A good deal more sober now that they were face to face–so to speak–with the enemy, the Doctor slowly descended the steps until he was standing on a metal grate almost directly above the vat where the Consciousness…well, rippled, really. Charley hung back a bit. Someone had to watch the Doctor’s back, after all.<\/p>\n
“I seek audience with the Nestene Consciousness under peaceful contract according to convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation,” he announced.<\/p>\n
The Consciousness let out a burbly roar, but as was usually the case when she’d spent a bit of time in the TARDIS, Charley understood as well as though it had been speaking perfect English.<\/p>\n
So did the Doctor. “Thank you. Then I might have permission to approach?”<\/p>\n
When the Consciousness indicated its cautious agreement, he stepped forward to the railing. “If I might observe, you infiltrated this civilization by means of warp shunt technology. So, may I suggest, with the greatest respect, that you shunt off?”<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Charley thought, perhaps talking his way out of a scrape was a talent restricted to her first version of the Doctor. Bad puns? Really? And he expected that to work?<\/p>\n
The Consciousness burbled indignantly this time, and Charley didn’t blame it. She felt rather the same way. Well, except for the part about it having some sort of constitutional right to invade. It must’ve gotten that bit from the Americans.<\/p>\n
“Oh don’t give me that, it’s an invasion! Plain and simple! Don’t talk about constitutional rights!”<\/p>\n
There was something oddly soothing about listening to the Doctor carry on an argument with a gigantic blob of…something. Most people likely would have found the experience a mite surreal, but for Charley it was confirmation that the leather-clad man was indeed the Doctor.<\/p>\n
The Nestene Consciousness, on the other hand, didn’t appear to find it at all soothing. It reared angrily, roaring something about having every right not to starve, but the Doctor cut it off sharply.<\/p>\n
“I am talking!” He allowed a sufficiently dramatic pause for the Consciousness to settle back down to a simmer before going on. “This planet is just starting. These stupid little people have only just learnt how to walk, but they’re capable of so much more. I’m asking you on their behalf: please, just go.”<\/p>\n
He was so engrossed in this plea that he didn’t notice two of the Autons creeping up behind. Charley barely noticed them herself, and not until they were nearly on top of the Doctor.<\/p>\n
“Doctor! Behind you!” she cried out a warning, but it was too late. The Autons seized him by both arms, holding him with mechanical implacability while one searched his pockets, producing at last the sonic screwdriver.<\/p>\n
“Let him go!” Charley leaped at them, onto the back of one of the Autons, but it shrugged her off as though she were no more than an inconvenience. She landed hard on the grating, the wind knocked solidly out of her. The Consciousness ignored her, too busy accusing the Doctor of being its enemy, despite his vehement protests to the contrary.<\/p>\n
Struggling to catch her breath and jump back into the fray, Charley was only peripherally aware of the conversation. Until the Doctor asked in a voice both bewildered and terrified, “What do you mean?”<\/p>\n
There was a noise above them, and Charley looked up to see the TARDIS revealed behind a panel of some sort, bathed in blinding white light as though to draw particular attention to it.<\/p>\n
The Doctor was almost babbling now, but not in the manner she was accustomed to. He was frightened, almost hysterical. “That’s not true. I should know; I was there. I fought in the War. It wasn’t my fault! I couldn’t save your world! I couldn’t save any of them!”<\/p>\n
He didn’t sound as though he expected to get out of there alive.<\/p>\n
Her own heart pounding with terror – for if the Doctor thought they were lost, what chance did they have? – Charley struggled to her feet.<\/p>\n
The Doctor looked at her, desperation like she’d never seen in his eyes. “It’s the TARDIS! The Nestene has identified its superior technology. It’s terrified! It’s going to the final phase. It’s starting the invasion! Get out, Charley! Just leg it! Now!”<\/p>\n
He’d given up. The world was ending, and the Doctor just wanted her to run away, to save herself. Charley could hardly believe what she was hearing. But this was the Doctor. He was the one who’d taught her that there was always a way. And she’d seen Earth’s future, she knew it wasn’t meant to fall to this monster and its army of mechanical men. Which had to mean they’d stopped it.<\/p>\n
The Consciousness writhed, energy waves like rings of light pulsing outwards and upwards. The signal.<\/p>\n
