Doctor Who Fic: In Our Youth Time: Part Five: Running With the Doctor
Part Five: Running With the Doctor
Traveling with the Doctor was the perfect life for her. Melody loved it just as she’d always known she would. It was different than when she had been a child or after she’d found out about the Silence. Then she’d always been looking over her shoulder, always confined to the safe jobs, always answering to her parents. But now she was free. Free to run with the Doctor.
The Doctor still treated her somewhat like a child though she was going on fifty. Her proximity to the Tardis made her look like she was only pushing thirty and she felt even younger than that so maybe that was why, though she guessed in the Doctor’s eyes she’d always be the little baby he’d saved from an orphanage; that, and a human being, a somewhat primitive species, compared to his mighty Timelord sensibilities.
Every once in a while she needed to take him down a peg or two by doing something spectacular while they were planet side and it certainly didn’t hurt that the Tardis was often on her side and helped her on occasion.
“It’s your birthday, Melody Pond,” he told her once, spinning the Tardis dials. “Care for a treat?”
“All those important historical dates and you remember my birthday, how sweet,” she said.
“Well, it’s rather tangled up time-wise,” he said. “Makes it memorable.”
“Right,” she said solemnly. “Nothing at all due to my being your favorite honorary niece.”
“I shall refrain from offering the obvious rejoinder,” he said.
Melody raised her eyebrows.
“Quoting, are we?”
“Could be my fabulous verbal skills and things,” he said.
“And things?”
“Shut up,” he said, twirling around her. “Or you won’t get your treat.”
“Since your treats for me usually end up more being treats for you, I highly doubt it,” she said.
“True enough. I shouldn’t be punished just cause you get all insubordinate.”
“That would be a shame,” she agreed, hiding her smile. “So where are we going? Not to see my parents?”
“They’ve gotten all your birthdays ever,” the Doctor said grumpily. “It’s my turn. Besides, time machine. Always plenty of time for more birthdays. You can have as many as you like. Have them all in one go if you want. Ooh, we should try that.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, casually stabilising their landing. “You know what you’re like with too much birthday cake.”
“Fine,” he said, running past her into the Tardis. “Race you to the wardrobe.”
They got bundled up into nineteenth century clothes and the Doctor proudly displayed the ‘completely unaware he’d been time-displaced’ Stevie Wonder who sang at the Frost Fair. They went ice skating and Melody laughed her head off while the Doctor fell all over the place.
“A millennia in and you still can’t ice skate,” she said, gliding gracefully around him while he floundered.
“I can do other things,” he said sulkily.
They had the best time and then they did go and see her parents and then they ran across time and space again.
For years they ran, saving planets and sightseeing and surfing cosmic storms and meeting historical figures and picnicking on Asgard and seeing the tower on Calderon Bita and having a perfectly wonderful life.
Time was their companion, whirling with them in a dance, playing along with their ideas, molding around their decisions, protecting them from aging, allowing them space to save the universe.
Melody didn’t see how it could end and she never wanted it to. Of course, realistically she couldn’t live forever but she kept on looking young enough that the Doctor didn’t have to be reminded of her not living forever. Besides, it was just about time he realized that seeing the end of someone’s life was not the torture that he always railed about. Naturally it was sad, naturally it reminded him of being the last of his kind, but he couldn’t keep on letting it ruin his relationships with the people he did have, or quitting them too soon. How much of his life he’d wasted by running from people.
So Melody kept him in check and she was happy to do it. Sometimes it seemed like they’d always lived this way and everything before was just a blurry dream.
It was around the time she’d been named Empress of the Ar’withians and the Doctor had been banned from their system that she got the job offer. It was from a Mr. Lux and involved investigating an entire planet only recently unlocked. A planet that was a library. How could she resist?
