Doctor Who: The Time of the Companions: Book Two (Doctor Who: The Companions Adventure 2)

by Cour M.

  “She has a right to know, don’t you think?” Jack asked.

  “Why?” Ten asked, looking around at all in the room, “you all want so much from me, always! Is it not enough that I save your lives, that I am there for you, but no, I can’t have any secrets. I can’t have anything to keep to myself, because you want my memories as well!”

  “We do it simply because we wish to understand you,” Amy explained, “traveling around the universe with a man with two hearts who is ageless, well, eventually the mystery becomes tedious. Can you blame us for wishing to know all that we can about you? Can you blame us for wishing to know who is beside us?”

  “All this time, and different faces,” Rory said, amazed, “and you are the same that you always were, I guess. Doctor, you’re running. But not just to things, I see. It’s from things.”

  “Well, don’t we all?” Ten asked them, sounding old and resigned. “Don’t we all… run?”

  Amy flinched, remembering when Eleven had said something similar.

  “Doctor?” Ace continued, “I know that you didn’t tell me everything, but you told me enough to trust you. So tell me now.”

  Ten looked between his past companions and his future ones.

  “I’m alone now,” He realized, “When I was Seven, I had you, Ace, when I was Nine, I let you travel with me, Jack, and then when I am Eleven, you two will follow me everywhere, but now I am alone. And I do not wonder why that is. It hurts—yes, I am just saying that because it hurts. And I need you all to know that it does.”

  “Yeah well,” Rory said, “we’re not going anywhere.”

  

  Resigned, Ten relented and began to tell Ace about the Time War.

  “It was years after I knew you,” Ten explained, “but I really am the same man. The same one that you know. Ace, I’m the last of my kind. The last Timelord that there is.”

  “What do you mean by that?” She scoffed, “no you’re not. You’re from Gallifrey. You once showed it to me and it was a whole—”

  “Was. Ace, my people got into a war… with the daleks.”

  “The daleks?” Ace muttered, flabbergasted, “Oh, my god. Not the daleks!”

  “Yes, the daleks. We fought for the whole of creation. And the more we fought, the more that we were losing. Everyone was breaking because of it, Ace. All of space and time was bleeding because of this war. We were hurting the universe, N-Space 1 and N-Space 2, everything would eventually get destroyed if I stood by and did nothing. You see, Ace, we lost. My people lost the entire war, and therefore, to destroy the daleks and for the sake of all creation… I did what I had to do.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I destroyed Gallifrey.”

  “You what?”

  “Killing my people as well so that I could stop the daleks,” Ten finalized, his voice heavy, “With a bomb, called the Moment, I destroyed my homeland, to stop the daleks from taking over the universe and killing everything.”

  “You killed your entire people?” Ace gasped.

  “He had no choice,” Amy assured her.

  “Then Gallifrey really is just gone? Completely?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jack answered for the Doctor, who was looking at Ace with shame. He raised up his hands in supplication, facing her.

  “Ace, really, I am the same man.”

  “No, you are not!” Ace stood up and backed away, “he would not do that. My Doctor would never do that to an entire species.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Shut up! Shut up! You’re not the Doctor! You’re not the Doctor!”

  Ace then rushed out of the flat, and Amy began to go after her.

  “I’ll get her back,” she reassured them, “and you three, if you’re going to talk about important things, make sure to fill me in on the entire thing later.”

  “Right, love you,” Rory promised, and then Amy went after Ace.

  “Love you too!”

  

  Jack and Rory just stood there as the Doctor rubbed his eyes.

  “Should we say something?” Rory whispered to Jack.

  “I can still hear you,” Ten announced.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re not the best at whispering?”

  “Yes, but what can I do about it? I just am not good at speaking low.”

  “Yeah, well, I suppose, neither am I.”

  “She’ll come back. Ace, I mean. Amy will get her to come back.”

  “Will she? To be honest, there are times where I don’t even want to be in the same room as myself. Oh dear, why am I sitting here, getting on and on about myself when there is a crisis at hand.”

  Ten jumped up and removed his coat.

  “Yeah, so we have a war and the problem is not just that.”

  Ten raised up the papers and then turned to Rory and Jack.

  “So, do you expect me to weep?”

  “I just…”

  “Tell me something, Rory? Have you ever reached that point where it’s pointless to show off, because you were forced to tell your secret? And that secret kills everything, so there is nowhere to hide? I thrive best when there is always somewhere left to hide. And now I don’t. I don’t know, Rory and Jack. Have you ever felt as if you ruin everything you touch?”

  Jack was quiet, for he had never seen the Doctor this way before, but Rory had. And it did not unnerve him.

  “Yes, I have,” Rory answered simply, to which the Doctor replied with a scornful look.

  “No, you have not. You only thought that you have before. But you have not, for I know the real thing, how it sits in someone’s eyes. I know how it is to irrevocably fail and then run out of options.”

