Hey, listen to me. Something very very important. I am willing to swear under oath that I wrote this chapter in late November. A little bit before the Starbeast dropped. I have discord screenshots of me sharing snippets. It may not seem relevant now, but it's very important that you know this.
Anyway, I hope you like the starting segment of this.
I've got a lot of Marion art to show off because I participated in Art Fight this month and had Marion as my OC.
artfight [PUT A PERIOD HERE] net/~Lunammoon
Marion woke up on a couch with a headache. The first thing she noticed (other than she really needed to make a point of getting ahold of some Ibuprofen at some point) was that it wasn't a particularly comfortable couch.
It was made of dark grey plastic pretending to be leather, and her head was resting on one of those rolled pillows and another one was propped up under her feet.
For a moment, Marion wondered if the Powers that Be had yanked her away after she'd-
Marion wasn't sure what she did. She knows that she had passed out, but she doesn't think it was for very long and she's also not sure how or why.
The couch was in a small, mostly empty room. It reminded Marion of a small one-room house or an apartment. The kind that was owned by people who could afford to live without roommates and didn't want a whole lot of space bought or rented out.
The walls were a blank white and all of the furniture was square and in various shades of beige except for the pastel blue. There was a small kitchenette looking at the tall trees and on either side of the counterspace was a tall rectangular window.
In front of the sink was a glass table with a pair of white chairs that had beige sort of cushions that were held in place by ties. There was a large TV screen over a fireplace with a pair of white abstract statues. Between the couch and the fireplace was an off-white coffee table. There were two doors on opposite sides of the room as well.
Marion, having looked around sat up and put her feet on the linoleum, and got to her feet carefully to investigate further. (Because of course this kind of modern hellscape of an apartment would have tile instead of carpeting.)
Her eyes were drawn to the TV. There was something wrong about it. She couldn't quite put her finger on what though.
Marion reached up and felt around the bottom of the TV trying to find the on button. She felt something, but no matter which button she pressed the screen didn't change. There was a VCR connected to the TV even though the TV looked more on the modern side. The VHS was empty, but if there were tapes anywhere, she couldn't see them.
She stepped back to stare at the TV closer.
Something was wrong with it. She knew that it was.
There was something missing.
Marion shrugged and turned around, half expecting it to suddenly click to life and get weird and staticky.
Marion decided to try the door on the left. For some reason, on the ceiling of the alcove was a photo or a hyperrealistic drawing of the welcome mat below her feet. Marion twisted the door knob. The door wasn't locked. It turned with a gentle pull.
Marion stared at the open door for a moment.
It wasn't that Marion wanted to wait for the Doctor to come and save her. But there had been a THING in this episode where the Doctor's companions had been stuck in various situations that the Doctor had to get them out of.
And Marion had woken up inside of a modern-style living room with a door that wasn't even jammed. And that was suspicious.
If she was remembering correctly, Zoe hadn't been trapped in the bottle and Jamie hadn't been turned into a cardboard cutout until they had started to wander. They had landed somewhere and then they started running around. And that's when they got trapped.
Maybe Marion was paranoid, but she was at least going to have to check the room for a bit before leaving.
She didn't want the door to be locked behind her. She stepped away from the door and lowered her hand.
Four times out of five, when Marion and her friends got together to play TTRPG's Marion ended up being the DM. But in that one-in-five example where she did get to be a player, she never went through any door or entrance that could lock behind her without propping it open with physical and/or magical means.
Once or twice, she had straight up removed the door from its hinges.
That was probably why her friend group had gotten into using magical barriers come to think of it.
Anyway, she didn't think she needed to take the door entirely off its hinges. Instead, she lightly lifted the welcome mat with her foot and wedged it in between the door so it wouldn't be able to slam shut on her. The welcome mat would help, but if it slipped, she would be unlikely to notice until it was too late. Her eyes flickered around the room looking for something stronger to bar the door with. The chairs looked too unwieldy to move and fit into the doorway. But the statues on the mantle looked just right. Marion lifted it up and caught movement out of the corner of her eye and that's when she realized what exactly had stuck her as so odd about TV.
In the dark reflection of the television, there was a floating white statuette seemingly being held up by nothing.
Marion silently lifted her hand and looked down at herself and then waved the hand in front of the TV.
She wasn't invisible, at least to herself, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the TV set.
Marion backed away from the TV and turned back towards the door. She looked up. The "photo" depicted a welcome mat wedged between the wall and a door and a floating abstract statue that floated into the open doorway.
"Oh," Marion said aloud. "Oh. Ok."
