I don't own Doctor Who; believe it or not, while I have been cringing at some of the Chibnall era I have actually enjoyed the Flux story arc. So far.
Please let me know what you think.
"Your Fault, this is all your fault, all your hubris…"
For an organisation as far-reaching and as powerful as the Division was hinted at being, the Doctor was not impressed; she had encountered time corridors, time portals, time rings, cellular dissemination, T-Mat cubicles like the ones she'd encountered in her second life, and many more sophisticated methods. But she was so confused about why the Weeping Angels had trapped her in a form mimicking their own and landing her in that plane, and her mind was reeling from being broken out of the stone shell and then put back in a moment later, and then finding herself blinking at the waves of energy rippling at her like a stone had been dropped in a lake.
Adjusting her eyes to the glare of the light from whatever the Angels had done to bring her here, the Doctor found herself looking at a single Ood holding some kind of device like a water hose.
"Ood," the Doctor said thoughtfully; she was hardly surprised by the news that Division recruited Ood, after learning they recruited Weeping Angels, but if she encountered any Daleks then she would really question their sanity. Somehow she had a feeling getting this particular Ood to open up to her was going to be hard. Ood Sigma had only trusted her and Donna after they'd helped him and his people.
"Please remain still while quantum realignment stabilises," the Ood said in that standard voice she had come to hate since she had discovered the sick truth behind Ood enslavement while it placed some kind of metal disc to her coat. "Do not remove your conversion plate."
The Doctor yelped when the - whatever this was - rocked hard. She staggered due to the impact, and she looked around the chamber she was in. The walls with the pinkish-grey colouring were dotted here and there by plant life she had seen from several planets on her travels.
Unaffected by the buffering, the Ood went on. "Follow me. She is waiting."
"Who is?" The Doctor asked after the Ood while she tried to centre herself only to discover that something was very wrong with her temporal senses, but he didn't reply. That was the trouble with Ood, really; thanks to people like Halpen and the rest of his sick company, the Ood who were processed were good at following orders but were hard-pressed to give answers. Still, she followed him through a pair of double doors into a vaguely familiar room that was much larger than the TARDIS console room but dominating the space was some kind of tree with the trunk surrounded by hanging cables leading to a collar halfway up. The tree canopy went up to a dome, but the Doctor's eyes spotted a slightly overweight figure wearing what looked like a gardening hat of all things in front of a bank of displays.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor," the Doctor greeted the figure; if this was Division, she wanted to get some decent answers for the Flux and she opted to go for a more polite introduction even if they knew her more than them.
The figure turned and the Doctor's stride slowed down when she took in the old woman she had seen when she'd been in the timestream on Atropos. "I know," the woman walked away from the console to stop right in front of the Doctor and she smiled in that condescending manner of hers which had quickly grated on the Doctor's nerves.
"You. I've met you," the Doctor whispered, hoping she was hiding her distaste for the woman right now underneath an air of neutrality. She didn't think it was working. But she doubted that this woman cared, she didn't seem to care about anything.
"You won't be told, will you?"
"It's a defining trait," the Doctor shrugged while she sneered at the woman, not even bothering to mask her distaste for her; after listening to the way the woman had disdained the universe and had dismissed the lives of millions who were at risk from the Flux, she didn't care about being polite anymore. "Who are you and where are we?"
The woman's smile as she took in the surroundings was full of pride. "This is Division, Doctor. Welcome back."
"Division?" The Doctor whispered, looking around the control room she and the woman were in with the Ood helper. She had wanted to come here and discover her missing past, but on her terms, not on theirs.
"Yes," the woman turned to gaze back at her work, dismissing the Doctor as if she were one of the ornaments or plants scavenged from the universe.
"I've been here before?" The Doctor looked around, trying to take in the scale of everything here while she continued to try to centre herself.
"Many times," the woman wandered around the room without paying much attention to the Doctor. "You were one of the best agents the Division ever had."
"And then you wiped my memories," the Doctor pointed out sharply remembering the image of Brendan from Ireland who had his memories wiped; it might have been a watered-down visual account of what actually happened, but she wished she knew what had actually happened to her when it happened.
Ever since her meeting with her 'Ruth' incarnation, something she had come to accept ever since meeting that illusion in the Matrix on Gallifrey, and the little trip in the timestream, the Doctor had come to accept that version as a part of herself and she wanted to get those memories back.
She wanted to remember her life on Gallifrey before Tecteun tortured her and forced her to regenerate…. God knew how many times, just to understand how regeneration worked.
She wanted to remember what kind of things the Division had made her do before they'd wiped her memories. But more than that, she couldn't help but think of Jack Harkness and the new similarities that had appeared between them; both of them were long-lived, old people, both part of advanced societies, both with murky pasts they'd rather very few people actually knew about, both of them were experienced time travellers with a long histories, and their memories were both erased. The Doctor was ashamed now that she hadn't really bothered to help Jack find a way of getting his memories back, but now she knew how the former Time Agent felt.
The woman shrugged. "It was necessary," she said dismissively. The Doctor didn't know what was worst, the fact the Division believed that to be true, or the fact they couldn't actually look her in the face.
Suddenly she began to lose her patience. "Just tell me, where are we?" The Doctor demanded as she focused instead on her inability to centre herself, and getting worried now she couldn't.
"You're being very reductive," the woman said witheringly, her condescending smile really grating on the Doctor's nerves.
Okay, that's enough, the Doctor thought to herself as she felt herself getting more and more annoyed by the lack of any real answers from this stranger who didn't care about the universe she and her organisation were destroying. Why won't you speak to me when you brought her here in the first place?
"And you're being evasive. A completely transparent power move, and not very effective." The Doctor glared at the woman while the place seemed to shake itself apart. The Doctor looked around hoping to find a few clues to explain those shifts.
"Systems are under increasing strain," the Ood called.
The woman turned away from the Doctor and called at the Ood. "Go further, Ood. You can push it much further. This is no time for caution." The Woman hurried away from the Ood, focusing on her own tasks mystifying the Doctor even more. The longer she was in this woman's presence, who was part of the Division, the more convinced she was becoming that they were less interested in talking and more interested in keeping her away from something.
