The reactions to the plot twist last chapter were fantastic! So glad that so many of you didn't see it coming but were excited for all the things it will mean for the story. Thanks for all the feedback!
I don't think I have much to say except that Marion/Mariaka is one of my favourite characters to write ever. Enjoy!
p.s. if you like approximate FCs, Marion's new regeneration is based on Kate Mara. :)
You want a revelation,
You wanna get it right
But it's a conversation,
I just can't have tonight
A revelation in the light of day
You can't choose what stays and what fades away
No Light, No Light – Florence and the Machine
You're a child of the darkness
Born and bred to close your eyes
But you've learned to see with neither open
They'll take your rights, but they can't take your mind
The concepts that were planted in your brain
And nourished by the water of your pain
The more you love, the more they feel afraid
You never really did believe in fate
River Song – Ally Rhodes
The Doctor, thankfully, had not been completely paralysed from the shock of what was going on and had the sense to yank Jenny backward just before Marion's body exploded with golden regeneration energy. They all watched with wide eyes as the energy burned – though not a single scream came from within the inferno – and rewrote every cell it came into contact with.
When it finally faded, there was a sort of irony to what they saw. Tumbling curls of red hair, and sharp hazel eyes that darted around their surroundings to take it all in for the first time. Both features augmented a pretty face that was close to the same physical age as the one that had preceded it, but appeared more youthful due to the current lack of scowl it possessed.
"Oh my god," Jenny breathed.
Aliya had lost her voice completely. It was practically impossible to deny the evidence before her eyes and yet she so desperately wanted - no, needed - to try.
She can't be.
She is.
She can't be.
She is.
Aliya covered her mouth and fought to keep tears from gathering in her eyes. She would not cry. Not now. Not in front of her. Not like this.
They took my baby and hurt her until she turned that. Nausea rose in her again, potent but not so much so that it could override her determination to keep it down.
"Wow," Marion said, making them all snap out of their individual mental blocks. "It had been a while since I had done that." Her new voice was considerably more refined than her old one, making her sound like early 20th century royalty instead of a doctor from the 21st or a living weapon from the 52nd.
The redhead glanced down at her clothing.
"Oh. No. That's not going to do at all." She discarded the lab coat and stilettos before heading for the set of doors on the other side of the bed, which ended up being a very large walk-in wardrobe. "Ah. That's more like it." She started going through the various clothes at her disposal with only a glance or two in the direction of the others in the room. "I imagine you might have questions. We might as well get those over with now. Multitasking and all that jazz."
Of the three people whom she had just bemused entirely, the one who snapped first was the one they all had least expected.
"You cow!" Jenny shouted, earning shocked looks from her parents and a lifted eyebrow from Marion, who had popped her head out of the wardrobe upon hearing her surprising language. "You told me you were ill. You told me you were dying, and it was all just a stupid lie that I bet you didn't think twice about. And for what?"
Marion shrugged, making her newly long hair shift around her shoulders. "It was necessary."
"How?"
She finished wiggling on the leather trousers she had come out in before answering as casually as one would in a conversation about the weather. "I'd threatened to massacre the entire Torchwood team while talking to your father," she reminded them, "And Hart had suspected me long before that."
"I saw him dragging you away right after," the Doctor murmured.
Jenny frowned. "So he suspected that you were-"
"A treacherous bitch," Marion finished, the coarse word sounding rather wrong in her newly refined voice, "But he knew nothing of the nature of my plans and didn't particularly care. He just wanted to be sure that he and his precious boyfriend were going to be safe. Naturally they weren't remotely involved in what I was waiting to do, so I assured him of that and we continued on as normal." She eyed the trousers she had put on. "Ooh, yes, I like these."
"What does any of that have to do with lying about your health?" Jenny asked, hurt and injustice still in her eyes.
"I'd stopped being careful," Marion said, disappearing back into the wardrobe, "Waiting for this for so long was a miserable way to live and I was getting tired of it. But I was being obvious enough to attract suspicion from Hart, and the Doctor, and I was fairly sure Jack was keeping a closer eye on me as well. I needed something to explain away my behaviour. Finding out I didn't have long to live seemed like one of the easiest excuses."
"I'm your only friend, and you let me think you were going to die-"
"Our friendship was doomed from the start," Marion told her, finally sounding like her old self despite the physical differences because bitter scorn had entered her new voice. She emerged from the wardrobe in a white camisole and moved to put her stilettos back on as well as retrieve her gun and phone from her coat. "After this you were always bound to hate me."
