Much to the Doctor’s surprise and relief, Martha hadn’t insisted on sitting him down on a log and starting a therapy session. When he’d questioned that, she’d merely glanced at him and asked, “Is that what you want?”
“Well… no.”
“Would you willingly sit through that?”
He’d scratched the back of his head at that and glanced away, much to Martha’s amusement. “We’re here on an adventure,” she’d told him, quite simply. “Just like always.”
Since then, Companion had willingly flipped through the available options of friends he could choose to accompany him. Most of them hadn’t been part of the mob that had tried to kill him, except for the various natives of this universe. Now that he knew they weren’t dead yet, they seemed to have been added back into the roster. There were a few others, like Evelyn, Romana, or Sam, who were still accessible as well.
Eventually, they’d settled on Bernice Summerfield. It wasn’t for any particular reason, really. Not any intellectual ones, anyway. It was just that seeing Ace in particular transformed into a monster bent on revenge was particularly galling. Most of the others had been hurt because of circumstances outside the Doctor’s control (circumstances he should have foreseen, fates he would have averted…), but Ace…
His former self had led her down the garden path right into the Time War. She, more than any of his other friends, was a monster of his own making.
Benny seemed scarcely any more inclined to chatting about the Doctor’s mental state than Martha had, though she did make a little small talk about the weather and how the Doctor was handling domestic life.
After about ten minutes, the Doctor stopped dead in his tracks. “Right, that’s enough.”
Benny looked affronted. “Excuse me?”
He gestured around with his hooves. “All of this nothing, it’s getting ridiculous,” he said crossly. “You said this was an adventure, didn’t you? Well, where is it?”
Benny chuckled. “What, you want me to be your Morpheus on this jaunt through the Matrix? Your Ghost of Doctors Past, Present, and Future, perhaps?”
“Alright, sure. That sounds doable, let’s try it.”
“Really?” Benny asked. “You want me to take you back through your own history? Let me rephrase that. You want to see your own history?”
“Well, if the current alternative is wandering around here until we starve, then --”
There was a rustling in the bushes and the Doctor and Benny froze.
“Don’t think this gets you out of an explanation,” the Doctor muttered.
Bernice glared at him. The rustling grew louder, and out of the bushes popped… a ball of fluff. It was blue.
Benny snorted and relaxed her posture. “What the hell is that? A tribble?”
The Doctor’s face was grim. “No. Keep back, Bernice.”
“Meep, meep?” The fuzzball pushed itself off the ground. It had a petite little snout and big eyes. It was painfully cute, like some kind of plush toy. Once upon a time, there had been a very successful line of toys based on its species.
“Oh, it’s adorable!” Benny said.
The thing looked up at her, its lower lip trembling. “P-pwease hewp me,” it said. “I’m just a poor wittle Meep, wost and awone. Won’t you hewp me get home?”
Benny smiled broadly and reached out toward the thing.
“Keep back,” the Doctor said shortly.
Benny frowned at him. “Oh, come on, Doctor. What’s the worst that it could--”
“Doctor?” said the Meep, its sweet little voice turned to ice.
“Benny,” said the Doctor. “Please meet Beep the Meep, inveterate conqueror of worlds and a war criminal even by the standards of his own bloodthirsty culture.”
Beep the Meep sniggered unpleasantly. “The pleasure is all mine, meep meep!”
Benny backed up several paces. “Right. Okay. Yes. Er, what do you suggest we do about our new friend Mr. the Meep, then?”
Out from his voluminous layers of fluff, Beep produced an unfeasibly large laser pistol.
“RUN!” the Doctor shouted.
Benny didn’t need telling twice, and the pair of them raced into the brush, pursued by blasts of crimson light that crisped the leaves around them to ash and the maniacal laughter of the Meep.
The six pegasi were gathered in the atrium. The lighting still wasn’t the best, but it was better than going outside and risking being seen. Flitter and Fluttershy delicately picked out the fine shards of glass one by one while Ditzy and Thunderlane stood back, awkwardly hanging around the base of one of the statues. Fortunately, the damage was largely superficial -- several small cuts, not deep enough to damage anything beyond the skin. After several minutes had gone by, Fluttershy had stepped back and pronounced that she, at the very least, couldn’t see any more slivers of glass in Rainbow.
“Yeah, I think you should be alright too, CeeCee,” Flitter said, after a few moments scrutinizing her sister’s wounds.
