Derpy Hooves held on for dear life as the TARDIS jerked violently around her. She was thrown violently back and forth and back again, the time machine she was trapped in shaking and shuddering as it plunged into the Z-neutrino energy core of the Crucible. The sound of hundreds of glass dials and lights shattering filled her ears, along with the dull roar of the fires that shot through the floor and walls of the TARDIS.
"Doctor!" She knew the scream was futile, but it was the only thing she could do. The TARDIS was being ripped apart around her, and she was completely helpless.
She couldn't help the short, involuntary screams that escaped her throat as she clumsily made her way the the controls. She had to at least try to avoid certain death. She pulled herself up onto her back hooves and tried pulling a lever, but a particularly violent jerk knocked the light gray mare back onto her hind quarters. A few inches away a fire erupted, releasing even more caustic smoke into her mouth and lungs. Coughs wracked her small body, and it was all she could do to remain in a sitting potion. Eventually even that was too difficult, and she collapsed into a heap on the floor.
Derpy knew that she would die today, and the thought brought even more tears to her eyes. She knew that people said that your life flashed before your eyes right before you died, but she hadn't known it was true until today.
She saw herself as a young filly, laying on her bed at her home in Cloudsdale. She was crying because the other fillies at flight school had laughed at her when she accidentally knocked a hole through a cloud, and fell through it. "Dum-Dum Derpy" they called her, along with "Clumsy Cross-eyes". She hated going to flight school.
She saw herself the day she moved to Ponyville. She was a teenager at the time, and glad to be out of Cloudsdale. She only hoped her new school would be better.
She saw herself getting her job as a mailmare of Ponyville. She loved her job, even if it meant she occasionally had to handle heavy things that she occasionally dropped, sometimes on other pony's heads.
She saw herself meeting the Doctor for the first time. He had been running one way, she had been flying the other. She had run into a tree and landed right on top of him. He had gotten up, grabbed one of her wings, and pulled her along with him, saying that they needed to get out of the forest as fast as they could. Turned out he was running from what he called a "Dalek". It was hard, but they eventually defeated it when Derpy had tried to air-lift her and the Doctor out of there, she had fallen directly on top of the Dalek and it had broken the eye piece clean off.
She always did have an abnormally hard buttocks.
But that wasn't going to help her now. Slowly her eyelids lowered over her yellow eyes, taking in the last sight she would ever see. It was the Doctor's disembodied hoof, floating in what seem to be a futuristic jar. Her eyes closed completely, the last of her tears slipped out, and her world went black.
Black, but not silent.
Bum-bum Bum-bum Bum-bum...
A heartbeat, clear as day, rung in the mare's ears. At first she assumed it to be her own, and expected it to extinguish soon with her life, but something gave her the strength to open her eyes. She saw the same thing she had seen a moment ago, the hoof in the jar. But somehow it was different. She blinked a few ties to be sure, but she could have sworn it was glowing with a yellow shine. A yellow shine that seemed to be swirling in the air around the container. Derpy rubbed her eyes with a hoof to make double sure it wasn't a trick of the light, but there was definitely a glow around the hoof and its jar. The same something that gave her the strength to open her eyes a moment ago brought her closer to the jar. Slowly, carefully, she reached out with a shaking hoof to touch the strangely warm glass...
A bright light, the brightest Derpy had ever seen, erupted from the jar and illuminated what was left of the TARDIS. The glass shattered, and her eyes squeezed shut of their own accord. She heard a slight thump in front of her over the roar of the flames, opened her eyes to see the severed hoof, lying there on the floor, still glowing with that golden light. She watched, fascinated, and the hoof grew into a leg, then a torso, then a whole body. A familiar body. A brown one, with twin hourglass symbols on each flank. It was the Doctor, no mistaking it. Same dark brown spiky mane, same matching tail. Same blue eyes, and same slightly cocky grin. The only difference was a pair of brown feathered wings set squarely on his shoulders. It was the Doctor, but as a pegasus.
"It's you..." She heard herself breathe, though she made no conscious effort to.
"Oh yes," He gasped back. He shot her a quick grin before expertly pulling himself up to the control panel and stomping on a small red button. It took a few seconds, but the distinctive sound of the TARDIS's engine was the sweetest relief Derpy had ever heard.
A few months later
Derpy Hooves squinted at the messily-written grocery list she had written earlier while her boyfriend, the Doctor, graciously held it between his teeth for her. The two pegasi were in the middle of their weekly shopping trip, but unfortunately the gray mare's writing was near impossible to read.
"Does this say blueberries? I think this says blueberries." She pointed a hoof at one of the squiggly lines on the paper and Doctor crossed his eyes trying to see it. He shrugged at his girlfriend, then carefully placed the list back into her open saddle bag.
"I don't know dear, but maybe we should get them anyways. Just in case." He smiled at her and leaned in to touch his nose to hers. "Besides, you can always bake them into some delicious blueberry muffins."
"Ooo! Muffins! I can bake some when we get home! We can eat them for dinner, and we could have some pancakes with it to!" Her crossed, golden eyes widened in excitement and she trotted away towards the booth selling blueberries. "It'll be breakfast for dinner!"
The Doctor followed her at a slightly slower pace, laughing softly to himself.
"Breakfast for dinner, how marvelous."
Derpy was all he could ever hope and dream for, she was sweet, innocent, caring, and she was all his. The "real" Doctor had wiped her memory and left her behind, but he had given the "fake" Doctor the greatest gift anypony could ask for, and for that he was grateful. He had settled into life as a normal pegasus quite well, he had gotten a job working at a clock maker's shop because it matched his unique cutie mark, and he liked the work as well. After that he had staged his "first" meeting with the mailmare of Ponyville, and after they had gotten to know each other (for the second time, but she didn't know that), he had moved out of his flat above the clock shop and into her quaint two story house in the town square. The Doctor wouldn't give up his new life for the world.
Derpy thanked the salescolt for the blueberries and moved on to the next thing on her list, which she though was milk. It looked kind of like milk, but it was hard to tell. She was on her way to the next stall, when she heard a strangely familiar noise. It was impossible to describe, but she was strangely drawn to it. She turned the corner, and saw an odd blue box on the side of the deserted dirt road. It was taller that she was, and across the top in faded gold lettering it read "Police Public Call Box".
A strange pony she had never seen before walked out the door of the box and looked right at her. She tilted her head to the left in confusion. Surely she had never seen this pony here before. He was brown, with a spiky mane. He was still half inside the strange box, so his tail and cutie mark were hidden, but she swore later that he almost looked exactly like her Doctor. She almost went to investigate, but a voice stopped her.
"Darling? Where'd you go? You have the grocery list remember?" It was the Doctor, calling to her from around the corner.
She turned and shouted "Coming!" over her shoulder, but when she turned back the strange earth pony had disappeared back inside the strange box. She started to move forward, but was interrupted again.
"Darling?!"
"Coming!" She turned and walked around the corner, not hearing or seeing the strangely familiar pony and box disappearing.
