Prologue
“He’s picking on me! He always picks on me! He’s bullying me, he sent me out for no reason because he hates me!”
“You know exactly why I’ve sent you here, it’s because you answered back in class after I had warned you not to.”
“I didn’t-“
“Okay,” interjected Robin, wondering whether she would have to break up a fight between a teacher and a student in a minute. “Mr Watson,” she continued diplomatically, “you can go back to your class now, I’ll take this.”
“But miss!” cried Chloe, turning to Robin pleadingly. “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!”
Robin looked down to Chloe. The whole foot there was in between them hardly helped Robin’s sense of guilt, but she felt it was more a matter of genes than age; Chloe, at sixteen, had done all the growing she was going to do – physically, at least.
She had a way of showing when she had gone too far, a set of mechanisms so innate and instinctive that she had no idea they were happening. Her face would go red, her brow would furrow, her handbag would slip down to her elbow, and her hands would wave, or perhaps flail, indignantly. At this point, regardless of the cause, what had started off as a small misunderstanding had become, in her mind, the greatest conflict on Earth.
“Just… come and sit down, Chloe,” instructed Robin, in an attempt to simultaneously underline the severity of the situation, and calm and reassure her. “Come on, come and sit in my office for me, okay?”
Chloe nodded – with a tremendous sigh – and sauntered into Robin’s office, taking a seat on the chair she knew so well. Robin closed the door for a moment so that the two adults were out of earshot.
“What happened?” murmured Robin.
“She just snapped,” replied Mr Watson. “I was explaining something to the class and when I turned to the board I heard her talking to someone, and then when I told her off, she started answering back. She’s always like this these days, like she’s looking for a fight. I really can’t deal with it for much longer.”
Robin wondered what the point in that last sentence was. To imply that there was something she could do? To warn her that he would fail to deal with it next time? Sometimes teachers were harder to understand than students.
“I’ll sort it,” promised Robin, and stepped into the office. “I think you just like my office,” she joked, shutting the door behind her and sitting at her desk. “Six months in the new building and you haven’t been out of it.”
“I liked the old one better,” said Chloe.
“Well.” Robin looked down. “It was a lovely building. We wouldn’t have demolished it for years, but there was nothing we could have done with the ruins.”
Chloe nodded. The fire was the one time she never challenged her teachers, the one time she had respect for what they had to say; the one time making the situation about her would just be wrong. It was about all of them.
“Alright then,” started Robin. “Tell me what happened from your point of view.”
“I was just sittin’ there, listening to him,” said Chloe, beginning her well-rehearsed monologue, “I weren’t even on my phone, but then someone else starts talking and he turns around and says it’s me, and when I say it’s not, he has a go at me like I’m gobbing off at him, but I’m not, I’m just-“
“Who was talking, then?”
“Um… Megan.”
Robin raised her eyebrows. “You sure about that?”
"What are you sayin', miss?"
“I’m saying, Chloe, that sometimes we have things we really need to tell people about. I’m sure you wouldn’t have ‘gobbed off’ if he’d just caught you gossiping about Liam’s latest relationship.”
Chloe smirked.
“But if you were trying to tell your friends something, Chloe,” continued Robin, “something personal, maybe, then him telling you to be quiet would upset you. That doesn’t make it right, but… look, that sort of thing happens every day.” Robin lowered her voice. “You know I don’t care about the little skirmishes like that just as long as you promise they won’t happen again. But if there’s something you want to talk about, something you couldn’t even wait for a teacher to finish talking to say, then now’s the time to say it.”
Chloe considered the offer.
“You’ll judge me, miss.”
“Look, Chloe, being honest here, we all judge each other all the time. A few years ago if you said that I’d have told you I’d never judge you, but that’s not how the world works. But our minds form judgements about everything, even your decision to not tell me, so what’s to lose? What I won’t do, Chloe, is form any judgements about you telling me, because whatever it is, that is brave.”
Chloe made her decision immediately, appreciating the raw honesty. “Alright miss, but please don’t tell no one.”
“I can’t promise that,” replied Robin. “It depends on what it’s about. If I think you’re at risk, I will have to tell someone who can help, but we can do that together. You can choose someone you’re happy with, and we can do it all at your own speed and from your own point of view. Okay?”
“I’m pregnant,” declared Chloe, without any prior warning. Robin tried not to react and panic her.
“Oh. Okay. Thank you for telling me.”
“And I don’t know what to do.”
“You know exactly why I’ve sent you here, it’s because you answered back in class after I had warned you not to.”
“I didn’t-“
“Okay,” interjected Robin, wondering whether she would have to break up a fight between a teacher and a student in a minute. “Mr Watson,” she continued diplomatically, “you can go back to your class now, I’ll take this.”
“But miss!” cried Chloe, turning to Robin pleadingly. “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!”
Robin looked down to Chloe. The whole foot there was in between them hardly helped Robin’s sense of guilt, but she felt it was more a matter of genes than age; Chloe, at sixteen, had done all the growing she was going to do – physically, at least.
She had a way of showing when she had gone too far, a set of mechanisms so innate and instinctive that she had no idea they were happening. Her face would go red, her brow would furrow, her handbag would slip down to her elbow, and her hands would wave, or perhaps flail, indignantly. At this point, regardless of the cause, what had started off as a small misunderstanding had become, in her mind, the greatest conflict on Earth.
“Just… come and sit down, Chloe,” instructed Robin, in an attempt to simultaneously underline the severity of the situation, and calm and reassure her. “Come on, come and sit in my office for me, okay?”
Chloe nodded – with a tremendous sigh – and sauntered into Robin’s office, taking a seat on the chair she knew so well. Robin closed the door for a moment so that the two adults were out of earshot.
“What happened?” murmured Robin.
“She just snapped,” replied Mr Watson. “I was explaining something to the class and when I turned to the board I heard her talking to someone, and then when I told her off, she started answering back. She’s always like this these days, like she’s looking for a fight. I really can’t deal with it for much longer.”
Robin wondered what the point in that last sentence was. To imply that there was something she could do? To warn her that he would fail to deal with it next time? Sometimes teachers were harder to understand than students.
“I’ll sort it,” promised Robin, and stepped into the office. “I think you just like my office,” she joked, shutting the door behind her and sitting at her desk. “Six months in the new building and you haven’t been out of it.”
“I liked the old one better,” said Chloe.
“Well.” Robin looked down. “It was a lovely building. We wouldn’t have demolished it for years, but there was nothing we could have done with the ruins.”
Chloe nodded. The fire was the one time she never challenged her teachers, the one time she had respect for what they had to say; the one time making the situation about her would just be wrong. It was about all of them.
“Alright then,” started Robin. “Tell me what happened from your point of view.”
“I was just sittin’ there, listening to him,” said Chloe, beginning her well-rehearsed monologue, “I weren’t even on my phone, but then someone else starts talking and he turns around and says it’s me, and when I say it’s not, he has a go at me like I’m gobbing off at him, but I’m not, I’m just-“
“Who was talking, then?”
“Um… Megan.”
Robin raised her eyebrows. “You sure about that?”
"What are you sayin', miss?"
“I’m saying, Chloe, that sometimes we have things we really need to tell people about. I’m sure you wouldn’t have ‘gobbed off’ if he’d just caught you gossiping about Liam’s latest relationship.”
Chloe smirked.
“But if you were trying to tell your friends something, Chloe,” continued Robin, “something personal, maybe, then him telling you to be quiet would upset you. That doesn’t make it right, but… look, that sort of thing happens every day.” Robin lowered her voice. “You know I don’t care about the little skirmishes like that just as long as you promise they won’t happen again. But if there’s something you want to talk about, something you couldn’t even wait for a teacher to finish talking to say, then now’s the time to say it.”
Chloe considered the offer.
“You’ll judge me, miss.”
“Look, Chloe, being honest here, we all judge each other all the time. A few years ago if you said that I’d have told you I’d never judge you, but that’s not how the world works. But our minds form judgements about everything, even your decision to not tell me, so what’s to lose? What I won’t do, Chloe, is form any judgements about you telling me, because whatever it is, that is brave.”
Chloe made her decision immediately, appreciating the raw honesty. “Alright miss, but please don’t tell no one.”
“I can’t promise that,” replied Robin. “It depends on what it’s about. If I think you’re at risk, I will have to tell someone who can help, but we can do that together. You can choose someone you’re happy with, and we can do it all at your own speed and from your own point of view. Okay?”
“I’m pregnant,” declared Chloe, without any prior warning. Robin tried not to react and panic her.
“Oh. Okay. Thank you for telling me.”
“And I don’t know what to do.”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
Series 3 - Episode 4
The Last Great Fire of London
Written by Janine Rivers
Six Months Earlier
“So the Master’s going to use an army of those weird dream ghost things to destroy the planet before we can go on, millions of years in the future, to make an invincible Empire thing that leads to her own death, which is why she’s in this virtual reality without a real body in the first place?”
“More or less.” The Doctor frowned at how insanely baroque the plan sounded when summarised like that, and waited for Sasha to begin picking holes in it.
“If there are millions of years until all this happens, why has she picked this precise date?”
“Why pick any precise date?” suggested the Doctor, his mind clearly in other places. “Besides, she’s probably doing it to get at me, just like she always does…”
The pair took a moment to look around. They were stood at the top of Covent Garden market now, overlooking a selection of empty restaurants. The evacuation of the city began ten minutes ago, and the market had emptied out: unfinished meals were still piping hot on tables, as if invisible people were sitting down for dinner, and without the colourful varieties of shoppers, the shopfronts on their own appeared bare and uninteresting.
“Is the TARDIS nearby?” asked Colonel Ward, hurrying across to the Doctor and Sasha. The Doctor never knew whether to be relieved or horrified when a figure of military authority turned up, but at least he had nothing to fear that involved the word ‘professional’ or ‘official’ where Ward was concerned. “You two want to get out of this city pronto.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” replied the Doctor, almost amused by the suggestion.
“The fires are building up throughout central London. They started off in Westminster Abbey and there were rather large casualties we couldn’t prevent.”
“By large, do you by any chance mean political?”
“Well, yes.” Colonel Ward did up the buttons on his coat, not even changed into military attire. The Doctor was tempted to make a joke about how he had heard it was about to get a lot warmer, but decided that would be a bit insensitive.
“Sasha,” decided the Doctor, changing his mind. “I think it’s best if you leave.”
“What? No! I’m staying.”
“I don’t want you by my side because you’ll get hurt, and I don’t want you on your own, because you won’t be by my side.”
“You do realise how arrogant that sounded?”
The Doctor huffed. “Look, you can stay if you like, but the Master ordered for you to be kidnapped too.”
“But you said she only kidnapped you to find out what you knew – to get a measure of you-“
“-yes, but she kidnapped Robin to test if I had a pressure point, and her next leverage could well be you, which means that you, personally, are not safe in this city.”
“I think what the Doctor’s saying,” interrupted Colonel Ward, the only one whose eyes were on the clock, “is that you can do a lot of good, but not here. We’re putting out fires and fighting God knows what else is coming out of the Abbey. It’s a military operation, and you’re not military. Soldiers don’t need you, Miss Ramachandran, but people do.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. He had never expected to hear Ward say something quite so profound.
“Okay.” Sasha gave in. “But if you need me, call me. I mean it, you two – if any of this is on the grounds of Health and Safety, I’ll whack you with a golf club.”
“No you won’t.” The Doctor smirked, and shared a brief, understanding nod with Sasha.
“One of my officers will escort you out of the city,” began Colonel Ward, leading Sasha out of the market. “You’ll catch up with the rest of the group…”
The Doctor turned away as his phone buzzed, and took a deep breath when he saw the caller’s name: Tommy.
“Hi.”
“Doctor?” Tommy sounded older. The strangest thing, however, was just hearing him at all after all this time. “I’ve got a UNIT officer here demanding that I leave the city. Can you please speak on my behalf to say it’s okay for me to stay?”
“Why? You don’t want to stay, do you?”
“Well… yeah, I kind of do. I want to see you.”
