genessia | [Anon Text]

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[Anon Text]

A question to pose to all of you. Have you ever lost someone so dear that you lost a part of yourself with them? And if you have, have you ever met another that's become dear to you in that way again? Nobody can ever replace those you've lost and I know that well, just as the hole can never been filled, but can there be room again. Is it possible to find that one rare person or is it little more then an illusion? Would you lose your loyalty to the person you lost by being with this new person?

Please, let me know your opinions on the matter.

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Yes. All emotionally powerful experiences take pieces of ourselves, and loss is prevalent here. All have been dear to me in different ways, as the relations have never been the same. Alas, that means no one's replaceable in the slightest. This all seems like you're talking about an erotic lover, in which case other rules come into play.

And if I was speaking of a lover?

Then the circumstances of the parting and whether you're a believer determine what to do.

The person I refer to was murdered. I wasn't there to protect them. It is what parted us.

I'm sorry to read that. Death, as a parting, does leave you perfectly free to find that love again, should you wish it, with no treachery on your part. If you are meant for it, you will, but don't despair if you don't. Cruel as it seems, some loves are ended for reason, much as it hurts.

Loss is never an easy thing to deal with. It's something I still feel myself struggling with even now. While it seems as if our situations might be different, Im sure the pain we each feel is strong.

With that being said, I don't believe you should see it as losing your loyalty. This person is and was very dear to you and has affected you in ways. Even if your heart starts to beat for another, it doesn't mean you've thrown those other feelings aside. It doesn't make them any less important. It just shows you and the person no longer with you that you're strong and you're still holding on. That's how I feel anyway.

[IF SHE SOUNDS LIKE SHE'S BEEN CRYING -- Well...]

[HER VOICE IS SO THICK AND HOARSE BUT THIS CANNOT BE DONE THROUGH TEXT!!!!]

Of course you can! [BWAAAAAAH.] I -- they, the person you loved first would be glad you could still love again, I promise. It hurts to be left behind, but they would NEVAR want you to be lonely! If anything... it's MORE loyal to them to still be a happier and better person more open to love again.

That's... that's what I know! [Sniffles.]

[BRB NEEDING ABOUT FIFTY HUGS FROM THE DOCTOR EVEN IF SHE is 100000000% convinced this post is from him.]

[As usual, the Doctor is one to answer anon texts with videos, offering a face to connect to the words, the sympathetic grimace and tone of voice going with it hopefully comforting.

He's more of a public speaker than scriptwriter, anyhow.

Also, there might be some people he knows for whom it could be useful.]

...now and again. ...yeah, like you said, some people, you lose a piece of your heart when they go away, nothing you can do to get it back, but it's an amazing thing, the heart, 'cos you know what it never does?

[He pauses a tick--either building suspense, or working himself up to it--and smiles, although it's a bit of a wry, bittersweet smile.]

It never runs out of room. That first person's always with you, in fact, never mind one rare person, I'll bet you've got more people in there than you'd even realized, and none of them ever pushed the others out. Someone being important t'you, being the world t'you, doesn't take that away from anyone else who is, so long as you remember and try to live up to what they'd want, what they mean to you, even if they're not with you anymore.

Seems like such a little thing, your heart, I know, seems like there's only room for one, but really, it's much, much bigger on the inside.

[She shuffles through the TARDIS console room a while after this post went out and she'd seen his reply while worrying that it might have been one of their own "family," one of the Doctors or their friends. She's got some weird contraption under her arm and those shades the Scotsman had given her perched on top of her head, and was obviously headed somewhere outside after having lost herself in her tinkering for a bit. But she pauses when she sees him doing whatever it was he was doing, shuffling over and clapping him on the back.]

Nice words, Doctor. Think you put it better then I did.

[Aaaand then she's walking again without explaining, raising her arm to wave at him behind her, the massive hodgepodge of machinery and wires braced on her hip with the other hand as she called back at him on her way to the door.]

Yay for bein' the socially awkward one! Peoplein' is harder, sometimes. Headin' out. Settin' up some energy scanners, wanna see if we can triangulate the source of whatever's supplyin' this place with the energy it needs to exist. [She's just babbling, now, trying to hide that awkwardness with talking. There have been a concerning number of those types of messages they'd seen on the network lately, and it's brought up some uncomfortable feelings that are just adding to everything else this place has dumped on her.]

[He's fiddling with the console, mostly distracting himself from that train of thought he'd rather have not entertained at all but dived into almost without thinking when someone asked for help. He could almost understand Eyebrows getting sick of that... ...he could just never understand actually turning away from it the way it seemed he had. Will have. Whatever.

He's a little startled at that clap on the back--maybe getting too used to spending time on his own, again, and definitely not used to people being quite as familiar with him as he is with himself. He flashes a wry smile at his older self, though.

He'd be glowing at such praise from his future self, usually, if not for the rather bittersweet subject matter.]

...ah, well, thanks.

[He pauses a tick, giving her a queer look as she starts walking again right off, peering after her briefly. He considers stopping her, but he's preempted as he laughs ironically at her choice of words.]

Yeah, lucky thing we've never been socially awkward, eh?

[Which is to say: you're not talking to Kissy Faces Ten and Eight, here, and even they had their awkward moments tyvm, but most of all, you don't get to claim the crown of social awkwardness, not after Rory's stag party.

He crosses his arms, leaning his hip against the console for a second as he glances downward, then over at his future self again.]

