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Rain pelts against the TARDIS as the Doctor stands in the doorway, watching Yaz walk to her flat a block away, making sure she gets home safe. Just as they did for Dan, moments ago. The Doctor tried to convince them it was important that they continue to live their present-day lives, maintaining connections with their friends and family on Earth.
“I can always time travel back!” Yaz said, gripping the edge of her sleeve. “We can do more things together and visit later.”
“You can’t keep putting it off while you get—” the Doctor stopped herself. She closed her eyes briefly. “You have to prioritize spending time with you friends and family. You can’t let the weeks slip away, until something happens, until—” She saw the look on Yaz’s face and knew Yaz understood. Until they’re gone. Until you’re the only one left, and there’s no one to remember your childhood with, no one to understand cultural references with, no one—
“Okay,” said Yaz. “One week back home. Spending time with friends and family. And you’ll pop ahead to next Saturday, yeah?”
“Of course,” the Doctor lied. “Straight away.”
“Don’t get the date wrong,” Yaz warned.
“I promise.”
She doesn’t know yet if that one was a lie. The wind blows some of the raindrops in toward the TARDIS, dusting her face with pinpricks of cold. Yaz has almost made it to her door.
I want to tell you everything.
She’d meant it, when she said it. She really had. But then she choked on certain things that she couldn’t say.
“I didn’t get my memories back,” she said. She didn’t say, “I got my memories back and I hid them in the TARDIS because even after putting you through all of that and getting you stranded in the past for three years in my quest to get them, I was too scared to look at them.”
And she didn’t tell Yaz what Time had said. She knows she should talk to her, eventually, to prepare her for regeneration. But not now.
Maybe not ever.
Lightning flashes and thunder rumbles soon afterward. Maybe she should have dropped them off inside their homes. It’s too late for that now.
The Doctor goes back inside to the console and pilots to the time vortex before beginning the search. Again.
She’s run this search many, many times already. This time she won’t give up. She knows he’s out there. “I have to find him,” she tells the TARDIS. “If he’s going to be my end, I have to confront him before he comes to me.”
damage/timeline/holes, the TARDIS responds.
The Doctor takes a shaky breath. That fear has been living in the corners of her mind for the past week. Hearing it come from the TARDIS makes it real. “All the more reason to go after him,” she says, feigning confidence. “Before it gets worse.”
The TARDIS grumbles.
“I know,” she snaps. “I know it won’t help. But what else am I supposed to do? I can’t fix this.” The Doctor gestures at her head, then leans back against the console, looking up at the ceiling. “Just run the scan, please?”
The TARDIS runs the scan. The Doctor watches the monitors, knowing that the result is going to be the same as ever. Knowing there’s no trace of him left in the universe.
It doesn’t dull the disappointment.
“I’m just going to have to go looking myself, then,” she says. “How many planets are left?”
4,392, the screen reads. Comparatively, not a lot of planets. Guilt claws its way up her throat, but she swallows it down. It’s still a lot of planets for her to search on her own. “Narrow down to planets that are solids,” she says, “where I could survive.”
3,201. The Doctor nods. “Okay, make a list.” She knows this is a bad idea. She knows that he could move to a planet she’s already checked after she marks it off the list—she knows he might not be on a planet.
He might not even be in this universe.
But if he can find her to sabotage her life at any time, she can certainly find him to sabotage his plans against her. Whatever it takes.
—
She doesn’t stay on the planets for very long. Not enough to interact with the locals, usually. She simply steps out of the TARDIS, closes her eyes, and blasts out contact, searching for him.
Most Time Lords wouldn’t be able to contact someone on the other side of the planet. But most Time Lords didn’t grow up living inside each other’s heads half the time.
And technically, she isn’t a Time Lord.
Sometimes, she reaches out and feels other psychic beings inhabiting the planet and has to apologize for momentarily deafening them. She should feel worse about this than she does.
She tries to stay on the same date on each planet, traveling back in time when necessary, to make it harder for him to outrun her. If he is running. But she knows she’s making waves, sending out psychic blasts on each planet she visits, and he’s bound to hear of her before she gets to him.
Unfortunately, her psychic blasts are having a side effect.
There are holes in her timeline. Fractures. Cracks. There are things she could have done, might have done, won’t have done, will do or won’t do—they begin to overlap with her memories, blurring at the edges. With each psychic blast, the holes get a little bigger, like little moths eating at the scraps of her past—and her future.
What if this is how the Master is responsible for her demise?
What if she destroys herself, looking for him?
She doesn’t have a choice. It’s either go after him, or wait for him to come after her. The forces massing against you, Time had said. So there must be forces, somewhere.
A gun fires. The Doctor catches him.
“Dying in your arms. Happy now?”
“You’re not dying. Don’t be stupid. It’s only a bullet. Just regenerate.”
“No.”
And then he dies.
