"The Theater, The Theatre"

11. Living Tales

Inside the TARDIS

Seeing the look on Sophie's face when they'd first walked on to the TARDIS with her, Rachel could only see her as she'd once been, when they would huddle together and she would tell her daughter about the adventures of the Doctor and the Teacher. The interior had changed since the last time Rachel had seen it, and although it had been that old version she had described countless times to her, Sophie did not look as though she minded the change at all. It was still one of the more impressive sights anyone come upon in their lives. If Rachel had had any doubts still that this woman was the same Doctor as she'd known all those years ago, seeing the barely concealed pride on her face as she watched Sophie discover her ship was enough to prove that this was the Time Lord… or Time Lady now, she supposed.

"It's real…" was all Sophie could say. Rachel looked at her, approaching the console as though she was afraid she might touch it and damage it. "I can't believe I'm standing in a time machine."

"You can't, really?" the Doctor looked around her ship, too.

"Alright, maybe I can," Sophie trailed around, her face relaxing into a smile. "It's just… When I was little, all I ever wanted was for you to be real, you and the Teacher and the time machine."

She didn't go on, didn't say why, but she didn't have to. She had that same look about her the Doctor had seen once before, when she'd first known Rose Tyler, and she so desperately wished to know her father. The Doctor didn't know if it was exactly the same, if it was her father she'd lost, or when, but the weight of loss was on her, as heavy as the Doctor saw it on Sophie's mother.

"People hear the words 'time machine,' more often than not, they never think of the consequences, pasts rewritten, friends lost, loves lost… children…" the Doctor spoke evenly, and in the end, as she'd expected her to, Sophie's hand had reached instinctively to lay over her stomach. After that, she made no more mention of the great unknown that was a time machine. Instead, she had a valid question.

"So why are we here?"

"We are here, because you need to be," the Doctor answered.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you have to stay here, Sophie, for the time being, and it's very important that you don't step off this ship until we come back to get you, understand?" the Doctor looked her in the eye. She looked about to ask why, so the Doctor took another step toward her, laying her own hand over the future mother's. "Do it for her."

"Right…" Sophie breathed out, nodding slowly. "Got it."

"Feel free to walk around, don't question a locked door, and whatever you do, don't go flipping switches you don't know the function of," she indicated the console.

"Hands off. Noted," Sophie nodded again before reaching into her bag and pulling out a book. "I do a lot of sitting around and waiting these days, I'm always prepared."

"Good girl," the Doctor clasped Sophie's head between her hands and stretched to plant a kiss on her forehead, which at once surprised and amused her. "Right this way, have a seat," the Doctor guided her back to the chair, looked around briefly, then on the spot decided to remove her jacket, fold it up, and insert it between the chair and Sophie's back. "How's that?"

"More comfortable than this, I'll fall right to sleep."

"Good," the Doctor moved back toward the door, then turned again. "Food!" she remembered. Sophie responded by reaching into her bag again and pulling out the snacks she kept on hand, along with a water bottle. "Well done," the Doctor tipped her head to both Sophie and Rachel. "Right," she took Rachel toward the door, and the other woman turned to her daughter with a silent look that asked if she would be alright. Sophie promised she would be, and so they walked out, closing and locking the door to leave the girl to her seat, her snacks, and her book.

"Thank you," Rachel told the Doctor once they'd walked out. "But I just need to know, why keep her here with us when you locked the theater up, only to put her in there?"

"First, if I had to choose between the wide open world and my TARDIS, I'd choose her, always," the Doctor explained. "Second, until we know more, I don't believe anyone should be allowed to leave the premises, or enter them if they aren't already here."

"Why not?" Rachel asked as they moved away from the ship.

"If you'd encountered rapidly adapting beings like this before, you'd know to be on high alert, too," the Doctor stated before looking at her. "When we found those two in the beginning, yes? Brian and Cassie, you remember how they were?"

"They acted like they couldn't see us," Rachel recalled.

"Yes, because they couldn't. But then they could. And then they began to speak, with difficulty and then with no difficulty at all. And they attained their minds, or at least the minds of their characters. And all this has happened in under an hour. So what happens next?"

"Oh…"

"No one must touch them," the Doctor added.

"But they're not… corporeal," Rachel remembered watching those two, with the faces of her old friends and colleagues, just passing through the wall like ghosts.

"Yes, and they also couldn't talk thirty minutes ago, do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Yes, I do, I," Rachel sighed, pulling herself together again, "These are not bad people, those characters. Cassie and Brian are lovers and that's that, Cosima is a little kid, Mr. Bennett, an absolute sweetheart, so's Etta, and 0712 is tragic but harmless, the prince is noble, Lady Hanlon can be a bit of a handful but she's reasonable, and the Angel…"

"… has your face."

"I played her for a long time, they may have their sides out there, but I know who she is." The Doctor knew she wouldn't convince her otherwise. The only thing that would convince her, and she hoped it wouldn't come to that, would be for those ghosts to act in any other way than she expected them to. So rather than arguing any further, the Doctor gave a nod.

"Let's hope you're right."

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)