Chapter One
The Arctic, London, and Junkyard 46
We are falling. We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. I can be there. We must do this alone. We must... We are falling. We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. I can help you, I can be there to catch your fall. We must do this alone. We must...
The Arctic, Earth, 920 CE
He sat on the ice shelf and smiled. The cold was close to invading his nervous system, but he knew he had a few moments before it happened. A few moments to watch the sunrise. His twin hearts beat independently of each other, that's how he knew this was perfect. There was no one around, no one beside him. Only the ice and snow and the sun. He liked twin suns but Earth's was special. The golden orange glow over the horizon matched no other planet in the universe. And he'd seen a sunrise on almost every planet, from the beginning of time, to the end. Earth had hope and promise. Earth had a billion years of future, and still the little people tracked each day like it might be their last.
Snow always seemed to be his downfall, the snow at the first, the snow at the twelfth, and twentieth, and twenty-first coincidently. Now he was an old, old man. The hundredth. He dragged his bones onto his feet. His elbow rested on his cane, the wooden head shaped like an angry duck from the markets of the planet Ti'yah'tak'to, though he didn't actually remember buying it. His hand slowly rose to cover his eyes from the sun, his old, old eyes. There was something standing in front of him. Something dark, a shadow, stretching out in front of the something. It called like a crow. A death screech, a cacaw into the sunshine. The burning orb behind him rising too quickly, the shadow growing too fast. He jumped.
The Doctor didn't move. The something was close now, if he listened closely enough, he could hear its breath. The something couldn't stop its breathing, it was real. He brought his hand down and clutched the head of the cane, taking a step forward. "Stop," he said. "You don't need to be afraid. You can if you want, fear is nothing to fear." He stopped himself from laughing. He felt hysterical, calling out to nothing. The something's face was shielded by a dark hood, the robe it was wearing concealed his race and identity. "Hello?" The Doctor called, his cane making a hole in the snow. A pit in the ice. He ground it down, putting his full weight on the stick. The something inched forward.
He decided to turn around, he wasn't as patient as he used to be. If the something wanted to talk to him, it would. The TARDIS sat waiting, a ship without her captain. The something moved again. The Doctor looked up and there it was. The shadowed hood, with bold blue eyes staring back at him. Under the hood was a wave of green scales, fluttering with each breath the something took. He peered at it, standing up properly, letting the cane fall into the powdered snow. It made no sound as it fell, just floated down until it reached the ground and stayed there. Like it was asleep.
"What took you so long?" The Doctor asked, his white hair flying around his face as the wind picked up. He was staring at his ship, past the something, past the hood. He didn't want to look directly into its eyes.
"This is urgent Doctor, you must help me." The hood replied, a hand extending from under the black robe, covered in yet more green scales. The voice was distinctly female, sharp-tongued, the sounds whipped around her mouth before streaming out like music. "Can I take you to them?"
The Doctor shrugged and walked forward, the hood turned and watched him stroll up to the TARDIS doors. He pushed them open and turned his head back, his white hair stark against the blue. "You coming?"
The TARDIS, the Time Vortex
The only thing happening in the console room, was silence. The hooded figure sat on one of the seats not close enough to reach the console. Her arms crossed over and her hands knitted together, the scales paler on the underside. Her hood was lowered and pooled around her neck, her lips pulling into a thin smile every time the Doctor looked her way. He was flicking every lever on the console trying to remember which one activated the anti-gravs. He'd put his cane in the umbrella stand by the door, and was whisking around the room with much more energy than he should have for an old man. Each minute he was inside the TARDIS, his white hair receded more and more into a dark brown. The exposure to time vortex reduced his appearance back to a shiny young man. He had green eyes, this time, and purple socks, and his bottom teeth were crooked. His disguise as an old man was believable, in a way that his young man face was a coverup. He was somewhere in between and far beyond, that of a simple man.
He stopped in front of a yellow plastic switch, unlabelled. Most of the console was now because even a time lord brain forgot things from time to time. This one was blank. He scowled at it. The hood was staring at him, it was unnerving. And it was upsetting his concentration. He flicked the switch, nothing happened. Not even a sound to break the silence. Just nothing. He looked up at the hood, "do you mind just- just- not looking at me quite so much." He'd tried not to snap.
The hood stood up, her robe blanketing the floor. As she left it behind, her armour revealed itself. "Doctor, listen to me," her smooth tone began again, "I'm grateful for your help, I really am, but we need to get there. Why haven't we taken off yet?"
