Something About Stars (15/20)
Title - Something About Stars (15/20)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Master, OCs
Spoilers - Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5 - Ch 6 - Ch 7 - Ch 8 - Ch 9 - Ch 10 - Ch 11 - Ch 12 - Ch 13
Chapter Fourteen
Athena watched an enormous planet burst into the sky over their heads and thought that whatever that was, it wasn’t good, and she was apparently somehow causing it, and the truth really was that all of that seemed minor in comparison to the fact that Matt was still safe and alive and she was confident she and her family could figure out the rest of it later.
“Isn’t this cozy?” said the man her father had called the Master, and she stopped looking out the window and looked at him instead. “I’m sure,” he said, “you must have a million questions.”
He was speaking Gallifreyan, and she answered him in it. “I do, actually,” she said.
“Your father bothered to teach you Gallifreyan!” he interjected, sounding tickled by this.
Athena ignored him. “First off, ‘the Master’? What sort of a ridiculous name is that? Master of what, exactly?”
He smiled and tilted his head in apparent thought. “Do all of you take after your father this much?”
“We do,” said Athena. “How fortunate.”
“Indeed. Because your father’s flaws are so…obvious. Don’t you want to know what they are?”
“He’s really terrible at remembering birthdays,” said Athena.
“He loves,” said the Master, taking what seemed like vicious delight in pronouncing the word. “He loves so much. That’s all he ever babbles about: love. It’s such an absurd concept. It barely exists in Gallifreyan, as you know. Or maybe you don’t. We have a phrase for I love you but it doesn’t mean what your father means when he says it. For us, it’s duty and respect and obedience, and for your father it’s all love.”
“Sorry, I thought we were discussing his flaws,” interjected Athena, unable to keep the distaste from her voice.
“We are. Do you know how vulnerable love makes you? Well, of course you do. It’s the only reason you’re in this car with me. Because I threatened to kill someone you love. Oh, you lot are going to be as easy to play as ninnators. Those are musical instruments from the planet Biznatur, you know.”
Athena did know. She sat in the car and thought of her father being terrified. Because, he had said, you’re what I love most in the universe. He had been right, that they would use the things he loved against him, she realized in that moment, because they had been doing it his whole life. It was suddenly crystal clear.
“Oh, he’s always been as easy to play as a ninnator,” the Master continued, into her silence. “He’s always been vulnerable. So easy to manipulate. The thing that is most delightful is that he’s tripled it all. Oh, it’s marvelous. This is going to be so entertaining. Now.” The car had drawn to a halt, and the Master gestured out the window, to the orange planet in the sky. “Don’t you want to see what your home planet looks like, finally?”
***
The Doctor sprang into action, running into the TARDIS, and they followed after him.
“Alright,” he said, hands caught in his hair, pacing around the TARDIS. “Now we know what they’ve been up to, so now we can figure out how to counter it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rose. “What are they doing?”
“They found a way to break the time lock, obviously. They were able to implant a signal, here, in Cunodys, and it laid dormant, for years and years and years, waiting for a Time Lord to show up and activate it, which is what Athena did. She landed on Cunodys, and there was a time traveler on the planet, and the signal activated. A beat of four. A Time Lord heartsbeat. So deep in the recesses of her mind, and we don’t really use psychic links, not links as deep as that, any of us, and I certainly never made you lot look into the Vortex or anything that would open up those parts of your minds, so she didn’t notice it. What she noticed was that she was time skipping, but that was just a side effect, an unintended side effect, Gallifrey trying to grab hold through the time lock, pulling her through the other worlds, the real necessity was the heartsbeat of four in her head, they were using that to figure out where they could break through, but what they needed, as well, was a physical link, having planted the signal on Cunodys wasn’t enough, they needed a physical link.” He held up the white-point star. “Which is what we have: the physical link.”
“A triangulated signal, you said,” Brem pointed out. “We have Athena and we have the white-point star, what’s the third point of the signal?”
The Doctor thought, pausing for a moment in his circling of the console, frowning off into space. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Something on Gallifrey. It would have to be on Gallifrey, the third point of the signal. Something or someone. Could be the Lord President of the High Council maybe. Actually, probably. Anyway.” The Doctor resumed pacing. “Doesn’t matter. Because what we’ve learned is the important thing.”
“What’s that?” Matt asked, when no one else seemed inclined to.
“We could cut the signal,” said the Doctor. “We could destroy the white-point star and cut the signal here and now, and Gallifrey would go back to the time lock.”
