the age of steel.

[ineternity]

The resistance performs admirably. She loves that about humans, in any universe: they try so hard, and so enthusiastically. They look at her with hope in their eyes - this universe where she's a clean slate, this pretty little pocket where they trust her implicitly and she has no history. She could do it here, she thinks. Not just to wipe out the blight that is the Cybermen from this universe, but for them, at least a little bit.

It comes down to this: the Doctor, her fingers curled around a ridiculously primitive phone, flanked by Cybermen and talking pleasantly with their Controller. "You've created a virus," she says. One of the Cybermen grabs hold of her arm, keeps it in a bruising grip.

She almost fancies she hears a touch of a sneer in the Cyber Controller's voice. "I've created life. Superior life."

"You'd think that, wouldn't you. It's really not, though." Every piece of technology in this building is compatible. "Even the people you're converting have more potential. At least they do something other than replicate and conquer." Her phone buzzes. The resistance have come through with the codes she needs to shut down the Cybermen's emotional inhibitors.

"Oh, look at that," she says, flatly. "It's for you."

Cybermen aren't supposed to feel pain or sadness or insanity. The ones whose circuits don't overload will probably kill themselves out of horror.

"No," the Controller says. "No, what have you done - "

One of the Cybermen reaches out to her, voice twisting into some grotesque parody of a whimper. "I've killed you," she says. "You should hate me." She looks around, at the once-people grasping for the only flesh they see, the one familiar thing, and thinks, a good person would stay. A good person would at least keep them company.

So she doesn't walk away. She sits down on one of the consoles and looks at them steadily, and she doesn't walk away. "It will be over soon. That's the one thing I can promise you."

Comments

[the_maestro]

For years—eons, really—the Maestro has had a habit. It’s only to be expected, really: traveling around for as long as he has, going on a thousand years, he’s bound to have picked a few things up. How he takes his tea, patting the inside pocket of his jacket when he stands up. And, whenever he comes back into his console room after sulking around in the library or laboratory or squash court or whatever, he’ll inevitably check the readings. There’s a tally he keeps of sorts, a few sweeps and scans that his TARDIS completes and pings whenever something happens. Normally, there’s nothing. Sometimes, there’s an errant time traveler, somebody trying to change a little bit too much for his own good. This time, though, there’s a ping, and a little flashing red light.

“Now, what’s this?” The Master asks, frowning. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He’s fresh from a quick game of squash—no opponent, but it’s something to blow off steam and keep himself active. Game, shower, back into a suit, and bob’s your uncle! He taps the side of the screen, looking—ahh, hm. A slight tear in reality, a little gap between this Universe and a parallel. Could be dangerous in time, but it’d be easy to repair. Though he admits that he’s curious, just curious, as to what’s on the other side.

And so he chuckles to himself, and throws the TARDIS forwards, and off he goes, hurtling through the vortex until he finds a certain tear, and the TARDIS plows through it. He keeps the viewscreens open as he does so, just to see the change, when one reality gives way to the other. For most, it’d just look like traveling through the vortex always does. But for a Time Lord, it’s as stark as the change from blue to red. Sublime. Beautiful.

He lands, and breathes in. A new world! New people! Traveling between dimensions was tricky at the best of times, now, with Gallifrey gone, it’s nearly impossible. He’s excited, he admits, just to be doing it again. It takes him back to being a schoolboy again, to running around with Ushas and Theta and Mortimer and the rest.

The Maestro opens the door, and steps outside, and everything is wrong. It hits him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to his skull: a niggling, buzzing sensation down, one of the unnamed Time Lord senses flashing. Warning light. He takes off running, racing through the streets of the city, half a mile, barely even noticing the damage, the scorch-marks on the streets, the metal casing and armor littered at the sidewalk. He just looks like another bloke, albeit not one with earbuds in.

Cybermen too, eh? Wicked.

He ends up—where else?—in a factory, the headquarters. The battle’s won, the Cybermen are defeated, and some little men and women are trying to clean things up, or just holding on to one another. He doesn’t have time for that, not now. He vaults over a still-twitching corpse, ducks a half-fallen metal girder, rounds the corridor where the buzzing swells up, where it increases and blares and he can’t bloody ignore it.

Finally, he stops, out of breath, silently wheezing as he stares. Stares at the woman coolly regarding the Controller. It’s her. It’s her.

“Doctor?”

And then there were two.

[ineternity]

Him.

She's almost immediately torn away from the Cybermen when her gaze locks onto his, and it's just as well, really, because it brings into sharp awareness the way the building (and this room, particularly) is starting to fall apart. A touch from natural malfunction and neglect, she thinks, and a good portion from human brains trapped in Cyberbodies destroying everything in sight.

It's a race between her mouth and her legs, which will move faster, and her legs win. She's already grabbed his hand and started pulling him out of the room, because for Rassilon's sake, this building isn't going to last long enough for them to have this conversation. Which isn't to say she can't get in anything on the go.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

[the_maestro]

Her.

