Doctor Who: The Time of the Companions: Book 3 (Doctor Who: The Companions' Adventure)

by Cour M.

  “We did,” C.S. said, “and you said they were at the Ice Fortress?”

  “They are,” Mrs. Beaver said, “we have this on good authority. Held there by HER. And that’s what is leading to the last straw.”

  “The last straw?” The Doctor said, “for what?”

  “You came in dark times,” Mr. Beaver informed them, “at the eve of war.”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Tumnus said, “the… queen, has terrorized our lands for long enough. An army has been gathering to rise against her. Tomorrow many will march against the fortress.”

  “Still too afraid to fight, Tumnus?” Mr. Beaver declared. “Even after what she did to your family?”

  Tumnus looked at his hooves.

  “It’s not his fault,” Ten defended, “it’s not easy to have courage in the face of war.”

  “But I’m sorry for you,” Tumnus said, “you came from the brink of war, to another. Tomorrow, this land will cry out in agony.”

  “Yes, but you all have to fight,” C.S. Lewis said, “we cannot say that we were pushed to the brink, as you were.”

  “At the moment, it seemed like a good cause,” John Henrickson explained, “but when all was thought over, we realized that it was an extreme reaction. The decisions made in a moment of immaturity on all parties. The countries should have spoken, should have communicated. Apologies should have been given. If it were, many a young man would be alive now.”

  “But I understand what it means to fight for independence,” C.S. noted, thinking of his Irish heritage. “So yes, our cause is noble. It’s what keeps me going.”

  “But you are all strong fighting men,” the Beaver said, “will you join us? The more soldiers the better.”

  “Besides,” Mrs. Beaver said, “you need to get to your soldiers. And this is the only way. They are captured there with many of our kind. This battle is to defeat her as well as to retrieve our loved ones.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t fight at all,” the Doctor said.

  “But we have to help,” Amy stressed, “Doctor this is what we need to do.”

  “I don’t like guns.”

  “There won’t be any,” Ace assured him. “Look around you, they don’t have those. But we have to defeat this evil woman. And besides, this is the ultimatum that the Dream Lord has given you.”

  “Precisely. I feel as if he knows that it’s the only way that he will win.”

  

  Much debate occurred over the course of the hour, and getting tired of it, Amy emerged from the house to get some fresh air. As she stood in the snow, with flakes falling all around her, the Dream Lord appeared, sitting on a rock, his back to her, with glasses and reading a book. This time he wore the same clothes as Eleven usually did.

  “What book are you pretending to read?” Amy asked lightly, not scared of him at all at that point.

  “He did that often too, you know,” he replied, and the book was actually lit by a small lamppost that was the size of a pin, hovering just above the book, “Pretending to read. So tell me,” he removed the glasses and turned to her, “Do you miss him yet? Your first Doctor.”

  “He is the Doctor in there.”

  “Oh Amy,” he placed his glasses in his pocket, “you know I can see into your mind. That one in there is handsome, dashing, but sadly, he can’t fix things the way your other one could, can he? He would fix things like he fixed his bowtie! Even the things he destroyed, he healed. Yet not this one. This one, you have found, in a weak place. Where he can’t fix anything at the moment. You thought you would get a chance to see space and the stars once more and where has he gotten you? Stuck in the middle of a book, in the middle of the woods, and that book hasn’t even been written yet.”

  “There is more to him than just the stars and a blue box.”

  “Oh yes… there was that kiss you shared once.”

  Amy blinked and looked away, for the Dream Lord had finally found the chink in her armor.

  “Tell me,” he said, “does that still haunt your memories? That moment where you betrayed Rory, and you let him down.”

  “Yes, it does,” Amy answered, “I will not deny it.”

  “You won’t?”

  “No,” she leaned closely to the Dream Lord, “that mistake haunts me terribly, and sometimes I wake up in a fright, moved by the guilt of not caring for Rory at the time. But that guilt is important. It keeps me fighting! It keeps me wishing to never let him down again. I will get Rory out of this. I will protect him from whatever happens tomorrow. We will be free, and I will always put him first.”

  “Will you? After all, you have the Doctor back.”

  “She doesn’t need to have one and lose the other,” Rory said, appearing behind them.

  “Of course you would come out for her,” the Dream Lord scoffed, “Rory’s never much good unless he’s near Amy, is he? Without his crutch.”

  “Enough!” Rory spat, coming forward.

  “But it’s never enough, is it?” The Dream Lord disappeared and suddenly appeared again, wearing the exact same thing as Rory. “Rory Williams, the man who will always be insecure. So insecure, in fact, that he would rather die than find a woman who was loyal to him from the start. Because there is not much to Rory, is there. No, he is so useless that outside of a woman, he has no purpose.”

  Rory smiled gently, not moved.

  “I know you like to take our weaknesses and destroy us for it. But you never bother to stop and think that beneath those weaknesses are the strength itself. Yes, I depend on Amy, because there shall never be anything wrong with depending on the person you claim to love. Her love keeps me fighting. So what? And as for her mistake, you see the action, but you forget she waited fourteen years for a man to fall out of the sky, and that sort of loyalty does not leave anyone. You think I’m foolish for believing in her? She sacrificed much for me eventually. She chose me. And if she waited fourteen years for a man she did not choose, then how long do you think she will wait for a man that she did? There was a time when you said that I was not as intimidating as the Doctor when I spoke this, well I am now: leave her alone!”

