New Plan
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He was sitting alone in the park, on an old bench. He was musing at the hedges in an increasingly tattered black cloak, Steven was gone, he was sure Dodo would be next to leave, he was lucky enough to have gotten the TARDIS to land somewhere around her own time and she was exploring the city. He was feeling tired, and old, for the first time in a very long time, he felt very alone. His mind drifted, homewards, to his own people, his own time, his own place. He winced as a static-like pulse ran down his spine. He clutched his cloak and pulled it around him more closely. Something was also in the air, an evil presence he could feel it.
It was a few seconds before he realized he wasn't alone and turned to find another man sitting next to him, white hair, white beard, a tattered leather coat. The hairs on his arms frizzed, and his eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the newcomer. The newcomer held out a brown paper bag.
"Peanut?" the man asked. The man reached in and pulled out a roasted legume. He shook the bag encouragingly.
The elder man eyed the newcomer and slowly reached into the bag and withdrew a peanut. His arthritic fingers clamored at the shell before it cracked with a snap. He fumbled as he pulled the shell apart and ate the meat of the legume. The newcomer placed the bag between them and sat back, looking at gardens and the rest of the park.
"If you think I am ignorant of your nature, you are quite mistaken." The old man said quietly. "I've been in this position before, hmm, yes. I can't say that I approve of what I see, a lot of fiddling about, a lot of nonsense." He looked at the man sitting next to him. "Each one becomes slightly more incredulous than the last. The clown and the dandy were about serviceable, though they wouldn't have gotten half as far without me. The one with the curls and the teeth, that tall oaf…yes, hmmm, gets the job done eventually when he isn't swanning about acting a fool. Then there's the one that goes about as if he's off to the pitch all the time…wearing vegetables…I've even met one that is nothing more than a skinny, hyper-active lemur…the shoes he wears….unimaginable…tennis shoes…pff!"
"Yes, I can agree with the sentiment on the last one." The man said nodding, he took out another peanut, "but, as incredulous as they are, they are still the Doctor. I can say that they all do amazing things…unbelievable things."
"Well, that much is undeniable…" The elder man said as he stamped his cane on the ground. "They are me after all."
The man chuckled slightly to himself. "My I'd forgotten how prideful you were. Forgotten have we about how we came upon our first real friends after the exile?"
The Doctor sniffed and looked at the ground. "I suspect you're here for a reason?"
"Indeed." The man said quietly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crystal cube. "I need a favor."
"You lot always do." The Doctor said stiffly. He looked at the cube. "I suspect you want me to paint you something. That is a stasis cube is it not?"
"Yes, something like that." The man said quietly. His fingers rolled over the cube. The man stared at the cube, as if he was lost in it.
"I don't normally have any truck with this business, dipping into your own past, it's not done." The Doctor said, he looked at the man and then to the cube. "You know, that I know what you did…you thought you got away with it, but I saw you in that alley in France, the night of the massacre. That's when I knew, I knew that things couldn't be stopped, that that girl couldn't be…"
"You allowed Steven to believe that she was though." The man said quietly.
"He simply didn't understand. How could he understand?" The Doctor said, frowning, his hands gripped the head of his cane. "You can't fiddle with history, not easily, not safely. If he'd known the truth undoubtedly he'd have tried something dangerous." The Doctor looked at the man. "Why did you come to France?"
"Some things had to happen." The man replied quietly. "Actions needed to be set in motion. I had to become."
The Doctor lifted his head slightly and looked down at the man over his nose. "I see, and now, rather than use subterfuge you'd simply beg me?"
"I can't go into details." The man said quietly, still staring at the cube. "Suffice it to say, I have run out of options. Or rather, the other option is quite horrific. I've tried that option, evidently, in one iteration of history."
The Doctor stiffed and glared at the man. "You wish for me to change the history of my future!?" His eyes narrowed and turned his back to the man. "I do not know what happens in the future, but I dare say this is unacceptable. You can't change history not one…."
"Except when you can, and when you have the chance to change this history and change it for the better, when you have the chance of saving history, of saving everything, you damn well take it!" The man snarled, his hand landed on the Doctor's shoulder and he turned the old man around. "I have looked into the future, not by choice, but I have seen what happens, the pain I cause because I refused to take a chance. You have no idea the misery that will be unleashed, the sorrow that I personally have wrought on the universe. The destruction I will cause, if you refuse to do this for me."
"Just because you have a TARDIS doesn't make time your personal play thing, to twist and contort. It doesn't make the universe your pearl." The Doctor growled. "I will not be a party to…"
"There's a war…" the man said sharply. "The Time Lords, our home, it's all going to be destroyed, one way or another. This is literally the last chance we have, the last chance I have to redeem everything we stand for, to make right something I have done very wrong. I need you to do this, not for me, but for…"
"War?" The Doctor looked at the man, his old gray eyes sizing the man up searching him. "Susan? Is Susan ok?"
