prologue
It was some tiny little world, marooned somewhere on the edge of the universe. Dark and dank, the planet was obscured behind an asteroid belt – so daylight lasted for but five minutes a day, and even that was just a smidge away from the 1,435 minutes of night, as the planet was obscured with a layer of natural thick, choking, black clouds.
The world had become covered in an infinite sprawling forest –not a forest with rich earth, and proud, strong trees with green, sunlit leaves, the light streaming through and spattering hope upon the thick blanket of undergrowth and bracken. There were no clean rivers, glowing a tranquil aqua in the sunshine, flowing through the woods and bringing life to a million species of fishes, and insects and mammals beside the banks, mushrooming into a forest shining bright with light and life and calm.
Instead, the forest was black, decayed, and dead. There was a thick network of trees, but because of the planet’s darkness, their leaves were stained black and grimy, and the only light that streamed to the ground was gloomy and murky, choking the undergrowth – and yet, as if almost in reaction, a sprawling web of vines and creepers extended across the forest floor, latching onto the greenery and turning it into a grubby scrubland, populated by thin, brittle trees. Several filthy rivers churned through the planet, ploughing through dusty, chalky dirt, teeming with a billion diseases. The planet reeked, the smell of mould and rot and fungus infecting the entire surface, cell by cell and leaf by leaf, corrupting everything with its horrific stench.
There was very little life on the planet. There were wolves, their thick coats stained and muddied, their eyes shining red as they hunted out their prey – small, scuttling mammals that through a scraping desperation to survive, had evolved enough to consume the infected, diseased water, and to eat the bugs and worms that imbedded themselves in the dirt. It was a sick planet. Even when the rain fell, it was not simply water. A complex arrangement of the elements, to form something akin to gasoline. And so, when it drenched the planet, it would kill the life that the rain should normally nourish. The rain should make things grow. This rain was a poison.
There was no civilisation on the planet. Except, there was a house. A manor house, broken and dilapidated, a fading memory of a time there had been people living in the forest. Now, the wood was crumbling, infested with lice and insects, and the plaster and wallpaper was peeling and disintegrating. Inside the house, where there were carpets, they were faded and frayed, some of them had even decomposed completely, exposed to the lifeless elements. Several parts of the bottom of the house had been damaged completely, leaving only the dusty surface of the Earth as a ground-floor.
There were remnants of furniture in the house – very little, but there was an old, wooden table, frail under its age, but useable. A wooden chair sat beside, lonely, just as its occupant would be, as there was nothing else for anybody else – a room that now, would only be fitting for one person. Perhaps another to stay occasionally, judging by another chair, mismatched against the other. The only other item in the house was a musty, unclean mattress, perhaps recently pinched out the back of a skip and tossed into the house, with no concept of who it was to be used by. It waited in the master suite – which did not deserve that name, as it was in a similar state of disrepair to the rest of the house. A fragmented grand staircase loosely paved the way to the landing, individual stairs hanging off, and holes crushed into it.
And from the landing, one could look out the remnants of a great window. It was long shattered, allowing the stinking winds would blow through the house, freezing any occupant who had the misfortune of staying there. The old panes of glass were smashed, sharp shards jutting out to slice at anyone who should let their skin get caught in their teeth – and one might be tempted to do that. To just stride through that window, allowing the splinters to tear the skin into ribbons, before they fell, so far, to the ground, and their bones would shatter, just as the window had.
There would be nobody to find them, nobody to save them.
Death would greet them.
But there had been nobody to greet death. Nobody to step through the window, nobody to use the matress, nobody to use the lonely chair.
Until that night.
The Doctor walked through the forest, his TARDIS parked far away, just to ensure the people he was meeting would be unable to get their hands on it. As he walked through the undergrowth, the Doctor felt the chill in the air nipping at him, and then biting deep into his skin. So, he pulled his coat closer to him, and he sped up the pace with which he walked. He could see the house ahead of him – the house he’d been summoned to.
The house he’d been summoned to by his own people.
By the Time Lords.
He had no idea what for – the rendezvous was secret to everyone, apart from those involved. He had been forbidden to tell any of his loved ones – and now that he had a family, the Doctor was not willing to risk it. He had responsibilities, now. He had to tread carefully, and with every step he took, he would have to consider the extent of the consequences – for Lizzie, for Cioné… and above all, for Iris.
The Doctor was always terrified of meetings with his own people, although he would never dare to admit it. They had a troubled relationship, and whenever he was summoned, there was always that slight, nagging fear that he would not come back. So, before he left, he’d held Iris in his arms, and kissed her. Too small to know what was going on, just a tiny baby, with the whole universe raging above her head. And with that kiss, the Doctor hoped, that he would come back. That he would see his little girl grow up.
He wanted nothing more than that.
They were already there, it seemed, waiting outside the house. Waiting for him. There were a few of them, the guards dressed in a subtler garb to the usual, ornate Gallifreyan attire. This was a meeting that nobody was meant to see, that was meant to pass undetected into history… that would be forgotten about.
Most strikingly, and most intriguingly… one of the guards held a white object, visible in stark contrast to the gloominess of the world around them. As the Doctor got closer, he realised that he was looking at a sort of… cradle. A travel-cot.
At the front of his Gallifreyan reception party, stood a man, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie. He exuded an air of authority, command… and terror. Although the Doctor had never seen him… he knew exactly who the man was.
“I am honoured, it seems.” The Doctor spoke sarcastically, with a mocking tongue. He had nothing but contempt for this man. And at the same time, the Doctor knew he had to play his cards carefully… the man he was faced with, meant that whatever business this was, was going to be very, very serious. The Doctor was also acutely aware that if he got on the wrong side of the person in front of him, it could lead to catastrophic consequences.
“You know the severity of the business at hand,” the man spoke simply, his voice clear, cold, and clipped.
“Faced with you, Not-Applicable? Of course.” The Doctor knew it was him. He was the highest ranking general in the Gallifreyan secret police – and he was known by the name ‘Not-Applicable’, simply as he did not need a name. He was order, running subliminally beneath the streets. He was oppression, keeping an unyielding grasp on everyone who lived on the planet – but a grasp so secret, so subtle, that barely anybody noticed when they were being constantly controlled and manipulated.
But everybody knew who he was, for everybody, barring his superiors, were simply his puppets, and he pulled the strings, so slightly and shrewdly. He operated quietly, delicately, but coldly effectively. There was no fuss, there was no big scene, there was no noise. If Not-Applicable was coming for you, one night, you would be there. And the next, you would simply disappear, as if you had never existed.
“May I ask, what am I doing here?” the Doctor questioned, bristling slightly at Not-Applicable’s lack of any visible response. One might feel safer when he displayed some kind of emotion… or at least, more assured of where the conversation was going.
Not-Applicable gestured to the travel cot.
“This is the child of –”
London, 2018 – 13:30PM
“Hmm, I’m starving,” Cioné began to scoff her way through the giant steak on the platter in front of her, the chips eyeing her up gleefully from the side of the plate. The Doctor looked down at his chicken Caesar salad, and then looked off the balcony of the restaurant, at the passers-by milling around the riverside beneath them. It was a rather beautiful day, and the sun streamed down the tree-lined boulevard, shining on the families strolling past the river, and the content old couple meandering past a boutique, and the group of teenagers huddled around a bench. And then the sun glinted on the sharp surface of the river, making it shimmer in the golden, midday light, and turning it into a mirror – a universe where this riverside happiness was the only world, and where nobody had any demons to worry about.
“I need to tell you something,” the Doctor said, as his eyes turned away from the river to look at his wife. She looked so beautiful, sat there in the sun. And there was part of him that wished he would never have to talk about what he was about to – because then that world could’ve stayed perfect for just a little bit longer. But he knew, in his heart, that that could not be the case. He would have to confront what needed to be confronted, and he couldn’t hold it off longer. If he did, it would grow, it would get darker and scarier. And above all? Cioné had a right to know.
“Oh?” Cioné murmured through a mouthful of chip. They did lovely chips there. That was why she loved it so much. And… she knew that her husband enjoyed it as well. And right then, that was perhaps what they needed, although she didn’t know it. Perhaps being in the restaurant would make it easier. Because the Doctor knew that what he was about to say would shock her. In fact – maybe it would change her opinion of him forever.
Easier for her. Not for him. When she’d seen the look in her husband’s eyes, she wondered whether that was a good thing. She was scared, when she looked up and saw it. For most spouses, the simple words, ‘I need to tell you something’, were ominous enough. Cioné hadn’t been unnerved – but as she’d looked up and seen the look of trepidation, and something… something akin to fear – present in his eyes – that was when she was unnerved.
That was when she knew something was wrong.
“Iris talked about her once,” the Doctor started. Immediately, Cioné’s mind started going. He wasn’t having an affair, was he? No. No, the look on his face suggested something much worse. The Doctor paused, and she could’ve spoken – so often, she would’ve done. Slipped in a quick joke, or something. But the way he looked up at her… this was not a time for joking.
“This girl…,” the Doctor said, his voice trailing off. “Emma.”
Cioné thought about it. She couldn’t put her finger on it…
“Oh!”
Yes. She could remember.
“Yes – that girl Iris and Lizzie got to find out… information or something on Cullengate? They showed me a picture of her – red lippy, pasty, that sort of thing.”
The Doctor nodded grimly. Cioné stopped trying to be so glib. But then her husband didn’t say anything, and so she kept talking. She couldn’t stop herself.
“I just… assumed she was some… private detective, and I thought, well, if she agreed to help the girls’ find out about Cullengate for free, it might be useful in the long run, I – I – I didn’t recognise her –”
The Doctor interrupted her. He spoke clipped, and coldly, and the very words sent a shiver down Cioné’s spine.
“But I did.”
The Doctor couldn’t look at her – his eyes flitted around to every other location possible. He knew that if he did dare to look at his wife, all she’d be able to see was the look of guilt in his eyes. But, Cioné kept staring at him – she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He’d recognised her – he knew who she was, and he hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t he said anything? And, with her eyes locked firmly onto him, eventually his face gravitated back to her.
The Doctor knew he had to look her in the eye. Cioné deserved that.
And as he did look her in the eye, Cioné saw it. A look of confession.
“Who was she?” Cioné asked.
“Emma…,” the Doctor said her name, like he was trying to make sense of it – a word, undefined, that he didn’t really… get. It was, sort of, the truth. But in reality, he was playing for time. Trying to find the words to explain himself, and also trying to delay having to reveal the truth. Emma. The private detective. The consulting assassin. “A long time ago…”
“Just – Doctor, tell me who she is. To you.”
“Do you remember the Master, Cioné?”
Cioné stopped. She knew the Master. Not like the Doctor did, but the Master was one of those Gallifreyans with a reputation. A bit like the Doctor – a renegade Time Lord, insane, hell-bent on destruction – and not just because they liked the destruction. Because they found it beautiful. Always played nicely off the Doctor. One saw the universe and loved it. The other saw the end of it, and loved it.
And, in a way… the Doctor’s best friend. No… something different to that. Something a little bit… more.
But the Master was dead.
“I – I know of them. Why?”
And that’s when Cioné realised. That’s when it all started falling into place. The Master was dead. But a grey, private detective, consulting assassin – ruthless and efficient, independent and… terrifying. It made sense. Maybe that was why Emma had taken such an interest in Iris. A distorted reflection of herself. And… the Doctor and the Master, held in a strange, sickening balance, them both being the close, childhood friends they were… maybe that was why.
Because everyone left a legacy behind.
As Cioné looked up at the Doctor, she was almost certain of what he was going to say.
He spoke.
“Emma… Emma is the Master’s daughter.”
The world had become covered in an infinite sprawling forest –not a forest with rich earth, and proud, strong trees with green, sunlit leaves, the light streaming through and spattering hope upon the thick blanket of undergrowth and bracken. There were no clean rivers, glowing a tranquil aqua in the sunshine, flowing through the woods and bringing life to a million species of fishes, and insects and mammals beside the banks, mushrooming into a forest shining bright with light and life and calm.
Instead, the forest was black, decayed, and dead. There was a thick network of trees, but because of the planet’s darkness, their leaves were stained black and grimy, and the only light that streamed to the ground was gloomy and murky, choking the undergrowth – and yet, as if almost in reaction, a sprawling web of vines and creepers extended across the forest floor, latching onto the greenery and turning it into a grubby scrubland, populated by thin, brittle trees. Several filthy rivers churned through the planet, ploughing through dusty, chalky dirt, teeming with a billion diseases. The planet reeked, the smell of mould and rot and fungus infecting the entire surface, cell by cell and leaf by leaf, corrupting everything with its horrific stench.
There was very little life on the planet. There were wolves, their thick coats stained and muddied, their eyes shining red as they hunted out their prey – small, scuttling mammals that through a scraping desperation to survive, had evolved enough to consume the infected, diseased water, and to eat the bugs and worms that imbedded themselves in the dirt. It was a sick planet. Even when the rain fell, it was not simply water. A complex arrangement of the elements, to form something akin to gasoline. And so, when it drenched the planet, it would kill the life that the rain should normally nourish. The rain should make things grow. This rain was a poison.
There was no civilisation on the planet. Except, there was a house. A manor house, broken and dilapidated, a fading memory of a time there had been people living in the forest. Now, the wood was crumbling, infested with lice and insects, and the plaster and wallpaper was peeling and disintegrating. Inside the house, where there were carpets, they were faded and frayed, some of them had even decomposed completely, exposed to the lifeless elements. Several parts of the bottom of the house had been damaged completely, leaving only the dusty surface of the Earth as a ground-floor.
There were remnants of furniture in the house – very little, but there was an old, wooden table, frail under its age, but useable. A wooden chair sat beside, lonely, just as its occupant would be, as there was nothing else for anybody else – a room that now, would only be fitting for one person. Perhaps another to stay occasionally, judging by another chair, mismatched against the other. The only other item in the house was a musty, unclean mattress, perhaps recently pinched out the back of a skip and tossed into the house, with no concept of who it was to be used by. It waited in the master suite – which did not deserve that name, as it was in a similar state of disrepair to the rest of the house. A fragmented grand staircase loosely paved the way to the landing, individual stairs hanging off, and holes crushed into it.
And from the landing, one could look out the remnants of a great window. It was long shattered, allowing the stinking winds would blow through the house, freezing any occupant who had the misfortune of staying there. The old panes of glass were smashed, sharp shards jutting out to slice at anyone who should let their skin get caught in their teeth – and one might be tempted to do that. To just stride through that window, allowing the splinters to tear the skin into ribbons, before they fell, so far, to the ground, and their bones would shatter, just as the window had.
There would be nobody to find them, nobody to save them.
Death would greet them.
But there had been nobody to greet death. Nobody to step through the window, nobody to use the matress, nobody to use the lonely chair.
Until that night.
The Doctor walked through the forest, his TARDIS parked far away, just to ensure the people he was meeting would be unable to get their hands on it. As he walked through the undergrowth, the Doctor felt the chill in the air nipping at him, and then biting deep into his skin. So, he pulled his coat closer to him, and he sped up the pace with which he walked. He could see the house ahead of him – the house he’d been summoned to.
The house he’d been summoned to by his own people.
By the Time Lords.
He had no idea what for – the rendezvous was secret to everyone, apart from those involved. He had been forbidden to tell any of his loved ones – and now that he had a family, the Doctor was not willing to risk it. He had responsibilities, now. He had to tread carefully, and with every step he took, he would have to consider the extent of the consequences – for Lizzie, for Cioné… and above all, for Iris.
The Doctor was always terrified of meetings with his own people, although he would never dare to admit it. They had a troubled relationship, and whenever he was summoned, there was always that slight, nagging fear that he would not come back. So, before he left, he’d held Iris in his arms, and kissed her. Too small to know what was going on, just a tiny baby, with the whole universe raging above her head. And with that kiss, the Doctor hoped, that he would come back. That he would see his little girl grow up.
He wanted nothing more than that.
They were already there, it seemed, waiting outside the house. Waiting for him. There were a few of them, the guards dressed in a subtler garb to the usual, ornate Gallifreyan attire. This was a meeting that nobody was meant to see, that was meant to pass undetected into history… that would be forgotten about.
Most strikingly, and most intriguingly… one of the guards held a white object, visible in stark contrast to the gloominess of the world around them. As the Doctor got closer, he realised that he was looking at a sort of… cradle. A travel-cot.
At the front of his Gallifreyan reception party, stood a man, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie. He exuded an air of authority, command… and terror. Although the Doctor had never seen him… he knew exactly who the man was.
“I am honoured, it seems.” The Doctor spoke sarcastically, with a mocking tongue. He had nothing but contempt for this man. And at the same time, the Doctor knew he had to play his cards carefully… the man he was faced with, meant that whatever business this was, was going to be very, very serious. The Doctor was also acutely aware that if he got on the wrong side of the person in front of him, it could lead to catastrophic consequences.
“You know the severity of the business at hand,” the man spoke simply, his voice clear, cold, and clipped.
“Faced with you, Not-Applicable? Of course.” The Doctor knew it was him. He was the highest ranking general in the Gallifreyan secret police – and he was known by the name ‘Not-Applicable’, simply as he did not need a name. He was order, running subliminally beneath the streets. He was oppression, keeping an unyielding grasp on everyone who lived on the planet – but a grasp so secret, so subtle, that barely anybody noticed when they were being constantly controlled and manipulated.
But everybody knew who he was, for everybody, barring his superiors, were simply his puppets, and he pulled the strings, so slightly and shrewdly. He operated quietly, delicately, but coldly effectively. There was no fuss, there was no big scene, there was no noise. If Not-Applicable was coming for you, one night, you would be there. And the next, you would simply disappear, as if you had never existed.
“May I ask, what am I doing here?” the Doctor questioned, bristling slightly at Not-Applicable’s lack of any visible response. One might feel safer when he displayed some kind of emotion… or at least, more assured of where the conversation was going.
Not-Applicable gestured to the travel cot.
“This is the child of –”
London, 2018 – 13:30PM
“Hmm, I’m starving,” Cioné began to scoff her way through the giant steak on the platter in front of her, the chips eyeing her up gleefully from the side of the plate. The Doctor looked down at his chicken Caesar salad, and then looked off the balcony of the restaurant, at the passers-by milling around the riverside beneath them. It was a rather beautiful day, and the sun streamed down the tree-lined boulevard, shining on the families strolling past the river, and the content old couple meandering past a boutique, and the group of teenagers huddled around a bench. And then the sun glinted on the sharp surface of the river, making it shimmer in the golden, midday light, and turning it into a mirror – a universe where this riverside happiness was the only world, and where nobody had any demons to worry about.
“I need to tell you something,” the Doctor said, as his eyes turned away from the river to look at his wife. She looked so beautiful, sat there in the sun. And there was part of him that wished he would never have to talk about what he was about to – because then that world could’ve stayed perfect for just a little bit longer. But he knew, in his heart, that that could not be the case. He would have to confront what needed to be confronted, and he couldn’t hold it off longer. If he did, it would grow, it would get darker and scarier. And above all? Cioné had a right to know.
“Oh?” Cioné murmured through a mouthful of chip. They did lovely chips there. That was why she loved it so much. And… she knew that her husband enjoyed it as well. And right then, that was perhaps what they needed, although she didn’t know it. Perhaps being in the restaurant would make it easier. Because the Doctor knew that what he was about to say would shock her. In fact – maybe it would change her opinion of him forever.
Easier for her. Not for him. When she’d seen the look in her husband’s eyes, she wondered whether that was a good thing. She was scared, when she looked up and saw it. For most spouses, the simple words, ‘I need to tell you something’, were ominous enough. Cioné hadn’t been unnerved – but as she’d looked up and seen the look of trepidation, and something… something akin to fear – present in his eyes – that was when she was unnerved.
That was when she knew something was wrong.
“Iris talked about her once,” the Doctor started. Immediately, Cioné’s mind started going. He wasn’t having an affair, was he? No. No, the look on his face suggested something much worse. The Doctor paused, and she could’ve spoken – so often, she would’ve done. Slipped in a quick joke, or something. But the way he looked up at her… this was not a time for joking.
“This girl…,” the Doctor said, his voice trailing off. “Emma.”
Cioné thought about it. She couldn’t put her finger on it…
“Oh!”
Yes. She could remember.
“Yes – that girl Iris and Lizzie got to find out… information or something on Cullengate? They showed me a picture of her – red lippy, pasty, that sort of thing.”
The Doctor nodded grimly. Cioné stopped trying to be so glib. But then her husband didn’t say anything, and so she kept talking. She couldn’t stop herself.
“I just… assumed she was some… private detective, and I thought, well, if she agreed to help the girls’ find out about Cullengate for free, it might be useful in the long run, I – I – I didn’t recognise her –”
The Doctor interrupted her. He spoke clipped, and coldly, and the very words sent a shiver down Cioné’s spine.
“But I did.”
The Doctor couldn’t look at her – his eyes flitted around to every other location possible. He knew that if he did dare to look at his wife, all she’d be able to see was the look of guilt in his eyes. But, Cioné kept staring at him – she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He’d recognised her – he knew who she was, and he hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t he said anything? And, with her eyes locked firmly onto him, eventually his face gravitated back to her.
The Doctor knew he had to look her in the eye. Cioné deserved that.
And as he did look her in the eye, Cioné saw it. A look of confession.
“Who was she?” Cioné asked.
“Emma…,” the Doctor said her name, like he was trying to make sense of it – a word, undefined, that he didn’t really… get. It was, sort of, the truth. But in reality, he was playing for time. Trying to find the words to explain himself, and also trying to delay having to reveal the truth. Emma. The private detective. The consulting assassin. “A long time ago…”
“Just – Doctor, tell me who she is. To you.”
“Do you remember the Master, Cioné?”
Cioné stopped. She knew the Master. Not like the Doctor did, but the Master was one of those Gallifreyans with a reputation. A bit like the Doctor – a renegade Time Lord, insane, hell-bent on destruction – and not just because they liked the destruction. Because they found it beautiful. Always played nicely off the Doctor. One saw the universe and loved it. The other saw the end of it, and loved it.
And, in a way… the Doctor’s best friend. No… something different to that. Something a little bit… more.
But the Master was dead.
“I – I know of them. Why?”
And that’s when Cioné realised. That’s when it all started falling into place. The Master was dead. But a grey, private detective, consulting assassin – ruthless and efficient, independent and… terrifying. It made sense. Maybe that was why Emma had taken such an interest in Iris. A distorted reflection of herself. And… the Doctor and the Master, held in a strange, sickening balance, them both being the close, childhood friends they were… maybe that was why.
Because everyone left a legacy behind.
As Cioné looked up at the Doctor, she was almost certain of what he was going to say.
He spoke.
“Emma… Emma is the Master’s daughter.”
THE EIGHTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES
THE 2017/18 SPECIALS - X3
THE skin tear
WRITTEN BY Peter Darwin
A Long Time Ago
“The Master is dead,” Not-Applicable said, more of a statement than a question, as he knew that the Doctor would have known.
“I know…”
“Before her death, she had a child.”
A shiver crept down the Doctor’s spine, and the air around him felt a little bit colder. Of course… the Doctor and the Master had once done everything together. Why was it a surprise that they would have children at the same time? And yet, the Doctor was the only one left, the legacy of the sibling-like presence in his life lying in front of him in a cradle. He caught sight of the baby, looking up at the black, empty sky, so innocent, so sweet.
And he felt a pang in both his hearts, a strange cocktail of emotions rising through him. It was heartbreaking, that the Master wouldn’t see her child growing up. So, the Doctor felt a strange kind of loyalty, of devotion, to the child. And above all, he felt hopeful, dreaming that he might be able to stop baby going the same way as mother. Someone with an impossible potential… but someone who had wasted it, gorging on death and destruction and pain. The Doctor thought, perhaps, that he could help the little baby, to raise them into what the Master always could have been.
To help them.
“A girl, given the shortened name ‘Emma’. Born not long ago, a similar time to your own infant. Until now, she resided in an orphanage. Your orphanage. However, as she grows… she will need another residence.”
Not-Applicable gestured, and the guard with the cradle stepped forward, and passed it over to the Doctor. He took it, and quickly took the girl into his arms, placing the cradle on the floor. Emma was stirring, and her eyes briefly flickered open. It was like a punch to the gut – as the eyes staring up at him were those of the Master. And yet… they were different in their emptiness, their innocence. An open book, ready to be written. The Doctor, with his Dad-skills, held her and quickly soothed her back to sleep. Now was the time for sleep. The questions could come later.
Not-Applicable asked a simple question.
“Will you protect it?”
As if there were no doubt about it all, the Doctor said, “I’ll try and keep her safe, yes.”
“No,” Not-Applicable replied bitterly, filled with nothing but contempt for the Time Lord and the child opposite. “The universe. Will you protect it from this child?”
Horror spread through the Doctor – Emma was just a baby, she couldn’t harm anything or anyone – and so he held Emma closer, as if protecting her from the people opposite. “What do you mean by that?” the Doctor questioned.
“This is the daughter of the greatest mind, and the greatest psychopath, Gallifrey ever produced. She cannot be allowed to roam free.”
“Why not?” the Doctor protested. Emma was her own person, she wasn’t just a carbon copy of her mother. Who were the Time Lords to think that? Of course genetics had a bearing, but above all, nurture. That was what made a person who they were.
Not-Applicable ignored him. “The girl will reside here, in this property,” he gestured to the crumbling mansion. “She will live alone, and you will visit her regularly. You will watch her, you will ensure that in her mental state, she poses no threat to creation.”
The Doctor gazed grimly at the squalor around him. Each breath he took was a struggle, the putrid gases filling up his lungs and draining the life out of him. And there was barely any life around, the miserable landscape reduced to nothing by death and despair and decay. It was bad enough to leave a young child on their own – especially here, for this was no planet for a child. “I can’t keep her here, especially not alone.”
“The girl will be observed,” Not-Applicable continued. “We will see how a Gallifreyan child survives when left purely to their own devices. You will provide the human element. With your regular visits, we can examine her interactions with others. Furthermore, you will assist in developing communicative and social functions.”
The Doctor shook his head then, knowing that he couldn’t be part of such an… experiment. He looked down at the child in his arms… there was no way he would allow it to happen.
And, as if Not-Applicable had read the Doctor’s mind, he said,
“The Master was the greatest Gallifreyan mind to ever exist. How fitting that her daughter should contribute towards Time Lord science. A Monitor device has been implanted in her head. This allows us to watch her every move. Furthermore, if you ever attempt to take her from this world, we can detonate the Monitor, killing the child in an instant.”
The Doctor would not be part of this. He had not always got along with the Master, obviously. In fact, universes that been born, and had died, over the years of their conflict – but at the heart of it, the Doctor and the Master… they had a strange relationship that perhaps nobody would ever be able to grasp. And now the Master was dead, the Doctor felt a strange loyalty, to ensure that he didn’t… corroborate with such a scheme, a scheme disgracing her memory – the memory that lived on with her children.
Perhaps he felt this now, stronger than he ever would have done before, because he was a father. The lengths he would go, to protect Iris.
The lengths he would go to…
It was then, that he had an idea. A bit crazy, a bit reckless... in fact, perhaps it wasn’t even the right thing to do. But with it, he could save Emma. He could let the Master’s memory live on… and he could help raise her daughter into what the Master always could have been.
“Fine,” the Doctor laid Emma gently down in the cot. “I’ll do it – regular visits, yes? Weekly sound okay?”
“Yes,” said Not-Applicable, admittedly slightly suspicious that the Doctor was so open to the idea. “Be aware, Doctor. If you play games, I will kill you. I will kill your human plaything. I will kill your wife. I will kill your infant daughter.”
“I understand,” the Doctor said, trying to hide his shaking breath. They were only threats, but against his family? That in itself was chilling. And, he knew Not-Applicable’s power, so the words cut deep. He knew he was going to have to be subtle… there was so much at stake here. So much he was risking. And yet… he didn’t have a choice. There was a lonely child, one who needed his help. In fact, the Master was his greatest friend, his greatest enemy, his greatest rival. One might see him as an uncle to Emma.
The Doctor knew what he had to do.
“This is confidential, Doctor,” Not-Applicable instructed. “Just as our meeting. You will communicate about this with nobody.”
“Of course,” the Doctor agreed, knowing he had little choice.
“We are taking no chances with this operation. The ultimate experiment, leaving a Gallifreyan child alone in the wild. There is little, Doctor, that is as secret as this.”
And as if to prove his point, within seconds, Not-Applicable held a gun in his hand. He turned, and within seconds, shot his five guards dead. The ultimate proof, that Not-Applicable was not just a man in control, not just a man who had the power to oppress. He was a man unafraid of doing the dirty work himself. Unafraid of personally exercising that power.
“Remember what I have told you.”
The Doctor didn’t think he would ever forget those threats. And so he watched, with great contempt, as the man strode away into the forest, before picking up the cradle, and holding it close to him.
He turned, to look at the giant, looming, skeleton house, alone in the death, in the dark. He looked down at Emma, and he knew that in his life, there would be little making him feel as guilty as this. A girl, the same age as his daughter… but hidden away, part of an experiment. He scooped Emma out of the cradle, and kissed her forehead.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I truly am.”
He wanted to say something else, he wanted to reassure her – but he didn’t know whether the Time Lords were already watching, so he stayed quiet.
But to himself, he pledged it. Although he could not hate himself more for complying, he kept reassured, in the knowledge that if this went to plan, the experiment would be for nothing. In the long term, the people looking down upon them would be in no doubt, that they had got this wrong.
Holding Emma close, they stepped inside.
***
London, 2018 – 10:30AM
“That’s completely ridiculous, why would he do that? I mean, blowing up the car, that’s just… well, nonsensical!”
Cioné watched the TV from over the rims of her glasses, feeling the bubbling irritation of her daughter beside her.
“Err, because they controlled his whole life, perhaps?” Iris’ sarcasm was evident – in fact, Iris’ sarcasm seemed to balloon whenever watching television with either of his parents. There was just something… naturally irritating, at a parent’s inability to sit and watch television.
Thankfully, her dad seemed to be much more up to speed with it, as he sat in one of the arm chairs, K9 at his feet. “You wouldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” he shook his head.
“Alright!” Cioné raised her arms defensively, as both her husband and daughter mounted their assault at her inability to understand whatever trite they were enduring on the television. Of course, all of it was done in jest, and they were all laughing throughout. General family banter. Just… family.
Lizzie watched on, with a bittersweet smile. It was, perhaps, something she felt regularly, whenever watching the Doctor and his family. The outsider… never a part of any of it, but always watching on. Lizzie had felt a little bit like that, all her life. Perhaps it stemmed from the loneliness, but… who knew? She didn’t need to be alone to feel so, it was a feeling she got, as she trudged through existence… that even with people around her, she was alone. It wasn’t a thing that bugged her constantly, a lot of the time, she could laugh along with the Doctor, and Iris, and Cioné, and feel as if she were part of them. But there were moments, where she would zoom out – and it would be as if she were looking in on the world.
That was why Leo had been so completely wonderful. Leo Akram made her feel… not outside. He made her feel as if she were living, as if she were there. He was sat munching miserably (a miserableness quite part of his personality) through a bowl of cereal. Leo smiled up at her, and he looked solitary, and by-himself, but… he seemed as if he were happy, simply because she was there. That was the weird thing about loneliness. You didn’t need to be alone to experience it. In fact, Lizzie was quite comfortable being alone, she loved it, it was her favourite place to be. But when immersed in a group of people… that was when she felt saddest. As if everyone were simply passing her by. Often solitude was a good place for her, but… occasionally, she wanted something more.
