A long-overdue cameo for the fantastic awesomeness of Peter Davidson...frankly, a fight scene I wish we could have seen in THE FIVE DOCTORS...
Yellow-rustlight glows upon the underbellies of the heavy clouds over the strange sky, casting churning, snakelike shadows before and after him as he crawled beneath the shimmering coronosphere.
His knees had long since bled through the fabric of his trousers and something terrible had happened to his left wrist...it was sodden and sticky and a foul stench arose from the center of the stain.
I saw the Eye of Harmony swallow up the Master, and I'm cringing at the sight of my own hand...
The TARDIS. Find her. FIND TARDIS.
Can't change without her, the one thought hammered home.
Shouldn't.
She'd be so upset.
It was so important all other thoughts melted in its presence.
TARDIS.
TARDIS.
He gasped over a pile of rubble and scoil; a red brick made blue glass by the heat of a thermonuclear-grade blast sliced his palm open to the thin webwork of bones. The Doctor screamed in the fragile air of the ruined world's air. His strength gave out and his body slumped forward, weak as a kitten's across the lump of jumbled up constructive formation.
In the darkness, he remembers something soft and fuzzy...a reality blurred and fogged by distance just as distance alters perspective...a warping that proves to your brain that you really are seeing something in the physical world.
Why, one had to wonder, did the Time Lords think it was such a good idea to create an outpost for the Matrix on the furthermost planet of their old Empire's borders?
Why did the Lord President think anything was a good idea? But this...this was dreadful.
A meteorite shower sprinkled slow-motion green fireballs over the arching dusk. The Doctor panted to stay conscious, wishing he had two hearts again—even Two's hearts with their erratic and archaic secondary bypass rhythm that made him such a hyperactive, panicky and PTSD reactionary would be better than what he had right now!
The planet groaned pitifully under the weight of chaos. Far beneath its long-cooled crust the Matrix shuffled back and forth, struggling to break free.
Billions of minds preserved in the Matrix, most of them Time Lords, and no one thought to ask if the Matrix itself would acquire intelligence? Or wish to escape its death?
There were twenty million Daleks slipping through Kasterborous—of course the whole planet would get itchy. That would attract the Daleks, who would be sure to postpone their invasion of Gallifrey's Core System long enough to wipe out every dust-atom on this crumbling ball of rock, sand, and long-dead-civilization's-ruins before getting back to the plan of attacking Gallifrey through a Matrix Gateway.
Matrix. Matrix illusion. All is illusion now. Matrix.
Illusion.
Not even a good one, he thinks with a ghoulish humor. Second-rate, paltry... Brittle scoil breaks under the weight of his bleeding knees and he falls deeper into the artificial reality of the dying Matrix. Not for the first time, he wondered what deranged acolyte of the Mad God had thought to enslave the Matrix of Gallifrey with the computer Matrixii in this mad bid to win an un-winable war.
(I hate computers and refuse to be bullied by them!)
The Doctor caught himself laughing at the memory of himself as Two. Must have been the wish for another heart. He knew he couldn't always remember who he was, but he did (seem to) remember that one. Silly little Two...the funny little man in the big clothes who inspired laughter with his with sad eyes...Yes, Two would applaud if he were here...would be saluting the death of the Matrixii.
Madman's scheme, crazier than the Master...so much crazier than what the Master could think of...and the Master's dead too...He's dead and I'm dying...
Something blew up behind the ruined hills.
Dalek.
Taranium mingled in the stain of burning rock-dust.
I'm dying and this could really be it this time...
The Doctor crawled forward another few feet, ignoring the numbness setting inside his bones. The Matrix computers nearly won Gallifrey the war, but the cost would have been far, far too high for the Universe. And they thought him the traitor for not joining him? No, he was the Renegade. He was on the side of Life, not in anyone's corner!
The Matrix whispered in his mind, trying to distract him, trying to pull him back to it. It did not want to die, and it was not about to die without one last victim. It taunted him, tickling his broken mind with memories, hoping they would slow him down just enough that it could overwhelm him.
[[[AND ESCAPE...ESCAPE TOGETHER YOU AND WE]]]
The Doctor had no desire to be the hapless Host of an intelligent computer. He kept going.
He coughed against the rising smoke and dust, and the Matrix gathered its final power, thrust a memory-arrow into the back of his mind: Susan's sobbing face on the other side of the TARDIS. The Doctor groaned aloud.
["One day, we shall be back..."]
Oh, how his so-much-younger First Self had believed that! The Doctor could have wept for the pain of that innocence lost.
