Fic Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 16: Not Enough Time
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 16: Not Enough Time
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Eighth Doctor
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: This is why she’d kept River and Jack from coming. This is why she’d pushed them away. No one could ever see this…
Word Count: 4,326
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse. Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). This series is a sort of Season Two. Also written before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11
Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15
Her hand was killing her.
The Twelfth Doctor sandwiched her damaged, tourniquet-wrapped hand between her body and her right arm. The pressure against it helped, but did not completely alleviate the pain.
She felt slightly dizzy from the loss of blood.
She also didn’t know how much longer any of them could hold out.
They were walking now.
The Eighth Doctor had them walking in a sort of death march over towards where they’d told him the De-Mat Gun was buried.
Of course there was no De-Mat Gun buried anywhere. And once they’d gotten around to the area they’d indicated, he would certainly show them no mercy for their deceit.
The Twelfth Doctor had to admit to herself that they were up against arguably the most dangerous creature they’d ever come up against: A psychotic, deranged version of themselves…
And this was why she’d kept River and Jack from coming. This is why she’d pushed them away. No one could ever see this-how callous and brutal he had become-at least no one could see this and still believe her to be worthy of adoration. Since here he was now: “The Doctor,” in all his former glory-filthy and demented, his mind scattered in pointy, jagged shards like so many dropped dinner plates. Where was the hero? Where was that Doctor that inspired and amazed? The truth was that this twisted, lost soul lived huddled inside each and every Doctor, but that each incarnation kept him well at bay. Yet if the worst of her could be seen, who would follow her into the magical blue box? How could she ever avoid being lonely again?
No one could possibly love the monster she really was inside.
Once their Eighth self had shot her hand, their conflict had quickly evolved away from an impasse to a war of attrition.
Things weren’t looking good.
Feeling woozy, she stumbled.
”Keep going, damn you!” shouted the Eighth Doctor. “And don’t you get near her!” he hollered at Ten, who had attempted to go to her aid. “I don’t give a Rassilon’s trouser press if you both die out here!”
The next several minutes passed like a rough trip down high river rapids. Twelve would say something to try to calm him down, their Eighth self would pivot to focus on her and then Ten would try to get his attention. Whether it was to protect her or just plain old stall for time, she wasn’t sure. However, she knew from the sharp dip in her stomach that whenever she saw the gun trained on Ten, her fear would escalate, rushing her back through the churning vortex of anxiety and anticipation as the whole process repeated itself.
Her hand still absolutely throbbing, she kept trudging along towards a distant spot on the horizon where there was no gun, racking her brain for a way to either figure out how to work the two-handed Trap Box function herself with only one hand, or pass it off to Ten.
She hid it up her sleeve and waited for a chance to hand it off to him. Except with the Eighth Doctor making them walk in front of him and not allowing them to get close enough to each other, she hadn’t found an opportunity to pass the sonic to Ten. So it sat there, uselessly.
She glanced worriedly at Ten as she staggered along, wondering what they were going to do. Both of them knew what the stakes were: With the existence of the Eighth Doctor’s bio-echo, the universe was tearing itself apart; if the Eighth Doctor touched either of them, Reapers would appear to sterilise the wound in Time; to remove him from their reality would take Twelve’s sonic, which she could no longer use with one of her hands injured and she couldn’t hand her device to Ten lest he take it from them or kill them in the process...
As they grew ever nearer to the hypothetical location of the gun, she steeled herself for his reaction. Finally, she was done with the stalemate. If the opportune moment did not present itself, then, in standard Doctor fashion she would need to create one…
Time was running out.
She stopped.
“Y’know… Doctor…” she said in a languorous, drawling voice to her Eighth incarnation, moving in a slow circle around him.
“Don’t call me that!” snapped the Eighth Doctor. He followed her with his Staser pistol.
“Are you sure the De-Mat Gun will work?” she asked. “You can’t just pick it up and shoot it like that gun there…”
“Of course I know that, girl.”
“Oh, so you’ve got the Great Key of Rassilon, do you?” She positioned herself so the Eighth Doctor was between her and Ten.
Now his attention would be divided.
Out of her peripheral vision she saw Ten nod at her in understanding. They started to slowly rotate like a wheel around him, each of them on opposite end of the spokes.
