Nothing Gold Can Stay (2/8)
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: I know you're all probably ready to murder me for putting this up rather than the next chapter of BMaG, but it wouldn't leave me alone and so here it is, the next ready chapter of NGCS; Her Hardest Hue to Hold
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 and if anything is really unclear, just let me know. :)
I was so angry at you after that, you know. I couldn’t contain myself. I had just lost all control over the situation and you… You were going to get your hearts broken all over again.
We do it to you, each and every one of us. The only thing that forgives most is that they have no idea how very much they’re hurting you. But me? I knew. I knew how much worse this bond would hurt you, because it wasn’t going to be a passive bond. Even then I knew my mind well enough to realize how very much stronger this would be. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to keep you safe because no one else would. It never occurred to them that you’d need it. Or if it did, you made it seem unwelcome.
But I knew better. So much of you, my dearest Ar’ali’thae was laid open to me before you even breathed my name.
Well, one of my names.
But you… You took the choice away from me and I was so furious! I realize you thought you were doing what was best, but you’d been the one ‘in the know’ for far too long and with one act you stole a piece of my trust in you. You were a part of me now, just as I was of you and I hated you for that; it felt so good to have roots again, to have that tie to another living being and I loved it. I hated you for that too.
…………………………………………………………………..
The Doctor sighed heavily as the TARDIS set down on Earth. Again. Hands shoved into his coat pockets, he leaned against the console as his companion flew out the main doors in an unholy rage. He should have expected something like this, but he’d hoped… Nevermind what he’d hoped. It was a foolish thing to have done. With a grimace, he turned to set the controls that would take them back into the Vortex, convinced that he had just seen the last of Lhaki.
The TARDIS, however, had other ideas. She was not about to move one inch without her Lhaki on board and if the Doctor didn’t like it, she’d tell him just where he could shove it. He was in no mood to listen to his ship giving him hell, so he glared at her impressively for a full five minutes. When that didn’t work, he stomped off into the library in what most certainly was not a temper tantrum of any sort.
Two hours later, the Doctor was in a very foul mood. He had been lost five times-lost! In his own ship!-and when he finally did find the library, none of the books were in the proper order. When he chose one of the selection available-desperate for any distraction-the TARDIS would translate it into one of the few languages he didn’t speak. In irritation, he’d chucked one book at the wall, only to be answered with an impressive shock. Seeing, he supposed, his reaction to that first shock, the TARDIS proceeded to follow it up with others of varying intensities. Finally, he had had more, far more than enough. He stalked out of the library-wishing again that he hadn’t ejected the Zero Room-and to the console. Outside the doors, he was free from her meddling influence.
This, apparently, suited the TARDIS just fine, because she ‘humphed’ approvingly at him and then made it very clear that returning without his companion would result in more of the same. So it was that the Doctor found himself on a scavenger hunt for his wayward companion. It wasn’t an unusual situation on the whole-his companions tended to find the Don’t Wander Off rule to be optional at best-but with this TARDIS-added imperative, it was definitely something different. He wandered around hopelessly for another few hours before the TARDIS in his head took pity on him and pointed his ‘sorry Time Lord arse’-her words, not his-in the right direction.
He felt quite entitled to his surprise when he found Lhaki in a cemetery. Despite this, he could feel that insatiable curiosity rising up in his gut. Here was an opportunity to find out some history on his newest companion. Anyone she felt inclined to visit here would be important to her; a clue to her past. Lovely things, clues. As he approached the simple headstone she sat in front of, he felt prepared for anything.
Really, by now he should know better than to feel prepared. It never ended well.
Harriet Jones
1955 - 2008
Just that, nothing about her tenure as Britain’s leader, nothing about her final sacrifice; just a name and a pair of dates.
“You have a bad habit of making decisions for other people, Doctor.” Lhaki’s voice was flat and the Doctor cringed once-both at her accusation and at the stark reminder of an old failure. There were tear-tracks on her face, but her eyes-still indecisive about their color-were dry now. “You did it for her. You destroyed her Golden Age because she dared to do something you didn’t like. You destroyed her career, her life, her reputation, even her family. She had to live every day with her very sanity in constant question. Despite this, she never quit. She developed the subwave network and she saved the universe and you couldn’t even be bothered to ensure she had a proper headstone.”
The Doctor stood off to one side awkwardly, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground. He didn’t argue with her statements; she spoke nothing but the truth.
“Granted, you had a lot on your plate just then, but still…” Lhaki shook her head once as if to clear it. “That isn’t the point. You’re not human; it isn’t fair of me to expect you to behave like one.” For once, the Doctor felt this as an insult, and it stung. She sighed once and scrubbed her face with her hands. “But then again, neither am I; not really.”
The Doctor did a rather comedic double-take. Lhaki snorted.
“I’m like Jack.” The Doctor made as if to protest this, but she cut him off. “And not like him.” He had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from interrupting her with a thousand questions. “I don’t age, Doctor. I was spat out in this universe decades before I could cross your timeline. I don’t age and I don’t die; at all.” She shrugged one shoulder. “There is no dying and coming back, there’s just an injury and it takes the usual amount of time to heal, but it heals back to before the injury; never a scar. It’s like a permanent stasis, but everything seems normal.” She smiled then, but there was no joy in it. “There are times I’d prefer the dying.
“I’m not telling you this out of self-pity, Doctor.” Her voice became firm here and she stood slowly, brushing grass from her trousers before looking him square in the eye. “There will be a day where I will die and you will have to go on without me. That day will come and you won’t be okay, no matter how much you want to delude yourself otherwise. You said it yourself, Doctor; we all break your heart in the end.”
“But-“ She narrowed her eyes and held up one hand.
“Don’t interrupt. This is important.” Reluctantly, the Doctor fell silent again. “You did what you did to heal me and I’m grateful for that.” She tilted her head to one side and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “Or I will be when I stop being furious with you.” She dropped her hand and shoved it and its double into the pockets of her black coat. “But I was trying to protect you and you blatantly ignored me to do what you thought was best. That stops, right now.”
The Doctor paled, reminded with a flash of the last companion who’d been so concerned with protecting him, rather than the other way around. Superimposed, the images of Rose and Lhaki had…disturbing similarities. He was really beginning to hate the universe.
“All the evidence points to me being around a long time, so if I’m to spend that time with you, you’ll not treat me as if I’m a child.” Here she paradoxically rolled her eyes and cocked one hip out-the image of the child she denied. “It’s not as if you know anything I don’t know.”
“What’s the inverse cube root of 4.99985?” The Doctor seemed determined to test this; he couldn’t help himself sometimes.
“Nothing important, you loon.”
“What’s my name?” Lhaki narrowed her eyes at him still further, clearly losing patience.
“You don’t know that one either, so it doesn’t count.” Well, she had him there.
“Weakness of the Slitheen.”
“Vinegar.” She grinned, then shot a glance to the headstone. Her voice took on a hint of the wistful. “Just like Hannibal.”
“Best place to shoot a Dalek.”
“Eyestalk if you’re using traditional firearms. An energy cannon works anywhere.”
“Reapers?”
“Avoid changing a fixed timestream.”
The Doctor was starting to get irritated. It wasn’t often that he couldn’t stump someone.
“TARDIS stands for?”
“Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.”
“Hemophilia in the royal family is really what?”
“Infection from a lupine-wavelength haemovariform.” She rolled her eyes. “Too easy.”
“How were Time Lords born?”
“They weren’t; they were Loomed. They had been Loomed since Pythia cursed Rassilon and all his ilk with infertility.”
“Oh.” That was an answer he really wasn’t expecting from her. That was information that wasn’t even doled out at Academy.
“Are you quite finished?” Lhaki had one eyebrow cocked, arms folded over her chest, and seemed amused in spite of herself. The Doctor merely nodded.
“That bit of nonsense being done with; you will not make arbitrary decisions for me again, Doctor. If you don’t like it, tough. If you can’t live with it, then…” She shrugged and trailed off, swallowing hard once before she could finish her sentence. “Then I’ll just grab my things and go. I mean, it’s not like I even have much to pack, just a few bits and bobs here and-“
“You can stay.” He interrupted her quietly, amazed at this enigma of a girl-woman-girl who knew so much and was so much and still wanted to protect him. She stared at him, jaw slack. He could feel the corners of his mouth turning up in a smirk. It was becoming a small personal victory any time he could throw her off-balance. To his-admittedly childish-delight, it took her a full fifteen seconds to recuperate.
“Really?” There was such a vulnerability to her voice in that word. It made him want to protect her from everything and run as far from her as he could get, all at the same time. He was not equipped to cope with such naked emotions; too sticky. Then all of a sudden her eyes narrowed again and she turned wary. “Why?”
“Well…” He stretched his mouth into a grimace and rubbed one hand across his hair before clasping it around the back of his neck. He knew he could lie to her quite convincingly, but there was this odd niggling at the back of his mind that said she’d know; even if she never caught him in the lie, she’d know and it’d destroy another piece of her trust in him. So, he blew out a stream of air between his teeth and tilted his head back and forth, searching for the best possible way to say this. “For one thing, I definitely enjoy having company on the TARDIS, I need to keep and eye on the link in case there are any complications, it’s funny to sic you on random passersby, the TARDIS tortures me and won’t let me leave without you, I still haven’t taken you to see the nebula cluster in the Pisces Tertiary-“ He only made it that far before Lhaki caught on.
The next companion was going to have an IQ of 80 or lower; he swore.
“Hang on…” She started to laugh and snigger and sputter and shake. “You’re here because the TARDIS forced you via torture and blackmail?” He nodded hesitantly, not sure at all where this was going. Lhaki only laughed harder, eventually having to lean on his shoulder just to stay upright. She finally calmed down, brushing fresh tear tracks from her cheeks before linking her arm in his. “You are impossible.” She grinned madly. “Don’t ever, ever change.”
…………………………………………………………………….
I never could stay mad very long. Not even when I was a little girl. I’ve never been able to hold onto hatred in the same way that I’ve never been able to hold onto romantic love. It’s too much work for something self-damaging in the end. For me, at any rate. So it was that within the week, I’d forgiven you.
