Author: odosgirl
Disclaimer: All the characters contained herein are the property of their respective copyright holders, and no infringement is intended. No money is being made from this story; it was written purely for my own entertainment and that of my fellow fans. The story itself is mine. Please ask before reposting, republishing, or archiving.
Rating: PG-13
Recipient: Kathryn A
Series: Blake's Seven, Doctor Who, Farscape
Pairings: Cally/The 8th Doctor, Avon & Zhaan, Cally/Avon
Author's Note: With any luck, this story doesn't completely warp the canon of either Blake's Seven, Doctor Who, or Farscape. However, it's only fair to warn my readers that this piece was largely written from my (sometimes rusty) memory of those series, and not from any recent viewing of pertinent episodes (though I did consult some knowledgeable friends on certain facts). I have also intentionally fudged a few things (the Doctor's capacity for telepathy, for example) because they made sense to me and, well, because I wanted to. So there.
Chronology Note: This story takes place along the following universe coordinates:
Blake's Seven: After the death of Anna Grant, but before the destruction of Auron.
Doctor Who: Sometime after the Paul McGann TV film.
Farscape: After the introduction of Chiana, but before Zhaan hooks up with Stark.
Readers are advised to proceed at their own risk.
Cally flung herself down the corridor, pausing only long enough to squeeze off some directed energy bolts at the black-helmeted Federation troopers struggling out of the rubble behind her. The dust from the cave-in was thick in the close space. She couldn't tell if she'd actually hit any of them. Ahead of her, beyond her, she could hear Avon's boots pounding the deck-plating, his breath ragged like her own. Once they ducked around the next corner, they would signal for teleport. Liberator would snatch them away before the rest of the charges went off.
A grinding, screeching sound crashed into her consciousness, and Cally very nearly slammed into the dark shape that suddenly loomed up in front of her, blocking her escape route. Skidding to a halt, she drew back for half-a-second, staring blankly at the tall, blue box that seemed to have materialized out of the dust that was coking the hallway.
She had just enough time to register the white letters across the top of the thing: "Police Call Box."
What the ...?
Avon was no where to be seen, which was absurd--he had been scarcely two steps ahead of her. She reached out mentally, scanning for his awareness--for that bright, sharp, brittle consciousness that was unmistakably his. Nothing. Had he teleported already, without her noticing? That seemed unlikely, but ... damn him anyway. It had been his idea to sabotage this outpost. She should never have agreed to come. Slamming her hand against the blue box in frustration, she slapped the teleport bracelet with her other hand, preparing to call the ship.
That was when the energy charge hit her in the shoulder, and she fell.
Avon gasped as the world dissolved to nothingness around him. Time, even consciousness itself, seemed to freeze and then stretch, his senses drifting outside his conscious control. For some indeterminate time, it was as if he was outside his body. And then abruptly, sickeningly, he was wrenched back into it.
He had barely enough time to collapse to his knees and vomit on the floor before her heard the footsteps closing on him. Wincing and swallowing bile, he drew his side-arm and eased up into a crouch.
What the hell ...? Even with his senses as battered as they were, he could tell this was not the corridor he had been in seconds ago. On his immediate left was a gray metal box, half as tall again as tall as the current level of his head; on the other, a monstrous cylindrical object that bore no relationship to any technology that he recognized. He let his gaze flick briefly up to the cathedral-like vaulted ceiling, which in addition to being meters too high, was earthy bronze rather than institutional white.
Where the hell am I? He focused on the direction of the approaching steps, ready to open fire as soon as whoever it was came into view. It was a light tread, he noted, probably a woman. His fingers tightened around the handgrip of his blaster. Wait for it ... wait ...
He neither heard nor saw the object that struck him on back of the head with murderous force. Stars exploded behind his eyes, and then the world went black.
Cally slid back into awareness slowly but with surprising ease, feeling almost weightless for a moment or two as she stepped back into her own skin and filled out her own body. For a moment her surroundings were a blur of white, accented with random splotches of color. She blinked and felt vaguely sick for a moment as the room slowly came into focus.
She was immediately struck by three things: she was not dead; she did not feel as if she were wounded; and she had absolutely no idea where she was, except that it did not appear to be a Federation prison or interrogation chamber. She was no longer in possession of her side-arm, but that came as no surprise, since she was, in fact, lying on a bed.
It was a rather luxurious bed, she now noticed, canopied and made up in pale wine-colored silks and cotton. In the background, what had at first sounded like the white-noise of a ship's operating systems resolved itself into something more recognizable: the sound of flowing water.
The words, "How is that possible?" formed themselves silently on her lips, and as they escaped her, a figure appeared in what must have been the room's doorway--a thin, dark figure in the midst of all that brightness. He crossed the room to her bed, and set a tray of what appeared to be food items on the small wooden table next to it.
"Ah, you're feeling better, I see." His voice was soft and low, cultivated, but definitely masculine.
