War Room
It was not a good day to be a Gallifreyan.
The Doctor was back. Angry, and sans Adelaide.
Those two qualifiers were not necessarily responsible for one another, with each having their own perfectly separate explanations. But they were also unequivocally tied together.
Aligned, as a Gallifreyan may have said – particularly, a young one, who'd yet to fully embrace or understand the gravity their planet applied to that word.
The Doctor being angry or being without Adelaide were each cause for concern on their own, especially after Ohila casually – extremely intentionally – let it slip that the two were Aligned. If the Time Lady were with him while he was angry, there was at least a small chance that she would deter him from doing something extremely dangerous or idiotic. If he was happy while she wasn't, then whatever situation he'd found himself in would simply continue with quite a bit more rudeness than the universe had come to expect.
But the Doctor angry and without Adelaide...best to run away.
Currently, instead, the General, Rassilon, and Ohila were watching the Doctor eat soup.
"What's his plan?" Rassilon asked, frowning at the man who defied odds.
"I think," Ohila, the woman who'd known that a protector and a warrior would always be drawn together, "he's finishing his soup."
The General looked to Rassilon. "Suggestion, sir." They watched the Doctor stand. They watched the Doctor reenter the building. "We could talk to him."
"Words are his weapons."
"When did they stop being ours?"
|C-S|
The General went himself to speak to the Doctor. He was glad that the man opened the door when he knocked. Perhaps Adelaide had had an effect on him after all. Perhaps they didn't all need to feel quite so afraid that he was so angry at them.
"Welcome home, sir. As commander of the armed forces of Gallifrey, I bring you the greetings of the High Council."
The Doctor said nothing. He turned around and returned inside. Perhaps Adelaide's reported preference for politeness – the General remembered that from the one time he'd personally spoken to the woman – hadn't fully made its mark yet.
The General pulled up his wrist communicator to speak to Rassilon. "Who the hell does he think he is?"
"The man who won the Time War, sir," the General said.
Time Lord Victorious.
|C-S|
Rassilon was confused. Confused and angry.
Once, that would have warranted the same reaction as the Doctor being simply angry. But this was a different Rassilon and this was a different Gallifrey.
"What is he doing? What does he want? Revenge?"
Ohila looked at him. He'd never liked that. "The Doctor does not blame Gallifrey for the horrors of the Time War."
"I should hope not."
"He just blames you."
Rassilon only barely resisted his scoff. "Shouldn't he blame her?"
"It was never her war."
|C-S|
When the Doctor walked out, all of them were waiting for him.
He threw his confession dial at them. "Get off my planet."
"We needed to know," Rassilon said and the Doctor thought Adelaide would probably enjoy treating him to one of her stern silences. She was so good at giving those. At judging you. At being right. "You have information about the Hybrid. A danger to all of us. If you'd told us what you knew, you could have walked out of there."
"Get off my planet."
"You have nothing, Doctor. Nothing! Do you know what I have, out here in the Dry Lands, where there's nobody who matters?" He dropped to a whisper. "No witnesses."
The Doctor matched his volume. "Me too."
"Take aim! Aim at the Doctor. Fire on my command."
The soldiers behind Rassilon didn't immediately obey.
"Sir?" the General – he'd tried to convince Adelaide to help Gallifrey, the Doctor remembered her sharing that after they'd saved Gallifrey with their past regenerations.
"Step forward and take aim! What's the matter with you?"
The General glanced at the Doctor. "Lord President, he's a war hero. Some of these men served with him."
The Doctor was curious about what they would have done if Adelaide had stood before them. If they'd been faced with the Time Lady who'd run away from a planet in need, who'd never stepped foot on a battlefield. Did they hate her? Revere her?
"These men serve me! All of you! On my command."
The soldiers obeyed. The Doctor closed his eyes. Rassilon looked away.
He did remind the Doctor of Adelaide. She wouldn't have wanted to get her hands dirty like this.
Granted, she would never have been put in this situation in the first place, so it was a bit difficult to decide exactly how she would react.
"Fire!"
The soldiers obeyed.
To a point.
When the General and Rassilon looked again, the strength of the door behind the Doctor was proudly displayed. Someone should really send compliments to the creator.
The Doctor, meanwhile, was unharmed.
"You missed. All of you. Every single one of you! How is that possible? What is it? Is the firing squad afraid of the unarmed man?" Rassilon grabbed one of the soldiers. "You, explain."
"There was a saying, sir, in the Time War."
Rassilon raised his eyebrows. "A saying?"
