Author's Note: I came up with the idea for the title of this chapter because, apart from listening to a few lovey-dovey Disney songs during certain scenes & some tracks from the 'Day of the Doctor' soundtrack, I listened to a version of 'Aria of the Goldberg Variations' slowed down 6.66 times. (Apparently, it's a thing from that show Hannibal?) And who knows? Maybe the title is more than just a title.
Sorry, again, for the shorter length of this chapter. I promise I'm not making them smaller on purpose.
Please also keep in mind that death is dealt with in this chapter in a very serious manner. Don't read the rest of the chapter if you think it might mess with you.
An eruption sounded as the TARDIS shuddered, her engines grinding loudly as chaos suddenly rained down upon us. The ship lurched to one side and then the other, tossing the Doctor and I around like rag dolls. I threw my arms around one of the coral support beams and clung to it desperately as the Doctor grabbed hold of the console. Another eruption sounded from somewhere outside the TARDIS, sparks snapping from the ceiling as the lights flickered.
"Doctor!" I shouted, terrified.
The TARDIS lurched again and I was thrown to the floor, my glasses knocked off from the force of my landing and skidding a few feet away. The ship shuddered once more, groaned, and then fell silent. I looked up from the floor, spotting the Doctor still in place by the console, and braced myself for another explosion that never came.
"D-Doctor?"
"It's alright," she said, her back turned to me. "It's alright. They've stopped."
I slipped my glasses back on and pushed myself onto my knees. "Who?"
"The Time Lords." She took hold of the scanner and dragged it across the console so it was positioned right in front of her. On it was an image of the time vortex with a simple, silver cylinder floating inside it.
"Were they shooting at us or something?" I asked, finally standing and moving to stand next to the Doctor.
"Or something. Not only did I break a cardinal rule by traveling into Gallifrey's past to save you, but they seem to be under the impression that you're a temporal criminal." The Doctor's eyes narrowed as she read through the words scrolling by at the bottom of the screen. I thought, for a moment, that the message was written in Greek, but blamed the suspicion on the headache that had started in my temples. "The CIA wants to take you into custody."
"But I haven't done anything!"
"You'd think," the Doctor scoffed, "that with a Time War on their hands they would have better things to do than chase us down!"
I looked from the screen to the Doctor, nervously wringing my hands as I asked, "What are you going to do?"
With a flourish of her hand, the Doctor had set a new destination and the TARDIS jolted as she shot through the vortex like a bullet. I grabbed onto the lip of the console with my feet planted firmly on the floor, hoping I wouldn't get knocked around again if the TARDIS started pitching again. The ship landed with a wheeze a moment later, but the Doctor had already set in another destination and sent us back into the vortex.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to throw them off our scent."
The Doctor landed several more times, never staying more than a second in each place before dematerializing the TARDIS and sending us somewhere new. My headache, which was at first a mild irritation, had blossomed into a pulsating migraine by the time the Doctor landed for good and I found myself swaying long after the ship had stopped moving.
"Are you alright?"
I shook my head, but immediately regretted doing so. "No," I groaned, my hands pressed against my forehead. "I feel terrible."
The Doctor's hands were suddenly on my face, brushing my hands away so she could inspect me herself. After about a minute of gentle pressing, feeling, and inquiring as to how I felt, the Doctor let out a heavy sigh and retreated. "This is my fault," she said. "It seems like you already hurt your head beforehand, but the reason you're so sick? That's my doing."
I exclaimed painfully as the throbbing in my skull worsened, doubling over when it became to difficult to stand. The Doctor caught me as I fell forward and wrapped her arms around me. "What did you do to me?" I groaned.
"The inside of the TARDIS is nearly a minute out of sync with the exterior. We're about a minute into the future. But the different time zones are wreaking havoc on your body, affecting the chronons in your blood. If you stay in here much longer, you'll get seriously ill." At that point it became too painful to speak, so instead I yelled, my legs buckling under the weight of my body. Only the Doctor kept me from collapsing. "We have to get you outside. Quickly."
