A/N: Congratulations to the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi! I can't wait to see what he brings to the role!
Quinn had only traveled with the Doctor for a short time, relatively speaking. She'd faced crazy psychic meadows and brutal alien police with him before. He'd always had an unsettling quality about him whenever there was injustice of some kind of another for them to face, like he was trying to keep his anger and rage in check somehow and, sometimes, just barely managing. But this was new and different, this look on his face now. He was staring out the doors of the TARDIS, completely frozen, looking at the huge gash out in space that obviously meant a whole lot more to him than it did to anyone else in the console room.
He was brave - braver, she thought, than anyone she'd ever known. He'd stared down people who were doing absolutely atrocious things and never so much as batted an eye. The look he had now... it was more than just worry, it was beyond fear. The Doctor was terrified, faced with something so overwhelming that he wasn't in a position to do anything but gape at it, open-mouthed.
"Doctor?" she asked, stepping up to be beside him, gently moving anyone else out of the way. He didn't respond, so she put her arm around him as she stood right next to him, staring out at the cataclysm with him. "Doctor," she said again, a little more urgently. "What is it?"
"It's a..." he stopped, as if he were unwilling to speak the first word that came to mind. Taking a breath to compose himself, he started again. "It's a tear, a spot where something's been allowed to bleed out into reality."
"I don't understand," she said.
"The Time Vortex isn't like a... bypass or a thoroughfare," he said. "It's like the lifeblood of the universe, it's weaved into every bit of space and time, everywhere and nowhere at once. The amount of energy it should take to break the barrier and get through into the Vortex should be astronomical, off the charts. But here, it's slipping through into real space. If you look at the opening the creatures are coming from, you're staring into time itself."
She didn't have any real concept to compare that to, no idea what that actually meant in real, identifiable terms. She couldn't begin to fathom what it meant for these two nearly abstract concept to collide into one at this point. But the Doctor knew it was bad - was giving every indication, in fact, that it may as well be apocalyptic - and she didn't need to know what he meant or what it all was signifying. She knew him, and he was afraid. That was the thing that almost made her feel sick, made a gnawing worry settle into her stomach.
"I told you," Sanders said, sounding sad at the thought, rather than prideful or gloating. "If you deactivated the shield, people would die. We're not threatening to kill anyone. That doesn't mean there isn't a threat."
"How long has it been this way?" the Doctor asked, breathing hard through his nose and never breaking eye contact with the tear out in space.
"Almost since the colony was founded," Sanders said. "We started monitoring the situation ages ago. When it became obvious that the monsters - Vortisaurs, as you called them - were going to make a snack of anything that flew in or out, we grounded all spacecraft and erected a shield repurposed from one of the old cruisers."
"Why not just tell us?" Howard asked. "Why the charade, the song and dance?"
Of all the people, it was Josh who understood the government man's point, rather than anyone else. "Tell us what, exactly?" he asked, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "'Go on about your lives, ladies and gentlemen. Death hovers above, ever-present, but please, pay it no mind.' That's hardly going to work, is it?"
Sanders nodded his agreement. "The directive for secrecy has been passed down for generations. Once the initial shock of the groundings lost its novelty, not many people even noticed. We had everything we needed here, why worry that nobody seemed to come in or out any longer?"
"Only eventually that wasn't enough for everyone," Quinn said, filling in the gaps. "You started to wonder why nobody ever looked to the sky anymore."
Howard nodded. "The younger people felt... trapped. They wanted something more. The old research about off-planet travel was difficult to resurrect from where it'd sat wallowing in a database somewhere, but eventually we were able to find a way to get a prototype ship together. Only there was no point, not as long as the shield was up. We could break atmo easily enough, but not the barrier."
