Chapter 1: Shard Chapter One
Chapter Text
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole. -- C. J. Jung
Maybe you have seen those nesting boxes, which you open from largest to smallest, perhaps, with each diminution, mentally devaluing the expected treasure. The point is to discourage you until you get to the final box, substantially smaller than the first, and find something of great value, be it personal, monetary or, as in the case of the splendid shard of Shansa, historical. But what if you were the shard? What if you were the rare gem or that lock of your great-grandmother's hair? The discouragement is the same -- each time you think you're out, you find yourself in another, bigger box, and your heart sinks, your will waivers, your hope evaporates wisp by wisp -- but the prize, far from being devalued, seems increasingly precious. It is your freedom.
There is, of course, another difference. The nesting boxes are a trick with a happy ending. The deeper your disappointment as you go along, the more delicious your delight when you discover your deserts. If you are inside fighting your way out, layer by layer, your discouragement will be unallayed by any such reversal. The intention is to keep you in.
On this particular occasion, I was the shard.
I woke up in the innermost box. I didn't remember having left the TARDIS. In fact, there was a lot I didn't remember, but I didn't waste time trying. Even before my eyes were open I knew I was somewhere I didn't want to be. I could feel how closely I was confined: something cold was lying across my throat, there wasn't a lot of air and what air there was stank of death.
When I opened my eyes I couldn't see much, as my container was not only tight but dark. It would have been slightly less tight (but no less dark) had I not been lying next to a dead body, whose arm is what I felt pressing against my throat.
I admit I jumped and instead of gently removing the arm from my throat I batted it away. Then, as angry at myself as at my situation, I punched the wall repeatedly, without injury, since my container was, after all, a cardboard box. Was its container, too, mere cardboard? Of course at the time I had no idea I was in nesting boxes. For all I knew, I was out of doors. My escape was hasty. I hadn't considered that the box might be airtight and once escaped I would find myself floating in the vacuum of space, or sinking in an ocean (of water, if I was lucky, or of acid if I was not). No, I just punched my way out and found myself in a room of no great dimension, itself. There was a long cord snaking through an aperture in one wall, and it furnished power to a naked bulb. Almost apologetically, I pulled the corpse out of the box and set him -- for it was a young man who now would never live to worry about turning thirty, supporting a family, exploring space -- down across the creaking wooden floor, close enough to the bulb that I could examine his features. They were twisted into the most frightful grimace, whether at something itself fearful or at some horrific pain. No one had bothered to close his eyes. I hesitated, knowing they never could open again, but I learned nothing more from them, so I reached over with two fingers and lowered his lids.
The young man, whose dark brown hair was longer than my own and contrasted eerily against his paper-white skin, wore a white button-down shirt, faded now almost to gray, with rolled-up sleeves secured by red garters; khaki trousers, thick white socks and brown loafers. I unrolled one of the sleeves and found tucked therein a pair of small-gold-framed glasses. Trying them on, to assess the extent of his visual impairment, made me dizzy. I shook my head and, in a gesture no more or less useful than any other I could offer, arranged the specs properly on his face.
His remaining sleeve yielded a half-full pack of Venusian Venom cigarettes (for export only, as it is impossible to coax even the slightest flame out of the oxygen-free Venusian atmosphere), a bradawl and a few worn eight-dollar bills from Earth Seven. At first I tucked the Venoms back into his sleeve but then thought better of it and pocketed them, along with the bills. The bradawl I held tightly as I crawled over to the wall from which the cord emerged. Careful not to nick that cord, as I didn't fancy fumbling around in the dark, and yet pushing the light away as its glare was half-blinding me, I applied the bradawl to the tiny opening in the wall and chipped away at it, expanding it, my hand shaking at first, then steadied by the determination that drove me. The young man was beyond help. Certainly I was not.
Chapter 2: Shard Chapter Two
Summary:
How much of what the Doctor next encounters is real and how much is hallucination?
Chapter Text
Once I had lost track of time using my newly acquired bradawl to chisel a hole large enough for me to crawl through, I did just that, and on the other side, for the first time since awakening, I stood up, quite slowly.
The room was twice the size of the previous one, well lit (was that a crystal chandelier pending from that high, vaulted ceiling?) and most lavishly appointed. The creaking of its wooden floorboards was muffled under elaborately woven silk rugs. There was tea set out on a side table by the overstuffed Victorian sofa, and glossy yellow-iced tea cakes, and I knew better than to emulate Alice and eat or drink whatever I happened upon, I really did, but I was hungry, thirsty and ready for the comfort of those fat cushions. In my defense, I'll never know for certain but since I had no recollection of coming to this place, nor even of, say, being attacked and abducted, chances are I was already somewhat outside of myself, under some kind of chemical influence, and not capable of making good judgments, such as not licking the icing off of the tea cake (and then my fingers) and then biting into the firm, buttery denseness and savoring every crumb, or not lifting to my lips the cup of steaming, jasmine-fragrant tea that had already been poured for me, not long ago, either, and downing it in one burning gulp, or not keeling over in slow motion to rest my head upon the sofa's yielding arm, tucking my knees up, wrapping my arms around myself even though I wasn't cold, and slipping into another universe.
My surroundings had expanded significantly. All about me was nothing but sand, reminding me of twin planets I'd visited briefly a long time ago, alone and in another incarnation, except that this sand was lime green and felt like silk, very cold silk, and smelled like sardines, and twinkled so much that I covered my eyes, and the sand on my hands felt like silk on my face. The sun was blazing down on me like a spotlight and I was shivering.
Then I was on fire. I dropped and rolled in the sand, which was luxuriously deep and extinguished the fire as well as half-burying me. I looked up at the sky: there was no sky, just endless blank space. But then there was a face, quite a familiar face, at that, beaming down at me like that spotlight sun, "You amuse me," he said. "I didn't think you were capable anymore of surprising me, and yet you hallucinate something this cheesy. You've come down a few pegs in my estimation. You've disappointed me."
"Always happy to do so," I muttered, rolling over and trying to sit up on my haunches. Zebras have haunches, but my stripes were the wrong color. "The more disappointed I can render you, the less disappointed I am. How can you know what, if anything, I am hallucinating?"
"Because," replied the Master, "you are also hallucinating me. Or are you? Oh, dear, I'm not sure; are you?"
"I'm not hallucinating you. Drugged I certainly am, but I know the difference between a little artificially induced synesthesia and the presence of my best enemy. My imagination would create much more fascinating gloating than you are currently exhibiting. Only the real you could be so very... you."
"You won't be bored for long, dear Doctor. I promise you." His face -- all I'd seen of him -- retracted, rather like a telescope, into the sky, until I could see it no longer.
I swam in the sand until I could swim no longer, and, having no way to tell whether I'd gone anywhere or simply swum in place, I sank into the silky green stuff and drowned. While I was drowning I thought, there are, in the universe, many kinds of boxes. They don't all look like boxes. They're not all made of cardboard or wood or metal or paper, they're not all polyhedrons, they're not all opaque. They're not even all solid. I don't know when Omega's birthday is but if anyone has recently given him a birthday present, both the gift and the box will have to have been made of antimatter. If someone gives me anything in an antimatter box, the universe, or a good portion of it, will explode. I burrowed down into the sand, and through, endlessly through, still drowning, and at last fell into an ocean of strawberries, which I was unable to avoid breathing, and so, aspirating strawberries and spitting up sand, I found myself kneeling on the floor, spitting salty lime-green sand onto an exquisite Persian rug and falling back against the base of what had been a quite comfortable overstuffed Victorian sofa.
Chapter 3: Shard Chapter Three
Summary:
The Doctor finds a way out of the luxurious room... into much less luxurious surroundings.
Chapter Text
"It was real," I kept murmuring to myself. "It was real."
