Lifetimes ago, the Doctor had been one of Gallifrey’s elite. He hadn’t cared for it. The truth of why he ran away was never made clear, with many contradictory legends surrounding it.
Some said he wanted to protect his granddaughter from the horrors of the High Council. Some said his brother had made him do it. And of course there were some who said he was fleeing from a prophecy that he was destined to destroy the planet. He himself tended to keep it vague, saying it didn’t matter; the point was not why he had ran away, it only mattered that he had.
Then came the Time War. The Doctor turned on who he was and attempted to blow them all to hell. He recalled how he succeeded and how he regenerated back into the Doctor for a couple more lives. Now he was about to do it for the last time.
And the only other remaining child of Gallifrey had been lost in the process, dragged back into the war. The new Doctor would be alone in the universe.
Death Upon the Moon of X Written by Z. P. Moo
The Doctor stood alone in his TARDIS. He was breathing heavily and listened to the silence of the empty ship. He only had one person left to check in with now, and he’d saved her for last. He looked at the scanner. The Powell Estate, London, early 2005. He was going to see Rose.
The best part, he thought. He loved all of his companions – even Mickey – but there was something special about Rose. He had started this life, both times, in her presence. It was only right that he should end it with her too. The first face his face saw, and that could have significance. A nice bookend.
He watched the central column as it settled down into place, and turned to look at the doors. He had arrived. The Doctor shook a little as he walked over to them, knowing it was almost time to go, even though he didn’t want to yet. He stepped outside, expecting a snowy estate in London during the night.
Instead he got a quaint meadow, almost medieval, in what could only be the cool of the afternoon in early spring. He turned to his TARDIS and placed a hand on her now closed door. “Where are we, then?” he asked. “Normally I’m all for going to new places, but right now is not the time for it. Why have you taken me here?”
He looked up to the blue skies and saw a planet. Huge, like Gallifrey had been above Earth not too long ago. How long had it been? Was it hours or days? He wasn’t sure. Long enough to visit all the companions that he could reach. None of the dead ones and none of the ones he’d left on Gallifrey, but all the rest. Except for Rose of course. Anyway, wherever this place was, there was a planet hanging in the sky, and this was therefore not Earth. The Doctor didn’t recognise it but concluded he must have been on a moon.
“Oh, look at that!” he exclaimed at nobody in particular. “A new place! Even as I regenerate for the last time the universe still manages to surprise me!” He considered for a second, as he ran a hand through his spiky brown hair. “For now, let’s call you Planet X.” He liked the sound of that. It made the place sound mysterious. Who knew what secrets it held? He made a mental note to check it out on his next incarnation, assuming that he’d go ahead with having one.
He bent down and picked a white flower off the ground. He smelt it and decided he liked it. It smelt sweet, like it was filled with syrup. Perhaps a little too sweet, the Doctor thought, dropping it back to the ground.
Suddenly, a spasm deep inside his body sent a shock of pain through him. He let out a scream as the sensation jolted up his abdomen, clicked over each of his ribs and made both hearts skip a beat.
He looked at his hands, expecting to see regeneration energy cover them, but it didn’t appear. His state of grace was holding tight, for now. “I won’t go, not yet,” he said quietly as he recovered his breath. “NOT! YET! YOU HEAR ME?”
As if answering his question with an affirmative, the Doctor’s body let go of the pain and he stood upright again. He dusted off his suit and decided to undo the buttons of his jacket, letting it hang loose. “Now, let’s see where I am.” He reached for his pocket and retrieved a small device with a blue light in the end. His sonic screwdriver. “Scanning for lifesigns… twenty-seven billion billion million?!” He shouted this number out loud. “How can there be that many on a moon? It’s not even a big moon, the horizon is barely a mile away!”
He threw the screwdriver aside in frustration and watched as it landed in a patch of white flowers. “Oh, of course!” he said to himself as he instantly went to pick it up. “I’m mister thick thick thickity thick-face! It’s counting all the flowers.”
He held the screwdriver again and started to enter commands. “Now let’s do it again, subtracting all the non-fauna signals…” He did exactly that and shouted the new number again. “Five!” he said. “So that’s me, and four more. I wonder who they might be…” He held it up and started to wave it around, eventually settling for pointing it downwards. He was tracing the closest one, and was confused when it seemed to be sending him into the centre of the moon.
