Logical/Illogical

Mark grunted as Al launched herself back into movement, out of his arms having caught her, and storming towards an out-of-business hairdresser next door. Except it wasn’t ‘next door’ anymore. It was just adjacent to an empty plot.

Odyssey’s disguise wasn’t as strong as Kronos’; the painted wooden door with a ‘Closed’ sign on it opened straight onto the gigantic, majestic console room. There were no salon chairs or hairdryers. Just the place three individuals had decided to call home.

This strange impossible room was just that; but also the most familiar place available. When Mark returned, several paces behind Al, he did experience a slight adjustment in personal comfort. He remained deep in the minuses, but it was a start.

When the table nearest to him offered a glass of water and anti-nausea tablets, it dipped back again.

“Odyssey,” Al said, “take us to Gallifrey.”

The room at large scoffed. 

That’ll be a firm ‘No.’

Watching Al was like watching a speeding train slam on its brakes. “Why not?”

I’ve been listening in this whole time. What HH said about returning deserters and renegades rings true; it rings equally true for the TARDIS belonging to said deserters and renegades.

Mark looked up. “Why? I thought HH tells you what to do.”

When he needs to.

Odyssey sounded a little huffy.

TARDISes are expected to serve their homeworld first, and their owners second. The moment HH demonstrated any of the wrong behaviours, I was supposed to deliver him home.

“So, why didn’t you?”

More fun that way, I suppose. Hard to explore the universe from inside a Gallifrey parking bay.

Mark smiled at the ceiling; it went away when he caught eyes with Al.

“Done?” She asked.

“Don’t you start,” he said, dolefully.

“Seriously?” Al said, an eyebrow raised. “Two people have a go at you, that’s all it takes?”

“I didn’t even know HH had that much…volume in him.”

There was a mutter from across the room, which sounded distinctively like ‘for fuck’s sake.’ 

“Something to say, Al?”

“Let’s not waste our time. Again. For the second time, we are separated from HH and quite possibly the only means of rescuing him. Kronos is too legitimate, and Odyssey isn’t legitimate enough-”

Excuse me, Miss Alnilam?

Al quickly explained the Hologram-Alistair asking them to leave.

That wasn’t a subroutine; that was intervention. Kronos has been…commandeered. The first priority was removing two superfluous humans from the situation, and the planet. 

“Then what?”

Back to Gallifrey.

Forever.

That’s why we’re not there, Al. 

Al rushed forwards in a burst of energy, grappling with bits of the console at random, before moving onto another position, without any obvious reason. Levers were pulled, buttons pushed, dials turned – and the moment she left it alone, they all reverted back to their original positions. Mark was standing beside an orchestra of mechanics and Al’s swearing.

“He is your owner, Odyssey, you are his TARDIS, you must-”

Consider this your first warning, Al.

Before anything else happened, Mark approached Al and lifted her slightly, pulling her away from the hexagonal console, much in the same way he’d removed her from the doorway of Kronos. Which must’ve activated a memory for her. Because she was light enough, easy for him to carry, until she found yet more energy, and became a mass of hair, limbs, and shouting.

“Let…go of me!” She escaped Mark’s arms, and gave him a shove. A moment’s deliberation, and she gave him a second. “Haven’t you already done enough? Will you stop trying to protect me?”

He held out a hand. “Just stop, for a moment. Just think. Think for a moment what you’re fighting against. And what you’re fighting for.”

Al huffed. “Not this again.”

“Yes, this again. I want you to consider, properly this time, whether he’s really worth it, Al? Worth all this?”

“I already told you-”

“They are both from a different planet-”

“We don’t have time-”

“Customs, practices, laws – thing we don’t understand-”

Al and Mark continued to talk over the other, each rising in volume with Al in the lead, neither side truly listening to the other. Until:

“- since the way he tells it, you made the first move, that night-”

Mark applied some internal brakes. “What? What did you say?”

“-so don’t even try to pretend like he’s not important to you.”

Al finished; her mouth closed. The shape it made next helped her look victorious. 