"But I'm not just your friend," Jenny said, horrified, "I'm your-"
"My what?" The redhead asked, her tone mocking. "My best friend? My teammate? My confidante?"
"Yes, but-"
"How can you be sure that anything I ever told you was true, after what you just saw?"
Jenny didn't seem to have anything to say after that. She just stared at the woman who had been her friend like a puppy who had just been kicked.
But something about Marion's blasé attitude set off warning bells in Aliya's head, and from the hesitant look on the Doctor's face, she was fairly sure he was thinking along similar lines.
"Torchwood members are required to submit blood samples to be held in the medical lab, and your file says that you're A positive," the Doctor said slowly, "But given what I know now, that can't have been true."
"Of course not. I couldn't submit my own blood in case it came to light that it wasn't quite human."
"Not quite human," Aliya repeated, frowning at her even as she spoke for the first time since the regeneration, "I'd call that a massive understatement."
Marion rolled her eyes. "Look, I don't care how high and mighty you people might think your biology is. I don't share enough of it to care, just enough to get some of the perks."
The Doctor, Aliya and Jenny shared very puzzled looks. When the redhead noticed this, she just sighed.
"Right. Of course you don't have a clue, that's the entire point, or else I wouldn't have gotten this far," she said, before gesturing to herself. "Human conceived during TARDIS flight and therefore accidentally subject to the energy of the Time Vortex. Consequentially, mostly human but with a bit of Time Lord thrown in."
She doesn't know, Aliya realised, unsure of whether that made it better or worse, they've fed her this ridiculous lie about conception in the Time Vortex to keep her from seeing what was right in front of her. Just like she did with us. For all she would know, her fully Time Lord biology was just what human plus Time Lord looked like, if such a thing could possibly exist.
"Conceived by who?" The Doctor asked, glancing at Aliya and seeming to be thinking the same thing.
"Some married couple who travelled with you," Marion answered, flapping her hand dismissively, "That's not important."
"But that's not-"
"Something we thought was possible," Aliya said, pointedly cutting Jenny off, "But apparently today is just full of surprises." When Jenny shot them questioning looks, Aliya switched to Gallifreyan, knowing Jenny would understand well enough. "Jenny, she doesn't know. They've at least partially brainwashed her. And you can't tell her about her real heritage. She's dangerous enough as it is without her thinking that we're lying to her as well."
"Lying?"
"She wouldn't believe us if we told her the truth," the Doctor told her, "You must be able to see that."
It struck Aliya that it was surprisingly easy for her to speak about the situation like she had accepted it, even when the opposite was far from true. Perhaps what she was really doing was trying to keep anyone from uttering the horrible truth out loud. She wasn't sure she would be able to take hearing it.
"Well, as fascinating as it is to hear you three babble on in a language I don't speak, we should probably be getting down to the business at hand," Marion said, and the words had a sinister feel to them that again didn't match the pleasant sound of her new voice.
"And what business might that be?" Aliya asked, warily. She still felt ill and was rejecting any truth that this woman, this murderous bitch in front of her that she had spent so long hating, could be her daughter.
The other woman smirked. "Well, firstly I need to know whether Jenny can pilot the TARDIS on her own."
"No, she can't," the Doctor told her, "Not yet. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Well," Marion said, her smirk remaining, "It dictates whether I can shoot your girlfriend yet or not. Apparently I have to hold off on that if I want to get back to the 21st century, which I do, because Jenny isn't enough on her own."
The Doctor frowned. "What about me?"
She grinned at him. A genuine spark of joy was in her hazel eyes. "Oh, Doctor. You're already dead."
"What? What do you mean?" He asked, his voice urgent.
She started laughing, revealing herself to be the psychopath that Aliya had always suspected her to be. "You know, maybe it wasn't the yellow ones that were poisonous after all," she said, sounding far too pleased with herself. The words meant nothing to Aliya or Jenny, but they looked at the Doctor and saw he had gone pale.
"Oh," he breathed, "Stupid, stupid Doctor."
"Yes, you were rather," Marion agreed, smiling, "Taking sweets from strangers, I'd have thought you were old enough to know better." Then she sighed. "It was supposed to be a solution that would kill you without implementing me at all. The effects of the Judas tree poison tend to slow the body down, meaning that in an environment as hostile as this it would be easy for you to seem to die by pure accident. Which would have meant a free and easy ride back to Torchwood for me."
