Chasing after the silhouette, Lila avoided running into dozens of sudden walls popping up in front of her, the sharp corners, trying to keep up with the floating silhouette, calling out after it, but it didn't yield.
By the time her legs almost gave out under her, Lila lost sight of the silhouette, and Ellie.
Slowing down, panting, Lila leaned against the wall, her heart beating against her chest, sweat dribbled down her cheeks, as she felt the coldness against her back.
The growing hunger and thirst weren't helping, either, Lila felt her stomach rumbling.
Didn't seem right, Lila could've sworn…
When was the last time she ate?
It'd had to been before, the visit to station, but that can't be right, Lila doesn't remember them going to the station.
Frelling hell!
Once her heart stopped beating against her rib cage, Lila tried to wait for Ellie, but she guessed she outrun the older woman, now they've become separated.
Smooth move, Lee!
Exhaling sharply, Lila tried waiting for Ellie to reach her, but she never showed, and her stomach wasn't patient, anymore.
"Oh, hush you!" Lila shouted at her stomach, trying to keep herself from losing her wits.
It must've been thirty minutes, but Ellie hadn't showed, and Lila tried shouting for her, her voice didn't carry through the maze.
Ellie never showed up and it left Lila with a difficult choice of leaving her behind, wanting to keep looking for the silhouette.
Wracking her brain for ideas, Lila's forced to leave Ellie behind, but not before leaving something identifiable for Ellie to find.
Her scrunchies.
Not ideal, but Lila didn't have any other ideas, and it's a loud color that barely showed through the darkness of the maze, it'd have to work.
To be sure, Lila shouted down the maze she came up from, trying to tell Ellie that she left something for the woman to find, to show where Lila went, before continuing her search for the silhouette.
It's been over six hours, Lila's sure of it, at this point, had her wristwatch worked it would've shown that she's right, but it remained firmly at 12AM.
Theodore made sure the wristwatch worked before gifting it to her for Christmas.
A rare craftsmanship from Gallifrey, believe it or not, Hamon helped him obtain it without stepping foot on the planet.
Hamon pulled a favor for it, an old friend of his lived in a different version of London made it for him.
Not in exile, though it was the first thing that Lila thought of, the old Time Lord simply gotten fed up with Gallifrey's politics that he absconded his duties willingly.
London apparently reminded the old Time Lord of what life was when Gallifrey wasn't under the domes, he's that old, Hamon mentioned that he was far older than Hamon, if you could believe it.
Anyhow, the old Time Lord used to make the pocket watches and wristwatches that were gifted to the students when they graduated the prestigious school, but then Gallifrey started shifting, and the craft lost its luster in the eyes of the Council.
Not to the old Time Lord.
Such a rare gift, Lila couldn't believe her chestnut eyes when Theodore surprised her with it, but the aloof giant insisted that she deserved it.
All this for a wristwatch, Lila knows sounds insane, but this wasn't a wristwatch someone could buy from a frilly company with an engraving on the watch face.
And.
She's slowly losing her mind in the darkness and needed something to obsesses over so she doesn't go rabid, the fact that her Teddi gave her a rare piece of Time Lord history's an easy pickings for her.
Yes, she's talking to herself, how did you know?
God, why couldn't the megalomaniac behind this just show up so she doesn't have to come up with everything under the… whatever the hell they're in… to keep her mind from losing hope and her stomach from getting its two cents in every minute!
Stopping once again, Lila grew hopeless, she couldn't find the silhouette, she left Ellie behind, no one here except them, and nothing to show for her efforts finding a way out of here.
"Teddi, please, if you're somewhere in my head, you have to know where I am, now," Lila tried reaching out to the aloof giant.
When they melded, he said that no matter how far apart they were, they'd know where the other is, how they're feeling, everything else.
He'd have to know how she's feeling, by now.
Trying as she might, Lila tried to feel where Theodore was, but it's like it never happened, a numbing effect, instead.
He never said this could happen and Lila knows there wasn't a misfire, the morning after, she knew instinctively that Theodore wanted breakfast, even before he verbally told her.
"Excuse me?" Lila jumped when she heard another woman speak up.
The woman stumbled backwards in shock as Lila wrap her arms around her, ecstatic that she wasn't going crazy imagining someone.
Struggling, the woman remained in shock, until Lila finally pulled away, looking like a craze woman in the dark.
"Oh, thank god!" Lila exhaled sharply as she rubbed her eyes, "here I thought I was going to be stuck in my thoughts!"
Lowering her hand, pulling away sweat and tears, Lila sees the woman in front of her…
What?
"Hey… don't I… don't I know you?" Lila raised her finger at the woman.
