NLoT: You Can't Go Home Again

[Deleted]

The Archivist watched the wave of emotions flicker across The Librarians face, a small inner smirk of satisfaction filing her. yes, someone else was finally knowing a fraction of the pain she was in. She sipped the tea and listened to the men talking, and then cleared her throat as she nibbled on a few of the fruits. She was still starving, new regeneration and everything else that had happened. Her eyes watching the room rather avidly as she took everything in. As she absorbed all the knowledge she could, as she always did.

"The Dahleks, and yes they are that kind of monster. I once offered to show another, what is here. I can do the same for you. Though you may not like it." She offered in a sweet voice, stopping to pour herself another cup of tea, gently motioning to The Librarian that she could serve herself. Surely The Librarian would understand they were both once strong women, and preferred to do thigns for themselves. Unless she was so far gone, in this Time Line.

"They were started by a man named Davros, during a war on his planet. There was one point where this Dimensions version of you was given a choice, a choice to kill the Daleks forever - before they started. At that time, he had not yet realized exactly how things would get. He made the choice not to wipe out an entire race, because he did not feel he had that ability. But... time changes us all, and hard choices sometimes have to be made."

The Archivist had a small smile curling on her face now as she realized that this Lord President wanted to bring himself to trial. "Well which one, Lord President? By my count there is... 13 different versions of you? Though not counting the one that the Council themselves created out of your Darkness. In this Time Line." She said this as she sipped on the Tea again. "I suppose you wish to go after the one that made the decision, or the ones that came after him?" She mused as she let her head cock to the side.

[Koschei]

His hand shook as he reached out and plucked a quorlberry of his own. "We will still need to bring your Doctor to trial, of course. But... perhaps... there will be mercy."

The Archivist had a small smile curling on her face. "Well which one, Lord President? By my count there is... 13 different versions of you? Though not counting the one that the Council themselves created out of your Darkness. In this Time Line." She said this as she sipped on the Tea again. "I suppose you wish to go after the one that made the decision, or the ones that came after him?" She mused as she let her head cock to the side.

"The extant one," the Lord President answered, eying her curiously. "Even if we could travel freely in the History of Gallifrey - something that my Lord the Meddler insists is possible, but has yet to achieve - what would be the justice in bringing a man to trial before he commits a crime?" He shook his head. "No, we will hunt him down in the Now, and bring him to trial in the Now."

His eyes flickered from the Archivist to the Master. "You can aid us in this."

The Master lifted an eyebrow. "Indeed? How?"

"We had assumed," the Lord President answered, "based on other intelligence we obtained, that the Doctor of the Main Line travelled in the same TT-40 capsule I use. But this information must be incorrect, as we found the two of you in it."

Smiling faintly, the Master laid his hand on the Archivist's. ::Then he remains at large, still,:: he observed, transmitting directly through the contact of their skin. "It is mine," he said.

"Yours?" The Lord President sounded surprised.

"Oh, yes. When the High Council, ah, interfered with the Doctor and the Archivist, they did so in such a way that - as I understood it - each believed the other had betrayed them. The Doctor, in a fit of heartbroken rage, threw away the key to the TARDIS gifted to him by the Archivist."

It was a structure of lies, built on a foundation of truth. The sort of lie that had always been his greatest weapon. And from the way the alternate Archivist took hold of her husband's hand, he had scored a hit.

"The capsule sat in a museum for centuries. Until the Cruciform fell. Then, it was the only ship I could find to flee in."

"And the Doctor..?" prompted the Lord President.

"Currently flies a 102 series, one of the TARDISes bred during the War."

[Deleted]

The Archivist remained silent, sipping tea and chewing on fruit now. She would let The Master do his thing, set the scene and control from that brilliant mind of his. She was going to gather information now, and act like the woman that had pulled back and was haunted by the very past that had still haunted her. She needed to act like losing The Doctor made her hearts ache, but she also needed to act like she was forming a relationship with this man beside her.

