Hi guys. I'm back. It's summertime, and that means (hopefully) consistent updates for the next few months. Things are happening and I can't promise anything biweekly, but I THINK I can manage monthly, and if I play my cards right, that might spill over into the school year!
Anyway, some of you are not following me on tumblr, did you know that I was torn between which serial I wanted to do next? I had narrowed it down to either the Pirate Planet, Nightmare in Eden, or the Mark of the Rani. So what did I do? I made a poll on tumblr asking people to pick between the Rani, Romanan I or Romana II.
And the 10 people who interacted with the poll very clearly made their preference for Romana II be known.
This might not be the last time I do such a poll. So hey, something to look out for, lol.
Anyway, all that is stuff that's probably going to start in the second third next chapter. For now, enjoy.
Also, I've done some art of Marion if you'd like to see it.
Marion with Susan
deviantart (PUT A PERIOD HERE) com/lunammoon/art/Marion-Thirteen-Susan-Greyscale-955927293
Marion kneading bread and trying not to lose it.
deviantart (PUT A PERIOD HERE) com/lunammoon/art/Marion-Strad-961367189
And here are some acknowledgments.
Thank you for following DissM13 and Argosh
Thank you for favoriting ummr
Thank you for doing both Lady Shalpha, Morgliz
Thank you jansesu, Emrys Akayuki and the guest for reviewing.
As they walked down the hall, Marion took the time to reach into her bag and push the little switch on the side of it that turned it silent. She hadn't considered doing it before, but now that she thought about it, with the Brigadier calling her every now and again, and with her and the Doctor being MIA, it would probably be for the best if she didn't have to worry about ringing
The controller's suite reminded Marion of a black box theater. That was probably what the set had been but in universe, Marion wondered why it was like that. Surely there were smaller rooms that would work better. But then again, Marion figured that outside of cells for prisoners, the Daleks would want to have most of their rooms big enough for a bunch of guards to fit inside of for orders and the like.
Perhaps this room was as big as it was because it was meant to be a place for many people?
That made some level of sense. In the middle of the room, was what Marion could only describe as a charcuterie board with little sections made out of either glass or plastic. Surrounding the board were a few long cushions that furthered Marion's suspicions that this room had been set up quickly so that they could have a place to put Jo that wasn't a dungeon.
Speaking of Jo Grant the woman was sitting on one of the cushions. The woman's head turned to her as she entered.
"Marion!" she greeted.
Marion turned to wave at her and there was the Doctor.
He was lounging on a cushion reaching towards a bunch of grapes. He was fine. Marion let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.
"Doctor!" Marion greeted. "And Jo!"
Things had gone more or less the same when Marion and the Doctor had arrived. And the Doctor had been hurt.
And that made her feel so- so- so- angry-
But the way he was lounging on the cushion and leaning to the side told Marion that he couldn't have been hurt that badly. Movement like that would be impossible otherwise. And, as much as she hated to say it, she knew what Three, in particular, looked like when he was in pain. And so for the moment, Marion's attention flickered from him to Jo Grant.
The women's overall shorts and her plaid t-shirt left her arms and legs mostly exposed, and Marion couldn't see any bruises. And Jo looked fine. That didn't stop Marion from asking":
"Are you okay?" A part of Marion wanted to grab the other woman and check to see if there was some part of her that was hurt that she couldn't see. But a larger part of her understood the need for personal space and instead drummed her fingers on her knees anxiously.
"I'm fine Marion!" Jo insisted. And Marion believed her. Marion didn't know Jo Grant enough to know how she would look if she were lying. But she had been alright in the show, mostly because Jo Grant was already willing to tell them what they wanted to know without threats of violence and so attacking her might only serve to make her less willing to share information.
The Controller (Marion, still didn't know his name or even if he had a real name for that matter), sat on a cushion across from Marion staring at her.
Marion's eyes flickered toward a pomegranate. She was pretty sure that she had a knife somewhere where she could open it up. Or, an impulsive part of her thought, she could bite into it. As a joke, she had tried to do that when she was younger. And she just hadn't been able to bite through the hard skin, but she was sure that her jaw was much stronger now.
But then again…when she had gotten that pomegranate open, the tan foamy whatever it was that the pits were in tasted gross.
Still. It wasn't about the taste, it was about sending a message.
Marion wasn't sure what that message might be, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it was a bad idea.
She decided to just go for a grape instead.
"Would you like some wine?" The Controller asked her, gesturing to a ceramic flask that was on the table.
She shook her head and tossed another grape in her mouth. "I don't drink."
"What about you Doctor?"
"No, thank you, no, not for me. Though I must admit, it's an excellent vintage. Well, it's the finest I've tasted since, er, well, since we had dinner at old Styles' house. Do you remember, Jo?"
"It seems like a long time ago," Jo nodded.
"It was." the Doctor nodded, "Two hundred years to be precise. And quite frankly, I wish I was back there now."
"Naturally, you prefer the 20th century, Doctor. After all, it is your own time."
"Oh, I've known many times, and some of them much more pleasant than others."
"I see," the controller nodded, "I hear that you're from the 21st century."
"Oh, Jo told you that too, did you?" Marion tried not to sound too passive-aggressive. She wasn't angry at Jo, and she didn't want her to think that she was.
