Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 24: Killing Time
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 24: Killing Time
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Valeyard!Ten, Twelfth Doctor, River, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: If he could only get inside, he would gain access to the Gallifreyan Matrix and be able to alter a few details to some events that had occurred over the years-events that had resulted in far from satisfactory outcomes...
Word Count: 2,444
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 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18
Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23
Ordinarily, it would have been a pleasant, sunny day on Estannia Sylvannatonna. The sluggish wind would have smelled sweetly of honeysuckle as it fluttered the coattails of the Tenth Doctor’s black coat like butterflies.
But not today.
Caught below a gigantic rift, the planet was doing everything it could to survive. In fact, getting ripped apart by the cosmic and temporal forces at work here was a very distinct possibility.
Because of the massive rift energy, the winds had picked up, among other things. Even from his vantage point on the third of five garden tiers of the temple, he could witness the rift playing havoc with the planet. A massive greenish portal had streaked open, and it was growing. Winds overhead pushed the clouds around the atmosphere like toy trains-giant, billowing grey and white puffs undulated and then pulled away from each other like taffy as they were blown across the sky. Wide, streaking rays of light from the planet’s only sun shone down in-between the movement of the clouds and then disappeared as soon as the light hit the ground, diffused by more unnaturally moving clouds. The light constantly changed from sunny to hazy to black and then stormy, the sky overhead was a massive projection of live time-lapse photography.
While it was true that he may have had a hand in doing this-bringing about the rift-delivering this planet from ruin was not Ten’s main objective. In fact, saving them was quite a bit down on the list.
Quite a bit down, indeed…
He was hunched over the network concealment coupling that was imbedded in a mound of white marble, attempting to break his way into the Matrix-or at least attempting to get the interface to recognise him and allow him access to the extradimensionally transcendental entry port. Although this was proving very difficult to say the least.
If he could only get inside, he would gain access to the Gallifreyan Matrix and be able to alter a few details to some events that had occurred over the years-events that had resulted in far from satisfactory outcomes…
And yet, before the Gem of Salvation had led him here, he’d made a pit stop in time-weeeell, a few, actually-but the first one was to acquire the Skasis Paradigm. Had a bit of a bother about it, too, as no one had actually yet discovered what the algorithm really was! But the gem had led him to all the correct avenues until he cracked the code!
He’d tested it out, too. And while his results weren’t exactly what he’d intended, he had gotten a result: Donna’s memory had survived intact!
Unfortunately, he’d lost Martha…
But he would fix all that once he’d gotten inside the Matrix! He could fix all of it now!
He’d tried to end the Time War, too, but all he’d managed was time slippage-and this terribly inconvenient, gigantic instability over Estannia Sylvannatonna …
He needed the added power of the Matrix to get the job done now.
After this initial glitch, he had the telepathic gem lead him to the only surviving portal opportunity to access the Matrix. All the others had been wiped out. Yet even if they’d remained on Gallifrey, they would still have needed the Key of Rassilon to open the portal points to gain access. Of course this was not to be confused with the Great Key of Rassilon, which was something altogether different (leave it to megalomaniacal leaders to have confusing and similar-sounding gadgets!). For while he’d destroyed the Great Key once he’d made and used The Moment, the (regular old) Key of Rassilon was just for opening the Matrix.
In any case, that, too, was destroyed after The Moment.
So boom, all gone.
But he figured out that he could make another Key of Rassilon! After all, that’s all the original had been: An invention of Rassilon’s, a man-made thing. To be sure, it was an amazing thing, a wonderfully difficult thing of advanced technology fashioned from a mind that was as craftily brilliant as it was bolshie and megalomaniacal-but still, it was just a thing. And things could be duplicated, if you had the right know-how.
Fortunately, the Doctor was brilliant…
Sure, it had taken him a few days, but what were days to a Timelord?
So he had the key, but the wretched thing didn’t work yet!
Once again he tried to shove the key he’d fashioned into the lock he’d uncovered under an engraved tile in the centre of the temple, but it refused to open.
He grunted in frustration and scraped his knuckles across the hard marble mound with his futile effort.
“Blast!” he shouted, sucking on his fingers.
He had no idea why his contraption wasn’t working.
