Salvete, omnes! I hope you enjoy this chapter. There's a brief character summary at the end, if you need it. Also, please excuse the random science that accidentally appeared in the middle. It just pops up unexpectedly in the narrative.
After precisely five hours, the Doctor transitioned easily to a state of natural sleep. Comas helped to heal injuries and sicknesses, but they were not restful, and the Doctor did not want to be entirely exhausted during the following day's walk. After minor blood loss and a long cross-country trek, he needed a good two hours of sleep. As the Doctor slipped between stages of unconsciousness, he turned onto his side and woke Amy from a light slumber.
Amy turned her head to one side look at her husband, curled on his side towards her and breathing quietly, and to the other side to see the Doctor's tweed-covered back. She sighed. If it wasn't for the hard, sandy ground, she would have slept deeply, sandwiched between her timey-wimey family on the surface of an alien planet.
She stared up at the sky, with its constellations indistinguishable from those of Earth for a girl who had spent her childhood nights searching for a blue box in the darkened garden rather than watching the stars, and she was lulled into fuzzy half-sleep by the warm night air.
After minutes or hours drifting in a reassuring feeling of belonging and of anticipation for the much-missed adventure, Amy's eyes were caught by a streak of movement. A small bird-like creature, the first sign of life that she had seen, was flying across the not-so-dark-anymore sky in the direction they had been walking. She smiled and, at last, fell asleep.
Amy swatted away a gently prodding hand. "Amy," Rory was saying, "It's time to get up now."
She opened her eyes to a sky that was not noticeably lighter than it had been when she had fallen asleep. "You know what I hate? I hate it when you fall asleep five minutes before your alarm goes off and then have to go through the whole waking up process again. Could those idiots in the anonymous black suits not have waited until it was a little brighter outside?"
Rory cringed at the cranky anger of his tired wife. "Sorry, Amy, but I think you'd prefer me to wake you rather than our captor people… things." The three figures were lightly kicking at the sides of the humans who had yet to rise. "It looks like we're going to set off now."
The Doctor, still lying on the ground, stretched his thin arms over his head. "That we are," he said and sat up to unwrap the bandages from his foot. He wiggled his toes at Rory, showing off the new skin bearing only pink scars. "See? Told you they'd be better in the morning."
"Yeah, Doctor, but what about once we start walking again? The new skin is soft and fragile, and it'll be cut more easily than before. You should take my shoes." Rory knelt down to unlace his boots.
"No, no, no. If those shiny little rocks cut your feet, you won't be able to walk for a week. Give me two days or a five-hour healing coma and I'm just fine. In any case, we seem to be going now."
The three alien creatures herded them out of the circle of sand, and the Doctor stepped lightly onto the shards of obsidian, carefully keeping his expression free of pain. "Now, where are the children? I haven't finished telling them that fairytale."
That day's travel was harder, though the three figures did hand out cups of water around midday, and the Doctor distributed satsumas to the children from his endless pockets. By the time afternoon arrived on the planet, the starving adults were walking on shaky legs, and most of the children were being carried. The Doctor's red footprints had started to become connected with dripping trails of blood.
As a conversation about football teams withered into silence, the Doctor placed Stella on the ground to let her walk. "Do you want to hear more of the fairytale now?"
"Of course," she responded.
"Good. But I've got to warn you, there's a bit of a sad part coming up."
"That's fine," Stella said. "I've seen Bambi. That one's really sad."
"Yeah, it doesn't get much sadder than that. Alright, here it is," the Doctor said.
The Doctor traveled for hundreds of years, healing people and planets. But he was young when he left his home world, and he couldn't have imagined that the most miraculous part of his adventures would be the people he shared them with. There were many people whom he invited to travel with him, almost all of them brilliant humans. After he had lived eight lives and seen all of the universe's marvels, he still traveled, just to show his companions the stars and to keep being the healer he had promised to be.
But the Doctor's peaceful, if madly exciting, life was interrupted when the Time Lords and their enemies, the Daleks, became locked in a war that expanded until the whole universe was involved. The Doctor was called back to his home, and he abandoned his renegade name to become a warrior. He fought honorably at first, then without morals, and finally, when it was the only choice left, he destroyed his planet. The Last Great Time War ended when both the Time Lords and the Daleks were destroyed in a blaze of light, leaving the Doctor the last of his species.
