The Apocalypse Stops For No Time Lord [Part Four]
Part Four
A roaring started up then, so loud it whisked away the sounds of Trenzalore and pulled them down into the lake spread out in front of them. The surface began to swirl, like a giant had pulled the plug on the world. The whirlpool grew wider and wider until it was taking up the entirety of the lake and the brothers were standing on the edge of a roaring chasm that was waiting for them to jump.
For a second Sam felt as though he might; thought that it would be so much easier to fall, pitch forwards into the swift darkness, then suffer whatever might happen next; but Dean was gripping his arm so tightly that there was nowhere for him to go without his brother and Sam could never give up on the Doctor.
On the other side of the lake he could see the TARDIS landing and the gentle whooshing joined the rest of the sounds of Trenzalore. The door opened and the Doctor appeared, just visible as a splash of brown on blue. The brown splash spun twice, darting to each side of the blue before crouching down and disappearing.
In a bizarre mockery of physics, a huge plume of flame burst from the water, charging up into the sky and slamming into the Winchesters as scorching waves of heat. Slowly the fire spread across the sky, devouring the white clouds and the blue blue canvas until Sam could only see flames beyond the trees.
Then everything slowed down, every cough of fire distinct from the next until Sam could see each tree getting caught in the devouring flames. He could see everything and all he could do was watch as orange and yellow engulfed the opposite bank and there was no blue or brown anymore. There was no Doctor anymore.
This was the end. Dean’s hand tightened around Sam’s arm as a colossal shadow rose out of the lake in front of them, towering over the world until its serpent head wore a crown of flames. The beast was gigantic, sucking the lake dry as its skin seemed to turn a glistening pearly grey from the water.
It took Sam a moment to realise its skin wasn’t really grey, more of a mottled green. The grey came from the hundreds of shields patterned in overlapping lines, sunk into the beast’s flesh. Each shield, nicked and scarred from wars fought or Purgatory survived, was at least as tall as Sam and as wide as a double bed.
The colossal creature opened its mouth, displaying fangs like miniature skyscrapers, and roared once more. This is the end, and, Sam thought, it was a fitting one.
“Maybe he’s coming.” Dean was still muttering next to him, wistful thoughts coming out of his mouth before he could really process what he was saying. “Maybe this isn’t the end.”
“Come on, Dean.” It was strange, but somehow there was a smile on Sam’s face and part of him kept expecting hysterical laughter to escape his lips. “You didn’t think that we would live forever, did you?”
“We’re not supposed to die, though.” Dean’s eyes are fixed on his hands, clenching and unclenching as though he was just waiting for something that he could fight with his fists. “He promised.”
Sam closed his eyes. This was the end and he waited, staring at orange shadow puppets the flames painted across his eyelids.
This was the end. A hand slipped into his. For a second Sam thought that perhaps Dean had forgotten their repeated promises of no chick flick moments. Then he realised that the hand was too small to be his brother’s and Dean was pressed against his other side.
Sam opened his eyes. The Doctor was standing beside him, face caught in the yellow glow of the flames soaring above them. The last of the Time Lords was standing beside Sam and he was so very alive.
“Doctor?” The time-travelling astronaut grinned and this time the smile reached his eyes.
“Run!”
There was barely a moment to breathe or grab the corner of his brother’s coat before they were running and there was no stopping them now. The world flashed by in green that would soon be black, and puffs of yellow flames. Heat was wrapped around everything, threatening to pull them down, but Sam hardly noticed it.
“You’re alive!” He shouted at the Doctor. “How are you alive?”
“Funny what debris falls through the rift,” the Doctor replied, winking at him. “Torchwood picks up all sorts of things, like flesh matrixes. You humans and your love of cloning.”
“Did he just say cloning?” Dean growled angrily even as Sam could see relief in his eyes.
“I think so.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
A few seconds later the TARDIS came into view around a tree, streaks of black painting racing stripes across her blue. Sam didn’t think he had ever been happier to see something with ‘police’ written on it. They didn’t stop, the Doctor still pulling them onwards across the ground.
“Don’t stop running.” The Doctor shouted back. “We’ll never stop running.” They crashed into the TARDIS, the Doctor fumbling in his pockets, trying to find the key.
