Title: Blast Shadows
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-to-Harmless?
Disclaimer: Not mine, take no credit, earn no fee.
Pairing/Characters: Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, Rory Williams (sort of)
Summary: The TARDIS is a place built from memory, and sometimes her ghosts have something a little less like ectoplasm and a little more like flesh.
Spoilers: For season five of New Who.
Writer's Note: I wanted to post something for Halloween involving ghostliness, but the only thing I could come up with was this. I remember reading the 10th Doctor adventure, The Eyeless and being very intrigued by… Well, I'll try not to spoil that novel for you. Trust me, it's worth a read. This was started during a rainy afternoon in August, and left in mothballs until I thought "Hey this would make for an interesting Halloween post!" It's not especially spooky of Halloweenish, I missed the actual date by a couple of days, and… I dunno, if there's a philosophical point in here somewhere then I'm not sure what it is… but what the heck, it works for me and I like it. Thanks to Trunks for the quick beta.

Blast Shadows.

The first time the Doctor sees him, it's not long after their trip to Arcadia. The shadow is standing by one of the book cases, with his back to the door. It –he's only there for a moment: just long enough to twitch his head and notice the Doctor acknowledging him. The Doctor imagines the spasm of surprise that would have passed over the shadow's shoulders. He hears the questions that would've been forming on his tongue if any of this were real. Neither of those things happens, and less than a second later the image vanishes.

And alright, he admits it: he's surprised. He's used to the impossible, so used to it that everything he sees bears a striking resemblance to a back garden unless he has someone to share it with, for whom it's all still new. But this is impossible on quite a different scale; the scale which shares space with creaky floorboards in abandoned old houses, shadows in the mirrors, and things in the dark without any names. It's not unheard of for dead people to be found wandering in old, familiar places (and there was nowhere older or more familiar to his companions than the TARDIS). But having people who never even existed there is a little more disturbing.

He's been around humans for so long that it's probably quite understandable for him to start picking up rather human traits; like rationalising you're hallucinating people who never existed in the library, for example. So naturally, the Doctor does the most human thing he can think of: he decides to bide his time, finds the book he wants, and leaves.

When he gets back to the Console room he drops the act, runs every test, every examination and every type of scan he can possibly think of (over a hundred, not even including the psychic ones), and at the end of three hours he has nothing to show for it. The Doctor isn't one to doubt his senses, however. He keeps the event in the back of his mind.

The TARDIS has nothing to say, and he doesn't ask.

When it's Amy's turn to pick their destination, she already knows where she wants to go.

Or at least, she has a general idea of it. She leaves the specifics up to him. So he specifies the planet, continent and landmass, and sets the randomiser going, figuring he can blame any coming events on the TARDIS.

The TARDIS is pedantic about her landing, splitting hairs over her location, deliberating for longer than usual before finally locking down. Strange, she hasn't done that for a few hundred years. At first, when he realises where they are, he doesn't see why she was being so fussy. There's nothing worth seeing in the desert. It's just sand, rocks, sand, coarse shrubbery, and did he mention sand? Maybe the occasional Iguana or rocky highway to orient you, but that's about it. There's nothing else for as far as a twenty first century automobile can run on a single tank of petrol.

Naturally though, the TARDIS still found them something to look at. It just takes him a moment to notice. 'Ah! Look, they're running tests over there.' He nods at something too far away for Amy to see amidst the dusty landscape. 'Don't worry, perfectly safe. Just humans being humanish.'

'No children crying?' Amy asks with a smile.

'No children crying,' The Doctor confirms. 'No children full stop, in fact. There's nothing out here but dust, bugs, and the primary weapons testing zone of the North American Military. Well… For a good portion of the twentieth century, anyway.'

Amy nods slowly. 'Okay… So when are we, exactly?'

She's getting rather good at asking the right questions: "when are we", rather than "where"; "why is he running?" instead of "what's that thing with lots of teeth and three eyes chasing after him?" 'Look over there,' he says, and points directly ahead of them.

Amy looks around, scanning the desert for some hint or clue to where they are. She seems to find said hint in the distant eye-squinting sight of the barbed wire fence, at least half a mile in front of them.

The second time the Doctor sees him he's in the Wardrobe. A thousand old, ugly coats that his previous self had for some godforsaken reason liked rattle on their hangers as he shoves them aside and suddenly, there he is.

