Night Terrors AU time! I reckon I might do a storyline exploring the Tenza more at some point, it would be really interesting.
Thanks to all who have reviewed so far!
Enjoy! For Jenny's first storyline as a companion, I'm afraid to say she really doesn't get much to do here, but that's just the way it worked out. The God Complex AU (and the many story arcs after both original and AU where she is present) will be different, promise!
Three Weeks Earlier
"Wait, this is my room?"
The Doctor and Aliya shared grins at Jenny's wide eyed excitement. They were standing in the doorway of the newly created room which bore Jenny's name on the door in English and Gallifreyan.
The room wasn't large, but it sported sky blue wallpaper and a large skylight window above the bed where fake sunlight streamed through, and so it felt very open and cheerful. True to Gallifreyan design, the bed was large and circular, though the dolphin printed blankets were decidedly less so. There was a bar hanging from the ceiling for exercises such as pull ups, though the Doctor hadn't hesitated to point out that she could hang something from it too if she preferred.
"Do you like the skylight?" He asked, clapping his hands together as the trio moved into the room. "That bit is probably my favourite. See, there's the sun setting, but if you go over here-" He moved to the wall near the bed and showed his daughter the small panel there, "You could put it on default, which means you'll see whatever is really above the TARDIS. You've also got star, meteor shower, and cartoon settings. I thought I'd cover all the bases."
"Wait, I thought the TARDIS designed the rooms," Aliya said, giving him a curious look.
"She does, but this has been a special little project of mine," he admitted, sheepishly grinning.
"Since when?"
"My last self actually sketched out a rough design for the room, once. I never thought anything would come of it." His eyes were sad for a brief moment as he no doubt recalled how long he had thought his daughter was dead, but he brightened a moment later and put his arm around Jenny's shoulders. "But as soon as I found out you were alive, Jenny, I hunted the sketch down and got to work."
Aliya frowned at him. "Why did you never tell me? I could have helped."
The Doctor scratched his cheek awkwardly. "Well, when I say as soon as, I really mean when I found myself with a lot of free time. It was when we were…separate."
"Oh."
"And then after that it just seemed like a more personal project."
Considering that when it came down to it, Jenny was far more his than hers, Aliya couldn't really be angry about not being included. She just nodded and let herself enjoy the idea of him sitting down and scribbling down designs with an adorable frown of concentration on his face.
"I love it," Jenny said, beaming up at her father, "Thanks Dad."
"Good. Now get some sleep. We'll see you later."
Jenny rushed to jump on her new bed, making her parents grin. They left the room and shut the door behind them before heading back in the direction of the console room. After only a couple of seconds of silence, both of them tried to talk at once.
"Doctor, I remember what happened in Utah-"
"Aliya, I downloaded my personal records from the Teselector – wait, what?"
They stared at each other, unsure but suspecting, before speaking simultaneously for the second time.
"You know."
"I'm going to die."
Both of their expressions dropped. Having the other person say it made it feel truly real, and that wasn't something they wanted to face. Aliya hadn't been planning on telling him the entire truth, because it wasn't any less dangerous than it had been right after she had witnessed it. But now, for better or worse, he knew. And while the more traditional part of her screamed that him knowing his fate was wrong and utterly against the rules, she was mostly just relieved that she didn't have to keep such an awful secret from him.
"What are we going to do?" She asked, her voice quiet and desperate.
The Doctor's eyes were solemn and sad. "I'm not so sure there is much we can do. Did you see it happen?"
Aliya recalled sobbing over his lifeless body and swallowed. "I could happily have done without ever getting that memory back."
"I'm assuming you saw the information while inside the Teselector and it all came back to you?" She just nodded. "Those Silence creatures were probably behind the initial memory loss."
"I can't just let you die," she said, her voice breaking. "But it happened, I saw it, it's a fixed point. We can't change it."
"No, we can't," the Doctor agreed, his voice firm, "But we know where and when it happens. That means we can run from it for as long as we can."
Aliya just threw herself at him, hugging him as fiercely as possible and releasing a single sob into his shoulder. "You know I'll run with you forever."
Present
Mari's visit, all things considered, had actually gone quite well. Jenny went to bed with a grin on her face that was even bigger than usual, and the Doctor and Aliya retired to their own bedroom shortly after, discussing how it was at least something that both of them had managed to have conversations of sorts with their red headed daughter.
