Prologue
Stars raced past the window like mayflies, as the spaceship began to accelerate. Cioné tightened her seatbelt, just in case. It was a little bit terrifying, but she couldn’t complain – she was the one who had told the driver to put his foot down.
Well, it was a sort of foot, anyway. Kind of slimier, and it made more of a squelch than it did a stomp. But other than that, he was a fairly generic humanoid; two arms, two legs, blue-skinned, two eyes, two ears, and slightly perplexingly, two noses.
His spaceship was a small and makeshift thing, but sort of calming and quaint, too. It had a maximum capacity of six passengers, and unless they were stick insects, it would have been a stretch to fit them all in. The seats were leather, the lights projected a faint pink glow around the inside of the vehicle, and the windows were more like portholes.
Still, it wasn’t the vehicle that mattered. It was where it was going.
“What’s the speed limit out here?” shouted Cioné from the back, trying to make herself heard over the thrust of the engines.
“Up for debate!” answered the driver, with a wry smile on his face. “Anything else I can get for you, miss?”
“That’ll be ‘Mrs’ soon! And actually, that’s a point. It’s my wedding day. Let’s have some music!”
“Anything in particular?”
“Ooh… let’s have a bit of ZZ Top.”
“Certainly, miss.” And within seconds, Sharp Dressed Man was blaring out of the ship’s surround sound system.
Cioné’s fellow passenger, who had hitherto kept quiet, spoke up. “ZZ Top! I remember them…”
Cioné tried to work out the dates in her head. “They were your time, weren’t they?”
Robin shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they formed before I was born. They released hits for a while though, I think. I wasn’t really into them…”
The ship rattled again. The little girl next to Robin was thrown up and down as she gazed through the porthole at the industrial complex which they were drifting past. It was orbiting a sun. Robin reached out, concerned, but the girl seemed to be enjoying the ride. Robin made a mental note to take her to a theme park as soon as she was old enough.
“Are you okay with the speed, Robin?” asked Cioné. “It’s going a bit fast; I don’t want to unsettle you!”
“Don’t worry about it! I’ve known worse than this with the Doctor, believe me. This will be good practise for you!” She turned back to the little girl, affectionately messing up the curly blonde hairs on her head. “You alright down there, Jasmine?”
The girl nodded fervently.
“Well if you need a break or anything,” Cioné persisted, “just let me know. We’re allowed to be late, it’s a wedding.”
“Just because I’m getting on a bit…” complained Robin, not really seeming that offended. “I don’t need any ‘rest breaks’. I might be seventy-five, but I’ll have you know I still feel twenty inside!”
Well, it was a sort of foot, anyway. Kind of slimier, and it made more of a squelch than it did a stomp. But other than that, he was a fairly generic humanoid; two arms, two legs, blue-skinned, two eyes, two ears, and slightly perplexingly, two noses.
His spaceship was a small and makeshift thing, but sort of calming and quaint, too. It had a maximum capacity of six passengers, and unless they were stick insects, it would have been a stretch to fit them all in. The seats were leather, the lights projected a faint pink glow around the inside of the vehicle, and the windows were more like portholes.
Still, it wasn’t the vehicle that mattered. It was where it was going.
“What’s the speed limit out here?” shouted Cioné from the back, trying to make herself heard over the thrust of the engines.
“Up for debate!” answered the driver, with a wry smile on his face. “Anything else I can get for you, miss?”
“That’ll be ‘Mrs’ soon! And actually, that’s a point. It’s my wedding day. Let’s have some music!”
“Anything in particular?”
“Ooh… let’s have a bit of ZZ Top.”
“Certainly, miss.” And within seconds, Sharp Dressed Man was blaring out of the ship’s surround sound system.
Cioné’s fellow passenger, who had hitherto kept quiet, spoke up. “ZZ Top! I remember them…”
Cioné tried to work out the dates in her head. “They were your time, weren’t they?”
Robin shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they formed before I was born. They released hits for a while though, I think. I wasn’t really into them…”
The ship rattled again. The little girl next to Robin was thrown up and down as she gazed through the porthole at the industrial complex which they were drifting past. It was orbiting a sun. Robin reached out, concerned, but the girl seemed to be enjoying the ride. Robin made a mental note to take her to a theme park as soon as she was old enough.
“Are you okay with the speed, Robin?” asked Cioné. “It’s going a bit fast; I don’t want to unsettle you!”
“Don’t worry about it! I’ve known worse than this with the Doctor, believe me. This will be good practise for you!” She turned back to the little girl, affectionately messing up the curly blonde hairs on her head. “You alright down there, Jasmine?”
The girl nodded fervently.
“Well if you need a break or anything,” Cioné persisted, “just let me know. We’re allowed to be late, it’s a wedding.”
“Just because I’m getting on a bit…” complained Robin, not really seeming that offended. “I don’t need any ‘rest breaks’. I might be seventy-five, but I’ll have you know I still feel twenty inside!”
The Eighth Doctor Adventures
2016 Christmas Special Part 2
Till Death Us Do Part (pt. 2)
Written by Janine Rivers
The Doctor stood in the square hall of the registry office, faces both familiar and unfamiliar rushing past him in a haze. The whole room was surrounded by curtains: the hall was made of glass, and was entirely panoramic, but the view outside would not be revealed until the ceremony began.
If Trip Advisor (the intergalactic version) was anything to go on, it would be worth the wait.
This wasn’t a ceremony he was familiar with, either. The wedding was…
He paused, trying to remember, and then it came back to him. It was a Janusian wedding. A little like the humanist weddings of his companions’ time, it was at once non-religious and deeply spiritual. The Janus people placed an emphasis on looking both into the past and the future simultaneously. The wedding would celebrate what had been, and what would and might be. The Doctor and Cioné had both liked that idea.
He checked his watch. Twenty minutes late, so far. He hoped that was the fashion. A pat on his back startled him, but he soon realised it was supportive.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chris was saying. “They’ll turn up. I’d text Robin but I’m not getting any reception…” He waved his phone around in the air a bit.
“That’s because you’re trying to use TalkTalk in deep space, Scottish Moon,” the Doctor laughed.
“Ah, yes, that would be it…”
Somehow, thought the Doctor, old age made everyone technologically incompetent – even those who had grown up around it. Somewhere during his thirteenth regeneration, he would probably end up forgetting how to pilot the TARDIS.
“Listen,” murmured Chris. “I just wanted to say, uh… thank you.”
“Thank you?” The Doctor frowned. “What for?”
“Well, you’ve been around the block a few times…”
“A few thousand times.”
“Exactly. And you still chose me to be your best man. That means the world to me, Doctor.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Not to me it’s not. At my age…” The Doctor wondered, briefly, how old Chris was. He had always been quite a bit older than his wife, and Robin was in her mid-seventies. “I don’t get to go to many weddings,” Chris continued. “Kids and grandkids, that’s it. I’m just granddad these days. I don’t get to be the best man, because my best friends don’t have weddings anymore, they have funerals. Went to one last year. My old best pal. Horrible times… anyway, I just wanted to say thank you. Getting to do all this, it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I almost feel young again.”
“You are young,” said the Doctor, encouragingly. “To me.”
What he didn’t mention was that Chris was all he had left. He respected the man, of course, and he was high up on the list of people the Doctor would consider best friends. But he had always hoped, in the unlikely event he did tie the knot, that Tommy Lindsay would be there on the day.
The Doctor sighed, and pushed the thought aside. Absent friends.
***
The spaceship jerked to a halt, and the driver waved an apology to the passengers in the back. Peering forward, Cioné noticed that the vehicles in front had stacked up, and were forming an orderly queue along the space-lane. She suspected that, as soon as they entered an air corridor and sounds became audible, horns would begin to honk.
“Unbelievable,” marvelled Robin. “I mean, you get it in London, but space is kind of infinite. How the heck do you manage a traffic jam with that much room?”
“The traffic’s still organised into lanes, miss,” the driver explained. “Our vehicles are locked onto those lanes, so we can’t leave them. If a vehicle isn’t, that’s because it was produced without authorisation, so the law enforcement pick it up while it’s drifting. With that said…” he glanced in his right-hand mirror, and indicated out. “There’s more than one lane.”
The spaceship slipped out onto the lane below, and began to move at a slower rate – but, as Robin was keen to remind herself, at least it was moving.
“I’ve never taken this route before,” said the driver, almost gleefully, like that was somehow a good thing.
“I have a feeling we’re going to be very late,” said Cioné.
“Me too,” Robin agreed. “So let’s start at the very beginning. You never actually told me about the proposal…”
***
Barcelona, 2016
“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?”
Cioné thought about the proposal, and made a face the Doctor was neither expecting nor hoping for.
“Why?”
“Er…” The Doctor figured it was a good time to stand up, before he humiliated himself further.
“No, I mean…” Cioné took a deep breath. “I was working for Rassilon, I lied to you, and to be honest, I’m a bit of a nutter. I just don’t know what you see in me.”
“Oh, Cioné.” The Doctor took her hands, and held them in his own. “You daft woman. You told me about everything because you realised you couldn’t go through with it, and that was what mattered. We both lied, both did things for our own ends. They say love makes liars of us all, but I don’t believe that. War makes liars of us all. Love sheds light on the truth. You asked me what I saw in you. The answer is everything. Everything I could ever wish for, and more.”
“Yes,” Cioné said, suddenly and passionately. “God, yes. I will marry you if it’s the last thing I do. Come here.” She pulled him in, and they kissed again, but something was different this time, in a good way.
“Considering the time-shifts,” Cioné said when they had finished, “it’s probably a good idea if we don’t set a date yet. Time is relative, as they say.”
“Definitely. Besides, we have work to do first. I do believe we’re now both playing Rassilon at his own game, dear fiancée.”
***
“Oh, bugger.” Robin recognised the scene. Even in deep space, there were some things that just always went a certain way. “Border control.”
“They’re funny about immigrants these days,” complained the driver. “And holidaymakers. And they’ll want money.” He lifted his wallet out of the glove compartment, and sorted through a variety of alien coins, some of which seemed to glow in his hand, almost radioactively. “I hope this will be enough.”
The vehicle in front of them was allowed to pass. The driver moved forward and took his place, opening the ship’s side-door. Fresh air blew into the spaceship, some sort of artificial air-shell, allowing transactions to take place out in the open.
The border control officer was a reptile of some kind. Bulbous yellow eyes protruded from its scaly skin, a crest of scales ran down its back; its long, skeletal fingers ran down the paperwork on its desk.
“Can I see some formal identification?” it asked, in a gurgle. The driver fumbled around a bit more, and provided his wallet. “Driver’s license, I see…” The reptile eyed it curiously and passed it back. “And what are you doing here? Do you have a visa?”
“I think the passenger in the back gives it away,” the driver replied flippantly. Cioné gave a little wave, and gestured to her wedding dress. The reptile waited for an explanation. The driver sighed. “She’s getting married. I’m taking her to the registry office. Is that allowed?”
The reptile considered the question, as if it were his decision to make. “No.”
“Oh, fantastic.”
“You must understand the need to monitor who and what enters our sector of space. You could be extremists.”
“In fancy dress?”
“In disguise. The fee is fifteen trascolis.”
“Oh.” The driver hesitated, alarmed by the sudden and unprompted shift in discussion. He decided not to question it. “Okay then.” He handed the reptile the majority of the coins he had. “Thanks. You know how it is, weddings…”
“You misunderstand.” The reptile placed the money in a tin. “That was for the time you’ve wasted.” It pointed unhelpfully back in the direction the travellers had arrived from. “You’ll need to go back that way. If you come back within the next three hours and provide a visa or any other piece of relevant documentation, you will be allowed through without paying the time costs.”
“Absolutely fantastic,” yelled Robin, from the back. “Brilliant. Thank you so much, I’ll make sure you get a special mention in the best man’s speech.”
In agreement, the driver slammed the door shut and reluctantly took a U-turn.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I think there’s another route that lets you bypass border control.”
Cioné was surprised by something, her mouth forming a gasp. “Robin McKnight…” she shook her head in disbelief. “Maid of honour, you know, I’ve never seen you get angry before.” The way she said it, it was almost a compliment. “I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”
“Believe me,” agreed Robin, “you wouldn’t. You should have seen the argument I had with Caligula.”
“Granny,” Jasmine began in that inquisitive voice of hers, “did you used to travel in time?”
Robin grinned at her granddaughter. “Granny used to kick ass.”
***
For once, dinner at the safe-house was silent. Not awkward silent, but the kind of silence where both parties knew each other well enough to accept that it was the right thing; that ‘rude’ and ‘unsociable’ were just petulant terms that petulant people used to talk to each other.
The Doctor and Cioné sat in silence because they both knew things they couldn’t share. Because one wrong word could blow their whole operation. And because, above all else, they needed space to do what Time Lords did best: think.
Their soundless meal was interrupted by a clap of thunder from outside. The whole sky responded by turning white, and the couple exchanged a look, knowing what was happening. When the performance stopped, the Doctor stood up, walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain, and broke the silence.
“It’s another big one,” he murmured. “I’d say we’ve shifted about twenty years into the future.”