And Leo had helped with that. The two of them, against the universe. It had all got so much easier since he’d been around, there had been so much less of that… distance between her and everyone else. But it would still strike her – after all, there were wounds Lizzie simply couldn’t heal for good.
“Look, come on, both of you, out.”
When Lizzie looked up, she saw Iris herding her parents off the sofa, and guiding them towards the door. She was putting the plan into action, as they had agreed. Granted, Lizzie wasn’t sure how good Iris’ excuse for them leaving was – a rogue Vervoid in a Victoria Secret outlet – but it would do. And Cioné seemed quite willing to go – knowing her, she’d probably guessed what was going on.
“Are you… sure?” the Doctor, admittedly rather reluctantly, backed out of the door. Cioné trailed behind him, trying to look over her husband’s shoulders, as if trying to salvage whether her guesses were correct.
“Yep, absolutely, please, go, enjoy being in love, or whatever,” Iris walked further and further, until her mother and father were retreating down the stairs. Both of them knew Iris was lying, because Iris was a rubbish liar. But both of them seemed willing to comply, perhaps because they were naïve, or because they were both aware that arguing with their daughter was not something either of them had the willpower to do. “Okay bye!” Iris waved, slamming the flat’s front door in their faces. They heard the door lock, and then that was that. They were trapped outside.
The Doctor reached into his pocket, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. Cioné, however, quickly put her hand on his arm and lowered it. “Darling, they’re busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Organising our anniversary party. Come on!”
“Right…”
“Yes, I know. Anniversary parties, not our thing. But it’s lovely for them to be so wonderful, so let’s leave them to it. We should have lunch?” she suggested, taking the Doctor by the arm as they walked out onto the street. What she didn’t mention, was that she had ulterior motives herself. Something she needed to discuss with him.
“Sounds wonderful. There’s that riverside place we tried once?”
“Absolutely, let’s go.”
***
What Cioné had not realised, was that the anniversary party was a half-ruse in itself. Yes, of course they were going to be giving them the most spectacular anniversary shindig ever, but they were also going to be getting up to something a little bit untoward. Leo had been shepherded in as lookout, and he gestured to them when the Doctor and Cioné were turning at the end of the road, making their way to the underground station.
“Awesomesauce,” Iris suddenly leapt off the sofa, and bounded over to the far corner of the kitchen. There, she tapped thin-air, and the air beside her rippled, the faint outline of a blue box shimmering into existence.
“Invisibility. Cute, huh?”
“Erm, yeah,” Leo nodded along, his love of sci-fi fascinated by the spectacle. He had other things on his mind – he was about to spend the day with Kym Gomez, planning an anniversary party with the terrifying girl from next door who had nearly deafened him several times. And it was as if on cue, that she burst into the flat.
“YOU CALLED THE RIGHT GAL,” Kym screamed, striding into the flat with an admirable enthusiasm. “What’ve we got so far, guys?”
Lizzie, as she took her coat from the back of the chair, sheepishly gestured to the small bits of planning that they’d done for the anniversary. “Erm… that.”
When Kym danced over and quickly scanned over the documentation, she turned to Lizzie, a look of terror plastered across her face.
“What the hell is this.” Kym said it not as a question, but a vacant, terrified statement.
“Planning…,” Lizzie’s voice drained away as she said it, as her lack of understanding of planning big events became evident, and she felt guilty for clearly leaving so much for Kym to do.
“I can’t plan with this, Lizzworth,” she side-lined the papers, and whipped out her phone – the ultimate party-planning device. Kym was quite certain that with such a powerful device in her hands, she would be able to provide the most ultimate outer space event thingy for her favourite outer-space married couple. Lizzie’s documentation was feeble in comparison to the might of Kym’s party planning brain. “We need to start again,” she declared, before her voice trailed off. “Oh…..”
Lizzie looked at Kym, who had just looked at Leo for the first time.
“He’s adorbs,” Kym muttered wistfully.
“Oh, erm, er…,” Leo spluttered, like a rabbit caught in headlights, before stumbling into the kitchen.
“He’s beautiful,” Kym repeated, her eyes wide, as if struggling to contemplate how attractive the awkward little nerd guy was.
You know,” Iris said, leading back against the TARDIS. “You talk, and all I hear is bluuuuuuuuuurrghhhh.”
“Right, yeah,” Kym got her mind back on the job. This party was not going to plan itself. In fact, although she would not admit it to Lizzie, Kym believed that this party would work better if Kym were the sole orchestrator of events. Lizzie was not a sociable person, and her influence might not be hugely appreciated in the light of such a deeply complex task. “Babes, I can handle this from here. You both go do whatever it is you have to do.”
A look of trepidation spread across Lizzie’s face, as she tentatively walked towards the TARDIS, looking back at the flat in its current state, savouring the memory of her lovely ordered place, before Kym did whatever she was going to do to it. Of course, her stomach was a pit of nerves anyway, churning and twisting, as she knew what was about to happen. But leaving all of her possessions in a flat which Kym was going to be ‘working her magic on’, was also a little bit terrifying.
“Okay well… I don’t know how long we’ll be. Actually, maybe a while. I’m not sure, but… good luck, yeah?”
Kym seemed extremely nonchalant about the whole thing. Leo was stood beside her, paralysed with fear – even more so when Kym yanked her arm around him. Lizzie caught Leo’s eye, and she struggled not to laugh at her boyfriend’s awkwardness, which reminded her so much of herself.
“Don’t look at my laptop,” Iris spun into the TARDIS, with Lizzie following her close behind.
***
At the end of the universe, where all the planets and the stars and the people had stopped, there was Mountain.
No determiners have been dropped. The mountain on Mountain was so huge, and vast, and gigantic, that it is the origin of the word ‘mountain’. Everyone calls mountains ‘mountains’, because of the name of the planet. The extensive, immense mountain on the planet’s surface, occupied the entire world with its huge, infinitesimal rockiness, before peaking at a point higher than all of the peaks in the Milky Way put together.
As it lies at the edge of everything, looking out over the void, that boundless darkness, where nothing ever has or ever will live, one can stand and feel so tiny and insignificant and random in the face of the universe. People who looked over the edge of the world often felt so miniature, it would strike them how desolate, and solitary, the whole universe is. In an infinite plane of blackness and emptiness and nothingness… there we are. And in the scale of all that emptiness… well, the universe is nothing. And the people who watch the void often felt so small.
On that day, upon Mountain, a band of weary, ragtag, patchwork travellers trudged through the snows. They wore torn clothes and muddy furs, and some covered their heads in bandanas, while some wore cloaks, the hoods pulled tightly over their heads. Their supplies were carried upon an armada of braying donkeys being led behind – there were less of them than they’d started off with. A few of them had been slaughtered, to provide food for the expedition.
So, it would come as no surprise the times were hard. The blizzard had stopped, after raging all night and all day. Several of their people had died last night, the frostbite driving deep into them – not just their physical bodies, but their minds. The cold would tear the skin apart, and from that, it would creep into the mind. And when the cold was in the mind – often that was curtains for the sufferer. Gradually, their willpower, their desire, their hope, to carry on, would freeze, just like their body. And when the hope was drained… they often gave up, allowing the ice to take them.
The days were bleak, the nights were bleaker. There was a thick sense of depression and misery pungent in the air. What had started off as a joyous, optimistic adventure, had quickly turned into something rife with upset and despair. None of them wanted to continue, as under the light of the stars, and under the sight of everything that didn’t exist, they all believed they were insignificant.
But still they trudged on – for what other choice was there? They could kick over and die now, or they could kick over and die later, when perhaps, they’d discovered something interesting.
And perhaps, it was that night, that something interesting was about to happen.
One of the men beckoned the travellers over, and quickly they’d all waded over the snows and crags and rocks to a snowy bank, over which they saw something quite majestic.
A vast plateau of rock stretched out far away from them, like the polished marble surface of a kitchen counter – but in this case, it was enormous, perhaps the size of a football pitch. Spaced evenly along the sides of the flatness were outcroppings of rock, with eloquent carvings chiselled into each.
Their leader, a broad-shouldered, gruff man in his 50s called Urshak, gestured for them to step backwards. This was his expedition, he had led them through these tough times – so, he believed it was only right that he should be the first person to examine this marvel of nature. He knew what it was, of course. As someone who had dedicated their lives to dragging expeditions to the most distant, most remote parts of the universe, he knew what he was talking about.
“This is the Table of the Gods,” Urshak spoke, his voice trembling in the cold. He knelt down, and ran his hand over the smoothness of the marble. “The legends tell of a God, who awoke from an age-old slumber, and destroyed an army of heroes.”
“Yeah, sorry, that was me,” called out a voice at the back of the parade. It definitely wasn’t the voice of any of the men Urshak had recruited, and when he turned, he saw the figure pull down their hood, revealing a thick, flowing mane of brunette hair – it was, god forbid, a girl!
“It was New Year’s Day,” the girl continued. “The night had been rowdy, I did apologise, but I told the High Priestess to be careful about leaving the rest of the chocolate out.”
“She did,” spoke another woman, pulling down her hood. This one was different… shier, nervous – but still, definitely not one of the men Urshak had recruited. “I was there,” she added.
The first woman continued.
“And if your next story is about the High Commander of the Guard and his humiliation, that was my mother. Strip poker.”
Gasps erupted from around the troops, who had spent so long plodding up this almighty mountain surface, only to be confronted by such idiocy amongst their own ranks.
“Yes,” continued the woman. “It was just as traumatic for me.”
Urshak growled, not pleased with being taken for a fool. “Who are you?”
The second woman spoke, and as she did, a chill, very different to that of the usual biting cold, ran through all of their bones.
“I’m Lizzie Darwin, this is Iris, and we’re the one hope you’ve got of surviving tonight.”
***
Anybody would call her a miracle, but only those aware of the remits of Gallifreyan physiology would know it to be anything but. The baby, left alone on that forgotten, stinking world, with the howling wolves outside, shrouded always in darkness, with nothing to eat, nothing to learn from, nothing to understand… and yet somehow, she grew. For Gallifreyans seem to just… push on. No matter how extreme the conditions are, no matter how close to death they may be, the genetic make-up of that age-old species seemed to always have survival as its priority… as if, even when the individual wanted nothing more than to give up, their bodies forced them to plough onwards.
The baby survived. Crawling through the mud and the slime, she somehow just… existed, no matter the force of the conditions against her. In the freezing cold, in the rain that slashed through the empty shell of the house she lived in, in the gales and hurricanes and thrashing winds, the child would be resilient, never giving up and never giving in – as a child, her Gallifreyan nature inspiring nothing but dogged determination and grit. She lived in filth and squalor, and yet somehow, she was impervious to disease or infection.
It was not long before the baby was discovered by a wolf. A mother herself, the wolf began to feed the child with her wolf’s milk, allowing the child to grow stronger, and bigger. And eventually, the child would slither through the muck, biting at any insects daring to poke their heads through the soil. The wolf kept feeding her, and child kept growing, kept adapting, kept understanding, until she could crawl, and her tiny hands would turn through the muck, and grab insects and worms for her to chew on.
Eventually, there came a day when something changed within the child. It was sucking away at the wolf, and then with no forewarning, with no deep desire or knowing of what she was doing, she reacted. Perhaps it was a natural, primal instinct. Perhaps it was genetics, or the child’s personality, beginning to poke through. Perhaps, having lived the first months of her life in such brutal, harsh conditions, something had stuck with her, a knowing that to survive, she would have to adapt.
Therefore… now she was strong enough, she had no choice.
The child lurched forward, and dug her teeth in the underbelly of the animal, ploughing her teeth into the wolf’s flesh and sinew and muscle. And then, she tore, a giant chunk of meat unplugging itself from the body, and into Emma’s jaw. Hot, sticky blood sloshed from the wound, splashing all over the child, as she rolled out of the way, the wolf’s body dropping to the ground with a thud, and a slight spatter, as its belly sprawled in its own blood.
All it could bear to do was raise its head slightly, and look around her. Emma listened as the wolf whimpered and whined, but there was no temptation to stop, no desire to let the wolf lived. There was something driving her, telling her that she had to go through with it – and it was so natural that Emma didn’t even stop to consider the processes behind it.
Emma tossed the meat chunk to the ground, and placed her tiny hand on the thick wolf’s neck, clamping it to the ground, before she thrust her jaw into the wolf’s back, taking another mass of raw, bloody meat. The blood gushed from the wolf, faster than the black and murky rivers rushing not far away, and it covered her hands, and her white tunic, and it lathered in her hair and made it matted and sticky.
She was perhaps little more than what the rest of the universe would refer to as a two-year-old, and from that moment, Emma knew she’d made an enemy of the wolves. But times had changed, and something within her, whether consciously or subconsciously, had torn into that animal. She needed meat, she needed food, she needed to be stronger, her Gallifreyan body forcing her onwards, setting the steaming chemicals in her blood alight, spurring a vitriol and venom in her blood, making her need meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. And the wolf had been there, and she’d ripped it apart – and now, she made her way over the animal, her mouth gorging piece by piece, methodically and effectively.
Regularly, the Doctor would come and see the child. As instructed, he would carry out whatever the Time Lords asked of him – he was involved in nothing too inhumane, he would simply carry out the cognitive and motor tests that the Time Lords required. He would teach the child basic skills, so she didn’t merely become feral – so she would become, in effect, a normal person. Someone who would talk and communicate. Of course, that was far from normal, and the Doctor knew it. He was thankful, however, in a vile selfish kind of way, that this was the extent of his role. For he was he was complacent to the inhumanity. He was allowing this to happen.
Perhaps it was because of this, the Doctor would check on the little girl more often than was necessary. Partly out of guilt, perhaps. Carrying on with whatever sick experiment this was. Allowing this little girl to grow up in such bitter and disgusting conditions, while he had his lovely, beautiful family on stand-by.
But for whatever twisted reason in his head, he kept going. Perhaps it was out of knowing the experiment would continue regardless, perhaps it was out of fear. There was the core behind his guilt – but what scared him most of all, was that he had felt guiltier about smaller things. He could feel it, the cruel streak emerging within him, now he had things to lose. Now he had Cioné, Iris, Lizzie. They’d say they didn’t need protecting – but the Doctor loved them too much to care. He would do this, whether he wanted to or not, no matter how twisted it made him.
And so there he would be, prowling like a wolf through the forest, to that old house where the little girl raised herself.
Just like a wolf, he was scared of the girl as well. Just as he’d been terrified of her mother.
That night, he pushed the rickety old door, and caught by a faint, gloomy draught, it swung with an eerie gentile, gently thudding against the exposed brickwork surrounding the doorframe. As he stepped inside, his coattails trailing behind him, he heard the leaves crunch and the twigs snap beneath his feet, and he felt the wet, slimy mud stick to his shoes. He squelched through, and turned into the chamber he always found the little girl.
It was a former drawing room – once upon a time, it had probably been grand and ornate, with chandeliers dangling from the ceilings, held up by the strength of their proprietor’s status. With huge bayed windows, overlooking the extensive forests expanding around them. With handcraft furniture, fitted bespoke for the chamber itself. With sofas fashioned from exquisite material, maybe with old paintings hanging delicately from the walls.
All had crumbled now. There was nothing. No light, no heart, no warmth. The darkness and the cold streamed in through the broken window frames, and the sole furniture, of one table, and two chairs, was the sole extent of Emma’s possessions. As if she ever used them – most of the time, the girl would eat and drink on the floor, just as she slept on that grimy old mattress.
As the Doctor turned into the room, he saw her.
She would be like this a lot, hauling her mattress to the centre of the drawing room, and sitting on it as if she were meditating. Emma would face the windows, and she would close her eyes, allowing the cold to blow ominously past her, and knowing, but not seeing, that ahead of her, there was something more. Stuff that she didn’t understand. She would grasp how tiny she was then – except, she never understood that’s what the feeling was.
The Doctor would see her as he walked in, staring away from him, out of the window. Her build was that of a young child, perhaps 5, maybe 6. The age of Gallifreyans, however, was hard to grasp, time moving in an entirely different and malleable way.
“I… know,” Emma said, without turning around. Her words were thin and brittle – she was only just learning to talk, only just able to string together the words and occasionally sentences she needed.
“Good evening, Emma,” the Doctor spoke clearly and eloquently. It was important, so that Emma could pick up the words, pick up the way he said them, the way his mouth formed them. She didn’t turn, so the Doctor walked up beside her. In the cold, her skin had turned paler than milk, giving her the complexion of a living corpse. “How are you?”
“... living.”
The Doctor wasn’t sure if that were the case. But, he acknowledged her remark, and sat down beside her. He never used the chairs, he never liked feeling superior to her.
“Emma,” the Doctor reached into his pocket, and grabbed a jar. As he took it out, it shone a strange light in the room around them, illuminating the dark and filling it with a buzzing, flickering light, reminiscent of the strange balls of light whizzing and dashing about in their glass confines. “Do you remember the test we did? We’re going to try it again, if that’s okay.”
Emma didn’t respond… but she never did. It was as if she knew something were wrong, something with the very nature of her being didn’t quite cohere. The Doctor gave the jar a shake, and the particles gave an extra fast ‘whizz’ – before he unscrewed the lid.
It stuck, just slightly – but with a firm yank, the lid popped off in his hands, and the blue particles began to fly and dance and burst and sing in front of them. It was a peculiar sight, in the death and the emptiness of the chamber, to see such light and life in front of them.
Emma’s eyes opened.
She watched them coldly, oblivious by their beauty. This world of rot and degeneration had warped her perception of anything many would refer to as beautiful. Instead… Emma didn’t seem to understand beauty. Or… she saw beauty as something else. Whatever it was, the whirring, popping blue lights didn’t faze her, and her eyes merely followed them around, whooshing and nipping all around her head, staying strictly focused on her and not flying anywhere else within the room.
It wasn’t just ‘as if’ Emma was keeping them close – Emma was keeping them close.
The zapping blue lights were chronon particles… time, hurtling and rushing around Emma’s head. They exposed Gallifreyan children to chronon particles, seeing how they reacted, seeing what they did – often as a test, a measure of seeing the intelligence of the child. Not just the intelligence, however… something more, there was a sort of indescribable gift that the chronon particles could measure. One’s manipulation of the particles was often used to see the strength of mind of the individual being tested.
And the Doctor was forever amazed with Emma’s results. As they danced in front of her, illuminating her chilling face with an ethereal blue light, they seemed to be drawn to her, they seemed to hover and buzz around her head, and none at all would stray elsewhere, as if they were truly captivated by Emma’s presence… or as if Emma had made them captivated by her presence.
Then, the chronon particles divided, and they divided again, until four times the number of little blue lights were bringing light to the room. Seemingly, Emma did it all unfazed, her eyes staring vacantly as the specks and spots of light hopped around before her very eyes.
To her, the chronon particles were malleable, they could be warped and made in her design. She divided the atoms with a brainpower and willpower that the Doctor had never seen before.
These weren’t the only tests – the Doctor tried them all. Chronon particles, subatomic restructuring, radiation envelopes, dimensional transfiguring. But all of them showed the same. Emma displayed an impossible mental strength, something unheard of in the universe. Of course, it hadn’t been honed, it hadn’t been perfected, but her current intelligence, and the potential intelligence, was almost impossible. Her mental power was extraordinary, perhaps destined, when mastered, to be stronger than that of her mother. In fact, for many in the upper echelons of the experiment, there was no doubt about this.
Emma was the greatest Time Lord mind to ever exist.
“How do you feel, Emma?”
The Doctor asked the question, specifically wanting to engage an emotional response. The little girl didn’t seem to understand feelings or emotions, there weren’t ever any words for them, never any sign for them. There were no tests that could communicate the power behind emotions… nothing that could ever examine anything so powerful. Emma’s brainpower was all well and good, and perhaps it was all that mattered to the Time Lords… but the Doctor wanted something more. He wanted to know how she felt.
There was a pause, as if Emma were cycling through everything she’d learned. The Doctor reached into his pockets, and took out a series of cards, laying them on the dusty ground in front of her. Each of them had a smiley-face on them… but not always smiley – with a variety of expressions, each perhaps trying to explain emotions to a young child.
Perhaps it was a futile job, trying to explain such an… impossible thing. And cards were even more useless. How could one liken something so deep, complex, and overwhelming, to a simple picture? But… that was how it worked. And the Doctor looked at the cards, almost envious, wishing that one of the faces would explain him. He thought this whenever he was with the little girl, and none of them ever worked – he was always a cocktail of all sorts of feelings, some on the cards, some of them not.
Emma didn’t seem to like the cards either. Her eyes were scanning over them, but none of them seemed to be able to explain. Emma was concentrating now, in a way she hadn’t been before, her eyes completely fixed on trying to work out this unsolvable puzzle. And eventually, the calculations, the analysis, all of it began to wind up inside her little head. And perhaps she had found a word.
“Alone.”
The words were a punch to the Doctor’s gut. Emma’s expression was unmoving, unwavering, but the Doctor had to steady himself. It had been alright, for a while – to his own horror, he’d been able to divorce the person from his task. But now it was merging, he couldn’t stop himself from acknowledging that Emma was thinking, feeling, living, breathing. Now it rose up at him, like flames licking away. Loneliness… something nobody should ever have to speak of – and something a child should never, ever understand.
For this was not a thing that ever should have happened.
And yet it did, and he was part of it.
***
Iris strode up to the vast plateau of rock, tossing a stone up and down in her hand. Without a second’s hesitation, she meandered across it, her snow-boots slapping against the smoothened surface. It was strange, perhaps, that so exposed to the elements, the rock hadn’t been weathered. That was why it looked so out of place on the top of the mountain – it looked so man-made. It was as if there were something, keeping that plateau of marble as perfect as it was.
She could feel the men behind her, bristling as she got closer and closer. They seemed to be awfully scared. Iris didn’t care. When she was a bit further back from the middle, she gripped the stone in her hand, and tossed it forwards.
Before it hit the ground, however, it disappeared.
Iris heard Urshak behind her, and his voice trembled. Perhaps from the cold – but most likely from the fear. “Where – where did it go?” he mumbled.
“That’s a wormhole,” Iris gestured up to it. “Pretty neat sci-fi, really. Except, through that wormhole, is a prison, established by this evil church lot. The Qlerics. ‘Religious liberty’ gone mad… they’re allowed to open courts and jails and start trying people.”
A younger traveller dared to speak up, his voice slightly muffled by the furs he’d wrapped tightly around him – tighter so, as if he believed they could provide him some protection. “Who’s in the prison?”
Iris eyed the wormhole closely. “The most dangerous woman in the universe…”
Suddenly, half the men around them descended into fits of laughter.
“What harm can a woman do to us?” Urshak growled, heaving in breaths through his hysterical cackling.
It was at that moment, that from the sky, a bolt of lightning seemed to burst through the wormhole, and struck down three of the travellers, turning their once-freezing bodies into smouldering corpses.
Iris shuddered when she saw the bodies. Good to know Emma didn’t take lightly to casual misogyny. Even so, that almighty display of power was a little bit unnerving. Well – very unnerving, in fact.
Lizzie gently stepped away from the travellers, and made her way up onto the plateau with Iris, who was just taking the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket, having pinched it from her father earlier. She pointed it up to the plateau, and with a quick burst of energy, the wormhole seemed to burst to life in front of them.
“Good luck, you lot!” Iris waved at the travellers, before stepping through the wormhole. Lizzie followed her.
When the wormhole closed, Urshak and his expedition glanced around at each other, spellbound by whatever supernatural forces at work around them.
When Lizzie and Iris blinked, they were in a corridor. It was cold, grey, and metal – and at the far end, were two double doors. However – there were two Qlerics, stood in front of it, in their frog-like glory. They wore their flowing, red robes, the colour of blood juxtaposed coldly against the steel of the corridor. With her usual confidence, Iris paraded up to them.
“We’ve got visitors rights,” she held up a card she’d obtained, after her contact with Emma. The Qleric who examined it seemed impressed, and so he turned and pushed open the double doors.
The chamber beyond them was large, with a great glass cube in the centre. It was almost… too high-security for it to be real, as with that thick glass and the thick metal walls around them, escape seemed impossible. There was a real claustrophobia to the Qleric prison, isolated away in a distant dimension, in a strange metal box – with a strange glass box in front of them.
And she was there. Inside the glass cube, dressed in a stained, murky grey outfit, Emma sat watching them from her cold, metal chair. There was a table in front of her, and two chairs behind it – almost as if this situation had been prepared for especially. The glass box was surrounded by machinery, computers, panels, flickering lights and scanners. When Lizzie caught sight of the heart-rate monitor, doubled up due to the binary-vascular system, that was when she knew. Emma was being… examined, perhaps, from inside the box. The most striking thing was that another heart-rate monitor pulsated just beside it, one displaying the simple heart-rate of a human being. A chill ran down Lizzie’s spine… there was someone else there… someone nearby.
And yet, she couldn’t see them.
The robed figures, with their bulbous, frog-like heads, padded over to the glass door in the side of the cube, and placing a hand on it, the door slid open. A wide-open exit, and yet Emma sat tight in her seat… it was as if she didn’t want to escape. What could be so terrifying it deterred one from seizing the chance of a way out? It made Lizzie reluctant to enter – but Iris, with her usual lack of fear, meandered casually through into the box. Lizzie took a quick sideways glance to the nearby Qleric, who seemed unbothered by her concern. So… she stepped in.
The door sealed behind them, and Lizzie felt her heart pound harder than before. The Qlerics could shut the two of them in there, keep them trapped with Emma. Emma, who didn’t say anything. Emma’s, whose eyes blazed a piercing green, and whose eyes stared hard at Lizzie and Iris.
She was, without doubt, terrifying.
It wasn’t as if Lizzie had any reason to be scared of her. But… she was. There was a rawness to Emma, a brutal honesty. There was something cold, an uncaringness. At the same time, there was a careful precision to every look, every slight movement. Emma planned out everything she did with exact calculation, as if she always had the final result in mind, and new fully what steps to realise to get there.
Iris tried to ignore Emma’s looks, by causally strolling over and plonking herself down on one of the chairs opposite Emma. Lizzie walked over and did the same, and as she did so, she could see Emma with eyes surveying her. Just as Lizzie could read people, Emma seemed to be able to do the same, as if her look was an examination, a study, perhaps.
“You found out I was here?” Emma asked, looking directly at Lizzie and Iris. It was quite off-putting, especially for Lizzie, who always found it awkward looking straight at people during conversations.
“The messages were hard to avoid,” Iris shrugged.
“That was the point,” Emma sat perfectly straight, her hands clasped in an arch on the table. As she spoke, she was motionless, the only movement coming from her mouth.
“What do you need, anyway? Saving?” Iris looked around her at the Qlerics, as they paced up and down beside the cube. There was no way they could get Emma out of there.
“No. I simply want to talk.”
“But you never speak, like… ever?” Iris mused. In all of their conversations, everything had felt so… scripted.
Emma’s head tilted in a mocking, bitter way. “That’s because unlike you, instead of spouting white noise, I actually care about what I say. Words matter, Iris. They are our sole vessels of communication. Whether spoken, or written.”
“I don’t always think so,” Lizzie said, with the aim of steering this so far quite aimless conversation back on course. “We could’ve left you here.”
Emma gave a simple, casual response. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
It was as if she truly felt safe in the knowledge, that Lizzie and Iris would come. Information on Cullengate, of course they would.
And something else. And they didn’t know. As Emma looked at them, she could see that Lizzie and Iris didn’t understand. It was almost as if Iris and Emma were cousins, and Emma doubted very much that the Doctor’s family had been open and honest with each other.
“Do you know who I am, Iris?” Emma asked simply.
Iris looked at her blankly. Then shook her head. “Noope.”
Emma nodded slowly.
“Well. I know you’re that pale weirdo who gave Lizzie her business card.”
Emma was right in her suspicions. They didn’t know. Besides. She could read it in their faces.
So she continued.
“Do you care, Iris?”
Emma’s words were ambiguous, so much so they seemed to strike Iris with a wave of confusion.
“Care for what?” she eventually responded.
“Do you care?” Emma simply repeated herself, which seemed to fill Iris with nothing but irritation.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re –”
“You’re naïve.”
Iris was about to protest again, but she didn’t, Emma’s words stopped her in her tracks. It was true. She wasn’t that old, she barely knew anything about the universe. But asking her if she cared? That was nothing short of an insult. Of course she cared.
“I prefer the term ‘youthful’,” Iris responded, a sarcastic grin on her face.
Emma seemed unfazed, and uncaring. “I think, in fact, you know nothing.”
Iris was young… and Emma could see that. She could see the truth behind the girl – the product of a warm, cosy, familial upbringing. Someone who had lived comfortably, who had gotten the best start in life. Someone who perhaps didn’t have anything much to worry about. And yet… someone who had become so flawed because of it.
“A lovely little family,” Emma mocked, a sardonic look on her face.
“It was, actually,” Iris nodded, her mind drifting back to cosy evenings sat in front of the fire, the television on, with Dad, Mum, and Lizzie. K9 would be sat at her feet, and she would sip her hot chocolate, and she would be content. Those were the days.
“And yet… how much has it ruined you?” Emma’s sardonic smile twisted into a grim, mocking expression. “You were almost… isolated from reality? Your family was awash with lies. Perhaps that’s why you’re borderline Asperger’s when it comes to talking about how you feel –”
Iris no longer looked so self-assured, she no longer seemed to carry herself with an unbreakable air of impenetrability. It seemed as if her walls were breaking down, the walls she so often carried herself with.
“Why are you telling me this?” Iris looked down, and noticed her hands gripping tightly on the side of the table. When she shifted one, it was trembling. Lizzie noticed, and she placed a hand gently on top of it to calm her down.
“Because your father can’t get away with what he’s done.”
That’s when Iris and Lizzie both stopped abruptly.
Get away with what?
Had they known each other?
There was something dark inside Emma, it was clear in the cold, cutting way she put herself forward. And Iris knew that she couldn’t hide from the truth. She couldn’t stay in her nice little bubble forever, and if Emma was living with that darkness inside of her… Iris couldn’t hide from it either.
“What do you mean – what did he do? Wait – do you know him?”
“I’m an honest person,” Emma shrugged. “I don’t keep secrets.”
“Tell me,” Iris spoke plainly. Lizzie sat shocked beside her, stunned by Iris’ sudden forwardness – but she didn’t show it. Iris had her reasons, after all. As she looked up at Emma, she wouldn’t be… lesser than her. She wouldn’t take this truth simply because Emma was forcing it on her out of bitterness – she would take the truth knowing that it was the right thing to do. Because it was the grown-up thing to do.
If Emma was shocked, she didn’t show it – the only evidence was in a slight pause, longer than normal. With Emma, every beat felt organised, regimented. And that brief spell of silence didn’t – and that was when Iris knew she’d shocked her.
“While you were growing up with your lovely little family, in your nice warm TARDIS with the whole universe ahead of you… your father kept me on a cold, distant, planet, buried somewhere at the back of the universe. He dropped by, every so often. He monitored me, at request of the Time Lords.”
Iris’ breathing increased, she tried to slow it, to make sure her… fear didn’t seem evident. But it was a horrific revelation… that during those wonderful moments, when they’d been together as a family, her Dad had been keeping a dark secret. She tried to swallow her pain, but Emma continued, and as she did so, it became harder.
