The Simplicity of Time and Space
Chapter Three
When the enigmatic man who had named himself 'the Doctor' told her to open the door of his ship that supposedly traveled through space and time, Maree honestly didn't know what to think. What if she went to the door and this had all been some sort of elaborate hoax? She would feel like a right idiot for half believing that they had actually traveled through space and time, and everyone involved would have a great laugh at her expense. It wasn't that she was afraid of being embarrassed. It was that she was afraid of being conned. She wasn't a fan of being labeled 'gullible'.
The Doctor cleared his throat, obviously waiting for her to look outside. Fine, Maree thought. I'll do it, and God forbid that he's putting me on. She took a deep breath and slowly released it through her nose, gathering her courage about her. Marching to the door of the strange ship that he called the Tardis, Maree grasped the handle and pulled the door open.
"Good grief." Maree muttered, stepping down onto the softest, springiest grass she'd ever had the good fortune to step upon. The scene in front of her was more a shock than anything else. The sky was… yellow. Sort of a lemon yellow. The grass was still green but more of a pastel colour, and there were squat little cerulean blue buildings littering the valley she was looking down into.
"Just gorgeous, isn't it?" The Doctor asked, stepping out of the Tardis and closing the door firmly behind himself. "Kolionotarus, planet of the short people."
Wrenching her eyes from the beautiful but almost disturbing sight in from of her, she gave him a doubtful stare. "No, no, it's true!" He said and laughed. "Kolionotarus literally means 'short people'. The entire population is less than three feet due to some sort of lack of pituitary function, coupled with the growth inhibiting minerals in the water. It's fantastic."
"I actually don't think I like it." Maree admitted almost reluctantly, looking back at the yellow sky. Why did she acknowledge her distaste for the place with reluctance? It wasn't that she cared what he thought, but he seemed that he genuinely enjoyed the place, so she felt uncomfortable criticizing it. "The colours are kind of disconcerting and I can't figure out why." What had he said the planet's name was? Kolionotarus. Maree shook her head. She was somehow already managing to accept the idea that they were on another planet. How peculiar. Sure, she was open-minded, but she tended to reject totally ridiculous ideas. This was a ridiculous thing.
"Yeah, that's the regular reaction to this planet." The Doctor bobbed his head like a budgerigar looking in a mirror and jammed his hands in his pockets. "To be perfectly honest, you're perfectly right to feel uncomfortable. Blimey, the natives are terrible. The last time I stopped here, they almost ate both my hands." He glanced at her and immediately responded to her alarmed expression. "Didn't get them, though, see?" He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers with a grin.
Maree stared at him incredulously. "The natives eat humans?" Perfect. The man can travel in space and time, and he brings her to the scary-coloured planet with cannibals. That sounded almost like every date she'd ever been on.
"Nope." He shrugged. "The Kolions find humans to be a bit too stringy for their liking, and my hands were the only part with the proper consistency." There was a pause. "Apparently. So I've heard." Another silence, and he looked at her in a self-conscious manner.
"Your hands?" Maree said, dubiously. "They weren't too stringy?" Just ridiculous, she decided, that was the only decent word she could come up with, and she was an English major, for Pete's sake.
"Oh, no." The Doctor said seriously, and rocked back on his heels a little, pushing his trainers into the grass. "My hands were the only things that weren't too crunchy. Or so I've heard. Only humans are too stringy, not me.
She must've heard wrong. But… no, she didn't. He referred to humans as creatures not of his race. "What do you mean, only humans, and not you?"
"Well, I'm not human, Maree." The Doctor said kindly, and shrugged. "What kind of human gets to have a time machine? I mean, honestly? I'm a Time Lord."
"You're an alien." She said numbly and suddenly the discomfiting wonder she had experienced seeing the plant of Kolionotarus for the first time rushed out of her body leaving nothing but fear with the edge dulled to the point of inaction. She had escaped the Sruuted, the sonic aliens, only to be confronted with another alien. It seemed like he had saved her life, but in light of this new development, she wasn't so sure. She wasn't too sure about a lot of things anymore, so she repeated herself. "You're an alien."
The Doctor made a bit of a face. "As far as I can tell, so are you." He reached out as if he would put his hand on her shoulder.
"What?" Maree snapped and recoiled from his hand. "I am not an alien." He stared at her and raised an eyebrow. "Take me home, right now."
The eyebrow stayed cocked in an 'better believe it' position, and one corner of his mouth turned up. "Okay. That won't help your little dilemma, but okay. Come back inside the Tardis." He made a gesture towards it and she looked at the ship for the first time since she'd stepped out.
It was a police box from maybe the 1950's, 1960's era. Approximatelyfour and a half feet by four and a half feet and dark blue, the little police box sat there innocently in the mint green grass. "Open the door." Maree said suddenly, her quarrel with the Doctor about her being an alien forgotten for a moment as she viewed the phenomenon that was the Tardis.
The Doctor grinned, and from the look in his eyes, she knew from the look in his eyes that he had expected this sort of reaction to the appearance of his ship. He unlocked the door of the Tardis and pushed it open. She poked her head inside. Enormous room. Came back out to see the little blue box. She walked around the box, unintentionally mimicking dozens of others who had done this exact thing. "Okay." She said finally. It wasn't an optical illusion. It wasn't a trick. It just was what it was, and she would accept that too. She stepped inside the Tardis and the Doctor followed close behind.
