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"No, NO!" she yelled. Everything was wrong. Gosh, why were people so stupid?
She had grown older since the last time she saw it.
She was having a particularly bad day. The alarm clock hadn't been on; she got to work ten minutes late. She felt she was a student all over again. Her boss was in a good mood. Which meant getting bitched at all day about how this job was not good enough.
The bell rang. She checked her schedule: Ninth grade Literature class. She was a teacher in Churchill Secondary School in London.
Three, two, one steps towards the ninth grade door. They were shouting and throwing things, but all shut up when she went in.
She grabbed her list and started calling names. "Abercrombie?" she said. "Here," a loud voice answered from the back of the room. "Alex? Beckham? Fletcher?" she kept on calling, same as every day, every name being answered by a "here".
She stopped when she got to "McKinnon": something was missing. The faint, shy "here" that would answer her everyday's "Nigel" had not sounded. Had not made her smile like everyday. She looked up and, indeed, saw the front line right row seat empty.
She continued with her list, a little more unwillingly than before.
At the end of her lesson, she stopped Amber Honte on her way out of class. "Do you know what happened to Elise? Why was she absent?"
-"No, Miss" was the girl'a answer, a little weirded she got asked to. Then she walked away.
Finn Abercrombie was still in the classroom. "Do you happen to know why was Elise Nigel missing?"
The kid answered, "to whom?"
-"Ah, never mind. You can go."
The kid did as told and left Maria alone in the huge classroom. She had nothing more to do all morning. At least not until 2 pm, when her next class was.
She blew off grading papers and just went outside to her car, to find it being towed for parking wrongly.
-"Oh, sweet honey lord, have mercy."
She was usually very calm. Nothing would upset her. Well, only-
She sat on a small table near the Thames' shoreline. She ordered a cup of tea in a cafe near and pulled out her phone, to call the traffic police about her car.
She dialed the number marked "Traffic" on her agenda and got put on the waiting list, so she just turned on the speakers and left the phone on the table.
"Fifteen people on waiting list." said the woman's recorded voice, the other end of the receiver.
Her mind flooded with thoughts. Why would Elise miss school? It was so good for her to have Elise as a student. Elise was reality challenged. She lived in her own fairy tale, where she could conjure spells at people and ride broomsticks. Ah, how she would love to have a world of her own to fly to in moments like this...
She massaged her forehead with her fingers as her cinnamon tea arrived. She paid the waiter and made an effort to smile at him. He looked like that guy who played Jim Moriarty on the telly.
She drank her tea in small sips. It helped calm her.
"Three people on waiting list."
She could wait a bit more.
"Two people on waiting list."
Good.
She was about to pick up the phone, but she decided to take the last sip of tea instead.
Wrong choice. A mad man with a black car speeded by and honked his horn so loud she abruptly moved her left arm and pushed her phone off the table. At the same time the phone slid under the wall of plants that separated land from river, her cup fell from her right hand to the floor.
Why?
She was about to literally burst into a nervous breakdown. She ran to the shore to look for her phone: nope. It had already sank.
She called the waiter and apologized and paid for the broken cup, then walked off unsteadily to the first phone box she saw.
Weird, the thing was in the middle of a park. She did not even notice.
She messed up her purse looking for coins and didn't even look when she got in the box.
Good thing she didn't.
The thing was huge. Orange inside. Really huge. Enormous. With all kinds of machinery in the center of it, like some kind of spaceship.
She looked for the phone handle and fell backwards.
"WHOA" she shouted as she slid down the wall.
To her surprise, a voice replied.
"Who is there?" it was a man's voice.
"Who is THERE? Where am I? Why are you in a phone box?"
"Nice to meet you, young lady. What is your name? Why are your clothes so-? Never mind"
"How- what?" she looked at her long brown sweater and her cream- colored trousers. "Who are you? Show yourself!"
A man stepped forward from behind one of the machines that looked like a giant, green freezer.
