Fhoop.
Fhoop.
Fhoop.
The white dashes flashed outside the window, streaking off into the night as the car sped along the highway. Tegan pressed her nose against the glass, leaving a small daub of grease nestled within the cloud of moisture that her breath blessed, again and again, onto the cold window.
Fhoop.
Fhoop.
Fhoop.
Tegan kicked her little feet back and forth, high above the dirty floor mat, invisible in the dark. Kicking in little circles, her tiny legs possessed dervishes as she occasionally, just occasionally, bounced off the leg of the other, older girl in the back seat with her, letting her know whose side of the car was whose. Two shadowy heads, mounted with tufts of hair occupied the front seats and in front of the car was a movie screen, impossibly fixed in place as the car flew through the night.
On the screen was a blazing sun, that was an imaginary, unsun-like color, that filled the screen. Around it were worlds, worlds that merged and shimmered, like molten wax within a lava lamp, the globules wobbling and joining before parting and boing-boing-boinging away on to their orbits, their journey making a song that not even the silent void of space could silence; it was a system delighting in life, shouting, crying, rejoicing in this new Universe.
Tegan was bored. She shifted uncomfortably, staring out the window again, pulling up her feet to sit her rump on them, straining awkwardly under the cloying embrace of the seatbelt that held her fast. Outside the window the world was smothered in darkness as black as the space on the movie screen; all she could see was the quick, quick motion as the painted dashes on the road swept passed, fhoop, fhoop, fhooping off into nothing.
The screen caught her eye again as the worlds frolicked in their playground of absolute zero, spinning and dancing that could only be seen through the fast forward of memories, their motions too small and slow to be noticed by a child's eye. But this was a movie and Tegan loved movies and her little eyes grew wide with delight as she wished to join them, to fly away out of this car, to dance and feel the sunlight.
The view changed suddenly, to the edge of the playground, where the other stars glittered darkly, cold and icy, flickering as a small, black shape slipped passed them, sinking unnoticed into one of the jovial outer worlds of the system, disappearing in the gaseous dermis, unfelt, its touch precise and perfect.
The worlds continued their dance, uncaring, unaware, slipping past their swollen brother, altering their orbits and crashing into each other with increased speed and frivolity, not noticing the black clouds that stirred and gathered, swarming and storming across the vast surface of the world before dissipating from the blue and garnet sky once more.
One of the smaller, pink felsic worlds leapt joyfully into its recovered brother, slipping through its surface, friendly and caring as it tucked and wriggled through non-Euclidean space. When it emerged on the other side, it wobbled, its axial tilt just slightly off, its precision erratic as the black clouds licked and frothed through its skies as it had through its brother, before disappearing again. The little felsic world jiggled and twisted before joining the dance once more, reveling in the solar music.
And on and on the darkness spread, merging and swarming before sinking below the surfaces of many worlds, blue or scarlet, bubbly or stagnant.
One world, the runt, did not dance with the rest, preferring the close embrace of its mother sun, swimming alongside despite the flares and the blistering heat. It did not dance, but looked eternally inward, in awe of what birthed it, in love, undeveloped and stunted in size, its heart delighting in the warmth given so freely.
It never saw the plague that infested its brethren. Not until it was far, far too late.
Just as the dance was peaking, the music and mathematics reaching an ecstasy rhythmic harmony, the blackness ruptured through the skin of the worlds, clawing through the surface, swarming through the skies, leaving behind sravaged hredded planetary husks as they lunged for the sun, diving through the flares and flaming tongues and burrowing into the center of the star, tearing and biting their way through its blessed light.
The turbulence rocked the runt from orbit as the shadowy ravens sped passed, intent on their kill, and it rode the charged solar currents of its mother's agony into the Oort clouds, whinging and cringing among the black specks for a cloak, for protection as it watched its mother fight against the invaders, before they reached her heart and leached it of life, laughing as they watched the star swell and nova, its last raging fire swallowing her children's corpses in a final effort to save their decimated spirits, that were long ago scattered against the galactic tides.
Leaving the expanding sun, the shadows turned as one to the blasted system, hunting and searching for the lost world, the runt. But tear and claw as they might, they could find no trace, spreading their search further and further outward, their ranks thinning and thinning as they began to search for new systems, for new prey and breeding grounds as they sank back into the dimensional cracks that crackled throughout the young universe.
