The road less travelled...

Title: Time After Time 11/Lots
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Have you ever wondered what happens to those the Doctor leaves behind?
Spoilers: Major plot spoilers for The Trial of a Time Lord
Characters: Donna and the Doctor (Six) plus assorted Classic!Who people

Chapter X

“I only hope,” a female voice says on the other side of Donna’s closed eyelids, “that, one day, Father will learn what you’ve done for him.”

“Janie.” Donna reaches out a hand and feels fingers wrap around hers. Forcing open her eyelids, she meets the gaze of the woman sitting beside her on the bed and manages a smile. “It’s good to see you.”

“Considering what you’ve just put yourself through,” the younger woman says gently, “I imagine it’s good to see anyone.”

It takes a moment for memory to come flooding back, but, when it does, Donna can’t repress a shudder.

“Here.” Janie, who has regenerated at some point into a young woman with brown eyes and – her father would be delighted! – ginger hair, offers a steaming mug. “Have some of this.”

“What is it?” Donna asks, gazing at the light brown liquid.

“It’s called ‘tea’.” Janie smiles as Donna cautiously sips at the fluid. “Father gave some to me when I went to the Academy. He said he brought it back from Earth. I’ve found it to be an excellent boost of antioxidants after regeneration, so I keep it for those sorts of emergencies.”

Donna can feel the effects of the tea passing through her like a healing wave, mending synapses and repairing cells still unstable after the change. It also brings into focus the reason for Donna’s surprise at the voice that greeted her and she looks curiously at her former charge.

“But what are you doing on Gallifrey? I thought you, like Will and Tom, were away on business for the High Council.”

“They recalled me.” Janie rolls her eyes. “It was over such a minor matter that I couldn’t understand it until I heard the rumours about Father.”

“They aren’t just rumours.” Donna puts the cup aside, too upset to finish the tea. “I’ve seen footage of the trial.”

“Well, they didn’t want me interfering any more than you.” Janie looks upset. “They tried to exile me from the Citadel, but I took my chance and ran.”

“Like father, like daughter.” Donna can’t suppress a smile. “He would be proud of you.”

“I hope so.” Janie returns the smile. “And like you, too. But it means we’re both stuck here.”

“So where’s ‘here’ exactly?” Donna asks, but she knows the answer as soon as she looks around. “And,” she goes on before Janie can answer, “how did you get a bed into the former Presidential office?”

With a chuckle, Janie gets up and taps the object on which she has been sitting. “It’s not a bed at all. It’s one of the trolleys from the morgue. I happen to know someone who works there – in fact, he was the one who found me somewhere to hide – and when they took you down there from the Archive, he came to tell me about it. After having had Borusa as one of my teachers, I could make a good guess as to the password for the hidden tunnel.”

“Brilliant,” Donna tells her fondly. “Definitely your father’s daughter.”

Janie looks pleased, but quickly turns her attention to other things. “The only problem now,” she says lightly, “is how we’re going to know when it’s safe to leave.”

“Now that,” Donna remarks as she swings her legs off the bed and stands up, “I can definitely help you with.”

Crossing to the desk, she sits down and activates the screen so that it shows the courtroom. Janie slides onto the desk beside her so that she can also see what’s happening on the small monitor. They have arrived at a moment when it is clear that the Doctor has something important to say. However Donna could never have expected the sentiments that explode from the man at the centre of the trial.

“In all my travellings throughout the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen... they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power – that's what it takes to be really corrupt!”

Cringing back into her chair, Donna gasps as if she’s been slapped and stares at the clearly irate man on the screen.

“He didn’t mean it.” Janie speaks quickly, almost too quickly, as if trying to convince herself, too.

“When have you ever known your Father not to mean every word he says?” Donna demands rhetorically, but her mind isn’t on Janie or the words she’s speaking.

Perhaps Theta’s daughter picks up something from her tone. “At any rate, he didn’t mean you,” she assures her former teacher.

“You don’t know that.” Donna pulls her hands into her lap, fixing her eyes on the desk.

Decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core.

And yet Donna has never recognised it, has continued to work for these corrupt people.

If this is how the Doctor sees the Time Lords, then Donna can have no doubt what Theta must think of her.