Once again, it's brief –no more than a flicker, like a camera flash in a dark room. Except that the room is airy and bright, and it's a lot harder this time to dismiss what he sees as a figment of his imagination. He's there barely long enough to make out the ghost's face: or whatever passes for its face. He doesn't seem as caught off guard as he did in the library. His posture is casual and maybe even on the brink of laughter. The echo of sight is accompanied by a resonant of sound: a not quite chuckle in the air.

He considers what it might be –a replaying memory, maybe? That's what a lot of ghosts turn out to be. But he can't remember it, and… well, he remembers everything doesn't he? Even things which never happened.

If this is a figment of his imagination (and he isn't for one moment convinced that it is), then it's an uncannily persistent one.

'Just when you asked: 21st century earth, your late history. I set the console for Nevada, and the TARDIS picked the rest out of her bag of tricks. This iiiis…' he sticks out a finger in the air, measuring. '1962; I think it's May... Yes, definitely May. Which means they'll be starting any minute now.'

'Yeah, that being cryptic thing we talked about, Doctor? You're doing it again.'

'Am I?' he blinks. He's so used to the sensation of timelines congealing and solidifying as he arrives and leaves each place. It's strange, but he forgets sometimes that such connections don't come naturally to humans. Linear species like them have a bit of trouble with time travel, unless they have something to orient themselves –some pivotal event or historical figure, or at least something or someone they can identify with even if it's alien. They cling on tight to what they know to keep themselves grounded. His time sense is funny like that; it never quite solidifies until he's landed.

The TARDIS had set them down a safe distance away of course, but they should still be close enough to play witness. He can feel a sullen, yet controlled tension bristling through the desert sand. The earth turning beneath their feet. Things like that are always easier to feel in places like this, with fewer minds and events to distract him from the Here and Now.

He remembers what happened the last time he threw a companion into something like this without clarifying things beforehand, so this time around he tells Amy exactly where they are, and what's about to happen.

Her nervousness only shows for a moment. 'Oh, that.'

'Yes, that. Well, one of them anyway. Like I said, nothing will come of it. It's a Fixed Point.' She understands this of course; has probably done her homework, but he tells her anyway. This one will be the Dominic II Run, he thinks without saying so aloud. It comes just after the Nougat Run, but just before the Storax. He grins. Only humans would name this kind of thing after confectionary. 'Want to stay?'

'Would it be a bit weird if I said yes?' Amy frowns, but the Doctor isn't confused. It's not morbid fascination that makes her want to stick round, or even the curiosity that sometimes draws her kind to the edge of cliffs. It's something else. Something he saw burning in her eyes the very instant he met her.

'It might be a bit loud.'

She looks at him. 'You're worried about the noise?'

'Very loud, then. Your ears might pop.' He shrugs.

She thinks about it for a moment. 'Alright, let's stay. Just for a couple of minutes.'

'Personally, if I were a human living in early twenty-third century earth, I'd start investing shares in Yellowstone,' the Doctor yells over the console. He usually enjoys this part of the journey; the way he can feel time and space shifting right at the very corner of his awareness, the way his companions laugh as they're almost thrown off their feet. But this time the Doctor doesn't particularly notice the journey.

He's not imagining it. He knows that for sure now. But for the sake of his passenger and his ship, he's pretending. Which is a sensation that bothers him; tickling away at the corners of his brain the way Jack does whenever he's close enough. He is not accustomed to ignoring things or pretending they don't exist.

He'll deal with it when the time is right, he thinks. Not a moment sooner.

'As in the National Park?' Amy grins, striking the green panel with the hammer as he instructed.

'That's the one. But it's not just a National Park. It a National Park with a stonking big area of extremely volatile volcanic activity going on directly underneath it! Soon as you humans get the hang of thermal power it in the mid twenty-fourth century you start making good use of it, too. Wanna check it out?' He looks at her, eyes shining, already knowing what her answer will be. 'They build the first lab there.'

'On top of it?' Amy asks. 'But it's a National Park.'

