Nowhere Girl
5
"Your, uh… your what-now?" the Doctor asked.
mY … LiTtLe … bOy
it said, in a voice Matilda heard come distinctly from within her own mind. Hearing the words made her head pound, and it looked notably uncomfortable for Clara next to her, as well.
"Yeah. I thought that's what you said," Thirteen continued.
dO … YoU … kNoW … An especially long pause. HiM?
It clearly took the thing a tremendous amount of effort to communicate. Mattie put her hands on her head.
mY … SoN … Another long pause. mY … sWeEt … oC'tHuBhA
"Oc'thubha!? He's your kid?"
i … aM … MuMmY
"Yeah, you sure are…"
"WHOA!" Jack yelled when Rose finally managed to swing enough from her ropes to knock right into him and wake him up. He, too, immediately laid eyes on the creature in the pit, the wriggling, staring lump. "Holy mother of god!"
yEs … MuMmY
"This is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me," Matilda said. She could hardly even believe that this was actually happening, that she wasn't in a dream or a nightmare – though she could no longer tell which it would be. Jack and Rose were now both struggling against their bindings. How long had they been upside down for? People could die from being upside down for too long.
"Why aren't you two doing anything to help us!?" Rose shouted at them, "And why have you brought Mattie here!? This isn't safe, Clara!"
"What!?" Clara exclaimed, "Why are you having a go at me!? I wanted to come on my own!"
"Hey, HEY!" the Doctor cut across them both before they had much of a chance to fight, "Could everybody just calm down for a second so I can talk to this… uh, lady!?" Mattie was surprised that Rose actually listened to this Doctor; she'd so rarely seen Thirteen even attempt to command any authority. Apparently, this was because she saved that ability for when it was needed the most. She waited to make sure they actually were going to be quiet, then continued. "Okay. Yes, we know Oc'thubha."
mY … oC'tHuBhA
"I hardly think it's easy to get him mixed up with some other Oc'thubha. He's actually a good friend of my daughter's," the Doctor approached the edge of the pit and crossed her arms, studying the mass of eyes, "I'll make you a deal. I'll tell you everything I know about your son, if you tell me why you've kidnapped my friends here and what you're doing trying to create a portal to our dimension." There was a very long wait and then it groaned:
…dEaL
"Alright. Glad we're making some progress here. Tell me what you want with Earth first."
mY … SoN … i … MiSs HiM … DeArLy … hE wAs … BaNiShEd … i DiD nOt … wAnT HiM … tO gO
"Wait, wait, wait… this whole thing is so that you can try and contact your estranged son who was banished to Earth, like, nearly two centuries ago?"
"If that's true," Matilda interjected, "Then why is there a five-hundred-year-old painting made of human skin showing Jack and Rose down in the cellar of that house?"
"Yeah – that's a good question," the Doctor said.
TiMe … iN tHiS rEaLm … iS bEyOnD … YoUr cOmPrEhEnSiOn … FoR … oNe ThOuSaNd … eArTh yEaRs … i hAvE bEeN … aLoNe
"But what do you want with them? Why have you had them brought here? And why have you been manipulating Mrs Ward and countless others from through here?"
i aM … AnGiOmBrOhL … i SeE … TiMe iTsElf … i OnLy SeE … TiMe
"What do you mean, you 'only' see time?"
i … aM … bLiNd … tHeSe eYeS … SeE nOtHiNg
"Kind of ironic," commented the Doctor, "You're literally made almost entirely out of eyes."
oLiVe WaRd … wAs mY fRiEnD … sHe wAs SaD … i ToLd hEr … HuMaNiTy iS mEaNiNgLeSs … tHeRe iS nO nEeD … fOr SoRrOw … wHeN yOuR eXiStEnCe … iS eMpTy
"You told her her human life has no meaning to try and cheer her up!?"
WiTh nO mEaNiNg … iS nO fEaR … sHe MiSiNtErPrEtEd … mY mEsSaGe …
"You know she's dead?" That had not been the right thing to say. The hideous, growling wail pierced the air again, and Mattie clamped her hands over her ears.
"You've upset it!" Jack complained loudly.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Thirteen panicked, "I thought you knew! But it was kinda your fault, I mean, don't you know that telepathically communicating with humans makes them have brain haemorrhages? When Oc'thubha crashed to Earth in a meteor, he accidentally caused a plague before he learnt how to better communicate without hurting anybody. They built a whole sanatorium in the middle of a lake."
sHe LoSt hEr cHiLdRen … tHeY hAvE LoSt ThEiR fRiEnDs … i wAnT … tO mAkE … hUmAnS … hApPiEr … i wAnT … mY SoN … tO bE pRoUd oF … HiS MuMmY
"Newsflash," Rose said angrily, "Kidnapping and brainwashing people does not make them happy. Seems like you're the one misinterpreting things."
i sAw … tHrOuGh TiMe … mAnY yEaRs aGo … tHaT yOu HoLd … tHe KeY …
"What key?" Jack asked, "I don't have any key."
