"Why does it look like this?"
Tegan's voice carried across the barren scenery, sounding off of the brown and blood red rocks in the path. "It looks like this is an easy representation of the world to your eyes. After all most space can be based on math and what we are seeing here are improbabilities, possibilities and misaligned incomplete equations. Trust me, you would much rather see it as we do now." He sighed. "Besides, what you are experiencing is the best representation in the real time envelop of temporal possibilities and probabilities, mistakes and mishaps…temporal…"
"Zaps?"
With a slight smile, he nodded. "All right, yes, Tegan…like small temporal zaps."
"And this place has all your interferences in the time line…this is where all the mistakes you made are kept so as to not make the Universe…well…disappear."
"Yes, well, I wouldn't quite put it that way…"
She frowned. "Well at least that joker person has left us alone."
He glanced warily over his shoulder at her. "I wouldn't plan on him remaining without affecting us indefinitely."
"Why's that?"
"Because we are making progress," he replied as he narrowed his eyes in contemplation of the surrounding scenery. "We need to go in an easterly direction. And before you ask, I know that because that's where your other-worldly friend appeared. The dimensions are weak there; a cross-bridge probably exists. That's our best way back to the TARDIS and Turlough. As he has our ship, well…it leaves us little else than using the dimensional bridge to find our way out of here. Besides," he continued as he pressed against her back to keep her moving. "We are still a cohesive team, on the same side, facing off a bowler side by side as it were. He failed in that respect. And there is always our entertainment value."
Tegan bit her lip and continued to walk along at his side. She hadn't wanted to talk about that damned fountain; his nonchalant, I'm-lecturing-you tone wasn't helping matters. With a sigh, she stepped around a large stone formation. "So you're saying that'll happen again- that fountain thing."
"Undoubtedly."
Her voice sounded shrill even to her ears when she answered him. "So what do we do?"
"I would advise staying calm, Tegan," he said with a wide smile on his lips. "We'll get nowhere if you lose your head."
Her stare at the back of his head was comically vicious.
When he turned towards her, he gave her a sheepish look. "By my estimates, we only have 2-4 more hours of travel before we find this rift. He can't intercept us too many times; it takes too much of his energy reserves."
"So?"
"So, Tegan, you will only be confronted with images from your own mind and from his distance, I reckon he can't delve too deeply into your mind. Keep your thoughts devoid of whatever you don't want to be confronted with…"
"Only my mind?"
"Yes, well, Tegan," he muttered. "When one is confronted with someone else's memory and has a somewhat empathetic constitution, they'll have…"
"A similar memory…"
He cleared his throat and kept his eyes away from her. "Yes, well, when one is confronted with someone else's memories and has a somewhat empathetic constitution of mind…their brain will remember similar…"
"You…"
"Do keep up, Tegan," he warned. She glanced at his face. Under the brim of his panama hat, his eyes were steadfastly staring at the surrounding scenery. With a sigh, she glanced down at her feet; the black leather shoes were coated in red dirt. "I'll never get that off of them," she groused. "And why make us look at a rendition of the Sahara after having us in that fun house?"
His eyebrows were well arched over his blue eyes as he reached back for her hand. He hauled her up the slight barren hill and then answered her in precise tones. "Why? Were you having fun?"
Tegan rolled her eyes and took advantage of the moment to viciously swipe the dirt from her clothes. "No, if you must know, but it is more…"
"Interesting."
She growled under her breath. "Yes, more interesting to look at. I would appreciate it if you wouldn't finish my sentences…"
As she stood aright, she noticed that the scenery had changed yet again. They were standing in a circle of mirrors, much like she had when possessed by the Mara. Only this time, each of the mirrors reflected a different color; reds and blues, and greens and yellows, purples, magentas and some colors her eyes couldn't identify. They danced with light, seeming to fill the entire world around her until vertigo threatened to overwhelm her. Overhead (from everywhere) obnoxious carnival music could be heard.
"Well, poppet, you look rather ill."
Tegan struggled to get her eyes to focus. "Yeah, no thanks to you," she moaned, desperately longing for something cold on the back of her neck.