Cally closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. The scene before her did not change. The man standing over her, whoever he was, had perhaps the most absurdly innocent expression she had ever seen on an adult. His brown eyes twinkled down at her, and his hair fell in soft, dark waves around an angular face that, at the moment, was characterized by intense curiosity. What she could see of his clothing seemed ridiculously elaborate to her eye: ruffles of lace, velvet jacket, silk vest. For a moment she could not help but think him a creature of pure fantasy. Yet he seemed real enough. And he stubbornly refused to disappear when she open and shut her eyes once more.
Somehow Cally knew that this man's outer frivolity was a mere illusion. An impression of his mind touched her own. She sensed a strong will, vibrant curiosity, intellect as keen as any she'd ever encountered, personal warmth--and something deeper, impossibly old, something that almost made her shiver under the layers of blankets that covered her.
He was unique, something she had never encountered before. He looked human, but she knew that he was not.
His words brushed over the surface of her awareness in a kind of soothing patter. "I trust you're not too badly damaged. That burn on your shoulder was a nasty bit of business, but the tissue regenerator made surprisingly quick work of it. Alamarian medical technology is a truly amazing thing."
She nodded. She heard and understood, but her attention was fixed on his gaze, which seemed to be silently confirming her telepathic assessment of his inner self. He did not speak directly to her mind--though she had little doubt that he could if he wished, but his eyes seemed to say to her: "Yes, I am all of those things you imagine--and many more still that you don't."
Cally put her hand up to the front of her still-clothed shoulder, let her fingers slide under the collar to her skin. Her body still retained the memory of burned flesh--flesh that now seemed to be healed and whole, as far as she could tell.
"You'll find the garment mended and cleaned as well--amazing what gadgets can do these days."
She stared up at him again in utter disbelief. Was he actually talking about having repaired her clothing, as if he were the owner of some robotic service shop? After he'd presumably snatched her from the clutches of Federation troops and a communications installation about to explode? About half a dozen questions tried to find her voice just then. If she'd had any true sense of priority, she would have asked just where the hell she was, what kind of ship she was on, and where he intended to take her.
But all these issues seemed moot beside that of the man himself. So instead she asked: "Who are you?"
A broad grin animated the angular face. "Why, my dear, I'm the Doctor, of course."
At first he thought it was Servalan bending over him, securing the straps at his wrists and ankles, baring his arm and sliding in the needle. Having no power to move, he managed to pull back his lips enough to snarl. "Bitch ..."
The woman looked up at him, and something almost like panic closed around Avon's heart. Her expression was all wrong--wrong for Servalan, at any rate. Servalan would have leered at him--smug, triumphant. She would have said something witty and stinging.
This woman did not speak, nor smile, nor did she register any reaction to Avon's grated curse--except for the look in her eyes, which seemed ... concerned. Concerned, for him? Surely he was in the throes of a hallucination. He stared into her eyes, momentarily hypnotized. Such a strange color. Like white fire. Come to think of it, her whole face was a strange color.
No, she could not be Servalan, he decided. For even in the most warped drug-induced hallucination, Servalan would not have had compassionate eyes and blue skin.
Avon sighed and let unconsciousness claim him again.
Cally allowed herself to be guided across the marble-tiled floor. With the Doctor at her elbow, she gazed silently at the temple-like columns and pillars that soared above them to the ceiling. Except there was no ceiling, not in the normal sense. The columns disappeared above their heads into what looked like a night sky. Of course, it wasn't Cally's night sky. The constellations did not match those visible from Auron.
The other oddity of the room was that while stars shone in the dark depths above, everything else here appeared to be in daylight. A variety of greenery--hedges, climbing vines, even some potted palm trees--relieved the austere, predominant white marble with its occasional black accents. The room was vast beyond anything Cally had yet encountered. She'd lost count of all the rooms the Doctor had steered her through: libraries, laboratories, exercise facilities, dining rooms--and other, stranger rooms, filled with tools and apparatus whose purpose she couldn't even guess at. If this was a ship, it was surely the largest that she'd ever seen. She was certain that it would easily have dwarfed the Liberator.
And yet, in detailing her rescue, as he had during their leisurely stroll, the Doctor had somehow implied that all of these rooms were inside that same blue box that she'd run into before getting herself shot. A box that had easily fit into the corridor of a Federation remote communications outpost.
She wasn't sure that she even wanted to know the explanation for that. The higher-level physicists on Auron no doubt would have some theories about how such a thing might be possible, but at the moment, Cally's mind was preoccupied with more pressing issues.
She still had no idea what had happened to Avon. The Doctor, indeed, seemed wholly unaware that she had been with another person at the time of her ... rescue. Nor had she given him any details about the Liberator or the mission from which he'd plucked her. As always, Cally's warrior mindset urged her to guard that vital information. Thusfar she'd said very little at all about who she was or where she was from. Yet she already knew that to get back to Liberator, to learn what had become of Avon, she would most likely need this man's cooperation. She could not remain silent indefinitely.
