I finished the next chapter unexpectedly quickly, so I wanted to put this up because I'm doing a final word count for the year for myself and want the number to be closer to what I've actually written. So here's another update, three days later. Thanks for the feedback in that time, though, means a lot!
This chapter, unfortunately, is not remotely festive. Mostly it's just pain. Sorry. But here is the beginning of the finale AU, part 1 of A Daughter's Refusal, all the same. Even if it's angsty, there are a lot of feels and hopefully they make up for it. Also Mari is back for a longer stay, which is always good.
Enjoy!
It matters how this ends, cause what if I never love again?
I don't need your honesty, It's already in your eyes
And I'm sure my eyes, they speak for me
No one knows me like you do, and since you're the only one that matters
Tell me who do I run to?
Look, don't get me wrong, I know there is no tomorrow
All I Ask - Adele
Look at me and listen close
So I can tell you how I feel before I go
Say tomorrow, I can't follow you there
Just close your eyes and sing for me
I will hear you, always near you
And I'll give you the words, just sing for me
Out of time, all out of fight
You are the only thing in life that I got right
Sing For Me - Yellowcard
"So how big were these temporal spikes?"
"Big enough, Legs."
"Are you sending me on a wild goose chase?"
Mari was making her way into an abandoned building, one that according to Hart had been subject to some strange readings on their radar of the whole city. Broken glass crunched under her high heels, and a wind blew through holes in the walls and windows, cold enough to make her shiver.
Still, she had trained herself to be completely tolerant of most physical discomfort, so it was easy enough to ignore.
"Course I'm not, why would I do that?" Hart asked through the comm earpiece. It was impossible to tell if he was serious or not.
"To get me out of the Hub so that you and Jack can make like rabbits?"
"Bit of credit, Legs, if I wanted you gone I'd just tell you to fuck off."
Mari snorted. "Fair enough."
Rather unfortunately, there were several people that her new regeneration found a lot more tolerable than her previous regeneration had, and Hart was one of them. He was still an arse, but she was hardly a walking ray of pleasantry herself, so somehow they had established a strange...well, something.
She still didn't like him, exactly, but if she was being completely honest with herself, maybe she was starting to. Just a little bit. Maybe. Ish.
"There doesn't appear to be anything here," she said, moving into another room. "Wait - fuck. No."
"Legs?"
Without looking away from the agent of the Silence that was standing only a few metres away, Mari marked her forearm the only way she could. She didn't have any intentions to look away, but when she heard something behind her, she spun around.
There was nothing there.
"Legs, what's wrong?"
"What do you mean?" She asked, frowning. "Nothing's wrong, there isn't anything here, I said that."
"You just swore, and sounded scared as all hell," Hart said, sounding confused.
A feeling of dread set in, and when Mari glanced down she saw a thin red line marking her forearm and blood under one of the nails of the opposite hand.
"No," she breathed, and spun around to kick the agent of the Silence as hard as she could in the chest. It went stumbling back, but she didn't have time to make a break for it before another one grabbed her from behind. "Let go of me!"
"What the hell is going on, Legs?"
"Let go of me!" She shouted again, trying to wrestle out of the thing's grip before the other one - the one she had kicked - lifted an ugly three fingered hand that crackled with electricity. A threat.
She stilled, mostly.
"So you're still working for them," a familiar voice said, its owner stepping from the shadows. "Marion Laura Narke. How pretty you are, now."
Madame Kovarian. The same as ever, with the dark grey clothing and dark lipstick, and weird eyepatch that Mari had long suspected had to do with somehow remembering the creatures. Seeing her for the first time since her regeneration, since everything had changed, was like a nightmare had come true.
With the visit in London last year excepted, Kovarian was the horror of her childhood and adolescence. She had no part in her adulthood. No right.
"Kovarian," Mari spat, "Whatever you are doing, I suggest you forget about it and leave. I'm not your naive little weapon anymore."
"Legs, what-" Hart's voice disappeared when Kovarian snatched the comm from Mari's ear and crushed it under her shoe. Then the religious woman smiled at her. It sent a chill down the redhead's spine far more real than any low temperature could.
"And what makes you think you have a choice? You're mine, Marion, I made you. Every part of you was shaped to my design."
