Bad Dreams
On Cruciform the fires burned
Like tendrils of a war well-earned
To mark the dead of Gallifrey
Who never had a chance that day
And not a single one returned.
The Eighth Doctor examined what he'd written. I'm sure Mr. McCrae wouldn't mind... though I find myself wondering why I've written it in the past tense.
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!”
Ah, yes. He dropped his paper and pencil, and picked up his gun. Because we've lost.
“You''ll never take the—” General Maxil's defiant shout was cut off by his own choked scream as a Dalek deathray struck his side. He fell to the ground, frantically trying to crawl to cover and a safe place to regenerate, but it was no use. The golden energy was beginning to surge from his hands when another green laser struck and ended him.
“Maxil!” The Doctor clutched the modified de-mat gun close to him. It would destroy a whole group of Daleks, erase them from existence itself, but it had a long charge time. In theory, this wasn't a problem, because the brave defense of the Gallifreyans at the front would only permit a few small groups of Daleks to enter the control room at a time.
He poked his head up from behind the cover of the control panel, then promptly ducked as several death rays burned through his hair. Bloody theory. There's a hundred of them. He thought for a moment about what he'd seen, then calculated his shot very carefully... easy does it... now. Without looking, he brought his gun above the level of the embankment and fired right into the center of the group. He was rewarded by the sound of nothing at all—the Daleks had disappeared from history, leaving nothing but wonderful silence.
“Nice work, Doc!” Drax called from across the corridor. “Toss the gun over here, I bet I can get it working again in a minute.” The Doctor kicked it over to his side, whereupon Drax pulled out his sonic spanner and began tinkering with the object. “While we've got a lull, what do you want to talk about?”
“Do you want to talk about how we might be the only two left?”
“Not particularly, no.” His friend's weak chuckle was cut short by a sound worryingly unlike most of those they'd been hearing. It wasn't the sound of a deathray, or a scream, or even a Dalek's voice. It sounded, if anything, like a muffled explosion. “Well, I suppose we're about to see whether or not these work on Special Weapons Daleks too.”
“Drax, get over here now.” The Doctor's senses felt even more heightened than usual—he could tell exactly where the noise was coming from. “Get away from that wall.”
“What, you think they'll be blasting through? Oh, there's a good one, Doc.” Drax slapped his knee, still tinkering with the gun, then rapped on the wall behind him. “It may be a Special Weapons Dalek, but this is dwarf-star alloy. Nothing gets through these walls.”
BOOM
The Doctor was moving even before his senses told him what had happened. He was standing, he was running, catching the de-mat gun in one hand as it flew through the air, catching Drax in the same arm, pulling out his own screwdriver, turning it to the highest setting, draining it in a heartbeat to power up the de-mat gun, and ducking under the Dalek lasers pouring through the breach in the wall.
“Shows me, huh?” Drax coughed. They were both perfectly aware of how grievous his injury was, but the Doctor didn't have time to think about it. He aimed his gun straight for the Special Weapons Dalek and pulled the trigger, wiping the abomination and a dozen more of its kin from the universe in a flash of light, but it wasn't enough. He heard more Daleks just around the corner. They were trapped.
Or, more accurately, they looked trapped.
“You'll be fine, Drax,” he insisted, dropping his spent sonic screwdriver and grabbing the spanner from Drax's slackening grip. “There's always a way out.” He aimed it at what looked an awful lot like thin air, right beside the gateway to the Cruciform, and his TARDIS uncloaked.
“So you don't think we can stop the Daleks?” Drax grimaced as the Doctor dragged him across the floor. The light was coming out his palms now, but still he tried to stand up, to stagger back to the battle. “The legendary fighter, giving up already?”
“We've lost the Cruciform, Drax, can't you feel it? Tell me you can sense any other Gallifreyans on this base besides us.” The Doctor paused at the door of his TARDIS to fish his key from his pocket. “But we're getting out, you and me—”
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE!” Drax didn't even cry out. The Doctor just felt him go limp. He didn't have the time to pull his friend's body inside the door: only enough to whip the key from his pocket, unlock the TARDIS, and run inside. He closed the door on his people, his friend, and the Cruciform, hearing the triumphant yells of the Daleks: “THE CRU-CI-FORM IS AC-QUI-RED!”
