Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 26: Time for a Change
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 26: Time for a Change
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, River, Jack
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: “It’s over, Ten,” she said firmly. “Your vengeance triggered the Valeyard and now I have to put it right. Do you hear me? You’re the Valeyard, Ten!”
Word Count: 5,659
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Character Death
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: Specifically River-her parentage and her timeline, which while scattered, is NOT completely back-to-front…
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 Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Several Minutes Earlier…
River came around from her hiding place after the Valeyard had left the TARDIS and arranged herself on the ground on her stomach to take the shot. Kicking her legs outwards, she used her toes and thighs to keep herself grounded. The Torchwood issue sniper rifle was laid out in front of her, with the scope trained on the two Doctors. As her hands mechanically positioned the gun, traces of metal and oil wafted up to her, along with the sweet smell of grass from her grinding elbows.
The Daleks had just left-(wasn’t that something?)-and now she just had to wait for the Doctor’s plan to pan out. Soon she would have to scurry inside with the ETM, the coffin-sized box the Doctor had made the day before that would transport a single occupant into the Matrix, once they re-established a connection-but now she was waiting to see if the Tenth Doctor could be swayed, or not…
Eying the terrain below her, River looked out over the lush, multi-tiered garden temple. Yes, certainly much more impressive than the Hanging Babylonian Gardens, she thought to herself. She carefully watched the two figures of the Doctors, arguing below on the third level. She steadied herself internally-it didn’t appear that the Doctor’s attempt to persuade her former self was going well. She glanced over to her father’s hiding place a few meters away from the Doctors and wondered how he had been able to accept his role in the Doctor’s plan. As a result of her own inner conflict, she fought with herself to stay on task, and her focus drifted.
Yet as her eyes scanned the entire structure of the temple below, something seemed curiously familiar about the design of the landscape…
She turned her head and glanced at the curved, open metal roof embedded in the rotunda behind her…
It was in the shape of a Gallifreyan symbol!
She whipped her head around again and looked at the entirety of the landscape. She noticed the swirl of the water features and brightly coloured plants, the raked zen garden gravel paths, and the cutouts in the structure of the circular levels themselves-even the placement of the stairways…
Suddenly, in her mind’s eye, the multi-tiered image rotated and popped into position, and a giant three-dimensional puzzle snapped into place: An optical illusion, unmasked…
Taken together, if one could see the entire temple structure from a bird’s eye view, it formed one single Gallifreyan word:
Keyhole!
She gasped, understanding that the mysterious, ancient civilisation that had erected these beautiful structures and then disappeared were Gallifreyans! Perhaps they had constructed them as backup systems into the Matrix and left, their purpose only to be forgotten, erased by Time?
Another archeological mystery somewhat resolved, she quickly brought her focus back to her mission:
The Doctor was still counting on her.
She stayed low, out of sight, and waited for the signal.
This time she was going to do exactly as she’d been told.
But it didn’t mean she liked it.
Two Days Before, At Torchwood…
The Twelfth Doctor took a bite of her first post-resurrection sandwich and stared off into space. The universe was still in danger. The Valeyard was out there-set loose by her own miscalculation. He was shredding timelines with his selfish, misguided despair-and she was still the only one who could stop it.
But at least she had help. She wasn’t alone.
“We have to kill Ten, don’t we?” River’s voice was strangely distant and hollow, but resolute.
Sometimes River was just as clinical and calculated as her.
The Doctor swallowed and eyed her over her sandwich, wondering briefly if she should comment on the irony of the pot calling the kettle black…
For once, she thought better of it.
“Yes,” she replied simply, her voice like a stone tossed into a deep, stagnant well. “Possibly... If it comes to that,” she added quickly. “But we’re going to give him a choice first.”
Of course she would. That’s what she always did.
“But if you can’t reach him?”
“Then, yes,” muttered the Doctor. “He has to be stopped.”
Jack sighed and squeezed his forehead in resignation. He’d had a feeling this was coming. “You’ve got a plan, then?”
“Of course,” answered the Doctor. “But you’re not going to like it…”
Back At The Matrix Portal On Estannia Sylvannatonna…
Ten gasped at the blood on his shirt-he’d been shot!
“What have you done…?” he gasped.
