Chapter Text
"What if you were really old, and really kind and alone? Your whole race dead, no future. If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind…you couldn’t just stand there and watch children cry."
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She’s running. She’s running so fast, so fast that she’s scared that she’ll fall. But she doesn’t dare stop. Mummy told her to run, and she has to do what Mummy says.
Up the hill. Get away from the houses. The metal monsters are coming. Go somewhere they won’t find you. Mummy’s voice echoes in her head, and there is pain there too. People are hurting, she can feel it. And the air smells funny, but she doesn’t turn around. She’s running, and she can feel scared feelings in her head, where there shouldn’t be scared feelings.
Loud noises behind her, explosions, and she screams, unable to help it. She wants Mummy! She wants Daddy! She wants her brother, but he disappeared. He was running with her, and then there was fire, and he wasn’t there anymore. She wanted to go back, wanted to find him and the rest of her family, but the fire was in the way, and it was so hot, and the metal monsters were coming, and Mummy had said to run.
She runs up the hill, trying so very hard not to cry. But it’s getting harder to see, and she knows there is fire behind her, and she doesn’t know where to go. She doesn’t know, and there’s more pain, and fear, and she knows that other people are being hurt, and maybe her family is being hurt.
She sees something up ahead, a spot of color, and she can’t help but head for it. A spot of blue. Another explosion booms, nearly knocking her off her feet, and she’s crying now. She’s so scared.
But when she looks at the spot of color, she sees a person standing beside it, at the top of the hill, and she can’t help it. She knows she shouldn’t talk to strangers, but she doesn’t know where to go, and the monsters are coming.
It’s a man. An alien. He has long hair and funny clothes, and he’s not looking at her. He’s looking down the hill, and she can see fire and smoke. He has something in his hands, and even as she sees him, he presses a button, turning around to go back to the big blue box which was what she’d seen in the smoke.
“Help me!” she cries, and he sees her. She hurts, and the fire is coming, and maybe he can help her, even if he is an alien.
He’s staring at her, and his face looks strange. Like he’s about to cry, but also very, very serious. She can’t feel him, but she knows that she can only feel other people in her species. She’s feeling them now, pain and fear, and it’s scaring her, and she wants it to stop, and it’s getting hard to breathe…
“I want my mummy!” she’s crying.
Another explosion, and this one does knock her over. He almost falls too. It’s hot, and she can’t breathe, and she can feel pain and terror in her head.
In a moment, the man nods once, steps forward, and grabs her.
Instinctively, she tries to get away, knowing she shouldn’t let strangers pick her up, but he’s strong, and he holds her tight. He runs to the blue box, and there is a door, which he opens, running inside.
The air is clear, and the noise stops, and there’s a nice sort of hum, but the pain and scary feelings in her head don’t stop, and she can’t stop crying, though she does stop fighting.
“Okay,” the man is saying, his voice breathless and sounding scared himself. Grown-ups don’t usually sound scared, and she actually stops crying enough to look at him. “It’s okay. You’re safe.” He carries her to a chair (how is there a whole big room in that little box?) and puts her down.
“I want my Mum,” she tries to sound brave and calm, but she’s shaking and her head hurts. “I want my Dad.”
“I’m sorry,” the man says, and he won’t look at her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Can you go get my family?” she asks, and he looks like he might cry again.
He turns away, walking back to the big thing in the middle of the room, and she jumps out of the chair, trying to get his attention. If he could help her, maybe he can help her family too.
“Please?” she asks, remembering that she should always say please.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and he won’t look at her.
“There’s fire,” she reminds him. “There are monsters. They’ll be hurt!”
He still won’t talk to her.
She runs to the doors they came in and tries to open them, but they won’t open. They won’t open! She’s trapped!
“No!” she screams. “Let me out!”