“That can’t be right,” the Doctor said. “But whatever you say, screwdriver.” He paused. “Look at me, talking to a machine. I’ve gone soft in my old age.” Behind him the TARDIS made a whir. “Oh, shut up!” he said. “At least you’ve got sentience. Not like…” he dangled the screwdriver in his hand. He resolved to get himself a flashier one on his next incarnation. He was thinking green. Or red. Same thing in his mind anyway.
He set off walking, hoping to find some kind of cave that could lead him into the planet, where the trace was coming from. He didn’t have to go far before he stumbled into something entirely different.
-
The Time Lady Priyanous had not expected to meet another of her kind on this mission, although she had hoped to. She still remembered the lectures warning her of the danger of accepting the mission they had sent her on. How they had time for such things sitting at the end of Time itself was beyond her, but that hadn’t stopped her from attending. Any chance to go into the field! She’d been waiting ages for this opportunity.
The Time Lords had detected a strange signal coming from the planet… she couldn’t remember what that pompous git Narvin had called it. In her head it was just “X”, an unknown quantity. After further inspection the signal had been traced to one of X’s moons, and so that was where she had parked her TARDIS. Specifically, she had burrowed it a foot deep into the ground and had it take in the form of the surrounding terrain. Nobody would be foolish enough to walk over it, she would have thought.
The strange man in the black suit who had just fallen in suggested that her theory was wrong. She made a mental note to have a word with Narvin when she got back.
She drew her staser and pointed it at him. “State your name, rank, and intention!” she barked.
The Doctor, lying on the floor, raised his hands. “This introduction seems familiar,” he said. “Can you let me get up first?” He suddenly realised where he was. “Is this…? Is this a TARDIS? What? WHAT? WHAT???!!! But that’s not possible…!”
He looked at the woman he thought to be his captor. She stood at about five foot tall, medium build in contrast to the long thin Doctor, dark skin with shoulder-length hair to match. Had she been human he’d have assumed she came from South Asia but he knew better than to make assumptions like that. For one thing, she had a TARDIS, which rather ruled that out. “Are you from Gallifrey?” he asked. “So am I. Or I was once. It’s complicated. I’m the Doctor, by the way. Do you mind if I stand myself up?” He stood up anyway without waiting for confirmation.
“Priyanous,” she said by way of introduction. She holstered the staser. Maybe she wouldn’t need it just yet, not if this man was telling the truth about who he was. Of course she knew all about the Doctor. Every child on Gallifrey grew up hearing the stories of the foolish young man who ran away with his granddaughter, enrolled her in school under the third most popular girl's name of that year. Of how the Doctor had never stopped running ever since, despite everything the Time Lords could offer up to and including their presidency.
And of how all of him had come together to save them at their darkest hour.
“Prove it.”
The Doctor nodded. “Okay, I’ll try.” He met Priyanous’ gaze and tried desperately to think of something clever. He couldn’t help seeing her hand ready to grab her staser again. “What if I told you my name? It’s –”
Before he could finish another jolt of searing pain filled his body. This time it originated in his mouth and muffled the rest of his name so Priyanous couldn’t hear it, but she watched the flash of regeneration energy and knew he wasn’t lying. She knew the sight of regeneration well, the miracle of the Time Lords. She’d done it herself enough times.
“NO!” the Doctor shouted. “NOT NOW!” The energy diffused away and he took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said to Priyanous as he recovered. “I’m holding it off for now. It’s my last go, and I’m scared.”
“I understand,” she said. “My last incarnation, he was terrified. I’ve still got a couple more in me yet, though. Doctor, you have my sympathies.”
“You called me Doctor!” said the Doctor. “So, you believe me?”
“I believe you’re a Time Lord,” she said. “You may be lying about which one. I was just a Time Tot when you saved us.”
“I didn’t save you,” he said regretfully. “I sent you back into the war, and my only friend too.”
“The Master?” she asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “And at the cost of my own life. I’m regenerating for the twelfth time, and you know what that means.”
Priyanous watched as the Doctor leaned against the wall for support. “You’re struggling,” she said. “Your state of grace won’t last much longer. You need to let yourself change or you’ll die permanently.”