The Ood worked on his own console. "Increasing propulsion levels."
Propulsion levels? Are we on some kind of ship? The Doctor asked herself as the 'ship' lurched again, gazing curiously at the consoles and the 'rooftop dome' with the tree canopy. It wasn't much of a view to give her a precise answer to her questions about why this place was shaking itself to pieces, but the Doctor knew it could not be good. It never was in her experience.
But since this was the Division, a shady organisation born on Gallifrey, things looked even bleaker. A part of her wanted to rush around the consoles and grab the woman and shake her like a broken doll just to get some answers from her. She wanted to know why the Division had erased her memories and dropped her back on Gallifrey like she didn't matter to them anymore when they must have known things would come down to this, but her mind flashed back to her last encounter with this woman and her dismissive attitude regarding the universe.
"Better. Much more like it."
"What is that Ood doing?" The Doctor demanded as she walked around the room, taking note of the bizarre collection of jars, and artefacts and plants; she knew they were from across the universe but what was the point of them? What was going on?
"Of course, you have a lot of questions," the woman gestured with her hands, sounding as if she had only just taken note of the Doctor's very presence. The attitude alone was very annoying; the Doctor had never liked it when others dismissed her presence and she hated not being a part of a conversation which she was trying to drive through. "It must be hard to know where to start."
For a moment the Doctor glared at the old woman. She had spent the last few minutes trying and failing to get this woman to give her answers to her questions, but all she was doing was going about her own business, dismissing her as if she wasn't even there. Why go to so much trouble to send an extraction squad of Weeping Angels and not expect a demand for an explanation?
"No, not hard at all," the Doctor spat, no longer really caring about being polite, patient, or controlled. She was too angry for that; the universe was collapsing, she had just had an unpleasant encounter with the Weeping Angels, discovered the Division recruited a plethora of unpleasant lifeforms from other worlds, an implication which gave her nightmarish visions that soon she would be encountering Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans, Silents and half a dozen of her worst enemies working for the Division, and this woman was refusing to even look her in the eye. "The hard bit is getting you to deign to answer."
The woman was grinning now, tapping her fingers together. "So, you'd like to know about Division."
"Yes. Are you in charge of it, or just behaving like you are?" The Doctor demanded. She still wasn't giving a damn about manners, not right now.
"Well, it's complex, but I suppose yes, right now, leadership falls to me."
The Doctor almost rolled her eyes at the lack of a decent answer, a part of herself wondered if she was this bad with answering questions and she guessed she was, but when she was confronted she did her best to reply. "Leadership of what, though? What is Division now?" She asked; she had seen and heard enough about the organisation to be worried, but after seeing the way her other self had been hunted by the Judoon and Gat in Gloucester and how they had her imprisoned in that penal asteroid, she had a horrible feeling they only needed to make a small demand and their operatives would see their will done.
"Division is simple," the woman smiled, "and indescribable. It began on Gallifrey as a group to ensure the safety of our galaxy. As our ability to travel grew and our horizons broadened, Division kept pace. The number of operatives grew."
The Doctor remembered that recording in the Matrix shown to her by the Master before it just cut out, of that woman who'd been speaking to two other people implied to be one of her previous selves and the second incarnation of Tecteun after they'd succeeded in splicing the regeneration ability into themselves and other Gallifreyans. Mentally she tried to imagine the organisation starting out as a version of the Celestial Intervention Agency (she wished she was dealing with the CIA; operatives like Vansell had been annoying, but Narvin had been alright once in a while, but something told her the CIA were in the nursery compared to this lot), and she saw that many of those operatives had to be recruited from other races.
But what worried her the most was just how far the organisation had gone.
"And what did these operatives do?" The Doctor asked.
"Anything we needed. Guided and shaped events."
"Interfered," the Doctor pointed out, knowing she was one to talk, and she went on, ignoring the woman's shrug, "in contravention of all Time Lord directives!" The Doctor snapped at the end of it, knowing that many of her peers from Gallifrey, especially the Monk or the Master would be calling her a hypocrite, but she had always liked to think of herself as helping here and there, but what the Division was being implied of doing was exactly what Gallifrey had done with the Minyans; she had always argued that the Time Lords should intervene when evil warranted such acts, but she didn't believe meddling in other races' cultures was the way to go about it. For a horrible moment, she pictured the Division appearing on worlds like Skaro, Mondas, and Earth; she saw them giving the Kaleds and the Thals the resources they needed to engage in their thousand years war before giving Davros hints and tips about how to devise the Daleks, just to ensure events played out, before forcing her TARDIS onto Mondas after it had been blown away from Earth's orbit and forced to wander the stars to give Doctorman Allan and the Committee the final pieces of the jigsaw they'd needed to create the first Cybermen.
"Not every civilisation works or is enlightened," the woman turned away from the Doctor to face the consoles for a moment. "Some require help. Some needed to be told. Division assessed and acted accordingly."
The Doctor hated to admit it, but she could see where Division was coming from there. But the biggest problem she had was they had been meddling every step of the way, affecting history. She remembered hearing during the Time War, from people affected by the war between the Time Lords and the Daleks, that the Time Lords were a decadent people who played god with everyone in the universe.
But they were wrong.
The Division had been the ones who'd been playing God for so long, she doubted any member of their organisation remotely cared anymore about the view they should leave things alone.
Was any part of it real? The Doctor asked desperately in her mind, shaken by the revelation that while Gallifrey had observed the universe, in truth they were just watching as an organisation formed in their midst had been shaping events like they had some kind of grand design. The Time Laws? The laws of Non-Interference? Are they nothing more than a sham that I should never have bothered upholding all of these years unless they intersect with important fixed points? Does time meddling really matter as long as fixed events aren't touched or tampered with? Was the Monk the one who had it right, we should be meddling in history? What about that alternate timeline Romana, Narvin, Brax, K-9 and Leela had visited during their search for a cure for the Free-Time dogma virus where a version of Gallifrey was intervening in history as part of a grand plan and they encountered an alternate sixth me who was Lord Burner? Was that Gallifrey right while ours wasn't?
The last thought was hardly encouraging.
