The first place the Doctor decided to bring them was the Earth as it was still cooling. While he stands outside in his environment suit, taking a photograph where the Caliburn House will eventually stand, Charlotte sat down in one of the console room's seats- fighting the urge to have some shut-eye.
As she did, Clara went up to the open doors... trying to have a peek of the fiery landscape. Glimpsing over at Clara, the brunette paid minimal attention to her.
"Back off!" The Doctor warns, walking past Clara as she held up her hands. "Hot suit, hot, hot."
Charlotte rose from the seat and stood on the Doctor's other side as Clara asked him, "When are we?"
Through the suit's mask, he had to shout to be heard. "About six billion years ago. It's a Tuesday, I think."
The next stop they made was to when a bright, tropical jungle filled with life had power over the Caliburn land. A gigantic firefly flew past the group and swooped back into the jungle of green leaves. Once the Doctor took the photograph, they returned to the TARDIS and began their trip to the next destination.
In another era, they went to the house in the victorian era. A lady in a complex dress and a man in a top hat walked up the steps at the front of the home. From a distance, the Doctor takes photographs with a vintage camera. Spinning around, he faced Charlotte and Clara with a smile.
At last, they made their final stop to a devastated Earth- the Doctor was just about to step out wearing the same environment suit as before. Looking behind him, Charlotte craned her neck to see a desert for as far as her eyes could see. Beside her, Clara did the same.
They've just seen a whole timeline of Earth. To both Charlotte and Clara, who've both only traveled with the Doctor a few weeks, they thought it was so surreal... seeing their home in this state. No words could explain how they felt as they looked out to the deserted plains.
"Back in a mo," said the Doctor, with the mask on again. "Are you both alright?" He asked once noticing their forlorn mood.
Clara looked back at him. "Totally. Peachy keen."
"Yeah, yeah..." Charlotte added, giving a smile to the ground as she sat at the edge of her seat.
"Okay then," he began about to leave when he added, "Well, don't press any buttons or pull any levers or make any funny faces." He hesitated to leave again. "Actually, don't move. Stand... or sit, completely still. Don't breathe. Well, you can breathe, but shallow breaths." Then, at last, he went outside to take the photo.
Charlotte looked up to the scanner with Clara- as it shows the Doctor outside on the red planet all could vividly remember having lush trees towering high above and the beautiful mansion now crumbled to only a bit of a roof and a chimney lying on the ground long forgotten.
"This is crazy," Charlotte whispered breathlessly. Clara nodded, looking at the monitor.
The Doctor took the photograph and returned to the console after- placing the helmet on it with an ecstatic smile. "Oh, what's wrong?" He asked, his smile drooping when he noticed Clara's eyes glued to the scanner and how Charlotte was zoned out.
"Did the TARDIS say something to you? Are you being mean?"
"Doctor," Still sitting in her spot, Charlotte responded, catching his attention. "It isn't that... The three of us just saw the life cycle of Earth. That's mental." She laughed nervously.
The Doctor remained silent when Clara looks to him. "You're okay with that?"
"Yes."
"How can you be?"
He opened his arms out. "The TARDIS, she's time." He continued despite Clara looking lost at him. "We... Wibbly vortex and so on."
She gazes out to the Earth in the scanner. "That's not what I mean."
"Okay, some help." He paused, thinking of what to say next. "Context? Cheatsheet? Something?"
Clara immediately shoots her head over to him. "I mean, one minute you two are in 1974 looking for ghosts, but all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever's standing there." Charlotte looked up to her, caught off guard from being mentioned.
"To you, I haven't been born yet, and to you, I've been dead one hundred billion years." She looked back and forth from the Doctor and Charlotte. "Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?"
The Doctor nods, but Charlotte saw him hesitate for a second. "Yes, I suppose it is." He walked towards the stairs that led to the level below them.
"But here we are, talking," She said, the Doctor stopping at the top of the stairs as she did. "So I am a ghost. We're all ghosts to you." At that word, Charlotte stood up with her cane as the Doctor stood still with his back to Clara and her.
"We must be nothing," she finished.
The Doctor turns around, looking to the two kindly. "No. No. You're not that."
Clara stops him when he was halfway down the stairs. "Then what are we?" She questioned him. "What can we possibly be?"
