Chapter 25 - Moving On
Rose walked beside Guinn as they headed to his rooms.
"He loves you like a brother, you know, for all his idiocy. He did it from the best of intentions. He's just crap at thinking things like this through. He sees the end point and wants to get there, but forgets about all the middle bits," she explained.
"If the end is beneficial to Susan, that is all that matters." He smiled at her gently.
"No, your feelings matter as well, Guinn," Rose insisted. "You love this TARDIS, it's not fair to take it from you, without even asking. If the reasons were good, then talking to you first would have still gotten the right end and would have done it without hurting you!"
"I haven't exactly done anything to inspire that sort of trust," he pointed out. For some reason, he didn't mind when Rose followed him to his room. He felt comfortable with her. He wasn't sure why, but at that moment he didn't care. He was thinking of other things.
"I don't know about that, you haven't done nothin' to not be..." she fell silent and took a sudden indrawn breath. She was staring at the wardrobe and her eyes were swimming with tears. "Sorry," she muttered.
He was surprised at her reaction. His hands had been on the wardrobe doors, and now he hesitated there.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded abruptly.
"I wasn't born a Time Lord you know," she said in a baffling non sequitur.
"Weren't you?" He opened the doors and took down the box of Susan's things, and only then realized that it had been opened. He stopped abruptly, his breath catching in his throat. His expression was crushed.
"No... What's wrong?"
He sat down on the edge of the bed, the box in his limp hands and Rose dropped down in front of him.
"I'm… sorry," he said in a rather wooden tone. "It doesn't matter, of course it doesn't, I…" but the words stuck in his throat.
"I should say it does matter. A very great deal," Rose disagreed. He was silent for a long time.
"These were hers," he finally whispered. "Her things." He closed his eyes. "I always kept them very carefully, I…"
Suddenly he was talking. He had never talked about any of this before, and certainly not to Rose, whom he had met so recently. "I tried everything, everything to bring her back. You can't imagine… the places I went… defied Rassilon to his face… and I couldn't save her. All I could do was…" but his voice wouldn't take him any further.
"I know what I did to save the Doctor," she told him softly. "Love will set you on paths you never imagined. I was a human, you know. Just a shop girl from London. I fell in love and now I'm a Time Lord, living on Gallifrey, in an alternate universe where World War Two never happened. So, yeah, I can imagine what you would have done for her. You'd have done anything at all for her. That's what real love means."
"I killed her," he said, his eyes brimming. "I couldn't save her. All I could do was try to set her free." She nodded.
"Yeah, but if you could have saved her, you would have, if you had to kill her, it was because there were no other options. I know you, Koschei, and I know what you'd do for her, I've seen it for a while now, in the other one, so don't you tell me that you weren't torn to shreds about it, cause I know you were. I can feel it."
He clenched her to him suddenly, shaking in every limb and she hugged him back fiercely. He couldn't seem to find any words.
"You've been carrying this all by yourself, but not anymore. You're my mate and I'll help too," she assured him. "You don't have to do it all alone anymore."
"I'm sorry, I am so sorry, I shouldn't burden you with this."
"Nonsense! That's what friends are for, after all, for us to burden each other and by doin' so make the burdens lighter, eh?" she told him, a small smile on her face.
He looked at her and seemed surprised.
"It's been a… a long time since I have had a friend."
"Then you are overdue," she decided and smiled at him. "Besides, while you might not know it, we've been mates for just ages. Your double's my best chum, didn't you know?"
"No, I… I suppose it never occurred to me." He took a breath. "He's a very fortunate fellow, my other self. I try not to be too jealous. So far it's been very hard."
"Well, you've found your fortune too now," she pointed out. "You've got friends, family, and Susan to love you, not so bad, eh?" She looked at the wardrobe. "Everything she always wanted for you." The last part was nearly a whisper.
He blinked at her.
"Everything she wanted for him, you mean."
She looked at him and then back at the wardrobe.
"No... well, it hardly matters anymore, does it? She'll be able to rest knowing you're okay now." She rose and briskly looked around the room. "We'll need some float palettes and then we'll get to packing up."
He shook his head.
"No," he said, with the white box in his hands. "I don't need anything but this."