The Doctor shook the phone, frustrated. Every time one person I’ve messed up leaves, another one just turns up…
“Okay, okay, fine.” The Doctor knew there was no arguing with Tommy. And, as Robin said, he owed him one. “Hand him over.”
“Thanks.” There was some fumbling on the other side, and a woman – late fifties, the Doctor guessed from her voice, and from somewhere up north – answered the phone. “Is this the Doctor?”
“Yes.” The Doctor put the call on speakerphone and opened a new app. “I’m sending over clearance now. Tommy is allowed to stay, as long as he comes straight to me. Can you pass him back?”
“Certainly.” There was another muffle, and then Tommy returned to the phone. “Is that sorted?”
“It’s sorted. One more thing – Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful.” Concerned, the Doctor ended the call, and began to wait patiently and in crushing anxiety to see his friend again.
***
“Everyone expects me to have an abortion,” explained Chloe. “Like, I might, but it’s the first thing they think, like it’s the only thing that could happen. When I told my mum…” Chloe laughed softly, trying to make light of the situation. When her demeanour was so calm, it usually meant she was scared or embarrassed about something. “She went nuts, started screaming at me and telling me I’d messed up everything. She called me a ‘stupid girl’ over and over again, like she does whenever I tell her about girls I know who are up the duff. But my dad was really calm… and, like, you think that would be a good thing, but it ain’t, because the first thing he said to me was ‘When are you getting the abortion?’, like he made up my mind for me, like I had no other choice.”
“I’ve got a leaflet on this somewhere,” said Robin, carrying on speaking as she searched the drawers. “It’s got information on abortion and pregnancy, and it’s generally a lot better than what I can explain, so I’m going to give it to you to read, if that’s alright, for the facts and figures, and then I’m going to give you the advice.”
Chloe nodded. With most of her teachers, her gut response was to question everything she heard. With Mrs McKnight, it seemed difficult to even find a question.
“Okay.” Robin found the leaflet and passed it to Chloe, who skimmed over it, her eyes drawn to a section on the stages of pregnancy. “I’m not here to tell you to have an abortion, and neither am I here to tell you to keep it. I’m here to tell you – and some people will go mad when you say I’ve told you this, but it’s how the world works these days and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t a great thing – that it’s your choice. You know…” Robin sat back in her chair, showing visible relaxation. As intended, this calmed Chloe, as she sat back in hers. “A very wise woman once said to me that the most important thing is our ability to make our own choices. Even if the consequences are bad – bad for us, even – it’s still better than having never been able to make the choice at all. You’ve heard people talk about pro-life and pro-choice before, right?”
Chloe nodded. “We did it in PSE.”
“I thought you always turned up late for form?” Robin shrugged after she said that, realising her priorities were way off. “Anyway, the thing about them is, they’re just too complicated. Once, way back in the past, abortions were illegal. In this country, actually, and not that long ago.”
“I know,” said Chloe. “I do History.”
“Well,” continued Robin, “legalising abortion was what gave women a choice. Before then, they were told that they had to have a child. So that’s great and everything, but it means that we get caught up in a debate, sometimes, that we don’t want to be part of. People start to see keeping a child as going against what our modern values are, as rejecting the choice involved in abortion, but that’s so wrong. Sometimes people are pressured into having an abortion just as much as they are to keep a baby. The important thing, Chloe, the most important thing is that whatever you choose, it’s your choice, and it’s what you want. Because if it’s not what you want – either choice, I mean – that will haunt you for such a long time. And,” she added, much more severely, “if your dad is trying to pressure you into a medical procedure you don't want to have, that is abuse, and I may be obliged to mention it to the relevant authority for your own protection.”
“I don’t know what I want though.”
“Okay, maybe you don’t. But Chloe, I think a part of you does.”
Chloe looked down at the leaflet again; at the stages of pregnancy, with a picture attached to each stage. She never realised that four months was so noticeable. If she kept the child, by the time she took her mock exams it would be visible to everyone.
“I think,” continued Robin, “that deep down, everyone always starts off with a preference.”
***
“I tried to be like Grace Kelly… but all her looks were too sad.”
The Doctor stopped himself. The songs from the virtual reality were stuck in his head, their 4/4 beats going round and round, driving him insane. He almost felt pity for the Master, stuck with that at every second.
He was distracted by a sound from behind him – a sound separate from the sirens, loudspeakers, and crowd noises from outside, though those were beginning to subside as people got further away from the city.
The shop behind him was some sort of second-hand store, like others in the market; stacked up on shelves were old televisions. Most were turned off, but one was producing a muffling sound, showing white noise. The Doctor entered the shop and looked around the back curiously: the television did not seem to be plugged in, yet it was starting to pick something up, a vague shape now beginning to form on the screen.
“So you worked out my plan.” The Doctor took his head out from behind the television. On the screen, the Master now spoke to him. It was the first time he had seen her new face while he was awake. It struck him both how stunning, and how young, she looked.
“You can’t do this,” said the Doctor. “You can’t kill them to get back at their future.”
“Can’t I? I’m blaming a parent for the behaviour of their child. Tell me, how is that unreasonable?”
“Because they’re not their direct children! They’re descendants! They’ve as much to with them as… as you have to do with Omega!”
“This is the only way,” continued the Master, fixated on something the Doctor could not see. He wondered if she had even listened to a word he had said. “Kill the plague before it spreads. You’ve seen the effects of the Empire, Doctor, you’ve seen what it’s done…”
“You’re just angry because it led to your death!” retorted the Doctor. “Because you can’t accept death even when it comes gift-wrapped! Look at you, in the Matrix, a place for dead Time Lords’ souls to rest after they have found peace and purification. So much for that. You don’t even change post-mortem!”
“Autumn died too!”
The Doctor glared at the screen. There were some subjects that the Master should have left alone – some things that just were not said.
“She died,” carried on the Master, “because of the same Empire that killed me.”
“She was reborn.”
“Oh, but if you knew what happened…” the Master’s voice drifted, almost slipping spontaneously into another accent. “If you knew what really happened to her, Doctor…”
The screen cut off, and the Doctor threw it off the shelf in a fit of rage. He instantly regretted it: some kind old owner might return to this shop and have to clear it up. He vowed he would replace it before they returned.
Horsham
Forty-two miles outside of London, one group of evacuees had stopped for a break. They were some of the earliest to go: fleeing without direction before UNIT turned up and gave structure to the mass exodus. They found themselves, by sheer chance, in the town of Horsham, where the locals seemed to glare at them through charity shop windows. They half expected to be attacked by a mob of townspeople armed with perfume and hand sanitisers, based on their first observations of the town.
Chris sat down on a bench opposite the Heart Foundation shop, strangely exhausted from what had so far only been a short drive. It had taken them a long time to get there; half-way through the drive they gave up and began walking, finding it less effort than the slow-and-stop clutch control of the overfilled motorways.
“Nice town,” remarked Chris. “Quiet. Maybe we could…”
“Maybe.” Without disagreeing, Robin shut him down, preferring not to think about the future.
“I know it’s not perfect,” admitted Chris, “but he’s an idiot. A lot of these people are, these heroes. We might need him to fight the monsters but we don’t need him in our life.”
Robin seemed unsatisfied.
“I hate him. I hate him too much to just… stand back and do nothing.”
“But you know that’s exactly the thing that will make him the angriest,” pointed out Chris. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Robin looked away, scanning the strange town around her. What do I want?
London
“We’re getting close to the rest of the group now, miss,” said the UNIT officer, stopping at the corner of a street to catch his breath. Sasha peered around to see the street, and then shot back, standing against the wall. The fires were raging only a few yards away from them, dancing in strange patterns, somehow just a shade too red and a second too fast, as if being played out on fast-forward.
“What’s your name?” asked Sasha, trying to strike up some conversation before they ran for their lives again. “Your real name, I mean, not your rank or your codename.”
“Pete,” replied the officer, and pushed himself off the wall, stretching his legs. “Are you ready to make a run for it again, miss?”
Sasha nodded, and on Pete’s count they ran across the street. Sasha was a few steps ahead, and reached the next wall quicker. As she turned back, she noticed that Pete had stopped in the street.
“Pete! What are you doing?”
“I…” Pete looked down to see a smaller white flame curled around his leg. He wafted the smoke away, but was unable to shift the leg. Panicked, he looked back at the fire: this time the hiss and the cackle was a whisper; the dance was a ritual. Closer, he could see the creatures Ward had described to him, now indistinguishable from the flames themselves. “What are those things?” he uttered.
“I don’t know!” replied Sasha, pleadingly. “But there’s one I’ve seen in a dream since I was a little girl, always at the furthest edge, always before I wake up, and believe me, it’s not good! Now I need to carry on, I need to help people, and then I need to find out why I’ve been seeing it all my life, but I need you to carry on with me so I can find that out!”
Pete looked down again. A second flame – or arm, perhaps – had formed a ring around his other leg, leaving him unable to even pirouette. Sasha advanced on him, preparing to sprint over and help him escape, but as she did he flew backwards with the flames, thrown violently into the fire at the end of the street.
The last thing Sasha heard was Pete’s shrill, prolonged scream as he burnt – then her hearing seemed to cut out altogether as pure terror overwhelmed all her senses.
Closer to the rest of the group now, Pete had said. Sasha certainly hoped so…
Covent Garden
“Breaking things again? You were always clumsy.”
The Doctor turned around, startled, and realised that Tommy had entered the shop. He smiled sadly. Up close, Tommy looked older too: he still had a similar taste in clothes and wore a chequered shirt, but his hair was neater, and his skin perfect now that he was out of his teenage years. His shoulders were slightly wider apart, his face better-formed; the boy the Doctor had taken with him had become a young man, but the transformation had taken place not in the land of the extraordinary, but back home amid the mundane.
“Tommy…”
“Hello Doctor.”
The Doctor thought he heard a lump in Tommy’s throat as he spoke to him. He wished he could find out what inferences Tommy had made about him: what changes he had noticed, and what he had put them down to. During their analysis of each other, no words were spoken, but they moved closer together. Both had held strong opinions since they last saw each other; both took that last encounter as something else, and had things to say. But no words surfaced, and so they did the only thing their hearts told them to, and embraced each other in a hug.
“I’ve missed you,” said the Doctor.
Tommy stepped back. “You shouldn’t have left me then, should you?”
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, with genuine sincerity. He had heard himself less than an hour ago speaking to the Master: they’re not their direct children, they’re descendants. He cursed himself, realising how shaky his accusations were, and hoped he could replace everything in the TARDIS he had thrown out in that petulant fit of rage. “I was wrong, I was judgemental. You can come with me again if you want.”
Tommy seemed satisfied with the response, and considered it. “One day, maybe. I’m quite busy now.”
“Not right now, I hope.”
“No. Not right now. So what can I do? Don’t worry about putting me on the front line, because you know I go looking for trouble and I’d only wonder in dozily on my own anyway.”
The Doctor laughed. “That’s the spirit. Tommy, I want you to stay here unless the fire spreads. Get out your phone, set a stopwatch. If the fires continue to build after an hour and I haven’t returned, call Colonel Ward and tell him that my plan didn’t work and you’re on your own.” Tommy hoped that would not have to be the case.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to try and end it, Tommy.” The Doctor patted his friend on the shoulder. “I think I owe you that.”
***
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Colonel Ward called out at the top of his voice, but the Doctor either did not hear or completely ignored him as he strolled across the street, straight into the fire. Ward half-expected that to be it for him: he had seen six of his best men killed by those predatory flames in the last hour. Yet for the Doctor, they parted, forming a protective arch over his head. Further ahead of him, the rest of the fire withdrew deferentially, creating a passage for the Time Lord to follow.
“What the hell is he doing…?”
“He’s going to Westminster Abbey.” Colonel Ward nearly reached for his side arm; Tommy always crept up so quietly. “He’s going to confront the Master in the Matrix. And do you know what I think?” Tommy turned to Ward and beamed. “I think he’s going to win.”
***
“If you don’t mind my asking…” Robin hesitated, realising just how delicate the subject was. “How did this all… begin?”