But when she told the Doctor he got very quiet and went away into the depths of the Tardis and she couldn’t find him and for once the Tardis refused to help her. She was genuinely very worried; he couldn’t possibly be jealous or sulky because she was going to be gone for a few weeks? He could always just come with her. It sounded like something right up his streak so to speak.
When he finally emerged and let her know he hadn’t been eaten by some monstrosity that had been fermenting in the depths of the Tardis for years and years, he didn’t say anything.
She questioned him in vain and he finally smiled at her and leaned back against the console.
“It’s my turn, Melody Pond. Trust me?”
“Always,” she said.
“Then what’s the one place I’ve always promised to take you?”
“The Singing Towers?” she said, clapping her hands.
“That’s my girl,” he said. “So come along, Pond Jr, we’re going traveling. There’s a dress begging for your attention in the wardrobe.”
He set the Tardis in motion while she ran to get changed and they whirled into the Vortex and landed upon the most beautiful planet Melody had ever seen, and she’d seen so very many.
It was difficult to describe so she didn’t waste her breath trying. It was white and opalescent, colors glimmering everywhere without being overpowering. The smell reminded her of a beach in Hawaii and a pine forest in Washington and the red flowers on the Moon of Varza all at once. But the sounds…the sounds nearly unmade her. The melodies that swirled around her made her feel like her name and being had taken audible form and filled the air around them.
“Thank you,” she said, gripping the Doctor’s hand. She smiled up at him and saw that he was crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The time has come for us to part, Melody,” he said. “A bit sooner than I wanted, but at least the Tardis will like me better again.”
“She always likes you better,” Melody said. “I’m only going for a few weeks, you know, and you could come with me.”
“No, I can’t,” he said. “But if you need me, just call and I’ll come.”
“I always do,” she said, so very puzzled.
“And I’ll always be there to catch you,” he said.
“You’re so serious, what’s the matter?”
“I’ve got a present for you,” he said, sticking his hand into his pocket.
“What?” she asked, allowing him the evasion.
He pulled out a sonic screwdriver, not his, but she could see the similarities and the improvements he’d made.
“Really?” she asked, accepting it.
“Really really,” he said. “All yours; just don’t leave home without it.”
“Who would?” she said, examining it carefully, anxious to try it out.
“Some very backwards people?” he said hesitantly.
“Seriously, what is wrong with you?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“I’m listening.”
“There’s something you don’t know about me. Something no one knows. I barely remember it myself, but it’s an important thing. Sort of ‘would blow up the universe if the wrong people knew it’ important.”
“And that is?”
“My name,” he said, not looking at her.
“Excuse me?” she asked, absolutely flabbergasted.
Never in the wide universe could she ever imagine knowing the Doctor’s name. That was…inconceivable.
He perked up a bit as if the reminder that something was unfathomable about him stroked his ego.
“Absolutely,” he said, tapping her nose. “My name is an infinity of possibilities and I can say it, I will say it, to you. Because you’re going to need it.”
“That’s too much responsibility,” Melody said. “I think it would burn me alive.”
“It would if I tried to say it any other way than the way I will say it,” he said. “But some things have set rules. For once I’m following those rules.”
“Is something bad going to happen?” she asked.
“Something bad already has happened, but something amazing as well. You’re something so amazing, impossible and amazing. I count on you to change my life. So I trust you with one more secret and I’m sorry it’s such a secret, but really I’ve got nothing else in me.”
“But secrets?”
“Such secrets.”
She took a deep breath.
“Then I accept this charge.”
“Good girl.”
The Doctor leaned close to her and whispered in her ear and Melody’s world was completely unmade once again.
There’s no way she could ever explain what happened, no way she could ever understand it. It was simply the most defining experience of her life.
And that was all she would ever have to say about that.
When it was over Melody felt like she’d been sitting on that Tower forever, the Doctor at her side, the songs soaring in her soul.
“Any more surprises for me?” she asked, when she could finally speak again.
“There are always surprises,” he said. “You’re the biggest of them all. So go forth and-"
“Multiply?” she asked cheekily.
