Your Heartache And Mine
By Laura Schiller
Crossover: Seven Kingdoms Trilogy/Doctor Who
Copyright: Kristin Cashore/BBC
"In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine
at the disgrace of a waste of a life."
- Kristin Cashore, "Dellian Lament"
Fire woke up to a strange mechanical sound like the churning of giant gears, a sensation of warmth, and an excruciating pain in her hands. Awareness of where she was came slowly, her thoughts moving like sticky molasses. She was in a bed. She was wrapped up in a blanket, a silvery blanket of unknown materials that rustled when she moved. Her hands were bandaged. She still wore the clothes in which she'd escaped Leck's holding –
Leck. His red eye gleaming as he smirked up at her. I murdered my father. You murdered yours. Is that something you did with a large heart? Archer's body lying in the barn, dumped like trash with an arrow in his stomach. The blazing fire she had lit in his memory, not even caring whether Leck's soldiers could escape. Leck tumbling down the mountain. His mismatched eyes blurring into Cansrel's electric blue ones, condemning her all over again. Oh, Father … Archer … what have I become? What's the point of anything now?
"Oi, easy now! Take it easy, Ginger. You're safe now, all right? Whoever they are, they can't hurt you in here."
She swallowed back the sobs she hadn't even realized were coming from her. The voice, with a faint Pikkian accent and a tone of gruff concern, came from a man sitting by her bedside. He was tall and wiry, dressed in dark trousers and a black leather jacket, with close-cut blond hair, prominent ears and the weather-beaten face of a frequent traveller. He could have passed for anything between thirty and fifty. His eyes were his only handsome feature, very blue, and very kind.
Touching his mind, however, made her close her eyes with dizziness. Underneath his surface concern and curiosity, his consciousness was vast, limitless as the stars in the sky, filled with ecstasies and horrors she could not begin to imagine. Her head spun. Who was this man, to have the entire cosmos inside his head?
Just as she thought this, he slammed a mental shield in place and frowned.
"They call me the Doctor. Now stop that."
Sorry. She should know, better than anybody else, how important privacy was.
Where am I?
"You're on the TARDIS. My spaceship."
What is a spaceship?
"Oh, right. This planet hasn't even reached the steam age yet, has it?" he muttered, more to himself than to her. "Let alone space travel. Hmph. Let's just say … it flies through the stars, all right? Don't believe me? I can show you. But not until you're ready to get out of bed."
The Doctor placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder to stop her from trying to get up. Just as well, since it hurt to move.
Flying through the stars? It sounded impossible – but then, so might a fire-haired woman with the power to control minds, for those who'd never heard of her. For one painful moment, she thought of Brigan and Nash and the twins – how intrigued they would be by a flying ship like this. They'd probably want it put to some strategical use in the upcoming war. How she missed them …
"Absolutely not!" snapped the Doctor, his sunburned skin turning pale. "My TARDIS has seen too much of war already! And can you please stop projecting at me? It's giving me a headache. I haven't been 'round another telepath since … "
His shield cracked, just a little, letting a fierce flash of sorrow and guilt escape. She caught a glimpse of fire, of vessels floating in the sky, exploding. He pulled himself together with a shake of his head, possibly to avoid the sympathy Fire could not help sending out. Another survivor of horrors, then, just like Brocker and Brigan. Just like me.
"Ah, never mind about me," he said, with an uncomfortable shrug of his leather-clad shoulders, and a forced grin. "What about you, Ginger, eh? I don't normally take on passengers without knowing who they are, but as soon as I landed here, those projections of yours wouldn't leave me in peace until I'd tracked you down. You look like death warmed over, by the way. No offense."
None taken. It was almost a relief, after a lifetime of impossible beauty, to finally look the way she felt.
"Oh, and there's a horse. Feisty wee thing, tried to bite me. Last I saw her, she was grazing right outside the TARDIS doors. Yours, I take it?"
In a manner of speaking. She rescued me … I'm glad she's safe.
"Fantastic. So." He rubbed his hands together. "What's your name, what's your species, and what in Rassilon's name were you doing outside with no coat and gloves in the arse-end of winter?"
"My name is Fire," she said, her voice rusty from disuse. "And I'm a monster."
Once more, the Doctor's blue eyes filled with pity, and with anger on her behalf. "No, you're not."
"I am." She laughed weakly. "It's the name of my species."
"And whose daft idea was it to name you that?"
"I don't know … " As usual, she resorted to mind-speech to get across things that were too painful to speak out loud. I'm the last one left. I killed my father.
A choking sound from the Doctor made her glance up at him through her eyelashes, wondering if he was crying. He leaned forward in his chair, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He took his hands away, showing her the twisted smile on his face. He was laughing.
