Opposed Mirrors / Each Reflecting Each
AN: You must blame Richie of Crimitism for inspiring this by reversal; if he had never reposted the closing comment I would probably not have thought of this particular AU, or if I had, I would have dismissed it unwritten as too cracky even for fandom.
Dr. Jones, striding briskly across the shop-lined courtyard - deserted at this stark morning hour, still a little too early for even the hardiest tourists yet - away from the underground car park towards Oxford's center, was nevertheless not in too much of a hurry to keep a weather eye on the horizon at all times.
Even so, she was not prepared for the surprise that was about to ambush her on her way to the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre where the conference would shortly begin. (They had strongly suggested leaving all vehicles behind to take full advantage of Oxford's excellent public transportation, but she was unwilling to do without a getaway car in the event such should become necessary - the difficulty with buses and trains being that they went to such predictable places, at predictable times.)
--Then again, perhaps she was, after all.
Taking one look at the humanoid figure which had stepped out from behind the ornamental trees directly in front of her, she reached in silence for the likeliest of the improvisable weapon at hand, which happened to be a mossy terra cotta pot of moderate size holding a rather peaky and dessicated impatiens that had, until an instant ago, been ornamenting a wrought-iron table in front of a quaint and touristy pub. (There had also, until two instants ago, been a large marmalade cat perched beside, but that had vanished at the appearance of the too-familiar stranger.)
"No, no, don't -- it's me!" the doppleganger cried, with her voice and a frantic hand-flapping gesture which was not hers at all - but was all too familiar. "Really. --Me."
For a moment she was speechless. But only for a moment.
"You. --You?! You--" But she could not think of anything to say after that. Or, rather, too many things, and they all jammed up in the door. Some of them made their way out through her eyes, it did seem, as the other Martha Jones-shaped person blithered even more frantically, "I'm sorry! I didn't think of how it would look, until - until it was too late. --I'm. Sorry! --Really."
"That must be true," she managed, with more sarcasm not than she meant but than she ordinarily allowed herself to express. "If you had thought - for even half a second - you couldn't possibly have done something so - so - so--" Mere words failed her, again, and she was forced to resort to the sigh direct, and the headshake, and the exasperated look cast to the uncaring (and clouded) skies.
"I -- didn't mean to come and hang around you any more. Not after. Well, what you said. Um." Another, more feeble flapping of hands. "Clean break and all that. You understand--? Would you mind putting down that large and heavy piece of clay, please?"
"And yet," because she didn't feel like conceding even that much, or perhaps because the only way to answer it truthfully would have been a shouted Of course I understand, you idiot! You wanted to make a 'clean break' from me, so you turned yourself INTO me. That makes perfect sense - for YOU! and though with the end of the term meaning the departure of most students for their homes and the beginning of summer meant the departure of all the year-round inhabitants who could afford it for the seashore, or off caravanning in the wilds of Dorset, it still seemed like a bad idea to have a row in the public thoroughfare, no matter how deserted it might be presently. "Here you are, all the same."
"Well. You know how it is..." And of course, she did know, in general if not in specific - something gone wrong with the TARDIS (again!), a wrinkle (or more likely a divot) in the space-time continuum, --kidnapped by aliens!, a desperate distress call (real or feigned) summoning - well, not 'him', now - back to Earth to the rescue once more...'best laid plans' of course ganging as agley as always.
"I didn't know you could make yourself look like someone else. I thought it just happened."
"Erm. It's -- You see, when a Time Lord--" The expressions were not the same as hers, not any of them, and at first she did not recognize the old familiar Guilt when expressed via the medium of her body. "It's complicated."
--No, it's not. You can't let go, of anything or anyone. That's all. Aloud, "So what is it this time? The Daleks again? Or the Sontarans? Or somebody new today?" But the Time Lord - or did one say Time Lady, properly, now? - did not take the hint from her brusqueness (any of them!) and instead of an answer, continued to look at her in that way that, now was so unspeakably creepy that she nearly took up the unfortunate impatiens plant again.
