Chapter 11: Rivalry
That night, Kelly did not sleep. She stared up at the dark ceiling above her head. The feel of magically woven clothes still made her itch. After the Trickster, she wanted to avoid magic as much as possible but she had really needed new clothes. It had become a necessity. And, she thought to herself, it probably constituted as a health reason too, considering what her dark green tunic had endured. Dirt, straw, blood, horsehair, sweat; she shuddered and tried to comfort herself by focusing on how much cleaner she must be with this plain, unpretentious brown shirt and trousers. Also on the plus side, she doubted anyone would mistake her for a knight again. It was a relief to know she wasn't going to be challenged to any more duels and she had gladly traded the sword she had recovered from the battlefield for a collection of small broad-bladed knives. Had King Arthur seen her carrying so many weapons, he might have fainted in shock. 'Maiden' indeed.
But did she have everything? There was barely a minute she wasn't mentally reviewing her inventory, reassessing and re-evaluating her task. A mountain of doubt sat on her chest making it hard to swallow. This is like nothing I've ever done before. She paused and corrected the thought. Almost like nothing. Imprisonment had been an ever-present danger since she dipped her toes into espionage and thievery but lives have not been so precariously on the line like this, not since Alex and the shape-shifter.
The memory still made her shiver and reach for her throat as though to loosen something tightly woven around it. She traced the imprint of the trinket with a finger. It had faded considerably, appearing pink rather than burnt red, but was just barely slightly indented into her skin. A symbol, having been cut out of the trinket, stood out at a white sliver of skin surrounded by pink. It might disappear when it heals properly, she thought, but she wasn't certain. Still, not a scratch was to be found on her shoulder or where the knife had struck her stomach, so she should count her lucky stars if the only reminder of her injuries was an odd shaped indentation.
Deciding it was late enough, she slipped the dagger resting beside her into its sheath at her waist and pattered over to the door. Not a stair or a door creaked as she left the building. Her boots barely made a sound as she crossed the stone street and entered the stables. The Doctor was already waiting for her with three saddled horses; one burdened with their supplies with a lead attached to its halter. He took one glance behind her then handed her the pack horse's lead. She swallowed, only hesitating for a second before taking the rope. Scraps of cloth wrapped around the horses' hooves damped the sound on the stones. They walked in silence and exited the castle's gate easily with a quick nod from the Doctor to the guards on patrol. Having been forewarned of this evening excursion, the gates had remained open since sunset and the guards let the pair pass without a word. They continued to walk for several minutes until the Doctor halted and turned to face her.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked.
She nodded stiffly in return, not trusting herself to speak. No more doubts. Despite having decided that, she found herself avoiding making eye contact for a few moments before his deep blue eyes drew her in. His coercion allowed her to rest her hands on the animal and push herself up onto its back. While the semi-dreamlike state she was in was setting off alarm bells in her head, she muted them by focusing on the faint outline of the horizon. Her steed responded to the click of the Doctor's tongue and then muscle memory took over.
The Doctor steadied her when the haze lifted several hours later. She felt disorientated and a little displaced. It was light now and she could not tell which way they had come. He offered her a drink which seemed to trigger her thirst.
"You're doing well," he complimented brightly.
"Only because I don't know I'm doing it," she mumbled. She was far from proud of her weakness but she had refused to let it hinder them.
He disagreed and rambled on about being more receptive to the persuasion this time around, possibly due to becoming used to the animals she feared. She put it down to becoming less resistant to his hypnotism. He was probably lying but it was nice to believe the white lie. Still, she couldn't complain. Dizziness and feeling a little lost was a small price to pay in exchange for speed. It had been the most logical course of action and therefore the only acceptable one. Oh, she had considered plenty of alternative ways of returning to Peel Castle with haste but most were little more than to procrastination from accepting the fact that she had to ride. It cut their travel time down by half, more if they stopped only to eat and drink, not even to sleep. The Doctor seemed to have next to no need for it and the haziness was similar to being half-asleep.
Permitting him to hypnotise her wasn't something she had thought she'd ever do but she had strengthened her conviction by reminding herself that Ace was in danger and she could not allow her fear to stand in the way.
