- Chapter 36 -
"We were best friends
watching the lights explode
and then you'd give me your hand
and away we'd go.
We wasted so much time
under the sky
and now it's gone away
and I could cry, cry, cry.
Whatever happened to us
whatever happened to us
we were just two fools
making the best of the rules."
Sanders Bohlke, "Lights Explode."
Behind the dais, the wall of the museum began to grin viciously.
Little by little, amid the storm of tumultuous shaking, the crack spread – thin at first, a mere hairline fracture, trickling almost unobtrusively across the blank surface of the plaster. Then it began to widen, spilling forth a deluge of blinding white light.
The Doctor put up a bloodstained hand to shield his eyes from the brilliance. It was happening, just as his other self had whispered in his ear, precisely seventeen and a half minutes ago. Enough time to eat a hamburger, buy a sledge, have a bath... enough time to bring his daughter safely home.
"Doctor!" Amy shrieked, ducking her head as she crouched beside him, her red hair flying in the rising wind. "It's happening again!"
"What have you done?" The Chaos-Master backed up a few steps, but then stood firm. "This won't help you, Doctor! Not this time! Nothing will help you!"
The Doctor ignored them both, his breathing coming in painful, wheezing gasps, his eyes still fixed on the glowing tunnel of light that swirled beyond the crack. That black smudge – some distance away, but rapidly coming closer – was that what he had been told to expect?
Seconds later, the crack twitched spastically, and something flew out, like a cherry pip spat out of a mouth in disgust. It landed in a thump beside the Doctor, sprawled across the floor, right at the feet of the Chaos-Master. Straining to see, the Doctor lifted his head, his eyes desperately taking in every detail of the new arrival. A girl, very small and slender, with a tangle of copper-coloured hair. Her eyes were clenched shut and her face was very pale, making the faint sprinkling of freckles over her nose more distinct than he guessed they usually would be.
This... this was the daughter he had forgotten. The daughter he had failed to hold on to. The daughter he had known would be returned to him, if he followed exactly the whispered instructions his mortally-injured future self had imparted, in those hurried few moments back on the museum staircase.
"Well, well, well..." the Chaos-Master sneered, poking at the Time Lady's prone figure with the toe of his black work boot. "If it isn't my beautiful, traitorous little wife. He really did slip up, didn't he, my original self, sending you back here, right into my waiting arms? How marvelously poetic! We all get to be together, a happy little family... right until the very end!"
Tejana felt heavier than she could ever remember. At first, she'd imagined she was a bird, flying free at last, soaring with her beloved lifemate through the vast spirals of multi-coloured cosmic dust that formed the Medusa Cascade. It had felt like a pure slice of eternity, a radiant glimpse of what heaven would be like, as if it would never end.
Until, with a vicious and devastating wrench, it had ended, and she had literally come crashing back to reality. Now, the Master was gone, and she felt weak and listless, her last remaining reserves of energy gradually seeping away, like a wound hemorrhaging black heart's blood.
At the sound of the mocking voice from above, so like Koschei's, and yet so unlike in every way that mattered, her eyelids fluttered open. The first thing that greeted her was a white, oval-shaped blur. But then her vision swam into focus, and she realised she was staring into her father's face. Like her, he was lying on the floor – however, whereas she was on her front, he was stretched out on his back.
"Doctor," she murmured, the syllables of his name coming haltingly and almost inaudibly from her lips.
"Welcome home, Tejana," he smiled, before coughing painfully. A trickle of blood ran down his chin from the corner of his mouth.
"You're hurt!" She tried to sit up, but couldn't quite manage it. Horror rippled through her mind, her hearts plummeting like twin stones. Already, she could see the golden tinge to his skin, heralding his impending regeneration. Was it already too late? Had everything she'd done been for nothing? Was the battle already lost?
"It's just a scratch," he replied ruefully. "I've had much worse."
"He's lying to you, lovely Ana," the other sneering voice cut in. "Just like he's lied so many times before. He's dying and he knows it. The entire universe is dying."
With a supreme effort, Tejana turned her head and looked up. Squatting beside her, she saw the familiar black-clad form, the familiar white grin, the tousled white-blonde hair topped with the ridiculous paste-board crown, sitting lop-sidedly over one ear.
"You're the lie," she gritted out, hate stirring inside her, as corrosive as acid. "You're not the real Master. And you never will be."
"Oh, don't be so quick to dismiss me," he smirked. "At least I remember you. The Doctor doesn't. I ask you, what kind of a father forgets his own daughter? Oh, but wait... he already has a bit of a history of that, doesn't he? Leaving you alone on Gallifrey all those years, while he wandered about the universe, getting his jollies, seeing all there was to see... not exactly the sort of Dad every little girl dreams about, now is he?"
Again, she turned her head, her jade-green gaze meeting her father's sorrowful blue one, searching for and finding the truth in the bleakness of his eyes. There was no flicker of recognition there, no shared experiences, no echo of everything they had been through together since those long ago days on Gallifrey. The Timefire had stolen it all.
"I'm sorry, Tejana," the Doctor murmured. "I'm so, so sorry."
Tears shimmered in her eyes. Fighting against her increasing inertia, she inched her fingers along the floor towards his. "Nothing is ever forgotten, not completely," she responded fiercely. "If something can be remembered, it can come back."
With that, her fingers twined tightly around his, and she tore open the psychic link, pouring into him every memory of him she'd ever had.
"And I remember you, Theta Sigma. I will always remember you."
