Inside the TARDIS was mayhem. The whole ship was shaking and an alarm kept going off.
"Hold that one down!" The Doctor yelled at me, pointing to a button.
"I'm HOLDING this one down!" I yelled back showing him the lever I was holding.
"Well, hold them BOTH down!" He yelled back at me.
"It's not going to work!" I yelled at him, smiling.
"Oi! I promised you a time machine and that's what you're getting. Now, you've seen the future - let's have a look at the past. 1860. How does 1860 sound?" the Doctor asked me.
"What happened in 1860?" I asked.
"I don't know, let's find out. Hold on, here we go!" he pulled a lever down and we kept going until we came to a sudden stop, dropping the Doctor and I to the ground. We looked at each other then started laughing as we got up.
"Blimey!"
"You're telling me! Are you alright?" He asked me.
"Yeah. I think so! Nothing broken... did we make it? Where are we?" I asked him looking at the steaming controls.
"I did it! Give the man a medal. Earth - Naples - December 24th, 1860." he said studying the screen.
"That's so weird... it's Christmas." I said just thinking about it. I looked at the Doctor and he gestured towards the door.
"All yours." He said smiling at me.
"But, it's like... think about it, though. Christmas. 1860. Happens once. Just once, and it's gone. It's finished. It'll never happen again. Except for you." I studied him for a moment. "You can go back and see days that are dead and gone and a hundred thousand sunsets ago... no wonder you never stay still..." I said just staring at him, my thoughts flying everywhere all at once.
"Not a bad life." He told me.
"Better with two." I told him. We grinned at each other for moment before I started walking past him. I slapped his bum and made my way quickly to the door. "Come on then!"
"Oi, oi, oi! Where do you think you're going?!" The Doctor said, stopping me.
"1860!" I told him.
"Go out there dressed like that, you'll start a riot, Barbarella! There's a wardrobe through there. First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, it's the fifth door on your left. Hurry up!" I smiled and rushed off in the direction he sent me only stopping to give him a kiss on the cheek. When I got to the wardrobe, which was the size of a large mansion, I looked through all the dresses looking for one that might fit the time period as well as look good on me. I know I sound vain when I say this, but I wanted to look my best for him. when I saw are red and white dress out of the corner of my eye, I knew I wanted to wear it. Time period appropriate or not. I put the dress on and pulled out small white pumps. I also grabbed a small white jacket just to cover my arms. I put my hair up in a nice bun and stuck a rose into it to match the dress. I walked back to the console to see the Doctor doing repair work. He glanced up at the door way then back down before snapping his head back up.
"Blimey!" he looked shock at me.
"Don't laugh!" I started laughing, I knew I must have looked ridiculous.
"You look beautiful!" I stopped laughing and smiled at him. He then looked away."...considering." he turned on the screwdriver.
"Considering what?" I asked him my smile faded.
"That you're human!" he told me and I laughed a little.
"I THINK that's a compliment... Aren't you going to change?" I asked him.
"I've changed my jumper! Come on!" He jumped out of the space beneath the controls but I picked up my dress slightly and ran past him.
"You, stay there! You've done this before. This is mine!" I opened the door and looked out onto the 1860 street. I made a footprint in the untouched snow then withdrew my foot again. I took a deep breath and stepped out of the TARDIS not bothering to look behind me to see the Doctor.
"Ready for this?" I looked at his offered arm and smiled while taking it.
"Here we go. History!" we walked off together just looking at everything and talking about nothing. I was amazed by everything I saw. The Doctor wandered away from me and I followed him. He stopped and looked at a paper and I walked ahead a little, smile never leaving my face.
"I got the flight a bit wrong." He told me.
"I don't care." I told him, shaking my head.
"It's not 1860, it's 1869."
"I don't care!"
"And it's not Naples."
"I don't care."
"It's Cardiff." I stopped walking and the smile left my face.
"Right..." We continued walking down the street until we heard screaming. We looked at each other and the Doctor grinned.
"That's more like it!" he tossed the newspaper over his shoulder, grabbed my hand, and we ran in the direction of the screaming. We entered a theater and saw a blue mist zoom around.
"Fantastic." The Doctor said grinning. I followed the blue mist to an old woman to see the last of the blue mist left the old woman and she slumped back into a chair. The Doctor approached the man on the stage and I watched a man and a woman grab the woman and take her.
