Disclaimer: As much as I'd like to, I don't own Doctor Who
Feedback: Of course
AN: This chapter begins IMMEDIATELY after my "Sontaran Stratagem"/"Poison Sky" rewrite, just after the TARDIS has landed; hope you like it (And I acknowledge that it's a longer rewrite than most, but I couldn't help it; putting the Brigadier in this kind of position opened up far more possibilities than I'd anticipated...
AN 2: To clarify in advance, I won't be looking at Martha's role in this episode; it didn't change much from what it was originally, and the Brigadier's role was far more interesting for me anyway (Although I still cut out a couple of scenes like Donna naming Jenny as they didn't deviate significantly from the original take on things and didn't add that much to the overall plot))
AN 3: Some slight hints here about what's coming up in later chapters, but it's nothing you won't see coming when I reach the end of the 'rewrite' portion of this story
The Legacy of Gallifrey
Taking in their new surroundings, the Brigadier had to admit that he wasn't particularly impressed; the ship's impromptu independent flight appeared to have led them to nothing more remarkable than an apparently underground tunnel, filled with various pieces of junk and old equipment that gave the impression that they had stopped being used for their original purposes long ago, stacked up in a basic wall formation at various points in the corridor.
"Do you recognise this place, Doctor?" the Brigadier asked, looking curiously over at his friend as he followed the Time Lord out of the ship, followed by Donna and Martha.
"Not immediately..." the Doctor muttered in confusion. "Why would the TARDIS bring us here...?"
"I love this bit," Martha whispered over to the Brigadier, unable to stop herself smiling slightly as she leaned over to talk to the Doctor's old friend.
"I admit, I never entirely got the hang of it myself," the Brigadier said with a slightly apologetic shrug as he looked back at Martha. "Then again, I didn't exactly travel with him that much; he spent the first three years that he worked for me just trying to get the ship working again, and then..."
Further conversation was cut off at the sound of footsteps, the four of them spinning around to see three young men standing before them, automatic weapons aimed at them and dressed in dark green clothing, their skin slightly dirty with the accumulated grim that came from spending the day in a dirty location without any specific evidence of what had caused it.
"Don't move, stay where you are!" one of the soldiers said. "Drop your weapons!"
"We're not armed!" the Doctor said, holding up his arms and rapidly flexing his wrists as he looked at them, Martha, Donna and the Brigadier also raising their arms (The Brigadier was briefly grateful for the gun in his cane; it wasn't a perfect weapon by any means, and it would only give him a single shot, but at least it meant that he could defend himself without the Doctor lying right now given the relatively limited nature of the weapon). "Look, no weapons; never any weapons! We're safe."
"Look at their hands," another soldier said. "They're clean."
"All right, process them," the first soldier said, indicating the Doctor. "Him first."
As soon as the order had been given, the other two soldiers handed the guns they were carrying to the first man and ran towards the Doctor, grabbing him by both arms.
"Oi, oi!" the Doctor said, looking indignantly between them as they practically carried him over to what looked like a pair of large blue doors with black 'ribbing' connected via thick blue wires to a large tube thing that looked like a cement mixer with a narrower hole. "What's wrong with clean hands?"
"Leave him alone!" Martha yelled.
"What's going on?" Donna asked in confusion.
"He's done nothing to deserve this; we are-!" the Brigadier began, outraged at this blatant disregard for any kind of rule of warfare- they weren't even bothered about what the four of them were doing there, they seemed to have already made up their minds- before the Doctor's right arm was practically shoved into the tube, the Time Lord wincing as the machine made a sound like air whistling through it before gears apparently began to move.
"Something tells me this isn't about to check my blood pressure-" the Doctor began, his voice being cut off as he screamed in sudden pain.
"What are you doing to him?" the Brigadier asked, trying to exert some authority as he glared at the young soldier before him.
"Everyone gets processed," the other man replied, his gun still aimed at the three TARDIS passengers.
"It's taken a tissue sample..." the Doctor muttered, before he suddenly began to yell in pain before the machine began to quieten down.
"And extrapolated it..." he mused reflectively. "Some kind of accelerator?"
Before he could think any further on this issue, the machine had released him with a sudden hiss, leaving the Time Lord staggering back as Martha and Donna hurried over to him, the Brigadier close behind them as the Doctor stared wide-eyed at the machine.
"Are you all right?" Martha asked, looking at his had to see only a scar, shaped like a Y on its side, stretching across his wrist, the Doctor for once ignoring Martha as he stared at the machine in front of him.
"What on Earth...?" he said, seemingly uncertain about what he was looking at. "That's just..."
Before he could speculate further, the doors of the machine in front of them opened, smoke emerging from the doors as a young woman, dressed in a tight dark green T-shirt and equally tight black trousers, her long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, stepped out of the machine, looking curiously at her surroundings.
"Arm yourself," the first soldier said simply, handing her a gun before walking off as though nothing remarkable had happened (The more he saw of this 'war'- whatever it was about-, the less the Brigadier liked it; that man didn't even seem to care about this woman).
"Doctor," he said, turning to look in confusion at his friend, "who is this woman?"
"Well... she came from me," the Doctor said, an expression of shock on the Time Lord's face as the woman casually armed the gun she now held in her hands with a professional ease that even the Brigadier's disgust with this situation couldn't stop him admiring. "She's... she's my daughter."
The Brigadier blinked.
Daughter?
He wasn't sure if the fact that Martha Jones was just as shocked at this news as he was made it better or worse...
"Hello, Dad," the young woman said as she apparently finished setting up her gun, before she walked over to join the other soldiers as they took up position behind one of the 'walls' seen earlier.
"You primed to take orders, ready to fight?" the first soldier asked.
"Instant mental download of all strategic and military protocols, sir," the Doctor's apparent daughter replied, smiling briefly at the other man as she spoke. "Generation 5000 soldier primed and in peak physical health. Oh, I'm ready."
With that, she aimed her gun over the top of the wall and waited, the other soldier simply smiling briefly at her before he and his men did the same.
"Hold on; she's your daughter?" Martha asked, looking at the Doctor with a pointed stare that the Brigadier thought had a faint trace of jealousy about it. "You mean... you have been here before? You and-"
"No," the Doctor said, looking resolutely back at Martha as he spoke, his eyes briefly shifting away from his daughter to look at the woman he loved. "Martha, if you've ever believed anything I told you, believe this; I don't know what planet this is, and Rose and I- or anyone else I might have had a child with who'd have those features- never... did that..."
"OK, so what is she, then?" Donna asked, clearly trying to draw the conversation to a less awkward topic. "If she's your daughter, who's the mother?"
"Technically, me," the Doctor said, shrugging awkwardly at the sudden stares he received from the others (Although the Brigadier noted that Martha Jones's initial jealousy had faded with that last comment, even if she was still evidently confused). "She was created by progenation; reproduction from a single organism, means one parent is biological mother and father."
