Author's Note: Hello everyone! Thanks so much for all the people who reviewed the last chapter, especially those who were kind enough to pass on well-wishes regarding my health. You really are such a lovely bunch of people. So big hugs to the following - MayFairy, MountainLord-92, SawManiac211, Celestial Valkyrie, SophieQueenOfTheWorld, GuesssWho, Vincenth, silentnightDW, EmmaMarie, EDZEL2 (x 2), Lost Moon, Ahsilaa, Push To Shove, Beautiful Space, TheWritingKat, sailormajinmoon, Geraldine (x 3), Loki'sTimeLady, Storme22, Theta'sWorstNightmare, Misplaced Levity, TheWickedHeart, Aietradaea and Imorgen.
To SilentnightDW - Thanks very much for your well-wishes, that's so nice of you. And I promise Ana's baby is still alive, at least in this chapter.
To Lost Moon - More about John and Borusa in this chapter, hopefully will answer your questions :) **Hugs you back**
To Beautifulspace - Thanks for the review. Good to see you have set up an account, welcome to FFN. However, your Private Messaging Facility is still disabled, so I couldn't reply to your review. Not sure if you knew about that or not, but now you do :)
To Geraldine - Great to have you back on board! Thanks so much for the catch-up! XXX
To Loki'sTimeLady - Thanks very much for the review, so glad I made you feel something, that's terrific!
Okay, here's the chapter, hope you all enjoy!
- Chapter Thirty -
"Sing to me the song of the stars,
Of the galaxy dancing and laughing
and laughing again..."
Only Hope - Switchfoot
"Who's Borusa?"
Theta's question hung heavily in the frosty air of the Adytum as Tejana stared at him in disbelief, unable to take in what she was hearing, her delicate features paling in shock. Then she swivelled her eyes back to Koschei's face, desperately seeking some sort of recognition there.
"Borusa!" she repeated urgently. "Lord Borusa! You have to remember him! Koschei, please! He's been your tutor ever since you were both eight years old!"
Koschei shook his head blankly. "Sorry, Kat, but we've never had a tutor by that name."
"He's the Patrician of the Prydonian Chapter of the Academy!" she insisted, her hands closing on his arm tightly, as if she intended to shake the information loose from him. "He's in line to become the youngest Cardinal in Gallifreyan history, the most adept politician this planet has ever known!"
Theta took a hesitant step forward. "Kat, Cardinal Lenardi is the Patrician of the Prydonian Academy," he said gently. "He has been for over two hundred years. Are you sure you haven't made some sort of mistake? You've travelled back from Gallifrey's future – is it possible you've gotten your timelines confused?"
Hopelessness crept through Tejana's veins like slow poison. "No," she whispered. "No, I'm not the one who's confused. I saw Lord Borusa less than half an hour ago, presiding over the Otherstide Ball. We all did. But now you can't even remember he ever existed. Which can mean only one thing. The transduction barrier is failing."
Theta looked at her incredulously, as if she had just spoken some sort of blasphemy. "What are you talking about? The transduction barrier is one of the triumphs of Gallifreyan temporal engineering. It's impregnable!"
Tejana gave a bitter, hollow laugh at his naivety. "Yeah, impregnable, just like the Titanic was unsinkable."
"What's the Titanic?" Koschei spoke up, clearly not following. "I've never heard of it."
"Never mind! The point is, there has been some sort of enormous temporal explosion back in my timeline, something so colossal that it has collapsed the entire space-time continuum. The stars have gone out, entire galaxies have been erased. And the only thing that's been keeping this planet safe from annihilation has been the temporal protections built into the transduction barrier. But if people are beginning to be erased from time on Gallifrey as well – people like Borusa – it can only mean that those protections must be starting to fail."
Theta's eyes were searching her face warily now, as if he was concerned for her sanity. "Stars? But there are no such things as stars. There never has been. They're nothing but a myth. Just a pretty story about lights in the sky to entertain little children."
Tejana drew in a quick, sharp breath of complete dismay, as it suddenly became clear to her the devastating extent of the damage the eroding timeline had already done to Gallifrey. For the Doctor to forget the stars...the shining, celestial bodies that had inspired his dreams since he was a tiny child...the thought was incredible and painful beyond bearing.