And then he regenerates.
The TARDIS lands with a shudder and a warning. The Doctor shrugs off the warning and steps outside, focusing her mind again. The snow swirls around her, but she can’t feel the cold. Contact. Her psychic blast reverberates through the entire planet. Somewhere, an avalanche begins.
“Become death. Become me. Come on. Come on, come on!”
And then she hesitates.
And then she pushes the button.
And then she runs away.
And then he pushes the button.
And then both of them live.
And then both of them die.
The TARDIS lands again. This planet is hot and humid. She steps out, directly into a swamp. Contact.
Theta Lungbarrow is best friends with Koschei Oakdown.
Theta Lungbarrow is best enemies with Koschei Oakdown.
Theta Lungbarrow is not friends with Koschei Oakdown.
Theta Lungbarrow does not go to the Academy.
The TARDIS lands. The TARDIS doesn’t land, refuses to land. The TARDIS explodes.
The Doctor walks out onto another sunny planet. Contact. Her mind rips through the minds of everyone on the planet, less controlled now. He’s not here. Back in the TARDIS.
The Timeless child is sent to Earth without her memories.
The Timeless child is never found.
The Timeless child stays in division for all eternity.
The Time Lords never exist.
The TARDIS does not want to land. The Doctor exits anyway.
A figure tackles her to the ground.
“What are you doing!?” he hisses.
She blinks at him, briefly stunned, before she wiggles out from underneath him and shoves him to the ground. She draws back a fist, ready to strike, but he doesn’t move. His expression is both stunned and sad.
“I can’t remember your name,” he says.
She lowers her fist. “I’m the Doctor.”
“Theta,” he says, sitting up.
“Koschei,” she snarls, irritated. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Why?” he asks.
She dies when Gat finds her.
She dies when she is sacrificed to Time.
Time tells her to beware the forces massing against her and their Master.
“I heard you were amassing forces against me,” she says.
The universe is destroyed.
He laughs. “The universe is destroyed. What forces are left to amass?”
The universe is saved.
The universe never exists.
She goes with Tecteun and leaves the universe behind.
The Doctor finds it difficult to think as she fades in and out of existence.
Koschei leans forward suddenly, gripping her forearms. “What’s wrong with you? Theta—I can’t remember our childhood.”
“I’m not sure it happened,” she responds, gritting her teeth. “Not sure I had a childhood.”
Koschei is going to yell—
is going to cry—
is going to—kiss her?
“We had a childhood!” he yells, standing up. There’s three of him, but this time not from alternate futures. Her head is pounding and she can taste blood. She reaches up and wipes her nose. Yup, that’s where it’s coming from.
“I remember us!” he continues. “Okay, I don’t remember, but I know that I should remember, and that’s something. It’s not erased. Not yet.”
The Doctor watches her hand become translucent, then solid again. “I don’t feel so good,” she mumbles.
Koschei is beside her again. “Tell me what happened,” he said. “I imagine you did something stupid to stop the Flux.”
“Uhh…” she struggles to remember what was reality—or what was reality before all of this—which is when it happened—unless this is all that ever is, has been, will be—“I think, the Mouri, I went back in my own timestream and they said my body was breaking, and then I was trisected across time, oh and also I was turned into a weeping angel, twice actually—but that’s not important, because I already know what’s wrong with me. It’s my—” there’s a curious sensation in her ears, and it’s getting hard to hear. She can see Koschei’s mouth moving—all three of them, actually—but she can’t hear, and he’s getting blurry anyway.
It seems that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, after all.
—
Koschei grips her shoulders as her head tilts back, blood dripping from her nose and her ears. Theta. Her name is slipping in and out of his mind like waves on the sea. He pulls her forward so that her forehead rests against his, and tries not think about her blood staining his suit. Contact.
Historically, whenever Koschei has entered Theta’s mind—which has been far fewer times than she’s entered his mind—it’s been a little messy, but there was at least a space for him. Even if she was unconscious.
But this is just chaos. Her timeline is breaking off in so many directions, it takes up all of her psychic space, leaving no room for him, let alone her ability to think. There are gaping holes where some of her most important memories should be. Maybe he would have left the holes as they were, if they weren’t also affecting his memories. No, these aren’t just problems in Theta’s memory—they’re problems in her actual timeline. And by extension, his timeline.
And probably the entire universe.
Koschei begins to weave the threads of Theta’s timeline together through her mind, connecting strands of memories together where they should connect, or at least where he thinks they should, hoping this will also affect the past and the future. He’s never seen a psychic injury like this actually affect reality before, but there’s a first time for everything.
Unfortunately, as soon as he finishes with one repair and turns to another, the first one starts to disintegrate.
