The Doctor stood before her, silent, his shoulders slumped and his hands jammed into his trouser pockets.
"What?" She asked it quietly, but her glance bit into his soul.
"I'm sorry," he repeated gently, his eyes fixed upon the laces of his white tennis shoes.
"Say it again." She was fuming now, her nostrils twitching.
"I'm sorr-"
"Stop it! Not that! You know damn well what I mean!"
"Sydney must be destroyed," the Doctor repeated slowly, forcing his gaze into hers'. "The Australian government simply blames it on the nuclear reactor. The environmental pact signed by the nations of the world falls apart around the same period. With the failure of the Polar Sweep to produce any revenue from the ocean floor, the rape of Antarctica begins." He let out a little sigh. "It's part of history. I can't stop it."
"It's not my history!" she snapped. "Not yet!" She sucked her lower lip, her eyes filling with tears, but there was no way she was going to blink. No way. "We have to stop it."
"There's nothing I-"
"You always do. You always think of something. Always! It's what you do!" She was yelling now, but she didn't care. This wasn't part of some subterfuge, some desperate plan. There was no one to trick, no one to fool. Just her. Some part of her soul, deep within her, went cold as she stared into his wide, round eyes as she realized that he simply wasn't going to do anything. Worst of all, he wasn't even going to try.
"That's my home!" Tegan cried desperately.
He took a slow step back as she yelled at him. His voice, when he responded, was low and steady. "Millions of people are going to die," he began. "You think I don't care...?"
"Then why don't you do something?"
"It's history, Tegan! I can't change this any more than I could save the population of Chernobyl!" His eyes were wrinkled in confusion. His voice cracked an octave higher. "Tegan, even you, you must realize by now, please... there's nothing I- nothing we can do..."
"Even me?" she took a deep breath and took a step towards him, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, and faced him, pinning him with her eyes again. He flinched as if he expected her to hit him.
And she asked It.
Her knees were wobbly, her armpits were sweating, and her injured leg was starting to swell and if she was going to die anyway and if he was too and if Nyssa would never know and if it was all for nothing and "If it was me on that freighter, not Adric, would you have gone back for me?"
The Doctor's mouth hung open as he stared at her in disbelief.
Tegan expected a 'no.' She didn't want to hear it, but she could have handled it. A 'yes' was a response that a tiny part of her desperately wanted to hear. It was a childish question, she knew that, but she didn't care. Not now. Not anymore. She had turned the question over and over in her mind after having to watch Adric die, that harsh white light searing over the scanner screen, blinding her.
She just always thought that she never really wanted to hear the answer. Because, deep down, she knew what it would be.
But he just stood there, his pale face fading to a deathly shade that was whiter than his polo sweater. Even the celery on his lapel seemed to wilt slightly as he stood speechless.
No, she thought, not speechless, the Doctor could never be speechless. It was more like he couldn't wrap his mind around how she could have even thought of asking such a question. Like he couldn't know what it was like to lie there at night wondering what if the Cyberleader had picked her to stay on that doomed ship, not Adric. Sometimes she wished that he had. Like he couldn't work out why some one could feel that way. To feel something so irrational and so stupid, something so human.
They were still standing like that, facing each other in silence, when the guards came back and escorted them back to the command center.
It was only after the bulkhead doors sissed shut behind them and they stood before Alexi and his thugs once more that she remembered that other moment. Despite all the whiteness that had dazed her eyes, from the anti-matter explosion, the blues and greens dancing and swimming across her retina, a half-seen image was still imprinted on her mind. One that she had overlooked and forgotten, buried under the impact of the moment. Of looking across the console and seeing that expression on his face. That expression of pain, disbelief, and utter helplessness. And she realized that she had never seen him look so human as in that single, dreadfully wonderful moment.
Alexi stood before the repaired consoles, and turned a to face them. "Thank you, Doctor, we have accessed the mainframe. You have been most helpful."
The Doctor looked at Alexi for a moment and bit his lip as if considering. He threw a glance at Tegan who was held beside him. "I suppose it's useless of me to ask you to stop this."
Alexi merely flashed him a quick smile, before he returned his attention to the consoles, muttering advice to his comrades.
But I have to, thought the Doctor.
"Useless to point out that if the U.N. peace-keeping forces had arrived an hour earlier, your family would be alive today!" shouted the Doctor desperately.
A hit.
Tegan could have sworn the Doctor just made that up.
Alexi swung round and stormed over to the Doctor. "Easy to say Doctor! I was six when my family was murdered in Sariaveo! The 'peace-keepers' never arrived," he spat.