“Like I said,” Twelve said evenly through her grimacing face, “fixing things...” She pulled aside her own shimmering jacquard suit jacket to reveal an oppositely matching hole, which too had begun to bleed. While standing in front of him, she had lined herself up perfectly for a single shot to rip diagonally through one of the Twelfth Doctor’s hearts, through her body, and into the opposite heart of the Tenth Doctor.
Her hand on his shoulder had been the signal.
With one shot they’d each lost one heart.
It hurt like hell.
“How?” he gasped, clutching at his chest.
She gave him a one-word answer: “River.”
“NO!” he exclaimed more strongly-livid that he’d been played by his future self-and hardly ready to capitulate to defeat.
“It’s over, Ten,” she said firmly. “Your vengeance triggered the Valeyard and now I have to put it right. Do you hear me? You’re the Valeyard, Ten!” She emphasised it angrily to get the point across. His eyes snapped to hers. She thought she caught just a glimmer of comprehension as his lips parted slightly.
“The… Valeyard?” Ten asked in a small voice.
Twelve nodded back sadly.
A change came over the Tenth Doctor’s face. More than simply pain or fear, it was awareness. His face twisted in a panic as he thought about it further. The Valeyard? That’s not what he wanted, not at all!
“And that’s my mistake,” Twelve confessed, “thinking that you could go on without me. All those other bio-echoes were diluted-had flaws-but for some reason I’d insisted you were different. Sure you were intact, you were from the same time continuum-but I’d forgotten one thing: When you regenerated-when I regenerated,” she corrected herself, “you were too damaged. You shouldn’t have gotten any more time, cos everything would have only come to this. The TARDIS didn’t dilute you, she didn’t need to-you’d diluted yourself! Your incarnation was too unstable after Mars to go on. While we may always have trouble accepting what is, you became steeped in self-righteousness, and that made you dangerous. Death was the only reward the universe could afford to give us. Death was the only thing we deserved… Captain Adelaide Brooke was right, the Timelord Victorious was wrong, and left unchecked, you became the Valeyard. So I have to stop you…”
Ten flinched at Adelaide’s name but listened intently to her words. Could it be true? Had he gone too far, again?
Shame and upset twisted his mouth into a pout, “I just wanted to put things right...” His voice cracked and he sounded much, much younger than his thousand years…
The Twelfth Doctor nodded again and gently straightened his black silk tie. “I know.” She winced with pain. “I know better than anyone.”
Suddenly she felt so tired.
Two Days Before, At Torchwood…
“Well, if we won’t like your plan, why ask us to go with it in the first place?” asked River soberly.
“Because it’s the best one I can come up with, and I need you two to help me carry it out.”
“Oh, so you need us now?” Jack’s voice was dry and brittle, a rustle of paper in a western wind.
The Doctor set her tea down and stared at her hands, newly washed and free of the scarred and bloody reminder of what she’d just lived through, died from and been healed of. She sighed. “Jack, I had my reasons-we had our reasons-for not including you and River, Ten and I… Whether they were good enough reasons, or viable enough reasons isn’t important now. What’s done is done. And just like I’m not sitting here arguing with the two of you about whether or not you should have dug me up and resurrected me, I ask you two not to judge me for my decisions. None of them were particularly easy for me to make, but I made them. I’m sorry if they caused you pain. Believe me, they caused me plenty…”
She looked off into the distance, her eyes watery. They waited in reproved silence for a moment until she continued, each speculating at precisely what she might have encountered on that harsh Gallifreyan morning, only days ago.
“We’re going to need to make it into the Matrix,” said Twelve. She turned to Jack. That’s where you come in. I’m not under any illusions that I’m physically stronger than my Tenth self. If he wants to get into the Matrix to change things then he’s going to want to keep me out of it once he knows I disapprove. And he’ll probably try to restrain me physically if it comes to that. So we need to get him to the point where he either complies or has no choice but to let us in.”
“Y’mean physically incapacitate him…”
“Fatally so,” said the Doctor, bluntly, and then picked on her bottom lip in trepidation. She had to admit, she didn’t like the plan that had grown in her mind, but she really didn’t see any other choice, either.
“So if Jack’s responsible for getting you all inside the Matrix…” River’s mind was already working up to speed, as usual. She was beginning to piece together part of what the Doctor intended. “Then, that makes me responsible for incapacitating him…” She took a big breath in realization and turned to the Doctor for clarification. “Doesn’t it?” she asked, worry coiling in her blue eyes.
