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There are blisters on her feet and pink-lit clouds in the sky when Melody finally stops running long enough to look around. Through the hazy dawn, her eyes dart from a crossroads in the distance to a fillling station on the corner.
A real filling station. Straight out of the little TV in the parlor at the orphanage where she sometimes caught glimpses of an astronaut falling in love with a genie, happy children living with their happy parents, goofy cousins working at a sleepy small-town filling station. All impossible fictions, she thought. But here it is: a filling station, just like in Mayberry. Hope swells within her. Filling stations are where you go for directions.
“Which way is Leadworth?” She asks, short of breath when she stumbles inside.
“Are you lost, honey?"
The attendant gives her a bottle of Fresca and a Baby Ruth candy bar. He pats her on the head and leads her to a bench, wondering aloud how her family managed to drive off without her.
She’s too startled by his casual kindness to notice at first that he hasn't answered her question. She’s marveling at the sugary sweetness of the candy bar when she hears him pick up the phone and call for the police.They’ll help find her parents, he assures her.
She doesn't think that's likely. More likely they'll take her back to the orphanage.
She slips out the back door before the police can arrive, a stolen map tucked under her sweater.
“Do you know where Leadworth is?” she asks later that morning, as she sits hunched on the edge of a park bench in the next town, studying her newly-acquired map with growing worry.
It’s not listed in the index. How can that be? Leadworth is the most important place in the world. How can it be missing?
“Leadworth?” asks the woman who's stopped nearby to tie her shoe. Her eyebrows knit together in concern as she looks around. “Are your mommy and daddy nearby, sugar?”
That is precisely the question. If she knew the answer, she wouldn't be asking, would she? But a question for a question is all she receives, again and again. Over and over, until she realizes there’s no use asking anyone anything. Not in this body. This, it seems, is a body that elicits questions; not answers. If she wants answers she'll need to find them for herself.
And so she does. Between road signs and an atlas swiped from a public library in Sanford, she finds that she’s on the wrong continent. She finds that she’ll need to go north a long, long way and then cross an ocean before she's in Leadworth.
She spends that night curled up under a bridge, shivering despite the heat and fighting back tears. Before the moon fades, though, a steely determination settles over her. She gathers herself up for the journey ahead and sets out again before dawn.
It carries her forward, day after day, this body. She can't help but feel a grudging respect for it; a growing affection as it trudges along.
She learns in Jacksonville that, if she wears clean clothes and feigns tears, this body lets her pick pockets with ease. She learns in Brunswick that, during the lunch and dinner rush, this body lets her sneak into the kitchen of almost any restaurant and eat for free before she’s caught. Outside the city, she learns that people come skidding to a stop, offering free rides when they see this body wandering down the highway with a feigned limp and a sweet smile.
(She learns other things about what people will do when they see this body wandering down the highway; learns not to accept free rides. Learns this lesson quickly and then locks it away, deep in the basement of her mind where she’ll never have to remember how she learned it (how she got the scar that lives on her left thigh, felt bones break under her knuckles for the first time, ran faster and harder than she’s ever run in her life)).
Small but tough, this body.
Even as it develops a hacking cough and aching lungs, it trudges stubbornly onward to Leadworth.
Why Leadworth?
Sleepless in dark corners of train station and truck stops, she sometimes lets herself wonder: why does the word Leadworth beat in time with her pulse and echo in her head, making itself her singular purpose? Why has she known beyond a doubt, since sprinting away from the orphanage all those weeks ago, that her parents never abandoned her as she's always been told; that they're waiting for her in Leadworth?
Is it a clue left behind by the man who held her gently and then set her free? Is it a failsafe in her programming, designed by Kovarian to steer her course from a distance? Or is it just something she's made up in her own head to fill the silence?
She doesn't examine these questions too closely; keeps them pushed back around the edges of her mind. Holds fast to the word Leadworth. Through wrong turns and course corrections and weeks that stretch to months. Even as her appetite fades and she begins coughing up blood and she struggles to put one foot in front of the other. Slow but relentless, her progress to Leadworth.
It isn’t until she’s half-walking, half-crawling across the Brooklyn Bridge that Melody allows herself to admit the truth.
This body won’t take her all the way to Leadworth. She’ll be lucky if this body takes her into Manhattan. She'll be surprised if it lasts the night.
She mourns it. The bump on her forehead that never quite healed. The calloused blisters on her feet. The scar on her left thigh. She mourns her battle wounds and victory medals.
