Sorry that this chapter is a week late. I was busy being a camp counselor and didn't have time to write or proofread. This will unfortunately happen again. The good news is that this is literally the longest chapter that I've ever posted. So like, it balances out.
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The hallway leading from the music room led to a balcony which led down the stairs that led to the main room with all of the equipment that Marion thought might be a parlor, but again, she didn't know what that was called.
She also didn't know why her brain was choosing to focus on that of all things.
Marion ran just behind Clara and the Doctor. The moment they got to the bottom of the stairs, there was a beautiful bright flash of light like a cluster of stars. A moment later, there in the light's place was a huge, flat, black disk. It was polished and reflective; like black glass and it spun around erratically before gradually slowing down and speeding up again like a coin tied to a string being spun around.
"Has this happened before?" the Doctor asked.
Palmer shook his head. "Never,"
The Doctor took his screwdriver from inside of his coat and he quickly scanned over the disk. He looked back at the device and frowned. He reached out his hand toward the man.
"Camera. Camera!"
He took the device and snapped a few pictures of it while Marion stared at the disk. With every photo the Doctor took, the mirror started to crack from the center. As if every flash of the camera was a projectile aimed at the middle. It glowed brightly from inside as if the bright starlight glow had not disappeared, and had merely been encased by the black glass.
The Doctor continued to take photo after photo.
Marion felt a weird sort of buzz from just behind her. She spun around on her heels, trying to find the source of it.
Marion couldn't see anything in the hallway other than the fact that it was dark. Not an unusual amount of dark mind you. The hall wasn't shrouded in darkness. It was just, well, dark. But Grayling was clearly looking at something and whatever it was, it was making her breathe funny, Marion couldn't see it. But she could feel…something. It was similar to what she felt in the music room, only, more concentrated.
Marion stepped from behind Grayling and looked her in the eye. Her eyes didn't even flicker to her for a moment. Her breath only quickened.
Clara finally noticed it too.
"Doctor?!"
The Doctor turned away from the black disk and towards the woman and the hallway she was staring down.
"Ms. Grayling?" Marion asked slowly. "Ms. Grayling, are you alright,"
Marion didn't get an answer. Not that she expected one. But just by looking at the other women, you wouldn't know that Marion had said anything at all. Not even a side glance.
Marion moved behind Grayling moments before the woman collapsed. Marion caught the woman under her arms and helped her steady. The Doctor and Palmer joined her.
There was a loud whoosh noise.
"Marion, Doctor?"
Clara looked over at the two of them and then turned and pointed towards the stairwell.
There on the wall, like it had been projected through windows covered in overgrowth. The Doctor ran up the stairs two at a time.
"HELP ME"
The Doctor brushed his hands over the word and they faded away. Moments later, the black disk caved in on itself and was gone in as just a big flash of light as it appeared.
The Doctor stared back at them, stunned. After a moment, he walked back down the stairs.
"Marion, Clara, would you take Emma with you up to the living room and make sure she's alright. You remember where that is right?"
Marion poured hot water into three cups she found sitting on the table with all of the food. Marion wondered why they had more than two mugs since it was just the two of them and they likely weren't expecting guests, but maybe it was a precaution in case they dropped something or a ghost threw something or, they simply didn't feel like walking all the way over to the kitchen and washing out their dirty mugs so they just kept a bunch of clean mugs on the counter.
She dropped a teabag in each of them. She handed one to Clara, one to Grayling, and kept one to herself.
"There you are Clara, Ms. Grayling,"
Grayling laughed. "You're not that much younger than me Marion. You can just call me Emma,"
"Right," Marion nodded.
"I don't know about you," said Clara, "But I could go for something a bit stronger."
"Clara, the only thing they have is whiskey and you hate whiskey. It's the-"
"Eleventh most disgusting thing ever invented" "Eleventh most disgusting thing ever invented."
Marion said at the same time Clara did.
Clara stared at her for a moment, before smiling. "You keep doing that,"
Marion smiled. She grabbed one of the single chairs from the other side of the room and carried it to the other two women.
"So," Clara asked, winking at Emma, "So, you and Professor Palmer, have you ever, you know…?"
Emma laughed lightly and looked away. "No."
"Why not?" Clara asked, "You do know how he feels about you, don't you? You, of all people?"
The woman sighed and laughed, "I don't know," She put her hand on her chin. "People like me, sometimes we get our signals mixed up. We think people are feeling the way we want them to feel, you know, when they are special to us, when really there's nothing there."
"The thing is there's definitely something there," Marion took a sip of her tea. It was still far too hot. But small mercies, it only took a couple of seconds for her tongue to stop being burnt. "Don't drink the tea yet, it's far too hot. Anyway, Palmer likes you,"
"How do you know?" Emma asked.
"Because it's obvious," Clara replied, "It sticks out like a big chin."
"What about you and the Doctor?" Emma blew on her cup and took a sip.
"Nah," Marion shook her head.
"Oh, I don't think so," Clara added.
Emma bit her knuckle and looked up at them. "Good,"
"I'm sorry?"
Marion lowered her mug. And yeah, she knew that Emma was going to say is n and yeah, she knew that the Doctor had some shit work through Eleven especially, but-
"Don't trust him. There's a sliver of ice in his heart."
-that didn't mean that hearing Emma say what she said didn't annoy Marion greatly. Still, she wasn't going to snap or shout at the woman. That would be inappropriate. She had to say something else.
Marion almost said something along the lines of:
"He just lost two people he cared deeply about, and spent a few months moping and depressed."
But, she didn't know that for sure. Sure the Doctor was traveling with Clara, not Amy and Rory, but that didn't inherently mean that Marion had failed to save them. But then, it wasn't like losing Amy and Rory was the only negative thing that had happened to the Doctor. There were several things that could be contributing.
"He's been through a lot," Marion finally settled on, "He's a good man. Even if he might disagree. He's just been in a constant state of 'going through it' for the past- for a while."
