TARDIS Fic: Silence
Title: Silence
Characters: The TARDIS, Ten
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set after Waters of Mars, but no spoilers
Word count: 500
Summary: The TARDIS witnesses the end of everything she holds dear.
The whole of creation was falling apart. At first, not on a level that most inhabitants of the cosmos would notice. Planets kept revolving on their usual paths, spinning through space in their solar systems, within galaxies, within clusters. One day followed another, and the universe bustled with life as it always had. But here and there, the same day happened twice. Here and there, a tree grew, withered, and died in a matter of hours. And then, children were born before their parents met. Whole societies disappeared over night, no one remembering cultures that had never been.
The Web of Time was strained to bursting. It tried to compensate for the leaks and anomalies, but everywhere timelines were coming undone, snapping out of place and leaving destruction in their wake. Centuries deteriorated. Seconds dripped into nothingness. The ether was filled with the screams of creatures that had never existed now. And the TARDIS was racing through the Time Vortex in terror, frantically looking for the point that started it all, for a way to fight back utter chaos.
No matter where she turned, the stench of paradoxes made her reel back. Time was spilling, bleeding everywhere, uncontrolled, corrupting the fabric of reality. Helplessly and frightened she watched as fixed temporal coordinates became fluid and unpredictable, the beautiful timescape she had called home rapidly changing into something hostile, a scorched wasteland.
And the nightmare wasn't over yet. She tried to materialize somewhere, anywhere, but to her horror she discovered that she couldn’t slip out of the Vortex anymore. It had become a trap, twisting in on itself into a mad spiral until the temporal streams she used to navigate so easily threatened to crush her. Faster and faster the Vortex collapsed, spinning and pushing and tearing at her, burning her shell, overloading every circuit in her body and setting her mind ablaze with the cacophony of a dying universe. At the peak of the destruction, all she had left to do was yearn for silence...
The TARDIS awoke to the sound of her own Cloister Bell tolling. Once, twice, before she realized that what she had experienced had not been real, and stilled herself. A dream. Her kind hardly slept, let alone had terrifying nightmares. Yet here she was, feeling as though she had witnessed the end of reality itself. The shock and confusion of it reverberated through her corridors, seeping into the Doctor’s mind and making him check the controls even more frantically than the ringing of the Cloister Bell had urged him to do. But after a moment, he stopped and stared at the scanner in puzzlement, at the data output telling him that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The TARDIS watched her pilot, hope and trepidation carefully hidden away from him, as it dawned on him what must have upset his ship.
Go on, she thought to herself, ask me what I have seen. Oh please, ask.
He didn't ask.
She almost wasn't surprised.
Characters: The TARDIS, Ten
Rating: G
Spoilers: Set after Waters of Mars, but no spoilers
Word count: 500
Summary: The TARDIS witnesses the end of everything she holds dear.
The whole of creation was falling apart. At first, not on a level that most inhabitants of the cosmos would notice. Planets kept revolving on their usual paths, spinning through space in their solar systems, within galaxies, within clusters. One day followed another, and the universe bustled with life as it always had. But here and there, the same day happened twice. Here and there, a tree grew, withered, and died in a matter of hours. And then, children were born before their parents met. Whole societies disappeared over night, no one remembering cultures that had never been.
The Web of Time was strained to bursting. It tried to compensate for the leaks and anomalies, but everywhere timelines were coming undone, snapping out of place and leaving destruction in their wake. Centuries deteriorated. Seconds dripped into nothingness. The ether was filled with the screams of creatures that had never existed now. And the TARDIS was racing through the Time Vortex in terror, frantically looking for the point that started it all, for a way to fight back utter chaos.
No matter where she turned, the stench of paradoxes made her reel back. Time was spilling, bleeding everywhere, uncontrolled, corrupting the fabric of reality. Helplessly and frightened she watched as fixed temporal coordinates became fluid and unpredictable, the beautiful timescape she had called home rapidly changing into something hostile, a scorched wasteland.
And the nightmare wasn't over yet. She tried to materialize somewhere, anywhere, but to her horror she discovered that she couldn’t slip out of the Vortex anymore. It had become a trap, twisting in on itself into a mad spiral until the temporal streams she used to navigate so easily threatened to crush her. Faster and faster the Vortex collapsed, spinning and pushing and tearing at her, burning her shell, overloading every circuit in her body and setting her mind ablaze with the cacophony of a dying universe. At the peak of the destruction, all she had left to do was yearn for silence...
The TARDIS awoke to the sound of her own Cloister Bell tolling. Once, twice, before she realized that what she had experienced had not been real, and stilled herself. A dream. Her kind hardly slept, let alone had terrifying nightmares. Yet here she was, feeling as though she had witnessed the end of reality itself. The shock and confusion of it reverberated through her corridors, seeping into the Doctor’s mind and making him check the controls even more frantically than the ringing of the Cloister Bell had urged him to do. But after a moment, he stopped and stared at the scanner in puzzlement, at the data output telling him that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The TARDIS watched her pilot, hope and trepidation carefully hidden away from him, as it dawned on him what must have upset his ship.
Go on, she thought to herself, ask me what I have seen. Oh please, ask.
He didn't ask.
She almost wasn't surprised.