Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, particularly EDZEL2 for her big catch-up.
Personal soundtrack for this one - "Salvation for a Proud Nation" by Immediate Music, which you can find on Youtube :)
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
She couldn't even cry. She could feel the tears inside her, like sharp, glittering glass, but the pain was too immense, too great for her to be able to let them out, so even that simple relief was denied to her. Instead, she slowly leant her forehead against the rough stone of the thought bubble and just knelt there in the cold, numbly listening to the deep, distant rumbling of the shifting mountainside.
"I'm sorry, Koschei," she whispered, her voice aching with despair. "I'm so sorry. You trusted me, but I let you down. I tried, I really did, with all my hearts, you have to believe that. I just don't know what I could have done differently. If the Doctor was here, he would have thought of something spectacular at the last minute to save you, some mad, impossible, amazing scheme. But I'm not brilliant like the two of you. The only thing I was ever good at was manipulating the psychic link. And what use is that now Gallifrey's gone?"
She closed her eyes wearily. Everything seemed to be retreating to a distance. She couldn't even feel the icy cold any more. Instead, a warm, sleepy, disconnected feeling was spreading through her. A small voice in the back of her head warned her that she was beginning to succumb to hypothermia, just as Hart had predicted. But she didn't care. It didn't feel unpleasant. And with the Master dead, it didn't matter any more.
Her hand stroked lightly down the outside of the unyielding grey sphere, just as she had once caressed his warm, living skin, trying to remember how good it had felt. "You once told Jack you'd never leave me. You didn't think I knew, but I did. You told him even if you became one of the Neverwere, you'd never let me go, that you'd always whisper in my ear and walk through my dreams. Does that mean you're still here somewhere, Koschei? Can you still hear me?"
She listened, but there was no sound in the still room except her own feverish breathing and the steady dripping of the icicles. She gave a small, choked laugh at her own foolishness. "Funny, isn't it? How you always think you have forever? I truly thought that once we found each other after so long, we'd have the rest of our lives to spend together. There were so many things I wanted to say to you, but I thought I had all the time in the Universe to say them. A Time Lord should know better."
Keeping her eyes shut tight, she allowed her mind to drift back to the beautiful evanescent tapestry of her life she had seen in her recent dream, the way their life threads had intersected over and over again before finally coming together in the Matrix. There had been so many shapes and colours woven into that diaphanous embroidery, such a wealth of forgotten memories. She knew the Master was dead. She knew he could no longer hear her. But now she had started talking to him, she couldn't seem to stop.
"I'm so sorry now that I never told you how much it meant to me that you came to help me at my initiation ceremony, on the Eve of Cold Lamentation when I was eight years old," she continued softly, the painful, passionate words flowing from her hearts, as though he really was sitting right in front of her, quietly listening. "I never even knew who you were, but all I wanted for so long afterwards was to see you again, just once. I used to watch for your face in the crowds in the Capitol, hoping you would suddenly reappear, like magic. My secret friend. And when things got tough for me at the Academy, back when I was still little, I used to pretend you were there beside me, just like you were that day, telling me not to be afraid, that I wasn't alone. When I did that, everything always seemed just that tiny bit better, just that bit easier to cope with, and I always found I could get through it all, no matter what they threw at me." A small, reminiscent half-smile spread across her lips. "Imagine my shock then, when I found out later that my secret friend had been the Master all along, Gallifrey's most infamous son and my father's arch enemy. I never could understand why you did it. I suppose now I never will."
Her fingers dug sharply into the stone of the sphere, but she couldn't seem to feel them, her entire being concentrating on all the things she wanted to say to him, before this last drowsy, dream-like moment slipped away. "And I'm sorry I never told you...that you were my first crush. I was always afraid you'd laugh. You see, back before I ran away from Gallifrey the first time, I...I found this painting of you and the Doctor together, hanging forgotten in the old Deca common room in the Endless Library. I took it and hid it under my bed, because it was the only picture I had of my father, and I used to look at it over and over again. And the more I looked, the more handsome I thought you were. I knew next to nothing about you back then - you were just a face in a painting. But I used to daydream about you all the time. So ridiculous, looking back on it now. Like a teenage Earth-girl, obsessing over a movie star in a magazine. And every year, we'd have the big Otherstide Ball after the Academy graduation ceremonies, and every year Damon would take me. But, when I was a girl, I always used to wish it was you instead. I used to imagine us dancing together, and everyone staring and talking about us. Oh gods, Koschei, it was such a long time ago and I was so young and naive and romantic. So ignorant and stupid. And it's such a silly, unimportant little memory, but maybe I would have got around to telling you about it, one day, if I ever got the courage. Maybe when we were old and I wasn't so embarrassed any more. And maybe you would have laughed and I wouldn't have minded."
