---------------------
"I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in the light." --Helen A. Keller
----
Title:One Final Choice.
Rating:T.
Note:This was written long before the series showed how the universe handles temporal paradoxes (ie Rose's father).
Author:Rodlox.
Summary:Marco and Diana experience a hiccup in their formative relationship. The Doctor and Rose arrive in Seattle 2005...but are they on someone's trail, or is someone on theirs? Will the world survive either of these occurances?
Many thanks to my beta:Fiona Spence.
Crossover:4400/Doctor Who
4400 Spoilers:Season One, and 'Wake-Up Call' parts 1 & 2 (I haven't seen beyond there yet).
Doctor Who Spoilers:Rose, The End Of The World.
Pairings:Marco/Diana. (it remains to be seen if any other characters are going to get lucky).
Author's notes:This Prologue was inspired by the music vid 'Elevation' (http/community. well as by discussions held between myself and both PurpleYin and Fiona Spence.
WARNING:I am using the Gregorian calender only for simplicity. I am not suggesting that it will still be used at all of the eras in this fanfiction.
---
Prologue:"So long"
2005 AD:
NTAC, Pacific Northwest, USA, North America, Earth:
Wednesday:
9:45 AM Pacific Standard Time:
He could still taste her, could still feel the exquisiteness of her lips. And that's why he was here, in Nina Jarvis' office: because of Diana.
Nina looked from Marco's face to his letter of resignation, and back. After a few minutes of giving him the silent treatment, "First you're leading the charge to get Baldwin reinstated," she said, "and a week later, I get this?" tapping the letter with one finger. "If this is the theory room idea of power politics, let me assure you that its not working."
Marco shakes his head. "There's no politics in this. I just feel its better for everyone if I get reassigned."
Her eyes narrow ever-so-slightly as her mind adds two and two. "This is because of yesterday, isn't it?" Marco said nothing, kept himself silent and unresponsive, not even making a fist. "What exactly happened with you and Skouris?" The two of them had been trapped in a locked room by a returnee, one with the power to empower the reptilian portions of the brain, or the ape portions...depending on if you wished to ennoble what then took place, or to refuse to ennoble it. And as tempting as it would be to think highly of what they'd done... there was no way around the fact that it took place at the instigation of a returnee's powers. Foreplay under duress, difficult as it might be to believe.
"Nothing," Marco said, though the shedding of clothes alone made that a bare-faced lie. "Nothing that wasn't in our report." There were a number of omissions in that report, and Nina said so, particularly mentioning the several minutes immediately prior to that returnee being shot by other NTAC agents, which'd put an abrupt end to her influence, just before... "We put in our reports that we spent the hour trying to escape from the room." And in truth a goodly portion of the hour had been spent in exactly that way, initially. "I wasn't aware you wanted a step-by-step walk-through of every strategy we tried."
"I'd have expected it."
Damn. "Are you going to accept my letter of resignation or not?"
Nina's lips quirked. "No." Before he could object, "But I will tell you to take some time off. Take a week, not more than two. I want my geniuses staying sane." And I want them all to stay in-house.
Marco nodded. It was certainly acceptible, and her concern was admirable. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
--
11:02 AM Pacific Standard Time:
"Is there something going on here?" Diana asked Nina in Nina's office. Diana'd just been down to the theory room, only to find Marco's gone. Missing. And not out on assignment with another field agent.
Looking up from the forms she was signing, Nina resisted the urge to smile. "Funny, that's what I was going to ask you."
Keeping herself from frowning too deeply, "What do you mean?"
Leaning back in her comfy chair, "Doctor Pacella was in here earlier, Skouris, offering to resign." Watching Diana's face, "When I refused that possibility, he requested a transfer."
"He did?" Diana asked, her heart lurching. She had wanted to talk to Marco about that which'd happened yesterday. "Did he say why?"
"Not a word," Nina said. "So I'm left wondering, and you've no doubt learned by now that I don't like wondering." Nor does she like being left out. "So do you have any thoughts or theories about what could've happened to make him want to leave here?"
I thought I understood him, I thought he was as attracted to me as I am to him, I thought... "I haven't a clue." I acted on my emotions yesterday, let lose what lurks beneath my calm self-restraint, and now he's left. It felt like a hand was gripping her heart. "So, where's he being transferred to?" Maybe, in time, we can be friends again. Well, I can hope.
"I didn't say I accepted the transfer request either," Nina said. "I gave him some time off. Leave him alone, Skouris. I don't want my theory room brains suffering mental breakdowns." And then she leaned forwards, a swift motion that reminded Diana of a hawk swooping upon a rabbit. "I'll admit I was wrong about you and Baldwin, Skouris. But now I'm left wondering if I just named the wrong name. What do you think?"
Tempting as it was to ask 'should I come back in?' once more, Diana didn't. "You think I should've signed agent Baldwin's papers of resignation?"
"No, I'm asking if you're sleeping with Dr. Pacella."
Not for lack of trying the one time, Diana thought to herself. Other than that, "No, I'm not. Never have."
"Ever held hands?" the phrase coming back to haunt Skouris.
"Not even once."
Jarvis nodded once, seemingly satisfied with the answer, and leaned back again. "That's all for now, then."