She wasn't sure what else could be said.
Marion closed her eyes and then opened them again.
She now knew what was weird and she could begin to connect the dots.
Observation One: She was missing her reflection.
She looked down. Her hands didn't look any paler. Marion reached a hand into her mouth and pressed against a thumb against her canines. They didn't feel any sharper than normal. There was a slight indent in her thumb, but it didn't break the skin for even a moment.
"Jesus. Christ. God. uh…Mother Mary? Anything?"
Her skin was the same color, her teeth weren't any sharper, and she had said what she said and her mouth wasn't burning. The kitchenette cabinets were largely empty, so she could find any garlic but she was pretty sure that she wasn't a vampire.
She didn't think that that was even a possibility, but, it was a nice thing to narrow down.
Marion looked around the room trying to find more hints. She moved around the room and then sat back down in the middle of the couch and that's when it occurred to her. The couch was in the middle of the room. With the TV and coffee table-oriented in front of her and the table and kitchenette behind her. A kitchenette that had a sink in the middle with two sets of electronic burners on either side and then more counter space. There were two large windows on either side.
Marion quickly stood up from the couch, turned on her heels, and backed up against the fireplace.
"Oh!" Marion said aloud. "OH!"
Outside of the statuette that she and moved the room was perfectly symmetrical. Did that mean anything? She wasn't sure. Her reflection was off while she was in a room with two mirrored sides. Was that anything? That had to be something.
Or maybe she was losing it. Maybe that was part of the point.
Marion picked up the other statuette and bounced it lightly in her hand, for little reason other than the fact she needed to fidget with something. Marion glanced towards the other door, the one that wasn't currently propped open. She wedged that one open too, slid the statuette to keep the door open, and stuck her head out of the door and then walked out.
She was in the middle of a forest with huge trees. If they had been normal trees, then just from looking at the trunk, they would have to be a couple hundred years old at least and they were tall. Marion stepped outside of the house, making sure that the statues were in place and very carefully walked around the building.
It was a modern style. What with the rectangular windows and lights and a flat roof. On either side of the house, there was a concrete patio. And it was made of slate grey stone in rectangular panels and the grass was mowed so short that it was like a thin carpet under her feet.
When Marion stepped back to look at it at the house as a whole, she saw that it was symmetrical, but it was simple enough that it wasn't something she really would have noticed if not for the fact that she had noticed the interior being that way earlier.
Speaking of the interior, Marion could see inside of the house from the kitchen windows. She spotted what she supposed had to be the TV remote resting on the windowsill, just behind the curtain. But more particularly, she could see the mantel over the fireplace. Those statues were still there. Marion walked backward to look through the doorway. The statues were still propped open and when she peeked through the door and looked inside that way, the mantel was empty.
"Huh," Marion said aloud. "What the fuck."
Marion made sure that the door to the left was held open, she didn't want to take any chances. And she walked around. To the right side of the house.
The door was shut.
Marion glanced at it for a second, and then sprinted around back to the left side of the house and through the thankfully still open door. She stared at the door on the opposite side of the house.
It was still propped open just where she'd left it.
"Huh…" Marion repeated.
She drummed her fingertips on the wall.
Marion took a deep breath in and a shallow shaky breath out. "Okay. Okay, that's unusual. So what's going on has something to do with perspective maybe?"
She realized that she had to check through the other door to see if it was the same thing. Marion walked across to the other side of the room and pulled open the door carefully. She put a single step outside and then she paused. She walked to the window and retrieved the remote control from the windowsill, and then she doubled back around, took back one of the beige pillows under her arm, and stared out of the kitchen window for a moment.
She couldn't see the couch, so she did not know if both the pillows were in their places, but she could see those two statuettes in their place. Marion crossed her arms.
"Okay," Marion said aloud. "Alright, so. Just gotta check the door on the left." Marion walked around. The door was closed the same as the other.
"Alright. So. Observation Two: there seems to be two versions of the outside. I see if I go through the door on the right, and one if I go through the door on the left. The question is, which one am I seeing from inside of the house? And what does that have to do with my missing reflection?"
Another valid question was "What was behind the closed doors."
Marion was going to have to focus on figuring this out one part at time. She could still see the remote resting on the windowsill in that version of the interior. She stood at the base of one of the threes that was visible from out the window. Marion crouched down and placed the pillow down in a place where, in theory, she should be able to see from the kitchen window and walked back inside through the still-open door and quickly looked through the window. She couldn't see the pillow.
