CHAPTER 45
I do not own Doctor Who and I am making no profit off of this story.
Thank you for all of your reviews, favorites, follows, and story alerts.
The final revolt against Rassilon started out of the blue one day as such things often do with a single unforeseen act. Rassilon had become so desperate to find Sekhmet that he started to send soldiers into peoples' homes who would conduct searches for them from house to house. Every square inch of every home in the Capitol was vigorously searched through from top to bottom and torn apart all in one day.
Rassilon would not share the secret of immortality with anyone. He was not going to stop now until he found and permanently killed Sekhmet. He had erased all of the other evidence of the inoculation's existence; and now all that was left was her, that meddlesome boyfriend of hers, and their daughter.
He was going to kill all of them and let the secret die with them. No one else was ever going to become immortal while he lived. Once Sekhmet was gone, then he would become a god and rule over Gallifrey in perpetuity. There would be no one left to stop him.
He even had the secret of time travel now after having stolen the ideas that Sekhmet came up with for a time travel device and letting Omega complete them as the first TT Capsules. Omega then had successfully used his stellar manipulator to explode a star and create the Eye of Harmony which was used to power all of the new time travel devices once it was placed underneath the Capitol. Due to an 'accident' that would cause him to be lost for several millennia, Omega was now gone so that only Rassilon and Rassilon alone could claim credit for bringing time travel to Gallifrey and creating the civilization of the newly named Time Lords.
His life's work would soon be complete; and he could soon sweep out to control the universe itself after he wiped out Sekhmet, Robin, and their pitiful rebellion. Therefore he had decided to go all out and find her in one massive search this day.
He had lost all perspective, however, and the possibility that this might cause many more people to join the rebellion and start off a massive revolt at long last in response to it never even entered his mind. No one would dare to do such a thing to the mighty Rassilon after all.
The spark that set off the final battle was caused when one man refused to let the soldiers into his home. He fired on them and killed several of them before being cut down himself. His actions suddenly inspired the entire neighborhood around him to revolt at once and to start firing on the soldiers themselves. This quickly spread like wildfire from area to area until the entire Capitol was engulfed in a civil war.
This was when Sekhmet and Robin joined in with their forces and convinced those who were revolting to join them and to let them led an organized response to Rassilon immediately. This quickly formed army then stormed Rassilon's headquarters and battled his soldiers hand to hand throughout it. Rassilon refused to try to escape because he could not believe that his men could ever fall to what he felt were the common rabble that had risen up against him.
He was soon to be proven wrong when Sekhmet and Robin themselves showed up at his very living quarters with an army of soldiers. They started to beat down his doors, and Rassilon finally knew at long last that his time was now over. He would not go down without a fight, however.
Cracks in time and space began to open up in front of Rassilon's front door now, and anyone unfortunate enough to be near one of them when it appeared was instantly sucked into it. Each of these unfortunate victims would become lost forever somewhere in time and space. Rassilon had initiated his doomsday device. It was his final defense to save himself.
The cracks began to multiply and grow larger and soon no one was brave enough to go near the doors to Rassilon's quarters. Rassilon watched them fall back on his monitor and laughed. He would soon be rid of all of them because the cracks would eventually fill the entire area and suck them all inside, and then he would rule forever unopposed. Once word got out about what he had done to his enemies, no one would ever dare to oppose him again.
"We're all going to be sucked inside. The cracks are growing larger and larger. We have to fall back," Sekhmet said.
"We can't. The doors won't open to let us back out," Robin said as he tried them.
"Rassilon's deadlock sealed them," Sekhmet said in disgust as she tried them herself.
"We're all trapped in here then until we're sucked away and lost somewhere in time and space forever," Robin said in anguish.
He looked at Sekhmet and knew that he couldn't allow that to happen to her. He was going to make sure that she at least survived this. He didn't care what happened to him, but Sekhmet and Freya would not be lost here today. Not if he had anything to say about it.
