Tenth Doctor, Evelyn, and Alice: Illusions and Allusions

[memoirsverse.livejournal.com]

multiversebleed

The Doctor:

The door of that little curiosity shop swung open, and an equally curious gentleman strolled in, the rubber soles of his shoes padding on the floor as he went.

He was curious in a few senses of the word.

He was curious in that he was odd. He had an air of the peculiar about him, eternally out of place, like an “H” wedged into the “S” section of an otherwise meticulous alphabetization.

He was curious in that he was well-made, at least, to some means of reckoning such things. He had a handsomeness to him that, while not precisely conventional, wasn’t especially hard to see, either.

He was curious in that he was difficult to comprehend, he muttered things to himself that one might strain to hear and yet wonder what language it was when one did hear it.

And he was curious in that he was looking for answers, one could see it on his face, in the scrunch of his brow, in the way his questing fingers trailed over shelves and over objects.

As he approached the counter, he smiled gently but a little warily at the shorter, dark-haired woman who waited there.

“‘Ello,” he greeted her. “Sorry to bother– erm– looking for Evelyn Alvar? Was told I could find her here, is she about?”

Evelyn:

Evelyn was quite engrossed in Kerouac, enjoying the sound of the rain dancing across the shop windows, when the bell over the door chimed.  She glanced up to see a man, tall and slender and wearing a long coat over a suit, step inside.

She watched him over her book as he perused the shelves.  There was something very… strange about him, and not just because he was wearing trainers with that suit.  It wasn’t necessarily a bad strange, but he was strange, with an oddness that he wore with the ease of long practice.  He was looking about the shelves with a rapt, fascinated sort of attention.  He had a definite air of purpose about him– the sort of purpose, she decided without fully understanding why, that was seeking out a person rather than a thing. She knew she had guessed right when he approached the counter and asked about Evelyn Alvar.

She nodded, fixing a cautious smile in place.  "I’m Evelyn.  Can I help you with something?“

The Doctor:

He gazed at her for a moment, hands in his pockets. It was if he was trying to scrutinize her… as if he were trying to analyze her… one would almost expect an arch detective to give a new client such a once-over, the proverbial Sherlock Scan.

…two timelines in one? Wrapped around each other like a double-helix.

More to you than meets the eye, Evie Alvar, even my eye, no joking.

And then he reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and tugged a paperback book out of it, placing it gently on the counter in front of her.

"Well, um. If it’s not too much difficulty? I know, sorry, bushwhacking you in your place of employment like this, very– very rude–” he shook his head at his ridiculousness, an apologetic smile finding his features after the strangeness of before. “Could I– trouble you for an autograph? Something of a fan, really.”

Evelyn:

His continued scrutiny made her a bit twitchy as he placed the book before her, but she nodded at his request.  She’d certainly seen some strange behavior from the small cluster of fans she had, but no one had ever sought her out so directly.  Yet, that wasn’t really what bothered her about him.  Was an autograph all he wanted?  Something about him was relentlessly setting off alarms in her mind, practically making her hair stand on end, though for some reason she didn’t really feel as though she were in any danger from him.  She couldn’t isolate any single cause for her reaction to him, though.  Wherever it was coming from, it was concealed, buried too deeply within her consciousness for her to understand it.  "Well… yeah.  Yes, yes.  Of course.“  She took the book from his hands and flipped the cover open, gave a nervous chuckle.  "I mean… a bit strange to have a fan track me down out here.  But.  You know.  You must really want that autograph.”   She bit down slightly on her lip when she realized how rude that probably sounded, and reached for the pen by the cash register, meeting his eyes again.  "Who should I sign for?“

The Doctor:

”’T.S.,’“ he requested, at her asking. "The letters. Me initials. Well, sort of. Thanks, really, honestly, thanks awfully.”

He smiled faintly, one hand in a pocket, the other hand tugging at an ear, a wince and a squint of one eye. “And. Yes. I really do want that autograph. And– and, you know, a word. Just a word. With the creator of such brilliant images… I’m a bit of a student of the creative process, y'know, from brain to pen to paper.”

“And I’m sorry,” he nodded slowly, resignedly. “I’m so sorry, but I just– I have to ask you. That question that all writers loathe to hear.”

“’…where do you get your ideas?’”

Evelyn:

Evelyn scribbled a sloppy signature to T.S. on the inside cover of his book, and shrugged, uncertain really how to answer this without giving too much away.  "Oh, you know.  Just… imagination.  Daydreaming.  Dream-dreaming, you know, at night.  You’d be surprised at the sorts of things that inspire a person sometimes.“  She looked at him for a moment.  "A student of the creative process, huh?  You a writer?  Artist?”

The Doctor:

He nodded, ever-so-slowly. “I’ve had dreams like that. Mine always seemed to slip away from me, right through my fingers. Kept a journal, what I could remember.”

He tilted his head, accepting the book back from her, looking at that handwriting. He paused, again, and there was that scrutiny, again, as though he were performing handwriting analysis, as though trying to recognize the handwriting.

“I’m more of a reader than a writer,” T.S. admitted. “Poetry, prose, that sort of thing. And I love telly– television fascinates me. Though I do like music! I composed a symphony once. It, erm, could’ve been better.”

Evelyn:

“I know the feeling,” she said softly.  "Some of the dreams are maybe better left forgotten, though.“  She went very still as she remembered one she had far too often, of being dragged down, down, down into the dark, into a space too small and constricting for her to breathe.  Of being enslaved, owned.  She glanced up at him and gave a small smile as he took the book from her, saw him gazing at her signature, and again, a flare of something indefinable washed over her entire being.  She cleared her throat and started idly re-arranging things on the counter to regain control.

