NLoT: You Can't Go Home Again

[Koschei]

"I think... perhaps... it's an alternate." She mused softly.

"That sounds plausable," the Master said abstractedly, peering closely at the manacles. They were molybonded, of course. But that didn't matter. He knew the vibrational key.

Softly, he began to whistle.

"It's a detached sort of beauty." She mused aloud.

He stopped in mid note. "Hmmm?" A small grin. "It always was, Archivist. Glory upon glory upon glory, and all of it restrained and focused on Duty and Tradition."

"And why not?" asked an ancient, familiar voice. "Duty and Tradition are what made us great."

[The Doctor]

He was an old, old man. Hunched over and leaning on the Rod of Rassilon for support, the robes of the Lord President hanging like weighted tent cloth on his fleshless frame. His skin was so pale as to be almost transparent, and Whisps of white hair clung to a skull of a head. But his blue eyes were still vibrant and alive, and his voice - although tired and thin - was strong and steady. And his grin was crooked and lopsided.

The weight of centuries hung heavy on his ancient, half-human frame. But he was still recognizable as the Doctor.

Wearily he shuffled to his seat and took it, gratefully. The rest of the High Council entered as well. All of them familiar to the two prisoners.

The Master, dressed in his familiar black on black. The Rani, wearing the jade and gold of the Aesculum. The War Chief, in a red-orange uniform the colof of fresh blood, the Hunting Hound symbol of House Dvora its only emblem. The Watcher, in the severe grey-green robes of the Keeper of the Matrix. The Architect, clad in the many-hued robes of the Genuitera. The Meddler, wearing black robes shot with gold threads in conscious parallel to the white and silver of the Keeper of the Halls of Eilethya.

The Deca. And all save the War Chief still clad in the forms of their first Incarnations.

"This is them?" the Doctor asked, looking at his Lord Chancellor. "The ones you captured in my... in his TARDIS?"

"Yes, my Lord President."

The Doctor stared at them both in turn, curiously at the manacled Master, and with an air of sad fondness at the Archivist. "They've led hard lives. That much is clear. And what are we to make of the charges."

"They must first be accused, my Lord President," the Lord Chancellor said. "And they must answer."

"Must we go through this tedium, my Lord Chancellor."

The Master's bearded face split in a grin. "It is our Duty."

A sigh. "Very well."

The Lord Chancellor turned to face the Master and the Archivist. "You have been charged with dereliction of your Duty to your House, your Family, and to the Protocols of History, and are held now to submit to Law," he said. "For the record, you will state your name, your House, and your Duty as you understand it to your House and to the Protocols."

[Deleted]

"Duty's and traditions are what made us the slaves of the Council." The Archivist stated softly in a cool voice. "They are what took away my happiness, and bound me by chains of Duty and Tradition. They are what drove me to despair." She said in a dark voice. A soft look of pain and anger flashed on her face as she put her calm back in place.

She was hoping that the Master would do fine on his own. She sensed a little of what he was doing. But would say absolutely nothing about it. "Duty is a crutch, for people to fall back on, when they have no personal inspiration."

[Koschei]

He'd never heard the Archivist speak like that before. Although, to be perfectly honest, they really hadn't spoken since his failed coup. Something about the icy rage in her voice made him smile.

He met the cool gaze of the other Master - my Lord the Chancellary Castellan the Master - and sneered. "My name is the Master. I was once of House Lungbarrow. I renounced that allegiance, as I renounced any Duty I once felt towards Gallifrey, the day I swore to parade the High Council the length of the Royal Road before crucifying them in the Square of the Circle."

He brought the entire force of his Will to bear on the other Master, pitching his Voice into harmonics of command, seeking an opening to bend the other man's mind to his desires. "My only Duty, now, is to leave this place. And you. Will. Release. Us."

[The Doctor]

The Lord Castellan rocked under the impact of the Master's mental assault, then rallied back. "Strong..." he grimaced, sounding like a man with a migrane. "Not... quite strong enough... but strong."

Then the attention of both Masters was caught by a sudden wheezing fit from the Doctor. It continued for some moments, slowly resolving itself that seemed equal parts sorrow and humor.

"Slaves of the Council," he said sadly, echoing the Archivist's words. "My love... no, forgive me. I should not call you that. Archivist, then." Sorrow glistened in his eyes. "What horrors were allowed in the Prime lines of Time, to fill you with such bleak despair, and to fill you with such unquenchable fury?"

He shook his head, sympathetically. "In our line of history, we cast down the High Council. Destroyed the tyrrany of the men that corrupted our Initiations, perverted Duty in the name of self-aggrandizement, and mocked the finest Traditions of the Shining World."

