Anybody would call her a miracle, but only those aware of the remits of Gallifreyan physiology would know it to be anything but. The baby, left alone on that forgotten, stinking world, with the howling wolves outside, shrouded always in darkness, with nothing to eat, nothing to learn from, nothing to understand… and yet somehow, she grew. For Gallifreyans seem to just… push on. No matter how extreme the conditions are, no matter how close to death they may be, the genetic make-up of that age-old species seemed to always have survival as its priority… as if, even when the individual wanted nothing more than to give up, their bodies forced them to plough onwards.
The baby survived. Crawling through the mud and the slime, she somehow just… existed, no matter the force of the conditions against her. In the freezing cold, in the rain that slashed through the empty shell of the house she lived in, in the gales and hurricanes and thrashing winds, the child would be resilient, never giving up and never giving in – as a child, her Gallifreyan nature inspiring nothing but dogged determination and grit. She lived in filth and squalor, and yet somehow, she was impervious to disease or infection.
It was not long before the baby was discovered by a wolf. A mother herself, the wolf began to feed the child with her wolf's milk, allowing the child to grow stronger, and bigger. And eventually, the child would slither through the muck, biting at any insects daring to poke their heads through the soil. The wolf kept feeding her, and child kept growing, kept adapting, kept understanding, until she could crawl, and her tiny hands would turn through the muck, and grab insects and worms for her to chew on.
Eventually, there came a day when something changed within the child. It was sucking away at the wolf, and then with no forewarning, with no deep desire or knowing of what she was doing, she reacted. Perhaps it was a natural, primal instinct. Perhaps it was genetics, or the child's personality, beginning to poke through. Perhaps, having lived the first months of her life in such brutal, harsh conditions, something had stuck with her, a knowing that to survive, she would have to adapt.
Therefore… now she was strong enough, she had no choice.
The child lurched forward, and dug her teeth in the underbelly of the animal, ploughing her teeth into the wolf's flesh and sinew and muscle. And then, she tore, a giant chunk of meat unplugging itself from the body, and into Emma's jaw. Hot, sticky blood sloshed from the wound, splashing all over the child, as she rolled out of the way, the wolf's body dropping to the ground with a thud, and a slight spatter, as its belly sprawled in its own blood.
All it could bear to do was raise its head slightly, and look around her. Emma listened as the wolf whimpered and whined, but there was no temptation to stop, no desire to let the wolf lived. There was something driving her, telling her that she had to go through with it – and it was so natural that Emma didn't even stop to consider the processes behind it.
Emma tossed the meat chunk to the ground, and placed her tiny hand on the thick wolf's neck, clamping it to the ground, before she thrust her jaw into the wolf's back, taking another mass of raw, bloody meat. The blood gushed from the wolf, faster than the black and murky rivers rushing not far away, and it covered her hands, and her white tunic, and it lathered in her hair and made it matted and sticky.
She was perhaps little more than what the rest of the universe would refer to as a two-year-old, and from that moment, Emma knew she'd made an enemy of the wolves. But times had changed, and something within her, whether consciously or subconsciously, had torn into that animal. She needed meat, she needed food, she needed to be stronger, her Gallifreyan body forcing her onwards, setting the steaming chemicals in her blood alight, spurring a vitriol and venom in her blood, making her need meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. And the wolf had been there, and she'd ripped it apart – and now, she made her way over the animal, her mouth gorging piece by piece, methodically and effectively.
Regularly, the Doctor would come and see the child. As instructed, he would carry out whatever the Time Lords asked of him – he was involved in nothing too inhumane, he would simply carry out the cognitive and motor tests that the Time Lords required. He would teach the child basic skills, so she didn't merely become feral – so she would become, in effect, a normal person. Someone who would talk and communicate. Of course, that was far from normal, and the Doctor knew it. He was thankful, however, in a vile selfish kind of way, that this was the extent of his role. For he was he was complacent to the inhumanity. He was allowing this to happen.
Perhaps it was because of this, the Doctor would check on the little girl more often than was necessary. Partly out of guilt, perhaps. Carrying on with whatever sick experiment this was. Allowing this little girl to grow up in such bitter and disgusting conditions, while he had his lovely, beautiful family on stand-by.
