Rani, Immortal
I've been wanting to do a Rani vs. Two fic a LONG time, and with Kate O'Mara's passing, I thought this is the best I could do…she was such a wonderful actress!
Characters: The Rani, Second Doctor, mentions of Serena. The Brigadier. Barb and reference to THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH and THE NAMELESS CITY (prose)
Timeline: After WORLD GAME (prose), and deep within the years of Season 6B. Events happen after Time and the Rani; Mark of the Rani. Just before THE POWERS OF TWO fanfic I have on fflnet where Two rescues The Brigadier from The Year That Never Was.
Here Two is picking up the pieces for the CIA again, between visits to Jamie and Zoe and Victoria.
She was one of the more ghoulish memories of his past. He couldn't think of her without thinking of the painful memories that coincided with knowing her: the growing rift between himself and the others in the Deca.
His slow-moving alienation between himself and his own people.
He still didn't understand how Gallifrey could hold the likes of him as a monster on par with her evil. He wasn't evil; he was trying to help people—all people, not just his own. Gallifrey really had enough of her own champions. Why not champion for one of the underdogs once in a while? Wasn't that important?
The answer was no; never. Little people for little lives.
The Doctor sighed. His head still hurt but he moved slowly, and piece by piece he found what he needed in his bulging pockets.
Matches.
A two-ounce bottle of ethylene.
A Galactic Missile.
An empty brown paper wrap, from a sweets shop on his last trip to Earth.
He wondered if those were the last jelly babies he'd ever taste, because he feared the reaction of the Time Lords when they received his report.
He sat cross-legged on the damp ground, the tails of his frock coat trailing over the rocky stone. He poured the little bottle of lighter fluid into the paper bag a few drops at a time, letting it soak through the fibres and spread.
The fumes hurt his head, but his head already hurt. Combat did that. He hated to fight. He hated how it made him feel; like how easy it would be to take over and take charge, to remove free will from the equation because he claimed to know better than others.
Humans. His bloody lip burned but he smiled anyway. Barbara would have been proud of him, wouldn't she? He'd learned her most important lessons simply by following her example.
* Let people rescue themselves; otherwise they'll never know if they can rescue themselves.
* Make small changes, slowly.
* Stay in the sidelines.
* Fight to defend; all else is a fight for its own sake.
* And when all else fails…hit the Dalek with the truck in fourth gear.
The little Time Lord paused and reached up, frowning at an odd sensation at his right eyebrow. His fingertips came away sticky. What a lack of surprise there.
Well, he'd get that cleaned up too. First things first, though…
The Doctor picked and poked at the heavy coating on the firecracker until the cap was prized off. He poured the powder charge into the bottom of the fuel-soaked bag, and gently shook the closed back until the interior was lightly coated all over.
Almost over.
He stood up, slowly. Every bone ached now. And he was very frightened for what would happen after this night.
The Time Lords wouldn't be angry with him for what he did. Oh, no.
They would be pleased with him.
Fulsome in their praise.
He didn't want their praise; they'd take this horror and imagine it meant he was becoming a proper Time Lord again, the way he'd been back when he was "respectable" and honored.
I'm a pariah, exiled from Time Lord Society, so they can always deny sending me.
The hurt had never left, but he'd thought he was coming to terms with it. Once in a while something would cause his personal loathing for the situation to rise up and take control of his perspective.
If the Time Lords had been more responsible and less "neutral" with other worlds, Dastari might never have hatched the insane plan to take him apart; his unholy experiment Chessene might never have tried to turn him into an Androgum, and the Sontarans would certainly have never helped.
"More responsible and less neutral" would have saved Miasmia Goria from the Rani. The memories of that poor, blistered-over planet still made him shiver.
He walked stiffly to the edge of the wood and tucked the improvised tinder into a deep shelter surrounded by the papery wisps of blue barkwood. His hands shook over the matches, but he struck fire on the first try.
The little Time Lord cupped the tiny flame inside his hands, letting it grow in strength, and painfully knelt, touching match to paper. A breath later he was stepping backwards, the gush of hot hair ruffling his hair away from his face.
The paper crumpled in on itself, and the wood caught. The Doctor took another step backwards, his hot, dry skin loosening as he re-entered the zone of cool, damp night air.
It was ridiculous how much he wished for the Brigadier's wisdom right now.
Jamie he needed for his warmth and sense of self but this…no. He didn't ever want Jamie to see this side of him.
But the Brigadier would know what he was feeling. And he'd understand.
Maybe he would be able to explain it to him.
Odd how that old soldier could surprise him with his strange wisdoms, but humans could be like that. Their strangest form of wisdom was in their refusal to see the Time Lords as Time Lords; they treated him as a powerful, resourceful friend, not a temporal God like so many other species.
A friend.
Time and Space, but he needed a friend right now.
Crump.
Wood ignited into a burning tower of fire, violet from potassium nitrates native to the wood. It was a rare shade, and quite beautiful to the sight. And it was very, very hot. He winced at its heat against the still-swelling bruises on his skin, and clutched the heavy branch in his hands.
Yes, the Brigadier could explain this. Maybe he should look him up and see how he was doing…before his life came to its natural destiny in bed.
The little Time Lord accepted that most of the Universe saw him as a fool. It kept him alive—and it kept his friends alive (which was more important). But he did get tired of being treated like a fool. Sometimes it was a day to day struggle, and his otherselves really didn't help. They saw him not only a fool and a clown but an overly emotional one.
