Elizabeth Darwin felt the grass beneath her feet. It was springy, and bouncy, and soft. When she stood there, looking down, everything felt new again, as if she’d been born an adult, and she were experiencing the world again for the first time. Everything felt so much realer. She couldn’t shift it from her mind – that feeling of being born again. When she’d retold her tale, and blinked, and suddenly realised she was sat opposite a counsellor, it was as if suddenly her life was beginning again.
But she’d told herself, it wasn’t possible.
Though it just wouldn’t go in, as if no matter how many times she could tell herself and reassure herself, it just wouldn’t be right. She would think positively, she would think of something else, but it would always be there. Looming over her, like something latching onto her back, and no matter her efforts at trying to shake it off, it would claw on, and refuse to let go.
Mary was her counsellor, and she’d suggested they go for a walk, just to the end of the garden, and Lizzie had agreed. Maybe doing something would help her to shrug off that ever-present feeling that something wasn’t quite right. They left through the sliding doors, and Lizzie had said she was going to enjoy the walk – but it just made it worse. So many sensations, all of which she recognised, but all of which she felt she hadn’t experienced yet. A strange disharmony, between understanding the world, and everything being alien to the touch. Then it clicked – it was as if she’d read it in a book, but hadn’t experienced it for real.
The grass was strange – and there were smells, beautiful, Earthy, floral scents, from the beautifully planted flowerbeds. Mary had a passion for gardening, and it was obvious from the perfect formations of flowers, all in deep crimsons, and regal purples, and seas of translucent aqua and turquoise. Birds tweeted – so many birds, and Lizzie caught sight of one, perched on the top of the blossom tree, at one with the world, and happy. A cat on the far end of the red-brick wall, sunbathing, its eyes closed to the world. Perhaps it had drifted to sleep – but who knew? The cat was content, lapping up the warm embrace of the world. Another bird flew down from the roof of the great town house, and landed on the patio surrounding the pond. It dipped its beak into the cold, and drank. It raised its tiny head up, and gave a tweet of happiness, letting the refreshment and the stunning feeling of the coolness run down its tiny throat. In the sun, the fishpond was a liquid mirror, the world reflected precisely on the undisturbed surface.
Lizzie knelt down beside the water, and she could see the faint outlines of goldfish, slinking gently throughout the depths, a gentle meandering, as if there was nothing purposeful to their swimming – they were after nothing but pleasure.
This world was perfect.
Her alien-ness was not the only odd thing – it was the perfectness, the lack of any imperfections. It was blemish-less, it was beautiful. Lizzie wanted to spend the rest of her life here.
Then she remembered.
She had spent the rest of her life here.
But she’d told herself, it wasn’t possible.
Though it just wouldn’t go in, as if no matter how many times she could tell herself and reassure herself, it just wouldn’t be right. She would think positively, she would think of something else, but it would always be there. Looming over her, like something latching onto her back, and no matter her efforts at trying to shake it off, it would claw on, and refuse to let go.
Mary was her counsellor, and she’d suggested they go for a walk, just to the end of the garden, and Lizzie had agreed. Maybe doing something would help her to shrug off that ever-present feeling that something wasn’t quite right. They left through the sliding doors, and Lizzie had said she was going to enjoy the walk – but it just made it worse. So many sensations, all of which she recognised, but all of which she felt she hadn’t experienced yet. A strange disharmony, between understanding the world, and everything being alien to the touch. Then it clicked – it was as if she’d read it in a book, but hadn’t experienced it for real.
The grass was strange – and there were smells, beautiful, Earthy, floral scents, from the beautifully planted flowerbeds. Mary had a passion for gardening, and it was obvious from the perfect formations of flowers, all in deep crimsons, and regal purples, and seas of translucent aqua and turquoise. Birds tweeted – so many birds, and Lizzie caught sight of one, perched on the top of the blossom tree, at one with the world, and happy. A cat on the far end of the red-brick wall, sunbathing, its eyes closed to the world. Perhaps it had drifted to sleep – but who knew? The cat was content, lapping up the warm embrace of the world. Another bird flew down from the roof of the great town house, and landed on the patio surrounding the pond. It dipped its beak into the cold, and drank. It raised its tiny head up, and gave a tweet of happiness, letting the refreshment and the stunning feeling of the coolness run down its tiny throat. In the sun, the fishpond was a liquid mirror, the world reflected precisely on the undisturbed surface.
Lizzie knelt down beside the water, and she could see the faint outlines of goldfish, slinking gently throughout the depths, a gentle meandering, as if there was nothing purposeful to their swimming – they were after nothing but pleasure.
This world was perfect.
Her alien-ness was not the only odd thing – it was the perfectness, the lack of any imperfections. It was blemish-less, it was beautiful. Lizzie wanted to spend the rest of her life here.
Then she remembered.
She had spent the rest of her life here.
the eighth doctor adventures
series 5 - episode 12
fire forgotten
written by Peter Darwin
Lizzie ran.
Evangeline Cullengate and her people had the Doctor. He was powering the Memory Graveyard, a whole dimension that was going to bleed through into the universe and destroy it. She’d fallen backwards, away from the two of them, and she’d stumbled backwards through the door of the drawing room, before sprawling into the corridor and collapsing against the back wall. She couldn’t just let the Doctor go, and so she ran at the door, which had swung shut behind her. It wouldn’t budge, and so she pounded on it, over and over, desperate to get in and save him from the Memory Graveyard. She tried kicking it, and crashing into it with her shoulder, but it wouldn’t open. She so badly needed to help him, to get him out from this, but she couldn’t – there was a door in the way, so solid it was practically a wall.
Until suddenly, the door, with a lightness, gently opened.
When Lizzie ran into the room, desperate to find the Doctor, she realised that he was gone. Evangeline was gone. Hugo and Edwin were gone. She was muttering to herself, and she dashed over to the place on the wall, where the magic appearing door had once been etched. Lizzie pressed herself hard up against it, as if she’d be able to hear something on the other side, perhaps some recognition of wherever the Doctor was.
But there was nothing.
Lizzie had to do something, but she had no idea what.
So she ran.
Lizzie clattered out of the drawing room, and stumbled through the corridors, and bounded down the great staircase, and tore out of the great oak doors to the mansion, before she dashed down the gravel driveway, where she could see the TARDIS waiting for her by the huge gates at the end – gates which seemed even more imposing than ever. Lizzie fumbled around with her key, slamming it into the lock and yanking it, until she fell through the doors of the TARDIS and smashed them shut behind her.
Her lungs were engulfing the air, as Lizzie was desperate for as much of it as she could manage, shattered by how fast she’d run, and terrified of what was coming after her. She didn’t even know if there was anything coming after her, but Lizzie was almost certain of it – and she didn’t feel safe in that blue box anymore. The doors behind her suddenly felt so very thin, and she remembered the first time she’d ever stepped inside that box with the Doctor. In fact, the conversation echoed in her mind.
“Nothing can get through those doors.”
“Nothing only extends to the amount they’ve been tested against.”
That observation seemed more important now than it had done before, as those doors seemed like futile protection from the demons of the outside world. It felt as if nothing would ever be able to protect her from those demons – as if wherever she ran, they would never, ever stop following her. They would walk through walls, and stride over water, and fly through the air, until eventually she had to tire, and the demons would reach her. And Lizzie Darwin would be gobbled up, and gone forever.
The doors were too thin.
She was still heaving for air, but no matter how much she took in, it felt as if none if it was doing what it should’ve done, and Lizzie felt her throat close up, and the agony in her chest, the screams of her lungs as they cried out for more oxygen. And although she took great, heaving gasps, nothing would happen, and Lizzie felt her eyes droop close, and the life drain from her limbs.
She slept.
But the sleep didn’t last long, because in her panic Lizzie threw herself forward and ran over to the console – and then came the greatest moment of all, the one thing she’d really been hoping for more than anything else. It seemed that maybe, although everything seemed bleak at that moment, there was some hope.
The time rotor started to slide up and down, and the room began to spin – and echoing around her was that joyous sound that brought hope to so many people. She smiled, and then she laughed through the salty tears that she’d only just realised had trickled down her face. They were in flight – perhaps some automatic response programme leaping into life to save her. Yes – with this, she’d be able to get in touch with Cioné, and Iris, and – and perhaps they would be able to work out how to save the Doctor. Yes, that’s how it would work. Lizzie didn’t have to lean against the console, she almost danced away from it, in fact, relief bubbling through her with such force it might even have been euphoria.
But the world crashed down around her, when Lizzie realised she was just dizzy.
And the metallic breathing of the TARDIS was her own hoarse breath, as her incessant gulping of air had started to ease.
No, no, no… she slumped back against one of the bookshelves, sliding down it until she was hunched up, sobbing into her hands.
Lizzie couldn’t do it. She had to do something, she knew that she did, but as she looked around her, at that almighty, dark, and empty control room, she couldn’t bring herself to even stand up and face what she needed to. All she wanted to do, was stay there, quiet in the corner, and to hide from this. To never face it, and hope that it would all go away.
And Lizzie hated herself even more for being so selfish. Her greatest love in life was helping people, and finally that had been sucked away from her in fear of the universe. She was nobody, not even herself. Through this, guilt began to burn through her; the Doctor had said she was his best friend, and now she was too rubbish and useless to help him – the constant, pressing feeling of guilt hung onto her, like an anchor mooring a boat. Except, in this case, it was attached to her foot, and it was dragging her under water. The salt roasted the back of her throat, and she felt the water as it began to stuff her trachea and her lungs – but above all, it was the pressure, of gallons and gallons of ocean crushing her.
Lizzie was useless. Who was she? Just Lizzie Darwin. Nothing to anybody. Just a stupid waste of space, who people liked, but they had people they liked more. At that moment, she despised herself even more for her shallowness, but it was true. Now she couldn’t even help, everything she’d once prided in herself was gone. She should’ve just died, there and then. That’s all she wanted.
The stars in the observatory were gone. Nothing to live for, it seemed.
But as the TARDIS console room shifted slightly, just at that precise second, just as Lizzie was looking to the skies, she saw something. It was a lone star, far, far away – and yet it burned so brightly, that even though it seemed tiny, to her, it was massive. To her, it meant more than most stars did.
Lizzie took a deep breath, and she felt the air rush into her lungs.
They won’t take it from me.
The Doctor was her best friend, and she was his, and she had to do this. No matter how much it hurt her, no matter how insane it drove her, she was going to do this.
She was going to help him.
To save the Doctor.
Lizzie blinked and reality seeped back in around her.
They happened, these brief interludes. Flashbacks to the end of her time with the Doctor. To save the Doctor. Completely futile, when she thought about it. How could you defeat someone like Evangeline Cullengate? Someone with enough power and money to abuse. It hadn’t been long, before she’d ended up returning to Earth. Lizzie could remember it, on the first night, five years ago.
She had woken up, alone, in her flat. It had been the small hours. Her favourite time. There were no sounds, but for those noises that houses make. Everyone knows those sounds, because they happen in every house at night. Perhaps they are pipes clinking, perhaps the boiler is humming its tune, quietly to itself, or perhaps, somehow, a faint breeze has crawled through the gaps in the windows, and has blown at exactly the right moment, to allow a book to softly high-five another. All Lizzie could hear were those sounds, and she was back in normality again. Except normality did not feel quite proper – there was a peculiarity to them. She’d grown so used to that non-stop, unearthly hum made by the TARDIS, that this return to normality was disorienting.
Her life had continued as it had done before the Doctor. She lived her monotonous days, working in the little café, and living in her tiny flat. Sleepless nights and tea with Maggie and sitting on the bench and watching the sunset followed. And then stuff happened and…
She started writing.
Of course, she hadn’t just randomly started – writing had been part of her for so many years. Stories had lived in her, for as long as she could remember. Even as a kid, she’d write down tales in crude notebooks with stubby pencils, and let her imagine flow onto the paper. Throughout her teens, she started to type them up, and soon she’d write short stories, 20,000 to 30,000 words in length, all tales living inside of her. That was what being a writer meant to her – bringing those stories to life.
Her life with the Doctor had given her courage – to bite the bullet, to go do something truly special that she wanted more than anything else.
So she left the tiny market town of Dunsworth, and moved to London, and rented a flat half-the-size of her tiny Dunsworthian place, so small it was practically a broom-cupboard, but it didn’t matter, because she had a whole city ahead of her! A city of so many people, with bright lights and bright dreams and happy people. She got a job, this time in a tiny second-hand bookshop, down the back of a small cobblestone alleyway. And in the evenings, she would write. Pages would flow from her, and even after hovering around the phone for half an hour not doing anything, she picked up the phone and she spoke to publishers, and she’d had something published! Just a short story in some amateurish e-book collection, but still – it was a start.
All because of the Doctor.
The Doctor had truly changed her life for the better – given her the courage to do all this stuff that she wouldn’t have been able to do before. Helped her to realise her dreams, everything she ever dreamt of but was always too scared to try for.
And the guilt ate at her, every single day. Just like the constant, overbearing feeling now, beside the fishpond, that the world was brand new to her, the guilt was a black cloud, looming over her, perhaps always ready to burst, and then the rain would fall.
Because of that, she remembered, she started to come and see Mary. She’d come recommended – she couldn’t remember who by. Lizzie told Mary about the Doctor, and Mary had listened. She didn’t think she was mad. Now Lizzie came to think about it, that didn’t make sense. But she understood, for some reason.
“Lizzie?” Mary said to her. “Are you alright?”
“The fish…,” Lizzie murmured, watching them, and finding it therapeutic.
“Yes, love. They’re fish,” Mary said, gently, as she sat down on the wooden swing-seat beside the pond. There was a birdfeeder, and Mary took it off its metal hook. She sprinkled some seed into her hands, and hung the birdfeeder back up. Then, she held out her hand, and watched as the birds, one at a time, landed on her arm, and gently pecked the seed from her palm. Mary watched them contently.
Lizzie felt almost as if the years that she had just recounted in her head had been… fast-forwarded, perhaps, like her entire life were a video and she’d just cycled through to the interesting bit. She could remember the rough details, but the actual moments of simply living were non-existent. It was like she had been alive, but only now, had she just started living.
“The world is so perfect,” Lizzie thought, and then realised she was accidentally speaking out loud.
“Yes,” Mary said, watching the birds eat their dinner from her hands. “Yes, I like to think so. And quite frankly, I bloody hope it is.”
Mary paused, then spoke again.
“Look, Lizzie – perhaps you need to go home, and get some rest, love. You don’t seem quite yourself.”
Lizzie looked at the woman, and then at the sun-baked house behind her, and then at the cat on the wall, and then at the fishpond – a mental check of her surroundings.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I do. Sorry to bother you…”
“Lizzie – I’m sorry,” Mary helped Lizzie up – she’d been sitting on the floor, looking at the fish. Lizzie herself had only just realised she’d been sat down. “Perhaps we moved too quickly today – recounting the whole experience.”
“Erm, no, no. Don’t worry about it,” Lizzie smiled. “We were always gonna have to go over it. Now was a better time than any. It has been, like, five years.”
They went back inside, and Lizzie picked up her bag.
It was alright – she knew where she was, she knew what she was doing.
Perhaps it had just been some… existential crisis. A brief moment where the world had kept turning, and she’d been left behind. But no – she knew exactly where she was.
Her name was Lizzie Darwin. She had left the Doctor five years ago. She worked in a second-hand bookshop, she was a writer.
Everything made sense.
***
“Actually, can you do that without the chocolate?”
“You want us to make you a hot chocolate… without the chocolate?” the waiter stared back at the girl in the feather boa and the luminous pink fur coat incredulously, as if the last thing he wanted to be doing was dealing with a tricky customer. Lizzie smiled to herself as she overheard their exchange.
“Yeah.”
Then she paused, as she glanced at her Instagram notifications.
“Actually,” she continued. “That’s just hot milk isn’t it?” she thought for a few seconds. “Okay, can you do it without the milk?”
The waiter sighed, and before he could say anything else, the woman with the ruby-red lipstick and the fur coat and the heels interrupted him.
“Actually, just boil some water.”
“Right, okay,” the waiter turned, before the woman overheard him swearing.
Lizzie watched Kym, her friend from the publishing house, with her heels and her lipstick and her constant Instagram-esque pout, try and negotiate with the waiter on the other side of the counter. Eventually, the water turned away from her, and Lizzie was almost certain she saw him swear under his breath.
They were in a Starbucks, overlooking a crowded street below them – London was swarming with shoppers and tourists and selfie sticks – it was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and so it was only to be expected. Lizzie sipped gently from a cup of tea, watching her friend pick up her hot water, and bring it over to her.
“Is that…,” Lizzie was going to ask, but Kym interrupted.
“Yeah, it’s boiling water,” Kym said casually, sipping from the mug, while Lizzie was wondering what the point was of drinking boiling water. It was as if Kym read her mind.
“Well, I wanted something hot to drink, but didn’t want any calories – I’m already so close to my daily intake.”
Lizzie didn’t say anything, but sip from her tea, as Kym scrolled through her phone. They were so different – Kym was all trendy and modern and everything, and Lizzie was not. They’d struck up a friendship, after they’d moved to London at a similar time, and Kym had started working as a PA to Lizzie’s publisher, and even though they were the antitheses to one another, they’d still struck up a ‘I’ll be friends with you until we find other people’ kind of friendship. And they hadn’t found many other people.
“But anyway. Forget me, talking about myself. How was counselling?”
Lizzie sighed, because she couldn’t really be bothered to talk about it. Also, because she didn’t know how to talk about it.
“Okay, I won’t ask,” Kym gave her a friendly smile.
“Sorry,” Lizzie was thankful, and breathed a sigh of relief, taking another sip of tea.
“I get it,” Kym took a sip of her boiling water. “Anywaaay…”
Kym took a deep breath, and Lizzie could tell a bombshell was going to be dropped. Kym deliberately paused for longer – an anticipatory pause, and eventually, Lizzie found herself more nervous than anything else, and willed for Kym to get on with it.
However, nothing could have prepared her for how deeply terrifying and troubling the true extent of Kym’s revelation actually was. The very words made her legs quake, and her hands tremble, and her palms sweat. She could not even make herself take a nervous sip of tea – instead she sat, paralysed with fear, staring into the cold, dead, merciless eyes of Kym – a person she’d thought to be her friend.
“I’m having a birthday party!!!!”
This was one of the moments – those make or break moments – where the next thing you could say could truly decide the fate for the rest of your life. Lizzie had to make sure she handled it perfectly.
“Will you come?” Kym continued.
It was going to be fine. Lizzie was going to deliver the perfect, calm, and measured response. She was going to tell Kym exactly what she needed to be told – she was going to tell her exactly what she needed, more than anything else. If she did not, everything could go horribly, horrendously wrong.
