Doctor Who and The Dark Page: A Target Novelization
In the town of Broughstershire, on May 3rd, 5:27 AM, 2027, the postman came by every house in the neighbourhood and gave every single person a letter.
It was like any other day, and the postman personally did not think much of it, although there were more letters than usual, and neither did the townspeople think very much of the fact that the postman was delivering letters either.
Some people left the letters on their step, and rolled over in bed to sleep in a bit. Some morning joggers passed the letters by, and some picked them up and placed them on the mantle, not thinking about them in the slightest. A few self proclaimed old coots who had stayed up late or woken up early to watch the sunrise, though, they picked up their letters.
They were the first to read them: which is how the trouble started.
The letter was different for each person, although they all came from the same source. This is incredibly important to note. For instance, Mr. Charles M. Layton got a letter that said
May 5, 2027, and below that, in slightly aggressive, but smaller black font, the word: Gangrene.
Mr. Harold Curbishley got a letter that said May 3rd, bludgeoning, Mrs Emily Curbishley got a letter that said May 11, 2027, Car Crash, and Little Timmy got a letter that said May 9th, 2027, removal of spleen.
Everyone got a letter, really. They all almost instinctively knew what the letters had to be about, (there could only be one thing) and there was a brief and inexorable mass panic, before an equally inexorable state of slow acceptance and calm.
Something was coming, and it was close.
2 hours later, The Doctor arrived.
* * *
Danny awoke to an uncomfortable calm. He was not used to this, he mused, getting out of his race car shaped bed that the Doctor had so helpfully supplied. Resting in the TARDIS was usually a fitful thing. The Doctor did not stop at any hour of the day - the stagnant concept of a day not necessarily fitting within the Time Vortex, and so she would be up at all hours. Danny applauded this, and yet, he would have liked to get some decent sleep on an occasion, or perhaps not have to quickly shove breakfast down his throat while The Doctor combatted a tentacle demon.
One morning, he got up and asked her why she kept moving so much, and she looked at him like he had said the oddest thing in the world, that he was being so silly, and she practically whispered - “You’ve always got to keep going. People don’t care about the Wardrobe - they want to see Narnia.”
He thought about this while getting his breakfast this morning, and sitting in front of the time rotor to watch the Doctor and Roman quietly having a conversation. He couldn’t make out about what, but this morning was serene and peaceful. He ate his cornflakes.
No noise. No Tentacle monsters.
Something had to be wrong.
* * *
The TARDIS landed with a wheeze and a thud, and despite Danny’s trepidation, there was hardly a moment before all three occupants stepped outside. They saw what was on the scanner, and they knew exactly what had to be done about the matter, because there was no matter. It was a simple British village, where nothing happened. Why not take a step out into the countryside air?
The Doctor dressed like she was going to the beach - she wasn’t, mind you. There was no beach nearby. This was because they had intended to go to Disneyworld. She was rather excited about Disneyworld.
Danny dressed ordinarily. You would look at him, and if you didn’t recognize that through severe and painful genetic engineering he had been made to look like Danny Devito, you would not think him odd in the least.
Roman, being a serious and mystique filled man, wore a prydonian-red heavy trench coat that billowed in the wind. They all looked fairly ridiculous.
Roman had not been in the TARDIS long, and Danny had not had much time in the place either. They’d had a few adventures, sure, but Danny didn’t understand Roman well. He was so stalwart and imposing a figure who believed himself to be quite superior to most around him. The Doctor found it at times hard to believe Roman was once Romana, but then he would look at her with that same irritating intellectual bearing, and inform her that he knew precisely what he was doing, thank you very much. Roman looked at things with a usual scowl, and usually found a way to complain.
“A bunch of old people! You’ve gone and taken me to a village green with a bunch of old British ladies, and all the usual friendly small towns up in each other's business that you usually only see in Midsomer Murders! Frankly, I’m offended!”
Danny smiled dimly, trying to lighten the mood. The smile was not much of a smile - it was mainly a line with a little bit of a curve at either end. He looked more uncomfortable rather than anything.
“I mean, we’re all old people, Roman,” The Doctor mused. “We’re older than everyone here!”
“I’m 22,” Danny said, through the mouth of a 78 year old Danny Devito. He was not enjoying today’s frustrating pessimism. This was a lovely village. It’s pretty and prim perfection pleased him - and he actually liked Midsomer Murders, although thanks to recent experience, he could take or leave Countryfile. The green fields nearby gave him the shivers.
The Doctor, attempting to be the rational one this week, ignored this, and scanned the air with her sonic screwdriver. She was looking for something. Something interesting. There had to be something interesting, there was something in the air. She just had to figure out what it was, and if it was interesting. But there was nothing actually strange about the town that you could see on a scanner. The Doctor shoved the Sonic back into her pocket in frustration, and began to chew on her lower lip for a moment.
“Absolutely nothing.” She murmured. “So why did the TARDIS take us here? Why is this small town so important?”
“Maybe it’s just awesome?” Danny suggested, trying to lighten the mood.
“Maybe it’s garbage,” Roman suggested.
A noise split the air, and The Doctor paused. The Doctor was hearing someone cry. This was something, however silly she was, that she could not abide. “Come on,” She said, and they moved into action.
* * *
Earlier that morning, Sydney and Fred Warren also were having a peaceful day. It was spreading like wildfire. The birds chirped through the open window, and Sydney got up to water the plants. She adored plants.
Her father had owned a treespade company, and although her brother was in charge of it now, as she had no mind for business, she had gained the adoration of nature from it nonetheless. The thing about being involved in cutting down trees is that you not only learn to cut them down, but also to take care of them, and Sydney had kept this advice very close to her heart.
There was a tree on her lawn, however small the lawn was, that her father had helped her to plant, as a housewarming gift when she first moved. When she retired and came to Broughstershire, the tree had to come with.
Stepping out the door to water the tree, she noticed the two letters that had been placed on her front doorstep, and she knew in a broad sense somehow, what they were before even opening them.
She had smelled it on the sickest of the trees, the ones her father always had to cut down for his job, the trees that had rotted branches and black bulbs of decay… that same smell of death.
* * *
The Doctor expected the tears of a young girl, something that she knew how to deal with, but She turned her head to see a tearful old woman sitting by her house doorstep, wearing a grocery uniform. The nametag on her vest helpfully labelled her as Sydney Warren.
Of course, a village like this, being so nice, was home for the richer of the rich old pensioners. She put this to one side, remembering her lessons in manners, and despite the woman’s monetary value, to not eat her. “Is everything all right?” She called. “Anything I can do?”
“No, of course not,” Sydney cried in a dreadful cockney accent. “Fred is going to die tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry, what?” The Doctor asked, taken aback.
“We just got his letter.” Sydney said, tearfully waving an envelope. It was damp with tears, and the writing on the address was a little smudged. Extending her hand to the Doctor, she placed the tears and snot covered letter within her hands, which the Doctor took gingerly.
Opening the Envelope, the Doctor was surprised to see the simple writing of
May 4th, 2027
And in slightly smaller, but much more aggressive font,
Car Crash.
The Doctor was a bit confused. She looked at Danny and Roman, but Danny shrugged, and Roman looked supercilious.
“Why are you wearing a blue wetsuit and a big floppy hat?” Sydney asked the Doctor.
“Disney.” The Doctor answered, as if this explained anything. “What does the letter mean??”
“Well, it’s there, plain as day, it’s marked for my husband Fred. He’s going to die tomorrow morning,” Sydney said. “You didn’t know about these? You should check your doorstep…”
Danny caught on. “Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah, we checked our doorsteps,” He lied, quite enthusiastically. “It’s just, you know, we, um…” (Here he failed to think of a logical excuse:) “...are incredibly stupid. We forget things all the time, don’t we?”
The Doctor enthusiastically agreed. This sort of thing was why she kept Danny around. “We’re very good at checking our doorsteps, Mrs. Warren. We never forget to.”
“Surely you’ve received your letters? The Postal Service has got one for everybody.” The Woman said.