The Doctor studied her, “I warned you that you wouldn’t like my plan…” River’s lips pursed. “You can call me a bastard again if it helps…” Twelve added dryly.
River gave her a very brief, tight smile that evaporated as soon as it appeared.
“We’ll also need get all the old incarnation’s bio-data into the Matrix that’s currently being stored in the TARDIS,” said Twelve. “And that’s where you can show me how great your piloting skills are…”
River’s mass of blonde curls wobbled as she shook her head. “I really hate you sometimes…” she breathed.
“I know,” said the Doctor quietly. “And I wish that was all there was to it, all I needed to ask of you both…” She picked at her sparkly lacquered nails that she’d only just repainted. “But there’s more. And I’m sorry, I really am, but you’ll both have to promise me that you won’t interrupt-you won’t try to dissuade me or refuse me-because this next part isn’t so easy…”
Both father and daughter exhaled with dread.
“Tell us…”
Back At The Matrix Portal On Estannia Sylvannatonna…
Injured and bleeding, the two Doctors were holding each other up above the gleaming white lock of the portal.
They still needed each other.
Twelve studied Ten’s face as he wrestled with his shock and dawning self-awareness. She saw hope in Ten’s hesitation. He seemed genuinely horror-struck that he had become the mythical “Valeyard”-the dark, destructive, self-interested and mysterious future-self that every incarnation since their Sixth had dreaded meeting again, let alone becoming.
And then he began to understand what the Twelfth Doctor had in store.
“But wait!” he blurted (looking eerily like Donna in her moment of realisation in their last day of traveling together, so many years ago), “you… That means you’ll have to-You can’t--”
“Castor and Pollux, baby,” she replied. “No, Ten,” she replied off his look of protest, “The chaos is over. It’s time to take our place in the constellations, just like the mythos. It’s time for my redemption…and my ‘ultimate sacrifice…’” She pressed a hand to her wound to make the blood flow, once again matting down the recently cleaned red satin of her shirt with her crimson blood. “And now, here’s the bit about the Key of Rassilon that you never knew-and a clue that Donna, as usual, cannily picked up on and handed me unawares: Blood sacrifice! Rassilon had a bit of his own Timelord DNA imbedded in that key! It was our Rassilon Imprimatur that helped us gain access to the Matrix all those years-that little spark that makes us special, links us with our TARDISes, lets us travel through time, allows us to regenerate-makes us Timelords! And that is the piece of the puzzle you hadn’t figured out.”
She flicked her bloodied hand above the key in the lock next to them, sending scarlet spatters of it onto the ground around them. The freckles of blood stained the white marble flesh of the lock that still had the key inside it, and with a great click and a snapping sound, the entry port of the Matrix suddenly opened up-revealing a round, manhole-sized gap in the ground. It emitted a blinding yellowish-white light straight up into the rift-infested sky.
“Open says me,” she muttered.
He stared at the hole in the Twelfth Doctor’s blouse, once again stained with her blood, once again draining her lifeforce, and remembered what he had thought when he wore her face: That there was always somebody to apologise to, and that she would always be sacrificing something or another.
Always.
More people were dead because of him.
The entire society of Transboolian colonists, the Shades, six pilgrims at the garden temple, and Martha-all were dead because of him. Twelve was right, if he wasn’t stopped now, there would be more to go. This was so much worse than having saved three people who by rights should have died on Mars only for one of them to take her own life-for he had killed these people this time. Wittingly or unwittingly, he had slaughtered them all, including Martha.
And he’d just boasted to Twelve only minutes ago that he’d become the man he’d always wanted to be…
And now this-His Twelfth self was bailing him out, again.
A sob ripped through him, wracking his shoulders.
Suddenly he couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m ready.”
The Twelfth Doctor let her eyes fall shut. The man who didn’t want to go was finally ready. She took a moment to appreciate that, and then swallowed it down… “So. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?”
He laughed ruefully, flinching with pain. “Thelma and Louise, more like.”
“Which one’s Louise?”
“You are, Twelve,” he said with a small smile. “You are.”
“Thanks.”
She looked down. Their hands had started to glow.
“There were so many places I wanted to go with you…” she said to him, removing River’s Extended-Range Locator bracelet from her wrist.
“Just do me a favour?” he asked as she snapped the bracelet around one of Ten’s glowing wrists.
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes, late at night… when your companion’s asleep…”
She raised an eyebrow to him.
“Play some disco music?”