The Doctor gasped as he felt one of his hearts gave up on him. He pointed his screwdriver at arm’s length and turned it towards himself, clicked a button and gave himself a shock. “And we’re back!” he said, bounding forwards to the console. He took a closer look at it. “This is a Time War model,” he observed. “How can this be a Time War model? Unless you’re telling the truth… but you can’t be.”
Priyanous said nothing.
“So where are we then?” the Doctor asked.
“I don’t know. Some unknown planet.”
“X?” the Doctor suggested.
“X.” Priyanous nodded at him. “It’s good enough for a placeholder. Why are you here? Let me guess… your TARDIS was drawn in by a mysterious time disturbance.”
The Doctor considered. Did that fit what had happened? He decided it made sense and indicated as such to Priyanous.
“You’re not the first Time Lord it’s happened to,” she said. “It’s happened to at least two others. That’s why the Celestial Intervention Agency sent me to investigate.”
The Doctor thought for a moment. “I measured five lifesigns,” he said. “On this thing,” he indicated with his screwdriver.
“So that’s us, the other two Gallifreyans, and whoever's responsible!” Priyanous realised. “That’s pretty clever.”
“But four signals were coming from inside the planet,” he went on. “I didn’t even detect you inside this TARDIS of yours. Energy field, protecting you from outside interference.” He blew over the top of the screwdriver like a soldier might over a gun he’d just fired. It looked ridiculous, and while he had the flair to carry it off he pocketed it quickly to stop himself getting carried away. “So that begs the obvious question…”
“What was the other signal?” Priyanous finished for him.
The Doctor pulled a lever on her console. “Let’s go take a look-see!” he said, with a grin. The TARDIS started to hum into life.
“Doctor!” she shouted. “What are you doing, we’re flying right into the danger!” She caught his eyes and saw the raw passion and madness and thirst for adventure within them. “You really are who you say you are, aren’t you.”
The Doctor gave her a big smile. “Oh yes!” He held one hand to the console and took one of Priyanous’ in the other. “One last adventure before I go, Priyanous!” he hissed through his toothy grin. “Just you and me, let’s see what we can find down there! Allons-y!”
-
Deep below the surface of the moon of X, there was a small spaceship. If it weren’t floating through the aether of space you might have called it a lifeboat. It had been lying there dormant, for centuries, but in the last week or so, the creature within it had finally began to stir.
Well, I say creature. Nobody is really sure how to classify a Vervoid. Is it flora or fauna? There had been entire symposiums devoted to working this out after the Hyperion III had completed its voyage, most of them during the trials for whether the people on the ship had been justified. Apparently basic rights for sentient beings didn’t apply to plants and therein lay the debate.
Whatever a Vervoid was, it wasn’t natural. Some had claimed this meant they didn’t have such rights under Article 7, which had lead to mass protests. The Doctor had always felt a little guilty for killing them all, but the incarnation responsible had always stood by it. He’d done what he had to do, the Sixth Doctor told himself. A few lifetimes later, the Tenth Doctor was not so sure.
What nobody had realised, was that when the Doctor’s sixth incarnation had wiped out the Vervoid race, he hadn’t been thorough. It appeared that one lone survivor had managed to get on board this lifeboat and escape, falling backwards through time to the very beginning of whatever star system this was. Here his ship had been left adrift and frozen, stuck in orbit around the unknown world.
It was only natural that it would gather material around itself, like a snowball. Over millions of years it had become one of the planet’s moons. The Doctor had recently witnessed something similar on a favourite world of his with some giant spiders. Now that he thought of it, this wasn’t the only time he’d found out weird stuff about the origins of a moon either. He’d always meant to investigate the truth about the most famous of Earth’s, but he hadn’t the chance yet. If he found someone special maybe he could take them there and see.
But never mind that. The most pressing matter for him now was that after he and Priyanous had exited her TARDIS they had found themselves standing face-to-face with the last Vervoid survivor of the Hyperion III.
“Time Lords!” hissed the Vervoid. “Welcome to your doom!”
