Prologue
“Ten things you never knew about Jasmine Sparks.”
Patsy took a deep breath, and prepared to recite the list she had practised half a dozen times in the mirror, most of them ending in mistakes or tears.
“One: when she thought no one was around, she used to watch old Star Trek DVDs, which, she claimed, were ‘her Nan’s’.” Patsy winked at Sheila, who smiled sadly.
Patsy returned to her speech, and rested the paper to veil her shaking hands.
“Two: she was half-Welsh. She told me a few years ago; her mother, whom she never met, came from this little Welsh village, and her father had met her travelling. Which brings me to fact three: no one, including herself, was ever quite sure where Jasmine Sparks was actually born.” She let that one hang in the air.
A lot of people had turned up for the funeral; more than expected. It was a rainy day, with little else to do, but the majority of the people present would have turned up had it been the warmest, driest and busiest day of the year. Some of them knew about Jasmine’s sacrifice. Others knew the story that everyone else had been told, that UNIT had spread: that she had been killed by the plague which had recently struck London, and that her body had been incinerated as part of the quarantine laws.
The plague was gone now. Those present who believed the cover story found themselves wishing that it had gone a little sooner, spared those last few victims.
“Four: Jasmine Sparks was a Pisces. Pisces are described as compassionate, artistic, intuitive, gentle, wise, and musical. They like music, romance, and swimming; they dislike know-it-alls, the past coming back to haunt them, and cruelty of any kind. I’d just like to point out, as a firm advocate of astrology, that I have never heard such an apt description. Jasmine was all of those things, to me and to everyone else, and I’m sure she’d have welled up hearing this, except… fact five: Jasmine Sparks hated star signs.”
Everyone chuckled. Patsy, a timid, freckled young woman who had only just finished school herself, had such excellent delivery that even the most experienced performers in the room found themselves in awe of her natural talent.
“Six: Jasmine may have been born in the nineties, but she was secretly an imposter from the eighties.”
Had Patsy been aware of the UNIT presence in the building, she may not have made that joke. A few men at the back shifted uncomfortably, and made mental notes to conduct a background check when they got back to work.
Patsy quickly hurried to the punchline. “She adored the music of the 1980s. She used to keep a record player in her room. Kate Bush, David Bowie, Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet, Roxy Music, Duran Duran, and that’s about all I can remember because I live in the present day, so let’s move on to fact seven: for the grand sum of twelve quid, I once successfully dared Jasmine to use the boys’ bathroom at school whilst they were all getting changed for PE in the adjacent locker room. Well, she was discreet and none of the lads seemed too bothered, but she did give the PE teacher heart failure when he decided to go and wash his hands…”
There was one man, in the back row, who knew what had really happened to Jasmine. A man who knew, he estimated, eight out of ten of Patsy’s facts, but still never quite got to know Jasmine Sparks. He never came to events like this, never stayed while people picked up the pieces, but this time was different. He had been preparing for it longer than he had even known Jasmine, and through years of her history, and he had a story to tell.
But he didn’t tell it. This wasn’t the Doctor’s day; it was his best friend’s.
“Eight: her favourite word was plethora. Rumour has it that if you whispered it into her ear, she’d buy you a drink. Fact nine, Jasmine was 100% straight and interested in men, except this one night when I came to her with a plethora of things to discuss.”
Patsy let the final round of soft laughter resonate across the hall, and then the smirk left her face. She took another deep breath, and tried to keep a calm and cool composure.
“Fact ten,” she started, quietly. “Jasmine worked, very briefly – from the little she told me – under Colonel Graham Ward, who passed away the night she went missing. And she was in love with political activist Tommy Lindsay, who was killed, tragically, only a number of days before that.” Patsy sighed. “Jasmine’s life was entrenched in tragedy, in global, even cosmic events that had nothing to do with her, and in the end they snatched her away like they did to so many others. But she never let them eat her up. She never gave up and never gave in, never held back from saying what she thought or doing what she thought was right, and never, ever thought that her misfortune gave her preferential treatment. She lived her life as if she were the luckiest person on Earth, but she wasn’t. I was the luckiest person on Earth, to have her as a best friend. Someone so deep and complex that I can stand up here with ten things that most people don’t even know. Jasmine Sparks never stopped being the kindest, most honest and most frankly fascinating woman ever to walk the Earth. And I will never stop missing her.”
Patsy took a deep breath, and prepared to recite the list she had practised half a dozen times in the mirror, most of them ending in mistakes or tears.
“One: when she thought no one was around, she used to watch old Star Trek DVDs, which, she claimed, were ‘her Nan’s’.” Patsy winked at Sheila, who smiled sadly.
Patsy returned to her speech, and rested the paper to veil her shaking hands.
“Two: she was half-Welsh. She told me a few years ago; her mother, whom she never met, came from this little Welsh village, and her father had met her travelling. Which brings me to fact three: no one, including herself, was ever quite sure where Jasmine Sparks was actually born.” She let that one hang in the air.
A lot of people had turned up for the funeral; more than expected. It was a rainy day, with little else to do, but the majority of the people present would have turned up had it been the warmest, driest and busiest day of the year. Some of them knew about Jasmine’s sacrifice. Others knew the story that everyone else had been told, that UNIT had spread: that she had been killed by the plague which had recently struck London, and that her body had been incinerated as part of the quarantine laws.
The plague was gone now. Those present who believed the cover story found themselves wishing that it had gone a little sooner, spared those last few victims.
“Four: Jasmine Sparks was a Pisces. Pisces are described as compassionate, artistic, intuitive, gentle, wise, and musical. They like music, romance, and swimming; they dislike know-it-alls, the past coming back to haunt them, and cruelty of any kind. I’d just like to point out, as a firm advocate of astrology, that I have never heard such an apt description. Jasmine was all of those things, to me and to everyone else, and I’m sure she’d have welled up hearing this, except… fact five: Jasmine Sparks hated star signs.”
Everyone chuckled. Patsy, a timid, freckled young woman who had only just finished school herself, had such excellent delivery that even the most experienced performers in the room found themselves in awe of her natural talent.
“Six: Jasmine may have been born in the nineties, but she was secretly an imposter from the eighties.”
Had Patsy been aware of the UNIT presence in the building, she may not have made that joke. A few men at the back shifted uncomfortably, and made mental notes to conduct a background check when they got back to work.
Patsy quickly hurried to the punchline. “She adored the music of the 1980s. She used to keep a record player in her room. Kate Bush, David Bowie, Soft Cell, Spandau Ballet, Roxy Music, Duran Duran, and that’s about all I can remember because I live in the present day, so let’s move on to fact seven: for the grand sum of twelve quid, I once successfully dared Jasmine to use the boys’ bathroom at school whilst they were all getting changed for PE in the adjacent locker room. Well, she was discreet and none of the lads seemed too bothered, but she did give the PE teacher heart failure when he decided to go and wash his hands…”
There was one man, in the back row, who knew what had really happened to Jasmine. A man who knew, he estimated, eight out of ten of Patsy’s facts, but still never quite got to know Jasmine Sparks. He never came to events like this, never stayed while people picked up the pieces, but this time was different. He had been preparing for it longer than he had even known Jasmine, and through years of her history, and he had a story to tell.
But he didn’t tell it. This wasn’t the Doctor’s day; it was his best friend’s.
“Eight: her favourite word was plethora. Rumour has it that if you whispered it into her ear, she’d buy you a drink. Fact nine, Jasmine was 100% straight and interested in men, except this one night when I came to her with a plethora of things to discuss.”
Patsy let the final round of soft laughter resonate across the hall, and then the smirk left her face. She took another deep breath, and tried to keep a calm and cool composure.
“Fact ten,” she started, quietly. “Jasmine worked, very briefly – from the little she told me – under Colonel Graham Ward, who passed away the night she went missing. And she was in love with political activist Tommy Lindsay, who was killed, tragically, only a number of days before that.” Patsy sighed. “Jasmine’s life was entrenched in tragedy, in global, even cosmic events that had nothing to do with her, and in the end they snatched her away like they did to so many others. But she never let them eat her up. She never gave up and never gave in, never held back from saying what she thought or doing what she thought was right, and never, ever thought that her misfortune gave her preferential treatment. She lived her life as if she were the luckiest person on Earth, but she wasn’t. I was the luckiest person on Earth, to have her as a best friend. Someone so deep and complex that I can stand up here with ten things that most people don’t even know. Jasmine Sparks never stopped being the kindest, most honest and most frankly fascinating woman ever to walk the Earth. And I will never stop missing her.”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
2016 Christmas Special Part 1
Till Death Us Do Part (pt. 1)
Written by Janine Rivers
Barcelona, 1714
The Doctor ducked, as another bullet from the soldier’s musket shot past his head, ricocheting down the tunnel. As he fell against the wall, he felt it beginning to give way from the pressure of the troops outside.
He glanced out the end of the tunnel. The cavalry were outside, pushing on in attack formation. If he moved, he would undoubtedly be trampled.
No available exit, and no chance of stopping the tunnel from collapsing in on him. It would be an undignified death, and the Doctor was so busy searching for a means of escape that he didn’t notice the figure approaching behind him.
Within seconds, he was unconscious.
***
“Tell Philip I want my crown back. Get off!”
The Doctor woke up in a state of panic, still reeling from the consequences of his catastrophic nightmare. Philip was nowhere to be seen, and apparently, neither was the eighteenth century.
“Wow.” He rubbed his head. “That was all a dream?”
“Oh, no.” An old man was sat on a chair next to the Doctor’s bed, his nose buried in a clean, newly-printed version of some ancient Spanish text. He closed it, and placed it with ease on the bedside table. “That was a scrape, and we got you out of it.” The old man, clearly and ostentatiously of a high class, crossed one leg over the other, and smiled a smile that said he was pleased, if slightly disgusted, to be in the Doctor’s company.
Suspicious and still dazed, the Doctor took a look around the room. The décor was late twentieth-century, maybe early twenty-first; it had the look of a motel, a grotty but functional place which served as a bed for the night if you were staying in London, New York, or, so it seemed, the eighteenth century.
“Time traveller?” asked the Doctor.
The man nodded. “Call me the Sentinel.”
“That’s a terrible name.”
“We’re Time Lords, Doctor, we all have terrible names.” He sighed and crossed his arms. “Symbolism, hidden meaning, promises… delightful for the more refined critics to pick apart, but exasperating in everyday conversation. I much prefer this species, and all their meaningless but efficient titles.”
“Amazing. I’ve only been talking to you for about twenty seconds, and I’m bored already.” The Doctor sat up. “Why am I here?”
“Yes, they warned me you’d be blunt. Well then, to get straight down to business, as it were, you’re in a safe-house.”
“A what?” The Doctor stood up and pulled back the curtain. Outside, nothing happened on an empty Spanish street. But in the distance, a battle was being fought and lost by both sides. The window signalled only two options – tedium, or war. The Doctor drew the curtains closed again, unsatisfied with both. “Why would I need a safe-house?”
“Your actions on Hell.”
“What about them?”
“Everybody knows about them.” The Sentinel seemed to have lost interest in the Doctor already, and was evaluating his appearance in the mirror, pulling hairs off the end of his chin.
“Congratulations – you destroyed an all-powerful being. But do you know what happens if you kill God?”
The Doctor shrugged. “You end up in Barcelona?”
“If you kill God, you become God. God is all-powerful; you destroy him, suddenly, you’re more powerful than him. Making you all-powerful.” The Sentinel chortled to himself. “Yes, I think there’s a place for you somewhere in Anselm’s logic…”
“I’m not all-powerful.”
“Oh, of course you’re not.” The Sentinel scoffed, and the Doctor found himself this time feeling a little insulted. “You’re a bumbling fool, who’s only dangerous because of the situations he wanders into. But even so, Time Lords and Daleks would like to, shall we say, take advantage of you in the name of their cause. The High Council insists that you are kept safe – because they’re scared of you themselves, I’d suspect – but there’s no saying that the rest of Gallifrey will follow that rule.”
“Then I’ll run away in my TARDIS. Simple. Don’t bother making my bed.” The Doctor got up to leave, but the door to the room slammed shut in front of him. He turned around, and saw that the Sentinel had merely clicked his fingers. He noticed the Doctor’s expression, almost fresh out of the Dalek camps.
“Oh, don’t look like that! I’m not keeping you prisoner here, I just want you to finish listening to what I have to say, because I believe I’ll change your mind. A number of Time Lords now have access to time-scoop technology, and we believe that if you return to your TARDIS, you will be captured almost instantaneously.”
“Let them try,” challenged the Doctor.
“And where is your TARDIS?” The Sentinel pursed his lips. “Hmm?”
“Fair point. Where is my TARDIS, Sentinel?”
“We’ve absolutely no idea. After your friend Miss Sparks destroyed Hell, you were sent straight here, correct?”
The Doctor nodded. “Woke up in the middle of the Siege of Barcelona. I’ve been trying to fend for myself for the last three months. That’s not to mention the enormous stab wound I had to treat, on my own… by the way.”
“Jasmine Sparks was killed in the blast. She died breaking the looking-glass.”
The Doctor bowed his head. “Yes, I’m aware of the events, I was there.”
“I’m very sorry.” The Sentinel didn’t sound it. “God was also killed in that moment, since he relied on the planet to sustain his existence. There was only one other individual, Noa. She, like you, was thrown randomly across time. We were able to rescue her, and reunite her with her family.”
“Good for her,” said the Doctor, sombrely. “Good for her.”
“This is a Time Lord safe-house,” continued the Sentinel. “Constructed using temporal engineering techniques. This street is protected by a perception filter – as such, no one ever enters it. On the rare occasion that they do, usually drunk, lost, or trained to see past perception filters, the house automatically drifts forward in time to a point where the street is again unoccupied. Which means that no one from outside ever lays eyes on it. Even if there’s an attack from above, the proximity alerts are activated, and the house shifts forward in time. It does mean that time moves quicker here, of course. When there’s a proximity threat, often long-term, you’ll find that we skip, say, a decade or two. After all, we’ve been here since the Middle Ages, and look at me.” He gestured down to his suit, as if it said anything remarkable at all. “I hardly look a day over three-hundred. So then.” He clicked his fingers, and the door to the landing swung open again. “Will you be staying with us?”
***
2016
“Oh, Doctor. I’m so sorry.”
It hadn’t taken Robin long to spot the Doctor. She had seen him at the funeral, as silent and contemplative as he had been at her wedding. She had not expected to see him at the wake, yet here he was, doing things she would have thought unthinkable for him, in the name of someone he had lost.
She stepped forward, and saving him the opportunity to talk, gave him a hug, patting him supportively on the back. “It’s alright,” she reassured him. “You did well, both of you. It’s over now.”
The Doctor breathed in sharply, and took a step back, regaining his dignity. “Yeah.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” said Robin.