He turned bright red.
“Melody Pond! I’m telling your mother on you.”
“She’d probably say it’s about time,” Melody said.
Funnily enough in her entire life of wandering, there hadn’t been much time for men, despite some rather memorable experiences at university. Her life had been all about the Doctor really and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“I don’t have any regrets,” she said. “Not even missing a whole other life. The one I have had is worth every bit of pain.”
“Thank you,” he said.
They stayed there for a bit longer and Melody enjoyed every bit of it. In the morning she left, hugging the Doctor goodbye, excited and determined to make him come join her even if she had to send up a false alarm.
The last view she had of him he grinned at her and she winked, flashing her new screwdriver at him.
So Melody left the Tardis.
***
The first thing Melody did after getting her debriefing from Mr. Lux, who was an absolute twat, was send a message to the Doctor on his psychic paper. If she was going to put up with this idiot, she was going to have company.
She liked her fellow group for the most part, Anita, both Daves, and even Miss Evangelista. It was going to be a good job. All that was missing was the element of her crazy uncle. When they arrived at the library she saw two figures standing just out of the shadows. It had to be.
But then he turned around and she winced. That was not her Doctor. That wasn’t even a younger version of her Doctor. That was his Tenth self. Oh, this was going to be fun.
“Hello, Doctor,” she said, illuminating her visor.
“Get out,” was his charming reply.
Oh, so much fun, this was going to be. She sent a quick thought email to everyone on her team that if they mentioned her last name she was going to personally throttle them and send their bodies home to their mothers. There was some quick mental feedback and confusion while the Doctor blathered on about them surviving the Library by running. Eventually they all agreed.
Of course Mr. Lux was just angry there were others in his precious Library and everyone else was panicking about the air. She really shouldn’t have taken this job.
“You came through the north door, yeah? How was that, much damage?” she asked in an attempt to keep professional.
“Please, just leave. I'm asking you seriously and properly, just leave- Hang on, did you say, expedition?”
“My expedition. I funded it,” Mr. Lux said proudly.
“Oh, you're not, are you? Tell me you're not archaeologists.”
“Got a problem with archaeologists?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I'm a time traveller. I point and laugh at archaeologists.”
“Ah,” she said, extending her hand. “Professor Melody, archaeologist.”
He shook her hand and continued to try and get her to leave and she was rather bemused because normally the Doctor didn’t run from anything. This was obviously a very serious situation. He warned them all about staying out of the shadows and she set about obeying his orders, well, except for the one about leaving, because he was the Doctor, even if he was young, and he knew what he was talking about.
After Mr. Lux went on and on about his personal contracts Melody asked the Doctor.
“You think there's danger here. What is it?”
“Something came to this library and killed everything in it. Killed a whole world.”
“That was one hundred years ago. The Library's been silent for a hundred years. Whatever came here is long dead.”
“Bet your life?” he asked seriously.
“Always.”
He looked at her so strangely and she could see his brain start working, not just on their current predicament, but on her.
In the meantime, he explained that they were facing the Vashta Nerada.
“It's what's in the dark. It's what's always in the dark. Lights! That's what we need, lights! You got lights? Form a circle, safe area, big as you can, lights pointing out.”
“Oi, do as he says,” Melody said, gesturing to Anita.
“You're not listening to this man?” Mr. Lux asked.
“Apparently I am.”
She issued orders having them follow the Doctor’s instructions, getting Mr. Lux out of her way, finding out what had happened here, and trying to figure out what this Doctor was like.
“Thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“The usual. For coming when I call.”
“That was you?” She pulled out her diary and didn’t answer him. “How did you know to do that?”
There was no point in pretending she didn’t know him. Not when he was going to remember this as his first meeting with her and with River Song and Melody had no clue as to what River Song had done on her first meeting with the Doctor.
“I know you don’t know me,” she said. “But trust me when I say I know you.”
