The Rose & Crown

Chapter Twenty

The walls of the TARDIS groaned and clattered loudly with objection as she barrelled towards her intended destination. The cloister bells sounded from high above, warning the ship's passengers of the immediate danger they were heading towards. Its repetitive melody pierced the air to accompany the chorus of impending doom around them. The console sparked and ignited. The engines sputtered as if caught between forward and reverse at the same time. The emergency lighting had activated, bathing everything in the vicinity with its vibrant red hue. Inside the heart of the ship, the Doctor and his companion held on tightly as the living machine tore her way through space.

"What's wrong with the TARDIS?!" Clara shouted, gripping the edge of the console as if her life depended on it.

"She's figured out what I'm planning and she doesn't like it!" he answered, gritting his teeth as he struggled to pull the lever in front of him. "She's fighting me!"

"Why? Does she know something I don't?!"

"Let's just say I might've been to this system before. As I recall, it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. There may still be some animosity towards this section of space stored somewhere within her internal circuitry."

"Animosity?! She's trying to kill us!" she exclaimed urgently, barely ducking her head in time as sparks flew from beside her. "Remind me again why we're doing this?!"

"Everything we've accomplished so far has brought us closer to the source of our infinite timeline. We're approaching the darkest hour before the coming dawn. We're storming the gates of the castle. Each move we make from here must be strategically calculated if we hope to release ourselves from the eternal loop Missy has entrapped us in," he explained, hurrying to type a series of commands on the console to manually override the ship's hold on the controls. "We'd be altering not only our future, but the fate of anyone who had been affected by Quynn and her army. In theory, if we are successful, we could be saving them all."

"And if we fail?" she inquired, knowing nothing was ever as simple as he made it out to be.

"We won't," he assured her, activating the interface venting system to help control the small fires escaping from beneath the panels.

"Humour me." She eyed him, taking notice of his avoiding gaze.

"Well," he started, scratching his brow as if searching for the least abrasive words to reply, "hypothetically, there's a small chance we could accidentally change the course of history, thereby causing a chain reaction which could potentially result in the collapse of time and the entire universe as we know it."

"Oh, is that all?!" she replied facetiously, growing more agitated the longer she endured the instability of their current situation. "Why is it always the entire universe with you?! For once, it would be nice to travel without having to worry whether the universe would still be around when we got back! Is that so much to ask?!"

"I said hypothetically!" he countered. "We're talking about mass reversal here. Your temporary death on Messaline proved time can be rewritten. To what extent leaves a lot to be considered. On the one hand, we could find ourselves returned to the moment just before any of this started. It would be as if none of it ever happened. And on the other, we could unintentionally reset the loop sending us back to the beginning to live it all over again. There's no way to know for certain what our future will be us unless we try. Although, this would be a whole lot easier if she'd let me take control!" he yelled towards the rings above. He slammed his fist on the keys, hoping to release the ship's hold on the lever.

His words resonated into her thoughts as quickly as he had spoken them. She suddenly realised she hadn't quite grasped the real cost of what they had exhausted her entire pregnancy hoping to accomplish. She spent so long yearning to be released from the eternal prison keeping her bound to this altered reality, she hadn't thought about the price of what her freedom would cost. As much as she wanted to deny it, she knew deep down he was right. The closer they came to breaking free of their entrapment, the closer they were to erasing everything that had happened between them since the moment he picked up the phone. And yet, their failure would mean spending the rest of eternity running from their predetermined destiny. Until this moment, she hadn't fully considered which future their current path was headed towards, nor decided which of them she truly desired more. Either way, the TARDIS seemed to think whatever their fate may be wasn't worth risking all of time and space for it. "Here's a thought. Maybe you could try listening to her for a change!" she argued, flashing a heated glance as they continued to be knocked about.