Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who
Hide – Part Two
"Right, done, that's it" the Doctor announced, beckoning for them to come and see the presentation he'd put together, "Gather round, gather round. Roll up, roll up". He activated the projector and slides of the ghost appeared on the board. "The Ghast of Caliburn House. Never changing, trapped in a moment of fear and torment. But, what if she's not? What if she's just trapped somewhere time runs more slowly than it does here? What if a second to her was a hundred thousand years to us?
"And what if somebody has a magic box? A blue box, probably. What if said somebody could take a snapshot of her, say, every few million years?" he asked rhetorically; well, to Emma and Alec at least. The ghostly, overlaid images solidified and clarified into an image of a black woman in a white suit, running through a forest with an expression of fear on her face. "She's not a ghost" the Doctor continued, "But she's definitely a lost soul. Her name is Hila Tacorian. She's a pioneer, a time traveller, or at least she will be in a few hundred years".
"Time travel's not possible" Palmer protested immediately, "The paradoxes" -
"Resolve themselves, by and large".
"How long has she been alone?" asked Emma, ever compassionate.
"Well, time travel's a funny old thing. I mean, from her perspective, she crash landed three minutes ago".
"Crash landed? Where?"
"She's in a pocket universe. A distorted echo of our own. They happen sometimes but never last for long" the Doctor explained, blowing up a blue balloon and then a red one. "Our universe" he held up the blue, "Hila Tacorian's here, in a pocket universe", he held up the red one, "You're a lantern, shining across the dimensions, guiding her home, back to the land of the living" the Doctor told Emma, bringing the red balloon over to the blue and then letting them both shrivel up.
"But what's she running from?" Clara questioned.
"Well, that's the best bit. We don't know yet. Shall we see?" the Doctor suggested brightly. In the next shot, Hila had almost passed out of sight, but they could make out a blurry, strange, gnarled creature lurking behind a tree in the background. "Oh…"
"Eugh!" Laura pulled a face, "I don't blame her for running from that!"
"Well, it might be friendly" Charlotte offered with a shrug; then she looked at the creature again and said "But that's unlikely".
"What is it?" asked Clara.
"I don't know" the Doctor admitted, "Still, not to worry!" he added brightly.
"So, what do we do?" asked Emma.
"Not we, you" the Doctor stated, and all eyes turned to Emma, "You save Hila Tacorian because you are Emma Grayling. You are the lantern. The rest of us are just along for the ride, I'm afraid" he told her, before clapping his hands and declaring "We need some sturdy rope and a blue crystal from Metebelis Three; plus some Kendal Mint Cake".
"What's the cake for?" asked Charlotte as they hurried back to the TARDIS, the rain having thankfully dried up.
"You'll see".
"Alright, fine".
Inside the TARDIS, Clara inquired "Can't you just…you know?"
"What?"
"Fly the TARDIS into the parallel universe".
"Ah, it's not a parallel universe" the Doctor called up from where he was rummaging in a storage compartment, "It's a pocket universe. Plus, it is collapsing". He pulled a crystal out and slipped it inside his pocket before getting up. "I mean, the Tardis could get in there all right, but entropy would bleed her power sources, you see? Trap her there until the entire universe decayed back into the quantum foam. Which would take about three minutes, give or take, you know".
With the Doctor's direction, his companions helped lay a trail of glowing cables from the TARDIS to Caliburn House, into the music room, which was filled with clocks. The cables led up to a doohickey the Doctor had put together, with a lightly glowing blue crystal cradled at head height. "What is that?" wondered Clara, reaching up to touch it, only to have the Doctor slap her hand away.
"Subset of the Eye of Harmony" the Doctor replied as he calibrated it (or perhaps he was just fiddling with it, they couldn't tell).
"I don't" –
"Of course you don't" he interrupted, "Be weird if you did. I barely do myself. Right, you, sit down" he said to Emma, guiding her over to the chair and the crystal. "All the way from Metebelis Three" he announced, picking up a headset with a darker blue stone embedded in it, and placed it on Emma's head.
"What does it do?" she wondered.
"It amplifies your natural abilities" the Doctor explained, scanning the room with his sonic, "like a microphone, or a pooper scooper".
