Happy Monday! I hope you all had a good weekend. Now for Day of the Doctor part 3.
"I think there's three of them now," vortex Rose says.
"There's a precedent for that." Yeah that's got to be Kate.
The lead soldier is startled. "What is that?"
Ten and Eleven point their screwdrivers and the War Doctor notices. "Oh, the pointing again. They're screwdrivers! What are you going to do, assemble a cabinet at them?"
I prop my arm on his shoulder and lean on him. "Man I love you. You're awesome." He looks a bit confused and Ten looks shocked.
"That thing, what witchcraft is it?"
"Ah, yes. Now that you mention it, that is witchcraft. Yes, yes, yes. Witchy witchcraft. Hello? Hello in there. Excuse me. Hello! Am I talking to the wicked witch of the well?"
"Rose?" Something is not right with the way he says it. But what?
"Hello?" Rose finally responds.
"Rose, hi, hello. Hello. Would you mind telling these prattling mortals to get themselves begone?"
"What he said."
"Yes, tiny bit more colour."
"Right. Prattling mortals, off you pop, or I'll turn you all into frogs."
"Ooo, frogs. Nice. You heard her."
"Doctor, what's going on?" she calls. It sounds like Clara's voice to me.
"It's a timey-wimey thing," he calls back.
"Timey what? Timey-wimey?" The War Doctor furrows his brow.
Ten tries to look innocent. "I've no idea where he picks that stuff up."
I scoff. "Yeah, cause it's not like you said it first or anything." His eyes shoot daggers at me but I just smile. Then Elizabeth shows up again and the soldiers bow.
"The Queen. The Queen."
She holds her head high. "You don't seem to be kneeling. How tremendously brave of you."
"Which one are you? What happened to the other one?" Ten asks.
"Indisposed. Long live the Queen." Her answer seems sinister.
"Long live the Queen," the soldiers repeat.
"Arrest these men and the woman. Take them to the Tower."
"That is not the Queen of England, that's an alien duplicate."
Eleven grins. "And you can take it from Jane, cos she's really checked."
"Shut up. You're not clever." I'm not in the mood for that.
"Venom sacs in the tongue."
"Seriously, stop it," Ten tells him.
Eleven's eyes widen. "No, hang on. The Tower. Did you say the Tower? Ah, yes, brilliant. Love the Tower. Breakfast at eight, please. Will there be Wi-Fi?"
The War Doctor is perturbed. "Are you capable of speaking without flapping your hands about?"
He gestures again. "Yes. No. I demand to be incarcerated in the Tower immediately with my co-conspirators Sandshoes, Granddad, and Sexy Skirt."
"Granddad?" The War Doctor is taken aback.
"Did you just refer to me as a skirt?" I'm not even going near the sexy concept. Hard enough not to blush already.
"They're not sandshoes." Ten looks at his feet.
"Yes, they are." I forgot how sassy the War Doctor was. It's fantastic.
"Silence," Elizabeth orders. "The Tower is not to be taken lightly."
So with that, we are arrested, and ushered to the infamous Tower. The guard pushes us in. "Come on, you lot, get in there."
"You could say please." But the guard ignores me and shuts the door. I know it's not locked but the coming conversation needs to be had so I decide to sit down and stay out of it.
Eleven finds a piece of metal bar and starts scratching on a stone pillar. "More than one Doctor in one cell? That's going to cause some nasty anomalies if we don't get out soon."
"What are you doing?" Ten asks.
"Getting us out." He remains concentrated on what he's doing.
The War Doctor scans the wood door with his screwdriver. "The sonic won't work on that, it's too primitive."
I respond to Ten so that I don't feel useless. "Maybe we should ask for a better door so we can escape."
He ignores my comment. "Okay, so the Queen of England is now a Zygon. But never mind that. Why are we all together? Why are we all here? Well, me and Chinny, we were surprised, but you came looking for us. You knew it was going to happen. Who told you?"
I look in the direction that the War Doctor is and I'm surprised to realize that I can see her. I can see the Moment. The Bad Wolf. She holds a finger to her lips. Why can I see her.
"Oi, Chinny?"
"Yeah, you do have a chin."