He answered the Matrix' memory-arrow with one of his own:
("I am a Time Lord! I walk in Eternity!")
There. If anything could hurt the Matrix, it would be the Bohemian's larger-than-life mind.
The Matrix quailed before that booming mind-voice, a Titan feared, and the Doctor crawled forward through a lake of mercury dust. The TARDIS was close...he knew it...
...Another memory-arrow shot into his mind. The Doctor nearly collapsed under its weight. The broken rubble smoothed to tarmac and pressed concrete; a meteroid that was mostly agglomerate spaceship wreckage fused together by gravity slipped over his head
and
Gatwick Airport roared about him as he stood before Polly and Ben.
"The thing is," Polly said to him, "this is our world..." (Yes, he understood that...)
"You're lucky, I never got back to mine."
His sad honesty as he parted ways with Ben and Polly. And in only three years, he would be running from his world with all his might, fear sticking in his throat and numbing his legs as he struggled against the Time Field doomed to trap him, make him their slave.
No more longing for home. They didn't want him. They never wanted him for himself; just wanted him because they couldn't stand the idea of his being free. Tears burned his eyes like the acidic smoke and the pain ran down his cheeks. Perhaps he was wrong to want to live. After the things he'd done...
He'd saved lives but refused to take sides in a war where Time Lords and Daleks both shared culpability. How could he do anything else?
The memory BURNED. The Matrix had found his vulnerability. He'd lost loved ones before, but the pain had never gone away. They'd slept in his mind. Without knowing it, the Doctor swooned forward, his cheek smashing against a sharp-cornered foundation. Reality and digireality blurred together as a concussion wrestled inside his brain-pan.
The Doctor might have lost the battle with the Matrix at that moment, but computers, even those that carry biodata of Time Lords and relate in soft sentient programs can make grievous errors of judgment. It sensed his loss and sought another to add to the poison.
It showed him Adric.
The Doctor roared, rising up on shredded knees, clenching his fingers into his palms as red-orange blood rained down to die on dust and rubble. They always make that mistake, he thought dizzily. There were things you didn't do.
And not even the Master pressed him with Adric.
Even the Rani knew better.
Even Seven wouldn't dare. Seven, who had chained Five into his mind and kept him a prisoner, hadn't tried to provoke him-merely lock his freedom to whisper as the voice of his conscience.
This wasn't provocation. This was war.
The Fifth Doctor flared in the firestorm of the Matrix, leaped into the digireal fogs and screamed into the face of the Matrix' sucking maw. Hot, outraged and wounded, the Cricketeer had been pushed beyond all reason. Five, the number of the werewolf and the moon was full.
The Matrix was seeing this too late.
The Cricketeer placed his back to the digital fog-bank and faced the reality of the torn planet, his smooth and boyish face drawn tight about his skull-bones as he wielded a willowwood bat.
Five. Allegedly the weakest of all the Doctors because his compassion and empathy forced him to feel too deeply and see each issue from too many simultaneous facets. His regeneration had been double-flawed from physical trauma and psychic exhaustion; he had lacked the final cognitive recognition of Three and Four. His age and experience had been wise but crippled in its temporal filters—a crippling that also affected Six.
Five, too pacifist for even the Venusian Aikido that Two had mastered and Three had practiced.
Five had been the most indecisive, but he had not been weak.
Five snarled into the face of the Matrix, trainers braced for support in the soft reality of the Matrix/Not Matrix, his eyes burning with a fire none of the Doctors had seen since Two was executed. Blue-green, shifting, opalescent fire flickered and cast its own light into the murk.
Two used to do that when he was pushed too far. His eyes were a warning to friends and foe alike. Beware when you see the colors of Lungbarrow.
Lungbarrow eyes.
Five had never, ever lacked for courage.
The Doctor rolled over on his back, sliding down from the support of a broken stone pillar as blood bubbled from his third lung down the corner of his mouth. The ground upheaved; long-dried bones of the dead planet's people thrust calcium stakes through the surface—a minefield that would slice the unwary and unlucky to ribbons. He felt a ridiculous laugh escape his throat. Young, tender-hearted idealistic Five's digital programming had broken out of the Matrix' biodata storage tanks with nothing more than the strength of his own copied will, and was standing over him in the Soft Time, cricket bat swinging to meet the next salvo of memory-arrows.