“No offence,” Iris said, trying to steady her shaky voice. “But… you’re a random girl. Why – why would he do that to you?”
“I don’t want you to ever forget that, Iris. I want you to know how I suffered. And all that time your father could’ve saved me… I want you to know that he didn’t. That he had his little family to keep him going every day, while I was alone.”
“What do you want, then?” Iris spoke quickly. “Revenge?”
She tried to seem unwavering, she didn’t want the bitter girl to win. But… at the same time, she was disgusted by the actions of her father. And when she next saw him, she’d give him hell because of it.
“I’m not doing this out of revenge. I’m not doing this out of pity. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
That was the sentence that truly shook her. Because Emma was right. It was the right thing to do – people should know about what her Dad did. And it was good that Iris knew as well… she couldn’t keep living in her cosy childhood bubble, when people like Emma were out there. People who were lonely, people who had lived on the verge of death, every single day.
“I can see it, Iris. The way this is changing you. You… finally realising that things aren’t going to end happily. It’s fine, it’s called growing-up. But finally… you’re seeing how twisted the world is. It’s not always nice, and it’s not always sweet. And I think… you’re going to find out more about that, very soon.”
It was this moment that Lizzie decided to speak. After all… Iris might not understand that, but Lizzie most certainly did, and she was sick of Emma’s patronising act – even if she agreed with Emma’s sentiments about unmasking the Doctor’s lies.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Find out more, very soon… the words were ominous, chilling… and Lizzie was quite certain Emma knew something that they didn’t. “And, look – I understand where you’ve been, Emma. Truly… I – I do. I want to help you –”
“Elizabeth,” Emma quickly dismissed her. “You can’t help me.”
“But, I think –”
“You can’t.” And for once, Emma bristled, she seemed to display some kind of… agitation, or irritation, at Lizzie’s remarks. There was a silence, while Lizzie retreated back into her seat, before Emma spoke again. “I’ve learned that when you’re lonely, nobody comes. Never.”
“They did,” Lizzie smiled at Emma. She did so truthfully – because in the end, she had found a family.
And yet, Emma did not seem convinced. For as she looked at Lizzie, Emma saw something that perhaps… reminded her of herself. A loneliness, one that simply couldn’t be solved. Some people were naturally lonely souls. Some people would feel like outsiders.
“But you’re still alone,” Emma said.
It seemed, however, that unlike Emma, Lizzie didn’t think that meant they had to keep themselves isolated. And perhaps, she was lonely. Perhaps she always would be. But not so much so, that it would ever hurt her.
“Mmhm,” Lizzie nodded. “But I’m happy. Kinda. And I know that doesn’t mean anything. It’s easy for me to say that when I’ve come through things.”
“Then maybe you just got lucky,” Emma shrugged. She certainly didn’t. And she didn’t think she ever would. But what would be the point in ever getting close to anyone? All her life, people had stabbed her in the back. If she placed her trust in anybody, they would turn on her. What would be the point of ever getting close to someone if that was always the outcome? Everyone would tell her to be optimistic, to tell her to have hope. But so far, whenever she’d done that, it had never ended well.
So what was the point? The universe had proved its darkness to her, and so she had resigned herself to it.
And as Lizzie looked at her, she saw someone rather similar to herself. Someone who the world had twisted, someone who had been manipulated by her experiences. Someone who had been lonely. But unlike her, Emma was different. She’d become resentful towards the world. She’d become bitter. Lizzie didn’t blame her for that. Not at all – people dealt with trauma in different ways. And, in fact, Lizzie had been bitter as well, for a while. She’d hated the universe, she’d hated living. It was only when she’d met Leo, when she’d stood on that bridge and looked out at the stars, that she’d begun to see the value of existence again.
Lizzie had misinterpreted Emma. Normally, she could read people well, but for once, she’d failed. Emma wasn’t cold. Or at least – if she was, it wasn’t a bad thing. The universe changed people, bad things changed people. Who was Lizzie to judge her for that? There was no perfect way to cope – to say that would be to say that the cause was perfect. When… none of it was. They were all just strange, hopeless wanderers, in the end.
In fact… Lizzie had so much respect for the girl opposite. Perhaps she was still haunted… but she was still here. And that was quite wonderful.
It was then, that Iris spoke tentatively. She too seemed to have gained a respect for Emma. Perhaps Emma did despise her father – and rightly so. Iris would be blind not to see the reasons behind that. Dad wasn’t a perfect human being. Far from it. She’d known it for a while – but it was only now that it truly settled in.
“What is it you want?” Iris asked. It still didn’t make sense. She couldn’t make it work in her head – Emma had been an entirely random girl. And yet… the Doctor had met her before. But maybe that was why Emma had found Lizzie – because she wanted to get closer to the man who had been complicit in holding her captive.
“I wanted you to know,” Emma continued. “And then… I have plans. I can’t promise you’ll like them. But… they’re going to happen.”
“And I’m guessing, that’s what you meant when you were musing over me finding out about the cruelty of the universe, or whatevs?”
Although she wouldn’t admit it, Emma’s words had scared Iris. What she’d said about her finding out about… how twisted the world was. All her life, she’d been kept… well – she’d been safe. And so, the thought of that all coming to an end made her nervous. Still, Iris slapped on a brave face – she quite enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen, usually. Why should it be different here? Or at least – that’s what she told herself.
“Hmm, no,” Emma sniggered. “Your father is barely a footnote. There are dark days coming, Iris. And I think I’m to be a part of them. I’ve been looking into Mrs Cullengate, and I’ve discovered something… terrifying.”
“Tell me,” Lizzie sat forward. She needed to know, Evangeline Cullengate’s silence did nothing but make her anxious. And if Emma had any information, she had to have it, she had to keep her mind at rest.
Emma simply shook her head, however. She turned to Iris, and said, “Footnote your father might be, but footnotes can mean a lot. I can’t risk the information falling into his hands. When I’m ready, you’ll all know. Believe me.”
“Look,” Iris spoke up, and spoke with an honesty and maturity she hadn’t used before. “Creds to you, kay? You lived through some terrible stuff, not gonna lie. But please, I’m asking you, don’t take my father from me – please. I know he got it wrong, he’s not perfect – but you can’t expect me to just… abandon someone I love, after everything he’s done for me.”
“I’m not expecting you to,” Emma’s expression was blank, emotionless, perhaps. And yet, that emotionless quality held more emotion than one could realise. “I respect you both, especially you, Elizabeth. But your father, Iris? He will suffer, after everything he’s done to me.”
***
London, 2018 – 13:35PM
“Just… tell me everything,” was all Cioné could say. “Please.”
She needed to know. But she guessed this was why the Doctor had been… quieter. There had been moments when she’d looked at him, and he’d seemed so… empty. Guilty, perhaps. She hadn’t been sure at the time. Ever since Christmas and Bethlehem, he’d retreated into himself…
“When Iris was just a baby, I was summoned to a planet. Some… distant place, hidden away from everywhere else. The Time Lords met me, and… they had a child with them. Emma. A bit older than Iris, but roughly the same age.”
It made sense that the Doctor and the Master, almost sibling-like in their relationship, should have children at the same time.
The Doctor took a deep breath, before he continued.
“It was a sort of… covert conspiracy. And the idea was… to leave a Gallifreyan child in the wild, and see how she grew. What sort of person would she grow into? So… that’s what they did. They left her there, on this planet, when she was just a baby.”
The Doctor paused, as he prepared to tell his part in the tale. This was the hardest part of all. And already, Cioné was grimacing at the knowledge of what had gone on. It was truly horrifying, that someone could bear to treat a child in such a way. And yet… she was not surprised. Nothing about the upper Gallifreyan echelons could surprise her. It hit even harder, not just because it was so barbaric, but because Cioné was a mother, to a girl the same age. No child, no matter who their parents were, deserved to be treated as an experiment.
“They still wanted a person, above all,” the Doctor gulped. “Not just a feral child. So my job was to… stop by every so often, to make sure that she could speak, to make sure that she… understood basic information about the universe.”
He stopped, and Cioné sighed, and shook her head. How could he have been complicit in all of this? He might as well have been fully involved, if he had gone along with them. His… display of support for such a thing was almost skin-crawling. And… how had he lied to her about this? How had he kept this secret? All of those days when he might’ve just popped down to the Empire for a carton of milk, perhaps he was off to see the abandoned little girl being raised by wolves. All of the lies he must’ve told, a huge, intricate web of deceit.
“No,” she shook her head. “No, no, no – you – please, you didn’t?”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you do something about it?” she spluttered, at a complete loss of anything to say. She couldn’t get her head around how, with a little girl the same age, he could condemn the Master’s daughter to a lifetime of suffering.
“Because I was stuck,” the Doctor shrugged. There was nothing more to say than that. Yes, he regretted being a part of it, every single day – but there was nothing else he could have done, apart from risk all of their lives. “They threatened you, and Iris, and above all, the Monitor in Emma’s head was programmed to kill her if she ever left the planet.”
“Please don’t pull the old, ‘I was trying to protect you’, card, because quelle surprise, darling, I can actually think for myself without being lied to.”
The amount of times Cioné risked her life, and perhaps the Doctor didn’t even realise it. The work she did in the Time War… not killing anyone, not hurting innocent children. But helping them. Journeying to the front-line, where the Daleks and the Time Lords caused devastation wherever they went. The burning, flaming corpses, the torrents of blood gushing across the battlefields. Cioné had even seen a few planets turned to cinders. And whenever she saw it happen, she would shiver, and think of what was to come. If this was only the first few years, and they were no closer to a victory… what would it be like near the end? Whole universes obliterated? Whole civilisations burned?
And for some reason, she thought that it had never quite clicked for her husband, that if she went there and back every day, she could save his arse every single day and twice on a Sunday.
“I know, I know,” the Doctor shook his head, knowing that he was wrong. “Of course now I realise I was wrong – but at the time, with my new-born daughter, what did you expect me to do?”
He had been so lost, before Lizzie had found him. And still lost, before his family had truly been brought together. In the fresh throes of that, he couldn’t have brought himself to ever risking them. But understanding it didn’t help. He still saw the extent of the damage he did.
“We could’ve helped her!” Cioné would’ve taken her in. Emma was the same age as Iris, it would be almost like having twins. That would’ve been wonderful, and it would’ve… perhaps helped Emma.
“I didn’t sit around doing nothing,” was all the Doctor could think of to say. “What nobody understands, what I haven’t explained to anybody, is that… I tried to play the long game.”
He’d had an idea, right from the start. A beautiful, bright, whizzing idea, one that could’ve saved Emma, one that could’ve raised her into what her mother never was – but also everything beautiful that her mother was at the same time.
And the Doctor had tried, too hard to get it to work. But now… he didn’t believe it had.
“I tried to… show her the right way. I tried to guide her, to show her the… awe and wonder of seeing the universe. I thought, if I can gradually show her, perhaps she’ll become what her mother never could be.”
It was still truly impossible for Cioné to get her head around, that all she could do was sit back from her steak and swear to herself in her head. She had seen tortured young people, and she knew the effect that trauma could have. She saw it every day, whenever she went to the front line. And above all, one of the things Cioné held closest to her, was the right to be who you want. Trying to shape someone’s life, trying to turn them into something, instead of letting them find their own way – that was one of the worst things of all. Trying to… turn off their personality, who one truly was… that made her shiver.
And so there was only one thing the Doctor could do. If he had allowed someone’s life to be dictated, their destiny to be forced, then he needed him to do this.
“You need to find her, and you need to make amends.”
The Doctor did not seem convinced. “Do you truly think she’ll be so quick to get along?”
“No, I don’t. In fact, I think she’ll ignore everything you say, before leaving. But I don’t care if she hates you, you need to try.”
A stony silence fell, and Cioné picked up a chip and ate it.
“You talk about this as if it can… be fixed,” the3 Doctor said, looking back over at the river. The sun had gone in, and that perfect reflection had vanished.
“I don’t think it can,” Cioné admitted. “But at the very least, I think you need to realise what you’ve done.”
The Doctor couldn’t deny that. This couldn’t be made… right, but all he could do was try.
Another silence followed, and Cioné continued to munch her way through some of her chips, perhaps to try and diffuse the tension. The two of them didn’t have disputes that often, and when they did, they hit hard, with neither knowing quite what to say. So used to getting along normally, finding the words to argue with the person they each loved was stilted, perhaps even a little bit awkward.
Cioné, however, found something else to say.
“And what makes this worse, is that there’s Iris, and myself, and we’re oblivious to all of this. Do you know how that makes me feel? That we could’ve saved her, but we didn’t? Now, it isn’t just you who has to live with that, it’s me as well –”
“It isn’t your fault,” he interrupted, determined to make sure she knew that. She didn’t know, and so there was nothing that Cioné could’ve done.
But Cioné was not so easily reconciled. “I could’ve done something, but you… you denied me that.”
Perhaps he was to blame, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. Had she known, she could’ve helped. Maybe not much, maybe only a little, but it would’ve been something.
“I can’t believe this. I – I can’t actually believe you – you were part of this…”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. There was nothing more he could say.
Of course, the Doctor was still missing something quite large. Typical male brain, the important things just not quite sticking. Cioné watched him, waiting to see if he’d caught up yet. But nope… his eyes wandering over the street below.
Eventually, she asked him.
“How did she get off the planet?”
That seemed to pique the Doctor’s interest, as his eyes darted back to her. Somehow, Emma had escaped the clutches of the Time Lords. Somehow, she’d overcome the Monitor.
He would have to find out how.
***
She waited, clutching her knife close to her. There was a strange, stone pillar, and so she hid behind it. There was another not far away from it – perhaps the remnants of some old archway, with great, thick roots curled around the base of the cobble constructions, moss stuck to them and weeds crawling from beneath the cracks. Vines and ivy were intertwined the stone, some of them crawling through thin air to the hulking body of the tree just beside the relics.
The wolf prowled below, just down the hill. She saw it, sneaking through the undergrowth, beneath the cover of the darkness of the forest floor. The dead leaves and the thick polluted sky created a mucky, cloudy curtain across the roof of the world, and the wolf was using it to its advantage, as it slunk through the bushes and the bracken and the shrubbery, occasionally darting behind the tree. It watched its every step, avoiding any sticks or dry leaves that could give the game away. And in their game, even the tiniest twig was deadly. Emma’s hearing was sharp, and she used her traditional predator’s ears to her advantage. If that wolf put a foot out of line, Emma would pounce from the shadows and the wolf would be dead before its nervous system even began to carry out any of the split-second reactions necessary for its reflexes to kick into gear.
Of course, this makes it sound as if the game was always won with ease. No… the wolves were the masters, she was merely the challenger. But quickly she had risen, that the wolves knew her. They knew not to fight her, they knew to run even at the sight of her silhouette. But that was the problem. They knew her so well, and just as they were good hunters, they were good hiders too. But just as they had adapted, Emma had adapted as well. She could track a wolf, she could kill the wolf. It was all done with exceptional precision. Nowadays, she didn’t just… kill the wolf, and eat it raw like a savage. She had perfected her art so well, that she would never leave a mess behind. Emma was methodical, killing it quickly, cutting it up, dividing it by body-part. The dismembering was clean, quick, and little blood was shed.
He had asked her once, whether she felt guilty about it. Whether she felt sad that she killed another living creature. That had stuck in Emma’s mind, because nothing else had ever crossed her mind. What reason was there to feel guilty about it? She had to kill them so she could live. She had to try, so hard, just to survive. And the lengths she would go to, just to live.
Emma could see it, skulking just up the hill. It could smell her. But it wasn’t sure where. So, silently she crept around the pillar – it was but metres away, she could almost taste the meat in her mouth. Emma drew her knife, and as the wolf turned around, before it could even register what it saw, the knife plunged through its brain.
She knelt down, scooped up the carcass, and tossed it over her shoulder. Then, she began her journey back to… wherever it was she came from.
Emma had no name for the house. It was just… the house. The Doctor said it was her home, but when she asked him to describe his home, hers sounded nothing like it at all. In fact… hers sounded like exactly the opposite of what home was meant to be. A home should be warm – not just in temperature, but in atmosphere. There would be people. But Emma had only met one person in her life. In fact, she didn’t even know anyone else existed, she only thought they did, because the Doctor said so. For all she knew, they could be the only two people in the universe, and he was mad. There was nobody else. Half the time, there wasn’t even him. There was just her, and the insects, and the wolves. No cosiness, no… love, barely any life.
So, Emma referred to it as the house. The place she slept and eat. The place she spent her days.
When she got back there that afternoon, the box was there. The blue one, it was there every so often. It meant the Doctor was there to see her.
She readjusted the corpse on her back, and made her way in.
He was sat in one of her chairs, and as soon as she entered, he stood up, and greeted her, and asked her how she was. Emma understood interaction, since the Doctor spoke to her. And although she didn’t know anything about anywhere beyond that planet, she believed that if there was anything, communicating must be a part of it. Otherwise, why would the Doctor do it so instinctively?
“I am fine, thank you,” Emma responded. “Why are you here?”
“I just… came to check on you,” the Doctor seemed confused, as if she’d said something wrong.
“I am fine. Now, please leave.” She was busy, and she had things to be doing. The wolf needed to be cut, the planks on the windows needed to be reinforced. Occasionally, she’d get a pack trying to get in, in the middle of the night. They’d batter the doors, and the windows, desperate to get in and kill the girl who killed them.
The Doctor was reluctant to go, and he was, admittedly, taken aback. Emma had never said anything like that, she’d never asked him to leave. But he could tell she was growing up. Nearly a teenager, now. Once upon a time, her sentences were broken, stilted, and awkward. But now, she spoke fluently, and she spoke well. Emma knew nothing of the outside universe, barring that it existed. But because of that, her skills in this world had nearly been honed to perfection. Hunting, hiding, killing, observing, all were perfectly done.
“Did I say something wrong?” she asked him, noticing his hesitation.
“No, no!” he quickly said, his intrigue perhaps making him look irritable. “You’re growing up, you’re allowed to be irritable. I went to a planet, not long ago, where the people are the grumpiest in the universe. And I’m not surprised, its cloudy and there’s a constant drizzle. So I took one of them to Solus, this... completely empty planet. But because of that, you can see for miles and miles – and the sunsets are just magnificent.”
Emma listened to him – but it was only a half-listen. The Doctor always went on about the universe as if it was just nearby. It all seemed so regular to him, as if he spent so much time… seeing it. But just as Emma didn’t know whether there was anyone else, Emma didn’t even know if there was a universe. So, hearing him talk about it was almost painful. Hearing him speak of so much… beauty, it hurt, because she had never seen any of it. She didn’t even know how to picture it in her mind, she had nothing to go on. But he said it was good. Even that confused her, but she acknowledged it anyway.
If there was a universe… how did it work? Did everyone live in houses, and kill wolves? Were there more rivers? Were the trees as dead as these ones? If there was one thing Emma had learned, it was life and death. She understood it, because she killed the wolves, she knew what death was. Through that, Emma understood how close to death she was herself.
But she didn’t understand life.
“Wolves have children,” she sat down on the chair beside him. It had been bugging her for a long time, the origins of life. Well – not necessarily life in general, but her life.
“Yes,” the Doctor nodded, unsure of where Emma was going.
“Two wolves mate, and they have young.”
“Yes,” the Doctor confirmed. Phew. That was a conversation he’d let Cioné have with Iris.
“Therefore, two people had me.”
The Doctor hesitated, knowing that this was a question that would open up all sorts of questions for the girl. But he would answer them, and he would do so honestly. The Time Lords wouldn’t kill anyone for that, surely? The Time Lords would at least have the heart to be fair, and kind, just this once? But he didn’t believe himself, he knew the Time Lords would be cruel to the end. His only reassurance, was that they would want the girl to know. The reaction, perhaps they would want to see it.
“They did,” the Doctor tentatively verified her question.
“Who were they?”
Oh… that was a question with more dimensions than the little girl would perhaps be able to understand, isolated on that little planet. It made him realise even more, that letting this happen was wrong, that perhaps he was failing her by letting this happen.
“I’m afraid I only know your mother….,” he paused, as he braced himself to talk about her. He didn’t talk about her very often. After all, how easy was it to talk about your psychopath pseudo-sibling? “Her name was the Master.”
The words hung in the air, as Emma digested them. The Master. It was strange… the woman who had given her life, and finally she had a name. It was as if there was someone, definitely. But she still wasn’t sure. There was a hole, one which the Doctor had just… stuck a name over, perhaps. She needed more. But…. Emma didn’t have long to wait, before the Doctor continued.
“We grew up together. And… we were best friends. We were so close, we were like siblings, in fact. She made living so much fun, because she always… understood how rare it is that we are alive. So… she would dance through life, without a care in the world, and she would adore every second of it.”
The Doctor reminisced back on those childhood days, and their teenage years. The chaos they’d got up to, the madness and craziness of their lives. And all of it because of her.
“She wasn’t always right,” the Doctor admitted. “In fact, she got it very wrong, quite a lot, and I wish she was still here for me to ty and show her that there was another way to do things.”
He glanced over at Emma, and the girl was mesmerised. Because now, her mother felt real. She wasn’t just a name, just a… person who had brought Emma into the world. Now, the Master had a life, people she had impacted on, people whose lives she’d changed. She’d not always done things right, and that made her even more vivid. Because nobody could do things perfectly, so now, Emma felt her mother was real. And… Emma suddenly felt an affinity with her. Emma didn’t always get things right. Emma didn’t even know what was right, what wasn’t right.
There was one thing he’d said that had stuck out, one thing that struck her above everything else. In fact, it had struck her like a punch to the stomach, but it hadn’t quite settled in. It almost didn’t feel completely… real. But gradually it was sinking in, and gradually, Emma was understanding.
“Is she dead?”
The Doctor hesitated, but there was no point lying to the little girl.
“Yes.”
Simple words, but enough to make Emma look away from him, and look out towards the boarded-up window in confusion. Because… she was confused. She hadn’t even known her mother, and yet… she still felt a sense of loss. Emma often felt alone on that dirty, dead planet, but now she felt more alone than ever. It was as if there should have been someone out there for her – but that person was gone. What was that feeling? She didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t even as if Emma felt any kind of… what the Doctor may call love, towards her mother. She just felt… as if she needed to know, why she was the way she was. And Emma felt as if her mother was the only answer to that.
And the only answer was gone.
Emma stood up, and slowly she dragged herself to the door. The Doctor stood up and followed her.
“Did she love me?” Emma asked, as they walked side by side, Emma just slightly ahead. She seemed to be leading him up the stairs, and the Doctor wasn’t quite sure why.
He could lie to her. He could give her hope. But… that would hurt her more in the end. One couldn’t just… scoop out hope for the sake of it, he’d realised. Sometimes there were situations when things weren’t so straightforward. He hesitated, while she led him up that grand staircase, and while she showed him to the top of the landing.
The stairs opened into an immense corridor – but it was buried right at the heart of the house, and so when the Doctor looked down it, the walls seemed to… collapse in on each other, creating a sort of claustrophobic tunnel, as if one could easily get lost in those dark, lurking shadows. Emma led him down it, and gradually as the darkness shifted, the Doctor could see the faint outline of a window frame merging into view. It was large, and arch-shaped, and as the Doctor stepped up to it with Emma, he could see far through the thick foliage of the forest.
Most notably, the window was less like a window, and more like a door – an arch within the arch, the panes smashed so that one could walk through it, stepping out into the nothingness beyond its extension. Except, if one were to step through that broken window, one would perhaps die before they reached the ground, as the shattered glass, which jutted and protruded from the frame, was like a frame of hands each wielding knives, so sharpened and honed by the weather that it could slice through skin with the slickness and deftness of a finger stroked through something like oil, or custard, or maybe even blood.
The wind blew through the window, and the Doctor pulled his jacket tight against the cold, as it gusted down the corridor, creating an almost ominous whistle, as if the house were some devilish musical instrument. Emma, in the simple, white clothes she was dressed in, dirtied by her hunting and skulking predatorily through the woods, stepped closer to the cold, letting her auburn hair billow in the rush of bitter air
Then, Emma stepped onto the stone ledge, so the fragments of glass were but millimetres from her throat. She felt a sliver bristle gently against her flesh, and when she turned just slightly, it lethargically pierced the skin on her neck. It barely touched her, it was perhaps just a scrape, but Emma felt it, almost in slow motion. It might have been just a scrape, but it did, in fact, slice through several layers of cells, lightly piquing her pain receptors, before it drew blood; not much, but a small drop, poking its head from the tear, before lazily rolling down onto her white tunic.
“What are you doing?” the Doctor eventually asked. Emma didn’t turn around – her eyes remained firmly locked onto the sky ahead.
“I’m watching. I like to stand in the window and look up.”
Emma’s eyes poured into the murky, thick clouds. From her window, she felt so tiny. So insignificant. It was when she looked out, that Emma felt there was something there, something more than just her little world of trees and the river and wolves. It was when she realised that the Doctor might not just drop out of nowhere and see her, that there was truth to his implications and there was a whole other place above her head. Emma could imagine that some people would look up to the sky above their heads and they would feel hopeful, a surge of optimism rushing through them.
But as Emma gazed at the sky, it just looked like a ceiling, and that standing in that window was the closest she would ever get to smashing it. It felt tangible, when she was stood in the window, as if she reached hard enough she might achieve the means to not look up at the sky and feel lost, or feel alone. As if she might just get close enough to break free.
It wasn’t that day, however. When she blinked, the ceiling was fixed, the slate-grey plumes of natural smog churning in the atmosphere, and the blanket of charcoal leaves matting the underneath. There would be no escaping. And all this time, she could feel the Doctor behind her. She knew he was there, watching her, calculating her. The Doctor was a wolf – except, unlike the wolves, he wasn’t cold. Or at least, he didn’t try to be. But the fact he would stop there, and provide no answers, made him all the colder.
Eventually, the Doctor spoke, his voice punctuating the whistling winds
“I never answered your question.”
There was a spell of hesitation, and eventually Emma found the words.
“When I heard your silence I realised I never needed an answer.”
The words hit the Doctor hard – for that certainly wasn’t the truth. In fact, if he knew his oldest friend well enough, then he knew that the Master would have ripped galaxies apart to save her own. And yet, the Master wasn’t there. Emma’s mother was dead. There was nobody to protect Emma… apart from himself. And the Doctor had failed her.
As Emma looked out at the sky, and felt small, she also felt alone.
For that was the hardest thing about living on this world. She was the only one remotely like… her, really. Only the Doctor, but he didn’t really count, because he only stopped by occasionally, and even then, he always seemed preoccupied with something else. Emma had always felt as if he wasn’t alone, that he came from a place where there were people, and that… he had people to love, just as she saw the wolves in their packs. A family, the Doctor had said once, when he’d seen a group of them prowling around the outside of the house. He had said that word… strangely. It was as if saying it made him sad.
But Emma was alone. She wasn’t like the wolves, she didn’t have anyone to rely on. She was just her, and most of the time, she believed that she always would be. Occasionally there would be glimmers, when Emma would wonder whether she could ever meet anyone else. Or… whether this planet was just going to be her existence forever. The hunting, the old house, just… doing what she’d always done, ad infinitum, with no clear end.
It was a thought that she couldn’t dwell on for long, because it would drive her insane. If there was one thing that Emma understood for certain, it was that she hated this existence. She hated it all, she despised the loneliness, and she hated the wolves. The only thing she enjoyed was killing the wolves, for it made her feel as if she was culling her demons. As if she could keep doing it, and perhaps she would one day feel content. Because… that was the worst thing. Never feeling content. Although, she had mostly reconciled with the fear. Originally, the wolves prowling around the outside of her house, had terrified her. that one day they were going to get in and gobble her up. But… what would be the harm in that?
Emma didn’t understand why people were scared of dying. Because when you’re dead, you’re dead. Why worry about it? There was no point being scared of it, because when it had happened, she wouldn’t have anything to be scared of. So, it didn’t bother her, and the thought of death was something she was resilient to.
Meanwhile, perhaps her very existence was something to be scared of. It was living that was going to bring the bad things, the certainty of tomorrow that brought with it the potential of terror. And that was why she hated it, and desired something more. That was why she needed more than this.
But her heart sunk, when Emma turned back to the dark corridors of that house, and saw the Doctor. Because tomorrow was going to creep around, and she’d still be stuck there, enduring this insane torment of an existence.
She just wanted it to stop.
***
“You see, Elizabeth,” Emma was still sat perfectly upright, with her hands placed on the table in front of her.
“There is something significant that I’m afraid you’ve been missing.”
Lizzie glanced out of the box, admittedly a little bit on edge. There were no Qlerics out there, which was, admittedly… suspicious. Why would one leave their prisoner unguarded? There was, however, a peculiar feeling of emptiness in the prison anyway. Normally, one expects to find a general… noise, a buzz, in anywhere with large groups of people. Or even small groups of people. But in Emma’s strange dimensional prison, there didn’t seem to be any such buzz at all.
“The heart-rate monitors,” Lizzie stated. It had been her ‘next question’ for a long time, and she believed it was the ‘something obvious’. After all with all of the many things that made no sense at all about this prison, that was the most striking.
“The heart rate monitors,” Emma mused. “Three of them. Solve the puzzle.”
Okay, Lizzie thought to herself, sitting back in her chair. Three heart rate monitors. Of course, there was the possibility that Emma had three hearts, which was, admittedly, unlikely, and Lizzie did not believe this to be the case.
Three heart rate monitors. No guards.
Three heart rate monitors meant three hearts.
And there was only one logical combination in the room that that could apply to.
Although Emma was the sort of girl to be able to control any situation that she walked into, even Lizzie found it unlikely that she would so easily be able to manipulate everything about this prison environment to suit her needs.
And Emma, through her expertise at reading people, saw the realisation fly across Lizzie’s face.
“Well done,” Emma held out her hand. When Lizzie took it, her fingers went straight through it – for Emma was a hologram.
“What the hell was that,” Iris saw the handshake, and the hologram Emma. But before she could process it any further, came a terrible sound.
The Doctor’s TARDIS began to materialise in front of them. Once the sound of hope, now it did nothing more but bring them dread.
“As we speak, I am currently on that godforsaken mountain planet. I needed to take the dimensional imprint of your TARDIS, so that I could track it,” said the hologram-Emma. “A diversion was the only way possible. Here’s your box.”
“You mean… the entire prison is a construct?” Lizzie stood up and quickly made her way over to the TARDIS, just in case Emma was going to do anything about it. Iris quickly did the same.
“Yes,” Emma spoke. “Now… I suggest you two run away. This dimension will fall out of existence in approximately five minutes.”
There was nothing else Lizzie and Iris could do.
So they did as they were told.
***
“I can’t do it anymore,” the Doctor strode into the house.
It was to be the day that Emma’s life fell apart for good.
Emma was sat in her drawing room, as she always was when the Doctor arrived. Today, she sat perfectly still – and she had no idea that what was about to happen was going to happen. There would be many times that Emma would look back on this day, and would analyse the hours preceding the Doctor’s call. And, although the Doctor had said some stuff about her being cleverer than any Gallifreyan to exist ever, Emma had never been able to deduce any kind of… events, that had caused the moment. No strange feelings or anything.
Since it had all happened, Emma had heard people say that they could feel something bad before it happened. That they just… knew there was something in the air. But Emma couldn’t isolate anything. For her, it had just… happened. No forewarning, no change in the weather, nothing.
Emma had just decided that it was called hindsight.