"She told me a great many things. I assure you that whatever chaos you left behind, the future is far more peaceful. None of the-,"
"I'm from a different 21st century."
"There are different 21st centuries?"
"I know at least four. Yours, mine, the one she'll eventually get to see, and the one where a man eliminated world hunger and then proceeded to convince a bunch of people, nuclear war happening on the surface so they need to cause natural disasters wherever he pointed them to"
The Controller stared at her, taken aback for a moment.
"I don't know why he did that."
"I quite like it here." Jo Grant said with a bright smile. "Everyone's been most kind."
Marion blinked slowly. "I'm sure that they have been."
"Marion and I met some people who were far from kind."
"That was a simple mistake, Doctor, I assure you," the Controller said, speaking to them like they were simple children. "You must not jump to conclusions.
Marion wasn't unfamiliar with the tone. She hated it.
"Well, better than jumping from the crack of a whip from some security guard." he tilted his head to the side, "Do you run all your factories like that, Controller?" the Doctor shot back.
"That was not a factory Doctor." the man refuted.
"Oh? Then what was it?"
"A rehabilitation centre. A rehabilitation centre for hardened criminals."
"Including old men and women, even children?" The Doctor questioned
"And what makes them criminals?" Marion crossed a leg, rested her elbow against it, and pressed her chin into her palm. She stared at the man down. "What crimes did they commit? What crime could a child possibly commit to make THAT the solution?"
"There will always be people who need discipline," the man replied, avoiding the question like a weasel.
"Now that's an old-fashioned point of view, even from my standards."
"I can assure you that this planet has never been more efficiently, more economically run. People have never been happier or more prosperous."
"Ah yes," Marion replied sarcastically, "People being forced to carry rocks around under threat of getting whipped or shot all in the name of 'rehabilitation'" Marion. "Common signs of happiness and prosperity."
"If they're that happy and prosperous, why do you need so many people to keep them under control? Don't they like being happy and prosperous?"
"Perhaps they like it too much, and they need the guards to keep them from getting too ecstatic."
"You're being a bit unreasonable!" Jo rebuked.
"Are we now?"
Arguing with Jo Grant felt like arguing with her grandmother.
Come to think of it. If the Doctor Who universe had a version of her grandmother somewhere, she'd be roughly Jo's age wouldn't she?
That was a funny thing to think about.
The woman turned to Marion. "You've told me that you can't be right about everything. Maybe this is something you're wrong about! The Controller wants to help us."
"Does he? I wonder why?"
"You're not on the side of the criminals, surely? They wanted to kill you!"
"Yes, Jo. Just because I don't particularly like them." Marion didn't gesture to anyone in particular, she just kind of waved her hand around emphatically. "Doesn't mean that I have to, or that I will, like him." she pointed at the controller.
"And when I meet a regime that needs to import savage alien life forms as security guards, I begin to wonder who the real criminals are." the Doctor replied, his eyes flickering to the Controller.
"Those creatures aren't Savages!"
"Call them what you want, one of them tried to strangle the Doctor!"
"Another misunderstanding, I assure you! They're nothing more than simple guard dogs! They just do as I tell them."
"You mean there aren't enough humans around that will follow your orders so blindly?"
"That is not what I was saying!" The Controller replied quickly in a tone that told them they'd hit a nerve.
"Isn't it?" the Doctor retorted, "Then what you're saying is that the entire human population of this planet, apart from a few remarkable exceptions like yourself, are really only fit to lead the life of a dog. Why?"
"YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT!"
"Oh doesn't he? Tell me. Who's in charge of this planet? Who's your boss? Who's calling the shots?"
The Controller looked around at the three of them in silence for a moment, before quickly standing up.
"I'm sorry, I must go. I have work to do. You will excuse me!"
"Bye!~" Marion called after him.
"You shouldn't have spoken to him like that," Jo said the moment that he was gone. "You don't know the whole picture."
"But I do. And while it's frustrating on one hand, on another it's Very Very VERY lucky that you were willing to trust them so easily. I don't want to THINK about what might've happened if they thought that good cop wasn't enough."
"What do you mean Marion?"
"Humans aren't in charge of Earth here. The Orgons aren't either. "
"Then who does?"
"The most evil, ruthless life form in the cosmos. The Daleks."
It occurred to Marion, that she was in the unique position of knowing more about the Daleks than the Doctor did. He hadn't met Davros yet. He didn't even know who Davros was, and if she was remembering correctly, that time with Ian, Barbara, and Susan was the only time he'd been to Skaro.
"Daleks," Marion explained carefully. "Are genetically engineered squid-like beings who ride around in these large pepperpot casings. Their end goal is to kill anything and everything that's not like them, but they're willing to let some creatures live as long as they can be useful to them. Like for gathering resources and stuff. Another thing that's important to know about them is that they are. They are ontologically evil. And he's working for them. Maybe he's not a complete bastard. Maybe he's doing it because if you don't have the strength and numbers and courage to do a full rebellion and overthrow the Daleks, the safest thing to do is do whatever they ask and hope you die off natural causes instead of getting shot and hope that you can get reason with them enough for a concession or two. He's still working for them. He's still not trustworthy. And he's incredibly dangerous."