He shrugged slightly even as he scanned the area around him with a silent urgency, noting one of the other soldiers attaching and programming some kind of yellow device on a nearby wall. "You take a sample of diploid cells, split them into haploids, then recombine them in a different arrangement, and they grow... very quickly, apparently."
"Something's coming!" the blonde girl said, a sound from the tunnel drawing the group's attention back to the other end, just in time to see a group of four creatures that looked like humans with fish heads and some kind of green 'tube' in their mouths coming towards them carrying guns and shooting at them.
"It's the Hath!" the first soldier said, the group immediately beginning to return fire.
"Get down!" the blonde yelled, apparently unconcerned about the fact that the four travellers were already doing that. One soldier fell as the race that the Brigadier presumed were the Hath advanced, but the others didn't even appear to notice, simply continuing to fire away at their apparent opponents.
"We have to blow the tunnel!" the first soldier said, looking back at the Doctor as he hurried over to examine the fallen soldier. "Get the detonator!"
"I'm not detonating anything!" the Doctor yelled, his attention focused on the fallen man before a muffled scream prompted the Doctor, the Brigadier and Donna to look around and see Martha being dragged away by one of the Hath back towards their end of the tunnel.
Before the Doctor could do anything himself- the Brigadier didn't even have time to try and raise his cane; getting caught in a pointless fight was one thing, but they had to protect each other if they were ever going to get home-, the blonde had kicked the nearest Hath back and grabbed the detonator that the fallen soldier had dropped.
"Blow that thing!" the first soldier yelled.
"Martha!" the Doctor yelled, his eyes wide in horror as he ran towards the blonde. "No, don't-!"
Before he could reach her, the young girl had hit the detonator control, leaving them with no other option but to run and hide behind the junk barricades until the explosion had ceased and the worst of the shaking seemed to have stopped.
As the Doctor, the Brigadier and Donna walked out from behind the barricades to study the results of the explosion, the Brigadier knew that things had just become even more complicated; not only was there now a large pile of debris between them and Martha Jones, but they didn't even know if she was alive on the other side of it...
"You've sealed off the tunnels," the Doctor practically growled as he turned to look at the young woman. "Why did you do that?"
"They were trying to kill us!" the woman replied.
"But they've got Martha!" the Doctor yelled in frustration.
"Collateral damage," the blonde replied simply, indicating the Brigadier and Donna. "At least you've still got them; he lost both his men. I'd say you came out-"
"War is not about achieving victory by sustaining the least amount of casualties of the two involved sides, young woman," the Brigadier said, turning to walk forwards slightly to stand in front of the woman with a pointed glare on his face (A part of him briefly noted that she looked more like the Doctor when he'd worn cricket gear and that strange stick of celery than the Doctor as he was at the moment, but decided not to mention it; it was possible that the machine had grown her from whatever remained of that Doctor in this Doctor's body or something like that, and there was a reason he'd hired the Doctor for the scientific side of things, after all). "If you start to consider your soldiers as nothing but numbers, than you might as well allow the enemy to kill you, because you have already almost certainly lost whatever you were fighting for in the first place-"
"Enough!" the first- and only remaining- soldier said, his gun suddenly aimed at the Brigadier. "You three don't make any sense; no guns, no marks, no real fight in you-"
"Because we aren't interested in simply shooting away at someone without getting a handle on why they're shooting at us in the first place?" Donna asked, glaring over at the man in frustration. "Our friend is down there-!"
"And until I've taken you to General Cobb, you're going nowhere," the soldier said simply, indicating down the tunnel with his gun. "Now move."
"Alistair," the Doctor said, glancing over at his friend as they began to walk, "have I ever apologised for that time I said that I thought the term 'military intelligence' was a contradiction in terms back when I was all frills and velvet?"
"Not specifically, no," the Brigadier replied, ignoring the slightly surprised look Donna shot the Doctor at that comment, clearly wondering when the Doctor would have dressed like that (Not that the Brigadier could blame her; the concept of this Doctor dressing like the one he'd worked with back in the seventies was a very strange mental image...).
"Well, I'd like to apologise for that now; at least you actually listenedto me back then," the Doctor said, shaking his head slightly wistfully at the memory as they walked. "You might have done your own thing anyway sometimes, but you still listened before you did things..."
"You're his superior officer?" the girl asked, slowing her pace slightly to better address the Brigadier.
"'Superior officer'?" the Brigadier repeated, smiling slightly at the thought before he looked at the blonde with a more authoritative stare to ensure she understood what he was about to tell her. "If there's one thing you should know about your father, young woman, it's that he defies such categorisation; I might have been his commander on paper, but that was quite frankly as far as it went, and I was sometimes lucky to even get that..."
"Oh," the girl said, looking between the two men with a slightly confused expression, as though she wasn't sure how she should respond to that explanation.
"Anyway, enough about the military thing," Donna said, looking at the girl with a slightly uncertain smile. "I'm Donna; what's your name?"
"So, where are we?" the Doctor asked, trying to steer the conversation to a less personally difficult topic- debating the fine points of fatherhood with Donna and the newly-named 'Jenny' definitely hadn't been comfortable- as he addressed the soldier who was currently leading them. "What planet is this?"
"Messaline," the young man replied as they began to climb up a small stairway. "Well, what's left of it."
The Doctor was about to ask for further information, but further conversation was cut off as the group took in the sight of the room before them, pods like the one that had created Jenny on both walls as soldiers milled around the room, a balcony above them draped with two large cloths while soldiers stood on the edge, evidently look-outs of some kind...
"But... this is a theatre," Donna said, her gaze flicking in confusion between the boxes containing what the Brigadier assumed were either weapons or ammunition and the obvious stage at the other end of the hall from the balcony.
"Maybe they're preparing for the annual talent competition," the Doctor said, exchanging a brief, grim smile with the Brigadier at the memories of some of the shows from their UNIT days as the soldier who'd guided them in walked off to talk to someone.
"It's like a town, or a city, underground..." Donna said, shaking her head in confusion at the events around them, ranging from fires being used to cook to people shrugging on uniforms. "But why?"
Further speculation was cut off by the arrival of an older man with a grey beard and a weathered expression, who walked over to look pointedly at them.
"General Cobb, I presume?" the Brigadier asked, the Doctor almost automatically stepping back slightly to allow the Brigadier to step forward and take charge himself (If it hadn't been for the extra weight he was carrying since then and the Doctor's new appearance, the Brigadier could have almost felt like he was back in command, the Doctor deferring to his military experience at a difficult juncture).
"Found in the Western tunnels, I'm told, with no marks," Cobb said, his tone demonstrating a grim resignation of a man who did his job simply out of a lack of anything else to do. "There was an outbreak of pacifism in the Eastern Zone, three generations back, before we lost contact; is that where you came from?"
"Essentially, yes," the Brigadier said, trying to conceal his apprehension at the description of pacifism as an 'outbreak', like it was some kind of disease, simultaneously deciding to conceal his rank; the last thing he wanted was someone trying to forcibly recruit him into this fight in the belief that he was already a part of it. "I am Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, and these are my friends, Donna Noble, and the Doctor."
