I don't own Doctor Who, the show or the characters.
Just to clarify, this collection of short stories begins near the end of the Seventh Doctor story "Colditz," where the Doctor and Ace were captured by Nazis, and soon met the mysterious Nazi scientist, Elizabeth Klein who was revealed to have originated from an alternate timeline created when Ace's CD walkman fell into Nazi hands, allowing the Nazis to win World War 2 with the help of lasers refining nuclear material for the nuclear bomb. Ace was killed and the Seventh Doctor orchestrated a regeneration to manipulate Klein into changing the past.
But this collection of stories is of another alternate Eighth Doctor who regenerated in the temporal nexus point caused by the Colditz landing.
For Marcus S. Lazarus, who helped me with seeing my attempts to write a Doctor who had a different TARDIS simply was not Doctor Who, and for introducing me to the character of Klein with their story The Legacy of Gallifrey.
Enjoy.
Happy New Year.
Shadow of Klein.
Colditz Regeneration.
"So, Herr Doctor, Fraulein McShane, Flying Officer Gower," Feldwebel Kurtz said, unable to keep the cruel, crude smirk off of his face as he eyed each one of his 'prisoners' one by one while he held onto his weapon, "another escape? You thought you could take our travelling machine?"
"My travelling machine," the Doctor corrected quietly, inwardly annoyed that his and Ace's attempts to put right their mistake in coming here, and leaving behind anachronistic technology had been delayed yet again; it was bad enough they had learnt Klein was from an alternate timeline, set in a grim future where the Nazis had won the Second World War in the close race to crack the secrets of the nuclear bomb, only with help from studying the laser technology from Ace's CD walkman, which she had bought from the 21st century, and foolishly brought here to be taken by the Nazis' in Colditz castle.
Time had diverged and yet a version of himself had clearly travelled forwards into the future only to be found and killed by the SS, the TARDIS snatched from him… leaving him to regenerate and come up with a plan to put things right after making so many stupid mistakes. The Doctor could only admire his alternate eighth self's guile, coming up with the Johann Schmidt identity, manipulating Klein into taking the TARDIS back to the divergence point, which made her change history to give him the chance to put things back.
The Doctor and Ace had only just managed to get the rucksack back (he was going to have to give Ace a lecture on the dangers of meddling in history; she had already experienced one when her tape-deck came dangerously close to being taken apart during that mess with the Daleks and the Hand of Omega; you would think she had grown up since then - he just hoped this mess made her stop packing her rucksack with anachronistic junk, especially given how close they had both come during their unpleasant stay in this time), and now this gun-toting single-minded Nazi had stopped their attempt to leave.
"I knew you would come here," Kurtz went on, bringing the Doctor out of his momentary reverie. "Your diversion did not fool me!"
"Now there's no need to boast, Kurtz," Gower said in his low patient voice, although one look at the British flying officer told the Doctor the British airman was just as frustrated with Kurtz as he and Ace were, "just take us back to our cells."
The reasonable suggestion worked.
Kurtz nodded. "Very well," he said agreeably, although it was clear he had little choice in the matter, but he raised his gun and pointed it in the direction of the time travellers, "once you have handed over your key, Doctor."
The Doctor had to resist the urge to shout and sigh at the same time; this whole mess had been nothing but guns, alternate timelines, ignorant blundering humans, Nazi brutality and more threats and guns, and he had had enough. "The commandant already has it."
"You must have another, why else would you have come here?" Kurtz asked with eerie logic.
"The TARDIS will open for me."
"And your accomplice, Klein is already within?"
This was too much for Ace, who had already developed a strong dislike for Klein as she had for Kurtz. "Accomplice? You've gotta be kidding?"
"Do you want to handle this, Miss McShane?" The Doctor asked as he turned to Ace while Gower watched them, clearly wondering what was going on. But the Doctor ignored him, he was too busy wondering if Ace felt confident enough to get through to Kurtz, although he doubted it.
