Chapter Text
A westerly wind whipped her skin like cream, freed the hair from behind her ears and sent it flying in her face. She swayed, precariously sat atop an old stone bridge. Lorena hadn’t planned on doing it here for the simple reason that she’d planned on doing it everywhere. It was a constant thought, one which followed her like a shadow. Every time she thought she’d found peace, that shrill call would sound in her head at every passing glance. A roof, a knife, a radio mast. That would do the trick, it’d say. She held a half-finished drawing in her lap as an excuse and on it, a woman in graphite. Details piled on, people and cobblestones erased and redrawn again and if she didn’t know better, she’d say she was stalling.
Lorena was a young woman alone on a precipice and had been for twelve years. She’d found it, though, a place where the steep cliff in her mind’s periphery sat old and proud in solid stone. Here, she’d been for rather more than four hours, in part because nobody told her not to be. Perhaps just a little bit, in some vacant corner of herself, she hoped that somebody would. Perhaps.
The sun schlepped itself across the sky and was falling rapidly at her feet. It painted the paper orange and set her hair on fire. Rather than tuck it away again she stopped and smiled, for although it was a part of her and therefore unremarkable, what it became in the light was just…beautiful.
She reached into her bag for a kneadable eraser and replaced it against the lamppost to her right. It was one of many that would soon light up in the fading daylight. She really wished they wouldn’t. Her over-sharpened pencil skated over the paper in practice strokes and began to outline the structure of a body, a woman’s body, sprawled on the ground below.
“It’s a bit morbid,” came a voice over her left shoulder.
The pencil and pad slipped from her grasp. He caught it-the owner of the voice, using a hand he likely owned as well. He was tall and thin, with sticky-uppy hair and sad eyes speckled with petechiae, his cheeks were chapped and pale. She recognised the telltale signs of a recent jaunt through melancholy in an instant.
He held out the sketchpad and she took it, watched him with keen eyes. He sat half an arm’s length away and leaned back on his hands, dangled his legs over the edge and kicked his heels at the rock. Lorena scanned the ground where her pencil had fallen, then gave up the search to rummage about in her bag for another and found none.
“Oh, right. Sorry, here you go.”
He produced from his jacket something sleek and grey and placed it in the palm of her hand. It was heavy when she lifted it and curved gracefully, fanned out at the end in a shape resembling a gingko leaf.
“It’s...beautiful,” said Lorena.
He spoke as though he’d been holding his breath, words that tumbled from his mouth like they were trying to escape.
“It’s a erm...oh, what the hell. I bought it in Sordenia-fourth planet of the Sztoon system. It’s condensed graphite; should last a while. Though, come to think of it…you might need a stronger sharpener.”
It glided like nothing she’d ever used before, and managed to pique her curiosity for a triumphant second before the paranoia settled in, which was thoroughly doused with a heavy rain of concentrated apathy. “Thanks,” she coughed.
“What do they call you?”
”Lorena.”
”Any reason for it?”
“Maternal grandmother.”
”Ah.”
”More fanfare than she deserves, really. What about you?”
“I’m…I’m the Doctor.” He said it as though it were a religion he was beginning to doubt.
“Just ‘the Doctor’?”
“Yep.
“I assume there’s reason?”
He squinted at the horizon.
“Not really. Not a good one, not anymore. I’d change it if it wasn’t too late, t‘s a bit…fraudulent.”
She frowned.
“Have you not got a degree?”
“No, I do. Many of them. But Hippocrates would have a field day with my morals.”
Lorena chuckled.
“You broke the oath, then?”
“I broke them all.”
A few minutes passed, a market stand was gloriously shaded. The sun had sunk beneath the skyline like a huge egg baking its way down a window.
“It’s a bit nippy,” the Doctor noted. He didn’t think so, but Lorena wasn’t very good at pretending not to shiver.
“Here.”