The Doctor remembered her reaction when she had learnt a version of her sixth incarnation had been Lord Burner. She had been mortified, especially since she had horrible memories of her first escape from Gallifrey. The thought a version of her had not only been a part of that world, but he had once actively fought against it-
The Doctor closed down that line of thought quickly. It didn't matter. She still had answers to get hold of. "How much did it interfere? How big has it become?"
"Colossal. Across Space and Time, its influence is unparalleled," for a moment the woman clasped her hands almost as if in prayer, clearly worshipping what she was a part of before she carried on, "its reach is unlimited. All from the shadows. It achieved its aim beyond our wildest dreams. Division is magnificent."
"I don't think having Weeping Angels do your dirty work can be classed as magnificent," the Doctor glared at the woman, trying not to shudder at the blatant fanaticism displayed in front of her. Fanatics never listened to reason, and she had a feeling this woman was beyond reason.
"Division recruits across all dimensions, from all species. It had to," the woman explained simply, and even the Doctor had problems fighting off against such logic. But she was still confused by something important, and she was glad the woman had unintentionally pointed it out to her.
"Then why couldn't I find it?" The Doctor argued. "Where are we now? Because I looked far and wide across the universe, and there was nothing."
She was telling the truth. She had been trying to seek out the Division across half of the universe ever since her escape from prison with Jack's help and she had set up search parameters into the TARDIS to find some mention of it, but after a long search through the universe to the remote areas while keeping the facts from Yaz she had found nothing. The universe was a big place, she couldn't search everywhere.
The woman's expression had become amused when she had asked her those questions. "Of course not," she chuckled before she adopted a slow lecturing tone like the Doctor was a retarded child. "We're not in the universe, Doctor."
What? The Doctor stilled in disbelief.
"What do you mean, we're not in the universe? Are we in a parallel world? But that's impossible, the walls of reality were closed and travel between those worlds is now impossible," the Doctor fired rapidly at the woman, her mind swirling in horror as she remembered those trips into Pete's World.
The woman laughed at her, sending her a pitying look. "No, Doctor, we are not in danger. We had set all of this up a long time ago, with techniques far more sophisticated than the ones found on Gallifrey. Let me show you where we are, Doctor," a hologram appeared depicting galaxies of various types "Here is the universe as you know it. Universe One, if you like. And we are here, outside. The Division," the woman pointed to a lone looking space station made up of three large ringed domes surrounding a central torus hanging between parallel universes in the void. "The control centre from which all our operatives were directed. And there, beyond Division... the next universe, and the next beyond that. Multiverses. Our terminology became quaint a long time ago. So here we are, outside one universe, on the cusp of many more. A bridge."
The Doctor had heard and seen a practical example of void ship technology, she had even passed the void into parallel universes with nothing but her TARDIS console, but this was something else…
The Division had taken the Void ship theory and transformed it into something new. She was fascinated and intrigued by the scale of everything around her, and she knew this thing made those teleport discs Pete's World's Torchwood look like twig technology. It was astounding; she disliked Division and what it stood for now she knew what they did, but she had to admire their scope.
Walking away from the woman and unable to rip her eyes away from the hologram showing the universes with the Division station in between, the Doctor's voice was full of the awe she was feeling. "But the dimensional engineering required to build this place, it's incredible. Oh, conversion!" She yelped in realisation as she realised what the Ood was doing to her when she first arrived. "That's why conversion plates allow us to exist in form outside the known universe."
The Void was a hostile environment where nothing could live unless they were within a specialised environment, and those energy waves must have cancelled out the void stuff radiation which her tenth self had used on the Cybermen from Pete's world and the Daleks locked in the Genesis Ark, but Division must have discovered a way - and they'd had plenty of time to get it right - to stabilise their people who came here and keep them safe from, the effects of the Void.
"Very good. You always were fast at processing everything," the woman complimented.
But the Doctor barely heard her as her mind raced on, going through everything she knew of the theory of Void ships and the technologies that allowed the Time Lords to pass through the Void, and she came to an important realisation when she remembered the lurching about earlier before the Ood fixed the engines. "But it's unstable. Why is it shaking? Unless... It can't be, can it? It's moving?" The Doctor demanded
"Exactly," the woman replied. "As we near the end of the old universe, Division is moving into the next. The crossing is in progress."
"And this place?"
"My seed vault. Genetic traces from the previous universe to import into the next," the woman waved her hand to showcase everything around her; it looked impressive, but if the Division had come this far with dimensional engineering then they would have no problems building dimensional transcendental storage rooms for seeds, DNA slices from various races and planets and cultures. "To preserve what will have gone."
"That universe isn't going anywhere," the Doctor declared, wondering for a moment if the Division had taken the trouble to rescue any of the races in the universe the Flux was destroying because of the Division and the Ravagers, but she doubted it, this woman was too dismissive of the life forms there.
The woman, who'd been keeping her back to the Doctor while she was showing off her collection, turned and the Doctor was surprised to see the cold look of….anger? Dismay? Disappointment? "It's over, Doctor. It has been ever since we let a virus into the experiment."
Virus?
Experiment?
This was getting even worse every second. It was bad enough the universe was being destroyed by the Flux, the Division was calling everything they had done over the centuries an experiment. The Doctor guessed it made sense, given how the Division was constantly interfering in the development of other worlds to the point the Doctor was sure they couldn't make a single decision on their own. But she hated the way it was described, and what was this virus?
"What sort of virus?" The Doctor whispered.
"You," the woman ground out simply, shocking the Doctor with how they saw her. "You got out, from Division. And you couldn't leave the universe alone."
The woman laughed sarcastically for a moment while the Doctor watched, listened, getting the impression that if she could, the woman would wish to do everything all over again to make sure the same thing didn't happen again. "I blame myself a little, but mostly I blame you. I thought you were manageable. But I had to admit what I always knew deep down. You'd never stop if you rediscovered what Division had done," the woman shook her head irritably at the single truth of that statement because it was true. "Morality was always your flaw."
"Morality is a strength," the Doctor pointed out the truth of her existence, the truth she had discovered during her travels with Ian and Barbara after their return trip to Skaro before encountering the Daleks on Earth and coming face to face with the man who'd murdered Vicki's father and went on to murder an entire race for his own survival, before realising she needed to take a different stance to the universe.