"And I'm Jenny," Jenny added brightly.
"Don't think you can infect us with your peacemaking," Cobb continued, ignoring Jenny's attempt to introduce herself and further lowering the Brigadier's already far-from-high opinion of him. "We're committed to the fight, to the very end."
"We have no intention of challenging anything," the Brigadier said, hoping that an appeal to practicality would be enough to give them time to take a better assessment of the situation. "All we need is to find our friend-"
"That's not possible," Cobb said, looking at the Brigadier as though he was wondering how someone so ignorant of the situation was still around. "All movement is regulated. We're at war."
"Yeah, we noticed; with the Hath," the Doctor said, stepping forward slightly. "But, tell me- 'cause we got a bit out of circulation, Eastern zone and all that-, who exactly are the Hath?"
For a moment Cobb simply looked at them, and then he turned around and began to walk back into the hall, the TARDIS crew following him as he began to speak.
"Back at the dawn of this planet," Cobb said- with what the Brigadier felt was an unnecessary element of melodrama-, "these ancient halls were carved from the earth. Our ancestors dreamt of a new beginning, a colony where human and Hath could work and live together."
"So what happened?" the Doctor asked.
"The dream died," Cobb said, a simplicity in the statement that suggested he would accept no contradiction to that view. "Broken, along with Hath promises. They wanted it all for themselves. But those early pioneers, they fought back. They used the machines to produce soldiers instead of colonists, and began this battle for survival."
"There's nothing but earth outside," Donna put in, drawing the group's attention to where she stood studying one of the windows (She must have walked off while the Doctor and the Brigadier were listening to Cobb's story). "Why's that? Why build everything underground?"
"The surface is too dangerous," the first soldier replied.
"Well then, why build windows in the first place?" Donna asked, indicating a metal plate underneath the window stamped with some kind of number that the Brigadier couldn't quite make out. "And what does this mean?"
"The rites and symbols of our ancestors," Cobb replied, a strangely uncomfortable sense of dignity in his tone. "The meanings... lost in time."
"How long's this war gone on for?" the Doctor asked.
"Longer than anyone can remember," Cobb replied grimly. "Countless generations marked only by the dead."
"Excuse me?" the Brigadier said, looking incredulously at Cobb; Sontarans were one thing, but the idea of humans having fought for so long that the origin of their war was lost was something he almost couldn't believe. "You have been fighting for that long-"
"Because we must," Jenny said, a simple conviction in her voice that she was saying the right thing that it almost made the Brigadier feel sick; the first member of the Doctor's actual family that he'd ever met, and she had been created programmed to be nothing more than cannon fodder. "It's our inheritance, it's all we know; how to fight, and how to die."
"And for what?" the Brigadier asked, indicating the earth-covered window with a frustrated wave of his hand, trying not to look at the evident pain on his friend's face; for a man who'd dedicated his lives to stopping violence, his daughter being 'generated' to be a soldier had to be hard. "For a planet where you had to build underground because the surface was too dangerous? Do you even know how much territory you actually control right now?"
"Actually, that's not a problem," the Doctor said, the pain that had been on his face earlier now pushed aside in favour of curiosity as he walked over to study what looked like a holographic map of the tunnels and assorted chambers, pulling out a pair of black-rimmed glasses as he stared at the map. "If I'm right- and, in all fairness, I usually am; just ask Alistair-, this thing shows the entire city, including the Hath zones?"
"Yes... but why is that relevant?" Cobb asked.
"Well, it'll help us find Martha," the Doctor smiled (He was evidently also thinking of the TARDIS, but the Brigadier doubted that any of them should mention the ship right now; alerting the military in this kind of war to the existence of a time machine couldn't be a good thing).
"We've more important things to do," the young soldier said, his straightforward dismissal of Martha almost terrifying in its simplicity. "The Progenation Machines are powered down for the night shift, but soon as they're active, we could breed a whole platoon from you three-"
Anything else he might have said was cut off when the Brigadier turned to glare at the soldier, the stare that he had perfected from confrontations with the Master himself- the man might have been a psychopath but he could deliver an intimidating stare like nobody the Brigadier had ever met- directed at the soldier before him.
"If you even think for a moment that we will permit you to create soldiers from our DNA, young man, you are tragically mistaken," the Brigadier spat. "We will not permit you to create cannon fodder for your pointless war-!"
"Hey!" Jenny said, stepping forward to stare indignantly at the Brigadier. "I have a body, I have a mind, I have independent thought-"
"You said yourself that all you knew was how to fight and die; that doesn't sound like independent thinking to me," the Brigadier practically spat at her, his distaste for her apparently total inability to live up to her father's legacy coming through with the knowledge that the Doctor could never say this himself.
"She is more than that," Cobb said, glaring at the Brigadier as he stepped forward slightly with an approving nod at Jenny. "Soldiers like her are how we'll find the Source."
"The Source?" the Doctor repeated, looking at Cobb with an eager smile that only the Brigadier knew was the Doctor's way of concealing his pain about his new daughter's current attitude. "What's that then, what's a Source? I like a Source; what is it?"
"The Breath of Life," Cobb replied.
"Which is...?" the Brigadier asked, exchanging a brief, anxious glance with the Doctor at the memories evoked by that statement; both of them still keenly recalled the mess that Nancy Norton could have caused with those Semquess phials if they hadn't managed to stop her (Admittedly after causing the circumstances that made her a problem originally).
"In the beginning the great one breathed life into the universe," the young soldier said, an eager smile on his face as though he didn't even realise how he sounded. "And then she looked at what she'd done, and she sighed."
"'She'?" Jenny repeated with a smile. "I like that."
"A myth?" the Brigadier said, looking sceptically at Cobb; he'd known on a theoretical level that there were commanders like this- commanders who allowed themselves to be so consumed by their missions that they kept on fighting without any clear idea why they were doing it-, but actually encountering one- and a human one at that- was almost unbelievable. "You're trying to win this war with something from a myth?"
"It's not myth," Cobb said, his tone suggesting a simple certainty. "It's real, that sigh. From the beginning of time it was caught and kept as the Source. It was lost when the war started. But it's here, somewhere. Whoever holds the Source controls the destiny of the planet."
"Ah!" the Doctor said, his attention having been focused on the map while Cobb was speaking. "I thought so! There's a suppressed layer of information in this map, if I can just..."
Pulling out his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor quickly aimed it at the device that was projecting the map, prompting the device to rotate, more tunnels appearing on it that hadn't been displayed earlier.
"See?" the Doctor said, smiling over at the group, his usual enthusiasm for knowledge temporarily pushing aside his issues with their current situation. "A whole network of tunnels hidden from sight."
"That must be the lost temple..." Cobb muttered, staring at a room on the map that was significantly larger than the others before he turned back to look at the Doctor. "The Source will be inside, and you've shown us the way! And look, we're closer than the Hath! It's ours!"
Before any of them could say anything, Cobb had turned around and was walking back into the hall, addressing the younger soldier as he walked. "Tell them to prepare to move out. We'll progenate new soldiers on the morning shift, then we march. Once we reach the Temple, peace will be restored at long last."