A loud, crackling sound skittered up from the middle of the bonfire. Oils from the ancient wood ignited and a strange, sweet perfume like juniper and fenugreek and nutmeg clouded his view of the stars.
The Doctor tilted his stiffening neck up to watch the clouds roll in oddly beautiful patterns across the clouds of the Andromeda Galaxy.
"So foolish," He murmured out loud, and wished he didn't feel so old and tired just now. Whilst he deserved it, he couldn't risk it. Old and tired people were a liability to themselves and to others, and his work was far from over.
"I am sorry." The Doctor said to the starry night. "I should have asked Napoleon for a funeral pyre. He would have granted you anything to commemorate your death. All I had to do was tell him you wanted a burial in fire. But I was too afraid of attracting notice. We'd already been noticed by too many people.
"We stopped the Players, but you died and your last words to me was "I finally did something." You didn't 'finally' do something. You saved an entire world, and that meant everything. You never had a chance to see the Universe. You died and I had you buried like a human and I had no idea the Rani was there the whole time!"
The smoke billowed. He pulled out his handkerchief and covered his nose and mouth with the cloth as the fire caught on the contents resting in the middle.
"Always hiding in the plain sight of war. Oh, how I wish I'd known. I must have crossed paths with her before. I seem to always wind up in some sort of war when I come to Earth!" Despite the heat he stepped close and used his stick to push burning brands back into the flames.
"I chide myselves for their naivety, but I'm no better. I should have been more paranoid! But I wasn't. And because I wasn't, your remains were looted by one of the most evil geniuses of our world."
He blinked back the sting of smoke in his eyes, and wiped at them with the back of his coat sleeve. "I'm not sorry for how this ended, Serena. I know you'd be disappointed in me for falling into that trap of primitive emotions, but…I'm not sorry. She's done so many terrible things. She rendered her own planet a ruined cinder. I know. I was there. She enslaved the people and enslaved an incalculable number of humans for their neurochemicals, caused untold suffering, I can't even number the lives she's taken, and the souls she's damaged. You might argue you had no life to steal, but she was harvesting your body for her own ends, and her own ends were brilliant but never for good." He shivered, for the outcome had been close. "Ten more minutes and she would have cloned enough of your biodata that she could have broken into the Matrix on your genetic key. Ten minutes.
He winced slightly; the pyre was a fireball of all-consuming heat.
"I'm not going to let History repeat itself!" The Doctor said firmly. "Your ashes are already on their way home to your family. Now all I have to do is—" He stabbed at a crumbling log, shoving it back into the middle of the glow. "—make certain—no one will be able to—"…He grunted from the effort, but even though he was one of the smallest Doctors, he was still one of the strongest, and a heavy chunk of trunk collapsed on top of the body inside the flames. "—harvest her matter for the reasons why she harvested yours!" He shuddered from both effort and memory.
"That's not going to happen." The Doctor vowed.
And with that he stepped back into the cool night, holding vigil as the bonefire burned. He was over 900 years old now, though temporally trapped inside this body he usually never felt his age so much. But that seemed to happen when he took on a mission without his friends.
Not that he begrudged Jamie his time with his family, or Zoe and Victoria their lives. No, never that. But it frightened him that he'd come so close to death. No one would have known if the Rani had succeeded in her plans against him. It had been very, very close.
At heart he took no pleasure from what he was doing. It was another enemy defeated, another foe vanquished…another predator removed. But he felt old and tired and tomorrow there would be another enemy. Maybe it would be the Master—again. Or the Great Intelligence. Or another old friend turned sour.
But there would only be one Rani.
The Rani.
Ushas. Named after an obscure poet from the wilderness. On earth her name meant "Dawn" in Sanskrit. The greatest biochemist their school had ever seen.
And without a doubt, the most evil of minds; more so than even the Master, who was at least capable of some compassion. She had lost that ability long ago...trading it in for rationalization and justifying the means with the ends in her centuries and centuries of slaughter.
They'd bonded briefly over the shared love of botany, but the differences in ethics split them apart just as quickly. It had always been her nature to cut a mystery apart until it was no more than a lump of molecules; he preferred to understand what he had, and cherish it for what it was: unique and therefore a treasure.
She would have taken him apart, given the chance. Taken him apart, used his bioprint to pick the lock in the Matrix, and plundered the minds within.
She had always been smarter than he, but unlike the Master she never bothered with pointing out the inferior qualities of others unless they got in her way of scientific achievement.
He had been invited to her 94th birthday party. He had gone, flattered with their friendship and a little puzzled at how birthday parties happened. Other families celebrated them, but not his.
She'd given him his first time-piece; one of the small party tokens handed out casually to the guests. It didn't mean much to her; it was mechanical and thus less interesting, and anyway, a cheap thing.
He'd kept it until it fell apart. It was on him when he fled Gallifrey. It was centuries before anyone gave him another gift.
How ironic that it had been The Necronomicon; Jamie's innocent generosity at the machinations of the Master.
He remembered how beautiful she had been so easily, before the hard lines of obsession closed over her face and turned her eyes to flint.
He would always regret not asking her the one question he hadn't asked her when they graduated:
"What are you afraid of, to pursue your answers with such zeal?"
She wouldn't have answered. He knew this.
But he still wished he could have asked the question.