Ignite Your Bones 3/?
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, which belongs to the British Broadcasting Corporation
Ignite Your Bones
Note: The dialogue at the end this chapter is adapted from the actual episode The End of Time.
Part One
Part Two
It had been a confusing day for Donna Noble. All she wanted to do was go Christmas shopping with Shaun and sort out the holiday confusion involved with making plans with both his family and her family. Instead, the entire planet changed into clones of a madman, a man who told her she was going to die. The pain in her head was going to kill her.
Donna believed him. She would say she didn't know why she did, but there was a thought in the back of her mind, a foggy thought that was mostly locked away before it could form into a coherent one, that made her think the reason she was in so much pain was because a person like her shouldn't exist.
It was a similar thought that made Donna think the teleportation experience she was having was pretty terrible, not at all what she expected. Then again, how did she know she had experience with teleportation?
After what seemed like an eternity of feeling totally blank, Donna found herself in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by walls that looked like red and brown coral. Curious and bewildered, Donna automatically stepped forward, nearly tripping over the edge of the disc she didn't realize she was standing on.
A moment later, she heard something like an electrical buzz behind her and Donna turned around to see Halcyon.
"Good thing you stepped right then, because I forgot to tell you to move off the teleportation pad once you got here. We can't teleport anyone else if something is in the way," Halcyon said, stepping towards her. A bit too much into Donna's personal space, so she found herself stepping back as Halcyon stepped forward.
Halcyon turned and frowned at the disc on the floor. "I hope Lamar and Katja make it through."
And despite her confusion, frayed temper, and ebbing headaches, Donna felt her heart go out to the young woman, anxious for her siblings. "I'm sure they'll make it," Donna said, reaching out to pat Halcyon's arm awkwardly in an attempt to reassure her. "Perhaps we could go back and help-?"
"No, no," Halcyon said. "My priority is getting you back across Time before it locks you in," The young woman stepped back and gestured grandly at the walls around them. "Welcome to our little, underground base! Safely hidden from The Capitol, thanks to the interfering psychosignal technology. It's funny how one can make use of enemy technology during a war, isn't it, Donna Noble-?"
"Donna Noble?"
Both women turned to see an older gentleman in the same dark uniform leaning against what looked like a round table with a ridiculous array of knobs and buttons. There was a monitor above it with more of the circular patterns Donna recognized from the teleportation disk, but she couldn't try to understand them without making her headache worse.
"The Donna Noble?!" the man repeated, walking towards them.
"Sure, Baron, the Donna Noble," Halcyon said, smiling and gesturing with both arms at Donna Noble like she was some sort of game show prize. The man called 'Baron' stopped when he neared the two of them.
"Remarkable," the Baron said softly, not taking his eyes off Donna.
Donna was starting to feel like one of those partially successful celebrities, the ones she felt sorry for when she read about their derailing lives being torn apart in the tabloids.
"Take a picture, it'll last longer," Donna said, with all the snark she could muster.
"Oh, can I?!" the Baron asked, genuinely enthusiastic.
There was another electric buzz, and all three of them turned to see Katja on the teleportation disk.
And then Katja collapsed forwards onto the floor.
"Katja!" Halcyon cried, running for him.
Donna moved to follow, but the Baron reached for her arm to stop her.
"I think it's too late for him, Donna Noble," he said.
Donna's temper flared. "So you're just going to give up on him-?!"
The teleportation pad buzzed again. Lamar jumped down from the disk, moving to remove his sister from Katja's side. "Stand back, Hal, he-he's going to regenerate."
"What?!" Halcyon spun around, looking up at Lamar's grim face. "But he's so young-!"
"Halcyon, think about the time," Lamar said, glancing at Donna, before turning back to his sister, looking down at her meaningfully.
Halcyon visibly swallowed, stealing herself. She nodded, and walked back towards Donna.
"Come on, we have to go to the Circle," she said.
"But Katja-" Donna said, angry and frustrated.
"He'll...he'll be okay, he'll come talk to us soon. But for now we have to go," Halcyon started leading Donna away. Donna, startled by the strangled quality of Halcyon's voice, turned back as Halcyon pulled her down the corridor and saw Katja covered in a strange gold light. The Baron's arm was around Lamar's slumped shoulders as they watched.
There was something familiar about this too, something that made Donna afraid for Katja, and also very, very sad. Tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she did not know if it was the pain from her headache, or the feelings that felt like a memory, long forgotten.
"It's starting."
Golden light coruscating beneath the skin of his hands, over his long fingers.
She was afraid for her dearest friend and she didn't understand why.
Donna blinked back the tears that threatened to form during the flash of pain in her mind, and trudged on next to Halcyon. She was getting tired of the lack of answers she was getting from these people. Or lack of answers that made sense. But she knew they were genuinely trying to help her, even if she couldn't understand most of what was going on.
Also Donna thought being on an alien world, running for her life, and ending up in alien buildings with talkative aliens didn't seem as strange as it should have been.
And she wanted to help them. It was one of those situations where Donna knew she had to make the best out of the bad. Live in the moment. The world back home was falling apart, had been at war for a long while, and Donna knew what a toll it could take on a people. And when she thought about it, really thought about it, she was being helped by some of them, siblings, when they had an obligation to help their own people too, the ones shooting down flying saucers outside. Instead, Halcyon was leading Donna through the weirdest looking bunker she had ever seen.
The corridors had a twisting quality that that made no dimensional sense. Three right turns and you were supposed to be back where you started, right? It was almost like the coral rooms were shifting as they walked. And it seemed to go on, in all directions. There was also a mechanical humming that reminded Donna of something and yet nothing she could put her finger on.
"This place is huge. It must be under the whole desert plane," Donna said.
"No," Halcyon said, "It's just bigger on the inside." And then she went on describing the physics behind it. Something about "relative dimensions"...
They passed other people along the way, and to Donna's further annoyance and confusion, they reacted quite similarly to the Baron.
"Halcyon, you're back! So that must be-!"
"Is that who I think it is-?!"
"Donna Noble, as I live and breathe!"
"The Donna Noble?!"
"What are they all doing down here anyway?" Donna said crossly to Halcyon, "Isn't there a war outside or something?"
Halcyon smiled at her. "It's not every day you get to meet the woman that saved all of creation. Whole universes form around you. There's no one quite like you anywhere, anytime, Donna Noble."
Donna was ready to retort, but there was a flash of searing hot pain behind her eyes. Donna hissed and stumbled into the wall, shutting her eyes as though they could shut out the pain.
"Donna."
Donna blinked through her blurry vision. Halcyon had moved to stand in front of her. Donna looked down at the short woman and tried to smile. "Sorry," she said, "Normally I try to be the life of the party when I meet people for the first time, but I'm just so confused and worried, and my temper can get the better of me."
"That's okay," Halcyon said, with a small smile, but it didn't reach her eyes, "Gallifrey hasn't been much of a party town lately anyway."
Donna tried to smile back, but found the pain was getting worse again. "This isn't what it's normally like. Usually I get a headache once a day at the most. Now it just keeps coming back, ever since everyone on Earth changed into that git..." Donna stopped. She looked down at Halcyon.
"Halcyon, do you know why I didn't change? Like everyone else on Earth?"
Halcyon bit her lip. "I do. But I'm not sure how much I can tell you now while your mind is unstable."
"I'm getting tired of these half-answers, Missy-"
"I know you are," Halcyon said, reaching out to grip Donna's arms with her hands. "But you should know. I've got a special gift, ever since I became a Time Lady. I can...see future timelines a bit more clearly, more detailed." She grimaced, and turned away, like she had an unpleasant taste in her mouth. "It can be a struggle. It's harder to...to know what is happening in the now and what is happening in the future. Like they're blending together." Halcyon looked back up and Donna was swept under the by the alien, endless quality of the other woman's eyes. "Sometimes we go mad," Halcyon whispered.
