Chapter Text
“I can’t believe how big this place is. None of this was here at all, that last time I lived here,” Helen remarks, as she and Liv pass through a winding brick alley packed with stalls full of clothing and crafty things, and emerge before a wall made of... well, it’s mostly made of horses. The front halves of half a dozen stallions, as if they’d tried to leap through some kind of rippling metallic substance, and been frozen mid-gallop. “Well, the buildings were here, but this part of Camden was a stable and hospital for working horses, back then... which explains the statues.”
There are more of them, in all directions. Metal smiths and steeds, and a few large horse heads, poking up from the ground.
“Does it?” Liv wonders, staring up at them. “It almost feels like they’re looking back. I know they aren’t, but, still...”
Helen can’t shake that feeling, too – like they’re being watched, through those glossy, bulging eyes.
“Secretly-alien, possibly-murderous horse statues?” Helen wagers a guess – though, she isn’t serious about it. Then again, if one of those horse halves suddenly sprung through the wall and decided it felt like eating somebody, she’d barely be surprised. Revolted, sure. But not near as shocked as the rest of the crowd here. It’d be more, ‘Oh, carnivorous horse statues that aren’t really statues – looks like we’re back to business, as usual...’
(The things she’s gotten used to, travelling with Liv and the Doctor, she swears...)
“I was thinking trapped horses. Those ones look like they fell into a vat of molten... something. Iron? Carbonite?” Liv tries to ponder out. There is definitely something in their faces that looks a little pained.
Well, they were probably modeled after real-life work horses.
“If you ask me, I’d bet those giant robots back there would be the first things to come to life and start declaring their desire to, oh... enslave us? Kill us? Sell us for parts?” Helen decides, indicating the towering silver androids flocking either side of the entrance to a shop called ‘Cyberdog’. “Do you think people with normal lives come to Camden Market and start speculating on which statues are probably aliens?”
“Conspiracy theorists might – or, fiction writers?” Liv offers. Helen finds herself, not for the first time today, struck by the way the bright sun casts bronze and golden lights into her hair. Same as when it had snowed, a week ago, the falling flakes contrasting vividly against the warm brown before melting – whilst Liv took the opportunity to express her slight annoyance at the fact the TARDIS had to pick the middle of January to strand them all in.
Her hand weaves into the end of that plaid scarf of Liv’s, feeling the soft material against her fingers, as she grows perilously close to taking the opportunity to move even closer to her. To lean in and see what it’d be like to feel her lips against her own.
Maybe she should, after all this time.
And yet, as Helen hesitates, she’s struck by the oddest feeling of deja vu. Deja vu on overdrive.
She’s done this all before.
Of course she has, Helen shakes off. It’s not as if the feeling of wanting to kiss Liv – being seconds from it, in fact – is remotely foreign. She’s wanted to for... too many months to keep track of. But no, she’s felt that urge while standing here, staring at the entrance to the Horse Tunnel Market. She’s sure of it.
As sure as she is of the realness of the other images that suddenly press into her mind.
She sees dark brick tunnels, illuminated in watery neon reflections. Before glimpsing worn Egyptian lettering, baked in strands of dusty sunlight. And then there’s an endless green flame, burning hot, consuming everything in one solid flash as it fills her vision too quickly to evade it. Always too quickly.
“Helen?” Liv voice pushes her back towards the present, and Helen can see a touch of concern in her eyes.
Helen’s also aware she’s still holding part of Liv’s scarf. She drops it. Though, Liv seems to be paying more attention to whatever’s just made Helen space out on her for who knows how long. Space out and probably look terrified.
“I just saw... I don’t know what,” Helen tries to explain, as if that counts as an explanation. Her head still feels scattered, overwhelmed – and she tries to just focus on Liv’s face. Every familiar and beautiful part of it. Grounding herself as the sensation slowly fades, along with the onslaught of images. In fact, the more she thinks on them, the less she can recall. Except there’s a rather attractive enigma of a woman with heaps of curly blonde hair, mixed up in it all. “River.”