Just to be through, she walked through the opposite door with the second pillow under her arm (the first pillow wasn't there and she hadn't really expected it to be) and set it down in the same place. It was also invisible through the kitchen window.
Correction. There were in fact three versions of the outside and three versions of the inside. Alright. Cool. Fine. She had no way of knowing which was the "real" one. Well. Alright. Technically all of them were equally real (which wasn't very much) because this was the Land of Fiction.
One of them was the version of the Land of Fiction that the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie were in. And wandering around the others could result in her not finding them. Marion pinched her nose. She took a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
"Ok."
Once again, running around nonstop was how Jamie ended up being a 2d cutout and Zoe ended up being trapped inside of a bottle, so she wasn't going to leave the house until she had explored some more.
So, the next things she wanted to check were things that she could check one after the other.
First: Did the outside reset if she opened and closed the door?
Second: Did one of the outsides reset if she opened and closed the door?
Third: What was behind the other door?
There was a fourth thing she could check, which was what if she opened and closed the door when she was outside, what would happen? But she wasn't interested in checking that right now.
That seemed like a bad idea.
That seemed like an easy way to get in a situation the Doctor would have to save her from.
Marion went to the door on the left first. The first thing she did, was step out just far enough to see that the beige throw pillow was lying in the grass just where she'd left it. She walked back inside, moved the statue aside, and shut the door. She waited a couple of seconds and then opened it again, taking care to put the statue back into place before walking outside.
The beige pillow was indeed still there.
Marion wasn't sure what she expected but that was something to confirm. The bedroom was the same as it had been before. This was a good thing. It means that this version of the outside remained consistent. This was good. Consistency was good.
Marion walked out of the house and around to the other door. She reached for the handle and turned it. Marion pushed forward and when it didn't open, she first thought that the door might be locked even though the handle had moved easily but then she experimentally tried to pull the door open instead.
It opened.
This was concerning because both of the doors inside of the house had been pulled. The door on this side should have been a push door. And the door had been a normal house door. Not the sort that should've been able to move back and forth. Marion pulled open the door and ducked her head inside. Her brow immediately furrowed.
"Oh, what the fuck!"
The door opened into a long, dark hallway that stretched far longer than the interior of the house suggested was possible.
Marion stared through the doorway blankly for a moment. In the distance, there was a loud growl. She carefully stepped backward and slammed the door shut.
Marion reached into her bag for her notebook and scribbled a warning not to enter, just in case, and tapped it on the door before turning her back to it and walking away quickly. Re-entered the building from the direction she had exited from and opened the door that had been on the other side of that one. It opened into the outside. Not the hallway.
Marion kept walking through the door and to this version of the outside and checked the door on the other side. The door opened to reveal the exact same corridor from the exact same angle as the one before, and the exact same growl. It sounded even closer this time. She scribbled out another note and slammed the door shut.
Marion wondered if that was how the trap was supposed to work. If the fiction Master had expected her to just leave the hous- Marion shook her head. The house- (house? House.) without checking to make sure that the door would stay open and ended up wandering through the hallways until someone got her out.
Marion walked back towards the door she had exited the house from. She pressed the little part of the door that bended back when you turned the handle, and a small bar of metal shot out.
This was the kind of door that locked automatically when you closed it. Like, in a hotel room or inside of a dorm. Any place with keycards.
She remembered the remote control. She located it, held it up, and pointed it at the TV. A light at the end of it shined red for a moment, and she heard a noise, like the sound of an old TV turning on. That CRT buzz/pop, but the screen in front of her didn't even flicker. There wasn't even static. She ducked through the left door and the right door to see if perhaps she had turned on one of the other TV's, but no such luck.
It wasn't the kind of remote that had numbers for channels on them. So there wasn't some kind of number code for her to solve. She tucked the remote into her bag. If nothing else, the Doctor could probably use some of his sci-fi wizardry to make it into something useful. At least, once she figured out what she needed to do.
Marion lay back down on the couch. It wasn't very comfortable, but it was better than nothing.
She knew whatever she needed to do, needed to be done outside. What she didn't know was how she was going to get outside. That was the problem. What she saw when she looked out the right door, the left door, and through the window were three different locations. She knew that. And if she wandered around, she might get lost or separated. She didn't feel sick or anxious. So she was pretty sure that the Doctor would be fine. But she didn't want to just pick a direction and run.
It occurred to Marion that maybe this was how the Master (not that Master) intended to trap her. Who needs locks when your prisoner is too busy second-guessing the door? The door.
Marion's eyes shot open.