And then there was the matter of the Doctor himself. To put it bluntly, Cally had become fascinated with him from that very first brush against his mind, though she had not attempted to read him since. The man himself was even more strange and contradictory than his physics-defying ship. By all rights, Cally ought to have considered herself a prisoner, with no weapon and no means of leaving the ship independently. Yet she had no sense of being confined against her will. The Doctor seemed to regard her rather as a harmless tourist. Having saved her life and treated her wounds, he'd become the gracious host, showing her the sights. All her usual guerrilla fighter's impulses--to check for surveillance devices, to look for potential weapons and possible escape routes, seemed curiously misplaced, out of synch with the way he was treating her.
She was enough of a realist--enough of a survivor, to retain her wariness. And yet, having entered the ship, she now found herself increasingly curious about the man who seemed to be its sole occupant.
She walked to the large fountain in the center of the room and sat down on the white marble bench beside it. After a moment, the Doctor joined her.
"This is the fountain that I heard from the bedroom," she surmised.
The Doctor smiled. "Yes, it is. The bedroom is just next door, as it happens. I moved it there recently. I find that the sound of the water helps me sleep."
After everything else she'd seen on this ship, the concept of being able to move whole rooms around didn't seem the least bit strange. Cally gazed at the Doctor frankly now, looking him up and down before meeting those warm brown eyes. He did not seem at all disturbed by such direct attention. His angular yet youthful face was touched by a faint smile.
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
"I'm afraid there are a few things we need to discuss."
"Of course. You're wondering why I pulled you out of a combat zone in the middle of a pitched battle."
"That--and a few other things."
"Well ..." The Doctor laced his fingers together in his lap and seemed to study them. Cally found her attention curiously fixated by his long, elegant hands.
"This is rather embarrassing to admit," he went on, "but the truth is that the TARDIS really does have a mind of her own. I can't always control where she decides to pop up, if you follow me."
"You're saying you arrived where I was by random chance?"
"Random? Oh, no certainly not." He seemed almost offended by that suggestion. "The TARDIS always has reasons for doing the things she does, even if they're not always obvious to me. Frankly, she has a real knack for getting me into trouble--but since she usually gets me out of it as well, I've grown to trust her instincts."
Cally couldn't stifle her own amusement. "You think of your ship as a woman?"
"Well ... not as a woman exactly, but definitely as female."
"Because ‘she's' erratic?" It was difficult to keep the note of challenge out of her voice.
"Oh nothing so small-minded as that. It's just ... I'm not sure really. I've just always had that impression of her. Probably evidence of limited thinking on my part, I'm sure. Still, there's a bond between me and this TARDIS. I like to think that I know ... her ... better than anyone else does." He gave Cally a tiny smile, almost as if embarrassed. "We've been together a long time you see. I suppose we're a bit like an old married couple--as limiting as that analogy may be."
Cally shook her head. Why was she discussing the gender, metaphorical or otherwise, of a ship when there were other, more urgent matters that needed addressing.
"The thing is," she said. "When you ... found me ... I wasn't alone. I was part of a strike team. We were there to destroy that installation. Just before I lost consciousness, I also lost track of my ..." For some reason she hesitated over a word to designate her relationship to Avon. She had been going to say "friend," but at the moment, some lingering resentments were making her feel less than friendly toward Avon. She hadn't been conscious of those feelings until now.
"I lost track of my colleague," she said.
The Doctor's expression was uncomfortably knowing. "I see."
On some level, she had little doubt that he did. She ignored her unease and pressed on.
"I need to know what happened to him. I need to get back to my ship." Back to my friends. My family. My duty.
"Of course," said the Doctor. "It may take a little effort, but I'm sure I can convince the TARDIS to put you back where you belong."
"How soon?" she hoped that her anxiety wasn't too obvious in her tone.
"Well ... that's the issue, isn't it? Time, I mean. At this point I ... well, I really can't be certain." He put up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Cally wondered why she didn't want to strangle him.
He was vaguely aware of something, some object, floating directly over his head. How he knew this he wasn't sure, since he could see nothing. Eventually an irate, gravelly voice penetrated his awareness through the haze of sleep.
"What a frelling nuisance. I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't looking at it. This one's even uglier than Crichton."
"Yeah, right," said a lighter voice, distinctly female. "And if we had a beauty contest on this ship I'm sure you'd take first prize."
"I'll have you know that my entire family were considered gods of sexual attraction among the Hynerian people ..."
"Sure, after you chopped off the heads of everyone who didn't happen to agree, I'd wager."
"That is utterly beside the point, my girl. You don't fool me, you know--looking for another one of your conquests. Don't let your hormones get too overcharged. This one could be a Peacekeeper for all we know."