"Uh, call me old-fashioned," the Doctor said, grabbing Cobb's arm and pulling him back as he looked urgently at the general, "but if you really wanted peace couldn't you just stop fighting?"
"Only when we have the Source," Cobb said resolutely. "It'll give us the power to erase every stinking Hath from the face of this planet!"
"I'm sorry; you're going to use something called the Breath of Life to win a war?" the Brigadier interjected, briefly rolling his eyes in frustration before he looked over at the Doctor. "Doctor, please assure me that I was never as bad as him?"
"If you had the same amount of information as him you'd already have been questioning what you had here; I'd just need to point you in the right direction-" the Doctor began.
"Enough!" Cobb said, glaring between the Doctor, the Brigadier and Donna. "You know nothing of this situation; destroying the Hath is the only hope for peace-"
"Sorry, but when it comes to genocide, that's never a solution in my book," the Doctor said, glaring resolutely at Cobb. "If you think they're the same thing, look up genocide in the dictionary, and you'll see a little picture of me there, and the caption will read 'Over my dead body'!"
"And you're the one who showed us the path to victory?" Cobb said, actually smirking slightly as he looked at the Doctor before his eyes narrowed. "But you can consider the irony from your prison cell. Cline, at arms!"
Almost automatically, the young soldier had his gun aimed at the Doctor, the Brigadier and Donna, the Doctor and Donna automatically raising both arms while the Brigadier raised one, the other still holding on to his stick.
"Oi oi oi!" Donna yelled indignantly. "All right, keep your hair on, Rambo!"
"Take them away, I won't have them spreading treason," Cobb said grimly. "And if you try anything, Doctor, I'll see that your woman dies first."
"We're-!" the Doctor began, evidently about to protest before a pointed glare from the Brigadier shut him up; the odds of these people finding Martha might be slim, but the Brigadier didn't want his old friend's tendency to keep talking to result in him giving away something they could use later.
"This way," the now-named Cline said, indicating with his gun.
"I'm going to stop you, Cobb," the Doctor said, pointing one warning finger at the man in front of him, apparently unconcerned about the gun aiming at him at present. "You need to know that."
"I have an army and the breath of god on my side, Doctor," Cobb replied disdainfully. "What do you have?"
"This," the Doctor said, pointing at his own head.
"And that can be a very devastating weapon; this man once defeated a being who controlled a power on at least the same level as your 'Source' using only a recorder-" the Brigadier began.
"Enough of your lies, old man," Cobb practically spat, glaring disdainfully at the three before him before he turned back to Cline. "Lock them up and guard them."
"What about the new soldier?" Cline asked. Hearing herself being referred to, Jenny stepped forward, a simplicity about the stare she directed towards Cobb as she waited for the 'general's' instructions once again reminding the Brigadier why he'd liked Benton back in the day; the man might have been a loyal soldier, but he'd proven time and again that he'd only remain loyal to his superior officers if they proved they were worth his loyalty...
"Can't trust her, she's from pacifist stock," Cobb said, dismissively shoving Jenny into the Doctor's arms. "Take them all!"
"Well," the Brigadier said, the four of them now standing in their cell, as he turned to look at the Doctor with a grim smile, "this is certainly something that hasn't happened to me before."
"One thing you missed out on by not travelling with me that much, Brigadier; I see a lot of cells when I don't have official identification to be in certain places," the Doctor said with a nonchalant shrug before he sat down on a small bench in their cell, staring contemplatively forward at nothing in particular. "Anyway, that's not important right now; what is important is that, even if the story about the 'Breath of Life' isn't true, there's definitely something in that chamber that we need to get to before Cobb uses it to kill the Hath."
"Hold on, you mean it's not true?" Jenny asked, her expression briefly putting the Brigadier in mind of a child who'd just been told that Santa wasn't real.
"No, it's not," Donna replied, shaking her head as she looked regretfully at the girl. "I'm sorry."
"Regardless of the accuracy of the myth, it's clear that we need to get there first," the Brigadier asked, his military mind already going over the possible alternatives in this situation. "So, Doctor, I assume that the immediate goal is to break out of this cell, get to the 'Source'- whatever it is- and use it to force a truce?"
"Once we've found Martha, anyway," the Doctor confirmed with a nod. "Still, whatever the Source is, it's definitely the key to all this; so long as we can beat Cobb to it..."
His voice trailed off as he noticed Jenny staring at him with evident admiration. "Uh... what are you staring at?"
"You keep insisting you're not a soldier, but look at you!" Jenny said, smiling in admiration at him. "Drawing up strategies like a proper general-"
"Alistair's the military one here; I'm just trying to stop the fighting," the Doctor replied.
"Isn't every soldier?" Jenny replied with a brief shrug.
"There is a difference between fighting to stop a war and fighting to kill the enemy, young woman," the Brigadier put in, turning to look pointedly at Jenny as she turned to face him. "It might not be immediately obvious, but there is a distinction, and it's an important one that your commander in there has completely forgotten if he ever knew it, I assure you."
"Well said, Alistair," the Doctor said, smiling thankfully at his friend. "Quite right too..."
He paused for a moment, the two old comrades sharing a smile, before he stood up and clapped his hands together. "Anyway, moving on, Donna, give me your phone; time for an upgrade!"
"And now you've got a weapon-!" Jenny began, enthusiasm mingling with confusion as the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the phone in his hand.
"A weapon, Miss... Smith," the Brigadier said- he knew that giving her a surname might be overdoing it, but 'Miss Jenny' didn't sound right to him-, "is something that you use to fight directly against the enemy; the Doctor uses tools that prevent him from having to resort to fighting-"
"Martha!" the Doctor yelled, suddenly interrupting their discussion, a broad smile on his face as he spoke into the phone. "You're alive!"
He paused for a moment, listening to Martha's response, and nodded. "I'm with Donna and Alistair, we're fine; what about you?"
"And Jenny; she's fine too!" Donna added.
"Yes, all right," the Doctor muttered, before turning his attention back to the phone. "And Jenny... yes, the woman from the machine, the soldier, my daughter, but you don't have to- you're not- she's not... anyway, where are you?"
After listening to Martha for a few moments, he swallowed awkwardly.
"Oh... that was me," he muttered in a low voice. "If both armies are heading that way, there's going to be a bloodbath..."
He paused to listen to Martha's response, and then he spoke again. "If you can do anything to delay the Hath without endangering yourself, do it; right now I..."
His voice trailed off as he took the phone away from his ear, looking at it in frustration. "She must have run out of power; I've lost her."
"So much for that..." Donna muttered.
"What's the situation, Doctor?" the Brigadier asked.
"Well, apparently activating the map gave the Hath the information on it as well," the Doctor said, looking grimly up at his friend, the sound of cheering humans above them reminding him of the humans currently present. "Martha might be able to delay them, but we need to move fast; if we don't beat both species there, there's going to be a bloodbath..."