“Why do you use a fucking key for your time-machine space-ship!?” Dean was shouting, or Sam thought he was, but the roaring fire slinking behind them cancelled out the words. For a moment the Doctor’s eyes met Dean’s and then a smile stretched across his face.
The wall of flames enveloped the trees two metres away as the Doctor raised his hand and clicked his fingers. With a gentle creak the TARDIS door opened and the three friends tumbled in, Dean managing to kick the door shut behind them.
“Go!” Seconds later the familiar whooshing of the TARDIS filled Sam’s ears and the ground beneath him started to rumble and shake. They were leaving; the Time Lord was flying them away. It was then he realised that the Doctor’s knee was digging into his side, tangled up after they tumbled to the TARDIS floor.
Heaving his head up and twisting it at an awkward angle, he could see the console and promptly started violently choking on air. There had to be something wrong with his eyes, a momentary hallucination brought on by smoke inhalation. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be-
“Cas?” Dean’s breathy half-whisper made it real. The angel was looking down at them, a slight smile on his face, one hand resting on the TARDIS console. He was wearing a pinstripe suit that Sam could have sworn he had seen before and a trench coat sweeping down to his ankles that was so similar to the one in the boot of the Impala.
Slowly the three friends hauled themselves up, sprinklings of ash falling from their clothes like monochrome confetti. Sam stumbled up the stairs to Castiel, still not entirely sure that the angel was really there.
“You’re back.”
“Yes, Sam.” The younger Winchester couldn’t stop himself from gripping the angel’s shoulder, needing physical reassurance that Lucifer wasn’t playing tricks, so he could feel Castiel’s body under the angry red scar that traced a line along his palm. “The Doctor brought me back.”
All eyes turned to the Time Lord, readjusting his red bow-tie. “How?” Sam choked out.
“Simple contraterrene molecule reversal,” the Doctor replied with a smile. “Time Lords have used it for years to rebuild Espers destroyed by morphing bodies.”
“Oh, I get it now,” Dean said sarcastically, pausing before continuing. “Really though, whatever you did... thanks.”
“Yeah.” Sam smiled at the time-traveller. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You are the Doctor right?” Dean continued suspiciously. “Not a clone or something?”
“We are going to the coordinates you specified,” Castiel interrupted, reading the symbols floating on the scanner. “We should be prepared for the Leviathan to be at full strength.”
“Wait.” Sam knew there was something else that was going to shock him but his mind couldn’t keep up with the Doctor and his madness. Then it clicked. “You can fly the TARDIS?”
“I thought only the Doctor knew how,” Dean muttered, confusion lining his forehead.
“All Time Lords know.” The Doctor grinned. “Where do you think angels came from?”
“But God-” Sam started.
“Alien.” The Doctor turned his attention to the symbols floating on the TARDIS display, words still running from his mouth. “Some Time Lords were tied to specific planets to keep the time continuum. They evolved into Angels. It wasn’t a popular idea at first, but none of us had ever seen a Snorax birthing party back then let alone the catastrophes your lot almost caused.”
“So angels are Time Lords?” Sam said slowly, getting the sense that he was more confused than when the Doctor had first started explaining. “And God is an alien?”
“Not quite Time Lords. More like half-Time-Lord and half-something-else which no one quite knows. It’s all DNA genetic-y... stuff.”
“So basically you don’t know what happened,” Dean said, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
“Well, I suppose you could put it like that.”
“Doctor,” Castiel cut in, a patient look on his face. “I believe the Leviathan is about to end the world.”
“Right, yes,” the Doctor dashed over to the TARDIS door, Winchesters and angel in hot pursuit. “Better not keep the big sea serpent waiting.”
Sam was sure this was the most surreal moment in his life. There they were, a flying blue box hovering in front of a gigantic sea serpent from purgatory, sucking the water from the lake and replacing it with fire. Below them the world was a mass of flames and smoke, fields of orange and yellow that would be charred black tomorrow. Dean had a death grip on Sam’s wrist that somehow managed to tighten a little more every time the Doctor leaned further out the door.
“Hello Ephialtes,” the Doctor called. “Remember me?”