tHe pAiNTiNg … fOrEsEeS … yOu WiLL rEuNiTe mE … WiTh mY cHiLd … iF i bRiNg … yOu HeRe
"So did you do the painting?" the Doctor asked.
i eNjOy … aRt … iT LeTs mE … kEeP iN tOuCh WiTh … mY fEeLiNgS
"…You know it's made of human skin and painted with blood? Do these humans you want to make happy like you butchering them to make art supplies?" the Doctor persisted.
mR tRiStRaM … mY fRiEnD … tHrEw HiMsELf iNtO … tHe LaKe … i bRoUgHt HiM hErE … hE tHoUgHt hE … wAs uSeLeSs … i WaNtEd HiM … tO fEeL uSeFuL
"But why paint something if you can't see it?"
tHe MiNiOnS … aRe sTuPiD … tHeY nEeDed … tO sEe … wHo i wAnTeD … tHeM tO bRiNg … i aM sOrRy … aBoUt tHe KiTtY … wHeN i HeArD … wHaT tHeY hAd DoNe … i DeVoUrEd tHeM
"Okay then…" said the Doctor. Hardly anybody else had said a word, none of them knowing quite what to make of this situation. The cosmic monster wasn't evil? It was a misguided mother looking for her lost son with methods which left much to be desired? "You mean the two night-gaunts that use the portal? They're dead now?"
dEaTh iS diFfErEnT … hErE
"But they can't use that portal anymore to get to our universe?"
nO
"Hey – I'm still confused about this future-predicting painting," said Rose, "What, exactly, does this painting show? Because I can see all of time as well, and I'd really appreciate a more thorough explanation."
"It's not that complicated – this nice old lady here knew that, somehow, bringing you and Jack here would lead to her being able to contact Oc'thubha. So it's come true, because Clara and I came to rescue you, and we know how to talk to Oc'thubha. I'm friends with him on myspace; he's super into Taylor Swift."
mY … sPaCe?
"Oh, for god's sake…" Rose groaned.
"Yeah, like, social media," the Doctor continued.
"What do you know about social media?" Clara questioned her, speaking for the first time in a while, "You won't even get a phone."
"I use MSN! And so does Oc'thubha."
"It's beyond me how you even manage to access MSN in 2064, it's been defunct almost as long as we've been married," Clara complained.
hOw iS … mY SoN?
"Oh," said the Doctor, "Well, he's great, as far as I know. He lives in these mines underneath a village and teaches them all to be nicer to each other. He made them a cook book. My daughter, actually, years ago, she went to live in the village with her girlfriend at the time – they're married now – and worked in a bakery your son, like, enabled the existence of. She's a trained chef, and she always said that Oc'thubha's recipes are her favourite recipes she's ever tasted." The Doctor smiled warmly when she talked about Jenny.
yOuR … dAuGhTeR
"Yeah. She's called Jenny. My little girl. I don't know how I'm gonna tell her about…" she paused and cast a glance at Matilda, then sighed. But a second later she took Mattie by surprise by turning to her properly to explain what she meant, "The only reason Jenny started trying to keep herself safe was because she was scared of what your mother would do to her if she didn't. Since Martha was always the one who had to fix her up." She smiled a sadly. Mattie didn't know how to react. Clara stepped over to her and put her hand on her arm.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
"I'm fine." She didn't know if she was fine, only that the shock and horror of what she was experiencing currently was burying her aching grief. She supposed she was as fine as she could be, given the circumstances.
"Look, I'll tell you what I'll do, uh… what did you say your name was again?" the Doctor resumed addressing the eyeball-thing.
AnGiOmBrOhL
"Alright, Angie – I'm cool to call you Angie, right?"
i … LiKe … AnGiE
"Awesome, so, what I'll do – because I'm swell like that and I really know what it's like when you're missing your only kid-"
i hAvE … a tHoUsAnD cHiLdReN
"Well… my point still stands. I'll get you a computer and have Oc'thubha get in touch with you, if he wants to, and you're gonna let my friends go and stop trying to communicate with humans and sending your 'minions' through the portal. Capiche?"
cAp… iChE?
"I mean, do you understand?"
I … uNdErStAnD … AnYtHiNg fOr mY SoN
Matilda stared vacantly into space while Rose Tyler yelled in front of her. Yet again, everybody was talking about her, but nobody was talking to her; Rose took great issue with her accompanying Clara and the Doctor to the Unnameable world of cosmic phantasmagoria, despite her admission that leaving Mattie on her own in the house wouldn't be in her best interest, either. Whatever they were going to do about 'Angie', whether the Doctor would make good on her promise to deliver a computer and open a line of computer with her estranged, monstrous son, was something she kept being told not to worry about. Had the Doctor lied about her intentions? Was she just going to seal Angie away?
