prologue
How would Lizzie tell someone the impossible?
Well. Impossible. It was a bit of a strong word.
In fact, Lizzie did not believe, after the most recent months in her life, that the word impossible should even exist, since any known definition of the word had been disproved. She’d sat in exactly the same spot, several months ago, when her life beat at the same, monotonous rhythm, and she wanted nothing more than to escape, and yet she was trapped, because of politics, and because of herself. Not that long ago, her life hadn’t meant anything, and she’d felt so guilty about that, and so sad. Those were the days when things had felt impossible, as if no matter what happened, it would never be possible to reach what she truly needed.
But things changed.
Things didn’t feel impossible anymore, because she’d seen things that stretched well beyond the realms of what she’d thought was possible. And through that, she’d realised that if she were dreaming, she could make them come true. When she said it over to herself, it sounded awfully clichéd, and slightly cringeworthy. Though, it was easier to use a cliché instead of trying to find words for it. Maybe that was because the words didn’t exist, so a cliché was just easier instead of scrabbling around to find some adjectives, a verb and the odd noun to string together in a sentence to help describe it.
Lizzie did not want to keep her clichés to herself, however. She had done that for long enough, and she had loved it, keeping such an amazing secret that wouldn’t even make sense to most people. The time was now, to let a big part of her world know, at least. Maggie, her former support worker, was much more than just that. When Lizzie was struggling with the world, and was so stuck in a dark place she couldn’t find even the tiniest glimmer of light, Maggie would always, somehow, find some way of getting through to her.
Lizzie realised that Maggie deserved to know. And yet she’d doubted her decision to tell her. Several times. Several times over, she doubted.
Eventually, she decided she might as well go for it. In a moment when she felt good, she decided to bite the bullet, because there would be no better time – five minutes later, and she’d be doubting herself again. And that’s where she now sat – across from Maggie, at her kitchen table, a warm cup of tea beneath her, with Maggie’s comforting eyes watching her, waiting for her to speak.
It was that terrible pause, that anticipatory silence where someone says something, and then the other person prepares to follow it up but doesn’t quite know how. Maggie had told her to go on – and now she was waiting for what Lizzie had to say.
She’d played this conversation over in her head, many times, and she knew exactly what she was going to say; they were going to have a lovely, eloquent conversation about it, and Maggie would believe her and they’d drink tea and all be happy. (That was a thing people often did – scripting both sides of a conversation in their heads as they waited for just the right moment).
But now the moment had come and the planned script had vanished. She decided she just had to go for it.
“I’ve – I – I’ve seen the impossible.”
Maggie’s face did not change. There may have been just the flicker of momentary confusion, but nothing too obvious. But she didn’t interrupt – she sat there, ready to listen.
“I travel in space and time.”
The words were simple, and surprisingly, there wasn’t very much hesitation. And Maggie’s expression was now not only one of confusion, but of understanding – as if she were listening to Lizzie quoting from a story instead of telling a truth. Maggie did not speak. She waited, patiently, for Lizzie to continue.
“There’s this box, like…a box that’s bigger on the inside, and there is this guy called the Doctor, and he’s weirdly charming and sad, and a bit mad as well, and together we fly around in time and space, and we –”
Lizzie’s voice was running away from her, and she was running out of breath, and it was as if the walls were closing in on her, and in the briefest of seconds she wished she’d never said anything.
“Calm down, darling,” Maggie said softly as she reached over the table and placed her hands on Lizzie’s. She didn’t dismiss anything – Maggie didn’t do that. “Talk a bit slower! I’m old. I’m not quite as ‘with it’ as I was.”
Lizzie laughed at that. She had known Maggie would be kind – and suddenly, it didn’t feel as if she were doing something so stupid. She felt it was right.
“There’s this guy, and he’s called the Doctor,” Lizzie repeated, more slowly, taking deep breaths. “He’s an alien – and, together, we fly around the universe in a magic box.”
It would be an understatement to say Maggie wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
“Magic boxes – goodness, men do go to such lengths nowadays,” Maggie gave her a wink, and Lizzie laughed, shaking her head.
“I’m not making this up, I promise.”
“Darling – look-”
Suddenly Lizzie was worried that Maggie didn’t believe her. This was what she’d feared the most – that the person she could confide in about anything wouldn’t believe the greatest and biggest secret she’d ever told anyone. Ever.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Maggie said, and Lizzie believed that Maggie believed her. “It’s just – well – quite a lot to take in.”
Lizzie understood. To be fair, if she’d been told about the Doctor over a cup of tea, and hadn’t experienced it first hand, she’d have probably thought the same. And perhaps she had not expressed herself as clearly as she might because of her fear that even Maggie might not believe her.
“I’d love to meet him,” Maggie laughed. “I mean, Lizzie, what you’re saying,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t believe you. My head is telling me not to believe you because it’s—”
Impossible, Lizzie thought.
“But for some reason,” Maggie continued. “In my heart, I do believe you. I’ve no idea why.”
Lizzie hadn’t expected this, which was a bit of a naïve judgement on her part. She’d expected her to either take it on the chin or laugh in her face – instead, she’d believed her, but the way Maggie spoke, and the way she looked, it was clear that what she was hearing was not something she could easily believe, and yet she did. Her response was a simultaneous blend of wonder, amazement, scepticism and concern. Maggie sighed and looked away.
“Lizzie, that’s just—”
Lizzie took her hands out from underneath Maggie’s, and placed them on top of Maggie’s, Lizzie’s hands now returning Maggie’s soothing reassurance.
“My god,” Maggie laughed in realization. “And you – travel with him… in a box …
Right in the middle of Maggie’s sentence, there was outside the sound of pottery shattering, several paving slabs smashing in half, and then the sound of something huge thumping against the ground, like an almighty fist punching the Earth.
“What the bloody heck is happening in my garden?!” It was one of those weird moments when something is mentioned in a conversation and then suddenly it happens... as if it had been listening in.
Maggie was already out of her chair and was staring out her window. In contrast, Lizzie remained calm; although she had not expected it, she knew exactly what was going on.
The Doctor had made many entrances, but never one quite like this.
The backdoor was now open and Maggie was gazing out at the garden, the shattered remnants of a garden gnome lying in front of her like a dismembered body. Several shards of paving slab stuck out of the lawn as if they were bits of broken glass, and in the centre of the small garden, was a great big blue police box.
Maggie’s face really was one hell of a picture.
Suddenly, the doors to the box flew open, and smoke poured from the inside, billowing out into the garden and up into the air. The two women saw the faint outline of a figure, fumbling around inside, stumbling out and blinking in the harsh sunlight.
The Doctor, along with his usual outfit, wore a rainbow coloured party hat on his head, daisy chains around his neck, and a gigantic-framed pair of comical blue glasses.
“Sorry,” he waved at Lizzie and Maggie, who watched him with absolutely no idea as to what he was up to. Lizzie had never seen him like this before – so gregariously wacky, zany and bonkers.
She was about to say something, when he continued to speak. And then it all made sense.
“Number one duty of being a dad! Birthday parties!”
Well. Impossible. It was a bit of a strong word.
In fact, Lizzie did not believe, after the most recent months in her life, that the word impossible should even exist, since any known definition of the word had been disproved. She’d sat in exactly the same spot, several months ago, when her life beat at the same, monotonous rhythm, and she wanted nothing more than to escape, and yet she was trapped, because of politics, and because of herself. Not that long ago, her life hadn’t meant anything, and she’d felt so guilty about that, and so sad. Those were the days when things had felt impossible, as if no matter what happened, it would never be possible to reach what she truly needed.
But things changed.
Things didn’t feel impossible anymore, because she’d seen things that stretched well beyond the realms of what she’d thought was possible. And through that, she’d realised that if she were dreaming, she could make them come true. When she said it over to herself, it sounded awfully clichéd, and slightly cringeworthy. Though, it was easier to use a cliché instead of trying to find words for it. Maybe that was because the words didn’t exist, so a cliché was just easier instead of scrabbling around to find some adjectives, a verb and the odd noun to string together in a sentence to help describe it.
Lizzie did not want to keep her clichés to herself, however. She had done that for long enough, and she had loved it, keeping such an amazing secret that wouldn’t even make sense to most people. The time was now, to let a big part of her world know, at least. Maggie, her former support worker, was much more than just that. When Lizzie was struggling with the world, and was so stuck in a dark place she couldn’t find even the tiniest glimmer of light, Maggie would always, somehow, find some way of getting through to her.
Lizzie realised that Maggie deserved to know. And yet she’d doubted her decision to tell her. Several times. Several times over, she doubted.
Eventually, she decided she might as well go for it. In a moment when she felt good, she decided to bite the bullet, because there would be no better time – five minutes later, and she’d be doubting herself again. And that’s where she now sat – across from Maggie, at her kitchen table, a warm cup of tea beneath her, with Maggie’s comforting eyes watching her, waiting for her to speak.
It was that terrible pause, that anticipatory silence where someone says something, and then the other person prepares to follow it up but doesn’t quite know how. Maggie had told her to go on – and now she was waiting for what Lizzie had to say.
She’d played this conversation over in her head, many times, and she knew exactly what she was going to say; they were going to have a lovely, eloquent conversation about it, and Maggie would believe her and they’d drink tea and all be happy. (That was a thing people often did – scripting both sides of a conversation in their heads as they waited for just the right moment).
But now the moment had come and the planned script had vanished. She decided she just had to go for it.
“I’ve – I – I’ve seen the impossible.”
Maggie’s face did not change. There may have been just the flicker of momentary confusion, but nothing too obvious. But she didn’t interrupt – she sat there, ready to listen.
“I travel in space and time.”
The words were simple, and surprisingly, there wasn’t very much hesitation. And Maggie’s expression was now not only one of confusion, but of understanding – as if she were listening to Lizzie quoting from a story instead of telling a truth. Maggie did not speak. She waited, patiently, for Lizzie to continue.
“There’s this box, like…a box that’s bigger on the inside, and there is this guy called the Doctor, and he’s weirdly charming and sad, and a bit mad as well, and together we fly around in time and space, and we –”
Lizzie’s voice was running away from her, and she was running out of breath, and it was as if the walls were closing in on her, and in the briefest of seconds she wished she’d never said anything.
“Calm down, darling,” Maggie said softly as she reached over the table and placed her hands on Lizzie’s. She didn’t dismiss anything – Maggie didn’t do that. “Talk a bit slower! I’m old. I’m not quite as ‘with it’ as I was.”
Lizzie laughed at that. She had known Maggie would be kind – and suddenly, it didn’t feel as if she were doing something so stupid. She felt it was right.
“There’s this guy, and he’s called the Doctor,” Lizzie repeated, more slowly, taking deep breaths. “He’s an alien – and, together, we fly around the universe in a magic box.”
It would be an understatement to say Maggie wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
“Magic boxes – goodness, men do go to such lengths nowadays,” Maggie gave her a wink, and Lizzie laughed, shaking her head.
“I’m not making this up, I promise.”
“Darling – look-”
Suddenly Lizzie was worried that Maggie didn’t believe her. This was what she’d feared the most – that the person she could confide in about anything wouldn’t believe the greatest and biggest secret she’d ever told anyone. Ever.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Maggie said, and Lizzie believed that Maggie believed her. “It’s just – well – quite a lot to take in.”
Lizzie understood. To be fair, if she’d been told about the Doctor over a cup of tea, and hadn’t experienced it first hand, she’d have probably thought the same. And perhaps she had not expressed herself as clearly as she might because of her fear that even Maggie might not believe her.
“I’d love to meet him,” Maggie laughed. “I mean, Lizzie, what you’re saying,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t believe you. My head is telling me not to believe you because it’s—”
Impossible, Lizzie thought.
“But for some reason,” Maggie continued. “In my heart, I do believe you. I’ve no idea why.”
Lizzie hadn’t expected this, which was a bit of a naïve judgement on her part. She’d expected her to either take it on the chin or laugh in her face – instead, she’d believed her, but the way Maggie spoke, and the way she looked, it was clear that what she was hearing was not something she could easily believe, and yet she did. Her response was a simultaneous blend of wonder, amazement, scepticism and concern. Maggie sighed and looked away.
“Lizzie, that’s just—”
Lizzie took her hands out from underneath Maggie’s, and placed them on top of Maggie’s, Lizzie’s hands now returning Maggie’s soothing reassurance.
“My god,” Maggie laughed in realization. “And you – travel with him… in a box …
Right in the middle of Maggie’s sentence, there was outside the sound of pottery shattering, several paving slabs smashing in half, and then the sound of something huge thumping against the ground, like an almighty fist punching the Earth.
“What the bloody heck is happening in my garden?!” It was one of those weird moments when something is mentioned in a conversation and then suddenly it happens... as if it had been listening in.
Maggie was already out of her chair and was staring out her window. In contrast, Lizzie remained calm; although she had not expected it, she knew exactly what was going on.
The Doctor had made many entrances, but never one quite like this.
The backdoor was now open and Maggie was gazing out at the garden, the shattered remnants of a garden gnome lying in front of her like a dismembered body. Several shards of paving slab stuck out of the lawn as if they were bits of broken glass, and in the centre of the small garden, was a great big blue police box.
Maggie’s face really was one hell of a picture.
Suddenly, the doors to the box flew open, and smoke poured from the inside, billowing out into the garden and up into the air. The two women saw the faint outline of a figure, fumbling around inside, stumbling out and blinking in the harsh sunlight.
The Doctor, along with his usual outfit, wore a rainbow coloured party hat on his head, daisy chains around his neck, and a gigantic-framed pair of comical blue glasses.
“Sorry,” he waved at Lizzie and Maggie, who watched him with absolutely no idea as to what he was up to. Lizzie had never seen him like this before – so gregariously wacky, zany and bonkers.
She was about to say something, when he continued to speak. And then it all made sense.
“Number one duty of being a dad! Birthday parties!”
THE EIGHTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES
SERIES 5 - EPISODE 6
THE BLOOD TIES
Written by peter darwin
TWO WEEKS EARLIER (LIZZIE TIME); 3030 YEARS LATER (UNIVERSAL TIME)
“I don’t know why I bother,” the Doctor stood outside the TARDIS, his satchel over his shoulder, ready to investigate whatever it was that had moved the TARDIS halfway across the universe. The Doctor had spent the previous five minutes doing a weird silent pacing, that if audible would certainly be tutting. Lizzie had been watching him at a distance, from inside the TARDIS, sceptical about saying anything.
After a moment, she followed him out of the box, and into a strange metal corridor, that looked a lot like the sort of generic spaceship corridor in sci-fi movies. He closed and locked the TARDIS door behind her. Then the inhabitants of the spaceship appeared.
There were four guards, dressed in black leathers approaching them. They wielded guns as if they thought the two people stepping out of an old wooden police box would, somehow, be dangerous. She glanced at the Doctor next to her and changed her mind. They probably were dangerous. Their spacey blaster guns whirred, and the Doctor raised his hands. Lizzie looked at him and awkwardly did the same.
Then she heard a clink, clink, clink.
It was the sound of something metal tapping gently against the metal floor. She heard the sound of footsteps as well – somebody was approaching them. The guards didn’t do anything other than continue to point guns at them – they were waiting, Lizzie thought, for whoever was approaching them. As the tapping got closer, the guards made way for the imminent arrival.
Dwarfed by the four burly guards, was a tiny old man, with an oversized lab coat draped over his shoulders. He leaned heavily on a metal-tipped walking cane – it was sleek, and elegant, and the handle was padded with soft leather. Lizzie looked at the Doctor who clearly recognised the man.
“Doctor,” he murmured in a throaty voice. “It’s… been a while.”
“Yes, it has,” the Doctor murmured, as if he were hesitant to say anything else. Lizzie glared at at the Doctor with an introduce me sort of look.
“Lizzie,” the Doctor responded, “This is Dr Siddiqui.”
Dr Siddiqui nodded with a snigger.
“Dr Siddiqui, this is Elizabeth Darwin,” the Doctor added.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lizzie,” Dr Siddiqui giggled, with no sign of pleasure at all in his gravelly ancient voice. “Follow me.”
“Erm… and… a pleasure to meet you too,” Lizzie said, basically to herself, with an awkward but friendly smile as Siddiqui turned and walked away, the Doctor and Lizzie following, with the four guards close behind.
“Dr Siddiqui and I go way back,” the Doctor continued, and Lizzie tried to picture the Doctor’s life before she’d met him. She’d tried to picture it more than a few times in the past.
“Not as far back as the Doctor likes to believe,” Siddiqui interrupted.
“We saved Zygons together,” the Doctor said.
“We did not,” Siddiqui corrected him.
“I know. I was wrong,” the Doctor admitted, and Lizzie wondered what he’d been wrong about.
“It was, in fact, your friend – what was her name?” Siddiqui played a game of mock guessing. “Jessica? Jemima? Oh, that’s it! Jasmine.”
The Doctor walked past Siddiqui, looking at the floor as he went. His face was a picture of anger mingled with guilt. He turned left into the room that somehow, he knew they’d been destined for.
“Jasmine died,” Lizzie looked sternly at the odious little man. “Along with your decency, it seems.”
***
There were four of them sitting around a table, while a woman, who had introduced herself as Elle Mthembu, stood next to a screen at the front of the room. The atmosphere was tense, awkward. The one person they hadn’t yet been formally introduced to, was the man seated at the head of the table. The only thing notable about him so far was that he was sporting a small goatee.
“Who actually are you people?” the Doctor asked. “I mean… what? A space intervention agency? Intergalactic Mi6?”
“I like to think of us as more of an intergalactic Thunderbirds,” grinned the man with the goatee.
“We’re the Shadow Star alliance,” Elle told him. “Who we are is of no relevance.”
“Actually – it is,” the Doctor stated firmly in deliberate opposition. “Because, somehow, you grabbed my TARDIS, and hauled it halfway across the universe.”
“Ah,” Siddiqui murmured, laughing under his breath. “When I was on board back when Jasmine and myself saved the Zygons…”
“Oh, shut up,” the Doctor said, in a way unusual for him.
“Apologies for my little friend,” said the Goatee Man, as he smiled icily at the Doctor. Sadly, he doesn’t have an ‘off-switch’.”
“… I took some readings,” Siddiqui continued. “I thought they might be useful in the future. And I was right.”
The Doctor scowled at him, as if he was so annoyed he couldn’t even be bothered to respond.
“I simply… fed them into a computer, and we caught your TARDIS… a fish in a net,” Siddiqui gave a gummy smile.
“But – what can you people want with him?” the Doctor gestured dismissively towards Siddiqui. “I mean, look at you there! Jarvis Mthembu...”
“Wait! You know who I am?” said Goatee Man, whom the Doctor was now referring to as Jarvis.
“… renowned for his humanitarian efforts. Then there’s you, Elle Mthembu – a war hero. Your silver wedding anniversary was a few weeks back. And then there’s him – Girish,” the Doctor spat out Siddiqui’s first name, in a way similar to how Siddiqui had played games with Jasmine’s name mere moments ago. “What can you two possibly want with the great Dr Girish Siddiqui, accomplished drug kingpin?”
Elle sighed, and Lizzie felt rather sorry for her.
“You’re right. We’re a space intervention agency, set up by the people to help protect themselves in a variety of circumstances. If there is an incident with the Planet Makers, we fix it. Some dangerous pathogen outbreak from a science lab, we sort it. Happy?”
The Doctor smiled warmly. “Of course.”
“Can we please get on, now?”
The Doctor gestured for her to continue, and she did so.
“What do you know about The Bug?”
The Doctor looked confused. It sounded ominous, though – as if it were a title, a sort of bid to try and sound scary.
“Not much,” the Doctor admitted. Elle pointed to the wall, and the holographic screen burst into life with a figure displayed in the form of a Vitruvian man. The bottom half looked humanoid, though the top was more like an insect, specifically a cricket. As Elle tapped the screen, more and more layers appeared on top of the creature, portraying a metal exo-skeleton, and then layers of bug-like flesh, with leathery shields covering thin wings protruding from its back. And then finally, the creature was robed entirely in black, with its head visible beneath a hood in contrast to its cricket-like body, the head was now less humanoid, and more like that of a fly, with great, bulbous eyes crafted of what seemed like a million lenses from a million pairs of tiny fly-sized glasses. Cricket style antennae were visible from beneath the hood as well, and the moving image on the screen showed the creature peering around, its antennae wiggling, sensing something, and guiding the huge eyes in whatever direction the antennae moved.
The Doctor gazed at it. “Fascinating…”
“I thought you’d be impressed,” Siddiqui giggled. “I am… it’s like an amalgamation of so many different insectoid species. Just…beautiful.”
“Not exactly,” Elle said, and Lizzie saw the solemn look on Jarvis’ face. The Doctor clearly caught sight of their faces as well.
“What is it?”
“The Bug is a terrorist,” Elle was blunt, as if that were an everyday thing, a norm. In the current climate, it was.
“Working for whom?” the Doctor asked.
“It doesn’t work for just anybody,” she continued. “It wages war against the Empire’s corruption and fraudulent activities, citing their actions as ‘despicable’, ‘dishonest’, and ‘criminal’.”
“And it’s right,” the Doctor interjected.
“It’s also a white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ+, and almost every kind of –phobic you can imagine,” Elle continued, while the Doctor’s face morphed into a picture of disgust. Not so right. “That’s body armour," Elle pointed to the screen. "Made of extremely resistant yet flexible alloys – it binds to him, and it is almost as if it turns him into… well, a bug, basically. It’s the ultimate suit of armour, and it turns him into the ultimate terrorist, giving him increased muscular abilities, advanced and alterable eyesight, and flight. This creature has hanged universal marriage activists from the gates of the Imperial Palace. It arrived at an imperial refugee camp and, within an hour and a half, had the local government on their knees. It’s final goal? To destroy ‘the pitiful imperial elite’ and restore ‘freedom of speech’. And…”
“It’s planning something…,” the Doctor finished her sentence for her. Lizzie looked at his face, and she knew what was coming next.
“Yes.”
“You want me to hunt down the most effective and most despicable terrorist in the history of the universe? Why?”
“Because you’re good at it.”
“Excuse me?” the Doctor scoffed.
“The Bug is, on the whole, ignored by the Imperial government. Its crimes are, of course, tragedies – but nothing more. You’ll find that its actions are very quickly forgotten, and that the government starts concentrating on something it deems ‘of greater necessity’. Evangeline Cullengate herself has never made any attempt to condone the Bug’s actions.”
“I’ve heard too much about this Evangeline Cullengate.”
“While my position dictates that I must remain impartial, she is vile. And that’s why we need you – because if the Bug were a Zygon or a Jarageth or anybody else, I can guarantee the government would rain hell down on them. We want you to find the Bug, and eliminate it, before it does whatever it’s planning to do. We’ve been monitoring the underworld, and we have reason to believe that whatever he plan is, it’s huge – some say will be the Bug’s greatest attack yet, and –”
Welcome to the jungle! We got fun and games…
We got everything you want honey, we know the names…
The lyrics were coming from the Doctor’s satchel, and Lizzie glanced over at him, as he looked around sheepishly. All the eyes in the room were on him, as the muffled murmurings of that iconic Guns N’ Roses tune were emanating from his person. Elle stopped talking and glared at him, and Lizzie almost laughed at the intensity and absurdity of the moment.
“Do you mind?” Elle could not seem to comprehend that a mobile phone was ringing in the middle of one of her briefings.
“Sorry. I need to get this,” the Doctor responded as he stood up and stepped away from the conference table. Lizzie was slightly more fascinated by the fact that he owned a mobile phone. He then walked over to the door, and walked out. All three of them, Elle, Jarvis and Siddiqui were bemused, as the man of the hour had just upped sticks and left in the middle of everything.
Lizzie gave them all a guilty smile, and was about to apologise, when the Doctor popped his head back through the doorway. “By the way,” he said. “The ringtone – that was my wife. She, er, changed it.”
Then he left again.
Lizzie pulled on her coat and apologised to the dumbstruck ShadowStar alliance, before following the Doctor out of the briefing room. She caught him up as he was almost halfway down the corridor.
“Oh my god – did you just – like, erm – walk out of a meeting where you were asked to help fight the most evil terrorist in the universe?”
She followed him close behind, but he didn’t stop walking. It was his purposeful walk, the one he used when he had somewhere else he wanted to be. He seemed to be smiling, though.
“The Bug can wait,” the Doctor grinned. “Time machine,” he pointed to the TARDIS. Lizzie was hoping he would fill in the verbs he’d dropped. “This can’t.”
There wasn’t much that could make the Doctor drop or abandon everything within his focus without any warning. And then Lizzie remembered the ringtone, and understood exactly why the Doctor was in such a hurry to leave.
“It’s her,” Lizzie meant it as a statement but not a question, because she was so sure that it definitely was her.
The Doctor pushed open the doors, the broadest of grins still on his face. “Yes. I think it is.”
Seeing the Doctor so happy made her smile as well, because his face was not just pleased, it was delighted, the sort of delight that fills up one’s eyes with joy and excitement and passion –
And love.
Lizzie shut the TARDIS door behind her, and within the blink of an eye, the TARDIS had already taken off.
“I don’t know why now,” the Doctor moved around the console, flicking switches and pushing buttons, his steps full of spring and glee. “But it doesn’t matter – because she’s just rung me!”
Lizzie had heard a lot about Cioné. She was yet to meet her, however. Lizzie hadn’t had any idea what to expect, when she’d found out about the Doctor’s wife. It was weird to think of the Doctor as a married man, due to his seemingly non-existent ability to keep himself from suddenly running off. Also, as much as she loved him, Lizzie realised that such a trait would make him insufferable to love.
“Did she say anything?” Lizzie asked.
“It went through to voicemail – but she gave me some coordinates. And, er, speaking of which…”
***
The TARDIS had stopped, and the Doctor and Lizzie stepped out into the centre of Trafalgar Square. When he and Lizzie emerged, loads of tourists ran up to the doors of the blue wooden box and threw coins and bank notes at the ground, as if they were street artists, and this was their magic trick. The Doctor thanked them all – he was jubilant, in a way Lizzie had never seen him before, and it made her so happy to see him playing to the crowd, making them laugh with his sonic screwdriver. It was unbelievable, that all it had taken to get him to this point were some song lyrics as a ringtone.
Eventually, the crowds dispersed, and the Doctor sighed, still filled with the rush of excitement that came from the fun he’d been having.
And suddenly, he stopped.
Because there was a woman looking at him.
And Lizzie knew, straight away, that she was Cioné. They looked at each other the way that lovers look at each other – but old lovers, those with so many years of happiness already behind them. The woman wore a black blouse and black trousers, and a quirky, baggy, floral cardigan on top of it. Lizzie realised this woman was exactly what she’d been expecting. It all seemed so right.
Then she sensed something that didn’t feel so right. But before she could properly process it, Cioné walked towards them, surprisingly quickly, not the sort of traditional movie-style slow-motion reunion of a long-separated married couple.
“Ah, darling, and lovely Lizzie,” she grinned. Though it was not the sort of smile that said they hadn’t seen each other in a long time – it was as if it had only been a few days, and even then, she was in a rush. And even then, she recognised Lizzie. Unless the Doctor had showed Cioné photos, there was no way she could have recognised her or been that friendly.
But that was not even the strangest part of the situation.
Lizzie thought back to the gaze the Doctor and Cioné had shared, and then realised: their eyes were different. The eyes of old lovers, yes. Except Cioné’s eyes were those of someone whose love was older than the Doctor’s – as if somehow, she’d loved him for longer. Which couldn’t be possible.
And then Lizzie remembered.
