The End of Time And All Things

There was smoke coming from the center console.

"What's going on!?"  Rose screamed

"I don-" The Doctor started to say when there was a large explosion in one corner of the room.

"SURRENDER OR BE EXTERMINATED!

The Doctor and Rose simultaneously let out a fearful, "Oh-no"

"I thought we lost them," Rose yelled. "We blew up the mother ship"

"This must be one of the scout ships that wasn't there during the explosion" explained the Doctor. "The one thing I don't understand is how the bloody hell are they chasing us through time? The Daleks have never been able to bend time or space as fast or efficiently as the Time Lords."

"Well maybe they grabbed onto the TARDIS and we're pulling them through time or something" Rose offered

"It would explain the turbulence but I didn't even know that was possible" the Doctor answered now attempting to get to his feet. He slowly made his way to the display screen, stumbling a few times as the TARDIS shook violently. He finally made it to the screen and just stared at it for a while, trying to understand what he was reading. It didn't make sense. There was no way it could be possible.

His bewilderment must have been visible because Rose cautiously asked him, "What does it say?"

After another short moment of staring as if he thought the screen would change he looked up and said, "She must be trying desperately to shake off the Daleks because She's flying to the end of time itself. I didn't even know there was an end."

This was one of the last things Rose expected to hear. How could time have an end? Wouldn't it just keep on going, even if everything else died? Or wouldn't it loop back around and start from the beginning or something? It didn't make any sense, but the way the Doctor was looking at her told her that e was being completely serious. "If time really does have an end, and were going there, then what does that mean for us?"

The Doctor seemed to contemplate this for a moment. "I'm not sure, but with the Daleks in tow it can't be good."

Suddenly the TARDIS began to lurch even more violently than before as its two passengers were literally thrown off their feet. Rose was thrown across the room, straight into the opposite wall. Before she could get up another massive bump sent her into the air and back to the center of the room. She tried to get up but was thrown again as the TARDIS was shaken so terribly that Rose managed to wounder how it was even still in one piece, right before everything went black.

"What happened?" Rose said weakly. The room was dark. The smell of smoke filled the air and the TARDIS was....quiet? She was a bit confused as to why the quiet was so noticeable. Rose became worried when she received no response so she tried talking again, a little bolder this time. "Doctor?"

Rose got up and looked around.... or tried to look around. There was no light. The colorful, homely lights of the center console that she knew were there were without any sign of life. The large round lights that adorned the walls were nowhere to be found. Even the small windows above the door the usually allowed a bit of light from nearby stars or from other sources of light to stream in were dark. "Are you still there?" she squeaked hopefully, but no reply came. No cheery voice to assure her that everything was fine. Nobody to look to for an answer, standing tall and proud. Just darkness. After all they'd been through, all the times that all had seemed lost, he was always there. Now all she had was darkness. The kind of darkness that  seems the surround and crush you with its own supernatural mass. The kind that seems to push back at you and cause nothing but a fear that clouds your thoughts. With nothing left to do Rose just curled into a ball and waited.

She wasn't sure how long she waited. For all she knew it could have been hours. Eventually she heard some rubble shift and fall to the ground as the Doctor groaned trying to get up. Rose rushed and scrambled, trying to get to where she thought she had heard him in the darkness. "Are you OK?" she said through a pile of broken TARDIS as she tried to find him.

"A little more to the left" he said, sounding shaky.

Rose turned while still searching until she found his hand, relief washing over her. Grasping his hand she pulled him up, and helped him over to the steps in the back of the console room where they could sit down. Rose wanted to question him. She wanted to ask him what was wrong and hear him say everything was OK, that he knew exactly how to fix it, but the Doctor was quiet. Instead they just sat there in silence while Rose rested her head on his shoulder. Under normal circumstances she would have been embarrassed but circumstances weren't normal.

Slowly the Doctor got up and pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. Using it as a light he bypassed the broken pieces of rubble and began inspecting the controls of his TARDIS. Rose got up and followed but stayed quiet, not wanting to disturb him.

"Doctor what happened?" The last thing she remembered before blacking out was the TARDIS screeching as it haphazardly flew through time, dragging the Daleks with them to a destination that shouldn't be able to exist... the end of time.

"I don't know. We might have crashed but crashing shouldn't be able to break the TARDIS. She's taken harder hits and been broken up more than this before." The Doctor was moving from one side of the circular control pad to the other, pushing button after button, trying to get his miraculous machine to do something, ANYTHING, but to no avail.