The luxurious room hadn't changed, but I thought maybe I had. I'd learned something, but I wasn't sure what I'd learned; I'd been handed a clue but was at a loss to identify it. I was also convinced that the way out wasn't going to be as obvious or easy as punching or chiseling through a wall; there had to be another way, and of course there would be a trap, or multiple traps. Traps. Trap doors?
I began to crawl toward the nearest wall, which was not all that near; I had to crawl around the sofa to do it. Every time I encountered a rug I stopped and patted it before proceeding. The second rug I patted collapsed under my hand -- not just the section I'd patted, but the width and length of the rug opened up and nearly dumped me; I leapt back almost far enough and grabbed the solid floor with my hands and arms, and somehow managed to haul myself up onto that floor, turn and peer down into the chasm the trap door had revealed. The drop wasn't deep. I could have reached down and touched the sharp ends of the spikes that would have impaled me had I fallen.
"It's not the only one," I said aloud. "The Master leaves nothing to chance."
When I was done exploring the room the Victorian sofa was stacked high with silken rugs and I had exposed no fewer than six trap doors. Now I set about triggering each one, and was not at all surprised to find spikes below every one of them. Poisoned, too, no doubt. Nothing to chance.
The walls were solid, red brick hung with silk tapestries, devoid of doors or windows. I pulled the tapestries down but found nothing but more brick. The only way out was through those trap doors.
My aesthetic sensibilities were bruised by what I did next but I had no choice. I pushed the lovely, probably priceless Victorian sofa back to the first trap I'd triggered, over the edge and onto the spikes. As I had hoped, the sofa was so deeply cushioned that the spikes did not emerge through the seat, so I climbed onto the sofa and, with my weight, tipped it so that one end jutted not only past the spikes but down, allowing me to slide safely down to the floor without being impaled or even pricked.
To my unutterable disappointment, I had landed not in a room about the size of the one above it, with walls to explore for possible exits, but a cell apparently unconnected with any of the other spiked cells. Indeed, the six cells I'd discovered were well spaced, apart from one another. Were there cells or rooms in between, or was the "between" solid and impenetrable?
Also unutterable was my exhaustion. I may never know how much time had passed since I'd awakened to find a cold, dead arm resting upon my throat, but I was beyond knackered. That lovely tea. That lovely tea cake. Annoyed with myself for giving up (only for the moment, I promised myself), I curled up as far from the spikes as I could and drifted off into what I could only assume was another hallucination.
No, it was an extension of the previous hallucination. I was still breathing strawberries, choking on them, falling through the slippery stuff, but this time I landed not on the sofa I'd so badly abused, but in a white clawfoot tub in the center of an outsized bathroom whose walls were mirrored up to eight feet and gleaming white tile from there to the skylight. I didn't need the mirrors to tell me I was naked. The water was warm and comforting but I did not permit myself to be comforted. "I am not easily embarrassed," I called out, "and if you wanted to compare and contrast, all you had to do was ask."
"Nice bluff, Doctor, but you know damned well I couldn't get the time of day out of you with thumb screws. Why would you strip down on the basis of a 'pretty please'?" I looked up; the Master's face filled the skylight, not quite completely blocking the sun and casting skinny shadows down upon me.
"You can't get the time of day out of me no matter what you do; I have no idea what time it is, or what day, for that matter." I looked around. "I don't get a towel?"
"You don't need a towel."
"That's right. I forgot. I'm not really here. Are you?"
"Me to know, you to... well, you'll see. You're not half as clever as you think you are."
"That's funny. You're exactly half as clever as you think you are, and I don't think you think you're all that clever. It must be depressing to be burdened with such an inferiority complex. Depressing and destabilizing."
The face in the skylight glowered at me. "Sometimes you go too far, Doctor."
"If I could go, I would. I shall yet." I stood up and stepped, dripping, out of the tub, onto the gleaming white tile floor, which delivered a shock that almost stopped my hearts. There was nowhere to run, but I was unwilling to climb back into the tub; a shock received there would surely kill me, and at any rate I could carry the charge with me into the tub and be the author of my own doom. "What do you want?" I gasped, once I could speak. My only answer was another shock. This time I screamed.
"That," said the Master. "That is exactly what I want."
Chapter 4: Shard Chapter Four
Summary:
The Doctor figures out how to put some distance between himself and broken glass.
Chapter Text
One more shock smashed me into shards and I don't know how long it took me to reconstruct myself, but eventually I lay gasping on the somewhat damp tile floor, eyes closed until I thought to peer up at the skylight; it was just a skylight. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, looked around, leaned over the tub (almost falling in), picked up the soap from its little dish at the far edge, hefted the slippery cake briefly in my right hand, then flung it as hard as I could at the nearest mirrored wall. The mirror shattered into shards but did not reconstitute itself. The wall behind it collapsed too, and, shielding my eyes with both hands, I stumbled, barefoot (all over), through the glass, out of that room into a corridor, mirrored and tiled the same way the wall had been, with a conveyor belt instead of a floor, and the belt was conveying me back into the gleaming bathroom. Every time I tried to outrun the conveyor belt, the belt picked up speed. "Oh, good, convey!" I said aloud, resolving to slip back some day and ask Shakespeare about that. Then I had an idea. I turned around and walked as slowly as I could back toward the shattered wall through which I'd escaped (that's when I saw the drops of blood I was shedding; I'd been cut). The belt reversed directions and took me swiftly away from that wall. I walked faster and was conveyed away even faster. "Oh, good!" I repeated, without an ounce of sarcasm.
Of course I couldn't see where I was going. I tried turning my head and the belt changed directions once more. I didn't try that again. There was nowhere to step off; the conveyor belt covered the entire floor. Nothing to chance, I reminded myself. What if I was suddenly dumped over a cliff, or into a river full of barracudas, or up the tongue and into the gullet of a pterodactyl? By now I was trotting; I froze. So did the belt. I turned in place. The belt stood still. I could see, now, that there was no end in sight, which was in itself alarming but less dangerous than I had imagined. I took that opportunity to examine myself for wounds that needed attention; my skin was ashen -- from the shocks, no doubt -- but I wasn't sliced up too badly. One little shard was still embedded in my right ankle. I bent down and pulled it out, and rubbed my ankle vigorously to staunch the sudden flow of blood. I hadn't realized how much my feet hurt; they probably had glass splinters in them. Everything else just stung.
My face, reflected in the mirrored walls alongside the conveyor belt, was barely scratched, but my expression scared me. I looked calm and determined -- that was all right -- but something in my eyes was different. I couldn't put my finger on it, and that reminded me that I'd received a clue earlier, never identified it and now couldn't even feel it nearby; it had kept slipping away but dancing around me, always in the periphery of my consciousness, the way sunspots dart away when you try to look directly at them, but return when you look away. The clue was not darting or dancing; it was gone and unlikely to return. I looked into my own eyes again and shuddered. I wanted the clue back and the strangeness in my eyes gone.
"I'm still me. I'm still me." I tried to believe myself, but I felt like such a liar.
I began to walk backwards, which was slower going but at least I could see where I was going -- well, see where I wasn't immediately going (over a cliff, toward oncoming traffic, into the waiting arms of the Master). The belt proceeded, and I watched it proceed, but everything ahead looked the same. As far as I could tell, my options were twofold: continue into the unknown, ad infinitum, or return to where the Master had delighted in my screams.
I chose infinity.
Chapter 5: Shard Chapter Five
Summary:
Back in the cell....
Chapter Text
My projected infinity turned out to be finite, and abruptly at that. The conveyor belt sped up so suddenly that I was pitched backwards and fell on my butt, which turned out to be fortuitous: the belt took a hairpin turn that would have slammed me against the wall had I been standing. Then I found myself facing my own image, only slightly distorted: the end of the line was another wall, mirrored like the others, and I would have been slammed face-first against it had I not been sitting down. As it was, I yelled when my feet hit the mirror, which at least did not break. What it did was melt, like a Dali clock, and I slid right through it, melting a bit myself and dripping into a puddle into the small cell with the end of a large sofa looming over me, tall spikes standing like cold sentinels beside me, and my clothing in a heap beside me.