The smile ran away from her face and she had to swallow hard against the heartache, because now they would never get old together.
"Most of all, though, amin Mekhil, I'm sorry for not telling you about our baby. I should have done it that night in the meadow, when I wore your marriage flowers in my hair. I should have told you how happy I felt. How amazing it was to have a tiny piece of you growing inside me. Our child, the son we made together, despite all the odds stacked against us. All the joy, all the incredible wonder...I should have shared it with you then. But I didn't, because I thought we had plenty of time. And now I'll never get the chance."
She was tired, so very tired. Her skin felt almost rosy, toasty warm. She had forgotten the deadly killing frost entirely. Sleep beckoned, a beguiling surcease for all her pain and grief. Here in this frozen tomb, sleep was nothing but death in disguise. Nevertheless, she curled up dreamily in a small ball on the ice-coated floor beside the thought bubble, as peacefully and contentedly as if she was lying on the big white bed in their TARDIS. "If you can still hear me, Koschei..." she murmured, settling her head into the crook of her arm, never intending to wake. "I love you. And we'll be together again soon, I promise, all three of us."
Music sparkled through the air, resonant and melodious, like liquid gold. It was haunting and unearthly, beautiful beyond bearing, full of harmonies no mortal could ever understand, even a dying Time Lord. Tejana didn't move, knowing that it was the Song of the Universe, calling her home at last. She was not afraid, not even now the end was so close.
But then the ethereal melody grew louder and more insistent and it began to dawn on her that she was physically hearing it with her ears, not her subconscious. The sound was actually here, inside the room with her. A bewildered frown crossed her face and her eyes sprang open. There was nothing to be seen but the brooding shadows.
Every creature in the Universe has its own story, each one as important as the next...
That calm, serene voice, just as she had heard it in her dream...the voice of the Ruach...was she hearing things? Had she drifted into some sort of weird, cold-induced delirium? Or was this real?
All at once, sudden, inexplicable anger exploded through Tejana's veins and she sat up abruptly, all her peaceful lethargy dissipating into white, unbridled rage. Like all the children of Gallifrey, she had grown up hearing the Song of the Universe. From the cradle, she had been taught that it was the manifestation of existential harmony, the vibration the Universe made when all was in balance, a sign that all was well. But in that moment, she hated every single heavenly note. How could the Song just go on like that, unbroken and perfect and eternal, when her own personal universe had just been so utterly destroyed?
"Oh no, you don't!" she yelled into the darkness, staring around her wildly. "Don't think you can turn up now, just because I'm dying. I don't care if you are a hallucination. Go away and leave me alone!"
There was no answer except the beautiful, delicate melody, swelling around her in an untamed ocean of sound.
Tejana leapt to her feet and turned in a slow, contemptuous circle. "And stop it with the music!" she cried bitterly. "The Song is supposed to be all about harmony and equilibrium and balance! So don't you dare...don't you DARE...play it to me now! You call this balance? You call this equilibrium? He's dead! He did everything he could to stop the Cruciform. He saved this world and countless others, but he still died. And I'm going to die with him. After everything we've been through, how can that be fair? How can everything be well? The Chaos-Master was right, you're just a lie, just a stupid, useless fairytale, some sort of cruel cosmic joke!"
Each story takes its own path, that is how it must be...I can create the windows of possibility needed to maintain the balance, but I cannot interfere with the choices that are made.
"Don't give me that!" Tejana snapped, still unsure she wasn't talking to herself in some way. Maybe this was what happened when you died of hypothermia – maybe you went mad and started pointlessly arguing with yourself. "Do you know how sick I am of hearing that excuse? I grew up on a planet of powerful beings that refused to interfere and where are they now? Dead and gone, that's where, destroyed by their own self-satisfied indolence and corruption!"
