And now, we find out just what our Reader is meant to is meant to do with the vortex manipulator. See if you can spot the echo of a certain bossy brunette in here!
Part Six — Anything for the Doctor
Sometimes, the TARDIS takes you to other worlds where the sky is upside down and the sun is violet. Other times, she takes you to forests made of crystal, oceans of liquid honey, places were everyone lives in the dark, or worlds uninhibited but fiercely breathtaking.
But sometimes, the TARDIS can take you to the heart of a Cybermen fleet, flying forward to destroy worlds. She can take you to the darkest caverns full of horrifying monsters, plains with carnivorous serpents, metallic cities ruled by dictators, and war ravaged worlds.
And after she had shown you the wonders - or the nightmares - throughout the universe, the TARDIS might get it into her Matrix-mind to take you to somewhere simple, everyday, calming and homey. A place full of happy pedestrians going about their everyday lives: shopping, visiting, simply having a good time with friends and family.
At least that's how my day started.
The Doctor and I had woken up (well, when I say we I mean I because I don't think that that man ever sleeps) we found that the TARDIS had taken us to a planet called Releon. It was a lovely place, full of rolling grasslands and tundra and golden peaked mountains. In fact, it was all rather yellow, come to think of it. Anyway, we went there and had a pleasant time poking about in the grass and arguing on whether it smelled like fruit loops or fruity pebbles cereal, because apparently there's a difference.
Then, the giant lions shown up.
This should be remembered as the day that the Doctor discovered that he can't reason with twenty foot tall angry lions and as the day I finally beat him in a race back to the TARDIS.
It was after that harrowing experience that we ended up in a market place on some "backwater, out of the way" planet. The Doctor'd thrust a credit stick in my hand before wandering off, mumbling about some sort of temporal unit...thing. I'd thought that I'd been with the Time Lord long enough to take his weirdness in a stride, but sometimes that weirdness still weirds me out.
Knowing he'd find me later, I began to browse some of the open-air stalls in the market. Several sold alien bits and bobbles that made no sense to my earthling mind; others sold fruits, pastries, and other foods, many of which I sampled (note to self: prickly pears are never to be eaten again); still others sold fabrics and clothes and a wide variety of jewelry, something I instantly got caught up in.
You know how occasionally you'll meet someone you know at the store or something and you usually end up talking about what so-and-so is doing and when such-and-such happened? Yeah, that didn't exactly happen here.
"Is that...diamond?" I asked a stall runner, gesturing toward a entercately carved diadem that he had on display.
He nodded eagerly. "Oh yes! Made from thousand year old gems harvested on the planet Saturn in the Sol system! These are very rare! Worth billions!"
"Ah," I said, studying the circlet. It was rather lovely. Fit for a princess.
"But for you...eh," the man made a falsely thoughtful face and shook his hand. "Only a million credits will suffice."
"Phew," I hissed. "I...I don't believe I can afford that!" It was a lovely circlet, and the Doctor had given me an 'infinite' credit stick, but that was a bit much. Besides, what would I do with a priceless tiara anyway? Take over England?
"But surely Miss-"
"The lady said no," a new voice cut in.
The man and I both turned to see a petite woman with dark brown hair standing a few feet away. I raised my eyebrow as the man - who had a strangly green complexion - turned yellow.
"M-miss...Oswin..." he stuttered.
"Still cheating people, I see, Munfungus," Miss Oswin commented. She turned up her nose in disgust. "And what's this?" She picked up the diadem and began to toss it around in her fingers. "A diadem made of diamond? That's your best scheme yet!" She abruptly dropped the circlet while smirking as the horrified Munfungus looked on.
The diadem shattered into a thousand thousand pieces; I stumbled back, trying to avoid the small shards of...
"Glass? It was made of glass?" I exclaimed. That cheat! "You tried to sale me glass in place of diamond! Why-"
"Now, now, Miss-"
"Miss (l/n) has every right to be affronted with your actions," Miss Oswin cut in, startling me. How did she know my last name? "And I will, of course, be sending the market police over." Miss Oswin grabbed my wrist. "We will be leaving now. Good day Munfungus."
Munfungus simply stood there as Miss Oswin and I walked away. Or rather, as Miss Oswin dragged me off.
"I...does he normally pull stunts like that?" I ventured to ask once we were out of hearing distance.
"Oh yeah," she said and I realized that her accent was rather familiar.
Before she could continue, I stopped her. "Are you from Blackpool - er, Earth?"
Miss Oswin gave me a funny look. "...Sol 3? No, I can't say I've ever been. Have a cousin who lives on Pacifica, though we've never really been in touch."
"Okay..." I nodded, vaguely understanding what she meant.
