Work Text:
The girl sat in her room. It was a room of a typical twenty-something living back at home. You could hear the paint peeling away uncertainly, and the bed grunting under the unfamiliar weight. At her desk, a girl who might be have been called a woman, wrote. Her hand turned, swirled and danced lightly as she tried to write in the cursive she didn’t know how to write. She stopped suddenly, squinted at the paper and brought it up to her nose, trying to see it in better lighting. She couldn’t read what she had so neatly created but it was definitely pretty.
“And useless,” she added murmuring to the imaginary narrator. She sighed and crumbled up the paper decidedly, she didn’t need fancy, she needed good.
She casually threw the paper behind her, not caring where it landed. She was a considerably messy person. But quite shockingly, her entire room was in order, not a single sock lay haphazardly on the floor. It was almost like a professional cleaner had blazed through her room with a vacuum, making exasperated squeals as she picked up two year old dirty dishes from under her bed.
She was almost done, it wasn’t pretty anymore, but it was decidedly easier to read. Simple and true. Just like she was.
She brought her pen to her mouth and bit it. A habit she had never been able to shake. Then she pondered, because pondering was what writers did and that’s what she felt like. She felt like a writer nearing the end of their book, knowing what they needed to write but trying to turn it into something that would last forever. She pictured herself in a cabin, a young Colin Firth cleaning her house as she typed away, the sound of her loud typewriter matching the beat of Colin’s heart. She smiled to herself.
Then like she eventually always did, she remembered. Her memory came running back home, and her smile faded away with her fantasy. She wanted to curl into a ball and hide in the corner until she forgot again. She closed her eyes, and dropped her head on her desk, but not too forcibly. She wasn’t one for grand gestures.
Suddenly she heard a sound. It was the most bizarre of sounds. She didn’t have the suitable vocabulary or the right kind of imagination to describe it. It was both the most beautiful melody she had never heard and the oddest. It sounded a wheezing dog.
She lifted her head to the sound, her memory chased away by the sound of the singing old dog. She turned around and tried not to scream as a blue police box materialized at the foot of her bed, its halo blinking it fully into existence.
Then the blue box’s door jerked open, startling the moment. A man popped his head out the door, his eyebrows arched in a frown. He looked around and finally noticed her.
“Is this earth?” the man demanded impatiently. She nodded numbly, surprised that she still had the ability to communicate. The man’s eyebrows arched deeper.
“What year?” he demanded again, examining the room. She tried to croak out an answer, but this proved too much for the perplexed girl and she managed a hiss.
“Oh never mind. Let’s see,” he said closing his eyes. He took a deep breath and smacked his lips, as if tasting the air.
“Mmmh, 21st century, February and a Tuesday! Ooh I like Tuesday!” He exclaimed swiftly cheerful. “A lot people don’t appreciate good ol’ Tuesday, but I do, reliable Tuesday.” He shot her a toothy grin. When she didn’t reply his grin started to fade and a look of uncertainty clouded his eyes.
“Are you deaf?” he barked but not unkindly. Then he laughed at himself. “What good would screaming be to a deaf girl anyway, stupid man,” he said reprimanding himself. He raised he hands and started signing. Page looked at his hands captivated, then finally cleared her throat. “I am Page.”
The man did a double take. “A page! Disguised as a human. First time hearing of such a specie.” He paused and almost glared at her, “so where are you from, Yeltz constellation, the great Tulox empire?”
Page gaped again, she couldn’t help it. It was really all she could do, because in her room, the head of a mad man was looking at her. She tried to string words together, “Nooo. Page. Name. Me. What?”
The doctor relaxed his glare and stepped out the beautiful police box. “Oh. Ah yes, introductions. Such a human thing. Do you know that in the Ooo planet, greeting someone is like a mating call.You can imagine how awkward the first few days there were. Anyway Page. I have many titles, but call, me the Doctor.”
Page let out a dry mirthless chuckle, “haha. Page the doctor. Get it?”
The man let out a single sharp guffaw and continued the task of rummaging through her closet. Suddenly it dawned on her, “Doctor? Your name is the doctor?” He nodded not turning around, “yep that’s me.” She thought about it, and then realized that her brain was actually alright with what was happening. And Page wasn’t an award winning name either anyway.
“A weird man lands in my room, I have had worse dreams,” She whispered to herself. The mad doctor waved his hand dismissively not understanding the ramblings of the strange almost deaf girl. “Yes yes, that’s all well and good Page. But why am I here?”
Page got up and approached him cautiously, his back still to her. He was crouching, her bin in his hand, looking under it. He tossed it and things went flying out. He was making a mess. She wanted to feel annoyed but curiosity was the bigger monster.
