Chapter Five

When Jane woke up, she was convinced she had gone mad and died and was walking through some chaotic, colourful purgatory. But that did not seem right; her bed was comfortable, she felt fine, despite her aching feet… She felt right, but what she saw was most definitely not.

She was in a large, spacious bedroom. When she sat up in bed, she felt almost lonely because it was so large. There was nothing in here, save for the bed on which she rested. There were doors directly across from her that led to a bathroom; she could tell it was a bathroom, because at least bathtubs looked the same no matter where you went.

There was a pile of odd clothes on the edge of her bed, along with a note from Amy asking her to join them in the console room once she was ready. She had included a map.

Thoughtful, but patronising, Jane thought. She slid off the bed and limped to the bathroom. Her feet, scratched and cut during her run through the woods, had been cleaned and bandaged.

It took her a moment to figure out how everything in the bathroom worked, but eventually she managed to draw a warm bath for herself. She found soap and some strange liquid that said that it was for hair. Once she had washed, she felt immensely better.

The clothes proved troublesome. She could not put her dirty nightdress back on. She could not bear the awkwardness of running around in her nightclothes any longer, even if her alternative proved to be embarrassing. Jane sat on the edge of the bed, clutching her towel, tussling with the idea of wearing clothes that did not look like clothes. Finally, she gave in, knowing that she could not sit there forever when her new companions were expecting her.

As it turned out, she did not have as much difficulty as she expected. In fact, these strange clothes (that somehow managed to be both feminine and masculine at the same time) were much easier to put on than many of the dresses Jane was familiar with. The dark blue trousers felt odd; she refused to see what she looked like in the mirror, she knew it would be appalling. The shirt, which was a shade of pink Jane had never seen before, was much tighter than she wanted it. She spent several minutes tugging it this way and that to see if it would loosen its hold on her body.

The shoes were the only part of the assemble she did not take immediate offence to, (though the stockings were a trifle short and only came up to her ankles). They were easy enough to put on, and more comfortable than the boots or high-heeled shoes she was accustomed to wearing.

Jane picked up the large piece of hooded material last of all; she was uncertain of what its purpose was. However, after she pulled it over her head and saw how it, in an unflattering way, covered most of the embarrassing issues she had with her new clothes, she decided to keep it. Perhaps this excursion into the unknown would not be as bad as she had thought.

Holding Amy's map between two fingers, she slowly combed her way through this gigantic castle of the Doctor's. She could not comprehend how such a thing of this size existed on the little hill. Surely someone would have noticed it.

Unless it's not always there. The thought came unbidden, and though it was ridiculous, it sounded perfectly sensible in comparison to the other strange events she had witnessed in the past few hours.

She passed a large rectangular pool of water and vaguely wondered how many servants this place needed to keep itself running. But how can it have servants if I haven't run into any yet? she wondered. This place did not seem like the kind of home – if it could be called that – that would have something as mundane as servants. It was bright. It was warm. It was… oddly beautiful and enchanting.

"Clearly this is not a place where ordinary rules apply," she murmured to herself and passed by the pool without another word.

Jane knew she was approaching what Amy called the "console room" when she heard their voices. There was also a perpetual whooshing noise; Jane couldn't fathom what it was, but it was not an unpleasant sound.

She saw the doorway up ahead, and suddenly chose to draw aside. They didn't know she was there; they didn't know she was eavesdropping.

But she was curious, and this was the easiest and fastest way of getting information from them – listening, instead of asking questions and having them fumble around for a way to explain it to her.

"I'm just wondering how we're going to explain this to her," Amy was saying. "How can she possibly understand what's happening?"

"She'll be terrified," Rory said. "Would she even think about flying in space, I mean, people from her time?"

"I don't know," Amy said. "I don't think so. She may be famous, but she's as hopeless as any other eighteenth century woman."

"Still," Rory said, "eighteenth century or not, you wouldn't normally go up to people even from our time and say, 'oh, and by the way, spaceflight is possible, and so's time travel', would you?"

"No!" the Doctor interrupted. "No, no, no, you've got it all wrong."

"Sorry?"

"As usual…"

There was something almost condescending to his words, even though his tone remained friendly. Jane had heard a similar thing before; it was the kind of voice the old and the wise assumed when they were instructing the young about the ways of the world.

"People don't change," the Doctor said. "Fundamentally, that is. Humans fifty thousand years in the future from where you two come from are still looking for the same thing – love, friendship, the meaning of life. They still want purpose, which is exactly what you lot want. It's exactly what you lot wanted ten thousand years ago. You don't give your species enough credit. A lot of people have travelled with me over the years, and not all of them come from the twenty-first century or beyond. Not all of them were people for that matter."

"Like a tin dog?" Amy said.

"Oi, don't diss the tin dog!" the Doctor said loudly.

Amy laughed – good-naturedly, though.

"But you see my point?" the Doctor continued. "It doesn't matter if you're from… oh… from Rome in 100 BC or Scotland in 1746 or from Leadworth in 2010, you're all the same, really. Brilliantly human, seeing the great, wide world for what it is because that's who you are." He paused. "And all this – the TARDIS – this is just another part of it. There are humans in 100 BC who can accept it as a spaceship that travels through time. There are humans in 2010 who can't."

