Chapter 43

What she doesn't want you to see.

Raven opened the door of the Captains quarters and brought in a steaming cup of tea, one she had prepared for the Doctor. She'd never made the Doctor a cup of tea in all her time with him, but...

Today I just feel like being nice. She told herself. Yeah, that's it.

Raven found the Doctor laying on his back on a couch in the Captains Quarters, staring up into the ceiling, intensely focusing on the boards above him. Gingerly she approached and set the cup of tea down on a small table next to the couch. The Doctor was totally unresponsive and didn't register her presence. Was he dead?

Slowly she waved her hand in front of his grey eyes. He didn't blink.

"Doc... Doctor?" she asked. Was something wrong? She snapped her fingers in front of his face. No response. "Doctor?!" she said, her voice rising a little.

"Can't a Time Lord get any sleep around here?" He finally said.

Raven released a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"What's wrong?" she asked, "You've been down here for hours."

"I was meditating on something." he said.

Showing off and mocking me, you mean.

Shut up! She hurriedly told that voice.

"About how we can get out of here?" Raven asked.

"No. About Captain Hook, and Alice, Tinkerbell and the like. You know she's more talkative than the books and movies depict her." Raven just let the Doctor ramble a little. It was better than listening to him being silent. While he was talking she knew his brain was still ticking over the problem, and she wanted to take part in the conversation now. "Barriss is a rather nice girl isn't she." He added.

Raven felt a twinge in her stomach and she remembered her interacting with the Doctor. Though maybe he was referring to the time she spent with her. "Yeah, she's okay." Raven shrugged.

"You know, they're all two dimensional characters, or supposed to be. Their motivations are usually shallow. Yet, here they behave like real, three dimensional characters."

"Yeah, I've noticed that too." She lied.

"You have?" The Doctor questioned.

"Yeah, umm..." she had to pause to think. "Like Captain Hook and how he speaks about Peter Pan." The Doctor looked impressed she'd spotted this.

"Well, in the books the relationship between Captain Hook and Peter Pan is implied and theorised, but never clear nor explicitly stated." The Doctor said. "They're not even aware of it themselves, or shouldn't be." The Doctor then raised his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling again. "So somehow they've gained this insight into their own characters they were not privy to before."

"This could all be..."

"Pointless?" the Doctor stepped in.

Smart ass. "Yeah, well it could be..." she changed the word to. "You could just be over-analysing it all."

"When do I ever needlessly over-analyse anything?" the Doctor asked indignant.

She didn't need to answer that verbally. She just gave him a look. As always he ignored it.

"It could be important. Did the Mistress cause it? Did we cause it? Something gave these characters more free will than they should be afforded."

"Bar..." she caught herself before she spoke the name. "One of the characters here said they're a collective of all works of fiction about them. Maybe there is a re-telling that adds more to their character." Raven suggested. Oh god, 'I am' becoming his companion now.

"Could be. Some of your Earth scientists believe human consciousness and self awareness aren't born into a person. But pop into existence after certain ideas are introduced to a subject, certain ideas and ways of thinking. 'I think, therefore I am,' and such. But that implies that before that point some people act more like drones. Running on an outdated hunter gatherer and pack mentality." The Doctor sighed. "It wouldn't surprise me, since it wasn't all that long ago your species swung from trees and ate lice out of each others hair. Where your survival depended entirely on being subservient to a dominant Alpha."

"Hmm... very insightful." She said trying to fake some form of interest. But didn't know what to say next to continue the conversation.

"I like to think deep." The Doctor commented.

"Well, it's a shame it can't be better focused on getting us out of this fog." Raven said a little spitefully. Barriss was all well and good indulging the Doctor and encouraging him to keep moving on the same track. But Raven smacked his head into gear and made him focus on what was important.

"Oh, I've already worked that out." The Doctor said as if the solution was obvious. Ravens heart sank as he said this.

Don't tell me you discussed this with Barriss too.

"Don't play this game with me. I'm not in the mood." Raven cut him across rubbing her temples. She sighed, she had flared up. Calm down and be at peace. "Just pretend I'm still swinging from the trees and tell me."

