It seems like this week is a great week to be a Lunammoon enjoyer. You've got Can We Get Some Amens in the Chat on Sunday, and then Celery Thursdays, and then a Side Story That I couldn't bring myself to wait to post.
Quick CW: This little ficlet DOES contain thoughts of suicide, but the person in question is a Time Lord and so less "dying for good" and more "intentionally inducing a regeneration on the grounds of hoping the next you can handle the situation better than you can". She doesn't go through with it.
At the age of eight every child who's meant to become a Time Lord is taken to the hollowed-out remains between the mountains of Solitude and Solace to stare into the place where the warp and weft of time and space were stretched thin and snapped leaving behind a great gap where you can stare into the time vortex and it can stare into you. Some children run away frightened, some children are inspired, and some children go mad. And when they go mad, it's the subtle kind of madness. The kind that can be confused for inspiration until the child is no longer a child and the quirks that were so charming stop being charming.
There was a time when children would be thrown into the vortex and expected to make their way back, but that doesn't happen anymore. Children are considered more precious now, that they're harder to get.
Emaeharayowhen stands in front of the vortex and stares. Her mind is young, she doesn't get everything that she sees. That's by design. But she knows that what she sees is beautiful. Planets and trees and life and lights. Things she couldn't even imagine if she tried. And it's beautiful and then it's gone. It's dust and rubble destroyed as a casualty of something or another. She steps closer and closer to the schism, trying to see more and feel more. Someone grabs her arm and tugs her backwards and Emaeharayowhen knows to stop.
Emaeharayowhen reaches a hand to her eyes and realizes that she's crying.
It's that moment where a thought hits. It's a thought that she swears is a spark of inspiration no matter how much she knows everyone else will scream madness even though she knows that they're the mad ones.
For how can someone see the death and destruction of such beauty and decide not to interfere?
Emaeharayowhen knows things that she shouldn't Know, and she doesn't know how to stop Knowing them, but she Knows there's no one she can safely tell.
She gets a reputation for being slow and thoughtful with her words and her mothers say that it's a good trait in a child but they don't understand that it's because she knows that there's a finite amount of things she can say that she shouldn't know about before her life becomes much harder.
It's hard to explain how she knows these things. When she closes her eyes, she can still toss a ball from one hand to another. She doesn't need to open your eyes to play catch with herself because she knows where her hands are.
She doesn't play catch on her own very much. She doesn't need to. She has a best friend. He calls her Emaehar and she lets him. She knows what kind of man fate has him on the path to become. But she's still his friend because she refuses to belive that the clay has dried.
She knows that the name he's currently using isn't the one that he'll always use. She knows that he'll one day pick a title for himself but in between that name and this one he'll be Koschei. And she knows this just the same way she knows
Just like she knows that there's a drumbeat in his ears beating in time with his hearts.
Just like she knows who put them there.
She gives the founder of Time Lord Society as she knows it the appropriate amount of deference and politeness because she doesn't want to risk being asked why she doesn't.
She doesn't even invoke his name when not referring to him directly.
Her mothers think it's deference to the founder.
It's not.
She plans to interfere outside of the planet when she's older. She thinks it'd be best if she started small with this one. She thinks that if she stared into the schism for longer, she'd know what exactly to do but she was torn away to quickly. She Knows that they wouldn't let her back there without an explanation that she doesn't want to give.
A good start she thinks will be keeping Koschei from walking down the path she knows he might. She hopes that being friends will be enough, although she's scared it won't be. But she doesn't want her fear to be the reason that she fails.
She is thirty years old and Torvic is gone and Emaehar does not Know what happened. She tries to remember, but there's nothing.
Koschei is Koschei now, and she thinks that that's connected, but she doesn't Know.
Emaeharayowhen's Academy years are fine. By the time she's in her forties Academy no one really calls her that. It's quite long after all, and time is precious and nicknames abound. At first, people follow Koschei's lead and call her Emaehar. And then, Koschei takes to calling her "Em", and that eventually morphs into him calling her "Mu".
Within a couple of years, almost everyone calls her that.
Borusa doesn't. Mu doesn't want him too. She knows things about him and she doesn't want him close.
She's fine at science and she's fine at math and she does well with engineering. Not the top of her class by any means, but there's no question of if she'll pass or not. It's a good spot to be in. It helps that the Professors can't surprise her with tests because she Knows.
