Rassilon had asked, not long ago, if he mightn't take a look at that amulet that Jeff had taken off of Soze, the one that had allowed their minds to connect, however briefly, despite any and all mental shielding. A gift from a daemon, the others had said. Now, Rassilon had no truck with the supernatural, but he did know from otherdimensional beings and the kind of shenanigans they pulled, and he figured he'd feel a lot safer after he put the thing through a full analysis.
So he sat waiting patiently, now, in his laboratory, a place filled with machines whose purpose most other people could only guess at.
Every once in a while, Rassilon can make the inner laboratory accessible to beings who don't blithely sidestep through time the way he and his son and consort do. This is one such occasion, as he creates a dimensional pathway, then dims the light.
He'd promised Jon's head would be kept safe and out of sight.
So it was that Rassilon took it to a room in his laboratory, dimly lit save for the glow of various machines. Green light. It lent everything a murky emerald monochromaticism that somehow fit the still, sombre mood.
He carefully set the head in its gravity bubble in a stasis generator. Silently, he passed the fingers of one hand through a hardlight command sequencer--a specific pattern, like plucking the strings of a harp, half physical coded input, half telepathic. Gallifreyan technology always had been half art or half music or some unearthly combination thereof.
A ring of green energy spun around the head, replacing the gravity bubble, joined by another, then another, multiplying and spinning in countless directions until they formed a sphere. Reality seemed to blink in that instant, then continue.
The ice hadn't even started to melt.
Jonathan's head hung now in temporal stasis, caught in a nanosecond, preventing neural decay, awaiting the collection of the rest of his body. Still dead, but possessed of a glimmer of hope at life in the future.
Rassilon lightly touched another control and the green bubble, head and all, sank slowly into an opaque, protected sphere. There it would wait, shielded from everything.
Only then did he allow himself to weep. For Some, devastated at the loss of a love so powerful that his mind, for once, had resonated something readable. For Jeff, overwhelmed and stricken. And most of all, for Jonathan, deprived of the chance to win the struggle he'd been finally coming somewhere near to winning.
"Because we never really know each other as well as we think, in response to this post I'd like you to ask a question. Anything about which you are curious, anything you feel you ought to know about me. Silly, serious, personal, fannish. Ask away. Then copy this to your own journal, and see what people don't know about you."
The last part is not required, but feel free to do so if you wish. You're also free to ask multiple questions. Make sure that the questions are IC.
Feel free to ask anything of any of my characters:
A completely natural birth and probably the worst kind to have for a species who hadn't done the childbirth thing for several thousand years. Poor Kiam had started the labour racked with pain and terror--which had given over quickly enough to a healthy rage, no matter how many telepathic techniques Rassilon employed in attempt to divert the physical pain (rather foolishly to himself since he could think of nowhere else to direct its energies), maintain psychic balance, and generally ease the process. Festooned with everything from antediluvian Gallifreyan neuroresonancing rings to stones and objects carved with meditation symbols from seven planets to the spiral-chased stone weights he'd only recently acquired, he tried everything he could think of.
It was probably the only thing that stopped her killing him.
Yes, Omega was born yesterday, and it was quite the ordeal for all concerned.
To-day, however, the bedroom is filled with Ferulian orchids. And Rassilon himself is somewhere on the bed, dead asleep.
I believe there's an internet vernacular that applies here.
HALP.
I've had spectacularly esoteric demands made upon me for food (Unicorn? There's only one in all the multiverses! And I sincerely doubt it'd be a good idea to EAT IT!), I've had things thrown at me for the most incomprehensible of reasons (Never has the subject of interior decorating come to violence anywhere except in the Grand Palace on Myzymyris Minor), and I don't think I can survive another round of Guess My Mood In The Next .02 Seconds And Don't You Dare Use Telepathy.
I love her, but I'm afraid she's going to kill me....
Rassilon had spent the last three of them unconscious, save for a few confused moments of semiawakeness. During those, it was enough of an achievement to get him focussed enough to drink something. He did so without a murmur of protest, despite the periods of hallucinatory thrashing he would sometimes experience on the cusp of such awakenings.
