Mortimus wasn’t quick enough.
The Nightmare swooped down, screaming from the pit of its stomach, and reached out. Its clawed hand grabbed around Mortimus’s neck and pulled him into the air before finally releasing him. As it released him its talons ripped through the flesh on his neck and his body fell to the ground with a sickening thump.
“No,” said Holly, running to his side immediately.
Blood poured from the Keepers wounds, a pool of sticky red forming around the man’s head.
“Go,” said Mortimus, reaching up for her and pointing to her wrist. “Go…”
Holly looked up. The Nightmare had swooped over the trees, just out of view of the funeral procession, and was making another dive – this time it was aiming for her.
She had no choice. She could see the Master striding across the car park, heading for her other self. She could see her second self hiding behind the bushes. Time was in flux. She ran as fast as she could. She could hear the Nightmare soaring through the air behind her. She could feel its breath on her neck. She screamed out. The Master turned to look at her. Her past self turned to look at her.
The Nightmare reached out and grabbed her from the back of her neck just as she ripped the wristband from her wrist and pulled it away. She screamed in pain as multiple layers of fused skin was ripped from her wrist along with the band.
For a moment everything seemed to freeze. The wrist band fell to the floor and crumbled into a pile of blackened ash. Holly wondered if anything had happened at all. And then she felt it. The itching sensation she had felt in her wrist had turned to a burning. The burning feeling began to spread up her arm and up to her chest and before long she felt it through her entire body.
She fell away from the Nightmare and collapsed onto her back. The strange, twisted creature was writhing in agony, unable to focus on anything before it folded in on itself and disappeared in a twisting flash of light.
The Master and her past self were frozen in time, but all around her colour was fading from the world. It was turning black and white, the whites becoming whiter and the dark colours becoming darker. And Holly herself was glowing orange. The orange soon turned to white hot. She screamed out as the universe bubbled around her like a photograph burning in the flames.
And then there was nothing.
At the Zero Point India looked sadly at the Doctor, a tear falling from her eye. “She did the right thing.”
All the Doctor could do was nod before the world around them went dark.
Holly opened her eyes. The pain was gone. The black and white was gone. Colourful images flashed across her eyes.
She could hear Lilly’s voice. It sounded distant, but it was definitely her.
“...you are the best bloody thing to happen to me in ever...” She closed her eyes, fighting back the headache, “but he said he had a plan to make sure I was always with him. I’m...I’m worried, Dangerfield.”
“No he won’t,” said Holly, the world suddenly coming into focus. Lilly was lying on the floor in her strange time suit, the Doctor kneeling over her and frowning.
“I beg your pardon?” said the Doctor.
Holly felt her wrist and then smiled, a tear falling from her eye. “I’m back.”
“Back?” said the Doctor. “You didn’t go anywhere.”
Holly looked down at the Doctor and then smiled down at him. “Doctor, I have a very long story to tell you.”
Lilly was sleeping. She had pretty much passed out just after Holly had quickly explained the situation she had found herself in. It had been all too much for her. The Doctor had carried her to her old bedroom, gotten her out of the time suit, and had left her to rest.
“Will she be alright?” asked Holly, eager to reconnect with the woman she had fallen in love with.
“All in good time, Miss Dangerfield,” said the Doctor. “You and I need to go over this little adventure of yours in more detail.”
A few hours later and the Doctor and Holly were standing beside her grandfather’s grave. It was a sunny day and she could hear crows cawing in the trees. They always unnerved her. Why did they always hang around graveyards?
“And you’re sure everything is alright?” asked Holly.
“Everything is back to normal,” said the Doctor. “I checked the timeline and apart from a very small kink during the arrival of the funeral procession, none of it ever happened. The timeline reset. It was unable to cope with the changes.”
“And the Master?”
“He likely snapped back to before he left.” The Doctor shook his head. “He’ll know that something went wrong though. He’s a Time Lord. We tend to sense things like that.”
“But what’s to stop him trying again?” asked Holly, looking over her shoulder and almost expecting the Master to reappear with a gun.
“I’ve known him for a long, long time. He’s learnt not to repeat the same plans again. I always defeat him.” The Doctor smiled.
“Hey,” said Holly, “it was me that defeated him.” She smacked him playfully on the arm.
“Do you know how happy I am to have you two back with me?” said the Doctor. “I’ve missed having Lilly on board.”
“Me too,” said Holly. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on when she wakes up.”
“And we have a lot to do as well,” said the Doctor. “This stuff with the First Time Lord is worrying me.”
“And what about Zero Point? Mortimus died. Who’s there now?”
The Doctor shrugged. “I never meddle with Zero Point in case I have to. Maybe Mortimus is still there. Maybe he never left. Maybe it’s someone else.” The Doctor nodded. “The silly old fool.”
“And one more thing...India.”
The Doctor looked sad and handed Holly a computer tablet. “I’m sorry.”
Holly looked down at the tablet and closed her eyes, fighting back the tears.
“Not long after I met you she was killed in a car accident. She had her funeral back in the US a few weeks later.”
“I promised her I’d not forget her. I promised her.”
“Holly,” said the Doctor, his hands on her shoulders, “this is what the Master does. There are always consequences. He made sure that we’d lose no matter what we chose to do. He never changes.”
“But what about India?”
“India had a short life, but I’m sure she was happy. The India you knew never existed. But at least up here,” he said, pointing to her head, “you’ll always remember her. As long as you keep her in your memory she’ll never die.”
The Doctor turned to go.
“Do you mind if I stay a while?” said Holly. She turned to look back at him. “Just for a little while?”
The Doctor nodded. “Just for a little while, eh? We’ve got work to do.”
Holly nodded and smiled sadly as he wandered off towards the waiting TARDIS. Holly looked down at her grandfather’s grave and she thought of India who was now resting in her own grave halfway across the world.
The sun had disappeared behind the clouds and it was beginning to spot with rain. Somewhere out there evil was lurking, waiting in the shadows. And it was about to be reborn.
Zero Point
The room was different now. It had changed from its medieval look to a much more homely, clean look. It resembled a fashionable New York apartment. In the open plan apartment, across in the kitchen, a bag of popcorn was turning in a microwave. Across to the other side of the apartment a young woman with red hair sat and watched Holly on a flat screen television.
The microwave ‘dinged’ and the young woman got up. She looked ahead and smiled. The real her had died back in the original timeline, but this version of her – the aberration that had been trapped at the Zero Point – had survived. She hadn’t been forgotten. She nodded and closed her eyes.
She had become the new Keeper.
India had survived.
India lived.
The End
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