"Oh, Theta," she said sadly, wondering if the temporal decay had already progressed much too far to change anything. "The stars are anything but a myth. Before this all happened, they were our birthright – yours, mine, Koschei's – the song that called all three of us out into the Universe. Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through torrents of light that scorched the skies and danced across a million horizons. Throughout all of time and space; everywhere and anywhere and beyond, limitless and free. It's all you've ever wanted. You have to remember that!"
For a few seconds, she could see a strange yearning Theta's gaze, as if her emotional words pulled at something forgotten deep inside him. But then his eyes clouded over with doubt and more than a little suspicion. Back in her own time stream, the Doctor would have trusted her word immediately, without question, even if what she was saying seemed impossible. But that was more than eight hundred years in the future. Right now, to Theta, she was an unknown quantity, who had effectively dropped out of the sky and torn down his world, just like the evil goblin in the Pandorica fairytale. She had broken the fourth Law of Time, one of the greatest sins a Time Lord could ever commit. She had brought the wrath of the senior Time Lords down on his head. She had used the psychic link to kill, right in front of him. And now she was telling him that his faith in the transduction barrier, something which had been nurtured in him since childhood, was misplaced. The ongoing deterioration of the timeline was twisting everything. He only had her word that Borusa – and even the stars themselves - had ever existed, and he had no way to determine whether any part of what she was telling him was even remotely true. Could she blame him for wondering if maybe her mind was disturbed? And if he came to believe she was a raving lunatic, it was only a short step from there to handing her over to the Chancellery Guard, both for her own good and for the good of Gallifrey.
She looked up into Koschei's face, but found no help there. His expression was just as wary as Theta's.
"Listen to me!" she urged passionately. "I know right now you must both be thinking I'm mad, but you have to believe me. Neither of you are time travellers yet, so you can't see the damage the cracks are doing to the Universe. Every time someone or something is erased from Time, it leaves a hole. And the Universe does its best to mend that hole any way it can, stitching the threads of history together so that the whole thing doesn't unravel. Like altering your memories to believe that Cardinal Lenardi has always been the Patrician of the Prydonian Academy. But the thing is, it never quite fits. There are always loose ends, questions we can't answer, things we can't explain. And the bigger the hole in Time, the bigger the anomalies are. Tell me, you both still remember what a TARDIS is, don't you? A T/T capsule?"
Koschei frowned. "Of course we do. Considering how much training we have to do before we're allowed anywhere near one, we're hardly likely to forget, are we?"
"So, if Gallifrey is alone in the Universe...if there have never been any stars or any other planets out there...why would our people ever need to develop space/time travel? Where would we go? What would be the point?"
"The point is..." Koschei began, and then hesitated, his frown deepening, as though he suddenly had a headache. As though he was struggling to make things add up in his brain that just didn't. "You're right. What the hell is the point?"
"There isn't one," Theta interjected quietly. "Because it's an anomaly, isn't it? One big, fat, giant anomaly. Which means it's all true, everything Kat's said. The Universe is destroying itself. But what can we do to stop it?"
"I'm not sure there's anything we can do," Tejana said. "Not from here, anyway. In my timeline, I'm guessing your future self will be doing everything he can to sort this out. Somehow I have to figure out a way to get back there."
"So we do know each other in the future!" He stared at her imperatively, almost daring her to deny it.
Tejana gave a small grimace, furious at herself. She hadn't meant to let that much information slip, but she was frightened and exhausted, and hadn't been guarding her words as carefully as she should. Besides, the way things were going, such small compromises to the causal nexus were hardly going to be an issue. She nodded silently.
Koschei's eyes narrowed in speculation. She could almost hear the thoughts tumbling around inside his head, his quick mind striving to interpret everything she had left unsaid. "And you know me too, don't you? That's why Theta and I have both felt such a strong connection to you, ever since you arrived."