For example, you exist, and you feel something. It’s a strange feeling, not what you feel like usually (Emma had deduced that it was just the world. The world always felt a little bit different every day – and sometimes people could interpret to be a sign of something. Perhaps, you may interpret it to be a sign of something bad. And then you go about your life, that feeling of… fear, perhaps, hanging over you.
And then the bad thing happens.
And you knew about it. That feeling was a prelude to what you are experiencing, and you knew about it in your gut.
Or… the bad thing doesn’t happen, and nothing happens, and everything is normal.
Oh. Clearly nothing to be worried about.
And that, Emma had decided, was how the human brain had worked. It was just emotions, and tacking on ideas to them after an event had happened.
Because Emma didn’t have a clue what the Doctor was going to say when he strode in to her house. It just… happened. And even she experienced what she had come to call the hindsight problem – framing every event in her life prior to it in a specific light, perhaps because it made it easier to accept. Perhaps because it made her feel in control, as if she’d always known that it was going to happen and time was just passing as it was meant to.
But Emma knew, deep down, that she wasn’t in control. That it had just… happened, and that there was nothing she could do to control time’s malicious passing.
“Doctor,” she acknowledged him as she always did. He did not sit down.
“Emma, oh, Emma, Emma, I’ve got this all so wrong.”
His voice was urgent, and… emotional? Emma thought it to be emotion, although she wasn’t sure. It was that same voice that he’d used when talking about her mother. Except… a little bit different. One thing she was quite sure of was that the Doctor regretted something. He had taught her about regret. In fact, the Doctor had taught her everything – and not even when he’d intended to. For through him, Emma had learned how to read a person. Even though she rarely informed the Doctor of her observations of him, her isolation with him had made her exquisite at learning how to read what a person thought.
In fact, as she would later realise, the barbaric nature of her upbringing had forged who she was. And that made it inseparable.
As the Doctor would not sit, Emma decided to stand.
“You…,” the Doctor started, but his voice trailed off. Oh, this had been the moment he had been dreading. And… he wasn’t even sure if it would achieve anything. Perhaps, he would tell her, and the Monitor would kill her instantly. Now she was older, perhaps the Time Lords had decided to finish their brutal experiment. “Emma, there’s something you need to understand.”
“About?” she pressed him, still oblivious.
“Your life.”
That had intrigued her at the time. After all… the Doctor always seemed so reluctant to talk about… what life was all about.
“I’m afraid…,” the Doctor grimaced. And then he decided to just come out and say it, for waiting would have no better outcome. “Emma, your life has been part of an experiment.”
An experiment. Apparently the real world was nothing like this. There were a lot more people, as Emma had always expected. Everyone lived in houses, and there weren’t always trees. And there were good people, and bad people. A group of people had decided to raise a child, to see how it could fend for itself in the wild. And… the child had been her. Apparently, children were never meant to be lonely, and were meant to have people to look after them and to care for them. They were meant to have people around them.
She had been lonely. Every single day.
Emma listened as the Doctor told her life story to her. A story that she hadn’t written a single line of, and yet, one that still applied to her.
And then he said something that made her gag.
“You’ve got a thing called a Monitor. It’s a robot, like my screwdriver. And it’s… it’s inside your head. There are people, watching through it. Through your eyes. Seeing what you see.”
As soon as he said it, she grabbed the side of her face, and she could feel it. Pulsating, repetitively, just on the right side of her cranium. Oh my god, she could feel it, and she hated it, she wanted to get it out.
She wanted to get out of this life that had been… built for her, that had never been hers to control.
It was then, Emma made the decision, that she would. No matter what it took, no matter how hard it would be, she would overcome what she had been subjected to.
But before she could do anything, she had to ask what part the Doctor played. Because, although they had never been close, she was the only other person she had ever known. In fact, he might as well have been her father, because he had taught her everything, and showed her everything. Yes, the world had played its part too, her natural instincts keeping her alive. But the words she spoke with? The emotions she could identify on people, and occasionally, though not often, identify on herself? Any knowledge that she had – all of it had come from him.
When she asked him, he just looked at her, and that’s when she knew.
“Don’t tell me you were a part of this, please,” she shook her head, desperately hoping for something else.
Being alone, there had been something that she’d never understood – until now. For this was what it meant to be betrayed.
“I didn’t have a choice –”
“You always have a choice!” Emma protested.
“The Time Lords put a gun to the heads of my family, I couldn’t risk it. They put a gun to your head too.”
That made her feel more disgusted than anything else. For she would rather have had the gun.
“Get out,” she told him.
“Emma, please –”
She screamed at him, telling him to go away, and reluctantly, he did so. Because Emma would speak to him again. Yes… she was quite certain of that.
***
The Doctor had gone.
And now, alone, in that big, dark house, she felt lonelier than she’d ever done before. At least in the past she hadn’t been certain, ignorant to the fact that there had been something more. And at least, whenever Emma dreamed of something more, the ‘something more’ was better than the truth. But instead it turned out that the universe out there was just as dark, and just as cruel, as her funny little planet. That her whole life had been rigged, as an experiment.
She was an experiment, and the thought made her skin crawl.
Emma tried to forget about the taste of the vomit in her mouth, but thought of the dirt and the slime in the river, and she gagged. And to think that she’d been subjected to that, just on the whim of an individual who was interested. Without a second thought of the consequences, with his sole dreams being the gain for himself – he had sent a child to hell and let her raise herself. All alone, with nothing but cold and wolves and dirt for company.
But now she knew the truth, Emma knew what she had to do.
She picked herself up, and dragged herself over to the door. Even that required effort – in fact, everything felt so much slower, so much more… ponderous, than anything had done before. Now that everything around her was nothing more than a lie, she mused as to what point there was, what point there had been, to enduring so much suffering. Why not just give up? It would be so much easier, than endure the pain of a world just as grey and grim as the one she inhabited. If her life had been for nothing, where was the issue in going out in the same way?
Emma began to trudge up the grand staircase, and suddenly she felt so tiny in comparison to it. When she was a child, she could remember those stairs seemed so ginormous, like a grand road to the skies above. And gradually the stairs felt as if they got smaller, and smaller, as she got the measure of the wolves, the terrain, the world. As she began to hunt, as she began to live. But now, she felt so tiny again, and the stairs felt so huge – so far to go to get somewhere, and yet, Emma had the constant, overbearing feeling that actually, no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t ever get there. That was just what life was. A giant staircase, one stretching on for infinity; a staircase being crawled up by everyone, hoping to reach the top – and yet, none of them everwould.
But this staircase had an end, and Emma was there.
The corridor was once dark – and it was still devoid of all light. But now, that darkness was beautiful. She held it tight, she kept it close to her. With that darkness embraced, Emma could do what she needed to. Nothing to lose, no pain to worry about. If she hugged the pain, surely she would become numb, unable to feel anymore? Oh, Emma wanted nothing more than just… that. To not feel that fear, to not feel that loneliness, to not feel that constant, inner agony, the ache that came from just existing.
And now, as Emma looked up at the broken window, she felt the glimmer of something she hadn’t experienced before. It was… different. It was like the aching, but it was new. It felt good. She wondered whether this was what people called happiness. Emma thought back to the Doctor’s cards, the ones with the smiley faces on. The sad one, the scared one, the anxious one – those three had become her best friends. A few others too, but never a certain one, never the one that the Doctor called… ‘happy’.
For the very first time, her lips curled into a wry smile.
Emma stepped up to the window. The ground swirled below her, the cold, stone foundations of the house glaring up at her intimidatingly. She’d stood in this window so many times before, but she’d never felt nervous because of the ground. Scared of the skies above, yes. But the ground was just… there. So what if she landed on it? Everything fell, eventually. Perhaps it was her turn. Perhaps today was her day to die. Who would care? Because she had never had anybody to love. Never had anybody to love her. She was just… a plaything.
Her life and been controlled, and so there was only one way to become free of that control. One way to break free, one way to take her life into her own hands and not have her fate defined by the idiots who had dictated every day of her existence to her.
Emma took a deep breath, as she stood in the frame of the window, the cold winds gushing past her, and making herself feel so very, very… what was that?
Vulnerable.
Emma let go, and let the wind take her.
…
…
…
With her vulnerability gone in the wind, Emma reached up to the side of her face, and without looking, she gripped an icy pane of glass in her hand. She didn’t take it too hard, as already she could feel the fineness of its glassy teeth licking her hand – but she had it there, ready to go.
Emma smiled to herself again – she just wanted to picture it, the faces of the people watching through her eyes, as they thought she was about to jump out of the window. When she thought back to the Doctor’s smiley-face cards, she couldn’t quite picture it. It was fear – but not proper, burning, terror. Simply… anger, the thought of losing an experiment you’d spent so hard working on. Emma held on to the image of those faces, because it would become important later, when she put her plan into action.
No… Emma would not grace those sick men with the privilege of her death. They had a far worse day coming for them.
With a jolt of her hand, Emma removed the knife of glass from the window, and stepped down from the ledge. She sat down beside the window, and looked at the pane. She imagined it, the people watching her, and how on edge they must have been; so uncertain, so unknowing of what was about to follow. All of it through the Monitor, that fully little robot embedded in the side of the head…
Emma stabbed the glass into the side of her cranium.
Pain erupted through her face, burning through her flesh as the shiny glass needle dug deep into her skin, not just tearing it but ripping it, burrowing through it, churning through her head and eventually reaching its destination. Hot, sticky blood gushed from the wound, splashing onto her snowy white outfit and staining it a visceral dark red, and Emma felt it seep further to her skin, as her clothes became sodden. It washed over the pane of glass and her nails and fingertips became coated, the blood nestling in the gap between her fingers and nails, and it made her hair a darker red than it had been so before. It dripped down onto her lips, and she felt the metallic bitterness as a droplet crept into her mouth.
The rain began to lash down outside, so forcefully it was as if that great ceiling of a sky was tumbling down, and it tore through the broken window and thrashed at Emma, diluting the blood and soaking the rest of her hair, and between the constant buffeting of the blood and the rain she took great, irregular gulps for air.
And at the same time, Emma kept digging the blade deeper into her head, and she could feel it, the little metal object, almost spherical in shape, apparently. She’d skewered it, and immediately she’d felt something change, as if she’d been set free, as if she’d shed the chains binding her to this disgusting little world. She shoved and poked through the tissue and the marrow and she created a well, in which she thrust the glass. And with each slice, with each movement of her pseudo-scalpel, the pain became all the more gruelling and punishing and almost exhausting, and she could feel her breath shorten, and shallow.
But the pain felt… strangely sweet, in a way. This was her freedom, her way out. This was her escaping, refusing to let her life be defined by someone else. No matter how much agony she would have to endure, Emma was determined to achieve that – and so her self-dissection became easy. In fact, it was almost a breeze, as she let the anguish wash over her. At the same time, she held tight the fear and loneliness and grimness of her formative years, and it became easier still.
And that’s what she declared them: formative. The days of her entrapment in this house were long gone, and her new life started now. Emma knew that she could live that new life well. After all, she had survived this world. She had survived the wolves, the cold, an existence devoid from anybody else. Through the dark and the dirt and the slime, Emma could take on the rest of the universe and win. She had honed the art of survival better than anyone else – she had learned to trust nothing, to win everything – and above all, to love nothing.
Emma had become resilient, and she had become determined.
Above all, she had become ready.
The blade sliced through one last stray membrane, before being wedged under the Monitor. And through the rain and the blood and the cold, Emma ripped the glass pane forward, and the tiny, marble-shaped thing tumbled, in a cluster of sinew and tissue, into her lap.
Everything seemed to stop, frozen. The rain still buffeted her, the blood still dripped, and suddenly, Emma realised she was shivering. All she could hear was the gusting wind, and the thumping of the rain – in fact, that was all she’d been able to hear all along. But before, it had felt so noisy, almost as if she were screaming. Emma could hear her breathing, slow, and laboured, and she was paralysed, her mind running a billion calculations about her next move.
There was a hole in the side of her head, and it would need to heal. She could bind it herself – Emma had become quite masterful at treating her own wounds. She was glancing down at the Monitor, watching its red light flash maliciously – but that was when she knew that now was the time. Emma picked herself up, and holding her bloodied shirt up to the gash, she hobbled irrhythmically down the corridor, before stumbling down the stairs, one at a time – but at the bottom, she tripped and fell into the dirt. Only an hour ago she’d been alone in the universe, with everything else mere potential. Only an hour ago, she’d been having her whole life monitored. And now, she lay in the great belly of the house, looking so small in contrast to its majesty. Her whites were plastered in blood and mud, and her head burned in the lividity of pain, and she was sprawled on the floor, holding her head like a crying child. Just as she was nothing before, she was nothing now.
Except… now, she was free.
Now, she was alive.
Now came her escape plan.
Emma felt her bitterness towards the people who had wronged her, and it burned, harder than the pain in the side of her face. So, she dragged herself across the floor, her body catching on splinters and fragments of broken floorboards, cutting it further, tearing her skin – it wasn’t as if one could tell, of course, for in all her bloody glory she looked like a corpse, just trying to twist itself into a more comforting position, ready to die.
Maybe Emma was going to die. As she inched into her drawing room, sounds of distress creeping and manifesting through her throat, she thought it was likely. Maybe she would never live to see the universe above her head, the universe she had gone to such lengths to try and get to. Death would be a release, yes. But it wasn’t the release she needed. No… Emma had a job to do, and she needed to do it.
Emma was gazing up at her lonely table now, and she could see it. Her knife, and her flint and tinder. She tried to haul herself up onto her front, just a little bit, so she could move her hands and grab them, but when she tried, she flopped back onto the floor. It was only then that Emma realised she was whispering “No” to herself, over and over again. One more push toward, and she threw her hands, and they latched onto that table, and with all the determination and the grit she could muster, Emma wrapped her hands around her tools, and flung them towards her.
The tools clattered off the table and onto the floor in front of her, bumping her head as she went.
Glancing to the doorway, Emma could see her final destination. The front door. The exit. The place she needed to be.
And this time the torment was unendurable, but she endured it. Because that was her. No matter what hell she was faced with, Emma could face it. She could battle through it. She could beat it. Emma was strong, stronger than anyone else, fighting wolves every single day of her life. She would go to impossible lengths to get what she wanted, and she would hurt anyone or anything that crossed her path in the process. Emma would walk through the fires of Hell and come out unscathed. Come out the winner.
Emma had bled for her escape, and she wouldn’t die now.
What kept her going? It was the people who had done this to her. The Doctor, and everyone else behind the disgusting experiment that was her life. What they did not realise, was that it was her life. And now she knew what those men had done, Emma was going to find them, every single one of them, and she was going to bring down on them the pain that she had endured.
Every single one of those people did not deserve to live, and Emma was going to take that away from them.
Emma edged closer to the front door, and when she was there, she pushed it with as much force as she could. It creaked slightly, and when she thrust her whole weight into it, it opened just far enough for her to wriggle through.
That was the last time Emma would leave that house. The house she’d raised herself. She had no qualms about saying goodbye forever. Some goodbyes weren’t good. Sometimes they weren’t even goodbyes, sometimes they were just endings. This was an ending, and she would never see that planet again in her life.
The sky was dark, just as it always was. The trees loomed over her, their upper branches interlocking like skeletal fingers. There were so many of those trees, blanketing the whole planet, kept tightly together like a group of teenagers playing Sardines. In the distance, Emma heard the sound of a wolf howling – if she took any longer, it could get to her. But Emma had no fear of the wolves now. She lay out on the stone bed outside the house, and looked down at the bracken below, dripping from the residue of the rainstorm. The trees were soaked with it, and more to the point they were bordering on dead, kept alive solely by that putrid composition of gases in the air.
The conditions were perfect.
Petroleum rain. A thorn in her side, something she’d learned about after she’d nearly burned down the house. But now, it was her way out. Her beacon to the rest of the universe. All over the planet, a whole forest of trees, encasing the entire world in wood and leaves – and all of them, covered in petroleum.
Emma took her flint and tinder. She was well-aware that what was about to happen could have no effect at all. But that was okay. Emma didn’t usually have much hope for anything.
In fact, Emma hadn’t hoped in her whole life. She just did things.
She struck the flint and tinder a few times near the bracken beside her, and eventually, it caught fire.
And the world roared into life.
Because as the bracken caught., the flames leapt, and as the flames leapt, the trees caught and the flames leapt, and as the flames leapt, the leaves caught, and the flames leapt further still, to other trees, and other plants and shrubs and undergrowth and vines. Emma rolled back onto her stone platform and resigned herself to whatever was about to happen; but in the corner of her eyeline, she could see it, the whole forest burning an intense orange, and crimson, and fluorescent blue. The wood caught, the petrol caught, and it spread, for the fire was a beast in itself, tearing across the whole of the world, through everything, engulfing it and digesting it and turning it into nothing but ash and dust.
And Emma looked at the fire, and she was inspired. That was what she would do to them, she would blaze through their lives and turn them into nothing.
The entire skin of the world was burning, and Emma lay back and closed her eyes.
And although it meant twisting her face, which of course, only brought her agony, Emma smiled. She smiled as the flames hissed and crackled louder than anything she’d heard in her life, a great, thumping, sonorous roar ripping across the planet and shaking her very insides. The heat crept up to her, and she could feel it looming over her, scrutinising her, making her stone bed burning hot. In fact, the heat was rather painful as well.
Oh, who was she kidding? It was torture.
But still she smiled. And before she blacked out, she whispered some words.
“I’ll bring the rain to you.”
***
They’d got away, of course. Iris had quickly flown them back to Earth, back to their flat – but, before they left the TARDIS, Iris hung back hesitantly. It was unusual for Iris to be the hesitant one.
“I’ve got no idea what she’s going to do,” Iris shrugged, leaning back against the console. Emma was terribly unpredictable – and right now, it had Iris very much on edge. Iris tried hard to make it seem… not obvious, by making her previous statement sound more of an observation than of something consisting of sheer anxiety.
“I’d be lying if I said that I did,” Lizzie admitted. She had learned that it was probably better to be honest, than to try and lie to protect anybody.
“And I just… don’t know what to think either,” Iris admitted. He was her dad, and yet, he had so terribly wronged Emma. So what was Iris meant to think?
Lizzie understood, of course. And Iris didn’t even need to say anything. “You can love him, and… you can understand that what he did was wrong.”
Then, Iris said something, and although she tried to make herself not sound scared, it was the first time that she hadn’t done a very good job. “I’m just worried that she’s gonna… do something to him.” People in stories always talked about… having revenge, and doing terrible things to the people had wronged them. And it hadn’t ever occurred to Iris before that sometimes there would be consequences… well, she’d never had any reason to worry about it. But for once, the thought of what Emma was going to do did nothing short of terrify her. “He’s not all bad, Lizzie, he’s just… he got it wrong, and it was awful –”
“I know, I know,” Lizzie pulled Iris into a hug. “And… he’ll get what he deserves, I’m sure. And I don’t think it’s fair for you to expect anything less than that, because… what he did wasn’t good. At all. But whatever happens, please remember – that I care about him, and I care about you. Just… enjoy the party, yeah?”
Iris smiled. “I’m gonna ask him about it. Later, though. When all this is over, because… I know Mum knows about Emma, but I don’t know if Mum knows that Dad has been… involved with her. Gonna… give him a bollocking, y’know. Because I don’t get why. Like, why take an entirely random child and raise them like that? I don’t get it. Anyway. Yeah. Later.”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
Iris stepped back, looking very reassured. And then she shook it off, determined that nobody else would realise about her sudden spell of anxiety. And then, her voice filled with a mocking tone. “Hey, Liz.”
“Yeah?”
“Hope you enjoy the party,” she said, the sarcasm evident in her voice.
“Because that’s really likely…,” Lizzie mused, and Iris laughed, before they both left the TARDIS together – and stepped into Lizzie’s flat, where party preparations were full-on.
The anniversary party was due to start in about an hour and a half, and Kym was still storming about, ordering Leo around to make sure that everything was exactly right. The Doctor and Cioné were back from their lunch date, and Kym hadn’t made an effort to keep them away from their supposed surprise party – in fact, Kym had told them all about it. Iris joined in the preparations, and quickly, Lizzie gravitated away to the side of the living room.
And she sat there, in her chair beside the window. Not just because of the people and the chaos, but because of her balcony, and she liked to sit by it. From there, she could see the stars ahead of her, and it was relaxing, to be nestled up so close to that infinity above their heads. It was chilly, though, so she pulled the baggy sleeves of her jumper up to the tops of her palms, and let herself be enveloped by the wool, as if it were her only protection from all of space above her. There was always something quite thrilling about being sat beside the window at night. The coldness of the air seeping through the panes, making you feel as if you’re just… flying through space, clinging to the back of the Earth, hoping that you don’t fall off into the winds of the universe.
“Hello,” the Doctor took the seat opposite her. He looked weary. Not a perfect day for a party, perhaps.
He was weary. He’d not spoken much, to Cioné. They had finished their lunch in silence. She’d agreed to park the issue, until their anniversary party was over. But regardless – it had been an unavoidable presence looming over them. The Doctor knew, when he looked at Cioné. Shock, and horror, perhaps, that her husband had been involved in all this.
Lizzie had many questions to ask him, but she was tired herself. Why did he do it? Keep a little girl captive? Why would you do something so barbaric? It wasn’t as if he deserved a reprieve, but for her own sake, she wasn’t sure dragging it up now, when it was Iris’ responsibility to confront him over it, was going to make her feel any better. “Are you alright, Elizabeth?”
She smiled at him, a genuine smile. Because she was okay. She was… content with where she was. “Yeah. For once, haha.”
“You just seemed… distant, that was all.”
He wasn’t wrong. She had been far, far away, looking up at the sky, letting her mind just… wander. Meeting Emma had made her realise some things, and now they were sinking in, they made her feel… not necessarily happier, but… as if she could accept things. “I’m always a bit distant.”
The Doctor sat back in his chair, making it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was looking at her, the way he always did when he wanted to let her know that he was there for her.
Lizzie took a deep breath, and decided that she was going to tell him. Her counsellor had been saying that… talk to people you love. Somehow, saying the words out loud, forming them and giving them an audible meaning, can make the truth behind them seem… understandable.
“Sometimes I catch myself looking back on… on various things that have happened to me, and I realise I’m… feeling guilty,” Lizzie spoke slowly, trying to make sure that it made sense. “And I think about it, like… why? I’ve not done anything wrong.”
She paused, looking over at everyone who was chatting and a few people who were dancing, and people who were drinking or nibbling on the nibbles.
“And… I think it’s because the whole world is just… projecting this idea that we should all be happy, all the time. As if being happy is the right way to be, as if feeling sad is something wrong. It’s as if there’s some… overly sentimental idiot writing our lives, and is scared that admitting that it’s not always happy and nice and sweet.”
It had been Emma who had made her realise that part of the reason she felt so guilty about nothing, the reason she couldn’t… accept her life, was because everyone treated happiness as if it was some kind of ultimate goal, some kind of target that everyone should try and reach, and if they didn’t, they were failures. That was what Lizzie had been struggling with. She’d been seeing her happiness as something that had to be achieved, something that she was inferior without. Of course, achieving happiness was wonderful – but it was when people made sadness feel as if it was wrong.
“It’s like… society is scared of admitting when things aren’t perfect,” Lizzie continued, thinking of how Emma had made something click, that things didn’t always go right, and that there was nothing wrong with that. “Like, if someone’s life goes wrong, we don’t like to talk about it, and we… hide away from it, because… I don’t know. But… I dunno, I just think we should acknowledge it sometimes.”
In fact, Lizzie couldn’t quite believe she’d said it all aloud, so she quickly looked out the window again, taking the dusky indigo sky as if it were a comfort blanket.
But it was all true. Lizzie felt that the world needed to admit, sometimes, that things were hard, and that it shouldn’t all be buried under a tsunami of hope and optimism. Of course… simply being alive, sitting opposite the Doctor with the expanse of stars bursting above her head, was something truly special, and she couldn’t ignore it. But now, she was content, in a way that she hadn’t been before. She was content, not only with being happy, but being sad as well. Accepting that things weren’t always fine.
“You’re right.” The Doctor said it simply, because Lizzie had said it all. He knew what it felt like, for everyone to tell him to feel wonderful, to be happy with his life, when he wanted nothing more than to just… forget about even existing. They sat together, in a mutual understanding of how the other was feeling.
Eventually, the Doctor spoke again.
“You’ve come so far, Lizzie.”
Lizzie quickly shook her head and pulled her sleeves tighter around her hands, because she didn’t think so. Sometimes, she looked at herself and she’d barely changed since they’d met that first time, on that funny street corner. But then occasionally, she’d blink, and realised that she’d come such a long way. Gone from resigning herself to a life of depression, to… trying to cope, at least.
“I haven’t really,” Lizzie shrugged it off.
“You have. And I won’t let you put yourself down. Because, Lizzie… you are wonderful. Even when you’re not sure what to do, you can always put yourself in that situation. And… you can always make it better.”
Suddenly, they were cut off by a fateful shout.
“Oh my lawd peeps, selfie time!!!” Kym yelled. It was a command easier given than executed, but following significant complaining from Iris, and Cioné’s pretending to be busy, and Lizzie sinking further back towards the window in a bid not to be seen, and Leo’s awkward shuffling – eventually, they were all in position. The Doctor, Cioné , Lizzie, Iris, Kym, and Leo, (and not forgetting Ulysses), were all gathered in a group, piled close together. They all smiled – or pouted, or pulled stupid faces – as Kym took the picture.
As they were in their little huddle, however, they heard the door to the flat open. A little bit weird, of course, considering they weren’t planning on starting for another hour or so. Also weird, because one would expect any visitor to knock. But yes, they heard the door swing, and they heard footsteps, padding with a slow, but confident rhythm, through the hallway. A slight glimmer of anxiety piqued in Lizzie as she wondered who on Earth would randomly decide to walk into their flat – but when she saw, she realised that it couldn’t have been anybody else.
“Don’t mind if I join in, huh?” Emma strode nonchalantly into the living room, twirling a pistol equipped with a silencer in her hand. What a funny sight to walk in on! All of them, bundled close together. Truly, rib-ticklingly… hilarious. Because of all the moments, Emma took extra delight from the fact that this was perhaps the one that would hurt them the most. A party – a time for family, for friends… for togetherness. And definitely, absolutely not the place for loneliness. Not the place for the part of their lives that they’d tried to cut away, as if she were nothing but some kind of… malignant tumour, killing their family slowly.
But if that was what it took to hurt the Doctor? Emma did not care – she would go to whatever lengths, as long as it hurt him.
Quickly, Lizzie broke away from the group, and backed away across the room. The others gradually dispersed, diffusing across the room – but all gathered opposite Emma, who stood alone on the other side of the flat. And yet, Emma seemed to hold more weight, more control, than any of them. And it wasn’t just because she had a gun. No… Emma had seen them all, she’d been watching them all. Families were hilarious, thinking they had everything, thinking that it was just them against the world. Nothing irritated her more than that – because, in fact, families were just… constructs. Built on lies, twisted together and bound tightly. Surely that was where the ties were truly formed?
Lizzie looked around the room, specifically at Leo and Kym. Leo looked confused more than anything else, and Kym looked as if she was trying very, very hard to hold onto a very loud scream.
“Emma,” the Doctor urged her. “Put the gun down.”
Emma sniggered, and pointed it to her face, gazing down the barrel. It always made her feel peculiar – in a good way, though. To dance so close to death, to have the bullet mere milliseconds away from her face, from killing her and sending her brains splatting across the wall behind them. Would she ever do it? No… absolutely not.
“It’s just,” Emma swung the gun away from her face. “As someone who’s known the Doctor for longer than the human Barbie,” she waved the gun casually at Kym, causing the young woman to squeal and shut her eyes. “And the wannabe Spock over there,” she flicked the weapon up at Leo. “I thought my invite to whatever this piss-up is was just… lost in the post?”
“Let Leo and Kym go,” Lizzie pleaded. They had no part in this business, and they shouldn’t have to pay for the consequences. No… there were things they had to deal with, but Leo and Kym shouldn’t have to suffer through them. “Please, Emma.”
Emma strolled closer to them, causing Leo and Iris, who were positioned by Emma’s arm chair of destination, to move away to the others, who were also creeping backwards. Wherever Emma went, the others backed away from her. Story of her life, it seemed. But, in a funny way, it amused her, how all of them were so… malleable. So easy to bend to what she wanted. Elegantly, she sat down in the armchair, and crossed her legs, and tapped her blood-red nails against the gun’s grip.
Emma shook her head, an almost… upset look on her face.
“Did you really think I was going to use this?”
There was a visible wash of relief over them all, and that didn’t make her feel any better. To think that all they’d been scared of was the gun, and didn’t care about what all of them had condemned her to.
“You three,” Emma declared. “Barbie, Spock, Crookshanks. Go away.”
Kym was out of the room before Emma could finish her sentence, and after a hesitant glance to Lizzie, Leo followed her. Ulysses prowled sullenly away, giving Emma a quick flash of his claws as he went.
“Cancel the party, yes?” Cioné called to Ulysses. Ulysses nodded, and before long, they heard the door slam shut behind them.
Silence fell upon the five of them. Only the Doctor, Cioné, Lizzie, Iris, and Emma remained.
Emma felt quite satisfied that the party would not be going ahead. What sort of… sadistic thing would it be to do, to celebrate the happiness of their family.
“Do they know?” Emma said simply.
“No…,” the Doctor’s voice trailed off. “Cioné does.”
“Tell them.”
The Doctor hesitated. Then he looked at Emma, and looked at Lizzie and Iris.
“Emma is the daughter of the Master.”
Lizzie looked at the Doctor blankly – the words meant nothing to her.
But Iris knew a bit about the Master. Her dad didn’t say much – it was a difficult subject for him. But at the academy… with the Master one of the cleverest Gallifreyans ever known, who had gone rogue and called out the society for how rubbish and boring it was, it was hard for her shadow not to linger over the academy. And so she was almost a rumour – someone with a reputation. But, the Master had been nothing more than a ghost – rumours at the academy, and part of her dad’s past. A childhood friend. Like a sibling. A relationship that was tough – one that he was so often reluctant to talk about.
But now there was part of her. A legacy, stood in front of them.
But this person was so much more than just the Master. Emma was her own self. Her own upbringing, her own personality – now her own mission.
“Hold on,” Iris said, entirely spellbound. Because that was when it made sense. That’s why the Time Lords had wanted the Doctor to help them keep Emma captive. Because he was the Master’s best friend – and so of course the Time Lords would turn to him. And that was why Emma had found Lizzie. To get closer to the Doctor. Slowly, it all began to fall into place.
But Iris didn’t care whether Emma was the Master’s daughter.
But she did care about what the Doctor had done to her.
“What do you want from us?” the Doctor approached Emma reluctantly. He was so quick to side-line the revelation – not that it mattered. Iris was just shocked. Spellbound, that this woman they had come across, entirely by coincidence, was… someone known to the Doctor. And yet – it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
Emma, meanwhile, couldn’t believe him. As if he thought this could all be solved by him giving her something.
“I want you to see.”
Emma’s words hung in the air.
“I want you to see a lot of things,” Emma continued. Because the Doctor had been blind, every time he’d come to visit her on her disgusting little planet. He’d never truly understood what it had been like to be her, to haven’t met another soul until she was an adult. “Firstly, that you are on borrowed time. Your life, Doctor, it will end. For what you have done to me, I will end you, and you will bleed. And there aren’t many days I look forward to more than that.”