..."love is always wise," was that one yours?

[She might have felt a little bit of smug satisfaction at having startled him, if she didn't suspect why it had caught him so off guard, didn't recognize the way he'd been carrying himself when she walked by. She smiled, though, and gave a little laugh at the reply. Ok. So she wasn't the first of them to be complete bunk at trying to figure out how to just exist around others. Knowing their track record, she probably wouldn't be the last, either.]

Oh, course not! We're great at all'a that talkin', just ace!

[She was down the stairs and halfway to the door when the question made her stop. She was quiet for a bit, thinking over her reply, and the way she kept her back to him was probably a little telling in and of itself. But it was easier to talk, when she wasn't looking at him. Easier when she could pretend that she was just babbling into an empty TARDIS to clear her thoughts.]

Yeah. Yeah, that was me. 'S...what I told myself, when I regenerated. Got so tired of hurtin', and hatin'. Just wanted to be happy for once. Didn't have anyone else to distract from what was happenin', so I tried to guide my next self into bein' a better person then I had been. 'Hate is always foolish an' love is always wise.' [Boy, that Northern really muddied up her words when she was feeling this much. She gave a soft, almost bitter laugh, the fingers on her free hand running along the metal of the catwalk railing.] Sometimes I think I pushed too hard, 'cause sometimes it's all I can think about, and I can't stop worryin' I'm not gonna be able to live up to those words. Or maybe that even if I try, it won't be enough.

[Wouldn't it just be their way, to try to fix yourself in the next life, only to force correct things too much and send yourself bouncing wildly in the opposite direction? Regeneration was always so unpredictable.]

[The Doctor watched his older-and-again self as she hesitated there. He hadn't really thought of it as a question that would strike a special chord with her, or not enough to give her pause; he'd really just thought to return the compliment, in all honesty, on a turn of phrase he rather liked. The tone was maybe a smidge more puffed up than he usually liked to adopt, professing to expound on wisdom and so on, but-...

Something in her answer doesn't add up right away, enough so that with his attention on hearing and processing what she's saying, it takes him a second to spiral back to what threw him off.]

I-.. no, no, I was just... going to say it sounds brilliant, that was him, Eyebrows, the Scarecrow?

[It runs together into one sentence (well, sort of a sentence) but it's two thoughts he's having too much difficulty holding in his head together to really separate the clauses properly before the second one bursts out. He gets she's the one who sent the message, but to think they were words his next self had originated...

What message would he leave for his future self? What thoughts or concerns or wishes or imperatives would be the first ones in his next self's head? What the hell would he say to himself that would bring him there--and how could he come back again to say those words their mutually-future self seemed to hold so dear?

How can he even express how much that boggles his mind at this point in his relationship with his next self?]

Whot?

[That might do it.]

[His disbelief actually gets a loud snort out of her, a knowing laugh, because she understands. If she hadn't already lived through that life, she would have probably felt the exact same way. The look she gives him when she finally turns enough to glance back over her shoulder is a small, wry smile, barely more then a twitch of one side of her lip.]

I know. He doesn't make it easy, does he? [What little bit of a smile she had given him fades, though, back into an almost hollow look as her memories shift back to what it had been like.] As much as he makes you hate 'im, it's what he wants. Sometimes he tries so hard to make people hate him as much as he hates himself. That way, if he never lets anyone in, he never has to let them go, an' he can prove to himself that he really is as horrible as he thinks he is, because no one loves 'im.

[She's quiet again for a moment, her hand going into her pocket, scuffing and tapping the heel of one of her boots awkwardly on the floor before she looked back at the younger face.]

Want my honest opinion? I'm worried about 'im. The amount of pain he's in, an' us bein' out of synch as we are, I worry-...[Oh, and when she catches herself realizing where she was going with that, she stops short, her brow furrowing and her mouth pulling into a thin line. He wouldn't really want her to walk around blabbing this around the place.

But hiding it and trying to pretend that it didn't exist had only pushed him so far, in the end, so dangerously close to the edge. One tiny change would have been all it took for-...She set her jaw, giving a stuttered nod as if telling herself she was doing the right thing in letting someone else know.]

He finds out I said anythin', he may do me in himself. An' I don't really want 'im knowin' this bit, either, if he hasn't reached it yet, but...[She met his gaze firmly, holding it so he could see how serious she was.] We came very close to not regeneratin'. We were dyin', shot by cybermen. But we had been livin' with so much pain, we refused. I'm worried, if we stay here too long...one little nudge here is all it could take...an' next time, maybe we won't change our mind again.

[She sniffs, shaking her head. Alright, it's out there, now, she's said it, and she can't take it back. Which is when the babbling starts, because she may very well have just opened a can of worms that should have been left closed, but there was no going back, now, and it actually kind of terrifies her.]

It's not even a self-preservation thing for me. Well, ok, maybe a little, I like bein' alive again. Actually really enjoy it. But it's not about me, it's about him, an' knowin' how much he hurts, an' wishin' I could make it go away, because I remember how every nerve in my body was on fire with it, how everything felt so raw an' so painful, an' I couldn't take it, I couldn't stand seein' one more person die, couldn't stand havin' to watch one more person I loved get killed because they put their trust an' their faith in me, an' all I could do was think about how foolish it was, how much I hated myself, how horrible I was for never learnin' my lesson an' lettin' them live their lives without me there, bringin' misery into their lives! [There's a little bit of that Scottish coming out, now. Maybe not in the voice, but in the expression, in the tension that settled in her frame, the way her hand pulled itself from her pocket to press against her forehead like she was rubbing away the ghost of the pain from behind her eye sockets.] Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see an' hear were the women an' children on Gallifrey, screamin' an' burnin'.