"What's the point?" Ace sighed, gazing at Kurtz with the same loathing she had glared at Mike when he was revealed to be Ratcliffe's spy during that mess with the Daleks. "There's no reasoning with scum."
Although he wouldn't have used the same words, the Doctor had to admit she had a point. He'd discovered it was a waste of time trying to persuade Klein her timeline, her 1962, should not exist. But the Nazi scientist had just refused to listen to a word he had to say about how she had come back, changing events in such a way her timeline simply no longer existed. Now her cover had been blown, and she had no identification, Klein had been forced to flee for her life but she was still dangerous if she managed to persuade someone reasonable in the SS-
No, he wouldn't think of that now.
He had to find a way out of here, and soon; the gunshots must have alerted someone higher than Kurtz, and the Doctor hoped they came quickly.
The sooner he and Ace could escape, the better.
"Perhaps not," the Doctor conceded, a plan already coming together in his mind, "but I think perhaps we should give Sergeant Kurtz the opportunity to make a more informed decision."
"What do you mean, Doctor?" Gower asked, gazing at him curiously; this was one of the things the Doctor liked about humans. They might not know what was going on, but they were curious anyway.
"He wants to know who we are, where we've come from," the Doctor explained without taking his eyes off of Kurtz, surprised by the usually belligerent sergeants' patience but he was going to continue to take advantage of it while he and Ace still could, "he wants a key to our travelling machine because he wants to see inside it for himself, so the question will he believe what he sees?"
Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw a slow smile briefly quirk on the lips of Ace's face; his companion and friend had quickly worked out what he was driving at. If Kurtz saw the inside of the TARDIS, there was a chance they could overpower him or he might run out of the ship in disbelief, running around the police box shell of the time machine to tell himself what he had seen inside the interior dimension was nothing more than a strange illusion….giving him and Ace the chance to escape, and they only needed one minute.
"What would I see?" The belligerence on Kurtz's face was mixed with exasperation and interest, but the Doctor saw the ambition on his face. Kurtz was tired, frustrated with how badly the Nazis were losing the war, and he wanted to take anything he believed might help them turn the tide. That was why he'd taken Ace's walkman.
And now it was why he wanted the TARDIS.
Kurtz didn't know the TARDIS was a time machine, or even what the ship was capable of even if time travel wasn't part of the equation, but if he did then he would stop at nothing to ensure the Nazi's not only conquered Earth, but the whole universe, and millions of centuries of history. The Time Lords would never allow it, of course, and if they tracked it back to him, the Doctor knew he would be lucky to survive dematerialisation as punishment for letting the Nazis take his TARDIS in the first place.
He wasn't going to let it happen, of course. But the longer this took it would be harder to return. This was what he'd hoped to avoid ever since he had been sure Klein's timeline was negated, but Nazis had a habit of causing more trouble than they were worth.
"Will he accept we weren't meant to be part of these events? That the technology we have comes from a place and a time far away from the Earth of 1944?"
"The allies don't really have machines like this, you know," Ace put in, although the Doctor wished she hadn't, but he agreed with her nonetheless.
"No. So, you don't need to worry about catching up. We simply want to leave. We want to let history continue without our interference," the Doctor went on while he wondered how much longer it would be before somebody more rational overheard this and stopped Kurtz from shooting them, and then he saw Schaffer in the background.
He had clearly heard every word the Doctor had said, and it was clear he had been there for some time.
The German sergeant snorted. "No, Doctor," he said, raising his gun, "I can see how the tide of this war is turning. My country needs an advantage, and this machine can provide it. I know my duty."
"See?" Ace said, pointing at Kurtz as he proved her point. "I said you were wasting your time!" She added to the Doctor.
"Not wasting it, buying it," he whispered to her, making her eyes widen, and he could tell she was wondering what he had up his sleeves this time even though he had proven he could get them out of tighter situations than this, although this one would be tighter than most. "And I wasn't talking to Kurtz," he added in a louder voice, looking in the direction he had seen Schaffer, "did you hear all that, Mr Schaffer?"