"And then you got yourself shot," Aliya said, trying to keep down her worry for the Doctor's wellbeing through cool logic, "And had your cover blown anyway."
"Exactly. I might as well let him die here with all of you fully knowing what I've done, because you're only going to take me home if my gun's at your head, now that I've killed your precious Doctor."
"I'm not actually dead yet," the Doctor protested indignantly, "Just in case anyone had forgotten." But then he winced, his body jerking slightly with him. "Of course, this would all explain why I've felt a bit off over the last couple of minutes, but at the time I had an alternative explanation."
Aliya considered that just as she had a thousand unpleasant memories of Marion that she now had to fight to keep from associating with the baby she had lost, the Doctor had listened to Marion threatened to kill all of her teammates. Not a pleasant memory to be recalling with this new information providing a whole new background for it.
"Ow!" The Doctor yelped, doubling over as the poison began to hit him more powerfully.
"Dad," Jenny said, hurrying to his side and making sure he stayed on his feet.
"I'm fine."
"No, you're dying," Marion said boredly, moving to look at the city through the window of the bedroom.
"Details."
"This place…a final haven in the midst of a horrific war." She smiled a little as she took in the sight below. "That sounds like something I could enjoy. Or improve." She glanced back at them. "Of course, I can't merely go exploring for the risk that you'll just leave me here."
Before Aliya knew what was going on, she was in Marion's grasp and had the barrel of her gun at her temple.
"Marion!" Jenny exclaimed, horrified.
"Shut it," Marion snapped, keeping her eyes on the Doctor, who was watching her with a sadness in his eyes. "You said these rooms had parachutes. Where?"
"How should I know?" He asked defensively. "I can't know everything, why does everyone always expect me-"
"Fine, shut up then." She looked to Jenny instead. "Search this room until you find them, or I'll blow your mother's brains out."
"You need me to get you back to the 21st century," Aliya said.
"Well, yes," Marion admitted, not sounding particularly worried, "But that doesn't mean you need to be in perfect working order. You could stand to lose a few limbs." She narrowed her eyes at Jenny, who hadn't left the Doctor's side. "Move it, princess, or I'll find something sharp and start cutting her up."
Mariaka is threatening to torture me, Aliya thought, feeling ill again, this can't be real. This has to be some kind of sick nightmare. But it wasn't. She would never have been able to dream up something this twisted. She was surprised she had been able to even consider the woman holding her to be Mariaka. The fact that she had a new face made it easier. The connection her brain refused to make was between Marion and the word daughter. And that wasn't going to change.
Jenny scrambled to find the parachutes, and eventually was successful upon opening up the bottom drawer of the room's large dresser.
"Good, now put it on my back. And don't try anything."
Jenny followed the first instruction, but did attempt to grab Marion's gun only to be knocked back onto the floor in the space of a second.
"I'm a living weapon," the woman holding Aliya told Jenny, rolling her eyes, "I was trained to be the best. So don't bother trying. Now put your gun in my back pocket, I'll get a lot more done with two."
Jenny reluctantly did as she was told. Marion yanked Aliya with her over to the window and up onto the sill. Aliya could only look at where the Doctor was clutching a bedpost to remain upright and hope with everything she had that he could find a way to counteract the poison.
"What do I do?" She asked him. For once she had no idea of how to proceed. How could she reason with this woman, whose entire personality revealed just how horribly Kovarian and her people must have hurt her? Was trying to tell her the truth of her origins the way forward, and was there a way to do it when Aliya herself couldn't bring herself to accept it because the mere thought made her stomach turn?
The Doctor just held her gaze and gave her a melancholy smile. "The impossible. You have to believe. And you have to forgive."
"I can't."
"Then I'm dead," he replied, "And our baby is gone forever."
Aliya couldn't reply because that was when Marion pushed the window open and leapt from it into the open air. Aliya screamed at the top of her lungs as they went into free fall, but was relieved to feel her kidnapper of sorts pull the parachute quickly so that they slowed down and began to descend on Daher's city at a rate she could stomach.
Finally, they touched down on a street with blissfully solid pavement. Marion let go of Aliya, resulting in the Time Lady falling onto her hands and knees. The blonde had no complaints about the rough treatment because she was so glad to be back on the ground.
"What are we doing down here? Getting back in that building will be impossible," Aliya said, wondering how she could be so stupid. "You want to be able to get back to the 21st century, but you just put walls of platinum and a whole force of guards and soldiers between us and the TARDIS."