"Then why was he being so nice to us?"
Marion sighed. "Because right from the start, you trusted them on the grounds of you disliking Anat, Boaz, and Shura. There was no reason to be mean to you when you were already willing to tell them everything. All that would do is make you clam up."
"It's an old technique. They've tried the hard treatment. This is the soft. I don't think I want to wait 'till the hard come 'round again."
Jo shivered, "Nor do I."
"The Doctor and I snuck into the factory and got ourselves captured so that we could find you. I'm honestly not sure how we would have found you otherwise. I'm not sure where we are in relation to that right now."
"But now that we've found you, we need to get out."
Jo's eyes flicked to the door the Controller had walked out of.
"There's a guard in the corridor outside."
"Don't worry Jo," the Doctor said, "I can deal with him."
The Doctor and Marion moved on either side of the door, just behind outcroppings of the wall, just out of view of anyone who was entering the door.
Jo looked towards the two of them. Marion couldn't see what the Doctor did, but Marion smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up.
Jo covered one of her eyes with her hand and started to scream.
"HELP! HELP!"
The door opened and out came one of the Orgon guards. He stared at Jo Grant for a moment in confusion, and the Doctor whipped around and Judo Chopped him in the side of the neck.
It did very little.
Feeling a slight wave of nausea, Marion shouted at the guard and reached into her bag. She grabbed the first metal-like thing her fingers could get a hold of; her prybar. She held it tightly in her fist and jabbed the sharper part of it into the Orgon's back. He turned his attention to her for a moment and Marion jabbed him again.
The Orgon decided to focus his attention on Marion instead. The woman took a step back, less out of fear, and more to lead him further away from the Doctor, and went to swing at it again. He grabbed her wrist with one hand and reached for her throat with the other. Marion dropped the pry bar and tried to peel the fingers off of her neck. Every time she thought she'd almost managed it, they squeezed down again.
Just as Marion was starting to wonder if she'd end up with another matching pair of handprints around her neck, Marion heard a loud shattering sound and the Orgon suddenly let go. Standing behind him was Jo Grant, holding what was left of the ceramic wine karaff. The rest of it having shattered on top of the Orgon's head covering them in what Marion was about 80% sure was wine and there was a 0% chance of her double-checking.
Marion rubbed at her neck feeling the warmth of what might've been a bruise if she was normal fade away under her fingertips with one hand and grabbed her tool off the ground with her other. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn't even the slightest bit hoarse.
"Congrats on joining the blunt force trauma to an Orgon club Jo Grant. Now let's jet."
The three of them ran in the opposite direction that the guard had come from and they were soon successfully in the outdoors. It turned out that they hadn't been too far away from the factory at all just on a lower level, but Marion supposed that that made sense. The easily angered man in the black outfit had remarked that she'd been under for less than an hour, so it's not like they could've taken her that far.
The harsh artificial light slowly morphed into natural light, as they came away from the factory to a partially outdoor place next to the field. Some idiot had left a three-wheeled motorcycle just outside in the lot and the three of them ran to it. It was just big enough for the three of them to fit if they held on, it had clearly been built for Orgons which had to have been twice as dense as a human. Their combined weight didn't stop it from speeding off as soon as the Doctor stepped on the gas.
The Doctor sat in front, with Jo in the middle, and Marion in the back, shielding the other two from the barrage of gunfire from the guards pursuing them.
There still wasn't much room, but Marion did her best to grip more on the sides of the three-wheeler with her hands and thighs as opposed to wrapping her arms around Jo. If Marion fell off, she didn't want to take Jo with her.
They raced around the scrublands, Marion could barely hear the sound of anything other than the engine and the loud electronic whoosh of the gunfire all around them as she tried her best not to throw up.
Marion didn't know where the Doctor was going, but she knew that he was likely headed toward a ditch. She was just about to try to shout at the Doctor to warn him that whichever direction his instincts were telling him, when she heard the sound of a laser blast much louder and much closer than the rest, and then she felt something warm, and then nothing..
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Marion's first thought was that she was glad that she'd had both the foresight to sit in the back and to not grip onto Jo Grant too tightly. She wouldn't want Jo to have fallen off with her body.
Her second thought was that she hoped that they didn't suddenly turn around and try to grab her.
Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick
Her third thought was a simple "ow". The pain was fading which was good, but her head was spinning. Something was brushing against her face. Maybe grass or something? That would explain the temporary roadburn. She felt the sensation of something warm and wet fading in her skull, but she could have sworn that it was the ray gun that hit her. Maybe she'd hit a rock or something on the way down. From what she could see, she was lying at the bottom of a ditch of some kind, so it made some sense. Marion slowly got to her feet and pressed her hands against the ground. On further inspection, it was less of a ditch and more of a low hill, and here where he had been was a rock speckled with something red. Marion looked away.
She wasn't feeling any arm pain yet, so that was good. She could hear some gunfire in the distance but she couldn't quite make out the sound of the three-wheeler. She hoped that they had gotten to the freedom fighters and that when they did come back to her, it would be with them.
