Things to note:
1) This has a lot of "OCs" and lots of Easter egg characters (only if you read/watch the comic/novels or Classic Who)
2) This will be based loosely on the TV episodes.
3) I always wondered why those fanfictions don't have the Gallifreyans speak more gallifreyan. Wouldn't you be more comfortable with your mother tongue? So here's me, trying to be a bittttttt more realistic.
4) I don't think the Doctor would be with anyone. I don't plan to, but sometimes my characters write it themselves. So I'll just wing it. If it happens it happens, but for now. No.
Gallifreyan: "Hello."
Telepathy: 'Hello.'
There are spoilers especially in my author's note. Anyway, enjoy!
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
They clutched tightly onto the railings as the TARDIS trembled and shook.
"Navi! Report!" The tall man yelled as he struggled to push several buttons while trying to hold himself steady.
"I don't know what happened, Luton! The HADS kicked in and she's trying to move to somewhere safe."
"Bloody HADS. I told you take it offline," the lean man muttered as he pulled the Zigzag plotter. "Zigzag plotter activated."
"Friction Defibrillator activated -"
"Inertial brakes activated at 40%-"
"Vortex Spinners turned off. Turning on Gyroscopic stablisers."
The four of them pulled and pushed the levers, calling out as they did and with every cog in the clockwork, the Tardis' jerking began to smooth out.
"About bloody time. Hold on a little longer. Holding steady at 50%. Braking." Luton patted the console, the TARDIS jerked again. With the combined efforts of the four pilots, the TARDIS began to stabilise and with a shudder, it landed heavily.
"78% nitrogen, 20% Oxygen, 0.9% Carbon dioxide. Temperature is 21 degrees Celsius outside," the lean man read off the screen. "Sounds like Earth. All the turbulence just to land on Earth?"
Navi leaned over, looking at the screen. "51st century, America, New New Texas! New Earth. Not Earth, Chersyl." She said poking the lean man in the chest.
"Earth, New Earth. Still apes regardless."
"Well, now that we know where and when we are. Let's repair and return to Gallifrey to-" Luton tapped the console table. "5 minutes after we left just to be on the safe side."
"That's assuming we can get the parts to fix it." Navi said. Pulling another screen down, she scanned the inner workings of the TARDIS. Tugging her ponytail absentmindedly, she inspected the wires under the console with her sonic probe. "The helmic regulator is gone and much of the battery supply as well. If you can get some ionized alkali metal, I should be able to rebuild that part."
Luton sighed. "Chersyl, stay with Navi and help with fixing the Tardis, Anestes and I will go and find us some parts."
A stocky man slipped a large gun into his pocket before following Luton out of the Tardis. He paused at the door before turning to Chersyl. "Don't forget to deadlock the door."
Chersyl nodded, well aware of how prized Tardises were.
"At least the Chameleon circuit is still working. But the Arton energy convertor isn't working right," she brushed her black hair off her hair as she leaned down to blow some of her regeneration energy onto the dying circuits. "Check the circuits under the console-" She looked up to find Chersyl staring at the screen. "What? What's wrong?"
"It's not New Earth." He clapped his mouth in horror. "All the turbulence- "
"It's the parallel world." Chersyl pushed the buttons in hopes that he read the screen wrong –again. No, it was most definitely the parallel world. That was why there had been so much shaking that even 4 pilots have difficulty stabilizing. The doors between parallel worlds had been closed for almost four hundred years when the Time war begun. How had they slipped through? Or the better question was if they could slip through, could they even return? Did anything slip out with them? Would anything slip out with them if they tried to return? Chersyl shook the questions out of his mind as he began to formulate a course of action – plan A, plan B, plan C. They'll need a backup plan should there be daleks too. There are daleks too in the parallel world. He remembered vaguely. All the time spent in war with the daleks had made much of the stuff in learn in school vague, the essentials like surviving had been pushed in front rather than whether there were daleks in parallel worlds. Especially when the parallel was supposed to have been sealed off.