"You care a lot about him," Emma said after a moment. "And I can feel something else from you too. It feels like embers; a fire that's asleep, and has been asleep for a while,"
Marion stared at Emma in confusion.
"What are you talking a-"
"MARION!" Marion could hear the Doctor yelling from somewhere in the house and progressively getting closer and closer to the living room. "CLARA"
Marion stood up.
"This conversation isn't over." Marion started walking towards the door to the living room. "Definitely not over,"
Marion heard the Doctor run past the door to the room and then his head ducked through.
"Doctor? Doctor what's up,"
"Marion, Clara, I have an idea, but we need to get to the TARDIS."
Once again the sky was dark and once again, it was rainy.
Marion had no clue what time of day it was supposed to be at this point and was honestly too scared to ask.
The three of them ran back to the TARDIS with Clara and the Doctor under Clara's umbrella and Marion dealing with it. She'd accidentally left her umbrella in the house, and there was no point in running back for it.
She'd walked to class in worse weather. At least she didn't have a backpack full of notes written in pen ready to be smeared this time.
Clara and the Doctor stopped a few yards away from the ship. Clara stared at it warily.
"I've got this weird feeling it's looking at me. It doesn't like me."
"The TARDIS is like a cat. A bit slow to trust, but you'll get there in the end,"
The Doctor ran to the TARDIS and pushed open the door.
"What about Marion," Clara asked. "How long did it take the TARDIS to warm up to you?"
"No idea," Marion replied, "I haven't met Honey for the first time on her end yet,"
"Oh Marion's a bad example," the Doctor leaned his head out of the ship, "the TARDIS warmed up to her pretty much instantly. Like I said, she's like a cat. Almost makes me wonder if she knew her before…" the Doctor trailed off, "anyway, Clara, I'm sure that it'll be only a matter of time. Come on," he ducked back inside.
Marion carefully pushed the TARDIS door open and held it open for Clara. Clara walked through and Marion felt the TARDIS hum in a way that could best be described as the closest thing it could get to going 'HMPH'.
Marion closed the door behind her. Clara closed her umbrella and started looking around the room.
"Hey," Clara called, holding up her umbrella, "You need a place to keep this."
The Doctor looked up from the console room and over at Clara.
"I've got one. Or I had one. I think I had one. Look around. See if you find it. Did I have one? Am I going mad? Marion? Did I use to have one?"
"I think you used to have one next to the coat rack,"
"Where's the coat rack,"
Marion walked over to the main console room and looked around.
"I don't think you still have one? I know you had one a few years ago, but it got shifted around." Marion looked around the room again, "Yeah I don't think you have one,"
"Ah. Remind me to get one. Don't want water getting tracked all over the TARDIS. Speaking of that," the Doctor noticed Clara starting to shake the water out of her closed umbrella. He walked over to her and took the umbrella out of her hands."No, not in here. How do you expect her to like you? She's soaking wet. It's a health and safety nightmare!"
The Doctor set the umbrella down on one of the chairs.
"Sorry," Clara said up at the ceiling. The TARDIS buzzed and hummed in a way that Marion could best interpret as an "...it's fine". Clara joined Marion and the Doctor.
"Where are we going?"
"Nowhere," the Doctor started to flip switches in the console room. Marion put her hands on the console and felt a strong buzz leading her to a button, and then a switch, and then a lever, and another switch. "We're staying right here," the Doctor explained, "Right here, on this exact spot, if I can work out how to do it."
"So, when are we going?"
The Doctor looked up from his side of the console and laughed.
"Oh, that is good," he reached out to Clara for a high-five, "That is top-notch."
The Doctor ran down the stairs and through the doorway that led deeper into the TARDIS.
"And the answer is?" Clara asked after him.
"The answer is Yes."
Clara stared at Marion. "We're going yes."
"The answer to 'when are we going' is yes,"
"We're going always!" the Doctor called after her cheerfully.
"Neither of you two are making any sense. You aren't even using complete sentences!"
"We're using verbs, aren't we?" The Doctor came back out of the corridor holding a bright orange hazmat suit. He held it out in front of him and spun around. "What do you think?"
"Colour's a bit boisterous," Clara remarked.
"I think it brings out my eyes," the Doctor called up to the two of them.
Marion leaned over the railing. "It doesn't,"
"It makes my eyes hurt," Clara added.
The Doctor lowered the suit.
"You've definitely worn worse things. Besides, does it really matter how good you look in a hazmat suit? You aren't wearing it for fashion anyway."
After climbing into his suit, the Doctor flipped a lever and the TARDIS began to dematerialize. A moment later, it reappeared again. The Doctor took the camera from where he'd placed it down on the TARDIS and then opened the TARDIS door. For the moments that the door was open, Marion felt a wave of heat, and then the door was shut.
"What's the Doctor doing?" Clara asked.
"Taking photos,"
"Of what?"
"The house, or in that case, the land where the house'll be eventually built,"
"What do you mean-"
A few moments later, the TARDIS door swung open again. Marion got a glimpse of a wasteland with its molten ground and a brownish grey sky. The Doctor rushed back inside. He held up a hand. Marion could feel the heat coming off him from where she stood.
"When are we?" Clara asked.
"About six billion years ago, It's a Tuesday, I think." the Doctor pulled another lever this time and they were gone one moment, and sometime else the next.
The Doctor removed the helmet, stepped out of his suit, and walked back out the TARDIS doors. He motioned that they could come with him that time.
The air outside of the TARDIS this moment was hot, but it was more of a "wow, it's humid out here," kind of heat and not a "the floor is lava" kind of heat.
It looked like a jungle. Marion didn't know what the name of the time period they were in was exactly, just that judging from the giant dragonfly that was floating around, it was the one with the giant insects.
Shoot.