“So why don’t we?” said Matt.
“Because it would kill Athena,” said Brem. “She’s part of the signal now, if we cut it, she gets pulled into the time lock, too.”
“Well, then, that’s not an option,” said Matt. When he was met with silence, he said again, urgently, “It’s not an option, right?”
“No,” answered the Doctor. “It’s not an option.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. “But it should be an option. I can’t have Gallifrey escape from the time lock.”
“Why not?” demanded Matt. “So you don’t get along with these Gallifreyan people, so what? Every family has a black sheep, that doesn’t mean-”
“D’you think I’d kill my daughter because I don’t feel like having to make awkward small talk at a family reunion?” snapped the Doctor. “It isn’t just Gallifrey in the time lock. It isn’t just Gallifrey escaping from the time lock. It’s the entire Time War. Not just the Daleks, but the Star of Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never Weres. That’s what’s opening, right above this planet, the destruction of the universe right above us, because we can’t stop it, we Time Lords, we never could, we were losing the Time War, it’s why I time-locked it in the first place. Hell is descending upon us, and I could stop it, right now.” The Doctor took a deep breath. “And I won’t, because it would kill my daughter, and I would rather destroy the entire universe than harm a hair on any of your heads, and they know that!” he shouted, suddenly furious.
Silence fell and stretched, and Matt had the impression that no one in the TARDIS knew what to say. The Doctor, breathing heavily through his nose, began moving around his console, pressing buttons and turning dials and flipping levers. Everyone watched him.
“There’s an old Earth saying, kids,” he said, finally, watching his hands as they danced over the controls. “A phrase of great power, and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need.”
“What’s that, then?” asked Fortuna.
“Allons-y,” said the Doctor, fiercely, and brought his mallet down on the final button. The TARDIS jerked into motion, and Matt grabbed onto a strut to keep from falling over. “Here’s something I never thought I’d say,” continued the Doctor, furiously spinning a wheel. “Kids? We’re going to visit Gallifrey.”
***
Gallifrey did not look like what she had thought it would look like. She had seen mental images in her father’s mind, had examined the few paintings the family had of the planet. It was supposed to be blood-red mountains capped with bright white snow, an orange sky and shimmering silver trees, a city enclosed in a dome. There was none of that. The city looked ragged and destroyed, lacking its dome, and she stood in the spire they had brought her to and stared out the window at an orange-skied planet that was smoking with destruction. Crashed spaceships littered the ground beyond the city, so thick you would have thought they served as the planet’s soil. The war, she thought. The war they had been losing.
“The High Council wants to talk to you,” said the Master, coming into the room. He looked displeased, and she wondered what had transpired to make him look that way.
“About what?” she asked. “I don’t hear this heartsbeat thing the rest of you hear.” She didn’t. And her brain was being so assaulted now by the thoughts of all the Time Lords on this planet that she felt exhausted. She couldn’t understand how her father had dealt with all these thoughts all the time.
The Master didn’t answer, just turned and walked out of the room, and she followed him, feeling it would be inevitable that she would have to talk to this High Council anyway, so she might as well get it over with. There were guards everywhere in the building. Or maybe they were soldiers, from the Time War going on outside. The entire place had a feeling of desperation hanging over it. A war they were losing, thought Athena again, and she thought of her father, possessing the Moment, the means to end it all, and doing it. She didn’t blame him.
She followed the Master over a walkway that drifted high over a chasm of space. It had no sides, and she wondered if they had been lost. She wondered what would happen if she leaped over the edge. They walked through a pair of double doors into a conference room with dramatically dim lighting, with a table around which a number of dour-looking people in red were sitting, and the one at the head of the table looked at her and smiled and said, “Ah. The Doctor’s daughter. Good.”
Athena said nothing. She looked at him and resisted the urge to re-tie her ponytail.
“I am the Lord President of the Gallifreyan High Council,” he announced to her, grandly. “What are you called?”
Athena considered, and then decided no harm could really come of it. “Athena,” she said.
“Athena?” There was a murmur around the table. “What sort of a name is that? Knowing your father, it’s probably Earth-based, isn’t it?”
“Athena,” she said, “is the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, industry, justice, skill, and heroic endeavor.”
“Earth-based,” said the Lord President. “Predictable. I suppose your mother is human.”
“My mother is part-human, part-Bad-Wolf.”
“Bad Wolf,” echoed the Lord President. “And what is that?”