“I broke up with my boyfriend the other week,” began Chloe.
“That’s… the one from Stoke Newington?” asked Robin.
“Yeah, Callum,” said Chloe. “I hate him, he’s a dick, and he went off with some girl he met on residential. So I was really angry, and I went round my best friend’s house and complained about it, and then I got upset… and then we…”
“Your… best friend…?”
Chloe nodded and looked down at her leaflet, less interested in the leaflet now and more avoiding having to see Robin’s response.
“That’s Steven, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I know, I don’t even like him… much.” She finally looked up at Robin. “You probably think I’m mad.”
“Not at all.” Robin smiled. “You know him better than anyone, so if anyone can see what he really looks like, it’s you. You were very close, you’d have a rough time of it. It happens.”
“But the thing is…” Chloe fiddled with her phone case, peeling at the corners. “I just let it happen. I knew I could… you know… and I just went and did it. Like I wanted it.”
“Maybe a part of you did,” suggested Robin, trying to keep her tone purely theoretical. “Maybe you thought it would solve your problems, give you someone else to worry about. It’s really not unusual, you know. A lot of – “ she stopped herself, choosing the noun that would most flatter Chloe “-young women, they think it will solve their problems. It usually doesn’t. But that’s not important now, it’s happened.”
“I was really sad for a long time. Even before I broke up with Callum, when stuff was going well, I didn’t have nothin’ to complain about, but I was still sad all the time. Usually when I’m alone, but sometimes when I’m with other people. And I still got it even when I got over the break-up. I know, it’s weird…”
“Hey,” said Robin, the strictest she had sounded yet, purely to emphasise her point. “It’s not weird. Feeling like that is never weird, and it’s never wrong, even if you can’t think of a reason why you should be feeling like that. Do you understand?”
Chloe nodded.
“Did you lose anyone in the fire?”
Chloe shook her head. “We all got evacuated together and got as far as Brighton. But I did still get sad about it, though. I got this, like… this habit thing. Whenever I went into a shop or somethin’, and saw that the person who usually works there weren’t there, I would always think they died, or worry about it. And then I’d get sad again, because I always remembered all the ones I counted, and I never knew for sure what happened to them. That’s why I’m always so angry, miss, ‘cuz I wish I could find out, but I’ve got no way of telling what happened to any of them.”
“Then that’s just the sort of person you are. You’ve got every right to be sad about those people as the people who lost those they loved in the fire.” Robin leant forward again, ignoring an email which flashed up on her screen. “And you can take that from me, Chloe, because you know I was one of those people. My loss is no greater than yours, it’s all about how we feel them.”
“But it was, miss. What happened to you was just…” Chloe shook her head. “I just can’t believe he’s dead.”
***
The Doctor heard the doors slam shut behind him, and the room plunged into darkness. There was nothing to see, hear, or smell. There were no dimensions to the room.
This was not Westminster Abbey.
“I like what you did with the Houses of Parliament,” joked the Doctor. “But I’m here to stop you.”
“Here.” The Master stepped forward out of the darkness. Her hair seemed to have got blacker, and he realised he was back in the virtual reality again. The blackness of her clothes, a border continued by her hair, made it hard to figure out where the Master ended and where the void around them began. “Do you even know where ‘here’ is, my dear, dear Doctor?”
“At a guess…” the Doctor sniffed, pretending that was all it took to make the observation. “The Gallifrey Matrix?”
“Well, well, not just a pretty face.” The Master started to sit down, and an armchair appeared just at the right moment to cushion her fall. She relaxed on it and reached out her arm: in her hand, a glass of red wine appeared, and she took a sip of it, nodding in approval. The Doctor followed suit, sitting down carefully. Sure enough, an armchair appeared, a deep mahogany like the Master’s; and when he reached out his hand, just as he had willed, a glass of lemonade, with a straw and a mini umbrella, appeared in his hand. The Master rolled her eyes.
“No one, in the whole of history, will ever have an army of this power and capacity.” The Master let go off her glass. It landed not with a smash, but a soft thud; a table appeared less than an inch below it. “Which means that this will be your one and only chance to overthrow God. If you stop me, Doctor, you will be endorsing a reign of terror across the whole universe. How do you feel about that?”
“Wiping out billions of years’ worth of civilisation to overthrow one man? That’s a ludicrous calculation.”
“Almost as bad as risking an entire planet to save one woman,” re-joined the Master. The Doctor looked up in intrigue. “I found out about Robin when I overheard you talking to Sasha in Covent Garden. Don’t worry,” she said, in a voice that seemed utterly fed up of dealing with silly little emotions like worry and empathy and love, “she’s out of the city by now, all the way in Horsham, and she’s the safest person on this planet. Back when I originally planned all this, and realised she was your leverage, I knew I had to keep her alive long enough to bargain with her. So I instructed the Sleepwalkers not to hurt her, just as I instructed them not to hurt you. She’ll have a safe passage back, if she wants to return… which, of course, I would strongly advise against.”
“You would still have killed her.”
The Master cocked her head. “Perhaps. If you were being really annoying.”
“I can respect the motivations, don’t get me wrong,” said the Doctor, and stretched out his legs. As he had hoped, a footrest appeared. The Master gave up competing. “But you’ve underestimated your army. Once they start lucid dreaming into our reality and realise the extent of their powers, believe me, everyone and everything is in danger. You included. It will become… cannibalistic.”
The Master moved herself forward and spoke in a whisper, the words seeming to slide off her tongue as tiny little breaths of air. “Good.”
“No! Not good!”
“This planet will collapse in on itself. Good.”
“And precisely how much of the universe do you think it might end up taking with it?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m not a part of this universe anymore, Doctor.” The Master hesitated for a moment and took another sip of wine, deliberately covering her face. The Doctor thought he could see a tear in her eye. “I’m dead. Which means that however much of the universe is obliterated, I will be safe. For once, I truly am indestructible, because I have already met my end. You’re the one in danger. You’re the lonely little boy, clinging on to protect himself from the storm.”
“And how can you be sure about that? Think about it, Master, really think about it. You’re creating a paradox. If you’re wiping out the people who killed you before they commit the act, you’ll never end up here, and you won’t be safe from it! In fact, you’ll be the first to feel the tremor, believe me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I wonder, Doctor, whether you are blind to the fact, or whether you were trying to trick me. The Matrix is created by the Time Lords. As long as I reside here, I will be safe, my consciousness preserved through any paradoxes, and I’m adjacent to the dream world, free to roam the only dimension even the Time Lords never dared to venture.”
“I know.” The Doctor sat up and got out his sonic screwdriver. “I just wanted to hear you say it.” He lifted up the device and buzzed it. A red signal emanated from the end, and up into the blackness.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” laughed the Doctor. “I’m in the greatest repository of information in the entire universe, closer to the Time Lords’ eye than I have been for centuries. I’m doing what every lonely little boy does when it gets too much: telling… on… you.”
The National Gallery
Colonel Ward backed up at the entrance to the Gallery, reluctant to enter and admit defeat. If the fires built up any further, they would begin to engulf this building, one of the few that was still standing as a symbol of enduring history.
“Come on, Doctor…” urged Ward. “Come on, you daft bloody sod. Do something bonkers and save the whole lot of us.”
Ward found himself thrown to the ground, a weight suddenly on top of him. As he rolled over, he realised it was Tommy, who promptly stood up and helped Ward to his feet.
“You were about to be caught in a flame-trap,” said Tommy. “We need to head into the Gallery.”
Ward sighed and did as Tommy suggested, waiting in the entrance, and watching the fires outside.
“Flame-traps?” asked Ward. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”
“I find Sleepwalker a bit sinister. Besides, from their point of view, they’re asleep. It would be more sensible to call them the Dreamers.”
“Oh, Tommy.” Ward caught his breath and gave the young man a heavy pat on the shoulder. “Dreamers are what we call people who can’t accomplish their goals. Just look at those things outside. They can do whatever the hell they like. Right now, they are the Sleepwalkers, because we are the dreamers.”
Horsham
“We’re going to have to make a move again soon,” said Chris, observing the crowds just ahead, picking up bags and gathering their strength.
“I know.” Robin sat up and winced. “It’s just difficult, I’m a pregnant woman.”
“Only just.”
Robin smiled. “I hope this all gets sorted out. Not for the Doctor’s sake, but…” She gestured to her womb. “For this little person’s. As long as he" - she realised she had already gendered the child, and cursed herself for it "=grows up feeling wanted, that’s all that matters. He was born because I wished it. Now, not many kids can say that.”
“No,” agreed Chris, and sat back down. “They can’t.”
“Robin.”
The couple turned around, and behind them stood someone they both only vaguely recognised: Robin from one awkward encounter; Chris from what seemed like a smooth job interview.
“Sasha.”
“I came to find you,” wheezed Sasha, and collapsed on the bench. She panted for a few seconds before starting again. Sweat was dripping from her forehead. “They’ve evacuated everyone from London now. I was the last to go.”
“And how’s the operation going?” asked Robin. “Any luck from UNIT?”
“Not really. The fires just won’t go out. And the Doctor…”
“Urgh.” Robin turned away. “Don’t talk to me about him, Sasha, because no offense, but I really don’t care.”
“Okay, look.” Sasha surprised herself even more than she surprised Chris and Robin by her voice – it was possibly the most she had ever raised it, and certainly the angriest she had ever sounded. “I get that I haven’t known him long, and that you probably don’t even like me, but right now I think I know him better than you ever did.” That was enough of a comment to get Robin riled, but she contained herself, at least hearing Sasha out. “You think he doesn’t care about you but you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I’m sure you think-“
“He loves you, Robin!” cried Sasha. “More than anyone left on this planet. He risked my life and everyone else’s to save you.”
Robin stood up and looked in the direction of London. At least the fires were not visible from this distance.
“What do you mean?”
“He lied from the moment you arrived in the cell, Robin.” Sasha’s voice was quieter again now, and she smiled as she spoke. “He did it to keep you safe. He didn’t want you to care about him because he was worried that he’d end up causing damage again.”
“So the Master’s going to use an army of those weird dream ghost things to destroy the planet before we can go on, millions of years in the future, to make an invincible Empire thing that leads to her own death, which is why she’s in this virtual reality without a real body in the first place?”
“More or less.” The Doctor frowned at how insanely baroque the plan sounded when summarised like that, and waited for Sasha to begin picking holes in it.
“If there are millions of years until all this happens, why has she picked this precise date?”
“Why pick any precise date?” suggested the Doctor, his mind clearly in other places. “Besides, she’s probably doing it to get at me, just like she always does…”
The pair took a moment to look around. They were stood at the top of Covent Garden market now, overlooking a selection of empty restaurants. The evacuation of the city began ten minutes ago, and the market had emptied out: unfinished meals were still piping hot on tables, as if invisible people were sitting down for dinner, and without the colourful varieties of shoppers, the shopfronts on their own appeared bare and uninteresting.
“Is the TARDIS nearby?” asked Colonel Ward, hurrying across to the Doctor and Sasha. The Doctor never knew whether to be relieved or horrified when a figure of military authority turned up, but at least he had nothing to fear that involved the word ‘professional’ or ‘official’ where Ward was concerned. “You two want to get out of this city pronto.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” replied the Doctor, almost amused by the suggestion.
“The fires are building up throughout central London. They started off in Westminster Abbey and there were rather large casualties we couldn’t prevent.”
“By large, do you by any chance mean political?”
“Well, yes.” Colonel Ward did up the buttons on his coat, not even changed into military attire. The Doctor was tempted to make a joke about how he had heard it was about to get a lot warmer, but decided that would be a bit insensitive.
“Sasha,” decided the Doctor, changing his mind. “I think it’s best if you leave.”
“What? No! I’m staying.”
“I don’t want you by my side because you’ll get hurt, and I don’t want you on your own, because you won’t be by my side.”
“You do realise how arrogant that sounded?”
The Doctor huffed. “Look, you can stay if you like, but the Master ordered for you to be kidnapped too.”