“Why? I don’t know. You just sort of appeared. How did you even do that?” Page asked picking up a sock in an attempt to do something about her now messy room.
He looked at her doubtfully. “How? That’s a rather complicated question. I am not even completely sure myself. How I get to places is usually a bit wibbly but I am sure if I tried, I could explain it all to you.” He examined her as if trying to decipher something then continued searching, his hand feeling for something under her bed, “although I don’t know why you didn’t just ask me the simple whats, whens, wheres,, whys-” he paused, as if he had found something. Then retracted his hand, which was holding a round red bead. He stared at it amused then tossed it back under the bed. “Although to be fair I don’t actually know WHY I am here.”
He got up and walked up to her and glared at her accusingly. She looked back at him nervously, a sock dangling from her hand.
“Your room seems fine, no cracks, no aliens, nothing serious is going on here, so why?” She shrugged clutching the sock close to her chest.
“Maybe you are an evil person who wants to destroy the world?” He asked wistfully, still ogling her.
She shook her head again, fiercely this time, her eyes wide. He squinted and examined her head for some reason. He shook his head. “No, no one with such an interesting hair color would want to destroy the world.”
She blushed, unexpectedly self-conscious and patted down her hair. He took a step closer to her, almost nose to nose.
“Are you a very important person, Page?” he asked her softly. Page shook her head again slower. The mad doctor grabbed her face and gazed into her soul or so it seemed, to Page. They stood like that for a bit. Then feeling calmer, she dared and asked, breaking the moment. The moment having had it with the disrespect, left for a while, it needed to find itself, it couldn’t go on like this. Living at the whim of others.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to see how important you are.”
“Is it working?” she asked curiously.
The mad doctor pulled away, “of course not, that’s impossible. No one can judge the importance of a person. Not even me.”
He paced in front of her, hand running through his curly hair. He stopped, studied her once again, and broke into a sad smile. He bent down slightly and reached for her face again and gently squashed her cheeks in between the palms of his hands.
“You do have the saddest eyes I have ever seen.”
She stood still not blinking and managed a few words through her puckered lips, “you too.”
He smiled again and squeezed her cheeks with his palms, “well I have reason to be, I am very old. Have seen a great many things. But why do you?”
Before she could answer, he grabbed her hand and shook it awkwardly.
“Well. It was nice to meet you Page. Sorry to intrude. My lady sometimes takes me to places I shouldn’t be.” He said with a tinge of worry. He strutted away to his box.
“Don't go yet,” she whispered to herself, surprising herself.
He stopped mid-step and whirled around and shuffled back towards her again.
“Am I missing something?” He asked sighing, and spun around, hands in his pockets, “I am getting too old for these games.”
He opened his box, but before disappearing inside it again, he turned and gave her a mysterious look. “You could-” he seemed to think about it, his face a mask of sadness, “No, probably best if you stayed here.”
He walked inside box. She wanted to see how he managed to fit inside the box, but a part of her felt like it knew. Page stood there, half hoping the mad doctor would turn around wave at her and say, “See you later.” But he didn’t and he didn’t come back out. Instead the old dog started singing again and the box vanished. She turned around to look at her desk, expecting to see herself, with her head on the desk, asleep.
She exhaled, she felt like she had been holding her breath the entire time. And then, she was abruptly crushingly lonely. She noticed how empty and cold her room was. She sat on the floor, her lips trembling. She was starting to remember again.
Maybe she sat there for an hour, maybe a day, she didn’t know. But the sound that woke her up from her loneliness was a dog. And how it sang for her.
She looked up, and there she was. So blue, the bluest blue she had ever seen.
The mad doctor poked his head out his door, and looked around confused. Finally he noticed her on the floor.
“Is this earth?” he demanded, his voice thick with confusion.
She stared at him equally perplexed. Before she could answer, he scratched his head, his face contorted in deepening confusion.
“Wait, I remember asking that recently…” He looked at her again, “this place looks familiar.”
She decided to wait, maybe he would get there by himself.
His eyes widened in comprehension. “The almost deaf girl!” He exclaimed happily, laughing. She frowned, “Page,” she said correcting him.
He stepped out the box looking slightly offended, “Right. Page. So why am I here again?” She shrugged, and ventured jokingly, “Maybe you missed me?”
He looked at her and grinned, “Yeah maybe I did. Page with the sad eyes.”
He offered his hand, she looked at it hesitantly but allowed him to bring her to her feet.
“But why do I keep coming here? Oooh, a mystery, I like mysteries.”
“How long was I gone then?”
She shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe a second.”
He gave her an interested look, like he was finally seeing her, really seeing her. “That’s a fascinating answer. You are not afraid of time. Most people are.”
He circled around her desk, dragging her behind him. He was still holding her hand. “It’s too quiet,” he finally said.
“What is?” she whispered behind him, wanting to hold his hand forever.
“Everything.”
He brought her hand to his face and looked at something on it. “Way too quiet. Do you live alone?"
She felt herself panic, and followed the script, “No, I live with my parents.”
“They are downstairs?” He asked gazing at her.
Her eyes clouded over, and her head started to ring, but she answered him, “yes, they are.”
Page wondered if the mad doctor could feel that her hand was starting to tremble.
“And your room, why is it so dark?”
She looked around suddenly noticing that her room nearly pitch back except for the little lamp on her desk. It explained why she kept bringing up the paper to read the words better. How come she hadn’t realized the darkness?
The ringing in her head grew louder.
He crouched and brought his head down to the floor and listened. Page craned to see what he was doing. The he jumped up and whirled around and around and around. He let go off her and hand and started frantically tracing the walls of her room.
“What is it, what are you looking for?” she shouted, suddenly feeling very very afraid. There was something important she was forgetting. Something important. Her eyes started to tear up. It was coming back. The memory. She dropped on the floor.
He heard him ask the question she was never brave enough to ask.
“Why is there no door? Why doesn’t your room have windows or doors?”
-------
He stood there patiently. Page was surprised that the mad doctor could be still. He seemed like he moved, he moved people, and he could move worlds. He didn’t look like man who could stop for anyone, for anything. Not even for death.
She tried breathing slowly trying to collect herself. She could almost see the thing that she had work so hard to forget.
She felt a hand on her back. And it shouldn’t have, but it felt like it healed a small part of her. She looked up in daze.
“you are a doctor,” she whispered, hair falling to her face.
The mad doctor cracked another grin, “not a doctor, the doctor. Now get up. We are going.”
Page got up slowly, taking his outstretched hand. She realized just how small her hand was, the mad doctor’s hand almost engulfed them.
“You are a giant,” she said again in wonder.
The giant doctor stilled, and her head ducked slightly, his shoulder tensing, but when he turned around, he was smiling kindly, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“No. You are just quite small.”
Page almost giggled, she was particularly big or small. She hadn’t thought about that.
“But I am not…I am….I am…” she faltered realizing that she couldn’t remember how she looked like. She frowned to herself, she should have been afraid but the hand that held hers kept her strong. She didn’t know if she was small or big, she didn’t know if her skin matched white roses, or the brown of the earth.
But she did know one thing, “I am Page…and I have interesting colored hair.”
The not-so giant doctor cackled, and then stood upright.
“Right then Page, you are going into that box. You will wait for me. And then I will take you to the best people I know. They will take care of you.”
Page almost her mouth to protest about leaving her parents, but she realized that she couldn’t remember her parents, she knew she had had them, but another part of her knew that they no longer existed.
She opened her mouth again to protest that she couldn’t leave everything behind, but stopped short, realizing that she had nothing to leave behind.
She looked up at him, her lips trembling, “okay.”
The kind doctor nodded slowly, his eyes turning sad again, “why are you looking sad, we are about to travel through time and space!”
She sniffed confused, “that can’t be real.”
For the first time, the kind doctor’s eyes didn’t look sad,but mischievous instead, “nothing is impossible. Only wobbly and sometimes wibbly. Now go meet my Tardis. She is my partner, and my family.”
Page smiled, feeling less sad, and more curious, she pointed at the box, and asked, “Is she inside the box?”
The mad doctor scoffed, “don’t be stupid. She is the box. Stop pointing and gawking and asking stupid questions and get into the box.”
Page giggled, “you sound like you are kidnapping me.”
The silly doctor rolled his eyes and pushed her towards the boss, “But I am. I am kidnapping you.”
-----------
The Doctor stood in the girl’s bedroom and sighed. He was going to miss the part, he was going to miss when she gasped, and whirled around, and said the words, the words that always made him want to yell in joy. ”It’s bigger on the inside!”
But he did hear the Tardis door crack open, and after that silence.
The room was too quiet. It was also bare.
His face clenched and his fists trembled in anger. He knew this existed. He knew the world wasn’t just about the monsters or the aliens. He knew that on earth, monsters existed covered in human flesh. But that’s why he never stayed on earth for too long, because if he stayed for too long, he would begin to question why he protected them He would start to question, and eventually start to despite. Flawed humans.
