AN: Apparently I submitted the wrong document for the last chapter! I'm really sorry about that, and I fixed it right away. Apologies to all. And here's a consolation chapter:
Now imagine a December sidewalk in midday. It's covered in road salt from the promise of a winter storm. There is a storm coming, but it hasn't got anything to do with the weather. There is a pleasant absence of those little black marks from chewing gum; in Europe, Xan had been pleased to find out, there was less litter. There is a subway grille, and lukewarmth is rising from it. Someone is lying on top of it, huddling on the metal.
Guess who it is?
Good job.
Mister Robbie Hoss had very quickly left the grille the... man... had entered. It gave him the creeps, and so he was willing to give up a spot of warmth to someone else to keep away from whatever that man found so interesting. He found another spot in an alleyway deeper into the city. Someone else had been there, but Robbie kicked him out easily. Now he lay on top of it, wrapping his hands around a mug of something warm and maybe even drinkable. There was a logo on the cup, and it said Waterhelm Industries.
Suddenly he heard footsteps coming from below him. A blue light and a whine, one he recognized very clearly. He leapt off the grille and squished over to the wall, waiting. A hand pushed the grate up and over- he tried not to let it touch him- and then, yes, a mess of brown hair and sideburns and sharp eyes, and a hand pulling itself up. It rolled out of the hole and then, to Robbie's surprise, it reached down and caught another hand, a smaller one. The girl lifted herself up quite easily with a flex of her muscles, then shoved the grille back into place with her foot. She noticed the homeless man cowering by the wall, and gave him a perplexed look. He seemed to be staring wild-eyed at the girl's companion. Xan jerked a thumb at the Doctor as if to say, What, him?
Hoss nodded. He edged away from the Doctor a little more, who was heading out of the alley, pulling Xan with him. She resisted for a moment, a feeling tugging at her in a strange way, then she let him lead her off.
Robbie Hoss retreated further into the alley, thinking hard for the first time since he could remember. He reached inside his coat, which was full of junk, and pulled out a fob watch, running his hands over the strange circular diagrams on the back, shivering.
"Did they follow us?" Xan started to ask. She was feeling strangely faint, and the ground seemed to slide forwards under her feet as she walked.
"They might still be frozen."
"No. I don't think so. It looked like it wasn't going to last. Did you know it was going to do what it did?"
A sudden gust of wind snapped through the Doctor's coat and fled on down the street. The buildings were tall; in this part of London they disappeared into the sky on a cloudy day. They funneled wind through them from off the Thames.
He started to speak, changed his mind, and said disdainfully, "Of course I did."
"None of this was so surprising to you. Did you know the... Siren Hounds were monsters from the start, too?"
His silence was a dead giveaway as to the answer. Xan couldn't hold the accusations in any longer.
"You weren't too surprised to see those creatures down there, were you? Take anyone else on the street, any of those people, show them the thing... it's a nightmare turned real, it's fiction that's been written as fact! Those Siren Hounds were either genetically modified mutants or aliens! Aliens! They could have been from another planet! Aliens! That's... unbelievable! Or mutants, at least! But you... You act as though you see things like that all the time! I think you do! I hear about all the crazy things that have happened in this city, and I'm beginning to see that the tinfoil hat people aren't as wrong as we think! As I thought!"
The Doctor kept trying to get a word in edgewise, but was cut off by Xan's exclamations. He pulled her to a stop and looked around carefully. "Go home," he said quietly. "Just go home. Now. Go back to your life, go back to your world, because if you keep pushing farther, you'll get lost. Forget about tau radiation. Forget about the things in the subways. Because if you don't, you'll wish you had."
"Forget about the men in that place, forget that they said my name, like they were looking for me? Forget about that?"
"Go home! Out of England, back to New York City. Have Christmas with your family, not alone, over here, where there are people looking for you."
"I don't have any family," she said shortly. "I live here now." But uncertainty and doubtful query started to take root in her mind...
