by Cour M.
And that meant that he would have to find something else to live for. Travelling would have to come to an end.[13]
⌛
Walking through his old TARDIS, he reached the control room. His eyes widened in surprise however when he noticed that the door was just closing. This meant that someone had just left.
Worried that it was Martha or Satsuki who were going somewhere, his overprotective side ignited. He silently crept up to the doors, opened it and he saw that it was parked on a public street, in San Francisco, California.
The sight of it immediately sparked memories, and he knew that he was not following Satsuki or Martha. Only one person in the TARDIS would desire to go there. He crept along and up ahead, he saw Eight walking ahead, wearing a sweater, corduroy jacket and jeans, looking very much unlike himself. Ten followed him, just for the sake of curiosity.
Eventually, they arrived at a home and Ten kept his distance as Eight knocked on a door to a house. The door opened and Grace appeared. In seeing her, it sparked Ten’s memory of when he regenerated and they had his first adventure as Eight with her. She had been his very first companion when he had turned into Eight, and therefore, she had a great affection for him. And he had it for her as well.
Grace smiled broadly when Eight was standing in front of her, at her door.
“Doctor!” She cried, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him warmly. “You came back again!”
“Of course I did,” Eight laughed, hugging her, “you know I always try to. Is this a bad time?”
“Do you mind meeting the entire family?” Grace asked.
“How many kids do you have this time?” Eight asked as they walked in.
“Four. And it’s my birthday party, so don’t worry, I’ll do my best to make you feel comfortable.”
“Well, I’m up for it. And happy birthday!”
Eight disappeared inside of Grace’s home, and Ten saw her introduce him to her family through the window. Eight was doing a good job of immersing himself in the group, and therefore Ten found a bench, sat there, and watched the scene. Every fresh memory that Eight was making, Ten was remembering it in that exact moment. It was quite incredible and painful all at once. To be watching something that you are remembering simultaneously, it was so strange.[14]
⌛
Eventually Eight took his leave of the party, and Grace hugged him farewell. Eight emerged from the house, with Grace closing the door behind her.
“Try not to stay away too long, okay?” Grace urged, “and take me out to a movie or something.”
“Movie from the past, or the future?” Eight asked, “I’m not in the mood to stick in the present.”
“The past,” Grace replied, “you know that I’m nostalgic.”
“I do, I do, I very much do.”
Grace smiled at him once more and their eyes said farewell when their mouths didn’t.
“Till the next time, Doctor.”
“Yes, always so.”
Grace closed the door, and Eight jumped down the porch steps, walking briskly away. Yet he halted when Ten was sitting on the bench.
“Sorry,” Ten looked bashful.
“Ah, following me,” Eight remarked, “not surprised really, because you do have a bit of a stalker look.”
“Please! You look like Oscar Wilde on Gallifrey gas. And what’s with the change in clothes?”
“When I fought Weldon Jinn, he ruined my coat, and so I figured I’ll wear my clothes again when I find a good jacket to work with it.”
“Fair enough.”
“How are you?” Eight asked, genuine.
“I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”
Eight didn’t believe that for a minute.
“Come on,” he offered, “let’s go for a walk.”
Ten took him up on it and then they walked together down a few streets.
“What year are we in?”
“2017,” Eight replied.
“Ah.”
They found a bench that had a good view of the entire city, so they sat down on it.
“When we first were here,” Ten began, “I didn’t get a chance to really enjoy the city.”
“No, we did our traditional thing,” Eight added, “we did a lot of running around, and chasing a villain who we should have guarded better.”
“It always begins and ends with the Master.”
“Please tell me that in the future, we stop letting people suffer because we don’t stop him in time. Lie to me if you have to.”
“Then you place me in the role of a father lying to his child. Very well, yeah, we do stop him.”
“Works for me.”
There was a slight pause in the discussion, then finally Ten looked at his younger self.
“So, you still go back and see her from time to time?”
“Yes, I do. And I still come back here.”
“I forgot that about myself when I was you. I loved to go back and see things, even after I left them behind.”
“I never understood why we pretend like people don’t exist once they leave our TARDIS.”
“You know why.”
“Yes, but I also don’t. And with this city, I have no choice but to always want to come back.”
“Why?”
“You don’t understand? Because this was where I was born. When we regenerate, we’re being born again. Where was your place of origin?”
“I was a regeneration born in the TARDIS.”
“And I was a regeneration born here. This city was the first place this face of mine ever saw. So, it seared its way into my heart. Of course, we all wish to go back to the place we were born in, or to see the face who was the first face that we saw. It’s the way we’re built.”
Ten squinted, recalling how Rose was the first face that his incarnation had ever seen.
“And Grace was the first companion I had,” Eight added, “therefore, every now and again, my mind will always wonder back to her.”
“Yes, you never forget your first.”
“No, you don’t. By the way, after this adventure, you don’t have to worry. Martha and I shall go off, and find our own way.”
