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Caged bird was the inconceivable creature which bore past, future, and death in its tongue - lapping up to dust all who, by mere chance, came into being. Gazed upon, it could be swift on its feet, teeth ravaging the flesh of the cosmos, claws hooked onto the eyes of suns. Or treading lightly on the blanketing dark, a woman softly plucking breaths out of existence, lying forever so still that the dust encases her.The bird is both and the bird is neither, but the bird is all. Once, as a speck of the bird’s skin: it was, is, and will be a man’s home and ship.The tale of The Bird was something meant to soothe young girls like Ode, to serve as their sign of hope and offer the Vast Incomprehensible on a plate in the hopes that they can understand on the same plane as their mother and their mother before them. Whether she did not know how to eat or the Vast Incomprehensible desired not to be eaten yet, it only served to prove the world to be more intricate than she imagined. She only heard it was, is, will be loose and uncontrollable, both wildfire and mistress. How was that to soothe her at any rate?She brought this knowledge when she found herself in the hallways of an unfamiliar place. The floors and walls seemed to buzz, indicating a machinery nature, but the more she stayed and lingered the more it felt like the room was breathing. Like looking at someone else and knowing you breathe the same hair, the hallways buzzed with the same familiarity that made her skin warm.Forwards she walked, coming towards an opening to a rounded room with a honeycomb-like design on the walls, a yellow glow warming the round room. Despite its unfamiliarity, an ease was brought to her by the buzzing, as if welcoming her, asking her to walk.“Somebody there?” a voice rang through the room, unhostile but neither friendly - cautious, rather.Ode stopped on her tracks, caught off guard and staying as still as possible. Tilting her head sideways, she caught a peak of someone’s legs on the floor, their upper half obscured by a tall, round thing sitting in the very middle of the room.When the body slid out and sat up, Ode studied the man’s face. She had not seen it before, but it seemed she couldn’t make herself remember that she had, as once her eyes drew away and looked back, it was like seeing him for the first time all over again. Again and again. Over and over.“Oh hello there, you alright?” The man made his way towards her, confident in his wide strides before crouching to her level. “How old are you now? Six? Seven?” He squints at Ode’s face, picking apart the details of years gone by. “Nine?”But she had met him before. But she hadn’t. But she is. His face. Gone from memory but burned upon it at the same time. It reduced her to staring at him if not blinking, still attempting to memorise his features.She opened her mouth to correct him with Ten but no sound came out. With that, she was gone, and he faced an empty space.
Ode looked around the room, eyeing the redone walls and redecorated space, from chairs that seemed to be made for looking rather than sitting to the fireplace that looked far too ornate to be exposed to heat. She couldn’t deny the air of lavishness as well as the feeling of seeing an old friend that now appeared to be a stranger.She leant against the open balcony doors, halfway inside and halfway out, one ear towards her parent’s conversation and the other towards their redone garden. Gone was the overgrown lawn, replaced by a more well-kept one, flowers strategically planted to form pathways and ornate diamonds, a gazebo overlooking the park lake outside their land.She found herself missing blades of grass, the strange white-ish living room wallpaper stained throughout the years by tobacco amongst other things. When she walked through the doors of the house, she knew from the entrance it was no longer her home. Despite redecoration only being redecoration, memories had been taken down, repainted over, redone, recrafted, embellished. She wondered if it was still her home if all the parts that made it home were cut off.“You want one?” Oli, her step-brother, cut through her thoughts and stood across her, holding out a pizza slice as he ate another. “If we finish, dad might order us another one,”Ode huffed out a small laugh, shaking her head and taking the slice. “As if you haven’t already eaten an entire pizza,” she swirled what was left of her wine with her other hand, mind still drifting off.“Yeah, well,” Oli shrugged, “That’s ‘cause I’m not paying for it, so this is my last and only chance to order endless amounts of it until I get back to uni,” he grinned at Ode’s incredulous look towards him. “Perks,””Perks,” she mimicked, knowing her dad could easily finance all his pizza if he so asked. The bitterness fought with her want to be happy for him.“Hope you’re not too mad about what they did to your room,” he added, studying her face for any sign of bitterness or possibly resentment. “I told them you may still want it, but, you know…” his voice fell, replaced by a flat, attempting smile.Ode turned away, wanting to brush it off and instead looked at the new garden. “Your mom was in charge, wasn’t she? Of the redecorating?”Oli hummed.“Guessed so,” she wanted to laugh at the idea, but some part of her held onto the memory of her old room. The largest of all loss in the house. “She mailed me the decoration I left, at least she didn’t throw it out,” she took a bite off the pizza slice, squaring her thoughts into something more optimistic, lest she 'dampened the joy', Oli’s mother would say. “Besides, you can never have enough study rooms,” a sarcastic huff escaped her, not gone unnoticed by Oli.But he said nothing of it. Though they regarded each other as close as siblings could be, his mother was the one line neither wanted to cross. “What time’s your train going?” he asked quietly, picking at the under-side of his nails from crumbs.“Uh…” Ode slid her phone from her back pocket. “Hour and a half. I’ll probably get home around eight-ish, nine,” Her eyes wandered back to her father and step-mom in the living room, deep in conversation on the couch, the world silenced around them, it seemed.She was happy for them, she could swear. But the more she looked at her step-mother, the more her mind brought back reminders of who used to be in her place. She blinked and looked back at Oli, pulling on a smile. “Think I should go now, though. I’ll just hang around the station, work on some stuff,”Oli’s face wilted. “Oh come on, the entire family rarely gets to be together anymore,”“Aren’t you?” Ode placed a burning gaze on her brother, searching in his eyes for something that would refuse her. She hadn't meant for it to sound bitter and yet it did. “You three are usually together when given the chance. Same thing, isn’t it?”He fell silent, brows knitting together. “Ode…” her name escaped his lips in a whisper. “You’re my family, too. You know that,”Ode’s heart clenched at his words. So much love for him was held within her and she could feel its grip when he tried to pull her back into the fading sense of 'family', she felt him trying his best, loving her back just as much. “I know,” she gave him a trying smile, “But I’m not sure I'm theirs,” she glanced back at their parents and sighed, slipping her phone back into her pocket and straightening. “You know just as much as I do,”She spared him a glance before making her way out of the room, walking past the conversing couple and into the hall. She let go of a long breath, tears pricking her eyes at the sight of the new frames at the stairs.Walking up, she glanced at each photo frame - family photos. Oli at a lacrosse match, her father holding a new-born Oli, Oli and his mother on a couch frozen in laughter. No sign of a little girl.Ode led herself to the new study, pushing the door wide, some part of her hoping she’d open her eyes to the same purple wallpaper. Just as how it was, with the crayon-adorned desk by the window and museum posters blue-tacked to the wall, the sheer blue curtains and daisy-printed duvet. Instead, dark wood shelves lined the walls, a sturdy office desk and chair by the window, impersonal in a way that it invited any and everyone to sit and lounge or work.She stood there for a moment, taking in what was not there. Her chest ached at the acknowledgement of her erasure. She could still picture her single bed by the corner, her night-lamp screwed to the wall, the pink series lights that used to sit on her headboard. All a ghost.