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justmcshaneTitle: phantasmal and resplendent
Length: 3638 words
Alternate Links: AO3
Sparked originally from the thought that Ace and Lup might get along rather well if they ever met, and then the thought that Seven's brolly might have potentially been the Umbra Staff in another universe. Spoilers, therefore, for up to Story and Song from the TAZ podcast.
They're in the heat of battle (once again) and from where he's standing, he can see Roz and Chris, back to back, fighting off strands of the Hunger with a single-minded determination and focus, and Bernice staring at the space where Romana just vanished into (gods, Romana, how could he ever have forgotten) with the same betrayal that he's feeling right now, struggling to find the drive to do anything. It's a life-or-death situation, but he can hardly bring himself to care anymore, because now he knows that this planet he's on is not his home and has never been, and the woman who has been many things to him over the hundred-plus years they've known each other - colleague, friend, confidant, superior - and adding to that list he can now put 'enemy', perhaps with a question mark in brackets after that. But most definitely, she has betrayed him - betrayed all of them, even if she thought it was for the greater good. She has stolen their memories, their pasts, and she has stolen Ace...
...oh, Ace -
But there's no time to dwell on that (she's dead already, more likely than not, and it hurts but he's already lost so many friends so what's one more) because the agents of the Hunger are approaching and for the first time in so long, he needs to fight for his life.
He whirls around, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and tucking his umbrella over one arm, and begins firing off blasts of sound with wild abandon, and the tendrils of blackness and death disintegrate before him, bursting into smoke and ash. He passes Benny, who's finally gained back enough of her sense to dodge out of the way when he yells at her to, and she rolls behind some disabled machinery, using it for cover. Mel is at the shield that Romana's thrown up, working frantically at a bank of computers, but she's having no luck as far as he can see.
He clears a path of destruction, keeping the Hunger away from Chris and Roz (no more dead, not on my watch) long enough so they can gather themselves to defend and attack properly, and it's only after he's crossed to the far wall, barely panting for breath, that the Hunger manages to swipe the sonic screwdriver out of his hand and to the floor. It breaks with a faint cracking noise and a puff of blueish smoke, and he knows that even if he could get to it now, it would be no use.
Instead, he swings his question-mark umbrella around, and points it directly at the tendril of energy that swept his screwdriver out of his hands. He smiles, rather grimly, feeling the energy building up inside it. He's never quite figured out why or how his brolly is able to fling spells and curses as if it were some kind of magical focus, but it's useful and now certainly isn't the time to question it.
He fires off one, two, three bolts of radiant light, and that part of the Hunger is gone before it can even start to dodge. At some point, he notices, his hat has fallen off, but this is another thing that it isn't the time to think about. Mel, engrossed in what she's trying to do, hasn't even noticed the clawed hand that has swept in behind her, and if he doesn't do something-
This time, the Hunger is ready for him. It swings around, quick as a whip, and tears the umbrella out of his hand. The force knocks him to the ground, and it goes skittering across the floor, out of his reach.
He muffles a curse, and goes scrambling toward it, even though he knows it's no use. But then there's Benny (wonderful dear Bernice, just in time too) scrambling out to pluck it off the ground. He knows she's seen Mel's predicament, and they both know it's only a matter of seconds before they lose another friend -
"Doctor!" she practically screams at him, holding the umbrella almost gingerly, "can I-"
"Yes, of course!" - as if she even needs to ask, but she's already springing to her feet, pointing it at the part of the Hunger closest to Mel, and gritting her teeth. He recalls the last time she borrowed his umbrella - she could barely get a spark out of it, and the two of them had concluded she just wan't cut out for magic, or highly advanced science, or whatever it was that the brolly ran on.
And this time, she actually manages it. From the tip of the umbrella emerges a lot more than a spark. It's a raging inferno, a fireball the size of a elephant that swells and burns, and shoots through the air, trailing sparks. The heat of it sizzles the air, burning and rippling, and when it collides with the Hunger itself, it explodes, trailing ash and more sparks. And Mel, even though she's dangerously close to the site of the explosion - well, she isn't harmed at all. The wave of fire almost sculpt themselves around her. Mel barely glances up to make sure everything is fine, and although she looks scared (rightfully so) and more than a little shocked, she goes back to her task, doubling her speed.
