Time and Faraway Space
"The future is changing."
- Doctor Who, The Fires of Pompeii
Chapter 9. Rebuilding from Within and Without
He stood in the doorway, folded his arms across his chest, and watched them.
The two older children, both human or very nearly, had rallied the younger ones around them in a circle, and were attempting to distract, or perhaps instruct, the youngest in some lightsaber technique or another. The Tholothian girl was speaking quietly to the children, explaining what she was doing to defend against the Corellian boy's practice attacks. It was all half-hearted, the little ones barely paying attention and the older ones lacking enthusiasm. But it occupied them, gave them something constructive to do, something familiar to cling to in the aftermath of losing their people.
Even that young, they were resilient. He couldn't smile about it; there was too much loss surrounding them to even bother smiling. But they clustered together, drew on each other when they were lost, and managed to keep themselves from despair.
Two lightsabers hummed through the air, both blue, one in a simple overhead strike and the other in a diagonally slanted block. Though there was no strength behind the boy's attack, it was precise and with a bit of a flourish, despite the somber mood in the room. The girl defended against it with equal precision and less flash, and the two plasma blades crackled pleasantly off each other as they froze. The girl took a moment to explain to the children at her feet what she had done. She demonstrated the right angle to hold the lightsaber, how she had recognized what kind of strike the boy was initiating based on his body language, physical telegraphing, and something he personally couldn't sense in the Force.
How old were they? The little ones six or seven, the older two perhaps ten or eleven? Already they were dangerous and wielding weapons. A part of him recoiled at the idea of it; another part found it remarkably necessary, based on the lives they would be expected to lead. Wasn't he fiddling with rontgen radiation at that age? No, younger, wasn't it? Well, in the nursery at least, though he might have been only ten or so at the time, the aging process between Time Lords and humans being so different and subject to change at regeneration. And of course rontgen radiation was harmless for a Time Lord, unlike a lightsaber with which you could accidentally slice your arm off, but the idea was the same. You never knew what you'd need to know when you grew up, and for Jedi, lightsabers were the tool of choice; it wasn't as if they had anything sonic out there in the far, far away galaxies of the universe, just on the edge of reality. Wilderness, really, it was a miracle it was as civilized as it was. And it wasn't as if they had TARDISes and psychic paper to do both their rescuing and their battling.
The two children moved again, the boy scraping his lightsaber blade down the girl's, and she twisted her wrist to block a strike from the side as he swept in again. There was a short burst of white light as they made contact, then a skittering sound as they sparked off each other. There was no strength in the movement, and each moved with the ease of much practice. It was probably a set of forms they were showing off, too simple for themselves, but new and complex for the younger ones. The elders teaching the youngers, pulling up those that were behind them and teaching them to be safe.
At least they weren't taught to use their weapons lightly.
As the boy pulled his lightsaber away and turned to the side to say something to the sitting children around him, the girl got an oddly mischievous expression on her face. Edging slightly to his side, she used the tip of her lightsaber to poke him in the butt. He leapt up, hissing, "Katooni!" and she laughed, winking at the kids at their feet. It earned her a round of giggles, and the boy's scowl melted into something softer as he noticed the little ones smiling for the first time they'd arrived at the hospital.
The girl, Katooni, covered her mouth with a hand and snickered, "Sorry, Petro."
So much for using weapons lightly. The Doctor grinned. It was a long road ahead of them, but they'd survive, in one way or another.
As the giggles subsided, Katooni and Petro urged the younger ones to their feet, and started arranging them into two rows, facing each other. It must have been a familiar pattern to fall into, because the younger children assembled themselves into the lines quickly once they realized what the older two were trying to get them to do. They each unhooked a small, undecorated lightsaber from their belts and lit it. Greens and blues lit up their corner of the room as the two lines faced each other, and under the watchful attention of the older boy and girl, the youngest began to tentatively follow the steps they'd just been shown. Along with the flashing lights, a pleasant hum filled the air, punctuated by the skittering crackles of plasma blades tapping against each other uncertainly.
Beyond them was a window letting in what light the day could provide. It was rainy, steel grey outside and with droplets on the glass, all chasing each other downward towards the ground. The matrons had placed the Jedi in a newly refurbished hallway in the Palliative Care wing, and the place still smelled of fresh paint and molded plastics. The lightsaber practice session was taking place in a common room, where patients would normally go for meals or for group activities. It had not yet been filled with furniture, despite being complete otherwise. As living space, the walls were painted a warm cinnamon color, and the wide, curving windows provided a nice view of the bay beyond the city on days when the sky wasn't the color of iron and rain blurred the world. It was as good a temporary home as could be provided for the seventeen Jedi. The matrons would have taken the refugees of the Great Jedi Purge in no matter who or what they were, or where they were from - it was the legacy left behind by this particular hospital's founder - but in spite of the thousand years since his last visit to New New York, they had not forgotten the legend of the blue box and the Doctor that traveled inside it.
When he'd opened the door of the TARDIS and requested help, the matrons had nearly overwhelmed him and the Jedi with assistance.
Aside from the Jedi and the staff that were caring for them and assessing their physical states, their hall in the Palliative Wing was empty, and the corridors outside of the room they'd chosen to practice in echoed. Not even all the Jedi were settled in to their temporary quarters yet. The matrons were excitedly adding new information to their databases on what were exotic, extra-galactic species to them: Twi'leks, Togruta, Rodians, Wookiees, Ithorians. Each species was unheard of and entirely new in this corner of the universe. Humans, though, were remarkably mundane, and it had taken little time for the homo sapiens among the Jedi to be checked over, processed, and released to their living quarters by physicians.
The human or very-nearly-human children were the only ones in the room, save for one. He frowned when he looked at her, sitting alone in one corner of the room. Petro and Katooni could be seen glancing her way occasionally as well, worry for their friend apparent in their eyes, but occupied as they were with the younger ones, they let the Rodian girl be. She had been the first of the non-humans examined, and therefore the first to return to their temporary home. Sitting against the far wall, her knees tucked up most of the way to her chest, her hands dangled loosely between them and the silver cylinder of her unlit lightsaber rolled idly between her palms. Her indigo, multifaceted eyes were lowered, heavy-lidded, thoughtful, and the crest of spines on her head rose and fell slowly in time to her breathing. She did not look up, did not smile at the attempts at humor by her friends, did not join them in teaching the youngest, in distracting them and keeping them occupied.