“Why not just kill him now?” Iris interrupted. After all… Emma had made such a huge point of how her life was going to change. How she’d finally realise that life wasn’t perfect. How it was… time to grow up, or whatever.
“Because I have things I need to do first,” Emma looked at Iris. She was such a naïve little girl. “And besides. Do you truly believe you can understand what it’s like to be me?”
“Don’t patronise me,” Iris started towards her, but the Doctor quickly held her back. This was between himself and Emma, and he wouldn’t let his daughter get hurt in the crossfire.
“I’ll do what I like to you,” Emma ignored her, sitting back and sniggering to herself. “This has been planned to the letter, you see. It will work perfectly. And before you die, I want you to feel pain. To feel… tormented, in the way that I did.”
“Fight back by being bitter?” the Doctor questioned. “By being cruel?”
“Oh, just shut up!” Emma said – and it came out louder than she expected. But these were words that the Doctor needed to here. “Because I will fight back how I like. After what you did to me, you don’t have a right to dictate my life anymore. I won’t be told how to cope by you, or by anyone.”
The Doctor ran close to her, and took her hands, but she lurched back and slapped him. The blow caught the side of his jaw and sent the Doctor sprawling backwards. He could taste the blood, and when he wiped his mouth, it came off on his hands. “Emma, you must understand – I hated doing what I did. I despise myself for it, but the only reason I kept going was because I thought I could make a difference! I thought I could play the long game, I thought I could make you see hope! And see goodness!”
“Well you did a shit job,” Emma turned away from him, because she couldn’t bear to look the Doctor in the eye any longer. The Doctor. What a terrible name.
“Everyone, just, stop,” Lizzie stepped forward. She hated the conflict – she’d never been able to stand fighting. “Doctor, get off the floor and stand over there, and then shut up.”
“I want her to know,” the Doctor protested. “I need her to know that I tried, I really did.”
“I don’t care,” Lizzie watched, as the Doctor picked himself up and clambered over to the far side of the room. “And above all, what’s really not okay is that you keep claiming the moral highground, because god, that’s hypocrisy. And actually, Doctor, I have felt like Emma and I know what it’s like, and you’re really, really upsetting me that you would – sorry,” Lizzie broke apart mid-sentence, apologetically shaking off her sobbing. “Sorry, that you would… be like that to someone.”
Yes… Lizzie had been there, left to her own devices, to fend for herself. And she knew how it felt, to feel the outsider, to feel as if nobody was going to care, as if nobody was going to love.
“You’re meant to stand by me,” the Doctor scowled at them like a five-year-old.
“We’re meant to love you,” Cioné said, watching her husband from a distance. “And I wouldn’t be loving you if I told you this was okay.”
When the Doctor looked at his daughter, Iris stared at him, her eyes wide. She was lost in the situation, with no idea who to side with – and for once, Iris was silent, and blinking tears away from her eyes. But reluctantly, she sidled over to her mother, who pulled her in close.
And then the Doctor turned to look at Emma, who was no longer taking any delight out of the situation. But when she turned to look at him, she smirked.
“This is what you wanted,” the Doctor had resigned himself to the situation. Emma had wanted to break them apart – and she had succeeded.
“No.” Emma didn’t think the Doctor could have got it more wrong. “I’m showing you what you’ve got. You’ve got a family. You’ve got people who care. Those three women stand against you, but they do that out of love.”
The Doctor gazed at the three most important people in his life. His daughter was sobbing, in fact – and perhaps, that was the moment when things began to click for him. And he wiped his eyes, and now there were tears gently resting on his skin.
“This is what I’m doing, Doctor,” Emma continued. “Making you feel guilty. Because while you’re here, with these people who love you and care about you, not everyone has that. Not everyone can live happily with the people they love, because sometimes, the people they love don’t love them back. Or sometimes… people don’t have anyone to love. Sometimes, people are alone.”
Emma had won.
The Doctor had hated his decision for a very long time. But it was only now that he truly understood the lengths of what he had done – when he looked up at his daughter, his wife, and his best friend. All those beautiful days with them, with his family. People who cared about him, and who would always care about him. But now, he finally understood that all of those days, he’d been robbing Emma of a happy life. When he looked over at the woman who should have been his daughter, it hit him hardest of all – because she had been alone. And while solitude could often be a great thing, to breed someone in loneliness was perhaps the cruellest punishment of them all.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
The words were just whispers, and they cracked as he said them. Because… the weight of what had happened pushed down on them, and broke the words as he tried to say them.
“And I won’t try and understand, because I know I can’t,” the Doctor admitted. “But... I accept.”
Emma was staring out of the window, at the night blanketing the city, and the skyscrapers poking through the darkness, trying their hardest to shine light over the urban world below them. But the lights didn’t see to do any good.
“If you really want to make any kind of… amends, for what you’ve done,” Emma stood up, and she walked over towards the front door. Her walk didn’t seem as strong as it had done before – but it was certainly more purposeful. “Then you will hold tight to what you’ve got, and you will let it bully you over everything you’ve done.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, but he nodded.
“And one day,” Emma continued. “I will return for you.”
And then she slipped away.
Nobody moved, for a few seconds. And when, eventually, Cioné moved to clear away some crockery, and Iris slunk over to the X-Box, nobody said anything. For everything that needed to be said had already been spoken. The silence was full of tension, yes – but it didn’t need to be filled. The tension was an absence, a blank canvas, and now was not the time to fill it. Instead, they continued on as normal. As if nothing had ever happened, they just did what they always did, the familial bliss that the Doctor had adored so much. Because… theme parks and picnics and days out and holidays were always special, but the Doctor had always lived a crazy life, never stopping and staying, always whizzing from place to place. And so, the moments he treasured the most were the moments at home. The moments of the four of them, just… living.
And his family were just… living, there and then. Making tea, gaming, looking at the stars. That hurt him most of all, whether it was deliberate or not – that even after everything that had happened, all they could do was nothing. They had to live, just as they had done all of those happy days, when Emma had been living in the swamps and the slimes of that godawful forest world. This is what Emma had wanted – for the fact that he had such an amazing family to hurt him.
She had got what she wanted.
But the Doctor did not protest, for this was what he deserved.
Families were hard. It would be so easy to think of having a family as being perfect, of always being on good terms, of simply feeling complete, feeling as if your life had everything, just because you had those people to love. But it wasn’t so simple. Because families lied. Families argued. Families didn’t always stand by each other. Sometimes it was because families were toxic, because they hurt each other and deep down, it would be better if they were apart. But with the Doctor, Cioné , Lizzie, and Iris? Well – it was out of love.
And as Lizzie walked slowly out of the flat, she had something important to do. For she had felt alone and neglected. She knew what it was like, to see people so happy together and to realise that you could drift away, and you would mean nothing to them. To be surrounded by people, and to still feel lonely, was truly painful, and Lizzie had felt it, all of her life. And finally she had found her family, the people who loved her – but she wouldn’t stop worrying about the beaten and the lonely. She wouldn’t stop trying to help them.
Lizzie shut the front door behind her.
***
“Emma!” she called out into the night. Lizzie could see her, her figure gliding through the night, beneath the glow of the street lamps. And to make matters worse, Lizzie had no idea where she was going. It seemed as if Emma was just going to walk, until slowly, she vanished into night, and became lost forever. Emma didn’t stop. She continued walking at exactly the same pace, her gun gripped tightly beside her, her long coat flowing to her knees, trailing behind her like bad memories. “Emma, please, wait.”
It was only then that Emma stopped. She did not turn around, but she didn’t go forward. Lizzie pulled her jumper close around herself, as she hadn’t brought a coat – the night chill felt more distinct than ever, as if it were ready to bite at anyone out and about, and poison them with its frosty chill. But Lizzie didn’t care – in fact, by now, she felt immune to the cold. And Emma didn’t seem to care either.
“I know how it feels,” Lizzie said, stopping just a few feet behind Emma. As she spoke, Lizzie didn’t even bother putting any effort into the words – she just said them desperately, and hoped they’d resonate.
“You can’t,” Emma didn’t turn around.
“I can, and you know I can.” Lizzie could read Emma, just as well as Emma could read Lizzie. Perhaps that was the mark of the lonely – and how paradoxical it was, for the one with no company to grasp how a person works more than anyone else. But of course, it was through watching from the outside, slowly gauging what people do, what people say, and what it means.
“Then go on, Elizabeth. How?”
Emma turned to face her, the moon that bled through the tree-lined avenue illuminated her face a ghostly pale.
“I just… I’ve been where you are,” Lizzie said – and yet, she didn’t know what to say. “Alone. And, like, just… not feeling accepted anywhere, as if you’re an outsider to everyone.”
“Then you’ll understand that you can’t just heal wounds overnight.”
Oh, yes. Lizzie understood that very well.
“I – I know,” Lizzie said, her voice seeming ever so small in the night. It was funny… things always felt smaller at night. Perhaps it was because one could see space above their heads, and realise how incomprehensibly tiny they were. Perhaps it was that, that made everyone feel alone at night. “That’s… that’s why I’m saying that I will be here. When you’re ready, you can… yeah, always come and find me.”
Emma didn’t say anything. But… there was, perhaps, a flicker of acknowledgement in her eyes. “You’re strong, Elizabeth Darwin. Enviably so.”
“I’m really not.”
“Yes… yes, you are.”
Emma said it, and as she did so, she sounded almost sound. As if… that was what she wanted to be like. Strong, like Lizzie Darwin. It was then that Emma felt something odd – it reminded her of those days back on that stinking world, when she would feel something, and she would think back to the Doctor’s smiley faces, and try and work out what it was. This time… she was uncertain. But, Emma thought that, perhaps, it might be the feeling of having someone. It wasn’t quite developed yet, still… a distant feeling. But it was beginning.
And, although Emma would never say it aloud, she respected Lizzie Darwin immensely. She hoped that one day, she could be as strong a person as Lizzie was. Because, yes, she was resilient – Emma could walk through hell and back, and come unscathed. But to be strong? Well, that was a completely different game.
“I will do what I need to do, Elizabeth,” Emma said, mustering up her determination, thinking back to her horrific days in that old house, on that dead planet. “Whether it’s the strong thing to do, or the right thing to do. I will do it, and I will be victorious. It will be what I need.”
“Do what you need, but…,” Lizzie said all that she could think of to say. “Try to be good. Please.”
“You know I’m not.”
“And that’s why I asked. Because I worry that you won’t be.”
Emma nodded. And… Lizzie saw a glimmer of something on Emma’s face. Just like Lizzie, Emma was the master of hiding emotions – and rarely did she show any. Even when Emma did something that one might deduce the emotion behind it – rarely did her face twist to show any kind of feeling. And Lizzie knew that that didn’t mean Emma was emotion-less. In fact, in her experience, the people who hid their emotions felt them deeper than anybody else. Lizzie tried to read Emma’s face, and… she wasn’t quite sure.
Perhaps it was sadness.
Emma turned away, and began to walk down the tree-lined avenue. She was a woman who had been wronged, who had had some terrible, terrible things done to her. But Emma had survived. She was there, striding away from it, alone. And at the same time, Lizzie was worried about how far Emma would go. Because she could tell that Emma was determined, and ruthless, and if she didn’t keep herself in check, could be cruel.
As she walked, Emma looked up to the sky. The cloud layer was shifting, and the stars began to shine.
She was fighting a war. A war to seize back control of her life, the life that had been stolen from her.
And Emma was going to win.
“The Master is dead,” Not-Applicable said, more of a statement than a question, as he knew that the Doctor would have known.
“I know…”
“Before her death, she had a child.”
A shiver crept down the Doctor’s spine, and the air around him felt a little bit colder. Of course… the Doctor and the Master had once done everything together. Why was it a surprise that they would have children at the same time? And yet, the Doctor was the only one left, the legacy of the sibling-like presence in his life lying in front of him in a cradle. He caught sight of the baby, looking up at the black, empty sky, so innocent, so sweet.
And he felt a pang in both his hearts, a strange cocktail of emotions rising through him. It was heartbreaking, that the Master wouldn’t see her child growing up. So, the Doctor felt a strange kind of loyalty, of devotion, to the child. And above all, he felt hopeful, dreaming that he might be able to stop baby going the same way as mother. Someone with an impossible potential… but someone who had wasted it, gorging on death and destruction and pain. The Doctor thought, perhaps, that he could help the little baby, to raise them into what the Master always could have been.
To help them.
“A girl, given the shortened name ‘Emma’. Born not long ago, a similar time to your own infant. Until now, she resided in an orphanage. Your orphanage. However, as she grows… she will need another residence.”
Not-Applicable gestured, and the guard with the cradle stepped forward, and passed it over to the Doctor. He took it, and quickly took the girl into his arms, placing the cradle on the floor. Emma was stirring, and her eyes briefly flickered open. It was like a punch to the gut – as the eyes staring up at him were those of the Master. And yet… they were different in their emptiness, their innocence. An open book, ready to be written. The Doctor, with his Dad-skills, held her and quickly soothed her back to sleep. Now was the time for sleep. The questions could come later.
Not-Applicable asked a simple question.
“Will you protect it?”
As if there were no doubt about it all, the Doctor said, “I’ll try and keep her safe, yes.”
“No,” Not-Applicable replied bitterly, filled with nothing but contempt for the Time Lord and the child opposite. “The universe. Will you protect it from this child?”
Horror spread through the Doctor – Emma was just a baby, she couldn’t harm anything or anyone – and so he held Emma closer, as if protecting her from the people opposite. “What do you mean by that?” the Doctor questioned.
“This is the daughter of the greatest mind, and the greatest psychopath, Gallifrey ever produced. She cannot be allowed to roam free.”
“Why not?” the Doctor protested. Emma was her own person, she wasn’t just a carbon copy of her mother. Who were the Time Lords to think that? Of course genetics had a bearing, but above all, nurture. That was what made a person who they were.
Not-Applicable ignored him. “The girl will reside here, in this property,” he gestured to the crumbling mansion. “She will live alone, and you will visit her regularly. You will watch her, you will ensure that in her mental state, she poses no threat to creation.”
The Doctor gazed grimly at the squalor around him. Each breath he took was a struggle, the putrid gases filling up his lungs and draining the life out of him. And there was barely any life around, the miserable landscape reduced to nothing by death and despair and decay. It was bad enough to leave a young child on their own – especially here, for this was no planet for a child. “I can’t keep her here, especially not alone.”
“The girl will be observed,” Not-Applicable continued. “We will see how a Gallifreyan child survives when left purely to their own devices. You will provide the human element. With your regular visits, we can examine her interactions with others. Furthermore, you will assist in developing communicative and social functions.”
The Doctor shook his head then, knowing that he couldn’t be part of such an… experiment. He looked down at the child in his arms… there was no way he would allow it to happen.
And, as if Not-Applicable had read the Doctor’s mind, he said,
“The Master was the greatest Gallifreyan mind to ever exist. How fitting that her daughter should contribute towards Time Lord science. A Monitor device has been implanted in her head. This allows us to watch her every move. Furthermore, if you ever attempt to take her from this world, we can detonate the Monitor, killing the child in an instant.”
The Doctor would not be part of this. He had not always got along with the Master, obviously. In fact, universes that been born, and had died, over the years of their conflict – but at the heart of it, the Doctor and the Master… they had a strange relationship that perhaps nobody would ever be able to grasp. And now the Master was dead, the Doctor felt a strange loyalty, to ensure that he didn’t… corroborate with such a scheme, a scheme disgracing her memory – the memory that lived on with her children.
Perhaps he felt this now, stronger than he ever would have done before, because he was a father. The lengths he would go, to protect Iris.
The lengths he would go to…
It was then, that he had an idea. A bit crazy, a bit reckless... in fact, perhaps it wasn’t even the right thing to do. But with it, he could save Emma. He could let the Master’s memory live on… and he could help raise her daughter into what the Master always could have been.
“Fine,” the Doctor laid Emma gently down in the cot. “I’ll do it – regular visits, yes? Weekly sound okay?”
“Yes,” said Not-Applicable, admittedly slightly suspicious that the Doctor was so open to the idea. “Be aware, Doctor. If you play games, I will kill you. I will kill your human plaything. I will kill your wife. I will kill your infant daughter.”
“I understand,” the Doctor said, trying to hide his shaking breath. They were only threats, but against his family? That in itself was chilling. And, he knew Not-Applicable’s power, so the words cut deep. He knew he was going to have to be subtle… there was so much at stake here. So much he was risking. And yet… he didn’t have a choice. There was a lonely child, one who needed his help. In fact, the Master was his greatest friend, his greatest enemy, his greatest rival. One might see him as an uncle to Emma.
The Doctor knew what he had to do.
“This is confidential, Doctor,” Not-Applicable instructed. “Just as our meeting. You will communicate about this with nobody.”
“Of course,” the Doctor agreed, knowing he had little choice.
“We are taking no chances with this operation. The ultimate experiment, leaving a Gallifreyan child alone in the wild. There is little, Doctor, that is as secret as this.”
And as if to prove his point, within seconds, Not-Applicable held a gun in his hand. He turned, and within seconds, shot his five guards dead. The ultimate proof, that Not-Applicable was not just a man in control, not just a man who had the power to oppress. He was a man unafraid of doing the dirty work himself. Unafraid of personally exercising that power.
“Remember what I have told you.”
The Doctor didn’t think he would ever forget those threats. And so he watched, with great contempt, as the man strode away into the forest, before picking up the cradle, and holding it close to him.
He turned, to look at the giant, looming, skeleton house, alone in the death, in the dark. He looked down at Emma, and he knew that in his life, there would be little making him feel as guilty as this. A girl, the same age as his daughter… but hidden away, part of an experiment. He scooped Emma out of the cradle, and kissed her forehead.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I truly am.”
He wanted to say something else, he wanted to reassure her – but he didn’t know whether the Time Lords were already watching, so he stayed quiet.
But to himself, he pledged it. Although he could not hate himself more for complying, he kept reassured, in the knowledge that if this went to plan, the experiment would be for nothing. In the long term, the people looking down upon them would be in no doubt, that they had got this wrong.
Holding Emma close, they stepped inside.
***
London, 2018 – 10:30AM
“That’s completely ridiculous, why would he do that? I mean, blowing up the car, that’s just… well, nonsensical!”
Cioné watched the TV from over the rims of her glasses, feeling the bubbling irritation of her daughter beside her.
“Err, because they controlled his whole life, perhaps?” Iris’ sarcasm was evident – in fact, Iris’ sarcasm seemed to balloon whenever watching television with either of his parents. There was just something… naturally irritating, at a parent’s inability to sit and watch television.
Thankfully, her dad seemed to be much more up to speed with it, as he sat in one of the arm chairs, K9 at his feet. “You wouldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” he shook his head.
“Alright!” Cioné raised her arms defensively, as both her husband and daughter mounted their assault at her inability to understand whatever trite they were enduring on the television. Of course, all of it was done in jest, and they were all laughing throughout. General family banter. Just… family.
Lizzie watched on, with a bittersweet smile. It was, perhaps, something she felt regularly, whenever watching the Doctor and his family. The outsider… never a part of any of it, but always watching on. Lizzie had felt a little bit like that, all her life. Perhaps it stemmed from the loneliness, but… who knew? She didn’t need to be alone to feel so, it was a feeling she got, as she trudged through existence… that even with people around her, she was alone. It wasn’t a thing that bugged her constantly, a lot of the time, she could laugh along with the Doctor, and Iris, and Cioné, and feel as if she were part of them. But there were moments, where she would zoom out – and it would be as if she were looking in on the world.
That was why Leo had been so completely wonderful. Leo Akram made her feel… not outside. He made her feel as if she were living, as if she were there. He was sat munching miserably (a miserableness quite part of his personality) through a bowl of cereal. Leo smiled up at her, and he looked solitary, and by-himself, but… he seemed as if he were happy, simply because she was there. That was the weird thing about loneliness. You didn’t need to be alone to experience it. In fact, Lizzie was quite comfortable being alone, she loved it, it was her favourite place to be. But when immersed in a group of people… that was when she felt saddest. As if everyone were simply passing her by. Often solitude was a good place for her, but… occasionally, she wanted something more.
And Leo had helped with that. The two of them, against the universe. It had all got so much easier since he’d been around, there had been so much less of that… distance between her and everyone else. But it would still strike her – after all, there were wounds Lizzie simply couldn’t heal for good.
“Look, come on, both of you, out.”
When Lizzie looked up, she saw Iris herding her parents off the sofa, and guiding them towards the door. She was putting the plan into action, as they had agreed. Granted, Lizzie wasn’t sure how good Iris’ excuse for them leaving was – a rogue Vervoid in a Victoria Secret outlet – but it would do. And Cioné seemed quite willing to go – knowing her, she’d probably guessed what was going on.
“Are you… sure?” the Doctor, admittedly rather reluctantly, backed out of the door. Cioné trailed behind him, trying to look over her husband’s shoulders, as if trying to salvage whether her guesses were correct.
“Yep, absolutely, please, go, enjoy being in love, or whatever,” Iris walked further and further, until her mother and father were retreating down the stairs. Both of them knew Iris was lying, because Iris was a rubbish liar. But both of them seemed willing to comply, perhaps because they were naïve, or because they were both aware that arguing with their daughter was not something either of them had the willpower to do. “Okay bye!” Iris waved, slamming the flat’s front door in their faces. They heard the door lock, and then that was that. They were trapped outside.
The Doctor reached into his pocket, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. Cioné, however, quickly put her hand on his arm and lowered it. “Darling, they’re busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Organising our anniversary party. Come on!”
“Right…”
“Yes, I know. Anniversary parties, not our thing. But it’s lovely for them to be so wonderful, so let’s leave them to it. We should have lunch?” she suggested, taking the Doctor by the arm as they walked out onto the street. What she didn’t mention, was that she had ulterior motives herself. Something she needed to discuss with him.
“Sounds wonderful. There’s that riverside place we tried once?”
“Absolutely, let’s go.”
***
What Cioné had not realised, was that the anniversary party was a half-ruse in itself. Yes, of course they were going to be giving them the most spectacular anniversary shindig ever, but they were also going to be getting up to something a little bit untoward. Leo had been shepherded in as lookout, and he gestured to them when the Doctor and Cioné were turning at the end of the road, making their way to the underground station.
“Awesomesauce,” Iris suddenly leapt off the sofa, and bounded over to the far corner of the kitchen. There, she tapped thin-air, and the air beside her rippled, the faint outline of a blue box shimmering into existence.
“Invisibility. Cute, huh?”
“Erm, yeah,” Leo nodded along, his love of sci-fi fascinated by the spectacle. He had other things on his mind – he was about to spend the day with Kym Gomez, planning an anniversary party with the terrifying girl from next door who had nearly deafened him several times. And it was as if on cue, that she burst into the flat.
“YOU CALLED THE RIGHT GAL,” Kym screamed, striding into the flat with an admirable enthusiasm. “What’ve we got so far, guys?”
Lizzie, as she took her coat from the back of the chair, sheepishly gestured to the small bits of planning that they’d done for the anniversary. “Erm… that.”
When Kym danced over and quickly scanned over the documentation, she turned to Lizzie, a look of terror plastered across her face.
“What the hell is this.” Kym said it not as a question, but a vacant, terrified statement.
“Planning…,” Lizzie’s voice drained away as she said it, as her lack of understanding of planning big events became evident, and she felt guilty for clearly leaving so much for Kym to do.
“I can’t plan with this, Lizzworth,” she side-lined the papers, and whipped out her phone – the ultimate party-planning device. Kym was quite certain that with such a powerful device in her hands, she would be able to provide the most ultimate outer space event thingy for her favourite outer-space married couple. Lizzie’s documentation was feeble in comparison to the might of Kym’s party planning brain. “We need to start again,” she declared, before her voice trailed off. “Oh…..”
Lizzie looked at Kym, who had just looked at Leo for the first time.
“He’s adorbs,” Kym muttered wistfully.
“Oh, erm, er…,” Leo spluttered, like a rabbit caught in headlights, before stumbling into the kitchen.
“He’s beautiful,” Kym repeated, her eyes wide, as if struggling to contemplate how attractive the awkward little nerd guy was.
You know,” Iris said, leading back against the TARDIS. “You talk, and all I hear is bluuuuuuuuuurrghhhh.”
“Right, yeah,” Kym got her mind back on the job. This party was not going to plan itself. In fact, although she would not admit it to Lizzie, Kym believed that this party would work better if Kym were the sole orchestrator of events. Lizzie was not a sociable person, and her influence might not be hugely appreciated in the light of such a deeply complex task. “Babes, I can handle this from here. You both go do whatever it is you have to do.”
A look of trepidation spread across Lizzie’s face, as she tentatively walked towards the TARDIS, looking back at the flat in its current state, savouring the memory of her lovely ordered place, before Kym did whatever she was going to do to it. Of course, her stomach was a pit of nerves anyway, churning and twisting, as she knew what was about to happen. But leaving all of her possessions in a flat which Kym was going to be ‘working her magic on’, was also a little bit terrifying.
“Okay well… I don’t know how long we’ll be. Actually, maybe a while. I’m not sure, but… good luck, yeah?”
Kym seemed extremely nonchalant about the whole thing. Leo was stood beside her, paralysed with fear – even more so when Kym yanked her arm around him. Lizzie caught Leo’s eye, and she struggled not to laugh at her boyfriend’s awkwardness, which reminded her so much of herself.
“Don’t look at my laptop,” Iris spun into the TARDIS, with Lizzie following her close behind.
***
At the end of the universe, where all the planets and the stars and the people had stopped, there was Mountain.
No determiners have been dropped. The mountain on Mountain was so huge, and vast, and gigantic, that it is the origin of the word ‘mountain’. Everyone calls mountains ‘mountains’, because of the name of the planet. The extensive, immense mountain on the planet’s surface, occupied the entire world with its huge, infinitesimal rockiness, before peaking at a point higher than all of the peaks in the Milky Way put together.
As it lies at the edge of everything, looking out over the void, that boundless darkness, where nothing ever has or ever will live, one can stand and feel so tiny and insignificant and random in the face of the universe. People who looked over the edge of the world often felt so miniature, it would strike them how desolate, and solitary, the whole universe is. In an infinite plane of blackness and emptiness and nothingness… there we are. And in the scale of all that emptiness… well, the universe is nothing. And the people who watch the void often felt so small.
On that day, upon Mountain, a band of weary, ragtag, patchwork travellers trudged through the snows. They wore torn clothes and muddy furs, and some covered their heads in bandanas, while some wore cloaks, the hoods pulled tightly over their heads. Their supplies were carried upon an armada of braying donkeys being led behind – there were less of them than they’d started off with. A few of them had been slaughtered, to provide food for the expedition.
So, it would come as no surprise the times were hard. The blizzard had stopped, after raging all night and all day. Several of their people had died last night, the frostbite driving deep into them – not just their physical bodies, but their minds. The cold would tear the skin apart, and from that, it would creep into the mind. And when the cold was in the mind – often that was curtains for the sufferer. Gradually, their willpower, their desire, their hope, to carry on, would freeze, just like their body. And when the hope was drained… they often gave up, allowing the ice to take them.
The days were bleak, the nights were bleaker. There was a thick sense of depression and misery pungent in the air. What had started off as a joyous, optimistic adventure, had quickly turned into something rife with upset and despair. None of them wanted to continue, as under the light of the stars, and under the sight of everything that didn’t exist, they all believed they were insignificant.
But still they trudged on – for what other choice was there? They could kick over and die now, or they could kick over and die later, when perhaps, they’d discovered something interesting.
And perhaps, it was that night, that something interesting was about to happen.
One of the men beckoned the travellers over, and quickly they’d all waded over the snows and crags and rocks to a snowy bank, over which they saw something quite majestic.
A vast plateau of rock stretched out far away from them, like the polished marble surface of a kitchen counter – but in this case, it was enormous, perhaps the size of a football pitch. Spaced evenly along the sides of the flatness were outcroppings of rock, with eloquent carvings chiselled into each.
Their leader, a broad-shouldered, gruff man in his 50s called Urshak, gestured for them to step backwards. This was his expedition, he had led them through these tough times – so, he believed it was only right that he should be the first person to examine this marvel of nature. He knew what it was, of course. As someone who had dedicated their lives to dragging expeditions to the most distant, most remote parts of the universe, he knew what he was talking about.
“This is the Table of the Gods,” Urshak spoke, his voice trembling in the cold. He knelt down, and ran his hand over the smoothness of the marble. “The legends tell of a God, who awoke from an age-old slumber, and destroyed an army of heroes.”
“Yeah, sorry, that was me,” called out a voice at the back of the parade. It definitely wasn’t the voice of any of the men Urshak had recruited, and when he turned, he saw the figure pull down their hood, revealing a thick, flowing mane of brunette hair – it was, god forbid, a girl!
“It was New Year’s Day,” the girl continued. “The night had been rowdy, I did apologise, but I told the High Priestess to be careful about leaving the rest of the chocolate out.”
“She did,” spoke another woman, pulling down her hood. This one was different… shier, nervous – but still, definitely not one of the men Urshak had recruited. “I was there,” she added.
The first woman continued.
“And if your next story is about the High Commander of the Guard and his humiliation, that was my mother. Strip poker.”
Gasps erupted from around the troops, who had spent so long plodding up this almighty mountain surface, only to be confronted by such idiocy amongst their own ranks.
“Yes,” continued the woman. “It was just as traumatic for me.”
Urshak growled, not pleased with being taken for a fool. “Who are you?”
The second woman spoke, and as she did, a chill, very different to that of the usual biting cold, ran through all of their bones.
“I’m Lizzie Darwin, this is Iris, and we’re the one hope you’ve got of surviving tonight.”
***
Anybody would call her a miracle, but only those aware of the remits of Gallifreyan physiology would know it to be anything but. The baby, left alone on that forgotten, stinking world, with the howling wolves outside, shrouded always in darkness, with nothing to eat, nothing to learn from, nothing to understand… and yet somehow, she grew. For Gallifreyans seem to just… push on. No matter how extreme the conditions are, no matter how close to death they may be, the genetic make-up of that age-old species seemed to always have survival as its priority… as if, even when the individual wanted nothing more than to give up, their bodies forced them to plough onwards.
The baby survived. Crawling through the mud and the slime, she somehow just… existed, no matter the force of the conditions against her. In the freezing cold, in the rain that slashed through the empty shell of the house she lived in, in the gales and hurricanes and thrashing winds, the child would be resilient, never giving up and never giving in – as a child, her Gallifreyan nature inspiring nothing but dogged determination and grit. She lived in filth and squalor, and yet somehow, she was impervious to disease or infection.
It was not long before the baby was discovered by a wolf. A mother herself, the wolf began to feed the child with her wolf’s milk, allowing the child to grow stronger, and bigger. And eventually, the child would slither through the muck, biting at any insects daring to poke their heads through the soil. The wolf kept feeding her, and child kept growing, kept adapting, kept understanding, until she could crawl, and her tiny hands would turn through the muck, and grab insects and worms for her to chew on.
Eventually, there came a day when something changed within the child. It was sucking away at the wolf, and then with no forewarning, with no deep desire or knowing of what she was doing, she reacted. Perhaps it was a natural, primal instinct. Perhaps it was genetics, or the child’s personality, beginning to poke through. Perhaps, having lived the first months of her life in such brutal, harsh conditions, something had stuck with her, a knowing that to survive, she would have to adapt.
Therefore… now she was strong enough, she had no choice.
