"Easy," the Doctor watches John's hands carefully as they navigate the TARDIS controls. He has become a real whiz at this, but that knowledge is not entirely comforting.
"Can I know where we're going now?" The question sounds humorous, timid, and classic John Smith. His eyes, though, are a little more serious as he directs them towards the woman behind him.
The Doctor is leaned against the jump seat. Her arms are crossed, creating a cradle for her coppery hair. The grey sweater she always wears has a vaguely turquoise tone from reflecting the turbine lights. "We're on course, John, through the vortex and into the plane of space! Space: the final frontier—come on, John, you love that stuff!"
"Doctor," John presses and he hears her sigh. He continues piloting, but is glad when he hears movement. Soon enough she is leaning against the console, comfortably in his periphery. "Where and when are we going?"
"No when, this time, Earthboy," the Doctor smiles. It's a soft smile, with a touch of sadness in its gentility. "We're headed towards the Shadow Proclamation."
"The what?" John fixates a lever so he can face the Doctor properly. She does seem awfully run down. It's not her usual way, either, like when she lets her facade drop and looks horribly lost when she thinks he's turned away. This is a deep rooted melancholy in her.
"The Shadow Proclamation is a posh name for police—outer space police." The Doctor shifts again, with her arms still folded. "I have to speak with them regarding protocol on reality boundaries. That man from The Library, Thet—Twelve, I mean, he was from another reality. His appearance in this world is dangerous. The Shadow Proclamation has writs that must be adhered to."
"Right, so we're going to talk to alien police about a fictional man from another reality who is now in a virtual reality within a fictional world?" John figures he's not getting much more out of the Doctor for now and continues on, following their coordinates. "On another note, how did you sleep?"
The Doctor cracks a smile reluctantly. For the first time in a month or so, she did sleep. She refers to her requirement for sleep as her "time of the month". She still doesn't think John knows to what she's actually referring. The couple of hours she lounged in the TARDIS library did next to no good, though. If anything she's more anxious than before. It was nice to wake up to another presence, though. John, at some point, draped himself in a chair opposite her and napped there contentedly. "Fine, thanks; how's your back after sleeping in that chair?"
"I know you're lying, by the way, but that's all right. I slept fine, and the chair was just for a power nap," John shrugs. He looks at the Doctor and winks. "I just wanted an excuse to watch you, really. Not creepily, but you're breathtaking when you're asleep, you know that?"
The Doctor feels her cheeks become hot at the affectionate compliment. She curses her weakness for her Earthboy but is unable to resist smiling. "Okay, very smooth, Johnny-Boy."
"Seriously, though," John flicks a knob, breaking eye contact for only a second, "how was your sleep?"
"It was sufficient, I guess," the Doctor sighs with distinct defeat. "It was wrought with nightmares."
"Gallifrey," John whispers in a tiny, tiny askance of her.
"You; Midnight," she whispers back. The Doctor looks away, trying to compose herself, but lets her hand gravitate to his. The back of his hand is warm against her palm. In a moment she looks back at him. "Do you have nightmares?—about this, any of it?"
"I used to on occasion," John admits quietly. The Doctor lets go of his hand only when he needs it for work, then reclaims it without a word. "I don't anymore, really. I only dream of you."
"Sauce is gettin' a little thick, there, John," the Doctor rolls her eyes but laughs.
"I mean it," John smiles widely. A beep captures his attention.
"Temporal interference," the Doctor murmurs, pulling out her glasses. "There's some sort of…wibbly-wobbly area."
"Wibbly-wobbly?" John echoes her.
"It's not a rift, or a pocket, it's like…like a zipper, where times and dimensions are being bound together." The Doctor tippety-types a bit and whacks the screen a few times. "It's like a dimensional fork in the road."
The lights flicker as the TARDIS lurches drastically. She rocks back and forth as if being pulled by the arms she doesn't have. Her interior creaks and screeches in protest.
"Doctor, what's happening?" John asks but can barely hear it in his own ears. The Doctor doesn't seem any more capable of hearing his words. She clings to the console, still trying to navigate whatever is happening. John doesn't feel like he's using anything to keep himself upright, but he hasn't fallen either. "Doctor, tell me what's happening?"
