Acknowledgement: Much thanks to my twin and beta-reader Elizabeth (known to
many as Llyzbeth) who made the re-write of this story a lot more fun.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the original Doctor Who characters, or the settings or their histories, or their technology, and I'm not making any money from this story. So please don't sue. Please?
Author's note: I've seen a lot of Doctor Who episodes, but by no means all of them. Or even most of them. Due to this, I may have fudged some of the facts about these characters. Also their settings, histories, technology and motivations. Hi, I'm new here.
Archiveable if you ask. Feedback would be lovely, thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------
There was too much light here.
Pulsing, harsh light. And laughter.
The noises from machinery groaning and wheezing with age should have been familiar. They should have been comforting.
They weren't.
Even crouched in a corner, eyes squeezed shut against the light and the laughter, it was easy to hear how the sounds were wrong.
It would be so easy to panic..
Stay still. Stay calm.
Wait.
* * *
It's amazing really: the things a normally sensible person will put up with for the sake of some vague idea about "responsibility".
The Doctor had expected to be the center of attention. That wasn't unreasonable, was it? After all, he was the one who had started the trouble. And, too, he did have a certain reputation. Notorious, and all that. And yet somehow all the focus in the room was centered on someone else, someone who hadn't, in the Doctor's opinion, done anything to deserve it. It was only natural he should feel a bit petulant about the whole thing. (Although if asked, he would have said he was "pondering". Not at all the same thing as "sulking".)
Painfully bored, the renegade Time Lord settled further into his seat and tuned out the Speaker's voice. He wondered - not for the first time - why he had ever thought coming back here would be a good idea..
* * *
Some people can go their entire lives without any thoughts of their mortality. Most people can't. The Doctor didn't know when the first nagging doubts had started. They could have been as recent as the last few years. Or they could have been there all along, and merely been ignored. Or forgotten. He was good at forgetting. He'd had lots of practice.
Try as he might though, he couldn't put it out of his mind any longer. Now that he'd reached his thirteenth incarnation, he seemed to think of nothing else.
It wasn't the idea of death that bothered him. He had chased the unknown for so long that the final step was merely something new to discover. And, as Socrates once put it, "To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know." (Lovely chap, Socrates. Not a bit of smugness in him, and he always knew the right thing to say.) And there was no reason to think that the end was right around the corner. He could expect to live another hundred years at least, barring accidents, and time didn't move any faster for someone over a thousand that it did for someone..well..younger.
So no, he wasn't afraid of death. Regrets however..
The Doctor tended to avoid his home planet. To be perfectly honest, he avoided it the way most people avoided the plague, and had done so for most of his life. Much of what he'd ever done for his people involved running away from them as fast as possible. He'd ignored the other Time Lords' demands, chafed under the few tasks they'd given him, and repeatedly turned down the position of President of Gallifrey because he "wouldn't enjoy that at all."
And there was the problem, really. His entire life he'd done only what he wanted to do whenever possible, and ignored any sense of responsibility to his planet. Yes, the entire society was stagnant and rule-bound to a fault, but was he completely blameless for that? What had he ever willingly done to change things? (Complaining didn't count; it's easy to complain and then do nothing and leave.) Could he honestly live out the rest of his life knowing that the old state of affairs existed?
Not that he liked any of these ideas. He hated them actually; almost as much as he disliked most of Gallifrean society. But all his lives he'd hated leaving any task undone. After centuries of wandering, it occurred to him that returning to Gallifrey might count as a task.
Which, he reminded himself, was why he was here: sitting in an uncomfortable chair, wearing a cumbersome ceremonial cloak, surrounded by a crowd of Time Lords (none of whom liked him very much), while the most tiresome Time Lord of them all told him why he wasn't wanted.
It would be nice to "ponder" some more, but the Doctor supposed he ought to pay attention.
* * *
To say that Enaral was a public speaker was a bit of an understatement.
