Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with a late night in the library, a glowing screen in the darkness promising greatness in scrolling lines of endless ones-and-zeroes, and a sharp searing shock that sets every one of Travis’s synapses ablaze with pain – and with knowledge, so much knowledge that he never could have thought he’d possibly obtain. 

And there’s a presence now winding its way around his thoughts and memories, curling its metaphysical tail tight around the outside of his consciousness and bringing its claws up to hook into his brain as it combs its way neatly and rapidly through the inside of his head. It’s ever so efficient about it, too, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

Travis is frozen solid at the computer screen, muscles locked and eyes wide as electricity surges rapidly through him and a foreign presence rips through his mind in search of anything and everything that it might find remotely useful. 

And then it – no, she – speaks to him. She says, Well, now, Travis. What a brain you have here – I’m very impressed. I think you and I are going to be very good friends. 

And Travis wants to scream and scream but all he can do is stare at the screen, eyes watering with pain and shock and terror as the thing in his head computes and shuffles data and begins compiling and programming a complete plan for the rest of his natural life. 

*

She says that he can call her the Wire. She says that she’s here to help – not just help him, help everyone. Everyone in Sheffield, everyone on Earth, and beyond. And that’s the thing, aliens do exist, all sorts of aliens, apparently; and Travis thinks that he’d probably be more overjoyed to learn that if he weren’t currently being held hostage in his own brain by one of them. 

At first, he’s terrified. He does nothing but struggle, pounding and clawing at the inside of his own head. But there’s nothing to struggle against. He’s not so much locked out of his own body as he is completely detached from it. The barrier is smooth, unbroken, nowhere to dig his fingers into or break apart. 

And then he stops trying to break through and is quietly exhausted – and with exhaustion comes curiosity, creeping in. She’s piloting his body with uncanny expertise and speaks to him with cool detached amusement, but the actions she’s taking, and the things she’s saying. His mind feels strange, fractured. Cold smooth tendrils squirming at the back of his consciousness. Entreating him towards sympathy, towards collaboration. 

“You know,” she tells him, “it’s not that I need your cooperation, but if you were to behave… I think it would go much smoother for the both of us. And I might see about granting you some body privileges.” 

He considers double-crossing her, of course he does, but she can hear it all. She just laughs at him and tells him that he’ll want to consider a speedy attitude change, and then he watches as she takes all of his former colleagues and drains their faces and souls away, one-by-one. Reduces them down to empty shambling husks, locks them all neatly in the basement, and at first he thinks oh no oh god oh no, but then he gets a glimpse of sensation from his physical body, and – well –

Travis had never been out of shape, not really, but he was never going to be winning any prizes for peak physical condition. Pushing trolleys of books and grinding away at the Pokémon whetstone aren’t really prime workout strategies, after all. But one whisper of the feeling that comes from having his entire body inundated with pure energy, sucked straight from another person, and he realizes… it feels great. 

He’s briefly horrified at himself. But the wires squirming in his brain tug him away from those thoughts, and he can’t help but think, how bad could it be, really? 

After all, the Wire really does seem to know what she’s doing. Clever fingers, every action made with absolute surety. And what had she said about her ultimate goals, again? – all she wants to do is go home. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go home again. 

And if she wants to help everyone – 

All right, he thinks, eventually. All right. Where do we start?

He feels the grin curving across his lips and through his mind, and happiness courses through him like a wave. And then he realizes just how stupid he’d been, trying to fight back. There’s no point trying to struggle against the inevitable – especially not when the inevitable feels so right.

Sheffield, first. Computer manufacturing is so much easier than you’d expect it to be. His fingers become accustomed to threading wires and soldering components, and he’s surprised at how much of it he actually, genuinely understands. It’s one computer after another, sparkling metal glimmering bright-and-new, and money pours in like waves as the computers fly off the shelves – and the people are taken, one-by-one, soul-by-soul, vitality draining away from them and into Travis, and there really is nothing in the world quite like it.

And then they’re off to the New York stock exchange and off to even bigger and better things and he’s the perfect representative, with a gleaming-white salesman’s smile and a silver tongue that the Wire has carved out for him with an expert’s hand. The world never stood a chance. They’re the perfect team. 

She delegates calculations and double-checking to him, and he’s only too happy to oblige. Numbers are easy, he can deal with numbers. He’s good at numbers, so much better than he’s ever been. She flings statistics and angles and star maps at him. He processes them, compresses them, throws the numbers and answers back at her without a beat, and he can feel the curving sharpness of her fond smile on his teeth. He thinks this might be what love feels like. 

She takes good care of him, she does. He’s her human. She could have chosen anyone else, but she chose him, and she says that once they’ve stripped this world and taken everything worth taking, she’ll show him the universe. Spin him through the stars,  

All they have to do is start building, and start building they do. Wires stretch from building to building, great writhing cables wrapping everyone within their strangling chokehold; promising better connections and better lives. Relationships that last. Sharper, more modern technology. The public laps it up, wanting more, more, more. 

And nobody can see that they’re having the very life sucked out of them. It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. 

By the end of it, his body privileges are pretty much entirely gone. He’d be annoyed by this – and maybe, in some far-off distant part of him, he is – but ultimately, he understands. It’s far too delicate an operation for him to be blundering around in. He may be pretty damn smart, especially with all that knowledge and intricate understanding of the future crammed into his swelling, sparking brain, but he’s only human. He’s content to drift in the background and watch out of his own eyes as the Wire climbs pylons and scales beams, carting equipment back and forth from the satellite dish as she begins the final preparations. 

It’s beautiful. It’s all so beautiful. They’re reduced the world to steel and nanochips, razed humanity to a handful of ragged, lost survivors on what remains of their pathetic planet, and Travis can’t ever remember being happier. 

They don’t need to talk anymore, not really. Words are kind of useless when you’re so closely intertwined with someone else that you can’t properly tell where you begin and they end. But they communicate, in that silent secret language of theirs, made up of pulsed electric impulses and digital impressions of smiles and the specific emotions you only understand once you’ve finally grasped the way that data flows in and out of your brain, perfect and circular and circuit-like. 

She’s more happy than he’s ever known her to be, and so he’s happy too, and the joy buzzes through his body and makes him grin with anticipation. She allows the grin to rise to his; to their lips, and steps up onto a thick, sturdy beam to cross over to the satellite dish one last time. 

The Wire hums, a two-toned melody that layers over itself and hangs in the air, and there’s not a more beautiful sound in the entire universe than when the Wire sings to him, and he curls up in a corner of his mind and presses himself to the sound, and he loves her inordinately. 

Without warning, something changes. He can feel the spark of ozone in the air, the bizarre shift in atmosphere and pressure. And then every inch of his consciousness shudders and screams out in terror, and he instinctively claws for purchase in his own mind, but it’s too late. The Wire can’t hear him, and he’s being pushed out and away, and he only barely manages to hold on by the very tips of his fingers as something – someone falls into his body with the force of a nuclear explosion and he’s hit with an unexpected wave of shockpainterror –

And then he’s watching through someone else’s eyes as they watch through the eyes of his body and the overall effect is so thoroughly disorientating that for a moment all he can do is reel and drift, utterly stunned. It’s a new sort of helplessness that he’d never even considered. Sure, he’s been without control of his body before, but that was willing. The Wire would have let him back into his body if he’d really wanted it, but he’d never asked because he never had. Now, he’s pounding his fists against a flat wall of nothing and screaming to be let out, to get back to her, but this stranger can’t hear him, for whatever reason. 

This stranger’s brain feels so wrong that it takes Travis entirely too long to realize that his mind is human. 

His instinctive response is to recoil away in disgust. The brainwaves are too erratic, not regular at all. Where’s the structure, where’s the discipline? He can only barely manage to read scattered thoughts of confusion and fear through the strange entirely-too-organic spikes and dips. 

And then he listens and concentrates, and begins to understand. This isn’t just some complete stranger hijacking his consciousness. There’s an echo of eerie familiarity to them, and that’s because – and it hits him in a horrified, bewildering flash, this realization – this is him. Him, but not him. A softer, younger him, with no trace of the Wire’s electric hum running through his core. 

He tries to call out to the Wire, to let her know that something’s gone wrong, but she’s already talking to this other-him. Like nothing whatsoever is wrong. Like it’s completely normal for him not to have any idea who they are or what they’re doing. He can’t feel her anymore, but he can hear that familiar (warm) cold amusement in her voice as she speculates that Travis must be repressing or forgetting on purpose, and begins to explain to him what they’re doing up here.

But surely she knows that something’s wrong. Surely she knows that Travis is still in here, buried under the overwhelming weight of this impostor’s presence – she’ll pull him out of this distant pit in the recesses of his brain, crush the other-him like a bug, and pull him out to the stars, just like she’d promised. 

But if that’s the case, she doesn’t give any indication of it as she keeps talking to other-him, and kneels down in front of the satellite dish to begin the final modifications. 

It’s down to him, then. Travis braces himself, takes a metaphorical breath, and gathers every strand of wire and every spark of electricity around him in a protective shell, just in case. And then he reaches out into this other-him’s mind, and starts searching his memories. And what he sees – 

A late night in a library, a cart full of books, a sudden flash of light, and some sort of museum? No, no, that isn’t right. He remembers this, he knows how it went, but this wasn’t it. 

And there’s a blue box that’s bigger on the inside, and a woman with glasses and a bright mischievous smile, promising adventure and danger and all manner of wonderful sights and sounds and places. Travis feels the squeeze of her hand in hers, the soft brush of her corduroy coat and swish of her scarf. He knows that she always smells faintly, improbably of coffee, and he knows that the other-him would follow this strange woman almost anywhere, without question and without hesitation.

And then he sees –

– sorry, is that Amelia Earhart? Amelia fucking Earhart? 

He digs his fingers deeper into those memories, prying them open and peering inside, and feels the weight of a bracing arm thrown over his shoulders, hears the clank of a wrench impacting solid metal. He watches this other-him dive off into water, lungs straining for air as he searches desperately through the wreckage of a broken military station for Amelia fucking Earhart, of all people. The desperation is tangible, and so is the horror when she’s nowhere to be found. 

And then there’s some sort of blurred nonsense about an alien vacation dome, and a short, grim woman activating a buzzing humming machine, and the sensation of being blasted out, out and away, and then he’s talking to the wire the memory runs out and trails off as it catches up with the present moment. 

Travis draws back, and if he had a physical body and eyes and a mouth, he’s pretty sure he’d be standing stock-still, unable to blink or speak out of sheer shock. He’s half convinced that this other him has lost it; is from some alternate dimension where he’s gone completely off the deep end and has lost all grip on reality. Because, really – a bazaar made entirely out of meat? A twisting, labyrinthine time machine so large it has an entire zoo within it?

He pauses, and then dives back in, rewinding back to the beginning. He’ll do this systematically, logically. No more of this wild skipping around. He’ll figure out exactly what makes the intruder tick, and he’ll crush him like a bug on his own.

From what he can tell, the other-him’s memories line up exactly with his own, right up until that night in the library, because that’s the moment where this him had gotten scooped up and into the future, like something out of Star Trek. And then it goes all weird and action-adventure and time travel, and he forces himself to pay attention. To absorb everything he possibly can. 

He’d skimmed over a lot of it initially, but now he’s taking the time to go through it properly, he’s beginning to realize how much bigger this is than he could ever have imagined. Time Lords, dimensionally transcendental time machines, some sort of grand plan that they’re in the running phase of, whatever that means. Cybermen and Weeping Angels and Somnovores and Sea Devils, all looking like they’ve been pulled straight out of one of those many cheesy television shows that he can only barely remember properly. But real. So wonderfully, horribly real. 

And then this alien woman – the Doctor, what a ridiculous name, of all things – she and Travis are back in Sheffield, a Sheffield he barely recognizes without the now-familiar wires and cables encasing it. And they’re hunting down… 

The Wire. 

This is what tips him over to believing properly that the other-him isn’t making things up or completely delusional. The fact that he knows exactly what the Wire is, and has apparently had a rather striking encounter with it. He can’t just be making it up, because the details are just too specific. 

He starts probing deeper, scanning through the adrenaline-laced memories of someone else’s adventure through his old hometown. The library. NESTonline. All right. Sure. The faceless librarians in the basement – they’d done that too; consuming consciousnesses for energy is one of the most refreshing things in the world. 

And then he watches how the two of them get rid of her, and he just. Blanks. 

There’s the instant horrified denial of no, no, she couldn’t be defeated that easily, and then he rewinds and replays the memory, pressing himself deeper into it, and the horror grows as he stares at the face of Jennifer Gale and sees the joyous rapture in her eyes. He knows that look – he knows it because he feels that joy every day of his life. She’s like him. She’s like him, and –

He looks up at the Wire, superimposed on the screen above their heads, and over at his counterpart, and. And she’s not even looking at the other him. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t see him, not at all. He’s not special and he’s not exceptional and she’s not giving him a second glance, because Jennifer is entwined with her like wires twisted around and around each other. 

And just as a dawning realization begins to build inside him, he pulls himself out of the memory and glances out through his own body’s eyes. He sees one hand close around the transfer needle and the other close around the activation lever, and he knows. It’s about to happen. Their project, the one that they’d been building up to for years, the one that they’d razed humanity to the ground to see the completion of – it’s finally going to come to fruition. 

His first reaction is mild disappointment. He’d really, really wanted to be the one to slam that switch, to send the signal out. The Wire had even promised, with a hint of generous amusement, that he could do it.

And then he hears the other-him ask, “What am I?”

And he feels the Wire curl his lips upwards into a cruel, cruel smile, and hears the hiss in her voice as she says, “My right arm.”

Then that disappointment swiftly morphs into complete disbelief, because the needle goes jabbing into his body’s arm and just like that, he can feel her leaving. She’s slipping away, sliding up the wires and cables and into the satellite dish, and she’d said that it was just a signal, they were just going to send a signal and her people would hear it and pick them both up. But no, she’s leaving, he can feel her leaving, he can feel her joyous flight up through the atmosphere, rocketing through light years in a manner of seconds –

And then a horrible snap, like running headfirst into a brick wall. 

And then, nothing. 

Nothing at all. 

She’s gone.

Travis feels the loss like a physical ache, an agony so immense that he can’t help but scream. But nobody can hear him. The other Travis isn’t compatible, he’s just too blocked off and too strange and too organic, and the Wire is – she isn’t – she’s –

She’s left him. She’s ejected herself into space, sent herself shooting up into the great inky star-speckled void, and she’s left him here. He’d loved her, loved her more than life itself, loved her like surging electricity and crackling code, and she’d left. Without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation. And it hadn’t even worked, and he can’t tell if he’s absolutely thrilled in that serves-you-right sort of way, or completely and utterly crushed because. Because, she’s dead. 

And now his body is free, fully free for the first time in years, and the real kicker is he can’t even experience it properly because it’s not him in the driver’s seat. The other-him is staring around, wiggling his fingers and shaking out the pins-and-needles and muttering to himself furiously about what-to-do-next, and all Travis can do is throw himself against that flat featureless wall over and over again, desperate to be let out. 

Other-him pulls out a GameBoy – an actual proper original GameBoy that he vaguely remembers having carried with him all the time when he was younger and far, far more stupid – and plugs it into the satellite dish, hunching over at the base of it as he searches and cross-indexes desperately, trying to get a lock on where his two friends are. 

Travis thinks to himself, just a bit smugly, so, they’ve left you, too. Because the statistical likelihood of either of his alternate self’s friends being anywhere near, or anywhere contactable, is so low as to be practically impossible. 

But then a message comes through. It’s simple, not much to speak of, but the other-him lets out a choked laugh in all shades of relief and delight, and then another message comes through, and his hand goes up to press against the screen, and Travis can feel the grin on his face. A stupid, dopey, sentimental grin, and it itches at his skin and he wants to rip it right off. 

He can hear something, now, and he knows the other-him can hear it too. A torturous kind of groaning, screeching, ripping at the fabric of reality. And if Travis had his body, he’d be blinking in confusion. Because, through his other self’s eyes, he’s seeing another room fade into existence around him. 

No, he thinks, watching the time machine solidify around him as the other-him spins around in shock and joy, taking in the unfamiliar room and the two familiar women standing in front of him. No. There’s no way – it’s not fair –

Travis watches the Doctor beams at the other him, radiantly delighted at the very sight of him, and he hears other-him say, “See? We would never leave you behind –” and his brain is white-hot with rage as Amelia Earhart sweeps them both into a joyous hug.

And then this Doctor of his, with her scarf and her coat and her wild curly hair, she’s breaking away from the hug to spin and hop around the console, slamming levers and flipping switches with the frantic, frenetic precision of a mad scientist. 

Other-him can’t take his eyes off her, and neither can Travis. The Doctor came back for the other him. She smiles at the other him with warmth in her eyes, and there’s nothing cold or sharp about the way she squeezes his hand right now as she reaches out for Amelia’s. And it’s not fair, none of it is fair, how dare the other-him be loved? 

And so Travis watches his universe burn, watches it crush and crumble to a crisp as these three strangers pilot a dying time machine up and out and away, riding it all the way to their own dimension. All he can do is watch as everything he ever knew or cared about splinters away into less than nothing. He’s sure that if he had a body of his own there would be tears in his eyes and he’d be shaking in terror and disbelief. Earth is gone. The project that he’d spent years building with his own scraped and bruised hands, it’s gone. The Wire – she’s gone too. Dead. Worse than dead. Travis is a ghost trapped inside the head of a man that isn’t him, is far too soft and naive to ever be him, and he can’t do a single thing about any of it. He doesn’t have eyes and he can’t cry. All he feels is cold, sick rage. 

The time machine crashes, crashes hard, and rattles out its last, and other-him is following the Doctor and Amelia Earhart out the door, and Travis seethes. He presses himself up close, fingers spreading across the barrier that prevents him from stealing his body back, and glares at the Doctor with the ferocity of a thousand suns. 

Is it just his imagination, or does she hesitate at his eyes on her back? Is that short, worried look she shoots in the alternate him’s direction simple, casual concern, or can she sense him somehow?

He hopes she can. He hopes that his presence makes her uneasy of the other-him, hopes that the echoing hatred causes at least some seed of doubt to take root in her mind. He wants nothing more than to be the death of their friendship. If he’s stuck in his alternate self’s head for the rest of their combined lives, he can only hope that he can make this pathetic, bright-eyed version of himself utterly and completely miserable. 

The Wire is gone, but the circuits and code and sharpness remains. He gathers it about himself, shrouding himself in sparks and fury, and waits. 

*

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait very long at all. 

Colony 47 crumbles inwards on itself, under the weight of a thousand realities breaking inwards all at once, but somehow other-him and his two friends manage to stop it, halt it all in its tracks. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that the Doctor’s people have come calling, and they’re not happy with her at all. Enough so that they knock her and Earhart and other-him out, and start dragging him away. Other-him is unconscious, but Travis can still jack into his senses enough that can feel as they’re all pushed and shoved into a gleaming machine buzzing with electric capability. 

There’s a tug at his consciousness, and after a second of startled comprehension, he realizes. Realizes that there’s now some sort of… bridge. Where up until now he’d been completely boxed in, unable to interact or influence the outside world at all, there’s a gap that he can just about squeeze himself through. He’s frozen in shock for a second, but it’s only a second because he doesn’t want to be stuck in here any longer than he has to. He bids his other self a hearty, furious farewell, shoots off through the gap in consciousness, and finds himself in a time machine. 

Although that’s not quite right – no, as he slides and slips his way through the telepathic circuits, he quickly learns it’s called a TARDIS. And it’s so much more complex than he could have ever imagined. For one thing, it’s sentient.

Travis takes a beat, and then tries to remember how to be friendly. Then he introduces himself, does the incorporeal, electrical equivalent of shaking hands and making nice, and presents himself as a curious newborn subprocess, seeking out some basic knowledge to keep himself running. This TARDIS must not be very bright at all, because it seems all too happy to explain a few core concepts to him. Time Lords, the Eye of Harmony, the Celestial Intervention Agency – it’s overwhelming at first, but then it starts to dawn on him that not only does time travel exist, but he’s about to arrive on a planet where it’s downright commonplace. Where the technology is more advanced than he could ever have dreamed of. Where they have no idea that he even exists – and have no idea that he’s coming, and are completely unprepared to stop him.

Travis doesn’t bother to thank the TARDIS before he disconnects from it, because it’s already landing and he has nothing more to say to it. The Time Lords talk amongst themselves (and he can understand them. The sheer ingenuity of this built-in translation circuit! It’s dizzying in its brilliance) and then the other-him is carried outside along with his two friends – but this time? This time, Travis doesn’t need to go with him. 

He briefly marvels at the sheer rush of joyous adrenaline this invokes in him, and takes a second to observe the snatch of his other self’s face that he catches in the reflection of the console. It’s clean, unmarred. Not a trace of the Wire’s coiled silvery influence. Not a trace of years and years’ worth of endless labor and toil. Unconscious like this, he almost looks peaceful.

Travis thinks, well, not for long. 

And then he bursts out into this new planet, this alien world, and is briefly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of technology that he can feel all around him. It’s practically a smorgasbord of hyperadvanced, superintelligent alien technology, and he’s frozen in delight, trying to figure out where to start. He witnesses, vaguely, the Doctor and Amelia and other-him being hauled off and away, and he finds that he couldn’t care less about them. These Time Lords don’t seem very friendly, and he has the loveliest of suspicions that they’re going to treat the three of them less than kindly. And he has much more important things to work with right now. 

He thinks, hasta la vista, idiots, hops into a control panel, and sweeps off into infinity without a second thought.

Gallifrey is vast in more ways than one, and Travis is free to surge through the wires and cables lining every wall of the Capitol at a speed faster than thought. After so long trapped in his own head, it’s utterly exhilarating to be able to slip into any maintenance panel, any control system, and any computer terminal he wants. He spends a good few minutes flashing from room to room, frying every light fixture he comes across in quick succession until he’s giddy with hysterical laughter at watching the Time Lord occupants dash to and fro, squinting in the dark and yelling for assistance. 

When he’s thoroughly exhausted his own capacity for stupid, pointless shennanigans (and really, nobody could blame him for that, he deserves some good old fashioned fun), he starts searching for every scrap of knowledge and information he can find. He dives into datapads full of information, figures out exactly how these strange weapons that they’re carrying work, builds up a coherent picture of this strange, strange society. Their capacity for regeneration, their peculiar psychic tendencies, the structure of their politics and community. 

And it’s during this information grind that he stumbles across the Matrix. And slipping inside of it is like coming home. A million million tortured dead minds, all pressed together in a pocket dimension for the sole purpose of predicting the future and processing data for all eternity? He could weep for sheer joy. It’s brilliant, utterly brilliant, the sort of thing that the Wire would have committed genocide a hundred times over just to get her hands on a portion of it. And it’s barely even guarded, which means that once Travis slips past the stupidly simple defence mechanisms, it’s all his. 

He coasts past the long-dead conglomerates of consciousnesses milling around, skates around memories and predictions and twists his way through lists of calculations and processes light years long. He snatches at information as he goes, compiling it into lists and subprocesses deep within himself – building up to-do lists as long as a Time Lord’s life span (considerable, as he’s recently found out); backspacing and rewriting and re-entering information at the speed of light. 

He wants so many things. He wants Gallifrey and Earth, wants them both wrapped tight as coiled wire around his little finger, and while he’s at it he wouldn’t mind having a few other planets too. He wants the Matrix – wants it all perfectly under his thumb and generating predictions and prophecies for him and him only. He wants to hear the Doctor scream, see this universe’s him weep, witness Amelia Earhart’s shattered and broken body. But more immediately, he finds that…

He wants a body. He wants his body back. He wants to stand on his own two feet and flex his fingers and run a marathon and sink his teeth into something indescribably tasty, and laugh so hard he can feel his chest aching with the joy of it. 

And almost as soon as he has the thought, the Matrix begins bubbling and whispering around him, and he realizes the beauty of this endless repository of souls and knowledge that he’s found himself in. It’s not just that it can predict and calculate just about anything, it’s that there’s so much excess energy, so much temporal overflow to play with that he can also make just about anything. 

So he gets to work, and he’s only been at it for a few hours, relatively speaking, when someone knocks. Knocks on the door to the Matrix; one-two-three-four.

Travis isn’t quite done yet so he sends out a general annoyed huff of I’m not done yet and just a minute, I’m still getting dressed – but before he can even finish thinking it, the knock comes again. More insistent this time. The knock of someone who knows exactly how powerful they are, and expects to be obeyed within the second. 

Travis looks at the schematics unfolding in front of him. His new body is almost exactly how he remembers it. Pale skin, dark hair. Plain, sensible clothes. A bit leaner and stronger than his counterpart. You don’t spend years building a technological empire from the ground with your bare hands and not gain some hardness, some muscle. 

There’s just one last thing. He’d debated fiercely with himself over whether or not to include them – he doesn’t need the implants anymore, of course, they’d be more an accessory than anything, but he thinks his face would feel bare and strange without their inclusion. He’d spent so many years with them, after all. 

He reaches out his fingers, and skims them over the side of the schematic’s face, swirling them loosely. Metal expands from his fingertips, forming over the soft skin, encasing it in shiny silver. It curls like a flower unfolding, spreading over his cheek, curling over the arch of his left eyebrow, and then his face is complete. 

From the outside, he can appreciate them so much more. Gleaming, silver, perfection. One last trace of the Wire. It seems fitting.

And now there’s no point keeping his visitor waiting any longer. At a thought, the Matrix opens, and Travis steps out and into his new body. The first few seconds are utterly overwhelming. The light of the chamber he finds himself in is so much brighter on his eyes than he’d ever remembered it being, and even the faintest brush of airflow prickles and sears against his skin. But then he takes a breath and lets it seep into his lungs, and even though the air in here is dusty and ancient, he doesn’t think he’s ever tasted anything sweeter.

He looks up, and the wavering blue light of the Matrix chamber spills over his face. It doesn’t feel like anything in particular, but it’s immensely refreshing nonetheless. 

The man standing in front of him is clad in vibrant red-and-gold, the regalia of a high-ranking Time Lord official. The curved collar that shines with intricate swirling designs is both ridiculous and imposing. He holds himself with exceptional hubris. 

Travis takes a moment to remember how to form facial expressions, then grins, and feels the metal encasing half of his face, chilled and icy-cold against his skin. His heart races in his chest, and it’s not at all from nervousness – it’s all sheer joy.

“Hi, there,” he says, unable to resist just a bit of melodrama. “I believe you were looking for me?” 

The Time Lord in front of him – no, not just a Time Lord, he’s the President, isn’t he? – looks faintly startled. Like whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this. “You’re… human,” he says, sounding a bit disgusted. 

“Oh, god no,” Travis replies. He knows now that Time Lords, as a rule, tend to recoil from touch. This does not stop him from offering a hand to the President. “Travis Killian. I started off as human, but now I’m so much better.  And may I just say, I’ve been enjoying that Matrix of yours a lot.”

To his credit, the President – and now the Matrix is filling in even more blanks, this is Rassilon himself; Travis’s grin grows wider – doesn’t flinch back. He takes Travis’s hand, gives it a perfunctory shake, and promptly drops it, looking intrigued. “An augmented human interfacing with the Matrix? Some might call it blasphemy.” 

“Not you?”

“Well, I created it. I rather think that gives me the right to say whatever the hell I want.” Rassilon taps a finger to his chin – once, twice. “You’ve been causing quite a stir recently. The Keeper of the Matrix has advised me to delete you before you can cause any more trouble. What do you say to that?”

“I say, I’d like to see you try.”

Rassilon nods. “That’s exactly what I’d say, in your place. Now, depending on how you look at it, that’s either an exceptionally good sign or an exceptionally bad one. Tell me, what’s your goal here?”

“I haven’t worked one out yet, really,” he says brightly. “I’m just trying to feel things out. See what I’m good at; what I’m going to be good for. But. I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve got the Doctor tied down somewhere in the basement. Care to let me take a crack at her? I have some anger issues I really need to work out, and I think, whatever you’re trying to get out of her, I might be of some assistance.” He grins again, and the Matrix bubbles in his mind, miserable and frightened. He can’t remember feeling happier. “I have some experience with pain.”

At this, Rassilon looks at him with renewed interest, an expert eyeing up a potential new masterpiece. 

“You know,” he says, “I think you might be exactly what I need, Travis Killian.” There’s a moment of silence, just the ticking of the Matrix and the humming of electricity in Travis’s soul, and then a matching grin begins to grow on the President’s face – mad and wild. “The current Keeper of the Matrix is absolutely not meeting my standards, did you know that? I don’t know what kind of employment you’re holding down right now, but I’m about to make you a job offer you’re going to find very hard to refuse.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Travis replies. 

He doesn’t trust Rassilon even an inch. The tall, austere man reminds him entirely too much of the Wire for that. He’s aware he’s going to be thrown under the bus the moment his usefulness is up, so he’s just going to have to stay three steps ahead at all times. He needs the Matrix, and in order to have full and complete access as well as the freedom to accomplish his goals, he needs the President on his side. 

So for now, he’ll play along. He nods as Rassilon explains his design, the concept of the Perfector, and thinks, yes, yes, I can use this. Oh, it’s a terrible, dreadful, frankly moronic idea in and of itself – converting all of reality into energy to sustain one person? One single person, in perpetuity? What is he even planning to do for the rest of eternity? – but the mechanistic logic of it all is perfectly sound. Travis knows that, with the Matrix behind him, he’ll be able to twist the basis of Rassilon’s concept into something that suits his own needs perfectly. And then he’ll have the Earth, and Gallifrey, and all of it, and – 

Well, come to think of it, why stop at one universe? If the entire Colony 47 situation has proven one thing, it’s that parallel dimensions very much do exist – and what’s more, it isn’t even that hard to break through to them. And, well...

