A/N; Okay the last chapter I posted was actually pretty angsty, which can certainly be interesting to write... but it's almost Christmas. So, this is just what we need for this time of year, a lighter hearted little chapter with a partly holiday theme thrown in just because I can.
"Here we are," The doctor cried happily, as he made his way over to open the doors of his ship. "London. Earth!"
Hailey picked up her backpack from the floor against the far wall of the console room, and put the straps over her shoulders. The Doctor and Rose both walked with her outside. All three of them stood on the grass, looking around in surprise. They stood in a familiar well landscaped and comfortable courtyard, looking at a large brick building not far away past the walkways, and benches.
"The TARDIS brought us back to Belmont hospital," Hailey observed, stating the fact that the others could obviously see for themselves. "What's this all supposed to mean?"
It was than that she caught sight of her mother, sitting on a wooden bench near the hedge lined fence at the edge of the grounds, no more than ten meters from where the ship had landed. She was most thankfully all alone and considerably far from the main hospital or the couple of other smaller buildings on the grounds. Abigail, who had been sitting out there alone drawing intently on a sheet of white paper in a hard covered sketchbook, looked up at the sound of the engines. Her eyes opened wide in surprise at suddenly seeing a blue police box in the courtyard near where she sat.
"Mum," Hailey cried in surprise at seeing her. She felt strangely more excitement than she would have even a month before even thought possible at the idea of talking to her mother.
Abigail was clearly confused by the fact that her daughter seemed to have showed up very sudden in a small blue box. She shook her head once, blinked her eyes, and then looked again at the box, that sure enough was still there. Her eyes scanned the two others that had walked forward behind her daughter.
"These are my friends," Hailey explained. "The two I told you about, that I've been traveling with. The Doctor and Rose." She gestured toward each of them in turn as she said their names. She turned back the other way. "This is my mother."
"Maybe I really do belong in this nut house after all," Abigail Andrews exclaimed, her voice shaking slightly. "Did that box just appear right out of nowhere, or have I started to hallucinate? Nice to meet you by the way. Just call me Abigail."
"It didn't come from nowhere Mum," Hailey said, with a smile. "It came from within the time vortex, and simply materialized back in third dimensional real time reality !"
"Is this the Doctor's TARDIS then?" Abigail questioned, beginning to understand. She walked slowly toward the box to get a better look at it. "Why a police box though? Of course, if I recall it all correctly it should be able to look like almost anything within reason. But a police box is awfully out of date. Doesn't that defeat some of the purpose of a disguise"
"Something jammed back in the sixties," The Doctor explained. He laughed slightly. "I could probably fix it, but why? I like the blue police box appearance. So, you are quite familiar with the workings of a TARDIS then?"
Hailey's mother said nothing in response. She only looked up to the sky, staring off into space with a sad and dreamy look in her eyes. It was obvious to the three traveling companions, that even after so many years, she still missed her long dead husband from a place so far away. After a few seemingly endless seconds of staring forlornly at the sky, lost in thoughts and memories of the past, she gave another look toward the impossible blue box, and her eyes grew wider with worries.
"You three have all got to go," she said quickly. "We can't have something just kind of suddenly appear here on the lawn of a hospital. Here it would be noticed for sure by so many people, and the staff would look for any number of ways to explain it. When they can't figure it out, and the police tell them it's not their box either, people will be concerned and panic."
"It's never caused a panic before," the Doctor answered, unconcerned. "People most often barely notice it, and those that do think little of it."
"There are so many people here that suffer from all kinds of paranoia." Abigail insisted urgently. "The last thing we need is to risk a situation. What would happen, if some other patient, extremely paranoid about alien invasions and the end of the world were to notice such a thing that was not here before? People talk of course all the time. They talk to each other and rumors get going so fast through the halls."
"Come inside for a moment," the Doctor said quickly, realizing the importance she felt in getting out of there. He reached out, took Abigail by the hand and led her onboard behind the others. The woman's eyes showed a few greatly differing, mixed emotions. She showed clearly, everything from amazement to concern, and a few somewhere between.
"It's..." she began to say, and then stopped, thinking intently of the right words to use next.
