Disclaimer: Who owns this show? Not me, for sure.
Overcoming Guilt…
(After S6 ep3)
-o0O0o-
The time war has no beginning and no end but is always over. And it has consequences. Dire consequences, in the nearly impossible case you ever stumble upon them.
Unfortunately the TARDIS does.
-o0O0o-
"You just needed to listen to her, once," Rory whispered, starring out of the window at the barren landscape and the bird hanging motionless in the air.
"She said it was a bad idea. She always says that," the Doctor defended himself half-heartily.
"No, she doesn't," Amy corrected with a glare. Never as frantically as that.
If Tella tried to stop you with alarmed eyes and raised, higher voice, you should listen to her regardless of how uncaring her words may seem.
But then, the Doctor barely spent time with her to know that. And now, there was the really high possibility that she was dead.
The beginning had been completely harmless, following the same formula as always.
The Doctor told them about that awesome place, this time a constellation of systems and planets so near to each you could make out their surfaces with your eyes, and they decided to go there. On the way they randomly decided to fetch Tella, by simply materialising the TARDIS around her and flying off again.
After the typical lecture and a lot of questioning how Rory even was alive, she had agreed to partake in at least one adventure but tried to stop them the second she realised where they were headed.
Why, they understood as soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS.
Instead of a flush living landscape with sixteen colourful planets hanging in the sky all around them, there was only a wasteland with a huge crashed ship in the distance.
Although the sky was still something to behold: Four Planets with a fifth scattered and broken in a half rotating around a gigantic black hole that slowly consumed them, darkening the light into a constant twilight.
They all agreed with Tella to leave as soon as possible but still enjoyed the sight for five more minutes from the top of a hill in a few foot distance from the TARDIS.
A mistake.
When they returned, they found the TARDIS surrounded by the locals trying to break in.
When they spotted the four travellers, they instantly arrested them for some unknown crime, loaded the TARDIS on a barrow and started to return to their settlement. Apparently the only city left.
They were moving fast and loosing no time, leaving everybody behind who wasn't able to keep up and even when Tella somehow managed to escape, they didn't go after her. They only laughed and continued. When the Doctor asked them about it, they answered that a time storm was due within two hours.
They were already imprisoned in a cell in the heavily fortified city made of silver metal and glass - a faint reminder of what once was- when they learned what exactly a time storm was.
The black hole in the sky seemed to erupt a visible shockwave that crashed on the planet and swept over the surface in an invisible storm and the Doctor screamed surprised and stumbled, barely catching himself on the wall.
A time shift, he had explained later.
A literal shift of time, influencing everything around them and moving objects and sentients within time completely randomly.
The city had a shield against it, but everything else out there not.
Tella could be out there, limbs forever frozen in time but not her head or body, trapped but conscious and forced to stand still and dying, leaving a bizarre figure part skeleton part conserved flesh. Just like the countless animals they had seen on their journey, and the ghastly remains before the city of the people who weren't able to reach the shield in time.
The Doctor burrowed his face in his fists, hitting his nose whit them. "I'm sorry."
He took a breath and stopped, his eyes still squeezed shut. "I'll fix this."
"How," both humans asked simultaneously, both desperate and annoyed.
"I don't know," he confessed. " Yet. But she's alive. I can feel her. Here." He tapped against this temple. "We'll find a way. I'll promise you, we'll find a way. Together."
Rory starred at the motionless bird again, and Amy nodded silently. There wasn't any other acceptable option.
-o0O0o-
The screeching ended and the lights died own into near complete darkness.
The Storyteller slowly rose her head and cautiously uncovered her ears, but yes, there was the entrance. She let go of the breath she was holding and cautiously stepped to the console, stroking over it.
No response. It was done.
She hated killing a TARDIS. But this was a matter of survival.
Exhausted, she sunk down on a chair next to the console, hugging the outer layer of her dress she had taken of immediately after her escape.
The Doctor didn't even give her the time for a proper wardrobe change when he had swept her away from her way home. And now she was running around in high heeled button up boots and a white satin under dress, her beautiful summer hat and the heavy outer layer of her dress made of Bordeaux velvet stuffed in a ball and secured with a wire she had found.