"I am not Marion," Mari retorted hotly, "I haven't been for months." She sneered at the other woman. "Did nobody ever tell you that anagrams are lazy? Especially when you're dealing with self-proclaimed alien geniuses."
Kovarian's smugness evaporated into something much colder. "So you know."
"Smart of you to fuck my mind so drastically that your lies actually made sense, but all it took was a pesky little regeneration to alert them to the obvious. They managed to convince me of the truth in time for me to save him."
"How nice for you," Kovarian said flatly, her voice conveying the exact opposite meaning to her words. "Though it hardly matters."
"Hardly matters?" Mari repeated, laughing at her with an odd hysteria. She could feel the tendrils of insanity brushing the edges of her mind, the ones that had been there through her childhood and again when she had been Kovarian's prisoner for a year. The insanity that her previous self had managed to shut out but had wormed its way back into her current incarnation from the second she had regenerated.
Everything with Esther and the Doctor and Jenny and Aliya and Torchwood had kept it out, but now, when faced with the abuser of her childhood and adolescence, it was creeping back and curling around her.
"I saved his life, after poisoning him," she continued, continuing to laugh, "And I didn't lay a finger on Aliya. You've lost, Kovarian. You can kill me - and frankly I would welcome it if the alternative is having to listen to you talk for another minute - and they will still be alive."
Kovarian smirked. "You've really forgotten?"
Mari hesitated. "Forgotten what?"
"Tick tock, goes the clock, and what now shall we play? Tick tock goes the clock, now summer's gone away. Such a lovely old song. Do you not remember it? We used to play it for you."
"No, I don't," Mari lied, doing her best to shut out the memories of it that were cropping up in fragments, "I suppose my memory is adept at filtering out garbage."
"Now, if you'd chosen a more sophisticated time to live in, you might have heard the story that goes with it," Kovarian said, "One that so many know."
"Enlighten me, then."
"By Silencio lake, on the Plain of Sighs, an impossible astronaut will rise from the deep and strike the Time Lord dead."
Mari didn't remotely like the sound of that. But she didn't let it show. "Ooh, story that goes with a nursery rhyme, I am shaking in my stilettos," she snarked instead.
"All stories start somewhere. And this one starts, and ends, with you." Kovarian smiled as she clicked her fingers, and two more of her agents came in, carrying an astronaut suit that was horrifically familiar.
Stuck inside, couldn't get out, calling for help, Mr President calling her Jefferson and being scared of her, Mr President sending her his best men...ripping her way out and running as fast as she could, running and running until she was dying in an alleyway in New York…
"No!" Mari screamed, her resolve crumbling in a nanosecond. "You can't put me back in there! You can't!" She fought against her captors like an animal, twisting and clawing and yelling but to no avail.
"Tick tock, goes the clock, and all the years they fly," Kovarian said, sneering, as she stepped closer.
Mari felt a needle jab into her neck and the effects of a sedative begin to set in. She tried to stay awake, but they had obviously taken her alien biology into account because already her vision was going at black at the edges.
"No," she whispered. Kovarian's cold eye was the last thing she saw.
"Tick tock, and all too soon, your father will surely die."
When Mari came to, she was in the spacesuit and underwater, no doubt in the lake Kovarian had mentioned. Tears of panic sprung to her eyes and it took all the strength she had to not scream.
The Doctor and Aliya's investigations into the Silence took them to Gideon Vandeleur, who was actually deceased and being impersonated by the same Teselector crew as the one they had met in Daheer's capital.
When asked for the Silence's weakest link, the captain pointed them to a live chess player called Gantok. All it took was the Doctor to play a game with him to back him into a corner - figuratively, of course, as it was the voltage of the queen that had Gantok sweating - and he admitted that Dorium Maldovar was the only one that could help them, and that even though the trader was dead, he could take them to him.
Gantok brought them to a creepy underground tomb of sorts, with a dirt floor and stone walls filled with shelves of skulls that weren't half disconcerting.
"The Seventh Transept," Gantok said as he walked ahead with the torch, "Where the Headless Monks keep the leftovers. Watch your step. There are traps everywhere."
The Doctor eyed the floor and made a face. "I hate rats."
"There are no rats in the transept."
"Oh, good."
"The skulls eat them."