"That's when people started to question the directive," Sanders said. "For the first time in decades, people started talking about wanting to leave this place. We thought, if we could unify them against key figureheads then they'd focus all their energy on us, and forget about the shield." Quinn could scarcely believe it. If what he was saying was true, then it meant everything had been an act. All of it, not just the play they'd been to tonight, but everything the Anchors and the Travelers had done, for years. All of it was fake, two sides pitted against each other, acting out a revolution where there wasn't one, neither side actually doing anything to harm the other... at least not until the Travelers cracked the code and brought the shield down, at which point they would have launched their ship, been attacked by the Vortisaurs, and probably alerted the swarm that the planet was safe to approach. He'd promised them that people would die if they kept up doing what they were doing, and he'd been right; it just wouldn't have been him to do it. Quinn sighed, wondering how to snap the Doctor out of his trance, but he beat her to it.
"It doesn't work," he said, still staring out the doors to the TARDIS. "It was a good attempt but telling people they're trapped... they'll do anything to get free."
"Yeah..." Sanders said. "So what do we do?"
"Oh, Captain, I'd have thought that would be obvious by now," the Doctor said. "I'm a man of my word, after all. I'm going to do exactly what I said I would - I'm going to free your planet."
Sanders' mouth dropped open. "You are kidding me," he said. "After all this, you're still going to lower the shield?"
"Oh, yes!" he said, with some of his wild energy returning. "But not until I've cleared out the danger."
"We can do that?" Quinn asked.
"Of course we can do that," the Doctor said. "What good is it being a Time Lord if you can't fix something when it goes wrong? The TARDIS is made for this sort of thing - exploration was a low priority on Gallifrey. If it weren't for things like this, nobody would leave the planet at all. Sealing the breach is child's play. Literally, actually, I used to love doing it."
"Then what was with that little freakout just now?"
He looked up from his work for just a moment, barely long enough to even see her, but she saw that there was still fear there, in his eyes, as he casually lied, "Nothing, just trying to remember the procedure."
"So we're just going to seal the whole thing up?" Josh asked. "Just like that, problem solved?"
"Not quite," the Doctor said. "We've still got the Vortisaurs to deal with. I've got to lure them back into the Time Vortex before we seal it up." The TARDIS started to move just as he said this, approaching the tear in the sky at top speed. Quinn shut the doors, as the spinning of the outer capsule left the outside world appearing to spin wildly and some of the passengers looked like they were about to be sick. "The hardest part is going to be getting their attention," he said. "But I can handle that. I need a syringe."
"What?"
"A syringe," the Doctor repeated. "From the medical bay, you know where it is." She nodded. "Get me a syringe, a tourniquet, and an IV bag. Hurry!"
Quinn ran off to get the items he'd requested, while the Doctor continued to maneuver the ship in closer to the breach. As they got into position, the whole ship started to pitch and shake, a low-grade rumble that made it feel like the ship was running over rough terrain or being buffeted by a strong wind from outside.
"Sorry for the turbulence," the Doctor said, "I'm teetering right on the edge of the breach, on the border between Time and Space. The TARDIS can't decide which one to be invested in. We'll soon be done, though."
Quinn returned a short time later with the things the Doctor needed in a box. He took the syringe in one hand, rolled up his sleeve and tied his arm off with the tourniquet. Then he attached the IV bag to the end of the syringe and stuck the whole thing into his arm, drawing out some of his blood which, Quinn noticed, was definitely the wrong color. It still surprised her sometimes to see proof how how not human the Doctor was, whether that was physiological or just the way he dealt with situations. It was often undeniable that this man she trusted with her whole life and the life of her daughter was actually exactly who he claimed to be, a man from another planet.
The Doctor filled the IV bag - if it were anyone else, she would have thought he would collapse after giving that much blood, but she knew the Doctor was resilient. He wouldn't feel the effects half as much as anyone else or, if he did, at least he would never let on about it. He kept a little bit back in the syringe as he sealed the bag, and handed the syringe Quinn. "Hold that a moment, come with me," he said.
The two of them went back to the door, unaccompanied this time, the TARDIS crew doing what they did best as everyone else looked on. "What now?"
"We've got to get their attention," the Doctor said. He opened the door and reached out with the bag of blood, letting it touch the very edge of the disturbance, just slightly. The TARDIS continued to buck and shudder, like a hurricane force wind was buffeting it from outside. After a few moments, the blood in the bag began to glow, shimmering and sparkling with a golden light. He passed it back to her and took the syringe instead.