Sometimes it was best to be left alone, after a tragedy, to have some quiet.
This wasn't one of those times. Not for one so young.
It only took a few seconds for him to cross the room to where she was sitting. Tucking his hands into his pants pockets, he looked down at her thoughtfully. She sniffed a little when she noticed him, her snout scrunching, and she gave him a short, doleful look, before returning her attention to her lightsaber.
"Mind if I sit here?" he asked, making a vague gesture towards the empty room and its lack of furniture. "Not a lot of seating around."
She looked up at him again, this time a little more skeptically, and shrugged. "Okay." She returned her attention again to her lightsaber, turning it end over end as he plopped himself down beside her, stretching his legs out a bit as his coat pooled under him. She shifted a couple inches to the left, apparently deciding he'd settled in just a bit too close, and gave him another sideways look before hunkering down in silence. He leaned his head back against the wall and watched the other children for a moment, lightsabers wobbling brightly through the air before the backdrop of rain in the window. So full of concentration, every one of them, watching each other and the older children as they tried to learn movements that would one day be committed to muscle memory.
He turned his head and looked down at the Rodian girl and offered a hand for her to shake. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm the Doctor."
The Rodian girl eyed his hand skeptically, her mouth pursing into a frown as her antennae twitched and swiveled, testing the air. She tilted her head to the side and squinted at him. "Doctor who?"
It never got old. He grinned. "Nothing. Just 'the Doctor'."
Her squint became more pronounced, her snout wrinkled up, and she huffed, easing back against the wall and rolling her eyes. "That's weird."
"Is it? Hm, I never thought it was weird."
She gave him another skeptical look and sniffed, her spines flexing upright before flattening back down again. "It's weird not having a name." She paused, attention sliding momentarily away from him and towards one of the further windows as she rolled her lightsaber hilt absently between sucker-tipped fingers. The rolling stopped, and she looked back to find him patiently waiting. She sighed, apparently resigning herself to having a conversation. She extended a hand and shook his once. It seemed very small inside his. "I'm Ganodi."
He didn't have much experience with little kids. When was the last time he'd spent any time around little kids? There was that incident in London back in 2012, with the Olympics, but he hadn't really spent a lot of time with the girl or the Isolus possessing her. He had plenty of experience with adults who acted like kids at times, but not actual children. And Rodians? Normally a more aggressive race, but that was on the whole rather than on the individual level, and not necessarily including Jedi, who had quirks and tendencies all of their own.
Ganodi was waiting, still looking a bit irritated that her brooding was interrupted by his arrival, but now that she'd found herself caught in conversation, she seemed expectant that he'd continue on with his half of the conversation. At least all species – well, most species, since bearing teeth was sometimes threatening – responded well to smiling. He could do that easily enough. He beamed at her. "Nice to meet you, Ganodi." He tilted his head and glanced briefly at the other two and the younger kids, moving in short steps back and forth and they took turns attacking and defending. "Not joining in with the others?"
She looked away, back down at her lightsaber, and shrugged. "No. Don't feel like it."
He brought his knees up a bit and leaned an elbow on his right one, placing his chin in hand. "Ah, that's understandable. Sometimes it's good to be alone." He looked down at the lightsaber she was turning over and over in her hands, then gave a wistful sigh. "Just you and your lightsaber, gallivanting around the universe. Your only true ally amid everything else."
Her pebbled green hands paused in their rolling motions, and her fingers curled around the hilt of her lightsaber, thumbs running across its metal surface slow and hard, as though seeking reassurance from the metal cylinder. He'd never liked weapons, but to take a lightsaber away from a Jedi was not unlike taking a TARDIS away from a Time Lord. It was so central to their identity as a people. Without a TARDIS, a Time Lord couldn't really be a lord of time and space. Couldn't move through it, affect it, be a part of it. Without a lightsaber, a Jedi was still a Jedi, but without that critical part of themselves that made them the self-appointed guardians of their galaxy. Her lightsaber might be less alive than the TARDIS was to him, but it was no less important, no less a friend for all its lack of sentience. It resonated with what they called the Force, the expression of all the life that existed in any given moment of time. It was as much a Jedi's companion as a TARDIS was to a Time Lord. Ganodi, though, was looking at him more seriously after his words, and without that bit of exasperation or guardedness she'd had since he sat beside her.
She was thoughtful for a long moment, and then said, softly, "You sound like Professor Huyang."
The softness in her tone indicated that person was a friend, whoever he was. He took his chin off his hand and leaned back against the wall again as the children practicing with their lightsabers began to circle around the older two again for another demonstration, though giving them a wider berth. There was a series of low hissing, sucking noises as their plasma blades retracted into their hilts, and murmurs and shuffling as they huddled around the Tholothian and Corellian children for more instruction or a greater demonstration. Ganodi ignored them, looking at him reservedly, her lightsaber slowly drawing closer to her chest in an unconscious gesture of self-comfort.
It was an opening, at least. He tilted his head towards her and asked, "Who's Professor Huyang?"
Ganodi looked at her lightsaber, still protectively close to her body, but not yet pressed against her chest. Her snout curved up a bit at the edges in what seemed like fond remembrance. "He's the droid that helped us choose our lightsaber parts." The small smile turned into a larger one, and for the first time since he'd entered the room, she looked over at the other children with something like happiness. Ganodi chuckled once, then shrugged, turning her attention back to him, still with the smile curving her lips. "He helped us fight off some pirates." She added then, more proudly, "I got to pilot the ship because I was trained already. I'm good at flying stuff."
So this was Ganodi when she wasn't depressed. It was easy to return her smile, with her white-speckled eyes beaming at the memory. He chuckled, "Sounds like a fine gentleman, then."
Her smile continued for several more seconds, first at him, and then again at her friends, who were circling each other and tentatively testing each other's defenses before moving in more aggressively. Katooni was again defending and Petro attacking, each using what appeared to be a different style of lightsaber technique. The girl used a circling pattern, each twist of her wrist, each sweep of her feet, creating loops and whorls in her movements, a constant cycle of motion. Soresu, he recognized after a moment. The blue blade hummed pleasantly around her, leaving a swath of blue light trailing momentarily behind her with each sweep. The boy's movements were almost an exact contrast, full of quick jabs and ripostes, full of flourishes and leaps, ducks and tucks and darts in one direction or another, only to end up being feints in effort to draw the girl into a position where she would be left open. Ataru, he suspected, though perhaps with elements of Shien blended in amid a more familiar style.