“But you said she only kidnapped you to find out what you knew – to get a measure of you-“
“-yes, but she kidnapped Robin to test if I had a pressure point, and her next leverage could well be you, which means that you, personally, are not safe in this city.”
“I think what the Doctor’s saying,” interrupted Colonel Ward, the only one whose eyes were on the clock, “is that you can do a lot of good, but not here. We’re putting out fires and fighting God knows what else is coming out of the Abbey. It’s a military operation, and you’re not military. Soldiers don’t need you, Miss Ramachandran, but people do.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. He had never expected to hear Ward say something quite so profound.
“Okay.” Sasha gave in. “But if you need me, call me. I mean it, you two – if any of this is on the grounds of Health and Safety, I’ll whack you with a golf club.”
“No you won’t.” The Doctor smirked, and shared a brief, understanding nod with Sasha.
“One of my officers will escort you out of the city,” began Colonel Ward, leading Sasha out of the market. “You’ll catch up with the rest of the group…”
The Doctor turned away as his phone buzzed, and took a deep breath when he saw the caller’s name: Tommy.
“Hi.”
“Doctor?” Tommy sounded older. The strangest thing, however, was just hearing him at all after all this time. “I’ve got a UNIT officer here demanding that I leave the city. Can you please speak on my behalf to say it’s okay for me to stay?”
“Why? You don’t want to stay, do you?”
“Well… yeah, I kind of do. I want to see you.”
The Doctor shook the phone, frustrated. Every time one person I’ve messed up leaves, another one just turns up…
“Okay, okay, fine.” The Doctor knew there was no arguing with Tommy. And, as Robin said, he owed him one. “Hand him over.”
“Thanks.” There was some fumbling on the other side, and a woman – late fifties, the Doctor guessed from her voice, and from somewhere up north – answered the phone. “Is this the Doctor?”
“Yes.” The Doctor put the call on speakerphone and opened a new app. “I’m sending over clearance now. Tommy is allowed to stay, as long as he comes straight to me. Can you pass him back?”
“Certainly.” There was another muffle, and then Tommy returned to the phone. “Is that sorted?”
“It’s sorted. One more thing – Tommy.”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful.” Concerned, the Doctor ended the call, and began to wait patiently and in crushing anxiety to see his friend again.
***
“Everyone expects me to have an abortion,” explained Chloe. “Like, I might, but it’s the first thing they think, like it’s the only thing that could happen. When I told my mum…” Chloe laughed softly, trying to make light of the situation. When her demeanour was so calm, it usually meant she was scared or embarrassed about something. “She went nuts, started screaming at me and telling me I’d messed up everything. She called me a ‘stupid girl’ over and over again, like she does whenever I tell her about girls I know who are up the duff. But my dad was really calm… and, like, you think that would be a good thing, but it ain’t, because the first thing he said to me was ‘When are you getting the abortion?’, like he made up my mind for me, like I had no other choice.”
“I’ve got a leaflet on this somewhere,” said Robin, carrying on speaking as she searched the drawers. “It’s got information on abortion and pregnancy, and it’s generally a lot better than what I can explain, so I’m going to give it to you to read, if that’s alright, for the facts and figures, and then I’m going to give you the advice.”
Chloe nodded. With most of her teachers, her gut response was to question everything she heard. With Mrs McKnight, it seemed difficult to even find a question.
“Okay.” Robin found the leaflet and passed it to Chloe, who skimmed over it, her eyes drawn to a section on the stages of pregnancy. “I’m not here to tell you to have an abortion, and neither am I here to tell you to keep it. I’m here to tell you – and some people will go mad when you say I’ve told you this, but it’s how the world works these days and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t a great thing – that it’s your choice. You know…” Robin sat back in her chair, showing visible relaxation. As intended, this calmed Chloe, as she sat back in hers. “A very wise woman once said to me that the most important thing is our ability to make our own choices. Even if the consequences are bad – bad for us, even – it’s still better than having never been able to make the choice at all. You’ve heard people talk about pro-life and pro-choice before, right?”
Chloe nodded. “We did it in PSE.”
“I thought you always turned up late for form?” Robin shrugged after she said that, realising her priorities were way off. “Anyway, the thing about them is, they’re just too complicated. Once, way back in the past, abortions were illegal. In this country, actually, and not that long ago.”
“I know,” said Chloe. “I do History.”
“Well,” continued Robin, “legalising abortion was what gave women a choice. Before then, they were told that they had to have a child. So that’s great and everything, but it means that we get caught up in a debate, sometimes, that we don’t want to be part of. People start to see keeping a child as going against what our modern values are, as rejecting the choice involved in abortion, but that’s so wrong. Sometimes people are pressured into having an abortion just as much as they are to keep a baby. The important thing, Chloe, the most important thing is that whatever you choose, it’s your choice, and it’s what you want. Because if it’s not what you want – either choice, I mean – that will haunt you for such a long time. And,” she added, much more severely, “if your dad is trying to pressure you into a medical procedure you don't want to have, that is abuse, and I may be obliged to mention it to the relevant authority for your own protection.”
“I don’t know what I want though.”
“Okay, maybe you don’t. But Chloe, I think a part of you does.”
Chloe looked down at the leaflet again; at the stages of pregnancy, with a picture attached to each stage. She never realised that four months was so noticeable. If she kept the child, by the time she took her mock exams it would be visible to everyone.
“I think,” continued Robin, “that deep down, everyone always starts off with a preference.”
***
“I tried to be like Grace Kelly… but all her looks were too sad.”
The Doctor stopped himself. The songs from the virtual reality were stuck in his head, their 4/4 beats going round and round, driving him insane. He almost felt pity for the Master, stuck with that at every second.
He was distracted by a sound from behind him – a sound separate from the sirens, loudspeakers, and crowd noises from outside, though those were beginning to subside as people got further away from the city.
The shop behind him was some sort of second-hand store, like others in the market; stacked up on shelves were old televisions. Most were turned off, but one was producing a muffling sound, showing white noise. The Doctor entered the shop and looked around the back curiously: the television did not seem to be plugged in, yet it was starting to pick something up, a vague shape now beginning to form on the screen.
“So you worked out my plan.” The Doctor took his head out from behind the television. On the screen, the Master now spoke to him. It was the first time he had seen her new face while he was awake. It struck him both how stunning, and how young, she looked.
“You can’t do this,” said the Doctor. “You can’t kill them to get back at their future.”
“Can’t I? I’m blaming a parent for the behaviour of their child. Tell me, how is that unreasonable?”
“Because they’re not their direct children! They’re descendants! They’ve as much to with them as… as you have to do with Omega!”
“This is the only way,” continued the Master, fixated on something the Doctor could not see. He wondered if she had even listened to a word he had said. “Kill the plague before it spreads. You’ve seen the effects of the Empire, Doctor, you’ve seen what it’s done…”
“You’re just angry because it led to your death!” retorted the Doctor. “Because you can’t accept death even when it comes gift-wrapped! Look at you, in the Matrix, a place for dead Time Lords’ souls to rest after they have found peace and purification. So much for that. You don’t even change post-mortem!”
“Autumn died too!”
The Doctor glared at the screen. There were some subjects that the Master should have left alone – some things that just were not said.
“She died,” carried on the Master, “because of the same Empire that killed me.”
“She was reborn.”
“Oh, but if you knew what happened…” the Master’s voice drifted, almost slipping spontaneously into another accent. “If you knew what really happened to her, Doctor…”
The screen cut off, and the Doctor threw it off the shelf in a fit of rage. He instantly regretted it: some kind old owner might return to this shop and have to clear it up. He vowed he would replace it before they returned.
Horsham
Forty-two miles outside of London, one group of evacuees had stopped for a break. They were some of the earliest to go: fleeing without direction before UNIT turned up and gave structure to the mass exodus. They found themselves, by sheer chance, in the town of Horsham, where the locals seemed to glare at them through charity shop windows. They half expected to be attacked by a mob of townspeople armed with perfume and hand sanitisers, based on their first observations of the town.
Chris sat down on a bench opposite the Heart Foundation shop, strangely exhausted from what had so far only been a short drive. It had taken them a long time to get there; half-way through the drive they gave up and began walking, finding it less effort than the slow-and-stop clutch control of the overfilled motorways.
“Nice town,” remarked Chris. “Quiet. Maybe we could…”
“Maybe.” Without disagreeing, Robin shut him down, preferring not to think about the future.
“I know it’s not perfect,” admitted Chris, “but he’s an idiot. A lot of these people are, these heroes. We might need him to fight the monsters but we don’t need him in our life.”
Robin seemed unsatisfied.
“I hate him. I hate him too much to just… stand back and do nothing.”
“But you know that’s exactly the thing that will make him the angriest,” pointed out Chris. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Robin looked away, scanning the strange town around her. What do I want?
London
“We’re getting close to the rest of the group now, miss,” said the UNIT officer, stopping at the corner of a street to catch his breath. Sasha peered around to see the street, and then shot back, standing against the wall. The fires were raging only a few yards away from them, dancing in strange patterns, somehow just a shade too red and a second too fast, as if being played out on fast-forward.
“What’s your name?” asked Sasha, trying to strike up some conversation before they ran for their lives again. “Your real name, I mean, not your rank or your codename.”
“Pete,” replied the officer, and pushed himself off the wall, stretching his legs. “Are you ready to make a run for it again, miss?”
Sasha nodded, and on Pete’s count they ran across the street. Sasha was a few steps ahead, and reached the next wall quicker. As she turned back, she noticed that Pete had stopped in the street.
“Pete! What are you doing?”
“I…” Pete looked down to see a smaller white flame curled around his leg. He wafted the smoke away, but was unable to shift the leg. Panicked, he looked back at the fire: this time the hiss and the cackle was a whisper; the dance was a ritual. Closer, he could see the creatures Ward had described to him, now indistinguishable from the flames themselves. “What are those things?” he uttered.
“I don’t know!” replied Sasha, pleadingly. “But there’s one I’ve seen in a dream since I was a little girl, always at the furthest edge, always before I wake up, and believe me, it’s not good! Now I need to carry on, I need to help people, and then I need to find out why I’ve been seeing it all my life, but I need you to carry on with me so I can find that out!”
Pete looked down again. A second flame – or arm, perhaps – had formed a ring around his other leg, leaving him unable to even pirouette. Sasha advanced on him, preparing to sprint over and help him escape, but as she did he flew backwards with the flames, thrown violently into the fire at the end of the street.
The last thing Sasha heard was Pete’s shrill, prolonged scream as he burnt – then her hearing seemed to cut out altogether as pure terror overwhelmed all her senses.
Closer to the rest of the group now, Pete had said. Sasha certainly hoped so…
Covent Garden
“Breaking things again? You were always clumsy.”
The Doctor turned around, startled, and realised that Tommy had entered the shop. He smiled sadly. Up close, Tommy looked older too: he still had a similar taste in clothes and wore a chequered shirt, but his hair was neater, and his skin perfect now that he was out of his teenage years. His shoulders were slightly wider apart, his face better-formed; the boy the Doctor had taken with him had become a young man, but the transformation had taken place not in the land of the extraordinary, but back home amid the mundane.
“Tommy…”
“Hello Doctor.”
The Doctor thought he heard a lump in Tommy’s throat as he spoke to him. He wished he could find out what inferences Tommy had made about him: what changes he had noticed, and what he had put them down to. During their analysis of each other, no words were spoken, but they moved closer together. Both had held strong opinions since they last saw each other; both took that last encounter as something else, and had things to say. But no words surfaced, and so they did the only thing their hearts told them to, and embraced each other in a hug.
“I’ve missed you,” said the Doctor.
Tommy stepped back. “You shouldn’t have left me then, should you?”
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, with genuine sincerity. He had heard himself less than an hour ago speaking to the Master: they’re not their direct children, they’re descendants. He cursed himself, realising how shaky his accusations were, and hoped he could replace everything in the TARDIS he had thrown out in that petulant fit of rage. “I was wrong, I was judgemental. You can come with me again if you want.”