I cut in so that I can distract myself from this new development. "News flash. We all have a chin."
Eleven continues scratching into the pillar. The War Doctor sits down next to me and fiddles with his screwdriver. "In theory, I can trigger an isolated sonic shift among the molecules, and the door should disintegrate."
"We'd have to calculate the exact harmonic resonance of the entire structure down to a sub-atomic level. Even the sonic would take years." I have to bite my tongue and War and Ten have this exchange. I can't give it away yet.
"No, no, the sonic would take centuries. Oh, we might as well get started. Help to pass the timey-wimey. Do you have to talk like children? What is it that makes you so ashamed of being a grown up?" Ten glares at him but Eleven's gaze is more frightened and curious than stormy. "Oh, the way you both look at me. What is that? I'm trying to think of a better word than dread."
"It must be really recent for you." Ten says.
"Recent?"
"The Time War." Eleven clarifies.
"The last day. The day you killed them all," I say gently.
"The day we killed them all." Tens countenance is dark and brooding, and it hurts me I see it. He needs Rose with him now but she's in the TARDIS, pregnant, not knowing what's going on.
"Same thing," Eleven says. He turns back to the pillar.
The Moment begins to speak. "It's history for them. All decided. They think their future is real. They don't know it's still up to you."
"I don't talk about it."
"You're not talking about it. There's no one else here."
I glare at Ten. "What am I? A potato?"
"I didn't mean that Ryder."
"Then what? That I might as well be you? You'd be right. You're not the only one who has committed genocide. You're not the only one who's lost everything. At least you gained something back. You have a wife and a child on the way."
He's sufficiently chastised. We haven't talked much about what I've done, but we never needed to. We had an understanding not to talk about the wars we've fought. Eleven looks sad as I speak. And I can feel the man next to me stiffen. "Spoilers," I whisper in his direction. It doesn't matter. He'll forget this anyway.
The Moment addresses him. "Go on, ask them. Ask them what you need to know."
"Did you ever count?"
"Count what?" Eleven asks.
"How many children there were on Gallifrey that day."
He stops his scratching. "I have absolutely no idea."
"How old are you now?"
"Ah, I don't know. I lose track. Twelve hundred and something, I think, unless I'm lying. I can't remember if I'm lying about my age, that's how old I am," he evades the War Doctor's question nicely.
"Four hundred years older than me, and in all that time you've never even wondered how many there were? You never once counted?" I frown at his earnest question. He's almost begging.
"Tell me, what would be the point?" It seems to me that this Doctor doesn't understand. He's different from his predecessor yet very much the same as well.
"Two point four seven billion." I wince when Ten gives his number.
"You did count!"
But he doesn't acknowledge the man next to me. He turns to the other in anger. "You forgot? Four hundred years, is that all it takes?"
"I moved on," he tries to explain.
"Where? Where can you be now that you can forget something like that?" I move over to him and place my hand on his shoulder since Rose isn't here to do it.
"Spoilers."
"No. No, no, no. For once I would like to know where I'm going."
"No, you really wouldn't." I don't like that answer. Something in the way he says it makes me afraid. Did something happen? He has some version of Rose at least. Does something happen to the baby?
The War Doctor interrupts my thoughts. "I don't know who you are, either of you. I haven't got the faintest idea."
The Moment speaks. "They're you. They're what come from you if you destroy Gallifrey. The man who regrets and the man who forgets. The moment is coming. The Moment is me. You have to decide."
"No."
"No?" The others can't hear her.
"Just, no." Eleven starts laughing.
"Is something funny? Did I miss a funny thing?" I rub Ten's shoulder to sooth him.
"Sorry. It just occured to me. This is what I'm like when I'm alone." I smile at this. I think I'm rather like this when I'm alone too.
Ten starts flipping his screwdriver. And the moment speaks. "It's the same screwdriver. Same software, different case."
I grin as realization dawn on the War Doctor. "Four hundred years."
"I'm sorry?" Ten is lost. But I'm not.
"At a software level, they're all the same device, aren't they. Same software, different case."
"Yeah," he answers. Eleven questions, "So?"
My turn to steal a line. "So, it would take centuries for the screwdriver to calculate how to disintegrate the door."