"Martha, Martha, it's so good to see you again," and a shiver went down her back, and it was not one of the nice ones.
"I must assume--" and her voice sounded oddly loud and wobbly in her own ears, after hearing it from the mouth of a stranger, "--that it's something vitally important for the safety of Earth? You're not just -- sightseeing -- are you?"
The other Dr. Jones - The Doctor-not-Jones - looked hurt at her words.
"Aren't you going to say you're glad to see me too?"
There was just something too maddening, too impossibly insufferable to be borne, in that plaintive, hapless bleating being presented as her, and she exploded, "I'm not seeing you, I'm seeing ME! You, dressed up as me, just like my reflection that I see every morning in the mirror! This is all wrong!"
"...Oh." There was that gesture - abortive, because you can't run your hand through your forelock when you're wearing a ponytail, not without looking like you've had a run-in with a flock of roving killer balloons - which both twisted something inside her until it hurt, and made her laugh too at the failure of it, in this disguise. --It wasn't anything but that. Couldn't be-- "This...was a Bad Idea," in that hesitant, half-hearted way that always meant that the Companion was supposed to offer reassurance that no, it really wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"Yes," she said, obdurate as Cornish granite.
Her face fell.
"Not the best I've had, at least... Are you here for UNIT?"
--That's right, Doctor, change the subject! "I'm here for the Advances in Immunology conference," she replied quellingly, and more quellingly still, "and I need to sign in and find out where all the good sessions are being held. I don't know what to do about you, --Doctor," and this was not all sarcastic. "I can't let you run around the University like this. Who knows what you'll get up to and I'll be held accountable for! And I certainly can't take you into lectures with me--"
"Can't you say I'm your long-lost twin sister? It works in plays--"
"Perhaps I'll just say that you're my clone," she went on, as if her counterpart had not spoken at all. "Grown in a secret experiment by sinister government laboratories. Or an android. Who knows what kind of cutting edge robotics technology is really out there now? You--"
"Twins are possible," urges this over-familiar person, "really, that's the best solution--"
"Fine." To argue about this would require an outlay of mental effort that she would much prefer to reserve against the future emergencies that will inevitably - and swiftly - come upon them. "You can be my long-lost twin," and she starts walking again, because time is passing, and because it sets the pace, making - her - jump and hurry to keep up, keeping this new Doctor off-balance, if only a little. "Evil twin."
"I'm NOT evil!" The other exclaimed this a little too loudly, and then looked abashed, and looked even more abashedly around to see if there had been anyone to overhear it. There hadn't - at least, not anybody visible.
"No," she answered with a readiness that surprised even her, "you don't have a beard," and was wickedly pleased to see a look of blank confusion greet this sally. And then, because free association is a terrible thing, "Have you told Jack yet?"
"What?" It was not so much a question as an exclamation of dismay, like that made by someone who has trodden on the tail of the cat in the dark - or possibly by the cat, and it made her forget entirely her lines of thought, at first grateful that at least he hadn't turned up wearing the exact same outfit that she had chosen today, and then the confused dismay in reminding herself that she must now stop thinking of him as 'he' and oh God there was no end to it--
"You really didn't think this through, did you?" --Or did you, after all, Doctor? And from the look on the face of her Time Lord, of the two of them, she was not the only one uncertain of the answer. --Oh hell, thought Dr. Jones, and a little mad unvoiced laughter bubbled up like a spring inside her, not washing away but diluting some of the indignation and the anger - and the frustration! - that filled her right now, I've GOT to see this through! "Come along, Doctor 'Jones' - you can't be anything else today or it'll be too confusing altogether! What's your specialty going to be? We need to come up with a good reason for you to be here."
"But - you - didn't you? Married--?" Fortunately this time, at least, the blithering was not accompanied by the frantic manual semaphore, or she might have returned for the pot of impatiens...
"We don't have to change our names," she returned with a sharp, bright smile which gave away nothing. "Not in this century."
