Nothing Gold Can Stay (1/8)
Title: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Characters: Ten, Original Companion
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mentions of genocide and character death
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 7924
Summary: So Eden sank to grief... The TARDIS has always had a mind of her own and the Doctor is getting really tired of crossing his own timeline. So why would the time-ship keep such record of a woman who doesn't belong; and perhaps more importantly, why would the Doctor want her to?
A/N: This is the most twisted reunion!fic I've ever thought up, because I am cruel. It does and will often tie in with my other stories as it is meant to take place in the same storyverse, but can be read seperately if you don't mind missing a few references and/or have a good imagination about you. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for the new companion and I'm not even sure yet if I'll keep her or exchange her for a better fit. All of this is un-beta'd, mostly because I didn't think any sane person could slog through this. So! Any mistakes are mine.
I’m sorry.
I wish I could explain this better. I wish I had more time have more time will have more time. I don’t, though, so this will have to do. You always wondered wonder will wonder about me; about why I was am will be the way I was am will be. I’m sorry. I wish there was some way I could have told you. You deserved deserve will deserve better and I knew that know that will know that, but there are rules that bind even me.
I suspect that you are reading this because you know the how. Your connection with your TARDIS means that she won’t show you these files until you are ready. I wasn’t able am not able will not be able to show you more than your own memories and my journal entries from that time. It wasn’t isn’t won’t be much, but I was trapped in one time then, I did am doing will do my best to make it easy; show you the pieces in a linear sort of order so that maybe you can understand and not grieve for me.
In my own way I loved love will love you. It wasn’t isn’t can’t be the sort of love you want and need, but that love was never is never will never be mine to give you. The timelines are moving, Ar’ali’thae. All was is will be well; I promise. For now, read and watch and take comfort in the fact that there are other forces at work beside you.
......................................................
In every story, there are certain elements that are…universal.
There had to be have to be will have to be, or else we’d have no real stories.
There are the protagonists. Sometimes they take on the form of Hero, Comedic Hero, Tragic Hero, Anti Hero, or even Villain.
There are the antagonists. These range everything from the over-the-top Arch Nemesis who wears a silly coat and talks far too much to the very understated sidekick who whips out his true colors at the last possible second and literally takes our breath with him.
There are the others, the Wise Old Mentor. The DID-that’s Damsel In Distress in case you were wondering-sidekicks, allies; the list goes on and on.
If I’ve lost you, I’m sorry. Don’t worry too much, you can learn all about it in university-level literature courses, or you could always look it up on the internet. Wikipedia is your friend.
But I didn’t come here to give you a crash course on Earth literature-I’m pretty sure if you’re anything like you used to be, your own mania will have made you take that course will make you take that course is making you take that course…Bloody tenses.
I came here to inform you of a very important fact. You see, I am neither protagonist nor am I antagonist. I am no Hero, nor guide; not even a sidekick really-though I always wanted to be a particular sidekick.
No.
I am a catalyst. I serve the function in this story, this horrible wonderful story, of setting things in motion that will change life, the universes and everything. Funny thing about catalysts though… They’re never human. Never a real character and so no one ever really worries about their happy ending. I thought you had worried worry would worry. Not that I’m really surprised; I’ve been forgotten am forgotten will be forgotten about most of my life. It’s probably better that way. Still…you were different and I had hoped…
Nevermind what I had hoped hope will hope. It was a foolish thing for me to have done.
The other stories you did know once know now will know soon, the other pieces to the puzzle, but it’s important that you understand this piece; the mauve piece.
My piece.
This is my story, the story of the stupid human girl who fought so hard against her destiny that she ended up running straight into it.
This is the story of how I died die will die.
I was only am only will only be nineteen years old.
I was always am always will always be nineteen years old.
Figures I’d be stuck at nineteen. Old enough to go to war, never enough to drink.
……………………………………………………………..
If there was one thing the Doctor hated about London, it would have to be the tourists.
Not the travelers, mind. That would be a bit hypocritical, but the honest to Bob tourists. They clogged the city when the weather was nice and couldn’t understand a bloody word of proper English and had the nerve to sound just exactly like people he should forget because they’re dead. Dead and gone and buried and put behind him.
Well, not really behind him, more like buried in one of his trans-dimensional pockets. Lots of stuff gets lost in there.
So busy was he-thinking about how to get rid of the tourists in the most humane way possible and thinking about the nine different flavors of cheese he had just sampled and how it was really too bad about his planet having no cheese and then thinking about how maybe there had been a reason for that as he could feel the first of his stomachs protesting and most determinedly not thinking about those dratted ghosts he carried on his shoulders because there were just too many and if he let one out, they’d all come bursting through and then nothing would ever get done and wouldn’t that just be a shame and-that he almost didn’t notice the small little creature that waddle-ran across his path. Of course, it was harder to miss the woman chasing it, but even so.
Grasks in London? Again? Honest to Bob…
He really didn’t have a choice but to chase after the woman chasing the Grask, but at least it gave his overactive mind something new to think about for a little bit. She was thickly built, this woman, large-boned and tall and just…well just plain thick, but she seemed to have very little trouble keeping pace just behind that pesky little Grask. Hang on…
She was slowing down and the Grask was not. Making to pass her up on one side, the Doctor added a burst of speed, only to feel an arm collide forcefully with his chest as she stopped and held him back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he fairly shouted at her, nevermind that she never should have been able to stop him in the first place.
“Patience, Doctor.” There was a tone of indulgent amusement in her voice, as if a parent speaking to a very small child. The Doctor could only gape, jaw working up and down silently as he looked between the mystery-woman and the escaping Grask. Only…it wasn’t escaping. It was escaped. Past tense.
“Awwwww!” he exclaimed, drawing the word out until it was about four separate diphthong-ed syllables. “You let it get away!”
She simply smiled her crooked smile and took three steps forward before pausing, hands on hips. She shot him a satisfied look over her shoulder that said clearly ‘Come and see’.
So he did. And-to his complete amazement-there was the Grask, stuck in a hole about half a meter taller than its head. With such stubby little arms, there was no way it could escape on its own. Tugging up at the knees of her trousers and pushing her long black coat to either side, the strange woman squatted down on the lip of the hole, resting elbows on knees and regarding the creature with one raised brow. Neat trick, that.
“Are you going to give it back now?” she asked of it, quite politely. The creature grumbled a few very impolite words back at her before handing up a small plastic rectangle, lime green in color and very thin, two white cords dangling from it.
“An iPod?” the Doctor demanded a bit rudely. “You chased that thing down for an iPod?”
“Herded, Doctor; I herded it halfway across the city for this.” She held up the small device with a triumphant grin before pressing something else to the ground and watching the Grask rise up with a rather stern look. The Doctor just stared at her, blinking several times while his jaw worked up and down soundlessly. Finally, running a hand through his wild hair, he settled on:
“You’re mad, did you know?”
“I’ve heard it a time or two, yeah.” The Grask transmatted away while she rose and grinned at him and the smile was so painfully familiar that it took him off guard like a punch to the stomach. Worst part being? He couldn’t place it. Screwing his face up and reaching for his glasses, he took a step towards her.
“Sorry, do I know you?” He reached in his breast pocket for the sonic screwdriver only to be stopped by her hand.
“No, you don’t, Doctor. Not yet. I’d really appreciate it though if you left the sonic screwdriver where it is just now. Never much liked that thing reading over me like I was a bit of scrap metal.” She stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat, depositing the iPod in the process. “How about some chips? I’m starved.” Without giving him time to answer, she strode right up to him, linked her arm in his and started them off down the alley.
They’d made it thirty-seven and a half steps before the Doctor caught up with himself.
“Right, sorry. Chips, yeah. Who are you again?” The young woman rolled her eyes.
“Did I catch you after a bout of ginger beer? You’re quicker than this.” The Doctor frowned, getting horrible déjà vu. First River, now this woman. He really was going to have to have a word with himself about crossing timelines and the like. This was getting ridiculous.
“No, not ginger beer.” He rubbed his jaw with his free hand, seeming surprised to find one arm hooked. “Just…a bad day.” The answer was vague enough that he almost booted himself in the face. Curious humans never could just leave well enough alone. Now he’d have to fend questions all afternoon… To his complete surprise, she simply nodded once; as if she understood.
“I’m Lhaki.” One corner of her mouth twitched upwards as if anticipating something.
“What, never had a bad day?” The Doctor turned to stare at her openly as they paused for traffic at a corner. “Or because today isn’t a bad day?” The woman bit her lip and smiled, shaking her head.
“No, Doctor. I’m Lhaki. L-h-a-k-i. S’ my name.” She said it as if it was an old joke between them. Probably was, to her.
“Ooh,” he winced once. “Why do I get the feeling that ends up as one of those universal puns?”
