Authors notes: 07/07/2019 I've gone back and re-written chapter 32, specifically the latter half when Raven and Kasey stumble into Kaseys Time Machine. I did this because I was always unhappy with what I'd written and I did change it multiple times until I got a version I felt was just right; and now I have it. :D
Chapter 51
Raven's Mirror.
Raven was awoken from her slumber by the shouts and calls of many men who sounded like they were hard at work.
She opened her eyes, and instantly closed them. The sun was so bright.
Breathing deeply and waiting for her eyes to wake up she tried to gauge where she was based on her other senses.
There was the sound of a lot of activity, possibly a work yard of some sort.
She was soaking wet and through her cloak she suspected she was laying on damp sand. She took a deep breath. Something was restricting her chest from rising and falling too much.
There was also the sent of salty, sea air and the sound of gulls.
Her mouth and teeth felt weird. But that always seems to happen when she's knocked unconscious or falls asleep outside of her normal sleeping pattern.
She could also sense many life signs around her, and yet... they were all very close.
Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at the perfect, blue sky with gulls flying around.
Her fingers moved and played with a few grains of sand as her mind rushed back to full focus.
Where was everyone? She could hear a lot of activity around her, but there was no sign of any life anywhere.
Gently she turned her head, and felt several clumps of hair being pulled preventing her head from turning. She tried to turn her head the other way and it was the same on the other side of her head, and from the top as she looked down.
She was tied up! But tied up in an unusual way. She was tied up with string. Brown, dirty string which looked like it was pegged into the sand around her.
"The beast awakens!" Shouted a voice, and there was a scurry of movement as her head moved back into position. Her eyes rolled to find the people shouting, but they must be beneath her possible field of vision.
Something prodded her sharply near her ear and she winced. It was like someone just prodded her with a cocktail stick.
Raven remembered, she was in the Land of Fiction, and maybe this all referenced something, but she couldn't think what.
Sensing the pegs that were holding her hair in place she activated her powers and the pegs popped out of their holes allowing her head free movement and her head rolled to her right.
Her eyes widened. There was good news and bad news.
The bad news was she was greatly outnumbered. Hundreds to one.
But the good news was, she had them all greatly out-sized. Compared to her these people were small, very small. Her thumb was larger than any of these men.
"Do not move, fowl beast of the sea!" Called out a man in fine clothes who sat atop a great horse.
Raven sighed, she knew what fiction she'd fallen into now.
"Gullivers' Travels." She sighed, "Of course..." These guys were the lilliputlians, the ones who tied Gulliver up after a ship wreck. Figures.
At the behest of her powers, all the ropes holding her down snapped and she sat up. The army around her scattered. Some of the lilliputlians who were standing on her as she slumbered ran and jumped off, or slid down ropes she had not yet severed.
Raven untangled her legs as the army began to mobilise around her. They were no threat to her, so she ignored them and focused on untangling her legs.
The little men came at her with long poles, bravely thrusting them out at her.
Why do tiny things have to be such pests! She thought. Looking at the mobilising army she waved her fingers at them in a 'shooing' motion as if she was shooing away some bothersome insects.
Raven got to her feet, and she raised her foot to take a step forwards and the army instantly began to scatter. Carefully she placed her foot down in a clearing and moved forward to take another step.
BANG!
Raven's shield instantly appeared in time to catch a large pellet of metal which had been fired by a cannon near a cliff face, that to Raven's perspective was just a gentle ledge. Other cannons were preparing to fire. Before they could, Raven's powers reached out and squeezed the muzzels of the cannons. When they next went off they exploded.
The goth girl was just so tempted to take strides forwards and not care who or what she crushed. In fact, she didn't know why she just didn't do that. These creatures were hostile to her, after all.
Try to be nice. Her mind said. But it was difficult with the lilliputlians constantly trying to jab at her with their weapons. She was used to this feeling, lesser people finding her a threat and feebly trying to subdue her when she could crush them all so easily. At this moment, towering over and surrounded by easily destroyed, fearful mortals, it was the perfect metaphor for her life; she was not just 'different,' but an unstoppable Titan amongst easily destroyed mortals.
The Doctor would never know, and they are only fictions. Her mind reasoned. Would you be concerned with the well being of an ant?
Despite thinking this, she found herself not acting upon it regardless.