But for whatever twisted reason in his head, he kept going. Perhaps it was out of knowing the experiment would continue regardless, perhaps it was out of fear. There was the core behind his guilt – but what scared him most of all, was that he had felt guiltier about smaller things. He could feel it, the cruel streak emerging within him, now he had things to lose. Now he had Cioné, Iris, Lizzie. They'd say they didn't need protecting – but the Doctor loved them too much to care. He would do this, whether he wanted to or not, no matter how twisted it made him.
And so there he would be, prowling like a wolf through the forest, to that old house where the little girl raised herself.
Just like a wolf, he was scared of the girl as well. Just as he'd been terrified of her mother.
That night, he pushed the rickety old door, and caught by a faint, gloomy draught, it swung with an eerie gentile, gently thudding against the exposed brickwork surrounding the doorframe. As he stepped inside, his coattails trailing behind him, he heard the leaves crunch and the twigs snap beneath his feet, and he felt the wet, slimy mud stick to his shoes. He squelched through, and turned into the chamber he always found the little girl.
It was a former drawing room – once upon a time, it had probably been grand and ornate, with chandeliers dangling from the ceilings, held up by the strength of their proprietor's status. With huge bayed windows, overlooking the extensive forests expanding around them. With handcraft furniture, fitted bespoke for the chamber itself. With sofas fashioned from exquisite material, maybe with old paintings hanging delicately from the walls.
All had crumbled now. There was nothing. No light, no heart, no warmth. The darkness and the cold streamed in through the broken window frames, and the sole furniture, of one table, and two chairs, was the sole extent of Emma's possessions. As if she ever used them – most of the time, the girl would eat and drink on the floor, just as she slept on that grimy old mattress.
As the Doctor turned into the room, he saw her.
She would be like this a lot, hauling her mattress to the centre of the drawing room, and sitting on it as if she were meditating. Emma would face the windows, and she would close her eyes, allowing the cold to blow ominously past her, and knowing, but not seeing, that ahead of her, there was something more. Stuff that she didn't understand. She would grasp how tiny she was then – except, she never understood that's what the feeling was.
The Doctor would see her as he walked in, staring away from him, out of the window. Her build was that of a young child, perhaps 5, maybe 6. The age of Gallifreyans, however, was hard to grasp, time moving in an entirely different and malleable way.
"I… know," Emma said, without turning around. Her words were thin and brittle – she was only just learning to talk, only just able to string together the words and occasionally sentences she needed.
"Good evening, Emma," the Doctor spoke clearly and eloquently. It was important, so that Emma could pick up the words, pick up the way he said them, the way his mouth formed them. She didn't turn, so the Doctor walked up beside her. In the cold, her skin had turned paler than milk, giving her the complexion of a living corpse. "How are you?"
"... living."
The Doctor wasn't sure if that were the case. But, he acknowledged her remark, and sat down beside her. He never used the chairs, he never liked feeling superior to her.
"Emma," the Doctor reached into his pocket, and grabbed a jar. As he took it out, it shone a strange light in the room around them, illuminating the dark and filling it with a buzzing, flickering light, reminiscent of the strange balls of light whizzing and dashing about in their glass confines. "Do you remember the test we did? We're going to try it again, if that's okay."
Emma didn't respond… but she never did. It was as if she knew something were wrong, something with the very nature of her being didn't quite cohere. The Doctor gave the jar a shake, and the particles gave an extra fast 'whizz' – before he unscrewed the lid.
It stuck, just slightly – but with a firm yank, the lid popped off in his hands, and the blue particles began to fly and dance and burst and sing in front of them. It was a peculiar sight, in the death and the emptiness of the chamber, to see such light and life in front of them.
Emma's eyes opened.
She watched them coldly, oblivious by their beauty. This world of rot and degeneration had warped her perception of anything many would refer to as beautiful. Instead… Emma didn't seem to understand beauty. Or… she saw beauty as something else. Whatever it was, the whirring, popping blue lights didn't faze her, and her eyes merely followed them around, whooshing and nipping all around her head, staying strictly focused on her and not flying anywhere else within the room.