***
“There’s another charge,” whispered the driver. He had parked the car up round the back of the compound, which was suspended in space like an asteroid. No one could see them round the back, and as the driver spoke, he turned to face his passengers, so that even if anyone could see them, they couldn’t get anything from the conversation.
It felt like one of those old heist films, somewhere around the part where the pieces of the plan finally came together and the action started. That was always the best part. Robin found herself enjoying it all a bit too much.
“The difference,” the driver continued, “is that the charge is more of a…” he searched for the word… “procedure. By which I mean, it’s our defence, if anyone asks what we’re doing.” He pointed to the building: a cube, floating in the emptiness, a gaudy logo on its roof and a hatch on its side. “Fast food. It’s the only way you can get from here into the next sector without being picked up by security.”
“You mean we’re doing a drive-through?” Robin chuckled to herself, sure that she was finally losing the plot, and was really at home having a very strange dream. “In space?”
“Indeed.” The driver restarted the engine, and the ship hovered slowly over to the hatch. It opened suddenly. On the other side, a robot, made entirely of green cylindrical parts, started screeching at them.
“PLEASE CITE YOUR ORDER! THANK YOU!”
“Um…” the driver hesitated. “Is there a menu?”
The robot pointed silently to a card on the wall. Robin put her glasses on, whilst the other two squinted, wishing they’d had the humility to bring theirs.
“We’ll get the…” Robin studied it closely, and remembered, for the first time since she was in preschool, what it was like to not be able to read. “Quafligradt sinousis and the… waigsadab… daisa..dyduads… please.” She coughed awkwardly. “That’s a medium, by the way.”
The robot smacked a box next to it, so ferociously that the whole building seemed to tremor. Two steaming meals popped up out of the top, served in little dishes. They looked a little like sushi, except for the fact that they most definitely were not raw.
“WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT!” roared the robot, as if it was a demand rather than a question.
“Would we like fries?” Robin looked to the driver, who was presumably paying. He was shaking his head, remembering how little he had left. “No, no fries please.”
The robot pushed the tray out of the hatch aggressively, and Robin found herself catching it rather than taking it. She lifted it into the spaceship, and gave it a doubtful sniff.
“YOUR MEAL HAS COME TO FOUR TRASCOLIS.”
“Bargain,” murmured Cioné. The robot ignored her and continued thundering at its customers.
“PLEASE PAY NOW. WE ACCEPT CASH, CARD, OR LIMBS. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO LEAVE BEFORE THE TRANSACTION IS COMPLETED, YOU WILL BE INCINERATED. IF YOU REQUIRE A FINANCIAL WITHDRAWAL, THERE IS AN ATM ACCESSIBLE IN MY GROIN. TO ACCESS IT, PLEASE REMOVE MY-”
“It’s okay!” interrupted the driver, worried about where that demonstration was going. “I’ll pay by card, if that’s okay.” He lifted a card out of his wallet – a transparent and flexible thing, which intrigued Robin to no end – and handed it over to the robot, who nearly took the driver’s hand off as he snatched for it.
It pushed the card into the card reader so ferociously that the thing nearly snapped, and removed it, throwing it back in the vehicle.
“YOUR TRANSACTION HAS BEEN PROCESSED. THANK YOU FOR VISITING US TODAY. TO AVOID INCINERATION UPON EXIT, PLEASE FLASH YOUR RECIEPT OVER THE SCANNER.” The robot threw a card with a barcode over the side and into the spaceship. Presumably, that was what it called a receipt. “BYE BYE NOW.” It took a step back, and slammed the shutters closed.
“Don’t forget that receipt,” Robin added, suddenly feeling very nervous. She gave the meal another sniff, and very hesitantly picked up one of the warm, slippery bits of food.
“Hang on a minute!” interjected Cioné. “You’re actually going to eat it?”
Robin shrugged. “We’ve paid for it; it seems a waste not to.”
“I’ve paid for it,” the driver snapped from the front. “But go ahead. I can’t stand the stuff…”
“I’m thirsty,” complained Jasmine.
“Should have gotten a milkshake when I was there,” said Robin, regretfully. “Though it was probably shaddywaddybingbong flavoured.” Jasmine giggled. “Now there’s a thought…” Robin paused, almost comically, with the food only inches from her mouth. “Will I be okay with this stuff?”
“Probably,” Cioné said, encouragingly. “Then again, you might not be biologically evolved enough as a species yet; this is considerably far ahead in your future, after all. So it could kill you. Try it, find out.”
“You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”
Cioné chuckled. “Yes, of course I am. You’ll be fine with it, Robin.” She lifted one of the purple-coloured foods, and took a bite out of it, before grimacing. “This stuff tastes better with fries.”
The car jerked suddenly to a halt. Ahead of them, the incinerator had fired a warning blast.
“Whoops!” cried the driver. “Forgot the receipt. Hang on.” He held the receipt up to the scanner. The barrier lifted, and the incinerator powered down. “There we go. We’re into the next sector of space, at a bargain price. This is why you paid for me as your driver.”
“Oh no.”
Cioné was looking down at her clean, white wedding dress. Robin and the driver turned, wondering what the problem was. When they looked from a better angle, they realised.
Cioné had been holding her meal up when the craft had juddered to a halt, and had spilled more than a little of it.
The dress was now no longer clean. Or white.
***
Leaving the safe-house was becoming routine now, and the Doctor and Cioné didn’t even bother hiding it from the Sentinel. They walked out quite slowly and loudly in the late evening, shouting goodbye to a couple of residents as they went.
The Doctor had used Cioné’s laptop earlier that day to connect to the internet – the real one this time, he assured her. He had acquired the address of Robin McKnight. Still Barcelona; a little flat about twenty minutes away from them, not too far from the Palau Nacional.
They noticed that things had changed in those last twenty years. The cars on the roads were sleeker and more compact; many had reduced emissions, and even seemed to be driverless. A few street lamps had been replaced, for reasons unknown. And a lot more shops were boarded up. Times had hit hard.
But the biggest change of all was in Robin. The Doctor saw it as soon as she opened the door. It wasn’t just in her face; it was in everything. She moved that bit slower, talked that bit quieter, and looked that bit smaller. She wasn’t old. The Doctor was positively sure, in fact, that she was decidedly young. But she had years on her, years that she just couldn’t hide.
The other thing she couldn’t hide was her shock. She placed her hand over her mouth as she opened the door to the Doctor. There he was, looking just as he had when she had last seen him. That was what it was like being friends with the Doctor. Seeing him after all these years wasn’t like meeting an old friend, it was like finding an old photograph you’d lost, where all the details were still the same, the smile and appearance still not faded or changed in any way.
She invited the Doctor and Cioné in, led them into the dining room where Chris was sat reading the paper, and described briefly the content of the photographs on the wall: her three children; Gabriel, Jess, and Chloe. They were growing up now, moving away. Robin seemed to be coming to terms with that.
“So you haven’t introduced me properly yet,” Robin remarked, glancing over to Cioné. “Who’s the new friend?”
“Robin…” the Doctor shifted nervously. It was a good kind of nervous, but one he wasn’t used to, and had to take a moment to digest. “This is Cioné - my fiancée.”
Cioné beamed at Robin, who stared back in utter confusion.
“Okay,” said Robin. “That’s a new one.”
“New on me too,” admitted the Doctor. “I didn’t know I could do the whole relationship thing.”
“Well, congratulations!” exclaimed Chris, trying to liven the atmosphere a bit.
The Doctor chuckled. “Fancy being best man?”
Chris’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
“Wow…” Robin was still turning her head left and right, taking it all in. “Wow. Oh, Doctor, I’m so pleased for you. Cioné, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
And with the pleasantries out of the way, the Doctor began, in a fashion far more typical of him, to narrate his plan. He explained, with Cioné’s help, that they were working together to keep the Daleks and Time Lords from engaging in any direct combat; keeping the Time War cold. They would come up with reliable stories together, and Cioné would report back to Rassilon with them. The Doctor would ‘inadvertently’ share them with Heather the cleaner, who just so happened to be a Dalek spy.
Cioné explained that she had requested, for the benefit of the operation, that the Doctor’s TARDIS be returned to him. Robin reacted strangely to that, as though faintly amused by a joke that Cioné didn’t understand.
“Follow me,” she said, leading the couple into the garden. It was pitch black and, unhelpfully, without any available lights. But that didn’t matter – the Doctor could see it from the bottom of the garden. He could see the glowing letters, those familiar words reminding anyone and everyone that all they had to do was ask for help.
“You’ve had it the whole time!” he gasped, and rushed up to it like an excited child, fumbling around in his pocket for the key. “I can’t believe it!”
“The Time Lords came to me with it back in 2016,” Robin elaborated. “They said they were looking for you, but your safe-house had time shifted or something. I knew you’d come back to me, so I said I’d look after it, and as soon as you arrived in whatever time period it was, you’d come and find me, and be led back to it. So here you go. Call it a wedding present.”
“We haven’t set a date yet,” added Cioné.
“My TARDIS is back,” said the Doctor, almost purring. Robin tried to contain her laughter. “We can set any date we like, and get married tomorrow!”
“There you go, Cioné,” laughed Robin. “Now he’s got his ship back, you’ll never get a word of sense out of him again.”
The Doctor had already dashed inside and poked his head back out, beckoning for his fiancée to follow him.
“Come in,” he said, as if she’d never seen trans-dimensional engineering before. “You’ll love this bit.”
***
“This thing is completely ruined!” complained Cioné. “Oh, God, I can’t walk down the aisle in this! It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that this day is going to result in me sacrificing either my dress or my dignity… oh, bugger!” She growled to herself, making a conscious effort not to curse too vulgarly in little Jasmine’s presence. “Could this trip get any worse?”
“No!” cried the driver, but not in response to Cioné’s rhetorical question. He was tapping the fuel gauge with one finger, as the engines began to wheeze and splutter. “We’re out of fuel!”
“Are you kidding me?” asked Cioné.
“Look!” Jasmine was pointing out the window at something. It was only visible on her side, and the others had missed it. Just beyond a few rocks drifting through space, there was some sort of docking port. Not too large, it only had room for a few spaceships, but there were spaces free, and aliens of various shapes, sizes and descriptions were walking nonchalantly across the decks and around a cluster of buildings, suggesting another artificial air-shell.
“A service station!” The driver beamed. “I don’t know if it’ll have the right fuel, but it’s the best we’ve got.” Carefully, he reversed into one of the spaces. As the travellers opened the doors of their vehicle, they were hit by a gust of air, perfectly-filtered and unpolluted. They stepped up onto the deck, and surveyed their surroundings.
“I’ll sort out what I can for you,” said the driver. “Miss, if you want to get yourself cleaned up, that looks like a café over there.” He pointed at a little cafeteria area, its inside dotted with chairs and tables, different sizes for different species.
“Good plan,” said Cioné. “Robin, you can keep me company.”
***
It looked like coffee, and it smelt like coffee. It probably wasn’t coffee, but Robin tried it anyway. She recoiled when she realised that as well as being freshly boiled, it was somehow also fizzy.
“It feels good to have a break. I’ve always found travelling exhausting.” Robin swished the stuff in the cup around a bit more, and decided to take a swig of it. It probably had caffeine, after all.
“If you were getting tired, you should have said,” replied Cioné. She hadn’t gotten herself anything to eat or drink. The stress of the day had already given her a stomach ache, and she didn’t want to add to it. “None of us would have minded.”
“You are not having a break for me,” warned Robin. “One thing I hate about being old is that I suddenly feel like I’m holding people up all the time. It drives me mad…”
“You are allowed, you know.”
“No I’m not. I make the rules, and according to my rules, I’m not allowed.” Robin laughed at that. She still sounded like a teacher.
There was still a ghastly purple stain down Cioné’s dress. The other lifeforms in the canteen, even with their varied cultural tastes and social norms, stared at it when they thought no one else was looking. Apparently, in every single civilisation, purple splodges on white dresses were a universal sign of something having gone embarrassingly and catastrophically wrong.
“Aren’t you going to try and get that stain out?” asked Robin, unhelpfully.
Cioné shook her head. “It won’t come out. I don’t know what I can do. I guess I’ll just have to hope everyone at the registry office sees the funny side…” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s symbolic. I’m inadequate, I don’t deserve him. Et cetera.”
“Hey, that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You know, when I first met the Doctor, I was lying to him. I planned to extract information from him, feed it back to Rassilon, and in return get my own TARDIS in which I could run away from the Time War. I would escape conscription. But I’d have still played a part in the war. Still given Rassilon vital information. Which means my pacifism was just synonymous for cowardice, wasn’t it?”
“Pacifism is not cowardice,” said Robin, defensively; but Cioné was sure, somehow, that Robin was not a pacifist.
“No, but I wasn’t even a proper pacifist.”
“But you didn’t go through with it! You told him the truth, and the two of you got engaged. Surely that’s what matters?”
“Maybe. But what if I hadn’t fallen in love with the Doctor? What if it hadn’t been him? Maybe I’d have carried on lying to him, maybe I would have accepted that TARDIS and run away, and been responsible for, I don’t know, one of Gallifrey’s worst assaults, but not even had the strength to see it through.”