“Um… happy birthday to your...” her father’s voice rose from behind her, hesitant, bearing the kind of politeness you used for a stranger.Ode nodded, the slightest bit grateful he had mentioned her. “Yeah, yeah,” she gulped, wondering how else the event could’ve gone. At least it wasn’t sideways. “I was thinking of visiting Aunt Nena next week, have dinner or something,” she turned slightly towards him, hoping he would look back at her. “You could finally meet her. Do you wanna come?”He stilled, stood beside her under the door archway. “It’s not a... no, not a good idea,” he cleared his throat, shaking away the topic. “How’s your… sleep?” he asked, sounding as though the question had been stuck in his throat. “The dreams?”Ode side-eyed him, surprised he even cared enough to bring it up as he never really cared much for it before then. “Fine,” she said in short. “Still there, as they’ve always been,”He nodded, seeming unaffected. “Less? More? The same?”Again, Ode gave him a glance, unsure what he intended by his inquiries. In her entire life, this was the most he had ever asked her about her overactive dreams. “I don’t know… more? I suppose?”Her father’s face twisted into a sort of frown, but he usually looked like he was frowning which only made things more confusing. “Hmm… well,” he gave away a breath and shifted his weight onto another foot. “We redecorated,”Ode didn’t turn back, knowing she could burst into tears if she looked him in the eyes. “I noticed,” she swallowed, heart wild in her ribs. “Looks good. Very… antiquey,” her eyes wandered around the room, attempting to find something she liked. She hated it. Didn’t look too bad, but she hated it.Her father cleared his throat, a low 'hm' emitting from his throat as he thought of something else to say. “She said it would make a nice study,” he added, making Ode even more unsure where he was intending to go with it - if it was meant to comfort her or bring her even more conflict. “Natural light, park view and all that,”Nodding, Ode gave a half-hearted laugh, trying to find some sense of comfort in his words but coming back empty-handed. “Did you say no?” You fought for me, right? was what she meant to say.A minute passed with silence.Ode nodded again. “Okay,” the word came out with little strength. “That’s… it’s alright,”She could hear him gulp and take a breath, so she braced herself for greater impact. “We think…” he paused, as if plotting out how to word his intent but had already decided what to say. “She would… prefer,” he started again, putting on a tone Ode only ever heard when he talked to his colleagues or during meetings. “If we didn’t spend as much time together,” his eyes appeared distant, looking straight past Ode. “And we’d appreciate it… if you didn’t come back here,” he cleared his throat, “Anymore,”It fell out of him like it was choking him from the inside out, now it stumbled and attempted to find its footing, attempting to be received well when he could barely confront her eyes. While she kept herself silent, her body robbed of all warmth all of a sudden. There it was. The house had said it all along.“She, you know, she thinks you…” he quieted down, eyes running against Ode’s profile. “Well, you remind her of Lucia. It hurts her,” his voice softened while Ode’s insides screamed.Her cheeks had grown hot with embarrassment, disappointment, something red and black and boiling inside her stomach. She had come to this house as a daughter and she was going to leave a stranger, having assumed she was welcome.Wordlessly, she turned and calmly walked down the stairs, hearing her father’s footsteps chase after her. She rethought it again, unsure if he was even someone worth calling that word. The more she considered it, the more the word felt as though it needed more qualification.She strided straight past the living room and out the front door, leaving it open before making her way through the lawn, heart drumming against her bones she could hear its rage in her ears.“Ode!” her name wore her father’s desperate voice. “Ode, come back!”She continued her decisive strides as she made it out the gates, eyeing the bus stop not too far ahead, glad nobody else was standing in wait. She felt, for once, the teenager she wanted to be - walking away from your shouting parent, gut burning with a tantrum, hands curled into fists to contain what would otherwise be words sharpened into daggers.“Odirea, you come back!”Ode stopped at her tracks and turned back at him, eyes hooded by angered brows.Her father stopped a few feet away, slightly panting. “She… it’s not you, you know her, she just—”“Then why isn’t she here talking to me instead of you?” she cut back, nails dug into the meat of her palms. “God forbid a girl looks like her mother,” she spat each syllable with venom, tainting the air red. “God forbid your husband loved someone before you.”She watched her father’s eyes filled with grief. A stranger’s eyes. At that moment she realised who exactly he had been for the past few years and it wasn’t her father.She looked behind her at the sound of a vehicle running towards them, eyes met by the bus she needed to catch. She gave one last glance at her father, swearing she would keep to his request that she’d never return. That’s what she wanted to give them. Her lack of presence. If they so want it, they can have it, she thought and smiled. “I’m glad I took mom’s name instead of yours,” she said before turning and half-jogging to catch the bus.
She found her seat by a large window, sleep drifting in and out of her uneasily.If ever her eyes drifted to her reflection, she wondered just how much she resembled her mother. She’d seen photos of her but it had been a long time. Her father never kept her photos, so if the opportunity came that she visited her aunt, then she had all chances to see family photos. But it had been long enough that her memory of her mother’s face was slightly blurry.It saddened her she didn’t inherit her mother’s blue eyes but rather her father’s brown ones. She didn’t despise brown eyes, but only the fact that she got hers from her father - only then did it become muddy water, murky skies, darkened sewers.She closed them and leant back, her body being shook a little here and a little there now and then by the train, as if being cradled.She became impartial to the lull around her, people talking, some show being played earphone-less, a page flicking, something falling, a shoe tapping.She hoped to find the quiet between the noise, sifting through the muffled conversations and the low, slow buzz of the speeding train, and for sleep to steal her away. Hide her.Quietly and slowly, between the noise and the buzz, the hum, to be stolen away.Quiet and slow.It was a sort of woody, navy blue.She stood beside an open, wooden door, eyes wandering inwards what looked to be a console room, wires all about the place, a strong orange light making the room look warm.One step at a time, slow and wary, Ode made her way up the stairs. She recalled the few times she’d been there, a few times as a child, and fewer the older she got. But one thing remained throughout most of her dreams: a man whose face never made it to her memory. She knew he was around, she knew he seemed familiar with her, the way imaginary friends looked at you - but she could never commit his features to memory.“There you are!” a familiar voice sprang out of nowhere.Ode looked downwards towards glass flooring, seeing the man beneath it wearing the widest grin. He climbed out and gave her a once over, eyes falling slightly sorrowful.Ode made no effort to remember his face anymore, knowing that after two decades of dreaming about him every attempt was futile. Despite this, her heart found relief at the sound of him, grateful for the entirely different world he provided in her dreams.“You’re close,” he muttered loud enough for her to hear.Ode tilted her head in confusion, disregarding his face at that point and only focusing on his words. She opened her mouth to ask what do you mean? but refrained, knowing she would be cut short. Instead, she crouched to his level, clutching her knees together.He took a step closer, hands interlacing behind him. “Soon,” he whispered. “Soon, you will see… everything,”Ode gave a small, quiet laugh at his words. He always said the vaguest, strangest things, so she never took any of it seriously. She wished she understood him sometimes, as now and then she could feel from his tone that his face might be in a frown or something in upset, but what use was understanding if she woke up just before she sought to touch his face?She traced her finger on the glass floor, swiping it clean to form a small smiley face. That was as close she could get to communicating with him. One time, she considered learning hieroglyphics if it meant communicating but ultimately thought it overboard.He reached out at the drawing, his finger grazing hers momentarily. When he looked up, there was nothing but empty space.
