How Fortuna Saved the Universe (22/24)

[earlgreytea68]

Title - How Fortuna Saved the Universe (22/24)
Author - earlgreytea68   
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, the Master, OCs
Spoilers - Through "A Christmas Carol," just to be safe.
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 - Fortuna gets her story. And it's pretty timey-wimey.
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin, chicklet73 , and lorelaisquared , who all talked through plot points and gave early drafts once-overs. And, last but not least, everlasting thanks to chicklet73 for beta-ing, with flair.    

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 - Ch. 15 - Ch. 16 - Ch. 17 - Ch. 18 - Ch. 19 - Ch. 20

 

Chapter Twenty-One

Fortuna left Brem preparing his TARDIS and listening to their father’s instructions (or lecture, if you were going to ask Brem for the characterization he would later use in his journal) and walked into her TARDIS. Sylvain was still in the captain’s seat. His eyes were closed, and for a moment she thought he might be asleep, until he said, “I really hope you’re here to tell me. I really hope you weren’t going to do it and just not tell me.”

“How long have you known?” she asked him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Since you were so unhappy by Cardiff Bay. And then I realized what I’d said, about needing to undo the pivotal moment before the chrono-trap. That was us, wasn’t it? The pivotal moment. We can save the universe, but we have to lose each other to do it.”

“We’ll lose each other anyway, Sylvain,” she said, softly, and it seemed to echo around the cavernous control room.

“You’re going to tell me that this isn’t my fault, either. Which isn’t quite true, because if I had managed to convince my brother, then we wouldn’t have to do this.”

She walked over to the captain’s seat. “And if I hadn’t let myself be manipulated into chasing you—”

“Then none of this would have happened.”

“It’s not going to happen anyway,” she said, looking down at him and trying to freeze the memory of him into her brain.

“You’re going to remember me,” he said. “You exist outside all of this, you’ll remember all of it.”

“But I’m not supposed to chase you, Sylvain. I’m not supposed to chase my future, that’s what caused all of this in the first place. Yes, there was a chrono-trap, but I’d weakened the timelines by letting myself be manipulated and—”

“Fortuna, do you know why you’re not supposed to chase your future?” he interrupted, evenly.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because sometimes, when you chase your destiny, you end up blocking your destiny.” He stood up and pulled a piece of paper out of his inside coat pocket, unfolding it. “Can I borrow a pen again?”

“What did you do with the last pen?”

“Lost it. I’m an inveterate pen-loser. Can you live with that?”

“Sylvain—” she sighed.

“A pen, please.” He waggled his hand at her playfully.

She sighed again and pulled one out of her pocket to give to her. He leaned over the console, placing the piece of paper down, and she recognized it.

“That’s my soufflé recipe.”

“It is,” he affirmed, scribbling something on the bottom of it. Then he straightened and folded the paper in half and then fourths and then eighths, the way it had been folded in his pocket. “When you run into me again, give me this.” He handed it to her.

“Sylvain, I’m going to undo the timeline. That means I’ll never have written this, and it means it’s going to disappear, cease to exist.”

“Time is funny. Time does strange things. You never know. And if it does disappear, tell me you know my mother’s escargot recipe. That will get my attention.”

She looked up at him helplessly. “How can you be so sure we’ll meet again?”

He leaned down, speaking into her ear. “When I met you, time stopped. We’ll meet again. Now. You can kiss me, but you’re not allowed to kiss me good-bye.”

She did it anyway. And he probably knew that, but he didn’t say anything. He let her kiss him good-bye, and he kissed her back the same way.

“What do you think vanishing from a timeline feels like?” he asked, heavily, resting his forehead against hers.

“I think I don’t want to be here when you find out,” she replied, in a small voice. “Is that okay? I’d just rather not…rather remember you…”

“Go,” he told her, and stepped back, and nodded once, firmly. “Absolutely go. Au revoir, Fortuna Tyler.” He sketched a small bow at her.

She licked her lips and opened her mouth. Not a single adequate phrase presented itself. So she turned and left him standing in her TARDIS. She closed the door behind her. Her family was busy preparing things, but the other strange witnesses to all this craziness were watching her, and she couldn’t bear it, so she walked into Brem’s TARDIS.

