Nurse Prin takes in their state with barely a raised eyebrow. Apparently he's seen worse than a man looking half dead, caked in his own blood and sweat, and a girl with ugly hands half supporting him, exiting out of a bright red telephone box which has just materialized inside the lobby.
Melody doesn't want to consider just what, exactly, could be worse.
"Hm. Red. Cherry red. Cherry, cherry red. That's new. She was blue before."
"Come along John."
"I liked the blue. Such a nice color, blue is. And you like yellow, don't you? You're always wearing it."
Honestly, for a man with broken ribs he sure talks a lot. "Yes John," she says.
Melody Williams will be careful? And my John, too?
We will. Braveheart, what happened?
But the TARDIS doesn't say anything more.
The hospital is white, with muted green or blue lighting for the signs and white lighting for everywhere else. All the nurses wear white as well, and they're all men, and they're either human or Catkind. The patients, by contrast, are like bright, exotic birds dropped into all that cool white-green-blue, and those bright birds are everywhere. John and Melody simply disappear into the throng.
Even so, they still sign in as Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan and River Noble, because the Time Agency is big in the 53rd Century. (And while John doesn't mention it, he knows that Jack might still be alive here in Jack's possible past. No, it never hurts to be careful.) She calls him dear and he calls her darling and Melody struggles not to laugh.
John gives her a look when she introduces herself as River. That can wait till later, says the look she sends back at him. You're dead on your feet as it is. He shrugs.
When they are to go their separate ways, he to General and she to Burns, he says, "Well, darling, I'll see you in a bit." Because the nurses are watching he also kisses her on the cheek.
Melody blushes.
They are then led their separate ways. Melody looks over her shoulder at him as they go. John creaks along between two of the Catkind, shuffling slowly but steadily.
A soldier, she thinks, and allows her nurse to lead her away, too.
They assess Melody's hands. There's nothing they can do to heal them, they tell her solemnly. The nervous system is too badly damaged. At best, they can graft an organic, polymorphic skin over her hands. It dulls the senses; she won't feel any pain in her hands when she touches things because she won't feel anything at all.
Yes alright, she tells them. Alright.
When it's really not alright at all.
They sit her down in the hospital room. She's in the corner, out of the way of the real serious treatments. They hook her up to the machine that will give her her second layer of skin. It is sterile and white, and clamps down over her hands. But it's a gentle sort of clamping. There's a bright puff of air on the skin of her hands. An antiseptic, they tell her.
The last thing her hands will ever feel.
Melody falls half asleep against the broad white back of the construct that holds her hands inside its body, listening to the hum and pitch of the machine.
"Hullo."
She jerks upright, startled out of slumber. Her head swings around to the left, in the direction of the voice. It's a male. Human. He stands there awkwardly, arms akimbo, and gives her half a wave when she's looking at him fully.
"May I sit?" he asks. Without waiting for an answer he snags over a nearby chair, sitting down on it backwards. He crosses his arms on the head of the chair, plops his chin on his arms, and proceeds to grin at her.
Melody blinks at him. "Err . . . who're you?"
"The name's Ian."
". . . Melody."
"Yep," he says, popping the "p." "Time-travel," he adds at Melody's questioning look. "Really messes with the head. You always come at things a bit sideways afterwards." He's wearing a vortex manipulator on his wrist. Ah, Melody thinks. River had used one of those.
"Have we met before?" she asks him.
"Maybe not from your end. From my end? Well—spoilers." Ian then proceeds to waggle his eyebrows at her, grinning.
Melody looks at him, sharp. "How do you know about that?"
"About what?"
"That—that word."
Ian shrugs. "It's what you've always said. I've just adopted it for a short while."
"What I say."
"Yes." She eyes him, wary. Ian is easy smooth, with a grin filled with the white strip of his teeth and a spark in his eyes that is bright, alive. Some would call it merry. A scattering of freckles lie across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, small dim spots in the tan of his face.
"You don't believe me," he adds, amused.
Melody thinks of River.
"No," she says. "I believe you."
Ian is unable to hide his surprise. He doesn't act on it, though, merely grins at her and says, "Good."
Melody smiles back at him, still a bit wary, but brightening considerably to this strange, enigmatic young man. "So, future man, why are you here in my past? I suppose you do have a reason, other than to stop by and say hello."