"Oi! Leave her alone! Doctor, I'll get 'em!" I told him following them.
"Be careful!" he called after me. I caught up with them as they loaded the old woman into the hearse.
"What're you doing?!" I asked the woman as the man walked to the front.
"Oh, it's such a tragedy, miss. Don't worry yourself, me and the master will deal with it." she tried to bar me from see inside. "The fact is, this poor lady's been taken with the brain fever and we have to get her to the infirmary." I pushed her aside and felt the old womans forehead, cold.
"She's cold..." I felt for a pulse, nothing. "She's dead! My God, what did you do to her?" I snapped my head at the woman glaring at her. She looked behind me as someone clamped something over my mouth. I smelt something weird, but I couldn't quite distinguish. then everything went black.
When I woke up, I looked around to see where I was. I quickly turned around and saw a man behind me, making zombie noises at me.
"Are you all right? You're kidding me, yeah? You're just kidding." I asked as he climbed out of the coffin. "You are, you're kidding me, aren't ya?" He took a staggering step toward me. "Okay, not kidding." I got up and ran to the door and tried to open it, finding it locked. I looked behind me again to see a woman's body rising from the other coffin. I grabbed a vase and lobbed it at the man. I didn't do anything but cause him to stumble slightly. I turned back around and rattled the handle, hopping someone would hear me. "Let me out! Open the door! Please, let me out!" I glanced back to see both corpses walking toward me. "Let me out! Somebody, open the door! Open the door!" A hand clasped itself over my mouth, muffling my screaming. The man pulled me closer to him when the Doctor kicked the door in.
"I think this is MY dance." He pulled me from the man's grip. I smiled up at the man before me.
"It's a prank? It must be. We're under some mesmeric influence." I looked at the older man behind me.
"No, we're not. The dead are walking." He grinned down at me. "Hi!"
"Hi! Who's your friend?" I asked looking at the older man.
"Charles Dickens." He introduced.
"Oh. Okay." I looked back at the dead people in front of us.
"My name's the Doctor. Who are you, then? What do you want?" The Doctor asked the dead before us.
"We're failing. Open the rift, we're dying. Trapped in this form - cannot sustain - help us." both of them raise their heads to the ceiling and blue gas left them with a wailing sound. They then both fell to the floor.
Gwyneth poured us all tea while I was letting Sneed have it.
"First of all you drug me, then you kidnap me, and don't think I didn't feel your hands having a quick wander, you dirty old man." The Doctor chuckled at my words as I walked between him and Sneed.
"I won't be spoken to like this!" Sneed told me.
"Then you stuck me in a room full of zombies! And if that ain't enough - you swan off! And leave me to die! So come on - talk!" I said, ignoring his statement.
"It's not my fault, it's this house! It always had a reputation. Haunted. But I never had much bother until a few months back. And then the stiffs-" Dickens looked at him, mildly offended. "...the er, dear departed started getting restless."
"Tommyrot." Dickens said unbelieving him.
"You witnessed it! Can't keep the beggars down, sir! They walk. And it's the queerest thing that they hang on to scraps..." Gwyneth gave the Doctor his tea. "Two sugars, sir, just how you like it." I watched her leave.
"One old fella who used to be a sexton almost walked into his own memorial service! Just like the old lady going to your performance, sir! Just as she planned." Sneed told us.
"Morbid fancy." Dickens told him.
"Oh, Charles, you were there." The Doctor reminded him.
"I saw nothing but an illusion." Dickens told him.
"If you're going to deny it, don't waste my time. Just shut up." Dickens looked at him stunned by his words. "What about the gas?" The Doctor asked Sneed.
"That's new, sir, never seen anything like that." Sneed told him, honestly.
"Means it's getting stronger, the rift's getting wider and something's sneaking through." The Doctor told us.
"What's the rift?" I asked him.
"A weak point in time and space. The connection between this place and another. That's the cause of ghost stories, most of the time." He told me.
"That's how I got the house so cheap." Sneed discovered. "Stories going back generations. Echoes in the dark. Queer songs in the air and this feeling like a... shadow. Passing over your soul. Mind you, truth be told, it's been good for business. Just what people expect from a gloomy old trade like mine." Sneed told us.
