“Can you confirm?” the strange woman looked up at her over half-moon spectacles. “You are Margaret Shepherd?”
Maggie was sat with her legs crossed and her hands on her lap, looking nervously at the slightly intimidating woman across from her, in the office, on the gigantic space-station. What was perhaps slightly more intimidating, was that above her head, according to the lovely man who had led her in, was a star being born.
However, Maggie decided to take it all in her stride. Granted, it was a lot to take in – another strange woman turning up at your house in a box, a bit like that of Lizzie’s friend – and then saying that Lizzie was ill, and needed help. Still, she’d already seen the girl, a daughter-like figure to her, whizz off into time and space with a rather dishy gentleman, so Maggie took it all in her stride.
She’d been sat down with a cup of tea at the time, watching a rerun of The Chase and cheering to herself when she got the questions right, attempting not to spill the tea whenever she did so. Then, there had been a knock at the door, and the woman had been stood there, holding a rather sullen looking gnome in her hand.
“To replace the one my husband destroyed,” she said, an apologetic look etched across her face. The woman, who was apparently called Cioné had refused a cup of tea, even though Maggie had made up a pot. Maggie led her through to the living room.
“You see, it’s not often I refuse a cup of tea – but this is urgent. Maggie – you see, Lizzie is ill,” Cioné had said. Maggie had side-lined her cup of tea instantly, and cut the power to the television before you could say ‘It’s time to face the Chaser’, and immediately listened to what Cioné, and apparently married to Lizzie’s rather dishy friend, had to say.
“We can take you to see her, if you’d like?” Cioné offered. “In space.”
“Oh yes, I’d like that very much,” Maggie stood up and took her mug to the kitchen. “Just give me a second,” Maggie had bustled through the hallway. “Do I need anything?”
“Anything like what?” Cioné asked, bemused.
“I don’t know,” Maggie’s head popped around the doorframe. “Welly boots? A raincoat?”
“No dear, don’t worry,” Cioné reassured her. “Just grab your spacesuit and we’ll be on our way.”
Maggie’s face fell, and then suddenly she realised Cioné was mucking about. “Ooh, you’re even more of a minx than your husband.”
Cioné led Maggie out into the garden, thinking that Maggie had probably used ‘minx’ in the wrong context. A garden shed that hadn’t been there previously was stood upon the spot the Doctor had previously wrecked with his strange police box.
“And yes,” Maggie turned to her, wagging a bony finger at Cioné. “I do know what minx means, thank you very much. Just because I’m old, dear, doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun.”
Maggie pushed open the door of the shed, and Cioné, who was busy admiring Maggie’s collection of gnomes, heard her gasped, and feared that the lovely old woman was having a heart attack.
“Bloody hell!”
“Bit of fun?” Cioné said under her breath. “With women too?” Maggie, thankfully, hadn’t heard under the sound of her own cursing – cursing that, from an old lady, one would find quite shocking.
Maggie turned around and revealed that she had heard, saying, with a stern look on her face, “I’m game for anything.”
Oops, Cioné thought. Put my foot in it again.
Cioné followed Maggie into her TARDIS, and threw her patchwork jacket up over one of the coral beams stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Meanwhile, Maggie leaned up against one of the beams, perhaps not as shaken up as she might have been. After all, she always thought it strange that this Doctor chap and Lizzie had travelled around in such a cramped box. Especially if he was married.
“You okay?” Cioné asked her, as she strode to the console, trying to look epic and mysterious, but in fact just looking a bit stupid.
Every year, Maggie saw people in the world who said, blimey, this year is the weirdest of my life. Maggie put it down to the fact that yes, as time progressed, new things that hadn’t ever happened before would happen – and because those new things are new, and haven’t happened before, then they would seem weird. She’d proposed that idea to her son once, who had laughed at her. Lizzie had rather agreed, however. Hence why both of them were reasonably open with the concept of the TARDIS.
However, it didn’t stop her being in awe of the magnificence of the world. Perhaps that was why Maggie found herself happy in her old age – because she didn’t stop being amazed.
“Oh, me?” she replied to Cioné, only just realising that she’s said something. “Yes… yes, I’m – well, I’m worried about Lizzie, I suppose.”
“It’s been a struggle for her,” Cioné placed a hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “And there’s no quick fix – but in the end, I think we’ll get there. Oh look!” she suddenly exclaimed. “We’re here!”
“Blimey. That was quick. I should like one of these to do my shopping with.”
When Cioné led her outside, they had moved! And… they were in space. When Maggie looked out, she saw stars, stars like the sort she had never known if they were truly real or not – the sort that she was used to seeing as a screensaver more than anything else. It was beautiful, and although Maggie had long-accepted old age, and was no longer scared of death, there was something reaffirming about seeing those stars – as if she were truly living.
Cioné beckoned her down a corridor, and when Maggie turned, she began to get a grasp of the spaceship they were on. The two of them, at that moment, were on an almost circular corridor, and from there, Maggie could see that there was another corridor branching off, and leading to a great, central Hub. It seemed that this hub had several rings, like Saturn perhaps, although the central structure seemed more like the Shard, or another huge skyscraper.
“Where are we, then?” Maggie asked, following Cioné towards the central hub of the spaceship.
“The ShadowStar Alliance. They’re like a sort of, space intervention agency thing.”
Cioné led Maggie through the centre of the ship, and into a lift. Eventually, she said goodbye to Cioné, and a man took her the rest of the way to the office she was currently sat in, with the intimidating woman watching her. It was a glass office, giving a beautiful view of the stars, and making Maggie feel almost as if she were suspended in the vacuum of space.
The woman with the half-moon spectacles signed her form, and looked up at her.
“Margaret, let me explain what is happening. The universe has ended. Elizabeth has travelled halfway across the universe to find us, and is very ill. Furthermore, I should think we all have approximately one day to live. Are we clear?”
Maggie was sat with her legs crossed and her hands on her lap, looking nervously at the slightly intimidating woman across from her, in the office, on the gigantic space-station. What was perhaps slightly more intimidating, was that above her head, according to the lovely man who had led her in, was a star being born.
However, Maggie decided to take it all in her stride. Granted, it was a lot to take in – another strange woman turning up at your house in a box, a bit like that of Lizzie’s friend – and then saying that Lizzie was ill, and needed help. Still, she’d already seen the girl, a daughter-like figure to her, whizz off into time and space with a rather dishy gentleman, so Maggie took it all in her stride.
She’d been sat down with a cup of tea at the time, watching a rerun of The Chase and cheering to herself when she got the questions right, attempting not to spill the tea whenever she did so. Then, there had been a knock at the door, and the woman had been stood there, holding a rather sullen looking gnome in her hand.
“To replace the one my husband destroyed,” she said, an apologetic look etched across her face. The woman, who was apparently called Cioné had refused a cup of tea, even though Maggie had made up a pot. Maggie led her through to the living room.
“You see, it’s not often I refuse a cup of tea – but this is urgent. Maggie – you see, Lizzie is ill,” Cioné had said. Maggie had side-lined her cup of tea instantly, and cut the power to the television before you could say ‘It’s time to face the Chaser’, and immediately listened to what Cioné, and apparently married to Lizzie’s rather dishy friend, had to say.
“We can take you to see her, if you’d like?” Cioné offered. “In space.”
“Oh yes, I’d like that very much,” Maggie stood up and took her mug to the kitchen. “Just give me a second,” Maggie had bustled through the hallway. “Do I need anything?”
“Anything like what?” Cioné asked, bemused.
“I don’t know,” Maggie’s head popped around the doorframe. “Welly boots? A raincoat?”
“No dear, don’t worry,” Cioné reassured her. “Just grab your spacesuit and we’ll be on our way.”
Maggie’s face fell, and then suddenly she realised Cioné was mucking about. “Ooh, you’re even more of a minx than your husband.”
Cioné led Maggie out into the garden, thinking that Maggie had probably used ‘minx’ in the wrong context. A garden shed that hadn’t been there previously was stood upon the spot the Doctor had previously wrecked with his strange police box.
“And yes,” Maggie turned to her, wagging a bony finger at Cioné. “I do know what minx means, thank you very much. Just because I’m old, dear, doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun.”
Maggie pushed open the door of the shed, and Cioné, who was busy admiring Maggie’s collection of gnomes, heard her gasped, and feared that the lovely old woman was having a heart attack.
“Bloody hell!”
“Bit of fun?” Cioné said under her breath. “With women too?” Maggie, thankfully, hadn’t heard under the sound of her own cursing – cursing that, from an old lady, one would find quite shocking.
Maggie turned around and revealed that she had heard, saying, with a stern look on her face, “I’m game for anything.”
Oops, Cioné thought. Put my foot in it again.
Cioné followed Maggie into her TARDIS, and threw her patchwork jacket up over one of the coral beams stretching from the floor to the ceiling. Meanwhile, Maggie leaned up against one of the beams, perhaps not as shaken up as she might have been. After all, she always thought it strange that this Doctor chap and Lizzie had travelled around in such a cramped box. Especially if he was married.
“You okay?” Cioné asked her, as she strode to the console, trying to look epic and mysterious, but in fact just looking a bit stupid.
Every year, Maggie saw people in the world who said, blimey, this year is the weirdest of my life. Maggie put it down to the fact that yes, as time progressed, new things that hadn’t ever happened before would happen – and because those new things are new, and haven’t happened before, then they would seem weird. She’d proposed that idea to her son once, who had laughed at her. Lizzie had rather agreed, however. Hence why both of them were reasonably open with the concept of the TARDIS.
However, it didn’t stop her being in awe of the magnificence of the world. Perhaps that was why Maggie found herself happy in her old age – because she didn’t stop being amazed.
“Oh, me?” she replied to Cioné, only just realising that she’s said something. “Yes… yes, I’m – well, I’m worried about Lizzie, I suppose.”
“It’s been a struggle for her,” Cioné placed a hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “And there’s no quick fix – but in the end, I think we’ll get there. Oh look!” she suddenly exclaimed. “We’re here!”
“Blimey. That was quick. I should like one of these to do my shopping with.”
When Cioné led her outside, they had moved! And… they were in space. When Maggie looked out, she saw stars, stars like the sort she had never known if they were truly real or not – the sort that she was used to seeing as a screensaver more than anything else. It was beautiful, and although Maggie had long-accepted old age, and was no longer scared of death, there was something reaffirming about seeing those stars – as if she were truly living.
Cioné beckoned her down a corridor, and when Maggie turned, she began to get a grasp of the spaceship they were on. The two of them, at that moment, were on an almost circular corridor, and from there, Maggie could see that there was another corridor branching off, and leading to a great, central Hub. It seemed that this hub had several rings, like Saturn perhaps, although the central structure seemed more like the Shard, or another huge skyscraper.
“Where are we, then?” Maggie asked, following Cioné towards the central hub of the spaceship.
“The ShadowStar Alliance. They’re like a sort of, space intervention agency thing.”
Cioné led Maggie through the centre of the ship, and into a lift. Eventually, she said goodbye to Cioné, and a man took her the rest of the way to the office she was currently sat in, with the intimidating woman watching her. It was a glass office, giving a beautiful view of the stars, and making Maggie feel almost as if she were suspended in the vacuum of space.
The woman with the half-moon spectacles signed her form, and looked up at her.
“Margaret, let me explain what is happening. The universe has ended. Elizabeth has travelled halfway across the universe to find us, and is very ill. Furthermore, I should think we all have approximately one day to live. Are we clear?”
the eighth doctor adventures
series 5 - episode 13
the bad-dream girl
written by Peter Darwin
Downing Tower was a great glass skyscraper – the tallest in the Empire’s Capitol, in fact, reaching high into the sky like a beacon of hope and prosperity. Or at least, that is how Evangeline Cullengate wanted it to be seen, as a sign of a new golden age upon the universe, prioritising jobs for humans, preventing Illegals from entering the city, and entering a glorious time of higher demand, and therefore higher prices.
The cloaked figure watched it from above, looking out over the world, and their skin crawled. Beneath this tower, and beneath the other banks and HQs and CEO’s offices, was the undercity, where people lived in hovels, working all day with barely any pay, and forced into City Properties (tiny, one room shacks in the mud), where their entire families would either starve to heat their homes, or divide the little food they had amongst each other. These great pillars of ‘hope’ and ‘prosperity’ was constructed upon the shattered dreams of others and the cloaked figure hated all of it.
This ended tonight.
The figure slung their satchel upon their back, and continued.
Night had risen upon the city, but for many, under the section 372(6) of the Working Hours act 5037, work continued, to ensure optimum efficiency in the workplace. The lights in the skyscrapers remained on, lighting the city up, but the figure knew it was all just for show. The lights, however, in Downing Tower, were off, and in the corridor leading up to Evangeline’s office, Number 10, something happened.
There was a blue light in the darkness, and a high-pitched wailing sound, that to one who knew it well, would be the cause of a sonic screwdriver. The figure wielding the device crept silently through the corridor with feline dexterity, knowing that if they made any noise at all, the alarms would be raised. The intruder was not terrified of what may come to them, however, if they were discovered. They had faced great terrors that had made them tough against the world, and Evangeline Cullengate had crafted her empire on fear.
They could see her, sat in her office, signing a document, her exquisite hand wielding that ink pen – the pen that had the power to do anything, no matter how dastardly it may be. She was alone, thankfully – though she could summon her guards at the push of a button. The figure didn’t think that would be an issue, considering they were certain that given their rather marvellous escape, if they did say so themselves, Evangeline would want to stay and have a bit of a chat, before her Empire was torn down for good.
They were right outside the door now, and Evangeline still hadn’t noticed. Her office was a great glass chamber, overlooking the city, with doors to a balcony behind the desk, so Evangeline could gaze out over her empire. She had a glass desk – in fact, everything in the office was ironically transparent. There was, however, a wicker dog basket in the corner, where Evangeline’s two golden retrievers, Hugo and Edwin, slept.
With one swift moment, they pushed open the door, and stepped in to greet her, ready to treasure the look of surprise on her face.
When they entered, Evangeline looked up, and a look of confusion spread deep in the lines of her face.
***
Three weeks earlier
Lizzie sat on the end of her bed, her eyes tracing the lines of the carpet, an idle form of procrastination, to stop herself from rising and facing the world. The very thought of picking herself up and carrying herself over to the door, and then out into the corridor, and then down the stairs, made her weary, as did the thought of talking to anyone, opening her mouth and forcing out some words with some meaning. And then having to eat, and drink, and all the other stuff humans had to do to survive.
The most tiring thought of all, however, was the thought of what she was going to do that day. After all, Lizzie Darwin had nothing to do. Of course, the ShadowStar’s spaceship had lovely facilities for when the agents had time off – there was a library, flower gardens and a music room. There was even a cinema, a pool (which didn’t interest her at all), a Jacuzzi hot-tub, a sauna, an on-board spa (they even employed a masseuse, along with an armada of spa-technicians), tennis courts, a gym, a quad-biking centre, and a shooting range. Apart from dabbling in the library, after which she took the books out and returned to her room, and briefly to the garden, she had attempted to play the piano, before realising she couldn’t play much at the moment, and didn’t have the concentration to sit in front of a piece of sheet music and learn it.
Suddenly, the ship’s Tannoy system began to address the populace of the ShadowStar Alliance.
Good morning, staff, inhabitants and guests of the ShadowStar Alliance. All missions have been recalled following the end of the universe. We are expecting three rescue shuttles each carrying a thousand agents to dock within the hour.
Oh god, Lizzie thought. No, no, no, not more people.
Please be aware that all military zones are out of bounds to citizens. And now, the weather report, for our outdoor leisure facilities – sponsored by the ZZZ’s intergalactic sale. Nice and sunny, however, there is a distinct chill in the air. Wrap up warm.
Have a good day, everyone.
So, the routine was normal. She woke up, had some food brought to her, maybe took a brief walk, and then she would come back to her room, maybe read two pages of a book before getting bored, before spending the rest of the day watching daytime TV, binging on boxsets, googling random crap, or reblogging ‘tag yourself’ memes, always tagging herself as whatever was closest to ‘depressed trash’.
Generally, she felt like she was a complete waste of space who benefitted nobody at all and was instead just leeching off everyone else. She was stuck, in a disharmony of places, between needing a life, but in despising life altogether.
And as her days passed sluggishly onwards, and she constantly felt at a loose end, Lizzie Darwin realised that it was not only her days that were hollow and empty, the life and light sucked out of them, but it was her life as well. This was going to go on forever, she realised, as she was about to start nibbling away at a sandwich one lunchtime, before deciding she didn’t want to eat it or she’d end up being physically sick.
There was only one thing on her mind more terrifying than the fact she had nothing to do, and that was the fact that one day, she would have to move on. Although the thought of leaving it repulsed her, it was there, like a shadow on her back, whispering sullenly into her ear that she would one day, have to get up, have to go out, and have to get a life. The little capsule of her life at the moment could not be sustained forever.
Lizzie found herself sleeping a lot, except the sleep was never good. And that just made her want to sleep more, so she found herself stuck in a cycle of bad dreams eating away and infecting the one way out she had from this stupid place. She was constantly with a headache, a violent migraine pushing hard on the space behind her eyes. As her eyes traced the floor, her mouth was dry, and as she breathed it was like inhaling spikes, that sliced the inside of her throat into ribbons. There was a glass of water beside her bed, and she took it, raising it slowly to her mouth, with her hand shaking as it went. Lizzie took a tiny sip, and it felt good, but she spilt some of it down her, and hated herself for it because she couldn’t even do normal things like drinking water, and so she sidelined the glass and went back to looking at the floor.
The floor, of which she decided she must analyse to give herself some sense of meaning in the world, was boring. Tonally, it felt very much in tune with the rest of the room, which was also, most definitely, boring. It was too clinical, and she hated the fact she felt like a… patient. When Lizzie had grumbled about it, Cioné had told her that she was a patient who needed help. At the time, Lizzie had been very firm in refusing that help, though every day she felt guiltier and guiltier for taking that decision.
At that moment, as if somehow her guilt had been heard, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Lizzie instructed.
The door slowly opened, and the only face she wanted to see poked around the door.
“Hello Lizzie. Someone tells me that you’re a bit sad.”
***
Elizabeth and Maggie were stood in the corridor, where the entrance to the flower gardens lay. There was a wrought iron boot rack beside the door, and a set of pegs, upon which some coats were hung. As the Tannoy had said – it was cold outside. The seasonal simulation system and all that. Still, both Lizzie and Maggie – actually, mainly Maggie – fancied the fresh air (although Maggie was certain, in that certainty that tends to befall one with age, that it would do Lizzie some good).
So, Lizzie put on some boots – a lovely red pair. Maggie took a yellow mackintosh from the hook, and helped Lizzie into it, as if not a day had passed since Lizzie were a little girl, and they were going off to hunt for minibeasts and look at all the different plants, and the other types of wildlife that could live because of them. It was as if between them, twenty years hadn’t passed, and they were the same people as they had always been. Lizzie knew that wasn’t true. Maggie was pretty certain herself. When Lizzie was ready, something that Maggie had payed special attention to, in a very motherly way, Maggie herself put on a coat and some boots, and they opened the door leading out to the flower gardens.
Although Maggie had been rather welcoming of space, and time travel, and intimidating women with half-moon spectacles, one thing she did find remarkable was that a spaceship could have outdoor space. Of course, it was not real outdoor space, unless one wished for all of the liquid in their body to boil and their faces to compress. But the simulation was so near-perfect, that it almost felt real. As they took their first steps onto the grass, with its morning dew wiping on the side of the wellies, it felt as if one were stepping onto the dewy soil of an autumn morning. They were big gardens, too, stretching on for far ahead of her, until the rolling rows of perfectly kept flowers merged with the skyline. The ShadowStar Alliance hired gardeners, and it showed, as the lawns were exquisitely kept, mowed into lines of middle-class retiree preciseness, each path with a middle-class border of pretty flowers, of violets and crimsons and azures, some colour coordinated but many not, giving it a feeling forced naturalness as well. The sky above them were an ashen grey, but streaked with bursts of sunrise pink and orange.
It was, of course, worth noting that the simulation was only nearly perfect. One could taste the distinct taste of Fake Oxygen (the brand name, hence the capitalisation), and the slight rubbery texture of the dew (from Hydro Artificia, a company specialising in a multitude of artificial natural liquids).
They walked, a little bit awkwardly at first. What had they become? Lizzie and Maggie, walking awkwardly. Neither of them would ever think that day would come – even Lizzie, who expected everyone to relegate her because of that inherent awkwardness. And Maggie – well, ever since she’d first met Lizzie, she’d secretly believed she’d found a surrogate daughter for life.
“This is us, now,” Maggie mused.
“Yeah,” Lizzie replied, because she couldn’t be bothered to think of anything else to say. She just… didn’t care.
