Chapter 3
Valentina followed the Doctor into his TARDIS. It was weird because she had memories of this place, but had never been physically here. She touched the controls, and some lights started to blink.
"It recognises your DNA… well, your sister's DNA," The Doctor explained. Valentina looked at him blankly. After she had opened her pocket watch, and regained most of her lost memory as a Timelord, she had mind-melded with Theresa. Theresa had always been a friend to her – in her human life, but actually, she was much more – she was her sister. Theresa had also had her memory and powers taken from her, and put into a pocket watch that she had never been able to be aware of. Until Theresa had coincidentally met the Doctor, and some faint memories of the TARDIS, the war, had returned (cf. my Gallifrey-Trilogy for that).
This Theresa and she, Valentina, were only a puzzle piece of the many Soldiers and Warriors who had been splintered and distributed within time and space. Now, Valentina knew that she was the only 'activated' Warrior in the universe – spoken of relative time. All her 'selves' were not aware of their true being. It made her angry thinking about how they were unaware of their own existence, how they and she have been treated. She did not know how much time she had already spent on Earth, being born over and over again, dying over and over again, suffering for a crime she had not even remembered.
"You feel rage…wrath, don't you?" The Doctor asked. He could read her eyes like an open book. She nodded. "I will bring you to a place where you can find peace and serenity." He activated the TARDIS and with the well-known creaky noise they entered the time vortex.
It only took them a few minutes before the TARDIS landed, but instead of its creaky noise, it gonged loudly. "What is up with her?" Valentina asked as she knew that this noise meant that something was wrong with the TARDIS.
"I forced her to land. We're in a location that is actually time-locked," he said. She followed him to the door. He opened and she nearly had to close her eyes, as bright as the light shone onto them. She stepped outside. She had not been here in centuries, and only now did she realise that she was several hundred years old.
"We're…we're on Gallifrey," she muttered.
The Doctor nodded. "Welcome home. Well, technically not home. This is Gallifrey over one thousand five hundred years before you were born."
The capital, Arcadia, looked as beautiful as Valentina remembered it, that is, before the war had completely turned it into ruins. They had landed a few dozen kilometres away from the settlement that served as some kind of suburbs. The yellow sun had risen to its highest point and shone onto the globe of the government facilities, making it sparkle in red and orange. Valentina turned to the Doctor, and looked past him. They were only a few hundred metres away from the mountain range that separated the endless desert in which Arcadia stood, and the Ocean of Eternity, which was Gallifrey's biggest sea, but covered only a 20th of its surface.
"You have brought me here to meditate, right?" she asked and already started walking towards the mountains.
"Yes," he answered. "The Monks of the Eternal Flame are well-known for their Zen-technique. Once a monk reaches inner equilibrium, he will be in a state of…nothingness. He won't need food, he won't age, time will play no role. It is rumoured that some of them could even feel time and space in its eternity, like the untampered schism in which we all looked as children. Some monks died shortly after as they did not remember that normal life required them to sleep or eat, some became insane, and some became oracles as they could not tell apart past, present and future anymore."
They had reached the foot of the mountain and started the climb. The monks lived on a plateau on one of the mountain ranges, and only rarely did one of them descent and come to the city. They lived from fruits and trees grown on the mountains, and the water that circulated around the bigger mountains before it streamed down to the ocean.
"Do you want me to reach equilibrium?" she wanted to know.
"Equilibrium is reached by only very few monks, and often only in their second last or last life. And they had spent all their incarnations as monks. But yes, I will leave you here until you have reached equilibrium. Until you have fully processed and understood your regained memories, until you have your powers under control."
It took them nearly the whole day to reach the highest plateau and on their way they had met monks gardening the mountain plants, or carrying water, or meditating. Once arrived, the head of the Eternal Flame was already expecting them.
"You must be The Warrior," he said to Valentina. "You are from the future, the past and the presence. My name is Shakaahla. I will guide you through the principles of finding peace with your past, and looking ahead into a better future. I know what you have done and what you will do. But I will make you understand your own decisions as well." Then he turned to the Doctor. "You are no longer required. Return to your TARDIS and come back in two thousand years."