He looked at the countryside stretching out below him, lit by the fantastical, cataclysmic light show from above, and thought of how brilliant he was to have found that the entry to the Matrix would be here, inside a multi-tiered garden temple that the locals revered simply because they came over all tingly and woozy in its midst like a bunch of hopped-up pikeys.
But unlike the pyramid-shaped gargantuan in ancient Babylonia that held greenery on its outer terraces, the Temples of Estannia Sylvannatonna were elegant and refined, whilst equally ancient and majestic.
They were shrouded in mystery as well, for there were no records of them being made. It was widely believed that the aboriginal peoples of the planet had created them long before they’d died out-but nobody remembered who they were or what had become of them.
Whoever had constructed them, they’d eschewed a monolithic man-made creation in favor of a design that predominantly featured landscaping over architecture. Instead of wide terraces jutting out from a stone temple, there were a series of differently shaped planes that were cantilevered off from a massive central pillar. Each plane was mostly circular, varied in height and planted with sumptuous semi-tropical greenery that flourished in the rich, humid air. Stone stairways zig-zagged up to each succeeding level, bringing the pilgrim up to the smaller top section where a small stone rotunda-a gazebo type of building-allowed the visitor to meditate amid the peaceful energy of the spiritual vortices, enshrouded in lush greens and the colourful plumage of nature.
Each level was a veritable multi-national queue, dripping with deciduous and compatible alien strains of flora. Deep, rich reds cozied up next to pale, fragile pinks and virulent violets-all meticulously manicured and planted within structured borders, raised beds and ribbons of colour wrapping around hardscape design, infusing the air with their sweet and pungent perfumes. Indeed, the temple itself was a monument to the control of the wilds of the psyche-taming the seemingly untamable-seen in the metaphor of the orderliness of wild nature, and in the paradox of the invigorating stillness of the spiritual vortices themselves.
Despite the fact that the Estan-Sylvannotonians had not constructed the temples, they still revered them. In a rare show of evolutional largesse, they developed their own culture to mirror of what they found in the bafflingly wondrous structures that sparsely dotted their planet. They developed a similar aesthetic in kind and cultivated a deep respect for the natural beauty of their land. Pilgrims, students and visitors from across the universe came to walk amongst the glorious, elegant beauty of the garden and experience the renewing, tingling effects of the extraordinary forces at work in the land.
And they were fools.
Right bloody fools.
These idiots had no idea what they had in their midst! They had no comprehension of the kind of power they’d literally been sitting on for eons!
However today there was nobody around.
Weeell, there had been, earlier. But Ten had seen to it that they were cleared away so he could work unmolested in his task to open the portal to the Matrix.
It was a good thing he had remembered to remove Twelve’s squareness gun from her body before he’d buried her. When he’d shot the pilgrims with it they’d just disappeared into themselves like water going down a drain…
Six pilgrims. There’d been six pilgrims in the way.
But it was ok. He could fix this later.
He would fix this later.
Cos they weren’t dead. Not really. After all, once he gained access to the Matrix he could change that-he would change so much! So clearly, this didn’t count. So easy it was, to change time. He saw that now. And while Time could be a fragile thing, even if he couldn’t bring them back then they would become acceptable collateral damage in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, what he was trying to achieve was more important-far more important. Besides, so many others had died for him before in the name of Making The Universe Better, so how was this any different? And if they had truly known what was at stake they undoubtedly would have volunteered to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
He just hadn’t had time to explain…
But it was ok. He would fix it later anyway.
If only he could get the bloody key to work!
His knuckles still smarting, he stood up and kicked at the lock. The winds that violently battered his coat almost knocked him over. Glancing down to inspect his key, he discovered that one of the teeth had bent.
This wouldn’t do at all.
Now he had to go back upstairs two levels to the TARDIS and mend it!
A high-pitched squeal of rubber against marble sang out as he gave the mound one last kick before heading back to the TARDIS.
When the three figures suddenly appeared on the lush fourth level in a bright, flashing blue vapor, Ten was inside his TARDIS, and didn’t hear a thing. The gusts assaulting the planet completely covered the usual loud buzzing pop that accompanied them. They stood in a huddle around the ETM to buffet the wind.
“I don’t see him,” said Jack, turning into the wind to scan the levels below. “I don’t see anybody.”
“Well, it’s kinda hard to concentrate on reaching spiritual oneness with that great big honking thing breathing down your neck,” said the Doctor, pointing to the gigantic rift in the sky above them. “He could be anywhere.”
