Emma Chance is a character that popped up when I first started watching Doctor Who and never left. Let me know what you think of her! I don't have a beta, so all mistakes are mine (please tell me where they are so I can fix them). IMPORTANT: the only character I own in this story is Emma Chance. I also don't own Harry Potter, or the quote that will start the story (in 5... 4... 3... 2...).
"The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew."
-Robert Browning ~13~
A little nonsense tune was running through Emma Chance's head as she left the Doctor to his tinkering and went back to her room. Immediately, she felt something enter her head.
Are you all right?
"Fine. Bit tired," Emma smiled at the wall. "You?"
Fine, I suppose. I don't know how I'll be when he's finished tinkering, though.
Emma laughed. "Want me to stop him?"
It's all right. Coffee?
"You're an angel," Emma sighed. Her coffee addiction was a bit out of control, but hey, there were worse things to get addicted to.
The TARDIS left Emma's (extraordinary) mind to brew some coffee. Meanwhile, Emma absentmindedly began braiding and re-braiding her (natural) white-blond hair over her shoulder. Her dark chocolate eyes focused on the hallway.
Emma couldn't remember ever going very far into the long hallway. The farthest she had ever been was to the kitchen door. Sliding off her bed, she laced up her combat boots (in case of aliens coming to attack her- she was used to it by now) and headed out into the hallway.
Your coffee is in the kitchen.
"Thank you," Emma said as she gently patted the creamy wall.
After Emma grabbed her coffee, instead of going back to her bedroom, she turned in the opposite direction and walked down the long hallway. She supposed there were rooms in here that past companions had used, so she decided not to snoop too much.
The first door led to a room with a bunk bed (had the Doctor ever had children on the TARDIS?) and a dresser with a few pictures on it, all featuring a redhead woman and a smiling man laughing or kissing each other. Emma smiled, remembering how her parents had been the exact same way when they were with each other.
Before that day when all she had seen was red...
The mere thought of the evil color made Emma grab the TARDIS walls. She filled her thoughts with all things blue. Waterfalls. The ocean. The cable-knit sweater she was wearing that was the exact same color as the TARDIS. The TARDIS herself.
With all thoughts of Emma's least favorite color banished from her mind, Emma walked further down the hallway.
After bit of exploring, Emma found a room that looked like an attic full of broken things (Emma supposed that the Doctor had enjoyed tinkering with things throughout all of his lives, if her suspicion about what had happened to all these things was true), an enormous library (why was there a swimming pool in there?), another bathroom, and a TARDIS blue door that was locked. Emma decided it was the Doctor's and decided not to try to pick the lock (like she had with the library using only a bobby pin).
It was getting chilly. Emma opened the next door to find a room stuffed full of clothes. After a bit of searching, Emma had found a Stetson, a ridiculously loud jacket (Emma thought she'd go blind if the Doctor ever wore that hideous thing), a red fez, and a beautiful creamy green Victorian era dress with a bullet hole in it (Emma didn't even want to know what had happened there). Emma even found a nice, warm leather jacket that, when she put it on, nearly swallowed her tiny frame whole. Deciding to explore some more, Emma kept it on and walked out of the room, making sure to close the door behind her.
The next door had noises coming from the other side. Emma wondered if the Doctor had finished with his tinkering and gone looking for her.
Emma knocked loudly. "Doctor, you in there?"
No answer. Emma twisted open the doorknob and barged into the room.
Emma gasped softly when she took in her surroundings. It seemed to be some sort of greenhouse, but there was no roof. Tall trees the size of sequoias loomed over Emma, and all around were tropical plants, bright flowers, and vines that looked like Tarzan would swing through any minute. A hummingbird whizzed past Emma's nose. A slight buzzing made the forest come alive. Of course, that could have been coming from the cluster of white flowers to Emma's left that seemed a little out of place.
Emma walked over to them. They looked like little white bells, dangling from a minuscule green stem with only one small leaf. What made them strange was the fact that whenever something touched them, they bent up to the sky and blew puffs of fog into the air. When Emma ran her fingers through them, they sent enough fog in the air to make the whole forest looked like a fairy tale wood.