The child lurched forward, and dug her teeth in the underbelly of the animal, ploughing her teeth into the wolf’s flesh and sinew and muscle. And then, she tore, a giant chunk of meat unplugging itself from the body, and into Emma’s jaw. Hot, sticky blood sloshed from the wound, splashing all over the child, as she rolled out of the way, the wolf’s body dropping to the ground with a thud, and a slight spatter, as its belly sprawled in its own blood.
All it could bear to do was raise its head slightly, and look around her. Emma listened as the wolf whimpered and whined, but there was no temptation to stop, no desire to let the wolf lived. There was something driving her, telling her that she had to go through with it – and it was so natural that Emma didn’t even stop to consider the processes behind it.
Emma tossed the meat chunk to the ground, and placed her tiny hand on the thick wolf’s neck, clamping it to the ground, before she thrust her jaw into the wolf’s back, taking another mass of raw, bloody meat. The blood gushed from the wolf, faster than the black and murky rivers rushing not far away, and it covered her hands, and her white tunic, and it lathered in her hair and made it matted and sticky.
She was perhaps little more than what the rest of the universe would refer to as a two-year-old, and from that moment, Emma knew she’d made an enemy of the wolves. But times had changed, and something within her, whether consciously or subconsciously, had torn into that animal. She needed meat, she needed food, she needed to be stronger, her Gallifreyan body forcing her onwards, setting the steaming chemicals in her blood alight, spurring a vitriol and venom in her blood, making her need meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. And the wolf had been there, and she’d ripped it apart – and now, she made her way over the animal, her mouth gorging piece by piece, methodically and effectively.
Regularly, the Doctor would come and see the child. As instructed, he would carry out whatever the Time Lords asked of him – he was involved in nothing too inhumane, he would simply carry out the cognitive and motor tests that the Time Lords required. He would teach the child basic skills, so she didn’t merely become feral – so she would become, in effect, a normal person. Someone who would talk and communicate. Of course, that was far from normal, and the Doctor knew it. He was thankful, however, in a vile selfish kind of way, that this was the extent of his role. For he was he was complacent to the inhumanity. He was allowing this to happen.
Perhaps it was because of this, the Doctor would check on the little girl more often than was necessary. Partly out of guilt, perhaps. Carrying on with whatever sick experiment this was. Allowing this little girl to grow up in such bitter and disgusting conditions, while he had his lovely, beautiful family on stand-by.
But for whatever twisted reason in his head, he kept going. Perhaps it was out of knowing the experiment would continue regardless, perhaps it was out of fear. There was the core behind his guilt – but what scared him most of all, was that he had felt guiltier about smaller things. He could feel it, the cruel streak emerging within him, now he had things to lose. Now he had Cioné, Iris, Lizzie. They’d say they didn’t need protecting – but the Doctor loved them too much to care. He would do this, whether he wanted to or not, no matter how twisted it made him.
And so there he would be, prowling like a wolf through the forest, to that old house where the little girl raised herself.
Just like a wolf, he was scared of the girl as well. Just as he’d been terrified of her mother.
That night, he pushed the rickety old door, and caught by a faint, gloomy draught, it swung with an eerie gentile, gently thudding against the exposed brickwork surrounding the doorframe. As he stepped inside, his coattails trailing behind him, he heard the leaves crunch and the twigs snap beneath his feet, and he felt the wet, slimy mud stick to his shoes. He squelched through, and turned into the chamber he always found the little girl.
It was a former drawing room – once upon a time, it had probably been grand and ornate, with chandeliers dangling from the ceilings, held up by the strength of their proprietor’s status. With huge bayed windows, overlooking the extensive forests expanding around them. With handcraft furniture, fitted bespoke for the chamber itself. With sofas fashioned from exquisite material, maybe with old paintings hanging delicately from the walls.
All had crumbled now. There was nothing. No light, no heart, no warmth. The darkness and the cold streamed in through the broken window frames, and the sole furniture, of one table, and two chairs, was the sole extent of Emma’s possessions. As if she ever used them – most of the time, the girl would eat and drink on the floor, just as she slept on that grimy old mattress.
As the Doctor turned into the room, he saw her.
She would be like this a lot, hauling her mattress to the centre of the drawing room, and sitting on it as if she were meditating. Emma would face the windows, and she would close her eyes, allowing the cold to blow ominously past her, and knowing, but not seeing, that ahead of her, there was something more. Stuff that she didn’t understand. She would grasp how tiny she was then – except, she never understood that’s what the feeling was.
The Doctor would see her as he walked in, staring away from him, out of the window. Her build was that of a young child, perhaps 5, maybe 6. The age of Gallifreyans, however, was hard to grasp, time moving in an entirely different and malleable way.
“I… know,” Emma said, without turning around. Her words were thin and brittle – she was only just learning to talk, only just able to string together the words and occasionally sentences she needed.
“Good evening, Emma,” the Doctor spoke clearly and eloquently. It was important, so that Emma could pick up the words, pick up the way he said them, the way his mouth formed them. She didn’t turn, so the Doctor walked up beside her. In the cold, her skin had turned paler than milk, giving her the complexion of a living corpse. “How are you?”
“... living.”
The Doctor wasn’t sure if that were the case. But, he acknowledged her remark, and sat down beside her. He never used the chairs, he never liked feeling superior to her.
“Emma,” the Doctor reached into his pocket, and grabbed a jar. As he took it out, it shone a strange light in the room around them, illuminating the dark and filling it with a buzzing, flickering light, reminiscent of the strange balls of light whizzing and dashing about in their glass confines. “Do you remember the test we did? We’re going to try it again, if that’s okay.”
Emma didn’t respond… but she never did. It was as if she knew something were wrong, something with the very nature of her being didn’t quite cohere. The Doctor gave the jar a shake, and the particles gave an extra fast ‘whizz’ – before he unscrewed the lid.
It stuck, just slightly – but with a firm yank, the lid popped off in his hands, and the blue particles began to fly and dance and burst and sing in front of them. It was a peculiar sight, in the death and the emptiness of the chamber, to see such light and life in front of them.
Emma’s eyes opened.
She watched them coldly, oblivious by their beauty. This world of rot and degeneration had warped her perception of anything many would refer to as beautiful. Instead… Emma didn’t seem to understand beauty. Or… she saw beauty as something else. Whatever it was, the whirring, popping blue lights didn’t faze her, and her eyes merely followed them around, whooshing and nipping all around her head, staying strictly focused on her and not flying anywhere else within the room.
It wasn’t just ‘as if’ Emma was keeping them close – Emma was keeping them close.
The zapping blue lights were chronon particles… time, hurtling and rushing around Emma’s head. They exposed Gallifreyan children to chronon particles, seeing how they reacted, seeing what they did – often as a test, a measure of seeing the intelligence of the child. Not just the intelligence, however… something more, there was a sort of indescribable gift that the chronon particles could measure. One’s manipulation of the particles was often used to see the strength of mind of the individual being tested.
And the Doctor was forever amazed with Emma’s results. As they danced in front of her, illuminating her chilling face with an ethereal blue light, they seemed to be drawn to her, they seemed to hover and buzz around her head, and none at all would stray elsewhere, as if they were truly captivated by Emma’s presence… or as if Emma had made them captivated by her presence.
Then, the chronon particles divided, and they divided again, until four times the number of little blue lights were bringing light to the room. Seemingly, Emma did it all unfazed, her eyes staring vacantly as the specks and spots of light hopped around before her very eyes.
To her, the chronon particles were malleable, they could be warped and made in her design. She divided the atoms with a brainpower and willpower that the Doctor had never seen before.
These weren’t the only tests – the Doctor tried them all. Chronon particles, subatomic restructuring, radiation envelopes, dimensional transfiguring. But all of them showed the same. Emma displayed an impossible mental strength, something unheard of in the universe. Of course, it hadn’t been honed, it hadn’t been perfected, but her current intelligence, and the potential intelligence, was almost impossible. Her mental power was extraordinary, perhaps destined, when mastered, to be stronger than that of her mother. In fact, for many in the upper echelons of the experiment, there was no doubt about this.
Emma was the greatest Time Lord mind to ever exist.
“How do you feel, Emma?”
The Doctor asked the question, specifically wanting to engage an emotional response. The little girl didn’t seem to understand feelings or emotions, there weren’t ever any words for them, never any sign for them. There were no tests that could communicate the power behind emotions… nothing that could ever examine anything so powerful. Emma’s brainpower was all well and good, and perhaps it was all that mattered to the Time Lords… but the Doctor wanted something more. He wanted to know how she felt.
There was a pause, as if Emma were cycling through everything she’d learned. The Doctor reached into his pockets, and took out a series of cards, laying them on the dusty ground in front of her. Each of them had a smiley-face on them… but not always smiley – with a variety of expressions, each perhaps trying to explain emotions to a young child.
Perhaps it was a futile job, trying to explain such an… impossible thing. And cards were even more useless. How could one liken something so deep, complex, and overwhelming, to a simple picture? But… that was how it worked. And the Doctor looked at the cards, almost envious, wishing that one of the faces would explain him. He thought this whenever he was with the little girl, and none of them ever worked – he was always a cocktail of all sorts of feelings, some on the cards, some of them not.
Emma didn’t seem to like the cards either. Her eyes were scanning over them, but none of them seemed to be able to explain. Emma was concentrating now, in a way she hadn’t been before, her eyes completely fixed on trying to work out this unsolvable puzzle. And eventually, the calculations, the analysis, all of it began to wind up inside her little head. And perhaps she had found a word.
“Alone.”
The words were a punch to the Doctor’s gut. Emma’s expression was unmoving, unwavering, but the Doctor had to steady himself. It had been alright, for a while – to his own horror, he’d been able to divorce the person from his task. But now it was merging, he couldn’t stop himself from acknowledging that Emma was thinking, feeling, living, breathing. Now it rose up at him, like flames licking away. Loneliness… something nobody should ever have to speak of – and something a child should never, ever understand.
For this was not a thing that ever should have happened.
And yet it did, and he was part of it.
***
Iris strode up to the vast plateau of rock, tossing a stone up and down in her hand. Without a second’s hesitation, she meandered across it, her snow-boots slapping against the smoothened surface. It was strange, perhaps, that so exposed to the elements, the rock hadn’t been weathered. That was why it looked so out of place on the top of the mountain – it looked so man-made. It was as if there were something, keeping that plateau of marble as perfect as it was.
She could feel the men behind her, bristling as she got closer and closer. They seemed to be awfully scared. Iris didn’t care. When she was a bit further back from the middle, she gripped the stone in her hand, and tossed it forwards.
Before it hit the ground, however, it disappeared.
Iris heard Urshak behind her, and his voice trembled. Perhaps from the cold – but most likely from the fear. “Where – where did it go?” he mumbled.
“That’s a wormhole,” Iris gestured up to it. “Pretty neat sci-fi, really. Except, through that wormhole, is a prison, established by this evil church lot. The Qlerics. ‘Religious liberty’ gone mad… they’re allowed to open courts and jails and start trying people.”
A younger traveller dared to speak up, his voice slightly muffled by the furs he’d wrapped tightly around him – tighter so, as if he believed they could provide him some protection. “Who’s in the prison?”
Iris eyed the wormhole closely. “The most dangerous woman in the universe…”
Suddenly, half the men around them descended into fits of laughter.
“What harm can a woman do to us?” Urshak growled, heaving in breaths through his hysterical cackling.
It was at that moment, that from the sky, a bolt of lightning seemed to burst through the wormhole, and struck down three of the travellers, turning their once-freezing bodies into smouldering corpses.
Iris shuddered when she saw the bodies. Good to know Emma didn’t take lightly to casual misogyny. Even so, that almighty display of power was a little bit unnerving. Well – very unnerving, in fact.
Lizzie gently stepped away from the travellers, and made her way up onto the plateau with Iris, who was just taking the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket, having pinched it from her father earlier. She pointed it up to the plateau, and with a quick burst of energy, the wormhole seemed to burst to life in front of them.
“Good luck, you lot!” Iris waved at the travellers, before stepping through the wormhole. Lizzie followed her.
When the wormhole closed, Urshak and his expedition glanced around at each other, spellbound by whatever supernatural forces at work around them.
When Lizzie and Iris blinked, they were in a corridor. It was cold, grey, and metal – and at the far end, were two double doors. However – there were two Qlerics, stood in front of it, in their frog-like glory. They wore their flowing, red robes, the colour of blood juxtaposed coldly against the steel of the corridor. With her usual confidence, Iris paraded up to them.
“We’ve got visitors rights,” she held up a card she’d obtained, after her contact with Emma. The Qleric who examined it seemed impressed, and so he turned and pushed open the double doors.
The chamber beyond them was large, with a great glass cube in the centre. It was almost… too high-security for it to be real, as with that thick glass and the thick metal walls around them, escape seemed impossible. There was a real claustrophobia to the Qleric prison, isolated away in a distant dimension, in a strange metal box – with a strange glass box in front of them.
And she was there. Inside the glass cube, dressed in a stained, murky grey outfit, Emma sat watching them from her cold, metal chair. There was a table in front of her, and two chairs behind it – almost as if this situation had been prepared for especially. The glass box was surrounded by machinery, computers, panels, flickering lights and scanners. When Lizzie caught sight of the heart-rate monitor, doubled up due to the binary-vascular system, that was when she knew. Emma was being… examined, perhaps, from inside the box. The most striking thing was that another heart-rate monitor pulsated just beside it, one displaying the simple heart-rate of a human being. A chill ran down Lizzie’s spine… there was someone else there… someone nearby.
And yet, she couldn’t see them.
The robed figures, with their bulbous, frog-like heads, padded over to the glass door in the side of the cube, and placing a hand on it, the door slid open. A wide-open exit, and yet Emma sat tight in her seat… it was as if she didn’t want to escape. What could be so terrifying it deterred one from seizing the chance of a way out? It made Lizzie reluctant to enter – but Iris, with her usual lack of fear, meandered casually through into the box. Lizzie took a quick sideways glance to the nearby Qleric, who seemed unbothered by her concern. So… she stepped in.
The door sealed behind them, and Lizzie felt her heart pound harder than before. The Qlerics could shut the two of them in there, keep them trapped with Emma. Emma, who didn’t say anything. Emma’s, whose eyes blazed a piercing green, and whose eyes stared hard at Lizzie and Iris.
She was, without doubt, terrifying.
It wasn’t as if Lizzie had any reason to be scared of her. But… she was. There was a rawness to Emma, a brutal honesty. There was something cold, an uncaringness. At the same time, there was a careful precision to every look, every slight movement. Emma planned out everything she did with exact calculation, as if she always had the final result in mind, and new fully what steps to realise to get there.
Iris tried to ignore Emma’s looks, by causally strolling over and plonking herself down on one of the chairs opposite Emma. Lizzie walked over and did the same, and as she did so, she could see Emma with eyes surveying her. Just as Lizzie could read people, Emma seemed to be able to do the same, as if her look was an examination, a study, perhaps.
“You found out I was here?” Emma asked, looking directly at Lizzie and Iris. It was quite off-putting, especially for Lizzie, who always found it awkward looking straight at people during conversations.
“The messages were hard to avoid,” Iris shrugged.
“That was the point,” Emma sat perfectly straight, her hands clasped in an arch on the table. As she spoke, she was motionless, the only movement coming from her mouth.
“What do you need, anyway? Saving?” Iris looked around her at the Qlerics, as they paced up and down beside the cube. There was no way they could get Emma out of there.
“No. I simply want to talk.”
“But you never speak, like… ever?” Iris mused. In all of their conversations, everything had felt so… scripted.
Emma’s head tilted in a mocking, bitter way. “That’s because unlike you, instead of spouting white noise, I actually care about what I say. Words matter, Iris. They are our sole vessels of communication. Whether spoken, or written.”
“I don’t always think so,” Lizzie said, with the aim of steering this so far quite aimless conversation back on course. “We could’ve left you here.”
Emma gave a simple, casual response. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
It was as if she truly felt safe in the knowledge, that Lizzie and Iris would come. Information on Cullengate, of course they would.
And something else. And they didn’t know. As Emma looked at them, she could see that Lizzie and Iris didn’t understand. It was almost as if Iris and Emma were cousins, and Emma doubted very much that the Doctor’s family had been open and honest with each other.
“Do you know who I am, Iris?” Emma asked simply.
Iris looked at her blankly. Then shook her head. “Noope.”
Emma nodded slowly.
“Well. I know you’re that pale weirdo who gave Lizzie her business card.”
Emma was right in her suspicions. They didn’t know. Besides. She could read it in their faces.
So she continued.
“Do you care, Iris?”
Emma’s words were ambiguous, so much so they seemed to strike Iris with a wave of confusion.
“Care for what?” she eventually responded.
“Do you care?” Emma simply repeated herself, which seemed to fill Iris with nothing but irritation.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re –”
“You’re naïve.”
Iris was about to protest again, but she didn’t, Emma’s words stopped her in her tracks. It was true. She wasn’t that old, she barely knew anything about the universe. But asking her if she cared? That was nothing short of an insult. Of course she cared.
“I prefer the term ‘youthful’,” Iris responded, a sarcastic grin on her face.
Emma seemed unfazed, and uncaring. “I think, in fact, you know nothing.”
Iris was young… and Emma could see that. She could see the truth behind the girl – the product of a warm, cosy, familial upbringing. Someone who had lived comfortably, who had gotten the best start in life. Someone who perhaps didn’t have anything much to worry about. And yet… someone who had become so flawed because of it.
“A lovely little family,” Emma mocked, a sardonic look on her face.
“It was, actually,” Iris nodded, her mind drifting back to cosy evenings sat in front of the fire, the television on, with Dad, Mum, and Lizzie. K9 would be sat at her feet, and she would sip her hot chocolate, and she would be content. Those were the days.
“And yet… how much has it ruined you?” Emma’s sardonic smile twisted into a grim, mocking expression. “You were almost… isolated from reality? Your family was awash with lies. Perhaps that’s why you’re borderline Asperger’s when it comes to talking about how you feel –”
Iris no longer looked so self-assured, she no longer seemed to carry herself with an unbreakable air of impenetrability. It seemed as if her walls were breaking down, the walls she so often carried herself with.
“Why are you telling me this?” Iris looked down, and noticed her hands gripping tightly on the side of the table. When she shifted one, it was trembling. Lizzie noticed, and she placed a hand gently on top of it to calm her down.
“Because your father can’t get away with what he’s done.”
That’s when Iris and Lizzie both stopped abruptly.
Get away with what?
Had they known each other?
There was something dark inside Emma, it was clear in the cold, cutting way she put herself forward. And Iris knew that she couldn’t hide from the truth. She couldn’t stay in her nice little bubble forever, and if Emma was living with that darkness inside of her… Iris couldn’t hide from it either.
“What do you mean – what did he do? Wait – do you know him?”
“I’m an honest person,” Emma shrugged. “I don’t keep secrets.”
“Tell me,” Iris spoke plainly. Lizzie sat shocked beside her, stunned by Iris’ sudden forwardness – but she didn’t show it. Iris had her reasons, after all. As she looked up at Emma, she wouldn’t be… lesser than her. She wouldn’t take this truth simply because Emma was forcing it on her out of bitterness – she would take the truth knowing that it was the right thing to do. Because it was the grown-up thing to do.
If Emma was shocked, she didn’t show it – the only evidence was in a slight pause, longer than normal. With Emma, every beat felt organised, regimented. And that brief spell of silence didn’t – and that was when Iris knew she’d shocked her.
“While you were growing up with your lovely little family, in your nice warm TARDIS with the whole universe ahead of you… your father kept me on a cold, distant, planet, buried somewhere at the back of the universe. He dropped by, every so often. He monitored me, at request of the Time Lords.”
Iris’ breathing increased, she tried to slow it, to make sure her… fear didn’t seem evident. But it was a horrific revelation… that during those wonderful moments, when they’d been together as a family, her Dad had been keeping a dark secret. She tried to swallow her pain, but Emma continued, and as she did so, it became harder.
“No offence,” Iris said, trying to steady her shaky voice. “But… you’re a random girl. Why – why would he do that to you?”
“I don’t want you to ever forget that, Iris. I want you to know how I suffered. And all that time your father could’ve saved me… I want you to know that he didn’t. That he had his little family to keep him going every day, while I was alone.”
“What do you want, then?” Iris spoke quickly. “Revenge?”
She tried to seem unwavering, she didn’t want the bitter girl to win. But… at the same time, she was disgusted by the actions of her father. And when she next saw him, she’d give him hell because of it.
“I’m not doing this out of revenge. I’m not doing this out of pity. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
That was the sentence that truly shook her. Because Emma was right. It was the right thing to do – people should know about what her Dad did. And it was good that Iris knew as well… she couldn’t keep living in her cosy childhood bubble, when people like Emma were out there. People who were lonely, people who had lived on the verge of death, every single day.
“I can see it, Iris. The way this is changing you. You… finally realising that things aren’t going to end happily. It’s fine, it’s called growing-up. But finally… you’re seeing how twisted the world is. It’s not always nice, and it’s not always sweet. And I think… you’re going to find out more about that, very soon.”
It was this moment that Lizzie decided to speak. After all… Iris might not understand that, but Lizzie most certainly did, and she was sick of Emma’s patronising act – even if she agreed with Emma’s sentiments about unmasking the Doctor’s lies.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Find out more, very soon… the words were ominous, chilling… and Lizzie was quite certain Emma knew something that they didn’t. “And, look – I understand where you’ve been, Emma. Truly… I – I do. I want to help you –”
“Elizabeth,” Emma quickly dismissed her. “You can’t help me.”
“But, I think –”
“You can’t.” And for once, Emma bristled, she seemed to display some kind of… agitation, or irritation, at Lizzie’s remarks. There was a silence, while Lizzie retreated back into her seat, before Emma spoke again. “I’ve learned that when you’re lonely, nobody comes. Never.”
“They did,” Lizzie smiled at Emma. She did so truthfully – because in the end, she had found a family.
And yet, Emma did not seem convinced. For as she looked at Lizzie, Emma saw something that perhaps… reminded her of herself. A loneliness, one that simply couldn’t be solved. Some people were naturally lonely souls. Some people would feel like outsiders.
“But you’re still alone,” Emma said.
It seemed, however, that unlike Emma, Lizzie didn’t think that meant they had to keep themselves isolated. And perhaps, she was lonely. Perhaps she always would be. But not so much so, that it would ever hurt her.
“Mmhm,” Lizzie nodded. “But I’m happy. Kinda. And I know that doesn’t mean anything. It’s easy for me to say that when I’ve come through things.”
“Then maybe you just got lucky,” Emma shrugged. She certainly didn’t. And she didn’t think she ever would. But what would be the point in ever getting close to anyone? All her life, people had stabbed her in the back. If she placed her trust in anybody, they would turn on her. What would be the point of ever getting close to someone if that was always the outcome? Everyone would tell her to be optimistic, to tell her to have hope. But so far, whenever she’d done that, it had never ended well.
So what was the point? The universe had proved its darkness to her, and so she had resigned herself to it.
And as Lizzie looked at her, she saw someone rather similar to herself. Someone who the world had twisted, someone who had been manipulated by her experiences. Someone who had been lonely. But unlike her, Emma was different. She’d become resentful towards the world. She’d become bitter. Lizzie didn’t blame her for that. Not at all – people dealt with trauma in different ways. And, in fact, Lizzie had been bitter as well, for a while. She’d hated the universe, she’d hated living. It was only when she’d met Leo, when she’d stood on that bridge and looked out at the stars, that she’d begun to see the value of existence again.
Lizzie had misinterpreted Emma. Normally, she could read people well, but for once, she’d failed. Emma wasn’t cold. Or at least – if she was, it wasn’t a bad thing. The universe changed people, bad things changed people. Who was Lizzie to judge her for that? There was no perfect way to cope – to say that would be to say that the cause was perfect. When… none of it was. They were all just strange, hopeless wanderers, in the end.
In fact… Lizzie had so much respect for the girl opposite. Perhaps she was still haunted… but she was still here. And that was quite wonderful.
It was then, that Iris spoke tentatively. She too seemed to have gained a respect for Emma. Perhaps Emma did despise her father – and rightly so. Iris would be blind not to see the reasons behind that. Dad wasn’t a perfect human being. Far from it. She’d known it for a while – but it was only now that it truly settled in.
“What is it you want?” Iris asked. It still didn’t make sense. She couldn’t make it work in her head – Emma had been an entirely random girl. And yet… the Doctor had met her before. But maybe that was why Emma had found Lizzie – because she wanted to get closer to the man who had been complicit in holding her captive.
“I wanted you to know,” Emma continued. “And then… I have plans. I can’t promise you’ll like them. But… they’re going to happen.”
“And I’m guessing, that’s what you meant when you were musing over me finding out about the cruelty of the universe, or whatevs?”
Although she wouldn’t admit it, Emma’s words had scared Iris. What she’d said about her finding out about… how twisted the world was. All her life, she’d been kept… well – she’d been safe. And so, the thought of that all coming to an end made her nervous. Still, Iris slapped on a brave face – she quite enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen, usually. Why should it be different here? Or at least – that’s what she told herself.
“Hmm, no,” Emma sniggered. “Your father is barely a footnote. There are dark days coming, Iris. And I think I’m to be a part of them. I’ve been looking into Mrs Cullengate, and I’ve discovered something… terrifying.”
“Tell me,” Lizzie sat forward. She needed to know, Evangeline Cullengate’s silence did nothing but make her anxious. And if Emma had any information, she had to have it, she had to keep her mind at rest.
Emma simply shook her head, however. She turned to Iris, and said, “Footnote your father might be, but footnotes can mean a lot. I can’t risk the information falling into his hands. When I’m ready, you’ll all know. Believe me.”
“Look,” Iris spoke up, and spoke with an honesty and maturity she hadn’t used before. “Creds to you, kay? You lived through some terrible stuff, not gonna lie. But please, I’m asking you, don’t take my father from me – please. I know he got it wrong, he’s not perfect – but you can’t expect me to just… abandon someone I love, after everything he’s done for me.”
“I’m not expecting you to,” Emma’s expression was blank, emotionless, perhaps. And yet, that emotionless quality held more emotion than one could realise. “I respect you both, especially you, Elizabeth. But your father, Iris? He will suffer, after everything he’s done to me.”
***
London, 2018 – 13:35PM
“Just… tell me everything,” was all Cioné could say. “Please.”
She needed to know. But she guessed this was why the Doctor had been… quieter. There had been moments when she’d looked at him, and he’d seemed so… empty. Guilty, perhaps. She hadn’t been sure at the time. Ever since Christmas and Bethlehem, he’d retreated into himself…
“When Iris was just a baby, I was summoned to a planet. Some… distant place, hidden away from everywhere else. The Time Lords met me, and… they had a child with them. Emma. A bit older than Iris, but roughly the same age.”
It made sense that the Doctor and the Master, almost sibling-like in their relationship, should have children at the same time.
The Doctor took a deep breath, before he continued.
“It was a sort of… covert conspiracy. And the idea was… to leave a Gallifreyan child in the wild, and see how she grew. What sort of person would she grow into? So… that’s what they did. They left her there, on this planet, when she was just a baby.”
The Doctor paused, as he prepared to tell his part in the tale. This was the hardest part of all. And already, Cioné was grimacing at the knowledge of what had gone on. It was truly horrifying, that someone could bear to treat a child in such a way. And yet… she was not surprised. Nothing about the upper Gallifreyan echelons could surprise her. It hit even harder, not just because it was so barbaric, but because Cioné was a mother, to a girl the same age. No child, no matter who their parents were, deserved to be treated as an experiment.
“They still wanted a person, above all,” the Doctor gulped. “Not just a feral child. So my job was to… stop by every so often, to make sure that she could speak, to make sure that she… understood basic information about the universe.”
He stopped, and Cioné sighed, and shook her head. How could he have been complicit in all of this? He might as well have been fully involved, if he had gone along with them. His… display of support for such a thing was almost skin-crawling. And… how had he lied to her about this? How had he kept this secret? All of those days when he might’ve just popped down to the Empire for a carton of milk, perhaps he was off to see the abandoned little girl being raised by wolves. All of the lies he must’ve told, a huge, intricate web of deceit.
“No,” she shook her head. “No, no, no – you – please, you didn’t?”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you do something about it?” she spluttered, at a complete loss of anything to say. She couldn’t get her head around how, with a little girl the same age, he could condemn the Master’s daughter to a lifetime of suffering.
“Because I was stuck,” the Doctor shrugged. There was nothing more to say than that. Yes, he regretted being a part of it, every single day – but there was nothing else he could have done, apart from risk all of their lives. “They threatened you, and Iris, and above all, the Monitor in Emma’s head was programmed to kill her if she ever left the planet.”
“Please don’t pull the old, ‘I was trying to protect you’, card, because quelle surprise, darling, I can actually think for myself without being lied to.”
The amount of times Cioné risked her life, and perhaps the Doctor didn’t even realise it. The work she did in the Time War… not killing anyone, not hurting innocent children. But helping them. Journeying to the front-line, where the Daleks and the Time Lords caused devastation wherever they went. The burning, flaming corpses, the torrents of blood gushing across the battlefields. Cioné had even seen a few planets turned to cinders. And whenever she saw it happen, she would shiver, and think of what was to come. If this was only the first few years, and they were no closer to a victory… what would it be like near the end? Whole universes obliterated? Whole civilisations burned?
And for some reason, she thought that it had never quite clicked for her husband, that if she went there and back every day, she could save his arse every single day and twice on a Sunday.
“I know, I know,” the Doctor shook his head, knowing that he was wrong. “Of course now I realise I was wrong – but at the time, with my new-born daughter, what did you expect me to do?”
He had been so lost, before Lizzie had found him. And still lost, before his family had truly been brought together. In the fresh throes of that, he couldn’t have brought himself to ever risking them. But understanding it didn’t help. He still saw the extent of the damage he did.
“We could’ve helped her!” Cioné would’ve taken her in. Emma was the same age as Iris, it would be almost like having twins. That would’ve been wonderful, and it would’ve… perhaps helped Emma.
“I didn’t sit around doing nothing,” was all the Doctor could think of to say. “What nobody understands, what I haven’t explained to anybody, is that… I tried to play the long game.”
He’d had an idea, right from the start. A beautiful, bright, whizzing idea, one that could’ve saved Emma, one that could’ve raised her into what her mother never was – but also everything beautiful that her mother was at the same time.
And the Doctor had tried, too hard to get it to work. But now… he didn’t believe it had.
“I tried to… show her the right way. I tried to guide her, to show her the… awe and wonder of seeing the universe. I thought, if I can gradually show her, perhaps she’ll become what her mother never could be.”
It was still truly impossible for Cioné to get her head around, that all she could do was sit back from her steak and swear to herself in her head. She had seen tortured young people, and she knew the effect that trauma could have. She saw it every day, whenever she went to the front line. And above all, one of the things Cioné held closest to her, was the right to be who you want. Trying to shape someone’s life, trying to turn them into something, instead of letting them find their own way – that was one of the worst things of all. Trying to… turn off their personality, who one truly was… that made her shiver.
And so there was only one thing the Doctor could do. If he had allowed someone’s life to be dictated, their destiny to be forced, then he needed him to do this.
“You need to find her, and you need to make amends.”
The Doctor did not seem convinced. “Do you truly think she’ll be so quick to get along?”
“No, I don’t. In fact, I think she’ll ignore everything you say, before leaving. But I don’t care if she hates you, you need to try.”
A stony silence fell, and Cioné picked up a chip and ate it.