When the Master brushed her hand, she cocked her head towards him and almost just barely touched it against his shoulder. //Understood, make sure to keep them on their toes. I'm glad he's free... for now.// She said to him as she twisted her fingers into his hand and continued her drinking and eating. She was quiet, listening to The Master lay out a web of truth laced lies. No one could tell it, perhaps other than her, for what it really was. Only reason she could tell what it was... was because she held his hand at that moment. But the ones across from them? They'd be like sheep to the slaughter.

Then the woman cleared her throat, those tears of pain jumping to her eyes. "Yes... I'm to take care of the old girl... as she's all I have left ... of home. Though I have The Doctor, and I have The Master... the old girl is something else... something... special." She said, boosting The Master's charade with a show of emotion. Something that only specific Time Lords would ever be susceptible too. Oh my, was The Archivist starting to shape into a manipulative villain to be?

[Koschei]

The Lord President smiled a little at the Archivist's words, and gently clutched at the hand of the Head Librarian. "That she is. Yes, she certainly is." the Master tried not to gag at the little exchange of glances that passed between the two.

"Still," the Lord President continued, "I'm gettng ahead of myself. I didn't intend to grill the two of you over a pleasant dinner. Have you given any thought to what you might do, now that you've returned home?"

The Master snorted. "Our home is dead. Burned by your counterpart."

The Lord President waved a dismissive hand. "Yes, yes, we've established that. But you will, I hope, view our Gallifrey as your new home. The same offer is being extended to all of the survivors. The lost, drifting since the destruction of their Homeworld. We will, after all, need their experience to enable us to deal with this unfamiliar and hostile Spiral Politic."

"It would be very different, yes," the Master nodded. "But I'm curious: now that this Gallifrey is ensconsed into the main line of History, what do you intend to do?"

"Why, the same thing we did in our own History," the Lord President replied.

"And what is that?"

"We will bring peace to the universe."

"How... delightful," the Master said, not quite managing to suppress his sneer. "And how will you do that?"

The Lord President smiled beautifically. "Why, we will take the younger cultures in hand and guide them along. Control their development. Recalcitrant species will have their histories edited to make them more docile."

[Deleted]

The Archivist watched this Lord President and felt something strange in his chest. That's dangerous... he's got worse ideas than The Specialist. At least she wanted to just make use a watching raise and only step in when people were going to do something stupid that could get them destroyed... The Archivist said to The Master as she adjusted her position and continue to nibble on things.

"Interesting" She commented to The Lord President's words. Her eyes half hooded as she started to formulate some sort of plan. "Though I appreciate your concern and your wish to bring us here, this is not my home... these are not my people. But I do not mind interacting with you. I cannot call this my home." She said plainly as she bowed her head a little.

"It holds none of the things that made Gallifrey my home. Though the people are the same, the ... developments are not. The people never faced the same hardships and trials, and as such are completely different than the ones i loved - in personality." She said softly as she let her hand brush over the fabric that covered her knee.

[Koschei]

The Archivist shifted in her seat and selected another piece of fruit. As she did, her hand brushed his. ::That's dangerous... he's got worse ideas than The Specialist. At least she wanted to just make use a watching raise and only step in when people were going to do something stupid that could get them destroyed...::

::To be honest,:: the Master answered, I never would have thought that any version of the Doctor would possess the audacity to suggest such a scheme.:: His lips crooked in a wry grin. ::It must be the beneficial influence of my alternate self.::

"Interesting," she said aloud. "Though I appreciate your concern and your wish to bring us here, this is not my home... these are not my people. But I do not mind interacting with you. I cannot call this my home."

The Lord President gave her a curious look. "And why not?"

::Yes,:: the Master agreed, laying his hand on hers again. ::Think of it! We could rule this ersatz Gallifrey within a decade! Power beyond imagination!"

"It holds none of the things that made Gallifrey my home. Though the people are the same, the ... developments are not. The people never faced the same hardships and trials, and as such are completely different than the ones i loved - in personality." She said softly as she let her hand brush over the fabric that covered her knee.

The Master rolled his eyes, then sipped at his drink. The Lord President, for his part, shook his head sadly. "I was rather afraid you would say that. And do you agree, my Lord the Master?"

He hesitated, considering his options. But there was no real choice, was there? After millennia in the wilds of the Spiral Politic, Gallfrey felt... stale. Stagnant. Suffocating. If he was to rule - and to be honest, despite his earlier words - he wasn't sure he did - it would be because he had taken control. And so he shrugged. "Where my Lady goes, I go."