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“Constantly being invaded, constantly flooding..."The girl eyed the figures making their way through the market - a noticeable group of three, as emphasised by their choices of clothing that had no intention nor consideration of blending in. Miraculously, nobody around made an effort to notice their stark strangeness at all.The girl stood between two stalls hosting a myriad of vegetables and trinkets Ode couldn't recognise. The unrecognisable had become a staple of the places she appeared - she never understood or recognised where she was, so much that the familiar would be anomalies, things that were too real amidst an expanse of oddities.“Constantly... just beautiful!" the bow-tied man proclaimed, eyes darting to the sights around. Fruits, vegetables, a goat, a small girl in modern night-wear. He stopped. His body called all attention to the dark curly-haired girl who stared right back, almost hidden by the market and its mid-day bustle, but still sticking out from the greys and browns.A flash of emotions crossed his face, uncommunicable to Ode. “Constantly... there," he added quietly to himself before offering a small wave her way. He counted quietly how many times she appeared to him, the ghost of past, future, and present contained within a small, wiry girl. He huffed out a breath at the reminder of her.The girl's eyes traced dots on his face, hoping to mark his features in her mind. But once she blinked, he was anew and a stranger again. But his gaze towards her never faltered to become unfamiliar, she knew. His old, old eyes always found her no matter where she was, as if her phantom presence was gravity enough for his attention.He took one wary step towards her direction, but the moment he did she was gone. Once again, as she always became, empty space.
It was a sort of woody, navy blue. The grain ran vertically through the door, bearing blocked beige windows, a keyhole, and handle.Something of it was warm, was breathing, the very same air Ode breathed. And when she breathed with it, she could swear it was reaching out to her, as if the wood bore invisible hands, stretching and reaching and grasping for her arms. There was desire and desperation in its fingers, practically drenched in it - she could feel the bright warmth of its want for her.
“Ode… Odie…”
Ode shook awake, her desk colliding with her forehead briefly. “Mira?" she groaned, rubbing at the spot she was hit. Blinking herself to familiarity with the interiors of her lab, she turned to her side towards a taller girl with beads in her hair who looked down at Ode with brows quirked quizzically. “Sorry, did you say something?"“Asked if you're still going home or camping out here," Mira scoffed and patted Ode's shoulder, leaning her weight on one foot. “Sleeping again at your desk? You seriously need to get your sleep sched fixed, you never sleep at work," she pointed towards the sleepy girl and the paperwork on her computer screen. “I hope you're not getting drool on the keyboard,"“Oh, shit," Ode straightened, wiping sleep from her eyes and then the slight drool on her desk, rushing to delete the mass of “bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb” on the Word document. “Entire day of doing this, I don't know how you can't fall asleep, she huffed, ignoring Mira's comment about her new habit. “This was the last batch of paperwork, right?" she squinted at the file name, “Greek sarcophagus? When are those Italian journals that came in last week gonna be processed?"Mira hummed to herself. “That's tomorrow, it's been in conservation this week. It's yours, by the way, my Italian is rotting in the back of my brain. And twenty-five of them," she gives an exaggerated exasperated sigh, “Absolutely not," she smiled sweetly at Ode's dumbfounded expression. “I'll be doing the loaned Picasso,"Ode took in a sharp breath, already imagining the next day to be filled with sitting in one place and flipping through the journals, recording down its details, hours and hours of silence with her cup of coffee as her only accompaniment. Bleak, she pondered. “God, twenty-five?” she shook her head, saving the files on her computer. “Who had that much time?” she threw her hands up incredulously.For the first time in hours, she slid out of her desk and stretched her legs, giving a long sigh and yawn. Cataloguing ancient artefacts tended to be a rather uneventful career for the legs, she found, spending the majority of the time sifting through documents, looking closely at the items, the fine print, typing, typing, and typing. The kind of day where the hours bled into each other, making the memory of it all terribly murky.“Young, Italian women in the 1800s apparently,” Mira feigned a wistful sigh, leaning on Ode’s desk as she watched her put her coat and bag on. “Not much to do then, I suppose. Knit, crochet, sew, journal. Dear Diary,” she began a high-pitched, butchered Italian accent, grinning at Ode’s pained expression, “I cooked, I cleaned, did the laundry, now I shall learn how to garden,”Giving a quiet laugh at Mira’s accent, Ode offered her arm, in which Mira intertwined hers with before walking out of their shared lab space and into the halls of the cataloguing department. “Oh, my ancestors are absolutely growling at you right now, I hear them,” she looked away as if she heard something from afar, “Mhm, they detest that… that… I don’t even know what that is. Barely Italian,”Arm in arm and through the halls, they made their way up and out of the museum, their faces meeting the chilly December air, biting their noses and fingers. Mira walked with her head held high, unfazed by winter’s teeth after almost three decades of having lived there. Ode was much more shivery and shaky and still accustomed to the Mediterranean December sun.After almost fifteen years in England, she didn’t seem to wear winter any better - never having enjoyed the feeling of being eaten up by the weather, much less the sensation as if she were losing her fingers all together. She credited it to spending Christmases and winter breaks with her aunt in Sorrento, never having to face the brunt of English winters and its viciousness. Ode only had to face it fully at twenty-one when her aunt moved to England, then winter with either side of the family were equally freezing.The two girls stopped in front of a bus stop, arms still entwined as Ode pulled her phone out of her bag. Some part of her hoped to see her father’s name on her list of notifications, but she parsed through them with disappointment.Much to her dismay, Oli didn't seem to be keen on commenting on it either. Had he known it was going to happen all along? Maybe You're my family too was meant to soften the blow he knew was coming her way.Ode felt cruel thinking of her brother that way. Nevertheless, she also felt slighted by all three of them.The girls piled into a bus, nodding at the driver routinely, finding their usual seats near the exit and continuing conversation. The seats by the exit were the very same ones where they first sat when they met each other, and where conversations began, continued, and ended for the next year.“How’d your visit with your dad go?” Mira asked, drawing circles on the bus window mindlessly. “Still haven’t given me your brother’s number…” she smiled flirtatiously and nudged Ode’s shoulder.Ode rolled her eyes. “You two are two worlds I do not want to see collide,” she nudged back at Mira and settled into an uneasy quiet as her mind traversed the events of the weekend before. “And dad was fine,” she nodded, pursing her lips before forcing on a smile.I think I just got disowned, she wanted to say. I think I’m all alone now, she would have continued. The more she fixed her gaze on Mira, the more she realised she never really shared anything so… harrowing? She had always kept her at a distance - near enough that she knew some things, but far enough that the details weren’t precise.She looked away, forcing the confession to the back of her mind.“D’you want to have a run with me this Saturday?” Mira continued, oblivious to Ode’s sudden terse silence. “Been meaning to start running again but it’s been so cold,” she sighed and groaned into her hands.“Oh, your muscles won’t atrophy,” Ode patted her friend’s back. “But I’ll come. Need to get out of the house anyway,” she hummed, her mind finding its way back to her father’s living room once again. No matter what she tried, what she thought, it pricked her and bled through.I held on too long to him. Retroactively thinking of it, she could rationalise why he no longer wanted her there. It was merely her time to go. People have to go at some point. It was merely her time to go. It was merely my time to go.Ode closed her eyes and began compiling a list of things to do for the next day, finding nothing but more activities that were sure to meld each minute to the next, helping each hour seem indecipherable from the next. She opened her eyes wide at the thought of it.Was that to be her life? Every minute of every hour of every day until her knees gave up to gravity and her back was semi-permanently hunched, giving away the hours of her youth. If she thought about it hard enough, the hair on her arms would stand in protest, her skin irked at the possibility.Mira got off a few stops before Ode, which meant Ode faced the cold without the familiar warmth of a body next to her. She shoved her hands deep into her pockets, burying half her face into the red scarf wound round her neck, pushing her elbows close to her sides. But once she was inside her building, the cold quelled away, becoming warmer and warmer the higher the lift took her, until she entered her flat where the cold brushed past her one last time as she slid her coat and scarf off.