"Nonsense, you're going to use the other Koschei's toothbrush? Let's get your things packed up. You ought to have something of your own, you know," she replied firmly.
"I… didn't think I would be staying that long," he said, but stood.
"If you thought that, you don't know Susan very well. That girl is devoted and determined. She loves someone and that's it, she loves them forever. She's like the Doctor that way, it's why they are so frightfully reluctant to love anyone at all. They can't stop it once it's started, and it hurts them somethin' awful when it goes bad." She stopped and looked at him. "You were there for the debacle of the Doctor's first marriage, you saw how it broke him to have that fall apart, so you know. That's Susan all over, she's the same way. When her husband David died, she just froze over, couldn't just let go and move on. She's not made that way, you see?"
"Susan is wonderful," he said while getting his toothbrush, and meant every word.
"So's the Doctor, when he's not being an arse," Rose agreed, a smile on her face. "They both are."
"Don't be too angry with him… the Doctor, I mean," he said. "He was just doing what was best."
"Look, when I first met Susan, I was a Cockney human girl, she didn't say a thing about me bein' married to her grandfather an' you know she coulda. Her Mum sure had some rude things to say about me, I'll have you know," she growled. "You don't have to sell me on Susan, I think she's fantastic. She turned me into a Time Lord, after all. Made sure that the Doctor and I could have a real future. That's pretty good, right" she asked, smiling again, as she grabbed his things, tucked them into boxes and began loading them onto a float palette.
"It sounds just like her," he smiled almost wistfully.
"Yeah, she's pretty special," Rose agreed. "When we first ran into your other self, he was half crazy, out of his mind, cause he thought she'd died on Gallifrey. He was a right mess, he was, so I know you must have been too. Let's get you moved in with them proper-like, and then you three can take care of each other, and if her Mum says word one, you send her to me, right? I have things I want to say to her, I do!"
"To meet her mother I would have to leave the TARDIS," he pointed out in an amused tone.
"Yeah, well, I will be expecting you at dinner, you! Don't think you're gonna sulk in a TARDIS! You will come out and meet my kids, eat my cooking, and pretend it's all right," she teased.
He looked petrified.
"In public? Why don't we just invite you over to Susan's place?"
"Because Susan and Koschei live with us, silly!" she told him, still working briskly as she moved through the room. "We live in that bloody huge Line House, all rebuilt on the mountain. Awful place for a house, really, but the Doctor loves it. Susan and Koschei have their own suite of rooms, sure, but they still live with us, take meals with us, you know, the usual. Koschei said he spent half his childhood in that house, so you must know it!"
"Of course I know it, I… go back there? No, I think I'll live on the TARDIS. It'll be fine." He was looking more and more alarmed.
"Guinn, you don't have to dance naked on the tabletops, you know. No one is going to force you to do anything you don't like to. But, Susan's used to going in to breakfast with us all, to having the kids around, to being part of a family. If you're hiding out, she's gonna feel like she ought to be taking care of you, so maybe once a week, you can come out and have tea?" she asked gently.
He swallowed. Hard.
"Maybe once a week," he agreed.
"Right, I think I've got it all packed." He looked up and realized that while he'd been panicking, Rose had competently gotten about six loads packed up for transport.
"How did you do that? That's amazing."
"Shop girl, my dear fellow," she told him with a laugh. "I'm used to hard work, plus my Mum and I hadn't a penny growing up and had to move lots of times in the middle of the night, before the landlord came by."
"I see… I'll help you carry it over," he said in a somewhat stunned tone.
She stopped and looked at him.
"You know, I asked Susan once what the worst part was of having been bonded to you for all that time, when you were still a nutter. You know what she said?"
"What?" His tone was almost fearful.
"That she couldn't make things better for you. That she couldn't help you more. She had a howling madman in her head and she was most upset that you were in pain. That's what she is, Shay, so don't you ever, even for a moment, think that anything at all, would ever make her want anything for you but your happiness, okay?" she asked him and her eyes were curiously intent on him, as though she was trying to tell him something important.
He nodded, blinking hard.
"Thank you," he whispered.
She hugged him, throwing her arms around him and squeezing hard.
"You're a top rate bloke, you know!" she told him, a bit muffled. "Don't forget that."
"I think I just have you fooled," he said, but a bit of a smile touched the corners of his lips.