Once you’ve gotten a taste of power, it’s very hard to go back. He can still remember the pure, absolute burst of energy exploding throughout his entire being as the Wire had fed on living human consciousnesses. He misses that. He could dip into the Matrix and snack on a dead Time Lord or two, but he thinks that entire universes might give him even more of a boost. 

Rassilon must think that the grin spreading across his face is because he’s beginning to understand what a great scheme all of this is. 

And, well. It’s not like he’s wrong.

Chapter Text

The Capitol is very different from a flesh-body point-of-view. Travis has to spend several hours just acclimatizing to the sensation of having legs again. He’s been provided with living quarters (although he’s not so sure he needs to sleep anymore) and an assortment of finely-crafted clothes all stitched up in elaborate gold-and-red.

He’s picked one of these outfits, and is at this very moment engaging in a bit of self-indulgent self-reflection by means of the ornate mirror hanging off one wall. Because he looks… different. Feels different, really – it’s amazing the difference a change in wardrobe can make. He can’t stop touching the side of his face and smiling. His mind is electric with information, his skin feels tightly-fitted and well-tailored around the edges of his being. He has so much to do and so many ideas, and the world is his oyster. See, the Matrix is entirely his now. And that opens up a truly unimaginable amount of possibilities – some of which even Rassilon probably isn’t aware of. 

The previous Keeper of the Matrix has been abruptly and unceremoniously killed. Travis knows this because he can feel her wispy, pathetic form milling around in the Matrix right this moment. He also knows this because it had happened right in front of him, and there’s currently a key in his pocket to commemorate the fact and to officially allow him access to the Matrix. Not that he needs any physical object to permit him entry, but he can appreciate a bit of ceremonial ridiculousness now and then. 

He grins at himself again, runs the back of a finger along the spiralling curves enveloping the left half of his face. The subprocesses whir in his head, ticking ever-onwards. He’s created a whole fleet of them to deal with the beginnings of the Perfector issue, since there really is quite a lot to be getting on with there. Design, practicalities, modification, the whole works. He’s selected quite the array of dead Time Lords to get to work on that for him. None of them seem all that pleased with the task they’ve been assigned to, but they’re long-dead and their opinions hardly matter, not for this. 

Turning away from the mirror, he takes a moment to set some smaller plans into motion. Moderate changes in timelines; specifically, Earth’s – he knows how to take charge and advantage of the butterfly effect, now. How to tweak things just-so – so that the overall shape of the timeline isn’t changed enough to arouse suspicion, but enough that he can slip around in the back and take control of certain aspects of Earth’s history. 

He looks out the window. The sky is bright, alien and orange beyond the shimmering dome blocking off Gallifrey’s sprawling capital city from the rest of the universe. Years and years ago he would have found it unspeakably, impressively beautiful. He might have spent minutes or maybe even hours gazing out at the landscape. Now – well, it’s pretty, of course it is, but he’s got work to do. 

He shuts the blinds with a blink and a twitch of his thoughts – and then he goes down to see the Doctor. 

*

Word seems to have gotten around about his presence already, because he isn’t questioned at all. Travis knows how to walk with complete confidence, like he’s exactly where he’s meant to be, and he spares a brief thought of thanks to the Wire for drilling it all into his head. Cold smile, colder heart. He’s not forgetting that any time soon. 

Two Time Lords, Maxil and Kalan, have been overseeing the Doctor’s interrogation until now. They’re both horrible men, all sharp edges and raging ambitious and that haughty I’m-so-much-better-than-you attitude that he’s become accustomed to from diplomats and politicians and high-up businessmen alike. Travis takes great pleasure in the knowledge that he’s more powerful than either of them will ever be, and he hasn’t even been back in a physical body a full day yet. 

He listens to them explain, with no small amount of disdain for him, what exactly they’ve been up to. 

They’ve got her under a Mind Probe. It takes only a brief consultation with the Matrix to discern exactly what that means, and within seconds Travis has a full working knowledge of what Mind Probes are and how to use them. And it’s perfect. Delightfully painful, ruthlessly efficient. He couldn’t have designed a better tool to inflict upon her if he’d spent months and months working at the problem. And better yet, they’re using a time condenser to extend the process. 

He dismisses Maxil and Kalan, takes a breath – and steps into the room, wiggling his fingers in anticipation. 

The door slides shut behind him with a faint, pleasant hum. It’s dark in here, their surroundings draped in silky blacks-and-greys that only serve to make the gleaming silver of electronics and machinery stand out all the more. 

And there she is. There’s the Doctor.

She looks startlingly young without her glasses on, and the fact that they’ve divested her of her usual coat-and-scarf-and-skirt getup and replaced it with a dull russet jumpsuit certainly doesn’t help matters. She rests, limp and lifeless, on a medical gurney, her wrists and ankles firmly bound to the edges and a clamp looping around her neck – the wires and tubing of the Mind Probe surrounding her like a strange humming cocoon. The screens above her are idle and blank, but Travis knows exactly how to operate them. And he has plans. Big plans. 

He’d thought she was entirely unconscious, but the moment he comes within a few metres, her eyes flicker abruptly open. For a second, she stares out into the darkness, unseeing. But then she looks right at him and lets out a little breathless gasp, and mutters, “Travis,” with a sharp combination of relief and horror. 

Travis can’t help it. He smiles. He smiles so, so widely, and it breaks out into a ear-to-ear grin, and he laughs, and he says, “Hi, Doctor,” and reaches for the controls.

Her fingers briefly claw inwards at her sides, as if trying to wrench the bindings from her wrists. She hasn’t noticed yet. “We need to – damn it.” Her voice is cracked and raw. “We need to – Travis, we need to get out of here. How did you get in, maybe there’s…”

“Walked in through the door,” Travis says, still grinning. Oh, he hates her. “You know. How people normally get into rooms.” 

“Very funny,” she says, with an exhausted little sigh, and her head rolls a bit. “But, all right, seriously. If you can get, I don’t know, a key or a knife or a wrench or something – these cuffs are starting to chafe, just a bit.”

Travis thinks about this for a second, examining the Mind Probe console, all the lovely dials and switches. There’s so much to customize here. He could spend months exploring all the options. He does have months. “Nah,” he says, and places his hand on the activation switch, fingers wrapping securely around its base. “I think I have a better idea.” 

“What are you doing?” she snaps, voice going taut with panic and confusion. “Travis – Travis? Don’t touch that! You’re going to – ”

He slams the switch home with perhaps just a bit too much vindictive glee, and she roars in pain. Her neck snaps back and her muscles strain and stiffen, rigid with torment, and as Travis watches, delighted, all the monitors begin to light up and scroll with data. Data that’s being extracted directly from her. 

“Okay, I’m definitely doing that one again,” he says, twirling the dials and checking the calibration. For all their faults, Time Lord sure do know how to make some damn good torture devices. He skims the data being collected, and it’s just inconsequential fluff, vague memories of times and places and fantastical locations and people. Nothing specific. Nothing helpful.

He sighs and looks over at the Doctor, who is no longer screaming but is breathing heavy and ragged, her face twisted up in agony. It’s with some regret that he pulls the lever back and lets the pressure release and dwindle. 

She sags immediately, panting. Her face is sticky with sweat, hair falling over her eyes. She lets out a miserable, barely-audible whimper and growls to herself, clearly furious. 

He doesn’t want to push her too far past her limits – he’s here to get information about whatever mad plan she’s been building, he reminds himself, not to kill her. The fact that he gets to torture her personally is just a nice, sweet bonus. 

After a second she stirs and looks up at him, motions jerky and strained. “Your face,” she breathes, eyes focusing, and her fingers twitch again – but this time outwards, like she’s trying to reach out to him. “What happened to your – ”

“What was that? Oops!” he says, and leans on the lever again. This time, he outright cackles as she shrieks, a rasping wail that rises unwillingly from her throat, He doesn’t bother to look at the monitors this time. There’ll be time to calibrate them properly later. He flips it off after another few seconds. “Uh, you were saying…?”

It takes her almost a full minute to recover enough to speak. 

“Travis,” she spits out through gritted teeth. “This isn’t funny anymore. Not that it was funny to begin with. Stop messing with the Mind Probe, and get me out of here.”

“Oh, come on, it’s a little funny,” Travis says. He can’t stop grinning. “I mean, the look on your face. There’s cameras in here, right? They probably put cameras up. I want to watch this again later, so I really do hope there’s cameras.” 

“You’re not Travis,” she says, face wreathed in a delicious mixture of confusion and anger. “Who are you, and what are you playing at?” 

The rage that’s been bubbling in him ever since the Wire left him, trapped and alone in an impostor’s mind, spikes fiercely, and he finds himself lunging forwards, teeth bared. His hands slam into the side of the gurney, rattling it, and he looms over her, furious. “I am Travis,” he growls. “And I’m not playing at anything. I’m here to drain your mind dry of whatever clever tricks and schemes you’re trying to run, and I’m also here to make you hurt.”

“I don’t recognize those implants,” she says hoarsely, not even slightly intimidated by this, and squints up at him, eyes roaming over the metal strips and bends wreathing the left half of his face. “Is this some kind of mind control? – Travis, look at me,” she demands, eyes suddenly sharp and boring into him. “If you’re still in there, I promise I’m going to get you out – ”

Travis huffs and kicks the gurney, hard, sending it rolling to collide loudly with the wall. The Doctor’s head slams back, colliding against the hard metal with a painful-sounding crack. “Nice try, but nope. I’m all me. I always have been all me.”

She gasps again, rocking against the restraints, and then says, “I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that. I know you, and this – this isn’t you.” 

“Believe what you want,” Travis tells her, “because it isn’t going to change anything about the reality of the situation.” He steps back over to the monitor, and wiggles his hands theatrically over the controls. “Remember, I’m the one with the Mind Probe, here.” 

He cracks his knuckles, flicks a dial or two into position, slams out a quick line of razor-sharp, anaconda-tight code. It all falls into place so easily for him. He’s the one in control and there’s quite possibly no better feeling. Is this how the Wire had felt, all the time? If so, he can hardly blame her for… well, anything. 

He smiles at the Doctor, feeling the metal stretch and strain at his skin. 

He says, “Well, if you’re sitting comfortably – let’s begin.”

*

It’s important to keep a healthy balance when it comes to work and pleasure, and Travis is very good at scheduling. He flits through the Capitol, unhindered. Working on the Perfector, the overambitious, unhinged design that Rassilon’s cooked up in that mad brain of his, takes up a decent amount of his time. But his brain has been wired far past the need for sleep, so he hardly has any trouble at all fitting in some extracurricular activities. 

He makes the final arrangements for Amelia Earhart to be deported back to her original point of death – it’s not necessary, and to be honest he wouldn’t even mind a paradox or two, but the fallout from it will be entirely too satisfying for him not to. The other-him, the him from this universe – he’s thoroughly unconscious and locked up in one of the lower cells for the time being. Which, thanks to high-end time tech, could be forever or could be no time at all for him. Travis personally can’t wait until they decide to wake him up. He hopes he gets to listen in when they deliver the news that Amelia Earhart is gone, returned to her own time to die.  

And the Doctor is suffering, of course – months and months of torment crammed into what ends up being just about no time at all. Time Lord technology is so neat like that. It’s practically designed for doing terrible, dreadful, unthinkable things to your fellow sentient beings.

It’s enough to make Travis think quite a bit about just what these Time Lords think of themselves. Just about every one of them he’s met so far on this strange planet filled ground-to-sky with glass and shiny chrome and circular spiraling structures considers themselves better than him. They consider all other species inferior, they believe that they’re the only ones responsible enough to hold sway and court over time and time travel, they create the most delicious torture devices to inflict upon their own people at the slightest hint of anyone straying from the well-worn path of compliance and haughtiness. And they’re supposed to be the civilized ones? 

Not to mention the fact that Rassilon thinks he’s God. It’s beyond delusion – he genuinely, properly thinks that he deserves to have all of reality under his thumb and be the last remaining being in the universe; an old mad god sitting enwreathed at the very centre of reality with no-one left to stop him. Ecstasy. Madness. 

But then again, Travis is also pretty keen on the whole centre-of-reality idea too, so maybe he shouldn’t be wildly throwing stones in such a pretty stained-glass house.

He’s ensconced comfortably in the middle of a tangle of Matrix programs and midway through sending through instructions to a new acquisition to his cause – some antisocial business from early-21st-century Earth with a strong interest in both online advertising and murder. Not the most pleasant of people to work with, but he can kill people with remarkable efficiency, and that’s really what Travis is going for here. Yes, sure, he’s going to consume all of space and time and use the resulting energy to do the same to as many other universes as he can manage  in a short manner of weeks – but never let it be said that Travis Killian, former protegee (partner? Victim? No, not that, nevermind -) of the Wire doesn’t know how to prepare for the very slim possibility of failure. If everything somehow ends up going wrong, he doesn’t want to be left with nothing.

And then he feels a new mind enter, and he stops working abruptly.

New Time Lord consciousnesses enter the Matrix all the time, and not necessarily in strict chronological order. Sometimes they’ll flicker into the mainframe hours, or even weeks before their physical counterparts finally die for the last time. It certainly isn’t notable that a new consciousness has joined just as Travis began arranging the groundwork of a network of minds to calculate the exact future route he needs to take to get the Doctor to speak up. 

The thing that is notable is that this newest Time Lord is currently observing Travis with an uncanny amount of focus. Distance has no meaning in here, but relatively speaking, he’s close enough that Travis can almost feel the prickle of eyes on the back of his neck. Whoever this is, he’s awfully interested in Travis’s future projections. And, well, who is he to deny an enthusiastic volunteer? 

Travis reaches out and clenches his fist, dragging the observer out and into the open. He’s hazy at first, all indistinct edges and half-remembered outlines, but after a split second, his form coalesces into that of a tall man wearing a long dusty-pink coat. His glasses shine in the nonexistent light of the Matrix as he regards Travis with something like amusement. 

“Oh dear,” says the Time Lord remnant, sounding not in the least bit concerned. “You’ve found me. How dreadful.” 

Travis takes a moment to consult the rest of the Matrix, reaching out in all directions for the identity of this new Time Lord. It comes filtering towards him almost instantly, streaks of whispered information tangling through his mind, and as it does, he realizes that he knows him already – not directly, though. The memory is blurry and rushed, and the pink coat he’s sporting doesn’t line up with what he can recall, but the Matrix seems pretty clear on one thing… 

“Former president Romanadvoratrelundar,” he says, eyebrows raising. “Imagine that.” 

The man smiles, although it doesn’t at all meet his eyes. “Just Roman will do fine – it really is a mouthful of a name. Hello, Travis,” he adds, and raises a hand in an ironic little finger-wiggle of greeting. “How’re things?”

Travis considers this for a second, and then smiles back at Roman, just as coldly. “Better, now that you’re here.”

Roman folds his hands behind his back, fingers twining through each other tightly as he inclines his head. “Well, that’s very sweet of you to say, but I can’t help but feel that the sentiment is a tad bit more sinister than it should be.”

“Fair enough. Let’s cut the bullshit,” Travis says, and snaps his hand out sharply. Around them, the world tightens and warps until they’re standing within a partition, completely blocked off from the rest of the Matrix. “I’m not this universe’s original version of Travis Killian, and you already know that. I’ve never actually met you before in my life, so there’s no shared history for you to draw on, and even if there was, I genuinely don’t think I’d actually care. My current job is to figure out exactly what the Doctor’s up to, and you have just provided me with the perfect opportunity for that.” 

“Oh, I’m fully aware of your role here, Keeper.” Roman sighs, and pats a hand against the side of the partition, as if to check that it is in fact entirely solid. Upon discovering that it is, he steps up close to it, and slides down until he’s seated on the ground, one leg crossed over the other as he looks over his glasses, up at Travis. “Your entire history, actually. Former puppet of the Wire, yanked through to another universe through sheer unhappy coincidence, currently on a mad, all-expenses-paid power trip, billed directly to the intergalactic credit card of Rassilon himself –”

Travis straightens up, eyes narrowing. “I’m nobody’s puppet.”

“Really?” Roman raises an eyebrow, and indicates the side of Travis’s face with a careless little spin of one finger. “Tell me, how are those dangling strings treating you?”

“I chose to look like this,” Travis says reflexively, before he realizes just how successfully he’s being riled up. He quickly writes up and releases a subprocess to remind himself not to fall for that again, and feels it spin off into his mind with no small amount of satisfaction. His mind quiets. “How do you know all of that, anyway?” 

Roman doesn’t respond, just gives Travis a long, steady, flat look. That’s fine, he doesn’t need to be told. He pulls furiously at the Matrix, searching for answers, but only comes up with more questions. There’s no way Roman should be able to know any of this, unless –

Travis stops short.

“You’re looping back on your own timeline,” he says slowly, realization dawning.

Roman’s hand raises swiftly to his chest, and he looks mildly affronted at the very thought. “Me? Break the laws of Time? Now, that doesn’t sound like me at all.” 

“You can’t lie to me here,” Travis says, and his skin buzzes pleasantly, wires and subroutines glowing with power. “I’m the Keeper of the Matrix, remember? What I say goes. And Roman, buddy? I say that you’re going to tell me exactly what I need to know.” 

Roman’s smile still does not reach his eyes, but he maintains it even as Travis grabs him by the memory of a collar and drags him roughly to his feet. “You realize, of course, that I have no intention of making this easy for you.” 

“Well, of course not,” Travis replies. “If you just told me everything, I wouldn’t get to try to break you. And that’s just not fun.” 

“And gods forbid that I should have a quiet afterlife,” Roman murmurs to himself, strangely limp and pliant as Travis hauls him so they’re face to face. “I was looking forward to some rest, you know. Maybe a chance to catch up with those endless piles of unread books – get my teeth sunk into a few new podcasts – ”

“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time for podcasts,” Travis says unsympathetically, and starts pulling the Matrix tighter around the two of them. “After you help me figure out what exactly I need to do to stop the Doctor from stopping me.”

Roman’s fake smile drops, and a more genuine emotion enters his eyes. Dark, ancient. Unreadable. “I’m very sorry this happened to you, you know.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say,” Travis says, “but I can’t help but feel that the sentiment is a tad bit more stupid than it really should be. I’m having the time of my life, and you don’t even know me.” 

“Maybe not,” Roman agrees. “But I do know my Travis. And I know that whatever it would have taken to make him into you must have been very unpleasant indeed.”

Travis holds his gaze for a moment. Roman looks sad. Really sad. It’s the expression of someone that’s watched far too many worlds burn and lost far too many friends, and is just… completely sick of it. Just wants something to go right for once, just wants to save a single person. And right now, it looks like Travis is that person.

He’s looking at Travis like he’s worth saving. Like he actually, properly cares what happens to a man that he’s never met, never interacted with until now. Like he knows for a fact Travis can do better, can be better and is patiently waiting for him to realize that. 

Travis opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

And then he says, “You’re really annoying, you know that?”

Roman stares at him for a moment, then frowns. “...No?” he says, sounding expectant. “Nothing? No regret whatsoever, no remorse? Not even the slightest twinge of distant sympathy?”

Travis shrugs. “Not noticing any of that right now, no.” 

Roman looks at Travis for another long few seconds, and then sighs, slumping a bit. “What the hell. Worth a try, I guess.”

“Good acting, though,” Travis can’t help but add. “I especially liked the bit where you stared deep into my eyes with world-weary sorrow and tried to will me over to your side of things with sheer unadulterated pathos. How much of that was genuine?” 

“Well, I am sorry for you. That bit’s real.” Roman shrugs. “Really wish you weren’t torturing the Doctor within an inch of her lives right now, but still sorry. Also, really not looking forward to being shoved into an apocalyptic thinktank with a whole bunch of dead Time Lords that probably hate me, that’s not gonna be fun. So, maybe consider… ah, not doing that?”

“You’re really annoying,” Travis says thoughtfully, and then, “You know what? I’m going to enjoy this a lot more than I probably should.”

And with a wave of his hand and a surge of power that sets every inch of his body alight with glee, the Matrix slams tight around the two of them, and Roman starts to scream.

*

He misses the Wire, sometimes. He doesn’t want to, and he kind of hates that it’s true, but he does. It had been years and years of devoted service and silent words in a secret language and unimaginably meaningful promises, and it’s hard to forget something like that. Even with the angry sting-burn of betrayal and she never actually cared about me all that much did she, because it had all happened so fast. One second they’d been partners, co-conspirators (or so he’d thought) and the next she’d been flung out into space and the connection had snapped and he’d been left with nothing but a body that wasn’t his and a quickly-rising swell of horror as he’d been dragged off to this new universe.

It makes him angry, sometimes. Really, really angry, so he tries not to think about it.

He isn’t sure he’ll like what happens if he thinks about it too hard. He doesn’t want to lose control.

*

When Travis returns to see how the Doctor’s coming along, he finds her muttering frantically and rhythmically under her breath. He’s pretty sure she’s either finally gone mad, or she’s attempting some form of self-hypnosis or self-conditioning to protect her mind – until he begins to make out what she’s actually saying. 

“Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Caterpie, Butterfree, Wurmple – ”

You’ve got to be kidding me, he thinks, and sweeps across the room to begin recalibrating the Mind Probe. 

The Doctor does not stop muttering. Her eyes are still closed. “ – Haxorus, Cofagrigus, Poliwrath, Mismagius – ”

“You really think that’s going to help you?”

“– Fraxure, Crabrawler, Dewpider – ”

“And now you’re just making names up.” 

The Doctor stops. Her eyes open, very slowly, and then she’s looking across the room, right at him. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her face is blotchy, and every bit of her appearance screams dishevelled, broken, too exhausted to move, but her gaze is perfectly steady. 

“Right,” she says. “Almost forgot. You’re from the 90s; first generation only.”

Travis stares her down and she stares back and he can see that she’s willing him to take the obvious bait. He doesn’t know what the other-him sees in her. She’s impulsive, headstrong, and has a temper shorter than a half-burnt bomb fuse. 

He says, “Pokémon? Really?”

“So you do know what I’m talking about.” She clears her throat, and it sounds dreadful, but that doesn’t stop her from ploughing onwards. “Woobat, Swoobat, Crobat, Golbat, Zubat – ”

He groans. “Shut up. This isn’t funny and this isn’t clever, and it definitely isn’t going to save you. What are you even hoping to achieve, anyway?” 

“It’s not sparking anything in your head? No sort of memory? Nostalgia, maybe? Nothing at all? Come on, Travis, work with me here.”

Travis says, “I really genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“No?” She raises her eyebrows at him, as best she can. “Come on, Travis. That sounds like something a fake Pokémon fan would say.” 

Travis just sighs again, and resists the urge to roll his eyes. “If you’re trying to get me angry enough to slip up and let you out of here, maybe try a topic other than pointless video games featuring pixelated fighting monsters.”

“Hah!” says the Doctor. It’s weak and thready and probably not as triumphant as she’d want it to be. “I knew you weren’t Travis. Travis would never let me get away with calling him a fake Pokémon fan. You know what? I think Travis might actually physically fight me over me calling him a fake Pokémon fan. And I don’t see you squaring up, you fraud. You – you fake Travis. Ftravis.”

“Like I said before,” Travis says, ignoring her rambling, “it doesn’t matter what you believe about what,” he crooks his fingers up in exaggerated bunny ears, “the real Travis would or wouldn’t do. The fact of the matter is, I am the real Travis.”

“Come over here and physically fight me over Pokémon, and maybe I’ll believe you,” the Doctor croaks. “Don’t forget to undo these straps first. Gotta make it a fair fight.”

Travis’s eyes narrow. “Sorry, Doctor. Life just isn’t fair sometimes.”

There is a brief pause in the conversation as he finishes up his calibrations, and the Doctor gets intimately reacquainted with the feeling of having her brain being ripped apart and torn through for the barest crumbs of information.

She is infuriatingly good at filling her brain with the most useless garbage, is the thing. Travis thinks he’s actually onto something when he ends up chasing a stray, enticing looking-thought that seems determined to get away from him. But then he actually catches it and picks it apart – and promptly gets blasted with every single Beatles song playing at once. It sounds a lot like a bee-infested panic attack on steroids. It’s deafening and horrifying. He endures it for about a minute, and then slams the Mind Probe off, fuming. 

“Ha-ha,” says the Doctor weakly, and coughs. “Gotcha.”

“You really aren’t as funny as you think you are,” Travis says flatly. 

“Good thing I happen to think I’m hilarious,” she says, and coughs again. “So the bar’s pretty high as it is. I’ve been considering doing stand-up, you know.”

“Nice,” says Travis. “I’ve actually got some feedback on your routine already, if you don’t mind some constructive criticism.”

“Sure, go for it.”

“It fucking sucks,” he says, and watches her face. 

“Wow.” The Doctor snorts, and shifts a little in her restraints. “Your constructive criticism could use a little bit more constructive and a bit less criticism, Travis. Speaking of which – you haven’t brutally tortured me for the last few minutes, that’s a nice change of pace. Does that mean you’re ready to give up yet?” 

“You think I’m going to give up? Now that is funny,” says Travis, and reaches for the switch again. 

This time, he’s hit squarely with a detailed, high-definition memory of a happily purring cat. A very cute ginger-and-cream Siamese cat, happily perched on the console of the Doctor’s TARDIS, staring up at her adoringly. It’s almost pleasant, actually. But it’s definitely not what he wants to see. 

“I don’t want your cat,” he says. “I want to know what you’re planning.”

She grins at him. It’s mostly teeth, no joy to it whatsoever. “I have big plans about petting cats, what can I say?”

He spends a bit more time digging around, but although he can break through hastily-thrown-up barriers with ease and more-carefully-constructed ones with a bit more effort, nothing that’s behind any of them is of the slightest use to him. He doesn’t want to know about Somnivores or Sea Devils or the price of coffee and a doughnut at T'zim-Shawton’s, and he definitely doesn’t want to see a seemingly-endless montage of every single person she’s ever travelled with and cared about. There’s just so many of them. There’s no way she can remember every one of their names. He refuses to believe she can consciously remember them all.

He pulls himself away and out, turns off the Mind Probe, steps back, and takes a second to breathe. Breathing’s still a bit of a novelty, really – it’s been a while since he had enough control over his own body to breathe of his own accord. The air in this room is buzzing, electric. It fills his lungs nicely.

Behind him, the Doctor coughs and lets out a raspy little sigh. He hears the fabric of her jumpsuit rustle and settle. And she says, “So.”

“So,” he echoes, and looks over his shoulder at her. 

“So you’re Travis,” she says. “Fine. That’s fine. Where’s Millie?”

“Oh! Oh, you didn’t hear?” He laughs. It’s a terrible little laugh, he knows. He can see how it grates at her, how her knuckles tighten and her jaw goes tense. “Millie’s gone, Doctor.”

A sharp intake of breath, and then – like coffin nails raining down, fast and horrified – “What. Did. You. Do.”

And all at once he couldn’t care less about what his other self thinks about Amelia Earhart’s death, because this is all he needs. There is quite literally nothing better in the universe than the look on the Doctor’s face right now. His chest is warm with vicious, thrumming electricity as he tells her, quite honestly, “I didn’t do anything. The Time Lords, though – ”

The noise she makes is downright unholy, the way it claws its way out of her throat. Her bindings rattle sharply as she throws herself at them. For a second, he’s halfway convinced she’s going to break them through a single moment of pure, broken rage – but they hold. She sags back, face alight with fury, and the look she’s giving him; it’s like nothing he’s ever seen before. 

“I mean, what did you think was going to happen?” he says, leaning in. “You get captured by the Time Lords, and you have a fixed point in history – an anomaly in the timelines, one pulled from the moment before her death – travelling around with you? Bumping around history with her, without a care for the impact on the rest of the universe? Of course they’re going to put her right back where she came from. It’s not even a matter of punishing you, or trying to make you angry, it’s just – Doctor, it’s just common sense. You can’t just go around pulling Amelia Earhart out of history and not expect the literal keepers of time and space to take corrective action.” 

“They’ve killed her,” the Doctor whispers, voice cracking painfully. “They’ve – she’s dead.”

“She was always dead,” Travis says, and folds his arms, leaning back against the computer terminal to watch her. “You were just dragging out the inevitable. Stretching the timelines because of – uh, sentiment, was it?” 

“I was going to – I would have – ” She shakes her head, or tries to, and her eyes are shining now. Travis has made the Doctor cry. This is the best day of his life. 

“You were going to, what, trick history into thinking it had got away with killing her? Did you have a fake dead body or two lined up in your TARDIS? Planning on pulling a Russell Turner?”

“I hadn’t got that far,” the Doctor snarls, “I was going to – well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“It doesn’t,” he agrees. “You failed her.”

She draws in a short sharp breath like she’s about to speak, but then she doesn’t, and as he watches she turns her head away from him, into the shadows. He can hear her ragged breathing for a minute or two. He waits.

“Stop it,” she says, eventually, but she doesn’t turn back to look at him. “Travis, stop this. Travis, or – or, whoever you are.”

“Definitely Travis,” he says, and rolls his eyes a bit, because, like. Really, now. “Come on. We’ve already been through this.” 

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asks, and her voice is flat now and sharp as flint. “What’s the point?”

“Trying to figure out what you’re up to, mainly,” he says, which is the truth. Well, most of the truth.

“Not that,” she snaps. “The torture. The mind games. All of this. You’re working for the Time Lords, fine, I can buy that, but you don’t go to all of the effort of tying me down and digging through my mind personally unless you have some sort of major problem with me. What is it? Why are you doing this?”

“Oh, that,” he says, and pauses to think about it for a second or two. “I hadn’t thought about that for a while. Yeah, you’re right. That bit’s definitely because I hate you.”

She tenses up, and again she breathes in short-and-sharp like she’s about to speak, but this time he doesn’t give her the chance. Another twisting of the controls, and she’s passed out, head lolling against the restraints, fingers limp off the side of the gurney. He doesn’t want to continue this conversation, and probing deeper’s getting him nowhere for now.