This silenced the Doctor for a moment. Then he said, "I don't want to put you in any danger. You know that I know more than I'm saying. I know that too. Why not admit it? But even if you get out of this one alive... there's no going back if you get in too deep. And sometimes that means you end up dead the next time. Or a target, at least."
"I'm already a target. Didn't you hear them? I am already a target; they knew about me... wouldn't it be better if I knew what they know, since I don't see how I can possibly go back to my normal life without taking down the whole company anyway..." There was a hint of pain in her words. "So much for your good intentions, Doctor. They've already marked me out for death. Or worse."
"Which is why you should stay away from them! And me!"
She laughed bitterly. "So you're trying to kill me, too?"
"I never try to," he whispered to himself. "But it doesn't make a difference, in the end."
"Why? What does that mean? Who are you?"
"Oh, but you're so clever, you should have figured it out by now, shouldn't you?" He turned around and began to walk away. "This is my job, to handle this kind of thing. Maybe you know that already. But it doesn't have to be yours."
"Do you know what I think?"
He did not respond.
"I think you're a time traveler, and the police box is your time machine."
The Doctor whirled around, gaping at the human who was watching him, arms folded across her chest.
"You have the worst poker face ever," Xan said.
"Who are you?" he was suddenly demanding. "Are you from Torchwood? You one of theirs? UNIT? They still around? "
Xan blinked, and her expression contracted with suspicion. "Who're they? What's... I... no, I'm just... from me." Then she realized the implications of this. "It's true?"
"You just... figured it out on your own?" he scoffed. "Like I'm supposed to believe that?"
"We..." she tried to articulate, with indignant confusion. "...do that... sometimes. Humans. Humanity. Scientists, especially. Of which... I am one...Well, it isn't like you haven't been dropping really obvious hints all over the place like dirty laundry, though, and, you know, this isn't going to help us fix the problem!" The man's apparent lack of common sense created a bizarre mix of bemusement and anger in Xan's voice. "And you just basically told me I was right! What kind of professional are you?"
The Doctor realized she was right about his poker face, and clamped his mouth shut. Then he slowly stuck his hands in his pockets and examined the girl.
"Xan Russell."
"Yes?"
"You're an archeologist. But you study genetics, too. And history. And chemistry. Astrophysics. Maybe philosophy or poetry as well, anything you can get your hands on. Your lab-mates think you're crazy, and you know it, too. It eats at you, doesn't it?" You also think you're the cleverest person in this star system, and maybe you are, but only when I'm not in town. And I usually am.
The girl shook her head, disbelievingly, but her eyes were tortured and wet. Fury began to crease her face, but it faded again and was replaced by astonishment as she listened.
"You love to read, probably science fiction. No family. No friends. You spend all your time working at the lab, even over holidays. And you made a point of tracking down any trace of huon energy you could find in the history of this world."
"No, tau radiation. I don't know what huon energy is. What does it have to do with..."
"We call it something different. It's more specific."
"We?" she echoed. A calculating look returned in her eyes.
"You just happen to notice it cropping up all over, do you?"
"All the places you've been?"
That brought him up short. He quickly considered all his options. He could tell her everything, and hope she wasn't working for anyone dangerous. He could lie. He could... Xan put her head to one side, unconcerned.
The Doctor wheeled about and fled.
He got only ten meters before Xan overtook him, catching him around the middle and dragging him back.
"Not so fast," she said calmly. "Wouldn't want you to get away now, would I? Who knows where you'd go? Before I was born? A couple of years after I die?"
He wriggled out of her grip and made it into a side street. Suddenly his route was barred by Xan's arm.
"You could stop me from ever being born. You could erase me from existence!"
He ducked under her arm and was suddenly diving away. "But I wouldn't!" This time he employed some good strategy and Xan was cut off by a mob of people talking and joking. She darted though them like a fish though a shoal, and intercepted the Doctor as he entered the network of alleyways.