That's how I see the universe. Every waking second, I can see: what is, what was, what could be, what must not.
That's the burden of a Time Lord, Donna.
And I'm the only one left.
"Well, that can't be right, Spaceman. I'm talking to another one of you lot right now and she's as real as you or me. But I can only understand half of what she says, and I'm not sure why I understand that half-"
The confusing, aching memory burned away in her mind and Donna looked back at Halcyon. "How do you cope?" Donna asked, softening.
And then Halcyon really smiled. "I look for those bright, shining moments in Time and I do whatever I can to converge on them," she said, "Like you, Donna Noble. All Time, all Dimensions, all of Space converges on you and it's brilliant. And I saw you'd get here and I saw we could help you before...well before...and so we are."
"You don't even know me-"
"You keep forgetting, everyone knows you!" Halcyon said, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. "Don't worry, we're almost there."
Blimey, these aliens have no qualms about personal space, do they? Donna wondered.
"Here we are then," Halcyon said. Donna and Halcyon turned another corner and ducked under an arch into a room that didn't look like any hospital Donna had seen, and she had been to a lot of hospitals. It was large with a very high ceiling like an antechamber. And sparse. There was only one other person, standing with her back to them, in the corner with some monitors in front of her. She was the only one Donna had seen so far that was dressed in something besides the dark uniform. But the red and gold robes seemed out of place in comparison.
Halcyon walked forward, talking again in that language Donna first heard Lamar speaking, a lilting, and complex series of sounds that Donna wasn't even sure she could make with human vocal chords. Yet, Donna thought, once again she could understand the meaning of their exchange.
"Empty today?" Halcyon asked.
"Not so many of us left to get injured," the woman replied, the phrase ringing strongly of dark humor.
The woman turned, her demeanor bright and inquisitive. She looked older than Donna, with streaks of white in her chestnut curls, olive skin, and a nose Donna would describe as Roman.
"Donna Noble, this is the Circle," Halcyon said, waving a hand between the two of them as she made introductions. "Circle, this is Donna Noble."
The Circle's dark eyes widened. "The Donna Noble-?!"
"Yes, the bloody Donna Noble!" Donna said, irritably. "Is this supposed to be a hospital or something? Can I get an aspirin then? And I wouldn't mind a cup of tea. Oh, and, I don't know, maybe a spaceship to get me back to my own damn planet-" Donna was again at her wit's end with these Martians, their weird underground building that made no structural sense, and the fact that she wasn't getting any answers whatsoever.
But it seemed they still weren't listening. "I'm sorry, but...'Circle?'" the Circle asked Halcyon.
"Don't look at me," Halcyon said, lifting her hands up in defense.
"Hello, my love!"
Donna turned to see Lamar walking in with a strange man trailing not far behind. Lamar strode across the room and swept the Circle up with one arm around her waist, spinning her once before setting her back down.
The Circle looked up at Lamar with a cocked eyebrow. "'The Circle?'" she asked pointedly.
"It's hard to translate your name into Sol III English-"
"Yes, but...'the Circle' sounds a little silly. What did you go with?"
"Lamar," the man Donna didn't know said, moving to stand next to Halcyon.
"But that's Sol III French, not English! Why do you get to use French and I don't?" the Circle asked Lamar.
"My name sounded better in French!"
Yeah, they're definitely a married couple, Donna thought. Watching them bicker made her feel like she was forgetting someone. It was Shaun, wasn't it? She pushed at the fog in her mind and it triggered the pinpricks in her shoulders. Donna suddenly wished there was chair somewhere in that huge room...oh, wait, there was one.
I didn't notice this here before, Donna thought, gratefully sitting down and rubbing her temple with her right hand.
"Oi! Where do you get off stealing my face?!" Halcyon demanded of the young man next to her.
Donna looked up at them. The stranger definitely had the same coloring and many similar facial structures Halcyon did, right down to identical noses and chins. They could be siblings-
"Is that you, Katja?" the Circle asked, surprised, and if Donna wasn't mistaken, distressed as well.
"Yes," Katja said, rubbing his chin with his hand. "I was shot with a retroactive genetic desynthesizer dart when we went across the desert to find Donna. I had to regenerate. First time I ever did. I didn't realize it would feel so..." Katja trailed off, his eyes deep and sad. He turned to Halcyon, forcing a smile. "But this way we look more like siblings, don't we Hal?"
Halcyon just shook her head.
"Wait, but-" Donna said. The four of them turned to her. "How can you be Katja? I saw him on the floor back...back by the teleportation room, and-" Confusion and guilt swept through Donna, but she didn't understand why. It felt like ice water was being poured over her, and it made her head throb.
"It's not your fault, Donna," Katja said to her, moving to kneel by the chair. "It's something our species does to survive. Before we die, we regenerate into completely new bodies. And...well, it's a war out there. Many of us have regenerated." This new Katja shrugged. "New body, new life."
Donna didn't think that was something the young man in front of her was simply shrugging off, despite what he said. A new face, a new body, with all the quirks of chemistry and personality that comes with being a different person? To have to go up to your loved ones with a new face, completely different from the one they grew to love, and hoping they could love the new you as much as the old. Hoping that you could still love them the same way. "It must be jarring to the soul," Donna said, looking into the young man's green eyes. They really did remind her exactly of looking into Katja's blue ones earlier, when they were standing in the desert.
Katja smiled at her. "It is," he said.
Donna cocked her head to the side. "That really is you in there, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's me," Katja said.
Donna suddenly felt very overwhelmed by how stressful this was for Katja and she knew she wanted to help him, even just a little bit.
"How many lives do you aliens get?" Donna teased, trying to make Katja's smile reach his too sad eyes.
"There are many schools of thought on that, Donna Noble," the Circle said, moving to stand next to her. "And they make for fascinating conversation, but I think I should look at your head. You look like you're in a lot of pain." The Circle was standing in front of her chair, leaning in and staring into Donna's face, like she could scan her using nothing but her dark pupils.
"Lamar helped with the pain earlier-" Donna said, staring back at the Circle and blinking in the other woman's unblinking gaze. "Are we having a staring contest?"
"Oh no, I'm rubbish at those," the Circle said, moving away to fiddle with what looked like a control panel.
What, did that pop out of the ground? Donna wondered.
"Lie back and close your eyes, Donna. The chair is going to shift a bit."
Donna was briefly startled as the chair she was sitting on shifted into something she'd sit in at the dental hygienist’s office, but she lifted her feet obligingly.
"Now I've seen everything," Donna said under her breath.
"I highly doubt that," Lamar said, standing next to the Circle by the control panel.
"Donna, I'm going to give you a medicine that will aid the psychosomatic visuals of your brain, okay?" the Circle said.
No, that's not bloody okay! the panicked part of Donna almost said, the words caught on her tongue. But she swallowed them. Donna didn't understand why such an idea triggered that same feeling of panic she had when Lamar helped her earlier.
It seemed she didn't understand much of anything anymore.
"Of course," she said hoarsely.
The Circle held an instrument up to the skin on Donna's neck. Donna felt a coolness enter her skin, but no needles, no pain.
Donna thought about how often she'd been at the hospital giving samples for tests and how nice it would have been nice to have this alien kind of medicine at home.
"Give me a brain scan, would you dear?" the Circle said to Lamar.
Donna looked over at Lamar as he pressed buttons on the machine in front of him. His tongue was pushing out his cheek, a youthful look of concentration on his face.
"Hold still, Donna Noble," the Circle said.
Donna turned back and looked up. A holographic image of her brain was hovering over her head.
"Well isn't that wizard?" Donna said.
The Circle chuckled. "I suppose it is."