"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that," she laughed. "You keep pretending you're all bad and stuff, but I know you both far too well." She stepped back and wagged a finger at him. "Come on, let's get moving. We still have a universe to save, you know!"
He nodded and followed, the white box tucked carefully under his arm.
The Voice Integrator didn't really need recalibration, but Adie had decided to go ahead and tweak it anyway. Doing so required more than enough work with the dials to keep her out of sight for a few minutes.
She hadn't felt that uncomfortable since the closing days of the project. The exchange had almost reminded her of Farian. This TARDIS had been her only friend for more than a century, but despite that she didn't feel comfortable about stealing it from Guinn. She'd seen how Koschei had acted when he first came aboard, he adored this ship and she suspected that went for Guinn as well. His reaction had been distressed and unhappy, which had made her want to go hide somewhere.
"Are you all right?" Tomoko had followed her, and now eyed her carefully. She saw the look on Adie's face, and came and gave her a hug. "This is for the best, you know."
"He's so upset," Adie murmured. "He's so angry. He used to terrorize me when he was like this. I'm so scared. I don't even have that bloody collar any more and I am just standing here waiting for the pain to hit, when I know good and well it's not coming," her eyes were brimming.
Tomoko pulled her into her arms and Adie shivered for a moment before disengaging.
"Easy," she soothed. "He can't hurt you any more. He's changing."
"I know, but what if he comes after it? I don't want it if it means he's going to try to steal it back…"
"This is for the best," Tomoko repeated. "He's going to see that, Rose will talk him into it, you watch."
"I hate to go," Adie said, angrily scrubbing her eyes. "This has been my only friend for so long…" Tomoko frowned.
"Your only friend?" Adie shook her head.
"You don't know what it was like to be alone on the station," she said. "I got so lonely. I had rigged holographic projectors all over it, and set them on triggers and loops, just to see people walking around, trying to make it feel as if it wasn't so empty. But you couldn't talk to any of the images, nothing had a real personality, only the TARDIS. I didn't feel so lonely when I talked to her. I have been hoping that the Master would take good care of her, but I always understood that this was his home and I never wanted to steal it out from under his feet!"
"Hm." Tomoko's face was neutral. "Well, let me go and talk to the…" but when she turned around, he was standing in the door frame, and she realized he had been there for some minutes.
The Doctor stepped into the room and Adie tried to summon a smile for him.
"How are you?" he asked.
"Uncomfortable," she said truthfully. "Flattered, but… uncomfortable."
Tomoko looked between them both, seeing the expressions on both their faces, and quietly stole out of the room.
"Well, it's all sorted now, TARDIS is yours," he replied and went to check on some of the other systems.
"Look, I… I just don't feel comfortable stealing a TARDIS," she told him. "I mean, yes, it was all very funny when I first thought of it, but I never actually meant to steal it for real. I just thought we would borrow it and give it back."
"But, you're not stealing anything, Adie, Guinn is giving it to you," he corrected. "Once he'd calmed down and thought it over, he saw it was all for the best."
Adie looked at him uncertainly, not entirely convinced.
"He didn't seem very comfortable with the idea."
"People rarely are at first. It's a hard thing, thinking forwards, and most people don't bother with it. Once you've explained though and they've worked it out, it all comes straight," he murmured and it was hard to tell if he was talking to her or to himself.
She was silent for a long time.
"I used to talk to it," she said. "After the Centre was abandoned. She was… the only live thing around, the only thing with a presence. I used to look up places in the navigational systems of the Centre, then come aboard and tell her all about them, the places we could visit someday, and the things that we could do. Big adventures we could have. It kept me sane. But I… never thought we would really do any of them. I thought I would die there, and now I've made all of these promises to her, and I don't even remember most of them…" She seemed close to tears.
"I understand," he murmured. "I used to plan out where I would go and what I would do, should I ever have a TARDIS of my own. All sorts of grand schemes." He patted the wall of the TARDIS with a fond expression. "Now, you can go to those places, Adie, you're free."
"I… I don't even know where to begin," she said truthfully. "My whole life I have tried to fit myself into what everyone else was doing. I never tried to do anything on my own. Never even thought about it before. I have no idea what I want to do. Everyone else seems to know exactly what to do all the time."