She grinned. “Deal. I promise: KC and the Sunshine Band until my ears bleed…” Putting one glowing hand on his other shoulder, she shifted him over to her left.
“My Ten…”
“My Twelve,” he grinned back.
“Allons-y?” she asked.
He nodded faintly, his chestnut eyes watery. “Let’s boogie,” he replied with a small, sad smile and a faint twinkle in his eye, homage to times past, and adventures never to be.
With a rustling noise off to the side, Jack emerged from the ferns. His head was light and fuzzy from dread and adrenaline. His voice sounded strained, apologetic. “Doc,” he started, directed at Ten, “I’m sorry… I never wanted-“
“No,” replied the Tenth Doctor, “But it’s what you do: Saving the universe, defending the Earth…even if it is from me,” he said. “Go ahead. Do it, Jack.”
Jack looked to Twelve, who barely nodded her assent. “We haven’t much time, Jack,” she reminded him, showing him the glow of her hands.
He gulped his feelings down, settling for a quick joke, “Y’know, despite all my boasting, I never do very well under pressure-it’s performance anxiety, y’see…” He unholstered his Webley revolver, and stared at it before glancing at Twelve again, hoping she might change her mind about the plan that none of them especially liked.
“It’s okay, Jack” said Ten, turning towards him. “It’s got to be done. I understand.”
It was as close to forgiveness as Jack would get from him.
Jack Adam’s Apple bobbled in his throat involuntarily. After releasing the breath he was holding, Jack snapped off a crisp salute to the Tenth Doctor, who was, and always had been, his friend. Tears skimmed his rugged features as he handled his gun.
Twelve squeezed the Tenth Doctor’s hand and held his gaze. Those chestnut eyes that once again looked so much like hers.
Now she knew why.
A second shot ripped through the Tenth Doctor’s remaining heart, and his alone.
Twelve staggered to hold Ten upright, but slumping, she went down on one knee. “Jack!” she called out, “Please!”
Instantly, he was there. Wrapping his arms around the two of them, he pushed.
All three of them fell into the Matrix portal!
Inside the Matrix…
Jack let both Doctors go as soon as he had gotten them inside.
He’d expected for them all to appear in some glowy white nowhere, or a high-tech, mechanical alien brain or some such. But he was rather unimpressed to see that they were in some sort of quarry…
He really didn’t get it.
But that didn’t matter now.
Because the Tenth Doctor had just died.
Jack stood over them as Twelve held him, kneeling on the gravel. Smoothing out his bloodstained charcoal coloured suit jacket, she whispered things to him in Old High Gallifreyan. He would never know what they were, and he didn’t want to guess.
Fatally shot in his second heart before he’d had the chance to finish the regenerative process, he was dead.
And this time, there would be no resurrections.
He almost couldn’t bear to watch as the Twelfth Doctor whispered her goodbyes to him, but he knew they weren’t out of the woods yet. There were still things that needed to be done.
Twelve ignored the pain in her chest from where she’d been shot as well as the sickeningly familiar dizziness from loss of blood.
Her hands were glowing more now.
It was almost time.
Jack knew from the Doctor’s explanation of her plan the night before that if Ten died in the Matrix, his bio-data would be saved there. The Twelfth Doctor also knew now that his knowledge of the Skasis Paradigm would die with him-because now that they were both here, she could erase those contents of Ten’s memories.
Not wasting any time, as brain death had not yet occurred, she pressed her fingertips to his temples and went in telepathically, removing chunks of time up to just after the point of Twelve’s death on Gallifrey. Working his memories and the timelines in concert from within the powerful Matrix, she erased most everything about the Valeyard, what he’d done and whom he’d killed. She could feel the timelines shimmer and bend as she worked, fixing the damage, undoing what had been done, and reconnecting the original continuums. Unfortunately, she knew she couldn’t erase his appearance on Transboolian, where he’d mistakenly crossed his own timeline; so regrettably, the Death Winds couldn’t be fixed. The colonists on Transboolian would still be destroyed, but the Valeyard would end there, and the rest of the timelines would be safe.
Martha’s death during the Dalek attack on UNIT, however was a different matter. But she already had an idea of how to prevent that, once outside of the Matrix…
Off in the distance, Jack heard a wheezing, mechanical sound:
VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP! VVWOOOORP!
“Doctor,” he said, “it’s time….”