Marion stayed low to the grass and slowly climbed up the way trying to get a better look at her surroundings without her surroundings getting a look at her. The dry grey grass contained large indents that seemed to lead to the bottom of the hill, so she assumed that that was about where she had fallen from.
As Marion was halfway back up the hill, she spotted someone. There was a man looking down at her. He had blonde hair and a blonde mustache. For a moment, Marion panicked, until she saw that he was dressed in camo the same way that Anat, Boaz, and Shura had been, but he didn't look familiar. Well, that wasn't exactly correct, he looked familiar enough that Marion knew that she had seen him on the show, but as for who he was, her brain was drawing a blank. The man stared at her for a moment, his hand moving towards his hip for what Marion supposed had to have been a gun. And then he paused.
"Marion Henson?" The man asked.
"Yup." Marion slowly got to her feet while remaining crouched down near the brush. "You're with the resistance, right? What's your name?"
"Don't you know?"
Marion stared at the man blankly. "Why would I ask if I knew? I know about a lot of people, but I can't remember every single name I hear."
"Monia."
"Nice to meet you!"
And now for the moment of truth.
"Are the Doctor and Jo Grant with you. Tall man, curly white hair dressed in red and a woman about my height with reddish blonde hair, dressed in denim. They're with you, right? Well, not with you-you, I can see that you're alone. Are they back at your home base, or heading there at least? With the rest of the rebellion?"
Marion couldn't hear any more gunfire. Perhaps the guerillas had defeated the guards?
"I am not sure," the man replied, "They very well might be! You should come with me to our base. If one of us found them, they'd be heading there anyway and if not, well you'll have a far better chance of saving them if you're not doing it alone. It's just this way."
The two walked in silence for a while. There didn't seem to be many guards around, she imagined that they were more focused on the two high-profile prisoners as opposed to the one that they thought was dead.
On the other hand, Marion not being able to die had rung enough bells for them to address her as "The Woman Who Won't Die"
On the third hand, the Daleks might not want the fact that someone who couldn't be killed existed to be public knowledge and it could be that the rebels had learned about them through alternate channels.
As Marion was thinking about this, a device on Monia's hip started to buzz and at the same time, her vision blurred. Marion's gait stuttered, and she brought a hand to her shoulder. It burned sharply. The pain faded, and then came back, and then faded, and then came back, and then remained.
"Shit." She hissed under her breath.
Monia lowered the device and looked down at her with a grimace. Marion already knew what he had heard, or at the very least about, what he was going to say.
"Let's go." The man said simply, picking up his pace. Marion effortlessly kept with his stride.
"Where are we going?"
The man didn't respond. He just continued to walk quickly until he crouched down by a bit of grass that Marion didn't notice anything unusual about until his fingers dug into the dirt and pulled up a trapdoor. He gestured down.
Ordinarily, Marion would ask more questions when a man gestured for him to enter the inside of an underground bunker but Marion was alternating between severe arm pain and dizziness, and frankly, whatever got them to the Doctor and Jo quicker she was willing to do?
There are far more people in the cellar than Marion had expected. She supposed that a rebellion that lasted this long would have to have more than like, five people, but still.
"They caught them," Marion asked quietly once Monia had joined her. The man brushed past her and went down a small set of stairs to a table where Anat and Boaz were waiting.
Anat's voice called out to them. "Well?"
"He's captured," Monia said, "Taken for processing. We must rescue him."
"Rescue him?" Boaz exclaimed, "Are you mad? From there?"
"I'm very mad." Marion spoke up, "Angry even. They're only in this mess because of you."
"And I say we must," Monia added.
"Suicide!"
"Are you afraid?"
Boaz looked down. "Me? Of course, I am. I'm not a fool. What is he to us?"
"We have fresh information from one of our contacts at control centre. He is the sworn enemy of the Daleks. He's the one man they're afraid of. Don't you see? She's not the only rumor that turned out to be real. It's our only hope. If we don't act quickly, it may be too late."
"Why would he help us? Why would SHE help us?" Anat turned to stare at her. "We shot you twice."
Marion shrugged. "I don't actually care about that."
"You were so angry back at the manor."
"You threatened to shoot the Doctor and Jo."
"So why would you help us?"
"You wanted to hurt the Doctor and Jo because of a misunderstanding, now that you have all the facts, your minds have changed. The Daleks want to hurt the Doctor because they have all the facts."
Because at most that they had done was make her feel a sense of dread, some nausea, and a touch of dizziness. Her arm had never burned the way it was burning right now. It had remained at that amount of pain for a while. She hadn't felt any chest pressure yet, and her vision wasn't blackened around the edge..
From what Marion could see, the steps from dread to blackout were based less on time than it was on the severity of danger.
The rebels weren't as big of a threat to the Doctor as the Daleks were, therefore, the Daleks were her main concern.
"So we help you save the Doctor,"
"And Jo!"
"And Jo-," Boaz continued, although it sounded less like she cared as much about Jo's life as she did the Doctor's and more like he figured that arguing would be useless. "And if we do that, you and the Doctor will help us destroy the Daleks."
"Yes."