"Doctor, when are we," Marion asked after the Doctor had taken the picture he wanted to take and their group was heading back into the TARDIS. "I feel like it's one of the ones that ended in a C, but I can't remember. Surely not the crustaceous,"
"Carboniferous," the Doctor set down his camera and pulled a lever again. "Age of the insect. Approximately 300 million years ago, give or take a few million years ago." he pulled another lever and had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the TARDIS engine. "Ended due to the formation of pangea, climate change, the loss of rainforests, just a bunch of little things." The Doctor looked up from the console as the TARDIS came to a stop. "Come on, just a few more pictures,"
The Doctor opened the TARDIS door again. This time, the house was actually there, although it looked far newer than when they had last seen it. A couple and a single woman holding parasols walked up the steps to the house.
The Doctor took a photo here as well and stepped back inside.
The Doctor continued to travel a few hundred million years forward at a time, ducked out, took a few photos, and ducked back inside until finally, climbed back into the orange hazmat suit, and pulled the lever once more.
With every movement, Marion noticed an odd expression on Clara's face, a sort of blankness that was replaced by a very small smile that might've passed for something natural if it had reached her eyes.
The Doctor walked over to the TARDIS doors and pushed one of them open. Marion got a view of somewhere arid, orange, and dusty.
"Back in a mo," the Doctor called over his shoulder, "Are you all right?"
"Totally, Peachy Keen,"
"I'm good!"
"Okay then. Well, don't press any buttons or pull any levers or make any funny faces. Actually, don't move. Stand completely still. Don't breathe. Well, you can breathe, but shallow breaths."
Clara gave the Doctor a thumbs up as the man nodded and shut the door behind him.
"He's not serious about all that is he?"
"He's serious about not wanting us to accidentally flip a lever and leave him stranded out there, but not about the not breathing thing. We're probably safe in here from whatever radiation the Doctor is wearing that suit to protect him from."
"Probably?"
"We're safe,"
Marion looked over at Clara and found her staring at the TARDIS scanner.
The sun looked huge, the sky was a dusty yellow-orange and the only living thing that they could see was the Doctor himself. Where the house had been before, was nothing but rubble. All in all, it looked dead. Everyone on earth was probably long gone by then and on New Earth and Mercury and Venus had probably long since been consumed.
Looking at it, Marion was experiencing an emotion. She wasn't sure what emotion was, or even if it was a negative or positive emotion. It was an emotion. She simply felt.
Marion looked at Clara's face. Her smile was gone. She looked sad.
Marion saw the Doctor walk out of frame from the scanner and a moment later, Marion heard the sound of the TARDIS door opening and closing and then footsteps. She looked up to see the Doctor closing the door behind him and taking off his safety suit helmet.
"Oh. What's wrong?" the Doctor asked. "Did the TARDIS say something to you?" he looked down at the console, "Are you being mean? Marion, was she being mean?"
Clara shook her head, not looking away from the screen for even a moment. "No, it's not that. Have we just watched the entire life cycle of Earth, birth to death?"
"Yes,"
"And you're okay with that?"
"Yes,"
Clara turned away from the Doctor and looked at Marion. "You're okay with it too?"
Marion shrugged, thought for a moment, and then nodded.
"How! He's one thing. He's an alien from space, but-" Clara just sort of gestured to Marion as a whole, "aside you're human right? From Earth?"
Marion nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're dumb or irrational or over-emotional or whatever for not being okay with it. But it doesn't bother me."
"How?"
Marion shrugged.
"The TARDIS, she's time. We," the Doctor gestured with his hands, "Wibbly vortex and so on."
"That's not what I mean,"
"Okay, some help. Context? Cheat sheet? Something?" the Doctor's eyes flickered towards Marion's in a silent. "Help me out here!"
Clara turned fully away from the monitor. "I mean, one minute you're in 1974 looking for ghosts, but all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever's standing there. To you, I haven't been born yet, and to you, I've been dead one hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?"
'It's not.' Marion thought but didn't say, 'You're hanging around in a time-traveling coffee shop with an immortal woman with a mortal memory.'
"Yes, I suppose it is," the Doctor said looking away.
"But here we are, talking. So I am a ghost. To you, I'm a ghost. We're all ghosts to you. We must be nothing."
Marion looked Clara in the eye. "You're not nothing, and you're not a ghost. You're standing right in front of me and talking yourself through an existential crisis. Nothings can't do that. Ghosts can't do that. Once you start traveling in time, it's a lot easier to focus on the people you're talking to and when you're talking to them, and the way that they are now. Right now Clara Oswald is an adult woman with a beating heart who's standing across from me. That's what matters. Anything else gets depressing, not to mention confusing,"
"Confusing?"
"Yup, incredibly so. Have you ever heard of UNIT?"
"UNIT?"
"United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. It's a part of the military? That's not important. What's important is for you to know that the Doctor used to work for them in the 1970s,"
The Doctor looked at Marion. "Are you sure it wasn't '80s?"
"Are you sure it was the 80s?"
The Doctor looked away for a moment. "Huh."
"Anyway, back at the Caliburn house, you could ask the question 'How long ago did the Doctor stop working there' And if you ask that, it gets confusing. See, back in 1974, he hadn't left yet. He was still in London in his lab. So the answer to that question is, that he hasn't yet. Of course, if you ask me, I was there when he left. He quit a couple of days ago. Of course, I've only been with him while was working there once and not about to quit once, but I'll be there more. Of course, if you ask the Doctor how long ago he left UNIT…" Marion blew out some air, "Doctor that was like, four centuries ago? Maybe more?"
"Just about. It gets hard to keep track."
"Right. The point is that Time Travel is confusing and weird and traveling to a time long after your heart stopped beating doesn't make you dead and traveling to long before you were born doesn't make you nothing. Your timeline was supposed to be parallel to the rest of the world, but now it loops and twists and weaves and doubles back around. And it becomes much, much, much simpler to just live in your present right?"
Marion fidgeted with her hair.
"I feel like I might be getting a little bit rambly. Am I getting rambly?"
Clara nodded. "A little bit,"
"Ah well. Point is, just because the TARDIS has landed on a ruined Earth doesn't mean that you're a ghost or that we see you as a ghost. I probably could've just said that. Sorry,"
"No," Clara shook her head, "I think I get it. It's still, a lot,"
"That's valid."