She felt dazed and woozy as she sat in the armchair in her living room which her mother used to occupy, something she was hardly thinking about now in her all-encompassing numbness. Mattie was hardly even perceiving the words or the volume of Clara and Rose's one-sided argument, which consisted of Rose's anger and Clara's half-hearted rebuttals. Jack had left as soon as they had returned to go to the hospital and make 'arrangements' he was even more unwilling to divulge to her after her 'trauma' so far that day. It was as soon as things had stopped happening to her that she'd returned to melancholy, however; it had ironically been almost easier to function when she had other things to focus on, when Jack and Rose were in desperate need of their help, when there was some kind of mystery. But now she felt like she was surrounded by the dead: her parents, Mrs Ward, Church… and she had still never been allowed to attend a funeral. Perhaps she had never learnt to cope properly… was there a proper way to cope?
"That's enough," the Doctor finally stopped Rose, "I take responsibility, okay? I didn't want Mattie to be on her own and I didn't want to be away from my wife. What's done is done, you shouting isn't going to help anything." It was almost like Rose enjoyed taking lumps out of Clara, until somebody came to her defence. Though she had begun blocking out all the noise, when they finally quietened, she felt a real sense of relief – for a few seconds, at least, until it was supplanted by a very intense feeling of displacement.
"I don't want to be here," she murmured, looking at the floor, "I don't want to be in this house. Not… n-not with Mrs Ward down the road like that, and that house just…" She clenched her fists and sank in the chair. To think, some hours ago, she had been so horrified by the prospect of leaving her home there on the Isle of Wight, but now just being there so close to the otherworldly portal and its nightmarish inhabitants – even if Angie hadn't ultimately been a malevolent world-destroyer – made her feel sick. Or perhaps that was because a thing from another universe had been telepathically communicating with her.
"Where do you want to go, sweetheart?" Clara asked her softly, the Doctor and Rose remaining in their minor stand-off, neither particularly impressed with the other. "You can stay on the TARDIS. The phones are working again, so-"
"Mickey and Martha wouldn't want her on the TARDIS," Rose argued with her. Clara paused, clearly frustrated by Rose, but didn't argue. Instead she turned her gaze imploringly on Mattie, crouching down in front of her chair.
"Do you want to come with us to Brighton? Not that this has to be a decision about where you want to live, but if you want to go somewhere else that's more, you know, solid and familiar, you're more than welcome," Clara said. Matilda just about managed to nod. She actually liked the idea of spending some time in Brighton – it was supposed to be nice there, after all.
"If the funeral's going to be in London, then…" she began, but didn't her finish her sentence.
"Yeah. Yeah, course, Brighton's a lot closer than Newport," Clara nodded, "Takes fifteen minutes on the levitating trains to get to London. Alright, Matts, you go pack a small bag and try not to think about too much. I'll drive you."
"Are you sure, Coo?" the Doctor asked, "That's, like, almost a three-hour journey. And there's no car here, Jack took it when he left."
"I could just teleport you," Rose suggested stiffly.
"I like long drives," Matilda mumbled.
"So do I," Clara smiled at her the tiniest amount, then turned back to Thirteen, "I'll just borrow one from the TARDIS; you have to bring it down anyway to get a computer. And talk to Jenny."
"…Right. Yeah. No, if that's what you want, then…" the Doctor was obviously not thrilled by the prospect of delivering Jenny the bad news. But then, who would be? "I guess me and Rose will have to wrap up everything here." Mattie had never been able to work out exactly what Thirteen and Rose thought of one another, whether they liked each other or not; but most of their issues seemed to stem from differing opinions on Clara Oswald, which Clara herself cared little for.
"Go upstairs," Clara bade Matilda, "When you come back down, we'll be ready to go; you don't have to stay here if you don't want, promise." Mattie did just that, glad of an excuse to leave her living room and its uncomfortable atmosphere. She hoped they didn't start shouting again as soon as she was gone.
Packing even a small bag was no easy task, however. She found herself struggling to choose what she wanted to take, especially since she didn't know how long she would be away from the house for. She wasn't even sure she wanted to come back to it, and wondered if that made her a bad person… but she hadn't grown up there. Five of her fifty years had been spent on the Isle of Wight, and the furniture her parents brought with them bore more sentimental value than the walls. She found a backpack and stuffed some of her clothes in it, as well as her computer, and an old blanket she kept on her bed. Then she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye a toy narwhal she'd had for decades, one which had needed to be sewn up and mended by her dad on more than one occasion. He was called Blob and was perched on top of her wardrobe, but now, on a whim, she decided she would take him with her. The last thing in her bag was her old pair of glasses her mum made her take everywhere in case something happened to the ones she was wearing; even wearing old glasses was vastly preferable to wearing no glasses, she had that many problems with her eyesight. She was almost as blind as Angie.