'You know me too'... Her hearts cried at the words. Oh gods, if only he knew how much more it was than that, so much more! A sudden kaleidoscope of gut-wrenching scenes spun helplessly through Tejana's memory – she and the Master, lying together for the first time in the dying Matrix; the Eye of Orion, as he laughingly carried her over the threshold into their new TARDIS; the flower-starred meadow on Mnemosyne, when he had wound the forget-me-nots in her hair; the joyous look on his face when he had first learned about their son... so much, much more!
"It's complicated," she responded curtly, dragging her mind away from the staggering pain of everything she might already have lost. Thinking about the Master was only going to make everything worse. "And, as you correctly pointed out earlier, the Guard will be here soon, so we don't have time to get into it now. I still have to go to Borusa's study, on the top level of the Academy. I need to confirm that he's definitely been erased. We'll have to retrace our steps back to the Records Room and take a transmat."
Eager to avoid any further discussion, she tried to lever herself to her feet again, only to sink back with a painful gasp, as she was gripped with another agonising cramp. Without bothering to ask permission, Koschei slid his hands under her and lifted her easily into his arms, as if she weighed no more than a child.
"Fine," he said tightly. "Then let's go."
Biting her lip, she held back her instinctive protest. Something in his expression warned her that their discussion had only been shelved on a temporary basis. Now that he knew that she wasn't a Shabogan servant girl, but a high-born Time Lady in her own right, the dynamic between them had shifted somewhat. Outwardly, he was showing her more respect. But the underlying sense of possession was still there. Being held in his arms made her feel small and vulnerable, something she couldn't afford right now. She needed to be strong – for the Master, for their baby, for their future as a family. But the inescapable fact was that physically, she was incapable of walking, and she needed his help.
Theta gave his friend a quick nod and led the way out of the Adytum, back the way they had come. Koschei followed close behind, holding Tejana against his chest, her head cradled on his shoulder. Tejana closed her eyes, shutting out her claustrophobia and concentrating on the warm, soft feeling of his velvet tunic beneath her cheek, the comforting sound of his double heartbeat throbbing in her ear. If anything, the meandering stone tunnels under the Citadel seemed darker and even more stifling than before, now that she knew time and space were progressively collapsing all around them.
Fiddling around in his pockets, Theta produced his prototype sonic screwdriver and held it out before him, twisting the ceramic base until the diode at the end illuminated the tunnel with a soft blue glow.
"See, Kos, I told you it would come in handy," he said smugly.
Koschei merely grunted. "First time for everything, I suppose."
Theta chuckled and went on further ahead, carefully scouting around the shadowy corners, to make sure no-one was waiting to take them by surprise.
"You two...make such wonderful friends," Tejana said wistfully, comparing their free and easy banter with the bitter enmity with which she was so much more familiar.
"We've had plenty of practice," Koschei replied. "We've been friends since we were tiny. He's probably the most important person in my life. But don't tell him I said so, he'd only get an even bigger head than he already has."
"Heard that!" Theta said from up ahead.
"Big ears, as well as a big head," Koschei muttered.
"Heard that too!"
Despite all the terrible things that had happened, Tejana couldn't help smiling at the childish exchange. She had always known that the Doctor and the Master had been extremely close back in their Academy days, but because all she had ever known was their enmity, it had never seemed real to her until just now, witnessing it first hand. Seeing the undeniable affection between them made her realise just how much she wished her father and her lover could resolve their differences back in her own timeline – if she ever made it back there, that was.
Koschei lowered his voice even further, to make sure that Theta couldn't hear. "You're so small and light. It's like carrying a piece of thistledown." His arms tightened around her, holding her even closer to him, an intimate embrace in the shadowy dark. "You didn't tell me about the baby, Kat," he murmured accusingly in her ear.
"No," she said tautly, her voice equally low. She could hear echoes of his older self in his voice, the familiar jealousy, the familiar possessiveness, raising its ugly head. "I didn't."
"You didn't tell me, but you told Theta."
"I didn't tell him, he guessed," she retorted, determined not to let him make her feel guilty. I would have told you eventually, Koschei...in about eight hundred years... "And it's not as though we ever did a lot of talking when we were together, did we?"