"Imagine thinking a human being could possibly be nothing," the Doctor looked up at Clara from the bottom of the stairs near the side room where he'd gotten his suit in the first place. "You lot are the only mystery worth solving,"
The three of them returned to the living room with the chairs and the board covered in photographs. The Doctor pressed the roll of film in Palmer's hand.
Marion was honestly kind of shocked that the radiation from the earth being born or the earth dying didn't ruin the film, but maybe Nikon cameras were simply built different. In this dimension at least.
Clara had been quiet as she left that TARDIS. And she was quiet as she stared at the few photographs that remained on the walls. Marion didn't need empathic abilities to tell that Clara still wasn't feeling great and if it was obvious to her, then it was certainly obvious to Emma. The woman put a hand on Clara's shoulder.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I just saw something I wish I hadn't."
"What did you see?"
Clara turned to look at her. "That everything ends."
"No, not everything," Emma glanced over at Palmer, "Not love. Not always."
Not ever.
That was a surprisingly strong thought.
"Right, done," the Doctor called over to them. The photos had seemingly already been developed. Marion didn't know enough about film or "That's it. Gather round, gather round. Roll up, roll up,"
Palmer slid some of the slides onto the projector and the Doctor pointed his sonic at it. It flickered to life and one of the photos was projected onto a large white screen.
"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?" The Doctor pressed his screwdriver to the side of the projector, and it began to flicker through images rapidly. The photos came together to show an image of a woman running at the camera as fast as she could. She had dark skin, white clothes, and her hair was tied back into a long ponytail. "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?"
Marion lifted herself up and perched on the side of a table. "What we're dealing with isn't a ghost."
The Doctor shook his head and pointed his screwdriver at the screen. The image changed again to something a bit more professional looking. The kind of photo that might appear on a company website or a person's id. "But she's definitely a lost soul. Her name is Hila Tacorian. She's a pioneer, a time traveler, or at least she will be in a few hundred years."
Palmer crossed his arms. "Time travel's not possible. The paradoxes-"
"-aren't really a problem most of the time," Marion cut in.
"They resolve themselves, by and large." the Doctor explained.
"How long has she been alone?" Emma asked, staring at the projection.
"It's been nowhere near as long for her as it's been for us," Marion assured. "Just a few minutes,"
"Three," the Doctor said, "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 reached into his pocket and took out a blue balloon and a red balloon as well. He blew them both up and then held them up.
"Our universe." He shook the blue balloon, "Hila Tacorian's" he shook the red one, here, in a pocket universe. You're a lantern," he explained to Emma, "shining across the dimensions, guiding her home, back to the land of the living." He brought the two balloons together and then let them deflate.
"But what's she running from?"
"It's on one of these slides," Marion replied. She got off the table and walked to the projector. "It's this button right?" Marion looked to the Doctor. He nodded.
Marion pressed the button twice and boom, there he was, in the back corner. The creature that had appeared in a flash of lightning by the window and sent them running downstairs.
No, no wait, no. It was that creature's mate, wasn't it? Point is, it was the same sort of creature as the one they'd run from.
"What is that?" Clara asked.
"I don't know," the Doctor was quiet for a moment, "Still," he clapped his hands, "not to worry."
"So, what do we do?" Emma asked.
"Not we, you," the Doctor leaned closer 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," the Doctor clapped his hands and gestured to the rest of the group. "We need some sturdy rope and a blue crystal from Metebelis Three. Plus some Kendal Mint Cake,"
The Doctor, Marion, and Clara made their way out of the house again and towards the TARDIS.
Marion thought back about what the Doctor said. Something in that list made Marion pause.
"Doctor, what was that thing you said,"
"The Kendal Mint Cake?"
"No. Before that,"
"The sturdy rope,"
Marion crossed her arms. "Doctor, you know exactly what I'm talking about. How did you get ahold of a Metebelis Three blue crystal! Because I know you only got the one and you remember what happened the last time you tried to get one"
Marion felt a flare of not-Anger-not-Fear. The last time, or at least the last time she could remember, the Doctor grabbing one of those blue crystals is what led to her having to go from seeing him impaled to watching him slowly die and change.
"Don't worry. I got this one safely this time. No wandering through the hostile wilderness, no spiders, and no radiation. The Associate was with me the whole time. Nothing went wrong,"
"I find that hard to believe knowing you-"
"Knowing me?" the Doctor said incredulously. "Like you're not as least as danger prone as I am. Clara, are you hearing this?"
"I'm hearing it. And you're both trouble magnets" Clara said, with a soft smile. "What are you two even talking about. Is that crystal dangerous or something?"
The Doctor waved a hand, "Oh, no, no it's perfectly safe. Marion's a bit on edge because of a little incident from a while back."
"An INCIDENT! Is that what you call it?"
The Doctor opened the door to the TARDIS. He ran around the stairs and down to another part of the TARDIS console. The part was based on the wires Marion could see, seemed to hold all of the important stuff that the Doctor dealt with while doing repairs.
"Yes, an incident. And it was hundreds of years ago for me."
"Maybe it was a while back for you, but for me, it was a couple of days ago!"
"Oh," the Doctor stopped for a moment and gave Marion a very strong side hug. He let her go. "Nothing to worry about here. This face is sticking around for a while yet," And the thing was, he was right about that. Eleven died of old age. Not a toxin or a great height or radiation or gunfire.
Just time.
"Now come on," the Doctor said, obviously blind to Marion's musings, "we've got things to get. If I'm being honest, I'm not quite sure how much time we have. Marion, would you check the closet for the Sapphire? It should be in a box somewhere on one of the shelves,"
Marion walked towards the same side corridor the Doctor had gone into to find that orange hazmat suit. "What kind of box is it in?"
"A shoebox,"
Marion blinked for a moment. "Of course it is,"
Marion started going through the different boxes.
Clara remained on the upper level near the console room.
"Can't you just…" Clara started out, "you know?"
"What?"
"Fly the Tardis into the parallel universe?"