“What,” she jabbed right back. “You mean like ‘Doctor Who’?” She lead him to a little corner place and surprisingly held the door open for him.
“Yeah, I never did get that one.” She released his arm and slid into one side of a booth, he into the other. “Every time it happens, I get this sort of…” He waved his hands around his head in a sort of all-encompassing motion. “It’s like someone, somewhere is laughing at that, every time, but I haven’t a clue as to why.” She bit down harder on her lip, a flush staining her face as she made a very human effort not to laugh.
A waitress came and took their orders. Lhaki wanted chips and a Dr Pepper. The Doctor eyed her strangely, then promptly ordered a banana milkshake. As the waitress left, Lhaki lost control, folding her arms on the table and then laying her head on them to hide her laugh. Poor job since her shoulders were shaking. The Doctor, who for the life of him couldn’t figure out just what, precisely was so funny, shifted in his seat a few times before reaching across and poking her in the back of the neck.
“Oi!” she exclaimed, sitting up with a start. There were marks of tears on her laughter-reddened face, but her eyes were sparkling with a bit of manic joy. “You never change, do you?”
“Actually, I’ve changed quite a lot since I was younger,” the Doctor argued diplomatically. “You’d not recognize me now if you saw me then.” Lhaki snorted once.
“Regeneration doesn’t count, you loon. You know just as well as I do that it doesn’t really change your personality. It doesn’t add or take away anything that wasn’t already there, just amplifies some and dampens others.” The Doctor had a rather sheepish grin on his face, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous gesture. “Dunno why you keep telling people it’s a total change, unless…” She trailed off as if a thought had just occurred to her. “No,” she negated her own theory before it could even be voiced. “That’d be too cruel, even for you.”
There wasn’t any judgment or malice in those words, but they acted as a trigger nonetheless. In a fraction of an instant, the Doctor stiffened, tensed and leaned in towards her, focusing intently and appearing more dangerous than anyone his size had a right to look. “Right then, lucky Lhaki, who are you and why the hell do you know so much about me?”
To his surprise-though to his credit, he didn’t show it-Lhaki didn’t flinch. She just sat there, staring into his eyes like she was searching for something. It gave him a long time to study her.
Her eyes were a curious shade of hazel. Sometimes they looked greenish-grey, others greenish-brown and still others a brownish-grey, almost as if they couldn’t make up their mind on just which color variation they wanted to settle with. Her hair was bottle-blond, but the roots and her eyebrows were an ashy, mousy sort of dishwater brown. She was tall; around 1.83 meters and she had fine bone structure, hidden beneath a comfortably thin layer of fat. She didn’t seem overly hefty; the impression she left one with was more thick and solid than obese. It was as if nothing dared to move her because nothing ever could. Her fashion sense left a bit to be desired, though. Navy t-shirt of some description-probably with writing on it too-there was an edge of a white letter poking out over the equally white zip-up sweatshirt, decorated with Mickey Mouse repeated in more patterns and more positions than any one garment should ever wish to possess. Plain denims, green chucks and that long black duster completed the outfit of a woman far too old for such a childish ensemble and yet…somehow it worked. On her.
“I’m not afraid of you, you know.” The words were so quietly, so sincerely delivered that the Doctor never thought to doubt them.
“Why? You know me. If your pattern of knowledge holds true to form then you know what I’ve done; what I’m capable of doing.”
“What, like the fall of Arcadia?” The question was far too simply asked for such a complicated and painful memory.
“Yeah,” he managed to get out, sounding a bit choked. “A bit like that.” He seemed very interested in his milkshake all of the sudden.
“Which reminds me, I’ve a bone to pick with you about that.” And suddenly it all made sense. She was too clever, too unflappable, too…big to fit inside tiny human parameters. She must have been one of the descendents of the Arcadian outposts, come to wreak her revenge.
At this point he was nearly ready to throw in the towel and let her.
He played her game, even though he was sure both of them knew. “And just precisely which bone would that be? I warn you, not many left for you to pick.”
Just then, the waitress returned with their drinks and Lhaki’s chips, which she pushed to the center of the table in a silent offer. He found he wasn’t hungry, which was really a shame. This place made good chips. When she’d made sure they didn’t need anything else just then, the waitress vanished. Lhaki took a long, strong pull of the brown soda in front of her.
“Developed a bit of an addiction to this particular flavor back taking A-levels.” Well, that knocked out the most plausible theory. Or did it? By this time the Doctor was so off-kilter he wasn’t sure what to expect. He found that both thrilled and terrified him. “I went for my final Astronomy exam and I was this close,” she demonstrated with the tiny space between her fingers. “This close to an A* and I miss it because by the time the test was graded, Arcadia was gone and I was the only one who remembered it being there.”
The sheer absurdity of being blamed, not for the deaths of millions or worse, of a particular loved one, but for a missed grade on a sixth form exam was priceless to the Doctor. Absolutely priceless. He let out a bark of laughter and took a long drink of his milkshake. It was almost enough to distract him from the fact that she shouldn’t have remembered Arcadia. None of the Lesser Species could remember and very few of the Greater Species still recalled that particular battle, so why should one tiny human girl remember?
“Do you know how universes form, Doctor?” Lhaki’s voice was quiet, almost sad. She nibbled on a few more chips and took another long pull of the brown soda. He gave her a look that said she should know better than to ask that question to him of all people. She snorted at the look and raised her hands in surrender. “Yeah, yeah I know; stupid question to ask a Time Lord. But it’s important.” After another pause she turned a pleading expression and her voice was just a hair shy of desperate. “Humor me?”
Convincing himself that he’d made a decision to relieve her of the inevitable-no doubt archaic-misconceptions, rather than caving to that appeal, the Doctor took another drink of his milkshake and forged ahead. “Every time a decision is made-no matter how small or apparently insignificant-another universe is created because all possibilities must be acted out.”
“Except with you.” The quiet assurance in her voice shouldn’t have startled him by this point, but it did. “You exist outside of time and so there’s only one of you. But a long, long time ago, in a place so far away even you would never believe it existed, you made a choice that spawned a universe.” There was an echo of something deep and yawing in her shifting eyes, but she looked away from him before he could put a name to it. “It’s gone now, don’t worry. All taken care of and they didn’t even have to call you in.” There, a ghost of a smile.
“They called you instead.” His voice was equally quiet. “You’re the one who had to shift through the timelines, find the point of origin and then…preserve the timestream.” Her jaw clenched and her eyes hardened, but she didn’t try and deny his conclusion. He stared at her for another moment. “Try again.”
“I beg your pardon?” She seemed taken aback by his question, something guilty flashing in her eyes.
“If there had been a disturbance in the timelines on that scale, I would have felt it. You’re lying. Try again.” As he explained himself, the tension bled out of her body until her shoulders slumped. If asked, the Doctor would be hard pressed to name a time he’d seen someone look so defeated.
“Do you ever look at your own timeline, Doctor?” And as soon as she said it, he knew. No, he didn’t. Too painful. Sitting there at a cheap chip shop across from the most dangerous woman he’d come across in quite some while, he let his mind find the timestream that matched his own resonance and-wary of being swept along into the future current-traveled backwards along the route until he found it, the cry of a universe snuffed out because he’d accidentally given birth to it. Only he hadn’t given birth to it and so it therefore shouldn’t have existed. But that was the Time Agency’s job, wasn’t it? There was no reason for it to have affected her so deeply.
Unless…
“This isn’t your original universe.” It wasn’t a question.
Lhaki smiled wanly, seeming relieved that he’d guessed, rather than her having to explain.
“I single-handedly slaughtered my family, my home, my entire race.” That much he could empathize with. “Not only that, Doctor. I obliterated everything. From Skaro to Clom… No matter the race, the time, the era, they all screamed.” She shuddered, taking a quick drink of her Dr Pepper as if to wash a bad taste from her mouth. “Not the races, mind. None of them felt a thing, but the planets, Doctor…the worlds; they knew. They could feel it and they all screamed.” She swallowed thickly and turned to stare out the window, where it had started to rain.
For a long time, they were both of them silent, each lost in the atrocities they’d been forced by Fate to perform. But the Doctor couldn’t stay quiet for long, not when there were still questions to be answered. “How are you here, then?” he asked, his voice gentle.
When she turned to look at him, he could have sworn up and down that he was staring into a mirror. “I don’t know.” And somehow that was the worst of it all. “No human could have survived what I did.” The fact that no one should have to survive that, though unspoken, sat heavily between them.
“No human could have heard the planets screaming, either,” he felt compelled to point out, though his voice was still gentle, a bit of hope worming it’s way into the node between his hearts.
