I do not own Doctor Who. I am not Australian. I'm not even an Aborigine.
I think I have changed nothing canon, but I have added some new bits and scenes.
Author's Foreword:
Tegan Goes Tribal: The Translation Issue From 'Four To Doomsday'
On Monarch's ship is an Australian Aborigine from 12,000 years ago. Tegan understands his language. There are a few problems with this. Where did Tegan learn a 12,000-year-old dialect? Why doesn't the TARDIS translate this like it does the Greek and the Chinese? Even the Doctor doesn't seem to get a translation!
Apparently, the writers wanted to build up Tegan's character by showing that she is a) really Australian, and b) multicultural enough to be fluent in an Aboriginal language. I think they were so used to TARDIS translation that they forgot it should work all the time. Even if the Doctor speaks English, and I'm sure he's fluent without the TARDIS, it still has to translate Adric and Nyssa's languages.
Therefore, I am going to play with this not-so-shining moment and make use of it to bring an extra element to Tegan's characterization–that's what it's for, anyway. This story builds on the themes from my earlier story 'Walking The Labyrinth' in the Walkabout series, and revisits the noncanonical idea of the Master's influence on Tegan. It is set following 'Castrovalva' and runs concurrent with the events of 'Four To Doomsday.'
I want to state for the record that I have the knowledge of Australia and Aboriginal language and culture that one may gain through casual interest and being sprinkled by factoids while surfing the Internet. I am trying to be restrained in what I do, hoping to make no obvious glaring error. If I have, someone tell me so I can apologize. What Tegan learned as a child has been overlain by a European upbringing, and was not built upon by later study. It is not intended to represent any scholarly body of knowledge on Aboriginal culture.
- o - O - o -
Ch 1. The River
'You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always
flowing onto you.'
- Heraclitus of Ephesus
"You've got to be fit to crew the TARDIS. A trim time ship and a ship-shape team!" That's what the Doctor had said as he led them onboard.
Tucked away in the functional little bedroom on the TARDIS, Tegan mulled over those words. Did the Doctor think she was staying? Did he want her to stay?
It didn't matter. She needed to go home. This was no place for Tegan Jovanka. She had things to do at home. Her aunt's hideous death had to be dealt with. Moreover, as ridiculous as the others seemed to find it, she had trained for her job and felt as if she was shirking. Family, work, and life: interrupted for this opium dream existence.
There was a knock at the door, and the Doctor called, "Tegan, are you all right?"
She opened the door. "Yes, I'm fine. You?" To smile at the Doctor came naturally. Regenerate, he had the shiny newness of an angel descended from heaven into a cricket locker room. Tegan had to steel herself against the temptation to let him sweep her up in the floodtide of his enthusiasm. He radiated energy and joy, for all that he came to her door out of concern.
"Perfectly splendid. I wanted to be sure that you're well, and thank you for helping me. I'm sure you expected nothing so fantastic to happen when you went out your front door that day. You've been very brave." He smiled at her and she felt as though she'd been given a medal.
"Not exactly what I trained for, but I tried not to let the side down." Tegan felt her smile turn into a ghastly, arch thing. Why was she so nervous? Granted, he was an alien time traveler, but he was pleasant. Easy on the eyes, too.
Why did her gut clench like this?
He started to say something else, but she put a hand up, rushing along. "It's time for me to go home now. I'm here by accident, after all."
"Ah, yes," the Doctor's smile faltered only slightly. "If that's what you want, of course. You're not a prisoner, Tegan. I'll see to it right away." He left her.
For all the reassurance in the Doctor's voice, Tegan felt as if she'd failed him. Ridiculous. This was a place of science and reason, supposedly, and the logical thing to do was to take the primitive Earth woman back to her own time and place. Her request was sensible, reasonable, practical--"Hell's teeth!" Her hands were shaking. The Doctor was taking her home. Soon he'd open those impossible doors and she'd step out at Heathrow and then… and then, she'd get on with it.
"Oh, Auntie Vanessa!" Tegan bent almost double, grief-struck. Her aunt's little sports car was probably still sitting off the side of the road. Why hadn't Tegan just rolled that bloody flat to the garage and got it fixed? Why hadn't she ignored that damn police-box-that-wasn't? Now Aunt Vanessa was one of those grotesque little mannequins, made ludicrous as well as dead.
Tegan wrapped her arms around herself, holding on until her harsh breathing calmed. No time to break down. She wasn't safe. When she'd gone home and dealt with everything, then she could mourn. First, she'd have to deal with the Doctor. Tegan checked her appearance in the mirror, repaired her makeup, steeled her spine, and set out to face the situation head on.