"THE DOORS"
Neither of the versions of the outside matched the version of the world on the inside. Maybe what she needed to do was get to the outside of the house that she was inside of!
The kitchen windows were the type of windows that were basically large glass doors. She could fit in and outside the house just fine. Marion untied one of the cushions on the chair and held it lightly in her hand. She pushed open the kitchen window and tossed it outside and quickly shut the window again. She could see the window just fine. She walked to the other window on the opposite side of the kitchen. When she pressed her head against the other closed window, she could see the throw pillow where she left it. She stepped up and climbed out through the open window, her feet landing softly on the too-short grass.
This third version of the outdoors felt more right somehow. Through the still-closed left window, she could see the fireplace mantel and its missing statues. And the doors on either side of the house were closed and locked. Which made a lot of sense, when Marion thought about it.
Now, Mairon would be lying if she claimed that she was 100% sure that she was in the right place. But she was fairly certain. And she wasn't sure where else she could go.
Just to be on the safe side, Marion took out her notebook and wrote a note.
"Hello Doctor or Jamie or Zoe"
"This is Marion. I was here, but I'm not here anymore. Don't go inside the house." Marion tore a bit of tape off with her teeth and taped the note in place against the wall.
Marion had been wandering in a straight line for a while, when it occurred to Marion that she wasn't quite sure where she needed to go.
And that's when she heard the Doctor's voice.
"MARION, JAMIE, ZOE, WHERE ARE YOU?"
"Here!" Marion shouted after him. She sprinted towards the sound of his voice. The forest was dark. She could see herself and she could see the roots on the ground well enough that she wouldn't trip, and slam face-first into the ground.
"MARION, JAMIE, ZOE, WHERE ARE YOU?"
Marion paused for a moment, trying to make sure that she was running in the right direction.
"DOCTOR-" Marion called out again.
"Marion!"
Marion jumped in surprise.
"Holy- Doctor you scared me. Have you been throwing your voice?
She, hadn't thought that the Doctor was that close. Maybe Land of Fiction was messing with sound or something.
"Marion!" the Doctor repeated.
"Yeah, I'm right here. Have you found Jamie and Zoe?"
"Marion!"
"Yes! Doctor I'm-"
"MARION! ZOE! JAMIE!"
"Huh?"
Marion noticed a handful of things. The first was that the "Doctor"'s mouth hadn't moved. The second thing was that the voice had been coming from somewhere and it wasn't the man in front of her. And the third thing, she realized staring at the Doctor and looking up at him was that she was looking up at him.
Patrick Troughton had been five foot eight. This wasn't exactly tall for a man, but it was still a little bit over half a foot taller than her. And that was how much taller than her the man she was talking to was.
The Two that she met had been barely taller than her.
Which meant-
Marion stared at "the Doctor"
She took a step back, he took a step forward.
For a moment, she wondered if someone else could've been dragged here.
It wasn't impossible, even if it was unlikely. It was even more unlikely he would know her name. Unless of course the real Doctor had had him go looking for her.
But then she got a closer look.
Most versions of the Doctor had blue eyes. Two's in particular sometimes looked more green and sometimes looked more brown. At least, in the novelizations. She'd never seen that for herself. That wasn't the point. The point was that neither the second Doctor nor Patrick Troughton's eyes had been that shade of grey. Marion wasn't sure that people in general had that shade of grey in their eyes.
"Marion!"
Looking carefully, the man's skin was greyer than it should have been and staring at him for too long made her a little cross eyed because his outline was fuzzier too. And greyer. And the longer the two of them stared at each other in silence, the more that the figure stopped looking like the Doctor. And his voice sounded familiar but fuzzy.
"Okay…" Marion trailed off trying not to look directly at him. This wasn't the Doctor. Marion didn't know who this was. And she wasn't even sure that he was a who and not a what.
"I'm-I'm going to go look for Jamie and Zoe. You just stay-"
Marion took off running again. She didn't pay much attention to where she was going. Because she needed to keep moving. The thing she was concerned about was the direction that she was going. She needed to lose "the Doctor" but she also didn't want to lead him towards the real Doctor. For all she knew, the Doctor was talking to a "Marion" that wasn't "Marion" and he had no way of knowing this. She needed to get to the Doctor, and soon.
One of the trees had a branch that she could reach if she jumped up and had a bunch of high sturdy-looking branches that she could hold onto.
Marion, not thinking of anything else that she could do, quickly pulled herself up the tree and braced herself, holding onto the trunk and looking downward. Hypothetically, if the thing that she was running from turned out to be able to climb, then she would just jump down and hope that it only took a couple of seconds for her ankle to fix itself.
