-1Chapter 6
The Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS twisted through the vortex with great purpose. It was an interesting experience on Firnos and not the one he was expecting. The whole scenario nagged at him to the point that he almost wasn't paying attention to the controls on the panel. He was on his way to find his 10th incarnation, because he needed him to help stem the tide of the other Doctors. He knew what it would mean should they stop Eight from completing his task. The outcome would be truly unthinkable, and the war would rage on. That was something he truly didn't want to consider.
What he was considering was far more sinister, indeed. The meeting on Firnos with River left a bad taste in his mouth, there was something dead in her eyes. She wasn't telling him everything, but that wasn't anything new. Her constant reminding that he wouldn't be getting any spoilers from her and that she didn't want any in return. In the meeting before this, which was just after Amy brought him back from being erased from existence, she told him that they next that they met it would be different. He was curious how that might be. Would she turn enemy? Would she finally meet him for the first time? In any of those eventualities it would mean one thing; that was not River Song on Firnos. And if that wasn't River, then everything she said would be suspect at best. The first thing he did after starting the engines was to check out if her story was true. There would be a certain energy spike if Doctors were converging on one another in their own timeline. With a bit of tinkering in the circuitry, he was able to pick up the diverging Doctors closing in on a point. There were two that weren't moving any more strangely than normal. As he checked dates and times he realized that those were the Doctors he was looking for.
"The only problem with finding Doctors is that if you don't remember your dates correctly, you'll always find the wrong one." He muttered to himself. He knew that where he wanted to go was Ancellex, just shortly after the return of Davros and the destruction of the Crucible. So many things happened. Another companion left his company and he swore it would be the last. Then he jumped into the time stream and ended up in 1851 on Christmas. He stopped another of the Cybermen invasions, which wasn't anything particularly different than any other Christmas. After that adventure, he decided that he needed to find some small amount of relaxation somewhere. He knew Ancellex was a great place to go for just that. The mineral waters of the planet acted like they were a carbonated drink. It had a tingling sensation to it, but when that ended the body relaxed and it felt like the best massage anyone could get. Eleven thought that Amy would like this place. The sky was as blue as Earth's, and the grass as green. It's many complexes were built to be like a great spa resort planet, and would give anyone a relaxing vacation to their heart's desire. Who wouldn't want to go there? Although the Doctor's particular reason for going was this great little restaurant. It wasn't as fancy as most you would find on Ancellex, but it had the best coffee bar this side of Earth.
The TARDIS didn't take long to lock onto its destination. As it rematerialized onto the planet, the time capsule found itself pool side. As the Doctor got out he noticed all the different male and females enjoying the sun in their bathing attire. Some of the ladies tipped down their sunglasses and looked at the Doctor with a smile. He returned the grin and kept walking towards the restaurant that he knew he'd be at. It was such an uneventful stroll, as there was no Dalek armies around the corner. No Cybermen busting out of the walls and converting people, not even the Slitheen. He shuttered on that one. As many horrific creatures as he'd been across, the Slitheen bugged him the most. They hide in human bodies, emitting gases that build up in their system. In there natural state their baby like faces are attached to a body that looked like it belong in a B-Grade movie. They weren't the worst of his enemies by far, they weren't even the most disgusting of foes. It was a combination of being annoying, ugly and flatulant. His face turned into disgust, "You never hear a Dalek get flatulant!" He shook his head to clear out the cobwebs that were the Slitheen, and before he knew it he was standing at the restaurant.
The Polycarbide Kettle was full of those vactioning people that didn't have a lot of money, but wanted to have a good time. Their assortment of foods and candies was rather good, considering not being the best of all Ancellex. The Doctor would often get a supply of Jelly Babies when he arrived. Eleven hadn't lost complete taste for them, but he wasn't as fond as his fourth incarnation was. The smell of exotic coffees hit him in the face. That wonderful scent that you could rarely find anywhere else, but on Earth. There sitting at the back of the restaurant was his tenth self, though not by himself. He was sitting there and laughing with a few families and their children. One child had a ball that he held on to very closely. The Tenth Doctor's smile and warming eyes gave way to the child handing over his favorite toy. Eleven remember it well, as in front of him the scene played out like an old movie. "C'mon, it's your old pal the Doctor! I just want to show you a little trick."
"Will it hurt my ball?"
