Apple Bloom broke down first, her entire body wracked with the force of her sobs. Rumble helped her walk out of the control room though Celestia knew how he was keeping it together.
Or. Well. Not anymore, she didn’t.
“I think,” said Sweetie Belle, her composure as fragile as cobweb, “that I’m going to be sick.”
She staggered out of the console room. Button hesitated a moment, giving anguished glances to Scootaloo and Dinky before hurrying after Sweetie.
The two remaining mares sat stock silent for a long moment. Then Scootaloo rose and trotted out the door. At the last second, she looked back. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t any of our faults.”
The light flickered orange again, before fading in the silence.
“I just thought you needed to hear that,” Scootaloo said softly, before leaving.
Then it was just Dinky. Or, just her and the TARDIS. She sat in the slowly-dimming light of the console room in dead silence, just staring at the monitor. Even after the display flicked off, presumably as an energy-saving measure, she kept her eyes fixed there.
When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse and dry. “So,” she said. “Hello again, old friend. It’s… been awhile since we last talked, hasn’t it? Properly, I mean -- not just through proxies and crystals and things. I guess we really haven’t talked in… must be ten years since we were stranded in the vortex.”
The TARDIS made no response. Slowly, Dinky managed to tear her eyes from the black monitor and look at the console directly. “Did you know this would happen?” she wondered. “You must have known something, to put a little piece of your power in me, all those years ago. Is this it? Is this your price to pay for saving us back then? The death of everyone I love? The burning of my home? The annihilation of the entire universe?”
She thumped the console. “I should have just let us all fall into oblivion!” she thundered. “I should have just let us all die! You should have just let us all die! At least the world would have survived!”
There was no answer. Dinky hung her head. “But how could I have known? Even if I had -- if I had, would I have had the strength to do it?”
She felt increasingly uncomfortable now -- not as though she was talking to herself, more as though she was lecturing a corpse.
Dinky stared at the central console. Her reflection stared back at her, distorted in the glass, her eyes wide and watery as they stretched up the cylinder. “Please,” she said. “Please. I need your help. I know you’re still in there somewhere. This is bigger than you or me, or any of us. You have to be in there. You have to.” She stared at the central console, dark and still, and her facade cracked.
“Don’t you understand, you stupid box? This is the end of the world, the end of everything! If the Valeyard gets his way, he’ll impose his will on the universe starting from the word ‘go’, and you, me, and everyone either of us has ever cared about will be erased, at best. No more flying. No more freedom. No more thief, no more TARDIS. Don’t you know? Don’t you care? I can’t do this alone!”
She crumpled, the weight of the situation finally too much to bear.
After a long moment, she felt a hoof fall on her shoulders. “You… are not alone,” Rumble said quietly.
Dinky said nothing. “You’re not,” Rumble repeated, more forcefully. “Dinky, you don’t have to be like this. You don’t have to cut yourself off from us, the way you always do. You don’t need to be strong, you don’t need to be brave, you don’t need to be smart for us to love you. We’re your friends. We love you because you’re you, not because you’re a monolith.”
“You’re leaving me,” Dinky said quietly. “No more Crusaders. No Mom. No Dad. Just me.”
Rumble was silent for a long moment. “That… sounds like an unhealthy amount of codependency,” he said. “But we’ll come back to that when we’re not about to die.”
He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry that I didn’t see this sooner,” he said. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry you feel like we’re abandoning you. That was never any of our intent, I promise. We love you, Dinky. We’d never hurt you, and we’d never want to leave you. Right here, right now, whatever you decide… I will stand with you, and I’m confident the others will, too. After all, the thing we're fighting for is literally lodged in your heart. And if you decide you don’t want to decide, we won’t love or respect you any less.”
Dinky pushed herself up from the console, turned around, and buried her face in Rumble’s chest, finally letting loose a flood of tears.
Rumble wrapped her in his wings and rocked her back and forth, letting her weep as he stared sightlessly at the blank, black screen of the monitor.
Ponyville fought bravely.
It wasn’t enough.
Slowly, the front line was pushed back, back, back, until the fire encircled them all. Ponyville General Hospital was the only building in town that wasn’t on fire. Yet. There were only a few dozen left who hadn’t succumbed to the flames or the smoke.
Fleur de Lis’s eyes watered as she blasted the inferno with a ray of frost. The air was too dry for much of anything to condense, let alone freeze, and so all that resulted was a thin wisp of white fog that quickly evaporated. “Fancee!” she called, looking over her shoulder. “Where is ze water --”
She stopped. Oh yes. No more Fancy Pants. He’d died nearly… ten minutes ago, crushed under a burning roof. No more partner. No more husband. No more best friend.
She became aware that she’d been looking back for almost two seconds now, and furiously pushed her grief to the back of her mind. She’d have time to grieve later. Or not. Either way, she couldn’t spare the time now.
