(no subject)

[continuum_of_drs]

It had started off ordinarily enough. After a massive fiasco in which they'd all been pulled through the vortex into a subdimensional pocket wherein resided a small, megalomaniacal group of beings
who'd detested the Time Lords' monopoly of temporal technology and had created their own massive reality engine with the physics-bending aid of what turned out to be Yog-Sothoth, Two had rather acerbically observed that it was strange indeed that the Time Lords hadn't said boo about this matter at all, where they usually had their bony noses in the whole thing.

Eight had gone positively white, shut his mind off to everyone and excused himself weakly.

"What's wrong with him?" Two huffed after Eight disappeared through the door.

"Biscuits were probably off," Six muttered.

Some of the others looked at the door, then at each other with puzzled expressions. Usually it was Nine who sloped off, but he was in his favourite corner.

Ten found himself looking at Seven and ...there was something in those grey eyes. Right there. Fire and death, screams of the mind, great pulling nothing and fire and always fire and and he knew. Damn him, but he knew, and had been able to manipulate his own mind so that no-one else did. The Ka Faraq Gatri always did know too much.

You're the only one who can speak to him, right now, a faint Scottish burr skirled at the edges of Ten's mind. Ten excused himself, as well, and walked through the corridors. He made his way through them as they changed, greenish and organic, here, vaulted there, unlit completely, then progressing through the phases of whitepanelled and gold-roundelled walls until, until he reached something bare. The walls, floor, and ceiling were white, the roundels shallow indentations rimmed with silver, the air cool.

Something hung on every breath. Something old. He stopped and memory pulled sharply at his hearts. He took breaths of it, closed his eyes, and re-opened them again. Memory roses. The room was filled with the barely detectable scent of memory roses. His throat tightened.

There was a nudge at his mind--not from any of his other selves, but from the TARDIS. Through there. Through a doorway whose shape he half remembered from a misty flashback of days of heavy acadaemia and he walked through, into a place suspended, his time sense relaxing and spreading like the feathers of a bird, small candles flickering in endless whorls of metal holders, part of the walls, part of the air....

His other self sat on a metal and crystalline bench--not the most comfortable of things to sit on, but the view it afforded within was spectacular. Eight turned a small object around in nerveless fingers and wore no outward expression. Hiding. Escaping. He'd been doing too much of that lately. Ten wasn't one to talk, really, he was dangerously close to clinging irrationally to anything and everything Gallifreyan he might find. Even if it brought disaster.

He sat next to his other self and waited.

It was far too long before his presence was noticed and even longer before his eighth self spoke, his soft voice barely audible. "I found this place," he whispered. "Or maybe it found me. Memories ... so strong it's like returning to the past... actually returning."

Ten's brow furrowed. "You can't keep doing that--"

"I'm going home."

That brought his other self up short. Eight hadn't looked at him, hadn't raised his voice above the half-dreambound whisper, hadn't shown any change in expression at all. "What?"

"I'm going to leave the Nexus. I'm going to go home." His gaze slipped inward again, though he continued talking. "I can't stay here, knowing what I know... what I do to you...."

"Now that's just nonsense--"

Eight squeezed his eyes shut. "I see--what the both of you carry with you--day after day--empty. Alone. Cut off," he said choppily, his voice rising, now. "I see it--feel it--and I know that it's because of me."

"You did--do what you had to!"

"Destroy my own homeworld?" Eight stood, backing away from his other self as though afraid.

"There's no other choice! It's Gallifrey or the rest of the Universe!"

"And what is a future without Gallifrey? With only us to protect time?"

Ten stopped, staring at his other self, eyes round and wild under brows harshly furrowed with intense emotion. Vast emotion, almost too massive for his lanky frame. Eight backed up another step. He'd closed off his mind to all the others, and yet he could feel that emotion, a firestorm hammering wildly against his shield, burning like Gallifrey burned. Will burn. Barely controllable.

The peace of the room dissipated. He tried to catch his breath. "Look what happened to you..." he breathed. "Look what I do to you--to myself... to the Universe...."

"It's WORTH it..."

"Is it?" Eight countered breathlessly. "Is a Universe without the Daleks worth a Universe without anything to hold the vortex together save for a single damaged Time Lord in a barely living TARDIS ... alone ... with no help ... nothing to ground the mind to ... adrift ...." his speech trailed off and his gaze lost focus again. "All of them dead. I can't let it happen!"

This brought Ten up short and he paused. Watched his other self. For so long, Eight had been slipping between the here and now and somewhere else. A thought lanced through the burning, roiling emotion that so often threatened to tear him apart. Cold, blue light. Realisation.

He was going to change time.

"No ... No, nonononono, no, you can't do that!" he shouted, taking a single long step forward and grasping his younger self by the shoulders, snapping him back to the present. "The past can't be changed, you know that! Gallifrey has to die!"

"It can be changed! Just by my knowing this it can be changed! Another reality! I have to try...." He almost tried to pull away.

"I won't let you do this--" not after all he'd been through....

Eight curled his hands around his older self's arms. His breath hitched. Some of the huge, violent emotion had leaked through and he could hardly breathe. "I'm sorry," he choked, his head dropping forward as he half held onto Ten's arms, half used them to stay upright. "I'm so sorry.... It's too late for you. But maybe not for others. It's my fault. I did this to you...." His voice dropped. "I can't hold this. Please let me try. ... forgive me...."

A pause stretched as they both grew still before they dropped to the floor and long, slim arms curled tightly around a fevered ball of velvet. Fingers curled spasmodically in pinstriped fabric. The quietude of the room crept back in, like cool air after a fire is put out.

"Please...." Eight choked, head buried against his other self's chest. "Please... I need to hear it...."

Ten felt everything drop into a deep, somehow abiding sadness. Patient. Still. He smoothed his younger self's fevered curls and whispered:

"I forgive you."