Tommy seemed satisfied with the response, and considered it. “One day, maybe. I’m quite busy now.”
“Not right now, I hope.”
“No. Not right now. So what can I do? Don’t worry about putting me on the front line, because you know I go looking for trouble and I’d only wonder in dozily on my own anyway.”
The Doctor laughed. “That’s the spirit. Tommy, I want you to stay here unless the fire spreads. Get out your phone, set a stopwatch. If the fires continue to build after an hour and I haven’t returned, call Colonel Ward and tell him that my plan didn’t work and you’re on your own.” Tommy hoped that would not have to be the case.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to try and end it, Tommy.” The Doctor patted his friend on the shoulder. “I think I owe you that.”
***
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Colonel Ward called out at the top of his voice, but the Doctor either did not hear or completely ignored him as he strolled across the street, straight into the fire. Ward half-expected that to be it for him: he had seen six of his best men killed by those predatory flames in the last hour. Yet for the Doctor, they parted, forming a protective arch over his head. Further ahead of him, the rest of the fire withdrew deferentially, creating a passage for the Time Lord to follow.
“What the hell is he doing…?”
“He’s going to Westminster Abbey.” Colonel Ward nearly reached for his side arm; Tommy always crept up so quietly. “He’s going to confront the Master in the Matrix. And do you know what I think?” Tommy turned to Ward and beamed. “I think he’s going to win.”
***
“If you don’t mind my asking…” Robin hesitated, realising just how delicate the subject was. “How did this all… begin?”
“I broke up with my boyfriend the other week,” began Chloe.
“That’s… the one from Stoke Newington?” asked Robin.
“Yeah, Callum,” said Chloe. “I hate him, he’s a dick, and he went off with some girl he met on residential. So I was really angry, and I went round my best friend’s house and complained about it, and then I got upset… and then we…”
“Your… best friend…?”
Chloe nodded and looked down at her leaflet, less interested in the leaflet now and more avoiding having to see Robin’s response.
“That’s Steven, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I know, I don’t even like him… much.” She finally looked up at Robin. “You probably think I’m mad.”
“Not at all.” Robin smiled. “You know him better than anyone, so if anyone can see what he really looks like, it’s you. You were very close, you’d have a rough time of it. It happens.”
“But the thing is…” Chloe fiddled with her phone case, peeling at the corners. “I just let it happen. I knew I could… you know… and I just went and did it. Like I wanted it.”
“Maybe a part of you did,” suggested Robin, trying to keep her tone purely theoretical. “Maybe you thought it would solve your problems, give you someone else to worry about. It’s really not unusual, you know. A lot of – “ she stopped herself, choosing the noun that would most flatter Chloe “-young women, they think it will solve their problems. It usually doesn’t. But that’s not important now, it’s happened.”
“I was really sad for a long time. Even before I broke up with Callum, when stuff was going well, I didn’t have nothin’ to complain about, but I was still sad all the time. Usually when I’m alone, but sometimes when I’m with other people. And I still got it even when I got over the break-up. I know, it’s weird…”
“Hey,” said Robin, the strictest she had sounded yet, purely to emphasise her point. “It’s not weird. Feeling like that is never weird, and it’s never wrong, even if you can’t think of a reason why you should be feeling like that. Do you understand?”
Chloe nodded.
“Did you lose anyone in the fire?”
Chloe shook her head. “We all got evacuated together and got as far as Brighton. But I did still get sad about it, though. I got this, like… this habit thing. Whenever I went into a shop or somethin’, and saw that the person who usually works there weren’t there, I would always think they died, or worry about it. And then I’d get sad again, because I always remembered all the ones I counted, and I never knew for sure what happened to them. That’s why I’m always so angry, miss, ‘cuz I wish I could find out, but I’ve got no way of telling what happened to any of them.”
“Then that’s just the sort of person you are. You’ve got every right to be sad about those people as the people who lost those they loved in the fire.” Robin leant forward again, ignoring an email which flashed up on her screen. “And you can take that from me, Chloe, because you know I was one of those people. My loss is no greater than yours, it’s all about how we feel them.”
“But it was, miss. What happened to you was just…” Chloe shook her head. “I just can’t believe he’s dead.”
***
The Doctor heard the doors slam shut behind him, and the room plunged into darkness. There was nothing to see, hear, or smell. There were no dimensions to the room.
This was not Westminster Abbey.
“I like what you did with the Houses of Parliament,” joked the Doctor. “But I’m here to stop you.”
“Here.” The Master stepped forward out of the darkness. Her hair seemed to have got blacker, and he realised he was back in the virtual reality again. The blackness of her clothes, a border continued by her hair, made it hard to figure out where the Master ended and where the void around them began. “Do you even know where ‘here’ is, my dear, dear Doctor?”
“At a guess…” the Doctor sniffed, pretending that was all it took to make the observation. “The Gallifrey Matrix?”
“Well, well, not just a pretty face.” The Master started to sit down, and an armchair appeared just at the right moment to cushion her fall. She relaxed on it and reached out her arm: in her hand, a glass of red wine appeared, and she took a sip of it, nodding in approval. The Doctor followed suit, sitting down carefully. Sure enough, an armchair appeared, a deep mahogany like the Master’s; and when he reached out his hand, just as he had willed, a glass of lemonade, with a straw and a mini umbrella, appeared in his hand. The Master rolled her eyes.
“No one, in the whole of history, will ever have an army of this power and capacity.” The Master let go off her glass. It landed not with a smash, but a soft thud; a table appeared less than an inch below it. “Which means that this will be your one and only chance to overthrow God. If you stop me, Doctor, you will be endorsing a reign of terror across the whole universe. How do you feel about that?”
“Wiping out billions of years’ worth of civilisation to overthrow one man? That’s a ludicrous calculation.”
“Almost as bad as risking an entire planet to save one woman,” re-joined the Master. The Doctor looked up in intrigue. “I found out about Robin when I overheard you talking to Sasha in Covent Garden. Don’t worry,” she said, in a voice that seemed utterly fed up of dealing with silly little emotions like worry and empathy and love, “she’s out of the city by now, all the way in Horsham, and she’s the safest person on this planet. Back when I originally planned all this, and realised she was your leverage, I knew I had to keep her alive long enough to bargain with her. So I instructed the Sleepwalkers not to hurt her, just as I instructed them not to hurt you. She’ll have a safe passage back, if she wants to return… which, of course, I would strongly advise against.”
“You would still have killed her.”
The Master cocked her head. “Perhaps. If you were being really annoying.”
“I can respect the motivations, don’t get me wrong,” said the Doctor, and stretched out his legs. As he had hoped, a footrest appeared. The Master gave up competing. “But you’ve underestimated your army. Once they start lucid dreaming into our reality and realise the extent of their powers, believe me, everyone and everything is in danger. You included. It will become… cannibalistic.”
The Master moved herself forward and spoke in a whisper, the words seeming to slide off her tongue as tiny little breaths of air. “Good.”
“No! Not good!”
“This planet will collapse in on itself. Good.”
“And precisely how much of the universe do you think it might end up taking with it?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m not a part of this universe anymore, Doctor.” The Master hesitated for a moment and took another sip of wine, deliberately covering her face. The Doctor thought he could see a tear in her eye. “I’m dead. Which means that however much of the universe is obliterated, I will be safe. For once, I truly am indestructible, because I have already met my end. You’re the one in danger. You’re the lonely little boy, clinging on to protect himself from the storm.”
“And how can you be sure about that? Think about it, Master, really think about it. You’re creating a paradox. If you’re wiping out the people who killed you before they commit the act, you’ll never end up here, and you won’t be safe from it! In fact, you’ll be the first to feel the tremor, believe me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I wonder, Doctor, whether you are blind to the fact, or whether you were trying to trick me. The Matrix is created by the Time Lords. As long as I reside here, I will be safe, my consciousness preserved through any paradoxes, and I’m adjacent to the dream world, free to roam the only dimension even the Time Lords never dared to venture.”
“I know.” The Doctor sat up and got out his sonic screwdriver. “I just wanted to hear you say it.” He lifted up the device and buzzed it. A red signal emanated from the end, and up into the blackness.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” laughed the Doctor. “I’m in the greatest repository of information in the entire universe, closer to the Time Lords’ eye than I have been for centuries. I’m doing what every lonely little boy does when it gets too much: telling… on… you.”
The National Gallery
Colonel Ward backed up at the entrance to the Gallery, reluctant to enter and admit defeat. If the fires built up any further, they would begin to engulf this building, one of the few that was still standing as a symbol of enduring history.
“Come on, Doctor…” urged Ward. “Come on, you daft bloody sod. Do something bonkers and save the whole lot of us.”
Ward found himself thrown to the ground, a weight suddenly on top of him. As he rolled over, he realised it was Tommy, who promptly stood up and helped Ward to his feet.
“You were about to be caught in a flame-trap,” said Tommy. “We need to head into the Gallery.”
Ward sighed and did as Tommy suggested, waiting in the entrance, and watching the fires outside.
“Flame-traps?” asked Ward. “Is that what we’re calling them now?”
“I find Sleepwalker a bit sinister. Besides, from their point of view, they’re asleep. It would be more sensible to call them the Dreamers.”
“Oh, Tommy.” Ward caught his breath and gave the young man a heavy pat on the shoulder. “Dreamers are what we call people who can’t accomplish their goals. Just look at those things outside. They can do whatever the hell they like. Right now, they are the Sleepwalkers, because we are the dreamers.”
Horsham
“We’re going to have to make a move again soon,” said Chris, observing the crowds just ahead, picking up bags and gathering their strength.
“I know.” Robin sat up and winced. “It’s just difficult, I’m a pregnant woman.”
“Only just.”
Robin smiled. “I hope this all gets sorted out. Not for the Doctor’s sake, but…” She gestured to her womb. “For this little person’s. As long as he" - she realised she had already gendered the child, and cursed herself for it "=grows up feeling wanted, that’s all that matters. He was born because I wished it. Now, not many kids can say that.”
“No,” agreed Chris, and sat back down. “They can’t.”
“Robin.”
The couple turned around, and behind them stood someone they both only vaguely recognised: Robin from one awkward encounter; Chris from what seemed like a smooth job interview.
“Sasha.”
“I came to find you,” wheezed Sasha, and collapsed on the bench. She panted for a few seconds before starting again. Sweat was dripping from her forehead. “They’ve evacuated everyone from London now. I was the last to go.”
“And how’s the operation going?” asked Robin. “Any luck from UNIT?”
“Not really. The fires just won’t go out. And the Doctor…”
“Urgh.” Robin turned away. “Don’t talk to me about him, Sasha, because no offense, but I really don’t care.”
“Okay, look.” Sasha surprised herself even more than she surprised Chris and Robin by her voice – it was possibly the most she had ever raised it, and certainly the angriest she had ever sounded. “I get that I haven’t known him long, and that you probably don’t even like me, but right now I think I know him better than you ever did.” That was enough of a comment to get Robin riled, but she contained herself, at least hearing Sasha out. “You think he doesn’t care about you but you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I’m sure you think-“
“He loves you, Robin!” cried Sasha. “More than anyone left on this planet. He risked my life and everyone else’s to save you.”
Robin stood up and looked in the direction of London. At least the fires were not visible from this distance.
“What do you mean?”
“He lied from the moment you arrived in the cell, Robin.” Sasha’s voice was quieter again now, and she smiled as she spoke. “He did it to keep you safe. He didn’t want you to care about him because he was worried that he’d end up causing damage again.”
“Oh my God…” Robin felt a tear rolling down her cheek. She wanted to kick herself. And then the Doctor, several times over. “Why…” She formulated another question. “If he told you this, why are you telling me?”
“Because I disagree. Because the most important thing, Robin, the most important, is autonomy. Is making your own decisions. I don’t think you should go back, because I don’t think there’s anything you could do. I think it would be mad… suicidal. But that doesn’t matter.” Sasha stood up too, and looked to the crowd. That was the direction she would head – she had already decided. That’s where I’ll find Dad. “What matters is that the choice is there. That you have the choice to be sensible, and to be beautifully foolish, if that’s what you want to do. You deserve to know. You deserve the right to mess it all up and to put it all back together, Robin, and you deserve to know what kind of man the Doctor is.”