[But then she stills, the Scarecrow melting away into memories again, and she came back to herself, feeling a little guilty as she shook her head.]

Sorry. I'm still new, yet. It's still fresh for me. [She gave a shaky laugh, tried to smile up at him as if everything was fine.] Still only a couple months since I regenerated. I just hope he's ok, 's all. We don't know what's goin' on here, or when we'll go back, an' now that I'm here, I've got him to worry about, an' apparently our 10th face, too! [She looks absolutely befuddled for a second, her nose curling as she shakes her head.] It's like this place was set up just to make us hurt worse! What are they even doin' it all for?

[The Doctor steps forward, toward the railing, giving his older self a searching look--and after a bit of a smirk at her initial response, he winces as she starts explaining in more detail. He listens, leaning against the railing, a part of him feeling that urge to rebel against her all-too-plausible complications to the relatively simple story of the regeneration between them just being bad. Whatever else she might say, those were already motivations he could understand all too well.

His expression's more serious and concerned as he looks up again to meet her eyes, and if he's amused on some level at the thought of him coming after himself, there's a feeling of hollowness when she says they almost don't regenerate. He grimaces at that, stung both with understanding and frustration--how hard had he struggled to keep going?--but he listens attentively, still. He bristles a little, sympathetically, as her tension raises to that climax, answering it with a rather hollow smile.

He'd rather hoped breaking all the rules to find a way to save Gallifrey would have given him some peace, at least, from those memories, those nightmares, that he'd worked so hard to pack away safely and compartmentalize.

The Doctor shakes his head as his older self finishes up, recovering at least some of her composure, and flashes a sort of wry, exasperated smile.]

...not impossible. You've picked up on how much here depends on telepathic fields, yeah? The barrier, whatever exactly lives outside it, those dream docks, the sacrifices...

[...he really didn't like the sacrifices very much, and even less so on account of River's.]

Wouldn't be surprised if it all served to charge up some telepathic field battery, somewhere.

[Or a generator, or a creature, or... too much was unknown and unclear, but the details were sort of besides the point, at the moment. He paused a tick, still gripping the railing, and shifted his stance awkwardly for a second or two before speaking again, abruptly changing the topic back again.]

...ought to tell you, we had an... incident, Eyebrows and I did, bit after last Christmas.

[Another tick and a faint wince of recollection.]

......found out about how he... struggled to remember anything of Clara. Gave him a painting, thought it might... help.

[Judging by his expression, it didn't.]

'tween that and playing with the electrics, he managed to give himself seizures, aphasia, seemed to be related to the mem'ry block, so, well, couldn't leave him like that, tried to fix it--give him my mem'ries, help him break through the block, seizures should stop once the block's resolved, Bob's your uncle.

[He flashes a wry smile at that. He figures he doesn't need to specify it was direct telepathic surgery, because honestly, how else would they share memories and take down a memory block? That much should be obvious.]

...hell of a surge cut loose, all his blocked memories at once.

[Would she remember that bottomless black chasm of rage that seemed to draw the line between Clara and No Clara? Would the memory block persist across regenerations? It did seem to be top-shelf, Gallifreyan work, as far as he could tell. Of course, his version of events was a bit muddled. Getting whacked with all the memories trapped under a memory block didn't mean they were easy to sort into the right order or interpret accurately. The Doctor is clearly more than a little angry, himself, even if it's kept cool for the moment by the way she'd spoken to sympathetically about his future self. How can he compress into just a few words how he feels?

Ah.]

...I saw what happened to her. To Clara. That she wanted him--us--to forget her.

[At least, roughly. Surely, she knows what a mess interpreting someone else's memories can be. Still, there's little doubt in his mind that they'd failed her, maybe even betrayed her, and gotten her killed, in whichever order. Whatever sympathy his older self might have inspired, that was a hard point to get past.]

[She took some small level of comfort by his presence standing nearby, though there was part of her that also wanted to withdraw, to hide herself from him now that her emotions had started getting the better of her. Always the way with them, bottle it up, bury it deep, forget it was there. Even now, when she was able to finally let herself grieve without letting it eat her away from the inside out, she still felt that defensive instinct to turtle up and hide whenever things got to be too much, if she could.

She hates seeing how much she's hurting him, too, how it's adding more weight to the burden he carries on his shoulders that she knows all too well. He's from the days after Amy and Rory, when his weight is heavier then it would have been otherwise, and it's not fair to him, for her to be making it harder on him still. This...this is why they don't tell each other spoilers, whether they'll remember them or not. It's cruel, she's being cruel, and fresh on remembering the way 12 feels, she can hear his voice snarling at her inside of her head. I'm not a good man. Woman. Doctor.

She shook her head, swallowing hard and doing her best to push it away, to remember herself and not let it sweep her away, and nodded softly in reply.]

I'd begun to suspect that, myself. The question then is who is behind it all. We find that out, we'll have the answers we need.

[Her brow furrowed as he continued, confusion crossing her features as she turned to watch him speak, giving him her full attention. Concern for the 12th only flaring worse as she realized what he was describing, how severely ill he must have been.

And then the full truth of what he meant hit her, and she felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her lungs.