"A symphony!” she said, when he told her of his musical experiment, though she kept her eyes averted this time, playing with the beanie penguin that always sat by the register.  To hell with her ridiculously weird reactions to this complete and total stranger.  "I bet it was probably better than you give yourself credit for.  Most people wouldn’t even have gone far enough to attempt it.  And I like to read too.  Obviously.  I mean, rather, most writers have an appreciation for literature, or rather, maybe I’m just stereotyping or something, but I can say for myself that I do love to read.  All sorts of things.  Don’t watch much television, though.  I mean, I’m not against it; I just get bored by it.  Maybe I’m just trying to watch the wrong shows.  What kinda things do you like to read?“

The Doctor:

“It’s cognitive dissonance,” T.S. agreed, and yet disagreed. “You desperately want to recollect these lost snippets, and yet, and yet, once you do, you wonder why you tried. These beautiful and terrible images and you wonder how your brain ever produced them, what strangeness boils in the subconscious, what unremembered things.” He smiled faintly, softly, thinly. “S’almost Lovecraftian, ennit?”

He couldn’t help a little endeared grin at the sight of the penguin, oh, he loved a good penguin. “Oh, I dunno. Probably should’ve gotten past me first draft before I had it performed on The Proms. Ah, that’s all right.”

T.S. nodded, as Evelyn pointed out the importance of reading to writers. “I think Neil Gaiman said something, once, about reading three times as much as you write? Or was that Stephen King? Ah, the exact quote escapes me. But still, yes. One, like Walt Whitman, must contain multitudes in order to create them— and what better way to inhale multitudes than to read them in a book? (Oh, I love television. It’s a new development, I used to loathe the thing, but recently, just been fascinated with it, those funny little stories on that funny little box, it’s brilliant.) Have you tried Downton Abbey? Sherlock? Elementary? Eastenders? Black Books? Community? Ah, I prattle on.”

“Reading, I am… omnivorous. Agatha Christie, Charlie Dickens, Bill Shakespeare, good oul’ J.K. Rowling, Monty Python’s Big Red Book… but I love a poem, me. I love a poem. Bobby Frost, Thomas Stearns Eliot… they don’t make poetry like that anymore, and believe me, I’ve looked.”

Evelyn:

She nodded, uncomfortable with the topic, and yet somehow glad to speak of these things to someone who at least appeared to understand somewhat.  She barely even noticed her speech anxiety slipping away, her words coming more readily, more confidently.  "Makes you wonder sometimes, what sort of mind comes up with these things.  And it’s so, so strange, how images and emotions and… and experiences in dreams can affect your day-to-day life.  How a certain quality to the late afternoon light can cause an upsurge of emotion and… even longing, from out of nowhere.  Or, you know, when you get outside the city and really see the stars, like someone shook out a bag of powdered silver across the sky.  And you just want to soar up to them.  Like you remember them.  And… miss them.“

She chuckled.  "I dabbled a bit in music when I was a kid.  I had an awful, awful teacher, sucked all the magic out of it, turned it into a chore.  I still sometimes want to learn– I studied violin.  I still love the sound of it, just cringe when I think about actually playing.  Maybe I’ll pick it up again someday.  Never did any composing, though.”

“Oh yes,” she said.  "I’d say that a voracious appetite for reading is essential to the creative process– for writing, anyway.  Though I have to be careful– I have a tendency to subconsciously copy the style of whomever I’ve just been reading if I’m working on a project.“  At his television suggestions, she smiled. "I haven’t, but I’ll be sure to look them up at some point.  My friend, Alice– she runs this place, actually, it’s her shop– she suggested that I might like the HBO show Carnivàle, as well, says it’s rich in symbolism, beautifully filmed, wonderful actors, just all around excellent.  Guess I’ll have to add your suggestions to the list she started.”  She paused.  "Hrm.  Speaking of Alice, she should’ve been back by now.  Last I heard, she was stuck in traffic.  Hope she didn’t get caught in any flooding.“

"I love Dickens too.  And–” she waved On the Road in the air, “Kerouac, and yes, Gaiman.  And C.S. Lewis– I always wanted to find a magic wardrobe when I was a kid, slip away into Narnia.  Those books were my childhood.”  She laughed softly.  "And Eliot, yes.  I could spend hours digesting The Wasteland.  It’s so… pertinent.  Emptiness, living death, lack of purpose or faith.  Solomon’s vanity.“

The Doctor:

He gazed at her quietly, as she spoke of missing the stars, as she spoke of sensory mnemonics and aches that went beyond elucidation, and he nodded a solemn nod. “Like you could greet them all by name, if only you could see their faces, or hear them laugh, you would remember. Yeah. Life can be… very strange.”

“Oooh, I hate that,” T.S. confessed. “Teachers that just want to drill into your brain the rote recitation of repeated traditions so dusty they make everything that touches them that much drabber and greyer. But there’s nothing written that says that’s all a subject can be. Look at Lindsey Stirling, she’s practically reinvented the violin.”

“I do that, too!” he nodded vigorously. “Well, not the— writing, but I do tend to subconsciously copy things. Accidentally quoted The Lion King once. Switched to a Scottish accent on a trip to Scotland, ah. But it can’t be all bad, having the voices of those who’ve influenced you speaking through you, eh? Evoking the past while chiming in with your own originality. I think every writer does that, to a certain extent.”

