• Published 12th Oct 2018
  • 1,420 Views, 29 Comments

Closer to the Void - Sixes_And_Sevens



The Doctor is popping back to Earth, and he's taking his friends and family along for the ride. When the TARDIS stalls in the middle of the vortex, though, old foes arise and threaten everypony on the ship.

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Home Truths

Meanwhile, deep in the corridors of the TARDIS, a pair of earth ponies walked along the maze of hallways. The silence was stifling. Finally, Applejack could take no more. “So, uh, what’s behind all these doors?”

“Oh, you know. Lots of stuff. This one here leads to the old swimming pool.”

“Nice.”

“Well, it used to be, until it sprung a leak and flooded the library.”

“Ah.”

“‘Course, there’s always the duck pond. That’s still quite nice.”

“Fluttershy’d probably like to see that.”

“Yes… I’ll have to remember to tell her sometime. Tell me, Applejack, why did you come along today?”

The mare flinched slightly, but regained her composure quickly. “I jest wanted t’ try an’ help with that motor—”

“No, no. Not to the engine room. To the TARDIS. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have you aboard, but you don’t really strike me as the ‘go exploring in another universe’ type. So, what’s up?”

Applejack sighed, frustrated. “Other day,” she said flatly, "ya got back with Ditzy after darn near a decade."

"I did."

"So are ya good at, Ah dunno, relationships?"

The Doctor hesitated. "You mean... long-lasting ones? Ones that occur in a linear fashion? With courting, and dates, and domestics and such?"

Applejack nodded.

"No, not really. Lucky that Ditzy puts up with me, to be honest." He was silent for a moment. "Rainbow Dash?"

Applejack glanced at him, surprised. "Am Ah that obvious?"

"No! No, no, no. Well. A bit, I mean. I've got this sort of low-level telepathy, and you give off a lot of strong emotions around her, if you see what I mean. She gives off similar ones around you, if that's a help."

Applejack sighed. "Well, it's somethin'. But now what? What do Ah say? She's just so dang... aw, shoot, Ah dunno. Free. Loyal, too. Mah best friend in a lotta ways, but Ah don't even know if she likes me like that."

“I believe that I mentioned that it seemed fairly likely that she reciprocates. If nothing else, she seems to have a great deal of respect for you.”

“Yeah…”

“So, what’s the problem? The Chancellor of Honesty (or whatever your title is) having difficulty talking to her crush about her feelings?”

Applejack’s silence was answer enough. The smile slid from the Doctor’s face. “Ah.”

"She don't even know Ah like mares."

The Doctor stopped in his tracks and looked at her. "I'm not... the first you're telling, am I?"

"Pfft! Course not! Mah whole family knows. Ah just don't mention it much. Never really thought 'bout settlin' down. Just me, the farm, an' mah kin. But then..."

"You got a crush."

"Yeah."

The Doctor looked up at the ceiling for a long moment. “Ditzy wasn’t exactly my first love, you know,” he said quietly.

Applejack said nothing, but watched her companion closely.

“I had a family, once. Parents. A brother. A wife. Kids. Grandkids, too, even some great-grandchildren in the end. But one day, I just… went away. And they stayed behind.”

“All of ‘em?” Applejack asked, shocked.

“Not quite all,” he admitted. “My granddaughter, Susan, traveled with me for a long time. Got me a few new companions along the way.”

“By ‘companions’, you mean…”

“Friends. Fellow travelers. There were a few, over the centuries, that I felt romantic towards, of course, but, well... I've lived for a very long time.” He looked down the hallway. "I never even told all of them how I felt."

Rose.

Grace.

Romana.

Jo.

Jamie.

...Ditzy...

He straightened up. “No. I was always too busy. Too distracted. Too afraid of being rejected.”

He turned to look his companion straight in the eyes. “Don’t make the same mistakes that I did, Applejack. You’ve only got one lifetime. I strongly advise that you live it.”

He turned and continued walking down the wood-paneled hallway. Applejack didn’t move for a minute. “Had a family?” she muttered to herself.

***

Back in the console room, Twilight and Ditzy were doing their best to make some sense of the manual. “I… think that that symbol there means ‘speech’,” Ditzy opined cautiously. “But this is definitely a different language than what the Doctor writes in, and way beyond what he's taught me to read…”

“Must be a different dialect,” Twilight muttered, her eyebrows furrowed. "Or maybe it's just more a formal version?"