"He doesn't smell like a Peacekeeper," asserted the female voice, quite confidently. "You know, he's halfway pretty, even if he's probably older than Crichton."
"Don't get any ideas, Chiana."
"Right. Like you didn't come in here looking to see what you could pilfer."
"I resent that implication--and I suggest we leave now, or Zhaan'll have our hides when she finds us here."
"So who's making you stay, Your Frogness?"
At that moment, Avon managed to open his eyes, to be confronted by a pair of coal-black ones staring straight back at him--and from an entirely disconcerting angle. The girl's face appeared to be upside down. She tilted her head at him, somewhat in the manner of a curious bird. Her skin was pale gray, framed by a wild dandelion-fluff of white hair. She grinned down at him playfully. "Welcome back to reality, sweetheart. What are you, anyway?"
"Isn't it obvious? He's a frelling human." Now able to see who the other voice belonged to, Avon was no surer of his own sanity. The speaker looked like some kind of large, demonic frog with bristling eyebrows and a mustache. He was wearing brightly colored robes and appeared to be sitting in some kind of anti-grav chair. Avon closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. It was all he could do, since there were leather restraints holding him to the bed he was lying on, pinning his wrists, ankles, and mid-section.
He wasn't altogether sure whether he should hope that he was hallucinating or not. Perhaps it would be saner to wish himself dead.
"If he's human, he can't be a Peacekeeper," said the girl--Chiana, was it?--who appeared to be still studying him when he next opened his eyes, moving around the bed slowly with an assessing look about her. Of course, from this angle he couldn't really be sure, but he was made distinctly uncomfortable by the thought of which portions of his anatomy were most likely to attract her curiosity.
The girl looked up as a calm but authoritative female voice sounded in the chamber. "I was under the impression that I'd told you two to stay clear of this area."
"Aw, come on, Zhaan," said Chiana, wheedling. "We haven't even touched him. We just wanted a look."
"Yes, well now you've had one, and you can leave. Go on--both of you." Whoever it was spoke to the two of them as if they were children, and they reacted as such. The mustached frog-creature wrinkled his bug-eyed brow into a petulant scowl. Chiana looked disappointed but undaunted. She flashed Avon a flirtatious smile as she flounced away from the bed. "Later, sweetheart," she mouthed at him as she vanished from sight.
As their footsteps receded, the blue woman, evidently not some figment of his imagination, reappeared at his side, and began silently unbuckling his restraints. Her face, as she worked, was expressionless at first, but then she smiled a little.
"Those two are incorrigible, I'm afraid, but they don't mean any real harm. Well, not Chiana anyway. No doubt she was here to admire the view. Rygel probably wanted to inspect your pockets." Again, she spoke of them as a mother would of children, sounding fond of her charges even as she deplored their behavior.
She slid one hand underneath Avon's back and helped him to sit. He was too weak and disoriented to do anything other than accept her help in silence. However, as soon as his body was upright, he was forced to put his head in his heads as a dull ache began throbbing in the back of his skull. The blue woman placed one hand on his back and studied him with evident concern.
"The sedatives should be wearing off shortly," she told him in her rich, reassuring voice. "You're probably experiencing some after-effects. How do you feel?"
"Feel?" Avon repeated, stupidly. Finding his hands free, he felt each wrist in turn while managing to regain some semblance of his old self. "Isn't that an odd question to ask of someone that you've just drugged and put under restraint?" Being able to put a sarcastic edge back into his own voice actually helped to improve his mood a bit.
The blue woman smiled again, a knowing smile, as if his reactions were familiar to her and completely expected. Avon briefly allowed himself to focus on his own irritation at what he interpreted as her smugness. Irritation was useful at the moment, since it kept him from thinking about other things--like pondering what hell-hole part of the galaxy he might have fallen into where blue skin and talking frogs were completely unremarkable.
"Sedation and restraint were a necessary precaution. Once we realized there was intruder on board, we needed to subdue you, if only temporarily. Surely you can see the logic of that."
Unfortunately, Avon could. He noted without surprise that his gun had disappeared from its holster.
"I am Zhaan, by the way," said the woman.
"So I gather," Avon replied, recalling the overheard conversation between Rygel and Chiana. He took advantage of the moment to really look at his captor for the first time. Zhaan's skin, he noted, was not simply blue, but rather a complex blending of various blues and whites in a pattern that resembled nothing so much as the mottled, delicate patterns of a colored eggshell. This was especially true of her head, which was sleek and bald and displayed these subtle variations in coloring to great advantage. Along the bridge of her nose and her sharply defined cheekbones were minute flecks of white and lighter blue, drawn like infinite, tiny brush-strokes over the contours of her face. Her eyes gave a similar impression of blended colors: white-hot suns hidden behind pale blue irises.
She was, in a word, beautiful. Quite irrationally, Avon found himself wondering what it might be like to kiss her.
