Someone asked what might be coming up, and whether or not that might include River Song, to which I have to say this: River Song is a perplexing character, and sometimes I love her, and sometimes I hate her. That said, I find nothing in her I'd want to write about, which means while I love her story and admire the character, that's all Moffat's game, and I ain't touching it for the world. (Just watch, now that I've gone and said that, I'll write something about her.) At least in this story, I have no plans for River Song to (ever) appear.
Also, thank you to everyone who's reviewed! I'm very grateful :) It's like Christmas, checking my email and seeing "FF Review Alert"!
Housekeeping, fini. So now... geronimo!
"We need to go back to Sub-Nine," said Grace, walking brusquely back towards the TARDIS, which was parked between buildings in the shape of a cleansing booth, a big metal box into which you could go to purge alcohol (and other things) from your bloodstream before reporting for duty. There was a haggard old man trying feebly to open the door, to no avail. "Down for repairs, gramps," Grace told him, and waited until he was gone to continue, "If they're breaching the Divide, we might be able to pick up the residue. We'll need to run full scans, go over everything with a fine-toothed comb."
"You're not thinking of bringing this to Dad?" demanded Jamey.
Grace quirked an eyebrow. "At least not until we have all the information."
"How do you know this has anything to do with the Divide?" asked Joran, holding open the door for them while they lugged Uncle Tony inside. "I mean, you said it could be—what was it—the Void?"
"Not much of a difference," said Jamey. He sounded the slightest bit out of breath, and abruptly let go of Uncle Tony, allowing him to slip, like a boneless sack of meat, to the floor. "Teensy-weensy. It's easiest to cross between universes where the edges nearly meet—only just nearly, because if they ever did meet, there'd be—well, nothing. They'd cancel each other out. Anyway. My point is that while they're almost touching, they're not, and for every trip, you pass through a small section of the Void."
Uncle Tony gave a little chirruping giggle from the floor. "Like a river," he burbled. "Is like a river … like crossing a river … big fat river—"
"Well, yes," said Grace. "A river of nothingness, I suppose. You'd naturally try to cross at the narrowest place."
"That's all very well and good," said Joran impatiently, "but how do you know? Couldn't it still be disintegration, a weapon?"
"Of course it could," she said, on her way up to the controls to help Jamey, who was already starting the engines. "It could be anything. It could be massive talking hamburgers with the powers of gods, for all we know. But we have a hunch and our hunches are usually very good."
"Please note for the sake of our reputations that we are going back to Sub-Nine to make sure," pointed out Jamey, as Grace slammed the heel of her palm onto something on the controls. The TARDIS's engines moaned into life.
"With drunken Uncle Tony," said Joran.
"Yes! Exactly," Jamey cried, but then amended hastily, "But leave off the drunken bit. He's not much of a chaperone if he's blubbering on the floor, now is he?"
"You don't seriously think your father will believe that Uncle Tony came along to supervise?" asked Joran, leaving Uncle Tony where he lay in order to take hold of the railings. Uncle Tony went sliding off to the other side of the TARDIS, but he giggled the whole way, and Joran really couldn't feel bad about letting him loose when he was so clearly enjoying himself.
"Of course not," said Grace. "But the effort will count for something. Land ho!"
"Parking brake!" shouted Jamey, and at the last second Grace grabbed it; they landed without even the characteristic whining of the TARDIS's engines, as smoothly and gently as if they were in a hover car. Joran applauded politely, and the twins took identical bows at either end of the circular controls.
"Start the scans," Grace said to Jamey. "I'll go out and see what I can't find. Joran, watch Uncle Tony."
"Not a chance," said Joran, and followed her out the door.
"Run!" Grace shouted, bolting down from the cliff face at full speed. Joran stared upward with an open mouth, frozen to the spot. There was an eye on the asteroid. A big, dark, empty eye. Or at least, it was eye-shaped. Really it just looked like a blotch of pure nothing, where no light could ever penetrate. Grace skipped back a few steps, aimed her stolen sonic screwdriver, and turned it on.
Something from within the eye screamed.
"What in the name of the gods—" began Joran, reaching upward to cross his heart in the symbol of the High Earth gods. There was a terrible screech, like metal being shredded, and the eye began, slowly, to close.