Ian sighs, leans forward, hands knotting together at the fingers. "You're right, I—"
A high wailing echoes throughout the medical bay. Before anyone has time to react an Absorbaloff, her ceremonial braids swinging almost to her waist, bursts into the room. Panic is etched across her features. She's wearing a bright blue and pink floral patterned dress, and attached to the end of her arm is one of the Catkind nurses, looking entirely too unflappable.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" the Absorbaloff woman is shrieking. "I didn't mean to!"
"Ma'am, you have to calm down," the nurse soothes.
And John squeaks in through the doors after them, waving the sonic screwdriver over his head. "Hello Melody!" he yells across the room. Melody groans and plunks her head against the machine. Of course he would—
"—be in the thick of things," Ian is muttering beside her. "Hang on—let me go get him sorted." It takes Melody a moment to realize that he is talking to her. "Be right back," he informs her, and picks his tall frame up from the chair.
She watches him join the fray in the middle of the room, wondering who this strange, strange creature is.
Do you want to know a secret? (That strange creature's a time traveler.)
A nurse, human, his bald plate gleaming under the bright fluorescence of the lights, is able to calm the woman down by explaining to her that the consciousness she'd accidently absorbed could be brought back by using a neural relay and uploading them into ganger technology.
"Oh thank heavens," a Raxacoricofallapatorian attached to the side of her neck says, rolling his eyes skywards.
"All I came in for was pentapox!" the Abosrbaloff woman sobs.
"Yes, I'm sure you did," the Catkind nurse attached to her arm soothes, making sure to keep his voice slow pitched and calm. The whole kit was led away by the second nurse, leaving Ian and John standing awkwardly in the middle of the room.
"Ganger technology?" John mutters, arms crossed and squinting a bit.
"You've never heard of it?" Ian asks, surprised.
"Weell, I've heard of it, but that was a sitcom. I Live Next Door. Funny, but the actress was a bit spotty. The actual actress, not her ganger co-star. Lovely purple skin . . . and who are you?"
"Ian."
"Yes—well yes, no—who are you?"
"Changing the inflection won't make me any more likely to tell you."
John flushes red and turns towards Ian, ready to berate, but Ian is already loping away back to Melody, hands in pockets and whistling.
"I don't like him. He's rude."
"John!" Melody frowns at him. Her hands are stuck in that machine, and she looks like a bit like a disgruntled penguin. He raises an eyebrow at her, leans against of the contraption that's eaten her hands.
"What? I don't like him." He turns towards Ian. "I don't like you. And I'm not afraid to say it to his face. He's rude."
Ian's lips twitch, as though he's struggling not to laugh. "You're no spring daisy yours—"
"Say, Melody! How are your hands going? What have they done? What can they do?"
Melody looks at the swallowed ends of her wrists. She says, "Oh, well. They can fix it. I won't be in pain anymore. But, um."
"Um?" John prompts. He pulls out the sonic from the back pocket of his jeans. He'd stuffed it there when he'd realized that a) his jacket was still on the console floor and b) there wasn't much he could do to help the Absorbaloff woman with it. He wonders whether they have a stabilizing unit for the gangers to, well, stabilize afterwards. They'd needed one in the sitcom, but that had been the 49th century, and this is the 51st and a completely different universe on top of that and an awful lot could have happened in 200 some-odd years. Even so, the TARDIS could probably stabilize them. In a pinch. Statistically. Probably.
He sonics the machine he's leaning against, scans the readings while he waits for Melody's answer. "Hang on," he says, frowning at the readings. "Hang on-on-on—Melody, this machine is a—"
"Yes, I know. They told me."
"And it's—"
"Yes."
"Will you quit interrupting? This is grafting a second skin over your hands—but it's not really skin, it's more of a thin metal alloy organic mixture thing that quite frankly I haven't bothered memorizing the name to. But I should have. Dulls the nerve endings. In the forty-second century it was used as a mercy grant for executions, so the victims wouldn't, err—" He stutters to a halt. "You really don't need to know that, actually. I didn't need to know, but they told me anyways. Last request type of thing."
"No, I didn't particularly need to."
"Sorry. Sorry."
"That's alright." She knows he's talking about more than just an insensitive comment. "Not your fault."
"Yeah, well."
Melody bites her lip, blurts out, "How're you?" John raises an eyebrow at her. "They—your ribs are alright? Your nose? There was so much—so much blood."