“You can stay, I don’t mind.”
“Yes, but you know that that’s not how we travel. We can meet ourselves, but we can’t remain together for too long.”
“There’s no rules, you know. Stop living by guidelines that don’t exist. Besides, I miss Martha.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. When she left, well, Satsuki and I got annoyed by it. We weren’t used to being a company of two. It hurt a bit, for me, like it hurt with Grace.”
“I forgot that about you, too,” Ten chuckled, “you were the ‘Doctor That Feels’.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be a prat about it. We all feel. We’ve always felt. We just pretend like we don’t. After all, feelings aren’t cool. And especially with us. We know how it is when we let our emotions get ahead of us. We make mistakes, have errors of judgment, and when we get angry, well—you’ve seen us; we can become as bad as the villains that we claim to fight.”
“Yes, I’ve been there.”
“But we always felt. Remember when we thought Peri died?”
Ten’s eyes closed, remembering when they thought their companion, Peri, had died when they were the Sixth Doctor. “Oh yeah, Peri! That almost killed us.”
“Yes, and after we suffered the loss, we had to try and forget our emotions, or we would have never gotten the job done. And remember when Jo left us?”
“Right, she had fallen in love with that blasted Professor Jones, who was so bloody presumptuous that he planned their marriage without even asking her first!”
“Yes, honestly Jo! Why did she marry him?!”
“Because she was in love. And we didn’t like it. Remember when the engagement was announced at the party? When everyone else was celebrating, toasting the engagement, and we just stood there, silent and disturbed.”
“Yes, then we silently
left the party, got into our car, and drove off. Out into the night. We put as much distance between ourselves and that party as we could. Finding comfort in solitude.”
“But it hurt,” Ten admitted, “it hurt so much.”
“Because we loved her. Like we loved Peri—like I love Martha. And they all leave, this we know, but for the longest time, we knew that if we showed it, if we allowed ourselves to feel, we would die. But then I came along. And something happened within me.”
“What?”
“I realized that I didn’t have forever. When we are born, we have the same feeling; that we are practically immortal. We could take on the universe. We are the mortal immortal. Yet I was born—distorted, I guess. I always felt like I was… not going to live forever. So, what was the point of waiting for things? What was the point of being afraid to feel things then? I’m not the Doctor who feels; we all feel. I suppose I’m just the one who admits that he does.”
“Yes, I suppose that is so.”
“So, back to Mecrellas, we have a problem.”
“Yes, we do.”
“We have the games, these infernal games. It took me so long to shut it down. And now our hands, for all intent and purposes, are tied. And they must appear to be.”
“Precisely. We cannot interfere, until something about this proves to be harmful to universal harmony. And to the Shadow Proclamation itself.”
“My first thought was to find a way to disable the window-bridges, but that much would take a huge amount of star power. I even thought to return to Gallifrey and retrieving the Hand of Omega again, but even if I wanted to go back, it would leave too many traces back to Gallifrey. Though a supernova would end this.”
Ten blinked.
“But we don’t need the Hand of Omega to do it, do we? Yes, we are causing vandalism, but we’ve done worse, so I’m not really complaining. We have…”
“What?”
“We have the Eye of Harmony connection that we stole from Gallifrey.”
“The Eye of Harmony that we had to steal to repair your TARDIS?”
“Yes,” Ten remarked, “that would be it.”
“A great sacrifice on your part.”
“Yes, it is. And I promised Martha that I would take her home.”
“I can do that. If she wants to go home.”
“She will.”
“If you say so.”
“But still, I promised that I would be the one to take her back.”
“You do know that we are the same person, right?”
“I know; it’s just a pride thing.”
“But it will be more than that. The Eye of Harmony connection must be somehow placed into sections by our TARDIS, so that we can take out all the space bridge windows that are located around Mecrellas.”
“The engine rebuilder room in the TARDIS will be able to do it, if I rewire the circuitry.”
“There we go. We’ve got a plan.”
“Yes, we do.”
Eight looked at Ten and saw how heartbroken he was. The very thing they got to save his TARDIS, he now had to sacrifice.
“Hopefully, by the time that we are done, my TARDIS can keep a section of the Eye of Harmony extract, and it may be fuel enough to restart your consul unit.”
“You and I both know that there is no hope, but I fuel on no hope like a Brexian hippopotamus fuels on hestine water sources. Therefore, when the time comes, we have a plan.”
Chapter 18
Tick Tock
“Brilliant!” Martha remarked, as she was in the wardrobe room of the TARDIS with Eight.
The next day had come, and Martha had woken up to find that Satsuki was no longer on the TARDIS. Eight had dropped her off because she had another performance to undergo for the day. Martha asked if they could attend, and Eight agreed to the idea of surprising Satsuki in seeing her performance that evening.
Yet since his coat was ruined, he had to get a new one, and Martha was eager to assist Eight in choosing one.