He walked towards the small desk, and picked up the letter. It didn’t have much on it, but it managed to break his heart a little. Silly humans.
On the paper were the words:
I can’t do this anymore, let me be brave.
They were sprawled over and over, repeated. And each time, they looked more and more desperate.
He placed the letter back down on the desk. And walked away, hands in his pocket.
He looked up at the ceiling slightly and wasn’t surprised to see noose. But it looked like it had been hanging there for a while.
He sighed and looked around the room once more. He would be back, not with the girl. Because then he wouldn’t be the doctor. He would come back as the soldier.
“I will come back for you, and when I do, the galaxy will shiver, I will burn the very soul out of you,” he declared coolly, his eyes steel. The air chilled.
Suddenly, a voice behind him called, “how can it be bigger though?”
The doctor turned, his face immediately transforming. He grinned wickedly, “magic!”
The young girl smiled dubiously, “really?”
The doctor walked towards her and shook his head in disgust, “no. of course not. It’s science girl. Time travelling. Not just magic. This isn’t Harry Potter!”
The young girl looked at him confused, “Who is Harry Potter?”
The doctor tried not to frown again, he shrugged, “a boy, like you, who was forced out of the light. Until, a person like me, came to tell him that he was special.”
The young woman, she was probably in her early twenties, but lack of sun, lack of food, and whatever else she had been forced to endure in the little closet room she lived in, had shrunk her. She looked like she had stopped growing at 10 years old.
The young woman, Page, looked at him dubiously, “I am special?”
The doctor stepped into his Tardis and twirled around, and yelled, “OF COURSE YOU ARE! The Tardis came to look for you. If the Tardis thinks you are special, then you are worth galaxies.”
The young woman grinned, and for the first time, she laughed. It was a short unsure laugh, a laugh that wasn’t used to existing. But it boomed in the Tardis, and the Tardis lit up slightly.
He went to his monitor, and turned it to her, studying the screen.
She stopped laughing, suppressed mirth still on her face, “what are you doing?”
He shrugged and lied, “I am giving you a quick medical check-up of course! Just stand still.”
She stood attention, her thin arm hanging to her bony body. And she stood still, giving him a wide smile. Her sad big eyes still shrouding away whatever secrets she tucked away in the corners of her mind.
The doctor stared at the screen, just as he had suspected.
Annabela Iyu. Kidnapped at the age of 5. Declared Missing, presumed dead ten years later. Suspect, Zack Bronin.
He could have continued reading, because it seemed like Annabela Iyu had been quite special, so special that her prolonged disappearance had led to the suicide of her parents. But Annabela was dead, and the doctor had to get Page home.
He swung the monitor away, shielding away his sadness with a laugh, “safe. Good. No extra heads. No extra hearts! On Y Vas Page!”
Page let out a breathless giggle, like she couldn’t believe what was happening. And off they went.
------
The Tardis sang for her. She tried to stay awake but eventually the noise lulled her to sleep. When she woke up, she woke up to the sound again.
The doctor stood by the door looking out. He seemed bigger than life.
“Where are we? Are we home yet?” She didn’t know why she said home, even though she didn’t know where she was going. But she felt it in the very fiber of her being that the doctor would take her home.
The doctor motioned her over. She stood up weakly and walked towards him, feeling unexpectedly nervous.
She stared out past the door and into the vast universe spotted with glimmering lights, and colors, and she gasped.
Then she cried, loud, and ugly, clinging to the Tardis, and staring out into space.
She wasn’t sure but maybe the Tardis cried with her. And maybe a few stars blinked out of existence at her pain. She wasn’t sure but maybe the memories of hurt, fear and pain started to hurt a little less.
She just stood there, sobbing at the universe.
----
But after what felt like an hour or a day or a month, she got home.
She held his hand and gazed out at the green, and whispered, worried that she might chase away the beauty.
"Were are we?"
“We are in a place called Gallifrey. I am taking you to someone very special to me. She will take care of you,” he said fondly, looking out at the sky.
She nodded slowly, Gallifrey.
“Why Gallifrey?” she asked suddenly curious.
They started walking, and it was a while before he answered, but when he did it was with quiet sadness, “I don’t know. Maybe because I am hoping that one day, you will also steal a Tardis and explore the universe.”
She didn’t understand then.
But a few years later, when the memory of the white room had faded away, she understood.
But she didn’t see the doctor again, but that was okay, because she sometimes heard the sound of the singing old dog.
---
On earth, far from Page. The doctor landed his Tardis outside a quaint cabin. He wondered what room had been Page’s as he looked grimly at the house.
And when the doctor found Zack Bronin. He didn’t hold anything back.