Chapter NINE: The Dream Comes Real

A few minutes later, the Doctor, Madame Vastra and Mother Superior were all waiting for Walter Simeon to arrive when he finally entered the room. "You promised us something. Have you brought it?" He asked in a gruff tone.

"Big fella here's been very quiet while you've been out. Which is only to be expected, considering who he really is," the Doctor said, getting up from his seat and holding up the tin to the snowglobe. "Do you know what this is, big fella?"

"I do not understand these markings," the Snowglobe said.

"A map of the London Underground, 1967. Key strategic weakness in metropolitan living, if you ask me, but then I have never liked a tunnel."

"Enough of this. We are powerful, but on this planet we are limited. We need to learn to take human form," the Snowglobe said, as the Doctor turned around and faced his colleagues in the room, as he took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and put it behind him, using it to make the Snowglobe's voice raise in pitch. "The Governess is our most perfect replication of humanity," the Snowglobe continued.

"And what is happening to its voice?" Mother Superior asked.

"Just stripping away the disguise," the Doctor said.

"No, stop! Stop that. Cease, I command you," the Snowglobe said again.

"It sounds like a child," Madame Vastra noted.

"Of course it sounds like a child. It is a child. Simeon as a child. The snow has no voice without him," the Doctor said.

"Don't listen to him, he's ruining everything," the Snowglobe said again.

"How long has the Intelligence been talking to you?" The Doctor asked Walter.

"I was a little boy. He was my snowman. He spoke to me," Walter answered, bringing back memories of him speaking to a snowman he had just made as a child.

"But the snow doesn't talk, does it? It's just a mirror," the Doctor continued. "It just reflects back everything we think and feel and fear. You poured your darkest dreams into a snowman and look, look what it became."

"I don't understand," Madame Vastra said.

"It's a parasite feeding on the loneliness of a child and the sickness of an old man. Carnivorous snow meets Victorian values and something terrible is born," the Doctor said.

"We can go on and do everything we planned" the Snowglobe said.

"Oh yes, and what a plan. A world full of living ice people. Oh dear me, how very Victorian of you."

Walter Simeon went up to the Doctor and snatched the souvenir tin off him, starting to open it. "What's wrong with Victorian values?" He asked.

"Ah, ah, ah. Are you sure?" The Doctor asked.

"I have always been sure," Walter Simeon said, as the memory worm crept out of the box and bit him.

"Good. I'm glad you think so, since your entire adult life is about to be erased. No parasite without a host. Without you, it will have no voice. Without the governess, it will have no form," the Doctor explained.

The Snowglobe started to power down. "What, what, what's happening? What's happening? What did you do?"

"You've got nothing left to mirror any more. Goodbye.

"What did you, did you-" the Snowglobe said, then suddenly, it filled with more snow, and its voice deepened again. "Did you really think it would be so easy?"

"That's not possible. How is that possible?" The Doctor asked.

Madame Vastra looked out the window and saw more snow outside, falling to the ground. "Doctor?" She said.

But the Doctor was too busy with the Snowglobe. "But you were just Doctor Simeon. You're not real. He dreamed you. How can you still exist?"

"Now the dream outlives the dreamer and can never die. Once I was the puppet..." the Snowglobe said, just as Walter Simeon was reanimated as an icy ghoul. "...Now I pull the strings! I tried so long to take on human form. By erasing Simeon, you made space for me. I fill him now." Madame Vastra went to fight the icy puppet, but it just knocked her out of the way - causing Mother Superior to go over and help her up - and grabbed the Doctor. "More than snow, more than Simeon. Even this old body is strong in my control."

"Argh!" The Doctor exclaimed.

"Do you feel it? Winter is coming!" The Snowglobe said, as Walter's touch started to freeze the Doctor's skin. "Winter is coming!"

Mother Superior took her wand out and aimed it at the Snowglobe and concentrated, but dropped her wand suddenly. Madame Vastra went over and asked, "What is it? What's wrong?"

"The Snowglobe. It's too powerful," Mother Superior started to explain.

"Well, perhaps you need something more powerful. Something as equally as dark..."

Mother Superior shook her head. "You don't know what you're saying. But it needs to be destroyed. If whatever this is gets to present-day Storybrooke, it could wipe it off the map."

"So what do you suggest?"

"I don't know. A miracle, perhaps?"


Back in the study of Darkover House, Strax was still trying to help Clara recover. "No, you must fight. Hang on and fight, boy. You can do it," he said.

Captain Latimer went over to Clara, where she said to him, "Captain Latimer. Your children. They're afraid. Hold them."

"It's not really my area," Captain Latimer said.

"It is now," Clara said, as a single tear ran from Clara's eye, where it meet one of the Professor's, and once the two tear drops met, it glowed golden-purple in colour.


Back at the Great Intelligence Institute, the Snowglobe started to fill with melt water, which made Walter Simeon leap off the Doctor.

"What's happening?" The Snowglobe asked.

"Doctor, the globe. It's turning to rain. All of it, the snow, look," Madame Vastra said, as Walter Simeon died, which was noticed by Madame Vastra. "He's dead. What happened?"

"The snow mirrors, that's all it does. It's mirroring something else now. Something so strong, it's drowning everything else," the Doctor said, then went to Mother Superior, who had opened a window and outstretched his hand too. "There was a critical mass of snow at the house. If something happened there..." The Doctor tasted the rainwater that collected on his hand, like Mother Superior.

"How can rain water taste salty?" Mother Superior asked.

"It's not raining. It's crying. The only force on Earth that could drown the snow. A whole family crying on Christmas Eve," the Doctor explained.


A few minutes later, the TARDIS materialised in the study and all three exited. The Doctor went over to Clara and the Professor, where he was informed by Strax the situation. "I'm sorry. There was nothing to be done. She has moments only," Strax said.

"We saved the world, Clara, you and me. We really, really did," the Doctor said.

"Are you going back to your cloud?" Clara asked.

"No more cloud. Not now."

"Why not?"

"It rained."

"Run. Run, you clever boys. And remember," C'ara said, before she died, just as the clock struck midnight.

"It's Christmas. Christmas Day," Digby said.