The Doctor looked at his shoes, they were odd, one brown, the other black with rusting laces. "I can't-" he said underneath his breath, then louder, "I can't remember how." His fingers rested on his forehead. The lines etching themselves back in as he creased his face.
The scaled woman shrugged. It looked odd in her get-up, the green of her and the leather armour. "But you must know, you're the Doctor, aren't you? You always know."
He met her eyes and found something in them, a memory. A faint inkling of recognition that she was someone he'd met before. She clearly knew him. Or knew of him. "I don't know if we've met before," he put his fingers to his chin. "But I think you know me, so place your hands here." He lead her to a side of the console, a bare patch of metal. He put the palms of her hands flat on the surface. It was so hot it almost burned her, but her scales compensated. She was cold-blooded, so the heat swam around her body blindly, each of her extremities warming considerably. The Doctor's wrinkled palm was on her shoulder, guiding her, or keeping himself steady, she wasn't sure which. "Think about where you want to go, where I need to be to help you. Think about who you want to save. Why you need my help, when."
She closed her eyes and thought of them, of the message, we are falling. We must do this alone. We must... The burn of being unwanted. She'd seen the blue box on the horizon, the snow falling around him. Heaven knows what he was doing on the ice shelf, why he was avoiding the bloodlust of a viking conquest when there was one only a boat ride away. He'd never admit it, but he loved a battle. She'd watched him fight before, not this one, this version of him. This old-man-disguised-as-new with the crooked teeth. With the cane. Now he looked young again, he still couldn't remember. She had awoken from her slumber hearing the message, called across the stars. But where? She see a place, only her version of the words, over and over. The TARDIS translating. Letters into circles into energy.
The centre of the console swirled, bouncing into life. The Doctor stepped away, sitting down in a seat too far away and letting his whole body relax. Like he'd been holding himself up for the last ten minutes. Like he couldn't stand to be on his feet anymore. The TARDIS roared. She stepped back, pulling her hands away from the metal, the ship grinding to a halt. There was a rocky landing, a few extricated and excessive noises, and then the doors flung open.
"Houston, we have a problem." River Song announced, stomping on board. She approached the old-young Doctor and grasped his face, "hello sweetie."
He blinked twice before showing signs that he recognised her. She knew it was him, but she hadn't seen this face before. He looked at the hood but she had a blank stare. A quirked eyebrow at River's demanding presence in the room. She spoke so the Doctor didn't have to, "who are you?"
"Who are you?" River replied, staring at her, her blonde curls dancing in the light from wherever she'd come from. The doors slammed behind her then, sending a rough drought through the room. Her hand went to the gun at her waist. "Have you got a new one?" She demanded of the Doctor, standing her ground.
The hood stepped forward, picking up her robe from the ground and setting it on one of the handrails. "I am Allia, child of the north frozen lands."
The Doctor looked at her, ignoring River's comment. "You're a Silurian." He said it clearly, he knew, he could remember.
River looked at him strangely, "Allia, my name is River Song." She pointed at the Doctor, "he is my husband. And he is being an idiot."
The Doctor stood there. His mouth slightly open, confusion racking his brain as River's rushed into the control room and began wildly flipping levers and buttons. She pulled the monitor round the centre column and shook it violently until the static stopped. The Doctor watched her work with wonder, trying to keep track of each thing she did, whilst simultaneously getting angry that she knew how everything worked when he couldn't remember. He stayed quiet, feeling the ship's movements through the vortex.
London, Earth, 2098 CE
They landed on a quiet street. It was obviously London, the Doctor could tell, he hadn't lost his sense of smell yet. He hoped that wouldn't go too. It was his only way of knowing where he was other than the TARDIS monitor. Even then it wasn't sentimental, he knew instinctively which scent went with each place, but there was no memory attached. He couldn't remember why he knew a place, only that he must have been there before. A lot of London was like that. He figured that when he was younger he must've run around there a lot. But the people had disappeared from his mind. Their faces only sparking a faint eerie feeling, like a book he'd read once, a few hundred years ago.
He took River's arm and she led him out of the blue box. Allia followed loyally, though she probably should've been the one leading this little expedition. Now he was outside, the Doctor would start ageing again. He could barely get out of the box these days. The ice shelf had been a treat. Most days he stayed locked inside the TARDIS like a prison. He could've sworn he was in prison once. This wasn't like that though. His ship looked after him a way robots and Judoon never could.
