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Christmas Eve.
You’re alone, and you’re walking.
The soft crunch of fresh snow beneath your boots is the only sound, quickly swallowed by night. It’s almost silent, but not quite. There’s a certain presence to the night air, a tangible quality that you can’t identify but are innately, keenly aware of. You think you can almost hear each snowflake as it hits the ground. Not with your ears, but with some other sense, something tied to that innate awareness of the night. The snow swirls gently around you with each step, resonating somewhere deep inside you. It keeps you from feeling entirely lonely, even as it isolates and reminds you how alone you truly are.
You muse on this as you move through the night; it’s an interesting contradiction. And snowfall seems to be full of them: your each step is crisp and sudden, yet only seems to heighten the silence around you. And the silence is so full of energy and potential it’s almost deafening. Even the night is contradictory— it’s true dark, edging close to midnight, yet the sky somehow glows a muted, purple tinged gold. And every step reminds you how alone you are, yet pushes away at your loneliness. Contradictions.
None of these things are particularly happy; you feel that you move through a sort of haze, something gauzy and incomplete. It aches, but in a soft way. Like pressing a bruise, or revisiting an old memory, once painful but softened now by time and now easier to turn over in your mind. Comforting, almost. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. If the night can be full of contradictions, why not you as well?
You pause under a streetlight. It illuminates a soft circle in the not-darkness, the gold light shot through with flurries of white as the falling snow enters its boundary. That snow seems to be swirling harder, faster. You stand outside that circle, one boot tip just resting on the gilded edge and your face tipped up to the sky. The brightness seems only to emphasize the darkness around it, the austere emptiness of the night. You press gently against that sensation, feel that familiar ache. It’s so lonely, so peaceful. So empty, and yet full of shivering, palpable potential.
Your hair stirs as a breeze pushes against you, sending the snow into a dizzying spiral. It flashes bright and vibrant as it arcs through the sphere of light. Somewhere in the distance, a muted sound pulses through the night. The wind in the trees, you think.
You reach up and push your hat down more firmly, only to jump as cold wetness bites into one of your hands. You drop them, staring at you gloves — no, glove. Singular. You’ve lost one at some point during your walk. Of course you have. It was too much to hope that you might have been able to enjoy a melancholy stroll uninterrupted. Sighing, you turn your back on the light and step into the not-darkness. And you draw up short, your breath seizing in your throat.
A large blue box sits several meters away. Police Public Call Box glows in a dark strip at the top of it. It steams and hisses as the snow falls around it, melting before it can touch the box. Dark and shadowed though the box is, it seems to glow faintly. Its own brand of not-quite-dark, just like the snow-filled night sky.
You regard the box, and feel that it regards you in turn. An idle, silly thought, one that tries to fill the space in your chest that is still seething with shock and denial and yes, just possibly a touch of fear.
Because all other anomalies aside, what your mind keeps fixing on before skipping away is that the box rests firmly upon the shadowed indents of your own footprints.
The moment stretches between you and the box, growing both thinner and heavier, somehow, a wealth of possibility in its wake. You hold your breath without quite knowing why.
When the door to the box swings suddenly open, you stifle a startled sound, stumbling back a step. Light spills out onto the snow, so bright that you blink. Your vision is still adjusting as an arm emerges from the door, clutching a slim mechanical device that glows and whirrs. The noise cuts off. The arm withdraws.
You think that you should be feeling more than just a touch of fear, but you’re somehow past that and into the realms of dreamy, gauzy surreal. So when the door opens back up and an entire woman leaps lightly out of the door, you merely blink at her. Her boots send up soft puffs of snow, and a lilac-grey coat flares dramatically around her ankles as she straightens, one hand pulling the door shut and the other pushing hair out of her eyes.
Those eyes swing to you, and suddenly the fear rushes in, bright and sharp. Because the strangeness of the glowing box materializing over your footprints is nothing compared to the strangeness emanating from the woman’s gaze. You stop breathing again, the snow falling around you unstirred. Then the woman smiles, and it’s as if time resumes. You gasp in an unsteady breath, cold flooding your lungs.
“Hiya!” she says brightly, her nose wrinkling. She seems to be sizing you up as you consider each other, and she adds after a moment,“This may sound a bit odd, but you are human, aren’t you?”
A new silence settles across the air between you, but it’s a different silence. It starts at her with cheerful expectancy, and ends at you with blank, ringing confusion You blink several times.