The German officer stepped forward, his face grim although there was a subtle hint of surprise that he had been caught out. "I did, Doctor," Schaffer said, sparing at look at Gower and at Ace before he turned his attention to Kurtz.
The German sergeant was surprised, but he rapidly tried to regain some composure although his face said he knew it was hopeless since Schaffer's face was so grim. "Herr Hauptmann," he swallowed, "the spies were trying to-."
Schaffer waved an impatient hand, a grimacing sneer on his face - he had heard all of this so many times before, the Doctor knew, and he had become as tired of it as the Doctor himself had grown tired of listening to Kurtz and Klein talk unashamedly of what their glorious philosophy was doing. "I know," he ground out, his tone making it clear he was exasperated and fed up with the same boring tone, "what they were trying to do, Feldwebel."
"And their ally, Klein-," Kurtz tried to go on, but Schaffer interrupted him again.
"Frau Klein walked out of the main gates ten minutes ago," Schaffer interrupted his expression set as he remembered the clearly frustrating way Klein had left. "The guards could not stop her."
Klein's gone?
The Doctor couldn't believe it, although it made sense; without his cooperation and how he had refused to take her back to the TARDIS, and with her documents being forged, she would have no choice but to make a quick escape although he had expected her to make another attempt to return to the sixties, in a timeline which had been negated.
But at the same time, he wondered what the implications would be.
Klein, despite her…questionable knowledge of time travel, was still a smart cookie. She would know enough about laser physics in order to help the Nazis win the war, but the Doctor wasn't worried about that and he discounted it quickly. Even if she didn't have Ace's walkman, she was still a non-entity in 1944. She had been discovered to be a fraud, thanks to his work, but there was still a lot she could do if she had access to the right facilities, but at the same time the Doctor was left wondering what she could do on her own. She might not have the kind of stupid documents the Nazis demanded everyone carry on them, but she would just need the right opportunity to either contact the local Nazi authorities and provide a credible story to ensure she didn't get shot by the SS.
"Now, Doctor and Fraulein McShane will leave too," Schaffer went on, breaking the Doctor out of his thoughts, although he continued to dwell on what the implications of what Klein, a temporal anomaly who had come from a time which should never be would have in the original timeline. "Put down your rifle, Kurtz."
"Hey, good on you, Schaffer!" Ace grinned while Gower smiled as well, and while the Doctor could not help but think this was not going to be as straightforward as his friend believed, he had to be thankful as well that people like Schaffer existed.
Schaffer was clearly a German army officer who was dedicated to his country, but he was clearly one of those officers who viewed Hitler and the Nazi party with the contempt they deserved. The fact the war had gone on as long as it had, and Germany's fall growing more inevitable probably didn't help.
The Doctor wasn't surprised. He had liked Schaffer from the moment they'd met, although he didn't approve of the fact the man was working for the Nazis. But he could appreciate the fact Schaffer disliked the fanatical way people like Kurtz worshipped Hitler, who wasn't even a soldier; his time during the First World War was spent delivering messages, not fighting, and the Doctor wondered what Schaffer's personal views of the man were.
If they were anything like the Doctor's, then they could not be good.
Kurtz was glaring at Schaffer with disgust while the senior German officer looked indifferent. "I always knew you sympathised with our enemies! You will shot for this, Schaffer-!"
"I don't doubt it, now drop the gun and let these people pass," Schaffer demanded, his expression settled as he accepted his fate (the Doctor caught Ace's look of sympathetic admiration; she might not like Schaffer's uniform or the people he was forced to work for, but she admired him for standing up for them even at the cost of his own life), but the Doctor knew this was not going to be good….
He was just tugging Ace away when they heard Kurtz's sneering voice yell, "I do not like traitors either!"