"Head wounds do that," he acknowledges. "Yeah, they patched me up alright. Fit as a whistle. Going to have a crook in my nose, though." He rubs the crook in question with his fingers. "My bones, they knit together too fast, what with me being part, well, and I didn't want them re-breaking anything more than necessary. It was painful enough with the ribs."
"Painful? Didn't they give you any pain medication?"
"He doesn't like them." This from Ian. "They give him headaches. He probably refused to take anything."
"Headaches? You get headaches?" Her voice rose a bit in alarm; John shoots a glance at Ian, irritated. Passing the sonic from hand to hand, he sighs. "It's not that big of a deal. I just get headaches sometimes is all. Pain medication makes them—weell, any kind of medication, really—makes them easier to come on." And when Melody continues to stare at him, appalled: "They're not that bad."
Ian snorts. "They're not," John insists. "I can handle them. I've been handling them and would you quit doing that?" This last is directed towards Ian, who raises an eyebrow.
"Doing what? All I'm doing is standing here."
"Exactly. You're staring. Stop it. Go somewhere else."
"Hm. You're deflecting. He's deflecting; doesn't want us to talk about those headaches." Ian turns away from Melody to stare at John. "You're just so young. Both of you. It's weird seeing you guys like this."
"Young? Young? I'm not young. Why does everyone think that I'm young? First that woman, now you—"
"Well you are. You're being, quite frankly, extremely irrational and angry. Why are you so angry?"
Melody looks between the two men, nervous. They're squaring off, toe to toe. John is beet red, and Ian is calm, cool. Deliberate.
"Look," John growls, pointing the sonic in Ian's face, "I've had a very bad day. Someone has just tried to kill me, and frightened my friend, and hurt her. And now I have someone from the future—my relative future, mind you—poking around where he is unwanted? Yeah, that bugs me."
"Hm," Ian says, completely unmoved by the angry man practically spitting in his face. "Interesting. You really do have an anger problem this young, don't you?"
"Excuse me." The nurse's voice is like frost. "This is a hospital ward, gentleman. If you refuse to quiet down I will have to ask you to leave." His gaze fixes on Ian with suspicion. "And who are you? My records do not show the Noble family coming in with more than two people."
John coughs, shifts his weight to the balls of his feet. "He's my brother. Arrived a bit late; he was so distressed upon hearing what happened to my wife here that he didn't bother checking in. Ian Noble: look him up, if you feel the need to."
"Hm." The nurse doesn't look convinced, but decides to let the matter drop. He turns towards Melody, asks, "How are you feeling, Mrs. Noble? The procedure shouldn't take much longer."
"Oh, I'm doing just fine, thank you. Just listening to these two idiots over here argue—something about a broken toy when they were little, I'm afraid. Never quite got over it. Isn't that right, dear?"
"Oh absolutely, darling. Abso-lonsy-lutely."
The machine is opened. Melody's hands lie there, exposed, naked inside of the pale blue translucence of the skin graft. "You can lift your hands out now, Ms. Noble," the nurse informs her kindly.
"Er, right." Melody pulls them out. The nurse wipes the residual skin graft off with a towel.
"There," he says, "all done." He's meaning to be kind, but all his kindness does makes Melody want to cry.
Her hands. They're oddly shiny in color, like saran wrap, and where there are scars the skin resembles oil.
No. They're definitely not beautiful. But they don't hurt, either. They don't anything; she holds them up, and they kind of hang there, and after a final minute of her staring at them she twists them into her lap, where they then proceed to bang awkwardly into one another. "Thank you," she tells the nurse. "Thank you. Thank you."
But her heart really isn't in it.
She makes to get out of the hospital chair, but she misjudges where she's placed her hands and one over shoots the arm of the chair and spirals off and away. Melody almost falls, but John catches her last minute. "Thanks," she mutters, flushing. Hands on her shoulders, he helps guide her up out of the chair. "It's just hard, knowing where to—knowing that I've placed them right when I can't feel that I've placed them anywhere at all."
"It'll take some getting used to," he acknowledges. He picks up her hands, brings them up to eye level for inspection. Melody eyes him; any trace of his earlier anger has vanished, but she knows that it's more than likely still there. He's probably just sitting on it. "But we'll work on it. Hey, they did a good job on these." If she was the nurse Melody would think that his surprise was insulting; as it is all she does is say, "Did they really?"