The Time of Chaos has come, a time of change, of endings and of beginnings... the gentle voice continued, unperturbed by her incandescent fury. A story can have many beginnings and many endings, depending on the teller. All that can be imagined can be realised.
Tejana threw up her hands in sheer frustration. "Everyone on this damn planet keeps saying that! Even Mother Hulde told me I had to remember it, back at the village. Why does everyone have to keep speaking in riddles? What the hell does it mean?"
Little by little, the cold creeps throughout the land and the psychic pollen dies. But even in its last extremity, the Cruciform seeks a master, a strong will with sufficient psychic ability to control and direct it. You bear his child inside your body. The thought bubble contains your memories. You are the only one left with whom the ship has a connection.
"Are you saying I can control it? How am I supposed to do that, without the thought bubble? And why would I even want to? It's evil...an abomination!"
Long ago, it was written: in the hands of the woman will rest the fate of the man...
Tejana's breath caught in her throat at the familiar words, incredulous, blinding hope suddenly surging through her soul. "The prophecy! You mean it's not over? It can still be fulfilled? I can still save him? Tell me what to do!"
In the hands of the woman will rest the fate of the man...
The calm voice was receding now, ebbing into the distance, as though the speaker was gradually walking away.
"Oh, no, don't you dare disappear on me, not now!" Tejana screamed. "Tell me what I need to do!"
Open your hands...
The voice was very faint, almost inaudible. Desperately, Tejana swung back and forth, trying to work out from which direction it was coming from, but all to no avail. "Wait! Please, wait! I don't understand!"
Open your hands...and your hearts...and call him home...
The floor lurched and trembled beneath Tejana's feet, mirroring the increasingly violent shuddering of the mountain, and she felt the invisible presence vanish. The Song of the Universe faded into silence and she was alone again, standing like a ghost in the middle of the frozen, echoing hall, still wondering whether it had all been a fevered dream. All that can be imagined can be realised. Shakily, she looked down at her small hands, tightly clenched before her, rigid from the cold, almost as if they had been welded shut. Open your hands...
Bringing her fists together, she raised them to eye level. Ever so slowly, she forced her reluctant fingers to uncurl, until her hands formed a shallow cup. And there, in her palms, lay a perfect, tiny, gentian-blue flower with a golden centre. Tejana stared at it numbly, rending tears of grief finally burning in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. It was a forget-me-not, one of the myosotis flowers the Master had woven into her hair the night she had discovered she was pregnant with his baby. She had kept just one as a keepsake, hiding it inside her tunic against her hearts, not wanting him to see, not wanting him to know how much that night had meant to her - yet another thing she hadn't told him when she had the chance. She had no idea how it had come to be in her hands. Somehow, lost in her sorrow, she must have unconsciously drawn it out and held on to it as a way of bringing him closer to her. But, for all its personal significance, it was just a flower. There was nothing magic or mystical about it, no last-minute gift from the Spirit of the Universe that could save the Master. It had all just been a hopeless delusion.
She was just about to curl her fingers closed again when a tiny gleam of aurulent light winked at her from the golden centre of the flower. Astonished, she realised it had looked just like artron energy.
Artron energy...oh gods, could it be possible? But how...? The words of the Ruach burnt through her brain: 'Open your hands...and your hearts...and call him home...'
And in that one awesome, transcendent moment, she finally understood. The thought bubble had been merely a focus for the power of the Cruciform. But for someone with unusually powerful psychic ability, anything could be a focus - anything at all - just as long as there was some sort of strong connection. Her psychic ability had always been her one outstanding talent. And her emotional connection with this particular flower could not be any stronger.
Hardly daring to hope, she raised the flower high in the air and threw back every single one of her mental barriers, opening herself wide to the power of the psychic pollen, once colossal enough to shatter entire worlds, but now thread-like and dying.
"Hear me, Cruciform. I am Tejanakaturadilena of the House of Lungbarrow and I am your Master now," she said aloud, concentrating on the forget-me-not with all her might, using it to focus her will and her desire. "I am your Master and you will obey me!"
