There is a story which explains quite neatly and in perfect innocence why I am wearing a soaking wet dressing gown and towelling my hair in a locked room with a young lady who literally just fainted from terror and is now unconscious. There was a time and a place for that story, but it is not now. Suffice to say it involves my wife, and her parents. Conspiracy, it is. They're all against me. Once more I am to be held prisoner in my own home. And River and the Ponds are nowhere near so easy to manipulate as the dead weight formerly known as the Little Ghost. Their flaws and weaknesses are all complex and human and psychologically.
But this thought, nonetheless, gives me an idea. It is my third or fourth idea since River locked me in, and as you can probably tell from the fact that I'm still in here, none of them have worked. I am, however, undeterred.
I go to the little hatch in the wall (the Tardis. The Tardis added this room on for her. She's in on it. They're all in on it, even she's out to get me) that River oh-so-kindly left and is manning, and rap again.
"You're not even trying to speak to her," she says, even before she's pulled it all the way back.
'Her', the cat's mother, in this case, being Jessica. The unconscious former Little Ghost. All caught up are we good right then I'll go on.
"I can't wake her up. You know, what I always used before was that heartbeat recording. Now, the speakers probably still have it, but I'll need the sonic."
River just looks at me. As if she's waiting for more. I make a point of keeping eye contact, returning the sentiment. Then she laughs at me and slams the hatch shut.
So it's clear then. My only way out of here is bite down and do what she wants.
That is not the first time I have had to say that. I do not imagine it will be the last.
I try again to rouse Jessica by shaking. Nothing happens. This Jessica, this time stream, this is the first time I've gotten a decent look at her face. Even in her sleep, even with her mask intact, she buries her head away in her arms. I've seen it in other times, though. There's a future version that keeps sticking her admirably unmasked head in, as if she was trying to point me towards this.
River implied, when she shot the bolt to keep us in here, that we've been avoiding each other. How she managed to draw that conclusion, when we two have been living as jailor and jailed for some days know, I don't quite know. 'You two need to talk,' she said. I was glad, in a way, that Jessica had collapsed; had she seen her say that, lip-reading it and mute in response, she might have taken offence.
We have been provided with pen and paper, though not with the cybernetic thought interface that might lend itself best to meaningful communication. All I need now is somebody to talk to.
"Sorry," I mutter to her, and brush the hair off her face before I stand up. Then I take the corner of my dressing gown and wring a stream of chill chlorinated water out over her nose and cheeks.
Jessica wakes in little shudders and winces, and bats at her nose like there's an insect fluttering there. Then her eyes open.
Her reaction times really are amazing. In the same moment I notice her eyelashes fluttering she's balled up in the corner of the couch, hugging a pillow with only her eyes looking over the top.
"No," I try to tell her, "it's alright. I don't know what you think will happen, but I looked at you before and you're fine." She shakes not just her head but her whole upper body, so that the cushion moves with her. "What do you think-?" I start to ask, and start to give her the pad to write on, but she refuses. She readjusts the cushion to be held in one arm, freeing the other hand. It goes to where I can only suspect her face to be, fingers spread, and moves in sharp, panicked circles.
See, now that I've described it, it sounds like it could mean anything. It doesn't. It means she wants her white mask back. Very plainly, unable to mean anything else, that's what it means.
"I don't have it. River does. She put the two of us in here because she doesn't think anything will happen either."
The bright blue eyes narrow, angry and mistrustful.
She points at me, then towards the door. Then hugs the cushion again and taps the places where the two shafts of her collarbone would be.
'You and her,' she's saying, 'you're both Time Lords.'
"River's not really."
She reiterates her motion. It simulates the twin heartbeat. It really does, there's no other way to interpret it. River has two heartbeats and must therefore be a Time Lord.
"Look, just put the cushion down. You'll be fine."