“You talk about this as if it can… be fixed,” the3 Doctor said, looking back over at the river. The sun had gone in, and that perfect reflection had vanished.
“I don’t think it can,” Cioné admitted. “But at the very least, I think you need to realise what you’ve done.”
The Doctor couldn’t deny that. This couldn’t be made… right, but all he could do was try.
Another silence followed, and Cioné continued to munch her way through some of her chips, perhaps to try and diffuse the tension. The two of them didn’t have disputes that often, and when they did, they hit hard, with neither knowing quite what to say. So used to getting along normally, finding the words to argue with the person they each loved was stilted, perhaps even a little bit awkward.
Cioné, however, found something else to say.
“And what makes this worse, is that there’s Iris, and myself, and we’re oblivious to all of this. Do you know how that makes me feel? That we could’ve saved her, but we didn’t? Now, it isn’t just you who has to live with that, it’s me as well –”
“It isn’t your fault,” he interrupted, determined to make sure she knew that. She didn’t know, and so there was nothing that Cioné could’ve done.
But Cioné was not so easily reconciled. “I could’ve done something, but you… you denied me that.”
Perhaps he was to blame, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. Had she known, she could’ve helped. Maybe not much, maybe only a little, but it would’ve been something.
“I can’t believe this. I – I can’t actually believe you – you were part of this…”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. There was nothing more he could say.
Of course, the Doctor was still missing something quite large. Typical male brain, the important things just not quite sticking. Cioné watched him, waiting to see if he’d caught up yet. But nope… his eyes wandering over the street below.
Eventually, she asked him.
“How did she get off the planet?”
That seemed to pique the Doctor’s interest, as his eyes darted back to her. Somehow, Emma had escaped the clutches of the Time Lords. Somehow, she’d overcome the Monitor.
He would have to find out how.
***
She waited, clutching her knife close to her. There was a strange, stone pillar, and so she hid behind it. There was another not far away from it – perhaps the remnants of some old archway, with great, thick roots curled around the base of the cobble constructions, moss stuck to them and weeds crawling from beneath the cracks. Vines and ivy were intertwined the stone, some of them crawling through thin air to the hulking body of the tree just beside the relics.
The wolf prowled below, just down the hill. She saw it, sneaking through the undergrowth, beneath the cover of the darkness of the forest floor. The dead leaves and the thick polluted sky created a mucky, cloudy curtain across the roof of the world, and the wolf was using it to its advantage, as it slunk through the bushes and the bracken and the shrubbery, occasionally darting behind the tree. It watched its every step, avoiding any sticks or dry leaves that could give the game away. And in their game, even the tiniest twig was deadly. Emma’s hearing was sharp, and she used her traditional predator’s ears to her advantage. If that wolf put a foot out of line, Emma would pounce from the shadows and the wolf would be dead before its nervous system even began to carry out any of the split-second reactions necessary for its reflexes to kick into gear.
Of course, this makes it sound as if the game was always won with ease. No… the wolves were the masters, she was merely the challenger. But quickly she had risen, that the wolves knew her. They knew not to fight her, they knew to run even at the sight of her silhouette. But that was the problem. They knew her so well, and just as they were good hunters, they were good hiders too. But just as they had adapted, Emma had adapted as well. She could track a wolf, she could kill the wolf. It was all done with exceptional precision. Nowadays, she didn’t just… kill the wolf, and eat it raw like a savage. She had perfected her art so well, that she would never leave a mess behind. Emma was methodical, killing it quickly, cutting it up, dividing it by body-part. The dismembering was clean, quick, and little blood was shed.
He had asked her once, whether she felt guilty about it. Whether she felt sad that she killed another living creature. That had stuck in Emma’s mind, because nothing else had ever crossed her mind. What reason was there to feel guilty about it? She had to kill them so she could live. She had to try, so hard, just to survive. And the lengths she would go to, just to live.
Emma could see it, skulking just up the hill. It could smell her. But it wasn’t sure where. So, silently she crept around the pillar – it was but metres away, she could almost taste the meat in her mouth. Emma drew her knife, and as the wolf turned around, before it could even register what it saw, the knife plunged through its brain.
She knelt down, scooped up the carcass, and tossed it over her shoulder. Then, she began her journey back to… wherever it was she came from.
Emma had no name for the house. It was just… the house. The Doctor said it was her home, but when she asked him to describe his home, hers sounded nothing like it at all. In fact… hers sounded like exactly the opposite of what home was meant to be. A home should be warm – not just in temperature, but in atmosphere. There would be people. But Emma had only met one person in her life. In fact, she didn’t even know anyone else existed, she only thought they did, because the Doctor said so. For all she knew, they could be the only two people in the universe, and he was mad. There was nobody else. Half the time, there wasn’t even him. There was just her, and the insects, and the wolves. No cosiness, no… love, barely any life.
So, Emma referred to it as the house. The place she slept and eat. The place she spent her days.
When she got back there that afternoon, the box was there. The blue one, it was there every so often. It meant the Doctor was there to see her.
She readjusted the corpse on her back, and made her way in.
He was sat in one of her chairs, and as soon as she entered, he stood up, and greeted her, and asked her how she was. Emma understood interaction, since the Doctor spoke to her. And although she didn’t know anything about anywhere beyond that planet, she believed that if there was anything, communicating must be a part of it. Otherwise, why would the Doctor do it so instinctively?
“I am fine, thank you,” Emma responded. “Why are you here?”
“I just… came to check on you,” the Doctor seemed confused, as if she’d said something wrong.
“I am fine. Now, please leave.” She was busy, and she had things to be doing. The wolf needed to be cut, the planks on the windows needed to be reinforced. Occasionally, she’d get a pack trying to get in, in the middle of the night. They’d batter the doors, and the windows, desperate to get in and kill the girl who killed them.
The Doctor was reluctant to go, and he was, admittedly, taken aback. Emma had never said anything like that, she’d never asked him to leave. But he could tell she was growing up. Nearly a teenager, now. Once upon a time, her sentences were broken, stilted, and awkward. But now, she spoke fluently, and she spoke well. Emma knew nothing of the outside universe, barring that it existed. But because of that, her skills in this world had nearly been honed to perfection. Hunting, hiding, killing, observing, all were perfectly done.
“Did I say something wrong?” she asked him, noticing his hesitation.
“No, no!” he quickly said, his intrigue perhaps making him look irritable. “You’re growing up, you’re allowed to be irritable. I went to a planet, not long ago, where the people are the grumpiest in the universe. And I’m not surprised, its cloudy and there’s a constant drizzle. So I took one of them to Solus, this... completely empty planet. But because of that, you can see for miles and miles – and the sunsets are just magnificent.”
Emma listened to him – but it was only a half-listen. The Doctor always went on about the universe as if it was just nearby. It all seemed so regular to him, as if he spent so much time… seeing it. But just as Emma didn’t know whether there was anyone else, Emma didn’t even know if there was a universe. So, hearing him talk about it was almost painful. Hearing him speak of so much… beauty, it hurt, because she had never seen any of it. She didn’t even know how to picture it in her mind, she had nothing to go on. But he said it was good. Even that confused her, but she acknowledged it anyway.
If there was a universe… how did it work? Did everyone live in houses, and kill wolves? Were there more rivers? Were the trees as dead as these ones? If there was one thing Emma had learned, it was life and death. She understood it, because she killed the wolves, she knew what death was. Through that, Emma understood how close to death she was herself.
But she didn’t understand life.
“Wolves have children,” she sat down on the chair beside him. It had been bugging her for a long time, the origins of life. Well – not necessarily life in general, but her life.
“Yes,” the Doctor nodded, unsure of where Emma was going.
“Two wolves mate, and they have young.”
“Yes,” the Doctor confirmed. Phew. That was a conversation he’d let Cioné have with Iris.
“Therefore, two people had me.”
The Doctor hesitated, knowing that this was a question that would open up all sorts of questions for the girl. But he would answer them, and he would do so honestly. The Time Lords wouldn’t kill anyone for that, surely? The Time Lords would at least have the heart to be fair, and kind, just this once? But he didn’t believe himself, he knew the Time Lords would be cruel to the end. His only reassurance, was that they would want the girl to know. The reaction, perhaps they would want to see it.
“They did,” the Doctor tentatively verified her question.
“Who were they?”
Oh… that was a question with more dimensions than the little girl would perhaps be able to understand, isolated on that little planet. It made him realise even more, that letting this happen was wrong, that perhaps he was failing her by letting this happen.
“I’m afraid I only know your mother….,” he paused, as he braced himself to talk about her. He didn’t talk about her very often. After all, how easy was it to talk about your psychopath pseudo-sibling? “Her name was the Master.”
The words hung in the air, as Emma digested them. The Master. It was strange… the woman who had given her life, and finally she had a name. It was as if there was someone, definitely. But she still wasn’t sure. There was a hole, one which the Doctor had just… stuck a name over, perhaps. She needed more. But…. Emma didn’t have long to wait, before the Doctor continued.
“We grew up together. And… we were best friends. We were so close, we were like siblings, in fact. She made living so much fun, because she always… understood how rare it is that we are alive. So… she would dance through life, without a care in the world, and she would adore every second of it.”
The Doctor reminisced back on those childhood days, and their teenage years. The chaos they’d got up to, the madness and craziness of their lives. And all of it because of her.
“She wasn’t always right,” the Doctor admitted. “In fact, she got it very wrong, quite a lot, and I wish she was still here for me to ty and show her that there was another way to do things.”
He glanced over at Emma, and the girl was mesmerised. Because now, her mother felt real. She wasn’t just a name, just a… person who had brought Emma into the world. Now, the Master had a life, people she had impacted on, people whose lives she’d changed. She’d not always done things right, and that made her even more vivid. Because nobody could do things perfectly, so now, Emma felt her mother was real. And… Emma suddenly felt an affinity with her. Emma didn’t always get things right. Emma didn’t even know what was right, what wasn’t right.
There was one thing he’d said that had stuck out, one thing that struck her above everything else. In fact, it had struck her like a punch to the stomach, but it hadn’t quite settled in. It almost didn’t feel completely… real. But gradually it was sinking in, and gradually, Emma was understanding.
“Is she dead?”
The Doctor hesitated, but there was no point lying to the little girl.
“Yes.”
Simple words, but enough to make Emma look away from him, and look out towards the boarded-up window in confusion. Because… she was confused. She hadn’t even known her mother, and yet… she still felt a sense of loss. Emma often felt alone on that dirty, dead planet, but now she felt more alone than ever. It was as if there should have been someone out there for her – but that person was gone. What was that feeling? She didn’t understand it at all. It wasn’t even as if Emma felt any kind of… what the Doctor may call love, towards her mother. She just felt… as if she needed to know, why she was the way she was. And Emma felt as if her mother was the only answer to that.
And the only answer was gone.
Emma stood up, and slowly she dragged herself to the door. The Doctor stood up and followed her.
“Did she love me?” Emma asked, as they walked side by side, Emma just slightly ahead. She seemed to be leading him up the stairs, and the Doctor wasn’t quite sure why.
He could lie to her. He could give her hope. But… that would hurt her more in the end. One couldn’t just… scoop out hope for the sake of it, he’d realised. Sometimes there were situations when things weren’t so straightforward. He hesitated, while she led him up that grand staircase, and while she showed him to the top of the landing.
The stairs opened into an immense corridor – but it was buried right at the heart of the house, and so when the Doctor looked down it, the walls seemed to… collapse in on each other, creating a sort of claustrophobic tunnel, as if one could easily get lost in those dark, lurking shadows. Emma led him down it, and gradually as the darkness shifted, the Doctor could see the faint outline of a window frame merging into view. It was large, and arch-shaped, and as the Doctor stepped up to it with Emma, he could see far through the thick foliage of the forest.
Most notably, the window was less like a window, and more like a door – an arch within the arch, the panes smashed so that one could walk through it, stepping out into the nothingness beyond its extension. Except, if one were to step through that broken window, one would perhaps die before they reached the ground, as the shattered glass, which jutted and protruded from the frame, was like a frame of hands each wielding knives, so sharpened and honed by the weather that it could slice through skin with the slickness and deftness of a finger stroked through something like oil, or custard, or maybe even blood.
The wind blew through the window, and the Doctor pulled his jacket tight against the cold, as it gusted down the corridor, creating an almost ominous whistle, as if the house were some devilish musical instrument. Emma, in the simple, white clothes she was dressed in, dirtied by her hunting and skulking predatorily through the woods, stepped closer to the cold, letting her auburn hair billow in the rush of bitter air
Then, Emma stepped onto the stone ledge, so the fragments of glass were but millimetres from her throat. She felt a sliver bristle gently against her flesh, and when she turned just slightly, it lethargically pierced the skin on her neck. It barely touched her, it was perhaps just a scrape, but Emma felt it, almost in slow motion. It might have been just a scrape, but it did, in fact, slice through several layers of cells, lightly piquing her pain receptors, before it drew blood; not much, but a small drop, poking its head from the tear, before lazily rolling down onto her white tunic.
“What are you doing?” the Doctor eventually asked. Emma didn’t turn around – her eyes remained firmly locked onto the sky ahead.
“I’m watching. I like to stand in the window and look up.”
Emma’s eyes poured into the murky, thick clouds. From her window, she felt so tiny. So insignificant. It was when she looked out, that Emma felt there was something there, something more than just her little world of trees and the river and wolves. It was when she realised that the Doctor might not just drop out of nowhere and see her, that there was truth to his implications and there was a whole other place above her head. Emma could imagine that some people would look up to the sky above their heads and they would feel hopeful, a surge of optimism rushing through them.
But as Emma gazed at the sky, it just looked like a ceiling, and that standing in that window was the closest she would ever get to smashing it. It felt tangible, when she was stood in the window, as if she reached hard enough she might achieve the means to not look up at the sky and feel lost, or feel alone. As if she might just get close enough to break free.
It wasn’t that day, however. When she blinked, the ceiling was fixed, the slate-grey plumes of natural smog churning in the atmosphere, and the blanket of charcoal leaves matting the underneath. There would be no escaping. And all this time, she could feel the Doctor behind her. She knew he was there, watching her, calculating her. The Doctor was a wolf – except, unlike the wolves, he wasn’t cold. Or at least, he didn’t try to be. But the fact he would stop there, and provide no answers, made him all the colder.
Eventually, the Doctor spoke, his voice punctuating the whistling winds
“I never answered your question.”
There was a spell of hesitation, and eventually Emma found the words.
“When I heard your silence I realised I never needed an answer.”
The words hit the Doctor hard – for that certainly wasn’t the truth. In fact, if he knew his oldest friend well enough, then he knew that the Master would have ripped galaxies apart to save her own. And yet, the Master wasn’t there. Emma’s mother was dead. There was nobody to protect Emma… apart from himself. And the Doctor had failed her.
As Emma looked out at the sky, and felt small, she also felt alone.
For that was the hardest thing about living on this world. She was the only one remotely like… her, really. Only the Doctor, but he didn’t really count, because he only stopped by occasionally, and even then, he always seemed preoccupied with something else. Emma had always felt as if he wasn’t alone, that he came from a place where there were people, and that… he had people to love, just as she saw the wolves in their packs. A family, the Doctor had said once, when he’d seen a group of them prowling around the outside of the house. He had said that word… strangely. It was as if saying it made him sad.
But Emma was alone. She wasn’t like the wolves, she didn’t have anyone to rely on. She was just her, and most of the time, she believed that she always would be. Occasionally there would be glimmers, when Emma would wonder whether she could ever meet anyone else. Or… whether this planet was just going to be her existence forever. The hunting, the old house, just… doing what she’d always done, ad infinitum, with no clear end.
It was a thought that she couldn’t dwell on for long, because it would drive her insane. If there was one thing that Emma understood for certain, it was that she hated this existence. She hated it all, she despised the loneliness, and she hated the wolves. The only thing she enjoyed was killing the wolves, for it made her feel as if she was culling her demons. As if she could keep doing it, and perhaps she would one day feel content. Because… that was the worst thing. Never feeling content. Although, she had mostly reconciled with the fear. Originally, the wolves prowling around the outside of her house, had terrified her. that one day they were going to get in and gobble her up. But… what would be the harm in that?
Emma didn’t understand why people were scared of dying. Because when you’re dead, you’re dead. Why worry about it? There was no point being scared of it, because when it had happened, she wouldn’t have anything to be scared of. So, it didn’t bother her, and the thought of death was something she was resilient to.
Meanwhile, perhaps her very existence was something to be scared of. It was living that was going to bring the bad things, the certainty of tomorrow that brought with it the potential of terror. And that was why she hated it, and desired something more. That was why she needed more than this.
But her heart sunk, when Emma turned back to the dark corridors of that house, and saw the Doctor. Because tomorrow was going to creep around, and she’d still be stuck there, enduring this insane torment of an existence.
She just wanted it to stop.
***
“You see, Elizabeth,” Emma was still sat perfectly upright, with her hands placed on the table in front of her.
“There is something significant that I’m afraid you’ve been missing.”
Lizzie glanced out of the box, admittedly a little bit on edge. There were no Qlerics out there, which was, admittedly… suspicious. Why would one leave their prisoner unguarded? There was, however, a peculiar feeling of emptiness in the prison anyway. Normally, one expects to find a general… noise, a buzz, in anywhere with large groups of people. Or even small groups of people. But in Emma’s strange dimensional prison, there didn’t seem to be any such buzz at all.
“The heart-rate monitors,” Lizzie stated. It had been her ‘next question’ for a long time, and she believed it was the ‘something obvious’. After all with all of the many things that made no sense at all about this prison, that was the most striking.
“The heart rate monitors,” Emma mused. “Three of them. Solve the puzzle.”
Okay, Lizzie thought to herself, sitting back in her chair. Three heart rate monitors. Of course, there was the possibility that Emma had three hearts, which was, admittedly, unlikely, and Lizzie did not believe this to be the case.
Three heart rate monitors. No guards.
Three heart rate monitors meant three hearts.
And there was only one logical combination in the room that that could apply to.
Although Emma was the sort of girl to be able to control any situation that she walked into, even Lizzie found it unlikely that she would so easily be able to manipulate everything about this prison environment to suit her needs.
And Emma, through her expertise at reading people, saw the realisation fly across Lizzie’s face.
“Well done,” Emma held out her hand. When Lizzie took it, her fingers went straight through it – for Emma was a hologram.
“What the hell was that,” Iris saw the handshake, and the hologram Emma. But before she could process it any further, came a terrible sound.
The Doctor’s TARDIS began to materialise in front of them. Once the sound of hope, now it did nothing more but bring them dread.
“As we speak, I am currently on that godforsaken mountain planet. I needed to take the dimensional imprint of your TARDIS, so that I could track it,” said the hologram-Emma. “A diversion was the only way possible. Here’s your box.”
“You mean… the entire prison is a construct?” Lizzie stood up and quickly made her way over to the TARDIS, just in case Emma was going to do anything about it. Iris quickly did the same.
“Yes,” Emma spoke. “Now… I suggest you two run away. This dimension will fall out of existence in approximately five minutes.”
There was nothing else Lizzie and Iris could do.
So they did as they were told.
***
“I can’t do it anymore,” the Doctor strode into the house.
It was to be the day that Emma’s life fell apart for good.
Emma was sat in her drawing room, as she always was when the Doctor arrived. Today, she sat perfectly still – and she had no idea that what was about to happen was going to happen. There would be many times that Emma would look back on this day, and would analyse the hours preceding the Doctor’s call. And, although the Doctor had said some stuff about her being cleverer than any Gallifreyan to exist ever, Emma had never been able to deduce any kind of… events, that had caused the moment. No strange feelings or anything.
Since it had all happened, Emma had heard people say that they could feel something bad before it happened. That they just… knew there was something in the air. But Emma couldn’t isolate anything. For her, it had just… happened. No forewarning, no change in the weather, nothing.
Emma had just decided that it was called hindsight.
For example, you exist, and you feel something. It’s a strange feeling, not what you feel like usually (Emma had deduced that it was just the world. The world always felt a little bit different every day – and sometimes people could interpret to be a sign of something. Perhaps, you may interpret it to be a sign of something bad. And then you go about your life, that feeling of… fear, perhaps, hanging over you.
And then the bad thing happens.
And you knew about it. That feeling was a prelude to what you are experiencing, and you knew about it in your gut.
Or… the bad thing doesn’t happen, and nothing happens, and everything is normal.
Oh. Clearly nothing to be worried about.
And that, Emma had decided, was how the human brain had worked. It was just emotions, and tacking on ideas to them after an event had happened.
Because Emma didn’t have a clue what the Doctor was going to say when he strode in to her house. It just… happened. And even she experienced what she had come to call the hindsight problem – framing every event in her life prior to it in a specific light, perhaps because it made it easier to accept. Perhaps because it made her feel in control, as if she’d always known that it was going to happen and time was just passing as it was meant to.
But Emma knew, deep down, that she wasn’t in control. That it had just… happened, and that there was nothing she could do to control time’s malicious passing.
“Doctor,” she acknowledged him as she always did. He did not sit down.
“Emma, oh, Emma, Emma, I’ve got this all so wrong.”
His voice was urgent, and… emotional? Emma thought it to be emotion, although she wasn’t sure. It was that same voice that he’d used when talking about her mother. Except… a little bit different. One thing she was quite sure of was that the Doctor regretted something. He had taught her about regret. In fact, the Doctor had taught her everything – and not even when he’d intended to. For through him, Emma had learned how to read a person. Even though she rarely informed the Doctor of her observations of him, her isolation with him had made her exquisite at learning how to read what a person thought.
In fact, as she would later realise, the barbaric nature of her upbringing had forged who she was. And that made it inseparable.
As the Doctor would not sit, Emma decided to stand.
“You…,” the Doctor started, but his voice trailed off. Oh, this had been the moment he had been dreading. And… he wasn’t even sure if it would achieve anything. Perhaps, he would tell her, and the Monitor would kill her instantly. Now she was older, perhaps the Time Lords had decided to finish their brutal experiment. “Emma, there’s something you need to understand.”
“About?” she pressed him, still oblivious.
“Your life.”
That had intrigued her at the time. After all… the Doctor always seemed so reluctant to talk about… what life was all about.
“I’m afraid…,” the Doctor grimaced. And then he decided to just come out and say it, for waiting would have no better outcome. “Emma, your life has been part of an experiment.”
An experiment. Apparently the real world was nothing like this. There were a lot more people, as Emma had always expected. Everyone lived in houses, and there weren’t always trees. And there were good people, and bad people. A group of people had decided to raise a child, to see how it could fend for itself in the wild. And… the child had been her. Apparently, children were never meant to be lonely, and were meant to have people to look after them and to care for them. They were meant to have people around them.
She had been lonely. Every single day.
Emma listened as the Doctor told her life story to her. A story that she hadn’t written a single line of, and yet, one that still applied to her.
And then he said something that made her gag.
“You’ve got a thing called a Monitor. It’s a robot, like my screwdriver. And it’s… it’s inside your head. There are people, watching through it. Through your eyes. Seeing what you see.”
As soon as he said it, she grabbed the side of her face, and she could feel it. Pulsating, repetitively, just on the right side of her cranium. Oh my god, she could feel it, and she hated it, she wanted to get it out.
She wanted to get out of this life that had been… built for her, that had never been hers to control.
It was then, Emma made the decision, that she would. No matter what it took, no matter how hard it would be, she would overcome what she had been subjected to.
But before she could do anything, she had to ask what part the Doctor played. Because, although they had never been close, she was the only other person she had ever known. In fact, he might as well have been her father, because he had taught her everything, and showed her everything. Yes, the world had played its part too, her natural instincts keeping her alive. But the words she spoke with? The emotions she could identify on people, and occasionally, though not often, identify on herself? Any knowledge that she had – all of it had come from him.
When she asked him, he just looked at her, and that’s when she knew.
“Don’t tell me you were a part of this, please,” she shook her head, desperately hoping for something else.
Being alone, there had been something that she’d never understood – until now. For this was what it meant to be betrayed.
“I didn’t have a choice –”
“You always have a choice!” Emma protested.
“The Time Lords put a gun to the heads of my family, I couldn’t risk it. They put a gun to your head too.”
That made her feel more disgusted than anything else. For she would rather have had the gun.
“Get out,” she told him.
“Emma, please –”
She screamed at him, telling him to go away, and reluctantly, he did so. Because Emma would speak to him again. Yes… she was quite certain of that.
***
The Doctor had gone.
And now, alone, in that big, dark house, she felt lonelier than she’d ever done before. At least in the past she hadn’t been certain, ignorant to the fact that there had been something more. And at least, whenever Emma dreamed of something more, the ‘something more’ was better than the truth. But instead it turned out that the universe out there was just as dark, and just as cruel, as her funny little planet. That her whole life had been rigged, as an experiment.
She was an experiment, and the thought made her skin crawl.
Emma tried to forget about the taste of the vomit in her mouth, but thought of the dirt and the slime in the river, and she gagged. And to think that she’d been subjected to that, just on the whim of an individual who was interested. Without a second thought of the consequences, with his sole dreams being the gain for himself – he had sent a child to hell and let her raise herself. All alone, with nothing but cold and wolves and dirt for company.
But now she knew the truth, Emma knew what she had to do.
She picked herself up, and dragged herself over to the door. Even that required effort – in fact, everything felt so much slower, so much more… ponderous, than anything had done before. Now that everything around her was nothing more than a lie, she mused as to what point there was, what point there had been, to enduring so much suffering. Why not just give up? It would be so much easier, than endure the pain of a world just as grey and grim as the one she inhabited. If her life had been for nothing, where was the issue in going out in the same way?
Emma began to trudge up the grand staircase, and suddenly she felt so tiny in comparison to it. When she was a child, she could remember those stairs seemed so ginormous, like a grand road to the skies above. And gradually the stairs felt as if they got smaller, and smaller, as she got the measure of the wolves, the terrain, the world. As she began to hunt, as she began to live. But now, she felt so tiny again, and the stairs felt so huge – so far to go to get somewhere, and yet, Emma had the constant, overbearing feeling that actually, no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t ever get there. That was just what life was. A giant staircase, one stretching on for infinity; a staircase being crawled up by everyone, hoping to reach the top – and yet, none of them everwould.
But this staircase had an end, and Emma was there.
The corridor was once dark – and it was still devoid of all light. But now, that darkness was beautiful. She held it tight, she kept it close to her. With that darkness embraced, Emma could do what she needed to. Nothing to lose, no pain to worry about. If she hugged the pain, surely she would become numb, unable to feel anymore? Oh, Emma wanted nothing more than just… that. To not feel that fear, to not feel that loneliness, to not feel that constant, inner agony, the ache that came from just existing.
And now, as Emma looked up at the broken window, she felt the glimmer of something she hadn’t experienced before. It was… different. It was like the aching, but it was new. It felt good. She wondered whether this was what people called happiness. Emma thought back to the Doctor’s cards, the ones with the smiley faces on. The sad one, the scared one, the anxious one – those three had become her best friends. A few others too, but never a certain one, never the one that the Doctor called… ‘happy’.
For the very first time, her lips curled into a wry smile.
Emma stepped up to the window. The ground swirled below her, the cold, stone foundations of the house glaring up at her intimidatingly. She’d stood in this window so many times before, but she’d never felt nervous because of the ground. Scared of the skies above, yes. But the ground was just… there. So what if she landed on it? Everything fell, eventually. Perhaps it was her turn. Perhaps today was her day to die. Who would care? Because she had never had anybody to love. Never had anybody to love her. She was just… a plaything.
Her life and been controlled, and so there was only one way to become free of that control. One way to break free, one way to take her life into her own hands and not have her fate defined by the idiots who had dictated every day of her existence to her.
Emma took a deep breath, as she stood in the frame of the window, the cold winds gushing past her, and making herself feel so very, very… what was that?
Vulnerable.
Emma let go, and let the wind take her.
…
…
…
With her vulnerability gone in the wind, Emma reached up to the side of her face, and without looking, she gripped an icy pane of glass in her hand. She didn’t take it too hard, as already she could feel the fineness of its glassy teeth licking her hand – but she had it there, ready to go.
Emma smiled to herself again – she just wanted to picture it, the faces of the people watching through her eyes, as they thought she was about to jump out of the window. When she thought back to the Doctor’s smiley-face cards, she couldn’t quite picture it. It was fear – but not proper, burning, terror. Simply… anger, the thought of losing an experiment you’d spent so hard working on. Emma held on to the image of those faces, because it would become important later, when she put her plan into action.
No… Emma would not grace those sick men with the privilege of her death. They had a far worse day coming for them.
With a jolt of her hand, Emma removed the knife of glass from the window, and stepped down from the ledge. She sat down beside the window, and looked at the pane. She imagined it, the people watching her, and how on edge they must have been; so uncertain, so unknowing of what was about to follow. All of it through the Monitor, that fully little robot embedded in the side of the head…
Emma stabbed the glass into the side of her cranium.
Pain erupted through her face, burning through her flesh as the shiny glass needle dug deep into her skin, not just tearing it but ripping it, burrowing through it, churning through her head and eventually reaching its destination. Hot, sticky blood gushed from the wound, splashing onto her snowy white outfit and staining it a visceral dark red, and Emma felt it seep further to her skin, as her clothes became sodden. It washed over the pane of glass and her nails and fingertips became coated, the blood nestling in the gap between her fingers and nails, and it made her hair a darker red than it had been so before. It dripped down onto her lips, and she felt the metallic bitterness as a droplet crept into her mouth.
The rain began to lash down outside, so forcefully it was as if that great ceiling of a sky was tumbling down, and it tore through the broken window and thrashed at Emma, diluting the blood and soaking the rest of her hair, and between the constant buffeting of the blood and the rain she took great, irregular gulps for air.
And at the same time, Emma kept digging the blade deeper into her head, and she could feel it, the little metal object, almost spherical in shape, apparently. She’d skewered it, and immediately she’d felt something change, as if she’d been set free, as if she’d shed the chains binding her to this disgusting little world. She shoved and poked through the tissue and the marrow and she created a well, in which she thrust the glass. And with each slice, with each movement of her pseudo-scalpel, the pain became all the more gruelling and punishing and almost exhausting, and she could feel her breath shorten, and shallow.
But the pain felt… strangely sweet, in a way. This was her freedom, her way out. This was her escaping, refusing to let her life be defined by someone else. No matter how much agony she would have to endure, Emma was determined to achieve that – and so her self-dissection became easy. In fact, it was almost a breeze, as she let the anguish wash over her. At the same time, she held tight the fear and loneliness and grimness of her formative years, and it became easier still.
And that’s what she declared them: formative. The days of her entrapment in this house were long gone, and her new life started now. Emma knew that she could live that new life well. After all, she had survived this world. She had survived the wolves, the cold, an existence devoid from anybody else. Through the dark and the dirt and the slime, Emma could take on the rest of the universe and win. She had honed the art of survival better than anyone else – she had learned to trust nothing, to win everything – and above all, to love nothing.
Emma had become resilient, and she had become determined.
Above all, she had become ready.
The blade sliced through one last stray membrane, before being wedged under the Monitor. And through the rain and the blood and the cold, Emma ripped the glass pane forward, and the tiny, marble-shaped thing tumbled, in a cluster of sinew and tissue, into her lap.
Everything seemed to stop, frozen. The rain still buffeted her, the blood still dripped, and suddenly, Emma realised she was shivering. All she could hear was the gusting wind, and the thumping of the rain – in fact, that was all she’d been able to hear all along. But before, it had felt so noisy, almost as if she were screaming. Emma could hear her breathing, slow, and laboured, and she was paralysed, her mind running a billion calculations about her next move.