“Shhh…” he says, and he’s doing something. The whole room shakes, and she screams again, unable to stop herself. This room shouldn’t be doing that! The funny hum gets louder, and there’s a sort of warm feeling in her head, but the pain and scared feelings are too strong, and the warmness is quickly gone.
The man is saying something strange.
“Forgive me.”
And she sees him press a button in front of him.
Instantly, her head is filled with screaming and heat and pain and terror, and she can’t even stand, and she falls down. It’s like a thousand million voices are screaming out at once, and she knows that it’s her people screaming. They’re hurting!!! And she’s hurting, and it feels like she’s going to die, and she’s scared, and she wants her Mum!
The man is saying something, and he sounds surprised and upset, but she can’t hear the words, because her head is too full of the screaming pain. It gets louder and louder and louder and louder...
Then, all of a sudden, there is silence.
Absolute silence.
No one in her head.
Nothing.
“NO!” she shouts, clutching her head, terrified.
She’s never had silence in her head before, never felt alone. Silence means only one thing. Even she, little as she is, knows what silence means.
She remembers when her grandma died, last year, and how there was sudden silence where grandma used to be in her head. And Daddy told her that silence meant that Grandma was gone.
Gone meant dead.
And dead meant never coming back.
And everyone was silent. Not just Mummy, not just Daddy, but everyone! Silent means dead…
“MUMMY!” she cries, desperately reaching for them. Nothing but terrifying silence. “DADDY! WHERE ARE YOU?”
“Oh no,” the man says, his voice echoing in the sudden silence. “You’re telepathic!” She opens one eye, seeing his face, and he looks horrified. “I didn’t…”
“WHERE ARE THEY?” she demands. But she already knows.
Silent means dead.
And she knows who killed them.
In that instant, she knows beyond a doubt that it wasn’t the monsters who did this. No, this man had pushed a button, and everyone had screamed.
“NO!”
She leaps to her feet, and she’s hitting him, kicking him, punching him, anything she can do. She wants to hurt him, and he’s not fighting, he’s just trying to stop her, but she keeps fighting, because he KILLED them!
“YOU KILLED THEM!”
“I’m sorry!” he’s saying, and she can’t even think. He’s saying he’s sorry? Sorry doesn’t fix things! She’s crying so hard she can barely see, and all she can do is hit him, trying to hurt him like he hurt them.
They can’t be dead. They can’t be! But there’s no other reason for the silence in her head.
“What have I done?” he says.
“YOU KILLED THEM!” she says again.
Then she realizes: he killed them. And he’ll probably kill her now too.
She scrambles away from him, trying desperately to get as far away as possible from him. She’s still crying, and she wants her family, but no matter how hard she reaches out, there’s nothing, and she doesn’t know what to do. The man is still there, and she can only hide and hope he doesn’t find her.
She has to make herself small. So small, and she has to keep quiet. She can’t cry. She has to keep quiet, and maybe he won’t see her. She finds something to hide behind, and curls herself up into a tiny ball, trying to be invisible.
He’s going to kill her now too!
He starts to come after her, but a noise stops him. He turns around, going back to the thing in the center of the room, and she peeks out just enough so she can see him. She needs to know where he is, so he can’t sneak up on her.
The man is looking at a screen, and he’s saying something. She keeps perfectly quiet.
“What?” he says, and he sounds angry.
It’s a woman’s voice answering.
“Is it done?”
“Yes,” he says, angrier than ever. “I hope you’re happy.”
“You’ve bought us time,” the voice says.
“At what cost?” he asks.
“You know…”
“I know, I know.”
She tries to make herself smaller. Maybe he’s forgotten about her. She can feel the warm feeling in her head again, but now it feels like fire in the empty space where her people were, and she tries to block it out.
“You’re needed back on the front lines as soon as possible,” the woman is saying. “Rassilon wants to discuss tactics.” Who is Rassilon?
“Of course he does,” the man says, sounding angrier than ever, and she shivers.
