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Yay! More story! biggrin
I've been busy with school & beta work & such.
And I thought Priestess was too busy to post more, besides.

The dig surpassed River’s expectations. She’d hoped they’d find something intact, anything that might shed light on the craft that had crashed there and its mysterious occupants. What they found, buried beneath the dust and sand, was everything from huge pieces of the ship itself to the personal property of the crew. They found clothing, jewelry, a book of Andromedan nature haiku (“the Poetry Book of Rassilon”), a food synthesizer (“the Coffee Maker of Rassilon”), and furnishings from the crew quarters (“the Incredibly Ugly Lava Lamp of Rassilon”). They found no physical remains, but they did unearth a medical database that sent Kitty Kincaide into absolute fits of alternating excitement and curiosity (“It’s official! They were humanoid! But there appears to be nothing in here on reproduction. What does that mean?”) Every day brought a new discovery, and the excitement of the team members was infectious and irresistible.
Almost. River couldn’t help but notice, as the weeks passed, how the Doctor seemed to shrink and fade, withdrawing into his own thoughts, avoiding everyone’s company, even hers. He worked as hard as ever, translated anything brought to him, and offered helpful suggestions (“It’s highly unlikely, Kitty, that this anatomy evolved naturally. The Time Lords were probably genetically engineered, and reproduced through some form of cloning.”) when asked, but still seemed distant and distracted. His smiles, which grew fewer and farther between, never reached his eyes. He stopped eating–he would open a meal, stir it with a utensil, and then pass it to Po or Jenkins when he thought River wasn’t watching. She doubted he was sleeping.
Then they found the Black Box.
In fact, it was neither black nor box-shaped, but it was giving off a signal, in exact resonance with the Great Seal, and Jenkins speculated it might be some form of communications device. The brought it through the decontam cycle that evening and carried it up to the crew lounge, where Jenkins thought he might be able to hook it in with the Lupine’s communication systems.
“Hey, everyone, back already?” asked Kitty, who’d stayed aboard the ship that day with the medical database and a translation matrix the Doctor had provided her.
“We’ve found what we think is part of their com system,” said River. “We came back to see if we could extract anything from it.”
Jenkins, Po, and RayQuan began fiddling with the device while the rest of the dig team watched and Bob from History videorecorded their work.
“Well, I’ve spent all day on the database,” said Kitty, “and I think I may have learned why we aren’t finding any bodies. They seem to have developed the ability, when seriously injured, to send themselves into a state of sub-cellular flux. They literally rebuilt their bodies, from the DNA up. They called it “regenerating.” But if something went wrong, if the process were arrested and they died, then . . .”
“They dissolved into puddles of goo,” said the Doctor darkly.
“Uh, well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,” said Kitty.
“But it’s exactly what happened,” said the Doctor. “When their ship exploded and they were trapped in the wreckage, their regenerations would have failed, and their bodies would have broken down into pools of organic residue, which then dried up into dust. When you wonder why we keep finding empty garments lying beneath the rubble as if someone had been wearing them, well, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”
"You mean the dust we keep shaking out of the clothes we find is corpses?” asked Summer, aghast. “That’s, that’s . . . Ewww!” eek
