fic: an idea of synchrony (1/3)
Title: An Idea of Synchrony
Rating: PG
Characters: Romana, Eleven, Amy, little!Amelia, Aunt Sharon, Mandy, Liz X, Bracewell, Blanche Breen, Alistair, River, Francesco Calvierri, the Northovers, Rory, Dr Black, Craig & Sophie, OCs.
Pairings: Romana/Eleven, Amy/Rory, Craig/Sophie
Wordcount: ~9500 (!)
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.
Spoilers: for the entirety of S5.
Summary: Romana decides to investigate the cracks, but something keeps her from doing it the way she had planned.
A/N: Contains frivolous, skientific usage of the chameleon arch/fobwatch technology, vortex manipulators, &c.
A/N 2: Written for the eleven_romana November ficathon. Some parts inspired by this fantastic meta by promethia_tenk.
Many names and dates come from here, and a quote from here. The 5x3 transcipt by jpgr was very helpful.
Furthermore, I’ve made Sharon the sister of Amy’s dad, solely because we don’t know Amy’s mum’s maiden name.
Leadworth, 1996
The Doctor will destroy the Universe.
The cracks in time are the work of the Doctor.
Silence will fall.
The Pandorica opens.
She’d intended to stargaze, to take her new wellies for a walk down to the meadow, to lie down and let her mind wander. There had been a few clouds in the sky, and she had started to let it wander a bit prematurely, unfortunately, while waiting for them to pass. She must have taken a series of wrong turns unwittingly, because when a dog’s sudden bark brought her back to Leadworth and gravity and gusts of wind and an itchy woollen jumper, she found herself halfway up the street Sharon Pond lived on.
Perhaps, she thought, she should postpone the gazing and visit her. Sharon always had a nice selection of teas. She also had a pleasurably predictable way of dragging up every single piece of gossip she though would be of interest. If they were home. It was a holiday, after all. And Sharon… wasn’t always there as it was. Half the time it was as if she didn’t exist at all.
Wasn’t there something she really needed to talk to her about, something about her house, something about it that she had happened to notice… but what - a broken floorboard, a leaking tap? - no, she couldn’t remember the specific details right now. She’d just have to anchor her mind firmly, first, and it would all come back.
Romana rewrapped her scarf (whyever had she invested in such a long one?) and walked the way to Sharon’s house, her wellies making a rather loud noise on the asphalt, now that she was aware of herself.
There was something about that house that made her skin crawl, noises that sounded like whispers… and yet, there was something irrevocably alluring about it.
From the street, the house looked still. That didn’t necessarily mean it was, though, she’d learnt. Sometimes they did things like that, the Ponds. Turned off all the lights and sat on a crooked bench in the garden, aunt and niece, wrapped in blankets and drinking hot chocolate. It was things like that that reminded the child that she had an aunt, Romana thought. She turned up the path.
Emotionally, her first reaction was No! Intellectually, she had to think about it.
The Doctor, sufficiently enraged, could do a lot of stupid things. Well-meaning, he could still do a lot of stupid things. Nothing like this, though. He knew what would happen and he wouldn’t cause it. She might not know him anymore, but this was the TARDIS… the TARDIS. He would never. Not on purpose. But unwittingly… by mistake. It was possible, truth be told.
And if not him - who? She would not stomp around like an inexperienced tot anymore. She would handle this responsibly. She needed to see without being seen.
“What was the diagnosis?”
“They said it must have been a migraine or something.” She’s feeling quite shaken, is still recovering from a shock she doesn’t know how she suffered. It’s midday and she has the tea and the earful at Sharon’s, the one she thought to have in the evening three days ago. Until she’d passed out in Sharon’s garden. It feels a bit odd being back here again, and at the same time it feels like she never left.
Thankfully, Sharon seems a bit shaken, too. “What do you think?”
“There was a crash. There was.”
Sharon stares at her, automatically stirs her tea.
“I was at your door. My head started throbbing, and my heart skipped a beat - and then it made up for it by beating twice as fast. And there was some kind of pressure. I felt… crushed.”
Two days in the hospital. Warm blankets, the smell of disinfectant, scans and ultrasounds, fingers in plastic gloves prodding, endless questions. She had a sniffle. Other than that she was perfectly fine. Well, except for the dreams.
“Because you know,” says Sharon, and pales under her rouge. “Our shed…” She glances out the window, and Romana does the same. The shed is no more. Where it stood is now a pile of rubble, planks hastily pushed into some kind of stack, bent content set to the side. “And Amelia…” Sharon starts, but nothing more comes.