'No, no, not on top of the park, beneath it. No rules about that. And we're talking at least 100 metres underground here. The surface is mostly unaffected. Imagine it, Amy, huge underground buildings with heavily reinforced glass walls, completely transparent! Magma boiling away on one side while people hold board meetings and coffee breaks on the other. Huge turbines buried miles below the earth… Also, there's a very nice lady in the cafeteria named Diana, who makes me tea whenever I visit. Shame we're not allowed to invest. You can't imagine all the companies that spring up around those hot springs.' He grins at his own pun, and Amy rolls her eyes. Then someone leans forwards, laughing against her hair…

The Doctor tilts away from the console.

He'd taken Ace here once, he thinks. He'd had a silly umbrella and bad taste in hats. The time before that he'd been fond of wearing celery, and Adric had spent hours poring over the plans of the Underground labs, working out how they'd done it.

All those deaths, all those long gone… why was it that the one person to appear before him now was the one who had never existed?

Amy looks up at him, frowning. If she was aware of the presence, she doesn't show it. Even the TARDIS herself gives no outward sign that she was aware of it.

They stay long enough to see, hear and feel the first explosion shuddering across the desert, the mushroom cloud expanding into the skies above their heads.

It makes his blood run cold. Even though it's barely a splinter in the fingertip of time: not even a fraction as powerful as the Time War, or the weapon which had fractured history all across the galaxy and torn two worlds and everyone in them into nonexistence. Cosmically this is little more than a pinprick, not even something that would scar over. The flow of time continues all around them, unmoved by this display of human violence, mostly because there were so few people close enough to feel it.

It's like that old saying. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, who's to say it made a sound? No people here, so no sound. No imprint on time. Not yet at least, though even a pinprick can fester and bleed. As this one will, for a little while, before the Reapers close the wound and cauterise it behind them. Still, people will know of this, one day. People will remember.

He sees Amy's lips moving around the word "amazing", and at the same time, she's obviously wondering just how on earth she can think such a thing. She looks at him. 'Why do I think that? Even knowing what it is?'

'Because it is.' The Doctor shrugs. The truth won't satisfy her but it's all the answer he can give. 'In the same way volcanoes are beautiful if you're watching from a distance.'

They stay and watch the clouds rising and rolling together for a little longer.

'Are you awake?' he asks, and it's half a joke because TARDIS'S don't sleep. Not the Type Forty variations, anyway. Her hum is soft and almost reassuring. He walks slowly down the steps into the console room, wiping the still warm Yellowstone ash from his hands and listening to the quiet, familiar humming all around him. He keeps glimpsing around, but sees nothing. 'Good. I'm here to talk to you. About that little blast shadow of yours?'

The whirring of the TARDIS changes in pitch. How funny, that she should be trying to comfort him. 'Of course I miss him! I'm the only one who can… except for you, apparently. You do remember him, don't you? Rory Williams? Nice bloke, big nose, funny jacket, not very good at being impressed? Eaten by a crack in time and space not two weeks ago?'

The TARDIS keeps humming in his brain. But now, rather than comforting she seems nervous and distracted. He can't blame her. 'You shouldn't do it, you know… You can't. Not to him.'

The hum changes again, slightly. For him, it's the equivalent of a kookaburra interrupting an orchestra. He winces. The TARDIS doesn't know much more about the ghost than he does, and she can't help it, any more than a cave can help the voices that echo from its depths. Any more than humans can help time slipping around them.

He'd almost allowed himself to believe that she had forgotten too, that even the TARDIS was fallible and that a boy named Rory Williams had been wiped away from her along with the rest of the world. It was a desperate, ridiculous assumption, but he's tried to convince himself it was true anyway. He didn't like the alternative.

And the alternative, of course, is probably the truth. Humans call it Murphy's Law. One day in the distant future, many species across the galaxy will refer to it as "The Human Factor".

In another time and place (any time and place, rather than here stuck in the Vortex with only a sleeping human, a distressed TARDIS and a non-existent ghost for company), that could be funny.

'So.' Amy says, eventually. 'You couldn't have landed us somewhere nice and tame, with lizards for company?'

The Doctor raises an eyebrow. 'Amy Pond? Nice and tame? Not words I would usually consider putting together in the same sentence. Unless the word "not" has been inserted between them.'

'Oh, shush. Even in a desert you find us trouble.' She says, her eyes looking right through him, as if she's seeing everything so clearly that there's no sense in trying to lie about anything. It's an illusion, of course. No human being has ever been able to look through him like that, though one or two had gotten disconcertingly close to it over the years.