“They should heal well enough,” Fluttershy said. “I’d prefer to wash them, of course, to prevent infection. I’d apply bandages too, if we could, but, well…”
“We don’t have any,” Rainbow Dash said, sitting up with a grunt.
“Or water. Or food,” Fluttershy noted.
“So we’re just screwed in general?” Thunderlane asked, stepping into the conversation.
Fluttershy considered this. “Yes,” she said. “I think that sums it up.”
There was a long silence. “So… where do we go from here?” Ditzy asked.
“The Crusaders,” Thunderlane said immediately. “They’re still wandering around the tower. We have to find them before… before something happens to them.”
Everypony nodded. None of them gave voice to the very real possibility that they might be too late. Dash forced a laugh. “I mean. Knowing them, we should be more worried about them happening to something else.”
There were a few chuckles, but they hung hollow in the vast hall and gave way to a long and painful silence.
“So,” said Cloudchaser. “Back the way we came, then.”
There was a murmur of assent, and all six made a hasty exit from the foyer and back into the halls of the tower.
High above the pegasi, the earth pony contingent and Spike wandered the top of the tower aimlessly. Applejack was still somewhat steamed about their ignominious dismissal and walked along with her ears flat against her head. Mac seemed to be lost in thought. Spike was busily checking every door on the off-chance that Rarity might be imprisoned behind it, leaving Pinkie Pie to be the level-headed one for the moment. It was a position which she didn’t relish, but was prepared to accept.
“So,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”
“Back to th’ tomb,” Applejack said.
Pinkie sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I dunno, Jackie. It seemed like Twilight really didn’t think we should stick around.”
Applejack snorted. “Well, if she thinks she can jus’ teleport us away an’ expect us not to go back an’ help her --”
“Applejack,” Pinkie said. “We’re talking about the mares who move the heavens themselves, two of the most powerful unicorns in the world who ascended into something even bigger and better, the mare who blasted an invading army out of the country with love, and the most powerful reality warper in existence fighting against somepony they might not be able to beat.”
Applejack winced. Pinkie continued, more gently. “You know as well as the rest of us that Twilight didn’t send us away because she didn’t want us to help. She did it because she didn’t want us to get disintegrated in the first half of a second of the fight.”
Applejack winced again, harder. “Thanks fer that particular reminder.”
Pinkie blinked, not quite following. Then the bit dropped. “Oh.”
“Yep.”
“You mean you --”
“Three times. Three different Applejacks. All the same way.”
Now it was Pinkie’s turn to wince. “I’m sorry.”
“Weren’t yer fault,” Applejack said gruffly. “Ah know -- Ah know why Twilight did it. Tartarus, Ah’ll say it; she was right to send us away. But y’know, Ah -- Ah died ‘round ‘bout…” She glanced up at the ceiling, mouth moving as she counted. “Thirty-seven times today. An’ then Ah saw somewhere ‘round infinity of me. An’ basically, what Ah’m gettin’ at here is, Ah’ve had a real fucked-up day an’ Ah gotta keep m’self distracted from that somehow.”
“Thirty-seven?” Pinkie squeaked, horrified.
“Uh…” Applejack tilted her head. “Yeah. An’ then there was th’ mirror thing. Which, uh…” She spared a glance back at Mac, who was gazing vaguely into the middle distance while Spike chattered at her nervously. Applejack continued in a lower voice. “Don’t tell mah kin ‘bout what we saw in there, alright? Don’t wanna fuss ‘em.”
“I…” Pinkie trailed off, her mane deflating. “I don’t wanna lose you either, Jackie.”
Applejack sighed. “No. Ah don’t reckon you do. But it ain’t tomorrow. It ain’t next week, next season, next year. We got time, yet. Time enough.”
“... You wanna change the subject?”
“Do timberwolves bleed sap?”
Pinkie looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Mac! What’s on your mind?”
Mac shook herself back to the present. “Ah, uh, me? Uh, nothin’ much. Nope. Um. Jus’, uh, thinkin’ bout bein’ trapped. In th’ tomb. With Twilight. Terrible. Bad time.”
Applejack arched an eyebrow. “Mhm,” she said. “Awful close quarters th’ two of y’all were in.”
“Um. Eeyup.”
Pinkie grinned. “Aww! Did you two smooooooch?”
Mac blushed so hard that her freckles turned the same color as the rest of her coat.
Pinkie gasped, her eyes lighting up. “You did!”