After a while I walked into the kitchen as Gwyneth was lighting a gas lamp. I walked to the sink and started washing the dishes in there.
"Please, Miss! You shouldn't be helping! It's not right!" Gwyneth told me.
"Don't be daft. Sneed works you to death." I handed her a drying cloth. "How much do you get paid?" I asked her.
"Eight pound a year, miss." I looked at her in shock.
"That much?" I asked her.
"I know. I would've been happy with six." I looked at her, dumbfounded by this news.
"So, did you go to school or what?" I asked, curious about the time I was in.
"Of course I did. What do you think I am? An urchin? I went every Sunday. Nice and proper." She told me.
"What - once a week?" I asked again.
"We did sums and everything. To be honest, I hated every second." She told me.
"Doesn't everyone?" We both laughed. Not a lot was different between us with the exception of the time period difference.
"Don't tell anyone, but one week, I didn't go and ran on the heath all on my own!" She confided in me.
"I did plenty of that. I used to go down the shops with my sister Rose. And we used to go and look at boys!" I told her. She stopped laughing and looked scandalized at my comment.
"Well, I don't know much about that, miss." She turned back to the drying.
"Come on, times haven't changed that much! I bet you've done the same." I told her.
"I don't think so, miss." She tried convincing me.
"Gwyneth! You can tell me! Bet you've got your eye on someone." I smiled at her. "I suppose. There is one lad..." I smiled more at her. "The butcher's boy. He comes by every Tuesday. Such a lovely smile on him!" She told me
"Oh, I like a nice smile. Good smile, nice bum." I gave her a look. Gwyneth looked at me shocked.
"Well, I have never heard the like!" We laughed once more.
"Ask him out! Give him a cup of tea or something, that's a start."
"Tell me! There must be a proper man in your life." I glanced at her and then to the door.
"There is one man." I confided in her.
"The man you travel with? The Doctor?" I smiled and looked at her out of the corner of my eye.
"How did you two meet?"
"He helped us out with a big problem then he asked me to travel with him I jumped at the chance." I smiled at her.
"I swear, it is the strangest thing, miss. You've got all the clothes and the breeding but you talk like some sort of wild thing!" She told me and I shrugged at her.
"Maybe I am. Maybe that's a good thing. You need a bit more in your life than Mr Sneed." I told her.
"Ah, now that's not fair. He's not so bad, old Sneed. He was very kind to me to take me in. Because I lost my mum and dad to the flu when I was twelve." She told me.
"Oh, I'm sorry." I apologized for my insensitivity.
"Thank you, miss. But I'll be with them again, one day. Sitting with them in paradise. I should be so blessed. They're waiting for me. Maybe your family's up there waiting for you too, miss." She told me.
"Maybe." I nodded at her then paused. "Um, my mum and sister are still alive. Who told you my dad was dead?" I asked her. She turned quickly from me back to her washing.
"I don't know, must've been the Doctor." She told me.
"My father died years back." I told her.
"You've been thinking about him lately, more than ever." She told me.
"I s'pose so... I just want to know if he would be proud of me... how do you know all this?" I asked her.
"Mr. Sneed says I think too much. I'm all alone down here. I bet you've got dozens of servants, haven't you miss." We laughed.
"No, no servants where I'm from." I told her.
"And you've come such a long way." She said as we continued the washing.
"What makes you think so?" I asked her.
"You're from London. I've seen London in drawings, but never like that." She said looking at me intently. "All those people rushing about. Half naked, for shame. And the noise... and the metal boxes racing past... and the birds in the sky... they're metal as well. Metal birds with people in them. People flying. And you - you've flown so far, further than anyone! The things you've seen... the darkness... the big bad wolf-" she staggered back from me, afraid. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, miss!" she apologized for her words.
"S'alright..." I told her.
"I can't help it - ever since I was a little girl. My mum said I had the sight. She told me to hide it!" She told me.
"But it's getting stronger. More powerful, is that right?" I jumped and looked to the doorway to see the Doctor.
"All the time, sir. Every night. Voices in my head." Gwyneth told him.
"You grew up on top of the rift. You're part of it. You're the key." He told her.
"I've tried to make sense of it, sir. Consulted with spiritualists, table wrappers, all sorts." she told us.