The front line…she knows that has something to do with war. Is this man going back out to war? He’s going to kill more people?! Make more pain, more screams? She has to stop him, but how? He’s big, and she’s small! She can’t fight him, and she’s terrified.
“Things aren’t going well. Get back here as soon as you can.”
“Fine.”
The woman speaks one more time, sounding a little sad.
“I…I’m sorry.”
“So am I, Romana.”
The voice goes quiet, and she peeks out again, seeing that the screen is blank. He is leaning on the thing in the middle of the room, looking tired and sad. Well, he should be sad!!!
She wants her Mum. She wants her Dad. But they’re not here. Only he’s here, and he killed them, and she wants to get away from him, but she doesn’t know how to.
He’s coming towards her again, and she pulls back even further, realizing he still knows she’s there.
“Stay away!” she cries, trying to move away from him.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “I’m sorry…really, I am, I’m so sorry. But I’ve got to get you somewhere safe now.”
“Go away!” She doesn’t want him to take her anywhere. “I want to go home!”
“I know,” he says.
He reaches out, and there’s nowhere else for her to go. She’s trapped, and she knows she can’t fight him. So instead, she lies very still, pretending to be dead. Maybe if he thinks she’s dead, he won’t kill her.
He’s picking her up, and she wants to fight, but instead, she keeps perfectly still, wanting more than anything for him to put her down. She doesn’t want him touching her. He killed her family, everyone. He shouldn’t be touching her!
He’s carrying her somewhere, and everything starts to shake again, the hum getting much louder, and making a rumbling noise. She squeezes her eyes shut, forcing herself not to cry, even though she’s more scared than she can ever remember being. She wants her family, but she knows she has to be brave for them.
She feels him moving again, and she keeps still. Is he going to kill her? Is he taking her home? Where are they going? But she’s not going to talk to him, not going to look at him. He can’t make her.
She hears a door open, and he’s moving somewhere, and there are other voices.
“Oh my goodness!”
It’s a woman’s voice, and it’s getting closer. She opens one eye, just enough to see that they’re inside a large pretty building, and there’s two ladies who aren’t like her, but aren’t like him either, and that’s good enough for her.
She opens her eyes fully, reaching out to one of them, just wanting to get away from the man holding her, just wanting him to let go of her. One of the ladies takes her, and she clings to her. She smells nice, not like Mummy, but not bad. And she’s not him.
The other woman and the man are talking, and she can’t hear everything they’re saying. Something about a war, and an orphan, and how he had no choice, he couldn’t leave her, not with her standing right in front of him…she’s trying so hard not to cry, but she’s so angry and scared. He’s a killer, and he should be punished! But no one is punishing him.
“We’ll give her a home,” the other woman says.
I already have a home, she wants to shout, but she doesn’t speak.
“Keep her safe,” the man says. “Look after her. She’s been through enough.” What does he care? “I’m so sorry it had to be this way.”
Then he’s looking at her, and she glares at him, hoping he can see exactly how much she hates him.
“I’m so sorry,” he says one more time, and turns to walk back to the blue box.
She realizes she doesn’t even know his name.
“What’s your name?” she shouts after him.
He turns to look at her, and his eyes are very sad.
“The Doctor,” he says.
He goes into the blue box, which vanishes with the same funny noise.
The Doctor. She’ll remember that name. Because he’s getting away. He’s going to hurt more people, and there’s nothing she can do about it now. She’s little. If Daddy were here, he’d make the man pay for what he did. But Daddy’s not here. No one is. Only the ladies, who are nice, but they don’t know what he did, not really. They talk to him like a friend. They don’t know. They won’t stop him.
But one day, she’ll be big. And she’ll find him again. The Doctor. And she’ll make him pay.
She’ll never forget what he did.
And she’ll never forgive him.
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“It doesn’t mean anything…you let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared. Because she smiled... because he's got freckles...because they begged.
And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions.
Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction... you happen to be kind.”