Add that to my To Do list; locate Little Ghost, betray Little Ghost to Silence. Not really. Well, it depends, doesn't it, on River, and on how they play their hand in that respect. No. No, it's doesn't depend. Me, and my moral high ground, where it is warm and I know who I am.
To clarify, my To Do list now reads, 'Protect Pond (x 3); find out what the Silence want at Stormcage; stop the Little Ghost burning to death; solve everything in one glorious flash of brilliance, escape intact.'
Those of you who are attentive readers might notice that I have somewhat altered the qualifiers on the last point, which was previously much, much more ambitious. It doesn't do to overstretch oneself, might prove detrimental to other more important tasks, like everybody still being alive in twenty minutes or so.
Nineteen now, in fact.
Amy and the Little Ghost couldn't have gotten far while I was talking, but I loop around a few extra corridors, and check the corners and keep a good check for any scores on my skin as I go. Just in case. Only when I'm sure I am neither being followed or ambushed do I take the monitor from my pocket and scan a forty foot radius of camera feeds for them.
They are in one of the stopped lifts, back the way I came. I spin on my heel and would go to them very quickly indeed, if Amy wasn't standing, leaning up in the corner of the frame, trying to read something by the dim red emergency light.
That sound's still on, you see, and she's reading the things she manages to make out. "'Jessica Apple'," she reads slowly, then turns very quickly to the Little Ghost and repeats the name. "That's you, isn't it? That's your name?" Ghost is baffled and says nothing, does nothing. Her body sinks in on itself, pulling up tight and small. Attack her, run at her, throw knives and scream, and she's fine. Just don't ask her what her name is. Pond, seeing there is nothing to be learned there, goes back to the paper she was reading from.
Just out of interest, I pat down my jacket. And yes, that paper is the same paper I took from Bracewell's office. But I had a reason; I had defiled it. You wouldn't give someone back a handkerchief if you'd blown your nose on it. The point I'm making is, what I did was a courtesy, not a theft, which is what Pond has done. That's humans for you; you can be trying to save their life, even their planet sometimes, and all they're thinking about is what they can get out of you. Ridiculous, frankly, plain ungrateful.
At any rate.
I might have run on a bit just now. But it's because I know what's next on that page, what she's going to mutter to herself now.
The charge, for which Jessica Apple will someday be incarcerated. "'Attempted… genocide.'" This said slowly, barely believing it, and then the details sharper and quicker, "'of Gallifreyan subspecies 'Time Lord'. Committee recommends the action be treated as complete, though one of the kind survives.'"
If she reads out the next part, I'll – Well, I don't know. I certainly won't cry, but it'll be something like it and just as unpleasant. So I throw their little feed into the corner of the screen and go to the other Jessica, upstairs in the antechamber of the Incinerator room.
Sitting, like a perfect young lady, at an interview table with her hands cuffed and one foot shackled to the floor. No chances taken this time. On the other side of the table, not looking half so calm as the condemned, is Rory.
"No," he's saying, "They can't just burn you-"
"Can," she tells him. "Is prison, her am had tries to escape. Can. Should." And a placid little smile, like a Hindu idol.
Rory shakes his head too hard and fast to look fully in control, grabs her hand across the table. "No! You think like that. I don't know how I know, but I know you think like that, because you never knew anything different. But that's not how it is. If you're innocent you have to tell them, you can't just let them believe the Doctor."
Oh, thank you Rory. Your unfailing confidence in my wisdom never ceases to flatter, to gratify, yay, even, to amaze me. Not I understand any more than he does, but I have never for a moment doubted my absolute justification in all aspects of the matter at hand. I haven't. I really haven't, I promise. Scout's honour.
Prisoner Eighty-Four, Jessica Apple, rearranges their hands so that hers are on top, and rubs her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles. "Not being innocent," she says quite simply. Then lowers her eyes. You can see that she's thinking, choosing her imperfect words very, very carefully. "Rory am being at the beginning. Her am being at the end. When Rory am at the end, him is not to have been forgetting her."
For the second time today she looks right at me. Or right at the camera, yes, fine, fair enough, but right at me. Echoes, "When them are all getting to the end they am not to have been forgetting her."
She looks up at a guard out of frame and nods. And Rory begins to protest, the way you would if a whole new instinct at the core of your being wanted to protect her. But she looks fine. Ready. Acceptant. "It's okay," she says to Rory, before they take her away. "Rory gets to save her soon."
I don't watch them taking her away. Not because there might be one of those nasty emotional reactions to deal with, but because I've just stopped next to that lift.
And inside, Amy is yelling, "Why are you really here?"
I shout for her to stop and beat at the door. When nothing happens I use the sonic and the doors slide open, just in time for me to hold her back. The Little Ghost is cowering, but there is the threat, just the merest point, of ash stake edging from her forearms. Should Pond attack, she will defend herself. That much is understandable. And the more of these scraps I glean about her, the more I understand why she can be so quick to resort to lethal force.
That's why I get Pond by the arm and pull her away. "What is the matter with you? Honestly! It takes me a full day to go mental if I'm stuck in a four foot metal box."
"She'll betray you, Doctor. All of us." She means it, too. Believes it, even. Without breaking eye contact with me, Amy brings up the papers. I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but she got farther while I was keeping an eye on Rory. What she wants to show me is on the second page. And the third, and the fourth. The full list of charges. "Murder," Amy is saying, flipping across them, pointing out the choice ones, "Grand larceny, spying, treason. That's why you changed your mind, that's why you handed her over to this General to be brought here."
Pond, at least, does not believe the General and I to be the same person just yet.
Yes, see? Optimism. You humans could learn a thing or two about it.
Unfortunately, that's about all I have.