"John?" the Doctor turns, no longer seeing John beside her. "John, where are you?"
"Doctor?" John feels odd, like he's in a vivid dream. He can't actually feel anything, or hear anything, but he still knows what's going on. It's getting hard to see, though. His mind's eye keeps blinking. He can barely see the Doctor anymore. There are two different points of light before him. They're tunnels with light so bright at their ends that it's all he can see.
John closes his eyes, surrendering to a sleepy state.
There's a woman. She's standing alone on a metal platform. It looks like a basement. There's water everywhere. Is it raining? Is it raining indoors? No, it's a flood. This place is flooding.
I'm so tired, the woman thinks, and John hears. She is, too. Looking down to where the water drains she is so tired. Her entire being is rife with grief. 'I just don't think I can do this anymore.'
A glowing gold appears in the woman's eyes, but she closes them. She tilts her head upwards. The glowing recedes behind her eyelids. The place is still flooding and the drain isn't keeping the water down. The woman stays still. Water rises around her and soon she is completely submerged. Her wildly red hair dances in the water before her face, which is serene. The tendrils look like ribbons, flowing about. The woman still does not move, does not breathe, and does not open her eyes. She is still tired, and she is making no move to save herself. There is nothing else for her, here. She has nothing and no one to stop her.
John startles awake from his dream. He scrubs his face with a groan. Now, that is a weird one, he grumbles in his head. Rather than lying in bed he finds himself swinging around in his swivel chair. He looks up at the wall, at the clock by the H.C. Clements logo sign. The hands are still.
Something sparks in John's mind but he ignores it and goes back to typing. He's done everything, but he can't look too bored or he'll get more work to do.
"Excuse me," a man addresses.
"Do you have an appointment?" John asks on instinct. When he looks up there's a dark haired man in black there. He looks alarmed. "Is everything all right, sir?"
"Y-yeah, I, uh," the man glances all over John's form and around him. "You're…John, right?—John Smith?"
"Yes, sir, been the temp here for," John shakes his head a little, "six months?"
"Right, how do you like it here?" the man asks.
John frowns at how invested this bloke suddenly is. "Fine, I suppose, why?"
"Just, you know, have you met anyone? I mean, well, found anyone who catches your eye?" The man shifts uneasily.
"Not really, no," John drawls to emphasize how uncomfortable he is.
"Merry Christmas!" the pub choruses at the crack of midnight.
John feels positively nauseated. He can't decide if it's because of how spacey he feels, because he hates Christmas, or because it means another damned year of being another damned temp in all of damned London. A temp from Chiswick, he scoffs at himself in his head. His Mum might be onto something; John takes a sip of his drink. He's just…plain.
"Everyone come outside! Shut up and come outside!—just look at the sky! It's a Christmas star!"
John could not care less, really, but he hauls himself up anyway. He's entirely willing if it gets him out of here. As opposed to pushing his way through the crowd it seems to push right past him. Trust John Smith to be ignored by even a mob. One person does bump into him, muttering and apology to some 'doctor' under his breath. The sky, black as anything, has one, big, discernibly white thing floating through it. It's monstrous, and menacing. "That's not a star…it's a web."
"Racnoss," a voice appears behind John.
John whips around to see the bloke from the office. "I remember you. You came into the office six months ago."
"No, it wasn't six months ago," says the dark haired man. "It was only a few minutes ago. I'm Lee, by the way, Lee McAvoy."
"Lee," John whispers under his breath.
"Yeah, and that," Lee points, "is the Racnoss ship. They've been buried at the center of the Earth since the dark ages, but they're out now…and there's nothing to stop them."
Several lights zoom through the sky. Most make contact, fraying the web at its edges.
John squints at the display, but isn't fazed. "Beg to differ, there, mate, they seem to be taking care of it."
"This is just the beginning, though," Lee sighs heavily. He has the distinct tone of someone who has to keep an awfully large secret.
"Greyhound 15, what is your report?—over."
John looks towards a soldier with a radio. "What's happened now?"
