Chapter Text
The doctor stood firmly before the High Council of Gallifrey. The robed figures standing before him in a semicircle as his verdict was spoken: “Exile and forced regeneration.” The doctor had to hold back a gasp. Grasping the lapels of his suit tightly he declared: “You can't! This is cruelty! I just tried to help these people!”
“Your good intentions are duly noted, doctor.”, the Time Lord speaker explained coldly, not one change in his ominous tone, “Yet you have broken our sacred laws. You interfered with lesser species. Your ‘help’ could have done irreparable damage to the timeline. We will, however, look upon you leniently. You will be allowed to choose your appearance. Also, given your fondness of the world, we have chosen Earth as the location of your exile.”
“No”, the doctor objected, “If you already want to do me a favour in the location of my exile, there is another location I can be of far more use to. A civilisation that has very recently made an error remarkably similar to the one you're making right now. Exiling a man for being a meddler. Banishing him because he cares.”
The doctor smirked at himself for coming up with the suggestion. Exchanging a meddler for a meddler. He already imagined that the Chiss would be less than thrilled about that exchange, yet that was part of the fun. The other part, of course, is the sheer irony of that situation.
The Lord Speaker's brow furrowed as he grew impatient: “What is this civilization you speak of? Don't stall, doctor, for otherwise we will simply carry out this verdict without consulting you on anything.”
The doctor quickly responded: “The Chiss ascendancy. Exile me there, the day after they banished Mitth’raw’nuruodo from their ranks."
The council went back to convene about the suggestion. As they stepped out again the speaker declared: “The council is willing to accept your suggestion. However, in exchange, we will not allow you to choose your appearance. The Chiss are registered in our archives as being extremely xenophobic. If we let you choose your appearance you may choose one that looks like them to fit in. Yet we will keep having you have a human-like outside appearance. You are in exile and your appearance shall remind you of that every day. Every look in the mirror will be a reminder that you are an outsider to them as you are to us. Do you accept this offer?”
The doctor couldn't hold back his sigh anymore. Of course, the Time Lords would come up with a stupid deal like that. But if there was one thing he knew it was that the Chiss just made a grave error and that he was the only one who may save them from collapse. So the doctor stood straight up and answered: “I accept your deal, high council.”
Before he could say anything anymore he was already whisked away into the forced regeneration chamber. "Ahh! No! Not so fast! No!”, His screams blurted out as his body and face were forcibly contorted into a new shape. The regeneration energy painfully burns through his body. He was then teleported back into the TARDIS and dropped into his location of exile. With his last remaining power left, he staggered out of the TARDIS onto a grassy landscape and collapsed right in front of it, the doors closing behind him for however long his
exile may be.
…
The alarms of Chiss high command on Naporar flared up: “Alert! Unknown object came out of nowhere and dropped onto the Southern Woodlands. Cuboid. Roughly three by one and a
half by one and a half meters. Unknown origins and signature might be a bomb. Vigilant! You are the closest ship to it. Explore the crash site with caution. It might be a bomb for all we know.”
Admiral Ar'alani was caught off guard by the transmission. She'd just come to Naporar to get some cadets from the academy some practical training. Usually, she'd object to a mission assignment like that, the Vigilant was too important a vessel to have her do the kinds of safe missions they usually get assigned with Cadets on board. But right now she could use some easy assignments. She even slightly doubts that her judgment was up to speed after the events of the past few days.
“Acknowledged”, she called back to Central Command, “Dispatching a probe over the area of impact.” The probe was soon sent out and remotely piloted to the location, standard procedure with unknown impacts by strange objects.
As the probe brought back visual information from the site of the impact Ar'alani’s eyes narrowed: “Senior Captain Wutroow, are you seeing what I'm seeing?” Wutroow responded, unable to hold back her surprise: “If you're seeing a lesser-space-human-looking man lying unconsciously in front of a blue box made of… Wood then yes, Admiral.”
Ar'alani raised one of her brows: “If that was wood it wouldn't have survived the impact.” Senior Lieutenant Almikho, the sensor officer who piloted the drone, responded a few seconds later: “Sensors confirm the object reads as wood.”
Wutroow tapped her chin before responding: “Maybe that's an advanced kind of cloaking system. From the high command transmission, it sounded as if this escape pod had come out of nowhere. Implies whoever made it knows a thing or two about cloaking tech.”
“You think it's an escape pod?”, Ar'alani asked. Wutroow shrugged and noted: “It's a small object that crashed on the nearest habitable planet, and an unconscious man is lying in front of it. This is either an escape pod or this man vastly overestimated his ability to conquer a planet by himself.” Ar'alani escaped a chuckle, the first in a while she had to admit to herself. She then ordered:
“Alright. We'll send a shuttle to the location and bring him as well as his box onto the Vigilant. As soon as he's conscious again I'll interrogate him myself.” Wutroow asked: “Don't you want Chiss high command to interrogate him? This doesn't seem like it would be part of our mission.”
“Our mission was to find out what the thing that crashed here was”, Ar'alani responded, “And
this man is the only one who knows the answer to that. Besides, this may be the last good mystery we'll get to investigate in a while, considering we're gonna do training trips with
cadets over the next few months. I wouldn't miss this for anything.” “Alright ma'am”, Wutroow responded, “Shuttle dispatched with equipment to haul in the box. Secure sickbay bed prepared to allow the prisoner to recover.” “Very well”, Ar'alani nodded, “I want to talk to that guy the second he's awake.”
...
The man and the box were hauled in. Senior medic Chaf’eni’alor immediately tied him down to one of the beds. She didn't want him to start trouble when he woke up. She hooked all the monitoring devices she had onto him, yet something was strange. Some of the readings were remarkably… inconsistent with others. She played around with the equipment until she got a halfway sensible reading.
A few hours later she could hear it. “Mirror”, the mystery man said, in a purer Cheunh than most officers on board spoke, “Mirror. I need a mirror.” Fenia keyed the com: “Admiral. He's conscious now.”
Admiral Ar'alani stormed into the sickbay, tall in her usual authoritative stance. She went over to the seemingly confused prisoner and didn't hesitate: “Why are you here?” He took a few seconds to gather himself until he could respond: “Exile.” The word almost stang in Ar'alani’s heart. She wasn't sure whether she could ever hear it the same way again, especially not now. Especially not a mere two days after.
Ar'alani’s tone grew stricter: “What do you mean exile? Were you exiled here or do you know of someone who was just exiled by us? Answer!”
“Yes.”, the doctor responded, the look on his face still the one of a man who had a bit too much spice in his system, “Exile. For interfering in other people's issues. Meddling around.”
He passed out again.
Ar'alani scowled, still not knowing whether he meant himself or Thrawn. Thrawn was unlikely, since he was an ascendancy-internal issue. Still, this couldn't be a coincidence, not so soon
afterwards. She grits her teeth and growls to herself: “What in the chaos kind of sick joke is this?”