Forgiven, not forgotten.
You could see my wariness, I know. To your credit, you never pushed me about it. Seemed you were still far too uncomfortable with such sticky feelings; uncomfortable enough that so long as I didn’t push, you were content to let sleeping dogs lie. It bothered you though. I could tell. You still weren’t convinced that I was going to be alright.
You think I never noticed your checking in on me? I’m not so unobservant and neither is the TARDIS. I felt bad for worrying you, I really did. I just didn’t know of any other way. I was still so new to myself, so uncertain. I robbed us both of precious time and for that-among many other things-I am very, very sorry.
…………………………………………………………………..
After three days of sitting through boring financial meetings-as he brilliantly saved the economy from a famine that stopped before his amazing solution could be implemented-four of trying to offend the Crown Prince of Pi-Omicron-Delta enough so that he would rescind his demand of marriage and seven of traipsing through the swamps of Clom after a renegade Absorbaloff, the Doctor felt his companion deserved a respite.
Very brilliant deduction really, but now the conundrum was where and when. Why did it have to be so hard with this one? With Leela, he could set down in a game preserve and let her have at it; with Ace an evening of hard rock and possible explosives; with Donna, a spa and with R-Rose-he was a Time Lord for Rassilon’s sake, he could say her bloody name!-it was shopping or a theme-park day.
But he’d tried all of his previous methods-even an evening of music so loud his left ear still rung a bit-and while Lhaki had certainly seemed to enjoy herself, it was more like she was indulging him when it should have been the other way around. It was a bit off-putting, actually. He was beginning to sympathize with his own past companions and that…was an odd sensation. His Rose-born, Martha-tested and Donna-approved failsafe wouldn’t even be an option this time. Lhaki had no home for him to take her to. There was no mum who’d make her tea and do the washing, no siblings eager to share the latest in their parents’ ongoing scandal and no granddad to take her out for a night under the stars with his faithful telescope.
For once-and one time only, he assured himself-the great and mighty Time Lord was stumped. This, he thought. This is why I don’t do domestics. The lie was so old and comfortable that he almost believed it this time. Still, he hated admitting defeat. He was halfway through the Orion system of stars-in alphabetical order by class, planets and habitability-when a sudden lurch in his mind caused his head to jerk around; eyes locking on the corridor that Wasn’t. Panic, raw and wriggling, flared to life in his chest, his limbs frozen for an instant before he leapt into motion, wrenching open and slamming closed the Door.
Considering it was the only door on the ship that would open to him, only him and exclusively him, he felt the capital letter entirely justified.
Upon his return to the console room, he found that his ship-blessed, wonderful thing that she was-had saved him yet again. Well, it looked as if she had. There, right there, coordinates primed and ready for Lhaki’s break. Only upon closer inspection did the Doctor have cause to question the sanity of his trusty time ship.
You’re mad, you are. How in the world is she going to relax there?
~You’re an idiot.~ Yes, well of course; because that answered the question beautifully. Still, it seemed a sentiment his ship had become rather fond of expressing lately. Rubbing the back of his neck, the Doctor briefly considered the mallet lying on the worn out old seat to his right, but a quick shock to the hand still resting on the console nipped that idea firmly in the bud.
“Ouch!” he cried, bringing the offended digits promptly to his mouth. The Doctor had realized that his ship was angry with him for initiating the bond with his newest companion without her consent-and in fact, against her explicit refusal-but Lhaki had gotten over being cross with him, so why was his ship still out of sorts?
Before he had the chance to properly contemplate that question, he felt the ground under his feet give way, giving him barely enough time to grab onto the console as the TARDIS bucked and pitched beneath him. Despite the rough flight, however, their landing was gentle as could be. He could hear his ship sniff daintily in his mind and then turn her back on him in a bit of a huff. It was an action so reminiscent of the Tyler women that he found himself cringing in expectation of a good slap.
“What’re you doing?” The rather dry voice of his newest companion startled him effectively from his self-defensive maneuver-he refused to call it a cringe, Time Lords did not cringe-and he turned to her with a whirl of jacket-tails.
“Ah, just testing out this new twitch I’ve got in my eye, see if it’s decided to leave me alone yet.” As if to prove his alibi, a muscle just underneath his left eye convulsed several times. Lhaki snorted her amusement and he congratulated himself on his timely save.
“So, is that the twitch you get when the TARDIS lands us somewhere you didn’t instigate?” One slim eyebrow lifted over the other and the Doctor spared a fleeting thought to the fact that no one wearing green chucks and a small Disney deer on their tee-shirt should be able to look quite so smug.
“Nope! This would be the twitch I get when certain companions act like they know everything when in fact I did plan on us landing here right from the very beginning!”
“Oh? And where is here, then?” Smug; far, far too smug. He could feel a smirk tugging at his lips, glad that for once he had a ready answer to her self-assured questions.
“The planet Zathula in the Pleiades’ system. About six thousand years after the primary species developed sentience and about four hundred years since the colonization ship crash landed on the surface, spawning a new hybridization of humans.” She didn’t have an answer ready for that, but she didn’t stop smiling either. He braced himself for another round of verbal sparring; a round that never came.
“Let’s go then.” Such easy acquiescence was not the normal way of things, but, as they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth… So, with his trademark manic energy, the Doctor flew down the console and flung open the door with a flourish.
“Madame, your planet awaits.” A sweeping bow accompanied his formal words and Lhaki couldn’t suppress a chuckle, even as she rolled her eyes. All amusement, however, vanished the instant she stepped out onto the planet’s surface.
The TARDIS had landed them in the middle of what looked quite a bit like an Earth savannah. The tall grasses, the twisted trees and the bright sky certainly suggested it. The air, however, was not like any air on Sol 3. It was richer, fuller, older and yet more vibrant than any from her own planet. It wasn’t just the air or the wind-which was pleasantly warm without making either of them uncomfortable-it was the very atmosphere of the planet.
Despite this, the Doctor rolled back onto his heels, hands deep in his pockets as he waited for the accusation that he’d taken them on safari instead of Zathula. The differences-lovely as they were-were of such a nature that his human companion wouldn’t notice them. While not nearly as crass about it as his former self, the Doctor never passed up an opportunity to point out the things the humans would miss. Good tactic, that; keep the barrier between them so they didn’t get too close.
The fact that he had initiated the closeness this time didn’t even occur to him. Old habits die hard.
For a moment, he wondered at her silence. Despite everything, she was still a human teenager and sometimes her propensity to talk surpassed even his gob. He opened his mouth to ask or teach or sneeze or something; anything to break this silence that wasn’t comfortable. Oddly enough, he was beaten to the punch.
“Shhh…” His companion laid a stilling hand on his arm. “Look.” He followed the direction of her gaze and saw a cloud of dust raising up to greet them. “What are they, Doctor?” Her voice was hushed and awed; her face full of an innocent wonder that warmed his old hearts.
They were…well, frankly magnificent. Tall and slender, their skin was a rather lovely shade of crimson. Their heads were long, rather like the skulls of ancient Incan tribes, but these seemed more natural; certainly more graceful, tapering at the end to an almost delicate point. Their eyes were large and bright, all shades of the sunset represented in the approaching group. They were unquestioningly female and rode unashamedly naked on what appeared to be cheetahs the size of horses.
Overly confident, the Doctor took a few steps up to meet them, eventually coming to stand back to back with Lhaki as the fierce women surrounded them. This close, it could be seen that they had small, almost feline noses and no mouths; their bodies actually covered in short, fine fur. While most of them were the dark, crimson color, there were some whose coloration leant itself more towards peach. These were smaller than the others and their fur darkened around their skulls, but they appeared no less fierce. The women carried no weapons, but considering their mounts, weapons would have been a bit superfluous.
“Um, yes, hello. I’m the Doctor and this is my companion Lhaki.” His introduction was met with silence and he shifted his weight, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um…we are on Zathula, are we not?”
“Silence!” The voice definitely came from the female opposite the Doctor, but he wasn’t quite sure just how that happened, considering the woman had no mouth. “You will speak in your turn, indoda.” There was a sneer in her voice at that word, un-translated by the TARDIS.
“I think I may have landed us wrong,” he whispered back to Lhaki, who snorted once.
“You think?” she hissed back. “When are we then?”
“Dunno, quite. Seems a bit matriarchal, though…” He winced. Mostly he avoided matriarchal societies at all costs. After all, he was the designated driver and the one who could think on his feet, not his feminine companions. He spared a moment of thought for Jack, who would-without a doubt-be absolutely thrilled to be in such a place. A low growl in front of him interrupted said thoughts and he backed up further into Lhaki.
“Who are you, Lhaki that an abantu has again found her way into our lands?” The same female spoke, only for the Doctor to realize with fascination that the words came from her mount. For a moment, his companion hesitated, stepping forward only after a conveniently placed elbow into her ribs. Rubbing his sore joint, the Doctor shot a warning glance at his companion, but held his peace.
“We’re travelers, my…” She suppressed a grin and straightened her shoulders. “My indoda and I. I am really very sorry if we’ve come somewhere we weren’t supposed to be…but…” She trailed off there, startled as the dark female dismounted and moved closer to her. Fingers gentle but firm gripped her chin and eyes the color of the evening sun stared deeply into her own. After a few aborted attempts at speech, Lhaki swallowed thickly and managed a squeaked, “Hullo?”
That small sound seemed to break the spell. The woman let go of her face and…well, without a mouth, it was hard to tell, but the Doctor was under the distinct impression that she smiled.
“Greetings indeed! Your arrival is anticipated, Lhaki. I am Umqothukhahlela. You and your,” here eyes of both rider and mount flickered over him with far too much disdain, “Doctor will ride into our village with us!” Before the Doctor could react-which was in itself very impressive-the woman had swept Lhaki up onto her mount in front of her. Another woman-one of the smaller, paler ones-had swept the Doctor up behind her and they were off.