Rose felt a bit useless just standing and watching so she asked, "Well isn't there a back up generator or power source that we could use?"

"No there isn't. The TARDIS runs off of time energy. As long as time is flowing, the TARDIS has power. However..."

"However?"

Hesitantly he answered, "According to the last coordinates I saw on the display screen we were headed to the 'end of time'. If time really does have an end, and we've ended up there, then it would make sense for there to be no time energy."

"Does... does that mean were stuck here?" Rose didn't want to spend the rest of her life stuck in a space ship, TARDIS or not. She had a family, friends. How would they react if she one day came back twice as old as everyone she knew? How would they react if she didn't come back at all? Rose didn't want to think about it but she had to ask the Doctor, "Will we ever make it back?"

At first the Doctor didn't say anything. He had been pausing in thought quite often recently, and it made Rose worried. Eventually he answered just as slowly as before, "We have to. Always have hope"

Suddenly the bone-chilling, robotic voice of the Doctor's greatest fear caused he and Rose to stiffen. "WHERE HAVE YOU TAKEN US, DOCTOR. EXIT THE TARDIS AND EXPLAIN!"

Neither Rose nor the Doctor moved for quite some time. Neither of them wanted to. Since waking up inside the pitch black TARDIS they had both forgotten about the Daleks. The Doctor was the first to move.

"Doctor you can't go out there!" For the first time in all their travels Rose was truly scared for his life.

"I have to Rose"

"No! You can't! If the TARDIS isn't working then you have no protection from whatever is out there"

The Doctor knew she was right. Without power the TARDIS had no force fields or artificial gravity which also meant they had either landed on a planet or were inside a larger ship that didn't run off of time energy. Considering the fact that it was a Dalek that had screamed at them a moment earlier he seriously hoped that it wasn't the ladder. Against his better judgement he turned and grabbed the door handle and said, "I have to" before stepping through.

The first thing he saw was the very thing he had hoped against hope he wouldn't have to face which had gathered by the hundreds. The room was massive, easily spanning hundreds of feet from end to end with the TARDIS parked right in the middle. Surrounding it in every direction was row upon row of Daleks, all unmoving and silently watching as the Doctor just stared.

A booming, deep, but still unmistakably Dalek voice  shook the Doctor from his state of shock. "WHERE HAVE YOU BROUGHT US DOCTOR?"

The Doctor hadn't moved. All he could do was say, quietly and to himself, "Not good"

Rose was getting more and more worried, the longer the Doctor stayed outside. All she could see as the Doctor opened the door to step outside was hundreds of Daleks. As silence ensued she began to fear for the worst. What if they just killed him the moment he stepped outside without letting him at least talk. She wouldn't put it past the Daleks. those vile and horrid creatures loved to kill and murder, it was all they lived for.

Just when she thought she couldn't take not knowing anymore she heard the voice of a Dalek. "WHERE HAVE YOU BROUGHT US DOCTOR?" Oddly enough this voice actually calmed her. It wouldn't be asking the Doctor questions if they had already killed him. Feeling a little calmer she decided she might as well take a look outside as well. The Daleks were actually willing to converse for a change. Plus it wasn't like a unprotected TARDIS was any safer from an entire army of the embodiment of death itself. She was still scared though and the fear made her hesitate at the door. It was one of the hardest things she ever had to make herself do, but she managed to open the door. Peeking through the door which she had opened ajar she asked, "Whats going on?"

"Rose stay in the TARDIS!" The Doctor ordered quickly. He was scared, and understandably so. There were no options. No easy or even hard way out. As long as the TARDIS wasn't working there was no way he could escape, but there was also no way he was letting Rose die here. No way he would let her perish by the doing of the Daleks. He would get her out, somehow. Rose didn't listen though. She stepped out of the TARDIS and stood next to him even though she was literally trembling with fear. That was what he loved about her, and it was why he would do everything he possibly could to get her out. She always stood by him even with death literally staring her in the face.

Turning his attention back to his foe he asked, "What do you want?"

The Dalek answered with its rage filled voice. "WHERE HAVE YOU BROUGHT US!?"

"But that's not all you want, is it? You could find that out on your own easily enough. If that were all then I would be dead, so what is it that you want?"

The Dalek paused before saying, "OUR SCANS SHOW THAT WE ARE AT THE END OF TIME. THAT SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE! TIME DOES NOT HAVE AN END SO TELL NOW DOCTOR WHERE WE ARE OR YOU WILL SUFFER!