"Oh. Right." She thought there would be more, but her alien companion only looked at her, with a look so wary and uncertain - of welcome? of what? - that she almost relented. Then she thought of the kinds of things that dopplegangers usually turned out to be, and her resolve firmed right back up again. (But her treacherous, treacherous heart - or hindbrain, really - kept telling her to be happy, and worse yet, excited...)
As the doctor and the Doctor emerged from the echoing and shaded courtyard into George Street the latter asked with an uncertainty both greater-sounding and less feigned than before, "You know, I did notice -- I was distracted, but I couldn't help -- that Harkness rather fancied you, that last time we met-- I wasn't imagining that, was I?"
And this time Dr. Martha Jones could not help herself, and the laughter inside her came out in her words, and her eyes, and her at-last real smile, as she turned her head and looked into her own eyes and said, "No, Doctor, not at all."
"That's - that's good, isn't it?" This time the plaintive tone didn't set her teeth on edge, didn't make her want to scream or find another satisfyingly-heavy, yet breakable object, either - but that didn't mean she was going to give a millimeter, regardless!
"You tell me, Doctor. --Is it?"
The traffic was much reduced with the summer reduction of Oxford's population as much as the earliness of the hour, but there were still enough buses and lorries in the town that she had to strain to hear her response, over the echoing blur of wheels and motors and impatient horns, and the other's embarrassed, downcast look and sidelong wriggle of uncertainty - the one that had looked so boyish before! - did not make it any easier...but it was worth the effort, to hear that one word, one answer, one breath:
"Yes."
--Honesty, after so long a disguise of glibness; truth, after so long a hiding behind everything, until even pain became an emptiness and a pose; reality, in a false, stolen face - It isn't only the TARDIS that has a Chameleon Circuit! thought Dr. Jones, exasperated - eternally exasperated, in that casual, meaningless way that humans use 'eternal', the way that all the Doctors' companions have been perpetually exasperated and perpetually forgiving of the occasion of that exasperation, for the sake of strange stars and stranger still. But this unregenerate regenerator chose for a new life a body too familiar for her to be fooled by any posing, once she had a chance to recover from the shock, and observe in a more cold-blooded way how those old familiar gestures were transformed and changed by the present shape, and how not.
--A lot of guilt, actually, she thought, growing more curious still. I wonder if Jack Harkness will be able to explain? Or will he just shrug and call it some Time Lord strangeness as usual? --Was it forbidden on Gallifrey? That could explain it--
"Come on, hurry, we don't want to be late," already plotting out how she will feign surprise, and distress, and indignation - all three shaded so delicately that the combination will - ideally - result in cooperation-through-pride, and the impulse-to-help in the registrars, without coming off so strongly as to trigger indignation in return, or discomfort rather than the faintest tinge of guilt at having overlooked her "sister's" unique identity, in the chaos of form-filling and form-reading.
She took the Doctor's arm as they walked, leaning into her shoulder, and felt her startle reflex at the casually-close touch, but lacking time to spare to soothe her, did not - Time's moving chariot not slowing for their reunion, and the sooner she adjusted as well, the better. "We need to come up with a name and a role for you, something at least a little bit plausible, and easy to remember. --Mary? Though that's not fair to my parents, they wouldn't do that to any of their kids-- We can say you're a reclusive hermit who's been off with your microscopes for ages, just managed to winkle you out for this, with great difficulty. Or perhaps you've been abroad, studying in America, all these years--"
The interruption was not, as she expected, an objection to her story-crafting skills.
"Are you still angry? About - you know. --This" and she almost grabbed her hands and held them still. It was so very provoking.
"Yes," with a smile that made her double flinch back, just a little. But with the time that had passed she had lost much (if not all) of her uncertainty, and her old awe of the alien genius, the great millennium-hopping philanthropist, already damaged by too much rough handling, proved incapable of surviving when faced with her own face, and it couldn't help but show. "Hurry up, we've still got several blocks to go past Broad Street."