When they ran out of things to say, the Doctor just sat on the edge of the bed and finished taking his shoes off. He noticed Aliya's silence easily.
"What is it?"
"Are we really not going to tell them about Utah?" She asked. The question had been plaguing her for days.
He sighed. "What good would it do?"
"But to keep this from them-"
"Saves them from the torment I have to see in you every day," the Doctor said, as steady in his stance as ever, "What would be the point?"
Aliya came to sit next to him and got busy getting rid of her own shoes. "I know. But I just don't know how to do this."
"It'll be okay."
"No, it won't!" She snapped, her head whipping to look at him. "Don't you dare tell me that everything's going to be okay when I've already had to watch you die. Even if we run from this for centuries, I will never be able to just let you go off to your death."
"You'll do what you have to," he said, "As the last Time Lady of Gallifrey, it's your duty to preserve the timeline."
She threw her shoe across the room in outrage, breaking an ornament on a bookshelf and making him jump. "Don't you dare talk to me about duty!" She cried, looking at him through a sheen of tears. "If you're going to die, I don't care about my fucking duty or the rules or timelines, I just want you to be safe!"
The Doctor, who had been trying to be so stoic, crumbled a little. His eyes became watery. "I know. And I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't make it all better." He kissed her, so abruptly that she was completely taken by surprise. She pulled away a second later, her face still showing her distress. "And neither does kissing me!"
"I know," he said, his hand coming up to cup her cheek and stroke it lightly with his thumb, "But if I've only got a limited time left to kiss you, I intend to make the most of it."
That set off a proper round of tears. Aliya just blinked them away as best she could before kissing him with new urgency all over his stupid face and not caring that she could taste the salt on his skin.
His hands pulled her body to his, and he shuffled back on the bed so that he could pull her on top of him and slide her dress up her body. Aliya briefly broke their kiss to make it easier for him to discard it, but found that stopping to look at him just made the crying worse.
"Hey," he said softly, "Save the tears for later. I intend to annoy you for a few more centuries yet. Or decades at least."
Her face contorted and she hit him on the chest. "You're so bloody stupid," she mumbled, making a noise that seemed to be between a sob and a laugh as she leaned over him so that her hair almost touched his shirt.
"That's me. And the stupid hearts of this stupid old man will be yours long after they've stopped beating."
Aliya lifted her head so that she could meet his eyes. The raw honesty and devotion in them staggered her. There wasn't much left for her to do but kiss him again and this time not stop for anything.
The Doctor had been in the middle of telling a story back from one of his adventures with Peri when he broke off mid-sentence and grabbed his psychic paper out of his pocket. He looked at it with surprise.
"Please save me from the monsters," he said, concern immediately crossing his face. He put the paper away and turned to the controls. "Haven't done this in a while."
"This being…?" Jenny prompted.
"We're making a house call."
Any piloting of the TARDIS done with Jenny on board meant the Time Lords explaining it to her, and teaching her bit by bit the multitude of things necessary to know if one was going to be flying a time travelling spaceship. The generated anomaly was a quick learner, even if she didn't have the academic background that someone her relative age at the Academy would have.
Within a few minutes they had landed, and the group left the TARDIS to find themselves outside an apartment block that to Aliya just looked like a dizzyingly stack of coloured squares. The idea of humans crammed in there like that was a little bizarre to her, but then she supposed some of them had few options when it came to living choices.
"Well this looks more or less exactly like the city I only left a few weeks ago," Jenny said, sounding somewhat unimpressed.
The Doctor sniffed the air. "No, this is definitely England. And today isn't about planets and history, today we're answering a cry for help from the scariest place in the universe – a child's bedroom."
As they began to walk towards the entrance, the Doctor passed around the psychic paper for the other two to see.
"Please save me from the monsters," Aliya read, "Do you think the monsters are real, or in his head?"
The Doctor shrugged. "In my experience, it's very possible for them to be both. But whatever those monsters are, they've scared a child until they were so scared that somehow their cry for help got through to us in the TARDIS."
They ended up splitting up to go knocking on doors in hopes of finding the child in need of their help. One of the first doors that Aliya tried opened to reveal a grumpy looking man with a dog.
"Hello, I'm with community services," she said pleasantly, holding a hand out to him. He gave her a once over that took a little too long before shaking the offered hand. "Just checking everything's alright around here. No bother with any of the neighbours?"