The Doctor was surprised. He had thought the display screen was wrong. Time didn't have an end but somehow both his TARDIS and the Dalek ship concurred that it did. He felt that he might as well at least try to explain their situation. "Normally time wouldn't have an end, but somehow we've managed to find it. I'm not sure but maybe the TARDIS tried to shake you off by flying to hundreds of destinations in time at once. That would have likely been accountable for all of the turbulence." Suddenly realization hit. "OH! I know where we are. When the TARDIS tried to shake you she realized that destinations in time weren't enough so she must have tried outside of time. There is no time energy not because time has ended, but because where we are there is no time, or at least it doesn't flow like were all used to it flowing."

Rose finally managed to get past staring mindlessly at all of the Daleks and asked the Doctor, "But if time isn't flowing then how are things happening? Wouldn't we all just stop doing things and be frozen in place forever?"

"Well think of it like this. Normally time flows not in a straight line like most people would think, but instead as a big ball of forever changing, never constant connections between different points in time. It's why I've always been able to jump to anywhere and anywhen. I'm able to travel those connections like roads, theoretical highways, but here time works differently because here it doesn't exist. All of the connections in the big ball of time have sort of collapsed, so all of the separate events are happening simultaneously."

Having a been hand some useful knowledge about where they were comforted Rose to a small degree, but it was soon crushed as the Dalek said, "THEN YOU WILL TAKE US BACK!"

The Doctor cautiously answered, "I can't" Afraid of how they would react to his answer.

"WHY CAN'T YOU!? EXPLAIN YOURSELF!"

"Because the TARDIS runs off of time energy. Since were outside of time there is no time energy meaning the TARDIS doesn't work."

The Daleks stayed silent for what seemed like hours. The Doctor began to wounder if they were having their own telepathic conversation when they said, "WE DO NOT WISH TO REMAIN HERE DOCTOR. WE WILL HELP YOU TO HELP US TO ESCAPE."

For a few seconds the Doctor was to stunned to reply. "Um... You want my help?"

"CORRECT"

"And you're willing to work with me to get it?" This all seemed too surreal to the Doctor

"THE DALEKS SUPREME GOAL IS TO EXTERMINATE ALL THINGS INFERIOR TO THE DALEKS. IF WE REMAIN HERE, THERE WOULD NOT BE ANYTHING INFERIOR TO US AND WE WOULD NOT HAVE A  PURPOSE. YOU WILL HELP US RETURN TO TIME, AND WE WILL ASSIST YOU IN HELPING US!"

"Well, uh... that's new"

The Doctor was pacing back and fourth, a content look of concentration pasted on his face as he tried to come up with some way to escape the impossible situation that he and Rose had found themselves in. Plans weren't usually his sort of thing, but not having some sort of planned order of events seemed like suicide. So as a result, he had been thinking about it for hours and hours, but there just seemed to be no way out. Every single situation, every sequence that he played out in his mind always ended in failure. The Daleks killing him and/or Rose, or only the Daleks escape and are free to wreak havoc upon countless galaxies, or the TARDIS gets destroyed and they're forced to spend the rest of they're live with the Daleks, however short that may be. He knew the Daleks would help, but he didn't want they're help. He could never trust them while knowing that they wouldn't hesitate to kill him and Rose the moment they all escaped. Just the thought of having to place the life of Rose, his assistant and beloved friend in the clutches of creatures as foul as the Daleks angered him to an immeasurable amount. He didn't want to, in fact he'd gladly give his life to keep her safe from them if it came to it. But no matter how he looked at it he could find no alternative to trusting the creatures that at the moment, had his TARDIS surrounded in more ways than one.

He had only come up with a sort-of make shift plan that was very questionable and had yet to work out the kinks. One such "kink" was that the Daleks would still have him and his TARDIS contained within they're ship when and if they managed to reenter the timeline. His plan for how to do that was one that he had come up with rather early on during the hours he had spent thinking. He wanted to come up with a better plan, one that was more solid and made more sense, but no such plan had decided to make its presence known to him. The TARDIS would be wired up to the Dalek ship's fission powered core. The Daleks would then increase the power output of the core and use that energy to collapse the core enough so that it would begin to create its own, noticeable gravitational field. This field would be amplified and contained using the excess power output from the core. Then some of the power would be sent to the TARDIS to give it basic power. Using this energy the Doctor would lock on to a certain point in space-time. When the core's gravity field became strong enough, it would begin to cause time distortion. Since the void that they were in was in a sense, "timeless", then the gravity field's distortion of time would begin to reach outwards towards time, and this would begin to "pull" time towards them. The closer time was pulled towards them, the more time energy the TARDIS would have, and hopefully they would get enough time energy to restart the TARDIS. It was a long shot, but it was the only plausible one.