It wasn't just 'as if' Emma was keeping them close – Emma was keeping them close.
The zapping blue lights were chronon particles… time, hurtling and rushing around Emma's head. They exposed Gallifreyan children to chronon particles, seeing how they reacted, seeing what they did – often as a test, a measure of seeing the intelligence of the child. Not just the intelligence, however… something more, there was a sort of indescribable gift that the chronon particles could measure. One's manipulation of the particles was often used to see the strength of mind of the individual being tested.
And the Doctor was forever amazed with Emma's results. As they danced in front of her, illuminating her chilling face with an ethereal blue light, they seemed to be drawn to her, they seemed to hover and buzz around her head, and none at all would stray elsewhere, as if they were truly captivated by Emma's presence… or as if Emma had made them captivated by her presence.
Then, the chronon particles divided, and they divided again, until four times the number of little blue lights were bringing light to the room. Seemingly, Emma did it all unfazed, her eyes staring vacantly as the specks and spots of light hopped around before her very eyes.
To her, the chronon particles were malleable, they could be warped and made in her design. She divided the atoms with a brainpower and willpower that the Doctor had never seen before.
These weren't the only tests – the Doctor tried them all. Chronon particles, subatomic restructuring, radiation envelopes, dimensional transfiguring. But all of them showed the same. Emma displayed an impossible mental strength, something unheard of in the universe. Of course, it hadn't been honed, it hadn't been perfected, but her current intelligence, and the potential intelligence, was almost impossible. Her mental power was extraordinary, perhaps destined, when mastered, to be stronger than that of her mother. In fact, for many in the upper echelons of the experiment, there was no doubt about this.
Emma was the greatest Time Lord mind to ever exist.
"How do you feel, Emma?"
The Doctor asked the question, specifically wanting to engage an emotional response. The little girl didn't seem to understand feelings or emotions, there weren't ever any words for them, never any sign for them. There were no tests that could communicate the power behind emotions… nothing that could ever examine anything so powerful. Emma's brainpower was all well and good, and perhaps it was all that mattered to the Time Lords… but the Doctor wanted something more. He wanted to know how she felt.
There was a pause, as if Emma were cycling through everything she'd learned. The Doctor reached into his pockets, and took out a series of cards, laying them on the dusty ground in front of her. Each of them had a smiley-face on them… but not always smiley – with a variety of expressions, each perhaps trying to explain emotions to a young child.
Perhaps it was a futile job, trying to explain such an… impossible thing. And cards were even more useless. How could one liken something so deep, complex, and overwhelming, to a simple picture? But… that was how it worked. And the Doctor looked at the cards, almost envious, wishing that one of the faces would explain him. He thought this whenever he was with the little girl, and none of them ever worked – he was always a cocktail of all sorts of feelings, some on the cards, some of them not.
Emma didn't seem to like the cards either. Her eyes were scanning over them, but none of them seemed to be able to explain. Emma was concentrating now, in a way she hadn't been before, her eyes completely fixed on trying to work out this unsolvable puzzle. And eventually, the calculations, the analysis, all of it began to wind up inside her little head. And perhaps she had found a word.
"Alone."
The words were a punch to the Doctor's gut. Emma's expression was unmoving, unwavering, but the Doctor had to steady himself. It had been alright, for a while – to his own horror, he'd been able to divorce the person from his task. But now it was merging, he couldn't stop himself from acknowledging that Emma was thinking, feeling, living, breathing. Now it rose up at him, like flames licking away. Loneliness… something nobody should ever have to speak of – and something a child should never, ever understand.
For this was not a thing that ever should have happened.
And yet it did, and he was part of it.
LINE HERE
Iris strode up to the vast plateau of rock, tossing a stone up and down in her hand. Without a second's hesitation, she meandered across it, her snow-boots slapping against the smoothened surface. It was strange, perhaps, that so exposed to the elements, the rock hadn't been weathered. That was why it looked so out of place on the top of the mountain – it looked so man-made. It was as if there were something, keeping that plateau of marble as perfect as it was.