“You saw River?”
“She’s here, somewhere. Don’t ask how, but I know... exactly where.” A picture of an alcove between a stairway and a particularly enormous horse head flashes through her memories. Helen wastes no time in turning and pulling Liv down another crowded laneway, seeking out the place she’d seen.
“I am wondering a bit about the ‘how’,” Liv questions, after a moment of rapid weaving through people and stalls.
“Well, if River’s involved, it’s probably something strange that we’ll find out about, later,” Helen presumes. It’s more of a hope. Because she knows that feeling, she’d just had. Or ones very much like it.
She’d gone so long without using those powers. Or even sensing their presence within her at all. What are they doing back, now? At a moment when Helen had felt more-or-less relaxed and happy, of all times.
Of course, it could be nothing to do with her. It could just be down to some rogue alien artifact or phenomenon that they’d learn all about, once they caught up with River. Logically, it was probably just that. The usual weirdness, and nothing to worry about.
The stairway isn’t far. They just reach the bottom step and head towards the shaded alcove, when the familiar zap of a vortex manipulator sounds out, accompanying the arrival of River Song. She stares back at Liv and Helen – not surprised to see them, exactly, but as if puzzling out something else. Something just slightly off.
“You’re not usually here, this quickly,” River says.
“You’re expecting us?” Liv asks. “Of course you are. Do you ever just –”
“ – Meet up with old friends by chance, without being the middle of pulling off some complicated plan to save the day? Sometimes, but not today,” River says, as if she’s said it all before. All of that, except the next thing. “Something’s changed.”
“Oh – I get it,” Liv puts the pieces of River’s strange behaviour together with Helen’s. “We’re all stuck in a time loop, that you two can remember going through before, but I can’t. I’m right, aren’t I? Do I always catch on that quickly?”
“Not always,” River tells her. She seems keen to discuss something else Liv mentioned, looking to Helen, “You can remember it, this time?”
“Parts of it. Nothing too clearly – just images, mostly. Of things I apparently see or already saw. Are you saying I couldn’t, any of the other times?”
“No. Neither of you could,” River tells them, just before breaking off in stride across the cobbled plaza. “And this is the part where I should probably fill you in on the rest of it. So, in five hours, a bomb in a flower shop goes off. Yes, that is more than enough time for the four of us to defuse any simple explosive device. Except that’s not the only thing in this market that’s set to explode in around five hour’s time. There’s a second explosion, always in a different location, and no matter what we try, it’s taken four of the brightest minds in this universe twenty tries to get even close to stopping it.”
“Four of us? You mean, the Doctor also gets involved?” Helen guesses at. It makes sense. They’d come here alone, just the two of them – but the Doctor was only a phone call away, elsewhere in London. If he was still back at the Baker Street place, that was just a short walk. Forty minutes, maybe?
“No, not him...” River says, bracingly.
She stops, at a particular spot between a crepe stand and an antique furniture store. Staring at a vacant bit of brick wall, like she’s waiting for something to happen any second now.
And of course, it does. With an sound indistinguishable from River’s own vortex manipulator, arrives a woman Helen knows all too well. A furied heat rises through Helen, at the sight of her. Filling Liv in, she quickly explains, “That’s the woman I told you about – the one who took me on an apocalyptic camping trip, at gunpoint.”
“Seriously? That wasn’t the answer?” The trigger-happy Time Lord with the dress sense of an Edwardian governess ignores Helen to baffle at, as she stares around at the place she apparently hadn’t expected to find herself in, again.
“You know very well, that wouldn’t be the answer,” River contests.
“Well, actually I didn’t,” she point out, feigning some kind of innocence – and making River groan in a particularly exhausted way.
“Have we tried the version where we lock you in a supply cupboard, and just solve it all ourselves, yet?” River ponders, looking very tempted by the idea. Shelving it for now, she looks back, towards Liv and Helen. “Before you ask, no, I’m not working with Missy in any voluntary capacity. We both came here looking for the same item, and got trapped in the same time loop.”