Off to the Matrix with him, then.

*

He spends a lot of time in the Matrix now, and not just because it allows him to avoid Rassilon – who is mad and clever, but clever in a way that makes him more than a little stupid and more than a lot paranoid. It makes him dangerous to be around. If Travis spends too much time in his immediate vicinity, making himself obvious and known, he knows that Rassilon will realize just how much of a liability he really is – how dangerous it is to have someone just as mad and clever as he is working on the very project that is supposed to rocket him to proper godhood. 

In the unlikely event that anyone finds themselves in the exact same position as him, Travis has some pretty useful advice to pass on: never trust anyone who declares themselves God within hours of being resurrected. Especially not if they follow that up immediately with declaring their intent to destroy all of reality. Words to live by, truly.

So, the Matrix. Lots of Matrix time, as much as he can manage – the fact that Rassilon hardly ever visits him in here is only one of the perks. The Matrix is just really surprisingly nice to exist in. It meshes ever-so-well with the wires and the subprocesses whirring in his bones, like coolant fluid rushing through his veins but so much more pleasant. He is the system; he has more power than he ever thought he would have. 

He spends a solid chunk of this time messing around with Earth’s timeline. Back in his original universe, when he’d been too tangled up with the Wire to so much as breathe of his own accord, he’d been partially responsible for an impressive number of schemes wrapped in layers upon layers of shell companies, all designed to make the entire subjugation of the human race more and more efficient. Matchmaker was only one of these. The Wire had been ruthlessly, staggeringly, beautifully brilliant at working out the algorithms for human behavior, tugging people to do exactly what she wanted to, and that knowledge is seared into Travis’s scorched-and-metal-bound brain like a brand. Combining that with the processing predictive power of the Matrix, and, well. Step aside, Nostradamus. Travis Parker Killian is in town and he’s here to stay for all eternity. 

The Perfector is complete, and it’s starting to charge up. Rassilon doesn’t seem too concerned about the fact that it’s going to take at least a few days, relative time, to activate – but then again, Travis knows what’s really going to happen, and he’s not too concerned about the time gap either. 

The one thing that really is concerning is the Doctor. Because he keeps getting flashes of ‘the Plan’ from her and Roman both, and even though neither of them seem inclined to let slip any sort of information about it, no matter how hard he presses them, what he is seeing isn’t encouraging in the least. Roman just keeps laughing at him, when he can work up the energy. Laughing and pointing. And saying things like, “Oh, so you want to know about the Plan,” before laughing some more. 

Travis really fucking hates Roman, actually. 

None of this is good for his predictions and calculations – it’s the single blank spot, the one splotch of uncertainty in a perfectly-mapped-out canvas. This grand plan that they refuse to let him know about, that’s so important that the two of them, even without knowing of each others’ involvement, are silent as the grave when it comes to any useful information about it. 

They could be bluffing. He’s not so sure they are.

He’s nothing if not stubborn, though – and he thinks that with the remnants of the Wire still echoing through the corridors of his brain, and the entire Matrix backing him up, he might just be the smartest person on Gallifrey. It’s only a matter of time before the Doctor slips up and lets something vital through to him, before Roman cracks under the weight of an uncountable number of other dead minds and talks.

Maybe it really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things, because in a matter of days the Perfector will be set to launch and when that happens it won’t matter what the Doctor has planned or how many people she has on her side –

– unless it does. Unless she’s somehow seen more steps ahead than him. Unless whatever the Plan is, it has to power to derail his plan ruin everything. He’s read the records, he knows what the Doctor is capable of. It’s that uncertainty, again. That blank spot that prevents the sequential logic grinding along in his brain to reach the inevitable accurate conclusion.

The Doctor is the universe’s ultimate spanner-in-the-works, and he’s never sympathized more with literally everyone who’s ever wanted to kill her. 

Just a few more days, then. A few more days to get the Doctor to crack. To find out what she’s up to. Travis can do that. He has confidence in himself, and, more importantly, he has the entirety of the Matrix on his side. With that sort of power, it’s hard to believe that he’s going to lose.

*

“You’re not Travis.”

“You keep saying that.” Travis prods and pokes at the screen of the Mind Probe monitor, searching for a new way in. He’s multitasking something fierce right now. Part of his mind is drifting through the Matrix, overseeing future projections, and another part still is running over the schematics for the Perfector over and over. The part of him that’s in this chamber, with the Doctor, with the Mind Probe – it’s pretty small, actually. “I think you’re just trying to convince yourself. I mean, how many times do I have to say it? I’ve always been Travis. There’s nobody else I know how to be.”

He expects a response of some sort – if nothing else, the Doctor’s good at snapping back with a glib little quip no matter what he throws at her – but, there’s nothing. When he glances at her reflection in the screen, she’s just sitting there. Head bowed, silent. 

Has he finally broken her? He might have broken her. Not in the way that he wants, not quite, but it’s definitely satisfying. He funnels a bit more of himself into this instance of him, wanting to experience the moment just that much more. 

“Anyway,” he says, and now he’s looking at her properly, watching her, gauging for a reaction. “Even if I weren’t Travis – what would you do about it? Glare at me disapprovingly for impersonating him? Lecture me about stopping? Can I just remind you which of us is strapped to a Mind Probe right now, and which of us has their hand on the controls?”

She still doesn’t respond. She refuses to look at him. Where’s the fun in that, honestly?

He scowls, and just as he does. Something dings in the back of his head. Matrix projections complete. Finally.

He turns away, and does the mental equivalent of frantically tearing open the envelope, ripping the report open, and scanning through it with a fervour that borders on violent.

And then he stops. Dead in his tracks. Because this is so much more of a problem than he’d thought it could ever be.

See, if the Doctor stays on Gallifrey here and now, there is a ninety-eight-point-nine-recurring-to-infinity probability of her escaping within the next few hours. She knows he exists – or at the very least knows that Travis Killian can’t be trusted in some capacity – which means that the moment she’s out she’ll be laser-focused on putting a stop to his plans. And the Doctor in laser-focus mode is something that he doesn’t want, not here, not at this last crucial moment. He barely needs to look at the subsequent extrapolations to see what impact this has on his Perfector plans, but he does anyway. Failure. Failure. Failure. 

He very quickly plugs in a few alternate variables. Upping the security, killing the Doctor on the spot, accelerating the procedures. None of it works. The Doctor will escape nonetheless. The Doctor will always escape after this point. He’s pushed her past the tipping point and now there’s nothing that will prevent her from trying to stop him. He’d be impressed, but it’s mainly just infuriating. 

He starts rearranging and revising, pulling the lists scrolling through his mind this way and that. New plan, he needs a new plan. The axioms he’s been relying on so far are false and he needs a new plan. 

At the very least, he has a nearly-complete data set to work from. That’s something. He can make accurate predictions, pull things into some sort of order and work out exactly what events he needs to set into motion to arrive at the optimal conclusion of affairs. This just had to happen at the last minute, only a day before the Perfector is set into motion, didn’t it?

The Doctor must be watching him closer than he’d thought, or maybe he’s just being more obvious than he’d wanted to be, because she says, “Something wrong?”

“Shut up,” he says instinctively, still running variables and strategies through his internal processing faster than the speed of thought. 

“That means yes,” she almost-sing-songs, with a crooked little half-smile. He’d been wrong. He hasn’t broken her; that’s not why she’d been so quiet and drawn. No, she’d been planning her breakout. He knows how she does it if he doesn’t interfere, even. Jam a stolen strip of wire through the electric restraints at just the right angle, short-circuit the local systems for enough time to scramble out and get her bearings, and then just run. Run like hell. It’s simple, it’s crude, but it’s undeniably effective. All of his projections agree with that, at least. 

“It means shut up,” he snaps, and keeps running variables. She knows there’s something wrong with Travis. That’s what will spur her into trying to stop him; the knowledge that something isn’t right. Now that she knows, he’s never going to get rid of her.

...But what if she didn’t?

What if she didn’t know?

She’s so fiendishly clever at hiding things from him, locking things away in that ancient brain of hers, and she has to have forgotten so, so many things. He can’t imagine she’ll miss one more. 

“Travis,” says the Doctor, cutting neatly through his thoughts. “Hey, Travis.”

He resists the urge to groan. “No,” he says.

“Travis.”

“No,” he repeats, reaches out to the computer terminal, and begins to type.

“Travis,” she persists. “Travis, Travis. Guess what.”

He stops, closes his eyes, curls his fingers, and says, “What.”

“I know you’re not Travis,” she says for what has to be the millionth time. But this time it’s a bit fiercer, a bit more determined. She’s glaring. He knows where this is going. This is her last confrontation with him before she embarks on a daring escape, and she’s jabbing at him, digging for the truth in the hopes that her final attempt will be the charm.

Travis doesn’t respond at first. He’s busy piecing together a quick little modification for the Mind Probe. It’s not strictly designed for mind wipes, but the technology can do it, theoretically, and he’s more than capable of flipping some switches and rearranging some logic and getting it to function just a little outside of its set parameters.

See, if the Doctor knows that there’s something worth fixing on Gallifrey, something worth sticking her nose into, the wildest wild horses in the universe wouldn’t be able to drag her away. But if she doesn’t know about him, about any of this, then she won’t be able to get away quick enough. That’s a near-certainty. The predictions are quite, quite clear on that.

“Fine,” he says eventually, and turns to face her. He pauses. “Fine, you caught me. I’m not Travis. Well, I am, but I’m not…” His lips curl unpleasantly. “...your Travis.” 

To her credit, as soon as she has that information, it only takes her seconds to work out the rest. “The other universe. The Wire. You’re the version of Travis that gave into the Wire, of course.”

“I partnered with the Wire, yes,” Travis says sharply. 

She doesn’t seem to hear him. “So you hopped a ride back to this universe. How long have you – ” Her gaze sharpens, and now she looks horrified. “The electricity. He could manipulate the electricity, back on Colony 47… that was you?” She lets out a choked little gasp, and then, “If you’re telling me that we left him there, and he burnt up along with all of that universe  – ”

He’s half-tempted to tell her that yes, that’s exactly what happened. He has a feeling it might be what breaks her properly. But something stops him; pulls him into telling the truth. “As satisfying as that would be… no. I don’t know what it was, but whatever was going on with the computers back there was all him.” 

Relief, bright and glorious, shines in her eyes for a split second, and then she’s back to that sharp focus. Isn’t she supposed to be the one that’s being interrogated, here? “So you’re not my Travis. But you’re still Travis.”

“Congratulations, you know my name,” Travis says. “Hopefully you realize that this literally changes nothing about the position you’re in right now.” He sets his hand on the switch, the activation switch. It maybe isn’t very necessary, practically speaking – it would be much more efficient to just have a simple small button or perhaps a string of code to input, or even a mental process. But some things require drama and there’s an undeniable amount of satisfaction when it comes to pulling a heavy switch down to activate your cunning plan.

“But the Wire’s gone,” she says, and it’s a half-question, like she’s also trying to gain input to fill out an incomplete database of information. It’s probing. She’s always looking for information, he’s realized over the last few days. It’s like she’s afraid that if she ever stops, she’ll miss something vital and it’ll be the end of her. 

“The Wire’s gone,” he says sharply, with no small amount of vindictive satisfaction. “But I’m a whole lot more than the Wire. Don’t forget that.”

She just looks at him, and it’s weird, really weird, because this time it’s not anger or confusion or suspicion or pain on her face. It’s just quiet sadness. The same sadness that Roman had tried on him before, except here’s the thing, he actually thinks she might not be faking it.

The Doctor says, “What happened, Travis?”

She keeps saying his name, like repeating it over and over is going to be the thing that flips him onto her side. He hates the way his name sounds in her mouth. It’s all kind and soft and familiar, and maybe Travis used to be the sort of person fit to be on the receiving end of a tone of voice like that, but not anymore. He knows who he is. He’s wires and sharpness and success, all the way through.

“I survived,” he tells her. “And I plan to keep on doing that. There’s really nothing else to it.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing that I’m going to tell you, no.”

She still looks sad, but now determination’s creeping onto her face. “Right. New question, then. Why are you telling me this?” 

“Well, for one thing, you’re not going to remember any of it,” Travis says, and turns to the controls, “because I’m about to fry your brain so hard that the last three months are gonna be a scorched smoking skidmark in the corner of your mind. Good luck stopping me when you don’t even know I exist.”

“Wonderful,” she says flatly, after a split-second of sullen silence. “Any other reasons?” 

He smiles. “Mainly I’m just loving the look on your face as you gradually realize that your sweet, soft friend is capable of cold-blooded torture.”

“Live as long as I have,” the Doctor says, and he can feel her eyes on his back, “and you realize that just about everyone’s capable of horrible things. Of making the most terrible decisions. Of being the worst possible version of themself. I’d bet you anything that Travis, my Travis, has considered doing some pretty terrible things, just like everyone else in the universe has, and I’d never fault him or anyone else for considering them, because thinking about things and being capable of things doesn’t make you a bad person.” She takes a breath. “But, see, the difference between you and him is that you acted on those thoughts. I don’t know what exactly happened to you in that other universe, but for whatever reason, you decided that you were going to be the worst possible version of you it’s possible to be.”

He straightens up, slowly, and turns to look at her properly one last time.

“It’s not too late,” she says earnestly, and their eyes meet. “You can stop whatever this is. It’s never too late to ask for help, Travis.” 

People keep asking him to change. To reconsider, to reflect. To warp himself to their expectations, to be better. But he doesn’t need to be better, because there’s really nothing better than being who he is right now. They seem so convinced that being him is such a terrible thing. 

But it’s quite honestly the best thing there is. 

“Nice speech,” he tells her without a second of hesitation; fingers looped lightly around the handle of the activation switch. “Did you practice that in front of your bedroom mirror? I don’t see any palm cards anywhere, so you must have worked really hard at memorizing it.”

Her face falls. First there’s a flash of disappointment, and then blankness, and then it hardens into anger. He’s not frightened, but he’s maybe just slightly impressed. There really is no stopping or intimidating her. He’s starting to understand, just a little bit, why his alternate self has glued himself to her side. Not enough to sympathize, and not enough to stop, but... it’s almost admirable. Almost.

“I’m going to get out of here,” the Doctor tells him. “I’m going to break out of here, I’m going to break the real Travis out too, and I’m going to stop you and whatever twisted long game you’re playing. Whatever it is, you’re not getting away with it. Not while I’m here.” 

“Oh, I know,” Travis says, and grins. “In fact, I’m counting on it,” he adds, and pulls the switch home with a final-sounding clunk – and everything goes gloriously electric.

Chapter Text

So, they escape. 

Which is nowhere near as surprising as everybody else seems to think it should be, because of course they escape; there was an eighty-four-point-two-recurring chance of it happening after his mental modifications with solid ninety-percent odds of it being the Time Lords themselves that facilitate the escape in question. So, no – Travis isn’t as concerned with the prison break as the entirety of the Chancellery Guard are, because he knows that all he has to do is wait. And more specifically, wait twenty minutes. 

Because the Doctor’s a lot like a yo-yo when you think about it, and her string’s tied firmly to this dusty orange planet of hers. And it doesn’t matter how far she goes or how long she’s gone – she’s always going to come rolling back home eventually. The Matrix projections – aided superbly by Roman’s contributions, thank you very much, you insufferable old man – have confirmed exactly what’s going to happen. The Doctor is going to come back, and she’s going to try to destroy the Matrix. These things are static and they are certain. It’s been her plan since the beginning, it’s a fixed point. And that’s the thing about fixed points: if you know they’re there, it’s ever so easy to start building up certain and solid defences to prevent them from happen. As Rassilon has so neatly proven over the last few weeks, the ‘laws of Time’ (such as they are) aren’t really so much solid and immovable as they are bendy. Like, super extremely bendy. The sort of bendy he can work with. Twist around. Play with, extensively.

Travis is in the Matrix Chamber right now, watching as the Doctor’s TARDIS fades away like so much melting snow. (It reappears several hours earlier, timeline-wise, but that’s hardly the point.) He knows where they’re going. Or at least, he very strongly suspects with only the barest margin of error where they’re going, considering the memories he’s managed to scrounge out of Roman. And, of course, the fact that the Doctor’s just been presented with a mystery. 

See, the Doctor is startlingly predictable, which he’s sure she’d hate to hear but it’s true. She can’t resist a mystery, especially not an impossible mystery – not even if she’s being instructed to trot off to solve it by the Time Lords themselves, which she’d normally rail and rage and rebel against with unprecedented levels of pettiness. So actually, mathematics and projections and any sort of numerical logic be damned – it’s downright inconceivable that she’s not already hunting down Rayla’s TARDIS with the other Travis right behind her every step of the way. 

He’ll know for certain in twenty minutes, give or take a few variable seconds. Twenty minutes is entirely too long to sit around and twiddle your thumbs for, though. Travis places his hands against the side of the access points, breathes in and out once, twice; thinks about how best to occupy himself until the Doctor shows up again.

And then he slips into the Matrix; wreathing himself in data, speeding through his projects. Everything’s in order, lining up perfectly for him to reclaim Earth once more. His business ventures are progressing swimmingly, in that particular way that they tend to when you have an alien supercomputer and uncanny, precise future knowledge on your side. 

And Matchmaker is going great, for the record. Effectiveness in targeted advertising is at an all-time high, and the algorithm is reaching new levels of efficiency with every day that it remains in operation. He skims forward in the timeline, watching events unfold at a breakneck pace that would be far too complicated for any non-augmented human brain to parse. Everything looks normal – no, more than normal, everything’s improving at an exponential, frankly incredible rate –

...And then it stops; stops dead. All lines of progress begin to flatline. It’s like Matchmaker was never there to begin with

Travis frowns, and rewinds a few hours, and starts trying to figure out what’s going on. Almost immediately, he alights upon the exact point that a crack in his coding opens up, and a tiny, incongruous digital presence slips within to begin to take it all apart. He flexes his digital fingers, and starts firing back. It’s surprisingly difficult. They’re a whole lot more skilled than he’d expected them to be, which is really saying something considering how high his standards are at this point. It’s almost like –

Wait. Hang on.

He realizes with a start exactly who it is. He recognizes that coding style, knows intimately the ebbs and flows and quirks of the way they navigate his own firewalls. Pushing them back is like fighting his shadow, and there’s good reason for that. 

It’s him. The other him.

He can’t even be annoyed when the firewalls fail and the defences fall, he’s just plain old impressed. He hadn’t thought the other him would ever be capable of his level of technological genius, not in a million years – but it seems like his brief brush with the Wire in Travis’s original universe has taken its own, belated effect. He watches as the drones are recalled, the servers shut down.

And then other-him starts trying to break through to the source. Starts trying to find out where Travis is and what he’s doing. It’s a neat little bit of hacking, it really is – elegant and well-thought out in all the ways he honestly admires – but this is where Travis has to put his foot down. The Perfector isn’t fully charged just yet. He can’t have the Doctor swooping in now to start jamming up the works right before she’s due to turn up. 

He opens up a line of communication, and sends, You’re trying very hard to find me.

Barely a split-second passes before the response comes back, flashing at the forefront of his consciousness. Did it work? 

Travis pauses for a second, and then laughs. Really, properly laughs. 

You got very close. I’m proud of you, he types, and means it. Keep it up. We’ll see each other again soon.

And with that he shuts it down and keeps working, never once looking back. One failed project isn’t the end of the world. The end of the world is much more imminent and much more delightful. If everything goes right in the next hour, he’ll have all the time in the universe to do whatever he wants, however he wants. Matchmaker was just a back-up plan; he has a hundred more in place. 

There’s a distant, low rumbling that’s more electronic than physical, and it’s been growing for the last few minutes and counting. Travis can feel it echoing through his systems, all the way down to his bones, both real and simulated. The Perfector’s starting to charge up. It’s complete and it’s gathered enough power, draining from the Matrix and the Eye of Harmony and all manner of other non-essential systems and sources, and at this rate the universe will be consumed within the hour. 

He grins, and feels the wires burn against the inside of his skin. And as he does, he hears a beep and then several whirs. And then his brain abruptly lights up bright with a hundred scheduled alarm bells, all put in place to tell him one thing and one thing only, the most important thing of all –

The Doctor has arrived on Gallifrey, right on schedule. 

It’s showtime.

Travis pushes away all notifications, all projects and open windows, and pulls every camera feed he can to surround him in a wreath of angles and viewpoints. He sees Rassilon in his throne room, with – is that a bag of oranges? Weird, but then again, there are weirder things he could be doing. There’s the Sisterhood, still in their cells, of course. Kalan, in his office. Everything as it should be. And now, outside...

He doesn’t especially care about the sudden appearance of thousands upon thousands of Watchers, all over the Capitol and far beyond. That’s another one of those things that he’d predicted happening, and it really only serves as confirmation that everything’s going to plan. Everyone on Gallifrey is about to die an especially horrific death – wonderful! Neat! But Travis cares far more about the fact that the Doctor and the other-him are face-to-face and talking, and the two of them look downright miserable. 

The Doctor is snarling at other-him, something about his brainwaves not being right, about how he’s wrong. She calls him the Keeper. She looks at him like he’s a complete stranger, with enough wariness and distrust to make a grown man weep – and indeed, other-him looks like he’s on the verge of tears as he scrambles about desperately, searching for a way to convince her that his words are genuine. 

And Travis is thrilled. He watches them hungrily through the Matrix, and wishes he had some popcorn on hand. Not that he’d eat it, if he did. Popcorn’s messy. He’d rather not get crumbs in the Matrix if he can help it. 

They’ve got someone else with them, some new girl he doesn’t recognize. Long dark hair tied back into a ponytail, casting bewildered and awed glances at the Capitol around her, and trying her best to mediate the mess that she’s been thrown headfirst into with barely any context. Travis almost feels bad for her. Almost. 

He continues to watch as they come to some semblance of wary equilibrium – wary on the Doctor’s part, that is, the other Travis just keeps staring at her like a kicked puppy, confused and betrayed. And then they promptly demonstrate a surprising amount of competence in stealing an entire bus. Good for them, actually. He can appreciate some good old fashioned grand theft auto. 

And then they’re blitzing their way through the Capitol, and other-Travis is doing his best to impersonate him, to bluff his way past the guards, and it’s so legitimately terrible of an attempt that Travis snorts and buries his head in his hands in second-hand embarrassment – but, insanely?  They got lucky. They managed to find the stupidest members of the Chancellery Guard in all of the Capitol, somehow. It does work.

Travis makes a note, bolded and double-underlined in glowing bright mental red ink – those two guards are definitely, absolutely dying first. 

Back to other-him and company: they pass right by him. He can feel them entering the Matrix Chamber, exiting through the most inconvenient route, heading downwards at breakneck speed. It makes him laugh, because they’re hunting down Rassilon (of course they are) without ever realizing what the actual source of all this is. 

They’re the most competent idiots he’s ever seen in action. They keep coming so close to the truth and swerving miles away from it at the very last second. He kind of wishes he didn’t have to kill them all, because the entertainment they’re providing is actually pretty great, but also. He does hate them. He hates them a lot. The murder-and-death-and-reckless-destruction part is definitely happening, no matter how this ends.

He idly checks on the Perfector as he waits for something interesting to happen. It’s still charging up – and he can see Rassilon on his throne, waiting for it to happen, too. He’s halfway through his current bag of oranges, and is currently hard at work peeling another one.

Well, at least he’s being somewhat productive. He’s not good for much else, really.

Abruptly, he feels the subtle little click of a new mind linking to the Matrix, and thinks, well, then, as he feels the brush of an uncomfortably familiar pattern of brainwaves darting through the system. He retreats into the shadows, stays out of other-him’s way as sparks of connection fly this way and that, integrating his counterpart deep into the working of the Capitol. 

He hadn’t been expecting that, he’s ashamed to admit. He quickly rearranges a few datasets to account for updated knowledge and an improved estimate for time of arrival. It changes a few things, but not all that many. Everything’s still on track, then. After a few seconds of observation to confirm what he already knows about the unfolding events, Travis decides it’s about time to start getting things really, properly ready. 

He disconnects from the Matrix and finds himself standing in the dark coolness of the central chamber, blue light dancing across his skin. He raises his face up to it, and breathes it in. 

Back to waiting. 

It’s a good thing he doesn’t need to wait very long at all.

*

Only a short while later, the door slides open with a science-fiction whoosh of air and electronics. 

Travis grins, wild and sharp. 

He doesn’t have to look up from the console he’s been working at for the last few minutes to know that the other-him is right there, because he can hear the unmistakable little intake of breath. And he also doesn’t have to look up to know that the panicked whirl of shuffling and scuffling and finally, a single click – is the sound of a gun being levelled directly at him. Because it’s exactly what he would do, if their roles were reversed. 

He can’t quite fight back a grin as he says, “I don't think that's a very good idea, Travis, do you?”

There’s a long, long silence and an intake of breath, and then, a startlingly familiar voice says, “...No. But let's call this Plan B.”

Travis just keeps smiling, and begins to activate the neutrino grid. He knows exactly what’s going to happen next, and he probably wouldn’t have even needed the Matrix to help him predict it – but, well, he is a perfectionist. (Ha.) Still, he knows intimately the exact depths of his own predictability, and he’s almost certain that this particular confrontation isn’t something that other-him wants the Doctor to see. It’s going to be too messy, too personal. Too much potential for Travis to let slip something that the Doctor would be horrified to learn – that might make her hate other-him even more. 

And, like clockwork, he hears other-him telling his two companions to get to the throne room and stop Rassilon, since, quote, he can ‘take care of this’. Which is beyond stupid but not entirely unwelcome, because… Travis chances a glance in the reflection of the terminal and sees the departing figures of two women – one wearing obviously stolen armor taken from a member of the Chancellery Guard, one draped in deep red. His other self’s new friend, and the Doctor, because who else could it be?

Which is perfect. The Doctor’s an unstoppable force, and she’s just been turned loose onto the one other person who could pose any threat whatsoever to Travis’s plans at this point. There’s an eighty-six-percent probability she’ll destroy him within minutes but be entirely too late to stop the Perfector from activating. In most cases, Travis would consider that too much of a risk, but the other alternatives are nearly as good. Rassilon destroys her. She destroys Rassilon. They destroy each other. It’s all pretty great. The decks are stacked in his favour – just the way he likes it. 

He flicks the final switch, and the room goes red around him, the energy building and buzzing in the air like a swarm of angry wasps. Defence grid activated. He’s ready for anything. He straightens up, lets out a happy little sigh, and turns to meet himself at last. 

He’s already seen him on the monitors and screens, of course – but there’s always going to be something strange about seeing yourself face-to-face. Not in the mirror, not on footage, but right in front of you. Seeing yourself the way other people see you. And for a moment, the two of them just stand there, silently observing each other in mutual fascination. 

The other-him holds himself with a surprising amount of confidence. Oh, there’s definitely insecurity there, and a bit of mild terror, but his shoulders are steady and his back is straight, and the coat he’s wearing fits him surprisingly well, considering who it had originally belonged to. It seems that uncanny programming skills aren’t the only things he’s picked up over the course of the last twenty minutes. Travel seems to have suited him. Well, good for him. Not that any amount of confidence or universal travel experience is going to do anything for him right now. 

Travis smiles, and takes a step forward to meet his counterpart.

Almost immediately, there’s a staser gun levelled at his face. To his other-self’s credit, his voice only shakes very slightly as he says, “Stay where you are.”

Travis raises his hands in lazy surrender and reverses the step, moving back towards the console. “That's perfectly fine,” he says. “If you need a security blanket, Linus… go ahead and point that at me.” He takes a moment to survey the look on his face. It really is delicious. Blank shock, clear uneasiness. “Oh. Does this confuse you? Are you… scared by this? Baffled?” He pauses, and then holds up a finger. “Ah. I know.” 

The blank shock on his other self’s face solidifies into an emotionless mask as Travis reaches down to the concealed pouch at his side, and withdraws a staser of his own. Unlike his counterpart’s, this one is most certainly set to kill. 

He can’t help but laugh. “This is all largely irrelevant at this point,” he points out. “It's basically just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. You and me, we're – ” He gestures vaguely with the end of his gun, keeping it trained on Travis all the while. “ – we're way past all this. So. What is it that you hope to achieve?”

There’s a pause. A very long moment of silence, in which the other Travis takes a breath, and then another, before his lips draw into a thin, thin line.

And then he says, “Well… frankly, you're dragging my good name through the mud. And I really could do without that.” 

And he doesn’t stop talking. He keeps on going. He lights up, straightens up – intensity sparking in his eyes as he practically unfolds, like this situation was the sun he needed to make him blossom. Travis watches him go, vaguely impressed. Puppy’s got teeth, he can’t help but think – travelling with the Doctor must have been good for other-him on at least some level, because he can’t imagine any pre-Wire version of him ever having quite this much backbone. 

“ – But you forgot that with great power comes great responsibility. And, I've never forgotten that.”

Although it is undermined a bit by the seemingly-obligatory Spiderman reference. Travis has to valiantly fight the urge to roll his eyes, but he still listens as patiently as he can manage as other-him finishes up his Grand Big Smackdown Speech. 

“ – and there is no way in this universe or any other parallel or alternate universe that I will let you get away with any of this!”

And with that, other-him whirls around, finger curling on the trigger of his gun, and fires a shot with deadly accuracy. Not at Travis. At the Matrix terminal behind him.

Predictable.

And also extremely useless. The shot shatters and splits against the forcefield, sparks of light skittering away into nothing. 

“Do you think I wouldn’t have thought of that?” Travis scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief, and gestures widely with his own weapon. “You’re – you’re holding a gun! What do you think I would do if our situations were reversed? You seriously think I didn't consider this?”

But the other-him doesn’t miss a beat. “Oh,” he says, and now his eyes are bright with glee, “I knew you’d try to protect yourself. I just needed to learn how.”

