Fault Lines
It was a somber group that slowly trooped back down over the path they'd so recently gaily ascended, arriving back at Baby's cottage door in silence. Romana stopped suddenly on the doorstep, glancing down at a drowsy Belanna in her arms and sighing. "I need to put her to bed." Her face twisted in distaste as she glanced back up the hill towards the village and her own transplanted house, then turned toward Joshua – who smiled back instantly, answering her question before she opened her mouth.
"Of course. Use the same bedroom as before – it's yours." He turned the smile down towards Tasheira, who'd been holding his hand on the way down. "Come on, little one, time for bed. Do you remember where it is?" They climbed up the spiral stairs, letting Tasheira lead the way.
Presonne had walked down with the others, but hesitated at the doorway, staring at his feet. Datherion, a couple of steps behind, realized his old friend hadn't met his eyes once. Before he could even glance at Tis, she mentally gave him the reason: he'd been the father of her stillborn child the first year of their exile. (She hadn't kept it hidden during their LifeDreaming, and he'd relived both the gut-wrenching decision and the horrible aftermath with her.) "Ah," he said, taking a deep breath and making a lightning-fast assay of his gut reactions. He stepped over to Presonne's side, placing a hand on his shoulder as he'd done to the Doctor shortly before. "I bear you no ill will, old friend, for the choices you made during my absence – either of you. Each of us has done what we deemed best at the time. Instead, I grieve with you for the loss of the child."
Presonne met his eyes at last, and simply nodded in relief, then gave his friend a shadowed smile. "Welcome back, old friend. Not as joyous a return as I would have wished for. But it is good to see you once more." With that, they wordlessly agreed the subject was closed, and together entered the TARDIS.
A short time later, the girls having fallen asleep in record time, Romana entered the big old kitchen again, finding all the adults clustered around the room, some sitting at the table, some standing, a fruit tart dessert in various stages of demolished here and there. She accepted her piece from Joshua with a matching smile, but then put it down on the island untouched and began pacing restlessly.
"What was he thinking? Has he gone completely mad? All the effort we've put in, for six long bloody years, ripped to shreds by one man with a grudge, in less than an hour. Hah! Five minutes! How did he divide us so quickly? I thought we'd put those divisions behind us! How did it deteriorate so fast?"
Tis'hania looked at her solemnly. "Those divisions have always been there, Romana. Perhaps because you knew so few of us before we crossed the Void, you didn't see them. But they were there."
Romana stopped pacing abruptly, in shock at her own blindness, almost pouncing on her friend. "What do you mean? What haven't I seen?"
Tis'hania sighed. "It's natural for any sizable group of people to create smaller subgroups, networks of friendships. And that's what we've done. But for a very long time, those networks did not cross the social barrier between former Councillor and former citizen. It did ease, over time, but it took quite a long time."
"That's it? Friendships?"
"No." She hesitated, then went on. "Everything I'm about to say is a generalization, and of course there are exceptions. But... then the Malaise struck. And it struck the Council hardest. Most of those who were gravely ill, and most of those who died, were Councillors. Probably because they had the most experience in time travel, and many of them had once owned a TARDIS. That would have strengthened the Imprimatur, and set them up for the Malaise.
"But even more telling: since Brandon discovered the cure, most of those who have stepped up and taken it – those who were not already gravely ill and thus forced to do so – were citizens. And most of those who have still refused to give up their Imprimatur are Councillors."
"Why?" She could figure it out herself, but she wanted to hear someone else say it.
Tis'hania shrugged. "Holding on to the hope, I suppose, of someday reclaiming the title of Time Lord. Of regaining the ability to regenerate, and live forever. That's a hard thing to give up. I haven't been able to do it myself," she admitted. She hadn't taken the cure, either. "Though in my case, I was afraid it would force a final regeneration, and I didn't want to change." She smiled at her bondmate, the reason for that desire.
"Why have you never spoken of this to me? I should have known about it!"
Presonne snorted, drawing her attention away from Tis. "After your dramatic challenge a week after our arrival? Nobody wanted to be banished..."
"Besides," added Tis. "I suppose I felt that to bring attention to the divisions, to put them into words, might make them worse. I don't know what you could have done, anyway, had you known."
"Then why did it bubble up now? – Oh." Romana turned to Datherion. "Because of your appearance, of course. He even said it. Hoping you, a full Time Lord still, with a functioning TARDIS, will lead them back into glory." She said if flatly, deriding the wish for a fantasy.
"I am truly sorry, Lady Romana, to be the agent of destruction. I would never have wished for this to happen," he replied solemnly.
The Doctor broke in from across the room. "You? Hardly. Your appearance may have been the catalyst, but you saw how quickly his attention landed on his real target. Me. I'm the one who destroyed everything..."