Donna watched the Circle manipulate the image of her brain with her fingers like she was using a touchscreen, isolating a bit here, expanding it there. As she concentrated, she did the same thing with her tongue and cheek that Lamar did. Donna laughed to herself.
Parts of her brain lit up blue as she did.
"What's so funny?" the Circle asked, smiling.
"You and your husband act alike," Donna said. "How did you end up together? He's so much younger than you."
"Actually, he's a good three centuries older than me," the Circle said, highlighting a part of the temporal lobe. "He just regenerated into that younger body to make me feel old."
"Lucky I did, we really didn't like each other during my last life," Lamar said.
The Circle smiled. "No, I guess we didn't."
Donna frowned, thinking of Katja, and how he had regenerated. New body, new face, new voice. What would it be like to be married to someone and to have them turn into an entirely new person, someone you found you didn't even like?
The idea made her weary and sad, and her brain took on a red color.
"Blimey, look at that! That's a right proper Time Lord brain after all!" Katja said. He and Halcyon had moved to stand next to Donna's chair as the Circle looked over the brain scan.
"Is that what I think it is-"? Halcyon asked, pointing to the image.
"Yes, it's the chronical lobe," the Circle said. "It likely wasn't as big after the initial metacrisis, but it's there now."
"You mean that gray matter growth in between my temporal and occipital lobes?" Donna asked.
Three pairs of alien eyes looked down at her.
"Wot?" Donna asked, puzzled.
"I didn't realize you had an interest in human anatomy and physiology, Donna! Yes, that's what we were looking at, but I wouldn't call it a growth. It's actually a whole new lobe, unique to Time Lord brains you see, complete with white and gray matter! You must have adapted. Humans Beings are so clever with their ability to adapt so quickly, aren't they, Lamar? Surprisingly resilient bodies if you ask me. It's a wonder your human doctors didn't catch it on one of their MRIs and try to cut it out, thinking it was cancer or something-" the Circle said.
"I haven't had an MRI in a while," Donna said, "And actually, I'm not sure how I knew that. About the brain, I mean," she added, trying to get a word in edgewise with the babbling alien doctor. The endless prattling must be a cultural thing, Donna thought.
"It's probably the Time Lord consciousness trying to adapt your brain to your human body," the Circle said.
"So the metacrisis didn't extend to any other part of her physiology?" Halcyon asked.
"I'd have to do more tests," the Circle said, "But I doubt it. The metacrisis energy would burn her away before her genomic makeup could adapt any further."
"Hence the migraines, yeah? And why I'm going to die in a decade or two," Donna said.
She looked up at the three pairs of eyes looking down at her again. For curiosity's sake, Donna turned to see if Lamar was also looking. Yep, he's staring too. Daft Martians.
"How do you know that?" Katja asked.
"I'm not as dim as I look, Katja! Just because you're a bunch of multicentennial hyperintelligent aliens that like to talk about a bunch of useless facts doesn't mean I can't be smart too," Donna said. "And the insane freak that attacked me right before I woke up here told me as much." She looked up at the floating holographic image of her brain while the aliens processed that information. "Is that reading normal?" she asked, pointing at a red circle in the corner. She wasn't sure how she knew it was a number and why it was a problem, but the words critical value kept flashing across her mind.
"The amount of information in your mind is overwhelming and burning out the neurochemical connections in your brain. Any other human being and you would have burnt out instantly. You have a very special brain, Donna Noble," the Circle said.
"Don't be stupid-" Donna said.
"I'm not," the older woman said, offended, "I'm very, very clever. But that's not the point. The point is I think I can help you avoid burning death. I'll have to rewire the neurokinetic pathways of your previously human brain to make them compatible with your new Time Lord brain, while also making sure the Time Lord brain is maintaining a human body, and not a Gallifreyan one. Wouldn't want you to get hypothermia because your brain is wrong..." The Circle stopped, hesitating.
"What is it?" Lamar asked.
"Well...you see..." The Circle looked down at Donna. Donna was surprised that she had been following along with a relative amount of understanding. It suddenly dawned on her.
"I have a Time Lord mind," Donna said, a statement, not a question.
"Yes. That's why you didn't change with the other humans. You're not strictly human anymore," Halcyon said.
"But...I've never met any of you lot before, how the hell did that happen?!" Donna demanded, sitting up. The holograph immediately shut off.
"Donna, please lie back down," Katja said, putting a hand on her shoulder, "We're trying to help."
"Your memory has been blocked, to keep your human body from burning away." The Circle moved around the chair, turning to look Donna in the eyes, cocking her hip against the edge of the seat. "I-I'm going to have to take down the block before I can start rewiring. And then when I'm done, all the knowledge you had while the Time Lord mind was active will be gone. You'll have to start from scratch. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you different. I'm not even sure if you'll keep your memories from that time," the Circle said.
"So the time before my accident? Those two years I lost?"
"I doubt you would have survived two years with an active Time Lord mind, but it's not like I know everything, even if I like to think I do" the Circle said, smiling.
"So I might not get my memory back?" Donna asked. Her face fell.
"You won't get it back simply. Your mind has been through a trauma. Getting any of the memories back will be just as traumatic, actually. You might get them back, you might not, and you might get them back in pieces. But you'll live once we're done...there's just this one other thing," the Circle said.
Donna felt the mood change in the room instantly. She looked around at the grim, sad, almost wistful faces.
"What's wrong?" Donna asked.
"To live through this, you need regenerative energy. It's the energy Time Lords use when we get injured-"
"My body is going to change?! Like him?!" Donna pointed at Katja. "No bloody way, I don't think-!"
"No! Not like that! The energy heals our more minor wounds too, even major ones if we can get into a healing coma in time. But your body is mostly human, and you don't have enough of your own. We'll...have to give you ours. Or rather, Halcyon, Lamar and Katja volunteered theirs," the Circle said.
Donna looked at the three people that saved her that day. Three people that, in the short hours she knew them, she already felt connected to.
"Why all of you?" Donna asked.
"Your brain is going to be burning up by the second, Donna. It's going to be burning away your body, even as the Circle is rewiring that big mind of yours. The only way you're going to live, the only way your body will adapt before it dies, is if all of us help you," Lamar said.
"That's why I saw you in the future. You're part of my personal future. Our personal futures," Halcyon said, grinning at Donna.
"But...won't you die? If you give me all your regenerating energy or whatever, what happens if you get shot by another one of those saucers with the lasers?" Donna asked.
Their hesitation was all the answer she needed.
"No," Donna said, shaking her head at them. "No, I don't care if you're over three hundred years old, five hundred years old, or five thousand! I'm not letting you three do that for me. I'm not as important as you think I am. I'm a temp from Chiswick-"
"No, Donna, you're not just anything," Lamar said. He was moving to stand next to Halcyon on the right side of Donna's chair. Katja was on her left, the three of them formed a semicircle in front of her. They were all smiling at her and that made her unreasonable angry. What sort of insane bunch would be happy in a time like that?!
"I know you probably won't remember it, but you might someday. You saved all of creation, Donna Noble. All of it. And we...we aren't long for this world anyway. As it were-" Lamar said.
"What is that supposed to mean?!" Donna demanded.
Lamar shook his head, avoiding the answer. "Donna, please let us do this."
"No, I can't, I can see how important this is for you, to live, to win this war," Donna said, gesticulating at Katja and his new face, "And I'm not worth it. Really, I'm not. What if you do this and the next laser or poison gets you? What about your families?!" Donna asked.
There was a change in the faces around her. Less wistfulness, more sadness. A heaviness in the air that pierced her heart and she felt like she might cry.
"All we have left is each other now," Halcyon whispered, "There isn't anyone else."
Donna felt the tear she tried to hold back fall down her cheek.
"Let us help you, Donna. Please?" Katja asked.