The Doctor expected that she would say it was bigger on the inside. Everyone said that, and it had quite clearly become the well anticipated reaction of visitors to the ship. Instead however, she only finished her statement with, "very different from the one I remember."
She reached over to the nearest of the curving support beams, not far from her at all, and brushed her hand against it gently as though feeling the texture of the structure. She smiled, and walked over to the next of the beams, where she went on to brush her hand along the surface of that one too. Rose looked clearly puzzled by this woman's slightly odd behavior, and Hailey busy taking off her pack and then storing it under the captains chair, didn't even notice at all. The Doctor however was both surprised and greatly pleased to see Abigail's interaction with his ship. She obviously knew that the TARDIS was technically very much alive, and though she was going about it in a way he'd never seen before, she was clearly trying to say hello to it, and communicate her harmless intentions.
"Are you sure you want an institutional patient onboard your ship," she asked the Doctor, as he set about working the controls again quickly, sending them back into the time vortex and dematerializing his ship. "Most people fear us and say that any of us might be dangerous."
"I don't think you're dangerous," the Doctor answered. "You look perfectly safe, not to mention sane, to me."
"Thanks for believing I'm a sane person," Abigail said. "Goodness knows, I can't convince those so called professionals at the hospital of that fact and I've been there for at least sixteen years!"
"Why are you in a mental hospital anyway?" Rose asked suddenly. "And why, after all those years can't you just be let out again?" As soon as she'd said it, she worried she'd stepped out of line and offended someone, but Abigail only looked thoughtful, as though trying to think of the best way to answer honestly.
"That incompetent fool of a head physiatrist refuses to allow my discharge from the hospital. So did the last moron that held that position. They think that I was so grief stricken by the disappearance of my husband, that my mind became delusional in order to deal with it the only way it could. The common theory is that I somehow became convinced of the whole story of the Time Lords and their distant home world because I was in a very emotionally fragile state and would have hung onto anything to be able to better understand why he left. Anyway the guy that used to hold the head physiatrist position was sure that James, my late husband, was murdered in front of me and that my mind still could not recall the blocked memories of it. The new guy has a very different theory on the matter. He says that if my mind has not overcome such a mental block in all that time, then that's because there was no traumatic murder at all. He says my husband probably just packed up and left while I wasn't home, and never came back. He thinks he might have been having an affair or something and went off to spend his life with some other woman."
"That seems like a strange and primitive reason to keep someone in an institution," the Doctor remarked. "You'd think that by this day and age..." he stopped thinking before he even completed his thought. Feeling less than impressed with the way this woman he'd just met but saw as perfectly reasonable and sane was treated, he let his ship drift through the vortex as it wished and stepped back from the controls.
"Would you like to see my room?" Hailey asked her mother. It seemed like a silly thing to ask her, but she could only assume that she would be curious about another small aspect of her daughter's life.
"Sure I would," Abigail answered and Hailey led her out through a door that appeared in the wall when she stepped in front of it.
The two of them walked in silence through the hallway and across a place where it crossed another hall leading to yet more rooms in the impossible ship. Hailey opened a door near the end of hall, by turning a standard doorknob. She led her mother into the simple but pleasant room, with the metal framed bed against the far wall covered with a red blanket, the white writing desk covered in a scattered mess of books and papers near the door, and the dresser against another wall with her art supplies stored neatly on top in a plastic crate. There were various pictures and posters hung on the room's walls, an analog clock on the nightstand along with a book on particle physics and a handful of small British change. A brightly colors hooded sweater was thrown over the back of the desk chair in an empty out of the way corner, Hailey's laptop computer lay plugged into an outlet charging up the battery.
"It looks so normal in here," Abigail remarked. She turned the chair away from the desk and sat on it.
Hailey laughed slightly and flopped down into a sitting position on her bed. "Yeah. Why wouldn't it?"
"No reason really. I just... well it seems strange to me still even after knowing your father, that the inside of such a machine can just look like any other common home."
"The parts that are used often do. There are rooms and hallways I've seen in here that look, well much less lived in I suppose. So many are just empty rooms that have never even been painted or carpeted."