Ideally, "the Doctor" wouldn't look up, he would run past, and she could jump down and follow the real Doctor's voice.
Marion was thankful that she wasn't taller than she was. She wasn't super light, but she was small enough that she could fit in between the branches and crouch with little difficulty. She was pretty sure that she was looking at the thing that wasn't the Doctor walk past.
You can't run away from something and look at it at the same time. And it didn't know where she was or that she could see it. So it had sacrificed its more Doctor looking form in favor of stretched and thin legs and a neck that moved more than it should have. Its outline was even fuzzier and ever now and then, a thin horizontal line traveled down his form. Marion didn't breathe as it walked past her. And then, just as its back was turned to her she felt the branch under her break and she was falling.
She caught a glimpse of "the Doctor" turning to look at her, and then she realized she was still falling. As if the ground below the tree wasn't solid. Not like it was a liquid, but like it was an illusion. A trick of the light that made her think that there was a ground there when there was in fact nothing of the sort.
Marion hit the ground a moment or so after she knew she should have, and the room that she was in smelt of old, wet, molded carpeting and sounded like fluorescent lights. Her face hurt and was pressed against something damp and faintly slimey, and she thought that her nose might've been running until she rubbed her face and her fingertips came back slightly red. She held her nose as she felt the bones click back into place and the rest of the blood go back to what it was supposed to be doing
Marion stared mutely at the carpeting. She pushed herself up upright, pressed the meat of her palms into her eyes, and let out a loud groan of frustration.
"This is fucking stupid," Marion said aloud. "Hey, do you accept constructive criticism?"
Marion was aware that since her nervous system had gotten used to the whole "mostly unkillable thing" the things she was anxious about had changed. It wasn't that she didn't get scared or anxious anymore. Because she absolutely did. All of the time. But not concerning things relating to her personal safety.
But even without that, Marion wasn't sure if there would have been room for fear in her at that moment.
She wasn't sure how to describe what she was feeling. Annoyance felt the most correct, but annoyance felt like an understatement.
It was like describing how she had felt when she was with Romana and realized that her vision was thinning out as "frazzled" and "worried" or describing how she had felt when looking at the Skithra Queen as "grumpy" or "upset".
"I mean it!" she shouted.
A part of Marion knew that she shouldn't be that loud. That she wasn't alone here and so she should probably lower her voice, but she was far past the point of caring. She was fairly certain she could outrun anything and if she couldn't it's not like they could actually kill her.
In the distance, Marion heard a loud growl.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
The growling stopped and then it continued.
"I SAID SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Marion stared upwards. "Hey. Hey. I know you can see me. What the fuck. Did you think a forest with eight mysterious pages to collect was too silly? What other ideas did you have? A security office with limited power on a six-hour time limit and haunted animatronics? An abandoned toy factory? An animation studio? A goddamn daycare? Fuck you!"
Marion heard growling again. It sounded mechanical and close.
"DON'T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!"
The growling only got louder and Marion could feel it in her bones.
"Fucking Fine!" Marion shouted. And she started running towards the noise. Maybe she could scare it or find an exit or something. She didn't find anything there.
"Where the fuck is-"
Marion was staring at three identical doors. She opened one at random. It was just more wall.
"Are you trying to scare me?" Marion called out to no one, "Because if you're trying to scare me, I need you to understand that you're not scaring me. You're just pissing me off."
Marion pulled open another door. The same wall.
She pulled open the last door. The floor was missing.
"Ok," Marion said simply. Before she could back away from the door, the door closed, behind her pushing her forward and sending her falling.
'Of fucking course.' Marion thought as her stomach dropped.
Marion caught a brief glimpse of words flying to meet her and then she thought she saw the Doctor and a well and the Doctor rushing towards her then she saw the ground.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock
Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick
Marion came with a hand pressed against the side of her neck near her pulse point. The hand felt cool. Marion cracked open her eyes. She was fairly certain that she had fallen on her face and now she was on her back staring up at a sky that looked too close to be real.
"Marion?"
Marion sat up so quickly that she felt her vision spin. She had been lying down with her head next to a safe.
The Doctor was looking down over her. He looked concerned. And he looked solid in a way that his copy hadn't.
"Say something else," Marion said quickly.
"Like what?"
"That'll do."
Marion got a close look at his eyes. They looked blue and his skin was pale, but tinted more pinkish than grey.
Marion stood up quickly and the Doctor stood up after her. His height was right.