Two Days Before, At Torchwood…
“No, no, no, NO!!!” Jack’s infuriated voice bounced loudly off the walls of the Torchwood canteen. “That’s a crap idea, Doctor! You can’t do this!! I won’t be a party to it!”
The Doctor sighed. Her hands flopped uselessly in her lap. “I told you… it has to be done.”
“But why must it be done?” whispered River.
“Because he’s a part of me.”
“That’s what you keep saying, my love” said River, “but we don’t get it.”
“Look,” the Doctor started, “I’ll explain: When I strapped that GENIE on my head thinking it was a Configurable Neurotransmitter Separator, I threw the switch and I wished to be free. The device pulled the residual bio-data out of me that I was storing, but-“
“The TARDIS spread them out throughout time and space, diluting them to save the universe from immediate annihilation,” finished River.
“Yes,” replied the Doctor. “Only Ten was different. Ten was the only one of them who was completely corporeal, from my own timestream and retained the same memories as me-none of the others had these exact three traits-just Ten.”
“Stellar! Yes-he’s his own man, I get that,” snapped Jack, “Then how does this collection of traits equal-so ‘I must force my regeneration??’”
She winced at his words. She’d just been dug up, she hardly wanted to go through the whole dying process again, but she just didn’t see any other way to fix the problem. Moreover, she knew there wasn’t any other option.
“Help us understand this,” pleaded River.
The Doctor nodded. “It took me a long time to figure out, but it’s simple, really. Cos, he’s literally part of me, see?” she emphasized. “Like two halves to a whole? The others were simply bio-echoes, the leftover bits that are always stored in the Matrix when the connection was still present-but Ten was literally created out of part of me. We were both diluted by the TARDIS to avoid instant universal catastrophe once that GENIE kicked in! Remember on Gallifrey after the resurrection I told you I could have easily ended up the Valeyard if circumstances had been reversed?”
Both River and Jack nodded.
“Remember how I said I could feel that the Tenth Doctor was the Valeyard?”
They nodded again.
“Remember how I said he needed a companion?”
They nodded once more.
“Well, he doesn’t just need a companion, he needs me…”
“Then let’s just go and find him then. Can’t you make him better?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s gonna work like that. I think he’s too far gone.” She looked down at her hands. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you about what happened when you brought me back. Remember I said I saw resurrection portents?”
“Yes.”
“I saw them from his point of view,” she confessed.
“Oh, this is crazy!” Jack exclaimed. “What are you saying?” he asked, with a bite to his voice, “That you’re good twin/evil twin or something??”
Twelve shrugged. “If it helps-“
“No!” yelled Jack, flailing his fist into his leg. “It doesn’t help! And it’s a stupid plan!”
River bit her lip and watched the floor as Jack continued to vent his anger at the Doctor.
“We go through all that to revive you-River has to do God knows what to make the Master happy-and you’re going to waste your second chance like this?!” He turned towards the Doctor, his eyes sparkling with fear even though his words were punishing, “And you want me to be your backup?? To shoot Ten while River gets the ETM in the TARDIS? Be the one to get you guys into the Matrix if you’re too incapacitated? FORGET IT!” he screamed.
“What is this about? That I’m not grateful enough?!” snapped the Doctor. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to ask your permission on how I choose to use this ‘second chance’ as you put it?! Y’know I can’t spend all my days wrapped in cotton wool-or are you just gonna follow me around like some overprotective father?”
River’s voice came to her father’s defense, clipped and acidic, “That’s not fair.”
The Doctor released an exasperated groan. She turned towards River. “You of all people should know that if there was another solution to this I would use it-but there isn’t one. If we work under the assumption that we’re two halves of the same whole, by dying together in the Matrix our bio-essences can properly fuse and be stored simultaneously so the next incarnation can be whole again.”
“But you’ll die, Sweetie. This regeneration of you will be over.”
She flailed her arms in frustration, “So I’ll just regenerate! Why are you so upset?”
Jack’s traitorous words came unbidden from his own mouth, muffled by his own pain, “Because we can’t lose you like this!”
River pursed her lips together, her father having spoken the words that were etched in her own heart. Hot tears prickled at the corner of her eyes.
The Doctor’s anger deflated. She touched her fingertips to her mouth and then to the sides of her jaw, absorbing her perception of Jack’s feelings:
She would be missed.
She-this version of her-would be missed…
She fought back her own tears.