"I don't know, the last I saw her she was on Earth still, fighting the next wave of Dalek invasions." The man said quietly. "She had a grandson and he…" The man stopped, took a deep breath, "he was exceptional."
The Doctor's face softened then hardened again. "Still, this business, most assuredly you could find someone else…dipping into your own time line, surely another Time Lo…"
"They are all indisposed, the ones that aren't dead, are fighting, and the ones that are fighting are losing and the ones that are losing are going insane." The man said, his voice pleading. "There is no one else, no savior, no allies, no last minute heroes. Gallifrey burns out there, as we speak. There is only us."
"Typical…" The Doctor said with a snort. "That business with the antimatter blobs, same situation. I suspect they put you up to this."
"Not exactly." The man said. "I need you to plug this cube into the TARDIS matrix. It has all the programming needed to initiate the computations needed to…put Gallifrey in a stasis cube."
"You can't possibly think that that…"
"It's possible but it takes time, only by my time there just isn't enough left…I have to have you start the calculations so they can be ready…" The man said.
"Even coming all the way back here won't give you enough time!" The Doctor snorted, looking at the cube.
"Yes, I know, but, it's been a very strange day." The man replied quietly. "It will work, it has to work, the alternative is…unthinkable. We-I've done all the theoretical work; we just need to get the calculations started."
The Doctor looked at the cube in the man's hand. He looked to the man. "This, this is dangerous. If you're off… I'm not even sure the TARDIS has enough power to pull this off. You'd need...at least a dozen to get the stasis field stable."
"We have to try…" The man said, his eyes met the Doctor's. The Doctor could see flashes in the man's eyes, bits of psychic contact leaking, the emotions were genuine, the images what flashes he saw were, indeed terrible. "Not trying will only lead to another option which…"
"Yes…" the Doctor said. His hand cupped over the cube, and then taking it and secreting it into the folds of his cloak. He clasped the hands of the man and nodded. "No more…I'm convinced."
The Doctor stood up bracing against his cane and nodded to the man and walked down the path to where his TARDIS was waiting.
The man stood up slowly, picked up his bag of peanuts and shoved them into his jacket pocket. He too turned and walked up the path towards a hedge row. He reached an intersection at the trail and grimaced.
"He's out of earshot you can come out now." The man said shaking his head, as two more men stepped out from the bushes. Both were lanky, one wore a bow tie the other work a brown suit with sandshoes.
"So, did the old man go for it?" said the man in the bow tie.
"Eventually, eventually, never was in doubt I suppose." The man said quietly as he fished into his jacket and pulled out a stasis cube, rather the same stasis cube he gave to the Doctor.
"He's a stubborn old thing though isn't he?" The one in the brown pinstripe suit said, he grimaced slightly. "Met him once, on Terrulis. The old codger called me a lemur and then hit me upside the head with his cane…I still have a welt!"
"Yes, he did mention." The first man said, nodding. He looked at the cube in his hand; it glowed quietly, humming with math.
"Well, we were naïve, I suppose, silly and young and stupid as you are." Said the one in the bow tie. "Always pretending to be older than you are, I mean really, he was a crotchety, cantankerous, old gi…"
"Show some respect!" the first man growled, looking at both of the other two. "That man there, your crotchety, cantankerous old codger, is the man who was you, before you had all your seductive rendezvous, your overblown pronouncements, your hip catchphrases and your whizz-bang special effects. He was you, when it was possibly the hardest to be the Doctor, when there was no trodden path to follow, no template, when he was making it up as he went along. He may have been different, but he was the first, his life shaped your lives, shaped all of our lives. Without him, none of us would be here."
The two other men looked at the ground, and kicked it like shamed school boys. The first man nodded and turned looking back at the bench where he had sat with the Doctor.
The one in the pinstriped suit looked to the one in the bow tie. "Did you ever meet him?"
"Once, briefly." The one in the bow tie said. His gaze glassed over as he remembered. "I was working on a dimensional stabilizer in the TARDIS when there was a chronion flux. Time must've looped, or something. We stood there, both of us at the TARDIS console just staring at each other…before we knew it the field destabilized and time snapped back into place. He looked exhausted."
"It won't be long now." said the first man quietly. "I remember bits of this, soon we meet Ben and Polly, and not too much after we end up in Antarctica."
"Cybermen…" The two other men said at the same time. The first one nodded.
"It never gets easier." Said the one in the bow tie. "They say it does, but it doesn't."
"Especially when you have to look at the outcome." Said the one in the pinstriped suit. "Really a bow tie?"
"Boys, boys…" The first man said quickly seeing this conversation degrading. "I believe we have a mission to complete. Come along, there are too many TARDISes in this park…or rather too many of the same TARDIS in this park. We're liable to blow a hole in the universe or something. Let's go, we have an ancient and august civilization to save from utter destruction."
The two men followed the first one, and a minute later the park chorused, as the same TARDIS dematerialized at the same time from four different positions.