The Tenth Doctor and Evelyn Alvar: September's Gift

[memoirsverse.livejournal.com]

multiversebleed

Evelyn:

New Orleans.

Evelyn Alvar steps out of the coffeehouse where she had met with an acquaintence with contacts in the publishing world and shivers in the surprisingly cold weather, tugging her flimsy sweater closed and wrapping her arms around herself.  A small, husky chuckle emanates from her throat at the thought of the earlier conversation.   It seems she may have a new book deal.  She rather hopes so– since quitting Alice’s shop after they had a falling out, she's been subsisting entirely on freelance work, which is scarce these days.  Her savings are close to being depleted, she's been living on ramen and peanut butter, and she has been considering the merits of returning to the retail industry, albeit with a different company.  The thought does not appeal to her.

It is near the end of September, and the storefronts are plastered with pale ghostly figures, witches in tattered black robes, dancing skeletons.  A gust of icy wind tousles her hair and raises gooseflesh.  She has never known it to be so cold in Louisiana this time of year; they usually still have one foot nudged to the edge of the sultry oppressiveness of summer heat.

For reasons she doesn’t fully understand, every cell in her body begins to tingle with alarm.

And then she notices three things, one right after the other.  One:  the streets and sidewalks, usually bustling with people, are deserted.   No cars in the road, though the parking lots are still full.  Two: the scene before her is slowly becoming obscured by a flurry of white particles.  It actually takes her a second or two to realize that it’s snowing.  Three: a rapid succession of footfalls echoing behind her as somebody runs towards her.

She spins on her heels and braces herself.

The Doctor:

This is where the rubber meets the road.

The Doctor explodes over a garden fence like something out of freerunning’s greatest hits, snowflakes puffing off of his coat as he hits the ground rolling and rises to sprint without ever once slowing down.

His eyes lock on hers. “EVELYN!”

He barrels towards her, the soles of his Converse slapping resoundingly in the eerie quiet of the world that had become otherworldly.

And a coruscating snarling billow of violet violence blows through the fence behind him, smashing it to splinters, and the whole snarling cloud of indigo indignation twists to follow him, to come after him, to come at her.

He gestures frantically at her as his voice once again splits the air: “RUN!”

Evelyn:

She turn,s and she sees the Doctor first, shouting her name as he runs frantically toward her.  Then she sees…

She doesn't know what she sees.  But she watches it pulverize a fence like it was made of cardboard.  It is right behind the Doctor.  Too close.  He’s not going to make it.

She doesn’t even think.  Her legs are moving before it’s even registered what she's doing, cannoning toward the Doctor, arcing toward him at an angle, covering the ground between them in seconds.  She barrels into him at full throttle and they both tumble to the pavement, rolling out of the way as the… thing… surges past, its momentum carrying it forward though she feels its attention locked on her.  It is so close as it tears past that she feels the back of her sweater shred.

The violet cloud-thing is turning in on itself, changing its momentum.

The Doctor:

The Doctor notes, with some small chagrin, that Evelyn has elected to take his advice and run, except she’s running into danger instead of away, of course she is, she’s ruddy Evelyn.

He stuttersteps to try and change direction, but he’s miscalculated how close the swirling mass is behind him, her flying tackle saves this life and possibly all his potential future ones.

(“D’oof! …right, cheers, thanks for that.”)

Thankfully, the cloud-bank creature can’t corner worth tuppence, and this gives them time to—

“Up!” he snaps, shooting to his feet, throwing out his hand to her. “Up! Now! COME ON!”

The sonic comes out of his pocket and the window at front of the coffee shop explodes inward in a scatter of prismatic fractures, a crystal bubble bursting, and he’s leading them to jump in through it, make a run through the shop and get out the back…

Evelyn:

She clasps his hand and lets him pull her to her feet, the soles of her boots sliding on the now slushy pavement, following him through the sonic-shattered window and into the coffeeshop.  It is as devoid of people as the streets outside.  The eerie absence of people reminds her of some Silent Hill- esque ghost town.

Stumbling a little, she is breathing heavily, light headed.  When you routinely sap your energy by bilocating to other parts of the universe, peanut butter and ramen don’t have the best nutritional value.  Ridiculously and embarrassingly winded, she gasps out a question as she follows the Doctor towards the back of the coffeehouse:  "What– the hell– is that?“  There is a hollow clatter as they burst through the doorway labeled "Employees Only,” which probably leads to the way out to the back alley, and she adds, “And– and where– are all the– people?  What the hell– is go– going on?”

The Doctor:

He shoots a look at her worriedly. Yes, he’s a doctor as well as being The Doctor, he can tell that she’s malnourished, any other time he’d fumble in his pocket for a banana, but they’re a bit hard to eat and run.

And run they must— the thing can’t corner, and it’s amorphous, but it’s got physical mass, it can’t pass through objects, it’s having to squeeze its way through the window and through the shop after them— but that won’t slow it down long.