There wasn’t time to call UNIT, though heaven knew the Brigadier might’ve done so already when she’d failed to contact him with her findings. But even if he had, they’d likely never make it through the hordes of Autons to find this place, let alone reach it. Which meant if the Doctor had given up, then it was up to her to save them.<\/p>\n
He’d once said she made a better Time Lord than he himself did. They’d soon know if he were right.<\/p>\n
Charley took a deep breath, opening her throat to make sure her voice carried, and said sharply: “Stop this puerile squabbling at once! You sound like children, not fully grown representatives of two technologically advanced sentient species!”<\/p>\n
The Doctor shot her a wary look and the blob below them wobbled an appendage that might’ve been a face in her direction. Well, she had the Consciousness’ attention now, at least. Now to see if she could bluff it long enough for the Doctor to escape. “I see that allowing my assistant to conduct this negotiation was an error. It is not one that I will repeat.”<\/p>\n
The Consciousness seethed. And who was she that it ought to pay her any heed? it demanded.<\/p>\n
“My name is Charleyostientashus, and I am here representing the High Council of Gallifrey. You are disrupting the Web of Time by your presence: a thing we cannot and will not allow!”<\/p>\n
“Charley, no,” the Doctor whispered urgently. It was too late, though: she was committed to the ruse, even if it meant she wouldn’t escape.<\/p>\n
“If you know the TARDIS, then you know what it means to face the might of Gallifrey. I advise you to depart peaceably while you still can.”<\/p>\n
The Nestene Consciousness laughed. The bloody thing laughed at her! Whatever fear it had shown a moment before seemed to have vanished, causing Charley’s face to burn hot with shame.<\/p>\n
Did she truly think it was so ignorant as that? the Consciousness taunted. Gallifrey’s might had died with Gallifrey.<\/p>\n
Gallifrey’s might died with Gallifrey.<\/em> It was everything Charley could do not to look at the Doctor for confirmation. Gallifrey, dead<\/em>? No…it couldn’t be. It couldn’t<\/em> be! They were the Time Lords. There was no race in the universe more powerful. She ought to know; it had taken beings from another<\/em> universe to truly threaten them before.<\/p>\n She didn’t dare turn, though. To do so would expose her ignorance, and any hope she had of her bluff being effective would fail. “Do you think it’s just for show that our people call ourselves Time<\/em> Lords?” she improvised instead. “That just because in your time, Gallifrey has ended, she cannot act just as easily from the past as the present or the future?”<\/p>\n When the Consciousness appeared to visibly pause, Charley felt a thrill of excitement. The Autons holding the Doctor loosened their hold just a little as well. She continued talking, even while one hand crept into her purse to discreetly withdraw the little vial of anti-plastic. “There are other worlds, just as rich in the resources you need, but uninhabited.”<\/p>\n She uncapped the stopper and palmed the vial so the Doctor could see it but the Consciousness could not. Since she daren’t look at him, though, she could only hope he’d caught her drift.<\/p>\n He did. Throwing off the Autons in the moment of the Consciousness’ distraction, he leaped forward, seizing the vial from her hand and hurling it over the railing. The midnight blue liquid sizzled as it struck the Consciousness below. The creature shrieked as cracks of light appeared in its surface and the foundations around them began to quake.<\/p>\n Casting only a brief glance in the direction of his handiwork, the Doctor proclaimed cheerfully, “Now we’re in trouble!” He grabbed Charley’s hand and the two of them raced up the stairs to the TARDIS. The grating collapsed behind them, fireballs erupting from above and below both.<\/p>\n Once the TARDIS door closed behind them, Charley let out a breath she’d not known she was holding. She grabbed hold of a strut as the Doctor raced to the console and began throwing switches, then a few rumbling moments later everything went still.<\/p>\n Only then did Charley open her eyes and look at the Doctor. “Did we do it?” she asked.<\/p>\n “Yup,” was the brisk answer. “With the Nestene Consciousness dead, all those Autons will go back to being what they were before it arrived. Ordinary plastic.”<\/p>\n She shivered. It had been close, though. Probably closer than she knew. She’d managed to buy the Doctor just time enough, but even that had nearly failed. The Consciousness’ words came back to her in a rush.<\/p>\n “Doctor, what did it mean, ‘Gallifrey’s might died with Gallifrey’?” Charley blurted. “Gallifrey can’t<\/em> be dead.”<\/p>\n “And you’re the authority on what can and can’t be?” he answered harshly, not looking at her. He was looking anywhere but at her, which was an answer in itself.<\/p>\n Charley started to shake. “Romana? Leela? K-9?”<\/p>\n “Dead.” The word was as clipped as though he’d physically cut it off with his teeth. “All dead.”