"Well, now seems like a good time to start practice, don't you?" he asked.
She looked up at him, biting her lip.
"Um… how?"
"Well, shall we start by thinking about where you would like to go first?"
She chewed on her lip now, thinking hard.
"Apalapucia?" She guessed rather timidly, as if afraid of getting an answer wrong on a difficult test.
"Oh! Lovely! I love that planet!" He replied with a happy smile.
"I have never been there… Farian told me about it," she said shyly. "He would always come and find me after Rassilon had been to visit. He was always trying to make sure I was all right. But he could never…" She shook her head. "And anyway, it's a ridiculous thought, we have the Manifold out there and everything else that's going on, I'm not just going to run out when everything is at such a critical stage."
"Of course you aren't, my dear, but there are thousands of years ahead of us! We have all the time in time to go out and see things! Once the Manifold is done, you can go anywhere you like!" he reminded her.
"Once the Manifold is done, I…" she looked down at her hands, and seemed surprised that she was twisting them together. "I don't… know if I'll want to." She sounded scared.
"Of course you will. You'll have all the Mashas to take care of, they'll need you more than ever, you know. They will have lost their unifying purpose, the very thing that brought them together, will be gone. The revolution will be won and they will have to figure out what to do with themselves. That's your next task, Adie. You will have to help them figure out what sort of future they will have, what their options are," he explained.
"Tomoko was talking about them living on Karn."
"Yes, but to what end? What sort of civilization will they build, or will they even build one? What will they do with themselves? Will they all stay together, or scatter? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered," he pointed out.
"I doubt they have even thought about them right now. I know I never did. I just…" She shook her head. "I never thought about what would happen if they ever made it, if somehow they got out… I just never thought about what would happen them. To them, or to me."
"I know, it's hard for people to see past the immediate problem," he agreed. "However, its time to start thinking about it, because the future is nearly upon you, Adie."
"I know and I… shouldn't I be happy? Or… happier? I'm mostly just scared…" She frowned. "Were you scared? When you stole your TARDIS?"
"Utterly terrified, I must say, but not for myself so much back then. I mean I was worried about my future, but mostly I was scared for my little Susan, for what the Tower would do to her. I had seen what they did to you and I was determined to protect her." He frowned and looked at his shoes. "I took her and ran and I've run for a very long time, Adie."
"Are you still running?"
"No, or at least, much more slowly," he chuckled. "Rose is my resting place, the home of my hearts. The Tower is gone, tumbled to dust, the Daleks and Rassilon are dead and gone, so there aren't so many things to run from anymore."
"I don't think I am ready to take her off on an adventure yet," she mused, resting her hand on the wall. "But I think… maybe one day I will be. I never thought that that would ever happen. So… thank you."
"There is nothing to thank me for, Adie. You stayed alive and helped to extricate yourself, you know. You have been strong, brave, and determined, that's how you did it, my dear," he corrected.
"I don't think I've been very brave," murmured Adie, now blushing madly.
"You wore that collar for a century, knowing that you could have cast it off and escaped, yet you didn't do it. That was very brave, Adie."
Adie looked shocked.
"That was just common sense. I couldn't have left them! They would have died!"
"Common sense? Sacrificing yourself for others? Submitting to pain and loneliness and remaining in a place you abhorred, for a century, was common sense? You underestimate yourself, Adyra, you seriously underestimate yourself! Not one person in a hundred would have stayed! Not one in a thousand would have stayed that long!" He shook his head, looking at her with a soft gentleness that surprised her.
"Farian would have," she said softly. "He was my inspiration for a long time. Still is, in many ways. He was always… trying to make it better for the clones, watching out for them… that's where I learned it from. Farian would have stayed and I… I cared about the clones but… He tried so hard and I wanted to honour the work I knew he would have done. Wow, that sentence sounded much better in my head. It sound so dumb when I say it that way."
"It sounds good to me," the Doctor assured her.
"I think… I think… I think I like the idea of building something," Adie now had a shy smile. "Of making something good. I don't know what but… something. That's what I would like to do. I would like to make things, I think. I just… don't know what kind of things."
"Well, start making all sorts of things and when you find something that makes you really happy, that'll be the thing!" he replied.