How I ended up outside the TARDIS, I could never remember, but my headache began to ease up within seconds and that was how I found myself turned over the Doctor's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Still feeling slightly dizzy, I pressed a hand to my head and sighed. The uncomfortable position I had been placed it left me with a view of the ground and the Doctor's rear, which I most definitely did not want to be forced to stare at.
"How do you feel now?"
I grunted when the Doctor jolted beneath me, rocking my body and aggravating my dizzy spell. "Stop moving," I hissed.
"The farther away you are from the TARDIS, the better."
I lifted my head and looked around, grimacing against the distant pain in my forehead as I took in our surroundings. The TARDIS stood several meters away on flat ground, the same reddish-brown dust and pebbles that the Doctor's shoes were crunching on. The sky was the color of cardboard, littered with clouds that veiled two bright points in the sky. They looked like suns, but were so small and so little light peeked through the clouds that I couldn't be sure. Miles past the TARDIS was a jagged mountain range a few shades darker than the rest of the environment, the tallest peaks covered by pale brown clouds. There was no vegetation, no sign of animal life, let alone intelligent life.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"Pastru. Over a billion light years away from Gallifrey." The Doctor paused and rested a hand on the back of my calf. "There's a rock here. Would you like to sit down?"
"Please."
I pretended not to hear the Doctor's little grunts as she crouched down and helped me slide off her shoulder. I knew it wasn't easy heaving two hundred plus pounds of dead weight. She firmly grasped my hands and lowered me to a large, mostly-red rock. Once I was seated, I stole a quick look around and realized that my little rock was just the starting point of a massive field of boulders. Many of the boulders were about the same height as the TARDIS, give or take a foot or two, and as broad as a suburban family's four-door Prius was from front to back, but a great deal more surpassed the size of houses.
The planet was uncomfortably quiet and still, the only noticeable sound being the whistling of the wind. Even the Cloisters weren't entirely devoid of sound; I had been able to hear the distant cries of Time Lord ghosts or the echoing of my own footsteps. I shivered involuntarily. There's something about this planet, I mused.
The Doctor seemed to notice that I was uncomfortable because she asked, "What's wrong?"
I had unconsciously moved my hands so they were ghosting along the exposed skin of my arms as if to warm myself. Frowning, I lowered my arms so they lay in my lap instead and sighed. "Nothing. I feel better now. Thank you."
"But?"
My eyes trailed along the jagged outline of the far-off mountains, then fell to the flat line of the horizon where the mountains faded into hills and then nothing. "But I… have a weird feeling about this place," I admitted. "Everything feels off somehow. I can't explain it."
"It's the lack of life on this planet. To any being accustomed to plants, animals, other intelligent species, this planet would seem like a desolate wasteland."
"It is a desolate wasteland."
The Doctor hummed. "Perhaps. You never know the shape that life will take in the outermost corners of the universe."
The wind seemed to turn colder and I shivered again, this time as a result of the temperature.
Inside the TARDIS, a red light on the console began flashing in time with the accompanying alarm. The scanner came to life with a snap of electricity and showed the empty console room a view of two ships inside the time vortex hurtling towardsPastru, the first ship belonged to the Time Lords and the second…
"What's that sound?" I asked, sitting up a little straighter. There was something more than just the wind whipping across the plain that lay between us and the TARDIS. "Is that the TARDIS?"
"It shouldn't be." A slender, silver cylinder materialized near the Doctor's TARDIS and I jumped to my feet, gasping in shock. "The Time Lords. Quick!"
Latching onto my hand, the Doctor bolted past me and ran for the nearest boulder. She dove to the ground and I fell with her, both of us landing on our sides with a collective grunt. As I pushed myself into a sitting position, I noticed that the Doctor had dropped my hand and that the ground had at some point turned from dirt and pebbles to red-brown gravel. The Doctor had already positioned herself with her torso pressed against the boulder, the very top of her head peeking over the top.
"What are we going to do?" I asked, scooting across the gravel so my back was against the boulder and my knees were drawn halfway to my chest.
