Sorry for the wait! I swear, I intended to get this out way sooner, but I had a really hectic past couple of weeks (we're talking heading games for 100 kids at an all-day summer camp plus extra shifts at work, and I'll admit, getting kind of hooked on Supernatural). I sat down last night with the intention to write… and somehow ended up watching David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. Since you're reading this, I should hope you all know how it is with David Tennant… when he's onscreen, you watch him. When he's with Catherine Tate… it's absolutely hilarious! You haven't seen funny until you've seen him in a Superman shirt, grinning like an idiot at Catherine Tate whilst covered in white paint as she glares daggers at him! So, go find that performance and watch it, and before you do, I hope you enjoy Riddle's adventures with the Doctor in Chapter Three!
Disclaimer: Until some marvelous space-time crack warps everything in our reality to my favor, I do not own Doctor Who.
Chapter Three: The Usual Sort of Thing
Riddle was, for the most part, very easy to live with. She liked to ask questions, which suited the Doctor just fine as he enjoyed answering questions. She spent much of her time in the kitchen, attempting recipes she found in books from the library to keep herself occupied. She took great pride in her creations, and the Doctor had to admit that she had a real knack for cooking – she was already much better than he was, and he'd had almost nine and a half centuries to learn.
She often parked herself in the captain's seat in the console room while the Doctor worked, watching him fiddle with control panels or thumbing through novels. He hoped to introduce her to Agatha Christie soon enough.
She was very stubborn, and very strong. When she wasn't having nightmares, that was.
Her subconscious was much stronger than he had expected, and the nightmares returned to her every night. And just like the first time she'd had a nightmare, he'd sat by her and probed her mind until her dream was available for his viewing, but thus far all she had seen was the same image; Daleks raiding her enchanting home planet, always cutting infuriatingly short just before the Daleks shouted the name of her people.
She had been with him for a week (or enough hours to constitute a week in human time; concepts such as days and months were so difficult to map in a time machine) and suffered the memory every night. The Doctor had gotten into the habit of asking the TARDIS to please keep Riddle's bedroom close to the console room after the girl retired so he could get to her swiftly when the screaming began. Because it always began. Shrieks of agony and unimaginable grief would resound through the halls, and at the first pitch the Doctor would drop what he was doing and race to the girl's side, always hopeful for new images, new knowledge, some link to Riddle's mystery of a past.
He got what he wanted at long last on her eighth day with him.
He'd been staring in irritation at a bit of wire that wouldn't quite fit back into the panel that connected one of his many monitors to the GPS (Galaxian Positioning System) and fleetingly regretting throwing the TARDIS manual out so he could figure out what he had done wrong this time when he heard the first cadence of a wail. While he would have normally sprinted to Riddle's bedroom, this time he paused. A wail was uncharacteristic; a wail was new. She never wailed. Screaming and shrieking, yes, in abundance; but never a wail. Which made him think that perhaps… she was seeing something new. And should he interrupt her and risk losing more precious information when all they had to go on were her nightmares?
He'd check on her before waking her, If she looked like she could endure just a while longer, he'd let her be until she was truly unable to handle any more.
He slipped into her bedroom as quietly as he could, but it became very apparent to him at once that she could endure no more.
She was not screaming, or shrieking. But her entire frame shook on her mattress, her blankets were in a heap on the floor from her violent thrashing, and her hair was not only black, but orange and blue and brown as well, rapidly changing until her head became a muddled blur of instantaneous flashes of color. She was whimpering and wailing, her mouth constantly moving like she was pleading in a silent and unknown language. Her hands were clawing at her arms and her forehead and her chest, which rose and fell too rapidly to be natural. She was hyperventilating.
"Riddle! Riddle, wake up, come on," the Doctor began calling out urgently, sitting on her bed and gripping her wrists firmly, trying to draw them away from herself. There were streaks of blood where she had broken the skin on her shoulders and on her face. "You're safe, remember? Open your eyes. You're in the TARDIS and nothing is going to hurt you. You know that don't you? Riddle, come on! Wake up!"
And she gasped in a breath so sudden and so violent that even the Doctor jolted as she hurled herself up into a sitting position, briefly fighting against the Doctor before reality began to take root in her fear-hazy thoughts and she burst into tears, shaking her head repeatedly. "Please, not tonight, don't make me go through that again!" she begged, trying to push herself away from the Doctor, but he held her steady and upright.
She fought against him every night so she didn't have to relive her nightmares with him, but the Doctor was adamant about finding out everything that he could about her and with a single plea had always managed to get her consent.
