Many, many thanks to my fabulous beta, moonmama, for making this chapter even better than I'd dared to hope.
Tegan had set the climate controls to rain. Usually she kept it sunny around her house even when rain was falling elsewhere, watering the lawns and gardens and non-holographic parts of the forests and meadows, but she wasn't in the mood for sunny skies. Not today.
God, she was so tired of it all. If only her memories of being with so many versions of the Doctor were untainted by the manipulations of the Valeyard…if only she had the mental strength to shuck off the bonds he'd placed upon her mind and body…if only, if only.
"If only I had a million dollars, I'd be rich," Tegan grumbled as she stood by the French doors and stared out at the rain. She'd pinned so many hopes on the Doctor, on one of his many selves figuring out there was something wrong with her seduction plan, on the first Doctor not coming to see her, and now all that was left to hope for was that Ten was right, and Nine wouldn't come round, that the mysterious whatever-it-was that happened to him and Eight would keep him away.
She continued to stand, brooding, as the sun slowly set and the rain continued, unabated. She left only long enough to pour herself a glass of red wine, then went back to her lonely vigil, sipping occasionally from the glass and trying desperately not to think.
As always when she was alone, the Valeyard's presence in her mind dimmed, as if he were a nightlight left on in a distant room, barely discerned but still there. She ignored him, willing her thoughts to dwell only on the rain and the descending darkness. She wasn't going to let it stop raining for a few days, she thought rebelliously. No matter how the gardening and lawn-care 'bots felt about it.
Not that they actually felt anything, of course, that was just her anthropomorphizing the stupid bits of metal and plastic, but still. They would express their displeasure in those toneless voices so like and yet so unlike those of the Cybermen.
She shivered; why couldn't her thoughts just go blank when she wanted them to, instead of bringing up horrors of the past? The robots' voices had never reminded her of Cybermen before; what was next, that she compared them to Daleks? She snorted at the thought. If she ever heard one of them say "Exterminate" it was more likely to be directed at dust mice under the furniture than at herself.
The sound of the front door slamming open startled her. She turned with a gasp, losing her grip on her glass of wine. She barely noticed as it smashed itself to pieces on the tile floor, more worried about who her unexpected visitor could be. Surely not the Valeyard? Her blood ran cold at the thought.
Incipient panic gave way to a sort of stunned surprise as she recognized the man striding toward her in the gloom. "You," she breathed when he stopped directly in front of her, watching her as warily as she watched him.
The Doctor's ninth self. The one she'd never expected to meet.
She recognized him from the "Rogue's Gallery" Eleven had given her, although he wasn't wearing the leather jacket. Still, there was the close-cropped hair, the lean physique, the haunted eyes that had been so accurately captured in the photograph. It was dark, but enough light shone from the lamp in the kitchen to reveal that he was wearing a deep blue t-shirt and jeans and, incongruously, no shoes, every inch of him dripping wet from the rain.
She opened her mouth to say something flippant about shutting the front door or cleaning up the glass he'd made her drop, but before she could speak he stepped forward and seized her roughly by the arms, drew her to him and forced a kiss on her that literally stole her breath even as it stole her thoughts right out of her mind.
He ended the kiss before she passed out from lack of oxygen, but only barely. Tegan felt her heart pounding as hard as it ever had, and if she noticed the way his soaking wet form had plastered her own clothing to her body, she said nothing, merely pressed her hands against the glass behind her in order to keep from falling.
Instead of moving back, giving her space to recover from the shock of that kiss, letting her regain her breath or her reeling senses, he pressed himself against her once again, trapping her between his body and the door, one hand on either side of her head, fingers splayed against the glass. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the darkness, and in that moment any protest Tegan might have been considering died in her throat.
His eyes were wild, desperate; his face, mask-like and yet all too emotionally vulnerable. He was holding himself rigidly under control, in spite of the intensity of the kiss they'd just shared, and she sensed how fragile that control was. One wrong move, one wrong word, even, and this could erupt into violence.