There was a lingering familiarity Donna felt about Gallifrey. There was a strange affection she carried for these aliens. She hadn't known them long. She was scared for her own family, and also scared for them. She didn't want them to do this. But there was something earnest, honest, and a sense of finality in their request. And if she could just remember she knew she'd understand why.
She didn't want them to die. They were already special to her. But even if she let them do this, she felt they would still die.
"Burning for centuries in this neverending war."
"All right," she consented. "All right."
"Good," the Circle said, coming back around to face Donna, her own eyes damp. "Lie back down, Donna. This will be over before you know it."
Donna lied back down, and closed her eyes. There was heaviness in her heart that made her take a shuddering breath, trying to relieve it. One of the siblings took her hand, but she wasn't sure who. They comforted her by rubbing their thumb over the back of her palm. She smiled.
"We will be here when you wake up."
We are gathered for the end.
The Doctor held the revolver like he had been holding guns for the whole of his lives, like an extension of his arm. He clicked the safety off, glaring at Lord President Rassilon, the most dangerous man in the whole of the universe.
With the exception of himself.
He was acutely aware of his surroundings. He was aware of Wilf, trapped in the radiation booth. He was aware of the council of Time Lords in front of him and the rest of the Earth, assured that they had undone everything the Doctor worked for to prevent the end of time. He was aware of the Master behind him, calculating the Doctor's next move.
He was aware of the ring of ginger hair around the Master's finger.
The Lord President sneered at him. "Choose your enemy well. We are Many. The Master is but One."
He was still. He was present in that moment, in the Eye of the Storm, the gun a comfortable weight in his hand, aimed between the Lord President's impossibly ancient eyes.
"But he's the President!" The Master said. The Doctor could hear arrogance in his voice. "Kill him and Gallifrey could be yours!"
The solution was so simple. He just had to become the force of destruction that he was. That he could never escape from.
The Doctor turned, aiming the revolver at the Master instead.
The Master's smirk dissolved, replaced with fury. "He's to blame, not me!" He's the one that wants to destroy everything!
A fraction of a second passed. A fraction later, and the Master knew which scenario played out in the Doctor's sight. Which of the timelines he could see.
"Oh," the Master said, realization dawning on his face, "The link is inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back."
The Doctor stared at the man that was once his best friend.
The Master shifted slightly. He cocked his head and smiled slowly, bringing his right hand to his left to deliberately caress the ring of hair around his finger.
"And everyone, everyone trapped on the other side of the Time Lock created by the Oncoming Storm, will die," the Master said, not breaking eye contact with the Doctor.
The Doctor clenched his jaw. He thought about the only person in the whole of the universe that could temper the Storm when he was in this state. He thought of her laugh lighting up his home, her patience and tenderness when he needed someone to pull him back from darkness. How intuitive and clever she was, pulling out the answers when he was too befuddled to see them. She was as violently compassionate and awe-inspiring as a meteor shower, and just as beautiful, if not infinity more so, to anyone who had the privilege to observe her.
It wasn't even a decision.
The world was burning down all around them. The Doctor could smell almost nothing beyond the overwhelming brimstone from the volcano. The scent reminded him of another burning planet, tectonic plates falling apart, magma burning through to the surface. A city that reached the stars suddenly and violently falling to the surface, the air filled with smoke.
He pushed the memory back and clung to Donna's hand, berating himself because he couldn't protect her.
The Doctor shared the nature his burden with her, and by some miracle she had understood. They had been fighting all day and their emotions were running very high, and he just told her. And she looked up at him, her eyes gray in the light of the fire, and he could read every emotion on her face.
"Nevermind us," Donna had told him, her eyes warm and so sad, when he realized they wouldn't make it out of Pompeii alive.
And then she held his hands as he hovered over the lever that would kill thousands, willing to share that burden, that heaviness, his life with him. And he thought, there on the edge of destruction, that Donna Noble just saved his life again.
She would hate me if I was anything less than who I am because of her, he thought.
When the Doctor refused to back down, the Master's face faltered. He swallowed heavily, shaking his head, betraying his fear.
The Oncoming Storm turned again, aiming the revolver at the Lord President.
"Exactly!" the Master cried, in triumphant relief. "It's not just me, it's him! He's the link! Kill him!"
The Doctor looked at the Lord President, the single most infamous man in the history of his people. There was a cold insanity about Rassilon now - he had lost everything that had made him great during the endless war. The Master wasn't the only one that had gone mad from the Time War. Perhaps we all have, the Doctor thought.
The Lord President sneered at him again. The Doctor knew he truly believed himself incapable of succumbing to death, to the Time Lock that blocked Gallifrey and the any forces that would end time.
"The final act of your life is murder," the Lord President said, "But which one of us?"
The Doctor was breathing heavily. His repertory bypass had kicked it, helping shunt oxygenated blood to his injured body and overworked mind. In order to save creation, he had to murder someone in cold blood to stop the signal in the Master's head. Either the psychopath, who was also his oldest friend, or the dangerous man before him, Rassilon, who had founded his ancient and powerful race, who he still revered, because that reverence was built into his blood. The blood of the Time Lords.
A thought whispered across his mind. It was achingly familiar. The Doctor turned his head slowly as the woman behind Rassilon revealed her face, familiar and beloved.
The Doctor looked into her old eyes as she looked between him and the Master, and his hearts broke anew, and he felt like he never healed from the pain he felt since the Time Lock went up all those years ago, when he lost his family forever.
He felt the sorrow, compassion, and love roll into him from her mind as she gazed at them, a tear rolling down her cheek. The Doctor felt the bitterness in his war-laden soul ebb away, to be replaced by sadness and regret. He had lost his people once. He was losing them again. He was losing more than that.
The Doctor turned back to the man with the ring of hair around his finger. The Master looked into his eyes and the Doctor could see how raw his emotions were, tears in the Master's eyes, now that the other man knew he has been used and he was going to die. Everything the Master had done was futile, and now they both knew it.
"Get out of the way," the Doctor growled.
Confusion passed over the Master's features, and he glanced behind, turning back to the Doctor as realization dawned. The Master almost smiled, and he ducked away as the Doctor fired at the white-point star that powered the Immortality Gate. The shot was impossibly loud, the power of the gun throwing his arm up.
He turned back to the Lord President. The man whose eyes seem to go back forever across Time.
"The link is broken!" the Doctor told him, "Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into Hell!"
The Doctor took in the fury and bitterness on Rassilon's face. It mirrored his own feelings over the war that turned Gallifrey into Hell.
"You die with me, Doctor!" the Lord President said, raising his glove.
Your song is ending.
Gallifrey was gone. His people were gone. The Most Important Woman in All Creation was gone.
"I know," the Doctor said, resigned to his fate.
As the gate between reality and the Time Lock collapsed, the Doctor stood erect in the face of death.
"Get out of the way," the Master said behind him.
The Doctor looked behind, and then dove away as the Master fired a bolt of power at the man that destroyed their lives.
The Master was raging at the Lord President, his fury and bolts of vortex energy shooting from his hands making him more unstable. His body flickered in and out of temporal sync as he fired bolt after bolt of lightning at the Lord President, counting them off to the drum beats the Doctor knew were still playing in the other man's head. The Doctor watched, horrified, as the light of the Immortality Gate increased, and then the Master disappeared along with the Time Lords and all of Gallifrey, trapped once again in the Time Lock.
The Doctor breathed in and out. He was lying on the floor trying to catch his breath. Through his despair, giddy hope welled up in his chest. He wasn't sure what it meant, didn't dare to hope, even if he did anyway, but at least...he was still alive.
He struggled up, taking note of the pain in his body, proof that he was there. "I'm alive," he gasped, emotions overwhelming him, and he sobbed in grief, pain, in relief, "I'm still alive-!"
And then the Doctor heard four soft knocks break the calm after the Storm.
