Chapter Text
Things went back to what passed as normal for me after that, for a while. I continued to perfect my ability to leave Stormcage whenever I wanted to go on my own little trips, but beyond a few adventures here and there, things were fairly smooth. I’d settled into a routine at Stormcage, and although I couldn’t say I actually enjoyed being there, it really wasn’t putting much of a stopper on my life, either.
And then I got a phone call.
Like so much else in my life, it was about the Doctor. And, like everything else, it ended up being about the whole world, too. Sometimes I wondered if it could ever be any other way – the fate of that man seemed to be tied into the whole world, and I could never be sure if it was a literal truth or a personal one.
When I heard the security guard (New, friendly enough, well-intentioned – he had no idea what he was in for) mention the Doctor, I answered as soon as I possibly could. It wasn’t like the Doctor to actually call in advance, rather than just showing up, but if there was one thing I had learned about him, it was that he was unpredictable.
When I answered the call, however, I was greeted not by the Doctor’s casual friendliness but by Winston Churchill’s grave importance. As I listened to the man speak, I started to plan my escape. Messages from Van Gogh and exploding TARDISes? This was one story I was not going to miss.
Escaping was almost fun. I felt a bit sorry for the security guard I had drugged with my lipstick, but it didn’t supress the small flicker of amusement as I imagined them realizing what had happened. That lipstick was one of the most useful purchases I had made, as far as I was concerned. A bit flamboyant at times, but the more outrageous I made my obvious escapes, the easier it was to get out with the subtle ones.
Getting the painting didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped. Despite my many other less-than-legal skills, successfully stealing from a relatively high-security museum was, apparently, not in the cards. Fortunately, it didn’t have to be. I took in the woman standing across from me and tried to look like I was doing something important and justified. Given that I was, it wasn’t too difficult.
My next stop (this was a busy evening) was to see Dorian. I knew him well, and although I couldn’t say that I actually liked the man, I knew I could count on him to get certain objects when I needed them; it was him who had helped me to procure the hallucinogenic lipstick I had used to escape on more than one occasion. Tonight, I needed him to sell me transport.
“Sell” may not have been the best term for it. I knew before even seeing the vortex manipulator that it had probably come from unsavoury sources, and I felt absolutely no guilt when I dropped a few microexplosives in the trader’s wine. It’s not like I intended them to actually detonate, after all.
With transport in all four dimensions secured, all I had to do was leave a message for the Doctor in a suitably ridiculous location and convince a troop of Romans that I was an Egyptian queen. It wasn’t even that difficult. Honestly, I was definitely going to have to find more of that lipstick.
When I did finally see the Doctor, I couldn’t help the little jolt of relief that flooded me at his recognition. Whatever else happened today, at least he knew who I was – however much of me there might be left to discover. I was fairly certain that the Doctor would survive whatever this was – I had seen him in the future, after all – but when I showed him and Amy the painting, I couldn’t help but worry. Having had my share of adventures in time travel, I knew that things weren’t always set in stone (although I, of all people, knew that sometimes they were). For all I knew, this point could change at any moment, or could be set back on its original course, and somehow things could go very, very wrong. Seeing the TARDIS explode – even if just in a painting – was jarring enough to leave me firmly convinced that whatever this was, it couldn’t be allowed to happen.
The title of the painting – “The Pandorica Opens” – was no more reassuring than its subject matter. I knew from my time studying archaeology what the Pandorica was, or was said to be. Like most others, I had assumed it to be mythical or allegorical, but apparently I was wrong. A box meant to hold something incredibly powerful, and dangerous, and dark, and feared beyond belief, and the Doctor had to get himself in the centre of it all. Typical. Of course, I knew I wanted to be right there with him.
When we got to Stonehenge (because apparently that was the best place to bury something like the Pandorica, and the archaeologist in me was dying to speculate on the history, but now was not the time), Amy started to talk to me. It was strange, like talking to the Doctor was always a little strange. I didn’t really know when I was with them yet, although judging from their attitudes they knew me, but not my story. When Amy asked me about the Byzantium, I tried to clarify things before I could get too much foreknowledge – there was enough time-related insanity in my life already, and I didn’t need knowledge of the future to make it any messier than it already was.