But inwardly she was relieved that the versions of her who'd worked with the Division felt the same way she did. It was always depressing passing into an alternate universe, and discovering a Doctor there who was a Dictator like the one in that fascistic world she'd slipped in many hundreds of years ago, during her exile on Earth. Hearing that she had been moral was one of the best pieces of news she'd heard for a while.
"And when you knew the truth, you'd never stop hounding us."
What did you expect me to do, after what the Master showed me? Sooner or later, I was bound to discover what had happened, either because someone pointed out the truth to me, someone who known me from the days in Division, or I'd meet an incarnation like I did Ruth when I knew nothing about the Timeless Child; did you expect me to just ignore something like that? The Doctor thought to herself, annoyed by Division's views of the situation.
But what angered and sickened her the most was the organisation that'd played God for so long
Not even hiding her disgust, the Doctor spat,"So the universe has to end to protect the existence of Division?
"Precisely," the woman replied, speaking in the same condescending, apathetic tone she'd used the last time she and the Doctor had met before during that mess on Atropos when she'd saved Dan, Vinder and Yaz from the Ravagers, the same attitude which had quickly made the Doctor dislike her. "Which is why we engineered the Flux, shut the universe down and you within it. Except even then you interfere. Disrupting the Flux, just as it came into existence," the woman walked off to a chair while the Doctor listened to the explanation with growing horror. "throwing yourself and a TARDIS in front of it."
"Division created the Flux because you're scared of me?" The Doctor leaned forward, horrified and surprised that the Division would not only go so far to call her a virus, but they had decided to destroy an entire universe just to get rid of her.
All of it…all of this was her own fault. The Flux had been unleashed because of her…
No, she couldn't think that way. Even if they had created the Flux, she was going to stop it, even if she had to drain her regeneration energy to do it (admittedly she could now understand why the Division would go this far, although why they were now destroying a universe to get it done was beyond her; they knew with her regenerations, including the cycle Rassilon sent through the crack on Trenzalore, although she wondered now if she would have regenerated without the Time Lord's help or if they'd given her a little push because they'd genuinely not known, she would survive any and all assassination attempts, although their reach was probably greater than anything Kovarian's part of the Silence could throw her way).
"Not scared" the woman replied, getting her composure back. "Wary, perhaps."
Oh yeah, like I'm going to believe that; you're shutting down an entire universe to deal with me. Or are you? The Doctor suddenly realised something very important; the Division had created the Flux to kill her, but at the same time they were destroying the universe. Was there a secondary reason why Swarm and Azure were out there, why the galaxies and planets were being destroyed, why Time was being compromised and the Mouri was needed?
The woman had termed the whole thing as an experiment, and the Doctor had heard on her travels, far across the universe, not only on Earth, the belief life itself was essentially a giant petri dish; planets were being poked and prodded, civilisation was being moved along and observed by scientists in a lab.
Was that how the Division saw themselves, as scientists who were tired of working with the same universe? Somehow the idea made sense, but why was she here, especially when they'd gone out of their way to make it clear she was part of the problem?
"How much power do you imagine I have?" The Doctor asked.
"You inspire," the woman uttered the word with distaste, "make people question and rise up. You give them hope. That can be problematic."
For a long moment, the Doctor stared back down at the woman, shaken and amazed by the echo of the lecture River had thrown in her face at Demon's Run when she'd risen so high and fallen so low in trying to save River's younger self from Kovarian and the Silence. She had been left shaken and horrified by how big she had become, the lives she had ruined, but she had carried on in a more secretive manner because it was the right thing to do.
But this woman was not River Song.
No, she was a stranger. And one that seemed to know her too well, and that was never a good sign. It was time to get some decent answers.
"Who even are you?" The Doctor demanded, angered by her last statement; what was problematic about giving hope to those in need?
The woman sighed, almost wistfully if the Doctor didn't know any better. "You don't remember. Hmm, why would you? I think my eyes are the same, even across the regenerations, but you wouldn't know."
The Doctor stared at the woman closely, wondering who this could be…and then it struck her. Of course, it made sense, but it couldn't be, could it? That talk of regenerations, though, it clinched it, and she had not recognised this woman as any of her old Time Lord peers, but there was something about her….
"You can't be," the Doctor whispered in shock.
The woman nodded. "I'm the one who found you. I brought you to Gallifrey and raised you," she stood up looking straight into the Doctor's eyes, "I'm Tecteun. The woman you used to call Mother."
Tecteun?
Mother?!
I actually called a woman who tortured me and forced me to regenerate Rassilon only knows how many times just to crack the secret of regeneration only to splice it into herself that name when she didn't even deserve it?!
"Y-you're still alive, after all this time? And you've been here, all along?" The Doctor whispered in surprise, although why it was a surprise for her, she didn't know.
It was possible for Time Lords to live for centuries - Rassilon and Omega were proof of that, but those two had lived through unique circumstances. Tecteun might have lived in the void for this length of time, but the Doctor truly did not want to know what kind of effects the conversion plates had with regeneration. But she was as insane as Rassilon and Omega, the Doctor could see that easily.
"Yes," Tecteun replied.
"Hold on, you have been watching me ever since I left Gallifrey for what I thought was the first time, and you've noted me helping people, inspiring them as you said. Let me guess, I interfered in several of your plans?" The Doctor looked pointedly at Tecteun.
"Try several plans, Doctor. Granted, we were careful not to attract too much unwanted attention, but whenever you arrived our agents were forced to delay their schedules."
"Sorry to make life difficult for you," the Doctor shrugged while she held her arms out mock apologetically, but she wasn't concerned by the woman's view. She was proud of making life difficult for the Division even if it was partly the reason why they did this.
Tecteun sent her an unimpressed look.
"But you watched me; my early travels, my exile to Earth, working for the CIA, working at UNIT, the Time War? Did you have anything to do with any part of it?"
"Yes, we did," Tecteun replied.
"Which part?" The Doctor asked.
"All of it," Tecteun answered simply.