T.S. grinned. “Well, tell your friend Alice that she’s got lovely taste. I adore a little shop, and thus far, this has been one of my favorites. And in telly! I’ve not watched all of Carnivale, but I’ve heard good things. I liked that it was a show that embraced its deep mythology and highbrow concept without talking down to its viewers. Shame about it being cancelled, but you never know, could get a TV movie and a revival a decade later, these things can be funny sometimes.”

He glanced out the window, and frowned worriedly. “Oh, good luck, Alice. D’you want me to go out and look for her? Does she have a mobile, I could call her?”

He nodded excitedly as she talked of people she’d read, and emphasized her love of Kerouac, and of traveling to other worlds by way of a wooden box. Such mysteries, such fantasies, such broken hearts and broken minds and, especially with Gaiman, such rare human mythic genius.

And then there was Eliot. Having been in the ships at Mylae, T.S. had a rather unique perspective on The Waste Lands.

“‘Et O,’” he quoted quietly, intently, remembering his own childhood in the Academy choir, forced to sing ancient drab and dusty music alongside his peers, “‘ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!’”

Evelyn:

She looked at him with a slight smile.  "You know what it’s like, then.  Not all the memories… or, well, images.  Stories.  Dreams.  Not all of them are pleasant.  But somehow, they just feel so very real, such a part of you.  Letting go of them would be like cutting off an arm.“

"I will never understand the mentality of someone who thinks it’s necessary to take something so beautiful and magical, and turn it into a cold, lifeless thing.  Just something to be exploited.  It’s always refreshing to find someone who pours passion and vitality into music.  It’s so rare anymore.”

Evie nodded.  "Well, I know someone– I don’t remember who– once said there really are no more original ideas, just different spins on old ideas.  I’m not sure I fully believe that, but that doesn’t diminish the value of inspiration.  You see it everywhere; threads of similarity running through different cultures, mythology, belief systems.  Everything interconnected, even if the connections are subtle and distant.  Would be interesting, I think, to see something completely new, completely different, though.  Sometime.“

Evie chuckled.  "I don’t know where she gets half this stuff.  She claims eBay, but I don’t really believe her.”  She smiled.  "And yeah, you never know.  Some TV shows have had longer hiatuses, I s'pose, but still came back popular.“

Evelyn frowned as she looked through the windows at the continuing deluge.  "I just called her cell a few minutes before you came in, actually.  She went to grab us some lunch and pick up something else; not sure what.  She should be okay, but thanks for the offer!  I may actually take you up on it if she doesn’t show soon…”

“And, O, these children’s voices singing in the dome!” she translated softly, noting the haunted look in his eyes and wondering at it.

The Doctor:

“‘Cutting off an arm,’” he echoed quietly, with the weight of experience behind it. “Yes. I know what it’s like. I know precisely what that’s like.”

“Mm,” T.S. mused. “The price of a heart of steel is being unable to tolerate gold.”

“I think it was Solomon,” he pondered. “Of course, it was old when he said it, and older still when Shakespeare paraphrased it. I’ve said it myself. And then I’ve been proven wrong. That’s a rare and new and beautiful feeling, in and of itself. Being proven wrong. There are new things in this world. There are always new things.”

“Ah, eBay,” he chuckled. “Flea market to The Universe.” He gestured encouragingly. “Precisely that, you never know. Besides. Myths, good ones, real living myths, even the unfinished ones never die. Look at Geoff Chaucer, his big opus will remain forever undone. People still read it in schools, and I do believe they always will.”

“Oh, yeah,” T.S. nodded. “I’ve been lost in my share of rain. Had a devil of time walking through that one. Had a brolly on me, though, old habit, so. But yeah. I’m on call if you need it.”

“Mm,” he murmured. “The dome. A dome of glass, enclosing a whole beautiful citadel.”

Evelyn:

“Do you?” she asked quietly, looking him in the eye.  "What… dreams… do you have that are so entwined with who you are?“

She nodded.  "It’s a necessary evil.  Well, I don’t know that ‘evil’ is quite the right word.  But, intertwining art and money always seems to have detrimental effect to me.  I mean, I sell my books, my art.  But that’s not why I create them.  I create them because… well, because I have to.  It’s a compulsion, a need.  Like breathing.”

“I wonder,” she said, after pondering that for a moment, “if some people even have the capacity to perceive something that’s so new, so beyond previous experience.  Something they have no point of reference for, nothing to make a connection to.  They just see what they expect to see.  Or nothing at all– they just don’t notice.  Fantastic and unimaginable things could be happening under our noses all the time and we just don’t know how to see them.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed enthusiastically.  "And they grow, evolve.  They’re like living things.  Some might even say they are living things.  I’ve learned to never underestimate the power of a story.  Sometimes truth is hidden in fiction.  Reality is… layered.  Multi-faceted.“

"I appreciate it,” she nodded.  "I’ll give her another call here in a minute to see how she’s faring.“

When T.S. described the dome, that dome of glass surrounding a citadel, Evelyn caught her breath, because she had dreamed many times of this very thing, dreams she had scrawled on scraps of paper and hidden away in a leatherbound journal, never showing anyone, never working them into her stories.  The image always brought such a conflict of emotion– longing, fear, even rage.  She stared at T.S. for a moment, long past rationalizing her reactions to him.  Her need to know, to understand, overcame her fear and hesitancy, and another crack formed in the wall inside her mind.  A cacophony of images swarmed for an instant into her consciousness, spreading a bloom of pain throughout her head that trickled into the rest of her body, and then the images faded, as quickly as they had come.  She sat heavily on the stool behind the register, rubbing her temples.  "Sorry,” she mumbled.  "My body doesn’t always like me.  Especially lately.“

The Doctor:

“I dream of a beach in Norway,” he murmured. “And a second verse, same as the first, and of people happier without me.”