"Well, that should help. You can show us what to do." He said.
"What to do where, sir?" She asked once more.
"We're going to have a séance."
We all sat around a round table for the seance.
"This is how Madam Mortlock summons those from the Land of Mists. Down in Mid Town. Come. We must all join hands." We all joined hands with each other except for Dickens.
"I can't take part in this." he said getting up from the table.
"Humbug? Come on, open mind." The Doctor told him.
"This is precisely the sort of cheap mummery I try to un-mask. Séances? Nothing but luminous tambourines and a squeeze box concealed between the knees. This girl knows nothing." Dickens said looking at Gwyneth.
"Now, don't antagonize her. I love a happy medium." The Doctor smiled at her.
"I can't believe you just said that." I told him.
"Come on, we might need you." Dickens sat down again and grabbed the hands closest to him. "Good man. Now, Gwyneth. Reach out." The Doctor instructed her.
"Speak to us. Are you there? Spirits?" She called out and Dickens rolled his eyes at her. "Come. Speak to us that we may relieve your burden." She raised her eyes to the ceiling as a murmuring filled the room.
"Can you hear that?" I asked them, gripping the Doctor's hand a little tighter.
"Nothing can happen. This is sheer folly." Dickens told me.
"Look at her." I told him.
"I feel them. I feel them!" Gwyneth told us as the gas creatures began to fill the room.
"What're they saying?" I asked her.
"They can't get through the rift. Gwyneth, it's not controlling you, you're controlling it. Now look deep. Allow them through." The Doctor told her.
"I can't!" She told him.
"Yes you can. Just believe it. I have faith in you, Gwyneth. Make the link." The Doctor instructed her. She looked pained for a moment before lowering her head and looking at us.
"Yes." Three gaseous figures appeared behind her. Dickens' mouth dropped open.
"Great God. Sprits from the other side!" Sneed said, staring at them.
"The other side of the universe." The Doctor told us.
"Pity us. Pity the Gelth. There is so little time, help us." They told us.
"What do you want us to do?" The Doctor asked them.
"The rift. Take the girl to the rift. Make the bridge." They instructed us.
"What for?" The Doctor asked them.
"We are so very few. The last of our kind. We face extinction." They told us.
"Why, what happened?" The Doctor asked.
"Once we had a physical form like you. But then the war came." The Gelth told us.
"War? What war?" Dickens asked them.
"The Time War." The Doctor and I glanced at each other. "The whole universe convulsed. The Time War raged invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms. Our bodies wasted away. We're trapped in this gaseous state." They told us.
"So that's why you need the corpses." The Doctor realized.
"We want to stand tall. To feel the sunlight. To live again. We need a physical form, and your dead are abandoned. They're going to waste, give them to us!" The Gelth commanded.
"But we can't!" I told them.
"Why not?" The Doctor asked me.
"It's not... I mean, it's not..." I struggled with the right words.
"Not decent? Not polite? It could save their lives." We stared at each other for a moment.
"Open the rift. Let the Gelth through. We're dying. Help us. Pity the Gelth!" They disappeared and Gwyneth collapsed onto the table.
"Gwyneth!" I ran to her.
"All true." Dickens mumbled.
"Are you okay?" I asked the girl in front of me.
"It's all true." I stared at the Doctor as he sat in silence, watching me.
In the parlor room we had laid Gwyneth on a couch and I sat next to her mopping her forehead. When she awoke she looked around quickly.
"It's alright. You just slept." I told her trying to calm her down.
"But my angels, miss. They came, didn't they? They need me?" She asked me.
"They do need you, Gwyneth. You're they're only chance of survival." The Doctor told her.
"I've told you, leave her alone. She's exhausted and she's not fighting your battles." I told him angrily. He felt pity for them because the Time War hurt them but still... The Doctor leaned his head back and sighed at me. I turned back to Gwyneth and gave her a drink.
"Drink this." I told her.
"Well, what did you say, Doctor? Explain it again. What are they?" Dickens asked him once more.
"Aliens." The Doctor answered him.
"Like... foreigners, you mean?" Sneed asked him.
"Pretty foreign, yeah. From up there." He said pointing to the sky.
"Brecon?" Sneed asked him again.
