The Longest Farewell - Prologue [0/?]
‘It’s the end of the world.’
DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS
Bad Wolf howled, and entire universes trembled in her wake.
The golden threads of time and space stretched along the ontological paradox of her existence before pulling taut; they created a temporal footpath, a trail through universes and possibilities and the Void which she could travel as she wished. As she flickered through reality, she scattered her name across the relative and myriad dimensions.
A haunting melody echoed where that name fell, a mantra that rang like a promise.
‘I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them through time and space. A message to lead myself here.’
Scrawled across a wall in a town doomed to suffocate under the pumice and burning ash of an exploding mountain. Centuries away, on a night when the dead walked and angels spoke, a young maid intoned the words in awe and fear. Generations later, in the blacked out night of a city under siege, a bomb carrying the name went unexploded because just that once, everybody lived. As a spaceship fell from the sky, a young boy holding a spray canister considered what to write on the odd blue box; he didn’t notice the golden stranger beside him, or hear her suggestion as he formed the letters. A country away, a lonesome, bitter alien stared at the scale model of her brilliant escape plan, searching for a name by which to christen it. And in an alien marketplace, as the most important woman in the whole of creation turned left, the words exploded over every visible surface.
A bell tolled the end of the universe.
Bad Wolf.
A warning as much as a message and a promise: she wanted her Doctor safe. Protected from his long-time enemy and the pain that its kind had inflected on him for so long.
The Bad Wolf could see it all - every encounter, every painful decision - unfolding before her for the first time and every time after. The man she loved, dying alone on a satellite that had become a graveyard, forced to commit genocide once more.
She would save him from that - had saved him from it and was saving him from it even now. But the hurt would linger with him, an abscess that would fester and rip open the scars that had been struggling to form since the Time War.
Scars he ought never to have had.
The thought formed and the Bad Wolf moved, darting through the time fissures and fabric of creation. A creature born of the Time Vortex, she breached the lock that forever bound the Last Great Time War with ease. It was nothing to her, stepping foot upon the ground of a planet condemned to burn.
Smoke and ash choked the umber sky, and blood flowed in the streets. Gallifreyans and Daleks clashed, one species desperate for survival, the other’s sole purpose to exterminate everything.
No one noticed the golden-eyed stranger moving through the chaos and debris, marching through the ruined Capitol and into the once grand hallways of the Time Lord’s Citadel. Sensors could not detect her as she materialised in the cavernous Time Vaults that locked away so many temporal treasures and armaments. Nor did they notice as she slipped into the dark, shadowy arsenal where the most powerful and dangerous weapon in all of creation lay.
The weapon capable of obliterating Gallifrey, the Daleks and whole galaxies within a single instant.
A small wooden box, filled with gears on the inside and intricate patterns on the outer panels. These were a mixture of circular script and indecipherable, ancient symbols from a time when Gallifreyans still believed in magic.
This innocuous looking object was what the Doctor would use to save the universe, and damn himself.
Unless she did it for him.
She raised a hand toward it.
‘Scatter your words elsewhere, Bad Wolf, you’re not meant to be here,’ a cheerful voice interrupted her perusal.
Bad Wolf turned, the movement languid and without apprehension, to consider her adversary.
She had not sensed the telepathic perusal of her thoughts and memories. Still, the sentient interface of the Moment had used them to give itself this specific form. Bad Wolf knew every incarnation of the Doctor that ever had been or ever would be. It was this face, however, that possessed a corner of her innermost being. A space where no other would or could tread.
The rangy body was leaning against a dark column, imperious in a leather jacket draped like chainmail and arms crossed. The achingly familiar face pulled into a wary grin, pale blue eyes watching her with a mixture of guarded concern and something else. Something nameless, that was so much more ancient than her Doctor and which Bad Wolf suspected had once threaded the Time Vortex that had born her.
‘I create myself to be everywhere,’ Bad Wolf’s voice was neutral. ‘Everywhen. I exist where I will.’
The Moment scoffed and pushed off from the column. ‘Well, this’ll be a lark. The Galaxy Eater and the Abomination walk into the Time Vaults…sounds like the set-up of a rather terrible joke, don’t you think?’
Bad Wolf cocked her head to one side, experiencing a distant curiosity whether the gallows humour came from the weapon itself or the persona it had adopted.
The Moment’s eyes narrowed. It looked down on her, its holographic form, like the model it had chosen, much taller than her own. ‘I know why you’re here.’
