A/N: Thank you for your kind words on the last chapter. This chapter we discover that Calamity is a very multi-dimensional character, and that first impressions mean nothing. Language warning, because Neil isn't who you think he is either. I'd warn you of the other thing but that would spoil the story, so if you are under the age of 13, I would advise you stop reading now. Remember what I said about Hedonia being a hedonistic planet? Also this story assumes that the Doctor has telepathic abilities on a basic level with no contact required as prerequisite.
This chapter can be read alongside the poem in Chapter 20 - Blue and Grey in my poetry series A Thousand Candles, They Burn At Both Ends
Clemency, Hedonia, 26th of May, 1993
"Cal!" Neil screamed drunkenly through the house. "Cal! Where are you, you little bitch! Come here. Come to Uncle Neil. Now!"
She leapt up from her play area, slammed her door and locked it, breathing as hard as any four-year-old Hedonian could. "Please," she whispered to no one in particular, "please, please no. No uncle, please don't... Not me! Please not me..."
The begging was pointless as he effortlessly beat down her door, and she burst into tears. "Please Uncle!" young Calamity screamed, blinded by her own tears. She fell to her knees, and he yanked her up roughly by the collar of her new red dress. "Such a waste. So pretty, but so... disobedient. Your sister was a lot better you know," he slurred roughly, and Cal tried as hard as she could not to cough as the effect of four bottles of whiskey hit her tender nose. He grinned darkly, and started to kiss her neck in a very, very wrong way.
It was the worst birthday she'd ever had.
Clemency, Hedonia, 26th of May, 2005
"Happy birthday dear!" Lucia cried, pecking her daughter on the cheek. "You're sixteen already! My little girl, sweet, sweet sixteen. What do you want?" Cal looked up from her laptop with an emotionless expression. Her face had been emotionless for years by this point in time. "I want to get out of here," she told her mother, slowly and clearly, with an air of determination. "I want to go somewhere far away and live a better life."
Tears spilled from her mother's cheeks as she nodded and took Cal's hands from across the spotless glass table. Her efforts to be cheerful this year failed, her facade falling with the uncontrollable wave of tears which fell from her eyes, so naturally, like raindrops from clouds – but with a good deal more melancholy.
"I... I wish I could've..."
Lucia's voice cracked so hard she couldn't finish, and instead she ran her slim, bony fingers over the hundreds of pink-brown scars that manifested themselves like disease onto her daughter's forearms. "I know, Mom," Cal sighed. "Don't blame yourself. Never blame yourself. You weren't home for a few hours and..."
She didn't have to finish. "Alright," Lucia said, sniffing up her tears, "where do you want to go?" Cal smiled at her mother for the first time in twelve years.
"I want to go to Earth. I want to study medicine and blend in with the humans. I want to grow up, Mom. I want to be great."
Lucia chuckled. "Of course you do. Who am I to suppress your greatness? Well, I guess we'll have to find you a plane ticket."
They both grinned.
London, England, 26th of May, 2009
"Hey Cal!" Rory called enthusiastically from across the hall. Cal immediately turned and half-bolted for the doors, but his footballing days counted for something and he caught her thin wrist before she got there. "Whoa, Flash," he joked weakly, "something wrong? It's your birthday! You're twenty – officially an adult! What could be wrong?"
She knew he was being a good friend, but she turned and ran anyway. She ran halfway across campus to her dorm and collapsed onto her bed, not even bothering to shut the door. Rory ran after her, tripped on the doorstep and stumbled his way to her side. "Go away, Rory. Go find Amy," she told him, holding the tears off as best she could. If there was one day of the year she should be allowed time and space to cry, it should be today. She could almost see his brows pulling together like magnets in a frown. "I will most certainly not think of Amy until you tell me what happened," he said sternly. That was when the crying started.
"My God Cal, I had no idea..." he breathed, running his hand through her long, shiny black hair over and over again.
"And where's Hedonia? Never seen it on the map. Is it a small town? There's lots of those in Greece, right?"
She stifled a smile by burying her face in the pillow. Humans, she thought drily. They still don't know yet.
Rory remembered her story until his dying day. He didn't even tell Amy what had happened to her on her fourth birthday. He still didn't know where Hedonia was. But he did know that after they graduated together, that she went back there, wherever it was. And that she was too beautiful to be so sad. He'd loved her; she was his best friend through hard patches with Amy, through frightening grades, through not being invited to drink with his peers (only when she was too busy to go herself).
She'd developed a personality disorder through their last year studying together, one day she'd be sassy and confident, and God so attractive – the next day she'd cry for hours and push them all away. Amy made her get a counsellor, but it wasn't enough, when during the winter holidays she tried to stab herself. An ambulance came to take her to their mattress room for surveillance, and the Ponds always remembered having to watch her sit there, ripping her hair out and clawing at her own face. Trying desperately to harm herself as much as possible – until she stopped. She laid down and stopped moving. They watched as she was carried to a bed, hooked to an IV and sedated. They watched her wake up, they watched her scream, they watched her cry, they watched her act like she was fine when of course she wasn't. They sat in the waiting rooms through her psychiatric assessments, they soothed her when she was diagnosed, they held her hands when she took her first antidepressant. They watched the bubbly, outgoing woman they knew become expressionless and brick-like again.