"Marion, where were you?"
"I'm not sure. I was in a house and then in the woods and then there was a copy of you that could just say my name and then I was in the Backrooms."
"The Back-"
Marion shook her head and put her hands on the Doctor's shoulders. "Don't worry about it. It's stupid. It's really stupid. It's all stupid. This whole thing is stupid. It's like, a place that exists outside of reality you can end up in if you step wrong!" at the Doctor's expression Marion quickly added, "It's not real? At least I think it's not real. It's probably not real. It's a story. A work of collaborative fiction. Of course, this world is all fiction. And I was stuck there and then there was this growling noise. And then I started running. Then I opened a door that had a hole or something in the floor and then I fell and now I'm here."
"That sounds frightening."
"It wasn't." Marion deadpanned.
"But you were running."
"Towards the noise. Not away from it. It wasn't even scary. It just made me mad. I think my ability to feel fear has been stunted. Not because of anything here specifically. Just because of. You know. Everything."
"I'm afraid that this might be in a way my fault."
"My lack of fear?"
"No, your fall."
"How."
"Well-I don't believe in wishing wells you see, but I saw that well and wished you were here. It wasn't meant to be serious you see. And then I turned and you were falling from the sky." The Doctor's eyes flickered upward, "You must know, I did try to catch you."
Marion blinked.
"Oh yeah, I think I saw that. That's fine. Was it at least funny?"
"Marion, there's nothing funny about watching you fall, trying to catch you, missing, and hearing your bones shatter." The Doctor said quite firmly.
"Agree to disagree!"
Marion noticed a pronounced dent on the top of the metal.
"Well, that's one way to crack a safe!"
"Marion!"
Marion held up her hands by her head in surrender. "It's fine I can joke about it."
"Marion!"
"I mean I've always had a bit of a hard head!"
"MARION!"
"Fine. I'll stop. Do you have a mirror by chance?"
"Why?" the Doctor asked, already reaching into his coat.
"I want to check something."
The Doctor placed the mirror in Marion's hand and she looked at it with a frown that she couldn't see.
"What on earth?" the Doctor exclaimed. Marion could see the Doctor staring into the mirror. And he kept looking at the mirror and then at her. "Your reflection! It's gone."
"Yup," Marion replied with a fake smile. "I'm not a vampire. I checked." The Doctor glanced down at her chest for a moment. "How?"
"I just felt my canine teeth and tried saying holy things. Couldn't find any Garlic in the pantry,"
"The pantry?"
"Of the house-HOUSE house. I woke up in. Again, not important, don't worry about it. You're looking for Jamie and Zoe right?"
"Yes. I heard Jamie calling me from somewhere around here." The Doctor moved and a book that had been resting on the edge of the well fell inside. The Doctor paused. He stared down into the well.
"Marion, did you hear that?"
"Do you mean the laughter?"
"Yes. That."
"No."
The Doctor looked around the forest carefully. His eyes seemed to look around the room staring carefully at something that Marion couldn't see. He stared up at the trees and squinted. He hummed thoughtfully.
"Hello. This is a puzzle, that's what it is. I take it that you can't see that either."
"Nope."
The Doctor looked to his left.
"Oh yes. Yes, I'm beginning to recognize this. Sort of picture writing. Let me see now. Jamie." The Doctor pointed towards the cardboard cutout of Jamie holding up his knife ready to strike, "Mist. Mist without the M or the T, i s. Is. Hand without the H, and. So we have Jamie is safe and well!"
Marion heard a loud clatter from somewhere behind them and then the statue of Jamie was there, only with his face blank.
"Oh!" the Doctor exclaimed "Oh, now I've lost his face."
Marion turned her head sharply to the side and jumped.
There was a black felt board suddenly behind her. She turned. There were four top thirds of a man's face with eyes, four middle thirds with noses, and then four bottom thirds with mouths.
"Hello. Oh, I see." the Doctor sounded more like he was talking to himself than Marion, "We're supposed to provide the face, are we? Very well. Now then. Yes. There we are."
The first thing that the Doctor went for was a set of eyes that looked nothing like Jamie's before he could pin them on the board, Marion held up a hand to stop him.
"Doctor, those aren't Jamie's eyes."
The Doctor stared at Marion, and then back at the eyes. He looked hesitant.
"Marion, are you certain?"
"Doctor am I- Doctor those look nothing like him!"
"Marion of course they do. They- oh dear. Marion, I think you might be right."
The Doctor put the eyes back on the wall. "Oh dear. They all look the same."
