#the whole destroying the universe thing seemed odd and the fact he said 'for gallifrey. for the timelords' was even odder

[master-missysversion]

I've been trying to figure out why the master would want to destroy the universe using the cybermen and I just realised. He doesn't. It's all an act. He wants the doctor to use the death particle and he needs to give her a reason to do it

[timelxrd-victorious]

The Vortex Diaries || A Family Affair

Summary:  "Faction Paradox. It's a family affair." After Martha walks in on the Doctor (allegedly) sleepwalking after a nightmare, a late night cup of tea and conversation leads to her learning more about the Doctor's past than she'd thought possible—and some similarities between the Time Agency and a certain time-traveling voodoo cult. Notes: The Martha Jones seen here belongs to fellow Tumblr RPer doctorandsoldier and comes from a verse where she joined the Time Agency in the 51st century after the Rift picked her up during a U.N.I.T. mission and spat her out in Captain Jack Harkness' home century. She met up with Teine  during one of his visits to the 51st century and he invited her into his TARDIS for as long as she was willing to stay—or for coming and going whenever she felt like it.      This was originally a RP thread we wrote back in late-2015/early-2016.

Martha descended the stairs from the upper levels of the TARDIS, having just used the nearest loo. As she made her way down, the top of the Doctor's spiky chestnut crown of hair rose above the horizon of her sight.

What she didn't expect was to quickly see him naked by the time she'd reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Oh, blimey!" she exclaimed, quickly spinning around until her back was to him. "I'm sorry!"

The Doctor jumped at the sound of Martha's voice, head snapping round before he dove for the nearest place of cover.

"For Rassilon's sake, Martha, give me some warning, won't you?!" he snapped, eyes scanning the floor for any sign of his shirt.

Nothing.

"Um, you wouldn't have happened to see my shirt anywhere, have you?"

"Um, no." Martha still had her back turned. "And what're you doing in the console room like that anyway? I just went to the loo—I didn't expect to see you half-naked in here!"

"And I wasn't expecting company!" he retorted, realizing the half-second the words were out of his mouth how ridiculous he sounded. He ducked his head, rubbed at his eyes. "Sorry. But if you really want to know… I have somnambulism." It was a lie—he didn't—but saying he was a sleepwalker seemed better than the alternative: that he'd woken from a nightmare and gone to the console room to try and calm down, or maybe work on the TARDIS's rather faulty wiring and circuits before going back to what passed for sleep in Time Lords.

Sleepwalking. Martha wasn't completely sure she bought his explanation, but her gut told her it was a little close to the truth. But she felt sometimes, that she was peering at him through a crack in the door that only stayed open for seconds to let light through. Surely, he'd seen horrors…way before she'd even met him at Royal Hope Hospital. Was his sleepwalking provoked by nightmares? Trauma?

She wasn't going to pry. She decided, rather, to start to help him in the best way she knew how. She was not about to enter his bedroom and rummage through his things…but she had an idea.

"I'll be right back, Doctor," she declared, then ran back up the stairs and darted into the spare bedroom where she used to sleep when she traveled with him. Diving into the closet, she found…an old, dark red bathrobe she'd left behind. Yanking it from off the hanger, she rushed back through the doorway and sprinted down the stairs to the console room.

"Doctor…" she began softly. "It's one of my old robes, but…you can wear it for right now, if you like." She gazed at him, her dark eyes enlarging and shining a little in the golden light of the console room.

"Thanks," he said quietly, reaching for the robe and wrapping it around his skinny frame. He stuck his arms through the sleeves, wriggled the ends of his fingers a little before drawing the front of the robe over his chest and tying the sash.

As the Doctor put on the robe, Martha studied him a little more. Her gut told her, again, that something was really bothering him. Pondering for a moment, she decided that it was not a good idea to thrust her hand through the proverbial crack in the door, let it shut on her.

But she wasn't going to leave him alone, at least not for long. "Would some tea help…maybe just a little?" she offered as she gazed up at him. She half-felt stupid for it, but she figured it was a start.

A faint smile, then it was gone. "Yeah, thanks. Have some for yourself if you want."

Martha nodded, and said nothing else before turning and heading past the console up the steps into the upper corridors of the TARDIS. She wasn't exactly thrilled to leave him there by himself, but she'd only be gone a few minutes, to make the tea and then bring it back to the console room.

The old girl must have been trying to help, because she moved the kitchen a little closer to Martha: she saw the warm yellow glow of its overhead light ahead on the right.

She rummaged very briefly through one of the cupboards and found a box of good, old fashioned plain black tea; in short order, she found the kettle, filled it, and set it on to boil. Once it squeaked, she pulled it off and steeped it in a teapot. Gathering up the pot, a couple of cups, some cream, and a small bowl of sugar lumps, she carefully brought the tray from the kitchen down to the console room.