Boaz looked towards Anat, who nodded at him firmly. Anat opened a drawer and retrieved a series of handmade maps. At first glance, they looked like something that a child might have made, but as Marion looked closer, the distances looked about right from her reckoning. So the child-like appearance was most likely due to the fact that they had been made with some kind of marker on whatever large scraps of paper the cartographer had been able to get their hands on. Marion lightly lifted the corner of one. It looked like someone had torn down some kind of propaganda poster to draw on the back of.
Smart.
Monia looked through the different pages of the map before deciding on one that he liked and putting it on top of the rest. He tapped his finger on a part of it.
"Now, the control centre is here. As far as we know they're being held prisoner in this block here," he tapped on a different part of the nap.
"Then how do we get through?" asked Boaz.
"The disused underground railway of the old city. There's an exit right by this wall." he tapped the map with emphasis.
"Even as a ruin, it has its uses."
"Come, time is short."
Monia rolled up his map and put it away and turned to walk out of the room. He gestured to three of the other soldiers that Marion had noticed were also in the base to come with him, and Anat, Boaz, and Marion followed after him.
The tunnels were just large enough for two people to stand side by side if neither of them were too broad. As they walked, Marion noticed something in Boaz's hand. It looked familiar, but Marion- oh.
Oh, Marion knew what that was. At least she thought that she did.
"That's an explosive, isn't it Boaz?" Marion remarked. "It reacts to Dalekite-"
"Dalekenium," Boaz said, sharply. "It's called Dalekenium."
"Yeah, that, anyway, that explosive works by latching onto a Dalek casing and exploding right?"
"Correct."
Marion held out her hand. "Give it over."
"Why would I-"
"Is there a way to trigger that explosive on a Dalek without blowing yourself up with it?" Marion knew that there wasn't, so she kept talking without letting him finish. "Because you don't strike me as the kind of man who could blow himself up and survive."
"And you are?" Boaz asked, already placing the explosive in the palm of her hand.
"Probably." Marion looked down at the explosive in her palm. "This doesn't activate unless it's pressed up against a Dalek's casing?"
"Shouldn't you already know the answer to that question?"
The man didn't seem to be as panicked as would be expected from someone who had just handed an easily triggered explosive to someone who suggested that they didn't know what triggered them and what didn't. So she figured that this wasn't something she needed to worry about too much.
Still, she held the device very gingerly. And pointedly fidgeted with her purse strap instead of the thing in her hand.
Marion didn't fully know where they were going, but Monia seemed to. They walked for a while through different corridors and pathways and tunnels. They had to have been walking for at least a couple of miles, although it was difficult to tell if that was because of how far they traveled or because of all the twists and turns.
Marion started to notice the tunnel making an incline and the occasional bit of orange-ish underground lighting gave way to the whitish-blue of daylight.
Marion thought that they had come out somewhere near where she and the Doctor had entered earlier, but she didn't believe that the Daleks would have enough variation from building to building to know for sure. The moment they came out.
The pain in Marion's arm had gradually faded as they walked through the tunnels, and now was nothing more than a mild sense of dread and slight nausea. Although, if Marion was being honest, it was possible that that nausea was because she needed to eat something.
When they came out of the side of the tunnel and approached the structure, Monia pointed to Marion and Boaz and two other soldiers whose name's Marion didn't know then gestured to the stairs. Marion nodded and slowly crept up the stairs. It seemed for a moment that they would be able to go completely undetected, but then all she could hear was the sound of raygun fire.
Marion didn't have a gun. She hadn't been given one, she hadn't asked for one, and frankly, she would have had to refuse one if given to her. It wasn't that she had the moral obligation against guns the later Doctors tended to have, it was more because her complete lack of hand-eye coordination made carrying one dangerous for everyone around her except perhaps for whomever she was aiming for.
She kept the bomb in one hand waiting for the Dalek.
An Orgon approached from the bottom of the stairs and the man in front of her launched himself over the railing and landed on him. Marion moved up the rest of the stairs and managed to duck just out of the way of a green blast headed right toward her. A yellow blast shot past and before she could see who had shot her at her, all she saw was a bit of ash.
Marion wasn't as frightened as she knew she probably ought to be. It wasn't like most of the times when she noticed that she wasn't feeling as scared or anxious as she should be in a situation only for it to all hit later. She wasn't disassociating. She felt completely present, she just wasn't afraid.
Marion supposed that most fears have their roots in the fear of death and the fear of injury. And those were fears that had become just as irrational as her fear of spiders.
What she was feeling now was more of a focus.
EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE.
And she'd found what she was trying to focus on.
Daleks were taller than she thought them to be. She'd known intellectually that they were as tall as a person. She'd seen people standing by them. But that kind of height doesn't exactly translate well through the screen. They'd seemed slightly shorter, or about the same height as the Doctor. But the Doctor was significantly taller than her and so was the Dalek.
It wasn't taller than her by a lot. Not enough to call them giant, but enough for her to realize she was going to have to either keep her distance or look up at them.
EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE.
It hadn't set its sights on Anat yet, it was still looking around. So Marion was moving towards it slowly, ducking behind cover when she could. She wasn't going to try to avoid getting hit if she was close enough that her momentum would still send her at the Dalek, but she didn't want to get shot before then.
Marion got a few steps closer, and then she heard Boaz scream for Anat and that was her cue.