"For now, I am thinking of making lunch," she said. "Are you hungry? There might even be cookies."
"Brilliant! I am right behind you!"
She paused and then turned around, pinning him with a sudden fierce gaze.
"Have you been thinking forwards? About me? About this TARDIS?"
"Yes, my dear, I always do, you know. People think I don't, that I wander about and just hope everything will work itself out, but it's not so. The problem with being able to look forward, is that sometimes you don't look like you're paying attention just then. I am though, paying attention. I always am. I've been thinking through the future, trying to work out how things will best serve you all. What's the best outcome for the Mashas? What's the best possibility to present to them? How can I make sure that they are left to find their own destiny, without being seen as a toy for a powerful man's conceit." He trailed off, eyes on some distant sight.
"Will you share those thoughts with me?" Adie asked curiously. "Wait… I think I even have the proper coin…" She fished in her pockets, and handed him a small copper-coloured disk. "Farian gave this to me, a long, long time ago," she told him. "He said it was from Earth, and all of the inhabitants there looked like Time Lords. Isn't this the right coin? It's a penny, I think he said." she smiled at him hopefully.
"It is a penny. They're lucky, you know. You should keep it. My thoughts aren't worth anything as valuable as a gift from someone who cared about you." He looked at the console and then back at her. "They do look like Time Lords. My fault, I suppose, I meddled too much, too often, but that's all right, it came out well. This will work itself out as well. I just need to do what I always do."
"What's that?" she asked.
"Make the hard choices, the ones no one else wants to," he replied and she nodded.
"Farian and I used to have this thing going… I would get things for him, usually from Rassilon, and afterwards he would bring me trinkets. This was one of them." She shook her head, turning the coin over and over in her fingers. "Sometimes he would cry and tell me I was the age of his daughter. I think he was very homesick, maybe." Her brows furrowed as if she still didn't fully understand his actions.
"They'd violated the Sistron Articles rather severely," the Doctor grumbled. "I suspect he knew that he'd be executed, if any of what they'd been doing had gotten out. It was a rock and a hard place, you know. Rassilon on the one side, the consequences of those violations on the other. He was a dead man, either way. It's a pity, because he was a decent sort of bloke. Nice wife, really sweet daughter, his son was an arse, but then, so many really young people are. He might have grown out of it."
"I never met them," she mused. "And I wish I had been able to… he loved them, I could always tell that." She looked at him hopefully. "I'd still like to hear your thoughts. Even without the penny."
"My thoughts? My thoughts are filled with cookies! I think Susan left some behind. Shall we go find out?" he asked with a broad smile and twinkling eyes.
"I think you are distracting me, because you don't want to answer the question," Adie told him. "But, if you don't want to share, I won't press. They are private after all."
"You're a very clever young lady, you know," he told her and headed towards the hall "I think that if you worked it out yourself, you'd come to have the same thoughts anyway." He disappeared into the kitchen and banging about could be heard.
"If you say so," she said, and followed him inside.
Rose, with Diana, Tomoko, Guinn, and two other Mashas hauled the float palettes across the snowy landscape. She kept her eyes roaming, despite all the assurances that the Manifold had departed, she still felt rather nervous. Besides, with the Manifold having left so quickly, there were actually live people in this Loop now, other than the Time Lords and the Mashas. She had no desire to run into them either. She wasn't quite sure if they were real or not, Guinn's explanation made little sense to her, but they made her uncomfortable, nonetheless.
"There it is," Diana pointed and they altered their course slightly to angle towards Susan's TARDIS, which looked, at the moment, like a cottage, sitting quietly in the middle of a barren wasteland, complete with a trickle of smoke from the chimney.
"Thank you for the help," Rose replied.
"Our pleasure," said Tomoko. The other two girls looked nervous, but didn't comment further. Tomoko looked at Guinn.
"This all your things?"
"Yes, thank you," he replied. "It was kind of you to help." He seemed easier in her company, though he shot her a sly little smile. "Or are you lulling me into a false sense of complacency?" he teased.
"Neither," Tomoko smirked back at him. "I don't want you breaking in at two in the morning because you forgot your favourite boxer shorts with the little hearts on them."
"Please! My boxers are all black silk, I'll have you know. The only thing I'd break in for would be my teddy bear," he assured her with a chuckle. "But, that's packed as well."