The Doctor is, despite everything, delighted. He crosses the room, dodging blasts and coming to stop right next to her. "Benny! You did it! That may have been the most powerful I've ever seen-"
Benny has been knocked back onto the ground from the force of the fireball, and she's still clutching his umbrella with a white-knuckled grip as she kneels near the wall. She looks up to meet his gaze, and she's white with shock. "D- that's wasn't me. I didn't do that. Doctor, I wasn't even trying-"
And something in the Doctor's mind clicks, and he realizes. Bernice seems to realize it too, and she passes the umbrella to him without him even needing to ask.
And he's standing there in the middle of a battlefield with a black umbrella in his hands with the red handle in the shape of a question mark, and he's staring down at it with the expression of somebody at the verge of giving up that has suddenly, miraculously been given hope.
With short, sharp movements, he grips the umbrella with both hands in the middle, at the balance point, and he snaps it in half, and-
- it's like a bomb goes off in his hands - a gigantic explosion like something she would have made back in the TARDIS lab. The Doctor goes flying backwards, knocked horizontal by the blast, and hits the wall, sliding down it almost comically.
Everything seems to stop - no fighting, no screaming, just the heat and intensity of the explosion, and then not even that. Because as Bernice huddles against the wall, shielding her eyes from the light, and Chris Cwej and Rosalyn Forrester move to pull each other back almost simultaneously, and even Mel turns to look, mouth wide open, the Doctor is sitting up, grinning -
and we see time freeze.
-->
And then we see Ace.
And she's lying on a hill somewhere far from here, with her hair braided somewhat messily and her jacket spread out around her, and she's staring up at the sky, watching the clouds pass around her. There's a valley below her, and from where she is, she can hear the sounds of a furious battle raging. And a long time ago, she would have been the sort of person that would be right in the middle of it, but now she's just on this hill, waiting for it to end.
And after a while, there's an explosion in the valley, but instead of smiling as it as you would expect her to do, she just winces and closes her eyes for a brief second, before sitting up and pulling her jacket on properly. She pulls the Doctor's umbrella across her legs and watches as the town below is reduced to so much ash, and the heat scorches everything that's left into a perfect circle of black glass. And she looks so tired and so sad, because she knows that this is all her fault, and it's happened so many times before - but she swears to herself, this will be the last time.
She stands up, brushing grass off her skirt, and begins the trek down the hill and to the glass circle that once was a village, and now is a tomb for the thousand-plus people that used to live there. She's going down to reclaim her creation for the final time, and nothing's going to stop her from her mission.
And now it's a few weeks later, and she's leading a man called Wynter through the twisting paths of a cave system somewhere she hopes nobody will ever go. She had heard of a vault somewhere in this cave, and had requested Castellan Wynter's to help her seal the Gauntlet away permanently, somewhere it could be pursued but never obtained. This is the perfect plan - foolproof, she thinks.
But she had underestimated how alluring her creation could be, and what people would do to obtain it. So as she turns her back to examine the vault that would be the Gauntlet's final hiding place, she feels the cold slash of a dagger carving across her back, and feels two hands snatch the Gauntlet from her possession, even as she falls to her knees, wounded and cursing.
She recovers quickly, and points the Doctor's umbrella in Wynter's direction and fires off a powerful wave of force, knocking him into the vault and slamming the door shut behind him, and that's the Gauntlet taken care of, but of course that isn't all, because things can never be that easy. Her wounds are much more serious than a simple stab to the back, which she could have recovered from easily on her own. The knife was coated with a layer of poison - simple, but deadly, and she knows she'll be dead within minutes.
She collapses with her back to the cave wall, her friend's umbrella in her hands, muttering curses and insults at Wynter and fighting the poison to the very end. And it was regrettable, because if this truly was the last cycle, she had already burned her last corporeal form, and this would be it- the end. She had never gotten a chance to say goodbye to her friends in person, and now the Doctor would never get his umbrella back (despite all of her talk, she had always intended to return it).
But as her lich form leaves her body, the true cost of what had occurred is revealed - because the Doctor's umbrella (or the Umbra Staff, to give its true name) eats the power of defeated magic users, and Ace's incorporeal form was pure power. And she had most definitely been defeated, by any definition of the word- and so her friend's umbrella quite literally ate her whole, and any chance she could have had to survive was gone as she was sucked inside.