The Doctor heard a gentle snore from behind him and looked over to see his companion had fallen asleep. It was enough to make him smile despite the seriousness of the situation. He couldn't blame her for sleeping and he didn't want to. She hadn't slept since this whole fiasco had started nearly three days ago, or at least three days in earth's time. That was counting the time they had spent here. Being outside of time didn't necessarily mean things stopped for you. A being's mind relied on a sense of time to allow its thoughts to happen in an order of one after the other. Outside of time didn't mean time stopped happening, but instead that there was no flow to it. All things that ever were, are, and will be were happening in unison, yet were still separate moments in and of themselves. The Doctor and Rose had been there for hours, and at the same time, they hadn't spent any time there at all. However to experience this would be to not experience anything a all because of the mind's tendency to separate separate moments and play them out in the order that we experience as time, even when there is no flow to it.

Still, seeing Rose in such a serene state after the events of earlier helped to calm him down. She was still safe and that was enough to force his smile to widen further.

"YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH TIME TO THINK, DOCTOR! EXIT THE TARDIS AND EXPLAIN HOW YOU MANAGE TO FREE US FROM THIS VOID!"

Rose yelped as she literally jumped from her light slumber, falling over as she tried to scramble to her feet as fast as she could, and not being very successful at it. After all, it's not every day that one wakes  up to what's possibly the worst alarm clock in the universe... an army of Daleks that expect you to "save them or die". Meanwhile the Doctor's stomach pitted as he exited his little-but-not-so-little-on-the-inside safe haven. He was filled with dread as he had yet to figure out how to leave the Daleks behind when he escaped with Rose.

Looking up to face the Supreme Dalek, the Doctor did his best to assume a tall and fearless pose. It wasn't easy. His thoughts were being constantly assaulted by emotions of fear and anger for the Daleks, every last one of them. Taking in the sight of hundreds of Daleks that had him trapped nearly caused him to slump his shoulders in defeat. He didn't though because he couldn't. He had to stand strong and act as if the Daleks were nothing more than a nuisance. He couldn't let them think that they had beaten him. He had to make them think he still had something up his sleeve. Something that him a threat to them. Something that would cause their diabolical scheme to blow up in their faces at the very last moment. It was how he always tried to face them and it hadn't failed him yet.

"You rang?" The Doctor said in a cheery voice. A much happier one than the tense and defensive one he had used when he first arrived with Rose. The Daleks were still a very real threat, but he decided that at least acting happier around Rose, even in situations such as the present one, might help make things easier for her.

The Supreme Dalek moved forward a bit. "TELL US HOW YOU PLAN TO BRING US BACK INTO THE FLOW OF TIME"

The Doctor's expression stayed the same for the most part, but inside he was shaking. His plan involved having the Daleks alter and warp their ship's core and possibly damage it. That part he decided to keep under wraps. The "damage" part. He had decided it might be unwise to make the Daleks angry. So he went ahead and told them his glorious plan with as much confidence and enthusiasm as he could muster.

As he finished he only began to get more and more worried. The Daleks hadn't moved. They hadn't interrupted him, screaming at him for attempting trickery, and spouting the usual, endless flow of threats of extermination. They just stayed silent. Silence around the Daleks was quite the rarity. It meant that they were either dead or... or... well usually it just meant that they were dead. But these Daleks weren't dead. They were clearly in deep thought, something that the Doctor thought Daleks were incapable of.

The Doctor had always wondered what Daleks thought about. What went on inside a mind designed only to hate and kill? He imagined they felt a constantly burning, writhing flame of anger. Everything they looked at and came near only caused that flame to brighten and flare up into a nearly uncontrollable desire to kill. Did they hate themselves and each other too?Was there a part of there mind that didn't hate, where they felt compassion and maybe even more for the Daleks around themselves, or, for their own kind did they feel nothing at all? It seemed like a living hell and he wanted to cringe at the thought.

The Daleks finally decided to voice their opinion of the Doctor's plan. "WE WILL AGREE TO ASSIST YOU IN OUR ESCAPE, DOCTOR"

At that the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't realized he was holding while caught up in his own thoughts. When the Daleks didn't say anything more he replied, "Alright then. Let's get started. Um... Lead the way?"