Priyanous stepped backwards, but the TARDIS doors had closed, and she didn’t dare turn her back to the Vervoid. The Doctor however shrugged. “Welcome to your doom?” he mimicked. “Is that it? Bit much, don’t you think? I’m gonna die soon anyway, so please and least try and be creative!” He walked around the monster and took in the room they were in for the first time. “A laboratory,” he observed. “No, not a lab, I suppose that was your doing. This is some kind of lifeboat and you’ve made it into one.” He paused and wheeled round to face the Vervoid. “Where did you get the equipment?”
Priyanous concluded the safest place to stand was next to the Doctor, so she followed him, took a look at the wires attached to a unit on the wall and gasped. “Doctor, this technology…” she began.
“I know,” whispered the Doctor quietly. “Gallifreyan. Time War era.” Was this further proof that Priyanous was right and the Doctors had saved Gallifrey? He’d have to look into that one day.
He picked up a piece of loose wiring that lay on the floor and brandished it at the Vervoid. “How did you get this?” he demanded.
The Vervoid didn’t answer. “You will give me your regenerations!” the creature said instead. “And new Vervoids will germinate!”
The Doctor sighed. “Is that all you’re going to come up with?” he said. “You could do so much more!” He didn’t dare admit he had no regenerations to surrender other than the one he was already stuck in.
Priyanous drew the staser from the holster at her belt. “Tell us everything!” she demanded.
The Doctor was horrified. “Priyanous, no, don’t you dare!” he shouted. He quickly moved to stand in between the two of them blocking her shot. “This creature is the last of its kind! My fault, I couldn’t do anything else, but it was wrong! That one of me was wrong a lot. At least he admitted it towards the end.” He turned to face the Vervoid. He didn’t turn to look at Priyanous behind him but heard her moving to the side. She was looking over his right shoulder now. “No guns,” he said to her.
“If you say so, Doctor,” she said as she replaced the staser in the holster. “But if that thing tries anything I won’t think twice about shooting it. You hear me, Vervoid?!”
The Vervoid suddenly jolted upright. “Doctor?” it said. “Are you THE Doctor?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
“YOU ARE THE DESTROYER OF VERVOID LIFE!” the monster hissed.
“I know,” the Doctor admitted. “It was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have found a better way, but I didn’t.” He stepped forward, leaned towards the creature and stretched his arms wide in an apologetic open pose. “I’m sorry, I am so sorry. I wish I’d had time to find another way.”
The Vervoid did not accept this apology and instead it drew a weapon. Another staser – more Gallifreyan tech, the Doctor observed. Priyanous grabbed him and pulled him aside as the blast from the weapon singed past the Doctor, barely missing him.
“Good idea, time we got out of here!” the Doctor said as Priyanous lead him through the only door out of the makeshift laboratory.
-
They slammed the door shut behind them and heard another staser blast hit it microseconds later. This room was darker but they could still see the doorway buckle from the hit. A couple more blasts like that would finish it, and then they’d be targets.
The Doctor got out his sonic screwdriver and sealed the door shut with it. “Not sure how long that’ll hold him,” he said. “But it’ll buy us time.”
“The one thing you don’t have,” Priyanous observed.
The Doctor had already fallen to the floor. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to deal with this and--”
Before he could finish his body spasmed again and he let out a loud cry of pain. “NO!” he shouted again. “Not here! Not with the Vervoid out there!” The golden energy began to fly out of him, bigger than any Priyanous had seen so far, but the Doctor clasped his hands together and absorbed it all back in. He yelled out as the energy flowed up his arms and dissipated away over his shoulders.
He sat huddled on the floor breathing quickly and rapidly in and out as he recovered. “I’m still here,” he said. “Still here.”
“Not for much longer,” said Priyanous, worried.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he admitted, looking up at her. She saw tears in his eyes. “And only a few more times before it’s too late.”
He breathed in and stood up. Then he saw what Priynous had seen behind her. The room was bigger than the last one with two of the units on the wall that had been in the previous room. Wires protruded from both units leading to a big perspex tube at the opposite wall. And in it there stood…
“A baby Vervoid.” Priyanous stated it bluntly. “Your fifth lifesign. Born from Time Lord regeneration.”
The Doctor had already seen the bodies strapped into the electrical wall units, one poor unfortunate Gallifreyan strapped up to each, both of them held upright with a red wire going into the back of the neck leading to the perspex tube. There was no movement but the Doctor couldn’t help noticing the eyes moving to watch him.