The look of pain on his own face, no matter that he tried to hide it, shot through the memories of Clara that came to her mind, and she shook her head, tightness beginning behind her eyes and blurring her vision. She leaned down just enough to put the sensor she'd been carrying on the floor before she was moving closer to him, wrapping her arms around him and holding him as tightly as she could.]

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you had to see that. You don't deserve that, especially not...[Her breath hiccuped on the words and she buried her head in his shoulder. When she was able to find her voice again, it sounded so weak.] Especially not so soon after losing Amy and Rory.

[It was like a dam had been broken. Remembering the pain he had felt at losing them, remembering the pain of losing Clara and the vividness of her memories after just being given them back, brought it all crashing to the surface, and she cried. She had been doing so well, dealing with the emotions those restored memories had given her, had chosen to feel the happiness and love through them instead of dwelling on the pain. Had she given herself a chance to grieve properly, after finally having something to grieve over? It was so hard to tell; things had barely slowed down after the Testament had given them back to her and she had regenerated. She had very literally hit the ground running and hadn't had a chance to really stop, not until she'd been dragged to this place and forced to stay where she didn't want to be. Maybe she was finally letting herself feel it. But it shouldn't have been at his expense.]

I remember, I remember all of it. [There was no audible crying, but each breath that she drew in was a sharp, ragged gasp, as if she kept forgetting and her body kept reminding her she needed oxygen, respiratory bypass or no, and the sound of her voice was so broken, higher and almost desperate when she spoke.] At regeneration, they...the Testament, they called themselves...a race who recorded the lives of people at the moments of their deaths...a living memorial of walkin', talkin' memories that thought they were real...They found us, when we were still refusin' it. An' they gave 'er back to us. Let me say goodbye, like I couldn't before, and...and they gave her memory back to me.

[She shook against him, shaking her head against his coat, and her arms twisted around him a little tighter, her hands fisting in the tweed fabric. Was she trying to give comfort or take it? A dark part of her hissed that she was being selfish, that she was just seeking it out from him instead of offering what little she could.]

She...she just wanted to save me, from myself. I can still remember seein' how much it hurt 'er, knowin' what I put myself through. How much it broke 'er, knowin' how long I'd let myself stay trapped in that damned confession dial, just so I could get the chance to make them pay for what they did to her! I brought her back, I took away her final choice because I couldn't accept losin' her, an' she couldn't stand the thought of me in that much pain, so she took it away from me in the only way she knew how.

[There was bitterness in her voice, anger at herself. She could never make up for what she'd done to her, for the position she'd put her in. Clara had made her choice, she had chosen bravery over cowardice and accepted her fate, and the Doctor had taken even that from her.]

She was my responsibility! I was supposed to keep her safe, an' instead, she ended up dead because they knew it would bring me right to 'em.

[There was more information he could share with his older self about the Genessia situation, and he weighed doing that at once, deflecting from the conversation they were having even though he suspected it was something they needed to sort out if he was going to co-exist with himself, especially if he was going to do it without making all his friends miserable. He winced inwardly at his older self's reaction--she was so open, again, for better or worse--and his smile grew a touch more contrite. He knew whatever exactly had happened, whatever the details were, he was digging up something traumatic, and it wasn't something he'd wish on anyone, especially a version of himself he actually kind of liked a bit. He raised his eyebrows slightly as she approached him, expecting she was perhaps intending to speak in a more hushed tone (not that anyone but the TARDIS was around to hear them anyway)--but was caught off guard at that sudden, fierce hug.

He paused a second, startled, then chuckled under his breath, and hugged her in return. He couldn't help being reminded of Amy, actually--who else would fierce, tearful hugs and kind words of understanding call to mind? It was a bit strange being so close to himself, so gentle, after so many years of self-loathing, even when it was a version of himself he already knew intimately, but even as he was aware of that strangeness, he held her and rubbed her back soothingly without even really thinking about it, a third train of thought wondering whether it was grandfatherly instinct kicking in? Or memories of Amy, perhaps? Or were they even entirely separate things?

Didn't entirely matter. On some level, there was someone suffering in a way he could understand, and it didn't entirely matter who.

He listened quietly, letting her cling to him... and she could surely feel some of the tension ease out of him as she explained, as she clarified that there would be some redemption after all, presumably off somewhere in their intermediate self's future. Was that what knocked some sense into him?

If he had any comment to make about the Testament and their regeneration, though, it was preempted as his older self went into details about what happened with Clara. Relief at the thought of redemption was one thing, but the bittersweet pangs rolling through him as she filled in the gaps were something else entirely. It was like lancing a series of emotional boils, a sharp stab followed by lingering soreness but also soothing relief. Even if he'd still feel like he failed her, it meant the world to hear that she'd still thought fondly of him at the end, that she still wanted to save him, that she might have had some agency in what happened to her, that (possibly in spite of his being an overbearing, patronizing jackass) she'd erased his memory to help him, rather than the Time Lords doing it to stop him.

He was a bit choked up, actually, much as he didn't especially want to admit it--and perhaps to his advantage, his older self seemed distracted with anger at the moment. He recognized that tone of voice. He'd yelled at himself in it often enough inside his head, even before he turned it against their intermediate self. He answered at first just by patting her back lightly, and holding her a little tighter for a moment, partly to bring her back to the present, and partly to buy himself a couple seconds longer to compose himself before he speaks.]

...thank you.