He ran to the TARDIS and slammed the ignition on the console, not bothering to set the coordinates. Anywhere was fine. Except that's wrong. Nowhere is fine—nowhere is safe. They have the Cruciform, and I failed. I ran.
Vworp... vworp...
He slumped against the console, unthinking and unfeeling.
“It has been many centuries since Equestria had such a war. I'd forgotten the grief it brings.”
“You've never had a war like this.” The Doctor was suddenly conscious of several things. He was not the Eighth Doctor in human guise, but the Tenth Doctor in pony form, and he was having another nightmare. The immediacy of his guilt diminished, replaced by anger at Princess Luna's brazen intrusion into his dreams. He looked up to see her standing solemnly in the dream-TARDIS. “What are you doing in my head?”
“I am the Princess of the Night, and I have authority over dreams.”
“Not my dreams,” he growled, raising the sonic spanner in front of his face. He'd smack himself on the head and wake up, simple as that—but she grabbed it with her magic and threw it away.
“Doctor, you are not my subject. But I consider you my friend, even if you do not, and I have watched you suffer these long nights.” She laid a hoof on his shoulder. “How can you live with such nightmares ever in your mind?”
In truth, it had been years since the Doctor had had such nightmares. Something about how Discord was poking around in my mind must have dredged it up... that and, perhaps... He noticed Luna motioning to him, as if to say 'go on', and narrowed his eyes. “Don't tell me you can read my thoughts too.”
“You are dreaming, Doctor. Everything here is your thoughts.”
Fair enough. The Doctor looked up at his old TARDIS, flying to the next destination. “If you hadn't interrupted, right now I'd be starting to think about what had happened. How many friends I lost that day—how hopeless the War seemed. Maybe I'd start dreaming of an old... friend... of mine, who watched as the Cruciform was taken and fled to the end of the universe.”
“No, Doctor. For you dream of the war not merely because of the losses you suffered, but the actions you were forced to take to end it.” Luna sat beside him, and the Doctor noticed that her starry mane was passing ethereally through his console. “So your sight would leave the TARDIS, to watch as your race resurrected their most ancient and powerful father to lead them once more. Your senses would revolt against the calamitous changes they made to the timeline of your people, transforming themselves into the ruthless warriors they thought could end the war. Your race tried to claim the godhood they thought they deserved. But they fell to the level of the monsters they fought.
“And you were forced to discard your own scruples to stop them.” The Doctor turned to the door and saw his eighth self standing there, holding the Moment and aiming for his home—but Luna pulled his gaze back to face her. “Every one of your dreams has ended that way, Doctor, ever since you came here. You do not need to see it again.”
“You didn't need to see it at all.” He got out from under her foreleg and walked to the TARDIS door to take in the sight of Gallifrey as he'd seen it that day, for the last time. For all its scars and craters, there was still beauty there. “I don't need your pity, Princess. I'm fine.”
“You are not fine. And I did not come to pity.” A hard edge crept into her voice. “I came because I believed you needed someone who could sympathize with your guilt.”
“Oh yeah, thanks.” The Doctor had been avoiding her gaze, but this was too much provocation to bear. “Lovely to know how understanding you are—but tell me, what's the worst thing you've ever done, Princess?”
But this was too much for her to bear. “How dare you!” she hissed, and the Doctor saw a pillar of smoke rise up and engulf her. A moment later, it was dispelled, revealing not Princess Luna, but Nightmare Moon. The TARDIS darkened in her presence.
“I smothered Equestria in endless night. I invaded the dreams of my once-beloved subjects, and tortured them with nightmares beyond even your imagination. I nearly killed my planet in the cold and the dark, and I forced my sister to banish the pony that had been her only friend. I broke her heart, and she will never recover from that pain. And I did it because I was jealous. How dare you suggest that no one else feels the guilt you do!”
The Doctor felt like he'd been slapped in the face, and took a few steps backward toward the door. He couldn't say anything 'out loud', but his thoughts and emotions were on display to her. A few moments later, she glowed white, and transformed back into Princess Luna. The lights came back on as she returned to her gentler tone.
