London, 2018 – 13:35PM
"Just… tell me everything," was all Cioné could say. "Please."
She needed to know. But she guessed this was why the Doctor had been… quieter. There had been moments when she'd looked at him, and he'd seemed so… empty. Guilty, perhaps. She hadn't been sure at the time. Ever since Christmas and Bethlehem, he'd retreated into himself…
"When Iris was just a baby, I was summoned to a planet. Some… distant place, hidden away from everywhere else. The Time Lords met me, and… they had a child with them. Emma. A bit older than Iris, but roughly the same age."
It made sense that the Doctor and the Master, almost sibling-like in their relationship, should have children at the same time.
The Doctor took a deep breath, before he continued.
"It was a sort of… covert conspiracy. And the idea was… to leave a Gallifreyan child in the wild, and see how she grew. What sort of person would she grow into? So… that's what they did. They left her there, on this planet, when she was just a baby."
The Doctor paused, as he prepared to tell his part in the tale. This was the hardest part of all. And already, Cioné was grimacing at the knowledge of what had gone on. It was truly horrifying, that someone could bear to treat a child in such a way. And yet… she was not surprised. Nothing about the upper Gallifreyan echelons could surprise her. It hit even harder, not just because it was so barbaric, but because Cioné was a mother, to a girl the same age. No child, no matter who their parents were, deserved to be treated as an experiment.
"They still wanted a person, above all," the Doctor gulped. "Not just a feral child. So my job was to… stop by every so often, to make sure that she could speak, to make sure that she… understood basic information about the universe."
He stopped, and Cioné sighed, and shook her head. How could he have been complicit in all of this? He might as well have been fully involved, if he had gone along with them. His… display of support for such a thing was almost skin-crawling. And… how had he lied to her about this? How had he kept this secret? All of those days when he might've just popped down to the Empire for a carton of milk, perhaps he was off to see the abandoned little girl being raised by wolves. All of the lies he must've told, a huge, intricate web of deceit.
"No," she shook her head. "No, no, no – you – please, you didn't?"
"I did."
"Why didn't you do something about it?" she spluttered, at a complete loss of anything to say. She couldn't get her head around how, with a little girl the same age, he could condemn the Master's daughter to a lifetime of suffering.
"Because I was stuck," the Doctor shrugged. There was nothing more to say than that. Yes, he regretted being a part of it, every single day – but there was nothing else he could have done, apart from risk all of their lives. "They threatened you, and Iris, and above all, the Monitor in Emma's head was programmed to kill her if she ever left the planet."
"Please don't pull the old, 'I was trying to protect you', card, because quelle surprise, darling, I can actually think for myself without being lied to."
The amount of times Cioné risked her life, and perhaps the Doctor didn't even realise it. The work she did in the Time War… not killing anyone, not hurting innocent children. But helping them. Journeying to the front-line, where the Daleks and the Time Lords caused devastation wherever they went. The burning, flaming corpses, the torrents of blood gushing across the battlefields. Cioné had even seen a few planets turned to cinders. And whenever she saw it happen, she would shiver, and think of what was to come. If this was only the first few years, and they were no closer to a victory… what would it be like near the end? Whole universes obliterated? Whole civilisations burned?
And for some reason, she thought that it had never quite clicked for her husband, that if she went there and back every day, she could save his arse every single day and twice on a Sunday.
"I know, I know," the Doctor shook his head, knowing that he was wrong. "Of course now I realise I was wrong – but at the time, with my new-born daughter, what did you expect me to do?"
He had been so lost, before Lizzie had found him. And still lost, before his family had truly been brought together. In the fresh throes of that, he couldn't have brought himself to ever risking them. But understanding it didn't help. He still saw the extent of the damage he did.
"We could've helped her!" Cioné would've taken her in. Emma was the same age as Iris, it would be almost like having twins. That would've been wonderful, and it would've… perhaps helped Emma.
"I didn't sit around doing nothing," was all the Doctor could think of to say. "What nobody understands, what I haven't explained to anybody, is that… I tried to play the long game."
He'd had an idea, right from the start. A beautiful, bright, whizzing idea, one that could've saved Emma, one that could've raised her into what her mother never was – but also everything beautiful that her mother was at the same time.
And the Doctor had tried, too hard to get it to work. But now… he didn't believe it had.
"I tried to… show her the right way. I tried to guide her, to show her the… awe and wonder of seeing the universe. I thought, if I can gradually show her, perhaps she'll become what her mother never could be."