The tiny world felt them sweep near, almost brushing her surface as they passed, and slowly, ever so slowly, she crept back to her mother's body, as the chaos of the system coalesced and reformed worlds, cold worlds, strange and lifeless, around her.
The runt knew she must hide before the shadows, the Ruiners, returned to claim her, so it allowed the molten rock that littered the system to coat her hide, masking her, shielding her, encasing her, gradually slowing into an orbit to watch its new mother reform and burn, but without the spirit, without the warmth it once gave.
Here hidden, it watched life come and go on its surface, some life sputtering and spreading to other worlds briefly before vanishing, despite her attempts to awaken the other worlds, or her mother's spirit. Alone she waited, harboring life upon her surface, waiting, waiting in fear- always watching, always waiting for the darkness to return from beyond.
Tegan kicked the seat in front of her, horrified by the plight of the little world, orphaned and alone. Tegan stared at the sun as it faded from the screen, turning back to her window, her mouth pouting as her mind thought, over and over:
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't right.
Fhoop.
Fhoop.
Fhoop.
"Come on Doctor, come on, wake up," Turlough muttered as he stared at the invisible device. The only light in the cellar had been smashed when the clashing Titans had taken out the ceiling; light filtered down through the massive hole of splinters and dust. Even as Turlough watched the floor/ceiling seemed to be repairing itself as the Watchtower healed its wounds.
Unfortunately, the Doctor was immune to Turlough's muttering and repeated glares, remaining prone, on his back, the black goop Tegan had thrown at him filling his gaping wound, swirling and bubbling, his body covered by the shadows that began to flood into the room once more.
Turlough could swear there was a keypad on the device; he could see the faint edges under the layer of dust that had fallen on it, his every breath threatening to disturb it. Swearing at his own stupidity, Turlough bent down and began to scoop up dust and dirt and fragments from the wreckage that was the cellar floor and dumped them on top of the Gallifreyan unit.
Wincing as he felt bits of metal and flakes of wood stabbing into his hands, he cursed as he saw the complex keypad materialize beneath the powder and crud. It looked vaguely like the dematerialization controls from the TARDIS, only older, more primitive. He doubted he would be able to decipher it.
"Now would be a good time, Doctor," he grumbled as the crashing upstairs grew louder. "Anytime…"
Think, think, think.
Super Tegan came here for a reason… why? To destroy this control unit? Or just to wait for… The Doctor? Or whatever was inside the Doctor? What did it want, control of this device? To use it or destroy it?
Turlough grabbed a piece of lumber and raised it over the device, his mind racing. Would destroying it help the Doctor, or help Super Tegan? Or was it exactly what that thing inside the Doctor wanted?
Turlough hefted the piece of wood.
If nothing else, smashing it would make him feel better. And at least it would be something, which was better than doing nothing… surely?
Turlough slumped to his knees and groaned at the device in anguish.
It sat there, uncaring.
It was only then that Turlough noticed that the Doctor was gone.
The Ruiner had changed, evolved, Tegan considered as she slammed it through the dining room table and then rammed it, face first through the ceiling, and into the upstairs bathtub. With each blow, she could feel the swarm inside it, twisting, seething to get out, but it was nowhere near as strong as she'd last seen it, when it had destroyed her peers and raped her moons that she'd left behind. It was weaker, barely existing in this reality, its blows ineffectual against her battle suit, desperate, as she'd thought, to access the well, the link to her core, her center, her weak point.
Four billion years of evolution, Tegan smirked as she launched herself through the ceiling and dropkicked the creature in the 'face'.
Look who's the Beast now! Beg for my mercy like you did my family!
The shivering form of the Ruiner slammed through the wall and fell to the lawn, sprawling on the ground, its nearly incorporeal form a parody of the man it had infested, limbs and torso spitting tendrils that thrashed and bit at the lawn, as it pulled itself to the crumbing well that lay scant feet way.
Tegan's face glowed with fervor as she leapt it, her sword arching to scythe it in two.
