Closer to the Void

by Sixes_And_Sevens

You Can't Go Home Again

Dinky, Ditzy, Twilight, and Pinkie found themselves on a carved wooden balcony. “Where are we?” Ditzy murmured, glancing around at the vaulted walls as she stepped into the light.

Suddenly, a voice came from down below. “Well, old girl, looks like it’s the end of the line for us both.”

Everyone glanced down to see the Doctor, facing away from them, resting against an antique table. His tan coat blended almost perfectly with the decor. “That’s okay, I suppose. Properly speaking, this was always just a bit of extra.” He nodded, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Yes. All things considered, I don’t think I mind dying too terribly.”

He sighed, and his face dropped. “I just wish that I hadn’t dragged all those ponies into this mess,” he continued, shaking his head. “If it weren’t for me, they’d all be safe. They’d all be alive.”

He blinked back tears. “Dinky and Ditzy would still be alive.”

Dinky smirked. "Ahem."

The Doctor spun around, disbelief etched across his features. “What?”

He took in the sight of his new friends, whom he had thought already dead. “WHAT?”

He blinked at the sight of his wife and daughter, whom he had thought he would never see again. “WHAT?”

Then, without further ado, he vaulted to his hooves and rushed to embrace them all.

“But how did you escape the Time Vortex?” he asked.

Pinkie, who had mostly regained consciousness and awareness of her surroundings, grinned dazedly. “Well, we just took a jump to the left… Ooh, and then a step to the right…”

The Doctor glanced at Twilight, who shrugged. “It’s easiest if you just nod along and pretend to understand what she’s talking about.”

“...Ah-huh. But really, how did you get out? Teleportation is a risky business at best in the Vortex.”

Twilight shook her head. “We weren’t in the room. Dinky insisted that everyone go out into the corridor just before the doors opened.”

He frowned. “That’s odd…” he murmured. Turning to his daughter, he asked, “Why did you do that, Dinky?”

She shrugged. “I just got this weird sort of sense that the console room wasn’t safe.”

The Doctor looked ready to say more, but behind him, the doors swung open. “Hey Doc, bad news— OHMYCELESTIA, AJ, THEY’RE ALIVE!”

Twilight, Pinkie, Dinky, and Ditzy all suddenly found themselves knocked to the ground by an overjoyed pegasus, who was closely followed by an equally thrilled earth pony.

The Doctor attempted to speak over the excited hubbub, but failed. Finally, he roared, “EXCUSE ME!”

Everypony stopped talking. Turning to Applejack and Rainbow Dash, the Doctor continued in a quieter voice, “Now, thrilled as I am that everypony is still alive, may I assume that this means something went really very wrong and you can’t start the engines?”

Applejack’s face screwed up into a frown, and she pulled a piece of mangled machinery out of her hat. “My sonic screwdriver!” the Doctor gasped. “You broke my sonic screwdriver! Those things don’t grow on trees, you know! That was practically new!”

“Well, it died honorably,” Dash said, rolling her eyes. “Took down some kinda giant furry thing that was trying to kill us.”

The Doctor looked up, though he still held his broken screwdriver closely cradled in one hoof. “Trying to kill you? What? When I warned you about trouble, I didn’t really think that—” He thought back to the unknown being that had knocked him unconscious and presumably carried him here. “Hm.”

“Here, lemme show ya,” said Applejack, turning the monitor controls. The screen flickered, but eventually settled on the monstrous form of the deceased beast. The Doctor started from his seat, moving over to get a closer look. He flipped on a pair of spectacles and squinted at the corpse. “That,” he breathed quietly, “is impossible. Literally, impossible.” He glanced back at Dash and Applejack. “That’s what attacked you? You’re sure? It didn’t just… fall over, or something?”

“Sure as apples is apples,” the orange mare replied, offended. “What is it, anyway?”

The Doctor took one last glance at the screen. “It’s a Yeti.”

There was a long silence. “You’re kidding,” Twilight said. “Yeti don’t exist!”

“Yes, they dooo…” Pinkie sang, but the others chose to ignore that.

“Says the talking purple pony,” muttered the Doctor. In a louder voice, he continued, “Well. I say Yeti. It’s actually a robot designed to look like a Yeti, because… well, it’s a long story. I brought them aboard the TARDIS to keep them separate from their control spheres. Without those, they’re useless.” He gave the figure onscreen another long look. “Or so I thought.”

