Chapter Text
“Doctor, are you sure that’s even a thing?”
The Doctor made a face, scrunching her nose in a perfect facsimile of good-natured annoyance—which wasn’t hard, thanks to the very real irritation prickling just under her skin. It wasn’t the kind of irritation, however, that she wanted to show to her fam. It was dangerously close to anger.
“Of course it’s a thing, Yaz! Jury duty isn’t a human invention, you know. Lots of species have juries—or at least, the more civilized ones do.”
Neither Yaz nor the rest of the gang looked convinced.
“And when will you be back again?” Ryan asked.
The Doctor pretended to think about it. “Oh, I don’t know. Half an hour? Depending on the TARDIS, of course, since she likes to trip me up a bit.”
She grinned, and gave a nudge to the TARDIS, as if the ship were in on the nonexistent joke. In reality, the Doctor planned to be in the hallowed halls of the Shadow Proclamation for roughly five minutes, enough time to give a lengthy explanation of why exactly they should all sod off.
“Right.” Graham nodded, clearly unconvinced. “Half an hour. After how many tries?”
“Oh, come off it, Graham!” The Doctor gave him an affronted look. “I got you back, didn’t I?”
“But you’ll come back, won’t you?” Yaz eyed the Doctor worriedly. She looked as if she were moments away from inviting herself along. As if she didn’t quite trust the Doctor to return. “You won’t leave us hangin?”
The Doctor gave Yaz a smile, as honest a one as could be dredged up, considering her mood at the moment. “I will, I promise. Even if it takes me one trillion and twenty seven tries. Though statistically, it probably won’t.”
None of them immediately answered, but they seemed to accept this. Mostly. She saw the reticence in their eyes, and hastened to make it more palatable. “Trust me, fam. This is the last thing I want to be doing—I’m not even getting paid! But it’ll just be a short hop for you lot, and then I’ll be back and we can go off again. Somewhere that’s not Sheffield. Or Earth. Unless you want to do past Earth—ooh, that could be fun! What do you say, past Earth?”
They still looked rather reluctant, Yaz most of all. “Do you want us to wait for you here?” she asked hopefully. The Doctor almost shook her head, but then caught sight of the painfully optimistic look in her eyes, and turned the shake into a nod.
“Sure, why not?” She craned her head past Yaz’s shoulder, and caught sight of a sign sticking off a building, just a block down. “That looks like a coffee shop, doesn’t it? Why don’t you all sit down, grab a drink, and I’ll come pick you up in half an hour?”
Yaz nodded eagerly, relief flooding her expression. Ryan shrugged, still clearly uneasy about the Doctor’s imminent disappearance. Graham just studied her for a long moment, a wrinkle in his brow. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then broke off into a cough.
The Doctor frowned. “Maybe some tea for you instead, Graham.”
Graham shook his head, then devolved into another series of coughs. The Doctor watched him, a crease appearing in her brow.
“You alright, grandad?” Ryan went to lay a hand on Graham’s shoulder, but at his words Graham gave one final cough and straightened up.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He shivered, and glanced around the little group, all of whom were eying him uncertainly. “Oh, I’m fine, really. It’s just the cold air. And I’m not as young as you two.”
He ignored Ryan’s and Yaz’s raised eyebrows, and said, “Did you want anything, Doc? Or is this thing gonna take too long?”
The Doctor gave it a think, then waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, don’t bother. I’ll be back in time to order.”
This was enough to draw a relieved smile out of all of them, and the Doctor gave them one last wave as she stepped into the TARDIS. Then she turned around, and made sure not to catch their eyes as she closed the door behind her.
Not that it mattered, she reminded herself, as she threw the dematerialization lever. She’d be back before their coffee got cold.
————
Was she really being so self-important if she expected somebody there to greet her?
They were the ones who had summoned her, after all, and not the other way around. Though it wasn’t as if she didn’t take issue with that; the Doctor had really only come to get them to stop. Or rather, not them specifically, but the big guys behind them. The ones manipulating the peons from the end of the universe.