“Look, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t know who you were before, and maybe if you were scared, you had a good reason.”
“Well, there is that,” agreed Cioné. “I’d always called myself a pacifist from an ideological standpoint. But it was only in my last incarnation that I came to know fear. I, er… when he died, it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t a pleasant way to go. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was tortured. And he – I – realised then that I didn’t want to be a part of it. That I would do anything to escape that war. When I regenerated, I looked into the mirror and saw the face of my old tutor. I had no idea why, I’m still not sure I do. Maybe I was telling myself that I had to learn a lesson. Well, look at me now. I think I certainly did that.”
***
The Doctor and Cioné knew something was wrong as soon as they turned onto their street. They found it straight away, as if the perception filter was non-existent. The windows of their safe-house were lit up, but not with the lights in people’s rooms. With fire.
The Doctor stepped carefully up to the entrance, helping Cioné over the shards of broken glass as he did. He pushed open the door, and the smell of smoke wafted around him. The carpet was singed, and the dining hall had been practically destroyed. Upstairs, the fire was still raging. The Doctor looked at Cioné, asking a silent question. Do we go in?
Cioné nodded, and without a word, they hurried up the spiral staircase. In the first room they came to, there was a screeching, a kind of screeching they both recognised. As their eyes met, a thousand sleepless nights on Gallifrey coalesced, and expressed themselves in one word.
“EXTERMINATE!”
There was a flash of green light, and the scream of a man the Doctor didn’t know. Before the Dalek had a chance to leave the room, the couple darted up the staircase and into the next room, in the hope that there would be someone to save.
It was too late.
The Sentinel was laying on the floor, a gash across his face, and a broken vase next to him. He recognised the Doctor and Cioné, and tried to wheeze something incoherent as they entered.
“Oh no…” the Doctor dashed over, and examined the injuries. Cioné took a closer look, and moved him into a more comfortable position. The Doctor frowned, his priorities momentarily lost, as he coped with the unfamiliar sensation of being around someone whose medical skills surpassed his own.
“Incarnation?” asked Cioné.
The Sentinel coughed. “Six,” he answered.
“Always a rough one. You’ll be fine.” She smiled supportively, and propped him up a little. “It was a rough blast. I’d say ten minutes until regeneration, and by the looks of it you’re safe up here. The Dalek is moving down. Make sure you take deep breaths. Don’t worry about losing blood, your body will reassert the balance after regeneration, and compensate for anything you’ve lost. The most important thing is that you stay still.”
“Heather,” choked the Sentinel. “She was… a Dalek spy. Must have alerted them to come here when she… got what she needed…”
The Doctor and Cioné shared a look, a mutual acknowledgement that their efforts had been wasted. Somehow, Heather knew. And if the Daleks knew, the news would soon spread to the Time Lords.
They couldn’t continue.
“Then tell Rassilon when you next see him,” began Cioné, suddenly harsher, “that our agreement is terminated. He has nothing to offer me.”
“You’re… mad,” the Sentinel murmured. “You’ll be… on… the run.”
“But not alone.” Cioné stood up, and gestured for the Doctor to do the same. The Sentinel would be okay – or at least, he would manage to regenerate. By the time he was looking down at a different man (or woman), the Doctor and Cioné would be gone.
As they dashed down the staircase, another few rooms alight, a door flew off its hinges. From out of the doorway came the Dalek, its bronze armour glistening in the flames.
“HALT! YOU ARE TIME LORD RESIDENTS! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!”
“You might just want to think about that!” suggested the Doctor. “Check your records. I’m valuable Time Lord intelligence.”
“DALEK AGENT H, INTELLIGENCE UNIT IN SAFE-HOUSE, INFORMED US OF THE DOCTOR’S MISINFORMATION! YOU HAVE NO VALUE! YOU WILL BE-“
“Ah, yes,” agreed the Doctor, trying desperately to make something up on the spot, and also trying not to become distracted by the fact that Cioné had slipped up the staircase, somehow escaping in the nick of time. He wondered what that said about her. “You’re absolutely right, Dalek, but even so, even if I misinformed Dalek Agent H (as you call her), I still know the truth, and you can still extract that by other means.”
The Dalek seemed to be considering the offer.
“Just think about it! Torture, extraction of brain waves, whatever other sick methods of interrogation you’ve come up with, I am a valuable resource to you!”
As the Dalek briefly pondered the offer, its gun still secured on the Doctor, someone rushed down the stairs. The Doctor turned sharply to see his fiancée lifting the lid off a jar. Two dozen shining red specks flew out, converging on the Dalek. It began to grow red with them; its armour, now scorching, exploded. It did not leave behind a mess. It was as if it had never been there.
“The one and only harmful species of glowfly,” Cioné explained, proudly. “They’re attracted to objects with a high level of time energy, and feed on that energy. The Dalek will have been sent back to where it was before it travelled in time, like none of this happened. Of course, it did happen. And that’s why we need to leave.”
“You’re brilliant,” said the Doctor, before following his fiancée’s advice. As they sprinted back out of the front door, something else happened.
The night sky turned paper-white, and they felt the ground shifting. The leaves disappeared off the old tree outside the house, and then the tree itself disappeared. It was different every time, and this time they were on the safe-house’s threshold. But they knew what it was by now. A time shift, and a large one.
“Come on,” said the Doctor, sorrowfully. “We’d better get back to Robin’s house, if it’s still there. Our plan failed, but we’ve still got each other. Maybe it’s time we set a date.”
***
“That was why it took so long,” said Cioné. Even the discussion had taken a while. Outside, the driver was cursing, kicking the door of the spaceship. None of the fuel was compatible with its system. “We came to find you again, and you were so much older. I think that hurt the Doctor more than you realised.”
“What?” asked Robin, defensively. “Seeing me old? Have I become sharp and bitter, forgetful?”
“No,” replied Cioné, smiling kindly, setting Robin at ease. “Realising that he’d missed all of those years. That he hadn’t been there for your children, your grandchildren… that he hadn’t been able to pop in for coffees, have adventures, take the kids out for the day.”
“He’s the Doctor, he doesn’t do that.”
“And I also believe you thought he didn’t get married. It might surprise you how changeable the Doctor’s habits are.”
Robin thought about that, quietly. She was staring at her empty cup of fizzy coffee, which was already upsetting her stomach. There was a look on her face. Cioné tried to decipher it. Maybe it was just a moment old people had: every so often thinking about things they could have done or might have done, and realising it was too late to change them.
“Are you okay?” tried Cioné.
“No,” admitted Robin. That was something Cioné had taken to, right from the start. She was rarely rude, but she was always honest. You knew where you stood, but that never made you feel bad. “I’m feeling rubbish. I’d been planning this for so long. I don’t know what he’s told you Cioné, but he’s been through so much, the Doctor. Not long after I met him he was banged up in a Dalek prison camp, tortured endlessly for four years of his life.” By the look on Cioné’s face, he hadn’t told her. Robin gave her a moment to let it sink in, before continuing. “And, he lost his friends – all of them. Autumn died of this illness, from what Tommy told me. Really nasty.” She grimaced. “Tommy was stabbed to death in the street. And Jasmine, poor Jasmine, she really went through it. She was shot, and then she smashed that mirror to save his life. I wish I’d known her better. But she was so young, you know, I wish I could have died in her place.”
“But that kind of thinking is why they all died,” said Cioné. “The Doctor makes friends with the kind of people who jump in front of bullets, who are happy to die in the place of others. Yourself included.”
“Other than Autumn,” remarked Robin. “I loved Autumn to bits, but bless her, she didn’t have a self-sacrificial bone in her body. She was just very unlucky.”
“I don’t think I’m the ‘jumping in front of a bullet’ kind, either.”
“I think you don’t think you are,” replied Robin, somewhat confusingly. “But I think you probably are.” She sighed. “Since I met the Doctor, since we got over that rough first patch, I’ve been so happy. My life picked up and it hasn’t dropped. But I’ve spent so much of it feeling sorry for him. Wishing he could have what I have. And now he has. Cioné, honest to God, you are not to jump in front of any bullets for him, ever.”
“Understood.” Cioné glanced out of the window, where Robin permanently had directed one eye. Little Jasmine was sat out on the deck, watching the stars go by. “She’s lovely, your Jasmine. Did you name her after…?”
“Yes. Well, I didn’t. She’s Gabriel’s,” Robin clarified. “That’s my son, Gabriel. I brought him up on stories of the Doctor. In a way, it’s only because of the Doctor that he was born. The Doctor introduced me to Chris, and it was because of my connection to the Doctor that I got that GENIE box on my doorstep.” Cioné was lost now, but went with it anyway. She caught the gist of Robin’s meaning. “I told Gabriel stories of Jasmine as he grew up, of that brave hero who gave her life so that everyone else could live. When I thought he was old enough for it not to upset him, I told him how she’d died. Of course, there was always a connection between them. The day the Doctor first met Gabriel, as a baby – this night on Primrose Hill, where I used to live, after the Second Great Fire of London – that was the night he first spoke to Jasmine. And Jasmine and Gabriel, they were the wishes that the GENIE had granted me. So they’d both walked into his life at the same time. Gabriel just thought, in all his wisdom, that it would bring our family full circle. So he named his little girl after her.” Robin sighed again, and shook her head. “Poor Jasmine. And poor Doctor. I so wanted him to have this one day. No grief, no pain, no disappointment… no Time War. But I’ve screwed up, haven’t I?”
“Screwed up,” repeated Cioné, in a tone Robin didn’t understand. She said it again, louder, as though she’d caught onto something imperative. “Screwed up. Robin, you genius!” She stood up and tucked in her chair, before politely helping Robin out of hers. “This is a service station, right? Well, even if they haven’t got the right fuel, they might just have the right parts. I used to pilot a spacecraft similar to the one we’ve been in today, and there was also a way of manually operating it. Once you’ve achieved the thrust, the power to get it going, it doesn’t need an engine. It will continue through space at the same velocity until you stop it. Which means all we need are the right parts to change the trajectory if needed. A bit of manual labour, that’s all it will take!”
“And how long will that take us?” asked Robin, eagerly.
“About an hour!”
“Ah.”
***
“Two hours.” The Doctor checked his watch again and sighed. People were no longer rushing past him in a state of panic. Everyone had just accepted it now, and they were unobtrusively retreating to the edges of the room, keeping their distance out of both consideration and anxiety. “It’s great that I booked the whole day here, but now I think about it, there’s not really much to do.”
“Oi,” said Chris, lecturing. He had been retired for the last twenty years or so, but he was still every inch a head-teacher. “Now you listen up, Doctor. I don’t know this Cioné woman very well, but whom did she chose as her maid of honour?”
“Bridal ring-bearer,” stated the Doctor, for no other reason than to make a completely arbitrary point. “This is a Janusian wedding, they use different language.”
“Anyway,” continued Chris, trying not to grow angry at the Doctor’s pedantry. “She chose Robin. And you don’t know how long Robin has been planning this day. She won’t let Cioné abandon you. They’re out there, somewhere. They’re just running a wee bit late.”
The Doctor smiled. “You’re right.”
And with that, the doors swung open. A young man rushed up to the Doctor, grinning from ear to ear. Either Cioné had arrived, or they’d brought out the wedding cake.
“She’s here!” he exclaimed.
If Trip Advisor (the intergalactic version) was anything to go on, it would be worth the wait.
This wasn’t a ceremony he was familiar with, either. The wedding was…
He paused, trying to remember, and then it came back to him. It was a Janusian wedding. A little like the humanist weddings of his companions’ time, it was at once non-religious and deeply spiritual. The Janus people placed an emphasis on looking both into the past and the future simultaneously. The wedding would celebrate what had been, and what would and might be. The Doctor and Cioné had both liked that idea.
He checked his watch. Twenty minutes late, so far. He hoped that was the fashion. A pat on his back startled him, but he soon realised it was supportive.
“Don’t worry about it,” Chris was saying. “They’ll turn up. I’d text Robin but I’m not getting any reception…” He waved his phone around in the air a bit.
“That’s because you’re trying to use TalkTalk in deep space, Scottish Moon,” the Doctor laughed.
“Ah, yes, that would be it…”
Somehow, thought the Doctor, old age made everyone technologically incompetent – even those who had grown up around it. Somewhere during his thirteenth regeneration, he would probably end up forgetting how to pilot the TARDIS.
“Listen,” murmured Chris. “I just wanted to say, uh… thank you.”
“Thank you?” The Doctor frowned. “What for?”
“Well, you’ve been around the block a few times…”
“A few thousand times.”
“Exactly. And you still chose me to be your best man. That means the world to me, Doctor.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“Not to me it’s not. At my age…” The Doctor wondered, briefly, how old Chris was. He had always been quite a bit older than his wife, and Robin was in her mid-seventies. “I don’t get to go to many weddings,” Chris continued. “Kids and grandkids, that’s it. I’m just granddad these days. I don’t get to be the best man, because my best friends don’t have weddings anymore, they have funerals. Went to one last year. My old best pal. Horrible times… anyway, I just wanted to say thank you. Getting to do all this, it’s been the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I almost feel young again.”
“You are young,” said the Doctor, encouragingly. “To me.”