They were still alive.
“I’m so sorry,” he said to the Time Lord. “For both of you,” he added.
“I can’t believe he did this!” Priyanous said, shaking with anger.
“They’re who you were looking for?” the Doctor asked.
“Yes,” said Priyanous. “I knew them,” she added. “I knew her on her first incarnation. Lanpon. She’s regenerated a few times since then, but I’d know her anywhere. We were…” she paused. “We were close.”
The Doctor was not an idiot, he knew what that meant. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Look at this unit she’s strapped into.”
He wheeled round as he heard a second staser blast hit the door. Priyanous however looked closely at where Lady Lanpon was trapped and realised what she was seeing. “Is that…?”
“It is.”
“A TARDIS Console?!” Priyanous couldn’t bring herself to think what that meant the Vervoid had done.
“Looks like it,” the Doctor said. “They both are. Similar to the one in the other room, but that was too rudimentary. Like he was trying to make his own based on the Vervoids’ encounter with me a few lifetimes back. His own attempt at a TARDIS! That must be the time disturbance you detected back on Gallifrey!”
He stepped up to the perspex tube with the baby Vervoid in it. He realised now it was the source of the dim light of the room. The Vervoid was suspended in fluid, and the wires from the two Time Lords lead into the back of what must have been its neck. “Look at you,” he said as he admired it. “How did that monster in the backroom create you?”
There was a blast as the door exploded into smithereens. Metal chunks flew everywhere but the Doctor and Priyanous weren’t hit. They watched as the Vervoid stepped into the room and pointed his weapon at them.
“Move away from the progenitor!” he demanded.
“Why, so you can shoot us without hitting it?” Priyanous shouted back. “Not a chance!”
The Doctor noticed that, unlike what the Vervoid had done, she hadn’t drawn her staser. He smiled. She was learning!
“What did you do, take a cutting of yourself and use the regeneration energy of these two Time Lords to germinate it and resurrect your race? Dismantle their TARDISes so you can get as much from them as possible? Try to make your own so you can get out from inside this moon?”
The Vervoid was surprised the Doctor had figured it out, so he stayed silent.
“This is not the way to do it,” the Doctor went on. He was making the same open pose as before, Priyanous noticed. “Killing innocent people just because you can’t find another way. This is abhorrent!”
“And now you want to speed up the process by using us,” Priyanous added.
The Vervoid stepped closer to her and pointed the weapon directly at her head. “That is my plan. Your regenerations will be harvested.”
“But he’s only got one more, and it’s already started!” Priyanous said, indicating to the Doctor with her head.
The Vervoid didn’t move his weapon, but he turned his head to the Doctor. “Is this true?” he asked.
The Doctor nodded. “It is,” he said. “Thanks Priyanous, I didn’t plan to mention that.”
As if his body had conspired to spoil it for him regardless, the Doctor suddenly felt another jolt of the same pain as before. The golden energy flew out of him again and he shouted out. “No, this is the worst possible time! Don’t do it now!”
The Vervoid reacted fast, seeing his chance. He pulled the wires out of other the Time Lord, the one who wasn’t Lanpon, and ran at the Doctor with them. The Time Lord fell to the ground and lay there motionless and the Doctor watched in terror of the Vervoid getting closer.
The Doctor was unable to struggle as the Vervoid tried to get a grip, but Priyanous had him covered. She drew her staser and pointed it to the Vervoid. “Stop right now,” she said. She chastised herself internally for not thinking of something better than that to say.
The Doctor was surrounded by a ball of the golden energy this time and he managed to get a look into the Vervoid’s face. He wasn’t sure if it was eye-contact, but it was close enough, he thought. He placed his left hand on what must have been the Vervoid’s shoulder and with his right he grabbed the wires and forced them free from the Vervoid’s grip.
“I wish you hadn’t made me do this!” The Doctor forced the words out. Everything in him wanted to scream, but he didn’t allow himself to. He clipped the wires onto the Vervoid and fell onto his back.
The Doctor let go of the Vervoid and watched as it rolled over with the wires attached. He shouted out as he drew the energy back into himself and breathed rapidly. “Priyanous, what’s happening?”
