FicWad

He could have crushed the whole damn thing if he wanted to. Watched the wretched little ball of a planet burn up into nothing but flames and dust. Thousands upon thousands of years of mistakes, wars, pestilence, hatred and loathing stretched across the cosmos --- gone. He would have been alone with the stars and the sound of his own hearts beating, both in sync as they floated through space with no destination.

They would all be dead, never to make history again, all with the push of one little button on a flimsy remote control; billions of lives never to be born, if he could just press it ---

"Stop."

He looked at his young mortal companion, his grey-blue eyes haunted by nine hundred years of deciding who lives and who dies and who matters more to the safety of the time stream, of missing the forest for the trees and only seeing red. His hand moved awkwardly away from the control device, which was quickly destroyed with a quick tap of a plastic hammer.

She placed her hands on his slumped shoulders as if holding him up and watched him lower his eyes out of something like humility or even shame. It was quite a scene: the student supporting the teacher. Seconds of painful silence dragged on as if stepping through a bog, thick and dark.

She said, "You need a break," and the Doctor looked up with a pained expression.

"You're right," he said, and in his mind he thought: she's always right. He felt as if he was resigning himself to the inevitable: a long stretch of inactivity.

Silently, it was decided, there would be no more of this madness. As they talked of where to go next, Ace was relieved to see the familiar glimmer of light return to the Doctor's eyes, the skip back in his step as he paced playfully around the console room. Yes, her Doctor, even if sometimes he would idly touch one of the roundels when in thought or dig out his worn pair of spoons during the end of the world.

The Doctor set the co-ordinates for a holiday resort on a far-off world, and the planet of Earth heaved a great big sigh of relief at narrowly avoiding extermination, thanking its lucky stars for the brave lass from Perivale.