“Ready?” he asked her, gently, when she closed the door behind her.

She unfolded the soufflé recipe and read what he’d scribbled on the bottom of it. Sylvain –Take her for a drink. She folded it and tucked it into the top of her argyle sock. If ever she didn’t want something to get lost in her multi-dimensional pockets…

She looked over at Brem, who was waiting for her patiently by his console, and nodded. “Ready,” she said.

***

“Your TARDISes are all different colors,” the Master told him, when he stepped out of it. “I think that’s so adorable.”

The Doctor looked over his shoulder. He’d taken Athena’s TARDIS, and he’d come alone. He hadn’t wanted to fly the strange not-his-TARDIS, and he hadn’t wanted anyone around to witness this conversation.

He turned back to the Master. “I was going to come here and kill you,” he said, evenly. “You see, this is what you have done to my family today. First, you almost killed Athena.”

The Master looked alarmed. “Athena? But I…I’m sure I didn’t get Athena involved.”

“She’s pregnant. Or she was. She was carrying a child, who went into abject distress over not having any Time Lords around, and got so frantic that he almost killed his mother in the process. Luckily, Athena has a clever husband who saved both of them. If she didn’t, you would have killed her. And that’s what you did to the child of mine who I actually think you like. Do you see? Do you see what these stupid games do? All the ridiculous collateral damage, all because you don’t like me? And now you’ve gone and broken Fortuna’s heart. Fortuna, who is the kindest creature in the entire universe, and has stayed that way, through all the ridiculous mistakes I made with her, and she fell in love and she was happy and she’s going to have to erase all that, to stop your chrono-trap. It should be such a small casualty, in the scheme of things. A young girl’s heart. Except it’s my daughter’s heart, and I was ready to kill you for that, finally ready, after all that you’ve done, finally ready.”

The Master stared over at him, silent for a moment. Then he said,belligerently, “So? Why don’t you just do it, then? All that speechifying, you’re always all talk, no action.”

“Fortuna asked me not to. I think it’s possible, after all this, that she somehow feels sorry for you. That’s how nice she is. You broke her heart, and in response she asked me not to kill you. You’re so very lucky. So. Extraordinarily. Lucky.”

He took a step away and opened Athena’s TARDIS and then he looked back, at where the Master stood in a room in Versailles, and he felt extraordinarily calm, the sort of calm that comes from everything being crystalline, the sort of calm he hadn’t felt in a long time, the sort of calm that falls over a seashore just before the gale unleashes. It was apt, he’d thought, that the name for him had not been the Storm, but the Oncoming Storm, because he had never, in his most lethal moments, been the loud and showy violence of a hurricane. He had always been this, this tangible tension in the air, this soft and unnameable dread.  

He looked back at the Master and he thought it wasn’t his imagination that the Master looked scared. “All the same,” he said, his voice even and casual and terrifying, “if I were you, I would run.”

He stepped back onto Athena’s TARDIS, and he closed the door, and he did not look back.

***

“It’s not as well protected as I thought it would be,” Brem commented, as they stood in his still TARDIS and looked at Paris on the monitor. “I thought it’d be harder to get the TARDIS to land here, I thought the Master would have more defenses up.”

“He didn’t really want the world to end, you know,” Fortuna sighed. “He just wanted to make us remember that he’s still out there.”

“He could have sent a Christmas card,” Brem commented.

Fortuna actually managed a chuckle, and then quickly stopped, because she thought if she started to laugh she might finish by crying.

She looked up at Brem, who was watching her closely. “Go on,” she said. “It has to be done, go on.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, after a second, and then tugged on a strand of her hair, which was Brem-speak for I love you, you’re my beloved little sister, and I’d do anything to fix this for you.

Fortuna smiled at him tremulously and watched him walk to the door of his TARDIS, his heavy great-coat swinging around him.

“Brem,” she said, when he reached the door.

He looked back at her.

“When you write this up in your journal, I want you to title it something grand and amazing.” She smiled, as if she could somehow make this into some kind of playful joke.

“I’m going to title it ‘How Fortuna Saved the Universe,’” he responded, seriously, and then walked out of his TARDIS.

Fortuna, finally alone, sat down on his captain’s seat and drew herself into a ball and sobbed.

Next Chapter