"I-" he said, walking with his hands in the pockets of the short, brown coat he was wearing "am the Doctor." he said with a smirk. He held out his hand to her.
He was wearing a fez. WAS HE WEARING A FEZ? WHY WAS HE?
Hesitating but still weirdly attracted to the man, she said "I- I'm Maria." She shook his hand.
-"So well, welcome to my TARDIS, Maria. Do you like it? Travels through time and space."
-"Wh- how?" she reluctantly decided to believe.
-"Well, that thing you see there-" he pointed to the machines and round table covered of buttons- "is an energy generator. It makes things to wibbly-wobbly."
He kept shaking her hand and staring at her.
"S-So..." She said. He cut her mid-sentence.
-"She should be here any minute now, ah." he glanced at his watch.
As if on cue, from the back of the room (did she walk out of a wardrobe?) popped out a shortish girl with short hair who must've been in her early twenties, wearing a purple suit and loud green army boots.
-"Woo! New people!" she said, sliding off a pole near the wardrobe. "By the way, Doctor," - she said teasingly - "don't you have any smaller shoes in there? Those things look like crocodiles."
Maria was looking at everything with a weird look on her face, like if she had just stepped in into her telly, inside of a science fiction movie.
The girl jumped off the lowest steps of a platform and shook Maria's hand.
"I'm Nikkie. What's your name?"
"I- I am Maria" she stammered again.
"Nice to meet ya" she said and turned around. "So, where are we going now?" Nikkie continued.
"I don't know" said the Doctor, who had been pleasantly contemplating the scene. "Your choice, Maria. Anywhere. Anytime."
"I-" Maria stuttered. She thought it was worth it giving it a shot. Meh, she had quite liked the Nikkie gal.
"To 2012. When I was 14." She did not know why she had chosen that time: she just felt it was right.
"Oh, I come from 2012! I was there last week!" said Nikkie cheerfully.
"Last week, last year- it can be last century as long as you girls want to." said the Doctor.
"He had me at 'last century'" Maria thought.
"Hold on, girls!"
Indeed, everything went wibbly-wobbly. She couldn't describe it any other way. Everything shook up and down, right and left for several seconds, it was all dizzy.
Then it stopped.
-"Ah, here we are, girls. Buenos Aires, June the twentieth of 2012."
Maria smiled. She liked winter. Especially winter /back home/. She guessed they could take a small look at them...
-"Doctor..." she said shyly.
"Yes"
"I- I was wondering if-" she turned into a child all over again, a child asking her mum for permission to go to a friend's house. "I was wondering if we could at least take a quick peek at my- my family- haven't seen them for almost five years, I suppose a look at the old them won't hurt anyone?" she said very quickly, like excusing herself.
"Oh, oh you know what? We are doing more than that. It's your first trip after all, isn't it. COME ON, you beautiful!" the Doctor was talking to the TARDIS.
Apparently, he wanted to turn Maria and Nikkie into store attendants, so Maria could talk to her parents -well, at least the 9-years-ago version of them- and her 14 year old self without "making the human timeline go fuzzy", as the Doctor had said.
They travelled forward. More precisely, to the 25th of July of 2012.
They were standing behind the cinema's ticket selling counter, wearing the cinema's green uniforms. The Doctor had stunned -"paused"- the real workers with that little glowing green electronic stick of his. Nikkie, who apparently was good at crafts, had made them look as alike to the workers as possible.
Maria's identity tag read "Audrey", Nikkie's read "Louise". The Doctor was sitting on a bench opposite, sipping an ice cream cone.
He was really nice though weird, Maria thought. And adorable. She just wanted to pinch his cheeks and tousle his hair all the time.
The Doctor signaled to them. It was all ready. They took their places in the cashiers line.
And then Maria saw them.
Her parents and her little brother, just as they were nine years ago. But where was her? She remembered perfectly having gone to the cinema with her family.