“Oh, I was oblique, no call for it, I’m sorry,” he gestured, “that’s not what I meant. Different sense of ‘gold.’” …he had been ridiculously oblique, hearts of steel unable to tolerate gold, how oblique he wasn’t sure she’d ever understand, but there was a germane analogy in there as well. “You close yourself off too much, make yourself, y’know, iron-clad, then beautiful things, brilliant things, these will start to hurt. But the other sense is true, too, a terrible cognitive dissonance. Gotta eat to live, gotta sell to eat, mm, but if you don’t obey the inscrutable exhortations of your soul, well, where does that leave you? Monetizing an irresistible creative compulsion seems like the best of both worlds, but there’s a fine line between monetizing and bastardizing, and oh, that fine line’s a tight rope to funambulate.”

And then she spoke a truth of The Universe. And he smiled softly. “Yes, I imagine that that happens rather often, this rationalizing of that which cannot be comprehended. But every so often, if the right person is in the right place at the right time and bears witness to the right thing… then they’ll understand. And something new will truly enter the world.”

“All the myths are true,” he nodded. “And story’s not just alive, it’s a force of nature. A tale that demands to be told will transcend generations, will defy life and death, and even if it needs to drive its vessel mad, it’ll find a way to be told.”

“Mm,” he clucked his tongue. “Fair do’s.”

And.

There it was.

A trigger.

Like Yana.

It’s starting.

She sank to sit on the stool and he— vaulted the counter— his agility was perhaps surprising given the gangly and ungainly length of his limbs, but he was over the counter and facing her— scrutinizing her fascinatedly and worriedly —before the average person could blink.

“Is it your body, Evelyn?” he wondered, those deepdeepdarkdarkdeepdark eyes gazing right into her soul. “Or is it your brain?”

(The brrrrrain is not compatible.)

“What did you see?”

Evelyn:

Evelyn listened as T.S. spoke cryptically about a Norwegian beach, about people happier without him, and wondered at it.

“Oh!” she said, a little embarrassed, when he clarified what he meant.  "Of course.  Sorry, my mind sometimes goes into left field; I don’t even know what I’m thinking half the time.  You’re right, though.  Shutting down the emotions, the experience of life, seems counterproductive to living.“  She nodded.  "And it is a fine line.  I have a hard time walking it sometimes.  There are times when I just want to throw it all out and start over, never publish, never sell, just create.  But, like you said, we’ve gotta eat somehow.”

She nodded silently but with rapt attention to his words about new things and old, about the power of story, and wondered at the things this man must have seen to speak with such fiercely unequivocal knowing.

She took a breath with a small shudder as the images dissipated, and then he was there, behind the counter, his eyes searching her face as though trying to read her entire life, her mind, her soul, backwards and forwards, demanding  what she had seen.  She jerked back and jumped to her feet so quickly that she knocked the stool over.  "What are you doing?“ she demanded, as her instincts coalesced into an adrenaline-fueled defensive fury, a knowledge replacing her suspicions that this man was most definitely here for more than just idle conversation.  "Who the hell are you?”  The urge to flee surged over her, conflicted by the need to know, to understand, and her entire body coiled impulsively like a jungle cat preparing to bolt or spring.

It was then that the front door swung open, the little bell giving a silvery jingle, and a tall, slender woman, swathed and half-hidden in a black, hooded rain jacket, stepped into the store.  Her icy, jewel-like blue eyes took in the scene before her, as her jaw tightened imperceptibly.

The Doctor:

“Ah, that’s all right,” T.S. admitted. “You were in left field, I was kicking into touch.” He tugged at one ear, quietly lamenting. “There are ways to do what you love and not put a price tag on it. But each of us have to find our own ways in this world, and your answer’s just as good as anyone else’s.”

And oh, he did know. Peter Street, distraught in Bedlam hospital over a tetradecagon he’d built for a genius. Eddie Poe, dying in a gutter in Baltimore. Agatha Christie…

Oh, did he ever know the cost of being a genius, of being a jar of clay filled to the brim with amazing things.

And then things came to a head, there on that dark and stormy day, and she demanded with Hell-hath-no-fury, demanded of him what he was on about. And he stood, straight and surprisingly tall, and even as steel informed his posture, a fiery passionate kindness informed his eyes.

“I’m The Doctor,” he told her, “and I’m going to help you.”

His head whipped around as Alice entered, his gaze locked onto her.

And, oh, she had some very interesting timelines whizzing about her. As though she had an awareness of causality that pre-temporal species could never possess. Not to mention, Time Lord eyes, he did perceive that imperceptible tightening of the jaw.

He was back over the counter again in another of those eyeblinks.

He stood before Alice, gazing at her almost defiantly.

“You must be Alice, eh?” he wondered. “Well, what side of The Looking Glass are you from originally? How many impossible things do you believe before breakfast?”

“I was just about to ask Evelyn here if she’s got a pocket watch, but, oh, it occurs to me, looking at you, that you might be the one watching her pocket watch.”

Alice:

Alice Deva was not having a good day.

She stepped into her little curio shop, shaking the water from her coat, simmering with barely suppressed rage over the clandestine meeting she had just got done with.  She was seriously beginning to question the sanity of those leading the small band of Aetheryn survivors.   Wanting to re-establish a sense of culture was one thing, but imposing such a culture on a planet of seven billion people?  Idiocy.  Sheer idiocy.  Especially since their “secret weapon” was liable to fall apart the moment she became fully functional.  Castles in the sand during high tide.