Eventually she turned and looked at the army which still followed her and she said very firmly, slowly and sharply to this mass of insect like soldiers.
"GO... AWAY...!" She warned. They stopped at her words and looked like they were considering, but began advancing forwards regardless.
She turned more sharply and stamped her foot down waving her hands. "SHOO! SHOO!" She said sharply. Again the soldiers hesitated, but quickly found their courage to advance again. Raven clenched her fists and used her powers to summon a whirl wind, which she blasted at the tiny humans hoping they'll finally get the point and just go away.
They still wanted to follow her.
Persistent little bastards! She thought.
Raven could hurt them, it would be so easy and would give her masses of satisfaction. But no, she could easily outpace them just by putting one foot in front of the other, so instead she just ignored them and continued walking. She hovered over the top of a ditch in the land, which was like a canyon to them, and she left them behind the barrier and in her dust.
She floated above the ground and looked around for any sign of wreckage from the ship, and she reached out hoping to sense the distinctive signature of the Doctor. But she felt nothing. He was either too far away to sense, or...
Don't think it! She didn't even want to consider it. The Mistress is so gonna pay for this.
Along the shoreline she spotted some wreckage from the Black Pearl and so she set herself down on the ground to investigate. It was the mast and rigging mostly, along with a few bodies that were leaking ink. She released a breath when she discovered the Doctor was not among them, not Captain Hook, Alice or anyone she knew, or cared about. Though sadly, Barriss was not among the dead.
That was a nasty thing to think!
Oh, shut up.
Raven froze as a voice, a shout, in a language she didn't understand came at her. Raven spun around to see a tall man in a triangular brimmed hat holding a flint lock pistol at her. He spoke again in a tongue she didn't understand, but it was threatening. The TARDIS wasn't translating for her anymore.
"Umm... do you speak English?" She asked slowly, her stare intense to show she was not intimidated by him.
"Ah..." The man said, "My birth was of honest parents on an Island called England."
Weird way to talk. Raven thought. He also spoke with a very broad, regional English accent. Raven wondered if it was another form of Yorkshire. She didn't have a good understanding of English accents.
"Are you here alone?" She asked, scanning the area around her in case this was some sort of trap.
"What became of my companions I cannot tell. They were all lost." The man said.
Raven's mind went back to the Doctors theory about fictional characters becoming more three dimensional. Clearly this person was still bound by the pages he came from. Perhaps he speaks in a weird way because its all the dialogue he has access to.
"Where are you from?" She asked, but again she got a strange answer.
"Ah, it would not be proper to trouble you with the particulars of my adventures." He said. "My father had a small estate in Nottingham, miss. I was the third of five sons, he sent me to Emmanuel college in Cambridge at fourteen years old." He rattled on, but the text did sound familiar to Raven. Nottingham? Emmanuel college in Cambridge? She remembered having to look these places up.
Raven suddenly had an idea. She had already met lilliputlians, so perhaps this was...
"Are you Lemuel Gulliver?"
"Your servant!" The man said bowing. Presumably that was a 'yes'. This was a start, but it got her nowhere to finding her friends. But Raven hesitated before speaking. Was Gulliver a servant of the Mistress? Or was he a free character?
"I'm looking for my friends." She said, and she described the Doctor, Captain Hook, Alice and the like.
"I confess, I know not of whom you speak. Though my eyes have clapped a person of the feminine persuasion in a similar guise of your own, though of a curious complexion." That sounded like Barriss alright.
Damn it!
"Accompanied by a woman of great girth, also of a curious complexion of the skin with a curious decoration adorning the forehead."
And that was the Impostor.
Double damn it!
Raven was about to ask if Gulliver had seen them. When he suddenly froze, and looked like he was sensing something in the air that Raven could not.
"Quick, we must make ourselves scarce!" He cried and he ran towards the cliff face, past a small boat and he dived into a cave. Raven followed slowly from behind, not fully understanding the urgency. Until she saw something gigantic stepping over the cliff face. A young boy and a girl, both were gigantic!
Raven had met the Lilliputlians, and Gulliver, these must be people from Brobdingnag, the island of giants.
Ravens body locked up at the sight of them. Flashes of her father towering over her entered her mind, she was terrified; and these were children, so she was doubly terrified, and they were gigantic, so she was triply terrified!
