Orpheus & Eurydice
Tom ran his hand over his face, taking one last look at Vivien, before getting to his feet, nearly tripping over them, earning himself a scornful glance from the Doctor. It was going on three weeks now, Vivien showing no sign of waking up, the strain turning Tom haggard, spending the long nights listening to Vivien breathe, Matt huddled against his side. He sleepwalked his way through his duties to the 2nd Mass, only alert when he was still carrying out the sporadic searches for Ben, knowing he was failing his son by not finding him.
Hal had stopped trying to reason with Tom, only ensuring he ate and took regular rest, the scales finally falling from his eyes, finally seeing that Vivien was the reason why his father was falling apart in front of him. He didn't know that Tom had made a deal with himself to walk away if Vivien would only wake up, only knowing that Tom was betraying the memory of their mother with another woman, one who wasn't even human.
Maggie strode through the swing doors, rifle slung across her back, her face deliberately blank as she approached Tom, hiding her hatred under a mask. She knew Tom was nothing like Pope, that he was a good man, but she disliked the way he was having her watched; how he'd unconsciously assumed ownership over Vivien like she was his property.
"Time to clock out, big boy," she said abruptly, making him glance at her, brow furrowing.
"You really don't like me, do you?" Tom said suddenly, eyes no longer haunted, but alert, watching Maggie like she was a snake about to strike.
"I don't like what you're doing," Maggie said quietly, glancing at Vivien's pale face, the sight making her fists clench, "and I don't like you full stop."
"I'm not exactly his biggest fan either," the Doctor interjected, appearing like a Jack-In-The-Box from behind them both, "but let's keep things friendly, eh?"
Maggie just exhaled sharply, turning away from Tom, who turned away from her in turn. The Doctor picked up a plastic flower, one of Tector's many floral offerings, twirling it between his fingers, making Tom tense up.
"You're not the only one Vivien has on the go," the Doctor said blithely to Tom, "Vivien's not Vivien unless she has half a dozen idiots dangling from her string."
"Thought we were going to keep things friendly, Snake Hips," Maggie reminded him, setting her rifle against the wall, "or is torturing Tom an occupation reserved only for you?"
The Doctor just raised an ironic eyebrow, making Maggie shake back her blonde hair, a smile reluctantly playing across her lips. A strange camaraderie had sprung up between human and alien, Maggie stepping into the space left vacant by Vivien.
"Aren't you meant to be trying to break into her mind?" Tom snapped, as though he was ordering the Doctor to commit a bank robbery. The Doctor had unfortunately become part of the landscape of Tom's life. Telepathy and aliens with two hearts where nothing to him now. If Abraham Lincoln popped out of a desk drawer and sang Yankee-Doodle-Dandee to Tom, he wouldn't bat an eyelid.
"I was just about to," the Doctor said testily, "so step aside."
Vivien waddled over to the sideboard, feeling like a fish out of water. She was no good at playing the discreet hostess, being too raw for the double-edged repartee that lent an adulterous undercurrent to the dinner parties Tom threw for his friends. Affairs began and ended under the Mason roof, Tom peddling his own peccadilloes, Vivien having been one of them, breaking up Tom's marriage and costing him his career, ruining any chance he ever had of becoming the dean of Boston University. And now here they were, living a lie, Vivien realising too late that it wasn't love that had led her here, but lust, damning her to a domestic prison, the bars of her own forging.
They'd met when she'd wandered into the wrong lecture, ruining the punch-line to Tom's well-worn joke about Abraham Lincoln and vampires, marking the beginning of their mutual ruin. For Tom, having affairs with students, foreign exchange or otherwise, was nothing new, but with Vivien, it had been different. She had a spark that set her apart from his other conquests. For Vivien, it had felt like being consumed by flame, only living when she heard the tell-tale rumble of his beat up Cadillac, Tom waiting for her in the pouring rain, their nights spent in seedy motels, the days dividing them.
She watched as Tom handed Anne a glass of wine, not missing the way their gazes met and held, Tom's fingers brushing against Anne's, the gesture almost unconsciously intimate. Vivien turned away, feigning interest in the empty crystal decanters littering the sideboard. Tom had pulled the same tricks on her, deceiving her, making her deceive herself in turn. She had been a novelty, but no more. Now she was a burden to Tom, a constant reminder of what he had been robbed of, academic glory and the exalted status it afforded, forcing Tom to teach history at a third rate community college instead, trying to provide for a family he loved almost against his will, a family he had never wanted in the first place.
With one hand, Vivien cradled her bump, wiping away her bitter tears with the other. Their first child had been born to save their marriage, their third child about to destroy what was left of it, and Vivien could do nothing to stop it, not being sure if she even wanted to. She had already destroyed Tom's world, so it made a twisted sense to ruin whatever remnants remained of it.
She glanced over at Anne's husband, tiredly wondering if he was turning a blind eye to his wife's wandering one, or if he was about to break Tom's jaw, only to see a blur where his face should be, the sight startling her. Vivien blinked, but nothing changed, his features a sickening swirl. Panicking, she glanced around the dining room, only to see the same pattern repeated over and over again, vortexes where faces should be. Then, as if from far away, she heard her name being called, making her head snap up, her gaze becoming drawn almost against her will to the blue doors of the dining room, the sight setting off a trip-wire in her memory -
"Vivien!" Tom hissed, his face almost ravaged with rage. "What the hell are you doing!?"
"I'm not doing bloody anything!"
"You better not be," Tom snapped, before stalking off, returning to Anne's side, the pair of them looking at Vivien as though she was insane.