“And yet I still pass every medical scan possible.” She spread her hands in a ‘search me’ motion. “Human to the DNA in my spit, me.” When she looked his way, her expression was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Doctor. One heart, no respiratory bypass system, no TARDIS curled up on a rift somewhere to recharge.” She laughed then, a bitter, mirthless sound. “The only kinship I can claim with you is that I’ve seen the Eye of Harmony and you know what?” He gaped at her and she grinned at him, waiting for his shake of the head before she continued. “I ran, too.”
There was a booming sound from the north, followed by a shockwave enough to register a minor earthquake. “Speaking of which, I’d say that’s our cue to do some more of it!” Tossing back the rest of her soda, she dropped a few pound notes on the table, grabbed a chip for the road and pulled him out of the booth by the sleeve of his jacket.
Standing on the corner outside the chip shop, the Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his coat and began to run an atmospheric scan. The more readings he took in, the deeper his frown got. “Mix of-“ but before he even got the chance to finish, Lhaki was pelting off up a side street. “Oi!” he called after her, catching up when she had to pause for traffic. “How d’ you know where you’re going?” By the tone of his voice, he seemed resigned to another of her eerily-vague bits of foreknowledge.
“Because people are running the opposite direction?” she offered back with a rather manic grin, just as traffic let up enough for them to pass.
“Oh.” And he left it at that, spurred on by her contagious excitement mixing with his own as the two of them pelted headfirst into danger.
……………………………………………..
I always wondered why you never thought to question me after that. One adventure and one time of saving your life and you just…just swept me up into your TARDIS and off into the stars.
I never really was sure why you’d done it, whether it was the fact that I was just as homeless as you were, or whether you’d seen through my lie-by-omission.
Can’t tell you how many times that one little falsehood ate at me from the inside. The fact that I’d let you come to your own false conclusions-helped to herd you into them, just like that Grask-was one of the worst things on my conscience. Do know this, though, if nothing else.
If there was any way to avoid it, even if it meant I’d have to bend the rules, I never lied to you. I cared about you far, far too much to ever do that.
…………………………………………………………
They’d been in the Vortex for three days linear time.
After their first few adventures, the Doctor realized that Lhaki was much more antsy if he parked the TARDIS somewhere linear. When they were in the Vortex, however, the young woman relaxed. In the short time they’d known each other, the girl without a universe and the TARDIS fell in love. Of course that was the most ridiculous possible way to put it, but the Doctor couldn’t think of a better way either.
It was like two halves of the same whole coming together, a pair of very old friends reuniting after years of separation; each thinking the other one dead. She was the only one of his human companions who could communicate with his ship on the same level-if not a deeper one-that he could. It prompted a whole new round of curiosity about who and what she was, but the tests-run for the fifteenth time-showed exactly what she said they would.
Lhaki was 100% certifiable human.
A human who could talk to, reason with and pilot his ship. Three things only he should be able to do and only two of which he actually could do.
The first time he had brought them into the Void, she’d disappeared to do her own exploring while he tinkered under the console. Hours later, he’d been distracted from his sealing up of some minor components by a haunting melody, strangely in concert with the TARDIS’ own eternal song. He wandered the corridors for hours, just listening. He never found the source of the sound, but a short while after it had stopped, Lhaki had appeared citing the need for sleep.
Every time they had landed in the Vortex-‘parked’ as Lhaki would say-he would hear it, music that somehow touched his hearts in a painfully beautiful way. Every time he heard it, he got a little closer to finding it. This time though…this time he had an advantage.
Parked they were in the Vortex, yes, but the TARDIS had been forced to shut down her main systems to hide and heal. Life support still ran, as well as a few emergency protocols that he really should update, but it was dark and silent. This time, when he heard the song there would be no background hum to disguise the direction, no sentient ship conspiring with his newest companion to keep him away. And didn’t that just rankle! There had been occasions in the past certainly where his TARDIS liked one or another of his companions, some of them especially well and one of them was forever a part of her now, but never before had he seen this level of…of almost symbiosis in any pair save a bonded Time Lord and his or her TARDIS.
Just in case, he told himself, and then checked the part of his mind that held his link to the TARDIS. Safe and sound and just as bright and strong if ever, though muted in her sleep. In that same area-a place he didn’t like to tread often-were the shredded remains of links to his friends, his family. Links that should never have been made. He’d grown a sardonic appreciation, since the War, for his culture’s insistence on emotional repression. If he hadn’t been such an emotional bastard, it wouldn’t have hurt him nearly so much. If he hadn’t been such an emotional bastard, the Daleks would have been destroyed eons before the breath of the Time War even ghosted on the universe.
Then again, without his emotions, he wouldn’t have been able to make the final steps necessary to secure the rest of the universe from the menace of the Daleks.
But what good did it do, really? There was that inner gnawing voice again. They came back, didn’t they? Not once. Not twice. Not three times, but over and over again. They take everything you ever loved and you can’t even make a dent in them!
Then, an echo of a voice painful for multiple layers of reasons brushed across his mind, soothing at the same time as it made him ache. Not only was he responsible for the death of this particular voice’s owner-his last hope of family in the multiverse-but when he’d been tossed back, thrown into his TARDIS in a rumple of grief and rushing memories, he realized why he’d let her into his hearts when his mind was programmed not to have any emotional attachment at all.
She’d sounded so like his Rose…
That echo brushed again now. They were old words, spoken to him what seemed like a lifetime ago now. Then why do they call you Ka Faraq Gantri? Why name you so aptly and with such fear if you never even scratched them? For a moment more he basked in thoughts both of the love sealed away from him-probably dead by this time in their linear timeline-and let himself soak in just a little bit of envy for the piece of himself who got to spend his life with her. Then his thoughts turned to the young Gallifreyan girl who could have been the future, could have been all he needed to keep himself going, but was lost forever to the machinations of those that should have died long ago. Her link in his mind wasn’t as jagged as the others, because she had closed it before, all to spare him the pain to come. Just as Rose had done before her. They both had wanted him safe.
What had he ever done to deserve such love?
Somehow the thoughts of those two bright, brilliant women didn’t clash at all, instead meshing together to double his joy in them, but also to double the pain. It was so sharp, so delicate and so poignant that he had to bend double to keep from screaming.
Just as he came down from the effort needed to seal all of those memories back into their box of OPEN UNDER DIRE CONSEQUENCE, he heard it; the first strands of music.
It was different this time, more solid and real and physical. It came from a pianoforte, full grand mid 20th century make if his ears told him true. Never before or since have there been pianos quite like those of that time period, so of course he’d have one on board. And he even knew where it was! Which, with the TARDIS corridors being what they were, was quite an accomplishment.
He started out at a brisk jog, but slowed as he approached, as he adjusted to the whole of the music instead of just trying to pinpoint its sound and location. It was soft and simple, almost childlike. It was full of yearning, of longing for something impossible, an undercurrent of hope sustaining the entire piece like a life-preserver. Somehow it matched the two his thoughts had just turned to…matched them exquisitely. By the time he reached the door, he found he couldn’t push himself through.
The music swelled to one, defiant crescendo, fiercely beautiful and driven and completely unstoppable…then faded with all the swiftness that those bright flames always extinguish themselves. It was beautiful and painful and it was a concept he’d thought entirely beyond human understanding.
Then again, Lhaki wasn’t quite your average human, was she?
It had been silent in the room now for a very long time and the Doctor finally worked up the courage to open the door. There it was, that sleek black piano just where he’d left it. Sitting at the bench, shoulders slumped and head bowed, was his companion. She was so still that for a moment he thought she must have fallen asleep at the keys. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his companions had needed to be carried into bed. So fragile, humans; and at the same time so blissfully ignorant of their own fragility.
He opened his mind and extended his sense of empathy to check her. If she was deep enough in sleep, he could just carry her, otherwise he’d wake her gently. His eyes widened however, when he found that she wasn’t asleep, only drowning in a depth of pain and sorrow that overwhelmed him. Even for what she’d done, what she’d had to do, it was more than a human mind should have been able to bear. More than a child’s mind of any species could handle.
At her age, had he been filled with this much…raw pain, it would have broken him.
He blinked then, unsure just how he’d made it from the doorway to just behind her, but there he was. Reaching out with one hand, he hesitated. Did he dare interrupt her? Would it help or only make things worse? A flash of over-mascara’d eyes flew across his vision, a hand reaching for his touch-any touch-when her world fell down around her ears and he remembered. Humans were unbelievably tactile creatures and so his hand fell softly on her shoulder as he lowered himself to sit next to her on the wide bench.
His touch provoked a shattering in her, emotion erupting in a broken sob as she gripped the edge of the piano and screamed. She never cried and that both impressed and worried him. She only screamed and screamed until her vocal cords were too raw to make any sound. The screams were familiar to him and to his ship, asleep though she was. They were the same sounds he’d made in the days following the Time War, when he realized that he had, by some miracle, survived the ravages he released on his allies and enemies both.
