Chapter Text
“Stop this game!” shouted the Doctor.
The Anne Droid didn’t react, intoning, “Fitch, you leave this life with nothing—”
“Stop this game!” Jack roared.
A floor manager scuttled over. “We're live on air,” they said in hushed tones. One of the contestants was sobbing louder and louder.
The Doctor just glared. “I order you to stop this game!”
“—You are the weakest link.” A beam emerged from the Anne Droid’s mouth and vaporised the woman named Fitch. Lynda Moss flinched.
“What the hell did you do to her?” demanded Jack, brandishing the defabricator.
“Where’s Wilf?” the Doctor finally asked. His eyes were busy flitting over everyone in the room, catching on Wilf’s name emblazoned on one of the podiums.
“The old man? He’s long gone—didn’t know a bloody thing!” Roderick laughed hysterically. “I can’t believe I’ve won!”
Jack moved to approach Roderick angrily. The Doctor only had to touch his arm for him to stand down. Slowly the Time Lord approached Wilf’s podium only to find a pile of dust.
Wilf pulled himself upright slowly. “That...that was not nice,” he groaned to himself, putting a hand to his head once he was securely slumped against the wall. He chanced opening an eye and stiffened.
Hundreds—maybe thousands—of Daleks filled a massive room.
“Blimey,” he breathed.
“You are an associate of the Doctor.”
He drew himself up as best as he could while still sitting. “So what if I am?”
The closest Dalek glided a bit nearer. “You will assist the Daleks.”
Wilf’s eyes narrowed. “Now, hang on—”
“You will assist the Daleks.”
The Dalek turned and started to glide away.
“I said hang on!” Wilf stood, though he kept one hand on the wall for support. “I’ve met one of you lot before—in the year two-thousand-and-twelve, yeah? Van Statten’s gaff.”
The Dalek turned back to face him, but said nothing. Around them, hundreds of its brethren passed along orders and went about their work.
“But...it destroyed itself. It was the last—it seemed quite sure of it...” Wilf finally told it. “And the Doctor said—”
“The Doctor is wrong!” The Dalek shook with the intensity of its statement.
All Wilf could do was stare. “But—”
“The prisoner will be silent!”
Just then, a strange figure appeared in the centre of the room. After a moment, she began to laugh. “Oh, my masters, you can kill me, for I have brought your destruction...”
“I will talk to the Doctor.”
“Oh, will you? That's nice. Hello!”
“The Dalek stratagem nears completion. The fleet is almost ready. You will not intervene.”
“Oh, really? Why's that, then?”
“We have your associate. You will obey or she will be exterminated.”
“Er, sorry...I’m a man?”
“...He will be exterminated.”
“Wilf, get down! Get down, Wilf!”
“Exterminate—”
Wilf flinched at the sharp retort of Jack’s destruction of the Dalek.
“Wilf! You alright?” Jack asked.
All of a sudden the Doctor was helping Wilf up and dusting him off. “Oh, yeah, I’m alright. Thanks, son.”
“Good ‘getting down.’ Perfect dodge,” Jack called out.
Wilf snickered. “You think I dodged? I just fell over!”
Jack laughed as the Doctor pulled Wilf into a hug.
“Oh, don’t get too excited! I’m fine,” the old man laughed, hugging him back. “Back’s a bit knackered, but that’s disintegration for you.”
“So you created an army of Daleks out of the dead.”
Wilf touched the Doctor’s sleeve. “Does that make them...half-human? Like that other one?”
“Those words are blasphemy!” The Emperor of the Daleks practically vibrated with rage.
“Do not blaspheme!” every Dalek in the ship chorused together.
“Everything human has been purged. I cultivated pure and blessed Dalek,” intoned the Emperor of the Daleks.
“Since when did the Daleks have a concept of blasphemy?” the Doctor asked incredulously.
The false god claimed his creations, and his creations validated his claim blindly.
The Doctor turned to Jack and Wilf. “They're insane. Hiding in silence for hundreds of years, that's enough to drive anyone mad. But it's worse than that—driven mad by your own flesh.”
Wilf shuddered. “It’s just like the Dalek in Utah...it destroyed itself rather than be human.”
“The stink of humanity.” The Doctor turned back to the Emperor. “You hate your own existence...”