Zhaan gestured at the chamber around them, several rings flashing on the fingers of her right hand. "This ... is Moya. You might have done serious damage to her had you opened fire in that cargo bay."
"Moya?" said Avon, gazing around at the distinctly un-metallic-looking walls that surrounded them. Earthy and brown, as if they were in a cavern. "You're telling me that this is a ship?"
"Yes. A Leviathan," said Zhaan, as if that explained everything. "A living ship."
Avon digested this in silence. He did not believe in sentient machines on principle. But then again, whatever part of the galaxy he'd managed to stumble into had already shown him stranger things, just in the last five minutes.
"How did I get here?" he asked.
Zhaan cocked her head at him, a strange expression on her face. "We were hoping you might explain that, actually. We assumed at first that you must be a Peacekeeper, but your clothing isn't exactly their standard issue." Avon followed Zhaan's gaze over his own clothing, which was predominantly composed of black leather at the moment.
"Who are the Peacekeepers?" he asked.
Zhaan's features registered some surprise at that query. She seemed to ponder how best to answer it. "They're who we're running from," she said at last. "As far as they're concerned, we're criminals."
"Sounds familiar," Avon growled.
"In what way?" asked Zhaan, with something like a hint of suspicion in her voice.
"Have you ever heard of the Terran Federation?"
As the words left his lips, Avon saw recognition flickering across Zhaan's calm, composed blue face. She met his gaze then, and her eyes seemed to burn into his for a moment with strange intensity.
"You are from Earth?" she asked, carefully.
"You ... know Earth?" he responded, equally guarded.
Zhaan drew a breath. Exhaled it. "I've never been there, but I know of Earth," she said. "I once met someone who claimed that place as home." She was watching him intently, gauging his reaction to her words. "He strayed into this part of space by mistake--and has been desperate to get back home ever since."
Home? Avon had never actually thought of Earth as home, despite having been born there. His eyes narrowed. "Very few people I know would be in a hurry to go back to Earth, once managing to leave it ..."
Except for Blake, of course, whispered a treacherous voice in the back of his head. Blake had been nothing if not desperate to go back to the hell that was Federation-run Earth. Had Zhaan met some similarly deluded would-be messiah? Avon sighed, why did everything in his life, even the fact of being stranded in some alien sector of space, always have to come back to Roj Blake and his bloody revolution?
"Damn you, Blake," he muttered softly, but without heat.
"Who is Blake?" asked Zhaan.
Avon looked up at her, surprised to have spoken aloud. "Believe me," he told her. "You don't want to know."
"Blake ... hmmm ... Blake, Blake," muttered the Doctor to himself, tapping his chin with the strange elongated instrument that he'd seemingly produced from inside his sleeve. "No, I'm afraid it doesn't ring a bell--unless of course you mean William Blake. He was a poet, whom I actually did talk to on occasion, though I think the poor fellow may have mistaken me for some deity--or his dead brother. It was never clear to me which."
Cally had become lost in this aside, but she smiled anyway. Within the last few hours she'd discovered that no matter how far the Doctor seemed to stray from a conversational topic, and no matter how much he (deliberately?) clouded it with extraneous details, he always came back around to the point of the discussion. Eventually. One only had to wait.
"Perhaps you've read some of his work?"
"I'm sorry?" said Cally.
"William Blake. I'm sure you'd like him. You seem to be the kind of person who ..." He stopped mid-sentence, seeming to have utterly lost the thread of his own thought. For a moment he simply gazed back at her, as if she were some remarkable discovery he'd made.
"Who ...?" she prompted.
"Who likes poetry." Again he favored her with that innocent, boyish grin. Cally found herself mesmerized for nearly a half-minute before she managed to find her voice again.
"I'm afraid I've only ever read Auronar poets–and then only when I was forced to in school." She walked over to one of the marble pillars and leaned her back against it, gazing into the facsimile night sky. They had been talking here for a long time, and the room had in fact now fully assumed the character of a night-time garden. "I think Blake once told me that poetry had been criminalized on Earth, along with other forms of literature. After that I learned to value the poetry of my own world."
"Cally," he came within a few steps of her, his expression very serious. "Are you certain that you want to go back to that world--back to Blake's revolution?"
She looked at him, folded her arms across her chest, then gazed up at the alien sky again. "It's not just Blake's revolution. It's mine. Fighting for my people is all I know. It's what I am."
He had not moved from where he stood. "But something's changed recently, hasn't it?"
This time she kept her gaze focused on the stars as she nodded. "Changed? Yes, of course. Everything changes. Blake's been gone from us a long time. We don't know whether he's alive or dead. And Avon--"
"The comrade you lost when you collided with the TARDIS?"
"Yes." Cally swallowed hard. Her feelings for Avon were complex. She had never spoken of them to anyone, not even Blake. Did she really want to enter that thorny territory now, in the presence of someone she'd only just met? And yet, the fact that the Doctor was a stranger ... reassured her somehow, made those feelings easier to articulate.