Athena just smiled.
The Lord President frowned and changed the subject. “What has your father told you about the Time War?”
“That you’re losing.”
“We are losing nothing,” thundered the Lord President at her. “We are merely changing the rules by which this war is being fought. We are changing the definition of the victory.”
“Convenient,” said Athena.
“See, I told you, just like her father,” sighed the Master. “Nothing for it.”
“We are going to ascend,” the Lord President went on, “to become creatures of consciousness itself. Free of these bodies. Free of time and cause and effect. We will end time. We will cause all creation to cease to be.”
Athena stared at him in horror. “You’re…utterly mad.”
“No. We can simply see things, in a way you and your feeble-minded father never could.”
“It’s suicide,” said Athena. “Surely you see that.” She looked to the Master. “It’s suicide,” she repeated.
“It is victory,” proclaimed the Lord President.
“Yeah, you can say that as pompously as you like, it isn’t going to change the fact that it’s suicide. You’re going to destroy the entire universe in a fit of pique because you’re losing the war?”
“If we lose the war, the entire universe will be destroyed,” returned the Lord President.
“Yes. Which is why my father time-locked the entire thing.”
“Your father,” snapped the Lord President, breathing heavily now, because clearly she had touched upon a sore subject, “committed murder on an unprecedented scale. He stole the most powerful weapon any species has ever created, and he used it for his own selfish purposes.”
“You say ‘potato,’” said Athena.
“What?” The Lord President looked perplexed. “What riddle is this?”
“Ah, it’s an old Earth saying, so of course you wouldn’t know it.”
“What does it mean?” he persisted.
“It means she disagrees,” inserted the Master, and then to Athena, “They’re not Gershwin fans.”
A sudden ripple of reaction flowed over every Time Lord in the room except for Athena. She watched, curiously, as they each started in surprise, and then the members of the High Council began murmuring to each other. Athena, perplexed, was startled when the double doors behind her were abruptly thrown open. She turned in alarm, backing away quickly as a small army of guards marched in and then fell back, revealing, in the middle of them all, her father, hair carefully mussed and tie knotted to just the right level of casualness, hands in his pockets and smile on his face, as he looked at the frowning table of High Council members and offered, cheerfully, “Hello.”
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, Master, OCs
Spoilers - Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5 - Ch 6 - Ch 7 - Ch 8 - Ch 9 - Ch 10 - Ch 11 - Ch 12 - Ch 13
Chapter Fourteen
Athena watched an enormous planet burst into the sky over their heads and thought that whatever that was, it wasn’t good, and she was apparently somehow causing it, and the truth really was that all of that seemed minor in comparison to the fact that Matt was still safe and alive and she was confident she and her family could figure out the rest of it later.
“Isn’t this cozy?” said the man her father had called the Master, and she stopped looking out the window and looked at him instead. “I’m sure,” he said, “you must have a million questions.”
He was speaking Gallifreyan, and she answered him in it. “I do, actually,” she said.
“Your father bothered to teach you Gallifreyan!” he interjected, sounding tickled by this.
Athena ignored him. “First off, ‘the Master’? What sort of a ridiculous name is that? Master of what, exactly?”
He smiled and tilted his head in apparent thought. “Do all of you take after your father this much?”
“We do,” said Athena. “How fortunate.”
“Indeed. Because your father’s flaws are so…obvious. Don’t you want to know what they are?”
“He’s really terrible at remembering birthdays,” said Athena.
“He loves,” said the Master, taking what seemed like vicious delight in pronouncing the word. “He loves so much. That’s all he ever babbles about: love. It’s such an absurd concept. It barely exists in Gallifreyan, as you know. Or maybe you don’t. We have a phrase for I love you but it doesn’t mean what your father means when he says it. For us, it’s duty and respect and obedience, and for your father it’s all love.”
“Sorry, I thought we were discussing his flaws,” interjected Athena, unable to keep the distaste from her voice.
“We are. Do you know how vulnerable love makes you? Well, of course you do. It’s the only reason you’re in this car with me. Because I threatened to kill someone you love. Oh, you lot are going to be as easy to play as ninnators. Those are musical instruments from the planet Biznatur, you know.”
Athena did know. She sat in the car and thought of her father being terrified. Because, he had said, you’re what I love most in the universe. He had been right, that they would use the things he loved against him, she realized in that moment, because they had been doing it his whole life. It was suddenly crystal clear.