And yet, she’s impatient for the change; for a new body. An adult body that can buy a plane ticket and rent a car and run again. A strong body that can take better care of her than this one.
She’s ready to let this body slip away.
When the time comes though, it doesn’t slip away. It crashes headlong into the dark, leaving her pinned to the wet pavement of an alleyway with a crushing weight on her chest, every cell revolting.
It’s worse this time, so much worse. It’s never easy, but this time is harder than all those other times combined. All those times she fell burning and choking from the starless void, only to wake with different eyes, hair, skin. All those times, she felt instantly better when it was over. This time, the idea of standing feels impossible.
Holding out her hand to examine it in the smoky moonlight, she sees that it's somehow even smaller than it was before. She's still getting younger, is her last, disappointed thought before sliding into unconsciousness. Younger and younger. As if her body is trying to back its way out of existence.
Darkness swallows her whole. It feels like drowning, like suffocating. Then—light. A hum. Something pulls her from the void.
The next thing she knows is weightlessness. The smell of roses and a lulling hum that seems to vibrate through her bones.
“Not quite yet, dear. Back to sleep now."
She knows that voice, doesn’t she? She knows the feeling flowing through her - safe, secure, calm . She’s felt it before.
Where is she?
“You’re right where you’re supposed to be, sweet girl.”
Her heart lurches in recognition. There's a hand on her forehead and the feeling of it is light itself: flickering candles and cozy hearthfires warming and glowing. Her lashes flutter as she tries to open her eyes and finally get a good look at the face of the man who it seems has rescued her twice now.
“Shh. Sleep is the best thing, love.”
His hand brushes lightly over her eyes and an irresistible wave of drowsiness passes over her. She allows herself to melt into a world between waking and sleeping, where she dreams that she’s floating in the stars. Her bones ache, but the pain fades into a dull hum as the fireflies swirl. Heat crawls over her skin. A soothing voice muttering nonsense. Strings of words that don't make sense but swirl, rich and warm, through her mind.
"You never told me it was like this. Of course you didn’t. Wouldn't even tell me about a broken wrist, why would you tell me about a broken regeneration?"
She dreams that the fireflies are hovering over and around her. Her body is vibrating; her muscles, her bones. Molecules mending. The fireflies shimmer, undoing whatever it was that had her trapped on the pavement.
"It’s a trauma response. When we can't stop aging in reverse like this. Easy enough to stabilize in here, but out there - Why, sweetheart? Why not let me bring you straight along last time? You were so little. You shouldn’t have come all this way alone."
She dreams that a feather-light touch is tracing the path from her temple to her chin, the top of her forehead to the end of her nose.
"I’m not the only one who shouldn’t travel alone." There's a long sigh and a longer pause before she hears the voice again.
“Travel with me,” it whispers. “Why won't you travel with me?"
She wants to ask him what he means. But her voice doesn’t seem to work and it doesn’t matter, she decides. It’s just a dream anyway.
“Did you hate me, when I tried to stop her? You must have. If you remember any of what comes next, you must have hated me for trying to erase it. Is that why you left?"
She wants to tell him that she didn't leave. She's right there.
“You hadn't been gone a day when I figured it out. Bit slow on the uptake. But I get it now.” He sighs. “What an idiot I am. A selfish idiot.”
She has the sensation of being lifted. Cradled against a syncopated four-point rhythm.
"Had to know for sure. Just wanted a quick peak of you all together and happy. But this is where the Old Girl brought me. Right where I was supposed to be, I guess. Right where I always was."
She's surfacing now, more aware of his fingers checking her pulse than she is of the fireflies.
"It always happened this way, didn’t it?" He's asking, muttering more to himself than her. "I said she was creating a fixed point, but - that’s not true. It was always a fixed point. They always had to leave me in Manhattan ... so they could be here waiting for you now. Thirty years. Waiting without knowing what they were waiting for - but that's nothing for them. The girl who waited - and the Roman who waited longer.”
They’re moving now. Her eyes are still too heavy to open, but she feels the air against her face, hears a door opening. The wonderful, lulling hum that’s rocked her while she’s slept begins to fade. She reaches for it, not wanting to let it go, and she could swear she feels it reaching back for her.
“I know, I know. You two. But you’ll be back. She'll be back, Old Girl, won't she? Of course she will."
