"Real hauntings have nothing to do with ghosts;
they have to do with the menace of memory."
-Anne Rice
Fifth Doctor's Hijacked TARDIS, Present Day
The next door that Sienna reached opened to a laboratory. Deja vu all over again. She entered the dark room and the lights came on by themselves, the door closed all on its own. She jumped a little when she heard it shut behind her.
She wondered how much time she had left to explore before the Doctor impostor tracked her down. She wondered mostly what the hell he wanted with her. Just as sure as she knew that she'd been on board this TARDIS before, Sienna was sure that the creepy guy must have taken it from someone else. That it didn't belong to him at all.
She walked all around the lab, peering at the small bank of computers, examining a centrifuge and a Bunsen burner. Nothing seemed especially familiar or significant until she noticed that some scientific paraphernalia remained on the center counter from some experiment. Like someone had been working on something and just walked away, leaving things as they were. A small microscope and a test tube rack with two vials containing samples of some cloudy liquid. She narrowed her eyes at the items. Dust had settled there so clearly the things had been sitting around like this for some time.
She approached the lab table and gingerly touched the test tube rack. She closed her eyes and tried once more to connect with the telepathy of the TARDIS. It didn't take near as long this time. It was like whichever neural pathways that were involved in the communication had been altered and adapted quickly.
The white noise came again. The change in vantage point. Seeing through the eyes of the TARDIS. This time she even saw herself. She was standing on the other side of the counter. The blonde guy stood across from her. His body language showed he was troubled. They both looked slightly pixelated. Imperfect recreations of the real thing.
"You didn't do anything wrong you know. Because I know that's what you think." The apparition version of herself told him. Her voice sounded echoey. Slightly mechanical. The playback of a machine's recording.
The blonde guy leaned against a cabinet, his expression a bit angry now. "What we did this morning. What I almost did this morning, was disgraceful. That is not who I am. I operate on logic. As a Time Lord, I need to be in control at all times, not to take all leave of my senses just because some attractive young woman rubs up against me. That's irrational. I need order in my life. Not this...this chaos."
Sienna felt a knot in her stomach just watching the interaction. Holy shit. Ouch.
The blonde guy lifted a box from the counter and sighed heavily. The TARDIS memory version of her didn't skip a beat. She looked at him calmly and smiled.
"Yeah, you're probably right. Anything you need me to do before we head to the woods?"
Double ouch. It couldn't be more obvious that her casual attitude affected the guy. He looked like he'd been slapped and had a hell of a time recovering. He had to set the box back down. Not a poker player for sure.
Sienna came out of the telepathic connection and stumbled slightly. It was like she'd stood up too fast. A slight head rush. She blew out a breath.
Okay. So. Apparently there was some complicated shit happening between the blonde dude and herself. There was no doubt that he felt some type of way about her and didn't know how to show it. And she suspected the feeling was mutual despite her put upon indifference.
Sienna was pretty astounded by these revelations. How the hell could someone have such a significant connection with another person and then just completely forget about them? Jesus. This was just getting stranger and stranger.
And another thought occurred to her. Why had he disappeared from her life? She was beginning to understand that this man was the Doctor from her own universe just as the other Doctor she'd met in October was the Doctor from a parallel universe. So where had her Doctor gone? Where was he now?
Just then she heard a voice. Not inside her head. Not telepathic. It was like it was coming over a public address system through unseen speakers.
"Sienna. Where have you gone dear?"
That voice. That creepy fucking voice. It made her skin crawl. Yeah. Definitely not the Doctor.
"Now where could you have disappeared to. I left you to take a little nap in the library because I thought you'd be more comfortable. Did you get lost in the corridors?"
A weird little laugh. "Shall I come find you?"
Sienna was grateful that whatever power he had over her only seemed to be effective in person. His voice did nothing but make her want to run far away.
She knew she couldn't stick around here. She needed to keep moving. But where to? Her heart was racing as she sneaked a peek into the corridor. It was all clear. She moved along the wall as it curved around. Almost like the hallway had become somewhat circular here.
"Siennaaaaa. Oh Siennaaaa. Why don't you come out and talk to the Doctor. Don't worry. I'm in the corridors now. I'll find you."
Her heart lurched in her chest. Every instinct in her body took his words as the threat they almost certainly were.
She continued quickly down the stark white corridor, hugging the wall. As she went, a door seemed to materialize on the wall beside her, right before her eyes. She blinked and it disappeared. Its appearance had been like a mirage, all wavy and not quite solid.
She reached out her hand to touch the wall where it had been and it materialized once more. When she took her hand away, it was gone again. But she had felt it. She had felt the door.
A hidden door? She felt hope rise in her chest. She looked all around her and felt the comforting hum of the TARDIS. It... no she was trying to help her. (Sienna wasn't sure where the pronoun came from, but it fit. The TARDIS was most certainly a 'she'.)
Sienna touched the wall again and the door was back. She ran her hand down to the handle and opened it up.
