This is pretty much just an info dump. I might actually write the story out, but it sounds cleverer in my head than it does when I try to elaborate.

The song "Live Like We're Dying" belongs to Kris Allen, not me.

Chapter XXVIII: Live Like We're Dying

"My dad pawned our TV," Sam admitted. "I haven't really had time, you know, working at the…uh, Dairy Queen and stuff."

The Doctor and Pearl both cheered, confusing Sam greatly.

"Am I missing something?" he asked.

"Do you know what the Avada Kedavra curse does?" Pearl asked.

"Of course," Sam launched into a description of various Harry Potter curses before the Doctor and Pearl hurriedly cut him off.

"The point is, do you know what the Decrescalio charm is?"

Sam shook his head.

"That's because it's a curse J.K. Rowling didn't know. It's the only charm that can safely shrink people. Other shrinking spells don't accommodate for organs."

"Ew," Sam made a face.

"Exactly. So when the Decrescalio Charm was performed on me, I didn't know what was supposed to happen until after I Hermione do it to Ginny."

Sam's eyes nearly bugged out of his face. "Wait, you've met Hermione and Ginny?"

"Emma?" Will looked at her. "Are you okay?"

"NO!" Emma shouted. "Look at my clothes! Look at my office!" she soaked her sponge in the bucket of soapy liquid next to her and continued to scrub at the tally marks on the wall.

"It's alright," Will bent down and gathered her in his arms. The red-haired woman gasped when she saw the marks on his arms.

"Will, was your office vandalized too?" Emma asked worriedly.

"I don't have an office," Will said, just as there was a shout from the choir room.

Rachel came flying inside. "Vocal Adrenaline has completely trashed our practice room, Mr. Schue!" she screamed.

Will let her lead the way, but they bumped into an extremely pissed off Sue Sylvester.

"William, this is the last time I will tolerate your blatant attempts to sabotage my Cheerios!" she roared. Will and Rachel backed away, both looking at the large black marks all over the walls.

Sue stopped rounding up on them suddenly, in favor of screaming at Lauren's Twilight fans and giving them advice on how to bite Jacob Ben Israel so that it hurt.

Pearl nodded, eyes growing faraway. "It was a long time ago. They were my age when the universe fell apart."

"When did this happen?" Sam asked, intrigued.

Pearl sighed. "My sis—aunt, I mean—was dating this guy named Jackson Cale, but she left him, and he couldn't accept that. So he made this universe, everything in it, to parallel the universe we were just in. But this put so much strain on the universe."

"Hold on," Sam held up his hand. "How did he just make another universe?"

The Doctor and Pearl looked at each other. The Doctor turned back to Sam. "I'm the main character of a television programme in your universe."

"Yeah," Sam laughed. "I'm still kind of iffy on that, to be honest."

"Well, Pearl's the main character in the universe you're from," the Doctor said.

Sam, rather than looking confused, appeared excited. "Oh my god, are we a science-fiction show, too?" he asked eagerly.

"I don't see any cracks," Burt said.

"Look at the part of the wall I'm standing in front of, Mr. Hummel," Blaine stood up on Kurt's bed so that his hair, which was starting to resemble Jacob's jewfro, hid the words.

Burt frowned, rubbing his eyes, and squinted, but no matter how he turned his head, he'd only have to blink and he'd be facing away. "I can't," he was astonished.

"Don't worry, Dad. I couldn't either. I was just so tired after…um, practicing with-with Blaine that, UGH!" Kurt stammered and pressed his palms into his eyes.

Burt cleared his throat. "So, there's a part of the house only Blaine can see, which is supposedly cracked and has ominous messages on it? Sounds like it's time to move."

Kurt and Blaine looked at each other before Kurt turned back to Burt. "How are you going to afford that?" he asked.

"Oh, we'd just be moving into Carole's house."

"Fantasy," Pearl corrected. "Have you ever seen Avatar? Not the movie with the blue people, the animated show."

Sam nodded.

"Well, it's sort of like that, except there's six elements—Light, Earth, Anti-matter, Wind, Fire, and Water—and only six people are ever given that power," Pearl explained. "It's easier to get that power if you're related to someone else who has it, and my parents both did: Light and Wind, so I was born the recipient of both."

"Oh," Sam blinked.

