Everything ends
-o0O0o-
Hello my lovely reader,
if you come this far, I applaud and thank you, because this shows you had more patience with this story than me myself.
Thank you so much for this.
The last two years were extremely difficult and brought a lot of change into my life which led me to lose touch with this story and fandom. I really wanted to finish this, as writing this story was a huge part of my life and also taught me lots of lessons, both about myself and writing.
I really love this and wouldn't have come back to this so often otherwise, however I just don't have the energy and time anymore. So, I give you a summary and outline where this was supposed to go and how it should have ended. Warnings for major Character Deaths apply.
-o0O0o-
The next chapter was planned to be a drabble collection, which I wrote to get a better grip on Team TARDIS, however, I just didn't. There was something about Bill and Twelve talking about what Bill had learned about the Time War and the Doctor destroying Gallifrey, one of the infamous Game nights, a girls night out with Tella and Bill chilling in a bar, and Tella zooming off to hunt down the Monks from Season 10 Ep 6-8. I know, I teased them coming and originally had planned a whole chapter going parallel to Lie of the Land, but then realized they had to deal with Tella properly and thus just noped out of there, not choosing that timeline with her there to overtake. It's also a hint for the end of this story. Oh, and banther between Nardole and Tella, cause while Nardole is the Team Mom, Tella is the widowed weird Grandma/ Aunt, unknowingly enabling the chaotic kids and then wondering when everything went wrong. As I said before, she's a lot fonder of Twelve than Eleven.
-o0O0o-
Back to the Story. Instead of the Monk fiasco, we get a greater fiasco. I thought long and hard about actually Including this Arc because in combination with the finale it's bit much and it is the ultimate Time Travel Fic Trope, but in the end choose to keep it in.
Kate Stewart just walks into the Doctors Office one day with something to show him at the Unit Base. They collect Bill and Tella and go there just to find an alien in an isolation Chamber. Just not any alien, but a Kapoaka, and not just any Kapoaka, but Sheila aka Tella. Turns out there are a few things our dear Timelord didn't tell the group.
The Problem is, she is already Infected with the Ebsai-Flu, but if they heal her, they never meet. The Doctor and Tella have a big argument about her not telling him about this, but ultimately agree to bring her back to the colony as he has no choice. And so damming everyone to die but get the Cure and Tella out of it. (If you're confused by now, read the prequel to this Story called Leviathan and then come back.) Nadole stays back and deals with the infected and decontamination.
On the Colony they get a big welcome and everything seems fine at first but when the leader and current head of the Hive doesn't acknowledge the sickness spreading, Tella and the Doctor dethrone him with the help of the two other Timelords in typical scheming Time Lord fashion.
Bill is fascinated how the Doctor sticks out like a sore thumb while Tella manages a surprisingly well-adjusted balance of fitting right in and still being her new self.
Kelliox of course is there, and we see that lovely ray of sunshine finally doing something.
They doesn't recognize Tella at first so there are some awkward shenanigans of, hey we really work and fit well together but I'm married and you don't want my wife after you, and Tella secretly dying of laughter and simultaneously working with Bill though her repressed feeling of betrayal she just now uncovered. They did betray her to the Galifreyan High Council to put her into that watch because she was too mentally unstable, after all.
Kelliox and Twelve don't get along at all. The Doctor has still resentments against them because of their ultimatum they gave him on the leviathan, and Kelliox is just confused by that weird Renegade, but tries because they like Tella and Bill.
The scout ship that will become the Leviathan needs to be completely overhauled because it still runs on old gallifreyan technology, and Tella suggests the Doctor and Kelliox work together as the Doctor had found an alternative way to power the TARDIS. Bill mediates between the two until they pull themselves together and find a common ground for working together. Unfortunately, as the genius they are, Kelliox immediately concludes that yes, at one point the TARDIS run on Dimensional Rift energy but is now powered once more by the Eye of Harmony. Which means Gallifrey exists, contrary to what the three told them and the whole colony. The doctor acknowledges that, but gives no further explanation, and Kelliox pierces everything together as they know by now who Tella is. They are melancholic about it but accept their fate surprisingly graceful, like the non-Timelord they are. Yes, Kelliox left the academy somewhere in their Sixties, but became famous, nevertheless. Everyone just assumes they are a Time Lord and they always humbly correct that. I might tell that story another time.
Team TARDIS leaves once the Infection can't no longer contained, and only then Bill figures out what's going to happen and is not happy to leave them to die. Tella chooses to stay with Kelliox, but they trick her by letting the Doctor manifest the TARDIS around her and thus taking her with him again. She still has half of her life before her, after all, she's in her seventh Regeneration. She accepts their choice, but allows herself to finally cry over Kelliox and her grief for them for one single time.
-o0O0o-
After a small timejump, there's a scoby-doooesque Episode where one of Tella's tenants insist one of her properties is haunted and they go and investigate, just to find out it's a half destroyed shatterpoint. Basically, multiple Timelines exist and manifest simultaneously, which is why there are two Georgian Children running around the house while a WWII solider is seeking for his daughter.