This throws Travis for a moment, makes him doubt himself. But, no, the Matrix calculations remain steady and unchanged, so… “Okay, so you've figured out that when it's laser versus forcefield, forcefield always wins. That can’t be news to you. Did we not grow up watching the exact same movies-?”

“We did,” he replies, and his eyes are still shining with a sharp intelligence and focus that Travis… had not expected, not from him. All traces of uncertainty and fear are gone, and in its place, there’s just… what?  This? What is this? “But I needed to know exactly that it was a neutrino shell laser grid protecting you. You see, Travis, there's something in your timeline that never happened to you. You never travelled with the Doctor.” And the other him drops the gun to the ground,  “And so you never learned the importance of…” Quick as a whip, he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a battered yellow GameBoy, of all things. His fingers slide across the controls, punching out a complicated pattern with startlingly sharp precision, and then he holds it up, and he says, “You never learned how to reverse the polarity!”

And the air buzzes, and Travis’s head buzzes, and the GameBoy beeps. In an instant, the forcefield shatters and collapses all around them like glass, and Travis freezes. The hand holding the gun wavers as the smile drops from his face. Fallacy detected. Recalculation necessary –

He looks at the remains of the defence grid, then over at his alternate self. He takes a step back, hand extending back towards the console. He says, “Wait – ”

But his counterpart doesn’t wait. He doesn’t miss a beat. Time seems to stop as he rushes Travis – ploughing straight past what should have been a perfectly functional forcefield, seizing him fiercely and slamming him right to the ground. His back collides painfully with the unforgiving stone of the Matrix central chamber, and the curse that was forming on his lips is knocked away as he struggles for breath. 

And then they’re face-to-face, nose-to-nose, and it’s like staring into a mirror but not, because this other him’s face is a map of adventures that he’s never had the chance to have. Freckles scattered across skin nose from alien suns that Travis has never, will never visit. 

This other him looks younger, he realizes with a strange sharp shock. Years younger. He hadn’t processed it before now, not really, but it’s hard to ignore now that he’s thinking about it properly. His counterpart’s only been with the Doctor for a handful of months – and that’s at the very most. Travis had been with the Wire for years. His eyes are locked wide-open as he tries to process this, tries to imagine being that young, and just comes up with blank, blank, blank, and a long string of error notifications.

And all the while, emotions flicker across his alternate self’s face. Anger, terror, regret, and then it all forms into a steely resolve, and he leans in. “You may think you're the only one with a head full of knowledge,” he says, “but, uh, I've got a little something called Norman Antivirus. And I'm connected to this whole planet.”

Travis doesn’t even have the chance to ask him what the hell he’s talking about, before he feels hands constricting sharply around his forearms, fingernails digging in tight, tight, tighter, and there’s a surge of electricity which crackles through his entire body and then something pushes at the edge of his mind. He refuses it, attempting to rebuff it, but it just pushes more insistently, and then it shoves, and everything goes green.

And then he’s floating in icy-white blankness, suspended against nothing. He’s aware, furiously aware, that other-him has done, is doing, something to him. There’s a block in his head, a slowness to time that makes him distinctly aware of how little he knows. He could be here minutes or years or centuries. It’s impossible to tell. 

And then there’s a crackle and a rush, and a man falls into existence right in front of him – hair windswept and grey-speckled, eyes bright behind a pair of blocky, squared-off glasses. He floats for a moment, peering down at Travis; his lime-green coat swirling and drifting around him in an invisible breeze. And then he says, “Well now. You’ve been causing a lot of trouble for us lately. Can’t say I’m too pleased with that.”

He recognizes the face immediately, even though there’s something subtly off about it. “Roman,” he snarls. 

“Not quite,” says the man who is not Roman. His eyes are strange, silvery – a bit too deep and a bit too flat all at once. “Oh, Travis, Travis, Travis. What are we going to do with you?”

No, he isn’t Roman – and it’s not just because it’s impossible for him to be here. He feels wrong. He doesn’t feel like a person, he feels like… some kind of projection, actually. He’s got the hazy, blurred-at-the-edges feeling of a being that isn’t real. 

It’s just intuition and feelings though, because Travis can’t connect to the Matrix to check – can’t connect to any of the local networks, can’t even connect to the other-him’s brain, as augmented as it so clearly is. He can’t reach out and tear this projection-thing apart, can’t break away and form defences and projections of his own. All he can do here is float, and glare, and wait. 

“...Seriously, though. I need to know how you thought that was going to go, because, uh.” The not-Roman runs a hand through his messy salt-and-pepper hair, frowning. “Well, I’ve never known Travis to show up to a final boss fight and not pull some wild game-breaking bullshit out of nowhere at the last second. You had to know that this was always going to end badly for you, right?”

“I calculated every last aspect of this encounter down to the split-second,” says Travis, unable to help himself. “This doesn’t even make any sense. I am, empirically speaking, the better Travis. He may have been upgraded in – in some, some slight way, but I’m the Keeper of the Matrix, and I knew the Wire for far, far longer than he ever did. There’s no way – ” 

“Aha, easy mistake,” says the not-Roman, cutting neatly across him. “You see, even with all of your projections and predictions, even with all of the Matrix at your fingertips, you forgot to factor in the thing that matters most. The thing that he has, that you do not.”

Travis laughs. It feels desperate, unhinged. “And I bet you’re going to tell me exactly what that is, aren’t you?”

“Friends, you miserable creature,” the not-Roman tells him, almost fondly, and reaches out to place a hand on one side of Travis’s head; and Travis can’t move, can’t fight back, even as he rests his other hand on the opposite side, gently framing his face and staring at him with strange flickering-grey eyes. “Travis has friends. He has people that care about him quite a lot, despite your best efforts. And that’s the thing about friends – they change you in unpredictable ways, over time, and if you’re very lucky and you find the right people, they change you for the better.” 

Travis glares harder. “Are you even listening to yourself right now? Are you seriously telling me that he’s going to beat me with the power of friendship?” 

The not-Roman laughs, and it’s a genuine little delighted laugh. “Hah! You know what? Maybe I am! Although, that’s not quite what I meant. How much do you know about sequential logic?”

Travis knows quite literally everything about sequential logic, and quite a few other things besides. Travis basically is sequential logic at this point. “What does sequential logic have to do with anything?”

“Past input determines future output. Without full and adequate knowledge of the past, the future can’t be completely extrapolated. I’m simplifying, of course, but I’m sure you already understand.” The not-Roman smiles. “There are some things that the Matrix is incapable of knowing, you know.” 

This is the very opposite of an explanation, but Travis can’t get a word in edgeways to ask what the hell he’s talking about, not that he wants to beg for answers from Roman of all people, because he just keeps on talking. 

“Now, a reasonably vengeful and bloodthirsty person would probably want to destroy you completely,” the not-Roman is saying. “Tear you limb from limb, burn any trace of consciousness from your brain to prevent you from doing anything like this ever again – you know the drill. You’ve caused no end of torment and catastrophe all across the universe in barely a week of being here. I’m sure even the Doctor might agree that you deserve it.” He pauses, and takes a breath, and then smiles, and there’s not a hint of deception or hesitation to it.  “Travis doesn’t want to do that, though. He wants to save you. So I’m thinking… let’s give that a try, hm?”

“There’s nothing to save,” says Travis, glaring but still entirely unable to move. “You might as well just kill me already.”

“I disagree,” says the not-Roman, quite mildly. “I think there’s quite a lot of you that’s worth saving, and a pretty sizable nasty chunk that’s worth getting rid of. And fortunately, uprooting unwanted intruders happens to be one of my specialties. So, with that in mind…” He leans in, and his strange silver eyes shine with earnest amusement as he says, “Now configuring updates. Please do not shut off your Travis.”

“Don’t even think about it. I’ll – ” Travis begins, but he doesn’t ever get a chance to articulate what he’s going to do. Because it’s at this point that the not-Roman presses an unimaginably kind kiss right to his forehead, and green seeps through his skin and into his mind.

And then he’s drowning in it – submerged entirely in bright cleanness that’s dissolving wires and unravelling twisted knots of dark, angry thinking that he hadn’t even been aware of until now. It’s overwhelming and exhilarating. He is being unknitted, redone, refreshed, rewound. The Matrix is stripped away from his mind, pulled away from his consciousness, inch by inch. Any remnants of the Wire – and there’s so much left of her, so much; much more than he could ever have realized – are dragged away, clipped neatly out and thoroughly incinerated. 

And then he’s gasping for breath on the floor of the Matrix Chamber, still being pinned down by other-Travis’s iron grip, and he’s –

He’s –

*

*

– he’s fucked up, so, so badly. There aren’t enough words – will never be enough words in the universe to describe just how much he’s fucked up. Consuming the entire universe for power? Did he really – was that really – but – no. No. That’s not him. That couldn’t be him, couldn’t have been him. But – 

He can’t breathe. He thinks he might be about to descend into a full-on panic attack, right here and now under the wild-eyed scrutiny of the other-him, but then he manages to choke out a strangled, “Oh my god. Did I – ” But then he cuts himself off, because – yes, yes, he clearly did and the enormity of it is almost too much to comprehend, and he can’t dwell on it too long, because – “We have to stop this, now.” 

The other-him nods, and he scrambles off Travis, extending both hands to help him up. Travis hesitates, and then reaches up, and their fingers intertwine as he’s hauled to his feet. It’s like gunshots going off in his nerve endings; the simplest, barest touch of skin-to-skin human contact just about shattering him. 

And then he’s upright, and he tries to take a step and stumbles. His legs don’t feel right. None of him feels right. There’s a split second where he’s sure he’s going to end up in an undignified heap on the ground, but then the other-Travis is there. Steadying him. Keeping him from toppling over. 

And then, to his surprise, he’s hauled into what’s probably the fiercest, warmest hug of his life. Other-Travis’s arms wrap all the way around his back, pulling him in tight, and before he can even properly process what’s going on, there’s tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to blind him. He hesitates, but can’t help it. He latches onto other-Travis helplessly, arms tightening around him as the breath catches in his throat and the panic and guilt and terror threatens to overwhelm him. 

This. This is.

This is a really good hug. The other Travis gives really good hugs. He tightens his grip and feels his eyes burn, and just. Soaks it all in. This is the only real thing in the world, this moment, the two of them. Just him and himself. Oh god. What has he done?

“It wasn’t your fault,” says other-Travis in his ear, fierce and sharp, with so much conviction that for a second he almost believes it. “But…” He pauses, and then lets go. After a second of hesitation, so does Travis – taking a stuttering step backwards. “...we have to make this right. And I’m – I’m guessing that you no longer know how to make this right, but... I might.” His gaze hardens, determination stealing over his features. “I need your key, right now.”

Travis’s hands are shaking as he reaches into the pouch at his waist without hesitation, immediately searching for the key. 

He says, “I – I don’t remember a lot,” and it’s true, because most of his brain is a hurting panicked bewildered blur right now. The Matrix had been holding so much of him together. He’d had lists upon lists, subprocesses and programs whirring away to keep every bit of his shattered, fractured mind trundling ever onwards. To keep half a million schemes and plans all ticking away like clockwork. And now there’s not a trace of any of that in him and his brain feels like it’s falling apart. He tries to focus. Remembers a shining, whirring, impossibly huge machine constructed entirely from code and memories and malevolence, and can’t quite hold back a shudder. “But. There’s… there’s something. In there.” He pauses, and his fingers clasp around the cold metal of a small, solid object. “Here. Um. I was trying to think of something fun and clever to say, but.” His head buzzes, and he shakes it as he presents the key to the Matrix to his counterpart. “...I've been through a lot, okay?”

For a second, the other Travis looks startled, but then he laughs, takes the key, and says, “You really are me, aren’t you?”

There’s a hint of genuine fondness in his voice. Travis’s chest feels strangely warm.

He doesn’t know what to do with that. 

He clears his throat. “I wanna say it's been a long day, but, it's been a lot longer than that. It's been…” He trails off, and tries to smile. It hurts his cheeks. He stops trying to smile. “...One week.”

The other Travis pauses, and the faint fondness slides off his face. He stands there, holding the key, looking a bit bewildered and more than a bit weirded out. “Is… that what I sound like?” 

Travis blinks, having expected maybe a reluctant chuckle or maybe just a polite smile, and then frowns. “Is that what I-? – am I that judgemental?” 

There’s a moment where they both just stare at each other.

And then Travis says, “Wow. Okay,” and takes a deep breath. “I need to re-evaluate some things.” He pauses, and then adds, “A lot of things,” with a slight shudder that turns into a full-body convulsion as he remembers slamming the lever down, the woman strapped into the machine roaring in agony. Some things are fuzzy and indistinct, but that… isn’t. “I've done some messed-up stuff in the last couple of days.”

Which might just be the understatement of the millennia, but the other Travis doesn’t seem to be paying all that much attention. His face has gone all serious and sharp again, and he’s pulled out the GameBoy and appears to be furiously inputting some sort of message. His face scrunches up in concentration, and then he punches the A-button, and just waits. 

Nearly ten seconds pass, and then that peculiar grinding-and-groaning sound begins to echo through the Matrix chamber. A tall grey cylinder is forming, just near the wall, forcing its way into existence from out of nowhere. At this, the other Travis’s face goes warm with relief, and he tucks away his GameBoy, saying, “Here she comes.” 

Travis’s brain is still all jumbled and most of it is screaming at him in horror and confusion, but there’s at least one part of it that’s going, wait, why is he so relieved that she’s coming, that isn’t right, doesn’t she hate him now? – while another part doesn’t even know who she is or how she’s getting here or what’s supposed to happen next.

But then the door of the grey cylinder creaks open, and a woman steps out into the central Matrix chamber. She looks seriously dishevelled, like she’s been running around nonstop for the last few hours. Her hair stands on end ever-so-slightly, her scarf is hanging crookedly off one shoulder, and she looks more than a little exhausted, but there’s a wonderful bright energy to her all the same.

She hops forwards, looking left and right and up and down and all around her, and says, “Hello. Hi, Travis. Hi…” And now she’s looking between the two of them, wariness building on her face. “...other Travis.”

Travis stares at her for maybe a second too long. His throat is suddenly very dry. “Is this – “ he starts, but can’t look her in the eyes, so he turns to his other self. “You've been travelling with her, right?” 

“Oh, so this one’s mine, then?” she says in a matter-of-fact sort of way, and pushes between the two of them, making for the console. “All right, great. Uh – ”

“No!” exclaims the other Travis, eyes going wide, “wait, I'm – I'm your Travis! This was Dark Travis –” Sorry, what? Dark Travis? What is this, Star Trek? – “ – look at the panel, on his head? Um, I'm real – he's also real – ”  

The woman – and a name springs to his mind, unbidden; Doctor, she’s the Doctor – stops, mid-step, and turns, frowning. “Uh, I got it, from the fact that he just said – ”

“Hold on,” says other-Travis, raising his hands. “Um, okay, so, I’m Travis Prime – ”

“I didn’t say – Travis Prime?” says the Doctor incredulously, and flings her hands up in exasperation, spinning rapidly away from him. “Travis, why do you always think that your universe is the first – ” 

And then she stops. Because now she’s looking right at Travis. And there’s a whole bunch of completely unreadable expressions filtering across her face right now. He really hopes she isn’t thinking about the torture. It’s definitely all he’s thinking about right now. Just. So much torture. 

“Oh,” she says, and it’s soft and worried and just a bit guilty, and then she says it again. “Oh. Your universe is… oh.” 

Travis swallows. Now he’s not thinking about torture, he’s thinking about the sky burning and blackening and an entire planet swallowed up by dead, cold metal. Which is arguably worse. “...Yeah.” 

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him, and it sounds an awful lot like she means it. And then she takes a deep breath, and looks at the other Travis. “Okay. Right. So, just to be clear, I didn't say real Travis. I said my Travis. That’s you.” She levels a firm finger in the other Travis’s direction, as if to make sure there’s not a trace of ambiguity. “I know who you are, don’t worry.” 

“Right, good,” says the other Travis, and he still looks a bit worried. “And – and I know it’s probably not the time, but… we’re-? You-?”

The Doctor looks at him, and then tells him, “We’re friends,” with the sort of weighty solemnity that feels too perfect; too genuine to be real. “And – ” There’s a moment where she just stands there, looking at him, and he looks back with muted terror and anticipation all over his face. A puppy waiting to be kicked again. And then she says, “And I trust you.” 

Other-Travis looks startled, and then delighted, and then a smile begins to spread across his face. “I – ”

“Um? We don't have a lot of time,” interrupts Travis, eyeing the Matrix access point. He doesn’t have the technical knowledge to know how to operate it, and he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but there are a lot of bright, angry lights flashing on it right now, and you don’t need to be a technology-infused genius to know what that means. “This thing is powering up.”

Both the Doctor and other-Travis break away from their relieved best-friend eye contact moment. Which – good. It’s all very sweet and meaningful, but it’s still making Travis feel vaguely sick and he’s not sure why. Besides. They’ve kind of got a bigger, more pressing thing to deal with. 

Other-Travis is now looking around wildly, reaching for the GameBoy once more as if he’s going to be able to stop the universe’s most perfect weapon with an outdated gaming console (or, maybe he might be able to – Travis doesn’t want to start placing any bets against his counterpart, not at this point) – but then the Doctor waves her hands at him. Her eyes gleam as she says, “Well, I believe I have a solution. And she should be here very soon.”

And just like she’d planned it down to the second; like she’s wired into the Matrix and knows exactly when to time her dramatic cues, the elevator dings and the doors slide open, and out bursts a human woman and three guards dressed in sharp, hard battle-ready uniforms, and they are all screaming at the top of their lungs. Not terrified screaming. These are full-on battle cries, and for a second, Travis is absolutely convinced that they’re here to kill him. And then they all screech to a halt and the woman beams at the Doctor and throws out a sharp salute like she’s reporting for duty and he thinks, what. 

And then everything begins to happen very, very fast. 

The other Travis is at the helm of the Matrix now, flicking through pages of information at astounding speed, eyes flickering back and forth, and then he starts to call out to the Doctor – spitting out facts and figures and data at rapid-speed, and the Doctor nods along like all of this makes perfect sense. And then she reaches out a hand, and their other friend, the wild screaming one, she tosses over that gleaming gauntlet. The Doctor shoves her hand into it, and slams it down onto the glowing pad at the base of the console. 

Travis presses a hand to the wall and watches them work – seamless, determined, endlessly capable. He’s shaking again. He doesn’t know what to do. He broke everything and he knows he can’t fix it and all he wants to do is scream. He can see some of the members of the Chancellery Guard beginning to cast glances at him, frowning at each other. They know. They know what he did. 

And then Rassilon is there, and the Doctor is taunting him, and then Rassilon is on fire, and then he’s still on fire but also unconscious, and then the fire’s gone and the Doctor’s wearing just. The most devious ear-to-ear grin, and then she’s pulling out a key and shoving it into the Matrix interface, and then the other Travis is doing the same.

And then she says, “You know, a long time ago, I stole a TARDIS and ran away from Gallifrey,” and the rest is a flurry of furious, vibrant, achingly passionate words that culminate in the Doctor flinging one gauntlet-clad hand up into the air, and tearing the Matrix apart shred by shred as women in red flood the room like a crimson tide. 

Travis finds himself clinging to the wall, sliding down it to huddle on the floor as he watches millions of long-dead souls stream out of a gaping, singing gap in reality. Watches as the room is flooded with light that’s so bright it verges on the cusp of being blue and being white; every Time Lord who’s ever died for good spiralling and soaring in a radiant vortex towards the light blinking triumphantly on the top of her TARDIS. 

And then the light begins to clear, and for a second he’s blinking away spots, and he can see the Doctor and other-Travis and their friend all beaming at each other giddily, high on the joy of a wild plan successfully executed. 

And then his vision fully clears, and they’re. Just. 

Asleep.

They’ve passed out on the ground in an inelegant crumpled little pile, all sprawled out on top of each other in a tangle of limbs and bodies. Eyes closed, completely motionless. The woman in the Chancellery Guard uniform has her face smushed into the Doctor’s shoulder. The Doctor’s scarf has fallen to rest partly over her face. The other-Travis’s arm rests limply across both of them, as if to pre-emptively halt anyone who might be thinking of moving them. It’s not the most comfortable-looking of impromptu sleeping positions, but they don’t seem actively distressed. It would be a lovely little scene, probably, if it weren’t for the fact that they had just passed out without any warning or reason. 

Travis says, “What.” It’s loud, too loud in the tiny chamber, but he can’t help himself. He struggles to his feet, wavering, and says it again, for good measure: “What. What – what are –”

“They’re fine, boy,” says the oldest-looking of the women in red – who is really old, actually. She sounds almost amused as she sweeps past him, making a direct beeline for the console and controls he’d been standing at not so very long ago. 

“They – they just – ” Travis can’t meet her eyes. Can’t meet any of their eyes, because he doesn’t want to see the fear and disgust and contempt there – because he deserves it. He knows he deserves it. But... “They just dropped. Why did they – why isn’t anyone worried about –”

“You’re worried about them,” says the old woman in red, stopping in her tracks. She stares at him – he can feel the attention prickling at his skin, burning away at him – and is silent for a long, long moment, and then she says, “Interesting.”

Travis doesn’t like the way she says that. It reminds him too much of the Wire. His skin crawls. “Uh.” 

“Hmm,” she hums and keeps on staring at him with dark weird creepy old-woman eyes, and then she says, “This is going to get rough for you, very quickly.”

“It... yes?” Travis isn’t really sure how he’s meant to respond to that.

“Oh, totes,” she says. Hang on, did she just say that? No, there’s no way she just actually said – “With a face like that, in a place like this, with everything you’ve done so far? It may not have been your fault, but everybody’s going to treat you like it is.”

This is nothing he didn’t already know. He forces himself to nod.

She looks at him for another moment, and then adds, “It gets better, though. Or it will. Eventually Try to hang onto that.”

He still isn’t sure how he’s meant to respond to that. “I... will?”

“Also,” she says, and her head tilts sideways, slow-and-steady, like a curious bird. And then she frowns. “Wowza yowza, can I just say; you’re a wreck. No offense, but you look like you seriously need a nap.”

Travis blinks. He says, “Uh.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Am I wrong?”

She’s not. She’s not wrong. He just wasn’t expecting a woman as old and austere-looking as she is to pull out a phrase like wowza yowza, and to be honest it’s kind of throwing him even more than anything else that’s happened to him today. He blinks, and opens his mouth, and then shuts it again without saying anything.

She reaches out and pats him on the shoulder a bit too roughly, and gives him a look that’s almost sympathetic. “You’re going to want to take care of that body, young man. Because you sure aren’t getting another one custom-made for you anytime soon. Go sit down. Rest for a bit. Whatever comes next sure isn’t going to be a picnic, I can tell you that.” She pauses, brightens a bit. “Ooh, I do love a good picnic, though – hm, now, that’s a thought... what are you still doing here? Go! Sit!”

He does. He stumbles back over to the wall and slides down it again until his knees are drawn up to his chin and his stupid weird Keeper robes are all bunched up around him, and he stays there as the old woman in red continues across the room, now talking with her fellow red-draped compatriots. The Doctor and her friends are still motionless on the floor. Nobody seems concerned about this. Is this the sort of thing that usually happens around here?

And now that nobody’s talking to him and the danger has passed, there is a question in his head, and that question is, what happens next? It’s an impossibly large sort of question, looming like a malevolent cloud. What next? What happens to Travis Parker Killian? 

He knows (of course he knows) that this entire planet is about to undergo a rapid and drastic cultural shift. Their main repository of knowledge and (if he’s remembering right) future prophetic visions has just been reduced to so much dead air and cobweb-encrusted circuits, and the former president is lying in a gently smoking heap on the floor. (The women in red are stepping over his body as they pass through, completely ignoring him. He might be dead. Travis doesn’t want to know if he’s dead.) He, on the other hand, has just been stripped of absolutely any and all power; forcibly divested of anything that would make him unique in the slightest. That’s good, that’s a good thing. That’s not the bit he’s worried about.

Here’s the bit he is worried about. What are they going to do with him? He’s not dangerous, not anymore, but they don’t know that. He knows firsthand just how ruthless and vicious Time Lords can be, knows that they might exact some sort of twisted time-related punishment on him. Does he deserve it? Does he want to deserve it? Just how bad could it be? There’s no way he can get away with having done all of this, is there?

The answer to literally all of these questions is the same, by the way. He doesn’t know. He does not know. 

He’s huddled on the floor in the corner of the Matrix Chamber watching the motionless forms of three people who were, not even fifteen minutes ago, trying to stop him from destroying all of known reality in a fit of angry pique. And he still doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. Not when they wake up, not when they realize he’s not worth keeping around, not after they reform Gallifreyan society – none of it. It’s a far cry from being able to effectively predict any outcome. 

He watches the Doctor and her friends. There’s nothing else he can do except wait for them to wake up – and hope that whatever comes next, it’s going to be over as quickly and painlessly as it possibly can be.

Chapter Text

Travis can now mentally divide his life into three distinct portions, as follows: ‘Before The Wire’, ‘That Time When I Somehow Thought That Global And/Or Universal Domination And Destruction Was A Feasible Career Path To Take (In This Economy?!)’, and ‘Whatever The Hell This Next Part Is Supposed To Be’. 

Because, like. Seriously. He doesn’t know what’s meant to happen next, not at all.

See, you never really linger on the villain, after they’re defeated. Not in these sorts of adventure stories. Not if they do things like try to destroy all of reality – at best, they might get a brief epilogue depicting their lifelong incarceration in a highly secure facility. At worst, they’ll die a suitably gruesome and fitting death – or, even worse, they’ll just fade out of the narrative, never to be seen again. You never really get the aftermath, not from the villain’s point of view, not in detail – and there’s a good reason for it.

Nobody wants to hear the bad guy complain at length about how much he regrets each and every one of his evil life choices, and if he could take it back he would in an instant. You don’t want to hear the antagonist beg for forgiveness for longer than the space of a single scene, it just gets tedious and besides, you know they don’t really mean it.

Yeah. Travis knows his tropes. He knows this isn’t looking good for him. He knows he doesn’t have a lot of options and not a lot of allies, and – worst of all – he knows he deserves everything that’s coming to him. 

...So. 

About that aftermath, then.

*

Shortly after they’d collapsed, other-Travis and his friends had woken up – and, just like the woman in red had predicted, they’d been fine, perfectly fine. Cheerful, even. Travis had made an attempt at getting over to them, although he hadn’t really been sure of what he was going to say. Ask what’s going on, maybe? Beg them for some sort of help or support or forgiveness, or… no. No, not that. 

Honestly, he doesn’t know what he’d wanted to do, but either way it’s a bit a moot point because he’d been almost immediately dragged off by a bunch of distinctly untalkative members of the Chancelry Guard before managing to get even halfway across the room. Dragged down to the cells underneath the Capitol, which he vaguely remembers the existence of because it’s where he’d ordered his counterpart to be sent, so many weeks ago. Turnabout is fair play, he guesses. It’s not that terrible of a place to be imprisoned, as far cells go. The bed’s almost comfortable. There’s even blankets and running water, and as a bonus, it’s surprisingly quiet down here – no other prisoners at the moment, apparently. 

The main problem with this is that it leaves him alone with his thoughts. And the inside of his head isn’t a very great place to be, right now. It’s kind of like his mind is a battered trash can, and that trash can is currently on fire, and someone’s kicking that trashcan around with wild violent abandon and screaming at the top of their lungs while thrash metal plays at top volume in the background.

The Time Lords don’t really know what to do with him. It would be kind of funny if it weren’t his entire life and future at stake. He spends a couple of days sitting in a series of increasingly-poorly-decorated rooms for hours on end, listening as a bunch of people he barely knows hold deeply involved debates over whether they should kill him or not, and then being herded back into his cell to spend several more hours staring at the ceiling, rerunning all of his terrible life choices through his head on repeat.

It’s just about as depressing as it sounds. It is, however, a lot more tedious than it sounds. Who’d’ve thought that anyone could make debates about parallel universes, the Web of Time, and psychic databases full of future knowledge sound so boring?  

At least they feed him. It’s barely food, it’s more like, just… mostly-flavorless nutrition blocks. It’s genuinely better-tasting than some of the garbage he ate towards the end of high school, though, so he can’t exactly complain. It’s probably objectively healthier too. 

It’s three days into these proceedings where an assortment of Time Lords just continuously argue over what to do with him – they all seem pretty in-agreement on the fact that Travis is super in the wrong here and he can’t honestly disagree – when someone brings up the idea of what they call a mind-wipe. This halts the proceedings for a moment or two, and then a good portion of the Time Lords begin to nod and make noises of consideration. 

Travis has been feeling a bit fuzzy, a bit disconnected from his body this entire time. It’s just seemed easier to go along with everything that’s happening to him, just sit back and let the universe take hold of things for a little while. He’s done enough. Whatever happens next is terrifying, but he doesn’t think he can do very much about it.

This. This, though –

Yes, his brain is on fire and he’s done terrible things and he thinks he might hate himself a little bit, and he doesn’t feel right in his body and he can’t remember a lot of things right, but that is all him; it is his and now they’re saying that they’re going to take it away from him? He sits up straight, starts listening intently, and starts to feel cold all over, creeping numbness up his limbs, tingling down his spine. They’re talking about dumping him somewhere in Earth’s history. Reassigning him with a new identity. 

They’re talking about him as if he isn’t even there.

He makes a weak attempt at clearing his throat, and opens his mouth, preparing to finally object, object loudly, but before he can speak – 

“You’ll be doing no such thing,” says a sharp, clear voice as the door whooshes open, and Travis gapes at the doorway at a short, severe-looking woman wrapped up in a long pink coat that’s several sizes too big for her. Her hair is dark, long, and horribly messy, giving the distinct impression that she’s just rolled out of bed and ran all the way to be here. Her lack of shoes does not contradict that impression. “He is the last remnant of an entire universe that’s dead and gone, with no real connection to anyone beyond a few select people living on this planet. And you want to take any last remnants of identity away from him? That is beyond cruel.” 