Almost without realizing what she was doing, she reached for the Doctor's mind, and found that it met hers easily, like a warm hand-clasp. It was such a relief to at last find someone who could share this kind of intimacy--the intimacy of joined minds. The kind of intimacy that Avon had always denied her, forever shutting out her telepathic mind-voice.
She closed her eyes and felt tears on her face, opened them to find that the Doctor was holding her hand, his face very close to hers. She had telegraphed her feelings to him without even realizing it. Now she spoke to his consciousness directly and deliberately. I loved Blake ... for the leader that he was. I might have loved him another way, but his first love was always his cause.
Avon ... she hesitated. He and I used to understand each other. He loved Blake too, even more than I did, in his way. Even now ... She shook her head as the tears ran freely down her cheeks. I fear it will destroy him, and there is nothing I can do about it, because he will never care for me the way I care for him ... I cannot reach him ... I cannot save him.
The Doctor's forehead was touching hers now. She could feel his breathing on her wet cheek, was enveloped in the sweet, faintly spicy odor that seemed to cling to his garments. In the artificial dusk, his face was shadowed, but their mind-link was stable, and she was aware of him responding to her pain, cradling her raw emotions with his compassion.
"Cally ..." he whispered, seeming aware of nothing but her. His fingers came up to gently brush her cheek.
Without thinking at all, she turned her head and let her lips brush his.
"You don't know how I got here, do you?" said Avon.
He and Zhaan were sitting across from each other at a table in her workroom--a room whose shelves were lined with strange-looking bottles and even stranger-looking medical implements, interspersed with stacks of ill-assorted books and weird alien potted plants.
"It seems that you simply materialized in one of the cargo bays--probably when Moya went into starburst. Aeryn and John advised us that there was a spatial anomaly in the area before they left the ship."
"Your friends don't seem entirely comfortable with me," said Avon wryly, recalling the rather tense meal they'd shared hours ago. Truthfully, he hadn't eaten much of the food, partly because it was bizarre food, partly because his appetite was almost nonexistent, and partly because of the hostile looks he'd been getting from both Rygel and the tall, obviously alien warrior that Zhaan addressed as D'Argo. Aeryn and John he'd not met, though he'd gathered that they were down on the surface of some planet, where they expected to be for several days, collecting supplies for the ship. Nor had he met Moya's Pilot, though he'd seen an image of the huge, lobster-like creature on one of the communication screens. All in all, the denizens of this ship had left him thoroughly unsettled.
He'd also gathered that John Crichton was a human--but not from any Earth that Avon would recognize, which made him wonder uneasily if he'd somehow traveled in time or to another dimension. Both were concepts that he'd always disliked and dismissed in the past as irrational, but at this point alternative explanations were becoming hard to find. He was left grasping at straws to explain how he'd come here, and more importantly, how he'd get back.
Avon looked up, and found himself irritated by the knowing smile on Zhaan's face. "Chiana likes you," she informed him. "Rygel and D'Argo will come around in time."
"I get the impression that Chiana likes everyone," said Avon drily.
"Only the good-looking ones," said Zhaan, and again, he found himself disconcerted by her. Was that some sort of come-on line? Was she flirting with him? Avon knew what flirting looked like well enough. Zhaan's expression seemed too cool and composed to be that, but one never knew with her--with any of them, for the matter of that.
"I never thought I would miss the Federation," he said.
"We all miss the familiar--no matter how bad it may be--when we're taken away from all that we know."
She spoke as one who knew that condition all too well. Avon decided not to pursue that line of thought any further.
Zhaan stood up form the table, evidently lost in thought, with her back to him. The light flowed over the clean lines of her robes, which were the same shades of blue as her skin.
"It sounds as though this Blake meant a great deal to you," she said at last.
"I wanted no part of him or his damned revolution," said Avon. "I wanted the ship, that was all."
"Yet you continued to fight in his cause."
"We no longer had a choice. Wherever we went, the Federation followed."
"I understand," said Zhaan, turning again to face him. There was no doubt from her expression that she did indeed know exactly what it was to be hunted by such a power as the Federation. Her eyes met and held Avon's for an instant. "Eventually you will have to make a choice, you know."
He looked at her blankly.
"Whether you want to stay here or return to your Federation--and your fight."
"Blake's fight," said Avon sullenly. "Though that seems a moot point now. If I don't know how I got here, it will likely be difficult to send me back."
"Even if you remain here, Avon, there are still choices," said Zhaan solemnly.
"What are my options in this ... corner of the universe?"
She gave a graceful shrug. "If you prove yourself, prove that you can be trusted, I don't doubt that there could be a place for you here on Moya." She paused, her expression ironic. "You wouldn't be the first criminal we've had on board. But by now I'm sure you've realized that ours is not a safe life. You may find yourself running as much as you ever did in the service of Blake's cause."
