![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68) wrote2010-06-09 10:13 pm
Something About Stars (16/20)
Author -
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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 - Ch 14
Chapter Fifteen
Brem, on the monitor, watched the guards lead his father away, and then turned immediately to Fortuna. “You need to keep this TARDIS moving,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Keep materializing and de-materializing, all over this building. We’re sitting ducks with them watching us like this, we need to keep them on their toes.”
“They can’t get in, can they?” asked Mum. “Your father said the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan can’t get through those doors.”
“No, they can’t get in. But, right now, we can’t get out. And I need to be able to get out. So we need to keep this TARDIS moving, so that there’ll eventually be a time when I’ll be able to slip out, but they’ll be so confused that I’ll be able to go undetected for a little while.”
“Slip out?” echoed his mother. “You mean to say you’re going out there, too?”
“Yes,” he answered, shortly. “In a little while. I need to find something first. Can you keep it moving, Fort?”
“Got it covered,” she answered, already inputting the de-materialization sequence.
Brem nodded once, then turned and marched out of the control room. His mother and Matt followed on his heels.
“Your father is going to do something incredibly stupid,” said his mother. “I should never have let him go.”
“Of course he’s going to do something incredibly stupid,” said Brem. He was walking swiftly down the central hallway of the TARDIS, throwing open doors as he went, working to think past and through the profusion of Time Lord thoughts overcrowding his head. “That’s what he does. He does incredibly stupid things because he doesn’t trust any of the rest of us to help him. So, rather than wasting precious time and energy fighting him, I figure we ought to just let him go and work to save him from here.”
“No,” retorted Mum. “Now you’re going to go do something stupid, and I’m going to have to save all of you.”
“I’m not going to do something stupid,” said Brem. “I have a plan.” Brem threw open another door, stuck his head inside for a moment, and then withdrew it and continued on his way. “Not in there.”
“What are you looking for?” asked his mother, frustrated.
Brem paused and looked at her and answered, “The Moment.”
***
“Can’t quite say I like what you’ve done with the place,” said the Doctor, into the cold, silent fury of the Time Lords ringed around the table in front of him. He began wandering, along the dark edges of the conference room. No one made a move to stop him. “I liked it better before, you know, all the death and destruction. Welllllll, okay, let’s be honest, I never really liked it here, but you’ve got to admit that now it’s all a bit…” He paused, wrinkling his nose as he looked around. “Dingy.” He’d worked his way closer to the Lord President, and he smiled at him. “My Lord President. It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it? Lifetimes for me, literally. And as for you, wellllllll, oh, that’s right.” His voice turned cold. “Time doesn’t exist in a time lock, does it?” He turned to Athena. “How’s your head?” he asked, gently, studying her closely. She looked a bit dazed by everything, which was understandable, but otherwise okay.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He winked at her, then turned back to the Lord President. “Alright, then. Let’s bargain, shall we?”
The Lord President looked openly amused. “You think we’re going to bargain with you over her?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “I do.”
“You are in no position to bargain,” the Lord President informed him.
“Yes. True. Correctamundo.” He winced. “Except for the fact that I have this.” He held up the white-point star. “Oh, and this.” He held up the sonic screwdriver. “And, you see, there’s a setting on this—” he waved the sonic screwdriver about—“that will destroy this.” He waved the white-point star about. “So.” His smile was brittle and did not come anywhere close to reaching his eyes as he glared at the Lord President and pressed the sonic screwdriver up against the white-point star. “Shall we bargain, my lord?”
The Lord President was busy glaring at the Master. “You told us he didn’t have it!”
“Well, he told me he didn’t!” the Master defended himself, and then said to the Doctor, “You lied to me!”
“Shocking, isn’t it? You and I are usually so honest with each other.”
“But why didn’t you destroy it as soon as you found it?” asked the Master, confused.
“I considered it. A white-point star that shouldn’t exist. I seriously considered destroying it. But then I thought that maybe I ought to figure out exactly why it was existing before I destroyed it. Contrary to popular opinion about me, I don’t just destroy things willy nilly.” He frowned. “Pell mell? Which expression do you prefer there? I can’t decide.”