And she regains consciousness, and she's in a tiny room with thick black curtains, and oh, it's so dark in there. She's not afraid, because she doesn't know how to be, and since when has Ace McShane ever shown any sign of fear?
Gradually she began to become aware, become awake again - and for years she was trapped inside that place, holding herself together with sheer force of will. And it was so hard, so hard, because she knew it was pointless- she was fighting against the inevitable. Nobody was coming for her. Nobody knew where she even was, since she had left behind only a note saying that she'd be back soon. And now she would never be back, much less 'soon'.
And then, nearly a decade later, she hears the Doctor.
She practically screams, trying to signal him, to let him know she's in there, but then she feels Benny's hands on the handle of the umbrella and... well, sorry, Benny, but you could never do magic anyway, could you?
She blasts her old friend out of the way, and waits with bated nonexistent breath as the Doctor dismisses all of his friends' concerns, and picks up the question-mark umbrella despite the risks. And she's so certain that any moment now, he'll recognize his own property, and realize that it's her, but... that moment never comes. Nothing clicks, and she's helpless as the bones of her body crumble to dust and she's carried along by the Doctor on the rest of the adventure.
And she screamed, she tried so desperately to signal him, but it took everything within her just to feel the world outside. But now, she had a goal. She would meditate for months channeling energy into a single spell, something she could cast at the most opportune time to let him know she was okay, or just to save his hide - she had always needed to do it in the past, and she had a feeling that an amnesiac Doctor would need the help even more.
She stored up energy for months to signal him, clear as day, by burning her name in the wall - because who else would have the audacity to do that? And she felt guilty about the collateral damage of Mel's obliterated carrot juice, but all of this was for nothing because the Doctor, stubborn as he was, would just not remember, couldn't even remember her existence. And at first she was worried, and then scared, and then just plain angry, because somebody had done this and now there was going to be hell to pay.
And she felt his pain in Wonderland, and she seethed in that black curtained place, and - look!- we can see her there now. We can see her tearing at the walls, swearing and screaming, a glorious ball of anger-sustained magical energy, and she doesn't want to be there any more - she wants to be out, wants to help in any way possible.
And then her chance comes, because it's at that moment that the umbrella swells, and all of a sudden there's another lich in there with her and she can do something of use for the first time in so many years.
And this lich, this unknown lich, is stammering and stuttering, and trying to get to their feet, and looking around her prison in complete confusion. "Who - who are you? What is this place?" they ask.
And Ace draws herself up, eyes narrowed and arms crossed, and practically hisses out her next words. "Are you the one that's been hurting the Professor?"
"Am I-? -where are we?"
And Ace smiles slowly and calmly and then she outright grins, and it's sharp around the edges and she's never felt so viciously angry in her life.
"I’m gonna fucking kill you now," she says.
--->
And there's a beat for a moment like the universe is holding its breath, and then everything resumes again, and everything's happening all at once.
And from where the Doctor was thrown, a cloud of red smoke starts to gather and encircle the tendril in the center of the room. And you see fireworks, wild orange and yellow and pink flares combusting within that fiery mass, filling the tendril with white hot light. And an explosion tears through the room, climbing that tendril up, and up, and up into the heavens, but the heat and power of that explosion weaves masterfully around them all, leaving every one of his friends, and not the remaining enemies in the room, completely unharmed.
The light fades quickly and then
there's Ace
phantasmal and resplendent
her outstretched hands still trailing flame and looking so very thrilled to be there and out of the confines of the umbrella - and she might be technically dead, but at this very moment, she's never looked so alive.
The Doctor levers himself up to a standing position using the shattered halves of his umbrella, and he's grinning wildly, the smile almost splitting his face in two. Anybody watching would agree unanimously that this is the happiest he's looked in years. And it could just be a trick of the light, or the waves of heat that are still coursing through the room, but there are glimmers in his eyes that might just be tears.
"And what sort of time do you call this?" he bellows, voice echoing like thunder through the room.