--
1,000,559,049 AD:
It was a Tuesday.
Looking down from the villa the Tardis naturally had parked at, the bloated mountain was impossible to ignore, as one would have to stick one's head back in the tardis in order not to have the volcano in their field of view. "Are you sure its safe?" Rose asked. Then she remembered what the Doctor had told her when the Earth had exploded. "Or is that the whole point?" It certainly fitted with what she knew of him, which admittedly isn't much more than a thimbleful.
The Doctor blinked. "Eh, what?"
"Why on Earth did you pick this place?" It was still Earth, that much was certain; just down the roadpath from their vila was the ruins of the Roman Colosseum and the central government office of the rebuilt European Union. It was all a little creepy, and not just in the way that looking an alien in the face was creepy. She'd been here, on a school trip, a few years back in her personal experience, a billion years ago as the world had paced through the time between then and now.
"I thought the view would be nice."
Once more, Rose felt struck -- he'd never denied that he was an alien. But surely, she'd long figured, even before meeting him, aliens would have a semblance of sanity and be concerned for safety. "It's Vesuvius!" Surely a time-traveler would realize how dangerous this place was. Is. Both. Rose shook her head.
A nod. "I know. See, they capped the volcano a few thousand years ago, using it to power their geothermal engines, which keeps everyone living like...what was it? Ah yes, living like kings," grinning that silly smile of his. That was when the smile dropped off his face, figuratively of course. "Its not supposed to do that," he said, scratching his head. Vesuvius was doing its impression of the Nestene Conciousness, lightning-bolts sparking off it and into the sky, the occasional bolt zapping out across the land, searing entire neighborhoods into vapor. Before their very eyes, the twisting sock-hat that capped the mountain, the pinnacle of pure industry, faded like a relocating tardis. And these people don't have tardis technology or anything like it, the Doctor knew. "Rose," he said.
"Yeah?" Rose asked, pretty sure she'd just felt a minor tremor, felt it through her feet.
"Back to the tardis." Anyone else would've qualified that statement with 'ASAP' or 'now' or 'chop chop.' But not the Doctor, who was already at the tardis' door, with Rose catching up to him. Slipping inside as the tremors graduated to full-grown earthquakes tearing the communal neighborhoods that lay around the volcano in a patchwork, he made his way postehaste to one of the consoles that he'd told her before, after having a bag of chips after they'd seen the end of Earth, was strictly a Do Not Touch spot. Rolling dials and tapping knobs, the Doctor's hands flew across the hodgepodge console. Speaking to himself, he said, "Silurians, no. Daleks, not a whiff of their style. Hnh, possibly, though they've been extinct now for eight billion years. Goches?" and backed away from the console. "No."
"Doctor?" Rose asked, not sure if he'd been thinking aloud or speaking to her too rapid-fire for her to answer.
"A few cosmetic changes to the emplacements in time," the Doctor said, "is one thing. A few retired gas collectives, an infant singularity, fine, fine. I might look the other way if they moved a star," depending upon to where it was moved to. "But this...?" staring at the readout.
Rose tried looking at it, but couldn't see anything there. Her eyes saw only a plain surface, if grooved, with no manner of writing or images on it; the grooves had always been there. "What is it?" she asked.
"This is worse."
"Worse than what? Worse than the gravity machines not working when the world's about to be burnt to a crisp?"
"That's an irritant more than being properly bad. This is worse."
An irritant? "How bad is 'worse'?"
"Someone, Rose, has defaced part of time."
"Defaced? Like spraying graffiti?" Was that all? Graffiti's a thing of the surface, even she knew that. So what's going on out there, she asked herself.
"Nothing so cosmetic," the Doctor said. "They've wrought an actual change. One that's restructuring this planet."
'Restructuring'..."Changing the Earth into something else? What's it being turned into?"
The Doctor stared at the grooves.
"Doctor?"
"A different Earth. One where things went differently." A human would have slapped the controls, kicked the computer. A Time Lord simply stood stock still, eyes fixed. "There are only two things I know of that can do this sort of thing. One is a Time Lord."
"Well that's good, isn't it? I mean, it proves you're not really the last, and they're mucking stuff up major, but what they're doing, that's fixable, right?" The Doctor's only response was to look at her with what she supposed was his attempt to fire a withering glare at her. O-kay, so maybe not a good thing; wait a minute... What about option two: "You mentioned something about a war the other day, just after taking me with you to the future." The future even from where they were presently standing. "Could this have something to do with that?"
"I do hope not."
"Then maybe there's a third something."
Turning his head with all the swiftness of a bird, he peers at her. "Something I've never heard of?"
One of those indecipherable looks on his face, something Rose figured was pure Time Lord, that facial expression that was only a twitch away from being disappointment and enthusiasm.
"Just a thought," Rose said. "Maybe its not what it -"
A muscle twitched, and his face became alive with delight, in his typically mercurial manner. Rose always found those moments a little scary. "Let's go!"
"Go?" Rose asked, the noise of outside turning into an explosive din. What was it that that programme had said? Oh yes, that in Roman times, Vesuvius took more than a day to erupt. Oh great. "Go where?"
"Where else? the Doctor said. "To the source of this deranged history." To find the point-source around which the changes revolved in a growing sphere.