  The Dream Lord took a few steps back and clapped his hands.

  “Strong words.”

  Then he disappeared.

  

  Amy took Rory’s hand and kissed it as they sat down on the ground.

  “Rory, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” he assured her.

  “No,” she argued, “let me talk about this.”

  “Amy,” he retaliated, “you don’t have to. Don’t forget, the Doctor is the Doctor and I’m a nurse. Before the Doctor brought me on the TARDIS all those years ago, he told me about what happened. You had an Angel in your mind. You saw your death walking towards you for a while. Therefore, when you recovered and the Doctor saved you, you were emotionally and chemically imbalanced, almost suffering from PSTD. That’s why we advise counseling after fatal encounters at the hospital. After an encounter like that, it takes days to be capable of making rational decisions. That’s why I forgave you so quickly.”

  “I know, you’ve explained this to me before, but I never told you… I still felt guilt over it. And I am happy that I did. Rory if I didn’t feel guilt from practically betraying you, what would that say about me? And yes, it’s been years, but that guilt keeps me like this. It keeps me spending every day of my life always wanting to be better for you. It led to me bringing you back to life over and over, to giving my life for you, undoing thirty years of time for you, jumping… for you. That guilt of letting you down somehow always leads to me choosing to be a hero, to being the greatest woman of all: to being a woman worthy of Rory Williams.”

  Emotional, they both kissed each other passionately.

  What they did not know was that the Doctor was standing nearby, watching them.

  

  The sight of them together! The words that were spoken were perfect and he could not remember how long it had been sin
ce he had such a connection—with his wife that had died so long ago when he was still the First Doctor.

  He did not move when he heard the sound of the Dream Lord appearing behind him, leaning against a tree.

  “Peeping Tom!” He teased.

  “So?” Ten replied, still looking at Amy and Rory. “You tried to break them, and I would beat you if I could for it.”

  “How quickly you have grown to love them.”

  “It’s impossible not to,” Ten sighed, placing his hands in his pockets, “Please, torture me only and leave them alone.”

  “You’ll never be able to have that, you know,” The Dream Lord said, “what they have. The curse of the Timelord in his blue box. Does it make you jealous?”

  “If you’ve been in my head, then you know if it does or not, don’t you?”

  The Dream Lord smiled.

  “Tomorrow there is going to be a war.”

  “Why? Why did you bring us to C.S.’s dreams when it was too late for me to do anything? There’s nothing I can do here, for this is a fictional world I’m in, and no matter what I say, I am useless.”

  “Think about that a little harder,” he suggested, “why would I do that? Fun fact, the answer is in your past.”

  Ten thought about it and then he turned colder.

  “Ah, yes, there it is!” The Dream Lord laughed. “You now know. Yes, there will be a battle tomorrow, and you will have to watch it.”

  “Why do that?”

  “You know why. And if this lot win, you get the soldiers.”

  “You can insult me,” Ten remarked, “you can offend me, belittle me, but for this moment, it will do nothing.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I know why you came in this moment.” Ten moved up to him, “and it was because you were trying to hurt them.” He gestured to Amy and Rory in the distance. “And you failed. And you just realized that you will always fail. So tomorrow, I have to watch a battle, and I will weep. But for the moment, I can smile, because they won. They beat you.”

  “Oh, Doctor, did they?”

  He smiled and disappeared.

  

  Ten walked back to the Lodge, and as he did, C.S. Lewis emerged from it.

  “How is it going in there?” Ten asked.

  “I can’t tell you. There really will be a battle tomorrow. We genuinely did come on the Eve of War.”

  Ten looked at C.S. pointedly.

  “What? It’s not as if this is what I wanted.”

  “It’s not?” Ten asked, “C.S., this is your dream.”

  “And that’s where I think you’re wrong, Doctor. I don’t believe that this is a dream anymore.”

  “Yes, it is. It has your imagination and everything.”

  “Does it?” He replied desperately, “or was I just born with premonitions, or the gift of foresight? And don’t scoff, Doctor. I have seen something like that possible with my own two eyes. There was one battle I fought in the war, and the only reason I survived it was because of a boy who always kept pulling me out of the way of the bombs, somehow always having the gift to tell what would happen.”

  “A boy?” Ten asked, curious, “what was his name?”

  “Timothy, I think.”

  Ten looked amazed.

  “Timothy? Did you learn his last name?”

  “No.”

  “But did he have a watch? A pocket watch?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  Ten covered his mouth in wonder. Timothy, the boy he taught in England when he was running from the Family of Blood, had been the one to save C.S. Lewis himself. And neither man would ever make the connection.

  “That explains it. That’s why the Dream Lord chose you. And I feel better… because now I know that my mistake back then was not for nothing.”

  “I don’t understand what—”

  The Doctor interrupted him when he came to the revelation.