She took a few moments, just to compose herself, and make sure she said the right thing.
“Yes.”
No no no no no no. That wasn’t the right one. No was the right one.
Lizzie took another sip of tea, to brush off the awkwardness of the mumbling sounds spilling from her mouth. She hadn’t quite realised she was making them.
“You hate me, don’t you?” Kym was blunt.
Lizzie said nothing, trying to think of some simple way she could salvage the wreckage of this conversation.
“Come on, Lizzie,” Kym placed both hands on her table, and she was trying to think of something funny to say, but couldn’t. “Look. You’re one of my best buds, right, and I know we’re like, soo different, but whatevs. It’ll be a laugh.”
“I won’t know anyone,” Lizzie gulped as anxiety rose through her, and all she could think of was the crushing feeling of being the one awkwardly stood in the corner, which was a weird metaphor for her entire life.
“It’s fine, Lizzie, you’re my wing-woman.”
Lizzie didn’t know if it was a good thing that the only reason she would be there was so Kym could escape singleton, but not wanting to disappoint her friend, she sighed, and said
“Fine.”
“YAAY! So, you make me look cool, but I also stop you from being awkward, and also, I introduce you to knew peeps and you make new pals.”
Sounds delightful, Lizzie smiled at the thought of social crucifixion and the now-perpetual cringing of her soul.
“When is it?” Lizzie asked.
“Friday, come up whenever, we’ll have drinks, it’ll be cool. You’re not doing anything else, are you?”
Nooope, she thought of her vacuous social life that she actually quite enjoyed.
“Cool,” Lizzie agreed to the uncool situation.
“So,” Kym said. “I met this guy, who…”
And she kept talking, while Lizzie kept fearing internally (and probably externally) about the fate awaiting her.
Partying.
***
When Lizzie approached the front of the block she lived in, there was a black cat, curled up on the breezeblock turrets, sunning itself in the thick gold rays blanketing all of them from the sun in the sky. It was the same cat from Mary's garden, she realised. It could have been any black cat, but Lizzie was good with cats – and this one specifically had an aura about it – something that set it apart from its feline friends.
Walking casually up to the door, she heard a smooth, silky, voice. It was also rather camp.
“Hello Elizabeth.”
She stopped, looking around, trying to find the source of the voice – but it was nowhere, and all she could hear was the lack of breeze, and the tweets from the birds, and those random sounds that nature makes. Admitting to herself that it was probably just someone mucking about, she headed to the door, and even got as far as placing a hand on the door handle, before she heard the voice again.
“Oh, come, now, Lizzie.”
The voice was surprisingly well spoken. Almost aristocratic in tone, it was smooth and silky, with each letter firmly and clearly pronounced.
“Or, perhaps, aristo-cat-ic.”
Lizzie turned to look at the cat up on the wall. It was sat up, now, looking down at her with beautiful, deep amber eyes, the colour of the sun beaming down on them.
“I’m dreadfully sorry. I don’t do puns, and I’m never going to try them again.”
Lizzie loved that movie. Aristocats. Kind of irrelevant but the black cat reminded her of it. But her mind was wandering – she couldn’t restrain it, and she honestly thought she was going mad, because a cat was talking to her.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” the cat repeated. “Welcome. Oh, goodness – it is cold out here. I’m sick to death of the rain on this planet. It’s always raining. Always. Give me some sun, any day of the week.”
“But… it’s perfect here?” Lizzie asked, ignoring the blatant absurdity that she was talking to a cat. But she was right – she gazed around her, and could see no fault with the weather. It was stunning – the highs of summer, the sun beating down, the trees in full bloom with swathes of leaves decorating the branches, the flowers brightening up the world with oceans of colour. There was no rain.
“I do not mean the weather,” the cat slipped down from its position of height, gracefully leaping down onto the floor, and almost immediately presenting his-self in front of her, those amber, jewel-like eyes gazing up at her.
“My name,” the cat held out a paw. “Is Ulysses F. B. Higginsdale Esquire,”
“Hi,” Lizzie reached down and took his paw, unaware of what the hell was going on and why the hell she was shaking the hand of a cat. Ulysses, sorry.
“I’m, er, Lizzie,” she smiled, though it was not quite as eloquent an introduction as Ulysses.
“I’m your new… what do the youths call it? Flatmate,” Ulysses seemed rather pleased at his use of colloquialisms.
“Erm… awesome,” Lizzie nodded. Why was it that the world had been perfectly normal up until she’d had her funny turn at counselling?
Five years since the Doctor, and everything had been perfectly normal. Nothing strange had happened… which for her, was quite amazing. But for some reason, ever since that moment earlier in the day, the world had changed. Something in the air had altered, just slightly.
It was, as she’d told herself, as if she’d been alive, but now, she was truly living.
Cats certainly hadn’t been able to talk until now.
“Shall we go up to the palace?” Ulysses suggested. Lizzie hoped he wasn’t truly expecting a palace, and she nodded.
Lizzie and Ulysses, side by side, made their way into the block of flats. Lizzie was ready for, not only her first flat-share, but an actual flat-share with an animal.
***
Aware that she was probably going to every kind of counselling under the sun, Lizzie had been reluctant to do anything else that would supposedly ‘help her’, but she’d agreed to do this, originally because it had intrigued her.
It was a group – like one of those grief counselling groups, made up of people who have lost close friends and relatives. The sort of groups that met up in town halls and churches and community centres, and drank tea and juice and ate flapjacks.
Except, their group did not talk about grief.
They talked about the supernatural.
Lizzie’s stories had proved quite exceptional – nobody else had anything that quite lived up to her tales of the bigger-on-the-inside box, and the magic man who lied inside it.
It was such a friendly little group – nobody questioned anything anyone else said, even though most of it was probably grounds to have someone sectioned. No – everyone in that group accepted everyone else, and nobody questioned the truth of any of their stories. Lizzie loved it – it was not often she’d found a group of people like that.
The chairs in the community centre were always set out in the circle – Jasper, the bearded chap in charge, was a kindly old gentleman. Lizzie had his story a few times now – he had been taken by aliens in the middle of the night, and he could remember what happened – ending up on a spaceship, at the head of an almost… council-like group of people. But he could not remember anything else, apart from the fact it had been an awakening-like experience.
Next to him sat Jac – she was a tough woman, always getting herself into fights. She’d had a daughter – a daughter who had been taken from her and put into care. Except… when she went to visit her for the second time, the house her daughter had been moved from had completely vanished. When she spoke to the authorities, they questioned her, they said there was no such house. And her entire family swore that she’d never had a daughter. Lizzie admired her, for being so strong, even though nobody was on her side.
On the opposite side of the circle sat Chloe – she was an elegant woman, at some point in her 20s, in a very toxic relationship with a man called Max. And she swore blind that skeletons roamed the basement beneath the block of flats she lived in. Chloe was lovely, if a bit mad, and a bit scary at times – but she had beautiful, silky black hair, and precisely cut gold and silver jewellery.
Roger was an older man, who had worked as a caretaker in a school – until he’d had to leave his job, following the ghosts that kept following him. He was a gentle soul, always on hand to reassure Lizzie if ever the world got too tough.
George was a funny little man who owned a café – he’d battled with drug addiction in the past and had done frequent spells in prison. He frequently riled up many in the group, but he was a strangely charming and humorous man, who Lizzie couldn’t help but take to, even if occasionally he repulsed her in every way. Nobody quite knew what he was doing there.
Ken was, again, an older man – a former detective, who’d struggled with loss over the years, and had seen mysterious spirits haunting him. There was Tammy as well – she was a batty old woman, who had never quite recovered following the loss of her husband, but she was almost certain that aliens were locking her out of her block of flats. She provided the tea and the flapjacks, and made lovely jam tarts – and they all loved her, and she often had wise, if unintentionally wise, words to tell them all.
“So,” Jasper started, with his usual calm and welcoming town, making all of them feel instantly included. “How are we all?”
There were general nods and hums of ‘yeah, we’re alright’. ‘Nothing much is new’. ‘We’re all just going on as usual’.
“Who’d like to start off for us today?”
People glanced from one another, but there were no volunteers, so Jasper turned to Jac.
“How is the search for Jessie going, Jac?” he asked. Jac tensed, slightly, and Jasper calmed her down. “Take your time, Jac. We’re all friends here.”
Jac paused for a moment – everyone was looking her, but they were not preying glares, they were warm and comforting gazes – they all wanted to help her, and to help her find the daughter she’d lost.
“I – I don’t know. I’ve not – not seen her now for two years. Nothing. I can’t find anything, and – I – I’m beginning to think I’m at a dead end. I don’t think I’m ever going to find her.”
There were some sad mutters across the floor, a few sad sighs and general mournful noises, before Lizzie turned to her.
“Don’t give up,” she said, simply. Although, it didn’t make much sense, it had just come to her and she’d said it anyway. “Jessie is still out there.”
Jac clearly appreciated it – but it didn’t look like it meant anything. But Lizzie felt as if, no matter how much she had heard about how impossible it would ever be for Jac to find her daughter, there was still… something out there. Some possibility.
“There’s always… hope, I guess. Sorry, I’ll…”
Lizzie’s voice sort of trailed off into nothing, and Jasper interrupted.
“No, no, Lizzie,” Jasper reassured her. “You’re right. Jac – there is always hope.”
***
Lizzie had worked out the science behind this. She knew that she either had to arrive early, before anyone else, or later, when many, many people were already around. If she arrived very early, and she were one of the first, she could avoid that awkward lull, when there between 10 and 20 people around, and things hadn’t really got going. That would be unbearable for her to even contemplate – though if she arrived later, she wouldavoid the lull altogether, and easily blend in with the crowd.
Because of her recent appointment as ‘wing-woman’, Lizzie decided to opt for the earlier option, so she could make sure Kym was always being… winged.
Lizzie had made herself look reasonably presentable – Ulysses approved of the hairstyle and the dress and lipstick, saying.
“You look glorious, darling.”
“Thanks, Ulysses.”
The complement, although it was from a cat, made her feel positive, and confident – tonight was going to be fine. She was going to enjoy herself, and things were going to go brilliantly. She was sort of dangling off the edge of a very tall cliff carved out of fear in terror but on the whole, she was alright.
“What are you doing this evening?” she asked (the cat, who was sat on the sofa nibbling from a silver platter of tuna).
“Alas, a night in, I believe. There is a fascinating documentary on BBC 4, about our relationship with… the others.”
Lizzie stopped, and turned to Ulysses, whose once-silky and warm voice turned deadly cold. Something had truly chilled him to his bones, made his exquisite, cat senses alert. Something beyond comprehension, something truly terrifying.
She was about to ask him what he meant, when he explained.
“Dogs can be the most ferocious animals.”
Lizzie sighed with relief, and turned to the door. “Have fun.”
“You too, my darling. Go! Mingle with the humans! Drink cheap beer and cheap spirits! I believe I am more of a Sauvignon feline myself…”
***
When Lizzie arrived, thankfully she had proceeded the pre-party lull of social awkwardness. She was, in fact, the first, other than Kym, of course, meaning that although present for the pre-party lull, she was bedded into the occasion, and was not expected to attempt making any kind of conversation.
Kym had already started setting up – a row of trestle tables had been established against one wall, rows of bottles of booze lined neatly up, along with plastic cups. One could not say that Kym didn’t know how to throw a party – the place was ready for what, Lizzie was sure, would turn into a very raucous time.
“So,” Kym turned to her. “You stick with me, okay, and I’ll make sure you’re not intimidated by everyone. Then, in return, you make me look cool.”
“Okay,” Lizzie agreed, even though she didn’t have a clue how to make her look cool.
Before long, some guests started arriving, in dribs and drabs – “help yourself to drinks” and “more people will be arriving soon” were bungled about, and Kym started off the playlist, at a fairly low volume – though everyone knew it would not stay like that for long.
About half an hour after Lizzie had first arrived, the first big group turned up. Big meaning enough people to take up half the flat – and all of them carrying crates of all kinds of alcohol, dumping them on the trestle tables. Kym notched the music up a bit, the lights were dimmed even further, and she even switched on some strobe lights –
And before Lizzie knew it, there were more and more people turning up. Huge groups at a time, cramming themselves through the door and into the flat. It was a bottleneck, with everyone slowly spilling in, but completely engulfing the entire flat. Though the flat seemed to be like the TARDIS – every time a massive group of millions of people Lizzie hadn’t even seen before, let alone met, Lizzie always thought that the flat could not take anymore. But always she was wrong, for only minutes later another group would arrive, and would find space in the flat.
The volume of the music rose, and strobe lights were flickering around the room, great searchlights of red and green and orange, searching out for people dancing and drinking, searching out for them and their bids to find as much happiness as they could. The night was still young, and the lights would not stop flickering forever yet.
More and more people, unknown faces – random Facebook friends lists, all with random faces and random names, and yet all at this one celebration. Wherever Lizzie turned, there were people – cliched though it were, the only way to describe them would be sardines in a tin, as the hundreds (and there must have been hundreds in that tiny flat), were crammed tight, bodies up close, each tasting of sweat and beer and cigarettes, and of that typical early-twenty-ish smell.
Lizzie blinked, and a stubbly face was right up in front of her, and she was staring straight at him. She blinked again, and there was a woman with impossibly long eyelashes. Another blink, and a man with great gold sunglasses and gold chains of ‘bling’ – so much it almost formed robes on him.
She glanced at her watch, and it was only half nine, and she cringed, realising that this was the sort of thing that didn’t end ever. This would be a perpetual fate – condemned to spending at least the next 12 hours in this one flat with these people. It was dark outside, and suddenly she felt even more claustrophobic, trapped into a tiny space with so many, many people.
Again, more bodies, dancing through the door, with more alcohol. A group were arriving now, already screaming at the top of their lungs – the lads were here, and they seemed to have already been on a pub crawl of half of London before turning up to this. Kym yelled in happiness, running over to them and giving a rather beefy looking skinhead a noogie.
“OH! MY! GOODNESS! GRACIOUS! DOO DAA! YOU CAME.”
“I wouldn’t have been anywhere else -”
The noise was unbearable now – the sound of the music reached deep into her ears, filling up her brain right from the middle. On top of the enormous, thumping base, was the constant hubbub of people having to shout over the songs – loud cries of people desperate to communicate, but held back by straining throats and slurred syntax.
She watched Kym ‘bantering’ with the lads who arrived, and glanced over at people pouring drinks from the trestle tables (one of which somebody was already dancing on top of – the same table did not look as if it would hold up much longer), and she felt that music, pulsing like a ferocious migraine deep in her head, and then
Evangeline Cullengate and her people had the Doctor. He was powering the Memory Graveyard, a whole dimension that was going to bleed through into the universe and destroy it. She’d fallen backwards, away from the two of them, and she’d stumbled backwards through the door of the drawing room, before sprawling into the corridor and collapsing against the back wall. She couldn’t just let the Doctor go, and so she ran at the door, which had swung shut behind her. It wouldn’t budge, and so she pounded on it, over and over, desperate to get in and save him from the Memory Graveyard. She tried kicking it, and crashing into it with her shoulder, but it wouldn’t open. She so badly needed to help him, to get him out from this, but she couldn’t – there was a door in the way, so solid it was practically a wall.
Until suddenly, the door, with a lightness, gently opened.
When Lizzie ran into the room, desperate to find the Doctor, she realised that he was gone. Evangeline was gone. Hugo and Edwin were gone. She was muttering to herself, and she dashed over to the place on the wall, where the magic appearing door had once been etched. Lizzie pressed herself hard up against it, as if she’d be able to hear something on the other side, perhaps some recognition of wherever the Doctor was.
But there was nothing.
Lizzie had to do something, but she had no idea what.
So she ran.
Lizzie clattered out of the drawing room, and stumbled through the corridors, and bounded down the great staircase, and tore out of the great oak doors to the mansion, before she dashed down the gravel driveway, where she could see the TARDIS waiting for her by the huge gates at the end – gates which seemed even more imposing than ever. Lizzie fumbled around with her key, slamming it into the lock and yanking it, until she fell through the doors of the TARDIS and smashed them shut behind her.
Her lungs were engulfing the air, as Lizzie was desperate for as much of it as she could manage, shattered by how fast she’d run, and terrified of what was coming after her. She didn’t even know if there was anything coming after her, but Lizzie was almost certain of it – and she didn’t feel safe in that blue box anymore. The doors behind her suddenly felt so very thin, and she remembered the first time she’d ever stepped inside that box with the Doctor. In fact, the conversation echoed in her mind.
“Nothing can get through those doors.”
“Nothing only extends to the amount they’ve been tested against.”
That observation seemed more important now than it had done before, as those doors seemed like futile protection from the demons of the outside world. It felt as if nothing would ever be able to protect her from those demons – as if wherever she ran, they would never, ever stop following her. They would walk through walls, and stride over water, and fly through the air, until eventually she had to tire, and the demons would reach her. And Lizzie Darwin would be gobbled up, and gone forever.
The doors were too thin.
She was still heaving for air, but no matter how much she took in, it felt as if none if it was doing what it should’ve done, and Lizzie felt her throat close up, and the agony in her chest, the screams of her lungs as they cried out for more oxygen. And although she took great, heaving gasps, nothing would happen, and Lizzie felt her eyes droop close, and the life drain from her limbs.
She slept.
But the sleep didn’t last long, because in her panic Lizzie threw herself forward and ran over to the console – and then came the greatest moment of all, the one thing she’d really been hoping for more than anything else. It seemed that maybe, although everything seemed bleak at that moment, there was some hope.
The time rotor started to slide up and down, and the room began to spin – and echoing around her was that joyous sound that brought hope to so many people. She smiled, and then she laughed through the salty tears that she’d only just realised had trickled down her face. They were in flight – perhaps some automatic response programme leaping into life to save her. Yes – with this, she’d be able to get in touch with Cioné, and Iris, and – and perhaps they would be able to work out how to save the Doctor. Yes, that’s how it would work. Lizzie didn’t have to lean against the console, she almost danced away from it, in fact, relief bubbling through her with such force it might even have been euphoria.
But the world crashed down around her, when Lizzie realised she was just dizzy.
And the metallic breathing of the TARDIS was her own hoarse breath, as her incessant gulping of air had started to ease.
No, no, no… she slumped back against one of the bookshelves, sliding down it until she was hunched up, sobbing into her hands.
Lizzie couldn’t do it. She had to do something, she knew that she did, but as she looked around her, at that almighty, dark, and empty control room, she couldn’t bring herself to even stand up and face what she needed to. All she wanted to do, was stay there, quiet in the corner, and to hide from this. To never face it, and hope that it would all go away.