"Deranged? That," pointing to the closed door, beyond which was a landscape tearing itself apart, "is deranged! Is that all?" Some days, his sense of understatement was overwhelming. "I think that that's a lot more than just 'deranged'!"
"You should've seen the War. Ah be thankful you didn't," as he reset the tardis space-time coordinates. And the tardis moved, fading from existence in the physical world as it the tardis began movement more purely in the timestream.
"Where're we going?" Rose asked. "I mean, when're we going to?"
"Two thousand and four...a little before I came across you, as it happens."
--
2005:
Wednesday:
Diana's Apartment:
Maia squeezed her eyes shut, hands pressed deep into her pillow, leaning against her bed. She'd ran in here when the throbbing had begun; it hurt. Her tutor here babysitting her today. "You okay, Maia?" Janice Reis asked, standing on the opposite side of Maia's bedroom door.
Eum... "Got a headache," Maia replied. She hadn't said anything about the future to her babysitter, and her head did hurt. Something was wrong, very very wrong. There was a variable that'd just entered from...from out of nowhere. Thinking about the randomness produced by the variable -- a person, she assumed -- hurt her head. Think about something else, she told herself. "Mrs. Reis?" Maia asked. Mrs. Reis was a headache too, but more of a weak itch.
"Yes?"
"Do you know any good songs?" And can I call my mom in a few minutes? But Maia held off on that second question until she could claim her headache had lessened.
"I sure do."
"Okay," Maia said, picking up her pillow and taking it with her, back into the living room. "Like what?" she asked. "And can we sing in the car?"
"You want to take a ride somewhere?" Mrs. Reis asked.
"We need to pick up Marco and go visit my mom." Sitting on the sofa to put on her shoes, "Its going to be done," Maia said with such ease and naturalness that Eum briefly forgot Maia was only human, momentarily thinking she was hearing the words of another Gallifreyan.
At the end of that moment, Eum thought to herself that Humans don't think with such ease when it comes to the flow of time in other directions than past-to-future. "I'll write a note." Part of surviving, after all, was keeping the disguise as long as possible. "Just in case we miss her."
"We don't." Not we won't...we don't. Again, not part of a Classical Human.
---
PART ONE:
NTAC:
Thwump as they abruptly came to a stop in the timestream, and the tardis settled, reappearing in the physical world. "Odd, off by a full year," the Doctor said. Most unusual, that, unprecedented insofar as he knew.
"One more mystery," Rose shrugged. Mysteries seemed to like traveling in herds, and loved to join other herds if they had none of their own. "Great."
The Doctor's grin returned and grew. "Splendid," eagerly anticipating tackling this mysterious puzzle, putting the pieces all together into the correct result. He headed for the tardis door, opened it -- and found himself looking at an empty storage room. "Underground," he said, noting that the floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of the same material. Hearing Rose's stomach growl, "I would expect there's something to eat around here. Come on," and stepped out of the tardis, Rose uncertain but still following him, and the tardis door shutting behind them. That was when the security personnel arrived, their firearms pointed at the Doctor and Rose. "Yes, I expect chips may be out."
"Can the tardis protect us?" Rose asked the Doctor.
"Why would it? We came here to find out what's spoiling my holiday, and so we shall."
"Just as long as nobody gets killed."
The Doctor shrugged. "What's a body or two between friends?" asked in a jovial manner.
Oh great. "You're -- tell me you're kidding. You are kidding, aren't you?"
"I'm Gallifreyan. Kidding are much shorter."
One of the gun-toting people called over to them, "Who are you?" and how did you get in here? Diana was wondering all the while that she kept her gun barrel aimed at the two intruders.
"This is Rose, and I'm the Doctor."
"The doctor of what?" asked the man next to the first who'd asked a question.
"No, he's much taller than I've ever been," the Doctor said, remembering well the Doctor of What. Insufferable lout, he was.
"So who are you?"
"I told you, I'm the Doctor."
"Okay, doctor. We're going to need the two of you to step away from..." he hesitated, blinking to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. "Step away from the phone booth." I finally escape from that job limbo, Tom thought to himself, and already I think I need a vacation. Or at least have an eye exam.
---
Marco's Apartment:
The five-inch tv was off and had been so all morning. Marco was slouched on his recliner, staring up at the ceiling. On the chairside table, his tv dinner was getting cold. The kiss, the caresses, all of it were still on his mind; and those recollections were refusing to vacate the premises, and he was of two minds about whether he really wanted to banish the memory to some dark corner of his mind. It'd been wonderful, it'd been pure delight, it'd been -- forced, contrived, not at their instigation. Had things gone any further... he didn't care to think about it, no matter how much the evil act niggled at him.
What had it been for, sending that particular returnee back with that particular power? Because it most certainly wasn't about subtlety. A hint from Maia would've been sufficient, even if it took a few months - or a few years - of dating for him and Diana to reach the stage they'd been thrust into in the oh-so-recent past. No, subtlety wasn't a byword of these folks from the future; and neither, it seemed, was patience. Were the people in the future anxious to get me together with Diana? Was that what it was about, in part? Nevermind the fact that he wasn't sure how Diana and him as a couple coule prevent the catastrophe that was coming. "What was their hurry?" Marco asked himself. "Or was it more about prevention?" Could the future have been trying to keep me and Diana from becoming an item? If that was so, then why? How are we so dangerous together? Did one of our jointly-produced ideas contribute to the catastrophe that Baldwin's reports had been full of?