The scenery flew by quite fast, but considering the mechanics of the felines they were riding, the Doctor wasn’t too surprised. Thrilled, actually. He’d heard of these beasts, of this time in the planet’s history, but it was far, far earlier than he’d bargained for. For some reason TARDIS as a rule wouldn’t allow their pilots to steer them into the first two thousand years of sentience here. The only rational explanation was that a Time Lock had been placed, but no one knew who had done it; or why. Whatever the reason, he was here now and despite their rather…unique predicament, the excitement boiled up into manic laughter as the band loped along the savannah.
The village, when they reached it, turned out to be rather brilliant in its simplicity. It took advantage of an old cave system in the side of a small mountain. Long, long ago, ice flows had circulated from the frozen surface to the natural hot springs down below. The entire complex was connected and there were enough caves to house hundreds, plus room for communal facilities such as washing and storage and cooking. It never required maintenance and represented a strong, defensible position against predators and weather.
The main entrance was large enough that all of them could have ridden in abreast of each other with room to spare. At first, the place seemed abandoned, but when a rolling purr sounded from the patrol-the riders this time-people began to emerge from all corners. Some were the peach and crimson of the women who’d met them outside, but the vast majority were some shade of brown or tan. Despite this, every color on the savannah was represented in some form or another; blues, greens, violets and the occasional greyscale dotted a brilliant counterpoint to the sea of more ‘natural’ hues.
It wasn’t until they reached the center of the largest cavern that the riders dismounted. Lhaki was offered assistance from the back of her beast, while the Doctor was left to fend for himself. Why is it matriarchal societies never develop an inverse system of chivalry? he couldn’t help but wonder. In the end, he managed-as always-but before he could pose the question to his companion, a hush fell over the assembled crowd.
A diminutive white-furred female stepped out from behind a cloth-covered doorway, head bowed, with her left arm resting between the shoulder blades of an enormous black panther. Even the Doctor-who’d faced down the Beast without trepidation-had to swallow against an instinctive ripple of fear. A quick glance at his companion showed her pale and trembling. Despite feeling a bit of gratification that something got under her skin, the Doctor couldn’t help feeling sorry for her and moved closer to take her hand, only to be thrust backwards and away by the peach-colored rider he’d hitched a lift with.
“Come, child.” The voice, coming from the black feline, was a rumbling, masculine bass-an odd counterpoint to the riders, who…well, come to think of it, he’d only heard the one speak. Perhaps here one could be paired with either side. Hmm, an interesting question. He’d have to ask about that later. For now, he watched as the female lifted her head and with it her free arm, beckoning to his companion blindly. Blindly because he could see now; her once jeweled irises were now covered with film. The panther was her eyes as well as her mouth, then.
Disconcerted, Lhaki stiffened her spine and pulled back her shoulders, but he could feel her in his head, more open than she’d ever allowed herself to be and almost desperately seeking reassurance. He nodded, sending an affirmation down that link. He saw nothing dangerous about their situation so far. That received, she clamped down tight until he knew she was there only by conscious probing. Her hips lowered as her back relaxed and he had confirmation that she’d understood.
Stepping forwards, the young human extended her hand to clasp that of the old white female, who drew her closer still. The female then lifted her hand from the back of the panther and held it up, fingers just a hair’s breadth from Lhaki’s temple; waiting. The human girl nodded and the soft fingers made contact.
All three sets of eyes drifted closed and they stood like that for quite some time. Actually, it was getting a bit ridiculous. The Doctor was fast beginning to lose interest and turned to the rider next to him to strike up conversation, only to realize that she too, had her eyes closed. They all did. Every single one of them that he could see-and he’d wager all the ones that he couldn’t-was somehow a part of this…thing. A bored Doctor is never a good thing, so really it shouldn’t have been too surprising when he tried to enter with them. It was obviously a telepathic thing and he was bloody well telepathic! No reason to be left out of-oh goodness! The response to his telepathic wanderings was a concise and firm NO, the force of which caused him to actually take a step back. This…was worrisome.
He narrowed his perceptions on just the female locked with Lhaki, poking and prodding and a bit surprised to find psychic barriers as strong as his own. For a whole collective to push him out was one thing, but to find he could not penetrate an individual was quite another. Such a puzzle was this that he quite lost track of time. It’s a time-consuming business, trying to break into the impenetrable. So focused was he, that the fondly indulgent voice in his head quite took him by surprise.
Are you quite finished there, Doctor? The voice was warm and full and soothing, like hearing a close grandmother speaking to her favored grandchild. I promise we mean no harm, but this was not meant for you.
Uh, yeah, sorry, but…what wasn’t? There was a pause and then his voice took on an edge of steel. If you’ve hurt my companion…
There’s no need for concern, Doctor. She is well.
If you meant no harm then why was I excluded? he ground out, a bit concerned that he could be excluded in the first place.
You have your umoya thanda already, Doctor. You’ve just misplaced it. Her mental voice lost its tone of mild reproach. But you’ll find it again soon. She has yet to find hers. We needed to know her, but it is not for you to know her. Not yet.
What d’you mean, ‘not yet’? She’s my companion; my friend!
Would you presume to eavesdrop on her life then Doctor? Does being your companion mean you have the right to see her soul? There was nothing but softness in the voice, yet still he felt censured. She was right. He didn’t have to like it, but she was right.
No… No, but… He couldn’t finish that thought. How does one explain to a stranger the fear that gripped his hearts at losing someone else so soon, so very soon after he’d found her? How could he translate the grief that would drown him if he had to be alone for too long? He couldn’t; he couldn’t possibly and so he was left to swallow his own paralyzing emotions, to wallow in memories of the others he’d let down, the others he’d not been able to save, despite their trust in him. Two women in particular haunted him, one dead because he couldn’t protect her and the other one trapped; sealed away from him forever, not even missing him. How could she, when for her he was right there? That one wasn’t a failure, not as the other one had been, but it still hurt; still left him feeling every single one of his 991 years.
But those two had been special-for obvious reasons, one a Time Lady and the other Rose-his two loves. So why was it that he had the nagging suspicion that two had become three? When had this plump, audacious child wormed her way into what was left of his hearts? A hand on his shoulder startled him out of his thoughts before a conclusion could be reached.
Eyes that still couldn’t decide their color stared at him with concern, changing their hues five times even as he watched.
“You alright, Doctor?” Her concern bled over into her voice and he couldn’t help a smile. It was the softest she’d been towards him since his invasion of her mind.
“Who, me? Yeah, I’m alright. I’m always alright. No need to worry at all.” Despite his quick talking and brilliant grin, he was left with the impression she didn’t believe him.
“No you’re not.” She was arguing with him. Typical, that; at least it was for this particular companion. He opened his mouth and began to regale her with a rather impressive amount of evidence on his side; that he was perfectly alright, thanks. It wasn’t until about halfway into his stride that he realized she was smiling at her rather brightly. It took him another six sentences to realize she was also crying. Emotions of these sorts made him quite uncomfortable and so he trailed off, unsure of the proper thing to say. Eventually, he settled on a simple:
“Are you alright?” Granted, it was only a repetition of her earlier words, but at least it was something.
“Yeah, m’ fine. Just wonderin’ when you were gonna shut your gob.” She smiled the brighter for her attempted tease, but there were still tears in her voice. Before he could say anything else, she reached for his sleeve and tugged him towards the room the white female and her black companion had come from. Only then did he realize that they were completely alone. Everyone else had gone without him even realizing it. Shaking his head, he attempted to clear it. Something about this place was distracting him, a fact that could prove fatal if danger should strike. “Come on,” she urged. “There’s something you need to see.” He followed.
The room she led him into was small but homey. An incense burner wafted the room with a clean scent; light and relaxing. There were cushions and blankets strewn about at random, places to sit around the small fire pit in the center of the room. There was another exit, leading off to the left and a small alcove in the wall. In this alcove sat a small shelf and on this shelf there lay a small variety of religious paraphernalia. Oddly enough, it was towards this small shelf that his companion pulled him, smiling. Her tears had dried and there was a hopefulness, a buoyancy to her that hadn’t been there before. But before he could figure out just how right his ship had been to bring them here, he felt a small stone object be placed in his hand.
It was a carving of a wolf.
His first reaction-still, after all these years-was to panic. Wolves in his experience meant that something universally bad was about to happen. He was able to tamp it down and stuff it away.
“Ah, you’ve gotten him from his thoughts. Come, sit; we have much to discuss.” Jerked again from said thoughts-this time by the low, rumbling voice of the white woman’s panther-the Doctor turned to see his companion sitting on one of the cushions next to the female and her…feline. Lhaki was giving him a sharp glare and he thought he heard a mental warning against rudeness. Said warning sounded quite a bit like it had been given from either of his other two once-upon-a-time girls, but it was a fair enough rebuke, so he really couldn’t decide if it had actually come from her or if it was only a memory imagined.
With a heavy sigh, he sat on Lhaki’s other side, across from their hosts. The wolf carving still in his hand, he accepted the mug of spiced tea from the white female.
“What needs to be discussed…” He trailed off as he realized he didn’t even know her name. Luckily, she was astute enough to catch the problem and polite enough not to make him ask outright.
“I am called Inyangaisithuzi.” The Doctor’s gaze darted between the two with a slow nod. Moon Shadow; it was appropriate, given the pairing. “And I’m afraid we need your help.”
Instantly he was on the alert, sparing nary a glance to his companion, who sat sipping her own tea with an odd amount of silence. “How can I help?”
She hesitated. “We are…a flawed species, Doctor.” It was odd to watch them. Even though the voice came from the black feline, the white female moved as if it was she who spoke, hand gestures and facial expressions; all of it. “In time before reckoning, we were…not so telepathically advanced. We did not have the umingane to speak for us and we had no telepathy among ourselves. We made do with crude sign and body language, but it made even the simplest things nearly impossible and so we were mainly a solitary race.” Her filmy eyes narrowed even as his voice grew darker.
“Then came the invasion.