"He has done that," Marion called over as she moved a box from the side and took out another one. She looked inside. Nope. "Both on accident and on purpose. But this isn't a parallel universe,"
Marion tried for a second box. Bingo.
The box contained what looked sort of like a tiara but with a large deep blue teardrop-shaped stone on the front.
The Doctor finally grabbed whatever he was looking for from the bottom TARDIS console thingy. An oblong quartz-like crystal. He flipped it in his hand.
"It's a pocket universe. Plus, it is collapsing. 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."
The TARDIS buzzed under Marion's feet.
"It's possible," Marion showed the Doctor the box with the headpiece thingy, closed the box again, and held it under her arm. "Like you could do it, if you had some kind of psychic tether, and were quick, but it's not something you'd do if you think there's the possibility of another option. Now, we just need the stuff to wire up to the house and we'll be set, right?"
The music room was now covered in even more electronic sci-fi-related stuff than the parlor and that was saying something. The Doctor hooked up the quartz crystal thingy to a tripod, and a wire ran from there, to the underside of the TARDIS console and it glowed a bright cyan. Clocks had been placed down all over the place.
Whatever the crystal from the inside of the TARDIS had been hooked up to to the wires, and it went from being clear to glowing a bright blue.
"What is that?" Clara asked, tapping her fingers on the side of the device.
The Doctor batted her hand away. "A subset of the Eye of Harmony,"
"I don't-"
"Of course, you don't. Be weird if you did. I barely do myself. I don't even think Marion does." the Doctor gestured to Emma and picked up the headset with the stone. "Right. You, sit down. All the way from Metebelis Three."
"What does it do?" Emma asked.
"It amplifies your natural abilities like a microphone or a pooper scooper," The Doctor went from clock to clock, changing something in them with his sonic before moving to the next one.
The Doctor started to shrug on his harness while Marion stood next to him, helping Clara fix the buckles.
Marion put on her own. The Doctor had tried to convince Marion to stay in the living room with the rest of them but she'd flat out refused. Just the very idea of it made Marion feel off.
It wasn't that she was unaware that the Doctor would make it out, but still. It was the principle of the thing.
"What exactly is this arrangement?" Palmer asked.
"A psychochronograph," the Doctor explained, pulling in a final strap.
"Forgive me, but isn't it all a bit well, make do and mend?"
"Oh Mr. Palmer," Marion replied, "Are you suddenly an expert of multiverse travel now?"
"Non-psychic technology won't work where we're going. Listen, all we need to do is dive into another dimension, find the time traveler, help her escape the monster. get home before the entire dimension collapses and Bob's your uncle."
"Doctor, will it hurt?"
"No. 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."
Clara looked at Marion. "Ah, I don't think so? If it'll probably be exhausting though, which is why Doctor when we get in there, we're going to have to Move. Move. Move."
Marion saw Emma's eyes flicker to Palmer who nodded. Then Emma closed her eyes took a long, deep, breath, and raised her voice.
"I'm talking to the lost soul that abides in this place," Thunder crackled outside as the woman spoke. The Doctor hooked the lone, winding coil of rope that had been spooled in the Caliburn house. Perhaps for boats or something like that. Once he was hooked up, he grabbed Marion by the hand. "I'm speaking to Hila Tarcorian."
Emma breathed in heavily as the many clocks that surrounded the room began to loudly tick backward and hmm…that was…Marion didn't like that.
It was like hearing the pop song she used for her alarm back in high school playing on the radio or on the loudspeakers at the store. Mildly unnerving and incredibly anxiety-inducing.
It wasn't great.
Marion focused on the fact that her eyes were open and she could see the things that were around her and the way that Doctor's hand felt in hers.
Cool. Temperature wise. That sort of thing tends to happen when you've got a body temperature of 60.
In her peripheral, Marion could see the Doctor glancing down at her, but Marion focused on looking straight ahead.
Then, there was a low, loud popping noise. Like air finally breaking through something thin, but substantial.
Both Marion and the Doctor turned to look as that black disk reappeared. It spun rapidly and as it spun, bright white cracks appeared on its surface starting in the middle and spreading out. Right when it was seemingly too bright to make out, the black mirror imploded. For a moment, there was a bright light with what looked like shards of glass spinning around inside of it. The wind blew wildly around the room. The light pulsed once more and then it was gone and so was the doorway out of the music room.
Instead of the hallway, the doorway was simply an expanse of bright white light. The portal to the pocket dimension.
"See?" The Doctor shouted. He could only just barely be heard. "The Witch of the Well! It's a wormhole!" The Doctor let go of Marion's hand to lean down and flipped something on the side of the rope spool. "A reality well! A door to the echo universe. Ready?" he shouted to Emma.
"Ready!" Emma shouted back.
The Doctor stared at the blinding white doorway. He cricked his neck and grabbed ahold of Marion's hand. He looked down at her and grinned. Marion grinned back.
"Geronimo!"
And the two of them ran as fast as they could into the light.
The two of them fell through a bright white tunnel for a moment, and then they landed in a large greyscale forest. It was thick with fog and little bits of ash or smoke or whatever the world was made of floating all over the place. The sound of rushing wind was everywhere.
The forest had that same liminal feeling of an unlocked lecture hall long after classes had ended.
Like, there's no rule against you being there, but it still feels illegal and like you have no business being there and that you should leave as quickly as physically possible. You just want to grab whatever you came in there to get as soon as possible and then get out.
Or maybe that uncomfortable sense of dread could be because of the fact that she was standing with the Doctor in a world that was about three minutes away from disappearing. Perhaps both.
The Doctor unbuckled the harness he had jumped in with and tossed it to the ground. He looked around frantically. Marion took off hers as well.
"Hila?" "Hila!" "Hila Tacorian!" The two of them shouted out into the expanse. They didn't get a response.
"Which way," the Doctor asked Marion.
"Dunno. Run."