"But Sonny Cale wanted all that power so he could create a universe where Callia Hotchner loved him," Pearl smiled sadly. "Not really that bad of a reason. He probably would've gotten away with it if I hadn't accidentally brought my best friend back to life."

Sam was glad he had passed on the orange juice, because it would have been sprayed all over the console by now.

Tina looked extremely strange in a plain grey sweatshirt when she walked into glee club. "I feel like an Asian Branch Davidian," she grumbled.

Will encouraged her to try out other looks, and soon suggestions were raining down like, well, rain: biker chick, cowgirl, hood rat, computer programmer, Catholic schoolgirl, Happy Meal sans onions.

As soon as Tina thanked them and complained about being denied her right to express who she really was, Rachel burst in.

"I went to gather evidence that Vocal Adrenaline vandalized our walls," she began.

"Is that even legal?" Blaine asked.

Rachel waved aside his accusation carelessly. "Instead, I found eighteen empty boxes of Christmas lights in one or their dumpsters, and listen to this." She played the tape recorder.

"Lady Gaga is more than just a musician," a girl said. "We need to be able to do her justice, and right now, you guys just aren't cutting it."

"Who put you should kill us all on sight you in charge?" an outraged boy replied.

"I am choreography captain!"

"Well I'm in charge of costuming, and I say we stick with the you should kill us all on sight dancing you laid out last week, or none of us will be able to wear Lady G's iconic ballet shoes!"

"Are you kidding me? We can't dance at all in those shoes!"

"Shut it, Randall!"

"I will not! I have been a member of Vocal Adrenaline for five years, and I have never worn anything as difficult to maneuver in as your you should kill us all on sight ballet shoes!"

"Oh, so would you like to be head of costuming?"

Tina, Kurt, and Mercedes gasped in horror, but not for the same reason Blaine did.

"What's up with this Gaga dude?" Puck asked. "He just dresses weird, right, like Bowie?"

Kurt looked like he was going to have a panic attack. Blaine supposed he would have found this funny had he not been so terrified of that voice.

"How did you do that?" Sam demanded.

Pearl laughed. "The summer before I entered high school, my older sister, who should've been dead for two years at that point, appeared on my door step with my completely insane mother, who should have died when I was in the third grade. It turned out that one of her ex-boyfriends, someone named Jackson Cale, was convinced she wouldn't have left him if it weren't for our parents, so he decided to try to get rid of them. And this is where the story gets weird."

"It sounds pretty weird already," Sam said.

Pearl snickered. "Yeah," she said nostalgically. "My parents were among a generation of Elementals. They could each control some aspect of the universe. And I was the first person who could control two, because two Elementals had never…well, mated before."

At this, Pearl made a face, which Sam completely understood. He preferred not to think of his parents having sex either, even though it led to his birth and those of his brother and sister.

"Anyway, because I was an anomaly, I was an extra Elemental. My friend, Keefe Cale, was Light Elemental, or a Diamond. He died pushing me out of the way of a car, and I brought him back to life because I was a Diamond, too. But because Light and Wind aren't compatible—not like Light and Fire, for example—the conflict literally tore him apart from the inside out. Another Elemental killed him painlessly so that he wouldn't have to suffer any longer."

Sam frowned. "Blaine's told me you talk to a Keefe," he said suddenly.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "This is where I come in," he said. "Jackson had killed the last generation of Elementals to take their power for himself and create a universe where he and Callie Hartell could be together. The strain this put on the universe meant that it couldn't take something as unnatural as a boy being brought back to life through magical means. The barriers between universes started to disintegrate. I walked from the destruction of Gallifrey to a morgue where a boy with lesions all over his body was trying to get away from that girl, and her friends."

Pearl laughed. "Funny thing was, in his universe, my friends and I were the main characters of a television show. Well, the Gallifreyan equivalent of a television show, anyway. And he helped us figure out that I had accidentally turned some of my friends into Elementals by giving them jewelry from Callie's room. Luckily, this turned out to be an advantage, because we were able to keep Jackson from tearing the entire multiverse apart to search for Callie."

"And then you destroyed the fake universe, right?" Sam asked eagerly. "Was there a really epic battle? Like, with robots and stuff? Oh, were the people in that other universe Autons?"

Pearl and the Doctor both laughed. "Nothing like that," Pearl said. "See, that other universe is the one we're in right now."

Sam frowned. "But if it was putting a strain on the universe, wouldn't it be better to destroy it?"

