Disclaimer: I don't own "Doctor Who" or "Twilight", and the essential details of the original concept of this fic came from a video posted on YouTube by heroesdwtw- which has unfortunately now been taken off YouTube- and is used with their permission

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: A new take on one of my original stories- I lost what I'd written due to a virus before I could upload anything and couldn't be bothered rewriting it until now-, this one sees Bella Swan facing her greatest challenge, as well as meeting some of the Doctor's oldest friends and enemies…

Time's Ashes

Lying on my bed in my room in the TARDIS, I stared up the ceiling, feeling overwhelmed by just how pointless my time with the Doctor had been.

Seeing Steven Taylor had been an interesting experience, and it had been fascinating to find out more about the world he'd created, but after we'd left, despite my attempts to distract myself in the library, I felt like it just reinforced for me that I wasn't a normal companion by any stretch of the imagination.

OK, so I felt like I was more willing to act on my own than I had been before I'd met the Doctor; what had I ever actually done since I'd joined him? I'd been so dependent on Edward to get anywhere when I lived in Forks, and when he'd left I'd relied on Jacob- even if I hadn't consciously realised I was relying on him- to pull me out of it; the Doctor was encouraging me to stand up for myself more, but in the end, when I looked back on what I'd done since I joined him, was I any further along?

"Bella?" the Doctor's voice said from outside my room, prompting me to sit up and walk over to the door, abandoning my train of thought; if the Doctor was coming to see me, I didn't want to appear too depressed.

"Yes?" I said as I opened the door, the Doctor standing casually outside, clearly unaware of the mental turmoil I'd been experiencing.

"We've been drifting long enough; thought I'd drop in and ask if you wanted to help me pick our next destination," the Doctor explained with a smile.

"Oh," I said, glancing down at myself to make sure I was dressed- I'd lost track of how long I'd been lying around my room, and wasn't sure if I'd even bothered to change in the first place- before I stood up and followed the Doctor back to the console room.

"Anyway," the Doctor said as we finally reached our destination, my friend moving over to the console with an elaborate flourish, "would you prefer-?"

Before the Doctor could finish his sentence, the TARDIS let out a sudden screeching sound that I'd never heard it make before, prompting the Doctor to step back and look anxiously at his ship. As we watched, a part of the console seemed to shift, various components moving aside as two small objects rose up from the console interior. They were identical in appearance, appearing to be gold bracelets with three swirled lines focused around what I assumed would be the top if they were worn around a person's wrist, but I would have known that there was more to them than the obvious due to the Doctor's haunted expression when he saw them.

"What are these?" I asked, looking curiously at the Doctor as he stared at the bracelets.

"Time Rings," the Doctor said, still looking solemnly at the strange objects.

"Time Rings?" I repeated in confusion; not only did the name not fit their size, but what they had to do with time completely eluded me…

"They were developed after I left Gallifrey the first time; these are actually fairly basic ones," the Doctor explained, turning away from the rings to look at me. "Basically, once you put them on, if you turn the control at the top- on these versions, anyway; the first one I encountered was operated by remote-, it sends you to and from a specific temporal location when you touch it and think of your destination; bit more basic than a TARDIS, but a useful means of getting about if you have a specific destination in mind and need to attend to specific business very quickly."

"Oh," I said, reaching down to pick up one of the rings.

"Bella, wait-" the Doctor began, just as I touched the Time Ring on the left. As soon as soon as my fingers made contact with it, a red light emerged from the ring, generating a thin red beam that reminded me of scanners I'd seen in films, which flashed over my body before it vanished. I was about to ask the Doctor what had happened when the nearest monitor suddenly turned on, revealing an old man with white hair hanging down around his ears looking solemnly at the screen.

"Hello there, Bella Swan, and you, if you're there, young fellow," the old man said, looking slightly amused as he spoke, something about the way the Doctor stared at the screen making it clear that he wasn't going to accept any interruption until this unexpected message had finished. "If you're receiving this, then you are about to experience a very difficult set of events. If you wish to come through what you are about to experience intact, Miss Swan must put on the Time Ring that she has just come in contact with, and activate it when the attack begins."