"Guards and soldiers don't scare me," Marion replied, not even looking at her because she was too busy appraising the various buildings around them, "I'll force my way back in there when I want to."
"You'll get us both killed."
A smirk was sent her way. "No."
"I should have known your arrogance would transcend regenerations," Aliya spat.
"Just as I imagine your whining transcends yours," Marion retorted, checking her gun and barely glancing at her, "And being annoying transcends the Doctor's. You might want to remember how little weight I give your opinions before voicing them. It would save you breath and me time."
Aliya didn't care who this woman apparently was. She was no different with her red hair and fancy voice than she had been when she'd been the lanky brunette doctor. "Fuck you."
Marion ignored her and instead had honed her gaze in on a restaurant some way down the street. "Just stand up and shut your mouth," she commanded, pointing her gun back in her direction in case she got any ideas of disobeying, "And don't think I won't shoot one of your ears off if you annoy me any more than usual."
They walked to the doors of the restaurant and Marion pulled out Jenny's gun to grasp it in her other hand before kicking the door in.
"Everybody out!" She shouted. All the patrons gaped at her. They seemed to be middle or upper middle class citizens, none of them armed and all of them bemused. "Now, or I'll start shooting the ones who haven't moved."
That got them moving. They ran past Marion and Aliya out onto the street, screaming and pushing past each other in their urgency.
"That's better," Marion said, "Now, you stay right where you are. If you move, I'll know." She then turned away, her right arm behind her so as to keep a gun on Aliya at all times. Aliya sighed and stayed put while the redhead made for the sound system, though what she was planning on doing with it she had no idea.
When she turned to glance at the street, the blonde was surprised to see a guard from Daher's palace standing a metre away, a parachute still trailing behind him. She barely had time to frown at him before her vision flared until all she could see was white.
By the time the light behind her eyes faded, Aliya was lying on the grated floor of a round dark blue corridor.
"Welcome. You are unauthorised," a nearby robotic voice said, and when she got to her feet she saw three machines that vaguely resembled jellyfish coming near her, "Your death will now be implemented."
"What the fuck?!" She exclaimed, scrambling backward. She hadn't thought it possible for her day to get any more bizarre, but apparently she had been wrong.
"Please remain calm while your life is terminated."
"Well that's not happening." She ran towards what looked like it could be a door, but it wouldn't open and a moment later she realised she had only managed to trap herself. The murderous jellyfish robots were closing in. "Oh lord. I'm not going out like this after everything that's happened."
"Please cooperate during your officially sanctioned termination. It is normal to experience fear during your incineration."
"Cooperative isn't in my genetic programming," she told it, if only because snide remarks were her only defence left and if she was going out, she wasn't going quietly.
That was when the door behind her opened and a man inside what appeared to be a lift grabbed her arm.
"It's okay," he told her, "Stay still and don't move."
She happily did as she was told while he strapped something to her bare forearm, a wristbands of sorts with a light that changed from red to green a few moments later.
"Privileges activated," he said, directing his words to the antibodies, "See? Activated."
The robots halted. "You are authorised. Your existence will continue."
Aliya felt herself relax and let out a huge sigh of relief. "Thanks," she told the man. "What the hell's going on?"
"This is Justice Department Vehicle Six Zero One Eight," he replied, gesturing for her to follow him into the lift, "You're not guilty of anything."
"Well thanks," she said, shooting him a weird look.
He just smiled, as if vaguely amused. "Welcome aboard the Teselector."
The Doctor, with great difficulty and more stealth than he had thought he possessed, had managed to navigate his way down a level of Daher's palace and get back into the TARDIS without getting caught or shot.
He had given Jenny the sonic and sent her off after her mother and sister, as Jenny's personal history with Marion was currently their greatest asset. The blonde girl had been unsure and markedly upset, but eventually had taken the other parachute and leapt from the window just as they had a few minutes before.
Now, however, he was slumped against the jump seat in the console room and trying to get the TARDIS interface to respond. When it did, though, it had taken his form. Which was the absolute last thing he wanted to see while he was dying.
"Voice interface enabled," his holographic self said.
"Oh no, no, no, no, no, give me someone I like." The hologram's form shifted into that of Rose Tyler. "Oh thanks. Give me guilt." It changed to Martha Jones. "Also guilt." The hologram became Donna Noble. "More guilt!" He cried, wincing. "Come on, there must be someone in the universe that I haven't screwed up yet!"