The Doctor went through the list, thinking that the Division had likely been there at certain points in her lives, but when her mind drifted to the Time War, her brain went cold. She'd been with Division long enough to know they didn't care about the universe they were meddling in, so how could they have….?
No, they didn't. They couldn't…but the longer she was in Tecteun's company, the more convinced she was that they were capable of doing it, and they would if they believed it was worth it.
"Did you….did you have anything to do with the start of the Time War?" The Doctor whispered, hoping and praying that Tecteun wasn't that far gone, that while she no longer cared about the same universe that her original incarnation had been so enthusiastic about exploring and discovering new mysteries to gather knowledge, she would never want to destroy Gallifrey.
"No, you started the Time War, didn't you?" The Doctor whispered, half in denial but she knew the Division had done it.
Tecteun was still, but she nodded. "Yes," she said simply as if the war was nothing to get one's feather's ruffled, but the Doctor was now so angry as she remembered the death and destruction caused by the senselessness of the Time War.
"Why?" The Doctor demanded. "How?"
Tecteun snorted. "You would not understand, Doctor-."
Suddenly the Doctor's temper exploded; her arms flashed out in a Venusian aikido move, and she paralysed Tecteun's upper body. "WHY DID YOU START THE TIME WAR?!" She shrieked at the top of her voice. "TELL ME, OR I'LL PARALYSE YOU FOR LIFE!"
She wasn't sure if that would work, given she didn't know if Tecteun still had regenerations left, but if she could hold her here for longer, she could get more answers.
Tecteun tried to move, but she couldn't. She stared into the Doctor's eyes coldly. "We started the Time War because events were getting out of control, Doctor. We realised our interference had led to too many temporal powers appearing, and we were concerned that sooner or later their versions of the Celestial Intervention Agency would detect us."
The Doctor was reminded of the confrontation with the Kasaavin. "What, so you started a genocide against your own people, just to make sure Division was kept secret? How did you manage that?"
"Did you never wonder, Doctor, how the Daleks learnt about your attempt to kill them at birth?"
The Doctor stilled. "No, you told the Daleks what I'd done? What Gallifrey ordered?"
She had never forgiven herself for her mistakes in her fourth incarnation. She had been sent to Skaro to destroy the Daleks when the Time Lords became worried the Daleks would become so powerful they would have destroyed all other lifeforms and they'd gone on to become the supreme beings, which was their aim.
But somehow the Daleks discovered what had happened. The Doctor had always assumed Davros had told the group of Daleks who'd retrieved him from the ruins of the old Kaled bunker on Skaro and they'd passed it along when the Kaled scientist realised that her fourth incarnation was there, and the Daleks had made their plans to get their revenge ever since before the Time War started but somehow the news the Division had sent to them made more sense. It wouldn't have been difficult either.
"So you told the Daleks what happened, and when you did that, what did you do then? Did you give them more advanced technology and direct them into more conflicts with Gallifrey to make the possibility of the Time War a reality?" The Doctor shook her head, realising that it made sense now; the Daleks' better time corridor technology during that mess with the Hand of Omega in Shoreditch, her encounters with the Dalek Time Controller who'd worked with the Monk.
She'd assumed the Daleks had just been evolving their technology, but in truth, it was down to the Division. It was all a part of their plan to clean up their own mistakes, and that made her even sicker.
She let Tecteun go.
"Where did I fit into this, because I entered the Time War at a late stage, but you let Rassilon destroy so many worlds and come up with the Ultimate Sanction to rip the vortex to pieces; was that part of your plan, too or just a bonus?" The Doctor demanded as her so-called adoptive mother staggered, relieved to be freed from the paralysis.
Tecteun glared at her. "We had projected that the war would cause the universe to convulse, change and grow in different ways. Yes, many races were wiped out, but think of the long term benefits; with them gone, the universe evolved in different ways. But at the same time, we knew you would become involved. And you did. You stopped the Time War. We had nothing to do with that upstart's plans."
The Doctor was left staring at Tecteun in shock, shock that the Division was not only responsible, but Tecteun saw the whole thing like a cold-hearted scientist would. She felt no shame in what she did. She didn't even care if Gallifrey had been destroyed, believing that the loss of the Time Lords meant nothing despite their place in history, believing the Division was far superior.
In a way she was right.
"Pattern optimisation in progress," the Ood suddenly reported, completely unaffected by the devastating bombshell that had been exploded in the room. "Matter compression increasing. Spatial distribution and destruction analysis now available."
"I know what that Ood is doing. You're generating the final waves of the Flux from here, forcing spatial compression on that universe. You're trying to move this structure into the next universe while you wreck the one you leave behind. No wonder this place feels under so much pressure," the Doctor held out her hands while Tecteun turned to face her again.
Tecteun didn't seem bothered by her earlier attacks relating to the Time War. "We all need to clear up after ourselves. That's why I had you brought here, to ensure you won't be in the universe to save it."
How does that make sense? The Doctor didn't understand this; they had unleashed the Flux and the Ravagers to get rid of her once and for all, so why was the plan changing? Did they plan to send her back at the last moment so she couldn't do anything?
The Doctor decided to change tack. She had many more questions and Tecteun was the perfect person to answer them; the Shobogan who had left Gallifrey in search of knowledge was truly gone, replaced by this cold-hearted scientist who saw the whole Division as her own sick experiment. "So, was what the Master told me true?"
"Yes. I found you. A lost child, alone, beneath a monument on a deserted planet, seemingly deposited thereby a wormhole. No way back, no one to care for you," Tecteun replied, her eyes wistful as she clearly remembered that day.
"You took something that didn't belong to you," the Doctor ground out, furious as she remembered the Matrix recording of Tecteun torturing her younger self. It had been horrifying to learn the truth of the Time Lords was based on the torture of a child, but finding out that child was her… it was horrifying to know everything she'd thought she had known was a lie. The Master was right, it wasn't good to know.
Tecteun laughed suddenly, a harsh sound without any kind of humour. "I rescued you. Would you prefer to have been left?"
The Doctor was sickened by the implication this woman felt she owned her, like a slave. "You assumed I came through that wormhole, but you don't know. What if I was waiting there to collected? What if I was supposed to be taken through it? What if whoever left me there was taken by that wormhole?"