"And outside of Moya?"
"A limitless universe--often a dangerous one, given the immense power of the Peacekeepers. There are always places to hide, of course, but I doubt that you would find much solace in hiding."
She looked at him keenly, and Avon had the uncomfortable sensation that she was looking into him, reading his desires. Desires that he himself barely acknowledged. He shook himself away from that thought as ridiculous.
"You overestimate my virtue."
"I doubt that. It's simply that if you stay here, you will never know what became of your Blake, or if he might still be alive."
It was as if the words had been dropped into his awareness. Your Blake ... as if he'd ever had a choice about the fate Blake had led him into. For all his insistence on self-determination, Avon had long felt that he'd never really had a choice about his involvement with Blake. Or was he simply unwilling to acknowledge the choice he'd made? This woman that he barely knew seemed to be suggesting just that, and the suggestion rankled.
Zhaan had not taken her gaze away from Avon's face. "There is something in you that needs to know what happened to him. That needs to find him, one way or another," she said.
Avon favored her with what he hoped was an unpleasant smile. "And you're the priestess, so you would know, I suppose. And by exactly what means did you deduce this need of mine?"
She did not even flinch at the insult. Her gaze was as level and direct as ever. "There is nothing to deduce, Avon," she said. "Most people wear their desires plainly. You are no different. You will find out what happened to Blake, or you'll die trying."
The opulence of the bed-chamber surprised her anew when Cally woke up, much later, to find her body curled around that of the Doctor. He was fast asleep, his breathing soft and reassuring. Several locks of now unruly hair strayed across his face, which, in sleep, managed to look both provocative and profoundly innocent.
Cally reached out to brush a strand of that soft brown hair away from his cheek--and was seized by an overwhelming rush of need: compassion, lust, loneliness. And as she bent to kiss his cheek, he stirred, bringing his mouth to hers once more. His arms came around her, and she reached for his mind once more, felt him answer that touch.
He caught her face between his hands and simply looked at her for a long moment. Cally ... you are so beautiful ... His mind-voice was like a gentle rainfall, and joy and grief seized her at the same time. She wound her arms around his body as they moved together on that bed, inside each other, body and mind.
Afterwards, she sat a little away from him on the bed, needing to re-connect with the rhythms of her own body. He did not begrudge her this, and for a long moment they simply shared the silence.
At last Cally spoke. "You know how we can find him, don't you? You know where Avon is."
"I believe so. You want go to him, don't you?"
Cally nodded. "I have to."
The Doctor said nothing for a moment. Then: "I understand."
He sat up then, leaning against her, rubbing her back as he lightly nuzzled underneath her hair to kiss the nape of her neck. Cally closed her eyes. His voice was a soothing murmur. "You know ... it was a joke at first--leaving Gallifrey with a malfunctioning TARDIS. Since I left my homeworld all those years ago I've come to discover that ..." He sat back now, squeezing the back of her neck with his hand. "I've come to believe that ... there is some purpose to all this--wandering about that I do. That ... I am here--wherever I am at the moment--to do good."
Cally put her chin on her knees. "But you could escape if you wanted to," she whispered. "This ship could go anywhere ..."
And in that moment, she wanted to take that journey of escape with him--and knew that she could not.
She looked up, met his eyes, which now seemed very old and very sad. She touched his face, for comfort. The Doctor shook his head. His voice came out as a whisper. "I know the world that you live in, Cally--and hundreds like it, where blood is shed every day for the most senseless reasons. I know that your battle is necessary. I don't condemn you for it. Perhaps I am merely a useless meddler--but I try not to leave things worse than I found them."
She did not know what to say. Instead she leaned her forehead against his and kissed him again. This time she felt his hunger, his longing, his aloneness--so much deeper than her own, and for the next little while, she tried to put it right.
"Rationally ..." said Avon, "My only real option is to learn how to survive where I am." He gazed around the room at the tools of Zhaan's trade: the vials and jars and strange implements stored and labeled on the irregular shelves. He had never encountered a planet that was as strange and unsettling as this room was to him. He could half-believe that there were magical elixirs on these shelves--things that might make him see the future--or live forever. The laws of logic were a carpet that had been ripped out from under him. Perhaps he should simply kill himself rather than live in a world of sentient lobsters and talking frogs.
He looked across the room at Zhaan, who still stood there so calmly in the middle of this disaster that had befallen him. "Would that be so bad?" she asked, reasonably. "Objectively, you are no worse off than you were before. Your Federation cannot find you here, and you need not stay with us." She was playing devil's advocate, and she was good at it. This did not please him.
"My knowledge is useless here, most likely. Your computer systems must be very different from what I know."
"But you are highly intelligent. You can learn, adapt."
Or I can just ask you which one of these jars contains the most fast-acting and painless poison, he thought.
