My heart beats slowly, soothingly. Coupled with the slow recession of light from the room, closing my eyes seems more and more attractive as I continue to fade. The machine bumps me more violently until I vaguely feel hands lifting me again. Holding me securely.
I manage to gather enough strength to open my eyes. The Doctor has me pressed against his body, bouncing me in his arms as he runs, looking over his shoulder. His nostrils flare in distress. A bead of sweat rolls down his face. His eyes are absolutely on fire, alight with the adrenaline I know he loves so much. He notices me gazing at him after a moment, and his mouth moves as though shouting. All I hear is silence, a delectable absence of sound. All of my senses are like this, as if padded with fluffy cotton, lifting me slowly out of consciousness. The Doctor's eyes dart from me to the floor in front of him, and he shouts again. I blink quickly, trying my best to read his lips through the fog in my eyes.
Stay. With. Me.
My eyelids collapse, as if holding them open for that long was much too troublesome for my body to handle. I float blissfully in that darkness, my senses dulled to the point of pleasure. It's the feeling of running your hands over still, lukewarm water. The lull of a breeze caressing your face as sunlight kisses it. It's the sensation of fire-warmed gloves on freezing fingers. Simple contentment, corporeal and tangible.
My blessed prison is disturbed, almost as if the entire universe itself is being jarred. I open my eyes to see that I am no longer in the arms of the Doctor. I'm on a black marble floor, in a familiar throne room. Cracks are opening up in the floor, water gushing out of them in geysers. Some sort of golden fire is licking at the gilded curtains, marble chunks are falling from the vaulted ceiling. I see the Doctor, then. He's laying several feet from me, taking his sweet time rolling himself to his feet. Vibrations of the floor against my cheek tell me that the machine is finally overloading, exploding with three years of pent up atomic energy.
A cut has opened up on The Doctor's forehead, and his black suit is charred all over, holes having been burnt into it all over his back. The gold fire licks at his heels, spreading from the transparent hallway that we had taken to Hadra. It threatens to engulf him, to reduce him to golden dust. My hand, sprawled in front of me, extends towards the Doctor, and some water lifts itself to extinguish the strange gold fire before it reaches the Doctor's feet. My breath comes short, and my eyes become so very heavy again.
Can still manipulate.
My thoughts roll through my brain like thick pudding. Nothing is making sense as it should. I can't tell if it's death that is embracing me or if it's life, begging me not to give in.
The Doctor staggers to his feet, his face contorted in pain.
My eyes.
I struggle to maintain my current state of awareness, but I'm fading fast now. I see the Doctor struggling my way, his now scuffed dress shoes pausing in front of me.
So tired.
I open my eyes and inhale the crisp air gratefully. The sky stretches as far as my eyes can see, the clearest and bluest I have ever seen it in all my 19 years. Mountains roll forever into the distance, their green depths holding secrets I feel I have to know.
I flop back onto the rocks, using my backpack for a head rest. My legs shake, my back is screaming in pain, and my lungs feel about ready to pop, but I feel like the luckiest human on Earth.
Who else gets to see something like this, right in their back yard?
"I just climbed a mountain," I mutter under my breath, sitting up to take the view in again, and again. The sun is now high in the sky, a beacon of warmth in the chilled air. It seems to stand vigil proudly over its many mountains.
Who could ever get enough of this?
"I just climbed a mountain!" I shout, and my voice seems to die in the vastness that lays before me, on the nonexistent wind. Up here it's so dead silent that no sound could possibly travel through the void of it. No birds have ventured this far up the mountain to tweet. No people to be seen. Nothing to ruin this moment.
This is it. This is what I've been searching for. This feeling, of freedom, of knowing myself to be worthwhile.
I'm so glad I got to do this again.
I stand up to stretch out my sore muscles. 16 miles of hiking and climbing over snow, mud, and ice can make you pretty sore.
Wait… Again? Since when have I already climbed a mountain? This is definitely the only time I have done anything like this. Why…
I shake my head, as if doing so will dismiss this thought that troubles me more than it should. I begin to sift through my backpack to find the honey peanut butter sandwich I had made myself. I scarf it down in a matter of seconds, ravenous after all the effort it took to get up here. I down half of my second water bottle, grudgingly forbidding myself to finish it.
I'll definitely need it at the bottom, given I don't slip and plunge thousands of feet to my death.
The thought sends a sick shiver of excitement down my spine.