“Yes, we did.” The Doctor looked around the room, and saw the extent of Jasmine’s sacrifice: all of these people, saved. And more. “I mean… she did.”
“How did you get back here?”
“That’s…” The Doctor seemed to be staring at something in the distance, out the window of Jasmine’s flat, at someone or something in the world, that was somehow more important than this. “That’s a long story.”
***
1714
The Doctor liked the house. It was about five floors in total, but with little rooms jutting out across the staircase, making each floor not-quite-complete. He counted, in his inspection, seven bedrooms. That meant at least seven people, like him, who were so dangerous they needed protecting from people who liked the idea of making friends with them a little bit too much.
There were bits of Time Lord technology here and there, disguised inconspicuously as Victorian furnishings, which themselves were still anachronistic. But that was all they were – scattered anachronisms. The house, bizarrely, kept its use of technology to a minimum. It was not bigger on the inside. It was simply… big.
On his way back up the staircase, he bumped into a little old woman with round glasses and short, brown hair. She smiled at him as she crouched down and began dusting cobwebs off the window-frame.
“You’re new here,” she pointed out.
Yes, I am. Thank you for pointing that out. The Doctor felt his sarcastic bone kicking in, and for some reason it spoke in the voice of Tommy Lindsay.
“You’re the cleaner,” the Doctor found himself replying bluntly, in his own voice.
“Yes, I am. I’ve been working here eighty-seven years.”
“Aren’t you due a regeneration?”
The old woman laughed. “Wouldn’t that be nice, eh? No, sir, I’m Vivasuellian. One-hearted race, and with a heart that’s not liable to change, sorry.”
“Average lifespan of five hundred years,” recalled the Doctor, trying to be supportive. “You’ve got plenty of time to ponder on those morbid topics yet, don’t you worry.”
“I’m five hundred and six,” said the old woman, and the Doctor suddenly felt awful. She smiled again, and he felt worse.
“Well…” the Doctor found himself cringing as he spoke. “Er, you look fantastic for your age…”
“You’ll have to do your hair like this when you get old.”
“Does it work on men too?”
“Who’s to say you’ll be a man?”
The Doctor laughed, and offered the woman a handshake, feeling that she had earnt it. “The Doctor,” he said. “If I’m meant to use that name in here.”
“We all know your face anyway!” She shook his hand cordially. Her clasp was still firm, but her hand itself was freezing cold. “I’m Heather, or at least that’s what they’ve called me for the last few decades.”
“Heather! I used to have a friend who was named after a flower…” The Doctor smiled ruefully. “See you around.” He sped up suddenly down the staircase, as if trying to remember something – or perhaps, Heather thought-- to forget it.
***
2016
The Doctor was approached by a young, blonde woman, who seemed to be searching for things to support her as she walked. The Doctor moved on to the sofa, and she sat down next to him.
“Natalie,” he said, recalling the face just in time. “It’s been a long time.”
“Look at me,” Natalie joked. “Hobbling everywhere, still. I was so close to death when the plague went away, it has taken it out of me a bit…”
“Yes, of course, I suppose that was all very recent for you?”
“It wasn’t for you?”
The Doctor shook his head grimly. “No, since I saw you last I went to Hell and back, Barcelona, and watched a considerable amount of human history pass, among other personal developments. Time-traveller, remember?”
Natalie tapped her right temple. “Good point. Did she…”
Natalie seemed to be hesitating, as if it were the wrong question to ask, or as if she would not like the answer. She went with it anyway, as she always did.
“Did she stop him? Did it work?”
The Doctor nodded. His favourite thing to do with his life, he had discovered, was this: being able to impart the knowledge to these little, brilliant people, that it had worked, that Jasmine Sparks had succeeded in the thing he had thought to be impossible. It had cost her life. But when it came to toppling gods, perhaps that wasn’t as unreasonable a price as it seemed.
“She died doing it,” said the Doctor, vocalising his thoughts. “But she wouldn’t have minded. She was a remarkable woman, our Jasmine.”
“She saved my life,” agreed Natalie. “I’ll never forget that.”
***
1714
The Doctor faltered, surprised, as he entered the dining room.
As he had expected, it was the best-kept and most comfortable room in the house. The cream wallpaper was fresh on and unscratched; the furniture was of an exquisite taste, the table neatly-laid with the necessary cutlery for a three-course meal; and there were lamps burning, hung from the wall, so that the overhead lights could be turned off during the meal, for a little more ambiance.
What he hadn’t expected was that there would be no one here. No one, except, inexplicably, one woman.
She wore a simple, patterned shirt and black trousers, with expensive-looking screw-back earrings just visible below her hair. Her haircut was attractive, if a little bohemian, and she was astonishingly well made-up for someone routinely dining alone (the Doctor assumed).
The woman saw the Doctor as he entered, catching him off-guard as she beamed at him. Her smile was the honest expression of someone genuinely pleased to have company; someone, who clearly found social interaction more satisfying than her plate of veal.
“Now this is a surprise,” the woman remarked, and much to the Doctor’s own surprise, stood up to greet him. “Cionécletrixitterum,” she said, introducing herself. The Doctor gulped, a little symbolically perhaps, at his outright failure to swallow the name. Cionécletrixitterum, as she called herself, laughed as she shook the Doctor’s hand, and added: “But everyone calls me Cioné.”
“A very unusual name,” said the Doctor. “But a beautiful one nonetheless.”
“Spelt C-I-O-N-E – with an accent on the E,” elaborated Cioné. “Pronounced si-o-nay. Now, there we go, as per usual I manage to get a whole conversation out of just my name! Would you like to join me for dinner?”
“I would very much like to join you for dinner, Cioné.” The Doctor took a seat opposite the woman, wondering what he had just agreed to.
She had introduced herself warmly; she looked normal, she sounded normal, and she even smelt normal. She ate ordinary food, like an ordinary person. She had her quirks, but that was, in the Doctor’s experience, a good thing.
So why did he feel like there was something else to her? Something that she, but no one else, possessed.
“Don’t worry,” joked Cioné, “I haven’t upset everyone.”
“Yes.” The Doctor was glad she had addressed the elephant in the room. “I was wondering about that.”
“I was surprised when I saw your plate left untouched. Normally they’re all gone by the time I come down.”
“I was exploring the place,” said the Doctor.
“Usually people come down as soon as the meals have been cooked and take them up to their room. Whatever the Sentinel has told you, this isn’t exactly what I’d call a community.” She had lowered her voice, worried that someone might be listening in on her complaints. “Most people here are the paranoid sort, who want nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Except you,” the Doctor observed. “You stay here every day, Cioné, even though there’s no one to join you. Fascinating.”
“Well, I knew that someone would, one day.” Cioné gestured to the Doctor with her fork. “See, I was right. And I get ever so lonely up in my room. I’m a social creature, really, and the forced solitude in this place is driving me to insanity.”
“It would drive me mad too,” agreed the Doctor.
“I didn’t ask your name before. Let’s see if we can beat my record, and get a conversation out of that.”
“I’m the Doctor.” The Doctor lifted his drink to take a sip, before wincing at the taste. “Is this wine?”
“The Doctor? That’s an unusual sort of person to place on witness protection. Was it a patient thing? And yes, it’s wine, but it’s not very good wine.” She pushed hers away. “Hard to import it, I suppose. There is a major European conflict going on outside.”
“You’ve never heard of me? I’m not just a Doctor, you know, I am the definitive article.”
“I’ve heard of you, I just felt like being facetious.” Cioné giggled. “Oh, heavens, I think I’ve had too much wine. I’m not used to company. Usually my rule is that the only thing I have to be able to do at the end of the night is get back up the stairs.”
“They’re some dodgy staircases. I’m surprised you haven’t worked through this incarnation yet.” The Doctor frowned, realising he may have jumped to a few conclusions. “That’s if you’re ...”
“Time Lord? Yes, of course I am. What other species would name their child Cionécletrixitterum?"
“Fair point. I suppose you can see why I went with ‘the Doctor’ now. So, what’s your story, Cioné?”
“I testified against a Time Lord war criminal,” Cioné explained, appearing distracted by something on the other side of the room. “He had a vast network.” Her voice was trailing off. “They thought it would be safer if I…”
“Anyway.” The Doctor decided not to press. “Apparently I’m here because everybody loves me.”
Cioné chuckled. “Well, I am lucky to be sharing veal with you then, aren’t I?” She placed her knife and fork down on the plate, and pushed it a couple of inches away, waiting politely for the Doctor to finish his. “I think I’ll skip dessert. I haven’t quite got the appetite.”
She looked back down, and the Doctor had wiped his plate clean. She had never seen anyone eat that quickly before – at least, not with their dignity left intact at the end of the meal.
“I’m absolutely famished,” stated the Doctor, as if it needed saying. “I’m having a dessert. We could always share?”
***
“This is the problem with Gallifrey,” said Cioné, shovelling another spoonful of cheesecake into her mouth. “They don’t have raspberries.”
“Earth cuisine is terribly underappreciated, I agree.” The Doctor went for some more, but realised that the plate had been cleaned up. “Cioné, I thought you weren’t hungry?”
Cioné looked down at the empty plate, and then back at the Doctor, before laughing. “And I thought you didn’t like wine!”
“Hmm?” The Doctor looked to his empty glass, and then to the empty bottle on the side of the table. “Well, I was thirsty, I had to go for the nearest… thing…”
“If I have to help you up the stairs, Mr…”
“Second-floor room,” said the Doctor, terribly pleased with himself. “I think I’ll manage.”
“STOP!” cried Cioné, suddenly, and the Doctor nearly fell off his chair. He wondered, briefly, if there really was another reason why no one else came to the dining room. Maybe Cioné ate people. Maybe she was about to eat him…
He cursed his inebriated mind, and reminded himself never to drink again.
“Stay very still,” Cioné whispered as she did the opposite, slowly getting up from her chair.
“Cioné!” hissed the Doctor. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s a glowfly!” Cioné hissed back. “Extraordinarily rare species, found in areas of high temporal disturbance. Of course, this place would be perfect for them, constantly shifting through time…”
The Doctor could just about see what she was talking about. A winged insect was sat on the wall, so small it had the appearance of a floating, microscopic ball. Its name was aptly-chosen, for the creature was glowing, lipstick-red. Its glow was powerful, spreading much further than the fly itself, and seemed to be faintly pulsating.
It was beautiful, but the Doctor found something else even more significant in the events happening around him: someone else in the room knew more than he did.
“Pass me your glass,” instructed Cioné, her voice still just a whisper. “And your placemat.”
The Doctor did as he was asked, silently. Cioné took the glass first, and in one swift movement, placed it over the glowfly. As soon as it realised what was happening, it went to move, but Cioné was quicker. The thing was trapped in the glass. Cioné lifted the glass just a fraction, and slid the placemat underneath, so that she was able to move the glowfly off the wall whilst keeping it in her glass.
She took a closer look, squinting. The Doctor coughed rather loudly, reminding her that he, too, was in the room, which she seemed to have forgotten in awe of this tiny insect.
“Come over,” she murmured, placing it on the table. The Doctor joined her. “This variety is one of the rarest of the lot. It’s androgynous, if you’re wondering. The species change gender numerous times during their lives, and their gender system isn’t binary. They don’t need it for procreation, you see. They just have it for…” She shrugged. “Well, that’s one of their greatest mysteries. Self-expression, that was always my theory. The scientists prefer to view it as a survival mechanism, or something more involuntary.”
“That was well caught,” said the Doctor. “Your reflexes are fast, for someone who’s had a few.”
“They always have been. My mother said I should have been a soldier, rather than a doctor.” She laughed, not at the conversation, but at some distant memory. “I don’t think I spoke to her for about fifty years after that.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Yes. But I’m hardly the genuine article.” Cioné grinned at the Doctor, and he found himself grinning back. Cioné’s emotional state was so infectious, and he was beginning to worry that he would forever find himself hypnotised by her moods rather than controlled by his own.
“What are you going to do with the glowfly?” asked the Doctor. “Let it go?”
“Not this one! No, this one’s coming back up to my room. Top floor. Time to test your alcohol tolerance.”
“You’re quite into these insects, then?”
“Oh, you know…” Cioné brushed the subject aside modestly. “Just a casual interest.”
***
Cioné slid the placemat off the glass and watched the glowfly glide into a jar. The jar was opaque, and when the Doctor looked inside, he saw why: had it been transparent, the optical illusion would have been enough to drive any three-dimensional being insane.
The jar was bigger on the inside, with a light coming from the end of it, an expanse which could have gone on miles. Cioné smiled, almost a little ruefully, as she watched the insect flying away.
On her lower shelves were stacked other jars, at least twelve to a shelf. The Doctor opened one to test it, and as he had expected, it too was bigger on the inside. Something green and glowing darted around the inside, a few metres away from him. He put the lid back on promptly.
“Just a casual interest then,” he teased, secretly becoming terrified that Cioné would not let him leave, or really would eat him for tomorrow’s dinner.
“I get very bored up here on my own, okay?”
It certainly was high up – the Doctor felt as if he had climbed a skyscraper, and when he looked out of her window, he was astonished by a view that confirmed some of his impressions. The building did stretch high, with a skyline view of eighteenth-century Barcelona. The perception filter must have hidden it from the view of outsiders.
The room was well decorated, if a little overcrowded. It was the largest he had seen yet; Cioné had been given the luxury of a very small but valuable kitchen area, where some freshly-baked cookies sat enticingly on the worktop. She had a diary at her bedside, a laptop on the bed, shelves full of dusty books, and under the bed, a few more jars just for good measure.
“The jars each contain a mini-ecosystem perfect for the glowfly,” explained Cioné, noticing the Doctor inspecting her collection. “They’re high on artron energy too, which is like food to it, I suppose. I picked them up at a convention once. Not a bad deal. And I’ve got enough for each sub-species. So far the most common is the little amber one, which seems to gather in slightly smaller temporal disturbances, and tends to be the seventh gender. Their lifespans are shorter, unfortunately. I do what I can for them…”
She walked over to the window, and gazed out over the city. With the safe-house’s occasional shifts in time, Cioné also found her view changing occasionally. At this point in history, buildings had a habit of disappearing, of being knocked down and demolished by the latest careless invaders, people who were glorified now but would go on to be loathed by archaeologists for centuries.
“What’s happening out there now?” she asked, somehow completely confident that the Doctor would know.
“The Siege of Barcelona,” narrated the Doctor, and joined her at the window. “We’re nearing the end of the War of Spanish Succession. France and Spain against the Grand Alliance. Just another bloody battle, but I’m sure this species will find a way of romanticising it one day…”
“And what are they fighting over?”