Well, most of my clothing was in the heap, and most of it was mine. My smalls were missing and there was an additional item: a spiked dog collar. My red socks also appeared to be missing but when I began to put my trousers on, a sock fell out of each leg so I put those on as well (although they hurt my feet by pressing against the glass embedded in them) and shook the trousers to see if my smalls were also tucked into a leg. No smalls appeared. Sighing, I finished dressing, but avoided touching the dog collar, which had been hidden under my shirt, so I wasn't sure whether or not I had actually brushed a hand against it. I worried about that, since although I was unlikely to impale myself on its spikes, even a slight scratch could be troublesome. Indeed, if the spikes were envenomed, some of the poison could have tainted the shirt, or, for all I knew, every item. I only thought of that after I was almost completely dressed, so there was nothing I could do about it.
Without rising, I patted the wall. It crumbled under my hand, revealing only darkness. I patted as much of the wall as I could reach and it all crumbled as well. Was I facing another small cell, a pit into which to tumble, a room of some generous size to explore, or just undefined darkness?
Maybe I could throw something into that darkness and assess the sound it made, if indeed it produced any sound at all. I began to dig through, then empty, my pockets.
Careful to avoid touching the collar or the tall spikes beside me, I made a new pile: my yo-yo, autographed by Pedro Flores; Vicki's embroidered handkerchief; various lengths of string; a magnifying glass; my cricket ball, which I most certainly did not intend to throw into the void; a pair of scissors stuffed into a striped gardening glove; my requisitioned bradawl, those pathetic eight-dollar bills and pack of Venusian Venoms, all of which made me sad by reminding me whose it once was, not that I knew the lad's name or anything about him apart from the fact that he was dead and had needed eyeglasses; my own half-moon eyeglasses, which I did not need at the moment; a book of matches advertising Pabst beer and given to me by Eddie Cantor while I was searching my pockets in vain for a coin to donate to the March of Dimes; three paper clips, none the same size; a piano string broken by Franz Liszt by too-forcefully pounding out his own transcription of one of his son-in-law's operas; one little Alzarian coin; a light bulb.... I stopped emptying my pockets and, trembling, held the light bulb in both hands. It was just an ordinary BC light bulb, I knew all the other objects, where I had acquired each, their provenance to varying degrees. I have never pocketed a light bulb.
I picked up my magnifying glass and examined the light bulb but could perceive nothing unusual about it, no odd marks or scratches, nor any trace of anything unusual inside it (and nothing rattled when I gently shook it). I sniffed at it; it had no odor. I almost licked it, then thought better of that.
I threw it with some force into the void. I didn't hear it hit anything, but it did explode in mid-air, and for a second it illuminated its surroundings enough for me to see that the space ahead was wide and deep. Its blast wave knocked me backwards against the tall spikes and, afraid of whatever might have been smeared on them, I flung myself forward away from them and flew over the edge, into the darkness and down, down into whatever awaited me.
Chapter 6: Shard Chapter Six
Summary:
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Chapter Text
"Not again!" I cried, falling, spinning in the black nothingness into which I'd leapt, out of the frying pan and into the fire, "I'm not dreaming, but this one's not real. Do you hear me?"
"Say my name."
"Is that why you're doing this? So I'll call you 'Master'? You're not my master. You will never be my master."
"I am mastering you now. I can set you free or I can make sure you fall forever, that you never land, that your head never stops spinning, that you never see the light of day or any other light unless I decide to immolate you. Auto-da-fé, anyone?"
"To what purpose?" It was hard to talk, hard to think.
"Purpose?" The Master, invisible to me, laughed right in my ear. He's falling, spinning, too? How is he in my ear? "You know my purpose. Your complete humiliation. Your demise. Your absence from the universe."
"Why... why now? What's triggered you?" Keep him talking, as loathsome and, yes, frightening as his voice is in my ear, his breath on my cheek... wait, his breath? He's really here? Physically here? How is he here? Can he fly? Am I here? Am I physically here?
"Trigger!" he scoffed. "I don't get triggered. I don't need a trigger to want you destroyed. I have always wanted you destroyed."
"Always?" That caught me off guard. "We... we were friends...."
"Until."
"Until?"
"Yes, Doctor. Until." And then his breath was no longer on my cheek, his voice was no longer in my ear, I could no longer feel his presence, and I landed abruptly on something flexible, but hard.
I had no time to feel stunned; what I had landed on was a diving board, and I bounced right off into water that was warm, almost hot. A pool. Not a hot spring. Not a lake. It has to be a pool. The water's surface was harder than the diving board and I was stunned again, and really felt it this time; I sank a bit before recovering enough to swim to the surface, which, of course was no longer hard. A pool is contained; it has limits. A pool that can be entered can be exited. Even as I thought it, I knew that this was not necessarily true. It's another box, a box of a different sort, but a box nonetheless.
My soaking clothing was dragging me down a bit, but I'm a strong swimmer and even with my mind reeling, my arms and legs knew what to do. My right trainer must have got caught on something and was now dragging that something along, but I didn't stop to check it out. I was swimming in darkness but there was some distant source of light glimmering on the water and I headed for it.
The light was an illusion. As soon as I reached it, it was no longer there, but glimmered faintly in the distance. I don't even know if I changed direction, or how often I did so, if at all. I just kept heading for the light, hoping I wouldn't get so well turned around that I ended up where I'd begun. Then I heard the echo of a door being opened, also in the distance, but there was light in the doorway, a soft, steady blue light that didn't vanish as I approached. When I finally reached it, exhausted and well aware that my exhaustion was part of the Master's plan to keep me off kilter, I found that the edge of the pool was too high for me to grasp. The door loomed above me but there were no steps. There was no ladder. The wall of the pool was unyielding, slippery with no handholds, just plain too tall to scale. I floated, then dove, bent double to reach whatever my trainer was dragging, loosened the net bag on the second dive and carried it up to the surface. It contained everything I'd removed from my pockets, save the light bulb, of course.
Why would he return these things to me? How did he collect them so fast? How did he attach them to me without my noticing?
The matchbook was ruined. The eight-dollar bills were limp and fragile but they would dry if I ever found a way out of the pool. The pack of Venus Venoms, being half full, was no longer encased in its original plastic wrapping, so the remaining cigarettes were sopping, but perhaps they would eventually dry as well. I had no intention of smoking them, but I knew they were self-igniting (except on Venus itself) and now that the matchbook was a mere soggy souvenir, at some point they might turn out to be my only source of light, if they survived. The other items were intact. I couldn't maintain my position and reload my pockets so I left everything in the net bag and used its drawstring to tie it to my left wrist. I looked up again at the unattainable light in the unreachable doorway.
Chapter 7: Shard Chapter Seven
Summary:
The blue light beckons.
Chapter Text
The depth of the pool had not changed since my initial, unwitting dive. I must have crossed laterally. I was still on the deep end. If I turned 90 degrees I could get to the shallow end. Maybe there were stairs there. On the other hand, maybe there was no shallow end. Maybe there was, complete with stairs, but there was no way through to the door and its enticing blue light. Maybe maybe maybe. I followed the wall and the pool got deeper. I turned around and followed it back and beyond the way I'd come and to my relief it became shallower. Its wall was the same -- insurmountable -- but the water was soon shallow enough that I could walk in it, and then instead of coming up to my neck it came halfway up my chest, then my waist, then mid-thigh and no lower. There it was: a rickety metal stairway leading up, out of the pool. I couldn't see it until I was just about to trip over it.