He was young for a Time Lord (only three hundred and ten years old, and not even regenerated once!) but it was easy to see how he could have reached such a lofty position at his age. Enaral didn't lecture, he orated. In this case he also declaimed, denounced, inveighed with much vituperation, and railed vehemently. There wasn't an adverb he didn't like, and he only breathed in dramatic pauses. It was impossible to describe just how convincing, how persuasive Enaral was when at the top of his form. The speeches the young Time Lord gave could persuade an entire city to accept crippling taxes, or to rebel in a shrieking riot, and he was ruthless enough to do either. Add to all that the fact that he was conniving and violently self-centered and..well it made for quite a display. There was little he couldn't use to his own benefit. Whatever or whoever had been the focus of a situation soon had to take a backseat to Enaral's talent. And ego.
Most importantly, he didn't like the Doctor. Or approve of him, or trust him, or even respect him. And since both the Castellan and the President had opted not attend the trial, Enaral was able to give his talent free rein.
"I believe, my lords, that the examples I've given, (most notably the theft of a valuable and dangerous piece of Gallifrean technology) should be more than enough to illustrate the monstrous..unsuitability..of the applicant."
Enaral leveled a stern glare at the Doctor. The Speaker had artfully positioned himself in the throne on the main dais, letting his robes and the edges of his elaborate headpiece catch the faintest glimmer of light, while leaving his face in shadows.
The Doctor shifted uncomfortably in his chair, surrounded by guards and raised slightly above the crowd and slightly below Enaral by a low pedestal. He'd had to compromise about his own clothes, though he'd drawn the line at the full ceremonial garb that Enaral was wearing. (Stiflingly hot, and the headpiece always made his neck ache.) At least the cloak they'd forced on him wasn't too foolish-looking, although it was rather too large, and dragged at his shoulders and wrists. There was so much white- and-gold cloth to the thing that it almost hid him from view. Not surprising, since he'd insisted on attending a High Gallifrean function wearing simple dark trousers, scuffed boots, and an almost shabbily plain white shirt. Hiding him from view was most likely the point.
Enaral turned towards a different section of the room. The crowd was impressively large, almost filling the mammoth chamber where the assembly was taking place. It would have been pleasant to think that everyone was gathered there for the Doctor's sake. That was looking less and less likely. Apparently, Gallifreans were so starved for spectacle that they all flocked to the assemblies whenever Enaral felt moved to speak. Which was probably quite often. The man certainly seemed to love the sound of his own voice..
"This 'Doctor', this shiftless wanderer barely known to the average Gallifrean.."
I'd be a lot more than 'barely known', the Doctor thought irritably, if people here would stop making the records 'safe' for posterity.
"..has returned to the planet he has scorned for so long, asking for an acceptance he has never given in return, and even suggesting that he become our leader!"
(I did a lot more than suggest it, since I was damn well scolded for turning it down.)
The guard standing nearest (Sergeant Vasc, who was rather full of his own importance) gave him a jab in the shoulder and told him to stop muttering.
"Yes, laugh if you will my lords, but it is all too true." Everyone was too spellbound to laugh, but Enaral held up his hand for silence anyway.
"By his own admission, he has consorted with lesser species, with races ignorant and aggressive enough to attempt violence even against Gallifrey. And he has told them our secrets!" He paused to let this information sink in. "Why, on at least one occasion we have had to erase the memories of this planet from the minds of intruders; intruders which this 'Doctor' allowed to be brought here."
(Yes, good of you to remember that, since Jamie and Zoe couldn't.)
The guard behind his chair jabbed him again and hissed "Silence!", earning a poisonous glare for his trouble.
"What could we expect if we allowed him to remain?" From the direction of his gaze, Enaral seemed to be looking for an answer from the intricate columns near the ceiling, or maybe from the tops of the multi-faceted windows. "More betrayals? Could he be capable of fulfilling his dreams of leadership with violence? Might he eventually be as much of a threat as the former Time Lord known as 'The Master'?"
"Now that is unmitigated slander!" The Doctor jumped up from his chair in outrage. This was greeted with general noises of shock and disapproval from the assembly. Undaunted, the Doctor continued, "Why the very idea that I could even be associated with someone so.." Behind him, Sergeant Vasc - who was trying to shove him back into his seat - suddenly doubled over as the Doctor elbowed him in the stomach. "I demand to know the basis for that comparison!"