Mark spluttered for a moment. “What does that have to do with anything? A moment of thoughtless affection, is that all you’re basing this on? I’d been single for the majority of my life, and he was showing me some attention – what’s your excuse?”

Al wouldn’t have reacted much differently had he slapped her. “Excuse me? You fucking dare-? ”

“Tell me that you see how it looks? Don’t you? A twenty-something-old girl – I’m guessing – goes off with an older guy-”

“Who very recently found himself inside you. I think that demonstrates his ‘type.’ Besides, he and I just aren’t like that.”

“Nevertheless, you have fought impossible odds, taken on some hideous responsibility, and even had to watch someone literally kill themselves. For a guy.”

“Yes,” Al stated. “And you answered a mysterious text, opened your home, your heart, and a third word beginning with ‘h’ – for a guy.”

Mark took a moment to think; then several more to recover.

Silence drifted into the room, wrapping itself around the pair of them. Al could almost see the corporeal form of Odyssey, blowing air through her non-existent cheeks, twiddling her non-existent thumbs. 

She hadn’t felt a rush like this in a while. Hadn’t flexed these muscles of argument, not since the days of the Westford and the Father. If anything, she enjoyed the chance to use them again.

Mark held her gaze. “I’ll forgive that remark, since you’re in shock.”

“Excuse me?”

“Shock, Al. We both are. Different versions of it, maybe. But the fact remains, we just saw a man try to kill himself, we all saw…whatever the hell happened next. Before we start saying things we might later regret, we should take some time, to-”

“I don’t need you to tell me how I’m feeling,” she snapped, “and I really don’t need you to parent me. I saw far worse than that on Day One with him.”

“Weird flex, but sure.”

“I mean it. It was bad enough you giving me that talk before the Cosmic Queen – but don’t you ever think that you need to cover my eyes, or try and protect me, or whatever macho bullshit gets into your brain.”

“Why, because you think HH will do it? HH’s a psychopath, Al. It took me a little time, but I see it now. He comes from a long line of psychopaths – just look at the Watchmaker!” Mark began ticking off his fingers. “Then, he kills because it’s easier, and he takes a young girl along with him to act as his echo chamber. You are not. Safe. With him.”

Mark stood still for a moment, breathing deeply. His eyes glimmered, for a moment. “And he knew it too. Why else would he ask me to remove you?”

Al raised an eyebrow. “Puts a hole in your ‘he’s a psychopath’ theory, though.”

Mark took a step forward. “Take this opportunity, Al. Please. HH asked me to take you back; he must have sent you away for your own protection. You can only be safe, as far away from him as possible. Take this moment and run. Tell the story that you survived one of the most dangerous men in the universe.”

Her next move offended Mark far more than her reference to his and HH’s intimacy. Al laughed in his face. “Did that sound better in your head?” She took a moment to collect herself. There was a thoughtful pause between them, as Al held the weight beneath his words, testing them for herself. Her arms folded, and her expression hardened. “No,” she said, “you’re wrong, anyway. No, he sent me away…because he knows I’m his best chance for getting him back. He needs me here. He’s not travelling on his own, anymore, he’s not making the big decisions by himself anymore. Cos he’s got me.”

A deep, knowing sadness formed on Mark’s face. He sighed through his nose. “Yeah. He’s got you, all right.”

“Meaning?” When Mark didn’t respond, just mumbled and looked away, she reloaded the question and fired again. “Meaning?”

“Al, please, I just want to-”

“To what? To prove yourself? To save poor, innocent, little me?” She hooked her lip into a sneer. “Get it through your sad, lonely mind. I don’t care about your opinions, Mark. I don’t need you to parent me. And you trying to save my life isn’t going to undo or redeem the shitty one you made for yourself. I don’t. Need you. Okay?”

Without moving. Without so much as blinking. Mark stared back at her, and gave his answer:

“Odyssey. Take me home, please.”

The room responded, in its usual manner of vibrations and distant roars. 