  “Yeah, and guess what?” Rory groaned, “you’re not perfect in the future either. You would take Amy and I to places and the TARDIS would get us lost. The first time that I died, it was from saving your life. You didn’t know my wife was a doppelganger this one time. You one time almost didn’t save us from freezing to death. You left Amy behind for years because you let her down. It’s what you do. So you know what, Doctor? The question does not become if you failed or not. The question then becomes do you fix the things that you broke, and do you fix others when they are broken. So, what’s it going to be?”

  Ten flexed his hand and then returned back to himself.

  “Rory Williams, I could kiss you.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Of course I wasn’t. Don’t you know an empty eureka moment when you hear it? So Jack, let’s get cracking.”

  “Great,” Jack clapped his hand, “And don’t ever get emotional before 3 P.M. on me again, all right?”

  “Rodger that.”

  

  “Ace!” Amy cried, rushing after her, down the staircase of the boarding apartments.

  “Leave me alone!” Ace cried.

  “Oh stop won’t you and remember that we don’t have time for this!” Amy demanded, “And why am I the one who has to order you around? Aren’t you the older one?”

  “Precisely, so I can do what I want!”

  “Then do better!”

  Ace turned on Amy, glaring at her.

  “Just to be clear, that look never works on me,” Amy informed her.

  “Do you even understand?” Ace bellowed, “what he did.”

  “Yes, I did. Do. Did.”

  “And you are honestly all right with this? He doesn’t want me wielding a gun, but he destroyed all of Gallifrey.”

  “He was a different man back then.”

  “While also being the same man.”

  “He didn’t even call himself the Doctor when he did it. Yeah, Ace, he let go of his name because of it. He broke the promise that he made. If his name is a promise, which I always assumed that it was. You think he did that because he wanted to? Of course he didn’t want to. He did it because he had no other choice.”

  “The real Doctor, the proper Doctor, would have found another way.”

/>   “What other way do you find when there is no other way? You heard him yourself, Ace; all of space and time was suffering because of that war.”

  “Is that what occurred, what really occurred—or is that what he tells us? Is that what he tells himself?”

  Amy flinched, not wishing to continue the conversation.

  “No really, Amy, what other bit of evidence do we have other than the Doctor’s? You know how he is. He can lie sometimes, because it is easier for him. I love him, as do you, but he doesn’t have the face that he had before, therefore I am not blinded anymore. There’s nothing to hide the fact that he lies, and it makes you wonder, to blow up Gallifrey, well… there really must be a sliver of ice through his heart.”

  “You said it yourself. When he was the Sixth Doctor, he wasn’t that kind always. You forgave him for that.”

  “Well yes, but this is different.”

  “This is a man who was faced with a time where it was impossible to do the right thing. He did not have the ability. And it’s also a man who does everything in his power to save the rest of the universe. Why would he do that if he did not feel anything? Why would he do that if he was not so full of regret? He misses Gallifrey all the time. I see it in his eyes. Or rather, I saw it in his eyes—when we first travelled with him. So I cannot hate him. And the question then becomes, can you?”

  

  Ten was just learning everything from Jack when Amy entered the flat—followed by Ace.

  When he saw both women, he froze.

  “Oh, don’t look so thunderstruck,” Amy groaned, amused, “of course I got her back.”

  “Brilliant,” Ten grinned happily, “because now it’s time to go.”

  

  Whipping on his coat, Jack placed all their cups in the sink and they were off, with Jack leading Ace onward as the Doctor led the way, followed by Amy who felt rushed as Rory pulled her along.

  “Weren’t we just drinking tea?” She asked.

  “Sorry, but you know how the Doctor is.”

  “So, kindly fill me in on what’s happening.”

  “Well, first I will say that it wasn’t our fault. The reason why we weren’t in the know about this was because we are in America and you know how much they are not involved with the war at present, and also because it is war, and during wartime, it’s hard to see a pattern.”

  “And what is this pattern?”

  “Right now, it’s the battle of the Somme and soldiers have gone missing.”

  “Soldiers lost in battles. Forgive me for sounding ignorant, but how is that mysterious?”

  “Because they are gone, without a trace, and here,” Rory handed Amy a newspaper clipping. “It’s an interview, from a Captain in the British Army, named John Henrickson, and he was able to send a letter to the English papers from the trenches that he believed these soldiers were not lost from simply missing in action. He believes that the soldiers are being taken. Abducted, but not by the Germans or Austrians. He wrote specifically that he felt that it was another force.”

  “And let me guess, no one believes him,” Amy put in, reading the article while they were walking.

  “Of course. Jack even said that he was labeled as a lunatic from post war stress, but from reports, Captain Henrickson will not take back what he said.”

  “Then Rory, we have to go back to 1916?”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t get stranded again, because now we are going to Britain, not New York, and we might be going a year later.”

  “Still, it frightens me. I cannot help it. Give me a minute.”

  She removed herself from Rory’s side, rushed up to the Doctor as his coat bustled in the wind and grabbed his arm.

  “You’re taking us back. To 1916.”

  “You wish for me to drop you off before I do this,” Ten said heavily.