While she organised all this, she didn't hear the arguments begin again downstairs. All she heard was the thrumming of the TARDIS arriving outside and her front door opening and closing. She made a point to wait around in her bedroom for a few minutes to give them a chance to get this fabled car, during which time – to her horror – she realised she had nearly forgotten her mum's letter. Mattie crept out of her own room, backpack slung over one shoulder, and into her parents' bedroom again where the letter remained. On one last whim she also swiped a family photo of the three of them her mum kept on the bedside, her when she was much younger, shot in black and white, everybody smiling. Was it strange that she wanted to take their most mundane possessions, as well? Her dad's old alarm clock, the glass her mum kept out in case she wanted a drink in the night? But for the time being, she left those behind. She would come back to the house and retrieve these seemingly meaningless objects, eventually. When she could stomach being so close to that portal again.
Mattie left the room and descended the stairs into the hallway, where her front door was slightly ajar. She picked the spare keys up from where they'd fallen down next to the shoe rack and went outside, where it was still as unnaturally chilly as it had been that morning. It felt more like March than July. The only person left now was Clara, who was smoking. The TARDIS stood nearby with its doors closed. Clara hurried to try and finish her cigarette once Mattie appeared.
"Smoking's bad for you, by the way," she said hastily, "Don't ever start doing it." Mattie was much too distracted to pay attention to Clara's bad habits though, because next to her stood one of the sleekest, fanciest cars she'd ever seen. Cobalt black, low to the ground, large wheels almost totally obscured by the bodywork to give the impression it was floating, and a top 'pod' made entirely out of darkened glass. She recognised it well as the car that had been plastered all over the news recently: CyTech's 'Omnio.'
"Isn't that a prototype car?" Mattie asked, staring at it.
"Something like that," Clara shrugged, "Adam Mitchell said I can take it out. Wants to see how it copes with the three hours back to Brighton." The car was being celebrated because of its being made of affordable, sustainable materials, while also being potentially entirely self-driving (though, all cars were) and powered exclusively by the solar glass its windows and pod were made of. And it was meant to run completely silently. It was what companies had been promising to do with their cars for decades. "I'll tell you what, my first car was a bright red Ford Ka from 2006, and I still had it when I met the Doctor seven years later. Seems like so long ago now… people used to make fun of electric cars back then."
"Really? Why?"
"Well, they were a bit rubbish," Clara said, taking one last, long drag on her cigarette before dropping it to the ground and stamping it out, "Couldn't go very fast, took hours to charge, had to plug them in… people didn't care quite as much about climate change. Anyway, come on. Rose'll bring the Doctor back home in a few hours."
"Will they be okay? Going back there?" Mattie asked as she approached the passenger door. After Clara unlocked it with a button on a set of keys, Mattie only had to touch a sensor on the door for it to slide open, directly upwards. This was to stop car doors banging into things, like she remembered they used to do a long time ago. She shoved her backpack in the footwell and got in, glancing at the TARDIS.
"Oh, they'll be fine," Clara assured her, "They'll be able to take more equipment with them, and some backup. Oswin's studied parallel dimensions extensively."
"You're not worried at all?"
"I'm always worried about what my wife might be doing," Clara sighed, "She gets into trouble a lot. But they can handle it. And they're going to talk to Oc'thubha about it first, fact-check everything." There was next to no indicator that Clara had started the engine, which she did by just flicking a switch, except for all the lights coming on. The car remained utterly silent. Clara turned off the automatic driving after putting on her seatbelt and pressed down on the accelerator, the car gliding soundlessly through the trees and away from Mattie's house. Just like the hospital, she watched it disappear in the wing mirror. Now, with every passing minute, she would be going further and further away from her parents' home, and they themselves.
Soon enough, they were on the road again, following the car's built-in, digital satnav. All the readouts were projected onto glass screens. Mattie slouched down against the car door, crossing her arms tightly, enjoying the smooth motion of the vehicle as well as its heater. It was the first time she'd actually felt warm in hours.
"Don't you have your own car?" she asked eventually.
"Well, uh…" Clara grew awkward, "We did… and then the Doctor borrowed it and crashed it into a tree… and then we got another one from Adam, a Ferrari, and then I… accidentally drove it through a spatial-temporal rift and we got stuck in London in 1912 for a while… since then we've been carpooling to get to work with a colleague. But the Doctor's just bought this write-off camper van she plans on fixing up over the summer."
"Camper van?"
"Yeah, this Volkswagen Westfalia from Nineteen-Sixty-Something. She's got some special TARDIS-blue paint to do it over with and plans on building an electric engine from scratch. Should be done by the time we have to go back to work in September."
"Why a camper van?"
"Oh, I don't know, just one of those ideas she gets in her head," Clara said fondly, keeping her eyes on the road, "Maybe she wants to go camping without having to pitch a tent. I've never much liked camping in tents. I guess that's what's good about the TARDIS."
"Why'd you leave?"
"Bunch of reasons. I got tired of the transience, I suppose, never feeling like you're in the same place… I never got the chance to live out my life on Earth, and one day it just caught up with me and I didn't want to stay there anymore. Besides, it's good for Jenny to have the TARDIS for a while; she's doing fine taking the Doctor's place for the moment."