I couldn’t suppress the thrill of excitement that shot through me when we discovered the tunnels under Stonehenge. They had clearly been there for a very long time, and I wondered absently if I would ever get the chance to drop by while they were being built and see this story from the beginning. After the whole thing was said and done, I decided that I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Pandorica, and was content to leave its construction to the depths of historical myth in which it belonged. Still, I can remember my first sight of it: something straight out of legend and fairy tale, sitting in front of me. Whatever danger it held, it was nevertheless amazing.
When we discovered that the Pandorica was starting to open of its own accord, I was intrigued and a little nervous, but not really surprised. We had been given advanced warning, after all. I couldn’t decide which was more powerful: my fear of whatever was inside, or my desire to know what was in there. Since neither was relevant, however, I pushed them both aside in favour of a more useful concern.
Interrupting the Doctor’s not-exactly-internal monologue on the mystery, I brought up what was probably our more pressing concern.
“Doctor, you said everyone could hear it.” I knew better than most just how many enemies – and how many devoted enemies – the Doctor had. With something this powerful happening, how many of them would be trying to harness themselves a weapon?
As it turned out, the answer was all of them. As I interpreted the readings from the ships orbiting above us, I realized that pretty much everything up there had a grudge against the Doctor. I didn’t know what that said about the Pandorica, but it couldn’t bode well for the immediate future.
The smart thing to do would have been to take the TARDIS and go somewhere far away from all of the ships waiting to attack us. We should have just tried to forget about the Pandorica and left as soon as we saw those readings. Of course, the Doctor wouldn’t have any of it. For a man who spent his whole life running, he was surprisingly stubborn.
It was as a result of that stubbornness – that desire to stand and hold his ground on the one occasion when he should probably run – that I found myself trying to convince a Roman military leader that he should help the woman who had been posing as a dead Egyptian Queen to his troops.
It was, admittedly, rather amusing. I could empathize with the way those people felt, trying to understand something that was beyond what they could possibly be expected to know, but it was nevertheless entertaining to vaporize a cabinet and watch the expression of awe and incomprehension wash over the man’s previously smug face. It was nice, after so many years of only half-remembering my life, to be the one who knew what was actually going on (even when I still had no clue what was happening).
My illusory sense of understanding fled fairly quickly when I saw the face of the soldier who had volunteered to help us. Of all the strange things happening, I was fairly certain that Rory showing up in a Roman battle camp was one of the strangest. I recognized the Centurion outfit from the battle at Demons Run, but I understood the purpose of it no better now than I had then. Rory knew even less than I did – not only did he have no clue why he was suddenly a Roman soldier, but he also had no knowledge of me at all. Being Rory, he was friendly enough to me, but it was a saddening reminder of what my future held, and it was the first time I’d met someone I knew and had been greeted with blank unrecognition.
I didn’t really have time to dwell on it, however. Rory and I split up soon after I secured his help, and I was off to find the TARDIS. Rushed as I was, given the situation, it was always a relief to see the ship again. The Doctor’s memories of me faded and changed every time we met, but she always remembered me, always caught me when I was falling and smoothed her controls to let me fly. Even in the days in my “childhood” making paper-mache sculptures of that blue box with Amy and Rory, she had been a comfort.
It was unusual, then, that she started to buck and fight me as we went to fetch supplies. She’d only ever behaved like that when there was some place she didn’t want to go, there was no reason for her to fight this trip – she’d been there before, plenty of times, and this was new. Lamenting the fact that my connection to the ship was purely nonverbal, I pressed on. What else was there to do?
Pressing on didn’t appear to be working. The ship bucked again, shifting violently in a part of the vortex that was, theoretically, smooth sailing. I grabbed onto the console once again and wondered what was up with the ship. After things smoothed out (for the time being) I asked the ship “Okay? You okay now?”
I didn’t expect an answer. I also didn’t expect to be dropped at Amy’s old house. If the old ship had been fighting enough to stop somewhere completely unrelated to my original destination, she had to have a good reason for it.
I remembered this place, and after everything that had changed since I had last been here, it was strange that the house itself was still so much the same. The same, that is, except for the unusual patterns burnt into the ground of the garden. I didn’t recognize them, but they were clearly not from Earth, and if the bashed-in door was anything to go by, they weren’t friendly.
There was some sort of signal coming from inside the house, and as I followed it I found myself being led to Amy’s bedroom. The room itself was empty, thankfully, but still filled with the Doctor’s influence on Amy’s childhood. Drawings of the TARDIS, paper dolls and figurines – they all served as a clear reminder of just how much he had changed her life, from the very start.