Without a word, the Supreme Dalek turned and headed off down a hallway to do what the Doctor could only guess at. It was another thing about the Daleks that the Doctor was curious about. What did they do when they weren't killing or planning the best way to kill something? They were living creatures after all. When and where did they rest and sleep? He snapped himself out of his train of thought. Focus was needed for whatever lay in store for him.

One of the Daleks moved up front and out of the crowd. "YOU AND YOUR COMPANION WILL FOLLOW!"

Meanwhile, in another part of the multiverse

The day had started out so normal. The air had been clear, the sky had been blue. It was't too hot, not too cold. Celestia's sun shone brightly, lighting up the beautiful land of Equestria, and many lands beyond, as it shone down from the heavens in a brilliance that had been giving breath to life and to the world since even before Celestia herself had taken control of it. From the fillies and colts playing carelessly in the schoolyards of Ponyville, to the hustle and bustle of busy ponies in Fillydelphia, always having to be somewhere for somepony else. From the pegasi pushing the clouds and shaping the weather in Cloudsdale, to the earth ponies managing their farms in the country. From the ice-capped mountaintops near Vanhoover, to the waves gently crashing against the shore in Manehatten. It was everything Celestia lived for. It was the result of over a thousand years of demanding, difficult, and strenuous leadership, and it was all worth it. She took pride in knowing that every single pony out there loved her and that they all looked up to, and needed her as a figure of strength and leadership. She, Celestia, was the ruler of this great nation, at least by day.

It still felt like  it was only yesterday that Luna, her little Lulu, Had returned. One thousand years, so much waiting, and freed by Celestia's own student, Twilight Sparkle. While she hadn't exactly been training Twilight for that particular task, she hadn't left Twilight completely unprepared either. Celestia knew Twilight was capable of great things the moment she laid eyes on her. She still remembered Twilight's entrance exam for The School For Gifted Unicorns. She could clearly remember how relieved she was that an excuse had come up for her to leave day court early. Celestia had lost count of how many times she had had to tell Blueblood that he couldn't ban the "Commoners" from castle grounds. Sometimes that stallion just couldn't get that no meant no.

By now of course, Celestia considered Twilight to be nothing less than family. Over the years she had grown as close to Twilight as she was to Luna. After all, she had practically raised Twilight since she was a filly of no more than seven. She was proud of Twilight for bringing Luna back. She was proud of Twilight for getting past her social roadblock and making friends, and in the process, becoming the bearer of the most powerful artifact in Equestria, the element of magic. Celestia was proud of everything Twilight had ever done. Seeing Twilight happy, seeing Luna again and happy, seeing an entire happy kingdom of happy and safe ponies brought joy to Celestia's heart. Her kingdom and the ponies in it were what made Celestia happy

Because of this she was terrified.

Equestria was under attack by creatures that nopony had ever seen before. They came from everywhere, east west, north, south. When they began raining fire from the sky, that was when Celestia knew that they had lost, that Equestria had fallen, that she had failed. Worse than the changelings, they left no survivors in their wake. They burned and pillaged everything in sight with weapons straight out of a comic book. These creatures had decimated every structure, every pony, civilian or not, anything that was not their own, in a matter of minutes, without remorse. These creatures form Tartarus.

These creatures, unstoppable creatures that had hammered down every defense, every barricade, every shield put up against them, like it was easy. These creatures which had taken everything from her. Luna and Twilight were dead. Killed right before her eyes when it all started. At least it had seemed painless. Now they were at her door, pounding away, breaking through. She had put up so many spells, so many defenses that a fully grown dragon would have had a hard time breaking through, and it was useless against them. She paid it no mind. All she could do was watch as the fires of her judgement day slowly ate away at her once beautiful kingdom, her home, now littered with the bodies of the innocent.

BOOM

The doors to Celestia's private bedchambers flew open in a torrent of choking smoke and rampant magic, remnants of the countless spells and runes that protected the ruler of one of the greatest nations on the planet. In rushed the creatures, twelve of them. Twelve. Twelve was all it took for them to kill the ruler of Equestria, and most powerful being in the land, if not the world. Slowly without saying a word, she turned to look at them. She was helpless. It was over, and nopony had stood the slightest chance. She just watched and waited for the inevitable. The one up front pointed its weapon.

There was a brilliant flash of light.