Romana rises, approaches the window, stares out at the remains. “What happened to it?”
“You tell me. The fence is whole. There aren’t any tyre tracks. It’s just…”
“Crushed.” The kitchen table is set with mugs and a pot of tea, with milk and sugar and shop bought ginger biscuits on a plate. Everything is spotless. And the shed is crushed.
“What’re you talking about?” Little Amelia stands in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. She’s holding a blue crayon.
“Nothing, darling,” says Sharon, drawing herself up visibly. She glares at Romana across the rim of her mug. “Romana’s had a bit of an accident, that’s all.”
“Is it about the shed?” Amelia purses her lips. “I know what happened to it.”
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Amelia! What did I say about bothering guests?”
Amelia doesn’t even bat an eyelash. Utterly determined, she looks up at Romana and says, “I want to tell you about my friend.”
“Amelia!” says Sharon.
“It all right,” says Romana, trying to sound flippant. “I don’t mind.”
Amelia runs out of the kitchen, her hair flying, returns in but a moment carrying a small red suitcase. She plops down on the floor and places the case in front of her. Next she makes a demanding gesture indicating that Romana better sit down, too.
Romana leaves the window and obeys; sits down across from the child, tugging her legs into the lotus position.
Sharon makes an irate noise and clutches her mug, stares out into the garden.
Amelia solemnly opens the case.
Romana can’t see what it contains, wonders what to expect.
“This is me.” Amelia places a little thing with blazingly red yarn hair and a handkerchief for a dress on the floor. “This is my friend.” A slightly larger doll, made from an empty paper roll, with askew pieces of cloth for a shirt and trousers. Its yarn hair was brown and plentiful. Amelia makes very sure the doll is standing perfectly straight. “He’s called the Doctor.”
“How unusual…” says Romana. She’s starting to feel a little light-headed, all of a sudden.
“He doesn’t need a boring name. He’s magic.”
Romana peers closer at the doll. “Magic?”
“His box is magic too.” She reaches into the suitcase with both hands and smiles up at Romana, waits a few seconds before reverently retrieving said box. It’s vibrantly blue, if still obviously just a painted tea bag carton.
Romana’s heart skips a beat nonetheless.
“It has a library and a swimming pool and guess what? The pool is in the library!”
“Shouldn’t it stand up?” she manages, when Amelia has placed it on the floor. She really shouldn’t be this invested in a child’s game.
“It needs to have a lie-down while the engines are phasing.”
Romana presses a hand to her chest. “It crashed?”
Amelia sighs impatiently. “Yes. You see, he was in such a hurry to fix the crack in my wall. He didn’t stop in time and crushed the shed.”
Cracks in time… Romana suddenly feels nauseous. “A crack? He fixed it for you?”
“Closed it. Just like that. He’s got a wand.”
“The Doctor…”
“We met when Aunt Sharon went to London,” says Amelia brightly.
“Can I see your wall?”
“Absolutely not!” says Sharon, staring down at them. “Amelia has an unhealthy obsession as it is, don’t fuel it!”
Amelia turns a fierce frown on her aunt. “I’m not making it up!”
“Who are you to decide what’s unhealthy?” asks Romana quietly.
Sharon slams her mug down and a little tea sloshes over the rim. “There’s no such thing as raggedy men flying about in blue boxes.”
“What if there is?”
“It’s preposterous!”
“You should listen to Amelia, just for once. What if there is? What if he crushed your shed?” If she really thinks about it, Romana knows there is no such thing, that it is indeed preposterous. If she doesn’t think, however, she feels that she must defend this man and his box.
The phone rings, in another room. Sharon gets up and leaves the kitchen, her lips tightly compressed.
Romana hears her answer, wonders if she ought to go.
“I can show you my wall now,” says Amelia.
She’d sat on a swing, stared up at the sky, wondered if there were planets where the grass was red. A great weight had pressed against her. She’d stumbled into a bush.
Someone had draped a coat over her. She had looked up and it had been like looking in a distorted mirror. The face of the woman looking down on her was as familiar to her as her own face, and yet she knew she looked nothing like that.
It’s just an ordinary wall. Romana inspects it thoroughly, running her hands over it, though she has no idea what she’s looking for.
Amelia watches her, clutching her Doctor-doll. “No crack.”
Romana turns. “No crack.”
