Episode: The Snakes of Sicily
Chapter: Everybody Lives [6/6]
Summary: Rory Williams wanted to have his stag night in peace. Amy Pond wanted people to stop flirting with her fiancé. And the mothers wanted their children safe. The Master only wanted to forget. Or the one where the Ponds get their wedding present, the TARDIS refuses to behave, and things have a (sort of) happy ending for once.
Rating: T
"And I saved them! I actually did it!" Koschei laughs as he spins around the controls, the TARDIS singing all around him while Theta lounges against the rails with a huge grin.
"Yes, you did," he confirms with a laugh before walking into the middle of his next loop. "Isn't it about time you got a shower and changed out of that tunic? Amy and Rory should be more than done. They're probably asleep by now, if the TARDIS has made them a room. They looked exhausted after all the excitement."
"Oh, they most definitely are, humans and their frail bodies," Koschei agrees easily, turning to the controls to make sure the TARDIS is safely floating in the Vortex mostly out of habit. "Or, actually, they better be. I'm sure Amy won't be happy if she goes to her own wedding all sleep-deprived," he laughs, though the memory sours his good mood the slightest bit.
The cracks in the universe, the fissures that erased the Weeping Angels aboard the Byzantium but that can also take away something as large and complex as a whole planet.
And all of them originate from the twenty-sixth of June of 2010.
The date of Amy and Rory's wedding.
It can't be a coincidence.
"Oh, come on, don't look so down. Whatever it is, you can deal with it," Theta tells him, lounging on the controls so he can meet Koschei's eyes.
"How can you be so sure of that? This isn't a time ripple, for crying out loud!"
"Of course not! But you've dealt with worse things before."
"That was—"
"And you can still deal with them now. Lamia and Helene and all their people could tell you that," Theta adds before Koschei can protest, and he finds himself stopping as the realization of what he did dawns on him again.
"I really can do it, can't I?" he asks softly, part of him still too surprised at the way he just turned the situation around back in Sicily.
He had been so wrong, but when he'd scanned the weird lump at the origin of the whirlpool, holding onto a dead sapling sticking from a crack on the cliff wall and battered by water on all sides, and heard Charybdis' voice begging for forgiveness…
He'd adapted. He'd read the situation, and instead of setting everyone on fire and be done with it, he'd tried to reason with them.
And he'd done it. Koschei had saved the day.
The grin that splits his face is so wide that it hurts.
"I can fix things," he tells Theta with more strength this time, and the ghost smiles blindingly.
"Of course you can. You just have to believe it. So, what now? Wedding or cracks?"
"Cracks. I need to figure out just what is going on and stop it, so that Amy can have her wedding in peace. I'm going to drop them back in Leadworth first, of course, but once I've fixed everything and brought everyone back—"
And Koschei freezes, eyes widening in realization.
The cracks erase people, erase whole planets. If he can fix them, he can bring Laestrygon and Father Octavian back.
But right now, he can only stare at the screen behind Theta's confused frown, and remember River.
River Song, who knows him in the future, who knows his face as the Doctor's.
Only, the Doctor is dead, with only this possible echo stuck in Koschei's head left, and his body was burnt until nothing remained.
"Koschei? I don't like that look on your face," Theta calls, uneasy now, but Koschei can't stop his new grin any more than he could the last one, growing wider and sharper as the thought coalesces in his mind.
"I can bring everyone back," he repeats, meeting Theta's eyes and laughing as he gestures grandly in his excitement. "I can bring everyone back! If I can reverse whatever caused the cracks, turn back time, I can bring everyone back!"
"Yes, you've said that. Why do you keep repeating it? What am I missing here?" Theta asks, confused, as he tilts his head, and Koschei hops to him and barely stops himself from ineffectively hugging the ghost.
"I can bring you back!"
"What?!"
"Don't you see? The kind of energy that created the cracks would be enough to rewind time just the slightest bit, to save you! Or, no, alright, because that would create a paradox, but you – you aren't just an echo, are you? I could use that energy to get you out of my head, to get you a new body! Or to get myself a new body!" he proclaims grandly, almost vibrating in excitement as he starts the analysis for the cracks, their energy levels, anything and everything, even as his brain moves on to the next possibility. "Don't you see? That's why River knows this face as the Doctor's – it's your face! I know how to sustain a body not of Time Lord origin, and with your regeneration energy in this one, it's compatible! Oh, Lamia, Eternals bless you! Don't you see? I don't need a body! You can take this one, and I could take, oh – aha! Your Metacrisis! It's subpar, partly human, but I've dealt with worse, and all your memories are in that body! It would work!"
