Chapter 6 The One with all the Faith
Welcome welcome welcome! Let's do this! These last two chapters took me a long time and I'm really happy with their outcome! Hope you enjoy them too!
THGHPTVD.2 thank you again for the review! I love how interested you are! I promise, all your questions about Florence's jumping will be revealed slowly but surely throughout the story ;-)
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The whistling of a kettle and the buzzing of the Doctor screwdriver (Florence noticed with interest that it had transformed from the blue and silver tube to a more brassy colour with a green tip) were the only things distracting Florence for the presence of a dead body in the dining hall the group had gathered themselves in. She refused to look at it, him, the body. She didn't understand how everyone was so calm about it, she supposed the Doctor, Amy and Rory must have seen a few in their time together and it scared her that she might soon be as desensitised to it as they seemed. Rory was guiding her with a soft touch away from the white sheet she could see Joe's torso poking out from and towards helping him and Howie barricade the door.
"If we can wedge a chair under the door handles, that should stop anything from getting in." He was saying, and Florence nodded distractedly.
"Yeah, but we don't know how strong this thing is…" She called over to the man who had finally covered Joe completely with the white sheet. "Doctor, what's it looking like?"
"Yes or no to the chair trick?" The Doctor waved them off, crossing his arms in contemplation,
"Think, I don't know.. big old Minotaur." Florence blinked at his suggestion, great were fighting an alien myth, Rory tugged her elbow.
"Come on, no harm trying." He told her, bringing the chair with him anyway, shoving it under the door handle and leaving Howie to handle the rest. Florence watched as Rita brought over a cup of tea to where the Doctor sat, before joining Rory in fetching her own from the pot on the bar. He handed her the milk and shook his head slightly, noticing the nurse's conversation with the Time Lord. "Every time the Doctor gets pally with someone, I have this overwhelming urge to notify their next of kin." He flinched as soon as he finished his sentence, and Florence looked at him, concerned. "Ooo. Sorry. The last time I said something like that, you hit me."
"Did I? Sorry." She told him uncomfortably.
"No, no, it's fine. I know you're young and we just met, but…" Florence laughed at this,
"Oh, Mr Pond, your wife is just over there."
"Ha ha ha." He laughed sarcastically. "I was going to say that, we're your friends. Okay? You mean a lot to us, and to him. He will get us out of here."
Florence sighed, but smiled gratefully at his comforting words. "I know, it's just still so new, yknow? It's like, he doesn't give me a reason not to trust him, and I do!" She assured him. "Trust him that is. I trust him with my life, but I just… constantly feel out of the loop. It's like, he knows so much about me and I didn't even know he could change his face! I don't even know his name!" Rory laughed a bit at that,
"Well, if it helps, I don't think anyone knows that. I don't think he knows that…" Florence was about to ask him what he meant, but was distracted by Amy's call out to the Doctor,
"Doctor, look at this." He sidled up next to the girl as the other two time travellers approached her, seeing she had kept the papers she had found on the floor of the corridor where the rivets in the ceiling had also been. The Doctor took them from her and hit her lightly on the head with them for forgetting, before smoothing them out and trying to read the rushed handwriting Florence could make out from looking over his shoulder.
"Er, my name is Lucy Hayward and I'm the last one left." He began. "It took Luke first. It got him on his first day, almost as soon as we arrived. It's funny. You don't know what's going to be in your room until you see it, then you realise it could never have been anything else. I just saw mine. It was a gorilla from a book I'd read as a kid. My God, that thing used to terrify me. The gaps between my worships are getting shorter, like contractions. This is what happened to the others, and how lucky they were. It's all so clear now. I'm so happy. Praise him. Praise him." On the second 'Praise him', Howie spoke up from his place folding napkins at the table.
"Praise him." He repeated, causing the others to look over at him.
"What did you just say?" The Doctor asked, worriedly.