“I’m sorry I have to ask this of you both,” she said quietly. “Please believe me that there just isn’t any other way… The Valeyard and I are of the same person. If he’s going to be stopped, I have to go, too. We recombine, The Matrix absorbs the bio-data, and the new regeneration can move on… It’s the only plan that works…” She sighed. “I’m sorry…”
Back in the Matrix…
With one last Gallifreyan endearment, Twelve kissed Ten’s slack forehead and then stood up. By the time she was standing aside with Jack, Ten’s body had disappeared, absorbed by the Matrix, the Extended-Range Locator bracelet he briefly wore handily left behind on the ground, ready to be homed in on by the ETM.
“I’m ready.”
With her preternatural piloting skills, River set the TARDIS around them in the Matrix, and using the Spatial Overlap function, materialized, ghostlike around the two of them, pulling them both inside and outside the ship.
As the physical substance of the ship grew a little more substantial and opaque, the Twelfth Doctor noticed that her previous incarnation had changed desktop patterns again in her absence.
“Coral again?” she said, and greeted its graceful, curved support structures with a small smile. “I always was fond of this one…”
The TARDIS was caught between materialisation and dematerialisation by design, and Twelve was beginning to feel the heat building inside her cells.
The Doctor turned to the Captain. “Go help River, Jack. I’ll be with you in a moment…”
“No you won’t,” said Jack with a small, sad smile. “But that’s okay.”
She smiled briefly, knowing she’d been forgiven. It was a relief.
“Oh and Jack?” she called as he walked around the side of the glowing green console.
He looked up.
“I never said-“
“Sure you did,” said Jack, with tears in his eyes. “Right back at cha, babe!”
She nodded. Whatever it was between them, it was understood-neither she nor he were second choices, and they both fully respected each other.
Then she looked to River, who glanced up from working feverishly at the TARDIS controls for once last look at the Twelfth Doctor. Twelve smiled at her, at which River bravely grinned back through her tears, and briefly blew her a kiss.
It was happening again, but this time she wasn’t alone. Also, she found that the pain wasn’t so bad.
She thought over her rather short time and decided that it wasn’t so bad either.
The Time War was finally over for the Doctor, for once and for all.
It never had to haunt her anymore.
And, despite what had plagued her throughout most of this early incarnation, she realised that even considering her relatively brief term in existence, she would never be forgotten.
She wondered if her next self would be as cool…
She welcomed the searing fire, knowing that she felt totally at peace. She’d done her job, there was nothing left to do. She could move on.
“An unnatural child brings a song of chaos and redemption and will make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of all…”
Even that blasted prophesy that had haunted her throughout her regeneration-it all made sense now.
And it was over. Tied up neatly in a bow.
Some other man or woman could go sauntering off now.
A golden veil fell across her vision, engulfing her head. In an instant, she would be gone.
Before the final burn of the Doctor’s regeneration, Jack tried to pull River away from the controls of the TARDIS. She had preset the settings to delay a few moments before dematerialising out of the Matrix and taking them back to earth. Earlier, she’d also set coordinates to link to the Extended-Range Locator bracelet, now left inside the Matrix to guide the coffin-like extradimensional teleportation module-the ETM the Doctor had made-to ferry her people back and forth into the Matrix as needed.
The link would be restored. The Matrix would survive for Gallifrey once more.
River flicked a few more crucial switches. She wasn’t going to mess this up. There was still too much at stake, and the timing was essential.
They needed to remain in a semi-solid state in the Matrix just a few moments more…
“River, please,” Jack pleaded with his future daughter, who wasn’t such a stranger anymore, “Honey, there’s nothing left for you to do.”
She pressed one last button in the sequence and took one last glance at the Twelfth Doctor. “Okay, Dad…”
He pulled her over to the far corner of the TARDIS and shielded her from the coming blast, just as the Doctor had planned.
The Doctor, who was regenerating…
Incredible energy blasted out of her face, her fingers and her eyes, which she attempted to aim in one direction. While this time there would be no all consuming, raging fire, there was one last detail that still needed to happen: The resultant regenerative blast took out the capsule attached to the Time Rotor that had held all of the former Doctor’s bio-data in stasis. Exploding it, the information was sent into the Matrix, where it could be properly stored, where it belonged.
Seconds later, according to River’s pre-set flight pattern, the handbrake was released, Spatial Overlap was reversed, and the TARDIS fully dematerialised and took them safely away from the Matrix.