"Jim Purcell," he said, gesturing for her to come in and offering her a smile that looked more like a leer as she did so, "And course we get on well. I'm their landlord. They love me, don't they?"
"Oh," Aliya replied, blinking, "Right. Naturally."
"I'm a very hospitable man," he continued, making it sound like he was trying to impress her. The glint in his eye made her stomach turn. His dog growled at Aliya, but he shushed the animal. "Now Bernard, don't growl at the pretty lady."
She tried to hide her discomfort and headed back towards the door. "I think it would be better if I came back later. Thank you for your time." He looked vaguely disappointed but she was back out on the landing with the door shut behind her before he could say anything.
She met up with the Doctor and Jenny who were coming towards her.
"The child has to be around here somewhere," Jenny was saying. The Doctor's eyes, though, had locked onto something across the way. "I didn't find a scared one, just scary ones."
"I found three old ladies, a traffic warden from Croatia, and a man with ten cats," he replied. "Jenny, you take the next floor down, and Aliya can go with you or come with me."
"You going to be okay on your own?" Aliya asked Jenny. Ever since the revelation about Lake Silencio and what their future held, she found herself more reluctant to leave the Doctor's side.
Jenny nodded. "I'm a big girl. I looked after myself on a regular basis at Torchwood, you know."
"We know." They parted ways, and the moment they were out of earshot Aliya turned to the Doctor as they walked. "You think you saw the child, don't you?"
"Maybe."
They eventually came to a halt outside one of the doors. The Doctor knocked before whipping out his psychic paper to have ready for the dark haired man who opened the door and blinked at them with surprise but less hostility than the others.
"Oh, right," he said mildly, "That was quick."
The Doctor glanced at his paper. "Was it?"
"Claire said she'd phone someone. Social services."
"And here we are," Aliya replied brightly, while the Doctor just monosyllabically agreed. "Here to help in any way we can."
"It's not easy, you know, admitting your kid's got a problem," the man said, his face falling a little.
"Believe me, I know." Aliya's sympathetic and somewhat automatic reply took her by surprise, her thoughts having immediately gone to Mari. She directed them back to the issue at hand.
"You've got a problem, I've got a problem," the Doctor told the man cheerfully, "I bet they're connected. I'm the Doctor. Call me Doctor, and her Aliya. What can we call you?"
"Alex."
"Hello, Alex."
They came inside the flat, which was small but cosy, and ended up sitting on the couch while Alex took the armchair. The Doctor located a family photo album and flicked through it while Alex told them what was going on.
"Ever since he was born he's been a funny kid."
"Funny's good," the Doctor replied, glancing up, "We like funny, don't we?"
Alex didn't seem so sure, because he just kept going, his frown only deepening. "He never cries. Bottles it all up, I suppose. Tell him off, he just looks at you."
"How old is he?"
"He was eight in January. I mean, he should be growing out of stuff like this, shouldn't he?"
Aliya shrugged. "All children are different, it's a universal fact. Some need more time with things than others."
"But it's got worse, though, lately?" The Doctor inquired.
Alex nodded, seeming very glum about the whole thing. "Yeah. We talked about getting help. You know, maybe sending him somewhere. He started getting these nervous tics. You know, funny little cough, blinking all the time." He sighed. "But now it's got completely out of hand. I mean, he's scared to death of everything!"
"Pantaphobia."
"What?"
"That's what it's called," the Doctor explained, "Pantaphobia. Not a fear of pants though, if that's what you're thinking. It's a fear of everything. Including pants, I suppose, in that case." Aliya elbowed him in the side and he winced. "Sorry. Go on."
"He hates clowns."
"Understandable."
"Old toys. He thinks the old lady across the way is a witch. He hates having a bath in case there's something under the water. The lift sounds like someone breathing." Alex shook his head helplessly. Look, I don't know. I'm not an expert. Maybe you can get through to him."
"We'll do our best."
Aliya felt a rush of great sympathy for Alex - he plainly loved his son and wanted to help him desperately, and not being able to was definitely taking its toll on him.
A crash from behind the door that read George's Room had them jumping to their feet. Alex pushed the door open and rushed inside to where a small boy with pale red hair was curled up on his bed.
"George? You okay? What's the matter?" He spotted the lamp on the floor. "Oh. Never mind. Were you having a nightmare, son?"