She latched onto the warning issued by the Doctor. While the world spun, she centered her thoughts on the most upbeat things she could think of: Nyssa. Her friend long gone; there were only good memories associated with her: warm friendship, surviving and caring.
"Why, dear, concentration can make you particularly green."
"Bully for you," she replied through gritted teeth. "So does this freak show you have going on here."
"Oh." The voice sounded hurt and surprised.
The Doctor's voice was equally peeved as he answered the joker. "Yes; your idea of entertainment and ours are very different, it would seem."
His hand rested against the back of Tegan's neck; the coolness was what she needed to calm her stomach. "Deep breaths, Tegan, and close your eyes, it will help."
"Figures your sight isn't affected," Tegan groused.
"Oh, it is; Time Lords have iron stomachs."
"Typical."
The voice heaved a loud sigh. "There is only so much one can do to a human. Pity, I quite liked the decorating."
After a moment, the Doctor patted the back of her neck and told Tegan to open her eyes. A slow blink brought into focus a single mirror.
"Oh no," she breathed. "Can't we run?"
"There's nowhere to run," the Doctor whispered back. "He - or rather IT – would find us wherever we went. But he can't physically stop us and he can't physically close the rift." The Doctor's hair blew across his brow as he stared at the now visible clown. "What a horrid coat," he mentioned.
Tegan agreed: a conglomeration of yellow and red and black and green, it was nauseating.
The clown leaned forward and the mirror's shimmered. "Correct, Doctor, I can't physically stop you; I'll let you stop yourselves."
"It's been tried before," Tegan hissed.
The clown stared down at her, the powdered face caught in a wide, sickening, distorted grin. This time there was no warning: the face disappeared and left her staring at the mirror. She found she couldn't look away.
A wave of happiness crashed over her. Although she had walked these halls before, she knew the air ducts of Terminus better than its corridors. Still, she recognized the distressed metal, the broken grates, and just the look of the place. Nowhere said end of the line like Terminus, she thought ruefully. Though she wondered why she wore the space suit. She hadn't the last time. But she knew where she was and she knew that Nyssa was there. She was going to see Nys.
The door ahead of her opened; it was opened by the small man that walked ahead of her. Tegan could see Nyssa in the room, bent over a table, apparently working hard on something. Although Nys' back was to her, Tegan knew it was her by the long curly chestnut hair and the same slim form.
"Mistress?" The man's voice was quiet, almost reverent.
Nyssa turned from the table to respond to the man. Tegan could clearly see her face; it was lined and jaundiced although she barely looked older than twenty. She knew she was in shock; the girl looked extremely ill. Tears burned in her eyes and fell; she could taste them on her tongue.
Tegan reached up and wiped the tears from her face; she couldn't draw deep breaths; she was completely engrossed and feeling reality through the mirror.
"Nys?" Tegan breathed "Nys, what's happened?"
As she reached to remove her helmet, Nyssa shouted for her to stop. Tegan could hear the rate of her own breathing increasing within the confines of her helmet. Her friend shook her head slowly. "Don't, Tegan; you can't. The pathogen in the air, Lazar's, would infect you immediately."
Tegan still fought with the clasp of the helmet to release it. "But, I can help you! We should have never left you here! You can come with us!"
Nyssa neared her. Tegan could see her ice blue eyes, wide and beautiful, with the spark of life still shining bright. But they were deep set, sunken in her sallow colored skin. As the girl neared her, Tegan could see the pain in the way she held her body; in the way she walked. Wrinkles and color changes and the look of death were in every movement.
She stepped close enough to touch Tegan's shoulder. "I've found a cure, Tegan."
With a heaved sigh of relief, Tegan smiled through her tears. "That's wonderful! What do we have to do?"
Nyssa smiled as well and squeezed her shoulder. "It only works in the early stages of the disease. It's much, much too late for me."
Tegan could feel the panic rising, like a hot lump of metal in her throat. She reached out with her gloved hand to touch her friend's face. "Nys, no."
"I'll be dead in a month, but you and the Doctor need to help disperse the cure…"
The words grew louder, swirling around her like lights, like the swirling colors in her head. "You can't die! You can't!"