"We could make a break for the TARDIS. They wouldn't be able to do anything to us until we draw closer, but… they'll have weapons."
"We can't just wait them out, can we?" The Doctor shook her head. "So, how will we get back to the TARDIS?"
Before the Doctor could formulate a response, the metallic shrieking of genocidal pepper pots exploded across the plain. Breaking through the clouds was a Dalek saucer and at least a dozen Daleks had already exited the ship, flying towards the surface on hovering mechanism, all the while screaming, "THE DOC-TOR IS DE-TECT-ED!"
The Doctor's mouth fell open. "No," she breathed. "No." She looked at me and I could see that her eyes were welling with tears.
Electric red blasts of energy rained down all around us, soon accompanied by broken shards of rock. The Doctor threw herself at me, cupping my head in her hands as we fell over, her body on top of mine. I curled myself into a ball, hiding behind her as dust and rock pattered against her leather coat like heavy rainfall. When there was a pause in the attacks, the Doctor lifted her head and looked around.
Deciding the coast was clear for the moment, the Doctor moved into a crouching position and pulled me up. "We have to run for the TARDIS. Run as fast as you can and don't stop. Don't run in a straight line. Make it impossible to target you. Do you understand?" I nodded mutely. "Run!"
The Doctor hauled me to the feet alongside her, then pushed me in the TARDIS' direction. I could hear her shouting as I ran, announcing her position to the Daleks, mocking and provoking them. A bolt of Dalek fire hit the ground behind me, pebbles whacking against my back. I darted to the right, then to the left, pushing myself to run faster than I ever had in my entire life. The TARDIS drew steadily closer with each thundering step I took and for a single, beautiful moment, I had hope that I would make it.
A Dalek swooped down from the sky and landed to my right, screaming incoherently. I froze for just a moment, distracted and scared out of my mind, then stuttered forward on unsteady legs, missing its blast by a hairsbreadth. The TARDIS was so, so close.
There was a woman who had once called herself the Doctor long, long ago. She hadn't felt like the Doctor in years and she certainly didn't feel any closer to the title on the plains of Pastru. She knew that she wouldn't survive this encounter with the Daleks, even if, for some reason, the CIA decided to help her, but she was not about to give up with Diana's life on the line. She would keep regenerating, keep distracting the Daleks until her hearts finally stopped beating just to ensure that her beloved human lived.
A Dalek swooped low over the boulder patch, too close for comfort, and the Doctor followed the creature with her sonic, disrupting its primary functions like she had with the Daleks that flown into range. If she got lucky, maybe some of them would shoot each other or crash and just maybe she would live to see another day.
The Warrior, as the former Doctor had taken to calling herself, felt her hearts freeze when a bloodcurdling scream pierced through the chaos. She spun towards the TARDIS, time slowing as she searched the whirlwinds of dust and Dalek for the source. A body flew through the air and slammed into the TARDIS doors, shaking the Warrior to her very core. She squinted and raised a hand to shade her eyes from the light of the double suns overhead. A shock of blue hair seemed to call out to her from the ground.
It couldn't be… Could it?
The Warrior surged forward, her hearts hammering within her chest as she prayed to every deity she had ever heard of or encountered, begging that her worst fears hadn't just come to life before her very eyes.
She didn't recall when it had started, but the Warrior was crying by the time she reached the TARDIS. She couldn't breathe or think or feel, she could only stare at the dead body of the woman she loved strewn out at her feet. The Warrior fell to her knees, her hands trembling. She started to reach for Diana's extended arm, but pulled back when she realized that the pale hand buried in the dirt would be lifeless and still warm with the memory of her life force.
The Warrior fell forward onto her hands, her sobs rocking her body. She screamed and beat her fist against the ground. Diana was dead and it was her doing. She had set the TARDIS interior and exterior out of sync, she had taken them to Pastru, she had joined the Time War willingly all those years ago and now the Universe was repaying her.