“Donna.” Janie’s hand has come to rest on her clenched fists. “I’m sure Father doesn’t think of you like that. He’s – he’s upset and stressed.” She turns her eyes to the screen. “He’s on trial for his life! Of course he’s going to – to make…”

“Unseemly outbursts?!” The words come from the Doctor himself in response to an accusation by the Inquisitor.

The words seem to release the almost bearable tension in the room and Janie chuckles. Even Donna manages a faint smile, relaxing her hands a little, her eyes travelling between the prosecutor and the man fighting for his life. However she continues to turn the accusation over in her mind, wondering just how much he does mean it.

“Who’s that then?” Janie demands, pointing at the man in black.

“The Valeyard,” Donna tells her. “In charge of the prosecution in any trial.”

“He’s familiar though.”

“I know.” Donna frowns. “I thought the same, but I can’t understand how he could be.”

They fall silent, watching the trial as it unfolds before them.

“Explain,” the Inquisitor is demanding of a man dressed in black with a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, who is shown on a screen in the courtroom.

“They made a deal with the Valeyard,” the stranger explains, “or as I've always known him, the Doctor – to adjust the evidence…”

“The Doctor?” Donna starts at the words, ignoring the Valeyard’s interruption, exchanging startled glances with Janie.

“Just a minute!” The Doctor’s voice keeps her from speaking again. The man with curly, blond hair is staring at the Valeyard. “Did you,” he demands, pointing at the screen, but without turning his gaze in the same direction, “call him ‘the Doctor’?”

“There is some evil in all of us, Doctor,” the bearded man replies. “Even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your 12th and final incarnation. And I may say,” he adds flippantly, “you do not improve with age.”

“No!” Janie says desperately, her eyes travelling between the two men. “It can’t be! Daddy…”

Now it’s Donna’s turn to reassure the younger woman, and she places her hands on Janie’s, feeling that young lady cling on as if for dear life.

“Madam,” the Doctor turns at last to the Inquisitor, and it’s clear from his tone of voice that the revelation has both shocked and relieved him, “this revelation should halt this trial immediately. Surely even Gallifreyan law must acknowledge that the same person cannot be both prosecutor and defendant.”

“The single purpose of this trial,” the Inquisitor replies at once, “is to determine the defendant's guilt or otherwise on the basis of the evidence that has been presented. Anything else is, for the moment, irrelevant.”

“What?” the Doctor demands incredulously, an exclamation echoed by both Donna and Janie.

At this juncture, the Valeyard flees the courtroom, with the Doctor chasing after him.

“I don’t understand,” Janie says weakly. “How can that be Father?”

“I can’t be sure,” Donna replies, although at least now the rush of familiarity she had felt when she first saw him makes sense. “But nobody, not even your father, is wholly good.”

“Like Jekyll and Hyde.”

“Yes,” Donna agrees, remembering when she had listened to Theta reading his children that story, which he brought with him from Earth. For the first time, Donna can see the dramatic parallels that exist between the fictional and the real person “Your father has always worked hard to hide those dark parts of his personality, but they exist, as they do in all of us.”

“Have you seen him like that?”

“Sometimes,” Donna admits. “After the loss of your mother, particularly once you children were in bed, when he could grieve.” She squeezes Janie’s fingers, seeing the lost look in the younger woman’s eyes. “Your father takes any death hard,” she says softly. “More so if he feels he was in any way responsible, particularly if he believes he should have been able to prevent it.”

“Like Mother.”

“Yes.”

Janie suddenly reaches forward to hug Donna, something she hasn’t done since she was very small, but Donna makes no objection, merely holding her in silence as Janie’s shoulders tremble and tears soak Donna’s top.

“In all my experience,” the Inquisitor says suddenly, drawing their attention back to the screen, and Janie sits up to watch, wiping her eyes, “I have never before had to conclude a case in both the absence of the accused and the prosecutor.”

“One and the same person, madam,” the man on the monitor in the courtroom says easily.

“So you've said.” The Inquisitor’s voice is cold. “But can you prove that?”

“I know them both. But,” there is a mischievous sparkle in the man’s eyes, “I suggest you question the High Council. They set up this travesty of a trial, making a scapegoat of the Doctor to conceal their own involvement.”

“Is there any reason why I should accept that allegation from a renegade Time Lord?” demands the woman in charge of the court.

“Yes, if you're concerned with learning the truth.”