Her mind returned to the hazy realm. In this half-aware state, her thoughts wandered everywhere without any reason behind its direction. She thought of Finn and how he would have found himself alone by now. He would be angry, possibly even feel betrayed, but that was of little consequence. She shared the Doctor's belief that the boy should not accompany them. He was better off where he was. Neither she nor the Doctor wanted him to be involved any more than he already had been. He was a liability and a responsibility neither wanted to carry and thus they had left him, leaving him with the spoils of the battlefield to start a new life. The Doctor optimistically hoped he would give up his old habits. Kelly doubted he would. She understood better than the Doctor how closely entwined the boy's skills were to his identity. It was part of who he was, just as her experiences were a part of who she was.
You could give up thieving but thieving would never give you up.
She also thought of Ace stuck in her prison, banging her wooden bowl against the wall in a futile protest. But mostly she thought of the Doctor staring down the Trickster, indescribable threats in his eyes.
Long periods of hypnosis, Kelly decided, are a kind of time travel. You lost track or skipped large sections of time between being alert and being freed from it. It seemed no sooner had the sun rose than it set. They continued until dusk and Kelly caught sight of a castle on the horizon. She frowned and turned to find the Doctor looking mighty pleased with himself. She wasn't sure why until he gestured vaguely at her steed. It took a few moments to realise her head was clear. He had pulled her out of the haze. She had not noticed. She was still riding, not leaping off its back or shrieking in distress.
He smiled as if to say 'Not so bad, is it?' He endured her scowls until she reached the conclusion that yes, this wasn't too bad. It wasn't enjoyable but she took quiet pride in being able to retain her seat without any of his hypnotic cohesion.
When it became too dark to go on, they made camp. As the night set in around them, they sat on opposite sides of a small fire and left each other to their own thoughts.
Having brooded long enough about the confrontation with the Trickster while in the hypnotised state, she found herself apologising. "I'm sorry."
He, unlike her, seemed to know exactly what she was apologising for. "You cannot help how you feel," he told her but did not look up from his brooding.
True but that didn't make her feel any better about having the tension between them being so explicitly aired by a third party. "You said you knew..." she began, unsure of where she was trying to lead the conversation. It was like navigating a minefield. Who knew what one step in the wrong direction might set off? She could have shut her mouth but it didn't bode well to ignore what had been said. They would reach their destination tomorrow and she would commence the climb. She needed to know if she could trust her belayer and reasoned she would rather know if the person holding the other end of her lifeline was mad at her beforehand rather than halfway up.
"It is what I would have wanted too, to check on her."
She shook her head. "Not that."
He sighed. "You have a very strong independent drive," he began slowly. "You are my responsibility. Unstoppable force meets immovable object," he concluded. His hands met with a loud smack as he demonstrated. "The friction is equally my fault as yours," he went on. "It wasn't just you who was competing."
Kelly tilted her head. Competing? About what? He couldn't mean... Why on Earth would he feel the need to compete with me? He's the all-knowing experienced time traveller with a spaceship bigger than Westminster Abbey. I'm just me. I pick locks and go where I shouldn't. There was hardly a comparison.
"We both tried to impress each other and grated on nerves instead."
That's not how I'd describe it, thought Kelly. I never wanted to impress you.
She realised 'we' didn't include her as he went on. "Ace wanted to show off what she knew and I wanted her to realise she still has much to learn. I thought it would be good for her to be with people of her own age but..." he paused, "it reminds me that is where she ought to be. With humans of her own age," he elaborated, "not old weary travellers."
Kelly leaned forward to see his face. "Having lived with her, I can assure you she can't bear being in the one place for long. She's an accident waiting to happen. Sooner or later things start getting blown to pieces. Being stuck in the same people with the same people would drive her mad. She wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
No matter how much you might want her to stay, she thought and the tight feeling in her throat returned, because that's not where she belongs. She needs to be out there, saving the world, doing her thing with you.
Her words seemed to depress him further. "But do I have the right to let her?"
Kelly frowned. Doesn't he know how lucky he is? He gets to go with her. I could never do the things she does. This little trip has shown that what I always knew was true. I don't belong in her world of aliens and time travel any more than she belongs in one place and one time.
But it sounded less like he doubted if he should let Ace travel the Universe and more like he doubted if he deserved her at his side. Part of her agreed he didn't. It was the same part of her that had fumed in silence, taking instant dislike to everything and anything he did merely because it was he who did it, the same side that shared Ace's emotional distress. You're a manipulator, it wanted her to say. You treat her like a playing piece and try to control her. You used her for your own ends and left her in the dark, never permitting her to make her own decisions. You don't deserve her.