“You called me Doctor before,” he said, then squinted. “And sweetie. Oh, that’s new. Professor River Song and Professor Melody.”
“This will be very confusing for you,” she said. “But please believe me when I say I’m on your side. You're younger than I've ever seen you, but you’re still you.”
“Who are you?” he said, his voice thickening with suspicion and she inwardly groaned.
She was going to give him hell for this the next time she saw him.
There wasn’t a lot of time to waste chatting and soon they were involved in a mystery with a strange girl on the computer core and books flying every which way.
Of course it was a tie as to who was more stubborn, Mr. Lux or the Doctor. Or even her. The Doctor kept shooting looks at her, questions burning on the tip of his tongue. Mr. Lux wouldn’t own up as to who CAL was and the Doctor was amazingly predictable in that he wouldn’t sign Mr. Lux’s contracts.
Not that she had.
“Okay, okay, okay. Let's start it again. What happened here? On the actual day a hundred years ago, what physically happened?” the Doctor asked.
“There was a message from The Library. Just one. ‘The lights are going out.’ Then the computer sealed the planet, and there was nothing for a hundred years,” Melody answered promptly.
“It's taken three generations of my family just to decode the seals and get back here,” Mr. Lux said.
“There was one other thing in the last message,” Melody began.
“That's confidential,” Mr. Lux protested.
“I trust this man with my life...with everything.”
“You've only just met him.”
“Nope. He's only just met me,” she replied.
The Doctor looked very intrigued, but he didn’t say anything. He kept looking off into the distance and she could tell that he was remembering everything both ways and she wondered, not for the first time, if he liked her way of doing things or the mysterious River Song’s.
From what she could gather from things he’d said, especially early versions of him, River Song had been very important to him, but in a very different way from how she’d been important to him. Since Melody was only herself, she couldn’t help but be biased and think her relationship with him was better. Certainly she’d spent more time with him and gotten to know him on a purely domestic basis.
She just didn’t know, which made everything she said here dangerous and she wondered if it was possible for her to do something so wrong it would rewrite time again. Maybe that was what her Doctor had been so worried about.
Regardless, this version of her was here now and this version of him was here now. They’d just have to do.
“This is a data extract that came with the message.”
"Four thousand and twenty two saved. No survivors,” he read out loud from her data pad.
“Four thousand and twenty two saved - that's the exact number of people who were in the library when the planet was sealed,” said Melody.
Of course then they lost Miss Evangelista. Not a fun situation, no, not very fun at all. Melody felt responsible for the girl. She should have been paying more attention.
So they all stood there listening to her ghost.
“Whatever did this to her, whatever killed her, I'd like a word with that,” Melody said quietly.
“I'll introduce you,” the Doctor said. “I'm gonna need a packed lunch.”
“Hang on,” she said, getting her pack.
“What's in that book?” he asked. “Before you kept saying that I’d done things, using that book.”
“Spoilers,” Melody said. “You know I can’t say.”
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“Professor Melody…Smith, University of-"
“To me. Who are you to me? Why are the timelines changing? Which one is real? What did you do?”
“Again...spoilers.” She held out the box. “Chicken and a bit of salad. Knock yourself out.”
She chatted with Donna while the Doctor looked for the Vashta Nerada. It pained her to know that this woman who she’d once seen in her head was going to lose everything, but she couldn’t say anything.
It turned out they were surrounded by shadows, by creatures who could strip their flesh in moments and the Doctor said to run.
Proper Dave had two shadows and the Doctor teleported Donna somewhere and they still didn’t know where to run and the Doctor got tetchy again when he saw Melody had her own screwdriver.
Then they lost Proper Dave and the Vashta Nerada treated him like a brand new ride and she had to pull out one of her guns, the one she loved to use because the Doctor seemed to have fond memories of it and mostly it was non-lethal, yet effective.
When the Doctor said to run and took her hand it felt like old times.