"That is not something I ever, ever needed to hear or know," Aliya said, wincing and stepping closer to the Doctor and away from the walls lined with skulls, which turned towards them as if to look.
"The Headless Monks behead you alive, remember."
"Why are some of them in boxes?"
They had come to the end of the passageway, into a small circular space that had some expensive looking boxes sitting on waist-high pillars. "Because some people are rich, and some are left to rot. And Dorium Maldovar was always very rich."
"Thank you for bringing us, Gantok," the Doctor told the other man as he sonicked Dorium's box open to reveal his head, blissfully sleeping.
"My pleasure," Gantok sneered. "It saves me the trouble of burying you." They turned around to see that he had a gun pointed at them. "Nobody beats me at chess."
There was a whole second for Aliya to get nervous before he stepped forward and the ground sucked him up. One of his aforementioned traps turned out to be a pit of ravenous skulls.
"Gantok!" The Doctor cried out, moving closer to help him only for Aliya to yank him back.
"We are not feeling sympathy for the guy about to kill us, or endangering ourselves to help him," she said firmly, grabbing his sonic from him to shut the pit before the skulls could get an ideas about eating them too.
The look of disapproval he was giving her was something she had expected, but she didn't have it in her to worry about would be murderers when all her worry and sympathy was being used up for him.
That was when Dorium opened his eyes.
"Hello? Is someone there?" He asked. "Ah, Doctor. Aliya. Thank god it's you. The Monks, they turned on me."
"Well, I'm afraid they rather did, a bit," the Doctor said, slowly.
"Give it to me straight, Doctor. How bad are my injuries?"
The Doctor and Aliya exchanged bemused and panicked looks, and the former opened his mouth to try and give some kind of answer when Dorium started guffawing.
"Oh, your faces!" He cackled. They relaxed considerably. That could have been a very awkward conversation. "Oh, it's not so bad, really, as long as they get your box the right way up. I got a media-chip fitted in my head years ago, and the Wi-Fi down here is excellent, so I keep myself entertained."
"We need to know about the Silence," Aliya said, far from in the mood for small talk.
"Oh," he remarked, his face falling a bit, "A religious order of great power and discretion. The sentinels of history, as they like to call themselves."
"And they want me dead," the Doctor added.
"No, not really," Dorium told him, "They just don't want you to remain alive."
While Aliya grit her teeth, the Doctor just snorted. "That's okay, then," he said sarcastically, "I was a bit worried for a minute there."
"You're a man with a long and dangerous past, but your future is infinitely more terrifying. The Silence believe it must be averted," the head continued, as if it weren't information that devastated everything they held dear.
Aliya's body, for the first time in a fair while, shook with anger instead of devastation over the death that loomed near. "Why didn't you tell us this before?!"
"It was a busy day and I got beheaded!" He replied hotly.
"What's so dangerous about my future?" The Doctor asked.
Dorium sighed. "On the Fields of Trenzalore, at the Fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely, or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, ever be answered."
"Silence will fall when the question is asked," Aliya repeated. It was something they had gone over repeatedly since Daheer's capital, when they had learned the phrase from the Teselector.
"Silence must fall would be a better translation," Dorium corrected, "The Silence are determined the question will never be answered. That the Doctor will never reach Trenzalore."
The Doctor frowned. "I don't understand. What's it got to do with me?"
"The first question. The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight. Would you like to know what it is?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure? Very, very sure?"
"Yes," Aliya said adamantly, scowling.
"Then I shall tell you. But on your lover's head be it."
"Just. Tell us."
Dorium made a big show of pausing and clearing his throat. Finally, he spoke. "Doctor who?"
Ironically, after voicing the question, silence did fall. The Time Lords both just stared at him incredulously, neither of them remotely understanding. He gazed back, with a strange sort of smugness. And then -
"Are you fucking serious?" Aliya cried. "That's the question? They want to know his fucking name? His name is the thing that will apparently doom the entire universe to the point where a religious order thinks they have to kill him to keep it a secret?"
"Well, yes," Dorium answered, a bit taken aback by her outburst.
"That is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard! A Time Lord's name isn't powerful, it can't bring down a city or a civilisation or a galaxy, it's just really fucking private!" She shouted.
"But the Doctor isn't just any Time Lord-"
Aliya snorted. "No, he's not, he was known as an embarrassment to the whole planet, as far as our people were concerned."