“Hi, hi, Machy,” she scooped up her brown cat into her arms as he meowed and wriggled. “Sorry, long day, what time is it?” she slid her phone from her bag and glanced at the time, tsking at the numbers, more so in disapproval with herself. “Oh, sorry bub,”She quickly refilled his bowl with kibbles before changing into more comfortable clothes, murmuring to herself about the time.“Slipping from me nowadays, you know that,” she skipped one-leggedly across her living room as she slipped a sock on her raised foot. “Getting up late, sleeping late, alarms not—” she drew out a pot and filled it with water, turning the stove on and sprinkling salt. “Pasta for the third time this week. One of these days I’ll drop dead due to malnutrition,” she heaved an exasperated sigh and glanced at Telemachus sitting on the table, wide-eyed and understanding nothing.Her shoulders fell, squeezing her eyes shut and keeping tears at bay. “God. Going crazy. I’m going…” she shook herself and took a seat, gliding her hand across the feline’s back who took it with welcome.Once again, she found herself clicking to the last conversation between her father and her, wishing he hadn’t said what he said, married who he married, and looked at her the way he did that night. Was a daughter so replaceable? Was it so light a loss? The weight of it sat heavily on her chest.She wondered what her mother would say, or how her face would contort into anger or betrayal. Ode believed her mother would always be by her side during disagreements with her father, but perhaps she just hated her father at that moment. There was no mother anymore to side with her, but it was the best of hope she could muster.She set her phone down and rested her head on the table, closing her eyes and breathing slow to the sound of Telemachus’ purrs.She let a breath in, then a breath out. She could hear the water start to boil. Telemachus continued to purr.Breath in, breath out. The water boiled. Telemachus’ purrs start reminding her of machinery buzz.Breath in. Breath out. The water spilled over. There is buzzing.In. Out. Buzzing.The more she stayed and lingered the more she felt like the room was breathing. Her skin was warm with it. The lungs of the machine lived by the same blood and air she did.Forwards she walked, coming towards an opening to a rounded room with a honeycomb-like design on the walls, a turquoise light emanating from the machinery in the middle.She bit back a gasp as she noticed a man standing directly across her behind the machine, his back to her as he seemed preoccupied with something below him. But a second later, he turned to look at her her, his face briefly wearing grief before his eyes softened. The furrow between his brows plained out, his mouth making a downwards smile, and suddenly it became a twisted form of sadness braided along with the comforts of familiarity.Despite reading what he showed, the veil still remained - after a blink, the memory of having seen a pair of downcast eyes were the only thing to remain. The colour of them were wiped away, the shape of his face gone, his hair and mouth and cheeks let go. The memory of what made him him was water in her hands.“I knew you’d come,” he said softly, his expression flickering between smiling and frowning.Ode glanced at his hand which he seemed to be balling into a fist and releasing again and again, then at his stance, leaning on the machinery a little too much. For as much as he was showing a smile, his entire body communicated he was feeling otherwise.“Are you okay?” the words escaped her before she realised she had heard her own voice. At this, she staggered back. Years of routine and normality in the oddities sunk in. She was never able to talk in dreams before, they normally ended before her voice was produced, or she’d wake up just before opening her mouth.She looked to the man, eyes asking for answers but all he gave was his grief and she couldn’t make sense of any of it.“I don’t want to go,” he whispered, his gaze focusing on her as she started to retreat into the hallways.The moment she caught sight of a golden light creeping up his face, her body was flung back, darkness eating her vision as nausea and ache homed within her chest. Her mouth opened in agony but nothing came out, eyes squeezing tears onto the hills of her cheeks.The buzz devoured all she heard. A thousand bees. A million machines. A billion mouths wailing. It circulated in her head with no gap for silence, cacophonous and merciless.A scream escaped her finally and her eyes opened wide to tears sheening her face bright under a streetlamp. Shock riddled her body frozen. The indecipherable noise had ceased once she laid eyes on the world, but no comfort found her.A street. Cars. People walking past her, whispers filling the silence.“What” she huffed, hands palming the ground beneath her. Solid, rough, real. Real. Real? “What?” she whipped her head at her surroundings, her panicked eyes meeting the gaze of the people walking by, where suddenly their eyes were focused on everything else but her. “Where…”The embarrassment started to sink in and she picked herself up quickly, unsure. Terribly unsure of everything.It still seemed to be evening where she stood, surrounded by hedges, trees, and a small pond in front of a bench a few feet across. But none of it was familiar, not in the way the waking life was supposed to resemble.She looked across the street at a familiar laundromat and grocery shop she knew to have stood directly across her apartment building, where she stood at that moment. But upon turning around, there were only trees. The neighbouring building was nowhere to be found either, instead another patch of hedges and trees with benches sprinkled about.Worry crept over her face, forming into furrowed brows and frowning lips, eyes on the brink of letting go of tears.“I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming. I’m still dreaming,” she squeezed her eyes shut, forcing something - anything - to happen. “I’m dreaming. I’m…” a sob broke her words into syllables as the pace of her breath quickened, the reality of this settling over her with dis-ease.In a snap, she curled over herself, her chest hit with a pang of something sharp. A cry burst out of her as she collapsed on her knees. Once again the cacophony eclipsed the world around her and singled her out, and a sharp clawing stung through her chest, climbing upwards the bridge of her neck to the back of her head.Though the pain had subsided in a few seconds, she remained curled on the ground, letting her quiet sobs wet her hands.Her dreams had never abandoned her like this. Nor had it permitted any form of pain to touch her in all her life. Abandoning her wasn’t even an option she knew could be possible. Was that what they could do? Leave her forever asleep in alternate dream lands?“Ode?” a voice softly called, its tenderness bringing a piece of comfort to the weeping girl.Surprised out of her cries, Ode straightened at the sound of her name. Instead of the sparse park she had previously found herself at, she was kneeling before a bookshelf. Shock ran through her body, stumbling back to sit and take in her new surroundings.Her eyes widened at it all - a metallic-looking room, white and yellow lights adorning the space, with a familiar button-filled centre. No… her mind rejected the thought. But the park…“Ode, you alright there?” the soft voice called once again, bringing Ode back down.She turned to her back at a brunette girl in a dark blue dress already looking at her, a slight expression of bewilderment gracing her dainty features. The girl offered Ode a smile, “What are you doing down there?”Ode remained unsmiling, her breath quickening once again as the events of the past few minutes fought to be understood, to be placed within some category of logic. She found herself staring at the girl with no response, unable to give one.The girl’s small smile wilted away upon noticing Ode’s state, resorting to kneeling beside her and reaching out for her hands. “Hey, what happened? You don’t look well,” she placed a hand over Ode’s forehead, surmising she was, at the very least, not ill. “Ode? Can you tell me what happened?”Ode kept her eyes on the girl, all sense of danger bundled up in a mess inside her. “Who are you?” she whispered, face knitting together in confusion. She searched through her memories where she might have seen the girl but it was to no avail, unable to reconcile why the girl seemed to be quite familiar with her.At Ode’s first words, the girl’s face fell, her hands freezing. “Oh,” was all she was able to push out, left to stare back as she tried to connect her own events and knowledge.“You know me,” Ode managed to get out, scraping at the barrel for any scrap of bravery she had left. “How do you know me?” she had meant it as a genuine question but by the way the girl took back her hands, it seemed as though she had given her an accusation.