Amelia runs down the stairs; her aunt is off the phone and crying for her, decidedly angrily.
Romana takes it slower, thinking. She’s seen the wall; it’s normal, and still she isn’t pleased. Then she notices something: a door, and it is most certainly not normal, even though she can’t say what’s wrong with it.
She opens the door and peers in.
What... is that? What is it trying to do?
Her watch… The emergency switch!
With a little tweaking, the fobwatch will do nicely. She needs to keep her mind, but change her body. It may defeat the point of the Chameleon Arch, but she doesn’t care. She needs to be something other than a Time Lord, and yet she needs to think like one.
She upgrades the perception filter, programs parameters for an infinite number of different projections, makes sure she can’t be a scientist every time. She’ll undoubtedly get to keep the appearance of her arms and legs, most of the time, thankfully. The Doctor and his beloved humans.
Next, she gets hold of a vortex manipulator. She programs it to track the cracks, by way of the Doctor’s TARDIS, by way of the Doctor. It’s throwing caution to the wind, tying herself to his whims, but it’s necessary.
She’ll have three months to examine each crack, and that will have to do. She adds an emergency switch, wires it to the manipulator; she is not spending a quarter of a year in any given (illusion of a) different body if there is nothing to investigate.
…
A silence so complete it is a force, a presence; an actual substance invading her lungs and sticking to her skin… an actual something crushing her watch, inside and out, breaking and bending the precious technology… She takes the step, a motionless step into a nonexistent darkness, but it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Her control is not where it should be. Her mind leaks into the watch, just where it’s not supposed to go…
The Starship UK, 33rd century
A glass of water. Simple. And still… There is something wrong here, something much more tangible than cracks in the Universe. This ship built on a lie, a deck of cards that the right kind of pressure at the right place could bring down. But what? Why? Crying children, fire and fear and death. Last changes. A button saying protest.
Her nightmares are terrible, all-consuming things. She can’t concentrate on her work. Melancholia, they say. Travelling on a spaceship without a set goal - it’s common. She gets a few months’ leave, no questions asked.
The Pandorica opens.
Protest, protest, protest! Something screams at her: press that one, that one! But she doesn’t; her heart constricts in her chest and she presses the wrong one. And then she wakes up, but she doesn’t wake up properly.
Something went wrong… she wasn’t supposed to be human, not this much… Malfunction, miswiring, sabotage.
It was her choice. Wasn’t it? The manipulator, the fobwatch… of course it was.
She puts on her coat and her everyday hat, both grey and nondescript, and goes for a walk.
There are people everywhere, people just like her. They’re walking and eating and drinking, and somewhere just below the surface are all those things they cannot see; and those who do see choose to unsee, at least in her nightmares.
She stops by a water shop and gets some to go.
A glass of water. A hundred glasses of water. The terrible, impossible truth. They’re somehow connected. She tries to look deeper, but it’s like she can’t focus properly. Sometimes she feels the same way when she looks at herself in a mirror; like she’s not looking deep enough.
She finds a quiet street corner and puts the glass down. The water is just as immobile as it is in her nightmares.
Footsteps fall further down the street, heavy ones. She snatches the glass up and hunches between a pair of bins, pulling her hat rim down over her eyes, aims to become just another grey lump. A pillar of steam shoots up nearby, drifts through the air, obscures the whole street. Luck. The steps come closer, falter. Romana holds her breath. Whoever it is starts to move again, away from her. She leans out and peers through the steam, makes out a figure shrouded in black, soon engulfed by darkness.
She stands, disposes of the glass, dusts herself off and rights her attire.
Something red disentangles itself from the darkness that just swallowed the Winder. It shapes itself into a cape, which, in turn, gets caught by a draft and reveals a pair of boots and a porcelain mask.
How intriguing, Romana thinks. Her hat just won’t go the way she wants it, or so she makes it seem.
The woman stops, at a respectful distance. ”Why are the Winders after you?”
Romana has to strain her ears to hear. She retaliates using the same tone. “Why are you after the Winders?”
“I asked first.”
Romana shrugs.
The woman squares her shoulders, approaches with measured steps, comes close enough to stare down at Romana. “Answer me.”
“I didn’t forget properly.”
“Forget what?” There’s a challenge in the eyes, very much alive behind the mask.
“I don’t know. Something I was supposed to… I suppose.”
”You’ve voted.”
”Yes.”
”Recently.”
”Yes.”
The woman drops her voice even lower. “Why did you do that with the water?”