"Right. --Right."
She had been noticing more and more as they walked together, how it wasn't just her expressions that were totally different, nor even her gestures, for all the outward exactness, but all her 'body language,' her very stance and stride, as though wearing an unfamiliar and formal set of clothes -- though she had also noticed that the Doctor did not seem at all awkward in a much frillier top than she had ever worn in her life, and a very retro pair of flared-leg trousers (both fortunately restrained enough not to bring too much untoward attention) any more than in the sensibly low-heeled shoes that, as a matter of fact, did look rather like the same ones she was wearing. --But then, considering what had been historically deemed 'men's clothing' in the past on this planet, let alone on other ones, perhaps this wasn't surprising at all.
"So when are you going to tell me what you're up to?" Upon a sudden impulse she undid the fastener and loosened her hair, to reduce still further any 'Tweedledee' effect, refastening it in a softer style as she went.
"How - how did you do that!?" The shock was palpable, even without the agitated handwaving that accompanied it. "You make it look so easy! It takes me--"
"Answer the question, Doctor! And keep going!"
"Oh. Right. --There was this distress signal, which I traced back to Atrios, where all that Key to Time nonsense ended up - I told you about that, didn't I? - and when I got there, something took control of the TARDIS, and next thing you know -- is that a Burger King over there--!?" The outraged alto voice rang out sharply (causing a passing cyclist to turn his head as he whisked past) before the two of them vanished altogether among the labyrinth of pale-gold walls that were old when Ann Boleyn's only daughter was young, and modern concrete entities futilely camouflaged with upstart ivy.
--Back on a picturesque corner not far from the car park, several American tourists were taking it in turn to have their pictures taken by each other, posing next to the authentic, charming, and oh-so-quaint blue telephone box they had so conveniently discovered within bare minutes of disembarking from their bus.
(The title, which I chanced to dowse up looking for a fitting mirror quote, comes from an early untitled sonnet of Tennyson, addressed to a redacted recipient:
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude,
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, ‘All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where;’
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true-
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each-
That, tho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either’s heart and speech.
Dr. Jones, striding briskly across the shop-lined courtyard - deserted at this stark morning hour, still a little too early for even the hardiest tourists yet - away from the underground car park towards Oxford's center, was nevertheless not in too much of a hurry to keep a weather eye on the horizon at all times.
Even so, she was not prepared for the surprise that was about to ambush her on her way to the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre where the conference would shortly begin. (They had strongly suggested leaving all vehicles behind to take full advantage of Oxford's excellent public transportation, but she was unwilling to do without a getaway car in the event such should become necessary - the difficulty with buses and trains being that they went to such predictable places, at predictable times.)
--Then again, perhaps she was, after all.
Taking one look at the humanoid figure which had stepped out from behind the ornamental trees directly in front of her, she reached in silence for the likeliest of the improvisable weapon at hand, which happened to be a mossy terra cotta pot of moderate size holding a rather peaky and dessicated impatiens that had, until an instant ago, been ornamenting a wrought-iron table in front of a quaint and touristy pub. (There had also, until two instants ago, been a large marmalade cat perched beside, but that had vanished at the appearance of the too-familiar stranger.)
"No, no, don't -- it's me!" the doppleganger cried, with her voice and a frantic hand-flapping gesture which was not hers at all - but was all too familiar. "Really. --Me."
For a moment she was speechless. But only for a moment.
"You. --You?! You--" But she could not think of anything to say after that. Or, rather, too many things, and they all jammed up in the door. Some of them made their way out through her eyes, it did seem, as the other Martha Jones-shaped person blithered even more frantically, "I'm sorry! I didn't think of how it would look, until - until it was too late. --I'm. Sorry! --Really."
"That must be true," she managed, with more sarcasm not than she meant but than she ordinarily allowed herself to express. "If you had thought - for even half a second - you couldn't possibly have done something so - so - so--" Mere words failed her, again, and she was forced to resort to the sigh direct, and the headshake, and the exasperated look cast to the uncaring (and clouded) skies.