The Doctor was lounging in the jump seat when she returned and toying absent-mindedly with the sash on the robe. He glanced up at the smell of the tea, accepted one of the cups from the tray and took a sip.

"How's everything been at the Time Agency lately?" he asked her.

Martha's eyes followed the Doctor's hands as he picked up one of the cups of tea and sipped on it. At his mention of the Time Agency, she let out a long sigh.

"I'm thinking of leaving, actually," she finally admitted, after setting the tray down on the floor grating just inside the railing around the console and picking up her own cup of tea. "What happened to Jack…made me really think. And me myself, I've done too many things that I'm not proud of."

She blinked a moment, took a sip of her tea, and standing in front of the Doctor, gazed back at him. "In theory, he should have recognised me on Malcassairo, but he didn't. That's because of them erasing two years' worth of his memories. I joined the Agency in that two-year period."

She shook her head sadly. "Even if he did remember but refrained from saying anything to avoid corrupting my own timeline, there would have been something. A look in his eyes, maybe. Something that might have struck me as odd back then, but would make sense to me now."

Lifting the cup to her lips, she drank another small sip of tea before continuing. "I know I had to be very careful of what I said to him at the Time Agency. I couldn't tell past Jack about his future. I wouldn't." She sighed again. "But they took away two years of his life, Doctor."

"I know. He told me that when I first met him with Rose in 1940s war-torn London. Don't know if he ever got his memories back—I never asked, didn't want to find out. And even if I could do some telepathic trick that would help him regain the memories… I won't."

He took another sip, then held the cup in his lap, glanced down and pretended to be very interested in the dregs swirling around. After a few moments of silence, he spoke again: "What did they make you do, Martha?" Another thought struck him. "You never ran into any Victorian-robed figures wearing skull masks, did you?"

He wouldn't have been surprised if any Time Agents had run into Faction Paradox members, considering their similar lines of work. But then again… maybe she hadn't. The Faction, after all, preferred to shroud themselves in myth and legend—much like his own people. Considering their founder had once belonged to one of Gallifrey's Great Houses… it wasn't all that surprising.

Martha nodded. What was done, was done. She herself could tell Jack at least some of what they'd taken from him. But she hadn't. In fact, she'd tried to avoid hopping back to twenty-first century Cardiff unless she was on assignment…and when she did, she watched Jack from a distance, to make sure he was doing okay. Well, relatively so, considering he was still with Torchwood Three.

Surely, Jack thought she was gone for good. Let him think that for now.

Martha froze a little at the Doctor's next question. "I'm not sure I even want to talk about it," she said quietly. "When I was with U.N.I.T. and Torchwood, I had to kill. But…I did it to either defend myself or save lives. But…" She paused for a moment, staring down into her own cup of tea, and then gazed back up at the Doctor with troubled eyes. "I've killed a lot more times than I ever bargained for."

She tilted her head and looked at him curiously when he asked about strange beings. "I haven't," she admitted. "But…I heard rumours about them from the other Agents. Thankfully, no one really had a serious run-in with them. The rumours were is that they were some sort of aliens or something, but nobody every figured out what they were."

He snorted at that. "Hardly. The Faction recruits from all sorts of races, though most of their agents are human."

"I beg your pardon?" Martha cradled the bottom of her teacup with the palm of her left hand while she stared at the Doctor. "What's this faction you just mentioned?"

"Faction Paradox. It's a family affair." He waved his fingers in a spooky manner, then shrugged. "They're necromancers. They summon into our time-stream things that never were, things that were never meant to be. They revel in paradoxes, causal loops, anything that tangles the Web of Time more and more, until the order of the universe is lost in a mass of exceptions and impossibilities.

"These are people to whom the whole reason for linear existence is to see that existence transcended. Or, as we would see it, destroyed.

"There are those who say the Faction create their paradoxes through the use of… other Spirits. Then again, there are those who say they're just a bunch of jumped-up charlatans putting on an impressive act.

"Then again," he added with another shrug, "they say the same thing about me."

Martha gazed back at him. "So…basically instead of escaping the material world, they choose to fuck it up by using paradoxes until the whole mess destroys itself." She shook her head. "Well…what if after all this is gone, there's…nothing? Who would they find in the dark aftermath of it all to chat with and compare notes to see if they'd even succeeded?"

"I don't think they'd really care, to be honest. They live in the Eleven-Day Empire—it's sort of a splinter universe from ours. Trust me, you don't want to go there. And really, right now they have their own problems to deal with, what with the aftermath of the Time War and the Eleven-Day Empire being eaten by Lolita.

"Besides…" Here, for once, the Doctor looked almost uncomfortable. "Their founder, Grandfather Paradox, used to belong to one of the Houses on Gallifrey. Then he became disinterested with their diseased pretensions to immortality and separated from them, and turned his House into a timetravelling, time-active, ritualistic cult based in part in the beliefs of voodoo, time travel with the marked interest in paradoxes and death fetishism that is now their trademark, both rejecting the immortality the Houses sought and ridiculing the Laws of Time. …Did I mention that he's the first one to ever go back and murder his own grandfather? And he's pretty much the embodiment of all potential evil in the universe?"