“I won’t say. I don’t fancy meeting the Smilers.”
“Have you ever wondered if you voted right?” The woman chokes a fistful of air.
“Have you? No, of course not. You don’t vote.”
The eyes widen.
“You’re Liz X. Who else would you be?” Romana’s suddenly terrified of how bored she sounds. It’s the queen, honestly…
“You could work for me.”
“That’s not what I’m here for,” she says, even though she’s not sure what exactly she is here for.
The button. Just the one. Forget. The feeling that something was wrong, that she was waiting in vain… She must watch from afar. She must find out the truth… the grain of truth… those rumours…
When she’s been at home for exactly two weeks, there’s a knock on her door.
Romana gets up from the couch, rubs her eyes and opens the door with great reluctance.
On the other side is Mandy Tanner, one of her eleven-year-olds. She clutches a folder and smiles hugely.
Romana feels better already. She misses the class, really she does.
“Here are some pics,” says Mandy, holding out the folder. She drops her gaze. “Those that were accepted.”
“That’s very kind!” says Romana, speaking too loudly to somehow balance out the uneasiness. “Make sure you let the others know that.”
“I will.”
“Whose painting wasn’t accepted?” She has to ask. Has to know.
“I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Please!”
“Lisa’s… and Byron’s.”
“Thank you.” Romana tries to breathe through the spreading coldness, but it has affected too much of her already. “You should be going home,” she tells Mandy. “If you could come back in a few days, I’ll have something for you to bring the class.”
Mandy nods. “Miss,” she says. “You’re my favourite.”
She sits on her couch, wrapped in a blanket, flips through the paintings. She doesn’t really see them. Her eyes burn.
The Doctor is there often; a faceless shape that she knows only by feeling, an old friend, so old… Someone who has perhaps made their greatest mistake ever. And that’s saying something. She laughs to herself, inside the dream, and her sleeping body twists in the sheets.
Errant memories fitting together in a semblance of sense. There are layers, so many. A translucent sheet upon another upon another. Blue and yellow make green. Green and purple make brown. Brown and blue make black, right? Black is all colours. There’s a sound like...
When Mandy returns, Romana opens the door before she’s knocked.
“Are you all right, Miss?” asks Mandy.
“I’m fine.” She’s feeling positively beside herself. One part is so very tired, and the other is telling her to run, run, run, because the Winders… She’s got the class a film, though, a funny, harmless one, and she presses the card into Mandy’s hand.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“The Doctor will come.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m sorry… I’m very tired. Say hello to the others for me.”
Mandy stares at her, clutches the film card.
That night, or perhaps the night after that, her door opens - no, it’s opened - and a handful of Winders swarm in. There’s a gas, and then there’s darkness, and a proper, deep oblivion.
Romana isn’t entirely certain she’s awake.
She’s in a voting room, on a chair, that much is clear. In front of her are the screens and the dreaded buttons. An open door reveals a tiny toilet cubicle, from which a pronounced smell of vomit issues.
The system recognises her alertness, scans her. ‘Frederique Dvora, 40’, it says. Is that right? That doesn’t seem right.
She shakes her head, doesn’t get up to vote. She’s scanned again, with the same result.
She’s ephemeral, and herself (finally), and not herself at all, and all at the same time. It’s all very confusing. Perhaps it’s part of one great dream: a dream within a dream within a dream. There’s something intriguing in that; a scientific study; an equation; a bit of poetry.
An indeterminable amount of time later, the system has developed some sort of glitch. It scans her continually. Sometimes it won’t even recognise her right to vote. How ironic.
She pulls her legs up, watches the computer try to identify her.
The door opens, and a Winder enters with a bowl and a glass on a tray.
“You think I’ll eat that? You’ve drugged me once already.”
“The food’s safe. We won’t interfere with the voting.”
“How long have I been here?”
“A day. Please vote. You’re taking up an entire booth.”
The Universe is cracked… There are cracks in time… the work of the Doctor…
The Winder leaves.
Perhaps she didn’t have to occupy it any longer. If this was all a dream, she ought to take up her watch and push the button her finger itched to push.
She tries that.
There’s a torrent of words in her mind… equations she can solve as fast as… and four dimensions. It - everything, all of it - rises to a terrible pounding crescendo and just when her skull feels like its going to give out it’s finally turned itself right and she’s got the answer on the tip of her tongue - and there’s silence. There’s darkness. There’s another dark room and another motionless step.
