"What's happening?"
"There's another TARDIS materializing-"
"-in the same spot we are."
"That's absurd."
"Don't you have some sort of defense-"
"-something to stop this from happening."
"Of course there is!"
"It's not working."
She woke up to a the smell of a hospital. She hated that smell. There was nowhere else that ever smelled like it. After a moment she opened her eyes and looked around. There was a row of beds on both sides of the room. Her bed looked to be in the middle. Carefully she pulled back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. "No slippers. What kind of hospital doesn't leave you slippers? Am I just supposed to walk around on the cold floor?"
"You're not supposed to walk around at all." She jumped at the new voice answering her question. Turning she saw a nurse walking towards her. Least she thought it was a nurse. It had a certain nurseiness about it. As much as a giant mantis could anyways. "You've been unconscious for three days. We were beginning to worry about you."
"What happened?" She tried not to panic. "Where's the Doctor? Where is this place?"
"You're in the medical wing. There was an explosion in loading bay 3A. No one was killed although there were quite a lot of injuries." The nurse gave her an inquisitive look. "We show no record of any doctors, but you're the second person to ask about one."
"Second person? Who's the other one?" Lucie started to get up, cold floor or no cold floor.
"A girl named Charley." The nurse pushed her back down into the bed. "Right now you need to stay in bed. I'm going to check your vitals and get you some food. Then you can talk to this Charley."
Reluctantly she agreed. It had waited three days already another few hours wouldn't hurt she supposed. However, she fell asleep soon after she ate the food the nurse provided for her. It was an unknown amount of time later that she woke up to a light humming and the soft sound of pages turning. Opening her eyes she looked to the side of the bed where a girl was sitting. Something must have alerted her to that fact that Lucie was awake as she looked over. She carefully marked her page and said smiling, "I'm Charlotte Pollard, but please call me Charley."
"Lucie Miller." She sat up in the bed to get a better look at the girl. "You're the one that was asking about the Doctor."
"I'm not the only one. Or so they tell me." The girl smiled at her.
"Yeah. I was traveling with the Doctor." Lucie smiled back at her and then asked the question that had been bothering her since she first woke up, "Do you know what happened to him?"
"I'm very much afraid I do." Charley suddenly looked sad, but she continued, "I was traveling with the Doctor as well. A different Doctor obviously. The last thing I remember before waking up here was the TARDIS shaking and the cloister bell ringing non stop. The Doctor said something about two TARDISes materializing in the same spot."
"Yeah, that's what my Doctor said as well." Lucie suddenly understood what Charley was telling her. "You mean that the explosion was caused by them materializing in the same spot? You don't think the Doctor lived through it do you? Either of him."
"No, it doesn't seem likely. He wasn't recovered from the explosion and they've cleared all the debris out now. What worries me is that clearly one of the Doctors was older than the other. If they both died then that creates a rather worrisome paradox."
"Right." Lucie replied working it out as she spoke, "Because if the Doctor died at a earlier point in time then the other Doctor wasn't alive to materialize at the same time. Kinda makes my head hurt."
"If I wasn't so used to being in the middle of time paradoxes I would agree with you." Charley let out a small laugh.
"So what do we do now?" Lucie asked. She didn't know what to think, the Doctor was dead and she was stuck somewhere a long way from Earth. She was more then willing to let someone else take control at this point.
"First I'll go see if you can get signed out yet." Charley stood up and put her book on her chair. "Then we'll see about getting you a place to stay and a job. After that I don't know."
It took a little over an hour to get her released from the medical ward. When she was finally released Charley met her with some new clothes and some papers. "They don't have any spare living quarters right now so you're going to have to share with me. There were several job opening but I didn't think you'd want to work in food service or janitorial so I signed you up for the problem solving team."
"I don't mind sharing with you. Right now I'd rather share then be by myself really." Lucie took the papers from Charley and looked through them. "What are these?"
Charley started telling her as they walked down the hall towards their quarters, "The top sheet is your bill to the clinic. Don't worry they let you pay in installments. The next sheet is your work description. Where to show up tomorrow, what to bring, those sorts of things. The one after that should be your temporary ID card. That'll let you get into our suite as well as get food and access the parts of the station you'll need to get to."
Lucie flipped through the papers again, trying to get a handle on just what was going on. "What is this place? Why aren't we being questioned about the explosion? It can't be usual for two girls to show up out of nowhere after an explosion."
"It's not usual no. Not after an explosion at least." Charley looked at her as though she was attempting to share a joke. "This place is the Maracot Centre. The galaxy's largest independent convention center. The entire place is one big space station in the middle of an unpopulated solar system."
"Convention center?" She stopped in the hall and turned in a circle. "Like where Star Trek geeks go to mate? This place?"
Charley nodded her head. "I'm not sure what Star Trek geeks are, but I think I get what you're saying. People come from all over the galaxy to hold conventions outside of any political influence. Apparently it can be a rather hard thing to do in this time period." Charley grabbed her arm and pulled her along to get her moving again. They stopped a few feet later in front of a lift. It was a short wait until they got on and started going up.
"Okay, so this is a bit weird." Lucie was silent for the rest of the ride up the lift, but continued once they got off. "Still doesn't explain why no one is asking questions about us being here."
"Apparently most of the staff comes from people who can't leave after their convention is over." She turned down an adjoining hallway. "There are a lot of different reasons and since the explosion damaged some of the computer records it was easy enough to pretend that we were both at a convention and didn't have the money to pay for a ride home."