When it was all over, the Doctor was filled with even more sadness and regret than he had felt back at home all those years ago, when he'd watched his people ignore the suffering on other planets. He'd pledged years ago to heal the problems of the universe, and instead he'd killed billions of people with the push of a button. At last, still reeling with guilt, the Doctor decided to go on one last adventure to see whether he could still save some people and show others how wonderful the universe truly is. And whether he could still believe that life is brilliant.
"John," Amy interrupted, "do you see that?" She pointed to a flock of three birds flying above their heads.
"Wildlife! We must be getting closer to our destination." He whipped out his sonic screwdriver with one hand and pointed it at the birds as they passed. He frowned.
"What is it?"
"Oh, nothing, Pond. Just some unusual readings. I'll tell you later." He turned back to the little girl in his arms.
The Doctor took a deep breath and opened the door. He looked out. His blue box had taken him into space, in an orbit around a green, living planet that circled a red-orange sun. The flames of the star reached out not into blackness, but instead overshadowed the bright colors of a star birth. The Doctor grinned in pure happiness: His ship had taken him to a place of color and creation. She believed that he could go on in life become a healer again.
But then the star in front of him began to shrink, collapsing in upon itself. The Doctor's grin faded. He ran back inside the blue box and used its magic to hold the sun steady. The power of the magic box would keep the sun from collapsing and exploding, but it wouldn't hold forever. In just over a week, the box would be drained of energy, and the Doctor would either have to leave, and abandon the green planet below to its death, or use his box to absorb the energy from the unstable star. Overwhelmed by power, the blue box would explode forever, an undying replacement for the old star. The Doctor's choices were life for himself and death to whomever lived on the planet, or self-sacrifice.
It was not a decision that he could make in a few minutes, so he decided to give himself a week. He would spend seven days on the planet below, and at the end he would decide whether to live or die.
He frowned, and he gazed fondly at his box with ancient eyes. "Choose somewhere to land. And make it a good place, Old Girl. This might be our last adventure."
The Doctor stopped his story abruptly and placed Stella down. He crouched down to the ground. "You're a little beauty, you are," he said, hopping up again as one of the robed creatures walked up to push him into motion.
"Are you alright, John?" Linda asked.
"What? Oh, yes, perfectly fine. Brilliant, actually. Just look at this!" He held up a minute sprig. "It's a plant, the first one that I've seen on this whole planet, actually. Wonderful little succulent, this baby is. Remarkably similar to those on Earth, with its thick leaves to conserve water. It's a pioneer plant," he added. "First, plants like this guy here, ones that can live straight on rocks, live on the inhospitable ground, and when they die, they decompose into little bits of organic matter. They keep that up until there's enough soil for slightly bigger plants, and then for average sized ones, and then for bushes and vines and trees. It's a big cycle of life and death and life, and at the end of it, the desert's been transformed into a forest with deep, rich soil. Beautiful! And it all starts with this little guy."
The others looked taken aback by the Doctor's unexpected enthusiasm. "I… see," said Frank.
"Well, enough of sciency things." He clapped his hands together. "You all probably want to hear the rest of the story." His comment stirred up a conversation among the humans about fairytales and who should be carrying Stella. As the others talked, the Doctor turned to Amy and whispered, "You see what this means? We'll soon come upon an area that's more hospitable to life, and there we'll no doubt arrive at our destination and discover why these three gentlebeings have gone through all the trouble of hauling us across the desert."
"They'd better have a good reason, 'cause I'm fed up with walking across this wasteland and being woken up early by those three."
"Yes," he muttered, "If they don't explain themselves, they'll have to face the wrath of Amelia Pond. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."
"Hey," she said and hit him on the arm.
He bopped her lightly on the nose. Laughing lightly, Amy linked arms with him and they continued across the desert as the Doctor again picked up the train of the story.
With a groan, the magic blue box landed on the planet. The Doctor walked over to the door. He hoped it was someplace uninhabited. He didn't yet want to look upon the people he might abandon, and he didn't want to see people nearly identical to the billions that he had killed just a short time ago.