‘Then you also comprehend that my intentions are in sync with your own programming.’
‘Well, yes and no,’ the Moment mused. ‘You’re probably right that the most moral and ethical action is to allow the War to be stopped sooner rather than later. But keeping the Doctor from pushing the button isn’t a choice for an emotional teenager with the temporal cosmic powers of creation and destruction to make.’
‘I am more than that and you know it.’
‘Perhaps,’ a tight smile graced the Moment’s borrowed features. ‘The Time Lords fear my judgement and so stowed me away in here. But not you, eh, Bad Wolf? You’re used to my moral judgement.’
‘You are not him.’
‘Might as well be, considering the situation,’ the Moment quipped. ‘He wouldn’t be best pleased with this. Even now he’s begging with you. Can you hear him?’
A voice echoed within the walls of the arsenal, much more harried and desperate than the facsimile with whom she now spoke.
‘You’ve got to stop this now! You’ve got the entire Vortex running through your head. You’re going to burn!’
‘This has already happened,’ Bad Wolf said. ‘Will happen. It is not an immediate concern for either of us.’
‘Barrel of laughs you are,’ the Moment scowled.
‘If you wished to stop me, you would have done so,’ Bad Wolf reminded. ‘Yet that is an outcome neither of us want. We share omnipotence, but we are also both bound by rules.’
The Moment snorted. ‘Well, we’ve got a bit of a conundrum on our hands then. Devastating weapon with a conscience and an omnipotent avatar of creation and destruction without one. It’s a sort of unstoppable force meets immovable object, when you think about it.’ The Moment straightened. ‘Alright, let’s talk.’
The surrounding space shifted and blurred, transforming from the featureless marble enclosure of the Time Vaults into a wide, open stretch of beach. The sky and sand were a stark grey, and brisk sea air whipped at Bad Wolf’s face.
‘Recognise where we are?’ the Moment asked, gesturing at the barren beach.
Bad Wolf frowned. ‘I have the same trans-dimensional awareness of past and future you do.’
‘True - so it’s not as though we can lie to each other,’ the Moment grinned. ‘Might be the most honest conversation the universe ever witnesses.’
‘Then speak.’
The Moment gestured at the beach again. ‘You understand what this place means. The choices that will be made here. I thought it would be appropriate. So let’s not beat around the banana bush - we both see how this discussion ends, but causality demands it take place. I abhor paradoxes, don’t you?’
Bad Wolf’s eyebrow raised, a gesture more suited to the human that had created her.
‘Maybe not,’ the Moment chuckled, and then its borrowed face became serious. ‘If you could stop him - from ever committing genocide. From ever killing his own people along with the Daleks - would you?’
There was a beat of silence where the whole universe held its breath.
‘We both know the Daleks survived,’ Bad Wolf said, and it was the beach which echoed this time with rattling, metallic rasps and shrill, computerised cries.
‘EX-TER-MIN-ATE!’
‘We waited here in the dark space, damaged but rebuilding.’
‘I AM THE GOD OF ALL DALEKS!’
The Moment’s expression didn’t change, a stark contrast to the way the owner of the face it wore would have reacted.
‘To destroy his own kind while their murderers live is not a burden I would have him carry,’ Bad Wolf said. ‘If I can relieve him of this, I will.’
‘Would you take that choice from him?’ the Moment prompted. ‘Invalidate every sacrifice he made, just to spare him pain?’
‘Yes,’ Bad Wolf answered. ‘He need never experience the burn of the guilt and the feel of his people’s blood on his hands.’
‘You do that, your entire timeline changes,’ the Moment reminded her. ‘You risk creating a bigger paradox than what you already are. And even now forces beyond the universe wait to devour the entropy your destruction would bring.’
‘Those forces have been - are being - will be dealt with.’
‘Perhaps,’ the Moment said again. ‘Perhaps not. Who’s to say my interference in things might not tip the scale and ensure your destruction? D’you really figure the Doctor would be keen on losing the universe - and you - just to avoid being called genocide?’
Bad Wolf was silent, and for a fleeting second the human heart of her wavered.
The Moment’s expression turned gentle.
‘Might do to think about it a bit, hey?’ it told her. The surrounding sky filled with images of a life that was at the same time too long and too short. ‘It’s not like we don’t have all the time in the world…’
· ΔΩ ·
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