"Attack?" the Doctor and I said simultaneously.

"The second time ring will be required for later, but Miss Swan must take it and turn the dial on the top counter-clockwise now," the old man said, before moving back slightly and looking at the screen in a pointed manner, as though waiting for us to do something. With the Doctor giving me a firm stare, I simply reached out and did as I had been instructed, taking the other Time Ring and putting it in my pocket out of a lack of anything else to do with it.

"I assume you've done that by now, mmm?" the old man said; I didn't even realise that he'd been silent while I was putting the Time Ring away until he spoke again. "In any case, with both of those attended to, based on what you've told me, all you need to do now is wait a little while and the reason for this will be clear. Good luck, my boy, Miss Swan."

With that, the old man smiled at the screen before the message ended, leaving me feeling completely lost and the Doctor with a very grim expression on his face that I didn't like the look of.

"So… who was that old man?" I asked, looking over at the Doctor in confusion, hoping that he could answer the most obvious question.

"Me," the Doctor said.

"You?" I repeated, looking at the screen in confusion. "As in… you from the future-?"

"As in a past me," the Doctor said, as he looked solemnly over at me. "Actually, that was me in my original body, the body I was born- as you'd understand the term- and grew old in; got a bit mixed up about names at times, but he was always the most intellectual of us."

His eyes narrowed. "Which means that, whatever he wanted to say to you, it had to be important…"

I was about to ask how the Doctor could be so sure when the TARDIS suddenly shook, followed by a loud explosion in one wall as something came crashing into the TARDIS. I had barely started to scream when I noticed that the damaged walls were already sealing themselves up- at least we probably weren't going to get pulled out of the TARDIS or something like that-, but I quickly felt a new surge of panic when I realised that the think was heading towards the Doctor.

"Get back!" the Doctor yelled, shoving me through a gap in the railings around the console before hitting a button on the console. Immediately a transparent barrier, the same colour as the central column, sprang up behind the railings, surrounding the console and the Doctor, leaving the strange object to strike the barrier that had now appeared between it and the Doctor. As I looked at it, I realised that it seemed to be a missile made of a strange white substance that reminded me of the walls I'd seen in some of the TARDIS's deeper corridors, consisting of a simple white pointed tube with some form of energy coming out of the back, but something about it gave me a headache just from looking directly at it…

"What is that?" I asked, turning my attention away from the missile-like thing in confusion; I didn't know what looking at it was doing to me, but I was already sure I didn't want to find out what would happen if I tried to look at it long-term.

"It's a TVM!" the Doctor yelled.

"A what?" I asked, looking at him in barely-contained terror; I'd already been concerned, but the obvious panic in the Doctor's manner as he identified the strange thing facing us didn't help me feel calmer. "What's-?"

"Activate the Time Ring!" the Doctor yelled, pressing himself against the console as the… whatever-it-was… continued to press against the force field surrounding it. "This must be the attack that I was talking about; use the Ring and find out what's happening!"

"But what-?" I began in confusion.

"DO IT!" the Doctor yelled at me, just as the forcefield collapsed and the thing continued towards the Doctor. With no other option left to me, I slammed my hand down on the spiralling lines in the Time Ring-

When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing on a hill, around half-way up one side, looking out at a battered, ruined city at the bottom of the hill that looked like at least half of it had been destroyed by fire damage, putting me in mind of some of the buildings I'd seen in my old textbooks on Roman history.

For a moment, as I looked up at the night sky, I thought I was just on Earth in the past- the stars looked familiar, and the moon was definitely recognisable-, but then I saw three large spherical ships flying through the air, pursuing a large grey ship in a half-oval shape with wings on its back and blue lights on the side, the two exchanging fire and striking the ground below them, and quickly re-evaluated my initial thoughts.

Whatever other alien invasions had happened in Earth's past and been forgotten about, I didn't think something like that would have been mentioned somewhere in some form, which meant there was more going on here than me being stuck in Earth's past while something happened to the Doctor…