"Surely, 'Doctor', you can understand our concern." Enaral spoke in a reasonable tone, gently bringing the audience's attention back to the main dais. "This 'Master' was also a gifted, if unorthodox, student at the academy. Like yourself, he chose to steal a time machine and squander his gifts on travel and irresponsible contact with other races. And when he neared the end of his final incarnation he became obsessed with prolonging his life. What is to prevent you from following the same path, now that you.."
"Don't be any more of an idiot than you can possibly help, Enaral." There was a scandalized intake of breath from the crowd, which the Doctor chose to ignore. "This didn't happen as he 'neared the end of his final incarnation'. It couldn't even be called a mid-life crisis. He became obsessed with prolonging his life the moment he realized that no Time Lord lives forever. Seven or eight centuries, a few thousand years, it would never be enough. The Master was a raving lunatic long before he used up his last regeneration. He wasted his entire life trying to live longer. That was what drove him, and that was what brought about his every act of malice: a pure hatred for anyone who stood in his way."
"Such as yourself," Enaral put in smoothly.
"Well yes, since Gallifrean history has been so carefully 'edited' to remove all trace of him, there weren't that many other people interested in the problem. Wouldn't do to dwell on such an embarrassment, would it?"
Enaral was distracted from the Doctor's acid tone by a functionary who leaned over and whispered something in the Speaker's ear. Enaral nodded.
"An ominous description, Doctor. You seem to know a great deal about this 'Master'. Should we take measures to nullify this menace?"
"Well, no. He has already been..nullified." That was an unpleasant story there, and not one he cared to talk about. Ever.
"So you believe that Gallifrey has nothing more to worry about from the Master."
"Not exactly," the Doctor admitted. "I discovered recently that the Master spent the last few hours of his..life..moving from place to place in time, creating incidents for me to deal with. Nothing serious; he was too certain that his final plan would succeed to bother making any concrete plans otherwise. There were just enough to be annoyances, anywhere he could predict I'd be in the future."
"Interesting you should say that." There was something predatory in Enaral's expression. "How exactly would he know where you would be."
"Well I imagine it would be rather difficult, what with an infinity of times and places to choose from. I suppose he could.."
The Doctor's voice trailed off as the Time Lords seated on the main dais leaned forward in anticipation. "He's already been here, hasn't he?"
The only answer was a chill silence.
"What happened?"
"A human, one of the many you have had dealings with, is on Gallifrey." All of Enaral's talents as a public speaker couldn't keep the note of smug triumph from his voice. "Claims to have been forcibly brought here by the Master. Coincidentally, at the very same time you choose to return to a planet you have not set foot on for a thousand years. This could be construed as ample evidence that you have remained in contact with a known threat to Gallifrey. At the very least it is one more example of the disruption you have caused by meddling in time and allowing knowledge of this planet to be.."
Caught completely off guard by this new information, the Doctor missed most of what Enaral was saying. "How long ago did this happen?"
Enaral permitted himself a moment of genteel annoyance at the interruption. "We discovered the intruder a few hours before this hearing began. Considering the seriousness of this assembly, we thought it best not to mention the intrusion until.."
"A friend of mine has been kidnapped, dragged across the galaxy to an alien world and held prisoner for hours and you thought it best not to mention it?!"
The guards fell back in confusion as the Doctor bullied his way off of the platform, knocking aside the sergeant - who was still trying to shove him back into his chair - with a casual backhand to the chest. "Well?" he snapped, pausing to glance back at Enaral. "Where is this 'intruder' being held? The Tower I suppose. And an alien trespasser would be considered a political prisoner, so that would make it the eighteenth level, correct?"
Enaral sputtered helplessly for a moment before managing to protest, "Doctor you have not been dismissed.."
"I'll take that as a yes. Rassilon forbid that any changes should have been made in the last thousand years."
Indulging in a dramatic sweep of his cloak, the Doctor spun about and strode through the doors.