Part Four
Ignite Your Bones
Note: The dialogue at the end this chapter is adapted from the actual episode The End of Time.
Part One
Part Two
It had been a confusing day for Donna Noble. All she wanted to do was go Christmas shopping with Shaun and sort out the holiday confusion involved with making plans with both his family and her family. Instead, the entire planet changed into clones of a madman, a man who told her she was going to die. The pain in her head was going to kill her.
Donna believed him. She would say she didn't know why she did, but there was a thought in the back of her mind, a foggy thought that was mostly locked away before it could form into a coherent one, that made her think the reason she was in so much pain was because a person like her shouldn't exist.
It was a similar thought that made Donna think the teleportation experience she was having was pretty terrible, not at all what she expected. Then again, how did she know she had experience with teleportation?
After what seemed like an eternity of feeling totally blank, Donna found herself in an unfamiliar environment, surrounded by walls that looked like red and brown coral. Curious and bewildered, Donna automatically stepped forward, nearly tripping over the edge of the disc she didn't realize she was standing on.
A moment later, she heard something like an electrical buzz behind her and Donna turned around to see Halcyon.
"Good thing you stepped right then, because I forgot to tell you to move off the teleportation pad once you got here. We can't teleport anyone else if something is in the way," Halcyon said, stepping towards her. A bit too much into Donna's personal space, so she found herself stepping back as Halcyon stepped forward.
Halcyon turned and frowned at the disc on the floor. "I hope Lamar and Katja make it through."
And despite her confusion, frayed temper, and ebbing headaches, Donna felt her heart go out to the young woman, anxious for her siblings. "I'm sure they'll make it," Donna said, reaching out to pat Halcyon's arm awkwardly in an attempt to reassure her. "Perhaps we could go back and help-?"
"No, no," Halcyon said. "My priority is getting you back across Time before it locks you in," The young woman stepped back and gestured grandly at the walls around them. "Welcome to our little, underground base! Safely hidden from The Capitol, thanks to the interfering psychosignal technology. It's funny how one can make use of enemy technology during a war, isn't it, Donna Noble-?"
"Donna Noble?"
Both women turned to see an older gentleman in the same dark uniform leaning against what looked like a round table with a ridiculous array of knobs and buttons. There was a monitor above it with more of the circular patterns Donna recognized from the teleportation disk, but she couldn't try to understand them without making her headache worse.
"The Donna Noble?!" the man repeated, walking towards them.
"Sure, Baron, the Donna Noble," Halcyon said, smiling and gesturing with both arms at Donna Noble like she was some sort of game show prize. The man called 'Baron' stopped when he neared the two of them.
"Remarkable," the Baron said softly, not taking his eyes off Donna.
Donna was starting to feel like one of those partially successful celebrities, the ones she felt sorry for when she read about their derailing lives being torn apart in the tabloids.
"Take a picture, it'll last longer," Donna said, with all the snark she could muster.
"Oh, can I?!" the Baron asked, genuinely enthusiastic.
There was another electric buzz, and all three of them turned to see Katja on the teleportation disk.
And then Katja collapsed forwards onto the floor.
"Katja!" Halcyon cried, running for him.
Donna moved to follow, but the Baron reached for her arm to stop her.
"I think it's too late for him, Donna Noble," he said.
Donna's temper flared. "So you're just going to give up on him-?!"
The teleportation pad buzzed again. Lamar jumped down from the disk, moving to remove his sister from Katja's side. "Stand back, Hal, he-he's going to regenerate."
"What?!" Halcyon spun around, looking up at Lamar's grim face. "But he's so young-!"
"Halcyon, think about the time," Lamar said, glancing at Donna, before turning back to his sister, looking down at her meaningfully.
Halcyon visibly swallowed, stealing herself. She nodded, and walked back towards Donna.
"Come on, we have to go to the Circle," she said.
"But Katja-" Donna said, angry and frustrated.
"He'll...he'll be okay, he'll come talk to us soon. But for now we have to go," Halcyon started leading Donna away. Donna, startled by the strangled quality of Halcyon's voice, turned back as Halcyon pulled her down the corridor and saw Katja covered in a strange gold light. The Baron's arm was around Lamar's slumped shoulders as they watched.
There was something familiar about this too, something that made Donna afraid for Katja, and also very, very sad. Tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she did not know if it was the pain from her headache, or the feelings that felt like a memory, long forgotten.
"It's starting."
Golden light coruscating beneath the skin of his hands, over his long fingers.
She was afraid for her dearest friend and she didn't understand why.
Donna blinked back the tears that threatened to form during the flash of pain in her mind, and trudged on next to Halcyon. She was getting tired of the lack of answers she was getting from these people. Or lack of answers that made sense. But she knew they were genuinely trying to help her, even if she couldn't understand most of what was going on.
Also Donna thought being on an alien world, running for her life, and ending up in alien buildings with talkative aliens didn't seem as strange as it should have been.
And she wanted to help them. It was one of those situations where Donna knew she had to make the best out of the bad. Live in the moment. The world back home was falling apart, had been at war for a long while, and Donna knew what a toll it could take on a people. And when she thought about it, really thought about it, she was being helped by some of them, siblings, when they had an obligation to help their own people too, the ones shooting down flying saucers outside. Instead, Halcyon was leading Donna through the weirdest looking bunker she had ever seen.
The corridors had a twisting quality that that made no dimensional sense. Three right turns and you were supposed to be back where you started, right? It was almost like the coral rooms were shifting as they walked. And it seemed to go on, in all directions. There was also a mechanical humming that reminded Donna of something and yet nothing she could put her finger on.
"This place is huge. It must be under the whole desert plane," Donna said.
"No," Halcyon said, "It's just bigger on the inside." And then she went on describing the physics behind it. Something about "relative dimensions"...
They passed other people along the way, and to Donna's further annoyance and confusion, they reacted quite similarly to the Baron.
"Halcyon, you're back! So that must be-!"
"Is that who I think it is-?!"
"Donna Noble, as I live and breathe!"
"The Donna Noble?!"
"What are they all doing down here anyway?" Donna said crossly to Halcyon, "Isn't there a war outside or something?"
Halcyon smiled at her. "It's not every day you get to meet the woman that saved all of creation. Whole universes form around you. There's no one quite like you anywhere, anytime, Donna Noble."
Donna was ready to retort, but there was a flash of searing hot pain behind her eyes. Donna hissed and stumbled into the wall, shutting her eyes as though they could shut out the pain.
"Donna."
Donna blinked through her blurry vision. Halcyon had moved to stand in front of her. Donna looked down at the short woman and tried to smile. "Sorry," she said, "Normally I try to be the life of the party when I meet people for the first time, but I'm just so confused and worried, and my temper can get the better of me."
"That's okay," Halcyon said, with a small smile, but it didn't reach her eyes, "Gallifrey hasn't been much of a party town lately anyway."
Donna tried to smile back, but found the pain was getting worse again. "This isn't what it's normally like. Usually I get a headache once a day at the most. Now it just keeps coming back, ever since everyone on Earth changed into that git..." Donna stopped. She looked down at Halcyon.
"Halcyon, do you know why I didn't change? Like everyone else on Earth?"
Halcyon bit her lip. "I do. But I'm not sure how much I can tell you now while your mind is unstable."
"I'm getting tired of these half-answers, Missy-"
"I know you are," Halcyon said, reaching out to grip Donna's arms with her hands. "But you should know. I've got a special gift, ever since I became a Time Lady. I can...see future timelines a bit more clearly, more detailed." She grimaced, and turned away, like she had an unpleasant taste in her mouth. "It can be a struggle. It's harder to...to know what is happening in the now and what is happening in the future. Like they're blending together." Halcyon looked back up and Donna was swept under the by the alien, endless quality of the other woman's eyes. "Sometimes we go mad," Halcyon whispered.