Naar was one of the 74 lost systems. The whole quadrant was poisoned with unstable time. She honestly thought he knew.
The time war had no ending and no beginning, and it was always over. But, it had consequences.
And there was the problem again, the Doctor never thought about consequences.
No.
She forced herself to stop that thought and closed her eyes.
Her temper had reigns of steel, she was a teacher after all.
Always soft spoken, polite , yet resolute. She listened and understood.
Moreover she was a master of words, subtly and easily urging peoples thoughts in new and different directions so they figured out things for themselves.
That's what her students always complimented her with, she looked people in the eyes with respect, helped them, but always let them ultimately figure things out of their own.
She was a storyteller, a liar and manipulator, if she choose to.
She always knew what to say in a situation, both the worst and the best words to determine a specific outcome.
She could calm a frantic Amy, rile up a moody Rory so he started laughing at the absurdness of the situation.
Alaya, that unfortunate Silurian, had been one of her easiest exercises, even if the most regrettable.
Signora Calivierri, finished with three sentences.
She had not lost that well honed skill, as she had first thought with the Doctor's particular way of getting under her skin and turning her into a screeching Banshee, constantly arguing and behaving like a barbaric, violently lashing out and not being able to get one person to listen to her. She had been scared of herself those first weeks.
This was her new self the council had punished her with after the forced regeneration?
Untill it turned out, it just was the Doctor.
She wasn't able to figure him out. Which words did she need to say so he would listen?
His constant stunts and unreliability were only things that angered her on the outside, the real annoyance was that she couldn't reach him.
She never was going to sit here in this dead TARDIS, if she just had found the exact words to describe what awaited them here on Naar.
She couldn't use the words dangerous, life-threatening, trouble and anything alike, because that only caused him to jump straight ahead into it.
She failed to keep them save and warn them because she couldn't find the words.
Which explained her short temper with everything about the Doctor, because she actually was angry about herself. She always has had no patience for her own underperformance.
Which was why she needed to get out of here.
She stood up and slung the wire with her useless clothes around her shoulder like a messenger bag.
She took one of the scraps lying around and used it to crack the doors open enough so she could squeeze herself through it and shielded her eyes against the sudden light.
The TARDIS had turned sideward in its crash, so she found herself standing about ninety feet over the ground overseeing a wide area of endless wasteland.
This planet never had been a paradise, but it had been alive with a wide array of creatures, living on the wide grasslands.
Now, there was only barren dirt and the gigantic frames of crashed TARDISes.
The Battles in the Moquay sector and its 74 systems had been bad, yes. But she had never realised they had lost this many.
Her hand started shaking and she busied herself with mapping a route she could use to climb down the husk.
No wonder the locals had a grudge against the Time Lords. There were at least five in this area, and probably all still alive and thus death-traps, just like the one she was standing on now.
She knew who coordinated the retreat of the Gallifreyan forces, and that person would never left a living, active TARDIS behind.
Not for the reason that one could steal the technology - which was impossible by the way.
No, for the reason it was impossible to steal that technology: a grounded active TARDIS with a severed connection to the eye of harmony went mad after a certain amount of time. They trapped passengers inside and consumed their minds in an attempt to force them to fly them, some even went bitter and hateful and let anybody stepping into them die a painful starving death in their thirst for revenge.
So why?
The Storyteller started to climb down the hull, sliding over the plates carefully so she wouldn't hurt herself.
She had been lucky to find the shields still intact the moment she realised what happened in the sky and didn't even twice think about jumping into the old ship.
Fortunately that one only wanted to get away, so she had been able to trick what was left of the Consciousness into showing her the console room where the Storyteller instantly killed her as soon as the temporal shift had been over.
She rubbed her head, trying to chase away a slowly building headache.
She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
She needed the protective shields of an active TARDIS to survive the time shifts, which was why she was on route to the next one, but she had to kill every single one as soon as she would step into them to not be caught or killed by them.
She needed a plan.
The settlement was about four hours away, she had taken the exact opposite direction after all. Plus, she could see the gleaming typical for a city on Naar in the distance from her higher position.