“Oh! My god! I am dreadfully sorry,” Cioné laughed, as she caught sight of Lizzie’s face. “I’ve just realised, we haven’t actually met yet. It’s fine, you’ll do that stuff in a bit! I’m actually from the future,” Cioné emphasised the ‘future’ to try and make herself seem almost jokily mysterious.
“How many years in the future?” the Doctor seemed shocked.
“About… a hundred.”
“A hundred?!”
“Ish.”
“Ish?!”
“Look, I’m not stopping – but you are. I suddenly remembered something rather important, and you need to be there for it. Long story,” she handed him a scruffy bit of paper with more coordinates on it.
“More coordinates?” the Doctor took the paper and slipped it in his pocket.
“You’ll see what I mean! Oh, and forgive me if I’m not particularly amicable!”
The Doctor’s face fell, as he looked glumly down at the coordinates.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” Cioné ushered them into the TARDIS. “See you later! Or earlier, or something…”
She slammed the doors shut behind them, leaving the Doctor standing in the doorway, looking at where his wife had stood about a few seconds ago, before turning and walking straight over to the console.
Her first encounter with Cioné was provoking quite a rollercoaster of emotions and not just in her alone.
“Are… you all right?” Lizzie awkwardly placed a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.
He reached into his pocket for the piece of paper, and walked over to the console. “Yes – I mean, the coordinates must be for…”
He had no idea, and it was strange seeing the Doctor having no idea. Funny that it was his marriage that brought him more confusion than anything else. Silently, he entered the coordinates into the console, and the machine hummed into life, breathing deep metallic breaths, in and out. And the Doctor was doing much the same.
Then the TARDIS stopped again.
“Doctor,” Lizzie began, her voice shaking. He turned to her. “Did it ever cross your mind that the reason she sent you away is because that’s ‘your’ version of her?”
Excitement wavered across his face.
“I mean – I think, like, that version of Cioné is from your future. And, this is a time machine, like, so maybe you’re just the wrong version that she’s not looking for… or something.”
The Doctor strode up to the doors where she stood, and hugged her. She reciprocated, kind of awkwardly.
“You’re too clever”
She blushed, and broke off the hug. “I think she’s out there.”
“Yes – I think she might be. I don’t know why I was so worried,” he dismissed his previous thoughts. “I think it’s because – well, when you lose people, you worry it might happen to someone else.”
Lizzie nodded. “I get it.”
***
THE BX7Z5 INFIRMARY (somewhere off the coast of Spacetropolis) SOMETIME IN THE 52ND CENTURY
As soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS, they were greeted by the almost-deafening sound of “Ode to Joy”. Beethoven. It seemed a bit random, but before Lizzie had time to even look around, a woman, who looked like a nurse dressed in blue scrubs, rushed straight up to them.
“Oh, good, you’re here! Cioné said you wouldn’t miss this for the world! Just follow me,” and she walked away.
The Doctor looked around at wherever he was, with the cacophonous strains of “Ode to Joy” booming through the antiseptic corridor, and its almost as loud squeaky floors. Like something in a hospital, Lizzie thought. Then, she caught sight of the holographic noticeboards “encouraging” people to take part in the various groups and workshops and… antenatal classes.
Lizzie was not usually one to exclaim out loud, but the sudden realisation of what was going on made her swear.
“Come on! She can’t hold the baby in much longer!” the nurse called over to them.
The Doctor came to the same realization as Lizzie, and his face went white. He followed the nurse, and glanced out of a large hallway window that looked out into space. Lizzie also looked at the view – they were on some sort of space station, and there were other branches of it, branching out from where they stood. A cluster of galaxies was visible as far as their eyes could see.
The Doctor had left Lizzie, and was following the nurse as she moved down towards a door at the end of the corridor.
“Cioné said it’s always awkward when time travel is involved!” the nurse said as she opened the door, and the Doctor walked inside, followed by Lizzie, who suddenly realised she was being thoughtlessly intrusive, and was about to turn on her heels and leave, when she realized that the bizarre nature of the situation was fundamentally irresistible and she had to stay.
Cioné was there, as they’d expected, lying in a hospital bed – in the birthing position. Her fists were clenched, her face red and covered in sweat, and she was groaning and muttering curse words under her breath. “Ode to Joy” continued to blast from a set of speakers in the corner of the room, making it nearly impossible to hear what was really going on. A midwife waited at the… ‘business end'.
Cioné was giving birth.
“OH!” Cioné screamed at the Doctor. “What time do you call this?!”
“What do you mean what time do I call this?!” the Doctor ran over to her and grabbed her hand, while Lizzie stood awkwardly in the corner observing the situation. “When did this – I mean – what?!”
“You were there for that bit,” she spoke through gritted teeth, before letting out another scream of agony.
“Yes, alright, I know that,” the Doctor admitted, though he wasn’t exactly going to argue with her for slagging him off, as he was a bit more concerned about the fact she was giving birth.
“And who’s – ow, ow, ow, ow, OWWWW,” Cioné took in several breaths, panting and huffing, engulfing as much gas and air as she possibly could. “And who’s THIS?” she pointed at Lizzie, screaming the last word out of agony not anger. “No offense darling, I’m sure you’re lovely….”
“Erm,” the Doctor looked back at Lizzie, and then back to Cioné. “Lizzie…this is Cioné. Cioné… Lizzie.”
“Lovely to meet you, Lizz– FOR GOD’S SAKE! THEY SAID THIS BLOODY MUSIC WOULD HELP!”
Lizzie reached into the Doctor’s satchel and grabbed the sonic screwdriver, pointing it up to the Beethoven-booming speakers. A shower of sparks erupted in the corner of the room, and the midwife dodged the falling metal shards of what had been blasting the iconic finale of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, mere seconds before.
“Thank you dear,” Cioné gave her a warm smile (as warm as it could be when spoken through tensed facial muscles).
“You never mentioned this?” the Doctor gestured to her… state. Now even he was laughing at the absurdity of it all.
“Look, I’m sorry," Cioné apologised. – but, you know, you’re going to be…a …!”
***
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
“…A dad?!” the Doctor exclaimed, as he sat by Cioné on the steps in front of the square’s great fountains, taking in the news. Lizzie sat with them – their relationship was so beautiful, she thought.
“Yes, a dad!” Cioné looked delighted, but the Doctor just looked confused. Happy for sure. But mostly confused.
The Doctor would be a good father. At least, Lizzie thought he would be. She wondered how their lives would work – after all, the Doctor had a baby to look after – and to love, and to mentor, and to cherish, until they grew up and up and up, until they weren’t a baby anymore, and they were cleverer and wiser than him. Then she felt kind of selfish that fearing the loss of adventures together was the first thing that had come to mind – but she wasn’t upset. If their travels did have to come to an end end for some reason, she would be so happy if this was the reason.
As she watched the Doctor and Cioné laughing on the steps of Trafalgar Square, it made her feel even better – that these two lovely people were going to be blessed with a child, to bring them even closer together.
She wondered what life would be like for a Gallifreyan child. Did they… grow up like humans? Go to school? Do the whole teenager thing? Lizzie tried to imagine a teenage version of the Doctor and then stopped because it got too weird.
Happiness.
That’s what she was watching – happiness. Moments like this were the ones that needed to be treasured, when the world would seem as if nothing could go wrong.
THE BX7Z5 INFIRMARY (somewhere off the coast of Spacetropolis) - SOMETIME IN THE 52ND CENTURY
Cioné continued to speak in between her great, heaving breaths, while the Doctor was apologising for the fact he hadn’t been here sooner.
“I am so, so, sorry,” he kissed her hand, though she didn’t seem to care since she was busy pushing an 8-pound baby through her – anyway.
“I’ve been here ten hours, you stupid man,” she said. “Punctuality, it was never your thing.”
“You were the one who was late to the wedding,” the Doctor countered.
“Hmm… true.”
Lizzie listened to them talk, like the married couple that they were, and she turned to the door and opened it. The Doctor looked to her as she left – it was a look of appreciation – but also one of confusion, as if he wanted her to stay, because he didn’t know what to do next. She gave him a reassuring nod, that he’d be able to do this. Not just this bit – but all the rest of it as well – the days and years that would come after. The Doctor smiled in understanding, and Lizzie slipped through the door, out into the corridor.
It wasn’t much later, following an increase in the volume of Cioné’s screams, that Lizzie could hear the sounds of a baby crying; that almost unearthly cry from a new-born and the Doctor emerged from the hospital room, smiling. It wasn’t his big, broad, grin from earlier – instead, it was almost bittersweet. Parenting was a job for life, she’d read somewhere once, and the Doctor’s face reflected that.
“Do you want to come and see her?” the Doctor asked. Lizzie nodded, and picked up her coat, and walked into the room. Cioné was already cradling the baby in her arms.
“Hello Lizzie,” Cioné looked up from that beautiful, pure, innocent face, and over to her. “Would you like to hold her?”
Lizzie didn’t know what to say – she’d only just met Cioné, and already she was holding her new-born child. The Doctor’s new-born child. But, of course she said yes. There wasn’t anything else she could say. She nodded, and made her way over to Cioné, where gently, she received the tiny baby into her arms. Lizzie sat down on the chair in the corner of the room, watching the little girl as she slept, with no worries at all, no cares in the world.
“Lizzie… meet Iris.”
“I don’t know why I bother,” the Doctor stood outside the TARDIS, his satchel over his shoulder, ready to investigate whatever it was that had moved the TARDIS halfway across the universe. The Doctor had spent the previous five minutes doing a weird silent pacing, that if audible would certainly be tutting. Lizzie had been watching him at a distance, from inside the TARDIS, sceptical about saying anything.
After a moment, she followed him out of the box, and into a strange metal corridor, that looked a lot like the sort of generic spaceship corridor in sci-fi movies. He closed and locked the TARDIS door behind her. Then the inhabitants of the spaceship appeared.
There were four guards, dressed in black leathers approaching them. They wielded guns as if they thought the two people stepping out of an old wooden police box would, somehow, be dangerous. She glanced at the Doctor next to her and changed her mind. They probably were dangerous. Their spacey blaster guns whirred, and the Doctor raised his hands. Lizzie looked at him and awkwardly did the same.
Then she heard a clink, clink, clink.
It was the sound of something metal tapping gently against the metal floor. She heard the sound of footsteps as well – somebody was approaching them. The guards didn’t do anything other than continue to point guns at them – they were waiting, Lizzie thought, for whoever was approaching them. As the tapping got closer, the guards made way for the imminent arrival.
Dwarfed by the four burly guards, was a tiny old man, with an oversized lab coat draped over his shoulders. He leaned heavily on a metal-tipped walking cane – it was sleek, and elegant, and the handle was padded with soft leather. Lizzie looked at the Doctor who clearly recognised the man.
“Doctor,” he murmured in a throaty voice. “It’s… been a while.”
“Yes, it has,” the Doctor murmured, as if he were hesitant to say anything else. Lizzie glared at at the Doctor with an introduce me sort of look.
“Lizzie,” the Doctor responded, “This is Dr Siddiqui.”
Dr Siddiqui nodded with a snigger.
“Dr Siddiqui, this is Elizabeth Darwin,” the Doctor added.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lizzie,” Dr Siddiqui giggled, with no sign of pleasure at all in his gravelly ancient voice. “Follow me.”
“Erm… and… a pleasure to meet you too,” Lizzie said, basically to herself, with an awkward but friendly smile as Siddiqui turned and walked away, the Doctor and Lizzie following, with the four guards close behind.
“Dr Siddiqui and I go way back,” the Doctor continued, and Lizzie tried to picture the Doctor’s life before she’d met him. She’d tried to picture it more than a few times in the past.
“Not as far back as the Doctor likes to believe,” Siddiqui interrupted.
“We saved Zygons together,” the Doctor said.
“We did not,” Siddiqui corrected him.
“I know. I was wrong,” the Doctor admitted, and Lizzie wondered what he’d been wrong about.
“It was, in fact, your friend – what was her name?” Siddiqui played a game of mock guessing. “Jessica? Jemima? Oh, that’s it! Jasmine.”
The Doctor walked past Siddiqui, looking at the floor as he went. His face was a picture of anger mingled with guilt. He turned left into the room that somehow, he knew they’d been destined for.
“Jasmine died,” Lizzie looked sternly at the odious little man. “Along with your decency, it seems.”
***
There were four of them sitting around a table, while a woman, who had introduced herself as Elle Mthembu, stood next to a screen at the front of the room. The atmosphere was tense, awkward. The one person they hadn’t yet been formally introduced to, was the man seated at the head of the table. The only thing notable about him so far was that he was sporting a small goatee.
“Who actually are you people?” the Doctor asked. “I mean… what? A space intervention agency? Intergalactic Mi6?”
“I like to think of us as more of an intergalactic Thunderbirds,” grinned the man with the goatee.
“We’re the Shadow Star alliance,” Elle told him. “Who we are is of no relevance.”
“Actually – it is,” the Doctor stated firmly in deliberate opposition. “Because, somehow, you grabbed my TARDIS, and hauled it halfway across the universe.”
“Ah,” Siddiqui murmured, laughing under his breath. “When I was on board back when Jasmine and myself saved the Zygons…”
“Oh, shut up,” the Doctor said, in a way unusual for him.
“Apologies for my little friend,” said the Goatee Man, as he smiled icily at the Doctor. Sadly, he doesn’t have an ‘off-switch’.”
“… I took some readings,” Siddiqui continued. “I thought they might be useful in the future. And I was right.”
The Doctor scowled at him, as if he was so annoyed he couldn’t even be bothered to respond.
“I simply… fed them into a computer, and we caught your TARDIS… a fish in a net,” Siddiqui gave a gummy smile.
“But – what can you people want with him?” the Doctor gestured dismissively towards Siddiqui. “I mean, look at you there! Jarvis Mthembu...”
“Wait! You know who I am?” said Goatee Man, whom the Doctor was now referring to as Jarvis.
“… renowned for his humanitarian efforts. Then there’s you, Elle Mthembu – a war hero. Your silver wedding anniversary was a few weeks back. And then there’s him – Girish,” the Doctor spat out Siddiqui’s first name, in a way similar to how Siddiqui had played games with Jasmine’s name mere moments ago. “What can you two possibly want with the great Dr Girish Siddiqui, accomplished drug kingpin?”
Elle sighed, and Lizzie felt rather sorry for her.
“You’re right. We’re a space intervention agency, set up by the people to help protect themselves in a variety of circumstances. If there is an incident with the Planet Makers, we fix it. Some dangerous pathogen outbreak from a science lab, we sort it. Happy?”
The Doctor smiled warmly. “Of course.”
“Can we please get on, now?”
The Doctor gestured for her to continue, and she did so.
“What do you know about The Bug?”
The Doctor looked confused. It sounded ominous, though – as if it were a title, a sort of bid to try and sound scary.
“Not much,” the Doctor admitted. Elle pointed to the wall, and the holographic screen burst into life with a figure displayed in the form of a Vitruvian man. The bottom half looked humanoid, though the top was more like an insect, specifically a cricket. As Elle tapped the screen, more and more layers appeared on top of the creature, portraying a metal exo-skeleton, and then layers of bug-like flesh, with leathery shields covering thin wings protruding from its back. And then finally, the creature was robed entirely in black, with its head visible beneath a hood in contrast to its cricket-like body, the head was now less humanoid, and more like that of a fly, with great, bulbous eyes crafted of what seemed like a million lenses from a million pairs of tiny fly-sized glasses. Cricket style antennae were visible from beneath the hood as well, and the moving image on the screen showed the creature peering around, its antennae wiggling, sensing something, and guiding the huge eyes in whatever direction the antennae moved.
The Doctor gazed at it. “Fascinating…”
“I thought you’d be impressed,” Siddiqui giggled. “I am… it’s like an amalgamation of so many different insectoid species. Just…beautiful.”
“Not exactly,” Elle said, and Lizzie saw the solemn look on Jarvis’ face. The Doctor clearly caught sight of their faces as well.
“What is it?”
“The Bug is a terrorist,” Elle was blunt, as if that were an everyday thing, a norm. In the current climate, it was.
“Working for whom?” the Doctor asked.
“It doesn’t work for just anybody,” she continued. “It wages war against the Empire’s corruption and fraudulent activities, citing their actions as ‘despicable’, ‘dishonest’, and ‘criminal’.”
“And it’s right,” the Doctor interjected.
“It’s also a white supremacist, anti-LGBTQ+, and almost every kind of –phobic you can imagine,” Elle continued, while the Doctor’s face morphed into a picture of disgust. Not so right. “That’s body armour," Elle pointed to the screen. "Made of extremely resistant yet flexible alloys – it binds to him, and it is almost as if it turns him into… well, a bug, basically. It’s the ultimate suit of armour, and it turns him into the ultimate terrorist, giving him increased muscular abilities, advanced and alterable eyesight, and flight. This creature has hanged universal marriage activists from the gates of the Imperial Palace. It arrived at an imperial refugee camp and, within an hour and a half, had the local government on their knees. It’s final goal? To destroy ‘the pitiful imperial elite’ and restore ‘freedom of speech’. And…”
“It’s planning something…,” the Doctor finished her sentence for her. Lizzie looked at his face, and she knew what was coming next.
“Yes.”
“You want me to hunt down the most effective and most despicable terrorist in the history of the universe? Why?”
“Because you’re good at it.”
“Excuse me?” the Doctor scoffed.
“The Bug is, on the whole, ignored by the Imperial government. Its crimes are, of course, tragedies – but nothing more. You’ll find that its actions are very quickly forgotten, and that the government starts concentrating on something it deems ‘of greater necessity’. Evangeline Cullengate herself has never made any attempt to condone the Bug’s actions.”
“I’ve heard too much about this Evangeline Cullengate.”
“While my position dictates that I must remain impartial, she is vile. And that’s why we need you – because if the Bug were a Zygon or a Jarageth or anybody else, I can guarantee the government would rain hell down on them. We want you to find the Bug, and eliminate it, before it does whatever it’s planning to do. We’ve been monitoring the underworld, and we have reason to believe that whatever he plan is, it’s huge – some say will be the Bug’s greatest attack yet, and –”
Welcome to the jungle! We got fun and games…
We got everything you want honey, we know the names…
The lyrics were coming from the Doctor’s satchel, and Lizzie glanced over at him, as he looked around sheepishly. All the eyes in the room were on him, as the muffled murmurings of that iconic Guns N’ Roses tune were emanating from his person. Elle stopped talking and glared at him, and Lizzie almost laughed at the intensity and absurdity of the moment.
“Do you mind?” Elle could not seem to comprehend that a mobile phone was ringing in the middle of one of her briefings.
“Sorry. I need to get this,” the Doctor responded as he stood up and stepped away from the conference table. Lizzie was slightly more fascinated by the fact that he owned a mobile phone. He then walked over to the door, and walked out. All three of them, Elle, Jarvis and Siddiqui were bemused, as the man of the hour had just upped sticks and left in the middle of everything.
Lizzie gave them all a guilty smile, and was about to apologise, when the Doctor popped his head back through the doorway. “By the way,” he said. “The ringtone – that was my wife. She, er, changed it.”
Then he left again.
Lizzie pulled on her coat and apologised to the dumbstruck ShadowStar alliance, before following the Doctor out of the briefing room. She caught him up as he was almost halfway down the corridor.
“Oh my god – did you just – like, erm – walk out of a meeting where you were asked to help fight the most evil terrorist in the universe?”
She followed him close behind, but he didn’t stop walking. It was his purposeful walk, the one he used when he had somewhere else he wanted to be. He seemed to be smiling, though.
“The Bug can wait,” the Doctor grinned. “Time machine,” he pointed to the TARDIS. Lizzie was hoping he would fill in the verbs he’d dropped. “This can’t.”
There wasn’t much that could make the Doctor drop or abandon everything within his focus without any warning. And then Lizzie remembered the ringtone, and understood exactly why the Doctor was in such a hurry to leave.
“It’s her,” Lizzie meant it as a statement but not a question, because she was so sure that it definitely was her.
The Doctor pushed open the doors, the broadest of grins still on his face. “Yes. I think it is.”
Seeing the Doctor so happy made her smile as well, because his face was not just pleased, it was delighted, the sort of delight that fills up one’s eyes with joy and excitement and passion –
And love.
Lizzie shut the TARDIS door behind her, and within the blink of an eye, the TARDIS had already taken off.
“I don’t know why now,” the Doctor moved around the console, flicking switches and pushing buttons, his steps full of spring and glee. “But it doesn’t matter – because she’s just rung me!”
Lizzie had heard a lot about Cioné. She was yet to meet her, however. Lizzie hadn’t had any idea what to expect, when she’d found out about the Doctor’s wife. It was weird to think of the Doctor as a married man, due to his seemingly non-existent ability to keep himself from suddenly running off. Also, as much as she loved him, Lizzie realised that such a trait would make him insufferable to love.
“Did she say anything?” Lizzie asked.
“It went through to voicemail – but she gave me some coordinates. And, er, speaking of which…”
***
The TARDIS had stopped, and the Doctor and Lizzie stepped out into the centre of Trafalgar Square. When he and Lizzie emerged, loads of tourists ran up to the doors of the blue wooden box and threw coins and bank notes at the ground, as if they were street artists, and this was their magic trick. The Doctor thanked them all – he was jubilant, in a way Lizzie had never seen him before, and it made her so happy to see him playing to the crowd, making them laugh with his sonic screwdriver. It was unbelievable, that all it had taken to get him to this point were some song lyrics as a ringtone.
Eventually, the crowds dispersed, and the Doctor sighed, still filled with the rush of excitement that came from the fun he’d been having.
And suddenly, he stopped.
Because there was a woman looking at him.
And Lizzie knew, straight away, that she was Cioné. They looked at each other the way that lovers look at each other – but old lovers, those with so many years of happiness already behind them. The woman wore a black blouse and black trousers, and a quirky, baggy, floral cardigan on top of it. Lizzie realised this woman was exactly what she’d been expecting. It all seemed so right.
Then she sensed something that didn’t feel so right. But before she could properly process it, Cioné walked towards them, surprisingly quickly, not the sort of traditional movie-style slow-motion reunion of a long-separated married couple.
“Ah, darling, and lovely Lizzie,” she grinned. Though it was not the sort of smile that said they hadn’t seen each other in a long time – it was as if it had only been a few days, and even then, she was in a rush. And even then, she recognised Lizzie. Unless the Doctor had showed Cioné photos, there was no way she could have recognised her or been that friendly.
But that was not even the strangest part of the situation.
Lizzie thought back to the gaze the Doctor and Cioné had shared, and then realised: their eyes were different. The eyes of old lovers, yes. Except Cioné’s eyes were those of someone whose love was older than the Doctor’s – as if somehow, she’d loved him for longer. Which couldn’t be possible.
And then Lizzie remembered.
“Oh! My god! I am dreadfully sorry,” Cioné laughed, as she caught sight of Lizzie’s face. “I’ve just realised, we haven’t actually met yet. It’s fine, you’ll do that stuff in a bit! I’m actually from the future,” Cioné emphasised the ‘future’ to try and make herself seem almost jokily mysterious.
“How many years in the future?” the Doctor seemed shocked.
“About… a hundred.”
“A hundred?!”
“Ish.”
“Ish?!”
“Look, I’m not stopping – but you are. I suddenly remembered something rather important, and you need to be there for it. Long story,” she handed him a scruffy bit of paper with more coordinates on it.
“More coordinates?” the Doctor took the paper and slipped it in his pocket.
“You’ll see what I mean! Oh, and forgive me if I’m not particularly amicable!”
The Doctor’s face fell, as he looked glumly down at the coordinates.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” Cioné ushered them into the TARDIS. “See you later! Or earlier, or something…”
She slammed the doors shut behind them, leaving the Doctor standing in the doorway, looking at where his wife had stood about a few seconds ago, before turning and walking straight over to the console.
Her first encounter with Cioné was provoking quite a rollercoaster of emotions and not just in her alone.
“Are… you all right?” Lizzie awkwardly placed a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.
He reached into his pocket for the piece of paper, and walked over to the console. “Yes – I mean, the coordinates must be for…”
He had no idea, and it was strange seeing the Doctor having no idea. Funny that it was his marriage that brought him more confusion than anything else. Silently, he entered the coordinates into the console, and the machine hummed into life, breathing deep metallic breaths, in and out. And the Doctor was doing much the same.
Then the TARDIS stopped again.
“Doctor,” Lizzie began, her voice shaking. He turned to her. “Did it ever cross your mind that the reason she sent you away is because that’s ‘your’ version of her?”
Excitement wavered across his face.
“I mean – I think, like, that version of Cioné is from your future. And, this is a time machine, like, so maybe you’re just the wrong version that she’s not looking for… or something.”
The Doctor strode up to the doors where she stood, and hugged her. She reciprocated, kind of awkwardly.
“You’re too clever”
She blushed, and broke off the hug. “I think she’s out there.”
“Yes – I think she might be. I don’t know why I was so worried,” he dismissed his previous thoughts. “I think it’s because – well, when you lose people, you worry it might happen to someone else.”
Lizzie nodded. “I get it.”
***
THE BX7Z5 INFIRMARY (somewhere off the coast of Spacetropolis) SOMETIME IN THE 52ND CENTURY
As soon as they stepped out of the TARDIS, they were greeted by the almost-deafening sound of “Ode to Joy”. Beethoven. It seemed a bit random, but before Lizzie had time to even look around, a woman, who looked like a nurse dressed in blue scrubs, rushed straight up to them.
“Oh, good, you’re here! Cioné said you wouldn’t miss this for the world! Just follow me,” and she walked away.
The Doctor looked around at wherever he was, with the cacophonous strains of “Ode to Joy” booming through the antiseptic corridor, and its almost as loud squeaky floors. Like something in a hospital, Lizzie thought. Then, she caught sight of the holographic noticeboards “encouraging” people to take part in the various groups and workshops and… antenatal classes.
Lizzie was not usually one to exclaim out loud, but the sudden realisation of what was going on made her swear.
“Come on! She can’t hold the baby in much longer!” the nurse called over to them.
The Doctor came to the same realization as Lizzie, and his face went white. He followed the nurse, and glanced out of a large hallway window that looked out into space. Lizzie also looked at the view – they were on some sort of space station, and there were other branches of it, branching out from where they stood. A cluster of galaxies was visible as far as their eyes could see.
The Doctor had left Lizzie, and was following the nurse as she moved down towards a door at the end of the corridor.
“Cioné said it’s always awkward when time travel is involved!” the nurse said as she opened the door, and the Doctor walked inside, followed by Lizzie, who suddenly realised she was being thoughtlessly intrusive, and was about to turn on her heels and leave, when she realized that the bizarre nature of the situation was fundamentally irresistible and she had to stay.
Cioné was there, as they’d expected, lying in a hospital bed – in the birthing position. Her fists were clenched, her face red and covered in sweat, and she was groaning and muttering curse words under her breath. “Ode to Joy” continued to blast from a set of speakers in the corner of the room, making it nearly impossible to hear what was really going on. A midwife waited at the… ‘business end'.
Cioné was giving birth.
“OH!” Cioné screamed at the Doctor. “What time do you call this?!”
“What do you mean what time do I call this?!” the Doctor ran over to her and grabbed her hand, while Lizzie stood awkwardly in the corner observing the situation. “When did this – I mean – what?!”
“You were there for that bit,” she spoke through gritted teeth, before letting out another scream of agony.
“Yes, alright, I know that,” the Doctor admitted, though he wasn’t exactly going to argue with her for slagging him off, as he was a bit more concerned about the fact she was giving birth.