"Oh, very well said! Very well said, indeed!" The Lord President applauded briefly, and then Chancellary Guardsmen entered the room. "But, you perceive, you have no choice. We simply cannot allow you to roam free, hmmm?" He smiled thinly. "And you will see reason, I suspect, once the Aescepulans have finished."

[Deleted]

::I'm not letting him do this.:: where the only words that jumped over to The Master as The Archivist used hundreds of years of experience in martial arts. She could tell that the her from here hadn't practiced in a long time, at most she did morning exercises, and The Professor as she wanted to call him - was not even someone that looked like he had practiced in awhile either. His muscles showed none of the fine toning that came from practicing. He acted self-assured in his capabilities.

The movement she had was quick as a snake, and she grabbed the old man by his throat and slammed him over to the nearest wall. In one hand she held a broken tea cup, with a rather jagged edge. Closest thing she had to a weapon, considering they had made sure she wasn't in her normal clothes. The good news was her bag was in the infirmary of The Doctor's TARDIS, and she could get back into her real clothes later.

"No, I believe YOU will listen to me." The Archivist said, her eyes holding that slight gleam that came post regeneration. Her body thrummed still with the power within. "The Guard will leave, now. No questions, no firing shots. No going after Koschei. Or I will end you, and as you regenerate, I will end you again." The woman said her voice graveling down to a rather strange pitch.

"You have no idea of the atrocities this world has seen. You have no idea the world you are stepping into. So I'm going to show you, I'm going to tell you." The woman hissed as she threw open the doors of her mental processes.. And then she started to feed images, memories... horrors... with this man. If she broke him she didn't care, because he was not her Doctor, and he was not some doddering old man.

In that moment, she lost being The Archivist, she wasn't The Archivist anymore... She was something else. For this moment, she was someone else. Not anyone that anyone in the room would recognize. Because This Archivist had never lost control in such a way. Never gone feral in such a way.

Even as her mind pressed down upon his, her hand still had that sharp porcelain edge to his throat.

[Koschei]

The Master tensed to move, then blinked in surprise as the Archivist beat him to the Lord President. As she threatened the man - with a broken teacup, of all things - he smiled thinly. My, she had become ruthless in this life, hadn't she? Then she did something, and the Lord President screamed in agony.

He turned slightly in his chair, watching the Guardsmen. They hesitated, then brought up stasers. Before anyone could fire, there was a roar and a gout of flame as the he shot the lead Guardsman in the face. He fired twice more, the automatic pistol bucking in his hand as he squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, and the other two Guardsmen went down. Chuckling, he collected their crystalline weapons.

"How..?" the other Archivist asked, stunned. "How did you get a weapon?"

"My Lady," he answered, bowing slightly, "you have no conception of who and what I am. My analogue in your history may use the title, but I am the Master." He gave her a thin, feral smile. "And, like fools, you gave me access to a Cornucopia Engine."

He glanced at the Archivist. "Are you quite finished tormenting the eidolon of your lost love? Because we have little enough time before reinforcements arrive. And I doubt they will be caught as easily off their guard."

Motion out of the corner of his eye. He spun, raising his pistol, and something shattered against his face. He crashed to the ground in a cloud of porcelin fragments and blood, stunned.

---

The Archivist wished she had a weapon at hand as she rose. The teapot had seved well enough to put that insane duplicate of Koschei down, temporarily at least, but now she had nothing at hand. And her husband, writhing and screaming under the psychic assault of her own duplicate, needed her help.

She never forgot anything. Her blessing and her curse. So even though she hadn't practiced in centuries, she flowed easily into the combat stance of a venyu sankido practitioner. "If you harm him," she snarled at her doppelganger, eyes narrowing, "I will kill you."

(OOC: Mirror match! Just like in the video games! )

[Deleted]

Just because you remembered something, didn't mean your body knew how to execute it well. The Archivist dropped The Professor, as she couldn't call him the Doctor, and then turned her attention on the version of her that got happiness. That had known no pain and strife, they probably had a gaggle of children and grandchildren. In this world Susan was probably her grandchild.

