Disclaimer: The BBC owns "Doctor Who." I only own some time I wanted to kill with some creative task XD
06: [Weakness]
To the universe, he was a legend.
Some myths painted him as a sheer force of nature, an incomprehensible cosmic horror beyond words, the lone sovereign of a realm with power no one should possess – The horrible herald of death whom the countless worlds in the sky with their even more numerous people and their ungraspable number of languages had tried to find more and more titles for, one more fear-inspiring than the last, desperate to fill the blank space left my an unmentionable Name.
In others, he was celebrated as a hero – there were statues, portraits and myths, stories of liberation and revolution scattered in time, there were wise, wandering strangers, miraculous wizards with the power to conquer the world and the noble spirit to use it to save said world instead, songs and poems about lonely Gods enacting judgement and a pair of dreadfully ancient eyes up in the sky, keeping watch over the world, ready to unleash the white, blinding light of the newborn stars of molten metal that lay behind them.
In short, the Galaxies spoke of an invincible immortal.
That was the problem with myths – The seed that gave birth to them was often a spark of truth, but nourished by the fertile ground of human imagination, they tended to take the most bizarre shapes, and more often than not, the final result one had to work with when dealing with the actual 'source of inspiration' was less than accurate – The myths about his own person in particular couldn't have been further from the truth.
In the end, he was but a simple man – a bit harder to kill than your average humanoid, but not significantly so, and oh, he was a brilliant scientist and rightfully proud of it, but it was not like he was some sort of messiah, or like he could just… make stuff happen by pointing.
He knew very well that he was fallible, and every time he forgot it in a dark hour or a moment of weakness, even for a few seconds, the consequences burned that bitter knowledge deeper into his consciousness.
Most recently, it had been the genuine fear in the eyes of Tegan of all people, that deeply-rooted repulsion towards the blood that drenched his path, that had taught him humility anew – A few weeks ago, he had his TARDIS full with people he considered the younger siblings he never had, some looking up to him, some willing to learn from him, and some annoying, yet cute.
Gone was the somehow affectionate bickering that had once filled the console room, leaving only silence and simple, bone-white walls whose starkness should've stopped to irritate him long ago – at least, until the most recent resident of the time ship stepped on its bridge.
As he would one day tell a certain lonely painter, far in the future, when he was older and wiser, his experience had shown that there was, surprisingly, always hope.
Each and every breath was a new chance to find happiness, and while it was a given that you couldn't go on forever without getting to know the taste of sorrow, avoiding all good things was no less impossible.
He knew it very well – Every time he felt like he was lost for good now, the heavens had opened up and revealed someone to duct tape him back together, and that big old universe was far too alluring for him to resist its temptations for too long.
Now back then, that someone with the Duct Tape had been a young American botany student who went by the name of Perpugilliam Brown.
She was neither the first nor the last, but he did not allow himself the injustice of comparisons – He knew better than to invalidate someone who had saved his life and/or soul.
Originally, he had taken her with him for the same reason he had taken many others: Because of the potential he had seen in her. As much as the tremor of her body and voice betrayed the fear that most people would have felt in the situations she tended to find herself in, it never succeeded to keep her from looking the danger into the eye, telling it what she thought of it and, if the situations allowed it, saving herself.
If she had told him the truth, her reaction to being trapped on a boat by her stepfather to foil her vacation plans was to just jump into the water and try to swim away, taking said stepfather's previous artefact with her as an additional way to…. Express her opinion to him.
Sure, she probably would have drowned if Turlough hadn't found her, but the act of defiance itself had earned her his respect and proved that there was potential to be cultivated – He took it upon himself to make sure she'd reach the shore on her own the next time.
Speaking of respect, she might probably have gained the Master's as well. According to what she told him later, his best enemy apologized for her almost falling into a trap that had been meant for him when they met again – He didn't think that the Master would've shown much concern if she had actually died because of his actions, but his own, twisted kind of respect was respect nonetheless – but he was one to talk.
Most bystanders would probably fail to see any sort of mutual respect between him and Peri if they happened to witness them striding across the landscape – She would usually be complaining about everything in sight, and later, those complaints would often serve as the beginning of an argument, either thanks to his sixth incarnation's quite different temperament, or because she was simply starting to rub off on him.
The places he would bring her to would always be either too boring or too dangerous for her tastes, and her opinion as to which of those statements applied to their current location was not always consistent.
He still kept trying to impress her – Their little quarrels might annoy him in the moment they were happening, however, whenever he looked back on them later, he'd realize that they were merely proof to the fact that she saw him as he was – Not as a perfect, dashing hero or an unstoppable menace, but simply as himself.