"Yeah, yeah, they did. The seam is near invisible; you wouldn't be able to tell at all the skin graft was there, unless you actually knew. And now your skin's all rainbow-y."
"Rainbow-y?"
"Of course rainbow-y! All around your scars, see? And rainbows are—are—" His mouth worked, trying to come up with a word, and finally settled on, "They're cool."
Melody blinks at him. "Cool?" she echoes.
"Yeah, cool. I like them. Rainbows are cool." He pauses. "Not much else is though. Weell except for maybe pears. I like pears. Rainbows and pears."
"Hrm." The nurse clears his throat. John and Melody jump, look at him. "Will you come to the front desk to talk about a method of payment?"
John stares at the nurse blankly. "Payment? With money?"
The nurse gives John a look. "Of course, Mr. Noble. Is there any other way?"
"Indentured servitude?" John squeaks.
Melody absolutely refuses to let John use a piece of psychic paper to get them out of the mess. "It's cheating," she informs him. "I've never approved of you using it, even when you were the Doctor, and especially not now that I can actually say something about it. And where in the world did you even get psychic paper anyhow?"
John buttons up a bit at that, but his gaze flicks side long to Ian. "I-an!" Melody scolds.
He raises his hands in denial. "Hey, hey, don't look at me. Blame her."
"She would be the one," Melody mutters, while John looks at them in confusion.
"Who? What?" he splutters.
Nurse Prin, who is still on his shift at the front desk, scowls at them, whiskers twitching with annoyance. Melody's nurse stands next to him, and he is also bristling with annoyance. "Stalling can be tried in a court of law," he informs them. "Especially stalling to pay medical bills."
"Well erm, ah, erm, ah . . ." John stumbles. He and Melody exchange glances.
Ian shoves his way between the two of them, rolling his eyes. "Since neither of you two thought to plan ahead—here." Pulling out a thin grey placard from his back pocket, he hands it to Nurse Prin. Both nurses peer at the placard for a moment, then stare at Ian. Finally Nurse Prin squeaks, "O-o-oh. Yes, of course. Agent 789! I hadn't recognized you. I-I—"
"Don't worry about it," Ian reassures him. "Just . . . don't remember that I was here, alright? The security of the galaxy's at stake if I don't get Mr. and Mrs. Noble out here as soon as possible. We only really had enough time to stop for medical attention."
"What medical attention?" Nurse Prin says, face a bit wan.
"Exactly," Ian says, winking at the nurses and giving them a quick smile. He takes the placard back from them, stuffs it back into his back pocket. He turns towards Melody and John, ushering them away. "Come along, Noble troupe. Time to skedaddle. Ach—skedaddle. Rubbish. Never using that again."
The TARDIS had apparently upon their absence drifted over a few feet to the left, making the front entryway of the TARDIS a bit harder to see from reception than it had previously. They stop in front of the doors, awkward. John immediately rounds on Ian, face flat with fury. "You're a Time Agent?" he hisses, backing Ian into the TARDIS doors. "Did they send you? You're here to spy on us, aren't you? Tell them where we are?"
"No!" Ian protests. "No, I'm not. I was a part of the Agency, but that was two years ago and it was only to learn how to work these!" He waves around the arm with the vortex manipulator. "So back off."
They glare at one another.
"John." She places a hand on his arm. He looks down at her, scowling.
"What?" he snarls. Because John is really, really not in the mood.
"I trust Ian," she informs him, simple and direct. He turns away from her, snorting.
"John. I do, okay? I do. And besides, if he was going to turn us in already he would have." But the stiff set of his shoulders tells her he's not ready to listen.
She turns towards Ian. "I'm sorry. He's just—"
"Angry," Ian finishes for her. "He's just angry."
John studiously ignores both of them.
"You said you had something for me?" Melody reminds Ian. He brightens considerably, and says, "Eh, that's right! Not that I hadn't, y'know, actually forgotten or anything. I was just wondering if I shouldn't give it to you later, what with Mr. Grumpy over here, but since you asked—" From his back pocket he pulls out a brown paper package roughly the size of a medium sized hatbox. When he hands it over to Melody, he makes sure that her hands are curled all the way around it before letting go.