"Alright. The Mistress and this Impostor want the TARDIS? You have the TARDIS in your head. Therefore they'll come after us to get at your head. They'll come after me too, because the Impostor can't be 'the Doctor' if the real Doctor is still around."

"That's your plan?" Raven said with a sharpness to her voice. "We wait until the Mistress finds us?"

"Pretty much."

"Yeah, nice plan." Raven was being sarcastic again. "Should I paint a bulls-eye on my face?"

"You don't agree?"

"You can tell? Very insightful." the demon girl bit back.

"Sarcasm does not become you."

No, but its fun and helps me relieve tension. She thought in her head, but she didn't have a good thing to say in retaliation. So she just said. "Whatever." Then suddenly something occurred to her.

"Why not just surrender when those submarines attacked?" Raven asked.

"Because the point is not to surrender, but to see how they plan to enter the Censored Zone and maybe we can use the same method to get out." The Doctor explained.

"Logical." Raven commented as if not impressed. But she found the plan to be rather cunning.

"Plus, our time has not been wasted. Some of the things we've found in here have given us some insight into what the Mistress is like." The Doctor said, relaxing back onto the couch again.

Indeed, for the past few days they had been encountering phantoms. Ghosts of characters that can no longer interact nor find their way out of the fog. Stuff she didn't want to see.

"That she hates bad comedy?" Raven questioned. She felt happier now in her stride. Yes, she kept the Doctor focused. Surely that made her more valuable to him than an obsequious, patronising alien.

"Parody!" The Doctor corrected, "She hates parody. But not all parody it seems, going by the presence of the Dozen Shanpils. Parody is used to exaggerate a style, a topic or even a way of thought to the point of being comical; ever heard of the Monty Python troop? They were great at it. The 'Life of Brian' was banned in many movie theatres around the globe at the time, purely because of what it poked fun at." Raven was about to interrupt to make him get to the point, but he cut across her. "So I suspect she has a problem with Parody that covers topics she doesn't like to see mocked. Remember a few days ago..."

Two days previously...

Raven was startled to suddenly see several ghostly figures materialise out of the fog on the deck of the ship.

The Doctor took this in his stride and he looked totally absorbed in what he was looking at. Captain Hook and his crew just looked bored of it as if they were expecting it.

The ghostly figures seemed to comprise of one man who was bright blue, he was also quite powerfully built, and the rest were red and quite short.

"You're a dirty, Shizno!" One of the red people said as they advanced on the blue man.

"I'm a what?" the blue man asked confused and looked a little intimidated.

"A Shizno. You know what a Shizno is!" the red men accused.

"Umm... No I don't." The larger man admitted.

"Liar!"

"I don't know."

"Well, if you don't know. Then I'm not going to tell you!" The red peopled cheered as if this was a clever and intelligent thing to say.

The tall, blue man just shrugged. "Then I can't do much about it then, can I." and he turned to leave. But the red people surrounded him and refused to let him leave.

"Yes there is. Stop being a Shizno!"

It was an odd thing to watch, because it looked like a jock was being bullied by a bunch of weedy nerds that the larger man could easily snap in two.

"Tell me what a Shizno is then, and why its a bad thing to be one."

The red men looked utterly offended that this question had to be asked.

"A Shizno is the most evil thing you can be."

"Which is?" The blue man prompted.

"It means... it means..." the red man was looking at his fellows like he was hoping someone else would hop in and take over from this uncomfortable situation.

"It means your bad!" and the group of red people nodded in agreement.

"Why aren't any of you Shiznos then?" he asked. The group burst into laughter, but it happened only after the one leading them burst into laughter first.

Weird, in Raven's mind this made them look more like a hive collective link, a colony of ants or bees, and that they followed their leader blindly.

"We can't be Shiznos, you idiot!" the leader of the red people said, "Because we are red. You are a blue!" They all nodded in agreement.

"I'm actually purple." the blue man said. As Raven looked more closely she could see that the blue person was actually more a purple, but the fog made him look more blue.

The red people started to look uncomfortable. In fact, they weren't all the same shade of red themselves, some were bordering on a red-ish purple.