Jedi chose their techniques as best suited them, the kind of work they expected to do, and their personalities. Katooni must see herself as a protector, a defender, to choose Soresu. Petro, in turn, was more of an aggressive combatant with a penchant for showing off, based on all the acrobatics he was trying to pull to score a hit on Katooni. She did not let him in past her defenses, nor did he allow her to shift from defense to offense. It was a stalemate between the two mock combatants, but it seemed a familiar one. There was an increasing rhythm to it, small smiles visible on each of their faces as they danced to the sound of their humming blades, crackles of percussion adding variance to the sonorous tones as they came into conflict. They looked nowhere but each other, seemingly oblivious to their audience of now giggling children.
For a little while, they were able to forget their loss.
His attention was brought back to Ganodi when she began to speak. "You know, when I got my lightsaber crystal, Master Yoda said it was because I found hope in the Force." For a long moment, she watched her friends, then turned her gaze down to her lightsaber hilt. One sucker-tipped finger tapped the central portion of it, where within the metal casing there would be a single small adegan crystal, resonating to the same temporal frequency that Ganodi did. Her fingertip fell away from the casing, and she cradled it closer to herself, head bending down so that she could almost wrap herself around it, one solid and unchanging thing for her in a universe gone wibbly. She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as she curled herself up. "I don't really feel like that anymore." Her voice caught, paused, continued thinly. "Everyone's dead."
Across the room, two lightsabers sizzled off each other, creating a corona of white light in the place the two blue blades intersected. Katooni and Petro were locked into their friendly combat, eyes serious but with little lingering smiles as they did something familiar and enjoyable. The little children watched them, some open mouthed, others intent, as they dueled before the rainy window, still being lashed by the fierce weather. Abruptly, the two combatants leapt back, twirled, moved together again and again. Their lightsabers arced and dipped and spun, glowing brightly against the dark and the storm just beyond them.
The Doctor leaned back, looking at them for a long moment as they moved, then down at Ganodi, watching them out of heavy dark eyes. She saw them, but didn't seem to recognize they were there.
So he dug into the pockets of his coat and began to pull things out. Psychic paper. Sonic screwdriver. Stickers. A string of paper clips. Stethoscope. A pen that was not sonic. His regular glasses. A tie. A coupon for chips with a grease stain on it from his last trip to London. A sock. Why did he have a sock in his coat?
Ganodi was staring at him. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for something." They must be in different pockets. He patted his chest, then dug into the pocket of his suit jacket. One pack of gum and two rubber bands later, his fingers found what he was looking for, and he yanked it out with a victorious grin. "3D glasses! You ever seen a pair of these?"
Ganodi's stare became immensely skeptical. "No."
He offered them to her with a smile. "Take a look through these, what do you see?"
She gave him a look only a child could really pull off: the look of someone too old to believe in things easily, but young enough to still want to. She pursed her lips into a frown, gave him another look of suspicion, and tentatively plucked the glasses out of his hand. She flipped them over a couple times, apparently unimpressed with the blue-red eyepieces and white cardboard frames, then held them up to her face with the stems flopping off to the sides of her head. She turned her head up to him, and the skeptical look on her face melted into thoughtful consideration. She blinked once, then turned to look back at her friends, still dancing around each other, Katooni evading and Petro attempting to score a hit. She blinked a second time and tilted her head, pulling the glasses away for a moment, staring at them, then returning them to her eyes and looking again.
Thoughtfully, she said, "I see you. And the others." She paused, then added, with a note of confusion, "What's that weird stuff around Petro and Katooni?"
Stuff wasn't visible to the naked eye, of course. But the glasses could tell a different story. He shifted where he sat, settling himself in better as the younger children scattered a bit out of the way as the two duelists began to spar a little too close to where they sat. "Oh, the stuff. Yes, the stuff." He turned his attention to Ganodi, who was now looking at him most curiously. He winked at her, conspiratorially. "It's timey wimey stuff. Shows up sometimes. Completely harmless, don't worry about it. But you see your friends, don't you?"
She gazed through the glasses, head tilting from one side to another as she tracked their spar across the length of the room's long windows. Her snout pursed up after a moment, and she removed the glasses from her face and admitted, "Well, yeah."
"Then I suppose you're not alone then, are you?" He smiled as he said it, but could not help but feel more somber at the next thought, and his words were more distant than he intended. "You're not the last of the Jedi."
Whether it was something in the tone of his voice or some tingling in the Force, he didn't know for sure, but Ganodi looked at him differently then, more seriously. She straightened, turned towards him, and seemed to really see him for the first time. He was no longer just the quirky guy with too many things in his pockets, or someone intruding in her personal space, or even a mysterious stranger in a strange blue box providing unexpected rescue. Any lingering smile on his face faded as she asked, "Who are you? You're not a Jedi, but you feel like one."
It was a serious question, and deserving of a serious answer. "No. I'm not a Jedi. I'm a Time Lord."
"What's a Time Lord?"
The crackle of lightsabers connecting sounded through the room, accompanied by a booming clap of thunder from outside and a slap of water against the shivering window. The youngest children gave a surprised series of little shouts and shrieks, and the older two stopped their sparring to reassure them of the solidity of the walls.
What was a Time Lord? They were so many things, to so many people: maintainers of time, watchmen of worlds, protectors and saviors. Victims of the Time War. Destroyers. Now, though, they were all but gone. He shrugged as Petro and Katooni retracted their lightsaber blades and sat down amid the younger children, gathering them into a huddle. There were whispers, both uncertain and hopeful, as they decided what to do next. Their interest in lightsaber practice must be waning. He tilted his head back until bumped the wall. "Well, not too different from a Jedi, I suppose. I run around the galaxy, fixing things. Trying to help if I can. But like Jedi, I can't always fix everything, even if I wish I could."