“Stop your stalling, girl!” their Eighth self barked, moving with her-the gun still pointed in her direction: At her head.
“Well, I’m only saying…” she kept moving. “I mean you must be somebody very intelligent to have found out about both the lost key and the forbidden gun of Rassilon…” The three of them continued to move together in a bizarre dance of predator and prey-although who was who still wasn’t exactly clear anymore…
“I see you’ve finally come to appreciate who you’re dealing with…”
Suddenly, the Tenth Doctor tried to draw him off her: “Y’mean a terrible bore and a bad dresser?”
The Eighth Doctor snapped his head around to glare at Ten-whom he apparently had temporarily forgotten-and whirled around to train his Staser pistol on Ten.
“No, no, no!” yelled Twelve to the Eighth Doctor, “It’s me! You want me!” Her sonic still up her sleeve, she waved her good arm over her head to direct his attention back to her.
He turned the gun back to her.
“What are you doing?” The Tenth Doctor’s voice was as chilled and flat as black ice in a still pond.
Re-aggravated, the Eight Doctor snapped at him “You! Shut up or I shall-“
“No, no no! Me! Here!” she repeated. “That’s it. Just focus on me, Doctor-“
“I SAID, STOP USING THAT NAME!!!”
“Okay, okay fine. Zagreus… Is that better?”
He squared his shoulders and continued to train the gun on her, but seemed a little less activated. She swallowed, and continued to talk, as the sky grew a brighter greenish red behind her, diffused by the dense, angry clouds that were always present now, swirling around the ripples and distortions of Time from The Moment.
Dawn was coming to Gallifrey.
It had been ages since she’d seen the twin suns rise on her planet. But she didn’t have time to watch-not that it would be the same now anyway.
In her mind, she stretched out on her own golden skein of the Web of Time. As she listened, it shimmered, and she knew instinctively that she faced a choice point right here, in this moment. Her timeline was not fixed, it was in flux, but there were consequences in whichever direction she chose. It frustrated her that the outcomes were murky at best. She couldn’t see them all-she never could when it came to herself-but she knew she had a mission: That bio-data of her Eighth self must be retained and the universe was hanging by a thread, thanks to her-and she had to put that right, too. The only question was, how?
Then she realised, she’d already known what would happen for days… She’d just hoped for other options.
She closed her eyes briefly and felt the dull warmth on her face, reveling in the feel-one simple moment in the middle of all of this pain and confusion.
Turning again, she refocused on her Eighth self. “You don’t want to bother with him,” she said simply, hooking her chin in Ten’s direction. “Cos my friend here-he really isn’t that important, to be honest. Y’see he’s just an extra, an adjunct. Really doesn’t matter. It’s me who you really need to watch out for. Cos see?” she flicked her sonic back out of her sleeve and held it up, “I’ve got this. Know what this is? Hmm?”
The Eighth Doctor cocked his head. Seeing the object tickled something in the back of his consciousness, but he just continued to stare at her as she moved and talked, moved and talked.
“This is my weapon. I’m the only one that has it. So I am your enemy. Look at me.”
She continued to talk. As she did so, she drew his attention in with her voice-continued to move around him in a circle, continued to hold his gaze, continued to keep his eyes off Ten and on her.
She used her voice like a drug, infecting him, befuddling him… hypnotizing him. He wasn’t really paying attention to the words she was saying, only the rhythmic sound of her voice. She spoke slowly, deliberately, letting the sound wash over him, like silkily petting a cat. She rolled her r’s and rounded her o’s-she whispered parts to draw him in, lull him, soothe him. She used every trick in the book. She would have even put the Master’s mesmerizing abilities to shame.
The Eighth Doctor’s face grew slack, the lines deepening on either side of his mouth in relaxation. His eyes lost the glint of rage and grew peaceful and docile again, resembling more of his old agreeable self, before they were ravaged by the dreadful Time War. He soon found he felt all warm and hazy inside, as though he’d fallen asleep in the light of the sun, curled up with a book in his favourite chair in the console room by the fire…
His eyes may have begun to droop, but he’d still managed to keep hold of the gun. She couldn’t chance using the sonic-not with only one good hand-but he did appear befuddled enough to risk explaining things to Ten, who was still following directly opposite her, his eyes wide in fear, considerably wary of the direction things were taking, but afraid to speak lest he should break her hold on the Eighth Doctor.