“Oh, he’s always been as easy to play as a ninnator,” the Master continued, into her silence. “He’s always been vulnerable. So easy to manipulate. The thing that is most delightful is that he’s tripled it all. Oh, it’s marvelous. This is going to be so entertaining. Now.” The car had drawn to a halt, and the Master gestured out the window, to the orange planet in the sky. “Don’t you want to see what your home planet looks like, finally?”
***
The Doctor sprang into action, running into the TARDIS, and they followed after him.
“Alright,” he said, hands caught in his hair, pacing around the TARDIS. “Now we know what they’ve been up to, so now we can figure out how to counter it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rose. “What are they doing?”
“They found a way to break the time lock, obviously. They were able to implant a signal, here, in Cunodys, and it laid dormant, for years and years and years, waiting for a Time Lord to show up and activate it, which is what Athena did. She landed on Cunodys, and there was a time traveler on the planet, and the signal activated. A beat of four. A Time Lord heartsbeat. So deep in the recesses of her mind, and we don’t really use psychic links, not links as deep as that, any of us, and I certainly never made you lot look into the Vortex or anything that would open up those parts of your minds, so she didn’t notice it. What she noticed was that she was time skipping, but that was just a side effect, an unintended side effect, Gallifrey trying to grab hold through the time lock, pulling her through the other worlds, the real necessity was the heartsbeat of four in her head, they were using that to figure out where they could break through, but what they needed, as well, was a physical link, having planted the signal on Cunodys wasn’t enough, they needed a physical link.” He held up the white-point star. “Which is what we have: the physical link.”
“A triangulated signal, you said,” Brem pointed out. “We have Athena and we have the white-point star, what’s the third point of the signal?”
The Doctor thought, pausing for a moment in his circling of the console, frowning off into space. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Something on Gallifrey. It would have to be on Gallifrey, the third point of the signal. Something or someone. Could be the Lord President of the High Council maybe. Actually, probably. Anyway.” The Doctor resumed pacing. “Doesn’t matter. Because what we’ve learned is the important thing.”
“What’s that?” Matt asked, when no one else seemed inclined to.
“We could cut the signal,” said the Doctor. “We could destroy the white-point star and cut the signal here and now, and Gallifrey would go back to the time lock.”
“So why don’t we?” said Matt.
“Because it would kill Athena,” said Brem. “She’s part of the signal now, if we cut it, she gets pulled into the time lock, too.”
“Well, then, that’s not an option,” said Matt. When he was met with silence, he said again, urgently, “It’s not an option, right?”
“No,” answered the Doctor. “It’s not an option.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. “But it should be an option. I can’t have Gallifrey escape from the time lock.”
“Why not?” demanded Matt. “So you don’t get along with these Gallifreyan people, so what? Every family has a black sheep, that doesn’t mean-”
“D’you think I’d kill my daughter because I don’t feel like having to make awkward small talk at a family reunion?” snapped the Doctor. “It isn’t just Gallifrey in the time lock. It isn’t just Gallifrey escaping from the time lock. It’s the entire Time War. Not just the Daleks, but the Star of Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never Weres. That’s what’s opening, right above this planet, the destruction of the universe right above us, because we can’t stop it, we Time Lords, we never could, we were losing the Time War, it’s why I time-locked it in the first place. Hell is descending upon us, and I could stop it, right now.” The Doctor took a deep breath. “And I won’t, because it would kill my daughter, and I would rather destroy the entire universe than harm a hair on any of your heads, and they know that!” he shouted, suddenly furious.
Silence fell and stretched, and Matt had the impression that no one in the TARDIS knew what to say. The Doctor, breathing heavily through his nose, began moving around his console, pressing buttons and turning dials and flipping levers. Everyone watched him.
“There’s an old Earth saying, kids,” he said, finally, watching his hands as they danced over the controls. “A phrase of great power, and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need.”
“What’s that, then?” asked Fortuna.
“Allons-y,” said the Doctor, fiercely, and brought his mallet down on the final button. The TARDIS jerked into motion, and Matt grabbed onto a strut to keep from falling over. “Here’s something I never thought I’d say,” continued the Doctor, furiously spinning a wheel. “Kids? We’re going to visit Gallifrey.”