George shook his head. "Wasn't a nightmare. I wasn't asleep." His eyes flicked to where the Doctor and Aliya stood in the doorway. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor, and this is Aliya."
His eyes widened and fear instantly filled them. "A doctor? Have you come to take me away?"
"No," Aliya said quickly, hearing the Doctor say the same word from next to her, "We promise. But we do want to talk to you."
"What about?"
The Doctor didn't break his gaze. "About the monsters." He ended up sitting on George's bed and fiddling with a Rubik's cube, with Aliya next to him.
"Maybe it was things on the telly, you know?" Alex wondered, pacing slightly.
"Right."
"Scary stuff, getting under his skin, frightening him," Alex continued, and the Doctor just made a non-committal noise, more focused on his lack of apparent progress with the colourful cube. "We stopped letting him watch."
"Oh, you don't want to do that," the Doctor said, slipping George a sly wink.
"Then Claire thought it might have been something he was reading."
"Great," the man in the bowtie exclaimed, "Reading's great." He looked at George. "You like stories, George?" The boy nodded. "Yeah? Me too. When I was your age, about, ooh, a thousand years ago, I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics."
"Those are not real bed time stories, at least not where any of us are from," Aliya criticised, and Alex seemed to share similar sentiments. She smiled at George. "I like Sherlock Holmes, but you might have to wait until you're a bit older to read those. What about Harry Potter? I've heard those are good."
"I got scared of the goblins," George mumbled. Aliya couldn't pretend to know what he meant, so wasn't sure if it was a valid fear or not.
"Rubbish!" The Doctor exclaimed as he threw the Rubik's cube on the floor in defeat. "Must be broken. I hate those things. Better tidy it away, though, eh?" He got off the bed and picked it up. "How about in here?" The moment he went over to the cupboard, George began shaking his head. "No. Not in the cupboard. Why not in there, George?"
Alex sighed. "It's a thing. A thing we got him doing ages back. Anything that frightens him, we put it in the cupboard. Creepy toys, scary pictures, that sort of thing."
"And is that where the monsters go?" George didn't answer the Doctor's question, he just stared. "Yeah. There's nothing to be scared of, George. It's just a cupboard."
Despite the tension in the room, mostly coming off George in palpable waves of trepidation, the Doctor let his fingers brush against the wooden surface of the cupboard door and come to touch the key in the lock.
A hammering sound made them all jump, but it wasn't coming from the cupboard.
"Front door," Alex mumbled, and left the room. Aliya vaguely recognised the voice of the landlord in the other room, but decided it likely wasn't her business to listen in. The Doctor took out the sonic, which immediately got George's attention.
"Is that a torch?"
"Screwdriver," he replied, and came to sit back on the bed, shuffling back so that his shoulder was pressed up against Aliya's. "A sonic one. And other stuff."
The boy eyed it with great curiosity. "Please may I see the other stuff?"
"You may," the Doctor replied, sharing a smile with Aliya. It had been a while since either of them had been around young children, but Aliya could feel her spirits improving already. The pure essence of children never failed to make her hearts lighter and made it hard her for to do anything but smile.
The Doctor used the sonic to make some of the toys move around, much to George's amazement.
"That's better," the Time Lord said, smiling at the awed look on the child's face, "No tears from George, that's what I've heard. Go on, give us a smile, there's a brave little soldier." George looked at him, definitely not quite sad or scared, but not smiling either. "Bit rusty at this."
"You're doing fine," Aliya said.
"Anyway, let's open this cupboard, eh?" The Doctor got up, prompting Aliya to shuffle along so that she was closer to George, figuring he might want her support in the face of the cupboard being tampered with. "There's nothing to be-" Whatever readings had come up on the sonic, they had the Doctor stopping in his tracks, his face drained of colour as he whispered his next words. "Off the scale. Off the scale." He came to sit on the edge of the bed. "Off the scale," he said, at a more normal volume, "How?"
"What's off the scale?" Aliya asked, frowning as she tried to lean forward and look over his shoulder at the sonic in a hope of glimpsing the readings. That was when Alex returned, looking a little shaken.
"Right," he said, swallowing, "Sorry about that." He perked up. "So, have we got this thing open yet?" He crossed to the cupboard, only to be stopped by the Doctor's cry.
"No! No, no, no, no, no. You don't want to do that," the older man said, rushing over to him.
"Why?"
"Because George's monsters are real."