"Nothing." Howie insisted, before looking as though he was about to throw up. "Praise him!" He spat out, before covering his mouth in panic. Gibbis jumped from his seat opposite him in terror,
"This is what happened to Joe!" He told them. Howie also stood in fear, backing up into the corner,
"God, it's going to come for me now."
"You'll lead it right here." Gibbis warned, not helping the situation, and Florence told him as much,
"Hey, enough of that Gibbis."
"I won't leave you." The Doctor tried to placate the poor boy. "I promise you. You have my word on that."
"I don't want to get eaten." Howie cried, the room filled with overlapping voices trying to get him to calm down, or, in Gibbis' case, scaring him further. Finally the Doctor snapped and held his sonic up in the air, creating a loud buzzing noise that shut them all up.
"Don't you see?" Gibbis continued once her held the room. "He'll lead it right here." Rita looked at him in annoyance.
"What do you suggest?" Gibbis paused, before answering,
"Look, whatever it is out there, it's obviously chosen Howard as its next course. Now, tragic though that is, this is no time for sentiment. I'm saying if it were to find him, it may be satisfied and let the rest of us go." Florence looked at the simpering coward with disgust, allowing a poor kid to be eaten in the hopes they could all go free? The Doctor looked similarly horrified at the mere idea. "All I want to do is go home and be conquered and oppressed. Is that too much to ask?!"
Rita looked at the rest of them calmly. "It's okay. I'll stay with Howie. You take the others and go." The Doctor shook his head at that,
"No, we stay together." He walks over to Gibbis and leaned over him with a calm fury Florence had yet to see him exhibit,
"Your civilisation is one of the oldest in the galaxy. Now I see why. Your cowardice isn't quaint, it's sly, aggressive. It's how that gene of gutlessness has survived while so many others have perished. Well, not today. No one else dies today. Right?" Gibbis made a muttering sound of agreement, and the Doctor gave him a cold smile. "Brilliant." He stood straight and looked back towards Howie. "Howie, any second, it's going to possess you again. When it does, I'm going to ask you some questions. Please try to answer them." Howie nodded slightly, allowing the Doctor to direct him into a chair and the others sat around him.
"I hope my mum's all right, she's going to be wworried." He told them, before his eyes went blank and a smile overtook his face, much like Joe's had, and the Doctor took his chance.
"Howie? Howie. Howie, you're next." He told the boy, feigning excitement. "We're all dead jealous. So, tell us. How do we get a piece of the action? Why isn't he possessing all of us?"
"You guys have got all these distractions," Howie told them, tapping the side of his head with his index finger, "all these obstacles. It'd be so much easier if you just let it go, you know? Clear the path."
"You want it to find you even though you know what it's going to do?" Amy asked him, trying her best to keep the fake smile on her face. Howie gave her a look.
"Are you kidding? He's going to kill us all. How cool is that?" They all nodded awkwardly, smiles slowly falling from their faces. They gathered towards the back of the room and the Doctor began to tell them his musings with a hushed voice,
"It's as I thought. It feeds on fear. Everything, the rooms, Lucy's note, even the pictures in reception, has been put here to frighten us. So we have to resist it. Do whatever you have to. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, think of a basket of kittens, but do not give in to the fear." He told them all in seriousness, but Florence raised her hand slightly,
"Right but… that's a bit, 'don't think about the pink elephant'." The Doctor paused in his tracks with a frown,
"What?" He asked her, and she blushed slightly at the intensity of his gaze.
"You know? The ironic process theory?" She explained to the blank faces. "Dostoevsky? I learnt about it in sixth form, it's- it's a psychological process. Tell someone not to think of something and you'll be thinking about it all day… sorry, probably not helpful…" The Doctor's stare wouldn't let up, his eyes were dark.
"No, you are just so…" Amy slapped his chest to pull him out of it,
"Okayyyy down boy, so we don't think about the elephant we think about hope, but what are we actually going to do?" The Doctor smiled at them all,
"We're going to catch ourselves a monster."
