The End of the Universe (Doctor Who fanific)

Chapter 4

"Well? Aren't any of you going to answer my question?" the first Doctor asked imperiously.
Seven and Four sighed, rolling their eyes at each other. Ten, however, stepped right up to the new arrival, pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket and peering at him. "Oh, you are brilliant. The original!" He looked around at the others, who looked back blankly.
One, meanwhile, was staring at Ten in bafflement, "Is there something wrong with you, young man?"
Ten shook his head, still grinning. "Nope, not me."
"Nothing that isn't wrong with the rest of us, I assure you," Three said stepping into the front holding out his hand. "I'm the Doctor, and so are they."
One looked at him suspiciously. "The Doctor, you say?"
"That's right," Five said. "He's the Third, I'm the Fifth, and that's the Fourth, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh." He smiled. "Oh, this is fun."
"But - but, something is terribly wrong, for all of us to be in one place like this!" One said frantically, rushing to the TARDIS console. "We're breaking the First Rule of Time, meeting like this!"
Ten and Eleven looked at each other and burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," Ten said breathlessly.
"It's just that after eleven lifetimes, there aren't many rules left I haven't broken," Eleven said.
Ten shrugged, "The universe is still standing."
"More or less," Eleven agreed.
"Not for very much longer," Three said. "And that's a remarkably cavalier attitude about something so important,"
"Hmm, yes, I quite agree," One said.
"No, it really isn't," Eleven said, no longer the carefree young man he appeared to be. He stared his first incarnation down, a look in his eyes that suggested power beyond limits. "After everything I've seen, everything I've done, I've learned to be a bit less uptight about rules."
He and Ten nodded almost imperceptibly to each other, and Seven caught Five's eyes. There was something wrong here, but not with their situation. With themselves. There was something drastic that had changed between their single-digit and double digit incarnations. Ten and Eleven were weighed down with palpable grief, in spite of their outward childishness.
"You still haven't explained to me what's going on here," One said, turning from one to another.
"It's very simple," Four said. "We all ended up here for reasons unknown, and now we're trying to figure out what they were."
"Do you mean to tell me we all came to this exact spot without knowing why?" One asked. "And for goodness sake, what is that around your neck?"
"It's a scarf," Four said, his eyes widening.
"At least it's not a vegetable," Three whispered to Ten, who looked apologetically at Five.
"Oh, I like the celery, it's...whimsical?"
"It's ridiculous," One said flatly, turning to Ten, who looked a little startled. "If you really are me, where is your self-respect?"
"Oh, now where's the fun in that?" Ten asked. "I didn't leave Gallifrey just so I could keep being a stuffy stick-in-the-mud -sorry, sorry."
"A stick-in-the-mud, am I?" One asked, bristling.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Four said, standing up and striding around the room between them. "We're among friends, aren't we? What's a few disagreements about fashion compared to that?" he spread his hands out and grinned.
"My successor is right," Three said. "None of us have ever had the most on-point fashion sense, have we?"
Eleven started to laugh, "Remember the time we were late to biochemistry 101 and showed up in the national outfit of the Ohkesh of Arabathon?"
Three started to chuckle, "The ones that bear a remarkable resemblance to bubbles?"
"That's the one," Eleven said.
One started to laugh too, "You still remember that, do you? I thought Borusa's eyebrows were about to fly away, they rose so high!" He chuckled. "I suppose we really haven't changed that much, have we?"
"Oh, not at all, I'm proud to say," Five said with a grin.
"So, none of you ever went back, then?" One asked. The others all looked at each other, wondering what to say.
"Well, if none of us will remember this, I suppose it couldn't do any harm," Seven said. "I wouldn't mind a preview of where I'm headed, myself."
One was still waiting expectantly, and Eleven took up the story, "Oh, we went back, many times."
"Sometimes kicking and screaming," Three added.
"Oh, so they caught me, then?" One asked, sounding faintly amused by the whole thing.
"Not you, exactly," Three said. "My predecessor. Who they executed and then exiled me to Earth."
"But not for long," Five said, while Three glared at him.
"It was long enough, my dear fellow."
"Then I was appointed President," Four broke in.
Five scoffed, "So was I."
"And - no, that was the one before me," Seven said.
One watched them, eyes wide. "Me, President of the High Council?"
"Oh, don't worry!" Five said. "None of us took it." One looked slightly more satisfied, until Ten stepped in.
"And then I, well not me, exactly, but one of us, destroyed it."
Dead silence followed his words, and they all stared at him, except Eleven, who kept a hand in front of his face.
"What do you mean, destroyed it?" Five asked.
"Gallifrey," Eleven said, looking up with a heaviness in his expression. "It's gone."
"It isn't just gone," Ten said acidly. "It was destroyed. By us. It and the Daleks."
Seven shooked his head in the silence. "I knew something like that was coming. There was no way to stop it, and I tried."
"You mean those hideous creatures I met on Skaro?" One asked.
"Those creatures became the greatest menace the universe has ever seen," Ten said harshly. "They kept coming, and coming, more and more of them every day, and I couldn't stop them."
"Nobody could stop them," Eleven said. "And the Time Lords weren't innocent either."
"Don't you think I know that?" Ten snapped.
Five cleared his throat, "You mean there was a war? Between the Time Lords and the Daleks."
Ten nodded, swallowing painfully. "The Time War took over all of time and space, the entire universe was ablaze."
"Both sides would have destroyed the universe in order to win," Eleven said quietly. "There was no other choice."
Three recovered himself first, breaking the awkward silence. "Oh, come now, there must have been something."
"Did you think I didn't try?" Ten asked, anguish apparent in his voice.
"Sometimes the only choices are terrible ones," Seven said quietly.
There was yet another silence, followed by One clearing his throat. "Is that what I became, by leaving Gallifrey? A destroyer of worlds?"
The others carefully avoided each other's eyes. One stood up, "I...I never should have left."
"Oh, come on," Ten said, glaring at him. "Don't pretend you would have done any differently if you had known."
"I might have!" One protested. "I wanted to see the universe, not destroy it!"
"No, but you've always known. This darkness that lives inside you. You've seen it, you just don't want to admit it," Ten said, stepping forward until he was staring One right in the eyes. "But you'll use it, you've got no qualms about that. Harness that dark quality, whatever it is, to get you where you want."
"Hang on," Five said. "Am I the only one who's remembering all the worlds we've saved? The people we've helped?" No one answered, and the silence deepened.
"He's right, though," Seven said from where he was sitting with his chin on his umbrella. The others all looked at him, and he pointed his umbrella at Ten. "We've all lived with that darkness, used it as we see fit to do what needs to be done. Me more than anyone."
Five shook his head, "I still see us helping people more than hurting."
"Right, fine, so maybe we're not as nice as we seem, maybe there is something dark about us," Eleven said, getting up and starting to pace. "Does any of this matter? You were never going to stay on Gallifrey, no matter what you knew," he added, looking at One. "And if you didn't leave, one of us would have. None of us are all that good at living within polite society."
Nervous laughter followed this statement. "In any polite society," Seven clarified.
"All right, so what if we've broken the rules a few times, done things other people wouldn't do?" Eleven continued.
Five sat up, "I've always done what I had to do to save as many as I could, any way I could."
Eleven grinned and pointed right at him, "Exactly! If it saves lives, if it stops something harmful, if it protects people, then I do it. I'm the last stop; I don't have the luxury of debating ethics in the face of an invasion."
"Well put," Three finally said.
Eleven nodded, sitting back down.
"So," Seven said, bringing the conversation back to their situation. "What do we do about the here and now?"