The Doctor's revelation had not gone down well, resulting in a terrified George and a pissed off Alex who sent them out into the kitchen and got George back into bed before leaving the bedroom.
"You're supposed to be professionals," the human told the Time Lords crossly while the one in the bowtie went through the cupboards, "I'll never get him to sleep now. It's so…irresponsible."
"No, Alex," the Doctor said firmly, "Responsible. Very. Cupboard bad. Cupboard not bare. Stay away from cupboard. And there's something else. Something I've missed. Something staring me in the face."
Alex wasn't having any of it. "Look, I'd like you to leave, please. You're just making things worse." He tried to take away the mugs the Doctor had found in one of the cupboards. "Will you stop making tea? I want you to leave."
"I'm afraid that's not an option," Aliya told him, from where she was leaning against the counter opposite the fridge.
"What? What do you mean, not an option?" He repeated, staring at her with horror. "Leave. Get out. Now, please. Look, maybe this was a bad idea. We should sort out George ourselves."
"You can't," the Doctor said, leaning on the fridge. Aliya noticed how his posture shifted from casual to authoritative as he did so.
Alex, based on his nervousness, had clearly noticed too, but wasn't yet backing down. "No one's going to tell us how to run our lives. I don't care who you are or what wheels have been set in motion. We'll sort it."
"I'm not just a professional. I'm the Doctor." He had managed to get inside the fridge without Alex blocking him and brought the milk over to the mugs. Alex followed him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The Doctor turned to face him, his eyes more serious now. "It means we've come a long way to get here, Alex. A very long way. George sent a message. A distress call, if you like. Whatever's inside that cupboard is so terrible, so powerful, that it amplified the fears of an ordinary little boy across all the barriers of time and space."
Alex just stared. "Eh?"
The other man's voice remained intense and passionate as he continued to talk. "Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through empires of glass and civilisations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex. Monsters are real."
There was a lengthy pause as Alex gaped before whispering, "You two aren't from Social Services, are you?"
"Not remotely," Aliya said cheerfully, "But trust me, we're the ones you want on this."
They ended up back in the lounge, with the Doctor briefly stopping to flick through the photo album again and mention that there was something about the photos that he couldn't pinpoint. Then a debate on whether to open the cupboard started. Or rather, the Doctor debated it with himself aloud, while Alex and Aliya tried to get a word in and mostly failed.
"We have no idea what might be in there," the man in the bowtie was saying, "How powerful, how evil that thing might be."
"We don't?" Alex asked, frowning at him.
"Come on, Alex! Alex, come on," the Doctor replied, "Are you crazy? We can't open the cupboard."
"God, no, no, we mustn't."
Aliya got a nagging feeling in her gut. "You're about to do a one eighty and do something incredibly stupid, aren't you?"
It was impossible to tell if he had heard her considering that his eyes didn't flick to her even once. "Right, that settles it," he said, still looking at Alex.
"Yes. Settles what?"
"Going to open the cupboard." As the Doctor headed for the bedroom, Aliya groaned before she and Alex hurried after him. Once back in George's bedroom, Aliya stood just behind the Doctor as he approached the cupboard, while George peered out from behind Alex.
The lift started up again nearby at the same time that the Doctor pressed his ear to the cupboard door, making the other three jump. His hand trailed down the wooden panelling of the door, almost thoughtfully, or as if he was trying to reassure it with some kind of caress. Then he pulled the door open and reflexively jumped back, but nothing happened. The cupboard appeared completely mundane, merely filled with clothes and toys.
"I don't understand it," the Doctor exclaimed, "It has to be the cupboard. The readings from the sonic screwdriver, they were-" He stopped short and dashed out of the room, only to return a moment later with the photo album. "How old is George, Alex?"
"What? How old?" The boy's father asked, confused.
"Yes. How old is George?"
"Well, I told you. Just turned eight."
"So you remember when he was born, then?"
"Of course."
"Course you do. How could you not?" The Doctor showed him one of the photos in the album. "You and Claire. Christmas Eve, 2002, right?"
"What? Er, yeah."
"Couple of weeks before George was born. Tell me about the day he arrived. Must have been wonderful."
Alex nodded. "Well, it was the best day of my-" He faltered, his easy and cheery words disappearing as a stricken look crossed his face, "- life."
"Sure?"
"Yes," Alex replied.
"You don't sound sure."