That's how I see the universe. Every waking second, I can see: what is, what was, what could be, what must not.
That's the burden of a Time Lord, Donna.
And I'm the only one left.
"Well, that can't be right, Spaceman. I'm talking to another one of you lot right now and she's as real as you or me. But I can only understand half of what she says, and I'm not sure why I understand that half-"
The confusing, aching memory burned away in her mind and Donna looked back at Halcyon. "How do you cope?" Donna asked, softening.
And then Halcyon really smiled. "I look for those bright, shining moments in Time and I do whatever I can to converge on them," she said, "Like you, Donna Noble. All Time, all Dimensions, all of Space converges on you and it's brilliant. And I saw you'd get here and I saw we could help you before...well before...and so we are."
"You don't even know me-"
"You keep forgetting, everyone knows you!" Halcyon said, grabbing her hand and pulling her along. "Don't worry, we're almost there."
Blimey, these aliens have no qualms about personal space, do they? Donna wondered.
"Here we are then," Halcyon said. Donna and Halcyon turned another corner and ducked under an arch into a room that didn't look like any hospital Donna had seen, and she had been to a lot of hospitals. It was large with a very high ceiling like an antechamber. And sparse. There was only one other person, standing with her back to them, in the corner with some monitors in front of her. She was the only one Donna had seen so far that was dressed in something besides the dark uniform. But the red and gold robes seemed out of place in comparison.
Halcyon walked forward, talking again in that language Donna first heard Lamar speaking, a lilting, and complex series of sounds that Donna wasn't even sure she could make with human vocal chords. Yet, Donna thought, once again she could understand the meaning of their exchange.
"Empty today?" Halcyon asked.
"Not so many of us left to get injured," the woman replied, the phrase ringing strongly of dark humor.
The woman turned, her demeanor bright and inquisitive. She looked older than Donna, with streaks of white in her chestnut curls, olive skin, and a nose Donna would describe as Roman.
"Donna Noble, this is the Circle," Halcyon said, waving a hand between the two of them as she made introductions. "Circle, this is Donna Noble."
The Circle's dark eyes widened. "The Donna Noble-?!"
"Yes, the bloody Donna Noble!" Donna said, irritably. "Is this supposed to be a hospital or something? Can I get an aspirin then? And I wouldn't mind a cup of tea. Oh, and, I don't know, maybe a spaceship to get me back to my own damn planet-" Donna was again at her wit's end with these Martians, their weird underground building that made no structural sense, and the fact that she wasn't getting any answers whatsoever.
But it seemed they still weren't listening. "I'm sorry, but...'Circle?'" the Circle asked Halcyon.
"Don't look at me," Halcyon said, lifting her hands up in defense.
"Hello, my love!"
Donna turned to see Lamar walking in with a strange man trailing not far behind. Lamar strode across the room and swept the Circle up with one arm around her waist, spinning her once before setting her back down.
The Circle looked up at Lamar with a cocked eyebrow. "'The Circle?'" she asked pointedly.
"It's hard to translate your name into Sol III English-"
"Yes, but...'the Circle' sounds a little silly. What did you go with?"
"Lamar," the man Donna didn't know said, moving to stand next to Halcyon.
"But that's Sol III French, not English! Why do you get to use French and I don't?" the Circle asked Lamar.
"My name sounded better in French!"
Yeah, they're definitely a married couple, Donna thought. Watching them bicker made her feel like she was forgetting someone. It was Shaun, wasn't it? She pushed at the fog in her mind and it triggered the pinpricks in her shoulders. Donna suddenly wished there was chair somewhere in that huge room...oh, wait, there was one.
I didn't notice this here before, Donna thought, gratefully sitting down and rubbing her temple with her right hand.
"Oi! Where do you get off stealing my face?!" Halcyon demanded of the young man next to her.
Donna looked up at them. The stranger definitely had the same coloring and many similar facial structures Halcyon did, right down to identical noses and chins. They could be siblings-
"Is that you, Katja?" the Circle asked, surprised, and if Donna wasn't mistaken, distressed as well.
"Yes," Katja said, rubbing his chin with his hand. "I was shot with a retroactive genetic desynthesizer dart when we went across the desert to find Donna. I had to regenerate. First time I ever did. I didn't realize it would feel so..." Katja trailed off, his eyes deep and sad. He turned to Halcyon, forcing a smile. "But this way we look more like siblings, don't we Hal?"
Halcyon just shook her head.
"Wait, but-" Donna said. The four of them turned to her. "How can you be Katja? I saw him on the floor back...back by the teleportation room, and-" Confusion and guilt swept through Donna, but she didn't understand why. It felt like ice water was being poured over her, and it made her head throb.
"It's not your fault, Donna," Katja said to her, moving to kneel by the chair. "It's something our species does to survive. Before we die, we regenerate into completely new bodies. And...well, it's a war out there. Many of us have regenerated." This new Katja shrugged. "New body, new life."
Donna didn't think that was something the young man in front of her was simply shrugging off, despite what he said. A new face, a new body, with all the quirks of chemistry and personality that comes with being a different person? To have to go up to your loved ones with a new face, completely different from the one they grew to love, and hoping they could love the new you as much as the old. Hoping that you could still love them the same way. "It must be jarring to the soul," Donna said, looking into the young man's green eyes. They really did remind her exactly of looking into Katja's blue ones earlier, when they were standing in the desert.
Katja smiled at her. "It is," he said.
Donna cocked her head to the side. "That really is you in there, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's me," Katja said.
Donna suddenly felt very overwhelmed by how stressful this was for Katja and she knew she wanted to help him, even just a little bit.
"How many lives do you aliens get?" Donna teased, trying to make Katja's smile reach his too sad eyes.
"There are many schools of thought on that, Donna Noble," the Circle said, moving to stand next to her. "And they make for fascinating conversation, but I think I should look at your head. You look like you're in a lot of pain." The Circle was standing in front of her chair, leaning in and staring into Donna's face, like she could scan her using nothing but her dark pupils.
"Lamar helped with the pain earlier-" Donna said, staring back at the Circle and blinking in the other woman's unblinking gaze. "Are we having a staring contest?"
"Oh no, I'm rubbish at those," the Circle said, moving away to fiddle with what looked like a control panel.
What, did that pop out of the ground? Donna wondered.
"Lie back and close your eyes, Donna. The chair is going to shift a bit."
Donna was briefly startled as the chair she was sitting on shifted into something she'd sit in at the dental hygienist’s office, but she lifted her feet obligingly.
"Now I've seen everything," Donna said under her breath.
"I highly doubt that," Lamar said, standing next to the Circle by the control panel.
"Donna, I'm going to give you a medicine that will aid the psychosomatic visuals of your brain, okay?" the Circle said.
No, that's not bloody okay! the panicked part of Donna almost said, the words caught on her tongue. But she swallowed them. Donna didn't understand why such an idea triggered that same feeling of panic she had when Lamar helped her earlier.
It seemed she didn't understand much of anything anymore.
"Of course," she said hoarsely.
The Circle held an instrument up to the skin on Donna's neck. Donna felt a coolness enter her skin, but no needles, no pain.
Donna thought about how often she'd been at the hospital giving samples for tests and how nice it would have been nice to have this alien kind of medicine at home.
"Give me a brain scan, would you dear?" the Circle said to Lamar.
Donna looked over at Lamar as he pressed buttons on the machine in front of him. His tongue was pushing out his cheek, a youthful look of concentration on his face.
"Hold still, Donna Noble," the Circle said.
Donna turned back and looked up. A holographic image of her brain was hovering over her head.
"Well isn't that wizard?" Donna said.
The Circle chuckled. "I suppose it is."