“These creatures like from the worst of nightmares came down out of the sky. They wanted our mineral deposits and without any organization, we were powerless to stop them. They would have stripped our world bare of everything and then left us to die.” The white female picked up a wide clay bowl and held it to the feline’s mouth as he lapped up some of the herbal drink. “You see, they saw us as no more than animals, these invaders. They were rounded metal things with no legs and voices that screamed out all the time and death shot out from a tiny metal arm and they ignored us; unless one of us was in the way.” Inyangaisithuzi grimaced. “In that case, we were exterminated.”
The sorrow that had been slowly creeping up the Doctor’s spine finally bit into him with a jolt of fear as those words almost certainly confirmed the identity of their attackers. No matter how much he lost in fighting them, in destroying them; they always survived.
“We would have been wiped out, if not for the timely intervention of our beloved goddess. She looked as you both do, pale and smooth and small, but she brought us such wonders.” The low, rumbling voice was reverent when they spoke of this goddess. Something was beginning to tingle uncomfortably in the base of the Doctor’s skull. “She brought to us the ushomii, themselves the refugees from a world that had burned. They could bond with some of us, give us physical voices where before we had none. For the others, she set up…” And here they trailed off, lost in thought as memories older than either of them struggled to surface. “A field…of some sort. It enabled their minds to link together. She gave us language, Doctor and then she helped us drive the metal monsters from our lands and skies.”
He could feel his stomach twisting into knots. For a species this primitive to have thrown off the Daleks…that would mean some pretty powerful…something was brought into play. A something of about his intelligence and that was a frightening thought.
“She was magnificent. Bonded to a creature as beautiful as a sunrise, she fought with us and she saved our world.” Another few laps of the drink were offered to the panther. “But we have failed her.” The pair breathed a heavy sigh. “The device she used to create the links is dying, Doctor. It’s becoming harder for those without an ushomi to communicate along the lines. The…the technology is far beyond what we are capable of fixing, but we do not wish to return to being solitary nomads. Can you help us?” Such trust and hope and longing filled both halves of this pair that the Doctor found he had to swallow twice before answering.
“I’ll help you, Inyangaisithuzi. If it means I have to do a complete overhaul of the telepathic field generators in my own ship, I’ll help you; I promise.” His answer was vehement and both natives looked assuaged and…amused.
“I don’t think it will need a complete overhaul, Doctor.”
“What do you think it needs, then?” He grumped a bit at that.
“Oh…I think a bit of jiggery-pokery should do the trick, don’t you?”
The Doctor stiffened suddenly at the out-of-place phraseology, noting with a bit of irritation that his companion did the same.
“Um…sorry,” Lhaki spoke for the first time since the pair had begun to speak. “What did you just say?”
The pair repeated themselves and the Doctor saw his companion glance at him before speaking again. “Where…where did you hear that term? It’s not in your native language, is it?”
“Not initially, no.” Again, while the feline spoke, his humanoid counterpart held the facial expressions, the body language. The Doctor was unequivocally fascinated by this level of psychic integration. It was almost as if they were sitting to tea with one being in two bodies. “It was a phrase we heard spoken by our Lady Goddess when she created the device for us in the first place. It was the term used to describe what she had done to create.”
“You heard her say it? Was this a recent thing, then?” The Doctor heard the veiled skepticism in his companion’s voice and couldn’t help but agree. If the device was running out after only a short time, there wasn’t a fantastic outlook for there to be a permanent-or even semi-permanent-fix. Despite understanding the basics, he couldn’t help but be a little hurt in her lack of faith in him. Or it could be that he was reading too much into things. He’d had a habit of doing that in this body.
“No, she graced our lands only shortly after the grasses started to grow.” This caused Lhaki to wrinkle her nose in confusion until he leaned over and lifted his mouth towards her ear.
“About three hundred years after their last ice age.” She nodded once, shooting him a tentative smile of thanks before turning back to their host; hosts…host?
“And what’s the date now?”
“It has been two aeons since the ice finally melted.” Lhaki’s eyes widened into saucers as her suddenly shaking hands set her mug on the ground in front of her.
“You can’t possibly be that old! Not even-I mean…that’s impossible!” she cut herself off in time, but her shifting eyes had flickered to his face and the Doctor knew, just knew that she had been about to make some crack about his age.
“It isn’t my memory, no. It’s…” Inyangaisithuzi paused then, struggling with how best to explain the concept. She gently brushed her mind against the Doctor’s and he allowed her beyond the first walls of his shielding, processing what she showed him and smiling fondly as he understood.
“Racial memory, Lhaki; with a telepathic field this strong, they can access and relive memories that aren’t and have never been their own. It’s like the oral traditions in the primitive Americas and early European cultures, only more precise.” He tilted his head to one side. “Much more vivid too, I’d expect.” Then something struck him and he gripped the figurine in his hand that much harder. “Inyangaisithuzi…can you show me a memory of what she looked like, your goddess?”
“Of course I can.” No sooner had they spoken than an image, clear as day, presented itself for his mental perusal. The woman in the ‘photo’ was remarkable only in her unremarkable-ness. She had plain blonde-ish hair and plain eyes in a plain face with a plain body. She could be any woman off the street. Still, there was something niggling at the back of his mind and so he studied the image closer. It was only then that he realized; she wasn’t just any woman off the street, she was all of them. Reinette, Sarah-Jane, Ace, Leela, Jackie, Aleth, River, Jabe, Grace, Diana, Nancy, Hame, Lynda, Harriet… The longer he stared, the more of them he could see in her and it took his breath away.
The image, having cycled through a myriad of expressions, must have been of her finally listening to someone-or something-because in that next instant, she smiled brightly and his breath caught in his throat; his chest refused to rise or fall. Without his respiratory bypass system, he would have blacked out from lack of oxygen. As it was, there was a painful wrenching between his lungs, even after his breathing resumed.
That smile…oh Rassilon he knew that smile. That particular smile he could chart better than the Kasterborous constellation; gravitated towards it like a powerless moon. The fact that it appeared on this woman’s face shook him to his absolute core, because…because…
Because that smile was all Rose.
“More, I need more.” His voice was raspy and thick with choked back emotion. “Please, I need a fuller image…”
“All right, Doctor; all right.” As the words left the panther’s mouth, the female reached her hands out over the fire. With only an instant’s hesitation, the Doctor reached his own hands to take hers, gasping sharply as layer after layer assaulted his senses. Sight was now augmented with sound and smell and taste and touch and a thousand other tiny little clues picked up by his twenty-odd senses.
She looked like every woman he’d ever seen a spark in, bits of people who’d touched his lives mingled in with the expressions of strangers until it made him dizzy trying to souse it all out. The smile was hers, the eyes were even occasionally hers, but the smell was all wrong, the taste was wrong and the hand he wrapped his around didn’t fit as hers should have. Even her mind, laid open to an extent in the memory was unfamiliar to him. It was larger, firmer, more efficient and adept. In fact, if he’d had to extend a guess, he’d have said her mind was like Aleth’s would have been had she gotten the chance to reach maturity. But then there was a flash of gold and the ‘sense’ of the person recording the memory dove a bit deeper, baring a flame that burned with songs no mortal in this universe could know.
Unless…
Pulling back forcefully from the memory, the Doctor was only mildly surprised to find that he’d pulled back physically as well. With a well-aimed bit of leverage, he managed to sit up straight again, running hands through his already wild hair as thoughts bounced about his head too quickly even for him to analyze. A soft touch on his forearm made him turn; Lhaki’s-for once-silent concern evident in the expression of her eyes and the budding support he could feel along their link. Ha! She was accepting it after all! He knew he’d win; he always won.
Still a bit overwhelmed by the stream of data running amok between his ears, the Doctor looked almost pleadingly at his companion, who took up the mantel with surprising alacrity.
“Your goddess, my friend…what was her name?” He narrowed his eyes at her and wondered if he hadn’t been broadcasting his own irrational discoveries a bit too loudly. Sometimes it was damn inconvenient having a telepathically sensitive companion.
“She goes by many names, some we learned from her and others from the off-worlders who came later-those who’d been exposed to her light as well. When the first bonded mind touched hers, it was blinded by light and surrounded by such a howling.” Despite the rapture in his tone, both the panther and his bonded female shuddered at the mention of the sound. “Here, on our world, to us, she is known as Inja Embi.”
Because he preferred to use their travels as an excuse to practice the many languages he had at his disposal, the Doctor was a full 3.7 seconds behind his TARDIS-aided companion, but one look at her expression of shock quite assured him that no, he hadn’t translated wrong.
This goddess of theirs really was called Bad Wolf.
Lhaki tried to speak once, closed her mouth to swallow and then tried again. This time she was more successful. “She wasn’t…wasn’t blonde by chance?” There was something raw and hopeful in his companion’s voice at that-though the question shouldn’t surprise him, she couldn’t be telepathic enough to have seen that image. Still, he decided with a sharp look her way, it was high time he sat her down and had a nice long talk about how much she really knew and just where she’d gotten her scarily accurate information.
“Why, yes, actually. Is that important?” Their host appeared quite intrigued by this possibility.
“More than you know.” The Doctor’s voice was quiet and rough, almost low enough to match the panther’s purring tones. “How did you know I could help you?” He saw Lhaki jerk at the apparent non-sequitor and couldn’t help a self-satisfied smirk; another point to him.
The panther’s lips curled back in a sly smile, even as the female’s eyes took on a knowing expression. “When asked what would need to be done in case the device ever began to fail, she told us that she hoped it never would, because it would take just the right kind of Doctor to set things straight.”
“Fantastic,” he muttered sarcastically. “Like I’ve never heard that one before.” That said, his face twisted into a scowl and he stood up, brushing imaginary dust from his coat. When he looked up again, he was grinning madly; an excellent front he hoped would fool Lhaki long enough to get them back to the TARDIS, where he could conveniently lose her in some repair work. “Well, no time to waste! If you’d be so kind as to show me to this erm…field of yours, I’d be more than happy to sort it out for you.”
“But of course.” The pair rose as one, the female laying her hand on the panther’s shoulders and letting him guide her out the doorway. “Follow us.”