She had a host of other ideas that she had dreamt up during her time in prison, but Tecteun shot them down. "What if, what if, what if?"
"You denied me my life!" The Doctor shouted, glad to have this chance of arguing with the woman who'd ripped so much away from her.
Tecteun sneered back at her, unimpressed by her arguments. "I gave you a life. Everything you are is because of me. But I understand," Tecteun suddenly looked at her with sympathy that was so fake the Doctor was left wondering if the woman had practiced a technique the Nestene Autons couldn't copy. "You think you could have been something else, someone else."
The Doctor stilled. She hadn't thought of that, but she wasn't going to admit it to Tecteun. "Maybe. I'll never know."
For a moment she wondered if she had been left on that planet under the wormhole with someone about to come through - what kind of life would she have had if that was true? The Doctor didn't know, but one thing was sure; she would never have a TARDIS, she'd never travel the universe, seeing the sights and meeting new people and travelling with others.
"You judge me for giving you the journey of your lifetime. What do you do, Doctor?" Tecteun demanded scornfully. "Pick people up, take them with you? You adopt them, use them, for reassurance, for company. They're your experiments, just as you were mine."
The Doctor gasped under her breath, horrified by the question as she thought about her lives travelling, the lives she remembered, at any rate, hating the fact Tecteun had pointed out the reasons she'd taken them on in the first place; she'd taken Susan away from Gallifrey without caring or giving a thought about what the girl wanted, she had taken Ian and Barbara away and let them face the music when they returned to the 1960s. What about Steven, the way their relationship had turned sour after the whole mess with the Daleks plan? Ben and Polly hadn't been planned, but what about Dodo? Her mind was affected by WOTAN's hypnotism, and she was left in an almost vegetative state as a result. That would never have happened if she hadn't travelled in the TARDIS.
What about Jamie, Victoria, and Zoe? Jamie and Zoe had had their lives and experiences with her erased by the Time Lords when her second self had called in Gallifrey to deal with the War Games, and Victoria had been so affected by the death and destruction around her.
What about Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric? Adric was killed trying to save Briggs's freighter against the Cybermen when hours earlier he was telling her that the whole mess was not their problem before they discovered, Tegan had become tired of the never-ending pain and grief following that encounter with Davros and those Daleks after the TARDIS was ensnared in that time corridor, and Nyssa's original departure was one of the more peaceful ones, but her apparent death hurt her in so many ways.
What about Peri, Mel, Ace, Hex, and Benny? What about Rose, Martha, Liv, Helen, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Martha, Donna? What happened with them? She still remembered the way Amy had recoiled from her when she'd found out what Kovarian had done, and she'd wanted to make sure she hurt nobody ever again following what happened to Bill on the Mondasian ship, but what about Yaz, Ryan, Graham?
She had refused to talk about her past, about Gallifrey, about the Division; if she got back to them, and Dan and Yaz didn't ask her what the Weeping Angels meant, she would be surprised.
But her mind returned to Tecteun's argument.
Yes, she might take people with her on her travels, but she didn't experiment on them and betray them in such a way. No, sometimes it was worse than that. Far worse, but she liked to think she was giving her friends the time of their lives while trying to keep the danger at a minimum.
"We are not the same," the Doctor ground out.
Tecteun sent her a disappointed look and she walked slowly away before she stopped and turned around.
"This just shows I was right to order your memories erased. Ood, guard her," Tecteun did not bother looking once at the Doctor before she walked away to tend to some other task, but the Doctor did not particularly care.
She was reeling from the news she had just received
Tecteun was the one who ordered her memories erased, but why? The Doctor was so taken by surprise by the revelation that had been so coldly dropped in that she didn't really pay any attention to the Ood's reply, "Yes, Tecteun."
She was too busy thinking over recent events, ever since she had discovered the truth on Gallifrey, and she had found herself in that prison on the asteroid, she had longed to discover the truth about herself, and in a short time, she had learnt more than she had imagined. In truth, the Doctor was not particularly surprised by the news Tecteun had ordered her memories erased, but she decided to just ignore it for the time being. She had heard stories about abusive parents, but she had never imagined that her real parent if she could classify Tecteun as even that, would ever do that.
But it didn't matter at this point. She had much more to do, and not much time left to do it in.
After making sure that Tecteun was gone, she hurried over to the Ood - she wasn't sure if this Ood would cooperate or not, but she had found their people kind and friendly in the past, well most of the time. "Ood, Ood, Ood, quick, quick, quick. Don't have long, need your help," the Doctor whispered; she might be sure Tecteun was gone, but she could have some kind of bug to keep watch over her to make sure she didn't jeopardise her plans.
The Ood stared placidly back at her, making the Doctor wish she could somehow reach out and find the Ood brain and make this individual Ood see how wrong this was; she was relieved it didn't use the translator ball to attack her, and she was relieved its eyes weren't glowing due to telepathic interference like they did when the Beast mentally assaulted the Ood on Sanctuary Base and transformed them into its slaves and willing soldiers and House taking over Nephew. "I am unable to provide assistance. My service is to Division and Tecteun."
The Doctor grimaced. She had forgotten how blindly obedient the Ood could be. "I'm right, aren't I? You're generating spatial compression, the final Flux events, from here. Mate, we have to stop this."
"Prevention is in contravention of instructions. It is also impossible. Flux culmination is already in progress."
The Doctor hated being reminded of that. "Show me while she's not here."
"I am prevented from…," the Ood began to say to her.
The Doctor interrupted quickly, walking around the Ood quickly, she was not really in the mood for a pointless argument with an Ood when the whole of the universe was at stake. "I know. I know you are. But aren't you worried? Aren't you scared for your own kind? Because that universe is full of Ood," the Doctor held back the urge to grin in delight when she saw the Ood begin to take notice of what she was saying. "The universe, the matter that is being compressed by you, that's where your people live. And I don't know how or when you became part of this, but I can stop this. I can save them. I'm the one."
"You cannot," the Ood replied, but it was hard for her to tell if the Ood was now interested in helping her now it realised it would become the sole survivor of its race because of Tecteun's insane plan. "It is too late."