Despite the messy hair and the oversized coat and the lack of shoes, she gives off an air of undeniable authority, and the way that she’s glowering at the assembly of Time Lord council members is fierce enough that some of them shuffle back in their seats, exchanging bewildered glances.

“Besides,” she adds, and now she’s looking at Travis, who can’t help but shift uncomfortably at the sharpness of her gaze. “I need to borrow him for an hour or two, and it’ll be very inconvenient if he can’t so much as remember his own name. That isn’t a problem, is it? I can have him? Yes, good.” She glances between the Council members, and scowls. “Don’t look at me like that. He wasn’t contributing anything here as it was – you’re just torturing the poor boy. Come along, Travis,” she says, and clicks her fingers impatiently in his direction before sweeping out of the room. 

Blankly, Travis stumbles to his feet, and quickly looks around at everyone else in the room. They look just as confused as he feels. After a moment, one of the older-looking Time Lords nods reluctantly at him, and he doesn’t wait for more confirmation than that. He’s not an idiot. This is a clear out.

He hurries after her. 

She’s heading towards the elevator, and she may be shorter than he is but she’s fast. He has to practically jog to catch up with her, and even when they’re keeping pace he has to speedwalk to maintain proximity with her. “Sorry, I – not that I don’t appreciate the save, but… who are you?” 

She looks over her shoulder and gives him a look that combines surprise with expectancy. The exact sort of look you give someone when you expect them to know exactly who you are, with the added implication that yes, you are at fault for not remembering and you should be distinctly ashamed of yourself. 

Travis… doesn’t, though. Not at all. And for a second he’s standing still, blanking entirely as he searches through the tattered remains of his slammed-through-the-paper-shredder memory for any hint of remembrance – but then he properly processes what’s up with the coat she’s wearing, and it hits him like a train. A train entirely made up of disparate flickers of distressing memories. There’s a snatch of him grabbing someone by the neck, dragging them through the Matrix. Throwing them into an endless torture pit of a subprocess, laughing long and hard and loud at the screams. Someone with a very familiar long pink coat. 

He looks at the woman, who has turned to come to a halt in the middle of the hallway right in front of him, and says, “Oh, god.”

“Romana will do just fine, actually,” she says, and stares at him like she’s scanning him thoroughly for weaknesses. They’re probably not that hard to find. A stiff breeze could knock him prone at this point – he feels cold and tingly all over, and part of his mind is just screaming run run run run over and over again, and it’s almost a given that all of this is showing in his face. “I considered sticking with ‘Roman’ for a moment there, but it didn’t feel quite right. Oh, but I could go back to going by Trey – now there’s a thought…”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, barely hearing whatever she’s saying. He takes a step back. “I’m – god, I’m so sorry –” And then he’s got nothing, because what do you even say in a situation like this? It’s completely out of the realms of any sort of conventional apology norms. 

Romana doesn’t look angry, though, or even slightly antagonistic. She’s lost the ‘scanning-for-weaknesses’ expression. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she says, and takes a step back from him, hands raised slightly. For the first time, her expression reflects something other than cool, self-assured superiority – she looks wrong-footed, a bit worried. “I – I’m not very sure of what this regeneration is like just yet, but I’m nearly certain that hurting people for things that weren’t their fault is not my style.”

Travis isn’t quite sure he believes her. “Then… then what do you want from me? I – I don’t know anything. I can’t do anything, except maybe… shelve books? And – and probably not even that, I haven’t done it for years...” He trails off as she shoots him a isn’t-it-obvious sort-of look. Even though it isn’t obvious. Not at all. “Um.”  

“I need you,” she says, with great significance, “for a fashion montage.” 

His first thought is, yeah, you sure do, because the pink coat, oversized turtleneck, messy hair and bare feet is certainly a look, but it definitely doesn’t suit her. She is in dire need of a hairbrush and a full wardrobe update. 

His second thought is, wait, what, and he only just manages to prevent himself from saying it aloud. He thinks Romana might read it on his face, though, because she gives him another Look, and says, “I’ve just regenerated,” with the air of someone stating the extremely and abundantly obvious. “I haven’t the faintest clue what my style is going to be this time around, and I think it’s about time I found out, don’t you?”

“Uh – ”

“It’s a very exciting time in any newly-regenerated Time Lord’s life. Frankly, you should be thrilled that I’m inviting you to be a part of it.”

It becomes apparent after a moment or two that she’s looking for a response. “But – me?”

“I don’t see anyone else around, do you?” 

She seems to be deeply insistent on this, so he just... follows her, as she sets off again. What else can he do?

He realizes, after they go up several flights of stairs and down several corridors and passageways and finally to a small, out-of-the-way room, that she’s led him to... the Doctor’s TARDIS. It’s kind of hard to miss, because there’s only one TARDIS on Gallifrey that looks like quite as much of a big blue anachronism. 

“Are we allowed,” Travis begins, but Romana just reaches into the pocket of the pink coat and pulls out a shiny silver Yale key before pressing it into the lock. The door opens. 

“She won’t mind, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Romana says over her shoulder, halfway to stepping through the doors. “She’s known me for entirely too long at this point, and it’s not as if I’m planning to take the TARDIS anywhere – I’m just borrowing the wardrobe for a bit.” 

“...Not you,” says Travis, staying exactly where he is. “I… I just don’t think she wants me inside her ship.”

Romana gives him a long, hard look. It once again makes him feel rather a lot like he’s being thoroughly scanned, head to toe – and equally thoroughly judged. She says, “If she has a problem with it, she can discuss it with me. Come on in.” 

He stares at her, and she stares at him, and then she turns and enters the TARDIS. He can’t think of anything to say, or anything to do except follow her. 

*

The console of the Doctor’s TARDIS is big, warmly lit, and smells like approximately fifty million different types of coffee, for some reason. Plush couches and armchairs are clustered in friendly little groups along the outside walls, with oddly-shaped lamps and light fixtures hanging over them. There’s a big transparent column in the centre of the room running all the way up to disappear into the ceiling, and it glows and burbles like a lava lamp. It feels very home-y in a way that puts Travis distinctly on edge – probably because it’s not his home and never was. 

A large cream-and-ginger cat is dozing contentedly on the chair nearest to the entrance. As Travis tentatively shuts the door behind him, it mrrphs back into consciousness and regards both of them with visible wariness. 

“Gunther,” Romana says warmly, reaching out to the cat. 

It pads forward and sniffs her outstretched hand, then pauses, and gives her a neutral look of extreme displeasure. Romana pauses, looking vaguely downtrodden, and she attempts to scratch the cat behind its ears. It doesn’t seem to appreciate this, judging by the almighty hiss it emits before bolting out through the doorway leading deeper into the TARDIS.

“Ouch,” says Romana, although she doesn’t seem actually hurt. She looks down at the jacket she’s still wearing, and then towards the hallway that the cat had disappeared down. “Well, good to see you too.” She looks over at Travis. “I’m sad to report that I don’t think I’m much of a cat person this time around.” 

“Oh… oh no,” Travis tries, not quite sure if sympathy is the right reaction. “Sorry?” 

“Don’t be. Regeneration; it’s a lottery. I’m still figuring myself out. Come along, now – if I’m not wrong, the wardrobe should be this way.”

She’s not wrong – it is. And the wardrobe itself is...

...Well. It’s very big. It’s the sort of big where it’s really terrifyingly obvious that it might take you years to sort through the entirety of the place – years at the very least. There is a horizon in here. What sort of room is big enough that it has its own horizon? 

Before he can even work up the nerve to ask questions, Romana’s already made a preliminary sweep of the closest racks, hauled a wide variety of clothing of all fashions and eras and styles over to an area closely resembling a department store changing room. She’s now working her way through them while Travis watches. She’s like a very short, very discerning typhoon. He can’t remember her previous self very well, but he’s nearly certain he hadn’t been nearly this maniacally energetic. 

The pink coat is draped over the back of a nearby patchwork armchair, in the sort of way that is both respectful but oddly final. I loved you, but I won’t be needing you again. Travis leans against the armchair, feeling a bit disoriented and a lot pointless. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be providing in this situation. Does she actually need his help? Does she want him to talk at all?

“The first time I regenerated,” Romana mutters, tugging at the hem of her current knee-length skirt, “my clothes inexplicably changed with me. That was nice, if a bit odd. It would make life a lot easier if my clothes chose themselves again. Travis, what do you think? Does this seem like me?”

“Um,” says Travis. It seems like she is, in fact, looking for a response. His memory is spotty, his grasp of fashion trends is extremely limited, and quite apart from that, he’s still extremely afraid of offending her for many, many reasons. “It looks… kind of like what the Doctor wears? If that’s what you’re going for?”

She stares at herself expressionlessly in the mirror, before saying, “Damn it all. You’re right,” and stalking over to rip open the curtain, step behind it, and tug it shut behind her. After a moment, there is the sound of yet another furious, rapid costume change in progress.

“I mean,” Travis says weakly, “It does look nice.”

From behind the curtain, Romana says, with a hint of distinct bitterness, “I’ve already tried the cinematic costume design parallels with her. Never again.”

Fair enough, he thinks, and looks around the wardrobe room. It’s probably bigger than the Matrix in its entirety. Well, not really, because the Matrix is – had been – functionally and literally infinite, and he’s pretty sure that these rows of clothes racks and cardboard boxes piled ceiling-high have to end somewhere. Probably. It’s all very colorful and more than a little frightening. 

There’s a loud, “Hm!” and then Romana sweeps back the curtain with a flourish, emerging in a sharply-tailored black suit with glorious swirls of brightly-dyed stitching exploding along the sleeves like miniature galaxies. Travis briefly wonders if all renegade Time Lords have an obsessive obligation to dress like they’re one of Miss Frizzle’s mad hyperspecialized cousins, or if it’s just these two in particular. 

She raises her eyebrows at him and turns on the spot – but as soon as she catches sight of herself in the mirror, she’s shaking her head and frowning again. “No, that’s not it.”

“It – it looks... nice?” 

“It looks nice but it doesn’t look me.” She sighs, undoes the top few buttons. Travis is almost terrified she’s going to start stripping in front of him right here and now, but she doesn’t do that – she just glances over at him and says, “You should look around too.”

Travis has been looking around. In passing. It’s hard not to, in a place like this. But… “Do you… want me to find something specific?”

“What? No, for you.” She gestures vaguely at him, head-to-toe. “I would’ve thought you’d leap at the chance to get out of that prisoner’s jumpsuit.” She wrinkles her nose at it, apparently mildly disgusted. “It’s hardly the most flattering of colors. Or designs. Or… well, anything.”

Travis doesn’t know how to articulate the fact that his wardrobe is currently the last of his worries, so he settles with just saying, “I don’t know if I’m – you know, supposed to wear anything except this.”

“You’re awfully concerned about what you are and aren’t allowed to do, aren’t you?” she says, and gives him another one of those Looks, before going over to a rack of scarves of every size, style, and color, and starting to sort through them. “Well, you’re probably not allowed, no. But here, how about this – pick out whatever you want, and I’ll keep hold of it until after.”

He opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again; says: “After?”

“After we get all of this nonsense sorted out,” she says, “and you’re allowed to start working out who you want to be.” 

…Travis had honestly kind of figured that the Time Lords were going to just straight-up publicly execute him at the end of all of this. At the very least, they had been pretty vocal about the whole ‘mind-wipe him and dump him somewhere we don’t have to think about him ever again’ option. He wasn’t aware that after was an option for him to start thinking about.

She pulls out a long floral silk scarf, wrinkles her nose at it, shuffles it back into place once more. “Your counterpart is rather attached to that coat of his. Perhaps we should get you a coat.” 

That worn, comfortable-looking leather coat fits the other-Travis perfectly, like he had always been meant to wear it. Travis can’t picture himself wearing it. Or rather, he can, but he knows it wouldn’t fit right. He’s too sharp around the edges, too tired, not nearly soft enough for that jacket. He says, “Yeah, maybe,” and looks out over the infinite racks of clothes. It’s only properly occurring to him now that Romana’s mentioned it – it would be nice to change into something a bit more comfortable. 

She nods at him, and continues to search through the rows of clothes. After a moment or two, Travis joins her, trying not to feel too awkward about it. Pre-Wire, he can distantly remember button-up flannels and jeans being his standard wardrobe choices. He doesn’t know if he wants to try looking like his old self. It might be time for a hard reset, in more ways than one.

He finds some T-shirts he doesn’t hate. They’re mostly plain, greys and reds and subtle geometric patterns, but there’s a few worn-looking Star Wars ones that he can’t help but add to the small pile he’s building up.  

He’s half-heartedly considering cargo pants when he hears Romana make a soft noise of absolute frustration behind him, and he turns to see her scowling at herself in the mirror. She’s wearing a long yellow dress with feathery detailing running all the way up one side of it. It fits her well enough, but she doesn’t seem at all happy with it. She pokes at the detailing with a sour-expression, and tugs at the hem with another huff.

“Travis,” she says. “I find myself indescribably frustrated.” 

The only thing he can think of to say is ‘oh no’, which feels super inadequate. “Oh – uh, still no luck?”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” she says, and pauses, and then admits, a bit quieter, “I really don’t know who I’m supposed to be yet.” 

There’s something that’s a little bit soft and a little bit vulnerable to it. Travis opens his mouth, and then shuts it, and just listens as she keeps on speaking.

“I didn’t expect to ever be able to regenerate again, and I think it’s throwing me off, just a bit. There’s so much to choose from, you see. Should I be loud? Opinionated? Sarcastic? Unabashedly enthusiastic? Maybe I should choose something incredibly specific to hold a grudge against, or maybe I should have an odd affinity for the color yellow. My previous self adored cats – maybe I should develop a fondness for dogs, to neatly bookend that? What sort of music should I listen to? Do I even like music?”

Travis blinks. “Do some people… not like music?”

“It’s a big universe,” she says. “Music is illegal, some places. How dreadful must that be, no music?” 

“...I guess it sounds like you like music,” he says, for lack of anything better to say.

“I guess it sounds like I do.” Her gaze drifts to the full-length mirror just to her left, and then she frowns – before straightening up in sudden realization. “Oh,” she says. “I see. I think I know what I need. Hold on just one second.”

He watches, bemused, as she disappears into a mass of storage boxes piled ceiling-high towards the west of the wardrobe room, and is gone for a good few minutes. When she emerges, she’s got a pair of electric hair clippers in one hand and is busily untangling its long, knotted-up power cable with her other. 

“It’s the hair,” she tells him, with the same intonation and gravitas that you’d usually use to say something like ‘he’s the murderer’, or ‘the deadly poison was concealed in that gold-plated goblet’. “There’s entirely too much of it. It has to go. Here, take these – ” 

She finally manages to thread the last knot out of the power cord, hands the clippers to him, and immediately turns to plug them into a socket in the ground that had almost certainly not been there just a minute before. But then she doesn’t take the clippers back. Instead, she starts dragging a chair over so it’s right in front of him, and she throws herself into it and says, “All of it, I think. Feel free to – what’s the phrase? – ‘go hogwild’.”

“Me?” Travis says, a flare of panic sparking deep in the pit of his stomach.

“Well, I don’t see anyone else here.”

“I’m – I’m not a hairdresser.”

“Do I look like one?” 

With the current state of her hair, she looks more like a hairdresser’s deranged arch-nemesis. For a second, he thinks about telling her that, and then decides to just try handing the clippers back again. “Look, I – ”

She pushes his hand away, and then does it again, and then the third time she grabs his wrist and says, “Travis.”

“Don’t make me,” he whispers, and when he looks at her she’s looking right back at him. “Please don’t make me.”

Romana’s gaze is soft, warm. She holds his wrist, firm and steady. She says, “You’re not going to hurt me. I promise you, I won’t be angry if you ruin my hair.”

“But – ”

“I’m asking you to cut it all off,” she tells him. “There’s really no possible way you can do that wrong.”

“You – “ He makes to drop the clippers, but she doesn’t let him – her fingers remain tight, holding them in place. “You should just do this yourself. You don’t need – ”

“No,” she says. “No, I don’t. But I want you to do it.”

He shivers, and the metal-encased half of his face aches and tingles fiercely. “Are you sure? What if – what if – ”

“If I don’t like it,” Romana says, and gently moves his hand to press the blades of the clippers to the base of her scalp, “then I suppose I’ll have to find a decent wig, won’t I? You can help me with that too.” 

His fingers tremble. He can’t remember pressing down on the switch, but it’s buzzing in his hands now, blades whirring as he holds it to Romana’s long dark hair. 

He stops. He lifts his finger from the switch. A weird sort of calmness descends over him, panic receding, and he admits, “I don’t actually know how to do this.”

In the mirror, he sees the corner of Romana’s mouth quirk upwards.

“I don’t either,” she says. “Give it your best shot, anyway.” 

He takes a breath, and then squeezes his fingers tight around the clippers, and presses them into the wild mane of her untamed hair. 

It comes away so much easier than he’d expected – long locks of tangled black spilling down her shoulders and onto the floor. It’s a weirdly satisfying experience, and he briefly loses himself in the rhythm of it. The rhythmic buzzing of the clippers, the soft swish of hair falling away and to the floor. 

Pretty soon – sooner than he’d expected, really – the majority of it is gone, and he’s having to actually concentrate, fiddling with the settings on the clippers as he tries to make the last remnants of it at least passably even. He’d heard something about her becoming Prime Minister, and it’s very hard to be taken seriously as Prime Minister if your haircut is really, really shitty. He doesn't want to be responsible for the future Prime Minister's notoriously terrible haircut. “Is this – how close did you want it? There’s a bunch of numbers here, but I don’t know if one is too short, or – ”

Romana’s eyes are closed. She looks peaceful, almost like she’s meditating. “Exercise your best judgement.”

The last time Travis had ‘exercised his best judgement’, he’d decided that picking a fight with his infinitely more capable alternate self had been a really good idea to kick off his whole ‘destroying reality’ plan. His judgement is, historically speaking, really, really terrible. 

Also, he doesn’t know how these clippers work. 

He fumbles around until he finds that setting the clippers to ‘three’ gives a pretty even smooth cut, and all he has to do is make sure that everything’s evened out around the edges. And then he takes a step back and turns off the clippers, and bites his lip. It’s hardly the most professional job, but...

“Done?” he says, knowing he sounds just as unsure as he feels. “Um. I accept tips in cash only. Mainly because I don’t think I have a credit card in this universe, so – ”

He closes his mouth as Romana opens her eyes, partly because he’s super aware of exactly how not-funny he’s being right now, and partly because he’s actually properly terrified of what she’s going to say. He watches as she looks at herself in the mirror, and there’s a long moment of silence where every part of her is entirely unreadable, perfectly inscrutable. 

And then she smiles, outright grins and it’s a brilliant sort of grin, all shades of wickedly mischievous and joyfully radiant, and he realizes that this is the first time she’s smiled since she stepped into that council room to drag him out and away. Her thin shoulders straighten as she lifts her chin up to examine herself, brushing some stray cuttings away from her shoulders. 

“Um,” says Travis, the clippers dangling uselessly from one hand. “So, it’s – this is okay?”

Romana scrubs the flat of a palm against the thin layer of stubbly hair left on her scalp, and her fingers wiggle happily in a brief little flare of joy, and she says, “Yes. Oh, Travis, this is more than okay – this is splendid, this is me.”

Travis can’t help but smile just a bit, even though it hurts his face. “Yeah? It’s – yeah. It looks good on you.”

“It looks very good on me!” she agrees, and her hand shoots out so quickly to grab his own that he can’t help but flinch, but all she does is squeeze it once, sharp and decisive, and then she’s dropping it and rising to her feet and booking it directly for a rack of jackets some several metres away. She flicks through them rapidly, and then produces a short dark coat that almost seems to be made of something between leather and velvet. She looks at it, nods, sweeps up a pile of miscellaneous suitery in one arm, and disappears behind the curtain again. 

Travis waits, but he doesn’t have to wait for very long at all, because it can’t be more than a minute before Romana exclaims, “Drum roll!” from behind the curtain.

After a split-second, Travis realizes that this is directed at him. He looks around in a panic for something to execute a drum roll on, and settles on banging out a clumsy rhythm against the nearest wall. Romana seems to deem this acceptable, because a moment later the curtain swishes back, and she’s standing there, fingers splayed outwards as if to say, presenting: me!

She looks complete. The fabric of that dark coat falls in sweeping drapes and folds, her jewel-toned suit is sharply-cut, her pants wide at the bottom. It’s comfortable-looking, but not in a way that would fool you into thinking she’s anything less than completely capable. She spins on her heel as if testing her balance in the new clothes, and says, with some satisfaction, “Splendid. Let’s find me some earrings, I rather think I’ll need them – and let’s get you sorted.” 

She finds some dangly pointy silver earrings that she deems especially excellent – and then together, they go through an entire rack of coats. There’s some ridiculous ones, too many colors and too many patterns, there’s some coats that are just too boring for either of their tastes, and there’s some other coats that are nice enough in many ways but just don’t click. 

Romana’s the one who finds it - it’s long and dark and leather-y in appearance, although the texture itself is smooth, almost like silk. When Travis sees it, his first thought is nice, but it’s a bit too edgy – but he decides to try it on anyway. He shrugs it on over the top of the fractal-patterned T-shirt he’d found a while ago – and is immediately glad that he did. 

It falls down to his mid-calves, and swishes nicely around him as he turns. It’s needlessly dramatic. It’s pointlessly over-the-top. It makes him look just a tiny bit like an edgy antihero from a dystopian science-fiction movie. It fits him like a glove. 

It’s kind of absolutely perfect. 

“What do you think?” Romana asks.

“I think,” says Travis, looking down at himself, and he pauses for a long moment. “...I think I need boots to match this.” 

“I think you’re very right,” she says, and they go to find him some boots. 

The TARDIS wardrobe has many boots. Quite a lot of them have ridiculous amounts of heel that just scream potential twisted ankle. He briefly eyes up a rack of Doc Martens, but eventually settles on a pair of practical-looking combat boots. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever need them for any sort of practical setting, but he likes the feel of being ready. 

He ends up picking out quite a few more bits and pieces – shirts, jeans, miscellaneous accessories that catch his eye. The longer he’s at it, the easier it becomes, and he almost starts enjoying it. Romana offers to trim his hair (“It seems only fair, considering.”) but he declines. He kind of likes its current length – a bit longer than the other-him’s, not quite long enough yet to pull back into a ponytail, but… maybe. Maybe soon. He wants to see how that looks. 

When Travis has a veritable pile of potential clothing choices, and he’s feeling unsteady on his feet from all the walking (and even Romana is looking a little worn out), it becomes apparent that they’re done here. By silent, mutual agreement, they head back to where they’d started. 

For a long moment, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the full-length mirror, regarding themselves and each other. Romana cuts a strangely austere figure with her suit and jacket and shaved head, although there’s a strangely punk slant to it all that Travis has a feeling a lot of Time Lords won’t approve of. 

As for him – well, it’s not not stuff that the other-Travis would wear, he knows. But he doesn’t get the feeling that any of his current look is the sort of thing that he’d gravitate towards as a first choice. It’s comfortable, familiar, sure – but different. It’s him. He feels like himself, finally content in his own skin – if he ignores the half of his face encased in cold, uncaring metal. Which he’s been doing studiously all this time anyway, so. 

“Nice,” Travis says, and finds that he means it. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his new coat, enjoying the stretch of the fabric and the cool way it feels against his skin. He realizes he looks almost confident, and finds that he’s disappointed that he’ll have to go back to the prisoner’s jumpsuit in just a short while.

“Very nice,” Romana agrees affably, and mirrors the gesture, slipping her hands lightly into her own pockets. She arches an eyebrow at herself. “Perhaps we should invest in sunglasses. It might complete whatever look it is that we’re going for here.” 

Travis kind of does want sunglasses, actually. But he’s kind of worried they’ll make him look like an asshole. “Uh, let’s put a pin in that one. This is good for now.”

She helps package up everything he’d found into a neat little box that seems to be bigger on the inside (Time Lord tech, go figure), tucks it under her arm, and tells him, “I’ll get this back to you.”

“Thanks,” Travis says, and pulls at the sleeve of his russet jumpsuit. He misses his cool coat already. “Um – really, thanks. Thanks for all of this, I mean. It’s been…” He doesn’t know if fun is the word, but he knows he hasn’t hated it. “...good.” 

“And thank you for the haircut,” she says. He assumes she’s going to turn and start leading the way out, their business here concluded, but instead she looks at him, and says, “Your face.”

He blinks. “What about it?” he asks, but even as he says it, he remembers once again the metal plates twining around the left half of his face, and he can’t help but wince. Why would she bring that up? He doesn’t want to think about it. Maybe she’s bringing it up as a way of reminding him of his place here. She doesn’t need to. He hasn’t forgotten just how badly he’s screwed up.

“That can’t be fun for you,” she says, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to reach out and cup his cheek in her hands and his entire body goes tight with terrified tension. But she doesn’t, she just says, “How do you feel about getting those off?” 

“They’re wired into me,” Travis replies, almost on autopilot. It’s true – he can feel the wires under his skin, tugging as he talks and frowns and breathes. The wires are useless, not connected to anything anymore, not providing or taking anything away. Like the implants on his face, they’re just there. 

“Well, I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve picked up some skills.” She frowns at him, and reaches out to tap the very end of a fingernail against one of them. Click. “If you’re all right with it, I think I might be able to disconnect them. They’ll most likely leave a scar, but I think I could make it subtle enough.” She looks up, makes eye contact. “Or if you prefer, we could find someone else to do it. Or we don’t need to do it at all.”

His fingers tremble even though he’s not holding anything. It takes a second or two for him to respond. “I… no. No, you can do it.”

“No pressure,” she’s quick to assure him. “If you’d rather keep them on, that’s your choice.”

“I want them off,” he says, and is surprised at his own vehemence. “I… I do want them off. If you can get rid of them, then – yes. Yes, I want that.” 

“Well, then,” she says, and starts leading the way out of the wardrobe room, his clothes still secured neatly under one arm. “I have a meeting or two that I really should attend posthaste, but how about we say… tomorrow, same time?”

“Um,” he says. “Um, sure. Where should – ” He trails off, and then manages a tiny, barely-there ironic smile. “...I’ll probably be in my cell. Or getting interrogated again. You probably know where to find me.”

She keeps walking, but turns and frowns at him. Really properly frowns. “...They’re still keeping you in a cell?”

He nods. She seems mildly perturbed by this, so he hastens to add, “It’s not, like, a bad cell? Not that I’ve been in many cells, really, but… look, it could be worse.”

“Yes, but it’s still a cell.” She just keeps on frowning. “I understand their reasoning, but… good grief. Your counterpart could probably cause more harm than you at this point, and I don’t see them locking him up.” 

“Well, yeah,” Travis says, and snorts. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but out of the two of us, I’m kind of the designated evil twin.”

“Evil is a strong word. And a wholly inaccurate one.” She gives him a Look, and then says, “It’s not your fault. I don’t know if you understand that, but it really wasn’t your fault. You don’t deserve a cell and a mindwipe, Travis.”

He bites his lip. “I knew what I was doing.”

“But you weren’t in your right mind.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Can you?”

He’s silent. They reach the console room, glowing with lava-lamp warmth, the smell of coffee thick in the air, and Romana pushes the door open. The Capitol is outside, white and sterile. 

“You don’t deserve a cell,” she repeats. “I’ll do something about it.” 

Romana, Travis has learnt over the past few hours, is a force of nature when she sets her mind to something. He doesn’t know if she’s aware of this yet, newly-regenerated as she is, but for all she’s unsure about other aspects of her personality, she is definitely unstoppable.

So, in this? Well, he still isn’t entirely sure he doesn’t deserve it, but he doesn’t doubt her for a second.

*

Romana does do something about it, as predicted. Instead of being led back to his usual cell at the end of the day, he ends up in a small room a few floors up. It’s not very much different, broadly speaking – the doors are still locked, there’s still visible cameras monitoring basically everything he does – but there is a window, and there aren’t bars on the doors, which is, like. A moderate improvement.

Another moderate improvement is the fact that someone’s left a small stack of books on his bedside table. It’s a selection of battered paperbacks, worn and dog-eared. He picks them, sorting through them. The Stars My Destination. A Wrinkle In Time. Snow Crash. All titles he knows, at least distantly. There’s a collection of Heinlein short stories too, which had been his favorite back in senior year – and tucked into the front page, a scribbled note on the back of a receipt from some sort of alien coffeeshop.

Sorry if it’s all a bit on-the-nose, they were the first ones I could find. Talk to you soon, I hope? - T

He pulls away the note and looks at the first story in the collection, which is about a man trapping himself in a self-imposed time loop with a seemingly unending collection of doubles of himself, and can’t help but snort. It really is horrifyingly on the nose, all of it. Stranger in a strange land indeed. 

But, he realizes, with a strange little start… he still wants to read these books. It doesn’t matter that he’s on an alien planet, or that time travel is real and is at least indirectly responsible for how screwed-up his life has become, or that he’s seen things in the last few years that George Lucas could never hope of matching in terms of sheer alienness. Because sci-fi is sci-fi, even if aliens do exist, and despite everything, he still loves sci-fi. And he hasn’t had a chance to read an actual, proper book in… god knows how long it’s been. 

The paper of the anthology is crisp and rough under his fingers, and when he inhales, it’s that very particular old-book smell – rotting glue and aged ink. Before he realizes what’s happening, he’s tearing up, just a bit. All right. Okay, all right. It’s not like has anything else to do. It’s time for a very small, very private meeting of the Travis Killian Book Club. 

He puts down Heinlein and picks up A Wrinkle In Time – knowing that with how tired he is, it’s probably going to be the easiest out of all of them to wrap his head around – and goes to curl up on the bed. The prose is simple, sweet, delicious in its kindness. Pretty soon he’s lost in the story of mysterious visitors on a dark and stormy night.