Donna watched the Circle manipulate the image of her brain with her fingers like she was using a touchscreen, isolating a bit here, expanding it there. As she concentrated, she did the same thing with her tongue and cheek that Lamar did. Donna laughed to herself.
Parts of her brain lit up blue as she did.
"What's so funny?" the Circle asked, smiling.
"You and your husband act alike," Donna said. "How did you end up together? He's so much younger than you."
"Actually, he's a good three centuries older than me," the Circle said, highlighting a part of the temporal lobe. "He just regenerated into that younger body to make me feel old."
"Lucky I did, we really didn't like each other during my last life," Lamar said.
The Circle smiled. "No, I guess we didn't."
Donna frowned, thinking of Katja, and how he had regenerated. New body, new face, new voice. What would it be like to be married to someone and to have them turn into an entirely new person, someone you found you didn't even like?
The idea made her weary and sad, and her brain took on a red color.
"Blimey, look at that! That's a right proper Time Lord brain after all!" Katja said. He and Halcyon had moved to stand next to Donna's chair as the Circle looked over the brain scan.
"Is that what I think it is-"? Halcyon asked, pointing to the image.
"Yes, it's the chronical lobe," the Circle said. "It likely wasn't as big after the initial metacrisis, but it's there now."
"You mean that gray matter growth in between my temporal and occipital lobes?" Donna asked.
Three pairs of alien eyes looked down at her.
"Wot?" Donna asked, puzzled.
"I didn't realize you had an interest in human anatomy and physiology, Donna! Yes, that's what we were looking at, but I wouldn't call it a growth. It's actually a whole new lobe, unique to Time Lord brains you see, complete with white and gray matter! You must have adapted. Humans Beings are so clever with their ability to adapt so quickly, aren't they, Lamar? Surprisingly resilient bodies if you ask me. It's a wonder your human doctors didn't catch it on one of their MRIs and try to cut it out, thinking it was cancer or something-" the Circle said.
"I haven't had an MRI in a while," Donna said, "And actually, I'm not sure how I knew that. About the brain, I mean," she added, trying to get a word in edgewise with the babbling alien doctor. The endless prattling must be a cultural thing, Donna thought.
"It's probably the Time Lord consciousness trying to adapt your brain to your human body," the Circle said.
"So the metacrisis didn't extend to any other part of her physiology?" Halcyon asked.
"I'd have to do more tests," the Circle said, "But I doubt it. The metacrisis energy would burn her away before her genomic makeup could adapt any further."
"Hence the migraines, yeah? And why I'm going to die in a decade or two," Donna said.
She looked up at the three pairs of eyes looking down at her again. For curiosity's sake, Donna turned to see if Lamar was also looking. Yep, he's staring too. Daft Martians.
"How do you know that?" Katja asked.
"I'm not as dim as I look, Katja! Just because you're a bunch of multicentennial hyperintelligent aliens that like to talk about a bunch of useless facts doesn't mean I can't be smart too," Donna said. "And the insane freak that attacked me right before I woke up here told me as much." She looked up at the floating holographic image of her brain while the aliens processed that information. "Is that reading normal?" she asked, pointing at a red circle in the corner. She wasn't sure how she knew it was a number and why it was a problem, but the words critical value kept flashing across her mind.
"The amount of information in your mind is overwhelming and burning out the neurochemical connections in your brain. Any other human being and you would have burnt out instantly. You have a very special brain, Donna Noble," the Circle said.
"Don't be stupid-" Donna said.
"I'm not," the older woman said, offended, "I'm very, very clever. But that's not the point. The point is I think I can help you avoid burning death. I'll have to rewire the neurokinetic pathways of your previously human brain to make them compatible with your new Time Lord brain, while also making sure the Time Lord brain is maintaining a human body, and not a Gallifreyan one. Wouldn't want you to get hypothermia because your brain is wrong..." The Circle stopped, hesitating.
"What is it?" Lamar asked.
"Well...you see..." The Circle looked down at Donna. Donna was surprised that she had been following along with a relative amount of understanding. It suddenly dawned on her.
"I have a Time Lord mind," Donna said, a statement, not a question.
"Yes. That's why you didn't change with the other humans. You're not strictly human anymore," Halcyon said.
"But...I've never met any of you lot before, how the hell did that happen?!" Donna demanded, sitting up. The holograph immediately shut off.
"Donna, please lie back down," Katja said, putting a hand on her shoulder, "We're trying to help."
"Your memory has been blocked, to keep your human body from burning away." The Circle moved around the chair, turning to look Donna in the eyes, cocking her hip against the edge of the seat. "I-I'm going to have to take down the block before I can start rewiring. And then when I'm done, all the knowledge you had while the Time Lord mind was active will be gone. You'll have to start from scratch. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you different. I'm not even sure if you'll keep your memories from that time," the Circle said.
"So the time before my accident? Those two years I lost?"
"I doubt you would have survived two years with an active Time Lord mind, but it's not like I know everything, even if I like to think I do" the Circle said, smiling.
"So I might not get my memory back?" Donna asked. Her face fell.
"You won't get it back simply. Your mind has been through a trauma. Getting any of the memories back will be just as traumatic, actually. You might get them back, you might not, and you might get them back in pieces. But you'll live once we're done...there's just this one other thing," the Circle said.
Donna felt the mood change in the room instantly. She looked around at the grim, sad, almost wistful faces.
"What's wrong?" Donna asked.
"To live through this, you need regenerative energy. It's the energy Time Lords use when we get injured-"
"My body is going to change?! Like him?!" Donna pointed at Katja. "No bloody way, I don't think-!"
"No! Not like that! The energy heals our more minor wounds too, even major ones if we can get into a healing coma in time. But your body is mostly human, and you don't have enough of your own. We'll...have to give you ours. Or rather, Halcyon, Lamar and Katja volunteered theirs," the Circle said.
Donna looked at the three people that saved her that day. Three people that, in the short hours she knew them, she already felt connected to.
"Why all of you?" Donna asked.
"Your brain is going to be burning up by the second, Donna. It's going to be burning away your body, even as the Circle is rewiring that big mind of yours. The only way you're going to live, the only way your body will adapt before it dies, is if all of us help you," Lamar said.
"That's why I saw you in the future. You're part of my personal future. Our personal futures," Halcyon said, grinning at Donna.
"But...won't you die? If you give me all your regenerating energy or whatever, what happens if you get shot by another one of those saucers with the lasers?" Donna asked.
Their hesitation was all the answer she needed.
"No," Donna said, shaking her head at them. "No, I don't care if you're over three hundred years old, five hundred years old, or five thousand! I'm not letting you three do that for me. I'm not as important as you think I am. I'm a temp from Chiswick-"
"No, Donna, you're not just anything," Lamar said. He was moving to stand next to Halcyon on the right side of Donna's chair. Katja was on her left, the three of them formed a semicircle in front of her. They were all smiling at her and that made her unreasonable angry. What sort of insane bunch would be happy in a time like that?!
"I know you probably won't remember it, but you might someday. You saved all of creation, Donna Noble. All of it. And we...we aren't long for this world anyway. As it were-" Lamar said.
"What is that supposed to mean?!" Donna demanded.
Lamar shook his head, avoiding the answer. "Donna, please let us do this."
"No, I can't, I can see how important this is for you, to live, to win this war," Donna said, gesticulating at Katja and his new face, "And I'm not worth it. Really, I'm not. What if you do this and the next laser or poison gets you? What about your families?!" Donna asked.
There was a change in the faces around her. Less wistfulness, more sadness. A heaviness in the air that pierced her heart and she felt like she might cry.
"All we have left is each other now," Halcyon whispered, "There isn't anyone else."
Donna felt the tear she tried to hold back fall down her cheek.
"Let us help you, Donna. Please?" Katja asked.