"I -- didn't mean to come and hang around you any more. Not after. Well, what you said. Um." Another, more feeble flapping of hands. "Clean break and all that. You understand--? Would you mind putting down that large and heavy piece of clay, please?"
"And yet," because she didn't feel like conceding even that much, or perhaps because the only way to answer it truthfully would have been a shouted Of course I understand, you idiot! You wanted to make a 'clean break' from me, so you turned yourself INTO me. That makes perfect sense - for YOU! and though with the end of the term meaning the departure of most students for their homes and the beginning of summer meant the departure of all the year-round inhabitants who could afford it for the seashore, or off caravanning in the wilds of Dorset, it still seemed like a bad idea to have a row in the public thoroughfare, no matter how deserted it might be presently. "Here you are, all the same."
"Well. You know how it is..." And of course, she did know, in general if not in specific - something gone wrong with the TARDIS (again!), a wrinkle (or more likely a divot) in the space-time continuum, --kidnapped by aliens!, a desperate distress call (real or feigned) summoning - well, not 'him', now - back to Earth to the rescue once more...'best laid plans' of course ganging as agley as always.
"I didn't know you could make yourself look like someone else. I thought it just happened."
"Erm. It's -- You see, when a Time Lord--" The expressions were not the same as hers, not any of them, and at first she did not recognize the old familiar Guilt when expressed via the medium of her body. "It's complicated."
--No, it's not. You can't let go, of anything or anyone. That's all. Aloud, "So what is it this time? The Daleks again? Or the Sontarans? Or somebody new today?" But the Time Lord - or did one say Time Lady, properly, now? - did not take the hint from her brusqueness (any of them!) and instead of an answer, continued to look at her in that way that, now was so unspeakably creepy that she nearly took up the unfortunate impatiens plant again.
"Martha, Martha, it's so good to see you again," and a shiver went down her back, and it was not one of the nice ones.
"I must assume--" and her voice sounded oddly loud and wobbly in her own ears, after hearing it from the mouth of a stranger, "--that it's something vitally important for the safety of Earth? You're not just -- sightseeing -- are you?"
The other Dr. Jones - The Doctor-not-Jones - looked hurt at her words.
"Aren't you going to say you're glad to see me too?"
There was just something too maddening, too impossibly insufferable to be borne, in that plaintive, hapless bleating being presented as her, and she exploded, "I'm not seeing you, I'm seeing ME! You, dressed up as me, just like my reflection that I see every morning in the mirror! This is all wrong!"
"...Oh." There was that gesture - abortive, because you can't run your hand through your forelock when you're wearing a ponytail, not without looking like you've had a run-in with a flock of roving killer balloons - which both twisted something inside her until it hurt, and made her laugh too at the failure of it, in this disguise. --It wasn't anything but that. Couldn't be-- "This...was a Bad Idea," in that hesitant, half-hearted way that always meant that the Companion was supposed to offer reassurance that no, it really wasn't such a bad idea after all.
"Yes," she said, obdurate as Cornish granite.
Her face fell.
"Not the best I've had, at least... Are you here for UNIT?"
--That's right, Doctor, change the subject! "I'm here for the Advances in Immunology conference," she replied quellingly, and more quellingly still, "and I need to sign in and find out where all the good sessions are being held. I don't know what to do about you, --Doctor," and this was not all sarcastic. "I can't let you run around the University like this. Who knows what you'll get up to and I'll be held accountable for! And I certainly can't take you into lectures with me--"
"Can't you say I'm your long-lost twin sister? It works in plays--"
"Perhaps I'll just say that you're my clone," she went on, as if her counterpart had not spoken at all. "Grown in a secret experiment by sinister government laboratories. Or an android. Who knows what kind of cutting edge robotics technology is really out there now? You--"
"Twins are possible," urges this over-familiar person, "really, that's the best solution--"
"Fine." To argue about this would require an outlay of mental effort that she would much prefer to reserve against the future emergencies that will inevitably - and swiftly - come upon them. "You can be my long-lost twin," and she starts walking again, because time is passing, and because it sets the pace, making - her - jump and hurry to keep up, keeping this new Doctor off-balance, if only a little. "Evil twin."
