Chapter LXXXVI

Doctor

He hadn't felt as confused in a very long time as he wandered aimlessly through the TARDIS. If he had thought that Rose had turned everything upside down when he had first met her, then he was completely lost for words to describe what happened now.

Rose, and most of his other companions, they had always thought they did understand. And he had done nothing to correct this belief, why would he? They had meant well, and for him it had always been saver and more comfortable to not be forced to explain himself. Not like that. Not like Mira had done by offering to listen to him, even openly admitted what she had kept secret so vehemently. Not that he was any wiser now about what had happened, other than she had done something horrible, something the Beast on Kroptor had called her the Destroyer of Stars for. A part of him had always known that the Beast hadn't lied about her, just as it had said the truth about himself.

And now it was bugging him what exactly she had done. Not that it would change anything. She would still be the same person, with or without him knowing. And it was not just a phrase for him, he knew it truly wouldn't matter. Not after getting to know her like he had. Not after what he had seen and done in his own life.

And there it was. He could never tell her. Not even though he could very well remember how he had thought, not too long ago, that her ways had rubbed off on him. It was true, they both rather solved their issues on their own, but, in contrast to himself, she had a way of finally confronting others, of putting things on the table, even though rather other people's issues than her own.

It was then when he realised that he was not wandering that aimlessly. He was looking for Mira. She certainly didn't deserve to be left all alone right now, not after opening up to him, if only to prove that she would understand. And yes, maybe she would. Of course he had no intention to tell her, not ever, but at least he could imagine that maybe one day he would, finding a tiny bit of comfort in this thought, this idea. And he could imagine how she would not judge him, not see him as the monster he was. The murderer of his own people. Not out of an accident or anything, he had exactly known what he was doing, and it hadn't stopped him.

He finally found her in the gardens, sitting in the red grass, leaning with her back against a big tree. She was staring into space, not turning her head as he sat down next to her.

They sat there in silence for a while, and as he was almost certain she would not tell him anything, she asked, "What about the centre of Andromeda galaxy?"

"What about it?" he replied and turned his head to her, only to find her still staring into space.

"It's still there? And if so, no weird formation of stars there? Like a hexagon?"

"No.. No, no such thing. And yes, it's still there. Why wouldn't it?"

"Well, in my universe, there was a formation like that, hidden right in it's very centre. Six stars in a perfect hexagon. Forming the gate for a gigantic transmitter. Another one was in the centre of our own galaxy, linking them. They have been built over fifty-thousand years ago, by an ancient people who we call the first mankind. The ancestors of most humanoid species in our galaxy. Humans, Arkons, -"

"But you descended from apes!" he couldn't help but interrupt her. Not for a moment he had considered it could be different for her and humanity in her galaxy.

"No we didn't. Sorry to disappoint you. Well, there were humanoids on Earth for which you could say evolved from apes. But this first mankind, as they degenerated, sort of mixed with them, prehistoric men and such. But no, we did not directly descend from apes, only remotely. There are a few traces in our DNA showing that, but mainly we descended from that first mankind."

"That's not possible." He still couldn't quite believe it. She was too similar to humanity here for that to be true.

"Trust me, I've seen them, back then on Earth, and spoken to them. And yes, we travelled back in time. Anyway. Apart from obviously dwelling on Earth, their realm was huge. Spanning almost our whole galaxy, including parts of Andromeda. That's why they built those transmitters."

"What happened to them?" he asked after a moment of silence, not quite sure if she would continue, for she seemed to be lost in those memories.