He extended his arm and pulled her close into his side, offering the silent comfort he could, the comfort of someone who understood and had survived. Finally, when she leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool, lacquered wood, he made another venture towards her mind, trying to soothe and repair what he could. His brush against her mind made her jump, throwing her whole body away from him until she was sprawled on the floor staring up at him with apology in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped up at him, trying so desperately to gather all her tattered pieces into some semblance of herself, just enough to get her out of here. His mind whirled as he thought of ways to forestall her escape.
“Don’t be,” he answered with uncommon gentleness. “I’ll bet that’s been wanting to come out a long time now.” She froze, staring at him very much like a deer caught in headlights. “Hasn’t it?”
She blinked then, nodding in response to his gentle prodding.
“I can help you, Lhaki. I can help your mind put itself back together, but you have to let me in.”
She shook her head vehemently and the Doctor’s face fell into that pleading look, the one that had always worked on Martha, but never Donna. “Don’t you trust me?” She shook her head and he reared back a little.
“No, no,” she rasped again, clutching her throat. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you.” It was funny, but with her shields in pieces and her voice so raw, her accent leaned heavily towards American.
“You do?” He couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his mouth, the expression melting into a full-on manic grin at her nod. “Well, of course you do, I’m the Doctor!” He was trying so hard to lighten the situation, but it somehow backfired on him. Her face fell and she closed her eyes as if against some great pain. Instantly the sonic screwdriver was out and buzzing at her throat as the Doctor knelt next to her. “There, that should help.”
“Thank you.” But her eyes, her shifting, indecisive eyes said that wasn’t the problem.
“Now, will you let me help you?”
“No.”
“No? Wh-how-I mean…why the bloody hell not?” The Doctor sputtered in his indignation and Lhaki couldn’t help but savor the small smile it triggered in her face.
“Because, Doctor…” She trailed off, hesitant, her lower lip being pulled and worried between her teeth. “Because if I let you into my mind, you’ll open a bond there.” The Doctor opened his mouth to deny it and Lhaki shot him a sharp look. “Don’t you dare try and deny that can happen with humans, you big idiot. That was Rassilon’s bullshit, not mine.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she seemed confused, but shook it off and went on. “You had one with Rose-damn strong one too, if I don’t miss my guess.” She didn’t need to add that she never missed her guess, her referential point had been made. “You had one with Donna and you have one with Jack.”
For a full minute he gaped at her like an overgrown fish. He regained his composure-with visible effort-and grinned that cheeky little grin at her. “Oh come now, you can’t tell me that’d be a bad thing, eh? Humans and Time Lords, we’re not so different some places. We thrive on bonds, both of us. Be right good for you to have a bit of stability, I’d say.” Yes, he could see now that would be the best possible solution. The human mind didn’t process bonds on the same level that Time Lords did. When the time came for her to leave, it wouldn’t do her further damage, but while she was with him it would go a long ways toward healing her; this child caught in a nightmare because of a choice he made or didn’t make. The Doctor still wasn’t entirely sure which it was. He swallowed thickly and stiffened his shoulders. He’d be in trouble for a while after she left. He always was after parting from a bond; nothing he couldn’t handle.
“And where would that leave you, Doctor?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, I’d be grand, I would. S’ been a while since I’ve been able to see Jack and what with…” He swallowed. “The others, them being gone, it’s far due time to have a few new ones, yeah?” This was awkward. Humans, as a rule, were consciously unaware of the bonds they formed with higher species unless made to be aware of them. Rose had come close to figuring it out there, near the end. Always was too clever for her own good, his Rose. She had worked out enough to clamp down on her end before… Needless to say, it wasn’t a conversation he had often at all.
“Exactly.” Her quiet answer was so sadly certain that he had to rein in his rambling thoughts and try to remember just precisely what he’d said to prove her argument. He wasn’t even sure what her argument was, to be honest.
“I’m sorry?”
She shook her head at him, careful not to touch him in any way. “What happens when I die or when I get stuck somewhere or you get it in your head to try and send me away?”
“I wouldn’t do that! Where’d I send you back to?” She flinched back and he could have beaten himself over the head with a metal pipe. “I didn’t mean it like that, I only-“
“Stop.” She held up both hands and he mercifully quit babbling. “It’s fine, it is. But even if I spend my entire life here with you and the TARDIS, it’ll still be a fraction of what you have left in you, even with…” She frowned here. “How many regenerations have you got left anyhow? I knew this body was your tenth, but there was the whole business with the hand and I never could figure out if this was tenth or eleventh you…”
“Eleventh.” His answer was clipped. He was getting a bit tired of her knowing everything. Took a big chunk of the fun out of this whole ‘companion’ business, plus brought up some really unwanted memories. “And I’ll be fine, Lhaki. I’m always fine. But you, you may not be if we don’t fix this bit of business in your head.”
“No.” Her voice was gaining strength and he almost regretted repairing her vocal cords. Almost.
“Why not?” He was quickly losing patience.
“No.” She wasn’t really helping matters.
“No, no no no. Is that all you can say, no?”
“No.”
Standing and running his hands through his hair as he paced, the Doctor fumed. “You’re being ridiculous, you are!”
“I don’t care. I won’t do it.”
“You’ll die if you don’t, Lhaki.” He whirled to face her, eyes blazing and expression fierce. “If we don’t do something about that giant mass of…of raw pain that’s inside your head, it will consume you until there’s nothing left but a shell! Is that what you want? Do you want to suffer in that sort of agony until you’re nothing more than a vegetable?” He was practically screaming at her now. “Do you?”
There was silence for a while then, broken only by his heavy breathing as he waited for her answer. When it came, it was soft and shaky and completely, utterly hopeless.
“Yes.” For some reason that infuriated him more.
“Why would you want to go and do something wasteful like that? You survived impossible odds, Lhaki!” He was getting a touch of his ‘you’re being an extremely thick ape today’ voice. “You managed to stay alive when by all rights you should have been wiped from existence and you want to throw that all away?” He couldn’t understand why he was so angry. She was only a child. She didn’t understand.
“I deserve it.” And suddenly the floor was jerked out from under his feet. Survivor’s guilt, of course! That, mixed with the guilt of being the one responsible for the non-survival state of trillions of species, well. It would be quite a dose.
“No one deserves that,” he informed her quietly, squatting down in front of her.
“I do.” Childishly stubborn, holding onto her guilt like a morbid security blanket.
“If you hadn’t done what you did, the entire multiverse would have collapsed and infinitely more loss would have occurred. You’re nothing short of a hero, eh?” He smiled at her, tilting his face to try and catch her eye. “Which reminds me, just how did you manage such a clean cut timestream fix?”
“Removed the impetus for the error from the erred timestream.” Her voice was flat, reciting procedure rather a bit too old for her.
“Oh, yes, I suppose that would do it…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. She hadn’t answered his question, not really. Not the way he would have liked anyway, but that’d have to wait. “It was a better and more humane job than I could have done.”
“Really?” Her voice was so small. It didn’t seem to fit the larger-than-life aura she usually projected.
“Really really.” That got a watery smile from her, though he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why. “You did the only thing you could do, Lhaki. You made a impossibly hard choice and you did the right thing.” That was, apparently, also the right thing to say, because she looked up at him with the smallest flicker of hope in her eyes.
“I…I did?” She sounded so much like a child then, a little lost child that he reached for her, stopping only when she flinched away.
“You did.” She didn’t look convinced. She wanted to be convinced though. He could practically taste that. She wanted him to convince her and that was something he could do and gladly. “Honest.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” She was almost grasping at straws now, he could tell.
“I’m the Doctor. If you know as much about me as you seem to, you’ll know I don’t sugarcoat things.”
“Yes you do. When it’s someone you care about or might care about, you do sometimes.” Damn, the girl knew him better than he thought. In the back of his mind he wondered if that would ever stop being weird, saw her knowing look and decided probably not.
“I’m not now.”
“Prove it.” Stubborn to the end. He was beginning to really like this child, even if he currently wanted to wring her neck.
“Alright I will.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on projecting his admiration of her, being able to do something that difficult so well, so young, his empathy at having committed a similar atrocity to save the universes and his complete and utter lack of blame on her for what she’d done. At first it was like showing a movie to a brick wall, but slowly, ever so slowly, she began to soften, to open up to his projections. The more she took in, the more she relaxed, until she was wide open to him, soaking up the things projected while holding her own mass of pain at bay so as not to hurt him. It was the opportune moment.
Begging her forgiveness, he pounced.