He motions shifted a little, and her eyes darkened just a little. She looked at the downed Koschei and also remembered that on Earth, as a human she had picked up a few tricks. "I wouldn't kill him, I merely gave him the information he lacked. Perhaps he won't find our Universe so... easily to take over. I'd rather The Specialist lead us, than some madman that would enforce brainwashing to get members for his 'society'." She stated simply as she kept herself on the defensive.

"Of course, you wouldn't understand anything like that, given the fact that you have lived a relatively peaceful life. You don't know the tragedy of my life, you have the exact opposite. You don't know what it is to watch the man you love walk away, because you were forced to let him go. You don't know what it's like to live hundreds of years with an aching heart. You don't know what it's like to see Daleks, or Cybermen... or the ever Re-Gen Soldiers... the Nightmare Child... " The Archivist whispered as she felt that shiver race up and down her dogy, that four beat tempo suddenly drowned her thinking.

"You don't hear the drums"

[Koschei]

The other Archivist circled, testing the Near Now for openings as her counterpart from the Trunk ranted. Things didn't look good - after all, remembering and doing were too very different things, particularly when you hadn't done in centuries. And this Trunk counterpart had, based on her readings, kept much more in practice. Yet another symptom of the sickness of Prime History, she decided.

Time to try and make her sloppy.

"The man you love?" she sneered. "If you really loved him, you would have fought for him. I did." A mocking laugh. "I stood up to the Council, stood by him as we threw them down. And now I have three fine children, and a dozen grandchildren. What do you have?"

More mocking laughter. "Nothing! I can see it in your eyes, Libertansiel! For all your scorn, I have everything you wanted, while..."

Thunder drowned out her next few words, and she jerked twice as bullets slammed into her chest. Numb, staggering, she turned to see the Master pushed up on one arm, smoking pistol in his hand. Blood trickled from her mouth as she tried to speak, but the Master's gun spoke louder. She went down, a neat hole in her forehead and blood splattering the wall behind her.

"Did you always talk this much?" he asked, struggling to sit up as he wiped blood from his nose and mouth. "Or would you have just gotten chattery as your first life aged?" Painfully, he pulled himself to his feet and tossed the Archivist a staser. "Here. Do you know how to use one of these?"

He stretched, then looked around. "Anyway, before the Doctor wakes up and all of these people start regenerating and we have to shoot all of them again - and before more of the Guard arrive - I suggest we make our escape. What can you tell me about the architecture of the Presidential Palace?"

[Deleted]

The Archivist felt a grim sense of satisfaction as she watched 'The Librarian' fall. Her eyes narrowing just a little. "No, I think peace has made her complacent. Master." She said, not using his name as he had asked her not to. She shifted to the side and caught the stazer he had thrown her, and then looked down at her clothing. They were ridiculous, but she would fix that later.

"What do you want to know? How to get out? Or the secret tunnels that riddle our city? From the old days when we had a Royal Family?" The Archivist asked as she gave 'The Professor' a hard kick in the ribs. "I'm not some doddering old woman, and you are not my Doctor. Think about that the next time you try to come after us, if you can hear me." The woman snarled as she swept passed Koschei.

She ripped off the sash of the gown, and threw off the over layers until she wore just one of the layers of the garment. Her hands retying the sash as she wore just the white under layer, and had better mobility at this moment. "Let's go. I assume you want the path of least resistance? Return to the TARDIS? I can access her systems and refortify her and bring her back to a point where The Doctor can easily pick her up. Then I'm done with all of this."

[Koschei]

"Let's go," the Archivist said, stripping away most of her ornate gown. "I assume you want the path of least resistance? Return to the TARDIS? I can access her systems and refortify her and bring her back to a point where The Doctor can easily pick her up. Then I'm done with all of this."

It was right on the tip of his tongue to say "yes". Because 'yes' made sense. He'd fought hard fights before, but he'd never seen the benefit to staying and fighting a losing battle. And two Time Lords - even if those Time Lords were an exceptional archive and the most dangerous criminal Gallifrey had ever produced - were fighting a losing battle by trying to take on all of Gallifrey.