She had not disappointed him. The Doctor opened her doors to reveal a wild countryside, all gentle hills covered with grasses and small wildflowers. He walked outside, feeling the warm air wash over his skin. Behind him, just as he told it to, the box disappeared to return to its place in space, holding the sun's fires in check until she returned the next day.
He walked for some time, enjoying the fragrant loneliness. All the while, his hearts ached within his chest, tempering his peace with sorrow and regret.
As the Doctor passed a thorny bramble of flowers, a girl, young and pretty and with wild hair, ran into him, knocking him to the ground. He stood up and helped her to her feet.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Why are you running?"
"I am being chased by a monster," she said. "It calls itself Death."
The Doctor looked behind her and saw a black cloud lurching across the countryside. It had no concrete form, but out of the wisps reached smoky arms ending in pointed fingers. A skeletal head appeared out of the blackness and opened its mouth to speak. "I am decay, I am life's last gasping breath. I am the end. Fear me, I am Death," it intoned.
The Doctor grabbed the girl's small hand, and they fled across the meadows.
The Doctor saw a winding stream ahead and pulled the girl toward it, saying, "Some cultures say that ghosts can't cross water. I've never met an actual ghost myself, but hey, you never know. It's worth a try." After they hopped across the stream, the two of them ran a short distance and then turned around to see what the monster would do.
The black cloud crossed over the water without slowing. As the Doctor and the girl stood watching, the creature spoke. "I am regret for lives lost and blood spilt. I am consuming, soul-crushing. I am Guilt."
This time, the girl grabbed the Doctor's hand and pulled him along. "Come this way," she said. "The top of the hill is always very windy. Maybe it will blow the ghost away."
"Clever. Very clever," the Doctor said. The pair climbed quickly through the thick grass to the summit of the hill. The wind whipped their clothing around, the girl's golden hair flying in the gust.
But as before, the monster continued after them, unaffected.
It was good, Amy reflected, that the Doctor believed that they would be arriving at their unknown destination soon. Their story-teller was walking wobbily, tripping over his feet every once in a while. Exhaustion, hunger, and blood loss were making him even clumsier than usual. She wouldn't put it past the Doctor to fall and break something, that hopeless Raggedy Man.
The other adults were becoming worried as well, casting concerned looks at the trail of red footprints that stretched out behind them and scrutinizing the Doctor's face for signs of how much discomfort he was in. Rory was now carrying Stella, and pauses in the storytelling were becoming more frequent as the Doctor grew increasingly tired.
"John," Linda asked during one of the breaks, "what is that off in the distance, would you say?" She gestured towards the horizon, which was becoming blurry and indistinct, as if obscured by clouds.
"Oh, it's probably just some fog," he responded. He was beginning to allow his mind to gradually shut itself down in order to conserve energy and dull the pain in his feet.
"We're in a desert, John. There can't be fog," Amy said.
"What? Oh. Of course." He shook his head to pull himself out of the mindless state. "There can't be fog in a desert without a nearby water source: a sea or a forest or recent rain. There's been no precipitation here in weeks, judging by the wrinkled leaves of that plant we found earlier. So that means either we're coming upon a body of water and we're going to be put on boats and shipped off to somewhere, or we'll soon arrive in a considerably more lush area, with a considerably higher chance of being populated." He stopped speaking and began to jump about bizarrely, leaning from side to side and turning his head. "I'd say that fog's about two miles away. Well, more precisely its five pi over eight miles, but it never hurts to round. Except when nuclear reactors are involved. That really didn't go well."
"What's a nuclear reactor?" Jordan asked.
"Well, have you ever heard of atoms, dear?" Janet began.
As Janet explained nuclear fission in simplified terms, the Doctor wandered to the back of the group to talk quietly to Amy and Rory.
"I'm glad to see you're feeling better," Rory said.
"I've always been fine, Mr. Pond. Just went into a bit of a mental shutdown to focus on healing my feet. Gallifreyan biology is a wonderful thing. All it takes is a cessation of conscious mental functions to focus the mind and vestigial regeneration energy on the process of knitting tissues back together."
"Right," said Amy. "But what on earth were you doing back there? You looked like one of those pet birds that turns its head upside down when it looks at you."