"Gee, thanks," the Doctor remarked, speaking for the first time since hearing the question, her detractions the things to break him from deep contemplation.
She ignored him and turned back to Dorium. "I know the whole damn universe has some delusion that because he goes around saving planets he's some god-like warrior, but Dorium, you know him. He's not some feared being, he's an idiot in a box who is only good at doing impressive things because he's spent centuries getting good at it!"
Dorium waited a few moments, with a look on his face that plainly said he was wanting to be sure that she was finished. Then he said mildly, "My dear, it's not me you need to convince, I'm afraid."
"You're coming with us," the Doctor said out of nowhere, moving to grab his box.
Aliya stepped into his path. "Um, why?"
"Because he has information."
"He just told us everything we need to know, why would we possibly need to bring him with us?"
"Hardly," he scoffed, "All we know is that apparently I'm going to end up at this Trenzalore place where I'll be forced to speak the truth, and someone is going to ask my name and that apparently means something incredibly bad that this religious order are trying to avoid."
She crossed her arms and nodded. He blinked.
"Oh. Right. That is about everything, isn't it?"
"Yes."
The Doctor stepped away from Dorium's box. "Never mind, Dorium, you can stay here. Thanks for the help, but we should probably get going."
"So you understand now?" The blue head asked. "You do see why you have to die?"
"Because otherwise I might say my name on the Fields of Trenzalore," the Doctor said gravely, "And it would seem that if I do, something terrible will happen."
"Exactly. You can't run away from this."
"I'm still calling bullshit," Aliya remarked, "I mean-"
"Shh," the Doctor muttered, "We're leaving now anyway. Come on. Goodbye, Dorium."
They hurried back down the passage and got back into the TARDIS. The Doctor immediately went to the scanner, and Aliya sat on the jump seat, feeling a headache coming on.
"Why Lake Silencio?" The Doctor asked, without sounding like he was particularly talking to her. "Why Utah?"
"I imagine it's a still point," Aliya replied quietly, "It would make it easier to make your death a fixed point, which is apparently is."
"Dorium said I couldn't run away from this. But I've been running all my life, why should I stop?"
"Bullshit reason for why it supposedly needs to happen or not, it is still a fixed point," she reminded him, hating herself with every word that she said but needing to keep the facts out in the open.
"Not today. The farewell tour is still going, Aliya, things to do, people to see," he said, grinning at her as he picked up the phone and dialled a number.
Relief coursed through her veins and she grinned back. They were going to have more time, they could keep avoiding it for as long as they wanted. So long as we actually do at some point go, a very academic part of her brain said. She ignored it.
"We could invent a new colour," the Doctor told her, "Save the dodo, join the Beatles!" He brought the phone back to his ear. "Hello, it's me! Get him. Tell him we're going out and it's all on me, except for the money and the driving!" He put the phone back to his shoulder. "We have a time machine, Aliya, it's all still going on. For me, it never stops."
"Well," she tried to say, frowning at the look in his eye that was actually worrying the more sensible part of her. She was determined not to lose him, so she should have been thrilled about his new attitude, but now of all times, the part of her pledged to protect time was wary.
"Emmeline Pankhurst is still waiting for us to give her a bridge rematch, we could help Rose Tyler with her homework, we could go on all of Jack's stag parties one night, we could find River Song and take her out dancing-"
"No, time has some limits," Aliya interrupted, her hearts pounding at the mention of River Song, which was something he should never have considered.
"Well, it has never laid a glove on me!" He snapped. Then his entire demeanour shifted as he brought the phone back to his ear and pleasantly smiled, a deceiving picture of carefree charm. "Hello?"
Whoever was on the other end spoke, and the Doctor's face fell as he listened.
"Yes, yes, I-"
Aliya watched him age in the space of a few seconds. Everything in him that had just set off warning bells in her time sense evaporated and was replaced by a wary old man with a young face.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" She asked, concerned.
"Nothing," he breathed, "Nothing. It's just-" He put the phone down and patted down his pockets where Aliya knew the blue envelopes were being kept. "It's time."
"Wait, no," she said, standing up as panic took hold of her. "Not now, not right this second-"
"If not now, then when, Aliya?"