………………………………………………………
Characters: Ten, Original Companion
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Mentions of genocide and character death
Spoilers: Through JE and then spoilers for other stories of mine, but nothing major there.
Word Count: 7924
Summary: So Eden sank to grief... The TARDIS has always had a mind of her own and the Doctor is getting really tired of crossing his own timeline. So why would the time-ship keep such record of a woman who doesn't belong; and perhaps more importantly, why would the Doctor want her to?
A/N: This is the most twisted reunion!fic I've ever thought up, because I am cruel. It does and will often tie in with my other stories as it is meant to take place in the same storyverse, but can be read seperately if you don't mind missing a few references and/or have a good imagination about you. :)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for the new companion and I'm not even sure yet if I'll keep her or exchange her for a better fit. All of this is un-beta'd, mostly because I didn't think any sane person could slog through this. So! Any mistakes are mine.
I’m sorry.
I wish I could explain this better. I wish I had more time have more time will have more time. I don’t, though, so this will have to do. You always wondered wonder will wonder about me; about why I was am will be the way I was am will be. I’m sorry. I wish there was some way I could have told you. You deserved deserve will deserve better and I knew that know that will know that, but there are rules that bind even me.
I suspect that you are reading this because you know the how. Your connection with your TARDIS means that she won’t show you these files until you are ready. I wasn’t able am not able will not be able to show you more than your own memories and my journal entries from that time. It wasn’t isn’t won’t be much, but I was trapped in one time then, I did am doing will do my best to make it easy; show you the pieces in a linear sort of order so that maybe you can understand and not grieve for me.
In my own way I loved love will love you. It wasn’t isn’t can’t be the sort of love you want and need, but that love was never is never will never be mine to give you. The timelines are moving, Ar’ali’thae. All was is will be well; I promise. For now, read and watch and take comfort in the fact that there are other forces at work beside you.
......................................................
In every story, there are certain elements that are…universal.
There had to be have to be will have to be, or else we’d have no real stories.
There are the protagonists. Sometimes they take on the form of Hero, Comedic Hero, Tragic Hero, Anti Hero, or even Villain.
There are the antagonists. These range everything from the over-the-top Arch Nemesis who wears a silly coat and talks far too much to the very understated sidekick who whips out his true colors at the last possible second and literally takes our breath with him.
There are the others, the Wise Old Mentor. The DID-that’s Damsel In Distress in case you were wondering-sidekicks, allies; the list goes on and on.
If I’ve lost you, I’m sorry. Don’t worry too much, you can learn all about it in university-level literature courses, or you could always look it up on the internet. Wikipedia is your friend.
But I didn’t come here to give you a crash course on Earth literature-I’m pretty sure if you’re anything like you used to be, your own mania will have made you take that course will make you take that course is making you take that course…Bloody tenses.
I came here to inform you of a very important fact. You see, I am neither protagonist nor am I antagonist. I am no Hero, nor guide; not even a sidekick really-though I always wanted to be a particular sidekick.
No.
I am a catalyst. I serve the function in this story, this horrible wonderful story, of setting things in motion that will change life, the universes and everything. Funny thing about catalysts though… They’re never human. Never a real character and so no one ever really worries about their happy ending. I thought you had worried worry would worry. Not that I’m really surprised; I’ve been forgotten am forgotten will be forgotten about most of my life. It’s probably better that way. Still…you were different and I had hoped…
Nevermind what I had hoped hope will hope. It was a foolish thing for me to have done.
The other stories you did know once know now will know soon, the other pieces to the puzzle, but it’s important that you understand this piece; the mauve piece.
My piece.
This is my story, the story of the stupid human girl who fought so hard against her destiny that she ended up running straight into it.
This is the story of how I died die will die.
I was only am only will only be nineteen years old.
I was always am always will always be nineteen years old.
Figures I’d be stuck at nineteen. Old enough to go to war, never enough to drink.
……………………………………………………………..
If there was one thing the Doctor hated about London, it would have to be the tourists.
Not the travelers, mind. That would be a bit hypocritical, but the honest to Bob tourists. They clogged the city when the weather was nice and couldn’t understand a bloody word of proper English and had the nerve to sound just exactly like people he should forget because they’re dead. Dead and gone and buried and put behind him.
Well, not really behind him, more like buried in one of his trans-dimensional pockets. Lots of stuff gets lost in there.
So busy was he-thinking about how to get rid of the tourists in the most humane way possible and thinking about the nine different flavors of cheese he had just sampled and how it was really too bad about his planet having no cheese and then thinking about how maybe there had been a reason for that as he could feel the first of his stomachs protesting and most determinedly not thinking about those dratted ghosts he carried on his shoulders because there were just too many and if he let one out, they’d all come bursting through and then nothing would ever get done and wouldn’t that just be a shame and-that he almost didn’t notice the small little creature that waddle-ran across his path. Of course, it was harder to miss the woman chasing it, but even so.
Grasks in London? Again? Honest to Bob…
He really didn’t have a choice but to chase after the woman chasing the Grask, but at least it gave his overactive mind something new to think about for a little bit. She was thickly built, this woman, large-boned and tall and just…well just plain thick, but she seemed to have very little trouble keeping pace just behind that pesky little Grask. Hang on…
She was slowing down and the Grask was not. Making to pass her up on one side, the Doctor added a burst of speed, only to feel an arm collide forcefully with his chest as she stopped and held him back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he fairly shouted at her, nevermind that she never should have been able to stop him in the first place.
“Patience, Doctor.” There was a tone of indulgent amusement in her voice, as if a parent speaking to a very small child. The Doctor could only gape, jaw working up and down silently as he looked between the mystery-woman and the escaping Grask. Only…it wasn’t escaping. It was escaped. Past tense.
“Awwwww!” he exclaimed, drawing the word out until it was about four separate diphthong-ed syllables. “You let it get away!”
She simply smiled her crooked smile and took three steps forward before pausing, hands on hips. She shot him a satisfied look over her shoulder that said clearly ‘Come and see’.
So he did. And-to his complete amazement-there was the Grask, stuck in a hole about half a meter taller than its head. With such stubby little arms, there was no way it could escape on its own. Tugging up at the knees of her trousers and pushing her long black coat to either side, the strange woman squatted down on the lip of the hole, resting elbows on knees and regarding the creature with one raised brow. Neat trick, that.
“Are you going to give it back now?” she asked of it, quite politely. The creature grumbled a few very impolite words back at her before handing up a small plastic rectangle, lime green in color and very thin, two white cords dangling from it.
“An iPod?” the Doctor demanded a bit rudely. “You chased that thing down for an iPod?”
“Herded, Doctor; I herded it halfway across the city for this.” She held up the small device with a triumphant grin before pressing something else to the ground and watching the Grask rise up with a rather stern look. The Doctor just stared at her, blinking several times while his jaw worked up and down soundlessly. Finally, running a hand through his wild hair, he settled on:
“You’re mad, did you know?”
“I’ve heard it a time or two, yeah.” The Grask transmatted away while she rose and grinned at him and the smile was so painfully familiar that it took him off guard like a punch to the stomach. Worst part being? He couldn’t place it. Screwing his face up and reaching for his glasses, he took a step towards her.
“Sorry, do I know you?” He reached in his breast pocket for the sonic screwdriver only to be stopped by her hand.
“No, you don’t, Doctor. Not yet. I’d really appreciate it though if you left the sonic screwdriver where it is just now. Never much liked that thing reading over me like I was a bit of scrap metal.” She stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat, depositing the iPod in the process. “How about some chips? I’m starved.” Without giving him time to answer, she strode right up to him, linked her arm in his and started them off down the alley.
They’d made it thirty-seven and a half steps before the Doctor caught up with himself.
“Right, sorry. Chips, yeah. Who are you again?” The young woman rolled her eyes.
“Did I catch you after a bout of ginger beer? You’re quicker than this.” The Doctor frowned, getting horrible déjà vu. First River, now this woman. He really was going to have to have a word with himself about crossing timelines and the like. This was getting ridiculous.
“No, not ginger beer.” He rubbed his jaw with his free hand, seeming surprised to find one arm hooked. “Just…a bad day.” The answer was vague enough that he almost booted himself in the face. Curious humans never could just leave well enough alone. Now he’d have to fend questions all afternoon… To his complete surprise, she simply nodded once; as if she understood.
“I’m Lhaki.” One corner of her mouth twitched upwards as if anticipating something.
“What, never had a bad day?” The Doctor turned to stare at her openly as they paused for traffic at a corner. “Or because today isn’t a bad day?” The woman bit her lip and smiled, shaking her head.
“No, Doctor. I’m Lhaki. L-h-a-k-i. S’ my name.” She said it as if it was an old joke between them. Probably was, to her.
“Ooh,” he winced once. “Why do I get the feeling that ends up as one of those universal puns?”