"No, no and no! How can you—He's not even in this universe anymore!" the ghost protests, flailing uselessly since, just like Koschei can't touch him, neither can Theta touch Koschei.
"The cracks! I could use them to hop there, or their energy, and—oh, wait, he's with Rose?" he realizes as he checks the TARDIS' database, grimacing for a moment before a new grin splits his face. "Alright, new plan, scan the brain but leave the body, Rose doesn't deserve having the Metacrisis taken away from her if she likes it. But still, the memories! And I really don't need a body, we can find something else! What about an android? Can't be much difficult, right? At least it'll last longer than a human body, those are really pitiful—"
"That's madness!" Theta interrupts, stepping between Koschei and the TARDIS screen, forcing him to jump back in surprise, though it quickly washes away into anger.
"No, it's not! Do you know what madness is? River calling this face the Doctor! How do you explain that?" he asks with a snarl, and Theta hesitates. "You can't, that's how! I am not you, but you can take over me! Come on, I know how to survive without a body. But you don't. What other chances do we have?"
They fall silent, glaring at each other for a moment before Theta turns away with a huff, rubbing the back of his neck, and Koschei gives him a rueful grin before turning to the screens.
There's no other option. Maybe Theta doesn't like it, but Koschei knows they can do it. He can bring the Doctor back, let him use Koschei's body as his own for this last regeneration, while Koschei uses something else – or, maybe, they can switch roles, with Koschei being the annoying ghost instead. He knows how to deal with subpar bodies, he can figure something out. And, with the Doctor in a body of his own, he can help Koschei out too.
It'll work. Koschei will fix the cracks and get the Doctor back and then they can go to Amy's wedding and just, do whatever after.
It'll be alright.
Koschei will make sure of it.
AN: Lamia was a beautiful woman, lover of Zeus, who lost her children to Hera's jealousy and became twisted by grief into a temptress and child-killing monster. She was supposed to be cursed with insomnia by Hera, so Zeus gave her the ability to take out her eyes to get some rest, alongside shape-shifting abilities. It was later rationalized that Lamia was the Queen of Libya, who used her power to take children from their parents and kill them, and whose drunkness made her blind to everything.
Some sources identify Lamia as queen of Lamos and its man-eating Laestrygonians, ruled by King Antiphates and an unnamed queen, while others think she's the mother of the monsters Scylla and Charybdis.
The Laestrygonians were man-eating giants from Greek mythology, either from Sicily or Sardinia, and worked day and night as herdsmen and shepherds.
Scylla and Charybdis lived on opposing sides of a strait, likely the Strait of Messina between the Italian peninsula and Sicily, so narrow that sailors had to pass close to either one of them to cross. Scylla had four eyes, six long necks with grisly heads, each of which with three rows of sharp shark's teeth, and with her body consisting of twelve tentacle-like legs, a cat's tail, and six dog's heads ringing her waist. Charybdis was a large bladder with flippers for arms and legs, chained to the bottom of the sea, under a small rock on one side of the strait, which, three times a day, sucked in sea water and belched it out, creating large whirlpools.
There is a whirlpool in the Strait of Messina, but it is only a danger to small boats on extreme circumstances.
So, with that information, and a randomizer that gave me the names Helene and Eusthatios (well-built, stable) for their 'local contacts', we got a story! I didn't want to do just a rewrite of The Vampires of Venice because the circumstances for that episode aren't really appliable here, with Amy not kissing the Doctor, but I didn't want to add the weight of more 'tough choices' or loss on the characters… and so they got a lesson in learning to let go instead.
Though I'm surprised at the lesson the Master got out of this story. The characters really did what they wanted in this one…
Next time: Stranded time travelers, old enemies back from the grave, pizza and a movie, the fate of the universe resting on their ragtag group… All in all, just another day at the office - as long as your office is under the Roald Dahl Plass.