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The journey back to the TARDIS had been more comforting than usual; Ace McShane walked close to the Doctor as he mused about where they could venture next in his machine, smiling to herself that, for once, he seemed to be speaking with sincerity. The sun shone bright in the clear sky above Perivale, and the quiet suburban streets helped calm her mind. The banality of ordinary life was a welcome reprieve from the primality the pair had been subjected to mere moments ago.
It was only when Ace crossed the threshold and entered the TARDIS that the true extent of what had occurred began to register in her mind. The Doctor, however, was typically unfazed, moving to the central console to examine its instruments, sparing no thought for anything else. Ace sighed to herself, but, as she moved to the door leading deeper into the vessel she called home, she swore she could feel her companion’s gaze cut through her back.
The uniformly white corridors had once disoriented her. Endless pathways nestled between identical walls with identical patterns – identical roundels interrupted at regular points by identical columns – made it difficult to find her bearings when she stepped aboard for the first time, and, even now, on the rare occasions she ventured further into the TARDIS, the ancient machine still made it impossible to move with complete confidence through its depths—Ace was thankful that her bedroom was closer to the control room than it was to the library.
As she rounded the corner and glimpsed her door, a dull ache twisted through her calves; with each step she took towards the bedroom, the pain swelled further until, just a few paces away from reaching out to turn the handle, a flaring agony tore through her legs. Ace’s knees buckled. She steadied herself against the wall and resisted the urge to prod or rub the pained area, a gnawing instinct telling her it would only make matters worse. With a noise somewhere between a wince and a groan, Ace opened the door and nearly fell into her room, only remaining upright out of sheer force of will.
Her jacket felt heavier as she hobbled to the bed, but she sensed removing it would somehow make the pain spread to her shoulders. The badges caught against each other in the impact as her body met the mattress with a dull thud. Ace cursed under her breath. Despite being alone, she made sure that the string of expletives – growing longer and more visceral as the pain persisted – were spoken in a whisper; the Doctor had chastised her more than once for her language, yet, to Ace’s confusion, he seldom took issue with her other rebellious qualities or her other more explosive proclivities.
The pain made it difficult for her mind to wander. It kept Ace confined to the present moment, to the bedroom and the fire in her legs. There was a small mirror she remembered seeing in the bedside drawer when she first arrived and unpacked her belongings. She retrieved the item, paying no mind to floral design or the initials ‘V.W.’ on its back, and put it beside her. It took considerable effort, but she eventually rolled the legs of her trousers up past her knees and repositioned herself on the bed; holding the mirror in one hand and supporting her leg in the other, Ace examined the skin, only to find nothing amiss.
She began to wonder if it was a trick, if the pain she felt was instead her body adjusting to a lack of adrenaline after being hunted for hours. Her adventures in the TARDIS had led her to all manner of injuries; she had been knocked unconscious in a school in Shoreditch before jumping through a plate glass window; she had nearly drowned in a sealed chamber when she and the Doctor fought against knights and witches from another dimension; Ace was no stranger to peril, but there was something indescribable about this new pain.
Her head felt lighter, her vision blurrier. She held a palm to her forehead and tried to blink back into focus to no avail. Then, as soon as the disorientation came, it vanished and took the pain in her legs with it. Ace sat on the bed for a few minutes in cautious silence, worried that the reprieve was merely temporary, but, eventually, took a chance and rose to her feet.
She regretted standing up immediately.
‘Got a knack for timing, haven’t you?’ Ace groaned, clutching her side. The area beneath her hand was tender—the garish image of a potential wound pressed itself into her imagination.
Summoning the strength she knew she had but which threatened to abandon her, Ace discarded her jacket and shirt, and raised her arm to get a better look at her side in the hand-mirror. As she feared, the reflection depicted a grizzly sight; a thick and swollen bruise splayed across her skin like mold on a neglected wall, its blurred outline interlacing its hues of deep black and vivid purple with the pastier complexion of her body. Ace squinted and looked closer. In the centre of the discoloured mass was the impression of a fist, an impact doubtless sustained on the planet whose name she never learned, but whose people she had fled from.
‘Karra…’ There was a unique twinge of angst to the memory, more acute than any physical injury Ace had sustained. In her rational mind, she knew that Karra was only in her life for less than a day, but something within her – a potent, primal part of her true self – felt as though they had known one another for lifetimes. That inscrutable instinct compelled Ace to believe that Karra was the one who injured her, that Karra had somehow marked her to ensure a piece of her remained even after she was gone; she ghosted her fingers over the broken skin—Karra was still with her.
Ace glanced back at the mirror and lingered on the bruise before checking elsewhere for other injuries. There were a few cuts on her back and shoulders, small disturbances to the skin she felt compelled to gently rake her nails over without knowing why; Ace was estranged from herself as she studied her body closely, feeling a strange flicker of disappointment upon finding herself otherwise unharmed. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
No sooner did she look back at the mirror than Ace flinched at the sight held within it. Her face was intact, her nose and mouth were hers, and every detail was unharmed save for one: the eyes staring back at her were a golden yellow.
‘The planet’s gone,’ the Doctor had told her, his voice echoing in her head, ‘but it lives on inside you. It always will.’
Ace shut her eyes and kept them firmly closed for several seconds. ‘I felt like I could run forever,’ she remembered admitting to him, ‘like I could smell the wind, and feel the grass under my feet, and just run forever.’ She could still feel that urge, a compulsion nestled firmly in the heart of who she was. Ace had spent most of her life running, but, with Karra, they had the advantage; she was no longer the victim of Chad Boyle or the outcast for befriending a Pakistani—she was no longer fleeing, she was running free.
When she finally opened her eyes, it was as though Ace had awoken from a dream, the memories of that other world – the other life she knew she could never live – blew away on her breath as she sighed. The face looking back at her in the mirror was her own, with two human eyes set in the human skull of a young woman who had never felt more inhuman.
Ace closed the mirror, tossed it onto the bed, and retrieved her clothes. She started towards the door, but stopped herself as she reached for the handle.
‘No point,’ she mumbled.
In the time she had spent by his side, Ace learned that, although the Doctor had many qualms concerning violence, his clinical perspective hardened him to the more unpalatable occurrences across time and space. He had no reservations in condemning the horrors he encountered, but, having lived for several centuries, it was evident that he could weather the maelstroms of the universe with a seemingly effortless aptitude; Ace knew that an injured body was no less common to the Doctor’s lifestyle than a star in the endless void of space, and that, of all the untold billions of people in all of history, she was no exception.
‘Not like he noticed,’ Ace reminded herself. ‘Not like he’d care…’