He offered his overcoat, a large brown article that felt immaculate yet wore the filth of decades like a fashion statement. Salt from some distant sea had crystallised where its hem had swept the sand. It smelled of cheap perfume, sweet and fruity. A young woman’s perfume. And there was something else there, too. Not quite a smell or a sound or a stain, but a an astounding influence over its own perception, as if it were broadcasting from some faraway tower the places it’s been and the things it has seen, and to look upon it was to tune into that wavelength.
Or perhaps it wasn’t the coat at all, rather the man who wore it.
She sniffled.
Dusty books and meteorites, her brain offered, having never caught so much as a whiff of space debris.
Lorena thanked him and pulled it tight round her shoulders. It was surprisingly heavy, and her voice was surprisingly wet. The lump in her throat had crept up on her.
“So what brought you here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
“Art student, I’m doing a study. What’s your excuse?”
“You were, but that’s not why you’re here,” he said, knowingly. “My erm...vehicle. Broke down. Ish. It’s a long story-“ he summarised it anyway, “-involving quantum entanglement and a sentient Chesterfield and the fact that supernovas aren’t really harmless, especially if you leave the sunroof open, and I may or may not have abandoned my friend but it sort of wasn’t my fault, and now my T-my vehicle is cross with me.” He rattled out. Lorena just smiled.
“Nothing you say makes sense,” she mused.
“You get used to it.”
“Will I indeed. Hang on-why’ve I got your coat?”
“You were cold.”
“Aren’t you? You’ve got like, no body fat. Make a girl jealous.” Lorena mumbled the last bit. She knew it was a mistake before it left her lips.
“I don’t get cold.” he looked at her, troubled. “And you shouldn’t be, you really…” His face got all frozen and he stared at the ground for a bit too long. It scared her, if only because it was the very same look she’d been giving it herself all afternoon. She hoped it was on his face for a different reason.
“You all right?”
He blinked once, twice, exhaled something that looked like the sun and waved to it as it floated into the sky as if it belonged there; a fallen star with a return ticket.
“What...what was that? What are you?”
He coughed into his elbow and a winced as he did, the sort of wince that lingers. The sort of wince gets when one is briefly paralysed by the pain.
“I’m an alien,” he gasped for air. “-and I used to be dying but not anymore. Sorry, usually I’m gentler about it but to be frank I don’t think I could manage that right now.” He smiled apologetically, she shrugged in response.
“Okay. Cool.”
“Cool? That’s it then, is it? You’re not gonna get all...hysterical?”
“No, am I supposed to?”
“Well it’s certainly not necessary, but you lot usually do.”
“What, women?” she arched an eyebrow.
He scoffed.
“Don’t be daft. Humans.”
Lorena chuckled.
“Right. It’s true, they do have a propensity for the theatrical.”
“They do indeed.”
She tried to keep at it in the low light, outlined the pool of blood on the paper and wondered if it’d be the same shape in real life.
He watched closely over her shoulder. The way she sketched, it reminded him of someone else.
“You haven’t got on heels,” he noted.
“What?”
He sat up and shimmied over to her, pointing at the high heels the woman on the ground in her drawing wore. The rock had left deep impressions in his hand, a mountain range inverted. He didn’t miss that the body in the sketch was nearly identical to Lorena. He was working on that, though.
“You’re wearing boots, not heels.”
“They’ve got heels.”
“Yeah, but the ones in the drawing are stilettos, these are chunkier.” He indicated to her feet.
She frowned.
“Wait-why would I-how did…”
“Of course I did, Lorena. Anyone like you would know.”
And didn’t that just break her heart.
“I guess you’ll be wearing stilettos tomorrow, then?”
“I s’pose I will. It’s too dark to finish anyway. I wasn’t to know show up and stop me.”
That was a lie. The Doctor knew she had a feeling there was a chance somebody would.
“Who says I’m gonna stop you?”
”Could you live with yourself if you didn’t?”
She smiled kindly. “But you shouldn’t have come. Not to here, not to me. I don’t get another chance. Not again.”
The Doctor smiled.
“If you say so. I was trying to be mysterious, you sort of ruined it.”