What he didn’t mention was that Chris was all he had left. He respected the man, of course, and he was high up on the list of people the Doctor would consider best friends. But he had always hoped, in the unlikely event he did tie the knot, that Tommy Lindsay would be there on the day.
The Doctor sighed, and pushed the thought aside. Absent friends.
***
The spaceship jerked to a halt, and the driver waved an apology to the passengers in the back. Peering forward, Cioné noticed that the vehicles in front had stacked up, and were forming an orderly queue along the space-lane. She suspected that, as soon as they entered an air corridor and sounds became audible, horns would begin to honk.
“Unbelievable,” marvelled Robin. “I mean, you get it in London, but space is kind of infinite. How the heck do you manage a traffic jam with that much room?”
“The traffic’s still organised into lanes, miss,” the driver explained. “Our vehicles are locked onto those lanes, so we can’t leave them. If a vehicle isn’t, that’s because it was produced without authorisation, so the law enforcement pick it up while it’s drifting. With that said…” he glanced in his right-hand mirror, and indicated out. “There’s more than one lane.”
The spaceship slipped out onto the lane below, and began to move at a slower rate – but, as Robin was keen to remind herself, at least it was moving.
“I’ve never taken this route before,” said the driver, almost gleefully, like that was somehow a good thing.
“I have a feeling we’re going to be very late,” said Cioné.
“Me too,” Robin agreed. “So let’s start at the very beginning. You never actually told me about the proposal…”
***
Barcelona, 2016
“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?”
Cioné thought about the proposal, and made a face the Doctor was neither expecting nor hoping for.
“Why?”
“Er…” The Doctor figured it was a good time to stand up, before he humiliated himself further.
“No, I mean…” Cioné took a deep breath. “I was working for Rassilon, I lied to you, and to be honest, I’m a bit of a nutter. I just don’t know what you see in me.”
“Oh, Cioné.” The Doctor took her hands, and held them in his own. “You daft woman. You told me about everything because you realised you couldn’t go through with it, and that was what mattered. We both lied, both did things for our own ends. They say love makes liars of us all, but I don’t believe that. War makes liars of us all. Love sheds light on the truth. You asked me what I saw in you. The answer is everything. Everything I could ever wish for, and more.”
“Yes,” Cioné said, suddenly and passionately. “God, yes. I will marry you if it’s the last thing I do. Come here.” She pulled him in, and they kissed again, but something was different this time, in a good way.
“Considering the time-shifts,” Cioné said when they had finished, “it’s probably a good idea if we don’t set a date yet. Time is relative, as they say.”
“Definitely. Besides, we have work to do first. I do believe we’re now both playing Rassilon at his own game, dear fiancée.”
***
“Oh, bugger.” Robin recognised the scene. Even in deep space, there were some things that just always went a certain way. “Border control.”
“They’re funny about immigrants these days,” complained the driver. “And holidaymakers. And they’ll want money.” He lifted his wallet out of the glove compartment, and sorted through a variety of alien coins, some of which seemed to glow in his hand, almost radioactively. “I hope this will be enough.”
The vehicle in front of them was allowed to pass. The driver moved forward and took his place, opening the ship’s side-door. Fresh air blew into the spaceship, some sort of artificial air-shell, allowing transactions to take place out in the open.
The border control officer was a reptile of some kind. Bulbous yellow eyes protruded from its scaly skin, a crest of scales ran down its back; its long, skeletal fingers ran down the paperwork on its desk.
“Can I see some formal identification?” it asked, in a gurgle. The driver fumbled around a bit more, and provided his wallet. “Driver’s license, I see…” The reptile eyed it curiously and passed it back. “And what are you doing here? Do you have a visa?”
“I think the passenger in the back gives it away,” the driver replied flippantly. Cioné gave a little wave, and gestured to her wedding dress. The reptile waited for an explanation. The driver sighed. “She’s getting married. I’m taking her to the registry office. Is that allowed?”
The reptile considered the question, as if it were his decision to make. “No.”
“Oh, fantastic.”
“You must understand the need to monitor who and what enters our sector of space. You could be extremists.”
“In fancy dress?”
“In disguise. The fee is fifteen trascolis.”
“Oh.” The driver hesitated, alarmed by the sudden and unprompted shift in discussion. He decided not to question it. “Okay then.” He handed the reptile the majority of the coins he had. “Thanks. You know how it is, weddings…”
“You misunderstand.” The reptile placed the money in a tin. “That was for the time you’ve wasted.” It pointed unhelpfully back in the direction the travellers had arrived from. “You’ll need to go back that way. If you come back within the next three hours and provide a visa or any other piece of relevant documentation, you will be allowed through without paying the time costs.”
“Absolutely fantastic,” yelled Robin, from the back. “Brilliant. Thank you so much, I’ll make sure you get a special mention in the best man’s speech.”
In agreement, the driver slammed the door shut and reluctantly took a U-turn.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I think there’s another route that lets you bypass border control.”
Cioné was surprised by something, her mouth forming a gasp. “Robin McKnight…” she shook her head in disbelief. “Maid of honour, you know, I’ve never seen you get angry before.” The way she said it, it was almost a compliment. “I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”
“Believe me,” agreed Robin, “you wouldn’t. You should have seen the argument I had with Caligula.”
“Granny,” Jasmine began in that inquisitive voice of hers, “did you used to travel in time?”
Robin grinned at her granddaughter. “Granny used to kick ass.”
***
For once, dinner at the safe-house was silent. Not awkward silent, but the kind of silence where both parties knew each other well enough to accept that it was the right thing; that ‘rude’ and ‘unsociable’ were just petulant terms that petulant people used to talk to each other.
The Doctor and Cioné sat in silence because they both knew things they couldn’t share. Because one wrong word could blow their whole operation. And because, above all else, they needed space to do what Time Lords did best: think.
Their soundless meal was interrupted by a clap of thunder from outside. The whole sky responded by turning white, and the couple exchanged a look, knowing what was happening. When the performance stopped, the Doctor stood up, walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain, and broke the silence.
“It’s another big one,” he murmured. “I’d say we’ve shifted about twenty years into the future.”
***
“There’s another charge,” whispered the driver. He had parked the car up round the back of the compound, which was suspended in space like an asteroid. No one could see them round the back, and as the driver spoke, he turned to face his passengers, so that even if anyone could see them, they couldn’t get anything from the conversation.
It felt like one of those old heist films, somewhere around the part where the pieces of the plan finally came together and the action started. That was always the best part. Robin found herself enjoying it all a bit too much.
“The difference,” the driver continued, “is that the charge is more of a…” he searched for the word… “procedure. By which I mean, it’s our defence, if anyone asks what we’re doing.” He pointed to the building: a cube, floating in the emptiness, a gaudy logo on its roof and a hatch on its side. “Fast food. It’s the only way you can get from here into the next sector without being picked up by security.”
“You mean we’re doing a drive-through?” Robin chuckled to herself, sure that she was finally losing the plot, and was really at home having a very strange dream. “In space?”
“Indeed.” The driver restarted the engine, and the ship hovered slowly over to the hatch. It opened suddenly. On the other side, a robot, made entirely of green cylindrical parts, started screeching at them.
“PLEASE CITE YOUR ORDER! THANK YOU!”
“Um…” the driver hesitated. “Is there a menu?”
The robot pointed silently to a card on the wall. Robin put her glasses on, whilst the other two squinted, wishing they’d had the humility to bring theirs.
“We’ll get the…” Robin studied it closely, and remembered, for the first time since she was in preschool, what it was like to not be able to read. “Quafligradt sinousis and the… waigsadab… daisa..dyduads… please.” She coughed awkwardly. “That’s a medium, by the way.”
The robot smacked a box next to it, so ferociously that the whole building seemed to tremor. Two steaming meals popped up out of the top, served in little dishes. They looked a little like sushi, except for the fact that they most definitely were not raw.
“WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT!” roared the robot, as if it was a demand rather than a question.
“Would we like fries?” Robin looked to the driver, who was presumably paying. He was shaking his head, remembering how little he had left. “No, no fries please.”
The robot pushed the tray out of the hatch aggressively, and Robin found herself catching it rather than taking it. She lifted it into the spaceship, and gave it a doubtful sniff.
“YOUR MEAL HAS COME TO FOUR TRASCOLIS.”
“Bargain,” murmured Cioné. The robot ignored her and continued thundering at its customers.
“PLEASE PAY NOW. WE ACCEPT CASH, CARD, OR LIMBS. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO LEAVE BEFORE THE TRANSACTION IS COMPLETED, YOU WILL BE INCINERATED. IF YOU REQUIRE A FINANCIAL WITHDRAWAL, THERE IS AN ATM ACCESSIBLE IN MY GROIN. TO ACCESS IT, PLEASE REMOVE MY-”
“It’s okay!” interrupted the driver, worried about where that demonstration was going. “I’ll pay by card, if that’s okay.” He lifted a card out of his wallet – a transparent and flexible thing, which intrigued Robin to no end – and handed it over to the robot, who nearly took the driver’s hand off as he snatched for it.
It pushed the card into the card reader so ferociously that the thing nearly snapped, and removed it, throwing it back in the vehicle.
“YOUR TRANSACTION HAS BEEN PROCESSED. THANK YOU FOR VISITING US TODAY. TO AVOID INCINERATION UPON EXIT, PLEASE FLASH YOUR RECIEPT OVER THE SCANNER.” The robot threw a card with a barcode over the side and into the spaceship. Presumably, that was what it called a receipt. “BYE BYE NOW.” It took a step back, and slammed the shutters closed.
“Don’t forget that receipt,” Robin added, suddenly feeling very nervous. She gave the meal another sniff, and very hesitantly picked up one of the warm, slippery bits of food.
“Hang on a minute!” interjected Cioné. “You’re actually going to eat it?”
Robin shrugged. “We’ve paid for it; it seems a waste not to.”
“I’ve paid for it,” the driver snapped from the front. “But go ahead. I can’t stand the stuff…”
“I’m thirsty,” complained Jasmine.
“Should have gotten a milkshake when I was there,” said Robin, regretfully. “Though it was probably shaddywaddybingbong flavoured.” Jasmine giggled. “Now there’s a thought…” Robin paused, almost comically, with the food only inches from her mouth. “Will I be okay with this stuff?”
“Probably,” Cioné said, encouragingly. “Then again, you might not be biologically evolved enough as a species yet; this is considerably far ahead in your future, after all. So it could kill you. Try it, find out.”
“You’re winding me up, aren’t you?”
Cioné chuckled. “Yes, of course I am. You’ll be fine with it, Robin.” She lifted one of the purple-coloured foods, and took a bite out of it, before grimacing. “This stuff tastes better with fries.”
The car jerked suddenly to a halt. Ahead of them, the incinerator had fired a warning blast.
“Whoops!” cried the driver. “Forgot the receipt. Hang on.” He held the receipt up to the scanner. The barrier lifted, and the incinerator powered down. “There we go. We’re into the next sector of space, at a bargain price. This is why you paid for me as your driver.”
“Oh no.”
Cioné was looking down at her clean, white wedding dress. Robin and the driver turned, wondering what the problem was. When they looked from a better angle, they realised.
Cioné had been holding her meal up when the craft had juddered to a halt, and had spilled more than a little of it.
The dress was now no longer clean. Or white.
***
Leaving the safe-house was becoming routine now, and the Doctor and Cioné didn’t even bother hiding it from the Sentinel. They walked out quite slowly and loudly in the late evening, shouting goodbye to a couple of residents as they went.
The Doctor had used Cioné’s laptop earlier that day to connect to the internet – the real one this time, he assured her. He had acquired the address of Robin McKnight. Still Barcelona; a little flat about twenty minutes away from them, not too far from the Palau Nacional.
They noticed that things had changed in those last twenty years. The cars on the roads were sleeker and more compact; many had reduced emissions, and even seemed to be driverless. A few street lamps had been replaced, for reasons unknown. And a lot more shops were boarded up. Times had hit hard.
But the biggest change of all was in Robin. The Doctor saw it as soon as she opened the door. It wasn’t just in her face; it was in everything. She moved that bit slower, talked that bit quieter, and looked that bit smaller. She wasn’t old. The Doctor was positively sure, in fact, that she was decidedly young. But she had years on her, years that she just couldn’t hide.
The other thing she couldn’t hide was her shock. She placed her hand over her mouth as she opened the door to the Doctor. There he was, looking just as he had when she had last seen him. That was what it was like being friends with the Doctor. Seeing him after all these years wasn’t like meeting an old friend, it was like finding an old photograph you’d lost, where all the details were still the same, the smile and appearance still not faded or changed in any way.
She invited the Doctor and Cioné in, led them into the dining room where Chris was sat reading the paper, and described briefly the content of the photographs on the wall: her three children; Gabriel, Jess, and Chloe. They were growing up now, moving away. Robin seemed to be coming to terms with that.
“So you haven’t introduced me properly yet,” Robin remarked, glancing over to Cioné. “Who’s the new friend?”
“Robin…” the Doctor shifted nervously. It was a good kind of nervous, but one he wasn’t used to, and had to take a moment to digest. “This is Cioné - my fiancée.”
