Mankas Klapo [Narvin / Leela / Valeyard]

[Leela]

"I know that it is a high risk idea, Narvin, but if there is anyone at all that I trust to let off explosives around me, and keep the reaction under control, then it would be you. I am sure that the weapons on a new TARDIS like this would also be more reliable than those old... what did you call them... 'museum pieces' back on Gallifrey."

It was a comment that needed no explanation. She could never forget that first long walk back in the darkness, only the weight of Narvin against her to keep her moving, and keep the panic at bay. She had learned a lot since then, but that moment had been like an unending bad dream.

She dropped down to sit crosslegged on the floor, head tilted so that she could follow the sound of Narvin scrabbling under the console with her ears, every tiny sound giving her a new part of the image she was painting in her mind. 

"What are you looking for, Narvin? If it anything that I can help with?"

Sitting still and silent had never been her strong suit. If she didn't have something to do, something to occupie herself with, then she had to make something. If they were going to go down, then she would make sure that it would be with every scenario considered, and with fire in their hearts. 

"What about the shields? Are they still working? Can we just open the doors and look out, to see where we are? If we are not far away from a planet, or another ship, then maybe we could use suits, and jump." 

[Vansell]

”I know that it is a high risk idea, Narvin, but if there is anyone at all that I trust to let off explosives around me, and keep the reaction under control, then it would be you. I am sure that the weapons on a new TARDIS like this would also be more reliable than those old... what did you call them... 'museum pieces' back on Gallifrey.”

“Really?” Even distracted, Narvin’s response was no less sceptical or cynical than usual. “I thought I was the last person to trust with explosives.”

Precisely because of those old “museum pieces”, he thought, and a shadow passed across his eyes, unseen in the darkness.

”What are you looking for, Narvin? If it anything that I can help with?”

“I’m looking for a way to connect up the tertiary power to the functions usually run by the primary and secondary power systems,” he explained. “If I can do that, we’ll have a scanner, maybe some controls...at least light.”

”What about the shields? Are they still working? Can we just open the doors and look out, to see where we are? If we are not far away from a planet, or another ship, then maybe we could use suits, and jump.”

“Shields...shields...” A hand snaked out from beneath the console to feel around the controls - and then, he felt a click, and an almost imperceptible increase in the warmth of several of the wires beneath his other hand. “Oh! Yes, we have shields. That’s something...although it would be nice to know what there is to need to shield ourselves from.”

Because there had to be a catch - there always was.

Shields activated, he shuffled back from the console and rose to his feet. Suiting up and jumping, he wasn’t too sure about - although it was a marginally preferable idea to explosives - but Leela was right, they could at least take a look.

“Well...hold onto something - let’s see what disaster we’ve flown straight into the middle of...”

With the shields, it should theoretically have been safe, but Narvin gripped onto the edge of the console anyway, just in case - he wasn’t in the habit of trusting. He glanced over to Leela, to make sure she was doing the same, and then operated the door control.

No rushing winds of the time vortex, no sucking vacuum of space, no blast of heat death. Small mercies, but it wasn’t to last long. When Narvin cautiously let go of the console and ventured over to the door, he found himself staring out at...

...well, nothing. Nothing but the empty void of space, strewn with just a few aimlessly-drifting fragments of rubble, red rocks and dust.

[Leela]

Leela followed Narvin's suggestion, and wrapped both hands around a railing near the door, before Narvin opened the doors, so that they could look out. Although, truth be told, she'd have done it anyway, holding on the door. Because she knew well enough from past experience, that if either of them were going to be dragged across the floor of the silent TARDIS, and out into space, then it wouldn't be her.

It was her place, to catch Narvin.

She was actually surprised when nothing went wrong, and the door slid open smoothly.

Carefully, she let go of her handhold, and stepped across to the door beside Narvin, grasping onto the door-frame to lean out, so that she could look properly.

It never failed to strike Leela, how vast and how quiet space was. Yet this place still made the hairs on the back of her next stand on end. It was as though she were looking into a deep void, deep enough to draw her away and down, and she couldn't see the bottom for all that she tried.

This place was wrong. So, so wrong. Every instinct was screaming at her to leave it, to get away, but of course, she couldn't. She was trapped here for now, as surely as Narvin was.

One of her hands was gripping the door-frame hard enough that her knuckles were turning white, and her fingertips were growing numb, and without even realizing it, the other hand had instinctively locked around Narvin's wrist, almost equally tight.

"The stars, Narvin. What...? How...? This is all wrong. None of this should be. This place - it feels empty. Empty and dead, like a graveyard."

She only hoped that it would not be their graveyard, as well.

"What next?"

Narvin would have an answer. He always had an answer, in moments like this.

[Vansell]

"What next?"

What next indeed? The last time he and Leela had traversed Axis portals and explored alternate possible timelines, the first step had always seemed to be to set off for the Capitol and start poking their noses into everybody's business, trying to determine the nature of that timeline, and later, how to get out of it and the trouble they found themselves in. Clearly, that course of action wouldn't be immediately possible this time.

But why?

Something was different. Something was wrong.

Narvin didn't need Leela's instincts to tell him that. He needed...

"Navigational instruments..." he muttered, tearing his gaze away from the sight of those reddish rocks drifting aimlessly in space - a sight that made his blood run cold through his hearts, although he was fairly sure he couldn't have said why - and returning to the console but leaving the door open. "We need navigational instruments."