"Two thousand years?" Valentina gasped. Was she supposed to stay here for two millennia?
The monk smiled at her. "You are not capable of understanding that neither past nor future matter. But one day you will."
The Doctor watched Valentina leave with the monk to the park where the monks gardened their fruits. A young monk to his side bowed and greeted him. He then took him to the nearby house and gave him something to eat so that the Doctor could start his descent back to the TARDIS as soon as the sun had set. It was not dangerous as the moons were bright enough to illuminate the path the Doctor followed. Once returned, he did as he was told, and set the coordinates for two thousand years later. It was an early morning at which he arrived and looking at the once glorious city, he could see a big black column of smoke rising from the government complex, and the glass globe was broken into many pieces. The suburb of Arcadia was replaced with a huge pile of ashes and rubble, and even the sky looked darker than two thousand years ago. The Doctor turned away and faced the mountain.
This time, the climb took longer, and he was out of breath when he reached the plateau. But what he saw, took him even his last breath. Valentina had indeed reached equilibrium, she was sitting in meditation sit, but floating in mid-air, and yellow-golden energy was whirling around her as if she was in a constant state of regeneration.
Like last time, the head monk awaited him, but another incarnation of him. This one was even older, bald headed, and his eyes were tired. It must be his last incarnation. "Doctor, you have grown up on Gallifrey several centuries ago," he said. "Do you remember the stories they told you about the eternal flame in this mountain? The one that lasted and lasted, and no citizen could explain? The eternal flame for which they gave us our name?" He pointed at Valentina who had her eyes closed but was aware of everything around her. "She is the eternal flame, she has been in equilibrium for one thousand nine hundred years now; I think you will find her wiser and calmer than when she came here, or when she took the lives of billions during the war. She has not found peace with her past, and she has not forgiven herself for everything that she has done, but she has accepted her past, and looks ahead into the future."
Both the Doctor and the monk walked over to Valentina who opened her eyes as soon as they stood in front of her. The golden shimmer vanished and, Valentina stood up and her feet touched the ground. "Doctor," she said and looked at the face of the man who she had not seen in ages. He eyeballed her. She looked much older than when he had left her, but she had not changed at all. It was all in her eyes.
The descent was quick, but they did not speak a word. Only when they were back inside the TARDIS, did he dare to break the silence. "Before you return to your life, Valentina, let me show you a bit of the universe. The last time you visited other planets and galaxies, you burnt them down. But let us go to exotic places and just look at them… simply look…"
The USS Voyager was a scientific exploration vessel originally sent to rescue a ship of Marquis rebels because a Federation spy had been operating undercover on board. Unfortunately for all of them, both the Marquis and the Federation star ships were drawn by a very powerful being, called The Caretaker, to a different site of the galaxy, the so called Delta Quadrant. It would take them nearly 70 years to reach Earth again. However, not giving up, the Voyager used its voyage through unknown space to seek out new life and new civilisations, and to boldly go where no one has gone before – except for all the other star ships that the Caretaker had kidnapped.
Two crewmembers of the Marquis ship, however, had neither been convinced Marquis nor Starfleet members. They were actually spies of an organisation called Section 31, which had lived throughout centuries in the shadow of the United Federation of Planets, and controlled parts of history without anybody of the government ever noticing. They had also been behind the idea of sending a science vessel to the Delta Quadrant, masking its mission as a rescue mission for an undercover agent. No one except for these two crewmembers, identical twins called Valentina and Theresa Riddle, knew about this mission though. None of them had ever doubted their mission, or their activity for Section 31, until one day they returned back to their quarters after a night shift, and found a young woman waiting for them.
"Who are you?" Theresa asked. She had just had a double shift on the bridge, and she was sure her sister who had passed some uneventful hours in sickbay was not keen on trouble either.
The human woman smiled and asked them to sit down on the couch. "In case you still want to call security, go for it. I disabled the communication system though."
Valentina and Theresa looked at each other, but did as they were told.