"That's nothing," he rasped. "I destroyed my planet."
Your entire planet? Monster rocks …
Even though Brocker's lessons had included astronomy, and she knew on an abstract level that the ground she walked on belonged to an enormous sphere circling one of an infinite number of stars, she had had no real sense of the vastness of the universe apart from the small stretch of land that was the Dells. The idea that a planet could be destroyed was staggering – cities, meadows, mountain ranges, animals, people, millenia of culture and history consumed in blood and flame.
She fought to subdue her instinctive horror at such a deed. It was not her place to judge. Still …
"Why?" she asked.
"It was the only way to end the war," he said bluntly. "I killed them all – my people and the enemy together – to prevent them tearing apart the rest of the universe."
So you saved us all, she thought to him, with all the warmth and understanding she could gather, as an apology for thinking the worst. So many worlds, so many people, live because of you. She sent him images of the soft green hills that gave her country its name; Brigan's gray eyes and his strong hands holding hers; a red-gold monster kitten sleeping in her lap; Hanna's endearing intensity during achery practice; the enormous golden-leaved tree outside Brigan's house; the joy of playing her fiddle. For someone who lived with tormenting guilt on a cosmic level as the Doctor did, it might be only a very small comfort to remember that he had saved all this from destruction; but even a small comfort was better than none at all.
Judging by the ever so slight softening at the jagged edges of his mind, she knew her message was received.
"So what's your reason?" he asked, not needing to specify.
The same as yours, I believe, on a smaller scale. My father … She closed her eyes and let her memories speak for themselves. Cansrel forcing her pet dog Twy to throw himself against a sharp rock. Cansrel cutting into his own bare chest to make his caged predator monsters hungry for his blood. Cansrel plotting Brigan's assassination. Brocker in his wheelchair, his legs shattered according to Cansrel's advice to King Nax. I loved him and he loved me … ("I'm told this has a nice sound, darling") … but he was leading our kingdom into ruin. He was like that boy …the boy who killed Archer, my oldest friend, for being too strong-minded to control …
The Doctor, who thanks to a delirious Fire's involuntary thought projections, had learned more about Leck already than he wanted to know, nodded grimly.
"Some people in this universe are just beyond saving, aren't they?" he said, working to persuade himself as much as her. "No matter how hard you try. Sometimes all we can do, all we should do, is stop them from causing any more harm."
She caught a glimpse from his own memories, of a man in a black cloak, laughing bitterly, falling down a well of blazing light.
His compassion – for the unknown man; for her; even for Leck and Cansrel – was like the deepest of oceans, carrying her along in its gentle yet powerful waves. He understood.
"You should get some rest, Ginger."
"I told you my name was – "
"Fire, I know." He smiled, his first genuine smile, and brushed a strand of orange hair away from her forehead. "You still look like a Ginger to me."
She fell asleep to the churning of the TARDIS engines and the quiet breaths of the Doctor, all her pain for the moment forgotten.
/
The next time she woke up, the smell of the room and the familiar feel of her cotton nightdress and bedsheets disoriented her once again, but otherwise she felt better – warm, well-rested, even her frostbitten hands less painful than before. It was early morning, the sky white as unwritten paper. She was back in the rooms she had occupied in the palace, with their mosquito grid at the window and a profusion of flower bouquets from her admirers on every surface, including the nightstand. She could even sense Musa and Margo standing guard outside her door, worried about her, relieved but mystified by her sudden reappearance after an absence of so many weeks.
Home. She was home. She would see Brocker again, Roen, Nash, Tess, Clara, Garan, Mila … oh, no. She would have to tell both Mila and Clara that the father of their children was dead. She would have to tell Brocker.
And what about Hanna? Was she safe? Was Brigan still out leading the war against Mydogg and Gentian? The Doctor's eyes, blazing with pain and fury at the very idea of one more war, flashed into her mind's eye. The Doctor. How strange that, after such a short time on his TARDIS, she already missed him like a friend of many years.
As the first rays of the sun came through the window, Fire spotted a letter on her nightstand, written on bright blue paper in a large, energetic, black-inked scrawl. Unable to hold it steady with her bandaged hands, she sat up and leaned over it instead.
Dear Ginger,
I'd offer to take you with me, but seeing as neither my TARDIS nor I are in any shape to take on a companion yet, I thought better of it. Yours is the first life I haven't ruined, one way or another, in a very long time. I prefer to keep it that way. Maybe in few centuries, I'll come back to show you the stars.
In the meantime, take care of yourself, and I don't just mean your hands. Tell your soldier boy how you feel. And most importantly, don't forget what you showed me today: only by helping others can you help yourself.
Have a fantastic life.
- The Doctor