“-Cos you know this is how it has to be,” she said, staring at her Eighth self, but directing her words to Ten. “You know that all of this is impossible-you and I, traveling together-It’s not right... And if the Timelords were still here they’d have stopped us-would have put it right. Cos this shouldn’t have happened! It was all my fault. I get that now…” While she was still focused on Eight, she could see the Tenth Doctor shaking his head vigorously in her peripheral vision. “Don’t lie to me, not now, not after everything. Cos Jack, River-even Mickey saw it-they knew. And I didn’t. I denied it for so long. But now I admit that I was wrong-a vain old woman’s mistake.” She smiled a sad, crooked smile. “They used to say we traveled with companions to remind us of death-our ‘memento mori.’ But I held onto you because you kept me from remembering. And I made the whole universe pay for that vanity. But I can’t anymore. And here’s where it all gets sorted…”
“NO!” yelled Ten-snapping the Eighth Doctor out of his trance, causing him to roar:
“I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU-“
“DON’T YOU DARE!!” shouted Twelve, raising her sonic and pulling his focus back off Ten. “ALL I HAVE TO DO IS PULL THIS TRIGGER!” she threatened, yanking on the O-ring-but the Trap Box system would never work without her other hand.
Ignorant of her bluff, the Eighth Doctor spun between them like a manic duck in a carnival fete shooting game, sweating and grimacing, unsure of where to point his gun.
The Tenth Doctor flinched to move forward.
“Ten, don’t you dare!” she warned and drew apart, drawing their Eighth incarnation closer to her. “Don’t you see?” she whispered, “This has to happen!”
“No…” Ten said, helplessly.
“I thought for a long time that I wanted my own time, but now I understand that it was never to be. We can’t all get what we want. And that’s okay, it’s right…”
“WHY DON’T YOU SHUT UP!?” screamed the Eighth Doctor. “THERE’S SO MUCH NOISE IN MY HEAD!!!” His voice was between a frightened whine and a raw, enraged shriek. His graying curls shook with his inner torment.
“NO, I WON’T!” Twelve yelled back. “Because we never shut up! Never! It’s our most annoying and our most endearing quality! And it usually works, too. Usually… But not this time. Cos I have to do this. This is the only solution. There can only be one of us, and it has to be you, Ten,” she said it to Ten, but was still looking at the Eighth Doctor, who was shaking his head clear of the voices that never stopped, his fingers twitching on the gun, still aimed at her.
Twelve’s voice began to thicken. “You’ll go on. This buys you time. If it’s you, then I’m down to my last go-round. This way you’ll have the time to work out a solution, find an extension to the twelve regenerations… Doctor, I do this willingly…”
“Please, don’t…” begged Ten. “I can’t…”
“Sure you can, old boy,” she said, the tears running down her face, evident now in the murky russet dawn. She finally turned to look him square in the face. “Cos you… you can do so much m-“
The Tenth Doctor saw the blood spurting out of the back of her head before he ever heard the shot ring out.
But ring out it did…
“NO!” He screamed out all the air in his lungs as he lunged for the Doctor.
Twelve’s body made an awkward and limp impact. He was over to her in an instant.
She was still clutching her sonic as she hit the ground.
The Eighth Doctor’s face twisted in confusion. He saw the gun in his hand, the body on the ground, the man by her side yelling in horror. The Zagreus part of him evaporated like fog burning off in the sunlight, and the Eighth Doctor’s confusion turned into horrific realization that he had killed. He shrieked in anguish, frightened of himself, what he had become and the sounds and sights of the Time War raging around him. As the visions of the mortar attacks rained down around him, his poor disorganized mind reacted in terror and self-loathing and he held his head and wailed.
Watching Twelve’s blood rush out onto the rocks, Ten felt the fire seethe within him, he felt the rage burning him up inside. He saw his Eighth self, apparently overcome, clutching at his head-at the voices-and screaming at the images assaulting him inside.
The Tenth Doctor took his chance.
He snatched the Twelfth Doctor’s sonic out of her lifeless hand. Scree went flying as he twisted to take his shot.