"Does the Doctor not mind leaving the TARDIS?" Mattie persisted with her questions. Clara didn't seem to be too fazed, though.
"She misses it, but it's not like I'm trying to control her. We still spend time there because she goes to see Jenny and I have to visit my sister. Besides, we seem to get roped into dangerous situations regardless of if the TARDIS is around, today being a prime example…" Mattie grew quiet again, thinking about the day's events. It was very hard to keep it all straight in her mind. It had been the middle of the night when she had left the hospital, then she'd been woken up at seven by arguments downstairs, before being dragged around to a parallel universe no later than ten. It was now just after one o'clock, but the gloom hanging over the island was persistent, like being trapped in a dream.
It was certainly the strangest day of her life and felt to her about as unreal as a dream, like the events didn't really connect to each other, didn't work properly. She stared at the digital "13:08" on the car's dashboard. It was still less than twelve hours since her parents had taken their last breaths… she felt stray tears playing at her eyes again, now that there was nothing leftover to distract her. But in spite of everything the car was especially lulling, and she did feel calmer the further they got from the horror of Knighton Gorges Manor. Places like that were the reason her parents had never wanted her to spend time on the TARDIS, were the reason they wanted her to go live an ordinary life in Brighton. She didn't want to go against their wishes, and maybe it wasn't as much of a wonderful daydream as she had always pictured it. The danger present in their stories suddenly felt palpable, threatening… even Clara didn't enjoy the instability of a life of constant travelling… she herself had never liked moving around so much… so many different houses, and places … how long would it be until they reached the Solent Tunnel? … it had windows along some of its length, illuminating the seafloor … but she had never seen anything interesting … no fish … maybe this time there would be plenty of fish … a narwhal, like Blob … she had always wanted to see a narwhal …
"Mattie?"
Somebody shook her shoulder and she was startled. The first thing she saw was the car clock, only now it read "14:51." But she had only closed her eyes for a moment, hadn't she?
"Matts." It was Clara.
"Huh?" she asked, woozy. Her glasses had slipped down to the edge of her nose, and when she went to rub her eye she accidentally pressed her palm onto the lenses, getting them covered in sweat from her hands.
"You fell asleep, sweetheart," Clara explained.
"Were there any whales?" she mumbled.
"Where?"
"In the tunnel."
"Oh. No, you didn't miss anything cool, don't worry. They didn't have the lights turned on for the windows." The Solent Tunnel was the large tunnel built underneath the strait between the Isle of Wight and the British mainland, some thirty years old now, and unlike the Channel Tunnel it did have windows in it. They were illuminated by outside lights, but there was rarely anything to see. The car was parked somewhere, bright sunlight agitating Mattie's eyes as she struggled to wipe her glasses clean on her sleeve.
"Where're we?" She squinted out of the window, but saw nothing except a clear, blue sky.
"We're at a service station just off the A27," Clara said, "Rose rang me, so I pulled in here."
"What did she want?"
"She says it's all resolved, they've given 'Angie' a computer and set it up to IM Oc'thubha, and broke the portal generator. Apparently, the bad weather on the island's really cleared up, but it's been alright ever since we came out of the tunnel. We're halfway between Chichester and Worthing. I'm starving though, and I thought you might be, too." Now that Clara mentioned it, she was; she felt hungry for the first time in days. Why was that? Things had only gotten worse… "Do you want something to eat? There's a McDonald's." She nodded, yawning. "Oh, and Jack texted me, said he wants you to know that everything is 'being taken care of' and you don't have to worry."
"Uh-huh…" she mumbled as she got out of the car. For some reason she brought her backpack with her, not wanting to part with it and the possessions within. Clara left her coat behind her on the front seat in a clump. Mattie's stomach rumbled slightly. After the day she'd had, the soaring, summer temperatures nearly renewed her state of shock. Luckily it was air conditioned inside the services and not particularly busy.
"What do you want?"
"Just, I don't know… chicken nuggets, or something…" She stayed non-committal about her food, going to find a table that was at least partially in shadow, while Clara disengaged to go use the screens to order. It was table service, so Clara wasn't away for more than a minute or two, pulling out the chair opposite Mattie with a numbered, cardboard placard. The only other person in that McDonald's was a trucker eating three Big Macs to himself.
"Are you feeling alright?" Clara asked.
"I guess."
"Have any good dreams?"
"Didn't have any at all." She crossed her arms on the table and leant on them, slouching forwards. "Does Rose hate you?"
"Hate me? No," said Clara.
"It seems a bit like she does, sometimes."
"We're friends. Good friends, even. She just thinks I'm annoying, that's all, and for a long time she really didn't like me – but things change. I'm the only other person who really understands what it's like being married to the Doctor, anyway, and that's something that can get very frustrating sometimes."
"I heard a story once that she tried to kill you."