“Oh, yes, we’ve got our letters, of course…” Roman began… “but you must tell us everything about yours, you simply must.” The way Roman looked at people was a bit like being examined by a medical professional - he had that way of appearing imposing. Sydney had to oblige.
The Doctor looked disturbed. “Letters for everyone?” How could there be letters for everyone like this, she wondered. The sheer scale of whatever was going on - it was remarkable.
“Well, they’re having trouble handing em’ out, you see. I got mine this morning. I have eleven days left. I die of yeast infection,” She said, absolutely and completely matter of factly. She didn’t look concerned in the slightest.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” The Doctor said, not sure what to do. This was a remarkably delicate, and yet baffling scenario.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” the old woman said. “It’s fine if I go. I just - I really don’t want to outlive ‘im. I just … I just wish Fred had more time… I mean, he’s 95, too young to die!”
The Doctor neurotically latched onto this number. “You know, before I came along, old Martin only had 94 theses. 94! Marty, I said: Marty, you need to round that up. Nobody will take you seriously with only 94 theses. So I popped the last one in for him.”
Sydney looked at her witheringly. It was not the time to be jovial. The Doctor looked down ashamedly and fiddled with her shoes.
“How do you know these letters are set in stone?” Roman asked, curious. It was a good question. “Surely if you know your time of death, it should be simple to avoid??”
“You don’t have a choice in the matter, me luv!” Sydney exclaimed, aghast that Roman would even consider this. “It’s your bleedin’ death, innit!! We’re all gonna go, and we’re all gonna go soon!”
This clearly explained everything, The Doctor thought to herself sarcastically. She did not know the facts of the matter.
* * *
Earlier that morning, Sheridan Holland and her husband and wife, Clyde and Sophie, were living a happy and beautiful marriage together. The sun streamed into the windows, and lit the room with an elegant golden tinge. The birds sang like something out of a fairytale, and Sheridan was so pleased, and so happy that she had been lucky enough to find not one, but two people in the world who loved her.
Sheridan went into the Kitchen to make breakfast, and she picked up the post.
There was only one letter addressed to her, for there was only one letter that mattered.
Opening it, she saw the text
May 3rd, 2027, in five minutes.
And in slightly smaller, more aggressive font,
Frying Pan.
She had no choice in the matter, and five minutes later, she bludgeoned her own head in with the frying pan she was using to make her morning omelette.
* * *
Still on the front step of Sydney’s porch, they tried to comprehend exactly what was occurring. The Doctor hoped they could get more exposition out of Sydney or something… There had to be further context!
“I’m sorry,” said Danny. “What’s going on? I still don’t understand the central concept here, letters of your date and cause of death? And- everyone here is doomed to die? What? my god, this is morbid…”
“Not just senior citizens, Danny, although that is the majority. Children. People whose lives are just beginning. If we trust those letters, Everyone in this town is doomed.” The Doctor said ominously. “I don’t like this…”
Noise began to flare up in the distance.
* * *
In the town square, society was evolving. People were behaving exceedingly odd. The majority of the village gallivanted around the town’s water fountain. It wasn’t a dance, more like a ritual in praise of something. Almost immediately, all common sense had fallen down the drain.
The Doctor, Sydney, Danny and Roman had awkwardly approached the town square to see what was going on. The Water fountain’s ornamental tip displayed a white horse, and a woman in a robe upon it. It was marble, and exquisitely carved.
“I’ve seen her, I have!” A boy, one of the youngest in the village said happily, running up to the Doctor. “I’ve seen the Pale Rider! She delivered our mail this mornin’!”
“The pale rider??” Roman questioned.
The boy proudly showed Roman the letter, which said
May 21st, 2027
And in a slightly smaller and more aggressive font, the words “Fucking Mega-Cancer.”
Before any of them could comment, the boy ran off, happily screaming “the hour is upon us!! Exfoliate our great knees into the ancient beyond!! Rejoice!!”
Even Roman seemed rather perturbed. There was a moment of silence before Danny blurted: “What’s in these letters, cocaine??”
* * *
It was only a minute before they encountered someone even more disturbed.
“Oi, you!” An angry red haired man with a full beard came up to them. He was muscly and aggressive looking, sun burnt and with exceedingly pointy and bushy eyebrows. “What are you doing talking to Sydney!!?!”
“Talking?” Roman remarked, incredulous. “My good fellow, I was interrogating the woman!”
Being a man didn’t suit Roman, The Doctor thought to herself. Their ego had gotten positively out of control. Men don’t always have obnoxious egos, that is a stereotype, but Roman almost certainly did have a damn big one. (and Romana had too, back in the day, but it was worse now due to the personality change)
Roman enjoyed interrogating people. The Man looked at Roman oddly.
“Ey, who are you anyway?” The man growled, the situation escalating. “I don’t recognize ya…”
Sydney recognized him. “Mr. Nettles,” she exhaled in a bit of fear. Clearly Mr. Nettles wasn’t very nice at the best of times.
The Doctor considered what was to be done. This Mr. Nettles clearly was the sort of person who worked out, drank beer, and beat up anyone who questioned either of those two enterprises. How was she to calm everything down? Perhaps a show of aggression?
“I walk into town without giving a name and I walk out of the town without any more problems left. I fix things.” The Doctor hissed. “I’m Clint Eastwood in all the Westerns. I disappear into the sunset, or if I am so inclined, the mist.”
She had miscalculated. Nettle’s brow furrowed deeper.
“You listen here,” Nettles said, practically shouting - “I don’t care who you are, braggy lady. You can’t do shit. Everyone in this town knows how we’re going to die. We know exactly when and how it will happen. And do you know what?? It’s liberating.” Danny looked at him, frightened. He was like a pastor preaching fire and brimstone now. “We will have a new society, one based upon existence without the fear of death. And it shall be glorious.”
Sydney was frightened, but she stood up. “Let ‘em go mate,” She commanded.
Nettles stood her down, eventually conceding. “I suppose they don’t understand yet. After all, I am one for putting things off until their proper time.” He walked off ominously - for an angry and dull brute, he clearly had a flair for the melodrama.
The Doctor bit her lip. “Okay, so, um… have some of the people in town gone homicidal or something??”
Sydney said something the Doctor couldn’t quite make out.
“What?”
“A few people in town have snapped because of the pressure… and the town’s leadership is very persuasive…”
There was no time to process what happened next - a sudden and tremendous noise echoed through the town square. It was loud, possibly an explosion or some sort of crash… No sirens sounded to announce what had just happened… no announcement or any effort was being made to calm anything down. There were no more birds singing. Danny smelled fire.
The three of them looked out into the town. Whatever was happening - the peace was broken.
Death was on the ride.
Part Two: Don’t Fear The Reaper
Paige Curbishley is an innocent young woman the age of 22, and she has hardly lived her life the way she intended. She never ended up getting the job she wanted, or really, much of any sort of job. She wiles her day away in her bedroom in the attic, writing. She has not published anything, yet. The words are not enough. No words are.
To speak from an outsider’s perspective, it is often stated how the Weeping Angels, as a species, feed on possibility, and what might have been. This is not about the Weeping Angels, but for the record, they would have found Paige absolutely delicious - she could have done anything, become a physicist, professional dancer, famous actor, or an astronaut. Paige hasn’t done anything of the kind, though. She’s a little bit depressed, but not in the realm of despair yet. She thinks she’s still going to finish her novel, Postern of a Butterfly. She may yet someday, but it will certainly not be released in it’s current condition.
Paige doesn’t yet understand the idea of a writer having to be an observer. She doesn’t observe people and human behaviour to write, she has her own idea of people, mainly gleaned from her mother and father. She hasn’t gathered enough material to really have a go at something. The outside world can be a bit much.