Florence stood with Rory by the glass windowed door of the Pasiphae spa, he was holding a mop while she had her ear pressed against the wood, waiting for Amy's signal. Her heart was beating wildly, they had only seconds to act. She could hear Howie's desperate voice coming from the intercom, spurred on by the belief that the group were going to find the creature and bring it to him,
"Bring me death! Bring me glory! My master, my lord, I'm here! Come to me. I'm waiting here for you. He has promised me a glorious death. Give it to me now. I want him to know my devotion."
She heard the lumbering steps of the Minotaur entering the spa, and gestured Rory to creep closer to the door. She held up her hand until…
"He's in!" The other doors slammed shut (courtesy of Rita and Amy) and Rory quickly ran forward, jamming their door with the mop in his hands. The lights in the spa turned off and the two of them stood on the outside, waiting.
"Let his name be the last thing I hear." Howie's voice continued, oblivious. "Let his breath on my skin be the last thing I feel. I was lost in shadows, but he found me. His love was a beacon that led me from darkness to light, and now I am blinded by his majesty. Humbled by his glory! Praise him, praise-" The intercom cut out as the Doctor switched it off. Florence let out the breath she had been holding and shared a nervous laugh with Rory.
"Now what?" She whispered half listening to the Doctor interrogate the creature.
"Well... Based on past experience, we wait for something to go wrong." Florence tutted slightly,
"Yep, sounds about right." She listened back into the Doctors discussion, he was seemingly translating the Minotaur speech aloud.
"Did you say 'they take'?" He was asking, and the creature was snarling occasionally in response. "Ah, what is that word? The guard? No, the warden? This is a prison…" he realised, making Rory and Florence look at each other in confusion. "So what are we, cell mates? Lunch? 'We are not ripe'. This is what Joe said, that we weren't ready. So, what, what, 'you make us ready'. You what? Replace? Replace what, fear? 'You have lived so long even your name is lost'. You want this to stop. 'Because you are just instinct'. Then tell me. Tell me how to fight you." Florence felt terrible for the poor creature, clearly begging to be released. Before she could dwell on her sorrow, however, they were interrupted by the 'something going wrong'. Howie was out.
"My master, my lord. I'm here!" He was calling to the creature, and the creature was coming.
"No, no, no, no, no!" The Doctor yelled above the chaos inside the spa. "Florence, Rory, watch out!" Rory quickly backed them into the corner as the beast's huge hand smashed through the glass of the door they had been guarding, throwing the door open and knocking the two of them down in the process. The Doctor ran through the spa, crouching at their sides in worry. He looked to where the Minotaur had disappeared before gently stroking Florence's cheek, checking that she was okay.
"Where did he go? He asked, and Rory rubbed his head.
"Somebody hit me." Florence laughed shakily and patted his arm in sympathy.
"It wasn't me, promise."
"Was it Amy?" He asked cheekily. The Doctor laughed slightly at them, glad they were somewhat okay, kissing Florence's forehead (startling her slightly, and waved him to go after the creature as he so clearly wanted to) before giving chase once again. Amy and Rita approach them and help them to their feet,
"You alright?" They asked, and at the nods they began to follow after the Doctor in a hurry. Before they could get far, Amy broke away from them, heading towards door 7, drawn to it. Florence made to stop her but it was too late, the ginger's hand had grasped the golden doorknob and she had pushed it open, peering inside. Rita ran ahead and closed the door before Amy could react.
"You shouldn't have done that." She told her, back still pressed against the Now closed door. Florence and Rory approached cautiously, Florence keen to get the whole group back together as quickly as possible. "What did you see?"
"Nothing." Amy replied, almost instantly. "Nothing. I don't know. It was weird." The three stared at her, before deciding to just carry on searching for the Doctor. They found him much quicker than it had taken him to find them after discovering Joe's body, Florence wondered if this was due to the hotel schematics picking and choosing when they needed to be confused. As they ran down the hallway to find the Doctor crouched over Howie's dead body, Gibbis approached from the other side.
