Disclaimer: I do not own anything pertaining to Doctor Who.
Annabella ©2011-2016 MamaBunyip
Everything else and story line by me but of course they're set in the Dr. Who Universe so I still hold no rights to them.
Story takes place somewhere in the 11th Doctor Era. I hope you enjoy it!
Rating: It's perfectly safe for the whole family, like the show. So don't worry.
PART 4: There's always hope
The doctor eyed the three foes, his eyes skipping and switching with a hint of note, but none of worry. He smiled again.
"Empress Christie! The leader of the Bleaks, how wonderful it is to see you," he said, extending his hands towards her like he wanted to hug while managing to not move an inch. She, in turn, folded her arms in deflection and smiled knowingly, as if she knew all that he was saying. "Will you still be fighting me, then? Or will you just let this conquering business go?"
"It's a slaughter, Doctor, conquering implies pushback. And no, we won't let it go."
"Really? I have defeated you Bleaks once. I have defeated many like you, I'm sure you know. More dangerous, more powerful, less dangerous, less powerful, it really doesn't matter, I'm the Doctor."
"Whose Doctor, though?" She asked, visibly leading him to answer.
"Everyone's", he gladly told her. She cracked a wider smile in reaction before loudly laughing. It was an evil laugh and she didn't cover it with her hand like Annabela would. It had a presence to it that drove Rory and Amy to step back a bit, unknowingly flinching.
"Remarkable," she remarked, "it's all just like I remember...I suppose from here on, it's going to be a never ending déjà vu."
"What's going on?!" Annabella finally questioned, and her future-self turned to her.
"The Destruction of quadrants, Annabella," she told her, waving a hand at her. "The assimilation of species, the slaughter of life, the darkening of stars, the rise to ultimate power," she opened both her arms, presenting herself to her past as if it was good news. "Our emancipation, my dear!"
She had looked away from the Doctor during her over-the-top amazing performance, which had caught the attention of Annabella, Rory and Amy. As she finished, she was looking up like in contact with the star and, for that reason, did not notice how not impressed the Doctor was. Or how busy, for that matter.
She was still looking up when the bleak machine to her left sizzled and short-circuited, falling forward. She jolted down and looked at the Doctor who was holding his sonic screwdriver.
"Oh, right," she casually commented while he pulled it back and waved it, recharging. "It's annoyingly difficult to remember all the details." She pointed at them and yelled out, "kill him!"
The Doctor opened his eyes as the remaining bodyguard flexed its legs. He pointed the screwdriver but changed his mind almost immediately.
"Jump!"
They all jumped out of the way and, before they had even landed, the Bleak flung himself in-between them like a hurled gigantic boulder. When Annabella opened her eyes, still lying on the ground, she saw the Doctor spinning in the ground to aim his screwdriver at the bodyguard, who had crashed into a wall on the far side of the hall.
It beeped and the machine short-circuited and fell onto its back.
The Doctor then rolled and crouched to stand up, aiming his screwdriver at her future self, the Empress. Unlike Annabella, however, the Empress was not one to stand around gawking. She had started running towards him and was thus in time to kick it off his hands.
Startled, he looked up in time receive a backhand to the face.
"Unf!"
He jerked and fell to the side.
"Hey!" Amy and Rory ran to help him but she turned and walked in their direction, smiling.
Effortlessly, she grabbed Rory's first punch, spinning and throwing him over her shoulder, so he'd land on top of the doctor, then she spun and met Amy's stomach with a jab. She placed her hands on her thighs and pushed Amy over herself so that she'd land behind her, also on top of Doctor and Rory.
"Uff!"
"Ow!"
"No…more helping," the Doctor complained, catching his breath.
"The Doctor, always without weapons, isn't that right? How have you survived for so long is beyond me." She pointed a finger at him and the whole finger started glowing with the same color that trailed patterns across her skin. Glowing brighter and brighter.
No…
Without thinking, Annabella dashed to protect the Doctor and his friends. She sprawled herself to cover them with her body, practically hugging the heap the Empress had made of them. Her back to her future self, to her enemy.