She found a bedroom. All silver metal and black and red accents. She walked in quickly and closed the door behind her. As she backed into the bedroom, she saw the door disappear again. She breathed a sigh of relief. The TARDIS was hiding her. She was keeping Sienna safe. Away from the madman who had taken her from her apartment.
She looked around the room. It really was the perfect bedroom, Sienna thought to herself.
It had a modern feel with a silver metal framed bed and matching metal tables and lamps. The comforter was black and red with matching pillows. The floor was wood with a black and red area rug. There was a silver metal wardrobe full of cute clothes just her style and size and a silver metal book shelf full of true crime books and thriller type novels. It was like the room had been made with her in mind. There was also an attached bathroom with a huge clawfoot bathtub.
She supposed there were worse hiding places a person could get stuck with. She sighed and sat down on the bed. Not having her phone was driving her fucking nuts. It was practically another appendage to her.
She bet Silas was freaking the hell out. She knew he was smart enough to get in touch with her mother when things went wrong like they did. Perhaps they'd tracked down the real Doctor and were looking for her right now. She could only hope.
She glanced around the bedroom again and was once more hit with deja vu. Had this been her room? She narrowed her eyes and looked down at the bed, ran her hand along one of the pillows. She closed her eyes and mentally spoke to the TARDIS. Anything else you want to show me? The TARDIS answered almost right away with the white noise. Her point of view shifted once again and she was looking down at the bed from above.
Sienna gasped at what she saw.
"Oh hell nah." Sienna stood up quickly and shook her head hard to clear the images from her mind. She was blushing from her toes to the roots of her brown hair.
She put her hands on her hips and looked all around the room, incredulous. "Really? You wanna warn a motherfucker before you go showing some X rated shit like that?" Sienna blinked rapidly. The TARDIS hummed in response. Trying to play innocent, Sienna thought.
She most definitely did not remember any of that happening. She couldn't believe this. She'd spent many years partying. Had her share of black outs, waking up next to questionable guys. She'd never blacked out an entire goddamn relationship.
She shook her head again, chewed at her bottom lip.
Well, apparently the blonde Doctor had shown her one hell of a good time. And she supposed she'd learned something else important from the TARDIS.
That didn't mean she wanted to see it though!
Sienna went and snatched a Dean Koontz book off the shelf and sat back down hard on the bed. She glared up at the ceiling, her eyes narrowed. Damn pervy TARDIS. She grumbled and opened the book to the first page.
Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS, Present Day
After Silas had shown Savannah the way to the bedroom, he went back to the control room to wait. The other Silas, or Lancelot as the Doctor seemed to have dubbed him, was passed out cold in a chair. He watched him for a moment.
Dude. Is that what I look like when I sleep? It was rather unsettling.
He heaved a big sigh and fidgeted with his stocking cap. He was worried to death about Sienna. He hoped that whatever they were talking about in the house would give them some idea where she was.
Silas glanced back toward the corridor. It was crazy having Savannah here. She was like Sienna in a lot of ways but there was a difference there he couldn't quite put a finger on. Obviously she looked the same, even dressed the same. Savannah did seem more mature somehow. Probably because she'd had it a bit harder growing up. Dayle had said that the Dayle from the other universe had been an addict. Silas imagined that hadn't been a walk in the park for her kid.
He sat heavily in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs and put his face in his hands. He was getting pretty tired himself.
Suddenly the door came open and the Doctor, Jesse and Dayle walked in.
"Where'd Savannah go?" Dayle wondered.
Silas nodded toward the corridor. "She was tired. She headed back to lay down in that first bedroom there."
"Ah. Her mother's bedroom." the Doctor mumbled and went to lean against the console.
"Where is she anyway?" Dayle asked. "Why isn't she here with Savannah?" Dayle's eyes narrowed suspiciously.
The Doctor looked uncomfortable. "I didn't see the point in dragging her in to all this." He turned his back and began fiddling with the computer.
Dayle put her hands on her hips. "No. Hold up now. That's bullshit. You've dragged her to another universe and back. Twice. So why not this time?"
He turned and looked at her. His expression plainly told her "duh."
Dayle pressed her lips together. "She doesn't know. She doesn't know you've changed." Silas could see she was getting a bit pissed off.
Jesse tried to break in. "Sweetheart. This really isn't any of our business."
"Aw no. Fuck that. He made her my business by bringing me into all this five years ago. If he hadn't gotten me involved, Sienna might not be missing right now." She was near tears now. Jesse put a hand on her shoulder, still trying to calm her down.
"You also might have never met Sienna." Jesse pointed out gently.
The Doctor still hadn't said a word. Just leaned against the console looking up at the ceiling.
Dayle sighed and seemed to count to ten. "So you're another guy now. A completely different person. So now you don't care about the other Dayle?" Dayle was looking at him, trying to understand.
The Doctor sighed. "You're wrong about that. I just didn't see the point in upsetting her." He scratched his forehead and sighed. "I spoke to her on the phone. She called because Savannah was having those dreams. When I spoke to her, I was her Doctor. The old me." He chuckled darkly. "Couldn't quite get away at the time. So here I am." He gestured at himself. "Do you really think she'd be happy if I showed up like this on her doorstep?"