"Evelyn? Evelyn Crenshaw, right?"
I turn, my heart leaping into my throat stupidly. The person whose voice beckoned me surprises me. A boy from my Calculus II class, Cole. Surprising because he's so very attractive and so very charming. Also surprising because I'm in the library, where I go specifically to not be found.
I can feel my cheeks heating.
"Yeah, hi." I say, my hands smoothing my hair as if they have a mind of their own.
"Hey, I'm Cole, we have Calculus together?" He says, sitting down at the table I have all of my books sprawled over. I rush to clear a space for him.
"Right, yeah! Most def. What's the word- what's up?" I say, silently cursing myself for the awkward that I know is about to pour out of my mouth.
"How are you?" He asks, his blue eyes sparkling. I laugh nervously, and it's then that I remember why I came here. To be by myself and avoid situations where I end up shattering the illusion I have going that I'm the quiet but sophisticated and mysterious one. Quite like this situation.
"I'm uh… Yeah, I'm perfect. Well by perfect, I mean like my day has…"
Please just kill me. And quickly, so I can maintain at least some dignity.
"I'm good." I finally grate out through my too-wide smile after he just gives me a pointed look.
"Well, great! I'm glad!" He says, smiling as if amused. It makes me relax a little, thinking that maybe he just thinks I'm funny. Maybe he just noticed me, and wants to talk?
"Yeah, so can I, uh… Did you need something?" I say slowly, and he nods quickly.
"Right! Well, I noticed you're doing really awesome in Calculus," he says, and immediately the hope I'd not even known had been there is crushed. He just wants me to do his homework for him. He doesn't want to talk or get to know me, or anything like that.
This time, just get up and leave. Don't help the vulture with his homework, let him use someone else.
I watch him as he snatches my calculus textbook from in front of me, and flips through it. He's trying to flatter me, get me to practically do his homework for him.
This time… Something is not right. I've already done all of this.
"This is wrong." I say, my eyes darting around the library and I notice some very concerning details. The edges of the library are… colorless, blurry. The librarian walks between aisles, and when she turns to look at me, her face is a swirl of meaningless gray and white scribbles.
"Stealing is wrong, Evelyn Anne." I hear my mother's voice, and suddenly I am in a grocery store. A disgruntled man in a blue uniform is scowling at me. He has orange hair, and pimples all over his corpulent face. My mother is apologizing profusely, her expression flustered, but angry. She turns to me, her blue eyes icy, and holds out her hand.
"Now give it back and say you're sorry." She commands, and I just stare at the man through my little lashes. He scowls deeper at me.
"It's mean to frown at people." I say, slapping the little electronic toy into my mom's hand and giving the man a nasty scowl of my own. My mom gasps.
"Evelyn Anne! Apologize now, or you are grounded for a month! Apologize for stealing from this man!"
The man in blue smirks, raising his bushy eyebrows at me expectantly.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Evy."
That was not my voice. That was the Doctor's.
"Well, little girl?" The man in blue says. His uniform looks like the T.A.R.D.I.S.
"This is fake, it's all fake, you're all liars!" I burst out, and again, everything begins to turn gray, swirling into colorless nothing.
I turn to run out of the grocery store doors, into a blinding white that frightens me. Yet, it frightens me less than the faceless mirages waiting for me in that store.
I jerk violently, my whole body convulsing in shock as I find myself in that whiteness still. Although, something has definitely changed. Something…
I blink a few times, not comprehending what is happening to me.
"Hello?" I try to say, but it ends up coming out as a croak, like a rusty door needing to be oiled. I cough, and fill my lungs to the brim. They feel tight, like they haven't been used in ages.
"Hello?! Is anyone there?" I say, trying to see if I can move. I lift my arms and legs, which I notice are also covered in white, but it seems that the white surrounding me has limits. Very tiny limits. The white is cool to the touch, yet soft as if padded. My eyes widen in sudden fear. An irrational thought wracks its way through my brain.
What if the Doctor thought I had died and they buried me alive?
"Hello?! I'M ALIVE!" I screech, my voice sounding like metal scraping on glass. I bring my hands up to smack against the top of whatever coffin they've placed me in.
"I'm not dead! Please, let me out!"
Suddenly the top is ripped off, eliciting a loud hiss, and the sudden flood of color, greens and whites and oranges, causes me to startle. I squint and rub my eyes.