When the letters arrived that morning, her nuclear family was in quite a bit of a shock. They were aforementioned: Mrs Emily Curbishley got a letter that said May 11, 2027, and in slightly smaller more aggressive text, Car Crash, and Little Timmy got a letter that said May 9th, 2027, and in slightly smaller more aggressive text, removal of spleen. Mr. Harold Curbishley got a letter that said May 3rd, 2027, and in that smaller text, the words: Crushed by falling object. He was especially unlucky to have received such a letter, but figured it at least gave him enough time to put his affairs in order. Leaving the house to go fill out his will at the local bank, a malfunctioning Amazon drone dropped a package upon his head, crushing it instantaneously. It was filled with copies of Slaughterhouse Five that had been printed for the local college. So it Goes.
Emily, Timmy and Paige too, were heartbroken. Paige was so heartbroken that she ascended deeper into the attic, further out of sight, in order to be solitary. In the process, she had forgotten to open her letter like everyone else did.
Her mother Emily didn’t know what to do with her life now, not without Harold, but wanted there to be no further surprises. She couldn’t bear another shock, not after Harold, not after reading her son’s letter and realising that she would outlive him. It was all too much, and so she seeked solidarity, solidarity in something. So she decided to open Paige’s letter. She wanted to know, to understand what to do next. For a bit of hope, even though these letters had offered nothing of the sort so far.
Paige’s letter however, was blank but for the smeared navy blue text: “Printing error.”
* * *
Danny was getting decidedly worried. The chaos had begun, and there was something in the air, it had a sense of confusion to it. Smoke billowed from the nearby chapel. In Roman’s stern eyes, he saw a burning candlewick of fear. This was not how their lives usually went - where were the jokes??
The Doctor was in motion, soon enough. She saw some sort of metal object being hurled at the town school, a small hut of a building that should have been a place of safety. A man was breakdancing in front of the firebombed church. Several others were in a state of reverie, chanting in nonsense words at what was to come - not in unison, but the same few sentences at different times, in different orders, or perhaps there was none. Some were hardly clothed, although there was nothing sexual about it. To transcribe it would be difficult, but if one were to attempt, the fragments in a rough order were to say:
“First the doors shall be opened, then the time shall be it yet again, hold, hold against the blackened dunes, in vertigo is the night and the day unappeasing to all but the squirreliest of men. Five Three Nine. The lawnmowers are running. Praise Sacabambaspis. Diamond Dear As Daylight, Forlorn like the Womb! Let madness take us, we beg you, before the Rider yet comes.”
Two people in bright and bold pink wigs led the crowd in their anarchy. Their names were Clyde and Sophie Holland, and grief (and whatever was going on) had done terrible things to them. They were no longer in control.
Briefly, Sydney caught sight of Nettles. He was bathed in someone’s blood - as it was what happened according to one of the letters. Despite everything, despite his unwavering faith, Sydney saw immense sadness in his eyes at what he had been made to do, what they all had.
The Doctor tried to shout over the tumult. “I’ve seen something like this before. I believe we’re dealing with a powerful psychic influence, though something is different, something is wrong. It’s intoxicating…”
Danny bit his lip as he felt the pull. Some part of him, or something, although he was gravely frightened - dearly wished to fall into the crowd, to know the robust flavour of the fire - to praise the death. He held himself back, although it took considerable effort. “Are you all feeling it too??”
“Deeply,” Roman gritted his teeth. “It is not just letters we are dealing with.”
“Come on!” The Doctor yelled. “We have to get away from here now or we never will!”
* * *
The crowd had learned of it faster than Emily had hoped. She had wished the secret could have been kept, that people wouldn’t have learned of the blank letter, but news spread like the wildfire that was also spreading oh me oh my
Paige, upon being informed, sat disgruntledly at the Kitchen table. They apparently had to discuss it.
“You… aren’t dying.” Emily tried to understand. “You’re…. Going to have to outlive us, you’re going to have to be the family’s legacy.”
Paige looked at her mother - who was frayed, and tired, and sometimes felt the pull to step outside for a reason neither of them could quantify. Something was calling to them, like a silent Siren Song or a particularly strong Magnet.
She didn’t understand her mother jumping to such a conclusion. Why wouldn’t she die with everyone else?? It was a printing error after all - it didn’t change predetermination. Nothing could do that, because people could only act like themselves, and by trying to avoid predetermination they were also acting like themselves.
Paige was no longer slightly depressed, but her mother had latched on. “You have an opportunity, Paige. This is very important. We have to get you out of town, keep you safe.”
A knock on the door. Behind it, Paige saw her best friend, Sally. She opened the door.
”This is a bit of a tangent,” Sally began, “but, um, Paige, if like, what the people are saying about your letter, if it’s true, you’re in big trouble. I came to, like, warn you.” Sally said, twirling her hair. Sally was a little vain.
Notes about Sally: Sally hadn’t always been a girl, but she had found that otherwise she was incapable of relaxing. As long as she thought of herself in a masculine manner, she was rigid. Perhaps it was nerves. She hadn’t necessarily felt deep and traumatic dysphoria in being perceived as a man, (she sometimes worried about this) and thought that the body parts were fine, but the whole societal perception thing was awful.
Sally’s bad news worried Paige immensely. She could already feel the pull in the distance, the yearning in the town. Paige understood mob mentality, and she was sure that despite everything, the people would operate under that. She didn’t have a death date - she was different, and that wasn’t okay, now was it??
“The woods,” her mother suggested, “You should hide in the woods, get out of town.” There was a calmness in the way she said it that did not befit the words.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Paige told them both, but Sally was already unlocking the back door.
“I’m going to get you out,” said Sally. “We’re going to be safe, Paige-girl.” Sally always called her that. It was both endearing and condescending.
Paige bit her lip, and it crumpled a bit in response. This was not quite enough, so she proceeded to nibble at her fingernails. It was a filthy habit, one she could never break even when her mother tried to stop it by applying foul-smelling ‘don’t eat this’ nail polish. What could she do? What could she do? She didn't want anyone to die, and yet she was the one person who wouldn’t, right?
She looked at Sally, and Sally was very intent about this. Paige briefly wondered, in a flash, how Sally was going to die, and it was a painful worry. She could not stay in it.
“Go!! Go!” Emily begged, looking more motherly and afraid by the minute. “You have to get out!!”
The stillness of indecision - and then Paige kissed her mother on the forehead and began to sneak out the back, out over the grass and past her childhood playground and into the woods, which weren’t dark and ominous but weren’t friendly either, nothing was friendly, not today.
* * *
Danny didn’t think he’d see Stevie Nicks ever in his life. She didn’t come over to Britain half as much as she should, he noted. He had a bit of an obsession with her, the way gay men hold up beautiful blonde women who sing well as idols.
She was there, in the mist when his eyes watered right now, though. Shimmering through teardrops.
He half-imagined that she would sing to him, one of the songs that he listened to with his mother, but she didn’t sing, she hung there like a spectre evaluating him.
“Join the wind,” she whispered, her voice husky and ragged yet as painful as nails on a chalkboard. “The chorus calls through.”
She extended fingernails, sharp like talons, and snapped them, pointing down at her boot.
“Doctor,” Danny said, “I’m having ominous visions of Stevie Nicks.”
“Oh, that isn’t something that’s always there?” The Doctor said. “I constantly see the Stevie Nicks demon.” Danny could not tell if she was joking.
“Doctor, he’s being serious,” Roman grated. “I too, am experiencing severe psychotropic imagery.” Roman was currently seeing many colours made out of floating cats but he wasn’t letting it get to him.
“Oh my god!” The Doctor exclaimed, joyfully. The others looked at her out of sheer confusion. “We’re on drugs!!” She cheered, and promptly lost consciousness.
* * *
The forest was neither forbidding nor entirely friendly as Paige and Sally wandered into its depths. It was not an incredibly large forest, being in the British Countryside, nothing but an amalgam of trees, really. It was enough to hide in, if briefly. Sally and Paige were coming to the dreadful conclusion that soon enough they would have to move, hide somewhere in town, and when you could see the smoke from the fires this was not appealing.
It was midday, but the world was billowing in smoke and shadow. Sally stopped to lean on a tree, and she coughed furiously.