I was cold before I even reached the steps. Once atop them, I turned and walked alongside the pool, back to where the door must have been, but I couldn't see its light. For all I knew, it had closed once more and the light was gone. For all I knew, I had passed it without knowing I'd done so. For all I knew, this was just another hallucination, or another trick. I was freezing in my drenched clothing but unwilling to part with any of it.
When I felt sure I'd passed the door, I sat down against the rough wall in which it had seemed to be set, untied the net bag and carefully placed its contents, then the bag itself, in my coat pockets. I held the half-moons in my hands for a long time, though, before putting them away, and thought about the young man whose body I had dragged through from a tiny box into a small box. I couldn't stop thinking about him. The more I looked at my specs, the more I thought about his face, with and without his own eyeglasses. Was he starting to look familiar to me because I had been thinking about him or was I beginning to recognize him from somewhere else? I couldn't decide. His gold-framed spectacles in particular seemed familiar. That's silly. Lots of people wear gold-framed glasses. What's so special about these? Then, with a start, I realized what had been special about them. They did not have spring hinges. They had, instead, barrel hinges, with screws. I almost certainly would not have noticed this but for one fact: the right hinge had a small, goldtone screw that matched the overall frame, but the left hinge was fixed with a slightly larger screw that had been painted red and white, like a barber pole. The earpiece wobbled a bit because of this but the screw had held. I knew this because those glasses had been mine. My best friend at the Academy had painted that screw for me.
Oni and I had laughed about it, and he teased me about it sometimes. "When you graduate," he declared, "and choose your name, you should call yourself 'The Barber.' Let blood, as they do on Earth. You are such a natural healer."
"A healer," I repeated. "Like a doctor. I'll think about that."
"Tenshi," he said. "You wear my mark. Red is my color."
"Ah," I pointed out, "and white."
"White is not my color."
"Yet here it is." I looked him in the eye. "Have you thought about what you will call yourself? Whatever we choose, that is what we shall become. What will you become?"
At first he could not meet my eye, but then he looked up, quite serious, more serious than I had ever seen him. "I shall be the Captain. I shall be in charge of everything I see. I'll be respected and I'll be obeyed."
Why was the dead young man wearing my eyeglasses? Well, he hadn't been, had he? His glasses had been rolled up in his gartered sleeve. I myself had put the glasses onto his face. Whyever had I felt compelled to do that?
Why, for that matter, had the young man's sleeves been gartered? He needed his hands free, clean, unobstructed. Perhaps he had been a gambler, or a printer, an auto mechanic or a violinist. At any rate, it was obvious that the Master had given my glasses to him for a reason. Was it to taunt me somehow?
I stood up and resumed my search for the door, feeling along the rough wall instead of just looking for the blue light. I've passed it. I know I have passed it. I missed it because the light was turned off, or the door was closed. I should turn around and go back. I'll find it by feeling for it as I am doing now. As I was thinking this, my hand touched an anomaly and I stopped. Under my hand, the wall was smooth. This had to be the door, or at least a door. I groped around for a knob or handle and found a button instead. I depressed it. Slowly, silently, a door swung inward, letting escape a soft blue light that cast its reflection into the pool, then coming to a halt at 45 degrees. I was shaking more now from excitement than from being cold and wet. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the blue light.
Chapter 8: Shard Chapter Eight
Summary:
A confrontation!
Chapter Text
"You don't have Adric to help you with these block projections. How are you doing this?"
"Oh," said the Master, sitting on what looked an awful lot like a throne perched on a blue cloud in the middle of a photon swarm, "it is you, Doctor, who no longer have Adric. I'm good. Oh, dear, did I really say that? Of course I'm not good. I wouldn't be good if you paid me, not that you could afford me. I only meant to say I don't need Adric, whereas you, Doctor, pine for him."
"You pretend to read my thoughts. Is this your new carnival act?"
"I read you like a Piccadilly billboard, Doctor."
"I have nothing to hide."
"But you do, Doctor, and I don't mean just your name. You have many secrets, or you think you do, but my clairvoyance, if you will, my little spyglass directed at your psyche, is no act. I know you better than you know yourself." He waved a careless hand. "Have a seat. Make yourself at home."
I had no intention of sitting down -- how could I even be standing here, with no floor, no walls, no ceiling, just a haze of blue light -- but I could not help looking around to see where he was bidding me sit. Finding nothing, I raised an eyebrow. "Are you offering me your throne?"
"Ah, I've been remiss. I know you'll pardon me. You always do." His smile was a lip-twitch; his eyes were furious. "Here. Here is your throne." A box about half the size of a foot stool materialized between us, and I realized that until its appearance, the Master and I had been each other's only apparent frame of reference for the room. The door through which I had entered was invisible, since everything on the other side of it was as black as the Master's hearts. Instead of sitting on the box, I put one foot up on it and leaned very slightly toward him, my hands in my pockets.
"Who was that young man? The dead one. Did you kill him? Not on my account, I hope. Or did you just gift me a random corpse? I confess I was startled. Were you hoping I would react a bit more... erratically? Be beside myself?"
"Disingenuity doesn't become you, my dear Doctor. I am as patient a man as you will ever meet, assuming you ever again meet any living soul, but you can be quite trying. Let us be frank with one another."
"Oh, let's. You've been so transparent so far."
He ignored the dig. "You mentioned confession."
"To my moment of startlement, yes, I did."
"Nonsense. I promise you will beg to confess to me whatever I demand that you confess and mere startlement is not on my list. Sit down!"
"Or what?" He didn't answer but his eyes never left mine. "Or what?"
"Call me by my name." I could barely hear him, so dampened was his voice, not by diffidence but by his efforts to restrain himself and his fury. He clutched the arms of his throne with whitened knuckles that shone blue. He looked suddenly like the boy I had known at the Academy, as he had looked when things went wrong, when he went wrong, the boy whose madness shone blue like an aura of righteousness when he knew how wrong he was, an aura not of shame or apology but of self-justification, a quick shifting of perceptions so that the wronger he was, the righter he felt. I'd known then he was mad. I loved him for it, even envied him a little. How courageous it must have been not only to be mad but to be aware of being mad, and go on, to be trapped in that particular box and yet to carry on. How difficult to have a friend, even to be a friend, to acknowledge that someone else existed and mattered when you knew, deep down, that no one else existed and no one else mattered. "Call me by my name!" he shrieked, rising from his throne, his fists still clenched and something shiny in one of them.
"Oni," I began, and he waved the shiny object at me. As suddenly as the Master had become my boyhood friend, the confidant who had shared his ginger beer with me, gallons of the stuff, until we were both out of our brilliant minds, laughing like the gulls on Larineska, chasing each other in the drylands and catching one another, wrestling, brutally, sometimes inflicting minor injuries, bruises we were loath to explain back at the Academy, pummeling one another as if for our very survival, the winner extracting ridiculous or impossible favors from the loser -- that was me more often than it was he -- favors like setting fire to Borusa's desk or letting down the hem of a Prydonian robe, or gathering every known variety of weed to make a foul brew which we then drank, and which made us ill, so that we vomited during Temporal Physics class -- and, oh, all sorts of other mischief, such as climbing to the rooftops of Arcadia and pouring buckets of red paint down on the skimmers below, yes, as suddenly as I recognized that friend in that enemy, I was no longer facing him in the blue light. I was curled up, as there was no room to be otherwise, in the box on which I had been resting one foot, a simple cardboard box in which I could not move and from which I could not escape.
Chapter 9: Shard Chapter Nine
Summary:
The Doctor is beside himself.
Chapter Text
The box was in motion, sans shock absorbers, but the jostling and jolting this journey afforded me was well exceeded by how shaken I was trying to process everything that had just passed between me and the Master. I could still see him sitting in the middle of luminescent blue nothingness, and I could simultaneously see, superimposed upon that vision, mischievous Oni, Oni who could always persuade me that his bold new idea would be fun to implement, and that I should be the one bold enough to implement it. (The only time Oni ever implemented a plan on his own was when I was the planned-against party.)