Oh god, she felt so guilty about that. Lizzie felt guilty about most things but the fact her mind had just dared to stray into such territory when Margaret Shepherd was concerned, that was perhaps the final nail in the coffin of unrepentance.
“Look at us now,” Maggie suggested, waving at the National-Trust-in-space pristine gardens around them. “We’re in space…”
Lizzie may have dreamed of being able to hear something like that, like something out of a storybook, all of her life. Except it didn’t bring up at that same feeling of stomach-turning excitement, of the happy butterflies, that it had done so long ago. Instead, space had become a byword for the endless darkness in the sky – that darkness, so prevalent in the universe, was practically space’s poster boy, and Lizzie resented it all.
“You did it, though,” Maggie stopped at the end of the path, in front of a stone observation platform, with an ornate carved railing that had developed a mossy-like age. Beneath them was a lake, the edge surrounded by reeds and wildflowers, all sorts of which Maggie, a keen gardener, didn’t recognise from Earth. Lilly pads floated nonchalantly across its mirror top, which displayed a reflection of that sky above them, the picture of misery but with little flickers of something else too. “You wanted to escape your life, and here you are…”
“Out of the frying pan, and into the fire…”
Maggie gave her a worried look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lizzie shook her head like a grumpy teenager, as if she hadn’t grown up at all since seeing the entirety of space and time. “Dunno. But it’s just made me feel…,” Lizzie’s voice was trailing off because she didn’t have an answer. Actually, she did. “It’s made me feel awful, because I saw it. I saw some really… beautiful stuff. I was happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. But it… stabbed me in the back, because that’s just how it always works out for me.”
Maggie sighed and shook her head, and Lizzie thought she was going to declare how irritated she was.
“You faced everything, right?" Maggie said. "Recently you’ve done everything you’ve dreamed of and you’ve run into it head-on, and let me tell you something, love, that’s more than I could have ever done at your age. You have come so, so far. You hadn’t a hope in the world and then, you did. And right, I’m not going to pretend to understand a thing you were talking about when you phoned me, but let me tell you what I always understood – that you were happy. That you had found your place in the universe, the place you had been searching for, for so long. And I felt proud that Lizzie Darwin, a girl who is like a daughter to me, had done that. And guess what? I still am proud.”
Suddenly, Lizzie realised she was crying, as a tear dripped off her face, and mingled with the dew below – the one natural droplet beneath their feet.
“Because you,” Maggie continued. “You fight, every single day. I wouldn’t blame you for giving up, the world is bloody awful, but you fight on. And you’re so strong, because of that, Lizzie, and I will always, always be proud of you.”
Lizzie turned to the woman opposite her, who now, for the little old lady she had become, seemed to stand taller than Lizzie had seen before.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and even though she didn’t realise it, the tears kept coming. “I can’t believe – I just can’t.”
“I know, love,” Maggie pulled her in, and hugged her, and she felt her shoulder become damp with Lizzie’s tears. She didn’t care, though, and before she knew it, Maggie was crying too. And in that garden, of light and life, that garden that lay under the shadow of a dismal sky, the clouds began to clear, and perhaps a bit more sunlight burst through that day.
***
The next morning, Maggie woke up after a less-glorious-than-usual night’s sleep. Although in her old age, she normally slept quite well, perhaps having found some contentment she once lacked, the last night was no evidence of that newfound enriched slumber. Her dreams were eaten away, of worry and anxiety for Lizzie, and of the dredges of past times she had always wanted to forget, resurrected by seeing Lizzie so afraid of everything.
Eventually, at five o’clock, she had just given up sleeping, and put on her television to see if there was anything good on. Oh… Countdown was still a thing, apparently? Except, this version she was watching was in some intergalactic language that Maggie didn’t recognise. However, she was quite certain that she could pick out a few words that perhaps had links to Latin languages that had sprung up on Earth. Ancient times that for her, in comparison to this, were modern history.
It was times like this when Maggie wished she really cared what the future was like, but she still didn’t. She didn’t care whether Nick Hewer had eventually been replaced by a cyborg, in fact the only thing that she cared about particularly was that Rachel Riley was now not Rachel Riley, and had been replaced with a particularly sexualised robot. When seeing it, she quickly switched off, and instead spent the time mulling over things that didn’t need to be mulled over.
Maggie Shepherd was an old, tired woman, but sometimes when she looked in Lizzie’s eyes, Lizzie seemed older, and more tired, than Maggie had ever done in her life.
When it came seven o’clock, she went to knock on Lizzie’s door. Her first medical assessment was today, and yesterday they had been determined to do it properly. However, there was no response, and Maggie had expected this. Lizzie had even forewarned her of it yesterday.
“Lizzie, love? You there?”
Maggie gave another knock. Suspiciously, there was no noise coming from the room at all. And in a sudden moment of panic, Maggie forced the door – 52nd century architecture was a lot flimsier than 21st century architecture, and Maggie had kicked down many doors in her life. When it swung limply open on its hinges, Lizzie was nowhere to be seen.
Oh, no, no, no.
Upon the bed, and the crisply made sheets, was a pile of library books, perfectly stacked. And on top of the books, a post-it note had been placed, simply reading,
Thank you, so much.
I am going to get the hope I need.
Lizzie
Maggie grimaced, because she did not think this was going to end well.
Then she realised she was crying, because all she wanted was for Lizzie to be safe.
***
Three weeks later
Evangeline glanced up over her glass desk, looking over the two crystal pen pots and quite an expensive marble paperweight. She gently pushed her chair back from the table – and as her door opened, Hugo and Edwin began to stir.
“So, Doctor,” she spoke, her cold, clipped voice cutting through the night’s silence. “You escaped…”
“Yes,” came a voice from the shadows. Evangeline turned pale when she recognised it, and when Lizzie Darwin stepped into her office, wielding the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver and his satchel, she turned even paler. “But this is all me.”
Lizzie definitely treasured the moment. Evangeline did not remain fazed for long, however. She always liked to maintain that having conquered business and politics, there was very little that could faze her.
So she began to applaud Lizzie, bestowing her with a mocking round. “Oh, well done.”
Lizzie took the seat opposite the table, and let Ulysses jump up onto her lap. The old woman opposite didn’t scare her, not anymore. Not since leaving the ShadowStar alliance. It was as if she had taken all those fears, and all those anxieties, and channelled them into something determined. Something good, however, she was not yet sure. But now, she felt stronger than she had been before, and more powerful, and something else that she wasn’t quite sure of.
To her, Evangeline was nothing, and Lizzie was determined to reduce her Empire to dust. Although not one to bear a grudge, Lizzie Darwin had finally been pushed too far, and the Prime Minister had to answer for her crimes. All of them.
“Hmm,” she mused. “You took a gamble with the memory graveyard, tried to prime it as your superweapon. And then,” Lizzie took great delight in making Evangeline feel as guilty as possible, even though she knew Evangeline probably didn’t care. “It turns out, you accidentally destroy everything that ever happened.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, you’re so wrong –”
“No!” Lizzie interrupted her, and Evangeline shut up, admittedly slightly taken aback. “God, I’m not just going to be pushed around by you anymore. I ran from you for a long time, and it hurt me. A lot. This ends now, Evangeline.”
Evangeline sighed. Clearly she didn’t care at all, clearly she was too stuck up in her ivory tower. Then, as if reading from a script, said “you really should learn to ignore what the media are telling you. It’s misinformation, all of it. The universe hasn’t ended.”
Lizzie took the sonic screwdriver and used it to project a 3D hologram in the office. Evangeline shrugged and shook her head, not a clue what it meant. Lizzie knew that she did know, however. The woman was good at mind games, she wanted to make Lizzie not believe herself. That was how these people always won. Lizzie was very accustomed to these mind games, having half the time, played them on herself.
“You are here,” Lizzie pointed to a stray dot on the 3D map. “This is the Empire. There’s a moon there, another just… here,” she pointed. “And that’s it.”
Evangeline tapped a button on the control panel of her desk, and the screwdriver’s hologram vanished, replaced by another projection, showing the universe in its previous state, minus a moon or two. She barely had to lift a finger to destroy Lizzie’s projection, no matter how far Lizzie had travelled to prove the stupid woman wrong.
“It’s all lies. And do you know something, Elizabeth?” Evangeline leaned over the desk. “You think you’re special. Let me tell you, that you are not. You are nothing in the universe. You have to work to be anything bigger. You cannot just get handouts,” Evangeline gestured to the bustling city behind her. “That’s the attitude I have brought to government.”
“You’ve brought –”
Lizzie stopped, when she looked outside. The city landscape was dropping away – not obviously, but there was a black, vacant whiteness creeping up on the world around them. Not obviously, not… viciously, just… slowly lapping up at the metropolis, slowly enveloping buildings, and preventing them from ever have existed. Evangeline looked at it, and with a casual look upon her face, she shrugged. “Oh, blessed Memory Graveyard!” Evangeline tutted. “Ending the universe.”
Lizzie looked Evangeline dead in the eye, and without any hesitation, or fear of coming across as blunt, for that was exactly what was intended, she declared to the Prime Minister, “Resign.”
Evangeline giggled her patronisingly polite giggle. “It doesn’t work quite like that. I was elected. And knowing you, Elizabeth, I’m sure you are passionate about upholding the principles of democracy.”
Lizzie did not care. She had decided that sooner rather than later, it would be time to deconstruct the entire Empire.
“Not when they’ve elected someone like you.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake –”
Then suddenly, the doors to Evangeline’s office crashed open, with nowhere near the same elegance that Lizzie had mastered to make her entrance as dramatic as possible. Stumbling through in a clatter of doors and tangled limbs, two women collapsed onto the floor face first.
“Oh my god Mum why did you kick it you completely killed our dramatic entrance.”
Cioné and Iris stood up, and awkwardly brushed themselves off. Lizzie was quite relieved they had turned up, considering time was ticking on, and Lizzie wasn’t quite sure she’d be able to dramatize the overthrowing of the bourgeoise and the establishment of a socialist state without actually having the reinforcements to carry out on her threat. Lizzie glanced down at said reinforcements, and realised that this was going to be harder than they initially thought.
“Hello!” Cioné offered Evangeline a sheepish wave, before turning to Lizzie. “Sorry about that, the lift got stuck.”
“I had this place designed to the optimum specification,” Evangeline seemed unfazed by the entrance. “The lifts do not get stuck.”
“Haha,” Iris muttered. “Yeah she’s seen through us, the lifts didn’t get stuck, I sort of got my leg jammed in the door and it just wouldn’t – would it?”
“No, no,” Cioné confirmed. “Just wouldn’t budge.”
So much for peace, bread and land, Lizzie shrugged.
“For goodness sake,” Evangeline interrupted them. “If this is the revolution then I pity the people you’re revolting for. Three bumbling fools! And what else?”
Lizzie turned to her then, for at that moment all they seemed like was three bumbling fools – they were, in fact, ready for this. “And when they find out about what you’re truly like? The whole planet beneath you.”
“And you’re going to take me down how, exactly?”
Now was the moment, when the revolution would truly come into play. They had orchestrated this well, every second planned to the letter, and when Lizzie said her next sentence, it would begin.
“Three bumbling fools. Everyone on the planet. And this.”
…
After a few seconds of awkward silence, with Evangeline looking sarcastically around her, she laughed. And chortled and chortled away, to the point of where it was ugly and her pretences died around her. Lizzie, Iris and Cioné stood in the centre of the room, looking a bit stupid, and each of them terrified that what they had been planning had not worked at all.
“Well, then, the Golden Girls,” Evangeline spoke between her laughter-laden breaths. “Sorry ladies. Time is up. I had hoped that if there were to be a revolution, it’d be rather more exciting.”
Evangeline pressed another button on her desk, and guards spilled into the room, with much more dexterity than Cioné and Iris’ anticlimactic tumble. Within seconds ten guards had semi-automatic guns trained on the three of them, and in the surrounding buildings at least 50 snipers all with cross-hairs aimed precisely at their foreheads.
It was now or never, if something dramatic didn’t randomly occur within the next five minutes, then the three of them would be shot at from all sides and turned into human pincushions but with bullets instead of pins, obviously. Each second seemed to take an eternity and Lizzie looked at all of the guards in the eye and glanced over to see if she could spot any of the snipers, just so she could devise another way out before the inevitable occurred. Then finally, she clocked Evangeline’s eyes, and as those eternal seconds wore on, she saw something change within them, as if in slow motion. It was the typical dilemma of the speed of light being faster than the speed of sound, as Lizzie saw Evangeline’s face fall before she heard the sound that was to save their lives forever.
“Aaaand here comes Blanche,” Cioné’s face curled into a smile.
It was the sound of hope, the sound that had descended onto oppressed worlds and liberated the masses. It was the sound that stopped children crying, and the sound that brought happiness to all. At least, that was what Lizzie had once thought. Now, it was merely the sound of her sighing with relief.
Except, regardless of her disillusionment with the entire universe, there was something about that metal breathing that took her back to the first time she’d stepped into an anomaly of human understanding and logic, and had her life transformed forever. She remembered that fairytale wonder as she’d seen the stars so close, and so far at the same time. As she’d seen that strange disharmony between homely and distant.
And as she’d seen the sad man come to life in front of her.
It was growing louder, now, that rhythmic sound, and slowly through the nothingness, as if the universe had always destined for this moment to come, a strange blue box began to come into vision standing on the far side of the room. Great gusts of wind like the force of nature materialising before them lashed through the office, blowing Evangeline’s papers all over the room, and causing the guards to squint to take in the impossible sight.
The box was in front of them now.
The TARDIS had arrived.
The doors swung open, and stood in the doorway, was the Doctor.
“Three bumbling fools, everyone on the planet – and a Doctor.”
It was all he said, but it was enough to send chills down all of their spines. Many of them had heard legends of the Doctor and his immense power, but none had ever seen it in front of them, as they were witnessing at that moment. All of the guards, and Evangeline herself (although she did not say it), were terrified at that moment, of how the Doctor would exercise these legendary powers.
Cioné glanced at her watch. “About bloody time.”
“Yeah,” Lizzie grumbled. “You made me look stupid.”
“Not even a ‘thanks for rescuing me’?” the Doctor gave them all one of his irresistibly charming grins.
“I’ll thank you later, dear,” Cioné winked at him. Iris, meanwhile, nearly vomited inside her mouth and wanted the ground to swallow her up. Parents talking like that in public, no. Straight sex, deffo no.
“I should be late more often –”
“Both of you,” Iris interrupted. “Stop it, now, please, I wish I’d got my leg stuck in that stupid lift.”
“And my darling daughter,” the Doctor took her hand and kissed it. “How are you?”
“All the worse for seeing you,” she looked down at the floor to try and hide the fact she was smiling.
“Why am I Blanche?” the Doctor turned back to his wife.
Evangeline eventually coughed, to remind them that they still had 10 guards and 50 snipers pointing at them. Eventually, the four of them realised that they were sitting ducks and could be bulleted into mincemeat within seconds, and so, as one would expect in such a situation, the Doctor bounced over to the far window and looked out over the city, covered in its thick blanket of midnight.
“Hmm. What do you think, girls?”
Cioné checked her watch again. “Half an hour.”
Iris nodded in confirmation. “Deffo.”
Evangeline whistled, and her two dogs leapt up and jogged over to her, slumping obediently down beside her feet. It was as if, perhaps, she were scared of the Doctor. Which of course, she would never admit. Except, he had somehow escaped the most advanced sub-dimension in the entire universe. “Would you please explain this ridiculous exercise?” she demanded. “And, I should like to know how you escaped the Memory Graveyard.”
The Doctor grimaced, and a grimace from the Doctor was always the harbinger of doom. “Amount of time until the Empire falls off the edge of the universe. Oh, and I just did.”
Ignoring the looks of his three companions, the Doctor decided that was a satisfactory answer.
Evangeline waved casually. “Hmm. Nonsense.”
“But you know that it is true. Both things,” the Doctor protested. “Evangeline, you’re clever –”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not-stupid, by the way,” Iris interrupted, determined to make sure that her dad didn’t accidentally side with her.
“What she said,” the Doctor agreed, noting his daughter’s concerns. “I cannot fathom why you are letting the universe come to an end. What could possibly be in it for you?”
“If it’s all well and good,” Evangeline had grown tired of their circular conversation. She was not going to give the petulant little man any of the information he desired, and she knew that he knew it. “I’d like to see your epic revolution now.”
“The revolution is on hold,” the Doctor said.
Evangeline collapsed into creases of laughter, the Doctor having just thrown away the great threat he and his little gang had been building up to ever since they arrived. The guards looked around awkwardly, after all, the fabled Doctor was doing nothing that warranted the writing of any fables. “Guards, leave us.”
Reluctantly, the guards did as they were told. And then, there was only the five of them. The Doctor, Lizzie, Cioné, Iris… and Evangeline.
“Those guards will be dead in a second,” the Doctor grimaced, as all of them left the room. Evangeline sat back in her chair, as if to say, ‘do I look like I care?’.
Meanwhile, Iris groaned, as if all she’d been looking forward to all day was overthrowing Evangeline. And now, as she looked at the old woman, and her refusal to care about the men she had just condemned to death, she was desperate for it. Even more so.
“Ladies, inside the TARDIS,” the Doctor scampered back over and pushed open the doors. “I have… business to attend to.”
Iris looked hacked off, but when she saw the way her mother looked at her, she did as she was told. In fact – they all did as they were told – leaving the Doctor and Evangeline alone.
“What’s the point of all this, hmm?” Evangeline was certain that the Doctor had just turned up to waste 10 minutes of her time and scatter her papers across her office with his silly little box. “Turn up, prance about in my office for a while, and then leave. What have you gained?”
The Doctor’s face was ambiguous, and, as many of those who had faced the Doctor’s wrath would gladly agree, his face of ambiguity was often his most dangerous. “Because we’ve put the fear of god into you. Myself, Lizzie, Cioné, and Iris.”
“But the universe is only going to exist for… what?” Evangeline glanced at her watch. “Another 45 minutes? Why could you possibly want to do that?”
“Because there’s something different about you, Evangeline. The universe is ending, and you don’t care. And I don’t know why that is – either you’re going to go down with this sinking ship of a universe, or you’re going to accept my offer for help. Come with us, and I’ll get you out of here.”
This was the Doctor’s final test. Her answer to this would confirm what he’d been desperate to know, it would... bring him to the conclusion that he’d been looking for. Not fully understanding, but at least… grasping, the truth behind Evangeline Cullengate.
Evangeline Cullengate spoke.
“No.”
And that was all he needed to hear. Because Evangeline would never, ever go down with a sinking ship.
Somehow, she had another way out… and the Doctor knew that they would meet again. Evangeline Cullengate somehow had a means of escaping a dying universe – and that meant immense power, and immense technology. And it meant… that she wasn’t just a human being, not just a citizen of the Empire.
The Doctor stepped into the TARDIS, and it left Evangeline’s office.
***
He bounded to the console, a quick romantic twirl on his way. Lizzie was sat on the leather seat beside the console, while Cioné had already been prepping the TARDIS for take-off. Iris, meanwhile, was sat on top of a shelving unit that she probably shouldn’t have been sat on.
“Darling, your console is in a horrendous state,” Cioné picked her way through the buttons and switches, and her husband joined her, and soon they were piloting the TARDIS together. “You’re too rough with the machinery.”
“Oh yes?” the Doctor yanked the dematerialisation lever, soon they were proving that two pilots did not make TARDIS flight less bumpy than usual. In fact, they probably made it worse.
“You don’t quite have my delicate touch with the fluid pump,” Cioné giggled, because she was too immature to carry off innuendos flirtatiously and ended up laughing at them mid-delivery.
The Doctor spun around the console and then turned to see Lizzie. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
The Doctor gave her a concerned look. “Do say –”
“I’m fine,” she reassured him, and the Doctor, getting the message (but only temporarily – though he would not admit that to her), turned away. Lizzie was definitely not fine, and she didn’t know why. That was the story of her life, it seemed. But now, it was as if she were so close to something she wanted most of all, and yet, so far away at the same time.
“Iris, get on the Star-Forecast,” the Doctor told his daughter, a not-fatherly order delivered in a fatherly manner. “Check all satellites within a good few light years of our destination.”
“On it,” Iris grabbed the TARDIS’ screen and span it around to the other side of the console, tapping something quickly into the keyboard.
As she watched them all at work, piloting the TARDIS, Lizzie realised that this was the place she felt at home. She had been with Iris as she’d grown up, she’d lived their hundreds of years of family life, but only in the space of two weeks. Lizzie knew these people well, and they knew her, and she was comfortable there.
Except, she could not help but acknowledge how alone she felt at the same time, sat there in the TARDIS like a complete lemon with nothing to do, watching as everyone else played their part. She sometimes worried that her part would forever be outsider. The three of them were Time Lords, they had all this huge universal knowledge, and then there was her.