“What,” she jabbed right back. “You mean like ‘Doctor Who’?” She lead him to a little corner place and surprisingly held the door open for him.
“Yeah, I never did get that one.” She released his arm and slid into one side of a booth, he into the other. “Every time it happens, I get this sort of…” He waved his hands around his head in a sort of all-encompassing motion. “It’s like someone, somewhere is laughing at that, every time, but I haven’t a clue as to why.” She bit down harder on her lip, a flush staining her face as she made a very human effort not to laugh.
A waitress came and took their orders. Lhaki wanted chips and a Dr Pepper. The Doctor eyed her strangely, then promptly ordered a banana milkshake. As the waitress left, Lhaki lost control, folding her arms on the table and then laying her head on them to hide her laugh. Poor job since her shoulders were shaking. The Doctor, who for the life of him couldn’t figure out just what, precisely was so funny, shifted in his seat a few times before reaching across and poking her in the back of the neck.
“Oi!” she exclaimed, sitting up with a start. There were marks of tears on her laughter-reddened face, but her eyes were sparkling with a bit of manic joy. “You never change, do you?”
“Actually, I’ve changed quite a lot since I was younger,” the Doctor argued diplomatically. “You’d not recognize me now if you saw me then.” Lhaki snorted once.
“Regeneration doesn’t count, you loon. You know just as well as I do that it doesn’t really change your personality. It doesn’t add or take away anything that wasn’t already there, just amplifies some and dampens others.” The Doctor had a rather sheepish grin on his face, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous gesture. “Dunno why you keep telling people it’s a total change, unless…” She trailed off as if a thought had just occurred to her. “No,” she negated her own theory before it could even be voiced. “That’d be too cruel, even for you.”
There wasn’t any judgment or malice in those words, but they acted as a trigger nonetheless. In a fraction of an instant, the Doctor stiffened, tensed and leaned in towards her, focusing intently and appearing more dangerous than anyone his size had a right to look. “Right then, lucky Lhaki, who are you and why the hell do you know so much about me?”
To his surprise-though to his credit, he didn’t show it-Lhaki didn’t flinch. She just sat there, staring into his eyes like she was searching for something. It gave him a long time to study her.
Her eyes were a curious shade of hazel. Sometimes they looked greenish-grey, others greenish-brown and still others a brownish-grey, almost as if they couldn’t make up their mind on just which color variation they wanted to settle with. Her hair was bottle-blond, but the roots and her eyebrows were an ashy, mousy sort of dishwater brown. She was tall; around 1.83 meters and she had fine bone structure, hidden beneath a comfortably thin layer of fat. She didn’t seem overly hefty; the impression she left one with was more thick and solid than obese. It was as if nothing dared to move her because nothing ever could. Her fashion sense left a bit to be desired, though. Navy t-shirt of some description-probably with writing on it too-there was an edge of a white letter poking out over the equally white zip-up sweatshirt, decorated with Mickey Mouse repeated in more patterns and more positions than any one garment should ever wish to possess. Plain denims, green chucks and that long black duster completed the outfit of a woman far too old for such a childish ensemble and yet…somehow it worked. On her.
“I’m not afraid of you, you know.” The words were so quietly, so sincerely delivered that the Doctor never thought to doubt them.
“Why? You know me. If your pattern of knowledge holds true to form then you know what I’ve done; what I’m capable of doing.”
“What, like the fall of Arcadia?” The question was far too simply asked for such a complicated and painful memory.
“Yeah,” he managed to get out, sounding a bit choked. “A bit like that.” He seemed very interested in his milkshake all of the sudden.
“Which reminds me, I’ve a bone to pick with you about that.” And suddenly it all made sense. She was too clever, too unflappable, too…big to fit inside tiny human parameters. She must have been one of the descendents of the Arcadian outposts, come to wreak her revenge.
At this point he was nearly ready to throw in the towel and let her.
He played her game, even though he was sure both of them knew. “And just precisely which bone would that be? I warn you, not many left for you to pick.”
Just then, the waitress returned with their drinks and Lhaki’s chips, which she pushed to the center of the table in a silent offer. He found he wasn’t hungry, which was really a shame. This place made good chips. When she’d made sure they didn’t need anything else just then, the waitress vanished. Lhaki took a long, strong pull of the brown soda in front of her.
“Developed a bit of an addiction to this particular flavor back taking A-levels.” Well, that knocked out the most plausible theory. Or did it? By this time the Doctor was so off-kilter he wasn’t sure what to expect. He found that both thrilled and terrified him. “I went for my final Astronomy exam and I was this close,” she demonstrated with the tiny space between her fingers. “This close to an A* and I miss it because by the time the test was graded, Arcadia was gone and I was the only one who remembered it being there.”
The sheer absurdity of being blamed, not for the deaths of millions or worse, of a particular loved one, but for a missed grade on a sixth form exam was priceless to the Doctor. Absolutely priceless. He let out a bark of laughter and took a long drink of his milkshake. It was almost enough to distract him from the fact that she shouldn’t have remembered Arcadia. None of the Lesser Species could remember and very few of the Greater Species still recalled that particular battle, so why should one tiny human girl remember?
“Do you know how universes form, Doctor?” Lhaki’s voice was quiet, almost sad. She nibbled on a few more chips and took another long pull of the brown soda. He gave her a look that said she should know better than to ask that question to him of all people. She snorted at the look and raised her hands in surrender. “Yeah, yeah I know; stupid question to ask a Time Lord. But it’s important.” After another pause she turned a pleading expression and her voice was just a hair shy of desperate. “Humor me?”
Convincing himself that he’d made a decision to relieve her of the inevitable-no doubt archaic-misconceptions, rather than caving to that appeal, the Doctor took another drink of his milkshake and forged ahead. “Every time a decision is made-no matter how small or apparently insignificant-another universe is created because all possibilities must be acted out.”
“Except with you.” The quiet assurance in her voice shouldn’t have startled him by this point, but it did. “You exist outside of time and so there’s only one of you. But a long, long time ago, in a place so far away even you would never believe it existed, you made a choice that spawned a universe.” There was an echo of something deep and yawing in her shifting eyes, but she looked away from him before he could put a name to it. “It’s gone now, don’t worry. All taken care of and they didn’t even have to call you in.” There, a ghost of a smile.
“They called you instead.” His voice was equally quiet. “You’re the one who had to shift through the timelines, find the point of origin and then…preserve the timestream.” Her jaw clenched and her eyes hardened, but she didn’t try and deny his conclusion. He stared at her for another moment. “Try again.”
“I beg your pardon?” She seemed taken aback by his question, something guilty flashing in her eyes.
“If there had been a disturbance in the timelines on that scale, I would have felt it. You’re lying. Try again.” As he explained himself, the tension bled out of her body until her shoulders slumped. If asked, the Doctor would be hard pressed to name a time he’d seen someone look so defeated.
“Do you ever look at your own timeline, Doctor?” And as soon as she said it, he knew. No, he didn’t. Too painful. Sitting there at a cheap chip shop across from the most dangerous woman he’d come across in quite some while, he let his mind find the timestream that matched his own resonance and-wary of being swept along into the future current-traveled backwards along the route until he found it, the cry of a universe snuffed out because he’d accidentally given birth to it. Only he hadn’t given birth to it and so it therefore shouldn’t have existed. But that was the Time Agency’s job, wasn’t it? There was no reason for it to have affected her so deeply.
Unless…
“This isn’t your original universe.” It wasn’t a question.
Lhaki smiled wanly, seeming relieved that he’d guessed, rather than her having to explain.
“I single-handedly slaughtered my family, my home, my entire race.” That much he could empathize with. “Not only that, Doctor. I obliterated everything. From Skaro to Clom… No matter the race, the time, the era, they all screamed.” She shuddered, taking a quick drink of her Dr Pepper as if to wash a bad taste from her mouth. “Not the races, mind. None of them felt a thing, but the planets, Doctor…the worlds; they knew. They could feel it and they all screamed.” She swallowed thickly and turned to stare out the window, where it had started to rain.
For a long time, they were both of them silent, each lost in the atrocities they’d been forced by Fate to perform. But the Doctor couldn’t stay quiet for long, not when there were still questions to be answered. “How are you here, then?” he asked, his voice gentle.
When she turned to look at him, he could have sworn up and down that he was staring into a mirror. “I don’t know.” And somehow that was the worst of it all. “No human could have survived what I did.” The fact that no one should have to survive that, though unspoken, sat heavily between them.
“No human could have heard the planets screaming, either,” he felt compelled to point out, though his voice was still gentle, a bit of hope worming it’s way into the node between his hearts.