And yet her heartstrings pulled at the memories of the many wordless exchanges he and Ace shared, of their little moments that made her feel like she was trespassing. Not the 'I'm-taking-something' trespassing but the uncomfortable awkward tension of your presence being unneeded and unwanted and trying to find a tactful means to leave without drawing attention to yourself. The smiles and shining eyes Ace had whenever he tapped her nose, the teasing and playful banter, the behaviour that confused Kelly and disproved her conclusions almost as soon as she made them.
And that fire, that look that had burned in the Doctor's eyes when the Trickster stood in his way, stood between him and his companion... That fury that revealed his willingness to do anything, anything at all, to save her...
Kelly liked things to make rational sense. She sought patterns. She like connections, liked linking cause to effect. Above all else, she liked knowing. It meant you understood. It allowed you to predict and explain.
She thought she knew this figure of import in Ace's life; an alien, a risk, a time traveller, someone Ace felt she owed and would do anything to protect, an obstacle that had separated them both, someone who meant more to Ace than her. It had been easy to ignore the one-sidedness of her preconceptions. Odds were she would never meet this mysterious figure so it didn't matter. Then she did and she gathered evidence to support her assumptions to make them justified. To complicate things further, she had met him without knowing it. Twice! Both times she had identified him as a threat and both times she had reacted impulsively to respond to it. Discovering he was Ace's travelling partner had been unsettling.
Having endured his company and being forced to cooperate with him, had caused her opinion of him to shift from being a nightmarish insufferable pain to a manageable if not rational co-conspirator. That didn't mean she didn't still think of him as exactly what the Trickster had described. It just meant she recognised, albeit incredibly reluctantly at first, his worth. It challenged her perceptions.
She would never share or completely understand Ace's unwavering devotion and admiration, but had glimpsed enough to decide Ace's loyalty could be warranted. If there was anything worth describing as an immovable force, it was Ace's loyalty.
"You know her well enough to realise it isn't your choice," Kelly told him. "It's hers."
"And yet being with me might get her killed," he murmured, deep in thought. "It's already almost killed you."
'Almost' wasn't cutting it fine enough, she thought and gently touched the mark on her neck.
He leaned his head back against a tree trunk and stared up through the leaf canopy at the stars above.
Kelly attempted to translate the message his body language was telling her. "You better not be thinking of leaving her behind once we get back," she warned. "Trying to make the choice for her will only hurt you both."
"I thought... I thought I had a plan for her," he confided softly. "I was wrong. She did not take it too well when she found out."
That didn't surprise Kelly in the slightest. Ace would certainly have made her feelings known. "Secretly enrolling her into an academy of scholars in funny robes probably wasn't the best idea," Kelly admitted. "You could have asked first."
He sighed regretfully. "She told you about that." He studied the stars. "I just want her safe."
You and me both. "She wants the same, you know. She'll follow you anywhere because she thinks you are the most important thing in the Universe and worth defending."
"She said that?"
Kelly nodded, remembering Ace's explanation from that night all those years ago. "And that she could never give up because you need her."
"Oh," was his answer.
Kelly brushed dirt off her trousers and spoke to the ground. "For the longest time," she confessed, "I tried to imagine what kind of person you were for her to think the world of you, tried to see what she saw in you. I still don't know what she sees. But..." she paused, "it must be true because she believes it. And, I believe her."
Their campfire crackled as they explored their own thoughts.
"You must be nervous," he commented, firmly leaving the discussion behind them.
She shook her head slowly. "Too late for nerves."
"It's not too late."
Her laughter was hollow. "It was too late the moment I stepped inside that box of yours and allowed my pride to agree to a detour."
"It's not always like this," he lied.
"Doesn't matter," she shrugged. "If this is what Ace likes doing, then good for her. People like me aren't meant for this. We're not all heroes raring to go off on wild adventures to liberate the oppressed or rescue the distressed."
"You won't consider staying?" It wasn't an initiation, merely a question.
"God no," Kelly answered honestly. "Not in a million years. Once this is all over, I'm getting my things and slipping out quietly. No point delaying things." She lowered her voice and reminded herself, "She hates goodbyes."
"Those she never made she hates more," the Doctor replied.
Kelly ran a hand through her hair as she remembered their separating of ways. Three years, and the memory was still as vivid as it had been that night. It had been an unwanted goodbye from both perspectives. Recalling it now didn't hurt as much having defied the odds and found her again but to go through another parting like that...
"No, it's better if I just go," she decided. "Once was painful enough."