"What exactly is this arrangement?" Palmer questioned.
"A psycho-chronograph".
"Forgive me, but isn't it all a bit well, make-do and mend?"
Clara and Laura helped the Doctor strap into a parachute harness, minus the parachute. "Non-psychic technology won't work where I'm going" he explained, "Listen, all I need to do is dive into another dimension, find the time traveller, help her escape the monster, get home before the entire dimension collapses and Bob's your uncle".
"Oh, well when you put it like that it sounds easy" Charlotte said sarcastically.
"Doctor…will it hurt?" Emma asked nervously.
"No" he told her quietly, before admitting, "Well, yes, probably, a bit. Well, quite a lot. I don't know. It might be agony. To be perfectly honest, I'll be interested to find out".
"Doctor" Laura said reproachfully, "You're scaring her".
"Oh…sorry" he said apologetically.
"It's fine" Emma brushed it off. She looked at Alec for comfort, and he nodded encouragingly, believing in her. Emma took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I'm talking to the lost soul that abides in this place. I'm speaking to Hila Tacorian" she declared, the blue Metebelis stone glowing.
All the clocks in the room began to run backwards, and the Doctor clipped a length of rope to the parachute harness he was wearing. Emma gasped and winced as the black disc from earlier appeared, spinning and shattering into a blinding white void in the doorway ahead of her. The Doctor shouted over the rushing wind of the portal, "See? The Witch of the Well! It's a wormhole! A reality well! A door to the echo universe! Ready?" he asked Emma.
"Ready!" she shouted back.
He cracked his neck, muttered, "Geronimo…" – and jumped into the reality well, falling down and down as the rope spun out on the winch.
"Doctor!" Clara cried out worriedly, fearing for his safety. She almost tried to follow him but Palmer held her back.
"He's fine, he'll be fine!" Charlotte reassured her; Clara calmed down a bit at that. After all, Charlotte and Laura had seen this happen before, so they would know if anything bad was going to happen to the Doctor…
/
His descent stopped and the Doctor dropped down into the echo universe, pulling off his harness. He picked a random direction and ran forwards, only to come to the edge of the universe – literally, the world beneath his feet was crumbling into an abyss. This wasn't good. He turned and ran in the other direction, calling out for the lost time traveller. "Hila? Hila! Hila Tacorian!"
The Doctor stopped suddenly, hearing a scratching, rustling noise and remembered – they weren't alone in here. He could hear it scuttling, the trees echoing the sound so it appeared to be everywhere at once. By the way the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, the creature was sneaking up behind him. He braced himself to turn around and face it, murmuring "One…two…three!"
He spun around, but there was nothing there – then a scared voice cut through the silence. "Help me! Help!" Hila shouted; his hearing, being sharper than most, figured out the direction she was in and headed off that way; only to almost run into her as she emerged from the mist. The Doctor grabbed her hand. "Hila Tacorian, I presume".
"Who are you?" Hila asked, pulling her hand out of his grasp and panting.
"Collapsing universe" the Doctor replied impatiently, "You and me, dead, two minutes. No time complete sentences. Abandon planet".
"Wait – there's something in the mist" she tried to warn him.
"Then run" he advised, "Run!"
They ran. The Doctor heard Emma's voice calling out and followed it, hoping to find the harness and the wormhole…not that he couldn't have found it himself, he had an excellent sense of direction…
"Doctor! Doctor! Come home! Doctor, come home!"
He and Hila ran to the edge of the world, pursued by the monster in the shadows, and the Doctor frantically tried to get his bearings. "Not that way, which means, err, probably…" he ran off in another direction and Hila followed, mostly because she had no idea where else to go.
"What's wrong?"
"You know that exit I mentioned?"
"Yes?"
"I seem to have misplaced it!" he admitted. They stopped in a clearing, trying to spot whatever was stalking or chasing them…they backed into each other and jumped.
"Doctor!" shouted a distant voice.
"This way" he decided, heading off with Hila close behind.
"Doctor, come home!" Emma cried, holding a hand out towards the portal as if wanting to pull them back herself. Clara, Laura and Charlotte felt sorry for her; keeping the portal open and communicating through it was clearly no walk in the park, and they couldn't do anything except watch and hope she didn't crumble under the strain. Clara looked at Alec and saw that he was staring, not at the portal, but at the woman he loved. He'd better tell her the truth after all this is over she thought to herself.