"No." The syllable caught him off guard, and he tried to figure out how to justify it. "This is..." he gestured around. "These doppelgangers are too dangerous. If they are to be believed - and I see no reason to doubt them - then they are both willing and capable of conquering the entirety of the Spiral Politic. For our own safety, we need to see what would need to be done to get rid of them. Permanently."

Of course. That made sense. That must be why he was going to risk his lives again. Self-preservation, and not the mad promise made to a young human woman a decade ago.

"There must be..." he considered what there must be. "Temporal engines, on a vast scale. Time rotors capable of pulling Gallifrey and the Eye of Harmony through the Vortex. But where..." His eyes lit up. "The Orrey! The Orrey of Vertumnus and its Keeper! If anyone will know, it's that mad little man that's their current Keeper!"

My Lord President the Doctor groaned, stirring a little. Without any change of expression, the Master shot him once in the brain and then twice where his lone hybrid heart would be in his chest. "What's the easiest way to make our way unseen to the Square of the Circle, and from there to the Royal Road?"

[Deleted]

The woman stared ahead of herself for a moment, her eyes sliding over everything as she started to take things into mind. Her mind calculating possibilities as she reached out and grabbed his hand. "Here, follow me." She said as she darted to the side, her other hand searching along the outside of the building for something. She knew that there had to be something here, because of old plans. "There should be an entry to the underground area, mostly used for servicing and repairs." 

She said this as her hand twisted and she activated a panel, the door sliding back. "Which obviously they don't use as often as they should." She mused at the musty smell of the opening rolled passed them. "Let us go." She said as she pulled against his hand and darted in. "We can take these underground for awhile, then we can pop up to the Royal Road, there should be the old Royal secret passages nearby, some down alleys - others more hidden... that we can use to get to just about anywhere in the main city." 

[Koschei]

"Excellent," the Master said, following the Archivist into the passage. "Once, I had all of those passages committed to memory - you never know when information like that would come in handy. But, with all of the lives I've passed through, my memory isn't quite what it once was."

That had to be it, yes. Surely the blonde imposter, the one that claimed to be the original Master, was wrong. He wasn't just a copy. But... compression errors from a backup could easily explain the gaps and distortions in his memory. Far more easily than simply having regenerated and swapped bodies more often than any other Time Lord in the history of Gallifrey...

He shook the thoughts off. They would be of no use, now. Instead, he chose to focus on the here and now. Closing the doorway behind them, for instance. "I wonder,' he mused aloud. "Does their Doctor know of these passages?"

Memories swam up - distant, fuzzy memories of secret meetings in ages past. "No, I rather suspect he does. Not all of them, but... well... we did use them with some frequency. Back in the Academy."

Memories or no, the layout of the tunnels was no longer familiar to him. He stared at the four-way intersection before him. "Which way should we follow?"

[The Doctor]

There was silence in the Presidential Residence. Six bodies lay motionless, drenched in their own blood. One of the corpses, an ancient man with stick-figure arms and whispy white hair clinging to head that was more skull than face, twitched. Then he twitched again. The whole corpse blurred, as if size and shape and appearance were utterly indeterminate. And then his appearance settled down, changed.

The corpse was now taller, limbs and chest and face fuller. His hair was still snowy white, but it covered his scalp entirely once more, and it had been joined by a beard. The wounds in his forehead and chest were gone, smears of blood the only sign that they had ever been there. With a sudden jerk, the corpse sat up.

"Hands," he said aloud, holding them up and staring at them as if he'd never seen them before. His voice was different now, stronger and deeper. "Good. I've got hands still." The hands explored his face, a curious expression flickering across his features as he felt the beard. "Nose... eyes... ears... good. Hearing and sight seem in order, and..."

He made a small sound of alarm as he saw the Archivist's body lying in a pool of blood. Scrambling awkwardly, moving like a man uncomfortable in his own skin, he stumbled and half-crawled to her side. "Libby!" he cried in anguish, cradling her body in his arms. "Libby!"

(OOC: No reason to assume that the Doctor would follow the same regeneration sequence under different situations, right? And I assume that the alt-Archivist would regenerate, give that the Master shot her with a 9mm pistol and not a stazer.)