"I don't know, but not now! I won't let you, I'm not ready, you can't just-"
He shocked her by yanking her in by her jacket and kissing her with a firmness that was very uncharacteristic. So uncharacteristic that she quickly pulled away so that she could frown at him. Usually, even his rougher kisses were still underlined with tenderness, but this one had been strangely aggressive and almost cold.
"What the hell was that?" She asked. "You've never kissed me like that."
"I'm sorry," he said, and sounded very much like he meant it, but there was still an odd look in his eye. His hand cupped the back of her neck and he kissed her again, backing her up to the railing.
He kept murmuring the apology against her lips, but she didn't understand why until something cold and hard jerked against her wrist.
She yanked her mouth away from his and looked down at where she was now handcuffed to the console platform railing. Her blood ran cold and her head snapped back up to look at the Doctor, who had a resigned and pained look on his face.
"No," was all she could say at first, her voice choked, "No, don't you dare."
"They'll unlock after 24 hours."
"You know that's not what I mean!"
"This has to happen, and you would never have let it, you'd hang onto me kicking and screaming," he said, pursuing his lips inward while his eyes filled with tears, "This is the only way."
"I know that this has to happen, I know that just as much as you do!" It had only taken two seconds for her to become just as teary.
"You keep changing your mind! You switch every five seconds, between knowing that it's inevitable and denying it completely!" The Doctor told her, with exasperation. "You're completely torn between your duty as a Time Lord and your duty to your own hearts! Like you've been your entire life."
"What else am I supposed to do?!" She shouted hopelessly, her free hand fisting in his jacket while her other one fought against its restraints. "You're right, I'm torn, I'm breaking down the middle and I don't know what to do."
"I know. Which is why I'm doing it instead. Either choice would tear you apart, properly. The only way to ensure that you survive this is to take the choice away from you," he said, his hands coming to cup her face very gently, "And I'm so sorry that I have to do that, but I do, and I think deep down you agree with me."
Perhaps she did, but all she could currently register was that she was going to lose him forever. Her arm kept tugging at the handcuffs in a fruitless attempt to get free, and she kept trying, harder and harder until she was crying out with pain.
"Stop it," the Doctor said, his brow furrowing but his hands not leaving her face, "Aliya, stop it, you're hurting yourself-"
"I don't care-"
"I care!"
He said it so forcefully that Aliya immediately stilled.
"Please don't leave me," she whispered, her eyes locked with his.
"You said it yourself, it's a fixed point, this has to happen," he told her, his voice shaking a little, "Not because my name will cause some disaster in the future - you're right about that, what a load of rubbish, and even if you weren't, we'd find a way to deal with it - but because it has already happened. You've seen it. It is a fixed point."
"I don't care."
"Yes, you do. See, you weren't lying just now, but I'm also right. You can never make your mind up, it's frankly a bit ridiculous," the Doctor said, smiling fondly in a way that made her tears fall that much harder.
"This coming from you," she managed to say. His fingers brushed her hair behind her ears, so tenderly that it only made her hearts break all the more. "What the hell am I going to do without you?"
"I've no idea. But won't it be interesting to find out? Aliyanadevoralundar, in the TARDIS. Sounds like good potential for a new story, if you ask me."
She ignored that and used her free hand to pull him into a bone-crushing hug. "I'm going to miss you so much," she whispered into his shoulder.
He hugged her back just as hard, in a way that betrayed how he was trying to put on a brave face for her. "I know."
When they let go of each other, they stayed in each other's space, Aliya's hand coming up to comb through his stupid - wonderful - hair. Her lip shook and her throat felt entirely constricted. "You're so fucking beautiful," she breathed, the salt of her tears stinging her eyes and making her have to blink them away as best she could.
His fingertips lifted her chin. "So are you. Ugly crier and all."
That made her cry harder, and cast her gaze down dejectedly. "I'm sorry," she muttered, shaking her head, "I ruin everything by crying, you shouldn't have to remember me like this-"
"I won't have to, you'll be there, hopefully tear free," the Doctor reminded her, "But for the record, you're the Aliya I'll be missing. She's got a way to go yet before she's you."
Aliya really didn't know what to say to that.