“Almost,” Mac said hastily. “A lil’ bit. Maybe. She mighta just been, uh…”
“Trying to feed you like a mother bird?” Spike teased.
“Eeyup. Nope! Nope nope nope!”
The others laughed, the tension falling from their shoulders. After a moment, Mac chuckled a little, too.
The laughter stopped abruptly as the tower shuddered. All four stood perfectly still and silent, gazing around them. “Do you…” Spike hesitated for a moment. “Do you think that was it? The end of the fight, I mean?”
“...Could be,” Applejack allowed, turning in a slow circle. “Could very well be. Which, Ah gotta say, begs th’ question of just who won.”
There was a hollow knocking sound that echoed through the corridor. Everypony glanced around in confusion. Then, Mac’s gaze fell on Pinkie. “Uh. Miz Pie?” she said.
“Hm?”
Mac rolled her eyes and gestured downward. Pinkie’s knees were knocking together. She brightened up. “Ooh! Pinkie sense says, um…” Her smile faded. “Run.”
Nopony questioned the Pinkie Sense, even less so when the hairy blue spider that was easily a head taller than Big Mac rounded the corner at the end of the hall.
Dinky slotted the last few pieces of the stained glass window into place. It had gotten easier and easier as she went, not only because there were fewer pieces to sort through, but because she could compare them to the parts of her identity that she had already pieced together. She had never been a big fan of jigsaw puzzles, generally speaking. The picture was already on the box. Why waste the effort on recreating it?
Now, though, she understood some of the satisfaction other ponies felt slotting the last few puzzle pieces into place. The window shimmered with iridescent patterns, the colorful icons seeming to flicker into life.
Dinky squinted suddenly. ‘Seemed to,’ her flank. The whole thing was moving in a dozen different ways at once. The window fractured again, but not into little shards -- it peeled into layers, like an onion. The thin, colorful cross-sections flicked out, surrounding her. Her eyes went wide as she recognized them for what they were -- now that she had reassembled her past and present, she was seeing glimmers of the future.
Or rather, futures.
Each one was different. She watched as the Crusaders killed the Valeyard only to be annihilated by the Nightmare. She watched as they vanquished the Nightmare only for the Valeyard to trap them in the Matrix for eternity. She watched as her friends lived, died, disintegrated, were trapped, were freed, leapt from the frying pan, fell into the fire. She snarled. “I never much liked Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, either.”
She tried to study them, to get some idea of how the Crusaders could do any of the things depicted in the colorful glass, but they skipped around oddly. She was missing something, some piece of knowledge necessary to these scenarios.
Still, that in turn was some kind of knowledge. At least now she knew what she didn’t know, which was a start. Perhaps if she watched the stained glass windows carefully, she could get some kind of clue. She stared at one after the other, letting the brightening colors seep into her brain. They hurt to look at. It was almost impossible to keep watching. But she had to look, had to learn.
Didn’t she?
Dinky’s eyes widened. Then she snapped them shut, pressing her hooves against her forehead. “No, you don’t,” she growled. “That’s how you got into this mess, remember?”
In her mind’s eye, she could still see the bright colors swirling, swarming her, jostling together, threatening to crack apart once more on one another’s fragile edges. The picture was still broken, just in a different way.
“Back,” she growled. “Back, damn you! You’re not real yet, none of you, and if you keep it up, you never will be."
The light began to fade. She could tell from the way the insides of her eyelids darkened a few shades, from white to pale pink. “That’s it,” she murmured, trying her best to sound soothing. “Just calm down…”
In her mind, she pictured the window as it had been when it was whole. Outside, the clatter of glass and the whistle of wind faded to nothing. The inside of her eyelids faded from pink to magenta to red to dusky orange to twilight violet to midnight blue to, at long last, the refreshing black of oblivion.
The Doctor raced through the undergrowth before tripping on a root and tumbling down a ravine. He landed with a heavy thump and a grunt. After a few moments spent regaining his bearings, he pushed himself up onto all fours and glanced around. He’d lost Benny. That didn’t worry him too much. All his friends wandered off at some point in the adventure. Which, thanks to Beep the Meep, this was rapidly becoming.
He chuckled. “I suppose I should be careful what I wish for,” he said.
He had landed in what looked like a quarry. Sliding down the gravel hadn’t done him any favors, and he was now bleeding slightly from several nasty scrapes on his barrel and face. He glanced around, looking for the forest. It was nowhere to be seen.