"Cockatoos, you mean. Well, I'm a Time Lord, you know, and Time Lords have a lot to do with time. We, or just me now, can see in a sort of fourth dimension. Fixed points, the passage of time, the turn of the universe, all those sort of things. You know how you sense distance by the disparity of distance between your eyes, or how quickly trees at the edge of the road move when you drive past them, compared to the pterodactyls in the distance? Sorry, bad example, that was just the alternative world that had those. Remember, with Churchill and all the creepy eye patch people? Anyways, I was doing the same distance-judging thing, except using the spin of the planet and little ripples in time and all that as markers. It's easy, really, once you get the hang of it. I just don't do it very often because concentrating on the fabric of time can make a person quite dizzy, you know."
"Yeah. Of course," Rory said.
After Janet finished explaining atoms to Jordan, making use of a metaphor involving apples and pears, the group lapsed into silence. A moment later, Stella pulled on the Doctor's jacket and impatiently insisted that he continue telling the fairytale.
"Ah, yes," the Doctor said. "Where was I? The big monster had just foiled the second plan of the girl and the Doctor."
The cloud of smoke continued over the hill and towards the two people. "I am dying planets that don't even have a prayer. I am forlorn hopelessness. I am Despair," it moaned.
"It's right," the girl said to the Doctor. "We don't have a chance." She stopped running and sat down on the ground.
"What are you doing?" the Doctor cried.
The cloud of black smoke was approaching quickly, but the girl just smiled calmly. She reached down to pick a flower from the grass and turned it around in her fingers, staring at the blossom. "We have no hope of escaping from the monster," she said. "So I'll wait for it here, with the flowers."
The Doctor's hearts swelled with sorrow and happiness. The little girl was so brave and loving, so brilliant, even in the face of death. He patted her on the head. "It'll be alright," he said. "We might die, but you know what? These flowers and grasses and the blue sky will always be here. I've seen the future of this planet, and I know that everything will turn out just fine. This isn't the end of the world. A thousand years after our deaths, the matter that makes us up will have been transformed into little children and the feathers of birds and a thousand roses. They'll always be a sun in the sky, and life will always continue."
He plucked a flower from the bramble beside him and sat down next to the girl as the shadow of the monster covered them both. The Doctor focused his eyes on the delicate petals covered in dewdrops.
The smoke creature reached out a skeletal hand and spoke. "I am sadness. I am…" It paused. "I am happiness. I am hope and beauty. I am brilliance of spirit, and I… I am free."
In an instant, the smoke evaporated into the air, leaving behind a tall woman in a flowing dress. The black, bony features had been replaced by pale alien skin spotted lightly with the lavender colors of the flowers around her.
The girl looked up, transfixed, and the Doctor stood to walk closer, the flower still in his hand. "You are beautiful," he said in wonder. "You're an alien, of course. Must have some sort of psychic connection or power, am I right? You were trapped in the fears of the people of this world, just as you reflected this girl's terror of death and my guilt. But when the girl accepted her death and opened her soul to be filled with beauty, the small relief was enough to let you escape from the cycle of fear."
The woman nodded. "That is all true. I came here by accident and became trapped, but now I am able to leave. Goodbye." She waved and dissolved into a breeze that swept upward, into the sky, and filled the air with the scent of flowers.
The girl and the Doctor smiled, and the Time Lord held out a welcoming hand. "One more little trip? I'll walk you back to your home." The girl nodded and took his hand. With a gentle cough, she led him across the countryside and to a hill that overlooked a village.
The Doctor's hearts twisted when they reached the top of the hill. He had seen this town before. He knew it by the outline of the buildings and by the chickens that roamed the streets, and he knew what would happen to its inhabitants. The village was even now ensnared by the plague, and within a month nearly everyone would be dead. The girl beside him coughed again, and he realized that she was already infected. She had lived through the encounter with the empath, but she would soon die all the same, and he could do nothing about it.
The Doctor placed his hands on her shoulders and kneeled down to speak to her. "You'll be alright, won't you?" he said. "Your family and friends may get sick, but you'll still be as brave as you were today?"
She nodded and smiled. "Of course I will. No matter what happens, in a thousand years I'll be a field of flowers."
She skipped off down the hill with a final goodbye, and the Doctor watched her go with eyes full of tears. Once the girl was out of sight, he fell backward to lay in the grass. He was crying, but at the same time the flowers and the vivacity of the little girl had filled him with life. He lay there, smelling the fragrant blossoms, until his magic blue box arrived to take him away.