Something stirred behind his eyes, something primitive, something savage. "Is it Harold Saxon's child? The man you told me you were promised to?"
The question was sharp and brutal, the syllables like chips of ice. Suddenly, with a chill, she found herself thinking back to his fight with Theta in the Adytum, wondering how much the Master had contributed in trying to stop her jumping into the crack, and how much had actually been down to his younger self also not wanting her to leave Gallifrey.
"Yes," she answered flatly. "Harold Saxon is his father."
"I'd like to meet him one day. We have a lot to discuss."
Even in a Universe as messed up as this one now was, the idea of Koschei coming face to face with "Harold Saxon" was timey-wimey enough to tie Tejana's brain in knots. Fortunately, she was saved from answering by Theta hurrying back towards them.
"Quick!" he hissed. "Get back to that last branch in the tunnel. The Guard are coming!"
Sure enough, from up ahead, they could hear the regular stamping noise of a platoon approaching. Swiftly, they raced back through the tunnel and took refuge in a small dark opening leading off the main passageway, leading to a much smaller, narrower tunnel that wound off into the darkness. Trying not to breathe too loudly, in case they gave themselves away, they listened to the Guards drawing nearer and nearer. As exhausted as she was, Tejana knew she had to somehow gather enough strength to screen the three of them from the psychic link. If a single member of the Guard picked up on where they were hiding, they were lost.
However, even as she wearily sought to gather her wavering concentration to access the link, it dawned on her that her effort was not required. Koschei was already screening them. Belatedly, she realised that he'd been doing it ever since they left the underground chamber. Not only that, he had been expertly manipulating the link still further, to mislead their pursuers as to where they really were.
Headed by an irate-looking Castellan, sporting a large, raised lump on the back of his head, the Chancellery Guard marched blindly past, pacing in perfect formation, without bothering to look to the left or the right, until they disappeared further up the corridor.
"They think we're still in the Adytum," Koschei whispered gleefully. "Idiots! The tiniest bit of psychic misdirection and they couldn't tell you what day it was!"
Tejana released her breath in a long, slow exhalation of relief. Oh, he was good, she thought with pride, even back this far in his timeline. Despite knowing him as well as she did, his genius still continued to surprise her. Very few Time Lords had the ability to manipulate the link to such an extent, let alone as effortlessly as he had just done it.
"Hurry up!" Theta urged, slipping back out into the main passageway. "You can do the self-congratulation thing later! It won't take them long to figure out they've been tricked, and then they'll be searching every single tunnel for us."
"Yeah, good luck with that, this place is a labyrinth!" Koschei snorted.
Nevertheless, despite Tejana's weight in his arms, he quickened his steps to keep up with Theta, until they were both nearly running. It wasn't just a schoolboy prank they had committed this time. Both of them knew it had gone well beyond that. And neither of them wanted to dwell on exactly what the consequences would be if they got caught by the Guard.
Koschei's deception appeared to have bought them the time they needed, because they reached the relative safety of the Records Room without further incident. Tejana guessed that many of the Guard were still engaged in sorting out the unprecedented shambles the Master had left behind in the Ballroom, leaving only a few isolated platoons available to search for her. Once the immediate emergency had been dealt with, she had no doubt there would be a full scale alert, and every last man would be deployed to hunt her down.
The transmat tube at the end of the corridor near the Records Room did not offer the upper regions of the Academy as an available destination. However, a few minutes tinkering with the sonic screwdriver, and Theta had taken care of that.
"Too easy!" he said with a cocky grin.
"You'd better have got this right, Lungbarrow," Koschei growled, as they took their places in the transparent tube. "I don't particularly fancy having my atoms scattered all over Gallifrey."
He placed gently Tejana back on her feet to stand between them, still keeping a steadying arm around her. She hated being so weak, but she accepted his support, leaning against him to ensure she stayed upright.
"Trust me," Theta said confidently, twirling the clunky screwdriver in the air like a conductor's baton. "I'm..."
"Theta Sigma," Koschei and Tejana chorused simultaneously, rolling their eyes. "Yes, we know!"
Fortunately, for once his confidence appeared to be well-placed, since they ended up materialising in a transmat tube almost right opposite the door to Borusa's study.