And then, as she fell from the sky, her hair flaming red in the setting sunlight, her blade slitting the air with fury, the black form twisted and morphed and it was gone- replaced by the pale form of the Doctor, standing at the well directly beneath her plummeting form, slumped over the well, his arms outstretched over the rusted metal pole, his head dangling over, staring into the black depths, the black feathery shadows of the Ruiner twisting under his cream jacket.
In the cellar, Turlough was in mid-groan when he heard a bleep bleep sound chime in the darkness.
Turlough raised his head and let out a longer groan: bleeps never, ever meant anything good.
Tegan sighed. She was dead bored. The little girl next to her was kicking the seat again. The movie had grabbed the child's attention for a short while, but Tegan knew it was only a matter of time before she would be thwacking her legs again with those dreadfully painful shoes with their ghastly pink laces that seemed to glow even in the dark of the car.
Tegan leaned forward in her seat to try to see over the driver's shoulder, to try to see the digital clock, but she couldn't see. She crossed her arms again and let out another sigh, louder this time.
No one noticed. No one even looked at her. Tegan turned to her window, her eyes searching the sky for a moon or stars as they flew along, but the ground might as well be a thousand miles away, so thick was the blackness. Faint lights passed by, signs and mile markers, the faint glow of houses; lives, other lives were happening as she sat here, speeding onward. Lives, events, actions, all were hidden from her in the warmth of the car's heaters and comforting glow of the dashboard.
She could see her reflection though, pale and ghostly against the glass, her hair, long and thick, sank into the darkness around her shoulders, her ear slightly swollen from the new piercing. Her first earrings dangled from her lobe, her skin fresh and freckled with acne. Tegan sighed again at the sight and turned instead to movie screen that still hung impossibly in front of the speeding car.
Tegan tried not to look, she didn't want to gawp and gape like the child beside her, so she watched out of the corner of her eye, watching life pepper and sprout over the little world, watched ships shower down from the sky as time flashed passed, millions of years at a time. None of which held her attention, save one. One ship, silver and flashy, that did not appear from the sky, but seemingly out of nothing, plunged itself into the world's core, its blade slender and fierce, cutting into the molten heart of the planet. Then, leaving the needle still bleeding in the crust, they left.
Fascists.
Tegan frowned as the screen seemed to flash and stutter: another movie started to interweave with the first in quick, sharp licks. It was as if someone had combined two separate flipbooks together, every other page of the book a different narrative. This one was much more interesting; Tegan found herself leaning forward in her seat as a hero, seen through the hero's eyes, fought its way through a crowd of gnashing spitting bugs, sword flashing, arms weaving, hacking and slashing through the ranks of creatures which somehow Tegan knew were aiding the Ruiner, helping it to return and destroy the helpless little world.
Tegan felt her anger rise, mentally cheering the hero on as it carved through the ugly beasts before leaping heroically through the air and into a ship of dreams… and then there was a blur before the view changed again, filled with oceans and beautiful green, a world in its prime, in its glory.
Then the view swept down from the sky, taking in beaches and brown land, pitted and scarred with freeways and revolting housing complexes, crusty, wooden acne that soiled the land, as the view continued to sweep towards towers of metal and hate that bit into the earth, that bit at the sky with glass and steel forged from heat made of screaming trees and processed Earth.
Tegan fumed with anger and rage directed at whatever creatures could desecrate a world that had formed them, that had nurtured them, as the view descended up on a girl in an alley, her red dress fluttering around her in the cold night air.
The image coughed, flipping back again to the world as it formed, out of synch, out of time. Tegan watched creatures birth and swim, crawl and hatch, swarming and sleeping across the surface of the world, eating each other, the weak perishing, the strong surviving. Always the weak died, from the smallest, earliest microbe to the largest reptile, and then not even they were strong enough and the world spewed volcanic death of fire and ash, killing them all, starting afresh, slaughtering the weak, again and again and again for the world must be strong enough to survive another attack from the Ruiner, she must survive, she MUST have her revenge.
Almost as if something was tapping into her angst and rage at life, Tegan felt herself cheering as the hero leapt at the girl, attacking: smiling as she inflicted pain upon the weak, trembling woman.
When the black woman, wielding blows that could level mountains appeared, Tegan lost interest again momentarily. She wasn't interested in a losing battle.