“Missy?” Liv remarks, upon hearing it. “What is it, with evil Time Lords having the strangest names?”
“Don’t you want to ask what it stands for?” Missy steps in towards Liv, matching her eye to eye. They’re about the same height, with Missy’s heels giving her that slight edge. She looks at Liv for a long, curious moment. Like a cat toying with its prey. “Or should we skip past your terrible guessing skills, and play another round of Regeneration Roulette?”
With smooth ease, Missy slides a very high-tech gun out of wherever she’d holstered it, and points the barrel straight at Liv’s heart.
Oh.
The same dawning realization hits Liv, just as River intervenes - placing her hand on the Time Lord’s shoulder and firmly guiding Missy’s arm away. “For the nineteenth time, you’re not doing that. Do you have to threaten to kill her, every reset? It’s pathological.”
“Psycho-pathological...” Helen utters her agreement.
“Well, I could threaten her side-kick, instead, if you like...” Missy says, boredly – while her eyes drift towards Helen.
“I’m not her side-kick,” Helen finds herself arguing.
“You kind of are. She’s the Xena, and you’re Gabrielle. Ooh, did that not turn out well, for Xena?” Missy suddenly recalls, pivoting back towards Liv, referencing something Helen thinks is a television programme, but not one she’s at all familiar with the plot of. Judging by Liv’s reaction, she doubts Liv has any clue what Missy’s on about, either... aside from the obvious.
She knows Liv and the Master have a history – though, not the full extent of it, beyond the fact that both of them would probably happily and celebratorily see the other one die.
“We’re wasting time.” River sighs, evidently beyond done with all nineteen versions of this conversation she’d apparently witnessed.
“It’s a time loop. The one thing we have is lots and lots of time. The same time – over and over again. I could shoot all three of you, find a nice pub, and be right back where I started in five hours. Oh, no, wait - I’ve already done that. Twice.”
“Oh, that’s it –” Liv’s fist balls in a flush of fed-up anger, and in one swift strike, she aims for Missy’s face.
Missy reacts fast. Catching and blocking it before Liv can actually hit her – yet, all the same, Helen can’t help get that feeling she always does, whenever Liv does that. That feeling of wanting, very badly, to press Liv up against the nearest surface, and profoundly declare her attraction with a very thorough, lengthy kiss. And more.
Though, now... might not be the right time for that.
She watches, as Missy rolls her eyes at Liv’s surprised reaction.
“Time. Loop,” Missy pronounces, with emphasis. “It’s like none of you get it.”
“That just proves I actually did hit you, the first time. Good job, past me.”
Of all the images that had flashed through her mind, earlier, Helen wonders why she couldn’t have seen that. She can imagine it, though...
“And I’ve actually killed you. Shame it didn’t stick. Though, third time might be the charm... or, is it sixth?”
“Is there a version of this where I hit Missy?” Helen asks River, perilously close to doing so right now.
“Tries eight, eleven, fourteen, eighteen, and nineteen,” River recalls, fondly, before getting back to the task at hand. “And we need to get going, if any of us ever want to finally get out of here.”
They follow River deep into another part of the marketplace.
“What’s this ‘thing’ you two came looking for? It can’t be coincidence that this place keeps blowing up, right at the same time there’s something here so special that both of you want to get your hands on it,” Liv figures, as they attempt to hurry through a density of people who seem in no hurry, at all.
“It is the thing that keeps blowing up,” River tells her. “The Blood Dagger.”
“Since when does a dagger blow up?” Helen remarks, before realizing they’re probably not dealing with your ordinary large knife. “What am I saying? It’s a mythical artifact or some advanced alien technology... of course it can do that.”
“The exact designs and origins of the dagger are annoyingly impossible to locate. Like they’ve been deliberately hidden,” River tells them. “All most sources have to say about it, is that if the blade isn’t regularly fed with new blood, it’s designed to explode.”