Cioné beamed at Robin, who stared back in utter confusion.
“Okay,” said Robin. “That’s a new one.”
“New on me too,” admitted the Doctor. “I didn’t know I could do the whole relationship thing.”
“Well, congratulations!” exclaimed Chris, trying to liven the atmosphere a bit.
The Doctor chuckled. “Fancy being best man?”
Chris’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
“Wow…” Robin was still turning her head left and right, taking it all in. “Wow. Oh, Doctor, I’m so pleased for you. Cioné, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
And with the pleasantries out of the way, the Doctor began, in a fashion far more typical of him, to narrate his plan. He explained, with Cioné’s help, that they were working together to keep the Daleks and Time Lords from engaging in any direct combat; keeping the Time War cold. They would come up with reliable stories together, and Cioné would report back to Rassilon with them. The Doctor would ‘inadvertently’ share them with Heather the cleaner, who just so happened to be a Dalek spy.
Cioné explained that she had requested, for the benefit of the operation, that the Doctor’s TARDIS be returned to him. Robin reacted strangely to that, as though faintly amused by a joke that Cioné didn’t understand.
“Follow me,” she said, leading the couple into the garden. It was pitch black and, unhelpfully, without any available lights. But that didn’t matter – the Doctor could see it from the bottom of the garden. He could see the glowing letters, those familiar words reminding anyone and everyone that all they had to do was ask for help.
“You’ve had it the whole time!” he gasped, and rushed up to it like an excited child, fumbling around in his pocket for the key. “I can’t believe it!”
“The Time Lords came to me with it back in 2016,” Robin elaborated. “They said they were looking for you, but your safe-house had time shifted or something. I knew you’d come back to me, so I said I’d look after it, and as soon as you arrived in whatever time period it was, you’d come and find me, and be led back to it. So here you go. Call it a wedding present.”
“We haven’t set a date yet,” added Cioné.
“My TARDIS is back,” said the Doctor, almost purring. Robin tried to contain her laughter. “We can set any date we like, and get married tomorrow!”
“There you go, Cioné,” laughed Robin. “Now he’s got his ship back, you’ll never get a word of sense out of him again.”
The Doctor had already dashed inside and poked his head back out, beckoning for his fiancée to follow him.
“Come in,” he said, as if she’d never seen trans-dimensional engineering before. “You’ll love this bit.”
***
“This thing is completely ruined!” complained Cioné. “Oh, God, I can’t walk down the aisle in this! It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that this day is going to result in me sacrificing either my dress or my dignity… oh, bugger!” She growled to herself, making a conscious effort not to curse too vulgarly in little Jasmine’s presence. “Could this trip get any worse?”
“No!” cried the driver, but not in response to Cioné’s rhetorical question. He was tapping the fuel gauge with one finger, as the engines began to wheeze and splutter. “We’re out of fuel!”
“Are you kidding me?” asked Cioné.
“Look!” Jasmine was pointing out the window at something. It was only visible on her side, and the others had missed it. Just beyond a few rocks drifting through space, there was some sort of docking port. Not too large, it only had room for a few spaceships, but there were spaces free, and aliens of various shapes, sizes and descriptions were walking nonchalantly across the decks and around a cluster of buildings, suggesting another artificial air-shell.
“A service station!” The driver beamed. “I don’t know if it’ll have the right fuel, but it’s the best we’ve got.” Carefully, he reversed into one of the spaces. As the travellers opened the doors of their vehicle, they were hit by a gust of air, perfectly-filtered and unpolluted. They stepped up onto the deck, and surveyed their surroundings.
“I’ll sort out what I can for you,” said the driver. “Miss, if you want to get yourself cleaned up, that looks like a café over there.” He pointed at a little cafeteria area, its inside dotted with chairs and tables, different sizes for different species.
“Good plan,” said Cioné. “Robin, you can keep me company.”
***
It looked like coffee, and it smelt like coffee. It probably wasn’t coffee, but Robin tried it anyway. She recoiled when she realised that as well as being freshly boiled, it was somehow also fizzy.
“It feels good to have a break. I’ve always found travelling exhausting.” Robin swished the stuff in the cup around a bit more, and decided to take a swig of it. It probably had caffeine, after all.
“If you were getting tired, you should have said,” replied Cioné. She hadn’t gotten herself anything to eat or drink. The stress of the day had already given her a stomach ache, and she didn’t want to add to it. “None of us would have minded.”
“You are not having a break for me,” warned Robin. “One thing I hate about being old is that I suddenly feel like I’m holding people up all the time. It drives me mad…”
“You are allowed, you know.”
“No I’m not. I make the rules, and according to my rules, I’m not allowed.” Robin laughed at that. She still sounded like a teacher.
There was still a ghastly purple stain down Cioné’s dress. The other lifeforms in the canteen, even with their varied cultural tastes and social norms, stared at it when they thought no one else was looking. Apparently, in every single civilisation, purple splodges on white dresses were a universal sign of something having gone embarrassingly and catastrophically wrong.
“Aren’t you going to try and get that stain out?” asked Robin, unhelpfully.
Cioné shook her head. “It won’t come out. I don’t know what I can do. I guess I’ll just have to hope everyone at the registry office sees the funny side…” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s symbolic. I’m inadequate, I don’t deserve him. Et cetera.”
“Hey, that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You know, when I first met the Doctor, I was lying to him. I planned to extract information from him, feed it back to Rassilon, and in return get my own TARDIS in which I could run away from the Time War. I would escape conscription. But I’d have still played a part in the war. Still given Rassilon vital information. Which means my pacifism was just synonymous for cowardice, wasn’t it?”
“Pacifism is not cowardice,” said Robin, defensively; but Cioné was sure, somehow, that Robin was not a pacifist.
“No, but I wasn’t even a proper pacifist.”
“But you didn’t go through with it! You told him the truth, and the two of you got engaged. Surely that’s what matters?”
“Maybe. But what if I hadn’t fallen in love with the Doctor? What if it hadn’t been him? Maybe I’d have carried on lying to him, maybe I would have accepted that TARDIS and run away, and been responsible for, I don’t know, one of Gallifrey’s worst assaults, but not even had the strength to see it through.”
“Look, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t know who you were before, and maybe if you were scared, you had a good reason.”
“Well, there is that,” agreed Cioné. “I’d always called myself a pacifist from an ideological standpoint. But it was only in my last incarnation that I came to know fear. I, er… when he died, it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t a pleasant way to go. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was tortured. And he – I – realised then that I didn’t want to be a part of it. That I would do anything to escape that war. When I regenerated, I looked into the mirror and saw the face of my old tutor. I had no idea why, I’m still not sure I do. Maybe I was telling myself that I had to learn a lesson. Well, look at me now. I think I certainly did that.”
***
The Doctor and Cioné knew something was wrong as soon as they turned onto their street. They found it straight away, as if the perception filter was non-existent. The windows of their safe-house were lit up, but not with the lights in people’s rooms. With fire.
The Doctor stepped carefully up to the entrance, helping Cioné over the shards of broken glass as he did. He pushed open the door, and the smell of smoke wafted around him. The carpet was singed, and the dining hall had been practically destroyed. Upstairs, the fire was still raging. The Doctor looked at Cioné, asking a silent question. Do we go in?
Cioné nodded, and without a word, they hurried up the spiral staircase. In the first room they came to, there was a screeching, a kind of screeching they both recognised. As their eyes met, a thousand sleepless nights on Gallifrey coalesced, and expressed themselves in one word.
“EXTERMINATE!”
There was a flash of green light, and the scream of a man the Doctor didn’t know. Before the Dalek had a chance to leave the room, the couple darted up the staircase and into the next room, in the hope that there would be someone to save.
It was too late.
The Sentinel was laying on the floor, a gash across his face, and a broken vase next to him. He recognised the Doctor and Cioné, and tried to wheeze something incoherent as they entered.
“Oh no…” the Doctor dashed over, and examined the injuries. Cioné took a closer look, and moved him into a more comfortable position. The Doctor frowned, his priorities momentarily lost, as he coped with the unfamiliar sensation of being around someone whose medical skills surpassed his own.
“Incarnation?” asked Cioné.
The Sentinel coughed. “Six,” he answered.
“Always a rough one. You’ll be fine.” She smiled supportively, and propped him up a little. “It was a rough blast. I’d say ten minutes until regeneration, and by the looks of it you’re safe up here. The Dalek is moving down. Make sure you take deep breaths. Don’t worry about losing blood, your body will reassert the balance after regeneration, and compensate for anything you’ve lost. The most important thing is that you stay still.”
“Heather,” choked the Sentinel. “She was… a Dalek spy. Must have alerted them to come here when she… got what she needed…”
The Doctor and Cioné shared a look, a mutual acknowledgement that their efforts had been wasted. Somehow, Heather knew. And if the Daleks knew, the news would soon spread to the Time Lords.
They couldn’t continue.
“Then tell Rassilon when you next see him,” began Cioné, suddenly harsher, “that our agreement is terminated. He has nothing to offer me.”
“You’re… mad,” the Sentinel murmured. “You’ll be… on… the run.”
“But not alone.” Cioné stood up, and gestured for the Doctor to do the same. The Sentinel would be okay – or at least, he would manage to regenerate. By the time he was looking down at a different man (or woman), the Doctor and Cioné would be gone.
As they dashed down the staircase, another few rooms alight, a door flew off its hinges. From out of the doorway came the Dalek, its bronze armour glistening in the flames.
“HALT! YOU ARE TIME LORD RESIDENTS! YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!”
“You might just want to think about that!” suggested the Doctor. “Check your records. I’m valuable Time Lord intelligence.”
“DALEK AGENT H, INTELLIGENCE UNIT IN SAFE-HOUSE, INFORMED US OF THE DOCTOR’S MISINFORMATION! YOU HAVE NO VALUE! YOU WILL BE-“
“Ah, yes,” agreed the Doctor, trying desperately to make something up on the spot, and also trying not to become distracted by the fact that Cioné had slipped up the staircase, somehow escaping in the nick of time. He wondered what that said about her. “You’re absolutely right, Dalek, but even so, even if I misinformed Dalek Agent H (as you call her), I still know the truth, and you can still extract that by other means.”
The Dalek seemed to be considering the offer.
“Just think about it! Torture, extraction of brain waves, whatever other sick methods of interrogation you’ve come up with, I am a valuable resource to you!”
As the Dalek briefly pondered the offer, its gun still secured on the Doctor, someone rushed down the stairs. The Doctor turned sharply to see his fiancée lifting the lid off a jar. Two dozen shining red specks flew out, converging on the Dalek. It began to grow red with them; its armour, now scorching, exploded. It did not leave behind a mess. It was as if it had never been there.
“The one and only harmful species of glowfly,” Cioné explained, proudly. “They’re attracted to objects with a high level of time energy, and feed on that energy. The Dalek will have been sent back to where it was before it travelled in time, like none of this happened. Of course, it did happen. And that’s why we need to leave.”
“You’re brilliant,” said the Doctor, before following his fiancée’s advice. As they sprinted back out of the front door, something else happened.
The night sky turned paper-white, and they felt the ground shifting. The leaves disappeared off the old tree outside the house, and then the tree itself disappeared. It was different every time, and this time they were on the safe-house’s threshold. But they knew what it was by now. A time shift, and a large one.
“Come on,” said the Doctor, sorrowfully. “We’d better get back to Robin’s house, if it’s still there. Our plan failed, but we’ve still got each other. Maybe it’s time we set a date.”
***
“That was why it took so long,” said Cioné. Even the discussion had taken a while. Outside, the driver was cursing, kicking the door of the spaceship. None of the fuel was compatible with its system. “We came to find you again, and you were so much older. I think that hurt the Doctor more than you realised.”
“What?” asked Robin, defensively. “Seeing me old? Have I become sharp and bitter, forgetful?”
“No,” replied Cioné, smiling kindly, setting Robin at ease. “Realising that he’d missed all of those years. That he hadn’t been there for your children, your grandchildren… that he hadn’t been able to pop in for coffees, have adventures, take the kids out for the day.”
“He’s the Doctor, he doesn’t do that.”
“And I also believe you thought he didn’t get married. It might surprise you how changeable the Doctor’s habits are.”
Robin thought about that, quietly. She was staring at her empty cup of fizzy coffee, which was already upsetting her stomach. There was a look on her face. Cioné tried to decipher it. Maybe it was just a moment old people had: every so often thinking about things they could have done or might have done, and realising it was too late to change them.
“Are you okay?” tried Cioné.
“No,” admitted Robin. That was something Cioné had taken to, right from the start. She was rarely rude, but she was always honest. You knew where you stood, but that never made you feel bad. “I’m feeling rubbish. I’d been planning this for so long. I don’t know what he’s told you Cioné, but he’s been through so much, the Doctor. Not long after I met him he was banged up in a Dalek prison camp, tortured endlessly for four years of his life.” By the look on Cioné’s face, he hadn’t told her. Robin gave her a moment to let it sink in, before continuing. “And, he lost his friends – all of them. Autumn died of this illness, from what Tommy told me. Really nasty.” She grimaced. “Tommy was stabbed to death in the street. And Jasmine, poor Jasmine, she really went through it. She was shot, and then she smashed that mirror to save his life. I wish I’d known her better. But she was so young, you know, I wish I could have died in her place.”