"C'mon!" yelled Grace, grabbing Joran by the arm, and she dragged him bodily away from the eye.
"How did you—"
"I fed it matter," she said, panting a little as they ran. Behind them, the screams were getting louder. "Atoms. Things. Should be escalating to boulders now. Once I get to the TARDIS we can sink the asteroid in it."
"Why—" Joran began, horrified, and Grace gave him a violent shove.
"Just trust me, you git!" she yelled at him. "Now run!"
They ran. The dirt beneath their feet was rolling steadily back the way they'd come, drawn into the deep black eye. Joran felt as if a bit of him had died, like he'd been poisoned, for looking into the thing. It was evil, of that he was sure.
Before them was the TARDIS, sitting peacefully beside a boulder. The boulder began to tremble—then to roll—and then it was wrenched into the air, zipping toward them at a terrible speed. Joran and Grace flung themselves to the ground and the boulder went safely over them, but a wave of space muck was right behind it, and it was all they could do to avoid it. They leapt and dodged and as Grace began to tire Joran took her by the waist and hauled her alongside him, dragging her through the flying debris. The TARDIS was trembling by the time they reached it, resisting the pull, but only just.
"Fly!" Grace shouted, the second they were inside. "Up, up, up!"
Jamey didn't have to be told twice. Up they went, until the shaking stopped. Grace leaned heavily against the controls and flipped switches and turned knobs until the thing was done. Jamey struck a blue button, and against the wall the viewer lit, showing them the scene below. There was a little black pinprick, a pinprick which was twenty feet across if you were standing just beside it, and into it the asteroid was going, ripped up and sucked in.
"The breach is sealing," reported Jamey, looking down at the scanner. "Just a little more matter—"
The pinprick shrank and then it disappeared, and all around where it had been was a mutilated and fragmented asteroid, already breaking apart. Grace sank to the floor, and Joran sat beside her, both of them wheezing and coughing from the amount of asteroid dust in their lungs.
"A near thing," said Joran, with a grin, and Grace gave him a friendly punch in the arm.
Jamey monkeyed with the controls for a bit longer, though they didn't really need too much watching at this point. Eventually he came round to the other side of the controls and crouched beside his sister, running his eyes over her, stopping at every scratch and bruise until he was satisfied that she was all right. She looked up at him without moving. After the scrutiny was over, he lifted a finger and tapped her between the eyes. That was all. Neither of them spoke. Grace went back to looking tired and Joran went back to flying the TARDIS.
"You all right?" Joran asked, unsure what to make of the scene he'd just witnessed. (Was a tap on the noggin the twins' version of a hug, then? But no—they'd hugged before. They were the hugging sort. Joran was perplexed.) Grace gave him a little nod.
"What about you?" she asked. "You took the brunt of it."
"Five minutes and it'll be like it never happened," he replied, and lifted his uniform jacket to show her bruises already fading. "Metahuman, remember?"
"Right," said Grace. Her eyes were twinkling. "Forgot you were special."
Joran pursed his lips at her and tugged his jacket back into place. "No one likes a smart mouth, Grace Smith."
She grinned at him. "Nor a show-off, Lieutenant Joran."
Although returning to Earth to tell the Doctor that his TARDIS and sonic screwdriver had been stolen (again) to do something dangerous (again) had ended in disaster (again—sort of) was not high on anyone's list, the TARDIS was nonetheless pointed homeward, and let loose. No one seemed to mind much at what speed she flew. It was enough that they were going.
Joran was rather dreading the whole thing, because the twins were odd ducks but he'd gotten over it, while their father was simply terrifying, and never once descended into anything more appetizing. He was forever and eternally the Doctor, an entity which Joran regarded with persistent fear, and would have gladly walked into the dark eye to avoid.
Well. Maybe not. He was metahuman, after all. Surely he, if anyone, could handle the Doctor. (This was a lie.)
Uncle Tony was hauled off to sick bay to recover from his experiment with Thor's Whiskey. The twins probably would have left him grinning on the floor for as long as he liked if it wouldn't have gotten them in even more trouble than they were already in, and so this brief spasm of altruism was actually something more akin to self-interest. Joran didn't blame them, and neither did Uncle Tony, once he stopped calling the light bulbs "sir". The Doctor probably would have flayed them all alive, for letting Uncle Tony drink such rubbish, and Uncle Tony would be flayed for drinking it at all. At least with Uncle Tony sober, only the twins would be in immediate danger.