"That can't be right?" Navi squinted at the screen over Chersyl's shoulder. "They closed the parallel worlds awhile back. How did we get here?" Chersyl moved aside to allow Navi to read the screen as well. "We didn't do anything special. We piloted the Tardis through some turbulence. That was it!" She pulled up the logs and scanned them through. Nothing. The HADS had activated and it had been due to the dalek's beam that triggered it but it did not explain how they even gone to the parallel world. She had programmed the Tardis to phase 3 seconds out of sync before returning when HADS was triggered. That was exactly what the logs reported too. She pulled up her programming. She was class 3 of the Durm – the most prestigious Engineering group in Gallifery's academy. She was the 3rd best of her century's class in programming, piloting and all things related to Tardis mechanics. Her Tardis was also known to have her own special designs that were supposed to have surpassed the Type 103 TT capsules.
"My programming is flawless," she said, returning Chersyl's silent look. "HADS activated at coordinates 33392/0134by30,034/red, 72431/231, Tardis moved into temporal shift for 3 secs. Temporal shift deactivated at Coordinates 33392/0134by600,030/red, 72431/200. There was no mistake. The returning coordinates is correct after factoring in the 3 secs." She pulled the logs to Chersyl. "Read it and tell me if you see a mistake."
There was no mistake. Chersyl knew there was no mistake. She had piloted, programmed, fixed this Tardis so many times over the 400 years they had fought together. Sure she was not perfect, but she never made such a large mistake. There might be the first times for everything, but it was hard to imagine she would have gotten something so fundamentally basic after more than 800 years of TT capsule engineering and programming. Something had happened. Chersyl could and would bet all his remaining regenerations on that. Something that was completely out of their hands had happened and he will get to the bottom of this.
"What caused this to happen?!" Chersyl flung his hand towards the door – towards the parallel universe. "Do you even remember how to return back to our world?" He asked, grimacing mentally at his tone. If anyone could open the portal to the parallel and back, it would be Navi. She probably was even part of the team that had created the mechanism to prevent parallel and alternate dimension travelling. He hadn't meant for it to sound so harsh. "-Because I don't really remember it anymore. Let's get the facts right. 1. We're in a parallel universe. 2. No idea how we got here. 3. No programming fault. 4. No mention of a change in universe in the logs. " He paced back and forth, ruffling his blond hair in irritation at the lack of information. "It has to do with the HADS. It seems only plausible, but the programming is right. Logically there would be a fault in the programming. However, even if there was a fault in the programming, the most that would have happened is us crashing and not landing in a parallel universe. They sealed the parallel universes off. Nothing should be able to overwrite it."
"Chersyl- If we could slip out-"Navi interrupted, pulling his pacing to a stop. "Chersyl-"
"Could anything have slipped out as well?" Navi turned to Chersyl in horror.
'Luton! Anestes?!' Chesryl called out, sending his mind far out as far as he could. They were there, just outside of his range. Between him and Navi, he was the better telepath; there was no dispute about that.
"Luton. Anestes. Come in." Navi called urgently over the comms. She sonicked the comms to boost it. Nothing. Either they were still too far from the communication's range or they were busy.
Meanwhile Chersyl had scampered out, his long legs covering grounds quickly as he sent his mind out searching for them.
'Focus on fixing the Tardis. Be ready for exiting when we return.' Chersyl instructed Navi as he scoured the city before him. Luton was also capable of long distant messages. Surely he would have caught on their frantic searching for them. Chersyl sniffed the air, following their scent. Pulling the sonic probe out, he began searching for alien activity, before facepalming himself. Alien activity? Really, Chersyl. He mumbled to himself before changing the settings. Searching for other time lords activities was hardly alien activity. He had barely finished setting his sonic probe settings when he felt a wave of regeneration energy. Chersyl could faintly hear Navi calling out in horror in the back of his mind as he hurried over towards the energy.
'Luton! Anestes!' he called out again. Neither responded. Was in Daleks? Had Daleks followed them?
"Luton! Anestes!" He called out again, this time through the comms. He sonicked the communications, hoping to boost it a little more than it already had been. "Luton! Anestes!" The sound of his hearts beating in his ears seemed to swallow all his other mental capacity as his feet crunched through the gravelly ground.