"The first thing you will notice about the Doctor of War is he's unarmed. For many, it's also the last." The soldier pulled himself away from Rassilon and dropped his gun, standing by the Doctor. "I was at Skull Moon, sir."
Four more soldiers followed suit.
After all, Time Lords Victorious were well known to the people they'd left and tried to save. The Doctor made a note to ask them about the individual specifics.
Did they know of Adelaide's role, if unwilling, in saving this planet? Did they know how much she did hate that she'd been forced to abandon them, the calculation she'd been forced to make? Or did they only know of the Time Lady who'd run away, who'd abandoned them to the war?
"Not one more of you moves! That is an order!" Two more soldiers joined the Doctor. "A direct order of your President! You leave me no choice." Rassilon activated his gauntlet. "How many regenerations did we grant you? I've got all night." The man glanced behind himself as four more ships arrived, grinning. "Excellent, General. You sent for reinforcements."
"No, he didn't," the Doctor corrected, slipping on his sonic sunglasses. "I did."
The final soldiers stepped over the line in the sand. The gunships turned their weapons on Rassilon. The Doctor tried to ignore his internal Adelaide's exasperation at the gratuitous, in her opinion, use of weapons. Granted, even if Gallifrey appreciated Adelaide now, he would have been surprised if the soldiers felt any particular unity towards her. Even if she'd saved Gallifrey, she'd still never set foot on a battlefield.
She had a legacy of destruction, some may say, but she'd never touched a battlefield. The Doctor had never decided if he hated or loved that about her.
"What?" Rassilon asked, sputtering, clinging. Adelaide would have loved to see him in such a state. "I am Rassilon the redeemer! Rassilon, the resurrected! Gallifrey is mine!"
The General moved between Rassilon and the Doctor, blocking the man from harm. "Lord President, with respect, get off his planet." The General threw his weapon alongside the rest and stood beside the Doctor.
Rassilon was abandoned.
|C-S|
The Doctor watched Rassilon fly away from the Citadel. He had, to his credit, allowed the legendary Time Lord to survive, though it had been a difficult decision. A difficult place to stop himself from going.
He was fairly certain he did the right thing to spite Adelaide. To show her – and the universe – that he didn't need a protector. That he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Gallifrey is currently positioned at the extreme end of the time continuum, for its own protection," the General explained. "We're at the end of the universe, give or take a star system."
The Doctor nodded. "I know. I came the long way round."
The General glanced at where the ship had been. "The President may not find anywhere to go."
"He's not the President anymore."
"He was a good man once. Isn't this going a little far?"
The Doctor turned. "Oh, I've barely started. Tell the High Council they're on the next shuttle." He made to move but stopped.
He wasn't in the dial anymore, but he could still feel Adelaide and Clara watching from just over his shoulder. Both poised to question him, judge him, become him. Teacher and assistant.
"Adelaide."
The General was wary, but he nodded. "Yes."
"Is she a good woman?"
The General understood what he meant. "She is the Betrayer. She stands against the Protector of Gallifrey."
The Adelaide over his shoulder smiled. "She is their monster."
"In a sense."
"How so?"
"She is not a Dalek."
|C-S|
The Doctor went to the Cloisters and found Ohila waiting. He thought that she and Clara would have been great friends. She came back with him.
He threw his confession dial on the table of the council chamber.
"If you wanted to know about the Hybrid, why didn't you just ask me?" the Doctor now spoke to the General. He could see Adelaide standing at the window, watching the aftershocks of the war, not wanting to interfere, not even to help.
That was one thing the Doctor had never understood. How she could have done nothing, tried nothing.
"If the Hybrid is a threat to the people of this world," the General said, "why don't you just tell us?"
"What do you know already?"
The General sat. "The Hybrid is a legendary..."
"No."
He began again. "The Hybrid is a creature thought to be crossbred from two warrior races."
"Which races?"
"The Daleks and the Time Lords, it is supposed."
The Doctor was glad he hadn't said 'assumed'. She never liked it when other people assumed. "Oh, must be well hard, then."
The General nodded. "Unstoppable. According to the stories."
"If they're just stories, why are you so worried?"
"Some Matrix prophecies suggest..."
"No."
"Many prophecies suggest..."
"No."
"All Matrix prophecies concur that this creature will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey. It will unravel the Web of Time and destroy a billion billion hearts to heal its own."
Not Adelaide, definitely. She wouldn't dare do such a thing to her beloved Web of Time.
It was a good thing she wasn't around.
"What color is it?"
The General blinked. "I don't know."