Not even Enaral's eloquence could restore order after this little scene. The courtroom soon emptied as the gathered Time Lords trailed along in the Doctor's wake.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the original Doctor Who characters, or the settings or their histories, or their technology, and I'm not making any money from this story. So please don't sue. Please?
Author's note: I've seen a lot of Doctor Who episodes, but by no means all of them. Or even most of them. Due to this, I may have fudged some of the facts about these characters. Also their settings, histories, technology and motivations. Hi, I'm new here.
Archiveable if you ask. Feedback would be lovely, thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------
There was too much light here.
Pulsing, harsh light. And laughter.
The noises from machinery groaning and wheezing with age should have been familiar. They should have been comforting.
They weren't.
Even crouched in a corner, eyes squeezed shut against the light and the laughter, it was easy to hear how the sounds were wrong.
It would be so easy to panic..
Stay still. Stay calm.
Wait.
* * *
It's amazing really: the things a normally sensible person will put up with for the sake of some vague idea about "responsibility".
The Doctor had expected to be the center of attention. That wasn't unreasonable, was it? After all, he was the one who had started the trouble. And, too, he did have a certain reputation. Notorious, and all that. And yet somehow all the focus in the room was centered on someone else, someone who hadn't, in the Doctor's opinion, done anything to deserve it. It was only natural he should feel a bit petulant about the whole thing. (Although if asked, he would have said he was "pondering". Not at all the same thing as "sulking".)
Painfully bored, the renegade Time Lord settled further into his seat and tuned out the Speaker's voice. He wondered - not for the first time - why he had ever thought coming back here would be a good idea..
* * *
Some people can go their entire lives without any thoughts of their mortality. Most people can't. The Doctor didn't know when the first nagging doubts had started. They could have been as recent as the last few years. Or they could have been there all along, and merely been ignored. Or forgotten. He was good at forgetting. He'd had lots of practice.
Try as he might though, he couldn't put it out of his mind any longer. Now that he'd reached his thirteenth incarnation, he seemed to think of nothing else.
It wasn't the idea of death that bothered him. He had chased the unknown for so long that the final step was merely something new to discover. And, as Socrates once put it, "To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know." (Lovely chap, Socrates. Not a bit of smugness in him, and he always knew the right thing to say.) And there was no reason to think that the end was right around the corner. He could expect to live another hundred years at least, barring accidents, and time didn't move any faster for someone over a thousand that it did for someone..well..younger.
So no, he wasn't afraid of death. Regrets however..
The Doctor tended to avoid his home planet. To be perfectly honest, he avoided it the way most people avoided the plague, and had done so for most of his life. Much of what he'd ever done for his people involved running away from them as fast as possible. He'd ignored the other Time Lords' demands, chafed under the few tasks they'd given him, and repeatedly turned down the position of President of Gallifrey because he "wouldn't enjoy that at all."
And there was the problem, really. His entire life he'd done only what he wanted to do whenever possible, and ignored any sense of responsibility to his planet. Yes, the entire society was stagnant and rule-bound to a fault, but was he completely blameless for that? What had he ever willingly done to change things? (Complaining didn't count; it's easy to complain and then do nothing and leave.) Could he honestly live out the rest of his life knowing that the old state of affairs existed?
Not that he liked any of these ideas. He hated them actually; almost as much as he disliked most of Gallifrean society. But all his lives he'd hated leaving any task undone. After centuries of wandering, it occurred to him that returning to Gallifrey might count as a task.
Which, he reminded himself, was why he was here: sitting in an uncomfortable chair, wearing a cumbersome ceremonial cloak, surrounded by a crowd of Time Lords (none of whom liked him very much), while the most tiresome Time Lord of them all told him why he wasn't wanted.
It would be nice to "ponder" some more, but the Doctor supposed he ought to pay attention.
* * *
To say that Enaral was a public speaker was a bit of an understatement.