"Close. They've been trying to get through from Brecon to Cardiff but the road's blocked. Only a few can get through and even then they're weak. They can only test drive the bodies for so long, then they have to revert to gas and hide in the pipes." The Doctor explained to us again.
"Which is why they need the girl." Dickens said, putting everything together.
"They're not having her." I told them.
"But she can help. Living on the rift, she's become part of it, she can open it up, make a bridge and let them through." The Doctor told me.
"Incredible. Ghosts that are not ghosts but beings from another world who can only exist in our world by inhabiting cadavers." Dickens thought aloud.
"Good system. It might work." I got up and walked over to the Doctor.
"You can't let them run around inside dead people!" I told him once again.
"Why not? It's like recycling." He told me.
"Seriously though, you can't." I told him.
"Seriously though, I can." He said, getting in my face.
"It's just... wrong! Those bodies were living people! We should respect them even in death!" I told him my view on it.
"Do you carry a donor card?" He asked me.
"That's different, that's-"
"It is different, yeah. It's a different morality. Get used to it or go home." I looked at him in shock. He sighed before speaking in a softer tone. "You heard what they said, time's short. I can't worry about a few corpses when the last of the Gelth could be dying." He told me.
"I don't care, they're not using her." I told him again.
"Don't I get a say, miss?" We looked at her.
"Look. You don't understand what's going on." I told her.
"You would say that miss. Because that's very clear inside your head, that you think I'm stupid." Gwyneth told me.
"That's not fair!" I told her.
"It's true, though. Things might be very different where you're from. But here and now, I know my own mind. And the angels need me. Doctor, what do I have to do?" She asked him and I looked down.
"You don't HAVE to do anything." The Doctor reminded her.
"They've been singing to me since I was a child. Sent by my mum on a holy mission. So tell me." The Doctor smiled at her words.
"We need to find the rift." He told us. "This house is on a weak spot, so there must be a spot that's weaker than any other. Mr. Sneed. What's the weakest part of this house? The place where most of the ghosts have been seen?" He asked Sneed.
"That would be the Morgue." He told the Time Lord.
"No chance you were gonna say anything else, was there?" I asked as everyone looked at me. I nodded at them. "Right let's go, gents, don't want to leave anyone waiting on us."
We all walked to the Morgue with the Doctor in the lead.
"Talk about Bleak House." He said as we looked around.
"The thing is, Doctor - the Gelth don't succeed. 'Cause I know they don't. I know for a fact there weren't corpses walking around in 1869." I told him, thinking of my home.
"Time's in flux. It's changing every second. Your cozy little world could be rewritten like that." he said as he clicked his fingers. "Nothing is safe. Remember that. Nothing." He told me.
"Doctor - I think the room is getting colder." Dickens told him.
"Here they come." I said as the Gelth flooded the room. The leader positioned itself in an archway and had the voice of a child.
"You have come to help! Praise the Doctor! Praise him!" It said.
"Promise you won't hurt her!" I told it.
"Hurry! Please. So little time. Pity the Gelth." They never promised me anything.
"I'll take you somewhere else after the transfer. Somewhere you can build proper bodies. This isn't a permanent solution, alright?" The Doctor told them.
"My angels. I can help them live." Gwyneth said looking at them.
"Okay, where's the weak point?" He asked them.
"Here, beneath the arch." They said and Gwyneth positioned herself beneath the arch.
"Beneath the arch." I rushed over to her.
"You don't have to do this." I reminded her. She placed her hands on my cheeks.
"My angels." I staggered backwards toward the Doctor.
"Establish the bridge, reach out of the void, let us through!" The Gelth told her.
"Yes. I can see you! I can see you! Come!" She called to them.
"Bridgehead establishing." the Gelth told us.
"Come! Come to me! Come to this world, poor lost souls!" Gwyneth called to them.
"It is begun! The bridge is made!" Gwyneth's mouth open and the Gelth poured out of it. "She has given herself to the Gelth!" she told us.
"There's rather a lot of them, eh?" Dickens asked.
"The bridge is open. We descend." The Gelth went into the bodies and the ones we spoke to turned from blue to red. "The Gelth will come through in force."
"You said that you were few in number!" Dickens told them.
"A few billion. And all of us in need of corpses." The bodies that the gasses entered rose.