"I'm NOT evil!" The other exclaimed this a little too loudly, and then looked abashed, and looked even more abashedly around to see if there had been anyone to overhear it. There hadn't - at least, not anybody visible.
"No," she answered with a readiness that surprised even her, "you don't have a beard," and was wickedly pleased to see a look of blank confusion greet this sally. And then, because free association is a terrible thing, "Have you told Jack yet?"
"What?" It was not so much a question as an exclamation of dismay, like that made by someone who has trodden on the tail of the cat in the dark - or possibly by the cat, and it made her forget entirely her lines of thought, at first grateful that at least he hadn't turned up wearing the exact same outfit that she had chosen today, and then the confused dismay in reminding herself that she must now stop thinking of him as 'he' and oh God there was no end to it--
"You really didn't think this through, did you?" --Or did you, after all, Doctor? And from the look on the face of her Time Lord, of the two of them, she was not the only one uncertain of the answer. --Oh hell, thought Dr. Jones, and a little mad unvoiced laughter bubbled up like a spring inside her, not washing away but diluting some of the indignation and the anger - and the frustration! - that filled her right now, I've GOT to see this through! "Come along, Doctor 'Jones' - you can't be anything else today or it'll be too confusing altogether! What's your specialty going to be? We need to come up with a good reason for you to be here."
"But - you - didn't you? Married--?" Fortunately this time, at least, the blithering was not accompanied by the frantic manual semaphore, or she might have returned for the pot of impatiens...
"We don't have to change our names," she returned with a sharp, bright smile which gave away nothing. "Not in this century."
"Oh. Right." She thought there would be more, but her alien companion only looked at her, with a look so wary and uncertain - of welcome? of what? - that she almost relented. Then she thought of the kinds of things that dopplegangers usually turned out to be, and her resolve firmed right back up again. (But her treacherous, treacherous heart - or hindbrain, really - kept telling her to be happy, and worse yet, excited...)
As the doctor and the Doctor emerged from the echoing and shaded courtyard into George Street the latter asked with an uncertainty both greater-sounding and less feigned than before, "You know, I did notice -- I was distracted, but I couldn't help -- that Harkness rather fancied you, that last time we met-- I wasn't imagining that, was I?"
And this time Dr. Martha Jones could not help herself, and the laughter inside her came out in her words, and her eyes, and her at-last real smile, as she turned her head and looked into her own eyes and said, "No, Doctor, not at all."
"That's - that's good, isn't it?" This time the plaintive tone didn't set her teeth on edge, didn't make her want to scream or find another satisfyingly-heavy, yet breakable object, either - but that didn't mean she was going to give a millimeter, regardless!
"You tell me, Doctor. --Is it?"
The traffic was much reduced with the summer reduction of Oxford's population as much as the earliness of the hour, but there were still enough buses and lorries in the town that she had to strain to hear her response, over the echoing blur of wheels and motors and impatient horns, and the other's embarrassed, downcast look and sidelong wriggle of uncertainty - the one that had looked so boyish before! - did not make it any easier...but it was worth the effort, to hear that one word, one answer, one breath:
"Yes."
--Honesty, after so long a disguise of glibness; truth, after so long a hiding behind everything, until even pain became an emptiness and a pose; reality, in a false, stolen face - It isn't only the TARDIS that has a Chameleon Circuit! thought Dr. Jones, exasperated - eternally exasperated, in that casual, meaningless way that humans use 'eternal', the way that all the Doctors' companions have been perpetually exasperated and perpetually forgiving of the occasion of that exasperation, for the sake of strange stars and stranger still. But this unregenerate regenerator chose for a new life a body too familiar for her to be fooled by any posing, once she had a chance to recover from the shock, and observe in a more cold-blooded way how those old familiar gestures were transformed and changed by the present shape, and how not.