Priyanous, keeping her weapon trained on the Vervoid, described what she was seeing. It was currently trying to reach the wires, but couldn’t reach. The creature was in pain. Good, she thought. That’s what you deserve.
The Doctor staggered to his feet and watched with her as the wires carried something into the perspex tube, which suddenly shattered into a million tiny pieces. The adult Vervoid had stopped moving now. The Doctor looked back at Lanpon and saw the life in her eyes wasn’t there anymore. The Vervoid’s entire life energy had been drained and, with one of the sources depleted, that had ended the process and her misery was over.
“Did it work?” asked the Doctor.
Priyanous looked at the dead Vervoid. “Yes,” she said. “What a waste. He only wanted to save his species.”
“There are ways to do that,” the Doctor said. “He chose a wrong way. Just like someone else I met recently.” He closed his eyes and saw the blinding light as the Time Lord council materialised in the Naismith mansion. “But it’s no reflection on every Vervoid.”
“You mean the baby one?” she asked.
“Don’t judge the baby for the parent’s crimes,” said the Doctor. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t save Lanpon.” He passed out at this remark.
Priyanous put her weapon back in the holster. “She was dead already,” she said. “So was--” She stopped herself, realising she didn’t know who the other man was. This needed to be rectified when she got back home.
She turned to look at the baby Vervoid. Free from the perspex tube, it lay on the ground. It was still. Was it dead? Priyanous cautiously took a look up close. No. Asleep, breathing, safe. “It’s alive!” she said. “Doctor, it’s alive!”
-
When the Doctor woke up he was lying down on his back in the meadow on the surface of the unknown moon of X. His TARDIS stood tall next to him with another a few feet away. He could see that Priyanous was stood beside it.
“You’re awake,” she observed.
The Doctor sat up and leant against the police box. “So I am!” he said. “Hello! I’m the Doctor, and for now the Doctor is me.” He looked around, as if trying to spot something. “Where’s the Vervoid baby?”
“You mean Lanpon II?” asked Priyanous. “I named her after my friend. She’s safe. I found a passing merchant ship to take her on. A nice cow said he knew a good place to leave her.”
“That’s good.” The Doctor stood up and opened the door of his TARDIS. “I’ve got to get going,” he said. “I must find Rose, this body won't last long.”
“And then what?” asked Priyanous. “Will you let yourself change or not?”
The Doctor smiled at her. “I think,” he said, “that’s for me to decide. But I’ve made up my mind.”
Priyanous stepped forward and earnestly grabbed his hand. It felt softer than before, like it was newer than it had been. “You should,” she said. “If this is what you’re like when you’re dying, then when you’re back at full strength the universe will need you. And after seeing Lanpon and whoever the other person was, they had their next lives taken away. You can’t squander yours, not now.”
The Doctor said nothing but she saw the look in his eyes and she knew. She watched the door slam shut behind him and watched as the TARDIS took off.
“Doctor!” she shouted over the vworp vworp sound. “Come back and visit me on Gallifrey!”
Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor listened to her words. “I’d love to,” he said knowing she wouldn’t hear him. “But I can’t. I shouldn’t even have met you.”
He entered the coordinates for the Powell Estate. Time for one last reward.
Before leaving the ship, he pondered what Priyanous had said, how all of his selves had saved Gallifrey. He considered that maybe his next incarnation would live up to that. But no, he thought, surely it was not true. He’d remember something like that.
-
The Doctor took in a deep breath. He’d managed to see her at last, and right at the eleventh hour. He watched Rose and her mother walk off round the corner, knowing this was goodbye.
And then a familiar voice.
“We will sing to you,” said Ood Sigma. A projection from the Oodsphere? At least a friend was here to see him off. The Doctor hadn’t realised it but he had fallen to the floor. He watched as Ood Sigma vanished away and listened as he heard the Ood singing.
Vale Decem, goodbye Ten. How fitting.
Dragging himself into his TARDIS proved a struggle, but he made it. He stood up and entered some commands on the console, taking off into the vortex and goodness knew where. His next self could handle that. Just try not to mess up anyone’s life on day one, he thought to himself.