Neither Amy nor Rory said anything. Jane stood quietly, one hand pressed against the wall. She wasn't sure she understood all of the words, but she felt she did know what the Doctor was saying.

She had somehow been swept up in a fantasy world that was real; she was onboard a ship that could travel through time, and only now she realised that the reason why these people were so strange to her was because they truly did not belong in Steventon in 1797.

They were from the future.

Jane looked down at herself. She was suddenly struck by an odd feeling as she realised she was wearing clothes that had not been invented yet. No wonder they were so odd.

Still, she felt slighted – offended, even – that because they came from a place in the distant future, she was simpleton compared to them. Jane silently thanked the Doctor's careful words, but even they were not enough to calm the rising burst of anger she felt.

She was a novelist; or, at least, she was attempting to be a novelist. Jane had heard many slights against her character from those who believed she could not live by her pen, but that would not stop her from writing and continuing her efforts. And now she was witnessing the opposite effect. These people, aside from the Doctor (who seemed rather neutral), slighted against her because of the era in which she had been born.

She may be from their past, but she was not a simpleton. She may not understand everything that occurred around her in this extraordinary place, but she was determined to prove that she was just as good as any of them.

Jane immediately felt that she did not need the absurd piece of material flapping around her body. She pulled it off in one smooth motion and flung it aside, entering the console room with her head held high.

Her three new acquaintances were grouped around the strange machine in the centre of the room; it was from it that the whooshing sound came.

The Doctor was the first to turn around, sensing she had entered. "Jane!" he said, looking genuinely pleased.

"Are you feeling all right?" Rory asked.

"I am fine, Mr – er…" Jane floundered. She reached out for the railing at the top of the steps.

"Rory," Rory supplied. "Rory – ah – Pond."

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw Amy grin.

"Well, then," Jane said, "thank you, Mr Pond."

"You don't have to be so formal around here, Jane," Amy said. "He's just Rory."

Jane shook her head. "Please, Mrs Pond," she said, "allow me the comfort of my own time's formalities. Your origins may be far beyond my own humble roots, but I still feel inclined to treat you with respect. Calling this man with the rather remarkable nose by his Christian name would seem indecent."

"Remarkable nose?" Rory said.

Amy, however, was unconcerned by this slight on Rory's character. She stood up, fixing Jane with a look that was both daunting and questioning. "How did you know we're married?"

Jane smiled and swept down the stairs with the grace and ease of one practised in the art of moving in long skirts. "My dear Mrs Pond," she said, "it was obvious to me within the first moments of meeting you this evening. Your treatment of each other, however crass at times, displays deep affection that has clearly been garnered over time. Then there is the small matter of your hands; you have recently been in some strong sun and there is a lighter mark where your marriage band should be. I assume, given the robust nature of your work, that you removed it to keep it safe from tonight's adventure." She finished and sat down calmly on the nearest available seat.

The Doctor chuckled quietly to himself while Amy appeared quite taken aback. Shock flitted across her face for the briefest of moments, and then she walked over to Jane and sat down beside her. "How could you possibly know about my wedding ring?"

"I find it helpful to be an observant woman," Jane said. "Naturally, if one is to write about the British gentry, one must be watchful, otherwise their actions become too layered to understand. As for you, Mrs Pond, I noticed your band – or, I should say, lack of one – when I noticed that absurd, infernal lacquer on those talons of yours."

"Talons?" Amy cried, standing up. "What's wrong with my nails?"

"I fear you are far too… futuristic for my tastes, Mrs Pond," Jane said.

Amy made a face. "Please don't say that."

"Say what?"

"Don't call me 'Mrs Pond'!" Amy said indignantly. "It makes me sound like I'm eighty." She huffed and stalked over to the machine.

Jane smiled, absentmindedly tugging at the hem of her long shirt.

"Well done, Jane," the Doctor said mildly. "You've managed to make my friend quite irritable."

"And my nose isn't that big, by the way," Rory added, still annoyed at her earlier comment. He withdrew, moving to speak quietly to his wife.

"What an enigmatic group I've found myself in," Jane said. "Tell me, Doctor, is there a name for you?"

He glanced at her. "The Doctor."

Jane blinked. "Do you not have Christian name or a surname?"

"The Doctor," he said.

"Surely you must be Doctor something," Jane insisted. "What is your surname? I must call you something other than 'Doctor'."

"It's what everyone else does," he said, shrugging. "It's fine, Jane, really."

Jane frowned. "So that is what they call you? 'Doctor'?"

"Yeah. Nice, simple, easy to remember. Doesn't necessarily bring about a sense of doom like some names—" He stopped, suddenly looking awkward. "… to some individuals, that is."

"That's highly unsatisfactory, sir," Jane said. "Names are important—"

"Oh, very! That's why I chose mine carefully."

"Then tell me what it is!"

"I did. The Doctor."