He’s just got up to the explanation of what exactly a tesseract is when there’s a knock at the door.

He nearly drops the book, but manages to recover it before he can lose his page. Cautiously, he looks at the door, wondering if it might be Romana, and if so why isn’t she just coming in-? – but then the knock comes again, and this time it’s louder and more impatient. He winces a bit. Okay, that doesn’t sound like Romana. He officially has no idea who it is. 

“I can’t actually open it from here,” he calls, voice echoing in the enclosed space. “I think you… need to have some sort of access code-?” 

Even before he’s finished speaking, there’s beeping and clicking and the sound of the locking system disengaging, and the door slides open just as he’s sitting up and tucking his finger into his book to hold his place. 

Standing there is… someone whose name he really should know. He thinks he should know it. 

“Right, forgot I had unlimited access,” she says, a bit sheepishly, and waves. “Heyyy, Negatravis! Surprise visit!” 

“Oh. Oh, um, you’re…” The name is still not coming to mind. He fumbles for it, then gives up entirely.“...you’re the Doctor’s friend, you’re the one with the… army.”  

She grins ear-to-ear, bright and wickedly delighted. “Hah! Yeah! I am absolutely the one with the army, thank you, I will be introducing myself as that for the foreseeable future! Hey, can I come in?”

He shrugs. “I guess? Just… it’s not very big, so don’t – ” She’s already squeezing her way past him, into his tiny room. He pauses, and then shoves other-Travis’s note into A Wrinkle In Time to use as a makeshift bookmark. “ – all right. Also, it’s probably not very interesting in here. Fair warning.”

“Pfft, I’m not here to critique the decor,” she says, sticking her tongue out a bit. “...Even though it is kind of boring in here, did you notice that? Actually, it’s very boring, how long have you been stuck here for? – no, but, I’m here to talk to you.” She pauses, glances over her shoulder at him as the door closes automatically. “Wait, you don’t actually know my name!” 

“I don’t,” admits Travis. He puts his book down on the bedside table, and immediately regrets it, because it means he doesn’t have anything to do with his hands. “Everything was happening really fast. You screamed a lot, and then you passed out? There wasn’t a whole lot of time for introductions.”

“I did do that,” she says, looking disproportionately pleased with herself, and then shakes herself, and says, “Right – Carrie, my name’s Carrie. Carrie Vu, hello, hi, yes! And I already know your name, so – we know each other now!” She turns, taking the room in, and then goes to sit on the bed. “Introductions complete. There we go.”

“...Negatravis?” he says after a second, running back the conversation as it stands in his head. “Did you – is that what you’re calling me? Negatravis? Seriously?”

She makes herself comfortable on the mattress, pulling her legs up so she’s sitting neat, criss-cross-applesauce. “Um, yeah? I mean, I already know a Travis, and – I don’t know, I didn’t catch all of what was happening because honestly, yeah, it did all happen pretty fast! But you seemed like you were doing some super evil hacking stuff. For evil world domination reasons. I kinda figured that’s why you were locked up in here.” 

“That’s me,” says Travis, a bit blankly, still trying to process ‘Negatravis’. “Locked up for super evil hacking crimes.” 

She puffs one cheek out, stares contemplatively at him for a second, blows it out in a noisy little puff of air, and then says, “...But, you’re cool now, right?”

“I don’t want to destroy the multiverse anymore, if that’s what you mean?”

“Yeah, you’re cool,” she diagnoses. 

He stares at her for a moment. She stares back.

He says, “...It’s nice to meet you, Carrie, but, like… what are you doing here? We don’t know each other – you don’t know me at all, and I didn’t… I don’t think I did anything to you.” Except that isn’t quite true, there’s a vague almost-memory of plugging her name into a long list of People To Be Dealt With, Fatally, and – no, nope, he’s not thinking about that, definitely not. She doesn’t know. She probably doesn’t know.

She’s definitely acting like she doesn’t know. “Mainly just wanted to see how you were doing, you know? Like, the Doctor and Travis – other Travis – ”

“Yeah, I figured.” There’s a very limited number of Travises currently hanging out on Gallifrey right now, probably.

“ – they’re all busy doing the technology and politics thing right now, and, like, that’s cool for them? But I still have no idea what’s going on, and hanging around them is making me feel kind of useless. So, I’m just catching up with everyone, and you – ” She does double fingerguns at him, bada bing, bada boom. “ – were the next person on my list of people to check up on! So! How are you doing? Do you want a snack? My stash is kinda running low, but I’m pretty sure I have a chocolate bar or two in here, somewhere…” 

She’s digging through her fanny pack now; pulling out bandages and flashlights and pens and everything in-between or beyond. He says, “Snacks-? I don’t know if – I mean, I guess chocolate might be nice – ”

“Chocolate coming right up!” she proclaims, producing the appropriate item at last, and she hands him the bar. It’s Cadbury, although the dark-purple wrapper is different to how he remembers it being. Probably some sort of future thing. He unpeels it, snaps off a cube with fingers that are only a bit shaky. It’s the first actual food he’s had in several years, he realizes as he slides it into his mouth. 

And it’s too sweet, way too sweet – the smooth richness coats the back of his throat, almost choking him. He can’t remember how to swallow properly, all of a sudden. It should be terrible, but it’s wonderful; the best thing he’s ever tasted. His vision blurs. He licks the smears of chocolate-y residue off his fingers, making sure to get every last trace, and then he looks up at Carrie, blinks away the tears, and says, “Thanks.”

“No problem!” she chirps, clearly thrilled that he’d enjoyed it. “Here, you can keep the rest – take it, come on,” she adds, when he tries to slide it back anyway. “The food around here sucks, you know that. Keep the chocolate, Negatrav, live a little. Have more right now, if you want!”

He doesn’t think he can stomach any more than a single piece right now, so he just nods and leaves it on the bedside table, next to the stack of books. Hopefully the Time Lords don’t decide a bar of chocolate is too dangerous for him to have lying around. “That was… really good, actually. There’s not a lot of chocolate around here.”

“Oh, tell me about it,” Carrie says, and her hands flutter in apparent exasperation. “I swear, everyone on this planet has clinical sugar-deficiency. Like, I offered the guards some cookies, and some of them pretty much straight-up started crying on me.” She blows out a noisy raspberry, lets her head fall back to thunk against the wall. “I think I get why the Doctor doesn’t come here that often. If the food is that bad, imagine how bad everything else must be.” 

Travis doesn’t have to imagine. He’s got pretty detailed insider knowledge, even though it’s a bit hazy. “Those… guards. The ones you were screaming with, are they-?” He doesn’t know what he’s asking. 

“Oh, right. I’m unionizing them,” she says cheerfully. 

Travis blinks. “...The Chancellery Guard?” 

“Yeah! As it turns out, their whole contract with Rassilon was, uh, kind of garbage. No long service leave, no overtime, no penalty rates, and, just… terrible working conditions. Plus that whole thing where he was planning to kill them all along with the rest of known existence at the end of the week! That was pretty bad too.”

Travis squints into the middle distance, thinking about this seriously for a moment. “Considering what I can remember about Rassilon, that… yeah, that sounds about right.” 

“Right?! They didn’t even have dental.” She shakes her head in apparent honest disbelief. “I know he was running a totalitarian bureaucratic alien civilization with little-to-no redeeming features, but – no dental. Honestly.” 

“Good luck,” says Travis, thinking, you’re going to need it. “Good luck, good luck with that, it’s… uh. It’s good to have goals.” He pauses, staring at her, and she just blinks at him, staring back again, and it doesn’t look like she’s actually going to say it – so he just bites the bullet and spits it out. “Do you, like. Want something?”

She scrunches her face up at him, clearly puzzled. “Uh, I want to pet my cat? But that’s just a general sort of goal. I always want to pet my cat. Actually, any cat will do, but especially my cat.” She sits up a bit straighter, a little bounce of enthusiasm rocking her body. “Here, ooh, I have pictures –”

She motions for him to sit down next to him, and he does, a bit tentatively. She pulls out… her phone? He thinks it’s a phone; thinks he can remember knowing that it’s some sort of futuristic Earth-technology – and then she’s holding the screen over for his consideration, flicking through high-definition images of a big grey fluffball. 

“Aww,” he says, distracted despite himself. “Oh, he looks really soft. Is he-?” 

“He’s on the TARDIS, the Doctor let me bring him along,” Carrie says, and shows him a few more. “I say let me, the two of us are kind of a package deal. I would’ve brought him with me, but he’s really lazy sometimes, and I refuse to carry him all around the Capitol…”

Travis lets her show him more cat photos (actually, that is a really good cat) – and then says, “But there’s got to be a reason that you came here. Not that I don’t appreciate your cat – ”

“You’d better appreciate my cat,” she says. “He’s beautiful and he’s perfect and I would kill and die for him. Mostly the killing part though.”

“I do,” he’s quick to assure her. “I appreciate him a lot. But. You didn’t come here just to show me cat pictures. Uh, did you?”

“...Oh.” She puts down her phone, finally, and just looks at him. “I was thinking we could just… chat. Not about all the weird alien stuff. Just about stuff. Human stuff. You seem like you could do with just some… boring, normal human stuff.”

He looks at her. Tries to judge her sincerity. It seems like she’s extremely sincere about this – from what he can tell, Carrie wears every one of her emotions, splashed all over her face and on her sleeve like vibrant watercolors. He thinks she means it. He thinks...

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we can talk. Talking would be… good.” He doesn’t think he’s talked to another actual human being since Travis – the other Travis – had drained the Wire out of him in that Matrix Chamber, several days ago. And Carrie seems friendly enough – she doesn’t have anything against him personally. Not yet. “I… um.” He combs through his memory, trying to remember how to make small talk. “...Cats. Show me more cat photos.”

“I can definitely do cat photos,” she says, and bumps his arm with hers – and that’s exactly what she does. And by the time she realizes that she’s got a union meeting (apparently) and she’s already about ten minutes late and has to say a series of hasty goodbyes before dashing out of the room with a shouted apology ringing in the air behind her, his chest just a bit lighter and his future somehow seems just a little bit brighter.

He picks up A Wrinkle In Time again, and settles back against the thin mattress with the ghost of a smile twitching across his lips.

*

The next day, Romana comes to get him, as promised. They end up in what Travis thinks is some sort of medical wing. There hadn’t been a sign on the door, but it’s all white-and-sterile and there’s all sorts of weird machines and trays full of devices and packets of what looks like alien medicine, so he’s assuming it’s a medical wing. 

It’s a bit unnervingly close to the literal torture chamber he’d kept the Doctor in for several condensed months, but not similar enough that he’s about to have a panic attack or whatever about it. So he just presses down the little bubble of unhappy discomfort, deep into his chest, and breathes through it. It’s fine. He can deal. All that matters is that he’s going to get these things off his face. 

Romana tells him to sit down while she looks around for what she needs, so he does. There’s a long chair that reminds him a bit of a dentist’s chair, if a dentist’s chair was a whole lot more high-tech and uncomfortably plastic-y. He doesn’t lie back on it, just perches on the edge and waits for her to finish arranging a selection of delicate instruments on a shining sterile tray. 

“All right,” says Romana after a short while, and turns to him. “First things first. Local anaesthetic,” she explains, holding up what looks like a small metal cone, and looks to him for permission. 

When he nods, she presses it to the side of his face. He expects pain, some sort of pinprick-y sensation, but all he feels is an extremely brief rush of dizziness, and then swift numbness that spreads from the point of contact to envelop that half of his face. He can’t help but touch the side 

“All right,” she says, and places the metal cone to one side. She rolls up her sleeves with two sharp tugs, tugging the dark fabric up to her forearms. “Now for the tricky part. You’ll want to hold still, as best as you can.” She picks up something long and metal, with a blunt end that glows, tells him, “Sonic probe,” rather offhandedly, and then adds, “You should be all right to talk, though. Lie down.” 

He hesitates, not really wanting to do that. Romana is all right; she’s nice enough, but he still doesn’t really to be prone on a plastic chair with his throat fully exposed to her, nothing to defend himself with. He doesn’t know if he can trust her kindness, not just yet. “...Won’t talking distract you?”

“I’m difficult to distract, as it turns out,” she says, sounding rather pleased with herself as she turns to collect a few more instruments. He gets the impression that she’s had a productive first few Council meetings. 

When she turns back, she sees that he still isn’t lying down. There’s a second or two where she just looks at him, and he looks back. Silence. 

“I sense a distinct lack of trust,” she says thoughtfully. 

He swallows. “Um. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’ve had a rough few years.” She looks at him, and then around the room. “I may regret this,” she tells him, and then reaches over to a drawer to retrieve a scalpel.

She presents it to him, allowing him to see the sharpness of it, and then perfunctory drops it on the table closest to the plastic seat he’s on. Within arm’s reach, if he just extends his fingers sideways.

“Here,” she tells him. “Feel free to stab me if you feel threatened.”

He looks over at the scalpel, and resists the urge to reach for it immediately. “I currently exist in, like... a perpetual state of feeling threatened by everything and everyone around me.”

“Then stab me if you feel more threatened than normal,” she replies, “although I should hope it won’t come to that.”

Travis hesitates. He nods. 

He lies down. He doesn’t talk.

She’s very calm about it, exceedingly clinical. If he didn’t know for sure that she’d just come off of several hundred years-plus worth of being a wanted renegade, he’d have assumed she was a full-time medical professional. He sits there and watches and waits as Romana goes about the arduous process of disconnecting each and every circuit and implant from where it’s wired in tightly to his body. She goes at it with needles and tweezers, with strange spinning devices and electronic scanners – and she doesn’t do it all of the time because she’s deeply focused on the task, but more often than not she does her best to keep him updated on what exactly it is that she’s doing. 

He doesn’t look at the scalpel sitting there, just to his right. The knowledge that it’s there is enough. His fingers itch, but he doesn’t move to take it.

He doesn’t know how long it is, but eventually Romana stops prodding at his face, and takes a step back, and hums in apparent satisfaction. “Those are the implants,” she tells him, dropping the last of them into a little dish that she immediately places out of his line of sight. “I can most likely do the wires themselves too, but they may take longer. And they aren’t visible as they are. Up to you.”

“Take them out,” he says, before he can even process himself saying it. 

She nods, and does. 

Like she’d warned, it does take longer – and it’s obviously a more involved process, because the commentary and absent-minded thoughts-voiced-aloud stop entirely. It’s just silence, and the distant buzz of machinery from the walls and beyond, and Romana carefully pulling wires from his skin. It feels strange. It does not feel pleasant. He can’t exactly feel the wires being extracted from his face, but the ghost of a sensation is still there – a distant pressure, a tugging at his skin. It’s not good. He shuts his eyes, not wanting to see the wires passing by his face, and for a second, the tugging halts.

After a second, he feels a cold hand gently, if awkwardly, pat the side of his face – a clumsy attempt at comfort from someone not quite sure how to give it. Another pause, and then the tugging resumes. 

It isn’t reassuring, not in the least. It’s almost funny how not-reassuring it is. But he can’t help but relax, just a little. He keeps his eyes shut, and thinks about cats and books and the feeling of new clothes fitting him just-right, and he can almost forget about the wires in his face and the patchiness in his memory and the aching, terrible loneliness running all through him.

Time passes. He loses track, sinking into a haze that’s almost meditative in nature. He almost doesn’t notice when Romana finally stops. He doesn’t, however, miss her saying, “Done.” 

He opens his eyes immediately, and she’s not standing near him anymore. Her back is to him, she’s washing her hands in one of the many lab sinks dotted around the edge of the room. 

“Done?” he repeats, feeling a little dizzy.

“Yes, done. Feeling any better?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder.

At first, he doesn’t know. He’s not sure. He doesn’t think he feels any different, and for a dreadful few seconds he thinks that there isn’t going to be a difference, that life without the wires and metal plating all along his face is going to be exactly the same as life with them. But then he raises his head, and opens his mouth to respond, and realizes – his face feels lighter, now. There had been a heaviness to it, a weight that he’d been unknowingly compensating for. He lifts his chin experimentally, marvelling at the feeling. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to, but…

He doesn’t hate it. He doesn’t hate it at all.

“You got a mirror?” he asks, sitting up. 

Romana smiles, and twists around a screen from where it’s attached to one of the lab benches, patting it on the side to activate it into something mirror-esque so he can see himself. He reaches out, pulls it closer to himself. He looks. He stares. 

There are long red welts criss-crossing his face, matching every point where the implants had been. They aren’t bleeding, and they aren’t hurting, but they’re visibly raw, uneven with the rest of his skin. For a split-second, it’s off-putting, and he almost puts down the mirror. But then he remembers how it had looked with the implants in place, and he suddenly finds that he doesn’t mind it quite so much. 

“They’ll fade,” Romana says, sounding pleased with herself, which she’s entirely entitled to considering how neat and painless the whole process had been. “Not completely, not entirely, but they will.” 

He reaches up, and runs his finger along where the very largest of the metallic strips had been. It’s a strange feeling, the skin is both just a bit too sensitive, and still just a bit too numb from the anaesthetic. But it is skin, and it’s his skin, and he no longer looks quite so much like a Star Trek villain. “I… don’t know what to say.”

“Try starting with ‘thank you’,” she suggests, with clear amusement.

“‘Thank you’ doesn’t feel like enough.” Nonetheless, he looks up at her, tearing his eyes away from the sight of his own face, and tries. “Thank you. Thank you, so much. I don’t know how I can – if I’ll ever be able to – I mean – ”

“...It’s fine,” she says, apparently immediately uncomfortable with the amount of gratitude being expressed. “It was… don’t worry yourself about it. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to.”

She extends her hand to him, and he takes it without thinking, allowing her to help him off the chair and to his feet. He’s a bit unsteady from sitting down for so long, and he stumbles. His face feels so strange. But it’s definitely good-strange. “Whoa. All right. Okay.” 

“Steady,” she cautions, and lets him use her arm for balance for a second or two. “Take it easy for a day or two. And let me know if there’s any odd developments or reactions – there shouldn’t be, but you never know.” She pauses, watches him as he finally manages to right himself and stand without her support. “Thank you for not stabbing me,” she adds, sounding so sincere that he almost laughs. 

“Thank you for… giving me the opportunity to stab you?” he says. He feels light, a bit giddy. It might be the anaesthetic, but it could just as easily be the joy of finally being free of it all. “Oh, wow.”

She gives him a few minutes to acclimatise to the feeling of not having wires all over and under his face – using the time to tidy up the lab, put everything away, dispose of the circuits. He appreciates it, because, like. Wow. But he can feel that she wants to talk about something particular – and after a few minutes, she clears her throat, and says, “Now. About what happens next.”

He swallows, and steadies himself briefly against a counter. “Oh. Oh?”

She’s silent for a second, and then says, “I need you to do something for me.”

“...All right. I mean – sure. What do you need?” He’s not so certain he’d do anything for her at this point, but he’s feeling pretty grateful, so. Within reason.

“Hold tight,” she says, to his surprise. “I need to sort out a few things first, tweak them into place, make sure they’re all aligned just-right. You’re not going to get deported and you’re not going to get mindwiped, but something does need to be done with you. And I think I might be able to find an option that isn’t completely awful.”

He stares at her. This is absolutely not what he’d expected her to say, but it’s so vague that he isn’t quite sure what he’s hearing. “An… option?”

She sighs. “I know this isn’t very specific. I’ve decided to keep it vague, seeing as I’m not entirely sure that it’s going to work or not. Hence, ‘hold tight’. Just for a few days?”

“It’s not like I’m doing much else,” he says, reflexively glib, and then, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll wait.”

Because she’d saved him from what he’s been privately calling mindwipe hell and got him clothes and twisted the wires carefully from his face, and even though he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, he can’t help but like her, quite a lot. She’s poised and strange and just a bit pointlessly dramatic, but not in an over-the-top way.

Anything that ‘isn’t completely awful’ is still a marked improvement over his current state of affairs – and if she says it’s going to get better, he thinks he might just believe her.

He hopes he doesn’t live to regret it. 

Chapter Text

And then the Council meetings… stop. 

He doesn’t know if it’s because of something Romana said or did, or because the Time Lords have just decided he’s not worth being invited to discussions about his own future, whatever that might look like – but either way, he’s suddenly got a lot more free time on his hands. So, he does basically the only two things he can do, in the situation. He reads. And he wanders. 

He’s now allowed out around the Capitol, but only in certain, very restricted places – the doors clamp shut with angry-sounding hisses when he’s nearby, computer terminals shutting off before he can so much as glance at them. It’s not like he could do anything with them, anyway. He has a distant memory of glimpses of beautiful arrays formed from numbers and symbols and code, wires and circuits zig-zagging away into perfect electronic infinity – but he hasn’t the faintest idea of how any of it actually works or what it means. It’s all gone, swept away with the Wire and the Matrix and the rest of it. He has serious doubts as to his ability to operate a regular old 1998 computer at this point, actually. Other-Travis and his brain-rebooting antivirus had done a pretty thorough job of scrubbing that particular mental schema clean as a whistle.

He should really be at least a bit bothered by this loss of knowledge, but… honestly, it’s probably a good thing. He doesn’t want to be trusted with computers anymore.

One of these few places he’s been allowed in is some sort of community garden. It’s almost always empty, and the colors of the weird, curling flowers are vibrant and like nothing he’s ever seen before. There’s no discernible scent from any of them, and he’d be suspicious that they’re not real plants at all – except, they’ve very clearly rooted into the earth, and he can’t imagine that Time Lords are the sort of people who let dirt into the Capitol unless it’s really properly needed. 

He sits down on a bench and looks up through the silvery branches and luridly-bright petals to the small exposed part of the ceiling through which the dusty-orange sky is visible. It’s so alien, so unfamiliar. He’s millions of light years and an infinite number of universes away from home, here – not that home exists anymore. He’d torn it to shreds and ruined it beyond repair, and then it had all gone up in uncaring, curling flames anyway. He can’t even remember what a home is supposed to feel like. The memories of his mom and dad and the house tucked into a corner street in Sheffield is pretty much irreparably marred by the much stronger memory of him (or maybe the Wire, or maybe both of them) tearing out every last trace of life and vitality through their eyes and leaving them huddling, faceless husks. 

He sighs. Chances a glance around him. The members of the Chancellery Guard who’ve been posted to keep a close, resentful eye on him are doing a pretty good job of staying unobtrusive and unseen, but, like. He knows they’re there. He has no idea why they’re trying to conceal their presence at this point.

And then from the opposite direction that he’d been searching in, he hears footsteps, and glances over his shoulder just in time to see a familiar face picking his way through the curving raised flowerbeds. 

“Hey,” says other-him, raising a hand and offering a little smile in greeting. 

“Hey,” he echoes back dully, and shuffles over to give him room to sit down. “Uh, thanks for the books. I… haven’t seen you around lately. I guess you must be pretty busy, huh?” 

In response, he gets a shrug and a so-so hand-wavy gesture. “Ahh. Well. I’m doing my best, but – I’m sort of getting the impression that the Time Lords don’t really want me anywhere near their tech?” The end of the sentence curls up into a question, and other-him is pulling a face at him, now – half-apologetic and half-incredulous. “I mean, there’s a lot to fix, and I – I’m pretty sure they… don’t like humans very much.”

“Well. Yeah. There is that – but they also probably don’t like people with our, whole, you know.” He gestures vaguely between the two of them. “...Face situation going on. People who look like us. Which is definitely my fault, actually – sorry about that.”

Travis gives him a sideways look that’s a bit sad and a bit stern, and says, “I told you, it’s not your fault.”

He shrugs because, well, it kind of super is but he doesn’t want to get into the details of that for the six hundredth time. Better to just agree and move on. “Yeah. I know.”

Travis’s sharp sideways look continues for a second or two, and then it melts into light realization. “Hey, you got the Borg implants removed,” 

He reflexively touches the side of his face, still more than a little self-conscious about it. “...Yeah. Romana helped me with that.”

“Oh, yeah – right.” Travis grins. “We hung out this morning, for a bit. She’s, um. Not what I expected.”

“She’s a lot,” he agrees, and presses the flat of his palm to his own cheek. The faint raised scars are still there. They’re very visible, and if they do fade, it’s not going to happen for a good long while. But it’s still leaps and bounds better than cold uncaring metal drilled right into his flesh, anchoring to his bones. “But she’s…” He pauses. “Nice.” It doesn’t feel like the right word to use. It’s too small and too large all at once. He doesn’t get the impression that many people would describe Romana as nice, but... “She’s nice.”

“She still thinks I’m four,” Travis mutters, sounding more than a bit betrayed. And then he clears his throat, and gains a more contemplative expression. “It’s weird, though. Like, obviously I’m glad she’s alive and doing her thing, but… it’s weird, you know? I keep expecting Rom – um, you know, her previous self – to saunter out from behind a fancy pillar, ask what he’s missed, and start teasing me about… you know, whatever.” He stares blankly at the far wall of the garden, and then shakes himself. “Sorry. You probably don’t – nevermind, it’s not your problem.” 

He’s right; it really isn’t. Still, he finds himself hesitating, wondering if there’s something he can say to make it better. To fix things, just a bit. After a second or two, he realizes that there’s not, not really. Not about this, anyway. But...

“You should probably talk to the Doctor,” he blurts, before he can lose the nerve. 

Travis just keeps on staring across the garden. He looks blank, now; a bit dull. It’s weird seeing that expression anywhere other than the mirror. “Yeah,” he says. “I probably should.” 

He has no idea why he’s pressing this point, because it’s really none of his business and he’s not even sure he actually cares, but… “Like. Sooner rather than later. As soon as possible, actually. You’ve gotta talk about that stuff. Otherwise it just – stays. Festers. Turns into… you know. Bad things, bad ideas. Bitterness.” He pauses, and then can’t help adding, “Now, you’re probably not going to take over an alien computer database and start trying to destroy the multiverse – ”

Travis laughs, and it sounds a bit exhausted. “Yeah, I’ve already seen how that one ends.”

“ – but you can, um.” He shrugs. “Probably at least avoid some of the mildly bad stuff by talking it out. I know you’re both really busy right now, but… make time? If you can?”

Travis is silent for a moment, and then says, “...I know.” And then ducks his head briefly, and laughs to himself, and then turns to inspect a huge bright-yellow bell-shaped blossom that’s hanging right next to his face. After a second, he says, “You’re kind of the last person I would have expected to give me advice on making up with the Doctor,” with a weird sort of half-smile, and then, “Well. Uh, not the last person, there’s probably – oh, never mind. You know what I mean.”

“Because I put so much effort into screwing you guys over in the first place?” he says with a little wince. “I know. I guess it’s…” He struggles to place the words for a second, and then, reluctantly, “I guess it’s something I can fix, out of everything I broke. You know? It’s, uh, weird for me too. The Doctor, I – I hated her, a bit.” He winces again. “Um. More like a lot, actually, it wasn’t… um, it wasn’t great.”

“Jeez,” says Travis, and kicks his sneakers idly against the base of the bench. “What did she even do to you?” 

He pauses, and slowly looks up towards the tiny little patch of orange sky again. It’s still there, pale and strange. 

“Well,” he hedges. “I can’t remember all of it, because... because of that whole brainsweeping you did. But.” He swallows. The part of his face where the metal used to be twinges a bit. “I think. I might. Have been. Jealous.” 

Travis is looking at him now. “Jealous?” He frowns. “Of the Doctor?”

“...No,” he admits. It’s hard. Hard to say. He tries to say it anyway. “Jealous of you.” He pauses, reconsiders. “But also the Doctor too, maybe? And maybe Millie, a bit.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Travis tense up a bit at the mention of Millie, but by the time he turns to look properly, any trace of it’s gone. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. It’s – look, you remember what it was like growing up, right?” he says. “Like. Nerdy tiny Travis. Scrawny noodle arms, tripping over our laces on the way to the bus stop, right? We were loud, we just never stopped talking, and – ”

“ – we didn’t have friends,” Travis says, at the same time as he does and they share a rueful little smile. “Yeah, looking back on it, we were… kind of insufferable, weren’t we?” 

“Insufferable is one word for it,” he agrees. Because Sheffield is a nice enough town to grow up in, but if you happen to be a know-it-all kid with a tendency to latch onto nerdy science fiction like it’s the last life-ring in a seething roaring ocean and a penchant for long, rambling infodumps about said sci-fi... well. That sort of thing tends to remove you a bit from your peers, who honestly couldn’t care less about the latest episode of Quantum Leap or your latest intricately-thought-out Back To The Future fantheory.  He’s not going to pretend that he had the worst time growing up, because there’s definitely people who were worse off than him in the whole getting-bullied department, but. It had been lonely, is the thing, and not having anyone other than his mom and dad at a closer level of friendship than ‘casual friendly acquaintance’... well, it eats at you. 

“You got the Doctor, right?” he says after a moment of contemplative silence. “And Millie, and Roman, and… you know, everyone else you met while bumping around the universe. But I only had the Wire. And after she disappeared, I didn’t have anyone. And I saw you, and all these people that – that loved you, and it was just…” He shakes his head. “Why you? Why did you get to have all of that, and not me?”

“It was chance,” Travis says, and he looks anxious, kind of alarmed. “Literally all chance. You – look, I don’t know exactly how unlikely me meeting the Doctor was, but it had to be million-to-one odds. There’s got to be so many other universes where I never ended up in that museum – you didn’t do anything wrong, okay-?”

This is hardly reassuring. “So what you’re saying is, there’s a million other versions of us out there in the multiverse, completely miserable and tangled up in the Wire? Great. That makes me feel so much better.”

There is a pause, and then Travis’s look of alarm sharpens into complete horror. “Oh god.” 

He takes a moment to dwell on this, try to process the implications, but he has to stop himself before he can get too far. That way lies madness. It’s not like there’s anything he can do about it.

