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5th_doctor
What: Five helps Data restore his memories, and then has to say his good-byes. All within his dreamscape.
When: The end of Lore Plot.
Warnings and Notes: Some tear-jerky sadness at the end.
He didn't know where he was.
There were crumbled buildings all around, and broken androids. No voices. No names. Some of them looked like they should be familiar.
Dressed in a brown scientist's tunic with a high collar and knee high boots, the clothes he'd been discovered on Omicron Theta with, Data walked through a mysterious, tattered village he didn't recognize. Rubble from a cataclysm laying everywhere, the electronic bodies of whatever the horror was strewn about the remnants.
He didn't know any of them. He should. But he didn't.
The android craned his neck back, looking up at the cloudy sky. There was a ship above it. The round outline of the saucer section and engines silhouetted by the sun behind it. That too was a shape that should have been known, but he couldn't recognize it.
Finally, Data just sat on a piece of broken wall and sighed. Poor man.
If he wasn't mistaken, he actually felt... cold. And the surrounding temperature was starting to drop according to his internal thermometer.
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"But I must see this through to the end." So many bodies needing repair, and Data ought not be the only one allowed to put things to rights.
"Hmm, and a beautiful ship she is," he said, craning his neck to study the Enterprise's graceful, flowing lines. "Perhaps I'll attempt to find her someday..."
He moved her himself somewhere out of the way, to a newly reconstructed bench until he had a suitable place to put her. Dream knowledge said that he had one in her honor.
"Perhaps. It would be an interesting challenge..." he returned back to the Doctor's side, looking around at the collection of other androids still in need of repair. "...I have no intention of giving up, Doctor. I would be glad for your company for as long as you're capable of remaining..."
He stooped down to the one that resembled his VISORed friend, setting about his repairs again as quickly as he could.
He repaired what he could, sending the androids on their way to continue to repair the dreamscape. Since time flowed much differently in Data's dream program than it did in all other planes of existence, the Doctor was uncertain of how long he'd lingered. But he endeavored to stay, even as the bell's call transformed from merely insistent to commanding. Not a 'you must listen' but a 'you will listen.'
No, not until he was certain of Data's working order.
Though there now seemed more androids on their feet and wandering the village rather than strewn about the rubble. It made for a livelier atmosphere, at least. He passed close to the figure representing Kamelion, still donned in the Fifth Doctor's guise. The android smiled weakly, fondly, and placed his hand upon Five's shoulder, giving it an assuring squeeze and, still silent, turned away to tend to the village.
He uncovered another form to repair, and stooped to wonder at it's face. His own face, reflected back at him placid and still. The attire was strangely dark, and he popped open a cranial panel to start his work. His hands began to shake. A sense of unease settled on him.
Was he fixing himself? Or something else. His too-pink tongue darted between grayish lips as he licked them, and bit them together between his teeth with focus. His fingers rattled against the compartment, and-
He shoved the android out of his lap. It could wait. It could wait for last.
The TARDIS's urgency he was coming to detect, and he closed his eyes tightly. Reassuring her that he knew. That he would go, and it was selfish to want to keep him here. He'd lost so much, it hurt to lose this one other thing. This one other thing that would likely never know how much he could mean not to the universe, but to the stability of one person. Who would shy away from it, because it might mean he would have to acknowledge that he wasn't just a suit for greater being. That this facet of his character was as important as any other.
He sincerely doubted that he would see him again, and he didn't look up from that collapsed form on the ground. "She will take care of me Doctor. She always has. You should go." Go before he pleaded with him to stay. Go before he begged to come with him because he wasn't sure he had anything left to lose. Go before he said something remarkably emotional and potentially regrettable in the future.
The Key...
His eyes shut and his tilted his head back, heeding the call, letting the dire urgency wash over him before the averting made him physically ill.
He needed to leave.
"I'll make certain I'll look in on you." Or he'd certainly try to make the only remaining him tend to Data's recovery. Affection for friends still carried over between regenerations, he'd noticed. Perhaps Seven would be kind.
He approached Data at a plodding pace, loath to leave, and he placed a hand on his shoulder. "Best of luck, Data." He allowed himself one final glance around the village before he focused his eyes up to the clearing sky, to the Federation ship hovering high above. Then he gazed at Data, eyes ancient and knowing and fond.
The Doctor gave a little wave and vanished.
The Doctor had come to be an important part of that. His memory, the imprint he'd left on him, hopelessly valued. He regretted that he couldn't at least ask for a bit of the Doctor's self before he left. Not that he would have granted it, but there were much more urgent matters to attend to.
But rather than tend to them, he took the time to meet his gaze. Fond and helpless and almost a little wistful. But good-byes happened, didn't they? One day in his own past he would meet the Tenth Doctor and ask about his sonic screwdriver. He could recall now learning of Kamelion from the man departing, and warning the Doctor of Lore's behaviors. Of being connected with his timeship, braving a sopping thunderstorm, playing cricket in a holosuite where the Doctor insisted on repaying the drinks he owed to holographic sprites.
Then he watched as the Doctor faded from his mindscape, the gentle comfort of his mental presence gone once again. Left with the TARDIS who was content with her new master, who was pleasant enough and Data enjoyed his company, but there was a hollow place in him that he just couldn't quite define now that the cricketer was gone.
Data turned back to the business at hand, stooping by another android to fix, and allowing himself to get lost in the work.
The bell still pealed, though less insistently than before. The Key fragments. He snagged the satchel containing them, slipped the handles up to his shoulder and, after taking a final look behind at the lone figure still connected to the TARDIS console, he sped out of the box. Hoping to find his elder, shorter self before the Key segments--
--oh but they were assertive! Briefly, his vision bumped from the view of the village to a different place, a different time. Amy's worried expression settling on him. She'd finally learnt how to worry. No longer a mere mindless servant of the Grace but growing into her humanity, with all the emotions that embodied.
He was rather proud of her. And even now, everything of Haurvatat had begun to fade, grow distant. He knew he needed to return to Amy and to recover the other four segments of the Key before it was too late.
But there was something else...something about...his future self? Whyever would he be speaking to a future incarnation? He stepped free of the TARDIS, shut the door behind him, wondering why he was in the village and not elsewhere.