"Oh no, you certainly are not dead, Miss Crenshaw! You are so very alive!" The Doctor is leaning over me, smiling that infuriatingly lovable smile of his. I burst out laughing, and it comes out as a series of wheezes.
"What- I.. Doctor?! I've missed something haven't I?" I say, trying to sit up to hug him, but my body has other ideas. The Doctor props me up with his hands, helping me to sit up. I see that we are in my room in the T.A.R.D.I.S, the familiar green pulsing lights making me smile. My bed is made, and all of the clothes I had tried on the night we went to the 20's are gone.
"Only a whole month of your timeline, but who's counting?" He says, laughing happily, "How I've missed you!"
He yanks me up into a hug that I gratefully return. We stay like that for a while, as if he is reassuring himself of my existence, and I of his.
"But I was on Mount LeConte, then the library, then that grocery store…" I say, my brain struggling to keep up.
"Memories, probably. The human brain never ceases to amaze me. That was your brain, needing work, craving the synergy of working together with your body. So, it made something for itself to do. Revisit old memories."
I guess that makes sense...
Then, my hands fly up to my temples, pressing into them in shock.
"My pain in the brain… It's gone… But I was still able to manipulate matter, back on Kleo." I close my eyes to try to focus.
"Well, if you'd like, I might be able to sort out all of this wibbily wobbily nonsense that is your life." The Doctor says, wiggling his eyebrows at me, holding out his hand. I take it, and as I do I remember that I'm not wearing my own clothes. Someone has changed me into a white jumpsuit type thing, with metal plates sewn into certain spots, like my heart, across my abdomen… I blush slightly, hoping it hadn't been him.
"What have you got me in, Doctor? Some kind of spacey Lady Gaga get-up?" I say, and he laughs, shaking his head.
"This is a Total Regenerative Hyperbaric Chamber and Cellular Stimulation Suit, complete with the latest Neuronal Repair technology, all the way from the planet of… Trinifare." He says, giving me a wink, and I gape at him.
"A what-now from Trinifare?" I say, and he helps me out of the chamber, only to crush me in another hug. I'm glad because my legs feel like they're made of jelly. And not even the good kind either.
"Where do I start? I've had a month to rehearse this story, and look at me, flailing all over my words like an over-excited Rubrabber!" He shouts, pulling back to smile widely at me.
"Let's see… I'm not sure what you remember from that mess, but I slowed the conversion process and damaged the teleportation on the machine. Said machine overloaded with that atomic energy of yours, and I managed to get you back in the T.A.R.D.I.S. before the grey matter of your brain was damaged beyond repair. Then, I took you to Trinifare, explaining what you did for them. Refusing to save yourself in favor of their lives, and they were ever so grateful. Karma was our friend that day, because Trinifare happens to be a level six planet. So, naturally, they donated a few of their top medical innovations." He pauses to shrug. "Basically, I'm brilliant."
"Basically, you are! C'mere!" I say, grabbing his face and showering him with kisses all over his prickly cheeks. "You crazy, brilliant man!"
He shoves his hands in his pockets, trying to look modest, and failing horribly. He's practically preening like a peacock.
"But hold the phone…" I say, stumble-walking to sit on my bed. The sheets feel like heaven against my hands as I run my fingers over them. "I could still manipulate. I know I could, because I extinguished some of that fire back on Kleo. Saved you, while you were saving me, you know, the usual for us." I say, grinning and he comes to sit next to me, hands in his lap.
"I managed to siphon most of the Organic Nuclear Fission Arc Reactor out of your brain, but the machine was set to go off much sooner than expected, even with my alterations. I had to get you out of there. The Trinifarian technology mended your damaged organs and brain tissue, in just about a month. Amazing, isn't it? But Ruth's little machine is still in there. The Trinifarians dared not remove it, for fear of either killing you or killing everyone on Trinifare."
My heart drops into my feet.
"So… I'm still dying."
He shrugs.
"Not any faster than any other human. You'll be able to manipulate still, but it'll be few and far between. You've got just about an eighth of the Reactor left in there, so you know what that means?"
I stare at him, a hesitant smile spreading on my dry lips.
"It means you'll not always be able to rely on 'superpowers' when we get ourselves into trouble. Wonder how long we'll last." He says, and I let out a whoosh of breath, every last bit of tension in my body leaving with it.
I'm going to live. I'm going to live. I'm going to live!