Her with her stupid head, who just did nothing but bring them all down.
“The old gang!” the Doctor grinned, his family at the console with him. “Back together again.”
And there was the ever-present feeling that something she had been hoping to avoid, would become unavoidable soon. Cioné and Iris knew as well, but Lizzie was almost certain that they were not as bothered as she were.
Cioné stepped back and gave the console a bemused look, as if it were deliberately playing up. “Hmm, brakes pads have shattered…”
“It doesn’t have brake pads…,” the Doctor scathed.
“Yes, it does! I said that your console was in a dire state…”
At that moment, the TARDIS gave an almighty shake, throwing Lizzie off the seat and on top of Ulysses, who purred an angry purr, before leaping up and darting under the console. Cioné and the Doctor both tried the tricks that they had learned, but both of them trying to salvage the TARDIS’ steadily worsening flight pattern probably only made things worse. Lizzie stood up and grabbed onto the console, the other three people doing the same.
“Iris,” the Doctor said. “Dematerialisation pattern, what’s happening?”
Iris was not quite sure what the screen was saying – considering it defied everything she thought it should be saying. “We’re… we’re coming through the atmosphere –”
And they stopped.
Without any warning at all, all four of them were thrown away from the console, clattering like ragdolls into the shelves bordering the room, sending books and ornaments and miscellaneous tat all over the floor of the control room, before suddenly, none of them could see anything, as all lights in the TARDIS became dead. The Doctor estimated, as he lifted a rather thick illustrated edition of the complete Lord of the Rings off his foot, that the TARDIS had just crashed into the ground at an unmeasurable speed, hence the lack of warning.
A silence enveloped the TARDIS, and it was like being in a graveyard. There is something truly unnerving about being in a dead TARDIS. It all begins with the ear-splitting crash of the infinite number of doors leading all over time and space slamming shut in an instant, and then the time rotor descends, so it lies sullenly at the base of the console, as if to emphasise its deadness. However, nobody hears the final breath of the time rotor, because everybody is too busy getting their heads around the fact the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. Which, for anyone travelling in the TARDIS, is perhaps a peculiar thing to wonder, but it occurs as suddenly the dimension-engine begins to waver. As everyone with any knowledge of Gallifreyan science knows, actual dimensional deterioration takes around a thousand years, but the crippling process begins from the moment a TARDIS breathes its last, and on anyone inside the vehicle, it starts by taking an unnerving toll. There is a sudden feeling that you are not where you think you are, a feeling of depersonalisation, as if you are looking in on your body from elsewhere.
The four of them in the TARDIS tried to forget about the side effects, as they all knew that they had the fairly important thing of the end of the universe to contend with.
“Hello?” Cioné was the first to speak. “Iris? Are you alright?”
Her voice emerged from one of the far corners of the control room. “Yep!”
“Good o, Lizzie?”
“Hi!” Lizzie slowly got up onto her feet, like a baby taking its first steps, tentatively shuffling across the floor slightly. There was something terribly eerie about the machine. It was as if it were dead, as if the lights switching off had been like the machine’s eyes shutting. Lizzie remembered when she first took a step inside, and she’d been in awe of how… alive it was. Now the TARDIS had no light or sound or anything.
But the strangest thing was when she looked up, to see that the stars in the ceiling had gone.
Cioné continued her rollcall. “Hubbie?”
“The hydraulic suspension boosters increase the relative gravity and cushion it,” the Doctor answered his name with a technobabble explanation none of the others cared out. “No different to what happens whenever we normally land, just bigger.”
“Good, thanks for that,” Cioné raised an eyebrow, as she too began to find her way back onto her feet.
“I’ve got no idea what you just said…,” Iris waved her torch around the control chamber. It was as if they were archaeologists exploring some long-forgotten tomb, with everything they did being by the light of a torch. Except pressing on all of their minds, was that they were going to find nothing inside the TARDIS. No… the truth of the matter was going to become evident outside, when they eventually discovered what was busy bringing the universe to an end.
Eventually, Iris’ torchlight spotlighted Lizzie, and they all saw her staring up at the blackness. Although not with the same fascination as her, the three others also looked at that endless night that could be seen from the observatory.
“No stars,” Iris acknowledged.
“They’ve all burned out,” the Doctor picked his way over a bookshelf that, in the calamity, had toppled over onto the floor. Over the rubble he hopped, and moved his way over to the door. He couldn’t think too much of the fact that every star in the universe had gone, because what they had to do was urgent. “Here we are…”
“The end of the universe,” Cioné guided her away from the observatory. It would do for now, but only as a temporary distraction. “Doctor, we need to get out, the TARDIS is falling off.”
“Falling off where?” to Lizzie, it seemed to be that the TARDIS was fine. Though, she was still aware that she had no true idea of the science behind the TARDIS.
The Doctor grimly agreed. “Everyone out.”
“Where are we?” Iris negotiated her way over the ruins of the bookshelves. As Lizzie stumbled over them, she caught sight of her book - her favourite book, The Good-Dream Girl. That well-thumbed novel, the one she'd held tightly onto ever since she was a kid. It was one of those novels that had just... got her. It gave her hope, and it made her smile, even in her darkest days. That's why she'd brought it on the TARDIS with her - because she always needed that hope. It was at that moment. that Lizzie thought she needed some hope. So, she took the book with her.
“The eye of the storm…," the Doctor mused, as he flung open the doors.
“Which is?” Iris stepped out of the TARDIS.
“Not a clue…”
Cioné left as well, and the Doctor, after giving Lizzie a kindly smile, helped her out of the box.
***
The memories came back to Lizzie within an instant. In fact, Lizzie had only placed one foot outside of the TARDIS before she knew exactly where she was.
Places that you know often retained some kind of… resonance, Lizzie had decided. In absolutely every way, from the sights, the sounds, the way everything felt. And the smell – in fact, that was probably what had led Lizzie to make the initial identification, considering it was completely dark, wherever they were, and other than Iris’ torch, nothing could be seen. Often, in one’s head, when revisiting somewhere you once knew well, it could be like travelling in time, with all those elements of sensual recognition coming together to form an image of the place as you once knew it.
As Lizzie stepped further out of the TARDIS, The Good-Dream Girl in hand, it was the same principle. Except a bit more literal.
Within seconds she had identified the entrance way to her former care home.
The TARDIS was parked in front of the front-doors, and ahead of them was the main hallway, with a great set of stairs leading to the upstairs, and ways branching off into the living room, the kitchen, and the main office. It was a fairly unassuming spot for the end of the universe, that former hub of her childhood home, with its patterned wallpaper and its stained carpet and that oh-so-familiar musty smell. There was a noticeboard on the wall, and to it were pinned the same old repetitive notices about fire procedures and rules, and then some others regarding events that changed every so often. Dusty artworks hung up on the walls, reminders of the fact that the kids who lived there were only there because they had to be, and nothing more.
Iris had meandered out far into the centre of the hall, in search of anything interesting. The Doctor gave Lizzie a look, to make sure she was alright, because he too could remember where they were. Lizzie intercepted his look and nodded, but Cioné saw as well.
“Where are we?” she eventually asked, caution heavy in her voice.
“This,” Lizzie looked around her, as the building didn’t seem any different as it had ever done during the universe’s life. “Was where I grew up.”
There was a strange notion of acceptance as she said it, made weirder by the fact she had her family around her, and that there seemed to be no life in the place where she had once lived. Buildings made noises at night, the rattling of pipes, people getting up to go to the loo, floorboards that randomly seemed to creak… but Dunsworth House was making none. Lizzie was quite certain that if she went upstairs, all the beds would be empty.
“It makes sense,” the Doctor shrugged. “The memory graveyard is constructed on this spot in another dimension. When Lizzie, Iris and myself came here before, we got here through that lake in the forest nearby. The manor, when Lizzie and I went ghost hunting, was built on this spot, and they were the ghosts of the memory graveyard,” he took his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and began to scan the building. He knew there was a link between the memory graveyard and this care home, but he had no idea what it was yet. And he was also fairly certain that the others knew something he didn’t…
“Are there any lights?” Cioné traced the walls for a switch, but couldn’t find anything. Lizzie found them in an instant, and flicked two of them on, deliberately trying to give the place a nightly, cozy glow.
Suddenly Iris’ voice came from the room next door. “Oh my god.”
The Doctor slipped his sonic screwdriver quickly back into his jacket pocket, joining Iris in the living room. Cioné and Lizzie quickly followed, swerving around the sofas and armchairs to the patio doors, which overlooked the impressive garden below.
It was made even more impressive by the blinding white light which burst through the conifers at the far end of the lawn. It was as if the sun were setting only a good 800 metres from where they stood, with the almost-divine light bathing the entire room, and causing the four of them to squint.
“What’s the light to do with?” Lizzie placed a hand on the patio window, just as she’d done when she was a kid. “Guessing it’s something to do with the Memory Graveyard?”
“Literally, we are on the edge of time,” the Doctor explained, the four souls, lonely in the whole universe, admiring its final sunset. “It’s like we’re on a cliff, and there’s a landslide. And gradually, it’s all falling away beneath us. Except… there’s nothing. Nowhere to fall, nowhere to land. There’s just nothing. Forever. Beyond that light… is nothing,” the Doctor turned to speak to his daughter without taking his eyes off the light, as if it were an enemy approaching steadily closer. Which was funny, because it was. “Iris. Star-Watch.”
Iris glanced at her phone. “Ax5, Helix 7, Kevin’s Apple, hey, even Helios 2, there goes Evangeline, good riddance…”
“We’re on the edge,” Lizzie whispered, as if there were someone out there that could hear her – even though nobody was, and nobody ever would be.
The Doctor clapped his hands. “Right. Last four people left in the universe, looks like it’s up to us to save it.
Cioné looked around at all of them. “The Golden Girls.”
“Cartman, Stan, Kenny and Kyle?” Iris suggested.
“Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte and Carrie,” the Doctor decided. Cioné gave him a bemused look, a little lost as to what her husband got up to in his spare time. The Doctor, meanwhile, had already crossed to the other side of the room. Cioné sighed, and followed him, and so did Lizzie, while Iris leapt over the back of the sofa and joined then.
“Okay, questions,” the Doctor began their group brainstorm. “Why is Evangeline so okay with destroying the universe. What good does she get out of a destroyed universe?”
"Did you feel it as well?" Cioné looked to her husband. Of course, that encounter in Downing Tower had been the first time Cioné had met Evangeline Cullengate up close - and it was hard to ignore something pressing. A strange familiarity, and yet a distaance as well.
"I've felt it ever since I met her," the Doctor walked into the office and tried to turn on the computer. It wasn’t functioning, unsurprisingly. "She's more than just... a normal... individual who decided to run for office. How did she do it?"
Lizzie spoke plainly. “You've felt... what?”
And to Lizzie, it seemed obvious, when she thought about it. No matter how different Evangeline was, she'd just... won an election. How did all these people come to power in the first place? Exploiting fear of the unknown. It made sense that Evangeline would be doing the same, to make sure she could retain her firm grasp over the people.
The Doctor nodded in agreement. “I don't know... I don't think it's anything major. Whoever she is, I'm certain that I've never clapped eyes on her before.”
“Right,” Cioné took over, because it seemed like they weren’t going to get anywhere otherwise. “How do we actually deal with this?”
“We need something to hold us back to… prevent us from falling out of the universe.”
Cioné pointed to the TARDIS. “Iris, TARDIS shields, use your teenagery techy skills to reroute them and surround this building.”
“Mum. I can’t connect my phone to the internet.”
The Doctor sat back in the office chair and gave Iris a grumpy parental glare. “What’s the point of having a teenage daughter if she can’t use a computer better than her parents?”
“Then… try and learn, I don’t know. In fact, I’ll help you. Darling Lizzie,” she turned to Lizzie who had been stood awkwardly in the corner of the room during the whole conversation. “Get him to do something useful.”
“I’ll try…”
Cioné vanished, leaving the Doctor and Lizzie alone in the office. They’d been in the same office together. It felt like ages had passed since that’d happened. So much had happened in that time.
There’s something else…,” the Doctor racked his brains. There was one big piece of the puzzle missing, the ‘x’ to make the equation work. And he just couldn’t work out what it was.
“This place.”
Again, Lizzie was blunt, because it had been preying on her mind. Everything was tied to her, somehow. Except… she had a feeling she knew why. When she looked down, Lizzie realised she was still carrying that copy of The Good-Dream Girl around with her.
“Lizzie, are you alright?” the Doctor stood up and walked over to her. He knew there was something up, he could read her like a book. Except, he always thought he could. Maybe Cleopatra had been right, all that time ago, perhaps Lizzie Darwin could lie to him, and he would never even know.
“Yep. Course I am.”
“I don’t think you are,” the Doctor placed a hand on her cheek. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Lizzie stepped grumpily away from him, so instead of sulking in the corner of the room she was sulking by the door. “Look, you’ve got a universe to be saving, so…”
“And I will let the universe die to make sure you’re okay.”
She knew that it was a stupid thing for him to say, but he said it with such earnestness. However, she did not let it get to him. Lizzie would not tell him the truth just yet, for she was quite certain that he would find both of his answers in the same place. And she knew he would. She knew the Doctor like that.
“Somewhere in this building, the Memory Graveyard is being streamed over the whole universe. It must be, that’s the only reason this building is still… intact.”
He grabbed his sonic screwdriver, scanning for the source of the energy. It wasn’t far, and he followed it, with Lizzie tentatively following behind, as if it didn’t mean as much to her as it meant to him. As if somehow, she knew where this was going to end up.
The Doctor clambered slowly up the stairs, and with each step, Lizzie felt another part of her retreat from the outside world. Step by step, the Doctor was nearing the truth, and it would only be another few minutes before the game would be up. They were at the top of the stairs now, and the Doctor listened closer to his sonic screwdriver, after all, if anything was going to tell him the truth, it would be the sonic screwdriver now. The Doctor turned again, up another set of stairs, heading towards the few bedrooms at the very top of the house. Lizzie, by now, was trailing far behind him.
She found the Doctor stood on the cramped landing, leaning against the wall with the door to the side of him. It was as if he were putting off entering, as if he knew that this wasn’t going to end well for him. He could see that Lizzie was paralysed with fear, as he joined her up there, and they faced the door together. So, he offered her a hand.
She took it, and in the brief seconds that they were holding each other, they both felt safe. As if whatever was to be found in that room could not scare either of them, as long as they were together. It was as if, after all this time, now that the universe had collapsed around them, this was all they had left. To go to the end, together.
The Doctor opened the door, and then his whole world fell apart.
Lizzie spoke before he entered. “I’m – I’m sorry, Doctor. I should’ve told you.”
***
It was a bedroom, right up in the top left corner of the house, perhaps as far away from the heart of the building that you could get. There was a circular window, looking out over the garden and the and the light that streamed through the fur trees below. It did not reach through the porthole-like window, as somehow, via some strange mechanism, the room remained in darkness, apart from the lamp beside the bed, which bathed the bed’s occupant in a warm, orange glow.
And the room was bittersweet, as the Doctor stepped further in. There was a bookshelf, crammed full of titles, all children’s books, and the Doctor guessed that whoever lay in the bed was probably around the age of 7, or thereabouts. A small writing table stood up against the wall, upon which were some loose sheets of paper that had been scribed upon in the surprisingly neat hand of a young person. Dangling from the ceiling were stars, cut childishly out from white paper painted yellow, and a moon as well, a planetarium of dreams for the dreamer to run to in the night. The wardrobe had a few drawings blue-tacked to it, and other than the dressing gown, which hung upon the door like a shadow looming over the life of the occupant of the bed, the room was empty.
But it did not feel empty, because through all of those books, some of which scattered the floor, and through those drawings, and those stories bursting with childhood imagination, and those stars, the hallmark of a little girl who dreamed and hoped and loved, the room felt as if it were bursting with character.
The Doctor realised now. He understood why he thought Lizzie was lying to him, why Cioné and Iris hadn’t been entirely straight with him either. Because the truth would hurt him more than anything else.
“Because nothing is more powerful than the bad dreams of a little girl…”
The little girl lay there in the bed, fast asleep, with her head buried into the pillow as if she were hiding from both the Doctor and Lizzie. It wasn’t as if the girl needed any identification, either. As soon as the Doctor saw her face, she knew that this was the bedroom of Lizzie Darwin.
And her childhood self was asleep.
***
The Doctor quietly tiptoed through the bedroom, and kneeling quietly beside the bed of the young Lizzie, he took out his sonic screwdriver, and waved it over her as if it would somehow bring her back from the strange universe she now slept in.
“It makes sense,” the Doctor spoke aloud, but quietly. He knew that the little Lizzie was not going to wake up, but he also instinctively spoke in a hushed voice. “You got me out my plugging yourself in. And that’s why everything is tied to you – because the Memory Graveyard is powered by you. That’s why the portal is in the pond in the forest, that’s why the Masked Maiden, all that time ago, came for you.”
Lizzie traced her way over the floor of her bedroom, and she did it instinctively, knowing exactly where everything was on the floor, and stepping over it deftly, as she had become accustomed to as a child. She took out the chair from beneath her writing table, and sat down on it, before finally deciding what to say. “When we were in the tower, and I... teleported you out, I plugged myself into the device. I knew I could... move, walk around, and just... do what I do normally; it's just a mental link. Doesn't really affect me at all, it's just... channeling what I think."
"But... why?" the Doctor questioned.
Briefly, Lizzie became distracted, after looking down at her copy of The Good-Dream Girl - her copy should also have been on her childhood bookshelves. A stickler for routine, she always kept it in the same place... but this time, it was gone. And Lizzie was quite certain that at the age of seven, she'd definitely had The Good-Dream Girl.
"It made sense. It’s not just me as a kid, it’s me. Every moment of my life, pouring through my head as we speak. I have depression, and… and I’d just had a really awful breakdown, and so I realised that I’d work well.”
“Elizabeth, you stupid girl!” the Doctor stood up, anger flooding through his voice. “Why, why are you so flippant with your health?”
“You’re more important.”
The words were simple, and yet they made the Doctor feel so guilty. She was a better person, a stronger person than he would ever be. And yet, Lizzie had resolutely decided that she were right; she steadfastly believed he could fix everything.
“How can you say that,” he shook his head, and then suddenly, he realised that he was crying. Lizzie noticed as well, and there was something so terrifying about the tears of a Time Lord. “Lizzie, you had no right to go and do that, you matter, so much more than I do, in fact.”
Lizzie shook her head, though half of her was looking at the scribblings of her childhood self. She didn’t need to, she knew them all too well. She just didn’t want to look at the Doctor.
“Lizzie, don’t you see! This depression makes you stronger –”
It was then that Lizzie snapped. Of all the people in the universe, she had expected him to understand. And it turned out, that she was just going to be disappointed, because he was going to spout the same stupid rhetoric that everyone spouted, and she was sick of hearing it. When she felt awful, it just made her feel awful, and not bloody stronger like everyone else seemed to think.
“Oh for god’s sake, not this stupid rhetoric, it doesn’t make me stronger. It’s an illness and all I can do is live with it. It’s not some kind of superpower, so don’t you dare try and turn it into that.”
The Doctor looked away from her, a sheepish look on his face, and he apologised. “I should know better. I’ve been there.”
He could remember it, when it had felt like he was the one with every bad dream that ever happened streaming through his head. When he’d sat lonely on a street corner, at the foot of his police box, and somebody had come to help him.
“Exactly. You’ve got a family who have helped you through it, it’s easy for you to look back and say it makes you stronger.”
The Doctor stood up, and walked slowly over to the other side of the bed, where he perched opposite Lizzie. The older Lizzie. The older Lizzie who knew that they were going to have to do something about this soon otherwise it was going to get confusing. “You are as much a part of that family as anyone else.”
She knew she wasn’t. The whole reason she’d ended up with this bedroom, on her own, far out of the way of anyone else, was because she cried herself to sleep at night, and apparently, she disturbed the girl she used to share a room with, which was probably understandable but hadn’t made the delivery of the news any better. Lizzie had been so, so lonely all of her life, and often she’d been fine with that, she had loved being on her own. No people to irritate her or make her upset or uncomfortable or anything like that. Bliss. Except sometimes, all she wanted in the universe was a friend. Someone she could talk to, somebody she could offload her problems to, somebody she could just scream at about how much she despised everything about her life. But she didn’t have anybody like that, and it felt like everyone else did. All she needed was help.
And finally, she had realised that.
The Doctor took both of her hands in his. “Elizabeth, you are my friend, my best friend.”
Lizzie really didn’t want him to go through the motions of talking about how much she meant to him, because she just didn’t want to hear it. “Doctor, I understand –”
“Lizzie,” he interrupted her, because he knew that she had to hear this. “You are – you are so important. You found me.”