One council hiding behind another.
The High Council of the Time Lords had issued the Doctor a mysterious summons several weeks ago, in linear time. Probably something to do with the president she’d deposed of at the end of the universe. She’d ignored it, as was customary. Now it appeared they were trying every route to get to her, including—and this really made her clench her teeth—giving the Shadow Proclamation the nerve to hand her an executive order of appearance.
The gall of it.
She almost hadn’t come. But then they’d issued her another, and another, clogging up the TARDIS’s servers, all written in badly spelled high Gallifreyan, as if that was supposed to appeal to her. After another half a dozen she’d decided that, instead of ignoring them, she would simply send a strongly-worded refusal. In person.
She spent the flight preparing a rather dramatic speech to launch into upon arrival, and stepped out of the TARDIS with the words on the tip of her tongue, only to find that nobody was there.
“Huh?”
She did a quick circle around the TARDIS to ascertain she hadn’t mislanded. And she hadn’t; she was standing smack dab in the middle of the congressional chamber of the Shadow Proclamation, which also happened to be the perfect spot to deliver dramatic refusals of executive orders. Which was why she had chosen it.
Only nobody was there to receive it.
“Hello?” she called, and listened to her own voice echo around the vast hall. Not a single soul responded, and the Doctor frowned, ever so slightly put out. What was the fun after all, in being justifiably annoyed at someone when those people weren’t there?
She turned around again until she spotted the doorway, far off to her left, and jogged towards it. She stopped short when she arrived, and pushed it open with just a little bit of pomp, in case the crowds were waiting on the other side of the door to hear her speech. They weren’t though; the hall was just like the congressional chamber. An utter ghost town.
“Strange,” she muttered, then started down the hall, eying the tall, darkly-paneled doors that lined each side of the hallway. They were all shut, and apparently empty according to the readings of her sonic screwdriver. She scanned each one as she passed by, giving a short huff when every reading returned the same.
Not a soul.
“Curiouser and curiouser.” She continued down the hall, suddenly conscious of her own breathing and scuff-scuff of boots against the carpeted floor, loud compared to the hushed silence around her. “They’ve got to be here, don’t they?”
Had she gotten her dates mixed up? The Doctor checked her sonic. No, it was the correct time and place. Perhaps they were using one of the other asteroids that made up the seat of the Shadow Proclamation’s power. That would be a headache, not to mention embarrassing, though she supposed she could just pretend she hadn’t gotten lost and—
Her sonic beeped and she froze, stopping right in the middle of the hallway. She glanced down, and read the indication; the presence of organic lifeforms, just to the right of her. She pivoted to face the door—identical to all the others—and moved closer, a smile creeping up her face as she caught the low murmur of voices. Ah, so they were just in the slow season, were they? Had to use one of the small rooms, didn’t have enough council members present to make it look grand. Well, she could work with that.
Her hand was already reaching for the door handle, mouth already opening to leap into her speech, when a shout issued from behind the door. She paused, curious, then bent at the keyhole. Voices weren’t often raised in the congressional chambers of the Shadow Proclamation. Not enough emotions among the lot of them, the Doctor liked to think. Or maybe they just liked the awe that a little stately silence could muster.
Her hair brushed the keyhole just in time to snag the tail-end of another shout, and this time it was loud enough for the Doctor to catch the desperation pinned to it.
“It’s not enough—!” The voice cut off abruptly, overwhelmed by emotion, and the Doctor’s eyes widened. Since when had tears entered the dignified chambers of the Shadow Proclamation?
“Sarva, we’re doing everything we—” another voice hurried to reassure, and the Doctor’s expression fell into shock. She knew that voice, though not in person. The Doctor made a point to know the main players of every era in whatever galaxy she happened to be currently visiting. And that voice belonged to no other than Rathoinax, the current—and most famous—head of the Shadow Proclamation. Rathoinax, who spoke in a monotone and never let a smile slip past her wrinkled old lips, if she could help it. Rathoinax, who most certainly didn’t reassure.
