Normalcy

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The Doctor strode back and forth in front of the giant archway. His hands tucked deeply into the green velveteen pockets of his jacket. He paced back and forth counting the steps and then looked through the arch. Izzy sat on a rock next to the TARDIS. She looked up to see the image in the archway shift and contort into a different one.

"So, then this is the way home then?" Izzy asked tentatively as she watched the Doctor take out his sonic screwdriver and point it at the archway. "We've been shooting for it since we left Fey and Destrii, that's where you were taking me when the Time Lords caught up to us and sent us on that crazy adventure. You realize they had one of these back in that Star Trek universe we were in…Kirk and them found it. Episode…"

"They all have one, The Source, the Eternal Gates of Forever, the giant warp gate thing that blew up the moon in that space cowboy universe, is basically a small human constructed attempt at one…" The Doctor said as he looked at the screwdriver, pocketed it and then put his hands on his hips, flipping his jacket out in a velveteen flare. "It's an indelible component of the greater transcendence. Everywhere that's a somewhere even some of them that are nowhere, have one."

"So then, why aren't we just going through it?" Izzy asked as she stood up. "It'll take us home right?"

"Easier said than done." The Doctor said as he turned around. "The archway isn't simply an archway. It's a physical manifestation of the connection of all things. Time, space, reality, fantasy, fiction, actuality….it's all connected by this gate. Everything's connected, the problem is can you never know how, so just walking through the gate is unpredictable."

"Don't go all Dirk Gently on me now, Doctor." Izzy said as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Nice chap, met him once…" The Doctor said as he walked back towards Izzy. He turned and looked back at the gate. "He's not wrong by the way. Professor Chronotis was a time traveller."

Izzy looked at the Doctor and shook her head. "When I first met you I thought you were mad…" She looked to the gate. "I thought this would be fun, but…it's not always fun, and now I'm starting to think that I'm the mad one…"

"That's the universe for you, no one's ever survived the experience." The Doctor said slapping his hand on Izzy's shoulder and smiled. "She'll show you the most impossible things you'll ever believe and then remind you at about tea time that you're the anomaly in it all. It'll make you mad, insane, crazed beyond belief, but it's completely worth every second you can get. But you finally remember the universe is built of anomalies, the only normal thing in the universe is the anomalies."

"So the Daleks were looking for this thing?" Izzy asked as she watched the gate change again, revealing a world beyond filled with magical ponies.

"This, no, no one wants this." The Doctor said as he walked up to the edge of the archway.

"But it's the ultimate jump between realities portal thing, you said the Daleks were looking for a way of searching for the ultimate reality, the ultimate victory, wouldn't this do it?" Izzy asked as she walked up to him.

"Nothing through this gate is anything more than a reflection of the reality it's in." The Doctor said as he peered deeply into the gate's orifice, apparently seeing something Izzy wasn't. "It's like one of Alice's mirrors, an infinite number of Wonderlands, completely chaotic, completely uncontrollable, all of them just dreaming realities of whatever point of actuality you're observing it from." The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "It just happens to be that one of those Wonderlands is our home. The problem is if we pass through the gate to there from here we'll simply be shadows, we'll be a reflection of a reflection, infinite regression loop."

"And that's…bad?" Izzy asked shaking her head trying to wrap her mind around what the Doctor was saying.

"It's suboptimal." The Doctor said as he sat down in front of the gate. He gazed into it. "I was here once before…."

"This gate?" Izzy said as she sat next to him.

"They're all basically the same gate, it's the point of view that's different." The Doctor said quietly. "I was so young, it was before Susan's grandmother and I….." The Doctor stopped and smiled quietly to himself. "It's hard to believe I was ever that young in my life." He looked to Izzy. "I came here to see everything just once before I submitted myself for some clerk position that would tether me to home." He chuckled to himself. "I had to see it all just once before things changed." His face changed slightly, he became sullen. "So much changed. The one constant in the universe is nothing stays the same, the second constant in the universe is things don't always work out as planned. You never expect to become an old man, and run away with your granddaughter but, here I am, still running away, granddaughter long since settled with a family, a home. I really should go back to her one day."

"So what are we going to do?" Izzy asked as she looked again to the portal.

"Do?" The Doctor asked quietly as he looked to Izzy.

"To get home, to our universe, to our 'Wonderland' without being that thing you said we'd be if we went through the gate." Izzy said her voice quickening as she started to get frustrated.

"I told you, didn't I?" The Doctor said as he got up and brushed off his pants.

"No, you most certainly didn't!" Izzy said as she jumped to her feet and followed him as he walked towards the TARDIS. "You just sort of went all despondent and wistful for a second."

"Oh…" The Doctor stopped and turned to Izzy. "Sorry about that, I've been doing that recently. I have a bad feeling something big is coming and I'm not sure what, but I won't like it."

"Then we need to get home to fix it, right!" Izzy said impatiently.

"Hmm? Yes, yes, well, let's go then." The Doctor said as he continued towards the TARDIS.

"Then you figured it out? What do we have to do?" Izzy asked as she walked alongside of him.