One thing to remember about the Master is that he is a physical coward. This cowardice has served him well, for he has long been at the end of his regeneration cycle. He was careful -- beyond careful -- and outlived the capacity of his physical form to sustain him. The form he has now is stolen -- from Nyssa's father, as it happens. When I first met him, I had, to my knowledge, regenerated twice. He has regenerated once since then, and I, twice. I don't think I am reckless; I think that as brilliant as he is, and I admit (wait, he said "confess") that, while his mental acuity at least used to surpass mine, he lacks a certain kind of foresight, lacks my perspicacity. All that would be moot (why did he say "confess"?) if he simply repeated his Traken trick (he wants to steal my body -- but why did he say "confess"?)
Well, if he was planning to steal my body he was hardly likely to damage it more than necessary. His next feat of legerdemain was not going to involve sawing me in half.
Confess? What had I done, or been perceived to have done?
My little gift box, containing me, the gift -- the ring, the lock of hair, the shard, not feeling especially precious at the moment -- trundled to a halt. Nothing happened for a full minute. Then all four walls fell away and I could uncurl myself, but barely, for I was in another box almost as small, and beside me once more lay the young man's corpse.
The Master's voice was as clear to me as if he were inside the box with me. "You see how stupid you are, Doctor? You say clever things and you don't even know they're clever." I had nothing to say to that. "You said I wanted you to be beside yourself. You really don't listen to yourself, do you?"
Walking in my dripping clothes I'd been shivering almost violently with cold, but standing in the blue light I had found myself dry, almost warm. Now I was cold again and that chill had nothing to do with air temperature. I slowly rolled over, turning toward the young man, sat up and forced myself not to snatch off his spectacles. I removed them from his face with the utmost gentleness. Yes, they were my glasses.
I tried them on again. Once more they blurred my vision, but they also felt familiar, as if I'd never stopped wearing them. That frightened me, so I took them off and, before replacing them on the young man's face I peered at it, quickly looked away, feeling so cold -- why was I so cold? -- and again forcing myself to do what I didn't want to do: look, really look at the face that seemed even more familiar than the glasses I had once worn. I had worn that face, too.
The Master had not been disappointed after all. Most literally, I had been beside myself.
"What have you done?" I cried.
"Well, at last! Doctor, I must say you have become old and slow. Perhaps it's time for you to regenerate again. Or not."
"You're mad!"
"Old, slow and repetitious."
"That may well be so. If it is, surely that is the result of whatever you've done to me...."
"You're broken."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I've broken you, and there is only one way to put you back together, which is better than Humpty Dumpty got." The walls of the second box fell away and now the Master was behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his cheek against my hair, breathing his words into my ear. "It is only just that you receive your old body back and be my little Tenshi again. Just pour yourself into it. You can do it. It's easy. Trust me."
"Trust... you?"
"You can be your old self again. And... I'll be you."
"No!" I whispered, horrified. Then I recovered myself enough to add, "Confess what?"
"Confess that you did it on purpose." He was whispering too.
"Did what? What are you talking about?"
"You forgave me."
"I did? I don't remember forgiving you. Forgave you for what?"
His whisper was a growl. "For killing you."
Chapter 10: Shard Chapter Ten
Summary:
Completely in the Master's power, the Doctor is subjected to some reminiscences and recriminations.
Chapter Text
"I forgave you for killing me but you haven't killed me yet? And furthermore you're mad at me for forgiving you, which I haven't done yet, for what you haven't done yet? What kind of convoluted nonsense is this?" I was more annoyed than frightened.
"Pay attention, Doctor."
"I am paying attention. It is rather hard not to pay attention. If you are good at one thing, it is capturing my attention, especially when you capture me."
"Which I have done."
"Which you have done. And now what?"
"I am not going to kill you."
"Oh, good. Nice to know."
"I am going to occupy you."
"Will that not essentially kill me? I mean me-me?"
"I am offering you," the Master said, in a normal tone of voice, but still in my ear, "a chance to survive this."
"Why? So you can continue this cat-and-mouse thing you have going? It does get old."
"And so do I. I need a body that can regenerate. This one can't."
"Your choice. Nothing to do with me." His hands, already gripping my shoulders, now squeezed and pulled me backwards so that I was leaning against his chest -- I could feel his hearts thumping crazily -- and then he pushed me down so that I was sprawled across my own former self, my face against my own dead chest, where no hearts thumped at all. I turned my head slightly to the side in order to speak and he didn't stop me, but he kept pressing down on my shoulders, and further immobilized me by sitting on my back. "This me. You killed this me. But... that had to be so long ago, before graduation, even. I don't remember at all. Why don't I remember?"
"Maybe you forgave and forgot, Doctor. I do neither. Confess!"
My head was spinning. I still didn't understand exactly what he wanted me to confess. "Confess to being murdered? All right, I confess. I don't remember it but obviously it happened...."
He shook me until I was breathless. "Confess that you forgave me on purpose! You destroyed me! You forgave me for killing you! You were not supposed to do that! You were supposed to hate me! You were supposed to set me free at last!"
"Free... from... what?" I gasped.
"From our friendship! Damn it, from our friendship!"
"I... don't... understand...." He finally stopped shaking me and even let go of me. I collapsed against myself and lay there, all shaken out, feeling him climb off of me and hearing him stand up. I didn't try to move.
"Don't you see," he sobbed, from far above me. "Don't you see? I had ambition."
"You never lost that," I murmured.
"I had ambition," he repeated. "I would be the greatest, most successful force of evil in the universe. Nothing could stop me. I was confident...."
"Overconfident."
"Yes, maybe, but no matter, I was ready, and you stopped me."
"We were friends."
"Yes, we were. Yes, we were." His voice was soft now. "We were friends and you influenced me, Doctor. Tenshi. You made me hesitate. I didn't care what anyone thought. I was unstoppable. But you made me care. You made me care what you thought, and you stopped me. You had to be stopped. So I stopped you." He drew in a deep breath and his voice was no longer soft. "I murdered you. It wasn't an accident. We were in the Panopticon, in Rassilon's corner. You were painting a white mustache on his face and I was painting his toenails red. We were laughing. We joked about how we were improving that old statue. I said the real Rassilon probably painted his toenails gold, and you said he would probably stop by and shave off the painted mustache, and if we hid, which we were going to do anyway, to watch the suns turn the Panopticon into a hexagon of glowing turquoise -- we'd done it before, you and I. Remember?"
"I remember."
"... then we would catch Rassilon in the act of shaving off his white painted mustache..."
"... to look younger...."
"... and maybe correcting his toenail polish, too. What silly lads we were, no longer children, but young men, almost ready to graduate, take on our Time Lord names, and robes, and be serious and noble. Noble! You, sure. Me?"
"I wanted none of it," I protested. "It kept me out of the army; that's all."
"Yes, my reasoning, too," said the Master. "We were so much alike. Too much alike. That couldn't be. That... must never be!"
"Wait, I remember this... a little. We decided to hide up in the gallery."
"Yes, very good. And I kissed you."
"What?"
"I kissed you goodbye."
"I don't remember that."
"Of course, you don't, Doctor. You remember and forget as it suits you. How terribly convenient."
"No, that's not how it is at all!" I tried to rise and he pushed me back down.
"I kissed you goodbye, and you were startled. You backed away."
"I don't remember, but if I was startled, then I was startled. You did not need to read it as rejection, per se. I can't say for sure. I know I would not have expected you to kiss me."
"Don't get all excited, Doctor. It was a goodbye kiss. It meant 'goodbye' and that's all it meant. You backed off so I kissed you again because I wanted it to be the last thing you remembered, because I stabbed you in the back with my paint brush. It was small, and the end was narrow and pointed, and the force with which I stabbed you was great enough to push it in, right next to your thoracic vertebrae, right into your lung. I pushed it all the way in. Only a few bristles stuck out. Then I pushed you over, off of the gallery, and you fell. It was dark. The suns were not yet up. You fell and you crashed with such a dull thump, I wasn't sure I'd heard you hit the floor, so I raced down to see if you were dead, and you were not."