He smiled, an old, crooked smile that - for an instant - stripped away the centuries and allowed a glimpse of the idealistic young man he had once been. "Archivist. Master. You are not among enemies, here. We are your friends, and we want nothing more than the truth."

He shot a sly glance at his version of the Master. "But my Lord Castellan speaks nothing the truth. There are Traditions to these proceedings, and we must follow them." He sighed. "So please, for the record, state your names at least."

The Doctor leaned back, looking weary. "And then, we will discuss what is to become of you."

[Deleted]

"I am The Archivist, Daughter of The Mist and The Deviant. My Father as you know, has no house - as he was found under a cabbage leaf." She stated smoothly as she stared at the man. How dare he laugh at her pain. She stared at him, that deep seated fury boiling within her. She wanted to hold him and hug him, because he was Theta, but he wasn't. He wasn't her Theta.

"I was ordered by the council, to renounce my relationship to The Doctor. Or they would slaughter my family, and his. I was told they would burn my work, and they would make me a social cripple." She said as her body shook, the pain from years ago was filtering up through her. "So I did as Duty and Tradition dictated, I obeyed the Council and protected my family." She said as she stared at this man, this Doctor who was the leader of the other Gallifrey.

"As a result, I lost my heart, my purpose, and my very soul - to the Council. Until I reclaimed a small bit of dignity by running away from the war. Saving myself and the knowledge I held within my mind." She rolled her shoulders back, as she felt the pain welling up. "I have spent a long time, as a human - with a Chameleon arch activated - hiding from my past. Then I was brought back to what I was. But still I remember the hundreds of years of loneliness that /Duty/ and Tradition forced upon me." She said, that icy and hot tone still present, twin spots of heat on her cheeks.

"And still that loneliness prevails, because of Duty and Tradition."

[Koschei]

The Master folded his arms as best he could, with the manacles still around his wrists, and looked at each member of the High Council in turn. His gaze was icy, deadly, and grew harder with each sentence the Archivist spoke.

He knew them all. Knew who they had been. The Deca. They were the band of outcasts and misfits that had clustered around the Doctor at the Academy. They were the victims of the High Council.

The were the worst criminals the Spiral Politic had ever seen.

And here, on this alternate Gallifrey that had entered the Spiral Politic, they had done what the Doctor had prevented them from doing, all those centuries ago.

"She has done as you asked," he said in a voice like frozen nitrogen. "Now. You will stop interrogating her."

[The Doctor]

My Lord President the Doctor smiled, almost fondly, at that. "I have no desire to cause her pain, Master. But I must know, in order to ensure the saftey of Gallifrey, what happened."

He looked from the Archivist to the Master and back, struck by the familiarity of them. That was worse, in some ways, than the differences. He kept reaching out to them, only to be rebuffed.

"Please," he said at last, "we must know. Our intelligence is spotty, at best, in this matter."

He took a deep breath. "How... why did the Doctor - your Doctor - destroy Gallifrey?"

[Deleted]

The Archivist stopped, her eyes closing as she began remembering the war, the tears trickling down her face for a moment. She didn't know why the Doctor had destroyed Gallifrey, she had run away a bit before it's destruction. But she knew why she would have destroyed them. She knew that the Doctor had some similar thoughts to her and many others. As she drew in a long breath, and the tears started. Time Lords didn't usually cry, especially not in front of the council.

"What I can surmise... is the same thought as mine. I ran away just before it was destroyed, apparently. But I know what our people had become, and I know what I would have done - had I been at my loves side." The Archivist said as she tucked her head down, the shame pounding through her. "The Time Lords, had become worse monsters then even the Daleks. The Daleks, creatures who had destroyed our world." She said as she began to shake.

The memories flashing through her inner library like a slide show. The images flashing in her mind as the woman found herself on her knees. "The protection of the Universe, was probably much more important then the continuation of our species. I believe the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey to protect the entire Universe, and anyone else that would come after them. The Doctor is not a murderer, he is a saviour." She whispered.

Unfortunately, her mind was in sensory overload, this situation was causing her to remember, all that had happened in the Time War. All that she knew was flashing through her mind, and causing the female time lord to almost enter convulsions. "The Soldiers on the frontline, the Cybermen... the constant regenerations... the slow declination of our very species. The Corruption of the council..." Her body jerked as the convulsion slammed into her. As if some small facet of her mind had shattered, the broken edges like a hiccup in a computers programming lines. She had been messed with much worse then most had even realized. Her mind was a computer almost, and was accessing files that it had locked away due to corruption.

[Koschei]

The Master was startled by the sight of the Archivist's tears. Startled, and disturbed.

It wasn't her recitation of the facts of the end of the War. He'd been through that himself, and it sounded as if they'd both fled about the same time. And he felt no particular sense of loss at the destruction of his homeworld. Merely a sense of irritation that he would never be able to rule it.