Marion stared at the board.
"I- no they-,"
It occurred to Marion that the Doctor might be a bit face blind. It made sense. Recognizing the particulars of how someone's face looks couldn't be that important for Time Lords with the whole regeneration thing. And it would explain why Twelve was Like that. Maybe he wasn't just doing a bit when he said that he and Marion looked to be about the same age.
"Here- let me"
The texture of the pieces was interesting. She didn't like it very much. It didn't feel like paper. It felt thicker. It reminded her of something, and she didn't want to think much about what it reminded her of.
She quickly handed it to the Doctor so that she wouldn't have to touch it anymore. She wiped her hands off on her pants leg. It didn't make the feeling disappear, and she wasn't sure that there was anything she could do to make it disappear shy of washing her hands. Her fingers felt tacky. The top face fit on the cardboard cutout's face perfectly, and the bit of dark hair lined up with Jamie's fringe perfectly.
"Hmm," the Doctor hummed, "Oh! Yes! I see now! Thank you, Marion!" He glanced at the board where he could find the eyes that he had grabbed first. "Come to think of it, you're right. Those eyes look nothing like him."
Marion was tempted to ask the Doctor how her and Zoe's appearances differed outside of their hair, but she was afraid of what his answer might be.
The Doctor looked carefully at the nose and then back at the cutout.
"Ah, well, if that's Jamie's eyes, then this would have to be his nose!" The Doctor exclaimed. He pressed the material on the cutout. "And this the mouth!"
It looked like Jamie so far. She couldn't be certain. But it looked correct enough that she was pretty sure that she'd made the right call. At the very least, it was more right than what the Doctor would have originally gone with.
The Doctor took the mouth and pressed it onto the face. A moment later, the cutout stopped being a cutout and Marion only just barely missed getting stabbed in the eye by the downward arc of Jamie's knife.
Jamie blankly looked at them and then blinked a few times. He shook his head and lowered his knife.
"Hi Jamie," Marion greeted. Are you feeling alright? Everything about you as it should be?
"Why wouldn't it be?" Jamie asked.
Marion turned around to gesture towards the face board only to find it not there at all.
"Ah," Marion said. Her mouth hardened into a line. "Of course."
"Of course what?"
"Never mind that now Jamie." the Doctor cut in, "Are you alright?" The Doctor was grabbing onto Jamie's arm and checking his pulse. Presumably to see if there were any long-term effects of being flat and also because the two of them couldn't seem to go more than a few moments without grabbing onto each other. "What's the last thing you remember?" The Doctor asked the other man.
"Well, you know I was telling you about my dream. You know, about the unicorn."
"Yes?"
"Well, he was charging straight for me, head down, ready for the kill, when suddenly... everything went crazy and I was off."
"Off? Where to?" the Doctor said quickly. "Where were you? Were you in a house like Marion? Where've... where've you been?"
"In the fog." Jamie explained, "I mean, really. Ever since the TARDIS broke up-"
The Doctor froze for a moment and then grabbed Jamie by his shoulders in a panic.
"IT DID WHAT!" His head turned to face Marion so quickly she was surprised that his neck could handle it. "You didn't say anything about the TARDIS being broken!"
"Doctor, it's fine."
"HOW COULD IT BE FINE." the Doctor turned to stare at Marion.
"I can't remember right now, but I know that it will be!"
"Oh! Well! That's a lot of help then."
"Doctor, if I didn't know better I'd say you were being-"
"Jamie, help!"
Marion could hear Zoe's voice off in the distance. Marion turned her head to look.
"Zoe? Where are you?"
"I'm trapped." she screamed. "You must help me!"
Jamie looked around for a moment, and then he pointed.
"It sounds as if she's over there."
"What?" the Doctor looked around, "Come on, then"
Jamie ran off with the Doctor and Marion following close behind. She wondered how far or close she was from the forest that she had run through earlier. The one with the floor that disappeared from under her. Hopefully far enough away.
They came across a series doors surrounded by foliage.
"Zoe!" The Doctor called as they approached the door. The door looked like a normal door from far away and if you looked at it straight on. But when you saw the door from an angle, it was obvious that what looked like an ornate door was in fact an incredibly detailed painting.
Jamie got to the door first. He slammed into it.
"There's no handle. There's no sign of a lock either."
"Don't you see?" the Doctor exclaimed, "It's not even a door at all. It's just a brick wall with a door painted on it."
"But that's crazy!" Jamie exclaimed, "How do you open a door that isn't a door?"
Marion pressed her hand on the stone and leaned.