The interface took on a different form, one in Gallifreyan dress with brown skin and dark eyes that watched him curiously.
"Voice interface enabled."
"Well this one's debatable," he muttered as he looked at Aliya's fourth self, the gentle one who had loved him so much more than either of them had been able to sustain. He hadn't screwed her up as such, but she had been certainly changed by her experiences with him and not entirely for the better. "Still. I'm a selfish old man. You can stay. My Aliyanadevoralundar. My Ali."
"I am not Aliyanadevoralundar. I am the voice interface."
"Do you want to run away with me again, Ali?" He asked, smiling at her and wishing she would smile back. "I'd look after you better this time."
"I am not Aliyanadevoralundar. I am the voice interface."
"You're so pedantic," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes. "How am I doing?"
"Your system has been contaminated by the poison of the Judas tree. You will be dead in thirty two minutes." Even if the voice interface looked like Aliya's past incarnation, its voice was stiff, betraying it as mere technology. He chose to ignore that detail as best he could.
"Okay. So basically better regenerate, that's what you're saying."
"Regeneration disabled. You will be dead in thirty two minutes."
"Unless I'm cured, yeah?"
"There is no cure. You will be dead in thirty two minutes."
"Why do you keep saying that?"
"Because you will be dead in thirty two minutes."
He rolled his eyes. "You see? There you go again, skipping thirty one whole minutes where I'm absolutely fine. Pedantic, that's all I'm saying."
"You will be fine for thirty one minutes. You will be dead in thirty two minutes."
"You're better than that, you know," the Doctor said, shaking his head, "You don't need to act how they want you to. We can bend the rules, just like I always taught you. Marion needs me. She's about to find out that everything she's ever believed is a lie. And you're going to be absolutely no help. I can't die now."
"You will not die now. You will die in thirty two minutes."
"I'm going out in the first round," he muttered, almost chuckling, "Ringing any bells?" He cried out as the poison surged through his body. "Okay. Need something for the pain now. Come on, Ali. It's me. Please."
Those eyes of hers watched him, lacking their characteristic warmth. "I am not Aliyanadevoralundar. I am the voice interface."
"Ali, please," he whispered, "I can be brave for you. And for our daughters. But you have got to tell me how." He slipped further until he was on the floor with his cheek against the glass. "Please."
"Your coat is the most absurd thing I've ever seen, and you used to wear a vegetable."
The Doctor's eyes, which had been drifting shut, snapped open as he recognised the very words this incarnation of her had said to him in the courtroom where the Valeyard had been prosecuting him.
He started to laugh, however weakly.
"There we go," he said, smiling as he began to push himself up off the floor, "Aliyanadevoralundar. Criticising me in every regeneration. That's my girl."
The Teselector lift came out into a small control room of sorts, where a small team of people were seated and busy at their various screens and panels of controls.
"What the hell is this thing?" Aliya asked. A man in a swivelling chair glanced at her over his shoulder but didn't bother to answer. An unexpected noise began to fill the restaurant which they were able to see through the screen and hear through the Teselector's systems. "Is she playing punk music?"
Marion, who had apparently not noticed that her blonde companion had been replaced by a robot worked by tiny people, let her head drop back and eyes shut as the music washed over her. A moment later she cleared a table so that she could climb on top of it and dance along to the heavy beat, laughing as she did so.
"She's mad," Aliya whispered, "She's officially insane." But that was only the beginning of what was bothering her. "But what is this thing? What are you all doing?"
"We were in this time period for Erebus Daher," the man who had saved her from the robots said, "But we were trying to get to him through one of his guards, and we were caught up in the pursuit of the four intruders in some of the upper levels. All the rooms were searched and we saw the blue box. It was a match in connection to one of the most wanted war criminals in the universe."
Aliya tightened her lips, eyeing the woman who was now lying down on the restaurant table and half-singing along to the music with her eyes shut. "Her."
"Mariakanerolunar," he said, nodding, "The woman who kills the Doctor."
"How could you possibly know that?"
He glanced at one of the side screens, which showed the Doctor's time and location of death.
Utah, 2011. Out of a deeply veiled part of her mind, memories that had been hidden from her came rushing back. Standing on that shore next to River Song and seeing the Doctor die right in front of her eyes, screaming and crying for all she was worth when River tried to convince her that the body needed disposing of…the creatures had taken it from her mind but now she remembered it all.
"No," she whispered, her hearts clenching at the horrific thought of him dying for real. "Wait, but he's dying now. How does that work?"