Now it was Pearl's turn to frown. "This universe was a second chance for Keefe to live again," she said. "I had to power to bestow life, but only at the cost of another's."

"You didn't-"

The Doctor held up a hand. "Neither of us were willing to kill another human being," he said. "Pearl here," he clapped her on the shoulder as she blushed, "came up with the brilliant idea to combine the fake Keefe with the real one. See, the people in the alternate universe were more like living dolls than anything else. Imagine if this box were just that: a box. In the alternate universe, it was. And only the real Keefe could put things like this console in here," the Doctor leaned on the console, as if to prove a point. "So we combined the alternate Keefe's life with the humanity of the Keefe from the original universe, but the new Keefe's existence hinged on this other universe's existence, because without it, the alternate Keefe would not exist either, and Keefe himself, in any form, would die."

Sam felt cold. "What does this have to do with this universe now?"

"There are still rifts: little cracks in time and space. I trust you follow my life religiously?"

Sam nodded.

"Then you know I drove the Silence out of Earth."

Sam's eyes widened. "They're looking for a new Earth."

"And now they've slipped through the cracks and found one," Pearl finished for him.

"Can't we just do the same thing here?" Sam asked.

The Doctor sighed, the weight of a thousand deaths on his shoulders so tangible, Sam could almost see them. "I can't condemn them to death for something I didn't think through properly the first time," he answered.

"Then what do we do?" Sam asked. He realized he was standing and had no idea when that had happened.

"Well, first, we delete the Karaoke Bar," the Doctor answered.

"Why?" Sam asked, mystified at both the Doctor's answer and Pearl's paleness.

"Because the Silent that was just behind you is there now," the Doctor answered, pressing a series of buttons.

Sam gasped as the Silent appeared behind Pearl. The young woman immediately caught his expression and whirled around.

"I can't believe this is what you guys look like," were the first words out of her mouth.

"What, you didn't see Series 6?" Sam asked.

Pearl shook her head.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, this is brilliant! Yes!" he cheered.

"Why is it brilliant? She doesn't even know what we're up against!" Sam yelled, afraid to blink in the presence of the Silent.

"Oh, but don't you see? If you don't know how a creature from another universe can affect you, then you simply aren't affected by it at all! Oh, Pearl Rush, you might just be the key to saving this universe!" the Doctor said, also staring at the Silent like his life depended on it.

"What kind of weapon am I supposed to get for it?" Pearl asked, looking at the Doctor but gesturing at the Silent.

"It's white. It's got green spots."

Pearl rolled her eyes. "I'll get whatever I can carry, Doctor," she said.

"Get twice as much as you can carry," the Doctor replied, his steely tone completely at odds with his silly words. "I know you're stronger than you claim."

"You overestimate my abilities, Doctor." Pearl replied. Sam watched, horrified, as the Silent followed Pearl to whatever room she was headed to, shooting an electric beam. He reached for the Doctor's hand, and the Time Lord squeezed it in reassurance.

Sure enough, Pearl continued walking, as if she hadn't even felt anything amiss. As soon as the Silent turned the corner, however, she let out a short scream, then a curse and a self-deprecating laugh.

"Have you ever shuffled across carpet and touched metal?" the Doctor asked suddenly. "Human bodies don't automatically reverse the polarity of-"

"Of the neutron flow, I know," Sam said.

The Doctor looked puzzled. "Neutrons have no charge. You can't reverse the charge of something that has no charge."

Now Sam looked puzzled. "But you say that all the time. Well, your Third self says it."

The Doctor shot Sam a glare. "There's a difference between the show in your universe and my actual life."

"Oh, right," Sam frowned. "I don't know how I keep forgetting that."

"Probably because-ow! Pearl!" the Doctor glared at the woman who had tossed a fairly large gun at him. "Now, you know I don't like."

"Silence, Doctor," Pearl said immediately.

The Doctor straightened and pointed the gun at the Silent that had suddenly appeared just behind Pearl.

He fired.

So did the Silent.

Next time, we see who the Silent shot.

I am so sorry about how long it's taking me to write, guys. Really, I am. It's just that Season Three sucked so badly, except for a few scenes in even fewer episodes, I've lost my taste for Glee. I might get it back when Season Four starts, but I'm also pretty busy with wedding preparations. So cut me some slack, guys, please.