"But it isn't working, right? Your time machine? Because you crashed it?" she went on, leaping over a dumpster and blocking the man. "Technical difficulties, huh?"
He feinted right and tried to skirt around her, but Xan moved with lightning speed. "You paid attention to every word I said, didn't you?" the Doctor rejoined. "Took notice of everything I did? Not many people will go that far and far-fetched, you know, even with me. Haven't you got anything better to do - on Christmas, no less; I've got a job to do, but you - better to do than following some obscure radiation around the city? That was what made you leave the train, wasn't it? The radiation?" He made another move to escape and, instead of dodging Xan as she blocked him, caught her as she moved and managed to knock her off balance with a swipe of his leg. As she tripped backwards, he caught her easily with one arm.
"D'you know what I think?" the Doctor smirked, having regained the upper hand. The irate Xan virtually dangled from his grip. Her shoes were slipping hopelessly on the cold asphalt. The Doctor leaned closer and said with satisfaction, "I think you're a little bit obsessed with me."
The utter absurdity of this statement as it seemed to Xan was even more effective than tripping her up. Unable to come up with a more eloquent response, she shook her head. "N-no," she stammered. Then, once she'd managed to muster a bit of disgust, she added, "That... doesn't even make any sense."
"It doesn't? Um... why not?" It was hardly the reaction he'd hoped for, or expected.
"Well... it... I don't know! It just doesn't! I don't... think like that. I think?"
"So people say." The Doctor put his head to one side, as if Xan was a curiosity to be studied scientifically.
His remark confused Xan even more. "So people say? About me?"
"Uh-huh."
"I'm... said? People... say things about me?"
"Er. Yes. Not that I... went around asking about you or anything..."
"Oh. Okay."
The Doctor took the opportunity to escape, leaving Xan furiously trying to reconcile her view of the world with this new purported reality. Then she realized she was alone. Her quarry was disappearing around a corner, coat billowing behind him as he ran.
The Doctor, as some people noticed, had a habit of running for his life. He had quite a bit of practice. So he was extraordinarily surprised by the fact that he had been overtaken more than once by... well... a girl. But this time, he had a good head start, and a certain special advantage. An iron gate blocked the path into the next set of alleys. As he approached it, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and then the gate was unlocked. He dashed through, and shut the gate. Too bad for Xan, he thought, his arm rising to lock the gate. In an instant, he was pulled back against the gate, immobile. His sonic screwdriver flew out of his hand.
She had come from behind, coving nearly three times the distance he did since she gave chase in seconds. Flinging her arms through the spaces between the bars, she grabbed the Doctor by his wrist, her other arm catching him across the chest, right over the breastbone so all the air was knocked out of him. He was horrified to find that he could not break her grip, which was as iron as the bars around him, no matter how hard he strained forward. It was almost embarrassing how easily he'd been caught.
"I think you may have misunderstood my intentions," Xan said amiably through the wrought iron. The Doctor tried to twist around to look at her, but this was patently impossible.
"Well, I didn't think assault was on the agenda!"
"I don't want to have to do this," she told him patiently.
"You may not realize it, but I live in a world where those words are never a good sign."
"What world would that be?"
"Which one would you like?"
"I have a choice?"
"No, but I do."
"Oh, for god's sake! Do you think I want to do this? Do you think I enjoy these long passive-aggressive Socratic questioning games? This is ridiculous! And embarrassing. It goes against my very nature. But if you think I'll let you just run off without me getting any answers..." She almost sounded hurt.
"Passive-aggressive? Where does passive fit into all this?"
"I ran out of patience!"
"Have you ever considered," asked the Doctor, his words suddenly cut with anger, "that it might be safer for you not to know?
"Yes," said Xan defiantly, although she hadn't really. Well I would have, if I'd had the time to think about it! So it isn't really a lie.