"She'd been given psychosis-inducing drugs, Matts," Clara said, "The part people always leave out about that story is that everybody else also tried to kill each other. The Ponds tried to kill each other, and they're married. Adam Mitchell tried to kill somebody. And you know, Rose is grieving as well right now – when she was shouting at me earlier, it's not me she was really upset about, you know?"
"Sort of…"
"Rose just wants what's best for you."
"All anybody's been talking about is what's 'best' for me…" she grumbled.
"Well, that's because we all care about you," Clara said seriously. Then a server came over with a tray of food, a box of chicken nuggets, two drinks, and a chicken sandwich for Clara. Clara who promptly produced from one of her pockets and additional three sachets of mayonnaise. When she lifted the bun from the top of her sandwich, Mattie saw it was already basically drenched in mayo.
"Were you just carrying that mayo around with you?"
"It's my emergency stash."
"'Emergency stash'? Of mayo?"
"You never know when you might need some mayonnaise at short notice, Matts," Clara said knowingly, as though this were legitimate advice a sane person would give. She proceeded to squeeze out the contents of all three sachets onto her sandwich. "Wish I had some more…"
"More?"
"Mm…" Clara said, slurping her drink, which appeared to be a milkshake. Mattie just had lemonade, it seemed, and she sipped it tentatively, worried about her ability to keep down food.
"Is there, like, something wrong with you?"
Clara glared at her, "Shut up."
"How can you taste anything except for the mayonnaise?"
"I don't really want to taste anything except for the mayonnaise."
"Eurgh."
Clara was indifferent, "Haters gonna hate."
"Eurgh," Mattie repeated herself, "Don't say that. You're too old."
"Too old?" Clara laughed.
"Yeah. You're ancient."
"I guess that makes you a hypocrite, then."
"No, I'd only be a hypocrite if I was as embarrassing as you are."
"Ouch," said Clara, taking a bite from her disgusting, mayo-soaked McChicken. It almost put poor Matilda off her nuggets (though, as soon as she bit into the first one she realised how famished she'd really been, and occupied herself for the next five or ten minutes with eating all nine of them.) After this time had passed, Clara informed her, "They've told the police about Mrs Ward, too…"
"Oh. What're the police gonna do?"
"They'll need to investigate her cause of death."
"Then what?"
"See if she had any last wishes."
"Will there be a funeral?"
"I… don't know. Sorry."
"She doesn't have anybody to go to a funeral… they're all dead… it must be awful. An empty funeral."
"I'll go," Clara offered, "You don't have to, but at least there'll be somebody there. Unless you do want to go? But it's fine if you don't want to. Funerals aren't… they're not a good time. Had my first cigarette at a funeral."
"Whose?"
"Mum's. Long time ago. 2005."
"What was it really like?" Mattie asked cautiously, "If – if you don't mind me asking, I mean…" Clara stopped to think and eventually put down her half-eaten sandwich.
"It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Has anyone ever told you the story of how Rose met the Doctor?"
"Is that the one with the shop window dummies? Where they came to life?"
"…Yeah," Clara nodded slowly, "Yeah, that's what happened. It was those dummies who killed my mum. They shot her in front of me." Mattie felt sick again hearing this, hearing the lump in Clara's throat and seeing the haunted expression on her face. "I was sixteen. It was, uh… I mean… in some ways I've never really… I still have nightmares about it sometimes. Martha used to worry about me, wanted me to see somebody."
"…Nightmares?"
"Sort of, experiencing it all over again… felt like something's been ripped out of me… but it's not like I even tried to deal with it well, at the time, I just started smoking and drinking, which you won't be doing no matter who you go live with. Dad was just never very good at telling me off, didn't know what to do with me after that," Clara said, then changed tact. "But, you know, having good people around you helps. I got a lot better when I met Oswin, when my Echoes gave me a, sort of, purpose." She looked at the scar on her arm when she said that, a scar Mattie still hadn't heard the full story behind. She didn't want to push her luck and ask about that, though, not when Clara was already having such an obviously difficult time talking about her mother. "You'll be okay, sweetheart."
"…If I did live with you," she began, "Where would I stay?"
"Well, if you like, we thought you could have the loft. It's a conversion, so it's a proper room and everything. It's just got old bits and bobs up there at the moment. It's nice, though, it's got skylights, and it's big."
"Do you really not mind? You didn't even get any warning…"
"I told you, we'd be honoured to take you in."
"There's this, um… I mean, my parents, they always… every Saturday, we had this 'family dinner' where Rose always came over, and sometimes Jack… could that-"
"Jack and Rose are welcome to visit whenever they want, but yes, I'm more than happy to carry on having this family dinner on the weekends. And I'm sure the Doctor will be, too," Clara assured her. Mattie nodded, and then was resigned to silence while she finished her lunch over the next few minutes. She ate very slowly, but Clara didn't try to rush her. It was almost nice to have the quiet and the sunlight.
"It's weird how things carry on…"
"Yeah, it is," Clara agreed with her. "But, they do. We do. We have to. For them."