"He got free." He lied. "He overpowered me." He lied again. "It might leave us alone now. Maybe now we'll be safe." The Doctor turned away from him, marching down the hallway and passed the foursome waiting for him, who turned and followed. "Wait!"
They were back near reception, at the bottom of the staircase that contained the photographs of all the victims of the hotel that they had observed so curiously only hours before. The Doctor was staring intently at Howies portrait, that had been added by the time they had arrived. Rory approached them cautiously from the side,
"Have you found your room yet?" The Doctor asked him.
"No. No. Is that good or bad?"
The Doctor smiled softly at that. "Maybe you're not scared of anything." Rory shrugged slightly,
"Well, after all the time I spent with you in the TARDIS, what was left to be scared of?" Florence didn't know much about the Ponds and their travels with the Doctor (and her, she supposed), but she knew that almost sounded like a goodbye.
"You said that in the past tense." The Time Lord clearly thought the same thing.
"No, I didn't." Rory was backtracking, trying to avoid the inevitable conversation. "You know, Howie had been in speech therapy. He'd just got over this massive stammer. What an achievement. I mean, can you imagine? I'd forgotten not all victories are about saving the universe." The Doctor backed away at that, but not before lightly stroking Florence's hair soothingly as he left them. Florence looked sadly at his retreating figure, she hadn't thought Rory to have held this kind of resentment towards the Doctor, or had she? His comments from earlier about informing next of kin suddenly made much more sense. As did his worry that she was going to hit him.
"What about you?" Rory asked her, breaking the silence. "Found yours?" She sighed deeply.
"Honestly, I hadn't given it much thought." She told him, truthfully. "Whatever is happening right now is scarier than any concept that could be waiting for me in the room…" She leaned against the wall next to Rory and looked up at him. "It's funny though, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"How many times have you been asked by someone what you're afraid of?" She asked, voicing something she had considered since they heard about the rooms. "It's like a party question or a date topic, and you say like heights, or spiders, or commitment… but confronted with it? What truly terrible thing could scare me so much that it would be waiting for me in a room…" She trailed off, unsure where she was going with it.
"Have you seen the Doctor?" Florence asked Amy, who she had seen staring at the fishbowl in front of her for some time now. The ginger looked up, frowning,
"Hmm, no actually." Florence fidgeted on the spot a bit, looking around, concerned.
"Should we… go find him?" She hesitantly asked, the Doctor usually just wandered back to his friends, but Florence wasn't sure she could trust that hotel would even let him find them again. Amy laughed at her question,
"God, you are young." She commented. Florence was really starting to hate this aspect of time hopping, more so than she already did. Almost as much as she hated people laughing at her, malicious or not.
"So people keep telling me." She muttered, resentfully. Amy stopped laughing and looked a tad sorry for it,
"No it's just, I'm sorry. It's just always funny seeing you so hesitant." She tried to explain. "Hesitant to follow, hesitant to comfort him, y'know. Just hesitant."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am." She crossed her arms defensively, wishing she had just gone to look for the Doctor instead of asking Amy, who opened her mouth presumably to apologise, but was cut off by Rory's arrival. He had a frown on his face.
"Um, I've just seen the Doctor sprinting past saying something about security cameras if that means anything to anyone…" Florence frowned, looking in the direction Rory had pointed in,
"Security cameras? Security cameras…?" She glanced up and, purely by chance (not that she believes in coincidences after everything she has seen), spotted a little red light coming for the corner of the room. "Security cameras!" She laughed at the Ponds and pointed to what she was looking at. "Come on!" She led the two past Gibbis and in the way the Doctor had disappeared and cut down a hallway, spotting a cream door with the word SECURITY on it. "Here we go!" She smiled at the Ponds, but Amy frowned suddenly, turning to Rory,
"Hang on, you said you saw the Doctor, so where did Rita get to?" They all looked concerned and Florence opened the door in front of them, hoping to find both the Doctor and their new friend. Instead they found only the former, he was on the phone staring intently at one of the many screens in front of them. "Doctor, what's going on? Rita disappeared." They looked at the screen he was focused on, seeing a black and white image of Rita clutching the receiver of a phone and sitting in a hallway. "What's she doing there?"