The Doctor shrugged. “What do humans ever fight over? Spanish succession; it’s all in the name. The crown. As per usual…”
Closer up to her, he noticed that he was just a few inches taller than Cioné. He placed his hands gently on her shoulders, as he joined her in watching the world outside. There was still fighting, but less of it. People moved slower on the streets. Somewhere out there, mistakes were being made which would cost lives, because of human nature itself, and the nagging message in the back of one’s mind: a reminder that night is for sleeping.
“Who wins?” whispered Cioné.
“Well…” the Doctor took his eyes off the scene outside, and focused on Cioné. “King Philip gets Barcelona, but as with most wars, I wouldn’t say there is a winner, exactly. There’s just a treaty… a dispassionate attempt to please both sides, which in the process displeases both. But I suppose it’s better than the alternative.”
“War…” Cioné murmured, thoughtfully. “It’s barbaric.”
“Some would say cathartic.”
“Would you?”
“Of course not.” The Doctor thought back to Hell, to his final confrontation with God, and to that shattered looking-glass. In a way, that had been both barbaric and cathartic. “Broadly speaking, war is wrong. After all, if everyone were against war, we’d all coexist happily. But if everyone were in favour of war, we’d wipe ourselves out.”
“Yes,” agreed Cioné, softly. “Yes, when you put it like that, it makes me feel very secure in my position as a pacifist.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’re a pacifist?”
“And very open about it. I respect ideological differences, of course. I know you’re not.”
“Who says I’m not a pacifist?” asked the Doctor, offended.
Cioné smiled, sharing some sort of inside joke with herself. “History.” She turned back around, and the Doctor took a step back, allowing her some space. As he did, he noticed his hearts beating faster than usual.
“Um, anyway…” He paced around the room nervously. “I suppose I’d better… er…”
“Get back to your room?”
“That’s the one.”
“Are you sure you can find it?”
“I think I’ll probably manage.”
“Well, okay then.” Cioné opened the door for the Doctor, and offered him a peck on the cheek. “It was lovely speaking to you, Doctor. I expect I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor. “Me… and no one else…”
They laughed, waved each other off, and parted ways. The Doctor began to walk forward and forgot the staircase, nearly falling down it head-first. The bannister saved his life, and the closed doors all around him saved his dignity.
***
2016
It was time.
The Doctor lifted his jacket from its hanger and pulled it over himself, preparing to walk back out into the cold winter’s day. He had done the funeral, he had done the wake. Now, people were beginning to leave; things were being cleared away, arrangements for the future were being made, and he was painfully aware that he did not have a part of any of it.
On his way out, a young woman grabbed his arm, stopping him. He took a closer look, and recognised her straight away.
“Sasha… Sasha… Ramachandran,” he finally remembered. “It’s been… wow. I haven’t seen you since…”
“It’s okay,” said Sasha. “We parted on good terms, if you can’t remember.”
“Yes. That’s good.”
“My condolences, Doctor. I only knew Jasmine a little, and from what I’d heard from you. The stories of Autumn Rivers.”
“And now she’s gone. You were right, Sasha, Autumn was reincarnated. She got to live again, in a way, through Jasmine. But now with Jasmine… now they’re both gone. It’s all over.”
“No, they’re not gone. They’ve both moved on again. I don’t think the cycle has ended for her yet, Doctor. She’ll be out there again, as someone else. Born into a new life. And maybe this one will be her last.”
The Doctor smiled, and nodded. He could never find a way to reconcile such words with his own philosophy, but Sasha’s beliefs always charmed him, in a way.
“Thank you, Sasha.” He stepped outside, and closed the door, taking one last look at the family and friends – the life – of Jasmine Sparks.
***
1714
The Doctor lay back in bed, tossing and turning.
Which never happened.
Sleep, for the Time Lord, was not as difficult a task as many might have assumed. However, recently, it had become more troublesome: he was haunted by nightmares, visions of Hell, of God towering over him, casting judgement, refusing to allow him to die. In fact, the creative side of sleeping was becoming positively terrifying, but the physical act of losing consciousness was, as it always had been, easy.
Tonight, he found himself watching the clock, the wall, the window; anything he could. His eyes refused to close, his hearts refused to slow, and his mind refused to focus on the things he asked it to. His thoughts were derailing, a little voice in his head saying words that weren’t his…
Do you even remember the first time you felt this way?
It had been centuries ago, the Doctor’s thoughts told the voice. In the first of his lives. It had ended in bittersweet goodbyes, and an urge to run away which had taken him to an old, faulty TARDIS.
Why are you feeling it now?
The Doctor shook his head. He didn’t want to answer that one.
Do you remember what it’s called?
He became sick of his subconscious, taunting him like this, and spoke the word. It occurred to him how long it had been since he had heard himself say it, at least in this context.
“Love.”
But you can’t fall in love with her, Doctor. You know who she is, why she’s here… you know why you can never fall in love with her.
“I do,” whispered the Doctor, gravely. “I do…”
***
Morning came. The Doctor observed its gradual arrival intermittently, during a night’s sleep continuously interrupted by something or other. After a few patches of sleep, he gave up, had the first shower, and found the only clean clothes in the wardrobe – a t-shirt. They were, apparently, waiting for some apparel of his size to arrive.
He couldn’t even imagine how a place like this would be stocked.
Before he had a chance to go any more insane than he already was, there was a knock at the door, and Heather the cleaner entered the room, dressed in exactly the same clothes as yesterday.
“You’re up early, sir. How was your first night?”
“Good. Well… restless. The evening was good.”
“You were talking to Cioné, weren’t you?” The old woman nodded. “Lovely woman.”
“Quite.”
“Anyway… I just saw you up, and thought you might like your room cleaned first!”
“Yes, why not. Thanks for the offer. Maybe give the universe a dust while you’re at it…”
“I’ve been listening to the news, sir. The Time War’s getting worse by the second. Are you keeping up to date?”
“Up to date?” the Doctor scoffed. “I know more about the war than just about anyone. The difference is, I choose to stay out of it.”
“Tell me, Doctor.” The woman set her broom to one side, and put her hands together, almost in prayer. “Do you think there’s hope for us? Against the Daleks?”
It was not particularly encouraging that the Doctor had to think about it, but at least his inevitable response gave her some reason to carry on.
“Yes. I suppose there is.” He decided to elaborate. “The Time Lords have weapons – weapons that no one else knows about, held in places that the Daleks will never find. Were the Daleks to attack, those weapons would be deployed, wiping out Skaro and most of their race. Half the universe with them, which is why the Time Lords are so reluctant to use them, but they would.”
The old woman half-smiled. “Funny, the things that give us hope, in times of war.”
***
The curtains to the dining room were open now and the light from outside came streaming in, giving the Doctor a chance to admire the assortment of plant species placed about the room, mostly from Earth and the nearest planets. The leaves were green, the soil damp; they had just been watered, and seemingly it could only have been one person.
Cioné was on her own again, tucking into a cooked breakfast. It was a full English, too; bacon, scrambled eggs, beans, hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, and a bit of toast. More impressive was how Cioné had managed to maintain her figure.
The Doctor sat down opposite, smiling at her. His breakfast was laid out.
“Same as last night?” he asked. “Everyone just came down and took theirs up?”
Cioné shook her head. “Of course not. They don’t make cooked breakfast here, you know. I just like to make my own, and I figured you’d be eating with me again, so…”
“Well, thank you very much, Cioné. I haven’t had breakfast made for me in quite a while. Well…” He chuckled, and stared off into the corner of the room. There he was again, his thoughts disappearing and reappearing somewhere else, like TARDISes out of control. “My friend… I had this, er, this friend, Jasmine her name was. Lost her very recently. She used to like a continental breakfast. Croissants, every morning in the TARDIS. Crack of dawn, if there’s such thing in a time machine. She wasn’t one to sleep in.”
“What happened to her? If you don’t mind my asking?”
“She died,” said the Doctor, ruefully. “We were travelling together very recently. She was shot and killed… well, I thought she was killed. When I went away, she used the last of her strength to… well, it doesn’t matter what she did. But it saved my life.”
Cioné smiled, and took a gamble, reaching out and placing her hand on top of the Doctor’s. “I’m very sorry to hear about what happened, but it sounds like that’s a legacy worth carrying on.” She raised her glass of orange juice. “To Jasmine.”
“To Jasmine.” The Doctor raised his own, and took a swig. “How’s your hangover this morning?”
“Bloody awful.”
“That’s the problem. I never had alcohol on the TARDIS. Autumn and Tommy used to like their lemonade, and Jasmine would always have a cup of tea. I don’t have the tolerance for it anymore, it goes straight to my head.”
“I’ve always drunk a bit,” confessed Cioné, “but since coming to Earth I’ve been an absolute bugger. Prosecco’s been my little friend here.”
“And is that terribly available out here?”
“This house is full of anachronisms. Speaking of which, I was listening to the radio this morning – they’ve got one tuned into the time vortex, you know the sort they have on Gallifrey. This Time War stuff is getting very depressing, and I feel like we only know about half of it.”
“It’s better not to know,” warned the Doctor.
“Yes, absolutely.”
The Doctor smirked. “You want to know as much as I do, don’t you?”
“Oh, God yes.”
“Five minutes.” The Doctor looked down at his watch. “We’ll finish breakfast, I’ll do the washing-up, then we’ll see what we can find. Speaking of anachronisms, do you happen to have a laptop?”
***
Cioné brushed the dust off her laptop, and watched it as it began to wheeze slowly back to life, a grotesque resurrection.
The old trader in the Jufitsian belt had warned her when she bought it, said how everyone these days was into solid state storage. You could leave it off for centuries, and it would turn back on without a moment’s hesitation. She had scoffed at the technical gibberish, asked for the cheapest, and pointed at this one because she thought the lighted-up keyboard was exciting.
The screen flickered. A welcome popped up, then disappeared again, and then returned to stay. A quartet of colours, and an accompanying fanfare. ‘Windows 19’.
The Doctor knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
As he entered, she noticed that he seemed to be shivering, in only a thin t-shirt.
“It can get very chilly in here. It might be a better idea if you…”
“They haven’t really got me any clothes yet.”
“Ah. Hold on, I have a solution for that.” Cioné opened her wardrobe door, hummed a tune as she scanned over its interior, and crouched down when she found her shelf. “A-ha!” There was a knitted jumper, very similar to her own – thick, woolly, and a little bit festive. “I keep half a dozen spares.”
“You like your knitwear, don’t you?”
“What makes you say that?” Cioné backed up against her kitchen cabinet, felt behind her and quickly removed the tea-cosy, before the Doctor was able to spot it. “Tea? Coffee? Cocoa?”
“Tea, please.” The Doctor had a sudden and painful flashback to Jasmine. Every cliché ever about loss ganged up on him, painting a picture of her face in his mind, smiling.
Still, it was getting better. He was seeing her now as she used to be, not how she was when…
He shuddered.
“Nice laptop,” he said, changing the subject as he pulled up a chair. “Now, with a bit of luck I should be able to connect to the Matrix, remotely. Kassandra showed me how to do it last time I was there, but I forgot for a while because she wiped my memory. Long story. Anyway…”
As Cioné poured two teas, the Doctor tapped away.
“Aha!” the Doctor cried unexpectedly, and Cioné spilled a drop as she placed them on the tables.
“You’re one of those people, aren’t you?” she huffed.
“One of what people?”
“Regular heart attacks.”
“Ah, yes…” He was only half paying attention. On the screen, incoherent strings of data were starting to come together to form sentences, tables, dialogues -- constantly shifting and being re-written…
Cioné recognised what it was turning into. A conversation.
“And we’re in!” cheered the Doctor. “I’ve never done this before. In fact, I’m not sure any Time Lord ever has.”
“Well done.”
“I try my best.”
The text gave way, and the screen went black. In the top left corner, a cursor flickered. Someone was waiting.
“Hmm…” the Doctor pondered, his fingers hovering over the keyboard in trepidation.
“Hello is usually a good start.”
“Yes, you’re right.” The Doctor typed his message.
Hello.
There was a pause. The Doctor and Cioné exchanged fearful glances.
-
-
Who is this?
“Okay,” admitted Cioné. “That is impressive.”
The Doctor typed something else.
Who do you think it is? There’s only one man capable of communicating with the Gallifrey Matrix from half-way across the universe.
“Incredible,” marvelled Cioné. “Even digitally, you’re still a smug…”
Just take a look at the source, Time Lords. I’m doing this using basic technology.
“Basic?” Cioné glared at the Doctor, offended. “Do you know how much this thing cost me?”
It’s me, the Doctor continued typing. The Doctor.
-
-
You survived?
Don’t I always?
What do you want with us?
Just a bit of news. I’d like to know about the Time War. I’d like to know the things you don’t even tell the other Time Lords. Am I talking to Kassandra?
Of course.
Then I’d like a prophecy.
-
-
“That’s a cruel cliff-hanger,” complained Cioné. “She’d better be typing.”
“She’s talking. She exists as a string of biodata. From her end of the conversation, this is all very different.”
“Oh, I see. I thought it was like Skype. Can she see through the webcam?”
“How happy are you with your hair this morning?”
“Not very.”
“Then no,” answered the Doctor. “Of course she can’t see through the webcam, such a thing would be impossible…”
A new message flashed up on the screen.
The Daleks are staying quiet, and for good reason. They no longer rely solely on the Darksmiths of Goth – their weapon makers exist in vast numbers across the universe, but many of them are official organisations with ethical codes. They only agree to fund the Daleks’ end of the war if the Time Lords make a strike.
Meaning?
The Daleks are relying on the Time Lords to make the first move – it’ll put a whole galaxy on their side in the war. They’re tricking the Time Lords into an act of aggression after their last conflict.
And if the Time Lords don’t strike?
At the very least, the Daleks will be without a strategy.
“Interesting,” murmured the Doctor. “Interesting…”
“And what are you going to do with the information?” asked Cioné.
“Collate it. Not share… any of it.”
“Keep collecting, good plan.” Cioné stood up, and walked over to another piece of technology, something more frequently-used, on the other side of the room. “But if we’re spending all day up here, there’s something we desperately need.”
“Security?” asked the Doctor.
Cioné rolled her eyes. “Think more recreationally, Doctor.”
“Tea?”
The Doctor ducked, as another bullet from the soldier’s musket shot past his head, ricocheting down the tunnel. As he fell against the wall, he felt it beginning to give way from the pressure of the troops outside.
He glanced out the end of the tunnel. The cavalry were outside, pushing on in attack formation. If he moved, he would undoubtedly be trampled.
No available exit, and no chance of stopping the tunnel from collapsing in on him. It would be an undignified death, and the Doctor was so busy searching for a means of escape that he didn’t notice the figure approaching behind him.
Within seconds, he was unconscious.
***
“Tell Philip I want my crown back. Get off!”
The Doctor woke up in a state of panic, still reeling from the consequences of his catastrophic nightmare. Philip was nowhere to be seen, and apparently, neither was the eighteenth century.