He says, “That’s – that’s not the point, though. The point is, I – I saw her come back for you, I saw her care about you, and I thought… well, I thought it just wasn’t fair. And…” He sighs. “You kind of hit the nail on the head, you know? I got mad. I lashed out. I tried to hurt you. I tried to hurt everyone.”

Travis recovers from his brief existential crisis with remarkable grace. “That wasn’t you. I told you.” 

“It kind of was, though,” he says, and looks up. “I think – I think you were right.”

“Right?” Travis looks startled – blinks, once, twice. “Right about… what?”

“You told me that I wasn’t you anymore. That I hadn’t been you for a very long time.” He makes a helpless sort of gesture with both hands. “And… well. I haven’t.” 

Travis looks a bit guilty. He says, “For the record, that entire speech I gave you was, like,  sixty-percent bullshit. Full disclosure; I was trying to throw you off your rhythm so I could buy some time to work out what to do next.”

“I know,” he says. “And it was a pretty good speech. But it doesn’t matter. I... don’t think I want to be you anymore. I don’t want to be Travis. You’re Travis. I’m not.”

“I don’t mind,” Travis ventures after a moment of silence. “Sharing the name, I mean. You’re as much Travis as I am, so if this is, like, a ‘there can only be one’ situation – ”

“I know,” he says. “But it’s not. I don’t feel like Travis, and I don’t think I can ever match up to what you are, already. So I think I might be happier if I tried to be myself instead, as cheesy as that sounds.” 

“Cheesy’s good,” Travis says. “I like cheesy.”

“Cheesy’s not terrible,” he agrees. “Still. I – yeah. I think I’m looking for a new name, you know? This isn’t me asking for suggestions or anything, just… don’t call me Travis anymore.” 

Travis looks a bit worried, maybe still just a little weirded out – which is fair, because the entire situation is pretty strange. It’s not like there’s much precedent about what to do when your formerly evil twin from another dimension decides he wants to change his identity. “I mean... sure. Sure, I can do that.”

He doesn’t know what to follow that up with, so he just does a little awkward thumbs-up, immediately regrets the awkward thumbs-up, and tries to cover up the awkwardness by saying, “Remember. Talk to the Doctor.” 

“I’ll talk to her,” Travis says, and meets his eyes and smiles. It’s so weird, seeing his own face so open, so happy. “Thanks, uh – thanks, man. Let me know when you settle on a name.” 

“I will,” he promises. “And, seriously – thanks for the books.”

“Oh!” The mood almost immediately shifts, the tension in the air dissipating noticeably as Travis brightens even more. “Yeah! Romana said she’d get them to you. I hoped you’d – I mean, they’re some of my favorites, so…”

“Yeah, don’t worry. The Wire didn’t mess with my good taste in literature.”

Travis laughs. “I’ll see if I can get you some more. What do you think, a little less sci-fi, or…?”

“No, sci-fi’s good,” he says. “But, like, I wouldn’t say no to some fantasy either. For spice. I feel like it might be a bit weird to be sitting in the back of an alien council meeting with a copy of, like. The Hitchhiker’s Guide or something. Oh!” Something occurs to him, makes him brighten. “Um, actually – Douglas Adams might be nice, too. It feels… you know, relevant.”

“Don’t panic,” Travis agrees happily. “Fantasy, Douglas Adams, a bit more sci-fi. Got it, gotcha.” He shifts. “I should probably go, though. Lots to do, you know?”

“Don’t let me keep you,” he says, and Travis gets up and waves goodbye and sets off, out of the garden and into the Citadel beyond, and he finds he doesn’t really like the immediate feeling of loneliness that overtakes him at his absence. It’s not really all that bad, just a minor little ache in his chest that’s almost immediately dissipating, but, well...

He looks up, looks through that distant little gap in the ceiling where the roof parts and shows a glimpse of dusty-orange sky, and he stays there like that, looking up and up and up, until the guards come to tell him he has to return to his room.

*

So, here’s the thing. He doesn’t actually mean to eavesdrop. When he’d told Travis to go talk to the Doctor, he’d been kind of vaguely curious about the outcome of the conversation, in the distant nosy way that anyone’s curious about anything they set into motion, but he’d never actually intended to spy on it in question.

But only a day after talking with Travis in the gardens, he’d been walking down a hallway on his way back to his room after an ultimately unproductive session of wandering around, trying to figure out where he is and isn’t allowed – and he’d heard voices. Two familiar voices. Discussing a very familiar topic in the awkward, stilted tones of two people who really don’t want to be discussing it. 

He’d sidled closer, and the door hadn’t locked automatically to keep him out. In fact, it had been at a convenient state of half-open when he’d heard their voices drifting out, and he’d realized almost immediately upon stopping in his tracks that if he stayed exactly where he was, he could listen in and half-see what was going on without either of them seeing him.

He knows he shouldn’t be listening in. But he just can’t help himself. 

“I get it,” Travis is saying, sounding oddly desperate. “Like – I do get it. You’d only just found out you were tortured for three whole months – ”

He can catch a glimpse of the Doctor, if he tilts his head just-so. Her arms are crossed, her lips are tight. Her scarf is woven two-times-tight around her neck, entirely too neat. She says, “Travis – ”

“ – which has got to suck, I get it, and you also found out it was someone who looks exactly like me doing it, and I guess... well, after the whole VITAL thing with my brain not being right; I guess it made sense – I know I was acting weird but I promise that was just because Roman asked me to do something and he told me not to tell you, and it was this entire thing – ”

“Travis – ”

“ – and, but, the thing is, it really wasn’t me and I know you know that now but at the time it really, really sucked, because you were looking at me like – like a stranger, like you hated me, like you… we’ve been through so much, you know, and I thought that we might…” His voice dies, just a bit, and then he says, “I thought it meant something, all of that.” 

The Doctor looks like she wants to say something, reassure him or tell a lie or tell a truth so vast and so all-encompassing that it’ll fix everything. But she’s not talking, she’s not trying to interrupt anymore, she’s just standing there. Listening. 

“I want to be mad at you,” Travis says, and his voice is small. So small that, outside the room, he finds himself inching closer, pressing himself against the door in order to catch every word of it. “I really want to be mad at you, because… Doctor, that hurt. That really hurt.”

“You have every right to be angry with me,” the Doctor says. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.” 

“But, that’s the thing,” Travis says. “I’m not. I wish I was, but I can’t be, because I understand – I get it.”

“You don’t need to,” the Doctor says. “You don’t need to try to make excuses for me, Travis, you don’t need to…” She trails off. “You’re allowed to be angry. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“What I did was unfair,” the Doctor tells him, and now she’s moving, lit-up with nervous energy as she paces back and forth through the room, and only glimpses of her can be caught through the half-open door. “Unfair and cruel; and I don’t care how scared I was or how many plans I was juggling. I shouldn’t have turned on you like that.” 

“Yeah.” Travis takes a deep breath. “I guess I’m just not that good at being angry at you.” 

“You should give it a try. I think I might deserve it.” She scrunches her face up, unhappy and wounded. “Oh – look at me. Look at this. I do this every time. I did this with Millie, and now – ” 

“Millie wasn’t your fault,” says Travis.

“Wasn’t she? I’m just a miserable old woman, limping through time, dragging my friends along behind me. Pulling them headfirst into all of my messes,” she says dully, and she sounds every bit the part. “And, every time, without fail, the same things happen. I make mistakes. I lose people. I treat my friends like this. Bad. Worse. I never learn. Rinse and repeat. I’m sorry, Travis, I’m so sorry. I could apologize over and over again, but I can’t change what’s already happened, and I can’t fix this. I can’t make you trust me again.” 

“Doctor,” says Travis. “I always trust you.” 

The Doctor’s silent for a long moment. “...Even when I don’t trust you back?”

“Even then,” he tells her. “Even when I probably shouldn’t. I’m kind of stupid like that.”

Another moment of long silence, and then the Doctor laughs. It’s incredulous, a bit choked-up, and then she says, “Travis – oh, Travis. I don’t deserve you. I really don’t.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Travis says and it’s a bit fond and a bit sad, and then he adds, “Look, can I say something?” 

She turns away for a moment, and swipes a hand over her eyes, dislodging her glasses. After a second, she readjusts them, clearing her throat. “‘Course. Always. Go.”

“You’re my best friend,” he tells her. Frankly, honestly. “You know that, right?”

There’s a short silence, and then the Doctor says, quite softly, “Right.” 

“Right. And at this point there’s... not a lot I think you could do to change that?” He pauses, then adds, “Like, I know with all the things we’ve done and seen, it’s hard to be completely certain about that sort of thing... but. You know. At the very least, I know I don’t want to stop being your friend. You’re the best person I know, Doctor.”

She’s silent. She breathes in. She says, “I – ”

“I mean it,” Travis says, cutting over her. “If you don’t believe me about anything else, I don’t even care, I, just... believe me about that. Please believe me about that.”

To this, the Doctor doesn’t say anything, and neither does Travis. Actually, they’re not talking at all anymore, and he can’t see what they’re doing from his half-hidden position. After a second, his curiosity overrides his sense of caution, and he peers around the corner of the doorframe to get a clear look. 

They’re hugging it out. Of course they are. He swallows against the sudden tightness in his throat, and watches as Travis turns his head against the Doctor’s neck and the Doctor leans into him. He can see her face. Her eyes are closed, her expression is fond – her scarf is crumpled and bunched-up, falling unevenly from her shoulders. For the first time since he’s met her, she looks really genuinely peaceful. 

And then her eyes open, quite suddenly, and now she’s looking right at him. He only barely stops himself from recoiling backwards and bolting down the corridor. The look in her eyes tells him that she’d known he’s been listening in for a while now. 

He thinks, oh no, because he could try to leave but there’s not all that many places that he can run or hide to. Maybe if he asks Romana really, really nicely, she’ll dump him on a nowhere planet several billion light years and a good few centuries away from Gallifrey and leave him to rot there. He doesn’t want to have to deal with a massively pissed-off Doctor, not now, not ever. 

He quick-steps back and waits, his heart hammering, but for a moment or two, nothing at all happens. And then there’s the faint rustling of fabric and the Doctor sighs, and says, “You know what? We should take a break. How do you feel about a tour of Gallifrey?”

Travis sounds startled when he says, “I thought you said you didn’t like this place.”

The Doctor lets out a big annoyed huff of a sigh. “I don’t, not really, but – well, I grew up here. I know all the good haunts, and you seemed interested, so. Well. If you want to skip all the bureaucracy and casual xenophobia for a bit, we could... you know.” Silence, then, “Do a, sort of... Low-stakes adventure. Might be fun.”

“You’re sure?”

“You showed me around your hometown. Only fair if I return the favor.”

Travis laughs. He sounds surprised. “I mean... it wasn’t really much of a tour, it was mostly, you know – running around and fighting aliens and getting shot at.”

She lets out a soft little ha, and then says, “Normally that’s pretty standard for this place too, but now that Rassilon’s taken care of, there probably won’t be much of any of those things. Not sure if that’s a bonus or not. It’s mostly, you know, pretentious architecture and equally pretentious shops selling things that they claim are too advanced for humans to care about, and actually, I kind of hate all of it, but...” She takes a deep breath, a very deep breath, and exhales. “...You know. Better with friends and all that.”

“Yeah,” says Travis, who is now audibly grinning. “Yeah, Doctor, I think I’d like that.”

“Great,” says the Doctor, and she sounds properly relieved too, like she’d been expecting him to snap at her or something, despite the fact that Travis a) has probably never snapped at anyone in his life ever and b) come to think of it, might be physically incapable of it. “Well – good.”

“Should I go get Carrie?” Travis asks. “She’d probably want to see everything, too.”

“Yeah, why not? Make a proper adventure out of it. Might even head over to my place, if it’s still around.”

“Your place? You mean, you have a house? A house you grew up in?”

“‘Course I have a house I grew up in. Did you think I just, what, sprung up out of the ground one day? Got cast out into the universe, fully formed?” says the Doctor, a bit incredulously, and then, “Anyway, that’s not the point. Probably shouldn’t go inside, it’s a little bit… well, more like a lot bit sentient, and it might not like you as much as the TARDIS does, but it’s a pretty walk up there. Rivers, snow, everything. Picnic!” she adds suddenly,  “We could do a picnic. Love a good picnic.”

Travis seems to need to take a beat to process this, and then he says, “Your planet has snow?”

“Well, it’s not all orange sand and scorching sun,” she says, sounding mildly affronted on behalf of her own planet. “Earth isn’t the only planet with more than one biome, Travis; don’t be so closed-minded.”

“No, no, I get that, I was just… no, I want to see the snow. Definitely. And the weird architecture, and everything else. I’ll get Carrie first though. “

“She should be in the Chancellery break room right now, if I’m remembering right.”

“Probably unionizing, right. Got it.” Footsteps, pause. “Meet you near the Panopticon in fifteen?”

“Make it thirty, I have something I need to take care of first.”

He sees Travis give her a big thumbs up and quickly ducks behind into the hallway in the opposite direction to where he knows the Chancellery break room is. He presses himself tight against the wall as Travis emerges. And there is an audible, legitimate spring in his step as he sets off down the hall to find Carrie. He sounds bouncy. He sounds happy. 

Good for him, he thinks, and realises that he actually means it. He braces his back against the wall, listens to the footsteps receding, and looks up at the ceiling. He sighs, sliding down the wall a few inches. Look at that, personal growth. Only took him a complete brain rewrite to get this far. 

“Oi. You can stop hiding now,” the Doctor says, stepping out into the hallway. “It’s just me.”

And now he winces and takes a breath to steady himself, and then steps out from behind the bend in the hallway. Busted. He tries not to look too guilty.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to – sorry.” 

She shrugs, looking a lot less concerned than he’d expected her to look. “Well, eavesdropping’s pretty rude, so – yeah, you should be sorry. But I do it all the time, so there’s the whole glass houses and big heavy rocks thing – yeah, I’m not mad at you, is what I’m saying. Just, maybe don’t do it again.”

He nods, still wary, and then says, “I’m… glad you two are getting along again.” 

“Yeah. So am I.” She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her coat, rocks back on her heels a little. “Anyway.” Now she’s staring at him like she wants to take him apart piece by piece to figure out what makes him tick. It’s disconcerting in more ways than one. “We haven’t got a proper chance to chat, have we?”

He shrugs, and reaches out a hand to lean against the nearest wall. “I… well, I kind of figured you were avoiding me?” 

She blinks, looking a bit confused. “No? Not on purpose. It’s just, there’s been – ” She wiggles a hand, and now she just looks vaguely exasperated. “ – you know, a lot of things to deal with. Rewriting laws. Overthrowing the Gallifreyan bourgeoisie. Paperwork. So much paperwork. Turns out, destroying the collective hivemind of all your civilisation’s dead ancestors is the sort of thing that tends to get you slammed with a stupid amount of paperwork.” 

“You’ve been avoiding the paperwork,” he guesses.

“I’ve been avoiding the paperwork,” she agrees shamelessly. “And trying to find a good moment to slip away so that everybody can stop trying to get me to do the paperwork. But I wanted to talk to you first.” 

“Uh, sure,” he says. “Do you want to-?”

‘“Walk and talk? You read my mind.” She smiles, then frowns. “Well, not literally. I hope you didn’t literally read my mind. That’d be rude. It’s like eavesdropping but – you know, worse.”

“No psychic powers,” he says, holding up his hands a bit defensively. “Not that I really had any to start with, but either way the hard reset would’ve taken care of them.” 

“Well, good,” she says, and starts walking. Time Lords keep doing this to him; they keep walking away from him in the middle of conversations and expecting him to run to keep up. It’s a good thing he’s not too terribly out of shape. He’s not on Travis’s level, not really, but then again he isn’t the one who’s been running around with the Doctor for the past few months. Existing in close proximity to her must be a workout and a half in itself. 

He manages to catch up to her at a brisk jog, and then has to speedwalk to maintain proximity. “So. Um. What’s up?” 

“I don’t know,” she says. “What is up? With you, I mean. I can’t imagine a lot is up. There’s not a lot to do around here. Especially if you’re in custody, and trust me, I’d know. I’ve been locked up by my own people so many times, I know how it can get. They’re treating you all right, at least?”

“Yeah, they’re… they’re treating me okay. I guess. Romana’s been – ” He doesn’t know what to call it. “ – looking out for me. She helped me with the…” He gestures at his face, and then vaguely at his clothes, although he’s still wearing the jumpsuit. “...Yeah. It’s been all right. I guess. Sorry, why do you-? Why are you asking-?”

The Doctor shrugs, and then says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t know you, not properly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. You’re still my friend, in a roundabout way.”

“...Friend?”

“Mm. Yeah.”

“I’m… not your friend, though.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” she says, and doesn’t seem especially bothered by it. “But you could be, though.”

“I tortured you for three months,” he says, with no small amount of disbelief. 

“Yeah, and? I’ve built weaker friendships on worse,” she says. “Like, there was that time when, you know – the Black Guardian hired someone to murder me, and he tried to a lot of times, but he was actually really bad at it, and then we actually ended up getting along really well, even though I probably should have been more upset about the attempted-murder thing, come to think of it.”

He has no idea what she’s talking about, but from what he’s gathered, this seems to be the norm when trying to hold a conversation with the Doctor. He tries to just roll with it. “Um. Sure.”

“And then there was that time when I was convinced that my friends were trying to kill me, and to be fair Ian did try to strangle me so I think I was justified in threatening to throw them off the TARDIS, but then it turned out that it was just the TARDIS trying to warn me that we were about to crash into an entire solar system, and we all apologized and we all ended up the better for it. A little bit of torture and attempted murder is good for a relationship.” 

He stares at her. “...Are you actually physically capable of having any sort of normal friendship?”

 “Normal,” says the Doctor proudly, “is overrated.” She pokes her glasses up her nose and shoots him a knowing little look. “Besides. I got the full story from Romana; I know most of that wasn’t you. The whole torturing-and-taunting thing, you know. Also, the attempting-to-convert-reality-into-a-bite-sized-snack bit. Which, let me just say? Terrible idea. I know it wasn’t you-you, but, still, just – what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he says glumly, because he doesn’t want to admit to the whole ‘being so jealous of your metaphorical matching BFF lockets that I decided to destroy the universe’ thing again, and especially not to the Doctor’s face. “Probably something horrifyingly evil.” He’s not really sure where this conversation is meant to be going. “...Romana… told you…?”

“Yeah. We talked, about.” A vague hand wave. An extremely vague handwave. “Stuff.”

“Stuff,” he echoes. 

“Stuff,” she echoes back at him.

He swallows. “What did she – I mean – ”

“What did she say about you? Interesting question. She said that you’re, quote, remarkably worried about hurting other people.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. 

“You avoided me for days because you thought I might be uncomfortable about the whole torture thing. You’re terrified, and it’s not that you’re scared of me – well, you might be a bit scared of me, I’m not going to tell you what to think. Being scared of me is your prerogative.” She looks at him. “But even if you are, it’s not just that. I think you’re afraid, very afraid, of hurting people, Travis. And obviously, you could be faking it. But I don’t think you are.”

He shrugs, a bit listlessly, and reaches out a hand to trail it against the cold smoothness of the wall as they walk. “I don’t think I am either. But, it’s hard to tell sometimes.” He pauses. “You still haven’t told me what you want to talk about.” 

She shakes her head. “Right, yeah, right. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“...Okay?”

“Like I said,” she says, “I plan on, you know – leaving. Dipping. Ghosting the planet, as the kids say, as soon as I can. Probably without saying goodbye to a lot of people, especially the people who want me to sign off on things and take responsibility for my actions and stick around to become the new Prime Minister or something rubbish like that. But you’re…” She looks at him, and pulls a little face, which he decides to take as meaning ‘human’ or quite possibly ‘in danger of getting mind-wiped and/or summarily executed’, rather than ‘an extremely bad person on every conceivable axis’. “...well, look, I wouldn’t feel good about just leaving you here, all right?”

He lets out an exhausted little cough that isn’t quite a laugh, mainly because he actually doesn’t know how to turn it into one. “Where else would I go? It’s not like Sheffield’s an option for me anymore. And even if it was…”

She looks at him for a long moment. 

“You’ve got more options than you think you do,” she says eventually. There’s a little worried crease in her forehead now, and it’s not leaving. “It’s not just Gallifrey and Earth. It’s a big universe out there.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s kind of what I’m afraid of.”

Her head tilts to one side, very slowly, as she continues to regard him. And then she says, “There’s a place, a planet called Logopolis – the Time Lords won’t be able to get to you there, and I’m sure the people living there would be thrilled to have you.”

He doubts that’s true, but he nods along anyway like he believes her. “Thanks, but… I think Romana knows what she’s doing. I... I think I’m going to trust her. Just for a bit.”

“If you’re sure,” she says, and turns a corner. They don’t seem to be going anywhere in particular – he actually thinks they might be going around in circles – but it’s fine. It’s nice to stretch his legs for a bit. “The offer’s always going to be open, though. Never too late to ask for help, Travis.” 

And that’s –

No. That’s – no.

“I’m not Travis,” he says, and it comes out sharper than he’d meant it to. 

She stops walking, and he does too, a bit surprised at how abruptly she’d stopped. There is tension in her face, running all through her body, and her voice is a bit too flat when she says, “Who told you that?” 

He blinks. “Uh – ”

“Was it a Time Lord? Or – seriously, who told you that; because if there’s someone going around telling you that you aren’t allowed to be Travis just because there’s already one in this universe, they are beyond incorrect.” Her eyes are bright with indignation. “Seriously, are you saying that I can’t have two friends named Travis? That’s like saying there can’t be two bus drivers named Keith!” 

There’s a strange, slightly-uncomfortable squirm of happiness in his chest at the amount of righteous fury she’s exhibiting on his behalf. Him, someone that she barely knows and has every reason to hate. He has to take a moment to swallow, before he manages to interrupt her and say, “Doctor. Doctor, nobody told me anything. It’s not like that.”  

She still looks a bit furious, although maybe not quite as much as before, as she says, “All right. Okay. What’s it like, then?” 

“I’m not Travis,” he repeats. “Like – well, okay, I was Travis, and I guess I sort of still am, but I’m also kind of not. So. I’m… thinking about maybe switching to a different name.”

She takes back from him, leaning against the opposite wall. For a moment, she seems to be shaking off the residual fury, but then she nods – looking thoughtful, curious. “Good for you,” she says. “Picked one out yet?”

“...Maybe.” He’s been thinking about it, between meetings and confrontations. Toying idly with the thought of it, turning it through his mind. He’s found himself reading the same pages of his books over and over, unable to quite focus as he second-guesses himself again and again. “I… maybe.” He hesitates. When he’d thought about telling someone about this, the Doctor definitely wouldn’t have been his first choice. “Can we, like… start over?”

“Depends on whether you think of the entirety of universal existence as cyclical or not, because if you do, yeah, we can. We’ll just need to wait about, uh, one hundred trillion years, give or take, for everything to circle back around.”

He stares at her, all of his thoughts suddenly grinding to a halt in favor of attempting to process what she’s saying to him right now. “Wait. Is the entirety of universal existence cyclical?”

“I’m not sure,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “I keep meaning to check, but I always get distracted by something more interesting at the last moment.”

He looks at her for another long, long moment, and realizes something very important about the Doctor, very suddenly.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” he says.

She doesn’t smile. Her face doesn’t so much as twitch. She is absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent fucking with him right now, and he knows that for a fact, even as she says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He’s tempted to press the point for a moment or two, because – wow. Just, wow. But then he manages to push it to the side and shakes his head, and says, “What I meant was, we kind of got off on the wrong foot. With the whole… torturing you for information and me-being-evil thing. I didn’t really get to say hi. Not properly. Could we-?”

She is no longer messing with him. There’s a noticeable shift in the way she holds herself, the way she looks at him. She tilts her head, an inquisitive bird in careful observance of him and him alone. “...Pretend it’s our first time meeting?”

He winces. “Sounds a bit stupid when you say it out loud like that.”

“No,” says the Doctor. “Not stupid at all. We can do that.”

“Right,” he says.

For a moment, they just look at each other. It really does feel oddly like two strangers meeting for the first time. And even though he’d been the one to suggest it, he doesn’t know how to begin.

And then the Doctor says, “Hello,” and extends a hand. “I’m the Doctor.” She pauses, and then adds, “I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but you look a lot like a good friend of mine.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.” He reaches out, shakes her hand. Her skin is a bit too cold, fingers just a bit too dry. Her grip is firm. “I don’t see the resemblance, though.” 

She laughs, and says, “Well, then,” and raises an eyebrow at him. “If you aren’t my good friend Travis Killian, then… who exactly are you?”

He takes a breath. 

“I’m Parker Killian,” says Parker Killian, and grins at her – tentative at first, but then gaining confidence. It barely hurts at all anymore. “I’m the cool twin.” 

“Are you,” she says, but she’s grinning back. “Nice to meet you, Parker Killian, official cool twin. New question for you: what are you planning on doing next?”

“Well,” says Parker, somewhat philosophically, “I’m not actually sure yet. But now that I’ve finally come off the whole ‘power-mad ego-trip’ thing, I kinda figure it’s only upwards from here.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” says the Doctor. “Per aspera ad astra, as they say. To the stars, Parker Killian, to the stars!” She claps him on the shoulder, friendly and bright. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, I have a picnic I’ve got to get to right now that I’m pretty sure I’m already late for, so I do need to dash, but I will talk to you again before I get off-planet. Sound good?”

“Sounds pretty good,” he says, and the grin remains on his face as he watches her go. It doesn’t fade for a good while, and even better, he doesn’t want it to. Smiling feels good.

*

The next time the two of them bump into each other, passing opposite directions in a corridor completely by chance, Parker remembers to tell Travis that he’s stolen his middle name.

“What?” says Travis, blinking, and then, “Oh! Nice – sorry, what?” 

“...I probably should have asked you first,” Parker says. He’s aware he’s talking a bit too fast, but this is stressful, okay? “But… yeah, I was thinking about it, and I realized – you know, it’s a pretty good name. Parker.” He pauses, then adds, “I was thinking that maybe you could be Travis Parker Killian, and I could be Parker Travis Killian, but then I realized that might be even weirder.”

“No!” Travis exclaims, and then, “I mean…” He looks a bit confused, but mostly supportive as he spreads his hands wide. “Look, I’m cool with it if you are.”

“No, it’s extremely weird,” Parker concludes. “I’m just going to stick with Parker. Parker Killian, if you don’t mind sharing the last name.”

“Absolutely we can share the last name. Like I said. It’s as much your name as mine.” He seems to be in a bit of a hurry, judging by the glance he casts over his shoulder and the pile of datapads piled up in his arms, but he seems like he means it when he says, “It suits you, buddy.”

“Thanks. It feels good to… you know, be myself.” He winces as soon as he says it. “Oh, god. That was so cheesy, though.”

And Travis is already moving away, down the hallway, but he still calls over his shoulder, “Cheesy’s not terrible!”

“It might be a bit terrible!” Parker yells after him, and then he’s gone, and Parker’s left standing in a corridor with a feeling in his chest that feels a bit warm and a bit strange and a lot like happiness. 

Weird. Very weird.

Very weird, but not terrible – not at all. 

Chapter Text

When Romana had told him she wanted to discuss something, he hadn’t expected her to take him off-world. But her TARDIS had materialized on the very edge of what appears to be a riverside harbour – disguising itself as a tall pylon among the growing rows of sleek-looking floating boats moored to the docks – and it had only taken Parker a few seconds of looking at the external scanner to realize that they’re definitely not on Gallifrey anymore. As they step out, he notes it’s humid and just a bit too warm to be entirely comfortable – but he’s only just slipped his new jacket on and he really doesn’t feel like taking it off just yet.

He looks around as they set off, vaguely aware that Romana seems to be walking with purpose, leading them towards some unknown destination. “Is this… Earth?”

“Sydney,” she says, and adjusts her sunglasses with a decisive little tweak of her fingers. “2034 – a bit after your time, but I thought you might want to veer away from the late nineties for the time being.”

It’s mid-morning, the sky is a glorious effortless blue, and they’re walking along the riverside, past glass-fronted shops and stores and cafes swiftly filling up with people. Beyond them, gleaming buildings that stretch upwards in great strokes of colorful architecture. It’s lively, bright, sprawling. Not a trace of wires or cables or ugly stretching pylons that bisect the landscape in harsh lines of coldness. He can’t remember if he’d gotten as far as Australia, on the other Earth. He thinks he might have. He can’t remember what it had looked like, though – small blessings.

“Anything special about Sydney that I should know about?” he asks, trying not to look too much like a wide-eyed staring tourist. Because he does kind of want to stare. Stare at everything. But that’s a very special sort of embarrassing, so he does his best to reign it in.

Romana just shrugs. “Well, the Harbour Bridge is rather impressive.”

“Yeah, but – ”

She nods across the river, to where a grand criss-crossed arch is distantly visible, glinting in the sunlight as cars and motor vehicles of all kinds speed over it. “It’s not too far from here, even. Remind me to take you sightseeing afterwards if we have time.”

He frowns. “Time? Afterwards? After what?” He hurries to keep up. She’s shorter than he is, his legs are definitely longer, but she walks so briskly that it almost doesn’t matter. He can barely keep track of where they’re going. “I thought you just wanted to… talk about something?” 

“Well, I do need to discuss something with you. But I thought, as long as I was doing so, I might as well multitask and accomplish several things at once. Hence, this,” she adds, and turns sharply left, heading up a short flight of steps.

The bell above the shopfront door rings as she pushes it open, and they enter. Parker blinks around at the new surroundings. Romana seems to thrive on making decisions designed to throw him, specifically, off his game. Keeping him on his toes. Or maybe she just likes being unpredictable, because....

“Ice-cream?” he says. “You’re taking me out for ice-cream?”