“It's been fun,” Jack said, approaching the Doctor and Wilf, “But I guess this is goodbye.”
Wilf set down the wires. “Don't talk like that!” he said, a bit harshly.
Jack looked him in the eye. “Just being honest. From one soldier to another.”
Tears gathered in Wilf’s eyes. He didn’t dare blink.
Jack sighed heavily, though he kept a smile on his face. “Wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better off as a coward.” He kissed the Doctor. The Doctor didn’t protest. Jack pulled back and grinned his devil-may-care grin.
Wilf shuffled forward and pulled him into a fierce hug. Jack hugged him back just as fiercely.
“Our hopes go with you,” Wilf said unsteadily.
Jack pulled a face. “Not all of them—some of them have to stay with him,” he said, indicating the Doctor. “Anyway. See you in hell.”
Wilf snapped a salute. Jack did the same, despite the Doctor’s muttering.
Wilf finally blinked. The tears coursed down his cheeks.
“You haven’t asked to go home.”
Wilf looked up from his work. He managed a hollow chuckle. “No. I haven’t.”
They worked a moment longer in silence.
“I suppose...if any battle’s worth falling in, it’s this one,” Wilf continued.
The Doctor froze for a split second before resuming his frantic rewiring.
Wilf eyed the back of his head. “There’s a time for everything—people, planets, and everything else. If this is mine...I’m at peace with it.”
The Doctor dropped his head to rest against the machine he was pulling apart for a long moment.
“Oh!” Wilf started and searched through his pockets. “I’ve got that mobile somewhere...ah, there it is!” He brandished the phone Sylvia had forced him to take.
He glanced over at the Doctor, who’d stopped to look at him curiously, and hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Er—would it be alright if I just—?” Wilf took a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “If I could speak to Donna one last time...?”
The effort it took the Doctor to find a smile was visible. “Course. Good idea.” He straightened up in his seat with a groan. “Go ahead. You can have some privacy if you go in the TARDIS.”
Wilf couldn’t resist ruffling the Doctor’s short hair fondly. “Right-o. I’ll be back in a jiff, there’s a good lad. Keep at it!”
The moment the Doctor activated Emergency Program One, Wilfred Mott had just hit ‘call’. The first heave of the TARDIS nearly knocked him off his feet.
“Hello?”
Donna Noble frowned on not hearing anything except some wheezing and indistinct babbling.
“...Just let this old box gather dust. No one can open it. No one'll even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner...”
“Hello?” she tried again. The babbling and wheezing just continued—and then she froze. Donna moved the phone away from her ear.
The TARDIS’ wheezing wasn’t only coming from her mobile.
Sylvia bustled out of the kitchen. “Oh, Dad, have something to eat,” she ordered, not for the first time.
“Two hundred thousand years in the future, he's dying. They both are. And there's nothing I can do,” Wilf said blankly.
Donna squeezed his hands. She’d been holding his ever since he first managed to get the words out.
“Well, like you said, it’s in two hundred thousand years,” Geoff said bracingly. “That's way off, isn’t it?”
Wilf dropped his head to the table top and stifled a sob. Donna stroked his shoulder gently and removed a hand to grab him a tissue. She took another one for herself, while she was at it.
“No,” Wilf said thickly. He mopped his face and blew his nose disconsolately. “It’s now. Time travel, it’s—look, it’s happening now. Every second that passes, they’re closer to dead.”
Donna caught a stray tear with a tissue before it could smudge her makeup.
“He was a great man, to be sure,” Sylvia said as she came back into the dining room. She set down a fresh pot of tea with a flourish. “We’ll always remember him for all the good he did, won’t we?”
Donna glared. “He’s not dead yet, Mum. Mind saving the obituary for afterward?”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Dad was just saying there’s nothing he can do! Isn’t that basically the same thing?”
“Sylvia!” Geoff protested, and she had the grace to flush.
“Look, Dad—Donna...I’m sorry—”
Wilf stood so suddenly the table was bumped an inch away. Sylvia leapt with a yelp to save her table from spilled tea. “I—I need some air.” He disappeared with surprising speed.
Donna sighed. “I’ll go after him.” She looked around, grabbed the box of tissues and his glass of water, and followed.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Donna asked when she caught up with him.
Wilf brandished the homemade flyer in his hand.