“You,” she snapped, pointing at the nearest pony. “Bring us water.”
Octavia nodded mutely at the command and hurried inside, her body on autopilot as her mind replayed the scene of fifteen minutes ago over and over again in her head. She had barely escaped a collapsing building when she had come upon Caramel, desperately trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Vinyl in the middle of the street. He had failed.
High above, Nurse Redheart sat in the coma ward, huddled in a corner, eyes dead and hollow. She was surrounded by corpses, some of whom belonged to creatures never meant to die. The death throes of the gods had been terrible and awe-inspiring, storms of light and stardust that cut through the air like shimmering rainbow knives through reality itself, like the Aurora Borealis screaming and boiling in the air, like a nebula teeming with life simply exploding.
Constellations shimmered on the ceiling, but they were fading quickly.
A few rooms over, Granny Smith rocked babies in her lap, quietly whispering to them as they screamed. She wanted to scream, too. Her world was dying around her. Ponies she’d known since their birth were lying dead in the streets. The farm was likely so much kindling by now, and the only family she could get to were dead or as near to it as made hardly any difference.
But she rocked the babies back to sleep as best she could. It would be best if they weren’t awake for what was coming.
Redheart rose on shaking hooves. She was still a nurse. There were still six living patients left under her care.
Octavia carried a water cooler out of the hospital to where Fleur was standing. Why not? There was nothing else to do.
Fleur took the water and turned it into an icy spray that actually put out some of the flames in front of her. But not enough. “Another,” she said shortly.
The Doctor did not know when he began to walk through the valley of ashes. The scenery had changed around him so often, he hardly knew whether he was coming or going.
“Here, you see,” said a voice from all around him, “it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place.”
The Doctor said nothing.
“But you make no response?”
He staggered on.
“The Doctor and the Valeyard/Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see/Such quantities of sand…”
The Doctor grit his teeth.
“If seven maids with seven mops/Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,' the Doctor said,/That they could get it clear?'/I doubt it,' said the Valeyard,/And shed a bitter tear.”
“You’re stealing from Zagreus again,” the Doctor said, barely able to force out the words through his dry, ash-choked throat. “The Alice in Wonderland bit was old even when it started.”
The smile appeared first -- bloody teeth in a mouth that couldn’t quite make the right shape for it. The rest of the cyborg followed close behind. “Have you reconsidered yet?” it taunted. “I offered you such freedom, and you rejected me. Now see what it’s gotten you.”
The Doctor said nothing for a long moment. “It’s all a projection,” he said. “Smoke and mirrors. Most of my companions are safe and well.”
“But not all. Not by a long chalk,” said the Valeyard with relish. “Oh, and none of them for long, either. The good prince is next on my list, I believe. Shall we watch him burn together?”
A television set appeared in the ash, displaying Ponyville aflame. The Doctor kicked it over, shattering the screen.
“What is it that you want from me?” he demanded, turning on the Valeyard. “If you’re so inevitable, so cold, so emotionless, why do you keep hounding me? What more can you possibly want from me, eh?”
The Valeyard chuckled nastily, his red eyes flashing. “I thought that was obvious. I want you to die.”
“Been there,” the Doctor growled. "Done that."
“You mistake me,” said the Valeyard. He leaned in close, but the Doctor didn’t flinch. “I want to watch you die,” he snarled. “I want to see the last hope go out of your eyes. I want to see the great hero humiliated and defeated and suffering, and I want it to be all done at your own hand.”
The Doctor stared at him mutely. The Valeyard stepped back. “Call it… job satisfaction,” he said. “Catharsis, perhaps. I’ve been working on you for such a long, long time. I would hate to think it was all for nothing. Go on then, I’m feeling sporting -- how do you want to go out? You’ve had so many samples -- exhaustion, execution, a few different flavors of radiation, fall, poisoning, gunshot, crash… and that’s not even getting into the War!”
Now the Doctor stepped back, unnerved at the maniacal glee with which each new option was offered up. “I get to choose?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.”
The Doctor considered this. “And if I refuse to answer?”
“You know, I almost hope you do,” the Valeyard said. “You must understand by now how skilled I am at manipulating the Matrix. It would be so simple to just -- cordon off this section. I could trap you in a ten-minute loop of anguish -- mental, physical, and emotional -- for eternity. Perhaps I already have. How long, I wonder, would it take for you to break? You’re so damn close to cracking as it is. I so want to see it -- but no. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and I cannot abide either. Your answer, Doctor. Choose how you want to die!”
The Doctor stopped and thought about that for a long moment. He considered, ‘asleep -- curled up next to Ditzy’. But that was cowardly -- making even a synthetic version of her suffer that was more than he could stomach. Perhaps he could goad the Valeyard into chasing him and escape somehow -- dying on the run would appeal to his evil alter ego’s sense of the macabre. But where was there to run to?