“Ms. Leiberman,” said River, “if you can not maintain your composure, not to speak of a respectful attitude, you have no business in the field of archaeology.” She turned to the Doctor. “Given this theory, which I do find logical, should we perhaps return the clothing to the site? Or abandon the dig? There seems to be no way we can continue without desecrating these people’s remains.”
“I don’t see any reason to stop,” said the Doctor, eyes lost in the distant expression River was coming to know well. “We have no evidence these people held the remains of their dead in any particular reverence . . .” He paused, looked down at what Jenkins was doing, and then shoved the young man out of the way. “Here, let me . . .” The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began fiddling with the settings, pointing it at different parts of the artifact. Suddenly, the com-screen at the side of the room lit up, and a dead woman began speaking in a long-dead tongue.
Her face was pale, grim, and resolute, suffused with an icy dignity, in spite of the sooty smudges on her cheek and the tendrils of dark hair slipping from the elaborate chignon she wore. Very little could be seen of the chamber she stood in, as it was obscured by her high white-and-gold collar. All that was visible consisted of a curved wall covered with a series of round glass roundels, and smoke, and flickering flames.
River turned to the Doctor. He stood frozen, staring at the screen with the most miserable expression she’d ever seen him wear. No one else noticed. They were all mesmerized by the woman, alternately speaking and then pausing as if listening to a reply.
“Sagacity . . .” she heard the Doctor murmur under his breath, with a little wan ghost of a smile.
“Doctor,” River said gently, “could you, possibly, translate what she’s saying?”
He nodded. “She is speaking to, to a subordinate, in another ship. She’s ordering him to return to Gallifrey for reinforcements. What he said is not recorded, but he obviously tried to argue with her, probably saying that, on account of her rank, she should go and he should stay.”
Sparks flashed behind the woman’s collar, and faint voices were heard shouting in the room around her.
“She refuses to save herself,” continues the Doctor. “She says she’s only a bureaucrat, and, and, whomever she is speaking to, is a warrior, and more valuable on account of his experience.”
The woman on the screen paused again, as River realized, Great Goddess, she was talking to HIM!
The pale woman began speaking again, and the Doctor translated: “She says this is more important than her life, than his life, than any of them. The Daleks must be stopped at any price. Go to the Forbidden Zone, to the Tomb of Rassilon, and wake him. He will know how to defeat them . . .”
The broadcast ended in a burst of sparks and static.
“Did she really say ‘the tomb of Rassilon,’ Doc?” asked Juan, “or are you just messing with us?”
“I do not think the Doctor would be ‘messing with us’ about such a serious matter,” said Jenkins somewhat huffily. River smiled wryly at him.
“Are you sure you translated correctly?” Summer asked. “I mean, did she really tell somebody to go wake up someone dead?”
“Well, tomb could be translated as resting place, I suppose,” said the Doctor.
“I’m finding a lot of references to Rassilon in the medical database,” said Kitty. “I think he was an actual historical figure . . .”
“What, like King Arthur, who sleeps until England’s darkest hour?” suggested Megan.
“Only with a significantly more effective stasis system,” River heard the Doctor mutter under his breath.
“Or it could be that ‘Rassilon’ is a common name in their culture, like ‘Mohammed’ in Islamic cultures, or ‘Jesus’ in Hispanic ones,” suggested Bob from History.
As the rest of the team debated and discussed their latest discovery, River watched the Doctor quietly slip out of the lounge. He didn’t come back for supper.
crying