Sekhmet was thinking the exact same thing about him. She was sure that whatever happened that she would somehow be able to survive it. She was immortal now after all. She was more worried about Robin. She was so afraid that he would be lost here today and therefore be lost to her future self forever as well. She was not going to allow that. She was going to keep her promise to him. She would make sure that he came back to where he was supposed to be with her future self.
She knew what she had to do. In order to save her future, she would have to sacrifice her past. If Robin was right, someday she would lose her memory of him and wander alone for a very long time until she found him again. Maybe today's events were what had started her down that path. She had to trust that things were proceeding as they were supposed to and to play her part in that.
All of this time, she had been fighting the reprogramming of her mind that Rassilon had started that had been making it harder and harder for her to think of anything but combat. Now, however, she stopped fighting it. Now she encouraged it. She would use it to crush Rassilon once and for all and save her family.
"What do you have planned? I know you, and I know when you're up to something. There's something that you're not telling me," Robin said as he looked at her in suspicion.
"Good bye, Robin, until we meet again," Sekhmet said with sadness.
"What?" Robin asked in surprise.
Sekhmet then knocked him out with a quick punch to his jaw. Some of the soldiers caught him and looked at her in shock. They had no idea what was running through her mind at that moment.
"When I break through the doors to the outside, take Robin out of the Capitol; and make sure that he gets back to the baby. We're having her looked after in the Wilderness by one of the Outsiders that helped us when we were in hiding there," Sekhmet commanded the soldiers in the rebellion.
"How are you going to break through a deadlock seal?" one of them asked.
"Watch," Sekhmet said simply.
She began to glow with regenerative energy until she glowed like Gallifrey's suns. The soldiers moved back from her in surprise and fear as she poured that energy into the doors and melted them down in seconds.
"All of you need to go now. Take him to Freya," Sekhmet ordered.
The soldiers all quickly left taking Robin with them. Sekhmet then faced the ever widening cracks with a smile. She let the battle instincts implanted by Rassilon take over completely at that point. All that she thought of now was the destruction of her enemy. Sekhmet the Destroyer was born at that moment, and the old Sekhmet was gone along with many of her memories.
"They've fled. They were nothing but cowards all along just as I thought," Rassilon said to himself as he watched what now seemed to be an empty hallway.
He switched off the cracks then and laughed to himself. He had taught the rebels a valuable lesson. No one could stop him! He was invincible.
As Rassilon descended into megalomania, the doors of his inner sanctum were destroyed in a burst of energy.
"What?" Rassilon said out loud in surprise.
"Judgment has come," Sekhmet said in a dark voice.
She then discharged all of her energy out at once in one massive explosion. Rassilon's entire base went up in a ball of flames with an earth-shattering blast that could be heard all over Gallifrey.
The flames could be seen all the way into the Wilderness where the explosion woke Robin. He knew at that moment that Sekhmet had won. At what cost, though?
"She can't be dead. I wouldn't still be here if she were," Robin reasoned to himself.
A hand was placed on his shoulder as he started to go back into the Capitol. He turned to see the Outsider who they had entrusted Freya with standing there. She was holding Freya gently in her other arm.
She was a woman who was always covered in a robe to conceal her identity. The two of them had instantly trusted her on sight though without any real explanation. She called herself Inanna.
"It's time for you and your daughter to go now. Sekhmet has her own destiny to fulfill. Unfortunately, she will have to do it without you. You no longer belong here, Robin of Locksley. You know you really need a real last name. How about Wright? Maybe you could take the woman's name and change tradition since you don't have one of your own. You've become much more than the fictional character that you started out as anyway so it's about time that you left him behind and established your own identity," the woman said with a smile.
"Who are you?" Robin asked with suspicion.
"Let's just say that I'm a friend and leave it at that," the woman said as she removed her hood to reveal her face to him at last.
"Rose?" Robin asked in amazement.