"Rita. Rita, please. Let me find you." He spoked desperately into the phone, and the three latecomers saw her lips move in response. "Look, Rita. Rita." Rory pointed to one of the screens, where the large figure of the Minotaur moved across it. The Doctor increased his pleading. "Go into the room. Lock the door." Rita said something else. "No. No, no, Rita." Even an amateur lip reader could see her response, 'Goodbye, Doctor'. She ignored his continuous calling of her name. On the screen, they saw her put the phone down on the floor and stood, waiting, smiling at the creature as he descended. Before they had to watch her final moments, the Doctor sonicked the screen off. Sitting in the chair behind him, blaming himself most likely. Rory took Amy from the room, leaving just Florence and a man she couldn't even comfort properly, but who was in desperate need of it. After a few moments the Doctor stood and made his way to the door, but Florence stopped him automatically. She didn't hesitate, Amy's words ringing in her head, and raised her hand up, brushing a strand of his floppy hair out of his face. It fell straight back, but neither of them noticed.
"Forgive yourself." She told him softly, she didn't ask, she didn't demand. She simply told him. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on hers firmly for a second, before moving past her and out the door.
Florence's soft touch and gentle words had only done so much to sooth the raging storm within the Time Lord, she watched him with concern as he smashed up the glasses and dishes behind the bar back in the dining room, where now Joe, Howie and Rita's bodies lay. She looked to Amy and Rory for help, but they sat back and cast their gazes away from him, though Amy's face held the same concern. The smashing stopped with one final sweep of a shelf and the Doctor stalked towards them, sitting down on the table further down from where Amy and Rory sat. He sat in silence for a moment, and Florence watched him solve (in minutes) the rubik's cube he had pulled from his pocket earlier that day, before speaking.
"Okay." He paused. "It preys on people's fear and possesses them. But Rita wasn't afraid. She was brave and calm. Maybe it's something to do with the people, some connection between the four of you that'll tell me how to fight it." He reasoned, but Gibbis disagreed with him.
"Yes, you keep saying that, but you never do. And while we wait, people keep dying. And we'll be next."
"Look, he'll work it out." Amy told him, with the utmost faith in her friend. "He always does. Just let him riff and move anything expensive out of his way."
The Doctor suddenly looked incredibly reflective. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no." Florence stepped closer to him,
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"It's not fear. It's faith. Not just religious faith, faith in something." Florence frowned, he stood and starting pacing as he explained his theory. "Howard believed in conspiracies, that external forces controlled the world. Joe had dice cufflinks and a chain with a horseshoe. He was a gambler. Gamblers believe in luck, an intangible force that helps them win or lose. Gibbis has rejected any personal autonomy and is waiting for the next batch of invaders to oppress him and tell him what to do. They all believe there's something guiding them, about to save them. That's what it replaces. Every time someone was confronted with their most primal fear, they fell back on their most fundamental faith." He sat once more, facing away from them, and rubbed his face with his hand, Florence thought he looked exhausted. "And all this time, I have been telling you to dig deep, find the thing that keeps you brave. I made you expose your faith, show them what they needed."
"But why us? Why are we here?" Rory asked.
"It doesn't want you." The Doctor told him. "That's why it kept showing you a way out. You're not religious or superstitious, so there's no faith for you to fall back on. It wants her." He pointed at Amy, who stood and walked towards him, sitting next to him.
"Me? Why?"
