"Guardian of the Array"

35. A Responder

March 2012 – Lima, Ohio

The last few days had felt like those last few days to Christmas, in the years after she'd stopped believing in Santa Claus. Her parents would put the presents under the tree several days before they were to be opened, and she'd have to see them sitting there, every time she walked by, the anticipation rising the closer they came to 'the big day.'

The Doctor's notebook had become like the presents under the tree, if the presents were sort of traumatic and dangerous.

The date was coming, and she didn't know exactly what it was about, but she had a sneaking suspicion.

When the morning finally came, she had a time and location, and five words. You know what to do.

The Doctor may have had all the confidence in the world that she would know what to do with what she found at those coordinates, but Gemma herself had not been able to eat all morning. When she'd gone in to McKinley to teach her classes, her students had been handed a free period to do research and write up a page on what they found, because she knew she would have been no good to them otherwise.

The hours were ticking by, and she must have gone over her plan for getting to where she needed to be about fifty times. She'd have to take a taxi, but she couldn't take it the whole way, so then she'd have to go the rest of the way on foot. What if I don't get there on time? How do I know if I made it on time?

As soon as she was done for the day, she was gone. She hailed her taxi, and she was off. She hadn't felt herself tapping her feet nervously until she'd accidentally kicked the driver's seat and he'd complained. After that, she'd substituted her nervous outlet by twisting and untwisting a cord on her bag.

The driver was already ticked off by her kicking his seat, and he'd nearly refused to drop her off where she'd asked to go. In the end, they had argued so much that, by the time he did stop to let her off, he had inadvertently brought her almost exactly where she needed to be. She'd walked ten minutes and then realized she'd passed it, when she turned back and spotted the envelope.

It was stuck on the inside of the windshield, on a car parked at the side of the road. It was blue. Her hand had gone to her pocket, to the smaller envelope she'd gotten with these coordinates. She'd known it was a key, just by feeling at the edges through the envelope, but she hadn't realized it was a car key.

"What are you even…" she muttered to herself, walking back to the car. The key fit. Of course. She snatched up the blue envelope and opened it.

"Wait here."

"Wait…" she leaned in to check if there was any gas in the car. There wasn't. "Wait here for wh…"

That was when she'd heard it, like something out of a nightmare. How many times had she heard the screech of tires, and horns, and then the crash of metal on metal, on television and in movies? It had nothing in comparison to real life. By the time she'd turned around, it was all over.

"Oh, Doctor. Couldn't help yourself, could you?" She knew why this moment mattered to her, as it had for so long already. It all came back to that choice, if they could even call it that. There had been no choice, not if they kept to the rules, and the Doctor had done it. He'd let Quinn Fabray return to this moment in time, where she was supposed to be.

But now she wouldn't be alone.

Gemma pulled out her phone and dialled 911. When the operator answered, she didn't have to force the trembling into her voice at all.

"My car ran out of gas, I was just standing there. There was a truck, it crashed into another car, people are hurt." She gave her location to the woman on the line. After she'd hung up, there was nothing else she could do but to go and look in on them.

Only moments ago, that girl trapped in the wreck that had been her car had been with him, the Doctor, when she had been a he. She had been with him, had known him, and when she would wake again, she would remember knowing him. What that would mean for Gemma and her task was left to be seen. She would have been there, wherever she was, if the Doctor hadn't decided that this was a better way to go about things.

Of course, the Doctor didn't know exactly what it was that she was asking her to do by being here, seeing this. Gemma wasn't going to say anything about it, how could she? When this is all over, we will have a talk, count on it.

She'd waited until the paramedics arrived. It was something of a risk, to have her entered as a witness in official records, but it was less dangerous than for her to have made the call and then fled the scene. They didn't need more trouble than they already had.

The driver had been loaded into one ambulance, and Quinn into another. As soon as she was cleared to go, she had remembered that the car didn't have gas and she'd come in a taxi. It would take some time more before she got back to her apartment. When she did, she did something she knew she might regret later. She'd gone one floor above, to knock at Walter Reskin's door. He'd been so surprised to see her, but then the look on her face was telling a story already. She was in need of comfort, and he gave it freely. He got her to come and sit, he'd gotten them food, and he'd listened to her talk. Even if she couldn't tell him her name, where she was from, when she was from, this already had been enough. All he'd had to do was be there.

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)