He concentrated. There had to be a way out of this. There had to be an escape from this hellish cycle --
And that’s when he felt the other mind in the Matrix. It was hard to discern when the pain it felt was so similar to his own -- the rage, loss, fear, and sorrow that had haunted him for so long now called out for help across the vast plains of ash. He felt that pain, that mind, and knew immediately who it must belong to.
“Dinky,” he breathed. In that moment, he knew what he had to say.
He looked up at the Valeyard. “I choose to die as I have died every time before,” he said.
The Valeyard looked vaguely impressed. “A compilation? I hadn’t expected that of you, Doctor. Perhaps I did make an impression after --”
“No,” said the Doctor. “I choose to die making a difference. Doing good in the world. Sacrificing my life for love, stupid and temporal and equine as it is.”
The Valeyard looked perplexed. Very likely, it didn’t know where to begin with that as a cause of death. That was fine. The Doctor knew where he needed to be.
And he took off running across the plains, ash flying in his wake. He threw back his head, and through his choked and dusty throat he roared, “ALLONS-Y!”
Many minutes had passed in the TARDIS console room. The lights were fading, and the emergency lighting seemed to be kicking in, bathing everything a pale pink. The other Crusaders had returned to the room, having all decided that no matter what, they didn’t want to be alone right now.
Dinky’s eyes had run dry, but she was still clutching to Rumble like he was a life preserver. He looked at the others. “So,” he said quietly. “Options?”
“Go out there and die or stay in here and die?” Scootaloo said.
Rumble frowned. “Other options?”
“We could go to another room and die there,” Scootaloo suggested, her voice and face strained.
Nopony said anything for a long time. “Fuck,” said Scootaloo. “That’s… really it, isn’t it?”
“Kinda,” Button said.
Apple Bloom bowed her head. “Ah gotta say, Ah never thought it’d end like this.”
“I’d be astonished if you had,” Sweetie Belle said.
There was another long moment of silence. “I love you guys,” Rumble said quietly. “I mean -- I don’t know what kind of pony I’d be if I hadn’t joined the Crusaders all those years ago. You guys helped me to trust ponies again. You taught me how to love.”
There were quiet head nods all around the room. “I used to be afraid to sing,” Sweetie Belle said. “I was never good enough, and I was always in Rarity’s shadow. Thank you all for helping me be myself.”
Apple Bloom looked around the room. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. “Fer helpin’ me be more’n just another Apple. Fer gettin’ into trouble. Fer reminindin’ me that Ah… that Ah am loved.”
“For getting me out of my comfort zone,” Button said. “For letting me be a part of all these great adventures, and sharing your lives with me. I’d never ask for a better group of friends.”
Scootaloo looked down and shook her head. “For wild adventures. It’s been real, you guys.”
The lights flickered, flashing gold for a moment of a second. The afterimage of a stallion in full gallop lingered in everypony’s field of vision for a few seconds before fading away.
Dinky stopped breathing, her eyes wide. “...Doctor?” she whispered.
A dozen voices whispered back, each one murmuring advice and praise and telling her how brave she was and how proud they were and countless other things beside, but one message repeated itself over and over again in her head.
“I love you. Goodbye.”
Dinky pushed away from Rumble, her eyes wide.
“...Dinks?” Scootaloo asked, looking at her in concern.
Dinky looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. “Oh,” she said. “I think… I see.”
“Huh?” Button asked.
Dinky looked at Scootaloo first. “Your courage and adventurousness inspire me every day to do more.”
She turned to Button. “Your compassion and thoughtfulness is everlasting, and you’ve only ever been nice to me even when I couldn’t be nice to myself.”
Apple Bloom, now. “You’re the glue that holds us together, the first Crusader, always building new bridges and reinforcing the old ones.”
Sweetie Belle. “Your wit and joy has lightened even my heart, which I’m sure you know is a heavy task. But you did it happily.”
At last, Rumble. “You are so strong, and you only ever use that strength to hold ponies. Thank you for letting me break.”
He nodded solemnly. “Any time. I mean that. You need to let out your emotions more.”
Dinky looked around the room. “Thank you all for being my friends for all these long years. I would lay down my life for any of you in a heartbeat.”
She held up a hoof to stop the concerned responses. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be an option here. So, I would like to propose a new option.”
“Yes?” Rumble said, leaning forward.
“Raid the TARDIS for anything shaped like a weapon, surprise the Valeyard, and break his fucking kneecaps,” Dinky said shortly.
“That… sounds like going out and dying with extra steps,” Scootaloo said.
“Yeah,” Dinky admitted. “It’d make me feel better, though.”
Bloom nodded. “Yeah, you got a point there,” she said. “Ah’m in th’ mood fer a little revenge mahself.”
“Then let’s go,” Dinky said. “Ten minutes, and we meet back here. Go!”
Everypony scattered. The TARDIS was draining faster than Dinky had anticipated. Already, the backup lighting had kicked on, suffusing everything in a dark, magenta glow.