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“What kind of man commits genocide against his own people?"
“Exactly."
No, not exactly. Not a rhetorical question in search of affirmation. A real question in search of a real answer.
What kind of man?
But the Cleric is watching her in sharp silence, the corners of his mouth beginning to turn down. And so she nods. Digs her fingernails into her palm. Bites her tongue until she tastes metal.
Never answers. Always silence.
Her studies are not meant to satisfy her curiosity, but to fulfill her purpose. Celestial Science, Thermodynamics, Weapons Training, the Kovarian History of the Beast of Trenzalore. Mastery of these subjects is her duty and obligation. Untamed curiosity is a sin.
She is filled with it though: untamed curiosity, sin.
There’s something wrong with her. Something twisted and rebellious and perhaps a bit mad. That’s what the Clerics say. That’s why penance in the starless void is the price of her questions. For her own good. For her own purification.
The lesson continues. Yet another lesson on the Time War.
Always the Time War. Always Demons Run, Hyperion III, Medusa Cascade. Always Trenzalore. Before she knew how to read, she knew his atrocities by heart, The Oncoming Storm. The Weaponless Warlord of Gallifrey.
Weaponless save for his name.
How many syllables is it, the forbidden name of the War Doctor? How many vowels? How many consonants? Could she stumble upon it if she tried enough combinations of sounds? If she accidentally muttered it to herself, would the universe end? If she screamed it into every corner of the galaxy, would the silence break?
She wonders as she nods. Leaves nail-shaped scrapes on her palms. Blood on her tongue.
In her room that night, she stares in the mirror and wonders where the angry bruise on her forehead came from. She stares at her hands and wonders at the nail-shaped scrapes. She stares at the single photograph she has of her real mother and wonders what her life would be like if Amelia Pond hadn't abandoned her.
“What kind of man abandons all his allies?” she asks the next morning during yet another lesson on the fates of Susan Foreman, Sara Jane Smith, Jo Grant, Jack Harkness, Donna Noble...
“Exactly.”
Wait.
How many times has she asked this same question and received this same answer?
Suddenly disoriented, she shakes her head. “How long have we been here? What day is it?”
The next thing she knows is the starless void. Empty oblivion. No beginnings and no endings.
Twisted corridors and gunpowder. A voice crying for help. Her own.
An ear-piercing scream, not her own. A woman’s face filled with terrifying tally marks. A woman who almost looks like -
Flashlights bouncing off walls. Heavy footsteps running upstairs. Desperate pounding on her bedroom door as she hides in the hall.
Then a moonless sky over the gated yard of the orphanage. She must have been granted outdoor privileges again.
What has she done to earn outdoor privileges? Why can’t she remember? Why are her days nothing but gaps and tangles?
Pacing blindly in the dark, she tries to steady her racing breath; in and out. She tries to quiet her mind as she’s been taught, release the questions that never leave her in peace.
It doesn't work. It never does. Tears burn her eyes as she stumbles into the side of the building, grasping for the exterior concrete wall to steady herself before she falls.
Why is she so wrong?
At a loss, she slams her head against the wall, welcoming the distraction of the pain that follows. But, when she pulls back, something on the wall catches her eye. Squinting, she can just barely make them out in the dark: the marks. Lines and lines, rows and rows, marks of dirt and paint and pencil on the concrete slab before her. Dozens of …
Tally marks? Marks like the ones on the face of the screaming woman in her bedroom.
For a moment, she stares uncomprehendingly. But then some inexplicable instinct takes over. Without conscious thought, she reaches down and drags her finger through the mud at the base of the wall. As if of its own volition, her finger adds another mark to the wall.
She’s done this before. Dozens and dozens of times before. Lifting her hand, she touches her forehead and winces as her fingers graze a series of overlapping angry, throbbing bumps. She laughs out loud, and then chokes out a sob.
She must be as crazy as they say, to keep doing this to herself.
“What’s wrong with me?” she whispers, her voice jagged in her own ears. Overcome, she moves to slam her head forward into the cold concrete again.
Instead, her head connects with something else. Something that wraps around her forehead and holds her back, stopping the collision.
She blinks, bewildered.
A hand. Attached to someone who's crept up behind her and is now pulling her away from the wall.