History is harder than her other classes.
A level of precognition isn't too unusual for Patrexes, especially just after staring into the schism. It's a remnant from the war with the Great Vampires and the N-Forms (at least that's what the history books say).
It's supposed to fade as you get older, but hers hasn't. It's not obvious. It's an instinct that tells her to go here and do this and watch out, but trickiest thing it tells her is a resounding "that's not true". It's so, so, loud when she's meant to be learning about History and sometimes she Knows the truth of what happened, but she knows better than to say it.
Mu's clever enough to know that she's not supposed to Know her professor is lying to her or at the very least, telling her things that he doesn't know are lies and so she doesn't say anything. She asks questions and she reads the approved textbooks and she takes careful notes on all the lies that the Professor repeats so that she doesn't end up telling a truth when she's asked to speak up in class.
The units on Rassilon are the hardest, and she can't afford to let anyone know why.
By the time she's in her fifties, her shields are constant and active, and cracking them open for the normal amount of psychic contact expected by High Gallifreyan Society feels like bracing open a stone door with her shoulder. It's better than the alternative.
Mu has friends. Nine of them. She didn't intend to befriend them exactly. They're more Koschei's friends than her's really. He befriended them and didn't want to leave her behind. But still, she knows them and she knows what they could be. She never says this aloud, and her shields are too strong for anyone to tell, and she never touches any of them just to be safe, but a part of her sees them as tests. Something so that she can prove that she can change things. To preserve the world that she saw through the untempered schism decades ago.
Ushas and Koschei worry her the most. She knew Koschei before the academy. She doesn't know if she's helping him be better or worse. But she doesn't want to leave them.
Ushas is the only other Patrex in the group. She's brilliant with a strong scientific mind and Mu knows exactly the sort of thing that that kind of mind is prone to do. She tries to turn her mind to other pursuits without it being obvious of what she is doing. She thinks Ushas is just humoring her and she hopes that that will be enough.
But all the while she focuses on offhand remarks and predictions that can cloak themselves as keen instincts all in the name of making sure that when she tells Rallon and Millenia to not search for the Guardians, they humor her and they don't go.
Emaehar (her friends still call her Mu, but she's a graduate now and Emaehar is a name that just straddles the boundaries between professional and relaxed. Emaeharayowhen is far too long for most to bother with) graduates with the rest of her peers just as they all turn nine-seven.
She graduates with high marks in science, math, and engineering and with second-firsts in history. She knows what is taught, and she tries to pretend it's literature instead of lies being passed off as fact and that makes it not as bad. It helps that she knows the patterns of the lies.
She is given her regeneration cycle, and for a moment, she is staring into the untempered schism again. She can feel potential could-bes and might-bes floating just under her skin before settling into the twelve others hers (and hims and theys and its and xirs and-) that make it up.
She makes sure not to lose touch with her friends, especially Koschei and Ushas and she tries to be there when Ushas does one of her more concerning experiments, particularly ones involving mice.
Her history marks and her family ties have her working in the Matrix archives cataloging the thoughts and feelings of deceased Time Lords and separating the true events (things the Celestial Intelligence Agency wants on file) from the imaginings (things the Celestial Intelligence Agency does not) and as the decades go on she steadily makes her way higher and higher up the hierarchy and is given larger and larger responsibilities because her mind is a fortress and she can "be trusted" not to speculate. She plans to horde this information until she has enough that she can do something. She doesn't Know what, but it might involve blackmail of the council. Something to force them to bring all of the truth to light. Something that they can't deny and can't silence.
And then, just before the alignment that would mark her and her year mates 300th year, she comes across a series of memories about a young Irish boy from the distant planet of Earth. At first, she thinks nothing of them. Just the memories of someone who's used a chameleon circuit, and then she looks closer.
They're incredibly normal and nondescript in the way that only something trying to hide something else can be.
She Knew that the story of how Time Lords came across regeneration energy was wrong. But she didn't know the details. And now she does. But she didn't know that it was this Wrong.
She leaves a message for her friends, at least the friends who still haven't run off planet.