Her father approached the counter.
"Three tickets for Amazing Spiderman, please."
Maria was stunned.
"That- that would be 30 pounds, sir."
He handed her a credit card and his ID ("Why? I already know who you are" Maria thought. "I wish you knew, too."), and then Maria realized she had no idea how to operate the machine.
She knocked on the glass that separated her stall from the girl on her left's and asked to help her with the machine, using the excuse that she was new.
It was no problem. Maria successfully sold her father three tickets to Amazing Spiderman.
She was speechless. She got back into the small cabinet the Doctor had left the workers, where Nikkie was waiting, already wearing her own clothes.
Nikkie knew better than to say anything.
They walked up to the TARDIS in the parking lot and got in.
The Doctor was touching and flipping buttons everywhere.
"Ready to take off, girls? It's Nikkie's choice now!"
When suddenly they heard a voice, coming from a wardrobe.
"Nikkie?"
The green wardrobe's door opened slightly and a shortish girl with short brown hair stepped out.
No one knew what to say, but because of different reasons. The Doctor and Nikkie were silent because they had never found a stranger in the wardrobe before.
But Maria was silent because she was the girl.
And Maria was who spoke.
"Do not worry, Doctor. We can trust her. We can trust /me/."
Young Maria looked very confused.
That's where the Doctor started talking. "This, Maria Jr, is a TARDIS. She's a time machine. Now you understand. Now. Ready, girls? I'm sorry, Nikkie, but I think we'd ought to let Maria Jr choose now."
Maria Jr didn't look less confused than before.
Grown-up Maria was who spoke: "I think Nikkie should choose, Doctor. I- Is there any place we can talk?"
"Oh. Yes. Over there, go right. You'll see a hallway. Make a left in the first exit, second door to the right. Now Nikkie?"
As Nikkie chose London in the 1930's, the Marias followed the Doctor's directions (the TARDIS) was bigger than it seemed) into a room with blue walls and a red bench in its middle. Young Maria sat straight and cross-legged, the 23-year-old Maria sat sideways, one leg over the other. The grown-up Maria started talking.
"Listen, Maria, you-"
But she was interrupted by her younger self.
"Who are you? I just stumbled in here. I thought it was an actual phone box."
"Exactly the same thing happened to me. Let me explain. Maria, I am- you are me. This is a time machine. I- you- met the Doctor while I was trying to make a call. I walked in here without looking, and just appeared in this place full of wibbly wobbly things- Then I met the Doctor and Nikkie, well, Nikkie I- we- already knew- and I wanted to see you guys. Mum and dad, my- our brother. Since I- you- we moved to London, haven't seen them since. I travelled to the day you went to see Amazing Spiderman- but you weren't there. It was just them three. I cannot explain that to myself. Then you're here- and I'm here-"
"I walked away." young Maria interrupted. "I saw this phone box, I had never seen one like this before, I guess you know- and I wanted to explore it."
"Well, we're both here now. That one I'm sure of."
They looked into each other's eyes, both creeped and comforted by seeing their own.
Their intense and dramatic moment with themselves was interrupted by an excited shriek coming from the TARDIS's machinery room. "Girls- girl!" they heard Nikkie shriek. "Come see this, oh god, come!"
They went.
It was wonderful. Mesmerizing. They were looking at the very center of London, exactly how it looked eighty years ago from young Maria's time, and ninety from older Maria's. It was amazing.
They spent all day running through it. Nikkie was very excited. Everyone on the streets stopped and stared at her loud colored outfit and her excited squeals now and then, but she was happy.
Maria - both of them - were also as happy as could be. Young Maria got used to the time machine thing quickly and enjoyed it lots. Older Maria was happy to have a moment with herself in her quite messy life.
The Doctor appeared to be in his element. He liked making people happy. The 23-year-old Maria really liked that. He was funny, and smart, and sweet- he was a child yet the wise old man of the universe. He was a very interesting being.
