Thanks to Des for Beta'ing. Love you~
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Chapter 2: Bow Tie
To: Madam Kovarian of the TLW Project
From: David Foreman, of Committee of the Free Human Alliance
Subject: Beside the point
Dear Madam Kovavian,
We are well aware of the achievements your project has made, Madam, but as you yourself once said, they are small compared to the end result.
So, while we do understand that one of the conditions set at the very start of your project was complete secrecy, the Committee believes that a certain leniency may be extended towards them in exchange for continued support. And so, we expect an answer to the following questions within the next few days:
Why must this weapon take so long to produce? How will it help in our efforts to defeat the Doctor? Why do you believe that it will turn the tide of the war? How do you know that it will work? And, most importantly,what is it?
Sincerely, D. Foreman
…
The Creature walked unnoticed through the white halls, passing men and women dressed in crisp, white clothes, all of whom gave it barely a terrified glance before continuing on their way. They were almost completely unaware of it, their weak, easily manipulated human minds wiped clean of any trace the millisecond it was out of sight. But this was normal, and not to be worried about.
It walked on in silence, taking in the endless white corridors with interest. The order and formality of the entire facility pleased the Creature; everything was structured and clean, like all things should be. The human race was usually a very dirty species, with constant wars and poverty raging across the surface of the earth. But here in this sterile underground maze, it could almost be believed otherwise.
The Creature purred to itself, a truly terrifying noise should any human being have heard it, thinking as it passed another group of white-wearing humans, that maybe they weren't so dirty after all. The species was vaguely civilized, with systems of government and religion and intercultural diversity. Yet, many of the species still faced adversity and hardship, while others were more fortunate and yet, unwilling to share their fortune. Plagues and death were normal, while much of the world sat in ignorance, wallowing in its own filth.
Why, it was hard to believe that one day this species would become one of the greatest civilizations in the universe, firmly planting itself among the stars for millennium to come.
It stopped, having arrived at its destination. This white corridor looked much like all the other ones; unnaturally clean and functional, with one difference. The formidable looking metal door looked very out of place, even if it was painted to match everything else. This was the lowest level of the underground complex, the place where he knew his objective was.
The man guarding the door was looking at him fearfully, his eyes snapping away every few seconds with confusion clouding them. A sudden commotion made both man and alien look to their right, towards the mouth of a staircase which traveled upwards and out of sight.
"…you've noticed how attached the child is to that photograph of her mother," a female voice said, floating down to them from the top.
About a minute of echoing footsteps later, a human woman descended the last few steps with a humourous smirk on her face. The Creature knew who this was immediately; she was the Commander of the facility, and a missionary for the Academy of the Silence, Madam Kovarian, an ambitious and ruthless woman with a strong mind. Certainly not someone that could be detered easily.
"Open!" She barked at the guard, and he jumped to attention, looking confused for a second, before pulling a key from his pocket and turning to open the heavy door.
The Creature backed itself up against one of the white walls, a lowly but necessary gesture, to let Kovarian past. She saw it and nodded, the eye drive covering her right eye allowing the woman to remember when others couldn't, before she turned and walked through the now open door, a package grasped in her hands. It followed.
"Hello ma'am," a child's voice said.
…
Sometimes, if she tried really hard, Melody thought she could remember what life was like before the Orphanage. She had been happy and had laughed all the time, and Amelia had always smiled at her with a loving smile that was very different from Madam Kovarian's one.
But the reality was, she had only been one month old when Amelia had left, and therefore too young to do much of anything, much less laugh. So that particular memory was probably just her imagination.
Most of her dreams were just like that; Amelia and Melody, together, just sitting and talking, though she never remembered what about. Sometimes she imagined two other people there as well, though she didn't have the faintest idea who they were.
One of the people wore red and black clothing, and a cape around his shoulders. She sometimes wondered if he was a superhero, and had drawn several drawings of him flying around everywhere and coming to rescue her, like superheroes do.
The other person had been dressed quite differently, with a coat and trousers. But the one thing Melody remembered most was what he wore around his neck. It was an odd thing, red and shaped like the ribbons she sometimes wore in her hair.
Melody had drawn it once and shown it to Madam Kovarian, who had said that it was a bow tie, and that it was something men sometimes wore around their neck. She had said it with an odd look in her eye, and had looked at Melody strangely for a little while after that.
The next time the white-coat people came they seemed to do more tests than usual and ask more questions.
The bow tie kept appearing in her dreams, so often that Melody had the feeling that it was really important. After a while, Madam Kovarian had told her to stop thinking about it, but it was a hard thing to do.