All she needed was to figure out the signs of an incoming shift or perhaps even a rhythm. The people arresting them had seemed to know another eruption had been due, so there should be some sort of pattern. And maybe even some algorithm to predict them.
This would help her to manage her resources by knowing when she had to retreat into a TARDIS and the time she could roam free. And if she was able to reach the settlement to free her acquaintances.
The shift of time zones hit with full force.
She slipped and fell a few feet, before she was able to catch herself on an outstanding metal rod.
Her head throbbed, and her vision fractured into the thousands of shattered time-lines.
This world was an utter and complete mess.
And it hurt!
She was used to alternative timelines hovering in the corner of her eye, it had been the bane of her existence ever since her eight year and the schism, but at least those lead somewhere!
Not those splitters and loose threads hovering everywhere, like reality was an image a mirror and somebody continuously smashed into it.
She needed to concentrate, she was hanging from a metal rot over an abyss.
She took a few breaths to calm down her frantic heartbeat and then felt with the tips of her shoes if she could reach the overhang beneath her without falling too deep.
She could, so she let go and took a short break to find her balance and tried to shove those irritating time splinters pressing down on all her senses out of her mind.
Then she continued climbing down. She glanced at the sky and shook her head.
"With all respect but throwing that detonator into that time-disruptor the Daleks had placed here, was not your brightest idea, deary."
-o0O0o-
He wouldn't stop searching. Amy silently followed the Doctor patting and touching every inch of their cell for what felt about ten minutes. At least it seemed like he had hatched some kind of plan instead of only running up and down like a beheaded chicken. He even laid flat on the floor, pining into a crack looking a lot like a mousehole, and started shuffling around in it with two fingers.
For Rory that was enough.
"What are you doing?"
"I didn't always use my screwdriver. I'm way better without it. Always have been on my best when the situation is the worst. I still want it back. Ah!"
He pulled himself up and triumphantly waved something stick-like before their eyes.
"What's that," Amy asked.
"Our key, of course." And with that he plunged it into the lock and started to fiddle with it.
"You ain't serious. What's the plan?"
He throw them smirk and simply continued.
Rory was as dumbstruck as her. "Doctor?"
He ignored them and continued to stab the lock, there was no other way to describe it. "Eh, I don't think that's how to open a lock-"
"And what do you think you're doing, Time Lord!"
Great. The motions had lured the guard. The Doctor stepped back and threw up his hands in surrender, leaving the object sticking in the lock. The Guard glared at him before he inspected the lock, then cursed and simply broke the part standing out off. Then he walked away.
"Wait," the Doctor tried to stop him. "Don't you need to change the lock? Give us another cell, we can find other sharp metal things inside here, you know?"
Oh. That was the plan. Which looked to fail spectacularly.
The Guard gaffed. "Why. You are executed tomorrow, anyway."
"What!"
"What about a trial? I want to know at least why we need to die. It's minimal courtesy." So, Tella did have an influence on him.
"Courtesy," the guard repeated mockingly. "Why. Shouldn't it be courtesy, to at least inform us before creating an unstable black hole right above our heads and leave us to die. We just return the favour. See it as another casualty of your war."
Wait, the Time Lords did that?
The Doctor gulped. "It wasn't me. Look, I'm the Doctor. I'm on your side. I stopped them. The War is over."
The Guard laughed. "If that is true, it's even worse. Well. Luck and precious time then, you going to need it." He split on the floor and left around the corner.
The Doctor sunk to the floor and buried his face in his hands. She hated it to see him like that.
The broken man, he always tried to hide but Tella could croak out, as well as this apparently, too.
This wasn't her raggedy man.
"Doctor," she whispered carefully, but he didn't answer.
-o0O0o-
The Storyteller let her bundle slip from her left shoulder and sunk down on the ground.
It hurt so much.
And even worse, she definitely injured her right shoulder when she caught herself after that slip on the hull. Those shoes didn't help either.
The confusing throbbing of her head and the constant irritating differing timezone where there should be just one beside, the constant twilight made it difficult to see hidden scraps of metal and other items in the barren sands. She had more than once stumbled and fell or one of her heels had caught itself in the remains of some small animal and twisted her ankles.