There was a hole in the side of her head, and it would need to heal. She could bind it herself – Emma had become quite masterful at treating her own wounds. She was glancing down at the Monitor, watching its red light flash maliciously – but that was when she knew that now was the time. Emma picked herself up, and holding her bloodied shirt up to the gash, she hobbled irrhythmically down the corridor, before stumbling down the stairs, one at a time – but at the bottom, she tripped and fell into the dirt. Only an hour ago she’d been alone in the universe, with everything else mere potential. Only an hour ago, she’d been having her whole life monitored. And now, she lay in the great belly of the house, looking so small in contrast to its majesty. Her whites were plastered in blood and mud, and her head burned in the lividity of pain, and she was sprawled on the floor, holding her head like a crying child. Just as she was nothing before, she was nothing now.
Except… now, she was free.
Now, she was alive.
Now came her escape plan.
Emma felt her bitterness towards the people who had wronged her, and it burned, harder than the pain in the side of her face. So, she dragged herself across the floor, her body catching on splinters and fragments of broken floorboards, cutting it further, tearing her skin – it wasn’t as if one could tell, of course, for in all her bloody glory she looked like a corpse, just trying to twist itself into a more comforting position, ready to die.
Maybe Emma was going to die. As she inched into her drawing room, sounds of distress creeping and manifesting through her throat, she thought it was likely. Maybe she would never live to see the universe above her head, the universe she had gone to such lengths to try and get to. Death would be a release, yes. But it wasn’t the release she needed. No… Emma had a job to do, and she needed to do it.
Emma was gazing up at her lonely table now, and she could see it. Her knife, and her flint and tinder. She tried to haul herself up onto her front, just a little bit, so she could move her hands and grab them, but when she tried, she flopped back onto the floor. It was only then that Emma realised she was whispering “No” to herself, over and over again. One more push toward, and she threw her hands, and they latched onto that table, and with all the determination and the grit she could muster, Emma wrapped her hands around her tools, and flung them towards her.
The tools clattered off the table and onto the floor in front of her, bumping her head as she went.
Glancing to the doorway, Emma could see her final destination. The front door. The exit. The place she needed to be.
And this time the torment was unendurable, but she endured it. Because that was her. No matter what hell she was faced with, Emma could face it. She could battle through it. She could beat it. Emma was strong, stronger than anyone else, fighting wolves every single day of her life. She would go to impossible lengths to get what she wanted, and she would hurt anyone or anything that crossed her path in the process. Emma would walk through the fires of Hell and come out unscathed. Come out the winner.
Emma had bled for her escape, and she wouldn’t die now.
What kept her going? It was the people who had done this to her. The Doctor, and everyone else behind the disgusting experiment that was her life. What they did not realise, was that it was her life. And now she knew what those men had done, Emma was going to find them, every single one of them, and she was going to bring down on them the pain that she had endured.
Every single one of those people did not deserve to live, and Emma was going to take that away from them.
Emma edged closer to the front door, and when she was there, she pushed it with as much force as she could. It creaked slightly, and when she thrust her whole weight into it, it opened just far enough for her to wriggle through.
That was the last time Emma would leave that house. The house she’d raised herself. She had no qualms about saying goodbye forever. Some goodbyes weren’t good. Sometimes they weren’t even goodbyes, sometimes they were just endings. This was an ending, and she would never see that planet again in her life.
The sky was dark, just as it always was. The trees loomed over her, their upper branches interlocking like skeletal fingers. There were so many of those trees, blanketing the whole planet, kept tightly together like a group of teenagers playing Sardines. In the distance, Emma heard the sound of a wolf howling – if she took any longer, it could get to her. But Emma had no fear of the wolves now. She lay out on the stone bed outside the house, and looked down at the bracken below, dripping from the residue of the rainstorm. The trees were soaked with it, and more to the point they were bordering on dead, kept alive solely by that putrid composition of gases in the air.
The conditions were perfect.
Petroleum rain. A thorn in her side, something she’d learned about after she’d nearly burned down the house. But now, it was her way out. Her beacon to the rest of the universe. All over the planet, a whole forest of trees, encasing the entire world in wood and leaves – and all of them, covered in petroleum.
Emma took her flint and tinder. She was well-aware that what was about to happen could have no effect at all. But that was okay. Emma didn’t usually have much hope for anything.
In fact, Emma hadn’t hoped in her whole life. She just did things.
She struck the flint and tinder a few times near the bracken beside her, and eventually, it caught fire.
And the world roared into life.
Because as the bracken caught., the flames leapt, and as the flames leapt, the trees caught and the flames leapt, and as the flames leapt, the leaves caught, and the flames leapt further still, to other trees, and other plants and shrubs and undergrowth and vines. Emma rolled back onto her stone platform and resigned herself to whatever was about to happen; but in the corner of her eyeline, she could see it, the whole forest burning an intense orange, and crimson, and fluorescent blue. The wood caught, the petrol caught, and it spread, for the fire was a beast in itself, tearing across the whole of the world, through everything, engulfing it and digesting it and turning it into nothing but ash and dust.
And Emma looked at the fire, and she was inspired. That was what she would do to them, she would blaze through their lives and turn them into nothing.
The entire skin of the world was burning, and Emma lay back and closed her eyes.
And although it meant twisting her face, which of course, only brought her agony, Emma smiled. She smiled as the flames hissed and crackled louder than anything she’d heard in her life, a great, thumping, sonorous roar ripping across the planet and shaking her very insides. The heat crept up to her, and she could feel it looming over her, scrutinising her, making her stone bed burning hot. In fact, the heat was rather painful as well.
Oh, who was she kidding? It was torture.
But still she smiled. And before she blacked out, she whispered some words.
“I’ll bring the rain to you.”
***
They’d got away, of course. Iris had quickly flown them back to Earth, back to their flat – but, before they left the TARDIS, Iris hung back hesitantly. It was unusual for Iris to be the hesitant one.
“I’ve got no idea what she’s going to do,” Iris shrugged, leaning back against the console. Emma was terribly unpredictable – and right now, it had Iris very much on edge. Iris tried hard to make it seem… not obvious, by making her previous statement sound more of an observation than of something consisting of sheer anxiety.
“I’d be lying if I said that I did,” Lizzie admitted. She had learned that it was probably better to be honest, than to try and lie to protect anybody.
“And I just… don’t know what to think either,” Iris admitted. He was her dad, and yet, he had so terribly wronged Emma. So what was Iris meant to think?
Lizzie understood, of course. And Iris didn’t even need to say anything. “You can love him, and… you can understand that what he did was wrong.”
Then, Iris said something, and although she tried to make herself not sound scared, it was the first time that she hadn’t done a very good job. “I’m just worried that she’s gonna… do something to him.” People in stories always talked about… having revenge, and doing terrible things to the people had wronged them. And it hadn’t ever occurred to Iris before that sometimes there would be consequences… well, she’d never had any reason to worry about it. But for once, the thought of what Emma was going to do did nothing short of terrify her. “He’s not all bad, Lizzie, he’s just… he got it wrong, and it was awful –”
“I know, I know,” Lizzie pulled Iris into a hug. “And… he’ll get what he deserves, I’m sure. And I don’t think it’s fair for you to expect anything less than that, because… what he did wasn’t good. At all. But whatever happens, please remember – that I care about him, and I care about you. Just… enjoy the party, yeah?”
Iris smiled. “I’m gonna ask him about it. Later, though. When all this is over, because… I know Mum knows about Emma, but I don’t know if Mum knows that Dad has been… involved with her. Gonna… give him a bollocking, y’know. Because I don’t get why. Like, why take an entirely random child and raise them like that? I don’t get it. Anyway. Yeah. Later.”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
Iris stepped back, looking very reassured. And then she shook it off, determined that nobody else would realise about her sudden spell of anxiety. And then, her voice filled with a mocking tone. “Hey, Liz.”
“Yeah?”
“Hope you enjoy the party,” she said, the sarcasm evident in her voice.
“Because that’s really likely…,” Lizzie mused, and Iris laughed, before they both left the TARDIS together – and stepped into Lizzie’s flat, where party preparations were full-on.
The anniversary party was due to start in about an hour and a half, and Kym was still storming about, ordering Leo around to make sure that everything was exactly right. The Doctor and Cioné were back from their lunch date, and Kym hadn’t made an effort to keep them away from their supposed surprise party – in fact, Kym had told them all about it. Iris joined in the preparations, and quickly, Lizzie gravitated away to the side of the living room.
And she sat there, in her chair beside the window. Not just because of the people and the chaos, but because of her balcony, and she liked to sit by it. From there, she could see the stars ahead of her, and it was relaxing, to be nestled up so close to that infinity above their heads. It was chilly, though, so she pulled the baggy sleeves of her jumper up to the tops of her palms, and let herself be enveloped by the wool, as if it were her only protection from all of space above her. There was always something quite thrilling about being sat beside the window at night. The coldness of the air seeping through the panes, making you feel as if you’re just… flying through space, clinging to the back of the Earth, hoping that you don’t fall off into the winds of the universe.
“Hello,” the Doctor took the seat opposite her. He looked weary. Not a perfect day for a party, perhaps.
He was weary. He’d not spoken much, to Cioné. They had finished their lunch in silence. She’d agreed to park the issue, until their anniversary party was over. But regardless – it had been an unavoidable presence looming over them. The Doctor knew, when he looked at Cioné. Shock, and horror, perhaps, that her husband had been involved in all this.
Lizzie had many questions to ask him, but she was tired herself. Why did he do it? Keep a little girl captive? Why would you do something so barbaric? It wasn’t as if he deserved a reprieve, but for her own sake, she wasn’t sure dragging it up now, when it was Iris’ responsibility to confront him over it, was going to make her feel any better. “Are you alright, Elizabeth?”
She smiled at him, a genuine smile. Because she was okay. She was… content with where she was. “Yeah. For once, haha.”
“You just seemed… distant, that was all.”
He wasn’t wrong. She had been far, far away, looking up at the sky, letting her mind just… wander. Meeting Emma had made her realise some things, and now they were sinking in, they made her feel… not necessarily happier, but… as if she could accept things. “I’m always a bit distant.”
The Doctor sat back in his chair, making it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. He was looking at her, the way he always did when he wanted to let her know that he was there for her.
Lizzie took a deep breath, and decided that she was going to tell him. Her counsellor had been saying that… talk to people you love. Somehow, saying the words out loud, forming them and giving them an audible meaning, can make the truth behind them seem… understandable.
“Sometimes I catch myself looking back on… on various things that have happened to me, and I realise I’m… feeling guilty,” Lizzie spoke slowly, trying to make sure that it made sense. “And I think about it, like… why? I’ve not done anything wrong.”
She paused, looking over at everyone who was chatting and a few people who were dancing, and people who were drinking or nibbling on the nibbles.
“And… I think it’s because the whole world is just… projecting this idea that we should all be happy, all the time. As if being happy is the right way to be, as if feeling sad is something wrong. It’s as if there’s some… overly sentimental idiot writing our lives, and is scared that admitting that it’s not always happy and nice and sweet.”
It had been Emma who had made her realise that part of the reason she felt so guilty about nothing, the reason she couldn’t… accept her life, was because everyone treated happiness as if it was some kind of ultimate goal, some kind of target that everyone should try and reach, and if they didn’t, they were failures. That was what Lizzie had been struggling with. She’d been seeing her happiness as something that had to be achieved, something that she was inferior without. Of course, achieving happiness was wonderful – but it was when people made sadness feel as if it was wrong.
“It’s like… society is scared of admitting when things aren’t perfect,” Lizzie continued, thinking of how Emma had made something click, that things didn’t always go right, and that there was nothing wrong with that. “Like, if someone’s life goes wrong, we don’t like to talk about it, and we… hide away from it, because… I don’t know. But… I dunno, I just think we should acknowledge it sometimes.”
In fact, Lizzie couldn’t quite believe she’d said it all aloud, so she quickly looked out the window again, taking the dusky indigo sky as if it were a comfort blanket.
But it was all true. Lizzie felt that the world needed to admit, sometimes, that things were hard, and that it shouldn’t all be buried under a tsunami of hope and optimism. Of course… simply being alive, sitting opposite the Doctor with the expanse of stars bursting above her head, was something truly special, and she couldn’t ignore it. But now, she was content, in a way that she hadn’t been before. She was content, not only with being happy, but being sad as well. Accepting that things weren’t always fine.
“You’re right.” The Doctor said it simply, because Lizzie had said it all. He knew what it felt like, for everyone to tell him to feel wonderful, to be happy with his life, when he wanted nothing more than to just… forget about even existing. They sat together, in a mutual understanding of how the other was feeling.
Eventually, the Doctor spoke again.
“You’ve come so far, Lizzie.”
Lizzie quickly shook her head and pulled her sleeves tighter around her hands, because she didn’t think so. Sometimes, she looked at herself and she’d barely changed since they’d met that first time, on that funny street corner. But then occasionally, she’d blink, and realised that she’d come such a long way. Gone from resigning herself to a life of depression, to… trying to cope, at least.
“I haven’t really,” Lizzie shrugged it off.
“You have. And I won’t let you put yourself down. Because, Lizzie… you are wonderful. Even when you’re not sure what to do, you can always put yourself in that situation. And… you can always make it better.”
Suddenly, they were cut off by a fateful shout.
“Oh my lawd peeps, selfie time!!!” Kym yelled. It was a command easier given than executed, but following significant complaining from Iris, and Cioné’s pretending to be busy, and Lizzie sinking further back towards the window in a bid not to be seen, and Leo’s awkward shuffling – eventually, they were all in position. The Doctor, Cioné , Lizzie, Iris, Kym, and Leo, (and not forgetting Ulysses), were all gathered in a group, piled close together. They all smiled – or pouted, or pulled stupid faces – as Kym took the picture.
As they were in their little huddle, however, they heard the door to the flat open. A little bit weird, of course, considering they weren’t planning on starting for another hour or so. Also weird, because one would expect any visitor to knock. But yes, they heard the door swing, and they heard footsteps, padding with a slow, but confident rhythm, through the hallway. A slight glimmer of anxiety piqued in Lizzie as she wondered who on Earth would randomly decide to walk into their flat – but when she saw, she realised that it couldn’t have been anybody else.
“Don’t mind if I join in, huh?” Emma strode nonchalantly into the living room, twirling a pistol equipped with a silencer in her hand. What a funny sight to walk in on! All of them, bundled close together. Truly, rib-ticklingly… hilarious. Because of all the moments, Emma took extra delight from the fact that this was perhaps the one that would hurt them the most. A party – a time for family, for friends… for togetherness. And definitely, absolutely not the place for loneliness. Not the place for the part of their lives that they’d tried to cut away, as if she were nothing but some kind of… malignant tumour, killing their family slowly.
But if that was what it took to hurt the Doctor? Emma did not care – she would go to whatever lengths, as long as it hurt him.
Quickly, Lizzie broke away from the group, and backed away across the room. The others gradually dispersed, diffusing across the room – but all gathered opposite Emma, who stood alone on the other side of the flat. And yet, Emma seemed to hold more weight, more control, than any of them. And it wasn’t just because she had a gun. No… Emma had seen them all, she’d been watching them all. Families were hilarious, thinking they had everything, thinking that it was just them against the world. Nothing irritated her more than that – because, in fact, families were just… constructs. Built on lies, twisted together and bound tightly. Surely that was where the ties were truly formed?
Lizzie looked around the room, specifically at Leo and Kym. Leo looked confused more than anything else, and Kym looked as if she was trying very, very hard to hold onto a very loud scream.
“Emma,” the Doctor urged her. “Put the gun down.”
Emma sniggered, and pointed it to her face, gazing down the barrel. It always made her feel peculiar – in a good way, though. To dance so close to death, to have the bullet mere milliseconds away from her face, from killing her and sending her brains splatting across the wall behind them. Would she ever do it? No… absolutely not.
“It’s just,” Emma swung the gun away from her face. “As someone who’s known the Doctor for longer than the human Barbie,” she waved the gun casually at Kym, causing the young woman to squeal and shut her eyes. “And the wannabe Spock over there,” she flicked the weapon up at Leo. “I thought my invite to whatever this piss-up is was just… lost in the post?”
“Let Leo and Kym go,” Lizzie pleaded. They had no part in this business, and they shouldn’t have to pay for the consequences. No… there were things they had to deal with, but Leo and Kym shouldn’t have to suffer through them. “Please, Emma.”
Emma strolled closer to them, causing Leo and Iris, who were positioned by Emma’s arm chair of destination, to move away to the others, who were also creeping backwards. Wherever Emma went, the others backed away from her. Story of her life, it seemed. But, in a funny way, it amused her, how all of them were so… malleable. So easy to bend to what she wanted. Elegantly, she sat down in the armchair, and crossed her legs, and tapped her blood-red nails against the gun’s grip.
Emma shook her head, an almost… upset look on her face.
“Did you really think I was going to use this?”
There was a visible wash of relief over them all, and that didn’t make her feel any better. To think that all they’d been scared of was the gun, and didn’t care about what all of them had condemned her to.
“You three,” Emma declared. “Barbie, Spock, Crookshanks. Go away.”
Kym was out of the room before Emma could finish her sentence, and after a hesitant glance to Lizzie, Leo followed her. Ulysses prowled sullenly away, giving Emma a quick flash of his claws as he went.
“Cancel the party, yes?” Cioné called to Ulysses. Ulysses nodded, and before long, they heard the door slam shut behind them.
Silence fell upon the five of them. Only the Doctor, Cioné, Lizzie, Iris, and Emma remained.
Emma felt quite satisfied that the party would not be going ahead. What sort of… sadistic thing would it be to do, to celebrate the happiness of their family.
“Do they know?” Emma said simply.
“No…,” the Doctor’s voice trailed off. “Cioné does.”
“Tell them.”
The Doctor hesitated. Then he looked at Emma, and looked at Lizzie and Iris.
“Emma is the daughter of the Master.”
Lizzie looked at the Doctor blankly – the words meant nothing to her.
But Iris knew a bit about the Master. Her dad didn’t say much – it was a difficult subject for him. But at the academy… with the Master one of the cleverest Gallifreyans ever known, who had gone rogue and called out the society for how rubbish and boring it was, it was hard for her shadow not to linger over the academy. And so she was almost a rumour – someone with a reputation. But, the Master had been nothing more than a ghost – rumours at the academy, and part of her dad’s past. A childhood friend. Like a sibling. A relationship that was tough – one that he was so often reluctant to talk about.
But now there was part of her. A legacy, stood in front of them.
But this person was so much more than just the Master. Emma was her own self. Her own upbringing, her own personality – now her own mission.
“Hold on,” Iris said, entirely spellbound. Because that was when it made sense. That’s why the Time Lords had wanted the Doctor to help them keep Emma captive. Because he was the Master’s best friend – and so of course the Time Lords would turn to him. And that was why Emma had found Lizzie. To get closer to the Doctor. Slowly, it all began to fall into place.
But Iris didn’t care whether Emma was the Master’s daughter.
But she did care about what the Doctor had done to her.
“What do you want from us?” the Doctor approached Emma reluctantly. He was so quick to side-line the revelation – not that it mattered. Iris was just shocked. Spellbound, that this woman they had come across, entirely by coincidence, was… someone known to the Doctor. And yet – it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
Emma, meanwhile, couldn’t believe him. As if he thought this could all be solved by him giving her something.
“I want you to see.”
Emma’s words hung in the air.
“I want you to see a lot of things,” Emma continued. Because the Doctor had been blind, every time he’d come to visit her on her disgusting little planet. He’d never truly understood what it had been like to be her, to haven’t met another soul until she was an adult. “Firstly, that you are on borrowed time. Your life, Doctor, it will end. For what you have done to me, I will end you, and you will bleed. And there aren’t many days I look forward to more than that.”
“Why not just kill him now?” Iris interrupted. After all… Emma had made such a huge point of how her life was going to change. How she’d finally realise that life wasn’t perfect. How it was… time to grow up, or whatever.
“Because I have things I need to do first,” Emma looked at Iris. She was such a naïve little girl. “And besides. Do you truly believe you can understand what it’s like to be me?”
“Don’t patronise me,” Iris started towards her, but the Doctor quickly held her back. This was between himself and Emma, and he wouldn’t let his daughter get hurt in the crossfire.
“I’ll do what I like to you,” Emma ignored her, sitting back and sniggering to herself. “This has been planned to the letter, you see. It will work perfectly. And before you die, I want you to feel pain. To feel… tormented, in the way that I did.”
“Fight back by being bitter?” the Doctor questioned. “By being cruel?”
“Oh, just shut up!” Emma said – and it came out louder than she expected. But these were words that the Doctor needed to here. “Because I will fight back how I like. After what you did to me, you don’t have a right to dictate my life anymore. I won’t be told how to cope by you, or by anyone.”
The Doctor ran close to her, and took her hands, but she lurched back and slapped him. The blow caught the side of his jaw and sent the Doctor sprawling backwards. He could taste the blood, and when he wiped his mouth, it came off on his hands. “Emma, you must understand – I hated doing what I did. I despise myself for it, but the only reason I kept going was because I thought I could make a difference! I thought I could play the long game, I thought I could make you see hope! And see goodness!”
“Well you did a shit job,” Emma turned away from him, because she couldn’t bear to look the Doctor in the eye any longer. The Doctor. What a terrible name.
“Everyone, just, stop,” Lizzie stepped forward. She hated the conflict – she’d never been able to stand fighting. “Doctor, get off the floor and stand over there, and then shut up.”
“I want her to know,” the Doctor protested. “I need her to know that I tried, I really did.”
“I don’t care,” Lizzie watched, as the Doctor picked himself up and clambered over to the far side of the room. “And above all, what’s really not okay is that you keep claiming the moral highground, because god, that’s hypocrisy. And actually, Doctor, I have felt like Emma and I know what it’s like, and you’re really, really upsetting me that you would – sorry,” Lizzie broke apart mid-sentence, apologetically shaking off her sobbing. “Sorry, that you would… be like that to someone.”
Yes… Lizzie had been there, left to her own devices, to fend for herself. And she knew how it felt, to feel the outsider, to feel as if nobody was going to care, as if nobody was going to love.
“You’re meant to stand by me,” the Doctor scowled at them like a five-year-old.
“We’re meant to love you,” Cioné said, watching her husband from a distance. “And I wouldn’t be loving you if I told you this was okay.”
When the Doctor looked at his daughter, Iris stared at him, her eyes wide. She was lost in the situation, with no idea who to side with – and for once, Iris was silent, and blinking tears away from her eyes. But reluctantly, she sidled over to her mother, who pulled her in close.
And then the Doctor turned to look at Emma, who was no longer taking any delight out of the situation. But when she turned to look at him, she smirked.
“This is what you wanted,” the Doctor had resigned himself to the situation. Emma had wanted to break them apart – and she had succeeded.
“No.” Emma didn’t think the Doctor could have got it more wrong. “I’m showing you what you’ve got. You’ve got a family. You’ve got people who care. Those three women stand against you, but they do that out of love.”
The Doctor gazed at the three most important people in his life. His daughter was sobbing, in fact – and perhaps, that was the moment when things began to click for him. And he wiped his eyes, and now there were tears gently resting on his skin.
“This is what I’m doing, Doctor,” Emma continued. “Making you feel guilty. Because while you’re here, with these people who love you and care about you, not everyone has that. Not everyone can live happily with the people they love, because sometimes, the people they love don’t love them back. Or sometimes… people don’t have anyone to love. Sometimes, people are alone.”
Emma had won.
The Doctor had hated his decision for a very long time. But it was only now that he truly understood the lengths of what he had done – when he looked up at his daughter, his wife, and his best friend. All those beautiful days with them, with his family. People who cared about him, and who would always care about him. But now, he finally understood that all of those days, he’d been robbing Emma of a happy life. When he looked over at the woman who should have been his daughter, it hit him hardest of all – because she had been alone. And while solitude could often be a great thing, to breed someone in loneliness was perhaps the cruellest punishment of them all.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
The words were just whispers, and they cracked as he said them. Because… the weight of what had happened pushed down on them, and broke the words as he tried to say them.
“And I won’t try and understand, because I know I can’t,” the Doctor admitted. “But... I accept.”
Emma was staring out of the window, at the night blanketing the city, and the skyscrapers poking through the darkness, trying their hardest to shine light over the urban world below them. But the lights didn’t see to do any good.
“If you really want to make any kind of… amends, for what you’ve done,” Emma stood up, and she walked over towards the front door. Her walk didn’t seem as strong as it had done before – but it was certainly more purposeful. “Then you will hold tight to what you’ve got, and you will let it bully you over everything you’ve done.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, but he nodded.
“And one day,” Emma continued. “I will return for you.”
And then she slipped away.
Nobody moved, for a few seconds. And when, eventually, Cioné moved to clear away some crockery, and Iris slunk over to the X-Box, nobody said anything. For everything that needed to be said had already been spoken. The silence was full of tension, yes – but it didn’t need to be filled. The tension was an absence, a blank canvas, and now was not the time to fill it. Instead, they continued on as normal. As if nothing had ever happened, they just did what they always did, the familial bliss that the Doctor had adored so much. Because… theme parks and picnics and days out and holidays were always special, but the Doctor had always lived a crazy life, never stopping and staying, always whizzing from place to place. And so, the moments he treasured the most were the moments at home. The moments of the four of them, just… living.
And his family were just… living, there and then. Making tea, gaming, looking at the stars. That hurt him most of all, whether it was deliberate or not – that even after everything that had happened, all they could do was nothing. They had to live, just as they had done all of those happy days, when Emma had been living in the swamps and the slimes of that godawful forest world. This is what Emma had wanted – for the fact that he had such an amazing family to hurt him.
She had got what she wanted.
But the Doctor did not protest, for this was what he deserved.
Families were hard. It would be so easy to think of having a family as being perfect, of always being on good terms, of simply feeling complete, feeling as if your life had everything, just because you had those people to love. But it wasn’t so simple. Because families lied. Families argued. Families didn’t always stand by each other. Sometimes it was because families were toxic, because they hurt each other and deep down, it would be better if they were apart. But with the Doctor, Cioné , Lizzie, and Iris? Well – it was out of love.
And as Lizzie walked slowly out of the flat, she had something important to do. For she had felt alone and neglected. She knew what it was like, to see people so happy together and to realise that you could drift away, and you would mean nothing to them. To be surrounded by people, and to still feel lonely, was truly painful, and Lizzie had felt it, all of her life. And finally she had found her family, the people who loved her – but she wouldn’t stop worrying about the beaten and the lonely. She wouldn’t stop trying to help them.
Lizzie shut the front door behind her.
***
“Emma!” she called out into the night. Lizzie could see her, her figure gliding through the night, beneath the glow of the street lamps. And to make matters worse, Lizzie had no idea where she was going. It seemed as if Emma was just going to walk, until slowly, she vanished into night, and became lost forever. Emma didn’t stop. She continued walking at exactly the same pace, her gun gripped tightly beside her, her long coat flowing to her knees, trailing behind her like bad memories. “Emma, please, wait.”
It was only then that Emma stopped. She did not turn around, but she didn’t go forward. Lizzie pulled her jumper close around herself, as she hadn’t brought a coat – the night chill felt more distinct than ever, as if it were ready to bite at anyone out and about, and poison them with its frosty chill. But Lizzie didn’t care – in fact, by now, she felt immune to the cold. And Emma didn’t seem to care either.
“I know how it feels,” Lizzie said, stopping just a few feet behind Emma. As she spoke, Lizzie didn’t even bother putting any effort into the words – she just said them desperately, and hoped they’d resonate.
“You can’t,” Emma didn’t turn around.
“I can, and you know I can.” Lizzie could read Emma, just as well as Emma could read Lizzie. Perhaps that was the mark of the lonely – and how paradoxical it was, for the one with no company to grasp how a person works more than anyone else. But of course, it was through watching from the outside, slowly gauging what people do, what people say, and what it means.
“Then go on, Elizabeth. How?”
Emma turned to face her, the moon that bled through the tree-lined avenue illuminated her face a ghostly pale.
“I just… I’ve been where you are,” Lizzie said – and yet, she didn’t know what to say. “Alone. And, like, just… not feeling accepted anywhere, as if you’re an outsider to everyone.”
“Then you’ll understand that you can’t just heal wounds overnight.”
Oh, yes. Lizzie understood that very well.
“I – I know,” Lizzie said, her voice seeming ever so small in the night. It was funny… things always felt smaller at night. Perhaps it was because one could see space above their heads, and realise how incomprehensibly tiny they were. Perhaps it was that, that made everyone feel alone at night. “That’s… that’s why I’m saying that I will be here. When you’re ready, you can… yeah, always come and find me.”
Emma didn’t say anything. But… there was, perhaps, a flicker of acknowledgement in her eyes. “You’re strong, Elizabeth Darwin. Enviably so.”
“I’m really not.”
“Yes… yes, you are.”
Emma said it, and as she did so, she sounded almost sound. As if… that was what she wanted to be like. Strong, like Lizzie Darwin. It was then that Emma felt something odd – it reminded her of those days back on that stinking world, when she would feel something, and she would think back to the Doctor’s smiley faces, and try and work out what it was. This time… she was uncertain. But, Emma thought that, perhaps, it might be the feeling of having someone. It wasn’t quite developed yet, still… a distant feeling. But it was beginning.
And, although Emma would never say it aloud, she respected Lizzie Darwin immensely. She hoped that one day, she could be as strong a person as Lizzie was. Because, yes, she was resilient – Emma could walk through hell and back, and come unscathed. But to be strong? Well, that was a completely different game.
“I will do what I need to do, Elizabeth,” Emma said, mustering up her determination, thinking back to her horrific days in that old house, on that dead planet. “Whether it’s the strong thing to do, or the right thing to do. I will do it, and I will be victorious. It will be what I need.”
“Do what you need, but…,” Lizzie said all that she could think of to say. “Try to be good. Please.”
“You know I’m not.”
“And that’s why I asked. Because I worry that you won’t be.”
Emma nodded. And… Lizzie saw a glimmer of something on Emma’s face. Just like Lizzie, Emma was the master of hiding emotions – and rarely did she show any. Even when Emma did something that one might deduce the emotion behind it – rarely did her face twist to show any kind of feeling. And Lizzie knew that that didn’t mean Emma was emotion-less. In fact, in her experience, the people who hid their emotions felt them deeper than anybody else. Lizzie tried to read Emma’s face, and… she wasn’t quite sure.
Perhaps it was sadness.
Emma turned away, and began to walk down the tree-lined avenue. She was a woman who had been wronged, who had had some terrible, terrible things done to her. But Emma had survived. She was there, striding away from it, alone. And at the same time, Lizzie was worried about how far Emma would go. Because she could tell that Emma was determined, and ruthless, and if she didn’t keep herself in check, could be cruel.
As she walked, Emma looked up to the sky. The cloud layer was shifting, and the stars began to shine.
She was fighting a war. A war to seize back control of her life, the life that had been stolen from her.
And Emma was going to win.
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next time - girls' night outIris and Lizzie are dragged on a treasure hunt with Cioné, with varying degrees of mortification and a reliable dose of perpetual anxiety. With crashed TARDISes, an AWOL Doctor, a dinosaur and a couple rogue elements along the way, the girls are determined to find their prize. Well, Cioné is.
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