A small hand tapped him on the arm, and he found Ganodi offering the 3D glasses back to him. He accepted them, folded the white cardboard stems across the eyepieces and prepared to tuck them away, but instead let them linger in his hands for a moment. Timey wimey stuff. Void stuff, around the children. Like Canary Wharf and Rose and the Cybermen, all so far away from here. Interesting.
"There aren't many other Time Lords, are there?" Ganodi was still watching him, her lightsaber clutched in her hands. "You're lonely." Leaning forward towards her knees, she was trying to peer into his face, a strange look in her large eyes, full of distance and concentration and consideration. He'd seen so many spooky and downright weird things in his life, but the look of a Jedi tapping into the matrix of reality just to do something as simple as read his feelings was still an eerie thing. Perhaps some other Time Lord would have thought it a waste of skills, a sign of the ignorance of what they could do with such intrinsic capabilities, but him? He smiled a little, sadly. One being reaching out to another in the best way they knew how was never a waste.
He chuckled and placed a hand on the crest of soft spines on her head and ruffled them fondly, much to her dismay. "Jedi. Even as kids, you're too clever by half, you know that?"
As Ganodi grabbed at her head to bat away his hand, he snatched it back. The look of timelessness was gone from her again, and she seemed, once more, an irritated little Rodian girl who wasn't overly fond of having her spines patted. She huffed, snout puffing momentarily as she eyed him, waiting for another attempt at messing with her crest. She rubbed at the top of her head, and when no further head-patting seemed forthcoming, she relaxed again, leaning back against the wall beside him. Abruptly and with the certainty of someone who was sure they were right, she said, "You should stay with us, then. There's not many of us, either." She made a little nod to agree with herself, and then gave him an expectant look, as though he would agree as easily as that.
Seventeen Jedi on New New York. One Jedi on his way to Tatooine. One more Jedi on his way to Dagobah. And two babies, just barely born, with knowledge of what they were locked away by ignorance rather than by a fob watch on a chain. Not all of them were supposed to have made it so far. He gave the 3D glasses a small frown and tucked them back inside his suit jacket pocket, then shook his head at Ganodi, scrounging up a bit of a smile.
"I can't do that."
Jedi. Not Time Lords. So close in some ways, and yet, so far. And Ganodi wasn't the first to offer him companionship. Far from the first, though there weren't as many to offer him a place among their people rather than to offer their friendship alone. The offer of a home...of others somewhat like him. He could have others around him, who knew what it was like to lose everything, lose their people to a war that consumed everything. To fight against creatures that were more filled with hate than anything else. He wouldn't be alone, with them. Perhaps. But as much as a Time Lord might have in common with a Jedi, they weren't the same. He'd still watch them age as he continued on as he always had. Watch Ganodi and friends grow up and grow old and then be gone, while he wore the same face. She offered him a home with her people, because she suspected he didn't have one. She was right, of course, but it didn't change anything. He couldn't stay. Still, she was going to be quite the Jedi, someday. His smile grew a bit wider as she looked at him with a concerned expression.
"Because you have to fix things?" she guessed, and he chuckled.
"Something like that." He sniffed and stretched his arms a bit, sleeves of both suit jacket and coat settling again around his wrists. "And there's a whole universe out there to see, after all. Maybe someday you'll come with me instead. How's that?"
She blinked big eyes at him, then laughed a little. "In your ship that's bigger on the inside? That would be fun. I could pilot it!" She looked at the other Jedi children on the other side of the room, attentively listening to some story that seemed to involve pirates, lots of big gestures, and mimicking someone who was apparently very drunk at that particular point in the tale. Watching them as well, Ganodi added with a small smile, "Maybe someday, then."
Very suddenly, she gave a hard blink, and turned towards him, but with her attention moving past where he sat. Turning to follow her gaze, he found Luminara Unduli stepping silently into the doorway, her hands folded in front of her. The matrons had provided her with a change of clothing at some point during the last few hours; she wore the long white robe of one of the hospital staff, but not the winged headdress, and her black hair hung down over one shoulder in a plait threaded through with silver strands. Her blue eyes were somber, and they focused on the group of children first, sitting in a circle around the older two and listening to a story about pirates as the rain poured down outside. Something around the corner of her eyes and lips softened, creating the ghost of a pained smile, before fading away.
As she took a final step inside the room, a pitched roar cut into the otherwise quiet scene, and the young Wookiee Jedi bounded into the room behind her, paused, looked around, and shouted another greeting before hurrying over. Children shifted quickly out of his way, and he settled down into the group with a snaggletoothed grin and a series of chuffing and gurgling sounds that roughly translated to: "I thought they'd never let me out of there!" Taller than the others, his head swiveled around a bit until it focused on Ganodi, sitting away from the rest of them and only with the Doctor for company. The grin spread into a smile, wave, and short but undulating call of, "Hey, what are you doing over there?"
The Wookiee, apparently, either had issues reading social situations, or was actually quite good at simply barreling his way through potentially tense moments. Ganodi lifted a hand and waved back, shaking her head a little bit with fond exasperation. "I should get going," she said, pushing herself to her feet and clipping her lightsaber hilt to her waist. She then offered the Doctor a hand up, which he accepted, and found himself pulled quickly to his feet. Ganodi looked up at him, serious once more. "And Doctor? Thanks."
So serious. He grinned and rumpled her crest again, the spines flopping around awkwardly as he ruffled them up.
Ganodi grabbed at her head and yanked it away, scowling again. "I'm not a little kid!"
She was, perhaps, ten or so. Maybe a little older, but no more than twelve. He chuckled. "Well, when you reach your hundredth birthday or so, I'll stop thinking of you as one, then."
Ganodi made a huffing noise that would have been considered rude on most civilized planets, and wrinkled her snout up into a pout. He gave her head one last quick pat, then tapped her back, just between her shoulder blades. "I think your friends are waiting for you."
The Wookiee, along with Katooni and Petro, were all watching, with varied expressions of welcome, concern, and impatience on their faces. The smaller children simply looked curiously at the two of them, and Ganodi sighed, then straightened. "I know. I'll see you around, right?"
"Absolutely."
She gave him a small grin, then turned away and ran to the rest of them.
