how the Founder was 'apprehended.'

Fifteen doesn't really get it.

warnings: AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. Doctor Who crossover. Rule 63. language: g.

pairing: none/gen.

timeline: circa NO 2500 (AD 5136), just after completion of the Null-Resonance Detention Facility.

disclaimer: marvel owns all the characters, i just made more alternate universe versions of them.

notes: 1) Fifteen's Node isn't the actual Norn; it's just named after her. 2) as for the Founder being a Fourteen - it's not perfectly clear whether the "thirteen lives" limit on a Time Lord is a fact of biology or an artificial limit (though since they are presumably a race created by altering Gallifreyans, they're completely artificial anyway). either way, it can be circumvented, as proven by the facts that Time Lords can give up regenerations to one another and that the Master was on his seventeenth face when he entered the Time Lock (some of those were not true regenerations, but he had supposedly been on his last life long before we saw Professor Yana enter the Doctor's TARDIS and regenerate into Saxon...admittedly, there was some resurrection involved at one point, but that was done *by* the other Time Lords, so if it had some effect on the number of regenerations he got, that's still something within the power or technology of a Time Lord). 3) Facility 6112 is the AR Facility, home of the Auditor(s) and the Fridge.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal 64465. html) for terms and concepts, and The Fateverse Appendix (lex-munro. livejournal 64565. html) for Nodes, branches, and important people.

Ripples

Loki frowns at the notification on her portable.

System administrator priority order. Slide coordinates sent to Node 005 Skuld. Proceed to non-hostile environment to witness and carry out sentencing.

She hasn't had a sapo for almost a thousand years.

"Skuld," she says.

~Yes.~

"Confirm receipt of slide coordinates for sapo."

~Confirmed.~

"Initiate pre-programmed slide."

She lands in darkness, with the moon waning above and the lights of a city in the distance. Nearby is a tall, boxy shape, high windows glowing dimly. A door creaks open, letting some of the glow escape around a slender silhouette.

She has a thousand questions.

"I'm here on a priority order," she says instead, slightly bewildered. "To witness and carry out sentencing on a timestream fugitive."

He spreads his arms and grins in the moonlight. "Ta-daa."

"I don't understand," she says as he shuts the door and the glow is snuffed out.

"Just saying goodbye," he tells her, patting the tall box in much the same way as a warrior might pat his long-time steed.

"That's not what I don't understand, Worlds-Ender."

"Please don't call me that."

"Founder, then. What is going on? Who exactly am I apprehending?"

"Me, of course. I'm charging myself with establishing a stream-spanning organization, catastrophic timeline alteration, unauthorised—"

"You did all of that centuries ago, before it was illegal."

He paces around her in a slow circle. "Centuries ago. Or just now. Or months from now. It's the timestream, the stream of Time. We can't know how far the ripples of our actions go."

She watches his bare feet on the dew-moist grass. "Well, it's a stream; in the forward direction, they go on forever. They call it 'upstream,' but it flows the other way."

"Exactly. Where was I?"

"Unauthorized."

"Ah. Unauthorised tuning, and introducing pre-space-folding societies to advanced time theory, enabling them to create the enhanced form of vortex transit known as timesliding. These charges and my culpability are not in question. I hereby sentence myself to lifelong incarceration in the brand-spanking-new Null-Resonance Detention Facility. Any form of noncompliance will be met with erasure. Do I understand the charges and instructions put forth? Yes, in fact, I do."

Loki watches his face in the moonlight. "Why are you doing this?" she asks.

"Because what I did was wrong. It had good results, but it was wrong. And our rules are for everyone, Fifteen, not just the people we think ourselves above." He smiles briefly. "It's quite funny, if you think about it."

"What is?"

"Well, you're Fifteen," he drawls, gazing out at the city lights in the distance. "The fifteenth hand-picked Keeper of Fate, one of the last I picked myself…and this is the fourteenth face I've had. So it's Fifteen replacing Fourteen. The Realm-Slayer neatly tidying away the Worlds-Ender. How very fitting."

"I'm not replacing you," she says sharply. "You're not the kind of person who can be replaced. Anyway, you're being melodramatic. It's just numbers."

He laughs. "If you look closely enough, everything in all the universes is 'just numbers.' And you, my girl, are not naïve enough to believe in coincidence."

She stares at him, and comprehension is a cold weight in her stomach. "You picked me, knowing this day would come."

"Yes. No. Sort of. But I knew I was right when you stopped me on Asgard." He circles her again. "How many people in all of the Network would have dared such a thing? How many people in the universe would have stopped me killing a baby-killer…by unmaking an entire world?"

"Unauthorized," she says. "I'm guilty of abusing my powers as a Keeper of Fate, and you haven't charged me with it, so why should you charge yourself with—"

"No," he interrupts. "Emergency. You saw an imminent catastrophic event and did what you, as a Keeper, deemed necessary to prevent it. There's a provision for that in Article Thirty-Two."

"Oh."

"Don't feel guilty about this," he sighs, stopping in front of her. "Don't. This is your job, and you are very good at it. This is how you save universes. I always knew this was coming, and I was always just fine with it. It's the price I pay for building this beautiful new thing that will do what my people should have done."

And, "Oh," she says again.

He reaches out, takes her hand. His pale eyes are gentle and weary. "I'm tired of running, Fifteen."

There, at last, she understands. She swallows. "Skuld, take us to Facility 6112."

.End.