Destiny Book 1: Dark Vengeance

by SirScribe

The Doctor confesses

Author's Note:

After looking back at the old version of this, I realized that I didn't do a good job with it and rewrote the entire second half. I'd say there are about 9 or 10 chapters remaining. Hang tight guys. Flutter On my fellow bronies!

Ditzy looked at the pink baker in the cell with concern and confusion. Pinkie was dancing in her cell, repeating her last words. “The Dark Lord has come! The Dark Lord has come!”

Twilight looked over at the Doctor. He was nervous. The brave stallion who could run head on into an army was gone. All that was left was a coward. She was going to interrogate him later, at least without Pinkie in the same room.

Sorry, Pinkamena. The earth pony stopped her dancing and finally stood still. “Oh, and it looks like he has it all here. The TARDIS, the Sonic Screwdriver, the companion who doesn’t know that the stallion she has been traveling with is really a mass murderer who shouldn’t be alive, and the regret on his face. What’s wrong Doctor, am I upsetting you?”

The Doctor snapped out of his trance. “As a matter of fact, no. I’m just surprised you heard of me. I try to stay out of the history books.”

“I didn’t recognize you from the history books, dear Doctor. You see, one can learn a lot about a pony based off of their facial features alone. Wrinkles along the eyes suggest a pony always has a grin on their face. Probably has a good job and wakes up every morning happy to be with their special somepony. For you, dear Doctor, your name and crimes are written all over your face. Your life in those 900-year old eyes show great loss.”

Twilight looked at the Time Lord with interest. “Lord Doctor of Gallifrey is all alone now. So without a companion he once knew as a friend. So long ago, your friend turned against you. How sad of a day that was for you. Childhood friends turned enemies.”

The Doctor’s ears perked up. “Excuse me?”

Pinkamena waved off her remark. “Oh well, what has been lost will be found. Anyway, I am curious about a few things. One of them is how the war actually ended. I’m seeing various stories on how it ended, but one can never know for sure unless one asks the sole survivor. Well Doctor? I am wondering about the fate of that lost world. Dear Doctor, where is Gallifrey?”

The ponies in the room, minus Fluttershy, looked at the Doctor. “Any day now, Doctor. Somepony upstairs probably heard the TARDIS materialize and probably sending for a head of command. You don’t have the time to stall anymore.”

Silence from the Time Lord. “SPEAK NOW DOCTOR! CONFESS YOUR CRIMES TO US!”

The Doctor growled. “OK! I DESTROYED GALLIFREY!”

All the ponies in the room gasped. Pinkamena smiled as the Doctor came undone. “Please elaborate.”

The Doctor sighed. There was no way he was going to slip away from this one. “It was after the fall of Arcadia. I was in the front lines trying to drive back the Daleks. I found and destroyed a legion of Daleks, and that was when I had enough. The war was going to burn the Universe if I didn’t stop it. The Daleks were coming in by the billions every day. There was no way to stop them by fighting. The Time Lords had an arsenal of weapons locked away, and out of all of them, only one could stop the war. I had no choice.”

Twilight walked forward. “So instead of figuring a way out of the war, you destroyed two civilizations and survived?!”

“I had no choice! There wasn’t a way out. Either I let the Universe burn or destroy my own people. It had to end with my people, because they were about to destroy Creation if I didn’t stop them! I fought two demons!”

“And probably innocent fillies while you were at it!”

“I COULDN’T SAVE THEM!”

Twilight took a defensive stance. “I had no choice. I couldn’t save everypony. I had only one way out, and that was burn them. I burned my whole planet and its attackers! I wasn’t supposed to survive, but I did! I didn’t want to! If you had to make a difficult choice, and both seemed extreme, which would you take?!”

The ponies stayed silent. "Exactly. I didn't want it to happen, but I just couldn't let either of them get away. The Daleks would've destroyed everything without mercy. The Time Lords wanted to cause a great paradox to rip the Time Vortex apart. Imagine a blood vessel in your body, Twilight. A blood vessel near your heart. What if one day it just suddenly exploded. There was no warning and no way to recover from it. You would die, Twilight! If I let them get away with it, they would've destroyed Creation."

Twilight’s eyes flared up. “How many ponies died?”

The Doctor shook his head. “How many, Doctor?! If we are to trust you, tell us!”

“I don’t know!”

“YES YOU DO!”

The Time Lord lowered his head. “I can’t place an exact number. There were too many,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to live! I wanted it all to end, Ms. Sparkle! I had no desire to survive, but I did anyway! Not only did I lose my family, but I lost what it means to be the Doctor! I was no longer the Doctor the minute I joined in the war, and I certainly was no longer the Doctor the minute I destroyed my own people.”

The Doctor turned to the pink pony. “How did you know?! TELL ME!” The Doctor slammed his hooves into the bars of the cell.

Pinkamena giggled. “I see your past, Doctor. So many faces, so many lives. 904 years of running, and now it is time to stop. Your time is up, dear Doctor.”

“No, I won’t. These ponies need my help, and if I die trying, then so be it! I will not give up!”

Pinkamena smiled. “Don’t worry, you won’t sleep yet. You have one more destination to make, but it will be years before you get there.”

“Where?”

Pinkamena leaned in closer. “You will know when you get the call. The whole Universe will know.”

Pinkamena started to laugh. Fluttershy cowered as her friend lost more of her mind. “The Doctor will die once more, when he reaches Trenzalore!”

Pinkamena’s eyes rolled into her head as she collapsed onto the ground. All the ponies in the room gasped. Twilight moved the Time Lord out of the way and used her magic to open the door. It was safe to say that Pinkie was alright.

