Fic: The Last Night / The Last Morning
Title: The Last Night / The Last Morning
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Idris, Auntie, Uncle, Nephew, mentions of House, and an OFC (Lady Serapteine)
Word Count: 1,939 / 752, respectively; 2,691 total
Rating: PG-13, for dark themes and minor body horror
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for "The Doctor's Wife," and that's all
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, then it's not mine. In fact, it is probably Neil Gaiman's.
Summary: Before Idris came to live on House, she traveled the universe with a Time Lady. Then, one day, they fell through a rift. / We know how Idris's last day on the House ended. This is how it began.
A/N: Written for the 2011 Minor and Original Characters Ficathon at who_like_giants. Still not sure if this is two separate stories or two halves of the same story, I suppose I'm going with the latter, as two connected parts, to make it simpler. These are currently in chronological order, but I wrote them in the opposite way, and they can be read in any order. Thanks to skypaws for the beta, and for watching "The Doctor's Wife" with me in the first place.
The Last Night
The path that led Idris to the House was not long, but abrupt and violent, as if a chair had been yanked out from under her former life (for the second time). She had been walking into the console room, having just finished hanging a portrait of a woman fighting an enormous boar in the third dining room. There was a loud, rough commotion outside, then a turbulence began to rock through Sera's TARDIS, of a sort that Idris had never felt before.
The Time Lady cried out; Idris whirled but couldn't see her. She fell to the floor of the ship, and flailed wildly. Idris managed to grasp a length of plastic piping and hold on until the tremendous shaking stopped. The turbulent crossing was not very long, but it was long enough to be terrifying.
“What just happened?“ she asked, lifting herself off the floor and standing carefully.
“That was a space-time anomaly, a rift of a sort I've never seen before,” Sera told her. “I don't understand, but we were crashing - it appeared to be the only way out. Otherwise, we could've been sucked into a black hole.” Idris nodded.
Lady Serapteine, whom she called Sera for short, had far more experience than her, so when she didn't know anything, Idris worried. She'd been traveling through time and space on missions for the past couple of years (linear time - it was all very blurry when you tried to factor it any more precisely, or account for the time drift between different parts of reality), but she still felt like a wide-eyed child beside the Gallifreyan woman. Sera was two thousand years old, give or take half a decade, and she often claimed she was too old to keep darting back and forth through the centuries.
“It's...outside the universe,” Sera said, awestruck. “Somehow we've exited the universe to end up here.”
“Oh. Which other universe?“ She'd been to one alternate world before that, a universe where her home planet of Prietroch had been defeated at the Battle of Kasterboros-Delta, and the Sontarans had taken the entire galaxy under their control, from Styron to Gallifrey. That had been an unpleasant universe, especially the parts they'd visited, but they only needed to be there a few hours, to undo a paradox. Once the complication had been resolved - Sera never used such grandiose terms as “we saved the day” - they had left post haste. “Is it a universe you've heard of, or an unknown one?” Idris asked.
Sera studied the three enormous screens on the console of her TARDIS. “No other universe, Idris. This place where we crashed is outside the whole universe. It's just an entirely different thing.”
“But that's impossible!”
“Oh, don't you know by now, girl? Nothing is impossible...” The lights shut off, one fluorescent strip at a time, plunging the cobalt room into dusky darkness. “I will admit, this is improbable, though. Deeply bizarre outcome. And it appears - from what I can tell, the heart of my TARDIS is lost.”
“No,” Idris gasped. “It can't just disappear like that, can it?”
“Clearly it can, because it just happened,” Sera said wearily. “But yes, it was surprising. I have no idea where it could've gone.”
“Maybe it was a defense mechanism?” Idris ran her hand over the metal rails situated just above where the soul of the TARDIS matrix usually glowed azure through the console. It felt very cold.
“Perhaps.”
“It feels like we've lost something, something big.”
“The external environment should be safe. And if it isn't, I don't know how we'll get back. So I suggest we set out.”
To leave such a brilliant machine was a shame, Idris thought, but the ship wasn't working properly so it made sense to figure out what was around outside them.