Martha shuddered. Eaten? She didn't even want to think about the possibilities, so she decided not to ask just exactly what the Doctor meant by that.

When he mentioned Grandfather Paradox going back in time to murder his own grandfather, she shuddered again. "I don't doubt that," she replied, taking another sip from her teacup and glancing back up at him after he explained more about the Faction; then suddenly her mind brightened, and an old memory flooded with new light. "So that's why you looked at me real strange when I asked about accidentally killing my own grandfather back in 1599 London."

"Yeah. That's how the Faction initiates new recruits: if you're human, you go back and murder your father—or grandfather. It makes them more resistant to time-based attacks."

"Blimey," Martha muttered. "Not the sort you'd want to mess with." She paused to drink another sip of tea before continuing. "But I asked that because it was my first experience time traveling. I didn't want to, you know, accidentally cause a paradox."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "We were in 1599 London. What were the possible odds of you killing your grandfather?"

"I pulled that one out of my arse," she admitted. "When I was younger, I remember reading something in a science magazine once about theories in time travel…I was trying to remember time paradoxes and I couldn't think of the name. It was the grandfather paradox. But…I remembered the concept. That's what I was asking about."

"And now that you know Grandfather Paradox actually existed?"

"Can't help but wonder if the theory was named after him," she mused, gazing back at him with unblinking eyes. "In any case, the whole idea of him—and the Faction, to be honest—sounds bloody frightening."

"It wouldn't surprise me if it was. As for him being frightening… Yeah, he is, considering he's a monstrous undead paradox whose shape changes depending on who's looking at him—and that shape is a twisted image of everything you swore you'd never be. The Faction, on the other hand…" He snorted. "Dangerous? Like hell they are. They go in for the skull masks and voodoo and biodata rituals and fancy costumes. They're very big on aesthetics. And when you get the shadow weapons involved…"

"Wait. Hang on a tic. Shadow weapons?" Martha stared back at the Doctor in partially disbelief. But…after what she'd seen with Torchwood and U.N.I.T. it halfway didn't surprise her.

Flashing back to her time at Torchwood before she was snatched up by the Rift, her mind drifted a little; the Resurrection Gauntlet flashed briefly in her memory but she shoved it away quickly. She made a strong mental note to herself never to mention it around the Doctor. ever.

"Yep," he said, popping the 'p.' "Godfathers and Godmothers can even time travel using their own shadows, though they tend to degrade with use. Cousins have independent shadows called sombras que corta—it translates to 'shadows that cut'—that they graft weapons onto. A cousin's shadow can rip a room full of enemies to pieces while the cousin could just be sitting at a table drinking tea. Fascinating, isn't it? And that's not even counting the biodata virus."

"What?"

Martha's eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. She'd heard of tales like this: mysterious deaths where entire roomfuls of people were decapitated, dismembered, ripped apart like gingerbread men…but no assailant ever seen, no weapons every found. And she remembered whispered rumours…that something like that had happened on Jack's last mission.

But if this was the cause of the chaos on jack's last mission…how'd he get out alive?

"You heard me," he said with a faint smile. "Trust me, you don't want to contract the biodata virus. Biodata… it's like a 4-dimensional DNA pattern. It maps out who you are and how you affect a timeline. The virus latches onto your biodata and messes about with your history so that you become a servant of Paradox before you even contracted it." He pulled a face. "It happened to one of my companions. Not good. Not fun."

Martha nodded. "We encountered some strange sort of thing fitting that description when I was still working at U.N.I.T. Definitely was a virus. But before I could continue my studies of the sample we'd found, U.N.I.T sent me over to Torchwood Three. They'd only intended for me to be gone a few days, maybe a week…and that's when the Rift snatched me up…"

Her eyes suddenly widened and she bolted up. "Hang on a tic!" she exclaimed, staring hard at the Time Lord and leaning closer to him. "Do they have the capability to manipulate the rift?"

"Maybe…? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how their technology works. Even they don't completely know how it works—if it's just highly advanced tech or if some of it's magic and guided by the Spirits. They might be able to manipulate the Rift, but then again, they might not. This is, of course, assuming they even know about the Rift in the first place. I mean, why else would anyone want to go to Cardiff?"

Martha nodded slowly. This was giving her more questions than she had answers. "Before today, I've always thought the Rift was kind of a random thing…a wound in time and space doing what it will," she offered. "It was the only explanation I could give myself after it'd had snatched me up. During those ten years I was in fifty-second century London, and being stuck there, with no way back." She chuckled darkly. "Popped out some grey hairs in that time period, that's for sure."