Tonight was different.
"Riddle, work with me. It's just a couple minutes more. I have to know."
"Not right now, please not right now," she sobbed, curling her knees into her chest. "I can't do that again!"
"I know you're scared—"
"You don't know!" she argued furiously, struggling to pull her wrists from his grasp. When that didn't work, she tried hitting him. With her small fists and weak limbs tight in the Doctor's grasp, it didn't hurt at all, but it did shock him a bit; she had never tried to hit him before. "You have no idea how I feel! Going through… through that…"
"Help me understand, Riddle. Let me in," the Doctor begged, afraid to let go of her hands until he was certain she wouldn't scurry off the minute he did. "I want to help. Really, I do. And I'm sorry I have to make you go through your nightmares more than once. I am. I'm so, so sorry. But this is the only way I can help you. You've got to trust me, and let me in."
Riddle let out a strangled sound that sounded like a final plea before she shut her eyes and nodded, burying her face in her hands but leaving the Doctor access to her temples as he pressed his fingers against them and delved into her subconscious alongside her.
Her nightmare was horribly vivid. He was seeing her world as she had seen it when experiencing the attack, racing past buildings with reflective glass surfaces in too many colors to comprehend. He could hear her harsh breaths as she ran and the pounding of her two hearts in his ears. He could feel her fear, so overpowering that it almost made his limbs unable to function. She was turning corners at random with no coherent thought other than that she had to get away from the metal monsters (her mind had no word for them at the time), whatever they were.
A woman ran past, and the Doctor watched the world stop moving. Something about that woman had made Riddle stop. She knew her; the Doctor could feel that whoever the woman was, Riddle had once been close to her; he could feel the familiarity Riddle experienced seeing the woman as she ran past. Riddle had turned to call the woman's name, but she hadn't ever gotten it out.
No; she had been too horrified by the sight of her friend shot by a green ray of light coming from the metal spire protruding from one of the monsters' cylindrical body. She had heard her friend scream in agony and watched her lifeless body crumple to the ground. The Doctor felt both his hearts twist in a way he hadn't felt since losing Donna (and that had been some months ago) and then felt his stomach lurch. Riddle was screaming in her nightmare, but she hadn't uttered that same sound in her reality. It was a strangled cry the likes of which the Doctor had never heard before, a cry that made him shudder and turn cold.
Riddle had finally gotten the good sense to run, but much slower and sloppier. The world was blurring through her tears and as she made turns at random in desperation, a sound made her stop. A tremendous crack that had come from right above her head, and she looked up just in time to see a massive glass wall, a piece of one of the magnificent buildings her world had been filled with, descending at a rapid pace upon her. And she had been crushed.
The Doctor pulled his hands away from Riddle's temples with a jolt; a very abrupt and almost electric pulse had shot through his fingertips. He wasn't sure if that signified the moment he'd woken her up or if that was yet another of her extraordinary defense mechanisms. Perhaps that had been the moment she'd somehow appeared in his TARDIS. A transport, maybe. Some form of teleportation. Oh, he wanted answers!
The girl who had struggled against him with such vigor was gone, replaced by a trembling mass of limbs and tears and tangled blue and orange hair, and those same small fists that had tried hitting him in desperation to pull away were now clutching at his jacket, seeking comfort and reassurance. The Doctor wrapped his arms around a trembling and sobbing Riddle, his hearts twisting to know he had just forced her to relive such trauma. "You were crushed beneath a building," he stated quietly, almost needing to hear the words aloud to truly believe it.
He'd been hurt before, plenty of times; he was no stranger to physical pain. But this girl… that was the first time she'd experienced agony, both emotional and physical, and he had seen what it had done to her firsthand. Sure, she was strong and stubborn, but the trauma of that moment, even if she couldn't remember it all clearly, had left terrible scars, both invisible and tangible, making that obstinate and clever girl into this; a terrified and lonely child with a desperate need to fill the emptiness with reassurance. Because how else could she go on? She knew she had lost everything, but she couldn't remember what everything was, why she had lost it, or even how. It would scare anyone out of their wits; in fact, it would drive most to insanity.
"I'm sorry," the Doctor apologized once more to her, the guilt still assaulting him in waves that came with each of her muffled cries. He bit the inside of his cheek in thought (as his hands were too preoccupied with rubbing Riddle's back and combing through her black and blue hair for adopting his typical thoughtful habits of earlobe tugging and hair ruffling) and came to a solution not entirely selfless, as he wanted it very dearly, but one that would help Riddle nonetheless. He wanted another adventure. He wanted Earth again. He missed that small blue planet. "Tell you what," he said, gently holding Riddle away from him and smiling at her tearful expression to try to calm her enough to listen to his proposition. "What you need are some good memories to cancel out those nasty ones. And I've got just the place."