"Hug Jenny for me," he said, his eyes melancholy and full of affection, "Tell her I'm sorry. Make sure she knows I didn't give you a choice in this, I couldn't stand it if this got between the two of you in any way."
"Doctor-"
"And give Mari a chance. A proper one. And don't blame her for this."
"She's the astronaut, isn't she?"
"I rather think she will be, yes. And she's going to need someone to tell her that it isn't her fault, and that person is going to need to be you, and I need you to promise me that you are going to really try."
Aliya nodded quickly. "I promise."
"Thank you."
She bit her lip. "There are a thousand things I want to say. But - I love you."
He smiled, and his fingertips came to rest against her lips. "I know."
The Doctor leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to her temple and each of her eyelids, then the tip of her nose. Through the tears, she found herself letting out an odd giggle, not because it was funny but because he was so sweet and she was already crying so there wasn't much left to do but laugh as well.
He took her face in his hands again and tilted it to look at him. "There a thousand things I wish I could say too. But mostly...Aliya, thank you. For everything you've ever done for me, for being the best and worst friend anyone could ask for. I feel - well, honoured, really, to have been able to know you like I have. My life, it's been...brighter, for having you in it."
Every part of Aliya's chest burned as a new sob wracked her body.
"I'd hoped to get one last smile out of you, but I don't think that's going to happen now, is it?"
A smile. As if her eyes weren't burning and squeezed shut in an attempt to halt her tears. "No," she said honestly, wishing that she could give him the last request because she was certain that she currently looked awful, "I'm so sorry-"
Surprisingly, the Doctor didn't seem too upset, he just gave her a tiny smile instead. "It's okay, it's okay," he said softly, his thumb brushing her cheek, "I don't need it now, it's not something I could ever forget. I'm the one that's sorry. I'm so very, very sorry." There was an unspoken for what I'm about to do that she could hear, and for some reason she didn't think he was talking about going to the lake.
"Why?"
"Run like hell," he told her, ignoring her question and instead holding her eyes intently, "Run like hell, because you always need to."
This was his goodbye. Truly this time. She knew because it was the only reason he would start telling her how to go on without him.
"Laugh at everything, because it's always funny if you have the right perspective," he continued, "Never be cruel, and never be cowardly, but if you are, always make amends. Never eat pears, they're all squishy and they make your chin all wet. That one's important, maybe write it down later. I'll be cross if you forget."
"No, I can't do this," Aliya said frantically, her hearts pounding as she started fighting against the handcuffs once again, desperately twisting to try and get her hand free so that she could stop him from leaving. Her free hand seized his jacket with intent to never let go, so that he wouldn't be able to move away from her.
"And keeping fighting until your last breath. I know you will."
The Doctor was unperturbed by her struggling, the same tender expression on his face that had been there for a good half minute. He came closer so that they were almost nose to nose.
"Goodbye, Aliya."
He leaned in even more and whispered the sentiment again against her cheek, only in Gallifreyan and with her true name instead of her given one. At the same time, his fingers went to her temples before she could realise what he intended to do.
Her world went black.
As Aliya's body went limp in his arms, the Doctor kept a tight hold on it so that she didn't fall. For a moment he stayed perfectly still, letting his tear-soaked face rest on top on her hair while he took some deep breaths.
Knocking her out was an invasion of her consent that he wasn't happy with, but he couldn't risk her injuring herself in an attempt to get out of the handcuffs, and he certainly couldn't let her get free. Besides, he still had to essentially kidnap her younger self. Having his Aliya conscious was just never going to work.
As gently as he could, he let himself sink to the floor and situate Aliya against the jump seat in a sitting position that looked mostly comfortable if not for the one arm up where it was attached to the railing. It was the best he could do.
With a final kiss her to forehead, and a last murmured apology for everything, he got to his feet.
First things first, he needed his invitations delivered.
"Surely you could deliver the messages yourself?"
"Well, this one I will, the others it would be best if you did."
"According to our files, this is the end for you. Your final journey. We'll deliver your messages. You can depend on us."
"Thank you."
"Doctor, whatever you think of the Teselecta, we are champions of law and order just as you have always been. Is there nothing else we can do?"
The Doctor returned to his TARDIS, wondering how the hell he and Aliya had never considered the possibility that had just presented itself. He felt like a prize idiot. Still, he wasn't sure it was going to work, it felt almost too easy, so he didn't have his hopes up yet.