Kurtz was just about to raise his rifle to aim at Schaffer, who looked unsurprised by the action but surprised it was happening so quickly, so informally, and Gower rushed in to try to save Schaffer's life, yelling the man's name while the Doctor and Ace were slipping away. But then Kurtz saw the two-time travellers moving away slowly towards the travelling machine, and he raised his gun.
He fired, just as the Doctor shouted, "Quick, Ace! Into the TARDIS!"
But then the Doctor spotted Kurtz running after them, aiming his gun…. And the Doctor realised he was aiming the muzzle at Ace! With no hesitation for what he was going to do next, the Doctor threw himself between the shocked Ace and Kurtz when the German sergeant opened fire.
Ace must have realised what he had done because she yelled, "PROFESSOR!"
The Doctor yelled in pain as the bullets went through his chest, making him stagger back. He thought he heard Ace scream, and he thought he heard other people - Gower or Schaffer shouting, and more gunfire (this was why he hated weapons; they made it so easy for them to be used by others to inflict pain and suffering on others), but he pushed through the pain and tried his best to focus his mind, relying on his mental connection with the TARDIS to help him recover some of his faculties enough to let him know how bad the damage was. Two of the bullets had been shot in his shoulder, while one had cracked his collarbone; those weren't the worst of his injuries. One of the bullets had badly damaged his left heart, while another had pierced a lung, making it hard for him to breath; his Time Lord body was protecting him even through the traumatic injuries, relying on one lung and one heart.
And then he felt it, the biological implosion that felt like a fire was being lit inside of him.
He was regenerating.
The Doctor closed his eyes. This might not have been one of his best lives, despite knowing he had won many victories against evil even if it had cost him a lot of respect from his friends since he had become a manipulative genius who shaped events around himself like a painter with the final image already in mind and just needed to work the paint around in a specific way, but it had been a good life despite so many complications.
At the same time, he became increasingly aware of Ace holding him, tears welling up and falling from her eyes. The Doctor looked into her face, knowing in a short time he wouldn't be seeing her, not with his current eyes. He saw her face, the guilt and sadness in her expression after what Kurtz had just done to him, and he knew she was blaming herself over everything that had happened.
If she hadn't gone running out of the TARDIS as soon as the ship materialised in Colditz, with a rucksack with a piece of anachronistic technology which would change the outcome of the war, if she hadn't caused so much trouble by trusting Tim Wilkins who'd turned out to be a coward who cared more for his own neck than the greater good of the other prisoners in the camp, then this would not be happening. They would have both in the TARDIS, far from here, safe in the Time Vortex…
But he didn't blame her, because in many ways this mess was his own fault. He should have made sure Ace didn't leave the TARDIS as soon as his ship had materialised out of the temporal anomaly - he now realised the anomaly was created by the nexus of the potent timeline Klein originated from - until he had run checks. He should have made certain Ace did not have anything that could not be explained in a different time to the one where she'd gotten the walkman. Rassilon, he should have made sure she didn't even have it in the first place.
He had not expected this.
He had not expected to die, regenerate even if he knew, thanks to Klein and the clues she'd handed to him about Johann Schmidt, the mysterious helper who'd helped her gain entrance to the TARDIS was him, his eighth incarnation from an alternate timeline who knew the world Klein was oh so proud of, where the trains ran on time, and everyone saluted the swastika when the 1960s was supposed to be a time where people found new ways of expanding culture, not a place where everyone was meant to live neat lives under a fascist ideology which made no sense in the long term, to put history back on track.
But he hadn't expected to regenerate anyway. The Doctor closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to give in to temptation and let the change take place, but he knew he couldn't; they were still out in the open, vulnerable to machine-gun fire, and he didn't want to lose more than one life because of a trigger-happy Nazi.
The sounds of someone running towards him and the urgent way Ace was speaking to him; his ears felt odd, as though he were hearing her voice from miles away, it was as though what had happened to him, the trauma and the shock to his body, had blanketed his body's ability to process outside stimuli - the scientific part of the Doctor was fascinated, given he was aware of how shock could render the same effect on an individual, but this was not the time...