He reached up, aimed in the Eighth Doctor’s direction and depressed the hidden button on her sonic with his left hand. The air around them reverberated with the strange, low, resonant vibrating sound that built to a loud, churning humming as the Trap Box system activated. A greenish-coloured plasma surrounded the Eighth Doctor, rendering him immobile. Shouting out his anguish and pulling the O-ring back, Ten drew his former self out of the universe with his right hand like a phlebotomist sucking blood from an engorged vein.
The Eighth Doctor’s shrieking matched Ten’s grief-stricken sobs.
Ten drew the O-ring back as far as it would go, siphoning Eight’s essence out of existence.
And with a blast of wind and a loud whoooosh, the Eighth Doctor was gone.
The universe was safe again, but the Tenth Doctor just felt numb.
He opened his hands helplessly. The sonic rolled out of his hand and fell into the crushed, blackened gravel with a clink.
He was back over by Twelve’s side before it even hit the ground. Now he truly needed to see what her precise injury was…
And why she wasn’t getting up…
He soon saw that the Eighth Doctor had shot Twelve in very close range, the path of the ammunition running through her left temple, blowing out the back of her skull. Her precious crimson blood spattered the stony, burnt umber ground behind her for several meters.
She was dead.
The Twelfth Doctor was dead…
“Oh-h-no!” His shaking hands covered his hiccupping gasp.
The absolute horror and complete pointlessness of what had just occurred overwhelmed him. He sank to the ground, sobbing over the body of his future incarnation and friend. Sharp pebbles dug into his bony knees, but he didn’t care-he actually liked the pain. He felt he deserved to feel nothing else now. Because this wasn’t supposed to be how it happened! If anyone was supposed to have gone it would should have been him-the adjunct, the extra, the spare.
She had literally taken the bullet for him.
She had done what he could never have done-indeed, none of his former selves could have done.
She had died.
Sure, they all “died” in the end-each incarnation had all sacrificed themselves in one form or another over the years-whether they’d died to protect a planet, a galaxy, all of creation, or a beloved companion. But this woman, this strange, impossible woman had made the ultimate sacrifice so that he, the Doctor-an earlier incarnation-could accomplish what she could not, and could have a little more time.
Because the truth of the matter was that no matter how lonely he had become, no matter how cursed he felt, how exhausted and world-weary he was-no matter what face he wore or what life he was on-he always wanted one more. Just one more. One more chance to fly his TARDIS through all of time and space. One more chance to see what he’d never seen before, have one more adventure, meet one more amazing person. Try once more to make things right…
And no matter how virulently he might hate himself for all of his shortcomings and failures, there was always tomorrow to entertain him, to entice him, and distract him.
Not only had she given him life, she’d given him all of her tomorrows…
He knew he didn’t deserve it.
He dug his fingers into her bloodied, black coat and pulled her lifeless body up to him. Clutching her to him, he held her to his chest, rocking her and howling up at the ruined sky of his beloved Gallifrey, this planet that had given him everything, but had also demanded and taken so much.
The Gallifreyan early morning suns were warming the air but she was cold when he finally laid her back down on the ground. He’d prayed to Rassilon, Omega and the Eternals that she might regenerate. She never did. The wound was fatal, she’d died instantaneously with no chance to trigger the regeneration, just as she’d probably predicted. But he waited anyway. He waited even longer than he’d waited for Jenny, hoping just maybe…
Still… nothing.
For a long time he sat in the utter stillness and silence. For the first time since they’d materialized on the planet his mind was still, the memories had abated. There were no visions, no echoes of the past, no haunting voices-there wasn’t even a breeze.
Finally, he allowed himself to admit that it was over. She really wasn’t coming back.
He knew what he had to do.
Without a second thought, he took off his camel coat and wrapped her in it. Then he picked her sonic up off the ground, aimed it at the TARDIS and brought it back into synch. Having difficulty taking his eyes off her, he walked the several meters back to the TARDIS to fetch a spade and a gallon of petrol.
He had work to do.
But first he needed to finish the mission. After all, it’s what she’d died for. Once in the TARDIS he took out Twelve’s sonic and angrily thrust it into the port of the containment vessel. He depressed the button.
The Eighth Doctor’s bio-essence was downloaded into the TARDIS Matrix amid a strange humming. Afterwards, he stuffed Twelve’s sonic screwdriver back into his inside suit jacket pocket with revulsion.
It was over.
Just about.
On weary legs he walked back to Twelve’s body with the spade.
He’d left the petrol behind on the TARDIS.