Not to mention the twisted figures of the unfortunate caught in the time shifts she avoided as soon as she could distinguish them from the silhouettes of a crippled and twisted plant.
Once there was a full cart with a family and their horse. She had run to them in the intention of asking for a ride. Only mere feet away she had realized, they were frozen in a hurry and skeletons from the belly down, as if a wave of acid had gnawed it away.
Nevertheless, she had done it and reached another TARDIS before the Hole erupted again. Unfortunately she didn't feel any presence in her mind when she came into reach.
But she had to investigate that later.
She carefully opened her bundle and looked though the items she had collected in the other TARDIS, before she had killed her. Since when did she called the CCT's that? The Storyteller pushed that thought aside and as well as the energy crystal and the defect time-ring, before she found what she needed.
This TARDIS did land, not crash. The inner dimensions started to bleed though and so the ship looked a lot bigger than originally, but the entrance was clearly where it needed to be. There were also weft craters around it, filled with muddy water so it had definitely stood here when the Daleks had attached the systems.
But no Dalek-remains. Figured, they never reached the ground, as far as she remembered.
She rose and hobbled the few feet to one of the ponds and scanned the surface with the Molecule-magnet. It needed a few seconds, then it showed the results and she nooded to herself. Nothing inside she couldn't get rid with it.
She programmed a capsule, which the device promptly generated and threw it into the water. It instantly attracted all the substances she programmed in while sinking to the ground and left behind clear, drinkable water for the next hour. Then it would release, and the ecosystem could return to its previous state.
The Storteller bent forward and dipped her hands into the water, just to meet the terrified eyes of a gallifeyan solider reaching up to her for help.
…
…her help…
...why do they always ask for her help…
…
...her taking the shortest way possible over the remains to the tell-tale glow of a starting regeneration, ignoring the hands and appendages reaching out, the tears, cries and moans of the few survivors. She is not here to save them...
...the reflection of trusting eyes in her knife, slicing the throat of a regenerating solider too young, knowing he will burn out and giving him the salvation of a quicker death...
... the burning sky in that familiar orange colour of her home but unnatural to this planet and the ashes burning her lungs...
...the eyes, the whispers, following her everywhere from the Panopticum in the Citadel to the barracks of the soldiers on an allied planet and out into the battlefield. Kelliox and her crew being the only ones nodding to her and smiling...
...her stepping over countless bodies withered and twisted in their last seconds alive. So many species, she had not been aware there were so many species involved right now. Curiously she starts counting how many she finds...
...the screeching of her TTC when she forced her down another time on the exact spot in time, barely a hand span away from her last attempt, breaking time apart into one single timeline of salvation...
...her gaze wandering curiously over the wastelands, wondering which weapon had caused this. There was no difference in the consequences between one of the Dalek's or one of themselves, there was always just a huge pile of bodies and a barren landscape left, full of ashes and lights of regenerating Time Lords...
...Kelliox's beautiful bright eyes bulging, her grasping for air with her burned throat, blood splitting out of her lips and unable to induce a regeneration and that is unacceptable...
...a Solider breaking out in tears by the sound of her voice, but this time in pure relief, while he mindlessly muttered his thanks. He knew exactly who she is...
...Rassilon's burning ice blue eyes and Kelliox comforting mental presence calming her down...
…eyes …
...all those eyes on her …
Her ragged breathing got faster and she curled into a ball, biting the palm of her hand so the pain can shoo the memories away but those eyes, eyes everywhere, pleading, judging,…. and that calm voice of the monster created by and creator of her civilisation growling words full of venom, splitting in passion and Kellixox...
...Kelliox...
Kelliox. She concentrated on the image of her partner, let the long memorized lines of those familiar features of every single regeneration rise before her inner eye in all detail. Then she continued with her cousins, her own generation and the following ones. First the house of her birth, then the one of her choice, Kelliox's home.
In shambles and full of bodies and blood...
... the familiar faces all disfigured, crippled and ...
...gone...
They are all gone. Fist the Daleks, and then the Doctor had killed them, erased Gallifrey and she is slipping, loosing everything and time freezes and turns into the eternal present and everything exist all the same because motion means life a future and a past means life but there is just the present because there is only death and there is nothing left because home burns and burns forever and never and turns to ashes by the Doctors hands and...