Nipping through the stockroom, there’s the fire door in back— one of those that makes you press the bar for a few seconds before it’ll open, but there’s that sonic and a shower of sparks and he kicks it right open for them.

“We’re in a dimensional subripple,” The Doctor explains, he’s a little short of breath, too, but he’s been running for longer. “An asynchronous pocket of time— one second out of sync with chronological progression as your species interprets it. I put me TARDIS into this region of spacetime as a safety precaution to do some maintenance— s’called a ‘coordinate override,’ when you do that with a TARDIS— only stepped outside for a mo’ to check the bulb on the top— when that— descended. I have absolutely no idea how you got here, but that’s a hurdle we’ll hurdle when we come to it.”

"I’ve never seen anything like it before,” The Doctor admits, “but if it’s native to this frame of reference, it might be a temporal entity of some kind, and having crossed over into this asynchronicity, we seem to be just bursting with the stuff it feeds on, possibly temporal background radiation.”

The Doctor smiles a thin little quirk of a smile as he bundles them to the end of the alley, glances left, glances right, wonders if they can make it back around to The TARDIS before the monster catches up now that he’s led the thing away—

"For lack of a better term,” The Doctor drawled, “it’s a Purple People Eater. And in the absence of any purple people, it seems to be willing to nosh on us.”

Evelyn:

"A dimensional– subripple?”  She shakes her head, but it somehow makes instinctive sense, though she doubts she could ever explain it in words.  "I have– no idea ei– either,“ she responds to his bewilderment about her presence here.

"Great!” She huffs out a humorless laugh.  "So we’re– dinner.“

She can hear the sound of crunching metal and exploding glass somewhere nearby as they edge toward the end of the alley.  She slows her pace; the alley ends in a rather imposing brick building, but there is a narrow walkspace between structures that leads to the storefront. Without hesitation she steps into it, glancing behind her to see the purple thing oozing out the back door of the coffeeshop.  "Please tell me– your TARDIS is nearby!”  Something occurs to her and she frowns.  "Oh, God.  Doctor.  The TARDIS.  If this thing feeds on– temporal energy…“

She very much hopes the Purple People Eater currently pursuing them is the only one of its kind here in what she has now begun to think of as Silent Hill.

The Doctor:

"All universes are complete in and of themselves,” The Doctor points out, chattering at shatterneck speed, “but they each of them contain a spaciotemporal spectrum, they contain multitudes, any number of subdimensions can inhabit a single universe, what if I’d gone two seconds out of synch, or three, and on and on, subatomic worlds and Narnias and Asgards and Faeruns.” He tsks softly at her own admission of ignorance as to her ingress. “Yeah, I thought not. If you’d meant to be here, you’d be here as Siobhan, not Evelyn.”

"A two-course meal,” The Doctor chortles wryly, darkly.

His gaze, too, snaps back to the store’s rear exit as they struggle to make headway, they’re leading it in a loop, causing it to make an ouroboros of itself— his thoughts briefly dart to The Corsair, here —but they’ll have to hurry if they want it to eat its own tail before it eats them.

“It’s nearby,” he promises, “one last run, just you watch, eh? Get squishing through that gap, I’m right behind you.” He squints back at the monster as he edges through the walkspace, keeping an eye on its progress, it’s snapping and snarling like a moray bound up in seaweed. “No, no, I don’t think it can feed off of The TARDIS directly, it’s too concentrated. I think it needs it diluted… the temporal background radiation embedded in the cells of all time-travelers. Needs to eat biomass, like The Reapers. If it had wanted The TARDIS it could have gotten it by swallowing it whole, instead it chased after me.”

A length of the creature surges out of the hole it’s bashed in the back wall of the coffee shop, and it crashes face-first into a Dumpster, crumpling the steel and causing refuse to spill about.

"Speaking of which,” The Doctor urges Evelyn, “GO!”

Evelyn:

Evelyn hears the clatter and crunch of metal that signifies the imminent pursuit of the creature, just as the Doctor admonishes her to move.  She quickly shoves her way through the remainder of the walkspace, stepping to the sidewalk at the storefront and glancing over her shoulder to see the Doctor’s progress before looking wildly about for the TARDIS.

"Where is it?” she shouts, her voice almost obscured by the melee of the creature tearing through the obstacles behind the shopping center.  "Which way?“

She spins back to him, grabs him by the arm, pulling him forward the rest of the way.  She has caught her breath a little after slowing down from a full-on run to squeeze through the walkspace, but her heart is pounding ferociously, and she is feeling a little lightheaded.  She inhales, struggling not to show it.   More important things to worry about, like the very real potential of becoming lunch.  "Doctor, where is the TARDIS?”

“Very well.” He guides her into the shadow of a tree and holds her shoulder firmly. “Keep a grip on that book.” He’s only ever done this with one other person, but now is not the time to let his confidence wane. “Here we go…”, he mutters and pulls her into the shadows with him. “Stay alert and don’t let go!”, he reiterates as if he hasn’t said it enough already. They begin moving through the shadows at a slow pace to allow Evelyn time to adjust.