So it was that when Alice stepped over the threshold and saw that man towering over her fr– over the– over Evelyn, like some brewing storm, she froze, and a cold fury washed over her.  When she heard him say, “I’m the Doctor,” her heart stuttered.  Oh, she had heard of this one.  She had heard much of him.  Of what he had done.

“Yes, in fact,” she retorted, striding up to meet him as he approached her. “I am Alice.  And, if you must know, I’m from both sides of the Looking Glass.”

A pocket watch?  She frowned.  She’d heard rumors of fantastical Time Lord technology, of species morphs and minds stored in ornate timepieces, but had thought them to be myth. But then, just about everything about her life– and Evelyn’s– could be interpreted as being merely myth.  She shook her head and spoke quietly, leaning into him and biting out each word through clenched teeth as her gaze bored into his.  "I don’t know what you’re on about, Doctor, but you will stay away from Evelyn.  You have no idea what you’re doing.  What she is.“

She turned her back on him and walked over to Evelyn, stepping behind the counter and placing a hand on her shoulder.  At her touch, the wildness in Evelyn’s countenance tamed a fraction.  "You should go to the back,” said Alice softly.  Evelyn looked her in the eye, something like some deep-set defiance swirling in her brown eyes for a brief instant, but then nodded and complied with a gentle squeeze of Alice’s hand.

The Doctor:

“Both sides, eh?” he squinted one eye, tilted his head. “How very Heisenbergian.”

He squared his jaw, squared his shoulders, didn’t lean back as she leaned into him, stood his ground. “But she is something. Oh, she very much is. And I’ve never once known what I was doing— well, once, but it was a good once —but that hasn’t stopped me and neither are you. If she’s what I think she is, then she’s either a long lost beloved friend or a threat to Time Itself, and either way you’ll recognize that I cannot stop until I know for certain.”

The Doctor bit his tongue out of— he didn’t know what, some sort of respect? —but he bit his tongue. Until Evelyn had withdrawn.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets until he heard the door click into place.

And then those impossible fathoms-deep eyes narrowed at Alice.

“I may not know what she is,” he pointed out, his voice low and quiet and dangerous. “But I know what you are. The nail polish is good, but you missed a spot, and I can perceive a silhouette to your ears through the waft of your hair. Combine that with your apparent causal prescience, your awareness, well, there’s only one thing you could be.”

“Aetheryn,” he pronounced, with weight and import and omen, showing her that she couldn’t put him all the way on his back foot.

Alice:

She gazed at him a moment before saying, “Certain… events tend to have that effect.”

She shook her head vehemently.  ”You really don’t understand, do you?  Open this Pandora’s Box and there will be no going back.  And you, of all people, will not be the one to open it.”  She frowned, thinking.  ”What is it that interests you about her?”  She considered for a moment, remembering his mention of the pocket watch, and the rumors she had heard, putting two and two together.  ”You think she’s one of your people?  You’re wrong.  She’s not.  She’s not yours.”

After Evelyn had disappeared into the back, and the Doctor had uttered Alice’s species name like some sort of declaration of power, she stood for a brief span in surprised silence, then shook it off.  ”So I am,” she said.  ”What of it?”

The Doctor:

“‘Certain events,’” he mused, with a drawl. “Fluxing as opposed to fixed, I take it?”

"Ah,” he grimaced, squaring his shoulders, “but the last gift of Pandora was hope, and I am in dire sore need of any hope now at all. Not to mention, I am properly gifted at unlocking things.” He blew air through his teeth at her denial. “She’s not mine. So you say. Then what is she, when she’s at home, eh? Mm? She’s certainly not human, not with the picture perfect description of my lost homeworld in her gloriously eloquent ‘fictions.’”

He frowned. Then looked away, his shoulders sagging. “Well. You’d have no love for my people, then, would you? Failing to prevent the destruction of your world, those beautiful purple skies. I promise you, I tried to save them, tried to— tried to tell Rassilon’s War Council— ah, but you’ve no reason to believe me. No reason to trust me. All the reason in all the worlds to keep me from that last desperate clutch at hope.”

The Doctor swung his eyes to meet Alice Deva’s, and they were deep dark saddened eyes indeed. “I’m not going to hurt her. Or you. I promise. I just— I just need a glimpse of a happy ending. Just once. Just once.”

Alice:

"Fluxing,” said Alice.  "That’s one way to put it.“  She didn’t say that half her childhood and the early part of her youth had been written, rewritten, erased and scrawled over countless times, torn apart by the war of gods and devils that had engulfed her people.  Her mind held half-glimpsed fragments of memory, like pieces of mismatched jigsaw puzzles, and she never even tried to figure out what pieces went where.  It was a pointless endeavor; she had better things to concern herself with.

She looked at him closely as he spoke of hope, and beneath the mercifully numbing ice in her heart, she felt the tiniest stirring of compassion.  Of course he would want hope.  Who wouldn’t?  She laughed, and there was a biting edge to it.  ”Hope is mostly overrated in my experience.”  She hesitated, frowning.  It seemed futile to try to maintain such an obvious lie.  ”No, of course she’s not human.  Not fully.  But, Doctor, she’s not one of your people.”  She looked him in the eye and said in a voice edged with silk and steel, “I swear to you on my mother’s lineage and my father’s honor. She. Is. Not.”

"You’re right,” she said.  "I have neither love nor trust for your people, and by extension, you.“  She turned to the shelves bearing some of the things she had brought to Earth with her.  Knicknacks, junk.  Worthless things, but one of a kind and exotically unique here, though their origins would always be mysterious to whomever bought them.  She sometimes made up far-fetched stories about the alien artifacts she sold here, to make them seem more enticing.  Always fictions.  Fictions pretending to be facts, while Evelyn penned facts masquerading as fictions.

