Harmony

Harmony

The Doctor had spent an hour in the console room; checking systems, running diagnostic programs, fiddling with circuits - anything that gave him an excuse to be close to the TARDIS again. Then he'd left the room and wandered the corridors, finding himself in parts of the ship he hadn't visited in two regenerations. Rose hadn't disturbed him, she'd seemed to know that he needed time alone with his ship - something that she would normally have teased him about, but not today.

Today he'd thought he'd lost the TARDIS for good. He'd known where she was of course, he could still sense her, he just had no way of getting to her. That was one of the reasons he'd volunteered to go into the pit with Ida; the knowledge that his ship was down there somewhere. It wasn't that loosing the TARDIS had stranded him and Rose in one place and one time; he'd have found a way around that, if they'd got off the base of course. He'd have found them another ship, would have found a way of getting them back to the 21st century - there were other time travellers out there, one of them would have given them a lift. But another ship could never have been home, could never have made him feel safe and cocooned like the TARDIS did.

He knew Rose, like most of his companions, thought his affection for his ship was amusing, and maybe they were right. But the thing was this - she wasn't just a ship, not to him. She'd been his home for over 900 years; more than a home - his sanctuary, his saviour more times than he could count, his constant companion through everything. When Zak had told him the TARDIS was lost, he'd felt sick, weightless, almost faint. The mere thought of loosing her terrified him, even now it still made him shudder.

Eventually he'd found himself in his study. He'd poured a drink and sat down in one of the armchairs in front of the fire. This had been one hell of a day. As if loosing the TARDIS hadn't been bad enough, there was the beast and what it had called him - 'the killer of his own kind'. He'd been called many things in his life - The Destroyer Of Worlds, The Oncoming Storm, The Bringer Of Darkness, and now the most apt of them all - The Killer Of His Own Kind. No, he hadn't needed reminding of that, after all they were stranded underneath a black hole.

Time Lord mythology taught that the first black hole had been created by Rassilon and Omega, it's power harnessed by them to enable time travel - The Eye Of Harmony. Now there were black holes across the universe; stars collapsed in on themselves, dying solar systems, and he'd seen his share of them. He'd never been completely convinced that they hadn't existed before Omega, but then who was he to challenge Time Lord belief? Usually the first, a small voice in his head reminded him.

But it wasn't the Beast or almost loosing the TARDIS that had sent him into hiding in his study. It was watching planets die as they'd been pulled into the black hole. It was knowing that races and cultures were being lost forever to the star's power, and there was nothing anyone, not even a Time Lord, could do to save them.

He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, and stared deeper into the fire. In the flames he saw Gallifrey; saw the planet burn, saw it being pulled apart by the power of the Eye of Harmony, by the power he had unleashed. The Time Lords, Daleks, the planet and her neighbours were being destroyed, their remains consumed, lost forever.

Earlier, when he'd stood on the base and looked up into the black hole, for a brief moment he'd been back in the war. He hadn't seen what was really above them, instead he'd seen the Eye Of Harmony, its devastating power, harnessed for so long, finally unleashed. His people were dying all over again; he'd heard their screams and felt their pain. Then Rose had asked him a question and he'd been mercifully pulled back to the present. He'd pushed the images and the sounds into a far corner of his mind, hid them away to be dealt with later.

Later was now, and his mind was no longer in the study. The fire in the grate had become the fires burning on Gallifrey. He could feel the pain from his injuries, knew they were fatal, knew he would die soon, along with all the others. Deep inside him a small voice was telling him to stop. Stop dwelling on the past, on events that he couldn't change, stop thinking and most of all, stop torturing himself. But that voice was being drowned out by the memories of the other Time Lords voices - screaming, dying, accusing.

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Rose stood in the doorway and watched the Doctor as he stared into the fire - not moving, not even realising she was there. She'd seen him like this before, the old him. This new Doctor was rarely still - she couldn't remember ever seeing him look so sad and alone, so brooding. No, brooding was something the old Doctor had been good at, but not this one. She couldn't understand what had happened to make him so despondent. He'd found the TARDIS, saved the crew (or what remained of the crew anyway) and saved her. But since they'd left Zak, Danny and Ida, he'd been quiet. Oh he'd pretended everything was fine, but the mask had been slipping, so she'd given him the privacy he'd seemed to need.