"Your faith in me. That's what brought us here." Florence looked at Rory at this admission, once more hating being so out of the loop surrounding the Doctor's impact he had had on his companions. One thing struck her about his theory, however.
"Wait, but if they fall back on their personal faith, why are they worshipping the same thing at the end of their lives?" Rory nodded in agreement,
"Isn't that just losing their faith? Transferring it?"
"It needs to convert the faith into a form it can consume." The Doctor supposed, "Faith is an energy, the specific emotional energy the creature needs to live. Which is why at the end of her note, Lucy said-"
"Praise him." Amy cut home off, and the Doctor nodded in agreement before they all realised what she had said.
"No. Oh, please, no." They all heard the noises that accompanied that phrase, the familiar stomping filled the room. The Doctor instructed them all to run and they obeyed, abandoned the dining room and raced through the now all too familiar hallways. They didn't get very far when Amy stopped, turning to face the creature.
"He is beautiful." Rory and the Doctor ran and grabbed her round the waist, throwing her arms over their shoulders. Florence held the door nearest to her open and motioned them all in, shutting the door behind her. She looked at the room she had directed them all into, seeing a small ginger girl in a red coat sitting on a suitcase in the middle of the room. The Minotaur pounded on the door behind her and Amy dropped to her knees in pain.
"Doctor, it's happening. It's changing me. It's changing my thoughts." The Doctor looked helplessly at her,
"I can't save you from this. There's nothing I can do to stop this." Amy looked up in surprise, as did Rory and Florence.
"What?"
"I stole your childhood and now I've led you by the hand to your death." The Doctor told her harshly, Florence was unsure what he was trying to achieve. "But the worst thing is, I knew. I knew this would happen. This is what always happens." Before anyone else could speak the Minotaur burst into the room, and Florence scurried behind the bed. "Forget your faith in me. I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored. Look at you." He ran his hand softly over her hair as she looked at him in pain. "Glorious Pond, the girl who waited for me. I'm not a hero. I really am just a mad man in a box. And it's time we saw each other as we really are." He kissed her forehead and the Minotaur staggered back in pain. "Amy Williams, it's time to stop waiting." He stood away from her following the Minotaur from the room and into the hallway, Florence running out of the room after him. As she did the lights began to flicker, and the creature lying on the floor was bathed in a sterile white light. She watched the Doctor stroke it's face. "I severed the food supply, sacrificing their faith in me. I gave you the space to die." He told it, shushing it gently as it moaned. The floor beneath her feet began to melt away, as did the walls until the three of them were standing in a black room with blue gridded lines. If it weren't for the lines and presence of other people, Florence was almost worried that she was about to jump again. Amy looked around the grid and at the dying creature.
"What is it, a minotaur or an alien? Or an alien minotaur? That's not a question I thought I'd be asking this morning." Florence let out a huff,
"Lucky you, it seems to be the sort of question I've been asking myself every morning recently. Crab? Alien? Alien crab? Alien bat!"
"It's both, actually." The Doctor told them. "They're usually both. Yeah. Here we go." He read something on the computer in front of him. "Distant cousin of the Nimon. They descend on planets and set themselves up as gods to be worshipped. Which is fine, until the inhabitants get all secular and advanced enough to build bonkers prisons."
"Correction." Rory called from his position looking down through a porthole. "Prisons in space." Florence ran over to where he and Gibbis were, down at the expanse of space, with a planet in the distance and the swirls of colours and lights enveloping her vision.
"Oh, that's space. We're in space." Rory looked up at her. "I haven't, I haven't actually…" She looked back at the Doctor, who was staring at her fondly. She grinned widely. "Doctor, the stars."
"Where are the guards?" Amy asked suddenly, bringing them back down to, well, not earth.
"No need for any." The Doctor told them. "It's all automated. It drifts through space, snatching people with belief systems and converts their faith into food for the creature." Florence pulled herself away from the space porthole to stand by the Doctor and Amy.
