by Cour M.
“There is an endurance pill that can increase your strength in the medical kit.”
Martha tried to reach it, but as she crawled, all the memories of the Doctor’s many faces flashed in her mind, along with records of his past companions and his deeds. This was too much and she began to lose the strength to even crawl.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said to the hologram. “I am letting you down.”
“I am not the Doctor. I am a voice interface.”
“I know, and I wish that I could be everything, but I can’t… I just can’t…”
Her eyes began to close, about to pass out, when she heard a word.
“Doctor.”
The voice of the interface changed and Martha opened her eyes, looking up at the hologram. The hologram had altered, going from being the Eleventh Doctor to being the Tenth.
“Doctor,” he said, “Martha Jones.”
“What?” she sighed. “I’m here.”
“Martha. My Doctor. Get up.”
“I can’t do this. What if I…”
“Martha. My Doctor. Get up!”
Feeling a strength that came from within, the simple will to determine, to dictate, to defeat, Martha crawled over to the kit, opened it up, pulled out the bottle and ate a pill. She felt strength in her again, and it was just enough to get her to crawl up to the consul unit, activate the TARDIS and pull the lever.
“Geronimo,” she whispered.
The main headquarters that had previously been occupied by General Davidson and his men now was being run by mechanoids, gelem soldiers and a couple of cybermen.
As they moved around the control rooms, they were busy putting a virus to the mainframe, unsuspecting, when the TARDIS smashed through the walls of the headquarters. Martha was flying the TARDIS, yet since it was not usually accustomed to such traditional flight, not having done it in so long, there was some smoke that was rising from certain areas of the monitor and parts of the consul unit. She aimed for it to collide into every being in the room, rendering it unconscious with the force of the TARDIS knocking into it. After crashing into a cyberman and destroying it, she pushed through the rest of the gelems and blew up a couple of mechanoids before she trapped a mechanoid against the main computer. Walking to the doors, she opened them to see the mechanoid pinned against the dashboard, flailing its body as it tried to wriggle free, when she emerged, she aimed the sonic screwdriver at its face.
“Signal your leader, now!” She demanded.
Intimidated under her gaze and the light of the sonic, he turned his body with the swivel of his hips, then pressed a few buttons. As it sent the message, Martha removed her gun.
“Set to stun,” She whispered in it, making sure it would simply disorient only and render someone unconscious.
On the monitor, the main control room appeared and a mechanoid was visible.
“Mechanoid Kai,” it said, “report. Have you fully disabled the base?”
“Not at all,” Martha said, pressing the gun against the mechanoid’s head, “Where is Croesus?”
The mechonoid did not respond at first, shocked in seeing Martha.
“Where is Croesus?” Martha repeated, “Bring him before me. Now!”
The mechanoid looked behind him and the monitor’s view shifted to the large table where Croesus was seated at.
“Martha,” Croesus said. “The companion who the Doctor would have let die.”
“Oh, stop pretending like that’s what he was doing. I communicate with you to negotiate the return of the Doctor to me and all the victims that you have captured. Lay down your arms, hand them all over, and we shall issue a report to the Shadow Proclamation where you will be pardoned. Yet any refusal to do this would lead to us declaring war on you. You will give me back the Doctor, and all those that you have taken.”
“Or what, Martha Jones?”
Martha shot the mechanoid and he fell down, unconscious.
“Or I come after you.”
Croesus chuckled.
“And this is the person who the Doctor travels with? Cold-hearted and methodical. You didn’t even flinch. I confess, that you make me happy. To see that this is what his companions are now. I am thoroughly enjoying myself. The man who calls himself the Doctor, and all he does is raise murderers to do his job for him.”
“You just reminded me of how villains always love to talk so very much. One last chance. Surrender, stand down, return your captives, and all will be forgiven.”
The monitor focused on Croesus directly.
“No.”
“Then what happens next is your doing.”
The mechonoid that she stunned began to stir and Croesus noticed this.
“Oh,” he smiled, “I see. You just stunned him. So the Doctor’s companion still has her goodness. You are harmless.”
“Underestimate me, fine. But you are overlooking one thing. You attacked and imprisoned a good man. And if he’s stoppable, there is one thing that is not: his wife. And she’s going to find you.”
“You won’t do anything that will ever destroy us,” Croesus sneered. “You think you’re the first companion I’ve met. No, I’ve met many, naïve Martha. So many come and go and each time they think they are special. But you’re not. You’re all just replacements of the one before you. And then you spend your life wasting away for a man who will never apologize. Yes, Martha, I met so many of you. And I know the Doctor. I know his hearts. You think your wrath shakes me. You were trained by the hearts of the Doctor, and there is nothing to fear. He’s a good man, and good men have too many rules.”
“Good men don’t need rules,” Martha stated, raising the screwdriver to the monitor, “And I am no man!”
She placed feedback in the computer and it ignited, flames erupting from it.
“I’m coming back. I always come back.”
Martha directed the TARDIS to raise above the ground as she looked at the gelem warriors, cybermen and mechanoids who began to wake up.