So she waited, feeling his body against hers, unsure if she should look away or continue to keep her eyes trained on his now-unseen face, unsure of anything until he leaned forward and forced a second kiss on her. Instinct took over, reason fled gibbering into the backmost recesses of her mind, and she surrendered to the moment and the man in front of her with a passivity that would have astounded anyone who knew her well.
He reached for her, wrenching the damp blouse from her body, buttons popping, seams tearing, tugging it down her arms with impatient jerks, and her own hands moved to lift his t-shirt away from his waist, pushing it up toward his armpits. He stepped back and twisted it off over his head with a grunt, dropping it to the floor with a wet "plop" and returning his attention to her body. His hands tugged with continued impatience at her skirt, rending it with only a little more difficulty than he'd had with the lighter fabric of her blouse. The skirt dropped to her feet and she shimmied out of her panties before he could wreak more havoc on her clothing.
Too late; he'd already decided the bra was impeding his progress and yanked the straps off her shoulders, shredding the delicate lace and ripping it from her body with almost contemptuous ease.
Almost contemptuous; that was the key phrase, the one that kept Tegan from panicking and striking out at him, from wondering if he'd been possessed or wasn't really the Doctor after all, no matter who he looked like. There was a fury to his actions, to the way he touched her, but a desperation overriding all, keeping it from degenerating into an attack. In spite of her earlier impression, she knew that he'd never deliberately hurt her, that if she pushed him away he might resist but would ultimately allow her the choice.
Knowing that she had a choice, intuiting it, feeling it with every fiber of her being, gave her the confidence to undo the button of his jeans, to lower the zip and spread the wet denim so she could better help him to unclothe himself.
He made a sound deep in his throat, half-moan, half-growl, and jerked away from her long enough to force the heavy, clingy fabric down his legs, taking whatever underclothing he was wearing with it too quickly for Tegan to determine if it was boxers or briefs, and what did she care? Not a whit, not when he returned his attention to her so quickly he might have been a conjurer, one minute clothed, the next naked and her lips captured for a third searing kiss.
She clung to him for support as they made love against the cool glass surface, and continued to hold him afterwards, as he rested his forehead against hers, eyes shut tight, still holding her in that desperate grip that was sure to leave bruises if she didn't have the medical 'bots tend to her before going to bed.
Before she could say anything, he pressed a kiss to her lips and smiled, very briefly, so hard to see in the dimness but for the flash of teeth. Then he lowered her gently to the floor, paused, and as she found her footing she could feel him holding onto her as if for support. His breath was deep and heavy on her shoulder until he drew back finally, releasing his grip and turning away from her, just slightly, as if unable to commit to either staying or going.
Or maybe there was something else he was contemplating; the way his eyes were flitting over everything in the room except for her, the crease deepening between those eyes; something was obviously weighing heavily on him. Whatever it was—related to Eight's decision, she suspected—part of her wanted to know, to have him share his burden with her.
And part of her prayed he wouldn't. Whatever it was, it had been too much for Eight to share with her and as such, she was far from certain that she wanted to hear it now.
He wanted to tell her, though, and all she could do was stand helplessly by and listen. "They're all dead, Tegan."
He spoke the words in a low voice, staring at the floor, as if ashamed, and this rattled her far more than the actual words did. Death was nothing new to the Doctor; they'd certainly racked up quite a trail of destruction when she'd traveled with Five and it had hardly fazed him then. Indeed, that was a big part of why she'd left him in the first place. So to see him so deeply affected by it now—it was endearing, and it was also downright terrifying.
"Wh - who?" she finally ventured.
"The Daleks," he replied. He sucked in a breath, crouched down to pick up his wet clothes, and began pulling on his trousers.
Why would he be mourning the destruction of the Daleks, the most evil race in the universe? This didn't make sense. She started to ask, but he cut her off. "And the Gelth," he added. "The Eternals." Another deep breath. "The Time Lords."