"Yeah, anyway! Enough about me, (f/n)! We have work to do! First-"
"Hold on," I interrupted. "How do you know my name? And what work? My friend, he's called the Doctor, I'm here with him. He sent me shopping. You know, fun, not work!"
Miss Oswin stood there and stared at me for several long moments, in which I began to fidget. At last she spoke. "This work, (f/n) (l/n), is for the Doctor. He asked me to do this, to get you to do this special bit of work."
"Really?" I tugged my arm free from her grasp and crossed it with the other over my chest. "Really? Because, I know the Doctor and I'm quite, quite sure he'd have told me if he had something he needed me to do. We're friends, best friends even! He-"
"(f/n)," Miss Oswin said softly.
"-saved me from a mundane life where nothing ever happened and-"
"(f/n)."
"-he's shone me such wonderful things! Spectacular things! We've bonded! We-"
"(f/n)," Miss Oswin's voice finally cut through my rant. "Are you done?" Before I could open my mouth, she continued. "Good, now, (f/n) (l/n), you're right about the Doctor. He did do all those things. He's always done all of those things, except not always in the same way. You're not his first companion, and you won't be his last."
"Yes, I know," I murmured, shoulders sinking. It hurt a little in the back of my mind to think about how I'm not the first girl the Doctor has taken off to show the universe. "But," my voice took on a steely edge, "I still don't understand why he'd go through you to tell me to do 'special work!'"
Miss Oswin gave me a quirky little smile, but there was something about it that struck me as almost sad, melancholy in a way, really. "Time is not a straight forward line, you know this."
"Yes, yes, wibbly wobbly timey wimey," I said, waving my hand dismissively.
She nodded. "Yes, if you'd like to put it that way. Time is wibbly and, as you know, while it isn't advised and is extremely rare, people have been known on occasion to brush their own timestreams together. Sort of how a showlace crosses over itself when you're tying it," she explained.
"So you still have shoelaces on a backwater planet in the far future?" I asked, mildly surprised.
"There will always be shoelaces," Miss Oswin chuckled. "The point is, your Doctor didn't give me this task. An incarnation of the Doctor from the future gave it to me. He wanted me to give you this." From within a hitherto unseen pocket, Miss Oswin pulled out a manila envelope and extended it toward me.
Eying her and the envelope, I slowly took it and opened the loose flap. Inside, there were a few folded pieces of paper, which I took out to examine. I'd barely read the first words on the first page ("A vortex manipulator is a rudimentary tool used to...") when I stumbled back, nearly dropping the pages.
"This is my handwriting!" I cried out in surprise.
"I know," Miss Oswin gave me this funny little smile, as if she found whole reaction humorous.
"But I never wrote this!"
"Not yet," she shook her head. "Not yet, but you will, and you'll give it to the Doctor who will give it to me to give to you to copy from."
I blinked at the other woman several times before her statement clicked in my head. When it did, I stared at her, wide eyed. "A circular paradox."
"Yes," Miss Oswin nodded. "I suppose it is, but you could also just give that to the Doctor, creating an even more complicated bootstrap paradox, in which the original manuscript will be handed over throughout each subsequent replaying of that moment and then only us, the first two in that cycle, will know who started it. Although-"
"Okay! Stop!" I cried, raising my hands in surrender. All this space time paradox talk was starting to make my head spin. "I get it, you know the Doctor. You sound alike, you do. Move on!"
"Well, actually-"
I cut her off. "Hold on, Oswin-"
"Claire Oswin," 'Claire Oswin' cut in.
"Claire Oswin...I probably, no, yeah, definitely should've asked this much earlier, but how exactly do you know the Doctor?"
The change that came over the other woman's face in that next instant was so drastic that, if I hadn't been watching her, I would have sworn she'd been replaced with an entirely different person. She looked drawn, stretched, as if there was too much bread and not enough butter. "I...I just...he contacted me, but..."
"Miss Oswin?" I ventured, gently touching her arm. "Claire, are you all right?"
"I..." Claire Oswin shook her head, regaining some symbolence of her former self. "I'm alright, thank you (f/n), but I'm afraid I can't tell you how exactly I know the Doctor, but I assure you, I do know him." She gave me another funny smile, saying, "and you're right! You should've definitely asked me that sooner! It isn't a good habit to just walk off with a stranger, you know."
"Oh, well," I shrugged. "The Doctor is a horribly bad influence."
We both began to laugh in a companionable way, not so unlike the Doctor and myself. Presently, though, Claire Oswin shook her head and sighed. "The Doctor will probably be looking for you soon. I have it on very good authority that there are some horrible little rodent people trying to poison the city's reservoir and you're both likely to get tangled up in it all."