A sound caught Marco's ear, pulling him from the depths of thought: his doorbell. Standing up, he answered the doorbell. "Hey, Maia," Marco said, greeting who was at his door. "What's -?" and was slapped on the back of his neck by Maia's tutor. His adrenal gland kicked in, but he could only say, "Please, come in," to the pair of them. Once they were inside, he could feel nothing but concern, and worry washed through his system.
"Miss Skouris is in danger," the tutor said. "There is a Time Lord threatening her life, and you must help us save her."
Marco nodded, wanting to help effect a rescue. As mixed a bag of emotions he had toward what he'd been coerced into doing, his feelings for Diana remained intact, and were only heightened by the aforementioned concern. "What can I do?" And what is a Time Lord?
"Call her, call her superiors. Have them kill the Time Lord." And, to cement the garuntee that he would obey, "Only then will she be safe."
Knowing what would happen, Maia went over to where Marco's cellphone lay atop the stacked phone books, and brought it over to him. Marco thanked her for it, and began dialling. 'His name is the Doctor,' the intruder's voice echoed in Marco's mind. 'He is the greatest threat mankind has ever faced. He must be destroyed.' And he told Jarvis all of that.
--
NTAC:
"What've you got?" Nina asked the medics she'd assigned earlier to give physicals to the intruders, just to make sure they weren't carrying anything on or in their persons.
"The woman's exactly that," said Dr. Gagarin. "Just a young woman with nothing wrong with her aside from some scrapes and bruises and a few patches of skin that're still recovering from a rather nasty sunburn."
"Not a returnee either," Diana said, standing on the other side of Gagarin from Nina. "Neither she nor her companion match any of the faces on file."
"Plastic surgery?" Nina asked, reasoning that it wouldn't be the first time that people changed their appearance to get away.
Diana shook her head. "Doesn't work on returnees -- Marsha Gruber tried it last week. Her face returned to its prior appearance in less than a day."
"Good to know. What about him," she asked Gagarin. What secrets is he hiding? Nina asked herself.
"That's the strange thing," Gagarin said. "None of the 4400 were physically altered in any way, right?" Diana nodded. "Then where'd he come from?" and tapped three keys on his keyboard. Onto the monitor popped a CAT scan of "This is a normal human brain. It's got two hemispheres, divided right down the middle. It's got wrinkles and folds -"
"Skip ahead to where you tell us how this has a bearing on the case," Nina interupted.
Gagarin nodded. "Right." Tapped a few more keys. A new CAT scan showed up.
"Did the machine break?" Because the readings made no sense. The image looked more like a bowlful of spagetti noodles than it did a brain.
"The machine's still working -- we ran tests on it just to be sure. But the brain isn't the weirdest part."
"Could've fooled me."
Running the edge of one finger along the edge of the brain on the monitor, "Look at the skull. It's not the fused collection of bones that you'd expect in a skull...no, this looks more like tree rings." Layers of growth radiating from the back to the front of the skull. Gagarin typed once more, and the screen split into two images side-by-side: one of the ring-growth skull around the spagetti brain, and its neighbor, a perfectly normal human skull and human brain. "That's from the second CAT scan we gave him."
Her cellphone rining, "Where did you come from?" Nina asks the images.
--
Tom looked at the blue object that, according to all the cameras, motion sensors, and seismic equipment that'd been in use at the time, had come literally out of nowhere. Typed in neat lettering on each side of the wooden thing were the words Police Public Call Box. "Weird," he said to himself.
"That it is," Nina said. "Didn't you and Skouris handle a case not a week ago involving a returnee who could make things come out of nowhere?" She was pretty sure they had, since she'd read the case report again this morning.
"Michaela McBride can make coins disappear and reappear, but she can't do the same to something the size of a gun; so I doubt she's involved in this. And none of the other returnees have that ability."
Nina nodded, feeling like she'd seen this call box before. Yes, she decided, but on a vacation in England when I'd been a little girl. The box had been part of an abandoned neighborhood that was being renovated. "I'm going to have a word with our guest," Nina said. "I want you to go up to the entrance and find out if Pacella's feeling okay."
"Something up?" Tom asked.
"He just called me a few minutes ago, saying he's on his way back in, completely confident that our new arrival is named 'The Doctor' and needs to die; Pacella even said that this Doctor is the enemy of all mankind." Nina got a look on her face. "I intend to find out if that's so. And I want you to see if we're dealing with another Knox or Doerner here."
------
Holding Cell 1:
The Doctor stood in their holding cell, facing where the tardis still sat.
History had changed. The Doctor had glimpsed a summary of the new history before he'd stepped outside of the tardis into this underground facility. There had been no War, subjectively near or far, and there never would be one. The Cybermen and Daleks were focusing their energies against one another. His own people, the Gallifreyans, had devoted their considerable efforts to building a device unlike any other in the universe of any era. And humans... The Doctor shuddered, not liking the taste of what'd become to his favorite little species.