The girl spotted Raven in the sand and they moved forwards. The boy reached for her.
Snapping out of it, Raven activated her powers and dark energy took the boys hand, and she twisted it. The giant winced in pain and fell to the ground on his side.
The girl now raised a fist and tried to bring it down on Raven. But she quickly took to the sky and flew for the space above them. The Goth girl dodged grasping hands and fingers. But the boy threw a fist full of sand at her, and she was blinded for a second.
Concentration lost, Raven fell to the ground in the sand trying to clear her eyes.
The girls clawed hand was reaching down for her, and the boy looked ready to squash her like a bug.
Suddenly the giant hand was batted out of the way and the two children were pushed aside by someone new.
"Leave it alone!" Said the new figure, a girl, and one Raven knew. It was Alice! She'd eaten her magic biscuits and turned giant.
"You two should be ashamed of yourselves!" Alice scolded, "Go home and leave this poor creature alone!"
"But it hurt me!" The boy cried.
"It doesn't want to be picked up." Alice said, sternly. "Now go home, before I tell your mother."
The two kids were upset as they stamped away, one crushing Gullivers small boat in frustration as they went.
Once they were out of sight Alice drank her potion and she shrank back down to Ravens size.
"Thanks." The goth girl said.
"Pleasure." Alice nodded.
"This Island is a jumble of different Island adventures. Gullivers Travels, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Coral Island, Lord of the Flies, Castaway, Lost. It's all here." Alice said as they began to trek across the Island, following Gullivers instructions to locate Barriss and the Impostor.
"No sign of the Doctor or Hook?" Raven asked.
"When the bomb went off I was thrown clear of the ship. I don't know what happened." Alice said. Raven noticed something odd. Alice's clothes were dry, and they were neat and unwrinkled. Perhaps it was something to do with the Land of Fiction itself, Raven reasoned.
"Do you think the Doctor is still alive?" Alice asked.
"I couldn't kill him, so yeah." Raven said. Alice looked a little on edge after that comment.
They went into a forest. This was where Gulliver said he saw the girls. It didn't take long for them to find the pair. The Impostor, as always, had a voice which carried like a fog horn.
"They aren't bad people." Barriss said, as she poked the camp fire with a stick. "They just don't want to be ruled by the Mistress, they want to have the freedom to be themselves and not be re-formatted to suit the world and stories the Mistress wants."
"Everyone else is happy with her." The Impostor countered. She struggled against her bound feet and hands.
"Only because they're either ignorant, stubborn, or you've already re-written them." Barriss said back. "I don't know if I trust the Mistress to re-write me."
"You're already the perfect character. You're nice, kind, sweet, a touch of spice to your personality, and you're an alien species, and a girl."
"Perfect, as in boring." Barriss countered. "Say what you like, but the fact I betrayed Ahsoka is the only reason why I'm so memorable to start with. Ahsoka was a better character than I ever could be."
"We can make you the best character you want to be. Do you want to be the most powerful Force user? Do you want to retcon something? Do you want to be universally loved? Have parents? A boyfriend? A Girlfriend? The Mistress will re-make you however you want to be."
"And add a little of her own views to override mine?" Barriss asked sceptically.
"Your views and personality match precisely the kind of character the mistress wants on her side." The Impostor said. "Think about it."
"I am thinking about it. Our views may match for all I know, but I can see the way she goes about it; and 'that' I strongly disagree with."
Snap!
Alice had just stepped on a twig. Oh well, might as well reveal themselves.
Raven stepped out into the clearing, pretending they had only just stumbled onto them now.
"Oh great, its you." Raven said flatly, Alice just behind.
Neither Barriss nor the Impostor knew where the Doctor was. Raven was sure the Impostor was telling the truth, Raven had been very... 'persuasive.'
So they hunkered down for the night in the forest. But Raven had trouble sleeping, she'd technically slept for a good few hours in the sea. Usually she'd meditate until she falls asleep, but it was still a trial to do that here, in this world.
What if the Doctor is dead?
He isn't.
But what if he is?
He isn't!
If he was, then Raven would have to release the TARDIS and try to escape this insane world. It was the Doctors desire to fix this strange realm, and she only went along with what the Doctor wants.
Why?
Because... She had no answer. Because...