Emma smiled slightly. This place looked so much like her dreams of her mother and father being able to enjoy more than six short years together.
In her dreams, she would be turning four, and she and her friend Crystal would run off into the woods. Crystal would start making a chain from bushes with thorns instead of daisies, and Emma would pick the tallest tree and scamper up as high as she could go. Emma's parents would watch calmly from a bench made of brown vines all twisted together, and Mom would lean into Dad's shoulder, and Dad would constantly be on the lookout for the monsters. He would finger his strange necklace, and when Emma came down from the tree, he would take it off and give it to her. Mom would object because it's Dad's precious family heirloom, but by that time Emma would have run off to the nearest tall tree, and Crystal would race her up. Emma would win, even though she was four and short and Crystal was almost eight and tall. Mom would sing, and Dad would close his eyes and listen. Crystal would go "awwwwww" at the sweet scene, and Emma would watch from her tree and sketch it in her notebook.
The image faded from Emma's mind, but she could still imagine her mother's voice floating over the layer of fog that hovered near the soft, green ground.
Emma missed her parents enough to make her entire body ache sometimes. Anyone would have thought that she was ten instead of twenty-five. It was getting harder to remember her father's face; he had died when she was only four, after all. She could still picture her mother clearly, because she had died when Emma was eighteen.
But her voice...
Darrin Chance and Maria Locke were two peas in a pod from the moment they met. Really, Maria's grief hadn't been that much of a surprise to anyone. No one could have predicted the measure of it, though. Ever since that blood red day, the day Maria fainted when she saw the body... Maria never sang a note again.
Emma closed her eyes and once again worked to push red out of her mind.
With a gentle hum, the TARDIS was there. That was all Emma needed; she could picture the TARDIS clearly in her mind. Not a bit of red anywhere.
Emma's thoughts grew calmer, and eventually she found a hollowed-out tree to hide in. After climbing up thirty feet or so and finding a hollow knot, Emma shimmied her way into the enormous tree and curled up inside. The warm, gentle breeze brushed against Emma's cheeks, and slowly, her thoughts drifted into the galaxy as she faded into sleep.
~13~
"Emma!"
Where was she?
"Emma!" the Doctor called. "Emma, you won't believe what-"
The TARDIS hummed in his head.
"In the greenhouse?" the Doctor asked.
Up a tree, to be precise. She likes it there. Her mind is at peace.
"You mean to say Emma fell asleep?"
The TARDIS gave the mental equivalent of a nod.
"And she hasn't had any nightmares yet?"
Another mental nod.
"I'm going to find her. Care to help?"
Emma woke up to the sound of the leaves crashing and someone cursing. She jolted awake, only to have her head crash into the tree. Rubbing the top of her head and muttering curses under her breath, she stuck her head out of her little hiding place.
Sure enough, there was the Doctor, about ten feet down from where she was sitting.
"Doctor, be careful!" she called out. "That branch isn't steady!"
"Oh, now you tell me?!"
"Well, I'm sorry! I thought you'd like to know before you crash your way down!" She rolled her eyes. "Here." Emma took pity and helped him up. After closing her small hand on his, she pulled him up to the branch she was sitting on with surprising strength (the Doctor didn't think he'd ever get used to her doing that).
"Why'd you disappear like that?" he asked.
"Oh, just wanted to explore. I've never been past the kitchen," Emma shrugged.
Then, her eyes turned darker, and she stared off into the distance with the air of someone thinking about their past. The Doctor supposed this room reminded her of something... or someone.
He decided to leave her to her thoughts. Things got hurt if they interrupted her thoughts. Emma had a nasty tendency to punch people in the face when she got angry.
But, apparently, Emma did not want to be left alone with her thoughts, thank you very much.
"Where are you going?" Emma asked as the Doctor attempted to climb down the tree without ripping his jet-black suit. His bright red loafers kept slipping on the smooth branches.
"You're gonna fall and die if you keep trying to go down like that," Emma said with a smirk worthy of Draco Malfoy (and with that, the Doctor wondered if Emma would be a Slytherin or a Gryffindor). "Here. Like this."