“And who’s – ow, ow, ow, ow, OWWWW,” Cioné took in several breaths, panting and huffing, engulfing as much gas and air as she possibly could. “And who’s THIS?” she pointed at Lizzie, screaming the last word out of agony not anger. “No offense darling, I’m sure you’re lovely….”
“Erm,” the Doctor looked back at Lizzie, and then back to Cioné. “Lizzie…this is Cioné. Cioné… Lizzie.”
“Lovely to meet you, Lizz– FOR GOD’S SAKE! THEY SAID THIS BLOODY MUSIC WOULD HELP!”
Lizzie reached into the Doctor’s satchel and grabbed the sonic screwdriver, pointing it up to the Beethoven-booming speakers. A shower of sparks erupted in the corner of the room, and the midwife dodged the falling metal shards of what had been blasting the iconic finale of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, mere seconds before.
“Thank you dear,” Cioné gave her a warm smile (as warm as it could be when spoken through tensed facial muscles).
“You never mentioned this?” the Doctor gestured to her… state. Now even he was laughing at the absurdity of it all.
“Look, I’m sorry," Cioné apologised. – but, you know, you’re going to be…a …!”
***
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
“…A dad?!” the Doctor exclaimed, as he sat by Cioné on the steps in front of the square’s great fountains, taking in the news. Lizzie sat with them – their relationship was so beautiful, she thought.
“Yes, a dad!” Cioné looked delighted, but the Doctor just looked confused. Happy for sure. But mostly confused.
The Doctor would be a good father. At least, Lizzie thought he would be. She wondered how their lives would work – after all, the Doctor had a baby to look after – and to love, and to mentor, and to cherish, until they grew up and up and up, until they weren’t a baby anymore, and they were cleverer and wiser than him. Then she felt kind of selfish that fearing the loss of adventures together was the first thing that had come to mind – but she wasn’t upset. If their travels did have to come to an end end for some reason, she would be so happy if this was the reason.
As she watched the Doctor and Cioné laughing on the steps of Trafalgar Square, it made her feel even better – that these two lovely people were going to be blessed with a child, to bring them even closer together.
She wondered what life would be like for a Gallifreyan child. Did they… grow up like humans? Go to school? Do the whole teenager thing? Lizzie tried to imagine a teenage version of the Doctor and then stopped because it got too weird.
Happiness.
That’s what she was watching – happiness. Moments like this were the ones that needed to be treasured, when the world would seem as if nothing could go wrong.
THE BX7Z5 INFIRMARY (somewhere off the coast of Spacetropolis) - SOMETIME IN THE 52ND CENTURY
Cioné continued to speak in between her great, heaving breaths, while the Doctor was apologising for the fact he hadn’t been here sooner.
“I am so, so, sorry,” he kissed her hand, though she didn’t seem to care since she was busy pushing an 8-pound baby through her – anyway.
“I’ve been here ten hours, you stupid man,” she said. “Punctuality, it was never your thing.”
“You were the one who was late to the wedding,” the Doctor countered.
“Hmm… true.”
Lizzie listened to them talk, like the married couple that they were, and she turned to the door and opened it. The Doctor looked to her as she left – it was a look of appreciation – but also one of confusion, as if he wanted her to stay, because he didn’t know what to do next. She gave him a reassuring nod, that he’d be able to do this. Not just this bit – but all the rest of it as well – the days and years that would come after. The Doctor smiled in understanding, and Lizzie slipped through the door, out into the corridor.
It wasn’t much later, following an increase in the volume of Cioné’s screams, that Lizzie could hear the sounds of a baby crying; that almost unearthly cry from a new-born and the Doctor emerged from the hospital room, smiling. It wasn’t his big, broad, grin from earlier – instead, it was almost bittersweet. Parenting was a job for life, she’d read somewhere once, and the Doctor’s face reflected that.
“Do you want to come and see her?” the Doctor asked. Lizzie nodded, and picked up her coat, and walked into the room. Cioné was already cradling the baby in her arms.
“Hello Lizzie,” Cioné looked up from that beautiful, pure, innocent face, and over to her. “Would you like to hold her?”
Lizzie didn’t know what to say – she’d only just met Cioné, and already she was holding her new-born child. The Doctor’s new-born child. But, of course she said yes. There wasn’t anything else she could say. She nodded, and made her way over to Cioné, where gently, she received the tiny baby into her arms. Lizzie sat down on the chair in the corner of the room, watching the little girl as she slept, with no worries at all, no cares in the world.
“Lizzie… meet Iris.”
Lizzie smiled at her – she always smiled at babies. Lives that had only just begun. People who had the most potential – who could change worlds, universes, in fact. Like a book, but with nothing yet written inside it, but with the pen poised and ready to begin. Lizzie watched Iris as she slept, and her heart fluttered. She thought of her own life, and of growing up. She remembered being at the helm of that particular book, and wanting to fill it in quicker – and then life became complicated, and the book became too hard to write or read.
Sometimes, there were hopeful glimmers, though, and Lizzie thought of how the Doctor and Cioné had laughed, as they’d prepared for the whole new life they were about to share.
All of that to come.
Lizzie thought of the huge journey Iris was beginning, when Iris opened her eyes from her nap – oh, the days of midday napping.
For now, though, things were good.
Iris was beautiful.
Lizzie looked up, and the Doctor was standing over her, his phone at the ready.
“Smile,” he said.
Lizzie smiled at him, Iris in her arms, and the camera flashed.
“Wonderful,” the Doctor checked out the photo on his phone, savouring the moment for as long as possible – now he had this moment forever held in a photograph.
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
“I can’t believe I didn’t find out about it sooner, though,” the Doctor said as he laughed along with this older version of his wife.
“I left a reminder on a post-it note on the fridge for about a hundred years,” Cioné giggled, sending the Doctor into further fits of laughter. They were an eccentric pair, but nobody minded, least of all Lizzie – London was a city full of eccentrics. But although the two of them were so perfect together, Lizzie could tell that at this moment the two people in front of her weren’t the same people – that is they weren’t from the same time.
Lizzie had no idea how time travellers fell in love or whether a time traveller could still love a future version of their beloved. She assumed so, because Cioné from the future, the one in front of her now, the one who, as she had discovered, was the mother of a grown-up Iris, still loved the Doctor. The only difference was that Cioné had had more years to love the Doctor.
Then Cioné turned to him again and asked a simple question, “Why are you here?”
“Aren’t I allowed to visit my wife?”
“Of course you are – but we wanted to keep our lives on the same timelines as much as possible, didn’t we?”
“Yes – I know.”
“So – where are you? In Iris’ timeline, I mean, at this point?”
Lizzie reached into her pocket and grabbed a scruffy little chart she’d made for herself – it was like currency conversions, with the Gallifreyan age down one side, and the human age down the other – or as close as it was possible to get. It wasn’t an exact science, but the Gallifreyan aging process roughly corresponded with the human one.
“She’s still a child. A young child. Although, for you, you’ve only just sent me to the birth, that happened years ago, for me. And… Iris is sixty-three now,” the Doctor tried to arrange the order of events in his head. Lizzie glanced at her age-chart. 63 – Iris was approximately six human years old. Lizzie also set about trying to keep track of the timelines.
So there was their first meeting in Trafalgar square, with the future Cioné. Then, the Doctor and Lizzie had gone back in time to the birth. Then, Lizzie had gone back to Cioné’s TARDIS with the Doctor and Iris, where –
CIONÉ’S TARDIS – NOT LONG AFTER THE BIRTH
“Sshh, sshh,” Cioné gently rocked the newborn back and forth in her arms. “That’s it, it’s alright. Mummy’s going to keep you safe.”
Cioné’s TARDIS was lovely: in contrast to the Doctor’s minimalist approach, and despite the fact that her TARDIS shared similar bookshelves, lining the walls, and crammed full of old and dusty tomes, Cioné’s TARDIS was warmer, more like a home, with its wooden floorboards that creaked in that familiar way whenever you walked across them, and a tartan rug in the centre, a rug that Cioné had made herself. And, unlike the Doctor’s TARDIS bookshelves, with its single photo almost hidden amongst all the books Cioné’s bookshelves were filled with such a mass of photos and quirky ornaments that almost rendered the books invisible. And, there was one entire shelf devoted to a collection of weird, jar-like containers, and another shelf filled with teapots, each sporting its own uniquely hand-knitted tea-cosy. On the hat stand by the door hung a warmly-coloured knit scarf and a few snuggly-looking, hand-knitted pullovers. An old-fashioned hi-fi set sat on top of a chest of drawers, and on the other side of the console room, were several great coral-like pillars stretching up to the ceiling.
“I like the coral,” the Doctor observed, when he stepped into the TARDIS.
“I know! I redecorated.”
They continued through her homely console room, down some steps, and into a recreational living area similar in décor to the console room, but with a big battered and very comfortable-looking sofa in the middle. There was also a mantelpiece, prominently displaying photographs of Cioné and the Doctor, and a few photos of Iris that they had taken before they’d left the hospital. Each of the lamps in the room sported a pastel-coloured lampshade that softened their bright white light into soft, warm oranges and pinks.
While Lizzie sat on the sofa, Cioné tried to rock Iris to sleep in a wooden rocking chair near-by, and the Doctor stood at the mantelpiece, propping up some of the unframed newer photos against the frames of the others. Lizzie felt rather awkward as she gazed at the photo from the hospital of herself holding the newly born Iris in her arms.
“Shall I make some tea?” the Doctor asked.
“Oh, I could murder a bottle of wine,” responded Cioné.
“Are you sure?” the Doctor looked concerned – he wasn’t sure about the protocol for new mothers and alcohol.
“Well, they said Beethoven would make the birth easier, and they were wrong.”
The Doctor took the hint, and left the room in search of a bottle, leaving Cioné and Lizzie to it.
“I hope, you’re like, okay, with –”
Cioné was looking at her with great understanding. “Putting you up on the mantelpiece?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie laughed, because Cioné’s response was so warm and lovely and kind that Lizzie’s concern seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Lizzie,” Cioné sat next to her. “I was the one who asked for it.”
That was unexpected.
“But… why? I mean, I didn’t-”
“Do you realise what a difference you’ve made to him?” Cioné placed her other hand on Lizzie’s knee. “Sorry, that’s not too personal, is it? I’m feeling quite sentimental, right now, so if I go too far, do tell me to stop.”
Most people, Lizzie would have asked to stop, but…
“Lizzie, when I married the Doctor, he was so very sad. He’d lost everything. Everyone he loved, gone. He married me – and that made him happy. Because he’d found love. But I saw him during the wedding reception, and he still looked so sad. Because it was at the wedding that he parted company with one of his best friends. He was devastated – I could see it in his eyes, because the Doctor is terrible at hiding his emotions. I don’t think it matters what incarnation, the Doctor’s naturally a very emotional chap.”
It was true – Lizzie had learned to identify the Doctor’s mood simply by his breathing patterns.
“But today,” Cioné continued. “He was so different. So full of life, and he was laughing again. That was you, who did that. You brought him back to us.”
Lizzie began to protest, but Cioné shut her up.
“We need you, Lizzie. All three of us do.”
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
Lizzie ran it through in her head again – they’d arrived in London, where they’d met future Cioné. Then the Doctor and Lizzie had gone to the birth, then they’d gone to Cioné’s TARDIS to settle in, and then the Doctor had dropped her off back home. Lizzie had thought about telling Maggie about her adventures with the Doctor, but decided against it – it could wait.
That’s when it got really weird, because for about two days, the Doctor had appeared every half hour, grabbing Lizzie’s hand with a joyful “come with me!” and taking her into the TARDIS to see Cioné and Iris. And every time he arrived in her flat, he looked just a little bit older – although it wasn’t that noticeable; it never seemed to be with Gallifreyans.
And then, later, for another two days, Lizzie had gone on non-stop visits, to see Iris – but although those visits were in two days for Lizzie, they all took place over the first sixty-three years of Iris’ life. And every half an hour, Iris would look just a little bit older, because for her, and for the Doctor, it had been years. There was a weird bit of tension between Lizzie and the Doctor at first, because he always hugged her, since, for him, it had been years since he’d seen her last, even though it’d only been half an hour for Lizzie. Eventually, she got used to it, and just pretended it had been years for her as well.
It was strange, though, watching sixty-three years pass in two days. Not just with Iris, who, in that time, had grown from a new born baby, into the Gallifreyan equivalent of a six-year-old girl. But, with the Doctor and Cioné, because whenever she spoke with them, they were always a little bit older and a little bit wiser, and she could see it, even more obviously: Lizzie felt like an observer, watching the first few years of the life of a family, as they grew and grew and grew – all three of them. While she hadn’t ever changed.
So – they had arrived in London, met future Cioné, seen the birth of Iris and gone to Cioné’s TARDIS, and then Lizzie had gone back home while the Doctor spent his years with Iris and every half hour or so (every year or so for the Doctor) the Doctor had popped into her life to take her to visit Iris. Then, because the Doctor was curious (he wanted to know about Iris’ future, and Cioné had declined his request), he had picked up Lizzie and taken her back to London at exactly the same time that Cioné was giving them the information regarding Iris’ birth just after they had come from the briefing about the Bug. It almost made sense.
Mostly.
Except, that wasn’t even the weirdest bit.
The next bit was really, really weird.
Future Cioné (whom Lizzie had realised was far enough into the future that her Iris was in her late-teens), suddenly glanced at her watch, and her face filled with dread.
“I need to go,” she said, grabbing her floral cardigan and wrapping it around her.
“Why?” the Doctor exclaimed.
“You know why. Or at least, you will in about thirty seconds.”
And then Cioné waved at them as she ran off into the crowd.
It was such an abrupt goodbye that it left the Doctor glancing around, just as confused as he’d been all those years ago, (all those days ago for Lizzie), when Cioné had ushered him into the TARDIS so he wouldn’t miss the birth of their daughter. Suddenly, emerging from the crowds that future Cioné had just disappeared into, was Cioné, wearing completely different clothes, and with a little girl in tow. When the Doctor saw them, his face fell into his hands, because even the Doctor, the guy who spent all his time whizzing about in time, was struggling to fathom such a peculiar and abrupt evolution of events.
“Ah, Hubbie. Here you are.”
“Lizzie!” Iris ran up to them, and Lizzie knelt down to hug little Iris.
“How are you, lovely?” Lizzie asked.
“I’m super-duper-awesomesauce!”
Iris’ use of language always made Lizzie smile. In fact, Iris herself always made Lizzie smil as a rule– she was such a bundle of energy, laughter, and enthusiasm, and an ever-present brightness.
Lizzie, the observer, had quickly learned that Iris didn’t care what people thought of her, if they thought she was a bit peculiar, because Iris was dreaming of a time when she would discover new universes, and didn’t care that the Time Lords had banned the exploration of foreign universes without an executive warrant, or that existing technology couldn’t take her that far, or anything like that. She was a child. She wanted to explore, and to discover. She loved everyone, she trusted everyone, and she was learning avidly and eagerly, and even when she made mistakes, she never let those mistakes hold her back.
“You were just there,” the Doctor looked back at the spot where future Cioné had stood.
“No I wasn’t,” Cioné said.
“The timelines have converged,” the Doctor said with more than a little concern. And Lizzie, for once, understood his technobabble: The Doctor, at his point in time, was back with the “right” Cioné and Iris – that is the Cioné and Iris from his present timeline. It was all sorted out again. Lizzie had just about gotten a grip on all of it and presumed that the reason Future Cioné had come here was because she knew that the Doctor would be here, because Past Cioné – the one standing in front of Lizzie now – had met up with a past version of the Doctor – the Doctor now standing in front of Lizzie – when the Iris now there in front of them was a little girl. And so, Future Cioné knew that if the TARDIS was here in one time, it would be easy to find in another time, because the Doctor’s TARDIS seemed to have a penchant for going to the same place multiple times.
She really needed a break from all this stuff.
And then, as if reading Lizzie’s mind, Cioné asked, “Do you fancy a drink? I’m parched. There’s a café over there.”
***
Lizzie sat opposite Iris as they each sipped their milkshakes – Lizzie’s was strawberry, and Iris’ was chocolate, because for some reason, children had a thing for chocolate, regardless of what form it was in.
“How old are you?” Iris suddenly asked. Lizzie was taken aback by the question, but children just said the first thing that came to mind, regardless of how irrelevant or personal it was.
“Why do you want to know?” she gently challenged the little girl.
“I’m 63 now,” Iris said.
Older than me, Lizzie thought and then asked out loud, “When did you turn 63?”
“A while ago. I’m going to be 64 soon!”
“Wow!” Lizzie grinned. She loved speaking to children, and pretending to be amazed at something that wasn’t really amazing to her, because it took her back to the days when, as a young child, she found everything amazing. “Are you going to have a party?”
“I’m going to have a HUGE party,” Iris waved her hands around to indicate the sheer size of her planned birthday bash.
“And you’re going to have birthday cake?” (Cake was Lizzie’s secret pleasure.)
“A massive chocolate one. Daddy said he would make it bigger on the inside!” Iris paused and then continued. “I asked you because you never look old.”
Lizzie stopped for a moment, a bit startled. Then she realised Iris was referring to her earlier question about how old Lizzie was, because that was another thing kids did – they had funny conversations, where they would ask and answer questions of sequence, like the conversation was being cut and pasted and swivelled around in a random new order. It was as if they were finding out for the first time how people spoke, how they interacted, how it all worked. Iris was at the age when she was ‘feeling’ the world for the first time, trying with all five senses to understand as much of it as she could, and when whatever she discovered, it was sure to be wondrous.
Lizzie knew that at some point, they’d have to explain to Iris why Lizzie never looked any older to her. They didn’t think it would happen for a while – but Iris was clever. At some point, they knew the little girl would have to understand that Elizabeth Darwin, a constant presence in her life, had actually only known her for a few days.
“I’m 24,” Lizzie told her. Iris became lost in deep calculations, as she was trying to work out how old Lizzie should be, and was clearly struggling.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Iris realised.
Lizzie smiled sadly, and hoped Iris wouldn’t notice.
Life doesn’t make sense.
***
Ten minutes later, the Doctor, Cioné, and Iris were on a bus (as was Lizzie, but she was sitting slightly behind them, to let the three of them have as much time together as possible -- that sort of thing was important for families). As soon as they’d climbed aboard the big-red-grumbly-machine, as Iris called it, Iris had dashed straight to the top of the stairs, because she’d been so desperate to travel on a bus with stairs and two levels!
“Honestly,” the Doctor muttered. “You give them bigger-on-the-inside, and they only want to ride on double-decker buses.”
The bus had rows of three seats running down one side of the second floor, and the Doctor, Cioné, and Iris had decided to sit on one of them – the Doctor by the aisle, Cioné by the window, with Iris between them. Lizzie was a few rows behind them on the opposite side of the bus; she smiled at the Doctor’s little family, as the bus slowly hissed away from its stop. It travelled silently because it was electrically powered, which impressed Iris as well, because “noisy-noisy spaceships” weren’t like that. And as they drove, Iris pointed at things out the window, desperate to know what they were. She saw the “big bonging clock” and “the palace where her royal majestyness” lives. Cioné pointed out things as well, and when Iris saw them, her mind wandered and wandered and wandered, into all sorts of little worlds, the sort of little worlds that only children can ever truly understand.
The Doctor looked sad, though. London, to be fair, was a painful city for him. Cioné mouthed an “okay?” to him, and he nodded, and she gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Eventually, the Doctor joined in with their natterings about the massive city around them, as the Doctor did impressions of the Queen coming out to the balcony of Buckingham palace to wave at them.
“I haven’t been this happy in years,” the Doctor suddenly said. Iris nodded in agreement and rested her head on her father’s shoulder, because children do that thing where they try to be like their parents. The Doctor leaned back into the seat, content with his life for what seemed like the first time in years. For now, he was happy to spend his days with the two people he loved the most.
The Doctor that Lizzie had first met would never have been this content. He was too nervous, even paranoid about something happening that would yet again take everything away from him. There were no shadows looming over him anymore, shadows that haunted him wherever he turned – they were still there, they always would be, but he didn’t have to worry about shadows anymore. Instead, he worried about the people who cast the light.
He’d grown up, just as Iris had grown, and perhaps because Iris had grown with him.
Everyone grew up, in the end.
***
THE DOCTOR’S TARDIS (LATER THAT DAY)
Lizzie sat in the leather seat by the console, while the Doctor stood over the controls, piloting the machine to take her back home. The day had been lovely: they’d seen some of the best tourist attractions, including Madame Tussauds and the Aquarium -- Iris loved the fish, and Lizzie had a picture on her phone showing Iris struggling to contain her wonder and excitement as she stood next to a massive Great White shark in the tank behind her. They’d all walked around the city, and when Iris started to complain about her legs hurting, they stopped off at a chippy, and the four of them ate chips together while watching the sunset glowing orangey red over the Thames.
“Are you alright?” Lizzie asked the Doctor, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for some time. His long silence continued for a bit, as he flicked a switch on the console, and the familiar sounds of the great ship’s rotor filled the control room. She nearly asked him again, but knew that he’d answer in his own time. And then he did.
“Yes. I’ve had – I’ve had an amazing day,” he said. “And I have an amazing life.”
There was a pause, and Lizzie knew what he was going to say next.
“It’s just … sometimes I feel as if… as if I don’t have any connection to anything at all. It’s not that I don’t love my life, because I do, and some days, I am so, so content, more than I ever have been before. But there are some days when that isn’t enough, and it’s like… I’m somewhere else, cut off from them, even when I am standing right there with them. And occasionally, I wonder whether they’d be better off if I just …”
“No.”
Her interruption had come as a surprise even to herself, because she didn’t think that she could be so blunt. But it was like he had awakened something inside her, like an instinct of some kind, and it just made her suddenly blurt it out that firm No. The Doctor looked surprised as well.
“I mean … I’ve been there myself,” she added, as she Lizzie looked at the floor and then back at him again. “But Iris is way, way too special. And the good days, the ones like today, don’t they mean something?”
“Yes, they do –”
“Don’t they mean more to you than you might realize?”
“I… I suppose, but –”
“Like, I get how you feel, but you know … you can’t let your fears get the better of you.”
“But what if I’m making her life…”
“Doctor. Listen to me, please, for once, even if you don’t pay attention to me ever again. I saw her today, with you, and I saw how happy you made her. That’s special, and – that’s something she won’t get anywhere else from anyone else. I mean, so, whenever your fears get the better of you or your life gets particularly dangerous and complicated, remember that there is a little girl waiting for you, a little girl who’s asking her amazing mum every day, “When’s Dad coming home?” And those words – just, please – just imagine those words and what they mean, because there are so many kids who ask that question, and so many who never get an answer, or the right answer, so many who never see their Dad and never will.”
The Doctor leaned back against the bookcase, his face lost in thought, his mind unsure.
“I’m just sick of time travel. I’m sick of what it’s done to me and… to those… around me.”
Lizzie thought for a few moments – she saw before her the hollowed-out time traveller, and she saw how sad he was. She wanted to help him, so much.
“Go to her,” Lizzie was blunt once again. The Doctor stepped forward from the bookshelves, and walked over to her. “Please,” she insisted, “Because – she really does deserve it.”
The Doctor opened his arms and hugged Lizzie tightly. It was warm and completely honest, because the two of them, in those seconds, understood each other.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
You’re welcome, she thought.
Then he danced back to the console and pulled down the lever.
“See you in, oh, I’d say… a few years.”
Lizzie smiled at him, a “you’re a really good person, you know” kind of smile.
“I’ve got one hell of a birthday party to organise!” were his last words to her as he left.
***
TWO WEEKS LATER. LIZZIE TIME
Lizzie and Maggie had stood in the garden, watching the Doctor stumble out of the TARDIS. A party hat was perched on his head, and silly string covered his jacket. Maggie’s face was a mix of shock, and stifled laughter, as she caught sight of his necklace of daisy chains and his great big blue sunglasses. Lizzie remembered, then, the events of two weeks ago, after she and the Doctor had left London, and how the Doctor had said he had a “hell of a birthday party” to arrange. A 64th birthday party, for Iris.
“Hello!” the Doctor said to Maggie. “Lovely to meet you.”
“We haven’t even been introduced,” Maggie responded as she winked at him, and as Lizzie glared at her, she stopped, mouthing a ‘sorry’ in Lizzie’s direction. “Seriously, though, whoever you are, I’m going to need new bloody paving!” she added, desperately trying to sound severe through a strangled chuckle.
“Sorry,” the Doctor smiled sheepishly. “Sometimes the stabilisers don’t quite function – I’m working on it.”
“Well,” Maggie said to Lizzie as she looked at the blue “box.” “You certainly weren’t lying, Lizzie.”
The Doctor looked at her, as if he was asking about what she apparently wasn’t lying about and Lizzie realised that the Doctor and Maggie had not yet met.
“Maggie, this is the Doctor I was telling you about before… well, yeah, that Doctor. And Doctor, this is Maggie, my support worker.”
“I’m basically her mother,” Maggie squared up to him. “So you’d better take care of her.”
The Doctor recoiled slightly, intimidated, before Maggie finally burst into fits of laughter while nodding towards him. “Look at him! I actually scared him!”
Lizzie was about to say something, when she realised he was wearing those massive blue sunglasses, and decided against it.
“Maggie, I’m dreadfully sorry, but Lizzie’s a guest of honour,” was all the Doctor said.
Lizzie was a what?
“For whom?” Maggie seemed incredulous.
“For my daughter. It’s the big 6-4 and I don’t want to disappoint.”
“What’s he bleating on about?” And then to the Doctor, “Are you dim or…?”
“Maggie, it’s their aging process, they age… erm…,” she struggled to think of a way to put it tactfully, “… differently.”
Maggie nodded as if she was at least partially understanding that, but with a suspicious expression on her face. She paused for a beat, and then added, “Would you like some tea?”
“I would,” the Doctor said. “But… I really must go.”
Lizzie tried to offer a few words of her own in all this, when Maggie looked at her with great sadness in her eyes.
“Lizzie, you’ve just told me about all this amazing stuff, love. Please, Doctor – can’t you stay? Just for a bit? I’d love to hear more.
“I’ll only be five seconds, Maggie” Lizzie said reassuringly.
“But you’re just saying that, Lizzie. You know it won’t really be five seconds.”
“No, Maggie. Trust me.”
Lizzie kissed the old woman on the cheek, and stepped into the box. The Doctor gave Maggie a bit of a friendly wave, but it was rendered absurd by the giant party sunglasses and the daisy chains.
Then… the box vanished.
***
CIONÉ’S TARDIS
The Doctor’s TARDIS materialised inside the console room of Cioné’s TARDIS, and the Doctor leapt out of the doors, and into to a child’s dream birthday party. His child’s birthday party. As soon as Lizzie stepped out of the box close behind him, there were kids all around her, chasing each other with cans of silly string, and laughing and playing, without a care in the world…or universe.
As Lizzie stepped out into the chaos, the Doctor crept up behind her with what seemed like a giant water pistol, something like a cosmic super-soaker, and all the kids saw him. They let out loud gasps of awe as silly string jettisoned from the blaster at a velocity incomparable to any kind of silly string device Lizzie had ever seen. In fact, it actually reached the far wall of the console room, and the Doctor shifted his aim to the ceiling, creating great webs of silly string, as if there were brightly coloured spiders nesting in the roof of Cioné’s TARDIS.
When the kids saw the sheer force of the device, they knew that whoever wielded that dreaded weapon would be the ultimate winner in their silly string battle, and so, within seconds, there was an army of children surrounding the Doctor, all desperate to play with it.
The Doctor tossed it over to a shy looking boy and shouted, “Go get ‘em, tiger!”