Things had changed, most certainly. The destruction of the Vesuvius landscape had been the smallest piece of that destruction, complete and utter. Had we been any further into the future, the Doctor knew, or been anywhere but Earth, we would've been wiped out with the rest of our history.
"Doctor?" Rose asked. No time like the present to ask something like this, or at least no time like the now. Ugh, it was becoming a muddy matter in her mind, all the tenses and sayings I've always taken as truths.
"Yes?" he asked, not taking his attention off what he was doing. Typical.
"Are you scared of dying?" She'd seen him excited, curious, bored, even struggling to escape. But never fearful. Maybe, she figured, she just hadn't known him long enough.
"Nope."
"You don't?" You're not?
"Why would I? I'm a Gallifreyan."
"I don't get it."
He came to a good stopping point in his work and sighed as he leaned back from it. "Time Lords experience two forms of death. The minor one results in reincarnation."
"Reincarnation? You're mucking about with me again, aren't you?"
That okay-I'll-spell-this-out look on his face again. "This body, the man you see before you now, is my ninth incarnation." There was not the slightest hint of amusement or humor on his face as he said that.
"Time Lords believe in reincarnation?" Rose asked, a little surprised. Then again, she figured, at least they believe in something. It helped her humanize him in her mind.
"No."
What? "But you just said -"
"We don't believe in it. We do it."
"I don't follow," Rose said. Maybe the Doctor was a strong enough believer that he thought of his beliefs as fact. She offered that idea to him.
"Gallifreyans can rebuild our bodies, which some of us use as an opportunity to look different from how we'd appeared before. It's to us what forming a scab over a cut is to you." And she had an idea of what the second kind of death was. After all, without something that was permanent, this Doctor couldn't possibly be the last of his kind.
The door to this holding cell opened. "Rose," Skouris said, motioning for her to accompany her to one of the interrogation rooms.
"Have fun," the Doctor said.
"Oodles," Rose muttered.
--
Interrogation Room 1:
"His name's the Doctor," Rose said, "and he's an alien. I swear, that's all I know about him."
Diana Skouris sighed, stretching. "I believe you. But let's just go over it once more time, just in case you accidentally forgot anything."
"Oh all right. His name is the Doctor, just the Doctor. He acts like the whole world revolves around him, and there are times the world acts like it too. He can be high-handed and arrogant at times, and I've never seen him lose an argument, which might be why he's occasionally arrogant."
Skouris nodded. "And when did you first start traveling with him?"
"Summer, 2004."
"Where were you living at the time?"
"I shared a flat in London."
"England?"
"I've told you this before, yes. Yes, I lived in England. Spent pretty much me entire life on the island."
"And how long were you traveling with this doctor?"
"Little over a week."
"And what were you doing after that, before you joined up again with the doctor?"
"Nothing. Its like I've already told you, his tardis moves through time. To you, I've been gone a year; to me, its only been a week."
Were the Time Lords the ones responsible for the 4400, Diana wondered, then dismissed that possibility: Rose had said that the Time Lords were not human, and Tom had said that the people in the future are human. "Who built this tardis?" Skouris asked.
"The Time Lords did. Or maybe he built it by himself, I don't know." Rubbing her eyes, "Can we take a break fer a bit? I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I could probably do with a wash."
"In a minute. There's one thing you haven't explained."
"Oh?"
"Why did you travel with him in the first place?"
"Well, at first it was just to escape from the murderous plastics."
"'Plastics'?"
"Yeah, see the Nestene Conciousness was sending out thought control, an' that brought all the plastic stuff to life. Store-window dummies, things like that."
"And what's this Nesteen conciousness?" Diana asked.
Oh dear me. Is this how it is for the Doctor, just saying things, assuming people know what he's talking about? "It's a living thing made of plastic. Not a pretty sight, I'm telling you," not a pretty sight in life or death. "And after the Nestene stopped being a danger to the world, I went with the Doctor because... He said the tardis could move through both space and time." She nodded. "And it does."
"Where did the two of you go, on this tardis?" Skouris asked.
"Well, first we went to watch the sun destroy the Earth... before then, I never thought the death of an abandoned planet would be a spectator event...or that there'd be a murder mystery at the time. After that, we went for some chips in London, 2004, and then to Vesuvius about a billion or so years from now. And from there," resting her hands on the tabletop, "here we are."
"If we let you go, where do you imagine you'll go to?"
"Hm, not sure really. He did mention the New Roman Empire, 'bout ten thousand years from now, but I'm not so hot on Roman stuff -- Vesuvius was enough for me, I'd say."
Before Skouris could answer, the interrogation room door opened, admitting in Marco, Maia, and Ms. Reis.
--
Interrogation Room 2:
Nina Jarvis shut the door behind her, gave a nod of recognition to the guard standing in the room's corner. There were also guards on the other side of the door; she had only to say the word, and they'd be in here, weapons trained on this 'doctor.'
"Hullo," the Doctor said. In response, Nina dropped the medical print-outs on(to) the table before the Doctor. "Oh thank you. I was beginning to wonder how long it would take to develop the negatives."
"You don't sound surprised," Nina said, one finger on the topmost image: that of the two CAT scans of this man's skull. "Most people would be."