As she stared out the window as the towns flew passed, the cloudy night skies above them, seeping with the magnesium yellow of the streetlights, Tegan was aware that the movies were still flickering, still passing, intermingling.
It was only as the hero ripped the Ruiner from the chest of man that Tegan found herself transfixed again, her fists tight and sweaty. Delighting in the destruction as it smashed its way through the house Tegan's nostrils flared, awaiting the final blow, the ultimate climax.
And then it was there:
The creature had fallen, writhing upon the ground, crawling towards the well, the gateway and as she dived towards it, it changed into a weak man, the blond man it had infested before; it was filling him, its manifestation complete as it pulled itself entirely into this dimension.
The Swarm of the Ruiner had arrived, still trapped, just barely, within this fragile, mortal, fleshy host. She had tasted its vibrations before; it was one of the ones that had pinned the blade into her core, that had wounded her, weakened her. And she saw that she could dispatch both creatures with one, single blow...
Revenge! teenage Tegan thought as she egged the hero on to raise her sword to bring it down upon the Doctor's pale neck.
It was coming from the steel cheesecake.
Turlough slowly turned to see the curdled tortoise powering up, forgotten, half-buried among the wreckage, as a hateful light of orange and purple seeped out from its fissured shell.
The beeping increased, faster and faster.
Turlough looked from the crusty turtle to the invisible device and back to the turtle again, as a slow, clawing sensation of horror began to churn his stomach. With a grisly creaking sound, a portal opened up on the yellowed and rusted flank. With a grating scream it blasted out a raging cylinder of pure energy that slapped against the control panel, burning and twisting, as it drilled through the invisible surface.
Turlough felt the earth beneath him, tremble and quake. "Oh," he began, "shi-"
But he was already sprinting for the remains of the staircase as all hell broke loose.
"Who was it that taught you to drive again?"
"You did Aunty Vanessa," Tegan replied in a tired monotone.
The tiny plastic figure dangled from the rear view mirror, swaying back and forth with the motion of the car; it had the body of an angel, with the face and hips of Tegan's aunt.
Blazing on the screen in front of Tegan was a memory of the mother sun, the particle flares and vaporizing solar heat lashed out from the screen and bathed the hood of the car in molten oranges and blistering yellows.
Tegan continued to drive, even as the fire flickered through the windscreen and boiled the flesh of her hands. "I can't even feel any more, you know that?" Tegan said in a daze. "Nothing hurts any more." Glancing in the mirror, she saw herself as a teenager, all retro hair and dark attitude, festering behind her. Next to her she saw herself as a child, pouting, cheeks puffed, chin thrust forward, determined to change the world. Beside her, in the passenger seat, her future self, old and hunched, kept fading in and out of existence; her future face was pale, lined and spotty, Tegan tried not to look too closely, and instead focused on the road, or rather on the screen, ahead of her. She felt Vanessa's eyes on her and decided to start fiddling with the radio instead.
"That's not a good sign, is it?" Her aunt blustered, grabbing the fake angel wings with her tiny hands, trying to bend and fluff them into shape. "The rest of you are certainly feeling something, I can sense it from here." She motioned to Tegan's two younger selves in the rear seat, their anger and righteousness practically blazing in dark confines of the darkened car.
Tegan sighed. "I just wanted to help. To be useful."
Vanessa took a long hard look at Tegan. "You remember Shane and Tizzy, when you were younger?"
Tegan grunted.
Vanessa pressed on. "You remember how every summer how they'd call and call and pester you to take them with you to your parent's cottage by the ocean? Do you?"
"Yes, Aunt Vanessa. I remember." Tegan was barely paying attention. Faces and images flashed across the movie screen and she was doing her best to steer, to make the best decisions, to win.
"And then remember how afterwards, every fall they wouldn't so much as speak to you, the pair of them? And then every summer, who suddenly wanted to be your best mates? I warned you about them, didn't I?"
"Yes, Aunty. I remember. You were right, I was wrong…. Do'ya mind? I'm trying to drive here!"
"Take your hands off the wheel dear." Vanessa said calmly, her tiny ball-like hands resting on her plump, quivering hips.
"Sorry?"
"Humor me, Teegs."
Very slowly, Tegan released her grip the steering wheel.
"There's a girl."