"Not yet?"
"Not yet. Your eyes were open. You'd landed on your back. That had to be painful."
"I don't remember."
"You do remember! You must remember! Your eyes.... You had no hatred in your eyes. You looked at me and you said, 'I forgive you.'" The Master was seething now and could not go on. I could hear him breathing heavily. "How dare you forgive me. It ruined everything. I wanted your hatred. It would have justified everything. You had to go and forgive me." His next word was an anguished cry. "Why?"
I could only tell him the truth, although it was not what he wanted to hear. "I don't remember. I'm sorry. I don't remember any of this, except going up to the gallery with you."
"I'll kill you again!" shouted the Master. "I can waste a regeneration on you! You still have plenty! I want them, and I'll take them, but I want you to hate me! You must be filled to the brim, overflowing, emptying yourself in a devastating flood, so that you are awash with hatred, so that there is nothing left within you, not a shred of kindness, not a shred of forgiveness, only hatred!"
"For what you are about to do," I said, as evenly as I could under the circumstance, "I forgive you again."
The Master screamed, flung himself down upon me -- both of me -- and, screaming still, throttled the life out of the living me.
I don't know what made him stop, but stop he did, obviously, since here I am. No, he never did like to get his hands dirty. Maybe what he was doing suddenly struck him as crude. He fancied himself the height of refinement and his affected delicacy always struck me as crude. It didn't matter; I didn't judge him that way, or, back then, at all. At any rate he let go of me and I hadn't even blacked out for more than a couple seconds, so now, rather than falling back atop my former self's corpse, I threw myself against him, toppling him and falling onto him as if we were wrestling back in the drylands. I grabbed his neck with one hand and with the other picked up the shiny thing he'd dropped in coming after me. I had no time to examine it, as he struggled to free himself, so I pocketed it and then closed all of my untrembling fingers around his throat and squeezed. He looked so surprised, even before his eyes began to bulge.
Then I stood up, backed up, threw up, backed up some more. There was plenty of room. I could have backed up forever. "I can't be the Doctor anymore. I'm not the Doctor anymore. I can't...."
I turned and ran desperately, as if I had just stared into the Untempered Schism.
Chapter 11: Shard Chapter Eleven
Summary:
The Doctor is beside himself in another way. Can the shard help or will it make things worse?
Chapter Text
When I couldn't run anymore, I stopped and sat down in the middle of the road. I hadn't even been aware that I was on a road. I crawled to the gravel shoulder and sat, catching my breath. My mind was not working. I am not used to my mind's not working. It was frightening to look around and see things and not have names for them, to know I had been running away and not be thinking of anything, not "escape from the Master," not "find the TARDIS," not "hide somewhere," nothing at all.
I didn't know what planet I was on, but I didn't know that I didn't know what planet I was on.
There was some unruly foliage beyond the shoulder. I darted to it like a rabbit on fire and crouched, out of sight and out of my mind. I don't know how long I crouched like that. Then, before words could form, I played Chopin's Prelude, Opus 28, Number 15, in my head, found myself humming it -- I say "found myself" but that is laughably inaccurate -- and the word "raindrop" came into my head. From the word "raindrop" language was once more at my command, and thought became possible. My first conscious thought was "what did I take from the Master?" I reached into a pocket, then two more, then finally found the right pocket and cut my hand on a brilliant white crystal shard. (No, it was not the splendid shard of Shansa; everyone knows that shard is microscopic and can only be seen through strong magnification, and, furthermore, that it is safely ensconced in the superb Shansan sponge in the Sea of Shansa, a puddle on the microplanet Sinead.) I yelped but didn't let go, dragged the shard from my pocket, dropped it into my left hand and shook the offended digit, for it was my right thumb I'd sliced. That thumb went right into my mouth and in that infantile stance I examined the shard, with a speck of my blood on it, in my free hand.
A drop of rain -- just a single drop -- fell onto the shard and washed it clean. I removed my thumb from my mouth and held it out, looking up to see whence the raindrop had come. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and yet another drop fell, out of nowhere, and landed right on my stinging thumb. Immediately the sting was gone, and, further, the wound had closed up and left not a trace.
Now I was truly frightened, albeit no longer out of my wits. I can't regenerate yet! I've barely gotten to know myself! I flattened myself in the weeds and waited for the inevitable, but nothing happened. After a while, I sat up and stared at the shard. "Did you do that?"
I swear it glowed, briefly, in the shape of a smile.
"Because of the Chopin," I decided. "I must tell him about that. I think it would amuse him."
"Doctor," said Aurore, crossly, "he's busy, and quite frankly, so am I. Was there something you wanted?"
"No, no, go back, don't mind me. This little bit of crystal appears to be manifesting whatever I think about. I must be careful what I think!" Then I added, "My regards to Frédéric. I'll try to visit again soon."
"Hurry," whispered Aurore. "He is quite ill." With this she vanished.
"My little shard," I whispered to the shiny thing in my hand. "Where is my TARDIS?" It flickered uncertainly. "My blue box."
"Box" it understood, and with a shock, so did I. I lived in a box. The Master did not live in a box. His TARDIS took on many forms: columns, fireplaces, trees, whatever he wished. He wasn't and isn't stuck with a box. I don't consider myself stuck in a box. I love my TARDIS... but she is undeniably, at least in form, at least in appearance, a box.
Have I trapped my companions in a box?
There she was, in front of me, in the weeds, and I was afraid to go in. Oh, I didn't think I would be harmed. She loves me too. I was afraid I would be lying to her, pretending to be the Doctor. I knew I couldn't be the Doctor anymore. I had attempted to kill, in anger, not self-defense. He had been murdering me -- again! -- but had already stopped, and since he had dropped the shard, I could have grabbed it and run away, as I ultimately did, without trying to kill him. I had no excuse. I just wasn't the Doctor anymore.
I put my healed hand out to touch her but pulled back. I didn't deserve her.
I sat back down in the weeds and put my head in my hands. I had to figure out what to do with the shard. It was too dangerous to keep it where it could read my thoughts and manifest them. What if I was not in complete control of my thoughts? And what if I was? What if from now on, to survive, to avoid absolute chaos, I had to be in complete control of my thoughts at all times? What a way to live! On the other hand, maybe this was my punishment. Maybe this is what I truly deserved, now that I could no longer be the Doctor.
Chapter 12: Shard Chapter Twelve
Summary:
The Doctor uses the shard in an unexpected way.
Chapter Text
"I think he's in shock," said Nyssa. "We'd better get him into the TARDIS.
"No," I whispered, my face still in my hands. "I can't."
"Why not?" demanded Tegan, taking her hands from my own, which I'd lowered in order to see who had come for me. "Never mind. You're in shock. We'll decide for you. We'll take care of you, Doctor."
"No!" I was adamant. "I'm not in shock, I'm not the Doctor and I'm not going in there." Tegan was already trying to help me up, and I wasn't having it. "Leave me alone!"
"We missed you too!" grumbled Tegan. "Where were you?" Then she added, as if suddenly hearing what I'd actually said, "Wait, you're not the Doctor? Nyssa, what does he mean?" Nyssa shook her head.
I shivered. "I'm cold."
"Shock," repeated Nyssa. "Never mind what he says. He's confused. We have to get him inside."