And Lizzie hated herself even more for being so selfish. Her greatest love in life was helping people, and finally that had been sucked away from her in fear of the universe. She was nobody, not even herself. Through this, guilt began to burn through her; the Doctor had said she was his best friend, and now she was too rubbish and useless to help him – the constant, pressing feeling of guilt hung onto her, like an anchor mooring a boat. Except, in this case, it was attached to her foot, and it was dragging her under water. The salt roasted the back of her throat, and she felt the water as it began to stuff her trachea and her lungs – but above all, it was the pressure, of gallons and gallons of ocean crushing her.
Lizzie was useless. Who was she? Just Lizzie Darwin. Nothing to anybody. Just a stupid waste of space, who people liked, but they had people they liked more. At that moment, she despised herself even more for her shallowness, but it was true. Now she couldn’t even help, everything she’d once prided in herself was gone. She should’ve just died, there and then. That’s all she wanted.
The stars in the observatory were gone. Nothing to live for, it seemed.
But as the TARDIS console room shifted slightly, just at that precise second, just as Lizzie was looking to the skies, she saw something. It was a lone star, far, far away – and yet it burned so brightly, that even though it seemed tiny, to her, it was massive. To her, it meant more than most stars did.
Lizzie took a deep breath, and she felt the air rush into her lungs.
They won’t take it from me.
The Doctor was her best friend, and she was his, and she had to do this. No matter how much it hurt her, no matter how insane it drove her, she was going to do this.
She was going to help him.
To save the Doctor.
Lizzie blinked and reality seeped back in around her.
They happened, these brief interludes. Flashbacks to the end of her time with the Doctor. To save the Doctor. Completely futile, when she thought about it. How could you defeat someone like Evangeline Cullengate? Someone with enough power and money to abuse. It hadn’t been long, before she’d ended up returning to Earth. Lizzie could remember it, on the first night, five years ago.
She had woken up, alone, in her flat. It had been the small hours. Her favourite time. There were no sounds, but for those noises that houses make. Everyone knows those sounds, because they happen in every house at night. Perhaps they are pipes clinking, perhaps the boiler is humming its tune, quietly to itself, or perhaps, somehow, a faint breeze has crawled through the gaps in the windows, and has blown at exactly the right moment, to allow a book to softly high-five another. All Lizzie could hear were those sounds, and she was back in normality again. Except normality did not feel quite proper – there was a peculiarity to them. She’d grown so used to that non-stop, unearthly hum made by the TARDIS, that this return to normality was disorienting.
Her life had continued as it had done before the Doctor. She lived her monotonous days, working in the little café, and living in her tiny flat. Sleepless nights and tea with Maggie and sitting on the bench and watching the sunset followed. And then stuff happened and…
She started writing.
Of course, she hadn’t just randomly started – writing had been part of her for so many years. Stories had lived in her, for as long as she could remember. Even as a kid, she’d write down tales in crude notebooks with stubby pencils, and let her imagine flow onto the paper. Throughout her teens, she started to type them up, and soon she’d write short stories, 20,000 to 30,000 words in length, all tales living inside of her. That was what being a writer meant to her – bringing those stories to life.
Her life with the Doctor had given her courage – to bite the bullet, to go do something truly special that she wanted more than anything else.
So she left the tiny market town of Dunsworth, and moved to London, and rented a flat half-the-size of her tiny Dunsworthian place, so small it was practically a broom-cupboard, but it didn’t matter, because she had a whole city ahead of her! A city of so many people, with bright lights and bright dreams and happy people. She got a job, this time in a tiny second-hand bookshop, down the back of a small cobblestone alleyway. And in the evenings, she would write. Pages would flow from her, and even after hovering around the phone for half an hour not doing anything, she picked up the phone and she spoke to publishers, and she’d had something published! Just a short story in some amateurish e-book collection, but still – it was a start.
All because of the Doctor.
The Doctor had truly changed her life for the better – given her the courage to do all this stuff that she wouldn’t have been able to do before. Helped her to realise her dreams, everything she ever dreamt of but was always too scared to try for.
And the guilt ate at her, every single day. Just like the constant, overbearing feeling now, beside the fishpond, that the world was brand new to her, the guilt was a black cloud, looming over her, perhaps always ready to burst, and then the rain would fall.
Because of that, she remembered, she started to come and see Mary. She’d come recommended – she couldn’t remember who by. Lizzie told Mary about the Doctor, and Mary had listened. She didn’t think she was mad. Now Lizzie came to think about it, that didn’t make sense. But she understood, for some reason.
“Lizzie?” Mary said to her. “Are you alright?”
“The fish…,” Lizzie murmured, watching them, and finding it therapeutic.
“Yes, love. They’re fish,” Mary said, gently, as she sat down on the wooden swing-seat beside the pond. There was a birdfeeder, and Mary took it off its metal hook. She sprinkled some seed into her hands, and hung the birdfeeder back up. Then, she held out her hand, and watched as the birds, one at a time, landed on her arm, and gently pecked the seed from her palm. Mary watched them contently.
Lizzie felt almost as if the years that she had just recounted in her head had been… fast-forwarded, perhaps, like her entire life were a video and she’d just cycled through to the interesting bit. She could remember the rough details, but the actual moments of simply living were non-existent. It was like she had been alive, but only now, had she just started living.
“The world is so perfect,” Lizzie thought, and then realised she was accidentally speaking out loud.
“Yes,” Mary said, watching the birds eat their dinner from her hands. “Yes, I like to think so. And quite frankly, I bloody hope it is.”
Mary paused, then spoke again.
“Look, Lizzie – perhaps you need to go home, and get some rest, love. You don’t seem quite yourself.”
Lizzie looked at the woman, and then at the sun-baked house behind her, and then at the cat on the wall, and then at the fishpond – a mental check of her surroundings.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think I do. Sorry to bother you…”
“Lizzie – I’m sorry,” Mary helped Lizzie up – she’d been sitting on the floor, looking at the fish. Lizzie herself had only just realised she’d been sat down. “Perhaps we moved too quickly today – recounting the whole experience.”
“Erm, no, no. Don’t worry about it,” Lizzie smiled. “We were always gonna have to go over it. Now was a better time than any. It has been, like, five years.”
They went back inside, and Lizzie picked up her bag.
It was alright – she knew where she was, she knew what she was doing.
Perhaps it had just been some… existential crisis. A brief moment where the world had kept turning, and she’d been left behind. But no – she knew exactly where she was.
Her name was Lizzie Darwin. She had left the Doctor five years ago. She worked in a second-hand bookshop, she was a writer.
Everything made sense.
***
“Actually, can you do that without the chocolate?”
“You want us to make you a hot chocolate… without the chocolate?” the waiter stared back at the girl in the feather boa and the luminous pink fur coat incredulously, as if the last thing he wanted to be doing was dealing with a tricky customer. Lizzie smiled to herself as she overheard their exchange.
“Yeah.”
Then she paused, as she glanced at her Instagram notifications.
“Actually,” she continued. “That’s just hot milk isn’t it?” she thought for a few seconds. “Okay, can you do it without the milk?”
The waiter sighed, and before he could say anything else, the woman with the ruby-red lipstick and the fur coat and the heels interrupted him.
“Actually, just boil some water.”
“Right, okay,” the waiter turned, before the woman overheard him swearing.
Lizzie watched Kym, her friend from the publishing house, with her heels and her lipstick and her constant Instagram-esque pout, try and negotiate with the waiter on the other side of the counter. Eventually, the water turned away from her, and Lizzie was almost certain she saw him swear under his breath.
They were in a Starbucks, overlooking a crowded street below them – London was swarming with shoppers and tourists and selfie sticks – it was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and so it was only to be expected. Lizzie sipped gently from a cup of tea, watching her friend pick up her hot water, and bring it over to her.
“Is that…,” Lizzie was going to ask, but Kym interrupted.
“Yeah, it’s boiling water,” Kym said casually, sipping from the mug, while Lizzie was wondering what the point was of drinking boiling water. It was as if Kym read her mind.
“Well, I wanted something hot to drink, but didn’t want any calories – I’m already so close to my daily intake.”
Lizzie didn’t say anything, but sip from her tea, as Kym scrolled through her phone. They were so different – Kym was all trendy and modern and everything, and Lizzie was not. They’d struck up a friendship, after they’d moved to London at a similar time, and Kym had started working as a PA to Lizzie’s publisher, and even though they were the antitheses to one another, they’d still struck up a ‘I’ll be friends with you until we find other people’ kind of friendship. And they hadn’t found many other people.
“But anyway. Forget me, talking about myself. How was counselling?”
Lizzie sighed, because she couldn’t really be bothered to talk about it. Also, because she didn’t know how to talk about it.
“Okay, I won’t ask,” Kym gave her a friendly smile.
“Sorry,” Lizzie was thankful, and breathed a sigh of relief, taking another sip of tea.
“I get it,” Kym took a sip of her boiling water. “Anywaaay…”
Kym took a deep breath, and Lizzie could tell a bombshell was going to be dropped. Kym deliberately paused for longer – an anticipatory pause, and eventually, Lizzie found herself more nervous than anything else, and willed for Kym to get on with it.
However, nothing could have prepared her for how deeply terrifying and troubling the true extent of Kym’s revelation actually was. The very words made her legs quake, and her hands tremble, and her palms sweat. She could not even make herself take a nervous sip of tea – instead she sat, paralysed with fear, staring into the cold, dead, merciless eyes of Kym – a person she’d thought to be her friend.
“I’m having a birthday party!!!!”
This was one of the moments – those make or break moments – where the next thing you could say could truly decide the fate for the rest of your life. Lizzie had to make sure she handled it perfectly.
“Will you come?” Kym continued.
It was going to be fine. Lizzie was going to deliver the perfect, calm, and measured response. She was going to tell Kym exactly what she needed to be told – she was going to tell her exactly what she needed, more than anything else. If she did not, everything could go horribly, horrendously wrong.
She took a few moments, just to compose herself, and make sure she said the right thing.
“Yes.”
No no no no no no. That wasn’t the right one. No was the right one.
Lizzie took another sip of tea, to brush off the awkwardness of the mumbling sounds spilling from her mouth. She hadn’t quite realised she was making them.
“You hate me, don’t you?” Kym was blunt.
Lizzie said nothing, trying to think of some simple way she could salvage the wreckage of this conversation.
“Come on, Lizzie,” Kym placed both hands on her table, and she was trying to think of something funny to say, but couldn’t. “Look. You’re one of my best buds, right, and I know we’re like, soo different, but whatevs. It’ll be a laugh.”
“I won’t know anyone,” Lizzie gulped as anxiety rose through her, and all she could think of was the crushing feeling of being the one awkwardly stood in the corner, which was a weird metaphor for her entire life.
“It’s fine, Lizzie, you’re my wing-woman.”
Lizzie didn’t know if it was a good thing that the only reason she would be there was so Kym could escape singleton, but not wanting to disappoint her friend, she sighed, and said
“Fine.”
“YAAY! So, you make me look cool, but I also stop you from being awkward, and also, I introduce you to knew peeps and you make new pals.”
Sounds delightful, Lizzie smiled at the thought of social crucifixion and the now-perpetual cringing of her soul.
“When is it?” Lizzie asked.
“Friday, come up whenever, we’ll have drinks, it’ll be cool. You’re not doing anything else, are you?”
Nooope, she thought of her vacuous social life that she actually quite enjoyed.
“Cool,” Lizzie agreed to the uncool situation.
“So,” Kym said. “I met this guy, who…”
And she kept talking, while Lizzie kept fearing internally (and probably externally) about the fate awaiting her.
Partying.
***
When Lizzie approached the front of the block she lived in, there was a black cat, curled up on the breezeblock turrets, sunning itself in the thick gold rays blanketing all of them from the sun in the sky. It was the same cat from Mary's garden, she realised. It could have been any black cat, but Lizzie was good with cats – and this one specifically had an aura about it – something that set it apart from its feline friends.
Walking casually up to the door, she heard a smooth, silky, voice. It was also rather camp.
“Hello Elizabeth.”
She stopped, looking around, trying to find the source of the voice – but it was nowhere, and all she could hear was the lack of breeze, and the tweets from the birds, and those random sounds that nature makes. Admitting to herself that it was probably just someone mucking about, she headed to the door, and even got as far as placing a hand on the door handle, before she heard the voice again.
“Oh, come, now, Lizzie.”
The voice was surprisingly well spoken. Almost aristocratic in tone, it was smooth and silky, with each letter firmly and clearly pronounced.
“Or, perhaps, aristo-cat-ic.”
Lizzie turned to look at the cat up on the wall. It was sat up, now, looking down at her with beautiful, deep amber eyes, the colour of the sun beaming down on them.
“I’m dreadfully sorry. I don’t do puns, and I’m never going to try them again.”
Lizzie loved that movie. Aristocats. Kind of irrelevant but the black cat reminded her of it. But her mind was wandering – she couldn’t restrain it, and she honestly thought she was going mad, because a cat was talking to her.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” the cat repeated. “Welcome. Oh, goodness – it is cold out here. I’m sick to death of the rain on this planet. It’s always raining. Always. Give me some sun, any day of the week.”
“But… it’s perfect here?” Lizzie asked, ignoring the blatant absurdity that she was talking to a cat. But she was right – she gazed around her, and could see no fault with the weather. It was stunning – the highs of summer, the sun beating down, the trees in full bloom with swathes of leaves decorating the branches, the flowers brightening up the world with oceans of colour. There was no rain.
“I do not mean the weather,” the cat slipped down from its position of height, gracefully leaping down onto the floor, and almost immediately presenting his-self in front of her, those amber, jewel-like eyes gazing up at her.
“My name,” the cat held out a paw. “Is Ulysses F. B. Higginsdale Esquire,”
“Hi,” Lizzie reached down and took his paw, unaware of what the hell was going on and why the hell she was shaking the hand of a cat. Ulysses, sorry.
“I’m, er, Lizzie,” she smiled, though it was not quite as eloquent an introduction as Ulysses.
“I’m your new… what do the youths call it? Flatmate,” Ulysses seemed rather pleased at his use of colloquialisms.
“Erm… awesome,” Lizzie nodded. Why was it that the world had been perfectly normal up until she’d had her funny turn at counselling?
Five years since the Doctor, and everything had been perfectly normal. Nothing strange had happened… which for her, was quite amazing. But for some reason, ever since that moment earlier in the day, the world had changed. Something in the air had altered, just slightly.
It was, as she’d told herself, as if she’d been alive, but now, she was truly living.
Cats certainly hadn’t been able to talk until now.
“Shall we go up to the palace?” Ulysses suggested. Lizzie hoped he wasn’t truly expecting a palace, and she nodded.
Lizzie and Ulysses, side by side, made their way into the block of flats. Lizzie was ready for, not only her first flat-share, but an actual flat-share with an animal.
***
Aware that she was probably going to every kind of counselling under the sun, Lizzie had been reluctant to do anything else that would supposedly ‘help her’, but she’d agreed to do this, originally because it had intrigued her.
It was a group – like one of those grief counselling groups, made up of people who have lost close friends and relatives. The sort of groups that met up in town halls and churches and community centres, and drank tea and juice and ate flapjacks.
Except, their group did not talk about grief.
They talked about the supernatural.
Lizzie’s stories had proved quite exceptional – nobody else had anything that quite lived up to her tales of the bigger-on-the-inside box, and the magic man who lied inside it.
It was such a friendly little group – nobody questioned anything anyone else said, even though most of it was probably grounds to have someone sectioned. No – everyone in that group accepted everyone else, and nobody questioned the truth of any of their stories. Lizzie loved it – it was not often she’d found a group of people like that.
The chairs in the community centre were always set out in the circle – Jasper, the bearded chap in charge, was a kindly old gentleman. Lizzie had his story a few times now – he had been taken by aliens in the middle of the night, and he could remember what happened – ending up on a spaceship, at the head of an almost… council-like group of people. But he could not remember anything else, apart from the fact it had been an awakening-like experience.
Next to him sat Jac – she was a tough woman, always getting herself into fights. She’d had a daughter – a daughter who had been taken from her and put into care. Except… when she went to visit her for the second time, the house her daughter had been moved from had completely vanished. When she spoke to the authorities, they questioned her, they said there was no such house. And her entire family swore that she’d never had a daughter. Lizzie admired her, for being so strong, even though nobody was on her side.
On the opposite side of the circle sat Chloe – she was an elegant woman, at some point in her 20s, in a very toxic relationship with a man called Max. And she swore blind that skeletons roamed the basement beneath the block of flats she lived in. Chloe was lovely, if a bit mad, and a bit scary at times – but she had beautiful, silky black hair, and precisely cut gold and silver jewellery.
Roger was an older man, who had worked as a caretaker in a school – until he’d had to leave his job, following the ghosts that kept following him. He was a gentle soul, always on hand to reassure Lizzie if ever the world got too tough.
George was a funny little man who owned a café – he’d battled with drug addiction in the past and had done frequent spells in prison. He frequently riled up many in the group, but he was a strangely charming and humorous man, who Lizzie couldn’t help but take to, even if occasionally he repulsed her in every way. Nobody quite knew what he was doing there.
Ken was, again, an older man – a former detective, who’d struggled with loss over the years, and had seen mysterious spirits haunting him. There was Tammy as well – she was a batty old woman, who had never quite recovered following the loss of her husband, but she was almost certain that aliens were locking her out of her block of flats. She provided the tea and the flapjacks, and made lovely jam tarts – and they all loved her, and she often had wise, if unintentionally wise, words to tell them all.
“So,” Jasper started, with his usual calm and welcoming town, making all of them feel instantly included. “How are we all?”
There were general nods and hums of ‘yeah, we’re alright’. ‘Nothing much is new’. ‘We’re all just going on as usual’.
“Who’d like to start off for us today?”
People glanced from one another, but there were no volunteers, so Jasper turned to Jac.
“How is the search for Jessie going, Jac?” he asked. Jac tensed, slightly, and Jasper calmed her down. “Take your time, Jac. We’re all friends here.”
Jac paused for a moment – everyone was looking her, but they were not preying glares, they were warm and comforting gazes – they all wanted to help her, and to help her find the daughter she’d lost.
“I – I don’t know. I’ve not – not seen her now for two years. Nothing. I can’t find anything, and – I – I’m beginning to think I’m at a dead end. I don’t think I’m ever going to find her.”
There were some sad mutters across the floor, a few sad sighs and general mournful noises, before Lizzie turned to her.
“Don’t give up,” she said, simply. Although, it didn’t make much sense, it had just come to her and she’d said it anyway. “Jessie is still out there.”
Jac clearly appreciated it – but it didn’t look like it meant anything. But Lizzie felt as if, no matter how much she had heard about how impossible it would ever be for Jac to find her daughter, there was still… something out there. Some possibility.