"And that's when you joined the Agency, I'm guessing. So, are they actual time police, or are they just more like the Celestial Intervention Agency and muck around with time for their own gain?"

"Best comparison I can make is a time traveling black ops," Martha replied. "Sometimes we just investigate, but a lot of times we've altered events. The purpose being to change without interfering, to leave an effect with no evidence of cause."

He snorted. "Sounds like the CIA to me."

Martha shrugged. "That's a fair comparison," she admitted. "Similar tactics, different operators."

"I was a member of the CIA once," he commented off-handedly. "Suppose I still am, technically." There was a sarcastic twitch of his mouth. "Not that there's any members left. And as for the Celestis… They turned themselves into beings of pure energy in order to escape the War in Heaven."

"That musta been a while back for you," Martha mused, gazing back at the Time Lord. When he mentioned the final fate of its remaining members, she wrinkled her nose. "Blimey. That's one hell of a way to escape."

"Didn't do them much good in the Last Great Time War," he said darkly. "Or in the war against the Enemy."

"I'd imagine not," Martha quickly replied before taking one last gulp of her tea, which was nearly cold by now. "So how'd you get roped into working with them?"

"They forced me. The Celestial Intervention Agency had a tendency to do that—force Time Lords to join. Their official purpose was to protect whatever lay in the Time Lords' best interests, though their motives were often questionable, and we never could be certain as to which side the Agency belonged to—it was largely neutral, rather than a specific force for good or evil. Still…" His voice trailed off as he stared into space in a frozen way for a few seconds, then abruptly he abruptly shook his head as if to clear away the memories.

Martha nodded. Deciphering that there were horrid memories behind his eyes, she decided not to ask him anything else about the CIA. "Blimey," she replied softly. "I'm not really surprised to hear you say that. Seems like that sort of thing is a constant no matter where you go in the universe."

The Doctor barked out a harsh half-laugh at that. "No kidding. I mean, my people didn't have a concept of sin or of good and evil, but still…"

Martha sighed and ran a hand through her long, dark hair. "You know what's really weird? I feel like I should remember the Faction. But I don't. I'm sure in two year's time I would have been told about them, considering the Time Agency is sort of in the same line of work, really."

The Time Lord shrugged. "Like I've said, the Faction's got their own problems. Besides, most people think they're just myths anyway. Jack thought the Time War and the Daleks were a myth. He probably thought the same about my people until he started traveling with me."

Martha nodded, leaning back against one of the coral pillars. "I do remember other Time Agents speculating about Gallifrey and Time Lords. Real, or not." She chuckled. "And I can personally vouch for what Jack thought. To him, Time Lords were like unicorns—mythical and non-existent. Of course, I didn't bother to correct him."

"Of course you didn't." One corner of his mouth twitched in a sardonic half-smile. "Although… I've seen a lot of things in my time. Werewolves, Yeti, vampires, actual witches… and yes, even unicorns. One tried to spear Fitz in San Francisco with its horn and then we realized it just wanted some chocolate. We came across a herd later, and there was a Kraken in the bay at the time. …"

Martha laughed. "I suppose I'm a kindred spirit with that unicorn then," she joked.

But the mention of the Kraken caught her ear. "I used to think they were mythical." She gazed at him, eyes brightening with interest. "I'd never think that one would get in San Francisco bay, however."

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. "Normally there isn't. But my biodata had been strung all across the city by a certain time-travelling cult and there was an 'unnaturalist' hanging out in his ship bringing in mythological creatures from different dimensions so he could study them. There was also a space-time rift caused by the Master opening the Eye of Harmony when i'd first regenerated into my eighth form in San Francisco, and the kraken was drawn to it. It's complicated."

"I don't doubt it," Martha mused, listening intently. "Before I got snatched up by the Rift, we were trying to find out more about it at UNIT. Our initial findings suggested it's not of Earth origin, but I never found out any more than that. Got sent to Torchwood and, well, you know…"

"Well, the Rift in Cardiff is an actual space-time rip. It's just… there. Even I don't really know why, to be honest. The one in San Francisco was a scar, one the TARDIS threw herself into in order to help close… but it was in agony and tearing her apart. We closed it on account of Dark Sam—the original Sam—running into my biodata, but when she did that she created the blonde Sam that had traveled with me—that Sam had gone missing." He shrugged. "As the Faction would say, a neat little paradox."

Martha listened intently. "Certainly sounds like it," she mumbled, then a quite seriously look washed over her face. "I've had near misses meeting other Marthas from other timelines, but I've lucked out so far. Once I was given a flash drive of classified information that was meant for the version of me who worked for UNIT at the time." She sighed. "Which got me hauled into Scotland Yard."

The Doctor quirked an eyebrow at that. "Really? You weren't arrested, were you?"

