Another month, another chapter. Woo wee. It feels so surreal finally posting this. I'm pretty sure that I wrote this sometime in like, mid-July or something? And I'm finally posting it. That's wild to me.
Anyway, if you don't follow me on tumblr for some reason, I currently have chapters written (in an admittedly completely and utterly unedited state) up to May 2024. June 2024 is mostly done, and then I'm PRETTY sure that I'll end up having chapters up to September or October 2024 before the Spring 2024 semester hits and I simply WILL not have time to write.
Not that any of you will notice this because having enough stuff backlogged that I can continue to post regularly even when I can't write was literally the reason why I started doing monthly updates the way that I am.
But anyway. This means since what's already been written is ahead, I can tell you what's happening next. So next after this will be Thirteen, and then Twelve, and then either Two or Ten depending on what word count I end up at.
Thank you Icannotscream, mwjchar10411, and SaiKaiya01 for favoriting.
Thank you Jazzper'sGirl, DarkArchitect, Reijoh, flarefire123 for following and favoriting
Thank you, Lady Shalpha, andre-papushi, iHateFridays for reviewing.
ALSO. As you may have noticed, 's email notification system is a little bit wonky atm and probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future. And so, I would recommend that if you're interested in this fic, that you do one of three things.
Follow this fic on archive of our own instead since that site has a working email system.
Follow me on tumblr at lunammoon. Whenever I post a chapter, I always link to the ao3 version of it there a few seconds after I post it.
When I post this chapter, it should be October 26, 2023 at least by Eastern Standard time. The next chapter should be posted around four weeks later November 23, 2023. The point is if you don't want to use ao3 or follow me on tumblr, you can instead just check back every four weeks. (not every fourth Thursday to be clear. Every four weeks.)
Also, last week, I posted another Chapter of Death was a Temporary Inconvenience
Things weren't always empty and cold. Every now and then there was something big and something warm. But those things never lasted for long. It made sure of that.
What It did couldn't be described as Crushing or Shredding or Unravelling or Ripping or Melting or with any other word but Destroying because to call what It did one of them was to deny It the rest of them. And anyway, those actions left something behind. What It did, didn't.
It destroyed the new thing and then It destroyed whatever or whomever create it.
At first, it was interesting, and she amused herself by guessing how far along this one would get.
And then it got boring because the answer invariably became "nowhere near long enough for something new and interesting."
After a few eternities, she stopped paying as much attention to it and It.
She just didn't care. Everything started the same way and it proceeded in the exact same way in the exact same order and the only real difference from one instance to another was how far they got down the exact same path doing the exact same thing until It destroyed both them, and what progress they had made apart.
And it was like that for several eons until something interesting and new happened.
At first, she didn't realize that someone new was trying their hand at creation because they didn't start the way that they always did.
First, came Them. They came after their predecessor had been destroyed and looked at the Nothing that It left behind and expanded it. Until Everything Was filled with Nothing, stretched so thin it seemed moments away from Snapping and Cracking and Slamming Together and yet it never did.
Then, They went away without being destroyed and He was there. Everything started getting bigger and bigger, and bigger and wider until she was uncertain if she could've gone from one side of everything to the other side of everything if she had started traveling the moment she realized that moving was a thing she could do.
And then He left and He and They had been interesting, particularly with the way that they had left willingly instead of being destroyed utterly.
Then came Her, and She was the most interesting of all.
It wouldn't be correct to call Her a painter. It wouldn't be correct to call Her a sculptor. You couldn't call Her a carver or an architect or a colorist or weaver any word to describe someone who creates other than Creator. Because to call Her one of them would be to deny Her the rest of them.
Her acts of creation were new and beautiful and wonderful and so was She.
Her skin made the rest of existence look grey and her intricately braided hair floated gently around her head as she paintedtwistedcarvedshapedwovepushedpulled dust and gas and smoke with her hands until it made a Something.
Something Bright. Something Warm, Something Wonderful. And most importantly, Something New. And it made the tiny silvery specks that covered her skin sparkle.
Soon she had connected the dots until she realized what had to have happened with Them and Him and felt something that she hadn't felt in so long.
Excitement.
They made the Nothing that She turned into Something and then He made Everything bigger and it kept getting bigger and bigger. And the two of them had done this to make It harder and harder for It to find Her and destroy Her along with the beautiful things She created like It had ripped apart everything that had come before Her.
It-
It had ripped apart everything that had come before Her.
And that thought caused her to feel something she hadn't felt before.
Grief.
The sort of grief you feel, not because you have lost something, but because you know that you will lose it one day sooner than you'd like, and you know that there's nothing you can do about it.
Because of course, that would happen sooner or later. She would get destroyed someday as well just like everything else and just like everyone else.
And she didn't want that to happen.
Something about Her, and the New, Bright, Warm, Wonderful things She made her realize that when It destroyed Her, it would not be the same as every other times creations and creations had been turned to nothing. She had never mourned before. But she thought that she might.
But it seemed that that terrible moment when all of the wonderful things were gone might not be for a long while yet. So she wasn't going to think about that time.
Marion woke up with a temporary sense of resignation and sadness and the soft light of the TARDIS shining on her face. Marion didn't think that it was what woke her up, but it was bright enough that going back to sleep would be a bit of a chore.
She wondered if Honey was doing that on purpose.
Marion didn't care.
She reached out for the covers, to cover her head back up and stubbornly go back to sleep when she realized that she was not in fact, under the covers that she had gone to sleep under.
Marion blinked the sleep out of her eyes and sat up fully. She was lying under an incredibly colorful thick blanket.
It was soft and felt heavy. Not like it was full of glass beads like a normal weighted blanket, but more like the very fabric used to put it together was significantly denser than normal threads. And yeah, it looked like it had been put together by a colorblind individual who'd only been given access to neons but considering what the purpose of a blanket was, how it felt was more important than what it looked like.
But something that was important, was the fact that she was lying on top of the grey constellation quilt. And she had been certain that she had gone under the covers. She'd been tired, sure, but not nearly tired enough to flop under the bed. And the covers under her seemed well made. Not like she had kicked them off. So why was she lying on top of them?