“Wow.” He rubbed his head. “That was all a dream?”
“Oh, no.” An old man was sat on a chair next to the Doctor’s bed, his nose buried in a clean, newly-printed version of some ancient Spanish text. He closed it, and placed it with ease on the bedside table. “That was a scrape, and we got you out of it.” The old man, clearly and ostentatiously of a high class, crossed one leg over the other, and smiled a smile that said he was pleased, if slightly disgusted, to be in the Doctor’s company.
Suspicious and still dazed, the Doctor took a look around the room. The décor was late twentieth-century, maybe early twenty-first; it had the look of a motel, a grotty but functional place which served as a bed for the night if you were staying in London, New York, or, so it seemed, the eighteenth century.
“Time traveller?” asked the Doctor.
The man nodded. “Call me the Sentinel.”
“That’s a terrible name.”
“We’re Time Lords, Doctor, we all have terrible names.” He sighed and crossed his arms. “Symbolism, hidden meaning, promises… delightful for the more refined critics to pick apart, but exasperating in everyday conversation. I much prefer this species, and all their meaningless but efficient titles.”
“Amazing. I’ve only been talking to you for about twenty seconds, and I’m bored already.” The Doctor sat up. “Why am I here?”
“Yes, they warned me you’d be blunt. Well then, to get straight down to business, as it were, you’re in a safe-house.”
“A what?” The Doctor stood up and pulled back the curtain. Outside, nothing happened on an empty Spanish street. But in the distance, a battle was being fought and lost by both sides. The window signalled only two options – tedium, or war. The Doctor drew the curtains closed again, unsatisfied with both. “Why would I need a safe-house?”
“Your actions on Hell.”
“What about them?”
“Everybody knows about them.” The Sentinel seemed to have lost interest in the Doctor already, and was evaluating his appearance in the mirror, pulling hairs off the end of his chin.
“Congratulations – you destroyed an all-powerful being. But do you know what happens if you kill God?”
The Doctor shrugged. “You end up in Barcelona?”
“If you kill God, you become God. God is all-powerful; you destroy him, suddenly, you’re more powerful than him. Making you all-powerful.” The Sentinel chortled to himself. “Yes, I think there’s a place for you somewhere in Anselm’s logic…”
“I’m not all-powerful.”
“Oh, of course you’re not.” The Sentinel scoffed, and the Doctor found himself this time feeling a little insulted. “You’re a bumbling fool, who’s only dangerous because of the situations he wanders into. But even so, Time Lords and Daleks would like to, shall we say, take advantage of you in the name of their cause. The High Council insists that you are kept safe – because they’re scared of you themselves, I’d suspect – but there’s no saying that the rest of Gallifrey will follow that rule.”
“Then I’ll run away in my TARDIS. Simple. Don’t bother making my bed.” The Doctor got up to leave, but the door to the room slammed shut in front of him. He turned around, and saw that the Sentinel had merely clicked his fingers. He noticed the Doctor’s expression, almost fresh out of the Dalek camps.
“Oh, don’t look like that! I’m not keeping you prisoner here, I just want you to finish listening to what I have to say, because I believe I’ll change your mind. A number of Time Lords now have access to time-scoop technology, and we believe that if you return to your TARDIS, you will be captured almost instantaneously.”
“Let them try,” challenged the Doctor.
“And where is your TARDIS?” The Sentinel pursed his lips. “Hmm?”
“Fair point. Where is my TARDIS, Sentinel?”
“We’ve absolutely no idea. After your friend Miss Sparks destroyed Hell, you were sent straight here, correct?”
The Doctor nodded. “Woke up in the middle of the Siege of Barcelona. I’ve been trying to fend for myself for the last three months. That’s not to mention the enormous stab wound I had to treat, on my own… by the way.”
“Jasmine Sparks was killed in the blast. She died breaking the looking-glass.”
The Doctor bowed his head. “Yes, I’m aware of the events, I was there.”
“I’m very sorry.” The Sentinel didn’t sound it. “God was also killed in that moment, since he relied on the planet to sustain his existence. There was only one other individual, Noa. She, like you, was thrown randomly across time. We were able to rescue her, and reunite her with her family.”
“Good for her,” said the Doctor, sombrely. “Good for her.”
“This is a Time Lord safe-house,” continued the Sentinel. “Constructed using temporal engineering techniques. This street is protected by a perception filter – as such, no one ever enters it. On the rare occasion that they do, usually drunk, lost, or trained to see past perception filters, the house automatically drifts forward in time to a point where the street is again unoccupied. Which means that no one from outside ever lays eyes on it. Even if there’s an attack from above, the proximity alerts are activated, and the house shifts forward in time. It does mean that time moves quicker here, of course. When there’s a proximity threat, often long-term, you’ll find that we skip, say, a decade or two. After all, we’ve been here since the Middle Ages, and look at me.” He gestured down to his suit, as if it said anything remarkable at all. “I hardly look a day over three-hundred. So then.” He clicked his fingers, and the door to the landing swung open again. “Will you be staying with us?”
***
2016
“Oh, Doctor. I’m so sorry.”
It hadn’t taken Robin long to spot the Doctor. She had seen him at the funeral, as silent and contemplative as he had been at her wedding. She had not expected to see him at the wake, yet here he was, doing things she would have thought unthinkable for him, in the name of someone he had lost.
She stepped forward, and saving him the opportunity to talk, gave him a hug, patting him supportively on the back. “It’s alright,” she reassured him. “You did well, both of you. It’s over now.”
The Doctor breathed in sharply, and took a step back, regaining his dignity. “Yeah.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” said Robin.
“Yes, we did.” The Doctor looked around the room, and saw the extent of Jasmine’s sacrifice: all of these people, saved. And more. “I mean… she did.”
“How did you get back here?”
“That’s…” The Doctor seemed to be staring at something in the distance, out the window of Jasmine’s flat, at someone or something in the world, that was somehow more important than this. “That’s a long story.”
***
1714
The Doctor liked the house. It was about five floors in total, but with little rooms jutting out across the staircase, making each floor not-quite-complete. He counted, in his inspection, seven bedrooms. That meant at least seven people, like him, who were so dangerous they needed protecting from people who liked the idea of making friends with them a little bit too much.
There were bits of Time Lord technology here and there, disguised inconspicuously as Victorian furnishings, which themselves were still anachronistic. But that was all they were – scattered anachronisms. The house, bizarrely, kept its use of technology to a minimum. It was not bigger on the inside. It was simply… big.
On his way back up the staircase, he bumped into a little old woman with round glasses and short, brown hair. She smiled at him as she crouched down and began dusting cobwebs off the window-frame.
“You’re new here,” she pointed out.
Yes, I am. Thank you for pointing that out. The Doctor felt his sarcastic bone kicking in, and for some reason it spoke in the voice of Tommy Lindsay.
“You’re the cleaner,” the Doctor found himself replying bluntly, in his own voice.
“Yes, I am. I’ve been working here eighty-seven years.”
“Aren’t you due a regeneration?”
The old woman laughed. “Wouldn’t that be nice, eh? No, sir, I’m Vivasuellian. One-hearted race, and with a heart that’s not liable to change, sorry.”
“Average lifespan of five hundred years,” recalled the Doctor, trying to be supportive. “You’ve got plenty of time to ponder on those morbid topics yet, don’t you worry.”
“I’m five hundred and six,” said the old woman, and the Doctor suddenly felt awful. She smiled again, and he felt worse.
“Well…” the Doctor found himself cringing as he spoke. “Er, you look fantastic for your age…”
“You’ll have to do your hair like this when you get old.”
“Does it work on men too?”
“Who’s to say you’ll be a man?”
The Doctor laughed, and offered the woman a handshake, feeling that she had earnt it. “The Doctor,” he said. “If I’m meant to use that name in here.”
“We all know your face anyway!” She shook his hand cordially. Her clasp was still firm, but her hand itself was freezing cold. “I’m Heather, or at least that’s what they’ve called me for the last few decades.”
“Heather! I used to have a friend who was named after a flower…” The Doctor smiled ruefully. “See you around.” He sped up suddenly down the staircase, as if trying to remember something – or perhaps, Heather thought-- to forget it.
***
2016
The Doctor was approached by a young, blonde woman, who seemed to be searching for things to support her as she walked. The Doctor moved on to the sofa, and she sat down next to him.
“Natalie,” he said, recalling the face just in time. “It’s been a long time.”
“Look at me,” Natalie joked. “Hobbling everywhere, still. I was so close to death when the plague went away, it has taken it out of me a bit…”
“Yes, of course, I suppose that was all very recent for you?”
“It wasn’t for you?”
The Doctor shook his head grimly. “No, since I saw you last I went to Hell and back, Barcelona, and watched a considerable amount of human history pass, among other personal developments. Time-traveller, remember?”
Natalie tapped her right temple. “Good point. Did she…”
Natalie seemed to be hesitating, as if it were the wrong question to ask, or as if she would not like the answer. She went with it anyway, as she always did.
“Did she stop him? Did it work?”
The Doctor nodded. His favourite thing to do with his life, he had discovered, was this: being able to impart the knowledge to these little, brilliant people, that it had worked, that Jasmine Sparks had succeeded in the thing he had thought to be impossible. It had cost her life. But when it came to toppling gods, perhaps that wasn’t as unreasonable a price as it seemed.
“She died doing it,” said the Doctor, vocalising his thoughts. “But she wouldn’t have minded. She was a remarkable woman, our Jasmine.”
“She saved my life,” agreed Natalie. “I’ll never forget that.”
***
1714
The Doctor faltered, surprised, as he entered the dining room.
As he had expected, it was the best-kept and most comfortable room in the house. The cream wallpaper was fresh on and unscratched; the furniture was of an exquisite taste, the table neatly-laid with the necessary cutlery for a three-course meal; and there were lamps burning, hung from the wall, so that the overhead lights could be turned off during the meal, for a little more ambiance.
What he hadn’t expected was that there would be no one here. No one, except, inexplicably, one woman.
She wore a simple, patterned shirt and black trousers, with expensive-looking screw-back earrings just visible below her hair. Her haircut was attractive, if a little bohemian, and she was astonishingly well made-up for someone routinely dining alone (the Doctor assumed).
The woman saw the Doctor as he entered, catching him off-guard as she beamed at him. Her smile was the honest expression of someone genuinely pleased to have company; someone, who clearly found social interaction more satisfying than her plate of veal.
“Now this is a surprise,” the woman remarked, and much to the Doctor’s own surprise, stood up to greet him. “Cionécletrixitterum,” she said, introducing herself. The Doctor gulped, a little symbolically perhaps, at his outright failure to swallow the name. Cionécletrixitterum, as she called herself, laughed as she shook the Doctor’s hand, and added: “But everyone calls me Cioné.”
“A very unusual name,” said the Doctor. “But a beautiful one nonetheless.”
“Spelt C-I-O-N-E – with an accent on the E,” elaborated Cioné. “Pronounced si-o-nay. Now, there we go, as per usual I manage to get a whole conversation out of just my name! Would you like to join me for dinner?”
“I would very much like to join you for dinner, Cioné.” The Doctor took a seat opposite the woman, wondering what he had just agreed to.
She had introduced herself warmly; she looked normal, she sounded normal, and she even smelt normal. She ate ordinary food, like an ordinary person. She had her quirks, but that was, in the Doctor’s experience, a good thing.
So why did he feel like there was something else to her? Something that she, but no one else, possessed.
“Don’t worry,” joked Cioné, “I haven’t upset everyone.”
“Yes.” The Doctor was glad she had addressed the elephant in the room. “I was wondering about that.”
“I was surprised when I saw your plate left untouched. Normally they’re all gone by the time I come down.”
“I was exploring the place,” said the Doctor.
“Usually people come down as soon as the meals have been cooked and take them up to their room. Whatever the Sentinel has told you, this isn’t exactly what I’d call a community.” She had lowered her voice, worried that someone might be listening in on her complaints. “Most people here are the paranoid sort, who want nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Except you,” the Doctor observed. “You stay here every day, Cioné, even though there’s no one to join you. Fascinating.”
“Well, I knew that someone would, one day.” Cioné gestured to the Doctor with her fork. “See, I was right. And I get ever so lonely up in my room. I’m a social creature, really, and the forced solitude in this place is driving me to insanity.”
“It would drive me mad too,” agreed the Doctor.
“I didn’t ask your name before. Let’s see if we can beat my record, and get a conversation out of that.”
“I’m the Doctor.” The Doctor lifted his drink to take a sip, before wincing at the taste. “Is this wine?”
“The Doctor? That’s an unusual sort of person to place on witness protection. Was it a patient thing? And yes, it’s wine, but it’s not very good wine.” She pushed hers away. “Hard to import it, I suppose. There is a major European conflict going on outside.”
“You’ve never heard of me? I’m not just a Doctor, you know, I am the definitive article.”
“I’ve heard of you, I just felt like being facetious.” Cioné giggled. “Oh, heavens, I think I’ve had too much wine. I’m not used to company. Usually my rule is that the only thing I have to be able to do at the end of the night is get back up the stairs.”
“They’re some dodgy staircases. I’m surprised you haven’t worked through this incarnation yet.” The Doctor frowned, realising he may have jumped to a few conclusions. “That’s if you’re ...”
“Time Lord? Yes, of course I am. What other species would name their child Cionécletrixitterum?"
“Fair point. I suppose you can see why I went with ‘the Doctor’ now. So, what’s your story, Cioné?”
“I testified against a Time Lord war criminal,” Cioné explained, appearing distracted by something on the other side of the room. “He had a vast network.” Her voice was trailing off. “They thought it would be safer if I…”
“Anyway.” The Doctor decided not to press. “Apparently I’m here because everybody loves me.”
Cioné chuckled. “Well, I am lucky to be sharing veal with you then, aren’t I?” She placed her knife and fork down on the plate, and pushed it a couple of inches away, waiting politely for the Doctor to finish his. “I think I’ll skip dessert. I haven’t quite got the appetite.”
She looked back down, and the Doctor had wiped his plate clean. She had never seen anyone eat that quickly before – at least, not with their dignity left intact at the end of the meal.
“I’m absolutely famished,” stated the Doctor, as if it needed saying. “I’m having a dessert. We could always share?”
***
“This is the problem with Gallifrey,” said Cioné, shovelling another spoonful of cheesecake into her mouth. “They don’t have raspberries.”
“Earth cuisine is terribly underappreciated, I agree.” The Doctor went for some more, but realised that the plate had been cleaned up. “Cioné, I thought you weren’t hungry?”
Cioné looked down at the empty plate, and then back at the Doctor, before laughing. “And I thought you didn’t like wine!”