"Doesn't matter. You still have blue blood in you. That still makes you a Shizno!" and again they all nodded in agreement.

"What, is there a quota of blue blood to be met to be this evil thing called a Shizno?" the tall man asked with sarcasm in his voice. Sarcasm the red men took seriously as they just nodded but didn't elaborate. "What chance does that give me? Okay, lets say I am a Shizno..."

The gang roared with celebration. "He gets it, at last!"

"Lets say I am... what do we do about it? What do you want from me?"

The gang stopped their celebration and looked at each other as if this had never occurred to them.

"To not be a Shizno!" and the gang again nodded in agreement.

"But you said being a Shizno is tied to my blue blood. Yes?" They nodded in agreement. "How exactly am I supposed to change that?!"

Again the reds looked confused. God, they hadn't thought this all through. Did any of them think this 'Shizno' thing through?

The leader suddenly looked like he had an idea and he laughed as if he'd always planned to say it. "There is more to being a Shizno than if you're blue." He stood proudly.

"But it's a pre-requisite." The tall man said. The red mans face dropped as if he knew what was coming and opened his mouth to move on, but the blue man cut him off. "It's apparently an important one to you, and it's a physical trait I can't change."

The red man had painted himself into a corner and the blue man was not going to let him off.

Raven was actually enjoying this. Though she didn't find it funny; it was clearly supposed to be, she was still loving it. What it had to do with anything she didn't understand, but clearly it was something to do with unfounded prejudice. That was something she could relate to.

"You hate our people, just admit it." The red man finally said. "You hate us and you think we're a threat to you!"

"Hey there." Said the voice of a new actor to the stage. A man, petite and a vivid shade of red and long, lovely flowing hair.

"Hey there." The tall man said in greeting and linked arms with the new character. He clearly knew the new person.

The red men looked utterly defeated and deflated.

"Who are your friends?" the new-comer asked.

"A bunch of Shizno's, I think."

"What's a Shizno?"

"Grop if I know." and they both walked off and vanished from the stage.

The red men looked at each other as if trying to process what had just happened.

"What do we do now?" one of the red men asked. They looked around, confused again.

"I know." Their leader said. "We go on social media. Describe that we met a dirty Shizno, and we put him in his place!"

"And we'll get up-votes?!" the others said.

"Yes, and we get up-votes!" and they all got a dreamy look on their faces as if they were somehow drugged up.

Then the ghosts vanished altogether.

Raven just stared at the space. She had no clue what had just happened. What were 'up-votes'? What was 'Social Media'? As her brain tried to process it her mouth formed her confusion into words.

"What the fu..."

A few days later...

And they had found another ghostly image playing for them.

This time it looked like a sports team. Several bulky men all gathered together and a coach. It looked like this sport she'd heard of called Rugby, or "an Americanised version of the sport called Football, not to be confused with Soccer which is also called Football." Or so the Doctor had tried to explain to her.

"Now can anyone tell me, what this is?" the coach said and held up a strangely shaped ball.

"It's a football." One of the boys said.

"Very good. Now keep an eye out for this! Because it's going to be important." The way the coach was speaking made it sound like he was making room for laughter. "Now we've established what a ball is now tell me, what are we supposed to do with it?"

This went on for a good few minutes with the coach just comically talking down to his team as if they were idiots. Something about the way the coach talked made the whole thing humorous, but it was all lost on Raven since she didn't know the first thing about "American Football."

The Doctor seemed to like it though, and he burst out laughing a few times.

The coach had just been assigning positions of the players when suddenly a voice spoke up.

"What position have you got for me?!" it was a girl, she was already in the teams colours and carried a helmet under her arm ready to play, and her shirt had a number one on it. "That's right, a girl wants to play Football. What do you men think of that?"

She wants to play that sport? Raven thought. Her mouth moved to one side of her face. She didn't buy it. The girl looked too well groomed to want to play a rough sport.

"That's actually fine with us." The coach said, "We already have three girls on the team."

The boys parted to show three girls in their equipment, one was even spinning a football on her finger.