It was still truly impossible for Cioné to get her head around, that all she could do was sit back from her steak and swear to herself in her head. She had seen tortured young people, and she knew the effect that trauma could have. She saw it every day, whenever she went to the front line. And above all, one of the things Cioné held closest to her, was the right to be who you want. Trying to shape someone's life, trying to turn them into something, instead of letting them find their own way – that was one of the worst things of all. Trying to… turn off their personality, who one truly was… that made her shiver.
And so there was only one thing the Doctor could do. If he had allowed someone's life to be dictated, their destiny to be forced, then he needed him to do this.
"You need to find her, and you need to make amends."
The Doctor did not seem convinced. After their brief reunion on Bethlehem, Emma seemed full of nothing but hate for him. "Do you truly think she'll be so quick to get along?"
"No, I don't. In fact, I think she'll ignore everything you say, before leaving. But I don't care if she hates you, you need to try."
A stony silence fell, and Cioné picked up a chip and ate it.
"You talk about this as if it can… be fixed," the3 Doctor said, looking back over at the river. The sun had gone in, and that perfect reflection had vanished.
"I don't think it can," Cioné admitted. "But at the very least, I think you need to realise what you've done."
The Doctor couldn't deny that. This couldn't be made… right, but all he could do was try.
Another silence followed, and Cioné continued to munch her way through some of her chips, perhaps to try and diffuse the tension. The two of them didn't have disputes that often, and when they did, they hit hard, with neither knowing quite what to say. So used to getting along normally, finding the words to argue with the person they each loved was stilted, perhaps even a little bit awkward.
Cioné, however, found something else to say.
"And what makes this worse, is that there's Iris, and myself, and we're oblivious to all of this. Do you know how that makes me feel? That we could've saved her, but we didn't? Now, it isn't just you who has to live with that, it's me as well –"
"It isn't your fault," he interrupted, determined to make sure she knew that. She didn't know, and so there was nothing that Cioné could've done.
But Cioné was not so easily reconciled. "I could've done something, but you… you denied me that."
Perhaps he was to blame, but she couldn't help but feel responsible. Had she known, she could've helped. Maybe not much, maybe only a little, but it would've been something.
"I can't believe this. I – I can't actually believe you – you were part of this…"
The Doctor didn't say anything. There was nothing more he could say.
Of course, the Doctor was still missing something quite large. Typical male brain, the important things just not quite sticking. Cioné watched him, waiting to see if he'd caught up yet. But nope… his eyes wandering over the street below.
Eventually, she asked him.
"How did she get off the planet?"
That seemed to pique the Doctor's interest, as his eyes darted back to her. Somehow, Emma had escaped the clutches of the Time Lords. Somehow, she'd overcome the Monitor.
He would have to find out how.
She waited, clutching her knife close to her. There was a strange, stone pillar, and so she hid behind it. There was another not far away from it – perhaps the remnants of some old archway, with great, thick roots curled around the base of the cobble constructions, moss stuck to them and weeds crawling from beneath the cracks. Vines and ivy were intertwined the stone, some of them crawling through thin air to the hulking body of the tree just beside the relics.
The wolf prowled below, just down the hill. She saw it, sneaking through the undergrowth, beneath the cover of the darkness of the forest floor. The dead leaves and the thick polluted sky created a mucky, cloudy curtain across the roof of the world, and the wolf was using it to its advantage, as it slunk through the bushes and the bracken and the shrubbery, occasionally darting behind the tree. It watched its every step, avoiding any sticks or dry leaves that could give the game away. And in their game, even the tiniest twig was deadly. Emma's hearing was sharp, and she used her traditional predator's ears to her advantage. If that wolf put a foot out of line, Emma would pounce from the shadows and the wolf would be dead before its nervous system even began to carry out any of the split-second reactions necessary for its reflexes to kick into gear.
Of course, this makes it sound as if the game was always won with ease. No… the wolves were the masters, she was merely the challenger. But quickly she had risen, that the wolves knew her. They knew not to fight her, they knew to run even at the sight of her silhouette. But that was the problem. They knew her so well, and just as they were good hunters, they were good hiders too. But just as they had adapted, Emma had adapted as well. She could track a wolf, she could kill the wolf. It was all done with exceptional precision. Nowadays, she didn't just… kill the wolf, and eat it raw like a savage. She had perfected her art so well, that she would never leave a mess behind. Emma was methodical, killing it quickly, cutting it up, dividing it by body-part. The dismembering was clean, quick, and little blood was shed.