But her tears - the tears of a friend - bothered him. More than he anticipated.

"What I can surmise... is the same thought as mine. I ran away just before it was destroyed, apparently. But I know what our people had become, and I know what I would have done - had I been at my loves side." The Archivist said as she tucked her head down, the shame pounding through her. "The Time Lords, had become worse monsters then even the Daleks. The Daleks, creatures who had destroyed our world."

"And, at the end," the Master added, voice haunted, "the Daleks had won. They smashed the Transduction Barriers. Burned the Halls of Eilethyla." He swallowed. "Captured the Cruciform."

"The protection of the Universe, was probably much more important then the continuation of our species. I believe the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey to protect the entire Universe, and anyone else that would come after them. The Doctor is not a murderer, he is a saviour." She whispered.

"The Spiral Politic, dominated by the Daleks," the Master said, shuddering. "I would have lived in it, rather than face death. But the Doctor settled on a solution that, I dare say, saved the universe itself. At the cost of Gallifrey and Skaro."

He met the other Doctor's eyes, and smiled without warmth. "I never would have thought he would have the nerve."

"The Soldiers on the frontline, the Cybermen... the constant regenerations... the slow declination of our very species. The Corruption of the council..." Her body jerked as the convulsion slammed into her.

He lunged forward, caught her with manacled hands. "Archivist," he called, low and insistent, as he did. "Archivist." He could feel the chaos in her mind, as her own particular talent-and-curse ran haywire, her memories running into a feedback loop. Carefully, he studied the seizure. He knew he could shut it down. The only question was, could he do it without harm.

[The Doctor]

My Lord President the Doctor's hands clenched into fists as Libby... the Archivist... the other Archivist. The Master's Archivist... began to weep. She reminded him so much of his Libby, and he couldn't let himself start to think of her like that.

"My Lord Chancellor," he whispered as the two Time Lords recited what they believed to be the reasons for their Gallifrey's destruction, "what is a Dah-lek?"

"No idea," the Chancellor answered, faintly puzzled. "Some minor species that managed to rise to prominance in the main line of history, I presume." He paused. "Maybe your Lady Wife would know?"

The Doctor gave a dry chuckle. "If anyone would..."

He was distracted by something the other Master said - "Captured the Cruciform" - and he gaped, astonished at what he had heard.

The High Council murmured at that, each glancing around. "What?" "Impossible!"

The Doctor and the Master exchanged glances of their own. A civilization that could threaten the Time Lords? Invade the citadel? Capture the Cruciform? "We must know more about these 'dah-leks', my Lord Chancellor."

"I agree."

The Archivist began to recite a litany of horror, describing the depths her Time Lords had descended to, sending a deep chill through the Doctor's ancient bones. And then she went into a seizure, shaking and still reciting. In a flash the Master - her Master (and that thought sent a curious thrill of jealousy through him) - was at her side, calling her name.

The Doctor reacted. "My Lady the Rani?"

"I've already summoned aid, my Lord President," she answered, rising. She was at the Archivist's side in seconds, a medical wand in one hand, reaching for her face with the other.

"You do not want to do that," the manacled Master warned her, voice harsh.

"I mean her no harm," the Rani insisted. "I'm familiar with her unusual mental conditions and-" She screamed, a mixture of horror and agony, as her fingers brushed the Archivist's cheek.

"I warned you," the Master said, as the Rani went into convulsions herself.

(OOC: I figure that the next post I do will pick up in the Aesculum, with the Archivist receiving some sort of treatment. Feel free to post in the Council Chamber or in the medical room, or both.)

[Deleted]

(( I'll throw in one last post, if you wanna get that Medical one going, and link it here. ))

The Archivist was stuck, looping through - over and over again. Her mind flashing as the pain slammed through her. Inside her own mind she had retreated to that one safe corner. The corner that The Master himself had taught her to make. Sure she had ended up on a feedback loop once or twice before, he taught her how to keep herself at least moderately sane. At least until she could be sedated and given a chance to calm down. Inside her own mind she was trapped, wondering if they really knew how to handle her abilities.

The Master did, he knew how to fix it. But it always came with an inherent risk. Sometimes nothing, sometimes some memory loss for a time, but always it came at a cost. Usually it was her being very sick for awhile. She was lost in her mind, and she knew that if she left her safe place -she may very well lose her sanity. She watched as the master warned the Rani, and the woman refused to listen to the truth.

With that happening, the Archivists body had gone into spasms, muscles twitching violently as her eyes rolled back in her head. Her empathic networks broken and leaking emotions throughout the room. Anyone that touched her with a bare hand, would feel the same things she was. This was her curse, her gift. Her knowledge and her downfall. This was what she had been made to be, a living breathing knowledge database.

