The Regeneration of the Meddling Monk

by the stargate time traveller

Spoilers for Big Finish Productions audio stories The Side of the Angels and To the Death, the Meddling Monk has spent centuries stranded in Earth's past after being sent back through time thanks to the Eighth Doctor, the mad Time Lord the Eleven, and the Weeping Angels. Now he is about to regenerate, and he has a promise to make.

The Regeneration of the Meddling Monk.

The Monk knew he was going to regenerate soon. In fact, he knew it would be happening in the next two days or so, and he was trying very hard to avoid the regeneration from beginning. He was just thankful that he had been living in his current incarnation for two hundred years already when the Weeping Angels had sent him back through time.

Sitting in his seat in first class on the plane bound for New York city in the early 1970s, the Monk was an elderly looking man, his hair was completely silver and his moustache was the same colour. By human standards, the Monk was an elderly looking man, but by Time Lord standards he wasn't that old; in fact, if another Time Lord met him they would see that he was close to regenerating. The Monk was looking forwards to regenerating out of this body, it had been wearing down for decades now, and he had been terrified of the prospect of regenerating without his TARDIS. Oh, he thought of his TARDIS wistfully, he was so looking forwards to being reunited with her and leaving this planet.

The Monk had been trapped on this planet for the last 700 years. He was desperate to leave the planet now. The Monk was a time meddler but meddling with history was no fun when you couldn't nip ahead and see the long-term consequences. He was reading a book through thick lenses - the glasses annoyed him just as much as his failing body - and was trying hard to stop himself from reading through the book faster than a normal human. He didn't want to attract any attention and besides, he wanted something to occupy his mind with so he didn't get bored on this plane - he couldn't believe that his prior incarnation had believed that giving the humans that technology would make things better when he could have given them basic teleportation technology instead. It was impossible for him not to think about his previous life without remembering how he'd been stranded in the primitive eleventh century after his failed attempt to change the outcome of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and then later on that brief period he had been on the ice planet trying to regain some measure of control over his TARDIS.

For decades the Monk had tried to find something, anything, he could use to replace the directional unit from his TARDIS, just to regain some of his control. What was the point of poking history into something much better if he couldn't go ahead to see how much better things were later?

The Monk had been forced to curb his meddling though he had messed with the Doctor to get revenge on him for causing him so much grief and for the damage his TARDIS had endured, but while the Master who seemed to have a delight in prodding the Doctor, only to slink away with his tail between his legs whenever he was beaten, only to go back for more, the Monk was not eager for conflict. He had no intention of his TARDIS's dimensional control being messed with again, nor did he want anything he did to control the TARDIS's movements through the vortex to be snatched away from him.

It had taken him centuries to scrounge about the universe looking for the materials and components he could use to control his TARDIS - it was just so frustrating, when he had stolen his TARDIS from the Time Lords, he had taken what had been at the time the most state-of-the-art model on the market at the time. Next to his fellow renegade and former classmate the Rani, he had the most advanced TARDIS. Now he was forced to meander through time and space without a clue where he was going. Even when he had first hooked the lash-up of components to the console to take the place of his old directional unit, the Monk had known he was taking a gamble.

And he had been right. When he arrived in New York, he was inspired by all the people who had built upon it, and decided to take his own cut.

The plan had been simple enough. He would take over a company that was doing well, and force them to build new skyscrapers and bridges, and reap the financial rewards to invest in businesses that would study electronics and finally give him the resources to build a new directional unit for his TARDIS.

But he hadn't expected the Weeping Angels that were already living in the city. The moment the Monk knew they were there, he had been terrified in case they turned on him and threw him back into the past like many of their other victims. Every Time Lord knew the stories of the Angels and what they did, but instead of pushing the Angels out of his mind and focusing on his business, the Monk came up with another idea. Using a Quantum communicator he had picked up on his travels, he contacted the Angels and offered them a deal. In return for all the humans they could send back through time, they would have all the food they could eat.

Weeping Angels were so predictable. They were always on the lookout for new supplies of energy, and they agreed with his deal. They didn't realise he planned to use the energy they produced whenever they sent someone back through time to power a simple space/time portal to travel into the future to gather fresh components from the future to build a new directional unit.

The Monk had successfully gathered all but one of the components and they were safely inside his TARDIS, just waiting to be assembled. The components would not make the directional unit as efficient for the TARDIS, of course, but they would do until he got a more superior component.

The Monk had stayed on in New York to gather the final component when it all began to go wrong.

It started when Cardinal Ollistra and some of the elite of the High Council of Gallifrey arrived in New York - the Monk had been surprised that the Time Lords had arrived, and at first he had bene afraid they had arrived to arrest him, but they had an astonishing story to tell him. After learning that Cardinal Padrac had taken over Gallifrey and was plotting to destroy the universe with a small group of Time Lords, the Monk was asked to help the Time Lords.