“Ingenious little invention,” Missy chimes in, with admiration. “It once decimated an entire colony planet in three weeks. Before the last remaining family found a way to disable it, rather than turn on each other. Such a pity – I had a lot of money riding on the middle brother to be the Sole Survivor.”
They reach an metal doorway, set into an alleyway and festooned with warnings to suggest anyone who enters it may be in serious risk of electric shock. There’s something else on another small sign just above the handle – a line in a language Helen can’t identify. With swift ease, River opens the unlocked door.
“What planet?” Liv wonders, as they enter into a darkened stairwell with a particularly damp smell about it, and begin to descend the long, narrow passage.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Missy shrugs off, indifferent. “They made up some story about brain-parasites in the soil turning people extra-violent, and abandoned it. Didn’t want word getting out that human nature veers towards stabby, with the right incentives...”
“Orphan 14?” Liv recognizes.
“Yes, that that rings a bell. I didn’t actually put the dagger there, if you’re going to get all self-righteously offended, on behalf of some people you’ve never met.”
“No, you just sat on the sidelines and placed bets while it happened. That’s so much better.”
“You should be glad I didn’t hop a century ahead, and move the game to Kaldor.”
“Out of the goodness of your hearts, I’m sure... “ Liv retorts. “Is that what you want it back, for? To carry on where you left off?”
Missy makes a non-committal noise, that suggests the thought has definitely occurred. But before they can get further into the topic of ‘why on Earth are we letting her anywhere near that dagger?’ the staircase ends, and opens up to a cavernous space, with an arched roof and brick tunnels veering off every which way. The floor beneath them is rife with puddles – Helen’s shoe unexpectedly taking in some water, as she finds herself stepping into one too shadowed to see.
“Are we in the catacombs?” Helen recognizes. They aren’t the sort of catacombs where you’d find dead bodies poking out of the walls, fortunately. They were just used for storing and moving goods, back in the days of canal horses. She thinks some of those cellar-like rooms might be old stables. “Why?”
“Does one of those tunnels lead to the cell we’re definitely going to leave her in?” Liv suggests, hopeful.
“Good luck with that. I’m armed. You’re not,” Missy reminds her.
“And, how many times have I managed to easily disarm you?” Liv returns.
“If you’re counting the time when I let you think you did...”
Ignoring them both, River locates a particular former-stable, with a short engraving in the same unknown language as before, carved into one of the bricks over the entrance. She places her palm to the door, concentrating on some specific thought, and a wave of illuminated energy washes over the wall. Shimmering, until the grey bricks don’t quite look solid, anymore.
River steps in, towards the wall – and passes right through. Helen follows, and finds herself someplace a far change from the still and silent catacombs. It is still the catacombs – the same curved roof and pillared archways made of corroding monochrome masonry, centuries ago. But here, on this side, lies a bustling marketplace, aglow in vibrant lights and colors. A thumping melody of music with unearthly lyrics pumps out from somewhere amongst it all, and she could just as well have strolled onto another planet, in another galaxy, for all the various races of alien she can spot. There are a few Helen actually recognizes, and quite a number of people who just look human – but even more that are completely new to her.
Or are they? Because that feeling of ‘I’ve seen this all, before’ is back in a big way. She wonders if that’s just a normal sensation, for people stuck in time loops.
As River and Missy lead on past a stall selling fluorescent blue fruit the shape of tennis balls, and another piled full of what might be odd spaceship parts, Helen looks to Liv.
“Have you ever been stuck in a time loop, before?” Helen asks her. The other woman had figured out the situation fast enough, after all.
“Not one that I know of. But I might have. Sometimes, I think...” Liv trails off, momentarily becoming lost in thoughts of some past event in her life. Whatever it is, it’s just as soon shaken off. “Are you remembering something else, about this one?”
“Only that we’ve been here, before. You’re really not getting that weird deja-vu feeling, too? At all?”