“Jealousy turned me into Nightmare Moon, but it would not have been enough. I also needed to decide that my sister would not understand—that nopony would understand my anger. I needed to give those evil thoughts a place to live, to grow and fester, deep in my mind where they would not be rooted out before I was poisoned beyond saving.”
“I don't need to burden my friends with the mistakes of an old fool.” The Doctor walked past Luna to lean on the console like a crutch. He didn't feel up to meeting her eyes. She hesitated, unsure what to say for the first time in the conversation.
Eventually: “Let me tell you the story of a traveling magician who lived many thousands of years ago. He was the cleverest in the land, and performed many impossible feats of conjuration and illusion and incredible escapes. His magic box was filled with many wonders never seen by pony eyes, and his magic wand had powers unmatched by anything in Equestria.
“Yet he was flawed, and mortal, and infamous for getting in over his head. For putting himself in traps even he could not escape from. Many of his most famous acts almost ended in disaster. But where he might have failed, he succeeded instead. Do you know why?” The Doctor said nothing. “Doctor, what does every master magician need?”
“An oversized hat and a gaudy cloak?”
“What every great magician needs, and what this stallion had, was a group of assistants. They may not have been as clever or daring as he was, and when he took his bows the crowd did not applaud them—for all the crowd could see were the magician's majestic powers. He and his friends saw behind the illusion to the truth: without them, he was powerless, but if they joined together they could do anything. So he made them appear in impossible places, sent them flying wingless across the starry sky. And they in turn lifted him and let him fly. When his daring and his cleverness failed him, they were there by his side.”
Luna smiled. “I heard this tale so many years ago, and it taught me this: do not be afraid to share a burden with your friends. Never presume that they cannot help you—or that it would be better for you to suffer silently than to confide in them.” Her smile faded, and she fixed the Doctor with a stare so powerful that he could not avert his eyes. “I forgot this lesson once, and I regret that more than anything in my long life. You cannot afford to forget, Doctor.”
“All right, all right.” He straightened and walked around the console to where she was standing. “I know you're right, it's just... how can I tell them about this?”
“But they already know, do they not? Discord saw to that—and it did not terrify them; it did not drive them away. Your friends have stayed with you through the worst this world has to offer. They will not let you down.”
“But still—”
“They will not let you down.” And at this the Doctor heard the sound of knocking. A terrible wind rushed through the TARDIS, ripping up the pillars and the floor and everything in sight, and drawing it into a vortex howling about the center of the room, with the Doctor caught in the eye of the storm and Luna disappeared, and it was just him and the storm and the knocks. The Doctor felt himself pulled into the vortex, flying around and around, up and up and up—
And waking up with a start in his bed, in his modest Ponyville two-story flat. He sat still for a moment, but then he heard the knocking again, coming from his window. He ran to it and pulled the curtains aside to see—“Derpy?”
“You don't like the sound of knocking?” She frowned at the look of apprehension, then dawning relief, that he supposed must have been all over his face.
“What are you doing here?”
“I had a dream weird—I forget what it was—but when I woke up all I could remember was that you needed to tell me something really important. Like in real life, and I know how crazy that sounds. Whoa—” Right out of nowhere she almost managed to topple out of the sky, and did several flips before coming right side up. “Never fly tired, my mom always said—can you let me out? In, in, sorry.”
The Doctor opened his window to let her fall in, a sneaking suspicion forming in his mind about the origin of her 'dream weird'. “It's nothing, thanks. I'm okay.”
“You're a terrible liar, Doctor alien,” she yawned. “But if you really don't want to tell me, then sorry about waking you up. G'night!” She jumped out the window before the Doctor could react.
He stood there, staring at her retreating, corkscrewing form, and felt very stupid. Always with the 'I'm all right' schtick. A minute later, he sighed and crawled back into bed, knowing from experience that he wouldn't have a peaceful rest. He stared at the wall for a few minutes, before sinking into a doze.
Fwump
From which he sat up to see a freshly fallen Derpy face-first on his rug. “Sorry again, but—” She moved to a sitting position to make her voice less muffled. “Now I can't sleep either, because you need to say something and you're not saying it, and I hate it when ponies keep these stupid secrets.”
He rolled out of bed and hugged her. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, buddy. Now come on, spill the beans.”