Had she been taken in her sleep?
She didn't know that that could happen. At least without waking her up.
Marion rubbed some of the sleep out of her eyes and blinked slowly.
Other than the odd sadness that was now fading she had felt upon awakening, she felt pretty well rested.
Marion rolled over to get out of bed, with a soft yawn and a stretch.
Genuinely one of the better night sleeps she'd had.
"Wonder what the Doctor is up to-"
Marion heard two loud knocks on the door.
"Mari!" called the voice on the other side. "I know you're awake!"
Marion opened the door and blinked slowly. And then she stepped back because she was having to crane her head upward.
Standing there, was a man with blonde curly hair, yellow and brown pinstripe pants held up by red question mark suspenders, and a coat that wasn't quite as loud as the quilt but came pretty close.
"Mari! And you're already out of bed. Good. You've been sleeping for quite a while you know. I wanted your help settling an argument with Peri you see about what constitutes proper lemonade."
"Lemonade?"
"Yes, lemonade! I went to talk to you earlier to settle, but you had fallen asleep. ON top of the covers for some reason. Were you so tired you couldn't be bothered to get under them? Honestly Mari! Naturally, I had to find a blanket to toss over so you wouldn't wake up cold and grumpy."
"Thank you?"
Marion's brain was barely running on a cylinder and a half. This was way too much-talking way too soon. She was pretty sure that that was the appropriate response.
"You're very welcome Mari. There's no point in you spending all that time sleeping and then waking up still tired. You humans'll snooze your life away if given half the chance. And you do! A whole third of it. Imagine if I slept for a third of my life. That's over 300 years. Three hundred years of just sleeping. Although for most of you lot, it's only 25-30. But still. Two and a half decades! At least! And you just lie there comatose for a third of the day! Think how much you could get done if you weren't so limited."
Marion wasn't one of those "Don't talk to me before I've had my coffee." people. And she'd been somewhat proud of herself for being one of the few people in her studio who'd successfully avoided a caffeine addiction. Still, she had just woken up and she was not in the correct headspace to see the Sixth Doctor and his coat going on a long rant about sleep and comas and time wasted and REM phases and Morpheus and wasted time and whatever. Marion was simply not awake to parse any of it apart. She just stared at him and nodded lightly.
"I mean what do you even do in that time Mari!"
"Maintenance I think," Marion replied, blinking slowly. "Moving short-term memory stuff to long-term. Healing. Downtime. Also. Hi. I slept well. Thanks for asking."
"I didn't-" the Doctor paused, "Did you sleep well Mari?"
"Yes! I did! I appreciate the blanket." Marion said with a soft smile, "Now do you still have an argument with Peri you want me to settle."
"No, no. We quickly agreed that I was right."
Marion highly doubted that that was what happened. But if that doubt showed on her face, the Doctor pointedly ignored it.
"So, why'd you knock down my door the way that you did? What's happening?"
"I was planning on taking Peri to the Kew Gardens. Early 19th century. She wants to see the gardens, and so I decided to check on you to see if you were ready to vacate the realms of the dreaming and join us. I figured that you might find the surrounding buildings fascinating."
This Doctor had a fun rambly way of speaking that she was sure that she'd be able to fit right in with if she had had a bit more time to warm up.
As for the Kew Gardens trip, she suspected that that either they wouldn't be able to go, or they would be able to go or some kind of fuck shit would occur and make everything go sideways, crash, and burn. Still!
"I would." Marion yawned. "That sounds like a lot of fun. Just give me a bit. I can't go out dressed like this now can I?" Marion gestured to her shirt that had a wide enough neckline that she had to constantly shrug every now and then to keep it from dipping down and showing half her collarbone and was long enough that the sleep shorts she was wearing were just barely visible.
And she hadn't glanced at a mirror (come to think of it, she didn't think that there WAS a mirror in her room) but she had had a very good night sleep and she'd noticed that the better a night sleep she had, the more wacky her bed head was.
"Good, good, perfect," the Doctor nodded, "Don't dawdle for too long. Wouldn't want Peri to get impatient. You can find your back into the console room in the next, fifteen or so minutes, can't you? Of course you can! I'll see you then Mari" And with that, the Doctor shut the door behind him. And it was in those moments of silence that it hit her.
"Wait, did he call me-"
Marion wished that she could get away with wearing pants in more time periods than she could. It wasn't like she HATED wearing skirts or dresses. It's just that she wasn't as used to moving around in them rapidly as she was in pants. She supposed that she had to get in the practice of it.
Marion's outfit was simple. A simple brown skirt, a dark green button up and a waistcoat the same color as her skirt. She had a pair of comfortable brown A drawer had a pair of light grey boots in a similar style, but they weren't her size. She tucked them into her bag anyway. You really never know. Her hair had been carefully combed through and she had wrapped a thin scarf of the same color as her shirt around her head as a headband.
"Ah!" the Doctor greeted, "Right on time." He paused and looked up from the console dials and stared down at her, seeming to consider something. He leaned down to look at her, his nose only a few inches from hers. "I did talk to you earlier, didn't I? You haven't left…or come back. You know where we're going, don't you?"
"Yes?" Marion took a step back, "We just talked a few minutes ago. Kew Gardens is the plan, right?"
"Exactly," the Doctor nodded. He went back to changing dials and settings on the console.
"Must get the coordinates spot on"' he mused. "Don't want to land the wrong side of the English Channel. Smack in Napoleon's lap!"
There was a moment when Marion suspected that he might have meant that literally, but then she realized that he probably was just talking about France. Hopefully.
The Doctor paused for a moment put his arm across his chest and tucked his hand under his lapel.
"Wonder why he always posed like this? Could ask him" The Doctor brought his hand up to his head and started fidgeting with his hair. "Be infinitely more interesting than traipsing 'round a lot of greenhouses!"
"I think Peri would disagree with you."
"What would I disagree with?" Peri entered the console room. Her hair was tied into a bun and she was wearing a long pink dress with gold accents and puffy sleeves.