When he finished telling the section of the story, Julia stepped back to walk in line with the Doctor and the Ponds. "What was it that you do, John?" she asked. "You mentioned it the other day, back when we were on Earth." She giggled slightly hysterically at the strangeness of her last remark.
"I'm a sort of a scientist-engineer-historian-traveler thingy. Nothing very concrete. I just travel around and help with problems. That's how I met Amy, actually. She was having some trouble with a crack in her wall, and I sorted out the issue."
"Really?" Linda said from in front. "What other sorts of jobs do you take on?"
"I've done some odds and ends. I helped with a fish problem in Venice a bit ago. And then there were some technical difficulties at an acid plant, and some excavations at Stonehenge. That sort of thing." The Doctor was uncomfortable with creating so many flimsy lies. "Would you look at that! We're almost at the edge of the fog."
Plants were beginning to appear beneath their feet, and the Doctor hopped from one patch of vegetation to another, relishing the feeling of a surface that did not slice his feet. Mats of the succulent that the Doctor had seen earlier were dotted along the ground, and viny bushes with circular leaves tangled across the rocks.
The day grew darker swiftly as the group neared the wall of mist. Tendrils of fog swirled around their feet. The three black-garbed escorts changed position, moving into a more secure formation with two at the front and one in back.
"Interesting," the Doctor muttered.
"What is it, John?" Frank asked.
"See the way those three are spaced? It's a classic security formation. I'd say there's something in that fog that they're afraid of."
The little group instinctively drew in closer, parents grabbing their children by the hand even as they put down the little ones, afraid of tripping and dropping them in the gloom. The Doctor stared forward, but he could see nothing through the dense barrier of water vapor.
"Everyone, hold hands," Rory commanded as the fog began to thicken. "I don't want anyone to trip on the vines and scrape their knees."
The Doctor began flailing his arms around, searching for Amy.
"Over here, Raggedy Man," she hissed, grabbing his hand.
"Sorry, it's a bit hard to see. But isn't this exciting! Who knows what could be on the other side of the fog. There could be a forest, or a cliff, or a whole booming civilization. Or there could be more desert, encircling the whole planet, and our captors could force us to walk forever, until we die of old age or starvation."
"That's not exciting at all."
"I have to admit, that last part got a bit dark. But still! There's an infinity of possibilities. Isn't that at least interesting?"
"Of course it is, Doctor. Would I have agreed to travel with you if I didn't like mysteries?" She tugged on Rory's hand, urging him to walk faster.
The others, with their thick-soled shoes, didn't notice the difference, but the Doctor felt the vegetation beneath his feet change gradually from tough desert plants to stringy, dew-covered grasses.
The fog was all-encompassing, so thick that everyone was effectively blind. They could see nothing but the blue-gray water vapor; other people, themselves, even the difference between the sky and the ground were invisible. They walked forward at a snaillike pace, ever so often being nudged back on course by one of the captors, but even so, the line of linked humans buckled as Carol tripped and was helped back to her feet. The Doctor silently congratulated himself on not being the first to fall, though he knew that the information, the contours of the ground and texture of grass blades snagging his toes, that he gained from the touch of his bare feet against the ground was the only thing keeping him from falling. Most of the sensation in his feet had been swallowed up by flaming agony from hours spent walking across obsidian shards, but there were a few nerves that still condescended to transmit a signal other than pain.
After several minutes of walking, the long grasses on the ground gave way to tender young plants, and then to leaf litter and moss. The Doctor closed his eyes, concentrating on the way that the sounds of the stumbling group bounced back at him. He'd spent a week with Helen Keller once, pretending to be blind, and she'd given him all sorts of tips on seeing without sight. Now, he listened to the minute echoes in the air and concluded that the group was no longer out in the open; they were surrounded on all sides by irregular, muffling objects. Based on the large, decomposing leaves that covered the ground, he guessed the objects were some sort of tree.
Gradually, the mist dissipated, and the group began to spot large forms looming out of the grey air.
"Are those trees?" David asked, once the shapes became clearer. He nearly ran into Linda as he stared up through the fog, and Frank lifted him up into his arms.