The boy grinned, and the children started running again, shrieking with delicious terror as the great silly string cannon once again leapt to life, and Lizzie was left marvelling at the science behind Time Lord toys.
The Doctor led Lizzie down the steps and into the warm and cosy living area. On the table in the centre, was a chocolate cake, with ‘64’ written across the top in chocolate buttons. The cake was pumped so full of butter cream icing, it was bulging out the sides, and Lizzie saw the mark of a small finger that had, presumably, decided to take a cheeky fingerful of icing from the cake before it was served. Paper chains decorated the beams of the room, and a throng of birthday cards clustered on top of the mantelpiece.
“Lizzie!”
And suddenly Iris was hugging her, and Lizzie had to kneel down to reciprocate the hug properly, as Iris was still so much shorter than she was!
“Hey!” Lizzie smiled at her. She had to talk loudly over the noise of the kids. “How’s the party?”
“The bestest fun!” Iris grinned a big cheesy grin. “Daddy said you’d be here for the cake.”
“And I will be, ” Lizzie reassured her.
“Yay! I need to go.”
And Iris vanished. She’d be back in a minute; she was just slightly concerned about the kid who was suspiciously fiddling with the microscope she’d received as a birthday present.
Lizzie drifted through the room and into a kitchen area, where Cioné sat, slumped over a table.
“Are you okay?” Lizzie sat down opposite her.
Cioné looked up, her hair a mess, and with a suspicious stain across her jumper. “This is the most stressful day of my life.”
Lizzie smiled one of those half-laughter sort of smiles. “Iris is loving it, though.”
“Yeah,” Cioné said. “Yeah, she is. As is the Doctor.”
Maybe having a bit too much fun, Lizzie smiled to herself at how happy he was, even if Cioné looked shattered.
“A good night’s sleep, that’s what I need. Kids always seem to take forever to go to sleep the night before their birthdays. You get to my age, and quite frankly, they become a lot less exciting.”
Cioné was simultaneously one of the most down-to-Earth and hilariously quirky people Lizzie had ever known, and Lizzie loved her for it, as Cioné poured tea from one of her many tea-cosy-covered tea pots. Cioné, meanwhile, was thinking the very same about Lizzie, while trying not to spill tea all over the place.
“I shouldn’t be too grumpy,” Cioné sipped from her mug. “It means a lot to see Iris so happy. It means a lot to see them both so happy.”
Cioné had been smiling for what seemed like ages and ages, especially when the party had first started, and the Doctor had donned those utterly mad, utterly HUGE, TARDIS-blue glasses and that garishly coloured party hat, and all the kids had laughed and joked with him. But as Lizzie watched her, she was worried that Cioné would be one of those people who worried so much about her family, that she would forgot about herself. The bags under Cioné’s eyes only heightened Lizzie’s concern.
“Look after yourself,” Lizzie said, perhaps rather abruptly, from Cioné’s perspective.
“Hmm? Oh, me? I do,” Cioné shrugged it off.
There was a brief silence. The radio was on, and there was a news report that the two of them sat and listened to it for a bit:
“In the last few minutes – it – has been confirmed – Evangeline Cullengate has been elected the Prime Minister of the Empire and its surrounding colonies. Someone who joined the race for the premiership as a controversial outsider, with her ideas either reviled or revered, has won the election. We’re expecting a statement from the Cullengate campaign within the next few minutes, and a speech from Mrs Cullengate herself should follow in the next few hours.”
“That’s what concerns me the most,” Cioné pointed to the radio. “That Iris is going to have to grow up in a universe like this. A universe where hatred is winning.”
That thought alarmed Lizzie as well.
“And it’s not helped by the war,” Cioné continued. “That’s why it means so much that we do the best for Iris that we can – to love her and teach her what’s important.”
Cioné had seen a lot. When she was a doctor, she would arrive on war-ravaged worlds and find the dead bodies of far too many children. It had been hard enough before Iris’ birth, but ever since she’d been born, it had grown worse, to the extent that whenever she saw a dead child, she’d seen them as probably close to the same age as Iris. And then she would think of the disgusting Dalek creatures who had killed them, and the slimy Time Lord bastards at the top of the greasy pole who had sanctioned the war, and she would worry for Iris, who would have to learn about the world through information given to her by those sorts of people. That’s why Cioné had tried so hard to teach her about the world and the universe, and what it was really about, and not what those people blinded by power and hatred and money believed it was about.
In other words, it was not what the Daleks, the Time Lords, and Evangeline Cullengate thought it was about.
“And you do an amazing job,” Lizzie complimented her.
“As do you,” Cioné interjected. It took Lizzie a few moments to register what Cioné had said, and then Lizzie completed her observation: “Honestly, Lizzie, Iris loves you.”
“... what?”
“She’s known you all her life. And you’ve taught her a lot.”
For Lizzie, it had only been a few weeks. And yet, now Cioné was telling her she’d done so much for this girl she hardly knew. In a way, it was the highest compliment Cioné could ever bestow.
“And so has the Doctor,” Cioné responded as she watched the Doctor through the kitchen door, as he was laughing and doing some stupidly funny impression in front of Iris and all her friends, which had reduced them to fits of giggles. “Honestly, though. 64 years. Feels like it was yesterday.”
Yup… Lizzie thought.
“It’s worth it, though,” Cioné said, thinking back to that day when she was listening to what now had become that utterly awful Beethoven piece that she had once loved. Her love for the piece had not survived the experience of hearing it while she had been giving birth to Iris. Then she thought forward to the day that Iris would be way too big for birthday parties like this, and realised she had to hang on to these moments, as much as she possibly could. “Anyway. Time to cut the cake. It’s bigger on the inside, you know?”
Time Lord parties, Lizzie thought. They seemed like a blast.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 5 CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 9
The timelines for Lizzie had become so confused, she’d almost given up. Now, she was back in her flat, waiting for the TARDIS to arrive again. The Doctor and Lizzie were following the same system as before, pretty much – he’d drop her back home, she’d wait five minutes, and he’d turn up in his TARDIS. But for him, it would be months later. And he’d take her to see Iris and Cioné, for whom it too would be months later.
Time was passing in a bizarre way for Lizzie, though.
Although there were only five minutes between each trip – five minutes Earth time – it happened that every five minutes, Lizzie would experience one day, or, more often, one whole day and night, as she’d sleep (or try to sleep) on the TARDIS. Then, she’d arrive back on Earth, and only five minutes had passed. Being a time traveller was strange, to say the least; and then again, it must’ve been even stranger to be Iris, the daughter of a time traveller, with people passing in and out of your life at a rate completely different from your own aging process.
That one day, they’d gone to the Golden Sun Spires theme park, but it was a whole planet, an entire world, as a theme park. It was the longed-for dream of any young child like Iris, who wanted to live as much as possible, and to have as much fun as possible, and who would happily ride rollercoasters all day and eat junk food and drink enough fizzy drinks to completely dissolve their teeth. So, Golden Sun Spires was most certainly Iris’ heaven, evident from the moment she and her father, the Doctor, swaggered on and staggered off the largest rollercoaster Iris’ height would allow. Iris ate gleefully from a cloud of sticky candyfloss on a paper cone core, while the Doctor looked as if he were ready to vomit at any moment. When the Doctor had looked to Cioné as the adult required to accompany Iris on the ride, Cioné had ridiculed the suggestion, citing it as one of the benefits of having a husband. Now, she watched the two of them, laughing as the Doctor flopped down on the bench.
“How was it?” Cioné asked her daughter.
“It was SO amazing!” Iris crowed with delight as she stood in front of the bench, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, barely reining in the hyperactivity typical of a little girl. “I’m surprised my candyfloss is still here though because it was the coaster was the fastest thing ever!”
Then Iris turned to her dad and laughed as he clenched his stomach, and remarked with unsettling precocity, “But, he’s so old that he can’t cope with it anymore.”
The Doctor’s age had recently become the butt of a good many family jokes.
“To be young again,” the Doctor sighed, as he sat down. Cioné placed an arm around him, and Iris ran to Lizzie and reached out a hand.
“Come onnnnn Lizzie! You said you’d go on a ride with me.”
“You’ve been on all of them!” Lizzie said as she sipped from her gryzymberry-flavoured milkshake (a flavour Iris had picked out, and one which Lizzie had taken a liking to).
“Not all of them,” Iris retorted, with her cheeky grin and puppy dog eyes, pointing at the “ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE” big wheel looming in the distance. It was like the London Eye – maybe even bigger, in fact. Lizzie gulped when she saw it. “Pleeeaaasse?” Iris pleaded.
Lizzie looked at the imposing wheel, then back at Iris, and realised that she’d have to be incredibly cruel and heartless to say no.
“Oh – come on, then.” And off they went, hand-in-hand.
***
Sometimes, there were hopeful glimmers, though, and Lizzie thought of how the Doctor and Cioné had laughed, as they’d prepared for the whole new life they were about to share.
All of that to come.
Lizzie thought of the huge journey Iris was beginning, when Iris opened her eyes from her nap – oh, the days of midday napping.
For now, though, things were good.
Iris was beautiful.
Lizzie looked up, and the Doctor was standing over her, his phone at the ready.
“Smile,” he said.
Lizzie smiled at him, Iris in her arms, and the camera flashed.
“Wonderful,” the Doctor checked out the photo on his phone, savouring the moment for as long as possible – now he had this moment forever held in a photograph.
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
“I can’t believe I didn’t find out about it sooner, though,” the Doctor said as he laughed along with this older version of his wife.
“I left a reminder on a post-it note on the fridge for about a hundred years,” Cioné giggled, sending the Doctor into further fits of laughter. They were an eccentric pair, but nobody minded, least of all Lizzie – London was a city full of eccentrics. But although the two of them were so perfect together, Lizzie could tell that at this moment the two people in front of her weren’t the same people – that is they weren’t from the same time.
Lizzie had no idea how time travellers fell in love or whether a time traveller could still love a future version of their beloved. She assumed so, because Cioné from the future, the one in front of her now, the one who, as she had discovered, was the mother of a grown-up Iris, still loved the Doctor. The only difference was that Cioné had had more years to love the Doctor.
Then Cioné turned to him again and asked a simple question, “Why are you here?”
“Aren’t I allowed to visit my wife?”
“Of course you are – but we wanted to keep our lives on the same timelines as much as possible, didn’t we?”
“Yes – I know.”
“So – where are you? In Iris’ timeline, I mean, at this point?”
Lizzie reached into her pocket and grabbed a scruffy little chart she’d made for herself – it was like currency conversions, with the Gallifreyan age down one side, and the human age down the other – or as close as it was possible to get. It wasn’t an exact science, but the Gallifreyan aging process roughly corresponded with the human one.
“She’s still a child. A young child. Although, for you, you’ve only just sent me to the birth, that happened years ago, for me. And… Iris is sixty-three now,” the Doctor tried to arrange the order of events in his head. Lizzie glanced at her age-chart. 63 – Iris was approximately six human years old. Lizzie also set about trying to keep track of the timelines.
So there was their first meeting in Trafalgar square, with the future Cioné. Then, the Doctor and Lizzie had gone back in time to the birth. Then, Lizzie had gone back to Cioné’s TARDIS with the Doctor and Iris, where –
CIONÉ’S TARDIS – NOT LONG AFTER THE BIRTH
“Sshh, sshh,” Cioné gently rocked the newborn back and forth in her arms. “That’s it, it’s alright. Mummy’s going to keep you safe.”
Cioné’s TARDIS was lovely: in contrast to the Doctor’s minimalist approach, and despite the fact that her TARDIS shared similar bookshelves, lining the walls, and crammed full of old and dusty tomes, Cioné’s TARDIS was warmer, more like a home, with its wooden floorboards that creaked in that familiar way whenever you walked across them, and a tartan rug in the centre, a rug that Cioné had made herself. And, unlike the Doctor’s TARDIS bookshelves, with its single photo almost hidden amongst all the books Cioné’s bookshelves were filled with such a mass of photos and quirky ornaments that almost rendered the books invisible. And, there was one entire shelf devoted to a collection of weird, jar-like containers, and another shelf filled with teapots, each sporting its own uniquely hand-knitted tea-cosy. On the hat stand by the door hung a warmly-coloured knit scarf and a few snuggly-looking, hand-knitted pullovers. An old-fashioned hi-fi set sat on top of a chest of drawers, and on the other side of the console room, were several great coral-like pillars stretching up to the ceiling.
“I like the coral,” the Doctor observed, when he stepped into the TARDIS.
“I know! I redecorated.”
They continued through her homely console room, down some steps, and into a recreational living area similar in décor to the console room, but with a big battered and very comfortable-looking sofa in the middle. There was also a mantelpiece, prominently displaying photographs of Cioné and the Doctor, and a few photos of Iris that they had taken before they’d left the hospital. Each of the lamps in the room sported a pastel-coloured lampshade that softened their bright white light into soft, warm oranges and pinks.
While Lizzie sat on the sofa, Cioné tried to rock Iris to sleep in a wooden rocking chair near-by, and the Doctor stood at the mantelpiece, propping up some of the unframed newer photos against the frames of the others. Lizzie felt rather awkward as she gazed at the photo from the hospital of herself holding the newly born Iris in her arms.
“Shall I make some tea?” the Doctor asked.
“Oh, I could murder a bottle of wine,” responded Cioné.
“Are you sure?” the Doctor looked concerned – he wasn’t sure about the protocol for new mothers and alcohol.
“Well, they said Beethoven would make the birth easier, and they were wrong.”
The Doctor took the hint, and left the room in search of a bottle, leaving Cioné and Lizzie to it.
“I hope, you’re like, okay, with –”
Cioné was looking at her with great understanding. “Putting you up on the mantelpiece?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie laughed, because Cioné’s response was so warm and lovely and kind that Lizzie’s concern seemed suddenly ridiculous.
“Lizzie,” Cioné sat next to her. “I was the one who asked for it.”
That was unexpected.
“But… why? I mean, I didn’t-”
“Do you realise what a difference you’ve made to him?” Cioné placed her other hand on Lizzie’s knee. “Sorry, that’s not too personal, is it? I’m feeling quite sentimental, right now, so if I go too far, do tell me to stop.”
Most people, Lizzie would have asked to stop, but…
“Lizzie, when I married the Doctor, he was so very sad. He’d lost everything. Everyone he loved, gone. He married me – and that made him happy. Because he’d found love. But I saw him during the wedding reception, and he still looked so sad. Because it was at the wedding that he parted company with one of his best friends. He was devastated – I could see it in his eyes, because the Doctor is terrible at hiding his emotions. I don’t think it matters what incarnation, the Doctor’s naturally a very emotional chap.”
It was true – Lizzie had learned to identify the Doctor’s mood simply by his breathing patterns.
“But today,” Cioné continued. “He was so different. So full of life, and he was laughing again. That was you, who did that. You brought him back to us.”
Lizzie began to protest, but Cioné shut her up.
“We need you, Lizzie. All three of us do.”
TRAFALGAR SQUARE - LONDON - 2017
Lizzie ran it through in her head again – they’d arrived in London, where they’d met future Cioné. Then the Doctor and Lizzie had gone to the birth, then they’d gone to Cioné’s TARDIS to settle in, and then the Doctor had dropped her off back home. Lizzie had thought about telling Maggie about her adventures with the Doctor, but decided against it – it could wait.
That’s when it got really weird, because for about two days, the Doctor had appeared every half hour, grabbing Lizzie’s hand with a joyful “come with me!” and taking her into the TARDIS to see Cioné and Iris. And every time he arrived in her flat, he looked just a little bit older – although it wasn’t that noticeable; it never seemed to be with Gallifreyans.
And then, later, for another two days, Lizzie had gone on non-stop visits, to see Iris – but although those visits were in two days for Lizzie, they all took place over the first sixty-three years of Iris’ life. And every half an hour, Iris would look just a little bit older, because for her, and for the Doctor, it had been years. There was a weird bit of tension between Lizzie and the Doctor at first, because he always hugged her, since, for him, it had been years since he’d seen her last, even though it’d only been half an hour for Lizzie. Eventually, she got used to it, and just pretended it had been years for her as well.
It was strange, though, watching sixty-three years pass in two days. Not just with Iris, who, in that time, had grown from a new born baby, into the Gallifreyan equivalent of a six-year-old girl. But, with the Doctor and Cioné, because whenever she spoke with them, they were always a little bit older and a little bit wiser, and she could see it, even more obviously: Lizzie felt like an observer, watching the first few years of the life of a family, as they grew and grew and grew – all three of them. While she hadn’t ever changed.
So – they had arrived in London, met future Cioné, seen the birth of Iris and gone to Cioné’s TARDIS, and then Lizzie had gone back home while the Doctor spent his years with Iris and every half hour or so (every year or so for the Doctor) the Doctor had popped into her life to take her to visit Iris. Then, because the Doctor was curious (he wanted to know about Iris’ future, and Cioné had declined his request), he had picked up Lizzie and taken her back to London at exactly the same time that Cioné was giving them the information regarding Iris’ birth just after they had come from the briefing about the Bug. It almost made sense.
Mostly.
Except, that wasn’t even the weirdest bit.
The next bit was really, really weird.
Future Cioné (whom Lizzie had realised was far enough into the future that her Iris was in her late-teens), suddenly glanced at her watch, and her face filled with dread.
“I need to go,” she said, grabbing her floral cardigan and wrapping it around her.
“Why?” the Doctor exclaimed.
“You know why. Or at least, you will in about thirty seconds.”
And then Cioné waved at them as she ran off into the crowd.
It was such an abrupt goodbye that it left the Doctor glancing around, just as confused as he’d been all those years ago, (all those days ago for Lizzie), when Cioné had ushered him into the TARDIS so he wouldn’t miss the birth of their daughter. Suddenly, emerging from the crowds that future Cioné had just disappeared into, was Cioné, wearing completely different clothes, and with a little girl in tow. When the Doctor saw them, his face fell into his hands, because even the Doctor, the guy who spent all his time whizzing about in time, was struggling to fathom such a peculiar and abrupt evolution of events.
“Ah, Hubbie. Here you are.”
“Lizzie!” Iris ran up to them, and Lizzie knelt down to hug little Iris.
“How are you, lovely?” Lizzie asked.
“I’m super-duper-awesomesauce!”
Iris’ use of language always made Lizzie smile. In fact, Iris herself always made Lizzie smil as a rule– she was such a bundle of energy, laughter, and enthusiasm, and an ever-present brightness.
Lizzie, the observer, had quickly learned that Iris didn’t care what people thought of her, if they thought she was a bit peculiar, because Iris was dreaming of a time when she would discover new universes, and didn’t care that the Time Lords had banned the exploration of foreign universes without an executive warrant, or that existing technology couldn’t take her that far, or anything like that. She was a child. She wanted to explore, and to discover. She loved everyone, she trusted everyone, and she was learning avidly and eagerly, and even when she made mistakes, she never let those mistakes hold her back.
“You were just there,” the Doctor looked back at the spot where future Cioné had stood.
“No I wasn’t,” Cioné said.
“The timelines have converged,” the Doctor said with more than a little concern. And Lizzie, for once, understood his technobabble: The Doctor, at his point in time, was back with the “right” Cioné and Iris – that is the Cioné and Iris from his present timeline. It was all sorted out again. Lizzie had just about gotten a grip on all of it and presumed that the reason Future Cioné had come here was because she knew that the Doctor would be here, because Past Cioné – the one standing in front of Lizzie now – had met up with a past version of the Doctor – the Doctor now standing in front of Lizzie – when the Iris now there in front of them was a little girl. And so, Future Cioné knew that if the TARDIS was here in one time, it would be easy to find in another time, because the Doctor’s TARDIS seemed to have a penchant for going to the same place multiple times.
She really needed a break from all this stuff.
And then, as if reading Lizzie’s mind, Cioné asked, “Do you fancy a drink? I’m parched. There’s a café over there.”
***
Lizzie sat opposite Iris as they each sipped their milkshakes – Lizzie’s was strawberry, and Iris’ was chocolate, because for some reason, children had a thing for chocolate, regardless of what form it was in.
“How old are you?” Iris suddenly asked. Lizzie was taken aback by the question, but children just said the first thing that came to mind, regardless of how irrelevant or personal it was.
“Why do you want to know?” she gently challenged the little girl.
“I’m 63 now,” Iris said.
Older than me, Lizzie thought and then asked out loud, “When did you turn 63?”
“A while ago. I’m going to be 64 soon!”
“Wow!” Lizzie grinned. She loved speaking to children, and pretending to be amazed at something that wasn’t really amazing to her, because it took her back to the days when, as a young child, she found everything amazing. “Are you going to have a party?”
“I’m going to have a HUGE party,” Iris waved her hands around to indicate the sheer size of her planned birthday bash.
“And you’re going to have birthday cake?” (Cake was Lizzie’s secret pleasure.)
“A massive chocolate one. Daddy said he would make it bigger on the inside!” Iris paused and then continued. “I asked you because you never look old.”
Lizzie stopped for a moment, a bit startled. Then she realised Iris was referring to her earlier question about how old Lizzie was, because that was another thing kids did – they had funny conversations, where they would ask and answer questions of sequence, like the conversation was being cut and pasted and swivelled around in a random new order. It was as if they were finding out for the first time how people spoke, how they interacted, how it all worked. Iris was at the age when she was ‘feeling’ the world for the first time, trying with all five senses to understand as much of it as she could, and when whatever she discovered, it was sure to be wondrous.
Lizzie knew that at some point, they’d have to explain to Iris why Lizzie never looked any older to her. They didn’t think it would happen for a while – but Iris was clever. At some point, they knew the little girl would have to understand that Elizabeth Darwin, a constant presence in her life, had actually only known her for a few days.
“I’m 24,” Lizzie told her. Iris became lost in deep calculations, as she was trying to work out how old Lizzie should be, and was clearly struggling.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Iris realised.
Lizzie smiled sadly, and hoped Iris wouldn’t notice.
Life doesn’t make sense.
***
Ten minutes later, the Doctor, Cioné, and Iris were on a bus (as was Lizzie, but she was sitting slightly behind them, to let the three of them have as much time together as possible -- that sort of thing was important for families). As soon as they’d climbed aboard the big-red-grumbly-machine, as Iris called it, Iris had dashed straight to the top of the stairs, because she’d been so desperate to travel on a bus with stairs and two levels!
“Honestly,” the Doctor muttered. “You give them bigger-on-the-inside, and they only want to ride on double-decker buses.”
The bus had rows of three seats running down one side of the second floor, and the Doctor, Cioné, and Iris had decided to sit on one of them – the Doctor by the aisle, Cioné by the window, with Iris between them. Lizzie was a few rows behind them on the opposite side of the bus; she smiled at the Doctor’s little family, as the bus slowly hissed away from its stop. It travelled silently because it was electrically powered, which impressed Iris as well, because “noisy-noisy spaceships” weren’t like that. And as they drove, Iris pointed at things out the window, desperate to know what they were. She saw the “big bonging clock” and “the palace where her royal majestyness” lives. Cioné pointed out things as well, and when Iris saw them, her mind wandered and wandered and wandered, into all sorts of little worlds, the sort of little worlds that only children can ever truly understand.
The Doctor looked sad, though. London, to be fair, was a painful city for him. Cioné mouthed an “okay?” to him, and he nodded, and she gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Eventually, the Doctor joined in with their natterings about the massive city around them, as the Doctor did impressions of the Queen coming out to the balcony of Buckingham palace to wave at them.
“I haven’t been this happy in years,” the Doctor suddenly said. Iris nodded in agreement and rested her head on her father’s shoulder, because children do that thing where they try to be like their parents. The Doctor leaned back into the seat, content with his life for what seemed like the first time in years. For now, he was happy to spend his days with the two people he loved the most.
The Doctor that Lizzie had first met would never have been this content. He was too nervous, even paranoid about something happening that would yet again take everything away from him. There were no shadows looming over him anymore, shadows that haunted him wherever he turned – they were still there, they always would be, but he didn’t have to worry about shadows anymore. Instead, he worried about the people who cast the light.
He’d grown up, just as Iris had grown, and perhaps because Iris had grown with him.
Everyone grew up, in the end.
***
THE DOCTOR’S TARDIS (LATER THAT DAY)
Lizzie sat in the leather seat by the console, while the Doctor stood over the controls, piloting the machine to take her back home. The day had been lovely: they’d seen some of the best tourist attractions, including Madame Tussauds and the Aquarium -- Iris loved the fish, and Lizzie had a picture on her phone showing Iris struggling to contain her wonder and excitement as she stood next to a massive Great White shark in the tank behind her. They’d all walked around the city, and when Iris started to complain about her legs hurting, they stopped off at a chippy, and the four of them ate chips together while watching the sunset glowing orangey red over the Thames.
“Are you alright?” Lizzie asked the Doctor, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for some time. His long silence continued for a bit, as he flicked a switch on the console, and the familiar sounds of the great ship’s rotor filled the control room. She nearly asked him again, but knew that he’d answer in his own time. And then he did.
“Yes. I’ve had – I’ve had an amazing day,” he said. “And I have an amazing life.”
There was a pause, and Lizzie knew what he was going to say next.
“It’s just … sometimes I feel as if… as if I don’t have any connection to anything at all. It’s not that I don’t love my life, because I do, and some days, I am so, so content, more than I ever have been before. But there are some days when that isn’t enough, and it’s like… I’m somewhere else, cut off from them, even when I am standing right there with them. And occasionally, I wonder whether they’d be better off if I just …”
“No.”
Her interruption had come as a surprise even to herself, because she didn’t think that she could be so blunt. But it was like he had awakened something inside her, like an instinct of some kind, and it just made her suddenly blurt it out that firm No. The Doctor looked surprised as well.
“I mean … I’ve been there myself,” she added, as she Lizzie looked at the floor and then back at him again. “But Iris is way, way too special. And the good days, the ones like today, don’t they mean something?”
“Yes, they do –”
“Don’t they mean more to you than you might realize?”
“I… I suppose, but –”
“Like, I get how you feel, but you know … you can’t let your fears get the better of you.”
“But what if I’m making her life…”
“Doctor. Listen to me, please, for once, even if you don’t pay attention to me ever again. I saw her today, with you, and I saw how happy you made her. That’s special, and – that’s something she won’t get anywhere else from anyone else. I mean, so, whenever your fears get the better of you or your life gets particularly dangerous and complicated, remember that there is a little girl waiting for you, a little girl who’s asking her amazing mum every day, “When’s Dad coming home?” And those words – just, please – just imagine those words and what they mean, because there are so many kids who ask that question, and so many who never get an answer, or the right answer, so many who never see their Dad and never will.”
The Doctor leaned back against the bookcase, his face lost in thought, his mind unsure.
“I’m just sick of time travel. I’m sick of what it’s done to me and… to those… around me.”
Lizzie thought for a few moments – she saw before her the hollowed-out time traveller, and she saw how sad he was. She wanted to help him, so much.
“Go to her,” Lizzie was blunt once again. The Doctor stepped forward from the bookshelves, and walked over to her. “Please,” she insisted, “Because – she really does deserve it.”
The Doctor opened his arms and hugged Lizzie tightly. It was warm and completely honest, because the two of them, in those seconds, understood each other.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
You’re welcome, she thought.
Then he danced back to the console and pulled down the lever.
“See you in, oh, I’d say… a few years.”
Lizzie smiled at him, a “you’re a really good person, you know” kind of smile.
“I’ve got one hell of a birthday party to organise!” were his last words to her as he left.