“No, don’t be –”
Again, the Doctor thought back to that time, outside his TARDIS, when he’d felt all alone. And that person had come out to help him – that person, of course, being Lizzie.
“When I was most alone in all the world, you took me in, and you made me tea, and you let me talk. That will always mean more than words can express.”
And since she took him in, and made him tea, his life had started again. He had found his family, and with her, he had travelled the universe, and it had made him realise why he wanted to live, when in the dark days of his life he had wanted the exact opposite.
The Doctor would never be able to thank Lizzie Darwin enough for that.
“Right,” he stood up. “We’re going to do this, we are going to bring back the whole universe, Lizzie, older Lizzie, of course,” which was a stupid thing to clarify, because young Lizzie was still asleep. “We’ll check on Cioné and Iris, see how they’re getting on with the perimeter…”
Lizzie did not share the Doctor’s optimism, as he bounded downstairs, with a newfound determination. However, she was quite certain that the Doctor didn’t share his own outer optimism. There was something darker about him, something a little bit more brooding, as if he’d already given up.
“Cioné?” he called, at the bottom of the staircase.
There was no reply, and both of them knew why.
“Iris?!”
Again, no reply. The Doctor did a quick recce of the downstairs rooms in the house, all of which were in pitch darkness, barring the rooms facing the garden, which were still bathed in that unearthly white glow. His wife and daughter were nowhere to be seen, and Lizzie couldn’t help but feel guilty that, as she were the one powering the big machine swallowing up the entire universe, she had been involved.
Right, she decided, resolutely. Guilt-face off, end-of-the-universe-saving-face on. Although by this point she was pretty certain they were the same thing.
She nearly started her next sentence with forgive my pessimism, before realising that would involve the Doctor forgiving everything she had said ever.
“Okay, how are we going to stop the universe from… dying? And how are we going to bring back Cioné and Iris?”
The Doctor hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, stood only a metre or so away from her. His face was melancholy, and he was trying to look hopeful – although she knew he wasn’t.
“My line of thinking…,” he began, heading up the stairs. “Is that we just… press undo. I mean, it’s a big computer hard drive, to process delete, someone had to press delete in the first place. There’ll be back-ups to restore, so – yes – yes, I think that’ll do.”
In his uncertainty, as he strode into little Lizzie’s room, he began to fumble around the base of her bed, as if he were looking for… something. His desperation was notable, however, as his handiwork was inelegantly done, his mind occupied by thoughts of his wife and daughter. To try and stop Lizzie from worrying, he tried to look in control – he always tried to look in control, always hoping that it would give those who needed it the hope they required.
“Lizzie, don’t come near me,” he pointed at the corner of the room, as if she were the same age as herself in the bed. She hesitated, but listened to him. As the Doctor poked his head beneath the wooden frame of the bed, he allowed himself to sigh, aware that Lizzie wouldn’t be able to see it. He knew that if he mucked this up, it would probably trigger a power vacuum through which there would be an energy surge which would be the cause of the big bang…
The last big bang.
Lizzie watched the sight, terrifying in its absurdity, of the Doctor wedged beneath a bed. “What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Putting me back in there – “
“No,” she ran over to him, and tried to grab onto his coat and desperately pull him back. The Doctor emerged from underneath and she clawed onto him, yanking him as far away as he could. “No, you can’t, please –”
The Doctor shook himself away. “Get off me!” He was going to do it, whether she liked it or not.
“Lizzie – okay, I don’t know how this is going to work.” And he was being honest. The Doctor had no idea – but his plan was all they had. “But when the back-up, if there’s a back-up, has been restored, all we can do is pull the plug. End it all, stop the Memory Graveyard from killing everyone and everything. It’ll kill the person powering it – and I won’t let you do that.”
“The universe needs you.” Lizzie thought of all those people she had seen him save, of all those civilisations the Doctor had brought hope to. Sometimes... the Doctor caused bad things. Lizzie knew that for sure, she had seen it first hand - but the life of the man they would be ending, would be the life of a man who had brought hope and happiness to so many. One could find solutions for problems - but when one destroyed the solution before, it was much harder to find another. The universe needed the Doctor. She had no idea what it would do without him.
“No. The universe doesn’t need me.” Time had hurt the Doctor, and whenever he did anything, all he could see was the impact it left behind. “When I’m gone, and the universe is back, you can get the help you deserve. Let that be my legacy, hey?”
The Doctor took Lizzie’s hand once more.
“Cioné and Iris need you,” was all Lizzie could say. She’d seen that little girl grow up, and she needed her father. She’d seen them fall apart, she’d seen them brought back together again. Lizzie couldn’t bear to see it fall apart forever.
Also, she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth.
“I couldn’t be a dad until you helped me,” the Doctor shrugged. And it was true, for he had had his doubts – not just doubts, in fact, but massive insecurities that he would have never gotten past without Lizzie. “And when you did, I faced up to my responsibilities, I promised I would protect them both, and I will. I will.”
And as the Doctor proclaimed his pledge to protect them, even though they both knew that really, it was Cioné and Iris who would protect him, he held up his hand, and saw that it was dissolving in front of his eyes.
It was bathed in the white light that had streamed through the windows, and it was like fireflies, all whizzing around and burning so bright it illuminated him a gleaming white. As the Doctor looked at his hands, as the other was now succumbing to the same fate, it reminded him of his regenerations. Except this time, he knew that there would be no life at the end of the universe. The white light was slowly crawling up his arms, and he estimated that the two of them had two minutes, perhaps.
Or at least, he did.
Because as he was going to have to tell Lizzie Darwin, she was about to be alone.
“Doctor? Is this it, have you done it?”
The Doctor scanned over his blazing hands. “No – no, I – it’s the Memory Graveyard, the end of the universe, Lizzie, it’s caught up with me.”
The Doctor watched helplessly at the look of realisation as it pooled Lizzie’s face, and she understood the face that was awaiting her. She couldn’t believe it – except, she could.
Because that’s how it always ended for her. Alone.
She confessed.
“I need you.”
The Doctor gave her a sad smile – like the one he’d given her all that time ago when they’d first met.
“Oh, Elizabeth Darwin. It’s me who needs you.”
Lizzie put a hand to her face, and wiped the tear that had fallen. She realised that she wasn’t crying at being the last one in the universe. She didn’t care that the whole responsibility of saving everyone was going to fall to her. She was crying because she was about to lose the Doctor. That after everything they had been through, it would come to this. Lizzie had never thought that she would be the one to outlast him.
“It was never gonna work,” she snivelled. “I’m messed up, and you’re a fairytale.”
The Doctor look his head. If Lizzie were to remember anything he had ever said to her, he hoped that it would be this.
“You’re not messed up, Lizzie. Please, never think that of yourself. You are… the most amazing young woman, and it has been a pleasure. At the end of it – I’m sorry I couldn’t be the Doctor for you.”
It hadn’t been all bad. Although it had not been a good time for her, since the Doctor dropped out of the sky, Lizzie Darwin had come back. It had felt like, for the first time in her long life, she had breathed, and she had felt the air of the universe gush through her lungs, and Lizzie had felt her bones move again, as she began to walk through everything in all of time and space. She had sung, and danced, and cried, and laughed. It may have taken her so long to realise, but finally, she understood that being with the Doctor had brought her back to life.
And she had loved her life.
She couldn’t bear to say goodbye to that.
“And I never asked that from you. But you know what? You showed me the universe. You became my friend. And that’s more than I could have ever asked for.”
Oh – and he had been her friend. All her life it had been as if nobody had ever understood her. There were some who wanted to help, but finally, she had found a friend. Someone who she didn’t want to say goodbye to, somebody who she would miss – somebody whose company she desired. It was new for her.
The light engulfed half of the Doctor’s upper body, and he was crying too, although the universe evaporated his tears as it swallowed him up. He took Lizzie’s hand, and he lifted it to his face, and the Doctor kissed it.
“And this is how it always ends for me,” Lizzie joked. “Alone.” Although she wasn’t really joking.
“Lizzie – you’re never alone. Not really.”
The light reached further up him now, and he was starting to vanish properly, just as Cioné and Iris had also gone. Lizzie thought of the three of them, and how they had brought her home. Lizzie thought of all the others she had met, Pat, Cleo, Nephthys, Jada, Elle, Jarvis, Ronnie, Kido, Carson. Cioné and Iris. And above all, Lizzie thought of Maggie. The woman who had been there for her, all of her life, even when she hadn’t realised it.
“I wouldn’t have missed it, you know,” Lizzie smiled. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the end of the universe.”
“Mmhm,” the Doctor said. “The universe might not always be kind – but perhaps we can make it so.”
A few seconds of silence passed between the two of them, and now the Doctor was just a ghost.
“Goodbye, Doctor.”
“Goodbye, Elizabeth.”
She let go of his hand. Except she wasn’t sure if she did – perhaps his hand just disappeared around hers.
There was silence in that room at the top of the house.
It was not a new silence. Lizzie had always known there to be silence in that room, all through her life, in the deepest, darkest parts of the night, when there was nobody for her. And even in the brightest parts of day, when there had been so much life, screaming and shouting below her, the room had been silent as well. Even when she could hear things, it felt silent.
Lizzie’s whole life had been silent.
And now the whole universe was.
“A fitting end,” she murmured. Her voice was weird, now she was all alone. She didn’t have a use for it anymore.
And Lizzie was correct. At the end of everything, she was alone, in the silence. Her life, perfectly summarised, laid out in front of her. Plagued by trust issues all of her life, locked up inside herself and refusing to talk to anyone anything. “You’re always very enigmatic, Lizzie,” is what people would always say to her, but she didn’t care. Nobody knew anything about her, really, she just passed under everyone’s radars, keeping all of her cards as close to her chest as she possibly could – determined to be her, and not defined by her life. So it did feel fitting that when she was the only person left in the universe, the only person with her, was herself.
Someone she could be open with. Someone who would understand her, when she said that it wasn’t just the universe that had kicked her, and punched her, and verbally beaten her, until she was blue and bleeding, and until she was so numb from the constant, relentless, never-ending pain, that she had finally learned to take it. And everything that she had faced, she had charged herself for it, and found herself guilty. When she ever did do something wrong, she would abuse herself over it, until she couldn’t torture herself over it anymore. And when Lizzie Darwin became old enough to understand, nothing would delight her more than the blade, and then nothing would make her feel sicker and more disgusting than the oncoming guilt that choked her and drowned her. No thought tantalised her more than the way out, the thought that she may find an escape from this constant hell, to find an escape from the bad dreams that had infected her soul, that plagued her, day in and day out.
Until now, she had thought that it was only herself who would understand this, but perhaps she had been wrong. Now she was faced with herself at the end of the universe, Lizzie finally realised that she’d been wrong, all of her life.
Now it was time for her to do something about it.
It wasn’t as if this were some great moment of realisation. It wasn’t as if she could just pull up her socks and decide to face the world and fix herself. It was just sheer, unbridled grit, a blood-filled passionate need to pull herself, and the universe, back.
And Lizzie had realised what she needed to do.
There were a few options, as the Doctor had suggested. But the Doctor hadn’t always been right. She could cut the power, cut the memory graveyard, the back-ups would restore, the universe would save. Let herself die, at long bloody last.
But it wouldn’t help anyone.
So there was only one option.
It was time for Lizzie Darwin to tell herself a story.
“Right,” she sighed, not really sure where to start, because although she could write stories down, speaking them was just incoherent. It was just her luck that the fate of everyone who had ever and ever would live was determined on her being able to speak. Lizzie pulled the lone chair away from the writing table, and placed it down beside her bed.
She took the seat, ready to begin her tale.
“So, turns out I’m gonna end this already quite narcissistic shitshow by being the last person left in the whole universe and talking to myself. Lovely. Yep. Brilliant.”
Lizzie had her book, sat on her lap. The Good-Dream Girl. It was her favourite book. Finally, it was to become her inspiration.
Lizzie had no idea that this was actually going to work. It was all just based on conjecture – logically, the Memory Graveyard was powered by bad dreams and memories streaming through the head of its power source - AKA, herself. So… Lizzie just needed to change the bad dreams that were busy engulfing the universe. Replace them with something else, and then the Memory Graveyard would start making good dreams. And maybe, those good dreams would be able to bring back the universe.
Yeah. It sounded stupid when put like that, but it was all she had. And when she did, perhaps she could accept her life. And then she could get help.
“The Good-Dream Girl,” Lizzie spoke aloud. “Once upon a time, there was a girl called Elizabeth Darwin. She sat on a chair, that was probably a bit too big for a six-year-old, since her feet couldn’t touch the ground, and were left dangling in the air…”
The cloaked figure watched it from above, looking out over the world, and their skin crawled. Beneath this tower, and beneath the other banks and HQs and CEO’s offices, was the undercity, where people lived in hovels, working all day with barely any pay, and forced into City Properties (tiny, one room shacks in the mud), where their entire families would either starve to heat their homes, or divide the little food they had amongst each other. These great pillars of ‘hope’ and ‘prosperity’ was constructed upon the shattered dreams of others and the cloaked figure hated all of it.
This ended tonight.
The figure slung their satchel upon their back, and continued.
Night had risen upon the city, but for many, under the section 372(6) of the Working Hours act 5037, work continued, to ensure optimum efficiency in the workplace. The lights in the skyscrapers remained on, lighting the city up, but the figure knew it was all just for show. The lights, however, in Downing Tower, were off, and in the corridor leading up to Evangeline’s office, Number 10, something happened.
There was a blue light in the darkness, and a high-pitched wailing sound, that to one who knew it well, would be the cause of a sonic screwdriver. The figure wielding the device crept silently through the corridor with feline dexterity, knowing that if they made any noise at all, the alarms would be raised. The intruder was not terrified of what may come to them, however, if they were discovered. They had faced great terrors that had made them tough against the world, and Evangeline Cullengate had crafted her empire on fear.
They could see her, sat in her office, signing a document, her exquisite hand wielding that ink pen – the pen that had the power to do anything, no matter how dastardly it may be. She was alone, thankfully – though she could summon her guards at the push of a button. The figure didn’t think that would be an issue, considering they were certain that given their rather marvellous escape, if they did say so themselves, Evangeline would want to stay and have a bit of a chat, before her Empire was torn down for good.
They were right outside the door now, and Evangeline still hadn’t noticed. Her office was a great glass chamber, overlooking the city, with doors to a balcony behind the desk, so Evangeline could gaze out over her empire. She had a glass desk – in fact, everything in the office was ironically transparent. There was, however, a wicker dog basket in the corner, where Evangeline’s two golden retrievers, Hugo and Edwin, slept.
With one swift moment, they pushed open the door, and stepped in to greet her, ready to treasure the look of surprise on her face.
When they entered, Evangeline looked up, and a look of confusion spread deep in the lines of her face.
***
Three weeks earlier
Lizzie sat on the end of her bed, her eyes tracing the lines of the carpet, an idle form of procrastination, to stop herself from rising and facing the world. The very thought of picking herself up and carrying herself over to the door, and then out into the corridor, and then down the stairs, made her weary, as did the thought of talking to anyone, opening her mouth and forcing out some words with some meaning. And then having to eat, and drink, and all the other stuff humans had to do to survive.
The most tiring thought of all, however, was the thought of what she was going to do that day. After all, Lizzie Darwin had nothing to do. Of course, the ShadowStar’s spaceship had lovely facilities for when the agents had time off – there was a library, flower gardens and a music room. There was even a cinema, a pool (which didn’t interest her at all), a Jacuzzi hot-tub, a sauna, an on-board spa (they even employed a masseuse, along with an armada of spa-technicians), tennis courts, a gym, a quad-biking centre, and a shooting range. Apart from dabbling in the library, after which she took the books out and returned to her room, and briefly to the garden, she had attempted to play the piano, before realising she couldn’t play much at the moment, and didn’t have the concentration to sit in front of a piece of sheet music and learn it.
Suddenly, the ship’s Tannoy system began to address the populace of the ShadowStar Alliance.
Good morning, staff, inhabitants and guests of the ShadowStar Alliance. All missions have been recalled following the end of the universe. We are expecting three rescue shuttles each carrying a thousand agents to dock within the hour.
Oh god, Lizzie thought. No, no, no, not more people.
Please be aware that all military zones are out of bounds to citizens. And now, the weather report, for our outdoor leisure facilities – sponsored by the ZZZ’s intergalactic sale. Nice and sunny, however, there is a distinct chill in the air. Wrap up warm.
Have a good day, everyone.
So, the routine was normal. She woke up, had some food brought to her, maybe took a brief walk, and then she would come back to her room, maybe read two pages of a book before getting bored, before spending the rest of the day watching daytime TV, binging on boxsets, googling random crap, or reblogging ‘tag yourself’ memes, always tagging herself as whatever was closest to ‘depressed trash’.
Generally, she felt like she was a complete waste of space who benefitted nobody at all and was instead just leeching off everyone else. She was stuck, in a disharmony of places, between needing a life, but in despising life altogether.
And as her days passed sluggishly onwards, and she constantly felt at a loose end, Lizzie Darwin realised that it was not only her days that were hollow and empty, the life and light sucked out of them, but it was her life as well. This was going to go on forever, she realised, as she was about to start nibbling away at a sandwich one lunchtime, before deciding she didn’t want to eat it or she’d end up being physically sick.
There was only one thing on her mind more terrifying than the fact she had nothing to do, and that was the fact that one day, she would have to move on. Although the thought of leaving it repulsed her, it was there, like a shadow on her back, whispering sullenly into her ear that she would one day, have to get up, have to go out, and have to get a life. The little capsule of her life at the moment could not be sustained forever.
Lizzie found herself sleeping a lot, except the sleep was never good. And that just made her want to sleep more, so she found herself stuck in a cycle of bad dreams eating away and infecting the one way out she had from this stupid place. She was constantly with a headache, a violent migraine pushing hard on the space behind her eyes. As her eyes traced the floor, her mouth was dry, and as she breathed it was like inhaling spikes, that sliced the inside of her throat into ribbons. There was a glass of water beside her bed, and she took it, raising it slowly to her mouth, with her hand shaking as it went. Lizzie took a tiny sip, and it felt good, but she spilt some of it down her, and hated herself for it because she couldn’t even do normal things like drinking water, and so she sidelined the glass and went back to looking at the floor.
The floor, of which she decided she must analyse to give herself some sense of meaning in the world, was boring. Tonally, it felt very much in tune with the rest of the room, which was also, most definitely, boring. It was too clinical, and she hated the fact she felt like a… patient. When Lizzie had grumbled about it, Cioné had told her that she was a patient who needed help. At the time, Lizzie had been very firm in refusing that help, though every day she felt guiltier and guiltier for taking that decision.
At that moment, as if somehow her guilt had been heard, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Lizzie instructed.
The door slowly opened, and the only face she wanted to see poked around the door.
“Hello Lizzie. Someone tells me that you’re a bit sad.”
***
Elizabeth and Maggie were stood in the corridor, where the entrance to the flower gardens lay. There was a wrought iron boot rack beside the door, and a set of pegs, upon which some coats were hung. As the Tannoy had said – it was cold outside. The seasonal simulation system and all that. Still, both Lizzie and Maggie – actually, mainly Maggie – fancied the fresh air (although Maggie was certain, in that certainty that tends to befall one with age, that it would do Lizzie some good).
So, Lizzie put on some boots – a lovely red pair. Maggie took a yellow mackintosh from the hook, and helped Lizzie into it, as if not a day had passed since Lizzie were a little girl, and they were going off to hunt for minibeasts and look at all the different plants, and the other types of wildlife that could live because of them. It was as if between them, twenty years hadn’t passed, and they were the same people as they had always been. Lizzie knew that wasn’t true. Maggie was pretty certain herself. When Lizzie was ready, something that Maggie had payed special attention to, in a very motherly way, Maggie herself put on a coat and some boots, and they opened the door leading out to the flower gardens.
Although Maggie had been rather welcoming of space, and time travel, and intimidating women with half-moon spectacles, one thing she did find remarkable was that a spaceship could have outdoor space. Of course, it was not real outdoor space, unless one wished for all of the liquid in their body to boil and their faces to compress. But the simulation was so near-perfect, that it almost felt real. As they took their first steps onto the grass, with its morning dew wiping on the side of the wellies, it felt as if one were stepping onto the dewy soil of an autumn morning. They were big gardens, too, stretching on for far ahead of her, until the rolling rows of perfectly kept flowers merged with the skyline. The ShadowStar Alliance hired gardeners, and it showed, as the lawns were exquisitely kept, mowed into lines of middle-class retiree preciseness, each path with a middle-class border of pretty flowers, of violets and crimsons and azures, some colour coordinated but many not, giving it a feeling forced naturalness as well. The sky above them were an ashen grey, but streaked with bursts of sunrise pink and orange.