“Hmm?” The Doctor looked to his empty glass, and then to the empty bottle on the side of the table. “Well, I was thirsty, I had to go for the nearest… thing…”
“If I have to help you up the stairs, Mr…”
“Second-floor room,” said the Doctor, terribly pleased with himself. “I think I’ll manage.”
“STOP!” cried Cioné, suddenly, and the Doctor nearly fell off his chair. He wondered, briefly, if there really was another reason why no one else came to the dining room. Maybe Cioné ate people. Maybe she was about to eat him…
He cursed his inebriated mind, and reminded himself never to drink again.
“Stay very still,” Cioné whispered as she did the opposite, slowly getting up from her chair.
“Cioné!” hissed the Doctor. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s a glowfly!” Cioné hissed back. “Extraordinarily rare species, found in areas of high temporal disturbance. Of course, this place would be perfect for them, constantly shifting through time…”
The Doctor could just about see what she was talking about. A winged insect was sat on the wall, so small it had the appearance of a floating, microscopic ball. Its name was aptly-chosen, for the creature was glowing, lipstick-red. Its glow was powerful, spreading much further than the fly itself, and seemed to be faintly pulsating.
It was beautiful, but the Doctor found something else even more significant in the events happening around him: someone else in the room knew more than he did.
“Pass me your glass,” instructed Cioné, her voice still just a whisper. “And your placemat.”
The Doctor did as he was asked, silently. Cioné took the glass first, and in one swift movement, placed it over the glowfly. As soon as it realised what was happening, it went to move, but Cioné was quicker. The thing was trapped in the glass. Cioné lifted the glass just a fraction, and slid the placemat underneath, so that she was able to move the glowfly off the wall whilst keeping it in her glass.
She took a closer look, squinting. The Doctor coughed rather loudly, reminding her that he, too, was in the room, which she seemed to have forgotten in awe of this tiny insect.
“Come over,” she murmured, placing it on the table. The Doctor joined her. “This variety is one of the rarest of the lot. It’s androgynous, if you’re wondering. The species change gender numerous times during their lives, and their gender system isn’t binary. They don’t need it for procreation, you see. They just have it for…” She shrugged. “Well, that’s one of their greatest mysteries. Self-expression, that was always my theory. The scientists prefer to view it as a survival mechanism, or something more involuntary.”
“That was well caught,” said the Doctor. “Your reflexes are fast, for someone who’s had a few.”
“They always have been. My mother said I should have been a soldier, rather than a doctor.” She laughed, not at the conversation, but at some distant memory. “I don’t think I spoke to her for about fifty years after that.”
“You’re a doctor?”
“Yes. But I’m hardly the genuine article.” Cioné grinned at the Doctor, and he found himself grinning back. Cioné’s emotional state was so infectious, and he was beginning to worry that he would forever find himself hypnotised by her moods rather than controlled by his own.
“What are you going to do with the glowfly?” asked the Doctor. “Let it go?”
“Not this one! No, this one’s coming back up to my room. Top floor. Time to test your alcohol tolerance.”
“You’re quite into these insects, then?”
“Oh, you know…” Cioné brushed the subject aside modestly. “Just a casual interest.”
***
Cioné slid the placemat off the glass and watched the glowfly glide into a jar. The jar was opaque, and when the Doctor looked inside, he saw why: had it been transparent, the optical illusion would have been enough to drive any three-dimensional being insane.
The jar was bigger on the inside, with a light coming from the end of it, an expanse which could have gone on miles. Cioné smiled, almost a little ruefully, as she watched the insect flying away.
On her lower shelves were stacked other jars, at least twelve to a shelf. The Doctor opened one to test it, and as he had expected, it too was bigger on the inside. Something green and glowing darted around the inside, a few metres away from him. He put the lid back on promptly.
“Just a casual interest then,” he teased, secretly becoming terrified that Cioné would not let him leave, or really would eat him for tomorrow’s dinner.
“I get very bored up here on my own, okay?”
It certainly was high up – the Doctor felt as if he had climbed a skyscraper, and when he looked out of her window, he was astonished by a view that confirmed some of his impressions. The building did stretch high, with a skyline view of eighteenth-century Barcelona. The perception filter must have hidden it from the view of outsiders.
The room was well decorated, if a little overcrowded. It was the largest he had seen yet; Cioné had been given the luxury of a very small but valuable kitchen area, where some freshly-baked cookies sat enticingly on the worktop. She had a diary at her bedside, a laptop on the bed, shelves full of dusty books, and under the bed, a few more jars just for good measure.
“The jars each contain a mini-ecosystem perfect for the glowfly,” explained Cioné, noticing the Doctor inspecting her collection. “They’re high on artron energy too, which is like food to it, I suppose. I picked them up at a convention once. Not a bad deal. And I’ve got enough for each sub-species. So far the most common is the little amber one, which seems to gather in slightly smaller temporal disturbances, and tends to be the seventh gender. Their lifespans are shorter, unfortunately. I do what I can for them…”
She walked over to the window, and gazed out over the city. With the safe-house’s occasional shifts in time, Cioné also found her view changing occasionally. At this point in history, buildings had a habit of disappearing, of being knocked down and demolished by the latest careless invaders, people who were glorified now but would go on to be loathed by archaeologists for centuries.
“What’s happening out there now?” she asked, somehow completely confident that the Doctor would know.
“The Siege of Barcelona,” narrated the Doctor, and joined her at the window. “We’re nearing the end of the War of Spanish Succession. France and Spain against the Grand Alliance. Just another bloody battle, but I’m sure this species will find a way of romanticising it one day…”
“And what are they fighting over?”
The Doctor shrugged. “What do humans ever fight over? Spanish succession; it’s all in the name. The crown. As per usual…”
Closer up to her, he noticed that he was just a few inches taller than Cioné. He placed his hands gently on her shoulders, as he joined her in watching the world outside. There was still fighting, but less of it. People moved slower on the streets. Somewhere out there, mistakes were being made which would cost lives, because of human nature itself, and the nagging message in the back of one’s mind: a reminder that night is for sleeping.
“Who wins?” whispered Cioné.
“Well…” the Doctor took his eyes off the scene outside, and focused on Cioné. “King Philip gets Barcelona, but as with most wars, I wouldn’t say there is a winner, exactly. There’s just a treaty… a dispassionate attempt to please both sides, which in the process displeases both. But I suppose it’s better than the alternative.”
“War…” Cioné murmured, thoughtfully. “It’s barbaric.”
“Some would say cathartic.”
“Would you?”
“Of course not.” The Doctor thought back to Hell, to his final confrontation with God, and to that shattered looking-glass. In a way, that had been both barbaric and cathartic. “Broadly speaking, war is wrong. After all, if everyone were against war, we’d all coexist happily. But if everyone were in favour of war, we’d wipe ourselves out.”
“Yes,” agreed Cioné, softly. “Yes, when you put it like that, it makes me feel very secure in my position as a pacifist.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You’re a pacifist?”
“And very open about it. I respect ideological differences, of course. I know you’re not.”
“Who says I’m not a pacifist?” asked the Doctor, offended.
Cioné smiled, sharing some sort of inside joke with herself. “History.” She turned back around, and the Doctor took a step back, allowing her some space. As he did, he noticed his hearts beating faster than usual.
“Um, anyway…” He paced around the room nervously. “I suppose I’d better… er…”
“Get back to your room?”
“That’s the one.”
“Are you sure you can find it?”
“I think I’ll probably manage.”
“Well, okay then.” Cioné opened the door for the Doctor, and offered him a peck on the cheek. “It was lovely speaking to you, Doctor. I expect I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow.”
“Yes,” answered the Doctor. “Me… and no one else…”
They laughed, waved each other off, and parted ways. The Doctor began to walk forward and forgot the staircase, nearly falling down it head-first. The bannister saved his life, and the closed doors all around him saved his dignity.
***
2016
It was time.
The Doctor lifted his jacket from its hanger and pulled it over himself, preparing to walk back out into the cold winter’s day. He had done the funeral, he had done the wake. Now, people were beginning to leave; things were being cleared away, arrangements for the future were being made, and he was painfully aware that he did not have a part of any of it.
On his way out, a young woman grabbed his arm, stopping him. He took a closer look, and recognised her straight away.
“Sasha… Sasha… Ramachandran,” he finally remembered. “It’s been… wow. I haven’t seen you since…”
“It’s okay,” said Sasha. “We parted on good terms, if you can’t remember.”
“Yes. That’s good.”
“My condolences, Doctor. I only knew Jasmine a little, and from what I’d heard from you. The stories of Autumn Rivers.”
“And now she’s gone. You were right, Sasha, Autumn was reincarnated. She got to live again, in a way, through Jasmine. But now with Jasmine… now they’re both gone. It’s all over.”
“No, they’re not gone. They’ve both moved on again. I don’t think the cycle has ended for her yet, Doctor. She’ll be out there again, as someone else. Born into a new life. And maybe this one will be her last.”
The Doctor smiled, and nodded. He could never find a way to reconcile such words with his own philosophy, but Sasha’s beliefs always charmed him, in a way.
“Thank you, Sasha.” He stepped outside, and closed the door, taking one last look at the family and friends – the life – of Jasmine Sparks.
***
1714
The Doctor lay back in bed, tossing and turning.
Which never happened.
Sleep, for the Time Lord, was not as difficult a task as many might have assumed. However, recently, it had become more troublesome: he was haunted by nightmares, visions of Hell, of God towering over him, casting judgement, refusing to allow him to die. In fact, the creative side of sleeping was becoming positively terrifying, but the physical act of losing consciousness was, as it always had been, easy.
Tonight, he found himself watching the clock, the wall, the window; anything he could. His eyes refused to close, his hearts refused to slow, and his mind refused to focus on the things he asked it to. His thoughts were derailing, a little voice in his head saying words that weren’t his…
Do you even remember the first time you felt this way?
It had been centuries ago, the Doctor’s thoughts told the voice. In the first of his lives. It had ended in bittersweet goodbyes, and an urge to run away which had taken him to an old, faulty TARDIS.
Why are you feeling it now?
The Doctor shook his head. He didn’t want to answer that one.
Do you remember what it’s called?
He became sick of his subconscious, taunting him like this, and spoke the word. It occurred to him how long it had been since he had heard himself say it, at least in this context.
“Love.”
But you can’t fall in love with her, Doctor. You know who she is, why she’s here… you know why you can never fall in love with her.
“I do,” whispered the Doctor, gravely. “I do…”
***
Morning came. The Doctor observed its gradual arrival intermittently, during a night’s sleep continuously interrupted by something or other. After a few patches of sleep, he gave up, had the first shower, and found the only clean clothes in the wardrobe – a t-shirt. They were, apparently, waiting for some apparel of his size to arrive.
He couldn’t even imagine how a place like this would be stocked.
Before he had a chance to go any more insane than he already was, there was a knock at the door, and Heather the cleaner entered the room, dressed in exactly the same clothes as yesterday.
“You’re up early, sir. How was your first night?”
“Good. Well… restless. The evening was good.”
“You were talking to Cioné, weren’t you?” The old woman nodded. “Lovely woman.”
“Quite.”
“Anyway… I just saw you up, and thought you might like your room cleaned first!”
“Yes, why not. Thanks for the offer. Maybe give the universe a dust while you’re at it…”
“I’ve been listening to the news, sir. The Time War’s getting worse by the second. Are you keeping up to date?”
“Up to date?” the Doctor scoffed. “I know more about the war than just about anyone. The difference is, I choose to stay out of it.”
“Tell me, Doctor.” The woman set her broom to one side, and put her hands together, almost in prayer. “Do you think there’s hope for us? Against the Daleks?”
It was not particularly encouraging that the Doctor had to think about it, but at least his inevitable response gave her some reason to carry on.
“Yes. I suppose there is.” He decided to elaborate. “The Time Lords have weapons – weapons that no one else knows about, held in places that the Daleks will never find. Were the Daleks to attack, those weapons would be deployed, wiping out Skaro and most of their race. Half the universe with them, which is why the Time Lords are so reluctant to use them, but they would.”
The old woman half-smiled. “Funny, the things that give us hope, in times of war.”
***
The curtains to the dining room were open now and the light from outside came streaming in, giving the Doctor a chance to admire the assortment of plant species placed about the room, mostly from Earth and the nearest planets. The leaves were green, the soil damp; they had just been watered, and seemingly it could only have been one person.
Cioné was on her own again, tucking into a cooked breakfast. It was a full English, too; bacon, scrambled eggs, beans, hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, and a bit of toast. More impressive was how Cioné had managed to maintain her figure.
The Doctor sat down opposite, smiling at her. His breakfast was laid out.
“Same as last night?” he asked. “Everyone just came down and took theirs up?”
Cioné shook her head. “Of course not. They don’t make cooked breakfast here, you know. I just like to make my own, and I figured you’d be eating with me again, so…”
“Well, thank you very much, Cioné. I haven’t had breakfast made for me in quite a while. Well…” He chuckled, and stared off into the corner of the room. There he was again, his thoughts disappearing and reappearing somewhere else, like TARDISes out of control. “My friend… I had this, er, this friend, Jasmine her name was. Lost her very recently. She used to like a continental breakfast. Croissants, every morning in the TARDIS. Crack of dawn, if there’s such thing in a time machine. She wasn’t one to sleep in.”
“What happened to her? If you don’t mind my asking?”
“She died,” said the Doctor, ruefully. “We were travelling together very recently. She was shot and killed… well, I thought she was killed. When I went away, she used the last of her strength to… well, it doesn’t matter what she did. But it saved my life.”
Cioné smiled, and took a gamble, reaching out and placing her hand on top of the Doctor’s. “I’m very sorry to hear about what happened, but it sounds like that’s a legacy worth carrying on.” She raised her glass of orange juice. “To Jasmine.”
“To Jasmine.” The Doctor raised his own, and took a swig. “How’s your hangover this morning?”
“Bloody awful.”
“That’s the problem. I never had alcohol on the TARDIS. Autumn and Tommy used to like their lemonade, and Jasmine would always have a cup of tea. I don’t have the tolerance for it anymore, it goes straight to my head.”
“I’ve always drunk a bit,” confessed Cioné, “but since coming to Earth I’ve been an absolute bugger. Prosecco’s been my little friend here.”
“And is that terribly available out here?”
“This house is full of anachronisms. Speaking of which, I was listening to the radio this morning – they’ve got one tuned into the time vortex, you know the sort they have on Gallifrey. This Time War stuff is getting very depressing, and I feel like we only know about half of it.”
“It’s better not to know,” warned the Doctor.
“Yes, absolutely.”
The Doctor smirked. “You want to know as much as I do, don’t you?”
“Oh, God yes.”
“Five minutes.” The Doctor looked down at his watch. “We’ll finish breakfast, I’ll do the washing-up, then we’ll see what we can find. Speaking of anachronisms, do you happen to have a laptop?”