Mark turned his back on her, facing the doorway, and said nothing else. He’d decided he didn’t care anymore. All of time and space weren’t worth being treated like this. If anything, he’d been proven right. He’d stepped away from Emerson Green, at long last, and he’d gotten hurt. He really was better off, back home. A floor panel opened up and delivered to him his shoulder bag, bulging with his belongings. Now exiting this lifestyle. Please take all bags and luggage with you.

“Good,” Al stated. “Good choice. You’re weak, Mark. And we don’t need you.”

After that, Al and Odyssey might’ve been discussing the plot of a film or series he’d refused to watch, fading into the background until the vibrations and roaring died down. They’d arrived at Emerson Green. Presumably. Mark wasn’t entirely fussed either way. He paused in the open doorway (disguised as a pinewood wardrobe again) but Al didn’t notice. 

“You mean, a way of moving HH across space?” She was saying. “Easy. It’s already been done twice.”

“You two really deserve one another,” Mark muttered.

And he left Odyssey and Al behind.

Al & M

The Impossible Clock Shop

Less than ten seconds had passed. The Kronos Clock Shop door had closed by itself, and before Al had so much as raised a fist to slam against it, or tried to call for HH, or even disentangled herself from Mark’s grip, the view through the glass shopfront changed. It dissolved from a landing bay with two Timelords in it, to the spaceport they’d left behind. 

Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. Minerva. Armstrong Services. Terminal 6. 

To every extent and purpose, not Gallifrey.

Al punched the door anyway, for the hell of it. Her hand hurt, but she felt a little better. 

“Take us back,” she whispered to the door, before whirling around. “Take us back!”

Nothing happened, besides Mark flinching. He was standing beside a cabinet full of watches (wrist, and pocket) looking baffled. Pale. Tear-strewn. And, if Al were feeling completely honest, a little useless.

“Why did you do that?” She asked, a quiet, calm demand. She knew shouting at him wouldn’t work for now. Much as she wanted it. She could at least enjoy him backing away, as she approached. “Why. Did you do that? HH needed me, he asked me to stay-”

“He asked me to move you,” Mark snapped. “When you sent me to get him, he…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Telepathy, mind-meld, sixth-fucking-sense, I don’t know, but he sent me a…an idea, I guess. A request to move you.”

“Why?”

A new hologram appeared, in a three-dimensional, translucent-blue form of Alistair the Watchmaker. Face and head still intact on this version. Flickering at the edges.

“In accordance with the TARDIS Hostile Action Displacement System, this unit has been relocated for the protection of its… -two- …passengers.”

Al frowned. It had his look, but not his voice. That was the default setting, the basic package. 

“Please vacate this unit as soon as you are able. Thank you.”

The hologram switched off. Mark looked round. “We’d better do what it says,” he said, in a small voice.

“Has HH taught you nothing?” Al growled, advancing on the desk. “Kronos, listen to me. Your owner and our friend are in danger; we need you to take us back. Right now.”

The hologram reappeared. “This unit has been relocated for the protection of its… -two- …passengers. Please vacate this unit as soon as you are able. Thank you.”

“We’re not leaving until you take us back to Gallifrey.”

“Al, come on,” Mark said.

“We’re just not.”

“Maybe,” he said, in the same voice, “if we leave, and we’re safe again, then Kronos will head back and pick them up?”

Al didn’t move, glaring back at the hologram. “It can do it while we’re still inside. Take us back to Gallifrey.”

“Please vacate this unit as soon as you are able. Thank you.”

“Look.” Al hung her head. “I know you’re scared. I know the Watchmaker was…he wasn’t a good man, to you. But you met someone better, and he needs you. Needs us. He won’t let Watchmaker take you back.”

“Please vacate this unit as soon as you are able. Thank you.”

Al’s hands met the desk with significant force. The one used to pound on the door gave an indignant throb. “We’re not leaving!”

“I am,” said the voice behind her. She heard the door open again. “You’re fighting the equivalent of Siri, here. It’s not going to work*.”

“It’s worth a try.”

“You did try.”