Vivien turned her back on them again, her fingers curling into fists, her head spinning. She blindly made her way over to the window, staring up at the sky outside, seeking sanctuary in its dark depths. But there was none to be found, the moon lost from her, reminding her of a story she sometimes told her daughters, that when all was lost, to let the moon be their guide, a fairytale to help them find their way home, a home she no longer had.
Oh, when the moon was shining bright before morning
I made a deal with the stars to keep holding
Shining bright to come and bring me back home…
The Doctor stood there, caught between dimensions and dreams, existing on all levels at once. In one world, he was in a science classroom, in another, he was on a spaceship, and inbetween that, he was in a house that wasn't a home, the rooms filled with blurred faces and blue doors. He saw the TARDIS, standing sentinel, cloaked figures circling it. Vivien was there and she wasn't there, her telepathic link to the time machine still connecting them together, pulling her to this place where the walls pulsated like a human heart, flickering beats of crimson, amber and gold.
Yet there was something else here, in the shadows, a terrible power he half recognized and recoiled from all at once. It appeared to be waiting, watching, but what for – who for? The Doctor took a step back, making reality ripple, and then the world faded from him, becoming replaced by four walls and a roof.
He glanced around him, only to see Vivien but not Vivien, the Doctor yelling her name, trying to reach her through the faceless crowd, the sound making her head snap up. But he couldn't move, remaining rooted to the spot, Vivien's gaze then becoming drawn to the blue doors of the dining room, her brow furrowing, trying to remember, Tom who wasn't Tom making his way towards her.
The Doctor watched them argue, realising a whole world had been created out of Vivien's most primitive desires, an unknown architect violating her mind and plundering her emotions, playing on her hopes for a family and a future, using desire as the thread to weave it all together. But the design was flawed, Tom a complete stranger, having been rewritten as a self-assured womanizer when in reality he was a bumbling, stumbling fool who blushed every time Vivien so much as glanced at him.
Darkly amused against his will at the contrast between the two Toms, particularly on the point of Tom's hairstyle, recognizing it as paying tribute to his own amazing gravity defying hair, the Doctor allowed himself a mocking grin before focusing on the matter at hand. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, feeling for Vivien's thoughts, trying to tether himself to her, guiding her ghost back like Orpheus and Eurydice. Suddenly the air seemed to shift around him, making his eyes fly open, only to fall over as reality rewrote itself, suddenly sending him sprawling onto sand.
"What the" - he began, only to fall silent as he felt the presence of that terrible power again, the sensation turning his throat dry, reminding him of why he was running. I don't want to go. And he didn't want to be here either, remembering standing on another seashore, losing Rose to himself.
The waves crashed on the shore, but all he could hear was silence, and then a little girl suddenly ran past him, too fast for him to see nothing more than a flash of black hair. Then there was a voice saying his name, the name nobody knew, making him slowly turn around, only to see a young woman emerging from the sea, her long white blonde hair bizarrely dry, her red kirtle just as conspicuously untouched by the elements.
"You cannot interfere," the young woman said, suddenly standing in front of him, "you must not."
"Why?" the Doctor challenged, trying to stand his ground, but inside he was shaking, suddenly that frightened little boy in the barn again.
"You have no place here," the young woman said, tilting her head to the side, her bright blue eyes oddly dilated.
The Doctor glanced down at her delicate pale hands, hands that could tear the universe apart if they so chose to. "What, so I've to leave then?" he said, circling her, only to find her circling him.
"I have been looking for you for a long time," she said quietly, suddenly standing on the shoreline, back turned to him.
"But why?" the Doctor pressed, following her, only to find her gone.
"You must leave," she repeated from behind him, making him whirl around, starting to tire of her talk.
"And if I don't?" the Doctor snapped. "What happens if I don't want to go?"
The young woman smiled crookedly, making the Doctor's hearts freeze in his chest, remembering another broken smile. "This," she said, before miming knocking on a door, one, two, three, four times.
The Doctor closed his eyes, but he could still see her, his death reflected in her own eyes. And then she was in his mind, walking through his memories, tearing them apart with those white hands of hers, driving him to his knees, his lives falling through her fingers, forcing him to surrender, knowing no will but hers -
- "Doctor!" Tom yelled, shaking him back into semblance, his worn fingers biting into the Doctor's flesh. "Wake up!"
The Doctor rolled onto his back, feeling like he'd just fallen a thousand feet, that he was still falling. He blearily glanced up at the spinning faces surrounding him, all blending into one -
- "Vivien!" Tom cried, lunging forwards as she suddenly sat bolt upright, eyes flying open, a strangled gasp escaping her lips, Tom catching her in his arms before she pitched over the side of the camp bed.
"Vivien," the Doctor echoed weakly, trying and failing to get to his feet, Maggie helping him up as Lourdes and Anne rushed over to where Tom was now suddenly violently struggling with Vivien, the three of them forcing her back down onto the camp bed.
The Doctor stared at Vivien, making no move to reach her, remembering a crooked smile. Maggie stood there, not sure what to do, the Doctor's reaction making her hesitate. She studied his face, noting the wild expression in his bloodshot eyes, his face reminding her of a corpse's. "She's gonna be hunky-dory, Doc," she then said uncertainly, hesitating before clasping his shoulder, "so just let Anne and Lourdes do their job, okay?"
The Doctor just looked at her, eyes almost unseeing.
"Take a seat, Snake Hips," Maggie said gently, steering him over to a chair, the two of them glancing over at Vivien, who had now thankfully stopped fighting the other three. Vivien just sat there, before suddenly bursting into tears, burying her face in Tom's shoulder, Tom taking her in his arms, Anne and Lourdes backing away, giving them space.
"Hunky-dory," the Doctor repeated under his breath, "we're going to be hunky-dory."
"You tell 'em, Time Lord," Maggie said, humouring him, whilst beckoning Anne over, "you tell 'em."