"Thankfully, no," she replied with a soft sigh, folding her arms across her chest. "I had no reason to keep the bloody thing. It had nothing to do with my mission at the time, so I just handed it over. It was Mycroft Holmes who dragged me into there, and in that universe Scotland Yard worked closely with UNIT and Torchwood. I figured the other Martha needed it way more than I did." She ended with a bit of a sly grin.

"I bet she did," the Doctor muttered. He leaned back, crossed his legs. "So, anything else you want to know about the Faction?"

Martha peered up, scrunching her nose in thought. "Hang on, I think I might," she murmured before looking back at the Doctor, her eyes widening with a sudden thought. "Actually, I do. If they go back and alter someone's timeline, is there any sort of logic to whose timelines they choose to alter."

As silly as it might sound, Martha was hoping they hadn't altered hers. After all, the Agency, in a sense, was in the same business as the Faction, minus its drama and cultish aspects.

"Well…" For a brief moment, the Doctor looked uncomfortable. "They wouldn't necessarily have to go back on someone's personal timeline. Change that person's biodata, you change the person."

Martha felt a mild shudder ripple underneath her skin. "And they'd know nothing at all," she murmured, not liking the way she felt at all right now: the dread creeping behind her navel, her abdomen muscles tightening.

"For most humans, no. You're nowhere near time-sensitive enough, but your subconscious might pick up on a few details that weren't there before. Dealing with memories is… tricky. False ones can be planted and are so vivid you think they're real; given long enough, your memory of past events will be colored, altered. Some can be erased altogether. When you've been alive as long as I have…" The Doctor cleared his throat. "Anyway. You—along with my other companions—have traveled through the Vortex, which may or may not make it a little more difficult." He slid her a sideways glance. "And what with you being a Time Agent and former companion of the 'Evil Renegade'… they'd be interested in you, don't you think?"

"That's exactly what worries me," Martha confessed. "I can't explain it, but I do feel as if I'm missing a few memories. I don't have any proof of this, yet. Not sure if I ever will."

She let out a long sigh and ran her hand through her dark hair, then gazed back at the Time Lord with sober eyes. "Then again…I was trapped in the Void," she added, swallowing a small, dry lump. "For only a few minutes…at most…but I'm not ruling out that being there hasn't mucked about with my head, either."

The Doctor tilted his head slightly as he studied her, thought for a moment. "The Eternals called it the Howling. Others called it Hell. So It wouldn't surprise me if being trapped in there mucked about with your head." He decided not to mention the effect being trapped in the Divergent universe had on an alternate eighth incarnation—being somewhere where time didn't exist was literally like having a limb torn off. He imagined that the Void would be worse.

"Hell's about right," the Time Agent mumbled, still gazing soberly at the Doctor. "I'm half-tempted to go back and tell Dante a thing or two, but…"

Quickly, she shook her head, as if to clear the awful memory from her mind, but she knew the truth; there was no ridding herself of it. She could distract herself – as she did with all the space hopping – but the feeling of being suspended inside sheer nothingness was only a thought away.

Martha decided to quickly change the subject. "You feelin' any better, Doctor?" she inquired, studying his eyes, or…well, as close as she felt comfortable looking at them. Truth be told, when she could do that for more than a second or two, she found them beautiful, yet unearthly; but she always had to glance away. From what the Time Agent sensed, she imagined that looking too much longer would like staring at both the sun and into an abyss at the same time; those who were wise just didn't.

"Yeah, thanks." Xir mouth quirked in a half-hearted attempt at what xe hoped was a reassuring smile. "If there's anything you want to know more about…" xe started to offer, then stopped. The Doctor wasn't quite sure if she asked xem about information regarding xir past in the War or xir home planet how much more xe would tell her—xe'd spilled enough closely-guarded secrets as it was for one night. (Well, insomuch as it could be considered night on a timeship modeled out of pure mathematics floating through space when it wasn't piloting itself through the Time Vortex.)

Xe cleared xir throat and ducked xir head from her questioning gaze, unsure of what she'd seen in xir eyes—if she'd seen anything at all.

Martha could sense the Time Lord's discomfort, a little. Well, as much as she could, even for the walls he always seemed to be ready to raise at a moment's notice.

She decided not to pry any further; the Time Agent sucked in a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. "Right then," she said, after waiting through a space of (somewhat) uncomfortable silence.

"I think I'll go to bed. If you need me, you come find me, Mister." The last words, she added with a (partially) easy smile, reaching out and clasping his shoulder, squeezing to reassure. "G'night," she said, watching him for just a quick moment before turning to walk past the console and up the stairs to the corridor leading to her bedroom.

"Good night, Martha." His gaze tracked her path up the stairs, stayed there while she disappeared. Already he knew that he wouldn't be going to her room tonight.

He hardly ever did.