  “No, don’t worry, that’s not it. Believe me, I know that you are rubbish when allowed to be alone, and you like having a gang.”

  When hearing that Amy would not leave him, he felt a little lighter.

  “You know that I like having a gang?” Ten smiled.

  “Yes, while I shall still do my best not to give away too many big moments, the small moments I shall allow. One time you got us together, with Rory’s dad, and you also could not help but bring along this hunter friend of yours from safari and you also brought along Cleopatra herself.”

  “I did not!”

  “Yes, you did. Though, now I see why you would get the idea in your head, and it must have been from me after this. I do so like having some influence on the future.”

  “Why did I bring them along?”

  “We had to save something. And you did. If it helps. You saved them all. But that’s all that I shall tell you, for now.”

  “So, we meet Cleopatra!”

  “Yeah. She fancied you.”

  “Did she?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “That is delightful. What did I do? No no no, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.”

  “Don’t worry. However, you acted, you acted well.”

  “That’s good to know. Amy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know I’m not Eleven, so thanks for this.”

  “You’re welcome. But Doctor, I admit that I am scared.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re taking us back to the time that we were locked in.”

  “Oh, that is what you are worried about?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Amy, we are going back to a different location. You will not get stuck there again.”

  “I can’t help but feel that we will.”

  “No, no need to worry about that. No, just worry about the fact that we are about to walk into one of the bloodiest wars in your planet’s history and therefore have to eventually stumble on a battlefield where we could get hurt.”

  “Like with my Doctor, I always have mixed feelings about you after we have spoken.”

  Ten laughed at this.

  “Now do me a favor.”

  “Anything, Mrs. Williams.”

  “Promise me that you will do everything in your power to bring Rory and I back here. Promise me that we shall not get stuck, and left behind. Promise me that we will get to go back… home. And just once, make sure that Rory doesn’t die.”

  “You love him very much.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Oh Amy Williams,” Ten sighed, happy, “I promise that I will bring you back. You won’t be left behind. No, no, not today! That has happened to me too many times as it is and not again! No not again!”

  “Now there’s the Doctor that I recognize.”

  

  Eventually they reached the TARDIS and Ten opened it for them as they walked in.

  “TARDIS, TARDIS, TARDIS,” Jack Harkness grinned, “you look like you missed me!”

  The last to enter was Ace, but before they both went in, Ace pulled at Ten’s arm.

  “Doctor,” she began.

  Ten smiled.

  “It’s nice to know that you are still willing to call me that.”

  Ace looked him up and down.

  “You must understand, from the face to this… it’s hard for me to know what to make of you.”

  “I understand. But I promise you, it’s still me. A part of me very much is the Timelord that you remember.”

  “Look me in the eye, Doctor, and promise me, that you did what you did for the good of the universe, that there was no other choice you had… and I will think you a good man.”

  “Ace,” he sighed, “what I did, I did for the good of the universe, not for myself. But as for there being no other choice I had—well, to this day I still haven’t found another choice, but there is a day that I dread might come.”

  “What sort of day?”

  “The day when I realize that there was something I could have done. Ace, you think my guilt is substantial now? I can assure you that if that day comes, then I won’t be able to leave the TARDIS with how I f
eel.”

  Ace wrapped his hand in her own.

  “Don’t hate yourself, Doctor,” she smiled warmly, forgivingly, “We have a world to save. Besides, no one is ever going to shag you if you keep on carrying the weight of the past.”

  “Oh thank you,” Ten joked, “I had not thought of that. Good advice.”

  “Are you both going to stand there like that?” Jack said, “because we do have a World War to walk into, and quite frankly, I kind of missed this.”

  “I’m sure that you did.”

  “That’s very perceptive of you.”

  Ace entered, and the Doctor followed.

  Closing the doors behind him, he removed his coat.

  “Now, back to the past.”

  “Back to the past!” Jack cried.

  Ten looked around him at his new ‘gang’, from Jack to Rory, from Rory to Amy, then from Amy to Ace.

  “Five in number,” Ten acknowledged, “I always liked that number.”

  He put the year into the consul unit and once more the TARDIS was off and flying through the vortex.

  Chapter 4

  Fantastic!

  “My god, you are Mozart!” Nine cried, rushing up to the man and taking his hand, “Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic!”

  “Thank you,” Mozart said, a little disconcerted by the handshake.

  “Um, Governor Smith,” Clara clarified, “forgive me if I am in error, but I recall that this gentleman comes from an era where shaking of the hand is not common.”

  “Oh, right. I knew that, thank you very much,” Nine said, releasing Mozart’s hand.

  “No, I don’t think you did,” Clara whispered, smirking.

  “I did, so there.”

  “You really didn’t.”

  “But truly, yesterday I was listening to your piece ‘Requiem’!” Nine cried, “truly fantastic, it was.”

  “Oh, my music makes you feel of the fantasy sort? I had no idea that my music did that.”

  “Oh, right. It means that your music is brilliant to hear.”