Seven little ones. Six not-quite-so-little ones. They weren't supposed to be here - not really. Certainly not here on New New York, but six of them weren't supposed to be involved at all. The other seven...well. A footnote in history, and they were safely outside their timeline now anyway. There would be no ramifications that instead of certain death at the end of a lightsaber, those seven merely disappeared and were assumed dead, killed by Vader as they were supposed to be. The other six...well. Two of them had void stuff. It was probable the others did as well. A little more checking should confirm that, but there were other Jedi that needed more immediate attention.
As Ganodi settled herself down into the center of the storytelling circle, he turned, tucking his hands into his pockets, and found himself under Luminara Unduli's remarkably lofty sense of scrutiny. He grinned at her, and she lifted an eyebrow as she approached him, her pace steady and slow and with one eye kept upon the children. As she came to a stop beside him, long white skirt swinging around her ankles, he said, "Hello, Ms. Unduli."
Her second eyebrow stretched up towards the first, and she said, archly, "I am generally referred to as Master Unduli, not Ms, Doctor."
Jedi and their titles. He wrinkled his nose. "Ah, see, I never cared for the title. "Master". A bit pretentious, don't you think? Getting people to call you Master this and Master that?"
Though she'd been primarily turned towards the children, once more retelling some story about pirates and now apparently involving droids, Luminara tilted herself more to face him, and with a bit of a wry look on her face. "I have spent a lifetime working towards earning that title, and see little pretention in using it after all the effort it took to obtain it." She lifted her chin, and he felt a bit like he were back in his own academy days, caught sneaking cookies into thermodynamics class to snack on. His grin grew a bit sheepish, and she added, "Besides, I at least attach a name to my title. One could argue that going simply by "Doctor" has a certain ring of arrogance to it as well."
Oh, she was a clever one. Not unusual for Jedi, though, and she really had the whole Jedi Master you're-being-an-impertinent-youngling look down to a science. He beamed. He never thought he'd enjoy getting that look. "Oh I like you."
She tilted her head to the side, her arched brows made a small twitch, and a brief, if somewhat exasperated smile crossed her lips. "Thank you, Doctor, the sentiment is shared, though less because of wordplay and more because of what you've done." She returned her focus to the children. Petro had his lightsaber hilt out, unlit, and was mimicking a battle as he waved it around. Katooni was watching him with the deeply unimpressed look of someone who frequently saw him waving his lightsaber around. Ganodi and Petro were recounting something about a high speed chase. Ganodi was apparently the hero of this segment of the story, as she was repeatedly reminding Petro she'd been piloting the ship.
"You have my gratitude," Luminara told him, watching the children's story unfold in big gestures. There was a note of pain in her voice as she finished, "I am unsure if I can repay you for your aid."
Katooni tugged Petro back down, as he'd been almost onto his feet reenacting whatever battle they'd been through. The young Wookiee took over, and a series of yips and low moans continued the tale into a crash and a recapture, this time of the entire group. The Doctor folded his arms across his chest and frowned at the thought. "I didn't do it for repayment. Or even gratitude." He paused, then added, "Master Unduli."
She looked at him, and gave him a small bow of thanks, perhaps for using her title, perhaps again for his help. "I know. Which is why my appreciation is heartfelt. Your actions are not unlike those of a Jedi, though a Jedi you are not." She paused, then added, "In this case, I believe 'Luminara' is acceptable, Doctor."
He smiled, and found it tentatively returned, albeit somewhat more wryly. "I just had this conversation with Ganodi, actually."
Ganodi was now translating a bit of Shyriiwook for a few of the younger set that hadn't quite picked up enough of the language yet, complete with hand gestures that indicated there was another battle happening. Whatever it was this particular adventure included, it sounded a bit on the dangerous side for young children. But then this was the galaxy far away. They all too frequently grew up too fast here.
"She's a smart girl," Luminara told him, noticing his attention of Ganodi, then turned herself slightly, away from the children and more towards the door. "Will you walk with me, Doctor?"
Some things were not to be discussed in front of children, he supposed. Or at least not in front of all of them. With a final glance towards the group and their animated way of telling their tale, he turned away from them and followed Luminara out the door and into the hallway.
Like the assembly room, the hallways of the Palliative Wing were painted in warm, rich colors, this time a chocolatey brown. With the wing still under construction, there was no furniture lining the walls in the corridors, just as there was none in the interior rooms. It was an oddly empty seeming place, all walls and carpet, without the bustle of sentient life forms moving about their business. Immediately outside the Jedi's common room was a small atrium; there was a hexagonal dome above, made with clear glass and hedged in with the distinctive heart-shaped leaves of strawberry ivy dripping down along the vaulted arches to drape over entranceways and exits. The scarlet, flowering buds of the plant were just starting to blossom, and the scent of almost-ripened fruit hung in the air, sweet and pleasant and homey. Strawberry ivy! Almost as nice as apple grass, but much easier to bring inside. Just the sort of thing for people stuck in a hospital instead of their home. The atrium's glass dome, though, was dark from the storm and wet from rain, there were only fluorescent lights giving the lengths of curling crimson ivy illumination.
In the middle of the atrium, a single sculpture sat in the center of what would, at some point in the future, be a pond. For now, though, it was a lonely bit of abstract art, a curling and twisting bit of silvery metal sitting on an island that did not yet have water around it. A nurses' station was tucked away to the left of the Jedi common room, but it was empty as yet; nothing but desks, computers, and holoscreens, all dim from lack of use, but ready to be turned on. Luminara led him around one side of the empty fountain, and then through one of the arches to a trio of turbolifts. One of the sets of doors opened, and he followed her into one of the cars.
"Surgical wing," she said, head tilted up slightly towards the ceiling, and the lift began to move, a faint but not unpleasant whir sounding as they moved up, then to the side. She closed her eyes for a moment as though in remembrance. "The sky beyond the windows and glass are too clouded by rain to see the stars, but I suspect I would see no familiar constellations if I could see the sky." When she opened her eyes, she looked at him evenly, with the seriousness of one who was well aware she was responsible for others under her care. "How far have you brought us, in your ship that is bigger on the inside?"
So much farther than anyone from the galaxy far away had ever traveled. Trillions of kilometers. Trillions upon trillions, past so many other galaxies to get to this one. "Almost to the other side of the universe," he told her. She did not look alarmed, or shocked, but did become very still for a long moment before turning her head aside and letting out a long, slow sigh. "You're very far from home."