“Tip for you all!” She called, triumphant. “I think it’s time that you teleported. For your own sakes.”
She closed the doors to the TARDIS, it dissolved as she flew it into the vortex and all the remaining soldiers teleported out of the base before the headquarters exploded.
“Did I just Eowyn that?” She asked herself as she flew the TARDIS away, “Yeah, I totally just Eowyn’ed that.”
Chapter 11
The Dreamer of Dreams
Through the woods of this secret land, they ran with Ten leading them.
“Do we even know where we are going?!” Oliver cried.
“Probably not!” Jack Harkness cried, “but let’s run anyway.”
Up ahead, they saw a thin and narrow bridge.
“Look, over there!” Ace cried.
“Right, come on, then,” Ten ushered them over to it, but it was so thin that they all had to use it individually.
“Some of us are too big for this perhaps,” Jason said, “we shall fall.”
“No, we won’t,” C.S. Lewis said, “I’ve seen bridges like this before, and they are sturdier than you think. We all can make it.”
“Yes, we can,” Ten said, first eyeing C.S. curiously, then he soniced the bridge and tested it. Suddenly he blinked, disoriented when he remembered the married couple he lost on the bridge in the midst of the Titanic star liner ship, even though he promised to save them. The sudden bit of guilt rushed back to him and he faltered a bit.
“Doctor?” Rory asked, placing his hand on his shoulder, empathetic, “are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” Ten reassured him, recovering. He rolled his shoulders and continued checking the bridge, “The only thing is that we have to use it individually till someone gets to the middle of the bridge, or it would not support all of our weight combined.”
“Ladies first then,” Jack said, then he turned to Henry first, who was the handsomest of the soldiers. “And then the good-looking men.”
“You�
��re not going first Jack!” Ten demanded as he moved aside and Ace went on the bridge, then Amy.
“I just got you to admit that I’m good-looking,” Jack smirked.
As Ten kept an eye out for Amy as she stepped onto the bridge, he looked around him at the trees and saw the Dream Lord, sitting on a branch comfortably and just staring at him.
“Rory,” Ten said, over his shoulder.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Should I be afraid of him?”
Rory followed his eyes and saw the Dream Lord as well, grinning.
“Doctor, now is the time to be perfectly fine in being afraid,” Rory admitted, consolingly.
“Thank you.”
With him being the lightest, Rory was encouraged to go next.
“I want to make sure that Amy is fine first,” Rory said, waiting, “we all should wait.”
Ten always could see their love for each other, but then did he notice to what extent it truly was. Once Amy made it to the middle of the bridge, then Rory went. After he was a few steps in, they heard the paws of feet, and Ten moved protectively in front of the group, extending his sonic as a wolf appeared on a rock that jutted above their heads.
It gnarled its teeth at them.
“Don’t worry,” Kenneth said, “it’s just one. It won’t attack till the rest of them get here, so we have time.”
“Do you?” The wolf said, “Because I’m stronger than I look.”
“Oh my god!” John gasped, “that wolf can talk?”
“And hear, imbecile!” the wolf hissed as Ten made Henry go next.
“Can it be?” C.S. Lewis declared, taking a few steps forward.
“C.S.!” Ten ordered, “stay back.”
“It won’t attack me,” C.S. said, inching closer to the wolf.
“What makes you believe that?” The wolf boomed.
“Because you’re not the leader,” C.S. Lewis said, “and you won’t make a move without him.”
The wolf faltered, not knowing how C.S. knew that.
Ten then told James to go, then Oliver.
“Why are you chasing us?” C.S. asked the wolf.
“Because we are told to.”
“By who? The Dream Lord.”
“No,” the wolf replied, “by someone else.”
“I knew it.”
“Of course you do. Who doesn’t know her?”
C.S. Lewis froze.
“No!”
Ten then told Jack to go, then the last ones as well, while he stopped and waited, staring at C.S. Lewis.
“Of course,” the wolf said to him, “And now she knows that you are here.”
“She can’t.”
“Yes, she does. Because the trees can talk!”
C.S. Lewis looked around them, in panic.
“Trees don’t talk.”
“Where are you from?”
“C.S.!” Ten cried, “come on.”
“But—”
Ten grabbed C.S. Lewis and pulled him on the bridge. C.S. went reluctantly and then Ten turned to the wolf.
“Who is she?”
The wolf laughed.
“What is that?” the wolf asked, referring to the sonic screwdriver, “a colored branch?”
“You may believe that if you like. Who is the woman you’re talking about?”
“Why… the White Witch, of course.”
Ten took a quick look at C.S.’s retreating form and it all was coming together.
“The Ice Queen?” Ten said.
“Yes, all hail the queen.”
“Oh, she’s no queen of mine,” Ten aimed the sonic over a branch that was above the wolf, it collapsed on the wolf and Ten took that as the time to rush onto the bridge and follow the rest of his company. As he did, he heard the wolves appear, the leader was barking orders and then they all began to follow him onto the bridge.
Eventually he reached the other side of it, and took a look at the oncoming wolves.