"Chesryl-!"
He half-spun to the voice, his mind taking in the male brunette – Luton, his timelord senses affirming his quick judgement, that was lying on the ground surrounded by scrap metal. Just several metres ahead of him was Anestes fending off metal. Not daleks. They didn't look like daleks. Luton had used his regeneration energy to destroy the metal things around him.
"Grab Luton and get out of here. They're Skaro degradations. We can't fight them with these guns."
Chesryl turned around, half skidding towards Luton. Heaving Luton onto his shoulders, he pulled out his sword. Skaro degradations. They had been fortunate enough to meet very few of these and always in space combat. There was nothing the four of them piloting the Tardis that could beat them. Nightmare child, the Horde of Travesties even the armies of Meanwhiles and Neverweres were not a match for them. How else could they have lasted the frontlines for 400 years? The Tardis couldn't come to their rescue because it was still being repaired. Even if they could, even if they had the power to come right here and right now, the damage from one shot of a Battle Tardis would destroy the whole city. Chesryl did a rough mental calculation. This city would have alone a million over people.
But they're Skaro degradations.
The small whisper in the back of his head said. What he'd give to have Arsus here now to burn everything through or even the renegade. Nothing they can't handle, nothing he can't handle, Chersyl breathed gasped, his lungs were burning as his legs sprinted towards the Tardis. There was no hope for Anestes. He would be killed before he would be even able to regenerate. Anestes must have bought time for Luton to complete his regeneration and then known there was no hope of saving him but there was still hope for Luton.
'Good luck Chesryl, Luton. Goodbye.'
He heard Anestes as the large flash of regeneration energy went out then cut short before it could complete.
'Navi. Tell me some good news!'
'The Tardis is prepped and ready.'
That was way too quick. How did she fix it? Chesryl slammed the doors behind him. Quickly dropping Luton to the side, he made his way to the console. Navi was already beginning the take off process, darting around the console, pulling the levers and pressing the buttons.
"We have one shot at this, so let me do this," Navi said before Chesryl could take his usual position. There was a deep frown marring her face, a frown of concentration as she calculated the coordinates, velocity and angle to what Chesryl could not deduce. He flickered his attention to both screens, neither was telling him anything much.
The Tardis shuddered, shaking side to side. It was a jerky flight, jerkier than he had ever experienced even when she had one-manned an eight man Tardis. The shuddering did not stop her; Navi gripped the railings, even using the off balance to aid her movement from corner to corner, side to side. Then pulling her sonic screwdriver out, she beamed it at the Tardis just as it jerked violently. Numbers began pouring down the screen. Too many numbers for him to begin to understand what it was counting. They were still moving in time or space or whatever Navi had sent them through – flying if Chesryl would hazard a guess. As the movement of the Tardis began to lull into a slow floaty movement reminiscent of them hovering in space, the numbers began to slow down as well.
"Co-Coordinates checks please," Navi called out weakly from the bottom of the stairs. The jerking had caused her to hit the ceiling hard and tumble down the stairs since unlike Chesryl and Luton, she had not been holding onto a railing.
"33392/0034by1000,030/arrow, 72431/200." Chesryl paused. "One hundred years, four months, thirteen days, eighteen hours since we left. But we're back on the same universe!"
"We can jump back again," Navi smiled. "Just need the ionized alkali metal to fix the helmic regulator."
"You mean you didn't get it fix? How on earth did you even manage the jump?" Chesryl stared at her in amazement.
"Compensated. I only had to get us through the gap before it closed. Didn't matter where we landed as long as we were in the correct universe." Navi pressed her hand at her forehead. "Didn't have the energy though."
She grinned, letting her hand as she healed her bleeding forehead. "Sort of blew on it until it was charged enough. Wasn't sure-"
"You used your regeneration energy?" Luton exclaimed. He was still finding his feet after his regeneration.
"Can't be helped! Couldn't let Anestes die in vain." Navi stood up. Pushing the buttons and adjusting the timing, she stared at the console, refusing to meet any of their stares. "Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same, because I know you two would have as well."