She nodded once, her expression wistful. "So I can tell. This place feels nothing like home. Dimmer, in a sense. Alive, but muted. The Force is not so vibrant here, though it exists."
That was because there were no midichlorians here for hers to interface with and provide a psychofeedback loop. The lift doors opened before them, and they stepped out of the car and moved into a very different scene than the one they had just left.
For all the depth of color that filled the Palliative Wing, this one lacked it. Stark white, the broad hallway stretched far and long until ending at a set of frosted glass doors. Matrons, novices and staff of all kinds hurried across the polished, tiled white floors in their equally white lab coats and gowns. They bustled in and out of doorways, which were closed only by disinfecting force fields that buzzed with a flash of icy blue each time a warm body passed through a doorframe. Here, service points were filled with Catkind, humans, New Humans, and human variants, reading monitors that were fully lit and active, letters and numbers scrolling across their translucent screens. Windows that stretched along the further edge of waiting rooms showed much the same stormy scene as did the Jedi's common room in the Palliative Wing; darkness whipped by water and wind. People waited here and there, some sitting on benches upholstered in plush white fabrics, others pacing by the stormy windows, some fidgeting as they watched holoscreens with newscasts. All was lit in clean, if harsh, lighting from long, intricately carved fixtures on the ceiling.
They moved through the hallway, Luminara leading the way as they navigated through the bustle of beings. Every few steps, they were noticed, and staff stopped, stared, and cleared them a path, eyes wide and mouths open as they gaped at the Jedi and the Doctor. Along with the sound of newscasts and the general chatter of staff, more secretive whispers began to build up along behind them as they passed and were pointed out. The legendary Doctor and one of those that traveled with him? A Mirialan wasn't terribly different from a human, but she'd be associated with the likes of the Wookiee, Ithorian, Rodian, Nautolian and Togruta that came with her. Mysteries all, and traveling with someone who was a legend now? Their presence was likely making the gossip rounds at a frenetic pace.
Halfway down the hallway, Luminara paused at a desk, and a nurse looked up from his screen with a frown. Upon seeing both Luminara and the Doctor, his orange eyes widened and he tried to stand up, unburying himself from a pile of datapads, but Luminara lifted a calming hand. "Thank you, but we would only like to pass into the theater."
He froze, still gripping an armload of datapads, and nodded quickly. "Of course, ma'am." He then looked at the Doctor gape-mouthed, and the Doctor couldn't help but grin at him, the poor boy was so flustered. He'd have to find out at some point exactly how far the legend of the blue box had progressed here; it seemed that it had gotten rather large. Hame's doing, he suspected, though stories often took a life of their own, getting bigger with the retelling. The nurse fumbled at the control panel to his left, and hit a button. The archway beside the station flickered once. "You don't have passes," he said nervously, "I've activated the disinfectant field. When you want to come out, just press the call button on the wall and I'll let you back in here. It'll take care of the rest." He shifted from foot to foot, his blue skin turning indigo as he looked around, noticing he was now the center of attention as well. "Last report was positive!" he blurted as Luminara moved to leave. The new information caused her to pause, and the nurse added, "Doctor Offee's been sending up reports when she can, if you need to see them."
"If you can patch them through to the theater screens, it would be appreciated, Mr…." she paused, and her eyes flicked over his name tag. "Senuwee."
"Of course, ma'am." He snapped up to attention and almost squeaked, "Doctor!"
If he were military, he'd be saluting by now. As Luminara again began to move, he gave the nurse a smile and drummed a hand once on the counter that ran around the station. "Keep up the good work then, Mr. Senuwee."
The man positively beamed. "Yes, sir!"
With a wave, the Doctor followed Luminara through the disinfectant field, shivering a bit as it activated around him. The things were always a bit chilly for some reason, made his flesh crawl a bit as it swiped away surface bacteria. They passed from stark brightness in the hallway and waiting rooms into a dimmer space, still unadorned white, but with the lights lowered. It was a theater in the round, but there were surgeons rather than actors on this particular stage, set low in a depression in the room's center. Wide screens were interspersed along the viewing area, with close up video feeds of the ongoing surgery. Dataports with computer terminals were placed just beneath them, scrolling with patient information. Three tiers of white benches provided amphitheater style seating, placed in rows around the entirety of the room and rising upward towards the back walls. The seats were empty, abandoned in favor of clustering right at the front of great, almost invisible sterility fields that encompassed the central part of the amphitheater. There were a dozen or so there, all but one in the shorter, light grey robes of medical students. Some clutched datapads to their chests as they listened to their instructor, others were busily typing away, jotting information down for later review. One of the group noticed the arrival of Luminara and the Doctor and let out a small gasp, staring as she looked up from her datapad.
The startled sound caught the attention of the rest of the group, and the instructor paused in her lesson as she suddenly found herself with inattentive students. An older human woman, with steel grey hair and sharp eyes, she frowned at them severely, then followed their collective gaze. She blinked once, startled at their appearance, but recovered almost immediately, giving both Luminara and the Doctor a quick nod of recognition before spinning back to her students and snapping, "This is a unique opportunity to study a new species, an opportunity that is infrequently afforded to students such as yourselves. As you branch out to your respective hospitals and infirmaries on the exploratory rim, you may also be encountering first contact situations with new species. This is no time to be gawking like children at a trapped Macra when a life is still on the line. You are doctors. Inattention during a surgery can mean death for a patient. Eyes forward!"
Chastened, the medical students attempted to rebury themselves in their datapads and the surgical drama unfolding before them. Though eyes shifted occasionally towards himself and Luminara, the students slowly began to turn their attention back to the matter at hand as their instructor continued with her explanation of what was occurring below.
Aayla Secura floated in the center of the operating room. It was a standard medical antigrav unit keeping her hovering there, a couple meters or so above the ground. White beams of light were projecting from the room's set of twelve antigravity discs, affixed to the floor, ceiling, and curving support beams of the operating area. As the white light approached her, it met yet another disinfectant barrier, this time a pale blue stasis bubble that flickered in lavender and yellow tones as the field flexed and shifted. Her blue lekku floated idly upward as her head tilted down, her arms loosely stretched out while her legs dangled downward. She looked like something caught in a snowglobe, twirling bonelessly, gently, in the air.