***
TWO WEEKS LATER. LIZZIE TIME
Lizzie and Maggie had stood in the garden, watching the Doctor stumble out of the TARDIS. A party hat was perched on his head, and silly string covered his jacket. Maggie’s face was a mix of shock, and stifled laughter, as she caught sight of his necklace of daisy chains and his great big blue sunglasses. Lizzie remembered, then, the events of two weeks ago, after she and the Doctor had left London, and how the Doctor had said he had a “hell of a birthday party” to arrange. A 64th birthday party, for Iris.
“Hello!” the Doctor said to Maggie. “Lovely to meet you.”
“We haven’t even been introduced,” Maggie responded as she winked at him, and as Lizzie glared at her, she stopped, mouthing a ‘sorry’ in Lizzie’s direction. “Seriously, though, whoever you are, I’m going to need new bloody paving!” she added, desperately trying to sound severe through a strangled chuckle.
“Sorry,” the Doctor smiled sheepishly. “Sometimes the stabilisers don’t quite function – I’m working on it.”
“Well,” Maggie said to Lizzie as she looked at the blue “box.” “You certainly weren’t lying, Lizzie.”
The Doctor looked at her, as if he was asking about what she apparently wasn’t lying about and Lizzie realised that the Doctor and Maggie had not yet met.
“Maggie, this is the Doctor I was telling you about before… well, yeah, that Doctor. And Doctor, this is Maggie, my support worker.”
“I’m basically her mother,” Maggie squared up to him. “So you’d better take care of her.”
The Doctor recoiled slightly, intimidated, before Maggie finally burst into fits of laughter while nodding towards him. “Look at him! I actually scared him!”
Lizzie was about to say something, when she realised he was wearing those massive blue sunglasses, and decided against it.
“Maggie, I’m dreadfully sorry, but Lizzie’s a guest of honour,” was all the Doctor said.
Lizzie was a what?
“For whom?” Maggie seemed incredulous.
“For my daughter. It’s the big 6-4 and I don’t want to disappoint.”
“What’s he bleating on about?” And then to the Doctor, “Are you dim or…?”
“Maggie, it’s their aging process, they age… erm…,” she struggled to think of a way to put it tactfully, “… differently.”
Maggie nodded as if she was at least partially understanding that, but with a suspicious expression on her face. She paused for a beat, and then added, “Would you like some tea?”
“I would,” the Doctor said. “But… I really must go.”
Lizzie tried to offer a few words of her own in all this, when Maggie looked at her with great sadness in her eyes.
“Lizzie, you’ve just told me about all this amazing stuff, love. Please, Doctor – can’t you stay? Just for a bit? I’d love to hear more.
“I’ll only be five seconds, Maggie” Lizzie said reassuringly.
“But you’re just saying that, Lizzie. You know it won’t really be five seconds.”
“No, Maggie. Trust me.”
Lizzie kissed the old woman on the cheek, and stepped into the box. The Doctor gave Maggie a bit of a friendly wave, but it was rendered absurd by the giant party sunglasses and the daisy chains.
Then… the box vanished.
***
CIONÉ’S TARDIS
The Doctor’s TARDIS materialised inside the console room of Cioné’s TARDIS, and the Doctor leapt out of the doors, and into to a child’s dream birthday party. His child’s birthday party. As soon as Lizzie stepped out of the box close behind him, there were kids all around her, chasing each other with cans of silly string, and laughing and playing, without a care in the world…or universe.
As Lizzie stepped out into the chaos, the Doctor crept up behind her with what seemed like a giant water pistol, something like a cosmic super-soaker, and all the kids saw him. They let out loud gasps of awe as silly string jettisoned from the blaster at a velocity incomparable to any kind of silly string device Lizzie had ever seen. In fact, it actually reached the far wall of the console room, and the Doctor shifted his aim to the ceiling, creating great webs of silly string, as if there were brightly coloured spiders nesting in the roof of Cioné’s TARDIS.
When the kids saw the sheer force of the device, they knew that whoever wielded that dreaded weapon would be the ultimate winner in their silly string battle, and so, within seconds, there was an army of children surrounding the Doctor, all desperate to play with it.
The Doctor tossed it over to a shy looking boy and shouted, “Go get ‘em, tiger!”
The boy grinned, and the children started running again, shrieking with delicious terror as the great silly string cannon once again leapt to life, and Lizzie was left marvelling at the science behind Time Lord toys.
The Doctor led Lizzie down the steps and into the warm and cosy living area. On the table in the centre, was a chocolate cake, with ‘64’ written across the top in chocolate buttons. The cake was pumped so full of butter cream icing, it was bulging out the sides, and Lizzie saw the mark of a small finger that had, presumably, decided to take a cheeky fingerful of icing from the cake before it was served. Paper chains decorated the beams of the room, and a throng of birthday cards clustered on top of the mantelpiece.
“Lizzie!”
And suddenly Iris was hugging her, and Lizzie had to kneel down to reciprocate the hug properly, as Iris was still so much shorter than she was!
“Hey!” Lizzie smiled at her. She had to talk loudly over the noise of the kids. “How’s the party?”
“The bestest fun!” Iris grinned a big cheesy grin. “Daddy said you’d be here for the cake.”
“And I will be, ” Lizzie reassured her.
“Yay! I need to go.”
And Iris vanished. She’d be back in a minute; she was just slightly concerned about the kid who was suspiciously fiddling with the microscope she’d received as a birthday present.
Lizzie drifted through the room and into a kitchen area, where Cioné sat, slumped over a table.
“Are you okay?” Lizzie sat down opposite her.
Cioné looked up, her hair a mess, and with a suspicious stain across her jumper. “This is the most stressful day of my life.”
Lizzie smiled one of those half-laughter sort of smiles. “Iris is loving it, though.”
“Yeah,” Cioné said. “Yeah, she is. As is the Doctor.”
Maybe having a bit too much fun, Lizzie smiled to herself at how happy he was, even if Cioné looked shattered.
“A good night’s sleep, that’s what I need. Kids always seem to take forever to go to sleep the night before their birthdays. You get to my age, and quite frankly, they become a lot less exciting.”
Cioné was simultaneously one of the most down-to-Earth and hilariously quirky people Lizzie had ever known, and Lizzie loved her for it, as Cioné poured tea from one of her many tea-cosy-covered tea pots. Cioné, meanwhile, was thinking the very same about Lizzie, while trying not to spill tea all over the place.
“I shouldn’t be too grumpy,” Cioné sipped from her mug. “It means a lot to see Iris so happy. It means a lot to see them both so happy.”
Cioné had been smiling for what seemed like ages and ages, especially when the party had first started, and the Doctor had donned those utterly mad, utterly HUGE, TARDIS-blue glasses and that garishly coloured party hat, and all the kids had laughed and joked with him. But as Lizzie watched her, she was worried that Cioné would be one of those people who worried so much about her family, that she would forgot about herself. The bags under Cioné’s eyes only heightened Lizzie’s concern.
“Look after yourself,” Lizzie said, perhaps rather abruptly, from Cioné’s perspective.
“Hmm? Oh, me? I do,” Cioné shrugged it off.
There was a brief silence. The radio was on, and there was a news report that the two of them sat and listened to it for a bit:
“In the last few minutes – it – has been confirmed – Evangeline Cullengate has been elected the Prime Minister of the Empire and its surrounding colonies. Someone who joined the race for the premiership as a controversial outsider, with her ideas either reviled or revered, has won the election. We’re expecting a statement from the Cullengate campaign within the next few minutes, and a speech from Mrs Cullengate herself should follow in the next few hours.”
“That’s what concerns me the most,” Cioné pointed to the radio. “That Iris is going to have to grow up in a universe like this. A universe where hatred is winning.”
That thought alarmed Lizzie as well.
“And it’s not helped by the war,” Cioné continued. “That’s why it means so much that we do the best for Iris that we can – to love her and teach her what’s important.”
Cioné had seen a lot. When she was a doctor, she would arrive on war-ravaged worlds and find the dead bodies of far too many children. It had been hard enough before Iris’ birth, but ever since she’d been born, it had grown worse, to the extent that whenever she saw a dead child, she’d seen them as probably close to the same age as Iris. And then she would think of the disgusting Dalek creatures who had killed them, and the slimy Time Lord bastards at the top of the greasy pole who had sanctioned the war, and she would worry for Iris, who would have to learn about the world through information given to her by those sorts of people. That’s why Cioné had tried so hard to teach her about the world and the universe, and what it was really about, and not what those people blinded by power and hatred and money believed it was about.
In other words, it was not what the Daleks, the Time Lords, and Evangeline Cullengate thought it was about.
“And you do an amazing job,” Lizzie complimented her.
“As do you,” Cioné interjected. It took Lizzie a few moments to register what Cioné had said, and then Lizzie completed her observation: “Honestly, Lizzie, Iris loves you.”
“... what?”
“She’s known you all her life. And you’ve taught her a lot.”
For Lizzie, it had only been a few weeks. And yet, now Cioné was telling her she’d done so much for this girl she hardly knew. In a way, it was the highest compliment Cioné could ever bestow.
“And so has the Doctor,” Cioné responded as she watched the Doctor through the kitchen door, as he was laughing and doing some stupidly funny impression in front of Iris and all her friends, which had reduced them to fits of giggles. “Honestly, though. 64 years. Feels like it was yesterday.”
Yup… Lizzie thought.
“It’s worth it, though,” Cioné said, thinking back to that day when she was listening to what now had become that utterly awful Beethoven piece that she had once loved. Her love for the piece had not survived the experience of hearing it while she had been giving birth to Iris. Then she thought forward to the day that Iris would be way too big for birthday parties like this, and realised she had to hang on to these moments, as much as she possibly could. “Anyway. Time to cut the cake. It’s bigger on the inside, you know?”
Time Lord parties, Lizzie thought. They seemed like a blast.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 5 CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 9
The timelines for Lizzie had become so confused, she’d almost given up. Now, she was back in her flat, waiting for the TARDIS to arrive again. The Doctor and Lizzie were following the same system as before, pretty much – he’d drop her back home, she’d wait five minutes, and he’d turn up in his TARDIS. But for him, it would be months later. And he’d take her to see Iris and Cioné, for whom it too would be months later.
Time was passing in a bizarre way for Lizzie, though.
Although there were only five minutes between each trip – five minutes Earth time – it happened that every five minutes, Lizzie would experience one day, or, more often, one whole day and night, as she’d sleep (or try to sleep) on the TARDIS. Then, she’d arrive back on Earth, and only five minutes had passed. Being a time traveller was strange, to say the least; and then again, it must’ve been even stranger to be Iris, the daughter of a time traveller, with people passing in and out of your life at a rate completely different from your own aging process.
That one day, they’d gone to the Golden Sun Spires theme park, but it was a whole planet, an entire world, as a theme park. It was the longed-for dream of any young child like Iris, who wanted to live as much as possible, and to have as much fun as possible, and who would happily ride rollercoasters all day and eat junk food and drink enough fizzy drinks to completely dissolve their teeth. So, Golden Sun Spires was most certainly Iris’ heaven, evident from the moment she and her father, the Doctor, swaggered on and staggered off the largest rollercoaster Iris’ height would allow. Iris ate gleefully from a cloud of sticky candyfloss on a paper cone core, while the Doctor looked as if he were ready to vomit at any moment. When the Doctor had looked to Cioné as the adult required to accompany Iris on the ride, Cioné had ridiculed the suggestion, citing it as one of the benefits of having a husband. Now, she watched the two of them, laughing as the Doctor flopped down on the bench.
“How was it?” Cioné asked her daughter.
“It was SO amazing!” Iris crowed with delight as she stood in front of the bench, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, barely reining in the hyperactivity typical of a little girl. “I’m surprised my candyfloss is still here though because it was the coaster was the fastest thing ever!”
Then Iris turned to her dad and laughed as he clenched his stomach, and remarked with unsettling precocity, “But, he’s so old that he can’t cope with it anymore.”
The Doctor’s age had recently become the butt of a good many family jokes.
“To be young again,” the Doctor sighed, as he sat down. Cioné placed an arm around him, and Iris ran to Lizzie and reached out a hand.
“Come onnnnn Lizzie! You said you’d go on a ride with me.”
“You’ve been on all of them!” Lizzie said as she sipped from her gryzymberry-flavoured milkshake (a flavour Iris had picked out, and one which Lizzie had taken a liking to).
“Not all of them,” Iris retorted, with her cheeky grin and puppy dog eyes, pointing at the “ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE” big wheel looming in the distance. It was like the London Eye – maybe even bigger, in fact. Lizzie gulped when she saw it. “Pleeeaaasse?” Iris pleaded.
Lizzie looked at the imposing wheel, then back at Iris, and realised that she’d have to be incredibly cruel and heartless to say no.
“Oh – come on, then.” And off they went, hand-in-hand.
***
Lizzie and Iris made their way over to the big wheel, stopping to buy another candyfloss for Iris on the way, and they were quickly seated. The wonderful thing about the Golden Sun Spires was that it had eliminated that plague of all theme parks: queueing. Each ride operated in several different dimensions, and groups could be shunted off to a new dimension at the flick of a switch – meaning you got the quintessential theme park experience with all the screaming and sickness, whilst not having to spend hours standing in line while being swarmed by wasps.
It did not bode well that already, Lizzie was growing dizzy as she walked up the steps towards their compartment.
The two of them sat down, and a beefy-looking alien with leathery orange skin and suckers on his forehead locked the compartment door.
No turning back now…
Iris looked up at Lizzie, and she saw that she was scared.
“It’s okay,” Iris gave her a smile, and her hand crawled over to Lizzie’s. Lizzie took it, and Iris gave it a squeeze.
“Sorry,” Lizzie apologised. “I – I – shouldn’t be the scared one!”
“We’re all scared of certain things,” Iris reassured her, looking out as the leathery-skinned alien entered the control box, trying to distract Lizzie from seeing him flick the switch and growing even more anxious. “But we can get through it, if we have someone with us who loves us.”
Iris was absolutely the sweetest little girl Lizzie had ever met. Children were often remarkably good at being wise, and Iris was no different. In fact, Iris seemed even better at it than most. Maybe it came from her parents, who were both incredibly wise. Even so – Lizzie believed that children in general are just the best at advice. Maybe it was the fact they looked at the world through unblinkered eyes, and thus, in a strange way, understood the world around them more than anyone else, because they only saw what was there, and they didn’t have bad memories to distort their vision. Lizzie hated it when people wrote off children as less significant than adults, because they were, in fact, wonderfully perceptive.
The giant wheel began to move. A sudden reaction caused Lizzie to squeeze Iris’ hand even tighter, and yet Iris sat there, calmly eating her candyfloss. Slowly their compartment climbed upward, but Iris never let go of Lizzie’s nervous hands.
Eventually, Iris looked up at her. “See? You’re doing fine.”
“Y-yeah. I am,” Lizzie confirmed, although she still had not yet looked out and over the edge of the compartment. She could feel the cold, though – the cold of being off the ground and in the chill of the wind as it blew through the now seemingly very little metal box separating them from the abyss.
“Look out the window,” Iris urged bluntly, with very little emotion.
“I – I – ,” Lizzie spluttered, still looking down at her lap.
“Go on,” Iris whispered. “For me.”
It was an odd situation to be in, taking advice from someone who looked so much younger than she was, but was, in fact, so much older.
“You won’t see the stars otherwise.”
A few seconds passed before Lizzie finally looked out.
She could see that they were approaching the highest point of the wheel’s journey, still continuing on the upward climb, but not yet at the top. And Iris was right – the sky was beautiful. It was bright sunset orange, with the sun’s rays reaching out from the setting ball of fire and enveloping the entire sky, as if it were embracing it, and keeping it safe forever. At the same time, though, the stars shone through the burning sky, glinting and sparkling through the dimming light, and turning the sky into the most wonderful painting. Then Lizzie looked down, and saw the theme park spreading for miles around her and Iris. It was an entire world, after all, so it made sense that it was such a vast expanse. But she was surprised to see so many people so actively engaged in this park, this world. She spotted a young couple with two young children, leaping from ride to ride and having the time of their lives. And she saw an old man and woman as well, sitting under a tree of beautiful rose blossom, just savouring the moment for as long as possible.
From their compartment, she saw life. Below and above her, life at its finest.
“It’s beautiful,” Lizzie murmured out loud, before realising it.
“I know all those stars,” Iris whispered in awe as she pointed at a great big one that, after the sun, seemed so breathtakingly close. “That one is the Argolisis Herisius. And there, that’s the Sperial Luminacious. They also call it the Great Lighthouse, because ships in the Sperial system use it to make sure they don’t crash into asteroids.”
Lizzie sat back and watched the stars as Iris told her all about them. She seemed to know so much – and they seemed to be one of Iris’ great passions. And then Iris asked Lizzie a question, completely out of the blue, about something else entirely: “Why are you nervous?”
Lizzie had noticed that although Iris was fast approaching that age when she would stop asking the first thing that came into her head, occasionally there would be a question so urgent that it would squeeze through the filter. Lizzie looked at Iris in momentary confusion and Iris helpfully supplied some much-needed context: “Sorry, it’s just … something Dad said the other day.”
“What did he say?”
“Sorry, I-”
Lizzie was worried she’d upset her, and rapidly apologised. “No, it’s not your fault, don’t worry.”
“Mum always says I ask way too many questions out loud,” Iris explained, as she continued to gaze out the window, perhaps trying to undo the awkwardness of the moment. She wasn’t very good at it or maybe “inexperienced” was a better word for it.
“Your dad spends half his time wandering around the universe asking questions out loud. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, Iris.”
Iris turned back to her, the awkwardness gone.
“I want to be like him, one day. I want to see the stars. I mean, I already can see them, but I mean I’d like to see them up close, to go there, experience them.”
“You already travel around, though. With your mum and dad.”
“I know – but one day, I want to have a TARDIS of my own.”
Big plans were such an important part of childhood. Big, silly, stupefying and unbounded aspirations were the things that kept children going, and Lizzie believed that there was always something profound that was lost when those aspirations disappeared in the face of sometimes bitter reality or the discouraging “advice” of well-intentioned adults. Opposite her was a little girl, filled with dreams of her future, and desperate to grow up. Perhaps all children were like that, though – they wanted to grow up so quickly, and when you told them to enjoy their childhood, they’d just laugh, and keep on dreaming of what they would do, who they would be, where they would go, when they were all grown up.
“I think, perhaps … like, I don’t really know," Lizzie said. "But I think the reason I’m nervous, is because I don’t have big things that I want to do, like you have – you really want to see the stars. And one day, you will. And – maybe – maybe I need a dream like that.”
Iris nodded, approvingly, even though she wasn’t really sure what Lizzie was so emotional about, because she, Iris, here aspirations aside, was still just a child.
“What dream will it be? What sort of dream do you need? What will it be?”
Lizzie looked out the window, and she wasn’t scared at that moment.
“I don’t know.”
Iris took her hand again. “Don’t be afraid. You’ve got aaages to find it, Lizzie.”
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 31CM
AGE: 12 (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION)
Her dad had built Iris her own private observatory. Her mum’s TARDIS, which currently floated around in space as the boring old normal space-time ship grey cylinder thing, now had a sort of metal railway track coming out the side, on the end of which was a battered old leather seat that her dad had retrieved from his own TARDIS. He’d mounted it onto the end of the track, and with the pull of a lever, it could be rolled forward, far out of the TARDIS and into the surrounding space. The chair could be spun around and locked in position. And in front of the chair, mounted to the mechanism in a similar way a gun was mounted to a gunship, was a great telescope, directed and reading well out into space.
Iris had dreamed of having a way of watching the stars, and when she mentioned it briefly, in conversation, her dad had decided to build one for her.
And it was amazing.
If she wanted to explore the universe, she could sit in her chair, roll out into space, and watch the stars through the far-reaching lens on her telescope. And even if she didn’t want to explore the universe, and just wanted to be alone for a bit, she could do the same, and escape for a while. It was perfect. And she loved it.
Iris sat there now, alone, observing the stars in front of her. It was one of those times when she was not there because she wanted to watch the stars. Instead, she was there because, for some reason she was feeling anxious, and she didn’t know why, because her life was fine.
However, she had started at the academy not too long ago, and it had only recently dawned on her how big the universe really was. Occasionally, she saw people on the news, like Evangeline whazzit, or the Daleks (Mum had to explain those to her, and the Time War, and that had certainly made her afraid), and she felt terrified that this was the world one day she’d have to walk out into alone. She thought of Lizzie, and how ages ago they’d been on the Big Wheel, and she’d asked her why she was so nervous, and Lizzie had said it was because she hadn’t dream of anything big like the dreams Iris had shared with her. Yes, it was ages ago, when she was just a little girl, things like what had concerned Lizzie so much-- lacking big dreams and plans-- didn’t matter to her then because she didn’t actually know about them or understand them – but now she did. And now it made everything she’d ever dreamed and wanted now seem so far away.
What had troubled Lizzie so long ago had now become Iris’ biggest worry – that she, Iris, was no longer dreaming of anything big to work towards. That her awareness and fear of the realities of the universe had almost inevitably trumped any dream she could ever dream.
And then, there was a comforting voice coming from behind her.
“Fancy some pizza?”
Iris glanced around, to see her mum standing there at the door of the TARDIS, holding a plate of pizza.
Iris nodded, and Cioné wobbled her way across the metal rails to get to Iris in the chair.
“Honestly, I don’t know why Dad couldn’t have put some kind of… gangplank on this.”
Iris smiled at her mother’s frustration with her father, and received the warm plate of pizza.
“Budge up,” her mum urged her and Iris did as she was told, shifting in her chair a little bit to make room. She was still small enough to fit both of them in the chair at once, though it was becoming a bit of a squeeze. They managed it, though. Iris solemnly took a bite from a large slice of pizza. It tasted delicious, and as she took a long sniff as well, she savoured the taste and smell of the pizza in all its crispiness and tomato-yness.
“What’s up?” Cioné asked her.
Iris didn’t say anything for a bit and then …“Nothing.”
“Now – I know that’s nonsense, because usually, you’d bite my hand off if I presented you with pizza, instead of accepting it with such a glum face.”
Was it not okay to be glum sometimes?
“Iris – I get it if you want to be on your own at tmes. You’re getting to that age now where you’re going to want some time to yourself. We all do, and some of us never grow out of it. So, it’s fine. But what I want you to know, is that I’m always here for you. No matter how bad it is, no matter how much you think being alone is for the best, just remember, you can always talk to me. Or you can talk to Dad, or Lizzie, or anyone else…”
Iris looked up at her. “Thanks Mum. It’s just – I don’t even know…. It’s scary, that’s all.”
She wasn’t lying – Iris had decided she wasn’t really one for either keeping secrets or making big sentimental speeches. They just came out as a ‘big jumble-ish’ of words, something that she was pretty sure Lizzie had once said once.
“Okay,” Cioné put an arm around her daughter.
“It’s like – those stars there. That’s like, billions of things happening out there. And that’s just scary.”
“I know,” Cioné patted her daughter. “I know. But remember – I know it seems dark, and scary. But you’ve always got people here who will protect you.”
“I know. And I’ll protect you too!” Iris smiled shyly and rather goofily, and Cioné saw the love and hope in Iris’ eyes, and how she genuinely meant what she’d said, as her daughter added, “I’ll protect you super-dupily forevermass.” And Cioné smiled, in quiet awe.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 42CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 14
“Happy Christmas, darling,” Cioné kissed the Doctor as he sat up in bed.
“Merry Christmas,” the Doctor replied, his eyes dancing with childlike joy. Cioné knew how much he loved Christmas. There wasn’t another time of year that could rival the happiness and euphoria he felt at Christmas. But even so, it was a joy tinged with sadness, and every Christmas, Cioné would see him, looking wistfully out the window at the stars. Christmas was always difficult for everyone, in a way, because everyone lost people, and Christmas was a time meant to be shared with those people. But for the Doctor it was worse – he’d actually lost someone at Christmas. He’d lost Robin. And she knew he still missed her, and always would. It broke her heart to see someone she loved so much be so sad, especially at his favourite holiday, but it was what it was. And then two minutes later, he’d be laughing and joking again. That’s who the Doctor was, though. So many people, all in one.
It was early, and there was the expected knock on the door. Thankfully, it was not as early as it used to be when Iris would wake up at stupid-o’clock on Christmas morning, and Cioné and the Doctor would rise from bed, zombie-like, and trudge through to the lounge of Cioné’s TARDIS, to open presents. Even so, it was early enough for all of them, but the Doctor and Iris didn’t seem to care, even though Cioné had always liked her sleep. She used to joke about how she could ‘sleep for Gallifrey’.
“Hello love,” Cioné said, as Iris peeped her head around the door. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas!” Iris responded happily as she walked over to them and kissed her mother on the forehead, before hugging her Doctor. She climbed over them, and lay down between them. Cioné reached down under the bed, and pulled out a rather crudely wrapped present.
“First prezzie of the day,” Cioné passed it to Iris. “Sorry it’s so awfully wrapped,” she gave her daughter a guilty look. “Wrapping It turned out to be a nightmare!”
“The wrapping doesn’t matter, Mum,” Iris grinned, pulling off the paper to discover a knitted item of clothing of some kind, and when Iris pulled it out, she realised it was a beanie hat. A blue and white police box beanie hat, in fact!
“Well – you’re always saying how much you love that my TARDIS is a police box,” the Doctor said.
“It does fit, doesn’t it?” Cioné asked. “I knitted it myself.” She was rather proud of herself, especially when Iris pulled it on over her head – and it fit perfectly.
“Mum – it’s beautiful,” Iris laughed, looking at herself in the mirror at the end of the bedroom. “Thank you.”
“Well – it’s my pleasure,” Cioné kissed her daughter. “Thank you for being the most wonderful daughter.”
Iris awkwardly shrugged off the praise in that typically awkward teenager-y way, and then the Doctor, as some kind of sudden impulse drifted over him, tossed back the covers and leapt from the bed. He whipped on his dressing gown, and stood proudly, bubbling with excitement. Cioné and Iris watched him with slight trepidation, because the last time the Doctor had looked like this, he’d blown up the kitchen.
“What is it?” Cioné asked, and she tried to look intimidating but couldn’t help but smile at him and his craziness.
“I’m not going to be able to keep it a secret from you for much longer, so we’d better do it now,” the Doctor opened the door to the bedroom. “Ladies…”
Iris climbed out of bed, followed closely by Cioné, who was tying up her dressing gown. They followed the Doctor as he made his way down the corridor and towards the lounge.
“What is it, dear?” Cioné asked.
“It’s a surprise! Or, at least, it will be, if it stays quiet.”
That was even more concerning.
Eventually, they arrived at the living room, and the Doctor leapt inside theatrically. He was such a good dad, in that way. He could look like the most whizzy-mad professor, and then become the zany dad any child dreams of while also being so easy to confide in.
Two people at once.
The Doctor was now out of sight.
Iris approached the door to the living room, and gently stepped inside. They’d decorated already – and it had been quite magical, with a great Christmas tree in the corner, covered in tinsel and lights and baubles and little kooky decorations from all parts of the universe hanging from it. Paper chains hung from the ceiling, and fairy lights in Christmas colours of green and red were wrapped around the framed photos and the mantelpiece. But now there was a fully-functioning, log-burning fireplace with a fire crackling away inside the space below the mantle. And, on the carpet in front of, Cioné had made herself, was a funny little metal box.
Iris had no idea what it was, but it looked more like a robot than a box, with a funny little head, and little ears, and an antennae-like tail poking out its behind.
That’s what it was like.
A robot dog.
“Hello mistress Iris,” the dog spoke in an adorable little computerised voice, breaking up each individual word.
Cioné heard Iris’ thrilled exclamations, and the voice of the robotic dog, before she’d even stepped into the room. When she finally did, she wasn’t even sure what to say.