Back at ya' E:
“You know,” said Sally to River that night in their cabin, “I’m really starting to worry about the Doctor.”
So am I, River thought, but said nothing.
“I don’t think I’ve seen him eat anything more than a piece of toast in the last 3 days,” Sally went on, “and Jenkins said he hasn’t shown up for their role-playing game for almost a week.”
“Role-playing?” River asked. “Is that what they’ve been doing in the lounge every night?”
“Yeah, something nerdy with little dice and maps. Apparently, the Doctor was playing the party cleric, and now Po’s upset because no one else can cast healing spells and his character got beat up by goblins.”
“Undergrads,” River sighed.
“Well, Jenkins thinks Po needs to get his priorities straight, because something isn’t right with the Doctor. We can’t remember the last time we heard him singing a bawdy song. You don’t think he’s being affected by the radiation, do you? Maybe Kitty should check him out.”
Oh, she’d love that, River thought. With a scanner in one hand, and the half-translated database in the other . . . “I don’t think so,” said River. “I think he’s just depressed. This planet will do that to anyone.”
“Yeah, that’s what Jenkins thinks. I said we should talk to him, but Jenkins said we should respect his privacy . . .”
Goddess bless Jenkins!
“Speaking of privacy, you know Summer was bunking in with Megan, but Megan, she can’t get to sleep without doing her calisthenics and listening to music every night, and Summer decided she couldn’t deal with it any more, so she’s started sleeping in the med bay, with Kitty.”
River managed to follow this torrent of student-life drama and wondered why Sally was telling it to her.
“Well, I was thinking, I don’t mind Megan’s music at all, in fact, I kind of like it, so I asked Megan if maybe I could bunk in with her, and she said sure, so I can go over there right now if you like. I mean, if you’d like to have this room to yourself. And, um, the Doctor. Since he seems so unhappy.”
Aha. The girls are matchmaking. How sweet. River smiled at Sally. “Thank you. All of you.”
Sally picked up her pajamas in one hand and her toiletry bag in another. “I’ll just be going, then, Professor. See you in the morning.”
After Sally left, River decided it might not be such a bad idea to go looking for the Doctor. If he were holed up somewhere in the TARDIS, of course, she’d never find him, nor would she intrude upon him by looking, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the common areas of the Lupine.
She found him sitting with the lights out on the observation deck above the lounge, folded into the corner of a window seat, listening to the poison rain lash against the ship.
“You weren’t at dinner,” she said softly. “Can I get you something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry,” he said, still staring out into the dark.
“How about a cuppa tea then?”
He sighed. “Tea. Yes. I’ll have a cup.”
“With sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
River went back to the lounge, made two cups of tea, and carried them back to the observation deck. Handing one cup to the Doctor, she kept the other and sat down at the far end of the window seat to drink it.
“I’m not going to ask you if you want company,” she said, “because even if you don’t want it, I think you need it. I don’t believe it’s healthy for you to be alone so much.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked, not looking at her.
“I’m an archaeologist. I’m trained to make deductions about life forms by their artifacts. I’ve seen inside your ship. It’s huge. There’s no way that was designed to be used by a single individual. And that control console? Unless you’re prepared to run laps around it, there’s no way anyone could operate that craft alone. Your ship had to have a crew, probably a large one. That indicates to me that your species evolved as social creatures, the same as humans did. I think you’re lonely.”
A faint smile touched the Doctor’s lips. “You know, I’ve had people in and out of that TARDIS for centuries, and you’re the first one to ever notice that she’s a bit much for me to handle on my own.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Everyone else just assumed that she gave me problems because she was old and decrepit, or because, for a Time Lord, I’m a bit thick.” He shook his head and sipped his tea.
River sipped hers but said nothing. They sat for a while without either one speaking, listening to the wind and rain howling outside.
At last River said, “You know, if I close my eyes and just listen, I can almost believe I’m back at my Granny’s place, where I grew up on New, New South Wales, sitting up in my bed on a stormy night. Just the perfect time to curl up with a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles, or perhaps the memoirs of Amelia Peabody.”
“Or one of the Harry Potter series,” said the Doctor. “Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite.”
“You like reading in bed in the rain, too?” asked River.
“Oh, yes. We’d have some fabulous storms come roaring up out of the wilderness on Gallifrery. They’d wash over the dome of the Citadel as if they were trying to wipe us off the planet. Most folks tried to ignore them, but I always tried to find myself a spot where I could see and hear a good storm.”
River sipped her tea in silence, waiting for the Doctor to continue if he chose.
“The irony of it all,” he said softly, almost to himself, “the terrible, terrible irony, is that for the most part I hated that damned planet, and spent as little time there as possible.”
River bit her lip to keep from asking “Why?” If he wants me to know, he’ll tell me, she thought.
The Doctor sat for a few minutes with his head sunk on his knees. “You know all those clothes we’ve been finding? All those layers? We wore them partly for warmth, it’s true, because when we remade ourselves, we made ourselves cold, corpse-cold, really. But we also wore them to muffle and conceal our bodies, to hide away our flesh, to deny any thought that the shells we inhabited were anything more than life support for our brains. It was like, like living in a monastery, I suppose, with all the discipline and denial. Except that there was no spiritual enlightenment, no religious ecstasy, to compensate for what we’d given up, nothing but dust, and boredom, and a simpering, smirking voyeurism with which we observed the lesser species as they ate and mated and wallowed in the muck that we, in our infinite perfection, had raised ourselves above.”
The most highly evolved race in the universe, River thought in shock, and they were a pack of self-righteous stiffs?
“Most Time Lords wore gloves at all times,” the Doctor added. Unfolding his legs, he moved closer to River and reached out to touch her cheek. “Can you imagine, going through your life without ever touching another person?”
River took his hand. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Neither could I.”