The Doctor took off in a direction. Marion kept pace right next to him they only ran for a few moments before they were forced to stop. The ground they were walking on suddenly came to a cliff-like stop. The chunk of land that they were on was a rocky island barely keeping itself together in a starry sky. Marion wondered if this had always been a floating forest surrounded by cliff sides, or if this was once a normal-looking world that had been slowly but sure eroding away and that was what the dust floating in the air was.
They turned around, running back to about where they ran in. The Doctor turned his head around, searching. After a few moments, he shut his eyes.
Marion kept her eyes open. She was watching for both Hila and the monster. Marion didn't really remember if that monster was genuinely hostile or if it was just trying to get back to its partner, and that wasn't something she wanted to risk under any circumstances.
Marion once again cursed the fact that she hadn't been given a heads up about the fact she was about to be shoved into a new universe. If she had known that the point-by-point details of each episode were going to be important, she would've studied. Taken some notes. Written a few transcripts. That sort of thing.
But Noooooo.
The Doctor counted to three slowly and then turned around just as Marion heard a distant voice screaming for help. Both Marion and the Doctor turned in the direction of it and heard the shout again.
A moment later, a woman was sprinting through the fog towards them. The woman jumped when she saw them.
"Hilla Tacorian," I presume.
The Doctor grabbed ahold of the woman's wrist to steady her and started to walk. The woman pulled away.
"Who are you?"
The Doctor took a deep breath. "Collapsing universe. All of us, dead, two minutes. No time to complete sentences. Abandon planet."
Marion and the Doctor started to walk off. Hila stopped and looked over her shoulder.
"Wait. There's something in the mist"
"Then why would you want to wait instead of run!"
The three of them took off. Marion kept pace behind the Doctor and Hila, just in case one of them tripped or stumbled, she'd be able to see and they wouldn't get left behind.
From the other side of the gate, Emma called out to them.
"Doctor! Marion! Come home! Come home!"
Her voice echoed around the mist, but it didn't seem to be coming from the direction that the Doctor was leading them in.
"Doctor!" Marion shouted, "We're going the wrong-"
They barely managed to stop before they fell off the island.
"-way!"
They turned around and ran in the opposite direction.
"That's fine we can find the exit," the Doctor said rapidly as if he looked left, right, and behind him. "I'm sure Marion knows where the exit is, don't you Marion."
"I do not!"
"Great, great, perfect."
"Listen, in a few seconds, Emma's going to call out to us again, and show us the way. We just have to be patient."
"Marion," the Doctor said slowly, "Did you miss the part where this whole universe collapses a few minutes from now,"
"No, of course not. It's just I don't know what else we can do here until-"
"DOCTOR! MARION!"
"-that,"
Marion looked around in every direction for the house that would be slowly fading out of the mist, not too dissimilar from the way that the TARDIS looked when it appeared.
"This way!" the Doctor shouted.
The three of them sprinted towards the house.
"What's that?" Hila asked, her eyes wide
"An echo house, in an echo universe. Clever psychic. That is just top-notch."
The psychic projection of the house felt a lot like a house. "A lot like" being the keyword.
There was something distinctly not houselike about it. Something was missing. Something off. Like Emma's powers were able to project the image of a house to five of her senses but they couldn't touch a key sixth. So despite the fact that Marion, the Doctor, and Hila had gone to the second floor of the projection, they were still very much walking around on the forest floor.
Or at least that's what Marion tried to convince herself was the source of her vertigo.
The Doctor tied a thing around the handles of one of the hall doors. Marion could hear something big scratching at it. They ran through the hall, around a corner, and back to the psychic projection house's music room. The doorway on the other side of the room lit up with a bright light.
The portal home. The Doctor's and Marion's harnesses were hanging out the side of it. Hila ran towards it while the Doctor started trying to seal the door shut with his sonic. Marion stood next to him, her ear by the door, listening for the sound of the monster charging towards the door.
The Doctor turned away from the door for a moment to look at Hila. "Grab the rope. Give it three tugs, quick as you like."
"What about you?" She called back at them.
"He'll be next," Marion replied.
"We'll be next,"
"I said what I said."
Hila grabbed ahold of the rope and tugged it thrice. A moment later, she was yanked through.
So, all Marion needed to do now was to get the Doctor through that gate before Emma ran out of juice and the door closed. Marion turned around to face the Doctor and shove him through the gate as hard as she could before hopefully running after him when she felt arms wrapped around her waist in a hug from behind.
"Doctor?" Marion asked, confused. And then she looked down, and couldn't see any arms wrapped around her.
"What-?"
"Marion, what's wrong?"
Marion heard the sound of something banging on the door Marion was standing at and then she was sent flying through the gate.
It didn't feel like normal (and it was fucked that being dragged everywhere and everywhen all of the time was her now normal) it felt like someone had picked her up and flung her like she was a box marked fragile, the Bitch Force was an underpaid postal worker, and the doorway was someone's front porch.
One moment, Marion could only see the color white as far as she looked. And the next she could feel a sharp pain on the side of her head and feel something wet on her scalp. Someone came to help her up and as the sharp pain melted away, Marion realized that she had fallen terribly on one of the many statues in the music room's sharp stone pedestals.
And then Marion realized that the Doctor was still on the other side in the pocket universe.
This realization was brought to her by the fact that Clara had a hand on either of her shoulders and was asking her frantically where the Doctor was.
Marion almost wished that Clara was shaking her because then she'd be able to convince herself that that was the reason she felt as nauseous as she did. Marion could feel her heart pounding loudly in her chest.
Marion thought to answer Clara's question, but doing that would waste a precious few seconds that Marion feared the Doctor simply did not have. Marion lept to her feet.
"C'mon Clara, we need to get to the TARDIS,"
"But-"
"Emma has done a lot being able to open the gate for a short while, but she's only human. There's only so much she can do. We need to get to the TARDIS now. We've got a small window where we can fly in and grab the Doctor but we need to go, go, go, go, GO!"
The two of them raced through the halls and back to where the ship had been parked.
"Why'd you leave him!" Clara asked as they ran.
"Well, it wasn't exactly by choice Clara." Marion took the steps down two at a time, "Something threw me through the gate. Much like what I was planning on doing to the Doctor."