[There was still some of that thickness in his voice, that tone Amy always seemed to be able to bring out of him, so he kept that first reply short and to the point--also engineered both to be a bit of an unexpected response to jar her from her train of thought, and to reassure her that she wasn't just dumping on him. He gave himself another second or two to collect himself before he continued.]

...couldn't get any details from him, just... just knew I'd--he'd--we'd hurt her, that she'd wanted us to forget for some reason, how angry we were, how hopeless, and-

[He trailed off for a second as the gears in his head turned one step further and something clanged into place. His hands grasped at her shoulders, and he jerked back just enough to get a look at her face, his eyes wide with shocked realization.]

No, shut up, you said- trapped in a confession dial?!

[It answered another lingering question, that. Now he had some idea what that Chasm in his future self's memories had been, that psychic scar that seemed to be more than just a memory, blotting everything else out with fear, anger, and despair, like a spot worn through a carpet.

Maybe a lot like a spot worn through a carpet.

She'd said something about how long they'd been trapped... how would you force your way out of a confession dial? How long would it take? How many countless time loops would you have to fight through? How hard would it be to convince yourself to keep trying, keep resetting, building up the telepathic residue of one person suffering through all the previous loops and all the loops yet to come?

Was that what left him seeming so broken, so spent?

There wasn't a very long list of who could trap someone in a confession dial if they wanted to--probably including himself and the Master--and precious few of them would want to. Sure, the Master didn't have many limits, but trapping someone in a confession dial was horrendously grotesque and morbid even by the Master's standards, and while he might do something analogous to some other species he didn't think much of, would he go that far with Time Lord traditions?

He knew one Time Lord who absolutely would without flinching, of course, because he was probably incapable of flinching, that one--and his older self didn't say he or she, but they. Brilliant, the Master was, but a leader among Time Lords...?

His eyes widened even more, then rolled as he nodded, comprehension dawning and settling into bitterly disgrunted anger at the awful, unacceptable, and obvious conclusion.]

Rassilon.

[And those damned ingrates. Hell of a way to say thanks for saving the planet and entire Time Lord civilization again.

Oh, with how furious he was just hearing about it, the borrowed memories still only half-connected, he could just begin to imagine what he might have done in the moment when it was all completely fresh, and he has a terrible, sinking feeling. It's a relief to know it's not as bad as he'd feared, but he suspects he's still going to want to smack himself upside the head later.]

...what did we do?

[The strangeness wasn't exactly lost on her, and it was simultaneously reassuring, to be talking to one of herself and be able to discuss the heavier things with someone for once, and at the same time realize that she had turned to herself with it instead of locking it away and keeping that usual detachment that they so often maintained between themselves.

But he was holding her, rubbing her back, and it was nice, even if she felt foolish about it, thumping her head gently against his coat as if reprimanding herself even as she did her best to hold back the tears.

She felt the tension easing from his own shoulders, her own hands unconsciously rubbing his back in return as he seemed to take solace in her words or her attempts at comforting him even as she babbled on like an idiot, raging against the Doctor in her memories that had so stubbornly plowed on straight ahead to the detriment to himself and the only person he had in his life, angry with him and of course angry with herself. No matter the different face, no matter the different personality, she still bore the responsibility for what had been done.

When he patted her back, held her just a little closer to give himself a chance to respond, it helped a little, to pull her out of the little hate spiral she'd allowed herself to veer into, and she nodded gently againt his shoulder when he thanked her, letting him regain his composure after she'd done such a wonderful job of throwing a spanner into the works and listening as he spoke. But something about his words twinged in her brain, and just as the gears in his head clanged into place, the same happened with her own.

He hadn't had the full details. He hadn't seen everything.

She had almost moved to pull away and ask him just how much was missing, when he jerked her back and stared at her in shock, and she stared right back, confusion melting away into dawning realization as she saw the emotions passing across his face.]

You weren't able to restore everything, were you??

[And oh, did his anger give her a little bit of bitter joy, a glimmer of angry vindication. The sneer that curled her lip when she nodded her confirmation was ugly with malice.]

Of course. Who else but? [The part of her that remembered that day the most vividly made her expression twist into a hateful smile, her lip trembling with the force of her anger and the unhealthy amount of smug joy she felt at what she said next.] I kicked them off. Off of my planet. Rassilon and the council. I'm just sorry I didn't scrub their names from the history books.

[After the things they'd put them through, after their own exile and denaming, it would have been poetic justice.

But then the smile faded into a bitter frown, and she fidgetted with the lapels on his coat, sniffing sharply as her gaze drifted away. She didn't want to say it out loud, didn't want to even admit to it, but if he had only seem bits and pieces, then he deserved to know.]

They...wanted me to confess what we knew about the hybrid. They'd made me watch Clara die moments before trapping me, so...the only thing I cared about was getting out and making them pay for it. Didn't realize at first where I was or who had done it, until...[Her face shifted uncomfortably, the ghosts of memories lost in a time loop, billions of years of their own psychic energy built up in the place, threatening to form but always just outside of reach. She hadn't lived each of those lives. Not really. It gave her a weird sort of disconnect, recognizing the fact that, like Schrodinger's cat, the Doctor was dead and alive at the same time, the original body gone, so long ago that his skull would have long-since dissolved in that sea, if they had been outside of the loop. It had given him a few unhappy nights of existential crises in the years that had followed, and even now, it was enough to set her teeth on edge. She didn't like to think about it.]