"Don't need to. When a door's not a door, it's a jar!"
She has her eyes closed so she doesn't see the brick wall turn into glass but she feels it go from rough to smooth and cold and when she opens her eyes again, she sees Zoe dressed in purple staring at her, slamming her fist against the glass. Marion didn't see her reflection in the glass but she was used to that by now. She hoped that she could get it back eventually.
"Get me out!" Zoe cried. "Get me out!"
The Doctor and Jamie laughed.
Marion turned away from Zoe for a moment and glared at them until they stopped.
"Honestly!" she said simply.
Marion found a ledge she could climb up and boosted herself until she was leaning between the wall and the top of the jar. The room was small enough that she could lean against it without knocking the jar over.
She didn't want Zoe to get hurt. Either from getting knocked around or worse, from the glass shattering.
She grabbed at the paper that'd been sealed over the jar. It was more than just paper.
Marion clenched her fist and down as hard as she could. It had too much give to be paper. Her hand sunk into it but it didn't break.
"Oh for-" Marion didn't feel like rummaging through her bag. Not when Jamie was standing right there.
"Marion?"
"I'm right here. Zoe, dear, I need you to duck down for a second," Marion turned her head, "Jamie, could I borrow your knife? If you're done laughing at Zoe's expense I mean."
"Marion, I was just having a bit of fun."
"Yeah. Sure. Knife. Now. Please."
Jamie reached up and offered the knife up to her hilt first. The blade gleamed a soft gold.
She was going to have to find a book on electrolysis. She understood the principle of it just fine, but if she was going to coat Jamie's knife in gold, she was going to figure out how to do it. She understood the theory, but she didn't want to mess too much with water and electricity without being 100% sure what she was doing.
Marion held the knife in her right hand.
"Zoe, I can't see you. If you aren't crouched down I need you to be. I don't want to stab you,"
"I'm out of the way. Now get me out please!"
Marion stabbed down with the knife. The top broke with a small pop. Marion held out the knife for Jamie to take and then tore the membrane apart the rest of the way. Zoe stood up, Marion leaned down as much as she could without falling over and reached down for Zoe.
"Grab my shoulders,"
Zoe reached out for her and once she had a grip Marion sat up carrying Zoe up with her. Marion used her free arm to hold Zoe behind her knees and once she was holding her, she leaned forward. She dropped a couple of yards between the top of the jar and the ground. She set Zoe on her feet and then bounced lightly on her on the balls of her feet to get out the unfortunate feeling of landing on her ankle harder than she probably should have.
"I thought I was never going to get out of there!"
"We wouldn't have left you," Marion said seriously. "Even if we were standing right next to the TARDIS and could leave at any time. We wouldn't even consider it if you weren't present and accounted for."
"I think it's about time we got out of this wood." the Doctor said, looking around.
"Yeah. There's like, a copy of the Doctor walking around somewhere. Or at least something pretending to be a copy of the Doctor? It wasn't very good at it."
"How so?" Jamie asked.
"Its skin and eyes were too grey, all it did was say my name over and over again, and it was too tall."
"Too tall?" Jamie asked.
"Yeah, your height not-"
"Was there anything else?" the Doctor cut her off.
"It was weirdly fuzzy."
"Like fur?"
"No, like, an image on a 1960s tv screen y'know. Out of focus. It was hard to notice at first, and then it was all I could notice."
"All the more reason to leave then," Jamie remarked. "Come on, let's go."
Marion and Jamie walked forward, with Zoe and the Doctor lagging behind. As they walked, Marion caught a bit of conversation.
"I couldn't see her."
"What Zoe?"
"When I was in the Jam Jar. I couldn't see Marion at all until she peaked over the side."
"It was clear to us."
"No, I could see you and Jamie just fine. Just not her."
Marion was pretty sure that she wasn't supposed to hear that. So she decided to keep moving with Jamie.
Next Chapter: Through the Looking Glass
Marion: Find my pages? More like, go fuck yourself!
For this fic, I tried to include modern literature, but specifically horror and suspense. When "Wild Blue Yonder" came out I felt like I was AAAAA. The "Not Doctor" was meant to be to be a Woodcrawler, Alternate, Stranger type thing. It wasn't meant to be one of the creatures from WBY.
Marion's segment was meant to have point and click video game or like, a text-based ARG horror vibe. Like gr3gory88 or hiimmarymary. I don't know if I accurately did that, but that's what I was going for.
readers, I would recommend you check out this chapter on AO3. There's a joke that this site's limited HTML prevents me from telling.