One of those people no longer existed. Hadn't existed, he reminds himself. Retroactive terminology is still in place.

'Hey, I didn't choose to set us down here you know; that was herself's doing.' He pats the side of the TARDIS. 'You asked for Nevada. I gave you Nevada…'

'Yeah, but you gave us the desert. I was expecting casinos and flashily lights and stuff.'

'That's Vegas; if you wanted Vegas you should've been more specific.'

'Vegas is on the other side of this desert! You gave me rocks, sand, and a nuclear explosion. In the sixties!'

'I repeat: not me. TARDIS. Don't blame me for where the Randomizer sees fit to drop us.'

Amy tuts good naturedly and looks back to where the mushroom cloud is thinning out, as if stretched by invisible hands, like liquid dough. It's already fading, but it won't be gone for a while. 'It really is kind of beautiful, isn't it? You know… for burning death.' She shivers. 'I wouldn't want to see what it leaves behind.'

'Not much, at its heart. Not really. A few shattered buildings on the outskirts of the blast; melted plastics, fallout… shadows shaped like people, burned into the pavements.'

Amy frowns more deeply, fingers curling within his. Then she sighs and her expression changes from contemplative to excited, like a chameleon changing its skin. 'And here I was assuming a desert would be tame and quiet. With tumbleweeds.'

'Well we do have tumbleweeds. Look, there's one over there. And one of my previous companion's first trips involved the destruction of her planet,' he says as lightly as he can, given the subject matter. 'By comparison, this IS tame and quiet.'

'Oh, I see. So this is a second rate explosion for a second rate companion is it?' she sounds annoyed but she is smiling as she speaks; the laughter in her eyes reminding him of why he does this every time.

'Don't be daft. Who else would I find to watch tumbleweeds with me?'

'I don't know. Someone, probably.' Amy squeezes his hand tightly, and they watch as the thickness in the air far over their heads disperses, and the clouds are sucked back up into the empty sky, and disappear.

TARDIS's are peculiar beasts/machines. Aware enough to notice things and to program themselves, but not alive enough to weep in rage or fear. Still, that's what it feels like to him right now. As if his ship is screeching in confusion. The pain of it swallows him whole for a moment, and he is left gasping, trying desperately to understand.

'I'm… sorry. I know it's not your fault. It's not…' He sighs, pressing his forehead up against her wall. 'You don't understand any more than I do. I'm just a little unnerved, that's all. Dead people become ghosts, sort of; alien races out of temporal sync with the rest of the universe become ghosts. People who worked for Torchwood for extended periods sometimes turn into them, too. But people who never existed…?' He runs a hand raggedly through his hair. 'That one's going to take some puzzling over, isn't it?'

There are a few moments of near companionable silence before she whirs out another silent almost-comment. 'No. Don't think like that. Of course I haven't. Come on now, when do I ever give up on them? But there's not giving up and there's something happening which shouldn't be, and I'm not sure which category this one fits into yet.'

Another comment tickling his mind. The Doctor laughs. 'Oh, alright, so it's a bit silly to compare a Crack in time and space and a few erased events to a nuclear explosion… Or…' he lifts his head from her wall, frowning slightly in realisation. 'Maybe it isn't. I understand how it works, you know. But all a bomb would do is wipe out the body… the Cracks wipe out the very memory of it. And that's why he can't be here, you see. There shouldn't be anything, not blast shadows, not memories. Otherwise sooner or later Amy will catch on and… well, you'll frighten her, not that that's an easy thing to do.'

The TARDIS seems to whisper in understanding; confusion and nervousness creeping in tendrils around the corners of his brain. 'You're frightening me a bit right now actually. Why's he here? Why is a blast shadow hanging around where it shouldn't be? It's an echo, that's all… just an echo.'

This isn't the question he wants to ask. Not really. What he wants to ask is "how can we make the memory solid again? How can we bring back flesh and bone, undo the mushroom cloud?" But the TARDIS has no answers for these questions. Even if she did there's no saying she could give it to him.

Amy finds him half an hour later, forehead still pressed against the metal (or whatever it is) wall. She sees him sitting in the stillness and silence, and immediately feels as if she's intruding on something private, something that nobody else should see. So she turns around and tiptoes out of the room without a word.

He next day she'll pretend she was never there and he'll pretend he didn't notice her.

Fin.