Charlotte leaned forward against the banister as she watched in interest at what he'd have to say next. Looking up to them, he answered her, "You are the only mystery worth solving." Utterly confused, Clara watched him leave to get changed.
Soon after checking her hair growth, just about three inches, and adding some more gel to it, they returned to the Caliburn's candlelit living room. First seeing Palmer, who stood at the table with the projector, the Doctor hands him the film of photographs to be developed. Besides the board covered with notes and pictures on the 'ghost,' Clara and Emma stood chatting.
Charlotte, standing with the Doctor and Palmer, held one film up to the light for both her and the Doctor to see. "It was the one we took in the 23rd century," she told him. It wasn't of a ghost, it was just one the three decided to take together.
"Should put that in your book," he commented.
Knowing that'll be a good idea, she slid the film in her pocket to be developed later. "And how do you know about my book?" She asked him, recalling the book she found with blurred out photos weeks ago.
"You told me." He set the film he was looking at back. "Right, done." Clapping his hands together he then said, "That's it. Gather round, gather round. Roll up, roll up."
Clara and Emma joined them as Palmer uses the negatives for the slides, and once he set the last one in the Doctor activated the projector with the sonic. The projection showed a picture of the ghast from when Emma spotted it not too long ago.
"The Ghast of Caliburn," He began. "Never changing. Trapped in a moment of fear and torment. But, what if she's not? What if she's just trapped somewhere time runs more slowly than it does here?" He began speaking faster than light. "What if a second to her was a hundred thousand years to us? And what if somebody has a magic box." He whispered to Clara and Charlotte, not so secretly, "A blue box, probably. What if said somebody could take a snapshot of her, say, every few million years?" With every click of a changing slide, it zooms in closer until they see the clear photo of a dark woman in white overalls running.
He continued speaking much slower and quieter than before and stood in front of the screen. "She's not a ghost. But she's definitely a lost soul. Her name is Hila Tacorian." Emma stood behind the Doctor, looking toward Hila fondly. "She's a pioneer, a time traveler, or at least she will be in a few hundred years."
Palmer shook his head. "Time travel's not possible. The paradoxes-"
"-Resolve themselves," the Doctor interrupted. "By and large."
Emma still looked to the still image of Hila. "How long has she been alone?"
"Well, time travels a funny old thing," he said to Emma. "I mean, from her perspective, she crash-landed..." he looked to his watch. "Three minutes ago."
Her eyebrows scrunched together. "Crash landed? Where?"
"She's in a pocket universe. A distorted echo of our own," he explained. "They happen sometimes but never last for long." To show, he pulled a red and blue deflated balloons from his pocket. Blowing up first the blue balloon then the red one and held them up to Emma. "Our universe," the blue. "Hila Tacorian's here, in a pocket universe," the red. "You're a lantern, shining across the dimensions, guiding her home, back to the land of the living." He touched the balloons together, and the red deflates.
"But what's she running from?" asked Clara.
The Doctor snaps, stuffing the deflated balloons into his pocket. "Well, that's the best bit. We don't know yet. Shall we see?" He used the sonic to show the next slide- a monster hiding behind a tree on four, spider-like legs.
All of their eyes were wide and glued to the creature on the screen. Charlotte felt her stomach twist looking at it looked straight from a child's nightmare. The Doctor looks to the picture as well. "Oh..."
"What is that?" Clara wondered, standing beside Charlotte.
He didn't turn his head to answer. "I don't know." He faces the rest of them again, clapping his hands together. "Still, not to worry."
Worried for Hila, Emma questioned, "So, what do we do?"
"Not we, you." He stood in front of Emma, talking much quieter. "You save Hila Tacorian because you are Emma Grayling. You are the lantern." He leaned down to her ear and muttered, "The rest of us are just along for the ride, I'm afraid." He backed up and began speaking to them all. "We need some sturdy rope and a blue crystal from Metebelis Three. Plus some Kendal Mint Cake." He then left the living room with Clara and Charlotte following him to the TARDIS; outside the storm had finished.
Clara dangled her legs as she sat on the console level, and Charlotte sat on the stairs looking over the banister to the Doctor as he shuffled through a cubby beneath for supplies. "Can't you just..." began Clara. "You know?"
He continued to look, finding a plastic bottle of water. "What?"