[precise-desolation]

[[Okay, guys.  I am slowly, slowly working my way through drafts.  I’ve been mostly over on my Doctor Who blogs lately.  What with the reveal of the Thirteenth Doctor’s actress (yes, actress; I am excited) and with having finally watched Scream of the Shalka recently, I’ve kind of thrown myself headlong back into that fandom.  I haven’t consistently watched the show since sometime in undergrad.  Mostly because I didn’t get BBCA, but also because I just got so fed up with Eleven and his companions who were puzzles rather than people that I didn’t feel like making the effort to keep up anymore. 

And I am very long-winded and also a huge Whovian, so I will put the rest of my rambling under a read-more.

But my roommate and I are watching New Who (we started with Nine because he’d never seen any Doctor Who) and Twelve has given me hope.  Watching Clara change when she was with Twelve verses when she was with Eleven is like night and day.  Takes a few episodes, but it’s like “Wow, you’re actually a human being with actual flaws and strengths and feelings and not just an enigma with no personality.”  I do rather agree with the theory that Peter Capaldi came in and led a revolt and somewhere along the lines they just tied Moffat up and shoved him in a broom closet, because the writing did basically a complete 180.  It still has its issues, to be sure, but it’s amazing the differences.

I’ve also, as I said, watched Scream of the Shalka finally.  It’s part of the Doctor Who Extended Universe (or EU) and hails from the time after the movie but before New Who when BBC was almost certain they would never get the show back on air.  Their solution?  The internet.  It’s this very short six part flash animated story arc featuring a new Doctor and Master.  Of course, if you’re familiar with the movie, the Master dies at the end.  But more specifically, he falls into the Eye of Harmony, which is basically the heart of the TARDIS.  That bit is important.  And then at the very end of the movie, the Eighth Doctor receives a message about a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks and returns to Gallifrey to lend whatever aid he can.

Of course, that movie was supposed to bring the show back on air.  (I remember my dad losing it over that.  Have I mentioned I was raised by utter nerds?)  But it just kinda... didn’t.  That was the only thing Eight ever appeared in on screen until Night of the Doctor, the short prequel to the 50th anniversary special, Day of the Doctor.  A full seventeen years later.  (Although they did do another flash animated short featuring the Eighth Doctor around the same time as Scream of the Shalka.)  Now, this was back in the day before YouTube.  Yes, there was an internet before YouTube.  We had things like NewGrounds and Albino Black Sheep.  Which featured a shitton of flash animated videos.  I remember this because I am old.  But in keeping up with the tech of the day, they flash animated these arcs.  Which can make them a bit odd to watch if you aren’t used to that.

Scream of the Shalka, though...  It introduced the first Ninth Doctor and a new version of the Master.  This iteration was later replaced in the primary canon by Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor when New Who started.  There are some striking similarities in the two, but also a world of difference.  Eccleston’s Nine was very much a soldier who had seen too much of war.  That was true, too, of Shalka Nine.  However, the Shalka Doctor was much, much closer in characterization to the Classic Who Doctors.  I think the only New Who Doctor who has come even remotely close is Twelve, but even there the differences between Old and New are steep.  There’s a huge difference, too, in the characterization of the Master between Old and New Who.  Again, I’d say the closest to the Classic Who characterization is Missy.  So it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that the dynamic between Twelve and Missy is also the closest to the dynamic between the Master and Doctor of Classic Who out of all the Masters and Doctors of New Who.  But the Shalka Doctor and Master retain that very definite “best frienemies” sort of relationship.  They act like an old married couple, assuming that married couple consists of a psychopath who enjoys making the other’s day miserable in tiny, petty ways and also occasionally poisoning their food and a put-upon “responsible” partner who runs around the universe cleaning up the other’s messes.

So some of the things I’ve mentioned earlier should make it no surprise that I grew up on Classic Who reruns.  My father actually wanted to name me after one of the Fifth Doctor’s companions, that is the extent to which this has been involved in my life.  I watched primarily Four and Six growing up, but did see bits and pieces of the others.  And one thing I have always loved is the relationship between the Doctor and Master.  It’s dysfunctional as all hell and most definitely not healthy, but it’s also interesting and oddly charming.  Mostly, I think, for their snark and pettiness over ridiculous things at some times but their genuine concern for one another at others.  And they did care for one another, no matter how disturbing the manner in which that care and affection was expressed.  They had been close friends since childhood, a point which is addressed in both Classic and New Who as well as extensively explored in the EU.  Their relationship was dynamic and layered and interesting to watch unfold.