"Doctor, we're here!" Emma's voice called through the mist; up ahead, the ghostly image of a familiar manor appeared. The Doctor couldn't help but be impressed. "Whoa".
"What is that?"
"An echo house in an echo universe" he explained, "Clever psychic, oh that is just top notch".
"Doctor! Doctor!"
They hurried inside the house and the Doctor locked the doors with a piece of red twine. The creature that had followed them there began scratching and clawing at the wood outside. "It's looking for a way in" the Time Lord realised. The creature banged on the door. He pulled Hila away, through the halls to the music room. If the portal was anywhere, it would be there.
In the actual music room, Emma was struggling. "I'm not strong enough!" she shouted.
"Just a few more seconds!" Clara urged her.
"Hold on!" cried Laura. Emma threw her head back and screamed; the pain in her head was near-unbearable…
The Doctor and Hila found the portal and the harness in a room full of statuary. "Grab the rope. Give it three tugs, quick as you like" he instructed, using the sonic to try and lock the door.
"What about you?" she asked even as she shrugged on the harness.
"I'll be next" he said, undoing his bowtie and using it to tie the door shut when the sonic wouldn't work. I really need to invent a wood setting...why haven't I already?
Hila tugged on the rope three times; back in the real universe, Palmer noticed the tugs and began cranking the winch back. A female figure staggered out of the portal with a cry of alarm, falling to her knees and breathing hard.
In the pocket universe, the Doctor managed to secure the door and headed for the portal. He heard a furious pounding noise and realised, "Oh, that's what that noise was. Lovely".
He made to jump into the portal, but it flashed bright and started to fade…
Emma slid off the chair onto her knees, energy spent, and the wormhole vanished. "No!" cried Clara – they couldn't give up now, the Doctor was still trapped! They couldn't just leave him there!
The Doctor stepped forward and found himself back in the woods, with the creature, his bow tie lying on the ground. He slowly knelt to pick it up. "Oh dear…oh dear…where are you?"
"Wake up" Clara demanded Emma, as Alec cradled her, "Wake up! Open the thing!"
"I'm sorry…"
"Don't be sorry" Alec soothed her, "Don't be. What you did-!"
"Wasn't enough, she needs to do it again" Clara insisted.
"She can't, look at her!" he protested.
"She has to! We can't leave him!"
"Clara, calm down!" Laura admonished; she and Charlotte stepping forward to break up the argument. Clara jumped to her feet and stared at them.
"You said he'd be fine!"
"Yeah, cos we're gonna rescue him…somehow" Charlotte asserted. "Come on!"
The three of them ran out of the room, back to the TARDIS. They could hear the Cloister Bell tolling from here. Alec held Emma's face in his hands, looked her right in the eyes and told her, "I know that you feel you can't do this, Emma, but look at that woman over there. You saved her. She's only here because of your strength, and so am I" he confessed.
/
Clara reached the TARDIS first; she tugged on the handles, but the doors wouldn't budge. "Oh, come on!" she cried in frustration. Laura and Charlotte attempted to tug open and unlock the doors, to no avail. "Let us in, you grumpy old cow!" Clara snapped, in no mood for the time machine's stubbornness. They heard a crackling noise and turned to see…another Clara, staring at them impassively. The real Clara summed it up quite nicely – "Whoa".
"Um, could you let us in, please?" asked Laura. Clara looked at her in surprise and inquired, "What's this now?"
"The Tardis Voice Visual Interface" replied the hologram of Clara. "I'm programmed to select the image of a person you esteem. Of several billion such images in my databanks, this one best meets the criterion" she, or rather the TARDIS, explained.
Needless to say, the real Clara wasn't happy at the insinuation. "Oh! Oh, you are a cow, I knew it! Whatever, you have to help the Doctor".
"The Doctor is in the pocket universe" holo-Clara stated.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, and if you enter it the entropy will bleed your power sources and you'll be dead in ten seconds, we know" Charlotte interjected, "You're still going to help us save him".
Holo-Clara looked at her sharply and inquired, "How do you know that?"
