Eight Months, Five Days
Rapa Nui.
Tegan had a lovely view of the village from the platform. The sea was behind her, blowing a gentle breeze across her back and the stars were out in force and the moon was full and smiling.
She was no rocket scientist, but even she worked out what had happened.
It took her the entire first three months mind, but she figured it out.
The sudden pain slapped her head back, and arched her back up into the air. She cursed at the heavens and her fingers tore into the cold rock beneath her.
Rapa Nui.
When she first heard the name from one of the villagers, it dangled in her mind, a phatom carrot that she would bay and nip at in her sleep, always just out of reach. Trying to remember the sound of the vowels, the dancing rhythm the sound.
Rapa Nui.
She arrived on the island as a sopping white mess, sun burnt and ravaged upon the white sands and between cool crashing ocean waves. A gift from the sea laid bare upon the beach blessed with sickly strands of seaweed and gasping foam.
The locals were perplexed- their legends held that all the other islands in the world sank beneath the seas centuries ago and that they were the last people on earth. The appearance of the white woman was a surprise. There were whispers that she could be some sort of god. However, word quickly spread of the woman's skin, hair, attitude, temper and pungent smell. The deity whispers petered out even before the sun set on the first day. Being a kind people, they took her into their villages and gave her food and shelter.
During the first few weeks she ate, slept and occasionally celebrated with the villagers- looking back, apparently she did a little too much celebrating- and she eventually retreated to spendher nights to the safety of the beach where they found first her. She had her sleeping mat and the stars- she got into less trouble that way. It seemed, however, that it was a little too late.
Tegan spent the first month waiting near the sea for the Doctor to arrive. She knew he would come, she never had any doubt about that. She knew that if the TARDIS dropped her here, in this tropical paradise, that the ship would have taken even better care of the Doctor. Besides, it wasn't as if anything could even kill the Doctor. She'd seen him die for Christ's sake. No, he would come. Eventually.
When he would come- that was another question.
She grew tired of waiting and spent the next several weeks touring the other villages of the island- it didn't take long as the island wasn't very large. Each village greeted her politely enough, but quickly grew bored- at least it seemed that way to Tegan. Since they couldn't explain her, it seemed, they preferred to ignore her.
Limbo- she was in limbo. Or as she used to chant to herself before it grew old: she was a bimbo in limbo.
Before the Doctor, she had her life planned out: globetrotting stewardess. She was confident, strong, and self-reliant. Then she met the Doctor and the following months of sheer terror showed her her puny place in the universe and how stupid she was and-
And she left at the first opportunity.
Then she lived the life she planned: trotted around the globe as a stewardess. Shebecame bored out of her mind, irritated by the petty demands of her passengers, despairing ofhotel room after hotel room and the bitchy behaviour of flight attendants. When she ran into the Doctor again she jumped at the chance to escape reality- reality that paled in comparison to the beautiful and fractal world she had seen with him before.
And now here she was- stuck on an island in the Pacific in some unknown century with still no idea about what she wanted to do with her life.
She decided to use this time to find out what she really wanted in life.
On month three, three things happened.
The first was that the villagers discovered her ability to draw. Fortunately for her, art was highly valued in their culture: from wild and chaotic tattoos to sculptures to elaborate carvings. As word of her talent spread, Tegan found herself welcome in the villages and she grew less hostile and less isolated. Apparently to the villagers was okay to be arty and be just a little bitchy, which made a certain sense to Tegan.
The second thing that happened was that Tegan worked out what must have happened. 'Worked out' implied a reasoning process, when in reality everything sort of popped into her head at once: the Doctor had said 'Rapa Nui' in Hawaii just before the ship broke up. Tegan knew, no- felt, that the TARDIS before it was destroyed, writhing in pain must havelashed out into the void and saw that single image in the Doctor's mind as a safe haven and dropped her here, on Rapa Nui. As to why the TARDIS blew up… well, Tegan blamed Turlough, but she couldn't prove anything… that was more of a hunch.
And it made her feel better. Just a little.
The third… that was something Tegan wasn't prepared for. She spent most of that month in denial. And trying to work out sums and days of the week.
By the middle of month eight, Tegan decided that what she really wanted in life was to kill the Doctor.
The sea was behind her, blowing a gentle breeze across her back. She was on the platform with the rest of the offerings that the villages laid out to honor their ancestors. A fire burned before one of the larger statues, flickering and snapping quietly to itself, but no one could be seen.
Tegan gasped with the pain and tried to pull herself along the cold stone. She made it this far since the initial contractions hit, but she wasn't going to make it back to the village. Screaming brought no reply- but then again, they were used to her screams during the middle of the night as random nightmares often brought her roughly awake, cold and sweating.
She lay against the cold stone and stared at the stars. She could feel the child moving with in her- her legs were slick with the water of it, her belly ready to split asunder. She let out a shuddering breath that shook her body, and her heart filled with fear- having a child here could kill her, it could all go horribly wrong and she needed a doctor and she didn't know who the father was and she couldn't remember and it hurt so much and she was strong but she could die and she wanted a doctor she wanted the Doctor and she wanted him to save her and her child and then she would kill him and she was so alone-
A soothing touch licked her mind and the fear subsided, slipping into the shadows ofnight and floating up to the stars with the ashes of the fire and the pain was gone- for a moment.
The women of the village came when her screams of anger changed into cries of pain. Their shadows danced across her skin as they placed a blanket beneath her head, warm hands soothing and strokingher forehead.
He? She? -Her unborn child was pushing now. It wanted out. She yelled and pushed, feeling it move and shift. In the fierce red light of the fire she could see it, could feel it pushing, tearing, clawing- she screamed with the pain of it, her hands spasming against the cold rock.
The women backed away from her in terror and shrieks and screams and cries fell upon Tegan's ears but her mind was blank, deaf to the world around her as she pushed and sweated and screamed and pushed as her baby emerged, the pink flesh melding, shining, browning, crusting, hardening, scraping, pebbling to see the rounded head, long thin nose and white eyes - it- the thing emerged from her legs
ohmygodohmygodwhaohmygodnothappeningohgod-
With a wet thud the foot long stone statue, slick and sheathed in the blue-red filmy afterbirth, clattered to the rock floor, the fleshy umbilical cord slipping away from the granite navel and Tegan screamed and screamed as the statue grew larger and larger and towered over her and all around her the identical statues stared down at her in the flickering fire light and watched her with white eyes and long noses as her baby- the thing- grew and shuddered in the evil light and to Tegan's deaf ears she heard all the statues on the whole of the Island- of Easter Island, it was Easter Island she was stranded on Easter Island, on Rapa Nui and all of the Moai statues were looming over her chanting, chanting over and over and over again in huge earth scraping voices that shook the skies and smothered her cries, over and over and her baby- her Moai- roared above her over sixty feet tall, still wet from emerging from her flesh and the whole world roared about her in the same chant swallowing her with the sound and the color and the chant pounding in her head:
Rapa Nui, Rapa Nui, Rapa Nui.