To her dazed astonishment, the wheel kept moving without her hands, as if the car was on autopilot or… or driven by... someone else…
"Just like Tizzy and Shane," finished Vanessa. "No different. No better. Worse, probably."
"This isn't a pair of brats," Tegan protested. "This is Mother Earth… a goddess." Her voice was simultaneously filled with awe and hollow with disbelief at her own words.
"Oh that's a load and you know it," Vanessa spat back. "Just another alien out for revenge, no better. All right, a very old and very large one, and possibly the sentience of the Earth itself, I'll give you that, but it's still using you, just like those two did. Doesn't give a damn about you does it? Worse of all, it makes you think you're in control!"
Tegan stared at the flames that were once again engulfing her arms and chest… it'd be so much easier just to melt away. "Just like the Mara…"
"Oh you do go on about that, don't you?"
Tegan looked up sharply, wounded.
"Girl, I'm telling you now, get over it. You beat that asp fair and square, twice. You, no one else, just you, Tegan Jovanka, you took that thing head on and where is it now? Not anywhere that I can see. Take some credit and stand up for yourself for once. Can't you see you're letting this thing feed on your juevenile anger and rage. Yes, Tegan it's in you: anger, hate and violence, it's in you, alive and well. It's in all of us. So you can either sit there simpering like a cretin or you can pull yourself together and get on with it. Are you part of this family or are you the weak link this goddess seems to think she keeps breeding?"
Tegan frowned. "What exactly do you expect me to do?" she asked, motioning to the steering wheel that was still moving on its own. "I'm not exactly in control, am I?"
Vanessa sighed, shaking her plastic little head. "After all this time about everyone complaining how useless you are…you've been given the power of a god, isn't it about time you started doing something with it?" she asked hopelessly and stared pointedly at the handbrake. "Didn't you learn anything from me?"
Tegan blinked.
Old Tegan blinked.
Teenage Tegan blinked.
Young Tegan blinked.
On the screen in front of the four Tegans, towered the face of the Doctor, pained and blistering as the wishing well roared as the very fires of hell poured out of the depths to consume him, his eyes were wide and pleading, staring at her as she leapt from the sky, blade held high, fell to slaughter him, and she saw in his eyes as he realized what had possessed her, and how he had failed to save her.
And the look of sadness he wore was horrible to see.
With a savage yell, Tegan yanked on the handbrake.
/GET OUT/
Turlough staggered out of the back door of the shuddering house and fell upon his knees, his head ringing with words that screamed without sound. They were not directed at him, but he could feel them echo in his mind, so great was the anger, the strength, the determination… Turlough raised his head to see… to see…
The sky was a livid, fleshy bruise of squashed mangos and aubergine as the darkened clouds loomed over the house. In the center of the tearing winds and swirling debris there was the figure of the Doctor, leaning against the wishing well as darkness, in a swarm of black wings and flapping shadows, raged out of his chest and plunged into the well that glowed a molten orange, its heat and fire flickering up to lick the sky in a colossal column. And suspended in the sky was…
Turlough had to blink to make sure he was seeing things properly, for in the sky, hovering only a few feet above the Doctor's slumped head, its great wings twenty feet across and shimmering with blackened quicksilver, was the figure of Tegan, her face contorted as she seemed to be forcing, almost spitting out…
And then with a flash that made the sky cry out in pain, Tegan smiled as colors, red, gold, chestnut, apricot and emerald fluttered across her great silver wings, that banished the mercury and sooty black and with a great yell she cast her adamantine sword high up in the air, its blade spiraling end over end as the clouds swallowed it whole before, with a single great flap of her massive wings, she landed before the Doctor/Ruiner that leered back at her through the towering pillar of fire that led deep into the planet's infernal heart.
As Tegan's feet touched the ground, the wings of her battle suit folded around her, lapping over and over each other in a riot of colors before vanishing smoothly into her back. She stood tall and proud, hands on her hips, as she faced the creature as it poured its spawn out of the Doctor's body to flitter joyously around the puncture in the earth's crust.
Despite the wind, the roaring of the shadows, the tremors that rocked the ground and the distance between them, Turlough could hear Tegan as she spoke, quietly and calmly, to the creature that had infested the Doctor.