With the speed of an acrobat (well, she was a stunt double, so in a way she was an acrobat), Emma somehow twisted her way down to where the Doctor was clinging to a branch for dear life.
Emma rolled her eyes. "Honestly! You can save the universe who knows how many times a day, but you can't climb a tree?"
"Must be the new body," the Doctor muttered to himself.
"What?" Emma looked at him.
"Nothing," he said quickly.
Emma's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing (the Doctor lies, after all). "Must be a ginger thing. I remember my friend Summer couldn't do it, either."
"You remember?"
"Dead," Emma said shortly. "War. She was twenty."
There was nothing else to be said.
The Doctor took a moment to reflect on Emma's childhood. Her neighbor's house had burned down when she was only one year old, and the effect had been that Emma's first word was "fire". Then, her father died when she was four. Then a few friends of hers had died (Emma hadn't told the Doctor what had happened to them, but he thought it had something to do with aliens). Then Summer. Then Emma's mother. Then Crystal, Emma's best friend of over twenty years. No wonder Emma thought she had no choice but to drive others away. He knew the feeling.
With a sudden epiphany, the Doctor noted something about Emma that he hadn't thought much about before. She always avoided the color red if she could avoid it.
What had happened to her friends?
He was pulled from his thoughts when he realized that a pair of small, warm hands were on top of his.
"Careful," Emma said. "Don't wanna fall from here. I doubt even your so-called Time Lord superiority could save you from this height."
The Doctor looked down. Emma was right; if he fell from here, he wouldn't ever be able to show Emma the planet that had inspired this room. Of course, he'd have to take her centuries back, before the Sontarans arrived to take over. Emma hated Sontarans with a passion after they made fun of her being little ("You're one to talk, Mr. Potato Head!" she had yelled, causing the Sontaran to fire at her and miss by centimeters).
"I'll show you where to put your hands," Emma said. "I've got a good instinct for that kind of thing."
She did. For some reason, Emma was a master of being quick and light on her feet in any situation. The Doctor tried to remember the last time he had detected her footsteps without straining his senses.
"Doctor, get your mind out of the stars and try to concentrate on not dying!" Emma said, exasperated.
He noted the tone of anger lying under her voice, and decided to concentrate on not dying, as requested by the woman who hated red and climbed trees like she lived in them (knowing her history of running away, she probably had at some point). The woman who had kept his mind from going to dark, evil places when someone died and he blamed himself with a few simple, well chosen words. The woman who had seemed to be the female version of Draco Malfoy until she finally decided to tentatively trust the Doctor.
The woman who could sing just like her mother, and sang only to people who were wounded and needed a distraction while she healed them.
All right. Concentrating now.
"You're doing fine." Emma muttered words of encouragement as the Doctor slowly worked his way down the tree.
Suddenly, one of the Doctor's shoes slipped off, and he fell down the last five feet and landed into a bush with dark purple lily-shaped flowers that made little twinkling sounds when they moved.
Emma sat on a branch, completely stunned at the sudden fall, while the Doctor untangled himself from the bush that seemed to want to eat his tie (red, to match his loafers, much to Emma's exasperation). After a bit of struggling and lots of swearing in Gallifreyan, he managed to push himself out of the bush.
The Doctor watched as Emma's shocked face formed into a smirk, and then a grin. Then, she did something that seemed to make the floor shake under his feet.
She threw her head back, closed her eyes, and laughed hard to enough to start shaking. She was grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and she swung her legs back and forth like a child. It was then that he realized she had his old leather jacket on.
"Not funny!" he yelled, but he couldn't deny the smile inching across his face. Emma laughed even more now, the sound of it soaring through the trees.
She dropped to the ground with graceful ease and handed the Doctor his shoe with another one of her classic smirks.
"Thanks, Ms. Malfoy," the Doctor smirked back.
"What?" Emma looked at him in confusion.
He tried to explain, and Emma smiled.
"Oh, yeah. Love that series."
"You actually read all the books?" he asked. Emma didn't seem like the reading type. More like the director behind the scenes or something.