“Um… I’m not… I don’t… Uh,” the girl blinked and blinked, mouth opening and closing undecidedly. “Do you need help?” she leaned back and got back to her feet, her face twisting in conflict.Ode surveyed the look in her eyes, deciding there was no one else to put her trust on at that moment, so why couldn’t it be this girl? There was no one else checking on her, nobody else that had the saddened look in the girl’s eyes.Ode nodded, taking the brunette’s outstretched hand and letting her help her up. She stayed silent, watching the girl’s features mix and melt between familiarity and conflict, eyes flickering from various things Ode couldn’t decipher.Just as she was willing to let the girl lead her away, footsteps padded their way quick towards their direction. Ode and the brunette turned back at the footsteps, Ode more so panicked than the latter.“Clara! Where’ve you—” a man turned up and hopped up the stairs leading to the platform Ode and the brunette stood on, abruptly skidding to a stop in front of the two girls, a bright grin lighting up his face before catching Ode’s gaze. Only then, he froze.“Something more pressing here…” The brunette said to the man grimly.Ode read over his old face, slightly finding his shock off-putting. His eyes had remained on hers, his body immobile as he seemed to be processing things.“You’re…” he whispered, eyes raking from Ode’s eyes, to neck, to hair as if connecting dots, pinning needles, tracing her shape. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked her, moving slowly as if she would strike him unexpectedly.Ode gulped, suddenly aware of how silent the room had become. “No? I don’t know,” she glanced around the room, a few things standing out seeming familiar but nothing she could state that she knew. “Who are you?” she looked back at him before her face fell at the sudden twist of pain in her chest.A yelp escaped her as she doubled over, knees feeling suddenly brittle without notice, giving her weight away only to be caught by the man and the brunette.“Ode?” the man brushed away stray hairs from Ode’s face, searching for her eyes but only finding them squeezed tightly shut. “What’s happened? Where’ve you come from?”The world had started to go by unnoticed, reduced to static and blurs as her body remained focused on the blade-like sting sitting between her ribs as it turned and turned with no pity for her whines. As if jagged knife through flesh, skin and blood flinging and tearing like cloth - sawing and sawing and sawing. Ode felt every tear.Gritting, she locked her screams between her teeth, tears pricking the corners of her eyes before blackness took hold of her senses and limp she became in the arms of strangers.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Ode theorised at a young age that perhaps death was like a meadow, a castle, or a beach of some sort. This was the only way she could reconcile why so much of her mother’s side of the family was long gone. Of course, there was her aunt but she seemed the only exception.But not this way: a golden forest, blinking like stars in a black sheet sky, every inch of vision bathed in yellow, the eyes straining to pick out the details from gold grass blades beneath gold tree trunks beneath gold tree tops.She blinked, deciphering what was what. For a good minute it seemed she was inspecting a waterfall, the stones and water all gold, the splashes and mist creating sparkles in the air. However, the more she focused on it, she realised perhaps it was a forest again.She could make out the thin tree trunks and wider roots, stretching out to a golden sky, or perhaps merely its golden canopy. But when Ode looked up, she swore she spotted birds passing by, gold as everything else.The air seemed full of transparent ribbons, quivering and dancing in the windless air, their grace curling around trees and caressing the canopy. The ribbons avoided the trunks like water against boulders, seeming to have a flow from somewhere. Ode wasn’t sure if it was tied to another tree or if it was floating mid-air, and upon further staring, she could see the outlines of more of them - suspended and rippling gracefully. Sometimes there and sometimes unnoticeable.When Ode blinked, they may have been strands of hair. But if she blinked again, perhaps it was flags she was seeing.She looked back at the ground, finding nothing concrete at the indiscernible figures, but suddenly the clear path had become a tangled mess of weeds and flowers, stretching out for miles and miles around her. From the stem to the stigma, everything was a gleaming, glittering gold.The sky was contrastingly colourless, but easier for everything else as now the field was easier to walk through.“Hello!” Ode called out to the golden abyss, taking note of how the weeds didn’t really feel like weeds against her skin but instead something more gaseous and cold, like a fall fog that settles near the ground during sunrise.Just another one of my dreams, she figured. By far it was the strangest. Still, she could hear her own voice, which seemed just as incomprehensible to her as everything else she was seeing.Figuring exploring was better than standing still while unsure which direction was even the right direction, she began wading through the thicket of weeds that seemed to have grown up to her knees in a matter of seconds.What was inducing the entirety of this world was her main question. Whether perhaps she’d randomly fell comatose or was taken to the hospital and the gold was the work of some drugs, or perhaps had a carbon monoxide leakage in her flat and this was all her last visions as she was dying. But she shivered at the last thought, remembering Telemachus.O… something whispered.Ode whipped around, the hairs on her arm raising at the sudden brush of cold air. “Hello?” she called again, seeing nothing behind her but more field and more sky.Once again, the breeze came back whispering O… re…She looked at her sides, but upon seeing no one was physically around, she surmised the call must've just been there, nowhere specific, just there. There was the place native to her dreams where some things could exist without having to reconcile with the physical world, something she made up when she realised she couldn’t make her dreams make sense in any logical way. Things like the buzzing hallway, the man, and now the whispers.Right then, something pushed through the weeds in front of her, shooting upwards high and high a foot a second, pushing Ode back as it grew wider in diameter.She fell backwards and watched the shoot take the shape of a tree, lush willow-like leaves springing from bone-thin branches. When only a few seconds prior it had been an unnoticeable sprout, now it towered and bended over her, its trunk thick and gold just as the field.Ode’s eyes were wide with bewilderment, more so entertained at herself for possibly conjuring up the tree. Something else her dreams had never done before.O… di… rea… the whispers had become louder, surprising Ode into startled attention. Odi… re… a…Ode composed herself and got on her feet, dusting her dustless pants by habit. “Is someone talking to me?” she cautiously asked, unsure if the silence or a reply would be more eerie.Odirea the whisper ran around her head before fading into the tree, veins glowing against the trunk. Wai… ted… the veins glowed once more, as if indicating speech.Ode leaned forward, unsure where to look. “What?”For… you… the whisper emphasised each vowel like a child trying out the sound of words. Wai… ted..Backing away slightly, Ode gave the trunk a confused look. “Okay…” squinting, she wondered that if she focused enough she could make a face appear on the trunk. But the moment the trunk’s crack patterns started shifting, she blinked the thought away. “What are you?”Wai… ted… wai.. ted waited the whisper repeated over and over until eventually it became a more recognisable word. For you. Waited, waited for youOde kept her arms by her sides, suddenly feeling the dis-ease at the voice’s repetition. Although it must have been some sort of voice that formed the words, it sounded just as everywhere as the wind - more like the wind imitating man. She wasn’t sure why she would dream something like this, or why she was feeling uneasy in the first place. Her dreams had never gone as far as to make her feel uncomfortable, why now?“What is?” Ode answered but was returned with a minute of silence. She rephrased, “Who’s waiting for me?”Somewhere, nowhere, and everywhere a clock chimed. The meadows shook, the tree’s billowing leaves quivering at the vibration.Ode fell to her knees, eyes agape at the sudden interruption. “Hello?” she called more loudly at the tree. “Who’s waiting for me!” she watched as the meadow shriveled, sinking deeper into the ground, leaving only the tree hovering over white nothingness.The clock chimed again, this time rattling her body, leaving her lying on the ground.Ode flattened her palms against her ears as the chime continued. At its second repetition, the tree’s leaves started to billow more forcefully despite the lack of wind. It whipped against each other that a few were swept away into the blank distance.