"If my memories of anything I've ever learned are right, then this ship must be so huge inside. Much bigger than we can even imagine."
"Oh yes," Hailey said wistfully. Sometimes I just wander through the halls and try to find the end. It seems to go on forever. But of course we know that's impossible. It can't possibly be infinite, only very very big."
"TARDIS Rooms always did look slightly strange to me for some reason I cannot place." Abigail moved her eyes once again around the room, trying to find a detail out of place, that might explain her insight. "Your father's was the same way. It looked so normal inside and so cozy and like it could be lived in just fine, but always something a bit off."
"No windows," Hailey said simply. "Exactly the kind of thing that a person might not think to pay much attention to when a room has one, but lack of them can throw you off a bit."
"Of course. Well don't I feel positively dense now. So many years and I never did catch onto something so plainly obvious."
"You wouldn't happen to have any photo albums would you?" Hailey asked boldly, changing the subject. "I know you might not, because you live in a hospital, and probably can't have many personal items. If you do have one though, and you don't mind showing me, I've been looking for photos from way back before I was born."
"I have an album," Abigail answered. "Of course you can look at it one day. Come and visit soon, and I'll show you photographs. You can borrow it if you'd like, so you can make copies of whatever pictures you want."
"Thank you."
"Next time you stop in, I'll get permission to sign out for few hours again. I'd love to show you some of the shops in the village. It's almost Christmas. The place looks so lovely this time of year, most of the shops are open late, and there are lights everywhere. I'd love to spend more time with you sometime soon."
"How about today?" Hailey said with a bright smile on her face. She explained how the TARDIS had simply landed her there when she meant to get off in London and take care of her various business. She wondered out loud why the ship would have done that, but also mused that she could always get off in the village and take a train into the city that evening, in more than enough time than she needed.
~DW~DW~DW~DW~DW~
"What time does the last train out leave this evening?" Abigail asked and she and Hailey sat in a cafe on a corner under a brightly lit Christmas tree and the string of bells that hung from the window next to their table. Outside a man in a red holiday hat, stood waving smiling and ringing a little brass bell, asking for donations to some charity organization.
"Not until seven. So a few hours yet. Are you sure you won't get into trouble for being out this long?"
"No. When I talked to the hospital nurse earlier I told her I'm spending the day with my daughter until she catches her train. She said that was alright. So... photos then?"
"Oh, yes of course!" Hailey got up from her seat in the cafe booth and taking her drink and her food with her, went to sit on the opposite bench with her mother and look at the pictures. Abigail took a little white album from the canvas bag she carried with her and opened it to the first page. Hailey found herself looking at a photograph of a woman who was quite clearly her much younger mother, wearing a lovely green knee length loosely flowing dress and a pair of black stiletto heels. Her hair was tied up with pieces hanging loose and a fabric flower pinned on one side. She stood beside a youngish looking man with wavy dark hair, wearing a simple grey suit and a ridiculous Christmas printed tie. She started in fascination at the photo. She knew that man. She'd seen him so many times whenever she took the time to remember.
"This one was taken in 1989, on New Years eve," Abigail said. "I decided to plan a party that year. Not too many people came, but that's okay. We had fun anyway, and because I had such a small apartment, It was good to have few guests. I have no idea why your father was waring that silly tie. He didn't even know that when people give you such a gift, you don't normally actually wear it to a party. He didn't know much about human customs back then. I don't think he knew how silly it looked." She burst out laughing, as she tried to sip her drink.
"He looks just like I remember him," Hailey said quietly.
"You can remember your dad? You were so little when he left, no more than two years old. I didn't think you'd remember him at all."
"I have very few memories, but I do recall a bit. I remember the way he used to throw me up into the air and catch me, and how I'd laugh so hard, but you'd panic every time. I remember we lived in a little two story house on a quite road near the top of a hill. I barely remember anything about the house other than that it had a blue carpet in the living room, and the Dad used to sit with me on the stairs and read me stories to me in a foreign language."