"What are you trying to say?" Alex had panic in his eyes. "Look, I don't like this. I've told you before, I want you to go."
The Doctor lifted his eyebrows at him. "What's the matter, Alex?"
"I can't," the man stammered, and then clutched his head, "Oh, this is scary."
"No, Alex, this is scary," the Doctor corrected, his voice very firm as he held out the photo album more pointedly, "Claire with baby George. Newborn, yes?"
"Yes."
"Less than a month after Christmas."
"Oh," Aliya breathed, after having spent the last minute trying to work out what could possibly have been wrong with the photos. Her knowledge of human anatomy, and of pregnancy (despite having somewhat gone through it herself), were limited enough that she hadn't noticed the lack of continuity. But the maths added up now.
Alex hadn't yet seen it. "So?"
"So look. Look," the Doctor gestured to the photos, "Claire's not pregnant."
"What?"
"Not pregnant."
"Well, of course not, Claire can't have kids!" Alex shouted. They all went still and the two Time Lords stared at him while a look of horror crossed his face.
"Say that again," they said at the same time.
"We tried everything," he continued, his eyes wide, "She was desperate. As much IVF as we could afford, but – Claire can't have kids." There was a poignant silence as the three adults looked at each other, each one of them as wary as the other two. "How? How can I have forgotten that?"
They turned to look at the small boy sitting on the bed, who was watching them with wide, frightened eyes.
"Who are you, George?" The Doctor asked.
"It's not possible," Alex said, "This isn't-" As the toys started to move, Aliya quickly got the feeling things were about to take a turn for the worst.
"George?" She said, her voice concerned. The toys continued to shake and the light began to glow. The cupboard door flew open, and blinding white light spilled from it, wrapping around the three adults and pulling them into its grasp.
"George!" The Doctor yelled. "George, what's going on? Are you doing it?"
"What's happening?"
George curled up, bringing his knees under his chin and wrapping his arms around his legs. "Please save me from the monsters," he recited, his eyes squeezed shut, "Please save me from the monsters, please save me from the monsters."
"George, no!"
That was all Aliya heard before she was sucked into the cupboard and the only thing she saw was pure white. The next thing she knew she was waking up on a rug next to the Doctor and Alex, in a refined dining room with a large table laden with plates and food that didn't look real.
The Doctor leapt to his feet and slammed his hands on the nearest door. "George! George, don't do this. We want to help you, George."
"We went – we went into the cupboard," Alex stammered as he and Aliya stood up, "We went into the cupboard. How can it be bigger in here?"
"More common than you'd think, actually," the Doctor said, throwing Aliya a wink, "You're okay."
"Where are we?" The human asked.
"Obvious, isn't it?"
"No."
"Are we inside that dollhouse?" Aliya guessed, eyeing the contents of the table. "I mean, I don't really know what they're meant to look like, but everything in here is made of wood, even the food by the looks of it."
"Exactly," the Doctor said, snapping his finger and pointing it at her, "Dolls' house. We're inside the dolls' house."
"The dolls' house?"
"Yeah, in the cupboard, in your flat. The dolls' house."
"No, no, just slow down, would you?" Alex asked, shaking his head.
"Look," the Doctor said, tossing a wooden chicken to him followed by several other wooden items, "Like Aliya said. Wooden everything. Chicken, cups, saucers, plates, knives, forks, fruit, chickens. So, we're either inside the dolls' house or this is a refuge for dirty posh people who eat wooden food. Or termites. Giant termites trying to get on the property ladder."
"No," Aliya said, frowning at him.
"No," he agreed, "Is that possible?" He dashed out of the room and they made to follow, Alex dropping the wooden objects as they ran.
"Look, will you stop?" The human pleaded. "What is he? What is George? And how could I forget that Claire can't have kids? How?"
"Perception filter," the Doctor explained, "Some kind of hugely powerful perception filter. Convinced you and Claire, everyone. Made you change your memories. Now what could do that?" He had ended up standing in front of a mirror.
"Just a mirror," Alex murmured, and Aliya agreed and pushed the Doctor lightly until they were continuing down the hallway of the dollhouse. They came into what looked like an entrance hall.
"So, Claire can't have kids and something responded to that," the Doctor considered, "Responded to that need. What could do that?"
Alex frowned at him. "I thought you were the experts, fighting monsters all day long. You tell me!"