It seemed like a lifetime ago now, after everything that had happened, but Tejana had only been in this corridor that afternoon, when she had brought Borusa his usual tray of tea. Everything had been normal then. Now the passageway looked like it hadn't been cleaned in centuries. Eddies of dust drifted along the floor, grey and unpleasant-looking, continuously moving and trickling, as though it was alive.
"This place is a mausoleum," Theta said in an awed voice, looking down at the deep prints his boots were leaving on the floor behind him as he stepped away from the transmat. "Look at this dust! No-one's been here in forever!"
"That's not ordinary dust," Tejana exclaimed in distaste, holding her long skirt up, keeping it well away from the loathsome stuff as she walked somewhat shakily towards the study door. Koschei shadowed her closely, as if he was worried she was going to collapse again. "That's entropy dust. All that's left after a massive degradation of matter and energy. Like I said, the timeline tries to adjust itself, but there are always remnants."
She pushed open the door and brushed her hand over the control panel to activate the wall sconces, keeping the lights low, to make sure they didn't attract any unwanted attention. The room was exactly how she remembered it – graciously proportioned, dominated by the enormous wooden desk, the walls filled with framed artwork and shelves of rare and exotic books, all beautifully displayed. The only difference was that everything was grey and insubstantial, as though each object had been delicately sculpted from the fragile entropy dust, poised eternally between existence and non-existence, like a snapshot in time. Tejana moved carefully into the room, aware that the slightest puff of air could disintegrate any one of these artefacts into a choking cloud of dust. She looked around, taking in all the things Borusa had treasured so dearly - all the luxuries, the trappings of power he had ended up selling his soul for in her timeline. What were they worth now? Nothing, Tejana thought sadly. Nothing at all.
"Wow," Theta breathed, as if he was afraid his voice would disturb the stillness. "Talk about eerie. But Koschei and I have explored every inch of the Academy in our tenure here. Why have we never been in this room before?"
"You have," Tejana replied. "Many, many times. You've just forgotten."
He was right, though. It really was creepy. The stillness. The dust. The air of desolation, as if the room was nothing more than a ghost of itself. She almost expected a spectral Borusa to appear and demand to know in his usual icy voice what exactly they thought they were doing.
Koschei wandered around the study, peering at some of the different objects on display. "Some of this stuff is amazing!" he exclaimed. "The art alone would have been worth an absolute fortune!"
"Borusa always did love his comforts," Tejana said wryly, her hearts heavy with despair and a strange sense of disappointment. She wasn't sure what she had expected to find here. Some sort of answer. Some sort of miracle, that would change everything back to the way it was. Instead, all she saw was dust and decay, a bitter premonition of what the rest of Gallifrey would soon look like if the temporal erosion could not be reversed. With a soothing hand supporting her aching stomach, she drifted across the room to the glass double doors behind the desk, keen to see if Borusa's lush rooftop garden had suffered the same fate as his study. But there was nothing to be seen. Sheer, impenetrable blackness greeted her. It wasn't just that the stars had gone. There was no moonlight either. Nothing but the obsidian curtain of night.
"Oh gods," she murmured brokenly, staring up into the empty, pitch-black skies. "Selenista Gallifreya and Pazithi Gallifreya – they're both gone."
"What's gone?" Theta asked, crossing the room to stand beside her.
"The two moons of Gallifrey. One huge and purple, the other small and copper-coloured. The event collapse has taken them as well. The cracks must be everywhere, right through the Universe. It's all falling apart, Theta. Very soon the cracks will widen into rifts, and then the rifts will..."
She broke off suddenly, an incredible thought slamming into her brain like a sledgehammer, a blinding flash of stunning revelation. "Rifts!"
"You already said that," Theta replied. "The cracks will widen into rifts, and then the rifts will..."
"No, you don't understand! That's the answer!" she cried excitedly. "That's how I'm supposed to get home! How old are you?"
Theta blinked at what he considered to be a completely irrelevant and bizarre change of subject. "What?"
"How old are you?" she repeated. "Right now, exactly, this very minute!"