“Is that a…?”
“Cioné, Iris,” the Doctor began the introductions. “Meet K9.”
“Plea-sure to meet you, mis-tres-ses,” K9 said.
“Hello K9,” Iris grinned, kneeling down in front of him, and patting his metal head and tickling him behind his metal ears. “Wow, Dad, I can’t believe you got us a dog!”
“He is lovely,” Cioné admitted.
“I tried to wrap him,” the Doctor said. “But he didn’t appreciate it.”
“Wrap-ping goes a-gainst my ba-sic de-fence pro-to-col, Doctor-master.”
“Sorry, K9.”
“Apo-lo-gy accepted, Doctor-master.”
And together, they had the most magical Christmas day. They ate and drank and danced, and then they watched Christmas telly, because Christmas telly was always great. And they enjoyed all of this, together.
They enjoyed being a family.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 51CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 16
The Doctor was making some repairs to his TARDIS, and he was lying there, underneath his console, a pair of strange looking goggles propped up on his forehead. Iris sat in his leather chair, her feet up on the console, her eyes fixed on her mobile phone. Her fingers had grown remarkably dexterous at texting, and her dad always ridiculed her for her ability to send a lengthy text message in a unit of time expressible in seconds.
Iris probably had something better to be doing, like completing an astrobiology assignment that was due last week, but she could spend ages sitting here, switched off from the world, just hanging out with her dad. They hadn’t talked about anything particularly useful. They had talked for a bit about science-y stuff, because they were both very good at that. Well, her dad was exceptional. She was just all right, she thought – but, in more recent years, she had discovered that it had become her passion. Yes, she’d known stars were her passion for many years, but it was during the last twenty years or so of her life, that her passionate had evolved into what she had started pursuing properly and intently in her studies at the academy. Although, at this moment in time, it was feeling like she’d spent near- infinite amounts of time focussed on it.
So, it was good to just come home in the evenings and switch off. The same went for Saturdays as well – Saturdays like the one they were living right now. There was something especially wonderful about Saturday mornings, a sort of cheerfulness everywhere, when everyone was just pottering about doing their own thing, or somebody was preparing to do something truly exciting they’d been looking forward to for ages.
Eventually, as conversations often did, it drifted onto into the area love and relationships and similar stuff.
“How long have you been married to Mum now?”
“Erm… too many years to count,” the Doctor responded from his position under the console.
“But you’re still so happy.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor murmured, as he soldered two stray pieces of wire together. “We really are. Very happy.”
Iris had, over her teenage years, learned a lot about her father, and his reputation. Thankfully, it had come from her dad himself, and her mum. They’d explained his roles in various conflicts, especially during the Time War, and they’d explained to her about the time he had fought God. She was grateful she’d heard it from them – she didn’t know how it would have affected her to hear it from anyone else. And it wasn’t always easy, because she’d come to realise her dad had what one might call a chequered past, and that he’d made a lot of enemies. Occasionally, very occasionally, it felt intimidating, as if she had… something to live up to.
Most of the time, she tried not to pay too much attention to such thoughts, because both her mum and dad had been great at explaining to her that she had her life to live, as she wanted, and she was deeply grateful for that knowledge as well. It struck her that, if her dad could have such a happy relationship, then it seemed that anyone could fall in love.
“Is it clichéd to say that she was ‘the one’, for you?” Iris suggested to her dad. If she could have seen his face, she imagined he’d be looking at her incredulously.
“Do you really expect me to know if it’s clichéd or not?”
“Point taken.”
“But yes – she was the one,” the Doctor said, still fiddling with his machinery. “And eventually, we all find that person. The… one person who means more than anyone else.”
Iris nodded approvingly.
“Problem is, though,” the Doctor added, with a soft laugh to himself, “Men are not exactly the brightest when it comes to relationships.”
Iris took a deep breath. “Then…I guess it’s a good thing for me then that girls are.”
The Doctor continued lying under the TARDIS console for a few seconds working quietly on whatever it was he was doing, before he realised what Iris had said and slid out from underneath, to respond face-to-face.
“You’re…,” the Doctor stood up in front of his daughter, suddenly realising how much taller than her he was.
“Gay?” she finished his sentence for him. “Erm… yeah.”
The Doctor nodded, mostly as a bit of conversation filler.
“Are you… cool with that?” Iris asked tentatively, perhaps even a little fearfully, because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. Well, she was pretty sure; she thought he’d be accepting, because both her parents were those kind of people—open-minded, kind, respectful of difference. But Iris had been waiting to bring up the subject with him for some time now, and she’d been looking for just the right moment, even when there never seemed to be one, so she decided to create one, and it was now. She’d already told her mum a while back, and so now she just had to tell her dad, and hope he was just accepting as she had been (and her mum had been totally amazing about it).
The Doctor looked down at the floor and then up again, and looked Iris straight in the eye.
“ Iris …” the Doctor placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I mean, it’s okay if you’re not, well, it’s not really, but…”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t be cool with it?” And the Doctor hugged Iris, gently but tightly, lovingly, and Iris hugged him back. It was like he was trying to communicate all his acceptance towards her through the power of a hug, and if that were possible, it seemed to be working, because Iris felt so happy.
Happier than she’d felt in a long time.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 57CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 16
This time, when the Doctor had arrived to collect Lizzie, he did not seem happy. In fact, he had not said a word to her for a good few minutes, until she eventually asked him what the matter was, and where they were going. And, the Doctor had corrected her – it was not where they were going, it was where she was going.
“Babysitting duties,” the Doctor told her. Lizzie scowled, even though she didn’t mind, although it was a bit annoying that the Doctor felt he could just pluck her out of her own life and get her to babysit for him.
“Iris is old enough to look after herself, though, isn’t she? I mean, like, if you’re trying to protect her-”
“You’re the only person she seems to hold even a modicum of respect for,” the Doctor said as he pulled down a lever with more force than usual, and the TARDIS even gave a small whine, almost as if it were reacting to his aggression.
“Oh. Erm… right. Okay.”
She didn’t want to ask about where this was all coming from, because she had a feeling she would find out sooner than later. Low and behold, Iris was sitting on the sofa, looking up at them, glaring at her father.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about, now?” Iris stood up and walked over to the Doctor. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a letter and slammed it down on the counter. Iris looked up at him, still with no idea what was going on, waiting for him to elaborate. Cioné hovered by the door, looking as if she were ready to go out somewhere, although, by her expression, not somewhere particularly nice.
“Truancy.” The Doctor basically spat the word out. Iris rolled her eyes because she knew, now, exactly what he was talking about, but just couldn’t be bothered to deal
“Don’t roll your eyes at me like that,” her dad replied.
“All I did was skip a few classes.”
“It was more than a few,” the Doctor said bluntly, as he gestured towards the letter.
“I was bored! Okay?”
“No! It is not OK. You’re talented, Iris. You’re so intelligent, and I hate watching you waste it all like this.”
“It’s no worse than anything you ever did,” Iris murmured.
The Doctor’s eyes blazed, just for a second, and Lizzie was genuinely worried for Iris. “Excuse me?” he asked, rather too calmly.
“Nothing, don’t worry.”
“No, please, go on –”
“Doctor,” Cioné spoke abruptly, as he stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I really don’t think that’s necessary …”
“I want to know what she just said…”
“I said it’s no worse than anything you’ve ever done,” Iris replied, only louder this time. “You’ve spent your whole life running away, so don’t criticise me for doing the same.”
A thick silence descended on the room, and the tension was almost blood curdling. So thick was the silence, it could have been cut with a knife. The Doctor didn’t look as if he were going to say anything. He just stood there, seething, and when he finally opened his mouth to speak, Cioné intervened.
“We need to go, Doctor.”
He started to follow her, then turned to his daughter. “We’ll talk when I get back – from the meeting that we are about to have with your head of year. Lizzie will be babysitting.”
“I’m old enough to look after myself!” Iris protested.
“This letter suggests otherwise.”
The Doctor and Cioné left, and Lizzie was standing awkwardly in the corner of the room. Iris looked at her, and rolled her eyes again.
She was rather good at eye-rolling.
15 minutes following this confrontation, Iris sat on the sofa in silence, watching the blank screen on the TV, as if somehow she could discover the power of telekinesis a and turn it on. In fact, Iris had been ordered not to use any electronics, and the Doctor had deliberately unplugged the TV and taken her phone, and Lizzie was sitting in the kitchen, playing some pointless app on her phone, and thinking she should probably go and say something to Iris, but she couldn’t think of anything helpful. So, there was a stony silence between them – which was unusual, because the two of them were usually very close.
Eventually, Lizzie thought of a possible conversation starter, and drifted slowly into the room next door, where Iris was still sitting, now dramatically slumped over, and very bored looking.
“He’ll come round in the end,” Lizzie said.
Iris didn’t say a thing, but Lizzie moved closer and perched on the edge of a low chest of drawers. Eventually, Iris sighed, and turned to face her.
“He’s just… such a hypocrite. He can be such a stupid, petty man sometimes, and he genuinely makes me want to…,” she stopped, seething quietly, and Lizzie moved over to the sofa, where she sat down next to Iris.
“I just think that what you said to him, just hit too close to home,” Lizzie said. Her more recent visits with Iris had changed, because she was no longer talking to Iris like she had when she was a child, when Iris would be amazed at everything Lizzie said. instead, Iris would talk to Lizzie like an adult, and realise had come to recognize and understand and even identify with Lizzie’s own inability to function in society, in the world around her.
“Yeah…” Iris admitted. Lizzie had a point.
“He goes off on people, sometimes, and loses his patience and his temper. The Doctor is kind of – like, I don’t know. Most of the time, he’s genuinely one of the nicest people ever, but sometimes he turns, and it’ll be for some… stupid reason, like this.”
“But my skipping classes is not that stupid a reason, though,” Iris said. “The academy and my studies mean a lot to me…but… I just get so bored, sat there, in a classroom, all day, every day.”
“But you’re clever. Like – really clever.”
“First thing, I’m not, really, and secondly, if I was that clever, I wouldn’t have to like it. Point is –my life at the academy is boring me. I just want to … leave… but only for a little bit.”
Lizzie had been there, in that place, in that mind set, more than she cared to admit, except, she had dealt with it in a different way than Iris.
“My dad sent you here because he thinks you’ll talk me around… but you won’t.”
“And, well, erm, I respect your decision….”
Was she condoning truancy? She had no idea.
“No, Lizzie. I mean – you won’t try to talk me round. Because you understand. You get me, and you get him.”
“Yeah – well, Iris. It is important that you stay in school, just for a bit … ” Lizzie was quickly interrupted by another Iris eyeroll. “Because even though you know everything, you actually don’t. Like – sorry, that was way too arrogant, I mean, just stay for a bit longer. And then… the universe is yours.”
Iris looked up at her, and Lizzie saw that she was crying.
The little girl that sat next to her wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a young woman, who had gone, as they say, from sketchers to converse, from denim skirts to skinny jeans, from tops with puppies printed on them, to red knitted stripy jumpers (when Lizzie saw the one Iris was wearing, she thought Cioné had probably knitted it herself).
Iris had long, flowing, brunette hair, and the most beautiful green eyes. So many years ago now, Lizzie had sat opposite that little girl in a café in London, a little girl who had dreamed of so much, and who, in her mind, strode through so many worlds. She now sat next to the same girl, who was crying, out of the sheer terror about those same worlds falling apart, and how she was reaching out to them as much as she could but felt as if she were having them taken away from her, by her parents and the government and everyone else. Lizzie hugged her, and Iris just cried and cried and cried. It must’ve been building up for a long time, because Iris was seemingly inconsolable.
“Why are you so clever, oh my god,” Iris laughed through all her tears. “You always know the right thing to say.”
Lizzie wished she could find some words to express what it meant to have watched this little girl grow up into a young woman, but could find none. It was the most overwhelming feeling – a feeling that parents had felt over years and years, yet for Lizzie, they had been compressed into days, and it made her start to sob as well.
“You know,” Iris looked up and into Lizzie’s eyes. “You’re a sister to me.”
Lizzie kissed the top of Iris’ head – the little girl she’d spent years with, the little girl who had meant more to her in just a few days, than most people had meant to her in her entire life thus far.
“You’ve always been there for me,” Iris continued. “Ever since I was small and for as long as I can remember, you’ve always helped me, and cared for me, and just… done so much for me. You were there whenever it mattered.”
It was meant to be a passionate speech but it was so broken up, under the emotion of years and years and years. Lizzie caught sight of a framed photograph, still sitting there on top of the mantelpiece where it had been placed years and years ago. It showed Lizzie, holding a little baby girl in her arms. A little girl with no worries, or sadness, or fears.
Iris.
The photo made her smile, and it made her cry even more.
“I don’t know if it makes much sense,” Lizzie began. “But you mean exactly the same to me.”
The two sisters sat and cried, together, and it didn’t matter about anyone else.
A few hours later, the Doctor returned, with Cioné in tow. Cioné hadn’t really said much during that earlier father-daughter encounter, unlike the Doctor, who had gone completely off the rails.
Lizzie and Iris had been prepping for the fallout, because they’d suspected that it wasn’t going to end well. Lizzie had settled on taking Cioné into the kitchen, and leaving the Doctor and Iris to fight it out. She’d hoped that this would be the best way. When Lizzie and Iris heard the Doctor and Cioné coming down the steps from the console room to the lounge, they stood up to greet them.
Needless to say, the Doctor did not look happy.
“Erm, uh, Cioné?” Lizzie gestured for Cioné to follow her into the kitchen, so that Iris and the Doctor could be alone and so that she and Cioné could shield themselves from the inevitable fireworks.
“Oh, of course,” Cioné followed Lizzie.
The door clicked shut and the remnants of any previous conversation were shut out with it. The Doctor stood opposite Iris, and the two of them looked at each other. They each expected nothing less than honesty now.
“What I don’t get,” Iris began. “Is why you went completely off the handle at something so… tiny.”
“Because it isn’t tiny, it’s your education.”
“Mum was composed, she was calm, but you, you just completely went off your tits in anger and started having a massive go at me.”
“Because you are wasting your potential, Iris,” he replied, with surprising calm.
“Did you not consider what it’s like for her?” Iris continued, as she recalled how her mother had hovered silently in the corner of the room, as if she hadn’t been quite sure what to do or say, or as if she didn’t dare say anything. “She couldn’t even get a word in, because of you.”
“Don’t you dare say that, when I spend so much time looking after her –,” he started.
“But…you seem to… seem to pick and choose when you after her, depending on when it works for you…”
“You know,” the Doctor raised his voice a bit. “It’s not the truancy that upset me, what upset me was when you said it was nothing worse than what I’ve done –”
“And it isn’t?” Iris interrupted him, shouting now. “You’re just… such a hypocritical arse all the time! Don’t you see, Dad? You spend all your time running and, and –”
“I’ve made mistakes!” the Doctor roared. “And those mistakes have haunted me every single day –”
“But the day you left Gallifrey – you’d never go back on that...”
The Doctor didn’t reply, because in all honesty, it was the truth. He wouldn’t change that day.
“Exactly,” Iris shrugged. “You wouldn’t. Because it’s one rule for you, and another for everyone else. It’s fine if you go and do whatever you want, whilst I have to stay in school.”
“No, Iris, it’s not like that –”
“No, you’re right, it isn’t,” Iris replied, and then took a deep breath. She was crying now, and her voice was shaking, and she didn’t want to say what she was going to say next because she knew it would make her feel guilty. She said it anyway. “It’s about… power. You like to control me and Mum, and everybody else you meet. Like, you just fly down and pick up Lizzie whenever, and don’t give it a second thought. You don’t care about anyone else.”
She was right – she felt very guilty after saying it, but she was right and it shut her Dad up, and that was what she’d wanted. Wasn’t it?
“You know, Iris, you’re such a child, because… you just don’t get it –”
“What don’t I get?”
“I have lost more people than you would ever believe.”
“Don’t pull that fucking card on me, Dad, because… do you know what it’s like growing up in your shadow?”
The Doctor looked away from his daughter and down at the floor. And for a second, Iris thought he looked… was it ashamed? Iris couldn’t be sure. But he looked guilty, and Iris felt awful for saying such things, but she couldn’t stop herself – it was like a fountain dam breaking, and all the things that had been building up for years and years were just pouring out.
“You could never know what it’s like being your daughter. You’re the guy who basically caused the Time War, the guy who killed God. I know about everyone you’ve lost, and I’m really sorry, but why don’t you concentrate on doing something good in memory of them, and not treat their memories as badly as you do. Grow up, Dad.”
Iris slammed the door behind her.
***
LONDON, 2017
A BUS
Cioné, being the glue that held their family together, had suggested they all go back to London again, together. The four of them – Cioné, Iris, the Doctor… and Lizzie. The atmosphere in the TARDIS had been dreadful – the fight between the Doctor and Iris had happened over a week ago, but they still hadn’t been able to talk to each other since. Both of them had said things to the other that’d hurt. Both of them didn’t think they’d be able to forgive the other, or forgive themselves for saying these things. Cioné had tried to liven the atmosphere a bit, but it hadn’t worked.
Eventually, after a brief spot of lunch, they made their way onto a bus, and Iris, eyes glued to her mobile, walked up the stairs onto the second deck. The Doctor and Cioné sat down, and Iris walked straight past them, sitting a few rows back from her mother and father. Lizzie herself sat a few seats behind Iris, watching the whole family, observing them, as she’d done so many years ago. Apart from a few muttered words between the Doctor and Cioné, this time there was no laughter, no jokes, no crazy stories, no silly impressions.
Iris sat alone behind her parents.
And all four of them wanted the old days back.
***
FIVE SECONDS LATER (MAGGIE TIME)
And, as Lizzie had promised, the TARDIS appeared in Maggie Shephard’s garden again, on top of the cracked china skull of a gnome. That was Maggie’s favourite gnome as well.
The door to the blue box opened, and Lizzie stepped out, looking, as Maggie would term it, like shi –, anyway.
“Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,” Maggie strode over to her and hugged her as she walked away from the box. “What’s happened?”
The Doctor briefly appeared in the doorway, before turning to head back inside the TARDIS.
“If you’ve done anything to her,” Maggie glared at him as she watched him. “I don’t care what magic-whizzy-space-box thing you fly about in, I will find my way across the universe and I will kill you.”
“Maggie, please,” Lizzie started.
“No, love,” Maggie shushed her. “You hear me? This girl means as much to me as my own kids, so piss off out of my back garden!”
The Doctor did as he was told, and a few seconds later, the TARDIS was gone. Maggie led Lizzie inside, and sat her down at the kitchen table, and went to boil the kettle.
“Who does he think he is?” Maggie began a rant that Lizzie knew would keep them there all day, if she let proceed.
“You’ve changed your tune,” Lizzie murmured.
“That was before you turned up on my doorstep looking like this. Hey –,” said Maggie, softly, as she took a bit of Lizzie’s hair in her hands, running it through her fingers. “It’s longer. Your hair is longer.”
“Maggie, please – just listen.”
Maggie shut up immediately, because when Lizzie was telling her to listen, she knew it was going to be pretty important. Tea was poured, and Maggie sat opposite her.
“The Doctor,” Lizzie began. “He has a daughter. And I’ve just watched her grow up while I was ‘away.”
Lizzie proceeded to tell Maggie the story, of how she’d first met Iris about two weeks ago, as soon as she was born. And of how, in those two weeks, Earth time, Lizzie had experienced Iris’ entire lifetime thus far, watching her grow up from the Earth equivalent of birth, through childhood to a young adult. It was a lot for Maggie to take in – but Maggie mainly felt very sorry for Lizzie. As a mother herself, she’d known what it was like to watch a child grow from birth to adulthood over many years – and she couldn’t imagine watching such a process occurring over such a short span of time.
“And – I guess, maybe, I’m just finding it way too overwhelming. Because two weeks ago, I saw this little tiny baby, and I’ve seen her on so many of the big and important days in her life, and now, that I am seeing her as a young woman …It just makes me so… sad, watching her grow up, and I don’t even know why.”
“Well,” Maggie took Lizzie’s hand. “Growing up is sad. Time passing is sad. Because… people change. People grow, and that’s emotional. I’ve been there, funnily enough.”
That made Lizzie laugh. Maggie was pretty good at doing that.
“But they’ve just…” Lizzie continued. “The Doctor and Iris, they aren’t talking. They seem to hate each other now…”
“Families don’t hate each other.”
“But – like, I – I think they do.”
“When parents fight with their kids, and with each other about their kids, it hurts, even more than any other time, because parents and kids are… part of each other. And both sides say things that hurt, and those are the rawest of fights. But here’s the thing – when they’ve said it all, and there’s nothing else to say, it means they can all come back together.”
Lizzie really hoped Maggie was right, and was too worried to think about what it would be like otherwise. Because she remembered the Doctor, all that time ago, when he’d arrived on her street, looking so sad and lonely, and she just wanted him to be happy, more than anything else. And she was desperate for Iris to be happy as well, because that lovely girl also deserved it… so, so much.
“The Doctor will be there for her,” Maggie said, decisively, as if she knew it for certain, and Lizzie thought about questioning it because she didn’t really believe her. But she decided not to say anything, and to allow Maggie to continue. “When he arrived before, I saw how much that little girl means to him. He adores her. And – I don’t think he’s the sort of person to give up on a love like that. I’ve seen all sorts of people in my lifetime, Lizzie – some that can just give up on that love, some that don’t even feel that love. But when you’ve seen lonely children, you understand how much of an impact that love can make, and you know who holds it. God, it does sound cheesy, but it’s true.”
Lizzie was going to ask how she knew, how she could possibly be so certain, but then she remembered that the old woman was wise in matters such as this, and so, again, Lizzie said nothing. Maggie had anticipated Lizzie’s uncertainty, however.
“A while ago, now, I arrived at the home to do what I always did. Help lonely kids who deserved better. And there was a little girl, wearing little red shoes with buckles on them. And her name … her name was Lizzie Darwin. Elizabeth Darwin, technically, but you told me that you didn’t like being called that. And I remember that I said, ‘Lizzie, let’s go for a walk.’ And we did! Not just then, but every single time we met.”
Lizzie thought back to those days. It was as if they were yesterday.
“And I would go to the pegs, and take down your yellow mackintosh, and help you put it on, and zip it up. Then, I’d help you get your wellies on. And when we were done, I’d get my coat and kneel down in front of you, because I was younger then and my knees could bend. And, you’d help me put my coat on, and help me to zip it up. Then, we’d do the same with my wellies. And we’d go for a walk through the garden.”
That was Lizzie’s favourite part of the story, although she was left wondering what on Earth Maggie’s purpose was in retelling this story now.
“Point is, Lizzie. That story is you to a tee. Even when you think you can’t really help, you still try, and you still find a way to do it anyway.”
Lizzie realised what she meant, now. It wasn’t a solution to their problems. But it was a call to Lizzie Darwin to help find a solution.
***
Since the Doctor had started to use mobile phone technology, it now meant Lizzie could easily contact him when and wherever. And when she gave him a ring, the TARDIS would materialise not so very many minutes later, in exactly the same spot it had left before. This time, when the Doctor appeared in the doorway of the blue box and Lizzie stepped inside, Maggie gave them both a friendly wave, before the TARDIS dematerialised.
“Lizzie!” the Doctor tried to act all warm and friendly, but he wasn’t doing a very good job. “Let’s go somewhere.”
Lizzie nodded. “Okay.”
“Anywhere! All of time and all of space. Danger? Maybe? Maybe not? Whatever you like.”
This was her chance.
It might get her kicked off the TARDIS. But…
Might he listen?
Probably not.
But he might.
So she said it anyway, because it was more important than her relationship with him.
“On one condition.”
The Doctor looked at her, unfazed. “Go on. Surprise me,” he smiled.
“Iris comes with us.”
She’d come straight out with it, deciding not to waste time beating about the bush. She was going to have to say it at some point, it might as well be now. The Doctor’s face certainly showed surprise, and it even looked slightly grim, before the Doctor turned away from her and walked towards the console.
“She can’t,” the Doctor said, pulling a lever. It was with the same aggression he’d pulled that lever a while back, and the TARDIS, again, let out a sad whine.
“You, um, you can’t leave it like this.”
“Lizzie, she said things to me that hurt. I was upset. I am upset”
“But – doesn’t it occur to you that you upset her as well?”
The Doctor sat down on his leather chair – the one Iris had sat in when she’d told him about something so important to her, and he’d accepted it and been so happy for her.
Happier times.
He had said that he’d always be there for her. Always. And she never had to worry about him turning his back on her.
“I know what it’s like,” Lizzie said after taking a deep breath, not sure where she was going with this, what exactly it was that she was trying to say, but she knew she’d have to continue anyway and she did. “I know what it’s like to feel alone when you’re young –”
“And you think I don’t?”
“Well – if you – if you do get it, then why don’t you go back to her? Because that’s how she feels, Doctor. She wants to be accepted for who she is. That’s all she’s wanted for such a long time.”
The Doctor stood up. It was another one of those moments, when the Doctor would throw all his toys out of his proverbial pram, and Lizzie would say something to him that would make so much sense to him that he’d look like and feel like an idiot.
***
It did not bode well that already, Lizzie was growing dizzy as she walked up the steps towards their compartment.
The two of them sat down, and a beefy-looking alien with leathery orange skin and suckers on his forehead locked the compartment door.
No turning back now…
Iris looked up at Lizzie, and she saw that she was scared.
“It’s okay,” Iris gave her a smile, and her hand crawled over to Lizzie’s. Lizzie took it, and Iris gave it a squeeze.
“Sorry,” Lizzie apologised. “I – I – shouldn’t be the scared one!”
“We’re all scared of certain things,” Iris reassured her, looking out as the leathery-skinned alien entered the control box, trying to distract Lizzie from seeing him flick the switch and growing even more anxious. “But we can get through it, if we have someone with us who loves us.”
Iris was absolutely the sweetest little girl Lizzie had ever met. Children were often remarkably good at being wise, and Iris was no different. In fact, Iris seemed even better at it than most. Maybe it came from her parents, who were both incredibly wise. Even so – Lizzie believed that children in general are just the best at advice. Maybe it was the fact they looked at the world through unblinkered eyes, and thus, in a strange way, understood the world around them more than anyone else, because they only saw what was there, and they didn’t have bad memories to distort their vision. Lizzie hated it when people wrote off children as less significant than adults, because they were, in fact, wonderfully perceptive.
The giant wheel began to move. A sudden reaction caused Lizzie to squeeze Iris’ hand even tighter, and yet Iris sat there, calmly eating her candyfloss. Slowly their compartment climbed upward, but Iris never let go of Lizzie’s nervous hands.
Eventually, Iris looked up at her. “See? You’re doing fine.”
“Y-yeah. I am,” Lizzie confirmed, although she still had not yet looked out and over the edge of the compartment. She could feel the cold, though – the cold of being off the ground and in the chill of the wind as it blew through the now seemingly very little metal box separating them from the abyss.
“Look out the window,” Iris urged bluntly, with very little emotion.
“I – I – ,” Lizzie spluttered, still looking down at her lap.
“Go on,” Iris whispered. “For me.”
It was an odd situation to be in, taking advice from someone who looked so much younger than she was, but was, in fact, so much older.
“You won’t see the stars otherwise.”
A few seconds passed before Lizzie finally looked out.