She remembered some of the stories she’d heard about the Doctor.  Fictions, myth, perhaps truth.  That he was the one who ended the war.  How he did it, a horror greater than words.  How he swept through the universe in his unassuming little wooden box, trailing death and destruction in his wake.  How even his friends were not immune from this.  When one befriends Death, destruction is certain.  She wouldn’t risk it.  Too much was at stake.

Too much at stake.  Her fr— no, no.  Not friend.  She was given a task and would see it through.  Even if it killed them both.  Sometimes she wondered if that were the plan, one well-planned strike, or mission, or whatever it was the Elder intended to do.  Galatea had been unmanageable, according to all accounts, and Evelyn probably would be much the same were she to remember much more of that life.

Perhaps it would be better that way, if it did kill them both.

"You may not intend to hurt her,” Alice said.  "But if you pursue this course of action, you may well kill her.“

(Somewhere beyond the beaded curtain separating the front of the store from the back, Evelyn lurked, listening.  A few moments ago, as she had walked into the cramped little lunch room, something wild and instinctual and a little bit angry had surged forth within her as a delayed response to Alice’s gently spoken command. She had spun on her heel mid-stride, moving back the way she came with the explicit purpose of eavesdropping.)

The Doctor:

"Why do I get the feeling,” he mused, “that my ‘one way to put it’ is decidedly… euphemistic?”

Her laugh had bite to it, and it bit into him. His eyes narrowed, terrible and dark. “Hope is overrated until you it’s all you have left, and then it’s water in a red, red desert.” He tutted, clucked his tongue, shook his head. “That’s quite the oath. I might even be inclined to believe it. If you even came within a hair’s breadth of answering the question. If she’s not a lost Time Lady— then. What? What is she?”

He’d looked at everything on his way in, looking for that pocket watch, and he’d seen the variety of curios. And he had gotten, in fact, curiouser and curiouser. Especially after he’d spotted something made out of bazoolium.

“You have no love or trust for me or my people, as expected,” he murmured. “Then what of empathy? Your people are Diaspora. My people are gone. Everyone else died and I’m the only one left. Time Lords were defined to an extent by their shared suffering. Now we, you and I, we’re the ones who share that suffering now. We’re both left homeless. Do we both have to be left hopeless?”

Again, he looked away, turning in a slow circle, tilting his head back to laugh achingly at the ceiling. “So not Pandora’s Box, then. Schrödinger. Always the Schrödinger. There’s a chance I’ll find out what I need to know. But there’s a chance I’ll be the end of her in the process.”

"You know,” he turned, and he laughed another aching laugh. “One of these days I’d love to have a victory that isn’t Pyrrhic.”

Alice:

Alice shrugged, deceptively nonchalant.  ”Make of it what you will.  I don’t care.”  You would know, though, she thought.  You’re one of those responsible for it, you and your people.

"Until it proves false,” she said, having tasted the bitter waters of euphoric hope become lost.  Better to just live in the moment and take what comes, rather than reach for illusory dreams.  She sighed at his persistent questioning.  "How many different ways to I have to say that she doesn’t concern you before you get it through your thick skull?” she growled, then shook her head, taking a breath.  ”All right, Doctor.  She’s one of my people.  Well, she’s… part human.  But she’s one of ours, one of the few left.  But she doesn’t know.”  She glanced down at her hands, absently picking at the small spot of peeling fingernail polish that the Doctor had noticed earlier.  ”We’ve been… watching over her.  Protecting her.”  She cast him a piercing glare.  ”Apparently with good reason, considering your highly inappropriate interest in her.”

She watched him closely as he spoke of the aftermath of the War, and could see a fathomless grief in his eyes that even she could scarcely understand, for all her loss.  She still had a handful of her people left, even if many— quite probably including herself, she realized— were half mad, broken by unspeakable horrors.  But this man… This man was truly alone.  But then she remembered again what she had heard, how he had allegedly ended the War, and her mouth tightened.  ”Is it true what I hear?” she asked, her voice silken and deceptively gentle.  She had no patience for indirectness or evasion right now.  ”Did you destroy your own people?”

She stepped up to him again so they were face to face, and said very, very softly.  ”Let us get something clear right now, as you seem to have difficulty comprehending what I’ve been telling you so far.  Evelyn is not your victory.  She is not knowledge or information that you need.  She is not your weapon, or your tool, or some plaything.  She belongs to me.  And if you attempt to circumvent that in any way, if you approach her, if you try to unlock that Pandora’s Box, I will be there, and you will not like what comes after.”

The Doctor:

“My experience is,” The Doctor pointed out, “‘I don’t care’ is usually more like a case of ‘the lady doth protest too much.’"

“It might prove false,” he murmured, “but while you have it, it’s the power of a thousand suns.” He narrowed his eyes at her pronouncement of his skull as thick, which, it admittedly was thick, old and thick, too full of stuff, but. That was for him to say, not her. “Few more yet, apparently,” he replied, deadpan. “Few more ways to go.”

He frowned. “She’s Aetheryn.” He glanced in Evelyn’s general direction, in the direction of the back room. “I did. Read somewhere. A terribly long time ago. That there were Aetheryn on Gallifrey in the old days. I always meant to ask Chronotis about it, never did get the chance.” He swung his gaze back to Alice. “My— my interest isn’t inappropriate— I’m not looking to— breed or to mate— I just— I saw my world in her words and I didn’t want to be alone.