Her touch burned him like white-hot metal, but he didn't pull away. He wasn't sure he'd be able to, even if he tried. Even if he'd wanted to.
Memories crawled through his brain like fire-ants, swarming in their thousands, and then in their millions, each one sparking a dozen more. And then he realised he was seeing not just her own memories of him, but also those that belonged uniquely to him, summoned back into being by the power of the psychic link.
Visions she had never seen, emotions he had never shared – his fear the day Melana had told him she was pregnant, his feeling of being trapped and smothered; but then, the wonder and awe he had felt the first time he laid eyes on his daughter's tiny sleeping face, the pure unadulterated love that had swept through his hearts; his grief at having to leave her behind on Gallifrey, the first time he had escaped out into the stars; his surprise when his second self had seen her materialising as bold as brass in his console room, complete with a stolen Time Ring, the sneaking sense of pride at her courage and daring, the miserable realisation how much she had grown and how much of her life he had missed.
All of those memories, and all the subsequent ones, of the periods she had travelled with him, the anguish of the Time War, the unexpected blessing of finding her alive again – all of those were his, not hers, recollection returning to him as her timeline reasserted itself and realigned with his.
His fingers tightened on hers, their final argument searing across his brain, reliving the hurtful words they had exchanged, right before she was snatched into the crack.
"I won't let you go," he told her, repeating the words he'd said back then, reaching to wipe away the the tears spilling down her ashen cheeks. "Ever again. Or your child either. I promise you, Tejana."
From behind them, there came the mocking sound of a slow hand-clap. "Oh, very touching, Doctor. Very moving. Just the usual sort of sentimental clap-trap we've all come to expect from you. It's just a shame you don't mean any of it."
"Oh, I mean it," the Doctor replied, flicking a look of contempt towards the black-dressed man. "Every last word."
"You're dying!" The Chaos-Master reminded him nastily. "And so is your daughter. In case you haven't noticed, I've been steadily draining her life-energy from the moment she arrived. Like I said, it was a big mistake, him sending her back here, right into my clutches. If it wasn't for the fact that he is essentially me, I'd call it an unbelievably stupid mistake. Just to be clear, she has... oh, let's see now..." He tilted his head, as if doing some calculations in his head. "About two and a half minutes to live. Time to say goodbye, folks."
Even as he spoke, the Doctor saw Tejana's skin was beginning to sag, visibly losing its youth and elasticity, becoming blue-veined and transparent. A network of fine wrinkles crept across her lovely face, deepening as they went, her cheeks crumpling like paper. Her beautiful glossy ginger hair began to bleach into grey, and from there into snowy white. Her jade-green eyes lost their lustre, becoming rheumed and sunken with old age, while the hand that gripped his was thin and gnarled.
"Tejana!" the Doctor cried, his voice anguished.
Her head drooped towards the ground. She was so tired. The life was trickling out of her, slowly but steadily. She could feel it ebbing away, leaving darkness and inertia in its place. Her vision began to blur, the Doctor's face retreating from her. Perhaps it was time... she'd fought so hard and so long. She was home now. Perhaps she should just give up and let go.
Oddly, through the encroaching darkness, she thought she saw a golden glow, a ball of fire, like a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing through the night. It was small at first, but gradually it grew larger and larger. She couldn't help staring at it, entranced.
More derisive laughter swirled around her, but it seemed far away and couldn't touch her.
"What are you going to do, Doctor? Sacrifice your life? Transfer your artron energy to her, in a vain attempt to save her?" From out of the shadows that were inexorably engulfing her, the Chaos-Master's voice burned like acid. The creature was so confident that this time it was unstoppable, that its final victory was close at hand. "Go on, do it. DO IT! And then I will drink your lifeforce too, with pleasure, as I watch you both die!"
Transfixed by the bright beacon of light, Tejana struggled to focus, her tired brain at last understanding what she was looking at. Concentrating for all he was worth, her father had gathered all his regeneration energy into a pulsating golden ball, spinning above the outstretched palm of his right hand. Once he expelled it, regeneration would no longer be possible for him. There would be nothing left to heal his mortal wound.
"No," she gasped. "You mustn't."
"Oh, but he must!" the Chaos-Master scoffed. "Because he wants to prove to himself that he isn't a total waste of space as a father. And this is the only way he can do it, as pointless as the gesture might be!"
"Pointless?" To the daughter who knew him so well, the Doctor's croaked rejoinder seemed to hold an unexpected note of triumph. "Hardly. After all, the moment has been prepared for."
"The moment? What moment?" the Chaos-Master sneered.
"The real Master would know better than to make unfounded assumptions." With a painful approximation of his usual boyish grin, the Doctor drew back his hand slightly, the golden ball of energy spinning even more madly. "You see, I never intended to give her my artron energy."
And then the ball left his fingers, arcing through the air like a flaming comet, flying over the Chaos-Master's head. Taken by surprise, the creature whirled around, just in time to see it strike an indistinct shadow that stood just in front of the white-limned crack. In an explosion of golden light, a figure etched itself into existence, painting itself on to the canvas of reality right in front of their eyes. A man, drenched in flame, a savage grin stretched across his face.
"Hello there, I'm the Master," snarled the dreadful apparition, just as his hands shot forth and locked on to the Chaos-Master's arms in a grip of iron. "Give us a kiss!"
And before anyone could move a muscle, or even draw breath, the Master took a step backwards, dragging his alter-ego with him, and the crack snapped shut behind them both.