“But that kind of thinking is why they all died,” said Cioné. “The Doctor makes friends with the kind of people who jump in front of bullets, who are happy to die in the place of others. Yourself included.”
“Other than Autumn,” remarked Robin. “I loved Autumn to bits, but bless her, she didn’t have a self-sacrificial bone in her body. She was just very unlucky.”
“I don’t think I’m the ‘jumping in front of a bullet’ kind, either.”
“I think you don’t think you are,” replied Robin, somewhat confusingly. “But I think you probably are.” She sighed. “Since I met the Doctor, since we got over that rough first patch, I’ve been so happy. My life picked up and it hasn’t dropped. But I’ve spent so much of it feeling sorry for him. Wishing he could have what I have. And now he has. Cioné, honest to God, you are not to jump in front of any bullets for him, ever.”
“Understood.” Cioné glanced out of the window, where Robin permanently had directed one eye. Little Jasmine was sat out on the deck, watching the stars go by. “She’s lovely, your Jasmine. Did you name her after…?”
“Yes. Well, I didn’t. She’s Gabriel’s,” Robin clarified. “That’s my son, Gabriel. I brought him up on stories of the Doctor. In a way, it’s only because of the Doctor that he was born. The Doctor introduced me to Chris, and it was because of my connection to the Doctor that I got that GENIE box on my doorstep.” Cioné was lost now, but went with it anyway. She caught the gist of Robin’s meaning. “I told Gabriel stories of Jasmine as he grew up, of that brave hero who gave her life so that everyone else could live. When I thought he was old enough for it not to upset him, I told him how she’d died. Of course, there was always a connection between them. The day the Doctor first met Gabriel, as a baby – this night on Primrose Hill, where I used to live, after the Second Great Fire of London – that was the night he first spoke to Jasmine. And Jasmine and Gabriel, they were the wishes that the GENIE had granted me. So they’d both walked into his life at the same time. Gabriel just thought, in all his wisdom, that it would bring our family full circle. So he named his little girl after her.” Robin sighed again, and shook her head. “Poor Jasmine. And poor Doctor. I so wanted him to have this one day. No grief, no pain, no disappointment… no Time War. But I’ve screwed up, haven’t I?”
“Screwed up,” repeated Cioné, in a tone Robin didn’t understand. She said it again, louder, as though she’d caught onto something imperative. “Screwed up. Robin, you genius!” She stood up and tucked in her chair, before politely helping Robin out of hers. “This is a service station, right? Well, even if they haven’t got the right fuel, they might just have the right parts. I used to pilot a spacecraft similar to the one we’ve been in today, and there was also a way of manually operating it. Once you’ve achieved the thrust, the power to get it going, it doesn’t need an engine. It will continue through space at the same velocity until you stop it. Which means all we need are the right parts to change the trajectory if needed. A bit of manual labour, that’s all it will take!”
“And how long will that take us?” asked Robin, eagerly.
“About an hour!”
“Ah.”
***
“Two hours.” The Doctor checked his watch again and sighed. People were no longer rushing past him in a state of panic. Everyone had just accepted it now, and they were unobtrusively retreating to the edges of the room, keeping their distance out of both consideration and anxiety. “It’s great that I booked the whole day here, but now I think about it, there’s not really much to do.”
“Oi,” said Chris, lecturing. He had been retired for the last twenty years or so, but he was still every inch a head-teacher. “Now you listen up, Doctor. I don’t know this Cioné woman very well, but whom did she chose as her maid of honour?”
“Bridal ring-bearer,” stated the Doctor, for no other reason than to make a completely arbitrary point. “This is a Janusian wedding, they use different language.”
“Anyway,” continued Chris, trying not to grow angry at the Doctor’s pedantry. “She chose Robin. And you don’t know how long Robin has been planning this day. She won’t let Cioné abandon you. They’re out there, somewhere. They’re just running a wee bit late.”
The Doctor smiled. “You’re right.”
And with that, the doors swung open. A young man rushed up to the Doctor, grinning from ear to ear. Either Cioné had arrived, or they’d brought out the wedding cake.
“She’s here!” he exclaimed.
“Wow, lucky.” The Doctor put his jacket back on, and strode up to the marriage platform, a small stage area raised slightly off the ground. The registrar, a tubby older man in bright colours, stepped up onto the platform, giving the Doctor a supportive wink.
A woman to the Doctor’s left started playing a piano. Just the one soloist, but there was something oddly charming about that. The piano was clearly based on the Earth model, but made using different materials, in a room with particularly unearthly acoustics. As a result, the tune was a blend of the human and the alien, of all the things that had changed since these strange beings had dared to step foot off their home planet.
The curtains were drawn to the corners of the room, revealing windows, panoramic and floor-to-ceiling. The ceiling itself also became transparent, and all that was left was the floor, a velvet carpet. The Doctor marvelled at the sight outside. The registry office was a few light-years away from any industrial development, and sat alone in space. Ahead of them, clouds were wrapped around a single point, in a constantly rotating spiral. In the centre was a light, so vivid and deep orange that its rays illuminated the darkness around it, and projected both upwards and downwards. It looked as if a needle of light were suspended in space, with a ring of cloud wrapped around it.
It was the birth of a star.
And then, something even more beautiful happened: Cioné stepped through the door.
Not conventionally beautiful, at least. The Doctor was the first to notice. For some bizarre reason, she was wearing a knitted jumper, all reds and whites, with a pair of harsh and clashing green chinos. Once the Doctor had finished grimacing at the combination, he chuckled. Never mind wedding dresses. He wouldn’t have had Cioné in anything else. She was, in every possible way, herself; and for him, that was the essence of beauty.
She almost hurried up the aisle, desperate to see her husband. When she reached him at the marital platform, she stepped up, and talked quickly to him in a whisper.
“The dress got badly stained,” she explained, not pausing for breath, “so we stopped off at a service station, and we ran out of fuel, and the fuel there wasn’t compatible, but I managed to carry out a bit of rudimentary engineering work on the ship – you know, like what they teach you in the Academy – but then my dress was ruined, because I also ended up with all the oil down it, so I had to look for something else, and there was this little shop on the service station, but this was all I could find in the humanoid section, so I had to go with it.”
And then she ran out of breath.
“It’s a knitted jumper,” said the Doctor, simply. “I’ve always thought they work on you. Come here.”
He went to kiss her affectionately, but she raised a hand in warning, and coughed loudly. “Wedding, remember?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. That bit comes later, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Ahem.” The Doctor straightened his tie, and shared a smile with his wife-to-be, their own private joke, even if they didn’t quite know what it was. The Doctor supposed that was what it was like to love someone.
“We are gathered here today,” announced the registrar, “to witness the union of two forces of life, and to celebrate the meeting of past and future, as it so presents itself to us in the present.”
Robin looked over to Chris, already thoroughly taken in by the ceremony. I love this, her eyes were saying. You know where it’s heading, but you never know what he’s going to say next.
“Doctor,” the registrar continued, addressing the Time Lord. “Do you promise to accept your loved one’s past, both vice and virtue, and to guide her through her future?”
“I do.”
“Cionécle…celtri…”
“Cioné will do,” laughed the bride.
“Cioné, do you promise to accept your loved one’s past, both vice and virtue, and guide him through his future?”
“I do.”
The registrar lifted a cushion. “I would now ask the ring-bearers to lay out the rings.” Robin and Chris both obliged, placing the rings on the cushion. “These rings are a reminder that all lives are circular, that every action has a consequence, that every beginning has an end, and that this process recurs, from beginning unto end. I now address you both, not apart, but as one. In the presence of the universe, and through the essential life-force that animates all living things, do you take each other, in sickness and health, past and future, vice and virtue, until the end of your lives and beyond?”
“We do,” replied the Doctor and Cioné in unison, their eyes locked onto each other.
“Then I now pronounce you as married, in the eyes of your people, and in the eyes of the universe herself. You may kiss.”
And so they did. For the first time since that night on the Hawaiian beach, everything was just perfect.
***
The reception was held in the same venue. With a click of the registrar’s fingers, the area turned into a dancefloor; and the chairs, lined up to watch the ceremony, were suddenly gathered around tables, with seating arrangements and everything. And perhaps most amusingly of all, the registrar himself had transformed into a DJ.
The songs had quietened down, until they were reduced again to one instrument, and a live one: the pianist had returned, and played a song – one which, apparently, she had composed this week -- “The Song of the Doctor and Cioné.” The others stood back, and Robin took the chance to grab a seat, while the Doctor and Cioné stepped forward, both trying to remember how the whole dancing thing worked.
They took it slowly. A bit of movement, hands around the waist, that sort of thing. They looked lovingly into each other’s eyes, and everyone else forgot they were critiquing the dancing. The best thing was, it was sincere. The Doctor and Cioné ended up forgetting the dancing, too, simply allowing the music to carry them away, like leaves drifting in the wind.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Cioné, as they took a slow step to the right. “Now we’ve got the TARDIS, I’d like to get my own. TARDIS, I mean.”
“Like Rassilon offered?” asked the Doctor, almost suspiciously.
“Yes. Well, yes and no. And not until long after the honeymoon, obviously. Let’s have at least a year or so living together. But I’d like to make up for my mistakes. Now, the ideal is me becoming an army medic, but that’s never going to happen because me and the army are incompatible in every way imaginable. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help out on the battlefield. There are always men left wounded, forgotten. And there are those who didn’t want to be there in the first place, the conscripted, who were too scared to object. I could find a planet for them, somewhere safe and away from the Time Lords. Somewhere they can live in peace.”
“That sounds like a plan,” said the Doctor, with more respect for his wife than he’d ever had. All the same, he tried not to look dismayed. He would miss her, and above all, he would worry. “A doctor, travelling the universe, saving people. We are the perfect match, you and I.”
Cioné laughed softly, and leant against the Doctor. They slowed up even more, swaying very gently to the music of the waltz, calming and lulling their audience. When there were no more words left to say, the Doctor looked back down to his wife, and stated one simple, indubitable truth.
“I love you.”
Cioné smiled, and adjusted her husband’s tie. It was a mess already.
“I love you too.”
***
A woman to the Doctor’s left started playing a piano. Just the one soloist, but there was something oddly charming about that. The piano was clearly based on the Earth model, but made using different materials, in a room with particularly unearthly acoustics. As a result, the tune was a blend of the human and the alien, of all the things that had changed since these strange beings had dared to step foot off their home planet.
The curtains were drawn to the corners of the room, revealing windows, panoramic and floor-to-ceiling. The ceiling itself also became transparent, and all that was left was the floor, a velvet carpet. The Doctor marvelled at the sight outside. The registry office was a few light-years away from any industrial development, and sat alone in space. Ahead of them, clouds were wrapped around a single point, in a constantly rotating spiral. In the centre was a light, so vivid and deep orange that its rays illuminated the darkness around it, and projected both upwards and downwards. It looked as if a needle of light were suspended in space, with a ring of cloud wrapped around it.
It was the birth of a star.
And then, something even more beautiful happened: Cioné stepped through the door.
Not conventionally beautiful, at least. The Doctor was the first to notice. For some bizarre reason, she was wearing a knitted jumper, all reds and whites, with a pair of harsh and clashing green chinos. Once the Doctor had finished grimacing at the combination, he chuckled. Never mind wedding dresses. He wouldn’t have had Cioné in anything else. She was, in every possible way, herself; and for him, that was the essence of beauty.
She almost hurried up the aisle, desperate to see her husband. When she reached him at the marital platform, she stepped up, and talked quickly to him in a whisper.
“The dress got badly stained,” she explained, not pausing for breath, “so we stopped off at a service station, and we ran out of fuel, and the fuel there wasn’t compatible, but I managed to carry out a bit of rudimentary engineering work on the ship – you know, like what they teach you in the Academy – but then my dress was ruined, because I also ended up with all the oil down it, so I had to look for something else, and there was this little shop on the service station, but this was all I could find in the humanoid section, so I had to go with it.”
And then she ran out of breath.
“It’s a knitted jumper,” said the Doctor, simply. “I’ve always thought they work on you. Come here.”
He went to kiss her affectionately, but she raised a hand in warning, and coughed loudly. “Wedding, remember?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. That bit comes later, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Ahem.” The Doctor straightened his tie, and shared a smile with his wife-to-be, their own private joke, even if they didn’t quite know what it was. The Doctor supposed that was what it was like to love someone.
“We are gathered here today,” announced the registrar, “to witness the union of two forces of life, and to celebrate the meeting of past and future, as it so presents itself to us in the present.”
Robin looked over to Chris, already thoroughly taken in by the ceremony. I love this, her eyes were saying. You know where it’s heading, but you never know what he’s going to say next.
“Doctor,” the registrar continued, addressing the Time Lord. “Do you promise to accept your loved one’s past, both vice and virtue, and to guide her through her future?”
“I do.”
“Cionécle…celtri…”
“Cioné will do,” laughed the bride.
“Cioné, do you promise to accept your loved one’s past, both vice and virtue, and guide him through his future?”