She could see that they were approaching the highest point of the wheel’s journey, still continuing on the upward climb, but not yet at the top. And Iris was right – the sky was beautiful. It was bright sunset orange, with the sun’s rays reaching out from the setting ball of fire and enveloping the entire sky, as if it were embracing it, and keeping it safe forever. At the same time, though, the stars shone through the burning sky, glinting and sparkling through the dimming light, and turning the sky into the most wonderful painting. Then Lizzie looked down, and saw the theme park spreading for miles around her and Iris. It was an entire world, after all, so it made sense that it was such a vast expanse. But she was surprised to see so many people so actively engaged in this park, this world. She spotted a young couple with two young children, leaping from ride to ride and having the time of their lives. And she saw an old man and woman as well, sitting under a tree of beautiful rose blossom, just savouring the moment for as long as possible.
From their compartment, she saw life. Below and above her, life at its finest.
“It’s beautiful,” Lizzie murmured out loud, before realising it.
“I know all those stars,” Iris whispered in awe as she pointed at a great big one that, after the sun, seemed so breathtakingly close. “That one is the Argolisis Herisius. And there, that’s the Sperial Luminacious. They also call it the Great Lighthouse, because ships in the Sperial system use it to make sure they don’t crash into asteroids.”
Lizzie sat back and watched the stars as Iris told her all about them. She seemed to know so much – and they seemed to be one of Iris’ great passions. And then Iris asked Lizzie a question, completely out of the blue, about something else entirely: “Why are you nervous?”
Lizzie had noticed that although Iris was fast approaching that age when she would stop asking the first thing that came into her head, occasionally there would be a question so urgent that it would squeeze through the filter. Lizzie looked at Iris in momentary confusion and Iris helpfully supplied some much-needed context: “Sorry, it’s just … something Dad said the other day.”
“What did he say?”
“Sorry, I-”
Lizzie was worried she’d upset her, and rapidly apologised. “No, it’s not your fault, don’t worry.”
“Mum always says I ask way too many questions out loud,” Iris explained, as she continued to gaze out the window, perhaps trying to undo the awkwardness of the moment. She wasn’t very good at it or maybe “inexperienced” was a better word for it.
“Your dad spends half his time wandering around the universe asking questions out loud. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, Iris.”
Iris turned back to her, the awkwardness gone.
“I want to be like him, one day. I want to see the stars. I mean, I already can see them, but I mean I’d like to see them up close, to go there, experience them.”
“You already travel around, though. With your mum and dad.”
“I know – but one day, I want to have a TARDIS of my own.”
Big plans were such an important part of childhood. Big, silly, stupefying and unbounded aspirations were the things that kept children going, and Lizzie believed that there was always something profound that was lost when those aspirations disappeared in the face of sometimes bitter reality or the discouraging “advice” of well-intentioned adults. Opposite her was a little girl, filled with dreams of her future, and desperate to grow up. Perhaps all children were like that, though – they wanted to grow up so quickly, and when you told them to enjoy their childhood, they’d just laugh, and keep on dreaming of what they would do, who they would be, where they would go, when they were all grown up.
“I think, perhaps … like, I don’t really know," Lizzie said. "But I think the reason I’m nervous, is because I don’t have big things that I want to do, like you have – you really want to see the stars. And one day, you will. And – maybe – maybe I need a dream like that.”
Iris nodded, approvingly, even though she wasn’t really sure what Lizzie was so emotional about, because she, Iris, here aspirations aside, was still just a child.
“What dream will it be? What sort of dream do you need? What will it be?”
Lizzie looked out the window, and she wasn’t scared at that moment.
“I don’t know.”
Iris took her hand again. “Don’t be afraid. You’ve got aaages to find it, Lizzie.”
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 31CM
AGE: 12 (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION)
Her dad had built Iris her own private observatory. Her mum’s TARDIS, which currently floated around in space as the boring old normal space-time ship grey cylinder thing, now had a sort of metal railway track coming out the side, on the end of which was a battered old leather seat that her dad had retrieved from his own TARDIS. He’d mounted it onto the end of the track, and with the pull of a lever, it could be rolled forward, far out of the TARDIS and into the surrounding space. The chair could be spun around and locked in position. And in front of the chair, mounted to the mechanism in a similar way a gun was mounted to a gunship, was a great telescope, directed and reading well out into space.
Iris had dreamed of having a way of watching the stars, and when she mentioned it briefly, in conversation, her dad had decided to build one for her.
And it was amazing.
If she wanted to explore the universe, she could sit in her chair, roll out into space, and watch the stars through the far-reaching lens on her telescope. And even if she didn’t want to explore the universe, and just wanted to be alone for a bit, she could do the same, and escape for a while. It was perfect. And she loved it.
Iris sat there now, alone, observing the stars in front of her. It was one of those times when she was not there because she wanted to watch the stars. Instead, she was there because, for some reason she was feeling anxious, and she didn’t know why, because her life was fine.
However, she had started at the academy not too long ago, and it had only recently dawned on her how big the universe really was. Occasionally, she saw people on the news, like Evangeline whazzit, or the Daleks (Mum had to explain those to her, and the Time War, and that had certainly made her afraid), and she felt terrified that this was the world one day she’d have to walk out into alone. She thought of Lizzie, and how ages ago they’d been on the Big Wheel, and she’d asked her why she was so nervous, and Lizzie had said it was because she hadn’t dream of anything big like the dreams Iris had shared with her. Yes, it was ages ago, when she was just a little girl, things like what had concerned Lizzie so much-- lacking big dreams and plans-- didn’t matter to her then because she didn’t actually know about them or understand them – but now she did. And now it made everything she’d ever dreamed and wanted now seem so far away.
What had troubled Lizzie so long ago had now become Iris’ biggest worry – that she, Iris, was no longer dreaming of anything big to work towards. That her awareness and fear of the realities of the universe had almost inevitably trumped any dream she could ever dream.
And then, there was a comforting voice coming from behind her.
“Fancy some pizza?”
Iris glanced around, to see her mum standing there at the door of the TARDIS, holding a plate of pizza.
Iris nodded, and Cioné wobbled her way across the metal rails to get to Iris in the chair.
“Honestly, I don’t know why Dad couldn’t have put some kind of… gangplank on this.”
Iris smiled at her mother’s frustration with her father, and received the warm plate of pizza.
“Budge up,” her mum urged her and Iris did as she was told, shifting in her chair a little bit to make room. She was still small enough to fit both of them in the chair at once, though it was becoming a bit of a squeeze. They managed it, though. Iris solemnly took a bite from a large slice of pizza. It tasted delicious, and as she took a long sniff as well, she savoured the taste and smell of the pizza in all its crispiness and tomato-yness.
“What’s up?” Cioné asked her.
Iris didn’t say anything for a bit and then …“Nothing.”
“Now – I know that’s nonsense, because usually, you’d bite my hand off if I presented you with pizza, instead of accepting it with such a glum face.”
Was it not okay to be glum sometimes?
“Iris – I get it if you want to be on your own at tmes. You’re getting to that age now where you’re going to want some time to yourself. We all do, and some of us never grow out of it. So, it’s fine. But what I want you to know, is that I’m always here for you. No matter how bad it is, no matter how much you think being alone is for the best, just remember, you can always talk to me. Or you can talk to Dad, or Lizzie, or anyone else…”
Iris looked up at her. “Thanks Mum. It’s just – I don’t even know…. It’s scary, that’s all.”
She wasn’t lying – Iris had decided she wasn’t really one for either keeping secrets or making big sentimental speeches. They just came out as a ‘big jumble-ish’ of words, something that she was pretty sure Lizzie had once said once.
“Okay,” Cioné put an arm around her daughter.
“It’s like – those stars there. That’s like, billions of things happening out there. And that’s just scary.”
“I know,” Cioné patted her daughter. “I know. But remember – I know it seems dark, and scary. But you’ve always got people here who will protect you.”
“I know. And I’ll protect you too!” Iris smiled shyly and rather goofily, and Cioné saw the love and hope in Iris’ eyes, and how she genuinely meant what she’d said, as her daughter added, “I’ll protect you super-dupily forevermass.” And Cioné smiled, in quiet awe.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 42CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 14
“Happy Christmas, darling,” Cioné kissed the Doctor as he sat up in bed.
“Merry Christmas,” the Doctor replied, his eyes dancing with childlike joy. Cioné knew how much he loved Christmas. There wasn’t another time of year that could rival the happiness and euphoria he felt at Christmas. But even so, it was a joy tinged with sadness, and every Christmas, Cioné would see him, looking wistfully out the window at the stars. Christmas was always difficult for everyone, in a way, because everyone lost people, and Christmas was a time meant to be shared with those people. But for the Doctor it was worse – he’d actually lost someone at Christmas. He’d lost Robin. And she knew he still missed her, and always would. It broke her heart to see someone she loved so much be so sad, especially at his favourite holiday, but it was what it was. And then two minutes later, he’d be laughing and joking again. That’s who the Doctor was, though. So many people, all in one.
It was early, and there was the expected knock on the door. Thankfully, it was not as early as it used to be when Iris would wake up at stupid-o’clock on Christmas morning, and Cioné and the Doctor would rise from bed, zombie-like, and trudge through to the lounge of Cioné’s TARDIS, to open presents. Even so, it was early enough for all of them, but the Doctor and Iris didn’t seem to care, even though Cioné had always liked her sleep. She used to joke about how she could ‘sleep for Gallifrey’.
“Hello love,” Cioné said, as Iris peeped her head around the door. “Happy Christmas.”
“Happy Christmas!” Iris responded happily as she walked over to them and kissed her mother on the forehead, before hugging her Doctor. She climbed over them, and lay down between them. Cioné reached down under the bed, and pulled out a rather crudely wrapped present.
“First prezzie of the day,” Cioné passed it to Iris. “Sorry it’s so awfully wrapped,” she gave her daughter a guilty look. “Wrapping It turned out to be a nightmare!”
“The wrapping doesn’t matter, Mum,” Iris grinned, pulling off the paper to discover a knitted item of clothing of some kind, and when Iris pulled it out, she realised it was a beanie hat. A blue and white police box beanie hat, in fact!
“Well – you’re always saying how much you love that my TARDIS is a police box,” the Doctor said.
“It does fit, doesn’t it?” Cioné asked. “I knitted it myself.” She was rather proud of herself, especially when Iris pulled it on over her head – and it fit perfectly.
“Mum – it’s beautiful,” Iris laughed, looking at herself in the mirror at the end of the bedroom. “Thank you.”
“Well – it’s my pleasure,” Cioné kissed her daughter. “Thank you for being the most wonderful daughter.”
Iris awkwardly shrugged off the praise in that typically awkward teenager-y way, and then the Doctor, as some kind of sudden impulse drifted over him, tossed back the covers and leapt from the bed. He whipped on his dressing gown, and stood proudly, bubbling with excitement. Cioné and Iris watched him with slight trepidation, because the last time the Doctor had looked like this, he’d blown up the kitchen.
“What is it?” Cioné asked, and she tried to look intimidating but couldn’t help but smile at him and his craziness.
“I’m not going to be able to keep it a secret from you for much longer, so we’d better do it now,” the Doctor opened the door to the bedroom. “Ladies…”
Iris climbed out of bed, followed closely by Cioné, who was tying up her dressing gown. They followed the Doctor as he made his way down the corridor and towards the lounge.
“What is it, dear?” Cioné asked.
“It’s a surprise! Or, at least, it will be, if it stays quiet.”
That was even more concerning.
Eventually, they arrived at the living room, and the Doctor leapt inside theatrically. He was such a good dad, in that way. He could look like the most whizzy-mad professor, and then become the zany dad any child dreams of while also being so easy to confide in.
Two people at once.
The Doctor was now out of sight.
Iris approached the door to the living room, and gently stepped inside. They’d decorated already – and it had been quite magical, with a great Christmas tree in the corner, covered in tinsel and lights and baubles and little kooky decorations from all parts of the universe hanging from it. Paper chains hung from the ceiling, and fairy lights in Christmas colours of green and red were wrapped around the framed photos and the mantelpiece. But now there was a fully-functioning, log-burning fireplace with a fire crackling away inside the space below the mantle. And, on the carpet in front of, Cioné had made herself, was a funny little metal box.
Iris had no idea what it was, but it looked more like a robot than a box, with a funny little head, and little ears, and an antennae-like tail poking out its behind.
That’s what it was like.
A robot dog.
“Hello mistress Iris,” the dog spoke in an adorable little computerised voice, breaking up each individual word.
Cioné heard Iris’ thrilled exclamations, and the voice of the robotic dog, before she’d even stepped into the room. When she finally did, she wasn’t even sure what to say.
“Is that a…?”
“Cioné, Iris,” the Doctor began the introductions. “Meet K9.”
“Plea-sure to meet you, mis-tres-ses,” K9 said.
“Hello K9,” Iris grinned, kneeling down in front of him, and patting his metal head and tickling him behind his metal ears. “Wow, Dad, I can’t believe you got us a dog!”
“He is lovely,” Cioné admitted.
“I tried to wrap him,” the Doctor said. “But he didn’t appreciate it.”
“Wrap-ping goes a-gainst my ba-sic de-fence pro-to-col, Doctor-master.”
“Sorry, K9.”
“Apo-lo-gy accepted, Doctor-master.”
And together, they had the most magical Christmas day. They ate and drank and danced, and then they watched Christmas telly, because Christmas telly was always great. And they enjoyed all of this, together.
They enjoyed being a family.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 51CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 16
The Doctor was making some repairs to his TARDIS, and he was lying there, underneath his console, a pair of strange looking goggles propped up on his forehead. Iris sat in his leather chair, her feet up on the console, her eyes fixed on her mobile phone. Her fingers had grown remarkably dexterous at texting, and her dad always ridiculed her for her ability to send a lengthy text message in a unit of time expressible in seconds.
Iris probably had something better to be doing, like completing an astrobiology assignment that was due last week, but she could spend ages sitting here, switched off from the world, just hanging out with her dad. They hadn’t talked about anything particularly useful. They had talked for a bit about science-y stuff, because they were both very good at that. Well, her dad was exceptional. She was just all right, she thought – but, in more recent years, she had discovered that it had become her passion. Yes, she’d known stars were her passion for many years, but it was during the last twenty years or so of her life, that her passionate had evolved into what she had started pursuing properly and intently in her studies at the academy. Although, at this moment in time, it was feeling like she’d spent near- infinite amounts of time focussed on it.
So, it was good to just come home in the evenings and switch off. The same went for Saturdays as well – Saturdays like the one they were living right now. There was something especially wonderful about Saturday mornings, a sort of cheerfulness everywhere, when everyone was just pottering about doing their own thing, or somebody was preparing to do something truly exciting they’d been looking forward to for ages.
Eventually, as conversations often did, it drifted onto into the area love and relationships and similar stuff.
“How long have you been married to Mum now?”
“Erm… too many years to count,” the Doctor responded from his position under the console.
“But you’re still so happy.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor murmured, as he soldered two stray pieces of wire together. “We really are. Very happy.”
Iris had, over her teenage years, learned a lot about her father, and his reputation. Thankfully, it had come from her dad himself, and her mum. They’d explained his roles in various conflicts, especially during the Time War, and they’d explained to her about the time he had fought God. She was grateful she’d heard it from them – she didn’t know how it would have affected her to hear it from anyone else. And it wasn’t always easy, because she’d come to realise her dad had what one might call a chequered past, and that he’d made a lot of enemies. Occasionally, very occasionally, it felt intimidating, as if she had… something to live up to.
Most of the time, she tried not to pay too much attention to such thoughts, because both her mum and dad had been great at explaining to her that she had her life to live, as she wanted, and she was deeply grateful for that knowledge as well. It struck her that, if her dad could have such a happy relationship, then it seemed that anyone could fall in love.
“Is it clichéd to say that she was ‘the one’, for you?” Iris suggested to her dad. If she could have seen his face, she imagined he’d be looking at her incredulously.
“Do you really expect me to know if it’s clichéd or not?”
“Point taken.”
“But yes – she was the one,” the Doctor said, still fiddling with his machinery. “And eventually, we all find that person. The… one person who means more than anyone else.”
Iris nodded approvingly.
“Problem is, though,” the Doctor added, with a soft laugh to himself, “Men are not exactly the brightest when it comes to relationships.”
Iris took a deep breath. “Then…I guess it’s a good thing for me then that girls are.”
The Doctor continued lying under the TARDIS console for a few seconds working quietly on whatever it was he was doing, before he realised what Iris had said and slid out from underneath, to respond face-to-face.
“You’re…,” the Doctor stood up in front of his daughter, suddenly realising how much taller than her he was.
“Gay?” she finished his sentence for him. “Erm… yeah.”
The Doctor nodded, mostly as a bit of conversation filler.
“Are you… cool with that?” Iris asked tentatively, perhaps even a little fearfully, because she wasn’t sure how he’d react. Well, she was pretty sure; she thought he’d be accepting, because both her parents were those kind of people—open-minded, kind, respectful of difference. But Iris had been waiting to bring up the subject with him for some time now, and she’d been looking for just the right moment, even when there never seemed to be one, so she decided to create one, and it was now. She’d already told her mum a while back, and so now she just had to tell her dad, and hope he was just accepting as she had been (and her mum had been totally amazing about it).
The Doctor looked down at the floor and then up again, and looked Iris straight in the eye.
“ Iris …” the Doctor placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I mean, it’s okay if you’re not, well, it’s not really, but…”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t be cool with it?” And the Doctor hugged Iris, gently but tightly, lovingly, and Iris hugged him back. It was like he was trying to communicate all his acceptance towards her through the power of a hug, and if that were possible, it seemed to be working, because Iris felt so happy.
Happier than she’d felt in a long time.
***
IRIS’ HEIGHT CHART: 1 METRE 57CM
AGE (HUMAN YEARS, LIZZIE’S ROUGH CONVERSION): 16
This time, when the Doctor had arrived to collect Lizzie, he did not seem happy. In fact, he had not said a word to her for a good few minutes, until she eventually asked him what the matter was, and where they were going. And, the Doctor had corrected her – it was not where they were going, it was where she was going.
“Babysitting duties,” the Doctor told her. Lizzie scowled, even though she didn’t mind, although it was a bit annoying that the Doctor felt he could just pluck her out of her own life and get her to babysit for him.
“Iris is old enough to look after herself, though, isn’t she? I mean, like, if you’re trying to protect her-”
“You’re the only person she seems to hold even a modicum of respect for,” the Doctor said as he pulled down a lever with more force than usual, and the TARDIS even gave a small whine, almost as if it were reacting to his aggression.
“Oh. Erm… right. Okay.”
She didn’t want to ask about where this was all coming from, because she had a feeling she would find out sooner than later. Low and behold, Iris was sitting on the sofa, looking up at them, glaring at her father.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about, now?” Iris stood up and walked over to the Doctor. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a letter and slammed it down on the counter. Iris looked up at him, still with no idea what was going on, waiting for him to elaborate. Cioné hovered by the door, looking as if she were ready to go out somewhere, although, by her expression, not somewhere particularly nice.
“Truancy.” The Doctor basically spat the word out. Iris rolled her eyes because she knew, now, exactly what he was talking about, but just couldn’t be bothered to deal
“Don’t roll your eyes at me like that,” her dad replied.
“All I did was skip a few classes.”
“It was more than a few,” the Doctor said bluntly, as he gestured towards the letter.
“I was bored! Okay?”
“No! It is not OK. You’re talented, Iris. You’re so intelligent, and I hate watching you waste it all like this.”
“It’s no worse than anything you ever did,” Iris murmured.
The Doctor’s eyes blazed, just for a second, and Lizzie was genuinely worried for Iris. “Excuse me?” he asked, rather too calmly.
“Nothing, don’t worry.”
“No, please, go on –”
“Doctor,” Cioné spoke abruptly, as he stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I really don’t think that’s necessary …”
“I want to know what she just said…”
“I said it’s no worse than anything you’ve ever done,” Iris replied, only louder this time. “You’ve spent your whole life running away, so don’t criticise me for doing the same.”
A thick silence descended on the room, and the tension was almost blood curdling. So thick was the silence, it could have been cut with a knife. The Doctor didn’t look as if he were going to say anything. He just stood there, seething, and when he finally opened his mouth to speak, Cioné intervened.
“We need to go, Doctor.”
He started to follow her, then turned to his daughter. “We’ll talk when I get back – from the meeting that we are about to have with your head of year. Lizzie will be babysitting.”
“I’m old enough to look after myself!” Iris protested.
“This letter suggests otherwise.”
The Doctor and Cioné left, and Lizzie was standing awkwardly in the corner of the room. Iris looked at her, and rolled her eyes again.
She was rather good at eye-rolling.
15 minutes following this confrontation, Iris sat on the sofa in silence, watching the blank screen on the TV, as if somehow she could discover the power of telekinesis a and turn it on. In fact, Iris had been ordered not to use any electronics, and the Doctor had deliberately unplugged the TV and taken her phone, and Lizzie was sitting in the kitchen, playing some pointless app on her phone, and thinking she should probably go and say something to Iris, but she couldn’t think of anything helpful. So, there was a stony silence between them – which was unusual, because the two of them were usually very close.
Eventually, Lizzie thought of a possible conversation starter, and drifted slowly into the room next door, where Iris was still sitting, now dramatically slumped over, and very bored looking.
“He’ll come round in the end,” Lizzie said.
Iris didn’t say a thing, but Lizzie moved closer and perched on the edge of a low chest of drawers. Eventually, Iris sighed, and turned to face her.
“He’s just… such a hypocrite. He can be such a stupid, petty man sometimes, and he genuinely makes me want to…,” she stopped, seething quietly, and Lizzie moved over to the sofa, where she sat down next to Iris.
“I just think that what you said to him, just hit too close to home,” Lizzie said. Her more recent visits with Iris had changed, because she was no longer talking to Iris like she had when she was a child, when Iris would be amazed at everything Lizzie said. instead, Iris would talk to Lizzie like an adult, and realise had come to recognize and understand and even identify with Lizzie’s own inability to function in society, in the world around her.
“Yeah…” Iris admitted. Lizzie had a point.
“He goes off on people, sometimes, and loses his patience and his temper. The Doctor is kind of – like, I don’t know. Most of the time, he’s genuinely one of the nicest people ever, but sometimes he turns, and it’ll be for some… stupid reason, like this.”
“But my skipping classes is not that stupid a reason, though,” Iris said. “The academy and my studies mean a lot to me…but… I just get so bored, sat there, in a classroom, all day, every day.”
“But you’re clever. Like – really clever.”
“First thing, I’m not, really, and secondly, if I was that clever, I wouldn’t have to like it. Point is –my life at the academy is boring me. I just want to … leave… but only for a little bit.”
Lizzie had been there, in that place, in that mind set, more than she cared to admit, except, she had dealt with it in a different way than Iris.
“My dad sent you here because he thinks you’ll talk me around… but you won’t.”
“And, well, erm, I respect your decision….”
Was she condoning truancy? She had no idea.
“No, Lizzie. I mean – you won’t try to talk me round. Because you understand. You get me, and you get him.”
“Yeah – well, Iris. It is important that you stay in school, just for a bit … ” Lizzie was quickly interrupted by another Iris eyeroll. “Because even though you know everything, you actually don’t. Like – sorry, that was way too arrogant, I mean, just stay for a bit longer. And then… the universe is yours.”
Iris looked up at her, and Lizzie saw that she was crying.
The little girl that sat next to her wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a young woman, who had gone, as they say, from sketchers to converse, from denim skirts to skinny jeans, from tops with puppies printed on them, to red knitted stripy jumpers (when Lizzie saw the one Iris was wearing, she thought Cioné had probably knitted it herself).
Iris had long, flowing, brunette hair, and the most beautiful green eyes. So many years ago now, Lizzie had sat opposite that little girl in a café in London, a little girl who had dreamed of so much, and who, in her mind, strode through so many worlds. She now sat next to the same girl, who was crying, out of the sheer terror about those same worlds falling apart, and how she was reaching out to them as much as she could but felt as if she were having them taken away from her, by her parents and the government and everyone else. Lizzie hugged her, and Iris just cried and cried and cried. It must’ve been building up for a long time, because Iris was seemingly inconsolable.
“Why are you so clever, oh my god,” Iris laughed through all her tears. “You always know the right thing to say.”
Lizzie wished she could find some words to express what it meant to have watched this little girl grow up into a young woman, but could find none. It was the most overwhelming feeling – a feeling that parents had felt over years and years, yet for Lizzie, they had been compressed into days, and it made her start to sob as well.
“You know,” Iris looked up and into Lizzie’s eyes. “You’re a sister to me.”
Lizzie kissed the top of Iris’ head – the little girl she’d spent years with, the little girl who had meant more to her in just a few days, than most people had meant to her in her entire life thus far.
“You’ve always been there for me,” Iris continued. “Ever since I was small and for as long as I can remember, you’ve always helped me, and cared for me, and just… done so much for me. You were there whenever it mattered.”
It was meant to be a passionate speech but it was so broken up, under the emotion of years and years and years. Lizzie caught sight of a framed photograph, still sitting there on top of the mantelpiece where it had been placed years and years ago. It showed Lizzie, holding a little baby girl in her arms. A little girl with no worries, or sadness, or fears.
Iris.
The photo made her smile, and it made her cry even more.
“I don’t know if it makes much sense,” Lizzie began. “But you mean exactly the same to me.”
The two sisters sat and cried, together, and it didn’t matter about anyone else.
A few hours later, the Doctor returned, with Cioné in tow. Cioné hadn’t really said much during that earlier father-daughter encounter, unlike the Doctor, who had gone completely off the rails.
Lizzie and Iris had been prepping for the fallout, because they’d suspected that it wasn’t going to end well. Lizzie had settled on taking Cioné into the kitchen, and leaving the Doctor and Iris to fight it out. She’d hoped that this would be the best way. When Lizzie and Iris heard the Doctor and Cioné coming down the steps from the console room to the lounge, they stood up to greet them.
Needless to say, the Doctor did not look happy.
“Erm, uh, Cioné?” Lizzie gestured for Cioné to follow her into the kitchen, so that Iris and the Doctor could be alone and so that she and Cioné could shield themselves from the inevitable fireworks.
“Oh, of course,” Cioné followed Lizzie.
The door clicked shut and the remnants of any previous conversation were shut out with it. The Doctor stood opposite Iris, and the two of them looked at each other. They each expected nothing less than honesty now.
“What I don’t get,” Iris began. “Is why you went completely off the handle at something so… tiny.”
“Because it isn’t tiny, it’s your education.”
“Mum was composed, she was calm, but you, you just completely went off your tits in anger and started having a massive go at me.”
“Because you are wasting your potential, Iris,” he replied, with surprising calm.
“Did you not consider what it’s like for her?” Iris continued, as she recalled how her mother had hovered silently in the corner of the room, as if she hadn’t been quite sure what to do or say, or as if she didn’t dare say anything. “She couldn’t even get a word in, because of you.”
“Don’t you dare say that, when I spend so much time looking after her –,” he started.
“But…you seem to… seem to pick and choose when you after her, depending on when it works for you…”
“You know,” the Doctor raised his voice a bit. “It’s not the truancy that upset me, what upset me was when you said it was nothing worse than what I’ve done –”
“And it isn’t?” Iris interrupted him, shouting now. “You’re just… such a hypocritical arse all the time! Don’t you see, Dad? You spend all your time running and, and –”
“I’ve made mistakes!” the Doctor roared. “And those mistakes have haunted me every single day –”
“But the day you left Gallifrey – you’d never go back on that...”
The Doctor didn’t reply, because in all honesty, it was the truth. He wouldn’t change that day.
“Exactly,” Iris shrugged. “You wouldn’t. Because it’s one rule for you, and another for everyone else. It’s fine if you go and do whatever you want, whilst I have to stay in school.”