For a few seconds, which felt like years, she hugged the misshapen mound made of the three people there cluttered, with a frown made of the effort to stay there, to do what she had too.
She was scared but she shivered that away and just lay there in their defense.
"You idiot," she heard her voice say, and it was still strange, to hear her voice from some other lips; a voice with a different life to it. Still, while it had sounded amused before, now it was cold and harsh. "Better they die now than later. The Bleaks are not as quick about that business as I can be."
"Well…" Annabella saw the Doctor crawling from under his friends, "that's a business we're not…ugn, interested in." The Doctor stood up and re-arranged his tie, slapping his jacket clean.
The Empress pointed at him but Annabella got in the way again.
She can't kill me! She realized, feeling panic subsiding, She'll die if she does!
"I've seen the future, Doctor. Through her eyes," she pointed at Annabella. "I win. I always win. And the Bleaks, defined in your mind as nothing but a passing threat, one more amongst hundreds, another regular day…they will be your undoing."
"Come with us," the Doctor suddenly said. Rory and Amy were getting up already, behind Annabella.
"What?" Amy protested.
"You want to stop it too, right? What they've done to you. So come with us, we'll defeat them all together."
She was rendered truly dumbfounded by this offer, which struck Annabella as strange since she should have expected it.
"Was it my tone? Out of everything, this is quite honestly the moment I never really understood. Why did you think I wanted to stop it?" She stepped forward, shaking her head curious and amused. She walked suggestively towards him. "You mistake my clemency for lack of purpose, Doctor. I will rule everything…"
"That remains," she added, stepping back. "So go," she pulled well away from them, "go back to your Tardis, put Rory and Amy back where they belong and proceed to try and use that sniveling child to try and counter my plans."
The Doctor opened his eyes in dark surprise. Annabella looked from one to the other.
That's why he wants me, to tell him how she thinks.
"Honestly, the very thought you believe that whelp can understand my mind is demeaning and offensive. It's basically you assuming I evolved nothing at all," she scoffed, shaking her head again. "But go ahead," she turned around and walked away and out. "Far from me to presume to change the events to come. After all, might be that killing you all would actually lead to my eventual defeat."
Annabella frowned in annoyance, it was very upset to see herself such a huge fan of gloating.
"You seem really sure of yourself, Empress Christie." The Doctor spoke with a grave tone, a tone a father would use to correct someone else's son. "I'm warning you now to stop all of this. There's still time to stop it all. Or I will be coming for you. Do you hear me?"
"Ever heard words lose their power the more they're said?" She glanced back with a hint of a victorious smirk, so to show just how little power his words had on her. "We fled back then, Doctor, so go ahead and flee right now." She kept walking, turning the curve to disappear beyond the hall, her voice a foreboding echo of contempt, "or die. All the same to me."
A chilled silence set after that. Not even Rory or Amy said anything for a few seconds and the Doctor was still looking at the end of the hall…thinking.
Then came Amy's voice.
"Thank you."
Annabella turned and saw she was looking at her. Without noticing, she had been standing in front of them, just to make sure. Most of all, however, with the Empress gone, it was as if her wits came crashing down on her. She blinked and felt wetness coursing her cheeks.
"Are you alright?"
"I-"
"You're crying," Rory noted.
"Oh…sorry," she wiped her eye with her hand, surprised to see she was crying. She was lightheaded and abuzz with what had been said, with what she had seen.
"We need to go," the Doctor pointed out, leading the way. He was no longer amused nor content. He marched back the way they had come in with an odd and new sense of purpose that Annabella hadn't yet witnessed.
"Doctor?" Amy followed, Rory waited for Annabella to react.
"Anna, come on," he urged her, extending a hand. She looked at it, frightened. It took her some seconds of staring to summon up the strength to move.
She nodded, more to herself than to Rory, and walked off so decidedly she absent-mindedly ignored his hand.
Nobody talked. Silence stretched the tension of all that had happened across a very awkward amount of time.