A strip of her hair turned orange, which the Doctor interpreted as curiosity rather than confusion, and she sniffled and wiped at her eyes, hiccupping slightly before she inquired, "Where?"
Knowing she was recovering from her nightmare at last, the Doctor's smile transformed into a full-blown grin and he said, "How would you like to see a planet with blue skies?"
To his shock, she snorted with amusement. "You're joking," she said bluntly, the corners of her lips twitching. "Blue skies? That's impossible."
"Oh, but it's not. I can show you one of the most beautiful planets in the universe. As a matter of fact, I can show you almost all of the most beautiful planets in the universe. I did mention this is my spaceship, didn't I? But it's rather special – it can go anywhere in the blink of an eye. No pesky six year journeys or nonsense like that, oh no. We Time Lords travel in style."
"Time Lord," Riddle repeated, inclining her head slightly to the right inquisitively. Another lock of her hair turned orange. The Doctor had got to figure out what she was, how she was doing that; it was driving him half-mad. She considered the unfamiliar term for a few moments and asked, "You're a Time Lord? What does that mean?"
"Well… I suppose you might say we control the laws of time and space and are some of the most incredible beings to ever roam the galaxies, or at least we were, but where's the fun in talking about that? I know all of that. You know what I've never seen? The ocean on Earth from America. Let's go there, see that. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
He said this all rather quickly, hoping to avoid further inquiry. Much to his relief, Riddle asked no more questions. "All right," she agreed, though she clearly had no idea what he was talking about. "This is the planet with the blue skies?"
"That's the one! And you, Little Miss Riddle, will never doubt me again. Now! Get dressed in something fit for a day at a beach and out to the console room. I can have us there in seconds."
Riddle had a slightly difficult time with clothes, and the Doctor deduced she didn't quite understand what a beach was, or its implications. She came back to the console room wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, and the Doctor, somewhat amused, shook his head and led her to the TARDIS's wardrobe, where the old girl was clever enough to grant Riddle access to only swimwear, shorts, and tank tops. The Doctor went back to the console room and waited for her return again, imagining ways she could possibly get the clothes offered to her wrong, but she had no difficulties the second time around and came back wearing shorts and a tank top over a swimsuit, her bright yellow hair interrupted only by a strip of vibrant pink.
The Doctor stopped and stared at her in contemplation. She stared back. "What?"
"We need to do something about your hair."
Her hands flew involuntarily to the rapidly color-changing locks, orange now added to the colorful array. "What's wrong with it?"
The Doctor couldn't help but chuckle. Once again, women and their concern for their hair… "Nothing's wrong with it, exactly, but on Earth hair color doesn't change. It stays put. Sure, the odd person goes dying their hair some crazy color, but none of that is nearly as impressive as what yours does."
"Oh." She nodded in understanding, and then pursed her lips. "What do we do, then? I can't make it stop. Wait – are my nails all right?" She held up her hands, displaying her color-changing fingernails.
"Those should be fine. They aren't nearly as noticeable. Let's see…" The Doctor thought about it for a few moments, almost stumped. She couldn't wear a wig if she was going to the ocean (because who in their right mind passes up the chance to run into the sea the first time they see it?) and she would never go for dying her hair, even temporarily. She was very proud of her color changing hair. Sometimes he swore she was mocking him for having hair that stayed one color all the time.
What to do, what to—? "Of course!" The Doctor yelped quite suddenly, giving Riddle a jolt from his abrupt exclamation. "Oh, I'm thick! Why didn't I think of this immediately?!"
He clambered to the loose floor panel where he kept stray odds and ends he collected in his adventures and pulled out a simple silver chain with a large glass pendant on the end shaped like a heart. "Here we go!" he said in satisfaction, replacing the few items he'd had to remove from the space before he'd found what he'd been looking for (the crystal ball in which the Carrionites were strapped, a few screws from a cyberman, a deprogrammed Silurian gun, a wilted stick of celery) and replaced the panel.
