-Chapter 3-
Throughout the infinite expanses of the cosmos; throughout time and space.
They flew.
All as one. Together and yet completely and utterly alone. The Weeping Host soared throughout the expanse of the universe. They hungered and, in time, they would devour. That was nature; the way of things. It had been so since the beginning of everything. Or close enough.
Eyes covered, the quantum expanse of the Weeping Host knew no limitations of Light or Time. They swarmed and devoured and the flew and swarmed and devoured. A family of Star-Whales proved no more an obstacle than the living moon of Rallis-7. Not to the Host, the ultimate predator.
That was the universe as it was intended. That was their own existence. As long as the expanse of everything had been whole, the angels had been there with their kindness and their hunger.
It was one angel which first felt the amazing chronal instability, the temporal flux which rang out throughout the galaxy with its promise of sustenance and momentary contentment. But the angels are solitary only in their spacial sense. Within a parsec, the whole of the host felt the exceeding potential that the chaotic ragings of the flux promised. The hunger that enticed, inflaming their desire.
They swooped. They swarmed.
To feast.
–
Canton found he quite enjoyed sailing. He had not been expecting that. It seemed almost a heretical subversion of the bad-to-worse sequence that Canton had been following around for years. Disgrace to discharge to weirdness to languishing to weirdness to other planets to, finally, sailing.
But sailing was nice.
The ship – Canton couldn't pronounce the name, not even when the old alien had said it in "Big" – was a barely larger than a schooner, manned by five aliens and their captain, a bearded, robust, thoroughly browned alien who laughed loud and often. There was just one sail, a giant purple monstrosity that looked almost like a leaf from some staggeringly huge tree. The rest of the boat was a deep brown wood that smelled like hard work and salt.
Canton's black suit, shoes, and gun were packed in wax paper at the bottom of a chest the old git had given him before leaving him at the dock, a single plank stretched over a warm, red-sanded beach. The rest of the chest was filled with appropriate clothing for a denizen of Alfalfa-Matraxis. Loose fitting tunics made of light material in rich greens and blues, the extra head-holes hastily sewn up. They were comfortable, but slightly off center on Canton, whose neck protruded directly from the center of his shoulders rather than a little off to the right and left.
He had considered learning to sew in order to fix the inconvenience – it had a long time since Canton had had an urge to better himself or his situation – but he had been hard at work for the last two days. There was a language barrier between Canton and the leathery, sun-dried Alfalfa-Matraxians who made up the rest of the crew, but Canton found them good enough company – for aliens. Canton had merely emulated their comings and goings and, proving a not-all-together-worthless hand at some of their daily chores, they had accepted him soon enough as just another one of the crew. The work was exhausting, but in a good way. Maybe it was merely in contrast to the withdrawl which had rendered him delirious for days, but Canton felt strong. His hands had begun to callus but had never blistered. He didn't get seasick, as he had always expected he would have if he were to sail.
And the air. Canton didn't know if the sea smelt so – what was it? – spicy on Earth, but he had grown to love that smell on Alfalfa-Matraxis. The mauve sunsets at the end of of a hard day's work, the spiny fish he helped drag in and de-bone for dinner, the astonishingly bright stars in the night sky, outshone only by the twin moons; Canton was happy. Sometimes he even forgot about the Doctor and Melody and Agent Lee and Charles and the grimy, heart-wrenchingly lonely life he had lead on Earth, full of unobtainable desires and eventual estrangement from everyone he let get close.
Not that Canton was just another one of the crew. Not in any manner beyond superficial acceptance. His single head obviously set him apart. He would catch the crew looking at him with one set of eyes or another, when they thought he wouldn't notice. At first, Canton merely accepted it as the unnerving presence of deformity, which he figured he must have been to these aliens, like a one-armed man or a headless ghoul. People were people. Even when they weren't, Canton had reasoned. Burroughs and Wells had been full of shit. It was thoughts like that that had let Canton stay sane, marooned and isolated by an impenetrable language barrier on an alien world. Well, that and the sailing.
But time went on and with it, Canton came to realize that the uneasy looks he was supposed to ignore but never quite could were something more. The other aliens, all but the Captain who magnanimously rambled on and slapped Canton on the back, as if they were sharing some cosmic joke which a unified language would have ruined, met Canton with a mix of fear and – he came to recognize – reverence. This revelation unnerved Canton when thought on it. Did they know why Canton was going to capital? Had the wizened old git of a priest filled them in? Were they themselves religious extremists? Canton realized that he had been shit at recognizing those genre of people even on his own planet.
On the whole, the vibe did not bother Canton. Canton was different wherever he went. At least here people could see it, could treat him as the outsider he had long accepted he was. No more passing for normal, hanging out in his pressed suit, lost in the masses, his own internal world one which would have caused the average man to vomit. It seemed more honest this way. It was just another aspect of sailing that had proven a good fit for Canton's demeanor.