The Doctor.
That annoying Timetodd and his stupid screwdriver. Jumping around and waving his hands in excitement while showing of his knowledge on a subject. Amy laughing at him and even Rory grins. His concerned face when she had lost herself in his TTC's library and him banning her from it for her own good.
Amy jumping into that lake and splashing her full of water even if she knew the Storyteller hated water. Her anger over getting picked up of nowhere from her way home by materializing around her dissolving in an instant, because there was Rory next to Amy at the console and how was he even alive?
Home, her little hut at the cliffs on that island on Dandelicon IV.
The little village made of boats floating under the cliffs. Her friends and the ten students of her small new school she started all on her own. Even those annoying merchants.
Lady Storyteller took some deep breaths and slowly unfurled herself, clingin to the timestream, to her past and future, because she is alive...
The calming trick Kelliox and her developed was still working, just the faces she had to enumerate had changed.
She sat down cross legged, back straight and closed her eyes. Then she listed of the names of the persons she came to value in the last few years, the persons she needed to stay sane for, repeating them over and over while conjuring their features to their mind. And yes, the Doctor was one of them.
Slowly the buzzing in her head stopped and she returned to normal breathing. She repeated the list another time before she felt stable enough to face the reality of what became of Naar.
She slowly stood up and hissed, the injury of her shoulder forgotten over her episode.
Knowing this time what awaited her she cautiously stepped forward and indeed, the water still was clear, the frightened eyes of the solider still starring up to her. She concentrated, then furrowed her brow and checked again on her fob watch. It really had been eighteen minutes. She scanned the water with the magnet once more, but it was clean. The magnet was able to detect but not handle a poisoning by corpses. The body was partly decomposed, but apparently another time shift had stopped the progress entirely so the water was save.
She took a few steps to the left away from the Solider, before she dunked her hands in and cleaned them. Then she did the same with her face and her neck. It was refreshing and calming and she eagerly took ships from her cupped hands, not realizing how thirsty she had been. Then she dunked in her Handkerchief and slid her hand under her dress to cool her hurt shoulder.
Her eyes followed the lines of the massive ship rising above her and she carefully placed one hand on the shell. Nothing.
Wait. She narrowed her eyes and took of her love before feeling the surface again. It was whole, not a single scratch as far as she knew. So even if this TTC was dead, it would still provide shelter from the shifts. Not the optimal one as a shield would but the chances of survival would be a lot higher. She looked back to the pond then again up to the entrance. She needed treatment for her shoulder and here, she would certainly find medical supplies and could fully concentrate on healing without having to deal with a mad TTC in addition. Reaching a decision, she gathered her things and slowly made her way up to the entrance, carefully not to slip again.
The Door was closed, as expected. She placed her fingers on it, ready to search for a weakness to open it and instantly flinched back when it slid open.
A string of curses flashed in her mind, so it was at least alive. She contemplated to just turn around and leave.
Then, in the dim glow inside something moved.
She narrowed her eyes. It could been an illusion to lure her in.
Still, she took a step close and leaned forward to glimpse inside. It was the familiar outline of an short hallway leading up to a door to the control room in the distance. To the left was another smaller corridor leading into the insides of the ship. In the middle was a small fireplace on the wall a pile of clothes and blankets and a pile of bowls and other indefinable objects. A camp.
"Hello," she asked. Nothing.
Carefully she stepped over the threshold, constantly aware that this could be a trap. The lights turned on and the door closed behind her, but it was welcoming, not threatening. And there still weren't any vibrations indicating the machine was active.
Which left only one conclusion: it was powered down, only running the life systems. But how was that possible, everybody…
"I've awaited you," smiled Kelliox behind her.
-o0O0o-
"This is Kelliox, House Beningmeer of the Drome of Gallifrey, Chief Mechanic on the Akythior. This is not an official message, I repeat: this is not an official message, but and the survival of the population of Naar depends on it.
Due to the increase of Dalek activity in this sector our fleet is forced to retreat to a more secured position to repel the theat. The high council permitted the use of time weapons, which are currently readied and will be used within the next 75 minutes."