It's a simple message, just that she's going off planet for a bit to explore. She doesn't tell them not to follow her because that would make them want to come with her and she has to go alone. They do not know what she knows and she doesn't want anyone to suspect that they do. She signs it Emaeharayowhen.
She can't stay here.
Not in the archives and not on this planet.
The record is three centuries old if that.
How many people know? Has she met the child? What became of them? How many people know? How many people know that they knew? How many people did she know that knew?
She stares down at the glass vial full of still dark liquid. She made it herself, and she knows that if she were to down it, it would be quick. She would double over in pain, and then when she opened her eyes, they wouldn't be hers. She would be someone new. Someone who could handle this more. Maybe someone who wouldn't care.
And then she thinks about the child and the sacrifices that they were forced to make wasting the face this way feels wrong. Maybe it's her cowardice talking. If it is, she's listening.
She pours the vial down the disposal instead of down her throat.
She doesn't have to leave that way, but she can't stay here.
When Emaeharayowhen was eight she stared into the untempered schism and she saw how beautiful and wonderful the universe and how so many terrible terrible things wanted to destroy it in a spark of maybe inspiration, maybe madness decided that she had to stop them.
She doesn't think she can do that on this planet. Not now.
When Emaeharayowhen goes to the museum, she doesn't intend to steal a Capsule. She has a license and could easily get a Capsule legitimately, remove all of the tracking bits, and then simply not come back. They would notice of course, but it wouldn't matter as long as she kept moving. She Knows how to create accidents that would break things in a way it would be reasonable for a pilot to never have noticed.
She intends to just look at the capsules. There's a particular one that she wants a closer look at. It's a Type 40 and based on when it was added to the museum, she thinks that it might have been the Child's. She doesn't know what she's expecting to find there, maybe something, a hint at what to do next.
She never quit her job. That might create a red flag. And so there's nothing unusual about her going into a museum after hours. What's unusual is that she isn't alone, she feels her before she sees her. And she turns her head to see that there's a woman there, about her height with long straight hair tied in a ponytail behind her head and dressed in the reds of a Pyrodian. She knows that the woman has been staring at her stare at the Type 40 for a while.
"Want to take her for a spin?" the woman smiles mischievously.
"What? I-" Emaeharayowhen shakes her head. "No. It's not even functional."
"Oh, but what if it was?" the woman asked. She steps towards the ship and the door slides open, almost inviting. "Go on inside. I know you can feel it calling to you."
And the thing is that she can. And she Knows that she's meant to go inside of the Capsule. Something about it just feels right.
"Who are-" Emaeharayowhen turns around and the other woman is already gone.
The Capsule likes her. And that's helpful because its navigation system is shot. It's outdated and the manual is largely useless because the Child or whoever used the Capsule after the Child added so many personal touches and upgrades and downgrades and modifications that Emaeharayowhen starts to wonder if someone had wanted to make the ship as difficult to control for someone who wasn't them as possible.
She gets very good at changing base10 to base12 and base60 in her head.
It's not difficult to get the ship to take off and fly. What's tricky is aiming it in specific places, but that's not too much of an issue. It's not that she has a particular place in mind she wants to go to. She just wants to go away, to somewhere that isn't Gallifrey.
Maybe the Capsule is of the same mind as her. Maybe it just likes her. Maybe it doesn't. But it always takes her to places where people need help. And so, she helps.
It's hard to piece apart what she Knows from what she Thinks, but she does her best and she uses her best to help people. It's minor interference. She's still starting out after all. More regional disputes than anything with world-ending consequences. She spends decades like that. She gets better and better at locating distress beacons and noticing atmospheric changes that tell her when something's going wrong on a major scale. But sometimes she comes somewhere and there's no real calamity to deal with. And when that happens, she will stay there for a while. Just to explore and to learn.
In the first one hundred and forty-seven years after she leaves Gallifrey. She spends a lot of time on Earth. Not on purpose, the Capsule seems fond of the planet. Ireland is located on Earth, and she wonders if it might not have been random. Maybe the Child spent a lot of time here.
Emaeharayowhen can blend in on Earth pretty well. Humans on the outside, don't look that different from Gallifreyans and she's used to avoiding saying things that she shouldn't know.
She always spends a bit of time on earth whenever she lands. Not very long, only a year or two unless it's a particularly awful year.
She only spent a month or so in 536.