Paige didn’t want to ask, but the alternative was the silence, and that was pressing in on her like some kind of vice. “How are you going to die?” Paige asked, tentatively. It was not an easy question to broach.
“You won’t believe it,” Sally said. “It’s really stupid.”
“Of course I’ll believe it. I’ll believe anything when the air quality is this bad,” Paige joked.
Sally felt a little embarrassed. “It said ‘emu.’” She admitted. “I’m going to die from an emu on May 18th.”
“An emu?” Paige questioned. “Those petting zoo birds that hate everyone??”
“I told you it was ridiculous,” Sally laughed, and it was a funny laugh - she was amused - but it was also a sad laugh.
Paige didn’t know what to say, necessarily, but her nervousness meant she was going to say something: “Are there even Emus around here?”
“I don’t know if there are Emus around here, but if there are, you gotta take one for the team, okay??” Sally joked, and Paige laughed, and it actually wasn’t a sad one.
They laughed long and hard, and Paige had to stop to breathe for a second, because the air was still absolutely awful and filled with death, it was hard to even convince your brain to accept the smog around them. The giddiness was total, complete, and then:
Everything stopped. The happy moment was fleeting, and it was lost in the smoke, because a foreboding feeling fell over them both, instantaneously. It was a deep depression, this enormous sadness that could not be quantified, and it was heavy, like a therapist’s weighted blanket. The wind brushed against Paige’s short curly hair.
Something was glowing through the trees.
Iridescent, majestic light that blinds you but you can’t look away from, why would you want to look away from the most beautiful light you’ve ever seen… it cut through the smoky blackness like a knife.
What was it…
A figure, it was a figure, because you wouldn’t necessarily call it a person… a glowing figure of pure light on a blurry formless but clearly four legged shape, the memory of a horse. There had been rumours, hadn’t there been rumours?? Something that had delivered it this morning, the thing that gave them the letters, all of this trouble…
She was looking at the Pale Rider. And just like that, it galloped away into the billowing smoke and shadow the world was trapped in, the light fading inexorably. It was gone in a flash, and with it, that feeling of immense sadness, replaced by fear.
Sally looked at Paige nervously. “…do you think it’s riding an emu??”
* * *
The Doctor, Roman, Danny and Sydney were no longer in what the Doctor kept insistently calling “The Hell Zone.” The world was still covered in smog and grey, and you could see fire everywhere, but it wasn’t calling them in with horrific visions anymore. The Doctor was experimenting. She was trying to figure out how much drugs were in the air, and what the town was being dosed with. She spoke about her visions:
“Did you see what I saw, Danny, I just saw it, like right over there? I saw this Amazon Prime Show, Danny. I saw it, it wasn’t on a TV, it was in a fuckin bush, and it had Alfred Molina in it?? I think it was Alfred Molina. Danny, you know Alfred Molina right?? It could have been like a detective show, I’m not really sure?? It’s called ‘I Need a Hero’ and is a meta deconstructionist horror show about Hollywood and there are zombies. In the episode I watched, he met his daughter for the first time, and she’s played by Jared Leto, and Jared Leto, she shits on the floor, Danny. Do you get it, Danny? It’s a metaphor for how Jared Leto shits on the floor. It’s such a good show, Danny, you gotta see it.”
The Doctor had clearly been absorbing a bit too much of the drugs in the air - probably to prove her hypothesis that there were drugs in the air, and the impact was certainly deleterious. Roman grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her furiously. She spit out a rat. This had nothing to do with the drug trip and was not an illusion - she was trying to eat a rat.
The Doctor babbled some more about how the drugs were likely proliferated through the firebombs - that this was organized somehow, all organized. As soon as someone started rioting, the drugs would spread and everyone else would follow suit. It didn’t explain everything but was a decent working theory.
Sydney had been quiet for quite some time now, because she did not know how to respond necessarily to what she was seeing, nor did she know what was going on with the Doctor, Roman, and Danny. She did not trust any of them. They were immensely odd. The Doctor was curious, manic, Roman constantly snooty and angry, and Danny would have been fine enough and an ordinary delightful young man if he didn’t look like a goddamn famous celebrity.
“This is enough,” Roman said, taking charge, “I am done being the only responsible one here. We must solve this whole letter debacle, and we must do it posthaste!”
Another firework like explosion went off in the distance, setting off a pillowy cloud of smoke.
“We have to be somewhat competent.” Roman insisted.
The Doctor heartily disagreed, still in her addled state. “We have to legalise nuclear bombs.”
The crowd, just coming into view in the distance, seemed to be marching towards the forest, now.
“What’s that??” Sydney asked. “What are they doing going over there?? It’s just a few trees, not more than a dozen.”
“Curious…” Roman intoned melodramatically.
“We can’t just follow the psychopaths everywhere. There’s got to be some sort of methodology to this…” Danny mused. “We should be problem solving. I think we need to investigate the post office.”
“The post office?” Sydney asked, confused.
“The post office!” Danny repeated.
“The post office…” Roman considered.
“tHe pOSt ofFicE,” The Doctor babbled.
Danny ended the loop. “I mean, the letters had to come from somewhere, and I doubt that they were spontaneously generated. If they were going to be hidden beforehand, before they delivered, it would have to be in plain sight, right??”
“Astonishingly astute, my good man. Perhaps you are not a vacuous imbecile,” Roman noted with pleasure.
“...Thanks??” Danny asked.
“I say, for one,” Roman said, despite the for one being an irrelevant statement as he had complete authority over the three of them at this precise moment, “that the solution could be found by splitting up: I shall monitor the Doctor and we shall investigate the post office, while you two can find out what’s happening in the tiny woods.”
Danny considered. “It makes sense, I suppose.”
Sydney spoke out: “I don’t get why I’ve been indoctrinated in any of this, I really don’t…I just don’t understand what I’m doing, how I could possibly help, or who you even are. I find myself really rather overwhelmed. I’m just an old woman, I don’t see how I could…”
- and Roman answered: “There is a chance we may yet save your husband, and all others who have not been killed in cold blood. Make no mistake. These letters are not valid, we all aren’t going to die within a month. It is a cruel and brutal trick, and we will stop whoever is responsible.”
Sydney bit her lip. “You are some of the oddest damn people I believe I’ve ever met.”
And with this, the Doctor seemed to exit the stupor she was in, just for a moment - and she murmured… “I should hope so.”
* * *
Paige and Sally had seen the mob approaching - thankfully enough, and knew exactly who they were after. Like any half-decent angry mob, they wanted blood. The problem was that it was theirs.
Sally was very pleased that she usually wore a black hoodie to begin with, but Paige’s light pink sweater shone a bit too much for the stealth mission they had embarked upon, so they had to be extra careful.
They crept out of the woods - as if they could even be called woods and not merely an assortment of trees and bushes. The smouldering fumes were even thicker outside of the assortment of trees and bushes; it was remarkably dark and dismal, and the moments that you could see orangey yellow light through the smog, that was worse.
Imagine London pea-soup, but darker, shadowy ink-blots of watercolor poured across the village. It was darker than night now, but not even 3PM. The shadows were running, not in the sense that they were fast, but rather that they were smeared and drippy.
Broughstershire was now hell.
* * *
Mr. Nettles marched with the people, without thinking. He had stopped thinking a while back. It was a filthy habit, and he tried to avoid it as much as possible. Today was odd, and bleak, but certain people had to die, especially the girl who didn’t have a letter. Everyone should have one. It was the point of life, wasn’t it?? There was a certain logic to having the letters, knowing when your time was up. He looked down at his own letter, mushed and crumpled, although not disrespectfully so, and examined the time and cause. He relished it, really, knowing when it would happen. The freedom. He couldn’t possibly die of anything else, he knew it, deep down in his heart, and so he could really get silly with the time he had left, he could live his best life and rob a bank and kill people and do everything he had always wanted to do with his life, deep down, but never had the balls.
He intended to value every second - never again would he wile away the moments at work, filthy, stupid work! He was marching, now, and that was the way of things, yes, of course it was!