“Yes,” you say finally, when the silence has twined itself thoroughly around you like an eager dog awaiting acknowledgment.
“Right, thought as much,” the woman says, and you’re nonplussed (and slightly offended) that she seems, of all things, disappointed with that answer. “Only I’m tracking a Chameleon Leech and a human would be right up its alley.” She squints at you, suddenly suspicious, and you would have been offended by that too if you weren’t occupied by sorting through the words she just said. Chameleon leech? In the snow? You look down, dubious.
Strident mechanical whirring interrupts your thoughts and you blink, refocusing on the strange woman. She’s leaning forwards on the balls of her feet, that slim metal device now pointed at you. It’s glowing a brilliant orange. It cuts off, the silence in no big hurry to fill the space left behind as the woman, after another suspicious glance, regards the device. She exhales. “Definitely human,” she announces. You wonder if this is supposed to be news to you. “Well, sorry for interrupting your evening,” she continues, though she isn’t looking at you but rather the surroundings. Softly falling snow is settling in her blonde hair, and it glitters in the lamplight. “Carry on, as you were. Although…” suddenly she’s looking at you again, eyes bright in a way that makes your stomach swoop. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything out of the ordinary recently?”
You stare at her, lips parted. Her brows lift slowly; you have the distinct impression she thinks you quite slow on the uptake. “Other than — you?” you manage, half-lifting a cold hand to wave at her and her blue box. Her face scrunches.
“Obviously,” she says. You stare at each other some more.
“No,” you tell her finally. Her and the blue box have well used up the “unordinary” quota for the night.
She nods. “Mm. Right. Well, you can forget you saw me then.” She makes as if to withdraw into the box, and a sudden thought grips you.
“Wait,” you blurt, and she looks back at you, blonde hair falling messily in her face as her brows lift again. “You said you were tracking — something?” She still looks impatient as she nods, her mind clearly already past you. “I — I mean — should I be worried?” That gets her attention again, and she refocuses on you. Another electric thrill runs through you as those bright eyes meet your own.
“Nah,” she says, and her voice has softened a little. “I’m on it. Readings must have been off, the spacial geometer has been acting up ever since business with the Chelonians.” She looks back at the box reproachfully as she says this, then back at you. “Maybe nip on home, though. Just in case, eh?”
Your stomach sours at the word, home. You don’t entirely suppress your automatic grimace.
“Or wherever it was you were going,” the woman adds, misinterpreting your scowl. “Just to be safe. Bit chilly to be out, anyways, isn’t it?” She tips her face up to the snow, then turns and flashes you a quick smile. “Off you go, nice meeting you, forget you saw me. Actually, forget —” her abrupt stream of words cuts off as something inside of the box chirps in an urgent sort of manner. Her brows furrows and she lifted the metal device up to her face. “Updated scan readings finished rendering,” she says absently. And then, quieter: “Ah.” Something about her tone alerts you, and she looks up from the device to see you still watching her, unmoving. “Oh,” she says quickly, “it’s nothin’ to worry about.” She flashes you a bright smile, and then without further comment turns and leaps into the blue box. The door snaps shut behind her flaring grey coat, and you stare a bit longer at the closed blue door. Not because you think it might open again, but because in that brief time that it had been open, you’d seen a bright sliver of orange lights and what had seemed like much larger room than the box itself had dimensions to offer.
Which is ridiculous, and absolutely your eyes playing tricks on you, but you remain standing for some time longer, regarding the box. Much like earlier, it seems to be regarding you in turn, and you get the strangest feeling that it’s waiting for you to leave before it can… do something. You don’t know what. Vanish as mysteriously as it arrived, maybe. Thinking about the box’s arrival makes your head hurt, and you decide that the strange woman was right about at least one thing: you ought to head home.
Home… your mood deflates at the thought. The snow piling steadily on your shoulders and collar is suddenly unpleasantly cold, and you hunch around it, shoving your hands in your pockets and resuming your walk. You look back at the box once, right before you turn a corner; it still sits innocently under the street light, and it still feels like it’s watching you. You hesitate, then turn and keep walking.
You aren’t sure if it’s the meeting of the woman and her strange blue box or just the fact that you’re on your way back home, but either way the wistful, contradictory mood of the night has been thoroughly broken. You’re tired, and cold, and full of a restless sort of bone-deep dissatisfaction you can’t put a name on but weighs down your every step. You sink into the mood, not fighting it, and so it takes you a while to notice that you’ve somehow gotten turned around.