Sometimes Canton would remember the gauntlets and the dagger hidden in a secret compartment down past the false bottom of his chest. His stomach would lurch and he would realize just how much being on a boat complimented his life as it was. Canton could work and relax and eat and watch the sunset on the boat. He could man the sails or tie the anchor or scrub the tiny deck. He could walk one way or walk another. But that did not mean his life was his own. No, Canton's life had not been his own for a very long while.
The boat bore him constantly towards a destiny which he himself had not chosen. There was nothing to do but try and enjoy it and hope he ran into the Doctor before things got too heavy. It probably beat languishing. Probably.
If only Canton could remember what the Doctor had been trying to tell him. It had seemed urgent. Canton sighed and dipped a finger into the deep red sea. It would sort itself out sooner or later. If there was one man in the Universe who did not appear to be on a boat, it was the Doctor.
Though, Canton reconsidered, boats could be big, couldn't they? Maybe if your boat was large enough, you could forget it was there. For a time.
It was about this time, as the sun was setting to the North and hot sea air was beginning to cool and lose its spicy scent which sublimed from it so regularly during the hot day, that Canton saw the angel.
To say it was the thing that Canton least expected to see would be misleading. Canton had pretty much entirely given up on expectations by this point. Humans are perennially an adaptable bunch. There was a reason, beyond hygiene or aesthetic, that the Doctor had taken, to date, five-hundred and seven human companions while only taking three Martians, seven Silurians, one Auton (well, temporarily), a Tribble (well, one at first), and a Dalek as traveling mates. Also a penguin, but they had been more partners in crime than anything. Same for the cats, wherever they got to in the infinite expanses of the TARDIS.
Canton didn't know any of this. He just knew that expectations had come to let him down as a rule. He didn't miss them anymore than ties. However, the angel certainly hadn't been something Canton was searching for along the horizon. He balked. But not as hard as he would have two weeks ago.
The strangest thing – well, a strange thing – was that, while the angel Canton had spied appeared to be stone, it was floating in the water. Well, floating was the wrong word. It was as if the statue was standing on a pillar that went all the way down to the bottom of the sea. Jade waves lapped at its base, the ship which carried Canton slow approached, but the angel statue before Canton was perfectly still.
"Ahoy!" Canton called to his crewmen. It was probably the wrong term, but nautical vocabulary had not been one of Canton's lessons for obvious reasons. The first mate followed Canton's pointing finger, then his eyes went wide and he shrieked a cry which would have unmanned him utterly on Earth. Perhaps it was different here, Canton wondered. The first mate ran to the railings were Canton stood and began to intently watch the statue with one face. His other face alternated between a hard grimace and utter panic. The face called to the rest of the crew in garbled words. They ran on deck and met the scene in a similar manner as the first mate.
For what happened next, there was no hesitation but every action carried the weight of immense dread. It was as if a dreaded disaster protocol long practiced, was finally being put into effect. One alien raised his hand, bravely at first, but then his knees buckled and he fell to the deck sobbing. The crew picked him up with a solemn reverence and placed him on a small raft that had always rested to the side over the rails of the boat, but which Canton had never payed any mind. Before they lowered him down, the Captain hugged the sobbing crewman, wiped his eyes, and whispered something into his ears with the head that Canton had never seen these aliens use for speaking. It seemed to help. The crewman stopped crying, took a basket of food, cask of water, and three exceedingly bright lanterns and gave a look which signified, even to Canton, that he was ready for what happened next.
The raft drifted off towards the statue of the angel. Off into the sunset. The crew stood at first in silence, before getting to work with a vigor Canton had never seen. They gave the statue so wide a berth that it would almost surely put them off-course. Then the crew went below deck. Canton could hear crying and thought it best he stood apart for a time. The captain stood beside him, staring off into the ever fading sunset. Eventually, the captain went below, the sound of desperate sobbing growing louder as he opened the hatch to go down.
Canton shrugged and watched the fading crewman alone on his tiny raft, the light of his lantern finally winking out in the distance. Perhaps these people were religious extremists after all. This must be some sort of ritual, a sacrifice to a blind, one-headed, winged deity. That was what he told himself, fighting the unease that crept in the spreading dark. The sea air seemed colder, now.
Canton turned his back to the lone vigil and went below deck.
–
The Doctor was almost done. He was so close. Where had he – had that always been there? – when was that going to crash into the clearing? – blasted four-dimensional crash patterns! – Hah! – there it is – oh wait – no, but put that aside to facilitate a smoother regeneration of the – Aha! – now where did the other half get to...