She drew it many times, and there was even an entire section on her wall dedicated to bowties of all different colours, although many of them were red.
Melody drew a lot of things. She drew herself sometimes, doing things like reading a book, eating food or even sitting at her desk and drawing. She drew Madam Kovarian sometimes, and had lots of fun making her hair really curly.
Sometimes Melody wished that she had curly hair as well.
She'd only drawn Amelia once, using her darkest red for her hair and her greenest green for her eyes, and putting extra effort into it especially. Then when it had been done, she had hung it just beside her bed and looked at it every night before she went to sleep.
"Goodnight, Amelia."
One night, she got angry.
In her books, the families had always lived happily ever after forever. The mother always stayed with the daughter and loved her. But in real life, it wasn't true.
She had ripped the picture from the wall (taking some of the white paint with it) and shredded it in her hands. Hot tears pricked at the corner of her eyes the whole time, and suddenly her mother was nothing but scraps of paper with red pencil colouring on the floor.
She had cried, then. Sobbed her heart out into her pillow. And in the morning she felt ashamed of herself, and put all the paper scraps into the bin. But she hadn't drawn another picture of Amelia after that. A part of her was scared, and another part was still very angry.
She didn't like her angry parts. But sometimes she couldn't help it when they took over.
One time she had yelled at one of the white coat people, who had accidentally tripped over one of her stuffed toys and grabbed the wall to stop himself from falling. In doing so, he had torn down some of her pictures, including half of her bow tie collection. She had screamed at him for several minutes, until she was red in the face and out of breath, and he had run from the room, fearfully glancing over his shoulder. Melody hadn't seen him since.
But that was nothing, for she had not truly been angry until the day of her eighth birthday.
"Happy Birthday, Melody," Madam Kovarian called as she entered the room with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in her hand.
"Thank you, Ma'am!" Melody replied excitedly, jumping up from her desk and bounding over. Every year, just for her birthday, Madam Kovarian brought her a present. Sometimes it was new pencils and paper, or a new toy, or a nice book. Madam Kovarian had no sooner placed the parcel in her hands, than the paper had been carelessly ripped aside to reveal a set of brightly coloured paints.
"Wow!" Melody whispered, her eyes wide. She rushed over to her desk and began pulling the pots out, finding several sized paint brushes among them. "Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!" She cried, taking a step forward and intending to rush over and hug Madam Kovarian tightly. But she stopped herself just in time, remembering her 6th birthday where she had done just that. Madam Kovarian had screeched in shock and hit Melody hard across the face. Kovarian had apologized immediately, although to this day, Melody was still unsure how sincere she had been.
"I can't wait to use them!" She told Madam Kovarian, pulling a fresh piece of paper out of a stack and popping the lid on the blue jar of paint and picking up the biggest brush. Though she had barely dipped the tip of the brush into the paint when Madam Kovarian snatched it away.
"Melody, before you start, I would like to tell you something."
"What?" Asked Melody, resisting the urge to snatch back the paintbrush, knowing it would result in another slap. "Ma'am." She added politely.
"It's something I think you ought to know, now that you're old enough to understand it."
"What?" Melody repeated, confused. "How come I couldn't know before now?"
Madam Kovarian sighed, suddenly looking much older and sadder than Melody had ever seen her. It looked extremely odd.
"Because your mother didn't want you to know it."
Melody suddenly felt as though all the air had been pushed from her lungs. What could Amelia have not wanted her to know?
"Melody," Madam Kovarian said softly, pulling a handkerchief out of nowhere, "I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier…" she hesitated for a second, dabbing at her eyes. "The reason your mother left wasn't because she didn't love you. On the contrary, she loved you very much."
By this time Melody had very much forgotten about the paint, and was staring at Madam Kovarian with a mixture of anticipation and dread. If Amelia had loved her that much, then why was Melody growing up in the Orphanage? And why was Madam Kovarian crying?
"Your mother left you so that you could be safe. You see, you're a very special little girl." Madam Kovarian walked over and kneeled down in front of Melody, taking one of her hands in her own and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "You are hope to many, many people."
Melody couldn't move. She felt like her entire life had been leading up to this moment, and listened with wide eyes.
"But other people are afraid of you. One of these is a man," Madam Kovarian spat the word man, and for a second she looked wild and angry. "This man would do anything to hurt you, because you are the only one who can defeat him."
Melody couldn't handle it anymore. "What happened to Amelia?" She asked, although she was absolutely terrified of the answer.
Madam Kovarian sighed. "Your mother knew that this man wanted to hurt you, and she hid you away, so that he couldn't find you."
There was a terrible silence. And then.