You just told me Charlotte was tempted to say; instead she said bluntly, "Because you love him…also because if he dies, so do you, and he will if we don't do something so you might as well take the risk".
There was a pause, and the hologram vanished. Charlotte crossed her fingers, hoping she'd gotten through to the TARDIS...she heaved a sigh of relief when the lock clicked and the door swung open. The three of them hurried inside, and Clara looked over the array of controls. "What do we do?" she wondered.
"Just a guess, pull this lever and hold on tight" Charlotte surmised. They all gripped the dematerialisation lever and pulled it down, clinging on for dear life. The TARDIS rocked about worse than ever, free falling through a gap in dimensions in a way that made them all hope their lunches weren't about to make an appearance.
/
Meanwhile, the Doctor was running through the woods, hopelessly lost and with an unidentified alien stalking him. Ah well, he'd been in worst situations…but this one was definitely up there. "Doctor!" he heard Emma call for him again, "Doctor, we're here!"
The echo house faded into view, and he ran for it. "Emma!"
He heard the beast in the woods scuttling around him, and he spun around in every direction trying to spot it, hearing it snarl. "What do you want?" he demanded, "To frighten me, I suppose, eh? Because that's what you do. You hide. You're the bogeyman under the bed, seeking whom you may devour".
Deep, throaty, menacing chuckling echoed through the trees. Something was sneaking up on him… "Agh!" he cried, spinning around only to find nothing there. There was something there, lurking… "You want me to be afraid" he realised, "Then well done. I am the Doctor… and I am afraid".
The creature still hadn't attacked him. "So why am I still here, huh? Why not just eat me? Ha? Come on. Because you still need me" the Doctor realised. The gnarled, skeletal creature crept out from behind a tree. "Yeah, you need me to piggyback you across. To which I say, come on then, big boy, chase me" he challenged, turning and running towards where the echo house had been.
Before he could get there, the creature – which looked even more hideous close up – came out of nowhere and slammed into his side, sending him flying. It's bony carapace rattled as it loomed over the Doctor; then, miraculously, the TARDIS appeared and flew down, knocking the creature aside. It spun around and came back; the Doctor scrambled to his feet and ran towards it, jumping and grabbing on to the edge.
The TARDIS used Emma's telepathic trace to pull herself out of the pocket universe, just in the nick of time. The Doctor let go of the side, breathing heavily and very happy to be back in the proper universe. He gave Clara a high five as she emerged, breathless, from the TARDIS and went to check on a very overwhelmed Emma. "It's okay" he assured her, smiling to see that it was daylight outside.
/
"You wanted a word?" Emma asked the Doctor, who was leaning against the door of Caliburn House.
"Well, it that's"-
"That's fine" Emma answered, before saying, "You didn't come here for the ghost, did you?"
"No".
"You came here for me".
"Yes".
"Why?"
"I needed to ask you something".
"Then ask" Emma prompted.
"Clara".
"Yes?"
"What is she?"
"She's a girl" Emma replied, confused.
"Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?"
"She's a perfectly ordinary girl. Very pretty, very clever, more scared than she lets on".
"And that's it, is it?"
"Why? Is that not enough?" Emma questioned. Before the Doctor could reply, a throat cleared behind him. He turned to see Charlotte, scuffing a trainer on the floor and looking past him towards Emma. "What's wrong?" the empath asked kindly.
Charlotte bit her lip and replied "I just wanted to say I'm sorry…not for what I said, exactly, but for how I said it. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings" she apologised.
Emma smiled and replied, "Apology accepted. You were right, anyway…it wasn't fair for me to jump to conclusions" she admitted.
The Doctor looked between Charlotte and Emma in confusion, wondering what they were talking about. "What ha"-
"It's fine" Emma assured him before he could finish, "Charlotte and I just had a…slight disagreement earlier".
"Yeah, don't worry your adorable head about it" Charlotte grinned cheekily, patting the Doctor patronisingly on the head. She laughed at his disgruntled frown and kissed him on the cheek, before waving at Emma and going back to join Laura and Clara outside.
"She really cares about you, you know" Emma told the Doctor after Charlotte had left.
"She's got a funny way of showing it" he grumbled.