Their plan was simple and if the Monk were honest, typically elaborate for Time Lords, and when they learnt what he was doing with the Angels, they took over his operation. When the Monk had dropped in on New York and began using the city itself to help him repair his TARDIS, he hadn't expected the Time Lords to muscle in on his operation to build a replica of Gallifrey's capital city inside New York itself, using the Weeping Angels to power it up, using the humans to ensure their little base of operations remained safe enough to fight Padrac.

The Monk had pretended to be helpful to Ollistra's plans, but inwardly he was annoyed with her because his operation was smaller scale than hers was. He wanted to take things small in case the Doctor made one of his usual unexpected visits.

But the Eleven put paid to their plans. Just thinking of that crazy Time Lord who's insanity would give even the likes of the Master a run for his money, though the Master at least had control of his previous personalities rather than letting them bleed out into his current self. It was because of the Eleven forcing him into switching sides and letting the Doctor's pet humans nearly be killed by the Angels (being displaced in time or having their necks snapped were both seen as deaths), to that confrontation at the enclave….. it had led to the Monk being thrown back in time. It could have been avoided if the Doctor hadn't looked away.

Thinking of the Doctor made the Monk furious - even after so many centuries of being exiled into the past, forced to hide and scrape a meagre living as a thief in the filth of past centuries on this barbaric little world, it was impossible for the Monk to feel anything less for the Doctor than anger. When the Monk had been in his prior incarnation, he had encountered the First Doctor twice, and both times his TARDIS had either had its dimensional control removed, reducing the interior dimensions to the size of a dolls house, or the directional unit was removed, and both times he had been stranded, either in 1066 or on an ice planet until he had could rig up a basic means of control though he had been far from accomplishing his long term goal and truly fixing the TARDIS.

But the Doctor he'd met in New York…..

The Monk had encountered previous Doctors before, but the one he had met in New York had been more hostile than others. The Monk had tried to be civil, hoping that his 'let bygones be bygones' attitude would help convince the Doctor he was serious, but the other Time Lord was not interested whatsoever.

"If any past or future me has done something to upset you-,"

"Believe me, they have."

The implication he was out of linear sync with the Doctor meant nothing to the Monk; ever since his work with the Celestial Intervention Agency in his first few lives, he had come to realise all the laws his people had with time travel were just laws, suggestions. If he met the next incarnation of the Doctor, or jumped a few centuries into the Rani's timeline, and see an incarnation he had never met before, then he wouldn't be bothered. But at the time he had wondered what in the universe had he done to the Doctor to get that resentment? The First Doctor had been fine with him on Tigus, not friendly, but fine.

But this Doctor had been hostile. Too hostile, so something he did in the future would cause a lot of grief for the other Time Lord.

Over the years the Monk had simply not bothered to care. It was hard to care about someone's feelings after they'd looked away and let you be catapulted back into the past via Weeping Angel and having your time energy being fed on by those quantum locked statues. All the Monk wanted was to get revenge. He had just about had enough of the Doctor's interference in his affairs, defeating his attempt to make the human race better itself during that business in 1066, damaging his TARDIS, and now this. The Monk closed his eyes tiredly, reinforcing his mental control over his upcoming regeneration, and waited for the plane to arrive in New York.

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The moment the Monk's plane touched down in the city, the ailing time traveller was already aware of the buildings Ollistra and he had constructed were gone. That didn't surprise him - with the time energy the Angels had generated from him being thrown back through time as well as the energy generated by the buildings, it would have been child's play to rewind time so the city's alterations were erased.

But the Monk didn't care about that. He got into a taxi and headed for the penthouse where the younger version of his current self was staying. He had timed his arrival at the city carefully, taking note of the date in case he bumped into the younger Monk by accident. He might be carefree with the Laws of Time, but even the Monk would balk at the thought of playing games with the Blinovitch Limitation effect (he would need to speak to Drax about finding out how his limitation effect limiter worked…. the possibilities with that piece of time technology were endless), and he had made sure the exact date was imprinted into his memory and onto the scraps of paper he had kept to remind him of when he could leave had helped keep him sane all this time.

Unfortunately, while the Monk was willing to bat for the little guy, he didn't want to speak to the cabbie. Too bad the driver was a talkative chatterbox.

"So, what're y'doin' here? On 'oliday? Man, you're in for a treat, yessir. New York, the only place that's real…."