Part 2
Rating: PG
Characters: Romana, Eleven, Amy, little!Amelia, Aunt Sharon, Mandy, Liz X, Bracewell, Blanche Breen, Alistair, River, Francesco Calvierri, the Northovers, Rory, Dr Black, Craig & Sophie, OCs.
Pairings: Romana/Eleven, Amy/Rory, Craig/Sophie
Wordcount: ~9500 (!)
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.
Spoilers: for the entirety of S5.
Summary: Romana decides to investigate the cracks, but something keeps her from doing it the way she had planned.
A/N: Contains frivolous, skientific usage of the chameleon arch/fobwatch technology, vortex manipulators, &c.
A/N 2: Written for the eleven_romana November ficathon. Some parts inspired by this fantastic meta by promethia_tenk.
Many names and dates come from here, and a quote from here. The 5x3 transcipt by jpgr was very helpful.
Furthermore, I’ve made Sharon the sister of Amy’s dad, solely because we don’t know Amy’s mum’s maiden name.
Leadworth, 1996
The Doctor will destroy the Universe.
The cracks in time are the work of the Doctor.
Silence will fall.
The Pandorica opens.
She’d intended to stargaze, to take her new wellies for a walk down to the meadow, to lie down and let her mind wander. There had been a few clouds in the sky, and she had started to let it wander a bit prematurely, unfortunately, while waiting for them to pass. She must have taken a series of wrong turns unwittingly, because when a dog’s sudden bark brought her back to Leadworth and gravity and gusts of wind and an itchy woollen jumper, she found herself halfway up the street Sharon Pond lived on.
Perhaps, she thought, she should postpone the gazing and visit her. Sharon always had a nice selection of teas. She also had a pleasurably predictable way of dragging up every single piece of gossip she though would be of interest. If they were home. It was a holiday, after all. And Sharon… wasn’t always there as it was. Half the time it was as if she didn’t exist at all.
Wasn’t there something she really needed to talk to her about, something about her house, something about it that she had happened to notice… but what - a broken floorboard, a leaking tap? - no, she couldn’t remember the specific details right now. She’d just have to anchor her mind firmly, first, and it would all come back.
Romana rewrapped her scarf (whyever had she invested in such a long one?) and walked the way to Sharon’s house, her wellies making a rather loud noise on the asphalt, now that she was aware of herself.
There was something about that house that made her skin crawl, noises that sounded like whispers… and yet, there was something irrevocably alluring about it.
From the street, the house looked still. That didn’t necessarily mean it was, though, she’d learnt. Sometimes they did things like that, the Ponds. Turned off all the lights and sat on a crooked bench in the garden, aunt and niece, wrapped in blankets and drinking hot chocolate. It was things like that that reminded the child that she had an aunt, Romana thought. She turned up the path.
Emotionally, her first reaction was No! Intellectually, she had to think about it.
The Doctor, sufficiently enraged, could do a lot of stupid things. Well-meaning, he could still do a lot of stupid things. Nothing like this, though. He knew what would happen and he wouldn’t cause it. She might not know him anymore, but this was the TARDIS… the TARDIS. He would never. Not on purpose. But unwittingly… by mistake. It was possible, truth be told.
And if not him - who? She would not stomp around like an inexperienced tot anymore. She would handle this responsibly. She needed to see without being seen.
“What was the diagnosis?”
“They said it must have been a migraine or something.” She’s feeling quite shaken, is still recovering from a shock she doesn’t know how she suffered. It’s midday and she has the tea and the earful at Sharon’s, the one she thought to have in the evening three days ago. Until she’d passed out in Sharon’s garden. It feels a bit odd being back here again, and at the same time it feels like she never left.
Thankfully, Sharon seems a bit shaken, too. “What do you think?”
“There was a crash. There was.”
Sharon stares at her, automatically stirs her tea.
“I was at your door. My head started throbbing, and my heart skipped a beat - and then it made up for it by beating twice as fast. And there was some kind of pressure. I felt… crushed.”
Two days in the hospital. Warm blankets, the smell of disinfectant, scans and ultrasounds, fingers in plastic gloves prodding, endless questions. She had a sniffle. Other than that she was perfectly fine. Well, except for the dreams.
“Because you know,” says Sharon, and pales under her rouge. “Our shed…” She glances out the window, and Romana does the same. The shed is no more. Where it stood is now a pile of rubble, planks hastily pushed into some kind of stack, bent content set to the side. “And Amelia…” Sharon starts, but nothing more comes.