Robin was speechless.
“A good one,” finished Sasha. “He’s a good man, Robin, and you need to know that.” She smiled again. “I’ll leave you now.” Robin was too lost for words to say goodbye, but Sasha did not seem to mind; she jogged on a bit further, and joined the crowd ahead.
“Well then,” said Chris, the last to get up. “Let’s follow her. Everyone’s going.”
Robin turned back to the direction of London. If there are no visible fires…
“Robin, come on…”
“I’m not going.” Robin turned back to Chris. “I’m sorry, you can go on if you like, but I’m not going. I can’t.”
“You can’t stay here!”
“I’m going back to find the Doctor.”
Chris sighed, exasperated. “Robin, every time he steps back into our lives, this happens. Someone gets killed. It will happen again, now please, just turn around.”
“No!” cried Robin, her voice cracking. “Now just you listen to me, Mr McKnight. In ten months’ time, we are having a baby together. And do you know why we’re having that baby? Because three years ago, that man…” she pointed toward London, “stopped a bunch of murderous mannequins from taking over the whole stupid world, and then he just got up and left.” Chris closed his eyes, still frustrated; it seemed there would be no getting through to her. “And do you know why we met?”
Chris tried not to think about it.
“We met,” exclaimed Robin, more tears rolling down her cheeks, “because he introduced us. Everything you see in this world is here because of him. So yes. I’m going to go back to London, and if I have to, I will give up everything I have, so that I can finally, just this once, pay him back.”
“Then this journey is over,” uttered Chris.
“Wait, I’m sorry… what?”
“This journey south. Because I am never, Mrs McKnight, stepping another foot anywhere but by your side.” He beamed; that kind beam that had first attracted Robin to him when he offered her the job. “Let’s go to London. Let’s save our friend.”
***
“Do you still get sad?”
Robin smiled. The deep longing in her smile seemed to give Chloe the answer she wanted, but Robin went on to elaborate. “Of course I do. How couldn’t you? He was a good man, at heart, even if he sometimes made mistakes. And it was my fault…” She reached for a handkerchief and blew her nose. Her first instinct was to break down; she always repressed the things she felt, and they always came out at the wrong moments.
“It wasn’t, miss.”
“Chloe, I’m fine. It’s not about me. Don’t let this get about me.” She pocketed her handkerchief. “The future.” She tried to smile again. “What were your plans, before the pregnancy?”
“Well… I wanted to study business at uni.” Chloe laughed nervously. “I know, it doesn’t seem like me, I probably ain’t bright enough for uni. But I always fancied it. Still…” She placed her hand over her stomach. “Stupid suggestion won’t even happen if I keep the baby, will it? ‘Cuz that’d just be it.”
“No,” spoke Robin softly. “It wouldn’t. You know, there are women out there who do it. Seriously, teen mothers who had plans and go on. Because if it’s what you want… and let me just emphasise this again, Chloe, if you do choose to keep this, you have to know for sure that you want it… then it’s not the end of the world. Not at all. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. I had my Tommy in my early thirties and however much I worshipped him, it was still the biggest challenge of my life. You go to uni and you won’t have a break, you won’t have a social life, and you could well have a few, well, breakdowns.” Chloe shuddered, but appreciated the honesty. “But you’ll live. And do you know what, Chloe, with the right support – and we would do everything we could to support you, through sixth form at the very least – you could do it.”
Chloe brightened up. “You think?”
“Absolutely.” Robin turned serious. “But Chloe, it has to be what you want. This isn’t about what’s sensible, what’s not sensible, what’s ‘right’ or what’s ‘wrong’. It’s what you want to do.”
***
“Why did you do it?” The Master stood up, and the furniture vanished. The Doctor stayed on his leather armchair. “You’ve been terrified of Gallifrey for years. Why did you bring them here?”
“Because it was beyond my control. And besides,” the Doctor scoffed, “I’m not terrified of Gallifrey. I just don’t care about it.”
“Oh, really?” The Master circled around the Doctor’s chair. “People who don’t care about where they came from pop home for casual visits every couple of years, read the news, do whatever suits them. They don’t run and run and pretend it doesn’t even exist, with only a photo on their wall as proof. No, you’re terrified of Gallifrey. I don’t know why, but something about that planet scares you stiff.”
The Doctor shivered and stood up, putting the subject aside. “Tell me what happened to Autumn Rivers.”
“I can tell you what happened to her. But you won’t like it.”
“Of course, I won’t even believe you, either,” remarked the Doctor. “After all, what reason would you have to tell me?”
“That reason, Doctor.” The Doctor’s armchair vanished; just he and his enemy remained now, wandering through the emptiness. “Because you won’t like it.” The Master was glaring now, bitterly, her fists clenched. “Because you tricked me into letting Robin go, so now I have no leverage against you. All I can do is hurt you. And this will hurt you…” She grinned wickedly. “Oh, this will hurt you…”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not going to like this at all…”
“Tell me!” the Doctor barked.
“Ectopic pregnancy.”
The Doctor stepped back, confused.
“A few centuries back, before civilisation made any major medical advancements,” continued the Master. “A young woman fell pregnant with a new daughter. But the foetus developed in the fallopian tube. This was before the days of operations. The mother died, and the foetus… little, reincarnated Autumn, so much potential… followed on after.”
“No,” whispered the Doctor, shaking his head. “No. No!”
“God really was cruel, wasn’t he?” challenged the Master, egging the Doctor on. “He really did play a sick, twisted little game with you. Oh, but I forgot… you let him live. You gave me up. You endorsed all the other terrible acts he’ll commit. Because you called the Time Lords. And here they come!”
A light began to shine above them; the same blood-red hue the Doctor’s sonic had projected, and holographic, moving writing of the same shade appeared: Gallifreyan.
“I will not go back to Gallifrey,” willed the Doctor. “I will not!”
“You’re inside the Gallifrey Matrix!” laughed the Master. “And you’ve just summoned them right to your little corner! There’s only one way out of this, and that’s to the world of dreams.”
“And how do I get there?” The Doctor moved closer to the Master, almost intimidatingly, his coat swinging behind him. “Tell me, now, how do I get there?”
“You die.”
The Doctor stopped, and stepped back. Perhaps the closer he got, the more the Master lied.
“I can move freely between dreams outside of the Matrix because I’m dead. But you’re still alive, so you’re confined purely to digital space.” The Master put her hands behind her back. “You have to die, Doctor.” She took one arm out, and in it she now held a gun, which she handed to the Doctor. He took it, his hand trembling. “You don’t have long, of course. They’re nearly here. When they find us, they’ll extract you and bring you to Gallifrey. When they find me, I’ll be archived to somewhere… safer. I’ve already had it, Doctor, but you…” This time it was the Master who was moving towards the Doctor, threatening him. “You could be free.”
The Doctor handled the gun; such a foreign object, the kind of thing he would usually hand to Autumn Rivers and pretend didn’t exist. He examined it. It was so heavy…
“Free from the Time Lords forever,” continued the Master.
He held it to his head this time, and rested his finger over the trigger.
“Free to dream, forever.”
The Doctor closed his eyes. “We live, as we dream…”
He pulled the trigger.
***
“Where is he?”
“Robin!” exclaimed Tommy, hearing her voice over the flames. He stepped momentarily out of the Gallery, safe between two pillars“Get away from the f-“
He stopped, awestricken. His warning was not just futile, it was unnecessary: the fires were deferentially avoiding Robin, forming a sort of archway, like the parting of the Red Sea. Robin seemed aware of this, almost unable to perceive the fires.
Robin ran up to Tommy, her appearance desperate. He always thought she looked to him as a son – she gave him more patience, more kindness, and more warmth than she ever seemed to offer anyone. Yet now, that was gone. There was something underneath that could not wait long enough to be patient or kind, and was not satisfied enough to be warm.
“Where is he?” she repeated, pleading.
“The Doctor?” Tommy turned around and pointed to Westminster Abbey. “He’s gone to Westminster Abbey, where the fires started…”
Before Tommy could react, Robin had shot off in the direction of the abbey, and the fires ahead began to part in anticipation.
“Robin, you won’t be able to…”
Tommy stopped calling. She could no longer hear him, and he suspected she would not have chosen to anyway. He stepped back inside.
***
Robin ran inside the abbey, the great doors seeming to give way to the softest touch of her hand. She darted across the chequered floor, her feet by sheer chance seeming to land perfectly in the boxes: as a child, suspicious of stepping on the cracks, she would have found this satisfying. Now, she felt more scared than ever at this cavernous, daunting place: a complex construction full of interior quirks she could not describe, constructions whose names she did not know, patterns she had never seen. She felt stupid.
The light was spilling in through the tainted glass window, illuminating the floor and reflecting back in her eyes. When she moved her arm and studied it closer, she saw him lying there, right in the centre, as symmetrical and perfectly-aligned as she had been as she entered. And still.
The Doctor.
Robin put her hand to her mouth and knelt down by his side. It could have been anything – he could have been sleeping. She had not observed him long enough to make a definite judgement; a trained medic would have taken at least another minute, but she knew. After all these years, after every adventure gone wrong, Robin McKnight knew what a dead body looked like. She knew how to infer the absence of life. She knew what posture a living being never took. She knew when it had all just…
Gone.
“No…”
Robin cried, but for once, did not reach for a handkerchief. She always hated herself for crying – always thought it was weak; that she was overreacting. This time, she let the tears flow and implored that more would follow. A hole had been cut in the universe, in the fabric of everything that was good: crying was not only justified; it was an insufficient response. The adequate response, she realised, was a catharsis beyond which any human being was capable.
She wondered what grief was like on Gallifrey.
“Gabriel…”
She ran her hand softly across the Doctor’s face. It was already losing colour; his eyes were closed, and his expression vacant. There was no chance that his conscious had lingered. Anything she said would just be for her own benefit.
So she said nothing.
For five minutes, she sat by his side, cradling his body in her arms. When that time had passed, she heard the doors of the abbey swing open behind her, and in followed other familiar faces: Tommy, Colonel Ward, Chris…
Chris stepped forward beyond the others and hesitated, considering comforting his wife. He stayed back, understanding, based on the little he had ever been able to understand about Robin’s relationship with this strange, strange, being. He understood the need to be alone with one’s angel.
***
“Oh God miss, I’m so sorry.” Chloe glanced up at the clock again, then down to her phone to check the time. “I didn’t realise, you only do part-time now, I’m keeping you behind…”
“It’s fine, really, don’t worry about it. I’ll stay here as long as you like.”
“Thanks miss, but…” Chloe lifted up her bag and secured it back over her shoulder; its rightful place, and a sign that the period of anger had passed. “I’d better get back to lessons now, say sorry to sir for messing about… but really miss, thanks so much.”
Robin smiled modestly. “It’s my job, Chloe. And I’d take a chat with you over logging reports any day.”
Chloe stood up, appreciative, but not wanting to bathe in it. “I dunno, miss.” She paused at the door. “About the baby, I mean. I dunno what I’m gonna do. Obviously I’ve gotta make up my mind soon, like… but I’ll think about it.” She took the leaflet out of her pocket and gave it a wave towards Robin. It already had creased edges, and a doodled-on illustration. “I’ll think about what I want.”
“You’d better,” said Robin, and realised that her argument may have seemed one-sided. “Chloe, if you want to get an abortion… you know, people will tell you that it’s a choice of killing, ‘getting rid’ of it, but it’s really not. That thing inside you right now is just a lump of cells. The choice is whether… whether you want that lump of cells to grow into something that you can call life. Whether you’re ready for that yet.” Robin shrugged; her nonchalance put Chloe at ease just as she was beginning to feel on edge. “It’s your call.”
Chloe nodded, opening the door, then hesitated again.
“When’s yours due?”
Robin laughed and pushed back in her spinny chair, giving Chloe a proper view of her volleyball-sized belly. She did not seem to have put the weight on anywhere else.