This had been going on for three weeks. The Doctor didn't eat. The Doctor didn't sleep. The Doctor scavenged and tinkered and tried to will – with what was currently functioning as his mind – a teaspoon and a ball of string – together that wonderful, sexy Hieronymus Machine that was the TARDIS. If only – River – Why?
It was so close. If only he could –
The Doctor was kicked in the face. Hard.
Stunned, the Doctor didn't look up from the dirt. He had been holding a piece. And important piece. It was somewhere in the soil. He couldn't lose – Who had kicked him?
The Doctor, realizing he was still holding the unfathomably – well, to be fair there wasn't much the Doctor was capable of fathoming in his current condition – important piece of the TARDIS and sat up, blearily, as if coming up for air for the first time in a month. Close enough to the truth.
A mess of frizzy red hair met his gaze. Frizzy red hair in a ragged brown dress holding a large stick. Melody. Right.
"Have you been practicing your forms?" the Doctor said, looking towards Melody but not at her. Why had she –
"It's not hard to sneak up on you," Melody said with something more than attitude. Anger.
"No, not exploded," the Doctor began, answering a question Melody would have asked in two minutes otherwise by mistake, "if the TARDIS had exploded with us at the heart, we'd have never existed at all. Just time-statues and ghost data in the expanse of nothingness. The Universe, too. Not that we'd notice. No, the TARDIS was shatt-"
The stick came down and hit him in the chest.
"Fight me," Melody said. Severe.
"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor stood, wiped some of the soil off of his shirt with a rad which had once been his bow-tie, a turned to the near-completed TARDIS console. Melody swung again, but the Doctor caught the blow without looking. He sidestepped another attempt and deftly fit the astrolabe into place, itself a mess of duct tape and will. But it would heal. It had to. Just this once. Please.
Melody flew towards the Doctor's head, but he ducked, either to avoid the blow or two check the placement of a particular panel, and Melody went soaring over both the Doctor and the TARDIS console, flipping and landing gracefully.
"You need to wake up!" Melody yelled. Desperately. "I won't let you drift away forever and leave me."
"I'm right here," the Doctor muttered, inspecting something and then flipping switches at random.
"You're gone," Melody wailed, "you abandoned me for weeks in this rubbish jungle for this rubbish … thing."
This got the Doctor's attention.
"She's not a thing," the Doctor said, not caring for a moment to hold back the coldness in his voice, coldness that felt like it belonged to another lifetime, "she's alive."
And then, more softly, "she needs me."
"I need you!" Melody was shouting, seemingly beyond herself. "You rubbish old man. You drop out of the sky and you promise these impossible things and now I'm alone again. Abandoned. And I abandoned Simon and that was okay, I thought, because there was a magic man and he was going to fix everything but now you don't care. You just want to work on your -" Melody stopped talking and merely seethed. Slowly and deliberately, Melody raised her large stick above her head. In the back of his head, a part of the Doctor guessed her intention and yelled. The rest of him followed shortly.
"Don't!" the Doctor shouted, desperately, somewhere between and order and a plea.
"Give me a reason!" Melody had begun to cry at some point during this exchange, the Doctor realized. Crying silently.
Oh River, the Doctor thought, this is one more thing you'll need to forgive me for. The fight went out of the Doctor and, slowly but deliberately, he closed the distance between he and Melody.
Melody looked at him with dangerous, wet eyes and held the stick in her trembling hands wearily. Then it dropped and she was in his arms.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into Melody's tangled mass of red hair as she sobbed into his shirt.
"You left me alone again," Melody said, muffled and nasal through tears.
"Never again," swore the Doctor quietly. She was only a child, how could he –
The TARDIS woke.
It was as if all the colors in the clearing suddenly became richer and were lit by ubiquitous luminescence. The TARDIS, a universe all its own, overlapped into a new one, free and unrestrained. She embraced them all and coaxed the clearing every which way. Gently. Like a mother. Sexy had stumbled upon a clever bit of something indeed, the Doctor thought, distant now even in his elation. It was hardly ideal, but it was going to be okay, they were going to-
"I appear to be interrupting something," said an unfamiliar voice. The Doctor turned, still holding Melody to his chest, to meet the eyes of a two headed ghost. But that was impossible.
"Who are you?" the Doctor said, not caring just how far above that question he was supposed to be.
"Ah," the ghost sighed mournfully, "that's the wrong question. They told me you were supposed to be some sort of wise man."
"Not my best day," the Doctor muttered and declined to inquire just who they were.
"Well," the ghost went on, "I'm not anyone. Not anymore."
"And who were you once?" the Doctor asked, wearily.
"No one. Never," the ghost said softly, never.
"I don't -" the Doctor didn't like where this was going. And he was beginning to get a good idea about just where that was.
"My name could-have-been Rigelax Metraxis," the ghost said. The Doctor flinched at the words and held Melody more tightly, "I'm afraid we're all in a whole lot of trouble."
They were.