"But if this is a prison, why were they feeding it innocents? Or were all these victims somehow guilty of something?" The Doctor looked surprised at the question,
"Huh, you know. I don't quite know… I don't like not knowing." He turned back to read whatever was on the screen for some sort of hint. "According to the in-flight recorder, the programme developed glitches. It got stuck on the same setting, the fears from the people before us weren't tidied away." Before he could look into it anymore the Minotaur on the ground groaned softly.
"What's it saying?" Amy asked
"'An ancient creature, drenched in the blood of the innocent, drifting in space through an endless, shifting maze. For such a creature, death would be a gift.'" The Doctor translated, bending down to pat his snout gently. "Then accept it, and sleep well." He paused as the creature spoke again. "'I wasn't talking about myself.'" Everyone looked away from him at that, except Florence who looked him directly in the eye, urging him to remember her words in the security room.
Having dropped Gibbis off to his homeworld, the TARDIS was relatively quiet as the Doctor put in the next set of coordinates. The atmosphere was solemn, reminding Florence of the sadness felt in the ship when the Doctor told her and Martha about the Time War, and a stark difference from the jubilation of her previous adventure with Sarah-Jane. The doctor pulled a final lever and plastered a smile on his face, "Right! Ponds! Florence! Next big adventure! Earth!" The Ponds looked at him in confusion, and Florence began to ask whether she could maybe shower first, when she felt it.
The fucking tingling.
"Um, I don't think so." The Doctor looked over and nodded.
"Right, yes. Hoped it might be longer." Florence shrugged,
"Maybe next time?" He smiled and let out a chuckle,
"I can't wait."
"Me neither." She smiled at him and sighed. "The pins and needles I could do without though." Before she could see his response she blinked, and the darkness appeared. Like last time, the burning was minimal, still painful, but more like when you accidentally touch a hot pan rather than a walking through fire type of pain. She felt herself drop suddenly and land hard on a grass floor. She sat back with a jolt, hitting her head against something behind her. She rubbed her head and looked over her shoulder for any clues as to where she was, and grinned when she saw the familiar blue wood.
The Doctor shut the blue doors of his old girl behind him and stepped fully inside the suddenly way too bigger on the inside room, looking up at the time rotor in front of him. He had done the right thing.. he assured himself of that. Amy and Rory were still breathing, they were together and they would move on with their lives. He rubbed his eyes roughly with the heels of his hands and took a shuddering breath in, the Minotaur was right: he was drenched in the blood of innocents. But theirs were two souls he refused to damage further. Maybe it was time to give up companions all together. He began to set the coordinates for somewhere, anywhere else, and looked around at his empty home, thinking of Rose, Martha, Susan, Jo, Donna, Sarah, all the people whose lives he ended up ruining.
There was a shift in the atmosphere of the TARDIS, and he felt the familiar arms of the only woman who understood him in any way wrap around him from behind, her hands pressed against his chest so that she could feel the beating of both of his hearts, like she too needed reassurance. He didn't know where she had just come from, and he wasn't planning on asking. He simply stood there, letting her rest her cheek against the back of his tweed suit and soak it with tears. He knew she didn't want him to see her cry, just as he didn't want her to see him crying at the same time. There were many times when they would wipe each other's tears away, and many more to come, but in this moment they were seeking comfort in one another, a greedy selfish kind of comfort.
He relished in her presence, but wondered even after so long, when it was that she was going to leave him as well.
And that's a wrap in chapter 6! Whoa that was a bitttt emotional at the end! But I just thought, the whole point of the episode is leading up to the Ponds' departure, and it didn't seem right to have him and Florence swanning off. I wanted to show his tormented mind a little bit here. ALSO! Future Flo! A sneak peak!
reviews/constructed criticism always welcome! What episodes are you looking forward to seeing?
See you for chapter seven! xo