Before them was a street, laid with cobble, though the buildings had long been replaced with big white boxes. Walls of the future. "It's this way, Doctor." River said, she was being weirdly formal, she'd noticed in the TARDIS, but she was trying not to be. It seemed to be innate. She wasn't sure why she'd bumped into the geriatric version of her husband though she was barely two hundred and walking around looking young and beautiful. Maybe it was some kind of cosmic test, the universe laughing at her. She brushed that thought off and let the Doctor walk on his own. Each click of his cane tapped the road, sending echoes all around the trio.
They walked for a while without reaching anywhere. Allia had begun to hear the message in her head again, over and over, we are falling, we are falling, we are falling. And they were no closer to getting to where they needed to be. She didn't even know where that was or where River was taking them. But she seemed commanding, too commanding to cross. Especially when she was so unsure. When they reached a bend in the empty road, the pain started. A first it was a small niggle at her temple, an ache that she ignored. But after a few minutes it'd become searing, she stopped mid-step and doubled over. She held her head in both her scaled hands and closed her eyes. It took the Doctor fifty yards to realise she wasn't behind them and he stopped, turning back.
"You go on, find somebody else River. I have to help her, I promised." He said, hobbling quickly with his cane.
River looked at him with her hands on her hips. "Okay, fine." She started wandering off down the road, but turned back suddenly. "I hate you sometimes."
"No, you don't," he replied on the tip of his tongue. Like a reflex. After he said it, bent over Allia's body, her head still in her hands, he saw a single life. A golden woman with three faces and a redhead with a baby. Amy. The Ponds. River Song - Melody Pond.
"We are falling." Allia started saying out of nowhere, the pain ceasing immediately and her words activating like she was possessed. She stood up, holding his arms, her eyes glassy and unreal. Blue orbs and green scales. "We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. We must do this alone. We must... We are falling. We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. We must do this alone. We must... We are falling. We are falling. We are falling. We are- are- are- are- are-" she sounded like a tape stuck on repeat.
The Doctor gripped each of her arms, "Allia. What is this? What are saying? What does this mean? Allia?"
"Urania is rising." She said it like it was her last breath and then flopped into the Doctor's arms. Her mind was shutting down. He laid her down on the road and waited for her to breathe. She lay flat, completely still, unconscious. Then her chest inflated rapidly, her head tipping back onto the ground, pressing down hard until her eyes opened once more. The Doctor didn't say anything, there was nothing to say, only a woman laying almost dead. She coughed a few times before sitting up. That's when the old man retreated, he remembered the Silurian custom of distance, other species weren't permitted to have physical contact without consent. He leant back, offering his hand, but she didn't take it. She just sat alone with her knees hunched up to her chest, her breaths coming in rattling waves. "What happened?"
River Song stopped running when she found the dent in the road. The dent became a hole about a foot down. She knelt down beside it and took a sample of the gunk clogging the hole, it was a thick, syrupy substance in neon orange. It glowed. If the sun wasn't beating down so brightly it would've lit up the whole street. The hole had been made with some sort of alien drill, she'd found the remains of it in the future, digging up artefacts from the buried British Museum. In the sides of the hole she could see the worms already emerging. If she didn't contain this now, people were going to die in a few hundred years, and it would be too late. She needed to block it, no pour something down there, kill whatever it was. She shuddered thinking about the little boy who wouldn't make it just because he'd been standing near the explosion. This road would be obliterated by then, everything she was looking at now, would be destroyed. Gone. Pieces of the rubble would embed themselves into the skin of children and they'd bleed out.
The Doctor was there too. A different one, more full of life. She was moving the wounded into a makeshift hospital, taking names and tinkering with the dislodged pieces of the hole. The glowing orange had been there then, before a wave of huge worms climbed out of the hole and descended on the chaos. There was screaming, crying, and death on each corner. The Doctor told her to get out, get help. That's when the TARDIS materialised at the end of the street. She thought it was part of the the Doctor's plan, sending herself back in time, she'd done it before. But then she'd come face to face with the old guy. The old guy and the Silurian. That was a tag-team she hadn't been prepared for. But she still had a job to do, and even if the Doctor hadn't sent the TARDIS purposefully, she had to take the luck of it appearing as a sign.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out another vial. This one full with a purple liquid, the serum the Doctor had been working on before the worms erupted. She searched around for something to block the hole, dragging a man-hole cover over. Then she squatted down and poured in the liquid, it frothed and bubbled and emitted a rancid smell of alien flesh burning. She quickly pulled the man-hole cover over it and stood up, looking around but the street was empty. She knew she'd better go back and find the Doctor.