The man carries her further and further away until she feels herself laid gently down - first on something hard and rough. But then he wraps her in something softer.
“Things will be better in this body. You’ll see. You’ll make them so happy. And they’ll take such good care of you.”
She feels his hand smooth her hair. “I won’t be able to come back here. I shouldn't be here now. Scrambled timelines and universe-ending paradoxes and all that. You won’t see me for awhile. But soon enough. And I’ll see you - someday."
She hears him take a shaky breath and clear his throat. Her stomach twists as she realizes he's trying not to cry. She wishes she could tell him it’s ok; that she doesn’t understand anything he’s said but she understands that he’s the only person she ever wants to see.
“Find me. Please. I can't be the one to go out chasing you headlong across galaxies anymore. Not this - late. It's too dangerous. I won't risk accidentally finding you - in the wrong place."
The warmth of his hand on her hair slips away then, leaving her with a final plea.
“Come back to me, love.”
There's the sound of knocking on a door and then nothing but his fading footsteps. She is trying with all her might to move, to run after him. But the remnants of sleep hold her under.
And then there's the click of a latch, the creak of a door. She's hit with a rush of toasty air through the autumn chill; the smell of something delicious cooking and a wispy floral sweetness that she can’t put her finger on.
“Hello?” A voice right above her calls, confused. A man. “Oh - oh, my god."
His voice is closer when he speaks again, as if he's knelt down beside her. "Hi. Um. Hello, are you alright? Can you hear me? Can you..."
He trails off.
"Oh."
His hand lands on her shoulder.
"Oh," he breathes.
And then she finds herself scooped up into wiry arms, not quite as strong as her rescuer’s but just as gentle and more joyful. Unrestrained affection and unconditional promises flow through these arms. Her brain is slow to catch up. But her body knows before she does. These are the arms she was always meant to be held in.
"Always did know how to make an entrance, didn't you?" he whispers to her, before calling into the house, "Amy! Come quick!"
Footsteps come running from inside and then skid to a stop.
“She was just here," The man explains, haltingly; voice thick. "When I opened the door, she was just here.”
There’s a long pause and then a beautiful accent she’s never heard before, a woman’s voice. “It can’t be - you don’t think …? Rory. Do you really think -?”
“I don’t think. I know. It’s Mels. Look at her.”
Another long pause and then the woman lets out a noise that sounds like a cross between a laugh and a sob.
“Give her to me, give me my baby, my - is she - is she ok?”
Melody feels herself transferred from one pair of arms to another. These arms are softer but fiercer, filled with unbreakable love and the wispy floral sweetness she smelled earlier.
She feels something inside her snap, a dam bursting with a pure happiness she thought only existed on television. Her parents. She knows it. She's found her parents. He's helped her find her parents. She didn’t make it to Leadworth, but she still somehow made it home.
“I think so. I think she's ok. She’s - I think she’s waking up.”
She's finally managed to blink her eyes open. Through blurry vision, Melody sees her own hand clinging to the shirt of the woman (her mother). It's darker than last time, though not as dark as it’s ever been. Smaller than last time, but not as small as it was in the alleyway. She must be at least three. She must be heavy. But her mother shows no sign of loosening her grip.
“It doesn’t make any sense. How's it possible? How'd she get here? How -”
“Look what she's wrapped in."
Her father's hand appears and she follows it to the tweed fabric tucked around her.
Her rescuer’s jacket. The same one he was wearing when he helped her escape the orphanage.
Before she can wonder how they recognize the jacket or what it means to them, she hears a screeching of gears reverberating in the distance. A wonderful, echoing, vworping sound that makes her blood rush faster and sends her mother running into the street, fast as she can move with Melody still in her arms; huffing from the effort.
“Oi! Get back here, you!" Her mother calls. "The city won't implode if you stay long enough to say hello. Or goodbye."
But the sound is already gone
“Still can’t say it, can you, old friend?” She breathes a soft, resigned laugh, and then looks down at Melody. "You've got your work cut out with that one, darling girl."
She taps her lightly on the nose, which causes Melody to smile, which causes her mother to positively beam. The loveliest feedback loop.
"He's worth it though. Oh, is he worth it." Her mother laughs again then, a real laugh that sounds like music. "But look who I'm telling."
Her mother stands for another long moment in the street, holding her close, before whispering into the night.
“Thank you, Raggedy Man."
And then she turns, carrying Melody back towards her father, back inside, back home.