“I do.”
The registrar lifted a cushion. “I would now ask the ring-bearers to lay out the rings.” Robin and Chris both obliged, placing the rings on the cushion. “These rings are a reminder that all lives are circular, that every action has a consequence, that every beginning has an end, and that this process recurs, from beginning unto end. I now address you both, not apart, but as one. In the presence of the universe, and through the essential life-force that animates all living things, do you take each other, in sickness and health, past and future, vice and virtue, until the end of your lives and beyond?”
“We do,” replied the Doctor and Cioné in unison, their eyes locked onto each other.
“Then I now pronounce you as married, in the eyes of your people, and in the eyes of the universe herself. You may kiss.”
And so they did. For the first time since that night on the Hawaiian beach, everything was just perfect.
***
The reception was held in the same venue. With a click of the registrar’s fingers, the area turned into a dancefloor; and the chairs, lined up to watch the ceremony, were suddenly gathered around tables, with seating arrangements and everything. And perhaps most amusingly of all, the registrar himself had transformed into a DJ.
The songs had quietened down, until they were reduced again to one instrument, and a live one: the pianist had returned, and played a song – one which, apparently, she had composed this week -- “The Song of the Doctor and Cioné.” The others stood back, and Robin took the chance to grab a seat, while the Doctor and Cioné stepped forward, both trying to remember how the whole dancing thing worked.
They took it slowly. A bit of movement, hands around the waist, that sort of thing. They looked lovingly into each other’s eyes, and everyone else forgot they were critiquing the dancing. The best thing was, it was sincere. The Doctor and Cioné ended up forgetting the dancing, too, simply allowing the music to carry them away, like leaves drifting in the wind.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Cioné, as they took a slow step to the right. “Now we’ve got the TARDIS, I’d like to get my own. TARDIS, I mean.”
“Like Rassilon offered?” asked the Doctor, almost suspiciously.
“Yes. Well, yes and no. And not until long after the honeymoon, obviously. Let’s have at least a year or so living together. But I’d like to make up for my mistakes. Now, the ideal is me becoming an army medic, but that’s never going to happen because me and the army are incompatible in every way imaginable. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help out on the battlefield. There are always men left wounded, forgotten. And there are those who didn’t want to be there in the first place, the conscripted, who were too scared to object. I could find a planet for them, somewhere safe and away from the Time Lords. Somewhere they can live in peace.”
“That sounds like a plan,” said the Doctor, with more respect for his wife than he’d ever had. All the same, he tried not to look dismayed. He would miss her, and above all, he would worry. “A doctor, travelling the universe, saving people. We are the perfect match, you and I.”
Cioné laughed softly, and leant against the Doctor. They slowed up even more, swaying very gently to the music of the waltz, calming and lulling their audience. When there were no more words left to say, the Doctor looked back down to his wife, and stated one simple, indubitable truth.
“I love you.”
Cioné smiled, and adjusted her husband’s tie. It was a mess already.
“I love you too.”
***
The pace picked up again after their dance, and the young found their place. Robin smiled pensively, remembering when that was her. Chris had gone home already, using the teleport on the balcony to take him and little Jasmine back to Barcelona. He was always the first to go these days. He enjoyed these events as much as he always did, but he just didn’t have the energy to stick with them until the end.
Robin realised it was her time, too. As quietly and discreetly as she could manage, she gathered her things together, and stepped out onto the balcony. She was about to step onto the teleporter when she noticed the one other person out on the deck with her. The Doctor. He was slumped against a wall, looking far too crestfallen for a man who had just gotten married.
“You okay?” Robin asked him, concerned. She eased herself down slowly, feeling a few bones creaking as she did, and joined him sitting against the wall.
“No…” the Doctor shook his head, and stared down at the floor. “No, I’m not.”
“Why, what’s up? You don’t think you’ve made a mistake, do you?”
The Doctor laughed. “No, no, of course not. She’s wonderful. This is the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s just…” He sighed resignedly. “Seeing all this today, it got me thinking. Jasmine and Tommy, they never got to do this, any of it. They were perfect for each other, and they realised it. But do you know how much time they got from the moment they knew?”
Robin shook her head.
“Two days,” said the Doctor. There were tears forming in his eyes. Robin wished there was something she could do, but in this situation, there seemed to be very little. “Two days together, two precious days. They deserved the rest of their lives. They should have been able to do this. Gone on adventures. Had children, if they wanted to, which I’m sure they did. Grown old, like you and Chris. They were too young.” He shook his head, and wiped a tear away with his finger. “Too young. And when I was standing there, getting married, I just wished… I wished they could have been there, my old friends. Tommy, standing next to me. Jasmine, on the front row. Autumn, playing the piano. But they’re all gone now.”
Robin rested her head on the Doctor’s shoulder, and patted his arm. After all these years, he even had the same smell. A Gallifreyan aftershave of some kind, she suspected, but she couldn’t be sure. “I’m here,” she said. It was all there was to say, and that made it special. “I’m here.”
“It’s just so… so tough. I miss them all so much.”
“I know. It’ll get easier, I promise. But you’ll never forget them, and that’s okay.” Robin stretched, and inadvertently winced. “Sorry, I can’t sit along this bloody wall any longer. Do you mind standing?”
“It’s probably a good idea. I’ll ruin this suit otherwise.”
“You always ruin your suits. Usually it’s exploding aliens, though.”
They stood up and took a few steps forward, until they were right on the edge of the balcony, leaning against the thin metal bar, which stopped anyone taking that extra step.
“It’s been years since I was in space,” whispered Robin, marvelling at the sight in front of her. The Doctor tried to imagine what it was like for her. Even for him, a seasoned traveller, it was incredible to see. “The last time… well, it wasn’t so good, actually,” Robin added. “That place beneath the sea. So it’s nice to have this memory to finish off with.”
“Finish?” asked the Doctor. “We could always do this again, if you wanted to.”
Robin shook her head. “Doctor, I… this…” She seemed to be struggling to get her words out. The Doctor frowned, apparently unaware of the extent of her internal struggle. “This will be it,” Robin managed. “This is the last time.”
“What do you mean? You’re only in your mid-seventies, Robin. That’s young.”
“It is,” agreed Robin, before shooting the Doctor a look that reminded him he wasn’t being entirely truthful about something. “Unless you’re the kind of man who has a habit of spacing each visit by a decade. The next time you turn up on my doorstep, I could be eighty-six, or ninety-one, or a hundred, or… not even here at all.” She maintained eye contact, even during the difficult parts.
“You might not.”
“I don’t want you to try. The last time you saw Tommy, you were standing over his grave. The last time you saw Autumn, or Jasmine, it was over their bodies. I just… I don’t want you to have to do that again. And what if I get something before I see you next? What if you turn up and I’m too weak to move, or I don’t even know who you are? What then?”
“Then I look after you,” said the Doctor, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“No. I don’t want you to. I want you to remember me for who I am, Doctor. I want you to remember me at my best. And I know people say their twenties are great, but sod it, I’ve been a flipping great seventy-five year-old, and I want you to remember this day. Me and my family. Your wedding. And then it never has to end like it did with the rest.”
The Doctor nodded, understanding. It hurt – but, as he was coming to understand, it hurt significantly less than the alternative. And if life had taught him anything, it was that if Robin McKnight wanted to do something, it was usually best to let her.
“Are you sure you want this?”
Robin nodded resolutely. “Yes. It was always going to end this way, I’ve had it planned for years.”
“Okay. Um…” The Doctor took a few deep breaths. “Wow.”
“I know. Take your time. Let’s spend a while longer out here, just us.”
And so they did. They both finally looked away from each other, and ahead of them, at the new star forming on the horizon, its orange glow on their faces. They could feel the warmth of its light at the centre of where they stood.
“We always pick the best places, don’t we?” commented the Doctor. “But, well, this puts the fountains to shame, doesn’t it.”
“It was never the places that mattered,” said Robin. “It’s the people you’re with.”
There was another moment of silence. The Doctor started to form a sentence; a few words of incoherent babble escaped his lips. They were ahead of his mind, which was now lost in the heart of that star, thinking some deep and cosmic thought.
“I think it’s time for me to move on,” he said, finally. “She’s gone, isn’t she? Jasmine’s gone.”
Robin nodded, sadly, feeling a sudden pang of sorrow for a girl she’d barely known. Then, as if he’d read her mind, the Doctor expressed a passing thought of his own.
“I don’t think I even knew her. I wish I’d had the chance. But look at that.” He pointed out to the star again, as though it was possible to have missed it. “New life. It’s all just a balance of forces, in the end. All that inward pressure of compression, until the fusion. Then it’s outward pressure, until they reach a balance. The fusion, pushing out, reaching out into infinity, and gravity, pulling it back, bringing everything back to where it started. And it stays like that until the day it dies, half-running, and half rooted to where it stands. More or less. I may have romanticised it a bit.”
“I wish my science lessons were all like this,” said Robin. As she looked at the star forming, she suddenly saw something different: the balance, the perfect natural harmony. The sometimes vicious push and pull of nature, which kept everything exactly where it was meant to be.
“I think it’s Christmas,” said the Doctor, out of nowhere. “It was an expensive booking here, today. We met at Christmas, didn’t we?”
“I never told you,” confessed Robin. “I had a leaking roof. I was going to pay for a new one. Then you crashed into it and fixed it for me. You saved me quite a bit of cash.”
They both laughed.
“Christmas,” contemplated Robin. She looked at the star again, and back to the Doctor. That thing in the distance was ancient and had a whole eternity ahead of it, constantly at war with itself. But she preferred the Doctor. He, at least, could take a step back from it. Just sometimes, he would walk out of the battlefield, forget his godhood, and live in the present. He didn’t have to be a cosmic wonder. He could be a friend.
Robin smiled, and realised, all of a sudden, how lucky she was. It was strange to think that, after all the things she’d lost. Her life, more than anyone else’s, was plotted between those extremes, between things both terrible and wonderful. Looking back, she realised she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She beamed at her friend, and knew, at last, that he was in safe hands. When her time did come, eventually, Robin knew that she would leave the world happy with how it looked. She stepped towards the Doctor, and placed a comforting arm around him, as they watched the light growing brighter ahead of them. Finally, Robin spoke.
“Merry Christmas.”
***
Robin realised it was her time, too. As quietly and discreetly as she could manage, she gathered her things together, and stepped out onto the balcony. She was about to step onto the teleporter when she noticed the one other person out on the deck with her. The Doctor. He was slumped against a wall, looking far too crestfallen for a man who had just gotten married.
“You okay?” Robin asked him, concerned. She eased herself down slowly, feeling a few bones creaking as she did, and joined him sitting against the wall.
“No…” the Doctor shook his head, and stared down at the floor. “No, I’m not.”
“Why, what’s up? You don’t think you’ve made a mistake, do you?”
The Doctor laughed. “No, no, of course not. She’s wonderful. This is the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s just…” He sighed resignedly. “Seeing all this today, it got me thinking. Jasmine and Tommy, they never got to do this, any of it. They were perfect for each other, and they realised it. But do you know how much time they got from the moment they knew?”
Robin shook her head.
“Two days,” said the Doctor. There were tears forming in his eyes. Robin wished there was something she could do, but in this situation, there seemed to be very little. “Two days together, two precious days. They deserved the rest of their lives. They should have been able to do this. Gone on adventures. Had children, if they wanted to, which I’m sure they did. Grown old, like you and Chris. They were too young.” He shook his head, and wiped a tear away with his finger. “Too young. And when I was standing there, getting married, I just wished… I wished they could have been there, my old friends. Tommy, standing next to me. Jasmine, on the front row. Autumn, playing the piano. But they’re all gone now.”
Robin rested her head on the Doctor’s shoulder, and patted his arm. After all these years, he even had the same smell. A Gallifreyan aftershave of some kind, she suspected, but she couldn’t be sure. “I’m here,” she said. It was all there was to say, and that made it special. “I’m here.”
“It’s just so… so tough. I miss them all so much.”
“I know. It’ll get easier, I promise. But you’ll never forget them, and that’s okay.” Robin stretched, and inadvertently winced. “Sorry, I can’t sit along this bloody wall any longer. Do you mind standing?”
“It’s probably a good idea. I’ll ruin this suit otherwise.”
“You always ruin your suits. Usually it’s exploding aliens, though.”
They stood up and took a few steps forward, until they were right on the edge of the balcony, leaning against the thin metal bar, which stopped anyone taking that extra step.
“It’s been years since I was in space,” whispered Robin, marvelling at the sight in front of her. The Doctor tried to imagine what it was like for her. Even for him, a seasoned traveller, it was incredible to see. “The last time… well, it wasn’t so good, actually,” Robin added. “That place beneath the sea. So it’s nice to have this memory to finish off with.”
“Finish?” asked the Doctor. “We could always do this again, if you wanted to.”
Robin shook her head. “Doctor, I… this…” She seemed to be struggling to get her words out. The Doctor frowned, apparently unaware of the extent of her internal struggle. “This will be it,” Robin managed. “This is the last time.”
“What do you mean? You’re only in your mid-seventies, Robin. That’s young.”