He had asked her once, whether she felt guilty about it. Whether she felt sad that she killed another living creature. That had stuck in Emma's mind, because nothing else had ever crossed her mind. What reason was there to feel guilty about it? She had to kill them so she could live. She had to try, so hard, just to survive. And the lengths she would go to, just to live.
Emma could see it, skulking just up the hill. It could smell her. But it wasn't sure where. So, silently she crept around the pillar – it was but metres away, she could almost taste the meat in her mouth. Emma drew her knife, and as the wolf turned around, before it could even register what it saw, the knife plunged through its brain.
She knelt down, scooped up the carcass, and tossed it over her shoulder. Then, she began her journey back to… wherever it was she came from.
Emma had no name for the house. It was just… the house. The Doctor said it was her home, but when she asked him to describe his home, hers sounded nothing like it at all. In fact… hers sounded like exactly the opposite of what home was meant to be. A home should be warm – not just in temperature, but in atmosphere. There would be people. But Emma had only met one person in her life. In fact, she didn't even know anyone else existed, she only thought they did, because the Doctor said so. For all she knew, they could be the only two people in the universe, and he was mad. There was nobody else. Half the time, there wasn't even him. There was just her, and the insects, and the wolves. No cosiness, no… love, barely any life.
So, Emma referred to it as the house. The place she slept and eat. The place she spent her days.
When she got back there that afternoon, the box was there. The blue one, it was there every so often. It meant the Doctor was there to see her.
She readjusted the corpse on her back, and made her way in.
He was sat in one of her chairs, and as soon as she entered, he stood up, and greeted her, and asked her how she was. Emma understood interaction, since the Doctor spoke to her. And although she didn't know anything about anywhere beyond that planet, she believed that if there was anything, communicating must be a part of it. Otherwise, why would the Doctor do it so instinctively?
"I am fine, thank you," Emma responded. "Why are you here?"
"I just… came to check on you," the Doctor seemed confused, as if she'd said something wrong.
"I am fine. Now, please leave." She was busy, and she had things to be doing. The wolf needed to be cut, the planks on the windows needed to be reinforced. Occasionally, she'd get a pack trying to get in, in the middle of the night. They'd batter the doors, and the windows, desperate to get in and kill the girl who killed them.
The Doctor was reluctant to go, and he was, admittedly, taken aback. Emma had never said anything like that, she'd never asked him to leave. But he could tell she was growing up. Nearly a teenager, now. Once upon a time, her sentences were broken, stilted, and awkward. But now, she spoke fluently, and she spoke well. Emma knew nothing of the outside universe, barring that it existed. But because of that, her skills in this world had nearly been honed to perfection. Hunting, hiding, killing, observing, all were perfectly done.
"Did I say something wrong?" she asked him, noticing his hesitation.
"No, no!" he quickly said, his intrigue perhaps making him look irritable. "You're growing up, you're allowed to be irritable. I went to a planet, not long ago, where the people are the grumpiest in the universe. And I'm not surprised, its cloudy and there's a constant drizzle. So I took one of them to Solus, this... completely empty planet. But because of that, you can see for miles and miles – and the sunsets are just magnificent."
Emma listened to him – but it was only a half-listen. The Doctor always went on about the universe as if it was just nearby. It all seemed so regular to him, as if he spent so much time… seeing it. But just as Emma didn't know whether there was anyone else, Emma didn't even know if there was a universe. So, hearing him talk about it was almost painful. Hearing him speak of so much… beauty, it hurt, because she had never seen any of it. She didn't even know how to picture it in her mind, she had nothing to go on. But he said it was good. Even that confused her, but she acknowledged it anyway.
If there was a universe… how did it work? Did everyone live in houses, and kill wolves? Were there more rivers? Were the trees as dead as these ones? If there was one thing Emma had learned, it was life and death. She understood it, because she killed the wolves, she knew what death was. Through that, Emma understood how close to death she was herself.
But she didn't understand life.
"Wolves have children," she sat down on the chair beside him. It had been bugging her for a long time, the origins of life. Well – not necessarily life in general, but her life.
"Yes," the Doctor nodded, unsure of where Emma was going.
"Two wolves mate, and they have young."
"Yes," the Doctor confirmed. Phew. That was a conversation he'd let Cioné have with Iris.
"Therefore, two people had me."
The Doctor hesitated, knowing that this was a question that would open up all sorts of questions for the girl. But he would answer them, and he would do so honestly. The Time Lords wouldn't kill anyone for that, surely? The Time Lords would at least have the heart to be fair, and kind, just this once? But he didn't believe himself, he knew the Time Lords would be cruel to the end. His only reassurance, was that they would want the girl to know. The reaction, perhaps they would want to see it.