“There’s always… hope, I guess. Sorry, I’ll…”
Lizzie’s voice sort of trailed off into nothing, and Jasper interrupted.
“No, no, Lizzie,” Jasper reassured her. “You’re right. Jac – there is always hope.”
***
Lizzie had worked out the science behind this. She knew that she either had to arrive early, before anyone else, or later, when many, many people were already around. If she arrived very early, and she were one of the first, she could avoid that awkward lull, when there between 10 and 20 people around, and things hadn’t really got going. That would be unbearable for her to even contemplate – though if she arrived later, she wouldavoid the lull altogether, and easily blend in with the crowd.
Because of her recent appointment as ‘wing-woman’, Lizzie decided to opt for the earlier option, so she could make sure Kym was always being… winged.
Lizzie had made herself look reasonably presentable – Ulysses approved of the hairstyle and the dress and lipstick, saying.
“You look glorious, darling.”
“Thanks, Ulysses.”
The complement, although it was from a cat, made her feel positive, and confident – tonight was going to be fine. She was going to enjoy herself, and things were going to go brilliantly. She was sort of dangling off the edge of a very tall cliff carved out of fear in terror but on the whole, she was alright.
“What are you doing this evening?” she asked (the cat, who was sat on the sofa nibbling from a silver platter of tuna).
“Alas, a night in, I believe. There is a fascinating documentary on BBC 4, about our relationship with… the others.”
Lizzie stopped, and turned to Ulysses, whose once-silky and warm voice turned deadly cold. Something had truly chilled him to his bones, made his exquisite, cat senses alert. Something beyond comprehension, something truly terrifying.
She was about to ask him what he meant, when he explained.
“Dogs can be the most ferocious animals.”
Lizzie sighed with relief, and turned to the door. “Have fun.”
“You too, my darling. Go! Mingle with the humans! Drink cheap beer and cheap spirits! I believe I am more of a Sauvignon feline myself…”
***
When Lizzie arrived, thankfully she had proceeded the pre-party lull of social awkwardness. She was, in fact, the first, other than Kym, of course, meaning that although present for the pre-party lull, she was bedded into the occasion, and was not expected to attempt making any kind of conversation.
Kym had already started setting up – a row of trestle tables had been established against one wall, rows of bottles of booze lined neatly up, along with plastic cups. One could not say that Kym didn’t know how to throw a party – the place was ready for what, Lizzie was sure, would turn into a very raucous time.
“So,” Kym turned to her. “You stick with me, okay, and I’ll make sure you’re not intimidated by everyone. Then, in return, you make me look cool.”
“Okay,” Lizzie agreed, even though she didn’t have a clue how to make her look cool.
Before long, some guests started arriving, in dribs and drabs – “help yourself to drinks” and “more people will be arriving soon” were bungled about, and Kym started off the playlist, at a fairly low volume – though everyone knew it would not stay like that for long.
About half an hour after Lizzie had first arrived, the first big group turned up. Big meaning enough people to take up half the flat – and all of them carrying crates of all kinds of alcohol, dumping them on the trestle tables. Kym notched the music up a bit, the lights were dimmed even further, and she even switched on some strobe lights –
And before Lizzie knew it, there were more and more people turning up. Huge groups at a time, cramming themselves through the door and into the flat. It was a bottleneck, with everyone slowly spilling in, but completely engulfing the entire flat. Though the flat seemed to be like the TARDIS – every time a massive group of millions of people Lizzie hadn’t even seen before, let alone met, Lizzie always thought that the flat could not take anymore. But always she was wrong, for only minutes later another group would arrive, and would find space in the flat.
The volume of the music rose, and strobe lights were flickering around the room, great searchlights of red and green and orange, searching out for people dancing and drinking, searching out for them and their bids to find as much happiness as they could. The night was still young, and the lights would not stop flickering forever yet.
More and more people, unknown faces – random Facebook friends lists, all with random faces and random names, and yet all at this one celebration. Wherever Lizzie turned, there were people – cliched though it were, the only way to describe them would be sardines in a tin, as the hundreds (and there must have been hundreds in that tiny flat), were crammed tight, bodies up close, each tasting of sweat and beer and cigarettes, and of that typical early-twenty-ish smell.
Lizzie blinked, and a stubbly face was right up in front of her, and she was staring straight at him. She blinked again, and there was a woman with impossibly long eyelashes. Another blink, and a man with great gold sunglasses and gold chains of ‘bling’ – so much it almost formed robes on him.
She glanced at her watch, and it was only half nine, and she cringed, realising that this was the sort of thing that didn’t end ever. This would be a perpetual fate – condemned to spending at least the next 12 hours in this one flat with these people. It was dark outside, and suddenly she felt even more claustrophobic, trapped into a tiny space with so many, many people.
Again, more bodies, dancing through the door, with more alcohol. A group were arriving now, already screaming at the top of their lungs – the lads were here, and they seemed to have already been on a pub crawl of half of London before turning up to this. Kym yelled in happiness, running over to them and giving a rather beefy looking skinhead a noogie.
“OH! MY! GOODNESS! GRACIOUS! DOO DAA! YOU CAME.”
“I wouldn’t have been anywhere else -”
The noise was unbearable now – the sound of the music reached deep into her ears, filling up her brain right from the middle. On top of the enormous, thumping base, was the constant hubbub of people having to shout over the songs – loud cries of people desperate to communicate, but held back by straining throats and slurred syntax.
She watched Kym ‘bantering’ with the lads who arrived, and glanced over at people pouring drinks from the trestle tables (one of which somebody was already dancing on top of – the same table did not look as if it would hold up much longer), and she felt that music, pulsing like a ferocious migraine deep in her head, and then
And then she stopped.
Somebody else had come in with the rowdy, riotous lads – somebody who didn’t seem to quite fit, as if somebody had taken a piece from one jigsaw, and tried to place it right in the middle of another. It was as if he were an outsider, who had just blundered into the world from nowhere in particular, and were still trying to get used to it.
His face said the same – it was a mix of confusion, and ‘oh god kill me now’, and a deep anxiety as well. Unlike his pals, he wasn’t shouting or screaming or throwing bottles of beer around, and he seemed as if he’d been the designated driver on the pub crawl his mates had been on.
Their eyes met.
Ooh. That was exciting, and weird, and she had to rewind her mind because it was getting ahead of itself – yes, that was right – their eyes had met.
It wasn’t only exciting – great explosions of euphoria were engulfing her mind, forcibly evicting social anxiety and letting fascination and fantasies and happiness move in. When their eyes met, a connection had been made – some beam of mutual understanding transmitted across the dense party atmosphere between both of them. Electricity and fireworks, a volatility Lizzie hadn’t ever experienced before, violently uprooting a state of reasonable emotional stability and detonating it in a great explosion of a kind of mental, sugary, sweeter-than-sweetness. She hung onto it, that taste of heaven – a taste from a once-distant land, that finally she had reached.
Except she wasn’t looking at him, she was awkwardly looking down at her battered old converse, because even though she had a nice-ish dress the old converse were the only pair of shoes she owned, and suddenly a great tsunami of self-consciousness submerged her. Lizzie was drowning in it, the fear of being judged filling her lungs, and she could feel herself going into respiratory failure –
Before she decided that it didn’t matter.
What was the point? This was probably just… some weird glitch or something. It had been a bizarre day, and perhaps this was just keeping with the theme.
Then she saw she was looking at him again – and he was looking at her. Just another broken glance between two people that didn’t know each other – but again, that connection seemed to heal the broken-ness of the gaze between them.
Okay. Definitely not a glitch.
But it didn’t matter, she told herself. Why should it? She was happy as she was, and she didn’t need to change for anyone. Lizzie took a deep breath – her mind was getting carried away.
But Lizzie looked away again, and then back at him. And he was doing the same – interchanging glances between the floor and the night and each other.
It was almost as if…
Did she dare to…
She wasn’t…
“Lizzington! COME HERE NOW!” a loud cry came from across the flat, and suddenly the moment was gone. Kym was waving frantically at her, a kind of ‘please come here now so I don’t miss out on this chance’ kind of wave. Lizzie did as she was told, but still trying to keep a firm look on him, making sure she’d be able to find him again in the masses. Except – she wasn’t scared – she didn’t think he’d be hard to find again.
Lizzie trailed over to Kym, who was talking to a bulky man with a leather jacket displaying the entirety of his chest. At the same time, Lizzie was still keeping both eyes focused on him.
“This,” Kym gestured to Lizzie. “Is my babe, Lizzie. She keeps me sane, because I’m a bit mad –”
“–she’s not really,” Lizzie awkwardly interrupted, and Kym gave her a ‘this is really great, keep going’ kind of smile. “Kym is lovely – such a laugh, always, and…”
The smile turned into a ‘this isn’t an effing business pitch’ kind of smile, and Lizzie scowled at her, and Kym scowled back, and they were locked in a standoff of scowling, all while Lizzie’s eyes were still wandering, making sure that he with his astonishing eyes and their amazing connection was still somewhere insight. He was – and again, another half-glance between the two of them. He smiled at her, and through some kind of automatic reflex she just couldn’t stop her lips curling up into a smile as well.
“Yeah. This is Kym. She’s amazing and my best friend,” Lizzie diffused the tension, admiring her UN-inspired social diplomacy.
It seemed to be working – Kym’s new beau (eww, Lizzie vowed never to use that word again) laughed, and not a laugh suggesting that he was merely chuckling to make things less awkward. He was enjoying himself, and Kym and Lizzie turned to each other and gave each other optical high-fives.
Lizzie turned, and he was looking at her, still with that flirtatious smile – except it wasn’t flirtatious, no. No, that was too cheesy. Cringeworthy. Whoever he was, he was the sort of guy that would maybe try a pick-up line ironically, because it would be impossible for him to even pull off one smoothly – the sort of guy who knew it was beyond the realms of possibility for him to even attempt anything like that and not look stupid.
Before she knew it, she was drifting away from Kym, despite pledging herself as wing-woman. Leaving behind small-talk and false smiles, leaving behind swathes of insecurity. She wasn’t walking towards him, yet – but again, they were back in that cycle, of interchangeable glances. Whenever she looked at him, anxieties disappeared, in just those seconds of magic that flared between them.
It was a conversation between their eyes – and it was more of a conversation than Lizzie felt she’d had in… in ever. He would say something to her, just in a look, and she would respond, just by channeling this unearthly visual force in a specific way, and like that, they were speaking.
Words did not matter now – there was something beyond that, a connecting force, something impossible that Lizzie had always known about, but hadn’t experienced properly until now.
And then
“Hey,” he stumbled over his words, as if he were still trying to get to grips with how normal people communicated. The absence of awkwardness from before had vaporised, and suddenly they were both brought crushingly back down to Earth, having to do what normal people did.
Talk.
“Erm… hello,” she said, looking awkwardly at the floor, and not really at him. When she did look briefly up, she blushed, but it was alright because he was looking at the floor as well.
“I’m Leo,” he said, and Lizzie repeated it over in her head. Yeah… it suited him. “Leo Akram.”
“Lizzie,” she told him, and he nodded approvingly, not that there was anything to approve of, it was more of a nod to try and kill that dreadful tension between them. “Darwin.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” Leo tried his hand at a complement, but it was a bit stupid because it wasn’t really anything she could do anything about, whether he liked it or not.
“Thanks… I guess…”
A painfully awkward silence followed, and Lizzie could see that internally, they were both scrambling for something to say to make things just that bit more…
“Sorry,” Leo shook his head, grinning. “Let’s start again. Hello Lizzie. My name is Leo.”
“Hello Leo,” she held out a hand, before thinking that just looked really stupid and formal and… stupid covered it. Then it was as if he saw her internal monologue retching at her handling of the social situation, because he reciprocated the handshake, and although it was awkward it was… strangely charming.
“I can’t do social situations,” Leo proclaimed. “I just sort of… fall over things and stuff. Yeah…”
“Neither can I,” Lizzie admitted, feeling much more at ease that he was just as socially inept as she was. It didn’t help that the only way they could communicate with each other was by shouting, really loudly.
Leo was reading her mind, as suddenly he gestured towards the door of the balcony. “You wanna go outside?”
Lizzie nodded, and the two of them made their way past several very-drunk bodies sprawled out all over the floor, bleating out the words to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem, with the repeated calls for “shufflin’” coming out as nothing more than intoxicated jumbles of sounds.
***
Lizzie shut the door behind them, to try and block off as much of the noise as possible. Leo started saying something, but as he had become so adapted to having to speak at a good few decibels louder, he spoke way too loudly. Lizzie let out an impromptu laugh at the hilarity, and Leo gave her a jokey glare, before he laughed along as well.
“Not really my scene, this,” Lizzie gestured to the chaos in the flat behind them, while looking out at the moon ahead of her. Just like the daytime, the nights here were perfect. There was that bracing chill in the air – a chill almost comforting, in a way. There were no clouds in the sky, and galaxies were visible from that tall tower-block.
“Me neither,” Leo admitted. “I only came because they wanted a wing-man…”
“Same… well, not a wing-man, but –”
“Yeah, I get you,” Leo laughed. “I guess I’ve… always been a bit of a misfit.”
Lizzie nodded, trying to play it cool, even though she hadn’t identified with anything more than him ever. She took a seat in an old deckchair, so she could look out over the sky. Leo found another, and he did the same, so they sat side by side.
“Now this,” Leo leaned back. “Is my kind of scene.”
A cautious girl at heart, Lizzie was not the sort of person to jump to conclusions, which is why she was so shocked when her brain started going ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with this random guy that I just met’.
Except it didn’t feel too unusual – because her thoughts were grounded. There was something with him that she hadn’t experienced with anyone else before – something that made her realise that she could not let him go.
The awkward silence had evaporated at the sight of the moon. They were both content in each other’s company.
“You know,” Leo eventually said. “It’s times like this that I’d love to be able to make really meaningful conversation about this unearthly experience I’m having but I just… can’t.”
She related so much it was unbelievable.
“Same,” she laughed. “I can’t do the whole… talking to people thing.”
“Any and every social encounter,” Leo started. “I just try and get it over as quickly as possible.”
“The worst are things like… hairdressers,” Lizzie thought back to how much she appreciated the fact that hair growth was all distorted in the TARDIS. “Because you actually have to sit there with a complete stranger and talk to them and it is the worst thing ever.”
“Agreed,” Leo turned to her, sitting up in the deckchair. “But you do that thing, right, where you’re talking to someone really important but you just don’t know what to say, and you panic for hours afterwards about how rude and horrible you must have come across?”
“All the time,” Lizzie sighed in relief, relishing in the fact she had met a newfound social outcast.
And the two of them carried on like it, for hours, just talking randomly about how much neither of them could function in the real world – and about all sorts of other completely unrelated stuff, all by the light of the night sky. Random, meaningless conversation, but a pointlessness bringing two people together. And they laughed, so loudly they worried they would wake up the people in the rest of the block.
Neither of them had laughed so much in a long, long time.
When the conversations stopped, there were silences, but their individual silences were now united in one, mutual silence – mutual understanding and respect.
There was a togetherness between the two of them.
“Lizzie,” Leo eventually said, and his voice changed. He was being serious now. “I would really like to see you again.”
And then the body hit the glass behind them.
***
It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Lizzie had first thought.
Life in the TARDIS had trained her to expect the most terrifying and melodramatic from every situation, as if it were an automatic reflex. She had practised it so many times now that even five years after the Doctor, it still controlled her.
It was just Kym, being very, very drunk. She was pressed right up to the glass, peering out at them, before eventually she found the door handle. She opened the door, and flopped out face-first onto the floor of the balcony, arms waving in a kind of drunk flail, landing face-first in a plant pot that looked as if it hadn’t been used for many years. She did not stand up.
Leo started laughing, and Lizzie also found the situation strangely hilarious, if a little worrying.
“Face plant,” Leo giggled to himself, pointing at the plant pot and at Kym’s drunken form, rather pleased with his own pun. Lizzie gave him a glare, trying not to laugh, but she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t even the pun that was that amusing.
Lizzie stood up and walked over to Kym, kneeling down beside the remains of her sobriety.
“Kym?” Lizzie shouted into her ear.
There was a loud mumble, more like a series of loud grumbling sounds, almost like a broken engine trying to start up, and eventually Kym managed to form words from the shambles of half-letters.
“N…… n….. th…. Ee….. d…………sh……..t”
Lizzie helped Kym up from the plant pot, sitting upright against the balcony barrier, wiping a bit of trailing soil from her ruby-red lipstick.
“What was that?” Lizzie asked.
“NO NEED TO SHOUT!!!!!! OH HEllo my voice worked that time,” Kym’s voice dwindled off into the night, leaving a peculiar, eerie, but definitely not romantic silence. “Oh my god,” Kym spluttered.
Fright and trepidation crept on to Kym’s expression, and for once in her life, she was lost for words. At a loss for whatever the matter could be, Lizzie decided to try and help her up, and she took her hand.
Kym did not come up – however, the entire contents of her night’s drinking did. All over Lizzie’s shoes.
Lizzie did not let go of Kym’s hand. She stood there, perfectly emotionless, trying to somehow work out what had actually just happened. Kym looked strangely content, at least, and that seemed to be most of the vomit. Lizzie looked down, to see whether the shoes would be salvageable (the answer being no), and grimaced when she remembered that they were the only pair of shoes she owned.
Leo was sat on his deckchair, chuckling quiet to himself, and Lizzie gave him a look, and he shut up instantly.
“You want help getting inside her?” Leo stood up to help her, and then realised Lizzie was staring at him. “I mean – I mean getting her inside.”
He had an awkward inability to talk without using innuendo.
“Yeah… thanks,” Lizzie tried to look grateful for the help. They both took one of Kym’s arms, and carried her between the two of them.
***
The inside of Kym’s flat looked like a crime scene.
Many of the partygoers had vacated, leaving glass bottles and cans and plastic cups and… all sorts of other things one could imagine twenty-somethings leaving behind at a party, all over the floor and the tables and Kym’s shelf of chick-flicks.
There were a few bodies, sprawled here and there all over the floor, some murmuring in some alien, slurred language. When Lizzie and Leo dropped Kym on the sofa (they’d originally put her on a chair, as they had to turn the sofa the right way around again), they shooed out a few of the stragglers (many of whom needed quite a shooing, as they were drunk to the point of which the last five years or so were probably just a blurred memory).
Three o’clock in the morning. Surprisingly early. Perhaps they were aging.
The place was still a complete tip. The Doctor had shown her warzones that looked, at least, vaguely more intact that Kym’s flat.
Kym also looked as if she were about to be a sick again. She looked very ill in general.
“I can’t leave her here,” Lizzie shook her head, wondering what her next course of action she should take. There was only one viable option, and it made her stomach crawl out of fear and anxiety.