Around her late twenties, early thirties, had flowing dirty blond hair, brown eyes, flushed cheeks, and wore a flowing creamy blue night gown.
Night gown?
Lila tilted her head at this, asking the woman her name, and she heard back, "Matilda. Matilda Pratchett."
Stepping backwards, Lila's aghast at the sight, looking at her with her chestnut eyes wide, when Matilda asked her what was wrong, she's surprised at the answer.
"Mrs… Mrs. Pratchett… but… you're… dead!" Lila tells her with shock in her voice seeing the woman that Pete described in fine detail, going far as showing a picture of the two on their wedding day.
Recoiling, Matilda found that offensive, stating that she isn't dead, that it was some sort of cruel prank.
Refusing to believe what Lila told her, Matilda shook her head, stating that she's as alive as her, forcing Lila to poke her.
Warm blooded, not a corpse, not a spirit.
"Ma'am, I hate to tell you, but there's some tomfoolery happening here, and I really wish I could get out of it," Lila summed her experience thus far, that while Matilda won't believe her, Lila knows for a fact, something's going on, and she wants it over with.
Lightly scoffing, Matilda gestured as she shared Lila's beliefs, she's been wanting answers since she woke up here.
"I must get back! Jenny needs me!" Matilda insisted that she find a way out of here, wanting nothing more than return to her family, to hold her baby daughter, see her husband, again.
Standing quietly, Lila watched as Matilda clasp her hands together, nervously pacing around, fear in her brown eyes.
Cogs turning in her head, Lila noticed Matilda wasn't wearing her necklace.
Pete said it went missing…
"Oi! What gives?" Lila turned sharply to the sudden appearance of Ellie, agitated at her for leaving her behind.
Her eyes wide, Lila stared at the appearance of Ellie, as she chewed Lila out for leaving her behind like that, before noticing the look on her face.
Her dark eyes moved towards the pacing Matilda, tilting her head, Ellie asked, "Who's this?"
Stopping in her place, Matilda turned her head, shocked at the sight of someone else in the maze with them, responding with a quizzical, "Matilda Pratchett."
Seeing the two women interact as she's trying to process what she's seeing, Lila exhaled sharply, her mind trying to piece everything together.
This couldn't be possible, Matilda's dead, Pete said it as such, that picture of her headstone cemented as much.
No way this was some alternate version, the woman's fretting about her child and her husband, and Lila's adventured enough to know the differences.
The other woman, Lila didn't recognize, never met her husband, the way the women interacted, they didn't know each other, either.
Growing confused, clearing her throat to get their attention, Lila asked them, "So-so, you both woke up here, right?"
Turning their heads, the women affirmed, in their respected events, they woke up in the maze.
"And-and you're both married to a Doctor?" Lila continued, the women nodding.
Pointing at herself, Lila goes, "Well, I'm kinda… kinda married… to one, myself."
Two threads shared between the women.
They were doing something, somehow wound up here.
All three were in a relationship with a Doctor.
It started causing cogs turning in her head, as Lila suggested, "What if… we're here, because of that reason?"
Only reason she can think of why someone would go through the effort abducting the women and Ellie concurred with Lila's suggestion, pointing out that it wasn't the first time someone tried using her relationship with her husband to draw him out for nefarious purposes.
Skeptical, Matilda pointed out that they've been here, for who knows how long, and no one's come for them, not their husbands, either.
"What reason would they have leaving us like this?" Matilda wanted an explanation for their entrapment, which Lila admitted she didn't think that far ahead, but quickly suggested that it's a good way keeping them from escaping.
Because she's sure as hell out of ideas, there!
Frowning as she pulled back her auburn hair, Ellie wondered, "How long do you think they intend to keep us here?"
Shrugging, Lila weakly tells her, "Well, if you two are still here, it can't be too much longer, right?"
Uncertainty in her voice as she still didn't understand how Matilda's alive and well here, sure as hell that this was the same one who Pete married and had a daughter with.
Her stomach gurgling, Lila attempted to keep this moving, wracking ideas with the two women, trying to come up with a way out of this hell, and fast!
At the end of their conversation, the women concluded with a loud sigh, as they tried going in the direction that they hadn't taken before, difficult prospect in the darkness, they know, but they don't have much else.
Lila tried keeping their spirits high, having them talk about their husbands, figuring the best way to keep them preoccupied's talking about their loved ones.
Of course, all this talking's detrimental to controlling her thirst, Lila pushed through despite this, it'll suck, she'll get cottonmouth for a good while, but at least the women weren't panicking.
Matilda described her chance meeting with Pete, having helped her sister and nephew move into an inherited castle by her sister's late husband, killed by the war, he himself having inherited the castle from his father, but they never lived in it until then.