“Soon,” chuckled Robin. “Very soon.”
Chloe laughed and thanked Robin again, before finally leaving. Realising she was alone in her office, with no one to keep the mask on for, Robin’s face fell. It was that time of the day, and she had that distant yearning she still experienced every so often. She knew where she had to go.
Primrose Hill
It was an impromptu shrine. A child from Coal Hill School, during the reconstruction, had taken the day off out of a desire to escape everything that was happening. His mother had died during the fires, and his father had come close – but just as the fires closed in on them, they began to retreat. It was later explained that this had been down to the work of one man: the Doctor.
The Doctor’s body had been moved to a UNIT storage facility, and the TARDIS presumably had too, if it was even recovered. So one day, the boy constructed, with some loose wooden planks – something which there was hardly a shortage of during the demolitions – a flimsy but meaningful replica of the ship. Together, as the other pupils and even members of staff learnt about the model, they began to gather what they could: drawings of the man, photographs of him, stories compiled into short anthologies, left by the statue in the hope that people would pick up and read them, learn about the man who had fought the fires.
And they did. Two years earlier, Primrose Hill – specifically, the spot outside Robin’s house – had been listed as Number 1 on a Best Places for a Quiet Retreat in London article on some popular magazine website. It was praised for, on occasion, its magnificent sunsets, and the seemingly unpolluted and panoramic view it provided of the city; both a ‘sense of inclusion’, but also a safe and calming distance from its incessant panic.
The article remained up, and was frequently visited by tourists and the like. More recently, the editor decided to update it. In Primrose Hill’s section, he spoke, out of obligation, about the fact that it was the one place far enough to remain untouched by the fires: of how, just as they had watched the sunset, the residents of Primrose Hill refused to evacuate and stood on as their city burned, praying for those they knew. One woman called Christine gave a personal account.
Below this, in a suitably understated final paragraph, the article stated the presence of the shrine. Visitors to the hill began to look out for the shrine, and learned about the stories of the Doctor. Some, who claimed to have seen him, left their own. Eventually, children began to make up stories of the Doctor; Planet Earth’s great firefighter, and would leave them, with immaculately-illustrated covers, at the front of the shrine. Every morning, Robin would go out and read the next one. She tended to maintain the shrine – moderate its content, not that it needed moderating; there was never a single prat who tried to deface it. Others offered to remove the fictional accounts, but Robin insisted on keeping them. The Doctor would have loved them. In fact, they were probably true, and when she read them it was the one thing that made her feel like he was still alive.
Today, no stories had been left; and on such a chilly, unremarkable weekday evening – an evening where rain had been wrongly forecast – Robin was alone on the hill.
“I don’t normally speak to you,” she said, addressing the closest thing the Doctor had to a grave. “It’s a bit of a cliché really, isn’t it… I never really got it. When people do it in films, I think it’s weird, but there we go. I’m an atheist. And that’s why I don’t. I didn’t do it at Tommy’s grave, I didn’t do it at Harry’s, and I didn’t do it at Jess’s. The reason I’m doing it here isn’t because… well, it’s not a cliché, put it that way. It’s because you’re a time traveller. You took me to imaginary futures, you took me to a city under the sea, you took me to meet Anne Bloody Boleyn, and of all those made-up stories about you, I reckon half of them are true. So is it really so much of a leap of faith to believe that somehow, by one of your weird sci-fi quirks, you can hear me right now? Because I hope you can hear these words.”
Robin glanced around, still embarrassed. Ahead of her, the cloudy sky above Primrose Hill made a feeble attempt at a sunset.
“Quick update, then, ‘cuz I haven’t really seen you for a while. After you died, I… well, we never really found out what happened. I had my theories, so did everyone else. I said she killed you. You probably tried to convince her you didn’t care about Earth either, until you were free of all your pressure-points. She realised there was nothing she could use against you, so she just…” Robin expected to cry at the subject of the Doctor’s death, but she found the words slipped out bitterly. “…killed you. I hope it didn’t hurt. I hope…” She considered her next point. Did she hope he didn’t even know? Would the Doctor have wanted to know? She abandoned the subject. “There are people who think you killed yourself. Maybe you did. They said the Master knew what happened to Autumn… maybe that pushed you over the edge. It couldn’t have been that bad, could it?” She decided she didn’t want an answer. “It’s sad, what happened. Because we all loved you. But if that’s what you did… if you’d lost that much… I don’t hate you for it.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. The tears were coming. She realised anyone following her major life events would have her down as a crier, and resented them for it. She had barely cried once between the Doctor’s death and this conversation. Perhaps that was why it happened – she always bottled it up. “I understand. But… it’s all my fault. I should have never believed all that rubbish you said back in the cell, I should have stuck by your side, stopped this from happening… why did I believe it?” She noticed her face reflected back at her by one of the artefacts left for the Doctor; appropriate, now she seemed to be addressing herself. “I made it all about me, and I killed you, and I’m sorry.” She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face. “I’ve been sleeping terribly. I should be enjoying pregnancy but I’m not. I had a girl come up to me today, she said she was pregnant, and you know, you always hope things will work out, but maybe she shouldn’t keep it. This isn’t a good world. This ‘real world’ without you… I don’t think I like it very much.”
Robin flinched as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She had been oblivious to Chris pulling up outside the house. He must have spotted her by the shrine. The pseudo-sunset was over, and he seemed to be feeling the chill worse than her.
“Come on love,” he said calmly. “It’s too cold to be out at this time. Let’s go inside.” Robin nodded and placed her hand on top of his. She took a last look at the shrine, and noticed a figurine she had questioned a few days ago. It looked like it was meant to be of an old man with messy hair in a velvet jacket. Someone else’s Doctor. But she kept it there; it must have meant something, and it could have been true. Though she could not have been more wrong all those months ago about what the Doctor had thought of her, she had managed to get one observation right.
“I never really got a chance to know you at all.”
“Because I disagree. Because the most important thing, Robin, the most important, is autonomy. Is making your own decisions. I don’t think you should go back, because I don’t think there’s anything you could do. I think it would be mad… suicidal. But that doesn’t matter.” Sasha stood up too, and looked to the crowd. That was the direction she would head – she had already decided. That’s where I’ll find Dad. “What matters is that the choice is there. That you have the choice to be sensible, and to be beautifully foolish, if that’s what you want to do. You deserve to know. You deserve the right to mess it all up and to put it all back together, Robin, and you deserve to know what kind of man the Doctor is.”
Robin was speechless.
“A good one,” finished Sasha. “He’s a good man, Robin, and you need to know that.” She smiled again. “I’ll leave you now.” Robin was too lost for words to say goodbye, but Sasha did not seem to mind; she jogged on a bit further, and joined the crowd ahead.
“Well then,” said Chris, the last to get up. “Let’s follow her. Everyone’s going.”
Robin turned back to the direction of London. If there are no visible fires…
“Robin, come on…”
“I’m not going.” Robin turned back to Chris. “I’m sorry, you can go on if you like, but I’m not going. I can’t.”
“You can’t stay here!”
“I’m going back to find the Doctor.”
Chris sighed, exasperated. “Robin, every time he steps back into our lives, this happens. Someone gets killed. It will happen again, now please, just turn around.”
“No!” cried Robin, her voice cracking. “Now just you listen to me, Mr McKnight. In ten months’ time, we are having a baby together. And do you know why we’re having that baby? Because three years ago, that man…” she pointed toward London, “stopped a bunch of murderous mannequins from taking over the whole stupid world, and then he just got up and left.” Chris closed his eyes, still frustrated; it seemed there would be no getting through to her. “And do you know why we met?”
Chris tried not to think about it.
“We met,” exclaimed Robin, more tears rolling down her cheeks, “because he introduced us. Everything you see in this world is here because of him. So yes. I’m going to go back to London, and if I have to, I will give up everything I have, so that I can finally, just this once, pay him back.”
“Then this journey is over,” uttered Chris.
“Wait, I’m sorry… what?”
“This journey south. Because I am never, Mrs McKnight, stepping another foot anywhere but by your side.” He beamed; that kind beam that had first attracted Robin to him when he offered her the job. “Let’s go to London. Let’s save our friend.”
***
“Do you still get sad?”
Robin smiled. The deep longing in her smile seemed to give Chloe the answer she wanted, but Robin went on to elaborate. “Of course I do. How couldn’t you? He was a good man, at heart, even if he sometimes made mistakes. And it was my fault…” She reached for a handkerchief and blew her nose. Her first instinct was to break down; she always repressed the things she felt, and they always came out at the wrong moments.
“It wasn’t, miss.”
“Chloe, I’m fine. It’s not about me. Don’t let this get about me.” She pocketed her handkerchief. “The future.” She tried to smile again. “What were your plans, before the pregnancy?”
“Well… I wanted to study business at uni.” Chloe laughed nervously. “I know, it doesn’t seem like me, I probably ain’t bright enough for uni. But I always fancied it. Still…” She placed her hand over her stomach. “Stupid suggestion won’t even happen if I keep the baby, will it? ‘Cuz that’d just be it.”
“No,” spoke Robin softly. “It wouldn’t. You know, there are women out there who do it. Seriously, teen mothers who had plans and go on. Because if it’s what you want… and let me just emphasise this again, Chloe, if you do choose to keep this, you have to know for sure that you want it… then it’s not the end of the world. Not at all. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world. I had my Tommy in my early thirties and however much I worshipped him, it was still the biggest challenge of my life. You go to uni and you won’t have a break, you won’t have a social life, and you could well have a few, well, breakdowns.” Chloe shuddered, but appreciated the honesty. “But you’ll live. And do you know what, Chloe, with the right support – and we would do everything we could to support you, through sixth form at the very least – you could do it.”
Chloe brightened up. “You think?”
“Absolutely.” Robin turned serious. “But Chloe, it has to be what you want. This isn’t about what’s sensible, what’s not sensible, what’s ‘right’ or what’s ‘wrong’. It’s what you want to do.”
***
“Why did you do it?” The Master stood up, and the furniture vanished. The Doctor stayed on his leather armchair. “You’ve been terrified of Gallifrey for years. Why did you bring them here?”
“Because it was beyond my control. And besides,” the Doctor scoffed, “I’m not terrified of Gallifrey. I just don’t care about it.”
“Oh, really?” The Master circled around the Doctor’s chair. “People who don’t care about where they came from pop home for casual visits every couple of years, read the news, do whatever suits them. They don’t run and run and pretend it doesn’t even exist, with only a photo on their wall as proof. No, you’re terrified of Gallifrey. I don’t know why, but something about that planet scares you stiff.”
The Doctor shivered and stood up, putting the subject aside. “Tell me what happened to Autumn Rivers.”
“I can tell you what happened to her. But you won’t like it.”
“Of course, I won’t even believe you, either,” remarked the Doctor. “After all, what reason would you have to tell me?”
“That reason, Doctor.” The Doctor’s armchair vanished; just he and his enemy remained now, wandering through the emptiness. “Because you won’t like it.” The Master was glaring now, bitterly, her fists clenched. “Because you tricked me into letting Robin go, so now I have no leverage against you. All I can do is hurt you. And this will hurt you…” She grinned wickedly. “Oh, this will hurt you…”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not going to like this at all…”
“Tell me!” the Doctor barked.
“Ectopic pregnancy.”
The Doctor stepped back, confused.
“A few centuries back, before civilisation made any major medical advancements,” continued the Master. “A young woman fell pregnant with a new daughter. But the foetus developed in the fallopian tube. This was before the days of operations. The mother died, and the foetus… little, reincarnated Autumn, so much potential… followed on after.”
“No,” whispered the Doctor, shaking his head. “No. No!”
“God really was cruel, wasn’t he?” challenged the Master, egging the Doctor on. “He really did play a sick, twisted little game with you. Oh, but I forgot… you let him live. You gave me up. You endorsed all the other terrible acts he’ll commit. Because you called the Time Lords. And here they come!”
A light began to shine above them; the same blood-red hue the Doctor’s sonic had projected, and holographic, moving writing of the same shade appeared: Gallifreyan.