["Salix alba var. caerulea displays a pyramidal shape upon natural growth which incorporates the strength and tension of the harvested wood."] Five recited with a furious gleam to his face-too young to have eyes so old-and the bat slapped the next Memory-arrow back to its point of origin, piercing the bank of foggy mental pollution. The Matrix squealed, indignant in its wounding—furious that something would strike back with its own weapons—and blind with rage that one of its own specimens had broken out to fight it.
The Doctor stared (it took less energy than saying anything), and clapped his hand over the region housing that leaking third lung.
["What most people don't know,"] Five added almost conversationally as the Matrix ground another round in preparation, ["is that the best willow for a good scrum is female."]
I'll try to remember that, The Doctor vowed, assuming he survived this digital stupidity.
["I always thought it just a bit historically amusing that the best female woods came from East Anglia and Essex-one of the last bits of England where the matriarchy survived. Just one of those little temporal jokes, I suppose."] The Cricketeer cleared his throat, digging his toes into the shifting surface. A fresh wave of glowworm-green fire illuminated his still-shining Lungbarrow eyes. ["The Cosmos seems to be rather full of them."]
Compassion said something like that, the Doctor had time to think, When we left the Brigadier in Avalon-and then—CRUNK! Another mind-arrow growled its way to them. This one was made of iron, dragon-tipped to scream as it passed through the thinning air. Five easily slapped it out of its original trajectory but it dodged him halfway to impact and he only got the front tip; the bolt flew sideways and clattered upon the smoking rubble of the mind-city. The stones caught fire under its impact. The bonfire stank of resin and burning rotting rose-petals-quantum molecules.
Five's shoulders tensed under his summer coat. His supple body locked up like a thermal ratchet inside the padding of his gear. ["Oh, that is not good,"] he said under his breath, gaze focused on something very unpleasant that the Doctor couldn't see. His gloved fingers latched tightly around the cane handle of his bat. ["Can someone give me a hand so I can hold them off long enough to let me get away?"]
[What did I tell you about the mindlash, lad?]
The Doctor couldn't have been more surprised to see Two stepping out of non-reality into the Soft Time of the Matrix.
It is quite one thing to accept you have recurring amnesia. It is quite another to see a diaphanous memory suddenly gain digitally projected flesh not a foot from the tip of your nose!
The Doctor peered up at a self he only barely recollected. The Cosmic Hobo, he remembered the Brigadier saying fondly, his trimmed mustache twitching to one side in inward amusement. Papa Wolf, Benton liked to call you then, though in those days anyone with a Primary School education could have beaten you in a fight...! That never stopped you, though. You nearly died, flinging yourself on a yeti killing Knight. I've never forgotten that, you know. You couldn't win, couldn't possibly win...but you never stopped trying. Not until it threw you down like a doll and knocked you out for the count. As long as I live, I'll never be able to thank you for caring for my men...just as you'll never forgive yourself for not being able to save them...
And this? The Doctor thought in just a touch of disbelief, was his just-barely-1.70m-past self that tried to pull a Yeti off Knight? What was I thinking? I'm just a tiny thing!
The Cosmic Hobo stood erect—all 170 cms of him-in floppy, ill-fitting clothes that made him look even smaller. His wild, messy white hair caught the artronic winds of the digital atmosphere and danced about jadeite eyes set inside the face of a thousand-year leprechaun.
White hair? He frowned, because his damaged memory seemed to be telling him Two wasn't white haired at all. Hair of iron, trapped in a bowl cut...
...running for his life; running for both their lives amongst palm trees...he was wearing a fur coat then; what? A fur coat? Yelling something, urgently...telling him to stop, change direction, something coming—something bad...the palm trees were whistling soprano alarms in the salty winds...
...palm trees? Was he in Ireland?
"Agh!"
This mind-arrow was clever; it nipped past the very tip of Five's bat and smashed into a marble pillar. Sharp chips of rock razored jagged wounds across the Doctor's cheek and bridge of nose and he cried out; the pain was immense.
And the little Hobo twisted on his battered heels to take in the sight of his future self writhing in pain on the broken scoil, clutching his face. His own face darkened; beneath the most ferocious brows any of the Doctors had ever possessed his blue-green eyes glittered in viridescent challenge upon the Matrix.
["You really think you can stop us just because you hold our biodata?"] He exclaimed indignantly. And to the current Doctor's astonishment (and perhaps a touch of embarrassment), he stamped his foot like a child, small hands balled into fists by his sides. A child with a temper tantrum.
["I WILL NOT BE YOUR SLAVE!"]
A child, but a changeling child; ancient soul trapped in an infant's body. A youth born with the secret of eternal age.
The first Doctor to embrace fear.