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: I know you're all probably ready to murder me for putting this up rather than the next chapter of BMaG, but it wouldn't leave me alone and so here it is, the next ready chapter of NGCS; Her Hardest Hue to Hold
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 and if anything is really unclear, just let me know. :)
I was so angry at you after that, you know. I couldn’t contain myself. I had just lost all control over the situation and you… You were going to get your hearts broken all over again.
We do it to you, each and every one of us. The only thing that forgives most is that they have no idea how very much they’re hurting you. But me? I knew. I knew how much worse this bond would hurt you, because it wasn’t going to be a passive bond. Even then I knew my mind well enough to realize how very much stronger this would be. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to keep you safe because no one else would. It never occurred to them that you’d need it. Or if it did, you made it seem unwelcome.
But I knew better. So much of you, my dearest Ar’ali’thae was laid open to me before you even breathed my name.
Well, one of my names.
But you… You took the choice away from me and I was so furious! I realize you thought you were doing what was best, but you’d been the one ‘in the know’ for far too long and with one act you stole a piece of my trust in you. You were a part of me now, just as I was of you and I hated you for that; it felt so good to have roots again, to have that tie to another living being and I loved it. I hated you for that too.
…………………………………………………………………..
The Doctor sighed heavily as the TARDIS set down on Earth. Again. Hands shoved into his coat pockets, he leaned against the console as his companion flew out the main doors in an unholy rage. He should have expected something like this, but he’d hoped… Nevermind what he’d hoped. It was a foolish thing to have done. With a grimace, he turned to set the controls that would take them back into the Vortex, convinced that he had just seen the last of Lhaki.
The TARDIS, however, had other ideas. She was not about to move one inch without her Lhaki on board and if the Doctor didn’t like it, she’d tell him just where he could shove it. He was in no mood to listen to his ship giving him hell, so he glared at her impressively for a full five minutes. When that didn’t work, he stomped off into the library in what most certainly was not a temper tantrum of any sort.
Two hours later, the Doctor was in a very foul mood. He had been lost five times-lost! In his own ship!-and when he finally did find the library, none of the books were in the proper order. When he chose one of the selection available-desperate for any distraction-the TARDIS would translate it into one of the few languages he didn’t speak. In irritation, he’d chucked one book at the wall, only to be answered with an impressive shock. Seeing, he supposed, his reaction to that first shock, the TARDIS proceeded to follow it up with others of varying intensities. Finally, he had had more, far more than enough. He stalked out of the library-wishing again that he hadn’t ejected the Zero Room-and to the console. Outside the doors, he was free from her meddling influence.
This, apparently, suited the TARDIS just fine, because she ‘humphed’ approvingly at him and then made it very clear that returning without his companion would result in more of the same. So it was that the Doctor found himself on a scavenger hunt for his wayward companion. It wasn’t an unusual situation on the whole-his companions tended to find the Don’t Wander Off rule to be optional at best-but with this TARDIS-added imperative, it was definitely something different. He wandered around hopelessly for another few hours before the TARDIS in his head took pity on him and pointed his ‘sorry Time Lord arse’-her words, not his-in the right direction.
He felt quite entitled to his surprise when he found Lhaki in a cemetery. Despite this, he could feel that insatiable curiosity rising up in his gut. Here was an opportunity to find out some history on his newest companion. Anyone she felt inclined to visit here would be important to her; a clue to her past. Lovely things, clues. As he approached the simple headstone she sat in front of, he felt prepared for anything.
Really, by now he should know better than to feel prepared. It never ended well.
Harriet Jones
1955 - 2008
Just that, nothing about her tenure as Britain’s leader, nothing about her final sacrifice; just a name and a pair of dates.
“You have a bad habit of making decisions for other people, Doctor.” Lhaki’s voice was flat and the Doctor cringed once-both at her accusation and at the stark reminder of an old failure. There were tear-tracks on her face, but her eyes-still indecisive about their color-were dry now. “You did it for her. You destroyed her Golden Age because she dared to do something you didn’t like. You destroyed her career, her life, her reputation, even her family. She had to live every day with her very sanity in constant question. Despite this, she never quit. She developed the subwave network and she saved the universe and you couldn’t even be bothered to ensure she had a proper headstone.”
The Doctor stood off to one side awkwardly, hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground. He didn’t argue with her statements; she spoke nothing but the truth.
“Granted, you had a lot on your plate just then, but still…” Lhaki shook her head once as if to clear it. “That isn’t the point. You’re not human; it isn’t fair of me to expect you to behave like one.” For once, the Doctor felt this as an insult, and it stung. She sighed once and scrubbed her face with her hands. “But then again, neither am I; not really.”
The Doctor did a rather comedic double-take. Lhaki snorted.
“I’m like Jack.” The Doctor made as if to protest this, but she cut him off. “And not like him.” He had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from interrupting her with a thousand questions. “I don’t age, Doctor. I was spat out in this universe decades before I could cross your timeline. I don’t age and I don’t die; at all.” She shrugged one shoulder. “There is no dying and coming back, there’s just an injury and it takes the usual amount of time to heal, but it heals back to before the injury; never a scar. It’s like a permanent stasis, but everything seems normal.” She smiled then, but there was no joy in it. “There are times I’d prefer the dying.
“I’m not telling you this out of self-pity, Doctor.” Her voice became firm here and she stood slowly, brushing grass from her trousers before looking him square in the eye. “There will be a day where I will die and you will have to go on without me. That day will come and you won’t be okay, no matter how much you want to delude yourself otherwise. You said it yourself, Doctor; we all break your heart in the end.”
“But-“ She narrowed her eyes and held up one hand.
“Don’t interrupt. This is important.” Reluctantly, the Doctor fell silent again. “You did what you did to heal me and I’m grateful for that.” She tilted her head to one side and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “Or I will be when I stop being furious with you.” She dropped her hand and shoved it and its double into the pockets of her black coat. “But I was trying to protect you and you blatantly ignored me to do what you thought was best. That stops, right now.”
The Doctor paled, reminded with a flash of the last companion who’d been so concerned with protecting him, rather than the other way around. Superimposed, the images of Rose and Lhaki had…disturbing similarities. He was really beginning to hate the universe.
“All the evidence points to me being around a long time, so if I’m to spend that time with you, you’ll not treat me as if I’m a child.” Here she paradoxically rolled her eyes and cocked one hip out-the image of the child she denied. “It’s not as if you know anything I don’t know.”
“What’s the inverse cube root of 4.99985?” The Doctor seemed determined to test this; he couldn’t help himself sometimes.
“Nothing important, you loon.”
“What’s my name?” Lhaki narrowed her eyes at him still further, clearly losing patience.
“You don’t know that one either, so it doesn’t count.” Well, she had him there.
“Weakness of the Slitheen.”
“Vinegar.” She grinned, then shot a glance to the headstone. Her voice took on a hint of the wistful. “Just like Hannibal.”
“Best place to shoot a Dalek.”
“Eyestalk if you’re using traditional firearms. An energy cannon works anywhere.”
“Reapers?”
“Avoid changing a fixed timestream.”
The Doctor was starting to get irritated. It wasn’t often that he couldn’t stump someone.
“TARDIS stands for?”
“Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.”
“Hemophilia in the royal family is really what?”
“Infection from a lupine-wavelength haemovariform.” She rolled her eyes. “Too easy.”
“How were Time Lords born?”
“They weren’t; they were Loomed. They had been Loomed since Pythia cursed Rassilon and all his ilk with infertility.”
“Oh.” That was an answer he really wasn’t expecting from her. That was information that wasn’t even doled out at Academy.
“Are you quite finished?” Lhaki had one eyebrow cocked, arms folded over her chest, and seemed amused in spite of herself. The Doctor merely nodded.
“That bit of nonsense being done with; you will not make arbitrary decisions for me again, Doctor. If you don’t like it, tough. If you can’t live with it, then…” She shrugged and trailed off, swallowing hard once before she could finish her sentence. “Then I’ll just grab my things and go. I mean, it’s not like I even have much to pack, just a few bits and bobs here and-“
“You can stay.” He interrupted her quietly, amazed at this enigma of a girl-woman-girl who knew so much and was so much and still wanted to protect him. She stared at him, jaw slack. He could feel the corners of his mouth turning up in a smirk. It was becoming a small personal victory any time he could throw her off-balance. To his-admittedly childish-delight, it took her a full fifteen seconds to recuperate.
“Really?” There was such a vulnerability to her voice in that word. It made him want to protect her from everything and run as far from her as he could get, all at the same time. He was not equipped to cope with such naked emotions; too sticky. Then all of a sudden her eyes narrowed again and she turned wary. “Why?”
“Well…” He stretched his mouth into a grimace and rubbed one hand across his hair before clasping it around the back of his neck. He knew he could lie to her quite convincingly, but there was this odd niggling at the back of his mind that said she’d know; even if she never caught him in the lie, she’d know and it’d destroy another piece of her trust in him. So, he blew out a stream of air between his teeth and tilted his head back and forth, searching for the best possible way to say this. “For one thing, I definitely enjoy having company on the TARDIS, I need to keep and eye on the link in case there are any complications, it’s funny to sic you on random passersby, the TARDIS tortures me and won’t let me leave without you, I still haven’t taken you to see the nebula cluster in the Pisces Tertiary-“ He only made it that far before Lhaki caught on.
The next companion was going to have an IQ of 80 or lower; he swore.
“Hang on…” She started to laugh and snigger and sputter and shake. “You’re here because the TARDIS forced you via torture and blackmail?” He nodded hesitantly, not sure at all where this was going. Lhaki only laughed harder, eventually having to lean on his shoulder just to stay upright. She finally calmed down, brushing fresh tear tracks from her cheeks before linking her arm in his. “You are impossible.” She grinned madly. “Don’t ever, ever change.”
…………………………………………………………………….
I never could stay mad very long. Not even when I was a little girl. I’ve never been able to hold onto hatred in the same way that I’ve never been able to hold onto romantic love. It’s too much work for something self-damaging in the end. For me, at any rate. So it was that within the week, I’d forgiven you.