It wasn't something that Marion would have picked out herself, and not just because the light pink color would show blood stains incredibly easily. But Peri looked nice enough in it.
"That going to visit Napoleon would be more interesting than visiting the Kew Gardens!"
"What?" Peri stared at the man, "Doctor you can't."
"He's not. Just thinking."
"Oh." Peri sighed in relief. "What do you think about this dress Doctor? Isn't it great!"
"The costume is too large?" the Doctor murmured.
"Large?"
"Isn't that a synonym for 'great' large?"
"Not the way that you're using it," Marion said quickly. She turned to look at the other woman. "Peri, your dress looks lovely."
"Of course, great can also denote a high degree of magnitude. Someone elevated to power. Like Napoleon!"
"Why is he going on about Napoleon?"
"His train of thought isn't going to be derailed easily," Marion said, leaning over and whispering to Peri. "It'll make its way back into the correct station soon enough."
"I can hear you, you know!"
"Yes yes. I'm su-"
Marion cut herself off. Something suddenly felt weird and she realized that the weird feeling was coming from the TARDIS.
It felt a bit like how Three's had felt only different somehow.
"Honey?" Marion asked aloud.
The TARDIS suddenly lurched to the side. The Doctor held fast to the console. Peri stumbled into Marion's side and Marion, who had been standing there braced just barely managed to keep the two of them upright.
"Mari, is there something wrong?" There it was again. He kept calling her Mari. Marion didn't HATE it. Honestly, as long as she wasn't being called "Mari-an" she was fine with it.
"The TARDIS feels weird."
"Weird," the Doctor repeated, "In what way?"
Marion thought back. "Do you remember when you were trying to fix the TARDIS, and Jo got on, and the Time Lords hijacked it? It feels a bit like that. Not exactly like that. But you know. Same vibe."
"Hmm." The Doctor looked down at the console. "It sounds like we're being manoeuvred off course."
That TARDIS didn't feel as gross and bad as it had when the Time Lords took over, but it still felt weird enough that Marion wasn't super interested in putting her hands on the console and getting the full blast of whatever that was.
"Maneuvered off course?" Peri thought for a moment, "You mean it isn't the TARDIS malfunctioning again?"
"Malfunctioning?" The Doctor froze. His hands stopped moving on the console and he looked up at Peri incredulously. "Malfunctioning? Malfunctioning!" his voice rose with each word and he started huffing to the other side of the TARDIS. "Mari! Can you believe she would even suggest such a thing? After all the work I've done on it? Malfunctioning indeed!" the Doctor looked back down on a screen on the other side.
"Well, I only asked a simple question!"
"Indeed you did. It was the wrong question."
Peri sighed heavily. "Well, tell me what's going on."
"We're heading to the right time, but not the right place," Marion explained.
"How?" Peri asked, "Did the Doctor put in the wrong coordinates?"
"The wrong-"
"No." Marion cut the Doctor off before he could get into another rant. "And honestly a good amount of the time, the problem isn't that the Doctor put in the wrong coordinates, it's that the TARDIS ignores him."
"The TARDIS didn't change the destination this time did it?" The Doctor asked glaring down suspiciously at the console.
"Nope not this time."
"Then who is it?" Peri asked.
"To borrow your vernacular, I haven't a clue."
"Well, can't you override?" Peri asked.
The Doctor pressed a button, looked up, and glared at Peri. "Don't try to be so obtuse. What do you imagine I'm trying to do?" the TARDIS buzzed twice, "That's a time distortion, Mari what do you see on that side?"
"Is there something I should be looking for?"
"A flashing light. Should be chartreuse."
"Green or yellow."
"Chartreuse!"
"Doctor, I'm seeing a blinking green light. Is that what you're talking about?"
The Doctor hummed for a moment. "That means there's a time machine nearby."
Marion felt a buzz beckoning her towards a switch, a button, a lever, and a pair of dials.
"Time Lords?" Peri asked.
"Or a Dalek. Certainly an alien force of some kind. Marion, is it someone I would know or someone new? Can you tell me that much?"
"It's someone you know. I don't think you've met them recently though."
"So it's not the Daleks then."
Marion shook her head. "Nope, not them."
The Doctor looked down at a screen. "Well, it's most certainly alien in origin."
"Alien?" Peri said in disbelief. "On earth?"
Sure the Industrial Revolution was going on, and it wouldn't be long until the air was choked with coal smoke but at least for right now the 19th century air smelled cool and crisp. Probably wouldn't smell as nice when they got closer to town near farm animals and whatnot, but for now it was nice.
The TARDIS had landed in a patch of rich dark brown earth, and the trees were a saturated greenish-yellow that made the whole place seem a bit dreamy. There were piles of coal in the distance, but they weren't on fire so she couldn't smell them. It was the sort of place that Marion kind of wished she could sketch.
Peri clearly wasn't enjoying the surroundings as much as Marion did.
"Oh, great," Peri moaned, "Some substitute for Kew Gardens."
"Try and look on the bright side." The Doctor replied cheerfully, "After all, isn't coal just fossilized plant life?"
Peri leaned over and pulled up her shoes to look down at the heel. Of her shoes. Her high-heeled shoes. The high-heeled shoes that she was planning on running around in.
Marion grimaced.
"Peri those won't do. Not here." Marion thought about the shoes in her messenger bag and looked down at the other woman's feet. She reached down into her bag just past the elbow and grabbed ahold of the boots.
She held them out to her. "Are these your size?" Marion asked.
Peri looked inside of them for a moment.
"Yes! How did you-?"
"Good, Go inside the TARDIS and swap out. It's too late to change your whole look I think, but at least in these you won't be risking your ankle."
Peri walked inside of the TARDIS and came out a few moments later minus the heeled boots. While she was inside, Marion gravitated towards the Doctor.
"Watcha got there Doc?" Marion asked, "Is that your timey-wimey detector?"
"Timey-wimey detector? Don't be ridiculous." the Doctor scoffed and held up the device. "Timey-wimey detector indeed. It's much too small to be that. And not rectangular enough. It's just a simple tracking device. Registers time distortion. Far more specialized." He called Peri over.