And the odd little Hobo he used to be was standing in a face-off with the much taller Cricketeer, lips set in disapproval as he poked his future self in the ribs with a stern forefinger.
["We've had this talk before, lad. Mindlash-you step back, I deal with it. Remember?"]
["Something like that."] Five said unconvincingly, and gripped his bat for the next round.
["Impertinence."]
["Comes with the dress sense."]
Three, the UNIT Doctor had formed digital flesh just behind Two and was stepping to the other side, the folds of his opera cloak making a protecting pair of wings. Three was also far older than the Doctor remembered, solemn as a minister in hemlock-pine velvet (The Evergreen Man) and age lined his face almost as deeply as Two, but he was still tall and very, very strong.
["And the manners."]
THE DOCTOR had the last word, as always. He leaned into his thigmotropic cane, his heartbeat so low and soft against the others that the Doctor wasn't sure if he had two hearts at all—did he have just one in those days? Many of the Oldblood had just one until they regenerated...but he couldn't remember if Lungbarrow's House was Oldblood.
It hardly mattered. THE DOCTOR's digital form glowered at the wasteland ringing the Matrix' false temple. He drew himself up in his hawkish body, hands clasping the lapels of his frock coat as his large, beautiful round eyes cast disparaging opinions at what he saw. He was old, seemingly frail, but he was tough as an old turkey beneath his rock-hammered bones and his mind's powers were still sharp, still clean despite the hammering attacks of degenerative powers and the memory loss that came with age and the pain of a body that failed and still refused to die.
THE DOCTOR cast his mind out, and threw up a shield as strong as rock-crystal, the power of that mental wall emphasized by the enhancement glowing in the dark blue signet ring upon his right hand.
Signet Ring.
His Signet Ring.
The Doctor glanced down at his own hand, and blinked against a gum of drying blood. He'd found that ring inside the TARDIS console one day and had worn it ever since...the first Doctor to wear it since Two's new hand grew too small to hold it. The ring had clattered to the floor and he'd not paid any more attention to it...hadn't needed it...
...and the Doctor had forgotten all about why his Second Self had walked away from the ring in the first place.
I'd like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis after it spread its wings...life depends on change and renewal...
Change and renewal.
Change.
Change.
Change yourself, or your enemies will change you.
The Doctor blinked through the mist of blood at his hand.
THE DOCTOR'S ring was glowing.
And so was that selfsame ring on his finger.
That never happened before, though he had the vague memory that THE DOCTOR used this ring to enhance his mental abilities...
Oh, my, that looks awfully angry...
["Pythion Crystal."] Two sniffed. ["Surprised you never tried it on for adornation, Dandy."]
["First of all, it fell into the TARDIS like your silly recorder. When you were off your face with your new face, you little Hobo."] Three shot back with his hawkish chin quivering against the effort to be serious against his rising delight in a fight. Three was laughing, the Doctor realized with no small sense of shock. Laughing at his younger self with spirit and...fondness?
And his legendary thrill of battle.
["And secondly, that shade of blue would never do, old chap. That's a winter shade. I'm an autumn."]
["You're something else, all right..."]
They could hear the Matrix gearing up for the next attack, the clatter and grind of psychic cogs.
Three faced the rest of his digital selves, his strong mouth turned upwards along parallel angles to his eyes. He was as unique to the Doctors as Two; where Two had buried himself to the extent that even his ownselves barely remembered him, Three was the most serious, and capable of battle like none other. He was the last Doctor to be designed for conflict, and the only one of them comfortable in it; a part of him relished it even though he never let it take control of his own impulses.
And THE DOCTOR, who to this day would have still bashed that wounded caveman's head in with a rock, tipped his head forward as he grasped his lapels, granting benediction to his larger self...and Two...smaller, silly-looking, clumsy-looking and very, very deadly little Two, grinned up at his successor as the electronic winds threw his hair into new coordinates of untidiness. ["Hi, Dad!"] The black tooth left from childhood prodded the eye as he grinned. The child of them all, THE DOCTOR'S one and only chance to actually be a child before he grew up and became a more sober and respectable renegade.
["Ready. Make it count."] THE DOCTOR nodded at Two.
And Three turned his magnificent leonine head upon Five.
["You heard the old fellow. Make it count."]
Five turned to grin tightly over his shoulder at his latest self. His longish canines gleamed in the clouded light (werewolf teeth). His boyish face was angelic in the dying light of the planet. Silky blond hair lifted in the static charge of atmosphere. The next Adric-memory-arrow slid through the tender reality, shrieking with a high-pitched sonic challenge designed to unsettle the enemy. The Cricketeer leaped forward, striking it with the precision of a fine instrument. It burst against a patch of computerized fog, melting the illusion in a wildfire patch.