--A lot of guilt, actually, she thought, growing more curious still. I wonder if Jack Harkness will be able to explain? Or will he just shrug and call it some Time Lord strangeness as usual? --Was it forbidden on Gallifrey? That could explain it--
"Come on, hurry, we don't want to be late," already plotting out how she will feign surprise, and distress, and indignation - all three shaded so delicately that the combination will - ideally - result in cooperation-through-pride, and the impulse-to-help in the registrars, without coming off so strongly as to trigger indignation in return, or discomfort rather than the faintest tinge of guilt at having overlooked her "sister's" unique identity, in the chaos of form-filling and form-reading.
She took the Doctor's arm as they walked, leaning into her shoulder, and felt her startle reflex at the casually-close touch, but lacking time to spare to soothe her, did not - Time's moving chariot not slowing for their reunion, and the sooner she adjusted as well, the better. "We need to come up with a name and a role for you, something at least a little bit plausible, and easy to remember. --Mary? Though that's not fair to my parents, they wouldn't do that to any of their kids-- We can say you're a reclusive hermit who's been off with your microscopes for ages, just managed to winkle you out for this, with great difficulty. Or perhaps you've been abroad, studying in America, all these years--"
The interruption was not, as she expected, an objection to her story-crafting skills.
"Are you still angry? About - you know. --This" and she almost grabbed her hands and held them still. It was so very provoking.
"Yes," with a smile that made her double flinch back, just a little. But with the time that had passed she had lost much (if not all) of her uncertainty, and her old awe of the alien genius, the great millennium-hopping philanthropist, already damaged by too much rough handling, proved incapable of surviving when faced with her own face, and it couldn't help but show. "Hurry up, we've still got several blocks to go past Broad Street."
"Right. --Right."
She had been noticing more and more as they walked together, how it wasn't just her expressions that were totally different, nor even her gestures, for all the outward exactness, but all her 'body language,' her very stance and stride, as though wearing an unfamiliar and formal set of clothes -- though she had also noticed that the Doctor did not seem at all awkward in a much frillier top than she had ever worn in her life, and a very retro pair of flared-leg trousers (both fortunately restrained enough not to bring too much untoward attention) any more than in the sensibly low-heeled shoes that, as a matter of fact, did look rather like the same ones she was wearing. --But then, considering what had been historically deemed 'men's clothing' in the past on this planet, let alone on other ones, perhaps this wasn't surprising at all.
"So when are you going to tell me what you're up to?" Upon a sudden impulse she undid the fastener and loosened her hair, to reduce still further any 'Tweedledee' effect, refastening it in a softer style as she went.
"How - how did you do that!?" The shock was palpable, even without the agitated handwaving that accompanied it. "You make it look so easy! It takes me--"
"Answer the question, Doctor! And keep going!"
"Oh. Right. --There was this distress signal, which I traced back to Atrios, where all that Key to Time nonsense ended up - I told you about that, didn't I? - and when I got there, something took control of the TARDIS, and next thing you know -- is that a Burger King over there--!?" The outraged alto voice rang out sharply (causing a passing cyclist to turn his head as he whisked past) before the two of them vanished altogether among the labyrinth of pale-gold walls that were old when Ann Boleyn's only daughter was young, and modern concrete entities futilely camouflaged with upstart ivy.
--Back on a picturesque corner not far from the car park, several American tourists were taking it in turn to have their pictures taken by each other, posing next to the authentic, charming, and oh-so-quaint blue telephone box they had so conveniently discovered within bare minutes of disembarking from their bus.
(The title, which I chanced to dowse up looking for a fitting mirror quote, comes from an early untitled sonnet of Tennyson, addressed to a redacted recipient:
As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem
To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude,
If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, ‘All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where;’
So, friend, when first I look’d upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true-
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each-
That, tho’ I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either’s heart and speech.