You pause under another streetlight, frowning. The snow is falling faster and thicker, but not so much that you can’t see your way ahead, or behind. Which is how you know where you are, on a street you’ve walked many times in your life. On one you’ve walked today, not ten minutes ago. Except you know you didn’t turn back, it’s not possible for you to have turned back, not on the systematic, grid-like streets. Streets that you know.
And yet.
You exhale slowly, staring at your own footprints in the snow, softened by the last ten minutes worth of precipitation but very much there, very much yours. Your eyes travel along them, then stop, snagged by the clear, clean-edged square just outside of the light, sat right over one of your prints.
Proof of the box’s existence.
And departure.
“How…” you breathe, blinking rapidly. Snowflakes cling to your lashes and you swipe them away with your gloveless hand.
Maybe your overconsumption of coffee and underconsumption of sleep is finally catching up with you. You shake your head. You need to get it together. Need to get home, where you at least knew what to expect. You decide to take the short way back, the way you’d initially come. Hopefully you’ll find your missing glove. Tucking your chin in your coat against the thickening snow, you edge past the outlines of the box (it had been there, it had, you weren’t wrong) you set off, eyes on your prints and scanning for the offending piece of clothing.
You haven’t been walking for very long (and haven’t found the glove, either) when you find yourself staring again at the familiar square indentations in the snow. Your heart lurches uncomfortably in your chest, the first stirrings of true unease. Your face is very cold as you lift it to the street light, still glowing merrily against the swirl of white.
“How?” you repeat, and you don’t like the way it sounds so thin and ragged. You sweep your gaze up and down the street; it’s getting harder to see by the moment, but you can still make out your surroundings, familiar, known, unchanged over the years. “This is ridiculous,” you say, your breath pluming in front of you. You set off again, faster, and keep your gaze up, the glove forgotten. If you just pay attention, you’ll stop getting turned around. You’re just letting your mind wander too much, you just need to focus.
You make it to the first corner, following your own footprints. See? You’re just tired, and cold, and over-caffeinated, and running into that odd stranger has done nothing to help. Adjusting your coat, you make the turn, a ridiculous sense of triumph flaring in you. Pleased with yourself for managing to find your way home, that’s a new low even for you, but the snow is cold and the night is dark and you cling to your victory.
A bright spot of colour catches your perisperhal vision and you turn sharply — and slip. You yelp, arms cartwheeling as you just barely manage to keep your balance. Heart thundering with the surge of adrenaline, you look again for what had caught you eye, but a sudden gust of wind whips stinging snow into your face and you close your eyes, lifting a shielding arm. When you lower it, everything has gone soft and hazy.
Your heart kicks against your ribs. “No, no no,” you murmur, turning on the spot and slipping again, and when you straighten, you see —
The outlines of that damned box, softened into faint indents by the snowfall but unmistakable nonetheless. You stand in the streetlight, the only thing illuminated in the thickening snow, and you stare. You feel like you’re in a dream. You feel like you’re the only person left in the world. You feel like your brain is unraveling.
You feel a little bit like crying.
In the darkness beyond the circle of light, something crunches in the snow. You go very still, even as your heart throws itself against your ribs. The wind howls against you, snow and ice stinging your cold face. You think you hear someone breathing.
“H — hello?” you manage, teeth chattering. Snow crunches again, and foreboding ripples through you in in sickening waves.
When your own face slowly materializes in the circle of lamplight, your whole body flashes hot, then cold. Snow swirls around you — both of you — in a freezing gust. The other you steps slowly into the light. Vertigo crashes through you; your knees have gone soft and wobbly, your breath thin as it hisses in and out in rapid gasps. Everything feels wrong but real, in the way of a dream. You think, desperately, that if you can just wake up, it will all be okay.
The other you smiles slowly, the whipping snow distorting their features like a cracked mirror. You have a sudden wild thought that you’re the reflection, the real you is over there and you’re fading. Wake up wake up wake up —
A familiar whirr makes you — both of you — stiffen and turn. A diffused orange glow and the noise of rapidly crunching snow precedes the form of the strange blonde woman as she materializes from the snow, looking aggravated and windblown. And real, achingly real, as if the nightmare has been black and white and she’s the first splash of colour.