"I think he was using his own, from his home world," again Abigail laughed at a long ago memory. "I told him you couldn't understand a word he was saying and of course I most certainly couldn't either. One night, he just shrugged his shoulders at me gave such a look of innocence and asked why you can't be raised to speak and understand both languages. Yeah, I'm sure that would have gone over so well with the board of education in a few years - a child that speaks an alien language. The whole lot of us would have been thought of as mad."
She turned the pages of her photo album, clearly looking for a specific picture. Finally she found it, and pointed happily toward the book. In that photograph, the same man from from the other picture and from her memories, stood on the grass in a park near a tree holding a baby girl in a tiny pink dress.
"Is that me as a little baby?" Hailey asked, realizing that she'd never actually seen any baby pictures of herself at any time in her life.
"Yeah. Oh wow, I can't believe now that you were ever really that small. You were such a beautiful baby though."
Hailey gave a little laugh. "Yeah, but everyone thinks their baby is the most beautiful one."
"No, but you were. Your eyes were open far more than it seemed those of most others your age were. You always noticed things, and had this look of wide eyed wonder about you so often. By six months old, while of course you still didn't talk or anything, I was so sure you could actually understand a lot of what anyone was saying. You hardly ever seemed to cry, only when you were hungry or in pain or scared mostly, and you were always smiling and laughing. Friends of mine used to say that if all babies were as happy and easy going and smart as mine, they hoped to have ten children one day. You started to walk by eleven months old though and then, while you were still just as happy and still always smiling, it seemed that nothing was beyond your reach, and everything ended up in two chubby little hands. You started climbing into things by a year and a half old, too. Then we were really in for it."
They spent the next half an hour looking at old photographs, laughing and chatting as they finished their supper. Abigail gave Hailey the book to take with her, and she promised to bring it back the next time she visited. They walked through the village square after the sun had set, and the lights strung from every tree and storefront door and window, lit the street. There was no snow, but there was a light frost in some places.
"Mum," Hailey said more forcefully than she had intended, as the two wandered out of bookstore, and back out onto the nearly quiet sidewalk. "I need advice on something very important that few people would ever understand."
"What is it?" Abigail sounded slightly alarmed at her daughter's words, but at the same time boosted in confidence as a mother, by finding her child asking her of all people for important advice.
Hailey looked around in all directions up and down the street to be sure that no one was nearby. They were in a sleepy village in the English countryside, and though it was still only early in the evening, the streets were quiet. Seeing no one, she spoke up. "Had Dad ever mentioned anything at all to you about Time Lord initiation?"
Abigail stood for a minute thinking carefully and trying to remember. "Yes, I do believe he did a couple of times. He could never discuss it with me entirely, for whatever reason. I think that somehow it was just impossible for him to put it into words properly, in a way I would understand. The things he did say though, it never sounded like an altogether bad experience. He said once that he'd been among the students that were excitedly waiting for their initiation nights, though just as many of them were dreading it. He said that no one was ever quite the same afterward, but that most became something a little better than they'd once been. You've read about all that by now then I'd assume."
"I read what little was written anywhere I could find, after the Doctor told me I am ready for my own initiation," Hailey said. "Mine will not be like any others were in the old days, and I actually have a choice in the matter. I don't have to do it of course, but I have no idea what my choice will be."
"This is all so fast, it's amazing to hear," Abigail answered. "I excepted when you were born, that you would grow up to be very different from other children, and even more shocking, you would be different from me. Your father told me that he was so sure you'd be far beyond me in terms of intelligence by the age of seven. I so often wish I'd gotten to see for myself if he was right, but knowing you as I do now, I think he must have been. He always told me I was by no means stupid, just... human. Anyway, I think he'd be so happy and proud now to see that you are so close to taking a place in the universe that he always knew you should be well entitled to."
"But what would you think, Mum? How would you feel about me taking a true place as one of the last Time Lords in existence? I've finally gotten to really know you pretty well and I actually do care what you think of the path my life could take. I'd have to assume you like having a daughter whose basically as human as you are."
"I knew I'd never be the mother of a perfectly human child. How could I think I'd be the mother of a human, when I found myself pregnant with the child of a Time Lord. Our races are not so different at all. A typical person could never even tell the difference. In any case, if things had gone differently, you might have done all that anyway. You have to do what you think is right. I'd be just as happy for you either way."