The TARDIS landed—smoothly, like before—and the twins stood together, looking down at the doors. They stood close enough that their shoulders touched, and their elbows too. Joran and Uncle Tony, still gripping the railings, watched them curiously. What were they waiting for?
A second later the doors to the TARDIS burst open, and standing in its outline was the Doctor, standing just far enough back to show them that he'd opened the door without touching it. It was a magical sort of thing. The Doctor's dark eyes swept over them, and then over the TARDIS, before coming to a rest on the twins.
"Well," he said, instead of yelling, which Joran had been fully expecting. "Best tell me everything before your mother gets home."
The twins both began talking at once, making it impossible to understand them, but the Doctor simply stood where he was and listened. His head was tilted a precise ten degrees, and his chin rested on his hand, and his eyes narrowed into intense points of concentration, until Joran thought he resembled a satellite dish, positioned for optimal data retrieval.
Eventually the twins stopped, either because they ran out of things to say (doubtful) or because they ran out of breath (more likely), and the Doctor said, "It's not a thing from another universe."
He said it with such assurance that Joran believed him.
"What do you mean?" asked Grace.
"I've been in the universe beside ours," he said. "I was there for the better part of nine hundred years. I've seen my fair share of things, and I'm telling you, it's not from there."
"So it's from here," said Jamey.
The Doctor gave a slow shake of his head. It was Grace who said aloud, realizing, "The Void!"
"Bingo," said the Doctor.
"The Void is nothing," Uncle Tony said tiredly, and everyone looked at him. Both of the twins had their eyebrows raised. "There's nothing in it."
"There's not supposed to be anything in it," the Doctor corrected. "But things—ships, people—have gone into the Void and survived there. Whether or not they went mad, well, that's another question. But it's possible to shield yourself long enough to live. The Void hasn't exactly been explored, so really, who can say one thing or the other, but if something that exists, that has mass and energy, can exist in the Void, then perhaps the Void is not entirely what we imagined it to be."
"We?" asked Joran.
"The Time Lords," answered the Doctor. "The Void is the name we gave to it."
Joran felt a little chill at that. As if this man wasn't already intimidating.
"Whether it is something in the Void or the Void itself," continued the Doctor, once it was clear that Joran wasn't going to say anything (what could one say to that? Cool? Nice work? Great creativity?) "things are being eaten, and they're being eaten for a reason."
"Eaten?" repeated Grace. "Not sucked in?"
The Doctor waggled his eyebrows at her.
Jamey tried it on for size. "Eaten—eaten. Like a living thing. Like—"
"Like maybe," interrupted the Doctor, glancing at a watch that wasn't on his wrist, "your mother will be here any minute with the groceries, and someone's going to have to go find out why the Void is hungry."
He turned and took too long steps out, all that was needed to take him back into his garage, where he turned his head to the side and added, "And this time, avoid the breaches, if you please. Your mother would kill me if you were eaten."
The twins looked at one another. "Aren't you worried about them?" asked Joran, with his usual tact.
"Worried?" repeated the Doctor, slowly closing the TARDIS's doors. "Of course I'm worried, what sort of father do you take me for? I know my children, Lieutenant Joran, and they're just going to do it anyway, whether or not I make a big fuss—so really, why waste the energy?"
The Doctor winked at them, and shut the doors, but just before they shut completely, when the Doctor thought no one was looking, Joran saw his expression slip into something dark, drawn, and intense. Joran felt a little wiggle of fear grow up his spine. The Doctor knew more than he was letting on, Joran thought, knew enough to be afraid of what was in the Void.
They were about to set off when the doors opened again, and the Doctor stuck his head in. "Actually," he said, trying to smile, "just take some readings, scout things out. No adventures. I'm serious—this is too big for you."
"Yes, Dad," chorused the twins, not meaning a word of it, and with one last lingering glance, the Doctor disappeared again.
"Does this mean I can't go home yet?" Uncle Tony complained.
