(MAIN RANGE): Blindspot
(MAIN RANGE): Blindspot
This Story Stars Alison Brie as The Twenty Third Doctor and Gillian Jacobs as Paige
From a Prompt By Cyberbrig and Hazel
Prologue
Paige had left the Doctor.
The Doctor had said something was wrong, and that she could sense something wrong with the world. Something the Doctor would solve. And Paige had said she would come with, but the Doctor said no, and then Paige was led out of the TARDIS, and she returned to her flat in Cardiff.
She had never felt at home here, really. Her moving boxes were still scattered on the floor. It had been a jump, moving from America to Cardiff, like that, but she had done it.
And then the Doctor picked her up, and they travelled for a long bit, and Paige felt comfortable in something.
And then she was back here.
Paige struggled to adjust to her life. It was a hard business, moving to a new country. Least of all, the fact she chose Cardiff. The streets flooded with rumors about Something Torchwood something or other, and the natives didn’t seem to take to her.
She wasn’t very happy with her “new life,” she had moved on from her “old Life” in America, to here, but She wanted her “middle life,” she supposed. Life with the Doctor.
Which is why when she received a note on her doorstep, with merely a return address and a scrawly handwriting that said Come and See on it, her adventurousness got the Better of her.
Chapter One
At the address, Paige creeped inside. "Hello?" She asked the Victorian household. It echoed, and reminded Paige of some of the Scooby Doo-ish places the Doctor took her to. Used to take her to.
She realized that she should probably be quiet because she had no idea who invited her here and this was actually the stupid kind of thing people do in horror movies all the time, you know, the ones she hated.
Paige began to berate herself within her mind."Oh, Paige, you could have called the Police to investigate. You could have called a friend to come with. But no, Paige. You were dumber than a person in a Saw movie. You let the idea of being an investigative journalist excite you for one second, and you conveniently forget that those people piss other people off and get killed. And You aren't a Journalist, so come on, And you're having an internal monologue to yourself, when you could be running out the door, but what are you doing? Going deeper into the creepy house."
Paige continued to walk deeper into the creepy house. She passed a dining room table, fully set and with beautiful linens that were now sunbleached and covered in cobwebs. Not that she could see much of that in the dark without a flashlight. All she saw were the dark wooden walls and the floorboards that creaked like they were alive.
A light at the end of the corridor.
Oh, this is stupid, this is so stupid, this is so stupid-
"I never expected anyone smart to come to this address. Least of all someone I know."
It was a woman she didn't recognize, with blackish or auburn or whatever hair brownish blackish hair.
Chapter Two
"Doctor," Paige cheered, laughing.
"It might be surprising for you to see me like this."
"No! Doctor! I get it! You're an alien that changes faces, and always looks like an brunette!"
"Let's go with that." The Doctor said dismissively. She furrowed her brow.
"So what was that letter?" Paige asked, laughing.
"Letter? I sent in a call to UNIT. Some chap named Shindi said that they'd get their best on it, Thought that was why you were here."
"No, I got a letter in intimidating black spidery handwriting that said 'Come and See' and I wandered into the Scooby Doo house." She muttered. "Not my finest hour."
The Doctor narrowed her eyes. "This is not a safe place, Paige. A long time ago, someone did an arcane ritual, and used all of their remaining life energy, trapping the monster upstairs for 500 years in a great heroic sacrifice."
"Who was it?"
"Me," The Doctor said, entering the TARDIS, and taking out a sci-fi device and examining it with her sonic screwdriver. "Hopefully it won't come to that, this time."
"You spent a regeneration on it?" Paige asked. "When?"
"The creature is capable of scrambling long term memories, it's a biproduct of it's origin. Anyway, I'm not sure. I might not even have done it yet, I just know it was me, I left a note." The Doctor showed Paige a note in the Doctor's handwriting.
"So, just like that?" Paige grinned. "We're back in business?"
"If UNIT gets here. If we survive." The Doctor said, handing Paige the device she had calibrated.
"A sonic torch." The Doctor said. "You'll want one. There's even less light upstairs."
Paige tried to flick it on. It seemed to her like a normal flashlight, maybe a bit pinker.
They heard a bump upstairs.
"Whatever's up there, it's going to break free soon." The Doctor said, moving ahead and down the hallway, and she led Paige to another staircase, before stopping.
A fly had been frozen, perfectly in midair. It didn't move.
The Doctor growled.
"Time has stopped." She said. "It's done it."
"What? We're still moving." Paige said.
"We're the only things in the world that are." The Doctor replied. "Help isn't coming. We're alone."
The thing upstairs in the darkness, growled and stomped.
Chapter Three
The Doctor sunk down to Paige's level, and whispered. "Paige, go around to the other staircase. Try to box it off."
"Okay." Paige said, her voice cracking a bit.
"And Paige, my note tells me one thing. You cannot, under any circumstances, look at it."
"Doctor, you know a lot about this thing, regardless of what your note says. What is it?"
"I can't tell you." The Doctor said, wrapping a cloth around her eyes and handing Paige a cloth too.
Paige bit her lip.
The Doctor and Paige simultaneously realized that the blindfolds made the flashlights redundant. They left them on the table.
"Okay. Paige, go-" The Doctor said, and Paige could hear her going up the stairs.
Paige now had to go up to the other staircase. Great.
She wrapped the blindfold around her eyes, and she realized that she could hear something.
She moved down the hallway, bracing for impact with pretty much anything. She thought about the sounds around her. She could really only hear her heart beating.
...What was that?