"Cross my hearts, it won't leave a scratch." The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and set it to the lowest intensity. He took the ball and placed it over the lighted end and held it there until he pressed the button. The ball just hovered over the screwdriver and the child was amazed by it. He wasn't sure how he was accomplishing that, but it was so cool. Eleven smiled at that too. There was a playfulness about him, and he wanted to get in on the act. He knew that if he did though, the good time would end. Ten needed this little bit of fun very badly. The problem was, he knew that he would have to end it.
Ten released the screwdriver button and caught the ball. He handed it back to the child and gave him a pat on the back. "Oh, do you believe it's Christmas back on, Earth? Eh? Wonderful time, Christmas. Snow, food, people being nice to each other. That's the sort of thing you want to see in the universe, isn't it? People being nice to each other!"
"I quite agree with that, Doctor." Eleven chimed in.
Ten looked up sharply and gave him the stern look he always did when something unexpected came his way. The moment their eyes locked, Ten knew what he was looking at and his eyes went cold. He marched away from the table he was sitting at and grabbed Eleven by the arm leading him outside towards his TARDIS. "You shouldn't be here." He said with a less than enthusiastic voice.
"Neither should your last regeneration, but he's on his way too."
"Why are you crossing timelines?" His face turned to concerned confusion. His eyes were almost as fixed scoped on his future self, trying to figure out what he was playing at.
"I'll explain when he gets here. There's no reason say it twice, this way we can get this next bit going once we're all in agreement." There was an innocents in his face, and the eyes that gave away that he had much larger things to tell his former regeneration. Ten looked him over with a great deal of questioning. His "poker face" came on as if to not betray what he was feeling or thinking. Eleven smiled and laughed a little.
"What, what's so funny?" Ten never blinked and the only thing that moved was his eyebrow into a questioning position.
"I liked doing that bit, the 'I don't know what's going on, but I'll look gruff till I figure it out' bit. I liked that when I was you."
Ten was less than amused and gave out a very harsh sigh, "Blimey, try to get away with anything when you're with yourself." He muttered as he looked across the landscape. "Well, when's he supposed to arrive then? I mean what point did you leave him a message?"
"He was on his way to Downing Street."
"Downing Street? Are you mad? He's dealing with the Slitheen! They've taken over! You don't interrupt that!"
"Actually it's a little late for that, I sent a message and once he opened it, it would send a small subroutine through the TARDIS and send him to here."
"Why are you interrupting that! All of the time zones you could have picked him up, and you chose that one!"
"I thought about picking him up right after he left from meeting Rose, but I thought it to be in bad taste to do so. Might make him change his mind about taking her with. This way he'll want to go back into the fight."
"Oh, that makes sense! Instead he'll be as merry as ever as he was expecting to find himself staring face to face with the Prime Minister and not two more of him! Brilliant! Nice to know I can come up with plans in the future!"
"It was a good place without bringing a lot of extra people along! He wasn't right next to anyone. I wasn't bringing Rose or Jack along on this one. I could've brought several companions with, but I decided that this was best."
"Good thing. I mean we could've let them sit in one of the TARDISes that we're collecting about the universe and let them swap stories, have a cup of tea, and have a bit of a reunion. No, instead we make sure that the aliens that took over Britain are able to get away with their plans! And by the way, when was he supposed to show up again?"
Eleven looked at Ten with a bit of a shy look. "About ten minutes ago. In all fairness though, he might be trying to fight the reprogramming."
"Oh, not good old number nine! Say that isn't so! I mean he gets a message from the future while he's dealing with something else and it hijacks his systems and he's supposed to just let it happen, eh?"
As Eleven was about to create a response the familiar sounds of a rematerializing TARDIS came screaming across the horizon. The two ran towards it, making sure to catch it before he took off again. Both reached the front doors before it fully materialized, and as it did the doors flung open and out stepped the Ninth Doctor. His eyes flared with anger as he stared at the two. "I'm still around in a couple of regenerations. I suppose that could be a good thing, except one of you has apparently decided that interrupting me was a good idea. Which one of you would that be, then?" Eleven raised his hand very slowly. "Right, so apparently hanging around the apes as long as I have, I've started to think like them. Like hijackin' someone in the middle of something. I'm assuming that you two understand that I was, right?"
Eleven and Ten stood their ground, not backing down to their angered past self. Eleven decided that he better speak up, because before too long, Ten would side with Nine and everything would be an uphill fight after that. "I brought you here for a reason."