“And yet I still pass every medical scan possible.” She spread her hands in a ‘search me’ motion. “Human to the DNA in my spit, me.” When she looked his way, her expression was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Doctor. One heart, no respiratory bypass system, no TARDIS curled up on a rift somewhere to recharge.” She laughed then, a bitter, mirthless sound. “The only kinship I can claim with you is that I’ve seen the Eye of Harmony and you know what?” He gaped at her and she grinned at him, waiting for his shake of the head before she continued. “I ran, too.”
There was a booming sound from the north, followed by a shockwave enough to register a minor earthquake. “Speaking of which, I’d say that’s our cue to do some more of it!” Tossing back the rest of her soda, she dropped a few pound notes on the table, grabbed a chip for the road and pulled him out of the booth by the sleeve of his jacket.
Standing on the corner outside the chip shop, the Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his coat and began to run an atmospheric scan. The more readings he took in, the deeper his frown got. “Mix of-“ but before he even got the chance to finish, Lhaki was pelting off up a side street. “Oi!” he called after her, catching up when she had to pause for traffic. “How d’ you know where you’re going?” By the tone of his voice, he seemed resigned to another of her eerily-vague bits of foreknowledge.
“Because people are running the opposite direction?” she offered back with a rather manic grin, just as traffic let up enough for them to pass.
“Oh.” And he left it at that, spurred on by her contagious excitement mixing with his own as the two of them pelted headfirst into danger.
……………………………………………..
I always wondered why you never thought to question me after that. One adventure and one time of saving your life and you just…just swept me up into your TARDIS and off into the stars.
I never really was sure why you’d done it, whether it was the fact that I was just as homeless as you were, or whether you’d seen through my lie-by-omission.
Can’t tell you how many times that one little falsehood ate at me from the inside. The fact that I’d let you come to your own false conclusions-helped to herd you into them, just like that Grask-was one of the worst things on my conscience. Do know this, though, if nothing else.
If there was any way to avoid it, even if it meant I’d have to bend the rules, I never lied to you. I cared about you far, far too much to ever do that.
…………………………………………………………
They’d been in the Vortex for three days linear time.
After their first few adventures, the Doctor realized that Lhaki was much more antsy if he parked the TARDIS somewhere linear. When they were in the Vortex, however, the young woman relaxed. In the short time they’d known each other, the girl without a universe and the TARDIS fell in love. Of course that was the most ridiculous possible way to put it, but the Doctor couldn’t think of a better way either.
It was like two halves of the same whole coming together, a pair of very old friends reuniting after years of separation; each thinking the other one dead. She was the only one of his human companions who could communicate with his ship on the same level-if not a deeper one-that he could. It prompted a whole new round of curiosity about who and what she was, but the tests-run for the fifteenth time-showed exactly what she said they would.
Lhaki was 100% certifiable human.
A human who could talk to, reason with and pilot his ship. Three things only he should be able to do and only two of which he actually could do.
The first time he had brought them into the Void, she’d disappeared to do her own exploring while he tinkered under the console. Hours later, he’d been distracted from his sealing up of some minor components by a haunting melody, strangely in concert with the TARDIS’ own eternal song. He wandered the corridors for hours, just listening. He never found the source of the sound, but a short while after it had stopped, Lhaki had appeared citing the need for sleep.
Every time they had landed in the Vortex-‘parked’ as Lhaki would say-he would hear it, music that somehow touched his hearts in a painfully beautiful way. Every time he heard it, he got a little closer to finding it. This time though…this time he had an advantage.
Parked they were in the Vortex, yes, but the TARDIS had been forced to shut down her main systems to hide and heal. Life support still ran, as well as a few emergency protocols that he really should update, but it was dark and silent. This time, when he heard the song there would be no background hum to disguise the direction, no sentient ship conspiring with his newest companion to keep him away. And didn’t that just rankle! There had been occasions in the past certainly where his TARDIS liked one or another of his companions, some of them especially well and one of them was forever a part of her now, but never before had he seen this level of…of almost symbiosis in any pair save a bonded Time Lord and his or her TARDIS.
Just in case, he told himself, and then checked the part of his mind that held his link to the TARDIS. Safe and sound and just as bright and strong if ever, though muted in her sleep. In that same area-a place he didn’t like to tread often-were the shredded remains of links to his friends, his family. Links that should never have been made. He’d grown a sardonic appreciation, since the War, for his culture’s insistence on emotional repression. If he hadn’t been such an emotional bastard, it wouldn’t have hurt him nearly so much. If he hadn’t been such an emotional bastard, the Daleks would have been destroyed eons before the breath of the Time War even ghosted on the universe.
Then again, without his emotions, he wouldn’t have been able to make the final steps necessary to secure the rest of the universe from the menace of the Daleks.
But what good did it do, really? There was that inner gnawing voice again. They came back, didn’t they? Not once. Not twice. Not three times, but over and over again. They take everything you ever loved and you can’t even make a dent in them!
Then, an echo of a voice painful for multiple layers of reasons brushed across his mind, soothing at the same time as it made him ache. Not only was he responsible for the death of this particular voice’s owner-his last hope of family in the multiverse-but when he’d been tossed back, thrown into his TARDIS in a rumple of grief and rushing memories, he realized why he’d let her into his hearts when his mind was programmed not to have any emotional attachment at all.
She’d sounded so like his Rose…
That echo brushed again now. They were old words, spoken to him what seemed like a lifetime ago now. Then why do they call you Ka Faraq Gantri? Why name you so aptly and with such fear if you never even scratched them? For a moment more he basked in thoughts both of the love sealed away from him-probably dead by this time in their linear timeline-and let himself soak in just a little bit of envy for the piece of himself who got to spend his life with her. Then his thoughts turned to the young Gallifreyan girl who could have been the future, could have been all he needed to keep himself going, but was lost forever to the machinations of those that should have died long ago. Her link in his mind wasn’t as jagged as the others, because she had closed it before, all to spare him the pain to come. Just as Rose had done before her. They both had wanted him safe.
What had he ever done to deserve such love?
Somehow the thoughts of those two bright, brilliant women didn’t clash at all, instead meshing together to double his joy in them, but also to double the pain. It was so sharp, so delicate and so poignant that he had to bend double to keep from screaming.
Just as he came down from the effort needed to seal all of those memories back into their box of OPEN UNDER DIRE CONSEQUENCE, he heard it; the first strands of music.
It was different this time, more solid and real and physical. It came from a pianoforte, full grand mid 20th century make if his ears told him true. Never before or since have there been pianos quite like those of that time period, so of course he’d have one on board. And he even knew where it was! Which, with the TARDIS corridors being what they were, was quite an accomplishment.
He started out at a brisk jog, but slowed as he approached, as he adjusted to the whole of the music instead of just trying to pinpoint its sound and location. It was soft and simple, almost childlike. It was full of yearning, of longing for something impossible, an undercurrent of hope sustaining the entire piece like a life-preserver. Somehow it matched the two his thoughts had just turned to…matched them exquisitely. By the time he reached the door, he found he couldn’t push himself through.
The music swelled to one, defiant crescendo, fiercely beautiful and driven and completely unstoppable…then faded with all the swiftness that those bright flames always extinguish themselves. It was beautiful and painful and it was a concept he’d thought entirely beyond human understanding.
Then again, Lhaki wasn’t quite your average human, was she?
It had been silent in the room now for a very long time and the Doctor finally worked up the courage to open the door. There it was, that sleek black piano just where he’d left it. Sitting at the bench, shoulders slumped and head bowed, was his companion. She was so still that for a moment he thought she must have fallen asleep at the keys. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his companions had needed to be carried into bed. So fragile, humans; and at the same time so blissfully ignorant of their own fragility.
He opened his mind and extended his sense of empathy to check her. If she was deep enough in sleep, he could just carry her, otherwise he’d wake her gently. His eyes widened however, when he found that she wasn’t asleep, only drowning in a depth of pain and sorrow that overwhelmed him. Even for what she’d done, what she’d had to do, it was more than a human mind should have been able to bear. More than a child’s mind of any species could handle.
At her age, had he been filled with this much…raw pain, it would have broken him.
He blinked then, unsure just how he’d made it from the doorway to just behind her, but there he was. Reaching out with one hand, he hesitated. Did he dare interrupt her? Would it help or only make things worse? A flash of over-mascara’d eyes flew across his vision, a hand reaching for his touch-any touch-when her world fell down around her ears and he remembered. Humans were unbelievably tactile creatures and so his hand fell softly on her shoulder as he lowered himself to sit next to her on the wide bench.
His touch provoked a shattering in her, emotion erupting in a broken sob as she gripped the edge of the piano and screamed. She never cried and that both impressed and worried him. She only screamed and screamed until her vocal cords were too raw to make any sound. The screams were familiar to him and to his ship, asleep though she was. They were the same sounds he’d made in the days following the Time War, when he realized that he had, by some miracle, survived the ravages he released on his allies and enemies both.