"Gwyneth... stop this! Listen to your master! This has gone far enough. Stop dabbling, child, leave these things alone. I beg of you-"
"Mr. Sneed! Get back!" I begged him but it was too late. A corpse grabbed him from behind and held him while another Gelth filled his body. The Doctor and I leapt back as Sneed looked up at us through black, dead eyes.
"I think it's gone a little bit wrong." The Doctor told me.
"Yeah, ya think?" I asked him sarcastically.
"I have joined the legions of the Gelth. Come. March with us." Sneed told us.
"No!" Dickens called out. The corpses advanced on us.
"We need bodies. All of you. Dead. The human race. Dead." The Gelth told us, backing the Doctor and I against a dungeon door.
"Gwyneth, stop them! Send them back! Now!" The Doctor tried telling her.
"Three more bodies. Make them vessels for the Gelth." The leader commanded.
"I- I can't! I'm sorry!" Dickens said backing away. I watched the corpses come at us when the Doctor pushed me inside a small area with him. He slammed the door shut so we were both locked in.
"It's too much for me! I'm so-" he jumped and ran from the room as one of the Gelth swooped at him. The corpses were trying desperately to get at us.
"Give yourself to glory. Sacrifice your lives for the Gelth." The leader told us.
"I trusted you. I pitied you!" The Doctor told it angrily.
"We don't want your pity! We want this world and all its flesh." it said as the ones already in bodies rattled the door.
"Not while I'm alive." The Doctor told it.
"Then live no more." The leader told him.
"But I can't die." I looked at the Doctor for reassurance. "Tell me I can't! I haven't even been born yet, it's impossible for me to die! Isn't it?!" I asked him.
"I'm sorry."
"But it's 1869, how can I die now?" I asked again.
"Time isn't a straight line. It can twist into any shape. You can be born in the 20th century and die in the 19th and it's all my fault. I brought you here." he blamed himself.
"It's not your fault. I wanted to come." I reminded him.
"What about me? I saw the fall of Troy! World War Five! I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party, now I'm going to die in a dungeon!" he said horrified. "In Cardiff!"
"It's not just dying. We'll become one of them. We'll go down fighting, yeah?" I asked him.
"Yeah." he agreed.
"Together?" I asked looking at him with a smile.
"Together!" He agreed with a smile. We linked hands. "I'm so glad I met you." He told you and I stared at him in shock.
"Me too." We smiled at each other. Then, Dickens rushed into the room.
"Doctor! Turn OFF the flame, turn UP the gas! Now fill the room, all of it, now!" He told us.
"What're you doing?" The Doctor asked him.
"Turn it all on! Gas the place!" Dickens told us turning more gas on.
"Brilliant. Gas!" The Doctor smiled at me.
"What, so we choke to death instead?" I asked them.
"Am I correct, Doctor? These creatures are gaseous!" Dickens asked him.
"Fill the room with gas, it'll draw them out of the host. Suck them into the air like poison from a wound!" At that moment the Gelth filled corpses turned on Dickens instead of us.
"I hope... oh, Lord. I hope that this theory will be validated soon. If not immediately." he said as the advanced.
"Plenty more!" The Doctor smashed a gas canister against the wall and all the creatures were sucked from the bodies with a scream.
"It's working." Dickens said, shocked at the results. The Doctor and I were finally free to come out of the dungeon.
"Gwyneth! Send them back! They lied, they're not angels." The Doctor told her.
"Liars." She said simply.
"Look at me. If your mother and father could look down and see this, they'd tell you the same. They'd give you the strength. Now send them back!" The Doctor told her.
"Can't breathe." I told the Doctor, coughing.
"Charles, get her out." The Doctor grabbed my arm but I shook him off me.
"I'm not leaving the two of you!" I told him.
"They're too strong." Gwyneth told us.
"Remember that world you saw? Ashlee's world? All those people - non of it will exist unless you send them back through the rift." The Doctor told her.
"I can't send them back. But I can hold them. Hold them in this place, hold them here. Get out." Her hand went to her apron pocket and she took out a box of matches. I rushed forward to take it from her but the Doctor stopped me.
"You can't!" I told her, tears filling my eyes.
"Leave this place!" Gwyneth told us. The Doctor grabbed my shoulders.
"Ashlee, get out, go now, I won't leave her while she's still in danger, now go!" I stared into his eyes then ran out of the Morgue with Dickens behind me.