Marion held the explosive loosely in her hand, hoping that the Dalek wouldn't think to shoot at it and her until she was too close for it to matter. Hearing her rapid movement the Dalek's eyestalk swiveled away from Anat and towards her.
Marion made a last-ditch dash towards the Dalek trying to make it so that when she fell she'd crash into it hand first and then-
EXTERMINATE.
She saw a bright flash of white light and then agony.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Brush and floss, their teeth but do you use mouthwash too? What kind? Is it the kind with alcohol? Get up for a second and put some in your mouth. Now swish it around. Does it burn?
Have you ever hit your funny bone, (keep swishing it around) I'm not going to ask you to hit it for a demonstration, but have you? Do you know why it feels that way? Do you know why it feels so weird?
Here's A Fun Fact: It's not a bone you're knocking into. It's your ulnar nerve getting pinched against the side of your humerus.
Is the cool mint mouthwash still in your mouth? Well, you can spit it out now. Does it burn? It honestly might still burn for a little bit but it'll stop soon.
Imagine if you couldn't spit it out.
Imagine if instead of it being in your mouth it was in your veins and arteries and capillaries, pumping burning cold mint to every single part of your body. With no way to get it out. Now imagine, that in your rush to escape this pain, you fall down a long flight of stairs and imagine that as you are falling, what it would feel like if every single bone in your body is a funny bone coated with exposed nerves that you keep crashing and banging against as you fall down.
Can you imagine that? The way that that would feel. Can you picture it?
It's not exactly how it feels to be shot by a Dalek. But it's maybe close enough for you to grasp.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Marion couldn't hear any more gunfire. Her arm was pinned under her body and causing her to feel pins and needles, and the left side of her body felt cold but it was the familiar sense of cold she had felt in Satellite Five when her arm caught fire. And her suspicions were confirmed when the cold started to sting.
Marion winced and slowly tried to get herself to a sitting position. Anat was looking down at her. Or more specifically, Marion's left arm. She followed the other woman's gaze. A large part of her shirt sleeve had been burned off and speaking of burned off, her skin. Marion watched as the blistered skin drained slowly leaving untouched but slightly cool skin.
Marion stretched out her hand the rest of the way. It didn't burn. Anat took her outstretched hand and pulled her to her feet.
"You saved my life," Anat said breathlessly as if she couldn't believe it.
"If I didn't do it, Boaz would've. And he'd still be lying on the ground. He gave me the idea though, so if anything thank him. He'd die for you, you know."
Marion pulled up her sleeves and compared the tone of her left arm to the tone of her right.
"Huh. No marks," Marion said under her breath. "The explosion happened after the Dalek shot me, didn't it?"
"I wasn't looking."
"It had to have been. My arm would be discolored otherwise."
"COME ON YOU TWO!" Monia shouted. "They're holding him this way. They'll be sending out reinforcements any minute."
Marion kicked her head leg back and forward and seeing that her range of motion was just fine, took off after Monia and Boaz with Anat by her side.
"Did it hurt?" Anat asked. "Getting exterminated, does it hurt?"
As we established before, the honest answer was "Yes. It only lasts a moment, but it feels longer and it hurts. It hurts so, so, so, so much."
Was that the right answer?
"No." Marion lied. "No, I just heard it shout 'EXTERMINATE' and then my vision went dark. I didn't realize I had been hit until I woke up."
Marion could say anything that she wanted. Anat wasn't going to get shot by the Daleks, so she wouldn't find out one way or another. And maybe the woman was asking for herself, but it was more likely that she was asking because she'd seen her friends and maybe even her family die at the hands of the Daleks. And Marion could tell the truth and tell her that her friends had died in pain. She could tell her about how veins burned and how every nerve in her body seemed to flare.
But again, it didn't matter one way or the other what she told her. And if she lied, and told Anat that her friends, maybe even her family, had died in an utterly painless way the odds of her coming across someone who could tell Anat that she'd been lied to was non-existent.
To tell Anat the truth would be cruel. Maybe it was honest. But it was cruel and pointless.
Marion kept her vision straight ahead as she spoke and kept moving through the hall.
Anat didn't know enough about her as a person to notice the tells of her lying. But Marion doubted that she had lived as long as she had without some kind of intuition.
With questions like that, an obvious lie might as well be the truth.
The soldiers had shot a lot of guards as they ran through. A lot a lot.
Luckily, it wasn't too much longer until Marion could hear the Doctor's voice from where she was and it got louder as she darted ahead of the guerrillas and through the doorway.
She slid to a stop, waving her arms trying not to fall over. The Doctor looked fine, and so did Jo. And the two of them and the controller stared at her. And then behind her. Anat, Boaz, Monia, and several other soldiers whose names Marion hadn't had the chance to learn poured out of the doorway.
"Right, stay where you are!" Monia shouted pointing his gun at the Controller's face.
"Guards!" the Controller shouted.
"Guards?" Monia scoffed, "You have no guards. They're all dead."
"Doctor, Jo, are you alright?" Marion asked quickly.
"We're fine now that you're here!" the Doctor replied.
"Marion, what happened to you!"