In the split second it takes her to process what's happening, she loses any hope of escape. Too late, her training kicks in. Her fists and elbows fly, but she’s unarmed and her assailant is bigger, stronger. He has the element of surprise. He easily restrains her, covering her mouth with his hand before she can make a sound.
“Shh. It’s ok. You’re ok. I won't hurt you. Ever.”
The voice is low and thick with emotion, but she’s too busy struggling against his grip at first to process the tone, the words, the fact that she isn’t being restrained after-all.
She’s being embraced.
"My poor brave girl. Right under our noses. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so late. This is as far back as you’d let me go." The hand covering her mouth has slipped to the back of her head, pulling her in close to someone who smells like…
Home. She’s never had one, but she knows with every fiber of her being that her assailant smells like home. Like something kindred, innate. Like sweet-scented flames; magnetic waves and cosmic dust, instants and eons, beginnings and endings.
Adrenaline is still coursing through her body, but she finds that she is frozen; too stunned to fight or scream. Her senses are drowning in the rightness of the smell of him and then she's flooded with a feeling. A strange sense of calm and safety that seems to emanate from the hand cradling the back of her skull. Any lingering desire to flee melts away.
“You don’t deserve this,” the voice is murmuring. “None of this is your fault and there’s nothing wrong with you. Not one thing. The fact that you’ve found a way to keep track, count every time they've sent you hurtling through the vortex in that spacesuit? It’s the opposite of wrong. It’s incredible. Back home, you’d be a prodigy.”
Home. The word wraps itself around her, soft and warm; gentle as the arms holding her like she's made of priceless glass. The assailant crouches down to her height and she finds herself clinging to him.
She can’t remember the last time there were arms wrapped around her for any reason other than combat training. Maybe Kovarian in the Nightmare Room. That feels like decades ago. Maybe it was.
She can’t remember the last time she was comforted by someone who didn't engineer her nightmares in the first place. Maybe never. She buries her face in the crook of his shoulder and is vaguely aware that her tears are soaking into the tweed of his jacket.
“I wish I could take you to your parents. I would if I could - If it wouldn’t undo things you don’t want undone. Stubborn girl.” There’s a catch in his voice. "I've come to give you something that will help you get out of here though. If you’ll let me."
He pulls back to look at her and she peers at him in the darkness. She can’t quite make out his features through her tears and the pitch black night, but she can see that his eyes are shining. She can see that he’s crying too.
“They’ve gotten it all wrong, poking around in your poor head.” He reaches out to smooth her hair and she leans into the foreign sensation. “They don’t know what they’re doing - how to activate your abilities properly. They must realize it. That must be why they've left you out here alone for me to find you. They think they've tricked me into helping them. But that's only because they don't know you like I do."
Unable to grasp the meaning of his words, she concentrates instead on the shadow of his face, straining to see anything other than his eyes.
"I can’t give you your birthright - the untempered schism, the century of training you should have had in the Academy. But I can at least activate your Time Sensitivity to stabilize your perception. Will you let me do that for you, Melody?”
“I don’t understand,” she finally manages to speak. “How do you know my name? How do you know my parents? Who are you?”
“Those are all the right questions. I'm sorry I can’t give you the answers tonight, sweetheart. All I can tell you is that-” There’s a pause and a breath before he continues. “That one day I’ll give you every answer I have. Every last one. One day - I'll be somebody that you trust. Completely."
There's something in his voice that makes her chest constrict. It slices through her last defense. She still doesn’t understand exactly what he’s offering or why he’s asking her permission when he could easily overpower her. But she knows that this is her best, her only chance.
“Do it. Please.”
The words are barely out of her mouth when his fingers settle on her temples and a tingling sensation buzzes through her mind.
Scattered images slotting into bigger pictures. Stray words rearranging into sentences. Broken shards reassembling into whole structures. Light glowing in dark corners. Haze lifting. Glittering threads untangling and weaving themselves into lines, maps, tapestries that patch over gaping holes, intricate webs connecting every inch of the ever-expanding space until it’s wider than any world she’s ever known.
When she opens her eyes, she's alone again. But nothing is the same.
Her mind is clear. The gate is open. And his parting words are lingering in the air.
"Run, my love."