In the beginning, she had already complained, because that's the way she was, but judging from some of the things she said later, she must've suspected that there was some kind of angel hidden beneath the straight, pale blond hair slightly odd cricket outfit.
He guessed that he couldn't blame her for feeling as if she had seen a worm crawl out of a recently bought, initially tasty-looking apple – She had seen but the softest, mildest sides, it was barely a wonder she would consider "sweet" a fitting adjective.
But this wasn't what he was like; he wasn't a classic dashing superhero. She shouldn't confuse him with Superman just because he occasionally happened to be running out of a phone box wearing glasses he didn't really need.
It wasn't that simple.
He wasn't that simple.
He was eccentric, blunt, difficult to deal with, even harder to make sense of and sometimes admittedly thinking himself to be cooler than he actually was.
Not to mention that he was utterly clueless at what many would consider the "important things of life".
She had been very correct in her assessment when she had called him 'a confusing person to be around' – He was both a saviour and a sinner, ancient, yet childish and occasionally, showing signs of a midlife-crisis, wise yet inveterate, he spoke a lot without telling her nothing at all, and right now, he was feeling vibrant and determined again after a long time, and did not feel ashamed of showing it to the world with the help of a multi-coloured outfit, whether the world (including Peri) liked it or not.
And he was pretty sure she did like it (his personality, not the outfit), at least after she had returned his smile after their departure from Jaconda.
The regeneration had certainly not made things easier, and he did not envy her for having to put up with him in the mess of a state he had been afterwards – To this day, he had no memory of assaulting her, and he honestly hoped he never would remember – Until that day, he had thought himself to be axiomatically incapable of such acts, but he had been a fool to forget that he was just flesh and blood like everyone else – Regeneration had never suited him: What preceded it was seldom pretty, (Particularly this time – He could only think of a handful of times where he had come significantly closer to his physical annihilation than back then on Androzani Minor) it was either mind-numbingly painful, induced a swirl of incoherent visions or, like this time, both (For a moment, he could have sworn that he had seen Adric kneeling besides himself next to Peri, and had half expected the boy to extend his hand and guide him to the next world, just for the young prodigy to urge him to stay alive), and a cruel twist of fate had cursed him with a certain predisposition towards unpleasant side-effects.
How had his ancestors ever survived in the strife of evolution when their regenerations left them in a predicament that made it very hard to get away from what had caused the regeneration (for example, some random predatory animal) in the first place?
Having the layers of his personality riffled like a card deck was not too pleasant either and kept leaving him with the feeling that he had to get to know himself anew.
He sometimes wondered if the only thing that had kept her from just ordering him to bring her home was the knowledge that it was the deed of saving her life that had put him into that sorry state. In Hindsight, he was very grateful that she had stayed and cared for him, even if his pride had successfully prevented him from ever admitting that, let alone thanking her.
It had been a hard time for him, too, even if his worries probably looked silly compared to what she must've gone through. As much as his appearance and outward attitude might have changed, on some level, his appreciation for her had remained unchanged, and even if he hid himself behind a bombastic, confident attitude, having lost her trust, if only temporarily, was not a nice experience.
Still, it was only after that ordeal that he had started to feel what she probably had felt from the very beginning – She had told him that she "Really liked him", thought him to be sweet (As mentioned before, hat statement was highly inaccurate, but nonetheless well-meaning) and he could imagine very well what would have followed after her last "and-" if he hadn't cut her off to go and pick his outfit(He'd like to chalk his exorbitant thickness up to his peculiar mental state, yet the truth was that he had always been that oblivious back then and had only slightly improved since then.), and he also knew the exact four words he would have replied if she had ever tried to tell him again anytime after the adventure that had followed his eventful trip to the wardrobe, the three she would have said decorated with a comma and the little word 'too'.
The catastrophe that should have made them into strangers only managed to bring them closer together for to love someone is to love them despite their flaws which had made it far too easy to lose his hearts to a girl who had still remained at his side after seeing what it was that made him strong and what it was that made him weak.
It was, admittedly, more of a hate/love relationship, and yet, his voice had sounded affectionate when he had answered the question as to what they did in that little blue box with "argue, mainly", since those arguments immediately ceased in the face of danger, sometimes turning into very obvious despair if the other appeared to be caught in afore mentioned danger.
They had stood side by side, fending off the dangers that the universe kept throwing into their faces; She told him not to patronize her as they took out a couple of guards in perfect teamwork, she ended up saving both their lives when he stumbled into a trap of the Rani's and otherwise kept proving that he had not been mistaken when he decided to take her with him.