“So,” Dash said, pacing back and forth, “Just to sum up, we’re crashing into a black hole in a malfunctioning time machine, while being hunted by robots that shouldn’t actually be able to move. Am I missing anything?”

“Well, at least the Yeti is dead,” the Doctor said with false cheer.

“One of them is,” Ditzy corrected, “But we heard at least two others in the corridors.”

Dinky, meanwhile, had trotted over to look at the controls. She twisted the monitor knob in her hoof. Suddenly, there was a burst of static, and the picture changed. Not just to a different room, but to a different TARDIS.

There was no sound on the monitor, but the images were captivating enough. Strange, bipedal beasts stood in the control room, two of them watching the other spin and twirl around the console, flipping switches and buttons as it went. “What are those things?” Ditzy asked, fascinated.

The Doctor stared open-mouthed at the what the monitor before him was showing. “What?”

Applejack looked over his shoulder. “What in tarnation is that thing wearing?”

“I think it’s a fez,” Ditzy replied. “But, Doctor, what are they? And how did they get in?”

“Humans!” Twilight replied, staring in astonishment at the scene. “Why are there humans in the TARDIS?”

The Doctor turned to Twilight, nonplussed. “How exactly do you know about humans?”

She shrugged. “Long story. Also, I had a classmate that was obsessed with them, back in college.”

“Well. You’re half right. Two of them are humans, but the one in the hat—”

“Is you,” Dinky interrupted. “It is, isn’t it?”

“...Yes. I didn’t want to admit it to myself before now, but yes, that is me. Or to be more accurate, my replacement.”

“Your replacement?” Applejack asked, confused.

“My next regeneration,” he clarified. He took a long look at the gangly, bowtied figure. “Not as bad as some, I suppose,” he conceded, “But blimey, that chin! And where are his eyebrows?”

“Uh, Doc? More important things going on here…” Dash snarked.

“You know, I’m not sure about that…” the Doctor replied, eyes glinting. “In fact, this might just be the root of all of our problems!”

He flipped up one side of the desk and, fidgeting with a few switches, turned on another monitor, this one covered in Gallifreyan symbols. “Oh dear,” the Doctor sighed. “I was afraid of that…”

“Why, what happened?” Twilight asked, looking back and forth between the two monitors, trying to find some kind of correlation.

Reaching out a hoof, the Doctor tapped one particular symbol. “See this here? It’s the Gallifreyan for— well, there’s really no equivalent concept in your language. Basically, it’s a diverging pair of timestreams.”

“Uh-huh. And what’s that when it’s at home?” Rainbow asked.

The Doctor looked down. “I… may have broken reality, slightly. When I crashed here, a separate version of events, equally real, occurred, and I regenerated into that floppy-haired chap and started travelling with those two.”

“Is… is that safe?” Ditzy asked, nervously.

The Doctor sucked in a long breath. “Oh, yeah, more or less. Trouble is, I can’t re-enter my time-stream while he's there. That would lead to two Doctors, and we all know what that would mean.”

Applejack scratched her head. “Ah don’t.”

The Doctor turned and gave her an enormous grin. “It would be a ‘Pair o’ Docs’.”

Groans echoed through the room. “Now is really not the time for puns, Doctor,” Twilight grumbled.

“Oi! I’ve just gotten back to my daughter. I owe her around ten or eleven years of dad jokes, plus interest—”

Suddenly, a loud thump came from just beyond the main doors. Everyone froze, staring at it. “Please tell me you locked that,” the Doctor said. Dash and Applejack went pale.

“Right, okay. Time to hurry,” the Doctor said, frantically flipping switches.

“But Doc, we never got the engines hooked up!” Applejack shouted in despair.

“Don’t need to! If I can just disconnect the time—”

The door burst open, revealing a trio of hulking, fur-coated bodies.

Comments

[Efadd]

Pinkie, who had mostly regained consciousness and awareness of her surroundings, grinned dazedly. “Well, we just took a jump to the left… Ooh, and then a step to the right…”

Appropriate, Time Warp

[Coyote de La Mancha]

Pinkie, who had mostly regained consciousness and awareness of her surroundings, grinned dazedly. “Well, we just took a jump to the left… Ooh, and then a step to the right…”

The Doctor turned and gave her an enormous grin. “It would be a ‘Pair o’ Docs’.”

[Shilic]

That would lead to two Doctors, and we all know what that would mean.

A bizarre and slightly out of place Sixth Doctor story that retcons past events in such a way that it leaves massives holes in continuity?

It would be a ‘Pair o’ Docs’.

Or a pun, that works too.