He shoved the paper back in his pocket.
* * *
The post office was a culture shock, Roman considered, stepping inside with the Doctor. It was well-lit and clinical, with those really strong LED light bulbs that cost a lot, but made everything washed-out in nearly pure white. The granite grey, cinder-block building seemed almost disappointing in comparison to that light, but Roman wasn’t one to judge post offices, just everything else. You could look out the tiny windows of the post office and see the blackened hellscape, Roman noted. It was so odd having air conditioning and not the deathly doom smog.
The Doctor, incongruous in her beach day outfit already, looked all the more odd, plastered out of her mind in the dull workplace. The outfit had been bleached a bit by the smoke, it looked dirty and disgusting.
The post office manager came out of the corner. “Excuse me??”
“Wow, you’re still here!” The Doctor murmured, still half conscious - but half a conscious Doctor was still smarter than most people.
“Well, yes,” said Terrence. “My letter said I have to be here for when I die in… ooh, about five minutes.”
“Couldn’t you just disobey it??” The Doctor asked. This fellow seemed a lot less psychopathic than the crowd, so it seemed safe to ask.
“I’d love to, but I literally can’t walk away from this shelf.” Terrence said. “It’s going to collapse on me soon.”
Roman and The Doctor would never not find this town’s blase reaction to all this anything less than terrifying.
“We’re just going to look around.” The Doctor said.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Terrence said. “Interfering with the United Kingdom postal service is a crime.”
This word excited the Doctor. “CRIME, CRIME, CRIME, CRIME, CRIME!!” She chanted, having the impulse control of a child.
Roman considered. “You can’t move from this shelf??”
“No, I can’t.” Terrence said. “I really want to, unlike most people, but I cannot move from this shelf. It’s destiny.”
Roman chuckled. “So then, I’m afraid, young man, that you really can’t stop us from committing a little crime for the greater good, now can you?”
“Aw, darn.” Terrence noted. “Well, it’s a fair cop,” he conceded. The Doctor and Roman high-fived.
The Doctor lifted up the little section on the counter and walked into the back room. It was to no surprise to her that there were plenty of letters - today’s mail, actually, it had all been held back, and was lying to one side of the backroom.
On the other side of the room, though, were the letters that were not from the postal service. A printing machine seemed to be plopping out dozens, no, hundreds of them, into a series of piles. It was remarkably advanced.
“Oh my,” Roman said, recognizing exactly what it was. Despite herself, The Doctor nodded grimly. She understood how it was being done now… the death letters, they were all being printed on psychic paper.
The town bells rang ominously, as if to accentuate the dire mood.
“We were right,” The Doctor said. “This whole thing was organized, executed by someone. It’s all an elaborate plot.” They could hardly believe it. The Doctor had thought this was some trick by an evil god, some malevolent figure, but the psychic paper revealed the worst. This was all organized by someone on the same level of power as them - not a god, but someone as mortal as the rest of them, and thus far more desperate. This had gotten a lot more dangerous than when the Doctor had assumed it was just Sutekh’s April Fools Day joke.
The bell on the door rang as it swung open. Impossibly, a figure had entered the post office, and not only that, but one that shouldn’t have been able to fit within the interior. A glowing figure on a blurry animal.
The Pale Rider had arrived.
Part Three: Isn’t There A White Knight (Upon a Fiery Steed)
The Pale Rider stood, impossibly, within the post office on their horse. The ceiling was not tall enough to accommodate this, but the Pale Rider managed. Everything else the Pale Rider had done had seemed impossible of course, but The Doctor had begun to figure out the explanation, the only one that could possibly make sense.
Psychic paper for the letters. Perception filters for the glowing light. Relative Dimensions to fit wherever you had to go.
The Pale Rider removed their head - no! A mask!
To reveal… Sardonia.
Wait, what?
“Who is that?” The Doctor asked. “What kind of Scooby Doo bullshit is this?!?”
* * *
Sardonia was a Gallifreyan Secretary, Roman’s Gallifreyan Secretary. For a race who is all high and mighty about the ineffableness of Rassilon and how they are the most powerful and almighty gods the universe has ever seen, the Gallifreyans really love menial labour for the lower classes.
Roman(a) had liked Sardonia. They were at least similar in a sense, in that Romana could see little Romana just out of the Academy in her puckered face. Sardonia had this look of superiority even though she was young and knew almost nothing about the world that was not in a book. She built a career upon bluffing that she was really good at things, in addition to her raw intelligence, and, to be fair, a bit of sleight of hand. Roman(a) respected her immensely, and even liked her, but would never trust her an inch.
Then the planet Gallifrey exploded - it may have for good, who knows?? The planet has an awkward habit of simultaneously leaving no survivors and also leaving absolutely plenty, basically all of them. Sardonia happened to get off the planet in time, as one does. She was the sort of person who was overbearing, yet you didn’t often notice her, not really. She had one of those faces.
Even the irrelevant people in the background can be immensely important. After all, everyone has their own lives, and it can be easy to forget about that, especially when it comes to strangers.
The world doesn’t tend to be polite and predictable.
* * *
“I’m irritated,” The Doctor noted. “I never met this person. How can I solve the mystery and be super duper cool if I’ve never met the person. I want to meet the person!” The Doctor pouted. She really loved having her Poirot moment at the end of these things.
Roman was livid. “Sardonia??” He hissed.
“...Romana, is that you??” Sardonia asked, curious. Her lips curled slightly, and then to rage: “You abandoned me.”
Roman stuttered. “I did not abandon you, Sardonia, the guards made me evacuate, I had no choice in the matter.”
“Oh, boo hoo.” Sardonia snarled. It was a wicked snarl, but upturned and sour. Indeed, sour was the word for Sardonia, with her yellow lipstick and dark eye-shadow. Hypothetically (she never had one) she was the kind of woman to suck a lemon for fun. “You died, I get it, you’re bitter. It happened to me four times. I had my skin melt off from the explosion of my escape capsule four times, each time regrowing to burn off again. I don’t care, Romana. You abandoned me.”
“I would never abandon you.” Roman stated, and it was true.
Sardonia didn’t seem to notice. She’d gone mad long ago. “By the time the Gallifrey Destruction Rescue Team got to my pod, I was in more agony than even the Time Lord brain can comprehend.”
“Oi, that’s still no good reason to massacre an entire village.” The Doctor stated. “I can understand being a renegade, but I don’t get causing an uber death thing. What did you do?? Drugs in the atmosphere combined with the psychic paper, I’ll warrant. You unearthed that angry little voice in the back of your head that wants you to do wrong. An entire village of people with no impulse control!”
“Yes, I know what I did.” Sardonia jeered.
“Well, we were being exposition-y, I felt like it needed saying.” The Doctor said smartly.
“WELL,” Sardonia mocked, “if you just want me to tell you my evil plan, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, because this is all above-board. We’re designing a bio weapon to combat the Maroth. You know, for the destruction of Gallifrey?? I have permission.”
Roman’s brow narrowed into a distillation of fury. “From whom?!”
* * *
Sydney had never been more frightened her entire life. She’s lived a life of kitchenettes and dried Salmon. She loves her husband dearly and hopes he’s safe back at home, that he just stays inside, and she wishes slightly that she hadn’t come, even if this is all for him, all for him to live, because if it all goes wrong, she won’t be by his side when the end comes.
She’s walking towards a mob of drugged-out lunatics with Danny Devito.
“Are you… actually him??” She asks, tentatively.
She anticipates embarrassment, but Danny responds thoughtfully. “No, I’m not him. I’m not a successful actor. I’m me, I’m a 22 year old chartered accountant, and I’m in the wrong body. I try not to be upset about it.”
Sydney considers this. Astute, she realizes that he actually is upset about it. It’s none of her business, though. She’s not one to pry. She doesn’t say anything back to him.
Danny points off into the distance. “I see them. The two girls that the mob is after.”