Scream of the Shalka retains that.  As I said earlier, at the end of the movie, the Master dies by way of falling into the Eye of Harmony.  The heart of the TARDIS.  The TARDIS is no ordinary ship, though.  It’s sentient.  It is essentially a living, intelligent being that grows and changes and expresses opinions and makes decisions.  It just also happens to be a bio-mechanical entity.  And it exists across all of space and time simultaneously, which is how it’s able to travel the way it does.  So basically what you have, then, is a living mobile supercomputer.  Another detail about Time Lords is that when they die, their consciousness is uploaded into a huge database, called the Matrix.  (No, I could not make that up if I tried.)  Time Lord technology.  So it stands to reason that if Time Lords can upload their consciousness into what amounts to a really advanced computer data base, then a sentient supercomputer of a species that has co-evolved with and been heavily influenced by Time Lords would be able to do the same thing.  This is why the manner of the Master’s death is significant.  He fell into the heart of the TARDIS.  His physical body would have been destroyed, as the Eye of Harmony is basically a star trapped in an endless sate of decay.  But I see no reason why his consciousness, which basically amounts to electrical impulses, couldn’t have been uploaded by the TARDIS.

So if he was destroyed, how is he present?  Well, that’s not terribly clear.  You see, all we really have, at least in a film format, of the Shalka Doctor and Master is six, fifteen minute episodes.  Not a whole lot of time for backstory.  However, two things are revealed that are extremely significant.  The first is that the Doctor is apparently not able to travel freely.  Someone - ostensibly the Gallifreyan High Counsel, since it’s not addressed whether or not Gallifrey survived the war in this timeline and the Doctor was living as a fugitive prior to the war - seems to be controlling or limiting his and his TARDIS’s ability to move within the Time Vortex, just based on his dialogue.  So he is seemingly a prisoner in his own TARDIS.  That does make the Master’s presence make more sense.  Evidently, at some point the Doctor was either so desperate for company or missed his friend so badly that he built an android fashioned after the Master.  (He appears to be a blend of Delgado and Jacobi.)  One would have to assume, then, that he was also able to download the Master’s consciousness from the TARDIS into the android.  Now, the Doctor is many things, but an idiot is not one of them.  Letting the Master back out to roam the universe, this time in a body made of circuitry rather than soft, vulnerable flesh, would be a terrible mistake.  The Doctor may be fond of the Master, perhaps even love him, but he is also aware that the Master is dangerous.  Because of this, he has fail-safes built in that don’t allow him to leave the TARDIS and that give the Doctor the ability to switch him off if need be.

And if you’re wondering, I do have good reason for thinking all of these things.  As far as the Doctor and Master’s relationship, when the Master is first introduced in Scream of the Shalka, he tells Alisha that “I pride myself that I am the dearest companion of the owner of this craft.”  Fast forward to New Who and we have a scene where Missy gifts the Twelfth Doctor a legion of cybermen so that they can conquer the universe together.  The Tenth Doctor tries to get the Master to abandon his scheming and run away with him to see the universe together.  Their close, if horrendously fucked up, relationship is a well documented fact of the Whoniverse.

And then there’s the situation with the Doctor’s ability to travel and with the Master’s reappearance as an android.  In one of the first scenes of Shalka, the Doctor is seen seemingly shouting at the sky that “I won’t do it!”  It’s worth noting that at this point he doesn’t even know what “it” is.  He basically walked out of his TARDIS, went ‘this is not the time/place I was looking for,’ and then declares he won’t do it.  “It” ends up being saving humanity.  Again.  As to the Master, given what we know of Time Lord tech, the nature of TARDISes, and the manner of his most recent death, it’s really the only logical answer.

And I don’t even remember where I was going with all of this, but it’s a quarter to 3am.  So I am going to go sleep now before I ramble for another two pages or so.]]

[mayalr96]

The Two Doctors Story 5: Revelations Part 8

This chapter was emotionally exhausting.

Part 7/10, here we go!

For those of you who don’t like reading from here, you can also find this on FF.net or AO3.

“Then choose one to die.”

The Doctor didn’t think he would be too far off if he said that the room was so quiet one could hear a pin dropping to the ground after Hankel – Raphael, Spencer called him – spoke.

“What?” Spencer asked, clearly as shocked and scared as the rest of them.

“Your team members,” Raphael said. “Choose one to die.”

“Kill me.”

The Doctor felt his hearts breaking as Spencer spoke. He always made sure to distinguish between the Professor and Spencer, knowing that much like Statum they were very different versions of his oldest friend, but the three were never as similar as they were now.

“You said you weren't one of them,” Raphael accused.

“I lied,” Spencer said simply, and the Doctor knew they both understood he was closer and closer to sealing his fate with every word that came out of his mouth.

Amy fell to the floor, her legs unable to hold her up any longer, and Rory kneeled by her side, hugging her tightly. They both closed their eyes, but they couldn’t stop themselves from hearing what was being said.

JJ pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to hold back tears, while Garcia gave up altogether and let the salty water make trails on her face. Prentiss looked like she was going to be sick. Hotch was struggling to keep himself together. Morgan looked more heartbroken than anything else, his feelings on the matter clearly very similar to the Doctor’s – the Time Lord knew Derek was very close to Spencer, and that they would only grow closer in the years to come.