She’d have to come downstairs and stay with her for the remainder of the night.
“We’ll take her downstairs to mine,” Lizzie said, reaching out for Kym again. Lizzie and Leo reinstated the carrying technique they’d established before, and half-dragged Kym out of the flat.
***
“YOUR STARE WAS HOLDING
“RIPPED JEANS, SKIN WAS SHOWING
“HOT NIGHT, WIND WAS BLOWING–”
“How are we going to get her down the bloody stairs?” Leo grumbled, when he saw the great flight ahead of him. In the claustrophobic feeling of the small hours, and under the plastered cries of Kym’s rendition of Call Me Maybe, the challenge seemed almost impossible. It was a descend to hell, that could only end in pain and misery and suffering for all of them. It was a descend they had no choice but to face. For Lizzie and Leo, and their new friendship, this was the greatest challenge that they’d ever had to face so far. In the darkness of the night, and the eeriness of the great block of flats, it seemed like the greatest challenge they ever would face.
“Hmm…” Lizzie pondered. Kym was approaching the chorus, and by the sounds of it, she was building up for a real belter. “You take the legs. I’ll take the arms. We’ll go backwards.”
Leo shrugged a ‘works for me’ kind of shrug, and did as he was told. Then they began the perilous journey. The great anthem of banshees was echoing throughout the midst of the tower block.
“HEY! I JUST MET YOU!
“AND THIS IS CRAZY
“SO HERE’S MY NUMBER –”
“Just go a bit to the left,” Lizzie ordered, as she was coming into close contact with the wall of the narrow stairwell. The bloodcurdling screams were on a level of terrifying neither Lizzie or Leo had been expecting. “Wait…”
Lizzie had to recalculate. “My left, sorry. Your right.”
Leo sighed, a grim, yet determined look twisting its way into his features. He complied, however, and the expedition continued, the two of them holding fearless as to whatever may await them next.
Thankfully, the rest of the crossing was less hazardous than it was when it had begun. They continued as previously, sending instructions to one-another, to make the passage of their intoxicated friend as comfortable as possible. They only dropped her twice.
When they reached their destination, they laid her down against the wall, and started to take deep, heaving breaths, trying to make up for everything lost.
And they both started to laugh.
In sync, at exactly the same time, creasing and having to take even deeper breaths because of the amount of air forced out in great bursts of hilarity – the two of them collapsed onto the floor at the bottom of the stairs, completely in awe at how ridiculous the situation was.
***
“PARTY EVERYDAY – P – P – P – PARTY EVERYDAY –”
Finally, Kym was sprawled out on Lizzie’s sofa, and in the recovery position (Leo had insisted, to make sure that she didn’t choke on her vomit or anything – neither of them had thought she had completely emptied her system yet).
Lizzie offered to make Leo a drink, but said she only had tea, and he was cool with that – except he didn’t want to stay, because it was already late. She was terrified, just for a few seconds, that she’d put him off her, because of their preposterous adventure.
“Nothing to do with all this or anything,” Leo reassured her. “I’m just… thing is, Lizzie –”
Lizzie waited in bated, fearful breath.
“I’m a real lightweight and I need sleep.”
Thank god.
So, she walked him to her door.
“Thanks for… such a good first… encounter,” Leo stumbled over trying to find the right words. Lizzie suddenly found herself looking at the floor again, retreating back into herself.
“Yeah it was…”
“I’VE GOT A FEELING! WOOOOHOOOOO. THAT TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT. THAT TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT. THAT TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD GOOD NIGHT.”
Leo started to laugh, and Lizzie stepped out of her flat so they could talk without being interrupted by Kym’s choruses.
“As I said. It’s been awesome,” Leo said.
“Yeah. Really… really cool.”
“You want to do this again?” Leo asked. “I mean,” he backtracked straight away. “Not dragging drunk people down stairwells or anything, but –”
“Yes,” Lizzie interrupted. “Yes, I would.”
They swapped numbers, and then there was a bit of an awkward encounter, because Leo didn’t have a clue what he was doing, awkwardly verging between hugging and kissing her on the cheek and doing nothing, and Lizzie didn’t know what he was doing either, so eventually they went for the cheek-kiss.
“Night,” he said his goodbyes, and she watched him disappear down the stairs.
Then she turned back to her flat, and back to Kym’s version of I’ve Gotta Feeling.
***
The three of them knew what they had to do.
It was silent in the Doctor’s TARDIS, and the only light came from the console. If one were to look in on the scene, they would perhaps expect the room to be empty. And they would not be far wrong – for the three women in the console room that day, it felt empty. Because the Doctor was gone, trapped far across the universe.
The only people who were visible in the light of that TARDIS console, were Lizzie Darwin, Cioné, and Iris, stood apart from each other in a triangle-like shape. And as they did so, they felt united – because they were going to do this. The work had been done. He had been located – the Doctor was on a planet called Lonely, a distant, rocky outcrop of a planet, right on the edge of the universe, devoid of all life. Or at least, it had been, until the Doctor had been trapped there.
The three of them were ready to save him.
And it wasn’t just the Doctor that they would be saving. Because in taking back the Doctor, they would be standing up to the governments and the oppressors, who ruined lives, and they would be making sure that nobody would ever have to suffer at those hands again. They weren’t just saving a man, they were leading a revolution.
But above all, they were saving their family. Not so long ago, the Doctor had lost all of his friends. Lizzie had been a lonely little girl on Earth. Cioné had been alone in her fight to escape the war. And Iris had brought them together. Now that the three of those women knew the importance of having those they loved around them, they knew that for all the reasons to do this, saving their best friend, their husband, and their dad, was the most important.
They were the Doctor’s family, and so they were going to do what a family should.
Help.
The three of them, without speaking, placed their hands on the dematerialisation lever, and after nodding at each other, they pulled it, and the TARDIS began on its journey to Lonely.
And so it was, that three women began on their quest.
Three good women went to war.
***
“So… you went to a birthday party?” Mary asked her. They were sat on the wooden swing seat in the garden.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lizzie joked, even though Mary didn’t actually sound that surprised.
“I’m not!” Mary laughed. “But Lizzie – this is truly bloody brilliant progress! You’re getting out and about. And did you enjoy it?”
Lizzie didn’t even need to think – the words just left her straight away, as it was a feeling so natural and instinctive to her. “Yes.”
Mary was visibly taken aback this time, however. “And is there… anything else?”
Like the mystic Meg she was, Mary knew whenever something was wrong. Lizzie was going to take great pleasure (in a good way) in telling her that for once, something was right.
“Okay…” Lizzie tried to think of how to tell her. She hadn’t actually told anyone. It sounded weird putting it into words, as if it were too cliched.
Mary waited, in bated breath.
“Dinner…”
Leo sat down opposite her.
“Yeah,” Lizzie replied, trying not to sound too surprised. It was still a shock to her as well, even after talking it over with Mary earlier. It was suitably reassuring that Leo was also reasonably surprised that he was on a date.
Except this time, there were no walls to hide behind. No walls of stars or night skies or carrying singing drunk people down the stairs. This time, she would have to face him, and they would have to talk like normal, human beings.
How hard could it be?
She’d managed it years ago, when she used to work in the café.
That was small talk, though. That was behind a mask…
“Okay look,” Leo admitted. “I know we’re both terrified. And it was alright when we were dealing with drunk singing people and stuff. And I’ll admit I googled ice breakers before I arrived but I couldn’t find anything apart from wink murder, which I didn’t think would be a very good thing to play in a restaurant. Sooo… er… sorry,” he laughed.
“It’s fine,” Lizzie felt better. “I just… haven’t done this before.”
“Nope… neither have I.”
“And, last time you saw him…” Mary was just a little bit confused at how they had met… and the circumstances which had befallen them going out to dinner together.
“It was alright last time,” Lizzie sat, playing with her hands and not looking at anyone. “We had… things to deal with. But we actually had to do normal things this time. And… we don’t actually know anything about each other.”
“You know,” Leo said, sitting back. “It’s just occurred to me that we don’t actually know anything about each other.”
Lizzie shook her head. It hadn’t really seemed like a problem… they’d sort of instinctively glossed over it. “So… who are you?”
Leo pretended to straighten his jacket and bowtie, and ended up looking a bit stupid. “Well,” he began sarcastically, as if he had a lot to say about himself. “My name is Leonardo Akram. I cannot function socially, and I write articles and interview people for a living.”
“… you’re a journalist?” Lizzie asked. Her English teacher once said she could go into journalism, but the ferocity of the industry terrified her.
“Ha… no. It’s for this nerdy website and for some film magazines.”
“Ah. Who were you named after?” she asked suddenly, in an attempt to make conversation.
“My mum likes to pretend she’s into art but really, my dad just liked Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles.”
Lizzie laughed, not sure whether he was being serious or not.
“My dad even had the first comic. Had to sell it, though. So…,” Leo said, clearly trying to change the subject. “What about you?”
“And that’s where the problems lied. Me… talking about myself.”
Mary looked at her, as if she were being stupid. Lizzie knew she didn’t actually think that, she was just good at making it look like she did.
“You'll get there. It'll take time, and quite frankly, coming out of my shell is one of the hardest things I've done."
“Yeah, but I didn’t have anything to say. That I used to travel with an alien in a blue box?”
“You’re a person beyond that, though.”
Lizzie thought about it and couldn’t think of anything. The sum total of her life was nothing – and then the Doctor had come along and shown her something else. A brand-new universe.
… maybe not, though.
There was Leo. And… Kym, and stupid birthday parties and shoes covered in vomit. And all those other things that actually, she quite liked.
“Maybe I am,” Lizzie shrugged, though she wasn’t at all sure.
“What did you say, then?” Mary asked, as if she expected Lizzie to script it all out, or do a drawing or something.
“I can’t even understand my own drawing,” Leo sat back, admiring his handiwork. The post-it note stuck to Lizzie’s head showed… something, at least.
“I’ve always wanted to be able to draw,” Lizzie looked glumly at her post-it note stuck to Leo’s forehead.
“Pictionary?!” Kym exclaimed, when Lizzie saw her later that day for a post-date catch-up. She was drinking some disgusting looking smoothie thing. “You played Pictionary with him when he asked you about yourself?”
“I didn’t know what to say. My life is boring and I said we should play Pictionary...,” Lizzie’s voice dwindled off into the absurdity of the date night.
“Well, I have to admire your… creativity, I guess. If that’s what works for you, then whatevs. Cool.”
“Thank you,” Lizzie took a sip from her tea, Ulysses purring quietly on her lap.
“Am I an animal?” Leo said. On this god-knows-what go.
“No!” Lizzie sighed. She’d guessed hers’ ages ago, and was now forced to endure Leo’s inability when it came to playing Pictionary. “You’re not an animal. Or a mode of transport. Or a food.”
“Can I give up?” Leo’s hands reached up to his forehead, but at the sight of Lizzie’s glare he instantly dropped them back down again.
“So you were sat in an actual proper restaurant… playing Pictionary?”
“I had some post-it notes in my bag, and a marker pen. It seemed like a good idea.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yes…”
“And did he come back to yours? Or vice versa?”
Ulysses stirred, and Lizzie started to run a hand gently across his silky fur.
“I have not yet met Elizabeth’s new gentleman caller,” Ulysses growled a posh, sophisticated growl into Lizzie’s shirt sleeve.
“Am I… a Morris dancer?”
“You’re not any form of dancer!”
The two of them were stumbling along the streets, and it wasn’t as if they’d had anything to drink. Apart from two, very, very strong coffees. They were lightweights at heart. Leo tripped over a bench (twice – once over the first leg and again over the second) and eventually, Lizzie and Leo arrived somewhere. A great big lion was staring down at them.
“Ohmygod,” Leo gasped when he realised where they were. “This is Trafalgar Square?”
“Yeah…,” Lizzie realised, sitting down, her back against the lion’s pedestal.
“Oh! Oh!” Leo jumped up and down, as if he’d just realised what his picture was. “Am I Lord Nelson?”
“No. But good guess.”
“So I’m close?” he said, climbing onto the back of the big lion that people weren’t allowed to climb on top of.
“Nope,” Lizzie laughed. “But I’m a history graduate, so it was a good guess.”
Leo cursed, several drunken, coffee-inspired curse words.
“Hey, Liz,” he looked down at her from the lion. He was riding it as if it were a horse. “Mount me.”
There was a terrifyingly awkward silence.
“… I did not mean that. I mean the lion – the lion, that’s… that’s what I meant.”
The child in her giggled. She stopped herself from giggling, because he couldn’t be serious, and then she looked up at his broad grin, and burst into fits of laugher again. He was holding out a hand for her, beckoning for her to join him on the great cat.
Lizzie stood up, and looked up at him apprehensively, before looking out at the silence. It was late now – only a few stragglers were left, wandering around the square.
She gestured for him to shuffle backwards, and he did so. Then, she hopped on front of the big cat.
Lizzie held onto the mane, as if they would start moving, and she could be left behind – and she didn’t want to be left behind. She could imagine what it would be like, if the big cat started to move. If suddenly, it raised its head, and gave a quiet purr. And then, it would unfurl itself from its pedestal, and start to slink its way across Trafalgar Square, with the two of them on the back.
And they would be able to go anywhere.
When she blinked, though, she was still there. Exactly where she’d been before. Instinctively, she stroked the lion’s mane, and she sat back. Leo was supporting himself by holding onto her shoulders – and they were okay, up on top of the big cat.
“Who am I?” Leo asked. It came across as deep, and poetic – someone who had become lost over the years, someone who didn’t know who they truly were, and someone who was intent on finding themselves –
And someone who had lost at Pictionary.
“I’m not telling you,” Lizzie said, as Leo hopped off the lion. He helped her down, and they sat at the foot of the steps of the square.
“Oh come on! You can’t not tell me now!”
Lizzie peeled the post-it note from his forehead, a few rogue hairs becoming stuck to it.
“You have to guess,” she pocketed it. A post-it note, forever reminding her of the future, until eventually, Leo Akram could guess what it said.
Leo sighed, but he knew there was no way of getting around it.
“One day… you’ll get it. One day.”
***
The fields stretched on for as far as Lizzie could see. It was a lifeless place. When she looked down at the ground beneath her feet, she realised that it was not a rich, healthy soil, in which plants could grow, one that would crumble softly to the touch. Instead, it was arid, and brittle, and thin, somewhere between sand and dirt and dust. Perhaps plants had grown their once, but now it seemed as if a drought had arrived, and choked all life from it. The decay echoed for miles and miles around her, eventually merging with the horizon of the bone-white sky.
Their target was a sturdy, stone brick tower, like the sort from a fairytale. Ivy grew down the outside walls, interwoven with pink and purple flowers, contrasting against the stony bleakness of the plains surrounding it. Other than the tower, there was nothing to be seen. In any normal situation, it would not be too far to reach, and they would sort out this situation with ease.
However, there was a sea of people between them and the tower.
There were so many of them, crammed into tight rows – gunmen and swordsmen, dressed in leathers and steel, wielding their blades and their semi-automatics, ready to pulverise whatever they were up against. There were thousands, and thousands, and thousands of these soldiers, spilling on far behind the tower. Some of them were on horseback – great steeds with terrifying metal armour. Some of them bore men with spears and lances and bazookas, a mishmash of old technology and new – there were handguns and knives and razors and pistols and revolvers and pikes and harpoons. Tanks rolled into gear, and above their heads, helicopters and planes and spaceships whizzed. At the head of the huge army they were faced with hordes of angry (and hungry) hounds and wolves, sharp teeth ready to tear into enemy meat, and beside them were great black bears, their claws capable of tearing through metal.
And at the fore, striding out ahead of her people, was Evangeline Cullengate, looking an outlier in her blue dress and pearls, her two kindly golden retrievers beside her.
It was silent on the battlefield.
Lizzie, Iris and Cioné stood alone against all of it.
“Do you think we’ve bitten off rather a bit too much?” Cioné mused, as she took in the true extent of the army.
Lizzie and Iris looked at each other.
There was a flicker of doubt between the three of them. Okay - quite huge amounts of doubt. None of them had expected this. And that was when the despair kicked in.
The Doctor was trapped in that tower. And there was no way they could get him out.
But then their fortunes, somehow, began to change.
In seconds, the three of them were flanked by battalions of men and women, all of them armed, dressed in a uniform emblazoned with the logo of the ShadowStar Alliance. Elle Mthembu headed them up, and her husband, Jarvis, stood beside her. From the sky, ShadowStar spaceships flocked down, and over the heads of the enemy, who turned and gazed up in awe, to see them as they rocketed past. When they looked back, the armies of the ShadowStar Alliance were joined by thousands more – soldiers dressed in surprisingly little, but for a few pads of thick, hardened leather, each of them wielding blades of some kind, and shields too. Queen Cleopatra stood at the head of her Egyptian army, and walked to wait with Lizzie.
“There are more,” Cleopatra spoke simply.
Only a few seconds later, the ShadowStar and the Egyptians were joined by neat blocks of soldiers in attack formation, in their steel and red fabrics blazing against the monochrome of the landscape, with tall, body-sized shields and stubby swords. Romans, from Cleo’s alliance with Egypt. Lizzie glanced to her left, and noticed three women stood beside her, each wielding crossbows and ready to use them – it was the Hunters of Artemis, and Jada, Chasya and Fortuna were ready. DI Ronnie Wolfe stood beside them, along with Inspector Kido, and Dr Siddiqui glanced at his computer screen, from which he had a few tricks up his sleeve. A few squadrons of futuristic UNIT soldiers later, headed by Jo Stewart, and their army was ready.
Lizzie turned to face them all. All of the people she'd met on her adventures, all of them gathered to help her. All of them gathered to help the Doctor. Lizzie understood, then, that people loved him. They owed so much to him, and they were determined to help him he needed it. After all... there would come days when everyone needed help. And today, it was the Doctor's. As Lizzie looked at the army behind her, hope sprang up in her heart again. Because they could do this. No matter what Cullengate threw at them, they could defeat her.
"What are you all doing here?" she asked Elle.
"The Doctor is in trouble," Elle shrugged, as if it was the most obvious thing. "You didn't even need to ask for our help."
Then, Elle turned to the army, and called "Ready?"
“Ready,” cried the ShadowStar, the Egyptians, the Romans and UNIT.
“Ready,” the two detectives cocked their revolvers.
“Ready,” Jada raised her crossbow, and Chasya and Fortuna loaded their bows.
And finally, Lizzie turned to face Cioné and Iris. In knowledge of who they were saving, and in hope of getting through the battle alive, they all said, in unison,
“Ready.”
The battle began.
***
For some, they may have said life ticked on as normal. However, as Lizzie decided that ‘normal’ made it sound boring, mundane, average – but that wasn’t what it was at all.