He extended his arm and pulled her close into his side, offering the silent comfort he could, the comfort of someone who understood and had survived. Finally, when she leaned forward to rest her forehead against the cool, lacquered wood, he made another venture towards her mind, trying to soothe and repair what he could. His brush against her mind made her jump, throwing her whole body away from him until she was sprawled on the floor staring up at him with apology in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped up at him, trying so desperately to gather all her tattered pieces into some semblance of herself, just enough to get her out of here. His mind whirled as he thought of ways to forestall her escape.
“Don’t be,” he answered with uncommon gentleness. “I’ll bet that’s been wanting to come out a long time now.” She froze, staring at him very much like a deer caught in headlights. “Hasn’t it?”
She blinked then, nodding in response to his gentle prodding.
“I can help you, Lhaki. I can help your mind put itself back together, but you have to let me in.”
She shook her head vehemently and the Doctor’s face fell into that pleading look, the one that had always worked on Martha, but never Donna. “Don’t you trust me?” She shook her head and he reared back a little.
“No, no,” she rasped again, clutching her throat. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you.” It was funny, but with her shields in pieces and her voice so raw, her accent leaned heavily towards American.
“You do?” He couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his mouth, the expression melting into a full-on manic grin at her nod. “Well, of course you do, I’m the Doctor!” He was trying so hard to lighten the situation, but it somehow backfired on him. Her face fell and she closed her eyes as if against some great pain. Instantly the sonic screwdriver was out and buzzing at her throat as the Doctor knelt next to her. “There, that should help.”
“Thank you.” But her eyes, her shifting, indecisive eyes said that wasn’t the problem.
“Now, will you let me help you?”
“No.”
“No? Wh-how-I mean…why the bloody hell not?” The Doctor sputtered in his indignation and Lhaki couldn’t help but savor the small smile it triggered in her face.
“Because, Doctor…” She trailed off, hesitant, her lower lip being pulled and worried between her teeth. “Because if I let you into my mind, you’ll open a bond there.” The Doctor opened his mouth to deny it and Lhaki shot him a sharp look. “Don’t you dare try and deny that can happen with humans, you big idiot. That was Rassilon’s bullshit, not mine.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she seemed confused, but shook it off and went on. “You had one with Rose-damn strong one too, if I don’t miss my guess.” She didn’t need to add that she never missed her guess, her referential point had been made. “You had one with Donna and you have one with Jack.”
For a full minute he gaped at her like an overgrown fish. He regained his composure-with visible effort-and grinned that cheeky little grin at her. “Oh come now, you can’t tell me that’d be a bad thing, eh? Humans and Time Lords, we’re not so different some places. We thrive on bonds, both of us. Be right good for you to have a bit of stability, I’d say.” Yes, he could see now that would be the best possible solution. The human mind didn’t process bonds on the same level that Time Lords did. When the time came for her to leave, it wouldn’t do her further damage, but while she was with him it would go a long ways toward healing her; this child caught in a nightmare because of a choice he made or didn’t make. The Doctor still wasn’t entirely sure which it was. He swallowed thickly and stiffened his shoulders. He’d be in trouble for a while after she left. He always was after parting from a bond; nothing he couldn’t handle.
“And where would that leave you, Doctor?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, I’d be grand, I would. S’ been a while since I’ve been able to see Jack and what with…” He swallowed. “The others, them being gone, it’s far due time to have a few new ones, yeah?” This was awkward. Humans, as a rule, were consciously unaware of the bonds they formed with higher species unless made to be aware of them. Rose had come close to figuring it out there, near the end. Always was too clever for her own good, his Rose. She had worked out enough to clamp down on her end before… Needless to say, it wasn’t a conversation he had often at all.
“Exactly.” Her quiet answer was so sadly certain that he had to rein in his rambling thoughts and try to remember just precisely what he’d said to prove her argument. He wasn’t even sure what her argument was, to be honest.
“I’m sorry?”
She shook her head at him, careful not to touch him in any way. “What happens when I die or when I get stuck somewhere or you get it in your head to try and send me away?”
“I wouldn’t do that! Where’d I send you back to?” She flinched back and he could have beaten himself over the head with a metal pipe. “I didn’t mean it like that, I only-“
“Stop.” She held up both hands and he mercifully quit babbling. “It’s fine, it is. But even if I spend my entire life here with you and the TARDIS, it’ll still be a fraction of what you have left in you, even with…” She frowned here. “How many regenerations have you got left anyhow? I knew this body was your tenth, but there was the whole business with the hand and I never could figure out if this was tenth or eleventh you…”
“Eleventh.” His answer was clipped. He was getting a bit tired of her knowing everything. Took a big chunk of the fun out of this whole ‘companion’ business, plus brought up some really unwanted memories. “And I’ll be fine, Lhaki. I’m always fine. But you, you may not be if we don’t fix this bit of business in your head.”
“No.” Her voice was gaining strength and he almost regretted repairing her vocal cords. Almost.
“Why not?” He was quickly losing patience.
“No.” She wasn’t really helping matters.
“No, no no no. Is that all you can say, no?”
“No.”
Standing and running his hands through his hair as he paced, the Doctor fumed. “You’re being ridiculous, you are!”
“I don’t care. I won’t do it.”
“You’ll die if you don’t, Lhaki.” He whirled to face her, eyes blazing and expression fierce. “If we don’t do something about that giant mass of…of raw pain that’s inside your head, it will consume you until there’s nothing left but a shell! Is that what you want? Do you want to suffer in that sort of agony until you’re nothing more than a vegetable?” He was practically screaming at her now. “Do you?”
There was silence for a while then, broken only by his heavy breathing as he waited for her answer. When it came, it was soft and shaky and completely, utterly hopeless.
“Yes.” For some reason that infuriated him more.
“Why would you want to go and do something wasteful like that? You survived impossible odds, Lhaki!” He was getting a touch of his ‘you’re being an extremely thick ape today’ voice. “You managed to stay alive when by all rights you should have been wiped from existence and you want to throw that all away?” He couldn’t understand why he was so angry. She was only a child. She didn’t understand.
“I deserve it.” And suddenly the floor was jerked out from under his feet. Survivor’s guilt, of course! That, mixed with the guilt of being the one responsible for the non-survival state of trillions of species, well. It would be quite a dose.
“No one deserves that,” he informed her quietly, squatting down in front of her.
“I do.” Childishly stubborn, holding onto her guilt like a morbid security blanket.
“If you hadn’t done what you did, the entire multiverse would have collapsed and infinitely more loss would have occurred. You’re nothing short of a hero, eh?” He smiled at her, tilting his face to try and catch her eye. “Which reminds me, just how did you manage such a clean cut timestream fix?”
“Removed the impetus for the error from the erred timestream.” Her voice was flat, reciting procedure rather a bit too old for her.
“Oh, yes, I suppose that would do it…” He trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. She hadn’t answered his question, not really. Not the way he would have liked anyway, but that’d have to wait. “It was a better and more humane job than I could have done.”
“Really?” Her voice was so small. It didn’t seem to fit the larger-than-life aura she usually projected.
“Really really.” That got a watery smile from her, though he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why. “You did the only thing you could do, Lhaki. You made a impossibly hard choice and you did the right thing.” That was, apparently, also the right thing to say, because she looked up at him with the smallest flicker of hope in her eyes.
“I…I did?” She sounded so much like a child then, a little lost child that he reached for her, stopping only when she flinched away.
“You did.” She didn’t look convinced. She wanted to be convinced though. He could practically taste that. She wanted him to convince her and that was something he could do and gladly. “Honest.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” She was almost grasping at straws now, he could tell.
“I’m the Doctor. If you know as much about me as you seem to, you’ll know I don’t sugarcoat things.”
“Yes you do. When it’s someone you care about or might care about, you do sometimes.” Damn, the girl knew him better than he thought. In the back of his mind he wondered if that would ever stop being weird, saw her knowing look and decided probably not.
“I’m not now.”
“Prove it.” Stubborn to the end. He was beginning to really like this child, even if he currently wanted to wring her neck.
“Alright I will.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on projecting his admiration of her, being able to do something that difficult so well, so young, his empathy at having committed a similar atrocity to save the universes and his complete and utter lack of blame on her for what she’d done. At first it was like showing a movie to a brick wall, but slowly, ever so slowly, she began to soften, to open up to his projections. The more she took in, the more she relaxed, until she was wide open to him, soaking up the things projected while holding her own mass of pain at bay so as not to hurt him. It was the opportune moment.
Begging her forgiveness, he pounced.
………………………………………………………