"We found a body, sir. Must have happened too fast for her to regenerate; she just didn't make it out in time."
John watches a feminine arm slip from the blanketed gurney. The hand drops a sleek, custom looking pen to the ground. It's a ghastly sight, and John feels unusually disturbed by it.
"The Doctor is dead."
John feels it odd that his dream from that morning would come to him now. He remembers the woman from it, with fiery hair and pale skin. She was draining something—a huge body of water. The Thames is empty.
She has nothing and no one to stop her.
The woman dies.
John turns to Lee, who has tears in his eyes. For a fleeting second John feels affronted, but can't place why. "Did you know her?—that doctor?"
"The Doctor," Lee corrects John roughly. His eyes are steady, as they continue to scan over John carefully. "You knew her too."
"No, I didn't," John denies quickly and vehemently, though nothing has ever sounded less convincing to him.
"You did, though. I think you dream of her, sometimes." Lee takes on a different tone, a little closer to edgy this time. "A brilliant woman, beautiful, in a leather coat with…really great—really red hair."
John feels like he's being pulled down a tunnel. It's as if he were a magnet, flying towards his other half. In the time it takes him to blink he's downtown, walking briskly in some undetermined direction. While he's questioning it he continues to walk. He arrives at a door and instinctively reaches inside his coat - when did he get this bloody long thing - pocket. He pulls out a kind of a badge, that he sees is blank. Regardless, the security staff lets him by, murmuring 'doctor' as he goes.
"Ah, John, good to see you," Lee rounds the corner and falls in step with John.
"What the hell is going on?" John asks but keeps his eyes forward, even as Lee claps a hand on his shoulder.
"It's a rift in time. In fact, there are so many rifts conflicting with each other it's like a mass collection of whirlpools, clustered and drawing in time." Lee looks at John and pointedly ignores his disbelieving expression. "It sounds crazy, I know, that's why we needed the Doctor."
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here, for that matter?" John turns to Lee sharply, now, with his hands shoved into his pockets. He can't feel the bottom of them. He can't even feel the lining of them; what is with this coat?
"Well, we're on time right now, but another wave is coming."
John feels what he has named the "tunnel effect" again. He blinks and is relieved to see everything fairly unchanged. Lee is still beside him and he doesn't feel like he has lost years of his life. "What is it now?"
"We're only days from before, but it's too late." Lee gestures to the window. It looks like hail the size of kittens is ascending into the sky. A blue beam of light comes into view and draws the whit blobs into it. "Every one of those things is a person: dead."
"What," John chokes a little on the question.
"The Doctor was supposed to be here, and she needed you with her to stop this."
"Why me?" John hisses at Lee madly. "I'm no one special, I'm just a temp. If she was so extraordinary - this Doctor - why was she with me?!"
"She thought you were brilliant," Lee laments, taking on that same tone as before when John couldn't pinpoint it.
The word "brilliant" echoes in John's mind a little but he pushes it aside. "I'm not, I assure you. As for this Doctor, I don't know her. You seem to know all about her so why don't you do something helpful?!"
"This is all wrong, John," Lee looks intensely at the younger man, "this world is wrong."
John feels a familiar swirling in his brain: "the world is wrong?"
"My world is wrong too, but it's saved—it's safe. This world is wrong. This is a world without the Doctor, and without her, everything will end."
"Why are you telling me?!" John shouts, grabbing Lee by his shirt collar for lack of anything better to do. "What can I do?! I can't help! I'm nothing special—I'm nothing!"
"You're one of a kind," Lee smiles, despite John's raging anger. "I'm from another world, and I've seen what's happening."
"What is it?" John demands through his teeth, still not releasing Lee.
"If this world continues on track, you will become the Doctor as realities intersect. However, whether you're the Doctor or she is, you need each other. If we let time progress until you become the Doctor and don't have her by your side the world is doomed. Every world is doomed and the end of time will come. Reality will be ripped apart." Lee implores John to listen to him through his eyes. "You're not who you think you are, John. You're one of a kind: you're a Time Lord."