She laughed and folded her sketch pad closed.
“I think the alien pencil is mystery enough, don’t you?”
“Hardly.”
Lorena started to pack up her things.
“I’m going home.”
The Doctor stared wistfully at the ground and she took a chance, tapping his arm.
“Hey. Is your vehicle…?”
“Hmm? Oh, no...not quite yet. Though I should probably check. Yeah, I’ll check on her.”
He rose to full height and fell back against the wall, pain written in a messy scrawl across his features, an arm curled about his waist.
“Shit, are you hurt?”
“I mentioned I was dying?”
“You said used to be, in past tense!”
“Well, it’s possible that perhaps I was a bit ambitious with that claim.”
“So you’re still dying?”
“Yes. Sort of. Well, yes, but I’ll give it a rest soon, promise.”
Lorena fastened the bag securely around her shoulder.
“Can you walk?”
“‘Course I can walk.”
The Doctor took a step and immediately collapsed to a knee, and when his arm shifted from its post around his abdomen, the front and sleeve of his shirt were exactly the colour a white shirt isn’t meant to be.
“Right, you’re coming to my place.”
“What?”
“My flatmate’s a nurse. You may be alien, but you look human and so does your blood and whatever happened to you, painkillers and a cup of tea certainly wouldn’t go amiss.”
He looked at her funny.
“What?”
“Why are you not frightened of me?” he asked, in a tone of neutral curiosity that thinly veiled a deep-set acceptance, even embrace of rejection.
“Why would I be?”
“Because of all the things I’ve done, all the things you don’t know about. I could be anyone.”
She stopped reaching for his hand and paused, crouching unsteadily on the balls of her feet.
”And? You’re alive and you’re hurting. I can’t see how it could possibly matter, who you are or what you’ve done, what species or which weapon. If you had anyone else you’d have gone to them but you’re here, now, with a stranger. That’s reason enough.”
She hooked an arm under his and helped him to his feet, and the two of them sprauchled down the path.
“Just let me get to the TARDIS, I’ll be fine in there.”
“Where is it?”
“Left,” he gasped.
“Here?”
“No. Next one.”
The two of them hobbled down the narrow sidewalk and rounded the next corner to an alley, in which a dark blue box stood next to the side entrance of a shop.
The Doctor fell against the door fumbled about to put the key in the general vicinity of the lock.
“Is this it? The TARDIS?”
He darkened, a shade of menace and cosmic rage and unadulterated, righteous fury. He became a creature of sorrow and revenge and spite and wrath who lurked beneath every crooked smile and erupted from every scream.
“How did you know that? Who are you really? Because I swear on every race in this galaxy that whoever you are and whoever you’re working for will never, never get their hands on my TARDIS,” he spat. “I am the oncoming storm, predator of the Daleks, protector of this planet and I walked from the blazes of the Last Great Time War and I’ve seen things you cannot begin to comprehend so if you think you have any chance against me, me- ”
He paused, suddenly feeling very out of place. As if he’d burst out of the wrong cake.
“You called it the TARDIS earlier. I just connected the dots.”’
His eyebrows crept upward and froze there, as if to say ‘You’ve got to be bloody joking, I can’t believe I’ve just done that.
I can’t-why am I allowed to have words
Clearly I can’t be trusted not to make an arse of myself
Someone take them away from me this is unacceptable
How am I supposed to move on from this. Where can I possibly go from here
Why isn’t my face working
Am I stuck like this?
Oh god she’s smiling. She’s going to laugh.
How dare she. I am very scary, she should be running for her life right now
Really though, she’s this small, defenceless human and she’s not even a little bit worried
To be fair, she is suicidal, not sure how much her survival instinct or lack thereof will prove.
I’m meant to do something about that, aren’t I. How ironic.
How do I rescue this conversation, it’s just an absolute travesty.
No, I’m going to stand here and I’m going to say nothing and then one day I will die. For the sake of the universe I can’t possibly allow myself to-oh-oh look, she’s waving-
“Earth to Doctor?”