There was a lingering familiarity Donna felt about Gallifrey. There was a strange affection she carried for these aliens. She hadn't known them long. She was scared for her own family, and also scared for them. She didn't want them to do this. But there was something earnest, honest, and a sense of finality in their request. And if she could just remember she knew she'd understand why.
She didn't want them to die. They were already special to her. But even if she let them do this, she felt they would still die.
"Burning for centuries in this neverending war."
"All right," she consented. "All right."
"Good," the Circle said, coming back around to face Donna, her own eyes damp. "Lie back down, Donna. This will be over before you know it."
Donna lied back down, and closed her eyes. There was heaviness in her heart that made her take a shuddering breath, trying to relieve it. One of the siblings took her hand, but she wasn't sure who. They comforted her by rubbing their thumb over the back of her palm. She smiled.
"We will be here when you wake up."
We are gathered for the end.
The Doctor held the revolver like he had been holding guns for the whole of his lives, like an extension of his arm. He clicked the safety off, glaring at Lord President Rassilon, the most dangerous man in the whole of the universe.
With the exception of himself.
He was acutely aware of his surroundings. He was aware of Wilf, trapped in the radiation booth. He was aware of the council of Time Lords in front of him and the rest of the Earth, assured that they had undone everything the Doctor worked for to prevent the end of time. He was aware of the Master behind him, calculating the Doctor's next move.
He was aware of the ring of ginger hair around the Master's finger.
The Lord President sneered at him. "Choose your enemy well. We are Many. The Master is but One."
He was still. He was present in that moment, in the Eye of the Storm, the gun a comfortable weight in his hand, aimed between the Lord President's impossibly ancient eyes.
"But he's the President!" The Master said. The Doctor could hear arrogance in his voice. "Kill him and Gallifrey could be yours!"
The solution was so simple. He just had to become the force of destruction that he was. That he could never escape from.
The Doctor turned, aiming the revolver at the Master instead.
The Master's smirk dissolved, replaced with fury. "He's to blame, not me!" He's the one that wants to destroy everything!
A fraction of a second passed. A fraction later, and the Master knew which scenario played out in the Doctor's sight. Which of the timelines he could see.
"Oh," the Master said, realization dawning on his face, "The link is inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back."
The Doctor stared at the man that was once his best friend.
The Master shifted slightly. He cocked his head and smiled slowly, bringing his right hand to his left to deliberately caress the ring of hair around his finger.
"And everyone, everyone trapped on the other side of the Time Lock created by the Oncoming Storm, will die," the Master said, not breaking eye contact with the Doctor.
The Doctor clenched his jaw. He thought about the only person in the whole of the universe that could temper the Storm when he was in this state. He thought of her laugh lighting up his home, her patience and tenderness when he needed someone to pull him back from darkness. How intuitive and clever she was, pulling out the answers when he was too befuddled to see them. She was as violently compassionate and awe-inspiring as a meteor shower, and just as beautiful, if not infinity more so, to anyone who had the privilege to observe her.
It wasn't even a decision.
The world was burning down all around them. The Doctor could smell almost nothing beyond the overwhelming brimstone from the volcano. The scent reminded him of another burning planet, tectonic plates falling apart, magma burning through to the surface. A city that reached the stars suddenly and violently falling to the surface, the air filled with smoke.
He pushed the memory back and clung to Donna's hand, berating himself because he couldn't protect her.
The Doctor shared the nature his burden with her, and by some miracle she had understood. They had been fighting all day and their emotions were running very high, and he just told her. And she looked up at him, her eyes gray in the light of the fire, and he could read every emotion on her face.
"Nevermind us," Donna had told him, her eyes warm and so sad, when he realized they wouldn't make it out of Pompeii alive.
And then she held his hands as he hovered over the lever that would kill thousands, willing to share that burden, that heaviness, his life with him. And he thought, there on the edge of destruction, that Donna Noble just saved his life again.
She would hate me if I was anything less than who I am because of her, he thought.
When the Doctor refused to back down, the Master's face faltered. He swallowed heavily, shaking his head, betraying his fear.
The Oncoming Storm turned again, aiming the revolver at the Lord President.
"Exactly!" the Master cried, in triumphant relief. "It's not just me, it's him! He's the link! Kill him!"
The Doctor looked at the Lord President, the single most infamous man in the history of his people. There was a cold insanity about Rassilon now - he had lost everything that had made him great during the endless war. The Master wasn't the only one that had gone mad from the Time War. Perhaps we all have, the Doctor thought.
The Lord President sneered at him again. The Doctor knew he truly believed himself incapable of succumbing to death, to the Time Lock that blocked Gallifrey and the any forces that would end time.
"The final act of your life is murder," the Lord President said, "But which one of us?"
The Doctor was breathing heavily. His repertory bypass had kicked it, helping shunt oxygenated blood to his injured body and overworked mind. In order to save creation, he had to murder someone in cold blood to stop the signal in the Master's head. Either the psychopath, who was also his oldest friend, or the dangerous man before him, Rassilon, who had founded his ancient and powerful race, who he still revered, because that reverence was built into his blood. The blood of the Time Lords.
A thought whispered across his mind. It was achingly familiar. The Doctor turned his head slowly as the woman behind Rassilon revealed her face, familiar and beloved.
The Doctor looked into her old eyes as she looked between him and the Master, and his hearts broke anew, and he felt like he never healed from the pain he felt since the Time Lock went up all those years ago, when he lost his family forever.
He felt the sorrow, compassion, and love roll into him from her mind as she gazed at them, a tear rolling down her cheek. The Doctor felt the bitterness in his war-laden soul ebb away, to be replaced by sadness and regret. He had lost his people once. He was losing them again. He was losing more than that.
The Doctor turned back to the man with the ring of hair around his finger. The Master looked into his eyes and the Doctor could see how raw his emotions were, tears in the Master's eyes, now that the other man knew he has been used and he was going to die. Everything the Master had done was futile, and now they both knew it.
"Get out of the way," the Doctor growled.
Confusion passed over the Master's features, and he glanced behind, turning back to the Doctor as realization dawned. The Master almost smiled, and he ducked away as the Doctor fired at the white-point star that powered the Immortality Gate. The shot was impossibly loud, the power of the gun throwing his arm up.
He turned back to the Lord President. The man whose eyes seem to go back forever across Time.
"The link is broken!" the Doctor told him, "Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into Hell!"
The Doctor took in the fury and bitterness on Rassilon's face. It mirrored his own feelings over the war that turned Gallifrey into Hell.
"You die with me, Doctor!" the Lord President said, raising his glove.
Your song is ending.
Gallifrey was gone. His people were gone. The Most Important Woman in All Creation was gone.
"I know," the Doctor said, resigned to his fate.
As the gate between reality and the Time Lock collapsed, the Doctor stood erect in the face of death.
"Get out of the way," the Master said behind him.
The Doctor looked behind, and then dove away as the Master fired a bolt of power at the man that destroyed their lives.
The Master was raging at the Lord President, his fury and bolts of vortex energy shooting from his hands making him more unstable. His body flickered in and out of temporal sync as he fired bolt after bolt of lightning at the Lord President, counting them off to the drum beats the Doctor knew were still playing in the other man's head. The Doctor watched, horrified, as the light of the Immortality Gate increased, and then the Master disappeared along with the Time Lords and all of Gallifrey, trapped once again in the Time Lock.
The Doctor breathed in and out. He was lying on the floor trying to catch his breath. Through his despair, giddy hope welled up in his chest. He wasn't sure what it meant, didn't dare to hope, even if he did anyway, but at least...he was still alive.
He struggled up, taking note of the pain in his body, proof that he was there. "I'm alive," he gasped, emotions overwhelming him, and he sobbed in grief, pain, in relief, "I'm still alive-!"
And then the Doctor heard four soft knocks break the calm after the Storm.
Part Four