He held the chain and pendant up for Riddle's regard. "This is called a perception filter. It makes others see what we want them to see. Unless of course, they don't want to see you how you want to be seen. Tricky bit of psychology attached. This particular trinket was given to me by a Pluvian duchess after saving her brother from execution by proving their uncle had created a body double of the duke to kill the prince…" he trailed off, realizing Riddle was not following his poorly spoken story and was instead staring in a transfixed sort of wonder at the crystal pendant. "Anyway, there's quite a bit of psychic nanotechnology in this that can bend a person's perception of you into a normal, non-changing haired human. Anyone who sees you shouldn't be able to see through to your actual hair… colors. Just let me adjust this a bit…" He pointed his screwdriver at the chain for a few seconds to program it and then placed it into Riddle's awaiting hands. Her hair turned a magnificent yellow, almost like spun gold.
"There you go. Put it on; let's see how it works," the Doctor ordered, and she grinned and complied at once, clasping it around her neck. The Doctor concentrated on allowing his focus to be altered just enough to see the result. She looked like herself, except her hair was a deep, and more importantly, stagnant, mahogany. He blinked, and the color was gone, replaced by the vibrant yellow. "Did it work?" she asked, although she didn't sound as though she cared too much if it had. She was far more enthralled by the pendant. Typical females. Jewelry always whipped them into quite the mood (something the Doctor had learned from his time spent with Donna).
"It works, all right. Just don't take it off," the Doctor added, although from the way Riddle had looked ever since he pulled it out for her to see, he didn't doubt that she'd raise hell if he ever asked for her to give it back. "Now that we've gotten that taken care of, let's see… how about Georgia? 2015 or so ought to do it." He looked at Riddle for confirmation, even though he knew the word would be completely foreign to her. She seemed to realize this, and nodded her assent. "Cumberland Island, here we come!" The Doctor grinned, rotating a few knobs and pulling a few levers. "Allons-y!"
Riddle was thrown backwards as the TARDIS jerked about, spiraling through the vortex towards their destination. She yelped and wildly flung her arms out to clutch onto the railing near the door, hanging on for dear life as her hair changed from yellow to black and orange. "Are we crashing?!" she yelled over the TARDIS's signature noise (a noise the Doctor absolutely adored), squealing when they jerked about again and then jolted to a halt.
The Doctor, who had been clinging to his usual rod attached to the central console, released it and went to the poor confused girl. "Sorry about that; should have warned you. Flying is always a bit of a roller coaster. In the future just grab onto something and don't let go until we've stopped. Usually the allons-y means we're on our way."
"Now you tell me," she grumbled, getting to her feet and looking towards the door. "What does that mean, anyway?"
"Let's go. It's French." When she looked at him in confusion, he added, "An Earth language. Well, go on, then! Go see your blue sky."
Riddle's lips turned immediately up into an almost Cheshire-like grin and she faced the door, fingers trembling slightly as they reached for the knob. She turned to look back at the Doctor for a brief moment before she laughed and yelled out, "Allons-y!" before leaping out the door.
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, partly in amusement and partly in fatigue. He was going to have a hard time keeping up with this girl. Hard to believe she was… what had she said? Ninety-eight years old. She acted almost like Rose used to, only slightly more childish. He had no doubt she'd fling herself head first into the trouble that always seemed to find him and more than likely cause some mischief herself.
"Are you coming or not?! This is incredible!" he heard her shriek of delight from outside, and with a smile, a small sigh, and an amused shake of his head, the Doctor climbed out of the TARDIS after her.
Riddle was standing some fifteen feet from the blue police box (which was partially concealed behind a cluster of trees), staring in awe at the sky. "It's so beautiful," she said in disbelief after glancing at the Doctor briefly. "I thought you had to be joking, but this… this is amazing. Blue skies! Who could have imagined?!"
The Doctor remembered his own amazement the very first time he'd seen Earth's blue skies. Riddle was even more impressed than he had been. "It's quite something, isn't it?"
"Earth," Riddle said the name with such reverence. The Doctor had no doubt he'd converted her to his level of love for the planet already. "Georgia. Is that a… city?"
"Nope. Georgia is a state in the US, which is a country, which is inside a continent," the Doctor explained briefly, and Riddle looked at him with wide eyes, trying to process so many new words at once. A strip of her hair turned that familiar shade of orange that signified confusion. "I'll explain later," the Doctor vowed, and though she nodded she still looked a little put out after being presented with the unknown. Hoping to distract her, the Doctor gestured towards the sea and asked, "Have you even noticed the ocean?"
Riddle allowed herself a few more moments of gazing upward before she reluctantly turned her attention towards the sea. She let out an audible gasp and her mouth dropped open in an almost comical O. That was the look of someone who had just been mesmerized by what had been set before them.