["If you're going to do that,"] he shouted into the fog that was the dying brain of the Matrix, ["Go up against someone who wasn't trained by W. G. Grace!"]
["Showoff."] Three said fondly. He had his sonic screwdriver out and was aiming it full-frontal into the boiling fog of manipulated Time. Something hissed and recoiled under its wavelength assault. ["You need to sit down with him, you know. He is far too much like you."]
["Jealous."] Two smirked, but a nanosecond later the pretend humor was gone from both antagonists and they were facing off the cloud of mind pollution. The time for joking was done.
["Great balls of fire, will you get out of the way?"] THE DOCTOR barked at Five.
["I need a clean shot!"] Five protested, lifting his bat in a stance that was not precisely according to the good old rules of the green.
["Let the Hobo do the job!"] Three yanked Five back, letting Two stand before the others in point. ["You know what happened the last time!"]
["DO IT!"] Two screamed.
Last time? The Doctor was not so out of it that he didn't notice that odd phrase in the softness of Time.
Two whirled to him, his snow-white hair fluttering in the winds of war. ["Get out of here, boy! If it gets too bad HE will wake up! And we don't want that!"]
Two was screaming at the top of his lungs as his otherselves clustered in to vanguard his plotted path.
He.
The Fourth Doctor.
The Bohemian.
The Sleeping Titan.
Horror washed The Doctor at the thought of their Fourth waking up. The Doctor ignored the pain and took off running. But this was still the realm of the Matrix, and he could still hear/see/smell/touch/feel/heart what was happening.
["Just because I can doesn't mean I should!"] The Cricketeer was shouting at The Hobo.
["You may be better than us, but you don't have to rub it in our faces!"] Two's words were joking, but his face was pale and corpse-calm. ["Get ready, all of you. I can hear it coming. Twenty-four seconds."]
And to the Doctor's horror, Two slowly pulled away, small shoulders squaring inside his battered frock coat and bracing himself against the carnivorous fog coming their way. A memory resurfaced centuries lost: Two, coolly and quietly and single-handedly taking on an army vanguard of Ice Warriors, prepared to die with each step of the way but fighting to live until the enemy fleet was destroyed.
Because they'd planned to attack Susan's World.
And when finally caught and confronted:
"You have destroyed an entire fleet!"
"You tried to destroy a world."
No venom in the statement, just quietly stating a simple fact. The King of Elfland patiently explaining to the humans who wish to explore: "Very well, but if man ventures where he is not wanted, or chooses to destroy, then do not blame us if we play tricks."
That was Two, through and through, and through. The Changeling Ancient in the body of a child. An inexorable force for Neutral Good.
"Kill him!"
And Two stood ready for the killing blast, his head tilted back peacefully, almost smiling, ready for the death about to come. He didn't even try to save himself...until he saw Jamie de-mat before him and then the accepting warrior turned frantic, whirling, jumping over the improbable consoles, grabbing the weapon in the Ice Warrior's hand and aiming the charge at the commander. Jamie screamed his war cry, "Rock of the Boar!"
And a cross-memory threaded across the Doctor...the Brigadier, shocking him with his own war-cry of the Stewarts with "Rock of the Cormorant!"
["Ohno."] The Cricketeer gasped. Three grabbed him and triangulated him to a point just behind the space betwixt THE DOCTOR and The Hobo.
["Twenty-two."]THE DOCTOR muttered. ["Twenty-one. Twenty. Nineteen..."] The bluestone signet ring glowed on his finger in the madlight.
The Doctor felt a stab of heat and looked down.
His ring...THE DOCTOR'S ring...was glowing in its own echo. The two stones pulsed in synchronicity against the muddled atmospheric light. Heat pulsed into his body through the stone, providing energy…warmth…
Strength.
The ability to move.
Somehow THE DOCTOR was re-wiring his brain into unheard of abilities to knit through its damage and re-route his body's defenses. His blood stopped wasting itself with escaping his body. His damaged lung sealed off; the others filled with precious air.
Something howled in the nattering darkness forming within the choking Matrix. It chattered amongst itselves and giggled.
The raining stars glittered a green glowing mess over the crushed fragments of marble ruin.
["...eighteen..."] THE DOCTOR whispered. Hands long rendered painful from the debilitation of age and disease knotted his bones and tendons into hard cords as he clutched his lapels. ["Seventeen."]
