[A/N: Before you read, please read the auxiliary chapter "Before You Read..." as it will be helpful for context of what this fanfiction is about. Thankyou!]
==={DW:NG}===
With the final scene of seeing Ruby leave the TARDIS after learning about her mother's identity and stopping Sutekh—along with Mrs. Flood speaking directly to the viewers about how Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor was about to meet a tragic end—Nick waiting until the credits rolled before closing out of the Disney+ app and going to bed. It was a tearjerker scene for Nick to witness as he understood Ruby's desire to learn about her true identity and struggle so desperately to uncover that secret.
Despite Nick having loving parents (both fathers) and wonderful grandparents, he knew he was a adopted child just like Ruby. He wasn't left at a church nor on the steps of some random house, but an orphanage where he was bullied since childhood. He had actually gotten adopted at twelve years old by Joshua and Jeff Parker just after they came back from overseas for their honeymoon because Nick held good qualities for a potential child of theirs.
Despite these "qualities" he had, both fathers loved Nick greatly and even supported him through college to learn game development. This kind of loving and caring environment for Nick made him so happy for his fathers, but unlike Ruby, Nick never learned who his biological parents were.
Nor did he quite care enough to bother learning who they actually were.
For over two decades, Nick had been very content with his fathers and grandparents. He got into a wonderful company that developed high-end games that rivaled big titles such as League of Legends, RuneScape, and Dark Souls. He became a project lead on a few projects that received high acclaim from news sources like IGN and got onto Sony's State of Play for console releases.
Nick's life, at least on the outside, was shining brightly. On the inside, he was a wreck. He loved his fathers so much and wanted to share his glory with them, but he couldn't do that. The main reason why he couldn't do that was because both his fathers passed away.
With the death of his adoptive parents, he felt himself shatter like fragile glass. For an entire week since their passing, Nick drank heavily. He drowned his sorrows in strong booze and crawled from one gay bar to another simply because the grief was far too palpable.
After his week-long grieving period, Nick returned to work. While his boss wanted to fire Nick due to missing work for an entire week, all of his coworkers silenced that boss with their HR complaints. This afforded Nick the time to grieve for his losses and return to work with a firmer colder drive.
In fact, this grief became the source for a brand new game that, if a certain event hadn't happened, would have dominated the market for MMOs. This new game was titled Blood of Anima in where the protagonist (the player character) had to survive in a broken dark world with a mysterious unknown power.
Now, months later, the game had been cleared by the Quality Assurance team and free of fatal bugs. Nick was smiling so happily when he received the news that Blood of Anima was soon to release and was fully greenlit by the QA team.
However, as everyone was celebrating and toasting to Nick's grief-fueled project, something was brewing in the shadows.
==={The Night Before...}===
A mysterious figure came around 2:30am into the company building. This person was caught on the security cameras wearing a ski mask, goggles, and dressed in all black clothes entering the building around 2:31am.
From entering the building, this person (not yet identified) was going up the elevator and pressed the button to go up to the third floor. They carried a backpack over their shoulder paying close attention not to jostle the bag too much.
As the elevator door closed and the elevator rose up towards their destination, only three minutes had passed. It seemed like this figure had planned this down to the last minute and knew exactly what to do and how to do it. The figure seemed nervous, but resolved to do what they were planning.
When the elevator doors opened to the third floor, the figure swiftly sprinted towards a familiar office space. They read the name tag by the office door to confirm the target area and, when they confirm it, they entered the room.
The figure opened the bag and took out a glass bottle full of a white substance and another glass bottle—this time filled with water. They took out other objects from their bag, but most weren't noteworthy save for one item.
A single teddy bear that had a small amount of dried blood on it—caked into the fur of the toy. The figure, despite their unseen eyes, shed silent tears as they placed this teddy bear on the desk of their target and began implementing their plan.
The exact amount of time from beginning to end (time they walked in to time they left) was ten minutes. They hadn't wasted a single second of their time and left before anyone was the wiser.
As for why no security guards caught them? They had planned it for the small ten-minute window of the shift change between guards and made sure they were left just before the new guardsman looked at the monitors.
=={5:00am}==
Nick arrived earlier than his coworkers did by just ten minutes. Normally, his boss and coworkers would have arrived around five in the morning to slowly start waking up their computers and take drinks of their Starbucks coffee, but they were a tad more hungover from the late-night celebrations. As Nick did not drink too much, unlike his coworkers and boss, he was able to get there at five before the rest.
Just as he opened his office door, a loud sound erupted before everything turned white.
BOOM!
==={Ten minutes later...}===
Firefighters were doing all they could to extinguish the flames on the third floor. The people who were going to work slightly hungover quickly sobered up as they heard the news of the explosion, but the ones who were really frantic were the investors who were concerned about the damages to the company and a select group of developers who knew that someone had left to go to work.
When the fire was extinguished, the insurance company had already begun crunching the numbers on their incurred losses and a bit of news came out that shocked some and left a select few joyous.
Nick Jackson has perished. Dental records confirmed that his charred remains were near the source of the explosion and forensic experts confirmed his identity due to his teeth being the sole remains identifiable.