"They did," the Doctor tentatively verified her question.
"Who were they?"
Oh… that was a question with more dimensions than the little girl would perhaps be able to understand, isolated on that little planet. It made him realise even more, that letting this happen was wrong, that perhaps he was failing her by letting this happen.
"I'm afraid I only know your mother….," he paused, as he braced himself to talk about her. He didn't talk about her very often. After all, how easy was it to talk about your psychopath pseudo-sibling? "Her name was the Master."
The words hung in the air, as Emma digested them. The Master. It was strange… the woman who had given her life, and finally she had a name. It was as if there was someone, definitely. But she still wasn't sure. There was a hole, one which the Doctor had just… stuck a name over, perhaps. She needed more. But…. Emma didn't have long to wait, before the Doctor continued.
"We grew up together. And… we were best friends. We were so close, we were like siblings, in fact. She made living so much fun, because she always… understood how rare it is that we are alive. So… she would dance through life, without a care in the world, and she would adore every second of it."
The Doctor reminisced back on those childhood days, and their teenage years. The chaos they'd got up to, the madness and craziness of their lives. And all of it because of her.
"She wasn't always right," the Doctor admitted. "In fact, she got it very wrong, quite a lot, and I wish she was still here for me to ty and show her that there was another way to do things."
He glanced over at Emma, and the girl was mesmerised. Because now, her mother felt real. She wasn't just a name, just a… person who had brought Emma into the world. Now, the Master had a life, people she had impacted on, people whose lives she'd changed. She'd not always done things right, and that made her even more vivid. Because nobody could do things perfectly, so now, Emma felt her mother was real. And… Emma suddenly felt an affinity with her. Emma didn't always get things right. Emma didn't even know what was right, what wasn't right.
There was one thing he'd said that had stuck out, one thing that struck her above everything else. In fact, it had struck her like a punch to the stomach, but it hadn't quite settled in. It almost didn't feel completely… real. But gradually it was sinking in, and gradually, Emma was understanding.
"Is she dead?"
The Doctor hesitated, but there was no point lying to the little girl.
"Yes."
Simple words, but enough to make Emma look away from him, and look out towards the boarded-up window in confusion. Because… she was confused. She hadn't even known her mother, and yet… she still felt a sense of loss. Emma often felt alone on that dirty, dead planet, but now she felt more alone than ever. It was as if there should have been someone out there for her – but that person was gone. What was that feeling? She didn't understand it at all. It wasn't even as if Emma felt any kind of… what the Doctor may call love, towards her mother. She just felt… as if she needed to know, why she was the way she was. And Emma felt as if her mother was the only answer to that.
And the only answer was gone.
Emma stood up, and slowly she dragged herself to the door. The Doctor stood up and followed her.
"Did she love me?" Emma asked, as they walked side by side, Emma just slightly ahead. She seemed to be leading him up the stairs, and the Doctor wasn't quite sure why.
He could lie to her. He could give her hope. But… that would hurt her more in the end. One couldn't just… scoop out hope for the sake of it, he'd realised. Sometimes there were situations when things weren't so straightforward. He hesitated, while she led him up that grand staircase, and while she showed him to the top of the landing.
The stairs opened into an immense corridor – but it was buried right at the heart of the house, and so when the Doctor looked down it, the walls seemed to… collapse in on each other, creating a sort of claustrophobic tunnel, as if one could easily get lost in those dark, lurking shadows. Emma led him down it, and gradually as the darkness shifted, the Doctor could see the faint outline of a window frame merging into view. It was large, and arch-shaped, and as the Doctor stepped up to it with Emma, he could see far through the thick foliage of the forest.
Most notably, the window was less like a window, and more like a door – an arch within the arch, the panes smashed so that one could walk through it, stepping out into the nothingness beyond its extension. Except, if one were to step through that broken window, one would perhaps die before they reached the ground, as the shattered glass, which jutted and protruded from the frame, was like a frame of hands each wielding knives, so sharpened and honed by the weather that it could slice through skin with the slickness and deftness of a finger stroked through something like oil, or custard, or maybe even blood.