<\/p>\n “How?” it came out as a whisper.<\/p>\n For the first time, the Doctor met Charley’s eyes. Suddenly she understood why he seemed to have changed so much. “There was a War,” he answered simply. “A War that stretched across time and space. Against the Daleks.”<\/p>\n “And you lost.”<\/p>\n “Everybody lost.” He was silent for a long moment. Charley could almost feel him weighing how much to tell her. “My people went mad towards the end. They resurrected Rassilon. Downloaded his consciousness from the Matrix, built a new body, complete with a whole new set of regenerations.”<\/p>\n She was shivering uncontrollably now. Rassilon. The founder of Time Lord society, who’d been a bigot and a despot so vile, he’d tried to use the Doctor’s efforts to save both her and the universe to wipe out whole species that didn’t meet with his approval. If he’d been so dangerous as a memory stored in a computer, she didn’t want to imagine what he could have done as flesh and blood.<\/p>\n “I can’t believe Romana would allow such a thing,” Charley said numbly.<\/p>\n The Doctor shook his head. “She wouldn’t. She didn’t.” He offered no further details, but he didn’t need to. Charley knew now that the Lady President she had met had died long before her world, and no doubt Leela and K-9 had both perished in her defense.<\/p>\n “I had to stop them.” Charley wasn’t sure who the Doctor was trying to convince, her or himself. “There was no one else left who could.”<\/p>\n The Doctor – her Doctor, who couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice her<\/em>, even when it seemed the only way – had destroyed his own people to save the universe? It was appalling: not the act itself so much as the fact that he’d found himself in a place where there truly was no other option. For if there had been, she knew him too well to believe he wouldn’t have found it.<\/p>\n He’d have sacrificed himself first, if he could.<\/p>\n The Doctor dropped his eyes again, turning his attention back to the TARDIS console. “I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”<\/p>\n Charley didn’t hesitate. “Doctor, I meant what I said earlier. As far as I’m concerned, I am home.”<\/p>\n He bristled. “I’m not some puppy dog that needs looking after lest it start to chew on the furniture.”<\/p>\n Aren’t you?<\/em> Charley thought, studying him. The Doctors she’d known before, she’d have trusted the fate of the universe to his hands without thought or hesitation. This one, she wasn’t quite so sure about. Especially not now she knew why he seemed so damaged. “Look, I admit: at the time I wrote that letter, I had every intention of leaving, but…”<\/p>\n “But?” he echoed when she hesitated.<\/p>\n “Things changed,” Charley answered simply. She didn’t know why he didn’t remember their last adventure together – his last adventure with her, rather – but ultimately what did it matter? He hadn’t died, at least not permanently, as she’d thought he had. That was the important thing. The same couldn’t be said for too many people she’d come to know and care for while travelling with him.<\/p>\n “So, what then?” the Doctor asked, his voice bordering on snide. “You gonna stay with me forever?”<\/p>\n “No,” Charley answered carefully. She studied his face and was surprised to discover that the sneer didn’t hurt as much as it once would have. Whether it was because he wore a different face or because she’d just grown up, she didn’t know. “I don’t think you would really want me to. I’ve seen how you deal with the mortality of your companions.” Or rather, how he didn’t<\/em> deal with it, but she’d opened that wound enough as is.<\/p>\n He looked away for a moment, back to the console.<\/p>\n “But you have to know,” she insisted. “That I would never leave you when you really needed me.”<\/p>\n “And you think I need you now, do you?”<\/p>\n Charley looked at him, heard the silent corollary to his words in what he wasn’t saying, and answered both questions. “I know you do.”<\/p>\n Another long silence stretched between them, reminding Charley a little too vividly of that endless white corridor where they’d found themselves when they first arrived in the divergent universe. This silence seemed just as oppressive, yet the possibility of speech equally dangerous. They might not inadvertently spawn a sentient being made entirely of sound who wanted them to sacrifice themselves so it could survive, but that didn’t mean there was no danger of monsters.<\/p>\n Then as suddenly as though none of it had ever happened, the Doctor was in motion again: toggling levers and pressing buttons on the TARDIS console. “Best be off, then.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A good deal more sober now that they were face to face–so to speak–with the enemy, the Doctor slowly descended the steps until he was standing on a metal grate almost directly above the vat where the Consciousness…well, rippled, really. … Continue reading