***
Cioné brushed the dust off her laptop, and watched it as it began to wheeze slowly back to life, a grotesque resurrection.
The old trader in the Jufitsian belt had warned her when she bought it, said how everyone these days was into solid state storage. You could leave it off for centuries, and it would turn back on without a moment’s hesitation. She had scoffed at the technical gibberish, asked for the cheapest, and pointed at this one because she thought the lighted-up keyboard was exciting.
The screen flickered. A welcome popped up, then disappeared again, and then returned to stay. A quartet of colours, and an accompanying fanfare. ‘Windows 19’.
The Doctor knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
As he entered, she noticed that he seemed to be shivering, in only a thin t-shirt.
“It can get very chilly in here. It might be a better idea if you…”
“They haven’t really got me any clothes yet.”
“Ah. Hold on, I have a solution for that.” Cioné opened her wardrobe door, hummed a tune as she scanned over its interior, and crouched down when she found her shelf. “A-ha!” There was a knitted jumper, very similar to her own – thick, woolly, and a little bit festive. “I keep half a dozen spares.”
“You like your knitwear, don’t you?”
“What makes you say that?” Cioné backed up against her kitchen cabinet, felt behind her and quickly removed the tea-cosy, before the Doctor was able to spot it. “Tea? Coffee? Cocoa?”
“Tea, please.” The Doctor had a sudden and painful flashback to Jasmine. Every cliché ever about loss ganged up on him, painting a picture of her face in his mind, smiling.
Still, it was getting better. He was seeing her now as she used to be, not how she was when…
He shuddered.
“Nice laptop,” he said, changing the subject as he pulled up a chair. “Now, with a bit of luck I should be able to connect to the Matrix, remotely. Kassandra showed me how to do it last time I was there, but I forgot for a while because she wiped my memory. Long story. Anyway…”
As Cioné poured two teas, the Doctor tapped away.
“Aha!” the Doctor cried unexpectedly, and Cioné spilled a drop as she placed them on the tables.
“You’re one of those people, aren’t you?” she huffed.
“One of what people?”
“Regular heart attacks.”
“Ah, yes…” He was only half paying attention. On the screen, incoherent strings of data were starting to come together to form sentences, tables, dialogues -- constantly shifting and being re-written…
Cioné recognised what it was turning into. A conversation.
“And we’re in!” cheered the Doctor. “I’ve never done this before. In fact, I’m not sure any Time Lord ever has.”
“Well done.”
“I try my best.”
The text gave way, and the screen went black. In the top left corner, a cursor flickered. Someone was waiting.
“Hmm…” the Doctor pondered, his fingers hovering over the keyboard in trepidation.
“Hello is usually a good start.”
“Yes, you’re right.” The Doctor typed his message.
Hello.
There was a pause. The Doctor and Cioné exchanged fearful glances.
-
-
Who is this?
“Okay,” admitted Cioné. “That is impressive.”
The Doctor typed something else.
Who do you think it is? There’s only one man capable of communicating with the Gallifrey Matrix from half-way across the universe.
“Incredible,” marvelled Cioné. “Even digitally, you’re still a smug…”
Just take a look at the source, Time Lords. I’m doing this using basic technology.
“Basic?” Cioné glared at the Doctor, offended. “Do you know how much this thing cost me?”
It’s me, the Doctor continued typing. The Doctor.
-
-
You survived?
Don’t I always?
What do you want with us?
Just a bit of news. I’d like to know about the Time War. I’d like to know the things you don’t even tell the other Time Lords. Am I talking to Kassandra?
Of course.
Then I’d like a prophecy.
-
-
“That’s a cruel cliff-hanger,” complained Cioné. “She’d better be typing.”
“She’s talking. She exists as a string of biodata. From her end of the conversation, this is all very different.”
“Oh, I see. I thought it was like Skype. Can she see through the webcam?”
“How happy are you with your hair this morning?”
“Not very.”
“Then no,” answered the Doctor. “Of course she can’t see through the webcam, such a thing would be impossible…”
A new message flashed up on the screen.
The Daleks are staying quiet, and for good reason. They no longer rely solely on the Darksmiths of Goth – their weapon makers exist in vast numbers across the universe, but many of them are official organisations with ethical codes. They only agree to fund the Daleks’ end of the war if the Time Lords make a strike.
Meaning?
The Daleks are relying on the Time Lords to make the first move – it’ll put a whole galaxy on their side in the war. They’re tricking the Time Lords into an act of aggression after their last conflict.
And if the Time Lords don’t strike?
At the very least, the Daleks will be without a strategy.
“Interesting,” murmured the Doctor. “Interesting…”
“And what are you going to do with the information?” asked Cioné.
“Collate it. Not share… any of it.”
“Keep collecting, good plan.” Cioné stood up, and walked over to another piece of technology, something more frequently-used, on the other side of the room. “But if we’re spending all day up here, there’s something we desperately need.”
“Security?” asked the Doctor.
Cioné rolled her eyes. “Think more recreationally, Doctor.”
“Tea?”
“We’ve got that already.” Cioné turned on the CD player, and a simple drum beat began playing, followed by a familiar electric guitar solo. “AC/DC.”
The Doctor grinned.
“Cioné, you dark horse.”
***
For the rest of the day, the Doctor and Cioné continued to gather information. They drank tea while they dug up official secrets, huddled in their knitted sweaters while they bypassed the most advanced security systems in the universe, and scrolled through reports of weapons with the capacity to blow up whole star systems while they listened, in agreement, to how they were on the highway to hell.
When the sun disappeared below the horizon, the Doctor closed the laptop, and the music changed. A new CD was playing. Something eighties.
“I’m not really an eighties woman,” confessed Cioné. “In fact, not being from this planet, I’m not entirely sure what the eighties were. But I picked up all my albums in a spaceship boot sale, and there’s not one I dislike, per se.”
“I like the 1980s,” said the Doctor, trying to place the artist. “Spandau Ballet? No, that’s not right…”
“Have you visited them?”
“The eighties? No, not often. Well, a few times. There was a time, a short while ago, actually… Autumn Rivers, and, what was her name… Ricker? Was it Ricker?” He frowned. “I think so. Aha!” He clicked his fingers on one hand. “I’ve got it! Yazoo.” He smiled sadly. “Jasmine loved eighties music.”
“Was that her time?”
“No, not really. But she was raised by a very old woman, and it was her father’s, and… I don’t know, really. Maybe she loved it because it was connected to the people she loved. Or maybe she just liked the music.”
“I’m definitely coming round to it this time. But you know what they say… you have to be feeling it.”
“Yes…” the Doctor took a last sip of his tea, and stood up to put it back on the worktop. Cioné grabbed his arm as he stood up, pulling him back into his chair gently.
“Sit with me.”
“Oh.” The Doctor shifted in his seat. “Okay then.”
“Tell me, how did you sleep last night?”
“Not very well.”
“Why?”
“New bed,” the Doctor lied. “They never agree with me. How about you?”
“Oh,” said Cioné, playfully, “I barely slept at all.”
“Why?”
“The city outside kept me awake. Unless…” she leaned forward, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “We’re both lying.”
“Why would we do that?”
A part of the Doctor was still blissfully unaware or perhaps naïve, to what both Cioné and his own hearts were telling him. But a part of him wasn’t.
That part of him was leaning in, his head turning slightly. And before he knew it, something was happening. Something which had not happened for a very, very long time.
He was being kissed.
The Doctor shut his eyes, reciprocating the gesture softly and slowly. They stopped, and looked back at each other. Their eyes were open again, and up close. They both thought back to the Untempered Schism, and chuckled, at how they had both chosen that as a comparison.
“It’s been a while,” whispered the Doctor.
“That’s okay,” laughed Cioné. “Would you like to try again?”
They kissed again. As their lips touched, a light blazed outside, brighter than all of the stars in the sky. They stopped, turning. Beyond the confines of their room, the world had changed.
There was still noise, still shouting, still crying, still a multitude of emotions, like any city. But the dialects were varied, the buildings rose higher, and lights shone from each of them.
There had been another time-shift, and a large one.
They had seen the city being born. Now, it had grown up. The Doctor turned back to Cioné and smiled.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
***
Morning came again, bringing with it unbearable heat. During that last colossal time-shift, the seasons had also changed, jumping from winter to summer in a single moment. The Doctor found that he was the only one who enjoyed the sudden, turbulent change.
“Biggest hop I’ve ever known,” Heather the cleaner said, entering the Doctor’s room. “We’ve only done weeks, months, a few years at most before now. Obviously the street was compromised for a significant amount of time! Centuries!” She coughed, brushing some dust off one of the shelves. “Good night?”
“Well,” said the Doctor, trying not to break into a smirk. “I’ve certainly had worse. Any more news on the war?”
“Nothing.” Heather sighed. “The Time Lords are doing nothing, the Daleks are doing nothing.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Perhaps both have realised that there’s no winning side. Retreat is the best option for all parties concerned. I’m not exactly saying make amends, but…”
He finished there, and ran a comb through his hair, before leaving the room for breakfast. “Keep me informed.”
He closed the door behind him, and then something terrible happened.
Heather looked down at the Doctor’s unmade bed, and was reminded of something from a very long time ago. The mattress was still warm, and her hands were cold.
The Doctor had slept there, or tried to. He had tossed and turned all night, Heather figured. She never tossed or turned. Every night she just… rested.
And just like every other morning, that sweet and transient illusion of life passed over her once more, and she remembered how it was she had died. That terrible fall, down that stupid, stupid staircase.
She felt the edge of the eye-stalk pierce her skin, and then it was all over once more.
“THIS IS DALEK AGENT H!” shrieked the monster inside. “INFORMATION REGARDING THE TIME WAR WILL BE RELAYED TO DALEK HIGH COMMAND IN SIXTEEN RELS!”
***
It was night now, and the residents were dining in their own rooms, with their own reflections for company, listening to their own stories. Except for two of them.
Cioné crept down the stairs, past the dining room, and scanned left and right to double-check that the Sentinel was not keeping watch, as he so often did.
At the bottom of the staircase, the Doctor was waiting, beaming. He offered Cioné an arm, and winked, before slowly and silently opening the door.
“We’re not meant to leave!” hissed Cioné. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not a prison,” re-joined the Doctor.
Cioné took a step back. “We can’t.”
The Doctor thought about that, tilting his head each way, as if literally weighing the possibilities. He finished his calculation, and the look on his face told Cioné what he had decided.
She repressed her feelings, allowing them to build up, before bursting in a fit of excitement. “Oh, go on then!”
And they left.
Once they left the street, whose perception filter was as powerful as ever, they found a Barcelona quite unlike the one they had left. The streets were crowded with people, but these people weren’t fighting. Those that had been on horseback now rode in the back of taxis, but quite charmingly there were still horses on the road, both a gimmick and a reminder of what the city had once been.
Cioné pointed at a strange-looking building, with architecture that curved and sloped, with rounded windows and bizarre mosaic patterns. It reminded them both of a few alien worlds they had seen.
“Gaudi,” remarked the Doctor, before double-checking his watch – for what, Cioné expected, was comedic effect. “Shame we missed him. We never did finish our game of Cards Against Humanity.”
***
“This is incredible,” said Cioné, quite charmed by the interior of this new place, as she travelled slowly up the escalator. The Doctor placed an arm around her, swinging playfully left and right.
“This is shopping!” he exclaimed. “You should see the rest of Earth. Oh look, we’ve reached the roof.”
He took Cioné’s hand, and led her onto the rooftop.
There was a balcony that wound around the exterior of the building, several floors off the ground. In the centre of the oval, there were restaurants, so that one could walk the full circle of the balcony and, if one desired, stop for a few drinks along the way.
The Doctor ushered Cioné over to the edge excitedly, drawing her away from an appealing restaurant and pointing at the building ahead of them. Beyond two impressive towers, and up a great height, stood a building which definitely wasn’t new to this century: a palace, deep orange under the setting sun, with an imposing series of fountains in its shadow, doing nothing.
“That’s beautiful,” said Cioné. “Not sure what the fountains are for, though.”
“Oh, just give it a couple of hours, and you’ll see.”
“A couple of hours, eh?” Cioné grabbed the Doctor’s arm, and pulled him away from the viewing platform. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat tapas. Then you can take me to your fountains…”
***
The Doctor stood and watched the fountains, now in full flow, his arm around Cioné. Bits of water vapour occasionally made contact with them, cooling them in the heat of the Spanish night.
The Doctor waved aside a man trying to sell a selfie stick.
It had changed here since last time. The fountains no longer seemed to move in synchrony with the music, but in their own routine, almost mechanical. The Doctor saw the science behind it. But something else had changed, too. As he watched the fountains, and looked back to see their deep red hue on Cioné’s face, he saw what it was that Robin must have seen all those years ago.
Something better.
“My old best friend took me here,” explained the Doctor. “Some time in the past, or future. I’m not exactly sure when this is, relatively speaking. Or when we were…”
Cioné laughed. “Doctor, you’re not making a modicum of sense.”
“I wonder why that is. Cioné…”
“Yes?”
“I’m old, I’m tired. The one person I had left was murdered right in front of me. I just…” he sighed, and turned away from the fountain. “I just want to know, is this what I think it is?”
“Us? Yes, it is.” Cioné kissed him again. “I’m old too, you know. But I wouldn’t say I’m tired yet.”
The Doctor chuckled, and looked around.
Then he saw her.
He ducked straight away, pulling Cioné to one side with him. Luckily, the woman didn’t look back.
“Robin…”
“Who?” asked Cioné.
“The woman who took me here last.” The Doctor peered up again. Through the spray of the fountains, he could see her, hand in hand with her husband, a child running between their arms. “And that’s Chris, and… Gabriel… which means…”
The tired old man bowed his head, and gestured for Cioné to follow him down the steps away from the fountain.
“It’s time.”
***
The fountains were still once again, and the crowds were disappearing. Ice cream and drink stalls closed for the night, and the men selling their selfie sticks sighed wearily, realising that what they had now was what they were left with for the night.
The Doctor and Cioné sat on a wall, lower down on the hill, facing away from the palace and the fountains. The Doctor had made sure that Robin and her family were out of sight. He stared desperately at Cioné, clasping her hand as he began his story.
“Jasmine was from this time. This is the summer of 2016, and she died in the winter. Which means I have until Christmas. There were people left behind, Cioné… Robin wasn’t the only one. Jasmine had a grandmother. She had friends, she had people who loved her. And I’m all that’s left from that terrible battle. I’m the only one who can tell them…”
“You need to leave the safe-house, don’t you?”
The Doctor nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got to return to London. I’ll be fine. It’s just…” he kicked a rock at his feet, like a distracted child. “If I tell them, I have to say it, I have to believe it. What really happened to her... my Jasmine.”