Neither of them attempted to stutter out those blasted words ever again, tough not because they lost their belief into the truth of that sentence: They simply happened to be busy all the time, all these Mentors, Cybermen, Daleks, Robots and stalkers (seriously, and he thought Jo hat gotten lots of unwanted attraction…) kept getting in the way.
Just for the big words, tough, they never hindered the slow, gradual shift of things, the way their arguments lessened and the increasing number of times where she would play along with his bombastic way of introducing things to her.
Without ever asking for confirmation, they had begun to stop doubting that they had become strong enough to take each other as they were.
His initial fear of losing her had long since evaporated, as the timeframe in which she had known his present self had expanded and expanded whereas their earliest travels remained static memories. He did not even know how long it had been since they had departed together – however, the only ways they as wanderers in the fourth dimension had left of measuring their personal time, namely the growth of her hair and the maturation of her body, indicated that it had been years, not counting the time where she had still kept her chestnut brown hair short, and probably also missing the few months it had been since she had fully reached adulthood – Humans didn't change that much during their early twenties and she'd probably hid middle-age before he started looking any older. (He was getting a bit chubby, tough. He should probably cut down on sweets)
At this point, Peri had probably completely forgotten about her initial intentions to return to return to Earth eventually – Turning up for her next semester looking visibly older was not really an option, and she did not really have anyone left who was worth returning to.
When her path led her to the world she had long since left behind for the final time, she probably wouldn't have been able to tell her own age, and the part of her life that could be ordered by calendars was but a series of faded images whose taste and smell she had forgotten.
Still, not even he had ever lost all attachment to his birthplace, and he had been away from it much longer than she had been from hers – When she found the blue planet ravaged and burned, his words couldn't soothe her grief in the slightest.
Oh, if they had only known of the conspiracy whose complicated, shadowy works they had just stepped into, if they only had known of the abrupt separation that had been awaiting them.
One of the greatest blessings of time has always simultaneously been one of its greatest curses: One remembers the past, not the future, and this allows the people of the universe to possess hopes for the future, as they can never see the grave holes waiting to devour their bodies, however, it also means that you have to live with the recollections of things after they are set in stone forever, and these particular memories would never fade from his mind.
The words he had always feared to hear, the spine-chilling way the reptilian abomination commented on his new body, her body, her head shaven clean, her movements so disturbingly different, the appalled scream of the warrior king, the white light enveloping it all, marking the cessation of her existence, and his utter helplessness as he observed the screen, unable to do a thing.
He was far away, far away from her, light-years as well actual years, both in huge quantities, separated them, the walls of this room confined him within and kept him from going where he ought to be, where he was so desperately needed.
As the screen fades to white, all the layers of confidence, all the bombastic acts, all the walls he had built around his innermost that was no less fragile than it had been when he still walked around with that stick of celery just shattered and crumbled away around him, exposing nothing glorious or frightening, not even anything remarkable, absolutely nothing but a simple man with nothing but deep despair reflected in his light grey eyes.
The colour of his skin must have turned several shades lighter over the course of a second.
"You…killed Peri…"
He was devastated, ruined even, and yet, he struggled to pull himself together.
Had he been on his own or with someone he knew, he would have dropped to his knees, but he would not grant the Valeyard the pleasure to see him like this.
Fighting to turn tears into rage, he swore to seek out the ones responsible for this, lacing each of his words with a thin layer of wrath and disgust as he promised to find out what reason had been so pressing that some stuck-up, powermad Time Lords who had probably never seen his or Peri's faces in their entire lives thought that they could just go and end their both their lives at a whim – They had already succeeded at taking hers and he would not rest before he had a chance to ask them what she had ever done to them.
Not even the Valeyard's accusations could break his determination – not that it kept them from cutting deeply into the flesh of his soul.
Sure, he could more or less tell where records of the parts he had witnessed had been tampered with, and the part afterwards could have been pure fabrication, but the truth was that he could not really think of any different outcome – It must've been the truth.
She was dead, and the size of the hole she had left had painfully reminded him of how important she had been to him – not only was she ripped away from him, no, it had to happen like that. Those words she had said, that disappointment in her eyes… it all seemed to be straight out of his nightmares – like this entire situation in general.
The Inquisitor offered him a rest to calm down, to which he replied with an untypically low voice, that he was perfectly calm, at least as much as the circumstances allowed it.
It didn't convince her too much.
And, as if he had peeked into his head, (As it turned out later, this was probably not so far from the truth) the Valeyard ordered him to be taken away – into the special suite, as a former president deserves, and of course, heavily guarded because "everyone here has seen what that despicable criminal is capable of.", telling everyone that they could continue this trait once he had "finished this blatantly fake, overly melodramatic farce."