The Teselector in the form of Vandeleur followed him inside, and if anyone inside it thought that it was odd that his best friend was unconscious and handcuffed up on the console platform, they didn't vocalise it.
The plan more or less hadn't changed. There was just a very mild chance of him being able to walk away from it all now (and a chance that he might be able to return to the TARDIS to wake Aliya up and spent the next two decades apologising to her).
Following the plan, it was time to get the younger Aliya, to snatch her from the market on Boranos.
It proved to be surprisingly easy - he just waited in the shadows until she wandered away from her own Doctor, snuck up behind her, and knocked her out much the same he had her older self. It bothered him just as much, having to do this to her, but for the sake of preserving what he knew of the timeline, he didn't have much choice.
He lugged Aliya inside his TARDIS and laid her on the floor near the door, taking only a moment to acknowledge the wrongness of having two Aliyas there at the same time and the box's aversion to it.
"Sorry, dear, it's only for a moment," he promised.
Vandeleur took the invitation for his younger self and slipped out into the marketplace to stick it onto the door of the other TARDIS. He was back within a minute.
Being zapped by the Teselector's miniaturisation ray was an interesting experience that made his tongue tingle. They went for an alternative route when it came to operating it, plugging the Doctor into the controls so that the robot could mimick him based on thought and instinct alone, making it more real (but with the crew still monitoring everything).
He was about to (hopefully) fake his own death, after all. He really did have to be himself as much as physically possible.
Once they were in Utah, things went surprisingly smoothly. He always had been an excellent liar. It was easy to lie to Aliya's face once she woke up, and thankfully once River shot off his hat she was sufficiently distracted and so was he.
It had been so long since he had seen his wife. And if this new plan didn't work, if he really did die today, at least he got to see her one last time - so alive, so vibrant in every way he had always loved about her.
They went to the diner and laughed together, and for a few glorious moments he could almost pretend it was like old times. But River Song was long dead for him, even if she never truly would be in his hearts, and Aliya was just not quite yet the woman that was currently unconscious and handcuffed in his TARDIS.
Even once they moved to the picnic at the lakeside, it was as difficult as it was joyous to get to spend these precious moments with River and Aliya. It was practically stolen time in itself, and therefore a gift. But every time Aliya looked at him, it was just too strange.
She was so young, or rather, so lacking the experiences that her his Aliya. She'd never met Jenny. She'd never held him as they weeped for River Song, never flung truly hateful words at him or been damaged by his, never finally caved after months of separation and asked him so tentatively to hold her in that alley in Cardiff. She'd never peppered him with her kisses or responded eagerly to one of his, or felt his hands on her bare skin in their most private moments. She'd never borne their child and gone through the trials of losing her and finding her again.
He could see in her eyes just how much she loved him, even now. But she didn't even know herself yet. She also didn't hold herself with quite the same confidence. She wasn't lacking it - this was Aliya, after all - but she was missing that small something that Aliya had gained somewhere along the line. He didn't know if it had been when she had spent so long away from him, or some other event entirely.
But even so, she was still Aliya. And having her and River here with him, at what might be the end, brought him as close to accepting that possibility as anything.
If I do die, at least I won't die alone.
Canton's truck pulled up, and the Doctor got to his feet.
"Whatever happens now, you do not interfere," he told the two women still lying on the blanket. "Is that clear?"
He stole last glance at the two of them - the wife he had so missed and the best friend who still had so much ahead of her - and wished there was more he could do. But what he was about to do would hurt them both so much. Aliya would soon have the memories taken from her for a long time, that he knew, but River...would carry them for the rest of her life.
That was something he had never considered. Had River gone that whole time thinking he was dead? Or had she somehow been made to forget too?
He just gave the women a tight smile that was probably more a grimace before turning around and walking towards the edge of the lake, where the astronaut had begun to rise from the water.
They arrived at the same time and faced each other.
"It's okay," he said softly, "I know it's you." The astronaut lifted her helmet, revealing his daughter's tear stained face, framed by red curls of hair that had escaped the bun it had been put into.
"Doctor, run," she said urgently, her resolve that looking very forced, "This suit, it's in control, I'm powerless to stop it-"
"It's okay, Mari, this is what has to happen."