He was young for a Time Lord (only three hundred and ten years old, and not even regenerated once!) but it was easy to see how he could have reached such a lofty position at his age. Enaral didn't lecture, he orated. In this case he also declaimed, denounced, inveighed with much vituperation, and railed vehemently. There wasn't an adverb he didn't like, and he only breathed in dramatic pauses. It was impossible to describe just how convincing, how persuasive Enaral was when at the top of his form. The speeches the young Time Lord gave could persuade an entire city to accept crippling taxes, or to rebel in a shrieking riot, and he was ruthless enough to do either. Add to all that the fact that he was conniving and violently self-centered and..well it made for quite a display. There was little he couldn't use to his own benefit. Whatever or whoever had been the focus of a situation soon had to take a backseat to Enaral's talent. And ego.
Most importantly, he didn't like the Doctor. Or approve of him, or trust him, or even respect him. And since both the Castellan and the President had opted not attend the trial, Enaral was able to give his talent free rein.
"I believe, my lords, that the examples I've given, (most notably the theft of a valuable and dangerous piece of Gallifrean technology) should be more than enough to illustrate the monstrous..unsuitability..of the applicant."
Enaral leveled a stern glare at the Doctor. The Speaker had artfully positioned himself in the throne on the main dais, letting his robes and the edges of his elaborate headpiece catch the faintest glimmer of light, while leaving his face in shadows.
The Doctor shifted uncomfortably in his chair, surrounded by guards and raised slightly above the crowd and slightly below Enaral by a low pedestal. He'd had to compromise about his own clothes, though he'd drawn the line at the full ceremonial garb that Enaral was wearing. (Stiflingly hot, and the headpiece always made his neck ache.) At least the cloak they'd forced on him wasn't too foolish-looking, although it was rather too large, and dragged at his shoulders and wrists. There was so much white- and-gold cloth to the thing that it almost hid him from view. Not surprising, since he'd insisted on attending a High Gallifrean function wearing simple dark trousers, scuffed boots, and an almost shabbily plain white shirt. Hiding him from view was most likely the point.
Enaral turned towards a different section of the room. The crowd was impressively large, almost filling the mammoth chamber where the assembly was taking place. It would have been pleasant to think that everyone was gathered there for the Doctor's sake. That was looking less and less likely. Apparently, Gallifreans were so starved for spectacle that they all flocked to the assemblies whenever Enaral felt moved to speak. Which was probably quite often. The man certainly seemed to love the sound of his own voice..
"This 'Doctor', this shiftless wanderer barely known to the average Gallifrean.."
I'd be a lot more than 'barely known', the Doctor thought irritably, if people here would stop making the records 'safe' for posterity.
"..has returned to the planet he has scorned for so long, asking for an acceptance he has never given in return, and even suggesting that he become our leader!"
(I did a lot more than suggest it, since I was damn well scolded for turning it down.)
The guard standing nearest (Sergeant Vasc, who was rather full of his own importance) gave him a jab in the shoulder and told him to stop muttering.
"Yes, laugh if you will my lords, but it is all too true." Everyone was too spellbound to laugh, but Enaral held up his hand for silence anyway.
"By his own admission, he has consorted with lesser species, with races ignorant and aggressive enough to attempt violence even against Gallifrey. And he has told them our secrets!" He paused to let this information sink in. "Why, on at least one occasion we have had to erase the memories of this planet from the minds of intruders; intruders which this 'Doctor' allowed to be brought here."
(Yes, good of you to remember that, since Jamie and Zoe couldn't.)
The guard behind his chair jabbed him again and hissed "Silence!", earning a poisonous glare for his trouble.
"What could we expect if we allowed him to remain?" From the direction of his gaze, Enaral seemed to be looking for an answer from the intricate columns near the ceiling, or maybe from the tops of the multi-faceted windows. "More betrayals? Could he be capable of fulfilling his dreams of leadership with violence? Might he eventually be as much of a threat as the former Time Lord known as 'The Master'?"
"Now that is unmitigated slander!" The Doctor jumped up from his chair in outrage. This was greeted with general noises of shock and disapproval from the assembly. Undaunted, the Doctor continued, "Why the very idea that I could even be associated with someone so.." Behind him, Sergeant Vasc - who was trying to shove him back into his seat - suddenly doubled over as the Doctor elbowed him in the stomach. "I demand to know the basis for that comparison!"