“Oh, Doctor,” I muttered to myself, “Why do I let you out?”
I remembered what I had told the Doctor that day at Demons Run. If this was what the Doctor could do to the life of one child he had known for perhaps an hour, without even meaning to, what else could he accidentally set into motion? I trusted him to make the right decision, when it came down to it, but I remembered the days when my life mission was to kill him, and I still desperately wanted to know why.
My thoughts were pulled back to the present when I caught sight of a familiar face where it shouldn’t have been. I thought back to something the Doctor had said earlier: Never ignore coincidence – unless you’re busy, in which case, always ignore coincidence.” I was busy, but this seemed like a bit much to ignore. I found it hard to believe that the Roman soldiers and Pandora’s Box references we were currently dealing with were scattered over Amy’s desk accidentally. The question was, which came first?
As I flipped through the book, the pieces suddenly slotted into place and I was running for the TARDIS to call the Doctor. I kept my voice low and urgent as I explained the situation. “They’re not real, they can’t be. They’re all right here in the storybook – those actual Romans. The ones I sent you, the ones you’re with right now.” I let a flicker of alarm seep into my voice. I didn’t know what could do this, but it had tricked us all with those Roman soldiers, so it was almost definitely dangerous. I could only hope we had caught onto them in time. “They’re all in a book in Amy’s house. A children’s picture book.”
As the Doctor and I analyzed the situation, it became apparent that the Romans really believed themselves to be exactly as they appeared. That in and of itself was disturbing enough – I loathed the concept of manipulating people into doing things, for obvious reasons – but I felt a little stab in my chest when I realized that one of those Romans was Rory Williams. I still didn’t really know what he was doing there, but now I didn’t even know if it was really him.
If Rory hadn’t recognized me, it seemed that I wasn’t supposed to recognize him, either. Still, I couldn’t just let the subject drop. If Rory wasn’t really himself, than Amy was in danger. He’d seemed like himself, though – had all of his own memories, certainly acted like he usually did. I hoped that whatever was making him seem like Rory was enough to give him the strength to break his commands. From what I knew of my parents, the love between them would certainly have been enough to do it.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, since the TARDIS once again started to throw a tantrum on me. I’d been trying to get back to the Doctor, since the supply run seemed to be a bust, but apparently she wasn’t even willing to make the return trip. This had to be the work of an outside influence.
The Doctor was maddeningly unhelpful. “You’re flying her wrong”, he said, the same way he always did, but I knew I wasn’t the problem. The ship liked me, knew me, and I’d flown her before without incident. Then the time coordinates started to freak out the Doctor, and I had no idea why – nor could I do anything about it.
“Silence will fall.” The words echoed over the TARDIS speakers, searing themselves into my brain. Of course. Whoever had been doing this was powerful and manipulative, and wanted the Doctor dead. What better way to do that than to mess with the one thing inextricably linked to him? As far as they knew, nobody else alive could fly this ship. I didn’t know if they were responsible for the whole of this mess, or just messing with the TARDIS, but it was still enough to make my blood run cold. I wanted to go to the Doctor, warn him about the Silence, but I knew I couldn’t. At this point, the Silence would probably mean nothing to him, and the fact that someone was manipulating the ship was far more important than who was doing it.
After what felt like a wrestling match with the ship, I finally felt us land somewhere. If I could just leave, as the Doctor helpfully reminded me, the engines would shut down and things – at least on this end – would be safe.
Which, of course, is why the doors were locked.
The ship was going to explode any moment now. Whatever the Silence had done to her was fatal, and who knew how much she could take out with her? I had to get out, had to shut down the ship until it was safe. Grabbing a cable, I ran to the doors and tried to jumpstart them into opening.
After what felt lake an eon, I finally managed to convince the doors to open. Flinging them wide, prepared to run out and deal with whatever was on the other side, I found myself faced with a wall. A very stubborn, immovable stone wall. No way was I getting through that.
This was it. There was no escape, and no way would I be able to save either myself or the ship. This was the earliest I’d seen the Doctor, but he had still known me. I’d taken that to mean that this wasn’t the last time I would ever see him, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe time could be rewritten, after all – just never when you want it to be. I turned back to the console and, not knowing if I was talking to the Doctor or the TARDIS, said what I figured would be my last words.
“I’m sorry, my love.”
Then the world exploded.