It was, of course, worth noting that the simulation was only nearly perfect. One could taste the distinct taste of Fake Oxygen (the brand name, hence the capitalisation), and the slight rubbery texture of the dew (from Hydro Artificia, a company specialising in a multitude of artificial natural liquids).
They walked, a little bit awkwardly at first. What had they become? Lizzie and Maggie, walking awkwardly. Neither of them would ever think that day would come – even Lizzie, who expected everyone to relegate her because of that inherent awkwardness. And Maggie – well, ever since she’d first met Lizzie, she’d secretly believed she’d found a surrogate daughter for life.
“This is us, now,” Maggie mused.
“Yeah,” Lizzie replied, because she couldn’t be bothered to think of anything else to say. She just… didn’t care.
Oh god, she felt so guilty about that. Lizzie felt guilty about most things but the fact her mind had just dared to stray into such territory when Margaret Shepherd was concerned, that was perhaps the final nail in the coffin of unrepentance.
“Look at us now,” Maggie suggested, waving at the National-Trust-in-space pristine gardens around them. “We’re in space…”
Lizzie may have dreamed of being able to hear something like that, like something out of a storybook, all of her life. Except it didn’t bring up at that same feeling of stomach-turning excitement, of the happy butterflies, that it had done so long ago. Instead, space had become a byword for the endless darkness in the sky – that darkness, so prevalent in the universe, was practically space’s poster boy, and Lizzie resented it all.
“You did it, though,” Maggie stopped at the end of the path, in front of a stone observation platform, with an ornate carved railing that had developed a mossy-like age. Beneath them was a lake, the edge surrounded by reeds and wildflowers, all sorts of which Maggie, a keen gardener, didn’t recognise from Earth. Lilly pads floated nonchalantly across its mirror top, which displayed a reflection of that sky above them, the picture of misery but with little flickers of something else too. “You wanted to escape your life, and here you are…”
“Out of the frying pan, and into the fire…”
Maggie gave her a worried look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lizzie shook her head like a grumpy teenager, as if she hadn’t grown up at all since seeing the entirety of space and time. “Dunno. But it’s just made me feel…,” Lizzie’s voice was trailing off because she didn’t have an answer. Actually, she did. “It’s made me feel awful, because I saw it. I saw some really… beautiful stuff. I was happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. But it… stabbed me in the back, because that’s just how it always works out for me.”
Maggie sighed and shook her head, and Lizzie thought she was going to declare how irritated she was.
“You faced everything, right?" Maggie said. "Recently you’ve done everything you’ve dreamed of and you’ve run into it head-on, and let me tell you something, love, that’s more than I could have ever done at your age. You have come so, so far. You hadn’t a hope in the world and then, you did. And right, I’m not going to pretend to understand a thing you were talking about when you phoned me, but let me tell you what I always understood – that you were happy. That you had found your place in the universe, the place you had been searching for, for so long. And I felt proud that Lizzie Darwin, a girl who is like a daughter to me, had done that. And guess what? I still am proud.”
Suddenly, Lizzie realised she was crying, as a tear dripped off her face, and mingled with the dew below – the one natural droplet beneath their feet.
“Because you,” Maggie continued. “You fight, every single day. I wouldn’t blame you for giving up, the world is bloody awful, but you fight on. And you’re so strong, because of that, Lizzie, and I will always, always be proud of you.”
Lizzie turned to the woman opposite her, who now, for the little old lady she had become, seemed to stand taller than Lizzie had seen before.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and even though she didn’t realise it, the tears kept coming. “I can’t believe – I just can’t.”
“I know, love,” Maggie pulled her in, and hugged her, and she felt her shoulder become damp with Lizzie’s tears. She didn’t care, though, and before she knew it, Maggie was crying too. And in that garden, of light and life, that garden that lay under the shadow of a dismal sky, the clouds began to clear, and perhaps a bit more sunlight burst through that day.
***
The next morning, Maggie woke up after a less-glorious-than-usual night’s sleep. Although in her old age, she normally slept quite well, perhaps having found some contentment she once lacked, the last night was no evidence of that newfound enriched slumber. Her dreams were eaten away, of worry and anxiety for Lizzie, and of the dredges of past times she had always wanted to forget, resurrected by seeing Lizzie so afraid of everything.
Eventually, at five o’clock, she had just given up sleeping, and put on her television to see if there was anything good on. Oh… Countdown was still a thing, apparently? Except, this version she was watching was in some intergalactic language that Maggie didn’t recognise. However, she was quite certain that she could pick out a few words that perhaps had links to Latin languages that had sprung up on Earth. Ancient times that for her, in comparison to this, were modern history.
It was times like this when Maggie wished she really cared what the future was like, but she still didn’t. She didn’t care whether Nick Hewer had eventually been replaced by a cyborg, in fact the only thing that she cared about particularly was that Rachel Riley was now not Rachel Riley, and had been replaced with a particularly sexualised robot. When seeing it, she quickly switched off, and instead spent the time mulling over things that didn’t need to be mulled over.
Maggie Shepherd was an old, tired woman, but sometimes when she looked in Lizzie’s eyes, Lizzie seemed older, and more tired, than Maggie had ever done in her life.
When it came seven o’clock, she went to knock on Lizzie’s door. Her first medical assessment was today, and yesterday they had been determined to do it properly. However, there was no response, and Maggie had expected this. Lizzie had even forewarned her of it yesterday.
“Lizzie, love? You there?”
Maggie gave another knock. Suspiciously, there was no noise coming from the room at all. And in a sudden moment of panic, Maggie forced the door – 52nd century architecture was a lot flimsier than 21st century architecture, and Maggie had kicked down many doors in her life. When it swung limply open on its hinges, Lizzie was nowhere to be seen.
Oh, no, no, no.
Upon the bed, and the crisply made sheets, was a pile of library books, perfectly stacked. And on top of the books, a post-it note had been placed, simply reading,
Thank you, so much.
I am going to get the hope I need.
Lizzie
Maggie grimaced, because she did not think this was going to end well.
Then she realised she was crying, because all she wanted was for Lizzie to be safe.
***
Three weeks later
Evangeline glanced up over her glass desk, looking over the two crystal pen pots and quite an expensive marble paperweight. She gently pushed her chair back from the table – and as her door opened, Hugo and Edwin began to stir.
“So, Doctor,” she spoke, her cold, clipped voice cutting through the night’s silence. “You escaped…”
“Yes,” came a voice from the shadows. Evangeline turned pale when she recognised it, and when Lizzie Darwin stepped into her office, wielding the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver and his satchel, she turned even paler. “But this is all me.”
Lizzie definitely treasured the moment. Evangeline did not remain fazed for long, however. She always liked to maintain that having conquered business and politics, there was very little that could faze her.
So she began to applaud Lizzie, bestowing her with a mocking round. “Oh, well done.”
Lizzie took the seat opposite the table, and let Ulysses jump up onto her lap. The old woman opposite didn’t scare her, not anymore. Not since leaving the ShadowStar alliance. It was as if she had taken all those fears, and all those anxieties, and channelled them into something determined. Something good, however, she was not yet sure. But now, she felt stronger than she had been before, and more powerful, and something else that she wasn’t quite sure of.
To her, Evangeline was nothing, and Lizzie was determined to reduce her Empire to dust. Although not one to bear a grudge, Lizzie Darwin had finally been pushed too far, and the Prime Minister had to answer for her crimes. All of them.
“Hmm,” she mused. “You took a gamble with the memory graveyard, tried to prime it as your superweapon. And then,” Lizzie took great delight in making Evangeline feel as guilty as possible, even though she knew Evangeline probably didn’t care. “It turns out, you accidentally destroy everything that ever happened.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, you’re so wrong –”
“No!” Lizzie interrupted her, and Evangeline shut up, admittedly slightly taken aback. “God, I’m not just going to be pushed around by you anymore. I ran from you for a long time, and it hurt me. A lot. This ends now, Evangeline.”
Evangeline sighed. Clearly she didn’t care at all, clearly she was too stuck up in her ivory tower. Then, as if reading from a script, said “you really should learn to ignore what the media are telling you. It’s misinformation, all of it. The universe hasn’t ended.”
Lizzie took the sonic screwdriver and used it to project a 3D hologram in the office. Evangeline shrugged and shook her head, not a clue what it meant. Lizzie knew that she did know, however. The woman was good at mind games, she wanted to make Lizzie not believe herself. That was how these people always won. Lizzie was very accustomed to these mind games, having half the time, played them on herself.
“You are here,” Lizzie pointed to a stray dot on the 3D map. “This is the Empire. There’s a moon there, another just… here,” she pointed. “And that’s it.”
Evangeline tapped a button on the control panel of her desk, and the screwdriver’s hologram vanished, replaced by another projection, showing the universe in its previous state, minus a moon or two. She barely had to lift a finger to destroy Lizzie’s projection, no matter how far Lizzie had travelled to prove the stupid woman wrong.
“It’s all lies. And do you know something, Elizabeth?” Evangeline leaned over the desk. “You think you’re special. Let me tell you, that you are not. You are nothing in the universe. You have to work to be anything bigger. You cannot just get handouts,” Evangeline gestured to the bustling city behind her. “That’s the attitude I have brought to government.”
“You’ve brought –”
Lizzie stopped, when she looked outside. The city landscape was dropping away – not obviously, but there was a black, vacant whiteness creeping up on the world around them. Not obviously, not… viciously, just… slowly lapping up at the metropolis, slowly enveloping buildings, and preventing them from ever have existed. Evangeline looked at it, and with a casual look upon her face, she shrugged. “Oh, blessed Memory Graveyard!” Evangeline tutted. “Ending the universe.”
Lizzie looked Evangeline dead in the eye, and without any hesitation, or fear of coming across as blunt, for that was exactly what was intended, she declared to the Prime Minister, “Resign.”
Evangeline giggled her patronisingly polite giggle. “It doesn’t work quite like that. I was elected. And knowing you, Elizabeth, I’m sure you are passionate about upholding the principles of democracy.”
Lizzie did not care. She had decided that sooner rather than later, it would be time to deconstruct the entire Empire.
“Not when they’ve elected someone like you.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake –”
Then suddenly, the doors to Evangeline’s office crashed open, with nowhere near the same elegance that Lizzie had mastered to make her entrance as dramatic as possible. Stumbling through in a clatter of doors and tangled limbs, two women collapsed onto the floor face first.
“Oh my god Mum why did you kick it you completely killed our dramatic entrance.”
Cioné and Iris stood up, and awkwardly brushed themselves off. Lizzie was quite relieved they had turned up, considering time was ticking on, and Lizzie wasn’t quite sure she’d be able to dramatize the overthrowing of the bourgeoise and the establishment of a socialist state without actually having the reinforcements to carry out on her threat. Lizzie glanced down at said reinforcements, and realised that this was going to be harder than they initially thought.
“Hello!” Cioné offered Evangeline a sheepish wave, before turning to Lizzie. “Sorry about that, the lift got stuck.”
“I had this place designed to the optimum specification,” Evangeline seemed unfazed by the entrance. “The lifts do not get stuck.”
“Haha,” Iris muttered. “Yeah she’s seen through us, the lifts didn’t get stuck, I sort of got my leg jammed in the door and it just wouldn’t – would it?”
“No, no,” Cioné confirmed. “Just wouldn’t budge.”
So much for peace, bread and land, Lizzie shrugged.
“For goodness sake,” Evangeline interrupted them. “If this is the revolution then I pity the people you’re revolting for. Three bumbling fools! And what else?”
Lizzie turned to her then, for at that moment all they seemed like was three bumbling fools – they were, in fact, ready for this. “And when they find out about what you’re truly like? The whole planet beneath you.”
“And you’re going to take me down how, exactly?”
Now was the moment, when the revolution would truly come into play. They had orchestrated this well, every second planned to the letter, and when Lizzie said her next sentence, it would begin.
“Three bumbling fools. Everyone on the planet. And this.”
…
After a few seconds of awkward silence, with Evangeline looking sarcastically around her, she laughed. And chortled and chortled away, to the point of where it was ugly and her pretences died around her. Lizzie, Iris and Cioné stood in the centre of the room, looking a bit stupid, and each of them terrified that what they had been planning had not worked at all.
“Well, then, the Golden Girls,” Evangeline spoke between her laughter-laden breaths. “Sorry ladies. Time is up. I had hoped that if there were to be a revolution, it’d be rather more exciting.”
Evangeline pressed another button on her desk, and guards spilled into the room, with much more dexterity than Cioné and Iris’ anticlimactic tumble. Within seconds ten guards had semi-automatic guns trained on the three of them, and in the surrounding buildings at least 50 snipers all with cross-hairs aimed precisely at their foreheads.
It was now or never, if something dramatic didn’t randomly occur within the next five minutes, then the three of them would be shot at from all sides and turned into human pincushions but with bullets instead of pins, obviously. Each second seemed to take an eternity and Lizzie looked at all of the guards in the eye and glanced over to see if she could spot any of the snipers, just so she could devise another way out before the inevitable occurred. Then finally, she clocked Evangeline’s eyes, and as those eternal seconds wore on, she saw something change within them, as if in slow motion. It was the typical dilemma of the speed of light being faster than the speed of sound, as Lizzie saw Evangeline’s face fall before she heard the sound that was to save their lives forever.
“Aaaand here comes Blanche,” Cioné’s face curled into a smile.
It was the sound of hope, the sound that had descended onto oppressed worlds and liberated the masses. It was the sound that stopped children crying, and the sound that brought happiness to all. At least, that was what Lizzie had once thought. Now, it was merely the sound of her sighing with relief.
Except, regardless of her disillusionment with the entire universe, there was something about that metal breathing that took her back to the first time she’d stepped into an anomaly of human understanding and logic, and had her life transformed forever. She remembered that fairytale wonder as she’d seen the stars so close, and so far at the same time. As she’d seen that strange disharmony between homely and distant.
And as she’d seen the sad man come to life in front of her.
It was growing louder, now, that rhythmic sound, and slowly through the nothingness, as if the universe had always destined for this moment to come, a strange blue box began to come into vision standing on the far side of the room. Great gusts of wind like the force of nature materialising before them lashed through the office, blowing Evangeline’s papers all over the room, and causing the guards to squint to take in the impossible sight.
The box was in front of them now.
The TARDIS had arrived.
The doors swung open, and stood in the doorway, was the Doctor.
“Three bumbling fools, everyone on the planet – and a Doctor.”
It was all he said, but it was enough to send chills down all of their spines. Many of them had heard legends of the Doctor and his immense power, but none had ever seen it in front of them, as they were witnessing at that moment. All of the guards, and Evangeline herself (although she did not say it), were terrified at that moment, of how the Doctor would exercise these legendary powers.
Cioné glanced at her watch. “About bloody time.”
“Yeah,” Lizzie grumbled. “You made me look stupid.”
“Not even a ‘thanks for rescuing me’?” the Doctor gave them all one of his irresistibly charming grins.
“I’ll thank you later, dear,” Cioné winked at him. Iris, meanwhile, nearly vomited inside her mouth and wanted the ground to swallow her up. Parents talking like that in public, no. Straight sex, deffo no.
“I should be late more often –”
“Both of you,” Iris interrupted. “Stop it, now, please, I wish I’d got my leg stuck in that stupid lift.”
“And my darling daughter,” the Doctor took her hand and kissed it. “How are you?”
“All the worse for seeing you,” she looked down at the floor to try and hide the fact she was smiling.
“Why am I Blanche?” the Doctor turned back to his wife.
Evangeline eventually coughed, to remind them that they still had 10 guards and 50 snipers pointing at them. Eventually, the four of them realised that they were sitting ducks and could be bulleted into mincemeat within seconds, and so, as one would expect in such a situation, the Doctor bounced over to the far window and looked out over the city, covered in its thick blanket of midnight.
“Hmm. What do you think, girls?”
Cioné checked her watch again. “Half an hour.”
Iris nodded in confirmation. “Deffo.”
Evangeline whistled, and her two dogs leapt up and jogged over to her, slumping obediently down beside her feet. It was as if, perhaps, she were scared of the Doctor. Which of course, she would never admit. Except, he had somehow escaped the most advanced sub-dimension in the entire universe. “Would you please explain this ridiculous exercise?” she demanded. “And, I should like to know how you escaped the Memory Graveyard.”
The Doctor grimaced, and a grimace from the Doctor was always the harbinger of doom. “Amount of time until the Empire falls off the edge of the universe. Oh, and I just did.”
Ignoring the looks of his three companions, the Doctor decided that was a satisfactory answer.
Evangeline waved casually. “Hmm. Nonsense.”
“But you know that it is true. Both things,” the Doctor protested. “Evangeline, you’re clever –”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not-stupid, by the way,” Iris interrupted, determined to make sure that her dad didn’t accidentally side with her.
“What she said,” the Doctor agreed, noting his daughter’s concerns. “I cannot fathom why you are letting the universe come to an end. What could possibly be in it for you?”
“If it’s all well and good,” Evangeline had grown tired of their circular conversation. She was not going to give the petulant little man any of the information he desired, and she knew that he knew it. “I’d like to see your epic revolution now.”
“The revolution is on hold,” the Doctor said.
Evangeline collapsed into creases of laughter, the Doctor having just thrown away the great threat he and his little gang had been building up to ever since they arrived. The guards looked around awkwardly, after all, the fabled Doctor was doing nothing that warranted the writing of any fables. “Guards, leave us.”
Reluctantly, the guards did as they were told. And then, there was only the five of them. The Doctor, Lizzie, Cioné, Iris… and Evangeline.
“Those guards will be dead in a second,” the Doctor grimaced, as all of them left the room. Evangeline sat back in her chair, as if to say, ‘do I look like I care?’.
Meanwhile, Iris groaned, as if all she’d been looking forward to all day was overthrowing Evangeline. And now, as she looked at the old woman, and her refusal to care about the men she had just condemned to death, she was desperate for it. Even more so.
“Ladies, inside the TARDIS,” the Doctor scampered back over and pushed open the doors. “I have… business to attend to.”
Iris looked hacked off, but when she saw the way her mother looked at her, she did as she was told. In fact – they all did as they were told – leaving the Doctor and Evangeline alone.
“What’s the point of all this, hmm?” Evangeline was certain that the Doctor had just turned up to waste 10 minutes of her time and scatter her papers across her office with his silly little box. “Turn up, prance about in my office for a while, and then leave. What have you gained?”
The Doctor’s face was ambiguous, and, as many of those who had faced the Doctor’s wrath would gladly agree, his face of ambiguity was often his most dangerous. “Because we’ve put the fear of god into you. Myself, Lizzie, Cioné, and Iris.”
“But the universe is only going to exist for… what?” Evangeline glanced at her watch. “Another 45 minutes? Why could you possibly want to do that?”
“Because there’s something different about you, Evangeline. The universe is ending, and you don’t care. And I don’t know why that is – either you’re going to go down with this sinking ship of a universe, or you’re going to accept my offer for help. Come with us, and I’ll get you out of here.”
This was the Doctor’s final test. Her answer to this would confirm what he’d been desperate to know, it would... bring him to the conclusion that he’d been looking for. Not fully understanding, but at least… grasping, the truth behind Evangeline Cullengate.
Evangeline Cullengate spoke.
“No.”
And that was all he needed to hear. Because Evangeline would never, ever go down with a sinking ship.
Somehow, she had another way out… and the Doctor knew that they would meet again. Evangeline Cullengate somehow had a means of escaping a dying universe – and that meant immense power, and immense technology. And it meant… that she wasn’t just a human being, not just a citizen of the Empire.
The Doctor stepped into the TARDIS, and it left Evangeline’s office.
***
He bounded to the console, a quick romantic twirl on his way. Lizzie was sat on the leather seat beside the console, while Cioné had already been prepping the TARDIS for take-off. Iris, meanwhile, was sat on top of a shelving unit that she probably shouldn’t have been sat on.
“Darling, your console is in a horrendous state,” Cioné picked her way through the buttons and switches, and her husband joined her, and soon they were piloting the TARDIS together. “You’re too rough with the machinery.”
“Oh yes?” the Doctor yanked the dematerialisation lever, soon they were proving that two pilots did not make TARDIS flight less bumpy than usual. In fact, they probably made it worse.
“You don’t quite have my delicate touch with the fluid pump,” Cioné giggled, because she was too immature to carry off innuendos flirtatiously and ended up laughing at them mid-delivery.
The Doctor spun around the console and then turned to see Lizzie. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
The Doctor gave her a concerned look. “Do say –”
“I’m fine,” she reassured him, and the Doctor, getting the message (but only temporarily – though he would not admit that to her), turned away. Lizzie was definitely not fine, and she didn’t know why. That was the story of her life, it seemed. But now, it was as if she were so close to something she wanted most of all, and yet, so far away at the same time.