Jessica shakes her head again. And this time she just looks hurt. This time, when I hold out the pen and paper, she stretches out and grabs it. 'They will trick it,' she writes. 'It must not remove its mask'.
Which is strange.
I mean, not just what she wrote. That's very strange and nonsensical and entirely ridiculous, of course. But this is Jessica writing. And Jessica's English am never to have been being so good. The sentences are simple but the grammar and the structure are perfect.
"Jessica, who taught you that? Who said that to you?"
She writes, and her writing is slow and small and almost reverent, 'Owner'.
I could question her about that. And I will. But I'll do it when I'm speaking to all of her round, pale face, and not a cushion with eyes. She looks like an unlikely puppet, like the mouth is going to open up in the cushion, just over where her arms are.
"What exactly did Owner say about your mask?"
'It must always wear its mask. If they look at its face it will die.'
Don't laugh. I know it's stupid and thoroughly unreasonable, and no sane person in their right mind would ever believe it. Not that I'm saying she's insane, oh no, far from it. Jessica is totally present. Highly intelligent. A thoroughly sharp little mind. So don't laugh. Because that means she has never known anything different to these things that she was taught. She has never been given the context to think them unreasonable.
"You won't die," I tell her, but she doesn't believe me. She can't. In her world, her rules, I'm the enemy, and I'll do whatever it takes to get that last killing glance at her face. "When you were unconscious just then, I looked at your face. And you're alive now, aren't you?" Jessica stretches and circles the words, 'They will trick it', to repeat.
The very fact that she's explaining her fears means she wants to believe.
"You don't really believe all that, do you?"
I try to sit next to her, ready to take the cushion away. She almost lets me, before she jumps up, over the back of the couch and runs to the door. The cushion is dropped. One hand obscures as much of her face as it possibly can. The other pounds at the door.
On up the wall, River opens the hatch.
"For heaven's sake, sweetie, you can't give up every time it starts to – Oh, hello, Jessica."
But Jessica is in no mood for pleasantries, and not from the woman who has her mask. I point over her head, trying to warn River that the stakes are starting to grow down her arms, slowly but surely and ready to shoot out sharp should she give an unsatisfactory answer. Jessica is making her 'Mask, please' mime again. River is looks back, nodding with infinite wisdom and empathy.
Do not, oh God, do not, please please do not let me think of the face of Boe, that does not end well for us, oh please, no…
The fact is, she's not giving anything up.
The fact is, there's nothing to give. Shrugging her shoulders to Jessica, she holds up in her hands the two halves of the shattered mask.
There's an eyeblink of a pause. Even the Little Ghost needs a second to find that kind of rage in her heart. Then she jumps, hauling herself up on the hatch. One stake is a second premature and fires over River's shoulder instead of through her throat. I grab the other back before it can swing forward. Jessica unbalances and falls to the floor, landing hard on her back. She knocks her head, too, against the mahogany leg of the coffee table. Her eyes swim.
When they focus again, it's on me.
She cries out. The only true sound I've ever heard her make. Somebody with no concept of sound, with no language, no vocal communication whatever, the only noise she can make must necessarily be involuntary, true, irreconcilable pain, and it is heartbreaking to hear.
Behind me I hear River close the hatch. It's almost difficult to blame her. I'd want to shut that scream out too. Yes, almost. Doesn't mean I'm not going to outright kill her this time. Soon as I get out of this room.
The cry ends, eventually. And Jessica realizes she can still open her eyes. And breathe. Heart's still beating, though I won't mention that if it comes to pointing these things out, hearts are a bit of a touchy subject. She is, in short, still very much alive.
She goes away though. All of her goes away somewhere very deep inside. And she gets up, shaking off my arm. Wanders back to the couch, stumbling once on her own feet, and picks up the paper again.
Staring at where she wrote, 'It must always wear its mask'.
I crane around until she notices me, so that I can ask her, "What else did Owner say?"
She doesn't answer me right away. She is tugging gently, thoughfully, on an earlobe.