Repeating his previous actions, the Doctor began flipping switches and turning dials until the core of the console rose and fell like someone gasping for air with his or her lungs heaving. The ship shook and rattled, and Maree grabbed one of the curved supports for balance until all was quiet.
There was a few beats of silence and the Doctor said without a trace of amusement. "You're home."
"You know, Doctor," Maree said in a conversational tone. She was accepting. She still didn't really believe that any of this was real, but she would play along. "I happen to be an English major, and don't know an awful lot about science and the like, but I'm fairly certain that your ship defies the laws of physics."
The Doctor grinned. "She's bigger on the inside."
"Yes, she is." Maree agreed with a slight incline of her head. "Am I really at home?"
"Absolutely." The Doctor told her and gestured to the door again. "I've brought you back to your flat, if you want to go home."
Maree strode forward and placed a hand on the door, then faltered. "Did you really mean what you said? That I'm an alien? Or was that just a joke?" She was so tired. She couldn't remember ever being this tired. She was exhausted right to the very core of herself and there was nothing she wanted more than to go to sleep and not wake up until the world was restored to its proper order.
He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck in a looking-for-the-right-words sort of way. "Strictly speaking, yes and no."
"What does that mean?" Maree asked and let her hand fall from the door. She wasn't leaving. She couldn't leave. Very strange. "I'm sort of an alien, and sort of not an alien?"
"Well," the Doctor started and angled his lean body against the console of his extraordinary spaceship. "In all technicalities, you are an alien, yes, but only part of an alien. The other half is entirely human."
"What?" She said, and shifted back towards him. Even if this was all a lie, he was going to great lengths. "I don't understand."
"Well," the Doctor said again and stroked one hand across the metal of the console, almost in a loving manner. "It's pretty simple, really. One of your parents was an alien. A Sruuted, if I'm correct." He looked up at her. "Maree, in the Sruuted culture, you are a creature of mythology."
"The Sruuted?" She asked, almost disbelievingly. "But they were trying to kill me, weren't they? If I'm…" She paused, not wanting to think about the 'half-alien' thing, then plunged forward "Half Sruuted, why would they want to kill me?"
"I'm not so sure they were, actually." The Doctor answered looking a little sheepish. "By nature, the Sruuted aren't all the fond of the human race, and I wanted you to be safe. I thought it better to swing by and get you before they did, then find out what they want with you. I picked up a stray transmission a couple hours ago concerning you. They just… want you, for some reason."
"A couple of hours ago?" Maree noted with confusion. "We met weeks ago, though."
The Doctor patted the Tardis console again with a grin. "Time and space. I just had to find you, that's all."
"How did you find me, by the way?" Maree asked, easing into the chair she had vacated earlier. She had so many questions, and he seemed to be at comfortable answering them, so she would continue asking. There was silence. "Doctor?"
"I, erm…" He said awkwardly and paused and looked at her. "I told your landlady that I was your boyfriend from out of town and that I was there for a surprise visit. She told me that you love that little café on 92nd."
She grinned at him. "Good lie."
He nodded at her, grinning back. "Thanks."
"Back to business." Maree said, her grinning sliding from her face. "How do I find out what the Sruuted want? You seem to know them pretty well. Are they more likely to roast me and devour me, or give me a million dollars for being a 'creature of mythology'?" She hoped it was the million dollars thing, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it was the devouring thing.
"Roast and devour." He answered with a hint of amusement, and twisted gracefully away from the console before coming over to her. "They weren't always." He said with a nostalgic touch to his voice. "The Sruuted used to be a peaceful race… back when they had no way to travel through space. Space travel changes everything." There was a bitter note to the statement that he quickly wiped away with a grin. "Good thing it's so much fun."
"Is it?" She said softly and he didn't answer, simply looked at her with an unfathomable expression that Maree knew hid something painful. She would let him keep his secret, because she had a secret to share herself.
"Doctor, look, this whole half-Sruuted isn't as big a shock as one would think it should be." Maree started delicately.
"Really?" He said lightly, and jammed his hands in his pockets. "I hadn't noticed, with the whole screaming fit about Torchwood."
"Yes." She answered composedly. She had to tell him. He seemed… trustworthy, although she knew that made it less likely that she should trust him. "It doesn't come as a big shock because, well…" How could she say 'I have feathers' to him? That sounded insane. How else could she say it? "Oh, to hell with it." She muttered, sliding off the chair in front of him. Grasping the bottom hem of her shirt, she pulled it up to the bottom of her ribcage, exposing her abdomen to him.
Maree looked down with trepidation making her heart race slightly. Just like she'd thought, the feathers she'd pulled out after her shower had already grown back, along with a dozen others. They grew so quickly that if she didn't pull them at least three times a day, her entire torso would be covered with feathers. They acted like an infection, though. If she kept them plucked, the feathers wouldn't spread. She looked up at the Doctor again, not surprised to see him staring at her with his mouth open.
"Look, I know it's strange, but-" Maree started angry and scared and embarrassed all at the same time before the Doctor cut her off with something she hadn't expected.
In a tone of voice that obviously conveyed his awe, the Doctor stared at the feathers on her abdomen and voiced his opinion. "That's beautiful!"
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A/N: Okay, so this entire story isn't really my best work. It's mostly based on dialogue, nothing has really happened yet, and the description is awful. Howevah, I'm feeling the distinct need to purge this storyline from my system, so please suffer through it. The ending is fantastic. :-D
Thanks for the reviews RngrThorne and Gamine Madcap!
Abby