"The - who?" she stammered. It was too much; trying to think through this with her slow human brain was like moving through molasses. She had to be missing something.
"The Time Lords, Tegan. They're all dead." He was standing straight up now, looking right at her with cold blue eyes, as if daring her to react.
She choked back a sob. "But—how? What happened?"
"The Time War happened," he replied. "The Last Great Time War, between my people and the Daleks. Years of destruction, folded over history to spread across the millennia, across the galaxies, erasing and overwriting events like a virus. Like an inferno, burning away everything that was ever good and true."
She felt the tears pricking at her eyes, such a tiny reaction to an enormous calamity. "So they destroyed each other?" she surmised. "The Daleks and the Time Lords?"
"Not exactly," he said darkly and that's when Eight's words came back to her, sending a shiver of ice through her. \\I know what I need to do now\\. That's what he had said, and now she was certain that she didn't want to know what he had meant.
But Nine was set on telling her, apparently. He was determined to force the information right onto her shoulders; shoulders which he was now grasping tightly as he leaned in to plead with her. "I didn't want to do it," he said, and now she knew for sure. "I tried to stop them," he insisted. "I tried to help, but everything I did just made it all worse. Tegan, they turned into monsters."
She turned her face away, trembling from head to foot. "You always found another way," she accused.
"I tried," he insisted, his voice hollow. "Over and over, I tried. Everything I did just ended up making the Time Lords more powerful, or else they found a way to erase what I'd done entirely. You saw what it was like—you saw what they were doing to me. I didn't even recognize you, remember? And that was one of my better days; some days I hardly even knew who I was or what I was fighting for."
"To help people," she supplied bitterly. "That's what you always used to fight for."
"But I couldn't always save everyone," he reminded her. "You of all people should know that. Tegan, you know me. You know I would've gladly died rather than sacrifice anyone else. But there was no saving them. And they were going to destroy Time itself. Castrovalva, Frontios, Deva Loka, they all would've been gone." His voice dipped to a whisper in her ear. "Earth."
She turned her face to his and saw the tears in his eyes, and when he added, "You," her last defense was broken and she was pressing her lips to his, softly and tenderly. Their tongues slid together as the salty taste of commingled tears spread, forming another sob in Tegan's throat. She choked it back and pressed forward, feeling the twin beats of his hearts through the thin, wet fabric of his t-shirt. She gave an inadvertent shiver as she belatedly felt the chill against her bare skin.
The Doctor noticed the shiver and swept her into his arms. She'd been carried by so many versions of the Doctor now it felt almost as natural as walking.
He brought her to the sofa, the scene of so many of her assignations with various versions of the man now holding her in his arms. So many memories, loving and tender, tempestuous and passionate, that if a single piece of furniture could somehow be erotically charged, infused with the very concept of "sex," this would be how she would forever picture it.
He started off at a slower pace this time, but no less intense. He was holding back, Tegan could tell as he held his body above hers, trying to give her some semblance of tenderness even though it was obvious he was currently incapable of feeling any such soft emotion. The Time War seemed to have burned all that out of him, leaving only despair and barely repressed brutality, and Tegan let him know she understood by nipping sharply at his neck, sinking her teeth into his skin hard enough to leave a mark.
"Stop holding back," she ordered him when he stared at her with an expression of outrage obvious even in the near-total darkness. To emphasize her point further, she raked her fingernails down his back hard enough to draw blood.
With a hiss of indrawn breath, he gave in to what he needed rather than what he seemed to think she needed and dropped his head to hers for another demanding kiss, arching her head back on her neck as she submitted to him on every possible level.
Body. Mind. Soul.
Much later, when he finally left her, he spoke only two words. "Thank you." Then he was gone, back into the storm and out of her life.
Infected.
One through Eleven, all infected.
The Valeyard had won.