He was still cold, though the shivering had ceased as though he were simply too weary for it to continue. He still breathed, his hearts still beat. His face, however pale, was not grey. But an odd rash had started on his fingers, spreading up his hands, wrists, and forearms as this malady progressed. Odd, round, clear bumps. Where they grew over veins, the veins looked noticably dark. It didn't appear to cause him any pain, but that didn't worry Kiam any less, and though her medical knowledge was scant at best, she cared for it as best she could, wrapping his hands and arms with bandages. She began to despair for his life. Wondered if she shouldn't venture into this Nexus to seek help, any kind of help.
Then, on the evening of the seventh day, something changed.
She'd been sitting next to him, reading, letting the words run though her mind and around his, when the muffled miasma of dark, incomprehensibly shifting, sharp-wire-tendrilled energy started to fade, sucked away, pulling itself into curves and lines, spirals and circles. Its unspeakable sounds faded, replaced by the familiar perspectives of the infinite whirling gears of time. The red, horribly pulsing mind-lines cooled. Spread. Became green. Darkness became blinding light.
Kiam put the book down for a moment and leaned over, placing a soft kiss on Rassilon's forehead. Still too cool. But that will change. She pushed wild, thick locks of red hair from his forehead and his eyes flickered open for only a moment. They were green again, though the black had moved to the whites, now, as though receding.
"Welcome back," she whispered, her mind gently touching his.
He was too weary even for coherent thought, but she could feel his mind curl round hers, the way it was supposed to be again, before his eyes slipped shut and he fell into a dreamless sleep.
It's been a few days, now, but it's felt like longer. He can almost feel it eating away at him, his strength waning the longer he has to keep this sheilding up to protect his own mind from the thin, sharp pulsing wires and tendrils of chaos as well as to protect everyone else from its drifting, seeping influence. Double-shielding. Psionics doesn't come easily, now.
He's gone cold, now, or maybe it's the rest of the world that's gone cold, inhospitable to this influence he carries that leaves him twitching, stomach full of black nausea and red lines in his head one moment; hyperaware and ravenously hungry another. It's always cold, though, now, no matter what else, and after a while he finds he can do nothing more than curl under blankets.
Every time he falls asleep, he tumbles into the Dreamlands, unable to control this aspect of his power. While he's there, Rassilon finds himself lost, and occasionally ends up chased by cats, swarmed by zoogs, reality-displaced, swept into rivers, or tumbled down hills. He doesn't wake up feeling rested at all, and often feeling even worse.
A thought comes to him, though, as he hides under the blankets in his home, now, that exposure to all of this barely controlled miasma of the Great Old Ones' influence must surely be why Omega turns out so immune to its various manifestations later.
His consciousness wavers in and out. Most of the time, he's barely aware of Kiam's presence as she stays by his side, tries to keep him warm, coaxes him to eat. He's simply too tired. He wonders how much longer this will last.
He finds himself apologising profusely. Kiam tells him there's nothing to apologise for. He can't remember half of what he's apologising for, but he's sure ... somewhere he must have done something wrong. Offended someone? Miscalibrated something? Mistook something for something else....?
"Been like this before," he mumbles, the present slipping. "Symbiotic nuclei... tests left me blood-poisoned for a ... fortnight...." His eyes flicker open for a moment, still depthless and black. They barely focus on Kiam. "Mmmm. What ... was I working on ... again?" His hand twitches toward her.
She rubs his hand between hers, her own warmth hopefully enough to combat the shivering cold that hasn't left him alone. A huge pile of blankets cover him, and she knows under those he's gotten worryingly thin. "The Station," she tells him. "And the Looms. Do you remember?"
"Nnnh. Looms. Progenitive cascades ... biogenic ... radiation...." his eyes slip shut again and he mumbles something she doesn't catch, lost to weariness and shifting memories. It isn't sleep his brain falls into now, but a sort of unconsciousness. A cold fever-state.
Kiam arranges the blankets around him a little better. There's nothing for it but to wait. Wait and hope he survives and listen to Omega's tiny, embryonic dreams.