He just couldn’t do it.
He’d loved her so much that he couldn’t destroy her, no matter what risk leaving her body would present.
So he dug a hole instead.
And as he dug he let his own tormented thoughts wash over him. He remembered his family and old companions-who felt just as much as kin-who’d disappeared into the ether of time. He felt their losses gnaw at his bones from the inside, leaving him hollow and brittle. It was a wonder to him that he even had any strength left to stand.
As he dug, the memories overwhelmed him. If the emotional effects of The Moment augmented them he didn’t know and no longer cared. He saw the faces of his friends and family as well as the faces of those nameless multitudes that had died so he could live-those who had sacrificed themselves freely and those whom he’d tricked to their deaths.
He saw Adric and C’rizz explode; Jamie and Donna forget him; Charley, Tegan and Martha walk away from him; River sacrifice herself and Amy pointlessly die; and Rose... Well, he’d left her in the end, hadn’t he?
The love of his life and he’d just left her behind. What the hell had he been thinking?
And now Twelve… His Twelfth self was added to the tally in his head of the missing, the lost and the dead.
And he could only stand there and watch, as usual.
And people actually adored him?
His spade scraped against the rocks. His stomach heaved at the thought of placing Twelve’s tender, vulnerable body under all these sharp rocks. He tasted the salt of his tears and heard the raggedness of his breath, but still he dug on.
The pain of everything made him wish that the crack in Amy’s wall had erased him for good!
He dug until the suns had risen and the murky dawn turned into a brighter, greenish diffused morning. It was an ordinary morning for an extraordinary event: The burial of the Doctor, The Doctor. How ironic that he would be the only person in attendance… He choked back his bitter, teary laugh.
He dug until he decided to stop, not because he had run out of tears; for he knew that that well might never run dry…
His stomach lurched as her body crumpled awkwardly into the grave, despite his care. As he arranged her in the grave, he ran his finger over her injured hand and through the silver streak in her hair. He purposefully tucked the shortest side of her asymmetrical hair back behind her ear-just as she always did-being careful to avoid the gaping, ugly, traitorous wound in the side of her head. His tears made clean rivulets on her face as he kissed the undamaged side of her head. Overtaken by the need to have something of hers close to him, he suddenly and carefully began to remove her black coat. He held the smart, black, military-styled coat up to his face and breathed her scent in. Somehow he felt better having it, despite the bloodstains.
He bent back down and carefully re-wrapped her in his own old, brown coat.
It was true he’d loved that coat, but as far as sacrifices went, it was the least he could do. He just felt that while he was leaving part of himself behind in her, he might as well leave part of his old self behind, too-because he knew he would never again be the same after leaving here.
But before he began the arduous task of covering her body, he pulled an object out of his suit jacket that had been poking him in the ribs.
It was her new sonic screwdriver.
He hated it.
This thing that had seen the death of two women he cared for; this thing that kept popping up, reminding him of the timelines, of his inescapable future-of his failures. With a sneer he bent down and tucked it into the inside pocket of her shimmering jacquard suitjacket-right over her hearts. Then he replaced her snugly into his old coat-the Twelfth Doctor’s shroud.
He saw leaving the sonic behind as an impudent taunt to Fate.
Let history re-write itself now, he thought, knowing that it could never be buried here and end up in River Song’s possession years from now. Let’s just see how the timelines deal with that! After all, he’d seen a lot of things, and never did believe in destiny. He gloated briefly about thumbing his nose at providence, and then sighed, remembering his task…
Bending over, he began gently placing the rocks he’d dug up back into the grave, arranging them carefully over her body.
Nobody would ever find her here, he decided. Buried on a ruined, blighted planet. Who could possibly come here? What could they possibly hope to find?
Everybody in the galaxy knew to stay away from here.
There was nothing but ghosts here anyway.
Bloodstained, dirty, exhausted and heartsbroken, he dragged himself back into the TARDIS… Now his TARDIS…
He’d never felt more lost in his long lives than when he dematerialized.
Alone again.
A little under an hour after he left, two figures appeared on the horizon in a blue haze and a loud POP.
They both carried spades…
and hope…
To be continued in Chapter 17: Shelf Life…
As usual, drawing by my lovely BetaBabe, akkajemo!
Hold onto your hats, bbs: We're only getting started!