The Monk didn't bother to reply, fortunately for him the cab driver was the type of individual who enjoyed speaking and then providing his own conversation, so all he had to do was sit back and wait for the driver to reach the right destination. He was just relieved that he had arrived on a plane that arrived in the early morning before the rush.

By the time the taxi was halfway to the penthouse, the Monk was holding back the urge to fall asleep. The only reason he didn't surrender to the urge was because if he did then the taxi driver might go down the wrong streets to charge him for more. But there was a more serious reason why he didn't fall asleep, he could feel something else, something that terrified him. A familiar burning sensation in his chest that was beginning to spread throughout his body. The Monk knew what was happening to him, he had been dreading this happening to him ever since he'd been thrown back through time without his TARDIS to sustain him.

It had started. He was regenerating.

The Monk closed his eyes and willed the regeneration to slow down. He would need to devote all his willpower to maintain the strength, though he'd let it down only when he walked back inside his TARDIS.

The cab driver was still yapping, but one look out of the windows told the Time Lord they were close to the penthouse. Mentally he sighed a sigh of relief; he doubted that he could have coped with a cab driver who yapped to confuse the unfortunate passenger and take them around the city so then they could be charged a lot more; it was unhealthy for a Time Lord to hold back the urge to regenerate, to bottle all that energy in themselves for a long time before the change began. If he lost his control here and now, the car would be destroyed, the driver would be roasted alive by the release of energy, and it could also damage some of the other parts of the street and some of the other cars as well.

The Monk didn't want to do that. He didn't want to harm anyone, though he would cause death if it helped in the long term picture of improving history. After all, as the saying went you couldn't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. But even the time meddler had limits. When the cab finally stopped outside the penthouse and the Time Lord took a good long look at the building - in his current state, the Monk was in no mood for mess ups - and he saw that it was the right place.

After paying the driver, the Monk entered the building like he owned the place, ignoring the humans as they went about their work, hoping that no-one recognised him; his alias as Reverend Mortimer had garnered him a lot notice and recognition while he used some of the funds to invest in his operation. In his current state, the Monk knew the prospect of someone recognising him was remote, but that didn't mean he wanted to push his luck even if he'd shaved the moustache off his face long ago.

The Monk was regenerating, so the last thing he needed was to be stopped from heading up to the suite he'd purchased by one human who couldn't keep his nose to himself.

"Excuse me, sir, but where are you going?"

Reinforcing himself for a little longer, the Monk slowly turned to face the human (why did this body have to be so stiff?) and put on a smile he hoped was charming. "I was here to visit a friend upstairs," he said, focusing the psychic aura of his Time Lord mind against the human, "don't worry, he's expecting me."

The human's expression went a bit slack as the aura washed over him, and the Monk was suddenly afraid that a combination of his impending regeneration and old age and lack of practice had caused his aura to diminish. But to his relief the human walked away after saying, "No need to worry, sir, your friend is expecting you."

Releasing a sigh of relief while holding onto his self-control, the Monk hobbled into a lift and pressed the control after squinting through his rheumy eyes to make sure he got to the right floor and not make some stupid mistake, he pressed the right button. The stupid thing began to rise. The next five minutes it took for the lift to reach the right floor seemed to take a century for the Monk. The lift was empty so he took the time to look at his hands.

It took only a second for the regeneration energy to reveal itself, and when it did the brightness of the energy as it burned through his body hurt his eyes while particles swirled around his hand.

The Monk leaned against the wall with a groan. The regeneration was starting to take hold, it was spreading and soon he wouldn't be able to control it. He forced the regeneration down again when the lift finally stopped, and he stepped off with a sigh of relief and he walked to the door where his suite was before digging in his pockets for the keys. He had been holding onto his keys on his person for centuries, determined not lose them; he still remembered how his previous life had made the mistake of dropping a quartz watch onto the ground in 1066. He had managed to change his ways over the years since that mess, but the keys to the apartment and the key to his TARDIS were too important to leave lying about for anyone to find.

The Monk slid the key into the lock and turned it easily, using the strength from the upcoming regeneration to turn the key. The apartment was richly decorated as befitted a celebrity, and since the Monk had regularly used the place to hold parties to showcase his good causes. But now the Monk ignored everything in the apartment and headed for the bedroom. He hadn't been in this room for centuries and yet he knew it was only two days ago - relatively speaking - he had been here. He didn't have anything in the apartment that was precious to him.

His TARDIS was inside the bedroom, disguised as a walnut chest of drawers. The Monk gently ran a hand over the surface of the disguised shell of the TARDIS, briefly letting some of his regeneration energy leak through his control. The Monk took out his TARDIS key and slid it into the lock and turned it before crouching down, cursing his present body's difficulties, and crawled through the doorway.