She lands in London, England, Earth in mid-1962.
The Capsule lands in a junkyard. It's not a gentle landing. She's pretty sure that something burned out, and she hopes that it wasn't anything important.
The Capsule takes the form of a Police Public Call Box. It's blue with a blinking light on top and a little phone that says call for help with a cell phone that's wired to the speaker in the central console. There's a little sign out front that says to pull the door open, and Emaeharayowhen thinks it's funny because in this form the Capsule is a push door.
Come to think of it, that might have something to do with whatever burned out.
Landing in a junkyard is nice. Most people don't look too closely into it, especially with the perception filter and a junkyard is a great place to find things that can be broken down into scraps for repairs and upgrades and changes.
She goes under the console with a wrench in her hand and a screwdriver in between her teeth. At the very least, she needs the navigation systems to be up to date. Then she can worry about the fact that her Capsule's Chameleon Circuit is most definitely shot.
There's something happening in London 1962. Emaeharayowhen doesn't know what it is, but she doesn't think she can leave until she finds it.
If there's anyone reading this who knows enough about Academy Era Doctor Who for my version of events to piss you off my condolences.
Btw, I know some sources say that all the different chapters went to different schools, but other sources say that Rani was the rest of the Deca's schoolmates and that she was Patraxi so like. Who can say?
The rough concept for this role swap is that "Emaeharayowhen" is a Time Lady whose exposure to the untempered schism gave her the ability to see the future kind of sort of. It mostly occurs in the form of her Knowing things without knowing quite how she Knows and powerful impressions of certain people and things. She doesn't know the future as much as Marion does, but her abilities are more well-rounded and don't depend as much on her memory. Heavily vibes-based precognition. Meanwhile, "Doctor John Smith" is still the child who Time Lords used to get the ability to regenerate, only instead of keeping him on Gallifrey, they turned him about as human as they could manage and sent baby him to Edwardian Era England. In theory, he'd eventually die of old age, and the problem would clean itself up but well, his Capsule still remembers him.
I think the main idea behind her is:
Human!Marion: I can't think about the shit that bothers me.
Vs
Timelord!Marion: I can't NOT think about the shit that bothers me.
There will probably be some more side stories involving Emaeharayowhen/Emaehar/Mu since I have but I just wanted to like, explain concept that I had for Time Lord!Marion since this is mostly a character study of how growing up on Gallifrey would effect her and why she would leave.
Other stories involving this version of events include:
Dimensions in Space: London's getting colder, Susan Foreman's Grandfather tells her not to worry about it, but she KNOWS there's something going on. Susan (who is a human genius) decides to look into it herself. She meets Emaeharayowhen (who she calls Marion due to thinking that she's spelling her name and not saying it). Otherwise, I'm also toying with Emaeharayowhen being a Math teacher but I'm not sold on it. Emaeharayowhen brings the Susan and her friends (she had some friends with her in that book but I need to reread the book to get the names) for a moment, mostly because it's the closest and safest and most importantly warmest place. Susan gets the experiment of an adult who instead of brushing off her concerns and what she's found out with a "you don't need to worry about that" or a "you don't know what you're talking about" goes "Tell me more. What did you find?" Possibly with the information Susan's gathered Emaeharayowhen figures it out and is able to get the aliens off planet. Susan coins the name TARDIS and Emaeharayowhen decides that she likes it.
The Unearthly Woman: After the events of Dimensions in Space, Susan visits Emaeharayowhen in the junkyard fairly often. Emaeharayowhen tries to keep herself from saying too much that a mid-20th century human girl shouldn't know, but sometimes, Susan will repeat something she heard in school that was just wrong and Emaeharayowhen can't help but correct her gently and encourage her to learn more, and so Susan is frustrated Ian Chesterton because she keeps correcting him in class and, like, when he looks up what she's saying half of what she says is correct and half is outlandish in a way he doesn't want to look into and Barabara is reporting similar things with history. On a particular day in November, Doctor John Smith, goes to the Coal Hill School to confront Ian and Barbara and ask them why they keep holding her so long she ends up coming home late and also, where is she? Issue, as far as they know, Ian and Barabara Susan Foreman has been leaving school on time. So, one day, they follow her to a junkyard. One thing leads to another, and the TARDIS decides that they're going on a little adventure!