Chapter LXXXV
Mira
He had not spoken a single word on their way back to the TARDIS. The whole way she had stared at his back, racking her brain what it was now. Well, apart from the obvious. But all in all it could have gone much worse, and it had been him coming here, knowing he had been here before. Or just now, depending on the point of view. But, stomping in front of her like that, hands in pockets and breeding in silence was a tiny bit overacting on his part, wasn't it?
Once back in the TARDIS she seized the moment as he was hanging his coat over the handrail to make her way past him and down the stairs towards her room. He could give her at least fifteen or so minutes to wash her face, inspect the lump on her head and probably get some fresh clothes which weren't covered in fine, yellow hair from the Ayxeluriusians, who seemed to be even more into hugging than the Doctor. She would just like to feel a bit more human and a bit less ragged.
Actually, she wished she could stay on Ayxelurius a little longer, probably a few months or so. She had often done that, back home in her universe, just getting away of it all for a while. May it be because she had enough of politics – and the situation had been reasonably stable – or other issues. She had been hiding for a while when Atlan had come back, after vanishing for four-hundred years, accompanied by that woman, Gesil, who had finally married her father. She still wondered that all three – or four, counting Gesil who she had never liked – had not killed each other. Well, probably she had just decided it was time again to leave for a while before it had really escalated.
And even though it might look like running, she herself had never thought of it like that. Not really at least. It was more some sort of timeout, a way of clearing her head and the air, getting new perspectives, trying to get rid of whatever grudge she was holding to not leave more scolded ground. Most of the times it had been places like this, like Ayxelurius, or she had stayed with groups and organisations outside the Solar Empire, which were considered friendly, if not a part of it – a lot of them in fact quite anarchistic; but the moral high ground, at least from her point of view, definitely on their side.
But that was gone now, leaving nothing but memories which would fade with time. She wished she could say the same when it came to pain; but pain had the nasty habit to hide, only to come back with full force when one least expected it. Probably that was the only certainty left in a life that theoretically was endless, after everything else had proven to be unreliable, fading and decaying as time went on.
…
After walking around the TARDIS for a while, she found herself in the observatory, sitting, legs tucked up, on the large couch, her eyes wandering over the Gallifreyan signs on the walls. Not that she wanted to evade him – if he really wanted to talk to her, he would know where to find her. She just wasn't sure if he really wanted to see her right now. Not after him hardly looking at her on their way back. So safest thing to do was to wait where he would find her – or, more so, where he knew she would be but wasn't hiding. And she indeed wasn't hiding. It was more like giving the choice of when to make a fuss about it to him. And honestly, to her it was more about making a fuss of it than anything else. Nothing bad had happened. She had recognised him in his previous regeneration and said nothing. Nothing about his past, future, nor had she tried to ignite the atmosphere of a planet, or tried to convince him to destroy Skaro. So far so good.
But then she almost jumped as the door opened, instantly feeling slightly guilty, wishing indeed she had been hiding instead of waiting for him. He didn't look angry though, and she was anything but sure if she should be glad about it or not. She had seen anger and rage in his face before, and if she had thought she could read in it – at least a little bit – right now she was proven wrong.
She stood up as he walked a few steps further into the room and stopped a good seven feed away from her, staring at her. She stared back, still trying to make something out of the weird look on his face, waiting for him to speak. But as the silence became too pressing – even the everlasting humming of the TARDIS seemed to be quieter than usual – she began talking.
"I'm sorry, okay? I know... Well, actually I didn't know back then why you wanted to leave. But I should have listened, this once."
He still didn't say a word. By now she was quite certain that it really wasn't anger in his eyes. But what then? Then it hit her. For a moment it almost felt as if looking into the eyes of his previous self. The eyes of a bitter, broken, haunted man without any hope for himself and his future.
"You know, you could have been a bit clearer, to be honest," she said quietly, more for the sake of saying anything at all. "Like: Look, we have to leave, otherwise we'll run into myself, and you know, that's bad for us, the universe, and-"
"Yes, well, it would have been bad, indeed," he finally spat at her in a voice so cynical that it almost made her cringe.
"Yeah, then be a bit clearer next time!" she replied louder than she had wanted to. "Seriously, I mean... Just trust me that by now I know that you don't always look like you," she pointed at him, "And that I'll keep my mouth shut. Even more so when it's earlier in your life."
"Really? After what happened last time I'm not so sure about that."
"What?! As far as I remember I didn't say anything to your previous self. Nor did I try to convince you to do anything. It was me and me alone who tried to blow up Skaro!"
"Yeah, and that's what I'm worried about. Oh, by the way, what made you so sure he was not my future-me? You knew it, even before asking me, didn't you?"
"Well, I was not certain about that at all. You seemed to remember me faintly, but that could have been due to some paradox. You've met me earlier in your timeline, but for all I know, that happened not too long ago, and you shouldn't know of that at that point in your timeline. Or you could have just forgotten me, remembering only faintly that you've seen me ages-"
"What?" he interrupted her, furrowing his brows in surprise. "I would never forget you," he added quietly, looking at her out of huge, dark, honest eyes, making her doubt what she had seen in his face and heard in his voice just moments ago.
But it only lasted for a few seconds, before the expression on his face changed again. And yet it had thrown her completely off balance.
"How can you be so sure?" she said. "How can you be so sure you won't forget? Maybe it's just not sixteen hundred years for you, but what about ten thousand? How can you say you'll never forget me?"
"Because I don't think you have forgotten her," he replied calmly. "You just don't remember. But that's not the same."
"Oh, it isn't? Well, that's just great! Could we come back to topic now, please?" she said, rubbing her forehead with the fingers of her right hand.
"Mira, I'm worried."