"They simply overdid it; at least in our galaxy. They expanded much too fast and too far, not quite to the liking of others there. They were finally forced to retreat to Andromeda. Once there, their empire was undermined, silently destroyed and overtaken from within. It's actually a long and complex story with a lot of time travel involved. Those who took over it called themselves Master of the Isle. As in Isle of Stars, or Galaxy. They actually changed history to be able to do so. They took over Andromeda, with their reign based on pure terror. Probably that's the reason why they never really made it back to our galaxy. They were just too busy subjugating the population in Andromeda. Or maybe they weren't aware that the transmitter in our galaxy was still there and working. Who knows. I mean, normally one tries to avoid going right to the centre of a galaxy. So did we, for a long time, having no idea that it was there. Until we found it again, got stuck in its gravitational field and pulled right through it. Of course we didn't arrive in the centre of Andromeda, but a bit outside, as our transmission was unauthorized and got rerouted. Hell, their security systems were still working, after all this time. It didn't take them long to realise that we might pose a threat."

"Did you?"

"No! How could we? We certainly didn't approve with what they were doing, and yes, we would have liked to help the races of Andromeda but freeing a whole galaxy and openly opposing them? No way. At least we didn't plan it, but by merely using their transmitter and fighting our way out of their traps we got up against each other. And they remembered all too well our ancestors and their abilities. It was them, after all, who had constructed the foundations of their empire. Long story short, we had sound evidence that they were planning to invade our galaxy and wipe us out, if they couldn't force us to obey. So the only way to stop them was to destroy the transmitter in Andromeda, as there was no way to reach our galaxy with a fleet without the transmitter."

"Sound evidence?" he asked, even though he didn't doubt it had been there – or at least, back then, they had thought so. Sometimes things appeared to be quite different when looking back.

"We already were in the middle of a war with them, if that's sound enough. We wouldn't consider destroying a hexagon made up with suns, existing for over fifty-thousand years because we thought that maybe at some point they would consider-"

"Mira, I didn't say that," he interrupted her, as she had raised her voice quite a bit, defending her and the actions of her people back then.

"You should have seen it," she continued in a more quiet way again. "A whole fleet could pass through it and materialise in the other galaxy within seconds. I still sometimes try to imagine how it must have been back then when it was used for the purpose it was built for; travelling safely between our galaxy and Andromeda."

"You probably could have put it to its original use again," he suggested.

"Probably. It was not that we didn't try everything we could think of, before considering to destroy something like that. But, back then we saw no other way. And even so, it was more than unlikely we would succeed. We thought that destroying one or two of those sun would be enough to render it useless, but, apart from overcoming their defences, destroying a star is not that easy. We could do it, but it takes time, and resources, and... Well, all things we didn't have. And we needed to be fast. Forcing a star to go supernova is doable, but back then it took months and months. So we had to find another way. There already was research, but nothing even close to being ready. So Dr. Kalup and I were to work on it and find a way to destroy that thing. Mind you, I knew what we were doing, I knew it the whole time, but did I think of it as a weapon? Me, who spent quite some time on trying to understand how scientists could ever work on developing weapons. Do you know Oppenheimer?"

"Yeah, met him once, great scientist, but never quite the same after..."

"Yeah. I thought I understood it. Dammit, I read everything I could get my hands on, and I swear, I thought I understood and I would never make the same mistake. And yet I just did it. Without realising it, I repeated history. We thought we were doing what had to be done, that's it. There was no alternative, nothing we hadn't tried already. Kalup was a great scientist as well, by the way. And no, he never was the same again after it. He never talked about it, not once. But I knew. He could hide it from everyone, including himself, but-"

"But not from you," he finished her sentence, and she silently shook her head. "So you did find a way to do it?" He couldn't quite believe it, even after all he had heard about humans in her universe.

"We did. As said, Kalup was a genius. But we couldn't have done it without the other. And our team. But we were to lead the project, and the major work was done by the two of us. I was still working as a scientist back then, you know. If I'd said no, we most likely hadn't been able to do it at all – not in time at least."

"But how?"