The unknown woman sat down on the armchair opposite to them. "I know that you will have many questions, and I will only tell you what I am going to tell because it might to of great advantage having some eyes in mankind's future where it may be easier to gain new knowledge…but first of all, I have a question for you: Do you possess a pocket watch, with which you have been found when abandoned as children, and are you both convinced that said pocket watch is old and does hence not work?" Judging from the blank stares of the twins, Valentina knew that her decision was the right one.
"And here we plant our seasonal fruits. Every second seasons, we can harvest enough to feed everyone in the capital," the indigene explained.
Captain Janeway nodded. It had been a good decision to grant her crew a few days on a Class M planet. This planet, designated so far only as Delta-M-3745 had welcomed them with hospitality, and one of the governmental heads of the democracy had offered the crewman to give them a tour through the capital. Janeway and seven of her crewmembers followed him. They entered an older part of the government complex, and the alien explained that it was one of the first districts to be re-erected after the everlasting Time War had destroyed nearly everything.
"This is our shrine," he explained and let them into a cave that was perhaps four metres wide and ten metres long. At the end, they could see a pedestal with a large cuboid stone. "We are not religious, but we mourn our fallen heroes of the war. This stone, it's called a Gallifreyan power-stone, holds the powers of one of our greatest enemies. These foes had destroyed our city, and many other cities. Their power and memory was taken from them, and even if they regain some of it, they will never remember certain aspects of their past without these stones."
"And I assume they won't remember the existence of these stones either?" Lieutenant Paris asked.
"Exactly. One man who fought on our side during the war, The Doctor, gave us this one of three stones to guard it, and we will protect it with everything we have, to prevent a destruction like the one of the war to ever happen again. And now follow me, I will show you our pool of recreation."
While they continued walking through the shrine, Valentina and Theresa exchanged meaningful looks. Stones containing their identity? Their complete selves? This was an opportunity they could not let go, whatever it cost.
Valentina left the TARDIS and went to her car. Before entering the key, she just sat there and thought about everything that had happened. Two thousand and fifty years. She looked at her watch. It had gone completely nuts. She adjusted it with the car's clock. And her mobile. Before driving to work, she decided to run back up to her flat. She unlocked the door and saw that Xi had decided to get up to make breakfast tea.
"You alright?" she asked. She had not changed a bit. Of course not, only ten minutes had passed for her.
"Yeah, yeah," Valentina muttered. "I forgot my phone charger," she explained and went to their bed room to get it. She gave Xi a kiss, whispered 'I love you' and left again. Two thousand years and it felt like nothing. Her whole perception of time has changed. Was that how Timelords endured such a long life? For them, a minute was not an eternity, but the blink of an eye?
The day at work went by fast then she had expected. But at four o'clock, when nearly everyone was preparing for getting home, she got a phone call by SHIELD. They were running an operation in Washington, but needed clearance from the government. Valentina talked with Mr Saxon himself about it, but was asked to attend personally. She had actually hoped to spend the night with her fiancée, but at 6 pm she was picked up by a black SHIELD SUV and taken to their headquarters.
"Thank you for joining us on such short notice," Agent Coulson greeted her. "I am Agent Coulson, we have talked on the phone."
"Pleasure to meet you," Valentina said and followed the agent to his office.
"It is just a minor operation, but it takes place on US grounds, so we needed your boss's approval. I understand that he wants you to be here and keep an eye on us."
"I'm not here to 'keep an eye on you'. I have absolutely no idea what you are doing anyway, so I trust you to be perfectly capable. Mr Saxon would just like to have a report unbiased by the military."
"SHIELD is not the military. We… are just operating in a similar way."
They entered his office where three other members of Coulson's team were awaiting them, Agent May, Fitz and Simmons, who were opening up the mission status as soon as they entered. However, for a millisecond, Valentina could see what had been on the screen previously: holographic pictures of the stones of Gallifrey. Those stones that contained her memory, conscience and power. And SHIELD had apparently gotten hold of both Earth-bound stones. 'Not for long,' she thought before she was briefed on the HYDRA-attack that SHIELD was planning for DC tonight.