"Fly the TARDIS into the parallel universe?"
"Ah, it's not a parallel universe. It's a pocket universe," he corrected, moving to lean against the ledge- which was below Clara's feet and next to where Charlotte sat. "Plus, it is collapsing. I mean, the TARDIS could get in there all right, but entropy would bleed her power sources, you see? Trap her there until the entire universe decayed back into the quantum foam." Charlotte narrowed my eyes, not sure about what he was saying.
"Which would take about... three minutes, give or take, you know?"
A silver cable, as thick as a mug, ran from the TARDIS with other cables wound around it back into Caliburn. In the music room, the cable ended at a large crystal in a cradle that stood at the same height as Charlotte. Placed in a circle around the crystal were many clocks- some modern-looking and others as old as the mansion.
Charlotte stood next to Clara as she inspected the crystal. "What is that?" She asked the Doctor when he passed them.
He stopped to answer, "A subset of the Eye of Harmony." He slapped her hand away as it inched toward it.
"I don't get-" Charlotte began before he interrupted her.
"-Course you don't. I barely do myself. Right," As he walked past Emma he said to her, "You sit down." He takes a wired 'crown' with a dark blue gem in the middle and placed it on top of her head. "All the way from Metebelis Three."
Emma adjusted the crown in her seat as she asked him, "What does it do?"
The Doctor moves around the room, beginning the tick of the clocks that surround the subset of the Eye of Harmony. "It amplifies your natural abilities- like a microphone or a pooper scooper!"
"What exactly is this arrangement?" queried Palmer.
The Doctor answers as Clara helps him into a harness. "A psychochronograph."
"Forgive me," Palmer says from on the other side of the arrangement. "But isn't it all a bit, well... make do and mend?"
Clara was buckling the back of the harness when the Doctor responded, "Non-psychic technology won't work where I'm going." He buckled the front of the harness. "Listen, all I need to do is dive into another dimension, find the time traveler, help her escape the monster, get home before the entire dimension collapses and Bob's your uncle."
Charlotte moved to stand in front of him, standing on her own for a second to fix his lopsided bowtie. "Easy peasy."
"Not really," he looks down at her, not getting the sarcasm. "I have to rescue a trapped time traveler before the dimension collapses, how is that easy?"
She was about to continue when Emma piped up with a question. "Doctor? Will it hurt?"
As he began to answer, Charlotte moved to stand away from the area the light would appear- standing beside Clara. He bent down to Emma, who still sat in the chair. "No." He straightened. "Well, yes. Probably. A bit. Well, quite a lot. I don't know. It might be agony. To be perfectly honest, I'll be interested to find out." He looked to all of them with a tight smile.
Emma looks to Palmer for support, who nodded back. The clocks continued to tick as she looked back to the Doctor and took a few deep breaths. She closed her eyes. "I'm talking to the lost soul that abides in this place. I'm talking to Hila Tacorian."
Charlotte grew nervous as the Doctor grabbed the end of the rope on the winch and the surrounding clocks either began speeding up or going backward.
Emma inhaled deeply, looking forward. Then, she closed her eyes once more as an electronic whizzing came from the front. Seeing the dark disc floating in midair, everyone began to grow more and more anxious as it began to crack before them.
The Doctor, still holding onto the rope, attached it to the harness. The disc then shattered, causing a bright light to appear at the doorway with a mighty wind. Charlotte's 'hair' hit against her face as she squinted her eyes at the light.
The Doctor looks over at them. "See? The Witch of the Well! It's a wormhole!" He tightened the harness. "A reality well! a door to the echo universe!" To Emma, he shouted, "Ready?!"
"READY!"
Turning back around, the Doctor faces the wormhole. He cracks his neck then shrugged. "Geronimo." The rope began to unwind from the winch as he jumps into the wormhole and gets farther and further away from where he started.
They could only watch the white light, for any hope. Charlotte, too, had her eyes glued to it- while she knew it'd be scary for everyone else, she didn't expect to be afraid for him too.
Distressed, Clara shouts out, "Doctor!" Moving closer to the light, she was held back by Palmer.
Emma watches the wormhole as she calls for him. "Doctor, Doctor!" She shouted for him, "Come home. Doctor, come home!"