"Don't you mean 'we'?" asked Corin from the other side. "I'll be standing up there with you tomorrow. I'm part of that, too."
"No!" the Doctor shot back. "This isn't your fight, Corin." Knowing unerringly what was behind the protest, he went on, holding up a hand to silence his twin. "Yes, they're your memories, too, and if I weren't here to answer for them, you could make the case that it's your responsibility. But I am here. And it was this body that made them, that took those actions. It doesn't make any sense at all, from any angle, to hold BOTH of us accountable. It would be like... punishing both Donna and Tyler for Tyler's crimes. Besides..." He stood up and walked over to Corin, dropping his voice to make his case. "I need to know that you'll be here to take care of everyone if the worst happens."
"What do you mean, the worst?" Rosita pounced from a few steps away.
"Please, Corin," he went on, ignoring his bondmate. "Stay out of it." Corin hesitated a moment longer, wanting – needing – to own the memories that made him, but his twin was right, and after a moment he capitulated, nodding silently.
"What do you mean, the worst?" Rosita would no longer be ignored, stalking up to the Doctor and placing her hand on his arm, fear widening her eyes. He turned to her, then, and wrapped his hands around her waist.
"If the decision goes against us, there's no telling what action they might decide to take. There's not exactly any sentencing guidelines for this sort of thing. They might do almost anything. One time, they even forced me to regenerate. Though I'd like to see them try that now..." his voice trailed off in wry amusement, acknowledgment of his continuing inability to completely regenerate.
"I wouldn't," his bondmate replied flatly. "That's not funny, Doctor."
Lady Rose broke in. "What do you mean, anything?" She didn't want to say the word she was thinking, but Corin, of course, picked up on it, and shook his head.
"Time Lords have never had capital punishment, love. But over the centuries, they've done just about everything up to it." He turned to Romana. "Had the colony come up with any kind of civil or legal code? Or is it assumed you're still following the old guidelines – such as they were?"
Romana scoffed. "This is the first time we've had any need of any kind of legal nonsense. Up till today, nobody has so much as... picked up a seabird egg that didn't belong to them. The question just hasn't come up." Her glance took in both Roses, and she shook her head. "There's not really very much they could do, though, under the circumstances. Just tear the colony apart." Her voice was as bleak as the snow they'd left behind on the peaks of New Gallifrey.
"I'm sorry, Romana," the Doctor told her. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have stepped into his trap like that."
That got him a fierce denial. "No! The only blame for this situation lies with Kaphir, not you."
"Excuse me," a new voice broke in to the silence following Romana's pronouncement. Donna and Tyler had been mostly quiet all evening, just soaking in the impressions of their new extended family. The redhead couldn't keep still now, though. "Shouldn't we be, like, planning a defensive strategy or something?" Visions of exciting courtroom dramas were almost visibly playing behind her eyes.
While most of the others were nonplussed at the question, Corin shook his head immediately. "Time Lord trials aren't like that, sweetheart. It's not an adversarial stage show, like human trials. What happens instead is each individual, which includes everyone involved, shares their memory of the events directly – I mean, telepathically – with the TruthSeeker, who has the ability to tell truth from fiction, and can dig down until the true memory is found. Even if someone truly, sincerely believed their memory was correct, if it wasn't, and was a false memory they'd constructed for themselves over years or centuries, the TruthSeeker will know it, and dig up the truth. After everyone has testified, the TruthSeeker puts it all together into a single narrative, and shares it directly with those who sit in judgment."
"And all that's left is determining what, if any, laws have been broken, and what the punishment should be." The Doctor finished the explanation, then turned to Tis'hania. "Mother, are you certain about this other TruthSeeker? Can you truly vouch for her?"
Tis nodded. "Absolutely. The only reason she didn't take the final vows was because the Time War intervened – which disrupted rather a lot of things," she added drily. "I only took on a handful of pupils over my entire life, and then only the best. Felisara was the best pupil I ever had. I can think of no other I'd prefer to have as my own TruthSeeker."
The Doctor nodded, satisfied. "Then it rests with the citizens, and how they'll react to the revelations. Or do they already know about what really happened in the Chamber during the War? Has it been discussed, these past six years?"
Tis shook her head, sadly. "No. We left the past back on Old Gallifrey. Or so I thought."
"But..." Donna was still troubled. "Can't you even offer reasons, justification for what you did?"
"Yes," Tis'hania answered her. "After the truth has been determined and shared, there is an opportunity for each of the accused to speak on their own behalf, or for others to speak either for or against them, but it is limited." She gave a ghost of a smile. "We don't believe much in excuses."