"Run," she repeated, with more force.
"I did. Running brought me here."
"No."
"It's okay, this is where I die, this is a fixed point. This is what has to happen, what always happens-"
"I will not kill you!" Mari told him furiously. "I did not give away half of my lives to save you only to kill you now, I won't be Kovarian's weapon, I won't!"
Despite her words, her suited arm began to lift towards him of its own again. Hazel eyes shone with a few fresh tears as they met his, as vulnerable as they had been all those years ago for him when they had been in the TARDIS corridor.
"Father," she whispered, desperately. "Please."
The Doctor's hearts skipped two beats. It was the first time she had ever called him that, the first time she had directly acknowledged his paternity (except in the letter he was fairly sure she hadn't written yet).
Sure enough, his eyes filled with tears too, and he smiled at her tenderly. "Mari, I am so proud of you. Who you became. You never did anything wrong." He frowned. "Well, that's not strictly true, actually, but-"
Mari made a hiccuping noise that sounded like a tiny hysterical laugh of sorts.
"You are forgiven," he continued, holding her eyes with his and making sure to convey all he had been afraid to show her but wanted to give if it was his last chance, "Always and completely forgiven. And loved. You don't have to love me back, you haven't had enough time. But I am honoured to call you my daughter."
She was openly weeping by that point, something he had never expected to see from her.
"I can't stop it," she said, "Please, run, you are the only person who can make me feel safe in this whole stupid universe and I want that no matter how much it terrifies me! If you make me do this I will never be able to live with myself, and she truly will never forgive me. If you are such a martyr that you won't do it for yourself, then do it for her." She paused. "Do it for me."
"I can't," he said simply, "This has to happen. Mari, look to your left."
She did, and made an odd sniffing sound. "It's her."
"That's your - that's Aliya before she ever met you. She's not a hateful person, Mari, not with people that aren't well and truly evil. She doesn't hate you, and as someone who has been inside her head, I can promise that."
Mari just shook her head, and he knew he didn't have the time to convince her.
"Just promise me that after this you'll find her. She's in my TARDIS, you should be able to sense where it is."
Again, she moved her head from side to side, her expression harder this time. "I have better places to be."
"Please, Mari," he asked, "For me."
Her face contorted for a moment before her shoulders sank the smallest distance in the suit. "Alright," she murmured, reluctantly. "I can promise that I'll go to her, but nothing more."
The arm had reached full height and was pointed directly at his chest.
"Goodbye, Mari."
She didn't answer. Instead, her eyes were squeezed shut. One shot came and he clutched his chest, the energy actually reaching him through the Teselector systems and making him wince. He braced himself for another and shut his eyes and waited.
The shot never came. He peeked out of one eye and saw his daughter looking utterly relieved.
"What did you do?"
"I believe I may have just drained my weapons system," she said, a tiny smug smile tugging on her lips.
"Mari, you can't do that! This is a fixed point!"
"I don't know or care what that is," Mari said rather grimly, the steel back in her eye, "You are my father and I am not killing you." Even though his hearts panged once again at hearing her call him her father, he still opened his mouth to scold her, to tell her to find a way to reverse it.
But that was when the entire world bent into a band of golden light and changed forever.
I know certain people (*cough* Mrs. 11th *cough*) will have cried reading this. I should feel bad but I don't. I'm a terrible person and she and OptimisticLady call me 'Angst Queen' in our group chat for a reason.
The next chapter isn't so angsty, and contains the longest exchange between Mari and Aliya to date. I'm excited about it for sure.
HAPPY (early, for some) NEW YEAR! It's been a crazy one, but a great one, and has seen so many of the things in this series I had been waiting to write desperately finally come into existence. Thank you so much to everyone who has been along on this journey with me. I hope you stick around, because this story is almost done and the next one is worth getting excited about for a reason I will disclose in a few chapter's time.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!
-MayFairy :)
Guest Review Replies:
Guest - I'm working on an Against All We Know update, but did get very distracted by Christmas fic and this story which is nearing its final climax. Thank you for your enthusiasm, it's great to know you love the story, but please do appreciate that I have multiple ongoing fics and I can only write so much at once. Hopefully AAWK will be updated soon, and I can hear your thoughts. The events of the upcoming chapter might not be what you want, though.