“Please vacate this unit as soon as you are able. Thank you.”

“See? I don’t-” 

Mark paused. He’d been a late joiner to someone else’s game. Was his idea correct? Was it worth saying? He decided to speak it, regardless. Right now he and the hologram were on equal footing of being ignored. He could’ve started singing for all the difference it made. 

“I don’t think Kronos is even…in there, anymore. HH took something out. You saw him do it.”

Al sighed. Her hands slipped off the desk, not of their own accord. She wobbled on her feet. The floor beneath her was moving, like a treadmill. The clock shop blurred past her, and suddenly she was falling backwards into Mark’s arms.

Kronos vanished in front of them.

Her head turned. “Odyssey!”

Al & M

* Logical computer brain against an illogical emotional one. Happens a lot. Not just between computers.

The Final Marker

The yelling of a Timelord caught in his own, failing regeneration, was just enough to revive me. When I stood, the strength had gone out of me, and I dropped back to my knees. My arms were trembling as I tried to stay upright, my feet and legs ached from carrying him here, but I’d done it. We had made it. 

Al called out to me, but I waved at her to stay still. I noticed Mark had moved, by instinct, back into the doorway of Kronos. He had his hands planted firmly over his ears, eyes clamped shut. Al was right where I’d left her, right where I needed her to be, one foot in the TARDIS, one foot here. Neither here, there, nor anywhere. Perfect.

I turned back to Alistair, one last time. Perhaps to pay my respects. Perhaps to watch what happens to manic devotion. Perhaps to see it for myself, from the other side this time.

Whatever my motive, I stayed there less than a few seconds, only to be blasted back again by an eruption of regeneration energy. I hit a glass window of Kronos’ clock shop and slid down it, staying where I was now sitting, to watch. Plumes of gold blazed from Alistair’s hands and head; flames of the same colour scorched wherever it landed. 

He kept on screaming. Screaming out of a one-sided mouth, that was half lips, half a dangling maw of teeth and flesh. It was a wet and gurgling sound. And then the colour of his regeneration started to change. I’d been waiting for this, I’d wondered, I’d only ever known it from his side. I had to see what a failed regeneration looks like. 

The golden flames were turning darker. 

“HH, come on!”

Al was still standing in the doorway of Kronos. When I looked round at her, the light surrounding us dropped entirely. Watchmaker’s energy might’ve fused the lights, but my eyes adjusted, and the lights were still on. I could see Al’s face, mouth open, and horrified.

I looked.

It was like the Watchmaker was melting. His regeneration energy had turned black, as though he were leaking a viscous, dark ink. Scraps of singed clothing were wafting off his body, like burnt paper dancing above a bonfire. The heat coming off of him was immense, and his clothes weren’t up to the challenge. Air shimmered above him like a dry, merciless desert. It felt like if we stayed much longer, we’d burn along with him. No wonder Odyssey crashed.

A demonstration of pure energy being suppressed and released, simultaneously. Almost like his regeneration was trying to do both at once. Save a life, and end it.

It was eating him alive.

There’s still so much about this that I don’t understand; I can’t remember this happening to me, and upon seeing this, am I glad of that. But I pulled through. Somehow. While the Watchmaker looks far from doing so. 

Perhaps it comes down to a choice. Perhaps the process is not finite either way. Both Alistair and myself experienced an intangible power struggle between Mind and Body. In my case, Body won. I made it to face no. 7 and wound up in Arkham Asylum. Long story.

Is the same outcome guaranteed for Alistair, too?

I felt pressure on my upper arm. Mark was kneeling beside me, pulling me up, away, his eyes wet and shadowed by the non-light radiating from our departing passenger. He shook his head at me, words made useless under Alistair’s yells, and tried to drag me back to the doorway. I hastily looked past him, but Al was still there; one foot in, one foot out. She had dispatched my own escort.

Mark kept pulling at my arm, and I went with him. He was eager to get back onboard Kronos, but I stopped him. It was still impossible to speak, so I pressed an index finger to his temple, and sent him a message. He recoiled a little, blinking at me. 