They wandered for a full week, living off food from the TARDIS's kitchens and a few bitter herbs they found outside, growing in the thin soil of the unknown planet. From what they saw of the world, it was a strange assortment of places and things, mostly broken or useless, that didn't belong together, like a junkyard assembled by people who'd never seen real junk before. Whole furniture sets that looked brand-new sat beside mounds of tin cans and candy bar wrappers. They came across a space shuttle lying on its side, with suits of armor and medieval spears clustered all around it. Idris found a grove of trees with strange letters carved into the bark, words that the TARDIS couldn't decipher. Sera picked up a lantern at one point, which glowed pale green; it provided their only light besides the rift shining down like a moon reflecting its sun, and the occasional fire. There were winding paths through the junk, but in a few places the sea of random objects was thick all around and they had to pick their way through, lifting away coats and bookshelves and shopping trolleys and mushrooms and crashed boats.
On the eighth day, they awoke to find a strange man and woman leaning over them, peering into their faces.
“I'm Auntie,” the woman said.
“And I'm Uncle.”
They looked young but older than Idris - probably in their thirties if they were human. They were both shorter than Idris, but Uncle was a bit taller than Sera, and they looked a bit weathered. Their clothes looked profoundly mismatched, like the rest of the junkyard around them.
“Whose uncle are you then?“ Lady Sera asked, peering up at them distrustfully.
“Oh, I'm everybody's uncle,” he replied.
“Where are your nieces or nephews?“
“All around,” he said, without the faintest suggestion in his voice that he actually knew the answer, or cared.
“Most of them are at Mechanic's Corner or in the Graveyard right now,” Auntie said. “Isn't that it, that was the place?“
“Certainly it is,” Uncle rasped.
“A graveyard?“ Idris asked, slightly apprehensive.
“We haven't seen any people since we came here. That's all she's wondering,” Sera told them.
“Oh, it isn't a people graveyard, sweets,” Auntie replied.
“It's a very different sort of burial ground.”
“Like an elephant graveyard?“ said Idris, recalling the strange legends, and the vast sea of bones, from her visit to the planet Earth.
“You could say that.”
“We've come to take you in,” Auntie told them. “Welcome to the House.”
“That's where we are then?“ Idris asked. “Somebody's... house?“
“It is the House, that's what he calls the place. And, for what it's worth, your new home - for as long as you two stay here.”
Sera furrowed her brow. “What if we don't want to stay? Do you know of any way to get out?'
“We tried to escape House once,” Auntie sighed.
“I was against it,” said Uncle.
“Up and left, we did, back when it was just us and Nephew. He'd just gotten here, he had a rocket - well, it's not a tale worth telling.”
“Waste of your time.”
“Follow us.”
Idris looked to Sera, stared her deep in the eyes, and asked without words whether they should trust these mysterious strangers and go along with them, even if they did know this planet.
“Trust them, I suppose,” Sera whispered in Idris's mind, “it isn't as if we have anywhere else to go for the time being.” She sounded tired, like she was resigned to being stuck here.
Auntie and Uncle shambled along through the junkyard, Auntie moving a bit slower. They were quite fast, though, compared with the days that would come later when their legs and feet had been replaced at least twice each and Uncle was hobbled because House had made a bit of a joke out of his last leg replacement. They took the new arrivals to a small cluster of tents that constituted their home, and there they settled in, promising Sera it would only be a temporary stay.
For the next fortnight, Sera and Idris stayed with Auntie and Uncle, as well as the two other nieces who were living there, Aster and Maladora, and the singular Nephew. They scavenged the junkyard by day, with one or two of the others accompanying them, for a few living plants or animals to harvest for supper. Although Sera asked a few times, she never got to see the Graveyard in those days. Seeing it would have left her utterly distraught.
Once, Idris and Sera snuck away to find the TARDIS - it was still sitting where it was, in the shape of a wrecked horse-drawn carriage. The splendid machine was looking a bit dingier and less impressive on the inside, but Sera assured Idris that there was so much rift energy all around them that the TARDIS was surely refilling her engines automatically, and it'd only be a few days before they could attempt to leave. “She was fairly old, by the end - just a Type 32,” Sera told her, fondly. “I could have traded her in again, gotten a new, flashy model - but even with the same soul inside, I think I preferred this old classic.” She knocked her hand against one of the midnight-blue walls. The hollow clank-clank-clank-clank that sounded worried Idris a bit; the space behind that wall hadn't been empty. She'd worked out once that it was one of the sides of the tennis court, just below the artificial cave. But now it didn't sound like there was any room there, which Idris thought eerie.
They went through only a few of the TARDIS's spacious halls, and up and down a single winding staircase, before they decided to leave the ship. It had the distinct feeling of a haunted place. And despite half an hour of walking through all the usual spots, neither Idris nor Sera could locate the dining room.