The Doctor pushed the nausea to one side, concentrating on the TARDIS and his desire to get Ace away, and he forced himself to stand up despite the pain, tightening his grip on Ace's arm.
"Ow! Professor?" Ace looked at him, but he staggered slightly as the pain got to him.
"Ace…," he had to whisper in order to concentrate on getting them back to the TARDIS, and he found himself drawing upon his regenerative energy to give him extra strength and to help him through this, "hold on tight to me. I'm going to get us to the TARDIS quicker before Kurtz gets to us."
"But, Doctor-!"
"No, buts, Ace," the Doctor gazed at her, his expression so pointed it stopped any hint of an argument. And that was the last thing they needed right now. "Ace, I'm dying, regenerating. I need us both inside the TARDIS right now quickly before anything else happens. But I need you to take my hand."
Fresh tears welled up in Ace's eyes, but she placed her hand in his own, and once he was positive she was going to do as he wanted, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the flow of local time - this was illegal to the Time Lords, but he was certain if his people got the whole story they would excuse it just this once, but he did not care - and he took Ace towards the TARDIS.
"Whoa! What-?" Ace looked around in surprise as time seemed to slow down to a point where Kurtz, who'd been running towards them both to stop them leaving 1944, seemed to be a fly trapped in amber. The Doctor remained silent, and he reached the TARDIS and took out the spare key he kept on his person - his seventh incarnation was quite paranoid, compared to his other lives although his second incarnation's attitude and ability to see the bigger picture compared to his other selves came close, this was one of those points where it helped rather than hindered him - and he slipped it into the lock.
As soon as he stepped inside the Doctor's time slowing trick cancelled itself out, and he almost collapsed again but he pushed his exhaustion aside and with Ace's help, he got to the console where he closed the door quickly.
"Doctor, what's happening?" Ace asked, frightened while he worked on the controls, and he dematerialised the ship just as soon as the sounds of knocking echoed through the console room.
"I'm regenerating, Ace," the Doctor replied as he focused on the controls, setting them to random, just as he caught sight of the glow to his hands.
Ace began to cry. He had told her enough about regeneration and what he went through enough times to understand what it entailed.
"No!" Ace sobbed.
The Doctor sighed. "Ace-."
"I'm so sorry, its all my fault," Ace cried when she saw his hands glowing brightly.
"Oh Ace," the Doctor said sadly, turning to her fully, using one of his brightly glowing fingers to brush a tear away. "It was not your fault; you made a massive mistake, which we need to talk about," he looked pointedly at her, but he smiled. "But it was worth it; I saved your life, and that's a million times better than dying alone."
"Professor," Ace sobbed, amazed the Doctor was being so nice about it. Here he was, dying and regenerating, and yet he was being so kind about it.
"I'll still be the Professor when I regenerate, Ace," the Doctor sighed, wincing a little as the glow brightened. He stood back and spread his arms out, letting the regeneration out….
The last thing the Seventh Doctor felt was the first thing the eighth Doctor felt. Where the seventh Doctor felt fire and death, his body changing and parts of his manipulatively sharp mind retracting and new thought processes taking over as the personality remained the same. Finally, the regeneration was over, and the Doctor staggered on unfamiliar legs while he looked around the console room curiously. For a moment he did not know who he was, but when he looked over at the sobbing young girl, he remembered everything that had happened in Colditz castle; the brutal interrogation by the Nazis, the encounter with Klein, the discovery of her identity and where she had come from, the realisation an alternate version of his new self had sent the TARDIS back in time to prevent that future coming about, the belief they had averted the future Klein was oh so happy about before Kurtz had shot at them, him taking the shots meant for Ace…
And they were so worth it.
He would never allow a life, even a single one, to never be important.
He smiled at Ace.
"Hello, Ace."
The Doctor had no idea what would happen to him in this life, but he knew it was going to be…. marvellous.