"Right then," the Brigadier said, nodding grimly at the Doctor as he indicated where Cline was standing on guard, "our first step has to be getting past that guard-"
"I can deal with him-" Jenny began, walking towards the door, only for the Doctor to grab her arm and halt her mid-step.
"No no no no," he said, looking pointedly at her. "You're not going anywhere."
"What?" Jenny asked, looking at him with the same dejection she'd shown when Cobb had ordered her to be imprisoned with them.
"You belong here, with them," the Doctor spat.
"Doctor," the Brigadier said, stepping forward before Donna could say anything, "I understand your issues with her creation, but she's not just a soldier; she's your daughter-"
"She's NOT!" the Doctor practically hissed, spinning around to glare at the Brigadier as he waved a hand at Jenny. "You met Susan, Brigadier; you can't even begin to think that... she... could compare to her!"
"Uh... Susan?" Donna asked uncertainly.
"The Doctor's granddaughter," the Brigadier replied, his memory flashing briefly back to that woman he'd met for such a brief time during the Game of Rassilon, followed by his more lengthy encounter with her during his first (Although apparently second from her perspective) meeting with Miss Noble...
Donna's eyes widened.
"Granddaughter?" she repeated, looking at the Doctor incredulously. "You're a granddad?"
"I'm... an aunt?" Jenny asked, slightly uncertainly, clearly unclear how to cope with knowledge of such a role without her programming to 'fall back on'.
"I was," the Doctor replied simply, responding to Donna's question rather than Jenny's. "She died in the War."
"Oh," Donna said, her expression briefly faltering as she realised the implications of the subject she'd just unintentionally brought up, before she stared at him with renewed intensity as she indicated Jenny. "But that doesn't mean you just ditch her; she's still-"
"I know," the Doctor practically growled, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Donna, his eyes displaying a focused intensity of conflicting emotions that the Brigadier hadn't seen his old friend express since that dark day when they'd witnessed the body of Claire Aldwych, lying burning beside the body of Adolf Hitler, killed to conceal the war's greatest and most terrible secret when so many other bodies could have been used...
"But," the Doctor continued, looking briefly at Jenny before he turned back to Donna, "her two hearts do not make her a Time Lord; there's more to that than biology."
"What's a Time Lord?" Jenny asked, her voice a quiet, inquiring tone that made the Brigadier feel somewhat more sympathetic towards her; unlike her earlier near-fanaticism, right now she merely sounded uncomfortably curious, like a child wanting to know where a missing relative was.
"It's... who I am," the Doctor said at last, his tone brief in a half-hearted effort to conceal his pain at this discussion. "It's where I'm from."
"And I'm from you-" Jenny began.
"You're an echo, that's all," the Doctor said, his voice trembling as he turned to look at her. "A Time Lord is so much more; a sum of knowledge, a code, a shared history, a shared suffering..."
He paused for a moment, clearly fighting to regain his emotional control at such a difficult topic, before he continued to speak.
"Only it's gone now," he said, his voice lower as the memories of that time when he'd been more than the lonely man in his Police Box filled his mind (Not that the Brigadier could blame him; he'd seen the Doctor's reaction when he'd first learned what had happened to Gallifrey, and that kind of grief could never fully go away). "All of it. Gone forever."
"What happened?" Jenny asked quietly, stepping closer to him.
"There was a war," the Doctor said simply.
"Like this one?" Jenny asked uncertainly, her voice so naive that the Brigadier's initial anger at her apparent inability to live up to her father's example was pushed aside at this fresh reminder of just how young she was.
"Bigger," the Doctor responded, after a brief, humourless chuckle at the idea of a conflict that was basically a playground skirmish on his usual scale being comparable to the war that left him the last of his kind. "So much bigger."
"And you fought?" Jenny asked, pressing for more information. "And killed?"
"Yes," the Doctor replied, the pain in his body language at the recollection of all the times he'd failed to live up to his own moral standards clear to the Brigadier.
"Then how are we different?" Jenny asked.
"Your commanding officer is leading you in a fight for territory on a practically dead planet for a reason that apparently neither side can remember," the Brigadier interjected, glaring over at Jenny to ensure she understood what he was saying to her as he spoke. "The Doctor and the Time Lords went to war against a race that would have destroyed every other race in the universe simply for the 'crime' of not being like them, a race who would have annihilated the universe if he hadn't stopped them... and, even after he lost the family of his birth in that struggle, the Doctor has never allowed conflict to define his life."
He paused for a moment, making sure that Jenny had understood what he was saying to her- he'd explain the 'family of his birth' bit later with the Doctor's permission; this wasn't the time to explain how the Doctor's companions were also his family-, before he continued. "Your father is not a soldier, Jenny; he is a scientist and a traveller, fighting out of necessity, putting his own desire for exploration aside to defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves against those who would seek to crush the defenceless merely because they are there, and ensure that those who wield power cannot use it to cause harm."
For a moment, as the Brigadier and the Doctor's daughter looked at each other, the Brigadier almost thought that he could see the same spark of idealism he'd seen in Miss Grant before she'd left them, the passion to be part of something greater than herself filling her eyes... the same resolution and drive that the Doctor always seemed to inspire in the men and women who joined him...
"Then we'll do that here," Jenny said, nodding resolutely. "We'll get out of here, and stop Cobb and the Hath using the Source to hurt anyone else."
Despite their still-confined circumstances, the Brigadier couldn't help but smile.
It was slow progress, but it was definitely progress...
"Here we are!" the Doctor said, studying the map they'd taken from the guard that Jenny had knocked out earlier, their cell now long behind them (Although the Brigadier hoped they wouldn't take too long to reach their destination; he might not exactly be inactive these days, but he was far from the physical specimen he'd been in his prime even without his hip slowing him down). "The hidden tunnel; there must be a control panel!"
As he turned his sonic screwdriver onto the locked door, searching for the panel in question, Donna's attention was drawn to another numbered plate at the end of the corridor.
"It's another one of those numbers," she said, indicating the plate in question to her current companions. "They're everywhere."
"Some old cataloguing system for measuring out material during the original construction, perhaps?" the Brigadier suggested.
"Maybe..." Donna reflected, before she turned to the Doctor. "You got a pen, bit of paper?"
Briefly putting the screwdriver between his teeth, the Doctor rummaged briefly in his pockets before pulling out the requested items and passing them to Donna.
"'Cause, d'you see," Donna continued, indicating the panel as she began to note it down, "the numbers are counting down; this one ends in 1-4, the prison cell said 1-6..."
"Always thinking, all three of you," Jenny said, looking between them with a slight smile. "Who are you people?"
"I told you, I'm the Doctor," the Doctor replied, his attention once again on probing the door.
"The Doctor?" Jenny repeated. "That's it?"
"He uses 'John Smith' for identification purposes at times- I'm sure we would have no objections to you using 'Smith' as your own surname, on that topic-, but all he has ever identified himself as to us is 'the Doctor'," the Brigadier confirmed.
"Thanks," Jenny said, smiling briefly at him before she turned her attention back to her father. "So... you don't have a name either? Are you an anomaly too?"