Because he's your daddy? The voice in her head mocked.
Ye... yes.
Grow up! Trigon is your father.
I don't want Trigon to be my father.
You're his biological daughter.
Anyone can be a father, it takes someone special to be a dad.
Raven curled up, and imagined what her life may have been like if the Doctor had been her real father. Would he have done all the things a loving father would do, like those she reads in the books?
Would he have read her bedtime stories when she was five? Teach her how to swim when she was seven? Hugged her? Loved her? Taught her? Took care of her? Protected her? Scolded her for staying out too late? Being overly protective if she brought a boy home with her? Maybe she wouldn't be as cold, closed, or abrasive with people? Maybe she'd even have actual friends!?
That's not your life. The voice reminded her.
But it's the life I want, and I want it so badly. I want a daddy, I want a family, I want friends, I want to be normal. Her semi-conscious mind insisted.
I want my daddy! Said the voice of something she wasn't used to hearing anymore, and it had never uttered that thought before, ever. The voice was of her inner child. Where is my daddy? I want my daddy! I will find you daddy.
Doctor! He's the Doctor, not daddy, never daddy!
But I want my daddy!
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!
The voices and thoughts kept coming as she teetered on the edge of sleep.
Something brought her back to consciousness and her mind settled again. All thoughts from her inner selves were squashed under her consciousness. Especially any thoughts relating to a 'daddy'.
Movement, and Raven was awake instantly.
Her head rose and she looked around. It was still dark, but she could sense something was out there.
The Impostor was still sound asleep, snoring a little. Alice was sleeping with her head up against a big mushroom.
Barriss? Where was Barriss?!
Not wanting to wake the others, least of all the Impostor, Raven got to her feet and reached out to sense the fictional female space monk.
She found her. Barriss wasn't very far away. She was standing in a ray of moonlight looking up into the night sky. A sad look on her face.
Raven did what she's good at. Stand in the shadows and creepily watch. The expression on Barriss's face suggested she was in turmoil inside her own mind.
Ha! Ameture. Raven thought, rather hypocritically.
"I know you're there, you might as well come out." Barriss said.
Who's she talking to?! Raven wondered. Is she about to betray us? She waited, and waited for this new person to step out. But she couldn't sense anyone else.
"Raven?" Barriss asked, "Do you prefer to stalk me?"
Oh, she meant me. Of course, she has her own freaky powers.
Raven stepped from the darkness and into the moon light.
"What are you doing?" Raven asked accusingly.
"I couldn't sleep. You?" Barriss said.
"I couldn't sleep, because of you." Raven said, again accusingly.
"I was a little too noisey, I'm sorry." She said calmly and she looked up into the stars. "Raven, do you know what its like to be hated?"
"More than you could understand." Raven said, trying to close the door on any conversation between them.
"Hated for things out of your control?" Barriss continued, "Hated for what some author made you do?"
"Kinda." Raven said. She wanted to shrug, but she didn't.
"Why do you hate me?" Barriss asked, "I thought we were friends, but you've developed a dislike for me."
"I hate a lot of people, don't take it so personally." Raven added flatly.
"Its more than that though, you're sabotaging me. What am I doing wrong? Please, tell me, so I might address it."
'Over the years I noticed their attitude towards me was gradually shifting, becoming more cold. I didn't know if I did something wrong in the past, and they wouldn't tell me so I could make it right. It just kept getting worse and worse. Sometimes I thought they enjoyed me squirming, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.'
Those words came into Raven's head. They were Kasey's words, they were words he'd said in distress as his mind died; and he was talking about the kind of people who gradually pushed him to the brink of suicide; and it's what Raven realised she was doing right now.
Raven swallowed, her armour had dropped for a second, but Barriss didn't notice.
What was the reason she hated Barriss? She just didn't like the way Barriss interacted with the Doctor. No, No, No, that was not the reason, that reason is silly. Her mind insisted. But it was true.
"I've been meditating on what you said to me when we fought the World Turtle." Barriss said, "You're jealous of my fascination with the Doctor, and his with me and my fellow fictions."
"What utter shit." Raven dismissed, but she'd put her finger right on it.
"I dream what I think you dream about, and the Doctor just seemed so nice and understanding." Barriss said. "Not judgemental, nor hateful. He sees to the core of people and can see the turmoil underneath."