“Iris, get on the Star-Forecast,” the Doctor told his daughter, a not-fatherly order delivered in a fatherly manner. “Check all satellites within a good few light years of our destination.”
“On it,” Iris grabbed the TARDIS’ screen and span it around to the other side of the console, tapping something quickly into the keyboard.
As she watched them all at work, piloting the TARDIS, Lizzie realised that this was the place she felt at home. She had been with Iris as she’d grown up, she’d lived their hundreds of years of family life, but only in the space of two weeks. Lizzie knew these people well, and they knew her, and she was comfortable there.
Except, she could not help but acknowledge how alone she felt at the same time, sat there in the TARDIS like a complete lemon with nothing to do, watching as everyone else played their part. She sometimes worried that her part would forever be outsider. The three of them were Time Lords, they had all this huge universal knowledge, and then there was her.
Her with her stupid head, who just did nothing but bring them all down.
“The old gang!” the Doctor grinned, his family at the console with him. “Back together again.”
And there was the ever-present feeling that something she had been hoping to avoid, would become unavoidable soon. Cioné and Iris knew as well, but Lizzie was almost certain that they were not as bothered as she were.
Cioné stepped back and gave the console a bemused look, as if it were deliberately playing up. “Hmm, brakes pads have shattered…”
“It doesn’t have brake pads…,” the Doctor scathed.
“Yes, it does! I said that your console was in a dire state…”
At that moment, the TARDIS gave an almighty shake, throwing Lizzie off the seat and on top of Ulysses, who purred an angry purr, before leaping up and darting under the console. Cioné and the Doctor both tried the tricks that they had learned, but both of them trying to salvage the TARDIS’ steadily worsening flight pattern probably only made things worse. Lizzie stood up and grabbed onto the console, the other three people doing the same.
“Iris,” the Doctor said. “Dematerialisation pattern, what’s happening?”
Iris was not quite sure what the screen was saying – considering it defied everything she thought it should be saying. “We’re… we’re coming through the atmosphere –”
And they stopped.
Without any warning at all, all four of them were thrown away from the console, clattering like ragdolls into the shelves bordering the room, sending books and ornaments and miscellaneous tat all over the floor of the control room, before suddenly, none of them could see anything, as all lights in the TARDIS became dead. The Doctor estimated, as he lifted a rather thick illustrated edition of the complete Lord of the Rings off his foot, that the TARDIS had just crashed into the ground at an unmeasurable speed, hence the lack of warning.
A silence enveloped the TARDIS, and it was like being in a graveyard. There is something truly unnerving about being in a dead TARDIS. It all begins with the ear-splitting crash of the infinite number of doors leading all over time and space slamming shut in an instant, and then the time rotor descends, so it lies sullenly at the base of the console, as if to emphasise its deadness. However, nobody hears the final breath of the time rotor, because everybody is too busy getting their heads around the fact the TARDIS is bigger on the inside. Which, for anyone travelling in the TARDIS, is perhaps a peculiar thing to wonder, but it occurs as suddenly the dimension-engine begins to waver. As everyone with any knowledge of Gallifreyan science knows, actual dimensional deterioration takes around a thousand years, but the crippling process begins from the moment a TARDIS breathes its last, and on anyone inside the vehicle, it starts by taking an unnerving toll. There is a sudden feeling that you are not where you think you are, a feeling of depersonalisation, as if you are looking in on your body from elsewhere.
The four of them in the TARDIS tried to forget about the side effects, as they all knew that they had the fairly important thing of the end of the universe to contend with.
“Hello?” Cioné was the first to speak. “Iris? Are you alright?”
Her voice emerged from one of the far corners of the control room. “Yep!”
“Good o, Lizzie?”
“Hi!” Lizzie slowly got up onto her feet, like a baby taking its first steps, tentatively shuffling across the floor slightly. There was something terribly eerie about the machine. It was as if it were dead, as if the lights switching off had been like the machine’s eyes shutting. Lizzie remembered when she first took a step inside, and she’d been in awe of how… alive it was. Now the TARDIS had no light or sound or anything.
But the strangest thing was when she looked up, to see that the stars in the ceiling had gone.
Cioné continued her rollcall. “Hubbie?”
“The hydraulic suspension boosters increase the relative gravity and cushion it,” the Doctor answered his name with a technobabble explanation none of the others cared out. “No different to what happens whenever we normally land, just bigger.”
“Good, thanks for that,” Cioné raised an eyebrow, as she too began to find her way back onto her feet.
“I’ve got no idea what you just said…,” Iris waved her torch around the control chamber. It was as if they were archaeologists exploring some long-forgotten tomb, with everything they did being by the light of a torch. Except pressing on all of their minds, was that they were going to find nothing inside the TARDIS. No… the truth of the matter was going to become evident outside, when they eventually discovered what was busy bringing the universe to an end.
Eventually, Iris’ torchlight spotlighted Lizzie, and they all saw her staring up at the blackness. Although not with the same fascination as her, the three others also looked at that endless night that could be seen from the observatory.
“No stars,” Iris acknowledged.
“They’ve all burned out,” the Doctor picked his way over a bookshelf that, in the calamity, had toppled over onto the floor. Over the rubble he hopped, and moved his way over to the door. He couldn’t think too much of the fact that every star in the universe had gone, because what they had to do was urgent. “Here we are…”
“The end of the universe,” Cioné guided her away from the observatory. It would do for now, but only as a temporary distraction. “Doctor, we need to get out, the TARDIS is falling off.”
“Falling off where?” to Lizzie, it seemed to be that the TARDIS was fine. Though, she was still aware that she had no true idea of the science behind the TARDIS.
The Doctor grimly agreed. “Everyone out.”
“Where are we?” Iris negotiated her way over the ruins of the bookshelves. As Lizzie stumbled over them, she caught sight of her book - her favourite book, The Good-Dream Girl. That well-thumbed novel, the one she'd held tightly onto ever since she was a kid. It was one of those novels that had just... got her. It gave her hope, and it made her smile, even in her darkest days. That's why she'd brought it on the TARDIS with her - because she always needed that hope. It was at that moment. that Lizzie thought she needed some hope. So, she took the book with her.
“The eye of the storm…," the Doctor mused, as he flung open the doors.
“Which is?” Iris stepped out of the TARDIS.
“Not a clue…”
Cioné left as well, and the Doctor, after giving Lizzie a kindly smile, helped her out of the box.
***
The memories came back to Lizzie within an instant. In fact, Lizzie had only placed one foot outside of the TARDIS before she knew exactly where she was.
Places that you know often retained some kind of… resonance, Lizzie had decided. In absolutely every way, from the sights, the sounds, the way everything felt. And the smell – in fact, that was probably what had led Lizzie to make the initial identification, considering it was completely dark, wherever they were, and other than Iris’ torch, nothing could be seen. Often, in one’s head, when revisiting somewhere you once knew well, it could be like travelling in time, with all those elements of sensual recognition coming together to form an image of the place as you once knew it.
As Lizzie stepped further out of the TARDIS, The Good-Dream Girl in hand, it was the same principle. Except a bit more literal.
Within seconds she had identified the entrance way to her former care home.
The TARDIS was parked in front of the front-doors, and ahead of them was the main hallway, with a great set of stairs leading to the upstairs, and ways branching off into the living room, the kitchen, and the main office. It was a fairly unassuming spot for the end of the universe, that former hub of her childhood home, with its patterned wallpaper and its stained carpet and that oh-so-familiar musty smell. There was a noticeboard on the wall, and to it were pinned the same old repetitive notices about fire procedures and rules, and then some others regarding events that changed every so often. Dusty artworks hung up on the walls, reminders of the fact that the kids who lived there were only there because they had to be, and nothing more.
Iris had meandered out far into the centre of the hall, in search of anything interesting. The Doctor gave Lizzie a look, to make sure she was alright, because he too could remember where they were. Lizzie intercepted his look and nodded, but Cioné saw as well.
“Where are we?” she eventually asked, caution heavy in her voice.
“This,” Lizzie looked around her, as the building didn’t seem any different as it had ever done during the universe’s life. “Was where I grew up.”
There was a strange notion of acceptance as she said it, made weirder by the fact she had her family around her, and that there seemed to be no life in the place where she had once lived. Buildings made noises at night, the rattling of pipes, people getting up to go to the loo, floorboards that randomly seemed to creak… but Dunsworth House was making none. Lizzie was quite certain that if she went upstairs, all the beds would be empty.
“It makes sense,” the Doctor shrugged. “The memory graveyard is constructed on this spot in another dimension. When Lizzie, Iris and myself came here before, we got here through that lake in the forest nearby. The manor, when Lizzie and I went ghost hunting, was built on this spot, and they were the ghosts of the memory graveyard,” he took his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and began to scan the building. He knew there was a link between the memory graveyard and this care home, but he had no idea what it was yet. And he was also fairly certain that the others knew something he didn’t…
“Are there any lights?” Cioné traced the walls for a switch, but couldn’t find anything. Lizzie found them in an instant, and flicked two of them on, deliberately trying to give the place a nightly, cozy glow.
Suddenly Iris’ voice came from the room next door. “Oh my god.”
The Doctor slipped his sonic screwdriver quickly back into his jacket pocket, joining Iris in the living room. Cioné and Lizzie quickly followed, swerving around the sofas and armchairs to the patio doors, which overlooked the impressive garden below.
It was made even more impressive by the blinding white light which burst through the conifers at the far end of the lawn. It was as if the sun were setting only a good 800 metres from where they stood, with the almost-divine light bathing the entire room, and causing the four of them to squint.
“What’s the light to do with?” Lizzie placed a hand on the patio window, just as she’d done when she was a kid. “Guessing it’s something to do with the Memory Graveyard?”
“Literally, we are on the edge of time,” the Doctor explained, the four souls, lonely in the whole universe, admiring its final sunset. “It’s like we’re on a cliff, and there’s a landslide. And gradually, it’s all falling away beneath us. Except… there’s nothing. Nowhere to fall, nowhere to land. There’s just nothing. Forever. Beyond that light… is nothing,” the Doctor turned to speak to his daughter without taking his eyes off the light, as if it were an enemy approaching steadily closer. Which was funny, because it was. “Iris. Star-Watch.”
Iris glanced at her phone. “Ax5, Helix 7, Kevin’s Apple, hey, even Helios 2, there goes Evangeline, good riddance…”
“We’re on the edge,” Lizzie whispered, as if there were someone out there that could hear her – even though nobody was, and nobody ever would be.
The Doctor clapped his hands. “Right. Last four people left in the universe, looks like it’s up to us to save it.
Cioné looked around at all of them. “The Golden Girls.”
“Cartman, Stan, Kenny and Kyle?” Iris suggested.
“Samantha, Miranda, Charlotte and Carrie,” the Doctor decided. Cioné gave him a bemused look, a little lost as to what her husband got up to in his spare time. The Doctor, meanwhile, had already crossed to the other side of the room. Cioné sighed, and followed him, and so did Lizzie, while Iris leapt over the back of the sofa and joined then.
“Okay, questions,” the Doctor began their group brainstorm. “Why is Evangeline so okay with destroying the universe. What good does she get out of a destroyed universe?”
"Did you feel it as well?" Cioné looked to her husband. Of course, that encounter in Downing Tower had been the first time Cioné had met Evangeline Cullengate up close - and it was hard to ignore something pressing. A strange familiarity, and yet a distaance as well.
"I've felt it ever since I met her," the Doctor walked into the office and tried to turn on the computer. It wasn’t functioning, unsurprisingly. "She's more than just... a normal... individual who decided to run for office. How did she do it?"
Lizzie spoke plainly. “You've felt... what?”
And to Lizzie, it seemed obvious, when she thought about it. No matter how different Evangeline was, she'd just... won an election. How did all these people come to power in the first place? Exploiting fear of the unknown. It made sense that Evangeline would be doing the same, to make sure she could retain her firm grasp over the people.
The Doctor nodded in agreement. “I don't know... I don't think it's anything major. Whoever she is, I'm certain that I've never clapped eyes on her before.”
“Right,” Cioné took over, because it seemed like they weren’t going to get anywhere otherwise. “How do we actually deal with this?”
“We need something to hold us back to… prevent us from falling out of the universe.”
Cioné pointed to the TARDIS. “Iris, TARDIS shields, use your teenagery techy skills to reroute them and surround this building.”
“Mum. I can’t connect my phone to the internet.”
The Doctor sat back in the office chair and gave Iris a grumpy parental glare. “What’s the point of having a teenage daughter if she can’t use a computer better than her parents?”
“Then… try and learn, I don’t know. In fact, I’ll help you. Darling Lizzie,” she turned to Lizzie who had been stood awkwardly in the corner of the room during the whole conversation. “Get him to do something useful.”
“I’ll try…”
Cioné vanished, leaving the Doctor and Lizzie alone in the office. They’d been in the same office together. It felt like ages had passed since that’d happened. So much had happened in that time.
There’s something else…,” the Doctor racked his brains. There was one big piece of the puzzle missing, the ‘x’ to make the equation work. And he just couldn’t work out what it was.
“This place.”
Again, Lizzie was blunt, because it had been preying on her mind. Everything was tied to her, somehow. Except… she had a feeling she knew why. When she looked down, Lizzie realised she was still carrying that copy of The Good-Dream Girl around with her.
“Lizzie, are you alright?” the Doctor stood up and walked over to her. He knew there was something up, he could read her like a book. Except, he always thought he could. Maybe Cleopatra had been right, all that time ago, perhaps Lizzie Darwin could lie to him, and he would never even know.
“Yep. Course I am.”
“I don’t think you are,” the Doctor placed a hand on her cheek. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Lizzie stepped grumpily away from him, so instead of sulking in the corner of the room she was sulking by the door. “Look, you’ve got a universe to be saving, so…”
“And I will let the universe die to make sure you’re okay.”
She knew that it was a stupid thing for him to say, but he said it with such earnestness. However, she did not let it get to him. Lizzie would not tell him the truth just yet, for she was quite certain that he would find both of his answers in the same place. And she knew he would. She knew the Doctor like that.
“Somewhere in this building, the Memory Graveyard is being streamed over the whole universe. It must be, that’s the only reason this building is still… intact.”
He grabbed his sonic screwdriver, scanning for the source of the energy. It wasn’t far, and he followed it, with Lizzie tentatively following behind, as if it didn’t mean as much to her as it meant to him. As if somehow, she knew where this was going to end up.
The Doctor clambered slowly up the stairs, and with each step, Lizzie felt another part of her retreat from the outside world. Step by step, the Doctor was nearing the truth, and it would only be another few minutes before the game would be up. They were at the top of the stairs now, and the Doctor listened closer to his sonic screwdriver, after all, if anything was going to tell him the truth, it would be the sonic screwdriver now. The Doctor turned again, up another set of stairs, heading towards the few bedrooms at the very top of the house. Lizzie, by now, was trailing far behind him.
She found the Doctor stood on the cramped landing, leaning against the wall with the door to the side of him. It was as if he were putting off entering, as if he knew that this wasn’t going to end well for him. He could see that Lizzie was paralysed with fear, as he joined her up there, and they faced the door together. So, he offered her a hand.
She took it, and in the brief seconds that they were holding each other, they both felt safe. As if whatever was to be found in that room could not scare either of them, as long as they were together. It was as if, after all this time, now that the universe had collapsed around them, this was all they had left. To go to the end, together.
The Doctor opened the door, and then his whole world fell apart.
Lizzie spoke before he entered. “I’m – I’m sorry, Doctor. I should’ve told you.”
***
It was a bedroom, right up in the top left corner of the house, perhaps as far away from the heart of the building that you could get. There was a circular window, looking out over the garden and the and the light that streamed through the fur trees below. It did not reach through the porthole-like window, as somehow, via some strange mechanism, the room remained in darkness, apart from the lamp beside the bed, which bathed the bed’s occupant in a warm, orange glow.
And the room was bittersweet, as the Doctor stepped further in. There was a bookshelf, crammed full of titles, all children’s books, and the Doctor guessed that whoever lay in the bed was probably around the age of 7, or thereabouts. A small writing table stood up against the wall, upon which were some loose sheets of paper that had been scribed upon in the surprisingly neat hand of a young person. Dangling from the ceiling were stars, cut childishly out from white paper painted yellow, and a moon as well, a planetarium of dreams for the dreamer to run to in the night. The wardrobe had a few drawings blue-tacked to it, and other than the dressing gown, which hung upon the door like a shadow looming over the life of the occupant of the bed, the room was empty.
But it did not feel empty, because through all of those books, some of which scattered the floor, and through those drawings, and those stories bursting with childhood imagination, and those stars, the hallmark of a little girl who dreamed and hoped and loved, the room felt as if it were bursting with character.
The Doctor realised now. He understood why he thought Lizzie was lying to him, why Cioné and Iris hadn’t been entirely straight with him either. Because the truth would hurt him more than anything else.
“Because nothing is more powerful than the bad dreams of a little girl…”
The little girl lay there in the bed, fast asleep, with her head buried into the pillow as if she were hiding from both the Doctor and Lizzie. It wasn’t as if the girl needed any identification, either. As soon as the Doctor saw her face, she knew that this was the bedroom of Lizzie Darwin.
And her childhood self was asleep.
***
The Doctor quietly tiptoed through the bedroom, and kneeling quietly beside the bed of the young Lizzie, he took out his sonic screwdriver, and waved it over her as if it would somehow bring her back from the strange universe she now slept in.
“It makes sense,” the Doctor spoke aloud, but quietly. He knew that the little Lizzie was not going to wake up, but he also instinctively spoke in a hushed voice. “You got me out my plugging yourself in. And that’s why everything is tied to you – because the Memory Graveyard is powered by you. That’s why the portal is in the pond in the forest, that’s why the Masked Maiden, all that time ago, came for you.”
Lizzie traced her way over the floor of her bedroom, and she did it instinctively, knowing exactly where everything was on the floor, and stepping over it deftly, as she had become accustomed to as a child. She took out the chair from beneath her writing table, and sat down on it, before finally deciding what to say. “When we were in the tower, and I... teleported you out, I plugged myself into the device. I knew I could... move, walk around, and just... do what I do normally; it's just a mental link. Doesn't really affect me at all, it's just... channeling what I think."
"But... why?" the Doctor questioned.
Briefly, Lizzie became distracted, after looking down at her copy of The Good-Dream Girl - her copy should also have been on her childhood bookshelves. A stickler for routine, she always kept it in the same place... but this time, it was gone. And Lizzie was quite certain that at the age of seven, she'd definitely had The Good-Dream Girl.
"It made sense. It’s not just me as a kid, it’s me. Every moment of my life, pouring through my head as we speak. I have depression, and… and I’d just had a really awful breakdown, and so I realised that I’d work well.”
“Elizabeth, you stupid girl!” the Doctor stood up, anger flooding through his voice. “Why, why are you so flippant with your health?”
“You’re more important.”
The words were simple, and yet they made the Doctor feel so guilty. She was a better person, a stronger person than he would ever be. And yet, Lizzie had resolutely decided that she were right; she steadfastly believed he could fix everything.
“How can you say that,” he shook his head, and then suddenly, he realised that he was crying. Lizzie noticed as well, and there was something so terrifying about the tears of a Time Lord. “Lizzie, you had no right to go and do that, you matter, so much more than I do, in fact.”
Lizzie shook her head, though half of her was looking at the scribblings of her childhood self. She didn’t need to, she knew them all too well. She just didn’t want to look at the Doctor.
“Lizzie, don’t you see! This depression makes you stronger –”
It was then that Lizzie snapped. Of all the people in the universe, she had expected him to understand. And it turned out, that she was just going to be disappointed, because he was going to spout the same stupid rhetoric that everyone spouted, and she was sick of hearing it. When she felt awful, it just made her feel awful, and not bloody stronger like everyone else seemed to think.
“Oh for god’s sake, not this stupid rhetoric, it doesn’t make me stronger. It’s an illness and all I can do is live with it. It’s not some kind of superpower, so don’t you dare try and turn it into that.”
The Doctor looked away from her, a sheepish look on his face, and he apologised. “I should know better. I’ve been there.”
He could remember it, when it had felt like he was the one with every bad dream that ever happened streaming through his head. When he’d sat lonely on a street corner, at the foot of his police box, and somebody had come to help him.
“Exactly. You’ve got a family who have helped you through it, it’s easy for you to look back and say it makes you stronger.”
The Doctor stood up, and walked slowly over to the other side of the bed, where he perched opposite Lizzie. The older Lizzie. The older Lizzie who knew that they were going to have to do something about this soon otherwise it was going to get confusing. “You are as much a part of that family as anyone else.”