"Something," Clara asked, "Do you mean 'them'?"
"I- maybe? I don't know!"
The two of them slid to a stop in front of the TARDIS doors.
The TARDIS refusing to open for Clara was something Marion had expected. She knew that it was going to happen. What she didn't expect was for the TARDIS to refuse to open for her as well. Marion reached into her bag and retrieved the silver key that Two had given her.
Nothing.
"Damn it!" Marion hit the door to the TARDIS in frustration.
"Marion?" Clara called.
Marion turned her head to see, standing across from them. Another Clara. This one translucent and with a slightly filtered voice and a fuzzy image.
"Marion, what's this,"
"The TARDIS Voice Visual Interface. 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." The projection answered for her.
"Oh, you are a such a- whatever you need to help the Doctor,"
"The Doctor is in the pocket universe."
"Honey, we know that. And it's going to collapse soon. That's why we need to get him out. And we're wasting time, we don't have that big of a window we're working with here."
The projection turned away from Clara to look at Marion. Her eyes softened and contained less of the barely held contempt of a retail worker staring at an annoying customer.
"Marion, the entropy would drain the energy from my heart. In four seconds, I'd be stranded. In ten, I'd be dead. So unless you know of some other way, I'm afraid that I can't. Even if I could reach the Doctor, there's no way I could possibly get in and out in four seconds,"
"Yes, I know that. But in a couple of moments, there's going to be a-,"
Before Marion could say anything further, Clara's projection disappeared and the next moment, the door to the TARDIS clicked open invitingly.
Marion hadn't realized that one of the music room's windows faced the little courtyard where they'd placed the TARDIS until she looked off and saw a lot of white flickering coming from it. Emma had reopened the gate with Hila and Palmer's help.
"C'mon," Marion said quickly as the two of them stepped inside, Marion was no longer dizzy.
The moment Clara and Marion got to the console the TARDIS took off without either of them touching a thing. Clara clung to the side of the console for dear life while Marion gripped the guard rails.
Through the TARDIS scanner, Marion could see the time vortex as the ship tumbled wildly through it. It looked like red fire.
"Ha ha! YES!"
The TARDIS continued to tumble until finally, the flame faded away to reveal the misty forest of the pocket dimension. At that point, Marion had to look away. The vortex was one thing, but looking at the TARDIS spin around in an actual forest was making Marion feel a bit sick.
A few moments later, Marion saw a blur of something that she thought might be the Doctor and then a soft thud that she knew was absolutely the Doctor, and then the TARDIS was once again dematerializing one moment and rematerializing the next.
Finally, the TARDIS was still and Marion felt that she could let go of the railing she was clutching onto without being hurled against a wall.
A quick glance towards the scanner told Marion that they were back in the music room. Marion pulled herself up, whispered a quick thanks to the TARDIS, and then along with Clara shakily walked over to the door and pulled it open.
For a moment, Marion was terrified that she'd look and see that the Doctor wasn't there. That thud was something else and they had missed him entirely and they'd grabbed ahold of a tree branch or something.
The next moment, Marion was face to face with a very heavy breathing and unsteady-looking Doctor. He took another deep breath, stood up somewhat upright, and then he reached for a high five from the two of them.
"DoctorI'msosorryIdidn'tmeanttoleaveyouinthepocketdimensionIdon'tknowwhathappenedonemomentIwasstandingnexttoyouandthensomethingIgothurledthroughbeforeIknewwhatwasgoingon-"
"Marion, breath." The Doctor said slowly.
Marion took a deep breath.
"Marion, it's fine. It wasn't on purpose after all. And besides," the Doctor waved his hand, "You two got me out quick enough, didn't you? I was barely in there for a couple of seconds,"
The Doctor had wanted to talk with Emma about Clara and Marion had wanted a follow-up on whatever Emma had been talking about in the living room earlier. While Clara was talking with Hila, the Doctor had quietly snuck away to the hall with Emma and Marion had gone too.
Whatever weirdness had been going on with the weather was gone and the sun shining through the walls onto the yellow wallpaper made the whole place look incredibly cheery.
"You wanted a word?" she asked the Doctor.
"Well if that's-"
"That's fine. You didn't come here for the ghost, did you?"
The Doctor turned to face Emma. "No,"
"You came here for me,"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I need to ask you something."
"Then ask."
"Clara,"
"Yes?"
"What is she?"
"She's a girl…" The woman seemed confused by the question and her eyes flickered to Marion.
"Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?"
"She's a perfectly ordinary girl," Emma smiled, "Very pretty, very clever, more scared than she lets on."
The Doctor shrugged. "And that's it, isn't it?"
"Why? Is that not enough? When you said you had a question, I thought you were going to be asking about her,"
Marion realized that she was the one being referenced. "Excuse me?"
"You said that you wanted to continue our discussion later? About the embers"
"Oh," Marion nodded, "Yes, what about those?"
"It's sometimes hard to tell who's emotions I'm feeling. But I can tell people apart. Or at the very least, I can tell if I'm feeling just one person's feelings or multiple."
Marion blinked. "I don't follow,"
"When you and I were talking in the living room, and I felt the sparks, I thought that it was you. Your emotions. But Marion, when you went flying back into the music room, you were frightened. You were scared. I could feel it."
"That's the typical response to your friend being stuck in a universe that's a minute from collapsing, yes."
"You weren't the only one I sense those emotions from."
Marion blinked.
"Yes…Clara was pretty panicked as well. Like I said, normal response."
Emma shook her head again. "Oh I could feel the panic coming from Clara's but I could feel something else. Along with yours, I could feel someone else's fear and worry. And it was coming from you. But it wasn't you,"
"What?"
"I could feel two sets of fear coming from you just then. You're not just you. There's something else inside of you."
Marion stared at the woman again.
"What?"
Marion looked up at the Doctor. Marion didn't know what she was expecting from him; shock perhaps. Or confusion. Him turning to look at her as if hundreds of years worth of little moments were finally making sense.