"I'm rather singular," the Doctor said, his tone low and - morose? Chipper only a second later, he asked, "Lovely pictures, aren't they?"
"You think this is funny?" Nina asked. The Doctor just smiled. "Who are you?"
The smile left, replaced by tired and weary. "I've already said: I'm the Doctor."
"What's your name?"
"The Doctor."
Alright, Nina thought to herself, maybe that's his name now. "What was your name before you had it changed?"
"I've always been the Doctor."
Great. "Fine. Save that question for later. "What did you do to the CAT scan?"
That smile came back. "Sleight of hand, I believe it's called. No, wait, maybe its more like a cat..." and shrugged, still smiling thoughtfully at her.
Tempting as it was to wipe that silly face off him, Nina forebore. "Where did you get the one on the left?" which was the spagetti-brain.
"You think that's the fake?" he asked, curious. Just like Rose originally thought the Nestene's work was a prank by kids.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"Ah yes, you're right, why wouldn't it be a fake?"
"Are you suggesting its the real one?"
"Why wouldn't I?" asked with equal ease as when he'd asked if she thought it was fake.
Nina narrowed her eyes. "You think all this is funny?"
Nodding rapidly and eagerly, "Oh immensely." Few entertainments more amusing than watching monkeys with a puzzle. Even if the puzzle wasn't very difficult. "Can I go now? Or is it teatime? Wait, terribly sorry; coffee time...no, wait...is it time for a coffee break?"
"You can have some tea when you answer my questions."
"I am answering your questions. You're just not very good at asking them."
Nina held back any urge to throw his mockery back in his face, knowing that doing that would be counterproductive, and possibly even worse than the negligable results she was getting at the moment. "Where would you go?"
"Here and there," the Doctor said.
"I might be persuaded to let you go," Nina said, a half-lie, "if you tell me where you'd go."
"Okay," the Doctor said, thinking that to be reasonable. "I'm going to try to find out what removed a catastrophe from the history of this planet."
"What makes you think there's going to be a catastrophe?"
"Because, it happened," spelling it out for her. "And now someone's gone and eliminated it."
"Wouldn't it be a good thing to stop catastrophes from happening?" Nina asked.
"No," the Doctor said.
"And why is that?"
"Natural catastrophes are not the same as induced catastrophes." Obvious as it is to him, the Doctor knew that humans usually weren't so quick to get that point.
"And have you ever induced a catastrophe?"
"Outside of war, no." Within a war, it depended upon one's definition of catastrophe.
"Do you consider this to be a war?" Nina asked.
"Should I?"
"Answer the question."
"You've asked several; did you have any preference for the order I answer them in?"
"No."
"Very well then...since I've answered your questions, can I have some tea or coffee?; elsewhen; I'd go elsewhere; I was there, as I've already said, no; because they can be useful; yes; no, not really." Smiling, "How was that?"
"I'll see about the tea. Now, who or what are you?"
"I'm the Doctor."
"Is that your name or your job?"
"Both."
"Where did you come from?"
"Elsewhere."
"More specifically, where?"
"Well, this morning, I was on the lower slopes of Vesuvius. Charming place it's going to be."
"'Going to be'? Why's that?" Nina asked, wondering if this lunatic had placed a bomb on the volcano.
"Because there's a billion years between then and now."
"Time travel is impossible." With the notable exception of the people who sent the 4400.
The Doctor just looked at her, blinked. "Oh, of course, silly me. You're right, of course. Whatever have I been thinking?"
"You're mocking me, aren't you?"
"Just a little." The door opened, and in came Rose, Diana, Maia, and Marco. "Hello," the Doctor said, "and who're you?" to the person with them, the person who was a person and wasn't human.
"She's a Time Lord, Doctor," Rose said. "That means you're not the only one anymore."
"You sound strangely pleased," having a hunch as to why that was no, but no certainty on the matter, given how unpredictable humans could be.
"Well yeah. I figured you'd be glad to know there's another survivor."
"Tiny moments of brilliance," Ms. Reis remarked, "buried in a field of blundering ignorance."
"Its the moments that make it all fun," the Doctor said. "You're a Gallifreyan, yes?"
"Yes, though I am no Time Lord," she said. "But, as you are doubtlessly the only one here who would not butcher my proper name's own pronounciation, call me Eum."
"Profess," the Doctor translated. "A verb and a modified noun." To the humans, "Call her Eum, call her Profess, or just call her Professor." To his fellow Gallifreyan, "Dare I ask how you survived the War?"
"By not being in it."
"We were all in it." Social compulsion worked that way, after all.
"No. Back when the last of us -- those who opposed the nascent Time Lord society -- were herded up," Eum said, "your Time Lord predecessors placed we last few into temporal lockboxes, set to open only if history became ruptured beyond a certain point."
"A dozen of your kind," said the Doctor, "set loose upon the universe. Such a shame."
"My lockbox was dinged-up initially, Doctor."
"So you're the only one left aside from me, is that it?"
"A waste, I know."
"What exactly is it that you - either of you - are here for?" Jarvis asked.
"Your Doctor here," Eum said, "will undoubtedly try to correct time so your returnee friends no longer exist. I, contrary to him, aim to keep this record of events as generated by the 4400."