She knew she wasn’t. The whole reason she’d ended up with this bedroom, on her own, far out of the way of anyone else, was because she cried herself to sleep at night, and apparently, she disturbed the girl she used to share a room with, which was probably understandable but hadn’t made the delivery of the news any better. Lizzie had been so, so lonely all of her life, and often she’d been fine with that, she had loved being on her own. No people to irritate her or make her upset or uncomfortable or anything like that. Bliss. Except sometimes, all she wanted in the universe was a friend. Someone she could talk to, somebody she could offload her problems to, somebody she could just scream at about how much she despised everything about her life. But she didn’t have anybody like that, and it felt like everyone else did. All she needed was help.
And finally, she had realised that.
The Doctor took both of her hands in his. “Elizabeth, you are my friend, my best friend.”
Lizzie really didn’t want him to go through the motions of talking about how much she meant to him, because she just didn’t want to hear it. “Doctor, I understand –”
“Lizzie,” he interrupted her, because he knew that she had to hear this. “You are – you are so important. You found me.”
“No, don’t be –”
Again, the Doctor thought back to that time, outside his TARDIS, when he’d felt all alone. And that person had come out to help him – that person, of course, being Lizzie.
“When I was most alone in all the world, you took me in, and you made me tea, and you let me talk. That will always mean more than words can express.”
And since she took him in, and made him tea, his life had started again. He had found his family, and with her, he had travelled the universe, and it had made him realise why he wanted to live, when in the dark days of his life he had wanted the exact opposite.
The Doctor would never be able to thank Lizzie Darwin enough for that.
“Right,” he stood up. “We’re going to do this, we are going to bring back the whole universe, Lizzie, older Lizzie, of course,” which was a stupid thing to clarify, because young Lizzie was still asleep. “We’ll check on Cioné and Iris, see how they’re getting on with the perimeter…”
Lizzie did not share the Doctor’s optimism, as he bounded downstairs, with a newfound determination. However, she was quite certain that the Doctor didn’t share his own outer optimism. There was something darker about him, something a little bit more brooding, as if he’d already given up.
“Cioné?” he called, at the bottom of the staircase.
There was no reply, and both of them knew why.
“Iris?!”
Again, no reply. The Doctor did a quick recce of the downstairs rooms in the house, all of which were in pitch darkness, barring the rooms facing the garden, which were still bathed in that unearthly white glow. His wife and daughter were nowhere to be seen, and Lizzie couldn’t help but feel guilty that, as she were the one powering the big machine swallowing up the entire universe, she had been involved.
Right, she decided, resolutely. Guilt-face off, end-of-the-universe-saving-face on. Although by this point she was pretty certain they were the same thing.
She nearly started her next sentence with forgive my pessimism, before realising that would involve the Doctor forgiving everything she had said ever.
“Okay, how are we going to stop the universe from… dying? And how are we going to bring back Cioné and Iris?”
The Doctor hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, stood only a metre or so away from her. His face was melancholy, and he was trying to look hopeful – although she knew he wasn’t.
“My line of thinking…,” he began, heading up the stairs. “Is that we just… press undo. I mean, it’s a big computer hard drive, to process delete, someone had to press delete in the first place. There’ll be back-ups to restore, so – yes – yes, I think that’ll do.”
In his uncertainty, as he strode into little Lizzie’s room, he began to fumble around the base of her bed, as if he were looking for… something. His desperation was notable, however, as his handiwork was inelegantly done, his mind occupied by thoughts of his wife and daughter. To try and stop Lizzie from worrying, he tried to look in control – he always tried to look in control, always hoping that it would give those who needed it the hope they required.
“Lizzie, don’t come near me,” he pointed at the corner of the room, as if she were the same age as herself in the bed. She hesitated, but listened to him. As the Doctor poked his head beneath the wooden frame of the bed, he allowed himself to sigh, aware that Lizzie wouldn’t be able to see it. He knew that if he mucked this up, it would probably trigger a power vacuum through which there would be an energy surge which would be the cause of the big bang…
The last big bang.
Lizzie watched the sight, terrifying in its absurdity, of the Doctor wedged beneath a bed. “What are you doing?” she asked him.
“Putting me back in there – “
“No,” she ran over to him, and tried to grab onto his coat and desperately pull him back. The Doctor emerged from underneath and she clawed onto him, yanking him as far away as he could. “No, you can’t, please –”
The Doctor shook himself away. “Get off me!” He was going to do it, whether she liked it or not.
“Lizzie – okay, I don’t know how this is going to work.” And he was being honest. The Doctor had no idea – but his plan was all they had. “But when the back-up, if there’s a back-up, has been restored, all we can do is pull the plug. End it all, stop the Memory Graveyard from killing everyone and everything. It’ll kill the person powering it – and I won’t let you do that.”
“The universe needs you.” Lizzie thought of all those people she had seen him save, of all those civilisations the Doctor had brought hope to. Sometimes... the Doctor caused bad things. Lizzie knew that for sure, she had seen it first hand - but the life of the man they would be ending, would be the life of a man who had brought hope and happiness to so many. One could find solutions for problems - but when one destroyed the solution before, it was much harder to find another. The universe needed the Doctor. She had no idea what it would do without him.
“No. The universe doesn’t need me.” Time had hurt the Doctor, and whenever he did anything, all he could see was the impact it left behind. “When I’m gone, and the universe is back, you can get the help you deserve. Let that be my legacy, hey?”
The Doctor took Lizzie’s hand once more.
“Cioné and Iris need you,” was all Lizzie could say. She’d seen that little girl grow up, and she needed her father. She’d seen them fall apart, she’d seen them brought back together again. Lizzie couldn’t bear to see it fall apart forever.
Also, she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth.
“I couldn’t be a dad until you helped me,” the Doctor shrugged. And it was true, for he had had his doubts – not just doubts, in fact, but massive insecurities that he would have never gotten past without Lizzie. “And when you did, I faced up to my responsibilities, I promised I would protect them both, and I will. I will.”
And as the Doctor proclaimed his pledge to protect them, even though they both knew that really, it was Cioné and Iris who would protect him, he held up his hand, and saw that it was dissolving in front of his eyes.
It was bathed in the white light that had streamed through the windows, and it was like fireflies, all whizzing around and burning so bright it illuminated him a gleaming white. As the Doctor looked at his hands, as the other was now succumbing to the same fate, it reminded him of his regenerations. Except this time, he knew that there would be no life at the end of the universe. The white light was slowly crawling up his arms, and he estimated that the two of them had two minutes, perhaps.
Or at least, he did.
Because as he was going to have to tell Lizzie Darwin, she was about to be alone.
“Doctor? Is this it, have you done it?”
The Doctor scanned over his blazing hands. “No – no, I – it’s the Memory Graveyard, the end of the universe, Lizzie, it’s caught up with me.”
The Doctor watched helplessly at the look of realisation as it pooled Lizzie’s face, and she understood the face that was awaiting her. She couldn’t believe it – except, she could.
Because that’s how it always ended for her. Alone.
She confessed.
“I need you.”
The Doctor gave her a sad smile – like the one he’d given her all that time ago when they’d first met.
“Oh, Elizabeth Darwin. It’s me who needs you.”
Lizzie put a hand to her face, and wiped the tear that had fallen. She realised that she wasn’t crying at being the last one in the universe. She didn’t care that the whole responsibility of saving everyone was going to fall to her. She was crying because she was about to lose the Doctor. That after everything they had been through, it would come to this. Lizzie had never thought that she would be the one to outlast him.
“It was never gonna work,” she snivelled. “I’m messed up, and you’re a fairytale.”
The Doctor look his head. If Lizzie were to remember anything he had ever said to her, he hoped that it would be this.
“You’re not messed up, Lizzie. Please, never think that of yourself. You are… the most amazing young woman, and it has been a pleasure. At the end of it – I’m sorry I couldn’t be the Doctor for you.”
It hadn’t been all bad. Although it had not been a good time for her, since the Doctor dropped out of the sky, Lizzie Darwin had come back. It had felt like, for the first time in her long life, she had breathed, and she had felt the air of the universe gush through her lungs, and Lizzie had felt her bones move again, as she began to walk through everything in all of time and space. She had sung, and danced, and cried, and laughed. It may have taken her so long to realise, but finally, she understood that being with the Doctor had brought her back to life.
And she had loved her life.
She couldn’t bear to say goodbye to that.
“And I never asked that from you. But you know what? You showed me the universe. You became my friend. And that’s more than I could have ever asked for.”
Oh – and he had been her friend. All her life it had been as if nobody had ever understood her. There were some who wanted to help, but finally, she had found a friend. Someone who she didn’t want to say goodbye to, somebody who she would miss – somebody whose company she desired. It was new for her.
The light engulfed half of the Doctor’s upper body, and he was crying too, although the universe evaporated his tears as it swallowed him up. He took Lizzie’s hand, and he lifted it to his face, and the Doctor kissed it.
“And this is how it always ends for me,” Lizzie joked. “Alone.” Although she wasn’t really joking.
“Lizzie – you’re never alone. Not really.”
The light reached further up him now, and he was starting to vanish properly, just as Cioné and Iris had also gone. Lizzie thought of the three of them, and how they had brought her home. Lizzie thought of all the others she had met, Pat, Cleo, Nephthys, Jada, Elle, Jarvis, Ronnie, Kido, Carson. Cioné and Iris. And above all, Lizzie thought of Maggie. The woman who had been there for her, all of her life, even when she hadn’t realised it.
“I wouldn’t have missed it, you know,” Lizzie smiled. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the end of the universe.”
“Mmhm,” the Doctor said. “The universe might not always be kind – but perhaps we can make it so.”
A few seconds of silence passed between the two of them, and now the Doctor was just a ghost.
“Goodbye, Doctor.”
“Goodbye, Elizabeth.”
She let go of his hand. Except she wasn’t sure if she did – perhaps his hand just disappeared around hers.
There was silence in that room at the top of the house.
It was not a new silence. Lizzie had always known there to be silence in that room, all through her life, in the deepest, darkest parts of the night, when there was nobody for her. And even in the brightest parts of day, when there had been so much life, screaming and shouting below her, the room had been silent as well. Even when she could hear things, it felt silent.
Lizzie’s whole life had been silent.
And now the whole universe was.
“A fitting end,” she murmured. Her voice was weird, now she was all alone. She didn’t have a use for it anymore.
And Lizzie was correct. At the end of everything, she was alone, in the silence. Her life, perfectly summarised, laid out in front of her. Plagued by trust issues all of her life, locked up inside herself and refusing to talk to anyone anything. “You’re always very enigmatic, Lizzie,” is what people would always say to her, but she didn’t care. Nobody knew anything about her, really, she just passed under everyone’s radars, keeping all of her cards as close to her chest as she possibly could – determined to be her, and not defined by her life. So it did feel fitting that when she was the only person left in the universe, the only person with her, was herself.
Someone she could be open with. Someone who would understand her, when she said that it wasn’t just the universe that had kicked her, and punched her, and verbally beaten her, until she was blue and bleeding, and until she was so numb from the constant, relentless, never-ending pain, that she had finally learned to take it. And everything that she had faced, she had charged herself for it, and found herself guilty. When she ever did do something wrong, she would abuse herself over it, until she couldn’t torture herself over it anymore. And when Lizzie Darwin became old enough to understand, nothing would delight her more than the blade, and then nothing would make her feel sicker and more disgusting than the oncoming guilt that choked her and drowned her. No thought tantalised her more than the way out, the thought that she may find an escape from this constant hell, to find an escape from the bad dreams that had infected her soul, that plagued her, day in and day out.
Until now, she had thought that it was only herself who would understand this, but perhaps she had been wrong. Now she was faced with herself at the end of the universe, Lizzie finally realised that she’d been wrong, all of her life.
Now it was time for her to do something about it.
It wasn’t as if this were some great moment of realisation. It wasn’t as if she could just pull up her socks and decide to face the world and fix herself. It was just sheer, unbridled grit, a blood-filled passionate need to pull herself, and the universe, back.
And Lizzie had realised what she needed to do.
There were a few options, as the Doctor had suggested. But the Doctor hadn’t always been right. She could cut the power, cut the memory graveyard, the back-ups would restore, the universe would save. Let herself die, at long bloody last.
But it wouldn’t help anyone.
So there was only one option.
It was time for Lizzie Darwin to tell herself a story.
“Right,” she sighed, not really sure where to start, because although she could write stories down, speaking them was just incoherent. It was just her luck that the fate of everyone who had ever and ever would live was determined on her being able to speak. Lizzie pulled the lone chair away from the writing table, and placed it down beside her bed.
She took the seat, ready to begin her tale.
“So, turns out I’m gonna end this already quite narcissistic shitshow by being the last person left in the whole universe and talking to myself. Lovely. Yep. Brilliant.”
Lizzie had her book, sat on her lap. The Good-Dream Girl. It was her favourite book. Finally, it was to become her inspiration.
Lizzie had no idea that this was actually going to work. It was all just based on conjecture – logically, the Memory Graveyard was powered by bad dreams and memories streaming through the head of its power source - AKA, herself. So… Lizzie just needed to change the bad dreams that were busy engulfing the universe. Replace them with something else, and then the Memory Graveyard would start making good dreams. And maybe, those good dreams would be able to bring back the universe.
Yeah. It sounded stupid when put like that, but it was all she had. And when she did, perhaps she could accept her life. And then she could get help.
“The Good-Dream Girl,” Lizzie spoke aloud. “Once upon a time, there was a girl called Elizabeth Darwin. She sat on a chair, that was probably a bit too big for a six-year-old, since her feet couldn’t touch the ground, and were left dangling in the air…”
And Lizzie told her story. She forced every single day out of her, every day she hated the thought of living and every day she despised herself. She told of the people who had despised her too, and she told of how she was almost certain that the universe was in cahoots with them. All of those moments of being completely alone in the world, every relationship around her shattered, and the glass so sharp it should slice into her soul. Lizzie spoke of every tear, and every drop of blood, and the vitriolic guilt, and every second of fearing the dark, and every night when she lay awake, the starvation of sleep making her ache to the very core. Lizzie spoke of it all passionately, and she made the universe know that all of those tears and all of that blood had come to form the woman sat beside that bed.
“But that,” she took a deep, shaky, breath, wiping the tears away from her eyes. “It’s not everything.”
Although nearly all the time it felt like it was everything, Lizzie forced herself to look past it. She told little Lizzie of those times she’d sat on the bench overlooking the sunset at Dunsworth, with life held perfectly in balance, and a rare, blissful moment of contentment upon her. As Lizzie looked out of that iconic circular window, she thought of the dark, and told Lizzie how, although she was terrified of what demons lurked in the shadows, there was something magical about the night as well – a stillness with the world that she craved more than anything else, and that often, it was that stillness that piqued euphoria, and she wanted to dance under the night and the stars.
And of course, she told little Lizzie about Maggie, who, even when she didn’t understand, would always listen, and would always accept. Maggie, who would always be there for the little girl sleeping in that bed, who would always take her in, and make her tea, even when it wasn’t convenient – especially when it wasn’t convenient.
“And then came the Doctor.”
Her life had transformed forever, from that moment. She had sat on the swings, at the top of a hill, the last frontier between the Earth and the Universe, as the sun had set on her old life. And she had truly grasped the impossible scale of the universe, and how, in all the millions and billions and trillions of random probabilities and occurrences that could have happened, she had been born.
Then she spoke of how she and the Doctor had walked upon stars. How they had travelled to long-forgotten lands, and helped long-forgotten people. How they had met Cleopatra, and gave her hope that her life would be remembered as it was lived. Lizzie told herself how she had met a girl, very similar to herself, who was very lonely, and who had lost her mother. Lizzie thought of when she met her sister – a sister she never thought she had, and how they had built a bond so unbreakable, an eternal love. And then she moved onto how she had finally danced, in a spaceship so far from home, the stars above her head, and the happiness that it had brought her. Of course, it would be impossible to forget the time she shared her breath with the TARDIS, and the time she’d sat at the top of an old house, and just talked about nothing to her best friend in the universe.
And even when times grew dark for her, Maggie, the closest person she had to a mother, had journeyed across the universe to find her. And that even when they had been the last two people left in existence, her best friend had helped her, and she had helped him. Human relationships, strained to their furthest limits – but displayed at the true optimum of their beauty.
Lizzie realised, at that moment, how rare and beautiful it was, to walk upon the universe.
How lucky she was to even be alive.
And suddenly, Lizzie looked up, and the most magical thing was happening.
There was a golden light streaming from the bed, wispy, arm-like beams waving around the room, dancing above her head – or heads, for she still wasn’t over the absurdity of the situation. Except now, she laughed because of it, as in that moment, Lizzie felt happy. She wiped her eyes once more, and watched as those golden stories trailed off into the never-ending night, and when Lizzie ran over to that circular window she had watched, alone, out of for most of her life, she saw those stories dance across the boundaries of the universe. They spread to the highest reaches of the sky, and soon it became tinged in that light.
The ultimate story of hope to a broken life flooded across all the universe.
And as those stories had been spoken, she saw something that Lizzie wasn’t even sure would ever come to be.
The white light from behind the fur trees began to dissolve, and roll back, and as it rolled back, the world unrolled with it, resurrected by all those impossible tales she had told. And she expected, as she saw how it retreated back, the night sky became rich with stars. When the sky became full of stars again, it was the moment that Lizzie knew it wasn’t just the world reaching out around her, but the entire universe coming back to life.
She was the good-dream girl now, and with her stories, Lizzie had brought back everything, and everyone.
Suddenly, Lizzie felt something inside her break – as if she had a connection with something, and the cord had snapped. Of course, she couldn’t be certain, but Lizzie was almost certain that it was the Memory Graveyard breaking away from her. In the end, the Memory Graveyard would not be where all the bad dreams were stored – but in fact, where all the good dreams lived.
A strange glowing portal began to extend from those golden beams of light, just ahead of the bed, and Lizzie knew that it was where she would go next.
It would take her back home.
But before Lizzie left, she looked at herself, and realised that she was still fast asleep. Clearly the insomnia hadn’t sunk in yet, she joked to herself.
“Hey, kid,” she whispered to her sleeping younger self. “I feel like, cause everything is back to normal, that I should probably give you some advice. Cause that’s what you’re meant to do, I think, when you meet your past self…”
Lizzie hesitated, as it dawned on her that she actually wasn’t sure what to say.
“I can’t lie to you,” which she was certain of, because she had always been a rubbish liar. “It’s not gonna be great. Life is awful and we all learn that the hard way. But… be hopeful. I’m still borderline hating myself now as we sit here, in two minutes I’ll end up stepping through that portal, going through months of therapy and dosing myself up on antidepressants.”
Lizzie realised that she wasn’t making any sense. She never really did, though, and she was just relieved that this time round, the whole universe didn’t depend upon her speaking skills.
“What I’m trying to say,” she concluded. “Is that there’s no magical cure for any of this, there never will be. But remember there’s good things too. Beautiful things. And above all – don’t be scared.”
Yeah. That was pretty good advice.
“In the wake of what you’re gonna see, it seems like a pretty good idea to just, be terrified of the future. But it isn’t, okay? It’s not.”
It was hard, giving herself advice. Because it wasn’t going to be easy – all she could manage was to tell herself that when it was okay, to take those times and treasure them.
“We’re… pretty lucky to even exist, so when everything is hell around you, try and hold onto that. I don’t think you’ll remember this, and even if you do, I don’t think it will make any difference. Because it’ll hurt, and you’ll hate it, so yeah, sorry. Typical me… awkward ending.”
And then Lizzie remembered. She'd never known when she'd received that copy of her favourite book. And... right now, it was nowhere to be seen.
“Guess you’ll be needing this too,” she lay her copy of The Good-Dream Girl, the one she'd been clutching ever since she stepped out the TARDIS, gently on the bedside table. “It’ll help you. It really will.”
Lizzie stood up from her seat beside the bed, and leaned over to her younger self.
“Stay strong, hey? Even when you don’t want to.”
She kissed herself on the forehead, and then slowly stepped away from the bed, switching off the lamp as she went, leaving the room in darkness but for the golden portal. She walked tentatively towards it.
“And to be honest, if you remember any of this, my awkwardness is gonna work wonders for your self-confidence.”
Lizzie gave herself one, final smile, and stepped into the golden portal, on her way home.
It wrapped itself up shut behind her, and then the room was completely in darkness. Seconds of silence passed.
And then little Lizzie stirred from her sleep, and she looked up at her bedroom around her. All good. She smiled, and then she went back to sleep.
It wouldn’t always be good for her. But for now, she was okay.
***
A Week Later
It was a funny rain outside. It was a true late-afternoon storm, lashing down, thrashing against the ground below, filling up puddles on the curb-side, and creating reservoirs on the top of the mud-brown bins outside. It drummed on drain-tops and car windscreens, and dampened the roof tiles of the houses opposite. Except, at the same time, on the roof she could only hear a gentle patter, and the windows were perfectly dry. Perhaps the wind was just blowing in a different direction. The sky was a slate grey, but the evening sun was cracking through, poking bittersweet beams of a yellowish white through the grimness.