Forgiven, not forgotten.
You could see my wariness, I know. To your credit, you never pushed me about it. Seemed you were still far too uncomfortable with such sticky feelings; uncomfortable enough that so long as I didn’t push, you were content to let sleeping dogs lie. It bothered you though. I could tell. You still weren’t convinced that I was going to be alright.
You think I never noticed your checking in on me? I’m not so unobservant and neither is the TARDIS. I felt bad for worrying you, I really did. I just didn’t know of any other way. I was still so new to myself, so uncertain. I robbed us both of precious time and for that-among many other things-I am very, very sorry.
…………………………………………………………………..
After three days of sitting through boring financial meetings-as he brilliantly saved the economy from a famine that stopped before his amazing solution could be implemented-four of trying to offend the Crown Prince of Pi-Omicron-Delta enough so that he would rescind his demand of marriage and seven of traipsing through the swamps of Clom after a renegade Absorbaloff, the Doctor felt his companion deserved a respite.
Very brilliant deduction really, but now the conundrum was where and when. Why did it have to be so hard with this one? With Leela, he could set down in a game preserve and let her have at it; with Ace an evening of hard rock and possible explosives; with Donna, a spa and with R-Rose-he was a Time Lord for Rassilon’s sake, he could say her bloody name!-it was shopping or a theme-park day.
But he’d tried all of his previous methods-even an evening of music so loud his left ear still rung a bit-and while Lhaki had certainly seemed to enjoy herself, it was more like she was indulging him when it should have been the other way around. It was a bit off-putting, actually. He was beginning to sympathize with his own past companions and that…was an odd sensation. His Rose-born, Martha-tested and Donna-approved failsafe wouldn’t even be an option this time. Lhaki had no home for him to take her to. There was no mum who’d make her tea and do the washing, no siblings eager to share the latest in their parents’ ongoing scandal and no granddad to take her out for a night under the stars with his faithful telescope.
For once-and one time only, he assured himself-the great and mighty Time Lord was stumped. This, he thought. This is why I don’t do domestics. The lie was so old and comfortable that he almost believed it this time. Still, he hated admitting defeat. He was halfway through the Orion system of stars-in alphabetical order by class, planets and habitability-when a sudden lurch in his mind caused his head to jerk around; eyes locking on the corridor that Wasn’t. Panic, raw and wriggling, flared to life in his chest, his limbs frozen for an instant before he leapt into motion, wrenching open and slamming closed the Door.
Considering it was the only door on the ship that would open to him, only him and exclusively him, he felt the capital letter entirely justified.
Upon his return to the console room, he found that his ship-blessed, wonderful thing that she was-had saved him yet again. Well, it looked as if she had. There, right there, coordinates primed and ready for Lhaki’s break. Only upon closer inspection did the Doctor have cause to question the sanity of his trusty time ship.
You’re mad, you are. How in the world is she going to relax there?
~You’re an idiot.~ Yes, well of course; because that answered the question beautifully. Still, it seemed a sentiment his ship had become rather fond of expressing lately. Rubbing the back of his neck, the Doctor briefly considered the mallet lying on the worn out old seat to his right, but a quick shock to the hand still resting on the console nipped that idea firmly in the bud.
“Ouch!” he cried, bringing the offended digits promptly to his mouth. The Doctor had realized that his ship was angry with him for initiating the bond with his newest companion without her consent-and in fact, against her explicit refusal-but Lhaki had gotten over being cross with him, so why was his ship still out of sorts?
Before he had the chance to properly contemplate that question, he felt the ground under his feet give way, giving him barely enough time to grab onto the console as the TARDIS bucked and pitched beneath him. Despite the rough flight, however, their landing was gentle as could be. He could hear his ship sniff daintily in his mind and then turn her back on him in a bit of a huff. It was an action so reminiscent of the Tyler women that he found himself cringing in expectation of a good slap.
“What’re you doing?” The rather dry voice of his newest companion startled him effectively from his self-defensive maneuver-he refused to call it a cringe, Time Lords did not cringe-and he turned to her with a whirl of jacket-tails.
“Ah, just testing out this new twitch I’ve got in my eye, see if it’s decided to leave me alone yet.” As if to prove his alibi, a muscle just underneath his left eye convulsed several times. Lhaki snorted her amusement and he congratulated himself on his timely save.
“So, is that the twitch you get when the TARDIS lands us somewhere you didn’t instigate?” One slim eyebrow lifted over the other and the Doctor spared a fleeting thought to the fact that no one wearing green chucks and a small Disney deer on their tee-shirt should be able to look quite so smug.
“Nope! This would be the twitch I get when certain companions act like they know everything when in fact I did plan on us landing here right from the very beginning!”
“Oh? And where is here, then?” Smug; far, far too smug. He could feel a smirk tugging at his lips, glad that for once he had a ready answer to her self-assured questions.
“The planet Zathula in the Pleiades’ system. About six thousand years after the primary species developed sentience and about four hundred years since the colonization ship crash landed on the surface, spawning a new hybridization of humans.” She didn’t have an answer ready for that, but she didn’t stop smiling either. He braced himself for another round of verbal sparring; a round that never came.
“Let’s go then.” Such easy acquiescence was not the normal way of things, but, as they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth… So, with his trademark manic energy, the Doctor flew down the console and flung open the door with a flourish.
“Madame, your planet awaits.” A sweeping bow accompanied his formal words and Lhaki couldn’t suppress a chuckle, even as she rolled her eyes. All amusement, however, vanished the instant she stepped out onto the planet’s surface.
The TARDIS had landed them in the middle of what looked quite a bit like an Earth savannah. The tall grasses, the twisted trees and the bright sky certainly suggested it. The air, however, was not like any air on Sol 3. It was richer, fuller, older and yet more vibrant than any from her own planet. It wasn’t just the air or the wind-which was pleasantly warm without making either of them uncomfortable-it was the very atmosphere of the planet.
Despite this, the Doctor rolled back onto his heels, hands deep in his pockets as he waited for the accusation that he’d taken them on safari instead of Zathula. The differences-lovely as they were-were of such a nature that his human companion wouldn’t notice them. While not nearly as crass about it as his former self, the Doctor never passed up an opportunity to point out the things the humans would miss. Good tactic, that; keep the barrier between them so they didn’t get too close.
The fact that he had initiated the closeness this time didn’t even occur to him. Old habits die hard.
For a moment, he wondered at her silence. Despite everything, she was still a human teenager and sometimes her propensity to talk surpassed even his gob. He opened his mouth to ask or teach or sneeze or something; anything to break this silence that wasn’t comfortable. Oddly enough, he was beaten to the punch.
“Shhh…” His companion laid a stilling hand on his arm. “Look.” He followed the direction of her gaze and saw a cloud of dust raising up to greet them. “What are they, Doctor?” Her voice was hushed and awed; her face full of an innocent wonder that warmed his old hearts.
They were…well, frankly magnificent. Tall and slender, their skin was a rather lovely shade of crimson. Their heads were long, rather like the skulls of ancient Incan tribes, but these seemed more natural; certainly more graceful, tapering at the end to an almost delicate point. Their eyes were large and bright, all shades of the sunset represented in the approaching group. They were unquestioningly female and rode unashamedly naked on what appeared to be cheetahs the size of horses.
Overly confident, the Doctor took a few steps up to meet them, eventually coming to stand back to back with Lhaki as the fierce women surrounded them. This close, it could be seen that they had small, almost feline noses and no mouths; their bodies actually covered in short, fine fur. While most of them were the dark, crimson color, there were some whose coloration leant itself more towards peach. These were smaller than the others and their fur darkened around their skulls, but they appeared no less fierce. The women carried no weapons, but considering their mounts, weapons would have been a bit superfluous.
“Um, yes, hello. I’m the Doctor and this is my companion Lhaki.” His introduction was met with silence and he shifted his weight, rubbing the back of his neck. “Um…we are on Zathula, are we not?”
“Silence!” The voice definitely came from the female opposite the Doctor, but he wasn’t quite sure just how that happened, considering the woman had no mouth. “You will speak in your turn, indoda.” There was a sneer in her voice at that word, un-translated by the TARDIS.
“I think I may have landed us wrong,” he whispered back to Lhaki, who snorted once.
“You think?” she hissed back. “When are we then?”
“Dunno, quite. Seems a bit matriarchal, though…” He winced. Mostly he avoided matriarchal societies at all costs. After all, he was the designated driver and the one who could think on his feet, not his feminine companions. He spared a moment of thought for Jack, who would-without a doubt-be absolutely thrilled to be in such a place. A low growl in front of him interrupted said thoughts and he backed up further into Lhaki.
“Who are you, Lhaki that an abantu has again found her way into our lands?” The same female spoke, only for the Doctor to realize with fascination that the words came from her mount. For a moment, his companion hesitated, stepping forward only after a conveniently placed elbow into her ribs. Rubbing his sore joint, the Doctor shot a warning glance at his companion, but held his peace.
“We’re travelers, my…” She suppressed a grin and straightened her shoulders. “My indoda and I. I am really very sorry if we’ve come somewhere we weren’t supposed to be…but…” She trailed off there, startled as the dark female dismounted and moved closer to her. Fingers gentle but firm gripped her chin and eyes the color of the evening sun stared deeply into her own. After a few aborted attempts at speech, Lhaki swallowed thickly and managed a squeaked, “Hullo?”
That small sound seemed to break the spell. The woman let go of her face and…well, without a mouth, it was hard to tell, but the Doctor was under the distinct impression that she smiled.
“Greetings indeed! Your arrival is anticipated, Lhaki. I am Umqothukhahlela. You and your,” here eyes of both rider and mount flickered over him with far too much disdain, “Doctor will ride into our village with us!” Before the Doctor could react-which was in itself very impressive-the woman had swept Lhaki up onto her mount in front of her. Another woman-one of the smaller, paler ones-had swept the Doctor up behind her and they were off.