“If this is another dead-end I’m melting you down for scrap metal — oh, hiya again!” She draws up short, peering at you, the metal device held before her like a conductors baton. “Wasn’t expecting to see you again… again.” Her eyes have slid past you to regard the other. She lifts her chin, straightening up in a serious, businesslike sort of way that’s at odds with her previous capricious sort of chatter. You follow her gaze reluctantly; you’d been hoping in a wordless, desperate sort of way that her arrival had, in the way of a dreams, banished the nightmare. But you’re met with your own image as you turn. The woman’s eyes are narrow as she regards the two of you.
“Well,” she says with a bracing sort of cheerfulness, “this does complicate things, now doesn’t it. I don’t suppose you actually have a twin, do you?”
“No,” you answer, and horribly you hear yourself twice. The other you had answered in tandem. Your hands are shaking.
“Too much to hope for,” the woman mutters. Eyes darting between the two of you, she lifts her metal device again and points it at you, then your double. It whirrs in a new pitch, something almost plaintive. “Oh, come on now, it’s just isomorphic drift, you can do it,” she cajoles, moving the device to your double. You jerk back as you take them in; they’ve shifted closer somehow, the movement imperceptible. Snow blows around you again, softening their edges, blurring them. “Oh, this is what I was worried about,” the woman grumbles, shaking the device. “You just couldn’t listen to me, could you? Couldn’t have gone home and been safe. No, why would anyone listen to me, that’d be far too clever — oh, hold on a mo’ then, you.” A note of steel slips into her voice at the last words, something authoritative and old and utterly at odds with her previous behaviour. She has also stepped forwards, her metal device pointed fully now at the other you, which you realize with a swift surge of horror has moved closer still. It has also frozen; you watch your own eyes as they rest calculatingly on the strange woman. It’s bizarre, seeing your own thought process from the outside. Its mouth — your mouth — opens.
“I’m scared,” you hear yourself say. Your eyes — its eyes — have widened, shining large and frightened in the streetlight, the earlier glimmer of shrew calculation gone. “Help me,” it adds, shifting forwards another step, closer to you. Its hands are held curled in slightly, as if in fear, gloved fingers flexing.
“Half marks,” the woman says. “You do need help. Not from me, but my friend here. You’re not scared, though. There can only be one, and all that. Twins not withstanding. And clones. Oh, clones make everything tricky. Get behind me, please.” The last words are, you realize, directed at you. You tear your gaze away from your double to glance at her. You feel oddly light-headed. She’s got the metal device whirring again as she scans the other you, lips pursed. “C’mon, shift,” she adds, wiggling the fingers on her free hand at you. You don’t move, eyes darting from this mad woman to your own image and back again. Your breath is still rasping in and out in ragged bursts, each heartbeat pumping a fresh wave of terror through you. Wake up wake up wake up —
“It has my face, help me,” the other one is saying in your voice, it’s your voice, it’s your voice. The whirring cuts off again as the woman pulls the device up to regard it. “Human,” the other you says, something almost sly about it, subtle to anyone who doesn’t know you. But you do. It has your voice.
“Human readings,” the woman agrees. You watch yourself relax even as your vision tints black around the edges. “Human features, human voice.” She glances swiftly over her shoulder, realizing you haven’t moved. She looks back at the other you, brows lifted as she eases sideways, her own body partially blocking you from yourself. You sway; you can’t really feel the snow still blowing against your face anymore, a small blessing.
The woman is still talking, a steady stream. “But you need more than the trappings of humanity, if you want to be convincing. You need to really understand them. I can’t blame you for not getting it, they’re a tricky species. I’ve made rather a career out of knowing them and they still surprise me, constantly.” She’s easing farther in front of you as she speaks, movement almost imperceptible. Just like your double. You sway again, wondering at the way the streetlight seems darker, dimmer. Snow you can’t feel crusts your eyelashes; every time you blink it’s getting harder and harder to open your eyes again.
“I’m scared,” you hear yourself say, though you haven’t spoken.
“Elevated heart rate, increased adrenaline, heightened awareness. All the markers of fear,” the woman says. She’s fully in front of you now; you blink slowly through ice crusted lashes and think she’s leaning forwards slightly, on the balls of her feet. “But when someone’s done as much traveling as I have, it pays to be able to tell the difference between fear and excitement.”
She lifts the metal device again. It’s silent, not whirring, a tacit threat as the light catches it. “You aren’t a scared human, alone in the dark with the unknown.” She leans forward slowly, the streetlight illuminating the snow dusting her hair. “You’re excited. Hungry. Hunting.”
There’s a brief silence, punctuated only the soft impact of falling snow. “Ah, well then,” your own voice says, from somewhere on the other side of the blonde woman. Your voice sounds less like your own by the word. “You’re not like the others.”