"Surely, 'Doctor', you can understand our concern." Enaral spoke in a reasonable tone, gently bringing the audience's attention back to the main dais. "This 'Master' was also a gifted, if unorthodox, student at the academy. Like yourself, he chose to steal a time machine and squander his gifts on travel and irresponsible contact with other races. And when he neared the end of his final incarnation he became obsessed with prolonging his life. What is to prevent you from following the same path, now that you.."
"Don't be any more of an idiot than you can possibly help, Enaral." There was a scandalized intake of breath from the crowd, which the Doctor chose to ignore. "This didn't happen as he 'neared the end of his final incarnation'. It couldn't even be called a mid-life crisis. He became obsessed with prolonging his life the moment he realized that no Time Lord lives forever. Seven or eight centuries, a few thousand years, it would never be enough. The Master was a raving lunatic long before he used up his last regeneration. He wasted his entire life trying to live longer. That was what drove him, and that was what brought about his every act of malice: a pure hatred for anyone who stood in his way."
"Such as yourself," Enaral put in smoothly.
"Well yes, since Gallifrean history has been so carefully 'edited' to remove all trace of him, there weren't that many other people interested in the problem. Wouldn't do to dwell on such an embarrassment, would it?"
Enaral was distracted from the Doctor's acid tone by a functionary who leaned over and whispered something in the Speaker's ear. Enaral nodded.
"An ominous description, Doctor. You seem to know a great deal about this 'Master'. Should we take measures to nullify this menace?"
"Well, no. He has already been..nullified." That was an unpleasant story there, and not one he cared to talk about. Ever.
"So you believe that Gallifrey has nothing more to worry about from the Master."
"Not exactly," the Doctor admitted. "I discovered recently that the Master spent the last few hours of his..life..moving from place to place in time, creating incidents for me to deal with. Nothing serious; he was too certain that his final plan would succeed to bother making any concrete plans otherwise. There were just enough to be annoyances, anywhere he could predict I'd be in the future."
"Interesting you should say that." There was something predatory in Enaral's expression. "How exactly would he know where you would be."
"Well I imagine it would be rather difficult, what with an infinity of times and places to choose from. I suppose he could.."
The Doctor's voice trailed off as the Time Lords seated on the main dais leaned forward in anticipation. "He's already been here, hasn't he?"
The only answer was a chill silence.
"What happened?"
"A human, one of the many you have had dealings with, is on Gallifrey." All of Enaral's talents as a public speaker couldn't keep the note of smug triumph from his voice. "Claims to have been forcibly brought here by the Master. Coincidentally, at the very same time you choose to return to a planet you have not set foot on for a thousand years. This could be construed as ample evidence that you have remained in contact with a known threat to Gallifrey. At the very least it is one more example of the disruption you have caused by meddling in time and allowing knowledge of this planet to be.."
Caught completely off guard by this new information, the Doctor missed most of what Enaral was saying. "How long ago did this happen?"
Enaral permitted himself a moment of genteel annoyance at the interruption. "We discovered the intruder a few hours before this hearing began. Considering the seriousness of this assembly, we thought it best not to mention the intrusion until.."
"A friend of mine has been kidnapped, dragged across the galaxy to an alien world and held prisoner for hours and you thought it best not to mention it?!"
The guards fell back in confusion as the Doctor bullied his way off of the platform, knocking aside the sergeant - who was still trying to shove him back into his chair - with a casual backhand to the chest. "Well?" he snapped, pausing to glance back at Enaral. "Where is this 'intruder' being held? The Tower I suppose. And an alien trespasser would be considered a political prisoner, so that would make it the eighteenth level, correct?"
Enaral sputtered helplessly for a moment before managing to protest, "Doctor you have not been dismissed.."
"I'll take that as a yes. Rassilon forbid that any changes should have been made in the last thousand years."
Indulging in a dramatic sweep of his cloak, the Doctor spun about and strode through the doors.
Not even Enaral's eloquence could restore order after this little scene. The courtroom soon emptied as the gathered Time Lords trailed along in the Doctor's wake.