Lizzie found it deeply satisfying, watching the raindrops fire into the lakes on the ground, sending tiny, instantaneous ripples spattering, there and gone in the blink of an eye, like a crude, stop-motion animation. She’d been stood for at least half an hour watching the scene, observing the couple dashing past with a floral umbrella, and the silver Peugeot cruise in an effortless attempt at parallel parking opposite, the occupant launching themselves from the car into their house at an impossibly quick, ‘I don’t have a raincoat’ kind of speed.
“You alright, love?” Maggie was stood behind her. Lizzie had noticed her ages ago, reflected in the glass.
Lizzie didn’t say anything.
Since she had arrived back here, she hadn’t said very much. Stepping through that golden portal in the bedroom of her childhood-self had taken her back to Maggie’s house. And rightly so – for it was a place that she had felt at home. Since all of it, Maggie had taken her to see a doctor, and she had, as expected, been prescribed medication. Now she was on a waiting list for counselling, but it was going to be a while. Maggie had been the best through all of it, and she was so thankful for everything she had done.
Except, Lizzie couldn’t rest easy. Because she wasn’t sure where the Doctor was. Her best friend, someone who could understand her, and he’d gone. She’d not seen him since he vanished, and she was so concerned for him.
Maggie stepped further into the small living room, gently brushing past the chest of drawers, with the wooden and glass cupboards on top, full of family photos and keepsakes and all sorts of tat that she didn’t really need to keep but felt obliged to anyway. There was a small framed photo, of Lizzie, on the day of her graduation, in a wrought metal frame, sat amongst the mementos.
“Lizzie – I’m almost certain, you know, that he’s alright. And when he inevitably comes back, because of this stupid delay I’m going to rip his boll –”
Lizzie couldn’t help but laugh, and it was probably the first time she’d laughed in a while.
“– and I’ll make them into bloody earrings.”
Lizzie shrugged. “I don’t really know how it’s all going to work. The universe ended and he was taken by it and then I brought the universe back with stories of him. So it’s logical he should come back too.”
Maggie stopped and held onto the drawers for support, caught in a complete wave of confusion as to what she should say next. Partly because she didn’t actually have a clue what she was going on about.
“What right have I got to be upset about this? To be upset about everything?” Lizzie turned away from the windowsill, and slumped down on the sofa. It wasn’t even a proper fed-up slump. She buried her face in her hands, like a child playing peekaboo, as if somehow, she thought it could hide her forever. “We’re all alive, that’s a start.”
“Oh, but my darling,” Maggie said to her. “You have every right.”
Lizzie looked up through the crack in her hands.
“I wish you’d talk about how you’re feeling more, but – just because some morons will say ‘you’re hurt in a different way to anyone else you are therefore less valued’ – they are so wrong. You’re hurt, bad things have happened, and of course it’s scarred you. Badly. And that’s what matters, more than anything else. There are idiots in this world who will deny it, but as I say, they’re idiots and their opinion counts for nothing.”
She took her hands away from her face, and Maggie came over and sat beside her. She ran an old hand through Lizzie’s hair, smothering down the tufts that had been stuck up, as if Lizzie were still a child. Everyone needed someone like that in their lives – someone who knew them better than anyone else.
“Thank you for everything,” Lizzie told her.
Maggie shook her head dismissively. “You don’t need to –”
“I do. I’m… useless as telling people things.”
“Oh, love… you’re my daughter. Or at least, you might as well be. There’s no thanks needed.”
Maggie hugged her, and Lizzie buried her face into Maggie’s old shoulders, where she felt safe. The world wasn’t a safe place, but at least, for a few seconds, she felt it.
“The Doctor will be back,” Maggie pointed over to the far corner of the living room. “Because also, I packed your stuff.”
Lizzie laughed at how well Maggie knew her. “You should come with us.”
Then it was Maggie’s turn to laugh at the sheer weirdness of Lizzie’s suggestion. One trip to that peculiar space-station had been quite enough for her. It wasn’t as if she were too… freaked out, by space. No, it had been quite a laugh. But Maggie Shepherd had people who needed her on Earth. Mikey. The kids she worked with.
And Lizzie, whenever she came home.
Maggie, at that moment, stood up, and proclaimed what obviously had to be proclaimed, for this was an encounter that had gone on far too long without this trope of their relationship being milked for all it was worth.
“Time for a cuppa, I think…”
But her voice trailed off at the end, as she caught sight of something out on the street corner.
Underneath the streetlamp, prematurely shining due to the nature of the weather, there was a familiar sight. Last time she’d seen it… well, the last time she’d seen it, it had destroyed her patio.
“Lizzie. I think you’d better see this.”
Both Lizzie and Maggie stood beside the window, and saw, underneath the falling rain and in the orange light of the streetlamp, there was a funny little blue box.
The bigger-on-the-inside box.
And suddenly, the doors opened, and a man stepped outside, an umbrella popping up above his head. He leaned on the door, and gave Lizzie a wave. He was clean shaven, and his boots were polished, and his trousers ironed. His shirt was clean, and tucked into said trousers, and a well-tied cravat was beneath his collar. A fitted jacket hung well over his shoulders, and for once, the Doctor looked presentable.
Maggie spoke with a mocking smugness. “I said he’d be back.”
Lizzie made her way over to the corner of the room, and picked up the lone suitcase. It was battered now – the suitcase of a well-versed traveller. Lizzie lugged it through to the front door, depositing it down at the foot of the stairs. Maggie hobbled in after her. A yellow mackintosh hung upon the pegs, and Lizzie took it, and slipped it over her shoulders, zipping it up.
Maggie leaned in, and kissed her. She would miss Lizzie dearly, as much as she missed her own children when they weren’t around. But she was quite certain that it made Lizzie happy – and that was what mattered.
“I’ll get in touch when I get a referral for your first counselling appointment, yes?”
Lizzie nodded. “Thank you.”
“As I said,” Maggie put on a brave face. “No thanks needed.”
The front door was opened, and Lizzie took a look at the woman who had helped her, so much, throughout all of her life.
Then she turned, and through the pouring rain, she dashed to the TARDIS, so that she was under the cover of the Doctor’s umbrella. It may have been the first signs of an autumn chill, and the autumnal weather, but Maggie was still stood there in the doorway, waving her off as Lizzie Darwin left to see the universe.
Lizzie raised her hand, and said aloud,
“Goodbye.”
The Doctor passed Lizzie his umbrella, and turned into the TARDIS, while Lizzie watched as Maggie shut her front door behind her.
As she was about to take one, final, melancholy look at Dunsworth, she saw a woman walking towards her from the end of the road. She was like a monochrome photograph, dressed in a sleek, perfect black business suit above a crisp, snow-white shirt, and her skin so pale - except she possessed a distinct, ruby-red umbrella, protecting her from the deluge. As she approached, Lizzie saw her ruby-red lips twist into a wry smile, which in turn twisted the faint outline of the scar on the left side of her face.
“Elizabeth Darwin?”
Lizzie stared at the mysterious woman, at a loss as to how she could know her name. After all, Lizzie was certain that she had never set eyes upon her before. “... yeah?”
The woman handed over a card - plain white, and framed with an ornate, black-ink border - but with a simple phone number printed on it. Lizzie, not knowing whether to take the card, obviously took the card to avoid the awkwardness of a social encounter.
“For when you want to take action against Evangeline Cullengate,” the woman acknowledged.
With that, the woman turned and walked away.
“How do you know… how do you know about that?” Lizzie called after her.
The woman turned. “We’ll be seeing each other again, I think.”
The woman walked away into the rain, and vanished into the fog. Lizzie decided to pocket the card, although she had no idea whether she would phone the number. Except… perhaps she did know.
Lizzie closed the TARDIS doors behind her.
***
When the doors slammed shut behind them, the Doctor bounded over to the controls. Cioné was already moving around the console, still in awe at what a shambolic state the Doctor’s TARDIS was in. Iris, meanwhile, was sat on the leather seating, watching a video of a man falling head over heels after someone switched off his bedroom’s antigravs. In the midst of her hysterical laughing, Iris caught sight of Lizzie as she walked further into the TARDIS, and she threw herself off the seat, and dashed over into Lizzie’s arms. Lizzie hugged her back, and in those moments, the two sisters were together, and they were happy.
“Oh my god, are you alright Liz?” she demanded, taking Lizzie slightly by surprise.
“Yeah. Well. Hopefully I’m gonna be.”
Iris held her for a bit longer, determined to not let go, until eventually, they separated. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“I’m so glad to be here,” Lizzie laughed, and she walked further into the TARDIS, where Cioné left the controls.
“Darling, thank god you’re here, hubbie’s driving me insane and you’re one of the few people who can stop me going mad.” She gave Lizzie a hug, and kissed her on the cheek, and then panicked wondering if it was too touchy-feely. “Be strong, hmm?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie agreed, before Cioné then turned away on her hideous neon orange trainers to the controls.
“All of time and space,” the Doctor joined his wife, and then Lizzie and Iris joined them both too, so all four of them were surrounding the console that controlled the gateway to everything that had ever happened, or ever would happen, or never could happen. The four of them looked at each other, and smiled, for this was how it was to be. "And things. Evangeline Cullengate, still looming large. And we'll get her."
And the woman, Lizzie thought.
"But, after all," the Doctor grinned. "This is a time machine."
And it would be a terrible shame not to have some fun.
“Whacked on the randomiser,” Cioné informed them. “Ooh. Whacked it on. Lovely turn of phrase.”
“But only after you repaired the databank stacks,” the Doctor saw it fit to remind her. “After someone tripped over,” he turned to Iris. “And ripped out all 377 physonomic sparkplugs.”
“You shouldn’t have left the lights off…,” Iris grumbled.
“Elizabeth,” the Doctor told her. “You do the honours, please.”
Lizzie took the dematerialisation lever, and she pulled it.
The TARDIS took a deep breath, and the four of them joined it, and now they were ready to greet the universe with open arms.
The bigger-on-the-inside box.
And suddenly, the doors opened, and a man stepped outside, an umbrella popping up above his head. He leaned on the door, and gave Lizzie a wave. He was clean shaven, and his boots were polished, and his trousers ironed. His shirt was clean, and tucked into said trousers, and a well-tied cravat was beneath his collar. A fitted jacket hung well over his shoulders, and for once, the Doctor looked presentable.
Maggie spoke with a mocking smugness. “I said he’d be back.”
Lizzie made her way over to the corner of the room, and picked up the lone suitcase. It was battered now – the suitcase of a well-versed traveller. Lizzie lugged it through to the front door, depositing it down at the foot of the stairs. Maggie hobbled in after her. A yellow mackintosh hung upon the pegs, and Lizzie took it, and slipped it over her shoulders, zipping it up.
Maggie leaned in, and kissed her. She would miss Lizzie dearly, as much as she missed her own children when they weren’t around. But she was quite certain that it made Lizzie happy – and that was what mattered.
“I’ll get in touch when I get a referral for your first counselling appointment, yes?”
Lizzie nodded. “Thank you.”
“As I said,” Maggie put on a brave face. “No thanks needed.”
The front door was opened, and Lizzie took a look at the woman who had helped her, so much, throughout all of her life.
Then she turned, and through the pouring rain, she dashed to the TARDIS, so that she was under the cover of the Doctor’s umbrella. It may have been the first signs of an autumn chill, and the autumnal weather, but Maggie was still stood there in the doorway, waving her off as Lizzie Darwin left to see the universe.
Lizzie raised her hand, and said aloud,
“Goodbye.”
The Doctor passed Lizzie his umbrella, and turned into the TARDIS, while Lizzie watched as Maggie shut her front door behind her.
As she was about to take one, final, melancholy look at Dunsworth, she saw a woman walking towards her from the end of the road. She was like a monochrome photograph, dressed in a sleek, perfect black business suit above a crisp, snow-white shirt, and her skin so pale - except she possessed a distinct, ruby-red umbrella, protecting her from the deluge. As she approached, Lizzie saw her ruby-red lips twist into a wry smile, which in turn twisted the faint outline of the scar on the left side of her face.
“Elizabeth Darwin?”
Lizzie stared at the mysterious woman, at a loss as to how she could know her name. After all, Lizzie was certain that she had never set eyes upon her before. “... yeah?”
The woman handed over a card - plain white, and framed with an ornate, black-ink border - but with a simple phone number printed on it. Lizzie, not knowing whether to take the card, obviously took the card to avoid the awkwardness of a social encounter.
“For when you want to take action against Evangeline Cullengate,” the woman acknowledged.
With that, the woman turned and walked away.
“How do you know… how do you know about that?” Lizzie called after her.
The woman turned. “We’ll be seeing each other again, I think.”
The woman walked away into the rain, and vanished into the fog. Lizzie decided to pocket the card, although she had no idea whether she would phone the number. Except… perhaps she did know.
Lizzie closed the TARDIS doors behind her.
***
When the doors slammed shut behind them, the Doctor bounded over to the controls. Cioné was already moving around the console, still in awe at what a shambolic state the Doctor’s TARDIS was in. Iris, meanwhile, was sat on the leather seating, watching a video of a man falling head over heels after someone switched off his bedroom’s antigravs. In the midst of her hysterical laughing, Iris caught sight of Lizzie as she walked further into the TARDIS, and she threw herself off the seat, and dashed over into Lizzie’s arms. Lizzie hugged her back, and in those moments, the two sisters were together, and they were happy.
“Oh my god, are you alright Liz?” she demanded, taking Lizzie slightly by surprise.
“Yeah. Well. Hopefully I’m gonna be.”
Iris held her for a bit longer, determined to not let go, until eventually, they separated. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“I’m so glad to be here,” Lizzie laughed, and she walked further into the TARDIS, where Cioné left the controls.
“Darling, thank god you’re here, hubbie’s driving me insane and you’re one of the few people who can stop me going mad.” She gave Lizzie a hug, and kissed her on the cheek, and then panicked wondering if it was too touchy-feely. “Be strong, hmm?”
“Yeah,” Lizzie agreed, before Cioné then turned away on her hideous neon orange trainers to the controls.
“All of time and space,” the Doctor joined his wife, and then Lizzie and Iris joined them both too, so all four of them were surrounding the console that controlled the gateway to everything that had ever happened, or ever would happen, or never could happen. The four of them looked at each other, and smiled, for this was how it was to be. "And things. Evangeline Cullengate, still looming large. And we'll get her."
And the woman, Lizzie thought.
"But, after all," the Doctor grinned. "This is a time machine."
And it would be a terrible shame not to have some fun.
“Whacked on the randomiser,” Cioné informed them. “Ooh. Whacked it on. Lovely turn of phrase.”
“But only after you repaired the databank stacks,” the Doctor saw it fit to remind her. “After someone tripped over,” he turned to Iris. “And ripped out all 377 physonomic sparkplugs.”
“You shouldn’t have left the lights off…,” Iris grumbled.
“Elizabeth,” the Doctor told her. “You do the honours, please.”
Lizzie took the dematerialisation lever, and she pulled it.
The TARDIS took a deep breath, and the four of them joined it, and now they were ready to greet the universe with open arms.
epilogue
It was late at night – if there was such a thing as night in the TARDIS. No… there were only simulated days, no true structure as to when one should sleep, and when one should wake. Life in the TARDIS had muddled on in that chaotic format, with sleep being grabbed in between their mad adventures.
For Lizzie Darwin, every day was simulated, whether she was back on Earth, or in the TARDIS. Living with insomnia, any concept of a structured ‘night’ was completely out of the window. Because of that, when the Doctor, Cioné and Iris retired to bed, Lizzie would often take to wandering the TARDIS. It was a truly brilliant place to be, as an insomnia sufferer, as there was so much to do in the thick of the night. Sometimes she would take herself off to the library and tuck into a book. Perhaps she would go to the cinema, and enjoy a film. Sometimes she just liked to be quiet and contemplate everything.
That specific night, she had taken herself off to the console room. It was dark, and Lizzie flicked on the lamp beside the bookshelves (now reconstructed following the crashed TARDIS at the end of the universe), bathing a corner of the chamber in a warm, orange glow. She slouched down in front of the bookshelf, so she was sat, her arms wrapped around her legs, looking up at the observatory.
Her heart grew heavy, as through the glass, she could see a supernova, fierce in space, a great crimson ball of heat in the middle, surrounded by thick rings of black, inky dust. It was dying, and soon it would finally be engulfed. Lizzie watched it, a powerful emotional punch to the stomach, as she knew it would fade out of existence.
But then, as the TARDIS continued turning through space, Lizzie realised. It was beautiful up there. She could see now, a star was being born, and pink and purple dust, and great silver clouds, were converging, with gravity as some impossible force of attraction between all the elements. The dusts mingled in the darkness, and soon it would be roaring, with great fires igniting, and that heat would bond the dusts forever together into one.
Of course, it wasn’t the stars that had made her so emotional. It was the fact she was there, when many people weren’t. That... she was so infinitely tiny, and of all the billions of billions of probabilities of everything that had ever happened... Lizzie was there. She was watching the birth of a star, an event that nobody else would see, and that in all the wide universe, she was lucky enough to be there at that exact moment.
“Can’t sleep?”
Lizzie turned, and the Doctor was leaning in the doorway. She laughed quietly. Way to make fun of an insomniac. Hilarious.
The Doctor made his way over, and sat down beside her. They were together, looking up at space.
“Seriously. Are you alright?”
Lizzie sighed. No, she wasn’t. Some days, she just hurt. And she wasn’t even sure why. Probably just… scars inflaming, bringing a darkness inside her to life she hated.
“No,” she admitted, and she let her head rest on his shoulder.
“I understand.”
And with those words, she knew that she didn’t need to say anything more. Because he wouldn’t say anything more either – he would help her, whenever she needed help, but he would not let it define her either. Lizzie had accepted it, and Lizzie was getting help. But Lizzie also wanted to be Lizzie. She didn’t want to be the bad-dream girl.
She knew the Doctor understood that, as they sat together, looking up.
The stars shone brightly.
For Lizzie Darwin, every day was simulated, whether she was back on Earth, or in the TARDIS. Living with insomnia, any concept of a structured ‘night’ was completely out of the window. Because of that, when the Doctor, Cioné and Iris retired to bed, Lizzie would often take to wandering the TARDIS. It was a truly brilliant place to be, as an insomnia sufferer, as there was so much to do in the thick of the night. Sometimes she would take herself off to the library and tuck into a book. Perhaps she would go to the cinema, and enjoy a film. Sometimes she just liked to be quiet and contemplate everything.
That specific night, she had taken herself off to the console room. It was dark, and Lizzie flicked on the lamp beside the bookshelves (now reconstructed following the crashed TARDIS at the end of the universe), bathing a corner of the chamber in a warm, orange glow. She slouched down in front of the bookshelf, so she was sat, her arms wrapped around her legs, looking up at the observatory.
Her heart grew heavy, as through the glass, she could see a supernova, fierce in space, a great crimson ball of heat in the middle, surrounded by thick rings of black, inky dust. It was dying, and soon it would finally be engulfed. Lizzie watched it, a powerful emotional punch to the stomach, as she knew it would fade out of existence.
But then, as the TARDIS continued turning through space, Lizzie realised. It was beautiful up there. She could see now, a star was being born, and pink and purple dust, and great silver clouds, were converging, with gravity as some impossible force of attraction between all the elements. The dusts mingled in the darkness, and soon it would be roaring, with great fires igniting, and that heat would bond the dusts forever together into one.
Of course, it wasn’t the stars that had made her so emotional. It was the fact she was there, when many people weren’t. That... she was so infinitely tiny, and of all the billions of billions of probabilities of everything that had ever happened... Lizzie was there. She was watching the birth of a star, an event that nobody else would see, and that in all the wide universe, she was lucky enough to be there at that exact moment.
“Can’t sleep?”
Lizzie turned, and the Doctor was leaning in the doorway. She laughed quietly. Way to make fun of an insomniac. Hilarious.
The Doctor made his way over, and sat down beside her. They were together, looking up at space.
“Seriously. Are you alright?”
Lizzie sighed. No, she wasn’t. Some days, she just hurt. And she wasn’t even sure why. Probably just… scars inflaming, bringing a darkness inside her to life she hated.
“No,” she admitted, and she let her head rest on his shoulder.
“I understand.”
And with those words, she knew that she didn’t need to say anything more. Because he wouldn’t say anything more either – he would help her, whenever she needed help, but he would not let it define her either. Lizzie had accepted it, and Lizzie was getting help. But Lizzie also wanted to be Lizzie. She didn’t want to be the bad-dream girl.
She knew the Doctor understood that, as they sat together, looking up.
The stars shone brightly.
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