"Thank you," Maia said. We have work to do. All 4400 of us have a lot of work to do.
"So the catastrophe we were warned of," Jarvis said, "isn't a threat any more?"
"So long as I am in a position to ensure the stability of this timeline," Eum said, "there shall be no catastrophe."
"It's not as good a thing as it sounds," Marco said, wincing at the chemical jolt that erupted against his neck muscles and against those glands situated in the throat. He'd heard all about it, as had Maia, in the car on the drive over to NTAC.
"Why's that?" Diana asked.
"Your species, doctor Skouris," Eum said, "is extinct."
In one respect, it was definately what our friends from the future - the ones who'd worked on the 4400, that is - had worked to accomplish: we'd prevented the catastrophe from happening. Bravo. Congratulations. Don't break out the party hats. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. "Extinct?" she repeated.
"I checked," Maia's tutor said. "Curious, I'm sure, given what the returnees had been sent back to prevent. But in all likelyhood, those who took them were only human themselves."
"And thus fallable, is that is?"
"You sound irate on the matter, doctor, and there is no need for that. This entire matter is academic: to me now, it is all a matter of history."
"It hasn't happened yet."
"And it won't happen," Nina said.
Eum smiled, a look that owed little to a primate ancestry.
"How exactly can you be so certain?" the Doctor asked. "After all, I don't doubt that you were allowed to take a sonic screwdriver and some toiletpaper with you -- civilization must be kept up, after all, even for those doomed to be caught between incarnations -- but beyond that, I admit I'm a slight flummoxed on the point." Using sleight of hand, Eum palmed into view a flattish palm-shaped mechanical device. "Ah, now I see," the Doctor said. "Tell me, did they allow you to bring that with you, or did you make the history book yourself?"
"I supplimented its features in the year I've been on this rock," Eum said. "And none of you have yet convinced me to do anything but what I am thus far self-assured of doing: keeping this history intact." Her smile broadened. "And nor have any of you yet convinced me not to walk out of here in the company of those returnees presently in the building that is about to be destroyed."
"And how do you plan on getting past security?" Jarvis asked. In response, Eum held up the history 'book' once more.
Skouris stepped back, Maia walking with her. Once they were on the other side of the room, "Maia," Diana asked, kneeling before her daughter, looking her in the eyes, "honey, do you have any ideas how -?"
One slow nod, then just standing there. "But you won't like it," Maia said.
"At this point, we may not have much of a choice. I'm hoping I'm wrong in that, though."
"You already know how to win." The passage from Maia's diary came to mind: Mommy's bosses will be punished for betraying us She looked into Maia's eyes for confirmation, and Maia nodded.
To save them, we have to betray them, Diana thought to herself, feeling sick to her stomach at the prospect. And ill though she felt, she stood back up and stepped over again to the conversation with the aliens. "I have an idea," not sure if the word 'proposal' would go over well, not really wanting to use that word with anyone but Marco anyway.
"I will hear you," Eum said indulgantly. "What will you say, thinking it can convince me?"
"Don't preserve this timeline," Diana said. "Let it weft and weave however it does."
"Benevolent noninterference," the Doctor said to himself, "involving oneself only for the extremes of history. Clever."
"Sounds more reasonable than what you're proposing," Nina said to Eum.
"The 4400 were sent back for a reason, doctor," Eum said. "Do you debate that point?"
"No," Diana said. "I won't argue the fact that they were sent back to save humanity," ignoring the amused chuckle uttered by the Doctor. "But I think maybe we need to walk a middle path, one that lets everyone win." One that lets us all walk out of here.
"And what do you think would become of me, in that instance, o human?"
"You're welcome to live here, if you like. If not, I'm sure the Doctor would be willing to drop you off wherever or whenever you want."
"Nothing's out of my way," the Doctor said. But I'm sure you realize that.
Just in case that didn't work, Diana added, "The people who sent the 4400 back, they planned for the 4400, but I don't think they planned for you. So we've already swerved off that road."
Eum smiled. "Quite clever for one of your kind, doctor. You have just made a good argument." Her smile vanished, and only now did her face looked unthreatening to humans. "Here is my offer; accept or reject it as you may. I shall stay here, on Earth in this era. Neither of your parties, nor any parties acting on your behalf or at your behest shall harm, plunder, or interfere with any of my occupations and endevours; interventions shall be on a case-by-case basis."
"Both myself and our NTAC friends," the Doctor pitched in, "reserve the right to put a stop to your efforts, should you attempt to assist any invasions or head any coupes yourself. You will be as unobtrusive as is possible for a Time Lord."
Grimacing at the nomen, "This I find acceptible."
"Fine by me," Jarvis said.
Diana nodded, not seeing anything objectionable to it all. Its like my dad and granddad always said, Diana thought to herself: this is a mutually-intervening buttress, an agreement holding itself together through the sheer stubbornness of all those agreed to it. The lightbulb of insight flashed on: that's what Maia meant by 'You already know how to win,' Diana realized, and I was wrong that it had to do with the diary. I was wrong, wasn't I?
--
SHORTLY THEREAFTER:
"Well, they're all gone," Marco said. And breathed a silent sigh of relief: finally!