"You've been destroying her kind for four billion years, from one side of the universe to another, and somewhere, somewhen out there, something beat you, crippled you to the point that you needed a species as low as the Valorians to help you travel here and reconfigure the Watchtower's link because you were too weak to suck her dry like the rest of her family… you need her soul fed to you like a coma patient, drip by drip." Tegan cocked her head to the side. "I ask you, four billion years of evolution… is this the best you can do?"
Turlough could have sworn he saw Tegan smile.
The creature reached out through the flames, its spawn diving and tearing at her exoshell, shredding and gulping at her skin. To Turlough's horror, he saw Tegan's confident expression falter and flee as panic gripped her. She began to swat at the creatures that appeared to devour her protective suit, piece by piece, vanishing to expose her bare skin as the storm roared through the air around
Turlough's mouth was pasty and dry as he saw her go down, buried by their massive numbers, her figure writhing in seething blackness before lying still upon the grass. Finally, stretching their lumpy dark shoulders and raven-like wings, the shadow creatures left the Doctor completely, leaving his empty body to collapse at the base of the well while the creatures delighted in the towering heat of geologic damnation.
The sound was so quiet, Turlough thought he was imagining it; its crescendo was so gradual, he thought it was his own labored breathing.
As its minons began to funnel into the fiery pillar to feed on the earth's center, the Ruiner seemed to notice Turlough at last, turning towards him, shadowy talons slipping across the lawn towards him.
The moment their deathly touch brushed his face, Turlough's heart forgot how to beat.
With a tremendous crashing, the sword plummeted through the roof of the house, scything straight down into the cellar, stabbing the Valuorian control device through its heart. As the crescendo completed, a silver figure materialized beside the Watchtower's control unit, flicking and pecking away at controls invisible to the human eye.
The Ruiner screamed in fury as the column of flame that emanated from the well flickered and downshifted from glowing amber to a stagnant, sickly black. The Ruiner's swarm spun and whirled as they tried to flee from the tower of oily sewage, diving for safety of the portal pinned within the Doctor's biocore. They threw themselves desperately against the Doctor's chest as the wishing well began to suck them down into its black heart but they found themselves bouncing off the Timelord's skin, that was now encased in shifting black plasma, impenetrable, immune to their clawing. Their screams reverberating through eleven dimensions, Turlough clutched at his head as the massive black figure before him was pulled, twisting and thrashing, down into the wishing well before vanishing completely.
And just as suddenly, the sun came out, ruby red and setting, its beams golden and warm as they reached through the trees to brush his pale and sweaty skin.
His head still ringing, Turlough knelt on the lawn.
Waiting.
The first of the stars came out.
Dazed, Turlough began to pull himself along the grass towards Tegan's limp body, her face ashen and lifeless.
Of the Doctor and the wishing well there was no sign.
The room was alive: clear, bright and translucent. Outside their invisible walls the partly cloudy sky was bright and summery as the sun made its first dive behind the trees on the horizon. Beneath the transparent floor, the grass seemed to poke through the smooth surface as if the soft green blades were just beneath it.
The Doctor opened his eyes and saw a tiny earthworm, pink and sticky with tiny grains of sand, staring back at him from its home within the soil.
The Doctor smiled and pulled himself up slowly, noticing how a mercurial goo seemed to slip from his chest and melt into the invisible floor. His chest, exposed through gaping torn sweater was smooth and healthy, the skin unmarked.
Sitting up, he turned to see in the center of the room was the wishing well and just above it, trapped with a lazily turning pillar of gold, was the face of a woman, her face perplexed, her eyes observing him with a mixture of confusion and fear. "What is this place?" Her voice was the crackle of fallen leaves in the autumn. "What has happened?"
The Doctor pulled himself to his feet and sauntered towards the face, his hands thrust deep within his pockets. Through the walls he could see Turlough holding the prostrate body of Tegan in his arms and the Doctor forced himself to take even, measured breaths before addressing her. "She saved the world, all our lives, including yours… without having, I might add, to kill me in the process."
The Doctor's voice was warm yet filled with a sadness of such impossible depth that the face found it difficult to look at him- except she knew the same emotion herself, once, long, long ago. She had forgotten.
"Sometimes," the Doctor continued, "I don't think I give her enough credit."