"What happened?"
Madam Kovarian looked at her warily, not quite meeting her eyes. "He found her." Her voice suddenly became thick, and she dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief again. "He found her, and when she didn't tell him where you were…"
She left sentence hanging horribly in the air between them and blew her nose with the handkerchief.
Melody was reeling. She found it hard to draw breath, and felt tears fall, hot and angry, from her eyes. She wrenched her arm away from Madam Kovarian's grip.
"Why didn't you tell me this before now?" She said angrily, trying to calm herself by taking deep breaths.
"Your mother made me swear not to tell you. But now I regret-"
But Melody had had enough. "YOU'RE LYING!"
And then she snapped, and started yelling at Madam Kovarian much like she had done to the man in the white coat, except this time her blood felt like it was boiling and her head felt numb. She screamed that it wasn't true, that her mother had abandoned her because she hadn't loved her child enough to do anything else. She yelled so loud and for so long, that she almost believed it was true herself, because it was much better than the alternative, in which her mother had given her life to keep Melody safe.
Tears streamed down her face as she raged and rampaged around the room, overturning the bookcase and breaking the legs off of her desk, sending pencils rolling everywhere. She didn't want to feel anymore, just scream and yell in anger.
Finally she collapsed, exhausted, onto the steel skeleton of her overturned bed, Amelia's picture in her hands. The floor was littered with the debris of books and paper and toys. In the Observation Room, a small crowd had gathered, and were gazing down at her like she was some exhibit in a zoo that had just done something extremely interesting.
But she ignored them. Staring into her mother's eyes, she felt a sob rise in her throat and the overwhelming emotion of shame. "I'm sorry, Mum." She whispered, aware that it was the first time she had ever actually called Amelia that.
She heard Madam Kovarian approach the bed, treading around the wreckage until she kneeled down in front of Melody, much like she had done earlier. For Melody's entire tantrum, she had simply stood against the wall and watched.
"Melody, look at me."
When the Melody didn't respond, she placed her hand under the little girl's chin, and forced her head up until her puffy red eyes were level with Madam Kovarian's one eye and eye-patch. Melody felt the woman's nails dig into her cheeks.
"Melody, there is something else. Do you remember those bow ties you keep drawing?"
She glanced over at where her collection used to be (as much of her drawings were now scattered on the floor) and saw that only one bow tie picture remained. It was one of the red ones.
She nodded, sniffing.
"Well, the reason you remember it is because a friend of your mother's used to where one."
Melody's throat was sore from all the yelling, so she just nodded again.
"Melody…" The woman faltered, as though unsure of how to continue, "This man was the one your mother was trying to protect you from."
Melody just nodded again. But her heart felt like it had been punctured by a needle, and was deflating like a balloon. "So he betrayed her." She said in a monotone voice. Sometime soon, she was certain that nothing would surprise her anymore.
Madam Kovarian nodded, and fell silent, as though waiting for Melody to start yelling again. She very nearly did, but stopped herself when she looked down at her mother's photograph, at her smile and her lovely eyes that seemed to stare into her soul. She looked so young and so beautiful and so brave.
Melody wished she could one day be as brave as Amelia Pond. One day…
"I want to be alone," she said aloud, the words sounding more like a command. Madam Kovarian nodded understandingly, and turned towards the door. Melody missed the smug smile on her face as it closed behind her.
With one last glance at the photograph, Melody went to work, gathering various coloured pencils from the ground and placing them all in a pile. Next she went in search of clean paper, finally extracting some from under the wreck of the bookcase. Her desk lay in ruins, so she cleared a space on the floor, well away from the sticky mess of her recently new paint and lay on her stomach and drew.
Page after page, she drew herself and Amelia. Two redheads, one taller than the other, playing together and drawing together (because Amelia liked to draw) and hugging each other (Amelia liked to hug, too) and doing lots of things that mothers and daughters did.
And then Melody drew her lying down. For that one, she used the red pencil for more than her hair.
The man from her dreams was there as well, sometimes. He leered at her from the page with his ugly, demented face, a black bowtie around his neck. The tip of her pencil snapped off several times from the sheer amount of pressure it was under in her clamped fist while she drew him.
When she had finished, Melody leaned back on her elbows to view it from a distance. Her mother looked so beautiful and sad, but still looked up at her with those loving eyes that were shrouded in pain. The bowtie man looked like something from a nightmare, with pointy teeth and mad eyes and a knife in his hands.
Though her eyes felt heavy, and kept closing by themselves, Melody still picked up her pencil and added one last thing to the drawing before her head drooped onto her arms and she was fast asleep.
…