Tegan is not a large woman and Nyssa is positively tiny. Even together they would have been no match for me, had I been myself... but I was not myself, and they dragged me forcibly into the TARDIS. I remember crying out, struggling against them, screaming terrible things at my two friends, and then just screaming. Nyssa had to let go of me to pull down the console-room bed, and I bolted for the door but Tegan blocked the lever. Even in my hysterical state I was unwilling to assault her. Nyssa came back and together the two of them got me across the room and into the bed. I stopped struggling and instead wept as they wrapped me up in blankets, propped my legs up with pillows, stroked my hair and my hands, spoke softly to me, more softly than I deserved, and eventually I just curled up (causing them to readjust the pillows) and sobbed myself to sleep. The last thing I heard was "What's that in his hand?"
"I don't know, Tegan. If it's important to him, if it gives him comfort, let him hold onto it."
What neither Tegan nor Nyssa could know, and what I barely knew myself, was that, instead, the shard was holding onto me. It created a shield around me, an impenetrable, opaque shell, a kind of bubble, and it floated me through the TARDIS walls, out onto the road, back to the world the Master had built -- from his own imagination, mine or a combination, or were we really, as I feared the same person, or as close to being the same person as two friends can become? -- back to where the Master was sitting up, massaging his neck, which still had impressions of my furious fingers upon it. My young murdered self still lay there, as lifeless as ever. The box closed up behind me, and I was alone with the two of them.
The fear in the Master's eyes slowly dissolved into delight. "You came back to me!" Then the anger flashed through. "You're stupider than I thought."
"No one could be stupider than you thought me," I said. "You always overestimate your own abilities and underestimate mine."
"Where is it?"
"Destroyed," I lied.
"Impossible, or you would not be here. No one travels that fast... unless...." He looked around for my TARDIS. "No. It brought you back to me. It's truly mine and you're truly in my power, forever and ever."
"We have unfinished business."
"Oh, are you going to finish the job? You came back to kill me properly, and finally? That's so unlike you, Doctor. Perhaps I have already begun to become you. Why have you not reanimated that you?" He indicated the corpse with a slight jerk of his head, at which he winced; my ministrations had caused him lingering pain.
I hung my head, but chose not to inform him of my transformation. Indeed, I raised my head again as quickly as I could and defiantly met his eyes. "Neither of those events is on my agenda."
"They're both on mine."
"Your agenda has been canceled."
"Oh," he smirked, "we shall see!" He stood up and stumbled forward. I caught him. He reached for the shard in my hand but I let go of him (not the shard) and stepped out of his reach.
"Yes," I agreed, "we shall see." I whispered to the shard, "can you grow wings? Can you fly?" It didn't answer. The Master flung himself at me and grabbed again for the shard and once more I rebuffed him, this time pushing him down against the wall of the box, which responded by opening as it had before. Still whispering, I told the shard where I wanted it to go and what I wanted it to do, but it sat still in my hand. Was it used up? Had it died? Had it been alive?
I closed my eyes and pictured the Eye of Orion, as vividly as I could recall it, and suddenly I could feel the change of atmosphere, feel the ions working their magic-not-magic, knew I was indeed on Orion, opened my own eyes and saw that the Master was still before me, sitting, dazed, in the grass, next to my corpse.
"You really don't know how to use it, do you?" I kept my face as stony as I could manage, given the relaxing milieu. That was not information I wished to share with the Master. I could see him struggling, too, not to be affected. The last thing the Master wanted was to relax. Only perpetual vigilance could allow him to maintain his level of anger.
"Me to know," I quoted him, inadvertently arming him against Orion's waterfall effect. He scowled. I mocked his scowl, thinking, don't. You're making it worse! -- and yet unable to control myself. I had him at a disadvantage but I was eroding that disadvantage. Why am I doing this? The Master, not unperceptive, realized what was going on and played into it.
"You have hurt me deeply, Doctor. Remember, we were once friends!"
I laughed. The Master had broken the spell. We were in the wrong place, to be sure, but I could fix that. Yes, I knew how. I closed my eyes and whisked us, all three of us, to where we needed to be.
Chapter 13: Shard Chapter Thirteen
Summary:
Witnessing and restoration.
Chapter Text
"The Reapers will come," said the Master, softly, so that the young friends could not hear us.
I stood to the side of the Master but a few steps behind, not wanting to let him out of my sight, or let myself be overpowered; I could only see a hint of his facial expression. "Are you opposed to that? You love that sort of thing. Rip the universe apart? Yes, goodie, more, please, that's you! Yet you're afraid of the Reapers?"
"I'm not afraid. I thought you would be."
"Oh, yes, I am afraid of the Reapers. That's why I won't save my own life. I won't lift a finger to save myself." Adric, I thought. Saving him would have ripped the universe apart. And then, I should have done it anyway.
"Then why are we here?"
"We're watching. We're witnesses." We were in the gallery, but the opposite side from where the Master had killed my young self. We could remain unseen, yet we could see everything. Oni was painting Rassilon's toenails cherry red. Tenshi was fitting the revered one with titanium white facial hair. I could hear their cheerful laughter as it echoed through the empty Panopticon. Could this really be the prelude to a murder? Why didn't I remember any of it? "We were babies."
"Speak for yourself."
The two youths raced up to the gallery. The Master and I shrank down a little to remain hidden. Tenshi was surveying his handiwork from that height, leaning over the railing to get a better view. Oni raised the paint brush, point-side down, then apparently was distracted... he was looking right at me! -- no, not at me, but at what was glinting in my hand, which I had raised to my mouth, anticipating my own murder. He was staring at the shard.
Apparently, Tenshi felt something change and looked back, then up. Oni had lowered the paint brush hastily and by then I had lowered my hand just as hastily, and ducked down as well. The Master and I held our breaths.
Oni threw the paint brush up at me but of course it just arced and plummeted to the Panopticon floor. It made almost no sound at first but then what little sound there was began to echo around the room. Tenshi laughed and threw his paint brush too, not up and across, and as a result it flew farther than Oni's had done before dropping and, with the same small sound, landing on the flat, somewhat fissured rock. The echoes were double what Oni's projectile had produced. Shrieking now with mirth, trying to trip one another, the comrades fled the gallery and the Panopticon itself without retrieving their instruments of defacement, one of which had been intended, however briefly, as a murder weapon.
The Reapers couldn't get in. The sheer age of the building and its insular location thwarted them. At least, I think they were out there, trying to get in and feast on the tiny (not to me! not to the Master!) temporal paradox. I thought I heard the flapping of wings, the frustrated thump of bodies against... against what? There were too many layers of architecture between them and us for any sound to penetrate. Yet I can hear it yet, just thinking about it.
"It changes nothing!" shouted the furious Master. "Nothing has changed! I'll have so many opportunities to kill you I'll be hard pressed to choose one, but kill you I shall, and you'll forgive me and you'll ruin my life!"
"That's what I love about you: your incurable optimism."
Then he must have imagined something that triggered the shard, perhaps another way to do me in, elsewhere and elsewhen, for he was gone, not in a puff of smoke or a whiff of sulfur, but just plain gone.
A moment after I had closed my eyes and envisioned the place I most wanted to be, I was there, not on the console room's pullout bed, but on my feet at the console itself, calculating coordinates for a particular dwarf star. It never even occurred to me that Nyssa and Tegan might not be in the TARDIS, but something made me look up at the scanner and my hearts each skipped a beat: I'd been about to take off without them! They were out in the weeds, looking for me, perhaps expecting to find me collapsed, unconscious or delirious, at death's door or at least within a postal code or two of death's door. I powered down and ran to catch them before they wandered too far off.
"Tegan!" I called. "Nyssa!" They heard me and looked back, then ran to me, calling,
"Doctor!"
"I'm here. I'm all right." I enfolded them in my arms. They're so small but so strong. "Come on." I led them, at a trot, back into the box who knew who I was even when I didn't know who I was. I still wasn't sure.
"Where are we going?" asked Tegan, breathless, leaning on the console as Nyssa closed the door behind us.
"We're going to the Small Magellanic Cloud, to find a certain white dwarf star."