She looked at them carefully, knowing they agreed. "After this war ends, when this war ends, let's all go to a beach," she smiled as she pulled the engine release lever.
"Agr-"
The Tardis jerked, the alarms sounded this time.
"That can't be right."
"No it can't."
"Luton- Turn on the inertial regulator. I'll try an earlier time."
Navi pulled the lever again and the Tardis jerked again. "No, no, no! Why would you work!?" She swore as she kicked the console table. Pushing Luton aside, she adjusted the inertial regulator again and changed the timing. Over again and again. "It's time-locked. All of it," she whispered finally to the duo that stared had been staring at her silently for what was probably over half an hour.
"How?"
"More like why?"
Luton and Chesryl begun to pace the floor, each trying to come up with probable reasoning, each reasoning sounding more and more ridiculous than the other.
"There's no sound," Navi whispered. She looked up at them from her spot on the floor by the bench. "No sounds but the three of us."
That was when they realized that silence was more frightening and deafening than those loud, raucous conversations that were always happening in the back of their minds. While they had always cherished the short bouts pauses in the ever-present noise, none of them had ever imagined a time where there was an absence in the noise that was part of the Time Lord consciousness.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
It was six months since then; drifting in space, no aim, no goal, nowhere to go. They had coped with it differently. Chesryl had taken to his books and the endless library that he had joked constantly about never having time to read it. Now it was like it was all he had left. Luton joined him occasionally, penning his own thoughts into the book of Those who survived that Chesryl had started. Perhaps it was Luton that took it the best among the three. Without Luton's telepathic chatter, Chesryl might have fallen apart. Navi retreated into herself, never speaking a single word or even uttering a single syllable. Her eyes were vacant whenever Luton tried to get her to speak to him. She drove herself into fixing the Tardis then when it was fixed, she began upgrading it to the point where neither Luton nor Chesryl could even begin to understand what the upgrades were.
The Tardis would hum gently as though comforting her passengers and while Navi seemed to take a certain comfort in it, Chesryl and Luton simply wrote it off as Tardis' sounds. Type 94 war Tardis weren't supposed to have a telepathic relationship with its passengers or crew.
"Luton," Chesryl begun. He looked up from his book to the other time lord sitting on the other side of the table. He realized over the three months that this regeneration of Luton had an odd sense of fashion, he liked to wear his hair braided and plaits all over. Who in the right mind wears braided hair? Chesryl had found himself questioning that every time he saw the braid. "What do you think of Navi?"
Luton arched an eyebrow at him. "Of Navi?" Luton repeated. "In what context are you asking this question?"
"I- I mean. Navi's taking it really badly. I mean-" Chesryl pursed his lips, trying to put his thoughts into real constructed sentences.
"I think we're all having it bad. It's just a difference in how we show it. There's you who I doubt have slept for over an hour for the last six weeks. While you seem to act normal, you look like terrible. There's me. I dream of Anestes every time I sleep. I ask myself, why did he die for? Did we do the right thing? There wasn't much of a choice then. The choice of a million lives and twenty Skaro's degradations or the death of Anestes and the survival of us three. What happened to the Skaro's degradations? What is going happen to that parallel universe? These questions hound me. Sometimes I wake up and say, we made the best decision we saw at that point of time. It's not like we can go back and change it. The gap's closed." Luton closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white as he clasped them together. "Then we have Navi who is at least honest about how she's taking it and there's nothing wrong with that."
The Tardis jerked horribly. It was the first real movement they felt since they arrived back into this dimension.
"Navi-" Luton muttered, hurrying out of the library.
Chesryl turned to the screens as they entered the console room. Navi was missing but the door to the Tardis was wide open.
"She jumped- I can't move the Tardis. She locked it down for the next –" The Tardis jerked, slamming the doors shut. The levers activated itself into a jump back to the vortex.
"What are you doing!?" Luton rushed to the console, trying to reverse it.
"It's a flight delay. To go into the vortex after she jumped. It's set on random."
"Why did she do that?"