“‘Please come to our show’,” she read out slowly. “‘Seven o’clock on Thursday, we promise our music is good—’ Oh!”
Donna stared at him.
“‘Bad Wolf’. Not the worst band name I’ve heard.”
“The Doctor’d never give up. And neither will I.” The glint in Wilf’s eye was contagious.
The car was on its last legs when Donna noticed Geoff watching her from the front doorway.
She released the accelerator and rolled the window down. “You gonna help or just watch?” she called.
“Get that unhooked. Let me see if I can pull in a favour.”
“Now that’s more like it,” Donna said approvingly. Her dad’s coworker handed over the keys to the massive truck and headed off.
Geoff grinned at her. “See? Almost a good thing I was laid off now, eh? Wouldn’t’ve been working at a garage otherwise.”
“Ha ha!” Wilf put an arm each around his granddaughter and son-in-law. “We’re gonna do it! Hang in there, Doctor, we’re coming!”
“—Can’t believe you’d help them, Geoff—it was his dying wish, keeping Dad safe! How d’you even know what you’re doing? What if you blow up the spaceship?! Are you going to be liable for damage?”
Donna and Wilf escaped Sylvia’s tirade by ducking into the TARDIS. “So,” she said, drawing out the word. “What’re you gonna do once it pops open? The Doctor told us not to look at the Heart of the TARDIS last time.”
“See, I’m thinking of what he said afterwards, though—the TARDIS is telepathic, right? Gets in your head, translates alien languages for you—she’s alive. She can listen!”
“Right,” Donna agreed.
Wilf grinned. “She must like you—she did pop open to save you!”
She rolled her eyes.
Distantly the sound of the truck’s engine rose to an irritable whine again. The chain attached to the console went taut.
“So I figure I’ll just think real hard about the Doctor—how he needs us, needs me and her to get back there and save him. Bob’s your uncle, the Doctor’s safe, so’s Jack, then we can set off that wave thingy and get out of there!”
Donna watched Wilf through his speech, brow furrowed. She’d just opened her mouth to ask another question when the aforementioned Heart popped wide open.
Humans generally react to fear by fighting, fleeing, or freezing.
In this case, Donna froze.
Wilf hadn’t walked so tall or as smoothly in years as when he exited the TARDIS in a flood of golden light.
The Doctor was too distracted by the golden light to notice it properly. “What have you done?!”
“I looked into the TARDIS,” Wilf said. “And the TARDIS looked into me.”
The Doctor’s eyes widened with horror. “You looked into the Time Vortex? Wilf, no one's meant to see that!” He completely ignored the shrieking of the Dalek emperor.
Wilf stopped a Dalek beam with his hand. “I am the Bad Wolf.”
“Did you say the Bad Wilf?” the Doctor asked incredulously. “Wait, no—”
“I create myself,” he continued, ignoring the Doctor’s interruption. “I take the words...I scatter them in time and space. A message to lead myself here.” Wilf moved his hand and the letters disappeared. “From Satellite Five to Chiswick, from Utah to Shan Shen...”
“Shan Shen?” The Doctor forced himself back on topic. “Wilf, you've got to stop this. You've got to stop this now!”
“There’s so much,” Wilf breathed.
The Doctor shook, this time with fear. “You've got the entire vortex running through your head. You're going to burn!”
Wilf turned to stare at the Doctor with empty golden eyes. “I want you safe, son. Protected from the false god.”
The Emperor of the Daleks’ protests were feeble.
“I can see the whole of time and space—every single atom of your existence—and I divide them. You are free of your flesh, freed from your mortal shells.” He gestured again and the Daleks turned to dust. “Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies...” Wilf looked to the Doctor again with those hollow eyes. “All things have their time.”
“Gallifrey,” the Doctor breathed.
“The Time War ends. You can move forward.”
The Doctor staggered to his feet. “Wilf, you've done it. Now stop. Just let go!”
But his companion was still caught in the web of possibilities. “How can I let go?”
“You must! You’ll die!” The Doctor seized Wilf by the shoulders.
The old man's eyes could not fill with tears, they were filled by greater powers than that, but his expression showed that they would be if they could. “Even a good death is a death. How can I leave worthy soldiers fallen?”
Elsewhere, the man known as Jack Harkness gasped back to life.