Rhythmic. Some kind of, weird dull Pink Floyd synthesizer kind of noise. But beneath it lay something animal.
She was useless like this. But she had to keep the blindfold on. She moved closer, and to the staircase.
By the staircase was a Grandfather clock, frozen mid-tick.
The slow single click echoed and never seemed to end or pane out in any way.
Paige felt the staircase around her, and grabbed the railing.
The Animalistic Electronic Noise stomped in a different direction, upstairs. Paige slipped off the blindfold, just for a moment, to see where she was.
It was...dark, but less black dark, and more lightish grey dark that was like a solid fog.
Fog had frozen in a single place in the drafty upstairs, and Paige inched up the staircase.
"Paige," The Doctor's voice said. "Take off your blindfold, please."
It was nothing like the Doctor. It sounded exactly like her, but she could already tell, there was a distinct wrongness to it.
"Paige, I need you to see this," The Not-Doctor continued.
Was this what The Doctor was talking about?
She thought about direction, and made a clicking sound with her mouth.
Okay, so humans cannot do echolocation without training.
Something clawed reached at her, and Paige felt it snag at her shoulder as she ran into the other direction.
The Doctor's voice stopped.
Don't take off the blindfold, Paige thought, begging herself, don't take off the blindfold.
And then the thing lifted it off of her head.
Chapter Four
A shallow, translucent Doctor, stood before her. She looked exactly normal.
With the slight deviation of having no Eyes.
The ghostly Doctor held the blindfold, and angrily glared at Paige from empty sockets.
She then, blindfold with her, faded into nothing.
The real Doctor rounded the corner, without her blindfold either. "IT TAKES BLINDFOLDS NOW!" She said somewhat unhinged.
"You took my blindfold."
"That was one of the creature's projections. It takes the form of it's last victim in ghostly fashion. It just continues to age. For a human it would be a decayed huskly skeleton. For a time lord, it simply appears as their current regeneration." The Doctor said. "And yeah, you can look at those, they're just the creatures minions. What you can't look at is...coming around the corner now."
Paige saw it before she closed her eyes although she tried not to.
It had no eyes. It was huge.
It.. Paige didn't know what to say about it beyond that. It was impossible to describe.
Paige and The Doctor turned and rushed blindly in the opposite direction.
"Doctor, tell me. Tell me what this thing does." Paige growled, forcefully. "I saw it, Doctor, you have to tell me. You have to let me know what it will do."
"It takes eyesight." The Doctor said, eventually. "Eye contact with it is beyond the comprehension of the brain's central nerve. Your eyes will start to shut down with continual contact. It will take your eyes, and your brain will literally melt out of your ears. And eventually, if it takes enough eyesight from people, it will be able to see itself again."
"And what happens then?"
The Doctor remained silent.
"Doctor, what happens then?"
"You really don't want to know," she said through gritted teeth.
The creature moved closer towards them.
"What can we do to stop it?" Paige asked, overwhelmed.
"I'm going to talk to it." The Doctor said.
Chapter Five
"Hello," The Doctor called to the creature, still running. "I'd like to have a conversation."
The thing made the most horrific noise Paige had ever heard.
"No, really." The Doctor continued, still running. "Gosh this is difficult to do while running. Let's talk this out. Three Things I know about you: One, every one hundred years, you break free, and you need a being sacrificed to you sustain you and keep you imprisoned. Two, if they happen to look at you, you can take their eyes. Three, you're intelligent. Despite your attempt to make us think you're some kind of raging unstoppable Godzilla, Godzilla would be way smaller, and also wouldn't think of time freezing the house, so good show, you. I know you understand me, so please hear me out. Because neither me or Paige is going to die today. I won't allow it."
It continued to rage towards them.
"You know, you could eat us alive, and that would be all and good, but what do you get out of it? Imprisonment for another 100 years. And this has happened, over and over. People caught on to what you do. And it's never going to work anymore, because we know that-"
And the thing grabbed her and screamed at the Doctor with her past selves voices.
"You're never going to get anything out of this. You're going to be stuck here, forever." The Doctor said. "You've already killed me before, it just won't stick."
And then time resumed, and the UNIT team rushed into the house.
The thing stood there, and walked out towards them.
"Psychology doesn't work on it." The Doctor said to Paige. "Whatever that thing is, it's intelligent, but it doesn't care. It's a monster."
And one of the brave UNIT soldiers rushed at the Monster, and it took him up with it's claws and then as the dead body fell to the floor, the creature disappeared.
Epilogue
"It's imprisoned for another 100 years. It doesn't care, I can't beat it, and it will strike again, and I will have to face it." The Doctor said.
"I don't understand. It's impossibly vague. What is it? Why don't you want it to see itself? How can it-"
"I don't have any satisfying answers." The Doctor said, and then there was silence.
"I think you got through to it a little. It realized at the very least, that you wouldn't give up. It had to unfreeze it and prey on the UNIT soldiers, no matter how it didn't want to be still stuck here for a 100 years. It knew you couldn't lose." Paige said.
"That's one theory. Or it did it to mock us." The Doctor said quietly.
The Doctor turned to the TARDIS lying in the scullery and opened the door.
"I'd understand you not wanting to come after this." The Doctor said.
"Yeah, this wasn't a fun one." Paige said. "But I'm not abandoning you again."
"Alright then," The Doctor smiled, leading her into the TARDIS.
"And I need some glasses. It took a tiny bit of my sight, you know. It's starting to get annoying." Paige muttered.
The Doctor made a nervous face as the TARDIS disappeared into nothing, and into the unknown.
The End
This Story (Hypothetically) Starred
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