[Koschei]

The Master spared no further thought for the other Rani. He'd warned her, and he had no time for for fools now.

Carefull, he eased her to a sitting position and then placed a palm on her forehead. The Archivist's thoughts were racing, replaying all of her stored memories and knowledge and emotions of the last days of the war, over and over and over again. They were like a whip, a psychic assault that would devistate the unprepared.

The Master shrugged them aside, unconcerned by concepts like pain, misery, loss.

He reviewed the architecture of her mind, comparing it to the mental map he'd built up centuries ago, and made his decision. //Sleep,// he commanded, the order spiking through the racing thoughts in her conscious mind, striking deep into the unconscious.

She sagged, oblivion overwhelming her, her thoughts stilling.

The Aesculum
Two hours later...

He'd been at her bedside ever since she had been admitted. He knew how to shut her attacks down, although this had been worse than the few he'd seen in the Academy. He had no idea how long it would take her to recover. But she deserved to see a friendly face when she awoke.

His face wasn't particularly friendly, these days. But it would have to do.

The Master looked around the green room. The Archivist's bed extruded from a pillar of crystal, the physical extension of the Aesculum's mind into this particular room. Lights played over her in a variety of colors from a variety of directions, supervising her care.

"You know," he said, awkwardly patting her hand, "I shouldn't have to sit and wonder if you're going to regenerate. Not twice in one day, anyway." He smiled, bitterly. "Even I wasn't that careless with my lives..."

The door swung open. "Has she awoken yet?" asked my Lord President the Doctor.

[The Doctor]

The look that this other Master gave him was feral. "No. And I'm certain that the Rani was able to tell you that."

My Lord President the Doctor shuffled into the room, followed by my Lord Chancellor the Master. Both stopped at the foot of her bed.

There was an awkward silence for a few moments.

"The Rani has reviewed the diagnostic records for your Lady," the Doctor began.

The other Master gave him a curious look, and he took that as a sign to continue. "The Aesculum - after we dealt with the High Council - was able to reverse the worst of the damage that had been done to the Archivist... my Archivist, that is." He paused. "But, apparently, your Archivist has been further tampered with. More extensively."

The other Master said nothing. He simply sat there, staring at him with eyes of posion ice.

"She believes that our psiurgeons could reverse the worst of the damage. Without sacrificing her talents as an Archive. It would take time, though."

He paused. The other Master said nothing. "Something to think about, as the two of you discuss your place on Gallifrey."

"What?" the other Master asked.

My Lord President the Doctor smiled. "Whatever you may have done, whyever Gallifrey - your Gallifrey - was destroyed, we are satisfied that the two of you are guilty of no crimes against us."

He didn't understand why the other Master snickered cruelly at that.

"And so, we invite the two of you to be reckonciled to Gallifreyan society. To join us." He smiled, sadly. "I know it isn't the Gallifrey you are accustomed to. But, just maybe, that will be for the best."

The other Master started to speak, and the Doctor raised his hand. "You need make no answer now," he said. "Talk it over with your Lady. But I hope that, when she is recovered, you will accept my invitation to dine with my family." He glanced from the Archivist to the Master, eyes resting for an instant on the Master's hand on hers. "I am curious to learn of the differences between our worlds, and how they came to be."

(OOC: No reason to start a new thread. I figure we can continue in this one.)

[Deleted]

The Archivist's face scrunched up a little. She was swimming in the fog of her own mind. But the voices floated around her. Slowly her eyes opened, a tired look crossing her face finally. She felt the presence of her dear old friend, beside her. But she felt another, in her state it was a different sort of reaction then she might have - if she had realized that he had a different feel. Not that she could sense that exactly, since The Master was the one holding her hand.

"Theta? Koschei?" She said softly, it was in a younger voice, a softer one for the moment. But as her mind rebooting in a sense, to what her current time was. She shook hard for a moment and then sat up. She had heard, just barely what was being said, but she /knew/ what her choice was. "It is not Gallifrey, without my Doctor..." She said as she pressed her palms over her eyes. "I cannot stay... somewhere - that they... ridicule him for saving the rest of the worlds - from... what our people had become." She said finally as she pushed her legs to the side and struggled to stand.

She was weak, in a sense but she regained her facilities rather quickly. Shaking for a moment as she wrapped her arms around herself. Her tattered clothing was gone, and all she wore was the medical robes, that she had been placed in. "Please... just... I'll do whatever you ask of me. Do not... do not take Theta from me again." She said as she looked up at this Lord President Doctor. Her Theta, but not her Theta.

"Please... I spent hundreds of years without even his voice. Please do not make me lose him again." She pleaded as she went to her knees, such a powerful and usually Strong Time Lady - was begging. She was grovelling, for the life of the one she loved. "I'll even accept the burden if his crimes, if you are so set on punishing someone for them."