He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his muzzle. “Sure. Why not? This may as well happen,” he grumbled. “Where am I, anyway?”
He started trotting along. It was chilly out, barely above freezing. The silence and isolation reminded him uncomfortably of his dream of Quiesca. Wherever this world was, though, it wasn’t that. The rock was grey, and the sun was too distant, a chilly white haze in the blue, blue sky. It felt familiar, but he couldn’t place the world.
Then he heard a mechanical whirring noise, not too far off. He spun around. A hatch had opened in the ground. He took a step back, nervous.
He relaxed when a familiar face popped out. “Benny!” he called.
She grinned at him, pulling herself onto the surface. “Hope you didn’t mind the sudden scenery shift,” she said. “We won’t have to worry about Mr. the Meep anymore, I lost him in the tunnels.”
“Tunnels? Scenery shift? You did that?” the Doctor asked.
“Well, sure,” Benny said, dragging a heavy rock over the top of the hatch. “I can change. Monster can change. Why shouldn’t Planet?”
“I suppose,” he allowed. “But Benny -- where are we? I can almost place it…”
“Ah. Yes, that is the bad news,” Benny admitted. The hatch opened and the rock fell. There was the sound of crunching metal, and a modified howl of protest. She grinned, slightly manically. “Welcome to beautiful Telos, Doctor! It may not look like much on the surface, but the underground life is really hopping. Well, for a given value of life. Native home of the Cryons, adopted home of the --”
“In-tru-derzz -” a synthetic voice buzzed. “You - will - be - like - uzz.”
“Cybermen,” the Doctor said. “Benny, can you --”
She was already sprinting off. The Doctor raced after her.
The world swam before the Doctor’s eyes, quite literally. The planet flickered from one world to another without rhyme or reason. Dry, cold, hot, wet, populous, spartan, barren, it made no difference. He recognized a few of them on sight as he ran -- the barren plains of Skaro, the lush and well-tended gardens on Trakken, the red, dry soil of Mars -- but most of them all ran together in a blur of rocks, water, and vegetation, with occasional buildings for emphasis. The Cyberman lumbered along behind them. The Doctor glanced back. Really, it was more of a Cyberpony, far less refined than the metallic soldiers the Rani had created all those years ago -- a monsterous draft horse of steel and plastic. But terminology didn’t much matter -- not while it was in hot pursuit of them.
The Doctor’s mind whirled. “Benny!” he yelled. “Can you get us to the mines of Flidor?”
No sooner had he said it than it was done. They were in a low-ceilinged tunnel, with rough scars running along its walls. “Now what?” Benny called.
“Now, this!” the Doctor replied, whipping out his sonic. There was a buzzing noise and the walls began to shake. Dust flew everywhere.
“What are you trying to do, make it sneeze itself to death?” Benny demanded.
The Doctor stopped and grinned. “Nope. We’re in a gold mine.”
Benny skidded to a halt and looked back. In the clearing dust, she could see the Cyberpony slumped on the floor. “Of course,” she said. “Gold interferes with their respirators, doesn’t it?”
The Doctor nodded. “Yep. Now, can I suggest getting us out of here before this one gets the wherewithal to turn into something nastier?”
“Capital idea,” Benny said. She gestured to a wall that definitely hadn’t been there before. “You first! Age before beauty and all that.”
The Doctor stuck his tongue out at her before trotting along the wall. As he went, he found that the mine fell away, revealing a chilly evening sky and wet pavements. He tasted the air. London. 1963. That sounded familiar.
And then he came to the gate. Big and blue, made of wood, painted with white letters. He took a step back. It read
I.M. Foreman
Scrap Merchant
76, Totter’s Lane
“Oh,” he said. He glanced at Benny. “So we are doing the Ghost of Christmas Past after all.”
She examined the gate. “Seems to be the size of it,” she agreed. “This is the place you first landed, isn’t it?”
“Not first,” the Doctor corrected. “We had a couple of adventures, first. But… in many ways… it was where I really started to become the man I am today.” He glanced at her. “What did you mean, ‘seems to be the size of it’? This isn’t your doing?”
Benny sighed. “You know, you’re being quite dense today. It’s your mind. You’re the one making all this, consciously or otherwise. I’m just here to be your Jiminy Cricket.”
“So before, when we were just walking in the woods --”
“There was never really a plan,” Benny said. “Not until you came up with one. All of this is you, Doctor. Every aspect of it is influenced by your mind, brought into being by the Matrix.”