“Wilf, you can't control life and death! That power—it’s too much for anyone to have over the universe—" The Doctor choked on the multitude of words he wished to say. “You’ll die,” he repeated impotently again. “And it’s my fault.”
“It hurts,” his companion gasped.
“I know,” the Doctor said softly.
“I could do so much—fix it all,” Wilf groaned. His face twisted with pain. “Even if it killed me—”
“I won’t let it,” the Doctor cut in. “I won’t.”
“I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be...” His breathing grew more laboured.
”I can see it too. But no one,” the Time Lord stepped forward. “No one should have the power to change it, Wilf. You know that.”
“All the possible futures...” Wilf whispered.
“Yes. And I need you to stay a part of them.” The Doctor paused awkwardly as he leaned in. “Sorry about this.”
The Doctor froze as he carried Wilf into the newly-restored TARDIS. The doors swung shut behind him.
“...Donna?” he asked tentatively.
She stood, still frozen, clutching the railing where she’d been all this time. Donna finally blinked and rushed forward. “Oh, my god—what’s going on? Is it all over? Is he dead?!”
The Doctor gently pushed past her and set Wilf down on the jump seat. Donna went ahead and sat beside him, propping him upright. He opened his mouth, then shut it again as Donna continued to ask questions.
“Did he save you? Is Gramps alright? He looks okay.” She traced Wilf’s cheek fondly with her free hand. “Oh—he’s a bit hot...”
The Doctor sighed. “He’s just asleep—he’ll be fine.”
“Good,” she sighed with relief. Then her eyes turned to him. “Are you alright?”
The Doctor looked away with a dark chuckle. “I will be.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that mean? What was that light? The Heart of the TARDIS, sure, but what’s that mean?”
The Doctor ignored her questions and focused on getting the TARDIS moving.
Donna asked even more questions. “Where’s Jack? And the—Daleks, right, the Daleks, are they gone? What happened, exactly, anyway? Gramps tried to explain, but it was a bit garbled—he was crying at the time—”
The only reason she stopped asking them was that Wilf stirred.
“Gramps? You coming back to us?” She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
Her grandfather groaned as he slowly blinked his eyes open.
“...Donna?” he finally said in a hoarse whisper.
“Gramps!” Donna pulled him into a quick, tight hug before letting go to give him a once over at arms’ length.
“Wh’t happened?” he asked groggily.
She laughed. “You’d know better than me, Gramps—I was stuck in the TARDIS like a coward.”
“There was this singing...”
“That's right,” the Doctor chimed in. “I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.”
Donna glared at him. He just laughed—though with precious little true amusement.
Wilf sat up properly and looked at the Doctor sternly. “Really, son—give it to me straight.”
“For once,” Donna added.
This time the Doctor’s chuckle was more genuine. “Oh, Wilf,” he sighed at last. “I was going to take you to so many places...”
His rambling continued until the growing solemnity in his companions’ faces sobered him.
“...I’m going to change. Have to, to survive this—no one’s supposed to absorb all the energy of the Time Vortex...every cell in my body is dying.” The Doctor doubled over suddenly with a groan.
Donna let out a gasp as Wilf lurched to his feet and toward him. The Doctor threw up a hand, retreating a few steps.
“Don’t! Stay back! You can’t touch me—it’s not safe.”
“Every cell in your body is dying?! Isn’t there something we can do?!” Her volume was genuinely impressive.
“Doing it already. I’m going to change. But it’s a bit dodgy, you never know what you’re going to get...”
Donna threw up her hands. “You’re making even less sense than usual!”
The Doctor grinned a little bit hysterically. “I might never make sense again! Might have no head! You’d like that, Donna—never have trouble holding up your end of a conversation, eh?”
She looked like she’d like to protest, but the Doctor doubled over again before she could decide what to say.
When he could speak again, the Doctor gave them a more serious look. “Now. Before I go—” He shook his head impatiently at their instinctive protests. “No, I’m going—no way around it. But before I go...Wilf, you did so much, helped me so much. And Donna—”
The Doctor took one last breath. “You were fantastic. The both of you. And you know what?”
He straightened up.
“So was I.”
Donna and Wilf clutched at each other as the Doctor was pulled apart. The golden light was too bright to look at—his entire figure was engulfed, until—
An entirely new man stumbled into existence.