Dayle squinted at him like he was stupid. "Lord of Time. Are you a complete moron? She loves you." She crossed her arms and leaned back against her husband. "Of course she'd be happy."
The Doctor made a derisive sound and turned back to the console. "Any way, what's done is done."
Silas finally saw a gap in the conversation. "So... Sienna?" He looked around at all of them. "Have we figured anything out yet?"
The Doctor turned toward him, put his hands in the pockets of his black coat. "Well, what I have discovered for certain is that Maren, the High Priestess on the planet Karn lied the last time we saw her. You see, Sienna and the other Dayle and I went to see the Sisterhood trying to find... a friend. Maren knew exactly who Sienna was. She knew she was family. And she even said 'the girl from the woods.' We just assumed she was referring to her last name." He scratched behind his ear looking thoughtful. "I'm getting a very strong feeling it was no coincidence that Maren played such a large role in the death of... our friend."
"How very cryptic of you." Dayle muttered. "You gonna fill in the blanks for us? Ever?"
The Doctor cleared his throat and leveled his intense gaze at her. After a moment of silence, he began. "It's an awfully long story. Complicated. I'll try to stick to the highlights. After you destroyed the Tregannon in the woods with the Anti Time sphere it created a temporal anomaly. It affected your entire timeline. It was as if my entering your universe five years ago never happened. It erased Jesse from your life. And Gabe. Retroactively."
Dayle gasped audibly and grabbed for Jesse's hand.
The Doctor continued. "How we came to know this is because... well, the Doctor from this universe came along to investigate something that Maren told him about. Maren being your great grandmother." he pointed at Dayle. "The other Doctor met Sienna in the woods that day. She had just gotten out of rehab and had relapsed. He befriended her. He even came to her rescue when her ex boyfriend Chris attacked her. The Doctor brought her along with him in his TARDIS. Then the other Dayle and I got involved. We were trying to help fix the timeline. We soon discovered it was the Anti Time that was causing a problem. What we didn't know, was there was still a whole other problem."
He stopped and took a breath. Everyone in the control room waited silently for him to go on.
"Sienna and the other Doctor traveled to the altered timeline via a Time Corridor in the woods. What they discovered was that Sienna was dead in that timeline." He looked at Dayle, his eyes unreadable. She blinked in surprise.
Silas felt his stomach drop. Sienna was dead?
"It turned out, in the skewed timeline, the other Doctor never intervened when she was attacked by Chris. Chris murdered her in the parking lot of a grocery store." It was obvious that the topic was troubling to him. He fidgeted with the ends of his coat. "At the time we assumed it was the Anti Time Sphere. But then we went back and fixed things. It fixed your timeline, but Sienna was still dead." He sighed and looked at all of them.
"What happened was partially my fault." he admitted, sounding wracked with guilt. "The other Doctor went back to his past to try to figure out what kept him from showing up to meet Sienna. We got worried and went after him. Sienna made a choice that changed the past. Changed the future. She healed a friend of his, created a paradox. In a way, she unknowingly caused her own death."
The Doctor stepped away from the console and went to sit in one of the jumpseats. He suddenly looked very tired. "It seemed there was no way to fix things. That Sienna was just meant to die. Until we discovered a temporal loophole involving the creation of a binary black hole. Throwing anti time at its singularity point, winding back the clock. Undoing the paradox. But it meant someone had to be there, at the explosion. In the explosion."
Dayle made everyone jump a little when she broke in. "He sacrificed himself didn't he? To save Sienna. He caused the explosion. And then you wiped her memory." She sounded certain. The Doctor's expression was answer enough.
Silas was confused. "But why? Why did you need to wipe her memory?" He was standing now, caught up in the telling of what happened.
"Because they fell in love with each other." Dayle guessed softly, eyeing the Doctor. "Isn't that right? He sacrificed himself because they'd fallen in love. And then he asked you to wipe her memory so she wouldn't have to grieve." Dayle had tears in her eyes. She actually looked heartbroken for her daughter. For the whole situation.
The Doctor nodded. "That's correct. I didn't want to wipe her memory. But I made a promise to him. We thought she-"
"That she'd relapse?" Silas asked flatly. He was feeling a ton of different emotions. But he felt like he understood Sienna a bit better. It made sense why she couldn't give her heart to anyone else. She was in love with someone she couldn't even remember.
"Yes. Well. It seems it was all for nothing anyway." The Doctor pointed out. "Since the Master has his TARDIS and Lenore is having dreams of him trying to communicate, it appears he didn't die after all. And we have to find him." He looked troubled. "What we must find out first, is if the Master is somehow connected with the Sisterhood of Karn on this. Or if he just stumbled his way into an opportunity."
"And how do you propose we figure that out?" Dayle wondered, sounding weary.
"I think it's high time I give my old friend a call, don't you?" The Doctor's face was hard, his eyes a bit crazy. Silas was beginning to feel a little sorry for the Master. He had a feeling he'd pissed of the wrong guy.