Palmer wisely still held back Clara from running after the Doctor, and Charlotte kept a watchful eye on the wormhole for any sign of the Doctor and Hila just like everyone else.
"Doctor!" Emma shouted again, reaching out a hand to the wormhole. "Doctor... come home!"
With the wind surging at them with the strength of a bodybuilder, it became difficult for Charlotte to look towards the wormhole without squinting. Even as she did squint, the bright wormhole was still just as overwhelming. Looking to Palmer, she sees him still holding Clara back. However, his grip seemed to loosen as he became focused on the wormhole.
Emma called for the Doctor again, "Doctor we're here!" She shouted, still holding her hand to the wormhole. "Doctor... Doctor!" She lowered her arm and gripped onto the chair arms. "I'm not strong enough!"
"Just a few more seconds!" Clara shouted back to her.
Emma screamed in pain, her head falling back as she continued to keep the connection up. She kept it up as the three others in the room spotted the rope on the winch being tugged. Without a single thought, Charlotte moved to stand beside Palmer as he began to crank the rope.
Believing it would be the Doctor to come up, Clara kept her eye on the wormhole for him. Charlotte kept her eye on it too, but for Hila instead- remembering he would be down there longer than desired. With a cry, Hila fell into the room just as Emma gasped and fell to her knees and immediately met with Palmer's aid.
The portal began to dim without the support of Emma keeping it up. "No!" Shouted Clara, just before the portal disappeared without a trace. She ran to the spot it was, looking to it with her eyes wide with fear for the Doctor.
Charlotte turns her attention to Hila, who lies on the ground out of breath. Going over to her side, she crouched onto the ground. Sticking a hand in her pocket, Charlotte took out the unused water bottle the Doctor insisted she brought earlier 'just in case' and handed it to her. "Here, drink some water, take it easy," she said as Hila drank it in large gulps in between breaths.
Clara storms passed them, up to Palmer and Emma. "Wake up!" She shouted at Emma. "Open the thing."
Emma sobs into her friend's chest. "I'm sorry," she managed to say.
"Don't be sorry," Palmer reassures her, stroking her brown hair. "Don't be. What you did..."
"Wasn't enough," interrupted Clara. "She needs to do it again."
Instead of Palmer, who was to busy caring for Emma, Charlotte responded. "Clara, she can't do it." The distressed brunette looked over at Charlotte as if she were slapped in the face.
Aware any moment she'll make a run to the TARDIS, Charlotte stood up. "We'll have to find a way without her."
Clara remained insistent. "She has to! There's no other way." She looked back to Emma, who sat tiredly on the ground with Palmer's full attention. Clara stood up. "We can't leave him." She runs out of the music room with Charlotte following behind her.
When the TARDIS came into sight, Clara rushed over to her with Charlotte falling in behind her, meeting her as she pulls on the TARDIS' locked doors. "Let me in, you grumpy old cow!" An electronic buzz alerted them both, turning around they saw a copy of Clara standing.
Clara looked to her copy astound. "Whoa." She looked to herself, surprised. "What's this now?
The second Clara flickered, showing how it was really a projection. "The TARDIS Voice Visual Interface. I'm programmed to select the image of a person you esteem." She looked directly to Clara, clarifying she selected the person she esteemed. "Of several billion such images in my databanks, this one best meets the criterion."
"Oh, you are a cow!" Exclaimed Clara, with a roll of her eyes.
Charlotte looked at her, done with her insults to their last hope. "Clara, not now!" She looked over to the TARDIS Voice Visual Interface. "We need you to help us bring the Doctor back."
The Interface glitched for a second before morphing into a woman with light brown skin and large brown curls covering her shoulders. Charlotte's eyes widened in realization that her sister, Gina, stood before her. Gina- the Interface- didn't as much as blink before continuing, "The Doctor is in the pocket universe."
She pushed down the long-gone memories of my sister. "Can't you enter the pocket universe?" She questioned.
The Interface glitched. "The entropy would drain energy from my heart. In four seconds, I'd be stranded. In ten, I'd be dead."
Before Charlotte could say anything else, Clara responded, "You're talking but all I hear is, 'Meh, meh, meh.'" The Interface looked to Clara with no emotion whatsoever. "Come on, let's go!" The projection disappeared. "Who even was she anyway?" asked Clara.