“Nope,” the woman says, cheerful.
“You’re the one who’s been tracking me.”
“Yep.” Still cheerful.
Another brief silence. You sway, all but blind in the swirling snow. Your terror is receding along with your vision, darkness closing in around you. It’s gauzy and soft and surreal and not entirely bad.
“You’re also late,” the approximation of your voice observes. There’s a sort of smugness in it. You want to look at the other you, to see if your expression is as warped as your voice, but you realize that you can’t see at all.
“Late? I’m never late. Sort of a trick of the trade.” You swing your head back and forth as the woman speaks, and you see nothing but black, black shot through with swirls of white grey flecks. “Oh,” the woman’s voice says, receding from you, “I’m late. I see. Oh, hold on now —”
The last thing you remember is your knees hitting the snow, shockingly cold in a body otherwise gone numb. And strangely, the scent of lavender and tea as you surrender to the darkness against something warm and firm.
———————————————————————————
You think, as your eyes flutter open, that they’re still crusted in snow. But that’s not right; you’re warm, if uncomfortable, and your skin is dry. But you blink, and the lights fractal and multiply above you in dizzying shades of orange and blue that seem to dance through a dark sky. You turn your head, the lights trailing in your sluggish vision like the trails of comets. Soft cloth rustles under your cheek and you inhale something like lavender and tea. It’a a familiar scent, though you can’t place it.
“Ah, with us again?”
Startled, you jerk upright. “Oh, steady now,” the voice chides as your vision fractures and you sway, fighting the darkness crowding the corners of your eyes. “Side effects of a psychic leech, never fun. Breathe through it, there you go. It’ll stabilize in a moment.” A firm hand grips your elbow, steadying you. You force your eyes to focus; sure enough the nausea is receding. The blonde woman is crouched next to you, head cocked to one side, and her startlingly hazel eyes are locked on your own. “Hello,” she says as you focus on her. She’s smiling. “Feeling better?”
“Think… think so,” you rasp, blinking at her. She unwraps a stethoscope that had been nestled around her neck and fits it to her ears. You flinch back warily as she lifts the other end towards your chest, and she clucks her tongue disapprovingly.
“Easy,” she chides, fingers still firm around your elbow. She presses the metal to your shirt and listens, tongue poking between her lips. She nods, pulling the stethoscope off and wrapping it back around her neck. “Your vitals are back to normal parameters,” she tells you, smiling. “And you’re definitely, completely human. Imagine if I’d grabbed the wrong one, now that’d be embarrassing. Hand up?” She’s already leapt lightly to her feet, and you regard the outstretched hand, still processing her chatter. The fingers wiggle encouragingly, and after another moment, you place your hand in hers. “Give it a moment,” she adds as you sway, vision briefly blurring and fracturing. “Might take a bit to get your sea legs back, as it were.”
“I’m — I’m good,” you say.
“Mm-hm,” the woman says noncommittally. Her hand is still under your elbow; she’s watching you closely.
“Really,” you add, starting to feel self-conscious under her close scrutiny. “Thank you, but I’m fine —” You break off abruptly.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I was waiting for,” the woman says bracingly, hand firming its grip as you sway again. You’re taking in your surroundings for the first time, lips parted in shock. There’s a massive crystal behind the woman, surrounded by a futuristic looking set of controls. More crystals flank the room, glowing softly with their own light. You can’t see the edges of the room, but you get the impression it’s vast. You tip your head up slowly: more crystals and lights fading gently into blackness.
“Where —”
“My TARDIS,” the woman says, letting go of your elbow. You feel the absence of her hand; it’s cold. “My transport and laboratory and home, all rolled into one. The blue box from earlier,” she adds, as you stare at her.
“This room fits into that box,” you say, voice flat with shock.
“Bingo,” the woman says, beaming, seemingly pleased that you grasped the concept so quickly. “Gives most newcomers a bit of a shock, you’re handling it proper nice. I suppose a run in with Chameleon Leech might shift your perspective a bit. Oi, don’t pick at that,” she adds, batting your hand away from where it had settled on your recently abandoned arm. You’d found the edge of a patch, and you look down at it, frowning.
“Psychic dampener,” the woman says. “Blocks the Chameleon Leech from accessing your mind. Should leave you alone after that. I’d leave it on for, oh, a week or so just to be safe. Wouldn’t want a return visit, they’re like parasites, harder to eradicate each time.”