"And not a minute too soon," Diana said. "Though I can't help but feel like we haven't seen the last of any of them." Particularly the Doctor. And she couldn't help but hope that Maia wasn't upset that her favorite tutor had to leave. She hadn't found anything in the first few pages of Maia's diary about the matter, but maybe on the next few pages...and she shook her head: no, no more peeking at the sometimes cryptic lone sentance. Mommy's bosses will be punished for betraying us was the line that still repeatedly passed through her mind. And Diana couldn't help but wonder, though: was it betrayal to prevent the future that the futurepeople had intented, even when people like Eum had made such a destination impossible from the beginning? Or was the betrayal something that had been averted, something prevented? There'd been no way to tell when that prediction had been written. Did it predate Eum's arrival?
One other possibility crossed Diana's mind: time. Hadn't the late Mrs. Rutledge, Maia's mother, been in the employ of a secretarial pool? Could the pool's employer have done or be planning on doing something to the 4400?
No matter which of those things turned out to be, Diana knew that she had to do what she could with what she had -- and foremost on that list was Marco. "Marco?" she asked,
"Hm?" he asked. Hesitant though he was, he at least made eye contact, which was reassuring. Immensely reassuring.
"I just want to.." to say? to ask? to... "to ask if you're mad. Mad at me."
"No, never," he said, his tone telegraphing his surprise that she could even ask such a thing.
"You tried to resign...Nina made sure I was told."
"That was nice of her," and Diana couldn't help but smile back at his quip. "I don't want to hurt you," he said.
"You never did," Diana assures him. "You couldn't."
"I almost did."
Ah yes, when they'd been foreplaying under the influence. "That wasn't you, just as it wasn't me. It wasn't us in command."
"True...it was the Cupid version of Oliver Knox. That doesn't make any of it any..." he hesitates, looks at the floor, his fingers interlaced behind his head, "Don't get me wrong," rising back to resume looking at her, "I did like what was happening...but it wasn't honest, wasn't genuine. I mean, it may've been built on real feelings," it certainly was in his case, "but it should've been at our instigation, not at someone's command." Romance at one's beck and call...shudder
Diana nodded. She too real feelings which had been the base of those actions. But Marco was right, that they couldn't build upon that forced action; it had to be torn down, and she knew only one way to do that. "Want to start over?" she asked, holding out a hand to him. "Hi. My name's Diana Skouris."
Smiling, "Where you lead, I will follow," placing his hand in hers. "My name's Marco Pacella."
--
1,8997 AD:
It wasn't Tuesday. In fact, in this era, Tuesdays were illegal, the celebration of which was punishable by having to listen to the operas of Britney Spears in the Archival Halls.
This was far from being any sort of Roman Empire - new, revised, or ancient - but it would do as a place to sit and rest for a few days, giving them time to think over what they might do next. Sitting on a conscrete pier, her feet dangling over the water, Rose felt the relaxing nature of this place, let it soak into her skin, logging itself alongside all the bloody muggy weather that was also everywhere in this era. Her attention drifted to the fact that the Doctor was whistling something, I'm not sure what exactly, but he was whistling.
Those comments he'd made to her before, had piqued her curiosity, and there was only one way to sate it. "Doctor?" Rose asked.
Abruptly he stopped whistling. "Yes?" By the sound of his voice, he was standing a few feet behind her.
"Do Time Lords have any sort o a religion?"
"Nope. Not anymore."
The war, I'm sure, accounts for that. "I mean before there was only you left." Before there was only you and Eum.
"I meant the same," the Doctor said.
"So, your people did have a religion?"
"A considerable one. Just the one, mind." Back then, Gallifreyans hadn't yet mastered time travel, and the universe was forever thankful that that was so. Gallifreyan intelligence was a product of the same thing as human intelligence: pattern recognition, only on a far larger scale. Finding more patterns between more things, the early Gallifreyan civilizations had formed a society fervent and intensely interventionist. It had taken several signifigant setbacks for philosophical reforms to even begin. Nothing alive today knew how nightmarish those Gallifreyans had been. Eum had been near enough to an agnostic Gallifreyan, perhaps the product of being alive at the end of that philosophy's life.
"What was it like?" Rose asked.
"It was a religion only Gallifreyans could adhere to. It centered around the darkness."
"'Darkness'? Not around a point of light, around warmth?"
The Doctor shook his head, starting to look uncomfortable with the subject. "Our eyes are good at seeing things in both bright and dim light. Its darkness, absolute darkness that our vision can't pierce." Taking a deep breath, "I'd prefer not to discuss it." It wasn't a civilized topic of conversation...even barbarian aquaintances of his knew not to make enquiries on that matter.
"Okay, sorry." Oooboy, hit a nerve, I take it. And that was when some kid pickpocketted her, thus starting them off on another grand adventure...
--
Present Day:
Diana's Apartment:
Maia was out mini-golfing with Tom and Kyle. That left the two of them here, alone, together. "You're okay?" Marco asked. "You're okay with this?" At the moment, he was only hugging Diana; he didn't want to overstep any bounds.
"Perfectly fine," Diana assured him, kissing his nose. They tightened their clinch, and went further than they had before. And this time, it was at their own behest. And they both enjoyed it.
----
the end.