When we stepped onto the roof, three things were very evident the moment I got there. First, the Doctor looked stupid with a fez on. Second, the sun was definitely River in the exploding TARDIS. And three, I had to die.
"What, it's morning already? How did that happen?" Amy asked.
"History is shrinking. Is anybody listening to me? Universe is collapsing. We don't have much time left." The Doctor jumped up onto a platform and used his screwdriver to scan a satellite dish.
"What are you doing?" Rory asked.
"Looking for the TARDIS."
"But the TARDIS exploded."
"Okay, then. I'm looking for an exploding TARDIS," The Doctor removed the satellite dish from the poles, sparks flashing.
"I don't understand. So, the TARDIS blew up and took the universe with it. Why would it do that? How?!" Amy asked frantically.
The Doctor stepped up on the ledge of the roof, holding up the dish to the sky. "Good question for another day. But for now... total event collapse means that every star in the universe never happened. Not one of them ever shone. So, if all the stars that ever were are gone, then what is that?" The Doctor pointed to the giant yellow fireball in the sky. "Like I said, I'm looking for an exploding TARDIS."
"But that's the sun," Rory tried.
"Is it? Here's the noise that sun is making right now." The Doctor amplified the satellite dish with the sonic, and the whirring of the TARDIS resonated. "That's my TARDIS burning up. That's what's been keeping the Earth warm."
"Doctor, there's something else. There's a voice." Rory squinted.
"I can't hear anything," Amy shook her head.
"Trust the plastic," Rory pointed to his head, annoyed.
The Doctor adjusted settings on his sonic, and soon enough the familiar voice was heard, repeating, "I'm sorry, my love," over and over.
"Doctor, I need... I need to go up there," I said passionately, albeit somewhat hesitantly. This was part one of what I had to do to save my universe.
The Doctor stepped down from the ledge and walked up close to me, and asked seriously, "Why?"
"I—just, really do," my eyes watered at the thought of everything that I had to do, and that this was just the beginning. "Please, please just trust me," I whispered.
I tried my best to keep any tears from falling, but I guess the Doctor noticed the glassy look in my eyes, because he took off the vortex manipulator from his wrist and grabbed my hand, securing it on mine, punching numbers in. "Whenever you're ready."
"Thank you," I breathed one last time, before pressing the button.
888
"River!" I exclaimed as soon as I materialized in the TARDIS by the door.
River looked down at her watch, and back up to me. "Well, finally!"
"I have to tell you something," I walked up to River, grabbing her arms. "To even it out."
"Even what out—? Oh, no, Nova, no spoilers!" River stopped me. Since she spoiled something for me, I was going to spoil something for her—because I had to.
"No, this is really important! The Doctor isn't going to die! He's not. Not today during this, okay? Everything will work out perfectly fine and no one's screwed anything up—so you have to give me time to talk to him, okay? I need him to do something."
"You never know for sure if he's going to die. If there's anything I've learned from you it's that everything, all time, all fixed points can be rewritten. And I know that look on your face, this won't be good for you." River pointed at me condescendingly.
"That doesn't matter, River. I messed up. I messed up so much and now so many people's lives are in danger because of me and I need to fix it—you just need to promise you'll give me time. There's going to be a time today where you'll feel like you'll need to say a long goodbye to the Doctor but you won't, because he's not dying." I rushed.
"What if you're wrong?" River tried.
"Then all of us will die. This is the only way."
River sighed, and then hooked her arm through mine. "Fine. But if you die, I'm going back in time and killing you."
888
"Amy! And the plastic Centurion?" River asked upon landing.
"It's okay, he's on our side," The Doctor assured her.
"Really? I dated a Nestene duplicate once... swappable head, it did keep things fresh. Right then, I have questions. But number one is this... What in the name of sanity have you got on your head?"
"Thank you," I sighed.
The Doctor seemed offended. "It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."
Amy and River turned to me, and I crossed my arms and smiled as Amy snatched the fez off the Doctor's head and threw it up in the air, and River shot at it with her blaster gun, destroying it.
With her gun still poised in the air, a Dalek levitated up to the sky where the fez was shot. "Exterminate!"
"Everybody RUN!" I exclaimed, rushing everyone back inside as the Doctor also yelled for everyone to run, holding up the satellite dish and using it to deflect the Dalek's blasts.
888
"Shh, it's moving away, finding another way in," The Doctor soniced the hatch in the ceiling closed, and climbed down the ladder. "It needs to restore its power before it can attack again. Now, that means we've got exactly—" The Doctor checked his watch. "Four and a half minutes before it's at lethal capacity."
The Doctor continued down the stairs, everyone following. "How do you know?" Rory asked.
"Because that's when it's due to kill me," The Doctor responded simply.
"Kill you?" River looked to me, and I titled my head as if saying—this is what I was talking about.
"Oh, shut up, never mind. How can that Dalek even exist?" The Doctor asked, continuing down the hallway. "It was erased from time and then it came back. How?"
"You said the light from the Pandorica..." Rory tried to comprehend.
"It's not a light, it's a restoration field, but never mind. Call it a light. That light brought Amy back, but how could it bring back a Dalek when the Daleks have never existed?"
"Doctor, the thing that you told me when you... died on the stairs," I interrupted. "Objects copy atoms. That's what you said."
The Doctor snapped, and pointed at me. "When the TARDIS blew up, it caused a total event collapse; A time explosion. It blasted every atom in every moment of the universe. Except..."
"Except inside the Pandorica," Amy finished for him.