“Hello!” Ode shouted over the chime.Slowly, the tree was overcome from the roots by a glowing white light, as if filling and painting the tree inside and out. It glowed painfully and brilliantly, overtaking Ode’s vision until white was all she could see.Where white was all and all was white. Painfully and brilliantly.White and white and all and all andShe jerked awake into a white room.There was a familiar buzz present all around her, filling her with warmth, as if being welcomed with a hug. It made the patches on her arm the slightest bit less frightening. They seemed attached to machines monitoring her heart rate with even beeps and another with animated circular figures.Hospital, she figured, noticing the sterile white of the entire room except for her clothes and the machine screens.She peeled the wires from her skin and slid out of the bed, bare feet coming in contact with the cold floor. Her toes curled at the sensation, feeling the buzz even more so. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a normal hospital. Something seemed to be alive beneath her, interacting with her skin, responding to her touch.Tiptoeing her way towards the open door, she peeked her out when she realised quite frankly that it was not a hospital.She straightened at the thought she might have been somewhere strange. Or worse, still in a dream.Once she stepped into the hallways, the warmth around her thickened, wrapping around her like a winter coat. A smile rose from her, recognising the familiar buzz become more emphasised as she walked down the hall. Something about it struck a strange nostalgia in her chest. This, along with a dose of wariness that attempted to put out the odd comfort the sense of nostalgia brought.Not too long later, the hall opened up to the familiar room she had appeared in, the brunette and old man standing by a machine in the middle. They conversed quietly amongst themselves as Ode watched them wearily, eyeing between them and the double doors not too far off.Perhaps they had brought her there, meaning to keep her. It concerned her how familiar they seemed with her when she hadn’t any recollection of meeting them at all. At the same time, their faces seemed already written but erased from her, the faint traces of them remaining. She figured it was best to run before they even noticed she was gone.She made her way towards the double doors slowly, each bare step as light as she could make it. But before she could properly run off, the walls of the room buzzed deeper, making her shiver as though she’d been part of the walls.This caught the older man’s attention, who looked up before turning, eyes landing on a frozen Ode on a cautious stance.He started, “You’re awa—”Ode sprinted.She jumped across and ran past them, hearing the brunette call after her along with a series of “no”s and “don’t”s. Ignoring her, Ode grabbed hold of the door handles and swung them open, ready to make a step out when she was pulled back in by her waist.Ode gaped at the expanse in front of her. Right outside the door was planet Earth, a glowing ball of green and blue in the vast blackness of space.She rested her hands at the sides of the doors, her heart still racing. “What…”The hands behind her moved her inwards before letting go. “Ode… meet planet Earth,” the older man’s voice chimed from beside her. “Planet Earth, meet Ode,”Ode side-eyed him, unsure what he had to do with the entire ensemble. She’d been dreaming for far too long, she decided, that how long could it possibly last. One after another, never ending, where she was left to wonder when she would wake. She couldn’t place a guess on when she’d wake. If she’d wake. The thought ran an uneasy chill up her arms.She remained fixated on the planet - unsure why she found it so beautiful. She’d seen it many times in passing through her screen before, had only ever seen it on TV or the internet. Though she knew none of it was a lie, it was an entirely different thing to see it before your eyes - like knowing you breathe but never learning the intricacies of how the air moves about the lungs. Suddenly, it was all real, and everyone became mere tiny, little specks in the face of this rock.What a dream this was.“Alright, let’s…” the older man’s voice rose behind her, gentle as if careful not to burst her bubble. “Let’s close this and—”Ode leant her weight towards the door, purposely preventing him from closing it. But she remained quiet, taking in the sable void and the velvety silence that rang all throughout. She hadn’t known space sounded this way. It begged the question if she was in fact dreaming.She backed up against the wood, wary of the older man’s body very much near her own. Her eyes fell on his, searching for safety, familiarity - relative? Distant relative? Very distant, if at all. Her circle of people was small, so she knew those that knew her - unless, she supposed, a relative or a friend told their relative or a friend about her. So on and so forth. He knew her, looked at her as if searching for something - it was something she tried to rationalise and give reason to.“It’s letting in a draft,” he softly said, head lightly nudging at the gaping door. “Better close it,”Ode blinked, weighing out several options. Speak? Ask him? Let him close the door? Stay silent and staring, unresponsive as if he had said nothing at all?The latter won. Ode turned back at Earth. But it was so real, there were details she couldn’t understand, things she knew existed but never tried to comprehend. It was brighter than she imagined, the size of it hitting her more heavily than expected.“Just don’t step out…” the older man spoke up, catching Ode’s attention. “Stay, I’ll get you something,” he lingered on her face before nodding in confirmation and slipping away into the hallways.The moment the entire room was hers, Ode sank onto the floor, becoming a heap of fright. Quietly, she rested her head on her hands, eyes wetting her palms and cheeks as the Earth’s light blurred into a ball of glow.If she blinked back and revised the planet, she could convince herself it was real. But if it was real then it meant she wasn’t dreaming. She could list several implications and complications out of that. None of which she wanted to entertain.She sucked in a breath when something dark green covered her periphery.Looking up, it was the older man holding out a blanket, a strange look on his face as he took in the sight of her.“Go on,” he encouraged, a small smile twitching on his lips. “You'll feel cold while the doors are open, might as well,” he nudged his head.Ode kept her eyes on him for a moment, sliding between trust and distrust. But her arms betrayed her, her fingers reaching out for the soft material. She tugged on the fabric and caught it when the man let go of it, then watched him kneel and adjust the blanket around her shoulders and knees.She watched the tender motions he employed with his hands, careful not to touch her, not to accidentally graze her. She wondered if once, a long time ago, they had in fact met and she had only forgotten - it was the only reason she could tie as to why he seemed familiar with her. Comfortable, almost.The man sat across her before sliding his legs outside of the door, feet dangling into the nothingness.Still wary, Ode fixed her gaze as he reached into his coat, something shuffling as he pulled it out and brought it in front of him.“This is for you,” he said quietly, turning half-way to Ode and extending a white envelope, creased and yellow-stained over time.Ode tightened her grip around the blanket, brows furrowed, eyes darting between the man and the envelope.As far as she knew, she had no cause to trust him - despite his show of familiarity, he was a stranger to her. She hoped she would wake soon. Whenever ‘soon’ decided to be.The man huffed, waving the envelope to emphasise her taking it. “I know this is confusing for you right now, trust me, so taking it would ease some of it,” he nodded at the envelope and fully turned to face her. "Hopefully,"Ode burnt into his gaze, wondering what it all meant. What he meant. What he was. Who he was.Backing down, she reached for the envelope and held it between her hands. No name, no address, but was perfectly shut in the back with a burnt red wax, stamped with an intricately-designed seal.Breaking the seal and peeling the flap easily, she slipped her fingers in and retrieved a folded letter, equally yellowed as the envelope, slightly crumpled but otherwise in stable condition.She opened.Inside were a few paragraphs of familiar handwriting: half long-hand, half short-hand, sentences drooping downwards the page due to the lack of lines.Her breath cut short, taken aback by an impossible conclusion. Once over, she surveyed the entire page, searching for consistencies or something that indicated it wasn’t what she thought it was. The dashes instead of dots over the i, the swooping g, the z that looked like the number three. But they were all there, over and over, only slightly different every time that suggested they weren’t printed. Her handwriting.Ode glanced up at the man who was already fixed on her, his eyes expressing something like pity, or sadness, or something else blue entirely.“Who wrote this?” Ode asked, her voice slipping out stilly.The man softened. “Oh, you know who wrote it already,”She did. On second thought, she didn’t - she refused it. But there was no evidence otherwise. When she looked back at the letter, all she could see was signs of her hand having penned it, having made the intricacies that made her writing her own.