Then Alice Deva breathed a seductive j’accuse, and The Doctor’s expression was a smile carved into grimmest granite. “Schrodinger. I did. And I didn’t. I wiped The Daleks from the heavens and in the process bound my people into a Hell of their own making, cut off from The Universe behind a Time Lock. Effectively, functionally, they’re dead and gone. I didn’t kill them. But oh, I stopped them. Stopped them cold.”

The Doctor flinched not a micron as Alice craned herself into his personal space, stood there with eyes narrowed and hands in pockets and be careful making wishes in the dark dark as she unleashed another diatribe. “She’s not my victory. She’s not my weapon, nor my salvation, nor my plaything, nor my sandbox, nor my toolbox, nor my Pandora’s Box. But neither is she yours.”

His hand leaped from his pocket in a synaptic arc to point at the back room where Evelyn had gone. “You said it yourself. She’s human. And she has every right to live this life that you’ve put her in. I’ve been where she is, I’ve been that man in an oubliette made from his own self, and when people needed me to be a Time Lord again, I had no warning, no choice, no period of adjustment, no transition. There were tears and screaming and people died while I fought to cling to a ghost of a dream of a man.”

The Doctor shook his head. “I can help you. I can teach her about who she is, what she can do, the history of her people. And then, when the time comes for her to come back to herself, she’ll have a choice and she’ll have a chance and maybe just maybe lives will be saved  rather than lost.”

Evelyn:


During the lengthy and heated discourse between her dearest friend and the man calling himself the Doctor, Evelyn had stood behind the beaded curtain obscuring the employee area from the front of the store, listening.  She was trembling, tears pricking the corners of her eyes, even as a cold fury washed over her.

Enough.

She stepped through into the store, and slowly approached the two.

She spoke, and her face, her voice, were almost impassive, calm and detached, even as her insides boiled with turmoil.  "Alice,“ she murmured, though her voice gradually built in volume and ferocity as she continued, "It seems you and I have some things to discuss.  For instance, how I don’t. fucking. belong to you.  Or to anyone.”  She cast a sidelong glance at the Doctor.  "And you.  Who are you?  Why did you come here?“  She stood, her eyes shifting back and forth between them.  "Somebody had better start explaining things to me.  Now.  What the hell is an Aetheryn?”  She looked at Alice again, as a realization began to dawn on her.  "You’ve been lying to me from the start.  Haven’t you?  Who are you?“

The Doctor:

"Such simple questions,” The Doctor mused, hands out of pockets but lightly crossed behind himself, “such very long stories.”

He could see the fire building in Evelyn’s dark eyes and was struck— perhaps for the first time, perhaps not— by a sort of cryptomnesia crossed with the eeriest of dejas vu. As though he had seen that rage before, that chafing at the leash, champing at the bit, that lust for emancipation.

A chill ran down his spine, and it was the most curious of sensations.

He arched an eyebrow, however, at Alice, as Evelyn’s fury seemed to focus most wholly on her. He took some small responsibility for this, as he’d opened Pandora’s Box and let Schrodinger’s Cat out of the bag. (Ahhh, he hadn’t mixed metaphors so painfully since his Seventh life, blimey.)

Nevertheless. There was, he had to admit, a sort of satisfaction in seeing Alice getting tangled in her deception’s own web.

He produced a marvelous Technicolor umbrella— from— somewhere— a pocket? What sort of pocket would hold an umbrella? —not his Seventh self’s umbrella, but his Sixth’s.

"This all seems a wee bit domestic,” he drawled to Alice. “Shall I wait outside while you sort this?”

Alice:

Alice looked frantically from one to the other, feeling her control over the situation rapidly slipping.  ”Evie—” she began, but whipped her head around to look at the Doctor as he tried to extricate himself from the conversation, pointing almost viciously in his direction.  ”No.  You started this with your meddling, poking around where you had no right.  You’ll stay to see this through.”

She looked back at Evelyn.  ”Evie.  Evelyn.  Listen to me.  Yes, there are things that you don’t know.  About me.  About yourself.  Especially about yourself.  But we’ve been trying to protect you.”  She took a deep breath, considering carefully what to tell her and what to leave out.  She would have to do some quick damage control here, thanks to this… interloper.  ”The Aetheryn are… a species.  A species that is nearly extinct.  And you’re one of them, as am I.”  She paused, pursing her lips.  ”Well, you’re half Aetheryn.  Your mother’s human.  Your father was…”  She swallowed hard.  Evelyn’s birth father was… very different these days.  She often had to remind herself that he was still, technically, the man she once knew, a man she had once looked up to as she would a father.  Back before the war, before the broken remnants exiled themselves, before their lavender skies had been scorched and their planet had become a barren, brittle shell. Before he had begun to lead his few remaining people into what Alice was truly beginning to perceive as madness.  ”He is.  He’s Aetheryn.”

The Doctor:


“Oh, quite so, quite right,” The Doctor replied, still drawling, eyes half-lidded. “Fair warning, full disclosure, I’m here, I’ll continue to meddle, I’ll continue to poke. I’m a Time Lord,” he noted, though he wouldn’t realize until later that he was echoing The Master, “I have that right.”

And then, like a proper Time Lord, like the Time Lord his teachers had always tried to impress on him to be, he watched this conversation and, perhaps surprisingly, he didn’t interfere.

Dark dark eyes flickered from Alice to Evelyn and back again, measuring reactions, gauging truth.

Humans and Aetheryn could procreate, interbreed. All right for some, he thought to himself, without too much bitterness, and then quirked an eyebrow at the reveal about Evelyn’s father— the implication was that Evelyn thought him dead? But there was that pesky verb tense. Her father is Aetheryn.