Her life took on a new form, a form that still felt, to her, strangely distant, as if it wasn’t truly her experiencing it, and she was instead observing someone else live this happy life she was being accustomed to. However, she decided not to dwell on it too much, as if somehow, thinking bad thoughts would make her lose all of it.
She saw Leo again. They saw some dreadful film together, but it didn’t matter – the film went over both of their heads, because they were both too petrified about coming across as too casual, or too uptight, and so both of them just came across as too awkward. When they left the cinema, a thunderstorm had broken out, and rain lashed down from the skies. Lizzie was stupid enough not to bring an umbrella, and Leo hadn’t even brought a coat, so they made the decision that the best thing they could do was chance it, and dash to the tube station which involved running through two streets. Lizzie, who hated any kind of exercise, had become too unfit for words in the five years since the Doctor – running down corridors was the only kind of exercise she enjoyed.
It was a bad decision, as they were both soaked through (Leo especially) about 30 metres from the cinema. Thankfully, Lizzie had spotted a bus shelter at the end of the road when they’d arrived, and so she pulled them both inside of it, a bunker to take refuge from the downpour.
Through chatters of teeth, Leo managed to splutter an “oh my god”, and it seemed he was violently shivering. Lizzie, therefore, took off her coat, and wrapped it around him. He was freezing.
“S – s – sorry, I – I – I – I’m stupid, I kn – know.”
Lizzie smiled, but hid it. “Yep.”
“Didn’t – didn’t br – bring an umbre – umbrella, though.”
“Thanks.”
“N – no problem.”
They could talk, interestingly. Which wasn’t a very interesting observation, of course, for the majority of people on planet Earth. However, for two individuals who could barely talk to themselves, holding a conversation that was not only quickfire but also flirtatious was a remarkable feat. Both of them had, of course, realised what an impossibility it was, and so they seemed determined to hold onto each other for as long as possible.
Except, the thing that was truly magical, was that their silences were not awkward. Lizzie decided that should be the true yardstick of a relationship – could you be silent with them without the silence becoming icky.
As Lizzie watched him shiver, she realised that for once, there was somebody who understood her. It was like their brains were connected by some invisible string, and their thoughts flowed through it, intermingling with each other, making her almost telepathic to him, and him almost telepathic to her. Admittedly, she had dreamed, all her life, of having somebody she could talk to – somebody who would understand what she was going through every day. Leo could do that – and even if he couldn’t, he listened, and he accepted, and perhaps that was just as good.
She looked at him, out of the corner of her eye, and she saw him watching her. There was a flicker of something between them, and then suddenly they were facing each other.
They were moving closer to each other. Lizzie was trying to resist entering panic mode, and although everything was telling her to stop this, it’s really not going to end well at all because you’ll mess it up, there was something else overpowering it all, cheering her on. For the briefest of seconds, she felt sick, and that really wouldn’t end well. But this was a moment, a moment she hadn’t even imagined would ever happen in her life.
She was in love.
They were edging closer now and it wasn’t awkward, in fact it was almost perfect, like the scene of a movie, so good, in fact, it could’ve been staged and filmed for some romance.
Suddenly, Lizzie pulled back. “Wait – I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.”
And the magic was gone. Leo laughed before she could feel guilty (and Lizzie was fine with this – their unspoken ‘no laughter’ rule was breakable in situations that both of them were finding ridiculous), and then they both looked at each other, in the eye.
“Neither,” Leo laughed.
This time, although they were both, now openly terrified, they kissed.
Their awkwardness subsided, perhaps because it was now a mutual awkwardness. Instead, it was replaced by moments of ecstasy, and of the most glorious living, and of love. It didn’t even last that long, but n of them cared, because even those seconds were beautiful.
It would, of course, be far from the last time they would do that. And more, of course.
They were not a conventional couple, because neither of them were particularly conventional people. Furthermore, both of them were very inexperienced when it came to relationships. However, they muddled through, in their own way. Neither of them did public restaurants, and a third date experience involved Leo falling over a chair, causing a catastrophic domino effect, involving a collapsing table, spaghetti bolognaise and a ruined marriage proposal.
After that, the two of them just had takeaways in front of a film or the TV, and for them, it was heaven. Some may have accused them of being boring, or of digging a grave for their relationship before it had already begun. However, it worked – after all, Lizzie still maintained that fiction was the greatest way to one’s true emotions – what better way to get to know someone by hanging those emotions on display? Also, they both found it hilarious.
Approximately eight-and-a-half months passed, and Lizzie and Leo made the executive decision to move in with each other. They later found out that this was much easier on paper than it would be in practise, as the logistics of deciding whose property to move into. However, the decision was made to move into Lizzie’s flat, as Leo was self-employed, and Lizzie one day hoped to be self-employed.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Kym was sat on Lizzie’s sofa, making silly faces at Ulysses.
Ulysses glared at her in return. “give me strength.”
“Oh yeah, about that,” Lizzie sat on the sofa and they turned to face each other, crossed-legged. “I’m staying here, and Leo is moving in.”
There was a slight pause while Kym’s jaw hit the floor. “Oh. My. Kendrick. Lamar,” she spluttered, and she started hyperventilating, gasping for breaths as if she were drowning. Lizzie started to panic, as she thought Kym was having some kind of asthma attack.
“Calm down, it’s not that amazing! Kym, seriously, please what’s happening –”
Kym squealed in delight. She was fine.
That night, Leo turned up in a death-trap of a van, and Lizzie and Kym helped to pack all the boxes in the lift (which, for Kym, was standing around ogling Leo and talking about the English translation of that Despacito song). They travelled up to Lizzie’s floor, and just chucked all the boxes in Lizzie’s hallway.
Before Kym left, she engulfed Lizzie in an almighty hug. “Thanks girl for being my bezzie.”
“You’re still my… bezzie,” Lizzie said, feeling like a spoon calling Kym a ‘bezzie’.
“Yeah, but like, end of an era and all that. You’re no longer a single pringle ready to mingle. And that’s hella cool.”
Yep, Lizzie thought. It was hella cool.
“You look after her, alright?” Kym pointed at Leo. “And more importantly,” she turned to Lizzie. “You look after him.”
Lizzie hugged her once more, and they said goodnight.
That night, the two of them sat on the sofa, watching Ratatouille (they shared a love for Pixar). and Leo turned to her. “Thank you for putting up with my awkwardness. And for just, y’know, being there.”
“It’s cool,” Lizzie kissed him.
“No but seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone who… gets me like you do. And even when you don’t, you accept me. And I think that’s just as good.”
Lizzie was almost happy for not being the one to have to feel awkward saying the sentimental stuff. There wasn’t really anything she could add.
“Thank you for exactly the same.”
“As they say,” Leo joked. “’There is excellence all around you. You need only be aware to stop and savour it’.”
They laughed.
***
One summer’s evening, Lizzie was sat on their balcony. The sun was setting, and the evening was hot and muggy. Her laptop was on the trestle table, and she tapped away at an annoyingly irregular pace. Writer’s block. Someone she looked up to once said writer’s block wasn’t not knowing what to write, it was having the ideas but not knowing how to write them. Or something like that. For what it was worth, she agreed.
“You’ve been doing this like, all afternoon,” Leo nagged her, trying to get her to shut up her laptop, because he could see writing was stressing her out.
“Let me just finished this chapter,” she muttered, trying to hide her laughter. She wanted nothing more than to shut her laptop because the writing was stressing her out.
“Oh my god you’re actually unbearable.”
“I have a good work ethic…”
One more sentence. Another more sentence. She could hear him giggling behind her, like an idiotic schoolboy. She glared at him through the reflection of the screen, and their eyes met in the glare. Lizzie tried very hard to ignore him. A third sentence, and then she realised that this wasn’t going to work.
“For god’s sake,” she turned to him, slamming the laptop lid shut. He raised his arms as if she were going to throw something at him, even though they both knew 1. She wouldn’t throw anything, and 2. If she did, she would miss.
He laughed, bouncing over like a little Jack Russell, and pulling up a chair. “Thank you.”
“You’re…”
“You wouldn’t actually call me anything nasty.”
“– an irritating individual.” She was going to be the better person in their banter-argument.
“Am I…”
“You are. Any work done today?” Lizzie asked, as if she were a childminder, when in fact she was just making conversation.
“Yep… articles written… reviews proofread –”
“Yeah, you’ve not done a thing.”
“– you’re right, I haven’t.”
“You’re such a bad liar,” Lizzie leaned across, laying her head on his shoulder.
Leo looked down at her guiltily. “Sorry if I disturbed you, Liz.”
“It’s fine.”
“But sorry.”
“It’s cool! Honestly, I needed to stop.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Please stop apologising,” Lizzie instructed him. He did so. “Thank you for disturbing me. I needed it.”
As Lizzie rested her head on his shoulder, she could hear his heart beating, and the vibration it sent throughout his chest. And it was to that rhythm of life that she fell asleep.
***
In the name of the Doctor, their army had charged, and collided with Evangeline’s forces.
It happened as it does in all wars – the gangs of soldiers mingled, and shot and fired and sliced and diced, and good people fell – but the Doctor’s people danced a deadly dance through their enemies, and Evangeline’s forces were being pushed back, their horses falling, their dogs failing, and their people dying. But in return, her hounds gnawed off faces, and bears cut through throats as if they were butter.
The quagmires they fought over became filled with blood, and limbs, and heads, and swords and spears swung and clashed, while bolts and arrows cut people down, and showers of bullets struck, all on both sides. Above them, spaceships and helicopters dashed low over the battlefield, sending storms of firepower onto the combatants below, slicing down hundreds in one, dreadful swoop. Meanwhile, Dr Siddiqui stood amongst the carnage with his iPad, and with the simple press of a button, he detonated mines that sent bodies scattered into the air like confetti.
As Lizzie walked over the battlefield, the battle raged on around her, and she could hear nothing, for the cries and screams of the dying, and the roars of the winners, and the howls of animals, and the bursts of guns and cannons, and the scrapes of blades. She had to step over corpses that had burned from incendiary bombs and flamethrowers, and she had to walk around bodies with chewed off limbs and ears and eyes gouged out, and finally she looked down at the animals – innocent creatures who had been condemned to die in such a dreadful fight. Soon, the bony-white sky above them became a strange mix of red and brown, reflecting the colour of the oceans of bloody dirt and mud that stretched on forever.
It was a disgusting sight.
Lizzie cried for those who did not make it. So many people willing to go so far, for one man. The slaughter was sickening, and Lizzie was faced with images that she thought for as long as she lived, she would never be able to forget in her entire life. When all this began, she had been delighted, to see so many join them. And now... Lizzie hated the fact they'd come. To think that when she had seen the Doctor's army, she had been pleased - when, in fact, this was all that had come of it. Because an idiotic old woman sat in her tower and decided that she was superior, meant that this hell had happened.
And that made her scared. Terrified, in fact. That when people came out to fight for their beacon of hope in the universe, so much hurt had been caused. That when they tried to help, sometimes it just wasn't enough.
She was now at the far end of the battlefield, and the oak doors leading into the tower were in front of her. After taking one, last, grim look at the battle, she entered the building.
***
Mary greeted Lizzie for the first time in a few months. She hugged her, and led her inside, and made her tea. It was all remarkably routine, although their appointments had slowly grown further and further apart, as Lizzie had realised she didn’t need them so frequently.
Mary finally sat down, and placed two hands on her lap, in that mediatory way she often did. A mediator, of course, between Lizzie and her thoughts. “How are things?”
Lizzie nodded, because she didn’t want to seem too overenthusiastic. “Yeah….” There was no point in lying. “Really, really good.”
At that moment, Mary bit her lip, as if it her to see Lizzie doing so well. Why would it pain her? Lizzie nearly said something, but Mary interrupted her.
“Wow! Wow, that’s – that’s – well, brilliant, Lizzie, yes. Brilliant.”
You’re not pleased, Lizzie thought. Why couldn’t she be pleased for her?
“I am pleased for you, Lizzie,” Mary reassured her, as if she were reading her thoughts.
Lizzie tried to look as if she wasn’t being too aggressive, but she just couldn’t see Mary's apathy to the situation. And… it was annoying. Lizzie had worked so hard to feel like she did, and she hated the fact that Mary, the person who had helped her most of all, couldn’t see it. “It’s just… you don’t look it.”
“Lizzie, look – there’s something I need to tell you.”
Those words never led to anything good, Lizzie was almost certain of that.
“I should’ve told you sooner, before –”
“What is it?” Lizzie cut her off, desperate to know, as if she knew, instinctively, it was going to be bad.
“– before you got to settled, it’s just – it was a risk, that’s all –”
“What is it?!”
Mary reached over and took both of Lizzie’s hands in hers, a reassuring gesture, a dreadful, doom-laden foreshadowing.
“Lizzie. I’m sorry to tell you this, but – this world is a lie.”
Why, of course Lizzie did not need to be told this. She looked up, and she was climbing the spiral staircase – it was cramped inside the tower on the planet of Lonely, and through the thick stone walls, she could still hear the screams of the dying, bleeding in through the walls. Above her head, in the room far at the top of this tower, the Doctor was waiting for her – he needed to be saved.
At that exact moment, that was what Lizzie had to focus on, because that was what was going on.
Lizzie, Cioné and Iris were saving the Doctor. They had amassed an army, with Cleopatra, with Elle and Jarvis, with the Hunters of Artemis, with Ronnie – with so many more. A few seconds of slight bemusement passed, as Lizzie suddenly became aware of her breathing, and her moving – but it was fine. She was just doing one of those things, where she slipped slightly from reality, and became disengaged with her own little world.
Yes… the ‘five-years-after-the-Doctor’ world. It really did seem to become reality in exactly the moments she didn’t need it to. Lizzie gritted her teeth, and continued up the steep heights of the tower, knowing that she would have to side-line that world for now. But as their mission to save the Doctor had progressed, that world had got stronger, and she had escaped to it even more frequently than usual. Which was understandable – for it was the world Lizzie ran to when she was scared, or when she was sad. When her anxieties flared, or her depression dragged her down, or when she needed to hide from the truth, Lizzie would retreat into her own head.
Her own head, where everything was perfect. A best friend who was hilarious and outgoing, and showed that even the smallest things in life could be brilliant. Talking cats! What was madder and more her than that? Being brave enough to go to all of the counselling under the sun – definitely wouldn’t happen in real life. And above all, someone she could love. Lizzie was too scared to love anyone – but in her dreams, Lizzie wasn’t scared at all, and the perfect companion was there for her. Leo.
A perfect world, a world where her depression couldn’t get to her. Lizzie looked at that world, and knew that it couldn’t be true – after all, the world was not tailored to her, whereas this world was. Although, whenever Lizzie left that world, although it gave her those minutes of respite, there was always the crushing disappointment that hiding there forever would never achieve anything, and she just felt guilty and useless. The closest thing she had to a real life and to a sane personality, was in a dream. What kind of life was that?
But it helped her cope. It was her world. There were people there who would always help her, and when Lizzie was there, she never felt alone. And in her darkest days, she could go to that heaven. Whenever the universe wasn’t so beautiful, Lizzie had a place that was. She held onto that place. Lizzie felt safe there.
And Lizzie didn’t feel safe anywhere else.
She was at the top of the tower – and so she opened the door, gently creeping inside.
It was a spacious chamber, and it was decorated nicely – there was an oak dining table beside the arch window, which looked down over the battlefield below. Upon the table was a vase, with blue flowers of a type Lizzie recognised, but couldn’t name, and beside it a laptop. The chamber was dimly lit, by gas lamps, and by the light of the moon, which shone brightly through the arch window on the far side. One of the moon beams reached the foot of a throne directly opposite the window – it was an ornate, wooden seat, upon which, as Lizzie had expected, sat the Doctor.
He glanced over to see her. “Lizzie…”
Lizzie quickly made her way over to him, and stopped as she observed what a state he was in. His hair was messy, and his beard had regrown – and various cannulas stuck into his hands. His clothes were shabby, torn and bloodstained, and yet, despite all this, he still managed to regain an air of elegance about him.
“The… the flowers,” he spoke, having to stop for breath in the middle of his sentence. His eyes were sunken and surrounded by black rings, and every word was an effort.
“Don’t try and speak,” she reassured him. It was painful to see him in such a… sad, lonely and ruined state. The figure in front of her was a shadow of the man who had stood up to men in glass towers, who had taken down terrorists. Who had saved Egyptian Queens, and who had fought ghosts. Yet he still retained all his bravery. All his strength. And all his emotion.
He ignored her and continued. “Irises.”
For the Doctor, it had been hope. Not only did they remind him of his beautiful daughter, but they reminded him of hoping, in general. And hope was what he needed – all of the bad dreams in the universe streaming through his head, with nothing to keep him entertained apart from a laptop (which they’d cut the internet to) – hope was pretty important. Lizzie felt a pang of sadness at the sheerness and rawness of the Doctor’s helplessness, and at how little he had to keep himself going. But she tried to ignore it, as she looked through all of the tubing that connected him to… whatever he was connected to.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
The Doctor gave her a smile, as if to say that he wasn’t, but he was happy to see her. “I knew you’d come,” he whispered. “I always had hope… I always knew I could rely on Lizzie Darwin to save me.”
Lizzie looked at the tangle of equipment surrounding the chair, because the saving wasn’t going so well. “How do I get you out of this?”
The Doctor spoke bluntly. “You don’t.”
Lizzie looked at him, and then at the chair in utter confusion. “What?”
The Doctor wasn’t quite sure how to get around the next bit of their conversation, because it was going to be a bit of a bombshell.
“Okay… the universe is ending.”
Lizzie backed away from the equipment. “… right.”
“I’m powering the Memory Graveyard, which is currently breaking down the dimensions and is going to result in the eventual destruction of everything that ever happened or ever will.”
All the bad memories and the bad dreams coming out to destroy the universe. Would anything else have ended it? So many lives, so many beyond the point of counting – and the amount of pain that could have been mustered up over time… it was a chilling thought. However, it still did not explain why they couldn’t take him out.
“Why can’t we take you out?”
“Because that will trigger a feedback loop which will destroy the universe instantly.”
Faced with a choice between destroying the universe slowly, or destroying it instantly, Lizzie reluctantly grabbed a chair from the table and sat down on it. She had no choice, and desperation filled her. She had to do something, she had to help – she couldn’t just… let the universe be destroyed like this.
“There has to be another way…,” Lizzie shifted the chair closer to him.
“There isn’t.”
Lizzie knew there had to be. There always was, surely so close to the end, the universe wouldn’t let her down. To reassure him of this, she slipped off her chair, and knelt down beside the Doctor, placing her hands over his.