"Hoist off your skirts, Peri," the Doctor said as he started to walk, "Off we go."
The countryside air smelled even nicer when they weren't on top of a dirt heap.
Marion and Peri followed after the Doctor with him occasionally spinning around with his tracker and walking in a different direction.
"Lots of these hedgerows won't exist soon," Peri remarked, pointing to a swath of greenery against the treeline.
"Hmm?"
"I mean, in the 20th century. They're being chopped down to improve farming efficiency. My generation's already concerned about the effects on wildlife. What about your generation Marion? In the 21st century?"
Marion sucked at her teeth. "My generation is also concerned about those things."
"Have they gotten better?"
Marion let out a dry laugh. "I mean, some of the holes in the ozone layer have closed up? But you know, trees are getting still cut down. Everyone has plastic in their blood. And the climate's getting warmer."
"By how much?"
"I'm from about the same part of the US you are Peri."
"And,"
"January, February, and March regularly hit the 60s and 70s."
Peri blinked at Marion for a moment. "Oh. Oh no."
"It's not all bad, there's a couple of bird species that we've brought back from the brink of extinction!"
"Talking of birds," the Doctor suddenly stopped and started looking around the room confused. "Do you notice anything strange?"
"Strange?"
They approached a large steep heavily tilled hill. At the top of the hill was a scarecrow. It took a moment for Marion to connect the dots and the Doctor connected them for her.
"No birds"
Marion had forgotten about the lack of birds, but now that the Doctor was mentioning it, she couldn't hear any birds anywhere. She should have heard chirping in the distance. Seen leaves rustle. But nothing.
Peri looked down the hill. "Well, maybe it's the scarecrow."
Marion got a careful look at it. It gave her terrible vibes.
"They're not usually this effective." the Doctor remarked.
"Well, it's certainly warding me off," Marion remarked.
It wasn't a normal scarecrow. She didn't remember what made it weird, but there was something off about it- she wondered if it was an actual scarecrow or someone in a disguise-
Someone in a disguise.
"Well Mari, you aren't a bird are you?"
"You're the one pretending to be an Englishman. You tell me. And besides!" Marion said, her voice carrying loudly. "It doesn't even look like a proper scarecrow! Terrible posture!"
"Marion," Peri said, sounding amused and exhausted in a tone Marion recognized, as a tone having been often aimed at the Doctor himself by Peri. "Why are you insulting the scarecrow?"
"Oh, you know," Marion said with a gentle spin of her wrist.
"I don't know actually!" Peri replied.
"It's just KIND OF CREEPY," Marion shouted out towards the scarecrow. "AND NOT EVEN IN A COOL WAY. IT'S NOT ADDING TO THE VIBE! IT'S RUINING IT!"
Peri made a face. Funnily enough, that expression was also familiar. Only she'd seen it on the Brigadier's face. Also directed at her.
"Well, if the place gives you the creeps, let's get out of it," said Peri.
"Considering we got dragged here by someone I'm not sure how that's going to happen unless you plan to walk to Kew Gardens. And like, sure those shoes are nice, but I don't know that they'd be up to that much walking."
The device led their group through a field of high tan grass. The sort of grass that Marion would've gone to great lengths to avoid when she had grown up without a pair of very long pants that cinched around the ankle for fear of tick bites.
Peri and the Doctor hadn't gotten bitten by ticks in the show, so it was probably fine.
Like, actually fine. Not probably fine like how she'd felt on the Hecate. She was actually feeling pretty chill. The tick thing was just something niggling in the back of her brain out of force of habit, not force of concern.
What DID bring up some concern was loud shouting coming from the other side of the field. The Doctor's head tilted up, and Marion and Peri did too.
The group looked at each other for a moment and then started running in the direction of the noise.
They came to the tree line. Just on the other end, shaded by rows and rows of trees
In the middle of the path was a white horse covered with brown straps in front of a cart made of redwood. Marion blinked for a moment, and then a blur of red and yellow and the Doctor was standing next to the horse and trying to soothe and calm it down.
The horse had looked like it was ready to bolt a moment ago, but it was quickly soothed.
Marion was impressed.
Also on the ground was a man dressed in brown lying face down on the grass. Peri ran to his side and Marion went with her.
"Doctor!" Peri called. The man looked away from the horse for a moment, ran his fingers through its mane, and joined them.
"Are you alright?" Marion asked the man.
She and Peri helped him to his feet.
"Why did they attack you?" Peri asked.
The Doctor leaned down and turned the man's head lightly. Whatever he was looking for, probably signs of a head injury. Deeming the man fine, he let him go.
"They didn't." the Doctor remarked. Gesturing to the broken wheel on the side of the road, "They attacked the machinery."
"Doctor, we heard shouting and then we found him right there, face down in the dirt. He's very much been attacked."
"They was after smashing up machinery."
"Oh, well, I'm lost," Peri sighed, "Why would anyone want to smash machinery?"
"I can think of a reason or two," Marion said under her breath.
"They're scared it'll rob them of their jobs," said the man.
"Maybe-" the Doctor trailed off.
"You suspect another motive?" the Doctor asked.
"Let's say I'm keeping an open mind. Can you stand?"'
Marion noticed a slight movement out of the corner of her eye and realized that there was a second man lying on his side. She hadn't noticed him before because he'd been half covered up by the dead leaves on the ground.
Marion made sure that enough of the first man's weight was on Peri that he wouldn't fall over the moment she let go and lightly nudged his shoulder.
"Are you alright? Doctor?"
The Doctor looked over to where Marion was kneeling.
"Odd that," remarked the driver, "leaving Jack Ward behind. They're usually such mates."
The Doctor jumped to Jack as quickly as he had jumped to the horse and lightly lifted his head to check the side of his neck for his pulse. Doing so, he revealed an odd pair of marks under his ear. Two large red circles right next to each other.
"That's an unusual mark," said the Doctor under his breath. It sounded almost more like he was talking to himself than Jack. "How did you come by that?"