John all but throws Lee by his collar. This is unbelievable. He can't actually make himself absorb it. There is nothing logical about any of this. How can any of it be true? He's just John Smith. He pauses. Against his gut instinct he pulls out the paper he showed the security guard of the building. It's blank for a second, but words start to scribble themselves into view.
The Doctor
Then, they fade, and new words replace them.
The Doctor and John Smith
John Smith
Doctor Donna
TARDIS
Shadow Proclamation
Turn Left
ShadowProclamationShadowProclamationShadowProclama tionShadowProclamationTurnLeftTurnLeftTurnLeftTurn LeftTurnLeftTurnLeftTurnLeft
"What is this," John turns to look at Lee but finds himself on a bench; "thing".
It's not night, but the sky is horribly dark. The air is wretched and he can't for the life of him remember what has transpired. Some foggy memories show time passed and life lived, but they're distant, like an echo. The sky is dark. The air is wretched.
"It belonged to the Doctor," Lee answers, seeming to have appeared spontaneously beside John. He's still wearing the same clothes.
"What's wrong with the air?" John looks up to the grey blanket of sky.
"It's Atmos," Lee laments simply as explanation. He offers a shrug, which is somewhat apologetic. While John flinches as the sky becomes engulfed in flame Lee remains unfazed. "Torchwood is gone, the Valiant is down and the Earth is safe, for now. The worst is yet to come, though."
"What could be worse? How many people have died through all the events that have happened?! What could be worse than this?!"
"John, look," Wilf points.
John obeys, no longer questioning the way the world bends around him. The motion sickness isn't as bad as it was the times before. He knows it won't be long before Lee shows up again. Lee always shows up when time does this weird jumpy thing. "What's wrong; what is it?"
"Look," Wilf stumbles a bit. "The stars are going out."
John watches. His eyes burn, unblinking, as he sees the light dying out of the sky. The stars are dying. John blinks with all the strength he has in him. He finds it's not much. When he opens his eyes he's at a shipping yard or something. He turns around. "Tell me what to do."
"Come with me," Lee nods his head. He doesn't wait to see if John is following, knowing that he is. A brisk walk and soon they're in the center of an operation. Several mirrors are aligned in a circle, with lights and technology all hooked up and whirring away. Parallel to those is a blue, wooden police box. "John Smith, this is the TARDIS."
"TARDIS," John recalls it being one of the words that magic paper scrawled out for him.
"Time and Relative Dimension in Space," Lee spells out quite literally. He opens the door and beckons for John to follow. As soon as the brown haired man steps in the center console moans with activity. It's a pain riddled, pitiful response, but a reaction nonetheless. "You two are old friends."
"Like how I know the Doctor?" John jabs dryly, with a humorless eyebrow raise. He does feel something, though. It's an instinct, urging him that he knows why this thing is bigger on the inside, and why it's so dark, and why he feels so at home. John pats the console and a few lights cough and hiccup out a response. "There, there, old girl; it's all right."
"You traveled in this, with the Doctor, in your world." Lee glances around the room fondly but wistfully. "I did too, once upon a time."
"You and the Doctor," John folds his arms and purses his lips. "Were you…?—you know?"
Lee doesn't dignify the question with a response for quit a while. "I fell in love with her, like I think everyone does, at least a little bit. We ended up in this world called The Library: my world. In there, time plays tricks like it's doing here, now. The Doctor could see because she was a Time Lady; last of her kind. In this fake world a life is constructed for you, it's just up to you to accept it fully to actualize it. In this fake world the Doctor and I were married, had a life, kids. I wanted it to be true so badly I believed it entirely. That's how I died."
"I'm sorry?" John asks more than apologizes.
"I can't exist outside of The Library anymore because I'm nothing but a data ghost. The only reason I can be here now is because you happened on a tear in time and reality itself. The parallels of worlds are breaking down, but they're folding around you. Time is folding around you."
"I told you, I'm nothing special," John repeats, sounding more tired and fed up than he meant to.
"You're brilliant—the Doctor thought so." Again, Lee says it in a clipped tone that John can now identify as envy. He can't blame him; as Lee tells it, he was cheated out of his true love by a life of a lie. There are sounds bouncing around and the two men register them as coming from the world around them. Another wave has hit; time and the world are still wrong. Lee scans John with his eyes again. "You should see."