“You don’t understand!” The first voice cut in again, sharp and quivering. “The Child of Time is on our doorstep—”
The Doctor’s mouth fell open. She stared at the edge of the door frame, dark and polished as the door itself, and tried to keep listening even as her mind was reeling.
The Child of Time. A memory whispered at the back of her mind—chasing after her Ghost Monument, on a planet with two suns and her little fam, then nothing more than a confused trio. The words of the Remnants; the Timeless Child.
She thought they’d been referring to her. But could this Child of Time be—?
Her hand was on the doorknob before she even realized she was reaching for it, and then she was flinging the door open and stumbling into the room, all thoughts of petty speeches long gone from her mind.
The occupants of the room turned immediately upon hearing the door, and a startled cry of surprise ran through the lot of them. The Doctor gave them a grin and a friendly wave, which wobbled with consternation when she actually caught sight of the group. There were only six, which was troubling, and she recognized them all, which was even worse. Every single face in the room stood as the head of a major section of the explored universe, and while it wasn’t unusual for such high heads of states to gather in the congressional chambers of the Shadow Proclamation, it was unusual for all the other representatives, the little planets and peoples and galaxies to be…absent.
“Private party?” She swallowed any worry which might have peeked out of her expression, and when nobody moved, sauntered over. “I almost wasn’t going to enter, but, well, I sort of eavesdropped, and—”
“Who are you?” A gaseous blue shape, his face no more than a roiling cloud of slightly darker blue gases, snarled at her. “How did you get—”
“Prijaan, calm down,” Rathoinax said wearily, her eyes fixed upon the Doctor. “You forget the last member we invited to the session.”
She dipped her head in greeting, and the Doctor gave her a nod. The smile she’d plastered on her face was already fading away. She never managed to keep them on very long around such folk. “Yeah, I got the invite. Didn’t really appreciate it. ‘Specially not the email spam, thanks very much.”
“Email spam?” Rathoinax raised one eyebrow tiredly. The Doctor waved a flippant hand.
“Oh, just a bit of Earth slang. Picked it up in my travels. But that’s not important. What’s important is what I came here to tell you.”
Prijaan nodded, his whole form billowing. “So you have heard about our distress—”
“Distress?” The Doctor wrinkled her nose. “What distress?”
The entire council—all six of them—stared at her. The Doctor stared back, confusion growing in her expression the longer the silence continued. “So, uh, you lot weren’t calling me as a front for the Time Lords, I suppose?”
Rathoinax frowned, puzzled. “The Time Lords no longer exist, Doctor. Excepting yourself, of course.”
“Ah right, yeah,” the Doctor answered hastily. “Right, they don’t. Definitely nowhere in the universe. Or out of it.”
Then she hesitated. “Though, hang on—why have you all been, er, blowing up my phone, as I believe the kids call it? You know I don’t answer to—”
“Unbelievable,” a tall, graceful form snarled, and the Doctor’s eyes flew to her. It was the council member she’d heard outside, moments before interrupting the party. Her voice was still heavy with emotion. “She doesn’t even know.”
“Sarva—” Rathoinax cautioned.
“Know what?” The Doctor looked between the six of them, utterly baffled. When they didn’t immediately answer, she gave an uncertain smile. “Oh, c’mon, don’t hold back on me. There’s not much I don’t know, and it really bugs me when I don’t.”
Several of the council members exchanged a glance. Rathoinax just eyed her, stern and scrutinizing. As if trying to decide. At last, she spoke. “Sarva, is the patient quarantined?”
Sarva looked to her in surprise, which quickly flashed to trepidation. “Yes, Rathoinax, but—”
“We won’t break the quarantine.” Her eyes stayed on the Doctor as she spoke. “But we’ll give her a look. She needs to see him. She needs to understand the trouble facing the universe.”
————
Rathoinax led the Doctor to the quarantine, past the rows of dark wooden doors and down a different hallway, this one lined with empty, glass-walled cells. The ones, the Doctor recognized, in which criminals against the Shadow Proclamation would come to await trial. Only now they were empty—evacuated, the Doctor realized, like the rest of the building. Rathoinax and her council, it seemed, weren’t taking any chances.