“Well, it does feel like a lot of other underground alien marketplaces I’ve been to...” Liv offers, before declining a green-skinned, ram-horned alien’s attempt to sell her on purchasing something unidentifiably deep-fried, and skewered on a stick and catching up a few paces with River. “So, what’s the plan? You obviously know what’s going to happen next.”
“Right now, the dagger should be in the hands of the Armade. A league of arms dealers from the Pandora system,” River says, for Liv and Helen’s benefit. “We know one of them purchased the dagger ten minutes ago, from a stall just over there. But we should be able to cut her off...”
“... And into tiny pieces?” Missy finishes, lighting hopefully at the idea.
“You’re not killing her,” River firmly dismisses. “Or anyone.”
“Spoilsport. Honestly, it’s like you actually enjoy all of this pointless running about.”
River sighs.
“Of course I do. When I woke up, four days ago, I thought ‘why don’t I get myself trapped in an exploding marketplace with the most infuriating Time Lord in any universe?’”
‘The most? I’m flattered,” Missy replies, but doesn’t budge from her position on the matter. “It’s not like I need your permission to kill some silly little arms dealer, anyway.”
River’s a second away from responding to this obvious statement of facts – that Missy is, well, Missy, and will simply shoot and kill anyone she happens to feel like, when this time Liv intervenes. She’s spotted something – or, rather, someone – moving through the lanes of stalls.
“That dagger you’re looking for... is it being carried around in something that very obviously screams ‘fancy, magic death dagger’?”
Helen sees her, too. Shrouded in a hooded black cloak (because, of course she would be) the arms dealer moves swiftly through a cluster of short grey aliens, before taking a left to swipe several disk-like objects off of another stand. Unnoticed by the man selling them. Who could either be human, or have fallen straight out of any old novel about mythic journeys in lands of elves and wizards. (Alright – he looks like Gandalf. Or, how Helen had always pictured he might look, back when she’d read The Hobbit in her youth.)
In her other hand, the woman holds firm to a dagger sheathed in an elaborate amount of deep red and onyx black jewels. Helen can’t tell if the jewels are just catching the lights of the underground market, or radiating their own sort of glow. She suspects it might be the latter.
The four of them move quickly. Following River’s lead as she makes – not for the woman herself – but for a specific tunnel she seems to be moving towards.
They reach it at nearly the same time she does – but the Armade woman spots them fast, and bolts down it.
They bolt after her, down a twisting, forking series of tunnels that are too dark to see much of the floor or even walls. They can’t see her anymore, either. And, somewhere in the pursuit, Helen’s lost sight of Liv and River, too. As she glances around, and spies no one but the dim shadow of Missy close by.
Because that’s always a good outcome. Disorientated and alone, with a psychotic Time Lord.
“You’ve ran through these tunnels at least a dozen times,” Helen realizes – with all of their experience doing this, this shouldn’t have happened. Getting separated. Losing track of the person they were chasing. “So, why are we lost?”
“We’re not. They’re the ones who are on the wrong track,” Missy says.
“That doesn’t make any sense, either. River knows exactly what she’s doing.” Helen presumes, anyway. Then again, there is the fact that River quite likely hasn't slept in four days.
“Yes – and, at this point, the fact that there are Armade, plural, after that dagger becomes apparent. Keep up. I thought you were supposed to be at least, oh, vaguely intelligent?”
“Well, sorry for being suspicious of the fact that person with a habit of kidnapping me has lured me down a dark tunnel.”
“Yes, I lured you. By following behind you.”
There’s movement up ahead, suddenly. A fleet of footsteps – just one set, it sounds like – and instinct has Helen rushing ahead after the sound. Unsure what she’s actually going to do, once she catches up with someone who’s armed with a dagger that both stabs and explodes, but running on hope and adrenaline all the same. It’s what Liv would do, probably.
She barely gets more than a few paces, before there’s a blinding flash of bright light, the sensation of Missy’s hand shoving at her shoulder, pushing her sideways – and when Helen next opens her eyes, she finds herself staring out at someplace that is definitely not a cramped dark catacomb.