  “Wait, this is your dream. And there’s a battle that will occur tomorrow, because you all just came from one! The battle is fresh in your mind, so it’s transferred over to the fictional world that you created.”

  “No, that’s not what is happening now!”

  “Yes, it is! But this time, it’s done right. This battle does have a noble cause. A cause you all wish to have. All you have to do is tell yourself that it does not need to happen, and it won’t!”

  “No!”

  “C.S., think about it! You wanted to see Mr. Tumnus, so he came. You wanted to meet the White—her, so she suddenly appears on the same road that we are traveling. You want to see the beavers, to be chased by talking wolves, so it’s all happening. If those things can occur because you want them to, think of what can end, because you don’t want it to continue. C.S. this can end, if you just tell it to.”

  “No, it won’t, because it’s real!” C.S. shouted with such force that he would brook no refusal. “Because this is all real. We will all fight tomorrow, and we will get back our soldiers.”

  “There’s a battle tomorrow, because it’s the exact sort of battle that you want. And the Dream Lord knows it. He is counting on it.”

  C.S. turned away to go back into the Lodge.

  “I know how your mother died when you were 10 years old,” Ten said simply, “and about how you always said your name was Jack. I know how the loss of her affected you. So your brother and you had no choice but to retreat further and further into the world you created, because it was the only warm place. But C.S., Jack, dreams may be brilliant, but reality can also be lovely too.”

  “Doctor, if you have seen the realities I have, you would not believe that.”

  “I have seen the horrors you have, and still do believe it.”

  “There will be a battle tomorrow.”

  “C.S., let go of this.”

  “No! This world is real! It is real!”

  With that, C.S. turned his heel and walked into the lodge, leaving Ten to remain there, wondering what was scarier: the universe run by a mad man who wanted to destroy everything, or the pains of a heartbroken boy who only had his dreams to help him.

  Chapter 16

  The Magnificent Seven

  In a medical room that the TARDIS created, Clara was helping Nine with his wounds. There was an instructional manual of what to do and how to treat him beside her as she chose certain ointments to administer and what pills and needles to give him.

  “Well, that was stupid,” she commented as she placed a bandage on his arm.

  “Was it?” He asked. “Did we find out what happened and who we were fighting?”

  “Yes, but you almost died,” she groaned.

  “I know,” he replied simply, “but it had to be done.”

  “So who is he?” Clara asked, “This Xaros, the Sea Devil with an ocean-sized grudge.”

  “He was there when I last ran into his species,” Nine got a faraway look in his eye. “Do you ever have those memories where you just saw someone for a second, they were just a face in a crowd, but it lasts with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was with him. He was young once. An Eocene child, and I remember his face looking at me, so much in wonder at what I was, and then heartbroken when I had to hurt his colony. The Sea Devils, at the bottom of the ocean… and he was innocent once perhaps.”

  “You sound as if his eyes haunt you.”

  “Yes, they do. But how would you know that?” Nine looked at Clara more pointedly and then realized that she was tending to his wounds a little too well. “And how do you know how to do all this?”

  “Well, the medical book…”

  “Even the medical book can’t supply you with this amount of quick learning and emotional deduction.” Without asking, Nine took her face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “You really did bring back a lot from that time you were uploaded into the computers, in the Wi-Fi. I should have noticed this more before, but I was distracted. Sorry if I was inaccurate then. But… you brought back a lot. Even
some feedback.”

  “Don’t worry I’m fine.”

  “Clara—”

  “I’m fine!” She roared, pushing his hands away and then turning away from him. Not deterred, he grabbed her arm to restrain her.

  “Clara…”

  “What is it!”

  “You’re perfect. Too perfect.”

  “But that’s great, isn’t it?” She turned to him, and he saw panic in her eyes. “I mean, now I can be what everyone needs. It’s brilliant.”

  “What did you say?”

  Nine realized something.

  “The first time we met, when you rushed into my TARDIS, at first I took it for eagerness, but it wasn’t that, was it? It was desperation.”

  “Well, I was worried about what the computer did to me.”

  “Yes, and you had a right to be, as we have discussed, but there’s something else here. Clara, what were you like before you were uploaded into the Wi-Fi?”

  “Well, I was fine. I was ordinary.”

  “You seem very desperate to be perfect. To the point where it’s like you feel that you have to make up for something.”

  Clara looked away from him.

  “And now you’re looking away from me. You were very disappointed when I was not the Doctor.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, John, I just—”

  “No, don’t worry about that. I’m not jealous or anything at all, really. I just… help me to understand. What were you really like before you were uploaded? In other words, what mistake did you make that makes you want to try so hard?”

  Clara looked up at him in panic.

  “The signs are all there,” Nine pointed out, “you are suffering from guilt. And it takes one to know one; you’re running from failure.”

  “Why do you want to talk about this?” Clara sighed, “we have a problem out there right now and the world is in danger.”

  “Yes, it is, but what would I be if I didn’t care about what’s happening in my TARDIS?”

  Nine was amazed at himself even for caring to focus on it, but then he realized that if he had spoken more to Rose before he took her to see her father, the situation might have ended differently. Or who knows…