"The perfect prison. Inside it, perfectly preserved, a few billion atoms of the universe as it was. In theory, you could extrapolate the whole universe from a single one of them, like cloning a body from a single cell. And we've got the bumper family pack."
Now I've done two out of the three things I needed to do to ensure my universe would be saved: tell River the Doctor wouldn't die, tell the Doctor what he had to say to me (without raising suspicion to my idea), and now, there was only one thing left.
"No, too fast, I'm not getting it." Rory shook his head.
"The box contains a memory of the universe, and the light transmits the memory. And that's how we're going to do it." The Doctor explained again.
"Do what?" Amy asked.
"Relight the fire. Reboot the universe. Come on!" The Doctor continued, everyone following again.
"Doctor, you're being completely ridiculous!" River chased after him. "The Pandorica partially restored one Dalek. If it can't even reboot a single life form properly, how will it reboot the whole of reality?"
The Doctor stopped running and turned to her. "What if we give it a moment of infinite power? Transmit the light from the Pandorica to every particle of space and time simultaneously?"
"Well, that would be lovely, dear, but we can't, because it's completely impossible!" River turned back to me. "Nova, help me."
I approached them, and shrugged. "It's not impossible. You just need a little spark..."
River rolled her eyes, now getting the notion that both of us were probably going to try to kill ourselves in attempt to save the universe. "Oh, I hate you both. A spark for what?"
The Doctor whispered, "Big Bang Two! Now listen..."
The Doctor was cut off by the zap of a beam, and a voice echoing, "Exterminate!"
The Doctor fell to the floor, and Rory shot the Dalek, temporarily draining it of energy again. "Doctor. Doctor, it's me, River. Can you hear me? What is it? What do you need?" River knelt by the Doctor.
"River, get up, come on," I pulled her up, letting the Doctor struggle to press buttons on his vortex manipulator, vanishing away.
"Where did he go?" River asked.
"Downstairs, 12 minutes ago. Kill this Dalek first and then I'll show you." I cut to the chase.
River shook her head, bewildered at my antics, but then shrugged, changing the settings on her blaster. "Alright. No problem there,"
The Dalek was killed much faster than I remembered.
888
"How could he have moved? He was dead!" Rory exclaimed upon seeing that the Doctor wasn't lying on the staircase.
"Who told you that?" River asked.
"He did," Amy answered.
River smiled, looking to me. "Rule one: The Doctor lies to everyone, except Nova. Rule two: Nova tells the truth to everyone, except the Doctor."
"That's new," I furrowed my eyebrows in worry.
"Oh, no it isn't," River smirked.
888
"Doctor!" Amy shouted, the four of us running down the hallway to see the Doctor at the end of it, sitting unconscious in the Pandorica.
"Why did he tell us he was dead?" Rory asked when he got there.
"We were a diversion. Long as the Dalek was chasing us, he could work down here." Amy knew.
River held the Doctor's face. "Doctor, can you hear me? What were you doing?"
The sun grew brighter and closer, and Rory could see it through the window. "What's happening?"
"Reality collapsing. Look around," I told him.
Back in the museum hallway, exhibits were empty. History was being erased.
"Time is running out. Doctor, what were you doing? Tell us! Doctor?" River shook his head gently.
The Doctor began breathing just barely, his eyes opening a little as he slowly whispered, "Big... Bang... Two."
"The Big Bang. That's the beginning of the universe, right?" Rory asked.
"What, and Big Bang Two is the bang that brings it back? Is that what you mean?" Amy tried.
The Doctor gave a small nod.
"The TARDIS is still burning. It's exploding at every point in history. If you threw the Pandorica into the explosion, right into the heart of the fire... Then let there be light. The light from the Pandorica would explode everywhere at once, just like he said." River explained upon realization.
"That would work? That would bring everything back?" Amy made sure.
I crossed my arms. "Yup. Look, he wired the vortex manipulator into the box so he can fly it into the TARDIS, the heart of the explosion."
888
Just as River promised, she was only with the Doctor for a few moments, hardly even a minute, before she came back out and looked to me. I rushed over quickly.
I came to a halt before him, finding it hard to get the words out as he stared at me, holding his hand out.
I slipped my hand in his slowly, and he pulled me closer to him. I was nearly the same height as him since he was sitting high up in the box.
"Nova. The Last Time Lady." The Doctor whispered.
"That's weird. I've never heard anyone say it out loud," I let out a brief chuckle of bewilderment, before getting to the point. "Doctor, something happened. Something went wrong."
"I know..." The Doctor didn't understand what I was getting at. "Time is erasing."
"Not just that. When I went back to my universe, the crack was by Meredith's old office and no one remembered her. And when you told me objects copy atoms I don't think it just meant the Pandorica."
"Nova, no, don't even think about it." The Doctor started, now knowing what I meant, and not wanting it to happen. "I don't know how long it takes to reset the universe. But, it's probably long enough for you to—" The Doctor choked on the last word, not wanting to say it out loud; not wanting it to be true.
"Doctor, it's the only way. My locket is the object that transported the atoms of the Silence to my universe—from just being around it, or—" I shook my head, stopping myself from adding it was also parasitical in my brain.
"You have to take my locket with you."
A/N: So do you hate me, or do you hate me?
For those who are super into intense plot details like me: I don't think I'm going to explain why specifically Meredith was erased in the next chapter so I'll just say it here: as mentioned before during the lodger episode, Meredith helped Nova experiment with the locket! So that's why.