Ode, it’s strange writing to you like this. You’re scared right now, I know. There’s a strange old man in front of you who looks at you the way he does, you’re floating above the Earth, and you’ve arrived there seemingly out of the blue. So you have every right to be as scared and as terrified as you are right now.
Ode looked back at the man, brows revealing her confusion.“Hope there’s nothing too scandalous in there about me,” the man remarked with a hint of a smile in his tone, but dropping it when Ode’s face remained furrowed,He’s not going to murder you. He just looks like that. Ode would’ve laughed in any other scenario, but at the moment she couldn’t bring herself to find anything humorous about any of it. But don’t worry. You can trust him with anything and everything.“You wrote this,” Ode blurted, disregarding what must have been very much her handwriting in front of her. “I didn’t write it, you did,” she looked at him with a storm in her eyes. “What is this?”The man gave a defensive shrug, seemingly taken aback. “I—now, I didn’t say you wrote it,” he gestured at the letter, disbelief coating his face. “I said you already know who—”“It was implied,” Ode retorted.“I implied nothing,” He gave back, resolute.“Well, who else could have written it?” she flailed the letter about in the air, earning a wince from him as he tried to stop her arm from aggravating the motion.“With your handwriting? I wonder who,” he dragged her arm downwards, supporting the paper with a gentle hand. “You be careful with it, it’s quite fragile at this moment - could very well disintegrate,”Ode glanced at the letter, noting how it was in fact aged and worn. In her short experience with restoring old artefacts, the letter did seem genuine in its age. “Another reason why I didn’t write it,”The man quirked a brow. “Which is?”Ode lifted the letter to his face, but his eyes drew away from the contents. “It’s old. Very old,” she drew the letter back to herself and examined the paper and writing closely. “I can’t have written it,”The man sighed, leaning back on the door, seeming to have given up. “Have you read it all?”Turning back to the letter, Ode shook her head.For you, it would only have been a few days after visiting dad. Ode paused, briefly glancing away at the detail. And you were right. Mom’s last name always sounded better anyway.“No, no, no, no. What is this?” Ode buried her face in her palms, shaking her head.Details. Mismatching details. Details that never happened. Details she couldn’t recall making.“Right. Okay,” she huffed and stood up, looking down at a half-smiling man before he dropped his expression. “I know what’s happening. This is a…” she looked around, feeling the room reach out to her like hands attempting to caress a child’s face. “So I’m dreaming,”The man’s face fell. “Actually,”Ode folded the letter and stood back up, still holding the blanket close to her shoulders. “Actually yes. This is all in my head. This is a dream,” she nodded, attempting to be resolved with her confusion but found her heart starting to palpitating in her chest.She disregarded the man’s wilting expression, eyes in conflict over something she couldn’t discern. “Ode, I know it’s hard to understand,” he stood back up, his much taller figure easily covering her in shadow. “That’s why I—”“And it’s why you know my name, why the other girl knows my name,” Ode nodded to herself again. This makes the most sense, she found herself consoling her own disbelieving heart. “Why this..” she shook the letter in her hand. “Why this letter—that I did not write, by the way—seems to be written by me about things I haven’t…”The more she forcibly pulled points together the more her heart jabbed erratically within her. It seemed distrusting with her judgement, her own body protesting what her mind tried best to rationalise.The older man rested his palms on Ode’s shoulders, surveying her state. “Ode… it’s alright, it’ll be fine,” he carefully slide the letter from between Ode’s fingers and slipped it back in his coat, his hands ever so delicate with the paper.Ode shook her head defiantly, attempting to shake off his hands but failing. “This is—I’m… I’m asleep. I’m dreaming. My dreams…” she sucked in a breath, suddenly finding it too little. She sucked in another. Too less. “They never—” she cut herself off with a sharp breath in, vision fading black around her periphery.“Hey,” the man pulled Ode’s body into his own, arms wrapping around her as she trembled out her reasoning, determined to find logic in the illogical land she had found herself placed in. “Okay. It's alright,” he pressed a palm against her back and slowly drew circles, his other hand tapping gently on her shoulder blade. “You can think about it later, it's fine,”Ode, refusing his tenderness, continued with her reasons. “I can’t… this can’t be real,” she said quietly into his coat.“Mhm,” the man responded, his voice reverberating through his chest and to Ode. “Why’s that? Can you list it out?”Ode’s breath had evened out, unintentionally syncing with his taps on her shoulder. “I—it can’t,” she shook her head slightly. “I have—I’ve got a job,” she ran through her list once again. “I have laundry to do,”She pressed back a small smile when she felt his laugh vibrate on his chest bone.“This has to be a dream because you haven’t done your laundry?” he summarised, a smile clear through his voice.Ode lightly hit the side of his arm. “Stop it. I’m serious. And I have a cat,” she pulled away, grounded by the thought of the brown cat she loved so much. “And a job. And laundry. And I have a run this Saturday with my friend. And a facetime call with my aunt on Friday,”The man had parted from her but let his hands rest on her shoulders, watching her eyes dart particularly nowhere as she listed her responsibilities.When she finally met his eyes, she found relief in his expression, brows softened into calm. “And the last thing I remember, I was cooking pasta,” she frowned at that memory, wondering what might have happened to her kitchen.He sucked in air between his teeth and winced. “That’s going to be very al dente by now,” he suppressed a grin at Ode’s more dour look.Disregarding his facetious remark, she turned back to the vastness outside the doors.None of it felt like her dreams. She knew it. But none of it made sense enough for it to be reality. What was the in-between that allowed the two to co-exist? The more she unfolded the thought the more complicated it became, finding creases where they shouldn’t be and more folds to open.“I'm dreaming all this?” she asked, her voice becoming quiet before looking back at him, eyes pleading for the truth.A sigh escaped him, much to her dismay. “I don’t know if you’d believe me if I don’t tell you what you want to hear,”Ode remained anchored on his eyes, pushing down a panic at the inconsistencies of this reality. “Right,” she hung her head, eyes tracing scratch marks on the floor.A thick contemplative silence settled between them, warming the air and holding questions that neither two could answer for the other.Ode brought her hands nearer her face, tentatively watching her fingers wriggle and make contact with her own skin - the lines on her palms didn’t seem too different, her nails the same as she had last kept them. Her own touch bore no difference to any other time, and yet her surroundings tore down any reasoning she could make.