The man sat up and jerked away from the Doctor and then seeing Marion in the way shoved past her. Marion just barely kept herself from falling on her butt.
"Hey!" Marion shouted in reflex.
"Hey, steady. Just trying to help." the Doctor insisted.
The Doctor looked at them for a moment and then started running.
"What's got into you, Jack?" the first man they had found shouted after him. He turned to look at them. "I can't fathom it. I've never seen him like that before."
"Well, so much for playing the Good Samaritan."
Marion walked over to what was left of the large wheel thing. (She wasn't positive what it was. It kind of looked like some sort of spinning wheel). She lifted it up. She gripped it by the spokes and got it back into the cart as best as she could. She wasn't sure that it would work again as intended. Or if it would need to be fixed in some way, or even if it could be fixed.
"Oh, Mister Stephenson's not going to be well pleased about machinery." the man bemoaned.
"I don't suppose he will," the Doctor stopped and blinked. His head tilted to the side. "Stephenson?"
"Waiting for them parts he is."
"George Stephenson!"
"Aye, sir. Do you know him?"
"I know of him. How would you two like to meet a genius?"
"I thought I already had," Peri replied.
"Yes, yes, of course, but I haven't changed the course of history," Marion pointedly coughed, "Indeed, I'm expressly forbidden so to do"
"Like that'd ever stop you." Marion coughed again.
"Why Mari, is there something wrong with your throat?"
"No, not at all," Marion replied, her voice flat. "You would never do ANYTHING that would divert the tracks of history. It'd just be incredibly out of character for you."
"Why I-"
"Could he be what all this is about?" Peri asked, "George Stephenson I mean?"
"An astute observation, Peri." the Doctor turned to look at the man, "Can you give us a lift?"
Marion did not like high-pitched noises and she especially did not like high-pitched beeping noises. And she especially didn't like them when they were repetitive. It made it nearly impossible to completely tune it out and made her feel antsy.
The more paved the road got, the sparser the trees started to be, the closer they got into town, the louder and quicker the beeping got and Marion was pretty close to saying "fuck it" and curling up in a ball.
Parts of the road closer to the town were rockier as the dirt transitioned to cobblestones. The machine let out a shriek. Marion winced, hunched forward, pressed the palms of her hand into the side of her ears, and shut her eyes.
"Whoa with it, steady, steady." The driver calmed the horse. She wasn't sure if it was due to the sudden bumpiness or the high pitch of the noise but he had to stop for a moment to keep the horse from freaking out.
"Was that significant or just a hiccup?" Peri asked.
"I'm not sure," the Doctor replied slowly. He started fidgeting with the device for a moment until it was fixed. The machine was still beeping annoyingly, but it wasn't as loud or as piercing anymore. "We did hit a bump just there. Are you alright Mari?"
"Yeah?" Marion replied. "It was just a bump."
"I meant with the sound,"
"I'll be-" The machine started to beep louder and louder and louder as the cart took them past a brick building with an older woman out front dressed in a tan apron and a black shawl. (Was that the Rani, she was pretty sure that that was the Rani.) Marion's shoulders tensed up to her ears. As they went past the building, the beeping started to slow down again and Marion relaxed. "I'll be fine."
After a little bit more traveling, the man brought the horses to a stop.
"Why are we stopping here?" the Doctor asked.
"I'm still a bit shook up. I need a toby before I can tell pit about attack."
Marion was pretty sure that the man was saying he needed either a drink or a smoke but she had no clue one way or the other.
Marion and the Doctor jumped over the side of the wagon. The Doctor doing so a little bit more gracefully than Marion what with him being a little bit less than a foot taller than her and wearing pants instead of a skirt.
"Where would I find George Stephenson." Marion heard the Doctor ask as she shook off the straw on her skirt and went around the front to help Peri down.
"In pit, sir. Do you think you could put a word in for us. They'll be none too pleased about machinery." the driver answered as Peri leaned down to Marion.
Marion reached for the woman's waist and then realized that her arms weren't long enough for that. Plan B.
Marion leaned to the side, put an arm behind Peri's legs, and reached up with her other arm towards her. Peri leaned down and put an arm around the side of her neck. With this new angle. Marion could get her other arm around Peri and after a couple of seconds, lift her out of the cart.
The Doctor had already walked off.
Marion looked at him walk away for a moment and then remembered that she was still holding Peri in her arms and set her down.
"In a hurry, isn't he, miss? Does that mean something's wrong?" the driver asked the two of them.
"It does," Peri replied, "I'm afraid, but don't ask me what. Thanks."
"It was nice to meet you. But we have to go before we lose him."
Peri scoffed. "I don't know how we could lose him in that coat of his!"
They found the Doctor at the end of the path a decent distance away. Two people were putting coal into a wheelbarrow and the rest of the area was guarded by two men with long rifles and a large black lab that barked loudly as they approached.
"What have they got in there," Peri asked, "coal or diamonds?"
"Machinery. Or more specifically, George Stephenson and he is just about-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Invented the locomotive. Super duper important-"
"Yes." the Doctor said pointedly. Like he hated the way that Marion had worded it, but figured that if he corrected her, she'd come up with a worse way of describing it. "Super. Duper. Important. And I didn't exaggerate. Without his genius, your precious 20th century would be a much sorrier place. Let alone YOUR 21st. We've got to get in there."
"That's easier said than done." Peri scoffed, "That dog doesn't look as though it's been fed today."
The Doctor scoffed, gave his lapels a tug, and marched confidently towards the guard.
Peri leaned towards Marion.
"Is that actually going to-"
"No shot," Marion replied. She casually tucked her hands into her skirt pocket. She didn't feel anxious or dizzy, so she figured that she could let things continue their course. "But the guard doesn't seem trigger-happy. I don't think he's in any danger of getting shot by the guard"
"What about the dog?"
Marion hummed thoughtfully and pretended to be thinking deeply. "I think there's even less of a risk of him getting shot by the dog."
"Marion!"
"No thumbs."
"MARION!"
The Doctor was just too far away for Marion to make out their conversation. The Doctor had tried to casually walk past and had been stopped.