“This will be a lot easier for you all if you just come quietly,” the main wolf suggested.
“Ah, and you’re the leader,” Ten said, “well lead this.”
Ten pressed his sonic against the bridge, it sent vibrations along it, making all the wolves lose their footing, slip off and fall into the water that was not very far below.
“Don’t worry,” he said to his group, “wolves can swim. Now come on.”
He led them through the woods until he felt that he could find some sort of safe haven. As they walked, C.S. Lewis cried out.
“Oi, look up there!” They saw where he pointed and it turned out to be a sort of small fortress on a plateau.
“It looks like a… watchtower of some kind,” Kenneth noted.
“Yeah, it does,” C.S. Lewis said, “I knew a man in the war, during the Battle of the Somme, who wanted to be a writer. He thought of something just like it. I just met the lad once.”
“Let me guess,” Ten deduced, “Was his last name Tolkien?”
“Yes, did you meet him?”
“Actually yes, I did,” Ten smiled, “come on, let’s go up there for a time until we can get our bearings and find out what to do.”[5]
“You met J. R. R. Tolkien?” Ace asked, whispering to Ten.
“Of course I did,” Ten smiled, “now that was a fun adventure!”
“What do you call this one, I wonder?”
“Child’s play. And I love it!”
“About to say, I thought this would have been Christmas for you,” Jack noted as they walked along.
“Yes, it totally is!” Ten beamed. “Though I hope that I don’t find myself in any more magical inspired lands in the future. And surely my luck could not be that bad twice. Or that good twice!”
They walked along, and while doing so, Oliver and James collected branches here and there. They then reached the watchtower, climbed into it and found a large room that was actually pretty enclosed.
“Brilliant,” Oliver said, “I was hoping there would be a hidden place, so now we can get a fire going.”
They confined themselves in the room and then three men assembled the fire and they stared into it, trying to get warm.
“So, now it comes down to it,” Kenneth said, “we have to figure out who that man was who is putting you all through this.”
“He’s called the Dream Lord,” Amy continued, “yeah, he wasn’t lying about that one. And he really is testing us. He loves to do that.”
“How was it last time though. Give me the precise explanation.”
Amy told them all over the fire about how it was when they met the Dream Lord. No moment was undefined and when she finished, Ten was confused.
“So, he will change his tactics in the future,” C.S. summed up, “there, he makes you fall asleep and wake up in another world and then makes you chose in between the two. This is the first one where he just has you travel somewhere and then just promises to let us go.”
“But it’s not as if this is not a dream, is it?” Ten said, and then he turned to C.S. Lewis, “Is it, C.S?”
C.S.’s eyes shifted.
“What? I promise I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“No, you haven’t. But we discussed this before. You’re just the one who the Dream Lord is using. You’re just the one who invented this entire world.”
C.S. bit his lip while all his fellow soldiers looked at him.
“What?” John asked, “What does he mean?”
C.S. looked around, a little afraid.
“After all,” Amy added, “C.S., how did you know that that wolf could talk? And that he would not attack us?”
“It was just a dream I had,” C.S. explained, defensively, “Well, I day dream, I suppose. I had just gotten done from a battle in the war, in the hospital wing because I had gotten some scrapes and my hearing was off. While sitting there, I remembered all the dead soldiers I had seen when the fighting was done. So I re-dreamed up a world where things were different, an
d when a great battle was won, there was a way in which they could all be brought back to life. And then I thought of talking animals being in the world as well. But that’s all I did. I just made it up in my mind.”
“And you had a dream,” Ten summed up, “a brilliant one. Perhaps one of the best dreams that will be seen in your world.”
“I’m just a soldier,” C.S. said, “no one cares about me. And my dreams are not important.”
“C.S., for over nine hundred years, I walked this Earth, and I never saw a dream that wasn’t important.”
“But what did he mean by a witch?” John asked, “the wolf, I mean.”
“Well, in this world I created, Boxen—”
“Wait, what did you call it?” Ace asked. “This land, I mean.”
“Well, I could not think of a name at the moment, so I called it Boxen.”
“Boxen?”
“Yes.
“Boxen?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing… just, I think that you need to explore other possibilities.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Narnia, for example.”
Amy bit her lip.
“Ace,” Ten gasped.
“What?” She responded defensively, “someone had to say it.”
“Narnia?” C.S. asked.
“Yes.”
C.S. looked at Amy, remembering that she had said something similar.
“Well… sorry, but I don’t like that name.”
“You don’t like that name?”
“It just doesn’t feel… right to me.”
“Give it some time,” Jack Harkness assured him, “now what were you saying?”
“Well, every time that I thought of this world, of course I knew that there needed to be a villain, so I thought of this character, the White Witch.”
The wind suddenly blew around them, the air got colder and the door burst open from the wind. Everyone felt the sense of foreboding and Amy turned to C.S. sharply.
“C.S. you created the world that we are in now and therefore you know all about it. What are we feeling now? What does this mean?”
C.S. stood up abruptly.
“We have to leave now!”
“Why?” Jason asked.