"Oi!" The Doctor shouted. "Listen, mush. Old eyes, remember? I've been around the block a few times. More than a few. They've knocked down the blocks I've been round and re-built them as bigger blocks. Super blocks. And I've been round them as well. I can't remember everything."
"And I was better at studying the blocks than going around them," Aliya said, shrugging.
The sound of the lift echoed around them, and in the dim dollhouse – which had already been putting Aliya on edge – it was rather unnerving.
"Doctor-"
"It's like the trying to remember the name of someone you met at-"
"Doctor, shut up," Aliya said, knowing he could easily go on for another half a minute if not stopped, "That's the lift."
"What?"
"It's the lift," Alex told him, "It's the sound that the lift makes. George is scared stiff of it."
A candelabra with five electric bulbs that was sitting on the floor began to go out, one at a time. But then they came back on. The Doctor wasn't paying attention but Aliya noticed Alex frown at it and come to kneel next to it, watching it the bulbs sequentially turn on and off over and over.
"Five times," Alex breathed.
"The lights? What's the significance of that?" Aliya inquired, crouching next to him.
"It's happening five times, it's like one of George's habits," Alex explained, "We have to switch the lights on and off five times."
"Now you're getting it," the Doctor said, having come to stand behind them.
Alex glanced up. "What do you mean?"
"What do you tell George to do, Alex, with everything that scares him?"
"Well, put it in the cupboard."
The Doctor nodded. "Exactly. And George isn't just an ordinary little boy, we know that now, so anything scary he puts in here. Scary toys, like the dolls' house. Scary noises, like – like the lift. Even his little rituals have become a part of it."
"A psychic repository," Aliya concluded, and he nodded, "A place to store all his fears."
"But what is he?"
A crack of a door alerted them to the wooden doll with an overly large head and long yellow hair that had slipped into the room from the door right behind them.
"Oh my god," Alex said, his eyes wide. They backed away while the Doctor whipped out his screwdriver and tried to stop the doll in its tracks. "A gun? You've got a gun?"
"It's not a gun," the Doctor told him, "Wood! I've got to invent a setting for wood. It's embarrassing!" Opening a nearby door revealed a giant pair of pink safety scissors, which he picked up and used to prod the doll away so that they could get away. "Come on!"
"Don't run away," the doll said, in an eerie child-like voice, "We just want to play."
"Massive psychic field, perfect perception filter, and that need, that need of Claire's too – stupid Doctor," the Doctor rambled as they came into a different hall, one with a staircase heading up. "George is a Tenza."
Aliya stared at him, wondering how the hell it hadn't occurred to her. "Oh! Of course, everything fits."
"He's a what?"
"A cuckoo," the Doctor said, "A cuckoo in the nest. A Tenza. He's a Tenza. Millions of them hatch in space and then whoomph, off they drift, looking for a nest." Alex had taken control of the scissors and was keeping the dolls at bay and the Doctor and Aliya tried all the doors only to find more creepy dolls behind them all. "The Tenza young can sense exactly what their foster parents want and then they assimilate perfectly."
"George is an alien?" Alex cried.
"Yep!"
"But he's – he's our child," he stammered as they backed onto the staircase and began to ascend it backwards in order to keep fending off the dolls.
"Yes, he is," Aliya assured him.
"Of course he is," the Doctor agreed, "The child you always wanted. He senses that instinctively and sought you out, but something scared him. Started this cycle of fear. It's all completely instinctive, subconscious. George isn't even aware that he's controlling it."
"So we have to make him," Aliya said, before calling out, "George!"
"George, you're the only one who can stop this!" The Doctor yelled. "But you have to believe. You have to know you're safe. I can't save you from the monsters. Only you can. George, listen to me. Listen to me."
As they looked further up the stairs, they saw a familiar figure coming down them, using a mop to fight off dolls who were following.
"Jenny!" Aliya exclaimed, surprised. "How did you get in here?"
"Don't know, was in the lift, and then I was here," Jenny replied, "Glad to see you two though. Don't let the dolls touch you, I saw them turn some guy into one of them."
"Oh," the Doctor said, frowning before resuming his shouting with even more urgency, "George! George, you have to face your fears! You have to face them now!" The dolls were closing in. There was nowhere for them to go. Aliya pushed Jenny back towards the wall, putting herself between her and the incoming danger. "You have to open the cupboard, or we'll all be trapped here forever in a living death. George! Please! George, you have to end this. End this. End it. End it now!"
