Lorna was entirely alone in the woods, and in a strange way that meant she was special. If the Fleuris hadn't been lying, then no one had ever really been alone in the forest before.
She'd never felt like the sort of person who'd get to do something unprecedented: she'd felt awkward enough winning the English award back at school. A part of her still ached to believe that everything was going to be fine. But then that was more impossible than anything she'd seen with the Doctor.
Before enough time had passed she saw her daughter running towards her, her hands crammed full of thin-stalked and dome-topped mushrooms.
"I found them!" Chris shouted. "There's loads! They're all around a path, and it's not very far away"—
She trailed off as she realised the two of them were alone.
"Where did the tree go?" she said. "I don't remember his name."
"No," said Lorna, frowning. "I don't, either."
She could feel her daughter notice the edge in her voice.
"Something's wrong," said Chris.
Lorna nodded, both slightly and definitely.
"He knew we'd have to be alone," she said. "That's why he isn't here."
Chris fell silent and looked into the forest again. Her grip tightened on the mushrooms in her hands.
"Are you going to kill me?" she said very softly.
Lorna burst out laughing, despite everything.
"I don't know!" said Chris. "It's what happens in films. I thought it must be something awful, if the tree's gone away."
"It seems less awful now!" said Lorna, her laugh not entirely gone. "There's nothing that scares me more than losing you."
Lorna looked down at the moss that was carpeting the forest floor.
"But this," she said. "It's still pretty difficult, yes. There's something that I should have told you."
Chris frowned. "Is it that the Doctor isn't real? Stop laughing," she added, once Lorna had started again.
"Oh God," she said. "not that! Frankly, love, I don't think that'd scare me at all. It'd be easier, wouldn't it, if she went around not being real?"
"Not right now," said her daughter. "We'd be stuck in this forest, unless it was all just a dream."
Her expression suddenly changed, like she'd understood.
"That's what it is!" she said. "It's all"—
"No," said Lorna. "That'd be better as well."
It was too much to ask to be able to look her daughter in the eyes. She just stood and looked right on at the trees, hating them all for how beautiful they were.
"Then I don't know what it could be," said Chris. "You're not my mother? The Doctor's my mother?" She gasped. "The tree is?"
"No," said Lorna. "It's not any of that. It's"—
She felt physically unable to say the words. It was all just too massive, so great.
Her daughter stood tiny in front of her like a judge. The way she might have done to her own mother long ago, when things had been different to now.
"You have to be honest with your little girl," the Fleurlis had said. Not with Christina, or with her child. Those were the exact words he had chosen to say everything he needed to say.
She'd sworn that she would do anything to protect her child. The least she could do was remember what it meant to be one.
She took a deep breath and let the sounds of the forest run through her.
"I was your age once, Christina," she said.
"That doesn't mean anything," said her daughter. "You still don't know what it's like for me."
"That's what I meant," said Lorna. "The world, it was different back then. It felt safe, like it hasn't done for a long time."
She moved to take her daughter's hand, and her daughter let her.
"You were very scared before you met the Doctor," she said gently.
"Of course I was."
"You were right to be, weren't you? You'd never have known what it was like for us. To live in a world where fear wasn't all that there was. I wish I could take you back there."
"You can. We can visit in the TARDIS."
Lorna shook her head. "No. It was… an innocence, in its way. Once you've lost it it's gone for good; even if you're only a child. I remember we used to learn"—
She swallowed. She knew couldn't let herself cry.
—"we'd learn about the world as it was before our time, when it hadn't been safe, not at all. And I remember thinking how lucky I was to live after all that danger, to not have to be scared like the children who lived before me."
"But that's silly," said Chris. "Of course things could get worse again."
Lorna nodded. "I know that now. But if I was still eleven, if I was your age now, and could see how everything turned out? I'd be furious to know that it just all got taken away."
She took her daughter's hand and squeezed it gently.
"You're angry, aren't you?" she said. "With all of us. Everyone who's an adult."
"Sort of," said Chris as she looked awkwardly away. "A bit."
"Perhaps you're right to be. I should've told you that, if nothing else."
"The tree told you to say that?" said Chris.
"No. He told me to say"—
Lorna bit her lip, and held back her tears. A long way away a bell was beginning to ring, one that only sounded when disaster came into the world.
"It's funny that you said that," Lorna said to change the subject. "About the Doctor not really being real. It's what they'd have said to me, and maybe I would've been about your age. That magic and stories should all be put away, or else I couldn't face the world as it really was. Have a future. But that future was all stories too. That real world was never real at all. And this future isn't… it's not"—
She waved her hand to indicate everything, the forest and all of time and space.