"'Course," she said. "Watched all the movies, too."
"Which house are you in?"
"Slytherin or Gryffindor," Emma said immediately. "I belong in both and yet I couldn't stand either. Gryffindor is great and all, but..."
"Red?"
Emma shuddered. "But I can't stand silver, either. I'm not a Hufflepuff because I'm too mean. I'm not in Ravenclaw because I'm clever, not smart. I'm in Slytherin because I've got ambition and I like revenge. I'm in Gryffindor because I'm brave. I think I'm more of a Slytherin than any other house."
Emma took a moment to pause. "It's a good thing, though. The only parts I can't stand are the silver and the snakes."
The Doctor looked at her, a smile inching on his face. "You're afraid of snakes?"
Emma glared at him. "You're afraid of me, but I don't make fun of you for that."
The Doctor backed of immediately. The last thing he needed or wanted right now was an argument with Emma Chance (to be fair, she did remind the Doctor uncannily of Jackie Tyler when she yelled, and of River when she took aim).
He decided to listen to her. One thing about Emma: if she trusted you, and you listened, she would spill out her soul.
So he listened to her stories of her childhood of running away with Crystal, science experiments with Jane, a love-hate relationship with Julian, and mini-therapy sessions with Nadia and Katie. She had other friends too: Jackson, Maddie, Summer, Todd, and a very strange woman named Miss Annie who lived in a lighthouse and called everyone she met a "muppet". She explained why she liked trees so much (it was only part of her fascination with high places). She told him about the day her father gave her the necklace that she wore every day without fail. She even told him about one of her many scars, this one over her right knee.
"I was at Miss Annie's," Emma explained, "with Maddie and Summer. We had just met Todd, and he gave us directions to his house. Problem was, the only way we knew that went to his house was a rocky beach." Emma sighed. "Suffice it to say I managed to live up to your theory about me being jeopardy-friendly."
"How many scars do you have, anyway?"
"Twenty-five," Emma said immediately. "One for every year I've been alive. I expect I'll be getting a twenty-sixth soon. Oh, shit!"
That last part was because Emma had accidentally stepped on one of the fog flowers, which tilted to the sky and blew out enough mist to blind Emma and the Doctor completely.
"I think the door was that way," the Doctor pointed.
"Which way?"
"That way!" he gestured again.
"Seriously, where?"
"Can't you see me pointing?"
"Doctor, I can't even see your face, and you were right next to me thirty seconds ago. Where are you?"
"Wait, don't move!" the Doctor said frantically.
"Why?" Emma asked. "Can't you hear her?"
"Who?"
"The TARDIS. Duh. Who else could I possibly be talking about?"
"Why can't I hear her?"
Emma paused for a moment. "She's weaker in here. She can only talk to one of us."
"Then why is she talking to you?" the Doctor asked, brimming with indignation.
Another pause. "I have no idea. Probably because I'd never listen to you if you told me where to go. Anyway, she said this way."
"Where are you?" the Doctor asked.
"Hang on."
In a moment, something in the fog began flashing. Emma was using her pocket torch. She tilted her necklace back and forth, creating flashing when the light of her torch hit it just right.
"Did I ever mention how wonderful you can be sometimes?" he asked her once she grabbed his hand.
"No, but I have," Emma grinned. "Hang on." She paused. "The TARDIS says she's switching over to you. Stronger connection or something."
Sure enough, in a moment, the doctor felt her reassuring presence in his mind.
"All right, old girl," he said softly. "Let's get out of here."
Later that day, after a disastrous trip to a beach planet where the water had seemed to want to kill Emma, the Doctor sat in the library and tried to figure out why the water was homicidal. Emma, meanwhile, sipped some coffee the Doctor had offered as an apology and read a book about the weapons in the Andromeda galaxy.
"Huh. Instant death." Emma would mutter things like that under her breath every once in a while and make a note in her sketchbook. then she would flip to the next page, and the Doctor would wonder which weapon she was reading about.
"Roasts enemies... boiling water... manure? That's disgusting... with a mallet..."