"It's a question of point of view." The Doctor said as he unlocked the TARDIS and opened the door. "You just have to look at the gate as if you are in your home reality and well…"

"So it's a, home is where the heart is sort of thing?" Izzy said, stopping. "Just click the heels of your ruby slippers together and say 'there's no place like home'?"

"Well, the slippers were silver in the book, but basically, yes." The Doctor said smiling.

Izzy turned and looked. She closed her eyes and then opened them turning and looking.

"Welcome home…" The Doctor said smiling, he pointed up into the sky. "That little, bluish green blinking, that's your Milky Way." He crooked his arm invitingly. "So, shall we?"

"We shall…" Izzy said as she threaded her arm through his and followed him into the TARDIS.

"Right, so I'll drop you off on Earth then…" The Doctor said as he rushed around the console. "Which century was it again? 20th century Stockbridge, right? I just want to make sure, I feel I may have misplaced someone in the past…Aberdeen maybe, should probably check on that."

"Drop me off? Why?" Izzy said as she ran to the console.

"That's where we were going, in the first place…" Doctor said as he looked through the center column to Izzy. "Plus things are changing, it won't be safe anymore…"

"It wasn't safe to begin with. I had an Destrii in my head!" Izzy said almost shouting, tears were forming in her eyes. "I was nearly killed by so many things that I'd only seen in comic books and TV shows in the last few months! I met goddamned Batman and Lex Luthor! I fired a phaser at the Borg on Deep Space Nine. I ran through the deserted streets of Miranda as Daleks rained hellfire from on high! I watched you tame Dialga and Palkia as Team Galactic tried to create a new universe on top of Mount Coronet! I put a wooden stake through a vampire's heart while Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped you close some interdimensional portal thingy! But now it's not going to be safe!?"

"It's not just that?" the Doctor said trying to head off the crying.

"What? Am I not good enough anymore? Did I make you angry? Did you decide I'm too stupid, too slow? What? Why!?" Izzy shouted loudly, she didn't know why she was so angry, but she felt it none-the-less.

"There's nothing more for you to see…" The Doctor said quietly. "You've stared into the halls of eternity and you didn't flinch. You looked into the eye of Cthulhu and shrugged your shoulders. The whole time since we left Destrii you only wanted to go home to talk to your mom and dad."

"Yeah, but then we got side-tracked. I - I didn't mean it, not home, home." Izzy said quickly, but the uncertainty was already there. She swallowed trying to hold her conviction but the words came haltingly. "Not really...not forever…I just wanted to be back to see my family, it just had been so long since I'd been home."

"This life is draining. You've taken it better than most." The Doctor said as he walked around the console and held Izzy. "But you deserve a home. I can show you the whole of the universe, entire realities only dreamed up in fairytales and sci-fi comic books, but I can never show you what a real life is. I can never give you a home, a story of your own. I live in other people's stories, I am a guest character in other people's narrative, I pass through, I don't stick around to the end, I drop in, resolve a crisis and get written off before the end. You deserve the chance, the opportunity to have your own story, to stay, to find your own happily ever after."

He gently kissed the top of her head as he reached back and pulled a lever. The TARDIS shook to life, the low grating vibrations rumbled up as the old ship slipped into the fabric of reality and headed out. Izzy hugged him tightly and then took a step back as he looked down at her with a faint smile.

"What about you?" Izzy asked as she looked at him. She still felt sad but deep down inside she knew he was talking the truth. The yearning for a home cooked meal, to talk to someone about something other than the aliens shooting at them had been growing. "I mean what will you do after I leave?"

"More of the same, I suppose." The Doctor said turning and fiddling with switches on the console. "Hi-jinks and mischief and roaring adventures in time and space." He looked over to a blinking red light, his eyebrows bunched together and slid his hand over the red light. "Maybe one day I'll be brave enough to embark on the adventure you'll be going on. On being normal..."

"You make it sound so, frightening." Izzy said smiling uncomfortably.

"It's the one thing I could never face. I ran from it, and never stopped." The Doctor said as he looked at the up and down motion of the center column the crystalline rotor embracing and then disentangling as the column pumped. The rumbling from below started again and slowly the wheezing came to a stop as a elevator gong sounded as the rotor came to a stop. The Doctor pulled a lever and the massive masonry doors opened. "You're home."

"I-I…" Izzy looked out to the open doors. She then looked to the Doctor. Then she heard the sound of her mother, shouting in disbelief at the blue box. Izzy smiled slightly. The Doctor nodded quietly and beckoned her to go see her mother. Izzy turned and ran to the door. She stopped once more looking to the Doctor. "Thank you, Doctor…for everything."

Izzy then turned and ran out of the doors onto the lawn of her parents' backyard. Her mother was gobsmacked as Izzy ran to her and hugged her tightly. The whining of the TARDIS revved up and the wind swooshed around them as the blue box disappeared into the infinite. She turned and silently hoped the Doctor found his own life somewhere.

888

The Doctor looked down at the blinking, red light. He narrowed his eyes and pushed the button. Within seconds he realized he wasn't alone anymore. He spun around and saw her, a woman with dark hair standing in the TARDIS.

"So, it begins…" The Doctor said as he looked at the woman.

888

AN: A little fun before….well we know.