You stare at her. She stares back, brows slightly lifted. “It’s safe,” she adds, looking a little peeved at your skepticism. “I do know what I’m doing. Generally.”
“That — thing,” you say, as the past events start to catch up with you.
“Chameleon Leech,” the woman corrects. You shoot her a narrow look; she shoots one right back.
“It had my — face.” You shudder, fear curling through you at the memory of your own eyes appearing in the snow, hearing your own voice.
“Your face, your body, and a fair few of your memories,” the woman says, ticking them off on her fingers. “Hence the patch. You’re okay now.” She seems to be of the opinion that this is the main takeaway of the events of the evening, and that you’re being very difficult about it all.
“That — Leech — was it an alien?”
“Well,” the woman hedges, nose scrunching slightly. “Yes.”
“And it’s still — out there? With my face?”
“Yes,” the woman repeats, moving away from you towards the control panel. “Grab me coat,” she adds, and you realize that your lavender scented pillow had been her lilac grey coat. She’d folded it beneath your head at some point; you feel a complicated tug of emotion at that. You pick up the coat, comforted at least by having something warm and real to clutch to your chest as you trail slowly after the woman. “I expect it will drop your sequence soon, though, if it hasn’t already. Now that you’ve got the blocker, you’re useless to it. Empty calories now.”
“And then what?” you ask, without really meaning to. The woman flashes you a look; you aren’t sure how to parse her expression. “It just finds someone else to — do that to?”
The woman’s face scrunches. “Well, yes. Chameleon Leech, that’s what they do. They find people, usually alone and under some degree of emotional distress,” and here she shoots you another swift, appraising look, “and they copy them. Enough to feed off their emotions and memories and lives, before moving on to their next host.” She punches in a few keystrokes to one of her myriad of controls, tongue slightly protruding between her lips as she thinks. “Usually they get in and out almost before their host knows they’ve been siphoned; they don’t even take complete memories, usually, and leave impressions and emotions behind, things that can be chalked up to faulty memory or age.” She pulls a screen towards her, brow furrowed. You know a tacit “but” when you hear one, and so you wait, watching this strange woman do equally strange things on her even stranger control panel.
“However,” she continues, which is the same as a ‘but’ only dressed up and you feel a certain degree of validation about that, “that doesn’t apply to humans.” Well, you don’t like the sound of that, nor the seriousness emanating from her pinched expression as she examines one of her screens. She must feel your gaze, because she glances up at you. “You’re fine,” she repeats.
“Right, but —” you break off your protest as she straightens, leveling the whole of her attention on you. It’s heavy. It’s electric. You swallow. “But what about — everyone else?”
The woman tilts her head; her eyes glimmer, flashes of light in their hazel depths as she considers you. You shift your weight, unnerved by the scrutiny. Wanting more. “Hm,” she says finally, turning back to her business with the controls and leaving you with the distinct impression she learned something about you. “Well, they’re in some amount of danger, yes.”
“What does it do to us? The leech?” You move closer to her, tentative. You’re still holding her coat.
“Ah, well, not entirely sure,” the woman says. “Nothing good; your biology isn’t suited to that sort of attack. You’re the first human to survive one I’ve encountered. So, actually, you’re my best source for what it can do.” She’s turned and darted over to you before you’ve fully processed her words. “Oh,” she exclaims, “my coat, thanks! Makes a handy pillow in a pinch, doesn’t it?” She takes the coat from you, shrugging it on absently while leveling that slim metal device at you. It glows orange and whirrs, and you eye it dubiously as she pulls it slowly up and down the length of your body. “Handy to have a guinea pig on board,” she says, as the noise cuts off. Her nose scrunches up. “No offense.” She makes a considering sound in her throat as she peers at the device, moving back over to her station.
“What is that thing?” you blurt out, trying to move past the pig comparison and the implications of being patient zero for what was, you were starting to realize, an alien attack.
“Ah! That’s me sonic. Sonic screwdriver,” the woman says brightly, looking around at you. “Very handy. Gathers all sorts of information for me. For instance…” She plugs the device (screwdriver? It doesn’t look much like a screwdriver but it also is only rating at about a 3.5 out of 10 on today’s weirdness scale, so you let it go) into the console and then examines a screen. Her eyes dart back and forth rapidly, then she rocks back on her heels. “Right, well. Like I said. Chameleon Leech and humans, it’s nothing good. You’re fine,” she repeats, “thanks to me. But if I hadn’t got there in time to patch you up, then…” she clicks her tongue. “Nasty business. It would have degraded your memories and personality, bit by bit; you have no natural defenses for it unlike the creatures where it normally feeds. Think of it like a tapeworm for your brain, for your sense of self.” Ugh; you’d rather not think of it like that, actually. Another thought strikes you.