“Including the ruined Gallifrey.”
“Yes.”
The Doctor looked at the gates. “I’m not sure I want to go through,” he admitted.
Benny grinned at him. “Well, that’s what I’m here for,” she said, shoving the door open and stepping into the world beyond.
The Doctor hesitated a moment. Then he sighed and followed his friend through the gate.
He had expected to find the old junkyard there, with the TARDIS humming softly in a corner. What he found instead was a jungle.
“Benny?”
“Yep?”
“Is this what being high feels like?”
“A bit,” Benny said. “Your brain gets fuzzier, though, so it’s easier to accept things like this. Where are we, anyway?”
“Still on Earth,” the Doctor said. “Just a very, very, very, very long time ago from where we were standing just now…”
He glanced back. Surprisingly, the scrapyard gate was still standing there, looking entirely incongruous in the vast, overgrown landscape. “To be precise,” he said absently, “I’d say we’re around… mm, 100,000 B.C.”
Benny looked at him sidelong. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that date’s rather important.”
“You said my mind was controlling all this,” the Doctor said. “If we were going to turn up anywhere to learn a moral about Doctors Past, there’s one time and place that tops the list.”
He set off through the trees. Now it was Benny’s turn to hurry after him. His face was grim. “Do I want to know?” she asked.
“Don’t you always? I thought that was one of the main traits of an archaeologist.”
“True.”
“You’ll see soon enough,” the Doctor said simply, stopping to stare over a bush.
Benny peered out alongside him to try and see what he meant. At first, she couldn’t see anything more than matted plants, brush, and trees. But then, figures came into view, flickering into focus like an old television set. Six figures in all, three mares and three stallions. Two of them were wearing heavy fur pelts. One of them appeared to have been injured. Several of the other ponies were trying to care for the wounded one, though the mare in furs seemed to be trying to fend the others off her compatriot. It was almost as though she thought they were trying to do him further harm.
Only one stood aside from the rest of the group -- an old unicorn, wearing a monocle and a shock of white hair. His lips were pursed in a thin line as he glanced back at the injured stallion. He levitated a heavy rock into the air and inspected it, nodding grimly when he found it satisfactory. He turned to face the others.
The scene froze.
Bernice took in a deep breath through her nose. “Well,” she said. “It’s not as though I didn’t know that you’d killed before.”
“An innocent life,” the Doctor said hollowly. “A wounded caveman, who was interfering in our escape. His name, I think, was Za? There’s his partner, Hur, of course, and my granddaughter. Poor, dear Susan.”
“And the other two?”
“Her teachers. The first humans I ever traveled with, Ian and Barbara. I hated them, at first! The things you learn on Gallifrey, all lesser species this and Laws of Time that… but really, they were the best things that ever happened to me.”
The scene started again. The old Doctor moved toward the injured caveman, raising the rock. He was halted by a hoof falling on his shoulder. He turned, looking rather guilty, to meet Ian’s stern gaze. He began stuttering excuses, and there the scene stopped again.
The Doctor sighed. “But for the grace of Chesterton,” he said, “I would’ve done it. I would have distracted Susan first, naturally, but she would have suspected. She was always a remarkably gifted empath.”
“You said there was a lesson here,” Benny said. “What was it?”
The Doctor pointed to his earlier self. “I felt guilty,” he said. “I was guilted by a piddly little temporal, marvelous, brilliant human out of killing someone for my own selfish reasons. That was the day I learned what a wonderful thing a little mercy, a little humanity could be.” He knocked withers with her lightly. “That’s why I like having you lot around so much.”
“Was that the day you started calling yourself ‘the Doctor’?” Benny asked.
“Er. Yes, actually, but for quite unrelated reasons,” the Doctor admitted. “They called me Dr. Foreman, and I didn’t want to listen to them butcher my actual name, and it just kind of stuck.”
Benny nodded. “Reasonable. That thing has what, seven consonants in a row at one point?”
“It’s easier to say when you’re not stuck in four piddly little dimensions,” the Doctor said.
“Oh, don’t you start that again…” Benny trailed off as she realized that the scene before her had changed. Now, the two caveponies were both lying dead on the ground, and Susan and the two humans were nowhere to be seen. Hunched over the bodies, levitating a rock in his red magic, the Valeyard looked around, his eyes cold and his face spattered with blood.
Then the scene faded entirely. “There but for the grace of Chesterton,” the Doctor repeated quietly as the landscape fell away from around them.