Yay! TWO updates! heart heart

ROFL @ various objects of Rassillion XDD;

TT-TT @ the artifact

XDD @ Harry Potter biggrin

AWWW @ ending



Much love, I definitely needed that boost of YAY before school starts Tuesday. 3nodding
Brilliant, as usual, only now you've gone and surpassed yourself!! heart

Warning: Angst ahead!

River half-closed her eyes, expecting the Doctor to kiss her, but he pulled away and kept talking. “The thing was, going off-world, experiencing life as other species lived it, I came to realize how similar we all really are. I mean, sure, I’ve got the metabolism of a reptile and your poor Kitty Kincaide probably couldn’t find her way around my internal anatomy with both hands and a torch, but I laugh, I cry, I like to read when it’s raining outside, just as a human does.”
River couldn’t keep herself from asking, “So you chose to live among humans?”
“And other species. I was curious. Always have been. And if it had just been a matter of satisfying my curiosity, the Time Lords wouldn’t have bothered with me. I’d have been just another degenerate wastrel out getting drunk and slumming with the natives. But I started to care. And then I committed the ultimate sin. I took sides. I got involved.”
He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “You see, our powers had grown so great, most of us feared that to use them would end up destroying the entire fabric of space-time as we knew it. So we were forbidden to interfere with the unfolding of history, with the affairs of other species.” He chuckled. “At least not openly. The High Council was hopelessly paranoid , always sneaking and poking and prodding, keeping other species from developing time travel, holding them back, keeping them down. All in secret, of course. I would interfere openly, so they made an example of me, stripped me of my rank and my name, took everything. I think I told you I stole my TARDIS from a repair bay . . .”
“You told me you took it . . .”
“Yes, well I stole it. Couldn’t stand the thought of living trapped on Gallifrey forever. And of course the Time Lords didn’t stop me, because I was now their most useful tool. Got a war cropping up, some kind of galactic menace, something too messy or dangerous for any other Time Lord to touch with a ten-meter pole? Just take remote control of the Doctor’s TARDIS, land him in the middle of it, he’s a clever boy, he’ll sort it. And the rest of them would sit back and watch, and lay bets on whether I could manage it without burning through another regeneration cycle, or if I’d get up the nerve to tell any of the pretty human girls I traveled with how fond I was of them. And that was my life, for centuries. Until the War came.”
The rain beat down on the hull of the Lupine, and River found herself holing her breath, waiting to hear what the Doctor would say next.
“They’d been dreading it for ages, ever since I’d discovered the Daleks. Yes, I was the first Time Lord to encounter them, quite by accident–well, maybe not, maybe they sent me, if they did, they’d never tell–And of course the Daleks were anathema to me, worse even than the Time Lords in terms of having no lives to speak of. They were nothing but brains in a shell, incapable of love or pleasure or laughter or music or anything that makes life more than merely existing. So I fought them, wherever I found them, which was pretty much everywhere, because they got to be like roaches. For every one you saw, there were a hundred more you didn’t. And of course, these roaches were nearly two meters high, armor plated, and out to exterminate you. They were genetically engineered to perceive every other life form, from the most advanced sentient life to the smallest microbe, as a potential evolutionary rival and therefore a threat to be wiped out. They got to be so pernicious, at one point the Council openly ordered me to travel back to their home world and destroy them at the moment of their creation.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“No. I couldn’t. I felt if I did, if I wiped out an entire species simply because they were a potential threat, I would have become exactly like them.”
“You were right.”
“Was I?” The Doctor looked at River with huge, haunted eyes. “I could have stopped them, stopped the War from ever happening. The War that killed this planet and hundreds of others.” He turned back to the window, as if staring back into the past a thousand years to the time Ghehenna had been a battleground. “She couldn’t have lasted five minutes after that last transmission, you know,” he said. “I followed her orders. I went back to Gallifrey. I woke Rassilon from his ten-million year sleep.” The Doctor gave a little smile. “He was rather disappointed that we hadn’t advanced at all since his time, that we’d just sat on our laurels and stagnated. But he led us, and gave us new gifts, powers like gods, things we’d never dreamed possible, and we fought the Daleks. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. There were simply too many of them, they bred too quickly, built their shells and ships and war machines too quickly, and we were overrun, and they were battering at the very gates of the Citadel. The Eye of Harmony, the source of our power, the terminus of a black hole harnessed by Rassilon in ages past, was almost drained. Can you imagine draining a black hole? We cowered in the Council chambers and looked to Rassilon to save us again. And it was too late. The only hope, the last desperate throw, Ultima Esperanza, was to drag them down into death with us, and allow the rest of the Universe a chance to survive. There was only one catch. The trap had to be sprung from the outside. Some one, solitary Time Lord had to stand apart and murder both our races, or the universe would be utterly lost. We all thought it should be Rassilon. He was father to us all, if he survived, he could re-build our race. But he said no. Our time was over. And the Daleks were crafty, and hard to kill. If only one survived, it could start the war anew, and then whichever of us remained would have to be able to fight on alone, without any aid or support. Guess who Rassilon chose, for that terrible, final honor, that wretched curse, to take the last of our fading power into himself and become immortal, the lonely hand of doom?”
River said nothing. She had no words with which to speak to a god.
“I had always hated Time Lords, hated them for their hypocrisy, for their coldness, for the dry, dusty monotony of their lives . . . But, but . . . I never hated them enough to want to kill them . . .”
Impulsively, River threw her arms around the Doctor’s shoulders. He buried his face in her hair, and she held him, saying nothing, as he wept.