"Oh my wonderful ship!" he whispered hoarsely, too exhausted to raise his voice any louder as he soaked up the telepathic environment of the ship, and the repetitive hum in the air. "How I have missed you."

The Monk staggered over to the console and closed the doors and checked the controls before mustering the strength and effort to check over the components on the worktable he'd prepared to assemble a new directional unit, noting from the console about the restored state of the vortex. Good, so he wasn't going to be jostled around while trying to hold his TARDIS in one piece. The technology was basic and rather crude, but it should work. Once again he wished he had had the opportunity to sneak into one of the TARDISes Ollistra had brought with her, and sneak back to Gallifrey where he could get a directional unit that was compatible with his TARDIS; it was dangerous to install such a vital component from a more advanced model to a less advanced model, and all of Ollistra's TARDISes were more advanced than his Type 54.

It would have been easy; just use his key to break into one of the TARDISes and return to Gallifrey undetected and find an old Type 54 and steal the directional unit from that, but he had not had the chance; between the operation he had needed to observe, meeting with Joanie on a near daily basis, and putting up with Ollistra's demands and arrogance, the Monk hadn't had the chance.

Maybe in his next incarnation he would have the opportunity to track down another Time Lord and do just that - he knew returning to Gallifrey was dangerous, but the Monk didn't care. He would rather by vapourised than spend another incarnation forced to rely on a TARDIS with no control.

Speaking of his next incarnation, the Monk closed his eyes and stopped holding back the change. He re-opened his eyes and looked at his hands, glowing more brightly than before.

The Monk sighed before he leaned over the console and set the TARDIS into motion while the regeneration took hold. His vision was overtaken by the golden-red light of the energy. He had had a good time in this body, his fifth body, he decided, even when he had been stranded in the past of Earth's history, but before that he'd had good moments before the Eleven, the Doctor, and Ollistra came to mess it all up.

But he had something to say, "Doctor. I swear I will make you pay for ruining my plans for the last time," he wheezed.

Throwing his arms out and leaning backwards, the Monk surrendered to the regeneration at last. The regeneration energy burnt his rheumy eyes even as his muscles and bones painfully rearranged themselves, the Monk was distracted though not enough because he could feel himself getting larger in both height and build before it was over.

The Monk staggered about on unfamiliar legs, the new height and his wider girth drastically affecting his centre of gravity, and he walked over to the console, studying the controls carefully, his mind was still shaken up by the regeneration he'd just endured. Unfortunately he walked too fast, and he tripped.

"Oooh! Blast!" he cursed loudly as he lurched towards the console, but his new arms shot out and grabbed the side of the console. "Ah!" he growled, closing his eyes as his regeneration befuddled mind threatened to overwhelm him. He kept his eyes closed as he focused on his mind, trying to dredge through his mind to focus on his past; he knew precisely who he was, what he was, what he did, but his mind was still screwed up from the regeneration.

Alright, first things first; he was a renegade Time Lord known as the Monk (he would have preferred to call himself the Meddler), but he had allowed himself to be named the Monk because monks were known to serve the common good, and considering that he wanted to improve things the title had stuck. He had once been a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency and he had seen that everything he had believed about his own people were a pack of lies. The Time Lords altered history all the time, mitigating the most dangerous effects of their changes. If the Time Lords altered history all the time, why shouldn't he?

After some time on his home planet (he couldn't remember it's name at the moment, but he would given time), the Monk had fled his home world when he had the opportunity (he couldn't really recall the circumstances of that either - he had the impression he had joined a group of other Time Lords on a research mission, but he couldn't recall what had happened to them), and he had used the TARDIS to travel through time and space to begin time meddling.

The Monk could remember beginning slow, he remembered visiting primitive worlds and helping them with science and technology, providing knowledge on bits and pieces. Then he began interfering in historical events. But then something had happened to his TARDIS. The Monk strained his mind and then he remembered.

Yes. The Doctor had developed a terrible habit of sabotaging his TARDIS - in fact that seemed to be the Doctor's number one means of defeating him; remove vital components from his TARDIS and then stranding him Rassilon knew where. It annoyed him, so many amazing plans - the Monk vaguely remembered something about the year 1066 in Earth's history, but he had sorted that out, only to lose the directional unit in his TARDIS. He recalled being stranded on an ice planet before escaping and then arriving at the 1970s to try to gather the technology to repair the directional unit so he could direct his TARDIS again, working with Weeping Angels and then Cardinal Ollistra who had taken over his operation in the city, and then it all went wrong when the Doctor and the Eleven appeared.

The Monk remembered the centuries he had been stranded in the past, and he looked down at the console. "I will repair my TARDIS, Doctor," he whispered, "and then you will be sorry."

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