Rathoinax’s robes swept behind her as she walked, long enough that the Doctor nearly tripped on the tail. Instead she jogged until she was even with her, and silently cursed this regeneration’s shorter legs. One regeneration back, and she would have been the one striding ahead.
“What do you mean when you say ‘quarantined’?” she asked. Rathoinax glanced at her once, before returning her gaze to the front as they strode down the hallway.
“You’ll see for yourself, Doctor. In fact, you might be able to tell us something about what this patient is infected with. All I can say is that it’s like nothing I’ve seen before, not in this universe.”
“Oh, and been to any others, have you?” the Doctor asked dryly. Rathoinax’s lip curled, but her gaze stayed pinned to the front.
“Not as of yet. Though, given the spread of this disease, I fear we may have to start looking.”
The utter seriousness in which she dropped those words stunned the Doctor out of her planned comeback. She looked at Rathoinax and pursed her lips to ask a question, but didn’t have time to phrase it before Rathoinax raised one elongated hand and pointed a slender finger.
“There.” The Doctor followed her gaze to a cell at the end of the hallway. It was identical to the others, the walls transparent like all the rest; only not, for as they approached, the Doctor realized that the glass was shimmering, strangely translucent. A shield, she guessed, though she couldn’t be sure as to what kind. Not without closer examination.
“It’s just a general quarantine,” Rathoinax said, as if reading the Doctor’s mind. “The problem, you see, is that we don’t know what we’re fighting. We don’t know what causes this disease, nor how it spreads beyond simple proximity. It doesn’t appear biological in nature, but it affects the biological processes. It also turns—well, look for yourself.”
They closed in on the glass—still easily see-through despite the shield—and Rathoinax gestured to a cot lying centered in the cell. A man sat upon it—not human, the Doctor noted, but definitely a close evolutionary pattern. He was pale and shivering, his head down and his hands resting limply on his knees. Rathoinax stopped a good five feet away and hung back, strangely reluctant, but the Doctor moved close, pressing up against the glass.
“Hello?” she called softly to the man, who twitched at her voice, but didn’t immediately look up. “Hello, there. My name’s the Doctor. I’m sorry you’re stuck in there, but the council’s brought me in to take a look at you—”
By the word council, it was clear the man was listening, for his head jerked up slightly, and then after a long moment, he lifted his gaze. His gaze immediately found the Doctor’s, and she broke off, drawing in a ragged breath.
His eyes were entirely a flat, dull gold.
“Help—me?” The man’s teeth chattered as he spoke. “You can…help me?”
The Doctor didn’t answer. She only stared for several moments, and then quickly whipped her sonic screwdriver out and drew it up and down, scanning. She snatched it back as soon as it beeped and examined the readings, the crease in her forehead growing with every passing second.
“Doctor?” Rathoinax, still standing several feet back, was clearly growing apprehensive at the lengthy silence and the extended time spent in the man’s company. “Do you know what it is? Have you seen this kind of thing before?”
“Yes, sort of—and no.” She was still staring at her sonic screwdriver as she spoke, brow deeply furrowed, but then a moment later she seemed to spring back to life, stuffing the sonic in her pocket and spinning around. Despite the energy of her movements however, the worry in her eyes remained clear as day. “I mean, sort of to the first one and a hard no on the second.”
“Oh.” Rathoinax relaxed slightly at the semblance of an answer, though her eyes still darted warily to the man sitting in the cell. “So can you tell me what it is? How we stop it?”
“Ah, well.” The Doctor made a face, and rocked back on her heels. It could have been lighthearted, if not for the fear rampant in her expression. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I can tell you what it is, Rathoinax. But you’re not going to like it.”
“Yes, well?” Rathoinax frowned impatiently, trepidation flickering heavy in her eyes. “What is it, then?”
The Doctor gave her a tight smile, shadowed with grim apprehension. “On the technical side, it’s something very, very wrong with time. On the more immediate side, it might possibly be the end of the universe.”