"But I still think of myself as human," Hailey answered, still confused. Perhaps even more so than she'd been before. "I love learning and now I'm enjoying being able to see so much as well. But I'll always think of Earth as home, and humanity as my family and friends."
"Your father loved the Earth too. This planet, doesn't have to be only for the humans, he said once. This planet became his home,and he thought of it as such, while aware as well that he had a place elsewhere out there. What are the Doctor's views on life on Earth?"
"He loves this planet too. With Gallifrey destroyed, he's pretty much a wanderer without a home. But Earth is the closest he seems to have to someplace to go. There are so many planets out there, but this one is clearly his favorite one."
"You see now what I mean then?"
"Actually that makes a lot of sense," Hailey said smiling. They slowly walked toward the train station at the edge of the small village.
"How'd you and Dad meet?" Hailey questioned as the two of them walked along the quiet sidewalk, under the glow of holiday lights hung in house windows and on fence posts. A man, outside, standing on a low ladder, hanging decorations on the front of a garage, waved at them. Both waved politely and cheerfully back. "What's the date anyway? I know it's close to Christmas, but how close?"
"It's the eighteenth of December," Abigail said. She looked at her daughter with a bright smile on her face, and kept walking quickly in the cool evening air. She hurried across an empty street. "Your father and I... well that's a story and a half. I could tell anyone else and probably never see another hope of ever getting out of Belmont after that. But you're different. You can relate."
Hailey laughed, and then raised her eyebrows. "Why, what happened?"
"I was driving along the highway late one night, and I saw this man - your dad - a stranger at the time, walking along the edge of the road, next to the driving lane. It was so late and this was on a quiet secondary highway. No one else was around, but I figured someone should stop and offer the man help, so I pulled over."
"He came over when I stopped the car, but as soon as I asked if there's anything I could do to help, he said that unless I could help him with repairs to a multidimensional, seventh generation advanced mode time engine, then probably not. First I thought he was crazy. Then I thought he was drunk! I hoped he just simply just kidding around, so I asked him what had happened. He told with with complete and utter seriousness that he needed to fix his time ship. Apparently it had landed on Earth of it's own accord and then just broke down."
"Did you believe it?" Hailey asked, in amazement.
"Nope. I still thought he might have been crazy or drunk, and by that time I'd also started to wonder if he'd been inhaling some fumes he shouldn't have been. He struck me though as someone who was completely harmless, and I still figured he could have just been joking around thinking he whole thing was quite perfectly funny. I was heading back to the city, so I offered him a ride. He got in the car and by the time we got into London twenty minutes later we were having a good time listening to music. He knew nothing at all about any of the stuff they played and the radio and he was so amused by it for some reason. He came to my flat the next day, and asked if I'd drive him back out of town and try to help him fix his ship. no idea why agreed and we got into my car. It was reckless, it was potentially very stupid, and if my mother had found out, she'd have shot me for picking him up in the first place. But I knew I could trust him somehow. We got back out of town to some big open field, and it seems he trusted me as much as I did him. He showed me his time ship. It looked at first just like a run down old tool shed on some farmers property. I remember when I first walked inside I said..."
"It's bigger on the inside?" Hailey guessed, her face lit up with happy laughter.
"Exactly," Abigail answered as they ran inside the small railroad station. "See I knew you;d understand and relate to all this, better than anyone else. You've been there, you've lived it. You're living it now."
Abigail waited on a bench near the doors while Hailey hurried to the ticket counter and purchased a ticket to London. By the time her daughter had come back, she held a small package that she'd pulled out of it's place hidden within her canvas bag.
"Before you go, I have a Christmas present to give you," she said, handing her daughter the small nicely wrapped box.
"Mum, you didn't have to give me anything..." Hailey protested, taking the package uncertainly.
"You were twenty-one months old the last time I ever got to give you a Christmas present. I've waited for years for a another holiday I might actually be able to give you one. Anyways, holidays are so confusing when you travel through time and space, so be sure to open it on the train on your way back."