The wind blew through the window, and the Doctor pulled his jacket tight against the cold, as it gusted down the corridor, creating an almost ominous whistle, as if the house were some devilish musical instrument. Emma, in the simple, white clothes she was dressed in, dirtied by her hunting and skulking predatorily through the woods, stepped closer to the cold, letting her auburn hair billow in the rush of bitter air
Then, Emma stepped onto the stone ledge, so the fragments of glass were but millimetres from her throat. She felt a sliver bristle gently against her flesh, and when she turned just slightly, it lethargically pierced the skin on her neck. It barely touched her, it was perhaps just a scrape, but Emma felt it, almost in slow motion. It might have been just a scrape, but it did, in fact, slice through several layers of cells, lightly piquing her pain receptors, before it drew blood; not much, but a small drop, poking its head from the tear, before lazily rolling down onto her white tunic.
"What are you doing?" the Doctor eventually asked. Emma didn't turn around – her eyes remained firmly locked onto the sky ahead.
"I'm watching. I like to stand in the window and look up."
Emma's eyes poured into the murky, thick clouds. From her window, she felt so tiny. So insignificant. It was when she looked out, that Emma felt there was something there, something more than just her little world of trees and the river and wolves. It was when she realised that the Doctor might not just drop out of nowhere and see her, that there was truth to his implications and there was a whole other place above her head. Emma could imagine that some people would look up to the sky above their heads and they would feel hopeful, a surge of optimism rushing through them.
But as Emma gazed at the sky, it just looked like a ceiling, and that standing in that window was the closest she would ever get to smashing it. It felt tangible, when she was stood in the window, as if she reached hard enough she might achieve the means to not look up at the sky and feel lost, or feel alone. As if she might just get close enough to break free.
It wasn't that day, however. When she blinked, the ceiling was fixed, the slate-grey plumes of natural smog churning in the atmosphere, and the blanket of charcoal leaves matting the underneath. There would be no escaping. And all this time, she could feel the Doctor behind her. She knew he was there, watching her, calculating her. The Doctor was a wolf – except, unlike the wolves, he wasn't cold. Or at least, he didn't try to be. But the fact he would stop there, and provide no answers, made him all the colder.
Eventually, the Doctor spoke, his voice punctuating the whistling winds
"I never answered your question."
There was a spell of hesitation, and eventually Emma found the words.
"When I heard your silence I realised I never needed an answer."
The words hit the Doctor hard – for that certainly wasn't the truth. In fact, if he knew his oldest friend well enough, then he knew that the Master would have ripped galaxies apart to save her own. And yet, the Master wasn't there. Emma's mother was dead. There was nobody to protect Emma… apart from himself. And the Doctor had failed her.
As Emma looked out at the sky, and felt small, she also felt alone.
For that was the hardest thing about living on this world. She was the only one remotely like… her, really. Only the Doctor, but he didn't really count, because he only stopped by occasionally, and even then, he always seemed preoccupied with something else. Emma had always felt as if he wasn't alone, that he came from a place where there were people, and that… he had people to love, just as she saw the wolves in their packs. A family, the Doctor had said once, when he'd seen a group of them prowling around the outside of the house. He had said that word… strangely. It was as if saying it made him sad.
But Emma was alone. She wasn't like the wolves, she didn't have anyone to rely on. She was just her, and most of the time, she believed that she always would be. Occasionally there would be glimmers, when Emma would wonder whether she could ever meet anyone else. Or… whether this planet was just going to be her existence forever. The hunting, the old house, just… doing what she'd always done, ad infinitum, with no clear end.
It was a thought that she couldn't dwell on for long, because it would drive her insane. If there was one thing that Emma understood for certain, it was that she hated this existence. She hated it all, she despised the loneliness, and she hated the wolves. The only thing she enjoyed was killing the wolves, for it made her feel as if she was culling her demons. As if she could keep doing it, and perhaps she would one day feel content. Because… that was the worst thing. Never feeling content. Although, she had mostly reconciled with the fear. Originally, the wolves prowling around the outside of her house, had terrified her. that one day they were going to get in and gobble her up. But… what would be the harm in that?
Emma didn't understand why people were scared of dying. Because when you're dead, you're dead. Why worry about it? There was no point being scared of it, because when it had happened, she wouldn't have anything to be scared of. So, it didn't bother her, and the thought of death was something she was resilient to.
Meanwhile, perhaps her very existence was something to be scared of. It was living that was going to bring the bad things, the certainty of tomorrow that brought with it the potential of terror. And that was why she hated it, and desired something more. That was why she needed more than this.
But her heart sunk, when Emma turned back to the dark corridors of that house, and saw the Doctor. Because tomorrow was going to creep around, and she'd still be stuck there, enduring this insane torment of an existence.
She just wanted it to stop.