Then he nodded. And slipped inside, behind Al.

I had to stop and glance back. At the writhing, naked body we’d sent home. I couldn’t help but think; I’d gone through that. Amidst the Silent Plains war, I had been in his position. Hurting. Naked as a newborn. Alone. 

No-one else deserved that. 

There was still his gun. Four bullets left. I could disrupt the regenerative stage. End everything for him. Pain, and potential, alike. Drastic, but…merciful. The Right Thing?

No. Maybe? Tricky. Messy. Complicated. 

He’d pulled that trigger to access his next (final) regeneration; his next best chance at fighting me, in a brand new body. He hadn’t known it doesn’t quite work like that – something else I’d found out the hard way.

Just Pulling the Bloody Trigger now…a mercy? Or a cowardly victory?

What do I do, what do I do, what do I do-

“Wait a minute,” I murmured. 

Al called after me; I barely heard it. My ears were full of yells, getting louder as I approached, and each step felt like moving closer to a blazing inferno, but even that faded as I reached Alistair’s side. Standing there, I confirmed what I thought I’d seen, and the heat and the screams and all the rest of existence seemed to fall away for a moment.

Just me. And Alistair’s chest tattoo. 

The symbol of the Ash Eagles.

I didn’t take my time. I didn’t wait. I just reacted.

I turned on the spot and stared directly into Mark’s eyes. I gave him a single nod. 

My last sight, of the dematerialising, disappearing Kronos, was the face of Al as she was hauled backwards, away from the doorway, mouth open in a yell I couldn’t hear, resisting as Mark drew her into safety. That single moment of betrayal, fading into nothingness. She wore an expression I would not forget for some time.

But I would deal with that.

As I had to deal with this.

I wiped my face and turned back. Just as the Watchmaker convulsed. He sat bolt upright, his jaw loose, he released a howl sourced from the deep recesses of some forgotten underworld, and his regeneration energy surged, lifting me clear off my feet.

Everything went dark after that.

HH, Al & M

A Failed Regeneration

I have returned to Gallifrey. Better deal with that.

I have returned to Gallifrey, carrying the body of a suicidal Timelord. That one might be outside my responsibilities.

I am exhausted. Start with that. Stay down.

I shouted at my companions. Better deal with that, too.

In my defence, we had very precious time; we have very precious time, it still hasn’t started yet. Regeneration is not immediate. In the same way that a wound does not always hurt right away, you won’t know the damage done until later. The body needs time to react.

But when Watchmaker’s body reacts to this…

Put it this way. We Gallifreyans were always encouraged to do it outside our TARDISes, and if on Gallifrey itself, as far from any valuables/personal items/irreplaceables as possible. Which is typical Timelord behaviour, come to think of it – ‘do what you need, let some other planet figure it out, and whatever you do, don’t mess with our stuff.’ 

If permitted, or rather if unrestrained, a regeneration can destroy a room. Depending on the nature of the Timelord, or any resistance from the healing generation in question, it can do even more. It can completely knock a TARDIS out, send it crashing to some time and/or place for which you are totally unprepared. 

And no soft, squishy, carbon-based lifeform standing nearby is guaranteed to survive that. 

When I pulled my own trigger, Odyssey managed – I don’t know how – to get me away from Silent Plains. Then crashed into a dead, desert planet named Adraxus, beyond repair until I found her. That’s how I know that a failed regeneration is even stronger. 

This is something I never thought I’d face again. It is certainly something I vowed, personally, never to repeat. That experience, and that promise to myself, had been enough. Or so I thought. Now I walk on trampled ground. Except this time, I am on the outside, looking in. A Timelord had just committed suicide; interestingly (though low on my list of priorities) in much the same way as myself. A bullet through the head. 

And while a normal regeneration is a phenomenal event, the same goes for a suicide-induced regeneration, but for all the wrong reasons.

We are each of us, at birth, given a gift. Thirteen regenerations. Or twelve cycles, thirteen faces. But thirteen goes at it. Thirteen chances at life. Enough for hundreds, even thousands of years, to do what we can in the universe. 