“There’s quite a lot of shrubbery here,” yelled River over the gale. “Frankly it’s rather hard to see anything with this weird light and the winds moving everything about. He could be anywhere!”
The Doctor looked around. She ignored the odd light show in the sky. The wind didn’t faze her anymore, either. She’d rather expected it, actually.
But her chest constricted at the sight of her TARDIS, one level above them, just to the front of the small, marble columned rotunda. She’d only spent a few days without her, but to the Doctor it had felt too long.
She yearned to simply walk in, set the controls and fly away-far away-but she couldn’t.
She had a job to do.
She glanced at River, who caught her eye and then she glanced meaningfully back at the TARDIS. River followed the Doctor’s gaze up to the timeship on the top tier. Wordlessly, the Doctor grasped River’s hand. She pursed her lips and nodded to her, hooking her chin up towards the TARDIS.
River knew what to do. They’d been over the plan many times. She quickly squeezed the Doctor’s hand in response and took the rucksack from Jack. She turned and climbed up the stairs, hefting the ETM to the top level. Once upstairs, she knew to conceal herself and await her signal.
The Doctor plucked at her ruffled satin shirt and straightened the collar of her jacket that had flipped up in the wind. “C’mon,” she murmured to Jack once River was gone. “Showtime.”
Together, they commenced downstairs to the third level where the Psycho-Telemetric Circuit had strongly registered Ten’s genetic signature earlier. They were halfway down the staircase when they heard a beeping noise from Jack’s wristband. Readings registered a humanoid descending quickly from above them. Jack and the Doctor reached the third level hurriedly and threw themselves behind a tall grouping of ferns under the staircase and waited.
Soon they saw Ten’s spiky hair whipping and thrashing about in the gusts. The Twelfth Doctor’s black coat swept behind him like a cape as he stalked over to a small mound of marble and eyed it. “Gonna work this time?” he said to no one in particular, and squatted to fit the key in the lock.
The change in his appearance was a shock to the Doctor. She saw a dark charcoal suit and black tie had replaced his comforting and familiar brown pinstripes. His face looked more gaunt and haggard, and she could see a faint graying at his temples.
Her hearts ached; he looked like a man in deep grief.
Only she knew better. She’d seen and felt the changes he’d made, the chaos he’d wrought: Donna, the Death Winds, the Temporal Surge on Gallifrey, Mickey missing from his place in the universe and the loss of Martha!
What else had happened that she hadn’t known about yet? How much further had he descended down the rabbit hole?
No, there was no way around it. No matter how much she cared about him, no matter how guilty she felt for putting him through this pain, no matter how devastated he was--he still had to be stopped.
But just like everyone else, he would get a chance to atone and put things right again…
Valeyard or no Valeyard, he was still her Ten, and she was still the Doctor.
There had to be a way to reach him.
Maybe all it would take would be to see her?
She squared herself to go to him.
But Jack pulled her down.
“Listen!” he hissed, his eyes giant with fear.
Even over the beating winds, they could hear the mechanical humming noise like several small jet engines that came from above.
From his place squatted above the lock to the access portal, the Tenth Doctor shielded his eyes from the sudden, manic rays of sun to search for the origin of the strange sound.
Upon finding it, his eyes widened in fear, too. He stood hastily and stumbled backwards.
Jack and the Twelfth Doctor peeked through the thrashing, verdant fronds of the ferociously shifting ferns to see the source of his alarm.
They heard it before they saw it, a noise so evil it could rupture the violence of time and reality ripping itself apart: The high-pitched, shrieking voice of Hatred incarnate:
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
To be continued in Chapter 25: Zero Hour…
* In addition to the usual Nu Who references, for you Classic DW fans and students of DW lore: Yes, there is a difference between The Key of Rassilon and The Great Key of Rassilon… God, how that man loved things named after him!:
“The Key of Rassilon allows physical access to the Matrix, for maintenance of this `micro-universe` repository of Time Lord knowledge. Confusingly, this is a separate artifact from the so called Great Key of Rassilon, that provides direct tapping of the near limitless energies of the Eye of Harmony, and is cited as a vital component part of the demat gun (a weapon of mass destruction); it is also hinted that this `key` is essential to accessing the other relative dimensions in time, in The Invasion of Time.” --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rassilon