She could feel the men behind her, bristling as she got closer and closer. They seemed to be awfully scared. Iris didn't care. When she was a bit further back from the middle, she gripped the stone in her hand, and tossed it forwards.
Before it hit the ground, however, it disappeared.
Iris heard Urshak behind her, and his voice trembled. Perhaps from the cold – but most likely from the fear. "Where – where did it go?" he mumbled.
"That's a wormhole," Iris gestured up to it. "Pretty neat sci-fi, really. Except, through that wormhole, is a prison, established by this evil church lot. The Qlerics. 'Religious liberty' gone mad… they're allowed to open courts and jails and start trying people."
A younger traveller dared to speak up, his voice slightly muffled by the furs he'd wrapped tightly around him – tighter so, as if he believed they could provide him some protection. "Who's in the prison?"
Iris eyed the wormhole closely. "The most dangerous woman in the universe…"
Suddenly, half the men around them descended into fits of laughter.
"What harm can a woman do to us?" Urshak growled, heaving in breaths through his hysterical cackling.
It was at that moment, that from the sky, a bolt of lightning seemed to burst through the wormhole, and struck down three of the travellers, turning their once-freezing bodies into smouldering corpses.
Iris shuddered when she saw the bodies. Good to know Emma didn't take lightly to casual misogyny. Even so, that almighty display of power was a little bit unnerving. Well – very unnerving, in fact.
Lizzie gently stepped away from the travellers, and made her way up onto the plateau with Iris, who was just taking the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket, having pinched it from her father earlier. She pointed it up to the plateau, and with a quick burst of energy, the wormhole seemed to burst to life in front of them.
"Good luck, you lot!" Iris waved at the travellers, before stepping through the wormhole. Lizzie followed her.
When the wormhole closed, Urshak and his expedition glanced around at each other, spellbound by whatever supernatural forces at work around them.
When Lizzie and Iris blinked, they were in a corridor. It was cold, grey, and metal – and at the far end, were two double doors. However – there were two Qlerics, stood in front of it, in their frog-like glory. They wore their flowing, red robes, the colour of blood juxtaposed coldly against the steel of the corridor. With her usual confidence, Iris paraded up to them.
"We've got visitors rights," she held up a card she'd obtained, after her contact with Emma. The Qleric who examined it seemed impressed, and so he turned and pushed open the double doors.
The chamber beyond them was large, with a great glass cube in the centre. It was almost… too high-security for it to be real, as with that thick glass and the thick metal walls around them, escape seemed impossible. There was a real claustrophobia to the Qleric prison, isolated away in a distant dimension, in a strange metal box – with a strange glass box in front of them.
And she was there. Inside the glass cube, dressed in a stained, murky grey outfit, Emma sat watching them from her cold, metal chair. There was a table in front of her, and two chairs behind it – almost as if this situation had been prepared for especially. The glass box was surrounded by machinery, computers, panels, flickering lights and scanners. When Lizzie caught sight of the heart-rate monitor, doubled up due to the binary-vascular system, that was when she knew. Emma was being… examined, perhaps, from inside the box. The most striking thing was that another heart-rate monitor pulsated just beside it, one displaying the simple heart-rate of a human being. A chill ran down Lizzie's spine… there was someone else there… someone nearby.
And yet, she couldn't see them.
The robed figures, with their bulbous, frog-like heads, padded over to the glass door in the side of the cube, and placing a hand on it, the door slid open. A wide-open exit, and yet Emma sat tight in her seat… it was as if she didn't want to escape. What could be so terrifying it deterred one from seizing the chance of a way out? It made Lizzie reluctant to enter – but Iris, with her usual lack of fear, meandered casually through into the box. Lizzie took a quick sideways glance to the nearby Qleric, who seemed unbothered by her concern. So… she stepped in.
The door sealed behind them, and Lizzie felt her heart pound harder than before. The Qlerics could shut the two of them in there, keep them trapped with Emma. Emma, who didn't say anything. Emma's, whose eyes blazed a piercing green, and whose eyes stared hard at Lizzie and Iris.