John quietly stalks over to the mirror circle with Lee. He doesn't know when he became so rude and broody. "What are the mirrors for?"
"The TARDIS has some very complex technology, but I've figured out some basics; just enough to help her show you."
John doesn't flinch as the lights flick on. He glances at his reflection in the mirror. It's not really him, is it? He looks down at himself, finding his attire to be trainers, jeans, and a faded blue flannel buttoned over a plain t-shirt. Yet, the man in the mirrors is different, but entirely John. The reflection has John's thick hair, but wildly swept every which way. His eyes are still brown, but a little darker, hollowed out—more intense than John's. The reflection wears the coat John thought he was wearing up until now, and a brown pinstripe suit. They have the same trainers at least. The reflection is John Smith, just…a different John Smith.
"This is the Doctor from another reality, separate from yours and mine all together. We're tied in small ways, but not enough to create a timeline that can remain stable. Reality is too weak, and the dimensions of the universe are too broken down to stand on their own. They need to be woven together to create a new dimension of reality. That's why you're here, John," says Lee.
"So, I'm not actually as special as you said!" John shouts from his frightening little place within the mirror circle. "I'm not as important as you said, it's because this guy and I are half the same person, that's it! It's not John Smith, it's the Doctor—this Doctor!"
"No, John, it is you!" Lee argues almost kindly. "You are literally one of a kind. All realities seem to gravitate towards and bend around you. You are able to interweave realities, and no one - not even the Doctor - could do that. You can interlock timelines to create new realities—stable realities! You're the only one who can do it and you're the only one who can save us. This world is wrong, but so is yours, John. Tell her that. Tell her the world is wrong. You have to get back to her and tell her that."
"How?" John asks in nothing more than a whisper. Everywhere he turns this identical stranger has his eyes burning into John's.
"We can send you back into the vortex using the TARDIS." Lee speaks as he starts rewiring things. The reflection disappears even though the lights remain bright and the mirrors are still there. "You hit a kink in your timeline, just enough to throw you off track and into a vortex of fluctuating reality. You were on your way through space when you hit the tear, giving you the option to turn right towards the Medusa Cascade, or left, towards the Shadow Proclamation. You ended up being pulled towards the Medusa Cascade to the right but that's where some major fluctuations are happening in another reality. In another dimension, the Medusa Cascade is crumbling out of reality, because the universes are being ripped apart. It wasn't stable enough to handle your anomalous reality bending so all of the crumbling universes literally folded themselves around you as a stabilizer. You can't, though, it will mean the end of you, the Doctor, everything. You have to turn left, towards the Shadow Proclamation, where you and the Doctor can save reality—every reality. Just remember, I know it's hard to control, but when you feel time pulling around you have to aim for the Shadow Proclamation. Just remember John, turn left."
"Turn left," John nods, feeling at least a little more sure of himself. Time is starting to bend again, but this time he's aware of it. He can feel it; he can feel the flow of time around him. He can remember, too. He remembers the Doctor, and the time they had. "When you say this world is wrong, it's because it was never supposed to exist. My world is wrong because it's not complete. I have to rewrite reality, by finding the Doctor. I can do it. I can do it for her! I can find the Doctor, because I remember her! She can't die because in my world; she has a future—with me! The Doctor and I can change the future because she's a Time Lord! She is a Lady of Time; she can save us! I'll do it. I'll do it, and anything else, because I remember everything I've done for her. I waited a whole year through a crack in time in my world. I faced Sontarans and Ood and fortune tellers who tell me I'm not who I think I am for her! I'd do it all again for her because I love her!"
Lee's smile drops and his face becomes pained. He holds the kind of sadness a man has when he loses his world right in front of his eyes. Maybe he has. "Tell her the world is wrong."
"This world is wrong but ours can be saved!" John shouts but registers Lee's expression. "That's right, isn't it? If I go back the Doctor lives and we rewrite the future, right? We're still together in my world, right?! I'm alive and so is she! She lives!"
Lee swallows his tears; tears for the woman he still loves. "I'm sorry."