Dickens and I went back through the dark, gas filled house.
"This way!" Dickens said, helping me walk. My vision was going blurry due to all the gas I had breathed in.
When we got outside we turned back to the house and waited. The whole house then went up in flame and Dickens had to hold me back as I tried running back to the house to get them out, until I saw the Doctor run out the door. I watched the doorway, waiting for Gwyneth then looked at the Doctor.
"She didn't make it." I said, reading his face.
"I'm sorry. She closed the rift." he told me.
"At such a cost. The poor child." Dickens said but I refused to take my eyes off the Doctor.
"I did try, Ashlee, but Gwyneth was already dead. She had been for at least five minutes." he told me.
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
"I think she was dead from the minute she stood in that arch." He explained to me.
"But... she can't have, she spoke to us. She helped us - she saved us. How could she have done that?" I asked him motioning to the fire.
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Even for you, Doctor." Dickens told us.
"She saved the world. A servant girl. No one will ever know." I said looking at the fire before us.
Back in the ally way with the TARDIS the Doctor, Dickens and I looked at the beautiful blue box.
"Right then, Charlie-boy, I've just got to go into my um... shed. Won't be long!" The Doctor said as he fit the key in the lock.
"What're you going to do now?" I asked Dickens.
"I shall take the mail coach back to London. Quite literally post-haste. This is no time for me to be on my own. I shall spend Christmas with my family and make amends to them. After all I've learned tonight, there can be nothing more vital." I smiled at his answer.
"You've cheered up!" The Doctor said cheerfully.
"Exceedingly! This morning, I thought I knew everything in the world and now I know I've just started! All these huge and wonderful notions, Doctor! I'm inspired. I must write about them!" Dickens told us.
"Do you think that's wise?" I asked him.
"I shall be subtle at first. The Mystery of Edwin Drood still lacks an ending. Perhaps the killer was not the boy's uncle. Perhaps he was not of this earth. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals. I can spread the word! Tell the truth!" Dickens told me excitedly.
"Good luck with it. Nice to meet you." the Doctor shook Dickens' hand. "Fantastic." he turned back to the TARDIS door.
"Bye, then. And, thanks." I told him leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek. When I pulled back from him he looked very taken-aback.
"Oh, my dear- how modern. Thank you, but, I don't understand - in what way is this goodbye? Where are you going?" he asked us.
"You'll see. In the shed." the Doctor said opening the door of the TARDIS.
"Oh, my soul. Doctor, it's one riddle after another with you. But after all these revelations, there's one mystery you still haven't explained. Answer me this - who are you?" I looked at the marvelous man before me.
"Just a friend. Passing through." he answered.
"But you have such knowledge of future times. I don't wish to impose on you, but I must ask you. My books. Doctor - do they last?" of all the things to ask, he wanted to know if he'd be remembered.
"Oh, yes!" The Doctor said smiling at him.
"For how long?" Dickens asked.
"Forever!" The Doctor told him. Dickens tried to look please and modest at the same time. "Right. Shed. Come on, Ashlee..." we turned back to the door.
"In - in the box? Both of you?" Dickens asked us.
"Down boy. See ya!" The Doctor and I entered the TARDIS and shut the door behind us.
"Doesn't that change history if he writes about blue ghosts?" I asked him.
"In a weeks time it's 1870, and that's the year he dies. Sorry. He'll never get to tell his story." I looked back to the screen where we could watch Dickens standing outside.
"Oh, no! He was so nice." I thought aloud.
"But in your time, he was already dead! We've brought him back to life! He's more alive now than he's ever been, old Charlie-boy. Let's give him one last surprise." He hit a button and the engines reved up. We laughed as we watched Dickens' face as the TARDIS was disappearing before his eyes.
Next time on The Doctor's Girl:
The ship hit Big Ben then land in the Thames.
"Big Ben destroyed as a UFO crash lands in Central London."
"Do not move!" Someone said over the loud speaker. Police cars and soldiers surrounded us, pointing guns at us and preventing us from leaving.
"What is it then, are they invading?" I asked looking at the monitor.
"Funny way to invade, putting the world on red alert." Mickey said breaking away from Rose to us. She moved her hair from her fore head and started pulling a zipper along it and a blue light came out.