"You know all this is real, don't you?" she said. "You've always known. Dinosaurs and galaxies, and whatever. There's so much more than the tiny bit we see."
Chris shrugged. "I guess. People don't often want to talk about it."
"I don't, either," said Lorna. "I want to tell you all that my own mother did. Say that reality is only mortgages and stuff like that. It's an easier world, isn't it? But you already know it's a lie. And the Doctor"—
"She wouldn't know what a mortgage even was," said Chris.
"No. She knows what's beneath all that, just lurking. However much we hide it or pretend. And she always knew when we were lying to ourselves, I think. Even if there's lots she doesn't see. The truth is, Christina... it's much, much worse than you thought. It's that of all the stories I've been told"—
—She looked to the ground, and sighed—
—"the Doctor was the only one that's true."
the distance there was birdsong like nothing heard on Earth, and underneath it Chris looked unimpressed.
"Is that it?" she said.
"And she told me something, the Doctor," Lorna added, "and I promised I'd never tell you. But she shouldn't've made me do that, and I shouldn't've listened to her when she did."
"She lied to me," said Chris blankly.
"She did," said Lorna. "And I did, too."
Chris scowled and kicked the nearest tree.
"Don't do that, love," said Lorna. "It's not that tree's fault."
"It's much worse than anything you said," said Chris. "It doesn't matter if you're real. It does if you keep on lying and lying."
"I'm sorry," said Lorna. "Really. I am."
"I'm not angry at you," said Chris.
"Chrissy… Chris. She thinks that there isn't any hope. That whatever happens the Daleks will end up everywhere, in all of space and time. There won't be any more Earth, or any more us. She doesn't think that there's anything we can do."
"Oh," said Chris. "That's not so bad."
"Yes it is! I saw how scared you were of the nuclear weapons. It's not really any different from all of them."
"It is," said Chris. "Imagining they were in the air, that we couldn't stop them." She shivered. "That scared me. But the Daleks aren't everywhere yet. We're still alive."
"But Chris. The Doctor said"—
"So what?" said Chris. "She's wrong about lots of things. She was wrong about this forest, and she was wrong about you. And if she was wrong about this as well, then showing her would be—"
"It'd be the most important thing in the world," said her mother. "But things aren't always like that, you know," she said. "Sometimes she's wrong, but she can be right as well. And there being a chance doesn't mean…" she sighed. "No way it's a definite thing."
"You're scared of it," said Chris. "Both of you are. The Doctor talks so much about hope, but she doesn't want to lose it. She stops thinking she could really win at all. Sometimes it means you'd rather lose than try.
Lorna opened her mouth to argue and then stopped.
"You're right," she said softly. "It's not only the Doctor, you know, who says that she isn't an adult. So many of my friends say the same, like we don't even know what it means. But it's that, isn't it? To put children above ourselves. Not our own fears or wishes, however much pain we might be in. And if the thing that scares us most is hoping— then I'll have to do it, won't I? I'll have to find a way to hope for you."
"Really?" said Chris.
"Honestly. I love you. And I won't let you down anymore."
Chris scuffed her shoe against the ground.
"I love you too," she said, very quietly.
"Come here," said Lorna, holding her hands out wide.
They hugged each other tight, not letting go.
"Stop looking at us," said Lorna after a while, not letting herself look up from her daughter's arms.
"Sorry," said the Fleurlis. "I'm so used to being everywhere. I don't know a lot about how to make an entrance. Have you talked?"
"Yes," said Chris in a muffled way. "We did."
"It feels strange to not know it for sure. I can see why you would come not to trust people, if you didn't see everything there was."
"But that's why I had to tell you, Chris," said Lorna through her arms. "There was too much you weren't being told. And God knows you've been lied to long enough."
"For my part, not everything was a lie," said the Fleurlis. "The mushrooms do lead the way to the dome. It isn't far now, not at all. And I imagine that both of you are ready."
"Good," said Chris. "I want to show the Doctor that she's wrong."
"Yes," said Lorna. "And we should probably save her life, at that. You found so many mushrooms, didn't you? You'll know where we have to go now."
Chris ran off ahead, pointing to where they should go.
"I thought that would be worse," said Lorna to the Fleurlis. "It's true, isn't it? It's never as bad as you think."
The Fleurlis smiled, despite himself.
"What?" said Lorna. "What's Mr Ancient Wisdom laughing about now?"
"Only," he said, "that you're about to find out just how wrong that is."