Anybody else would be terrified. Anybody else would turn on their heel and run a mile, because the Doctor's accent only gets this pronounced and this intense when he's very emotional, and that emotion tends to be cold, calculated rage - the type that burns planets and crushes worlds.
But Ace only laughs, spiraling to the ground in a shower of ash, because she knows him well, and she knows that at this moment, he's more relieved than he's ever been in his life, and so very happy too. And she keeps laughing, eyes sparkling, and she yells back, "I would have gotten out earlier if somebody had remembered my existence!"
"Ten years, Ace - that's really quite a lot longer than 'I'll be back soon'!" He's rolling his rs quite distinctively now, and still beaming, despite his words. "What in the world were you thinking?!"
"Oh, this is ridiculous," she mutters
and then Ace is dashing towards him, still beaming, and she dives at him with her arms wide open for a hug - but she quite literally passes through him like the ghost she is, and ends up hitting the floor and bouncing right through the wall.
There's a moment of complete disbelief, and then the Doctor starts to laugh, and it's hard for him to stop, even when Ace stumbles through the wall a second later, looking sheepish. "-right, I'm still a lich, I forgot. Stop laughing," she adds petulantly, glaring at the Doctor and also at Bernice, who's stood up and is giggling madly too. There's no real force behind the glare.
And then everyone is clustered around Ace, laughing and talking all at once, and Ace is apologizing for blasting Benny all those times and scaring her with the fireball, and also apologizing to Mel for wrecking her carrot juice, and at least two people forget about her incorporeality almost immediately and try to hug her too.
Romana's shield goes down, and everybody stops abruptly, turning to look at her. Half of those assembled look furious and ready for murder, but Ace just steps forward with the most dangerously calm look anybody has ever seen.
"Hiya, Madame Prez," she says, crossing her arms. "'Sup?"
"Ace," says Romana, looking horrified and sad and old, "Ace, I'm so sorry, I looked for so long - I didn't know."
"Oh, no sweat," Ace says, waving a dismissive hand through the air as if to say pft, all in the past now. "I mean, I was in an umbrella. And let's be real here, if the Professor couldn't find me, what were the chances that you could?" The causal tone drops here. "You gotta stop creating that barrier, Fred. I know you're doing it for the best and all, but I'm serious - it's gonna be the end of the world if you put that thing up."
Romana holds her head up high; still looks sad but now she's determined too. "Ace, I’m... I’m so happy you’re back but, I can’t-" she stutters off for a moment, and then regains her composure. "-there’s nothing you can say that will make me stop this. I’m going to save us all. I promise."
And there's a flash of white light, and then Romana's gone. Ace spins back to the group. "We need to find her. She's gonna get us all killed."
"Already on it," says Roz, messing with some sort of device. "Chris - with me."
"Gotcha," says Chris. "Mel-? We could use your help."
Mel nods, and like nothing has ever changed, everybody is working together and arranging themselves into groups to get things done.
Ace grabs the Doctor's arm - or she would, but her hand just slips right through, and she's left looking kind of annoyed at herself. "Fuck. We-"
"Language," he chides.
"-we need to get the memory altering thing out of here, if nobody can remember the Hunger even exists, then nobody has a fighting chance - you're really going to censor me, Professor?" she says suddenly, registering what he's said. "Here? Now?"
He's smiling again, and reaches out to brush a finger to her nose. He pauses just before it passes through, so they have the momentary illusion that she has a physical form. "Oh, Ace. Even if I couldn't remember you at all, I rather think I missed you."
"At least I remembered your existence - but the feeling's mutual." She glances down at the shattered remains of the question-mark umbrella. "Although - uh, sorry about your umbrella."
"You should be," he tells her mildly. "Stealing it in the dead of night and sneaking off with barely a trace? I don't know why I'm talking to you right now." And then he sees how stricken she looks, and backtracks a bit. "-it's fine. Don't worry. I can easily make another one."
Slowly, she smiles. "Yeah. And - well, I was trapped in it for over a decade. Some retribution was well overdue, right?"
"Right," he agrees. "Come on, Ace - we've got a world to save, if I'm not very much mistaken!"
"Just like old times," she laughs, and Roz and Chris are already leaving at a sprint with Mel in tow, and Benny is too, and they follow their friends, and-
well, there really is work to do, isn't there?
