Slowly, the Meddler regained consciousness.
This was an unusual situation for him. Typically Time Lords woke immediately, with none of the grogginess or disorientation experienced by other races. But it was clear that this was no
ordinary unconsciousness. Every cell of his body ached, it seemed, with a burning
pins and needles sensation.
Have I Regenerated? he wondered. Regeneration was, after all, accompanied by grogginess and disorientation and a full-body ache.
He took stock. His sense of touch still seemed to work - he could
feel stone beneath him, cloth around him. He could
hear several people, although he was feeling too disoriented to know who they were or what they were doing. He could smell cool air, warm leather and metal, several faint perfumes.
He didn't really
taste much of anything. But, since he could
feel the inside of his mouth with his tongue, he assumed that sense would work when called on.
Finally, he opened his eyes. He could see the arched roof of his... yes, his control room. The Doctor, and Amy, and Kikilia, and most of his crew. And he could see the patterns of energy and lines of force and spacial distortion created by the time rotor. Watch the artificial spacetime of the TARDIS interior distort under mass as the goblins or the Doctor or...
Sitting up, he blinked, shook his head, and looked again. Everything was back to normal.
He tried not to think too hard about the
crawling sensation he'd felt
inside his eyes, just before that had happened.
"What's... what's going on?" he asked.
"The Goddess of the Hall has once again been drawn into the person of our Lady the Queen," Tonks said, handing him a mug of coffee from
somewhere.
The Meddler drank down half the mug at one shot. "That made no sense to me, Tonks. Doctor?"
"Uhm..." The other Time Lord seemed to be considering his words. "Your wife tapped the main power feed for your TARDIS, and is now burning the Library in a holocaust of berserk fury."
The Meddler considered that for a moment, then sprang for the door.
In the centre of the library laid the unmoving body of the Dreamweaver on the cold marble floor, her light now dimmed to a mere flicker."Dreamweaver?" a voice called.
"Mom?" called a higher-pitched voice.
"Mommy?" called a different, higher-pitched voice.
She actually wasn't that far from the Meddler's TARDIS, in a relative sense. Less than a hundred meters.
The echos of leather and rubber slapping stone grew louder, as the Meddler dashed into the room, followed by two of their three children - the twins, six year old Morgaine and Ken. They'd come looking to see what the excitement was about. And when they'd heard what the Doctor had said, they refused to stay behind.
The Meddler knelt by his wife, going through the first basic checks. Pulse and breathing were strong. Color was good. Resolidified diamond crusted some of her hair, and congealed masses of gold clung to her face, but there was no signs of injury.
Morgaine plucked at one of the lumps of gold, revealing skin that was only slightly pink beneath. "Is... is mommy all right?" she asked.
"Of course she will," Ken said, crossing his arms, voice more demanding than confident.
The Meddler attached medical sensors to her forehead and throat and wrist. "She's just asleep," he said, checking the readouts fed to his remote from the Infirmary.
"So... she'll be all right."
The Meddler hesitated, just for an instant. It was right on the tip of his tongue to explain that she
might not be. That the load of energy she'd handled might force her into a Regeneration. But he looked at his children, and made a decision. "Yes. But we need to take her to the Infirmary. Can you help me carry her?"
Really, it was the Meddler who carried her. Ken, with a very serious look on his face, stood on one side and kept his hands on his mother's booted ankles the whole way. Morgaine walked on the other side, more stoking her mother's hair (and occasionally trying to pick out carbon crystals) than anything else.
As the four of them entered the TARDIS, the open doorway rippled behind them. The Meddler half turned to look. And for an instant, just for an instant, a feral-looking man in leather and fur lept at him with a chain.
Then only the two conscious Time Lords in the console room felt time and space
twist. Felt a piece of time pinch off and vanish. And the feral man with the chain vanished with it.
"Is everything back?" Ken asked.
"Yes. That took care of the rift," the Meddler answered. Then he looked down at the woman in his arms, who was staring up at him with a mixture of amusement and irritation. "So, should I promise that - next time you feel like something I'm doing is
extremely dangerous - we'll talk about it first?" He smiled. "Or should I just skip straight to the part where I spend weeks groveling and pampering you and generally doing everything I can to persuade you to forgive me for being an idiot?"
(OOC: The piece of time that pinched off and vanished is, of course
What Dreams May Come. Everyone's invited, if they wish, to get tossed through a rift to a fairy tale universe.
More OOC: And now, we get back to the original idea! Let's knuckle down and bring River back, shall we?)