The Doctor sighed. "Prophecies, they never tell you anything useful, do they?"
"This is no time to play the fool," Ohila snapped, sitting at the table as well.
"It's the end of the universe. It's the only time I've got." He looked back at the General. "And you want me to keep you all safe."
"Can you?"
"I'll need help, obviously."
"Gallifrey is at your command."
The Doctor waved a hand. "Oh, not from you lot. No, you'd cramp my style. Look at your hats. I'm going to need the use of an extraction chamber, to talk to an old friend." Before he stood, he glanced where Adelaide would have stood. Where she would have spent this conversation. "Not the Betrayer, in case you were worried."
On the contrary, that statement was what made the General worry.
The Doctor noticed.
|C-S|
When Clara stepped into the white room, she was not surprised to see the Doctor. His faces, after all, would always be there, waiting for her. Enticing her. Exciting her.
She was also not surprised to see that Adelaide was not with him, wherever they were. Adelaide never wanted to be that close. She hadn't even wanted to watch Clara die – which, frankly, was something Clara should have been doing right then instead of standing here, in the white room, looking at a Time Lord Victorious.
"Doctor?"
"Yeah?"
She glanced around, though she didn't dare let her gaze drift too far from his face. "Where am I? Is this the TARDIS?"
"No. This is a planet."
"What planet?"
"Basically, my place."
Clara looked at him fully again. "I was about to die. I should be dead."
He waved a hand. He loved waving hands. "Forget about that. It doesn't matter."
Clara felt she could hear Adelaide's reaction. Could feel the Time Lady's expression hardening, drifting into the protector of the universe, the protector of time. Becoming the thing she hated being, but couldn't help. "Hang on, your place?"
"Yeah."
"What do you mean, your place?" Clara knew what he meant, but she hoped she'd guessed wrong.
"My place."
"You don't mean..."
He nodded. He was grinning. "Yeah."
"Gallifrey?"
"Gallifrey."
Clara blinked. "Okay. Er...hang on...wait. What? Did I miss something?"
He shrugged. "Well, we're several billion years in the future and the universe is pretty much over, so, yeah, quite a lot."
One of the other people in the room – who Clara had neglected to notice until then, which made her momentarily glad Adelaide wasn't there to scold, as, somehow, the Time Lady would have known the rudeness – stepped forward. "Young lady, Miss Oswald, I'm afraid we only have a very few minutes with you."
To her credit, the reason Clara didn't notice anyone else was due to her noticing that she wasn't noticing something else. Something far more important. She just didn't know yet. "Who's he?"
"According to the Doctor, you can tell us something about the creature known as the Hybrid."
Clara had begun to notice that she wasn't noticing. She was being a terrible student of Adelaide. "Oh...oh, that's weird. What's wrong with my ears?"
"Nothing."
"Oh, it's weird. Everything sounds wrong."
"It's a side effect."
"I can hear you." Clara pointed at the Time Lord. "I can hear you fine. It's like, I don't know, it's like...er...it's like something's missing."
The man she hadn't noticed stepped closer to the Doctor. "Doctor, we have to tell her. We always tell them."
He was speaking so that Clara couldn't hear, but she did. "Tell me what? What's he talking about? Doctor? Doctor, what's going on?"
"Clara, there's a sound you've been living with every day of your life, but you've learned not to hear."
"What sound? What's wrong? Just tell me. Doctor, what sound?"
He didn't want to tell her. But sometimes you had to do things you didn't want to do. "Your heartbeat. Your physical processes have been time looped. Frozen between one heartbeat and the next. Even your breathing is just a habit. You don't need it."
Clara tried not breathing. It was simple in an impossible way. "If I'm frozen, how can I...how can I be walking about?"
"Because the Time Lords are very clever. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me!"
"Doctor," the man tried again, "we have to explain."
"Doctor, what is going on?"
The man didn't let the Doctor speak again. "Although you are currently conscious and aware, in fact, you died billions of years ago."
A fact Clara had known and not known and suddenly couldn't stop knowing. "Doctor?"
"We have extracted you at the very end of your time stream to request your help. Once we're finished here, you will be returned to your final moments. Your death is an established historical event and cannot be altered. I'm sorry."
Clara's only thought was to wonder if that meant she was Aligned. Then she looked to the Time Lord and knew that she had to remember to not only be the Doctor. "Doctor, will you just talk to me!"
He was glaring at her, but it wasn't at her, just in her physical direction. "I'll try not to break your jaw."
"My jaw?"