Marion wondered if he might've gotten away with it if he had been dressed like he was trying to blend with his surroundings and not like any moment his brothers were going to throw him down a well.
"A pass? My dear fellow, I am a VIP."
"Those that are attending the meeting have a special pass."
"Meeting?"
"We've been traveling," Peri tried. The pass obviously never reached us."
Marion reached half into her bag for her psychic paper. It was unlikely it would work on the people inside, but the guard. There was a possibility. And then the guard continued to talk and she froze.
"Then thy name will be on the list-"
There was no shot that their name would be on the list. If he tried to cross-reference it then that would be it. It would just be a waste of time.
The guard took a large folded piece of paper out of his pocket and started to unfold it. Presumably, a list of the guests who had actually been invited to the party.
The Doctor snatched the list out of the man's hand and opened it to read it.
"Here, let me see that," the dog barked at the Doctor loudly, "Get that dog under control, will you? Now, what have we got? Thomas Telford, Michael Faraday, Humphry Davy, James Watt. Good heavens, Peri, do you recognise these names?"
"I'm not totally ignorant." Peri shot back.
Marion knew who Thomas Telford was. He was the guy behind a very famous suspension bridge in Wales and had been very important to the introduction of suspension bridges to England. However, she really only remembered that because it had been on a test once.
Civil Engineering was not her thing. And what chemistry knowledge she had was more focused on the stuff people did. Not the people who did it or even what year they had done it. Except for James Watt. She knew who James Watt was or at the very least, she had enough of an idea who James Watt was. It was in his last name.
She didn't say this of course. She just hummed thoughtfully.
"What is the noun for a collection of geniuses?" Peri asked rhetorically, "A bevy?"
"A debate." Marion tried, "Maybe a convention?"
"An inspiration of geniuses? I don't know. But I do know that the people appearing at this meeting will transform history."
"Well, that's as may be, but" the guard snatched the list back and stuffed it into his shirt pocket "is thy name on the list?"
The Doctor tried to brush him off. "An oversight."
"Oh aye." the man said, doubtful, "A genius too, are you?"
"I am indeed." the Doctor said, he smiled and reached into his jacket pocket. "I'm also an inventor. Look." He held up the time distortion tracking device.
Peri noticed the disappointed expression on the guard's face and lightly pat him on the shoulder. "I must apologize. The Doctor is a little eccentric."
The guard's eyes flickered towards Marion who offered the man eye contact and the carefully apologetic smile of a child standing next to their parent as they talked the ear off of a retail employee who was almost as uncomfortable with the situation as they were.
The look that said: "Look. I know. I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do. I know that you aren't going to find anything. They shouldn't be shouting at you over a themed foam pumpkin. Please just go in the back and scroll on your phone for a bit and then come back and say you found nothing so they'll leave. I'm sorry."
The guard looked between the two of them, and then at the Doctor, and then down at the list, and shrugged. "A doctor, is he? Well, maybe I could have a word with the office."
"Would you?" Peri smiled, "Thank you."
"Harry!" the guard called out to another nearby guard. "The gate. Bolt it."
"This way, miss." the guard beckoned them towards them.
Marion realized the Doctor was lagging a bit behind.
"Eccentric, me? Preposterous." the Doctor started muttering under his breath. "I mean really Marion! Eccentric? Me?"
"A bit," "Mari!" Marion continued talking as if the Doctor hadn't spoken, "Doctor, we're lagging behind, we wouldn't want to get lost. We should go."
The guard led the two of them to the inside of a house that had been converted into an office. The walls were gray, there was a rug on the ground, a bookshelf against one wall, and a fireplace against another.
The three of them walked inside and the guard remained by the door, his hand tightly on the dog's leash.
"Set thee down and I'll see if I can find Mister Stephenson."
"I'll come with you." the Doctor started to walk towards the guard and he held up a hand to stop him.
"Nay," the guard shook his head. "You bide here. Now sit! Stay." he ordered the guard dog. The door remained half open with the dog lying in the doorway staring at them.
On one hand, if Marion went to pet the dog, it would probably bite her.
On the other hand, Dog.
Marion crouched down, staring at it. Not directly in it's eyes, but at it,"
The Doctor started walking slowly towards it. "There's a good boy," he said, "Good. Good Fido now."
"What are you up to?"
"That's a good boy. Let the nice Doctor through."
The closer the Doctor got to it, the more deep loud barks the dog let out. Until the Doctor jolted and backed away.
"I guess he's not susceptible to your irresistible charm." Peri snarked.
"Occasionally," the Doctor said, with a bright smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes as he turned towards Peri, leaning down towards her and lowering his voice until it was just a sharp whisper, "just occasionally, your smugness infuriates me!"
"Doctor," Marion called over, "chill."
"Chill! Me! Chill-"
"And keep your voice down." Peri reprimanded, "Time Lords may not get rabies but- Marion can Time Lords get rabies?"
"I don't-I don't think so, no." Marion looked away from the dog and towards Peri, slowly rising from where she was crouched. She thought for a moment. "Yeah. No, they can't. Their body temperatures are too low for the virus to survive."
"So he's like a possum?" Peri remarked. "Could he catch rabies if already had a caught a fever?"
"Have you forgotten that I'm in the room with you?"
"The Doctor's natural body temperature is about 60 degrees. I don't think his body temperature could ever get high enough for the rabies virus to survive inside of him without him dying first. And at that point, it doesn't really matter if he can catch rabies or not, does it."
"Could you two stop prattling on about rabies and whether or not I'm susceptible to it?" the Doctor tried again.
Marion kept looking at the dog. She wondered if she should get a hold of a jar of dog treats. Maybe some cat treats too.
That dog would probably most certainly attack her if she got too close to it which was a shame because she really wanted to pet it.
"Could you get rabies Marion? I mean, you're human aren't you?"
"Yeah, I'm human. But I'm also built different."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I'm pretty sure that if I WAS bitten by a rabid animal, I would simply-"
"Stop talking about rabies!" the Doctor said sharply. He walked towards the window and pulled aside the long curtain to look outside.