"No," the Doctor replied briefly.
"Oh, come off it!" Donna said, even as she continued studying the plate. "You're the most anomalous bloke I've ever met!"
"That's the way he's always been, Miss Noble," the Brigadier said with a slight smile.
"Oi!" the Doctor said, before he smiled in relief as he removed a panel from the wall in front of him to reveal the control panel. "Here it is!"
"And 'Time Lords'..." Jenny continued, looking curiously at him, "what are they for exactly?"
"'For'?" the Doctor repeated, looking at Jenny in confusion at the strangeness of the last question even as he continued working away at the panel. "They're not 'for' anything."
"So... what do you do?" Jenny asked.
"I travel," the Doctor replied. "Through time and space."
"Saving planets, rescuing civilisations, and defeating those who would use their power to oppress and dominate the weak through a varied combination of his own skills and those of the friends he gathers around him," the Brigadier finished, smiling briefly over at his friend as the two exchanged a glance, remembering all their old adventures together, both when officially and unofficially affiliated with UNIT...
"And runs a lot," Donna added dismissively. "Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved-"
"Got it!" the Doctor yelled, the door sliding open to allow them access to the next passage, just before the sound of Cobb's voice came up the passage.
"Best to keep moving then, Doctor?" the Brigadier asked.
"Naturally," the Doctor replied, nodding at his oldest friend before he turned to Donna and Jenny. "Well then; allons-y!"
"What does that mean?" Jenny asked.
"Basically, Miss Smith, it means move," the Brigadier said, hurrying along down the passage as fast as he could, only for their trip to be brought to a halt when they came to a corridor protected by a massive laser grid, laser beams blocking any attempt they might have made to travel further.
"Ah," the Brigadier said, looking over at the Doctor as he threw a clockwork mouse- the one he'd used earlier to distract the guard that Jenny had disarmed, the Brigadier noted- into the lights and watched as it was destroyed the second it touched a beam. "Well, this is going to be difficult..."
"Arming device," the Doctor said, turning his attention to a control panel nearby, quickly starting his analysis of the machinery as the sound of the approaching soldiers drew ever closer. "Just give me a few moments..."
"Doctor, as much as I admire your scientific talents, I doubt we have those few moments-!" the Brigadier began, only for Jenny to start to run back the way they had come before the Doctor grabbed her arm.
"Where are you going?" he hissed urgently.
"I can hold them up-!" Jenny began.
"No!" the Doctor practically hissed, staring intently at the young girl. "We don't need any more dead."
"But it's them or us-" Jenny began.
"Not on this occasion, Miss Smith," the Brigadier said, looking pointedly at the girl, aware of his friend's stare in his direction. "Sometimes such a situation can arise, but this is not one of them; we merely need them delayed, we do not need people dead."
"I'm trying to save your life-!" Jenny began.
"Motive is no excuse for killing; we always have a choice, Miss Smith," the Brigadier said, staring intently at her. "Your father taught that to me a long time ago; can you live up to his example?"
For a moment, Jenny just stared between them, and then she turned around and ran off, leaving the Doctor with no other option but to return to his work on the panel. Even when the sound of gunfire reached their ears, the Doctor continued to work away in silence, his attention focused on the task at hand to the exclusion of all else.
"What's his problem?" Donna asked, indicating the Doctor as he worked even as she directed her gaze to the Brigadier. "So he lost his family in the War; doesn't mean he can't make another-"
"Him beginning his current relationship with Doctor Jones was already an exceptional leap as far as personal relationships go, Miss Noble; you can hardly expect him to dive into something as significant as fatherhood particularly easily," the Brigadier responded; his own memories of how his relationship with Fiona had fallen apart during UNIT's early days was something he'd never quite get past, no matter how much he loved his current life with Doris.
Further reflection on the Doctor's personal relationships were cut short as the laser beams shut down, leaving the passageway in front of them clear.
"We're in the clear!" the Brigadier called back, hurrying down the corridor as fast as he could.
"Jenny!" the Doctor added, as he got back to his feet. "Leave it; let's go!"
"You're a child of the machine!" the Brigadier heard Cobb yell out as he walked, the Doctor and Donna just behind him (The General was evidently trying to win Jenny over once again, although the Brigadier couldn't help but wonder what made Cobb think that would work after he'd thrown Jenny in a cell already; were soldiers programmed with such a high level of 'dedication' that such an issue wouldn't matter, or did Cobb just have an over-inflated opinion of himself?). "You're one of us. Join us in the war against the Hath. It's in your blood, girl; don't deny it!"
For a moment, there was silence, and then there was a brief sound of steam before Jenny appeared at the end of the corridor.
"Come on!" the Doctor yelled, his hand outstretched towards her. "That's it-!"
Just before Jenny could enter the corridor, the red beams activated once again, leaving her trapped on the other side of a thick laser network.
"No, no, no, no!" the Doctor yelled, staring in frustration at the new barricade between the,. "The circuit's looped back!"
"And with the control panel down at that end..." the Brigadier concluded grimly.
"Well then," Jenny said, smiling as she threw her gun to the side, "I'll have to manage on my own, then; watch and learn, Father!"
Before any of them could call out to try and stop her, Jenny ran forward and sprang herself over the first laser, subsequently flipping over each red beam without stopping in a gymnastic-esque display that the Brigadier had never seen the like of.
"But... that's impossible..." Donna whispered.
"If there's one thing being with the Doctor should teach you, Miss Noble," the Brigadier said, smiling over at his old friend as the Doctor's face split into a broad grin at the display before him, "it's that 'impossible' is no longer a word."
"Exactly; 'unlikely' at best," the Doctor said, his smile growing broader as Jenny landed in front of them, only to be met with an enthusiastic hug from her father. "Brilliant! You were brilliant; brilliant!"
"I didn't kill him!" Jenny said, talking as eagerly as her father once he'd put her down. "General Cobb; I could have killed him, but I didn't! You were right; I have a choice!"
The sight of the soldiers arriving ended any further opportunities for the father/daughter bonding moment to develop further, Jenny and Donna running off down the corridor as the Doctor and Brigadier remained to address Cobb.
"If you have any degree of sense in that head of yours, Cobb, I would recommend that you surrender now!" the Brigadier called down to the other man.
"I'll make this simple!" the Doctor added, his own gaze fixed on the general. "If the Source is a weapon, I'm going to make sure you never use it!"
"One of us is going to die today and it won't be me!" Cobb countered, raising his gun to fire just as the Doctor and the Brigadier ducked to the side.
"And it's that attitude which is going to ensure that you lose this war!" the Brigadier called back as he and the Time Lord ran after their friends.
The Brigadier just hoped that his 'declaration' was correct; Cobb's arrogance and inability to compromise would definitely handicap him in this situation, but would it be enough of a handicap...?
"So," Jenny asked, looking curiously at Donna, the Doctor leading the way down the corridor while the Brigadier kept up the rear a few paces behind them, "you travel together, but you're not... 'together'?"