She closed her eyes. "No! No!"
Hands closed over her shoulders. Naked hands on her naked shoulders: someone was holding her; she was in the spacesuit; the hands were too big and too cool to be Nyssa's.
"Tegan!"
The Doctor's urgent voice cut through the fog in her mind. Her eyes opened to see his face close to hers, his hands on her shoulders and looked very concerned.
"Tegan, it was only –"
"I told you she'd die there!" She accused him viciously, nearly yelling at him. She tried to knock his hands from her shoulders, but his grip was harsh. "She's dying there and there's nothing we can do! You left her there to die!"
"It was only a possibility; a worst case scenario," the Doctor explained gently yet in a hurried voice. "It's not the truth, not even a probable truth."
"She's going to-"
"Listen to me," he urged and bent his knees to look in her face. "Tegan, listen to me."
"You killed her."
She growled a sigh. His fingers tightened on her shoulders even more. "Tegan, she's all right. I'll take you to her after this, I promise. It was only him, only the joker. He wants this. He knows we both have to physically get to the rift; I have to sense it, you have to see it. He wants us to be at odds with each other."
Tegan quieted a little and the Doctor nodded slowly. Comfortingly, he put his arm around Tegan's shoulders. His voice was anything but comforting when he confronted the joker. "That was unnecessarily cruel."
"Was it, I wonder?" The joker responded with a giggle in his voice. "After all, my dear Doctor, I wasn't the one to leave her in such dire circumstance."
"Nyssa survives," the Doctor reiterated, his voice growing hoarse with anger. "Damn you, you centered in on one of the most solid, most comforting thoughts Tegan has and shattered it."
The joker, the clown clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Such a fragile species."
"Such a resilient one," the Doctor roared. "They move and adapt throughout the entire galaxy! And their weaknesses are their strengths!"
"Resilient, are they?" The clown sneered, his blood red eyes nearly glowing in the ghastly white pasty face. He snapped his fingers as the Doctor brought Tegan closer with a squeeze of her shoulder. "Shall we see, Doctor, how resilient she is?"
The Doctor swallowed, again he knew he was viewing the mirror and felt himself transported into a situation. A construct in his mind, he knew. But it did indeed feel real. This time, however, Tegan was at his side. 'It hasn't begun yet' he thought.
"Tegan, are you all right? We can discuss…"
When she didn't answer or glance up at him, he looked down at her. "Come on, Tegan-" His voice drifted off as he saw blood on her shirt, clashing with the cheery red splashed in the color of her shirt.
His arm loosened on her shoulder reflexively and she began to crumple to the ground. As he shouted in surprise, he caught her before she could slip to the ground. "Tegan!"
Her brown eyes blinked up at him. "I feel so warm…"
The Doctor could see that the blood had spread across the entire breadth of her chest and a single red rivulet ran down her arm. Unceremoniously, he tore her shirt up the side seam; the blood was worse without the material to mask the extent of damage. One small hole was in her chest; a combat, small weapons wound made by someone who wanted the job done well the first time.
"Who?" He asked with his voice hoarse and pained. His gaze went back to her face. A small amount of blood was pooling at the corner of her red lips. "Oh no," he breathed as he picked up her head to keep blood from choking her. Glancing around, he could see nothing: no people, no formations, no TARDIS, nothing. "Tegan…"
She tried to swallow, but grimaced. "Tastes….horrible. Where's the TARDIS?" she whispered. "You have to-"
Blood in mouth, he thought, gaping weapons wound in her chest, feelings of languid warmth…"Tegan, stay with me…." He set her head down on his knee to take off his coat. Harshly he balled it up and pressed it against the wound. But he knew it was a losing battle.
"Doc?" She breathed. "This is all wrong…this way…"
He shook his head. A mirror, there was something about a mirror, he remembered, but as he watched Tegan's eyes start to become unfocused the mirror suddenly became unimportant.
"Brave heart, Doc…" She quipped in a voice so quiet it didn't sound like her own. "You've seen it…"
"Never…" his voice drifted off. He had never had a friend, a companion die this close. It was always at a distance; he never had to watch the light die in their eyes, feel their blood coating his hands or his clothes. Never had it been someone who had traveled with him so long. Never when he didn't have a chance to do something; it was happening too fast; she was bleeding out; there was nothing he could do except sit with her.