"It's never too late," the Doctor interrupted, wishing people would stop saying that, especially to a time traveller. "I'm very good at pulling rabbits out of hats."
"I have no rabbits."
The Doctor closed her eyes. She should have known better than to expect an Ood to appreciate a well-known metaphor. "It's a metaphor."
"Or hats," the Ood was determined to get the last word on this stupid debate.
"Honestly, it doesn't matter," the Doctor interrupted quickly, otherwise she and this Ood would be arguing about metaphors all day long. "Just show me, quick smart, before she comes back."
The Ood nodded and put in a sequence into the console, and the overhead hologram activated showing the universe. Or rather, a chunk of it. There were a few galaxies and an impressive amount of space within what was left of the universe, but the Doctor remembered seeing the universe being much, much bigger than what she was experiencing right now.
"Oh! Thank you, thank you, Ood. We can sort this. Sorry, which part of the universe is this?" She asked; she recognised one or two galaxies, but they were all scrunched up together.
"All of it."
The Ood's simple reply worried and horrified the Doctor. "No, there's nowhere near enough of it." The Doctor remembered a much bigger universe than what she was seeing.
"This is all that remains. The first Flux event destroyed many galaxies."
"But it doesn't make sense. It's not centred correctly. The erasure, the compression all looks like it's moving in from the outside, all to one place," the Doctor said, studying the image closely.
"That is Earth," the Ood informed her, making her pause and look at him in horror. "Earth will be the ultimate apex of destruction. It is designed that way."
The Doctor stared back at him, her brain ringing with the news that Earth would be the last place, the last planet to go. She had spent many of her years on that planet, all of her lives had visited it, meeting many people and seeing so much history unfolding. But a small part of her mind wondered, really wondered, if Tecteun had engineered the Flux as the Ood had told her to destroy Earth last to spite her, but she pushed that aside.
The Ancient Gallifreyans' motives were not relevant right now. She needed to stop this before it became too much, but before the Doctor could focus on a decent solution to restore the universe and stop the Flux, the Doctor suddenly heard something in her mind. It sounded like multiple whispers with no real source, reaching into her mind that it hurt.
Pressing her fingers to her temples, the Doctor concentrated hard on blocking it with her mental barriers so she could concentrate on the Flux.
"But what has been compressed can be decompressed, uncompressed, cos I'm thinking," the Doctor's mind raced excitedly as she tried to think of a way of reversing what Division had done, "those transport pads, this power source, reversing the polarity of the conversion plates, I can stop this and get out of here before she kills me, cos we both know that's where this is heading. And what is that noise? That whispering?" The Doctor finished with a shout, realising she had been so excited thinking of a possible way out of this hell, that she had let her mental barriers falter and the whispering had begun anew.
"I cannot hear it," the Ood told her, but the Doctor ignored him while she walked around the control room, concentrating on the telepathic whispering; it surprised her the Ood wasn't able to hear it, given how powerful its own telepathy was, but this seemed attuned to her mind, so she was using that connection to help her track it.
"It's coming from over here," the Doctor pointed to a small part of Tecteun's collection. "How can you not hear that?" She asked the Ood, surprised but she focused on the shelves, and her eyes caught something that made her hearts beat faster. Suddenly she was in some grey, desolate plain with a strange house that looked like it was built from a dozen houses stacked up on top of each other. She had seen it before, but she was snapped out of the vision and was back in the Division station.
On one of the shelves, tucked out of the way, was a glass dome. As the Doctor walked slowly over to it, her eyes were drawn to the ornate fob watch with the familiar language of Old High Gallifreyan stencilled in black inside.
The Doctor's breath caught in her throat when she saw it and quickly translated the script. This was the watch that contained her memories, the memories she had lost.
She felt numb as she took it all in.
A part of the Doctor was yelling for her to take out her sonic screwdriver, perform a quick check of the dome to make sure there weren't any security safeguards to stop anyone taking it, remove the dome, take out the fobwatch, open it, and get her memories back.
This watch held so many answers, for so many of her questions. With her memories restored, she would remember working for the Division, remember what she'd done and what led to her running with Lee all the way to Gloucester to hide there in the first place.
But she was too numb with shock with the discovery that it was too late.
"I see you've found it," Tecteun's voice called from behind.
The Doctor didn't move, she didn't say a word.
"Well, aren't you going to say something to me, Doctor? This is, after all, why you have been chasing after the Division for some time, yes?"
The Doctor did not know what was making her sicker; the fact Tecteun had had the watch all these years without any of her last 13 selves knowing about it, or that she had had all of this time to push those memories into her own mind.
"A Gallifreyan device for the protection and storage of memories and identities. Of course, you kept them, the memories you took from me," the Doctor said slowly and angrily turning to face Tecteun, wondering now if she could get away with smashing the dome and stealing the memories away from Tecteun.
Her fingers were itching to use the sonic screwdriver and steal the memories, but she did not know what Tecteun or the Ood would do if she took that kind of step, so she didn't bother regardless of the incentive.
"A good scientist never throws away their workings," Tecteun walked over to her, that same condescending sneer on her face. "We had them quantum stored for a long time in the Weeping Angel who tracked you and betrayed you, but don't worry, it didn't escape," Tecteun threw a small object which projected the image of a Weeping Angel; why she did that, the Doctor truly did not know, and she did not care. "Everything has been transferred now, stored in that fob watch."
The Doctor didn't care about holograms right now, all she wanted were some clues to her lives. "How much was lost? How many lives? How many people have I been? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?" The Doctor near whispered the last one.
Ever since she had gotten that regeneration energy from Gallifrey while she'd been trapped on Trenzalore, the Doctor had come to the realisation she didn't know how many times she could regenerate now, but now she didn't know if it was even necessary. Had she always been able to regenerate beyond the Time Lord's limitation of 12 regenerations? Was it locked? Did the new regeneration cycle Gallifrey provided do anything for her, or was it inevitable she would have regenerated on Trenzalore without Gallifrey's help?