"What?" Donna asked, looking at the young blonde in surprise before she shook her head vehemently as she realised the implications of what Jenny had said. "No, no! No way! We're friends, that's all; it's Martha he's dating, and I'm never entirely sure if that's legal, what with the different species thing..."
"I assure you, Miss Noble," the Brigadier said, putting on a brief burst of speed to catch up with the two women, "anything the Doctor and Doctor Jones share is fully legal; the Doctor has been listed in our records as essentially an 'honorary human' since he was first affiliated with UNIT in the seventies, and that is even without any documentation he himself created prior to our contact with him."
"Oh," Donna said simply.
"And... Martha Jones?" Jenny asked, looking slightly uncertainly between the Brigadier and Donna. "What... what's she like?"
"The most courageous- and at least one of the most compassionate- woman I have ever known," the Brigadier said simply, recalling the tales that the Doctor, Captain Yates and Miss McShane had told him about Martha's actions during a terrible year that only a select few still remembered after the events of the Valiant had concluded. "Your father could not have a more loyal partner in his life, Miss Smith, I assure you."
He just hoped that his answer would suffice for Jenny right now; he still had no way of knowing how Martha would react to having a daughter added to the 'baggage' that the Doctor carried around with him...
"And what's it like, the travelling?" Jenny asked, her eagerness reawakened by this less emotionally challenging topic.
"Ah, never a dull moment," Donna replied, smiling at the memory. "Can be terrifying, brilliant, and funny, sometimes all at the same time."
"But if you can be assured of one thing when you know the Doctor," the Brigadier said, smiling over at his friend's daughter, "it's simple; he will always show you worlds beyond anything you could have possibly imagined."
"I'd love to see new worlds..." Jenny reflected wistfully.
"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't," the Brigadier said, smiling briefly at her before he looked over to where his friend was still studying the map. "Isn't that right, Doctor?"
"Mmm?" the Doctor asked, glancing back.
"I assume you'll be taking Jenny Smith here to a few places once we're done here?" the Brigadier said.
"I suppose so," the Doctor said after a brief pause, looking back at Jenny with a slight smile.
"You mean..." Jenny began, looking almost unbelievingly at the Doctor. "You mean you'll take me with you?"
"Can't leave you here, can we?" the Doctor replied, only to be interrupted from anything else he might have had to say on the topic when Jenny ran up and threw her arms around him, the grin on both their faces all the assurance the Brigadier and Donna needed.
Jenny might not be able to replace the Doctor's old family, but they both had a strong feeling that she would make a great addition to the new one.
For a moment, as the Doctor stared at the other door leading out from the complex system of pipes that served as the ship's fusion engines, he couldn't help but wonder what he was going to do next; for all his attempts to avoid taking sides, the Hath still had Martha prisoner, and he still didn't know what had provoked this conflict in the first place...
Then his eyes fell on exactly what he needed to fill in that last unanswered question, and thoughts of potential danger were pushed aside in favour of the possibility of new answers.
"Ship's log!" he said, grinning enthusiastically as he began to rapidly tap away at the keyboard before him. "'First wave of Human/Hath co-colonisation of planet Messaline'."
"So... this is the original ship?" the Brigadier asked.
"Seems to be, anyway," the Doctor replied as he studied the screen, his usual interest in history pushed aside in favour of learning something about this mess that had kept him and Martha apart far longer than he liked to be away from her when dealing with an unknown hostile environment (She might have shown that she could take care of herself during both his three months as John Smith and the Year That Never Was, but that didn't mean he liked putting her in danger). "Robot drones used to build the city... c'mon, c'mon, c'mon... ah-ha; 'Mission commander dead... still no agreement on who should assume leadership; Hath and humans have divided into factions'; that must be it!"
"That makes sense, anyway; the crew split into factions during the power vacuum," the Brigadier said. "Add in the ability to use those progenation machines, and it wouldn't take long until you had two armies fighting each other..."
"Two armies that are now both outside-!" Jenny began urgently.
"Look at that!" Donna suddenly yelled, indicating a screen displaying the same numerical sequence that they'd seen in the tunnels earlier.
"More numbers; so?" the Brigadier asked, hoping the red-haired woman had a point behind her current reasoning.
"Look, Alistair," Donna said, turning briefly to glare at him, "I may not be all science-whizzy like Martian-boy, but I spent six months working as a temp in Hounslow Library, and I mastered the Dewey Decimal System in two days flat. I'm good with numbers! It's staring us in the face!"
"What is?" Jenny asked.
"It's the date," Donna said, the Doctor moving in to stand beside her before the Brigadier could even blink as she continued to explain her reasoning. "Assuming the first two numbers are some big old space date, then you've got year, month, day. It's the other way round, like it is in America!"
"Oh!" the Doctor said, hitting his forehead in evident frustration at not realising it earlier. "It's the New Byzantine Calendar!"
"So... the numbers we saw out there..." the Brigadier said, realisation dawning as he turned over this new information in his mind.
"Completion dates for the sector, counting out as the city gets built!" Donna finished, smiling enthusiastically back at him.
"Very go- hold on," the Brigadier began, looking with renewed intensity at the date before them. "If this gives us the current date... that first number you pointed out was only seven days before..."
"Yeah, exactly," Donna nodded. "6012-07-17 out in the theatre, 6012-07-24 in here..."
"What does it mean?" Jenny asked urgently.
"Seven days," the Doctor said simply.
The Brigadier's eyes widened at the implications of that sentence.
"Seven days?" he repeated incredulously. "You mean... this entire generations-long war... took only seven days?"
Even with the progenation machines taken into account, that only made it worse; people churned out all those lives, causing death on such a scale that they had reached a generation that was already thousands removed from the first one, in only seven days...
"But all the buildings..." Jenny protested weakly, clearly trying to latch on to something from the past she'd been programmed to acknowledge. "The encampments... they're in ruins..."
"They're not ruins, they were never finished in the first place!" the Brigadier finished, before a thought occurred to him. "But then... what about...?"
"The Source!" the Doctor finished for him, turning to run down another corridor, only to pause when he saw the figure standing at the other end. "Martha?"
The small group with the Doctor didn't even have time to avert their eyes to give the Time Lord privacy before he had wrapped Martha up in his arms, kissing her like he hadn't seen her in months, the two so wrapped up in each other's mouths that they probably wouldn't have noticed if the two armies following them had arrived.
Looking over at Jenny, the Brigadier and Donna exchanged a secret smile at the slightly pleased-yet-hopeful expression on the young woman's face; clearly, when it came to the woman who seemed destined to become her 'stepmother', Jenny's only real emotion was hope that she'd be lived rather than anything else.
"Great to see you!" the Doctor said, still grinning at her when he parted from her.
"And you!" Martha replied, shooting her own grin at the Brigadier and Donna, only for her smile to falter as her eyes met Jenny's.
"Hi," Jenny said, waving at her in a polite-yet-uncertain manner. "So... you're dating my dad, then?"