"I turned ninety, two months ago," he replied in bewilderment. "So what?"
She punched the air in jubilation, almost dancing on the spot. "Oh, yes! Ninety! He just turned ninety!"
Theta simply stared at her. "O...kay. Are you sure you're not just the tiniest bit insane, Kat? What's my age got to do with anything?"
"Because, according to Gallifreyan history, at the age of ninety, you and Koschei stole a TARDIS and took a joyride to the Medusa Cascade, where you discovered and sealed a rift in time and space. You never told me exactly how you did it. But, since a rift is nothing more than a particularly large crack, you must have used a particularly complicated space time event to seal it. And the only complicated space time event you've got to hand right now...is me."
Theta couldn't have looked more taken aback if she had punched him in the face. "So, you're suggesting we steal a TARDIS, travel to this Medusa Cascade, wherever that is, and just hurl you willy-nilly into any old rift we find there?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Don't you see? It's supposed to happen this way. I'm what makes it all happen. It's a circular paradox. The rift at the Medusa Cascade was always there in your history, but the reason it appears is because of the temporal explosion in the future, reaching back through time. When you use me to seal it, events will unfold just as they always have, and I'll be able to travel back home through the Rift to my own time. It has to work!"
Theta gave a long whistle and ran both his hands through his thick blonde hair, making it more tousled than ever. "I can't believe not long ago I was complaining about Gallifrey being mind-numbingly boring! That has to be the craziest plan I've ever heard. And trust me, when it comes to crazy plans, I've heard a few!"
"Even if we decided to go through with it, where are we supposed to steal a TARDIS from?" Koschei asked. "It's not like they're just sitting around on every street corner, waiting for us to take!"
"The repair dock in the Citadel!" Tejana responded eagerly. "Please, you have to understand, this is probably our only chance to change anything. We have to make sure history happens the way it's meant to! If Theta can realign the transmat, we can be at the dock in minutes. In this timeline, it's unheard of for anyone to even think of stealing a TARDIS. Security will be almost non-existent. We'll be gone before they even know we're there."
"We aren't doing anything of the sort!" Theta said, eyeing her pale face with concern. "You hardly have enough strength to stand up. You said it yourself, you need to rest, or you'll jeopardise the baby's life. You and Koschei can stay here. I'll go. I can re-materialise the TARDIS back here and pick you both up."
"Oh, right!" Koschei scoffed. "The man who failed Astral Navigation three times in a row is going to single-handedly fly a ship that's supposed to need six pilots, not to mention landing it accurately enough to take on passengers. Like that's going to happen! If anyone is going to go, it should be me."
Theta's expression darkened. "You've never flown a TARDIS either, Koschei. What makes you sure you'll be so much better at it than me? Theory is a hell of a long way from practice!"
Tejana sighed. If she let them go on like this, they would still be bickering when the Universe collapsed around their ears. Some things never changed. Unfortunately, Theta was right. While she could easily pilot a TARDIS herself, she was far too weak to be able to make it from here to the Repair Dock - the baby would never survive the trip. If this was going to work, she was going to have to trust Theta and Koschei to steal a time machine for her, as inexperienced as they were.
"You both have to go," she cut in firmly. "There's no other way. Flying a TARDIS isn't as easy as you might think. You'll need to combine your skills and work together, or you'll never get off the ground."
"What about you?" Koschei demanded. "We can't leave you alone and unprotected."
She forced a smile to her lips. "I'll be fine. Everyone has forgotten this place ever existed. The Guard will never think to look here. I'll just wait for you to come back." Koschei looked like he was about to protest further, so she added quickly, "We don't have time to argue about it. Lord Borusa has already vanished. Who knows how many other people have also disappeared, without anyone remembering them or realising they're gone. And it's only going to get worse as the entropy progresses. Please, you have to hurry!"
Koschei and Theta exchanged a glance and then nodded reluctantly. In one smooth movement, Koschei stripped off his black velvet tunic and handed it to her. "Here," he said gruffly. "Put this on, Kat. It's cold up here. And try to get some rest. We'll be back as soon as we can."