"What's going on," she asked, somewhat in awe of the glowing thing in her hands.
"Time Lord blood will already get them salivating," the Doctor replied. "I've just sweetened the deal a bit, charged it up with the power of the Time Vortex. No Vortisaur in the universe could turn down a morsel like that. As he spoke he was leaning out of the TARDIS, looking around for one of the creatures. When he finally did spot one, he held the syringe aloft and, calling out, "Hey! Come and get it!" he slammed down on the plunger with all his might, sending a thin stream of his own blood flying out of the TARDIS towards the creature.
The effect was almost instantaneous. The Vortisaur made an abrupt turn and swung back to face them inside the TARDIS, opening its mouth to reveal two rows of extremely sharp teeth and probably making some sort of shrieking sound that Quinn was glad the vacuum of space kept her from hearing. "Are we going to have to lure every single one?" she asked, remembering the huge number she'd seen earlier. This could take weeks.
The Doctor shook his head, however. "We'll be fine," he said. "He'll alert the others for us."
Sure enough, the rest of the swarm was turning around, coming this direction now. They were all circling the TARDIS, none of them brave enough to make the final approach. Perhaps they knew the Time Lords from past experience, Quinn thought.
There were a lot of them now, and just as Quinn was starting to think they were just going to be engulfed and torn apart, the Doctor reached his hand out to her and she put the IV bag in it. Leaning back to get as much momentum as possible, the Doctor hurled it out of the TARDIS and into the glowing red maelstrom of the tear, the entry into the Time Vortex. "Dinner is served," he said, and the creatures almost as one body dived in after the bag, hungry for whatever it contained. As they crossed the threshold, they didn't appear to move down the tunnel so much as they faded completely as they entered... probably moving away in time as well as in space. A minute later, the rest of them had also left the planet, following the herd as they searched for something to eat. "Now to seal that breach," the Doctor said. "That's the easy bit."
He strode back over the console, setting it to work sealing the breach. Robert, still holding his son, was the one to break the silence that had fallen over the whole group. "So... that's it?"
"That's it," the Doctor said, preoccupied with his work. "Assuming, of course, that Mr. Sanders will advise the king of the situation and ensure that the shield is shut down."
"You can count on it," Sanders said.
"So now what?"
"Now," the Doctor said, "we have a play to finish up. One last curtain call."
"How do we wrap it up now?"
"We'll do what every great performance does," the Doctor said, smiling. "We'll tell them a story. A story of bravery and courage and mystery and danger... and heroes. Everyday heroes who made a difference."
Robert smiled, hugged his son tighter to his chest, and went to find the other members of his theater company. They were leaning against one of the coral pillars away from the crowd assembled in the control room. "I need you to do something for me when we get back," he said. "One of you get out to the audience. In the first row there's a woman in red. Tell her the song is back on. She'll know what it means."
"I'll do it," Josh said.
"Good. And after you do that, get Clegg to wire up a mic somewhere backstage."
"What's all this about?" Quinn asked, coming up behind Robert.
"Oh, um..." Robert turned to face her, suddenly feeling his face go red. "It's... kind of embarrassing," he said. "You wouldn't believe me."
She raised her hands up as if to encompass the impossibility of where they stood and said, "Try me."
"Right..." he said, laughing lightly at himself. "When I first had the idea for the play, before it got co-opted into something beyond my control, I had this idea for how it would finish up. There was this... song."
"What song?"
"Here's the weird part... I don't know. It's nothing I've ever heard before. Nobody else has, either. I can't find anyone who's ever heard of it. The lyrics don't even make any sense, like they're in a strange language, but I know them, clear as crystal. I... dreamed them."
"What?"
"I dreamed them. They came to me in a dream, every night for weeks until I wrote them down. And somehow it just feels... right."
"That's beautiful," she said. "It will be, I'm sure."
"Places everyone," the Doctor called out, interrupting their reverie. "Curtain time!"