"It would seem so," Janet said, and she leaned down to pick up a handful of leaf litter from the ground. "This is interesting. These leaves are similar to those of Earth's plants. Same basic design, evolved for the same function, but this planet's evolution took a few different turns. The veins are branching, but they're much more orderly than our leaves' veins. Strange."
"Ah, perfect, glorious Janet! Leave it to a scientist to be intrigued by decaying alien leaves! Wonderful. Though you are right, these leaves are very orderly," the Doctor said, interested.
A few steps later, the group of humans and assorted aliens emerged from the last of the mist. They glanced around before looking upwards and gaping in surprise.
The three figures had led them into a massive rainforest, with trees as thick as the youngest children were tall arching up into the canopy. For the first fifteen feet up, the trees were blue-grey and smooth, their trunks irregularly shaped. After that, mosses began to sprout on the bark, followed by small plants. By the point where the trees began to divide into broad, gently curving branches, the trees' surfaces were thick with epiphytic plants holding on by thick roots or other means. Drooping fern-like plants perched in the spaces where branches split off from the trunk. Brightly colored rosettes clung to the bark, looking like flowers sprouting directly from the branches. Amy stared curiously at a yellow-orange plant with long spoon-shaped leaves before determining that it was in fact bouncing rhythmically, perhaps luring insects into its reach. Other plants were graced with irregular spots and splotches of lichens that glowed lightly in the darkness of the rainforest.
"Well, that is curious," Janet muttered, intrigued at the contrast in life between the canopy and the forest floor. The trees' wide leaves and their clustering epiphytes blocked enough light from the clouded sky that only delicate mosses could survive on the ground.
With a light nudge at the trailing members, the figures at the back directed them to move faster, nearly at a trot. The unknown aliens seemed to be getting jumpy at being out in the open for so long. The Doctor looked as far as he could into the trees, but he could see nothing suspicious to justify the captors' fear. There were no claw marks from large carnivores on the trunks; nothing moved furtively along the ground or across the gently sloping branches. And above, birds chirped lightly, insectivorous plants continued their gentle swooshing, and the occasional glimpse of grey fur could be seen from small creatures slipping among the leaves.
The group continued at its quick pace for only a brief time, though the short minutes were long enough for the hurrying to twist up the Doctor's feet, causing him to stumble. The refreshing sights of a new and unknown world were no longer enough to distract him from the deep pain in his feet, and he began again to dissociate his mind from his body, drifting numbly among his thoughts as his legs continued automatically to carry him along.
The foggy state of his mind was enough to keep him from observing the hilly grove that they were approaching. When the two leading figures stopped abruptly, the Ponds, grasping his arms from either side, stopped him from running into Frank's back.
"Would you look at that," Frank said, gesturing at the double football-field sized mound, covered in trees, that rose up behind a door made from woven saplings. "It's something right out of Swiss Family Robinson or Star Wars."
"Don't be ridiculous, Frank," the Doctor said, returning to his senses, "Those both had treehouses in the forest. This place is built underground, inside this big hill. A much better plan, if you ask me."
"Yeah," Carol said. "It's much more easily defendable."
"What makes you say that?" Rory asked.
"This lot has been hurrying us since it got clear enough to see again. They were perfectly laid back, in a creepily unresponsive way, when we were out in that desert. So there must be something in the forest that is hunting us."
Alarmed, David wrapped his arms more tightly around Frank's neck. Stella stepped closer to Linda's legs, and Linda patted her reassuringly on the head.
"And if there is something out there, we'll deal with it. Besides, we're soon to be nice and relatively safe inside that big mound," the Doctor replied.
Something moved within the darkness behind the latticed door. As the door inched open, the small group caught the first real glimpse of the aliens that had stolen them from Earth.
Thank you for reading! I always appreciate reviews, of course. Just a hint.
So, in case you're having a hard time keeping up with all of the Ponds' neighbors, here's a brief summary:
Linda and Janet: two older sisters. Janet is a retired physicist with a bad hand
Frank: father of Stella and Michael
Julia and Darren: parents of Jordan. Darren is an unloving father. You shouldn't like him
Carol: woman in her late twenties/early thirties. She lives alone and can be grumpy.
Also, if you were worrying, this will most certainly not end up as Doctor/OC. The neighbors have their narrative purposes, but romance is not one of them.