“Aw, forget all the egghead stuff,” Rainbow said dismissively. “Let’s just pound a few buttons, see what happens.”

“I tried that once,” said Dinky, deadpan. “I got pressure washed. And that was just in the shower. Imagine what all these buttons might do!”

Rainbow hesitated, staring around at the arrays of buttons and switches. “Well… okay, fine. No pushing weird buttons. Hey Pinkie, you got any ide— uhhh…”

Pinkie was standing in the middle of one of the walkways, vibrating like a tuning fork. “D-d-d-d-d-ooooooo-zzzyyyy!” she managed to shriek, just as the shaking stopped.

At the same moment, the lights flickered and went out. “I didn’t touch anything, I swear!” Rainbow yelped.

The sound of a distant bell, tolling sonorously through the TARDIS cut off any reply.

Twilight looked back to Pinkie Pie, who had started shaking again. “Well. This may not be the best sign.”

***

Applejack, recovering herself, started after the Doctor, but paused almost immediately. Where had he gone? The hallway continued straight for some distance ahead. No turns, no corners, and absolutely no way he could walk fast enough to reach the end of the hall in the few seconds she had been distracted. There was only one way he could have disappeared. She wrenched open the nearest door. Lots of books. No Doctor.

The next door revealed shelves and shelves of bananas, but a total lack of Time Lords. Grabbing a banana for the road (just because one is an apple farmer doesn’t mean one can’t appreciate a little variety), she looked back the way she had come- and noticed that the lights were going out, one by one. Her eyes dilated to pinpricks. “Aw, shoot,” she muttered, breaking into a gallop away from the approaching darkness.

“Doc? Where are ya?” Applejack yelled as she ran. The dull clanging of an ominously tolling bell echoed through the corridors behind her.

***

The Doctor stopped. This wasn’t the hallway he’d been walking down earlier. It was all metallic, and geometric. He turned around. No Applejack. “Okay. Don’t panic,” he muttered to himself. “Just start retracing your steps…”

Running back the way he had come, the Doctor suddenly stopped in front of a seemingly nondescript wall. For just a moment, he’d thought he’d seen a flicker of movement behind him. Slowly he turned around. A ghostly, featureless humanoid figure stood at the end of the corridor. The Watcher had returned. That could mean only one thing: his regeneration was at hand. Scowling, the Doctor advanced toward it. It reciprocated, drawing nearer him. “Now look here,” the Doctor shouted, shaking a finger at the ominous figure, “I’ve already died once this week, and that’s quite enough for me, thanks! You can just go— eh? Are you mocking me?”

For, indeed, the Watcher was mimicking the Doctor’s every move. Taking a closer look, he realized that there was a very logical explanation for this.

He had been yelling at a mirror.

“...Really glad no one saw that,” he muttered, turning away. Suddenly, he froze. If he had been yelling at a mirror… He held up his hands. They were paper-white. His suit had been replaced with matching robes. He had become the Watcher, the grim specter of imminent doom. Faced with this revelation, there was only one question remaining.

“WHAT?”

Reality suddenly shimmered, and he was back in the corridor where he had started. It was much darker now, he noticed, and there was still no sign of Applejack. He quickly glanced over his body. Good. All normal. Well, apart from the whole “being a pony” thing. He breathed a sigh of relief. This lasted all of three seconds before the ominous chimes tolled again. He straightened up. “Oh no,” he whispered, his eyes widening, “The Cloister Bells.”

***

Back in the console room, Twilight was beginning to panic. “Okay, I’m sure that absolutely everything is just fine,” she said, eye twitching. “They probably just tripped some circuit or another trying to get us to restart, right?”

She glanced frantically at her friends. “Right?!”

“Ohh, yeah, everything’s gonna turn out juuust fine!” Pinkie chirped. “It’s only the second story, so I don’t think anypony’s going to die just yet!”

This bout of Pinkie logic managed to snap Twilight out of her reverie. “Huh?” she asked, tilting her head at the peculiar party pony.

“Ugh,” Rainbow grumbled, “Let’s talk about this later. I’m gonna go see if I can find AJ and the Doc.” So saying, she zoomed off down the hallway her friends had taken earlier, as the dolorous chimes grew ever louder.