Tejana took the garment and gratefully held it close to her. It was still warm from his body heat, the material soft and comforting.
"Yeah, it's going to be all right, Kat, don't worry!" Theta agreed, heading for the door. "We can do this."
Koschei paused for a few seconds, looking down into her face. Then, unexpectedly, he pulled her close and dropped a quick, hard farewell kiss on her lips, before turning away and following his friend.
Then the door closed behind them, and Tejana was left standing alone in the ghostly grey study, with only the eternally restless entropy dust for company.
John Hart couldn't have said how long he lay there, staring up at the burning TARDIS, blazing in the murky sky like the wrathful eye of God. Time didn't seem to have any meaning any more, now that his life-blood was steadily seeping away, staining the dirty concrete rooftop beneath him. There was no pain. Somehow he thought it would have been better if there was. Some kind of feeling, to anchor him to reality. Instead, everything seemed to be fading away, his vision softening to sepia around the edges.
Somewhere nearby, he could hear River screaming in rage and the sizzling bolts of her blaster pistol flying through the air. Obviously, she had managed to unjam the weapon, he thought distantly. That was lucky. As he recalled, that had always been the problem with that particular Villengard model. It tended to overheat and lock up when you needed it most. The Time Agency had stopped using them ages ago. River really needed to update her weaponry.
Then River herself was there, looking down into his face, her bright curls dishevelled and her face taut with anxiety.
"Tobias!" she cried. "Oh God, Tobias, what have you done?"
He smiled slowly up at her. He liked hearing his old name on her lips. It had been a good name, Tobias Wolfe. A good name for good times, back when he was younger and the Universe had been his oyster.
She glanced down at the bloody ruin of his stomach, and the ugly length of iron pipe jutting out of it, and her expression tightened, her cheeks suddenly ashen. Her gaze shot up again to meet his, and even if he hadn't realised how bad his wound was, he would have known then, just from the anguished look in her eyes.
"Yeah, don't tell me, I'll never play the piano again," he said hoarsely, trying to make a joke out of it. He had never taken anything seriously in his life. It seemed stupid to change that now, just because he was dying. "What happened to the mummies?"
"I don't know!" she replied. "They all collapsed, as if whatever force was animating them just evaporated."
Somewhere inside, Hart could feel a red hot coal of anger trying to flare into life, but the strange lethargy that had wrapped itself around him wouldn't allow him to feel it. "Bastard lost interest," he rasped. "We were never his intended target. It was always the Doctor."
"What bastard? Who are you talking about?"
He coughed weakly and fresh blood bubbled between his lips and gushed down his chin. "Chaos-Master."
River snatched a handkerchief out of an inner pocket of her jacket and gently dabbed at his mouth, wiping the blood away. "The Master? The other Time Lord who survived the Time War? Are you telling me he did all this?"
"No, it's not the real Master," he murmured thickly. "Looks like him, sounds like him, but isn't him. During the Time War, the Time Lords built a battleship powered by stuff called psychic pollen. It extrapolates the dark side of a person's psyche and manifests it into reality. They used it on the Master." He gave a ragged laugh. "You know, I never thought Blondie had all that many good points until I met his evil twin. I helped Tejana fight it on the planet Mnemosyne. We thought we'd destroyed it, but we were wrong. That thing is pure evil, River. You have to get back to the Doctor right away. He's gonna need you."
River looked uncertainly over her shoulder at the hatch covering the stairs leading back down into the museum, obviously torn between racing to the Doctor's side and staying with Hart.
"I can't just leave you here injured like this!" she gritted out.
He coughed again, his mouth full of his own blood. "I don't think that's going to be an issue for much longer, Babe."
"Don't say that!" She forced a reassuring smile to her mouth, but he could see the tears pooling in her blue eyes. "I know you, Tobias. You're too damn stubborn to die! You'll get through this, just like you always do."
He tried to shake his head in denial, but found that his muscles would no longer respond to his commands.
"Not this time," he said with cold certainty. He knew a death wound when he saw one and so did she. There was no coming back for him from this one. "Still, it's not all bad, right? I got to see River Song crying over me. That's almost worth dying for."