I don't know. Hard to be sure. It's a bit of a blur. Either way, I refused. Let them keep me there until I was able to break out, an' even then, when I'd made the Generals and the Sisterhood scramble to try an' keep it all from blowin' up in their faces, I kept refusin'. Told 'em...[Her voice caught in her throat, and she pulled back an bit, her hands dropping from his coat and burying in her pants pockets as her head dropped and she stared at the floor between their feet. Turtling up on herself even as she tried her hardest to find her voice again. When she did, it was a whisper, strangled out through tense vocal chords.] Told 'em I had to talk to Clara again. That she could help me figure it out.

Used...used an extraction chamber. Wouldn't let 'em tell her what was happenin'. Broke 'er out, an'...took 'er through the Matrix. Stole another TARDIS. Tried ta...t'take her outside her timeline an' restart her heart.

[It's probably obvious, in the way her shoulders hunched and the way she shrank in on herself, how well that had gone. She doesn't let the tears reach her voice, this time, but she couldn't stop them from hitting the glass floor.]

She made 'em tell 'er what they did to me, before we got away. I think she knew I wasn't well. I did, too. Just...didn't care. Was gonna fix it all. Restart her heart, then erase 'er mem'ries so they couldn't find 'er again. Let 'er go an' be free of me. [She gave a bitter laugh.] She's smarter then us, though, sometimes. Used the sonic to reverse the polarity on the blocker when my back was turned, so it would backfire on me. She wasn't afraid of dyin', she'd already made peace with it. But she couldn't stand the thought of forgettin' everything.

I didn' know if it would work like she wanted. Had to try, though. So we decided we'd both use it at the same time an' let whatever happen happen. [She gave a slow, tense shrug.] Spent a long time lookin' for 'er, after I woke back up. She'd dropped me back off on Earth, in the US. Went back to bring back our TARDIS, while I tried to figure out what I'd forgotten. Pieced some of it back together from the gaps, but not enough.

[And then, she laughed a small, brittle laugh and glanced up, almost meeting his eyes, but not quite before her gaze dropped back down.]

Only saw her one more time before I regenerated. She was in that diner. Your diner, the one with Amy and Rory and River. [She laughs again, clearer, though it crumbled into a hiccupped sob as she rubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat.] It was the TARDIS I'd stolen to take her off Gallifrey! I didn't even realize it was her! She...she just wanted me to play a song for her. Wanted me to tell her about...about her. I think she was lookin' out for us, even when you were there, makin' sure we were ok. Musta been sittin' out in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, for years, waitin' for that face to finally come find 'er. Guess she hadn't quite figured out the controls yet, got the timezone wrong. Then she just...[Another shrug]...dematerialized away. Left our TARDIS for us so we didn't have to hitch anymore rides with the locals. After that...dunno. I...think she wanted to make sure we were safe before goin' back to Gallifrey an'...lettin' them put 'er back. She knew it wasn't safe for us there. Again.

[She let the silence fill the space between them, rubbing at her arm with the hand one she'd used to wipe at her eyes. She couldn't look at him, now, didn't want to see what the information did to him, the anger or sadness or shame that she was sure would be written all over his face. Clara was one of the only reasons he'd found to keep going, she was the reason he had started to feel happy again, after losing Amy and Rory. And here she was, standing in front of him and confessing to being the reason she was gone, dead and buried and her last wishes defiled so profanely.

It didn't matter that it hadn't been her face that had done it. It had been the Doctor, that was the only thing that mattered. It had been her hands that had done the acts that got them there, it had been her decisions that had pushed her that far. The appearance of those hands and the face that had made those decisions made little difference, in the end. She was just as much to blame as the last Doctor.]

[He'll have to get back to the question of just how much he'd unlocked at a later time--either on his own impetus, or when she reminds him. At the moment, he's much too engrossed in where the conversation's gone, and he can't help but smirk just a bit smugly at the thought of Rassilon fuming and raging as he's shipped off into exile. Maybe it wasn't the wisest choice ever, knowing Rassilon, but it sure as hell was poetic.

There's the first hint of a look of concern when he realizes she's talking about the whole council, as well. His smug anger gives way to one of those searching looks, absorbing all she says, and gauging as best he can just what her relationship to those events is, now ~~interrupted only briefly by an eyeroll at the hybrid nonsense getting dragged into it, too~~. He already knew his future self had something of a dark chapter, but the more she connected the dots between the bits he'd retained, the more sense it made.

Try as he might to maintain his composure, she knows his face too well to hide just how concerned--how alarmed--he is at what she describes. He glances downward with a wince as she describes the way she used--he will use?--the extraction chamber, what their long-awaited reunion with the Time Lords was and will be like, how their last run with Clara went and will go. He smiles one of his wry, ancient-eyed smiles when she mentions the diner (that slotted another bit into position better than his hypotheses could have done), and squeezes her shoulders lightly at the last bit.

Everything they'd gone through, just to be exiled from Gallifrey again.]

...well... could've been worse, eh?

[The Doctor pauses a tick, glancing aside briefly as he considers that.]

......not by a lot, but still.

[He's at least partly joking to lighten the mood a little; but he's also partly not, and he raises his eyebrows at his older self meaningfully.]

When the memory block cracked, I got ev'rything to do with Clara, all at once--couldn't retain all the details, not without their context, and nothing in the right order. Only other thing I got was that... black mark, the psychic scar from the Confession Dial, I s'pose... like a wall of anger and despair and fear I couldn't see past, except that we saw her again.