"My sister."
Knowing she struck a chord, she looked down. "Sorry..." She turns back to the TARDIS doors, trying to open it, but they were locked once again. "Do you have your key?"
Sheepishly, Charlotte smiled. "Funny thing... I've never got one." Groaning, Clara tried to open the doors again but failed.
"Here, let me try," offered Charlotte, moving to the side, Clara didn't expect anything to happen for her either. But, the doors opened so easily the two looked at each other with wide smiles and ran inside. The second the door closed behind Clara, the TARDIS started up on her own.
Throwing her cane onto a seat, Charlotte sprinted over to the console and hanged onto one of the handlebars. "Great ready," she said to Clara, who remained cool. "Traveling to different universes aren't pretty," she tells her, recalling the time with MIckey, Rose, and the Tenth Doctor.
Just as they began to travel, they screamed as the TARDIS pushed her boundaries of travel. Twisting and turning them around as she spun through the vortex. Multiple times, Charlotte's feet left the ground and Clara's shrieks were covered with her own. As the TARDIS flew, they heard a loud thunk! As if they hit something.
The hit made Charlotte want to hold on tighter. For a brief moment, she got a glance at the scanner- in that second she read only how something attached to the TARDIS' exterior. Roaring with laughter it was as if for a second she didn't think they could do it.
"We did it!" Charlotte shouted to her. She shouted something back, but it was taken over by our screams as the TARDIS took another sharp turn.
At last, the TARDIS landed back at Caliburn. Clara and Charlotte both panted after all the TARDIS' sharp turns and upside-down spirals. Clara sat on the ground, only one hand hanging onto the console, heaving. Charlotte looked down at her as she asked, "Will that happen often?"
She shrugged, chuckling a little. "Can't tell." Giving her a hand, she helped her up from the ground. Without saying another word, they left the TARDIS.
Standing outside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Clara exchanged tired high-fives. He heads up to Emma, bending down he puts a hand on her shoulder. Seeing she was alright, he straightened and looked through the window. The post-storm light floods into the room, giving them a good change from the moody darkness. Charlotte smiled.
With the weather cleared, the front hall of the mansion has been opened to the outside and beside each other the Doctor and Charlotte walked down it as Clara, Palmer, and Hila stepped outdoors. "There's nothing wrong with her," she told him as he leans against the door with his arms crossed.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," he began. "I don't believe you."
She couldn't argue with him- Clara's case was weird. "I don't blame you."
Emma walks up behind the two. "You wanted a word?" She said, looking to the Doctor.
"Well, if that's..."
Emma interrupted him. "That's fine." She smiled at him lightly. He uncrossed his arms, looking directly at Emma. "You didn't come here for the ghost, did you?" She guessed correctly, of course.
"No," Charlotte told her. "We came here for you, actually."
She looked back to them, confused. "Why?"
"I needed to ask you something," replied the Doctor.
"Then ask."
He hesitated a second before responding. "Clara..."
"Yes?"
He moves to stand in front of the empath. "What is she?"
Emma answered easily. "She's a girl."
"Yes, but what kind of girl?" He pushed. "Specifically."
As he turned to look out of the doorway, she answered. "She's a perfectly ordinary girl," She started. "Very pretty, very clever." Not paying attention, he hummed in response. "More scared than she lets on."
He looks back at Emma, stopping at the doorway. "And that's it, is it?"
Hitching an elbow onto his shoulder, Charlotte gave him a look. "It is. That not enough?"
After that, the two separated. Finding Clara leaning against the pillar near the TARDIS, Charlotte decided to keep her company instead. "Hi," she greeted her.
"Hey," she said, after which they stood in awkward silence. "So, you had a sister?"
"Huh?" She asked, forgetting how she knew. "Oh, she was my little sister, Gina," Charlotte told her, hardly even becoming saddened by their distance anymore.
Clara nods. "Ah, from your old universe. You don't exactly look alike."
"Well... when we were found by the Boltons, they just assumed we were 'cause we had the same last name written on our arms." She paused. "Why am I telling you this?"
"People say I just have one of those faces."
Humming, Charlotte looked back at the TARDIS, seeing Palmer resting a hand on the door. To her, it seemed insane how drastically different it was thinking of her family from the first day she was here and now. In the beginning, all she wanted to do was sob out the loss, but now it felt like a sweet memory she could move forward on.