“Yes!” he shouted. Lorena jumped a bit. “Right. Erm-hello. Blimey, I’m getting old-all right then. Apologies, for…that. Can’t be too careful. I’ll be back in…three-four? A few shakes of a…a erm….a dog’s…something.” he was retreating into the door. “Don’t fret if you hear explosions. Or if acid starts leaking from the-y’know what, if there is acid, you should probably run.”
He slipped inside and the door creaked shut, but not for very long. There was a loud banging and the Doctor emerged with soot on his nose. His hair appeared to be slightly singed.
“Everything all right?”
“No, it’s all wrong. The stove is in the library for some reason and the rest of Kitchen Four’s at the bottom of the summer pond and everything’s exploding and there’s this toxic smoke all over the place and I haven’t checked but I’m fairly certain it’s raining acid in the parlour so I think it’s best we give her some time to cool off.”
She nodded.
“Right, yeah. Sorry-the bottom of the what exactly??”
The Doctor opened mouth to speak but clamped it shut to muffle a cry, clutching his side as if it helped.
“Fine, take a peek, it’ll be faster than explaining it.”
“In there?”
“Yeah, it’s unlocked.”
Lorena popped her head in and saw something impossible.
“My god…” she breathed. The Doctor grinned. She’s going to say The Thing. The Thing they all say. “It’s the Wales Millennium Centre!”
The Doctor frowned. That was not The Thing.
“What? Let me see.”
She moved out of the way and was quickly replaced.
“No, no, no!”
“What’s wrong?”
The Doctor shouted at the ceiling.
“I liked that console room and I’d also very much like it back. I know you liked her and I liked her too, but it wasn’t my fault and throwing performing arts venues at me isn’t going to fix anything!”
With that, he slammed the door shut, locked it and presented his arm.
“Madame.”
Lorena smiled.
“Sir.”
She looped her elbow in his and they started walking. She tried not to mention how his gait slipped, and focused on holding the both of them upright the rest of the way. It occurred to her how difficult this would have been in stilettos.
“My flat’s ahead to the right.”
It took three minutes for her to finally ask.
“Why was the Wales Millennium Centre in a box? Why isn’t it in Wales? Why wasn’t there a console room? Is the console room in Wales now? Why would there be a-what’s the console room for and-what’s actually in Wales right now-who were you taking about?”
The Doctor sighed.
“The Millennium Centre’s still in Wales, we just opened a door onto it. And she was-she was a friend of mine. Her name was...her name-“ He struggled for a second.
“No. Can’t say it, it’s too soon.”
“You don’t have to.”
He sucked in a breath.
“I know. But I lost her...she’s not dead, just somewhere else. Somewhere I can’t reach. But she’s safer now. Away from me. I suppose she would always have been safe if I’d left her alone in the first place. I’d be dead, though. Without her. Saved my life.”
“Sounds like she meant a lot to you. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. I’d be dead…” he mumbled. “Anyway-we travelled, the two of us. Sometimes she brought her boyfriend. Mickey the idiot. He was fun though. He was a better man than either of us gave him credit for.”
“Oh, so you and her weren’t…?”
“No. Well, a bit. Well...it was complicated. She’s in her early twenties and I’m-well, I’ll still be alive long after she isn’t and if-I don’t know what I’d do if she died. If I had to watch her, day by day.”
“I think I know what you’d do,” said Lorena, and she nearly kicked herself for it.
He smiled, but it was the saddest thing she’d ever seen.
“I think you’re right. And we can’t have that. So I’m here and she’s there, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and that’s good, though it’ll take a while for that to sink in. And now, my ship is nearly as pissed off with me as I am, but she’s the one throwing a tantrum via spacial refraction.”
“I’m sure you did all you could.”
“How would you know?”
The coldness in his voice took her by surprise.
“I don’t,” she admitted. “but you must have.”
“I didn’t.”
“But whatever happened, it wasn’t that simple, was it?”
He looked away.
“No, no it wasn’t.”
Nothing ever is.