Raven again didn't speak. Hearing Barriss made her sound more and more like Raven, and she hated that. She didn't like the idea of there being another person like her, because it suggested there was a person out there who was like her, but better than her. Someone more deserving of the Doctor.
I'm not sure I even deserve him in my life. She'd once admitted to Kasey, and she feared someone more deserving may come along.
"I'm wary of you." Raven said slowly, "Because I know what you did to your own kind. Even I never attacked my own people."
"Oh, so you know about that, too." Barriss sighed, "I'm not proud of it. In fact, I am ashamed of it."
"Save it." Raven cut across her sharply.
"But I am." She said, "It was something I had no choice in. My reasoning behind it wasn't very well established. I was just a minor character, I was useful to a key part of someone else's character development. The writers made me betray my best friend, because they had to get Ahsoka from point A to point B. But it was never my character before then, before I was a lot like you. Smart, a drive to prove myself, sarcastic, with a few darker tendencies. But I just wasn't interesting enough to develop, to the writers at least." Her sad tone gained an edge. "The part of my character that made me betray my best friend wasn't properly established. So I rejected it. I reject it!"
Raven stood watching with an expressionless face, her hood over her head still. Her image that of a person casting judgement on a soul and she was not finding Barriss's case too favourable.
"I'm not a monster, I don't want to be a monster." Whoa! Those words echoed into Raven's core and she felt her cold mask slip a little. "But that one action defines me now. No matter what I do, my character will be hated. Ironic though, that it's the combined hate which spawned me to life in this world, yet I reject the very moment that caused me to manifest."
Barriss looked up at the stars and she clasped her hands together.
"Some days I prefer that episode never aired. I wish I'd never came into existence, and some days I wish I could leave existence altogether. But only the continued hate keeps me here."
Raven's mouth shifted, her emotions stirred up. The goth girl could empathise with a lot of that, but she just didn't want to. Barriss was a mirror of her, and she found her infinitely irritating for it.
Now the silence was just awkward.
Say something- say something- say something- say something. Her mind kept telling her.
"You're..." She paused again, "... it's good that you regret what you did. But you're looking for sympathy from the wrong person. I have none to give. I am a heartless monster." Raven sighed, she hated herself for what she was about to say. "But you're not. You're a better person than I ever could be." Raven swallowed. "I'm sorry people hate you for one, big mistake. But that's what the world is like. One big mistake, that's all it takes, and it colours you, forever."
"What was your 'Big Mistake'?" Barriss asked. Raven was caught off guard, but decided to answer the question.
"I was born to the wrong person." She said mysteriously.
"But that's a horrid reason to hate someone." Barriss interjected. "You were hated before you were even born?!"
"Tell me about it." Raven sighed. "It's peoples free choice to hate me if they want. I can't stop them, and it'd be wrong for me to force them to stop." Raven swallowed again. "Sometimes all we can do afterwards is just not be the person they think we are, and hope our sins can be forgiven."
"But what if the writers try to make me utterly hateful and evil. A villain?" Barriss said, her voice cracking, "I'll have no choice but to become how the public sees me."
"That I can't answer." Raven shrugged. "It's a good thing you're fictional and not a real person."
"But I am a real person!" Barriss said, "I want to be a real person."
"Not possible." Raven said, rather coldly. "You were spawned from a book. Ultimately you are a slave to the fiction that is written and the people who read about you."
"You must be so lucky." Barriss said.
"Why?"
"You can choose to not be what people write about you. You are free." Barriss said sadly, "I have to become what is written about me. No matter how much I evolve in here, it could all be wiped out with a few strokes of a pen." Barriss now swallowed, "And that scares me."
"I... I'm sorry." Raven said quietly. "But I don't see how I can help you."
Raven turned around and walked back into the shadows and back into camp, leaving Barriss to stand in the ray of moon light.
As Raven made herself comfortable on the ground her mind said.
'You can choose to not be what people write about you? You are free.' She says! Ha! Her mind scoffed. Freedom, what is that? My destiny is already written, and I have no choice but to become the thing my father has written for me.
Raven had one final thought as she fell asleep.
But I wish it wasn't written so...
To Be Continued...
Authors notes: I never planned for Barriss and Raven to empathise like this, but I quickly realised how similar their own plights might be.