She is pretty concerned because she can't explain it other than with the Monks failed takeover, but fixes it.
-o0O0o-
Empress of Mars happens like in the Show, except Nardole runs though the half of London to get to the Bookshop where Tella works, to get the TARDIS out of the wall she emergency phased into. And then back to Mars of course. Missy never gets free. Turns out, Tella is a really good pilot, in case you didn't know that already. She doesn't break the promise, she overcomes it.
-o0O0o-
Eaters of the Light is… there, I guess, with the change again, Tella is piloting, not Missy. They talk about giving Missy a chance, tho and the Doctor agrees to do so after one last adventure and that Tella should be the one choosing what Missy has to do. Tella allows the randomizer and so that of course never happens.
-o0O0o-
The TARDIS gets pulled in by something and – you guess it- appears on Gallifrey. Tella reads the Display and goes pale while the Doctor puts his head out of the Door, takes one look and slams it shut again, going still with a grimace on his face as well.
Both have to tell the other something.
It turns out both knew Gallifrey was back, the Doctor from the fiasco with Clara, and Tella because she ran into some CIA-Agents who took a look at her and ran- which amused her at the time. Until they stated stealing from her collection. And then tortured and basically brainkilled Aivex. The Hints were there the whole time.
The TARDIS is grounded, so they can't leave. Tella is a wanted criminal and the Doctor's status is unknown but probably not friendly. Bill is a Human who has no place here. Nardole is the only one not in Danger right now. And There are already vehicles on the way. Which suddenly force the TARDIS into Siege Mode.
Tella, Bill and the Doctor get out, Nardole stays to keep it save and find a way to get them out of here.
They run and are able to flee into silver leaved forests which disrupt the sensors of the search parties, but they get separated.
Bill holes herself up in a tree and waits but falls unconscious at a point. She wakes up in a cell created by forcefield, in a tent. The General we already know interrogates her once they find her awake. It turns out, Rassilon -mad as he is, didn't just leave but came back immediately after the Doctor left and there's now a full-blown civil war going on between the Citadel and the Gallifreyan people. There are some Time Lords fighting against Rassilon but most fall in line behind him.
Bill has protection from both the Doctor and Tella in her mind so she's an anomaly the Gallifreyans need to figure out. She can convince them that Tella isn't danger anymore, and they even allow her to walk freely. T
ella is heartbroken about the state of her planet. They came out of the Time War just to get into another one and there is nothing of the Time Lords left. So, she gets into rebuilding and everyone gets confused because she's not teaching fighting techniques but basic education.
In the end it doesn't matter, as the Doctor is scheduled to be openly executed. They try a rescue attempt but fail, getting injured and caught, too. And naturally as soon as the Doctor is erased out of Existence, the Universe itself unravels and everyone realizes it might have been a bad Idea.
The Timelords get rid of Rassilon himself and desperately search for a way to make up that mistake, which turn out to be a timeline shift with merely one casualty. Basically, Tella only needs to die before she ever reaches her second regeneration, which will turn this breaking Universe into an Alternative Universe and in reality, Tella and eleven/ Sheila and Twelve had never met.
Tella is of course pissed, and Bill horrified. But ultimately, against all protests Tella agrees.
For the Universe. For Gallifey and Time itself.
So Time resets.
Amy and The Doctor travel from a Starwhale to get tea with Churchill immediately, still 3 months late but with no detours.
She never went to Dandelicon IV or to Naar or the other 74 lost systems, she never read the 1001 Tales of Ctaxoplaxar , or went on a girls day. She never got gifted with a horrendous scarf she still wore because her friend liked it and never spent her nights in an old jazz bar once the Angles had gotten her and Rory.
And when the Doctor carried on after them, when he finally after a long long sulking time got another companion and regenerated and lost his precious Clara to the fear of a power mad tyrant, when he had settled down, first with his wife and then on a university where he found another companion and guarded an old friend who wanted to be good, he stepped on mars in the Victorian age.
And this time there wasn't another Time Lord working in a bookshop in another part of the town, and so they opened the vault. And the Doctor fell.
-o0O0o-
The TARDIS exists in the eternal present of time, everywhere and nowhere all at once.
She is not unaffected if the universe rewrites itself, but she can keep snippets, reminders to herself that it happened and that something is different.
That's why deep in the library there's a photograph tucked away in an old copy of a Book whit an untranslatable Title, of three people in ugly Christmas sweaters: an old tall white man with attack eyebrows, a young brown woman widely grinning with both her arms on the shoulders of another older white woman in the middle of her forties with a wide smile and a little twinkle of madness in her four colored eyes.
On its back is a Poem, because as we all know, Stories are where memories go, when they are forgotten.
-o0O The End O0o-
When the world crashes down around you, let your flame burn even brighter.
Never stop chasing your dreams.
Stay save.
For the very last time, and with the highest gratitude,
Greetings
alkatie
KD 25.06.2022