“No, Iris, it’s not like that –”
“No, you’re right, it isn’t,” Iris replied, and then took a deep breath. She was crying now, and her voice was shaking, and she didn’t want to say what she was going to say next because she knew it would make her feel guilty. She said it anyway. “It’s about… power. You like to control me and Mum, and everybody else you meet. Like, you just fly down and pick up Lizzie whenever, and don’t give it a second thought. You don’t care about anyone else.”
She was right – she felt very guilty after saying it, but she was right and it shut her Dad up, and that was what she’d wanted. Wasn’t it?
“You know, Iris, you’re such a child, because… you just don’t get it –”
“What don’t I get?”
“I have lost more people than you would ever believe.”
“Don’t pull that fucking card on me, Dad, because… do you know what it’s like growing up in your shadow?”
The Doctor looked away from his daughter and down at the floor. And for a second, Iris thought he looked… was it ashamed? Iris couldn’t be sure. But he looked guilty, and Iris felt awful for saying such things, but she couldn’t stop herself – it was like a fountain dam breaking, and all the things that had been building up for years and years were just pouring out.
“You could never know what it’s like being your daughter. You’re the guy who basically caused the Time War, the guy who killed God. I know about everyone you’ve lost, and I’m really sorry, but why don’t you concentrate on doing something good in memory of them, and not treat their memories as badly as you do. Grow up, Dad.”
Iris slammed the door behind her.
***
LONDON, 2017
A BUS
Cioné, being the glue that held their family together, had suggested they all go back to London again, together. The four of them – Cioné, Iris, the Doctor… and Lizzie. The atmosphere in the TARDIS had been dreadful – the fight between the Doctor and Iris had happened over a week ago, but they still hadn’t been able to talk to each other since. Both of them had said things to the other that’d hurt. Both of them didn’t think they’d be able to forgive the other, or forgive themselves for saying these things. Cioné had tried to liven the atmosphere a bit, but it hadn’t worked.
Eventually, after a brief spot of lunch, they made their way onto a bus, and Iris, eyes glued to her mobile, walked up the stairs onto the second deck. The Doctor and Cioné sat down, and Iris walked straight past them, sitting a few rows back from her mother and father. Lizzie herself sat a few seats behind Iris, watching the whole family, observing them, as she’d done so many years ago. Apart from a few muttered words between the Doctor and Cioné, this time there was no laughter, no jokes, no crazy stories, no silly impressions.
Iris sat alone behind her parents.
And all four of them wanted the old days back.
***
FIVE SECONDS LATER (MAGGIE TIME)
And, as Lizzie had promised, the TARDIS appeared in Maggie Shephard’s garden again, on top of the cracked china skull of a gnome. That was Maggie’s favourite gnome as well.
The door to the blue box opened, and Lizzie stepped out, looking, as Maggie would term it, like shi –, anyway.
“Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,” Maggie strode over to her and hugged her as she walked away from the box. “What’s happened?”
The Doctor briefly appeared in the doorway, before turning to head back inside the TARDIS.
“If you’ve done anything to her,” Maggie glared at him as she watched him. “I don’t care what magic-whizzy-space-box thing you fly about in, I will find my way across the universe and I will kill you.”
“Maggie, please,” Lizzie started.
“No, love,” Maggie shushed her. “You hear me? This girl means as much to me as my own kids, so piss off out of my back garden!”
The Doctor did as he was told, and a few seconds later, the TARDIS was gone. Maggie led Lizzie inside, and sat her down at the kitchen table, and went to boil the kettle.
“Who does he think he is?” Maggie began a rant that Lizzie knew would keep them there all day, if she let proceed.
“You’ve changed your tune,” Lizzie murmured.
“That was before you turned up on my doorstep looking like this. Hey –,” said Maggie, softly, as she took a bit of Lizzie’s hair in her hands, running it through her fingers. “It’s longer. Your hair is longer.”
“Maggie, please – just listen.”
Maggie shut up immediately, because when Lizzie was telling her to listen, she knew it was going to be pretty important. Tea was poured, and Maggie sat opposite her.
“The Doctor,” Lizzie began. “He has a daughter. And I’ve just watched her grow up while I was ‘away.”
Lizzie proceeded to tell Maggie the story, of how she’d first met Iris about two weeks ago, as soon as she was born. And of how, in those two weeks, Earth time, Lizzie had experienced Iris’ entire lifetime thus far, watching her grow up from the Earth equivalent of birth, through childhood to a young adult. It was a lot for Maggie to take in – but Maggie mainly felt very sorry for Lizzie. As a mother herself, she’d known what it was like to watch a child grow from birth to adulthood over many years – and she couldn’t imagine watching such a process occurring over such a short span of time.
“And – I guess, maybe, I’m just finding it way too overwhelming. Because two weeks ago, I saw this little tiny baby, and I’ve seen her on so many of the big and important days in her life, and now, that I am seeing her as a young woman …It just makes me so… sad, watching her grow up, and I don’t even know why.”
“Well,” Maggie took Lizzie’s hand. “Growing up is sad. Time passing is sad. Because… people change. People grow, and that’s emotional. I’ve been there, funnily enough.”
That made Lizzie laugh. Maggie was pretty good at doing that.
“But they’ve just…” Lizzie continued. “The Doctor and Iris, they aren’t talking. They seem to hate each other now…”
“Families don’t hate each other.”
“But – like, I – I think they do.”
“When parents fight with their kids, and with each other about their kids, it hurts, even more than any other time, because parents and kids are… part of each other. And both sides say things that hurt, and those are the rawest of fights. But here’s the thing – when they’ve said it all, and there’s nothing else to say, it means they can all come back together.”
Lizzie really hoped Maggie was right, and was too worried to think about what it would be like otherwise. Because she remembered the Doctor, all that time ago, when he’d arrived on her street, looking so sad and lonely, and she just wanted him to be happy, more than anything else. And she was desperate for Iris to be happy as well, because that lovely girl also deserved it… so, so much.
“The Doctor will be there for her,” Maggie said, decisively, as if she knew it for certain, and Lizzie thought about questioning it because she didn’t really believe her. But she decided not to say anything, and to allow Maggie to continue. “When he arrived before, I saw how much that little girl means to him. He adores her. And – I don’t think he’s the sort of person to give up on a love like that. I’ve seen all sorts of people in my lifetime, Lizzie – some that can just give up on that love, some that don’t even feel that love. But when you’ve seen lonely children, you understand how much of an impact that love can make, and you know who holds it. God, it does sound cheesy, but it’s true.”
Lizzie was going to ask how she knew, how she could possibly be so certain, but then she remembered that the old woman was wise in matters such as this, and so, again, Lizzie said nothing. Maggie had anticipated Lizzie’s uncertainty, however.
“A while ago, now, I arrived at the home to do what I always did. Help lonely kids who deserved better. And there was a little girl, wearing little red shoes with buckles on them. And her name … her name was Lizzie Darwin. Elizabeth Darwin, technically, but you told me that you didn’t like being called that. And I remember that I said, ‘Lizzie, let’s go for a walk.’ And we did! Not just then, but every single time we met.”
Lizzie thought back to those days. It was as if they were yesterday.
“And I would go to the pegs, and take down your yellow mackintosh, and help you put it on, and zip it up. Then, I’d help you get your wellies on. And when we were done, I’d get my coat and kneel down in front of you, because I was younger then and my knees could bend. And, you’d help me put my coat on, and help me to zip it up. Then, we’d do the same with my wellies. And we’d go for a walk through the garden.”
That was Lizzie’s favourite part of the story, although she was left wondering what on Earth Maggie’s purpose was in retelling this story now.
“Point is, Lizzie. That story is you to a tee. Even when you think you can’t really help, you still try, and you still find a way to do it anyway.”
Lizzie realised what she meant, now. It wasn’t a solution to their problems. But it was a call to Lizzie Darwin to help find a solution.
***
Since the Doctor had started to use mobile phone technology, it now meant Lizzie could easily contact him when and wherever. And when she gave him a ring, the TARDIS would materialise not so very many minutes later, in exactly the same spot it had left before. This time, when the Doctor appeared in the doorway of the blue box and Lizzie stepped inside, Maggie gave them both a friendly wave, before the TARDIS dematerialised.
“Lizzie!” the Doctor tried to act all warm and friendly, but he wasn’t doing a very good job. “Let’s go somewhere.”
Lizzie nodded. “Okay.”
“Anywhere! All of time and all of space. Danger? Maybe? Maybe not? Whatever you like.”
This was her chance.
It might get her kicked off the TARDIS. But…
Might he listen?
Probably not.
But he might.
So she said it anyway, because it was more important than her relationship with him.
“On one condition.”
The Doctor looked at her, unfazed. “Go on. Surprise me,” he smiled.
“Iris comes with us.”
She’d come straight out with it, deciding not to waste time beating about the bush. She was going to have to say it at some point, it might as well be now. The Doctor’s face certainly showed surprise, and it even looked slightly grim, before the Doctor turned away from her and walked towards the console.
“She can’t,” the Doctor said, pulling a lever. It was with the same aggression he’d pulled that lever a while back, and the TARDIS, again, let out a sad whine.
“You, um, you can’t leave it like this.”
“Lizzie, she said things to me that hurt. I was upset. I am upset”
“But – doesn’t it occur to you that you upset her as well?”
The Doctor sat down on his leather chair – the one Iris had sat in when she’d told him about something so important to her, and he’d accepted it and been so happy for her.
Happier times.
He had said that he’d always be there for her. Always. And she never had to worry about him turning his back on her.
“I know what it’s like,” Lizzie said after taking a deep breath, not sure where she was going with this, what exactly it was that she was trying to say, but she knew she’d have to continue anyway and she did. “I know what it’s like to feel alone when you’re young –”
“And you think I don’t?”
“Well – if you – if you do get it, then why don’t you go back to her? Because that’s how she feels, Doctor. She wants to be accepted for who she is. That’s all she’s wanted for such a long time.”
The Doctor stood up. It was another one of those moments, when the Doctor would throw all his toys out of his proverbial pram, and Lizzie would say something to him that would make so much sense to him that he’d look like and feel like an idiot.
***
The TARDIS materialised in Cioné’s living room, and when the Doctor bounded out of the door, Cioné and Iris were waiting for him.
“I’m sorry,” Iris said to him. “Really, really sorry.”
It was almost as if someone had talked to her in advance... (oh, who was Lizzie kidding? She’d phoned Cioné and instructed her to give Iris a similar pep-talk.)
“So am I,” the Doctor whispered as he hugged his daughter and she hugged him back, and they were honest with each other again, but about less painful things, this time. “I should never have said those things to you, especially after I promised to always, always be here for you, Iris. But now, I will be – truly and always.”
“I should never have said those things to you either,” Iris said, her voice muffled by the Doctor’s jacket.
“I was just as bad, Iris,” he pulled away. “Can we put it behind us? Move on?”
Iris nodded, smiling at her dad. Both of them were quite similar, really. But the Doctor had known that all along – he just hadn’t realised it properly.
“Well!” Cioné leapt in. “Thank goodness that’s all over! You’ve both been a nightmare to live with.”
“Sorry,” the Doctor apologised sheepishly.
“Yeah… same,” Iris gave her mum her best puppy dog eyes, which were just as effective as they’d always been. And…. speaking of puppy dogs –
“Sorry mistress Cioné!” K9 chirped up from the corner.
“Oh, not you K9!” Cioné knelt down beside the faithful hound and gave him a good rub behind the ears. “You’re a delight, as always”
“Thank you, mistress Cioné!”
“Good dog, K9,” the Doctor added. He was reminded of how, years and years ago, he’d used to travel around space and time with K9. Technically, it was a different K9 – but the Doctor had built this one by harvesting the same circuits. He was like a reminder of the old days – but he was also their dog, Cioné’s and Iris’.
“So, my dear,” the Doctor took his daughter’s hand. “As recompense for my sins – a trip in the TARDIS, perhaps?”
“Absolutely, father dear,” she said as she kissed her father’s hand with a dramatic flourish, and made her way towards the TARDIS. The Doctor, Lizzie and Iris looked up at the great blue box, and wondered what adventures awaited them. They turned, to see Cioné, watching them, K9 at her heels.
“Mum – can’t you come with us?” Iris asked.
“Me?” Cioné mock-gestured towards herself. “Oh, of course not. Father-daughter time! And besides! I’ve got lots of cooking and cleaning to do – I do so love making house.”
An awkward silence fell as the three of them stared at her in sheer disbelief.
“No, of course not,” Cioné shrugged off her sarcastic previous remarks, laughing. “I’m well overdue for a holiday. I’m off on a glowfly-hunting expedition! See you all later!”
Iris walked away and kissed her mum. “Enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, darling – I will! Apparently, their rosé is the finest in the galaxy. Don’t get up to too much mischief.”
The Doctor gave her a wink.
“And you,” Cioné kissed him. “Look after her. Otherwise I will renounce my pacifism and come after you.”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor agreed, even if he did rather slightly fear for his life. Lizzie slipped into the TARDIS, followed by the Doctor – and finally, Iris gave her mother one final wave, before disappearing as well.
Cioné watched the blue box slowly dematerialise, listening to the soothing sounds of the TARDIS engines roaring to life. Such a sound that Iris had had the pleasure of growing up with. A sound that would always remind Iris of a childhood, and a sound that would always remind her of someone who would keep her safe, of someone who would always protect her, of someone who would always be there for her.
Of the Doctor.
Of her Dad.
***
“So,” the Doctor spun the screen around, to give Iris a good look at the outing he had in mind. “Fancy a high-adrenaline trip? Because I’ve got a great day out to suggest!”
“Sounds great,” Iris said as she wandered around her Dad’s TARDIS, looking at all the books on the shelves, and at the stars visible through the observatory. She’d been in there so many times, she’d flown in the TARDIS so many times. But there was something different this time – as if now, she was going somewhere exciting.
“The Bug,” the Doctor said, as he displayed an image on the screen, an image similar to the one he’d been shown over a century ago, just before he’d found out about the birth of Iris. Lizzie recognised the creature immediately – of course, for her, it had only been two weeks ago. And it was still fresh in her mind, including the utter disgust in Elle Mthembu’s voice as she described it. “White supremacist,” the Doctor continued. “LGBTQ+ hater.”
“General arsehole, then?” Iris grimaced.
“Language, dear,” the Doctor scolded. “But yes. Fancy putting a stop to his next attack?”
“Oh, it would be a delight.”
“Lizzie?” the Doctor turned to her.
“Oh – er, count me in! Definitely. Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Lizzie had, in fact, been too busy watching the relaxed banter between the girl and her dad.
“I’ve locked onto a trace generated by the Bug’s high-tech equipment,” the Doctor continued, as he made his way around the TARDIS console, piloting the great ship. “Disadvantage of the Bug being the most recognisable terrorist in the galaxy, I suppose.”
It was not long before they’d landed. In fact, it was a weirdly short time – so short the Doctor wondered whether they were somewhere they’d been before, as the TARDIS had landed with relative ease.
“Lizzie? Would you do the honours?”
Lizzie pulled on her coat, and opened the door to the TARDIS, expecting to see whatever world they were about to step out on to. Preparing to find the greatest terrorist in the universe. Preparing to find an utter monster. Business as usual, then. Except it wasn’t, because usually the Doctor’s daughter wasn’t involved, and usually it didn’t involve space-terrorists.
And usually, Lizzie didn’t feel like fainting as soon as she opened the doors.
This time, she did. Because it turned out that the Doctor had been right – they had landed somewhere they’d been before. In fact, it was somewhere Lizzie knew very, very well.
They were in the den – the one hidden snugly away behind Lizzie’s care home, the one with the great oak tree overhanging the magical pond, and with the rope that swung out over the water. It was the place where Lizzie had run to whenever she needed to escape, Lizzie’s way out, for so many years. Of course, most recently, she’d been here when she first met the Doctor, and they had fought the masked maiden. For some reason, they’d arrived there again.
The Doctor was just as confused as she was, and quickly dashed back inside the TARDIS to make sure they’d come to the right place.
“Where is this place?” Iris asked, walking out of the box and across the mossy, dirty ground, towards the edge of the pond. “I mean – why’s it so important?”
“It’s – it’s my home,” answered Lizzie. “I mean, this place was like… like my secret place, my refuge, when I was a child.”
But all three of them sensed what it meant – the Bug was here, for some reason. And what other reason would it have to come to that place specifically, unless it wanted something to do with them, specifically with the Doctor and Lizzie?
Iris was the first person to dare say what they were all thinking. “So… do you think it knows that we’re onto it?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor spoke through gritted teeth, holding his sonic screwdriver up in the air. “But the Bug has definitely been here.”
A great fear rose in Lizzie, as she thought of all the kids living in the house, and the child that had died at the hands of the masked maiden. It was as if, somehow, the Bug was crawling all over her childhood, and contaminating it, poisoning it.
Then, the Doctor did something odd, even for him.
He had knelt down, beside the pond, and was pointing his sonic screwdriver towards the centre of the water. The sonic’s beeping noise had increased in frequency and pitch, redirected an ear towards the water’s surface and then stepped back, grabbing a stone and tossing it in.
Lizzie watched as the stone broke the surface, and ripples fanned out across the pond. But the surface of the pond quickly became still again. Perhaps, in such a secluded spot, the water settled easily.
“This pond is impossible,” the Doctor stepped back.
“An impossible pond?” Iris asked incredulously.
“The energy readings I’m getting here are impossible,” the Doctor shook his head. “And, I suspect – and, I believe that the pond is actually a wormhole through space and time.”
“A… what?” asked Iris. And to be fair, it was, for Iris, very much like being thrown into the deep end of the pool. Rather literally, in this case. Lizzie, however, was slightly more concerned about the fact that the pond where she’d spent so many years hiding away, was a portal to a completely different part of space and time.
“And, er… I think the Bug has gone through it, added the Doctor. “Wow… Lizzie … I’m glad you never fell off the rope swing.”
It was a bit of a relief, at least, that the Bug (probably) hadn’t harmed anyone in the home. And that it had scooted off from one of the places she felt the safest, as quickly as possible. Even so, it was still out there. But, wherever the portal led – the portal she’d been living on top of for pretty much her entire childhood – the Bug was there.
Lizzie knew what they had to do.
She looked at Iris, who clearly agreed. She’d grown to know Iris’ mannerisms so well, as she’d watched them grow and develop and react for so many years…or was it weeks? – in Lizzie time.
They both looked at the Doctor, and he nodded.
The three of them joined hands – Iris in the middle, the Doctor on her right, and Lizzie on her left. They held on tightly – and not one of them was going to let go. They were doing this together, hoping for the best… hoping that the wormhole was safe to travel through.
The three of them walked as one, down to the edge of the pond, still holding hands, and stopped at the water’s edge.
“On three,” the Doctor said.
Time seemed to take an age to pass.
But at the same time, it passed in the blink of an eye.
“1…
2…
3…”
And they fell.
“I’m sorry,” Iris said to him. “Really, really sorry.”
It was almost as if someone had talked to her in advance... (oh, who was Lizzie kidding? She’d phoned Cioné and instructed her to give Iris a similar pep-talk.)
“So am I,” the Doctor whispered as he hugged his daughter and she hugged him back, and they were honest with each other again, but about less painful things, this time. “I should never have said those things to you, especially after I promised to always, always be here for you, Iris. But now, I will be – truly and always.”
“I should never have said those things to you either,” Iris said, her voice muffled by the Doctor’s jacket.
“I was just as bad, Iris,” he pulled away. “Can we put it behind us? Move on?”
Iris nodded, smiling at her dad. Both of them were quite similar, really. But the Doctor had known that all along – he just hadn’t realised it properly.
“Well!” Cioné leapt in. “Thank goodness that’s all over! You’ve both been a nightmare to live with.”
“Sorry,” the Doctor apologised sheepishly.
“Yeah… same,” Iris gave her mum her best puppy dog eyes, which were just as effective as they’d always been. And…. speaking of puppy dogs –
“Sorry mistress Cioné!” K9 chirped up from the corner.
“Oh, not you K9!” Cioné knelt down beside the faithful hound and gave him a good rub behind the ears. “You’re a delight, as always”
“Thank you, mistress Cioné!”
“Good dog, K9,” the Doctor added. He was reminded of how, years and years ago, he’d used to travel around space and time with K9. Technically, it was a different K9 – but the Doctor had built this one by harvesting the same circuits. He was like a reminder of the old days – but he was also their dog, Cioné’s and Iris’.
“So, my dear,” the Doctor took his daughter’s hand. “As recompense for my sins – a trip in the TARDIS, perhaps?”
“Absolutely, father dear,” she said as she kissed her father’s hand with a dramatic flourish, and made her way towards the TARDIS. The Doctor, Lizzie and Iris looked up at the great blue box, and wondered what adventures awaited them. They turned, to see Cioné, watching them, K9 at her heels.
“Mum – can’t you come with us?” Iris asked.
“Me?” Cioné mock-gestured towards herself. “Oh, of course not. Father-daughter time! And besides! I’ve got lots of cooking and cleaning to do – I do so love making house.”
An awkward silence fell as the three of them stared at her in sheer disbelief.
“No, of course not,” Cioné shrugged off her sarcastic previous remarks, laughing. “I’m well overdue for a holiday. I’m off on a glowfly-hunting expedition! See you all later!”
Iris walked away and kissed her mum. “Enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, darling – I will! Apparently, their rosé is the finest in the galaxy. Don’t get up to too much mischief.”
The Doctor gave her a wink.
“And you,” Cioné kissed him. “Look after her. Otherwise I will renounce my pacifism and come after you.”
“Absolutely,” the Doctor agreed, even if he did rather slightly fear for his life. Lizzie slipped into the TARDIS, followed by the Doctor – and finally, Iris gave her mother one final wave, before disappearing as well.
Cioné watched the blue box slowly dematerialise, listening to the soothing sounds of the TARDIS engines roaring to life. Such a sound that Iris had had the pleasure of growing up with. A sound that would always remind Iris of a childhood, and a sound that would always remind her of someone who would keep her safe, of someone who would always protect her, of someone who would always be there for her.
Of the Doctor.
Of her Dad.
***
“So,” the Doctor spun the screen around, to give Iris a good look at the outing he had in mind. “Fancy a high-adrenaline trip? Because I’ve got a great day out to suggest!”
“Sounds great,” Iris said as she wandered around her Dad’s TARDIS, looking at all the books on the shelves, and at the stars visible through the observatory. She’d been in there so many times, she’d flown in the TARDIS so many times. But there was something different this time – as if now, she was going somewhere exciting.
“The Bug,” the Doctor said, as he displayed an image on the screen, an image similar to the one he’d been shown over a century ago, just before he’d found out about the birth of Iris. Lizzie recognised the creature immediately – of course, for her, it had only been two weeks ago. And it was still fresh in her mind, including the utter disgust in Elle Mthembu’s voice as she described it. “White supremacist,” the Doctor continued. “LGBTQ+ hater.”
“General arsehole, then?” Iris grimaced.
“Language, dear,” the Doctor scolded. “But yes. Fancy putting a stop to his next attack?”
“Oh, it would be a delight.”
“Lizzie?” the Doctor turned to her.
“Oh – er, count me in! Definitely. Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Lizzie had, in fact, been too busy watching the relaxed banter between the girl and her dad.
“I’ve locked onto a trace generated by the Bug’s high-tech equipment,” the Doctor continued, as he made his way around the TARDIS console, piloting the great ship. “Disadvantage of the Bug being the most recognisable terrorist in the galaxy, I suppose.”
It was not long before they’d landed. In fact, it was a weirdly short time – so short the Doctor wondered whether they were somewhere they’d been before, as the TARDIS had landed with relative ease.
“Lizzie? Would you do the honours?”
Lizzie pulled on her coat, and opened the door to the TARDIS, expecting to see whatever world they were about to step out on to. Preparing to find the greatest terrorist in the universe. Preparing to find an utter monster. Business as usual, then. Except it wasn’t, because usually the Doctor’s daughter wasn’t involved, and usually it didn’t involve space-terrorists.
And usually, Lizzie didn’t feel like fainting as soon as she opened the doors.
This time, she did. Because it turned out that the Doctor had been right – they had landed somewhere they’d been before. In fact, it was somewhere Lizzie knew very, very well.
They were in the den – the one hidden snugly away behind Lizzie’s care home, the one with the great oak tree overhanging the magical pond, and with the rope that swung out over the water. It was the place where Lizzie had run to whenever she needed to escape, Lizzie’s way out, for so many years. Of course, most recently, she’d been here when she first met the Doctor, and they had fought the masked maiden. For some reason, they’d arrived there again.
The Doctor was just as confused as she was, and quickly dashed back inside the TARDIS to make sure they’d come to the right place.
“Where is this place?” Iris asked, walking out of the box and across the mossy, dirty ground, towards the edge of the pond. “I mean – why’s it so important?”
“It’s – it’s my home,” answered Lizzie. “I mean, this place was like… like my secret place, my refuge, when I was a child.”
But all three of them sensed what it meant – the Bug was here, for some reason. And what other reason would it have to come to that place specifically, unless it wanted something to do with them, specifically with the Doctor and Lizzie?
Iris was the first person to dare say what they were all thinking. “So… do you think it knows that we’re onto it?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor spoke through gritted teeth, holding his sonic screwdriver up in the air. “But the Bug has definitely been here.”
A great fear rose in Lizzie, as she thought of all the kids living in the house, and the child that had died at the hands of the masked maiden. It was as if, somehow, the Bug was crawling all over her childhood, and contaminating it, poisoning it.
Then, the Doctor did something odd, even for him.
He had knelt down, beside the pond, and was pointing his sonic screwdriver towards the centre of the water. The sonic’s beeping noise had increased in frequency and pitch, redirected an ear towards the water’s surface and then stepped back, grabbing a stone and tossing it in.
Lizzie watched as the stone broke the surface, and ripples fanned out across the pond. But the surface of the pond quickly became still again. Perhaps, in such a secluded spot, the water settled easily.
“This pond is impossible,” the Doctor stepped back.
“An impossible pond?” Iris asked incredulously.
“The energy readings I’m getting here are impossible,” the Doctor shook his head. “And, I suspect – and, I believe that the pond is actually a wormhole through space and time.”
“A… what?” asked Iris. And to be fair, it was, for Iris, very much like being thrown into the deep end of the pool. Rather literally, in this case. Lizzie, however, was slightly more concerned about the fact that the pond where she’d spent so many years hiding away, was a portal to a completely different part of space and time.
“And, er… I think the Bug has gone through it, added the Doctor. “Wow… Lizzie … I’m glad you never fell off the rope swing.”
It was a bit of a relief, at least, that the Bug (probably) hadn’t harmed anyone in the home. And that it had scooted off from one of the places she felt the safest, as quickly as possible. Even so, it was still out there. But, wherever the portal led – the portal she’d been living on top of for pretty much her entire childhood – the Bug was there.
Lizzie knew what they had to do.
She looked at Iris, who clearly agreed. She’d grown to know Iris’ mannerisms so well, as she’d watched them grow and develop and react for so many years…or was it weeks? – in Lizzie time.
They both looked at the Doctor, and he nodded.
The three of them joined hands – Iris in the middle, the Doctor on her right, and Lizzie on her left. They held on tightly – and not one of them was going to let go. They were doing this together, hoping for the best… hoping that the wormhole was safe to travel through.
The three of them walked as one, down to the edge of the pond, still holding hands, and stopped at the water’s edge.
“On three,” the Doctor said.
Time seemed to take an age to pass.
But at the same time, it passed in the blink of an eye.
“1…
2…
3…”
And they fell.
to be continued
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next time -
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