Romana rises, approaches the window, stares out at the remains. “What happened to it?”
“You tell me. The fence is whole. There aren’t any tyre tracks. It’s just…”
“Crushed.” The kitchen table is set with mugs and a pot of tea, with milk and sugar and shop bought ginger biscuits on a plate. Everything is spotless. And the shed is crushed.
“What’re you talking about?” Little Amelia stands in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. She’s holding a blue crayon.
“Nothing, darling,” says Sharon, drawing herself up visibly. She glares at Romana across the rim of her mug. “Romana’s had a bit of an accident, that’s all.”
“Is it about the shed?” Amelia purses her lips. “I know what happened to it.”
Sharon rolls her eyes. “Amelia! What did I say about bothering guests?”
Amelia doesn’t even bat an eyelash. Utterly determined, she looks up at Romana and says, “I want to tell you about my friend.”
“Amelia!” says Sharon.
“It all right,” says Romana, trying to sound flippant. “I don’t mind.”
Amelia runs out of the kitchen, her hair flying, returns in but a moment carrying a small red suitcase. She plops down on the floor and places the case in front of her. Next she makes a demanding gesture indicating that Romana better sit down, too.
Romana leaves the window and obeys; sits down across from the child, tugging her legs into the lotus position.
Sharon makes an irate noise and clutches her mug, stares out into the garden.
Amelia solemnly opens the case.
Romana can’t see what it contains, wonders what to expect.
“This is me.” Amelia places a little thing with blazingly red yarn hair and a handkerchief for a dress on the floor. “This is my friend.” A slightly larger doll, made from an empty paper roll, with askew pieces of cloth for a shirt and trousers. Its yarn hair was brown and plentiful. Amelia makes very sure the doll is standing perfectly straight. “He’s called the Doctor.”
“How unusual…” says Romana. She’s starting to feel a little light-headed, all of a sudden.
“He doesn’t need a boring name. He’s magic.”
Romana peers closer at the doll. “Magic?”
“His box is magic too.” She reaches into the suitcase with both hands and smiles up at Romana, waits a few seconds before reverently retrieving said box. It’s vibrantly blue, if still obviously just a painted tea bag carton.
Romana’s heart skips a beat nonetheless.
“It has a library and a swimming pool and guess what? The pool is in the library!”
“Shouldn’t it stand up?” she manages, when Amelia has placed it on the floor. She really shouldn’t be this invested in a child’s game.
“It needs to have a lie-down while the engines are phasing.”
Romana presses a hand to her chest. “It crashed?”
Amelia sighs impatiently. “Yes. You see, he was in such a hurry to fix the crack in my wall. He didn’t stop in time and crushed the shed.”
Cracks in time… Romana suddenly feels nauseous. “A crack? He fixed it for you?”
“Closed it. Just like that. He’s got a wand.”
“The Doctor…”
“We met when Aunt Sharon went to London,” says Amelia brightly.
“Can I see your wall?”
“Absolutely not!” says Sharon, staring down at them. “Amelia has an unhealthy obsession as it is, don’t fuel it!”
Amelia turns a fierce frown on her aunt. “I’m not making it up!”
“Who are you to decide what’s unhealthy?” asks Romana quietly.
Sharon slams her mug down and a little tea sloshes over the rim. “There’s no such thing as raggedy men flying about in blue boxes.”
“What if there is?”
“It’s preposterous!”
“You should listen to Amelia, just for once. What if there is? What if he crushed your shed?” If she really thinks about it, Romana knows there is no such thing, that it is indeed preposterous. If she doesn’t think, however, she feels that she must defend this man and his box.
The phone rings, in another room. Sharon gets up and leaves the kitchen, her lips tightly compressed.
Romana hears her answer, wonders if she ought to go.
“I can show you my wall now,” says Amelia.
She’d sat on a swing, stared up at the sky, wondered if there were planets where the grass was red. A great weight had pressed against her. She’d stumbled into a bush.
Someone had draped a coat over her. She had looked up and it had been like looking in a distorted mirror. The face of the woman looking down on her was as familiar to her as her own face, and yet she knew she looked nothing like that.
It’s just an ordinary wall. Romana inspects it thoroughly, running her hands over it, though she has no idea what she’s looking for.
Amelia watches her, clutching her Doctor-doll. “No crack.”
Romana turns. “No crack.”
