AN: 1. This is the 13th Doctor, who is female (See "The Trial of River Song"); 2. Koschei (the Master) has regenerated (You can decide for yourself if he's Simm!Master, Cumberbatch!Master or someone-else!Master); 3. Koschei is no longer evil … or is he?


"So where are we going next?"

That's a question I've heard from nearly all my companions at least once. With most of time and space available to visit, the answers can be infinite. But when Koschei – formerly the Master - asked me that question, I looked at the calendar of the place we were visiting, and saw it was September 9.

"I have a promise to keep to an old friend," I replied, beginning to enter the coordinates of the place and time I needed to go to keep that promise. September 9 was his birthday, which triggered the reminder.

"Of course," Koschei said, sitting on the jump seat. "I'm sure he'll be glad to see you."

I was never sure sometimes, even though Koschei was now recovering from his long spell with the Rassilon-implanted drumming in his head, if he was being sincere, sarcastic or out-and-out malicious. I shook my head. "He won't know," I said. "But it's something I have to do."

Once the old girl was in motion, I turned to Koschei with a serious expression. "Koschei, keep an eye on the console, and let me know if anything's amiss. I need to change my clothes."

"Should I change, too?" he asked.

"Actually, no," I said. "I really need you to stay aboard the TARDIS this time. I have to do this alone."

Koschei frowned, but acquiesced. I went to my quarters and exchanged my usual brightly colored clothes for a black, tight-fitting t-shirt, black leggings and a black pair of sneakers. I pulled on black gloves and a black balaclava, and strapped a black-scabbarded rapier to my waist.

"You look like you're going to steal something," Koschei said when I returned to the console room.

"I am," I said. "And that's why you can't be involved. I'm sorry." I took a couple of anti-grav units from their storage space and checked their charge.

"Do you mind telling me what?"

"I'll tell you when it's over," I said.

He just shook his head. "I don't know how you get into half the things you do, Theta," he said.

"Coming from you, that's really funny," I laughed, then with an effort made my face and tone serious. "Could I ... um ... ask you to leave the console room until I finish this?"

"Am I being sent to my room?" Koschei asked, a bit tartly.

"No, no ... but I am going to lock you inside the TARDIS, I'm afraid."

"Can't have me getting out?" He was clearly irritated. And spend … the rest of my life imprisoned with you?

"Can't have other people getting in," I said sadly. "Really. You don't want to be mixed up with this."

When Koschei had gone away, grumbling, to the library, I locked the doors leading into the console room from the other parts of the ship, took a deep breath and opened the door leading outside. I found myself in a dark, echoing room, floored in marble. I played the beam of my small electric torch about the place. About 20 feet in front of me stood my target: A large marble box, three feet wide and eight feet long, more or less, topped with a sculpture of a robed man sitting up, supported by a cherub and woman in a gown and veil, with another woman, wearing a fashionable mid-17th Century French gown, cast across the foot of the implied bed, weeping bitterly. I crossed the space between me and the tomb, rested my hand on the marble replicas of the main figure's long, slender fingers and remembered the actual event that had inspired this effigy. There, the weeping woman and the woman supporting him with an arm around his shoulders had been the same woman, but there wasn't a good way to show someone in strength and in weakness all at once. ...

I ran my hand over my face. To work: I attached one anti-grav unit to the effigy, pulled my sonic screwdriver out of my pocket and pointed it at the seam between the effigy and the top of the box. The trick was to separate the effigy-lid (which is not the technical term; I'm sorry that I don't know the technical term; I had yesterday off) from the rest of the tomb without damaging any of it. Then, when I had done that, I would attach the second antigrav to the coffin inside, float it up and out of the tomb, replace the effigy and take the coffin back to the TARDIS - preferably without anyone noticing my presence or any changes in the tomb.

But this is me we're talking about here, and it seems that almost nothing I get involved in goes quite according to plan. And truth be told, I wasn't entirely surprised when the alarm was raised. Being as this was 1788, the alarm consisted of someone shouting, then several someone shouting and running footsteps.

I drew the rapier he had given me when he was dying (after I had thrown myself sobbing across his deathbed but before I had held him up to help him take his last few breaths with the least difficulty). It was the first time I had drawn it. It seemed appropriate for this situation.

Or at least it did until the Silents glided into the room.

I had not planned for this at all. No River Song, no guns, no backup, no weapons worth a damn.

But I kept my eyes on the uglies and ran the first Silent through the chest, much the same way he had run that one attacker through the chest in the thicket in Poitou. I shoved its body at his three followers. But before I could do much else, they thrust their dying compatriot aside and one of them pointed a finger at me, discharging tens of thousands of volts of electricity through my body. You don't want this to happen to you under any circumstances. True, I could withstand a lot of this kind of abuse (like the time Koschei zapped me in that junkyard), but the Silents seemed to have an unlimited supply of energy, and there were three of them ...

Koschei appeared at the door of the TARDIS, an eye drive in place, an energy weapon in his hand. He soon showed he had not relearned the Time Lord disdain for killing. When the last Silent ceased his attack, I stumbled back against the open tomb, dropped the rapier and tried to catch my breath. Koschei frowned, approaching me, smoking energy weapon in hand.

"Your TARDIS told me to put this on and take this weapon, and she unlocked the doors," he explained, taking in the scene without the distraction of gray-faced mouthless goons pointing their long deadly fingers at me. When I didn't say anything, he strolled up to the tomb and peered at the coffin inside. "Grave robbing, Theta? That's got to be a first, even for you."

"Not grave robbing, Koschei," I said, turning around and engaging the antigrav on the coffin. "Saving him from grave robbers. This lot -" I gestured at the dead Silents - "wanted his DNA so they could clone him." Or at least they had last time I saw him.

"But why do they want to clone Cardinal Richelieu?" he asked. "And why are you trying to stop them?"

"Probably for the same reason," I said, pushing the coffin into the TARDIS.

Koschei shut the door behind us. "You're not making any sense whatsoever, as usual."

I left the coffin floating there and pulled the takeoff lever. "Well, get comfortable, Koschei; this is a long story ..."