Matilda nodded, then repeated, "For them…"
"So, somebody's kind of already taken the username 'Angiombrohl,'" the Doctor confessed nervously. Angie wailed and writhed in her pit. "No – don't – it'll be totally cool, I'll just, like, throw a couple of numbers on the end."
"Or you could replace the letters with numbers," Rose said, "What if you swap the Os for 0s?" The Doctor nodded and tried this, sitting on the squishy, otherworldly ground with a desktop computer running Windows 98 in front of her. It was the first computer she could find hidden away on the TARDIS, a gigantic, cream-coloured brick Rose had needed to carry all the way there; it was running on a fission battery Oswin had rigged up that would last for a few millennia at least, but that wasn't making it go any faster.
"Alright, well, 'Angi0mbr0hl' with zeroes it's accepting," the Doctor said once a tiny loading bar had finally filled up. The night-gaunts swarmed above them, clearly interested in what was happening but luckily attacking. Not that she knew what they'd do if they did attack, they didn't have any eyes or mouths, their faces completely blank. Rose kept a careful watch on them, an enormous gun slung across her back which Oswin had called a 'universal cannon.' It apparently packed enough punch to at least impair a cosmic god long enough to make an escape. Thirteen highly disapproved not just of Rose even bringing it, but of Oswin building it in the first place, calling it a 'counter-measure', like she didn't trust Oc'thubha. But today wasn't the day to start an argument like that with her sister-in-law. It had been bad enough breaking the news…
"What's the weird noise?" Rose asked.
"Dial-up," the Doctor explained, "It's more stable than wifi when you're trying to transmit between dimensions."
"Dial-up? Jesus, what year is it?"
"I like the noise," she said, "If I had a phone, I'd set the dial-up modem sounds as my ringtone. Y'know, for irony."
"If you had a phone, I doubt it would be able to connect to the internet at all," Rose sighed, putting her hands in her pockets. Her mascara was still streaked across her face from her turbulent night. But her ordeal with being kidnapped by marauding night-gaunts appeared to have shaken her enough to put her grief on pause. "I don't know how you hold down a job without having a phone."
"I just give everybody Clara's number."
"It's almost like she's your secretary."
"A sexy secretary," she said, which made Rose turn her nose up disdainfully. So what if the Doctor sometimes thought of Clara as her sexy secretary? Not that she'd ever mention that to Clara, because Clara would probably get offended and start refusing to take any of her calls. But a girl could dream.
A notification on the computer, which had MSN sitting open, dinged.
"Would you look at that! You got a voice message from your son. I'll play it for you." She did just this, sonicking the computer to increase the volume of its frankly pathetic in-built speakers (though a computer of that age was lucky to have any speakers of its own at all.)
The noise which emitted from the machine was quite horrible. It was like listening to piercing radio feedback, coupled with an inhuman growl and violent static, bad enough to make both she and Rose plug their ears with their fingers. It drew on for what felt like an interminable ten seconds of grotesque vocalisations until the computer silenced again. Then they were subjected to another deafening screech from Angie in the pit.
mY … gOoD … bOy
"Uh, yep, he's a good'un," Thirteen nodded awkwardly, "D'you think you're okay now? I've added myself to your contacts list, too, so feel free to just get one of your bat-boys up there to shoot me a message whenever."
"Do you even have a computer of your own?" Rose continued.
"Yes, one I built myself. It runs the History department timetable spreadsheet like. A. Dream. I Excel'd the crap out of that syllabus."
"You are so domesticated. Honestly, it's like the woman's castrated you. In fact, it literally is, since you were a boy before you met her."
"Ha, ha. I'll put the snide-ness of that remark down to grief, thank you very much. Now, then, Ang, old-buddy-old-pal-old-friend, we've got some important business to attend to back in our own universe."
tHaNk … yOu … dOcToR
"Don't mention it!" she said brightly, "I'm happy to reconnect you and your son. I know how much it sucks being apart from your kids…"
"And there's another kid I'd like to get back to," Rose said, turning to leave.
gOoD … bYe … fRiEnDs
"Bye!" Thirteen waved, though Angie was blind and wouldn't be able to see.
"Yep, bye, Angie," Rose said, quick-walking away.
"See you around!"
Angie made an odd, guttural sound, which the Doctor took to be one of appreciation, as she hurried to catch up to Rose and her 'universal cannon.' Lucky they hadn't needed to use it.
"I can't believe you brought that dumb gun," she said quietly as they walked back towards the ruined Knighton Gorges Manor.
"I'm just not in the mood to take any chances today," Rose said, hunching her shoulders and glancing around the area suspiciously, like the night-gaunts were going to swoop down and attack them. Maybe Lovecraft had been wrong with his judgements of the creatures in the Unnameable – not that Oc'thubha had ever had anything nice to say about any of them, either. But clearly, they weren't all bad. "It's not like I'm trigger-happy."