Amelia runs down the stairs; her aunt is off the phone and crying for her, decidedly angrily.
Romana takes it slower, thinking. She’s seen the wall; it’s normal, and still she isn’t pleased. Then she notices something: a door, and it is most certainly not normal, even though she can’t say what’s wrong with it.
She opens the door and peers in.
What... is that? What is it trying to do?
Her watch… The emergency switch!
With a little tweaking, the fobwatch will do nicely. She needs to keep her mind, but change her body. It may defeat the point of the Chameleon Arch, but she doesn’t care. She needs to be something other than a Time Lord, and yet she needs to think like one.
She upgrades the perception filter, programs parameters for an infinite number of different projections, makes sure she can’t be a scientist every time. She’ll undoubtedly get to keep the appearance of her arms and legs, most of the time, thankfully. The Doctor and his beloved humans.
Next, she gets hold of a vortex manipulator. She programs it to track the cracks, by way of the Doctor’s TARDIS, by way of the Doctor. It’s throwing caution to the wind, tying herself to his whims, but it’s necessary.
She’ll have three months to examine each crack, and that will have to do. She adds an emergency switch, wires it to the manipulator; she is not spending a quarter of a year in any given (illusion of a) different body if there is nothing to investigate.
…
A silence so complete it is a force, a presence; an actual substance invading her lungs and sticking to her skin… an actual something crushing her watch, inside and out, breaking and bending the precious technology… She takes the step, a motionless step into a nonexistent darkness, but it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. Her control is not where it should be. Her mind leaks into the watch, just where it’s not supposed to go…
The Starship UK, 33rd century
A glass of water. Simple. And still… There is something wrong here, something much more tangible than cracks in the Universe. This ship built on a lie, a deck of cards that the right kind of pressure at the right place could bring down. But what? Why? Crying children, fire and fear and death. Last changes. A button saying protest.
Her nightmares are terrible, all-consuming things. She can’t concentrate on her work. Melancholia, they say. Travelling on a spaceship without a set goal - it’s common. She gets a few months’ leave, no questions asked.
The Pandorica opens.
Protest, protest, protest! Something screams at her: press that one, that one! But she doesn’t; her heart constricts in her chest and she presses the wrong one. And then she wakes up, but she doesn’t wake up properly.
Something went wrong… she wasn’t supposed to be human, not this much… Malfunction, miswiring, sabotage.
It was her choice. Wasn’t it? The manipulator, the fobwatch… of course it was.
She puts on her coat and her everyday hat, both grey and nondescript, and goes for a walk.
There are people everywhere, people just like her. They’re walking and eating and drinking, and somewhere just below the surface are all those things they cannot see; and those who do see choose to unsee, at least in her nightmares.
She stops by a water shop and gets some to go.
A glass of water. A hundred glasses of water. The terrible, impossible truth. They’re somehow connected. She tries to look deeper, but it’s like she can’t focus properly. Sometimes she feels the same way when she looks at herself in a mirror; like she’s not looking deep enough.
She finds a quiet street corner and puts the glass down. The water is just as immobile as it is in her nightmares.
Footsteps fall further down the street, heavy ones. She snatches the glass up and hunches between a pair of bins, pulling her hat rim down over her eyes, aims to become just another grey lump. A pillar of steam shoots up nearby, drifts through the air, obscures the whole street. Luck. The steps come closer, falter. Romana holds her breath. Whoever it is starts to move again, away from her. She leans out and peers through the steam, makes out a figure shrouded in black, soon engulfed by darkness.
She stands, disposes of the glass, dusts herself off and rights her attire.
Something red disentangles itself from the darkness that just swallowed the Winder. It shapes itself into a cape, which, in turn, gets caught by a draft and reveals a pair of boots and a porcelain mask.
How intriguing, Romana thinks. Her hat just won’t go the way she wants it, or so she makes it seem.
The woman stops, at a respectful distance. ”Why are the Winders after you?”
Romana has to strain her ears to hear. She retaliates using the same tone. “Why are you after the Winders?”
“I asked first.”
Romana shrugs.
The woman squares her shoulders, approaches with measured steps, comes close enough to stare down at Romana. “Answer me.”
“I didn’t forget properly.”
“Forget what?” There’s a challenge in the eyes, very much alive behind the mask.
“I don’t know. Something I was supposed to… I suppose.”
”You’ve voted.”
”Yes.”
”Recently.”
”Yes.”
The woman drops her voice even lower. “Why did you do that with the water?”