And in the back of her consciousness, she felt an answer, something crawling in response to her command like a wounded dog, something weak and broken and diminished, but still alive, in spite of that. The last, failing remnants of the power of the Cruciform, lost and confused, desperately seeking a mind potent enough to give it being. It was not a clean or wholesome power – it was twisted and filthy and vile, full of hate and evil. Anyone with a white soul would have cowered away in shock and horror. But, as her time on Mnemosyne had taught her so comprehensively, Tejana's soul wasn't white. And, just for once, this wasn't about saving the Universe, as the Doctor had always done. This was about saving her own little corner of it.
Once more, the words Ianto had read out so passionately at Gwen's wedding rang in her ears, all the more resonant now she truly understood them: "Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil, attempts things beyond its strength; love sees nothing as impossible, for it feels able to achieve all things. Love therefore does great things; it is strange and effective; while he who lacks love faints and fails..."
This was her chance to prove that her love was stronger than the Cruciform's hate.
"All that can be imagined can be realised!" she cried, feral joy flaring inside her as the golden glow at the centre of the myosotis flower grew stronger and stronger, lighting up the darkness like a flame and chasing the shadows away. Call him home...open your hands and your hearts...and call him home... "I know you're here somewhere, Koschei. I know you can hear me. All my life, people have told me, over and over again, that I'm too stubborn, that I never know when to let go. Well, it was you who taught me never to give up, back on Gallifrey, when I was eight years old and I was afraid to face the Untempered Schism. And ever since then, across the centuries and throughout the galaxies, one way or another you've been coming back to me, over and over again. After all those years of being apart, we've finally found each other. We've made a child together. We're going to be a family. So don't you even think about giving up on me now, Koschei Oakdown!"
Something as soft and light as a feather fell from above and brushed her shoulder. For a moment, she flinched, thinking with alarm it was starting to snow even inside the Cruciform. But then she saw that it was another forget-me-not. As she watched, more and more of the flowers fell, materialising gracefully out of thin air and floating to the ground, until the ice-cold floor of the black hall was covered in a beautiful, delicate carpet of blue blooms, their yellow centres shining like stars in the darkness, their bewitching, evocative scent filling the room. The scent of spring. The scent, not of endings, but of new beginnings.
Tears streamed down Tejana's face and this time they were not tears of sorrow. "I love you, amin Mekhil," she called in fierce determination, drawing on every last wisp of power she could summon forth from the Cruciform, ruthlessly draining it dry. "I will never love anybody else and I won't live without you. So I'm calling you home. Please...come home to me!"
All around her, the air vibrated with power, humming like an enormous tuning fork. She could feel the warp and weft of the space-time continuum reluctantly shifting, the very fabric of the Universe groaning as it altered to her command, changing reality from what was to what she wanted it to be. Life-giving artron energy poured from her cupped hands, swirling towards the thought bubble and engulfing it in a blaze of glory. All the arid, desiccated dust motes inside the Master's crumpled clothing began to glow and dance, rising and spinning like a mini tornado. Inside the golden vortex, Tejana could see a dark figure rising and reforming, from the feet upwards. Firstly, the black-jeaned legs, then a splash of scarlet at the waist from the red undershirt, then the torso and arms, clothed in the black hoodie, whole and undamaged again.
And at last, as the brilliant light began to ebb, she could see his face, the tousled white-blonde hair, the thin, stubbled cheeks. His eyes were closed and his hands were held out, palms upward; his expression almost euphoric as the leftover artron energy coruscated up and down his body, like snakes of golden fire.
"Koschei..." Tejana said, her voice hardly more than a stunned whisper, too afraid to move in case he vanished again, like an impossible dream.
Slowly, the brown eyes opened. For a few seconds, he looked down at himself, dazed and uncertain, as if he wasn't quite sure where he was. But then his head snapped back up and his gaze riveted on Tejana standing nearby, her hands still cupped loosely before her, her face wet with tears.
"Ana!" he exclaimed. Without another second of hesitation, he was leaping down off the raised platform of the thought bubble, surging towards her through the ankle-deep carpet of shimmering myosotis flowers.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Tejana ran forward and threw herself into his arms, feeling them close tightly around her as he lifted her against him, holding her as if he never meant to let her go.