[There's no mistaking that the details hurt him, still, but he ducks his head to try and catch his older self's eyes, to make sure she follows what he's saying. They'd had a dark page here and there, and things had gotten pretty bleak for them during the War, but there was one moment in his past when they'd maybe gone even farther.]

...I thought we'd... done something, something terrible. I mean, yeah, we did, I s'pose, not our proudest moment, and not the first time I've thought Eyebrows should've known better, but I'm glad she was there to stop us.

[He knows he doesn't need to provide a citation for the advice he's paraphrasing.]

Last time we'd felt like that--that anger, that despair, that fear, all at once--was after Mars.

[Banishing the Council, essentially conquering Gallifrey, misappropriating an extraction chamber indefinitely and thereby threatening the stability of time itself while snatching away a friend's agency for his own selfish purposes was all pretty bad--but all that was still just the tepid edge of the realm of Time Lord Victorious power fantasies, and they both knew it.

The Doctor shakes his head after a second, giving his older self an uncertain, pensive look.]

......after...

[He pauses a moment, knowing he probably shouldn't ask, since he's already wading up to his neck in foreknowledge... then flashes a mask-like smile and glances downward.]

...no, sorry, probably best I don't ask... ...and I s'pose it's a bit obvious, really.

[Rassilon would no doubt already be trying to find some way of making them pay for what had happened that day. But what was done was done, and that would have to be a hurdle crossed when they came to it. Though she would have had to admit to being a little surprised that he hadn't tried to enact whatever form of revenge he had planned by now. ~~And if she let herself think about it for too long, in this place, under these circumstances, it would make her own paranoia about Genessia's motivations even worse.~~

When he finally took the chance to speak, to give that small bit of humor to try and break some of the tension, she can't help but give a soft but somewhat hysterical little laugh as the incongruity of his statements hits her, hiding her face in her hand. It didn't last long, and she shook her head to deny it even as it faded, but it was there, and it helped. She reached out to press against his chest in reply, just firm enough to be a half-hearted swat, but not even firm enough to even throw him off balance, simply acknowledging the attempt at lightening the mood.]

S'pose. Certainly didn' feel like it, at the time.

[When he moved to catch her gaze, it was easier to meet his eyes as she listened, as she considered what he was saying, what he meant. She could see how he was debating with himself, with wanting to know what that black mark had been in her younger self's mind but struggling to find the right words. He needn't worry, though. She may have been two regenerations detached from him, three from Mars, but that day was still just as fresh in her mind as it had been in his, and she understood.

She gave him a small, watery smile, reaching up and holding one of the hands that was on her shoulder, patting it reassuringly. She didn't respond quickly, taking her own time to decide on the proper words herself, before she shook her head.]

Nothing we did then, in the dial, could've hurt anyone but ourselves. [Her smile faded, but the memory of that place was less painful then the memory of what came after, as hard as it might have been to believe. It was still traumatic, horrifying even, and she looked more haunted now then distraught. She had wanted to avoid the details on the dial, wanted to spare him the full extent of what they'd done when his worries had been so focused on Clara. But she knew how his mind worked, knew how he would dread it, fussing and stressing and worrying at his own nerves over it it he didn't know. The not knowing was the worst, sometimes. She didn't want to leave him like that. She let out a long, shuddering breath, steeling her own nerves as she determined to explain.]

It wasn't like Mars. It was...we were alone. Our own custom-made prison, designed to play on our worst fears. Rotting corpses in shrouds, surrounded by flies, stalkin' the halls an' wantin' to strangle the life out of us. Playin' on somethin' a little boy saw before he was old enough to handle it properly. [Even now, it made her skin crawl something fierce, and she shuddered violently, her face scrunching in on itself for a moment as she shook the fear out of her head, unconsciously squeezing his hand gently tighter.] We died there. I only lived a little over a day of it, but...I saw the remains. I held the skull of the man before me. Didn't even realize what it meant until right at the end.

[The memory of those skulls filled her vision, all identical, piles and piles of them, staring back at him from under the surface of that sea, and she shut her eyes against it for a moment, fighting down the horror of it before she could continue. Oh, how she hated to tell him how much she had seen. She hated to put that on his mind, whether he would remember it once they were home or not. But that one thing, those stars and those skulls, were maybe the only way he would ever be able to know just why that black mark in his mind had been so wrong.]

Every time I died, the system reset. A new Doctor took his place. I don't remember them, I'm not them. But...but...how many lives do you think were spent? How many...bodies do you think there were? Livin' in a prison custom made to drive us to our wits end from our worst fears, dyin' from them every other day, f-...for...[Face scrunching again, trying to regain control of her tongue after her brain tried to force her to stop, her fingers trembling ever so gently against his hand.] F-for...over four an' a half billion years.

[There. It was out. Her face still stayed screwed closed, though, for a long breath afterward, hating herself just a little for having been so weak that she hadn't just kept it all buried inside like they always did. But this was obviously something that had been causing them all pain, here, since long before she'd arrived, and if the face that had endured it couldn't or wouldn't explain, and she could? It would just make things worse not to.]

Coulda left at any time. All it would've taken was for us to confess. But we didn't. We decided it'd be better t'punch through a diamond mountain then to give 'em what they wanted.