Once again, he stooped down behind the console, at the open panel he had earlier been tinkering with, and then raised his head to peer over the top of it at Leela.

"We should have come out on Gallifrey. You remember those portals, last time - all of those timelines we entered, and we always came out on Gallifrey, within a limited radius of the Capitol - which, presumably, was the point where they had all branched from. We never, not once, stepped out into space."

If only they could at least determine their precise temporospatial coordinates.

"Maybe it's because we came through in a TT-capsule. Maybe we overshot."

[Leela]

Leela raised her head, to meet Narvin's eye, and then turned back to the door to study the vista before her, and the terrible beauty of it. She was not meant to be here. They were not meant to be anywhere near here, she could feel it in her bones. 

"We should never have stepped into this land. There is a shadow over the stars, in this place."

Navigation equipment. 

She turned Narvin's words over in her mind, the slight narrowing of her eyes showing how deeply she was thinging about this. Oh, but it was possible, wasn't it? Fingers of dread clawed at her spine, as she weighed everything, Narvin's tinkering becoming a soothing background sound. It was reassuring. It was something that was right with this world. 

"On the land, I would look at the signs around me. What colour is the earth? What are the rocks formed from? Are there any islands, or mountains in sight? How rich is the air, and what beasts and birds fly and crawl around me? Here, in space, the stars are the islands and mountains."

She broke down her thoughts for Narvin, giving him a chance to follow along, or get there before her. 

"You say that we always come out on Gallifrey, and you are right. No matter the Gallifrey, we are always there. So, what if we have not overshot? What if this is Gallifrey? The best tools you have are your eyes, Narvin? Can you recognize any of the stars, out there?"

It seemed like the most obvious possibility. And the most frighting. Because without Gallifrey, without anything to power the TARDIS, then how would they ever get back?

[Vansell]

Narvin couldn't have said why he hadn't looked immediately at the stars. He wasn't used to such primitive means of navigation, but he had certainly studied astronomy extensively - every Time Lord did, at the Academy, and Narvin had done rather well at it, if he did say so himself. Maybe it was just that he wasn't in the habit of looking heavenwards in a non-academic context, like Leela was.

Or maybe he just didn't want to be confronted with the evidence laid out before his eyes as plain as any Academy student's orbital charts.

Because he did recognize the stars. Every last one of them, by name.

Those drifting rocks...they were so, so red...

Over the top of the console, his eyes met Leela's, and he swallowed hard, throat dry - and then laughed, short and unexpected even to himself, because the first thing to come to mind, of all things, was that he would have to admit Leela had been right.

"Well." His throat was dry; he swallowed and licked his lips, straightening up and setting his hands on the console. "Well. That...would explain why the TT-capsule lost power

His voice sounded, to his own ears, a lot calmer than he thought it should have done. Maybe he hadn't quite taken it in, he found himself thinking objectively. There was still plenty of time to start panicking.

"Not to worry, though. TT-capsules have auxiliary systems - there are Rifts, all throughout time and space, that we can draw power from. We just need to find one."

Oddly, the realization that in this timeline, something catastrophic had happened to his home planet seemed to be just the thing he had been looking for - an answer, and therefore a tangible, complete problem to solve. The catastrophe itself...well, that could be set neatly to one side for the time being, until he and Leela were secure and safe. Then, he could process its enormity and consider the consequences.

Such as the fact that without a planet to land on, locating - let alone passing through - the portal they needed to return home would be...well, difficult would be something of an understatement.

[Leela]

Leela didn't need to hear Narvin's words, to know what he'd found. Simply by watching the way that he stood, as he looked out was enough of a tell, after all the time that she'd know him. Even if he'd tried to hide it, then he wouldn't have been able to, although for his sake she would have pretended not to know. 

In a situation like this, pretending would get neither of them anywhere, though, and certainly not to anywhere near where they needed to be. 

"Well." His throat was dry; he swallowed and licked his lips, straightening up and setting his hands on the console. "Well. That...would explain why the TT-capsule lost power."

Lifting a hand, she silently rested it on his elbow for a moment, a small show of support for someone that she'd known for so long. "We need to mark this place. Not just these coordinates, but exactly where we came through. The stars will keep drifting on their endless journeys, and I do not know this area well enough to work out where exactly it was, when we get back here again."

Talking was better than standing in silence, staring in shock at the red rubble drifting past them. They needed to be practical, and focused. Now wasn't the time to give over to fear. 

"Will a portal without a planet to anchor it to, also wander lost between the stars?"

Taking a deep breath, she focused on the moment once again.

"What happened to it? Did the Daleks win, here?" Her voice was almost a whisper, these words for herself, alone.

"Not to worry, though. TT-capsules have auxiliary systems - there are Rifts, all throughout time and space, that we can draw power from. We just need to find one."

"And of course, to do that, we need to move. We have plenty of oxygen, food and water. Now, we need a plan." Leela's eyes were in constant motion.

"The Doctor had a car, once. The battery died, at the bottom of a hill, miles away from a town. He said that if another car, or something holding power was nearby, then we could have used the power, to get the battery going again."

Her tone of voice was as calm as Narvin's, as she drew on his strength and focus.

"So, we need to find a way to jump-start the TARDIS. Or, one of us will need to get out and push. You have a space suit here, don't you? Something with rockets on the back of it? And Oxygen will not be a problem, thanks to the TARDIS. It would not be hard to push it through space."