Marion's pants had handled the explosion a little bit better than her shirt (seriously what were these made of) they were just covered in burn marks, but her left sleeve was covered in burn holes and there was a huge, clearly burnt hole in the side. Marion hadn't glanced in a mirror, but she was sure that her hair looked wild, dusty, and probably full of debris.
"Oh, this and that. You should see the other guy."
"She charged at a Dalek that was going to shoot Anat with an explosive in her hand." Boaz explained, "It shot at her, but she managed to take it out with her."
He sounded begrudgingly impressed which contrasted with the expression on Jo's face which was not.
"Marion!"
"Jo!" Marion said in the exact same tone.
"You two are coming with us," Anat beckoned towards Jo and the Doctor, "No harm must come to these two. Too much depends on them."
The two of them came to stand by Marion.
"As for you, my friend…" Monia said, slowly raising his gun to fire directly at the man's face.
"Put that gun down." the Doctor ordered, "There's no point in murdering him."
"You don't know how much blood there is on his hands!"
"Nevertheless, he's not your real enemy."
Monia didn't look away from the Controller for a moment. "He helped the Daleks. He's worked for them."
"They would always have found someone," the Doctor spoke in a sharp whisper, "Now just leave him."
Monia stared at the other hand for a while, and just as it seemed like he was about to pull the trigger, he sighed and lowered the gun.
"Right," Anat nodded, "let's go."
The way back to the rebel base was much, much, much easier than the way to it. But that didn't mean that there hadn't been any guards trying to stop them. There had been smoke, and there had been gunfire, and Marion had felt nauseous the entire time.
She kept close to the Doctor and Jo, trying to watch and listen for gunshots getting too close to hitting any of them. She was sure that some of the rebels had been shot as well, but she hadn't been paying a whole lot of attention to anyone but those two.
The smoke and explosions masked them reentering the tunnel under the ground, and they continued to walk. Marion didn't have an issue with having to walk that far, and neither did the Doctor, but by the time they got back to the room where Monia had shown them the map, Jo looked dead on her feet.
Boaz excused himself to talk to some of the soldiers that had helped them make their escape while Anat tried to explain to them what Styles had done.
"But how do you know this?" Jo insisted.
"Oh, there are books," Monia explained, "Even during the wars, people found time to study, to write about it."
"What to you has not yet happened, is to us history," Anat added.
"This history of yours, it talks about Sir Reginald Styles?" The Doctor's eyes flickered to Marion.
"Oh yeah. He pretended to be working for peace, but really he just wanted power for himself."
"So the conference he called was just a trick?" the Doctor questioned.
"He managed to lure the world leaders to a remote country house, and he pretended they needed absolute quiet if the meeting was to succeed. But then, there was a devastating explosion."
"And Styles was killed with the others. He must have set a bomb and mis-timed the charge."
"There were accusations, counter-accusations, and then the wars began. That was the turning point."
"But if this is true, Sir Reginald Styles must be completely round the bend." Jo shook her head as if she'd suddenly remembered something. "Oh, but Marion said that that's not what happened."
"But they thought that it was. And with the evidence they had it was just as reasonable as anything. And if the world has gone to hell, and you think you can pin the blame all on one man, and you have the ability to go back in time and get rid of him, why wouldn't you?"
Monia nodded. "We'd been fighting the Daleks for years, but it was hopeless. Eventually, we must lose, so we thought, what else can we do?"
"We learnt through one of our spies that the Daleks had succeeded in creating a time machine. We even managed to steal a copy of the plans, and we built one of our own, so that we could go back into history to the exact point where things started to go wrong."
"With one action, we stop could them. Mankind could have a chance to take a new direction."
"But even now, the transfer isn't always stable. People materialised in your time and then just faded away."
"Those would have been the ghosts that Styles saw," Marion said, her hand on her chin.
"Now," Monia continued the story, "somehow the Daleks found what we were doing, and they sent Ogrons back into your time after us and attacked one of our men."
"Well, that must have been the man that we saw down by the canal tunnel." The Doctor snapped his fingers, "You remember, Jo, the one who vanished from the ambulance"
"Hmm," the Doctor nodded, "And I assume that Marion managed to convince you to help come and rescue us."
"I mean, they were going to come anyway. But speaking of that," Marion cut in, "Why did you listen to me? Why did you know me, or at least know about me?"
"During the late 21st century, there were rumors, the Daleks had been on the hunt for a specific person, who was supposedly born at the turn of the century. A woman with curly brown hair and the unique ability to get back up no matter how many times she'd been exterminated. The Woman Who Won't Die. The Daleks had met her and her companions long before they arrived on Earth, she supposedly could travel through time, and the Daleks thought that if they could find her and lock her away somewhere, or, if they found her young enough, get her loyal to them, they'd be able to prevent some of their past defeats. She was never found. We started to think that she and her companions were some kind of legend to keep spirits high."
"Until we shot you at the Moor and you wandered back into Style's House a few minutes later."
"And then you didn't believe me, because you thought that I was being deceived by the Doctor and that he wasn't who he said he was."
"Well, what few descriptions of you there were agreed that you had curly brown hair, but the Doctor some accounts said he was an old man with curly white hair, and then others said he was a short man with black hair, and then another said he was-"
"Ah-ah-ah," Marion said, holding up a hand and cutting Anat off.
