Chapter 8
PHEW! Last chapter! Man that was a crazy one to write! I was on vacation in Florida for the last week without a computer, so I had to wait a little while, and I was hoping to get this all finished up before The End of Time was released, but alas, didn't work out that way I guess.
I think this chapter might be the best. It's certainly the longest... XD
Have fun- Tsukasa
P.S. Couldn't resist at least one ginger crack. lol
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Wren had been going to collect her things when the Doctor had taken Davon aside to talk to him. It surprised Davon, because as chatty as the man was and as close as he seemed to be with Wren, he had never truly spoken to Davon alone before. What Davon had noticed though, was that the Doctor’s eyes seemed to carry some sort of sadness about them, a sadness that never seemed to leave. This sadness seemed to intensify for a moment as he drew in breath, preparing to speak.
“Listen to me Davon,” he said in a serious tone. “There is going to be a time when you two will have to leave me behind, and I can guarantee you Wren is not going to take it well. When that time comes, I need you to trust me. I need you to take her wherever I tell you to go, no matter how much she struggles against you. Understood?”
Davon had nodded, sensing the significance of the issue. And when Wren had returned once again minutes later, the seriousness had all but dissipated. Davon hadn’t realized at the time just how hard of a promise it was going to be to keep.
Everything seemed to be happening so fast.
“Go!” the Doctor bellowed, and when Davon caught his eye he knew it was time to make good on his promise. Nodding, he grasped Wren’s wrist and pulled hard, running towards the exit.
Where are you going? Wren cried. The Doctor, we need to help the Doctor!
“No Wren, he doesn’t need our help!” he cried frantically. Wren tried to throw Davon’s grip and suddenly the boy’s anger flared. “Wren, would you stop it? The Doctor knows what he’s doing; he’s a Time Lord for Alasheru’s sake! He doesn’t need your help with that, he needs it with this, so open your eyes, stop being so blindly infatuated with him and stop being so stupid!”
Wren stopped struggling for a moment and looked at Davon with a hurt expressionand the boy began to apologize. This gave Wren the distraction she needed in order to finally break free of him.
“Wren, no!” Davon cried.
Desperately she ran back to the Doctor, and to her horror he was surrounded by large and frightening looking guards, the Headmistress behind them.
“Don’t move Doctor, or I will instruct my guards to attack you,” the Headmistress said in her terrifying voice. The Doctor had given her a look that Wren thought could have stopped the woman’s heart there and then. The Alazarin knew what was going to happen.
No, no, no, no, no, she repeated dreading the action she knew he would take. The Doctor slammed his hand down onto the button and Wren screamed, drawing the power from she knew not where to speak.
“DOCTOR!” she shrieked at the top of her voice. He turned. Wren felt them his eyes with hers and felt the shock coarse through her body. His shock.
Then all hell broke loose.
The guards tackled the Doctor to the ground and Wren felt once again the feeling of something deep within her snapping. There was a concussion throughout the room and every tank exploded showering the room with finely powdered glass and bluish green fluid. Guards were sent slamming into walls; the generator was all but wrecked. It was like the time before when her powers had gotten the better of her, only much, much grander. The girl could feel her very life energy being sucked out of her body, draining her closer and closer to death as more and more objects were thrown about the room and destroyed. Wren could see the Doctor, standing now, staring at her with his face twisted into a expression that could have been horror, confusion, shock, or all three. She knew something had gone wrong, and no sooner had she thought this than yellow light began to burst forth from her eyes, then her nose and mouth. And then everything was enveloped in the light, and the most peculiar feeling came over her entire. Wren couldn’t seem to remember anything for a time, which could have been six seconds or six months for all she knew.
She opened her eyes and everything was different. That is to say, that the way that she saw everything was different. It for some reason seemed to be from higher up, and the colors were ever so slightly different. The Doctor was standing where he had been just a moment before, just staring at her.
“What?” she asked using her newfound powers of speech, but the moment she spoke it felt odd, as if it wasn’t her mouth she was using. “Oh wow, that’s weird,” she said, then proceeding to flex her mouth.
“New teeth, it takes some getting used to,” the Doctor said, the faintest of smiles on his lips.
“New… what do you mean?” Wren asked, even though she was pretty sure that she already knew what was coming.
“Well, you can’t have expected to survive an explosion of your powers like that, could you?”
Wren looked at the Doctor in horror.
“What have you done to me?” she demanded. “What sort of sick Time Lord power did you use on me?”
The Doctor laughed, which hardly seemed fitting for the situation and only made Wren more uneasy. She was dealing with an absolute madman. The Doctor paused seeing her distraught face.
“Oh, come off it! It wasn’t me. You’ve regenerated, that’s all.” Wren was thrown for a loop by this statement.
“Only Time Lords regenerate,” she said bluntly. The Doctor began to laugh again.
“And just what do you think you are? You absorbed my entire mind, every single memory, knowledge of Gallifreyans, everything. That in itself shouldn’t have been enough to trigger it though, you must have…” He paused, as he often did, to contemplate it for a moment and come up with some sort of fitting explanation. It was possibly the strangest thing he had encountered in a long time, the creation of a new Time Lord. It shouldn’t have been possible, just as so many things he encountered were not supposed to be, and yet obviously it happened. And the best part was, as far as he could tell, nothing truly horrible had come of it. And that’s when it came to him.