The War Doctor picks it up and does what he says as he says it. "Scanning the door, implanting the calculation as a permanent subroutine in the software architecture and, if you really are me, with your sandshoes and your dickie bow, and that screwdriver is still mine, that calculation is still going on."
Ten checks. "Yeah, still going."
"Calculation complete." They all grin.
The moment and I speak together but I ignore the War Doctor's surprised expression. "Same software, different face."
"Hey, four hundred years in four seconds. We may have had our differences, which is frankly odd in the circumstances, but, I tell you what, boys. We are incredibly clever."
"Or we could just try the door," I say as I open it to reveal Clara...I mean Rose...and Elizabeth standing there. Rose regenerates into Clara?! Whoa. But no time for that.
"How did you do that?" Eleven asks.
"It wasn't locked." Rose and I fist bump.
"Right."
"So they're both you, then, yeah?" I'm confused by Rose's reaction. Doesn't she remember.
Elevenis unsurprised. "Yes. You've met them before. You remember." He puts his arm around her. She seems surprised but moves on.
"A bit. Nice suit."
"Thanks." Ten is eyeing her too. If this was Rose, something happened, and Ten seems to be determined to find out what.
"Hang on. Three of you in one cell, and the companion is the one who thought to try the door?"
"Who says I'm the companion? They're my companion." She grins at that.
"It should have been locked," eleven says weekly.
"Yes. Exactly. Why wasn't it locked?" Ten asks.
"Because I was fascinated to see what you would do upon escaping. I understand you're rather fond of this world. It's time I think you saw what's going to happen to it." And with that rather ominous answer from Elizabeth, we follow her out of the Tower.
As we follow the Queen through the halls she explains the motivation of the Zygons. "The Zygons lost their own world. It burnt in the first days of the Time War. A new home is required."
Okay. I need to differentiate. Clara/Rose tries to sum it up. "So they want this one."
"Not yet. It's far too primitive. Zygons are used to a certain level of comfort."
One of the Zygons approach. "Commander, why are these creatures here?"
"Because I say they should be. It is time you too were translated. Observe this. I believe you will find it fascinating."
The Zygon puts his hand on a glass cube with dents in the corners, then vanishes. He reappears in the 3D painting.
"That's him! That's the Zygon in the picture now," Clara/Rose exclaims.
The War Doctor begins the explanation. "It's not a picture, it's a stasis cube. Time Lord art. Frozen instants in time, bigger on the inside, but could be deployed as..."
Ten finishes it. "Suspended animation. Oh, that's very good. The Zygons all pop inside the pictures, wait a few centuries till the planet's a bit more interesting, and then out they come."
Eleven clarifies it. "You see, Rose, they're stored in the paintings in the Under Gallery, like cup-a-soups. Except you add time, if you can picture that. Nobody could picture that. Forget I said cup-a-soups."
"And now the world is worth conquering. So the Zygons are invading the future from the past," I say.
"Exactly," Eleven points at me.
"And do you know why I know that you're a fake? Because you're such a bad copy. It's not just the smell, or the unconvincing hair, or the atrocious teeth, or the eyes just a bit too close together, or the breath that could stun a horse. It's because the real Elizabeth, would never be stupid enough to reveal her own plan. Honestly, why would you do that?" Ten gets in the Queens face.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing. "No need to be offensive dear brother."
"Because it's not my plan. And I am the real Elizabeth."
"Ouch. You really should listen to me more."
Ten tries to fix it. "Okay. So, backtracking a moment just to lend context to my earlier remarks."
"My twin is dead in the forest. I am accustomed to taking precautions." She pulls a dagger from the garter under her skirts. "These Zygon creatures never even considered that it was me who survived rather than their own commander. The arrogance that typifies their kind."
"Zygons?"
"Men," Elizabeth corrects Rose.
"And you actually killed one of them?"
"I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but at the time, so did the Zygon. The future of my kingdom is imperilled. Doctor, can I rely on your service?"
"Well, I'm going to need my Tardis."
"It has been procured already."
"Ah." Ten is pleased by this.
"But first," she turns to me, "my love, you have a promise to keep." I might as well get over with.