The Leviathan let out a shattering roar, sending the TARDIS lurching backwards and its passengers clinging desperately to whatever they could.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Then the smile faded from the Time Lord’s face and his tone was wrought with cold fury. “Then you’ll remember that I’m a lot kinder than anyone else you know and I will always give you a chance, just one chance.”
A low rumble started down below the flames, somewhere in the belly of purgatory’s beast. “Leave.” The Doctor’s voice set Sam’s hair on end and something cold curled down the small of his back. “Leave now and I will stop you from burning in the fires you have started. See I’m very kind, but I’m also very old and I know what you did last time you were here. You might have forgotten but I haven’t and I’m quite fond of the Earth.”
The Doctor’s face was patterned in the colours of the flames burning below. For a moment Sam thought he looked like a warrior, the sonic screwdriver his deadly weapon, but that was wrong. The last of the Time Lords wasn’t a warrior, he was a protector, a defender, a guardian of humanity. “So this is it, your one chance. Leave now and I will let you live.”
Ephialtes let out a thunderous roar and once again the TARDIS lurched drastically, just missing the plume of flame that exploded from the beast’s mouth.
“Then I am sorry,” the Doctor said quietly with his sad eyes and a sad smile. “Truly, I am.” He flipped the switch on the remote and the Leviathan’s roar morphed into a shriek as the magnets turned on.
For a moment it seemed as though the shields would stay on Ephilates, just wrench away to bare the soft skin underneath. Then one of the shields ripped away, whistling over to bury itself in the east bank of the lake, a chunk of flesh still hanging to the root.
“Right,” the Doctor rocked on his feet. “I didn’t think about that.” A second later shields started flying out in every direction like bullets slicing through the four points of the compass. Sam instinctively ducked, Dean going down with him but the TARDIS was already dodging the projectiles, the Doctor and Castiel carefully controlling her.
Dean groaned and closed his eyes. “We're all going to die.”
His words were cut off as the TARDIS gave a shudder that Sam recognised was the spaceship landing. Instantly the sounds of battle exploded into the TARDIS with screams and shouts and the harsh cough of gunfire. As quickly as he could Sam struggled to his feet, fingers finding the gun in his waistband and slotting into the grip.
Beyond the TARDIS it was as close to madness as Sam could imagine battle being. Jack and Bela were back-to-back in the centre of the concrete-walled space, guns drawn and firing at the mass of creatures swooping in and out of the room.
Every other second a loud thud would echo and the building would shake as one of Ephialtes’ shields hit the concrete. A few breaths after the TARDIS had landed, a particularly strong shield smashed through the concrete wall, coming to a stop buried through two men and a monk.
Sam didn’t wait to see if Dean was following him, just scrambled out of the TARDIS. It was louder outside the spaceship, as if the Doctor had some kind of silencer inside to block out the world. Outside the TARDIS screams and shouts became banshee shrieks and inlaid over it all was the screeching, writhing turmoil of Ephialtes burning in the fires he had coughed from his mouth.
A monk was trying to sneak around a pile of debris to blindside Jack. Sam raised his gun and fired, shooting the man in the head. The kickback rolled down his arm in a painful reminder of hundreds of monsters slain and it felt like it belonged.
The Monk’s hood fell off and there was nothing underneath. Sam didn’t pause to wonder what alien it was. He just pulled the trigger again. This time the bullet buried itself in the monk’s chest and the creature fell to the ground. It had no head, just a twist of skin, but that was okay. Sam had seen weirder.
“Hey there, Sam.” Jack swung up next to him, winking easily. “Come to join the party?”
“Typical Winchester,” Bela chimed in. “Always there at the last minute.”
“And here I thought it was my privilege to rescue the attractive young lady.”
“How cute,” Bela laughed as she shot a human member of the silence. “You seem to think I’m going to need saving.”
“Why didn’t you tell me demons were such fun?” Jack asked as Dean appeared at Sam’s elbow, gun raised.
“Because eventually they try to kill you,” Dean growled. “They’re less fun after that.”
“Oh good,” Bela dead-panned. “The life of the party is back.”
“Party?” The Doctor appeared beside the quartet. “What party? I’m a great dancer.”
“I don’t think this is the time for a party,” Castiel replied. “We should start the ritual before Bobby and Crowley are over-run.”
“Why do you angels have to be so practical?” The Doctor grumbled. “It’s so boring.”