"You saved my life," she said, taking his hand in hers. He wished he could feel the warmth of her touch, but his entire body was already too numb to feel anything any more. "Why did you do that?"
Ordinarily, he would have come up with a dozen seductive and suggestive responses to avoid answering that question. But what was the point of that now? He was too exhausted to bother. So, instead, he told the truth for once.
"I dunno. Maybe to even the score between us, because of what happened back on that freighter. Or maybe because someone once convinced me I could be a hero after all, even after the life I've led, and I was stupid enough to believe her. Who knows? It hardly matters now."
"Well, it matters to me," River replied. "And, whoever she was, she must have been very special."
For a moment, River's golden curls hazed in his vision, and instead he saw a waterfall of dark copper hair and a pair of laughing green eyes, heard the sweet, husky voice trailing back to him on the wind. Thank you for being my hero, John... Fighting against the encroaching numbness, he reached up and ruefully brushed her cheek with his fingertips. I'm so sorry, Princess. I would have come for you if I could. She smiled warmly at him and, in his growing delirium, he wasn't sure if he'd spoken the words aloud or not.
Then his vision swam again, and he realised that it was River's cheek he was touching, not Tejana's, River's tears that were falling on his face.
"Yeah," he said, his hand falling back to his side. "She was." A deep shudder ran through his body. Suddenly, he felt very, very cold. He wondered if this was how Jack felt, every time he died, as if an icy wind was blowing across his soul. He wished he'd thought to ask, back when he had a chance. In fact, he wished he'd thought to do a lot of things he hadn't.
"River?" The darkness was closing in on him now, the sepia edges of his vision blurring into shadow. He could no longer see her face, and a sudden fear gripped him that she had gone and he would die alone. "River?"
"I'm here, Tobias," she responded. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise."
He swallowed dryly. All he could taste was blood. Very appropriate, he thought, his mind drifting now, remembering how much of other people's blood he had seen in his life. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or a goddamned iron pipe, in my case.
"I'm glad I bumped into you again, Babe," he whispered.
"Yeah, me too," she said in an unsteady voice. "I've been aching to give you that punch for years."
He gave a small chuckle. "I preferred the kissing part, actually."
"Yeah, that wasn't bad either."
The blackness was sweeping him away in waves now, a dark tide pulling him further and further away from the sound of her voice, dragging him out towards the unknown. Struggling against it, knowing he was losing the battle, he tried desperately to tighten his unresponsive fingers on hers.
"Listen, River, if you ever... if you ever come across a friend of the Doc's called Captain Jack Harkness, tell him from me..." Tell him I always loved him, in spite of everything I did. Tell him I tried to make him proud, at the end. Tell him he was the last one I ever thought about. A characteristic grin stretched his handsome face one final time, his eyes staring unseeingly up into River's face, his last words barely audible. "Tell him I said I'd see him in hell."
"I will, I promise," she said tearfully.
But he didn't hear her. He was already dead, the insolent grin still on his face.
Far away across time and space, Tejana huddled in the least dusty corner she could find in Borusa's study, Koschei's velvet tunic draped over her small form like a warm blanket, as she she allowed her mind to drift in a strange, dim twilight world, lost somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
Suddenly, out of the mists of exhaustion that surrounded her, she felt ghostly fingers brush her cheek. For a moment, both her hearts nearly stopped beating, and she sat bolt upright, hoping against hope that the Master had returned to her. But the familiar voice she had heard whispering her name wasn't the Master's.
"John?" she called, still only half alert, peering into the darkness, trying to make sense of the shifting shadows dancing at the edge of the circle of lamplight. "John, is that you?"
But it wasn't. There was no-one there. The room was empty and she was alone.
Of course it wasn't Hart, she chided herself uneasily, trying to shake the hollow feeling that had inexplicably settled between her hearts. How could it possibly be? He was such a long way away, probably still safely tucked up in their TARDIS, sculling beer and watching alien porn, just he had been when she left him.
Even so, as she lay back down again, she shivered and pulled Koschei's tunic closer around her, the abandoned, dusty room all at once seeming even colder and more lonely than it had been before.