["Jehoshaphat!"] Three swore. ["Keep running!"] He bellowed at the Doctor. ["Get past the Styx! NOW! You won't survive this, and you must survive!"]
The Doctor ran.
He never knew how he did it, even years after, when he regenerated into the patient persona of the War Doctor, and finally into the superior brain of Thirteen...but later, his fragmented memories strongly indicated the possibility that his first three biodatized selves had actually broken out of the Matrix' chains and fought in the Soft Time in his behalf.
Impossible as that sounded, it might explain why his ability to recall them was numbed and faulty for almost a year after his regeneration into the War Doctor.
It was not supposed to be at all possible for a biodata-logged Time Lord to break free from the Matrix... but the Doctor knew "possible" was not a w rd he liked.
His Fifth Self was called "The Supreme Controller" by the Ogrons.
His Third Self was called "The Great Wizard."
His Second, "The Indestructible Man."
And then of course, there was THE DOCTOR. The Wise Old Chieftain.
The first of them; the greatest of all of them. The one who stood up and faced the crushing mistakes of their world, and said, "Not so," for himself and Susan. The first Rule Breaker, the first Clown, the first to begin to accept the fact that Trouble was his Fate.
The Doctor fell, and something broke inside one leg. By this point in reality, Time was just beginning to implode upon the 16th and 27th Temporal streams. A Conundrum flew out of the 19th Dimension and screeched as it vanished into a travelling Nexus. He fell forward into a patch of mist that smelled of sewage and singular dimensions and a black tendril of matter-memory crawled against his throat, seeking asylum.
The impact knocked him quite out of his head long enough that he didn't know where or when he was. All he knew was the scent of dust and the Matrix energy leaking into reality, and mismatched streams of dynamic logic into the space-time continuum. The Styx was like that; not completely fluid or solid. And here he was in the middle of its currents when he didn't quite know up from down.
The blow was far stronger than he'd realized. For unknown units of Time he'd sprawled upon the shattered bones of the planet, unaware and uncaring.
It would not be a bad time to die...just because he had a few generations left didn't mean he was supposed to live through them...
"A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry...where there's life there's..."
You Dandy! the Doctor swore at his third self's memory. Damn you for never giving up. Now I can't!
Blood pooled inside his navel from a slow-leaking slash over his ribs. He groaned and kept crawling. Behind him another explosion, and something screamed as it died a thousand reality-deaths. Some instinct told him Five and Two had just done something very painful to the Matrix. Well, final on Five's part; Two was always more than happy to destroy something computer-related.
"We are always in trouble! Isn't it extraordinary!"
Prophetic words from THE DOCTOR..And what had I just been telling Grace about trust...?
He's brave, The Doctor thought dazedly. He'd never realized until now, just how very brave his Fifth Self was, and it was the same bravery motivating Two. The two really were a lot alike. The bravest of all of us because both of them would willingly sacrifice their own self-identities to save lives.
CRACK.
A supercharged pillar of atmospheric energy slapped the smoking ruin of the Matrix Outpost behind his back. The Doctor could hear ghosts, both artonic and logical, shriek and scatter to the winds. Sharp, sour scorchlings flitted past his face.
He kept going.
["You want us to surrender?"] Three was shouting his mocking disbelief into a fresh wave of Matrix' onslaught. [Are you as stupid as you are mad?"] His SSD poised like a bow against the rising tidal wave of digital advection. ["YOU HURT US! JUST BECAUSE YOU WISHED IT! AND YOU WANT US TO SURRENDER?"] His large, fine nose flared. ["WE ARE THE DOCTOR! WE NEVER SURRENDER, YOU RIDICULOUS FAKE BRAIN!"] Something squealed in the distance.
["NO!"] Three bellowed with a force of lung-power that would have impressed Zagreus. ["YOU LISTEN TO ME!"]
And THE DOCTOR pitched in, arthritic fingers clutched painfully upon his lapels as his bluestone ring beamed a pure azure light into the shrieking, squirming, tryingtogetaway fog:
["Never Again, you Computerized, foolish lump!"]
["I hate computers! I will not be bullied by them!"] The Hobo shrieked, his eyes wild and unfocused, and turning to sunset malachite, his mind doing the focusing as he shielded the Cricketeer from the fresh wave of arrows.
The Matrix must have been angered; it thrust three fresh mind-arrows at the digital Doctors. Even as the Cricketeer swung his bat against the first, the hobo scowled, lifting a small hand. The remaining missiles clattered against the broken stones, screeking as they burst from the inside out.