“Doctor, look at me.” Cioné strengthened her grip on his hand, and gazed intently, purposefully, at him. “You won’t face this. We will.”
***
Croydon – December 2016, shortly after Jasmine Sparks’ disappearance
Sheila used what was left of the water she kept by her bed to water the flowers. The jasmines were just hanging on, a perverse kind of symbolism; she couldn’t tell whether they hadn’t finished growing, or were about to drop dead.
She closed the door on her way in, feeling a breeze. But the breeze continued to build in strength even after she had closed the door, its sound becoming wheezing and machinelike. Suddenly, it took form. In the middle of her kitchen, a shape appeared accompanying the sound; a blue crate, something about police inscribed across the top.
In a world without aliens, Sheila would have had a heart attack. Even now, she was shaking. The door creaked open, and the Doctor stepped out of his TARDIS, wearing a jacket from one of his earlier incarnations.
He was still not sure where his TARDIS was. He had remembered a time, in his fifth incarnation, when he had parked the ship in France during this very year. So, he had travelled to France, borrowed it for the journey, and would return it to where it had been left when he was finished with it.
He didn’t need it for the journey. But he needed it to explain.
“What are you?” cried Sheila.
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, with none of his usual pretence or bombast. For once, he wished he could skip the TARDIS introduction. “I’m so sorry. I had to show you this, for you to know, I… I’m an alien. A time traveller.”
“Jesus…”
“I knew Jasmine,” he clarified. “Your granddaughter.”
“My adoptive granddaughter.”
“That doesn’t matter and we both know it. You were better to her than most biological parents. Sheila, I… uh…”
It wasn’t going as expected. Sheila, not even letting alien life deprive her of her manners, offered the Doctor a seat at the table.
“Thank you,” he said, resting his legs. “How long has Jasmine been missing?”
“A week. Is she with you?” Sheila looked around, trying to sneak a look inside the TARDIS. “I wanted to speak to her, actually. Oh God, I’ve just thought… well, I’d arranged a holiday for her, saved up everything I had. We were going to go to America. I thought it would cheer her up after everything with poor old Tommy. But you… this is… do you think she’d still like to go? Anyway, how did you meet? What happened?”
“We just got…” The Doctor was going to say lucky, but that was in bad taste. “Friend of a friend, I suppose. Sheila, I am so, so sorry, but…”
Sheila was smiling obliviously. “What is it, dear? I’ve just met a time traveller. I don’t think anything can shock me now!”
It was now or never. The Doctor took a deep breath, and let the two words he had been dreading for the last few nights of his life, finally leave his mouth. As the words touched the air, they infected it, like a virus.
“Jasmine died.”
Sheila stared back, open-mouthed and completely still. The Doctor had wondered when he had stepped out of the TARDIS, whether anything could really shock her. It turned out that there was something that could.
“No.”
“Sheila, I am so sorry. She gave her life to save me, to save you, to save everyone. She died fighting. She was brave, and she accepted-”
“No!” Sheila cried out louder this time, and began to sob neurotically, rocking in her chair. The Doctor felt a tear leave his own eye, and a ghastly spasm run through his shoulders and down his spine. This had been his nightmare, and the reality was worse. “No, no, no, no!” Sheila shrieked again, and clutched something invisible to her chest.
“I’m so, so sorry.” The Doctor wanted to reach out and comfort her, but the thought suddenly hit him that he didn’t know how.
“No...” Sheila continued to rock, and the Doctor realised what Sheila was trying to clutch into her arms: Jasmine.
As Sheila looked down, she could see her. Not the Jasmine she knew, but the one she met. The little baby, wide-eyed and tearless, who looked up like she had been in this world before, like she knew something wonderful and terrible that no one else did.
“My little girl!” howled Sheila. “No! Not my little girl!”
The Doctor stood up, losing his balance. He could see Jasmine too; the Jasmine he lost. As he dizzied, he could hear her pounding against the mirror. Those last few moments, so strong and determined.
I wonder what her last thought was.
Sheila ran to the sink, gagging, and threw up, still crying through it, and screaming Jasmine’s name.
For one brief moment, the Doctor forgot love. He forgot his excitement, his future, and everything he still had, and wished that he had died too.
***
The Doctor knew, from the moment he told Sheila, that he would be there for all of it. The funeral, the wake, and everything else he could manage. He entrusted UNIT with a cheque, so that they could pay for any necessary bereavement counselling. It felt pathetic, but it was the most he could do.
He met Robin at the wake.
“Oh, Doctor. I’m so sorry.”
She stepped forward, saving him the need to talk, and gave him a hug, patting him supportively on the back. “It’s alright,” she reassured him. “You did well, both of you. It’s over now.”
The Doctor breathed in sharply, and took a step back, regaining his dignity. “Yeah.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” said Robin.
“Yes, we did.” The Doctor looked around the room, and saw the extent of Jasmine’s sacrifice: all of these people, saved. And more. “I mean… she did.”
“How did you get back here?”
“That’s…” The Doctor stared out of the window. On the street below, Cioné was waiting for him, giving him the space she had promised. “That’s a long story. Robin…” He looked back at his friend. “I think I’m going to have to make a difficult decision, and soon. Where are you living now?”
“Barcelona,” Robin stated, hoping to impress him. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. She had definitely managed surprise.
“That’s how I saw you and your family, then…”
“You saw us? When?”
“A few months back. Because the thing is, Robin, I’m sort of living there too.”
***
The Doctor returned his past incarnation’s TARDIS to where it had been left, hoping as he did that his own would find him soon. He travelled back to Barcelona with Cioné, and on the way shared the story of how he had met Jasmine Sparks, and how it was that she had died.
They were sitting back outside the fountains, now, as they did every few nights. They sat a couple of storeys above them, closer to the palace entrance, just out of the earshot of others. Here, they did not just watch the fountains; they also got to watch the children playing around them, the couples holding hands and kissing, and even the selfie stick sellers.
“Cioné,” said the Doctor.
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
It was funny, Cioné thought, how you could never judge a conversation’s direction. Sometimes they would just fade out, slowing up and becoming duller until you ran out of things to discuss. Other times, they would dance and fly and create something beautiful; a bit like fountains, really.
“No.”
“Oh.” The Doctor wanted to be disappointed, but found that nothing could hurt him more than he was already hurt.
“Not like that,” said Cioné, sadly. “I can’t marry you, because… I’ve lied to you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m a spy.” She buried her head in her hands, too ashamed to look at the Doctor. “When the war broke out, Doctor, I was scared, so scared. I don’t believe in fighting, and I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wasn’t living on Gallifrey at the time, but I was in Kasteborous. I was part of the first conscription. I begged… they took me to the High Council. Rassilon made me an offer.” She finally made eye contact. The Doctor was taking it all surprisingly well, but she figured he would be furious when he heard the rest.
“They knew you would be a useful source of information,” she continued. “And they knew I’d be able to prize it out of you. They told me that if I did this, they’d give me a TARDIS. I’d be allowed to escape, run as far as I liked, and play no part in the war. Otherwise, I would be forced to fight, or be killed. I’m not sure which was worse, really, but I think I would have opted for death.”
The Doctor reached out his finger, and placed it under Cioné’s chin, bringing her head up to face his.
“I know.”
Cioné frowned, unsure what he meant. The Doctor always had a way of making the most direct statements the most ambiguous.
“I always knew,” said the Doctor, and much to Cioné’s confusion, laughed. “Cioné, did you really think I thought staying in a safe-house would be good for me? I don’t need one, and the Time Lords knew it. But I played along with their game. Heather, the cleaner, she’s a Dalek spy as well. I realised it when I first met her. She was a Vivasuellian; one of the warmest species’ in the galaxy. When I shook her hand, I realised it was as cold as ice. They must have killed her a while back.”
“So why…”
“It was part of my plan,” said the Doctor, already anticipating the question. “Cioné, do you think you’re the only person who doesn’t believe in this war? I deliberately fed you both information, but only the information I wanted you to receive. I never communicated with the Matrix – that kind of direct interface is impossible. I knew you were reporting back to Rassilon, so I motivated the Time Lords to avoid conflict with the Daleks, and through Heather, scared the Daleks into submission as well. I’ve been holding this war back as long as I could. But war… makes liars of us all, Cioné. I’m sure we were both good people once.”
“You are a good person, Doctor.” Cioné found herself, rather bizarrely, laughing. “You’re also a bloody clever one, and I hope you realise that.”
“Your acting skills weren’t that good, Cioné. I mean, seriously, the glowfly obsession, did you really think I’d believe that? Completely over-the-top. No sane person would spend so much of their life on such a trivial pastime.”
The Doctor looked over at the fountains, as the show came to an end. When he looked back, Cioné was glaring at him, looking seriously offended by something.
“You don’t…”
“It wasn’t an act, Doctor.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Whoops…”
The Doctor grinned.
“Cioné, you dark horse.”
***
For the rest of the day, the Doctor and Cioné continued to gather information. They drank tea while they dug up official secrets, huddled in their knitted sweaters while they bypassed the most advanced security systems in the universe, and scrolled through reports of weapons with the capacity to blow up whole star systems while they listened, in agreement, to how they were on the highway to hell.
When the sun disappeared below the horizon, the Doctor closed the laptop, and the music changed. A new CD was playing. Something eighties.
“I’m not really an eighties woman,” confessed Cioné. “In fact, not being from this planet, I’m not entirely sure what the eighties were. But I picked up all my albums in a spaceship boot sale, and there’s not one I dislike, per se.”
“I like the 1980s,” said the Doctor, trying to place the artist. “Spandau Ballet? No, that’s not right…”
“Have you visited them?”
“The eighties? No, not often. Well, a few times. There was a time, a short while ago, actually… Autumn Rivers, and, what was her name… Ricker? Was it Ricker?” He frowned. “I think so. Aha!” He clicked his fingers on one hand. “I’ve got it! Yazoo.” He smiled sadly. “Jasmine loved eighties music.”
“Was that her time?”
“No, not really. But she was raised by a very old woman, and it was her father’s, and… I don’t know, really. Maybe she loved it because it was connected to the people she loved. Or maybe she just liked the music.”
“I’m definitely coming round to it this time. But you know what they say… you have to be feeling it.”
“Yes…” the Doctor took a last sip of his tea, and stood up to put it back on the worktop. Cioné grabbed his arm as he stood up, pulling him back into his chair gently.
“Sit with me.”
“Oh.” The Doctor shifted in his seat. “Okay then.”
“Tell me, how did you sleep last night?”
“Not very well.”
“Why?”
“New bed,” the Doctor lied. “They never agree with me. How about you?”
“Oh,” said Cioné, playfully, “I barely slept at all.”
“Why?”
“The city outside kept me awake. Unless…” she leaned forward, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “We’re both lying.”
“Why would we do that?”
A part of the Doctor was still blissfully unaware or perhaps naïve, to what both Cioné and his own hearts were telling him. But a part of him wasn’t.
That part of him was leaning in, his head turning slightly. And before he knew it, something was happening. Something which had not happened for a very, very long time.
He was being kissed.
The Doctor shut his eyes, reciprocating the gesture softly and slowly. They stopped, and looked back at each other. Their eyes were open again, and up close. They both thought back to the Untempered Schism, and chuckled, at how they had both chosen that as a comparison.
“It’s been a while,” whispered the Doctor.
“That’s okay,” laughed Cioné. “Would you like to try again?”
They kissed again. As their lips touched, a light blazed outside, brighter than all of the stars in the sky. They stopped, turning. Beyond the confines of their room, the world had changed.
There was still noise, still shouting, still crying, still a multitude of emotions, like any city. But the dialects were varied, the buildings rose higher, and lights shone from each of them.
There had been another time-shift, and a large one.
They had seen the city being born. Now, it had grown up. The Doctor turned back to Cioné and smiled.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
***
Morning came again, bringing with it unbearable heat. During that last colossal time-shift, the seasons had also changed, jumping from winter to summer in a single moment. The Doctor found that he was the only one who enjoyed the sudden, turbulent change.
“Biggest hop I’ve ever known,” Heather the cleaner said, entering the Doctor’s room. “We’ve only done weeks, months, a few years at most before now. Obviously the street was compromised for a significant amount of time! Centuries!” She coughed, brushing some dust off one of the shelves. “Good night?”
“Well,” said the Doctor, trying not to break into a smirk. “I’ve certainly had worse. Any more news on the war?”
“Nothing.” Heather sighed. “The Time Lords are doing nothing, the Daleks are doing nothing.”
The Doctor shrugged. “Perhaps both have realised that there’s no winning side. Retreat is the best option for all parties concerned. I’m not exactly saying make amends, but…”
He finished there, and ran a comb through his hair, before leaving the room for breakfast. “Keep me informed.”
He closed the door behind him, and then something terrible happened.
Heather looked down at the Doctor’s unmade bed, and was reminded of something from a very long time ago. The mattress was still warm, and her hands were cold.
The Doctor had slept there, or tried to. He had tossed and turned all night, Heather figured. She never tossed or turned. Every night she just… rested.
And just like every other morning, that sweet and transient illusion of life passed over her once more, and she remembered how it was she had died. That terrible fall, down that stupid, stupid staircase.
She felt the edge of the eye-stalk pierce her skin, and then it was all over once more.
“THIS IS DALEK AGENT H!” shrieked the monster inside. “INFORMATION REGARDING THE TIME WAR WILL BE RELAYED TO DALEK HIGH COMMAND IN SIXTEEN RELS!”
***
It was night now, and the residents were dining in their own rooms, with their own reflections for company, listening to their own stories. Except for two of them.
Cioné crept down the stairs, past the dining room, and scanned left and right to double-check that the Sentinel was not keeping watch, as he so often did.
At the bottom of the staircase, the Doctor was waiting, beaming. He offered Cioné an arm, and winked, before slowly and silently opening the door.
“We’re not meant to leave!” hissed Cioné. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s not a prison,” re-joined the Doctor.
Cioné took a step back. “We can’t.”
The Doctor thought about that, tilting his head each way, as if literally weighing the possibilities. He finished his calculation, and the look on his face told Cioné what he had decided.
She repressed her feelings, allowing them to build up, before bursting in a fit of excitement. “Oh, go on then!”
And they left.
Once they left the street, whose perception filter was as powerful as ever, they found a Barcelona quite unlike the one they had left. The streets were crowded with people, but these people weren’t fighting. Those that had been on horseback now rode in the back of taxis, but quite charmingly there were still horses on the road, both a gimmick and a reminder of what the city had once been.
Cioné pointed at a strange-looking building, with architecture that curved and sloped, with rounded windows and bizarre mosaic patterns. It reminded them both of a few alien worlds they had seen.
“Gaudi,” remarked the Doctor, before double-checking his watch – for what, Cioné expected, was comedic effect. “Shame we missed him. We never did finish our game of Cards Against Humanity.”