"Oh," I said simply, not at all sure suddenly how to proceed.
"It's alright, (f/n)," Claire Oswin assured me, taking notice of my uneasy expression. "Follow those instructions once you get back to the snog box."
"The what?" Did she just...? She just called the TARDIS a snog box...
"The TARDIS, sorry. Read the instructions once you get back to the TARDIS," she explained tiredly.
"(f/n)! (f/n)! (f/n)!"
The two of us turned to see the Doctor running around at the end of the street. He went from one storage container to the next, opening it and calling out my name frantically before going on to the next one. Claire Oswin and I watched him for a moment before she turned to speak to me one last time. "Take care (f/n), I'm sure you'll know what to do."
"Do...what?"
She gestured towards the envelope I still had in my hands. She took it and slipped into the large front pocket of my boring sage green coat. "Don't be dense, just run." She smiled at me then, and somehow it was different from all of her others, even though it looked exactly the same. "Run you clever girl and remember..."
Then Claire Oswin was gone; the last I saw of her was her grey miniskirt and black boots disappear around a building corner. I stood there, dumbly, staring at where I'd last seen her when the Doctor barreled into me, his arms flailing wildly.
"(f/n)!" He cried, grabbing on to me. I grabbed at him, and it almost seemed like we were desperately hugging each other.
"Yeah?" I asked, trying to keep us both standing.
"I was looking for a multi purpose temporal circuit board," he started quickly. "When I met these peculiar little rodent people. They wanted to know if they could have my jacket, because apparently tweed is very rare here, but it can float on top of whatever kind of water they have on this planet. I told them no, of course they couldn't have my jacket, this jacket is cool, (f/n), and then they attacked me! I just managed to lose them in time to come find you and here you are!" He hugged me then, tightly, and I almost cried.
Claire Oswin was right about the rats and us getting involved.
Oh gods...
I hugged the Doctor back. "C'mon then," I said at last. "We need to go stop whatever nefarious plan they've probably cooked up."
The Doctor pulled back from the hug and my arms suddenly felt cold.
"How do you know they've cooked up a plan?" He asked.
"Would you rather they baked one?" I retorted with a raised eyebrow.
The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding. "I suppose you're right, (f/n)."
"Of course I am!" I laughed, taking his hand. "Shall we?"
The Doctor nodded, and together we went walking back in the direction of where he'd last seen the rats. "You know," he said after a moment. "I'm a two time winning baker in the Andromedean truffle baking contest."
"Uh huh," I nodded just as we rounded a corner and came face to face with a horde of angry rat people. "Er...we come in peace?"
The Doctor facepalmed as we were swarmed by rats.
Nearly two whole days later, I sat on my bed in the TARDIS, staring at Claire Oswin's envelope. The rats had taken us captive and were planning to execute us and take all of the Doctor's tweed. Miraculously, it seemed, city authorities had been staking out their operation for weeks and were ready to storm their hideout when we'd blundered into the picture. In the end, the rats were taken care of and the Doctor and I were once again on our merry voyage through all of time and space.
Merry, except for the mysterious contents of an envelope that I will, apparently, write.
Steeling my nerves, I reached forward and skimmed the first page.
And then I stopped.
These were instructions on how to use the vortex manipulator that Captain Jack Harkness had given me. The coordinates were neatly printed in a strict order of usage on the next sheet, along with several notes in-between. I then turned to look at the last page, only to see a photograph attached on top with a paper clip. Slowly, I picked it up for a closer look.
It was a picture of a girl. She was dressed in a pink sweatshirt and her blonde hair was a mess, but she was smiling so wide it seemed she didn't even care about her bedraggled appearance. There was a mischievous glint in her eyes, a warm whiskey color, that was obviously directed at whomever took this photo. I stared at it for a long moment before, at last, looking at the final page.
A minute later, my heart stuttered to a halt.
These were instructions on how to retrieve Rose Tyler from the alternate universe.
"(f/n), you alright?" The Doctor's voice sounded on the other side of my bedroom door.
"Yeah," I managed, clearing my throat. "I'm fine, thanks. I'll, I'll be in there to help you with dinner in a moment."
"Okay then," came his somewhat quieter reply, and then he was gone and I was again alone to face the music.
I took several deep breaths, trying to steady myself, before I eventually got up and began to pace the floor. The Doctor was my best friend, he'd done so much for me, and what had I done? Oh'd and aw'd over the universe while he stood back, aching for the girl he'd loved and let go.
I clenched my fist and turned to face my jewelry box, wherein sat the vortex manipulator.
I could do this for the Doctor, to make him happy. I nodded my head once as I opened the lid to the jewelry box. Yeah, anything for the Doctor.