If they'd tried to trek out to the crash-landed TARDIS later, they would have found a tiny machine, with three rooms still inside and all the rest left to molder around the junkyard. House had torn out the biggest chunks of artron energy by that point, leaving only a few rooms and columns to nibble on before the relic was hauled to the Graveyard. There was another Gallifreyan on his way, and House was in his prime, and he could afford to feast however he wished.
A week later, Idris had her mind wiped for the very first time, with equipment that had been taken from the TARDIS. Uncle, Nephew, and Maladora led Sera away and tricked her into a cryogenics chamber, where she laid in cold storage until Idris's heart failed and had to be replaced, and after that the time that Auntie lost her lower half to shrapnel. For all that House took away, after all, he did fix up his friends nicely, with whatever spare pieces he had on his surface. And somehow, he always found himself with enough parts to spare.
When Auntie revealed the distress-signal scheme, with the small boxes and voices all crying out at once, the system upset Idris, but she couldn't have said why. For the rest of her years, she felt like someone was missing. She couldn't have said whom. She never re-discovered the Time Lady who stole her away from Prietroch, or the ship they'd traveled in - Idris never found her thief.
*
The Last Morning
She woke up in the morning and it felt like every other morning. Idris's eyes opened, just as usual, and came to rest on the grandfather clock in the corner, with the big hand on 12 and its three small hands all pointed to the number 4. She was early; perhaps her sleep had been restless. House was quiet that morning, with only the distant sound of a teakettle boiling and the bubbling of the fountain in her tent breaking the serenity. Idris loved that fountain, ever since she'd received it half a year ago, a present Uncle gave her from the inventory of a Time Lord. She watched its constant flow, filling and refilling, as she slipped on her nicest dress and put up her hair.
Then there was a soft knock on the wall, and Auntie drifted in, holding a tray with a teacup on it, telling her good day. And then Idris remembered. She was the last niece, the only one of her sisters remaining here, and today was the day she was to serve her duty. It was her turn, just as Aster and Lupe and all the rest took their turn before her. She held out a hand to Auntie, reluctantly, knowing that she had to do this.
The last of the stores from the Advocate's TARDIS had run out weeks ago. They were long overdue, so it was time to take desperate measures. They'd sent out many hypercubes, one every day for the past two months. A few of them returned, but most just disappeared in the other universe. Idris could remember no other time since she had lived on House when they had to wait so long for a visit. It was as if all the Time Lords and Ladies decided to stop responding.
But they knew sooner or later, their messages would lure a Time Lord back, just as they always had. It would work - it had to. House had threatened them, impressing upon Auntie and Uncle and Idris and Nephew the danger of running out of artron energy. The whole universe could collapse, House told them, and the rift sun had already begun shining dimmer on the planet. On the parts of the planet where they hadn’t set up space heaters, global temperature had dropped five degrees. One morning, House took Other Nephew away, and Uncle went with him, and when he came back the broken oxygen filter had been fixed, and there was only one Ood left.
When House announced the day before the blessed news that there appeared to be activity around the rift that suggested a Type 40 TARDIS approaching, all four of them knew it was their only hope. So it was imperative that Idris succeeded in her duty.
Auntie gripped Idris's hand wordlessly, and together they walked to where they performed the ritual. Idris tried not to listen to Uncle saying it would hurt; he and Auntie were the only two who had survived having a TARDIS matrix inside of them, although they lost most of their bodies by the time it burnt out. But if that happened to her, the House would fix her up, neat and tidy, with the new Time Lord's eyes and ears and limbs. She was scared, but she was ready.
Nephew clasped his hands to the sides of her head, and his psychic energy was amplified by House's machine. There was a Time Lord coming. Idris began to forget.
The last hazy memories of her childhood in the forests of Prietroch were the first lost, then the bittersweet feeling when she left. Idris forgot the confusion of being stranded on the other side of the rift (her Gallifreyan lover, long-forgotten, shot into her memory once more before being erased forever). Her knees buckled, and Idris fell to the ground. It all drained: The feeling of rain on her skin. Auntie and Uncle and all the rest of their makeshift family. Her former love of swimming. The fountain in her room. Her favorite colors, light blue and silver. Idris's name.
She just sat there, and let the sensation wash out of her, a far-off sort of pain as her memories faded away. A distant hurt crumbled inside her, and she was left empty and clean... Then a wheezing, grinding noise roared through her ears - Auntie and Uncle looked apprehensive but excited, they must have heard it too. She opened her mouth and burned gold. Somewhere in her mind, a beautiful thing opened.