Being without feeling in your hands is a disconcerting thing. Melody hasn't really had the time to appreciate it before, because everything has been just light touches, but now with the weight of the box in her hands she has no other choice but to notice. How the box simply wouldn't be there in her hands, if not for the pull of its weight on the rest of her arms. How she can even forget it's there, because she can't feel the corners, the rough rasp of the tape keeping the corner flaps together, the rough smoothness of the wrapping paper.
Since focusing on her hands makes her depressed, Melody asks Ian, "You're pockets are bigger on the inside?"
He nods. "Normally it'd be my old anorak, but that was left behind earlier on. So she gave me pockets that happen to be bigger inside."
"And by 'she' you mean . . ."
"Precisely." This raises a whole new kettle of fish, for if Braveheart liked him enough (or will like him enough, come to that) to give him pockets bigger on the inside . . . Melody glances over at John. The TARDIS hasn't even done that for him yet. Or she's pretty sure the TARDIS hasn't. Pretty sure.
"How do you know us, Ian?" Melody asks him.
He grins at her, and that spark is back in his eyes again. "Spoilers," he says.
Melody laughs at him. "Figured you would say that." Behind her she is very aware of John bristling in indignation. "Well, I suppose we must go. I'd offer you a lift, but—"
"Nah, no need. I have this, remember?" And he waves the arm with the vortex manipulator around again. "I can get around perfectly well on my own."
"Right." They stand there, awkward again. Breaking the mood, John shoulders his way past Ian into the TARDIS proper, leaving the door open behind him. They both stare after him, Melody a bit wide-eyed.
"Don't mind about him," Ian tells her. "He'll come around."
"Yeah . . ." Melody stares after John, eyes narrowed. "I have to admit, I'm a bit irritated with him."
"And he's probably a bit irritated with you." Ian's gaze is fond. "Don't worry—you guys'll work it out. Probably have a fantastic row, and then you can make up later."
"I'm not quite sure if I want to have fantastic row." Ian shrugs.
"He's had a bad day. He's angry, but he won't want to take that anger out on anyone, especially you. But if he doesn't he'll just keep it bottled up inside and the more it's bottled up the worse it'll get."
"So you're basically telling me to get in there and have a row with him."
"Did you hear me say that? I never said that."
Melody hesitates. "You know him. Really well, I mean. John. You know John."
"Yeah," Ian admits. "I do." A soft smile curls the corner of his mouth; Melody watches it, sees the way this one little smile softens the entirety of his face far more than any of that bright vivacity of his grins ever could.
"Take care of yourself Ian," she tells him, sincere. Take care of yourself; take care.
"Yeah. Same to you." He stuffs his hands into the front pocket of his jeans, rocks back onto his heels. "Be seein' you in a few."
"Yeah. Thanks, Ian." Even though she isn't quite sure what she's thanking him for.
Heb rushes away her thanks. "Nah. You'd have done the same for me. We're friends, Melody. Best get used to it."
"Looking forward to it."
He winks at her.
There really isn't much else left to say after that. Tucking the package under her arm, Melody and Ian shake hands. She cannot feel the corners of his hand, and she can only tell that she's grasping anything at all by the drag the action has on the rest of her.
Strange and sad.
"Goodbye, Ian."
"Hullo Melody. Catch you later."
And she closes the TARDIS door behind her.
The rush of wind blows his hair back and rattles his shirt. The TARDIS disappears along the railways of time, falling through space with that familiar bumpy rattle of a key sawing along piano wires: vworp-vworp, vworp-vworp. Not traditionally lovely, but still lovely all the same.
Still lovely.
Ian watches until she disappears, her last whispered command echoing through his mind: Ian Noble will be safe-making.
He promises her he will be. Well, as safe as he ever is. Which is badly.
Whistling, he saunters out of the hospital. The day outside is bright and the city on the distant waterline sparkles across the bay like jewels caught in the noonday sun, all the windows catching fractals of light and throwing it out. The air is soaked with the smell of apples. Green, tart ones, with the juice squirting sour along the inside and down your throat.
Ian pulls the list out of his pocket. It's a bit crumpled from being squashed under the package. He uncrumples it, checks the next coordinates.
5) Sigma D 9-435678: The Alvarix Gardens.
He inputs the coordinates into the manipulator. With a crack and flash he is gone, off into the past or the future. He has some gardens to get to.