***
Gallifrey did not look like what she had thought it would look like. She had seen mental images in her father’s mind, had examined the few paintings the family had of the planet. It was supposed to be blood-red mountains capped with bright white snow, an orange sky and shimmering silver trees, a city enclosed in a dome. There was none of that. The city looked ragged and destroyed, lacking its dome, and she stood in the spire they had brought her to and stared out the window at an orange-skied planet that was smoking with destruction. Crashed spaceships littered the ground beyond the city, so thick you would have thought they served as the planet’s soil. The war, she thought. The war they had been losing.
“The High Council wants to talk to you,” said the Master, coming into the room. He looked displeased, and she wondered what had transpired to make him look that way.
“About what?” she asked. “I don’t hear this heartsbeat thing the rest of you hear.” She didn’t. And her brain was being so assaulted now by the thoughts of all the Time Lords on this planet that she felt exhausted. She couldn’t understand how her father had dealt with all these thoughts all the time.
The Master didn’t answer, just turned and walked out of the room, and she followed him, feeling it would be inevitable that she would have to talk to this High Council anyway, so she might as well get it over with. There were guards everywhere in the building. Or maybe they were soldiers, from the Time War going on outside. The entire place had a feeling of desperation hanging over it. A war they were losing, thought Athena again, and she thought of her father, possessing the Moment, the means to end it all, and doing it. She didn’t blame him.
She followed the Master over a walkway that drifted high over a chasm of space. It had no sides, and she wondered if they had been lost. She wondered what would happen if she leaped over the edge. They walked through a pair of double doors into a conference room with dramatically dim lighting, with a table around which a number of dour-looking people in red were sitting, and the one at the head of the table looked at her and smiled and said, “Ah. The Doctor’s daughter. Good.”
Athena said nothing. She looked at him and resisted the urge to re-tie her ponytail.
“I am the Lord President of the Gallifreyan High Council,” he announced to her, grandly. “What are you called?”
Athena considered, and then decided no harm could really come of it. “Athena,” she said.
“Athena?” There was a murmur around the table. “What sort of a name is that? Knowing your father, it’s probably Earth-based, isn’t it?”
“Athena,” she said, “is the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, industry, justice, skill, and heroic endeavor.”
“Earth-based,” said the Lord President. “Predictable. I suppose your mother is human.”
“My mother is part-human, part-Bad-Wolf.”
“Bad Wolf,” echoed the Lord President. “And what is that?”
Athena just smiled.
The Lord President frowned and changed the subject. “What has your father told you about the Time War?”
“That you’re losing.”
“We are losing nothing,” thundered the Lord President at her. “We are merely changing the rules by which this war is being fought. We are changing the definition of the victory.”
“Convenient,” said Athena.
“See, I told you, just like her father,” sighed the Master. “Nothing for it.”
“We are going to ascend,” the Lord President went on, “to become creatures of consciousness itself. Free of these bodies. Free of time and cause and effect. We will end time. We will cause all creation to cease to be.”
Athena stared at him in horror. “You’re…utterly mad.”
“No. We can simply see things, in a way you and your feeble-minded father never could.”
“It’s suicide,” said Athena. “Surely you see that.” She looked to the Master. “It’s suicide,” she repeated.
“It is victory,” proclaimed the Lord President.
“Yeah, you can say that as pompously as you like, it isn’t going to change the fact that it’s suicide. You’re going to destroy the entire universe in a fit of pique because you’re losing the war?”
“If we lose the war, the entire universe will be destroyed,” returned the Lord President.
“Yes. Which is why my father time-locked the entire thing.”
“Your father,” snapped the Lord President, breathing heavily now, because clearly she had touched upon a sore subject, “committed murder on an unprecedented scale. He stole the most powerful weapon any species has ever created, and he used it for his own selfish purposes.”
“You say ‘potato,’” said Athena.
“What?” The Lord President looked perplexed. “What riddle is this?”
“Ah, it’s an old Earth saying, so of course you wouldn’t know it.”
“What does it mean?” he persisted.
“It means she disagrees,” inserted the Master, and then to Athena, “They’re not Gershwin fans.”
A sudden ripple of reaction flowed over every Time Lord in the room except for Athena. She watched, curiously, as they each started in surprise, and then the members of the High Council began murmuring to each other. Athena, perplexed, was startled when the double doors behind her were abruptly thrown open. She turned in alarm, backing away quickly as a small army of guards marched in and then fell back, revealing, in the middle of them all, her father, hair carefully mussed and tie knotted to just the right level of casualness, hands in his pockets and smile on his face, as he looked at the frowning table of High Council members and offered, cheerfully, “Hello.”
Next Chapter