"Uh... yeah, I am," Martha replied, shooting a briefly inquiring glance at the Doctor, before the sound of a voice from down the corridor ended further thought of conversation at the moment.
As he stood in the middle of the garden where the 'Source'- it was easier to call it that than remember the Doctor's complex explanation of what it did- had resided for the past week, watching the shining gas that had been contained within the sphere spreading from the room to envelop the planet, the Brigadier couldn't help but smile in relief.
He might have been a soldier long before he'd ever met the Doctor, but this... witnessing the rebirth of an entire planet... a victory without a victim on either side after their arrival...
This was what it meant when the Doctor arrived.
Things might not be easy for Cobb's men or the Hath from this point onwards- each side had, from their perspective, spent a long time fighting each other, after all-, but the Doctor had given them a chance that nobody could turn down...
"NO!" Jenny suddenly screamed, the Brigadier spinning around just in time to see Cobb fire his gun at the Doctor, only for Jenny to step in front of her father and take the bullet for him.
As the young girl fell to the ground, the Brigadier didn't stop to think; he simply raised his cane and knocked Cobb's gun clean out of his hand, waiting only long enough to confirm that Cobb's former soldiers were holding him down before he turned to join his friend, the Time Lord tearfully cradling the young girl in his lap.
"Jenny?" the Doctor said, looking urgently at her as Martha knelt down to check the girl's wound, clearly fighting to maintain a professional approach despite the tears in the corner of her eyes. "Jenny! Talk to me, Jenny!"
"Doctor?" the Brigadier asked, his mind briefly flashing back to the remarkable occasion when he'd seen the Doctor regenerate right in front of him, and the circumstances that had brought that about. "Can you... help her?"
"She's had no training; I can't give her cells a complete crash-course in what to do when they've had so little time to adjust..." the Doctor said, his gaze still fixed on the girl in his arms. "Jenny, be strong now; you need to hold on..."
"A new world..." Jenny whispered, looking up at where the gases gathered and began to spread out above them. "It's beautiful..."
"Hold on, d'you hear me?" the Doctor repeated, smiling shakily at her. "We've got things to do, you and me..."
"And me," Martha said, crouching down beside the Doctor as she reached over to take Jenny's other hand, smiling slightly at the girl, her discomfort forgotten in the face of this new shift. "After all... I'm your mother, right?"
"Mother...?" Jenny whispered uncertainly, her finger gently stroking Martha's cheek as Martha raised the hand she was holding up to her face.
"Yep..." the Doctor said, the word lacking its usual enthusiasm as he looked at the rapidly-fading girl in his arms. "You're our daughter... and you've only just got started. We can go anywhere- we can go everywhere- and not even the sky's the limit. With just me as your dad, you'd be great, but with Martha as your mum, and Aunt Donna and Uncle Alistair... you're going to be more than great; you're going to be amazing..."
For a moment, Jenny smiled at him, the joy in her eyes surpassing the pain for a moment...
Then the moment passed, and she fell back in the Doctor's arms, her eyes closed, all the previously-witnessed signs of life gone from her body.
"No..." the Doctor whispered, tearfully cradling her body as he looked up at Martha. "She's like me... I've come through worse than that... if we wait..."
"If she hasn't started already, Doctor... I don't think she's going to," the Brigadier said, his memory drifting back to that dark day when he'd seen the man he'd known for over five years lying on his own laboratory floor, returned to them after a three-week absence only to die of radiation poisoning, him and Miss Smith unable to do anything but watch before K'anpo appeared to them.
"Maybe..." he began, pausing for a moment before he spoke again, knowing that he had to at least voice his doubts. "Maybe the machine just wasn't good enough to copy you that well; it didn't get enough of you..."
"No," the Doctor contradicted, shaking his head tearfully. "Too much... that's the truth of it.
She was too much like me."
For a moment, silence filled the room as the Doctor laid Jenny to the ground, his hand briefly resting against her face before he pressed his lips to her forehead, his shoulders shaking slightly from barely-suppressed sobs, before he stood up, turned around, walked over to where Cobb was held to the ground by his own former soldiers, and picked up Cobb's discarded weapon, aiming it directly at Cobb's head even as Donna and Martha stared at him in shock.
Even after his decades of experience with the Doctor, the Brigadier wasn't sure what his old friend was going to do next; the Doctor might pride himself on never killing, but after what Cobb had taken from him, simply because he couldn't accept the change and good that the Doctor had brought to his world...
There wasn't a single part of the Brigadier that could think of a reason why the Doctor should let Cobb live-
Then the Doctor flicked the gun's safety back on and crouched down so that he was face-to-face with Cobb, his gaze fixed on the other man as he held the gun by the barrel.
"I never would," he said simply, his tone grim as he stared at the man who had just destroyed the first family he'd had since he lost his people. "Have you got that? I. Never. Would!"
With that said, the Doctor got to his feet once again, his body language tense as he continued to speak.
"When you start this new world," he proclaimed, turning to address the people gathered around them, "this world of Human and Hath... remember that! Make the foundation of this society, a man who never would!"
Looking at the people around him as they stared at the Doctor, the Brigadier knew that his old friend had succeeded in that regard at least.
Whatever else people left this room with today, they would leave the room with the impression of a man who, no matter what the circumstances, would never kill...
"So..." the Brigadier said, staring uncertainly at the Doctor as they stood in front of the TARDIS, the ship having materialised in his garden after the Doctor's departure from Messaline after making the necessary arrangements for Jenny's funeral, Donna and Martha allowing the two men to say their goodbyes outside before departing once more, "you'll... be all right, Doctor?"
"'Course I will be," the Doctor replied, patting the TARDIS behind him with a brief smile. "I've still got the TARDIS, and Martha's still here- to say nothing of Donna-"
"But it's not the same, is it?" the Brigadier interjected, looking pointedly at his friend.
After a moment's silence, the Doctor sighed.
"No," he said, his tone expressing a weakness the Brigadier had never heard from the Doctor before. "I thought I was past the worst of it... I thought that I could cope with the risk... I thought that I was ready to go that far... and then..."
The Brigadier didn't need the Doctor to finish his sentence; he understood all too well what his friend was saying.
"You'll get there, Doctor," he said reassuringly.
"How do you know?" the Doctor asked.
"Because you're the Doctor," the Brigadier replied simply.
It wasn't much, the Brigadier knew, but it was what needed to be said.
No matter what else happened to him, the Doctor always found a way to triumph where others would give up; it was as much a part of him as the TARDIS or his ability to regenerate.
What had happened on Messaline was a terrible blow for the Doctor, but he would come through it as he had always come through trouble in the past; his own strength of will, and the help of his many friends.
"Thanks, Alistair," the Doctor said, smiling briefly at his old companion.
"Whenever you need me, Doctor," the Brigadier responded.
With that, the two men shook hands, and then turned around and walked back into their respective lives, the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising reaching the Brigadier's ears before he'd even reached the door.
Good luck, Doctor, he thought after his old friend.
If his memory served- and his limited understanding of time travel was accurate-, his friend would soon need all the luck he could get...