Jack fell over, dead from the regenerative impact, sacrificing yet another one of his infinite lives to save his daughter, who remained safely hidden under his body-something that the Doctor had hated to ask of him-but something he willingly gave.
However, in a few moments he would live again-and so would the Doctor.
But a very different Doctor would greet him, indeed.
Because after the initial inferno, the Doctor’s cells began to replace themselves, overwrite themselves, regenerate themselves. Hair shortened, changed colour, eyes changed and limbs elongated. Features molded and reformed together, flesh caught in the smelting of the regenerative process.
Finally, the TARDIS echoed with the first cries of the newest Doctor as she pitched forward, off balance. Fighting to stay upright, hands flailed out to catch herself… Himself?
The first thing the Doctor did this time was look for breasts…
They weren’t any.
A man again…
In truth, he was a little disappointed.
“Awww, I was beginning to get used to those,” said an unfamiliar, whispery tenor voice. “Oooh! New voice… Odd, I sound like a late night telly announcer…”
At the sound of his voice, River wriggled carefully out from under her father’s body and stood to see the Thirteenth Doctor…
A man she had known for years.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, covering her mouth.
The Thirteenth Doctor turned to look at her, a seemingly ridiculous vision in a purplish patterned suit jacket and black trousers that looked entirely too small for him.
The feminine, satiny ruffled shirt was also a bit absurd…
“That bad, huh?” he asked, dreading his new appearance.
“It’s you!” she breathed, with tears in her eyes and a big smile, “My Doctor!”
While the encounters between River and the Doctor had always been a bit fractured over the years, River had mostly done well to avoid the spoilers that were an inherent risk to a relationship like theirs. Bouncing all over the timelines, stringing together a coherent internal narrative of their partnership took a great deal of effort-as well as meticulous record keeping. But even while she had known the Doctor in a few incarnations, up until recently, his Twelfth self had been a mystery. Now that mystery was solved. And even though she still occasionally saw his Thirteenth self, her time with Eleven had long since passed.
Now that she had witnessed the “birth” of his Thirteenth self, she wondered how much time she had left with him, this mad, impossible man whom she loved with every fibre of her being.
For despite her attraction to and fondness of the Doctor’s Eleventh self, River’s Doctor had always been a ginger male with kind, light green eyes that looked practically blue, about mid-fortyish, who wore a perpetual bit of a five-o’clock shadow (that was pretty sexy, she had to admit) and a devious, ruffian’s grin.
The Thirteenth Doctor was noticeably pleased by River’s breathless reaction. “Oh, well then-that good, eh?” he smirked at her.
She pulled a compact mirror out of her utility belt and tossed it to him.
A glance at his reflection produced a grin from ear to ear.
Ginger at last!!
“Now this,” he said, regarding his hair, “is promising…”
“Oh, Sweetie,” she said, coming around to him, “the whole package is promising…”
“Really?” he said, his eyes twinkling, smirking up a storm.
“You bet,” she grinned. “You just watch us run!”
To be continued Saturday, April 21 in, Epilogue: Time’s Up…
*In addition to the usual Nu Who references, Classic show references to the “Rassilon Imprimatur” include The Two Doctors, and the DW Eighth Doctor, Big Finish audiobook, “Zagreus.” As for the bit of it added into the Key of Rassilon to open the Matrix-that was my little addition! ;)
Also, re: the Matrix, I added a little DW joke about it looking like a quarry. If you’re familiar with any of the classic episodes that feature the Matrix, it’s always partly a bloody quarry. See, The Deadly Assassin, Invasion of Time, Arc of Infinity, and The Ultimate Foe for reference.
Re: Spatial Overlap function on the TARDIS. Yep, that’s the name of it! Used to leave Sally and Larry behind in Blink, and another time in Classic Who (but the specific reference that escapes me at the moment-was it Logopolis?). If you want to know everything you never knew about the TARDIS, start here: http://www.whoniverse.net/tardis/tardisatoz.php
And YES, Damian Lewis as the Thirteenth Doctor-BOOYAH! Oh Lord, from my keyboard to the big Future!DW showrunner in the sky’s ears... I should start making T-shirts, banners and petitions to the BBC now! I challenge anyone to not admit that he is one sexy bastard. Don’t believe me? Go here: http://www.lewis-mccrory-central.com/damianportraitgallery05.html Bring your drool bucket…