"And the Ruiner?"
"Gone, crushed to a singularity," the Doctor sighed. "The 'well' is not so much an anchor as a portal. Tegan was clever enough to lure the creature out of me, trap it within the well and then change the entrance point from the earth's center to that of a black hole… though I suspect she may have had some help."
"She… she evicted me, when I tried to…"
"Kill me?" The Doctor finished for her. "Yes. Yes she did. And I'm fine, thanks for asking... She can be a very determined woman sometimes- only this time, her stubbornness saved my life. Even when you were in control, she subconsciously managed to protect me with plasma from my ships hull, which not only helped to heal my wound but prevent the Ruiner from returning into my body. You could learn from her."
"Her species is killing me slowly… I can feel it already; yet I will outlast them, gone like all the rest before them… nonetheless…" The golden face began to fade and sputter as the invisible walls around them began to take shape, white and greasy they slid into existence, blocking out the view of the lawn outside. "I am grateful, Timelord. Tell her."
The Doctor frowned as he watched her fade. The Watchtower well was reinitializing, rebooting to its original settings, sucking her form down within it like a genie into a bottle- and then the golden visage was gone and sitting in place of the crumbling well unfolded the TARDIS control console, the scanner screen switched on, Turlough still cradling Tegan's body within its small screen. "I only wish I could," muttered the Doctor.
It looked perfect, but something about the walk wasn't quite right.
"Are you sure that's it?" Tegan asked.
"Positive." His voice was calm and soothing; you wouldn't know he was a professional assassin.
Or maybe you would.
Tegan remembered lying on the grass, her head holding a thousand hangovers, her skin, clawed, bleeding and bitten. Remembered the Doctor leaning over her, anxious, the reassuring blue shape of the TARDIS standing behind him where the wishing well once sat. Even Turlough looked concerned.
She must really have looked bad then.
"Turn around again." Tegan said, watching her pace around the room one more time. "God, this is weird."
The memories began to fade as soon as she opened her eyes, leaking out of her head and into nothingness, all the worlds she had seen, the ancient protocols, how she had tricked the Ruiner into thinking it was eating her TARDIS skin when in reality she was constantly reconfiguring it until she could dematerialize it completely, letting it think she'd failed, drawing it out of the Doctor while allowing Kamelion to access the cellar controls… all of it was fading, the memories, the horror, those women, even the confidence…
"Right, I guess that will have to do," Tegan sighed. The woman stood before her, silent.
The Doctor had built a Zero room all for her, a human zero room, just so she could heal from creatures using her mind as a rent-a-wreck… the room was bare, blue and smelt faintly of orchids dipped in honey. Tegan had insisted on dragging in an old phonograph and stacks of jazz lp's… she couldn't stand silence any more. And she had the vague feeling she ought to become more cultured.
The Doctor had kept the keys to the house, muttering something about needing a 'time share'...
"Now then…" Tegan stared at her own face; it was peculiar looking at it on someone else; like hearing your own voice on a tape, it felt wrong, surreal, off. She had a vague flash of a large black woman, standing up in a city alley, dusting herself off, swearing fluently. "You have all my experiences, all my memories?"
"Yes," Kamelion had adopted her own voice, which was even weirder in that exact same tape recording way, only not a metaphor this time. "I was able to download everything from the TARDIS telepathic circuits."
Tegan swallowed, trying to clear the lump that sat in her throat, swollen and awkward. "How do you feel?"
Eratz-Tegan's face leant to the side slightly as Kamelion's processors considered. "There is considerable confidence… I feel that you feel that you… that is to say, I, as you, feel like I…"
"Yes?" Tegan asked, shifting uncomfortably on her sling back heels.
"I feel," Kamelion said, more assured in his grasp of pronouns, "like I can do anything."
Tegan nodded. The lump seemed, if anything, to grow larger. She had seen so much, experienced so many things, life and death on an unimaginable scale. It made everything about life seem so small, so pointless, so… so… why?
Tegan swallowed again. "So," she pressed. "Since you are me, what do I do next? What is it I want to do with my life?"
Tegan/Kamelion opened its mouth, but no words came out, its face locked in a peculiar, vacant expression.
"I know," Tegan said sadly. "I don't know either."