The Matrix howled, its mouth of a door flapped uselessly upon its artificial intelligence-hinges. A wind swept up, brushing the carnivorous fogs across the ruined crust of the planet. THE DOCTOR staggered backwards, his aged skeleton fighting the weight of the rising storm, but his mind kept strong and the bluestone ring on his hand glowed with cold, deadly intent against the enemy that was the Matrix.
["Brave Heart,"] The Cricketeer panted. His hat was long gone in the rubble, and his maize-silk blond hair fell across his smooth forehead like a fan. He leaned forward with his bat, breathing hard.
The Hobo lifted ferocious black brows. ["Just a simple levitation. A childish trick. Now stop playing games and open these doors. Or are you afraid to meet me face to face?"]
Icy words ripped out of time in the frozen highlands of the Det Sen Monastary.
Not a quote out of Time...
A dare.
The Doctor stopped in his broken flight long enough to gulp down a rising lump of dread in his throat.
A moment echoed by the flutter inside his otherselves.
The Clown was not clowning.
This was not good.
The Doctor took off running as fast as he could, a prickle of fear clawing down his spine at what had just happened. The expression of resolution on Three's face had told him everything.
Things were about to go Boom.
When the little Hobo stopped playing the Fool...even an Emperor Dalek fled.
["Cross the Styx, my boy!'] THE DOCTOR shrilled. Before him the fog cringed in the path of the blue light off his ring. ["It's your only chance!"]
["Don't give up! We'll send you some help at the end!"] The Cricketeer stumbled backwards, blanching against an electronic scream as the Matrix roared its insanity. With heavy limbs he lifted his bat for another round; the willowwood wobbled as his shoulders trembled.
["Get to the TARDIS!"] Three barked. His SSD squeaked, and the first clump of fog quailed under the sonic attack.
The Doctor tasted ions, and dust, and the digital memory of blood.
Yes. The TARDIS.
TARDIS.
TARDIS.
TARDIS.
The dying Matrix was clouding his thoughts with its mind-pollution. It swirled dirty yellow biodata fog around his bloody fingers and whispered through the ruined city. He blinked to get its grit out of his eyes and his palm scraped against a humming plank of wood.
TARDIS..?
A subsonic wail fluttered. He flinched backwards, forgetting himself and the sharp stones stabbed at his ribs when he fell back. Dazed cross-eyed from the impact, the Doctor blinked at the ruined sky but all he got was more blood in his eyelids and a new glare of green fire slashing his retinas from the slow-motion hail of meteorites.
["Hold on, Doctor!"]
Oh, now that was ridiculous, the Doctor snorted blood out of his nose, finally worn down enough to laugh at himself. That actually sounded like...
Oh, dear.
"When did they copy you into the Matrix?" The Doctor wheezed, spitting a fine rain of blood over the dusty rubble.
And with a wink and a quirk of his always-slightly-smiling mouth, the Brigadier twinkled down at him.
["Since I married the Queen Regent of Avalon, of course."] The Matrix-Born Brigadier pulled out his old service revolver as he spoke, as solid as any reality could get when it was under attack, planetwide. ["You just can't keep out of trouble, can you?"] He sighed. ["Oh, that's good."] He said out loud. ["I see you couldn't shake it off at the Styx. Stubborn things."]
? The Doctor took in a breath, held it, and struggled to push himself up. "Get away!" He protested. "I know you're just a copy, but I don't want to see you killed just because I can't get inside the TARDIS!"
["Poppycock."] The Brigadier sniffed. He drew a bead at something in the collecting grey fogs and pulled the trigger. ["Even the Matrix-born aren't what you Time Lords think they are...can't blame you for that,"] he added confidentially. ["You're not dealing with just digital copies, you know. You're dealing with UNIT!"] His lips spread, tight and firm in resolve. The Brigadier never flinched in battle...but nor did he ever smile at it.
There was a time when I accused him of just...killing. The Doctor remembered enough of that terrible day that he was ashamed. The Brigadier had never liked to kill. He loved how he only knew himself when he was fighting for his life, but he loved peace and the comforts of home—all the more so because hearth and home and children was denied to him as long as he was in service. He never flinched from war and it was that lack of flinching that had made the Doctor believe he was too willing to shed blood.
I was hundreds of years his senior, and yet I wasn't wise enough to understand him. He had to fight. He had to. Because his life was pledged in the defense of others. I had pledged myself to life in a different aspect. I underestimated his selflessness and called it stupidity. It wasn't his fault that he didn't believe he was important...