Discovering there were thousands more versions of her out there, wandering in and out of the timelines…
In her sixth self after discovering that statue in the Garden of Fond Memories before that encounter with Davros on Necros, she had told Peri she had thought she was good for a few more regenerations. Discovering that she'd led hundreds of lives and that incarnation was one of a vast number, it made her wonder just how long she was going to live.
"What would you give to know?" Tecteun asked while the Division station creaked; it was clear that the Ood's efforts at the engines had only slowed down the stress, but the Doctor was too focused on this newest conversation with the woman who began all of this to truly focus on what could happen to the Division. "What if I offered you a choice? You can return to the dying universe you left, defend it from its inevitable destruction and fail, or rejoin Division. Rejoin me. Come with us into the next universe, into the beyond. Help me build!"
The Doctor listened to amazement at the choice outstretched to her.
Tecteun carried on, "With your memories restored. Be complete again. The next universe holds the other end of the wormhole where I found you. That universe may be where you're from, where you began. Your origins, perhaps. Think of the discoveries that would await us both there. A new start."
The Doctor stared back at her in disgust. While she was intrigued at the possibilities of looking into that other universe, and perhaps seeing if there was a race of beings who possessed regeneration as she did, or the potential for it, she could never abandon her friends. At the same time, the Doctor believed this woman had long since stopped being a scientist long ago, someone who was just interested in seeing what was out there, instead of being obsessed with controlling every single thing.
Was this one of Tecteun's weaknesses, she was so sure she could appeal to her sense of curiosity?
The Doctor sneered back at her. "If you really knew me, you'd know I'd never agree to any of this, no matter how strong the incentive." She added sending a longing look at the fobwatch.
But Tecteun was not finished. What if I left the Earth? What if we let your friends live?"
The question made the Doctor snap.
"Oh, please!" The Doctor shrieked, startling Tecteun and the Ood, who turned momentarily away from his work to watch the unfolding argument, but the Doctor didn't care. "You don't care about the universe! You and your sick group have been interfering in the universe for centuries! You've been watching me, watching my travels as I go through the universe in the TARDIS, and you watched as the universe convulsed as the Time War erupted. Hell, you are even behind it. All to ensure none of the Temporal Powers discovered your existence.
"You set up the Flux, just to kill me and the universe, just because I discovered your existence. And now, you're saying that you'd let me come with you in a different universe, that you'd save the Earth? Why would you bother with that? When you enter that universe, you are going to do exactly as you've been doing for centuries; you'll recruit operatives and twist that universe exactly as you have done ours. And you want me to come back to you?
"Why should I believe you? Ever since I got here, you've been telling me I'm a virus, that you tortured me and forced me to regenerate several times just so you could take something that wasn't yours. You've even told me you had ordered my memories erased, that you unleashed the Flux to destroy everything because you wanted to see me dead, well it won't happen. I won't let it, because I have saved the universe before. I undid the damage caused by the Pandorica and the Silence. I stopped Padrac's plan to destroy the universe. I will end this all because you couldn't stop seeing the universe as your sick plaything," the Doctor leaned forward, dropping her voice into a low threatening whisper, much as her tenth incarnation had regularly done when really riled.
Her anger and her emotions must have been visible because Tecteun swallowed and tried to step back, but the Doctor refused to let the ancient Gallifreyan go - she might not have been able to intimidate Rassilon or Omega, but this woman was not one of them.
"Listen to me. I'm gonna save my friends. I'm gonna save that universe. And I'm gonna destroy Division. So hold on to that hat, because you, me, and the end of the universe -it's personal now. And I'm gonna win."
"No."
The Doctor turned and her eyes widened in horror when she saw Swarm and Azure standing in the doorway of the Division station control room. But how could this be? How could these two be here? What would happen if they were here?
"How did you get here?" Tecteun demanded.
Swarm chuckled. "The psycho-temporal bridge I've been building, powered by the energy we harvested from the lifeforms of that universe to you, Doctor. Right from the start. All it took was a little Time. And all for this, to get beyond any one universe, to find Division, to get revenge on those who imprisoned us so long ago. To take them all."
The Doctor looked down, nodding as she realised the Ravager had planted a means of tracking her mind, even through the Void. Personally, she didn't really care what happened to the Division; they had proven themselves corrupted by their own power, and their view of the universe as a scientific experiment only made it worse, to say nothing of their crimes.
"You don't belong here," Tecteun said.
The Doctor snorted. Did she really think that would work, she had no power over the Ravagers. But she didn't feel sorry for Tecteun. Her adoptive 'mother' had played a game she would ultimately lose. She shot her adoptive 'mother' an angry sneer. You did this, she thought privately to herself, your fault, this all your fault, all of your hubris led to this moment! You tampered with the forces of the universe, began committing mass genocide, all to get to me!
"Say thank you, Doctor," Azure's voice rang out, making the Doctor swing around and she caught sight of the female Ravager walking around the tree in the centre of the room.
"What for?" The Doctor asked.
"We could heal this pain of yours so easily," Azure replied with her disgusting skeletal, toothy smirk.
Swarm, meanwhile, turned his attention to Tecteun. "You released me. Now I release you."
What? Tecteun released-? The Doctor supposed it made sense in a sick way for Tecteun to release the Ravagers as the temporal poison that they were, and
"No, no, no, don't touch her!" The Doctor ran towards Swarm to stop him from killing Tecteun.
But it was too late; Swarm touched Tecteun, who disintegrated, sending the Doctor a look of horror. The Doctor looked on, just as horrified; Tecteun might have been arrogant and she had lost her fascination with the universe in exchange for seeing the whole thing as an experiment in a petri dish, poking and prodding to make certain events took place and had become detached from her own people, her own reality that she no longer cared, but she had been someone who held all the answers.
And now she was dead.
Swarm turned his skeletal countenance towards the Doctor, lifting up a hand to touch her. "Now, Doctor... you."
Author's note - Series 13's Flux arc is finished, but I wish the Doctor's memories were returned.
I found a screen rant article detailing the theory that the Division was responsible for the Time War and I ran with it, along with the mention of the alternate Gallifrey Romana and Narvin visited with Braxiatel, Leela, and K9 where they found the Time Lords there rewriting history constantly. I just felt that it went with the one-shot.
Enjoy.