The Doctor approaches the area with Hila and Emma next to him. At first, Emma and Hila hug each other but then the Doctor turns it into a group hug with the three of them. Clara pushed off the column she has been leaning against. Intruding the group, she pulled the Doctor away as they began to speak with each other.
And she did keep him away until he heard Emma say, "We can't have. You haven't been born yet."
The Doctor moves out of Clara's grip and, along with Charlotte, moves to stand with the two. "No, you can't have met," he agreed with them, "but she can be your great-great- great-great-great-granddaughter." He said with a smile just as Palmer joined our group. "Yours too, of course. But you'd guessed that already, hadn't you?" By the way Emma looked to Hila, flabbergasted they can tell she hadn't. "Oh... apparently not."
"The paradoxes..." Palmer began.
Charlotte finished his sentence, "Resolve. All by themselves."
"She's right," the Doctor replied. "That's why the psychic link was so powerful- blood calling to blood. Out of time. Not everything ends, eh?" He then walked through the group, patting Palmer on the arm as he made his way to the TARDIS, Charlotte stayed behind with Emma and Hila as they looked back and forth to each other. "Not love. Not always."
Palmer follows behind him asking him a question silently, to which the Doctor looked back to Emma- who consequently leaves to stand beside Palmer. Looking over to Hila, Charlotte asked her, "So what do you think you'll do now?"
She shrugs. "I'm not sure, can't make much money being a time traveler anymore."
"If I were you I'd try and stay out of the spotlight."
"That's what I was thinking," she responded, looking over to her ancestors as they held hands. Then, behind them, just as he was about to open the TARDIS doors, the Doctor smacked his forehead. Along with Hila and Clara, Charlotte walked up to where he stood.
"I'm so... slow!" He said, turning to face them. "I am slow, I'm notorious for it, right Charlotte?" He asked her, just as she met where he stood. "That's always been my problem, but I get there in the end. Oh, yes."
Walking up to him, Clara looks up at the Doctor oddly. "Doctor?"
"How do sharks make babies?" He immediately asked her.
"Carefully?"
He shook his head to her, disappointed. "No, no, no- happily!"
"Sharks don't actually smile," She looked up to him, as confused as the rest. "They're just... Well, they've got lots and lots of teeth- they're quite eaty."
The Doctor snapped his fingers. "Exactly! But birds do it, bees do it- Even educated fleas do it." The Doctor pulled Charlotte with him, rushing past Clara (who follows behind) to show the lonely creature. "Every lonely monster needs a companion," he said as they continued running.
He stops running at a spot that they can see into a top floor window. The pathway they stood on was just as overgrown as the brick wall covered with vines that reached the said third-story window- which, from where Charlotte stood can see the silhouette of another one of the same creatures.
Clara stood on her other side, looking up to the window surprised. "There's two of them?!"
"It's the oldest story in the universe," the Doctor began, "This one, or any other. Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events- war, politics, accidents in time. She's thrown out of the HEX." Charlotte barely paid any amount of attention as he put an arm around her shoulders.
"Or he's thrown into it. Since then they've been yearning for each other across time and space- across dimensions- this isn't a ghost story, it's a... love story!" Charlotte noticed how he looked down at her, taking a second to remove his arm. "Sorry," He apologized, then running back to the others.
Charlotte didn't take it into account at all, running back to the group with Clara, in time to see the Doctor say to Emma, "So... tiny favor to ask..."
So, the Doctor returned to the pocket universe to bring the creature's love home to his universe and Clara and Charlotte once again shrieked as they were being thrown around like rag dolls in the TARDIS the second time that day.
Next up: The Unquiet Dead (Another Ghost Story)
A/N: idk if all of ya'll knew this all used to be in first pov and since december i've been switching the pov n editing these chapters (it was harder than it sounds lol). anyhow, this chapter was the last one i finished before beginning the editing process and the next one will mark the first time i've actually rewritten a full episode w/o a 'guide' since rise of the cybermen (i had so much wrong in that ep i totally scrapped it).
any who, i'm just really happy i decided to change the pov and proud i went through with it. cheers.
also do ya'll think I'm writing too much per chapter?