She was, without doubt, terrifying.
It wasn't as if Lizzie had any reason to be scared of her. But… she was. There was a rawness to Emma, a brutal honesty. There was something cold, an uncaringness. At the same time, there was a careful precision to every look, every slight movement. Emma planned out everything she did with exact calculation, as if she always had the final result in mind, and new fully what steps to realise to get there.
Iris tried to ignore Emma's looks, by causally strolling over and plonking herself down on one of the chairs opposite Emma. Lizzie walked over and did the same, and as she did so, she could see Emma with eyes surveying her. Just as Lizzie could read people, Emma seemed to be able to do the same, as if her look was an examination, a study, perhaps.
"You found out I was here?" Emma asked, looking directly at Lizzie and Iris. It was quite off-putting, especially for Lizzie, who always found it awkward looking straight at people during conversations.
"The messages were hard to avoid," Iris shrugged.
"That was the point," Emma sat perfectly straight, her hands clasped in an arch on the table. As she spoke, she was motionless, the only movement coming from her mouth.
"What do you need, anyway? Saving?" Iris looked around her at the Qlerics, as they paced up and down beside the cube. There was no way they could get Emma out of there.
"No. I simply want to talk."
"But you never speak, like… ever?" Iris mused. In all of their conversations, everything had felt so… scripted.
Emma's head tilted in a mocking, bitter way. "That's because unlike you, instead of spouting white noise, I actually care about what I say. Words matter, Iris. They are our sole vessels of communication. Whether spoken, or written."
"I don't always think so," Lizzie said, with the aim of steering this so far quite aimless conversation back on course. "We could've left you here."
Emma gave a simple, casual response. "I knew you wouldn't."
It was as if she truly felt safe in the knowledge, that Lizzie and Iris would come. Information on Cullengate, of course they would.
And something else. And they didn't know. As Emma looked at them, she could see that Lizzie and Iris didn't understand. It was almost as if Iris and Emma were cousins, and Emma doubted very much that the Doctor's family had been open and honest with each other.
"Do you know who I am, Iris?" Emma asked simply.
Iris looked at her blankly. Then shook her head. "Noope."
Emma nodded slowly.
"Well. I know you're that pale weirdo who gave Lizzie her business card."
Emma was right in her suspicions. They didn't know. Besides. She could read it in their faces.
So she continued.
"Do you care, Iris?"
Emma's words were ambiguous, so much so they seemed to strike Iris with a wave of confusion.
"Care for what?" she eventually responded.
"Do you care?" Emma simply repeated herself, which seemed to fill Iris with nothing but irritation.
"Look, I don't know what you're –"
"You're naïve."
Iris was about to protest again, but she didn't, Emma's words stopped her in her tracks. It was true. She wasn't that old, she barely knew anything about the universe. But asking her if she cared? That was nothing short of an insult. Of course she cared.
"I prefer the term 'youthful'," Iris responded, a sarcastic grin on her face.
Emma seemed unfazed, and uncaring. "I think, in fact, you know nothing."
Iris was young… and Emma could see that. She could see the truth behind the girl – the product of a warm, cosy, familial upbringing. Someone who had lived comfortably, who had gotten the best start in life. Someone who perhaps didn't have anything much to worry about. And yet… someone who had become so flawed because of it.
"A lovely little family," Emma mocked, a sardonic look on her face. "All sweet and warm and… aww, how nice."
"It was, actually," Iris nodded, her mind drifting back to cosy evenings sat in front of the fire, the television on, with Dad, Mum, and Lizzie. K9 would be sat at her feet, and she would sip her hot chocolate, and she would be content. Those were the days.
"And yet… how much has it ruined you?" Emma's sardonic smile twisted into a grim, mocking expression. "You were almost… isolated from reality? Your family was awash with lies. Perhaps that's why you're borderline Asperger's when it comes to talking about how you feel –"
Iris no longer looked so self-assured, she no longer seemed to carry herself with an unbreakable air of impenetrability. It seemed as if her walls were breaking down, the walls she so often carried herself with.