In a matter of minutes, they were back at the Tardis. Rory closed the door behind Annabella and all the while, the Doctor was already fiddling with his levers and switches.
"We're in, Doctor," Rory let him know.
"Then we're off," he said, distant.
The ship rumbled and, instantly, they were traveling again. When the Doctor finally stopped messing with the panels, he started looking at a screen that was hanging from the ceiling. He watched intently and focused, his mind seemingly years away.
Annabella didn't feel she could interrupt but Amy was apparently made of more brave stuff.
"Doctor, where are we going?"
"Back to your time-frame, I'm dropping you off," he said, thoughtful.
"That's what she wants you to do, Doctor," Rory added
"Yeah! We'll help you, instead," Amy proposed.
"Or it's what she doesn't want me to do and so she tells me to do it so I don't do it."
"Reverse psychology?"
He glanced at them with a cunning smile. "Works surprisingly well when the other knows you're from a future he wants to change. So I'm going to ignore what she said," he looked at Annabella, "unless you have another idea, Anna."
Annabella looked startled.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. She had nothing to say, except for questions. They were flooding her mind, maybe the right thing to say was somewhere in there, drowning in all the questions. She decided to compromise and state a question.
"She's…me."
The Doctor frowned a bit, sadly, and said "yes."
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know yet," he told her, "and I'll explain what I know later, but first, I'll need an opinion, Annabella. You have to tell me, put yourself in her shoes, would you go out of your way to trick me? If you knew you had won, that you would win, would you go out of your way to trick me?"
"I uh…" her eyes gained a layer of tear but none actually fell. She shifted them in thought and nervousness. She brought her hand up to massage her forehead and then felt an arm around her shoulders. It was Rory.
"It's okay, we're all safe now."
"I understand this is all too much to take in, Anna," the Doctor said, saddened by the necessity, "but I really have to decide what to do as fast as possible."
She wanted Rory and Amy to stay. It'd be nice to have some company. But then she remembered all her games of chess with her father. When she was winning, she kept taunting him, telling him to make the moves she didn't want him to do. Moves she could beat, just in case he did them – and sometimes he did - but at the same time, they were harder to counter than the ones she actually expected out of him.
She told the Doctor exactly that, or she tried amid the hesitation and stuttering.
"I see," the Doctor said, looking her in the eyes. "Thank you, Anna. I'm going to take you two back," he decided, looking at them and before running up to pull a lever.
Annabella finally lost strength in the legs, she dropped to her knees.
She was the leader of an alien race bent on conquering the universe…how did that happen? How could she ever wish ill on others? And the way she talked…like this had always happened before, as if the Doctor and Amy and Rory all died. She…the Empress had spoken like she won, wins, and would win…
Annabella was afraid to admit that she had never taunted during a game and then lost.
"Don't worry," a voice came from the side. It was Amy this time. She knelt, placing her hands on her knees. "The Doctor will fix all this, we won't let them turn you into that…Empress"
Yes, that's right! Those lights coursing through my…through her skin. She went through some kind of transformation, that's it! The Bleaks did something to her, like mind control. All they had to do was keep her from being kidnapped…
"He always does. If there's something I've learned from spending time with the Doctor, Anna, is that he never loses. Because he always has hope, he never fails to catch those solutions that only show up when you least expect them to."
If you don't have hope then you won't be expecting a break, a solution to come up. Annabella understood that it was a new thought, but true enough, she felt.
"I was dead once," Rory said, interrupting them, and Annabella looked back and up at him. "Then the Doctor made it better," he jested with a small shrug. Amy giggled.
"It can get pretty crazy."
She looked at the Doctor and he was smiling at her in that way that eased the tension and encouraged trust.
She recognized then that it wasn't really trust, since you can't trust an alien liar you know nothing about. What it really was was hope…that he was really everyone's Doctor.
That he would be her Doctor.
Part End: Thank you for reading, please consider leaving a review if you have the time.
I hope you're not too confused. Next up, plot thickens as we learn all that the Doctor knows about these Bleaks.
Also don't worry, the story is fully written. Next update will come up next week, God willing.