"You wear boxers? Really?" Kimberly was looking surprised and a bit put out.
"Did you lose a bet? he asked. "Yes, boxers. Sorry to be so pedestrian."
Kimberly sighed.
"Yes," she grumbled, pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket, and handed to Tomoko, who smirked at them both.
"Don't make bets with Tomoko, Kimberley, she was designed with far too many brains and far too few scruples," he replied, his tone prim, but his lips twitching.
"Hey, I resemble that remark," Tomoko scowled.
"You certainly do," Diana laughed.
"Now, any other bets I can settle?" he asked.
Tomoko narrowed her glowing eyes at him. This had the effect of brightening her already painfully bright aura.
"What?" he asked. "Did you think that your curiosity about me wasn't something that I would expect and take into account? Of course you want to know. You're all smart and imaginative, you're bound to have questions." He shot her a look of amused disbelief. "Shall I start with my early childhood pranks with the Doctor? How about my early experiments with chemical rockets?"
"I have a question," Diana interrupted.
"Yes?" Guinn turned and looked at her with a suddenly wary expression.
"A private question. We'll chat once the palettes are unpacked."
"Fine. I have a question too. How long do you think you will last? With Susan, I mean, " Tomoko said. "Because at this point, barring us all getting killed by the Manifold, things look fairly stable between you all."
"I try not to speculate fruitlessly. Despite the length of our association, I can never predict Susan's behaviour from one moment to the next. On the other hand, Koschei assures me that escape is impossible and I have great faith in his pronouncements," he replied thoughtfully. "He's really far better at all this than I am."
"Well, if Koschei is better at this than you are, and hasn't found a way to escape," she said with a careful, sideways glance at the other Mashas. "Then we'll leave it at that and go on the basis that you are safely… er… incarcerated for the time being." She paused. "Any plans, if we survive all of this?"
"Yes, my plans are to do whatever Susan wants me to do," he replied. "I've been a monster for nine hundred years, Tomoko, completely out of my mind. I think it would be best for me to let others make the decisions for me for a while, until I can be certain that I can trust myself, if I ever can. Susan and Koschei know where all the controls were placed and they are helping me to strip them out, but I've not been sane since I was a child, so it will take a while for me to figure out what sanity even is. Better for me not to make any plans, eh?" He gave her a lopsided smile and they reached the door of the TARDIS.
"Agreed for now. Look," she paused, her lips thinning, and let the others go ahead of her, dragging their boxes aboard. "About the others. Some of them are coming around. Kimberly, for instance. She's not really mad at you, or anything."
"No, that would be me," Diana pointed out and glared at Guinn, who reddened.
"Kimberly has had other things to worry about," he told Tomoko. "She's read the entire MU library, I bet. But, I do grasp your meaning and yours as well, Diana."
"Well I know that Neveah has been over here bullying you," Tomoko pointed out.
"Neveah's... fragile. She needs some serious assistance, from a professional therapist. She's gone through so much and of course she sees me as the symbol of all her pain. I can hardly blame her for that. Nor can I blame you for being miffed either, Diana," he added.
"Just… don't let her scare you, all right? I'm not going to kill you. Neither will anyone else." Diana looked as through she might dispute that statement, but said nothing further, just leaning against the cottage wall and watching them both.
"Tomoko, it takes more than an angry teenager to make me scared. That said, she has a right to her feelings and if it makes her feel better to come over and yell at me, then I owe her that much at least," He rubbed a hand through his curly black hair. "Though I had thought her a trifle unimaginative until I heard her plans for me. Very... creative."
"That's Neveah," Tomoko said dryly.
"Well, I know you'll do your best, Tomoko, but the mob has a mind of its own and you cannot always predict what it will do." He turned to look at Diana, as Tomoko dragged her float palate inside of the TARDIS. "You had a question? Or more likely, a series of questions?"
"No. One. Just one. Why? Well, okay, two: and why me?"
"Why? Because I was between a rock and a hard place. There was a point where I still thought that I could save Susan. I hoped that I could bring her back to life. For that, I needed the Project to be useful to Rassilon, because I needed him to keep funding it. So, I sent you out to do jobs for him and for the Rani, who was his pet scientist at the time. Things that made him see you all as being useful. I'm sorry for what you were forced to do and for what you were forced to see. As to why you in particular? Because you excelled in the training Sims. Of all of the Mashas, you are the most suited for combat, Diana. I'm sorry, but you are in many ways, the perfect warrior."