“What is your interest in this matter?” she wants to know. “Not, I think, concern for the Doctor.”

The man chuckles. “Oh, indeed not! The Doctor's well matched against himself. One must destroy the other.”

“How utterly evil,” gasps a young woman with curly red hair.

And when the man’s response is a cheerful “Thank you!” Donna thinks she knows who the stranger must be.

“Evil and a renegade Time Lord,” she muses aloud. “It can only be the Master. But why is he helping the Doctor?”

The Inquisitor has a similar query. “Am I to take it that some base desire for revenge is your motive for interfering?”

“There's nothing purer and more unsullied, madam, than the desire for revenge. But, if you follow the metaphor, I've thrown a pebble into the water, perhaps killing two birds with one stone, and causing ripples that'll rock the High Council to its foundations.” His chuckle reverberates in the silent courtroom. “What more could a renegade wish for?”

“I don’t understand,” Janie says slowly, turning to Donna. “The Master, did you call him? Who is that?”

“A former friend of your father.” Donna sighs. “I still don’t really understand his motives though. Yes, he’s casting suspicion on the High Council, but that’s happened before. History will once more be rewritten.”

“But you can’t…”

“Don’t tell me you can’t change the Matrix,” Donna interrupts sharply. “You can. I know it. Your Father knows it. That is what this so-called trial is actually proving. It’s just that nobody in that courtroom is smart enough to have realised it yet.”

“Father knows…” Janie trails off.

“Exactly.” Donna nods. “And that’s clearly the reason he’s gone so willingly into the Matrix again.”

They both turn back to the monitor that now shows the Doctor’s actions in the Matrix, sitting in silence as he gradually overcomes the various obstacles that the Valeyard, who fled into the Matrix when he left the courtroom, is throwing in his path.

“What happens to the Valeyard,” Janie asks idly, “if Father dies?”

“That is the question indeed,” Donna replies. “He might find himself a little more free than he expects – so free, in fact, that he will cease to exist!”

“Why doesn’t he realize?”

“Perhaps his desire to set himself free of what he clearly sees as your father’s restraining side – the good that controls the bad – means that he’s blinded himself to the truth.”

There’s a loud crash from outside the door that startles the two women, who exchange glances before leaping up to check that the door is secure.

“What’s going on?” Janie asks in a low voice, her tones taut with fear.

“I don’t know.” Donna shakes her head, checking that the locks on the doors are solid and undamaged. “But we should be safe enough in here. Nobody knows where we are.”

Just to be sure, though, they move a heavy bookcase in front of the door as well. They return to the desk just as the Keeper of the Matrix bursts into the courtroom. His news explains the noise they can hear in the passageway outside.

“My lady, an urgent message.” The man is out of breath. “The High Council has been deposed. Insurrectionists are running amok on Gallifrey.”

The women exchange worried glances, but the Master on the screen speaks before they can.

“Thank you, Keeper,” he says smoothly, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “That is the news I've been awaiting. Listen carefully,” he orders. “I have an edict to deliver. Somewhere the Valeyard and the Doctor are engaged in their squalid duel. With luck, they'll kill each other, but that is a mere coincidental occurrence. What I have to impart is of vital importance to all of you. Now that Gallifrey is collapsing into chaos, none of you will be needed. Your office will be abolished. Only I can impose order. I have control of the Matrix. To disregard my commands will be to invite summary execution.”

“Ah.” Donna sighs as the Master disappears from the screen. “So that’s what he wanted.”

“Control of Gallifrey?”

“Control of both the Matrix and Gallifrey, yes.” Donna leans back in her chair. “I can’t help but think he might even have arranged this whole trial in order to get the Doctor out of the way.”

“Was that really necessary?” Janie asks wonderingly.

“Someone like the Master would almost certainly think so.” Donna sighs. “He seems to delight in making the Doctor’s life a misery.”

“The Valeyard, too,” Janie says, waving a hand at the screen, which shows the man in black mocking the Doctor.

“You are elevating futility to a high art. There's nothing you can do to prevent the catharsis of spurious morality!”

The Doctor, leaning over a massive machine, scarcely wastes time on his tormentor. “If you could compile this monstrosity, it follows that I should be able to unravel it.”

“And if he can’t?” Janie asks anxiously.

“Then,” Donna says slowly, “we are all in trouble.

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