When the Doctor failed to get her to Heathrow, Tegan honestly wasn't surprised. She had a feeling it wasn't going to be so simple. It was obviously like him to hare off after the least bit of mystery. Even Adric admitted it. Tegan was going to keep her eye on the prize. Heathrow, job. Job, Heathrow. That was reality, and she was going back to it. If she had to make the Doctor miserable every step of the way, then that would be two of them.
- o - O - o -
A Greek, a Chinaman, and a Mayan walked into a spaceship. Why? Trick question! The answer is, because there was no bar. Because the alien spaceship was full of humans from different cultures and eras.
Pity about the bar. Tegan could have used a drink. Where was the drinks trolley? It would have matched the food served in celled trays. Just one drinks trolley, just one, and she could pretend it was all a dream on a long international flight.
Tegan's pleasant flirtation with delusion was hijacked by a figure out of her childhood memories.
Kurkutji walked straight into her mind. He'd come for her. Tegan knew him for what he was on sight. He fit into some hole in her mind that was Kurkutji-shaped, or close enough. The shapes of his words weren't the ones she'd learned as a child from her nurse, but she understood them anyway. At her back, she felt the Doctor stir with surprise, then settle into intent watchfulness.
"We're all going to heaven," is how Tegan translated it to the others. What Tegan heard for herself was Kurkutji telling her she'd never get home. Fear collected in her middle like a swallowed ice cube. Round and round that ball of ice whipped her thoughts. Go to Heaven, but never get home; ever in Heaven and never at home; walk in the stars and always to roam; caught in the Dreamtime and imprisoned, doomed. The whirligig spun off words that tumbled from her mouth: home, afraid, trapped, leave!
- o - O - o -
As a child, Tegan had got in trouble more than once for translating the ideas she learned from the Aborigines in talking to her family. What seemed simple and right in one place was alien and wrong in another. Drawings came to life here! As in her childhood, they all ignored her. The more afraid she was the less the Doctor, Adric, and Nyssa listened. They were busy playing theories.
"And Kurkutji the Aborigine says it was so long since he was taken he can't remember," the Doctor said, turning to her. What Tegan heard was that the Doctor had understood Kurkutji himself even though he'd asked for her translation. Yet evidently, what he'd heard was not what she'd heard.
"But that's mad!" she cried, and it had nothing to do with the length of time it took to travel from Earth to Urbanka.
"Yes, so you keep saying, Tegan, is anyone saying you're wrong?" The Doctor flung himself into the seat next to her. She could feel his exasperation.
She tried to calm herself. What had Kurkutji said, as she understood it?
'Although we walk from one fixed star to another, each journey in the Dreamtime is new. Each step is again the first step, and no Song leads back where it came. Here is now, and always.'
No way back, no way home, ever to wander, lost and alone–
That wasn't her, that was the Doctor! In a nutshell, definitely. When they got separated from Adric and Nyssa, she had to stick with the Doctor. Someone had once told her that she must, no matter that he was mad.
"What if they harm them?"
"Why should they?" the Doctor replied maddeningly, as though the children in his care weren't missing on a spaceship of dubious refuge.
"I don't know why, but I think they will." The ice lay unthawed about her heart.
"Nonsense! It wouldn't make any sense."
"It doesn't have to. I think they're mad; I think you are, too." Tegan stared resentfully at the Doctor's calm profile.
"Well, take the advice of a madman, and look happy." The Doctor spoke with a tone Tegan knew from lifelong experience: the slip of the grip on one's temper.
"Why?" Oh, such a good question. Why anything, in this chaos?
"Try to look as if you're enjoying yourself. In these situations it's the best form of defence." He waved graciously at the alien called Persuasion. It was a display of noblesse oblige worthy of the Queen.
An alien madman, enjoying himself in cricket whites. With a celery stalk on his lapel. Where the hell had that come from? Tegan felt her sanity slipping.
No way back, no way
- o - O - o -
The last straw hit the load when Tegan was informed that she would shortly be made into an android. "No, no, no!" she cried, each negative shriller than the last. She directed this monosyllabic protest at the Doctor. Wasn't he supposed to be the hero here? He was blond and English and had doubtless gone to Eton.
"It's all right, it's all right, just leave everything to me," the Doctor patted her arms. He didn't say, 'Don't bother your curly head about it', but he might as well have.
"I'm sick of leaving everything to you," she said. The Doctor ignored her. "You must be mad," she said, her icy heart cracking.
"Now stay here; you'll be perfectly safe; I won't be very long." He gave her three lies in one breath.
"I won't stay here!"
At last, he turned on her. His will struck out through the camouflage of noble British manhood and whimsical vegetation. Alien, ancient, wily, dangerous. Powerful, the only power that mattered here. Time Lord.
"Yes, you will!" His gaze transfixed her, he pinned her with a pointed finger, he turned the words in her mouth to ashes.
He left her behind. Her life was in her own hands, now. How would she ever get home?
end chapter 1