Jane laughed, even though she felt entirely irritated by this fundamentally useless exchange. "I would have you know that I am a novelist, sir," she said. "If you do not tell me your name, I will have to create one for you."

"Hmm." He seemed genuinely interested by this proposition. "It's been a while since someone's given me a name, Jane Austen. What would you call me?"

Jane smiled, thinking of her blossoming manuscript sitting on her desk at home. "John Walker," she said confidently.

"Really?" He adjusted his oddly-shaped cravat – the bow-tie. "And how did you come by such a name?"

Jane rubbed her hands together. She caught the eye of this young, eccentric man who really did not seem like a young man anymore – and truly, she knew that he was not. With eyes so knowledgeable and mannerisms so peculiar, he could not be as young as he looked. Suddenly, she found herself explaining how she heard the Doctor and the Ponds in the woods earlier that day; how she had judged them simply by the sound of their voices; and how her name for him came from the character of John Walker in her new manuscript Emily.

Far from being appalled, the Doctor was thrilled when she described Mr Walker as an oddball professor from Oxford.

"Imagine that," he said, clapping his hands together. "Me in one of your novels."

Jane observed him for a moment. "I take it that my novels will eventually become published?" she said shrewdly.

The Doctor paused. "Jane—"

"Oh, do not take that tone of voice with me, sir," she interrupted, "I am but some naïve, unmarried woman displaced in a fantastical machine that has the power to move forward and back through time." Jane paused, feeling her unmasked irritation swirling in her gut. "Please do not spare me the details of my personal life, Doctor, for I have already seen the unnatural." She fixed him with an intense look; ever since she had come to the fantastical realisation that her three acquaintances were time travellers, she had a gnawing, insatiable urge to ask one thing: would her novels ever be published? Would she succeed when everyone said she would fail?

"Jane," the Doctor said slowly, "I can't tell you. You shouldn't even be here – you're too important, I should never have disrupted your personal time stream. I should never have brought you into the TARDIS in the first place, but it was the only thing I could think of, given the circumstances—"

"You speak in riddles, sir," she interrupted, "but I know the answer is yes. After all, you knew my name when you saw my face for the first time, and your exclamation was one of surprise and excitement."

He winced. "Yeah… that's another thing I shouldn't have done—"

"No matter, what's done is done." Jane stood, her eyes sweeping the room once more. Amy and Rory were standing on the opposite side from her, still whispering to each other. Behind them, Jane could see a hat stand of some kind, on which hung one large, black hat. However, it was towards the glowing, whooshing machine in the middle of the room that her eyes were drawn. "This is a ship, you say. A foreign ship. How does she run?"

"Um," the Doctor said, turning around, "it's better to take my word that she just does."

"Barely," Amy said.

"She works fine!"

"You have to whack the console with a hammer," Amy retorted. "And you still leave the parking brakes on."

"No, I don't!" the Doctor exclaimed, flipping a switch behind his back.

Jane was sure Amy noticed. The red-head had shrewd eyes.

"Where are we going?" she asked. "If this is indeed a ship, then certainly we have a destination?"

"Um, kind of," the Doctor said hurriedly. "But that's not important right now—"

"I think it is!" Jane retorted. She felt the colour rising in her cheeks; now even the Doctor was refusing to answer her questions. She felt like a simpleton. Like a child, unknowing of the way the world worked. "You drag me from my home in the middle of the night," she said slowly, her voice low, "in the course of which I am attacked. And then I am brought to this foreign vessel without so much as a word asking for my permission and now you refuse to tell me our destination?"

"Jane, it's not as easy as that—"

"No!" she shouted. "No, it is really quite simple. If I am to accept that all of this is real and not my imagination, or a dream, or some madness encroaching on my mind, then I must accept the three of you as real. As acquaintances, as friends – or as enemies." She paused, catching her breath, taken away by this rush of anger. "In essential terms, I have been abducted by you," she continued. "I demand to know where we are going, otherwise I have no choice but to concede that you are not my allies, but as much my enemy as the monsters in the dark."

There was silence throughout the room. Amy and Rory looked at her oddly, as if they were uncertain of what to say. Jane remembered Amy's words about hopeless eighteenth century women, and her eyes stung. She raised a hand to blot the furious tears from her eyes.

Suddenly, the whooshing noise – which had been so continual until now – ceased.

Jane regarded her three acquaintances with raised eyebrows. "I suppose none of you will say what that is, even if I asked," she said.

Suddenly, she sprinted across the room towards the doors, unheeding of the shouts and calls that followed her.

"Jane!"

"Jane, don't!"

She reached the doors, pulled them open – and fell silent, words and speech blocked from her mind as she viewed the beautiful horror before her.

There was no sound, only streams of light – beautiful, gold-white light – and a vast emptiness, stretching out forever. She looked into the deep void and found it enchanting, but ultimately horrifying. She was aware that her heart was beating faster than it ever had before, and it was with great effort that she pulled herself away from the terrible sight.

Jane turned slowly, gazing directly at the Doctor. "So," she said, her voice trembling. "This is what you are."

Without another word, she walked slowly up the steps and disappeared into the depths of the ship.