But there wasn't much of an expression on his face. It wasn't a mask of indifference it was genuine.
He knew.
Whatever Emma was talking about, it was something that the Doctor had already known.
Something that Marion could already tell that if she asked about, the Doctor would just wiggle his fingers and say spoilers.
Super.
The three of them went outside as if Marion hadn't just been told the things that she'd been told and joined the rest of their group outside near the TARDIS. The daylight shined brightly overhead. Marion wasn't sure if this was because the night had ended or if it had in fact been day the whole time, the sun was just unable to break through the storm clouds.
Marion could hear the Doctor and them talking, but Marion simply sat and leaned up against the TARDIS, thinking. She could feel the ship humming against her back, although that might've been the engine and not Honey.
Marion simply sat and listened.
Emma embraced Hila as the two of them walked.
"Where will you go?"
Hila shook her head. "He can't take me home. History says I went missing."
"But he can change history,"
The Doctor shook his head.
"No, no, no, I can't, actually. There are fixed points in time, you see."
Clara grabbed the Doctor by the arm and pulled him aside so that the two women could talk.
"Hi,"
"What?"
"I knew you were there," Hila told Emma, "I could feel you."
"I know,"
"Have we?"
"We can't have," Emma shook his head, "You haven't even been born yet."
The Doctor pulled away from Clara and walked back over to the two women. "No, you can't have met but she can be your great, great, great, great, great-granddaughter. Yours too, of course," the Doctor added as Palmer stepped away from the TARDIS and over to the rest of them. "But you guessed that already, didn't you," The Doctor saw something on Palmer's face, "Oh. Apparently not.".
"The paradoxes-"
"Aren't really a problem most of the time," Marion called over to them..
"They resolve themselves by and large. That's why the psychic link was so powerful. Blood calling to blood, out of time. Not everything ends. Not love. Not always."
The Doctor started walking towards the TARDIS, with Palmer walking close behind him and Emma close behind Palmer.
"Doctor, what about, what about us?" He asked. "Emma and me?"
"What about you?"
"Well, what's supposed to happen? I mean, what do we do now?"
"Well, what were you planning on doing?" Marion asked. She pushed herself off the side of the ship. She gestured between the two of them. "She loves you, you love her. So you should just…"
"Hold hands," the Doctor finished. "That's what you're meant to do. Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret."
The Doctor walked back towards the TARDIS and then he froze with the key halfway to the lock.
The Doctor had clearly connected the dots about the two monsters in the woods. This was good since while Marion knew that the dots were there, but had forgotten what their final picture was supposed to be.
The Doctor hit himself in the head and then turned around.
"Oh, I'm so slow!" the Doctor groaned and turned around on his heel, "I am slow. I'm notorious for it. That's always been my problem. But, but I get there in the end. Oh yes."
"Doctor?"
The Doctor pointed at Clara.
"How do sharks make babies?"
"Carefully?" she replied.
"No, no, no Happily!"
"Sharks don't actually smile. They're just, well, they've got lots and lots of teeth. They're quite eaty."
"You don't need to smile in order to be happy. Or be happy in order to smile for that matter."
"Of course, of course. The thing is that birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Every lonely monster needs a companion."
The Doctor suddenly took off. In the distance, they could see movement in one of the windows. One of the creatures from earlier. The ones that looked like they were made of bark.
"There's two of them!" Clara exclaimed.
"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," the Doctor slung an arm around Clara's shoulder. "She's thrown out of the hex, or he's thrown into it. 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!" The Doctor then realized that his arm was around Clara. "Sorry,"
The Doctor turned around to look at Emma, Palmer, and Hila.
"Excuse me. Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt the rest of your life. So. Tiny favor to ask."
Clara and Marion stood in front of the TARDIS waiting for the music room window to light up with the gate and signal that it was time for them to fly into the pocket universe.
Marion had wanted to be the one to go. In fact, she had started to follow the Doctor with the intent to go, but the Doctor simply shook his head.
"You'd have to hold on to the outside of the TARDIS while we're flying through the vortex and out of the pocket dimension." he had said.
"Yes, and?" Marion crossed her arms, "I can do that!"
"Marion. Direct contact with the Time Vortex is something that you should try to avoid as much as you can,"
"Oh but you can do in it twice in a couple of hours just fine"
"Yes," the Doctor nodded, "Because I'm not you. Trust me, I don't know how long you're going to stick around after finding a safe place to drop the creatures off and so I don't know if there'll be enough time for you to come down before you get taken away,"
"Come down, from what?"
The Doctor didn't answer her question. "Don't worry. I'll be fine. And it would be best if I were the one to do this."
The Doctor clearly wasn't going to budge on this. Marion was in the TARDIS with Clara. Bright light started to flash from one of the windows.
Marion ducked back inside.
"C'mon,"
Marion pulled a lever and they started to dematerialize and spin rapidly and they flew wildly through the vortex.
One spin shoved Marion so hard she almost got whiplash, and then another made her lose her grip on the side of the railing. And then the third spin, it shoved her so hard she let go and when flying with a shout.
Right before she would've slammed head first into the TARDIS console, Marion felt a sharp tug on her wrist, and then she was gone.
Next Chapter: And I Feel Fine
Clara, a millennial from the 2010s: We just saw our whole planet from birth to death and watched everything go from fire to dust. How are you not having an existential crisis?
Marion, a zoomer from the 2020s: I've been in a constant state of existential crisis since I was old enough to really have thoughts.
Judging from the comments, some of you might've guessed already that there's something inside of Marion other than Marion, but I had a chance to be explicit with it, so I took it. What is it? I've dropped a few breadcrumbs, but I'll give y'all a full roll as soon as I can find a place for it.
Oh another thing, I've been doing a thing with bolded and underlined texts where I do a secret message. The thing is, it just occurred to me that my code wasn't very screenreader friendly. The problem is that due to this sight's limited HTML, there's not much I can do. Anyway, this fic is crossposted on AO3, so if you're blind or vision impaired, I recommend you read my fic there instead of here.