Nighttime eventually fell upon them, and they returned to the TARDIS. Nikkie had taken lots of pictures on her camera- at which 1930 londoners would stare as if it was alien machinery- and was now transferring them to her laptop, which had stayed into the TARDIS.
Maria just observed the Doctor. Her younger self was asking him questions about TARDIS functioning and he answered them as easily as if she were asking about his hometown.
Her older self couldn't help but think he was adorable.
The Doctor finished working on the thing that "makes things go wibbly-wobbly" and went to the older Maria.
"We need to talk" he said in a low voice. "I need to talk this through with you."
They left Nikkie and Maria talking about how weird it was to meet old friends in a time machine and went to a room that looked like the one Maria went to talk to herself earlier, but its walls were orange and the bench was green.
They sat on the bench, he sat one leg each side of the bench, facing Maria, whose legs were crossed over the seat.
"There is no easy way to say this. I'm going to have to drop- you- back in your time. This was extremely fun I know. But messed up with the time continuum." he told Maria.
She agreed, but the Doctor spoke again.
"You're not getting the point, I think. If I leave the fourteen year old you back in 2012, I'll have to use my screwdriver to make her- not remember- she was here. If she forgets, I'll have to give her a whole new identity: she would be erased. Therefore- you would not exist."
She got it then. She would have to go for time not to fuzz up. She and the other her.
She impulsively hugged the Doctor. He hugged her back.
They all slept in hammocks, in the TARDIS that night.
The next day, the Doctor made the explicit effort to make both Marias spend her best day ever. They spent the morning in the 1850's Scotland, had lunch and went to the beach in 1970's Florida and visited 2010's Amsterdam at night and for dinner. Maria never stopped smiling, and Nikkie took more than a thousand pictures. Young Maria was delighted, she tried over six different kinds of tea in a day.
But midnight came, and the time was over. They slept in the TARDIS again, on the hammocks.
The Doctor had decided she could live with an old friend of his, a tall redhead named Amelia. Amelia knew the whole story, and was sure to agree to the Doctor's plan. Maria and her were sure to get along.
It was 10 AM when the Doctor shook slightly young Maria's hammock. He had explained her the plan earlier, and she agreed, knowing she wouldn't regret it because she wouldn't remember it.
The Doctor walked her out the TARDIS, leaned slightly forward and grabbed her shoulders.
"It's been a lot of fun, you know." They both smiled.
"You're going to stay here with Amy. Right now it's 2009. I'm going to modify your memory so you think you're Amy's daughter, Elise, who is 12. Amy- she's my old friend, she's going to take good care of you. Good luck, Little Maria."
Maria did nothing but smile at him while he spoke. When he was done, she said "Thanks" and hugged him. When she pulled away, the Doctor knocked Amelia's big house's door, and she came out. She was tall and red-headed, and greeted Maria with a huge smile before the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at her, and pressed the button. Then Amy took Maria -now Elise- inside.
In the exact moment the redhead closed her front door, Big Maria came running out of the TARDIS, followed by Nikkie, who stood on the door, looking.
Maria approached the Doctor and have him an overwhelming hug. She broke apart and fixed his red bowtie.
Then she hugged his middle again and kissed him.
It was her last moment, the moment she was clinging onto the kiss and life itself. Because she knew that kiss would be her last, that look and that moment too.
Maria's hug broke, and, still kissing, she grabbed the Doctor's hands. She pulled apart from the kiss and looked in his eyes. They were so deep, so human, she could not believe he wasn't. They looked like they had a whole universe inside them.
Then Maria started to glow. A yellowish glow, almost like fairy dust. It was exactly eleven seconds this lasted, and she left the world looking into the Doctor's eyes.
Amy closed the front window's curtain in tears, and the Doctor, in tears too, joined Nikkie in the TARDIS with his kindest smile and departed towards everywhere.