"Why are you telling me this?" Iris looked down, and noticed her hands gripping tightly on the side of the table. When she shifted one, it was trembling. Lizzie noticed, and she placed a hand gently on top of it to calm her down.
"Because your father can't get away with what he's done."
That's when Iris and Lizzie both stopped abruptly.
Get away with what?
Had they known each other?
There was something dark inside Emma, it was clear in the cold, cutting way she put herself forward. And Iris knew that she couldn't hide from the truth. She couldn't stay in her nice little bubble forever, and if Emma was living with that darkness inside of her… Iris couldn't hide from it either.
"What do you mean – what did he do? Wait – do you know him?"
"I'm an honest person," Emma shrugged. "I don't keep secrets."
"Tell me," Iris spoke plainly. Lizzie sat shocked beside her, stunned by Iris' sudden forwardness – but she didn't show it. Iris had her reasons, after all. As she looked up at Emma, she wouldn't be… lesser than her. She wouldn't take this truth simply because Emma was forcing it on her out of bitterness – she would take the truth knowing that it was the right thing to do. Because it was the grown-up thing to do.
If Emma was shocked, she didn't show it – the only evidence was in a slight pause, longer than normal. With Emma, every beat felt organised, regimented. And that brief spell of silence didn't – and that was when Iris knew she'd shocked her.
"While you were growing up with your lovely little family, in your nice warm TARDIS with the whole universe ahead of you… your father kept me on a cold, distant, planet, buried somewhere at the back of the universe. He dropped by, every so often. He monitored me, at request of the Time Lords."
Iris' breathing increased, she tried to slow it, to make sure her… fear didn't seem evident. But it was a horrific revelation… that during those wonderful moments, when they'd been together as a family, her Dad had been keeping a dark secret. She tried to swallow her pain, but Emma continued, and as she did so, it became harder.
"No offence," Iris said, trying to steady her shaky voice. "But… you're a random girl. Why – why would he do that to you?"
"I don't want you to ever forget that, Iris. I want you to know how I suffered. And all that time your father could've saved me… I want you to know that he didn't. That he had his little family to keep him going every day, while I was alone."
"What do you want, then?" Iris spoke quickly. "Revenge?"
She tried to seem unwavering, she didn't want the bitter girl to win. But… at the same time, she was disgusted by the actions of her father. And when she next saw him, she'd give him hell because of it.
"I'm not doing this out of revenge. I'm not doing this out of pity. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."
That was the sentence that truly shook her. Because Emma was right. It was the right thing to do – people should know about what her Dad did. And it was good that Iris knew as well… she couldn't keep living in her cosy childhood bubble, when people like Emma were out there. People who were lonely, people who had lived on the verge of death, every single day.
"I can see it, Iris. The way this is changing you. You… finally realising that things aren't going to end happily. It's fine, it's called growing-up. But finally… you're seeing how twisted the world is. It's not always nice, and it's not always sweet. And I think… you're going to find out more about that, very soon."
It was this moment that Lizzie decided to speak. After all… Iris might not understand that, but Lizzie most certainly did, and she was sick of Emma's patronising act – even if she agreed with Emma's sentiments about unmasking the Doctor's lies.
"What do you mean?" she asked. Find out more, very soon… the words were ominous, chilling… and Lizzie was quite certain Emma knew something that they didn't. "And, look – I understand where you've been, Emma. Truly… I – I do. I want to help you –"
"Elizabeth," Emma quickly dismissed her. "You can't help me."
"But, I think –"
"You can't." And for once, Emma bristled, she seemed to display some kind of… agitation, or irritation, at Lizzie's remarks. There was a silence, while Lizzie retreated back into her seat, before Emma spoke again. "I've learned that when you're lonely, nobody comes. Never."
"They did," Lizzie smiled at Emma. She did so truthfully – because in the end, she had found a family.
And yet, Emma did not seem convinced. For as she looked at Lizzie, Emma saw something that perhaps… reminded her of herself. A loneliness, one that simply couldn't be solved. Some people were naturally lonely souls. Some people would feel like outsiders.
"But you're still alone," Emma said.