Yes, I like this version of the Time War a lot. smile

Yeah, this version is more understandable... and I like the Rassillion tie-in too, it makes much more sense.. and RTD's got a hold of at least two of the three 'Christmas specials' over the course of next year, and I'm afraid he's going to try and top himself and go out with a big bang. sweatdrop

“So, are you going to want breakfast this morning, or are the peanut butter sandwiches I made last night enough to hold you for a while?” asked River, addressing the tuft of dark hair poking from beneath the covers on her bunk.
“Mmm, I’m good . . .” mumbled the Doctor from under the covers.
River turned back to her vanity mirror and continued blow-drying her hair. “Well, you’d better get up and get dressed soon if you want to make it to the briefing on time.”
“What’s on the agenda for today,” the Doctor asked, rolling over and stretching, exposing his face and one long, sinewy arm.
What is it that makes him so damned attractive? River wondered, looking at the Doctor’s reflection in the mirror. He’s certainly not what you’d call “classically handsome,” and he’s so pale. Pale as a ghost. A poor, lost ghost, haunting that great old ship of his . . . Maybe that’s it. He’s just so lonely, so pitiful, you just can’t resist taking him home . . .
“River?” The Doctor sat up in bed. The blankets fell away from his chest, revealing taut muscles clinging to his lean frame. River stared at the reflection and hoped the blankets slipped a little more. A time and a place, Professor Song, and this isn’t it! she admonished herself. She forced herself to look away.
“What will we be doing today?” the Doctor asked.
Making love like wild things, she thought, but said, “going back to the dig site, same as always. Our time here is so limited, we’ve got to recover as much as we can before we have to go. I think I’m even going to ask Kitty to put that database down and come help us. Unless, of course, you object. You can pull the plug on this project any time you like. You know that, right?”
“Oh, I know, but I wouldn’t dream of stopping this,” he said. “My, my people deserve to be remembered. Madame President’s last words should be heard. Even if it is painful to me to hear them.”
“I’m, I’m really rather sorry to put you through this,” River said. “I can’t begin to imagine what this must be like . . .”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” said the Doctor, perhaps a bit too easily, as he threw off the blankets and got out of bed. “I can’t deny what happened, and it doesn’t do me a bit of good to keep it all bottled up inside, eating at me.” He began examining the clothes he’d left hanging over a chair the night before. “I suppose I’ll have to put this suit back on. D’you think it’s too wrinkled? Did I get any jelly on my tie?”
“If any jelly escaped you last night, it was lucky,” said River, trying not to look at the unclothed man standing behind her. “I keep telling you, you should eat regular meals, not starve yourself for days and then swallow down a half-dozen sandwiches like a boa constrictor.”
The Doctor chuckled as he got down on his hands and knees. “Did I really eat that many . . . Where are my shoes? Oh, there they are . . .”
River couldn’t resist looking in the mirror as the Doctor fished his running shoes out from under the bunk. Oh, what a lovely bum . . . Steady, girl . . . She closed her eyes, regretfully.
“Have I time for a shower?” asked the Doctor.
If I can keep my hands off you . . . “Of course, dear,” said River, eyes still closed.
She began applying her makeup as the Doctor showered. She could hear him singing:
“Well, I kissed a girl, and I liked it!
The taste of her cherry Chap-Stick . . .”
River giggled.
“I kissed a girl, and I liked it!
Hope the folks back home don’t mind it!
It felt so wrong,
It felt so right . . .”
“What is that rubbish you’re singing?” River asked.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to bother you . . .”
“Doesn’t bother me, I’m just glad to see you’re in a better mood.”
“Yes, it’s amazing what a bellyfull of peanut buttter will do for one’s outlook . . .” He came out of the shower cubicle, toweling his hair, just as River stood up to find her clothes. In the cramped cabin, they found themselves standing toe to toe.
They were late for the morning briefing.
eek burning_eyes heart heart heart
(hey, at least no one's swinging from a chandelier . . .)