***
“This is incredible,” said Cioné, quite charmed by the interior of this new place, as she travelled slowly up the escalator. The Doctor placed an arm around her, swinging playfully left and right.
“This is shopping!” he exclaimed. “You should see the rest of Earth. Oh look, we’ve reached the roof.”
He took Cioné’s hand, and led her onto the rooftop.
There was a balcony that wound around the exterior of the building, several floors off the ground. In the centre of the oval, there were restaurants, so that one could walk the full circle of the balcony and, if one desired, stop for a few drinks along the way.
The Doctor ushered Cioné over to the edge excitedly, drawing her away from an appealing restaurant and pointing at the building ahead of them. Beyond two impressive towers, and up a great height, stood a building which definitely wasn’t new to this century: a palace, deep orange under the setting sun, with an imposing series of fountains in its shadow, doing nothing.
“That’s beautiful,” said Cioné. “Not sure what the fountains are for, though.”
“Oh, just give it a couple of hours, and you’ll see.”
“A couple of hours, eh?” Cioné grabbed the Doctor’s arm, and pulled him away from the viewing platform. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat tapas. Then you can take me to your fountains…”
***
The Doctor stood and watched the fountains, now in full flow, his arm around Cioné. Bits of water vapour occasionally made contact with them, cooling them in the heat of the Spanish night.
The Doctor waved aside a man trying to sell a selfie stick.
It had changed here since last time. The fountains no longer seemed to move in synchrony with the music, but in their own routine, almost mechanical. The Doctor saw the science behind it. But something else had changed, too. As he watched the fountains, and looked back to see their deep red hue on Cioné’s face, he saw what it was that Robin must have seen all those years ago.
Something better.
“My old best friend took me here,” explained the Doctor. “Some time in the past, or future. I’m not exactly sure when this is, relatively speaking. Or when we were…”
Cioné laughed. “Doctor, you’re not making a modicum of sense.”
“I wonder why that is. Cioné…”
“Yes?”
“I’m old, I’m tired. The one person I had left was murdered right in front of me. I just…” he sighed, and turned away from the fountain. “I just want to know, is this what I think it is?”
“Us? Yes, it is.” Cioné kissed him again. “I’m old too, you know. But I wouldn’t say I’m tired yet.”
The Doctor chuckled, and looked around.
Then he saw her.
He ducked straight away, pulling Cioné to one side with him. Luckily, the woman didn’t look back.
“Robin…”
“Who?” asked Cioné.
“The woman who took me here last.” The Doctor peered up again. Through the spray of the fountains, he could see her, hand in hand with her husband, a child running between their arms. “And that’s Chris, and… Gabriel… which means…”
The tired old man bowed his head, and gestured for Cioné to follow him down the steps away from the fountain.
“It’s time.”
***
The fountains were still once again, and the crowds were disappearing. Ice cream and drink stalls closed for the night, and the men selling their selfie sticks sighed wearily, realising that what they had now was what they were left with for the night.
The Doctor and Cioné sat on a wall, lower down on the hill, facing away from the palace and the fountains. The Doctor had made sure that Robin and her family were out of sight. He stared desperately at Cioné, clasping her hand as he began his story.
“Jasmine was from this time. This is the summer of 2016, and she died in the winter. Which means I have until Christmas. There were people left behind, Cioné… Robin wasn’t the only one. Jasmine had a grandmother. She had friends, she had people who loved her. And I’m all that’s left from that terrible battle. I’m the only one who can tell them…”
“You need to leave the safe-house, don’t you?”
The Doctor nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got to return to London. I’ll be fine. It’s just…” he kicked a rock at his feet, like a distracted child. “If I tell them, I have to say it, I have to believe it. What really happened to her... my Jasmine.”
“Doctor, look at me.” Cioné strengthened her grip on his hand, and gazed intently, purposefully, at him. “You won’t face this. We will.”
***
Croydon – December 2016, shortly after Jasmine Sparks’ disappearance
Sheila used what was left of the water she kept by her bed to water the flowers. The jasmines were just hanging on, a perverse kind of symbolism; she couldn’t tell whether they hadn’t finished growing, or were about to drop dead.
She closed the door on her way in, feeling a breeze. But the breeze continued to build in strength even after she had closed the door, its sound becoming wheezing and machinelike. Suddenly, it took form. In the middle of her kitchen, a shape appeared accompanying the sound; a blue crate, something about police inscribed across the top.
In a world without aliens, Sheila would have had a heart attack. Even now, she was shaking. The door creaked open, and the Doctor stepped out of his TARDIS, wearing a jacket from one of his earlier incarnations.
He was still not sure where his TARDIS was. He had remembered a time, in his fifth incarnation, when he had parked the ship in France during this very year. So, he had travelled to France, borrowed it for the journey, and would return it to where it had been left when he was finished with it.
He didn’t need it for the journey. But he needed it to explain.
“What are you?” cried Sheila.
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, with none of his usual pretence or bombast. For once, he wished he could skip the TARDIS introduction. “I’m so sorry. I had to show you this, for you to know, I… I’m an alien. A time traveller.”
“Jesus…”
“I knew Jasmine,” he clarified. “Your granddaughter.”
“My adoptive granddaughter.”
“That doesn’t matter and we both know it. You were better to her than most biological parents. Sheila, I… uh…”
It wasn’t going as expected. Sheila, not even letting alien life deprive her of her manners, offered the Doctor a seat at the table.
“Thank you,” he said, resting his legs. “How long has Jasmine been missing?”
“A week. Is she with you?” Sheila looked around, trying to sneak a look inside the TARDIS. “I wanted to speak to her, actually. Oh God, I’ve just thought… well, I’d arranged a holiday for her, saved up everything I had. We were going to go to America. I thought it would cheer her up after everything with poor old Tommy. But you… this is… do you think she’d still like to go? Anyway, how did you meet? What happened?”
“We just got…” The Doctor was going to say lucky, but that was in bad taste. “Friend of a friend, I suppose. Sheila, I am so, so sorry, but…”
Sheila was smiling obliviously. “What is it, dear? I’ve just met a time traveller. I don’t think anything can shock me now!”
It was now or never. The Doctor took a deep breath, and let the two words he had been dreading for the last few nights of his life, finally leave his mouth. As the words touched the air, they infected it, like a virus.
“Jasmine died.”
Sheila stared back, open-mouthed and completely still. The Doctor had wondered when he had stepped out of the TARDIS, whether anything could really shock her. It turned out that there was something that could.
“No.”
“Sheila, I am so sorry. She gave her life to save me, to save you, to save everyone. She died fighting. She was brave, and she accepted-”
“No!” Sheila cried out louder this time, and began to sob neurotically, rocking in her chair. The Doctor felt a tear leave his own eye, and a ghastly spasm run through his shoulders and down his spine. This had been his nightmare, and the reality was worse. “No, no, no, no!” Sheila shrieked again, and clutched something invisible to her chest.
“I’m so, so sorry.” The Doctor wanted to reach out and comfort her, but the thought suddenly hit him that he didn’t know how.
“No...” Sheila continued to rock, and the Doctor realised what Sheila was trying to clutch into her arms: Jasmine.
As Sheila looked down, she could see her. Not the Jasmine she knew, but the one she met. The little baby, wide-eyed and tearless, who looked up like she had been in this world before, like she knew something wonderful and terrible that no one else did.
“My little girl!” howled Sheila. “No! Not my little girl!”
The Doctor stood up, losing his balance. He could see Jasmine too; the Jasmine he lost. As he dizzied, he could hear her pounding against the mirror. Those last few moments, so strong and determined.
I wonder what her last thought was.
Sheila ran to the sink, gagging, and threw up, still crying through it, and screaming Jasmine’s name.
For one brief moment, the Doctor forgot love. He forgot his excitement, his future, and everything he still had, and wished that he had died too.
***
The Doctor knew, from the moment he told Sheila, that he would be there for all of it. The funeral, the wake, and everything else he could manage. He entrusted UNIT with a cheque, so that they could pay for any necessary bereavement counselling. It felt pathetic, but it was the most he could do.
He met Robin at the wake.
“Oh, Doctor. I’m so sorry.”
She stepped forward, saving him the need to talk, and gave him a hug, patting him supportively on the back. “It’s alright,” she reassured him. “You did well, both of you. It’s over now.”
The Doctor breathed in sharply, and took a step back, regaining his dignity. “Yeah.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” said Robin.
“Yes, we did.” The Doctor looked around the room, and saw the extent of Jasmine’s sacrifice: all of these people, saved. And more. “I mean… she did.”
“How did you get back here?”
“That’s…” The Doctor stared out of the window. On the street below, Cioné was waiting for him, giving him the space she had promised. “That’s a long story. Robin…” He looked back at his friend. “I think I’m going to have to make a difficult decision, and soon. Where are you living now?”
“Barcelona,” Robin stated, hoping to impress him. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. She had definitely managed surprise.
“That’s how I saw you and your family, then…”
“You saw us? When?”
“A few months back. Because the thing is, Robin, I’m sort of living there too.”
***
The Doctor returned his past incarnation’s TARDIS to where it had been left, hoping as he did that his own would find him soon. He travelled back to Barcelona with Cioné, and on the way shared the story of how he had met Jasmine Sparks, and how it was that she had died.
They were sitting back outside the fountains, now, as they did every few nights. They sat a couple of storeys above them, closer to the palace entrance, just out of the earshot of others. Here, they did not just watch the fountains; they also got to watch the children playing around them, the couples holding hands and kissing, and even the selfie stick sellers.
“Cioné,” said the Doctor.
“Yes?”
“Will you marry me?”
It was funny, Cioné thought, how you could never judge a conversation’s direction. Sometimes they would just fade out, slowing up and becoming duller until you ran out of things to discuss. Other times, they would dance and fly and create something beautiful; a bit like fountains, really.
“No.”
“Oh.” The Doctor wanted to be disappointed, but found that nothing could hurt him more than he was already hurt.
“Not like that,” said Cioné, sadly. “I can’t marry you, because… I’ve lied to you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m a spy.” She buried her head in her hands, too ashamed to look at the Doctor. “When the war broke out, Doctor, I was scared, so scared. I don’t believe in fighting, and I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wasn’t living on Gallifrey at the time, but I was in Kasteborous. I was part of the first conscription. I begged… they took me to the High Council. Rassilon made me an offer.” She finally made eye contact. The Doctor was taking it all surprisingly well, but she figured he would be furious when he heard the rest.
“They knew you would be a useful source of information,” she continued. “And they knew I’d be able to prize it out of you. They told me that if I did this, they’d give me a TARDIS. I’d be allowed to escape, run as far as I liked, and play no part in the war. Otherwise, I would be forced to fight, or be killed. I’m not sure which was worse, really, but I think I would have opted for death.”
The Doctor reached out his finger, and placed it under Cioné’s chin, bringing her head up to face his.
“I know.”
Cioné frowned, unsure what he meant. The Doctor always had a way of making the most direct statements the most ambiguous.
“I always knew,” said the Doctor, and much to Cioné’s confusion, laughed. “Cioné, did you really think I thought staying in a safe-house would be good for me? I don’t need one, and the Time Lords knew it. But I played along with their game. Heather, the cleaner, she’s a Dalek spy as well. I realised it when I first met her. She was a Vivasuellian; one of the warmest species’ in the galaxy. When I shook her hand, I realised it was as cold as ice. They must have killed her a while back.”
“So why…”
“It was part of my plan,” said the Doctor, already anticipating the question. “Cioné, do you think you’re the only person who doesn’t believe in this war? I deliberately fed you both information, but only the information I wanted you to receive. I never communicated with the Matrix – that kind of direct interface is impossible. I knew you were reporting back to Rassilon, so I motivated the Time Lords to avoid conflict with the Daleks, and through Heather, scared the Daleks into submission as well. I’ve been holding this war back as long as I could. But war… makes liars of us all, Cioné. I’m sure we were both good people once.”
“You are a good person, Doctor.” Cioné found herself, rather bizarrely, laughing. “You’re also a bloody clever one, and I hope you realise that.”
“Your acting skills weren’t that good, Cioné. I mean, seriously, the glowfly obsession, did you really think I’d believe that? Completely over-the-top. No sane person would spend so much of their life on such a trivial pastime.”
The Doctor looked over at the fountains, as the show came to an end. When he looked back, Cioné was glaring at him, looking seriously offended by something.
“You don’t…”
“It wasn’t an act, Doctor.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Whoops…”
“And you?” asked Cioné. “How much of what you said was an act?”
“Very little. Cioné…” The Doctor closed his eyes. His rapid Gallifreyan cognitive processes grew slower, the machine inside his mind grinding to a halt. The only mechanism at work was hesitation, and he grappled with it for a moment.
“Okay. Okay…” He stood up, and paced around briefly, doing a couple of brisk circles around the same spot. Then he sat back down, and looked directly at Cioné. Behind them, the show finished, and the crowds began to disappear once more.
“These last few months,” started the Doctor, “have been the most difficult months of my life. But do you know what’s stopped me from giving up, giving in, breaking every promise I ever made? You, Cioné. I did the one thing I swore I’d never do when I walked into that safe-house – I compromised the operation.” He smiled sadly. “I fell in love. So let me ask you again, and hope I really did have the measure of you, hope that you weren’t lying and that maybe, just maybe, we’re more alike than both of us might believe.”
“Cioné…” He took the Time Lady’s hand, and bent down onto one knee. “Will you marry me?”
TO BE CONTINUED
“Very little. Cioné…” The Doctor closed his eyes. His rapid Gallifreyan cognitive processes grew slower, the machine inside his mind grinding to a halt. The only mechanism at work was hesitation, and he grappled with it for a moment.
“Okay. Okay…” He stood up, and paced around briefly, doing a couple of brisk circles around the same spot. Then he sat back down, and looked directly at Cioné. Behind them, the show finished, and the crowds began to disappear once more.
“These last few months,” started the Doctor, “have been the most difficult months of my life. But do you know what’s stopped me from giving up, giving in, breaking every promise I ever made? You, Cioné. I did the one thing I swore I’d never do when I walked into that safe-house – I compromised the operation.” He smiled sadly. “I fell in love. So let me ask you again, and hope I really did have the measure of you, hope that you weren’t lying and that maybe, just maybe, we’re more alike than both of us might believe.”
“Cioné…” He took the Time Lady’s hand, and bent down onto one knee. “Will you marry me?”
TO BE CONTINUED
Next Time: Till Death Us Do Part (pt. 2)It's the Doctor's wedding day, and his best friend is determined to make sure that, just this once, absolutely nothing goes wrong.
So that means everything running smoothly. No Time War. No accidents. No fights at border control. And definitely no accidental incinerations... Till Death Us Do Part (Pt. 2) will be published on Saturday 11th December. |
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