"There's something wrong here," he fidgeted with the window's latch for a moment, before turning his head and looking around the room and at the ceiling as if he expected the answer to what he was looking for to fall from the ceiling and land on him. "I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'm increasingly convinced it's got to be stopped."
"You could be jumping the gun."
"Oh, really?" the Doctor said sharply, sticking his hands into his pockets and leaning forward. "Oh, that's your assessment, is it?" He took a step closer to the woman, "Did you see the date at the top of that list? In less than two days from now, a meeting will take place here of many of the greatest practical talents the human race has ever produced. A coincidence?"
"Marion, it's just a coincidence, isn't it?"
"God I would love a coincidence," Marion said wistfully. "Doctor, doesn't that sound amazing? I just end up somewhere, a couple of weird things happen that turn out to be nothing. And we can just enjoy an uneventful but pleasant day in time in space. Unfortunately Peri, this is not one of those times."
"Is it ever?"
"I think you know the answer to that by now."
"Hanging around an office is not going to provide the answer I'm looking for," the Doctor said sharply. The dog lifted one of his ears and it rose on its haunches. It barked and then ran out of the doorway.
"I warned you to cool it!"
"'snot him," Marion replied.
"That dog's really spooked," Peri remarked.
The Doctor got a look in his eye and then retrieved the time distortion detector from his pocket and held it up. He started to leave the room and Marion, noting the dread feeling quickly followed after him.
"I wonder why?" Marion could hear Peri calling out behind them. "Doctor! Marion!"
The Doctor darted from cobblestone wall to cobblestone wall trying to find a point where the beeping got louder. There wasn't really any difference in the different areas.
The dog continued to bar off into the distance until it stopped.
Marion felt like she might be forgetting something. She hoped that it wasn't anything important.
"It stopped," Peri remarked offhandedly.
The Doctor brought the device to his ear for a moment and then brought it to Peri's. He did not bring it to Marion. She appreciated that.
"No." the Doctor shook his head, "It's still functioning."
"The dog," Peri clarified, "It stopped barking."
The Doctor looked around for a moment.
"There was a silence as deep as death."
"Hey Doctor? Don't." "That's morbid."
The Doctor shrugged. "Possibly." And he walked off.
After watching the Doctor stumble over his own feet once or twice, Marion put her hand on his elbow and started to subtly push him in different directions when he seemed too close to tripping over fallen rope and roots of trees, and overly large rocks. After realizing what she was doing, the Doctor started to move where she guided him with no real complaint.
"What are we doing here, anyway?" Peri asked.
"Looking for George Stephenson"
"Oh, he could be anywhere."
Peri stared down into a large deep black pit. When Marion had seen it in the distance earlier, she had thought that it was some kind of well, but it was instead a deep dark pit with an old metal chain. A coal mine.
"Absolutely anywhere. Even underground."
Marion thought that Peri was standing too close to the opening of the pit and gently pulled her backwards.
"Peri!" the Doctor admonished, "You really do have an extraordinary capacity for seeking out danger-"
Marion's vision went spinny out of nowhere and she froze mid-step and nearly stumbled over a rock.
"Marion?" Peri tugged at Marion's arm.
"You ought to learn to avoid situations where-" Peri cut the Doctor off.
"Marion?"
Marion lifted her head and followed where Peri was looking and suddenly, the source of the nausea was clear.
Four men covered in soot and dirt charged towards a pile of mining materials, Marion recognized one of them, and she recognized that they were running towards them.
"PERI RUN," Marion shouted. "Get help!"
"Marion!"
"Peri!" Marion said in the same tone. "Run."
There were three guys with weapons. The Doctor was standing next to a pit, and there was a sharp pain in her arm that constantly alternated between being a dull pain in her upper arm and heavy pressure in her chest she supposed that the good news was that she could focus due to steadiness of her vision but the bad news was of course, that chest pain meant that she was a step or two away from blacking out and waking up back in the office or back on the trail and considering how close she was to the Doctor-
A lump of coal whizzed by Marion's head.
Marion held out her arm as the Doctor backed up. He specifically backed up toward the direction of the pit with the chain hanging down.
Why would he be backing up against a pit?
It was too late for him to change course now. Because the Doctor was being backed up towards a pit. He couldn't walk forward, because there were men in front of him with shovels and hammers.
Outside of a knife in her bag, Marion didn't really have a weapon. And somehow, in a way that she really couldn't describe, a shovel seemed like a better, more usable weapon than a knife. Something about the length.
In a moment, Marion broke it down. She was still worried, upper arm still burning, but despite that, her mind suddenly felt focused and calm. It was like back on the Sandminer when she suddenly felt anxious but instead of making her panicked it made her still and aware and her hands shaky. It was an obviously fake calm. But it would work for what she needed.
Marion needed a weapon. The Doctor (and also her) were being backed up towards a pit by men with weapons. If they didn't have weapons, then that wouldn't be an issue and it also would allow her to get ahold of a weapon.
In her current state of mind, everything felt so simple.
The men expected Marion to continue to back up. They did not expect her to launch herself at the man with the shovel, grabbing the handle in her hands and he absolutely did not expect his attempt at yanking it out of her hand to fail completely.
The man was trying to take the shovel out of her hands and he was STILL on his feet and his two friends were still trying to attack the Doctor and she dropped down, lowing her center of gravity so she couldn't be lifted up and at the same time, swung her no longer burning arms as hard as she could hoping to knock the man off balance.
He fell down to the ground and when the dust cleared, Marion was the one still holding the shovel.
Before she could fully stand up, she felt a hard blow to the side of her head. She fell back to the ground and hissed.
It hadn't been a hard enough hit to kill, but she felt like she was going to throw up as everything was suddenly too bright and too loud and the side of her head felt wet and when her senses came back to normal, the Doctor was holding on tight to a chain suspended above a the pit, Peri was screaming for help and lobbing coal at the men, and then men were trying to get the Doctor to fall down
Marion realized that the shovel was still in her hand. She tightened her grip and swung low at one of the men's legs. She didn't go as hard as she could. She knew that she could have gone harder.