"You don't need to," she said defiantly.
"No? Looked a bit different last night. That-"
"Yeah," she hurried to say so he couldn't get further into it, "I was tired, and exhausted, and yeah, well, it probably was a bit of a nervous breakdown, so-"
"Nervous breakdown? Really? Mira, do you know how much you scared me? That-"
"Yeah, please, stop it. Spare me the psychological terms. I know them all."
Indeed, it had not only left him scared. And there was no use in deny it or try to play it down. Probably their never ever was "playing down" of something in their relationship, not with being able to mentally connect as they kept on doing. He must have felt how it had scared herself, standing beside herself, watching from the outside how she was slowly losing grip with reality – yes, it had scared herself. It still did. And who knew how it had ended without him being there, not only physically holding her, but touching her mind with his presence - which had seemed so strong and eternal back then, as if nothing could ever shock or break him. And yet...
"I'm not going to lose it," she said, fully aware that it sounded more like a question than a statement. "No need to be scared. Really. And now you're deflecting."
She watched him. At least this time she had managed to focus her mind on something else, on him, instead of her own issues. "Why didn't you just say why we have to leave? And what's that look on your face? You're not angry that I didn't listen, are you?"
"No, I am angry because you obviously still don't understand how catastrophic this could have ended! You wanted to destroy Skaro last time, and who knows what-"
"You're not angry," she said again, still observing him, slowly shaking her head. "I don't know what the issue is, but that's not it. And, apart from that, you exactly know that I can at least vaguely imagine the possible outcomes of causing a paradox. And you most likely also know that I'd recognise you, no matter how you look. And, because of what I've just said, I almost certainly keep my mouth shut and try everything..." She trailed off as it suddenly struck her. "You knew that I would run into yourself after your homeworld got destroyed. So no need to be angry because I might possibly have warned you. No. It's not about what I could have told you. It's about what you might have told me."
The expression on his face changed again, this time definitely to something darker, finally with a slight hint of anger.
Got it.
Though she'd rather been wrong.
"How do you know that.. I.. He, was after..."
"For God's sake!" she said, "Did you look at yourself back then? Just once? You know what you've said to me?"
"Mira, don't-"
"You said you look happy now," she continued. "I mean, no. No, you actually don't. You seem to be better. You survived. But you're not happy. You... You're a little less broken. But not happy." The last two sentences had been little more than a whisper. "What is it that makes you so afraid I would find out? After all I've seen of you? Of who you are?"
"You wouldn't understand," he said after a long moment of silence. "Nothing of what you've seen of me would make you understand it."
"What makes you so sure about that? You know that I've done some pretty despicable things myself?" For a moment she stared at him in silence, trying to bring herself to tell him. At least to tell him enough so he would see that she would at least try to understand. "I can't even say how much innocent blood is on my hands, but it's there," she finally said, her voice shaking. "I had a hand in developing the most abominable weapon humanity had ever built till then – and even now, over a millennium later, it's unsurpassed. Guess that's a good thing though. Don't even want to imagine that," she added bitterly.
"When it all started, I was as pacifistic as anyone can be," she continued. "It was never planned to actually kill anyone with it. But then it went out of our hands. We – I – was so arrogant I believed I had it under control, that we knew what we were doing. But I was wrong. We all were. We touched something we should never have."
She paused to study his face for a reaction, but his face had become even more inscrutable. "I have done things I would have never thought possible. I've seen others doing so. And I can't be sure I won't do something at some point I would now consider absolutely impossible. I'm not even sure I would never ever help to do such a thing again. I keep on saying it wasn't worth it, nothing could ever justify it, not even the sake of our own galaxy and humanity, but I'm afraid I'm just lying to myself. I don't trust myself enough to be sure to never ever do something like that again. I did it once, so probably it's just a matter of circumstances. So I think my ability to understand goes quite far."
Still no sign or change in his expression. If anyone had ever built a wall around himself and his past, then it was him. She could almost physically feel it.
"You know, I wasn't alone back then," she added quietly. "My friends, my father, even mankind itself was there. I wasn't alone. Had I been, I'm not too sure I would still be here."
This, and she had always seen it as her very own, personal punishment to be forced to live with what she'd done. But on her own she probably wouldn't have made it to that realisation.
She waited for a moment longer, searching his eyes for some – any – sort of reaction, but there was none. At least none for her to see. He would not say anything. At least not right now, and probably it was on him now to be repelled by what she had just said to him.
But as she walked past him on her way to the door, he grabbed her wrist, slid down with his hand until he was clutching her hand with a somewhat desperate force. But before she could complain , she was overwhelmed by a rush of so many different emotions in such a short amount of time that she found it hard, nearly impossible to sort it out. They were ambivalent, conflicting, filled with uncertainty and guilt and pain. But there was no disgust, no feeling of being repelled in them, as far as she could tell. He was struggling with himself, that much she could clearly tell – but then his grip loosened and he let go of her hand. It was not until then when she finally looked up, but he had averted his head, his eyes fixed on the floor.
Was it unintentionally to let her feel all that? She doubted it. But just as certain as that was that he would not talk to her about it, at least not today, not right now. And yet, with only a short touch and that short but intense telepathic message which had told more than words could ever have, it all felt a little less hopeless.
a/n: I know, I wanted to post that earlier. But then I had some absolutely inhumane working hours (I'm too old for that...) and slept the whole weekend, then I got a cold the next weekend... Sorry. I just wanted to say I'm still into this story and don't think about abandoning it.
Storytelling-Doll, OneWhoReadsTooMuch, heroherondaletotherescue, bored411, E-man-dy-S, .54, NeoMulder, XxNimith531xX, milkymou: Thanks for leaving a review :-)