He stood up listening to Oodsong as he tried his hardest to hold back tears. His final regeneration was upon him now, the state of grace had passed by. It was regenerate now or die forever. But he didn’t want to change, not when he knew he couldn’t do it again. “I don’t want to go,” he cried out.
The Doctor looked at his hand again as he saw the golden energy flow from it, and he considered that maybe he should draw it back in and give up. But that’s not the kind of man he was, not really. Maybe one more go couldn’t hurt. He raised his arms and looked up to the heavens as the Oodsong grew more urgent. Screaming he let the energy flow over him and the Doctor died for the final time.
-
On the moon of X, Priyanous watched the TARDIS fade away as she reflected on the day’s events. She had of course switched off the equipment down there, to remove the time disturbance. But she’d left the bodies behind. Lanpon and the other one, the old man whose name she didn’t know. If things had gone differently she could have saved them. At least she could have known who he was.
Suddenly a small creature ran through her legs, laughing. Priyanous was startled and she tripped over backwards falling onto her rear. She looked round desperately to see what had done it, and saw the most unexpected sight. “Lanpon II? How can it be you?”
The baby Vervoid ran and jumped on Priyanous, laughing as it did so. Priyanous considered fighting it off, but such a playful creature clearly had no ill will against her. It was just a toddler, having fun was natural.
She heard the sound of a deep-voiced man laughing at the spectacle behind her, and wheeled round to see a man dressed in a brown blazer, dark trousers, and a shirt as white as his hair.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Who? Indeed, Who! Perhaps I was Who, one day!” he boomed with laughter.
Priyanous was about to ask what this meant, but the man had already put a finger on his lips. The universal signal for sssh. Even on Gallifrey it was used. Heck, they’d probably invented the gesture in the first place.
“Don’t ask how I can be here or why,” the man said. “All you need to know is that I have a mandate from my missus to protect the people and possessions from my history. Bless her majesty. She and I had good times.” He gave her a colossal heartwarming smile. “It’s like some kind of curator.”
Priyanous was completely taken aback by this sudden incursion. She could see no ships and no teleporter, so where had this man come from?
“And one thing that fell into my possession was this baby Vervoid,” the man continued. “How she came to me, well there’s a long story. There was a woman, all braces and rainbows… but her’s is a story worth waiting for. Take it from me as a trusted friend.”
He turned round, ready to walk away. “Look after the Vervoid,” he said.
“Wait!” shouted Priyanous. “You never said… who are you?”
The man laughed. “I’m just a humble curator.”
“Did you save Gallifrey, Doctor?” she asked.
“Some of them did,” he said, neither confirming nor denying her claim about his identity. “And one of him is about to go back. If I were him, and perhaps I might well be, I’d not be very pleased with that world. Girl trouble, and all that. I suggest you stay away.”
Priyanous didn’t respond to that.
“One last question before I go,” the man said. “Other than you and the Doctor, how many TARDISes have you seen today?”
“Three,” Priyanous said. “I have seen three.”
The man chuckled playfully. “Yes, there were three down below in that lab. But you might want to try counting again.” He suddenly seemed to fly into the Planet X. She wasn’t sure how the man had done this. It was like one second he had his back to her and had started to walk away, and the next he was somehow hovering and shrinking and it was like he was somehow drawn into the planet. She didn’t quite know how to process him doing this. And then the planet faded away exactly like a TARDIS, and the moon of X was left alone.
In fact, it wasn’t “like” a TARDIS. It exactly was one!
Priyanous had not expected that. “I suppose you had to park somewhere,” she thought to herself. “Still blue. Of course it is.”
She sat with the baby Vervoid on her head chewing on one of the sweet white flowers in her mouth. She got up and entered her own TARDIS where she sat Lanpon II down on the console. “I really should be getting back to Gallifrey,” she said. “But I’ve got you now. It’s a big universe, I’m sure if there’s room for the Doctor that there’s room for us too.”
Lanpon II made a cooing noise.
“I suppose we should go to Gallifrey now and report back what happened here,” she said. “But maybe not right away.” She smiled at her Vervoid companion.
Credits:
WRITER – Z.P Moo COVER ART - Esterath STORY EDITORS – Samuel Maleski & Zoe Lance PRODUCER – Samuel Maleski