“I can get up and walk,” the Doctor explained. “I can… I can live, essentially, but only just, the Memory Graveyard keeps me on the brink. And all the time, it’s like… like I can feel it there, in my head. So, we leave me plugged in, and we try and figure out a way to stop the end of the universe. And here’s what I don’t get, Evangeline Cullengate – why?”
Lizzie suddenly realised that the old woman was sat in a chair, in the corner of the room. She wondered how long Evangeline had been there, but it couldn’t have been long – she’d taken Lizzie’s chair.
“Oh - believe me, this isn't intentional. But if this universe must go down, then... so be it. I created the Memory Graveyard as a safeguard to protect my Empire from the Time War. But it seems this universe is sinking either way - and so, I must let it," Evangeline chuckled.
But neither the Doctor, nor Lizzie, understood. Why would Evangeline Cullengate go so far to protect her Empire from the Time War, choosing to destroy the universe instead of losing her sole safeguard against the conflict? Unless, of course, the conflict was that bloody. That brutal, that one would rather die than face it. But even so - there was something about Evangeline Cullengate that was strange... as if her rule of the Empire, in fact, meant nothing to her, and she was instead playing games...
Evangeline Cullengate was important, and not just as Prime Minister of the Empire. This wasn't a debate over power... this was something personal. Cullengate had a higher involvement in the universe... after all, how else would she design something as complex as the Memory Graveyard? How would she let the universe die in the blink of an eye?
The woman who would destroy the universe for her power and giggle about it, stood, and strode over to the window, where she gazed upon the fields below. Night had fully fallen now, and yet the battle continued. Quagmires of mud and blood stretched on for as far as she could see. Bodies splayed about, their faces ripped off by her hounds, their limbs dotted around. There were the carcasses of the horses of her men, and there were the bodies of her men too. It was not just casualties on her side, however – she could see many of the opposition had been culled. She gave it a wry smile – although the battle seemed to be approaching its aftermath, it did not seem like a victory for either party.
Which was better than a loss for her.
“Do you know what’s going to happen to you?”
Evangeline saw the voice facing her in the mirror. It was Lizzie Darwin, standing at her, looking so brave, and so strong. And yet she meant nothing. Although – even if that was what Evangeline’s mind was telling her, there was something admittedly quite terrifying about the grim way with which she spoke.
Evangeline did not respond to her question, and so Lizzie continued.
“Me.”
The Prime Minister turned around then, and attempted to hide the look on her face.
The look on the face, of a girl who had come so far. Once upon a time, she’d been that awkward girl from that little town, too scared to do anything with her life, trapped in her life by her mind and by the government. But all that time, she had never been afraid to stand up for what was right. And now, she did so – but without fear.
Lizzie walked closer to the woman. “I’ve spent all my life oppressed by people like you. People like you, who destroy the universe, often in the most subliminal ways – and until now, I’ve lived in fear of that. But… I’m not scared anymore. And it stops. I’m going to save the Doctor, and even if it kills me, I’m still going to find the time to come and overthrow you. I’d start packing up your office, Evangeline, because the end is near, the revolution is coming, and it’s going to get you.”
A brief silence followed, the three of them (Lizzie included), stunned by the extent of her speech.
Evangeline seemed almost scared – no, it wasn’t fear. Her eyes displayed genuine anger, in contrast to her face, which hardened to its usual, cold self.
“Well, Elizabeth,” Evangeline spat. “Powerful –”
But before she could have a chance to mock her, the ground beneath them rocked. An almighty tremor was throwing the tower around, and the Doctor was flung forward from his chair, the cannulas ripping from his hand and bloodying his shirt sleeves – but he didn’t care, as his eyes immediately took sight of the vase of irises, which spun on the oak table before falling, for what felt like an age, to the floor. As it connected with its stony death, the glass cracked, and then cracked again, and then cracked and cracked and cracked – a process that the Doctor realised was just the vase shattering into a million tiny pieces, but his mind was slow, and everything took longer to happen. The irises floated to the ground, becoming buried in that grave of crystals.
Evangeline had been knocked to the ground, but she regained herself quickly, dusting herself off, and dashing to the window. It might have been possible – although it was not uttered loud enough for them to hear it – that Evangeline cursed under her breath at that moment.
She turned back to Lizzie. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. It seems you’ll be starting the revolution from the dead.”
Lizzie ran over to the window, and as she did so, she was certain of a peculiar sensation beneath her feet. It was like being in a lift, slowly travelling down to the ground floor.
When she reached the window, she realised she wasn’t going mad.
The entire base of the tower was on fire – and the ground the tower was stood upon was slowly coming apart, like a fissure was opening up in the Earth. There was no sudden jolt, no sudden movement of crashing downwards; the dirt and the gravel beneath them was slowly sinking away, and the tower was going with it.
Everything passed in a blur, as Evangeline swished away from them and glanced at what was presumably a teleport bracelet. “Well – it’s been a pleasure –”
“No,” Lizzie ran over to her, but Evangeline stepped away with ease. “You won’t let him die, you can’t, it will release him from the Graveyard and the feedback loop with end the universe.”
But Evangeline leaned in, and whispered something terrifying.
"I don't care."
Lizzie stepped away from her, with a grimace etched across her face. What her and the Doctor were going through, and the torment she was forcing the universe to endure – and with the flick of a switch, she could stop it all.
“Remember what I said,” Lizzie told her.
Evangeline didn’t say anything before she was teleported away.
Lizzie looked at the Doctor, and then out of the window. She could hear it, the battle below – the screams of the dying and the injured, and the crackling of the almighty fires licking up at the tower’s brickwork. And Lizzie was divided. For once, she couldn’t go to the aid of both, there was no nice way out of this. The slaughter outside would continue and the universe was going to end, and Lizzie had no option.
The ground was falling, slowly beneath her.
And they were sinking into the flames.
***
Her supernatural-counselling group thing had its final meeting of the session tonight, and she wanted to go.
They were all there – Jasper, Jac, Chloe, Roger, George, Ken and Tammy, and herself.
“Today we’re going to talk about moving on,” Jasper said, as he opened the group.
Oh, for god’s sake. Of all the things Lizzie wanted to talk about, this wasn’t one of them.
“How have you all moved on from your experiences?” Jasper provided a few pointers. “What… coping techniques, perhaps. How long did it take?”
There was a brief spell of silence. The questions Jasper always asked them were big, and people weren’t ever in a hurry to be the first one to open up their inner-most emotions.
“Five minutes a day,” Jac said. “I miss her for five minutes a day. I look at photos of her, but that’s it. As far as I can go.”
They all nodded. Of course, they all knew ‘her’ was Jac’s daughter. By now, they’d become well-accustomed to each other’s problems.
The other participants in the group spoke in turn, about their experiences. Some of them were less cold and logical than Jac. Ken said he hadn’t ever come to terms with the spirits that haunted him. Roger said it was just a matter of time.
“Lizzie,” Jasper turned to her, sensing that she was being even quieter than her usual quiet self. “What about you?”
“I think,” Lizzie said. “People get moving on wrong. They think it’s forgetting about it, and just putting it in the past. Which it isn’t. With a lot of things, you can’t do that. Moving on is just learning to live with it. But… I don’t know how that’s possible.”
They all nodded in approval at that. “Thank you, Lizzie,” Jasper gave her a reassuring smile. “That was lovely.”
The meeting lasted another half an hour, before they wrapped things up. The gang said their farewells – maybe some of them would come back, maybe they wouldn’t. Now that their ‘course’ was over, it wasn’t so important. But all of them enjoyed it. It had helped all of them come to terms with it.
On her way out, beneath the orange glow of a street lamp, Lizzie’s phone rang. She ducked into a bus shelter and answered it.
It was Kym. And she was crying.
“Lizzie, it’s – it’s Leo.”
***
The tower was still sinking beneath them, and yet, the Doctor and Lizzie were calm. They could feel the floor heating up beneath them, as the fire slowly rose, and both of them had that ever-present feeling that it would soon engulf them. Lizzie sat beside the Doctor, as she fiddled with the wiring in the throne, and wrapped a teleport bracelet around his wrist.
“This is going to get you off the planet”
As soon as Lizzie said that, the Doctor made a move to try and take it off, citing, through his panting breaths, that he wouldn’t – that he couldn’t leave her there. But she ignored him, and put the bracelet back on him, and he was too tired to struggle this time. Finally, Lizzie turned away, so she could wipe the tears from her eyes without him noticing.
“Why are you so upset?”
Lizzie glanced out of the windows, just briefly. Now that night had settled, the flames and the explosions seemed even more vivid – and everything surrounding the tower seemed to be in a crimson glow… perhaps from the flames, or perhaps from the blood.
“Because look at what's happened.”
She hated it – she hated looking out at the battle below. Saving the Doctor seemed to mean nothing now, in contrast to the hell she’d created out there.
The Doctor tried to say something reassuring. “Lizzie… fascism created this. Evangeline created this. And you stood up to it. You saved me, and you did it because you had to stand up to Evangeline and her people.”
Lizzie snapped at him, then. “And there’s the difference between you and me, because you can look at this carnage and bat an eyelid, and I can’t. This wasn't ever meant to happen. Those people came out, in support of you. And that scared me - because look at how far people went today. Look at the... carnage that happened."
"I know, Elizabeth, and -"
"What sort of universe is that? Where kids are gonna wake up without their parents, because some idiot decided that they wanted to hate other people? Even the most... random guy fighting for the ShadowStar, he's probably got children, and they'll have lost their dad, because Evangeline Cullengate decided she was better than everyone else. And yet, what choice have we got? When people like her are threatening to cleanse populations, and ruin lives on an enormous scale? And I can't do it. Because no matter how much I want to help, I won't ever be able to. The universe will always be dark, and bitter, and hateful, and that will just cause more hate."
There was an awkward silence between them, then – if one were to see them as they were then, one could mistake the scene from their earliest meetings, before they’d changed at all.
The Doctor couldn’t think of anything to say, apart from the truth.
“But that’s what makes you brilliant. Because you value life.”
Lizzie shook her head. She didn’t even know what life meant. The only way she’d been able to cope with it, was by creating fantasies in her head, and even then, coping was a loose term for Lizzie Darwin. Perhaps she did scrape through every single day, but did she cope? Personally, Lizzie doubted it.
The Doctor continued. “The girl who values life, but not her own. The girl who helps, but can’t ask for help.”
This was not a conversation Lizzie wanted to have at that moment. So, she changed the subject – the fire was close to them now. “I’ll stay – I’ll find another way out.”
"You couldn't have done anything more," the Doctor ignored her. "What happened today was awful – but it proved that you are incredible. Because you try – you always try. Today, you saw how dark the universe can get, you saw the disgusting effect people like Evangeline Cullengate have on the universe – but you're still here, trying to save me. The universe is impossible, and hard, and horrific – and all we can do is try and see the good in it as well. But there will come days, like today, when that is so, so hard."
Then, the Doctor stood up with surprising ease, and walked to the centre of the chamber. “When we’re done here, Elizabeth – when we’ve saved the universe from the Memory Graveyard – it’s going to be my turn to help you. Just as you’ve always helped me.”
The Doctor’s teleport bracelet lit up green, and he vanished in a flash of blue light.
It was just her in the tower, and when she glanced out of the window, she could see the battle dwindling below her – except, gradually it was growing closer, as the tower sank further and further into the mud. In its place was a field blanketed in corpses, and as she gagged, she forced herself to turn away, and listen to the crackling of the blaze beneath her.
Lizzie knew how she was going to get out of this one.
She did not know whether she was going to get out of it alive.
***
Lizzie had practically thrown herself on the next bus, and when it arrived outside the hospital, she ran inside as fast as she could. Faster than she’d ever done before. Kym was stood outside the room, her make-up streaked, and more upset than Lizzie had ever seen her.
“Erm,” she murmured, trying to explain it. “I don’t – I don’t know, I found him cus I popped over to see you, and he was just – just lying there –”
Kym was actually just making Lizzie more panicky. “Okay Kym please shut up, you’re just stressing me out.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
A young woman in blue scrubs walked over to them. “Elizabeth Darwin?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m Dr Gao. I’ve been treating Leo. I need you to come and speak to my consultant?”
“Oh, erm, sure, can I see him?”
“Of course, but you really need to speak to the consultant first.”
Lizzie reluctantly followed the woman, to a little man at the end of the corridor, hunched over but dressed in a neat, grey suit. “You’re the… next of kin?” he said, remarkably tactlessly.
“Erm, yeah.”
“I’m George Siddiq, consultant cardiologist and clinical lead of our cardiothoracic ward here.”
His next words shattered her entire life. In fact, they were the worst words she’d heard in her life.
***
Lizzie threw herself forward.
The glass of the window smashed and lashed at her skin, and she fell from the tower – but it was only a few feet before she hit the ground, and her fall was broken by the soft dirt and gravel mattress she crashed into.
Except she was still moving downwards.
As Lizzie looked around her, she realised that the tower was not just sinking into the ground – instead, the entire area of ground around the base, for about a hundred by a hundred metres, had become a whirlpool of soil and gravel and rocks and stones, spiralling downwards to the place where the tower was becoming submerged in its earthy grave. And Lizzie had fallen straight into this funnel. She realised as she tried to crawl out of it, that the mud and the arid dirt she was gripping onto was coming away beneath her hands, the thinness of chalk, and falling into the almighty depth below her.
As Lizzie looked up, she could see the blackness of the sky, the same colour as the dust she was attempting to climb out of – but she could not see the moon as it was hidden behind the far rims of the pit, and the only light was the terrifying red glow coming from the bit. The dirt beneath her was dry, and the smoke left an acrid taste in the back of her throat, and her eyes stung and watered as the dust snuck past her eyelashes and nestled deep in her eyes. Her breaths were becoming further and further apart, and shallower and shallower, as oxygen became diluted from the billowing smoke rising from below. The dark gas filled her lungs, and she thought of the blood through her, thinning and slowing, and gradually she felt her limbs dozing off, as if there was nothing to worry about at all. Her eyes were closing – not just because of the ash snowing from above, but because she had no energy to keep them open.
Briefly Lizzie was woken, as she realised that the ground’s swallowing speed was increasing, and her foot had been sucked into the deadness of the earth. The quicksand-like qualities of the ground made panic burn through her, as the explosion had burned through the tower, and her survival instincts leapt into life, causing her to try and thrash her way out of the ground eating away at her – but as she dug the dirt just frittered away, spilling back into her face. As a globule of soil filled her mouth she spat it out, but more of the dry, crumbly mud entered her eyes.
The ground kept folding away from her, and Lizzie tried as hard as she could to find something to place her other foot on, so she could lever herself further up the continual landslide, but before she could do so the dirt gobbled up her other foot.
Now Lizzie was fully in the jaws of the landslide, and she could feel herself, slowly falling backwards, as the grubby grave whisked her slowly, but surely, into the mouth of oblivion, the almighty tower having fully disappeared behind her. In its place, there was a great, raging pit of hell – an almighty hole of fire, burning and licking up at the ground, busily digesting brickwork and beams and slate, and rocks and boulders and stones, and as Lizzie glanced back at it, she could see one of the irises from the Doctor’s chamber, the petals slowly catching, before they dropped off into nothing. The whirlpool was still carrying her down, and before long, Lizzie would face the same fate as the flowers.
She tried to grip on to something above her – she wasn’t sure what, but anything to help her out – but the sandy soil gorged her arms, rendering all of her limbs immobilised. A strange, muggy heat was swallowing her, and she felt sweat bead on her top lip, and her heart was screaming in her ribcage. In those brief seconds, Lizzie wasn’t even sure where she was, as it felt as if a camera was zooming out and taking the whole landscape into focus, showing her as just a tiny speck in the ocean of a dead universe.
Lizzie’s legs were so close to the flames now, and suddenly, Lizzie thought of how silly she was, to ever think there was a way out of this, as a wave of dirt cascaded upon her from above, filling her oesophagus, larynx and trachea chockfull of death. The stable ground above her seemed a mile away, a distant hope – but when the dirt filled her eyes, it became obscured forever. Lizzie tried to say something, like ‘OH MY GOD LET ME OUT I’M DYING PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE’, but no noise came, as the ground began to silence her. Her arms waved rapidly as if she were enjoying a concert, as she felt the fires stroke her Conversed feet – except the concert was her absent screams, and the audience were the disciples of the chalky deadness dragging her down into the depths of despair as if it were a giant sand-timer, representing her life, and she was getting ready to enter the bottom, fiery section.
What else would have finished her off? To die, alone, on a place far away from anything she’d ever thought of as home. With nothing but pain and despair surrounding her, with one, final cynical breath of smoke and dirt and blood, Lizzie gave into the flames, disappearing into the flaming pit of hell.
Lizzie burned to death.
***
Lizzie sat down, awkwardly, with her arms folded. She expected this to be the moment where she should start gushing beside his hospital bed, with some longwinded and beautiful and eloquently worded speech. Except, there was nothing like that – just a strange, awkward silence.
She slipped her bag down, and looked at him. He was so vulnerable. He had been hers, not so long ago, but it was as if now, the world had taken him and crushed him and beaten him up, just to prove to her that actually, nothing could ever truly belong to her. Lizzie did not believe that, but it was hard not to. His eyes were closed, and an oxygen mask was fixed over his face. There were tubes and wires and the ever-present beep beep, beep beep, beep beep, quietly emulating from the lifeless machine.
Lizzie felt a bit stupid, just sat there, doing nothing, and so she took his hand, again, slightly awkwardly. It had been bandaged up, and it had been a rushed job, the Doctors concerned to continue with more pressing parts of their work. His hand seemed vulnerable, and thin, and skeletal, and it was stupid because it was exactly the same hand she’d seen not that long ago. Nothing much could have happened to it in that time – but it had. She held the hand, hoping, and willing, for the fingers to press back, and to grip hers. They didn’t, and she closed her eyes, directing all sensation to her finger tips, as if it would help her find the slightest sensation.
“You know,” a smooth, silky voice came from the corner of the room. “You should talk to him.”
Lizzie almost laughed given the absurdity of the situation.
“How did you get in here?” Lizzie turned to Ulysses. He was perched on top of a cabinet in the side of the room, in perfect stillness – the sort of stillness that can only be captured by a feline.
“I snuck past the nurses. They did not notice my presence.”
“Good, well,” Lizzie got ready to say something else, but didn’t. “I’m aware of your presence, so please go away.”
Unintentionally harsh, but she didn’t care.
Ulysses didn’t say anything, but he just looked down at her, his amber eyes staring deep into her soul, trying to make it realise something.
“It isn’t just something they do in the movies, you know. Talk to him.”
“You’re just… part of my conscience.”
“Ever the cynic, Elizabeth Darwin. Oh wait – that’s not you.”