Still, the Doctor wondered about Emma. What had happened to her to change her from the sweet little girl he had seen in a picture to the woman she was? Her eyes were old, much like his in the weight they carried. Obviously, Summer and Crystal weren't the only friends of Emma's that were dead now. Something horrifying must have happened. It would have had to have happened early on in Emma's childhood, because she had been a bit mean even as a five-year-old. She may have told him the finer details, but he was nowhere near the final picture. It was like the time he told Martha what Gallifrey looked like and left out the part about how it had been destroyed.
Clearly, Emma didn't trust him completely yet.
That was probably a good thing for her, but the Doctor was starting to wonder if Emma didn't have a mental disorder. Her fear of snakes and all things red and silver were the biggest clues. What did humans call it? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
But in order to have PTSD, you have to have gone through a traumatic experience in the first place...
What was going on with Emma Chance?
~13~
Emma calmly flipped through her weaponry book and jotted down little notes in her father's old notebook.
She was quite aware of the Doctor watching her, trying to understand her past.
Too bad she'd never tell him any of the important things, the things he'd need to know to understand her completely. The only person who had ever had that honor was Crystal, and she was long gone.
Emma would never tell anyone what had happened to her, even if a dalek was threatening to shoot her with those weird whisk things.
She couldn't. It was too dangerous. She'd bring danger on herself and the Doctor if she ever told him about the monsters that she now suspected were aliens.
Right now, she was only making notes about certain types of weapons she would have to watch out for. If they contained anything silver, she needed to stay as far away from them as she could.
Silver was the color of the monsters. Red was the color that they fed on. So, silver and red were off limits to Emma. Now, blue and gold... those were a different matter.
Before she could focus too much on a blood red color that was about to take over head, she pictured the TARDIS and its wonderful blue color. All thoughts of blood and red disappeared from Emma's mind.
She was glad for that. The last thing she needed now was a flashback.
Her father's face swam up in her vision. Quickly, Emma closed her weaponry book and her notebook and took out a spare piece of paper.
She had to draw her father so she would never forget him.
White blonde hair like hers. Narrow, icy, blue-silver eyes that practically screamed troublemaker. A Malfoy smirk to rival Emma's.
The final essential piece of Emma's father was Emma's mother; doe-eyes and pale and dark brown, burly hair, at his side through thick and thin, humming little nonsense tunes all the way.
Emma smiled. She had decided long ago that she would never marry unless she found a love as strong as her parents'.
Emma leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and smiled despite the fact that she felt like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders.
~13~
Emma had fallen asleep. Careful to make sure he didn't peek at anything in the notebooks she had left lying open, the Doctor flipped them closed and asked the TARDIS to make Emma's seat big enough for her to lie down in. He also asked for a blanket and a warm cup of coffee when she woke up. Rassilion knew the universe would end if Emma Chance woke up without coffee within a five foot radius.
The Doctor tucked the blanket over her tiny figure, brushed her hair out of her face, and left quickly to pretend he hadn't just done that.
No nightmares for Emma that night. When she woke up that morning, she sent the TARDIS a silent thank-you for keeping the nightmares away.
~13~
The TARDIS, meanwhile, decided to take a short break. Keeping Emma's dreams calm and positive instead of terrifying all night long was hard work, even with a mind as open as Emma's was.
She also decided to put the forest room and Emma's room near the Doctor's, just in case. The TARDIS suspected her Doctor was in over his head when it came to Emma Chance, but this human girl was worth the risk.
The TARDIS made a happy humming noise when Emma knocked on the Doctor's door later, and he yelled, "Come in!"
~Fin~
Hope you liked it! Please leave comments on Emma and let me know if you'd be interested in reading more about her. If I'm working on her entire story now (it'll be a long one), but I'm weird in that I really hate working on my stories in chronological order. So I've got most of the chapters done except for the ones at the beginning... drag. I'll start publishing the story once I'm almost done with it so there won't be any gaps, but I'll work and publish faster if you review. I love reviews...
On that final note... anyone catch my (minuscule) Monty Python easter egg?
Love you all! -carrie