"Well… maybe her methods were unconventional and she made a few mistakes, but at least we helped her. At least something good came of everything that's happened…" the Doctor began. "Silver linings, y'know?"
"Won't be any silver linings if Mattie ends up traumatised by this."
"Rose, she'll be okay. She's resilient. Don't you remember when she was kidnapped by those Daleks? She was no worse for wear. She was even upset for a while that she wouldn't get to hang out with 'Pinkie' anymore. You oughta take some time out to worry about yourself a little here – instead of taking it all out on my wife."
"It's not my fault if she's…" but Rose didn't know how to finish her sentence.
"She's what? She's there?" Rose said nothing. "We're all heartbroken here. There's no need for any of us to take it out on each other." Still nothing, so the Doctor lowered her voice and tried a different approach, "Are you mad at yourself because of what happened?" Rose stopped walking and turned to address her directly, growing suddenly frantic; they were just outside Knighton Gorges, where Rose would need to give the Doctor a boost to clamber back into the building itself.
"I should've seen this coming," she said, "I see everything coming. And today, on a day so important, where I'm the one who needs to protect Mattie – I couldn't. I couldn't even protect myself."
"It's not your fault, Rose. You just don't have any control over other universes. Most people don't have a single ounce of control over any universes, including me. And Mattie's going to be okay. We're all looking out for her, and all of us have recovered from extreme loss in one way or another. Everybody goes through death like this. We can't keep her in bubble-wrap."
"Keeping her in bubble-wrap and just not letting her hang around in a dangerous, alternate universe isn't the same thing."
"She wanted to help save you and Jack, and she didn't want to be on her own. Leaving her would have just made her feel more powerless than she must do already. And finally, you know, she's not as much of a little kid as we see her. She's fifty. I'm sure that she's going to be alright in the end – don't you trust me?"
"Of course I trust you, stupid," Rose said, annoyed, clenching her jaw to hold off a fresh wave of tears. "I trust all the Doctors."
"Then can we just get out of here?"
Rose nodded and noticed the high floorboards they needed to scale, then sighed and lowered her hands to the ground so that the Doctor could step on them. This boost very nearly flung Thirteen across the room – it had been so many years and Rose still didn't quite know her own strength. She slammed into the floor a little too hard for her liking.
"Sorry!" Rose apologised awkwardly, "I didn't mean to…" Rose didn't need any help to just vault herself up, landing with a thud near the Doctor as she struggled to her feet, a little dazed.
"It's fine… just might leave me with a bruise…" she rubbed her shoulder, wincing.
"…How are you holding up? Apart from the bruise?"
"Me?"
"Nobody ever asks you, it's always you asking everybody else."
"I guess you're right. And who knows? I've lost so many people now… at the moment I just want to get back to Clara. What about you?" They descended down the narrow stairs back into the cellar with the slow-moving kinetic generator, about to be destroyed.
"I… I don't know. The Doctor's still doing the rounds…"
There was a strange pause between them, during which Rose looked at her feet.
"…If you wanna come back to Brighton with me, you're always welcome. You can come anytime – bonus points because you don't need a TARDIS to hide somewhere… and even you have to admit that Clara makes the best hot chocolates, they're just what a gal needs at a time like this." She stepped into floating rings of the generator, Rose following her and thinking over these words.
The violent teleport gave them some pause though, as they were wrenched from one dimension to the next and that familiar sense of nausea swept through her. They were plucked from the ancient library and dropped into that muddy cave with its roof open to the grey skies; a slight drizzle had begun, making it sticky and even more damp. But it was a notable improvement than being in the Unnameable. In their universe the spinning rings were embedded into the cave walls rather than suspended in the air, making their destruction somewhat trickier… at least, the Doctor thought it would be trickier.
"I should be able to just sever the connection," Rose said, her eyes both burning gold, indicating she was accessing the time vortex in some capacity. She blinked and it stopped. "I can't destroy it because it exists half here and half there, but I can close the gate to preserve where we are. It's awful in there, you know. I can't see anything. I'm like the opposite of Angie, only able to see what's physically in front of me… how do people cope with it?"
"Beats me – but it sure must be a lot quieter than being able to see time and space."
Rose only had to touch her hand to one of the rings to make them cease up, and they immediately began to deteriorate until their silver was completely gone, discoloured and transformed into rusty husks. Nobody would be able to use them now.
"What about these books?" she indicated the ones left behind by Mrs Ward about her dalliances with the Unnameable and its inhabitants.
"Uh… leave them. I'll talk to the Gutkeleds; Sally will want to put them in the archive."
"If you're sure…"
"How about it, though?" Thirteen implored.
"About what?"
"Brighton."
"Oh."
"Mattie will want to see you today. You don't wanna be on your own while Jack's sorting out all the funeral arrangements. C'mon, you're not gonna throw your ex-girlfriend a bone?"
"You're definitely not my ex-girlfriend."
"I kind of am."
"I'll come to Brighton if you never call me your ex-anything ever again."
"Well, I guess I can agree to that," she smiled.