He winced and almost crumpled to the floor as, from nowhere, a blinding headache stabbed through him, crippling his entire body for a moment. He'd had these from time to time on Liberator. An anxiety reaction, Cally had said. Zhaan caught his shoulders, and through the haze of his pain, he saw her face contort briefly. The pressure in his head eased. He realized what it was she was doing--she was taking some portion of his pain onto herself in order to spare him. He wanted to slap her. Idiotic woman! Of what benefit was it to her to go poking around in his head? What business was it of hers anyway?
"Pain ... is ... private," he managed to gasp. And then her forehead touched his, and for the briefest of moments, he felt ... wonderful. Limitless. Powerful. Eternal. And peaceful.
She drew back from him and smiled.
"And what drug was that?" he asked her.
"No drug at all. Simply two minds touching each other. Pain, as you say, is private. Touch therefore can lessen it."
He snorted softly. "Cally used to talk about such things," he said, before he could stop himself.
"A friend of yours?"
Friend? Did he actually have any friends, in the true sense? Would Cally even count herself as one such? He didn't care to delve into the complexities of that. For some reason, thinking of Cally made him want to ask Zhaan which jar contained the aphrodisiacs and would she mind handing them over please and just taking him into a bedroom for a few hours, till he forgot everything about who he was.
Instead, he just said: "Yes."
Then, unbidden, he found himself continuing: "Cally would return to Blake's cause on principle--if she could. She would find a way to survive here, if necessary. No doubt, she would find a way to help you and your friends."
"You seem to admire her a great deal."
"I suppose I do."
It was nothing more than the truth. Avon had prided himself on his ability to survive for so long, it had never occurred to him to doubt his own superior skill at it. And yet--he had no doubt that Cally, with her superior social skills would have found a way to survive and even thrive in the environment that he now found himself in--the environment that had already made him contemplate suicide.
Was he really that weak?
Zhaan seemed about to reply, when the silent atmosphere of the place was shattered by a skull-wrenching, groaning, grinding sound. On top of all the other weirdness that had occurred of over the past day and a half, this seemed like a minor disturbance, and so Avon merely took a step back, just in time to avoid being in the same space with the tall blue wooden box that suddenly appeared in the center of the room.
Avon glanced over at Zhaan, "Friend of yours?" he asked.
Zhaan smiled enigmatically. "Yours, I think," she said.
Avon would never forget the startled look that crossed Cally's features as she glanced from his own face to Zhaan's, and then back. There were a hundred questions in that expression.
His gaze hardened as it came to rest on the innocuous-looking man who emerged behind her, resting his hand protectively if not possessively on Cally's shoulder.
"Is this him?" the man asked.
Cally nodded. "It is."
"Good--then let's be going, shall we?" The stranger looked across at Zhaan, giving her a polite nod. She put her hands together and bowed her head in graceful reply.
Avon took Cally's hand, and was almost inside the the strange box/ship before he could say farewell.
Almost.
Zhaan caught his arm. He met her eyes. "Be mindful of your choices," she said.
He could only nod, and then the door to the ship closed, and she was gone.
Forever, he knew.
Cally, wrapped in one of the sheets, drew her long legs up and sat back against the headboard of the bed she so often shared with Avon.
"So," she asked after a long moment, "What was Zhaan like?"
"In bed, you mean?" said Avon, propping himself up on one elbow. "I'm afraid I'll never know."
She recognized his sarcasm as a deliberate cover. Cally didn't doubt the truth of his words, but she knew he was hiding behind them, as he so frequently did. She had no doubt that his experience of Zhaan's universe had marked Avon--that, sexual or not, the alien woman had touched him in some way, but she knew that he would probably carry that secret to his grave. Perversely, Avon's secretiveness was a characteristic she admired, even while trying to erode it.
She noted that he had asked her nothing about the Doctor, and she kept that memory private as well--for she knew the time she'd spent with him in the TARDIS had been utterly unique. She would never find another man so open-hearted. It would not do to compare him with Avon. They had both returned here, to Liberator, because it was where they belonged, whether they wished it or not.
Cally realized with a slight pang that Avon would never ask her about the Doctor, just as she would never again ask him about Anna Grant, or about Zhaan.
She leaned down to kiss him, let her hands travel over his body. Let herself be back in her own world.
Regrets would have to wait for another time.
~finis~
More Author's Notes: My thanks to the organizers of the Multiverse Ficathon 2004, for the opportunity to explore three universes that I love, but have not previously written any fanfic in (in the case of Blake's Seven, not recently--I did write a B7/DS9 crossover about ten years ago, which appeared in the fanzine "Face Forward"). I had a lot of fun with this story, and am actually hoping to expand it at some point, or perhaps write a sequel. The psychologies of the characters merit further attention, and frankly, I'd like to write a proper sex-scene for Cally and the Doctor, perhaps more than one ... With that in mind, comments on this story are encouraged (especially from all you canonical nit-pickers).