The special suite!
What an outrageous example of audacious mockery!
The last thing the wanted to see now was all the pomp and gaudiness of the oh so illustrious Time Lord Civilization! If he hadn't instantly protested and adamantly refused to budge from the very square decimetre he was standing on, then only because he was, at this very instant, so boundlessly ashamed of being a Gallifreyan that he felt physically sick.
He wouldn't have any of it! 'We had to act' – the sheer repulsion was too intense for words or gestures.
All this had nothing to do with her – it was him they wanted, right?
But no, they had to play God a little, hadn't they? They had to have her immolated on the altar of their personal amusement, simply for the sake of painting him in a negative light to further their own plans.
As soon as a ludicrous number of guards has escorted him out of the courtroom, (Why so many? Even renegades could not fly or shoot beams from their eyes!) he began to regret ever leaving it – He could bear with the sudden emptiness that seemed to be pulling him apart from the inside if he was occupied with something, if he could concretely do something to work against her murderers. Being in a silent sealed room with only his thoughts for company was an entirely different thing.
Nonetheless, it was too late to go back. He had no choice but to go on and walk into his golden cage, this dissipative monument of Time Lord arrogance that they seriously expected him to spend the night in.
The Door that he heard closing behind him was at least one foot thick and triple deadlocked – the only way out of here was the large panorama window taunting him with an excellent view of the nothingness beyond the space station.
How clever of them, how very clever of them to hold this trial on this space station in the middle of nowhere – He had acquired himself quite a group of allies back on Gallifrey, and of course, our mysterious conspirators, whoever they were, couldn't risk them butting in to save him.
He went further inside.
The sound his shoes made failed to significantly impress the silence that loomed above him.
Oh, he was usually very capable of filling soundless rooms with words, but there was no one to talk to, no one to listen to him, no one and nothing to occupy his mind, nothing to fill the bubble of emptiness raising within him, containing only one question and one very likely answer.
Defeated, he let himself sink into the nearest chair.
Had she truly died there, all alone, thinking he had abandoned her?
He was later told that she hadn't, much later, after everything was over.
Yet, he did not, as he had originally planned to, pay a visit to Krontep to provide her with an explanation and a wedding present after escorting Melanie back to her place in the time stream – How could she possibly have survived? The Situation was hopeless; at very least since the Moment he had been removed from it. He could not imagine how she could have escaped. And… She had always complained about how loud and hot-headed he was, why should she go on to marry someone who could give him lessons in being loud and hot-headed?
The bitter truth was that this Detail at least, was fully possible – She disliked admitting defeat as much as he did, but that didn't change that she, despite her complaints, had grown to like loud and hot-headed men – if they were also righteous and determined.
It could be the truth… but then, if he thought it over, the only source the Inquisitor could have gotten that information from was the Master… And while the Valeyard had twisted the presented eventsin little, if important ways, there was no way of telling whether he could have fabricated a deviation as huge as a persons' death.
It could also be false.
Or not.
He would immediately suspect the Master to be lying if he had said something that would have been detrimental to him, but why should he make up something that made him look better, something that gave him hope?
Did he want to ridicule him by making him journey to Krontep to find out that Peri never got there? No, this man had known him for centuries, long enough to consider the possibility that he wouldn't dare to check on her. And he'd never lay a trap that wouldn't provide him the possibility to laugh at those who had fallen into it.
Could his old friend possibly have been… lying to comfort him?
The odds for her survival were fifty-fifty.
If it was the truth, he would only disrupt her new life alongside her new husband, and heaven forbid that he put her in the unfair situation of feeling obliged to follow him.
And if it was a lie, he did certainly not want to find out.
Not now.
For now, he would keep avoiding Krontep like the plague.
Maybe someday he would have the strength to go and find out.
If she was still there, she would probably give her best to demolish his eardrums with her shouting, if only because she had inwardly been worried sick about him, as he was certain that she would forgive him everything else the very moment she saw him – He was positive that she knew enough of his weaknesses to understand.
Sorry for the wait! I'm quite busy right now since I'll be taking my Abitur (German equivalent of A-Levels) in a few months.
I'll try to finish the next chapter quickly anyway - It will be called [Matters of the Heart(s)], will be starring Grace Holloway and therefore be the last installment of this starring the classic series. (The official site seems to include the Movie into the classics, tough I think that it's style resembles the new stuff more... or well, it's somewhat in-between with a few very own elements. The half human thing will not be mentioned/adressed because said blasphemy which brought an, in my personal opinion, otherwise agreeable movie into discredit, NEVER HAPPENED.)