"It was called Wiezold-Effect. Don't ask. He was the guy who first wrote about it. It was based on specific particles, called hyperinmestrons. With them it is possible to convert energy into anti-energy. Just like anti-matter, but... Well, you know, don't you? It took a lot of work to really work it all out, and then we still couldn't directly use it on a sun. So we created a massive formation of energy by blowing up a ship, loaded up to the roof with fission-bombs, transformed it to anti-energy and let it collide with a star. And it worked. We tested it on remote stars without planets, three times. It worked. We ran simulations, knowing that the conditions within the centre of a galaxy are quite different from those in remote areas. There were concerns regarding the five-dimensional effects and what would happen with stars so close together in the centre of Andromeda. Their hyper-dimensional fields almost touch each other. But then again, the transmitter itself was a five-dimensional inferno every time it was used. And nothing happened. We were almost certain it would work. I don't know what I've missed."

"What happened?"

She sighed and replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper, "Don't you already know?"

He did. The only thing which could have happened. The one thing she had thought would not happen. And yet, he still couldn't quite believe it, couldn't believe they had really done it. Humans. She had been right earlier. Touching things they never should have touched. It was as brilliant – as it took a lot of knowledge and intelligence to work out such a thing - as it was stupid to even consider doing it.

"There was a chain reaction," she finally continued after he remained silent. "The one thing we had hoped would not happen, the one thing I was almost sure would not happen. It was an inferno. In the end almost every single star in a radius of about twenty light-years blew up. Even stars as far away as ten-thousand light-years showed signs of increased activity over the next months. There was a hyper-storm throughout the whole galaxy, lasting for two weeks. I don't know how many ships got lost or destroyed due to that. We ourselves hardly escaped." She paused for a moment, shaking her head slightly. And then continued, confirming his creeping suspicion that that hadn't been all. "The corner-stars of the transmitter in our galaxy started to increase their activity due to back coupling effects between them. A month later they went supernova and exploded. There were other, smaller, transmitters between Andromeda and our galaxy, which also got unstable, if only temporarily. They were all connected. But at least they didn't get destroyed."

Even though he was able to imagine what had happened before she had told him, he was left speechless – something which didn't happen too often. Humans. They had to dabble with everything, hadn't they? And yet, at the same time, he could understand them, understand her. Wasn't it just what always happened? As she had put it, repeated history. Certainly it didn't make it any better, but at the same time, it was not on him to judge her. As all these conflicting thoughts went through his mind, an image become clearer, until it was outshining everything else. Light, so bright that not even the filters in front of the lenses which projected it on a screen somewhere in a spaceship could prevent it from hurting the eyes. The world – no, the whole universe – around it was on fire, exploding, devoured by nuclear fire, and this image was accompanied by an all consuming feeling of utter horror and denial to believe what was happening. It took him a bit to realise that it wasn't him making up this image, but her remembering that moment.

Had he, just a moment ago, intended to go into a rant about stupidity of intelligent beings in general and humans in particular, telling her nothing she didn't already know, he remained silent now. Not that he had really wanted to tell all these things, but he couldn't get out of his skin after all, and this was his way of dealing with what he had just heard. But, just as much as he was enraged by such stupidity, and at least from his point of view it had been nothing but that, he felt sorry for her. There had been no right, or even less worse, option back then. One could still argue if saving her galaxy justified that amount of destruction, but it was always easy to judge from a save distance.

He had his head turned to her, and he could see how she tried to watch him out of the corner of her eye, apparently not daring to turn her head.

Still somehow lost for words, he just pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her.


A/n: It felt as they deserved a bit more talking-time. But next Chapter will be the next episode :-)

heroherondaletotherescue, OneWhoReadsToMuch, bored411, E-man-dy-S, .54, NeoMulder, Nevermore: Thanks for leaving a review :-)

Nevermore: Really? I didn't want to make it that bad, dramatic yes, but definitely not angst. At least not completely. Sure it's definitely not all happy smiling and sunshine, but I don't think I've put that much abuse, mentally or physically, or dysfunctional relationship topics or anything I would consider angst in there. :/ I'm sorry that it seems like that to you.