“Well, it was very lucky for you that you didn’t destroy the white-point star, wasn’t it, my Lord Doctor?” inserted the Lord President. “Because you know what happens if you destroy the white-point star, don’t you?” His eyes slid to Athena, and then back to him. “You won’t do it,” he said, softly. “You’ll never do it.”
“Once upon a time, I sent a large number of beings I cared about into a time lock to save the universe. What makes you think I won’t do it again?”
“Cared about us? Did you? Your thoughts pulse with love for her, my Lord Doctor. You will never be able to wipe out her existence. I think you would rather kill yourself, wouldn’t you? It’s why you’re here, begging to bargain. This,” said the Lord President, looking delighted, “has turned out to be even better than we planned. Because we planned this, you know. There was a prophecy, that you would do it. And once you had stolen the Moment, it became very clear to all of us what you intended to do with it. But you delayed, didn’t you? You stole it, and then you didn’t use it.”
“Because I was…” The Doctor cut himself off, wondering why he was bothering to defend himself, still.
“No, please, my Lord Doctor. Continue.” The Lord President lifted his hands expansively.
“Because I was giving you a chance. I was giving you a chance to turn back from the path you were taking. Do you think I enjoyed it, sending all of you off into a time lock? Do you think I would have done it, had you left me any other choice? But the timelines were coalescing into a future of nothing. It was like discovering a flat planet and hurtling headlong over the edge into an abyss. Did you think I would just let you do that? Destroy everything? You left me no choice.”
“It was not destruction, my Lord Doctor,” retorted the Lord President. “You never understood that. Think like a Time Lord for once. It was an opportunity to go beyond time. To exist on a higher plane.”
“Yes, that’s the problem with me,” the Doctor agreed. “I’ve always kind of liked it on this plane. So does every other creature in the universe, really.”
“The prophecy was that two would survive,” the Lord President continued, as if the Doctor had not spoken. “You, it was obvious, as the user of the Moment, you would survive the Moment. And my Lord Master.” The Lord President’s eyes cut over to the Master. “Our most infamous child, meant to be the bringer of our salvation.”
The Doctor looked at the Master. “How did you survive the Moment?”
“He was human,” the Lord President answered for him. “Seeing the loss of the Time War, not trusting in the promise of the higher plane of existence, doubting,” the Lord President spat out, “he erased what made him a Time Lord, and became human.”
“They were acting a bit mad, back then,” murmured the Master.
“And that’s saying something, coming from you,” remarked the Doctor. “So the Moment didn’t know you should be in the time lock with the rest of the Gallifreyans. It didn’t know you were Gallifreyan.”
The Master said nothing but he looked back at the Doctor.
“Where’ve you been all this time?” asked the Doctor, perplexed.
“On Cunodys, of course,” the Lord President once again answered for the Master. “He was here. On Cunodys.”
“A human? On Cunodys? Only Ood live here.”
“They are not Ood anymore, my Lord Doctor, surely you have noticed. Their rate of evolution was exponentially increased, for obvious reasons.”
“Oh,” said the Doctor, realizing. And then again, “Oh. Yes. You needed them. The most telepathic race in the universe, the Ood. What else could keep a signal alive from beyond a time lock? You needed the most telepathic race in the universe. But you needed them to evolve, you needed them to advance, you needed them to come in touch with a time traveler.”
“It was supposed to be me,” said the Master, sulkily. “But by the time the stupid human me thought to open the pocket watch, your interfering offspring had already stolen the signal and the white-point star.”
“What took you so long intercepting Brem that day? We didn’t know about you, you could have taken the advantage.”
“I got there as quickly as I could,” retorted the Master. “It’s not like I have magical flying superpowers or something.”
“You see, the prophecy didn’t predict that you would procreate,” interjected the Lord President. “But it is so obvious to all of us now that you would. Recreate the race in your own image, that’s always what you wanted, wasn’t it? So you get all of us out of the way, and you recreate the Time Lord race, while we languish in a time lock. For crimes against the greater good of Gallifrey, you will pay.”
“How are you going to punish him for crimes on a higher plane of existence?” demanded the Master.