"I wasn't talking to you." The Doctor turned and punched the General, using the shock to grab the man's weapon and point it back at him.
"Doctor, you can't do this," the man said. "You know you can't."
"No, General, I don't know that." The Doctor glared around at the rest of the few people in the room. "Everybody, stay exactly where you are! No moving about. On pain of death, no-one take a selfie!"
"These people are unarmed."
The Doctor shrugged. "So are you."
"Doctor, I will not let you leave here." But the man didn't move. "That's the sidearm of the President's personal security. There isn't a stun setting."
"I will not let Clara die."
The General was wishing for Adelaide. Clara could see it in his eyes. Could tell that this Time Lord knew that the Time Lady, despite hating her people, despite abandoning them, upheld one of the tenants of their civilization. Would do so until her dying breath, and then would probably find some way to do so after that. Adelaide protected time, and time very much needed protecting now.
But Adelaide wasn't here.
"She's been dead for half the lifetime of the universe. If you tried to change that, you could fracture Time itself. Doctor, Lord President, are you really going to take that risk?"
"Doctor," Clara tried. She would never be able to live up to Adelaide, but she could try, now, for the Time Lady's sake. "Please, I don't want this. Put it down, please."
"Regeneration?" He wasn't moving.
"Tenth."
"Good luck."
"You too, sir."
The Doctor shot the General. There was no Adelaide over his shoulder. She had no place in him now. He'd locked her out. "I want a neural block," he addressed the technicians but didn't quite look at them. "Human compatible. Quickly! Come on!" One of the technicians – time scientists, some part of Clara offered – handed him one and the Doctor grabbed Clara's arm. "Come on, quick!"
They started running after they left the room.
"You killed that man!" Clara, still pulled along by him, though he'd switched to her hand, shouted. "You shot him! He's dead!"
"It was him or you."
"I don't care!"
"Yeah? Well, the difference is, when you die, you stay dead." They'd reached a lift and the Doctor decided which floor they were going to go to.
"I don't care!" Clara knew what regeneration meant. She knew they were on Gallifrey and the man was a Time Lord and he would be completely fine. But this was still the Doctor and this was still a gun and for a man who'd always said that regeneration felt like death he was being incredibly hypocritical. Dangerously hypocritical. "It wasn't your choice to make."
Clara didn't know it, but the Doctor felt a flash of Adelaide and pushed it far, far away. Ran far, far away from the only Time Lady who could really stand opposite him.
The lift arrived and the Doctor led the way out, releasing her hand. Somehow, Clara knew they'd arrived somewhere called the Cloisters. She wondered if someone had mentioned it while she'd been too busy realizing that she was dead and wasn't. Adelaide would have hated it; it was very dark.
"I thought you said Gallifrey was frozen in another dimension?"
"Well, they must have unfrozen it and come back."
Clara frowned. "How?"
"I didn't ask. It would make them feel clever." He followed her gaze down to his hand and the weapon still there and tossed it aside. She didn't like that he'd forgotten he'd been holding it. "Happy?"
"No." Clara could understand why Adelaide hated to be this person. It wasn't a nice feeling to say no to the Doctor. To try and calm him, stop him. She – though she did think rather highly of herself – didn't know if she'd actually be able to do it. "Tell me what a neural block is."
"Never mind. This way." He turned to the side, starting off in that direction.
"What did you mean, human-compatible?"
That time, he was saved from answering by screeches from inside the Cloisters. A sound that made Clara very aware that she no longer had a heart.
"The Cloister Wraiths," he explained. "Sliders, we used to call them. They guard the Matrix. We're safe in here."
"Why?"
"They only attack if you make any attempt to leave."
Clara raised her eyebrows. "How long are we planning to stay?"
"Or, actually, if you try to stay."
She would have blinked at him if she were surprised but, honestly, there wasn't much the Doctor could do that would surprise Clara Oswald anymore. "You realize how well that conversation went, right?"
"Starting to, yeah, a bit." A Wraith, which all wore traditional Time Lord regalia, moved past them, it's face flickering. It looked like it was screaming. "This way, I'm fairly sure. According to the stories, there's a secret way out. If you find it, the Sliders let you go."
"Exterminate!" a Dalek shouted, making them spin, Doctor moving to guard her, but his defenses quickly fell.
"It's okay," he said, stepping to the side. "It's okay, look at it."
The Dalek wasn't moving. It was trapped in what looked like vines and there was liquid running from its eyestalk that didn't look natural to the creature inside. "Exterminate me."
Clara eyed the vine-like-things. "Is it trapped?"