“So what's the plan? Do we have a plan?” she asked.
She used her screwdriver to help him boost the light’s power and he started to pout again.
“Your screwdriver looks exactly like mine.”
“Yeah. You gave it to me.”
“I don't give my screwdriver to anyone.”
“I'm not anyone,” she said.
“Who are you?” he asked for the third time.
“You certainly are a chap of one idea,” she said. “Now, listen to me, I can’t tell you. Spoilers. Got it? So now concentrate and tell me, what's the plan?”
“Get to the Tardis before it leaves,” he said.
But Proper Dave was bearing down on them, Donna had not arrived at the Tardis, and the lights were flickering.
Melody sometimes hated her life.
***
Melody used her gun to destroy public property (or was it Mr. Lux’s private property? A question for another time), and saved them.
“This way! Quickly. Move!” They got to a clear room and the Doctor started checking all the shadows. “Right in the centre, in the middle of the light, quickly! Don't let your shadows cross.”
The Doctor kept looking, banging his screwdriver, and getting rid of chicken legs while everyone else worked on getting lights set up. Naturally everyone now had time to question exactly who the Doctor was and why they couldn’t tell him her last name.
“Who is he? You haven't even told us. You just expect us to trust him,” asked Other Dave.
“He's the Doctor,” Melody said simply.
“And who is ‘the Doctor?’ ” asked Mr. Lux derisively.
“The only story you'll ever tell - if you survive him.”
“You say he's your friend but he doesn't even know who you are,” Anita said.
Melody put down her equipment and focused on her friends. “Listen. All you need to know is this: I'd trust that man to the end of the universe.”
“He doesn't act like he trusts you,” said Anita.
“We’re both time travelers,” Melody explained. “That’s the tiny problem - he hasn't met me yet. In his own time. But I’ve met him. That’s why you can’t tell him my name because it would let him know who I am too soon.”
“Don’t we have enough going on?” Other Dave joked.
Melody swatted his arm and patted Anita’s shoulder and walked over to the Doctor because it didn’t appear that his screwdriver was working properly. In hind sight, telling him how to use it probably wasn’t her best idea ever. In the end she gave him hers to use.
“So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver?”
“A screwdriver, yes.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked.
“I didn't pluck it from your cold, dead hands if that's what you're worried about,” Melody said, exasperated.
“And I know that because...?”
They squabbled for a few minutes and it actually took Mr. Lux to break them up and Melody made a very very important decision.
She suddenly understood exactly why her Doctor had done what he’d done, equipping her with what she’d need for this expedition, but knowing he had to let her figure out when and how to use what he’d given her.
“Doctor...one day I'm going to be someone you trust completely, but I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you.” She bent down and whispered his name, his glorious, powerful, rendering-the-heavens name, in his ear and pulled back. He simply stared at her for a few minutes. “Are we good? Doctor...are we good?”
It took him a moment or two and she wondered how River had done this last time and if it was getting harder or easier for him to separate the two of them in his mind. Judging from later encounters for him and earlier for her it would take him awhile.
“Yeah. Yeah, we're good,” he choked out.
“Good.”
She walked away, trying to compose herself because it actually took a lot of effort to even think his name, let alone say it. It was indeed a heavy burden.
Their first order of business was to find out what was blocking the Doctor’s screwdriver and what was changing around them. Something flashed an image of Donna at them, but then…then Anita grew two shadows and Proper Dave’s suit found them again.
They ran, the Doctor insisting on being stupid and heroic, so Melody ran with Mr. Lux and Anita, leaving Other Dave with the Doctor and hoping it was the right decision.
She was feeling a bit melancholy actually. She really wished her Doctor had come with her or gotten her message. There was such a sense of foreboding inside her and she felt…lonely.
“You know...it's funny, I keep wishing the Doctor was here,” she said to Anita.
“The Doctor is here, isn't he? I mean, he's coming back, right?”