The scenery flew by quite fast, but considering the mechanics of the felines they were riding, the Doctor wasn’t too surprised. Thrilled, actually. He’d heard of these beasts, of this time in the planet’s history, but it was far, far earlier than he’d bargained for. For some reason TARDIS as a rule wouldn’t allow their pilots to steer them into the first two thousand years of sentience here. The only rational explanation was that a Time Lock had been placed, but no one knew who had done it; or why. Whatever the reason, he was here now and despite their rather…unique predicament, the excitement boiled up into manic laughter as the band loped along the savannah.
The village, when they reached it, turned out to be rather brilliant in its simplicity. It took advantage of an old cave system in the side of a small mountain. Long, long ago, ice flows had circulated from the frozen surface to the natural hot springs down below. The entire complex was connected and there were enough caves to house hundreds, plus room for communal facilities such as washing and storage and cooking. It never required maintenance and represented a strong, defensible position against predators and weather.
The main entrance was large enough that all of them could have ridden in abreast of each other with room to spare. At first, the place seemed abandoned, but when a rolling purr sounded from the patrol-the riders this time-people began to emerge from all corners. Some were the peach and crimson of the women who’d met them outside, but the vast majority were some shade of brown or tan. Despite this, every color on the savannah was represented in some form or another; blues, greens, violets and the occasional greyscale dotted a brilliant counterpoint to the sea of more ‘natural’ hues.
It wasn’t until they reached the center of the largest cavern that the riders dismounted. Lhaki was offered assistance from the back of her beast, while the Doctor was left to fend for himself. Why is it matriarchal societies never develop an inverse system of chivalry? he couldn’t help but wonder. In the end, he managed-as always-but before he could pose the question to his companion, a hush fell over the assembled crowd.
A diminutive white-furred female stepped out from behind a cloth-covered doorway, head bowed, with her left arm resting between the shoulder blades of an enormous black panther. Even the Doctor-who’d faced down the Beast without trepidation-had to swallow against an instinctive ripple of fear. A quick glance at his companion showed her pale and trembling. Despite feeling a bit of gratification that something got under her skin, the Doctor couldn’t help feeling sorry for her and moved closer to take her hand, only to be thrust backwards and away by the peach-colored rider he’d hitched a lift with.
“Come, child.” The voice, coming from the black feline, was a rumbling, masculine bass-an odd counterpoint to the riders, who…well, come to think of it, he’d only heard the one speak. Perhaps here one could be paired with either side. Hmm, an interesting question. He’d have to ask about that later. For now, he watched as the female lifted her head and with it her free arm, beckoning to his companion blindly. Blindly because he could see now; her once jeweled irises were now covered with film. The panther was her eyes as well as her mouth, then.
Disconcerted, Lhaki stiffened her spine and pulled back her shoulders, but he could feel her in his head, more open than she’d ever allowed herself to be and almost desperately seeking reassurance. He nodded, sending an affirmation down that link. He saw nothing dangerous about their situation so far. That received, she clamped down tight until he knew she was there only by conscious probing. Her hips lowered as her back relaxed and he had confirmation that she’d understood.
Stepping forwards, the young human extended her hand to clasp that of the old white female, who drew her closer still. The female then lifted her hand from the back of the panther and held it up, fingers just a hair’s breadth from Lhaki’s temple; waiting. The human girl nodded and the soft fingers made contact.
All three sets of eyes drifted closed and they stood like that for quite some time. Actually, it was getting a bit ridiculous. The Doctor was fast beginning to lose interest and turned to the rider next to him to strike up conversation, only to realize that she too, had her eyes closed. They all did. Every single one of them that he could see-and he’d wager all the ones that he couldn’t-was somehow a part of this…thing. A bored Doctor is never a good thing, so really it shouldn’t have been too surprising when he tried to enter with them. It was obviously a telepathic thing and he was bloody well telepathic! No reason to be left out of-oh goodness! The response to his telepathic wanderings was a concise and firm NO, the force of which caused him to actually take a step back. This…was worrisome.
He narrowed his perceptions on just the female locked with Lhaki, poking and prodding and a bit surprised to find psychic barriers as strong as his own. For a whole collective to push him out was one thing, but to find he could not penetrate an individual was quite another. Such a puzzle was this that he quite lost track of time. It’s a time-consuming business, trying to break into the impenetrable. So focused was he, that the fondly indulgent voice in his head quite took him by surprise.
Are you quite finished there, Doctor? The voice was warm and full and soothing, like hearing a close grandmother speaking to her favored grandchild. I promise we mean no harm, but this was not meant for you.
Uh, yeah, sorry, but…what wasn’t? There was a pause and then his voice took on an edge of steel. If you’ve hurt my companion…
There’s no need for concern, Doctor. She is well.
If you meant no harm then why was I excluded? he ground out, a bit concerned that he could be excluded in the first place.
You have your umoya thanda already, Doctor. You’ve just misplaced it. Her mental voice lost its tone of mild reproach. But you’ll find it again soon. She has yet to find hers. We needed to know her, but it is not for you to know her. Not yet.
What d’you mean, ‘not yet’? She’s my companion; my friend!
Would you presume to eavesdrop on her life then Doctor? Does being your companion mean you have the right to see her soul? There was nothing but softness in the voice, yet still he felt censured. She was right. He didn’t have to like it, but she was right.
No… No, but… He couldn’t finish that thought. How does one explain to a stranger the fear that gripped his hearts at losing someone else so soon, so very soon after he’d found her? How could he translate the grief that would drown him if he had to be alone for too long? He couldn’t; he couldn’t possibly and so he was left to swallow his own paralyzing emotions, to wallow in memories of the others he’d let down, the others he’d not been able to save, despite their trust in him. Two women in particular haunted him, one dead because he couldn’t protect her and the other one trapped; sealed away from him forever, not even missing him. How could she, when for her he was right there? That one wasn’t a failure, not as the other one had been, but it still hurt; still left him feeling every single one of his 991 years.
But those two had been special-for obvious reasons, one a Time Lady and the other Rose-his two loves. So why was it that he had the nagging suspicion that two had become three? When had this plump, audacious child wormed her way into what was left of his hearts? A hand on his shoulder startled him out of his thoughts before a conclusion could be reached.
Eyes that still couldn’t decide their color stared at him with concern, changing their hues five times even as he watched.
“You alright, Doctor?” Her concern bled over into her voice and he couldn’t help a smile. It was the softest she’d been towards him since his invasion of her mind.
“Who, me? Yeah, I’m alright. I’m always alright. No need to worry at all.” Despite his quick talking and brilliant grin, he was left with the impression she didn’t believe him.
“No you’re not.” She was arguing with him. Typical, that; at least it was for this particular companion. He opened his mouth and began to regale her with a rather impressive amount of evidence on his side; that he was perfectly alright, thanks. It wasn’t until about halfway into his stride that he realized she was smiling at her rather brightly. It took him another six sentences to realize she was also crying. Emotions of these sorts made him quite uncomfortable and so he trailed off, unsure of the proper thing to say. Eventually, he settled on a simple:
“Are you alright?” Granted, it was only a repetition of her earlier words, but at least it was something.
“Yeah, m’ fine. Just wonderin’ when you were gonna shut your gob.” She smiled the brighter for her attempted tease, but there were still tears in her voice. Before he could say anything else, she reached for his sleeve and tugged him towards the room the white female and her black companion had come from. Only then did he realize that they were completely alone. Everyone else had gone without him even realizing it. Shaking his head, he attempted to clear it. Something about this place was distracting him, a fact that could prove fatal if danger should strike. “Come on,” she urged. “There’s something you need to see.” He followed.
The room she led him into was small but homey. An incense burner wafted the room with a clean scent; light and relaxing. There were cushions and blankets strewn about at random, places to sit around the small fire pit in the center of the room. There was another exit, leading off to the left and a small alcove in the wall. In this alcove sat a small shelf and on this shelf there lay a small variety of religious paraphernalia. Oddly enough, it was towards this small shelf that his companion pulled him, smiling. Her tears had dried and there was a hopefulness, a buoyancy to her that hadn’t been there before. But before he could figure out just how right his ship had been to bring them here, he felt a small stone object be placed in his hand.
It was a carving of a wolf.
His first reaction-still, after all these years-was to panic. Wolves in his experience meant that something universally bad was about to happen. He was able to tamp it down and stuff it away.
“Ah, you’ve gotten him from his thoughts. Come, sit; we have much to discuss.” Jerked again from said thoughts-this time by the low, rumbling voice of the white woman’s panther-the Doctor turned to see his companion sitting on one of the cushions next to the female and her…feline. Lhaki was giving him a sharp glare and he thought he heard a mental warning against rudeness. Said warning sounded quite a bit like it had been given from either of his other two once-upon-a-time girls, but it was a fair enough rebuke, so he really couldn’t decide if it had actually come from her or if it was only a memory imagined.
With a heavy sigh, he sat on Lhaki’s other side, across from their hosts. The wolf carving still in his hand, he accepted the mug of spiced tea from the white female.
“What needs to be discussed…” He trailed off as he realized he didn’t even know her name. Luckily, she was astute enough to catch the problem and polite enough not to make him ask outright.
“I am called Inyangaisithuzi.” The Doctor’s gaze darted between the two with a slow nod. Moon Shadow; it was appropriate, given the pairing. “And I’m afraid we need your help.”
Instantly he was on the alert, sparing nary a glance to his companion, who sat sipping her own tea with an odd amount of silence. “How can I help?”
She hesitated. “We are…a flawed species, Doctor.” It was odd to watch them. Even though the voice came from the black feline, the white female moved as if it was she who spoke, hand gestures and facial expressions; all of it. “In time before reckoning, we were…not so telepathically advanced. We did not have the umingane to speak for us and we had no telepathy among ourselves. We made do with crude sign and body language, but it made even the simplest things nearly impossible and so we were mainly a solitary race.” Her filmy eyes narrowed even as his voice grew darker.
“Then came the invasion.