The new girl looked crestfallen and dropped the helmet she had in her hand. Suddenly she flared back up again.

"How dare you talk down to those girls, you big bully!" she shouted.

"He talked down to the boys too. What are you talking about?!" one of the three girls said.

Again it was like the pretty girl had taken a knock to her confidence, so much so she took a step back at the sight of all the eyes who were on her. People who clearly thought she was an idiot.

"Football's not really my thing anyway." Said with false confidence. "After all, what civilised society allows boys to play with the skin of a defenceless, innocent, pig!" She said. Raven guessed she was referring to the footballs.

"These balls are synthetic." One of the girls piped up. "And each one we buy, a dollar goes to local animal shelters."

This time the pretty girls face went really, really red with embarrassment. She opened her mouth as if wanting to say something else. She looked like she was going to cry.

She spun around and ran out of the gate and off screen, and Raven heard the girl burst into tears. Then the ghosts vanished.

"What the heck was that all about?" Raven asked.

"I think..." the Doctor began, "The girl never wanted to play the sport. She wanted to feel like she was fighting some outdated injustice."

Raven thought about it and said. "But the injustice didn't exist."

"Exactly."

"So she wanted to play the hero?" Raven concluded and thought a little more. What if they had accepted her onto the team? She clearly had no real interest in playing the sport. She did it only to make her feel like she was some big hero to society.

"It's a little like hero syndrome." The Doctor started talking. "Where the feeling and emotional buzz of being a hero, of being applauded for doing something good, is so great you invent situations to save people from, or make up enemies to fight. A very seductive way of doing things, especially if you have plenty of people to boast about it to later, giving you more of an emotional buzz."

Raven decided she would meditate on this concept. Was that like how the children of Azarath saw her? They 'fought' her because it made them feel like a hero battling evil? She was evil only because in their own personal story there needed to be a bad guy. If it wasn't her, would it have been someone else?

"Do you have a Doctorate in film studies too?" Raven asked the Doctor.

"Well... I dabble a little." the Doctor said looking out into the fog. "I remember when I met Alfred Hitchcock..." the Doctor was showing off again, and it was a person Raven had no clue about, so the impression would be lost on her. But rather than saying anything she turned on her heel and walked away leaving the Doctor to figure out he was just talking to himself.

Now back in the present day with the Doctor staring up at the ceiling. Raven had settled down into a chair as they had both discussed what they had seen in this place. They had seen much more than just those two sketches, but stuff like that was what the Doctor was fascinated by.

"Why does she hate those little sketches, do you wonder?" the Doctor asked, prompting her to think.

"Because they're terrible comedies." Raven dismissed.

"Humour is subjective." The Doctor shrugged. "I think she got rid of them because she didn't like what they mocked."

"A bunch of people calling someone a name? And a girl seeking attention?" Raven questioned.

"Maybe its more for personal reasons why she banished them here." The Doctor sighed, "They contextualised something about her in a way she doesn't appreciate." He mused.

"Surprise me." She added sarcastically. Someone must've been listening to her, because it felt like the world came to a screeching halt and both she and the Doctor were thrown to the floor. Anything not nailed down suddenly rushed forwards or tipped up.

"Raven, are you hurt?" the Doctor coughed.

"Only my dignity." She groaned.

"Sufficiently surprised?" the Time Lord asked.

Raven drew a blank on what to say back, so just gave the Doctor a look to show her grumpy mood.

"I think we've rammed into something." The Doctor said.

"Tell me about it." She said, and as she got up she saw the cup of tea she'd made for him. It had smashed to the floor. Her gesture gone unnoticed.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: The girl wanting to play football skit was based off an old Simpsons episode. I never understood the significance of it until I saw the episode again recently and now being a few years wiser I understood exactly what she was trying to do. I added it into this story because it emphasises the kind of person the Mistress is like.

I've tried to mimic the comedy of Monty Python for the first sketch. Which pokes fun at an absurd trend I've noticed on social media these days and one I feel the Mistress would be a part of.

I now have an outline for what I'm doing with this portion of the story so updates on this story might come faster. ;)