"That was what I was trying to tell you." Chesryl sunk into the pilot's seat, grasping his head with his hands. "Navi was going crazy. She wasn't being honest. She wasn't being honest at all."
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Doctor had just sent Donna back home. 'Quality time' she insisted on having. He did promise to pick her up in a week. A week of her time specifically, which meant very little to him. He supposed he would have to go back soon, it's been almost 3 months of travelling alone for him and he was almightily bored. He would have to be darn careful never to tell Donna how much he missed her big mouth or he would never hear the end of it or ever see her mouth closing that is.
"Should fetch her right after this cup of tea," he muttered. His feet were dangling out of the Tardis that was suspended just above the jungle as he watched the birds fly over. A time of not many men and no air traffic if you excluded the birds. So peaceful and silent. That was until the Tardis jerked heavily.
"What? What?" he called out, gripping onto the Tardis just as he was about to slide off.
Something blue was falling down into the jungle beneath him – apart from his tea cup.
"Was that- Is that-" Pulling out his glasses, he stared at it, looking up into the blue sky and down at his wrist watch before running back to the console table. "What's a person doing in mid-air!?"
Sure he had bumped into heaps of things. He never said he was the best driver. Okay. He might have said it a few times for the hell of it, but he didn't really think he was never the best driver. Anyway, no matter how bad a driver he was, he never actually hit anything before. He had landed in front of objects and crashed into them, but when you're miles up high in the sky stationery, you don't actually think anything is going to crash into you. Especially not when you're in the ancient civilization and they don't even know what metal is yet. Where and how did that person come from?
"I was just trying to enjoy my tea!" he muttered, steering the Tardis to catch the person.
Nope. Still a terrible driver. He phased out a moment too late, missing the person by a whole minute.
"Blimey!" He looked down and ran to re-adjust the landing where he thought he saw the person landed. It wouldn't be a nice sight to see, but oh the need for answers. He took his sonic screwdriver out, searching for something. He wasn't very sure what he was searching for to be honest. All he knew it was a person and it was wearing something blue. As he stood there scratching his head in puzzlement, he was struck by a very familiar sensation from behind him. It was a glow, golden-orangey sort of glow that washed over him like a wave. The glow intensified and though it felt like it was burning his eyes, the Doctor found he couldn't or rather didn't want to look away. The person was regenerating. A time lord was regenerating! Another time lord had survived!
The glow faded and in its place was a slim, lithely build female with the hair as dark as night. The Doctor hesitated for a moment, his eagerness to approach and the uncertainty whether it was okay to approach tore at him before he finally relented and knelt beside her. He brushed her hair away before lightly patting her cheeks. It was a few moments before her eyes opened. Her pale blue eyes darting from side to side.
"Are you okay?" He asked, helping her up to a sitting position.
"Where-?" She looked at him then looked around. She pulled his wristwatch up, reading it before finally sticking a tongue out. Was she measuring the time with her tongue like he liked to too? He never realized how odd he looked doing it. "100 000BC, Earth. How long was I out?"
She stumbled as she tried to walk.
"You're still cooking, I'm afraid," the Doctor replied slowly. It had been a long time since he had spoken Gallifreyan. He felt somewhat comforted by the musical sounds of it and somewhat intimidated on speaking it knowing he was badly out of practice.
"Cooking?"
"You regenerated."
She bent down, at last realizing it. "Oooh. Longer legs. These shoes are a bit big now." She said and chucked them aside. She frowned at him, tilting her head side to side. "I don't think I know you. Do I know you?"
The doctor chuckled, catching her again as she tripped over her feet yet again on the way back to his Tardis. "You sort of fell out of the sky. Quite literally in fact. I'm the Doctor, in any case."
"The Doctor! I remember you! Renegade! Oncoming Storm! Bringer of Darkness!" She spun around, calling out gaily.
"I never thought I'd actually meet you in person!"She shook his hand excitedly with a large smile on her face. She was very happy to meet him though why she wasn't quite certain.
"I'm-" She frowned. "I'm – What's my name?"
He quirked an eyebrow at her sceptically. Well amnesia was one of the possible temporary side-effects from regeneration. He too had suffered from it before.