"A certain... you sound uncertain, Doctor!"
"Well, Nyssa, my coordinates are very general because I am not sure exactly which dwarf star we're looking for, but we'll find it."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I have a guide."
"What does he mean, Nyssa?"
"Look."
Tegan looked where Nyssa was pointing: I was holding the shard out like a divining rod, but it was functioning more like a ouija board. I followed its "suggestions" and in a moment we were on our way. "What is that?"
"It's a piece of something bigger, and it wants to be restored." The bed was still pulled out, so I sat down on it. "It's part of a rather large hazandra. That is a stone of great power. This little shard has powers, too, but they are paltry compared to those of an intact hazandra stone, even one a third of the size of this shard. It must have broken off, or been broken off. I didn't recognize it until.... Anyway, it has confirmed its identity and it needs to be reconnected with the whole. I mean the entire object, well, a living being, not a hole as in... well, wait, that's not exactly true either, because it was formed, as hazandra always are, in a red hole."
"Not a black hole?"
"No, Nyssa, a red hole. In this case, probably a red hole in a white dwarf star in an irregular galaxy in a crazy universe. Maybe that's why it... oh, you wouldn't believe how tired I am. So tired!" I began to lie down on the pull-out bed.
"Why does he always lie down with his shoes on?" Tegan grabbed one of my feet and began to pull the trainer off. Nyssa stopped her.
"It's not important. Look, he has dropped the little crystal thing."
"What should we do? Put it back in his hand, or leave it on the floor, or...?"
I didn't hear Nyssa's answer. Instead, I dreamt I was in the center of a white dwarf star. That would be impossible, of course. I'd be burnt to bits. Dreams are odd. I was carrying the shard into the center of the star, where I found a red hole, walked right into it, never reached anything like an event horizon, just walked safely into the red hole and in the heart of that I found a huge red conglomeration of crystals, all jumbled together, smooth and jagged, round and sharp, hued deep scarlet, garnet and pale light coral and every shade in between, with mysterious crevices and shallow lines. There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason to it, and yet it was perfect, perfectly flawed, perfectly chaotic, perfectly random. I knew I could never find the stump from which my little shard had been detached; there were stumps of all sorts, and in some of the crevices were hazandra of varying sizes. I was tempted to pinch a hazandra, not as a mere souvenir but as a power source, for future use, but then I remembered what had happened when I'd taken -- in all innocence, I swear, not intending to steal -- a lovely blue metebelis crystal.
I held out the shard. "You know where you're going. You brought me here. You made me bring you here. You're protecting me from this impossible place, and I thank you. Now you must go be whole. Go be a part of a whole in the hole. That's silly. Go be yourself, where you are supposed to be." The shard flew up out of my hand and hovered for a moment as if hesitant to leave me. "I'll be all right." It vanished into the crystal, which, after a moment, briefly cast off an almost golden glow -- golden red, if there is such a thing. I think the glow touched me. I can't be sure.
Chapter 14: Shard Chapter Fourteen
Summary:
The Doctor wonders if he can still be the Doctor.
Chapter Text
Was I still dreaming or was someone making pancakes? I could smell them. I awoke to a stack of them and a pot of Earl Grey as well. "How long have I slept?" I sat up and took the dish onto my lap.
"Long," said Tegan, pouring the tea. "We were worried."
"Where's Nyssa?"
"She finally went to bed. Shall I wake her?"
"No, no, let her sleep. These are excellent. Do we by chance have any whipped cream?" Tegan shook her head. "It's fine. They're good just as they are. I don't even remember the last time I ate. I haven't felt hungry."
"Doctor, are you ever going to tell us where you've been?" I was silent. How could I explain what I'd been through? How could I explain what I'd done, and how it had changed me? "Are you really all right? You don't look all right."
"What wrong with how I look?"
"You look as if... you look as if you want to stop."
I looked down and whispered, "I don't want to stop but I think I have stopped. I think I'm finished. I think I can't be the Doctor anymore. And if I can't be the Doctor anymore, then I don't know that I want to be at all anymore." I looked up to see the expression of horror on Tegan's face. Nyssa wandered into the room, yawning, and saw that expression, and me sitting with a plate of pancakes balanced, forgotten, on my lap, and me, perhaps looking a bit unbalanced. "I did something bad. I undid it -- at least I think I undid it -- but I still remember doing it."
Nyssa took the plate from me and put it on the rolling cart Tegan had brought out before I had even awakened. She sat down on the side of the bed and took my hand. "Doctor, I can't imagine you doing anything so bad that you can't be the Doctor anymore. You will always be the Doctor."
I shook my head. "No, I... I killed, in anger. I mean I didn't, but I tried to, and for a while I thought I had. Same thing. I intended to kill." I could feel Nyssa beginning to release my hand, but then she gripped it more tightly.
"You're still you."
"No, I can't be."
"You are still you!"
"How can I still be me with that in me, the ability to kill in anger? Self defense I understand. I've killed in self defense and in defense of others. I'm not happy about it but I can justify it. And he was killing me! He had killed me. Now he was killing me again, but Nyssa, he stopped. He stopped and stepped back. He stopped himself."
"Who are you talking about, Doctor?" Tegan's voice was trembling. I think she had guessed.
"The Master. He was killing me and he stopped. I could have walked away."
The three of us were silent for a long moment.
"You didn't kill him," said Nyssa, finally.
"No. I stopped."
"He stopped and you stopped. No one killed anyone." Tegan looked hopeful.
"No, he revealed that he had once killed me. He showed me... he showed me...." Suddenly my hearts ached for the boy I'd been, the happy boy I'd briefly seen unaware of the makeshift weapon that was poised to murder him. I sobbed: "I was sad and angry and... I can't be that person. I can't be that person who can kill just because he is sad and angry. I can't be me anymore. Who am I going to be? I don't know who to be now!"
Tegan sat down and held my other hand. "Doctor, do you believe us when we tell you we love you?"
"Yes. I do."
"Good. Doctor, we love you. You are the Doctor and you're you. You'll always be the Doctor and you'll always be you."
I looked at Nyssa and she said, "Tegan is right. And we'll always love you, too." Since I couldn't answer, she added, "And we know you love us too. You don't have to say it. We know." I nodded. "But sometimes, Doctor -- Tegan and I have discussed this often -- sometimes you're an idiot." This is not what I had expected Nyssa to say. "You think you have to be perfect. You think you're not allowed to make mistakes."
"'I've made plenty of mistakes."
"Of course you have. Who hasn't?"
"But murder...."
"I've got news for you, Doctor," declared Tegan, a bit loudly. "It's within all of us. We don't act on it. Well, most of us don't. But anyone can be pushed, under the right circumstances, and you're no different."
"I thought I was," I whispered.
"Well, think again! You were gone a long time. What happened to you during that time? Were you with the Master the whole time?" I didn't answer.
Nyssa said, "I've seen what he is capable of. He doesn't need to be pushed. He can kill without disturbing his pulse rate. I saw him push you to the edge. I have no doubt he could push you over it. I have no doubt that this time, he did."
"Give yourself a break, Doctor." Tegan's voice was soft now.
When I could swallow the lump in my throat and speak, I asked, "Am I still me, then?"
"You're still you," nodded Tegan.
Suddenly exhausted, I lay back down. "Oni says that when I graduate," I murmured, dreamily, "I should call myself 'The Barber.' I don't know. Maybe." Nyssa and Tegan looked at one another, then back at me. I closed my eyes. "I'm rubbish with hair, I've never shaved anyone, and bloodletting sounds extreme. Maybe I should call myself 'The Physician.'"
"Or 'The Doctor,'" Nyssa suggested. Her comforting voice sounded so far away.
"Yes, that's a thought. 'The Doctor.' Maybe I could be that." I felt myself drifting away, but I think I might have added, "If I work at it, if I try very, very hard, I think I could be that."
THE END