Chapter Text
Marion Smith was already up when the alarm went off. It was really for John; he would go to bed way too late to wake up in time on his own. She made tea and toast for them and started the children’s breakfast. Marion heard John walking to Daisy’s room to get her up. Daisy would probably already be awake; she loved going to the kindergarten, and everyone loved having her there.
A few minutes later, Daisy showed up in the kitchen, already in her little uniform, with a familiar wide smile on her face.
"Good morning mummy" Daisy sat on the chair, her feet bouncing excitedly up and down in the air.
"’morning love." said Marion, serving her daughter’s breakfast and kissing her forehead.
John followed a bit later with their half-awake son in his arms. Jamie was a sweet, brown-haired, three year old boy that hadn’t inherited his mother’s ability to wake up and be ready for the day so soon. John greeted his wife with a kiss and sat with the kids at the table. He helped his son to eat without making too much of a mess. Later, John took Daisy to school.
The house was usually empty during the day. Marion wasn’t used to staying there alone, but with her vacation ending, the kids back to their own thing and John back to work, it was pretty inevitable. After taking Jamie to daycare she found herself reorganizing toys and going through family albums. Well, their small family albums. Since her husband and herself were only children, without parents or other close relatives, the books were full of pictures of their children and the first years of her relationship with John. She knew nobody did that anymore, that everything was on the computer, but without the pictures of anyone else in her family for her to remember, she felt the enormous need to do it.
Finished with the albums, but still feeling the need to be doing something, she took herself to the attic where they kept boxes and boxes of useless bits and bobs.. Going through one of the dusty boxes, she found John’s old dream diary; a collection of dreams he used to have of him being a space traveler or something. Since they moved here, they were less frequent.. His new notebook still had several clean pages.
She ran her eyes over the pages and stopped when saw the drawing he had done of her. Of course she was in his dreams, he said. Of Course. Marion felt her heart fill with love once more. It was a fairly common feeling when she thought about her husband.
After digging a bit more, she decided clean up the place. Maybe she could turn this into another room, an office or something. Yep, that would keep her busy until the vacation ended.
Marion took one of the boxes downstairs carefully, you never knew when you’d step on a toy that came out of nowhere in a house with two kids.
Find the watch
Open the watch
She jumped and dropped the box on her feet, terrified. Marion looked around, searching for the voice she was sure she’d heard, and it took a moment to realize how much the voice sounded like hers. Was she that bored? Her brain could at least have the decency to come up with a much creepier voice other than her own.
***********
A few weeks later, John decided that it wasn’t normal to have nightmares so frequently when you are a five year old girl. Jamie himself was waking up in the middle of the night and joining them in the bed frightened of something.
"I think our house is hunted by ghosts" Daisy whispered to him the night when he asked why she was so scared. In the moment he thought it all would pass when the Halloween was gone, after all, Daisy had other moments like that, clowns had been the last guilt ones. But the holiday came and go, and the nightmares didn’t.
***********
In the morning Daisy joined her mum while she was throwing away the last boxes at the attic. James and his dad had used the weekend to go to a play date with two other kids from the daycare and their parents.
"What is this?" The little girl weaved at her a metallic stick with a blue half circle in on of the endings.
"Uh, I don’t know love." said Marion, feeling the strange urge of ignore everything coming from where her daughter was and focus on where she’d put her easel "Probably one of dad’s old college things."
"Can I keep it?"
"Sure."
That seemed to make her happy, and she continued digging her little fingers in those mysterious boxes that she wasn’t allowed to play with before. "What about this?"
"Yes?"
"This." The little girl weaved the object at her mum, making it almost hard to see.
"It’s a watch, love."
Open the watch
Daisy struggled with the object "I can’t it’s stuck."
"What?"
"I can’t open it. Can you do it mummy?"
"Of course." she took the watch in her hand, also struggling with the thing "The bloody thing won’t open." her accent slipped, as if she was born in the south instead of...
"We’re home!" John announced as he entered the house with Jamie
"We’re home!" the little boy mirrored his dad
In her pocket, the object was quickly forgotten, for Marion it was as if it was never there. Downstairs Jamie was still jumping on his feet, ready to tell everyone about his day
"Hello baby, did you have fun?"
"The was dinosaurs!"
"That’s so cool!"
***********
Open the watch,
Wake the Doctor
Marion open her eyes and in a jump, sat on her bed, startled. She looked down at John, sound asleep next to her, as if he was the one who said the words.
Open the watch
Wake the Doctor
Marion got up and noticed they came from the pile of clothes she took off before bed. Even though the strange need of ignore it started to emerge, her curiosity overcame it. It was the clock Daisy found earlier in the day, a golden object covered in strange circles, dust and rust. Like her daughter said, it wouldn’t open easily.
Open the watch
Find the Doctor
Wake the Doctor
That was her voice again, with a different accent than hers, and more urgent. Almost begging.
With another push the watch finally open, unleashing a golden cloud that entered Marion’s body. Triggering the painful molecular transformation to happen, and the locked memories and feelings to come out.
Unlike her prediction before using the Chameleon Arch, the first feelings that Rose felt as herself wasn’t in anyway comforting or of relief, but a profound fear and despair.