["You'll be safe and sound once you get into the TARDIS."]The Brigadier told him. ["You can-"] The soldier paused, tipping his head to one side, listening to something on the artronic winds. ["He isn't regenerating yet?"] He asked it. ["Well, you're the boss. Right. No, no, that's not a problem. Yes. Ready."]
"What?" The Doctor asked weakly, just before he doubled up with a spasm of coughs. Blood painted the dry stones and the first of the pursuing dragon arrows shattered itself upon the surface of the dying world.
["Creag an Sgairbh!"]
Rock of the Cormorant. The cairn of the Lethbridge-Stewarts' doom. The clan proclaimed the address of their grave when they entered battle to not only prove their fearlessness of battle, but to let the enemy know where their bodies would go at the end of the day.
["A Gordon! A Gordon!"]
His mother's clan. So ferocious in battle, they had to warn the enemy they were coming so they would have time to prepare for death or retreat.
The Brigadier shouted his Gaelic at the top of his (at least they were working) lungs as he ripped something glittering and silvery from around his throat. It clinked against the marble chunks in his wake as he ran, weapon at ready. His UNIT badge glowed in the dying planetdawn much like THE DOCTOR'S ring. With his clan's war-cry shimmering in the air, the human charged.
And UNIT followed.
The Doctor stared, numb with awe as soldier after soldier poured out of the nether, weapons at ready, weapons blazing into the digital mist.
And this time, UNIT's bullets were working.
Benton paused in the solidifying reality to give the Doctor his famous grin. ["Just like the old days, sir. Rescuing you from the thick of it."] With a sly tip and a wink for finally getting the last word he took off running with his rifle parallel to his chest. Yates followed after; scolding Ancelin for trying to wear a UNIT badge above his helm.
["Brigadier, your husband has a hard head!"]
["Shame,"] Bambara tutted without the least bit of sincerity. Her own weapon was a deadly-looking little thing, a magnet-revolver the Doctor was fairly certain hadn't been invented until some 400 years past her natural death. ["You've got your orders, UNIT!"] The woman barked. ["The Brigadier is leading! We're going Zulu today! Tell the Cavers to take the right with me, Knight! The Brigadier is taking the Left! Shaka Plan! Horns of the Bull, gents!" ]
Knight? At first the Doctor thought she meant her husband, but a long-dead face picked up the end and smiled at him.
Captain Knight.
["That Brigadier, he's a demon for recruiting."] The young man confided. ["Doesn't let being dead stand as an excuse. Up you go, sir. The Bardo Plain's not too happy with this Matrix of yours right now. It asked us to give it a hand, so I daresay the Matrix is about due for a nasty shock."]
"Brigadier!" The Doctor choked, but another human was running after the big man in olive greens; a much smaller human, a man in greying brown hair cropped short in front and tied in the back. A kilt protected his thighs and knit trews the rest.
"Jamie!"
But how could it be Jamie? The Jamie he knew was young, and this one was a middle-aged man with limbs thickened with the solidity of maturity.
The little human paused in the middle of his charge, skein dhu in his stocking, sword in left hand, but a modern revolver in his right. More than anything that convinced the Doctor he wasn't seeing a delusion: Jamie had always been an enthusiastic anachronism, a magpie for Time, picking and choosing the bits of the Ages he liked and shrugging the rest aside. He was from too much a primitive culture to prefer something because it was "blending in" with the rest of things.
["Get tae the TARDIS, Doctair!"] The human chided in his old scolding/mother hen familiarity. ["We're buyin' ye Time! Thot's all a Time Laird needs!"]
And with a final whoop and a Craige an teure! He was gone.
"Jamie..." The Doctor was strangling on a welling pool of his own blood. He cast his head aside and vomited the excess out of his lungs. Deep in the fog, Gaelic imprecations shivered the air.
And he saw what the Brigadier had cast upon the stones.
A TARDIS key.
Numb at this latest example of bizarre reality on top of his day, the Doctor picked up the key with fingers slick with blood. It was an older model key, made to fit into the metal lock itself as opposed to the more traditional Time Lord keys that slipped into a lock hidden behind that human-like metal lock. It looked like it had just been made off a key shop in London.
It smelled like heather and seawater.
It was Two's key...
I was so afraid of the sea when I was him. And yet I always came back to it.
But that was me back then. To go where I was afraid...
Holding his breath, the Doctor heaved up, spun, and flung himself against the old TARDIS. In one stab (all he had the strength for), the key knifed into the locking mechanism between the Chameleon Skin and the TARDIS herself.