"No, but you're close though. I used to be named Arkytior in another universe in another time. Rose will be this universe's version of me when she's born in another couple of millennia," Ishtar explained.
"You look just like Rose. It's amazing," Robin said.
"Or she looks just like me. It depends on how you look at it. This isn't my true form of course. I've reshaped my current body to appear as I used to long ago. My true form would probably scare the tights right off of you even though I'm really a friendly sort of girl. My body was twisted by coming through to this universe where the laws of physics are different than from my original one. I prefer to use this form or to temporarily possess the bodies of others sometimes. My feelings could get hurt if people saw the real me and screamed you know," Ishtar said with a friendly smile.
"Is Sekhmet dead?" Robin asked in despair as Ishtar held him tightly by the shoulder and prevented him from moving with a single strong hand.
"No. She's going to be fine. She's forgotten you and Freya already though. That's why you can't stay. You have to leave, Robin," Ishtar said.
"You're sending me back? I can really be with Lily again? I've dreamed about her every night since I came here. My heart sinks every single time when I wake up, and she's not there. Sekhmet is not the same. I love her, but she's not my Lily yet," Robin said with hope in his eyes.
"You will be with her again I promise you that," Ishtar said.
Robin then looked at the baby and said, "What about Freya? She's Allison, isn't she?"
"You're good. It shows how close the two of you have become that you recognized her even as a baby," Ishtar said with a grin.
"Can't she go with me back to the present? Couldn't we change time just a little bit? I want to raise her myself along with Lily. I hate the idea of her being all alone in an orphanage all of her life. It breaks my heart," Robin said as he looked at his daughter in sadness.
"I'm sorry. I really am, Robin. She has to fulfill her role in the Web of Time though. She has to go to the orphanage. She can't follow you where you're going," Ishtar said.
"No! Let me take her with me," Robin said as he tried to grab the baby from her.
Ishtar looked at him with sad eyes as she said, "I can't. Time can be rewritten, but this time it should stay the same as it is. Allison being in the orphanage is a fixed point in time. She has to be there just like you had to be here in order to become her father. I wish that I could change time, but I can't. Even I wouldn't dare mess with a fixed point. All kinds of terrible things could happen as a result. I am sorry for this, Robin. She'll be alright though. You already know that."
"Let me take her back to the present with me. I can raise her as her father like it should be," Robin pleaded as he tried to reach the baby again, but Ishtar held him back with one hand.
"You're making me feel terrible. I don't want to do this. Don't you think that I want to hand her to you and let you take her? I don't like this any more than you do," Ishtar said with tears in her eyes.
"Let me have her then," Robin pleaded.
"I can't. You see you're not going back to the present just yet," Ishtar said.
A crack in time opened up in front of Robin just as Ishtar knew that it was going to. Was it a left over from Rassilon's earlier attack, or the Web of Time taking him where he was supposed to be next? Ishtar had no idea, but she knew where he was going to. She had already seen it.
Robin was sucked into the crack right in front of her, and then it closed as if it had never existed. Ishtar sighed, and then she traveled to the future to take Freya where she was supposed to be.
She left the baby in a basket on the door step of the orphanage where she would spend her entire childhood. She waited until she could see that Freya had been found, and then she left feeling guilty. She knew that it had to be this way, but that didn't make her feel any better about it or her role in it.
The members of the rebellion cheered as they found Rassilon's unconscious but still alive body in the wreckage. They were elated that he hadn't escaped. They sedated him and swiftly locked him away until they could find a more suitable place to imprison him. There was talk among the people of putting him in the Death Zone that he had loved trapping others in for his own amusement and walling him off inside of a force field there. Rassilon himself could be put inside of a huge prison built just for him. It could be some kind of large tower perhaps with mazes and numerous traps inside of it to mislead anyone who might try to free him.
The project to do this was led by a mysterious woman that seemed to have come out of nowhere named Minerva. No one had ever heard of her before but she was very, very brilliant. The new President of Gallifrey was already talking about appointing her as his new head of scientific research.