"But what if they had-"
"Nobody cared Doctor! The world watched on TV while we died and were torn apart. No one cares!" Alexi was screaming now, flecks of spittle dotted his upper lip.
The Doctor pressed home. "But you do. You must. Think of what you're doing! You're starting a war where people will die without knowing even why they died. And no one will care. Think of all the Alexis' you'll be creating if you do this, denying them a future, making a future like yours!"
Alexi stared at the Doctor, his breathing hoarse, eyes wide.
"You have the choice to stop all this Alexi. You don't have to recreate the past. Only you-"
"Doctor," Alexi cut him off. He held out his hand. "Do you have a billion pounds to give me?"
The Doctor was suddenly quiet.
"Then this conversation ends now." Alexi snapped, and he turned away.
Tegan looked to the Doctor and there were tears were in her eyes, not because her home was about to be destroyed, not because they had lost, but because someone did care. She mouthed a silent "Thank you," to him, but she wasn't sure he could see.
A low, thunder filled the room and rocked them all on their feet.
"Report," snapped Alexi.
"We've lost contact with the supply ship!" yelled Andrei.
Another roll of thunder ran through them.
A section of the ceiling collapsed in a flurry of steel and concrete that smothered Alexi and his men. The guards tossed Tegan and the Doctor into the corner as they ran to help their fellows.
"Sounds like air-surface missiles."
"Looks like your signal made it out," muttered Tegan under her breath as she nursed her bruised leg. "Lousy aim though."
A fire had broken out and the smoke began to fill the room. The troops ran about in confusion, most of them abandoning the center. Alexi lay unconscious on the edge of the debris.
"Be grateful," countered the Doctor as he helped her up. "Come on, let's get out of here."
They half-walked, half-stumbled across the control center. They made it to the frame of the exit corridor when the big one hit.
Tegan felt that same stomach-shrinking feeling she had in her car when she was nine years old with her parents and got hit head-on. The same sense of time going all syrupy around her and the mental shock as her mind retreated to some other, happier, place.
She watched the girder shear off from the gantries above and fall in a gentle arc to the floor, and neatly slice off Alexi's head.
She felt the wall beside her buckle and throw her out along the floor, skidding to a rest back in the corner of the room.
She watched a metal strut spring free and smack the Doctor full across his chest and saw him slam into the ground, winded and bleeding.
She saw him raise his head and stare at the control panel, at the device that would send the signal that no one was left alive to send.
Perhaps watching the birth throes of the universe changes you, stares within you and burns as you see the spasms of creation as light beyond time funnel around you.
She watched him lever his chest up off the cold gray floor and stare at the console.
Seeing her friend die in that same light, and flinching as a small, precious, intangible part of her burst quietly. Painfully.
Like suddenly waking up.
Or maybe growing up.
A smushed smear of green wetness lay upon the floor, scraped off the front of his jacket lapel, as he started to slowly pull himself toward the damaged control panels.
You aren't safe, you can be hurt. Permanently. It was a realization that had some how sauntered up and smashed a bottle of wine across her face. Red wine.
It was something she hadn't expected. Her world had changed in those few seconds as she watched Adric die. Just because you are with him doesn't matter.
But she was with him.
A groan escaped his lips as he pulled himself closer to the terminals, but his face was set and his eyes were determined. He was almost there.
She had few real friends in school and they had faded softly into memory. She was only plagued by the odd fit of tears, the random wave of loneliness that crashed into her as she lay in her bed huddled around her pillow within the TARDIS, in the dark of "night."
He slumped against the base panels, and fumbled with his left hand, blindly groping atop the console.
Abducted, threatened, mauled, insulted, patronized, possessed, infected... Hell, she had fought, whined and bitched her way across space and time. Begging to be taken back to a life and time she didn't even have anymore. Never had. Or wanted. Arguing and complaining in every tunnel, every quarry, every corridor, and on every alien world that no one else on Earth would ever see.
Just her. Tegan Jovanka. Who got canned as a waitress on her first day because she couldn't figure out how to work out the register tape.
Despite everything, despite all their fights, all her tears, he was her friend. Her only real friend left anywhere.
His face contorted with pain as he stretched his hand towards the launch controls.
To destroy her home.
Tegan Jovanka, a sacked air-stewardess from Sydney, had a friend who was a Lord of Time.
And he needed her.
She cradled her dislocated arm and staggered toward him.
Knelt beside him.
He acknowledged her presence, turning his head to her, his eyes glazed white with pain.
She took his hand in his. Guided it to the launch control.
And together, they pressed it.