"It's at the tip of my tongue. Na- something."
"Nedre? Nynde? New? Number? Nature?"
"No, no, no, no."
"Maybe it's No," he grinned. "Well here's my Tardis. I suppose we can do some scans in the medbay while I figure how you dropped out of the sky."
"Oh a type 40." She circled around the console table, her slim hands lightly touching the rim as she did. "Haven't seen one in a long while. In a museum yes. Didn't they recall all type 40s?"
He grimaced slightly before quickly deflecting the question. "How could you tell from a glance?" He hadn't met many Gallifreyans who could tell it at a glance.
"Well the positioning! It's a six man Tardis. Telepathic circuits. Your chameleon circuit's spoilt. I could fix it if you like."
"I sort of like it looking like this." He gestured vaguely around. It was always the same question when he met someone who could fix the Tardis. Fix the Tardis! She must have been a mechanic. How did she survive the war? How did she get out?
"I could fix it and program it to stay it this way until otherwise," she smiled cheekily. "It's always nice to have the option there than to not have it altogether."
"Medbay first! Then we'll talk about fixing the Tardis later. I do prefer to fix the Tardis on my own. What do you remember anyway? Do you remember your name yet?"
"Here and there," She motioned in the universal sign of somewhere there vaguely. "But really? You call that fixing the Tardis? The wires are just dangling out there like that! Even if it's below the console panel, it's not good for the Tardis to have it left that way."
The Tardis hummed with agreement. "See! She agrees!" The girl pointed, laughing before allowing the Doctor to drag her into the med bay.
"What's this, pick on the doctor day? Where's your Tardis? I'm assuming that's where you dropped out from."
She hummed as she thought."Good question. I suppose I could call it if I remember my name. It's N-something. I don't know. Pick a name that starts with Na for the moment I suppose.
"What about Nana? Since you said Na-something." The Doctor waved the scanner over her, he smirked at her.
"I like how that sounds. Hey, did you know that you've really pretty eyes," she said, grabbing his face and staring into them. "Pretty but sad and old."
He stared into her pale blue eyes. Her dark lashes framing her eyes seemed bigger. Her eyes too had seen conflict, a lot of conflict. If anything, she hadn't run from the battlefield. She wasn't the coward like the Master had been who ran from the battlefield.
Leaning her head against his, she could feel his mind beneath the barriers that he had built over the years. "You've forgotten. You've built this wall around you so tightly. It was difficult to find you."
"F-Find me?" He blushed at bit as he felt her mind leaning close to his. It had been such a long time since someone, anyone had been able to do that with him. He had forgotten how intimate it felt when someone with telepathic abilities did that to him as well. The last time it had been was with Jeanne-Antoinette but even then, it was nothing compared to his. Their minds pressed against each other, the ability to feel their surface thoughts and their emotions. The girl's surface thoughts were all over the place. Definitely temporal amnesia, those were always a pain.
"I heard you. I remember. I remember. I remember. I remember. Hearing you. Over and over. Calling out."
"I did?"
"You were crying. So I came."
She pulled him close. 'To tell you, you are not alone.'
The unbidden memory of the Time Lord consciousness surfaced, the cacophony of the muted conversations always somewhere in the back of the mind then the silence, the never-ending, mind-numbing silence. It was all gone. The silence stayed on, but now he could feel her and he wasn't the last Time Lord left. She brushed the tear that fell from his eye unbidden.
'Hello Doctor.'
A/N: I always thought of the concept that the Doctor was the last Time-lord a bit absurd. I'm sure that there would always be the cowards, the parents who cherish the very young that are willing to send them off to somewhere "safer", I'm even sure the government would have at least considered sending the very young to somewhere safe during the later stages of war. Then again, the War did lasted at least 400 years. By then, any very young would have been considered "sufficiently old enough" to participate in the war. Did they train the young as fast as possible to put guns in their hands? I thought of these as I was writing the story. Anything's plausible, so then what about when before the Doctor activating the Moment. It's time-locked and etc etc. Considered all these and would factor all these in the story.