"Don't worry, it's been neutralized. Those aren't vines. In your terms, they're fiber-optic cables, they're alive and growing. We're inside the biggest database in history. Sometimes, people are stupid enough to break in."
"And?"
"It's a database. They get filed."
"Exterminate me," the Dalek was quieter then. Pained. Suffering.
"Probably a leftover from the Cloister Wars. There's nothing we can do. Come on."
"Exterminate me...exterminate me..."
Clara followed the Doctor deeper into the Cloisters, but this was not a place meant for people to follow each other through. She saw a Weeping Angel, trapped in the cables, and hurried past it. But then it was in front of her. And another.
But these were old Angels, and Clara slipped past them with ease.
Until a Cyberman grabbed her.
Clara, despite her terror, was struck with how fitting a Cyberman attempting to stop her.
The Doctor pulled her free. That also felt fitting. It all made Clara miss Adelaide. "Keep away from them! The Matrix can use them as a defense. It means the secret exit must be close."
"What's to defend in a crypt?"
"It's not a crypt," the Doctor clarified. "More like a stone circuit board. This is the Matrix database."
Clara stopped walking, turning to face him. "Database? What do you mean, database?"
Instead of answering, the Doctor looked down. "Oh."
"Oh?"
"Oh."
"Oh?" She looked down. She was standing a panel of Gallifreyan text lit from below. "Oh."
The Doctor rubbed an area clean with his foot to see it better. "Looks like the primary service hatch. Just have to work out the key."
"Oh."
He grinned at her. This was his plan working. "When Time Lords die, their minds are uploaded to a thing called the Matrix. This structure, it's like a living computer. It can predict the future, generate prophecies out of algorithms, ring the Cloister bells in the event of impending catastrophe. The Sliders, they're just like the guard dogs, the firewall. Projections from inside the Matrix itself. the dead, manning the battlements."
Clara shook her head. "Was I supposed to understand any of that?"
He looked to the side as though Adelaide would have been there to supply the less decorated, more logical explanation, and then tried to pretend that he hadn't. "The Time Lords have got a big computer made of ghosts, in a crypt, guarded by more ghosts." He got to his hands and knees to run his fingers along the words.
Clara crouched to match him. "Why would a computer need to protect itself from the people who made it?"
"All computers do that in the end. You wait until the internet starts. Oh, that was a war!" As the Doctor ran his hands over some of the marks, they reacted, registering something. "A long time ago, there was a student at the Academy. He got in here, disappeared for four days. Showed up in a completely different part of the city. Said the Sliders talked to him, they showed him the secret passage out. And we just need the code." He pulled out his notebook, glancing at something.
"What, and the kid told you the secret?"
"Ah, no, he didn't tell anyone anything. He went completely mad. Never right in the head again, so they say."
Clara didn't nod. "Okay, that's encouraging."
"The last I heard, he stole the moon and the President's wife."
Clara had already guessed what that statement confirmed. You couldn't have spent as long around Adelaide as she had and not guessed. "Was she nice, the President's wife?"
He shrugged. "Ah, well, that was a lie put about by the Shabogans. It was the President's daughter. I didn't steal the moon, I lost it..."
She almost smiled. "I'd know you anywhere."
The Doctor didn't look at her. "I was a completely different person in those days. Eccentric, a bit mad, rude to people." His voice faltered on the last statement, and that was only part of the reason that Clara frowned.
"Look at me again."
He didn't. "Sorry, what?"
"In the eye. Look at me. Just do it."
He did, moving closer. "What? What is it?"
"How long has it been for you since you last saw me? Saw her?" Actually mentioning Adelaide was worse than asking the original question, but Clara did it.
"Oh, phh, I'm not sure."
"How long?"
"I was stuck in a place. They..."
"Them?"
"They wanted something from me. Information. It really doesn't matter."
"What happened to your coat? The velvety coat. I liked that one," Adelaide liked that one, Clara had seen the Time Lady's enjoyment. "It was very Doctor-y."
He shrugged. "I changed it."
"Why?"
"Well, I can't be the Doctor all the time."
Clara's heart would have sunk if she'd still had a heart that could do anything but sit, silent.
The groves made a few more sounds as the Doctor continued working. "I think I've almost got it. I think this is it."
"Tell me what they did to you. Tell me what happened to the Doctor?"
The Doctor stopped, looked at her, and did.
A/N: The Doctor always does get dangerous when he's alone, but I've been enjoying demonstrating some of how other Time Lords view Adelaide after what she did with the war. Conflicting perspectives are always fun ;)