But part of her, the part that knew that maybe the way that she suddenly felt clear and focused and fake calm wasn't necessarily a good thing was vaguely aware that these men weren't exactly running on full cylinders and she didn't want to-
She shouldn't swing the side of a shovel at his kneecaps as hard as she could physically manage.
She instead turned the shovel around so that she was holding it by the metal end and slammed the wooden side of the shovel into the man closest to her side like it was a baseball bat. The man fell down stunned.
With that man down the pain in Marion's arm faded and rose up her face into dizziness. She tried to focused on the third man. The one who kept slamming the side of his own shovel against the chain the Doctor was grasping onto, trying to make one of the links fail and send the Doctor to his death. Peri was pelting coal at the back of the man's head.
Peri was great.
The first man had fell, the second man was still slowly making his way to his feet and the third man seemed to realize that Marion was the reason. He stopped trying to hit the Doctor's chain and instead looked up at her. And Marion knew for the moment that his focus had changed because all she felt was anxiety with a slight side of vertigo. But she otherwise felt calm.
The man looked up at her furiously and Marion tightened her grip on the shovel. She spun it with her fingers until the metal bit was pointed outwards. She didn't think that she had enough space to swing at him. But she could probably stab at him. Surely if she hit him in the arm or something, he would stop and she would stop and she wouldn't do any long-term damage to him.
But still, that might not work and he would keep trying to get the Doctor killed, and if he did that she would have to hit him again and again until he stopped.
Marion lifted up the shovel ready to lunge forward and that was when she heard a loud BOOM.
Marion turned towards the source of the noise and the man that she had knocked to the ground looked up as well.
Standing across the way was perhaps the most 19th-century British man she'd ever seen in her life. Brown suit, top hat, grey mutton chops, a musket aimed towards them.
The man aimed the gun once more. His voice carried clearly throughout the field in part because nothing encourages complete silence like a round of gunfire.
"Stop that!" He shouted. "or I'll blast you to kingdom come!"
The two men fled. Marion didn't watch them leave. Suddenly, nothing was more important to Marion than the Doctor having both feet firmly placed on the ground.
"Forget them!" the man with the gun ordered some of the nearby guards. "Haul that man up to safety, quickly!"
"I've got him," Marion said quickly as she crouched down and grabbed ahold of the chain. She gripped it tightly and then pulled it up as far as she could.
Slowly, her muscles evened out until it felt like the Doctor weighed hardly anything to her at all as she lifted the chain further and further out of the pit. The Doctor let go of the chain with one hand and reached out for her. She tightly grabbed his wrist. The Doctor braced a foot on the side of the wall and Marion stepped backward pulling him up the rest of the way.
"Thank you Mari!" the Doctor said, "I was almost at the end of my tether."
"That's no joke." "Not funny Doc." Peri and Marion said at the same time. Marion unwrapped the chain from her arm and let it fall back down.
The moment he was out of the pit with his feet firmly on the ground. Marion had to hold her hands carefully by her side to keep herself from checking over his arms and head for bruises the way a part of her brain was screaming at her to do. Needing to move, she lightly grabbed the man's hands and looked them over. They were a little bit red, but otherwise fine.
Peri stood by and watched them while the guardsman and the man with the rifle stood still and looked from the Doctor to Marion confused.
"I'm stronger than I look," Marion said in lieu of explanation with a shrug. She pulled the Doctor a few steps away from the open pit and subtly turned her body around so that she was standing in between him and the pit and pushed him forward a little bit more.
"And I can't thank you enough." The Doctor wrung his hand and looked at the man with the rifle and smiled, "But for your very opportune arrival-"
"You can thank their stupidity," The man held up his gun. "I'd used up the shot. It would have taken at least two minutes to reload. They had plenty of time to finish you off,"
Not really because if jabbing the third man with the shovel didn't work, she would have kept hitting him with said shovel until it did. And if the second man had gotten back up she would have sent him back down again and if the first man had come back she would have-
Marion blinked and resisted the urge to hit herself in the side of the head.
"Yeah, it was a good thing they weren't in their right minds and didn't keep going."
She had slept and she had eaten (although she supposed that despite the fact that she felt fine, she should have eaten one of those food bars for breakfast) so she SHOULD have been thinking purely normal non-violent thoughts. She admittedly, didn't feel as enranged about Tryst but-
That was something to process later.
The man with the rifle continued to speak. "Now perhaps you'll tell me who you are, and I don't want any of that flummery about VIPs. I am Lord Ravensworth, the owner. I issued personally the invitations to the meeting, and your face is not one that I recall," the Doctor opened his mouth to speak and was cut off. "My office, now" The man turned on his heel and walked away scoffing under his breath "VIPs indeed."
Next Chapter: Consequences of the Future on the Past
Marion: I don't want to choose violence but y'all sure are insistent on graying out all the other options.
Also, this chapter has me playing more with writing dream sequences. If parts of it don't make a lot of sense, that's fine. In writing the dreams, I wanted to capture the vibe of when something make perfect sense in a dream, but when you wake up you feel confused?
So, behind the scenes. Up until pretty much the moment I wrote this chapter, I planned for Six to call Marion "Mari", but for it to annoy Marion. Then I actually got to writing it, and Marion hating being called "Mari" just didn't feel right. I could write her getting annoyed at him for calling her that without it feeling forced.
It was like I was going "Marion, the Sixth Doctor refuses to call you Marion. Only Mari. Doesn't that make you mad :("
And Marion kept going "No? I'm fine with it actually!"
"Are you sure? Doesn't it piss you off a little?"
"Nope."
"Positive?"
"Yup. He can call me that all he likes. I really don't care."
"Oh. Okay then."
So calling Marion "Mari" is like calling the Doctor "Doc". They don't mind each other using that name, but for anyone else, it varies on a case-by-case basis.
Six specifically got in the habit of calling Marion "Mari" after he first regenerated and realized that "Mari" and "Peri" rhymed. But Seven's not going to be doing it. Calling Marion "Mari" is a Six specific thing.