They stopped outside one of the doors. "This is it then?"
"Yes, just wave your ID at the scanner," Charley demonstrated for her. The door opened with a quiet whoosh and they walked in. "There is only one bedroom. The couch is quite comfortable though and I'm sure we can get something brought up later."
Lucie walked over to the couch and sat down. It was comfortable. Suddenly everything seemed to hit her at once. The Doctor was dead and she was stuck in the middle of space on some sort of station to make a new life with only a girl she barely knew for company. She didn't realize she was crying until Charley put her arms around her. She heard a barely whispered "I know" in her hair before the sobs took over. After a while the tears stopped and she looked up to see Charley's face just as wet and messed up from crying as she knew hers was.
"Aren't we a sight?" Lucie asked as she started to untangle herself from Charley.
Charley laughed at her and smiled. "If I look anything like you do then I'm sure we are. Thank you. I haven't let myself cry since I woke up. It was all too much and I thought if I started I would never stop."
Later Lucie was never able to figure out just how it happened. Charley had her hand on her face wiping away the last of her tears and she started to stand up. Lucie was still sitting on her skirt though and she fell back onto the couch, landing on Lucie and pushing her back into it. Their faces were millimeters apart and it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean up and kiss her. Charley pulled back and looked at her. Before she had a chance to start apologizing Charley smiled and leaned forward.
Things just seemed to go on from there. Her job turned out to be rather fun. There was no set job criteria, but if something went wrong they were expected to find a way to fix it. There were normal and somewhat simple problems like when the Captain Cosmotron convention goers refused to leave when their rented time was up. Then there were bizarre ones that had her and Charley laughing over at dinner like when the Flatware Appreciation Society and the Flatware Liberation Front almost started a riot in the cafeteria of C Wing. Amazingly enough Lucie found herself enjoying her new life. Her relationship with Charley actually became a relationship. It may have started as two people joined in grief but it certainly didn't end there.
That was of course when everything started to go horribly wrong.
"What the hell is it?" Lucie shouted into her communicator as she ran down the hall towards Convention Hall 34.
"We don't know." The voice that came back to her was almost unrecognizable due to the panic it carried. Lucie ran faster. Brent never got scared.
"Well give me a description or something." She had to keep him talking. She wasn't sure what she'd do when she got there, but she had to do something.
"It's a light. Get those doors close-" the radio turned into nothing but static.
"Light? What does he mean light?" She found her answer as she turned the last corner. A brilliant white light engulfed the corridor. With a curse she covered her eyes and dove across to the panel on the next wall. She quickly overrode the security and forced an emergency shut down of Hall 34. Alarms started sounding immediately and the security doors slid slowly closed. Just before they slid shut the light disappeared showing nothing but empty space. Lucie slid across the floor trying to grab something to stop her from flying out into space as well as the hallway depressurized. With a shriek she hit the doors just as they sealed shut.
Two hours later and they had lost ten more Halls as well as all of the docking bays. As many people as possible had been shoved into the emergency escape pods before those were lost as well. It still left far too many people stranded on the station. Lucie was pacing outside of the main conference room drinking a cup of coffee when Charley found her. She walked up and took the cup from her and set it on the floor before wrapping her arms around Lucie and resting her head on her shoulder. Lucie brought her arms up around her and squeezed as tight as she could without hurting Charley. They stood together, not talking, for a few minutes before separating. Lucie bent to pick up her cup, "Thanks, I needed that."
"So did I." Charley again appropriated the cup of coffee and took a sip. "Things have been crazy. The people who didn't manage to get out in one of the escape pods are demanding we find a way for them to leave. They're acting like we have a secret way out of here and have just decided not to share."
"I know what you mean." Lucie sighed and then stole the coffee back. "People keep calling in and demanding to know what sort of progress we've made. They won't believe me when I tell them we don't know what's going on much less how to stop it."
"I think I know." Charley barely whispered the words before abruptly sitting on the floor. "I think Time is trying to fix itself."
Lucie sat down next to the wall and pulled Charley over to sit between her legs, "You mean to fix the paradox."
"Yes." Charley said the word like it would bring the light to them right then and there. "I don't have any proof, but it feels right and if traveling with the Doctor taught be anything it was to trust my feelings."
"You're right. It does feel like the answer." Lucie did her best to wrap around Charley, "There's nothing we can do about it though is there?"
"I don't think there is." Charley said as she bit back a sob. "All these people are dying and there's nothing we can do. Nothing."
"No, we can do one thing." Lucie unwrapped herself from Charley and stood up. Reaching down she grabbed Charley's hand and pulled her to her feet, "I can take you back to our rooms and make love to you one last time. There's nothing we can do here, we can't stop Time, but we can say goodbye."
Charley nodded her head in reply and started to walk down the hall towards their rooms. "You're right. I want to stay and fight to the end, but we can't fight this. There's nothing to fight. Everyone who can be saved have been saved."
It was an unknown amount of time later that they woke up to the room shaking. "What's going to happen now?" Lucie asked as the room trembled again.
Charley rolled over to her side, looking down at her as they lay on the bed. "I don't know. We're in the middle of a paradox and the universe doesn't like paradoxes."
"Two TARDISes aren't supposed to be able to materialize in the same space either. Least not and have anyone survive," Lucie looked up at Charley as she spoke. The room was shaking again and this time the blinding white light started to seep through the cracks. They thought the light would destroy them. Grabbing Charley quickly pulled her into a desperate kiss as the light overwhelmed them.