"Do you see all those people?" hissed the Doctor. "Out on the streets, do you see them? Walking along, without knowing about the things inside the ground beneath them. They don't know, and they never will! And because of that, they won't be hurt, they won't go looking for danger. Why can't you be one of them?"
"I ask myself that every day," she said thickly. "Maybe part of it is that I'm here, looking for an answer."
"Oh? You think you're the only one who's ever noticed 'trends' or 'patterns' or whatever and thought that you could handle the truth? About what the world really is?" Bitterness was rising out of unpleasant memories. "And look at you now, eh? Look at you? Oh, you're just like all the rest of them, you get off the train to find out what's going on because you're curious, and then all of a sudden you're running for your life from all the evil I try to protect you people from, and you like it! Until something happens to you, and it's my fault then! Of course it is!" His voice had risen near a shout, but he composed himself.
Xan considered this, rather callously, and thought that he was not very good at being discreet. Baiting him might be a good way to get information. And something in his tone had touched a nerve for her. You people, she repeated to herself. There's more where that came from, too, she thought.
So she said, "Maybe you're right that we're safer not knowing what's real. Because it doesn't seem to have done you any damn good."
The startled look on the man's face as he turned around to stare at her showed that he had never thought about it that way before.
Xan had had enough of this. She kicked open the gate, shot through before the Doctor could run, and grabbed the front of his shirt, shoving him against a wall.
"Whoa! Hey! What're you-"
"Listen. Very. Closely," she told him, and the way she said it in her storyteller's voice made it sound like an omen. Green fury was dancing in her almond-shaped eyes. "You may think that the universe revolves around you and maybe you're right. But I will not let this go. I have seen what that place was willing to do to protect its secrets, and if it was so afraid of you, particularly, that it would let slip dogs of war in those underground halls that most certainly did not have any intention of showing mercy, if they are willing to kill me or anyone else then I will make every effort to stop them, because they have assumed the right of control over life and death and the fabric of time as a mere corporate entity, which I will not accept, and furthermore," she whispered, her fist pressing into the Doctor's Adam's apple, "you have no authority over me unless you reveal it, which you have not done, so I will do what I must as a citizen of this planet and you will not stop me! Do you understand?"
The Doctor, who had been gaping at her, slowly shut his mouth. He said nothing at first, simply met Xan's gaze steadily. She refused to look away, even though a feeling akin to nausea was rising in her chest because of it. It made her feel exposed and uncomfortable, as if her soul was being examined, but this only made her angrier. Her gaze focused the anger like a magnifying glass until it could ignite dry leaves.
"What was that you said," he whispered finally, "about the fabric of time?"
"I mean that I got on that train at about twelve-thirty. I wandered around in the subways for an hour or more, walked through that facility for maybe half an hour, and after all that time, it's just about noon right now." She pointed up at the sky. "I mean that I was outside the university yesterday and I felt... it was really unpleasant," she said, shuddering. "I can't even describe it, but that was around noon, and twenty minutes later it was four-thirty. No one noticed. But... something isn't right, I can feel it!"
The man looked shocked. Then he took a deep breath. "Listen, why don't you let me go, and I'll tell you everything? I promise. No more running away."
Xan considered this proposal. "Why did you?"
"Oh. Habit."
She released him. He rubbed his shoulders, wincing, and picked up the sonic screwdriver.
"What do you want to know?" the Doctor asked. "The meaning of life?"
"Is time travel possible?"
He smiled. "Of course not."
She rolled her eyes. "Is it possible for a large animal to be suspended in midair? Because I know I saw that."
"Couldn't have been an optical illusion, then? A trick of the eye? Trompe l'oeil, as they say in France."
"They may say that in France, but I've never heard of aliens invading their country. Here, things are a bit different."
"Hah! You'd be surprised."
"Of course. What am I thinking? The dresser. So you have met..."
The Doctor gave Xan a sheepish little smile and stood with his thumbs in his pockets.
"So," she said.
He stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you."