Her sister wanted a change of scenery, the pains of being in the house shared by her late husband wasn't doing her or her son any good.
The castle wasn't too far from Tommy's new school, so it helped them immensely managing that, as well.
On break from school at the time, Matilda opted to help renovate the castle with her sister and nephew, the sisters never having the chance of stepping into a castle that passed through different parts of the family branch, this was an experience for them.
"Oh, Tommy perked right up when he saw his room," Matilda reminisced the moment Tommy saw what would become his bedroom, bigger than his old bedroom, the joy on his face, the sadness when he couldn't stay in it, just yet, until after Matilda and her sister, Tabitha, worked to clean it.
Throughout the renovating, they started noticing some peculiar goings, objects moving on their own, odd footsteps in the dead of night, Tommy swearing he'd seen someone walking through the hallway.
Well, here comes the arrival of Pete, having come in his TARDIS for a cricket match he was invited to, and chanced meeting Matilda and her nephew when he bumped into them on their way visiting the nearby park.
Instant connection between her and Pete.
Didn't know anything about the whole affair with him being the Doctor until Tommy mentioned seeing something watching him from the closet of his aunt's bedroom he stayed in while she and his mother worked to clean his bedroom.
Matilda thought he was just imagining something when he was still waking up, his mind not processing what he's seeing correctly, but the way he described this awful creature with three eyes and scaly skin just resonated with Pete, and he ended up at their doorstep the next night, curiosity in those caramel eyes.
As it turned out, there'd been an alien living in the castle, much to her surprise, when the sisters started renovating the castle, it earned them the alien's ire, perceiving them as encroaching on its home, and resulted in Matilda's broken leg, having the alien sneakily cause the ladder she used to hang up a chandelier to collapse under her, hoping to seriously injure her, or worst.
Pete was in the castle during this and heard the commotion, coming to her aid, scaring off the alien before it'd attempted her life when it saw she was still alive, only suffering a broken leg.
It'd attempted their lives multiple times before Pete managed to thwart its plans on killing them, destroying it in its entirety.
Almost a shame Pete was going to leave them, be on his way, once everything was said and done, but he'd promise to return to them every now again.
Proposed to her after three years.
Hearing Matilda regale the story, it matched up what Pete told Lila and the others, down to the broken leg and the alien.
Ellie mused that it must've been an interesting experience for Tabitha and Tommy, which Matilda admitted that neither expected something like it to happen to them, of all people, but she's glad that it did, because she wouldn't have met Pete if it hadn't.
"So, uh, how did they feel when they found out… and you know…?" Lila broached Matilda how her sister and nephew felt when they found out the truth about Pete, the alien, and Matilda answers that it was a shock to them, but they came to an understanding.
Pete said that before Matilda died, they'd stayed in the same universe as Tabitha and Tommy, by that point, Tabitha had remarried and Tommy was entering high school.
Don't know much about what happened that resulted in Pete's decision to move into a different universe than to remain close to his late wife's family, the details were sparse there, and Lila wasn't going to pry details from a difficult point in Pete's life.
Whatever reason, he chose to move with his daughter, sent the TARDIS away, and lived a quiet life until a doozy of a man swooned his adult daughter.
"It's easier when they understand," Ellie summed, having her husband's family clued in to his unusual life, and with that, it resulted them understanding the little things that went over their heads.
Nodding, Matilda agrees, though Tommy's insistent on joining them on an adventure, and while he's getting older, she didn't want to risk the chance of something going wrong, or risk another grey hair in her sister.
"Oh, Will wanted nothing more than to adventure with us, but my husband didn't think he was ready for it," Ellie recalled how her youngest son wanted to go on an adventure like his father, but her husband forbade it, on grounds that Will was too young.
That boy great insistent by the year that he was ready to adventure, but Ellie's oldest son wasn't interested in the thought.
"I figured out of the two, he would want to at least go inside," she then went on to muse how Tom wouldn't think about adventuring with his parents, at least once, wouldn't even entertain the thought of stepping through the door into the TARDIS, just to see the inside.
He wouldn't, despite hers and her husband's efforts trying to understand his reasonings.
"The difficulty of raising sons," Matilda mused it sounded like dealing with Tommy.
He means well, but there are days where the sisters question their sanity, more than once.
The long-winded conversations ended with Lila catching sight of a woman with her back turned to them, wearing the yellow dress that Lila saw before.
Corralling the women, Lila made sure they ran ahead of her, as she encouraged them to chase after the woman in the yellow dress, trying to get her attention, hoping to stop her from disappearing, again.