“These creatures like from the worst of nightmares came down out of the sky. They wanted our mineral deposits and without any organization, we were powerless to stop them. They would have stripped our world bare of everything and then left us to die.” The white female picked up a wide clay bowl and held it to the feline’s mouth as he lapped up some of the herbal drink. “You see, they saw us as no more than animals, these invaders. They were rounded metal things with no legs and voices that screamed out all the time and death shot out from a tiny metal arm and they ignored us; unless one of us was in the way.” Inyangaisithuzi grimaced. “In that case, we were exterminated.”
The sorrow that had been slowly creeping up the Doctor’s spine finally bit into him with a jolt of fear as those words almost certainly confirmed the identity of their attackers. No matter how much he lost in fighting them, in destroying them; they always survived.
“We would have been wiped out, if not for the timely intervention of our beloved goddess. She looked as you both do, pale and smooth and small, but she brought us such wonders.” The low, rumbling voice was reverent when they spoke of this goddess. Something was beginning to tingle uncomfortably in the base of the Doctor’s skull. “She brought to us the ushomii, themselves the refugees from a world that had burned. They could bond with some of us, give us physical voices where before we had none. For the others, she set up…” And here they trailed off, lost in thought as memories older than either of them struggled to surface. “A field…of some sort. It enabled their minds to link together. She gave us language, Doctor and then she helped us drive the metal monsters from our lands and skies.”
He could feel his stomach twisting into knots. For a species this primitive to have thrown off the Daleks…that would mean some pretty powerful…something was brought into play. A something of about his intelligence and that was a frightening thought.
“She was magnificent. Bonded to a creature as beautiful as a sunrise, she fought with us and she saved our world.” Another few laps of the drink were offered to the panther. “But we have failed her.” The pair breathed a heavy sigh. “The device she used to create the links is dying, Doctor. It’s becoming harder for those without an ushomi to communicate along the lines. The…the technology is far beyond what we are capable of fixing, but we do not wish to return to being solitary nomads. Can you help us?” Such trust and hope and longing filled both halves of this pair that the Doctor found he had to swallow twice before answering.
“I’ll help you, Inyangaisithuzi. If it means I have to do a complete overhaul of the telepathic field generators in my own ship, I’ll help you; I promise.” His answer was vehement and both natives looked assuaged and…amused.
“I don’t think it will need a complete overhaul, Doctor.”
“What do you think it needs, then?” He grumped a bit at that.
“Oh…I think a bit of jiggery-pokery should do the trick, don’t you?”
The Doctor stiffened suddenly at the out-of-place phraseology, noting with a bit of irritation that his companion did the same.
“Um…sorry,” Lhaki spoke for the first time since the pair had begun to speak. “What did you just say?”
The pair repeated themselves and the Doctor saw his companion glance at him before speaking again. “Where…where did you hear that term? It’s not in your native language, is it?”
“Not initially, no.” Again, while the feline spoke, his humanoid counterpart held the facial expressions, the body language. The Doctor was unequivocally fascinated by this level of psychic integration. It was almost as if they were sitting to tea with one being in two bodies. “It was a phrase we heard spoken by our Lady Goddess when she created the device for us in the first place. It was the term used to describe what she had done to create.”
“You heard her say it? Was this a recent thing, then?” The Doctor heard the veiled skepticism in his companion’s voice and couldn’t help but agree. If the device was running out after only a short time, there wasn’t a fantastic outlook for there to be a permanent-or even semi-permanent-fix. Despite understanding the basics, he couldn’t help but be a little hurt in her lack of faith in him. Or it could be that he was reading too much into things. He’d had a habit of doing that in this body.
“No, she graced our lands only shortly after the grasses started to grow.” This caused Lhaki to wrinkle her nose in confusion until he leaned over and lifted his mouth towards her ear.
“About three hundred years after their last ice age.” She nodded once, shooting him a tentative smile of thanks before turning back to their host; hosts…host?
“And what’s the date now?”
“It has been two aeons since the ice finally melted.” Lhaki’s eyes widened into saucers as her suddenly shaking hands set her mug on the ground in front of her.
“You can’t possibly be that old! Not even-I mean…that’s impossible!” she cut herself off in time, but her shifting eyes had flickered to his face and the Doctor knew, just knew that she had been about to make some crack about his age.
“It isn’t my memory, no. It’s…” Inyangaisithuzi paused then, struggling with how best to explain the concept. She gently brushed her mind against the Doctor’s and he allowed her beyond the first walls of his shielding, processing what she showed him and smiling fondly as he understood.
“Racial memory, Lhaki; with a telepathic field this strong, they can access and relive memories that aren’t and have never been their own. It’s like the oral traditions in the primitive Americas and early European cultures, only more precise.” He tilted his head to one side. “Much more vivid too, I’d expect.” Then something struck him and he gripped the figurine in his hand that much harder. “Inyangaisithuzi…can you show me a memory of what she looked like, your goddess?”
“Of course I can.” No sooner had they spoken than an image, clear as day, presented itself for his mental perusal. The woman in the ‘photo’ was remarkable only in her unremarkable-ness. She had plain blonde-ish hair and plain eyes in a plain face with a plain body. She could be any woman off the street. Still, there was something niggling at the back of his mind and so he studied the image closer. It was only then that he realized; she wasn’t just any woman off the street, she was all of them. Reinette, Sarah-Jane, Ace, Leela, Jackie, Aleth, River, Jabe, Grace, Diana, Nancy, Hame, Lynda, Harriet… The longer he stared, the more of them he could see in her and it took his breath away.
The image, having cycled through a myriad of expressions, must have been of her finally listening to someone-or something-because in that next instant, she smiled brightly and his breath caught in his throat; his chest refused to rise or fall. Without his respiratory bypass system, he would have blacked out from lack of oxygen. As it was, there was a painful wrenching between his lungs, even after his breathing resumed.
That smile…oh Rassilon he knew that smile. That particular smile he could chart better than the Kasterborous constellation; gravitated towards it like a powerless moon. The fact that it appeared on this woman’s face shook him to his absolute core, because…because…
Because that smile was all Rose.
“More, I need more.” His voice was raspy and thick with choked back emotion. “Please, I need a fuller image…”
“All right, Doctor; all right.” As the words left the panther’s mouth, the female reached her hands out over the fire. With only an instant’s hesitation, the Doctor reached his own hands to take hers, gasping sharply as layer after layer assaulted his senses. Sight was now augmented with sound and smell and taste and touch and a thousand other tiny little clues picked up by his twenty-odd senses.
She looked like every woman he’d ever seen a spark in, bits of people who’d touched his lives mingled in with the expressions of strangers until it made him dizzy trying to souse it all out. The smile was hers, the eyes were even occasionally hers, but the smell was all wrong, the taste was wrong and the hand he wrapped his around didn’t fit as hers should have. Even her mind, laid open to an extent in the memory was unfamiliar to him. It was larger, firmer, more efficient and adept. In fact, if he’d had to extend a guess, he’d have said her mind was like Aleth’s would have been had she gotten the chance to reach maturity. But then there was a flash of gold and the ‘sense’ of the person recording the memory dove a bit deeper, baring a flame that burned with songs no mortal in this universe could know.
Unless…
Pulling back forcefully from the memory, the Doctor was only mildly surprised to find that he’d pulled back physically as well. With a well-aimed bit of leverage, he managed to sit up straight again, running hands through his already wild hair as thoughts bounced about his head too quickly even for him to analyze. A soft touch on his forearm made him turn; Lhaki’s-for once-silent concern evident in the expression of her eyes and the budding support he could feel along their link. Ha! She was accepting it after all! He knew he’d win; he always won.
Still a bit overwhelmed by the stream of data running amok between his ears, the Doctor looked almost pleadingly at his companion, who took up the mantel with surprising alacrity.
“Your goddess, my friend…what was her name?” He narrowed his eyes at her and wondered if he hadn’t been broadcasting his own irrational discoveries a bit too loudly. Sometimes it was damn inconvenient having a telepathically sensitive companion.
“She goes by many names, some we learned from her and others from the off-worlders who came later-those who’d been exposed to her light as well. When the first bonded mind touched hers, it was blinded by light and surrounded by such a howling.” Despite the rapture in his tone, both the panther and his bonded female shuddered at the mention of the sound. “Here, on our world, to us, she is known as Inja Embi.”
Because he preferred to use their travels as an excuse to practice the many languages he had at his disposal, the Doctor was a full 3.7 seconds behind his TARDIS-aided companion, but one look at her expression of shock quite assured him that no, he hadn’t translated wrong.
This goddess of theirs really was called Bad Wolf.
Lhaki tried to speak once, closed her mouth to swallow and then tried again. This time she was more successful. “She wasn’t…wasn’t blonde by chance?” There was something raw and hopeful in his companion’s voice at that-though the question shouldn’t surprise him, she couldn’t be telepathic enough to have seen that image. Still, he decided with a sharp look her way, it was high time he sat her down and had a nice long talk about how much she really knew and just where she’d gotten her scarily accurate information.
“Why, yes, actually. Is that important?” Their host appeared quite intrigued by this possibility.
“More than you know.” The Doctor’s voice was quiet and rough, almost low enough to match the panther’s purring tones. “How did you know I could help you?” He saw Lhaki jerk at the apparent non-sequitor and couldn’t help a self-satisfied smirk; another point to him.
The panther’s lips curled back in a sly smile, even as the female’s eyes took on a knowing expression. “When asked what would need to be done in case the device ever began to fail, she told us that she hoped it never would, because it would take just the right kind of Doctor to set things straight.”
“Fantastic,” he muttered sarcastically. “Like I’ve never heard that one before.” That said, his face twisted into a scowl and he stood up, brushing imaginary dust from his coat. When he looked up again, he was grinning madly; an excellent front he hoped would fool Lhaki long enough to get them back to the TARDIS, where he could conveniently lose her in some repair work. “Well, no time to waste! If you’d be so kind as to show me to this erm…field of yours, I’d be more than happy to sort it out for you.”
“But of course.” The pair rose as one, the female laying her hand on the panther’s shoulders and letting him guide her out the doorway. “Follow us.”