Below her was a ring of five terminals, each station occupied by a surgeon, nurse, or technician. The two surgeons had their hands lifted, encased in dark blue plastoid gloves with sensor arrays running down the fingers and back of the forearm. One of them gently turned her hands to the right, cupping the air, and Secura rotated in time to the motion, head lolling slowly to the right with the movement, lekku trailing. The turn revealed the mass of plasma burns webbing across her back, stretching out from the three impact points of the blaster bolts that were turned against her on Felucia. The uppermost of the three points was on her right shoulder, and unlike the lower two, it showed obvious signs of healing. Pale blue, it looked fragile and tender as new skin so often did. There was a puckering of tissue around what was the entry point of a blaster bolt, but the rest of the burned area was merely soft and pale, almost normal looking.
The focus now seemed lower, on the middle of the three holes in her back. One of the technicians was monitoring a vidscreen, which showed an enlarged display of the center of Secura's back, giving detail to the damage. The technician placed his hands lightly on the glass monitor, then flicked the images to the sides of him, the pictures sliding across the screens of the terminals and hanging there, giving each of the medical staff a close up of the wound's topography. Identical imagery flipped up onto the video screens in the theater area, giving the students a close up of the wound being worked on.
The second surgeon flexed her hands, fingers stretching out, and within the stasis bubble, a long prong of silver light appeared, flickering as it approached the Jedi's damaged back. As the tip of the solid light came in contact with Secura's raw skin, she twitched once, then lay still as the light flattened over her lower back, over the curvature of her spine. The silver light seemed to condense, deepen in color, sink into her skin, then withdraw, convulsing once the majority of it returned to the surface of her blue flesh. Then, abruptly, it dissipated, leaving behind a patch of tender, pale blue skin on Secura's lower back, a tentatively healed space that matched her shoulder area. Though there was no audio coming from within the operating room, the small sags and briefly slumped shoulders of each member of the operating team signaled relief that one more hole had been successfully closed.
To the left of the ring of surgical terminals was a smaller, analyzation one, with a full-scale holographic replica of Secura projected into the air. A data feed ran alongside it, scrolling upward as certain areas of Secura's display faded from a critical red to an intermediate yellow. Reading the incoming data and monitoring Secura's status was Barriss Offee, decked out in full scrubs with her hair bound back under a white cap, same as the other medical staff. She tapped busily away at a keyboard, then turned to answer a question that seemed to be coming from one of the two surgeons, both of them gesturing up towards the idly floating Secura.
"I have never seen such a place as this," Luminara said to him, her voice barely above a murmur. She was watching her former apprentice as she instructed and informed the two surgeons of some likely important part of Twi'lek physiology. "They do not use bacta. They do not even use scalpels as we think of them. You say we are on the other side of the universe." She turned away from her apprentice and looked at him. "Why this place, Doctor? It is so very far from our home."
For him, it had only been a couple years, since he was here with Rose. A little over a year since he was here with Martha. With Rose, New New York was a place with a pretty face and a terrible heart, full of secrets and abuses and desperation, using those who had no voices for themselves to create cures for those who had wealth, status, power. A terrible place. But that was centuries ago for the people that lived there now, and the place that was called the Matron Hame Memorial Hospital was a different world. Intensely driven by research and the training of new healers, Hame had rebuilt it from the ground up, along with all the others that escaped their decades on the Motorway of New Earth. He felt himself smile. Hame had done even more in her time than he had expected her to; she'd become a reformer and a world-builder, with a high moral code constructed from lessons learned from horrors she'd participated in and rejected.
"Because you'll be safe here," he told Luminara, watching as Barriss Offee and the surgeons returned to their terminals after their consultation, and Aayla Secura drifted in her stasis bubble, her body regenerating itself as technologies never seen in the galaxy far away worked to mend her. "This place has gone through so many reformations. New peoples have been made here. Survivors of a worldwide plague restarted their lives from nothing, building a new, better world for themselves and their families. It's a good world, where you and your people can do more than just survive."
The hands of the surgeons reached upward again, their fingers encased in blue gloves stretching towards the unconscious form of Aayla Secura, supporting her in her healing and ensuring her survival. "They can save her," he nodded towards Aayla, "and they will accept you if you want to relocate here. It's a good place." He smiled at the memory. "Fields of apple grass, far as the eye can see, just outside the city. Beautiful place, really. It would make a good home."
Luminara sighed, soft and slow and sad. "But it is not our home, Doctor."
No. No, it wasn't. Their home was gone. It still existed, in a sense, but it would never be the same. Never available for them to return to.
He spoke quietly, looking down at her. She seemed small without her headdress, without her dark Jedi robes. It was a strangely fragile look for someone he suspected was usually quite indomitable, her hair long and down, her lightsaber loose on her belt and terribly out of place against the white robes of a medical Matron of New Earth. "Your home is gone, Luminara. There's no going back to it. It will be decades before enough people rise up against the Empire to overthrow it. No Jedi is safe in your galaxy. Not right now. Not for many years to come."
She stood very still. There was no reflection of her in the sterility fields encompassing the operating room, the way there would have been if she were standing by glass; but light from the chamber below still glowed up into her face, casting it into an interplay of light and shadow. Those contrasts drew out the look of worry in her face, from drawn brows to a pursed mouth and a jaw clenched a little too tight. "How is it that you know these things? You are not a Jedi, and not even a Jedi knows the future as though it is a fact."
"I'm a Time Lord." Her blue eyes slid up to him, patient for further answers. "My TARDIS doesn't only move through space quickly. It moves from one point in time to another. I've been to the past just as often as I've been to the future. Just as you understand what you call the Force, I understand time. Every variance. Every nuance. Every possibility." Below them, Aayla Secura gave a slow pirouette, arms and lekku trailing after her as she turned. The stasis bubble around her flickered, and a low hum could be heard as the operating room's scanners ran another diagnostic on her internal structure, ensuring that the second wound's closure had healed correctly. "The rise of what is now the Galactic Empire is fixed in time. To alter it, even to save the Jedi," he sighed. "It might unravel the whole of your galaxy's history."