"Incredible, isn't it?" The Doctor asked her, closing the distance between them and staring at the ocean by her side. "All that vast, unexplored space. Entire worlds miles and miles down, and nobody knows what it looks like. They call space the final frontier here on Earth; I rather think they should focus their attention a bit closer to home before tackling the universe."
"Do you know what's down there?" Riddle asked. "Time machine and all. Surely the people of this planet explore it eventually."
"Humans," the Doctor supplied for her, and she took mental note before he went on to explain, "You're right, of course. I think they finally complete a map of the ocean floor at around the year /Delta.4."
Riddle evidently couldn't comprehend the strange year he'd given her and didn't try to. "What's down there?"
"Oh, lots of things. Most of them unpleasant, and let's leave it at that," the Doctor requested, watching as horror flickered briefly in Riddle's eyes and a small lock of her hair shifted from yellow to black. "Nothing that would come up to the surface," he reassured her at once, and she relaxed a bit. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and began steering her further away from the TARDIS, where he could see humans scattered across the beach a few hundred feet away. "Come on. Let's get you fully initiated to Earth and its people."
"Humans," Riddle said, reminding herself of the word. "Can I talk to them? I don't think I speak human."
"Oh, no need to worry about that. Gift of the TARDIS, you see. Translates everything for you. You can talk to anyone on any world and completely understand them, and they'll completely understand you."
"So what language am I speaking now?"
The Doctor paused. He hadn't thought of that before. "That is an excellent question," he decided, a little taken aback by his thoughtlessness. A language! His brain was beginning to lose its keen edge. A language could give him some very specific clues as to where she'd come from. "And that question will be addressed once we're back on the TARDIS. But for now, a little mingling."
"Allons-y." Riddle mumbled, and the Doctor gave her a playful nudge.
"Don't go stealing my catchphrase there, kid."
She was too easy to get riled up. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you could have a claim to a couple of words," Riddle griped, though good-naturedly.
The Doctor grinned as he looked down at her. Riddle could very possibly be his biggest adventure yet.
Riddle had taken quite happily to the ocean (although she had discovered incredibly quickly that seawater was definitely not for drinking) and the Doctor stood on the beach, sure to keep an eye on her as he looked around. This beach wasn't incredibly crowded. It was an excellent place for Riddle's first adventure.
"Well, there's a sight. You don't often see people coming to a beach wearing a suit," the Doctor heard a friendly voice comment from behind, and he turned to greet the speaker. It was an older gentleman wearing a t-shirt and swim trunks, clutching an umbrella beneath one arm.
"Yeah, not one much for swimming," the Doctor replied smoothly, offering the man a smile. "I much prefer the view."
"Your girlfriend seems to think quite the opposite," the man chuckled, nodding towards Riddle. The Doctor didn't bother to correct him. Humans couldn't quite grasp the complicated relationships he had with his companions. "You two here on vacation?"
"Oh, yeah. Thought a change of scenery could help. She's been working through some… stuff," the Doctor finished rather lamely, not sure how else to describe it.
"Well, you're lucky you got into this beach. They're only allowing about 300 people in here a day, you know. And everyone's gunning to get to this place, what with all that mermaid hype going around."
"Mermaid?" The Doctor repeated, his curiosity peaking. "What do you—?"
"Hey!" Riddle called, evidently having abandoned the ocean to see who had caught the Doctor's attention. She ran up to his side with an enormous grin on her face. "What's going on?"
"Oh, I was just telling your boyfriend here about that mermaid people keep spotting here," the man offered. Riddle didn't bat an eyelash at the term "boyfriend," obviously having no idea of its implications.
"What's a mermaid?" she asked outright, and the Doctor was somewhat mortified and amused all at once. That was a very un-human question.
The man, thankfully, glossed over her question like he thought she'd asked "what mermaid?" instead. "A couple of kids caught it on video a few weeks back on one of those fancy smart phones. Long tail, shiny black hair, real fairy tale stuff. Me and the wife are almost certain it's a hoax, but the entire country went nuts about it. And ever since then, people are always claiming to have seen it, or others like it. This place couldn't ask for better publicity, let me tell you."
"Right… Any place I could watch that video?" the Doctor asked, flashing Riddle a look that said "I'll explain later" as she opened her mouth to ask another question, which would almost certainly be along the lines of "What's a video?"
"Sure. The resort's got wi-fi, or you could just go home and get on the internet, find it real easy. Are you two staying at the resort?"