“How — I mean, if it’s an alien, how did it get here? On Earth?” Your eyes move from the woman, wandering the strange room that you’re in. You feel… watched, in a way you can’t easily describe but can feel, deep in your bones. ‘Your biology,’ the woman had said. ‘You’re the first human I’ve encountered who’s survived it.’ And you think of the blue box, vanishing and reappearing. You turn your head to look at her, and go very still as you find her looking steadily at you. You don’t know how long she’s been watching you. Her eyes reflect the orange and blue light of the room; all at once she looks very old. Remote. Your heart skips a beat.
“Ask,” she says. “Ask me.” Her chin lifts slightly as she waits; you know, somehow, it’s meant as a challenge.
“Are you one of them? A Chameleon Leech?” Her serious face flickers, replaced by a full-on scrunch, something you’re starting to realize is a signature expression.
“Am I a — of course not!” she says, and she actually sounds a bit offended, which is hardly fair but also lends her some believability. “I thought you were going to ask me if I was alien! Or how I got to Earth. A Chamelon Leech, that’s a low point, even for me.”
“Are you?” you ask, and she tosses her hair from her eyes to regard you. “Alien?”
“Well, obviously,” she answers, still looking a touch aggrieved; you get the impression you’ve somewhat ruined what she had planned to be a dramatic moment. “Time Lord. Not Chameleon Leech.”
Time Lord doesn’t so much sound like an alien species as it does an overly enthusiastic theatre kid’s first attempt at a stage name, but you keep that to yourself. She called you a guinea pig, you called her a Chameleon Leech, perhaps you’re even. “Okay,” you say aloud, taking a steadying breath. She’s still eying you. “How did I get in here?” She blinks; it seems you’ve once again asked a question she hadn’t prepped for.
“Me,” she says. “Carried you. Well. Dragged.” She waves a hand, tilting it back and forth. “Bit of both. Time was a factor, had to get you safe after you collapsed.”
“Carried?” you repeat, examining her. Time Lord or not, she is, for all appearances, a relatively average height, slim and unassuming. Definitely not the look of someone who can sling around humans with ease. “You look human,” you say, and she scrunches her nose.
“You look Time Lord; we came first.” She’s drawn herself up as she looks at you, and steps around the console, arms crossing. She stops a few steps from you, leaning a hip against the machinery. “You ask a lot of questions,” she observes, as you open your mouth again. “Oh, I like questions, me. Information gathering, always a smart choice.” She considers you. “You haven’t asked what I’m doing here.”
“The — Chameleon Leech said you were following it. You followed me, thinking I was it.” Her brows lift slightly. “You’re trying to catch it,” you say as she holds her silence. “Right?”
“Yep,” she answers after a pause. She pushes off the console, turning back to the controls. “I’ve been tracking this one for a while. It keeps slipping away. But thanks to you, I’ve got a bio-lock on it now. I’ll find it.”
“What are you going to do with it? When we find it?” Her head lifts at that, and she fixes you with another of her inscrutable, heavy gazes that make your heart race.
“Hit it with an isomorphic stabilizer, lock and immobilize it, then take it back to its home system,” she says, punching in more numbers as she speaks. “They aren’t malicious, not any more so than the parasites of your planet. They actually play an important role in the ecosystem in just the same way.” She throws a lever, and the room shudders, the lights flickering. “You said we.”
You look at her. “What?”
“When we find it, you said.”
Had you said that? She’s not looking at you, but down at the control panel. One of her fingers is tapping idly against the glass.
“No,” she says finally, to herself. “No. It’s too dangerous. I can’t.”
You aren’t following her meaning, and you realize all at once that you don’t even know her name.
“Right,” the woman says, seeming to have come to an agreement with herself. “I’m gonna drop you back off home. You’re safe now. What’s your address? Oh, not again.” The last bit is a groan as she flips a switch on the control panel and the machine beeps. “The temporal calibrator has been acting up recently, oh, come on now!” She flips the switch back and forth several times, in the universal gesture of someone at their wit’s end with a piece of technology and resorting to brute force. “Fine, fine. I’ll do it by hand. Date and time?” Those bright hazel eyes are fixed on you again; you realize she’s asking you the question.