“You know when you see a photograph of someone you know but it's from years before you met them, and it's like they're not quite...finished, they're-they're not quite done yet? Well, yes, the Doctor's here. He came when I called just like he always does. But he’s not the man I grew up with. The man who rescued me from horrors you can’t imagine. I can remember being a little girl and watching him travel through time and save planets.”
“A little girl, I don’t understand,” Anita said.
Somehow it was easier to talk to her when Melody couldn’t see her face.
“I don’t always either,” Melody said, smiling wanly. “But there’s no part of my life that doesn’t involve that man. Oh, the things I’ve seen. Whole armies would turn and run away at the mention of his name and he’d just swagger off back to his Tardis and open the door with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor, in the Tardis, next stop: everywhere.”
“Spoilers!” the Doctor said, jumping down the stairs. “Nobody can open a Tardis by snapping their fingers. Doesn't work like that.”
“It will do. Some day.”
She could see suspicion and acceptance warring on his face, but he didn’t argue with her. He simply went about fixing the situation and having brainwaves like he always did, reassuring Anita, admitting Other Dave wasn’t coming, suddenly decoding the data fragment from the last message.
The people were all saved to the computer. The hard drive at the center of the planet. The Library systems were all down so they had to physically get to the hard drive.
“Well then...let's go!” Lucky she’d studied the schematics of the planet quite thoroughly. She unlocked the floor with her screwdriver. “Gravity platform.”
“I bet I like you,” the Doctor said.
“Oh, you do,” Melody said, grinning at the Doctor.
They traveled downward and found out Mr. Lux’s big secret, his family’s heritage, and Melody liked him just a little bit more than she had before. But there was still no time because the child wasn’t able to cope with all the people crowding around her hard drive. Of course the Doctor came up with a plan that would kill him.
And she couldn’t really argue with him. But she knew, she knew he didn’t end here, he couldn’t. Her entire life depended on him getting out of here. What could she do? The only thing she could do. Poor Anita was dead, Melody had lived her life, so she knocked the Doctor out.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, handcuffing him to the pillar and hooking herself up to the computer.
He woke up when she was almost done and she almost wished he hadn’t. Because this meant that she had to say something, she had to say goodbye, and she didn’t want to. She simply wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and tragedy, thinking of her parents, and saving the Doctor.
“Oh, no, no, no! What are you doing? That's my job,” he said, straining against the handcuffs.
“Your job is to save the universe,” she said. “Mine is to save you.”
“Melody, please, no!” he pleaded.
“Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time I’ve known you, you knew I was coming here, no matter how time changed. The last time I saw you, the future you, you took me to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. Oh, what a night that was. The towers sang...and you cried.”
“Auto-destruct in one minute,” said the computer.
“You wouldn't tell me why, but I suppose you knew it was time, my time, once you'd heard about my job offer. You even gave me a sonic screwdriver - that should have been a clue.”
“Let me do this!” he pleaded.
“If you die here, it'll mean our future won’t happen.”
“Time can be rewritten!” he said.
“Don’t you think I know that? Believe me, I know that. But you don’t get to make those decisions again. Not for me. This time it really is my choice because I know what happened and I know what needs to happen. This time I’m going to be the person I want to be.”
“You’re dying for me and I don’t know why,” he said. “All I know is that you’ve done something to time, something happened. But it doesn’t have to be. Whatever lies you’ve been told or have told, whatever thing you think you have to do, it’s not written in stone. I know that.”
“I write it in stone,” she whispered. “It's okay. It's okay, it's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run.”
“Melody, you know my name. You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could...why do you have to die for me? Why did I send you here?”
“Hush, now,” Melody said. “Spoilers.”
She connected the cables and her world disappeared in a bright light. She was content. Melody Pond, child of the Tardis, daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, Professor of Archaeology, and companion of the Doctor. It was who she was and she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call...everybody lives.