"Checked in this morning," the Doctor grinned. Riddle looked confused, of course, but that was to be expected. They'd be checked in soon enough. Sure, they could go back to the TARDIS and connect to Earth's world wide web to find the video, but it would be much better to ask the other guests what they thought of it, and better yet, whether or not they'd seen it. "Actually, we should probably be heading back up there. Getting kind of late," the Doctor said, beginning to usher Riddle in the direction the old man had been indicating. "Thanks a lot."
"No trouble," the man smiled, offering the pair a wave before heading on his way.
"I have so many questions for you right now," Riddle said at once.
"Later. Once we've got a room."
"A room where? Aren't we going back to the TARDIS?"
"Not just yet. You see, hundreds of years of searching the ocean floor and the humans never once found any sort of mer-civilization beneath the surface. So the question is, what sort of creatures are masquerading as merfolk and how do we remedy the situation?"
Riddle looked ready to burst, she was so bamboozled. "That didn't help at all."
"Once again, I'll explain later."
"This is infuriating," she grumbled, but asked no questions as the Doctor led her through the doors of the beach resort the man had spoken of and marched up to the reception desk. "Hi. Hello. Would you happen to have any vacant rooms?"
The girl behind the desk scanned a few pages of her registry half-heartedly, then paused. "Huh. Looks like we had a cancellation." She closed the book and looked up at the Doctor. "It's your lucky day, Sir. We have one room. Normally there's a waiting list of a couple weeks, but lately what with all this mermaid stuff going on—"
"What do you think of all that, then?"
"Me? Honestly, I think it's a publicity stunt organized by the managers. We've never been so busy. Anyway, name?"
"John Smith."
"How many nights? I can only guarantee three."
"Three's perfect, thanks," the Doctor grinned, sliding a credit card across the counter. He'd taken the precaution some years before, acquiring a credit card in the name of his chosen alias, John Smith, and modifying it a bit with the screwdriver to give him unlimited credit. It was much more convenient than sonicking an ATM for cash, that was for sure. The girl ran the card without any problems and handed it back to him with a room key. "Enjoy your stay."
"Counting on it. Come on, Riddle," the Doctor beckoned her, and she bounded after him.
"It makes no sense," the Doctor said in disbelief, leaning back in his chair and watching the computer screen in shock. "The footage hasn't been tampered with at all!"
"Let me see," Riddle requested, climbing off the bed and going to stand behind him. The Doctor clicked the replay button and let Riddle see the perplexing footage. There she was, plain as daylight. A mermaid, sitting on a rock several yards out, picking starfish out of her dripping black hair with her back to the camera. She tensed and whirled around, obviously startled by the sight of whoever was holding the camera, and slid off the rock with one powerful shove of muscular arms. Moments later, a sparkling blue tail rose up out of the water and then disappeared in a flash. The boys operating the camera phone began letting out several exclamations off screen and the video stopped.
"That's a video?" Riddle asked before anything else, clearly delighted by the moving pictures.
"Yep."
"And… that girl with the tail… that's wrong?"
"More than wrong. Merfolk simply don't exist! Humans did not evolve for survival in water, it's just that simple!" the Doctor exclaimed, removing his glasses and holding his head. "And even if they had, they certainly wouldn't look like that! For one, they wouldn't have hair, and they'd need enormous eyes… this makes no sense. Absolutely none."
Riddle made a noise of understanding before she returned to the bed, sprawling out on it as she reached for the notebook and pen on the bedside table. "Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot? Like, mysteries everywhere you go?"
"More often than not," the Doctor sighed, rising from his chair and going over to the Riddle's side. The room was not one of the hotel's larger ones, and had only the one bed. "Scoot over," he said, and Riddle did. He sat down and took the notebook from her. "So, states and countries and continents, yeah? It goes something like this…"
Riddle sat up and watched as he drew a diagram on the open page, listening intently to every explanation. It was very easy to know when he needed to slow down because segments of her hair would go orange, but it didn't happen nearly as often as he had thought it would. Once she had a firm grasp on geology, he started on mermaid mythology, and as she listened the Doctor thought about how nice it was to have someone by his side once more. And he couldn't imagine anyone better than Riddle.
That's that chapter done! I was going to cut it off after the bit with the old man, but then I thought, "Nah, I'll keep going." I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks in the mountains without any computer access, internet access, or cell service, so I'll try my hand at writing in notebooks again, mapping out my next chapter. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Oh, and please review. I love your reviews. I need your reviews. They are my oxygen.
Phantom, out!