“What ritual?” Sam cut in.
“The ritual to reopen the door to purgatory,” Castiel replied calmly. “Normally this kind of ritual would open a portal into Purgatory that would suck in all those around it, but the Doctor can place a filter on it.”
“How?” Dean asked suspiciously, shooting a monk in the head. “And why won’t these sons of bitches die?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” The Doctor pulled out the sonic, waving it wildly around the room until it gave a shrill whine. “They haven’t got any heads and I’m very, very clever.”
“Bela,” Castiel turned to the thief as the Doctor darted over to the spot his sonic had chosen. “We need a demon to make the ritual work.”
“Alright boys,” she ducked out from behind Jack, letting Sam fill in the gap. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”
“Last time someone said that to me I woke up on a different planet with a lot of naked men.” Jack chuckled. “That was a good night.”
“Too much information,” Dean groaned.
Sam didn’t hear or see much of the ritual. It faded into the background as he aimed and fired, rinse and repeat. After a few minutes Ephialtes stopped thrashing and fell silent but the shields still thundered into the building from every angle. It didn’t matter, the crown price had fallen.
Unfortunately the loss of Ephialtes didn’t seem to slow the members of the Silence. If anything, they increased in numbers, bombarding the Winchesters and Jack. Every time one of them needed to reload, the other two had to work extra hard to keep up.
“Are you almost done back there?” Dean called as he threw a rock at an approaching monk in desperation. “There are a lot more bad guys than it looked on that map.”
“Yes well, ‘open sesame’ doesn’t work on inter-dimensional portals.” The Doctor called back. “I’ve already tried that.”
Sam emptied his clip into a monk that just wouldn’t die. Dropping to his knees, he quickly reloaded, not letting his thoughts linger on the single fresh magazine he had left. As he stood there was a faint whistling sound next to his ear and a second later burning pain sliced through his shoulder.
It took Sam a moment to react, to realise that there was a flaming-sword-wielding headless-monk trying to kill him and then another moment to convince himself that yes, he was awake. He was about to raise his gun when the monk lurched to the side and collapsed, a bullet hole in his chest.
“Sammy.” Dean’s urgent voice filtered through the haze of pain. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he managed to grunt out between gritted teeth. “I’m fine, Dean.”
“Doctor,” Dean growled. “You really need to hurry it up.”
As if recognising its cue, there was a rumbling groan and the entire building started to shake, little tremors at first but quickly becoming fiercer. The time lord, the demon and the angel were all facing what was once a wall but now was nothing more than a yawning chasm into pitch black.
“Look out!” Jack’s shout reached Sam seconds before he was tackled onto his side, shoulder slamming into the debris strewn floor. He barely had time to register the pain, distracted by the body of a human Silence member flying over his head. Jack had knocked the Winchesters out of the way just in time.
“Oh my god,” Sam breathed, Dean professing similar sentiments from beside him. At first it was only a couple of creatures spinning wildly through the air, none of them alive, only corpses with no resistance left in them. Then, as the violent shaking grew worse, the first living member of the Silence was sucked into the hole, screaming and clawing desperately at the air.
“Good riddance,” Dean muttered angrily. More and more of the Silence were succumbing to the pull of Purgatory. The first Leviathans soared in from the west, smashing through the walls and into the chasm. Their terrified faces flashed, cut through by desperately reaching limbs. Screams and shouts joined the symphony of rumbling and groaning until Sam couldn’t look anymore.
Just before he hid his face in his arms and the draping material of Jack’s coat, he caught a momentary glimpse of the Doctor’s face. His lips were drawn tightly together, eyes sadder than Sam had ever seen them. It was the look of a man who was doing something simply because he had to, not because he wanted to. It was the look of a man who had seen too much death.
And still his gaze followed every face to their demise.
Sam stared at the fibres of his clothing and silently wished it would end. Lucifer was sitting cross-legged in front of him, laughing from his throne of debris. ‘Poor Sammy going to cry?’ The mocking edge was cruel and cutting, each word as clear as day even in the chaos. Sam stabbed the edge of a rock into the angry red stitches on his palm, not letting his eyes move from the threads of Jack’s coat.
Quietly he wished for it to end.
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| Part Five |