Sekhmet may have been declared dead in the explosion of Rassilon's headquarters, but she lived on in this first of her many new names and guises. She had a fragmented memory now, but she had at least managed to regain much of her sense of self.
Her personality was much the same as it had always been once again, and she was glad for that much at least. The process that had taken over her mind could be reversed by her when she wanted to now just as she could bring it back on when she wished at great risk to her sanity. She thought that it might be an aftereffect of the inoculation.
She wished that she could recover her memories so easily. They were still lost however. She could remember someone very special though and some of the conversations that she had had with him. She could never quite see his face, however. That was lost to her. That and something else that she knew was very important. She didn't know what it was, but she knew that it was something or someone that she had lost. This loss made her feel very depressed inside sometimes. There was a hole in her hearts now that she was afraid might never be filled. Luckily, she was wrong.
In the present day, Lily had seen all of this through Robin's eyes or through her own newly unlocked memories except for the part about the orphanage. She had no idea where Robin was going to next. She had been totally surprised when Ishtar had appeared and told Robin that he wasn't going home next. Where was he going then?
She was determined to find out. She was going to go into the Matrix and see if she could find any traces of what might have happened to Robin there. The Matrix contained invaluable knowledge of the past that was otherwise lost to history. It was just a question of being able to find it.
She landed her TARDIS in the room where the Matrix was contained and prepared to hook herself up to it. She was stopped by Allison who looked very concerned about her.
"Are you sure about this, Mum? Rose said that the Doctor had some terrible experiences in there," Allison said.
"Both times that happened he was trapped in there with someone trying to kill him. That isn't the case this time, Freya. This time I'm just going to consult with the minds of the Time Lords in there, see what I can find out, and then get out. It's going to be fine," Lily said with a warm smile at her daughter.
"I really wish you'd just call me Allison. Freya doesn't feel right. I want to look over my shoulder for someone else whenever you call me that," Allison said.
"I'm sorry. I know that it's weird for you, but let me call you that a while, okay? I'd like to use the name I gave you at least some," Lily said.
"Fine," Allison said with a groan.
Lily laughed at her, and then hooked herself up to the Matrix. Allison looked on in concern as Lily's mind entered into this vast storehouse for the minds of dead Time Lords. She really didn't like her mother risking her mind this way so soon after having come back to her.
Lily found herself inside of a vast desert that was her mind's way of interpreting the inner reality of the Matrix. She walked through it for a while until she came upon a man dressed in a hunter's outfit holding a rifle.
Suddenly, the man raised the rifle and tried to shoot her with it. This took her completely by surprise. Luckily for her, the bullet missed her; or it would have killed her just as surely as if it had been real. She was sure that if you died in the Matrix after all, that there was a very good chance that your mind might interpret it as your having died for real. She certainly didn't want to stick around and find out anyway. She started to run for her life and began to wish that she had listened to Allison after all.
Just what had she gotten herself into here?
Meanwhile in the past, Robin found himself still on Gallifrey but obviously in a different time from the one that he had just come from. The buildings looked completely different than the ones that he knew after all. He started to explore his new surroundings when he heard a voice from behind him.
"Who are you? What are you doing outside of my home?" a woman asked him.
Robin turned and knew that it was Lily yet again without having to be told. He would know her anywhere. She had a different body than Sekhmet's now, but it was still her more or less. Ishtar was right though. She had forgotten him completely. He could see that now as she continued to question him.
"I asked you who you are and what you're doing here. I am the Lady Persephone, and I will send the guards after you if you don't immediately get out off of my property or give me a good reason why that you're here," Persephone said in anger.
Robin stood there dumbfounded as he tried to quickly think up a cover story to tell her. All of the while, he continued to wonder if he would ever get back home.
Next: Lily faces off against an old enemy of the Doctor's who has been trapped in the Matrix waiting for his chance to strike. Meanwhile, Robin finds himself caught up in yet another chapter of Lily's life.