[The look she gave him when she finally managed to straighten her face out was just...defeated. Resigned. No, what they'd done had not been as brutal as what they'd tried to do after Mars, not in the grand scheme of things. But the damage was just as severe, in it's own stubborn, idiotic way. At least this time, the damage had only been done to themself, and to Clara.

She gave a ghost of a laugh, though, pulling her other hand out of her pocket to scratch the side of her nose as she glanced away sheepishly.]

Literally punched, by the way. Musta broken every knuckle in my hand. Let it never be said that we won't drive ourselves t'stupidity when we set our minds t'somethin'.

[Those thoughts and concerns about Genessia were another conversation they'd need to have sooner or later, but the one at hand was a little too significant and a bit too personal to be set aside so easily. His smile brightens visibly at her faint laugh, always so glad when he can help even a little (even if it's only himself anyhow). As she starts to describe the ordeal, he just makes a grossed-out face when she mentions rotting corpses--but when she adds the flies, his eyes widen, realizing what she's referring to.

But, whether it's a different in lived experience, or how their brains had rewired themselves across regenerations, or a bit of both, while he feels the chill of that childhood terror the same as she does, it's overwhelmed by an acute anger burning cold and hard in his eyes. Gentle as he likes to be, he's still one of her faces who'd earned well his title as The Oncoming Storm, and as he follows her thought process to the notion of someone deliberately going for those childhood traumas...

It takes him a second to shake off that fury, but what she says after certainly helps. He didn't see it, himself, but he certainly has a vibrant enough imagination to fill in the gaps, and he knows that where you have time loops and matter locks, you can have temporal backwaters; the stage may be reset each time, but detritus and stray hairs and loose threads pile up in the corners, and four and a half billion years was a hell of a long time for leftover bits to accumulate. He's visibly a bit pale, himself, as she describes it, although he straightens a little with surprise at the diamond mountain bit, and goes right back to a grossed-out face for a moment.]

Whot? Like the Brothers Grimm? Blimey, it really is like a Time Lord ghost story, right down to stealing bits off someone else.

[He eyerolls at that--as much to convince himself that he's taking the story in stride, seeing as he features in it as the ghost--and rolls his shoulders a bit, half to demonstrate defiance and half to get out the tension he only just realized had crept into them. He can't help smirking a little, though; as much as his stubbornness can taken him to awful places and drag his friends through hell sometimes, he has to take some amount of pride in the thought of throwing such a grotesque means of interrogation back in the Time Lords' faces.

At least, until something she'd said echoes back to him, and he pales all over again, his voice hushed.]

......Clara knew?

[Dying over and over again, more than a trillion times, was a chilling enough thought, but if there was something possibly worse, it was someone he cared about and who cared for him knowing just how bad it had been.

The though revives the other topic he'd been trying to avoid, in a way he can't quite shutter out. Not at that moment, not as off-balance as he is with learning he'll have had a starring role in his very own grotesque Gallifreyan fairy tale. He shakes his head, just forlorn for a second as he does his best to compose himself.]

There's... ...there's something else. Again, probably shouldn't ask, but...

[But he's pretty sure he already knows, and it's been gnawing at him, and poisoning his relationship with his future self, especially once he learned (or at least half-learned) about Clara's fate.]

I can't answer your question, since I wonder about the same thing...

People have told me that my lover would want for me to move on, and that they've been in her situation and forgiven the person who lost them... But they say that while crying. I wouldn't want my sweetheart to be crying while I'm happy.

I have lost someone I didn't know was so dear to me until they were gone and with that, I felt like I did lose something of myself, but I have not had someone I have felt that way again here. So my answer to this question might be different to someone who said yes to both of those questions.

It's true nobody can replace what is lost, but it doesn't mean you will never find someone dear to you again. So if you found them it's not a bad thing, at least to me. In life people keep moving forward, after all, no matter what happens. No loyalty lost I think.

I have experienced this from both sides. For our shared experience I am unsure of what to say because of my own doubts--though I believe the circumstances surrounding the death of my first love color my feelings of guilt and the questioning of my loyalty in regards to my second.

But I can tell you this: all the dead want for the living they've left behind is for them to be happy. I am sure that the person you lost would want the same. We don't want our loved ones to suffer, so do not lament this. Be with this person.

I have learned that my husband--my second love--has wandered completely alone for over a decade after my death. I did not want that for him. I wanted him to find happiness. I wanted him to marry, have children, find what we had during our short time together. I admit that part of me is relieved as it makes the situation... less difficult being here together now, but it doesn't change the fact that I know what he has put himself through.

Does that make sense?

I don't know if it's the same, but... I lost my mom. It felt like everything in the world was falling apart. Like I wouldn't ever be able to be happy again.

But the world didn't fall apart. And I was happy again.

I don't know you, but I'm sure you can be happy again, too. I'm really sorry to hear that you lost someone, though.

Yes. Many times. It always hurts, and you feel like you'll never love someone like that again, because you don't want to feel that kind of pain again. Some people move on, some don't.

I don't have the answers for some of it, and I've been fighting with it myself for a very long time. But I always seem to find someone who starts the process for me all over again. No, they don't replace the ones who came before, but they help their loss feel less painful.

Hold onto their memories. Love them even though their gone, but don't close yourself off to feeling love again. Love is always wise.

It gets better, eventually.

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Ooooh noooo, this is a doozy...!

I know, we're such a bad influence on one another...

Hey, anything that influences ALL THE WRITING is a good influence, in my book! >8V

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