“It is,” agreed Robin, before shooting the Doctor a look that reminded him he wasn’t being entirely truthful about something. “Unless you’re the kind of man who has a habit of spacing each visit by a decade. The next time you turn up on my doorstep, I could be eighty-six, or ninety-one, or a hundred, or… not even here at all.” She maintained eye contact, even during the difficult parts.
“You might not.”
“I don’t want you to try. The last time you saw Tommy, you were standing over his grave. The last time you saw Autumn, or Jasmine, it was over their bodies. I just… I don’t want you to have to do that again. And what if I get something before I see you next? What if you turn up and I’m too weak to move, or I don’t even know who you are? What then?”
“Then I look after you,” said the Doctor, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“No. I don’t want you to. I want you to remember me for who I am, Doctor. I want you to remember me at my best. And I know people say their twenties are great, but sod it, I’ve been a flipping great seventy-five year-old, and I want you to remember this day. Me and my family. Your wedding. And then it never has to end like it did with the rest.”
The Doctor nodded, understanding. It hurt – but, as he was coming to understand, it hurt significantly less than the alternative. And if life had taught him anything, it was that if Robin McKnight wanted to do something, it was usually best to let her.
“Are you sure you want this?”
Robin nodded resolutely. “Yes. It was always going to end this way, I’ve had it planned for years.”
“Okay. Um…” The Doctor took a few deep breaths. “Wow.”
“I know. Take your time. Let’s spend a while longer out here, just us.”
And so they did. They both finally looked away from each other, and ahead of them, at the new star forming on the horizon, its orange glow on their faces. They could feel the warmth of its light at the centre of where they stood.
“We always pick the best places, don’t we?” commented the Doctor. “But, well, this puts the fountains to shame, doesn’t it.”
“It was never the places that mattered,” said Robin. “It’s the people you’re with.”
There was another moment of silence. The Doctor started to form a sentence; a few words of incoherent babble escaped his lips. They were ahead of his mind, which was now lost in the heart of that star, thinking some deep and cosmic thought.
“I think it’s time for me to move on,” he said, finally. “She’s gone, isn’t she? Jasmine’s gone.”
Robin nodded, sadly, feeling a sudden pang of sorrow for a girl she’d barely known. Then, as if he’d read her mind, the Doctor expressed a passing thought of his own.
“I don’t think I even knew her. I wish I’d had the chance. But look at that.” He pointed out to the star again, as though it was possible to have missed it. “New life. It’s all just a balance of forces, in the end. All that inward pressure of compression, until the fusion. Then it’s outward pressure, until they reach a balance. The fusion, pushing out, reaching out into infinity, and gravity, pulling it back, bringing everything back to where it started. And it stays like that until the day it dies, half-running, and half rooted to where it stands. More or less. I may have romanticised it a bit.”
“I wish my science lessons were all like this,” said Robin. As she looked at the star forming, she suddenly saw something different: the balance, the perfect natural harmony. The sometimes vicious push and pull of nature, which kept everything exactly where it was meant to be.
“I think it’s Christmas,” said the Doctor, out of nowhere. “It was an expensive booking here, today. We met at Christmas, didn’t we?”
“I never told you,” confessed Robin. “I had a leaking roof. I was going to pay for a new one. Then you crashed into it and fixed it for me. You saved me quite a bit of cash.”
They both laughed.
“Christmas,” contemplated Robin. She looked at the star again, and back to the Doctor. That thing in the distance was ancient and had a whole eternity ahead of it, constantly at war with itself. But she preferred the Doctor. He, at least, could take a step back from it. Just sometimes, he would walk out of the battlefield, forget his godhood, and live in the present. He didn’t have to be a cosmic wonder. He could be a friend.
Robin smiled, and realised, all of a sudden, how lucky she was. It was strange to think that, after all the things she’d lost. Her life, more than anyone else’s, was plotted between those extremes, between things both terrible and wonderful. Looking back, she realised she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She beamed at her friend, and knew, at last, that he was in safe hands. When her time did come, eventually, Robin knew that she would leave the world happy with how it looked. She stepped towards the Doctor, and placed a comforting arm around him, as they watched the light growing brighter ahead of them. Finally, Robin spoke.
“Merry Christmas.”
***
Croydon, 2016
It was Christmas. The apartments of people’s balconies said that much; inflatable Santas stood where plant pots had in the summer, and lights of all colours and shapes hung across the doors and railings. Everyone’s display was a little bit different. That was the beauty of it.
Across Croydon – across the world, in fact – people were coming to terms with the changing seasons, in the best way they could. But Sheila Evans was coming to terms with something else. This, she had decided, would be the last night of her life.
She knew, from the moment the Doctor delivered the news, that there was no way forward for her. She only made one phone-call, later that day. It was to Vitali, to tell him that it was over. She’d made a mistake. She didn’t tell him the truth.
Love, Sheila always thought, was just another word for that strange web of connections she had with the world around her, and Jasmine was the thread. Her love for Jasmine kept the rest going; it reminded her of what love was. The second that connection was broken, suddenly everything else stopped working. Love just disappeared from Sheila’s life, other than when it returned to plague her, to remind her of what had once been.
She was old, she was alone, and she didn’t really believe in anything anymore. The idea of resting, unaware of all the pain in the world, no longer seemed so bad. That was why she was standing there, over the kitchen worktop, shaking like she was on her way to her first job interview. That was why she was slowly emptying a strip of pills onto the worktop, counting them as she went. Prescription of two every day. She thought she’d try all twenty in the next five minutes, and hope that did the trick.
Maybe it would hurt. She kind of hoped it would. Maybe if the physical pain were enough, it would drown out the memory of her emotions altogether. She could die without remembering why it was she had chosen to die in the first place.
Sheila had always put other people first, and even now felt like she was letting people down. She shook her head, reminding herself that there was no one left to betray. No one would even mourn her. Maybe Vitali would find out, but as she had discovered recently, he had a lot more to live for.
There had been a lot of suicides recently. A lot of people left behind after the plague, she figured: parents without their children; things happening the wrong way around.
“I’m sorry Jasmine,” she said, her voice shaking. “I loved you so much.”
Then she started. She picked up the first pill, and swallowed it. And then the next. And the next. And the next. And then a few more at a time.
She was becoming dizzy, starting to pass out. In a way, it felt good.
She fell onto something.
No… someone.
The person she had fallen on to sat her down. She heard a buzzing sound, and felt a cramp in her stomach. All of sudden, she could see clearly again.
She was back at her dining room table. There was a woman sitting in front of her, wearing a white shirt and a suit jacket, her hair tied back. She looked important, but there was a warmth to her, and something else, too, something ineffable.
“I neutralised the tablets’ effects,” explained the woman. She was well-spoken, but addressed Sheila on her own level, without even a modicum of condescension. “You’re lucky I got here when I did?”
“Am I?” asked Sheila, dryly. “I just wanted to end it all.” She was sobbing into her hands, her head still heavy with tears. “I just wanted it all to be over. I hate it all so much…”
Once upon a time, Sheila may have responded to a stranger entering her house in the middle of the night. One of the many effects of her grief was that she stopped caring about weird or potentially dangerous things happening. They were as dull and unimportant as anything else.
“Look, dear,” began Sheila, “don’t you have a family to be getting to?”
“Sonic screwdriver,” said the woman, ignoring her, and playing with the contraption in her hand. “Surprisingly good in medical emergencies.” She pocketed it, and her attention returned to Sheila. “I knew Jasmine.”
For some reason, Sheila did not find that surprising.
“I was at the funeral. You won’t recognise me, though. I thought Patsy wrote a good eulogy. I didn’t know a few of those facts.”
“I think I knew all of them,” said Sheila.
“No you didn’t.” The woman shook her head, and despite everything that had happened, smiled. For the first time since Jasmine’s death, Sheila found herself interested in something.
“I knew all of them,” Sheila repeated. “The ten facts. Listen, it’s nice of you to t…”
“No,” interrupted the woman. “You didn’t know all of them. What about the eleventh fact?”
“The eleventh?”
“Of course. The most important of all. Why else do you think I came here?”
The woman stood up, and pushed open the door to the hallway. At the end of the hall was something Sheila recognised all too well; an object which had appeared on the worst day of her life, those letters still reading the same words.
POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX
The woman stood up in front of it, and took a key out of her pocket. Sheila gasped. At last, it all made sense.
“Fact eleven, Sheila,” said the Doctor, opening the door to her TARDIS and beckoning the old woman to follow. “Jasmine Sparks is still alive.”
It was Christmas. The apartments of people’s balconies said that much; inflatable Santas stood where plant pots had in the summer, and lights of all colours and shapes hung across the doors and railings. Everyone’s display was a little bit different. That was the beauty of it.
Across Croydon – across the world, in fact – people were coming to terms with the changing seasons, in the best way they could. But Sheila Evans was coming to terms with something else. This, she had decided, would be the last night of her life.
She knew, from the moment the Doctor delivered the news, that there was no way forward for her. She only made one phone-call, later that day. It was to Vitali, to tell him that it was over. She’d made a mistake. She didn’t tell him the truth.
Love, Sheila always thought, was just another word for that strange web of connections she had with the world around her, and Jasmine was the thread. Her love for Jasmine kept the rest going; it reminded her of what love was. The second that connection was broken, suddenly everything else stopped working. Love just disappeared from Sheila’s life, other than when it returned to plague her, to remind her of what had once been.
She was old, she was alone, and she didn’t really believe in anything anymore. The idea of resting, unaware of all the pain in the world, no longer seemed so bad. That was why she was standing there, over the kitchen worktop, shaking like she was on her way to her first job interview. That was why she was slowly emptying a strip of pills onto the worktop, counting them as she went. Prescription of two every day. She thought she’d try all twenty in the next five minutes, and hope that did the trick.
Maybe it would hurt. She kind of hoped it would. Maybe if the physical pain were enough, it would drown out the memory of her emotions altogether. She could die without remembering why it was she had chosen to die in the first place.
Sheila had always put other people first, and even now felt like she was letting people down. She shook her head, reminding herself that there was no one left to betray. No one would even mourn her. Maybe Vitali would find out, but as she had discovered recently, he had a lot more to live for.
There had been a lot of suicides recently. A lot of people left behind after the plague, she figured: parents without their children; things happening the wrong way around.
“I’m sorry Jasmine,” she said, her voice shaking. “I loved you so much.”
Then she started. She picked up the first pill, and swallowed it. And then the next. And the next. And the next. And then a few more at a time.
She was becoming dizzy, starting to pass out. In a way, it felt good.
She fell onto something.
No… someone.
The person she had fallen on to sat her down. She heard a buzzing sound, and felt a cramp in her stomach. All of sudden, she could see clearly again.
She was back at her dining room table. There was a woman sitting in front of her, wearing a white shirt and a suit jacket, her hair tied back. She looked important, but there was a warmth to her, and something else, too, something ineffable.
“I neutralised the tablets’ effects,” explained the woman. She was well-spoken, but addressed Sheila on her own level, without even a modicum of condescension. “You’re lucky I got here when I did?”
“Am I?” asked Sheila, dryly. “I just wanted to end it all.” She was sobbing into her hands, her head still heavy with tears. “I just wanted it all to be over. I hate it all so much…”
Once upon a time, Sheila may have responded to a stranger entering her house in the middle of the night. One of the many effects of her grief was that she stopped caring about weird or potentially dangerous things happening. They were as dull and unimportant as anything else.
“Look, dear,” began Sheila, “don’t you have a family to be getting to?”
“Sonic screwdriver,” said the woman, ignoring her, and playing with the contraption in her hand. “Surprisingly good in medical emergencies.” She pocketed it, and her attention returned to Sheila. “I knew Jasmine.”
For some reason, Sheila did not find that surprising.
“I was at the funeral. You won’t recognise me, though. I thought Patsy wrote a good eulogy. I didn’t know a few of those facts.”
“I think I knew all of them,” said Sheila.
“No you didn’t.” The woman shook her head, and despite everything that had happened, smiled. For the first time since Jasmine’s death, Sheila found herself interested in something.
“I knew all of them,” Sheila repeated. “The ten facts. Listen, it’s nice of you to t…”
“No,” interrupted the woman. “You didn’t know all of them. What about the eleventh fact?”
“The eleventh?”
“Of course. The most important of all. Why else do you think I came here?”
The woman stood up, and pushed open the door to the hallway. At the end of the hall was something Sheila recognised all too well; an object which had appeared on the worst day of her life, those letters still reading the same words.
POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX
The woman stood up in front of it, and took a key out of her pocket. Sheila gasped. At last, it all made sense.
“Fact eleven, Sheila,” said the Doctor, opening the door to her TARDIS and beckoning the old woman to follow. “Jasmine Sparks is still alive.”
Next Time: An Endless Sky of HoneyWho knows who wrote that song of summer,
that blackbirds sing at dusk. This is a song of colour where sands sing in crimson, red and rust. Then climb into bed and turn to dust. Every sleepy light, must say goodbye to the day before it dies. In a sea of honey, a sky of honey, keep us close to your heart so if the sky stays dark, we may live on in comets and stars. An Endless Sky of Honey will be published on Saturday 18th December. |
|