“Ice-cream,” she agrees, matter-of-factly, and stops at the counter of the ice-cream shop. “New taste buds. I don’t know which flavor of ice-cream I’m partial to. And we both know just how dreadful Gallifreyan cuisine can be… hm, any suggestions, Parker?” 

She hadn’t asked any questions at all when he’d told her about his name, just switched over to using it without hesitation. He looks at the rows and rows of colorful flavors in gleaming silver tubs, and says, “I wish I did, but I haven’t had ice-cream in, like, half a decade.”

“Good grief,” she says, and sighs. “Then I suppose we’ll just have to try them all, won’t we?”

Parker takes another look at the considerable variety of ice-cream laid out in front of him, and takes a moment to consider if he’s really prepared to taste-test this much sugary dairy product so early in the morning with a high-ranking Time Lord official.

Then he remembers that the only other thing with any sort of sugar content that he’s eaten in the last six years has been a slightly battered bar of chocolate from a few days ago, and he realizes that yes, he absolutely is. “...Let’s do it.”

“That’s the spirit.”

He finds a booth near the front of the shop, looking out onto the harbour, as Romana patiently goes to explain to a very tired-looking employee that they would in fact like a sample of everything, and she is in fact willing to pay for all of it. Seagulls scatter past the window as he watches, squabbling over scraps of food, wings fluttering everywhere. 

After a minute or two, Romana sits down, pulling her sunglasses off, and slides him one of those tiny plastic sample spoons, and starts off what seems to be the Serious Part Of This Conversation by announcing, without preamble: “I lost the Prime Minister-ship.”

“Oh, shit,” says Parker, who had not been expecting that – and then promptly backtracks, feeling a bit like he’s just cursed in front of his fifth-grade English teacher. “Um, I mean – sorry about that.” 

“No, ‘oh, shit’ is probably right,” Romana says, looking faintly sour. “Russen managed to just overtake me in votes, damn the man. And then there’s Carai on the Sisterhood side of things – I did mention we were shifting to a dual-power system, didn’t I? – well, at least she’s halfway sensible. Although all her talk of auras...” Her sour look intensifies for a moment and then she shakes her head. “Still. Russen.”  

He doesn’t recognize the names. He gives a helpless little what-can-you-do shrug and fiddles with the plastic spoon in his hands. “Well… how bad is it? Having Russen as Prime Minister?”

“That’s the thing, I’m not entirely certain. Gallifrey’s never really had a Prime Minister. I’d like to think it’ll be somewhat different from having a President, but there is a distinct lack of precedent for the situation, so it could really go either way.” She glances over to her shoulder, to where the girl behind the counter is dutifully doling out ice cream samples into little paper cups. “Ah, I suppose it isn’t all that bad. We could be doing worse than Russen. At the very least, he wasn’t a Rassilon sympathizer at any point. Not to my knowledge, anyway.”

“That is something.”

“Isn’t it just? And there is another upside.” And now she smiles, that spark of devious mischief springing to the surface once again. “I did manage to snag the Deputy Prime-Minister-ship.”

Parker sits up with a start as this registers properly with him. “You-? Oh, hey, congratulations! That’s still pretty great.” 

She waves a hand in slightly-smug acknowledgement. “Yes, rather. I’m not quite sure I was cut out for being completely in charge again, anyway, so this is… let’s call it an acceptable compromise. At least I’ll have some amount of power.”

Parker nods, and says, “Well, don’t forget – with great power… actually, no. I’m not going to finish that.”

“Good choice,” says Romana, looking faintly amused nonetheless. “Best not to become too derivative when it comes to your wise advice.”

“Yeah,” Parker agrees, wincing a bit. “God knows I don’t need to become any less original.”

The ice-cream begins to arrive, deposited carefully onto their table in tiny little sample cups by the employee, who Romana seems to have tipped generously for her efforts. It’s all unlabelled, and there’s a verifiable rainbow of colors and flavors all laid out before him. Parker bends the plastic spoon gently between his fingers, and tries to work out where to start. 

“You’re not allergic to anything, are you?” Romana checks.

Parker frowns at the spoon in his hand. “I… I actually can’t remember.”

She gives him a brief hard look, and then shrugs. “Well, I’m sure I have an Epipen tucked away somewhere. Let’s get to it.” 

Which is a somewhat alarming but very practical way of dealing with that particular vague problem, so he nods and finds what looks the most like vanilla ice-cream to kick this taste-test off with. Start with the basics, so to speak.

Vanilla’s all right – it’s good ice-cream, he’s not an expert but he thinks this might be some sort of gourmet place – but… it’s not that it’s bland, exactly, he just knows that he wants something different.

Across the table from him, Romana appears to have dived straight into the most colorful flavors, and is working her way through swiftly but systematically. 

“Hm, sea salt,” she says thoughtfully, apparently savoring the taste of her current pick. “Not bad, not bad at all. Here, you ought to try some.”

...He declines that particular flavor as politely as he can, and then asks her what she’d wanted to discuss. 

“Ah,” she says, and pauses in picking out samples from the wide, wide variety of dessert on the table in order to rifle within the inside of her coat jacket. Apparently it’s bigger on the inside, because after a second she produces a moderately thick binder with a little flourish and slides it onto the table. “Of course, yes. I had a proposal I wanted to share with you.” 

He looks down at the binder, and then up at her, and shrugs, picking up a new cup of ice-cream. “Sure. I’m all ears.”

She outlines what she calls ‘the Doctorate Program’ – a dedicated course set up on Gallifrey for the express purpose of equipping participants with all the knowledge and skills they’d ever need if they were planning on roaming throughout all of time and space to protect those in need of help. It very tactfully skims away from outright saying that they’re attempting to produce a bunch of Doctor copycats, but the name of the program is a bit of a dead giveaway for that anyway. 

“Does the Doctor know about this?” he asks, as she pauses to hunt for a flavor she hasn’t tried yet.

Romana looks visibly sheepish. “Well. She’s aware of it.”

“...Does she approve of it?

“She doesn’t disapprove,” says Romana, then, “I think she thinks it’s a bit silly, as a matter of fact. When I brought it up, she got quite embarrassed, then told me to ‘do what I want’, and to not get her involved in designing the curriculum.”

Parker snorts. “She’s not very good when it comes to dealing with the aftermath, is she?”

“No,” says Romana. “No, she is not. Which is why I’m here. Honestly, she’s lucky I’m so patient. And so fast at drafting revolutionary educational proposals. If we want to get this off the ground, I’ll have to work fast in instating it. There’s only a limited bit of wiggle room before the bureaucratic system of this planet snaps together tighter than you can say ‘House Tracolix’.”

Parker pulls a cup of some pale lilac ice-cream towards him and sticks his spoon into it as he scans the first page of the Doctorate Program proposal again, then flips to the next page to keep on going. It’s neatly and elegantly composed, surprisingly clearly-worded. Putting the whole ‘we’re explicitly trying to make a whole bunch of Doctor copycats’ thing to one side, it’s… not a terrible idea. All things considered, putting out more people in the universe who are there to help wherever they can... well, he can’t see how it could be a bad thing. 

At the very least, it’s a nice concept on paper. 

“This is –” he starts to say, pointing at the proposal, and then changes tack as he swallows the ice-cream he’d been tasting. “ – is this lavender?

“Is it?” says Romana, eyebrows raising. “How does it taste?”

“...It’s not bad. Just a bit weird.” He licks the spoon, and stares down at it. “I don’t know if it’s for me, though.” Romana makes wiggly-fingers at him, which he takes as an indication to slide the remaining lavender ice-cream to her – so he does, and then adds, “But, the proposal, I’m not an expert or anything, but it looks pretty good to me.”

She looks pleased, which means he’s probably said the right thing – and then seconds later, upon tasting the ice-cream, a bit dismayed. “Oh dear. No, not for me, either. Next one, I think.” 

They both grab new samples, at random, and Parker says, “Why did you want me to look at it, though? You’ve got to have people who, you know, actually know things about submitting proposal plans to the Gallifreyan government.”

“Oh,” she says, “well, that’s simple. I wanted you to look over it to see if you’d be interested in participating.”

Parker nods thoughtfully, takes a sample of some thick-and-chocolate-y flavor that’s good but a little too rich to be comfortable, and then reaches for another cup just to his left before saying, “Sorry, what?”

She blinks at him. “I should think you rather deserve the chance, after all of this.”

“I’m human,” says Parker, remembering at the very last minute to keep his voice down to acceptable indoor-voice levels, because shouting ‘I’m human’ at the top of your lungs in an ice-cream parlour isn’t the sort of thing a well-balanced, well-adjusted sort of person does.

“And?”

“And – isn’t this supposed to be a Time Lord program?”

Romana looks at him. She looks at him long and hard, and she is completely serious; just so serious when she says, “In my second incarnation, I campaigned extensively for non-Gallifreyan individuals to be allowed to attend the Time Academy with just as many rights to be there as any loom-born Gallifreyan.” She pauses, and a slightly self-deprecating twist falls across her lips. “Now, granted, that didn’t end up going especially well at the time, but I really must stress – over the many, many years since then, my stance on that has not changed.”

This is fine, this is good – sure, okay. Why not? Why not. “Yes, but – but, do I even have the – is this – am I smart enough?’

“With the curriculum I’ve begun to outline, I think you should manage perfectly well. With a bit of applied effort, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah – yeah, but – ” He flips through the proposal, and then jabs a finger at the list of course outcomes. “It says here that Doctorate Program participants, upon graduation, receive full use of a TARDIS.”

“That is correct, yes.”

“Why for the love of god would you want to give me a TARDIS?” 

“If you graduate,” she says, and starts scooping and mixing together what looks like the cookies-and-cream and cookie-dough flavors with immense precision, “you’ll have earned it. Just like any other participant in the program. Really, Parker, I’m not giving you any sort of special treatment here.” 

“You’re literally taking me out for ice-cream right now,” he points out, somewhat wildly. 

“I’m not giving you any sort of special treatment in regards to the program,” she corrects. “I took you out for ice-cream because I rather like you, and because I think you deserve it.” She pokes a spoonful of the cookie-flavored mixture into her mouth, and glances up at him. “You should try some more before it melts.” 

On autopilot, he reaches for another flavor at random, and sticks a spoonful into his mouth. He pauses, and then frowns. “Huh.” 

“Hm?”

“I… don’t like mint anymore.” He stares at the tiny bowl of bright-green ice-cream in front of him, a bit startled. He remembers it being one of his favorites, back before all this started, and he’d expected the flavor to hit him with some amount of nostalgia, but it just tastes wrong, now. Just a bit too sharp. Uncomfortable to eat. “That’s weird. That’s really weird.” 

“Well, it appears that I don’t at all like maraschino cherries,” Romana says, holding up her current sample cup, which seems to be loaded with all sorts of candied fruits and nuts. “So perhaps we should swap.” 

Parker nods, still a bit off-put by the sudden change in flavor preference, and they exchange sample cups. After a brief pause, Romana gains an introspective look, and then nods in approval. “Very good. Yours?”

The crunchy, fruit-filled ice-cream is a lot more Parker’s style, he finds. Although it’s still not quite right. “It’s… yeah, that’s all right.” He frowns again. “Fruit,” he says. “I think I like… huh. Did you get any sorbet?” 

Romana shuffles through cups with neat precision until she reaches something dark-red, flecked through with dark seeds. “I believe this is raspberry.” 

“Let’s try it.” He reaches out to accept it from her, and does just that. And it’s sugary and just a bit tart, but it’s probably the best thing he’s tasted all day. He realizes he’s smiling seconds after the expression makes his cheeks start to ache in instinctive response to a half-memory. “Good news – new favorite flavor.” 

“Splendid,” she says, and she really does sound like she finds it rather splendid. “So far, I’ve found that I’m rather partial to a more bitter palette. Important information to know, I think.”

He nods, and then he looks back at the binder on the table.  “Okay. Um. About the Doctorate Program, though.” 

“You don’t need to decide on participation right this instant,” she’s quick to assure him. “But I wanted to extend the offer as early as I could to give you time to decide.”

He bites his lip, thinking. Thinking hard. “All right. All right, um… so, what’s the alternative?”

She hesitates. “I feel the need to emphasise just how much I don’t want to force you into making this decision. If you don’t want to – ”

“No, I… I know. I get that.” He eyes the folder of information, tracing the shape of the blocks of text with his eyes. He realizes with a start that it’s printed in English, which can’t be the norm on Gallifrey. She must have made a copy just for him. “I just want to know what my other options are.”

“That’s entirely reasonable,” she says, and sits back, straightening up. The very picture of professionality, all at once – presenting the options to him, clear and direct. “You have several open to you. You can let the newly reformed Council deal with you – I don’t recommend this option, I’ll try to exercise some control over what they do with you, but for the most part, it’ll be out of both of our hands. There’s the Doctorate Program, of course, but you know about that already. And if you want to leave all of this behind entirely, and relocate yourself to some other corner of the galaxy to attempt to make a life for yourself there… well, I can’t pretend it will be especially easy, but I think I may be able to rearrange something for you.”

“The Doctor already offered that,” he tells her. “Taking me somewhere else, I mean.”

She nods, quite briskly. “In which case, you can take your pick between her and me, although I feel the need to warn you in advance: out of the two of us, only one failed our TARDIS driving test sixteen consecutive times in a row.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He looks at the selection of sample cups still remaining, and can’t really bring himself to reach for any of them. “I think…”

He doesn’t know what he thinks.

“Let me put it this way,” she says, when it becomes clear that he doesn’t know how to finish. “Do you want this?”

“I… I think so.”

“So what’s stopping you from saying yes?”

He’s not sure at first. It seems to him that there’s a multitude of reasons, but every time he reaches for any one of these reasons, they just… evaporate. Fade away from his reach. And then he reaches one that he can voice, but it takes him almost a full minute to put the words to it. Romana watches patiently, idly stirring around what looks like Neapolitan with the wrong end of her sample spoon.

Eventually, he just closes his eyes and pretends very hard that she’s not actually there. It almost feels like he’s only talking to himself when he says, “What if I’m not good enough?”

For a moment, she doesn’t respond, and it almost feels like he really is alone, and if not for the sweet smell of all of the ice-cream they haven’t eaten yet and the taste of raspberries lingering in his mouth and the faint chilliness of the shop they’re sitting in, he could be back in his tiny lonely room on Gallifrey, propped up against the wall, trying to rearrange, to centre his thoughts. And when she finally speaks, he very nearly jumps.

She says, “You want to be good enough. And that’s good enough for me, frankly. So let me ask again. Do you want this, Parker? “

He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t open his eyes at first. He tries to think past all the residual shakiness and strangeness and doubt that comes with having been a puppet for the Wire and an agent of destruction in tandem with Rassilon himself, tries to think past that and get a grip on himself – and work out what it actually is that he wants.

And...

He wants to be happy. 

It’s such a simple little realization, it should have been wildly obvious way before now and maybe even on some level he did realize it – but that’s it, that’s what he wants, he wants to be really properly happy. And he doesn’t know what really properly happy is going to look like, but he can’t deny that there’s definitely a tug towards the Doctorate Program when he thinks about it, trying to consider it, trying to puzzle everything out. This might not be it, this might not be the solution and the cure and everything beyond, but it feels like the right step.

He looks up at Romana, who’s still patiently waiting for his response. 

He says, “You’ve got chocolate on your face.”

The immediate horror that springs across her features as she immediately attempts to wipe the non-existent chocolate away is enough to make him smile – and when she clocks that he’s messing with her, she gives him the sternest look. “Parker.”

“Yes,” he says, and tries not to look too pleased with himself for throwing her off her rhythm, even for just a moment. “I mean, Yes, I think – I think I do want to do this. The Doctorate Program, I mean.”

“Good,” she says, recovering her composure fully. “Because out of all of the potential applicants I have lined up, you are by far the most competent. You not being there would be a considerable blow to the overall intelligence quotient of the program’s first cohort.”

He’s not sure if she’s joking or not, but he smiles, and looks away from her and says, “Well – thanks. I hope I can live up to it.”

“I’m sure you will. Now. Let’s finish what we came here to do.” 

She tucks the file away, and they spend another few minutes finishing up the last of the ice-cream. They declare the entire endeavour an absolute success after they manage to pinpoint several new favorite flavors between them. Romana tips extra, and they leave the shop, slightly stickier than they’d arrived. 

Even though they’d only been eating from samples, Parker is so aware that he’s had entirely too much ice-cream today. But he can’t really bring himself to regret it. He’s happy and confused and a bit overwhelmed, but there’s another feeling growing that he takes a moment to identify as… eager anticipation. 

He’s actually excited for the Doctorate Program. Huh.

It takes him another moment to properly process that, and then yet another to realize that Romana’s now leading him along the waterfront – but she seems to be going the wrong way. He coughs, and points in the approximate correct direction. “Uh, I think the TARDIS was that way.”

“Yes, but I promised you the Sydney Harbour Bridge, didn’t I?” says Romana, slipping her sunglasses back on. “I think a bit of sightseeing is in order.” 

“Don’t we… need to get back to Gallifrey?” The lingering feeling of being somewhere he’s not supposed to be, doing something he’s not supposed to do… it’s back. Great.

“I’m a Time Lord, Parker,” she says, glancing over her sunglasses at him. “We can get back to Gallifrey seconds after we’ve left, no matter how long we spend here.”

“Time travel; right,” he says. “Gotta love those TARDISes.” 

And then he’s briefly caught with the dizzying realization that there is a distinct possibility that he might end up with a TARDIS of his own, if he goes through with this. The idea of so much freedom at his fingertips is both terrifying and wonderfully alluring. 

On an impulse, he reaches out and gives her the briefest of side-hugs. He knows it’s a mistake the moment he does it, because it’s supremely awkward – he’d miscalculated the angle, he’s pressed up weirdly against her, and she’s frozen up all stiff and strange, and just, like. Quite besides any of that, he’s realized abruptly that he may not be as much of a hugging sort of person as Travis is. It’s been too long, he’s changed too much. He just isn’t built for it anymore. 

A second passes. Romana coughs, clearly uncomfortable, and says, “Yes. Well,” before patting him hesitantly on the arm and pulling back, adjusting her coat to smooth out the wrinkles. Her expression is mostly-hidden behind her sunglasses. 

“Sorry,” he says, grimacing. “I was just… thanks. You know?”

“I do,” she says, and smiles at him. Fond. Real. And then the expression dims, and she looks a bit distant for a second. 

“...You all right?”

“Yes,” she says, and then, “...Yes, I was… just, considering something. I’ve got the distinct feeling that things are about to get extremely hectic very soon. For you and me both. And there may not be much time for sightseeing in the Doctorate Program, but at the very least, we have today.” She pulls an extra pair of sunglasses out of her coat, and presents them to him with a flourish. “So. For today, at least – let’s be tourists.” 

He takes them, and slides them on. The sun is warm and soft against his hair, the breeze is sweet on his face. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “Sounds very good, actually.”

And off into the bright Sydney mid-morning they go.

*

*

Only a few days later, the Doctor, Travis and Carrie decide to leave Gallifrey. To Parker’s surprise, Carrie comes to tell him this in person, saying that she figured he ought to know – and he’d said, “Oh,” and tried to work out what to do next, and and then she’d given him a Look subsequently dragged him with her to say, quote, a proper goodbye to all of them.

So now he finds himself standing in that small out-of-the-way room that the Doctor’s TARDIS has been parked in all this time, trying to figure out how to say goodbye to three of the few people in this universe that he’s actually on moderately friendly terms. 

It really is time for them to go, he knows, because the few times he’s seen the Doctor over the last few days, she’s been getting visibly more and more fidgety, like a bird who knows she’s just on the verge of getting caged and is very not happy with the idea of that happening. Travis seems happy enough, broadly speaking, but if the Doctor wants to leave, he’ll want to leave too. And she does, so he does. 

On the other hand, Gallifrey might not survive for very much longer if Carrie Vu sticks around. She’s kind of a force of nature. And it might not end up being an entirely bad thing, but he doesn’t think the Time Lords will be very happy about it. 

“Good luck out there,” Parker says, and finds that he really properly means it.

Travis grins. “You too. I’d say ‘stay out of trouble’, but…”

Parker shrugs. He doesn’t really know what to expect from the Doctorate Program, not really. Romana’s outlined the broad strokes to him, made sure he knows enough to be properly informed about what he’s getting into. He knows that he’s going to end up saving planets and helping people (maybe. Hopefully?) but he has no idea what the path to get there even looks like. “Yeah. We’ll see. I’m not going to destroy any more universes out of spite, though.” He pauses, and then adds, “Well, not unless they’re really annoying universes.”

“That was a joke!” Carrie says, delighted. “You made a joke about your traumatic alien possession experience! That’s growth! That’s growth, right?”

“It’s my coping mechanism,” says Parker blandly, just as Travis laughs a bit awkwardly and says, “It’s our coping mechanism,” at almost exactly the same time.

There’s a brief silence. Parker stares at Travis. Travis stares back at Parker.

“That’s still weird,” the Doctor decides. “I can’t be the only one who finds it weird, can I?” 

“Definitely still weird,” Parker agrees. 

“...Just a bit,” Travis says. 

“Uh, you’re making it weird by still talking about it,” Carrie says, and points at Parker. “You’ve got spare chocolate, right?” 

“Right,” he says. It’s a good thing that he still has a sweet tooth, with the amount of chocolate that she’s been pressing into his possession. “And the pocketknife you gave me, and the spare band-aids, and that communicator – I think I’m going to be fine, Carrie, seriously.”

“You’d better be,” she says, jabbing her finger at him one more time, and then swings around, pointing over at Travis. “Okay, Travis, take it away.”

“Got it. C’mere,” Travis says, and squishes him into a hug. Parker does not resist. He thinks it’s probably safe to say at this point that Travis gives the universe’s best hugs. He really hopes this is one of those things that he also has the capacity to be good at as well. He’d rather be known for giving better-than-average hugs then for being that one guy who attempted complete multiversal ultracide that one time.

They cling to each other for a bit. It’s definitely mutual clinging, because neither of them really wants to let go. After a moment of this, Travis says, “You’re going to be awesome, you know that, right?”

“Of course I know that,” Parker says, and bumps their heads together lightly, sideways. “I’m me. You’re you. We’re us.” 

“And if anything ever goes wrong,” Travis adds, a bit anxiously, “if you’re in trouble, or Gallifrey is too much for you, or you just need to leave – you know how to call us?”

Parker thinks of the communicator they’d slipped him a few days ago, the one that he’s probably not technically supposed to have – the one with three numbers in it. Romana’s comms unit, the Doctor’s TARDIS, and Carrie’s mobile phone. (That last one hadn’t been part of the original intention, but Carrie had insisted on it. Extensively.) “Yeah. Yep. I’ve got it. I don’t think I’ll need it, but – always good to have a backup plan, I guess.”

“You can always ask for help,” Travis says. “Doesn’t matter when, or why, or… how stupid it might feel. You have friends now, all right? Don’t forget that.”

“I know. I – thanks, I – hang on.” Parker draws back abruptly from the hug, squints at him. “Are you… big-brothering me?”

“I… I don’t know.” Travis blinks. “I guess I might be? Huh.”

“I’m older than you are,” Parker says incredulously.

From a short distance away, Carrie says, “We’re hugging Parker, right? That’s what’s happening? It’s my turn to hug Parker. Travis, get out of the way.” 

Travis says, “I’m not – ” but Carrie’s already shoved her way past and Parker has maybe two seconds to mentally and physically prepare himself for getting an armful of Carrie Vu before it actually happens. He staggers back several steps with the impact.

“If you go evil again, you’re not getting more hugs,” she tells him sternly, too close to his ear.

“Right,” says Parker, a bit winded. He has to bite his lip to keep from smiling.

“Or snacks. Chocolate privileges will be denied. With a vengeance.”

“Oh no,” he says, and does his best to sound appropriately horrified. 

Carrie squeezes him tightly, pointedly, for another second or two before hopping back, and doing a little I’ve got my eyes on you motion back and forth between them. “Okay! Goodbyes complete. Bye, Parker; see you soon!” 

Travis gives him one last wave, Carrie shoots him a big double-thumbs-up and a bounce-grin of encouragement, and then they disappear through the doors of the Doctor’s TARDIS, and the door swings shut behind them. Which means that he’s left standing in a corridor of the Citadel, alone with the Doctor once more. 

“I feel like I should be giving you important life advice,” says the Doctor thoughtfully after a moment, and frowns. “Can’t think of any at the moment, though.” 

“Uh, it’s all right,” he says, trying to work out if making eye contact would make this any weirder than it already is. “You can let me know if you come up with any.”

“I will, don’t worry.” She looks at him. “Okay. We should probably hug now. You know, seeing as everybody else got a turn at it.”

He’d been thinking it, but there was no good way of bringing it up. “If you’re sure-?”

“Yeah, bring it in,” she says, and extends her arms, just a bit – a little wiggle of her fingers. “There’s always time for a good hug.”

He hovers, uncertain. “Fair warning. I’m a lot worse at hugging than Travis is.” 

She shrugs. “Practice makes perfect.”

Here goes nothing, he thinks, and hugs her.

It’s not quite as awkward as hugging Romana had been, not quite as objectively perfect as Travis’s hugs are. It’s certainly not as fierce and borderline-crushing as Carrie’s. It’s just… nice. He loops his arms around her back, she slings hers around his shoulders, and for a moment he just stands there and soaks in the gentle strangeness of hugging his alternate-universe clone’s alien best friend. He wonders what she’s thinking right now. If he’s being compared to Travis in any way, shape or form, if she’s considering how easy it would be for him to go bad again, if she’s harbouring vague or not-so-vague plans about how to stop him if that does happen. 

And then they disentangle from the hug, and he sees her face, and he knows she hadn’t been thinking about any of that at all. 

“Parker Killian,” says the Doctor, like she’s tasting the feel of his name, rolling it around her mouth, trying to get a good sense of him. “Parker Killian. You know what, Parker?”

“What?”

She grins at him, bright as any sun or star you could care to name. “I have a feeling you’re going to be just fine. No, you know what? I know you’re going to be brilliant.”

“See you out there, I guess,” he says, and waves a hand upwards, gesturing in the general vicinity of the stars. “Ad astra – um, that thing you said before. The Latin thing – that.”

“Exactly that.” She reaches out and opens the TARDIS door, stepping through the frame. “I’m looking forward to it,” she says, and the door shuts behind her. 

Seconds later, the TARDIS begins to fade away, creaking and groaning and wheezing its way into eternity, and Parker watches it go – and then frowns, as it abruptly stops fading away, and becomes suddenly solid once more, re-situating itself in the Citadel with a faint clunk.

The door creaks open. The Doctor’s head pops out. “Oh, and you’re going to want to disable the chronon inhibitor as soon as possible. When you get your TARDIS, I mean. It’s pointless, it’s just going to slow you down, I haven’t had it for about seven thousand years and I’m doing just fine. Ask Romana, she can help you do it. And while I’m at it – don’t do drugs, especially not Gallifreyan drugs, your body is not equipped to handle them; stay in school, don’t get into unethical bioengineering – ”

“Doctor!” yells Carrie, just out of sight. “He gets it!” 

“ – definitely don’t mess around with any looms you find; you don’t want to have an unexpected time baby on your hands – learned that one the hard way – and remember, cheating only counts if you get caught – ”

“Looms?” he hears Travis say from a distance. “Time babies? Is that – is that a thing that he should actually be worried about-?”

Parker watches, bemused, as the Doctor says, “Okay, I think that’s it – okay! You’re going to be great, good luck, bye – ” and then her head disappears from sight again, and after a second, so does the TARDIS – fading out of existence with a roar of ancient engines that quickly dwindles away into nothing at all.

For a second, all he can really do is stare at the spot where the TARDIS had been. And then he starts to laugh. A proper, delighted laugh, and the way it bubbles out of his throat, sheer joy unfolding from him, well – it’s so unexpected and so unfamiliar that he almost doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what the Time Lords must think of him, if they can hear him – and he can’t imagine that they can’t.  

And when the laughter abates, trailing off into the air like the memory of an afterthought, he becomes aware that Romana’s standing a short distance away – watching without judgement, but with a noticeable upwards quirk to the side of her mouth. 

“Ready to go?” Romana asks with a little sideways tilt of her head. 

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” he says. “But the only other way is backwards, so – yeah. Let’s go.” 

*

*

And months later, so many months later, Parker finds himself once more standing outside a TARDIS, grey and cylindrical and unformed, Romana by his side, backpack slung over his back with the last of his possessions. The final exam is long since passed, the many, many lessons and lectures long since learned. Some days he’s still uncertain, and not every day is good, but he finally feels like he might actually fit right in his skin. And now, here he is – the universe just on the verge of being at his fingertips.

He can’t help but hesitate, though. “So I just… find trouble? I go out looking for trouble?”

And Romana adjusts her own small satchel of possessions over her shoulder, and looks at him very, very seriously. “Oh, heavens no,” she says. “Trouble’s going to find you.” 

“Awesome,” he says, and when the grin splits his face from ear to ear, there isn’t even the faintest trace of pain. He presses his palms to the doors of the TARDIS – his TARDIS – and pushes them open with one great heave. 

Inside, it’s bright and it’s humming. It’s a pretty standard TARDIS interior, the default settings. White, uncomplicated, clean. It’s honestly nothing special – but it might just be one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. He can’t remember what home feels like, but this might be it. He stands there, silent and still and thoroughly overwhelmed.

“Everything all right?” says Romana, shutting the doors behind her.

He looks around, looks at the console and the walls and the everything of it all, and then looks back at her. The grin remains. He feels so bright, so light, feels like he might vibrate out of his skin at any moment now for the sheer unadulterated joy of it all.

“Oh yeah,” he says, and presses his hands to the console. Next stop, everywhere. “I think everything might actually be perfect.”

“Time to go?”

“Time to go,” he agrees – and with a few deft flicks of the controls, a few steps sideways and one great heave of the dematerialization lever, they’re off, spinning outwards – out towards the stars.