She turned to look at him appraisingly.
"And now?"
"Now it's up to you to figure out what you want to be or do. It's not my decision any more, which is... nice. Maybe I can unclog pipes on Gallifrey or something, make myself useful.." He shrugged and Diana frowned at him.
"Never tell them." She looked him straight in the eye. "I know Tomoko will figure it out, hell, she's probably already figured it out. But I don't want the others to know. Not even Jake. Not ever."
"I understand, Diana, but I think you do need to tell Jake. Keeping secrets is not a good way to manage a relationship," he told her with a sheepish look. "Trust me on this one."
"Tell Jake what? That I was Rassilon's assassin?"
"That you were Rassilon's assassin and the Rani's 'research archivist', which pretty much boiled down to a probe bot with feelings," he sighed.
"Why? What difference could it possibly make now? All those people are dead, and not like the Loops, they weren't pretend people, or pulled-from-a-moment people. None of them are ever coming back. There are horrors in the world that I am just as happy that Jake never knows about. Or any of them for that matter."
"He's had his own horrors and he will understand, but more than that, it will make you feel better to tell him. You still having the dreams? The crossing wires from the other Mashas?" he asked suddenly.
"Since we found everyone, the crossing wires has almost disappeared, I am not sure why… is it because of proximity? Or because we know about each other now? The rest… I'll always have those, I expect."
"I think the network reset actually cleared the problem up, you lot were getting so wired into each other that it was inevitable, still I'm glad to hear that. Look, you will be talking to a therapist soon, Susan says, so I will let her tell you this also, but talking to someone else is important." He laughed suddenly, a slightly bitter sound. "Agony Aunt, that should be my next profession. Like you need this from me. I'm sorry."
Diana crossed her arms.
"Will you be talking to a therapist?"
"Yes, the same one Koschei goes to regularly," he told her with a rueful smile.
"I meant, other than Susan. I will take that as a no."
"I wasn't talking about Susan," he replied in surprise. "I mean an actual licensed therapist at Torchwood that Koschei sees once a week and that I will be seeing as well. Susan is my... love, not my therapist, and it would be unfair to put that on her as well."
"I think you are being overly optimistic. I think the Torchwood therapists are going to take one look at us and run screaming for the hills."
"They are already providing therapy for the survivors of the Time War, Diana, adults who watched their world burn and children who lost everything. I think you overestimate how much damage you all have, only because you have nothing to measure it against," he told her with a small movement of his shoulders. "You were designed to be mentally stable after all," he smirked.
"Yes, I remember," she said dryly. "Well… I'll see how Tomoko likes her therapist I guess."
"I expect that Tomoko's therapist will put a gun to her head within a week of dealing with her. Tomoko was not designed to be mentally stable," he groaned, looking up at the sky in dismay.
Diana looked very surprised.
"You think she is mentally unstable? She seemed okay to me."
"Diana, I designed her to mimic Adie's brain as closely as possible, while keeping her in an easily controlled physical form. That means that she's an elephant who's been shoved into a shoebox and the shoebox is always on the brink of falling apart!" he explained.
Diana fixed him with a rather unnerving stare.
"Why? Why did you make her like that?"
"Because that's what Rassilon wanted and I didn't care enough anymore to protest. I wanted Susan back and that consumed my mind to the exclusion of all else. Diana, bondmates die when one of them is killed. I was dead, but I was still walking around, bleeding out in excruciating slowness." He rested his head against the TARDIS, his eyes squeezed shut, his face agonized. "I need her and when she's not there, it hurts so damn much."
She thought it over.
"Well you have her now," she mused.
"Yes, and look how nice and sane I am," he pointed out, with a bitter twist to his lips. "All I needed was her next to me and Rassilon dead and everything is so much better!"
"It is. Funny how that works. I'll see you around. We'll talk again." Diana pushed her empty float pallet with her foot, sending it down the hill, and followed.
"I look forward to the occasion with bated breath," he sighed, bowed elegantly, and dragged his float palette inside.