Ulysses was being annoyingly right. He leapt down from his spot on top of the cabinet, and prowled over, nuzzling up against her leg. “Go on.”
“I don’t know what to…”
“He’s the love of your life and he’s dying.”
The words hit her, harder than she’d expected them to. He was only in her head. But to her, he was so real – he was her coping mechanism, he was her companion, even if he didn’t really exist.
She hadn’t believed it when the consultant told her. Cardiac arrest. Lizzie had told him, she’d said it, over and over, Leo was healthy, Leo was fine, young, he loved a life. All the consultant had said was that cardiac arrests can occur without warning. An electrical malfunction, or something, that stopped his heart pumping.
Leo Akram did not have long to live, and the lifetime of words she had to say to him would have to be condensed into… what? Half an hour? An hour at the most?
Of everything the Doctor had shown her, nothing would be as hard or as impossible as that.
Lizzie sighed out loud, and just decided to say something, no matter how rubbish or terrible it sounded.
“I’m sorry, I’m so so so sorry,” it just spilled out, all those apologies that had been building up. That was all she could think of to say. Lizzie couldn’t even believe the situation. She was in a not-real-world, and the love of her life was going to die. It was too impossible to believe.
So instead of saying anything, she reached into her coat pocket, and pulled out a crumpled post-it note. It was the one from their first date, when they’d played Pictionary. He had never guessed what it was, and eventually, it had just slipped away. And they’d both forgotten about it.
Lizzie unfolded the note, to reveal a crude drawing of a human heart.
She ran a hand down her face, as it dawned on her how disgustingly fitting it was. But that heart, in her hand, was Leo’s heart. Lizzie took his hand, and unfolded it, and put the crumbled up post-it note inside, as if she were gifting it him back to save his life, after he had given it to her.
As his fingers touched it, it was as if the heart on the paper began to beat.
Leo’s eyes opened.
“Hello,” he murmured. And he let out a small smile.
“I’m really sorry.”
“Liz – it’s not your fault. Oh my god, though, this is mad, you’re apologising for killing me in your head. Only you…”
That was what happened when two existential depressed lunatics were a couple, Lizzie thought.
“Please, Liz,” Leo continued, and she squeezed his hand. “I know you feel responsible for this, but don’t. This – this wasn’t you, you didn’t do this.”
Lizzie wiped her eyes, and then she wiped Leo’s.
“Just…,” Leo paused again, snivelling. “Don’t blame yourself. Promise me. Promise me you won’t.”
Lizzie didn’t even care what he was saying, for she would have promised him anything at this point. She’d have promised him anything if it meant that he’d come back to her. What a ridiculous notion. She was mourning someone in her head.
Except, he wasn’t just someone. Her coping mechanism had been cruelly snatched away from her.
She knew it wouldn’t make him come back to her. But if it meant he was happy with her, then she would promise it without hesitation.
“I – I promise.”
And Leo smiled, and his broken smile made her smile, because even after it had been destroyed, it still held that charm and that intrigue, and she found him just as beautiful as she did when they first met. Leo was an eye smiler – when he truly smiled, deep down in his soul, his eyes lit up as well. She remembered, all those months ago, when they’d met at Kym’s birthday party, and she’d caught his eye. She’d seen the light and the life dancing inside it and singing, as if nobody was around.
She looked into his eyes, and she held the dance of them, as if, perhaps, she could learn the steps, and interpret the dance herself.
It was no use – it would be truly unique to him.
“You make me so happy,” Lizzie suddenly said, and she said it without thinking, still so mesmerised by him. “In a world that was just meant to kill me, we – we, we defied it, and we’ve been happy.”
Leo tried to nod, but he couldn’t move his head – there was only the faint movement left. Nothing hurt more than his absence of movement – once upon a time he had been so vivid in how he walked, throwing himself from place to place.
“We – we’ve been happy,” Leo said, but it was a whisper now. It was as if gradually he were being taken apart – first his movements, and now his words. “We showed them, hey?”
“Yeah,” she started stroking his hands now, trying to feel the blood pumping through him – trying to salvage for the last scrap of life. “We showed them.”
He took a deep breath, and then he fell back – not that there was anything to fall back onto – it was as if he fell back into himself, and was beginning to dwindle away. She gripped his hand tighter, trying to hold him, as if somehow, she could prevent him from falling away from her.
“Have adventures, Liz.”
He managed a smile then, and she knew that she would. One day.
“Promise me, yeah? Just live. Live as much as you can.”
Lizzie nodded, and she tried to speak, but she couldn’t.
“And, hey,” Leo murmured. “Maybe you’ll find me.”
Lizzie took his hand and she kissed it. His skin was so dry and so dead. There were a few moments of peace, as her lips touched him. Ulysses was curled up on the covers, but he was not asleep, and he was not content. He was watching – keeping guard, making sure nobody hurt his master.
She blinked, and then realised that Leo was gone.
The electronic heartbeat had stopped, to be replaced with one, long, cold, harsh, monotonous, beep.
Lizzie took her lips away from his hand, and she gently laid it against the bed, refusing to let it slip lifelessly down, trying to prevent any hallmark of his gone-ness as she possibly could.
A nurse was stood over the bed, and Ulysses gently skulked off the bed. He nuzzled up against her leg, purring quietly.
Purring sadly.
The nurse checked her watch, and a doctor arrived as well. Leo’s eyes were closed, and they said they would give Lizzie a few minutes. It was all so simple, and so routine. She was sure that the staff here had done it a million times before, but for her it meant so much more than a million times would to them.
Lizzie did not want a few minutes, though – she wanted the whole lifetime. She wanted all the memories and the years and the times that just evaporated in seconds. They were hers, they belong to her. The future belongs to nobody, she told herself, as if it were some kind of reassurance. It meant nothing.
Then she remembered what Leo said, and remembered the chance she’d been given.
Lizzie picked up her bag, and closely followed by her faithful black cat, she left the room.
The door swung shut behind her, as she left for more adventures.
***
I created a heaven to escape from you.
A place in my mind, a place I could run to whenever it got too tough. Where everything I had ever suffered from wasn’t there – just the good things. You weren’t there, Depression. In that place in my mind, I could be free from you. Instead, I was happy. I saw joy at every corner, and you did not corrupt my world as you do in real life. I dreamt of that place, so much – whenever I was lying in bed, trying to get some sleep that would probably never come, I would use that heaven to soothe me. I was free from Loneliness as well. I had so many friends around me, so many beautiful people, and we had so many good days together. And because of this, neglect was gone too.
Above all, one of those people was so much more beautiful than anyone I have ever met in my life. I dreamt of Leo Akram because he was someone who understood me, and even when he didn’t, he accepted. Perhaps it is true that you only find the perfect person in your dreams – because I dreamt up Leo as the perfect companion to me. Someone who had been just as sad, just as lonely, and just as awkward. Our relationship was so perfect – the sort of perfect one can only ever get when it’s not real.
In that world, I saw Beauty. I saw Life. I saw Love.
But then you entered that place, Depression. You toxified it. You made it bleed, and you ruined it forever – the one place I could escape from you, and you made me feel guilty about it. You killed the most beautiful person I had ever met, and I will never be able to live truly in my dreams again because of you. Well done – you’ve got my whole mind, you’ve polluted everything.
I could die.
I have nothing better, why should I keep living if you’re going to keep torturing me?
But I promised Leo. My beautiful Leo Akram, I promised I would have more adventures because of him. I can’t let him down on that – even if I want to die, even if it pains me so, so much to even move, I am going to do it because I will not let myself be beaten by what you’ve done to me, Depression.
I won’t die because of you.
Lizzie reached a hand out of the dirt, and placed it as far as it would reach. Lizzie gripped onto nothing – a burning nothing, as the ash and the cinders and the gravel was roasting – but it didn’t matter, because in her head she was gripping onto something so much stronger.
She pulled.
All of her weight, on that one arm, holding onto nothing at all but what she’d promised someone who had never even existed. It was ridiculous, but perhaps rather fitting for her. Although the stones disintegrated beneath her palm, with the sheer force of which she mustered, Lizzie flung herself forwards, and, although it was just by not-even-a-centimetre, Lizzie began to crawl her way up through the whirlpool.
Just that had been agony, as the smoke continued to rage, harsh on her eyes and on her breathing. Lizzie had gasped as she’d risen, just slightly, and she’d taken in as much pungent, choking air as she possibly could. The heat from below was unbearable, matting her entire body with sweat, and it did not help the constant, throbbing migraine that had come into life in the back of her head. Her mouth was so dry, the only liquid being the blood from her gums, as she gritted her teeth to hide from the pain assaulting her from all sides, and her entire body had been sliced at by sharp rocks and stones, and by the thin blades of glass from the broken tower windows.
It wasn’t going to be possible. She could see the rim of the pit so far above her, and it seemed like miles away – miles of crumbling gravel and dirt and earth and stone.
But she would not die.
She flung both arms forward this time, and mustering up all the sheer and undiluted emotion she could find, Lizzie Darwin took hold of nothing and grabbed. When she thought of how far she come, Lizzie knew that she could not just give up on this now – the lonely little girl who’d had bad dreams, and then the teenager who had become disillusioned with the universe, and then the young woman who had travelled through it, and seen how beautiful it could be. Lizzie had come far and she would not let that go. If that was how far Lizzie had come already, then she knew that she could go further. Even if her mind was constantly bogged down by the dreadful thoughts that frequently tormented it, Lizzie knew that if she could make her way through this, she could deal with it.
Lizzie pulled herself up further – although everything in her wanted to give up. Her bones were dead, her muscles were shattered, her head was ringing in agony and even her thoughts were telling her that this was even more stupid than her usual life decisions. But at the same time, there was a reserve somewhere deep inside her, forcing her to keep going. The Doctor had taught her that – she’d always been a determined force to be reckoned with, but she’d also been restrained, by people and by herself. But now she knew that when she believed in something, Lizzie Darwin would muster up the bravery to force herself onwards.
Lizzie moved further up the walls of the pit.
The Doctor had taught her a lot of things, and as she did so, at that moment, she saw the beauty on this dead and desolate world. Lizzie had moved enough, to be able to see the moon above the rim, shining brightly and beautifully. And… there were stars as well. Even when everything was dreadful, and she wanted nothing more than to give up, there was something happy too. Lizzie gazed at those stars, and she decided that she was going to see them. She wanted her happiness.
And although self-confidence was really not her jam, Lizzie decided that she deserved that happiness.
Then came a voice – a rather surprising voice.
“Yo, Lizzinator.”
Lizzie turned, to see Kym, chilling out on the landslide beside her, completely oblivious to the hell beneath them. At that moment, Lizzie mused over why she’d created Kym in her head – perhaps it was because of her happiness, even in the darkest of situations. Kym’s aviator shades were perched on her nose, and her make-up done exquisitely. She wore a tank top and shorts, as if she were dressed for the beach. Even in the depths of hell, Kym Gomez was determined to make an effort. And upon Kym’s lap, sat Ulysses.
“Btw,” Kym continued. “Calling you Lizzinator because it sounds epic, and you’re doing something pretty epic right now.”
“Thanks,” Lizzie spluttered, only just realising how breathless she was, and how much dirt was in her mouth, as she edged a bit further up the mountain, only to be rewarded by a face-full of gravel.
“Just wanted to say, Lizzinator, you’re doing really well. Like, girl, I’m hella proud right now, so keep going babe. You’re gonna get there in the end, I know you will.”
Lizzie gave her an appreciative smile, ignoring the sharp pain in her jaw as she did so. “Thanks, haha.”
Ulysses crept forward towards her. “I do hope that by the end of this, you will join me for a glass of wine and a tete-a-tete. You’d better get through it, Elizabeth. I need you, you’re the only person who’s sane enough for me to speak to.”
Lizzie shook her head, as she tried to move upwards more, but sliced her hand on a blade of broken glass. It meant nothing. They were created to be perfect, created as an escape. Kym and Ulysses meant nothing to her, they couldn’t even be real. What was the point in having somewhere if it was just going to be blatantly unrealistic?
“You’re… you’re not real,” Lizzie spoke in between her heavy breaths and dry coughing. “You’re in my head.”
But then Ulysses spoke. “Oh, my darling Elizabeth. Just because we’re in your head, doesn’t mean we’re not real.”
Lizzie almost stopped crawling then, due to how spellbound she was by what Ulysses had said. But then she reached forward, and crawled forward, and as she glanced around her, Lizzie could see the flames – not far beneath her, but much further beneath her than they’d been before. Perhaps she would meet Ulysses for that tete-a-tete. Having that place to go was important.
When Lizzie blinked again, she saw that the two of them had gone.
“Hey, sis.”
Sat in their place, was her sister.
“I – Iris,” Lizzie muttered. Lizzie had aimed to sound a little happier than she did, but in her own defence, under those current circumstances it was quite difficult.
“You’re my big sister. I need you.”
Lizzie was a useless sister. And besides, Iris had a mum, and a dad, who loved her beyond words. Iris had better people than her to love – but as she looked over at that woman, who Lizzie had known since that young woman was a little girl, she hauled herself further up that ground. Lizzie couldn’t just let her go, not like that, and so she buried her insecurities.
“Don’t tell anyone I said that, I have a reputation to keep up.”
And suddenly, Lizzie laughed. That was new – or at least, it felt new, and she wanted to do it again.
“Also, because I’m just in your head,” Iris added. “You essentially just laughed at your own joke.”
Lizzie grimaced at her own narcissism and took hold of a clump of burning ash, and crawled just a little bit further up; clearly her mind hadn’t quite given up on its own happiness just yet.
“It’s all stars, stars, stars, Lizzie,” Iris mused. She was right. Anyone who’d been looking into Lizzie’s life recently would have been incredibly fed up by the constant talk of stars. “But you know what? That’s because you’re not afraid to hope for them, even when you’re hating the universe.”
Iris stood up, and pointed to the stars above them. “I’ll be here for you, Lizzie. When this is all over.”
Lizzie wanted those days. She wanted that time with Iris, to be with someone who saw so much hope and wonder in the universe – and so she gazed at the stars Iris loved so much, and she dreamed of them.
And Lizzie rose further from the pit.
When Lizzie looked over again, Iris was gone – and this time, she was replaced by a woman in a sort of creamy-white colour, which most people would be concerned about getting horribly muddy. A pashmina was draped around her, along with the most hideously orange Nike trainers Lizzie had ever seen.
“Darling, thank the lord you’re alright,” Cioné breathed a sigh of relief, even though Lizzie wasn’t quite sure what she was saying, considering she was in complete agony trying to pull herself out of a burning hole in the ground.
“Nice shoes,” Lizzie observed.
Cioné seemed rather pleased with that remark. “Thank you! They’re very me, I think.”
Delightfully quirky, and without a care what people thought of her, Cioné decided to change the subject to one rather more appropriate. “Sorry, me, worthwhile conversation, bit of an oxymoron, anyway…”
Lizzie had quite liked the worthless conversation. It was a nice push back to reality, one that she thought she needed. All her life she’d been a bit of a dreamer, as had become even more relevant. But even Lizzie wasn’t sure she could ever have dreamed up her current situation.
“You, dear Lizzie,” Cioné continued. “Brought our glorious family together. You brought all of our uniqueness, and quirkiness, and created something truly beautiful from it. And from that, I won’t ever be able to thank you enough. Keep going, lovely girl – and I will see you again.”
Lizzie admired those shoes one more time, and she decided she didn’t want to be awkward, or hide herself from anyone anymore. To be herself was what mattered, to be confident in who she was – and that would help her to be happier.
Lizzie rose further from the pit.
The end was in sight now, and she put past the burning ash and cinders that roasted in the joints between her knuckles, and pricked her skin, and she forgot about the banging headache. Lizzie embodied her resilience and grit, and she forced herself up that scorching whirlpool that was determined to suck her deeper and deeper inside.
“You’re so nearly there.”
Maggie was beside her now. By her side, as Maggie Shepherd always was. The closest thing that Lizzie had ever had to a mother – of course she would support her during the journey.
Suddenly, Lizzie’s breath exhausted itself, and she slipped slightly down the mountain, the ground deteriorating beneath her. But Lizzie didn’t fall, because Maggie’s hands were resting on hers – reassuring her, calming her – showing her support, and that she would always be there to help.
Maggie would always be there for her, no matter how hard things got.
“I know you feel alone, Lizzie. I know you’ve always felt that way, all your life. But you’re not – and I won’t ever stop telling you this. But if you’re going to listen to me, at any point, now’s the time. We’re never alone in this world, love. Even if everyone vanished on Earth – there’d always be someone with you. Now… stay strong, love.”
And when Lizzie looked, Maggie was gone – but she did not feel alone. Because Lizzie knew that Maggie would always be there to welcome her home – and that there would always be people around her, even when it didn’t feel like it.
Lizzie made one, final, push, her entire body scraping over a field of spiky rocks, and stones, and soft gravel, and choking dust and ash. When she was over the threshold of the burning pit, she collapsed on the verge of the pathway to hell, her entire body giving up. Perhaps this was what it was like, to be so near the edge of life – with no energy left in the world, Lizzie lay back in the dirt, and she closed her eyes.
But as they began to shut, Lizzie saw one, final figure beside her.
Leo Akram. The perfect companion – the perfect person for her to love.
Her eyes shut.
But Lizzie was content.
Some very brave people had taught her some very brave things.
Lizzie had learned that even when something is in your head, it doesn’t make it not real.
Lizzie had learned that even when the night is blackest, the stars are still there – and that you just need to dream of them.
Lizzie had learned that she needed to embrace herself – to be quirky, to be unique.
Lizzie had learned that there were always people around her – and that no matter how alone she felt, she would never, ever be alone.
And finally, Lizzie had learned to love.
Her eyes opened again, as if she were trying to look at something – perhaps she was trying to see how far she’d come, and what a different person she was now. And yet, that person was broken. She’d been broken by everything. Her depression had gutted her, the governments she so hated had been victorious, and now she was alone, on a desolate plain of death and pain. Lizzie Darwin was content, that even though she had been such a failure, she had at least learned the most important things.
All she had to do now, was give up, and let the emptiness wash over her.
But as she looked up at the moon and the stars, she heard a voice.
It was the Doctor.
“We’re going to help you, Lizzie Darwin. It won’t be easy. There will be dark, dark days – but in the end, you’ll be alright.”
And Lizzie Darwin learned her final lesson.
To ask for help.
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Next time - the bad-dream girlRather unfortunately, it is the end of the universe.
In an empty house, the last spark flickering at the end of everything, there is a girl. She lies alone at night, tortured by her dreams. She is terrified by her thoughts, haunted by her memories. For once, Lizzie Darwin must not only help the universe. She must help herself. And Lizzie still has a story to tell. |