Only Gideon seemed almost indifference – that was, if the Doctor couldn’t physically feel every emotion that was rolling off him in waves.

“Your team has six other members,” Raphael said. “Tell me who dies.”

“No.”

Wordlessly, Raphael pulled a gun out of his pocket. He turned the cartridge, and it was clear to everyone in the room what he was doing as he aimed it right between Spencer’s eyes.

Russian Roulette.

“Choose,” Raphael ordered, “And prove you'll do God's will.”

“No.”

Everybody held their breaths as Raphael pulled the trigger.

Click.

“Choose,” Raphael repeated.

“I won't do it.”

Click.

“Life is a choice.”

“No.”

Click.

“Choose.”

The Doctor closed his eyes. Spencer’s odds were so small right now, and for some reason his regeneration cycle wasn’t properly functioning. If the next pull of trigger will release a bullet, Spencer won’t make it. He’d be dead, for good.

This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose Spencer, not when he was already certain he lost him once today.

“I…” Spencer started, and the Doctor was certain this was it, this was when his oldest friend was going to die. “I choose the Doctor.”

Every person in the room turned their heads to look at the Doctor, studying his response. Spencer’s team members, even Amy and Rory were curious as to how the Time Lord will take the fact that his oldest friend had just put him up as sacrifice.

The Doctor didn’t acknowledge their looks, instead opening his eyes and looking at the screen.

“What?” Raphael asked in disbelief.

“You want a sinner?” Spencer asked. “You won’t find a bigger one. He’s a killer and a thief, an adulterer. If I start telling you of all the sins he committed, we’ll be here until tomorrow. But that’s not why I’m telling you to kill him. That’s not my reason,” he added darkly.

“What is?” Raphael questioned.

“I’d like to see you try.”

The Doctor felt like a ton of bricks were taken off his shoulders, and if Spencer wasn’t still stuck Rassilion-knows-where with this madman, he might have let himself relax.

“I want to see you go after him,” Spencer went on. “I want to see you try, because I know you won’t succeed. I was never much of a believer, and there are little thing I have faith in, but I trust him.”

“Careful what you speak, boy,” Raphael warned. “Your words are blasphemy!”

“Then so be it,” Spencer said. “Doesn’t change the fact that I do. I trust him. Always have, always will. I trust him because that’s what Lundi would have done,” he added, and the Doctor felt his heart clench at the sound of a name he hadn’t thought about in centuries. “And even if you kill me, I will die in peace,” Spencer said, looking right at the camera – right at the Doctor. “I will die in peace knowing I will be buried by her side.”

The Doctor didn’t wait a moment, all but running out of the room. He needed to clear his mind, he needed to think because if he wasn’t wrong – and he was quite certain he wasn’t wrong – Spencer had just solved his own kidnapping case.

“Doctor!” Amy called out, running after him. “Doctor, wait!”

“You want a sinner? You won’t find a bigger one.”

“I want to see you try, because I know you won’t succeed.”

“I trust him because that’s what Lundi would have done.”

“I will die in peace knowing I will be buried by her side.”

“Doctor,” Amy breathed out, finally reaching him. “Don’t – he said your name because he believes Hankel can’t kill you.”

“No,” the Doctor said. “He said my name for a whole different reason. Oh, he is brilliant!”

“Doctor?” Hotch asked, walking into the room with the rest of the team in tow. “What is it?”

“What was wrong about what Spencer said?” the Doctor asked, looking between them. “Come on, he’s your friend – you know it. I know you do. It’s even written in his files. No? Nobody? Come on,” he added, turning to Prentiss. “You know this. I know you do. I know he told you.”

“He…” Prentiss started carefully, going over what Spencer said in her head before her eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”

“What?” Morgan asked. “Emily, what is it?”

“’I will be buried by her side’,” she quoted. “That makes no sense.” She turned to look at Gideon and Hotch. ��You read his files, you know better than everyone…”

“Reid wants to be cremated post-mortem,” Gideon said in understanding.

“It’s more than that,” the Doctor said. “He mentioned Lundi, and how he’d be buried next to her.”

“So?” JJ said.

“So,” the Doctor explained, “Lundi was never buried. There was…” he swallowed before resuming. “There wasn’t enough left of her to bury.”

She burned in fire and smoke when he destroyed Gallifrey. She perished along with the rest of their people, at the end of the biggest War to have ever rage the universe. The Doctor shook his head slightly, throwing the thought away.

“Why would he mention it twice?” he questioned. “Lundi was never buried, and he never wants to be buried, so why would he mention burial twice?”

“You think he’s in a cemetery?” Hotch asked in understanding.

“I think it’s worth a shot to check,” the Doctor said. “Garcia, how fast can you get us the location of every graveyard in the radius we marked?”

“Already on it,” Garcia said, and the group couldn’t help but share a small, nervous smile.

They just might be one step closer to finding Spencer.