“Is this how it always is when you regenerate?” Martha asked, “because I noticed that you and Ten wear different fashion styles.”
“Yup, every time,” Eight said, “our fashion preferences change, therefore we have to come in here and choose different clothes.”
“Do you commonly get your clothes ruined, and therefore have to choose a different outfit?”
“Actually, we go through quite the long time before we have to change our clothes. Sometimes something we wear does get destroyed, but we usually just replace it with something that’s very similar. For example, when I was Three and Four, there were only a few things that I kept the same on me always. My Third self mostly just wore the same cravat and shoes. My fourth self always wore the same scarf and hat. Everything else varied from time to time. I don’t suppose that we actually started always wearing the same thing until we turned into Five.”
“What was your fashion preferences like during that time?”
“We wore striped pants—the same striped pants repeatedly.”
“No variation?” Martha asked, looking through the racks of clothes and giggling when she found a pink leopard sweater.
“Never.”
“And don’t ever wear this,” Martha advised, pointing to the pink leopard print.
“Don’t worry, definitely not in this regeneration. I can’t be blamed for what the next Doctor does during his regeneration, whoever he may be.”
“Ah!” Martha cried, finding a black coat, “eureka!”
“You just said eureka.”
“I did!”
“Let’s see if it was worth it.”
Martha removed the black jacket from the hanger and tossed it to him. It came to his knees and looked like it was his size.
“What do you think?”
“Let’s see,” Eight smirked. He walked up to a mirror, put it on and looked at himself.
“Stellar!” Eight remarked, then he turned and presented himself to Martha. “Well?”
“Stellar,” Martha echoed. “Now, you look smashing.”
Eight waltzed up to her and kissed her cheek.
“Yeah, I know,” he smirked.
“Oh, shut up, you! Now come on,” she clapped his face, amused. “We need to get ready for the performance. I don’t know what to wear to this sort of thing.”
“Wear a dress that has a flattering and form fitting waistline, is knee length, flat shoes, and has a wide and flowy skirt part.”
Martha looked at him queerly.
“Why that particular?”
“Because you never know when we need to run.”
“We’re going to a Geisha show. What can possibly go wrong?”
⌛
When Martha got dressed, she went to the consul room, to find Ten wearing a tuxedo. Taking one look at him, she had no choice but to confront the reality.
“Something is definitely going to go wrong.”
“I thought you said that the tuxedo wasn’t bad luck,” Ten remarked.
“By itself, no. But you’re wearing it. So, the proof is in the pudding.”
She walked up to Eight in his new coat, and Ten, and took their arms in hers.
“Now come on, let’s enjoy this show.”[15]
⌛
They attended the theatre, saw Satsuki’s performance, and they found it delightful. After the show, they were allowed entry to backstage, where Satsuki was getting out of makeup.
“Reports are in,” Satsuki said to Eight, “the next part of the Imitation Games will be a repeat of the Battle of Brandywine, which was a battle during the American Revolution.”
“They love that war,” Eight groaned.
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but at this point, this will be the tenth battle imitated from that war. But there’s a chance that the tourist numbers will be lower than before. The protestors are making more headway.”
“They are?” Martha asked, “that’s great, then.”
“People are beginning to believe them abou
t the disappearing tourists. Therefore, of course people aren’t going to want to travel in something that could kill them.”
“What do you mean?” Ten asked, loosening his bow-tie. “What’s killing tourists?”
“The trans-mats. Over forty people from different planets who used the trans-mat transportation systems to come and visit the games have now disappeared, without a trace.”
“Oh yeah,” Martha recalled, “that girl, Daphne, she was talking about that.”
“Daphne?” Satsuki repeated.
“Oh, it was a girl who was picketing at the Halls of Justice when we were sentenced to be executed,” Martha explained, “And at the Imitation Gang Wars of London.”
“Yeah, that’s what she was talking about. By the way, I’m going to be a minute in getting all my makeup off. You can look around backstage and in the prop room if you want to. Just be careful in the room of puppets and masks, because those things are delicate. That being said, you might not want to go in there. It’s creepy at night.”
“Creepy dolls at night,” Ten beamed, “Come on, Martha!”
Ten pulled Martha out of the room, and Martha pulled Eight. They went through the back rooms of the theatre and they gasped as they entered a room where there were loads of life-size puppets. And there must have been over a hundred present, all over the walls and on racks.
“Creepy to the maximum,” Martha smiled. She walked through them as Ten and Eight also walked around in wonder.
“The Mecrellans are a race that don’t create anything,” Eight explained, “they don’t possess the imagination. Therefore, they mimic other planets to an exacting degree and then amp up the copy by a hundred percent.”
“It makes sense,” Ten replied, removing his glasses from his pocket and putting them on. “Theatrical puppetry is usually not of this scale. These must be a repeat of the puppets of the Kabuki Theatre in Asian Culture.” Ten leaned closely into one, focusing on it, and only then did he notice that there was the sound of a loud clock in the room.