“I will not go back to Gallifrey,” willed the Doctor. “I will not!”
“You’re inside the Gallifrey Matrix!” laughed the Master. “And you’ve just summoned them right to your little corner! There’s only one way out of this, and that’s to the world of dreams.”
“And how do I get there?” The Doctor moved closer to the Master, almost intimidatingly, his coat swinging behind him. “Tell me, now, how do I get there?”
“You die.”
The Doctor stopped, and stepped back. Perhaps the closer he got, the more the Master lied.
“I can move freely between dreams outside of the Matrix because I’m dead. But you’re still alive, so you’re confined purely to digital space.” The Master put her hands behind her back. “You have to die, Doctor.” She took one arm out, and in it she now held a gun, which she handed to the Doctor. He took it, his hand trembling. “You don’t have long, of course. They’re nearly here. When they find us, they’ll extract you and bring you to Gallifrey. When they find me, I’ll be archived to somewhere… safer. I’ve already had it, Doctor, but you…” This time it was the Master who was moving towards the Doctor, threatening him. “You could be free.”
The Doctor handled the gun; such a foreign object, the kind of thing he would usually hand to Autumn Rivers and pretend didn’t exist. He examined it. It was so heavy…
“Free from the Time Lords forever,” continued the Master.
He held it to his head this time, and rested his finger over the trigger.
“Free to dream, forever.”
The Doctor closed his eyes. “We live, as we dream…”
He pulled the trigger.
***
“Where is he?”
“Robin!” exclaimed Tommy, hearing her voice over the flames. He stepped momentarily out of the Gallery, safe between two pillars“Get away from the f-“
He stopped, awestricken. His warning was not just futile, it was unnecessary: the fires were deferentially avoiding Robin, forming a sort of archway, like the parting of the Red Sea. Robin seemed aware of this, almost unable to perceive the fires.
Robin ran up to Tommy, her appearance desperate. He always thought she looked to him as a son – she gave him more patience, more kindness, and more warmth than she ever seemed to offer anyone. Yet now, that was gone. There was something underneath that could not wait long enough to be patient or kind, and was not satisfied enough to be warm.
“Where is he?” she repeated, pleading.
“The Doctor?” Tommy turned around and pointed to Westminster Abbey. “He’s gone to Westminster Abbey, where the fires started…”
Before Tommy could react, Robin had shot off in the direction of the abbey, and the fires ahead began to part in anticipation.
“Robin, you won’t be able to…”
Tommy stopped calling. She could no longer hear him, and he suspected she would not have chosen to anyway. He stepped back inside.
***
Robin ran inside the abbey, the great doors seeming to give way to the softest touch of her hand. She darted across the chequered floor, her feet by sheer chance seeming to land perfectly in the boxes: as a child, suspicious of stepping on the cracks, she would have found this satisfying. Now, she felt more scared than ever at this cavernous, daunting place: a complex construction full of interior quirks she could not describe, constructions whose names she did not know, patterns she had never seen. She felt stupid.
The light was spilling in through the tainted glass window, illuminating the floor and reflecting back in her eyes. When she moved her arm and studied it closer, she saw him lying there, right in the centre, as symmetrical and perfectly-aligned as she had been as she entered. And still.
The Doctor.
Robin put her hand to her mouth and knelt down by his side. It could have been anything – he could have been sleeping. She had not observed him long enough to make a definite judgement; a trained medic would have taken at least another minute, but she knew. After all these years, after every adventure gone wrong, Robin McKnight knew what a dead body looked like. She knew how to infer the absence of life. She knew what posture a living being never took. She knew when it had all just…
Gone.
“No…”
Robin cried, but for once, did not reach for a handkerchief. She always hated herself for crying – always thought it was weak; that she was overreacting. This time, she let the tears flow and implored that more would follow. A hole had been cut in the universe, in the fabric of everything that was good: crying was not only justified; it was an insufficient response. The adequate response, she realised, was a catharsis beyond which any human being was capable.
She wondered what grief was like on Gallifrey.
“Gabriel…”
She ran her hand softly across the Doctor’s face. It was already losing colour; his eyes were closed, and his expression vacant. There was no chance that his conscious had lingered. Anything she said would just be for her own benefit.
So she said nothing.
For five minutes, she sat by his side, cradling his body in her arms. When that time had passed, she heard the doors of the abbey swing open behind her, and in followed other familiar faces: Tommy, Colonel Ward, Chris…
Chris stepped forward beyond the others and hesitated, considering comforting his wife. He stayed back, understanding, based on the little he had ever been able to understand about Robin’s relationship with this strange, strange, being. He understood the need to be alone with one’s angel.
***
“Oh God miss, I’m so sorry.” Chloe glanced up at the clock again, then down to her phone to check the time. “I didn’t realise, you only do part-time now, I’m keeping you behind…”
“It’s fine, really, don’t worry about it. I’ll stay here as long as you like.”
“Thanks miss, but…” Chloe lifted up her bag and secured it back over her shoulder; its rightful place, and a sign that the period of anger had passed. “I’d better get back to lessons now, say sorry to sir for messing about… but really miss, thanks so much.”
Robin smiled modestly. “It’s my job, Chloe. And I’d take a chat with you over logging reports any day.”
Chloe stood up, appreciative, but not wanting to bathe in it. “I dunno, miss.” She paused at the door. “About the baby, I mean. I dunno what I’m gonna do. Obviously I’ve gotta make up my mind soon, like… but I’ll think about it.” She took the leaflet out of her pocket and gave it a wave towards Robin. It already had creased edges, and a doodled-on illustration. “I’ll think about what I want.”
“You’d better,” said Robin, and realised that her argument may have seemed one-sided. “Chloe, if you want to get an abortion… you know, people will tell you that it’s a choice of killing, ‘getting rid’ of it, but it’s really not. That thing inside you right now is just a lump of cells. The choice is whether… whether you want that lump of cells to grow into something that you can call life. Whether you’re ready for that yet.” Robin shrugged; her nonchalance put Chloe at ease just as she was beginning to feel on edge. “It’s your call.”
Chloe nodded, opening the door, then hesitated again.
“When’s yours due?”
Robin laughed and pushed back in her spinny chair, giving Chloe a proper view of her volleyball-sized belly. She did not seem to have put the weight on anywhere else.
“Soon,” chuckled Robin. “Very soon.”
Chloe laughed and thanked Robin again, before finally leaving. Realising she was alone in her office, with no one to keep the mask on for, Robin’s face fell. It was that time of the day, and she had that distant yearning she still experienced every so often. She knew where she had to go.
Primrose Hill
It was an impromptu shrine. A child from Coal Hill School, during the reconstruction, had taken the day off out of a desire to escape everything that was happening. His mother had died during the fires, and his father had come close – but just as the fires closed in on them, they began to retreat. It was later explained that this had been down to the work of one man: the Doctor.
The Doctor’s body had been moved to a UNIT storage facility, and the TARDIS presumably had too, if it was even recovered. So one day, the boy constructed, with some loose wooden planks – something which there was hardly a shortage of during the demolitions – a flimsy but meaningful replica of the ship. Together, as the other pupils and even members of staff learnt about the model, they began to gather what they could: drawings of the man, photographs of him, stories compiled into short anthologies, left by the statue in the hope that people would pick up and read them, learn about the man who had fought the fires.
And they did. Two years earlier, Primrose Hill – specifically, the spot outside Robin’s house – had been listed as Number 1 on a Best Places for a Quiet Retreat in London article on some popular magazine website. It was praised for, on occasion, its magnificent sunsets, and the seemingly unpolluted and panoramic view it provided of the city; both a ‘sense of inclusion’, but also a safe and calming distance from its incessant panic.
The article remained up, and was frequently visited by tourists and the like. More recently, the editor decided to update it. In Primrose Hill’s section, he spoke, out of obligation, about the fact that it was the one place far enough to remain untouched by the fires: of how, just as they had watched the sunset, the residents of Primrose Hill refused to evacuate and stood on as their city burned, praying for those they knew. One woman called Christine gave a personal account.
Below this, in a suitably understated final paragraph, the article stated the presence of the shrine. Visitors to the hill began to look out for the shrine, and learned about the stories of the Doctor. Some, who claimed to have seen him, left their own. Eventually, children began to make up stories of the Doctor; Planet Earth’s great firefighter, and would leave them, with immaculately-illustrated covers, at the front of the shrine. Every morning, Robin would go out and read the next one. She tended to maintain the shrine – moderate its content, not that it needed moderating; there was never a single prat who tried to deface it. Others offered to remove the fictional accounts, but Robin insisted on keeping them. The Doctor would have loved them. In fact, they were probably true, and when she read them it was the one thing that made her feel like he was still alive.
Today, no stories had been left; and on such a chilly, unremarkable weekday evening – an evening where rain had been wrongly forecast – Robin was alone on the hill.
“I don’t normally speak to you,” she said, addressing the closest thing the Doctor had to a grave. “It’s a bit of a cliché really, isn’t it… I never really got it. When people do it in films, I think it’s weird, but there we go. I’m an atheist. And that’s why I don’t. I didn’t do it at Tommy’s grave, I didn’t do it at Harry’s, and I didn’t do it at Jess’s. The reason I’m doing it here isn’t because… well, it’s not a cliché, put it that way. It’s because you’re a time traveller. You took me to imaginary futures, you took me to a city under the sea, you took me to meet Anne Bloody Boleyn, and of all those made-up stories about you, I reckon half of them are true. So is it really so much of a leap of faith to believe that somehow, by one of your weird sci-fi quirks, you can hear me right now? Because I hope you can hear these words.”
Robin glanced around, still embarrassed. Ahead of her, the cloudy sky above Primrose Hill made a feeble attempt at a sunset.
“Quick update, then, ‘cuz I haven’t really seen you for a while. After you died, I… well, we never really found out what happened. I had my theories, so did everyone else. I said she killed you. You probably tried to convince her you didn’t care about Earth either, until you were free of all your pressure-points. She realised there was nothing she could use against you, so she just…” Robin expected to cry at the subject of the Doctor’s death, but she found the words slipped out bitterly. “…killed you. I hope it didn’t hurt. I hope…” She considered her next point. Did she hope he didn’t even know? Would the Doctor have wanted to know? She abandoned the subject. “There are people who think you killed yourself. Maybe you did. They said the Master knew what happened to Autumn… maybe that pushed you over the edge. It couldn’t have been that bad, could it?” She decided she didn’t want an answer. “It’s sad, what happened. Because we all loved you. But if that’s what you did… if you’d lost that much… I don’t hate you for it.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. The tears were coming. She realised anyone following her major life events would have her down as a crier, and resented them for it. She had barely cried once between the Doctor’s death and this conversation. Perhaps that was why it happened – she always bottled it up. “I understand. But… it’s all my fault. I should have never believed all that rubbish you said back in the cell, I should have stuck by your side, stopped this from happening… why did I believe it?” She noticed her face reflected back at her by one of the artefacts left for the Doctor; appropriate, now she seemed to be addressing herself. “I made it all about me, and I killed you, and I’m sorry.” She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face. “I’ve been sleeping terribly. I should be enjoying pregnancy but I’m not. I had a girl come up to me today, she said she was pregnant, and you know, you always hope things will work out, but maybe she shouldn’t keep it. This isn’t a good world. This ‘real world’ without you… I don’t think I like it very much.”
Robin flinched as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She had been oblivious to Chris pulling up outside the house. He must have spotted her by the shrine. The pseudo-sunset was over, and he seemed to be feeling the chill worse than her.
“Come on love,” he said calmly. “It’s too cold to be out at this time. Let’s go inside.” Robin nodded and placed her hand on top of his. She took a last look at the shrine, and noticed a figurine she had questioned a few days ago. It looked like it was meant to be of an old man with messy hair in a velvet jacket. Someone else’s Doctor. But she kept it there; it must have meant something, and it could have been true. Though she could not have been more wrong all those months ago about what the Doctor had thought of her, she had managed to get one observation right.
“I never really got a chance to know you at all.”