“I won’t say. I don’t fancy meeting the Smilers.”
“Have you ever wondered if you voted right?” The woman chokes a fistful of air.
“Have you? No, of course not. You don’t vote.”
The eyes widen.
“You’re Liz X. Who else would you be?” Romana’s suddenly terrified of how bored she sounds. It’s the queen, honestly…
“You could work for me.”
“That’s not what I’m here for,” she says, even though she’s not sure what exactly she is here for.
The button. Just the one. Forget. The feeling that something was wrong, that she was waiting in vain… She must watch from afar. She must find out the truth… the grain of truth… those rumours…
When she’s been at home for exactly two weeks, there’s a knock on her door.
Romana gets up from the couch, rubs her eyes and opens the door with great reluctance.
On the other side is Mandy Tanner, one of her eleven-year-olds. She clutches a folder and smiles hugely.
Romana feels better already. She misses the class, really she does.
“Here are some pics,” says Mandy, holding out the folder. She drops her gaze. “Those that were accepted.”
“That’s very kind!” says Romana, speaking too loudly to somehow balance out the uneasiness. “Make sure you let the others know that.”
“I will.”
“Whose painting wasn’t accepted?” She has to ask. Has to know.
“I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Please!”
“Lisa’s… and Byron’s.”
“Thank you.” Romana tries to breathe through the spreading coldness, but it has affected too much of her already. “You should be going home,” she tells Mandy. “If you could come back in a few days, I’ll have something for you to bring the class.”
Mandy nods. “Miss,” she says. “You’re my favourite.”
She sits on her couch, wrapped in a blanket, flips through the paintings. She doesn’t really see them. Her eyes burn.
The Doctor is there often; a faceless shape that she knows only by feeling, an old friend, so old… Someone who has perhaps made their greatest mistake ever. And that’s saying something. She laughs to herself, inside the dream, and her sleeping body twists in the sheets.
Errant memories fitting together in a semblance of sense. There are layers, so many. A translucent sheet upon another upon another. Blue and yellow make green. Green and purple make brown. Brown and blue make black, right? Black is all colours. There’s a sound like...
When Mandy returns, Romana opens the door before she’s knocked.
“Are you all right, Miss?” asks Mandy.
“I’m fine.” She’s feeling positively beside herself. One part is so very tired, and the other is telling her to run, run, run, because the Winders… She’s got the class a film, though, a funny, harmless one, and she presses the card into Mandy’s hand.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“The Doctor will come.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m sorry… I’m very tired. Say hello to the others for me.”
Mandy stares at her, clutches the film card.
That night, or perhaps the night after that, her door opens - no, it’s opened - and a handful of Winders swarm in. There’s a gas, and then there’s darkness, and a proper, deep oblivion.
Romana isn’t entirely certain she’s awake.
She’s in a voting room, on a chair, that much is clear. In front of her are the screens and the dreaded buttons. An open door reveals a tiny toilet cubicle, from which a pronounced smell of vomit issues.
The system recognises her alertness, scans her. ‘Frederique Dvora, 40’, it says. Is that right? That doesn’t seem right.
She shakes her head, doesn’t get up to vote. She’s scanned again, with the same result.
She’s ephemeral, and herself (finally), and not herself at all, and all at the same time. It’s all very confusing. Perhaps it’s part of one great dream: a dream within a dream within a dream. There’s something intriguing in that; a scientific study; an equation; a bit of poetry.
An indeterminable amount of time later, the system has developed some sort of glitch. It scans her continually. Sometimes it won’t even recognise her right to vote. How ironic.
She pulls her legs up, watches the computer try to identify her.
The door opens, and a Winder enters with a bowl and a glass on a tray.
“You think I’ll eat that? You’ve drugged me once already.”
“The food’s safe. We won’t interfere with the voting.”
“How long have I been here?”
“A day. Please vote. You’re taking up an entire booth.”
The Universe is cracked… There are cracks in time… the work of the Doctor…
The Winder leaves.
Perhaps she didn’t have to occupy it any longer. If this was all a dream, she ought to take up her watch and push the button her finger itched to push.
She tries that.
There’s a torrent of words in her mind… equations she can solve as fast as… and four dimensions. It - everything, all of it - rises to a terrible pounding crescendo and just when her skull feels like its going to give out it’s finally turned itself right and she’s got the answer on the tip of her tongue - and there’s silence. There’s darkness. There’s another dark room and another motionless step.
Part 2