“DNA!” he exclaimed. “Deoxy Ribonucleic Acid! You must have picked mine up somehow, could have happened any number of ways, a few hair follicles here, some dead skin cells there. Who would have thought creating an artificial Time Lord would have been such a snap? Brilliant, positively brilliant. That still shouldn’t have done it though; you need some sort of energy… Although I do suppose you’re bursting with it, Alazarin mind like yours. Not quite the same, but I guessed it worked. An Alazarin Time Lord… Daft, but brilliant nonetheless!”
Wren did not seem to share the Doctor’s enthusiasm. The whole experience was traumatic to say the very least, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry, laugh, or run for the nearest mirror. Her mind seemed to be exploding with all sorts of random thoughts, things she couldn’t seem to control. And the way everything worked was so different. The past, present, and countless possible futures were all flitting about her consciousness, and she wasn’t sure if she could handle it. She tried looking around, seeing if maybe it would help her get used to the new eyeballs in her skull. Yet the more she looked, the more she realized she had no idea where she was and no recollection of why she was there.
“Doctor!” she heard someone scream and turned about abruptly. Davon was running towards them, but Wren found she couldn’t quite place him in the order of things in her mind. She just knew that she knew him.
“Doctor, I’m sorry,” Davon said, distraught. “I let her get away. Wren’s gone Doctor, I can’t find her anywhere! Is she dead? Please Doctor, tell me she isn’t dead.”
The Doctor merely smiled and pointed over the boy’s shoulder. Davon turned, and his eyes grew large with shock. His mouth fell slightly open and it took him a few seconds before he was able to speak.
“Wren you’re… ginger.”
And quite right he was. Wren’s new appearance was that of a humanoid girl with long ginger orange hair and freckles, with skinny stick-like limbs. The only thing that set her apart from looking like a normal human being were the small horns she retained and her bright lavender eyes.
“I’m what?” Wren demanded. “What do you mean?”
“Oh you have no idea how jealous I am,” the Doctor said, grinning.
“Shut up you!” she snapped, but the Doctor’s beaming did not fade. He knew just how a recently regenerated Time Lord could be. “Sorry… it’s just… Can someone please tell me why we’re here?”
The Doctor laughed even harder, and soon his laughter was joined by that of the children pouring in from all directions. They were free, free at last.
A few hours later, things were just starting to get sorted out as Fabian and the rest of the Alazarin elders arrived from their village in order to help get things into some semblance of order. Without the Headmistress, Valentine’s Academy had fallen into chaos, and without the children powering everything the entire planet had plummeted into a blackout.
“They will find other ways to power Antares Beta,” Fabian said serenely once he had enough time to finally talk with the Doctor. The four of them stood on the lawn of the Academy, the TARDIS behind them, all just happy the ordeal was over. “The Alazarin will help. It is time for this race to make changes, changes they will need if we are to survive.”
“Well, I certainly wish you the best of luck,” the Doctor said, all smiles. “But really, I’ve stayed too long.”
“I guess this is goodbye then,” Davon said somewhat mournfully.
“Never think of it as goodbye,” the Doctor replied, and Davon gave a faint smile in response. And then after some hand shaking and hugging, the Alazarin began to walk away. The Doctor frowned watching them. There was nothing he hated more than seeing people go. However something was tugging at his hearts, and he couldn’t seem to let it go.
“Wren!” he called, and she turned. She started to make her way towards him, and he felt his gut churn in a way he had not experienced in a while.
“Yes?” she said when she had reached his side.
“Well, Wren, I just wanted… blimey, I’m never good at this sort of thing.” The Doctor swallowed, his eyes darting around as if he were searching for words somewhere. “Wren, I feel awful that you’re not going to have the proper training normally Time Lords get, what with Gallifrey being… gone and all.”
“It’s okay Doctor,” she replied calmly. “I have it all here. Your memories, all right here in my head.” Wren had finally recovered from after affects of her regeneration, and seemed to be much calmer and more accepting than before. She smiled warmly at the Doctor, and he laughed somewhat nervously.
“Yeah, there’s that,” he said. “But Wren… The reason why is, well… when I die you will be the last of the Time Lords. It’s quite the burden to bear, believe me, and I just want you to be… ready for it.”
Wren frowned slightly.
“But you won’t have to worry about dying for a long time to come, will you?”
“It might be sooner than you want to think. After all, all songs have to end right?” The Doctor flashed a quick smile, before swallowing again anxiously. Wren’s frown deepened.
“I can still sense your feelings you know,” she said with an air of sadness. “It’s okay Doctor, I know things will turn out right in the end.”
Then she hugged him, squeezing as tightly as she could and not wanted to let go, and the Doctor squeezed just as hard in return.
“I guess they always do, don’t they,” he said before finally breaking away. He smiled wanly, looking into Wren’s lavender eyes for one last time. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you Lucinda Wrencia Cordova. Or… I’ll try at least.”
And then he smiled for the last time, before turning and pulling open the door to the TARDIS and disappearing within. Then came the sound, that sound Wren had only heard once before but would remember for the rest of her life, the sound like some sort of great mournful song that was seldom ever heard. She felt a single tear slide down her cheek as she watched the TARDIS slip away, dissolving into time and space. She stood in that spot for a long time, before a hand on her shoulder jolted her out of her daze.
“Wren, is everything all right?” Davon asked her, concerned. Wren smiled before taking his hand.
“I have a feeling everything is going to be fine Davon,” she said. And she believed it.