"Yes. I get the picture. His face changes sometimes. And he hasn't quite gotten to some of those faces yet. And I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."
"Well anyway," Monia continued, "They say that you two are old enemies of the Daleks."
"Yes."
This was technically the first time Marion was seeing them in person, but that was just semantics. They were fascist cephalopods in cans. Marion could get behind hating those easily.
"Then you will help us to beat them."
"I mean sure," Marion agreed, "but I think your plan might have a hole or two."
Anat shook her head. "You can succeed where we've failed. We want you to go back into your own time and kill Styles."
"And there's the holes. That's not going to work."
"You're asking me to commit murder!" the Doctor's voice didn't raise, but he sounded furious at the idea. He stood up and began pacing.
"No!" Anat shouted after him, "We're asking you to kill one man and prevent millions more dying."
"That is still murder."
"Isn't it worth it to save the human race from the Daleks?"
"If killing Styles would save the human race from the Daleks I would be completely behind you. Unfortunately…"
"Unfortunately what," Boaz had ducked back in. "Unfortunately, you can't stomach doing what needs to be done in order to save the future!"
Marion didn't want to say "You've created a catastrophic example of Beethoven's Fifth." Luckily, the Doctor spoke first.
"But your history could be wrong, you know?" the Doctor was still pacing, "Now listen, why don't you send us back to our time? We know the future now. Maybe there are other things we can do?"
"Monia," Anat turned to stare desperately at the man, "we're wasting valuable time. Every minute that goes by-"
"Doctor, will you help us? It's our only hope."
"I still can't believe that Sir Reginald Styles is a ruthless murderer…" Jo's voice trailed off and her eyes widened.
"MARION!"
"Jo?"
"I just remembered something you said to me while we were locked in the cellar!"
From the spark in her eyes, Marion realized that Jo and figured it out, and it seemed that she had done so faster than the Doctor had.
"What?" Monia asked. "What did she say, what did you say?"
Jo had seemed tired before, but she seemed to have caught a second wind. "We were talking about who you were and why you were doing what you were doing, and then the Doctor posed the question of why you would go to all this trouble to kill a politician from the twentieth century. And then Marion said 'It's because they think Styles is the reason why the future sucks.'"
Jo did her best to copy Marion's accent when she said that as if to show it was a quote.
"Yes," said Anat, "that's what we just said."
"But then, I asked her why. And she just repeated herself. And then when the Doctor pointed out that she had repeated herself, Marion nodded and said that it was a paradox. It seemed strange at the time but, it makes sense now." Jo looked towards Marion to see if she was on the right track and Marion nodded.
"What are you two talking about?"
"Well," said Jo. "What if you travelling back in time to stop Styles is the reason why everything that happened?"
"That doesn't make any sense! How could us travelling back to stop Styles be the reason Styles plunged the world into war?"
"Any of your people still in our time zone?" the Doctor asked quickly.
"No?"
Anat shook her head. "Shura. He left just to send a message and we never saw nor heard from him again. We assumed he must be dead."
"Well, that's it then!" said Jo.
"Look, why are you so interested in Shura?"
"I'm curious, that's all."
"Curious?" She laughed without humor. "Well, that's funny. Mark got killed to save you and you're curious."
"Anat! Monia admonished sharply.
"Look, please, believe me, I'm completely with you about the ends. I only disagree as to the means."
"In the sense that we think pursuing those means won't reach the ends you want."
"All right," Monia sighed, "What do you want to know?"
"This mission of yours to the 20th century," The Doctor asked quickly, "What did you take with you?"
"The usual battle gear," Anat counted off on her fingers, "Radio, disintegrators..."
"Any sabotage equipment?"
"Only a few charges of Dalekanium."
"Dalekanium?"
"It's a highly effective type of explosive," Boaz explained, "We stole the formula from the Daleks. It's what your friend used to blow up that Dalek."
Jo glanced at Marion and Marion hid the arm with the burnt sleeve behind her back.
"Could it destroy a house?"
"What are you trying to say, Doctor?"
"It's like Marion was trying to tell us in the cellar. It's a paradox. You've trapped yourself in a temporal paradox."
"They thought that Styles had caused the explosion, so they went back in time to stop him and in the process, they caused the explosion!" Jo's eyes widened. "They think Styles is the reason why the future is the way it is because they think that Styles is the reason why the future is the way that it is!"
"What are you talking about?"
"If Styles didn't cause that explosion, somebody else did."
"Well, obviously, but-" Anat's eyes widened. She turned to look at Monia and then in a soft whisper." Shura!"
"Isn't that exactly what he would have done?" the Doctor asked softly, "One last suicidal attempt to carry out his orders?"
"It's possible, I suppose."
"It wasn't Styles who set off that bomb that started the war I'm afraid. It was him."
Next Chapter: It's Going Swimmingly
Anat: Does getting shot by a Dalek hurt?
Marion, lying through her teeth: No.
The 21st century where a man prevents global warning and then has people locked in a bunker is the plot of "Enemy of the World" a serial that I love very much and is absolutely wild. And the best part is that the episode came out in the 60s and takes place in the far-off future of 2018. Imagining ANY of that stuff happening in 2018 is amazing to me.
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