"We're not sure," one of the people near her answered. "Someone's mistake, probably."
"As it turns out, finding our girl here was perfect. We were here far too early for Daher anyway. We're thinking there might be a small fault in our temporal engines, since we nearly got rid of Hitler in 1938 last week."
After landing in the street, Jenny had followed the sound of screaming until she came to a restaurant that was blaring loud music that sounded very much like it was from the 21st century. When she got inside, she was greeted with the sight of Marion lying on her back on a nearby table with her eyes shut while she sang along to the music, and Aliya just standing passively nearby.
"What are you two doing?!" She asked, staring at them both. Then she frowned. "And is this Fall Out Boy?"
"Possibly," Marion replied without opening her eyes.
"How'd you manage that?"
"I made adjustments to the system until my phone could connect to it. It wasn't difficult."
"You like Fall Out Boy? I didn't see that coming."
"I thought we'd established that you know nothing of substance about me."
Jenny swallowed, hard. "You might be mostly right about that. But I know at least one thing. The thing that's arguably the most important." Before she could continue along that line of thought, however, she had to address the other issue in the room. "Mum, why the hell are you just standing there?!"
"You killed the Doctor," Aliya said to Marion, her body and voice so rigid that Jenny could immediately tell that something was seriously wrong even if her sister – that thought would take some getting used to – hadn't.
Marion made a noise that actually sounded like a giggle, which would have been downright disturbing in her old body but almost suited her new one. She sat up from where she had been lying down on the table. "I know. Finally." She leant her head back and shut her eyes again. "Neither of you could possibly imagine the sense of fucking freedom. I can have a life now. An actual proper life that isn't just waiting and lying and pushing away every single person who shows an interest in getting to know me."
As bizarre and disheartening as the revelation they had been confronted with was, Jenny knew that it was definitely less upsetting for her than her parents. They only knew the Marion who shunned the world. Jenny had been lucky enough to see glimpses of what was deeper. And now everything about her friend that had never added up made perfect sense.
It was also possible that if they could make Marion see reason, that she might be able to let go of all the negative thoughts and feelings that had been poured into her head all her life.
"This is why you were how you were," Jenny said quietly, eyeing her with sympathy, "Because you didn't have a choice. You were a puppet."
"And now my strings have been cut," Marion agreed, sliding off the table and stretching her body with a new energy. She bounced on her toes to the beat of her music in the background.
"You killed the Doctor on the orders of the movement known as the Silence and Academy of the Question," Aliya continued, as if she hadn't even heard them, "You accept and know this to be true?"
"Yes," the redhead said, facing her and grinning with a manic gleam in her eye, "I did kill him and now I get to be free of them for the rest of my life. And once we're back in Cardiff, I'm going to riddle your chest with bullets so that I never have to hear another stupid word come out of your mouth ever again."
"Marion, please, don't," Jenny pleaded, "I don't care what they told you, you don't have to be the killer they made you into."
"It's a bit late for that, princess," her sister said, smirking, "Your precious father wasn't my first kill by a long shot. But that's the best part. I don't have to kill Aliya. My instructions were to neutralise her and that has a multitude of interpretations."
Jenny smiled. "See, that's good-"
"But I'm going to kill her, because I want to. It's going to be one of the first things I do for myself and no one else."
It broke Jenny's hearts to see the hatred in Marion's new eyes, the excitement that hid the pain and childish desperation her upbringing had bred in her.
"You want your first step away from a life of being a killer to be murder?" Jenny asked, hoping with everything she had that the person she had seen in Marion was still in there.
Unfortunately, she couldn't even be sure that Marion had had the time to hear and process her question before the thing that she had thought was Aliya opened its mouth and shot a field of light at the redhead, one that had her swearing and demanding to be released with a strained but forceful voice.
"Sorry, did you say she killed the Doctor?" A familiar voice had the Aliya-machine as well as Jenny and Marion turning to where the Doctor was leaning against the TARDIS at the other end of the room. He was now dressed in a long tailed tuxedo, a top hat, and carried a cane. "The Doctor? Doctor who?"
Well, her father always had liked to make an entrance.
This chapter was fun, but the next one is one of my favourites. (They were originally all one chapter but it got WAY too long.) I'm back at uni now, so I'm going to post the next chapter in another week because 4 days really isn't sustainable anymore. Wish me luck in finding time to write in between uni work!
Let me know what you thought of the chapter!
-MayFairy :)