The first day of the rest of Alex Tyler's life began with a smile, the kind that draws you in and makes you want to know everything that can make it show itself. Its owner was stood at the central console when the girls ran in, and spoke as soon as the doors closed.
"Right then, Rose and Alex Tyler, you tell me. Where do you want to go? Backwards or forwards in time. It's your choice. What's it going to be?"
The sisters shared a nervous, anticipatory look, before Rose said, "Forwards."
The Doctor nodded, flicking a switch. "How far?"
This time, Alex made the choice. "One hundred years." The next thing she knew, the TARDIS was wheezing and groaning and spinning through its flight, before landing with a thump.
"There you go," the Doctor said. "Step outside those doors, it's the twenty-second century."
The girls stared at him. "You're kidding," Rose said finally.
He shrugged. "That's a bit boring, though. Do you want to go further?"
Alex grinned mischievously. "Fine by me." She grabbed onto the railings as the TARDIS shuddered into flight again.
By now, the Doctor was grinning too. "Ten thousand years in the future. Step outside, it's the year 12,005, the New Roman Empire."
Rose smirked. "You think you're so impressive."
He raised his eyebrows. "I am so impressive."
Alex snorted. "You wish."
"Right then, you asked for it," he decided, starting to work the console once more. "I know exactly where to go. Hold on!" The girls squealed in delight as the TARDIS shook and span, clinging onto the railings for dear life.
Finally, the TARDIS was still again, and Alex bit her lip in anticipation. "Where are we?" she asked eagerly. "What's out there?"
The Doctor just nodded towards the doors, and the girls ran outside. They appeared to have landed in some kind of viewing room, large and empty with one huge shuttered window. As the girls walked towards the window, the shutter descended, revealing a stunning orbital view of the planet they called home.
Alex stared with wide eyes, her breath catching in her throat as she brushed her fingers against the glass. That was her home. Her world, thousands of years in the future. A world that had seen her life from start to finish, and her children's and her children's children's. Right now, as she was looking, her descendants could be looking up at the stars, not even knowing she was there. God... Her grave would be there too. Somewhere, on the surface of the planet below, there was a headstone with her name on it. In the back of her mind, she wondered what it might say. If there would be messages of love and care... or if she would unremarkable and unremembered.
"You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying," the Doctor said, unknowingly interrupting those exact thoughts. "Like you're going to get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible, that maybe you survive." In Alex's mind, she took a moment to imagine that, too, that she might still be there, on the Earth of this year, walking amongst her descendants. That, she quickly decided, would be worse. She didn't ever want to outlive her family. "This is year 5.5/apple/26," the Doctor continued. "Five billion years in your future, and this is the day—" He hesitated, looking at his watch. "Hold on."
Even as he spoke, the sun flared in the corner of Alex's vision, turning a deep red and stretching towards the Earth.
"This is the day the sun expands," the Doctor finished. "Welcome to the end of the world."
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Watch Us Run |1| The Ascension | A Doctor Who/MCU Fanfiction
Science Fiction✅ approx 185,000 words. It's March 2005, and Alex Tyler is barely recovering from recent trauma. Living with her mum and older sister, she has good friends, and she's doing what she loves at work. But sometimes, she thinks, there has to be somethin...