Still, he heard the words he said as if coming from a long distance away. "Brave heart, Tegan, we'll get out of this…We'll…" He stopped talking when he realized that her chest no longer rose and fell beneath his hand. Her eyes were sightlessly gazing in the direction of his face and her lips were open, as if she was going to speak, as if she had died wanting to say something. "Tegan…" he whispered. It was strange to feel the well of emptiness like a hot lead poker in his chest. He didn't want to close her eyes so he closed his. It didn't make it any better. The heaviness of his own breathing surprised him; he couldn't draw a deep breath. He bent his head and allowed the burning at the back of his eyes to release… "Oh, Tegan…"
The image dissolved and it took the Doctor several breaths to realize that he was not kneeling on the ground and Tegan didn't lie dead on his lap. But the shock of seeing her sightless eyes still made him keep his eyes closed. He felt her warm body next to his, under his arm and he blinked his eyes open. Quickly, so quickly that Tegan teetered on her spiked heels, he twisted to grab her by the shoulders. His gaze traveled over her body, cataloguing any changes and looking for wounds.
"Doc," she breathed. "I'm fine."
He drew in a deep breath and steadied his eyesight on her and half expected to see her brown eyes staring lifelessly back at him. Her tears had dried on her face and the anger that had been there was lessened, easing the slight lines on her face. His grip was tremendous, he knew, but it took him several moments to calm his hearts and take a deep breath.
The clown burst out laughing, the sound almost sickening to both their ears. It reverberated off the mirrors and they shook from the force making the weird light dance across them and the ground. "Resilient, is she? You worry for her own weakness, Doctor. She's been with you a long time and the long time goes on, you worry she'll leave you in death. After all, your friends always do leave, don't they, Doctor? One way or another…"
Tegan was shaking; in anger, the Doctor suddenly thought. "Hell's teeth, you're only showing the probable future-"
"Possible future," the Doctor corrected his voice still hoarse. "Do watch your vocabulary, Tegan; in these instances, it's necessary to have things properly defined."
She frowned, but didn't say anything. His hands were still almost viciously gripping her shoulders.
"His power must be fading at this distance from the epicenter. The further we get away, the less based on probability he can make his visions to us." Raising his voice, he addressed the joker, the clown. "Worries, plagues of our souls, that's what this is! The spokes of time lines must be getting weak!"
The clown squawked a horn and gave a wide painful smile. "But which is worse, my dear Doctor? The probability, the possibility or the unknown, hmm?" At no response the joker snapped his fingers; the mirrors reappeared as he disappeared. They were left in the scenery they had seen before he had come.
"Can it get worse?" Tegan asked quietly as she rubbed her arms. The Doctor took a couple more deep breaths and released her shoulders. He turned and contemplated the space the thing had occupied.
"I sincerely hope not," he answered.
She glanced up at him and saw his gaze on her. Under the brim of his panama hat, his eyes were dark and troubled. Tegan had traveled with him long enough to recognize the pain she saw there. "Look, Doc, I'm not going to die…"
He gave a slight momentary smile and then reached out his hand. She looked at it for a moment before taking it. Then with a nod in a direction, he led her off out of the mirror circle. "And neither is Nyssa," he encouraged. "Come on, this rift can't be too much further; I can feel it in this direction, but you'll have to see it when we get there…"
She walked at his side and he was uncharacteristically quiet, but he still held her hand in a tight, vice-like grip. "Cripes, Doc…Adric…"
He nodded once. "His death was…painful, but you, Tegan, died in my arms. I had your blood on my hands, my clothes…" She could see his mouth formed in a thin line as if he were under a great deal of stress. After a second, she watched his gaze fall to near his feet and then back up to the horizon.
"But I won't, Doc…I'm more likely to run off without giving you a second glance than to die on you…remember? I'm indestructible…"
That forced a slight smile to his lips and a squeeze to her hand. He didn't answer her back but did continue to walk the barren landscape with her fingers crushed in his.