Sydney’s eyesight isn’t very good, especially with the smoke - although that’s doing more mileage on her throat than anything. She peers into the shade. “Yes,” She agrees. “It’s them.”
* * *
Nettles heard something. He had a frightening idea - that is, for everyone else. He chuckled to himself and stepped away from the crowd - beginning to walk towards town. Ah. This would be perfect.
* * *
Paige and Sally crept back into the shadowy town. It was nearly dinnertime, and soon the day would be gone. This concerned Sally immensely. Sally hadn’t gone mad with the drugs in the air or anything, but she still believed the letter she had read, since it was psychic paper. She saw what the darkest part of her mind wanted to see, and like everyone else, that was a soon death. Sally worried that hers was too close, but she shuffled it to the side, and tried to focus on helping Paige get to safety.
“Do you think we could steal a car?” Sally asked Paige.
Paige’s anxiety spiked a bit at even the notion, but it seemed logical enough. They had to get away from the mob, and while they were in the forest now, they wouldn’t be for long - it would not take them long to search every inch of it. They needed to get out of town. It made disturbing logic, and so Paige agreed. She got out her phone and tried to VOR “how to hotwire a car” but there was no signal. Fuck.
“Do you know how to hotwire a car??” Paige asked her friend.
Sally shrugged. “It can’t be that difficult, can it??” She began moving to work. Almost like it was a simple set up and reversal gag, she found it to be quite difficult, and they kept trying to hotwire the Jeep for the next ten minutes. Then:
Figures in the mist.
“Um, I don’t mean to alarm you, but we’re being followed by someone…” Paige blurted.
The figures approached closer. Sally picked up a brick and prepared to strike.
The mist cleared slightly, as the figures were within throwing range, and -
“Please don’t hit us, please don’t hit us,” Danny blubbered. “I’m innocent, I’m super innocent, I’m just a little guy!” He and Sydney were no longer in the smoke, and Sydney was coughing furiously.
“Sorry, can you hold on,” Sydney rasped. “Give an old girl a second to catch her breath, won’t ya?”
Sally and Paige both concernedly looked at eachother. “Who are you supposed to be, exactly??” Paige asked.
“Alright,” Danny said, speaking to the group authoritatively - or at least trying - being authoritative to save the world had to be easier than being a summer camp counselor. “I hope it helps to explain things, but I’m Danny, yeah, I know, and this is Sydney.”
Sydney smiled, cheerfully. “It’s good to see you girls are alright.”
Paige and Sally looked at eachother cautiously - a wordless conversation of ‘Okay, can we trust these guys?’
“We know the crazy psycho mob are after you, and we also know that they are on some sort of experimental alien drug.” Danny said. “The Doctor has a theory that it’s being sent through the firebombs?? I have no idea. Look, why are they after you??”
Paige thought Danny was quite odd. She found this oddness assuring, because despite the fact that he was odd, he was also almost definitely not murderous. Sydney wasn’t murderous either. She reminded her a lot of her Meemaw, actually, which was a little disconcerting. “I don’t know why it hasn’t affected us, if that’s the case…” Paige considered.
“We have been doing our best to avoid the smoke.” Sally noted. “It makes sense to me, although drugs can’t be the only thing explaining all of this.”
“I’m sure the Doctor knows more than we do.” Danny said, once again mentioning the Doctor and moving on before Paige and Sally could really figure out who that was. “Why are they after you??” Danny repeated.
“You… haven’t heard?? I’m the only girl in the village without a normal letter. That makes me a target, I guess.” Paige tried to explain.
“I’m mostly here via association.” Sally elaborated.
Sydney smirked. She knew the feeling. “What next??” She asked.
“Nothing changes. We get Paige out of harm’s way, that’s the goal. We should get her to the TARDIS.”
“The wha-wha??” Sally queried.
“I’ll explain later,” Danny said, borrowing one from the Doctor. “We should start by finishing hotwiring that car. Does anyone have a blowtorch??”
* * *
Time passes frustratingly slowly for some, and agonizingly quickly for others. For Danny, it is frustratingly slow. He’s having a hard time hotwiring the car. For Sydney, things are moving far too fast. Paige is trying to help with the hotwiring. She’s fairly useless. Sally is nearly asleep, lying against the Jeep’s tires. Frustratingly normal, Danny thinks.
Danny is fairly irritated with how average a day these disasters have become, although he’s not showing it. He is completely calm and professional at the moment - and the thought of how calm he is almost makes him anxious.
Sydney is much more anxious. She tries to breach the topic once more.
“You’ve been thinking about death all day,” she says.
Danny looked at her, and he was quite confused. “What?? I mean, of course. We have to stop the letters.”
“No, you’ve been thinking about death because someone took your life away, your normal life away.” She says. “You couldn’t go back to your family now if you wanted to.”
Danny almost got a little angrier at her for prying, but she was right. But there’s more than that. “You’re right, I’m also thinking about death though, because I’ve already done it. It’s not very good.”
There’s a bit of silence as the three of them work on the damn car. “...What do you mean?” Paige asks. “I’m - I’m sorry if I’m butting in here, it sort of seems like a you-two convo, but…”
Danny didn’t know what to say to explain his life.
“Is there an afterlife??” Paige asks, immediately, and she hates that it’s the first question, that it comes out without hesitation or tact. Sydney latches onto it immediately as well. She’s always wanted to know, especially recently - she’s never been one to believe something without evidence, and she’s near the end now, and so is - so is her husband. “Is there?”
Danny doesn’t know. When he died, it was a lot of pain and trauma that he has still not processed. He is not a healthy individual. He travels with a maniac in a blue box, seeking thrills and adventure, and it’s ridiculous, it’s mad! He didn’t even die normally, properly, he became a psychic imprint. Life with the Doctor is so strange and stupid, could he be even sure??
“I think there is,” He says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“I think there is.”
* * *
Danny felt like he had done everything perfectly, but the car wouldn’t start. It chuttered, if that was a word, that weird engine noise of something that doesn’t quite work. He felt exhausted. Would nothing work?? They just needed to get to the TARDIS… they had spent so much time on hotwiring the car they probably could have walked there…
“Hello, idiots,” said a voice from behind them.
Paige turned, and was frightened to see what she least wanted to see, the one man she didn’t want to catch up to her.
“I thought I heard a carjacking in the distance,” snarled Nettles, and he grinned with blackened teeth. “Whaddya know??”
* * *
Meanwhile, 38,000 feet in the air, a flight over the town of Broughtstershire was occurring. The pilot was a young and talented man named Steven William Moffat, (no relation) and he was flying a plane as one does when one is a pilot.
“The ground seems to be slightly on fucking fire,” noted his co-pilot, Christopher Antony Chibnall (no relation).
“Yeah, it is rather on fire,” Steven agreed. “Can you imagine the air pollution??”
Looking down at the smoldering town of chaos, they did not say anything, for the impact of the horrible occurrence was really quite impactful.
“This is absolutely horrid, should we inform the British government??” Steven Moffat asked.
“I’ll draft a text,” said Christopher Antony Chibnall. He got out his phone. “No signal.” He said.
Steven Moffat looked at him dead in the eyes. “I suppose, we’ll have to… have a conversation??”
* * *
Meanwhile, 38,000 feet below, Sophie Holland, wife of Sheridan Holland and Clyde Holland, had an idea.
“I’m going to shoot down that plane with this rocket launcher,” she bragged. “I can do anything, the plane won’t land on me, I won’t die, there are no consequences!!”
“Yay!!” said the mob of drugged out brainwashed people.
She aimed the rocket launcher.
* * *
Tonal Whiplash (Noun)
A Dissonance Between Tones in a Piece of Media That Is Jarring to the Audience.
These are just the facts.
When you look at the facts of the matter from a dispassionate angle, they become much more disturbing.