The Hologram flickered and the woman needed a second to balance, then growled at somebody outside the recording range. "Get those two modules online, immediately. I don't care. We will blasted away otherwise so, get it to work!"
She turned back, sweeping through her short silver hair and continued. "According to my calculations there's a sixty percent chance of creating a highly concentrated temporal nexus if we proceed as ordered, which will lead to the creation of an unstable black hole right above Naar. The command is aware of those possibilities and promised to install counter measures but as of now any order in this regard has reached the technical department. I fear it never will. I programmed a defensive sequence, which will be delivered with this message…. No, it must target the chameleon arch and the generator's control", she hissed at another unseen person. Then her bright eyes flickered back.
"This is all we can do for now. I know the people of Naar, they are strong and valuable allies. Proceed as instructed. "
Her eyes flickered to something outside. "Activate TTC Protocol Kryos-15-O-7-9."
The hologram shook anew and this time she needed a few more seconds to come back into view.
"It's bad, I know, but this is barely temporally, nothing is lost. When this war is over, we will come for you. Remember, Gallifrey stands! Kelliox out."
The blue hologram projected over the city gates disappeared and all the city lights dimmed down and slowly flickered out.
"Charming evening ritual," the Doctor commented.
"And, now we know why they hate you lot," added Amy, but he didn't seem to listen. Instead his fingers tipped on the bars, clearly thinking. Then he whirled around and declared: "Something's wrong."
"Sorry," Rory asked.
The Doctor started pacing with wild gestures.
"The message. Something's wrong. It doesn't fit. I don't know what, but something's off about it. And I know it will help us to get free. What's wrong, what's wrong!"
"That she programmed a defense and it didn't work?"Amy suggested. There was so much wrong with that message, but knowing the disregard for other species Tella had at the beginning she choose that detail.
"Hm? No. That's Kelliox Beningmeer, best mechanic on Gallifrey since the Triumvirate. Her work is perfection. Her defense is probably the reason why Naar isn't in that hole already."
Rory frowned. "Kelliox, as in Tella's Kelliox?"
The Doctor stopped, then turned around with big eyes. "Oh. Yes, of course. There's never the same name twice. I didn't knew she was married. Pity, she's a genius. Oh."
He stared out of the window clearly remembering the frail man buried under the life-suport back on the Leviathtan and his pained but cheeky smile. Amy tried to bring the images together, the well aged, elegant, yet stressed woman hissing orders to save a planet, and the broken man disfigured from illness clutching Sheela's -Tella's- hands in his last minutes alive.
Suddenly the Doctor's eyes grew big. He turned to Amy and pointed with his fingers playfully at her, seemingly unable to find words in his joy.
"What. You got it?"
"No. But, Vaao!"
"Wow?"
"Vaao," he corrected and pointed at one of the bigger planets in the sky. "That one. Vaao."
"And?"
"It's an unstable black hole. And this one moves. The Planet, not the hole, although that's moving as well… never mind. Vaao is the reason for the instability. I can calculate when the next time shift is going to happen."
"Really? When."
He squeezed his left eye shut, and posed his hands in a weird way , mumbling to himself, then grinned. "About nine days."
"So in nine days, we're gonna die," Rory summed up.
The Doctor sobered instantly and made a face. "If I can't find out what Kelliox tries to say? Yes."
-o0O0o-
To be continued...
AN:
I know I said ony one more update and then we're in the normal sequence again, but this chapter turned out way to long so, I split it. Yes, even my chapters can be too long, I always try to stay under 10k words per chapter.
What' it with Tella and her shoes? I have no idea.
Naar is a messed up planet and I hope I could capture a bit of it, without getting to explicit.
I know, there's no such a thing as an unstable black hole (the exact explanaition what it's supposed to be will follow in the second part), but as I already said in "Leviathan", its Doctor Who, so what's science?
By the way, why didn't anybody tell me I uploaded chapter 5 twice? Anyway, I fixed it now.
Thanks to Queen of the Rings and mishuu for following, Akahana Yukiko for favouring and Tali Alioquin for both.
You guys are all awesome.
Greetings
alkatie
KD28012019