"I told you to find help." He shouted at her when she reappeared in his eyeline.
She knelt down beside him and Allia in the road, "I had something to take care of, first."
He wouldn't look at her, now he remembered who she was. He remembered that the last time he'd seen her they'd been arguing. River could tell something had changed since she'd left them. She peered into the Doctor's old-new green eyes and questioned him. He knew what that look meant, he understood now. She could communicate an entire speech just through her eyes. She didn't care if he was her Doctor or not, he was still The Doctor.
Allia looked between them. She had seen enough lovers' quarrels to know when one was happening in front of her. However silent it was. "The message." She said, breaking the tension. Both River and the Doctor turned to face her.
"What do you mean?" The archaeologist asked.
"After you left, Allia collapsed. She started talking, saying the same thing over and over - um, we are falling, it started, we are falling."
Allia started shivering, like hearing the message activated every nerve in her body. "I heard it even when I was asleep, it woke me from hibernation. I was under the ice, Doctor." She looked at him, meeting his eyes. He nodded, River hadn't been there. "I was trying to tell you. They won't stop calling to me."
"Urania is rising." He repeated back to her. She nodded, rocking back and forth until she had enough momentum to stand up. The balls of her feet rocked too. She was impatient to get moving.
"We have to find them."
"Allia," River said, reaching forward, reaching for her hands.
"Don't-" the Doctor warned. She ignored him.
"Where Allia? Where are they?" She stared seriously into the Silurian's eyes. Allia didn't flinch, she stared back.
"I don't know. But I can feel them. I know they're out there, somewhere. We have to save them."
River huffed and turned around, her hand going to her forehead. She took a deep breath and turned back towards the TARDIS. "Let's go," she said, walking off down the road. The Doctor and Allia followed.
*Flashback* The Arctic, Earth, 920 CE
On the planet Mars, the Ice Warriors reigned until the empire fell. On Gallifrey, the Time Lords were superior in their citadel. On Earth, the Silurians ruled over the dinosaurs. One day, under the ice, around a thousand other warriors, I rose from the great sleep. The words haunting me as I cried because I was alone. My sisters lay around me, they looked so still they could be mistaken for the dead. I shook and shivered in my pod. I spent hours cradling myself before I thought of opening the door - of walking out onto the ice shelf.
I told myself to hold my tears, that warriors didn't cry. But the voice sounded so desperate, so without hope. As I climbed out of the ground, the sea level had rose since my feet were last walking, the voices swarmed in my mind. We are falling. We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. "I can be there." I argued with them, talking out loud to no one as I pulled myself out into the open air. The cold bit at my throat, I shivered some more and wrapped my black hood tighter around my armoured body. We must do this alone. We must... the message cut itself off, like a signal being cut off. Though I didn't understand the workings of a radio, not then. Not before the Doctor.
We are falling. We are all falling and there's nothing you can do. The voices started up again, getting louder and louder as I began to move, walking through the thick blanket of snow. My boots were not built for this climate. "I can help you, I can be there to catch your fall." I kept talking to take my mind off the landscape. I didn't even know what I was looking for, the message began to repeat itself dreadfully, we must do this alone. We must... Stopping just as I saw him. Saw the blue box on the horizon. The blue box brought the Doctor. I had never met the man, but I had heard the legends from my sisters.
He was standing on the edge of the ice shelf, leaning on his cane. He looked old, withered. I wondered whether he was even the Doctor at all. I had heard he had companions. It was only when I approached him did I realise he was alone. On the ice, and in his head. He could fiddle about with every lever in the room, in the ship that's bigger on the inside, but he couldn't get it to fly. He made that my job. I felt the vortex whirl inside my head for a split second. Then it was gone. Then we were landing. That woman was arriving, the one with the big hair, and she had other plans. She didn't know about the voices. The Doctor didn't know about the voices. I didn't know who I was trying to save.
Junkyard 46, Asteroid 51XAlpha, some distant future (78032 Earth years from the present day)
The junkyard was a wasteland. Allia had tapped into the TARDIS mainframe again and transported them to a place linked with the voices inside her head. There was nothing but desert sands, green putrid fragments of glass and brown vegetation made the place seem deader than dead. River held her nose between her fingers as the Doctor lead them towards the ruins of a building. This planet was a void of life, a rubbish tip. The fragmented building was what was left of society, a small hut made of out a stone Allia had never seen before. It too, was green, like everything else here. She had slept through millions of years in hibernation, and yet the sight of a new not-even-planet shook her.