On May 3rd, 2027, 5:41 PM, a plane carrying a shipment of various farm animals was being sent from Brunswick to Cambridge, and happened to pass over Broughtstershire. It was hit promptly by a large projectile missile, causing the cabin to rupture, instantly killing the crew of 4. The animals were ejected from the plane approximately 14 seconds before the missile strike, dropping 38,000 feet towards the town below. Parachutes were not provided. The plane itself crashed into the local barber shop, killing 12 people, who were waiting in said barber shop because the letters told them that this would happen.
Their families shall mourn them.
* * *
The explosion could be heard for miles.
“What’s going on??!” Nettles snarled, his face half obscured in shadow. “I've just caught up to ya, and there’s an explosion over us??! Rather shit, I must say.” He reached into his pocket. “Ah, well, this ‘as been a busy day, ‘asn’t it?”
Danny carefully examined Nettles in the dark - a glint of light revealed what was in his pocket, as he removed it. Nettles’ hand held a knife in it.
Paige bit her lip. “You’ve got it wrong, mister. I don’t know what you want from me, but - but I’m just a random girl.”
“A random girl without a letter,” Nettles snarled. “You’re different.”
“And that makes her worth killing??” Sydney shouted. “Think, Nettles!”
Nettles did think. He wasn’t entirely in his right mind, he had been slightly brainwashed by a cultish mob mentality and a terrifyingly powerful psychic influence, but he did think, and just a spark of hesitation burst up from within him. He pushed it back down.
He pushed it back down, and He raised the knife.
There are no words for how quickly this occurred, so you must imagine it quickly, in the sparks of a moment.
As suddenly as you can imagine, dozens of Emu came crashing down from the sky. They had no parachutes, because the plane had no parachutes. In fear, Sydney moved to the side, underneath an awning. Several Emu fell slightly near Danny, enough to stop him from quickly moving.
Sally began screaming, screaming, because she couldn’t move, she knew this was it. Sally was not ordinarily one to scream, but she had forgotten. The terrifyingly amusing sight of falling flightless birds of doom was coming for her. Tears dripped down her cheeks.
Nettles surged forward, brandishing the knife, and with all her effort, Paige did her very best to hold it away from her chest. They struggled, and then Paige saw what was crashing down. She saw one about to fall on her friend, her best friend, and she knew - she knew that due to the psychic impression, or at least something or other, Sally would not be able to move, she would die.
Sally would not be able to move - on her own.
Paige stopped worrying about the knife, and dived into her friend, pushing her out of the way. The knife delved into her chest.
Sally fell to the side, not a scratch on her.
The emu fell on top of Paige’s chest, smashing open the wound.
Nettles froze there, and something within him snapped, and he saw - he saw what he had just done.
As the rain of birds stopped, the street was a bloody viscera. Paige’s prone body lay against it.
It was ridiculous, and it was awful - truly the worst thing any of them, any of them, had ever seen.
Paige Curbishley was an innocent young woman the age of 22, and she hardly lived her life the way she intended. She never ended up getting the job she wanted, or really, much of any sort of job. She wiled her day away in her bedroom in the attic, writing. She never published anything, ever.
Looking at the young girl with a life ahead of her, they all understood.
The words are not enough. No words are.
Part Four: Shadow Take Me Down With You
The Doctor and Roman were absolutely pissed.
“You’re telling me that this was an intentional stratagem for military gain??” The Doctor bellowed. She was always loud, but this was especially loud, loud in a different way. It was like she was on the other end of a big sports field, shouting through a megaphone.
Sardonia was particularly indifferent. She looked even more washed out and sickly pale in the post office’s stronger than usual LEDs and dull granite. “Yeah??” She huffed, in a tone uniquely unbefitting a Time Lord.
Roman was hurt - very deeply hurt. “You had a duty, a duty to what is good and decent as a Time Lord. To not interfere, to not cause wanton destruction.”
“You realize who I’m talking to, right now??” Sardonia snipped. “President Romana and The Doctor, two of the most interfering Time Lords ever to live. Most Time Lords are happy, you know, to live a life of merely educating themselves and being content in the act of learning. You two are nothing BUT wanton destruction.”
“You’re killing people.” The Doctor noted. “It’s sort of a bad thing.” This did not sound very good out loud, but she was trying her best.
“For the greater good of the galaxy, Doctor. The Maroth, and everything touched by the surreal reality instability are a cosmic threat to the fabric of normalcy.” Sardonia noted smartly. She was so convinced.
The Doctor had seen the cosmic threat to the fabric of normalcy last week, and it was fairly rubbish. “You mean the silly dimension we went to?? As if that could destroy the universe. It was run by three shitty aliens down a well. It was just another adventure.”
“We are at war with an inexorable concept of what should not be, Doctor.” Sardonia said, with a lusty anger. “This is the greatest threat to the Houses since the Enemy. Unless we develop weapons to combat it, the universe itself will become silly and stupid.”
The Doctor sighed. “The universe is already silly and stupid, Sardonia. I fought a mummy on the orient fucking express. There’s no cause whatsoever to kill people, it’s brainless.”
Roman nodded. “I had expected so much better of you.”
Sardonia’s scowl changed from resting-angry-face to really-angry-now-angry-face. “If you do not support the Time Lord Council, then I, as the woman in charge of this project, am authorised to use whatever force necessary.”
* * *
A bloody street, filled with dead Emu, a burning building, and sad, sad, people. It was ridiculous, it was so ridiculous, so stupid and somehow anticlimactic in a sense.
Danny did not know Paige. He felt somehow like he did, though. He had known her for ages. Why was that??
It wasn’t particularly dramatic, Danny noted. It was a pointless, stupid and painful death, death by emu. And it had been all about her, his job. He was going off with Sydney to go rescue her from the evil mob, and he’d gone and bungled it. The one person in the whole town who wasn’t going to die apparently, was suddenly very very dead.
Join the Wind. The Chorus calls through. Nonsense words he’d heard, somewhere. He heard them again, as Paige blew away, leaving them all for good.
How stupid and melodramatic.
Sally was sobbing. “It was meant to be me!! It was meant to be me!!” She babbled. There were other words too, none of them coherent. She lay down on the ground, and sobbed. Danny tried to be empathetic, tried to reach out and comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say, because it was all so dumb, wasn’t it?? Why didn’t this mean anything?? A thought came to his brain, and without thinking further, he voiced it.
Danny blurted: “We can fix it.”
They all looked at him. Sydney and Nettles, expectant. Sally, distraught that he’d even consider toying with her emotions right now.
“I died once, The Doctor fixed it with Space Life Insurance,” Danny said, pleased with himself. “We saved another girl that way too, her name was Samantha. We can fix it, we can fix it all, surely.”
No one else said anything. Sydney looked away. She looked down at Paige’s face, already empty, nothing behind the eyes. Lying there, covered in grime and ash and feather.
Sally was wailing, absolutely wailing.
Danny tried to think of what else to say. “We did it, we really did it, I’m telling you.” He pleaded.
Sydney reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Stop,” she said.
* * *
Nettles didn’t know what was going on anymore. He took the letter out of his pocket, and examined it - hoping that it would keep him moving forward, as it had, that it would give him reason, the fire to keep going. It usually spoke to him in a way, it gave him the mettle he needed, but regardless…
But looking at the date in that small aggressive black font, he suddenly found it so strangely arbitrary. It was no longer convincing. He looked over at Sally - the girl whose time it was, but the girl who lived on! He had been so filled with rage, this mindless anger, that he had not seen it… he had not seen it…
And in doing so, he had caused a pointless death, a death not ordained.
Should death be ordained??
These were consequences, consequences that he would have to live with forever. If he had not interfered - two people would be alive today, and surely that was better, surely…
Nettles did not know it, but the psychic influence, the drugs, were wearing off him as he placed his bloodied, vile, knife down on the ground. Or maybe they weren’t - maybe there is the matter of the human will to consider. Maybe what he had done helped him to break through…
Regardless, the air was, in many a sense, truly beginning to clear.
* * *
Sardonia snapped her fingers and the Pale Rider’s mount rushed into motion. Impossibly vast due to the matter of relative dimensions, it slammed into the Doctor and Roman, knocking them to the ground. The Doctor, before being knocked unconscious, wished the Time Lords had stopped being grandiose and full of themselves enough and just to use a goddamn horse.