Both Alistair and I share a new sin, now. Yes, we’re also Time War deserters.

But we’ve behaved as heathens, in the eyes of our own biology. We have squandered our gifts. What other races out there would literally bleed and kill and (ironically) die for, we have thrown that away. Leaving us in a body hard-wired and coded to revive itself from any lethal blow, ordered to start fixing damage – that had, in this case, been self-inflicted.

Alistair’s mind, his consciousness, right now exists in between the only two available states of our universe, inside a body that was meant to restore a being, which had clearly demonstrated it didn’t want to live.

Contradictory orders. What’s the body to do?

Then the Watchmaker started screaming. 

HH, Al & M

First Steps Gone Wrong

Almost the entire world, for Al, had become gunshots, HH yelling, then the darkness inside Mark’s hand covering her eyes. She fought her way out of his grip; out of the pathetic shield he had made for her, in his desperate and ridiculous belief that one, mortal, human body was enough to protect her (or anyone) from the darker pieces of reality.

HH was another, slightly-less-mortal, non-human body, and he couldn’t do it either.

“I am not,” Al grunted, breaking free of Mark’s grip, “a child.” She gave him one more unnecessary push, and he fell away from her, making absolutely sure he didn’t look across the room. Al watched him go. She suspected that he’d wanted to do something to help, or even appear helpful, and had settled on protecting her younger, delicate, naive brain.

Several years too late for that.

So Al looked.

One side of the Watchmaker’s face had disappeared. The wall behind him was splattered with red, and the remainders of his thoughts. She could see meat, and red, and teeth – biology had never been her science of choice, but she knew enough that faces didn’t work if reassembled like that. 

HH was kneeling beside the body – him, Al reminded herself, besides him – pushing his arms under the neck and knees, trying to lift the lifeless, heavy shell. One Timelord bared his teeth, and got the other off the ground.

“Out!” HH bellowed into the room, with as much force and authority as the gunshot. He swayed with the body in his arms, but made sure to check on her and Mark, first. “Out, now!”

Al was already back in the clockshop’s upstairs apartment, having moved on the first ‘Out!’ She was making for the stairs, when she heard Mark dithering somewhere behind. HH roars echoed, demanding Mark to move.

He had to help HH get the body – get Alistair – down into the clockshop; the stairs were too narrow to be done alone. All Al heard from the ordeal was a lot of thumping, and a mixture of Mark protesting between moans and sobs, and HH having time for none of it. She’d dabbled with the idea of taking over, but knew Mark would just protest a different cause. 

Once back behind the till, Mark felt the task was finished; HH disagreed. While Mark studied the blood on his hands, and vomited where he stood, HH kept shouting. He shouted again at Mark to move and resumed carrying the fallen by himself. He shouted some more to get them outside.

“But,” Al started, “that’s-”

“I know full fucking well where we are. Do it!”

First steps out onto an unknown planet; and first steps back onto HH’s homeworld should not have gone like this, Al couldn’t help but think, as her boots clacked off a polished floor. First steps also shouldn’t come with this much tension, even though the tall, round room they occupied seemed benign enough. There were lamps, and empty pods, for…something. A larged, closed, hexagonal door. She watched it carefully.

It was stepping out into a new space of limitless and awful possibilities. Anything could happen next. Unlikely any of them would be good.

She heard Mark appear next, catching his breath, wiping his chin. He walked past her to lean against the wall. Against the backdrop of bronze and brass, he looked very pale indeed. Pale, and unimpressed.

Then, the sounds of HH. Al turned, in time to see him standing in Kronos’ doorway, choosing between the two options and settling on her. He had her stand beside him, and panted instructions to have one foot on the TARDIS, one foot on Gallifrey, at all times. He made sure she understood; when she confirmed, he asked again. She was not to move. No matter what.

Only when she’d agreed, wholeheartedly, did he take his first steps.

And the moment he was done, HH collapsed. He and Alistair hit the floor together.

Al, HH & M