Emma hesitated, and then admitted "When you first arrived, I wasn't sure if I should trust you. I knew straight away that you were a liar, and I could sense a…a darkness, a coldness in you, just under the surface" she revealed. She could also now feel the guilt the Doctor experienced, at the reminder of that darkness, and continued, "When I told your friends what I sensed, Charlotte asked me 'why?'. It reminded me that I didn't know where that darkness came from…I didn't know what you'd been through".
"A lot" the Doctor quipped; inside, though, he was touched that Charlotte had stood up for him…even if he didn't think he deserved it. He and Emma went outside, meeting the others outside the TARDIS. The Doctor walked up to Charlotte and hugged her; surprised at first, she quickly got over it and happily hugged him back, then opened an arm to make it a group hug with Laura and Clara as well.
Emma smiled to see them reconcile, and turned to hug Hila goodbye. "Where will you go?" she asked the young woman, who answered, "He can't take me home. History says I went missing".
"But he can change history".
"No, no, no, I can't, actually" the Doctor interrupted, "There are fixed points in time, you see"-
"Hi" Clara cut in as well, tugging the Doctor away. "What?" he asked, confused. Was it something he'd said?
"I knew you were there" Hila told Emma, "I could feel you".
"I know" Emma nodded.
"Have we…?"
"We can't have" Emma shook her head, "You haven't even been born yet".
"No, you can't have met but she can be your great, great, great, great, great granddaughter" the Doctor came back to reveal, adding to a shocked Palmer, "Yours too, of course. But you guessed that already, didn't you?" he asked, only to realise that Emma, Alec and Hila were staring at him in bewilderment. "Oh…Apparently not" he muttered… Charlotte and Laura face-palmed.
"The paradoxes…" Alec tried to protest, disbelieving.
"Resolve themselves, by and large" the Doctor repeated, before explaining, "That's why the psychic link was so powerful. Blood calling to blood, out of time. Not everything ends. Not love. Not always" he said, heading towards the TARDIS.
"Doctor, what about – what about us?" asked Alec, "Emma and me".
"What about you?"
"Well, what's supposed to happen? I mean, what do we do now?"
"Hold hands" the Doctor told him, "That's what you're meant to do. Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret" he told them. Emma and Alec looked at each other and smiled, reaching out to hold hands…satisfied, the Doctor made to enter the TARDIS, but a sudden flashback made him stop dead in his tracks.
"Doctor! I'm not happy".
"Yeah, you need me to piggyback you across".
"I'm not holding your hand!"
He slapped his forehead and exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so slow! I am slow. I'm notorious for it. That's always been my problem. But, but I get there in the end, oh yes" he told the others, all of whom (with two exceptions) were rather confused.
"Doctor…?" Clara asked hesitantly.
He pointed at her and inquired, "How do sharks make babies?"
"…Carefully…"
"No, no, no - happily!" he replied.
Clara frowned and pointed out "Sharks don't actually smile. They're just, well, they've got lots and lots of teeth. They're quite eaty".
"Exactly" the Doctor agreed, heading back towards the house, "But birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Every lonely monster needs a companion" he finished, looking up at a window of the house.
"There's two of them" Clara realised, seeing another one of the skeletal creatures peering out of the window.
"It's the oldest story in the universe, this one or any other. Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events. War, politics, accidents in time. She's thrown out of the hex, or he's thrown into it" the Doctor rambled, slinging an arm around Clara's shoulders, "Since then they've been yearning for each other across time and space, across dimensions. This isn't a ghost story, it's a love story!" he smiled…then he realised he'd put his arm around her and pulled away, embarrassed. "Sorry".
He ran back to Hila, Emma and Palmer, who were talking about what they would do next. "Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt the rest of your life" he said, turning to Emma, "So…Tiny favour to ask".
Ten minutes later, and he was back in the pocket universe. "I'm sorry!" he called out to the creature, "I understand now! I can take you to her! I can take you to a safe place far away from here! You can be together! Well, come on, then. She's waiting!" he shouted…the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he turned to see the twisted, malformed monster right behind him. "Well, hello again, you old Romeo, you" he greeted, trying not to grimace at the sight, "Now, here she comes" he said at the sound of the TARDIS, "Get ready to jump".