She extracted her own from the crook of her arm, where she'd stuck it to keep warm. They shook hands gingerly. It was another delicate truce.
"To whom do I owe the pleasure?" asked Xan. Her message was clear.
"I'm the Doctor. Just the Doctor," he said as she started to protest. "That's what I'm always called, both by strangers and by the people who know me well. It's more or less my name, and it says who I am."
Xan was surprised at how well-spoken he was. She began to revise her mental profile of him.
"And yes, I am a time traveler. I'm amazed how quickly you figured that out. I usually would just tell anyone who wants to know, but you... well, you handle information differently from other people. I can see that."
They slowly made their way out of the alley. "How do I handle information?" Xan asked him.
"Well, for one thing, you take the time to figure out what it actually means," he responded. "Most people just... adjust to the idea. Just another thing they don't understand. You're not like that. I don't want to overload your sense of reality. Not yet."
"It's pretty much gone by now." They stepped out into the street once more. "So now let's get back to the fuel and this whole temporal mess."
As if this was a cue, the Doctor's more serious expression vanished, and he began to speak rapidly, playfully. "Ah. Yes. Right. Brilliant! Unfortunately, we don't have any of the fuel left, so that's no good, eh? Got used up, didn't it? But obviously it does something to the fabric of time," and he said those three words loftily, and plucked at his greatcoat with a wink thrown Xan's way, "I can't believe the ideas people here latch on to, you have such funny ways of talking about time: it's a line... no, it's an arrow, 'cos it flies-"
"Flees."
"Sorry?"
"Tempus fugit means 'time flees,' not 'time flies.' People always get that wrong."
The Doctor noted the way she said the Latin words. TAYM-poos FOO-geet, rather than TEHM-puhs FYU-jit. She had not Anglicized them, so they sounded exotic. "But you say it flies, too... flees, flies, hey, I do both, all the time... you always want more of it, but you don't want to take it, and then you waste it, sometimes you kill it - ugh - or spend it... or bide it, or... you say that it waits for no man..." He gave Xan a nudge. "Can't really say that's true anymore, can you? 'Cos it sure waited for me 'n you. Well," he sniffed, "mostly me..."
Xan rolled her eyes. "And we're trying to find out why," she reminded him. "You don't use anything like that fuel in your time machine, do you?"
The Doctor shushed her. "Go ahead and tell the world, why don't you?"
This annoyed her because she knew she had been speaking very quietly, because she did understand the idea of discretion. "In your, ahem, car?"
"No. Well... yes. Not exactly. It runs on huon energy, which is a very rare type of tau wave, I suppose... but huon energy doesn't really relate to the time travel as much as it's... like... food for it..." He trailed off.
"So you've never encountered anything like that fuel before?"
"No. I really haven't. Not as far as I can remember. And that means a lot, because it's multiplied by about nine hundred and... oh, balls, did I just do it again?"
"What did you do?" Xan giggled.
"That thing where I hint at all this stuff you're not supposed to know?"
"Hmm. You may have. But I'll let this one slide."
"Do I expect you all to be sheep or something? I have to stop doing that. It's what got me stuck with you."
"I'm flattered. Why not just tell me everything? It'll save you the trouble, and then we can both laugh at your no doubt hilarious witticisms."
The Doctor said the first response that came to mind. "Spoilers?"
"Oh, give me a break... that's just..."
"Incredibly irritating? And snide? Yeah. Believe it. But you know when it's really annoying, is when they rub it in, you know?"
"Not really..."
"Well. So, imagine you were in some kind of life or death situation, and you're working your fingers to the bone - which is another 'hilarious witticism,' so you are permitted to laugh, even if you haven't a clue what I'm on about..."
Xan laughed anyway, and they strolled through the chilly streets of London, talking as if they'd known each other for a long time, or at least quite a bit longer than two days with two chaotic and relatively brief encounters.
AN: The scene doesn't end there, but it goes on longer and I wanted all my chapters to be around the same length.