It seemed, however, that unlike Emma, Lizzie didn't think that meant they had to keep themselves isolated. And perhaps, she was lonely. Perhaps she always would be. But not so much so, that it would ever hurt her.
"Mmhm," Lizzie nodded. "But I'm happy. Kinda. And I know that doesn't mean anything. It's easy for me to say that when I've come through things."
"Then maybe you just got lucky," Emma shrugged. She certainly didn't. And she didn't think she ever would. But what would be the point in ever getting close to anyone? All her life, people had stabbed her in the back. If she placed her trust in anybody, they would turn on her. What would be the point of ever getting close to someone if that was always the outcome? Everyone would tell her to be optimistic, to tell her to have hope. But so far, whenever she'd done that, it had never ended well.
So what was the point? The universe had proved its darkness to her, and so she had resigned herself to it.
And as Lizzie looked at her, she saw someone rather similar to herself. Someone who the world had twisted, someone who had been manipulated by her experiences. Someone who had been lonely. But unlike her, Emma was different. She'd become resentful towards the world. She'd become bitter. Lizzie didn't blame her for that. Not at all – people dealt with trauma in different ways. And, in fact, Lizzie had been bitter as well, for a while. She'd hated the universe, she'd hated living. It was only when she'd met Leo, when she'd stood on that bridge and looked out at the stars, that she'd begun to see the value of existence again.
Lizzie had misinterpreted Emma. Normally, she could read people well, but for once, she'd failed. Emma wasn't cold. Or at least – if she was, it wasn't a bad thing. The universe changed people, bad things changed people. Who was Lizzie to judge her for that? There was no perfect way to cope – to say that would be to say that the cause was perfect. When… none of it was. They were all just strange, hopeless wanderers, in the end.
In fact… Lizzie had so much respect for the girl opposite. Perhaps she was still haunted… but she was still here. And that was quite wonderful.
It was then, that Iris spoke tentatively. She too seemed to have gained a respect for Emma. Perhaps Emma did despise her father – and rightly so. Iris would be blind not to see the reasons behind that. Dad wasn't a perfect human being. Far from it. She'd known it for a while – but it was only now that it truly settled in.
"What is it you want?" Iris asked. It still didn't make sense. She couldn't make it work in her head – Emma had been an entirely random girl. And yet… the Doctor had met her before. But maybe that was why Emma had found Lizzie – because she wanted to get closer to the man who had been complicit in holding her captive.
"I wanted you to know," Emma continued. "And then… I have plans. I can't promise you'll like them. But… they're going to happen."
"And I'm guessing, that's what you meant when you were musing over me finding out about the cruelty of the universe, or whatevs?"
Although she wouldn't admit it, Emma's words had scared Iris. What she'd said about her finding out about… how twisted the world was. All her life, she'd been kept… well – she'd been safe. And so, the thought of that all coming to an end made her nervous. Still, Iris slapped on a brave face – she quite enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen, usually. Why should it be different here? Or at least – that's what she told herself.
"Hmm, no," Emma sniggered. "Your father is barely a footnote. There are dark days coming, Iris. And I think I'm to be a part of them. I've been looking into Mrs Cullengate, and I've discovered something… terrifying."
"Tell me," Lizzie sat forward. She needed to know, Evangeline Cullengate's silence did nothing but make her anxious. And if Emma had any information, she had to have it, she had to keep her mind at rest.
Emma simply shook her head, however. She turned to Iris, and said, "Footnote your father might be, but footnotes can mean a lot. I can't risk the information falling into his hands. When I'm ready, you'll all know. Believe me."
"Look," Iris spoke up, and spoke with an honesty and maturity she hadn't used before. "Creds to you, kay? You lived through some terrible stuff, not gonna lie. But please, I'm asking you, don't take my father from me – please. I know he got it wrong, he's not perfect – but you can't expect me to just… abandon someone I love, after everything he's done for me."
"I'm not expecting you to," Emma's expression was blank, emotionless, perhaps. And yet, that emotionless quality held more emotion than one could realise. "I respect you both, especially you, Elizabeth. But your father, Iris? He will suffer, after everything he's done to me."