Luminara closed her eyes a long moment, dark lashes resting on her viridian cheeks as she bowed her head. Her posture, until that moment straight and tall, bent slightly, her shoulders curving downward as a tiredness seemed to overtake her. "Time is an ever shifting thing," she began, opening her eyes to watch as her former apprentice began again to consult with one of the medical staff, a nurse this time by the looks of her robes, the white tunic of a New Earth healer reaching only to her knees rather than her ankles. "The future is always clouded and hard to see because of its constant turns." Luminara looked at him, and some strength seemed to flow back to her, straightening her shoulders and spine though her expression remained grim. "But I imagine that even something that is never still has its points of unchangeability. Its borders." A distant look came into her eyes, and he felt the back of his neck prickle in a similar way to when Ganodi tried to read him in the Force. This time, though, that tingle felt sharper, stronger, but more refined. He couldn't enjoy the sensation of being psychically scanned like this, but she deserved to know of his honesty, just as Ahsoka did, back on the TARDIS. He held still, but grimaced as she finished, seeking the truth from him. "You cannot change what has happened?"
"No."
Speaking the truth was easy. To change the rise of the Empire would alter too many events left to come, and doom an entire future that was so much brighter than any that the Jedi could possibly imagine right now.
The feeling of a cool wind ran down his neck, and he resisted the urge to shiver at it. Her focus was intent on him as she confirmed, "But you would if you could."
"Yes. And I'm sorry."
The coolness retreated, and he felt himself relaxing from a tension he had not thought he'd had. It was strange. He hadn't seen his own people for so many years now. Luminara was similar, in so many ways, to some of the professors he'd had as a child on Gallifrey. Cool, collected, distant, perhaps a little more confident than she really should be, but caring, all the same. She was as bound by rules as he was in this case, forced to accept that her people were beyond her reach just as his were.
Time War. Clone War. Both were devastating to everyone involved.
"Yes," she said, looking up into his face thoughtfully, almost kindly. "You are, aren't you? It wears upon you as well. I see it in your face as much as in the Force around you. Loss is not unfamiliar to you, is it?"
And like any good teacher, she always knew when someone was hiding something from her. But he wasn't a little boy anymore either, and both the Time War and his loss were his own.
"No."
She gave him a brief nod, then returned her attention to the operating room. The hum of scanners ceased, and there was a flicker from the video screens around the room as new imagery appeared across them. Green lit areas of Secura's silhouette indicated successful portions of the operation, while other areas remained a disturbing red. A murmur of interest rose from the group of students several meters away, and their instructor began pointing out internal organs on the display while explaining how the capillaries shown were being regenerated, as well as the risk factors involved in performing such delicate work on an unfamiliar species.
The instructor's words drifted over to them, clear and crisp. "It is imperative that her injuries are regenerated from the inside out. It will take time for her to heal, but with detritus removed from her body and surface injuries sterilized and sealed, recovery time will be minimized."
Luminara sighed beside him, watching as Secura rotated yet again within her stasis bubble. One surgeon cradled Secura within the antigrav field, her blue-gloved hands lifted over her head and cupping the air, while the other surgeon prepared the light scalpel.
"Still. The Jedi must rebuild. This Empire you speak of cannot be allowed to hunt down every Force-sensitive youngling in the galaxy. Nor can we afford to let the ways of the Force be lost." Her expression hardened with determination as the silver light of the scalpel formed within the stasis bubble, creating a steely streak of light within the lavender globe. It lanced forward into Secura's left side, causing her to twitch involuntarily as the hard light made contact with her skin and sank into it, seeking out places of damage and unwanted bacteria, purging them and repairing them. "We must rebuild, Doctor. Your offer is kind, but that galaxy is our home. We cannot relinquish it to the Dark Side. Even if this moment cannot be changed, we must protect our future. The Jedi must return." She gave him a pointed look. "Can you understand that?"
How could he not? "Yes."
She relaxed a bit. His understanding was also a promise, of a sort. Here, on the other side of the universe, they had no way home without him and the TARDIS. He could insist on their remaining on New Earth by simply abandoning them here and letting them pick up new lives in this galaxy. But for all their loss, they had an opportunity he did not.
They could rebuild.
He couldn't deny them that. He just didn't have to take them back to the exact same moment that they had left to do it. There would be no Jedi involved in the chronology of events leading up to Tatooine, but they would also have their future.
He smiled. Luminara's brows lifted archly, and his grin broadened. Before she could ask him what, exactly, he was smiling about, a communicator clipped to her belt began to make a small, but annoyingly steady beeping noise. She shook her head once, as though vaguely exasperated, unclipped the communicator from her belt and held it up. "Unduli."
"Master Unduli," a cheerful feminine voice replied, "We have completed our exams of Zatt and Byph. Most fascinating physiologies! Four throats! Pheromone based communicative abilities! Just amazing! I am most eager to speak with your team's doctor. Would you like to collect them, or shall I bring them to your quarters?"
Luminara gave him a glance, then Secura, floating in her stasis bubble and Offee manning the analysis terminal. She sighed. "I will collect them momentarily. Thank you."
"Certainly!" A pause, then the voice continued more seriously, "We have also been receiving updates on the status of your Twi'lek companion. Her prognosis is increasingly positive, Master Unduli."
"Thank you, I am aware. Unduli out."
There was a faint crackle of static as she flicked off the communicator's on button.
"It seems I must depart." She hesitated, looking at him thoughtfully, but he felt no prickle of her manipulating the world around them to read his feelings, and there was no distance in her eyes as though she were peering at something in the Force that he could not see. She merely seemed to look at him, taking in his unkempt hair, brown eyes, and small smile. After a moment, she returned it, her dark lips curving slightly upward.
"Again, Doctor, you have my thanks."
She gave a small bow of gratitude and farewell, turned, and left.
Anyone in here get the Professor Huyang quote? It was the reference to a lightsaber being a Jedi's only true ally. I wanted to make sure I got a Professor Huyang reference in here somewhere, since Huyang was voiced by none other than the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. ;)
Woo, first attempt at writing something lengthy from the Doctor's point of view. I really hope I pulled him off alright, it's very hard to get into his head when you don't have much of a science background. I lack skills in technobabble.
And yes…3D glasses.
The more I write this story, the more parallels I find between the Doctor, the Time Lords, and the Jedi. It's not exact, of course, but the comparisons are there to be made.
~Queen