He didn’t say anything at first. Not now. Evelyn deserved the chance to respond to this first and foremost. But he’d be her batman if she needed one, stand up to Alice for her, if she needed standing up for.

But he’d seen the ferocity in Eveyln Alvar, and he didn’t imagine she’d need so much as a squire in waiting, much less a knight— so much as she’d want for a counselor when all was said and dust was settled.

Evelyn:

Evelyn was beyond furious now.  That it would take a perfect stranger to bring out the truth about her, about her friend (but what was the truth?  Could she even believe anything Alice told her now?) was almost too much for her to handle.  She had felt so isolated all her life, able to share only the smallest part of herself with people, and Alice was the one person who had always been there, had always looked out for her.  She had always felt so normal around her, like there was hope of living a fulfilled life, of growing up and going to college and finding a career and a husband who would love her, really love her, and having children and a cute dog and a nice little home, a real Home, not a false home with brick and mortar and hidden violence and the cold edge of subdued cruelty, but a place to Belong.  Alice had made her feel like her differences were merely dreams and not evidence that she did not, in fact, Belong.  Okay, maybe Alice had always been bossy and controlling and a bit annoying at times, much like Evelyn guessed a big sister might have been had her mother been able to bear children after having her, but she’d never dreamed that her friend would have ever engaged in such a betrayal.

She glanced between the Doctor and Alice as a layer of ice hardened inside her heart.  "You know what?”  She turned to face the Doctor.  "I’m glad you came and started… meddling.“  She cast a sharp glance towards Alice as she uttered the last word, then looked down at her hands.  She folded her fingers into loose fists and tightened her jaw, speaking softly.  "Since it seems my trusted friends weren’t… worthy of that trust.”

“A… species?”  Evelyn digested the word.  "You say that like they aren’t human.“  But she had known.  Deep inside, she had known all her life that she wasn’t human, not entirely.  She just hadn’t been willing to admit it, already so alienated.  Alien.  She laughed a little as the word took on new meaning to her.  "So is this species… from another planet?”

She considered the news that her birth father was not the man who had raised her.  A lot of her mother’s behavior towards her, many of the things she had said when Evelyn was a child, made perfect sense now.  A child of sin. Of course.  Her parents had a reputation to think about, so better to just sweep the deed under the rug and pretend it never happened, while taking it out on the consequence of that deed.  That was her.  A consequence.  She took note of the slip of tense as well, narrowing her eyes, wondering at it.  When she spoke again, her voice was low and smooth and carefully controlled.  "Alice.  I need you to tell me who he is.  To tell me… about these Aetheryn.  Why all of the secrecy?  The lies?  I deserve to know this.“

The Doctor:

The Doctor inclined his head to Evelyn, appreciative of her gratitude, hands folded behind himself, he nodded. And because she had involved him again, though he had stopped and stood aside, only to watch, and he had promised that he’d keep right on meddling, he murmured: “Happy to be of service. Though I’m sure,” The Doctor intoned, glancing at Alice with sardonic wit heavy on every syllable, “she of course had her reasons for not being entirely forthcoming.”

He watched her process the implication of her hybrid origins. Her… otherness. “Yes,” he nodded slowly. “Extraterrestrial. Extrasolar. From a world lost in a great and terrible War. Just as mine was.”

…and then Evelyn returned her attention to Alice, demanded the heart of the story, demanded those reasons, demanded to know why she’d been kept from half of her life, forced to live half a life.

"You say she’s The Savior of your species, Alice,” The Doctor pointed out, his dark dark eyes flicking to the full-blooded Aetheryn. “There comes a time when every Savior has to be baptized into their mission. Now’s as good a time as any, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Alice:

Alice stood very still, rigid, a fierce-eyed, vengeful goddess carved from ice.  She would be damned if she lost control of this situation now, if she lost Evelyn.  This was not an option.

She turned her back on the Doctor, refusing to acknowledge his presence any longer, his existence.  Somewhere deep within her, an acidic rage seethed, but she kept her face placid, her voice smooth.  Only her eyes betrayed that anger, an anger that had been ever present since she had pulled the trigger on the soldier’s weapon while draped over her mother’s fallen form, destroying the dalek that had killed her.  This was her life, an eternally shifting dance between rage and control.  Her world could become beautiful and full of hope again, if only she could compel it to be.

She stepped towards Evelyn, her arms reaching out for an embrace.  Evelyn stepped backwards, shaking her head.  Alice sighed.  ”Evelyn, you’ve known me since you were a child.  Do you really think I would do anything to harm you?”  She closed her eyes, breathing deeply.  Even she wasn’t certain why Soren had wanted all of this information kept from Evelyn, but then she rarely understood his chaotic thought processes. “Your father’s real name is Soren, Soren Gray, and he is…”  She swallowed.  ”He is the current Luminary.  He leads our people.  What’s left of them.”  She didn’t say that Soren had taken the title by deception and force.  That his madness could be leading them all to extinction.  She wouldn’t say that.  Not yet.

"Evelyn. I’ll take you to meet him.  Soon.  But not now.”  She gazed at her friend’s face, the brown eyes hard like flint in that face that was too pale.  Evelyn’s Travels were taking a toll on her, she knew.  They always had, but especially of late.  She thought carefully about how to say the next part; though she was studiously ignoring the Doctor now, she also didn’t want him to know too much.  "Evelyn, we… are all aware of what you can do.  We’ve known for quite some time.“  She fell silent for a long moment, carefully smoothing a wrinkle in her jacket sleeve.  "But you aren’t aware, not fully.  You don’t even know what you’re capable of."