The Doctor was doing a lot of scowling and pacing. He was hoping that inside the ruins would be a box, and inside the box, a map, and the map would lead them on an adventure through the deserts of Junkyard 46 to find another box buried or a building undiscovered. He wanted this to lead somewhere. It'd been so long since his legs had walked him any great distance, and years since he saved a life. His life was sparse. Not the rush it used to be. He felt broken by it. Inside the ruins, on the back of the rotting stone wall, was a message graffitied by chisel. URANIA IS RISING.
Allia's hands traced each letter cautiously, curious about the words now embedded in her head alongside the message. They felt different to her, in different voices, different people. Whatever Urania was, it was causing harm to the voices. They were falling, falling in space? Time? She didn't understand the concept behind time travel, but she'd seen it was real. She knew if she and her sisters would hibernate then time could be cheated. "Do you know what it means?" She asked the Doctor. He shrugged. He was doing a lot of that lately.
River hung back, looking over her shoulder at the TARDIS every five seconds. She was fine with being on this mission, she really was. But it felt more like babysitting than saving people. They were traipsing alone at the speed of ants. Her current Doctor was back in the twenty-fourth century fighting worm monsters that'd burst out of a pothole in the middle of London. She could be helping. Time had a funny way of bending itself in half just to torment her sometimes. She hadn't exactly held herself as a baby, but she'd come pretty close. And sometimes it felt like she was being tortured on purpose. She put her hand to her forehead, the Doctor would want her to stay. He'd say that whatever this was, she was needed. That "she! River Song - Melody Pond - was the only person for the job." (Knowing him, he'd do a weird accent and a salute, even though he hated being saluted.)
"Urania was a king, a long time ago. Uranus was inhabited by Bogons, a race of human-like creatures who were convinced they were the be-all and end-all of the universe. Doctor, you stopped them. You told Urania that he was throwing the planet away, something about the environment. I don't know, it's all fuzzy, it was a long time ago." The Doctor stared at her and tried to remember. He remembered River, he remembered everything they'd done together, but the things he'd said, the memories he'd shared with her, that was smoke and mirrors now. He walked up to her and dropped his cane. He put both of his hands on her arms and clutched her tightly to him. A flatpack hug. "Doctor?"
He looked up at her and smiled. "I know what it means River, I know what the message is. Professor Song, you are a genius." He held both of her cheeks and kissed her forehead animatedly. Then he swivelled on his ageing legs and turned back to the stone wall. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out the latest incarnation of the sonic screwdriver. As if he'd suddenly remembered its existence. The outer casing of the sonic had changed considerably since River had last seen it, and now the screwdriver had all sorts of labelled multicoloured buttons attached. River scowled at the thing, "what? It was getting too complicated. I couldn't remember what half the settings were for."
River shrugged and looked down at the sand at her feet, "not wood," she said to herself. She was still bitter after last week when the Doctor had left her in charge of dismantling a fake town he'd set up to confuse some Sontarans. The thing was made entirely out of plywood and he'd left her his sonic, sure, but was the thing any use? No. She'd been stuck doing the whole thing by hand because he'd decided to bugger off and play with the wiring in the TARDIS. That was the chinny incarnation. And it was why she'd gone off into the future and left him to pick up the pieces as she battled giant worms with one of his more pleasant versions.
When the Doctor heard her, he pitched his chin up and then squinted at the current sonic in his hands. "Actually River, I think I finally added a setting for wood, I just can't remember which combination it was." His scratched said chin, then laid the sonic on its side and started playing it like a trumpet. The three most prominent buttons (all made out out of keyboard keys he'd taken from an old 90s style computer in the TARDIS library. X, S, and T were sorely missed) stuck out of the top and clicked when he pressed them. His fingers moved like he was playing guitar hero on top speed. As he played the command he wanted into the sonic, the air started to get very thin.
Around the three of them, and the ruins, the wind picked up from nothing and a loud high-pitched noise began emitting all around them. River had five seconds to place it, before she collapsed to the ground. Allia too slumped against the wall. The Doctor was standing alone, he couldn't hear it, his mind had a way of filtering out such pitches. He kept playing the keys of his sonic until it started to hum and vibrate. A flashing green light began emitting from the bulb at the top and the words on the wall faded. New letters reappearing moments later. 'GET OUT OF HERE, DOCTOR."