"Ancellex? Does it look I need a massage or somethin'?"
"Honestly, yes. However, that's not the reason I brought you here. Look, there's a gathering of the Doctors occurring. One of which we three have not been invited to, but one we need to attend."
"A gatherin'? So, we've done that before. The Time Lords needed us for somethin' or other."
"Wait a minute," Ten stepped in, "why are they gathering? What have you found out?"
"I don't know where they got their information, but our first seven regeneration are being collected to stop our eighth." Both Nine and Ten's jaws tightened. If either were mad before, the level of anger in their eyes just doubled. "I was warned by a supposed friend of mine."
"Supposed friend?"
"Yes, not to give too much away about this friend, but their meeting me was all wrong. I don't know it was there, but they delivered this information. I confirmed it to be right up to this point. I didn't want to get more of us involved, but I didn't see much choice either. I can't convince the other seven by myself. Four, Six, and Seven alone will try and convince the others that whatever they believe wrong with our eighth self has likely carried on."
"They'll be first to point out that it all looks like a trap, which is set to spring on all of us and not just them."
"This is fantastic. Fate of everything is depending on telling ourselves that we're being gits. That'll go over well." Nine grimaced at the two younger looking Doctors.
"Well, if anyone could explain that, it would be you." Eleven said coyly. Nine glared at him with a look of annoyance. He shook his head, "In any case, I've got coordinates set to go after the congregation and save eight's bacon. I think nine and I should go in my TARDIS and find eight. You should get to the collected ones and see if you can convince them that this isn't the way to go."
"You just said that they'll likely think us to be a further problem, than a solution. Why are they going to listen to me exactly?"
"You've got a natural gift and charm. Besides, you're the one who seems to get the most fairy tale solutions to all of your adventures."
"Like I said, you've got some great planning skills. Well, I suppose I did have a few quick solutions along the way and in the end I must've come across a real fairy tale ending."
"How do you mean?" Eleven asked, puzzled by the comment.
"I regenerated." He looked at his future self with cold eyes. Eleven saw in his eyes that he was curious how long it would be until he regenerated. He didn't have the hearts to tell him it would be sooner than he wanted.
Nine's impatience took over, "Look, I want to get this dealt with now. I have too much else happening when this is over. I want to end this now." Both nodded in agreement.
"When I'm done, I'll be in contact with you two. I'll catch up with you when I get that chance."
"Good luck, Doctor."
Ten took a deep breath, "I'm gonna need it… Allons-y!" With that he took off back to his TARDIS. The other two started towards Eleven's TARDIS.
Nine looked back at Eleven, "I thought I was done with all of this. No more time crossing. No more interference from the Time Lords. Nothin'."
"Actually, it was more likely to happen now. You and the Doctor's on either side of your regeneration were more Time's Champion than any of us ever had been. In doing so though, it meant stopping those that claimed to police time. We paid great prices for that. Now we've got to be more diligent than ever."
"I've been diligent. I've never stopped being, diligent. We've always been so damned determined. The problem is that none of us knew what that was gonna mean, did we? When the time came, we knew what we had to do. Never thought about judgments we would have about ourselves. We're the very few that could ever judge himself from any point in our life. Different perspectives based out of the same man. No one ever understanding fully what it would be to have that power, or to have to use it. Not threatening the ultimate destruction of all if he wasn't obeyed, but to use it in the path of stopping the bigger threat. That one moment that actually destroyed it all. We destroyed Gallifrey, we destroyed the Daleks. We will be damned by so many and thanked by so many others. And we will fight against both because we shouldn't be thanked, everyone lost and I pulled the trigger. We shouldn't be damned because all of creation was at stake. It was war and it was hell. There's no one that could understand that. We've never been innocent, but the more innocent Doctors came before that date. Our eighth self was the last of them, and with it he paid an ultimate sacrifice to make it count. I've never forgotten what we did, and I never will. I just didn't want to have it all blow back up like this. It should be ended and left to rot in the few that have any memories of it." Eleven was sullen, because he knew what Nine was going to face just shortly after he left from this task. He couldn't say a word, and it killed him. Still, he would find out and in due time and in learning it would make him become the Doctor that he was destined to be.
"Well said. Very well said. Now let's make sure we don't have to deal with it again." The two entered the TARDIS and the coordinated were set. Off to Manhattan and to see the Eighth Doctor about saving him.