The dolls stopped moving, and when the group looked down, they saw George in the center of the room near the bottom of the staircase.
"George," the Doctor murmured, clutching the railing and smiling at him, "George, you did it. You did it." The boy still looked terrified. "Hey, it's okay. It's all okay now. Everything's going to be fine."
The dolls started moving again, but this time down the stairs, towards George.
"No!"
The Doctor and Aliya had cried out simultaneously, but it was the former who kept talking. "No! No, no, no, no, no! George, you created this whole world. This whole thing. You can smash it. You can destroy it." George just shook his head. The Doctor glanced at the others. "Something's holding him back. Something's holding him back. Something…" He paused, his mind almost visibly going somewhere else briefly. "That's what did it. That's what the trigger was." He turned to Alex. "He thought you were rejecting him. He thought he wasn't wanted, that someone was going to come and take him away."
"Well, we – we talked about it," Alex said, having gone pale.
"But he heard you," Aliya told him, looking at the petrified boy being surrounded by dolls, "Tenzas need to be wanted, and you were rejecting him."
"We just couldn't cope! We needed help!"
"Yes, but George didn't know that," the Doctor said, "He thought you were rejecting him. He stills thinks it."
"But how can we keep him? How can we?" Despite his words, Alex's eyes kept flicking to George with worry. "He's not-"
"Not what?"
"He's not human," Alex said, but then the dolls got even closer to George.
"No," the Doctor said, at the same time that George cried out for his father.
"Dad!"
Something shifted in Alex's eyes. The human pushed past every doll in his rush down the stairs, and when he got to the ones around George he shoved them until he was able to take George into his arms fiercely.
"Whatever you are, whatever you do, you're my son, and I will never, ever send you away," Alex told him, and something about it made Aliya's hearts ache, but she couldn't be sure why. "Oh, George. Oh, my little boy."
George's eyes were full of tears as he dropped his head onto his father's shoulder. "Dad."
"My little boy."
"Dad."
They stuck around long enough to briefly meet Claire, who was bewildered but elated at George's miraculous recovery. And after assuring Alex that George was going to be fine, they met Jenny at the small stone wall outside the building.
"Everything alright in there?" Jenny asked. "What exactly happened?"
"We'll explain over some tea," the Doctor said, "How does apple pie from Tennessee sound?"
"Great!"
The father and daughter headed for the TARDIS with grins on their faces, and Aliya followed them into the box with a heaviness in her hearts. Alex's words to George kept echoing in her head.
Whatever you are, whatever you do, you're my son, and I will never, ever send you away.
She knew why they bothered her now. A suffocating wave of guilt was tossing her around, drowning her under you should haves and why couldn't yous. Alex had shown unwavering care for his child, his acceptance of his child's uniqueness overriding everything else. Something she could not claim.
Everything she had every said to Mari, every thought she had ever possessed, they rushed back to her. Under this new light, they made her feel sick. She knew that she had perfectly good reason for all her reservations regarding her redheaded daughter, but at the very heart of the matter, there was the fact she had been running from for weeks.
Mari, who had been Marion, was her daughter. The tiny child she had held in her arms and promised to fight for, the baby she had broken down over losing…was the woman she had hated, and upon learning the truth practically refused to address.
Mari was a killer. A sociopath. But she had been moulded by Kovarian's hands and lies against her will. In the end, she was Aliya's baby, who had been hurt until she had learned to hate more fiercely than most people could ever imagine.
Whatever you are, whatever you do…
"I failed," she said, not really meaning to speak out loud, but getting concerned looks from her other daughter and the Doctor.
"What?" The latter asked.
Aliya just shrugged helplessly. "I just – no. Don't worry. I'm going to try to do better."
"With what?"
"Keeping my family together," she said, putting an arm around Jenny but keeping her eyes on the Doctor and letting him see her determination. Knowing that she meant protecting him from his fate, he ducked his head, not looking happy.
She didn't care. There wasn't any choice in the matter for him. She was not going to let him die. And perhaps their daughters could help out with that.
That line of Alex's really resonated with me as something that would make Aliya rethink how she had been going about things with Mari, and I didn't realise it until I rewatched the episode before writing to write the AU of it, so it was a nice little find that I got a bit excited about.
Thanks for reading, feedback is greatly appreciated!
Love you all,
-MayFairy :)