“Silence!” thundered the Lord President, looking annoyed.
“So you planted a drumbeat of four in the Ood,” said the Doctor.
“The heartsbeat of a Time Lord, calling from the time lock,” agreed the Lord President.
“Yes, yes, let’s try to go over this without the poetical flourishes,” said the Doctor. “You planted the drumbeat—signal point one. Athena went to Cunodys, activated the signal, kept activating it more and more strongly each time she went there, and you lot kept trying to lock onto her position, but all you were doing was dragging her through parallel universes, trying to get her to one where you could reach her.”
“If it had been my Lord Master,” said the Lord President, sounding frustrated, “the way it was supposed to have been, he would have known to increase the signal’s strength. But, instead, the girl didn’t even know she was carrying a signal.”
“Yeah, that’s because I didn’t traumatize my children by scraping open their minds by forcing them to look at the Untempered Schism. I was trying some radical new child-rearing techniques this time around.”
“Did you still teach them parallel quark alternator geometry?” asked the Master. “Because I hated that subject.”
“Yeah, and I never understood it, so I kind of skipped it on the home-schooling curriculum,” replied the Doctor.
“Enough!” shouted the Lord President, very clearly furious now.
“Sorry,” said the Doctor. “Didn’t mean to get distracted there. Where were we? Yes. Athena triggered the signal, you kept dragging her through parallel universes, eventually, just based on the sheer length of time she was carrying the signal, it got strong enough for the white-point diamond to plummet out of the time-lock limbo and land on Cunodys, where you’d thrown it before I used the Moment, am I right so far?”
“Of course. You know how a triangulated signal works, my Lord Doctor.”
“I do. So who’s the third point, my Lord President?” The Doctor looked at him evenly. “Is it you?”
There was a moment of silence. The Lord President said, “I’ve had enough of this. You will surrender the white-point star, my Lord Doctor, or the girl dies.”
“You can’t kill her. She’s one of the three most important things on this planet right now.”
“Have it your way, then,” snapped the Lord President. “Surrender the white-point star, or we’ll kill you.”
“Before or after I destroy the white-point star?” asked the Doctor, sonic screwdriver still pressed against the white-point star.
“You’ll never do it,” said the Lord President, smugly.
They stared at each other in silence.
And then, from out of nowhere, came Brem’s voice. “Sorry, can I turn up the lights?” he said, and the Doctor looked around him, startled, and then lights started turning on, all around the chamber. Brem was standing on a balcony overlooking the room, aiming his sonic screwdriver at light after light, as they flipped on with loud, echoing booms of effort, and the Doctor realized that the room had been dark because Gallifrey barely had enough energy to run its lights anymore. “There,” said Brem, when the last light was on. “Better.” Sonic screwdriver still loosely clasped in his hand, he leaned his hands against the balcony’s railing, crossing one of his calves across the other jauntily, toe just touching the ground. His coat was open, falling heavily and dramatically around him, and he smiled down at the Time Lords gaping up at him and said, “Hi. Mind if I crash this particular party?”
The guards looked around uncertainly, as if they couldn’t determine whether or not they were supposed to kill this new arrival. The Doctor watched the Lord President narrow his eyes, calculating.
“I have something important to tell you lot,” continued Brem, conversationally, leaning forward now so that his lower arms were resting on the balcony’s railings. “First, this building’s falling down around your ears, have you noticed?”
“Shoot him,” snapped the Lord President.
Brem straightened and held up his hands. “Alright, I’ll get to the point. Which is this. You’re not exactly in the position of power you think you are.”
“Why? Because your father has the white-point star? He’ll never use it.”
Brem looked over at the Doctor, meeting his eyes. The Doctor stared, wondering what he could possibly be up to. Brem looked back at the Lord President. “You’re probably right about that. My father’s always been very squeamish about killing people, it’s one of his more annoying qualities, I admit.”
The Lord President looked as if he didn’t know whether to be impressed by Brem’s intelligence or suspicious that he was being played.
“So here’s your bigger problem,” said Brem, reaching into his pocket and pulling something out of it. “My father has the white-point star. But I have the Moment.”
Next Chapter
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Page 2 of 2