Sardonia casually walked to the post office counter, and pressed a concealed button revealing a Time Lord interface. Her assistant, a young Time Lord lieutenant of the name of Raliss, stepped up to the counter behind her.
“Raliss, report.” Sardonia scoffed.
“Well, Commander, you’ve been sort of in here, lecturing with President Roman and The Doctor… and… not outside, throwing the drug bombs??” Raliss meekishly reported.
Sardonia bit her lip. She was surrounded by idiots. “It is lucky for you I am a woman of logic and not base emotion, otherwise I would have torn out your spinal column.” She hissed.
Roman, out of breath, but unlike the Doctor, still barely conscious, wondered when exactly it was that Sardonia became a terribly aggressive villain figure. It was odd there were so many Time Lord villains, but then Roman realized the constant that all the interesting people usually are terrible in some way.
“So the psychic projection doesn’t influence the population as thoroughly without the drug dispersal.” Sardonia murmured. “We shall have to have a bit more controlled chaos, I think.”
“Understood, commander.” Raliss said. He was an ordinary Time Lord, and did not have much of a spine to him.
“Prepare a mass dosage,” Sardonia commanded. “We have been successful so far. I want to see the impacts of this experiment on a larger scale.”
* * *
Roman struggled to his feet. It took an immense amount of effort, especially in this infernal new body of his. Damn back pain. With great challenge, he removed the multi-tool of Rassilon from his pocket - an advantage to being a former President - and fired an electrical shock towards the counter.
Sardonia yelped in shock, the blast nearly hitting her. It didn’t hit her, but it did her sense of decorum. “Romana!!” She exclaimed. “What are you doing??!”
“What is good and decent.” Roman hissed. “You are most unlucky the Doctor is unconscious. She may be chaotic, yes, but I am not nearly so scrupulous when it comes to making decisions - most certainly for the good of Gallifrey.”
“The Good of Gallifrey??!” Sardonia laughed.
Roman thought back to his advisors when he was in office. He thought of what Braxiatel would do, what Narvin would do, and finally, he considered what Leela would do.
He preferred her approach, and fired once again.
Sardonia fell back - dodging the blast with great effort. “You don’t have what it takes to lead anymore, old man!!” She shouted, furious. There was nothing prim and proper about her left. Was everything about her a facade, Roman wondered?
“I know exactly how to lead,” Roman said calmly, despite that he wished that he had done so just a bit better, done just a bit better for her - “One leads by example.”
Sardonia snapped her fingers, again commanding the Pale Rider’s steed into motion. She yelled to Raliss. “ACTIVATE THE MACHINE,” She bellowed. Roman smirked. The indolence of youth. The blurry light rushed forward.
As the steed crashed into him, so too, did it the Interface.
* * *
The post office was a disaster site. Gallifreyan interfaces have safeguards - safeguards that stop their explosions from vaporizing planets, continents, and the like, but beyond that, there was little of the office itself that survived.
Amusingly, this did not include the shelf that was to collapse on young Terrence. He looked at where the Shelf was, the shelf that was due to kill him three hours ago, rather meekishly. He was unsure precisely how to move forward.
Of course, the Doctor and Roman were fine. Roman happened to have some second degree burns due to the explosion - Raliss promptly treated these with a dermal regenerator.
Most of the letters in the office were utterly incinerated - psychic paper, despite being considerably advanced - does not do well with fire. However, the universe has a strange sense of humor, of irony. A fragment of a paper landed in front of Sardonia.
When she awoke, she was unfortunate enough to see upon the shredded paper, the words in small aggressive black font:
Sooner than you think
* * *
The Doctor and Roman, upon returning to the TARDIS, saw a rather depressed Danny leaning against it’s door. “What’s going on??” The Doctor asked. “Didn’t you have a classical Doctor Fun Time Adventure??”
Danny scowled at this, even though she didn’t mean anything bad by it. “Can we go?” He asked.
Roman nodded, and stepped inside the TARDIS immediately. The Doctor, instead, held Danny back by his shoulders. “What happened??” She asked. She was trying to be empathetic. She was not exceedingly wonderful at this.
“People died, good people died,” Danny said, trying to verbalize it. “And - and I felt all of it. This wasn’t anything but grief and misery, Doctor, this whole thing. I died the other time, and it wasn’t much of a big deal!! I thought travelling with you was silly and fun, that death was - nothing to you, that we were eternal, like a fire that never goes out, but - but…”
The Doctor looked at him. She considered what to say. This was tough - she thought back to the time she called Graham socially awkward. She didn’t want to mess this one up.
“Tragedy is when I cut my finger,” She began. “Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer hole and die.”
“What??”
“Mel Brooks.” The Doctor said, not bothering to explain any relevance to the quotation. “The line between comedy and horror, you know, if you think about it, is remarkably thin. The universe is about context, and I understand if sometimes it seems like it will all be joyous, but not only is the universe about context, it is also about contrast.”
She was doing one of her speeches now, Danny thought. He almost rolled his eyes, but he did ultimately try and listen.
“Death can mean nothing to you or it can mean everything and anything. We forget, via our own perspective, in the moment, that it isn’t an enormous thing, we forget that deaths are tiny and painful, and regardless of everything, a constant. I understand them.” She noted. “I - I wish I didn’t, if that helps. I really wish I didn’t.”
She leaned out, and she gestured to Danny to see if it was okay, before she hugged him. “I’m sorry you understand them now too,” She said. Danny was very moved by the hug. He did not often get hugs, and The Doctor did not seem like a huggy person, despite how hyperactive she was. But it was helpful - this old mad silly woman telling him that she really understood. She loved him like a parent, he realised, for the first time, in her arms, and it was such an odd feeling, but it helped. He was being parented by Judi Dench, the space alien. He smiled. It did help. He had needed some help.
And just like that, The Doctor stepped away from him. “Now, if you’ll forgive me, I really want to get out of this garbage swimsuit,” She said, and she walked away, humming the blue danube.
* * *
The village of Broughstershire wept at the deaths - there were many, and they all meant everything, but somehow there was a deeper loss when it came to Paige. A sense of responsibility for what had been done.
Sally did not say anything at the funeral - nor did Paige’s mother or poor little Timmy. They all were alive, mind you, and that helped. Very few people that knew Paige well ultimately did speak at the funeral, which gave it the oddest tinge of insincerity - although everyone who knew her wept openly irregardless.
The authorities did not really hear about any of the debacle, not when, as usual, UNIT became involved. There was quite a bit of therapy redirected towards the villagers, thanks to them - although not much else. There was very little support.
People when broken, regardless, do have the astonishing ability to come together.
The Church, the Post Office, The school, bits of the town, the town water fountain that had been so desecrated by the mad population - all were rebuilt, not by some construction office, but as a village.
The old helped the young and the young, the old. There was a sense of poetry to it all. And of course… some did get their happy ending.
* * *
Sydney Warren stepped back into her house, and despite everything, it was untouched. “Fred?? Fred, dear??” She called out, unsure of whether there would be an answer.
Weary and shuffled steps were heard down the stairs before anything else.
“Sydney, love??” Fred Warren asked. “Oh my, where have you been??”
Sydney smiled the purest smile you can even think of, and her eyes glittered with delight. She hugged Fred, right there by the door, right in front of the stairs. “Oh, Fred, I have been on such an adventure…” She sobbed, half sadness at what had happened and half joy at what was to come. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for you…”
Fred had worried about her, but he had not worried about that. He knew she was always there for him. “I take it it was all dreadfully important??” He asked.
It was.
Sydney Warren and Fred Warren both lived to 113, although Fred lived two months longer. Their lives were blissful, long and happy, and they spent them fixing what was broken and sharing the sense of goodness that they had learned throughout their world, their little village, and how it shined.
And of course, many years later, when the final day came, although it had to, everything was well, and every moment valued - for no letters came.
Comments
Post a Comment