Frustrated, he gets up and tries to open Theta’s TARDIS’s door. It won’t budge. He certainly isn’t going to try to dig through Theta’s pockets for the key—if she even has a key, rather than just relying on her TARDIS to open for her. Who knows what assortment of junk and spoiled food she keeps in her pockets. “Come on,” he says to the TARDIS. “She needs medical care.” There’s no response.
With a huff, Koschei locks his arms under Theta’s armpits and begins to drag her the twenty feet to his TARDIS, which is currently camouflaged as an evergreen tree. Once there, he lets go of Theta with one arm to unlock the door with a key like a normal person. Then he drags her through the front of his TARDIS, directly to the zero room. He supposes it’s a good thing Theta’s TARDIS wouldn’t let him in; she probably doesn’t even have a zero room.
His zero room is purple, of course, with metallic gold constellations on the walls and glowing golden stars hanging from the ceiling. The bed is extravagant, purple with gold trim, but not so soft that one would sink too far into the bed and not be able to get out. It’s practical. If you’re going to be stuck healing from injuries somewhere, might as well make it nice.
Dragging Theta onto the bed is a challenge and he wishes there were other furniture in the room, but because his TARDIS is refusing to conjure any—on his orders, probably, so there wouldn’t be any tripping hazards—the bed will have to suffice. Once he’s managed to get her haphazardly lying diagonally across the bed, Koschei takes a moment to center himself. This is going to be challenging, but hopefully if she’s cut off from the rest of the universe, whatever she did to herself won’t have any more impact on anyone else’s timelines, and maybe—just maybe—he can fix her without having her timeline unravel faster than he can weave the holes back together.
—
The Doctor is dreaming of pasts that never were and futures that may not come to pass. She sees herself regenerating into a thousand bodies with a thousand faces. Yasmin dies every time. Sometimes Rose Tyler comes back. Sometimes the Master has an army. Sometimes he doesn’t.
When she wakes up, she doesn’t know when or where she is. She feels disconnected, and yet not. Disconnected on the outside; connected on the inside. Above her are stars. Indoor stars, that is.
And next to her is a warm body.
Alarmed, she carefully inches away, trying to untangle her arm from his without waking him up.
The Master’s eyes crack open. “That. Was. Exhausting,” he says.
She pauses. Blinks. “Did you fix my timeline?” she asks.
He pulls himself into a sitting position, still looking exhausted. “It was messing with mine.”
That seems reasonable. “Do you really not have an army?” she asks.
He smirks. “Didn’t yet, but now that you mention it…”
She sighs. “Can we not? Can’t we just call it even, now that you’ve destroyed our entire planet?”
He stands suddenly, angry. “Don’t forget that you destroyed it first, Doctor. And then you left me to die with that human—”
“Because you forced me!” she shouts. She bites back the other, crueler things she almost says. That he’d asked her to.
The unspoken words hang in the air between them for a long moment.
“I don’t want to fight you anymore, Koschei,” she says. “I’m so, unbelievably, tired. After what I went through with you, I was locked in prison for decades, the universe was nearly destroyed, I nearly lost my friends, I went directly into a time storm, was turned into a weeping angel, found Tecteun, and then she was immediately killed by my apparent archenemy—”
“Your what?”
“Don’t worry, he’s dead now too, killed by Time, who told me—” she sighs again. “Can we just not? Can we just be done?”
“How can we just be done?” he snaps. “Because you’re tired?”
“I’m tired and I want my friend back!” she says. “Even after everything I—I just—why can’t you just stop? Haven’t we suffered enough?”
He freezes for a moment. She almost gets her hopes up. “Hold on,” he says. “You met Tecteun?”
“Yes.” She fixes him with an irritated glare. He’s avoiding the question.
“So you know everything I told you was true?”
Begrudgingly, “Yes.”
Suddenly he’s in her personal space, gripping at her shoulders. “Doesn’t it make you angry?”
“It does,” she says slowly, enunciating her words with quiet rage, “but there’s nothing I can do, because you killed everyone.”
“Ah,” he takes a step back. “I can see how that might be an issue for you.”
After a moment of awkward silence, the Doctor digs through her pockets and retrieves an old receipt and a pen. “This,” she says, scribbling on the receipt, “is my number. Next time you want my attention, call me. Or text me, even.” She holds the receipt out to him. “I know you know how to text, O.”
Mouth twitching as if he’s trying not to smile, he takes the receipt. “Where are you going now?” he asks.
“Off to see my friends who don’t regularly try to kill me, or, y’know, amass armies against me,” says the Doctor, heading for the door. She glances back. “Thanks for the mind repair. Call me if you need anything.”
—
The Doctor breathes a sigh of relief once she gets back to her TARDIS. She hadn’t realized how much she’d been struggling to communicate with the TARDIS with that mess going on in her timeline. It feels like waking up from a long nap.
restored/timeline/yasmin/dan, says the TARDIS.
“I miss them too,” says the Doctor, spinning around the console and flipping switches with zeal. “Time for another adventure.”