No more, she decided. There would be no more war, no more Daleks, no more CIA or war-thirsting Time Lords. They had led her to this very moment and she would reign hell upon their lives.
When the Warrior next entered her TARDIS, the Pastru rains had drenched her to the bone and washed away the Dalek and Time Lord blood streaked across her face. As she took her beloved's body into her arms, she noticed the small Tares Feni that had crawled from the dirt onto Diana's bare arm and buried its pincers in her flesh. The Warrior gently unhooked the insect's pincers and then crushed it between her fingers. No other living being in the universe would ever touch Diana again, would ever see her face. She would be the last. That was how things were meant to be.
The Warrior laid her wife's body on the floor of the console room. There would be no point in taking her to the sick bay. Hell, the room no longer existed. Like the Doctor, the sick bay had run out its usefulness many years back. But there was nowhere else to place the body. The Warrior mused, then, that perhaps she should make a shrine dedicated to those she'd lost. Perhaps it would finally drive her and her guilty conscience closer to the end of the War and her life.
As she entered a new destination into the computer, the Warrior paused and wondered exactly what she was supposed to do with Diana's body. In all the years they had been together, somehow the topic of her wife's death had never been seriously discussed. There were people in the Warrior's past that had become Diana's second family and there were people in the Warrior's non-existent future that had done the same. Should she contact them? Should she just burn the body as Gallifreyans had been doing for centuries in a final attempt to honor the life of the woman who had deserved far better than a Time Lady with blood on her hands? And what of Miryam? How could she break the news?
The Warrior growled and slammed her fist against the console, fighting back tears. She stole a glance at the body on the floor and found herself doubled over, throwing up her last meal. Diana should be up and about, smiling and asking questions and bantering with her. It was wrong! The Warrior's knees slammed against the floor and she fell sideways onto her rear, her legs slipping to the side. The world seemed to be spinning.
The TARDIS whirred softly and the Warrior's head bobbed slightly. She gripped the edge of the console and for just a moment, the Warrior imagined she could hear the ship crying. She nodded. "I know, old girl."
It was some hours later that the Warrior cleaned herself, the TARDIS floor, and the dead, dusty face of her wife. She had taken the TARDIS to Earth sometime in the 13th century. There were so many times and places on this little blue and green speck that had come to mean something to the Time Lady and her spouse that there was no single resting place greater than another. But she remembered fondly the penchant Diana had for history and culture and the wild, savage beauty of nature, so she told herself that Diana would have loved the place the Warrior finally decided upon.
Deep in the uninhabited forests that would one day surround Diana's hometown, the Doctor built a funeral pyre and dug a tiny grave some meters away. It took her the length of an entire day to cut down and size enough wood for a decent pyre, and the majority of the night to build it. She tried not to think about her beloved's body waiting for her inside the TARDIS, which had been recalibrating for several hours. The Warrior had finally synced the interior and exterior, a too-late gesture of respect in Diana's memory. If she was lucky, then maybe a version of her wife from before the Cloisters would return to her.
The light of a waxing crescent moon shone down on the Warrior, countless billions of stars and a couple of planets shining and twinkling brightly. Diana would have loved a night like this, she thought. I would have watched the moon set and sun rise with her, and I might have kissed her in the last moment of the twilight hours just to make her smile, but no more. The Warrior sat down with a sob and cried into her hands.
A bolt of vortex lightning pricked the center of a dead heart and it began to beat anew. Synapses sparked to life and nerves tingled. A finger twitched, a pair of lungs expanded, eyelids fluttered lightly as the eyes beneath them moved restlessly.
The Warrior returned for Diana's body just before daybreak, carrying her outside and setting her atop the funeral pyre. She pressed a final kiss to her wife's cold lips and whispered goodbye. Holding the single torch she had crafted and lit, the Warrior whispered an Earth prayer for Diana's soul and then dropped it in the kindling at the base of the pyre.
As the flames grew higher and engulfed Diana's body, the Warrior forced herself to watch. She would watch and remember, and when the War was over, she would join her.