Granted she still isn’t insane. She turned to the Time Lord, who was quietly entering his TARDIS without a word. Ditzy stayed in the dungeon instead of following the Time Lord. She helped Twilight lift Pinkie from her cell and inside the TARDIS. The other ponies followed close behind. When the last pony was inside, the doors closed and locked.

---

The Doctor sat quietly inside his study.

The Doctor didn’t just hang around inside the console room like everypony believed he would. Whenever he wanted some quiet time, he would allow the TARDIS to drift endlessly in space, lock himself in his study, and read. He didn’t care what he read during his time, all that matter was he had something to keep his mind grounded.

In his hooves was a Daring Do book that he picked up during his time as Time Turner in Ponyville. Twilight never guessed that she checked out a book to a Time Lord.

As time went on, he went from reading an innocent Daring Do book to reading the History of the Time War, a book he kept in the library. He didn’t like reading through it, but at least he could recall and later surrender to the fact he committed genocide. He was adding salt to the wound willingly.

A knock came at the door. The Doctor looked up from his book. Who knows where my study is?

He rose to his hooves and opened the door. In the hallway was Applejack with her hat on the side. The Time Lord sighed but put on a fake smile to greet the earth pony. “Hello Applejack, what brings you here?”

The pony shrugged. “Ah just came out of the orchard, which was huge, and ah just thought ah could get some quiet time since RD was jumping in the swimming pool next door. Ah saw ya leaving, and ah thought that maybe ah can join you, if that ain’t too much trouble.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “That was rehearsed.”

Applejack sighed. “Ok, ah wanted to check up on you. Ya took us out of that dungeon and just left without another word. Ah want to see how you are doing, and apologize for Pinkie’s behavior.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault, and it definitely isn’t Pinkie’s fault. That level of intelligence of the Time War doesn’t exist in this Universe. She probably overheard something Princess Celestia said. It is natural and I probably should’ve expected that. Besides, I’m fine,” he said.

Applejack narrowed her eyes. “Yer lying.”

The Doctor laughed. “That’s me, the silver-tongued Time Lord. If you want to come in, you can. I’m not stopping you.”

The earth pony nodded and entered the study. Her jaw hung when she saw all the stuff inside. There were dusty old books, walking canes, a large brown hat with a multicolored scarf, and a weird long piece of metal on a desk. At the end of the metal rod was a round, black piece. Aside from the rod, it felt like she was visiting old family members.

Applejack inspected the metal rod on the desk. Inside the round piece of the rod was glass. “That’s a Dalek eye.”

She immediately jumped back. “Don’t worry, it was an add-on. It’s officially a Dalek’s eye stalk. Inside a Dalek is a creature. The creature needs to see the outside world, so they use an eye stalk to see. It’s also a Dalek’s weakest point.”

“Why do ya have it?”

The Doctor sighed. “A souvenir from a very long day back in my Universe. The planet I used to protect was stolen by the Daleks, so I and my companions flew off to retrieve it, but the Daleks were destroyed before we escaped. This was all I had from that day,” he said.

Applejack looked back at the eye stalk. “Umm, Doctor?”

The Time Lord looked over. “How bad could it have been?”

The Doctor sighed. "It could've been bad for you. The Universe I was in has its own timeline. Well, it's not so much of a timeline but more of a ball of spaghetti noodles. Twists and turns all over the place. You can meet somepony for the first time but they already met you in the future. You can visit the dead, have tea with the ponies who aren't born yet, fight in wars long forgotten or rediscover age-old empires. That was and still is the beauty of time travel."

The Doctor walked over to his scarf. "This was a gift from an old friend. I traveled through time and space for hundreds of years and I've never gotten sick of it. Everyday is a brand new adventure and nothing can ever compare. If either the Daleks or the Time Lords had accomplished what they set out to do, all of that would be gone forever. Time would never exist and the ripple would've affected so many other universes."

Applejack walked around the study, surveying all the little trinkets. There were Egyptian artifacts, alien ray guns that no longer worked, high heel shoes (the Doctor never could figure out why they were there), keys, a badge that said UNIT, a leather wrist band with a plaque that read 'Captain Jack Harkness. Do not touch! No, seriously Jack' and so many other cool things.

There was one thing that caught Applejack's attention: a photo on his desk. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it was the Doctor as a foal running with another. The pony was gray with black hair and he had an hourglass cutie mark with a snare drum next to it. The two foals in the photo appeared to be having a great time running through a red field.

Her curiosity caught the Doctor's attention. "I don't know if Twilight will ever trust me after hearing what I had to say, but it's the truth. Everyday since the end of the war, I've tried to right what was wrong. Gallifrey is gone, and I'm all alone in the Universe. I will give 110% of my power to help you regain your world and that is my promise."

"That's very nice to hear, Doctor."

The two ponies turned to see Twilight standing under the doorway. She was trying to look angry but there was no way she could keep a frown. "I thought about what you said, and what you told Applejack just now. While genocide is frowned upon, especially in my book, I can see why you had to do it. You hurt yourself more than you hurt those Time Lords who burned. I don't think I can ever wrap my head around the idea, but I will have to."

The alicorn princess approached the Time Lord. "We need your help, Doctor. Help us Doctor. What Sombra and the others have done is too great for me to comprehend. If anything we need you to lead us to victory. I trust you."

The Time Lord smiled. He walked over to his desk and opened a drawer. Inside was a large map of the kingdom of Equestria. "If you have the connections in all the major cities, make contact immediately. If we can divide Sombra and Nightmare Moon's forces, we can get a clear shot into Canterlot without a problem."

Twilight nodded. "For a thousand years, the peace has been kept in this world. Now they have squandered that peace and moved right on in with Nightmare's eternal night, Sombra's empire and Chrysalis' desire for love magic. It's time to go to war."