“Date and time for what?”
“When you should be, when I found you,” she answers. “I’ve got the general location, but I wasn’t paying attention to the temporal parameters, sorry.”
Having conversations with this woman feels like playing a card game you were never given the rules for. “Um, Tuesday. December 24th. Close to midnight, maybe eleven?” The woman pauses, looking over at you, hair falling messily into her eyes. She’s frowning, just a slight line by her brow.
“Christmas Eve?” she asks. You nod. She looks nonplussed.“What were you doin’, out in the snow on Christmas Eve?”
You think an alien woman who hunts other aliens in a wooden blue box might be more open-minded about someone else’s choices. “Walking,” you say, simply.
“By yourself?” You nod again.
“You — you can’t be alone on Christmas Eve,” she says.
“You are,” you point out, and something flickers across her expression, too fast for you to even begin to identify. You feel you’ve hit a nerve without meaning to, a shot in the dark you hadn’t meant to take in the first place.
The woman pushes hair from her face. “Well. S’pose so.” She hitches a swift smile on her face, one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Christmas and me, tricky relationship. Lots of history. Still. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m not now,” you answer without thinking. The woman’s expression goes very still; you worry you’ve hit another nerve.
“Suppose so,” she repeats slowly. She steps back over to you, still standing an arm’s length away. “Walking alone in the snow on Christmas Eve, just noisey enough that a stray Chameleon Leech is able to lock on. Do you want to go home?” It’s a big question, on the heels of a character analysis you aren’t entirely enjoying. She’s looking carefully at you. “We, you said earlier. Do you want to go home?” And the emphasis on the last question is different this time; it feels like another of her tests. You don’t know what it is, what she’s looking for. You can only answer honestly.
“No.”
The woman nods slowly; she doesn’t ask why not, which you appreciate, because that’s a much harder and more nuanced question to answer, one you aren’t sure of yourself, one you only know in the same bone-deep sort of way that drove you out into the snow, that attracted the attention of not one but two aliens, and landed you here, in this strange blue box.
“Well,” she says. “I suppose I could use a spare pair of hands for this. If you’d like. I can’t promise you’ll be safe,” she adds, correctly reading the hope on your face. “In fact I can promise you almost certainly won’t be. It’s a funny old life, knocking around in here, rounding up rogue aliens.”
“Is that what you do? Is that why it says police box on the outside?” Her nose scrunches.
“Oh, that. Nah. Coincidental. I do loads. Traveling, mostly. Helping where I can.”
And you believe her, because she had helped you. Which is when you realize another thing. “Thank you,” you tell her. “For helping me. Saving me.”
She smiles, and this one does reach her eyes. “Oh, any time. Glad I was in the neighborhood.”
Hope and trepidation are a heady mix as they rise in you, a thrill of nerves not unlike when you meet her impossible eyes. “So… I can come with you?”
“I’d like that,” she says. “Welcome aboard the TARDIS! Oh, I’m the Doctor, by the way. Not sure we’ve been properly introduced.” She bounces on her heels as she looks at you, her energy shifting from that watchful stillness into infectious enthusiasm. Maybe like you, she hadn’t so much wanted to be alone as she had wanted to get away.
You tell her your name, and she beams. “Nice to meet you! Now, a few ground rules.” She spins back to the control panel. “The TARDIS doesn’t just travel in space, but time as well. Anywhere we want, any time we want. Listen to me, don’t touch or eat anything alien without knowing how it’ll affect you. No weapons of any kind. And,” she adds, throwing a lever, voice pitched to carry over the sudden groaning wheeze of an engine, “you might want to hold on to something! It can get bumpy!” The ship bucks and you stagger, grabbing at a the metal edge of the console as overhead the massive crystal begins to move up and down. You look over a the woman — the Doctor — as she whirls around the console, messing with a whole myriad of switches and controls you can’t even begin to guess at. She meets your eyes as she passes; they’re wild, reflecting the light around them like so many stars. She grins at you, and it’s as wild and bright as her eyes.
“Here we go! Are you ready?”
You flash her a smile in return; you can’t help it. “Ready.”
She beams. “Brilliant. C’mon, then!”
And she dashes away, towards a door set in the wall. Pale light streams through the window, and you can even see snow as it patters soundlessly against the glass. She places one hand on the door, the other outstretched to you.
You take her hand, the first of what will be many times. And you let her pull you out into the unknown.