The scars on her arms had faded greatly, but the scars on her heart were still fresh. Rory always wondered why the worst things happen to the most beautiful of people.
But they also watched her take her last antidepressant. They sat with her through her last psychiatric consultation. They got to see her sass return, and her confidence peek from within when she wore red.
When he met the Doctor, he wanted her to have that too. The help, the laughs, the fish custard. She deserved it. She deserved to be happy.
The same couldn't be said for Neil, who grew old and bitter, never addressing what he'd done to Cal's family.
Amy and Rory grew old together, River visiting when she could, for a while at least. Amy got carpal tunnels from writing and Rory grew slowly blind from all the years of intricate operations. They died happy together, Amy leaving for above two days after him. Clara brought them both to the morgue; kept them company as their souls treasure-hunted for the light.
After the Great War of Aima, the King Hedonus decreed his scientists inject every humanoid inhabitant on the planet with regenerative DNA so as not to lose so many people to the fighting. Hedonians' cells started to learn to regenerate at the age of around 20~21, rendering them somewhat immortal for the rest of that time. In that way, they are alike with Gallifreyans – but they keep their physical appearance.
Cal heard of the death of the Ponds, and mourned for a month. She stopped work, stopped eating, but she couldn't cry anymore. The tears had dried up inside her a while ago. She grew numb and afraid and very, very bitter. She started to believe all the good people in the universe died too soon, but that theory would have made her evil, and she couldn't handle thinking she was evil. So she remembered her days with Rory, and she stepped out of mourning into the bright double sunlight of Hedonia. Cal went back to work, went back to the fame and false admiration; went back to pretending to be okay. And as long as she could pretend, a little part of her really did feel okay.
Calamity's House, Clemency, Hedonia, 26th of May, 2013
Cal clicked the door shut, keenly aware she'd shut it too abruptly, and immediately battled tears. She hated being this way every time her birthday came to pass. She hated waking up to make other people look pretty and coming home to hear about how she didn't look pretty. She hated her uncle always knowing where she was, even he did nothing about that information.
But the Doctor and Clara had come for her. She didn't like Clara much, but she knew about the Doctor from when she was a little girl learning of ancient civilisations on other worlds. She saw inside his head so easily; a millennia of pain swimming between thoughts of the small woman beside him. Her skill had developed since she was younger, and she could read most men's minds now. But not the Elders, never the Elders. She was never meant to try – but of course she did. Her name was Calamity and all the children had hated her. Though those children were now her assistants, fans and clients, everyone knew her past and looked down on her for it, even if the condescension was kept inside their heads – but that was just the curse of being a female Hedonian.
She dried her waist-length black hair, got dressed, and didn't bother with the beauty maintenance her mentors had insisted she keep. She opened the door as bravely as she could, took a breath, and cleared her throat audibly. "Hello Doctor," she said brightly, and the two time travellers whipped around with nervous smiles. They'd been talking about her, she knew it without even setting foot into the Doctor's mind. She chose to ignore their behaviour however, and set about making them all tea.
"So!" said Cal cheerfully, "Why would old Rory send a Time Lord and his deathbed nurse to find me?"
The Doctor rubbed his hands over the tops of his thighs somewhat nervously. "I honestly don't know," he told her. "We were hoping you could tell us."
Clara looked at him with a tight smile, and turned to Cal. "But you already know, don't you?" Cal stated rather than asked. "This is for Clara's benefit," she added, nodding at the petite brunette, "rather than yours. Why don't you tell her why you're here?"
Clara felt quite frustrated at being the only human in the group, the only person with no substantial biological abilities aside from being very, very small. "What is she talking about, Doctor?" Clara demanded, arms crossed. He shook his head and sighed heavily. "He told me, you know. Rory, I mean. He told me what happened to her. Oh Clara," he breathed. "I guess I... I just hoped that we could take her with us without bringing it up - somehow."
Silence filled the lush dining room.
"I... I'm so sorry, Calamity," Clara said, voice wavering with unshed tears from the intense turn the conversation had taken. The tall Hedonian waved a hand.
"Call me Cal. And you really shouldn't be, you know. You had nothing to do with it."
Clara found that a part of her wished that she had had something to do with it. Wished she could've helped the woman before her out of it all somehow. "We're going to take you places, Cal," the Doctor began gently, putting one hand on hers, the other still gripping Clara's. His companion nodded furiously. "We'll take you to places you haven't been yet. People you haven't met. We can take you away from all... this," she said, waving a hand vaguely around to refer to Cal's life. They watched as the woman's mouth wavered and formed a slightly stiff grin. "I'm ready to see this TARDIS of yours now. Hopefully she likes me."