There's a crash behind him, the screams of Cyber-whatevers, the grind of metal gnashing on metal. And yet, the Maestro barely hears it; like he's hundreds of feet underwater. The room seems dull, somehow, despite all of the very interesting and rather horrifying carnage. It's as if somebody has twisted the lens of a camera, bringing everything out of focus--except for her.

He takes her hand and they run, run from the decaying would-be empire of steel and cold reason. "Two parallel realities rubbing against one another, I had to look." Though it doesn't explain why he came out of his TARDIS instead of just scanning the area, does it? Oh well. He stops when they're in a corridor that probably won't collapse on top of them, as well as being secluded from her ragtag group of soldiers and anarchists. The Maestro grabs her wrist and pulls the Doctor so she looks at him. He can feel her pulse.

"You survived." Somehow, his voice doesn't crack.

[ineternity]

Sees him for a moment, at least, before her gaze slips away, not quite looking him in the eye. Of course she knew she might not be able to hide from him forever, and she's been keeping a sort of eye on his misadventures since regenerating - a peace talk here, a resolution there - but she couldn't have predicted what it would be like to actually be standing here. After Gallifrey fell, after she sent him away with her final goodbye.

("Who was he? The one you sent away."
"He shouldn't have to die with the rest of us.")

"Yes." She glances down at his hand encircling her wrist and tries to tug it away. "This building really doesn't have much structural integrity left."

[the_maestro]

"You survived," he repeats. Perhaps it's stupid to do so, but still, he can't help himself. It's why he doesn't let go, after all; he still scarcely believes that this is real, that this is happening. The Doctor's standing in front of him, and they're running out of a collapsing building. Just like old times, their dances and battles across Earth and Mutters' Spiral and Gallifrey, or the work they did during the War that he prays is otherwise forgotten.

"And you never..." He lets his voice trail off. Never what? Came back? Said hello? She didn't promise anything; the two of them don't make promises. A girder falls behind them, and some wiring explodes. "Ah." The Maestro says. "Right. We should go."

[ineternity]

She ducks around the girder to grab hold of his hand again, because the way he's looking, she's not sure he'd be paying proper attention to where he's going. And frankly, after all (he) (she) they have gone through getting to this point, having him lose a regeneration to a building would be frankly embarrassing.

One of the resistance members - Mickey? Sticky? something like that - crosses the two of them and doesn't think twice about her leading an apparently-human man around, because everyone who was involved in the conspiracy here is dead or converted already. He just barks out an estimate of the time it will take for the building to collapse on itself and weaves them through the building to safety, picking up a few more unconverted humans along the way.

During that time, she composes herself, snaps out a few leader-ish orders while Mickey-or-something herds the rescued humans into a group to explain what the hell just happened and what they can do to help.

Which leaves her alone with him again.

"I hadn't expected to," she says, after a moment. "Survive."

[the_maestro]

By the time they get outside, he's breathing again--in and out, almost enjoying the cool night air. The stars are starting to come out, and the city's almost starting to recover. It was a revolution, he supposes. A revolution of steel and circuitry, though it hardly lasted long.

"You're working with humans," the Maestro says. "Properly, I mean." It's something to talk about. She's not running around and manipulating people into doing what she wants, but working with them. Talking, and leading, and being...well. Being something. He gives a small at Rickey or Dickey or whatever his name is. The human rolls his eyes and charges off.

"I know," he responds. "How long has it been?"

[ineternity]

She stiffens a little at that - she's always worked with humans; they just need a bit of direction. The resistance's appearance was extremely useful, especially since they already had the structures in place for her to step into. "I'm hardly going to let the Cybermen loose on a universe. Especially when there's a crack they could slip through."

One that she would have closed herself if her TARDIS had been working. Speaking of which, it's been a while since she's had to check on her ship's progress. Should be almost capable of making another trip by now.

And... there it is. "A couple regenerations." Not even a century, though she's hardly going to talk about that. Her last regeneration was... short and private. Best to let memories of him rest.

[the_maestro]

"Don't be accusatory; I wasn't going to let the crack be. Land, poke around, seal it up while I left." His TARDIS can do that, at least--the Maestro can't quite recall if the Doctor's was that advanced. It was always a bit of a clunker. "Besides, how was I supposed to know there were bloody Cybermen on the other side?"

But then he stops--stops and stares. "A couple regenerations. A couple." The Maestro can feel his rage building, knows that it'll be a matter of minutes until the shock ends and the fury takes over.

[ineternity]

Oh, Rassilon. She's going to have to stand here and watch him stew in his own righteous anger because she didn't come to him right away. As if the Time War had somehow repaired their relationship permanently, as if she was supposed to be glad she survived and swan off with him in some sort of reunited bliss.

"Well, I certainly don't have any objections to you sealing the universe off," she says, clinging to the thread of conversation that's easier to deal with. "My TARDIS is probably recovered from our little jaunt through the crack, so I'll just be on my way, shall I?"

Of course he's not going to let her get away with that, she knows, but she's nothing if not capable of running from her problems. And right now, there's few things she can think of that she'd rather face less than trying to piece together what's happened since the Time War with him. Better to be the bitch who turns and leaves without a word of explanation.