“Well,” she sighed, giving in to the comfort of her closely-held conclusion. “Come time, I’ll wake up sooner or later,”The man gave a slight nod to this, eyes flashing a more downcast look briefly before blinking and putting on something more neutral. “Come time,” he repeated. “And if you don’t?”Ode spared him a doubting expression but said nothing.“Doesn’t hurt to live as if you won’t,” he continued. “No harm done anyway if you do in fact wake up in your… awake, very real, not dream world. With your cat and your laundry and your overcooked pasta,” he smiled as Ode turned and paid more attention to him, as if proud of the day’s catch. “And if you don’t…” he nudged his head at the room behind them, bathed in machinery light and a warm buzz that seemed to invite Ode in. “Least you lived it the best way you could,”Ode glanced away, piecing together his logic. She hated that he seemed so confident about it. But unfortunately he made sense.She turned back at him and gave him a once-over. “You’re quite smug about this,”“And you’re quite in denial about this,” he replied with a wry smile before closing the double doors. “They point to one answer,”Ode huffed, loosening the blanket around her shoulders as the coolness began to drift away. “Who are you?”The man had made his way to the middle of the room, punching things on the machinery, pulling down other bits, his movements seemingly random. “I’m the Doctor,” he gave her a glance as if expecting something.Ode blinked. “A doctor of what?”Taken aback, he gaped at her for a moment before shaking his head disapprovingly. “Didn’t think you’d be a rebel from the start,” he murmured to himself, pushing more buttons and pulling more levers. “Doctor of everything, really,” he said louder, then opened his arms and spun, gesturing to the entire room. “This is the TARDIS,” he jumped down to Ode’s level with a sudden liveliness in his eyes.“And how—”“And you are Odirea Dicosima,” he interrupted, his gaze following Ode’s widened one. “And I know you because you,” he raised his pointer finger and tapped her forehead. “Are very, very important to the universe,”Ode cast him an incredulous look, unable to fully believe his theatrics. “I don’t even know you,”The Doctor smiled, the hint of madness in eyes pulling Ode’s attention most. “Come time,”
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Ode discovered that the sterile, overwhelmingly white room was in fact the infirmary.She didn’t understand many things apart from generally it was the place to go when one needed medical care - but the Doctor had gone on about “overcompensating”, “generations”, and variations of the like that simply didn’t make sense even when he attempted to give context.“What kind of name is ‘The Doctor’?” Ode asked through a mocking tone, receiving a sharp look from him across the room where he was fiddling with a screen and a tablet of levers and buttons.“What kind of a name is ‘Odirea’?” he returned, making his way to the bed Ode had woken from earlier the day. “Sit. I’d like to run some tests on you again and check if you’re all right now,”Ode made a step forward to follow his instructions but she paused, looking back at him with a questioning furrow. “Was I not earlier?”The Doctor looked up from a screen he was holding, eyes seemingly busy with thought. “No… you were not,” he patted the bed to remind Ode to sit. “But you slowly stabilised as you slept, so hopefully you’re all good now,”She tilted her head, trying to understand. “What was wrong with me?”For a moment he considered the question, seemingly pausing to think as his eyes drew away from the present. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, isn’t it?” he tapped on the screen and drew his attention there. “By chance, did you feel any searing pain anywhere in your chest to head area before you arrived here?”Nodding, Ode replied without hesitance, “I did,” she thought back to the blade-like torment, her shoulders tightening at the memory, far grateful she was no longer feeling any sign of it. “It started in my chest, but it later on went to the back of my head. Does that mean anything?”The Doctor tsked and shrugged noncommittally. “Yes, probably,”Ode huffed in disbelief at his display of insouciance. “Yes, probably?” she repeated.He looked up at her and nodded, just as noncommittal as he had been. “Yes. Probably,” he turned back to the screen and typed something on it. “Last place you were in?”Ode pushed aside his unconcern about the pain and crossed her arms. “My kitchen,”The Doctor furrowed, his concentration poured into the screen. “You were in your kitchen, then you appeared here?” his eyes darted between several things on the screen, the mix of confusion and incredulity hooking Ode’s attention.The girl shook her head. “Well, not quite. I was in my kitchen, I fell asleep, started dreaming, then I got the pain in my chest, then I was in a park, then I was here,” she listed off the events with clarity, watching as the Doctor’s eyes seem to calm down, the slight unrest that had been there ebbing away. “Is that important?”She shelved her own confusion about the events, hoping he had some answers to ease her with. Alarming as it is to find yourself suddenly in a park with no knowledge of how you got there, it couldn’t compete with the peculiarity of everything else after that Ode had already gone through.The Doctor glanced at her with a hint of amusement in his eyes. “Could be. Or will be. Who knows,”A wrinkle of a slightly annoyed look appeared between Ode’s brows. Was this how he often answered questions? “Helpful,” she said with mute expression. “How long was I asleep?”Looking down at his wrist that bore no watch, the Doctor shrugged. “Eh, three, four, five hours,” he glanced away for a moment. “Six maybe,” he patted the bed again, as if discarding her question. “C’mon. No time left to lose,”Ode complied, still confused as ever. She hoped that perhaps something would start to make sense, given the belief this would all be in her subconscious - therefore it would be her own mind causing the confusion, creating the eccentric character that was the Doctor.“As long as I’m asleep, we have all the time,” she hopped onto the bed, watching the Doctor lightly sigh as he busied himself with the screen. “Where else would I go?”She had intended the question more lightheartedly, but the Doctor met her look with genuine solemnity that it overturned her own tone of the question. “Where else will you go?”He kept his gaze on her with such seriousness that compelled her to look away, unsure where things would head if he continued to direct the conversation.“You’re very cryptic,” Ode remarked. “And unhelpful,”For a moment the Doctor’s face lit up, as if recognising something, but glanced away as he pointed something blue and metallic towards Ode. “You’re as acerbic as I remember,” he replied and looked back at Ode, eyes pointing up then down. “If not more,”She screwed her eyes at I remember. “You still haven’t explained how you know me,” she reminded him, watching him return her gaze, gaping and without answers.“Clara,” he replied, his attention moving towards someone behind Ode. “How nice of you to join us,”Ode turned back to see the brunette girl with the blue dress - Clara - sliding into the room quietly with a blue mug. She met Ode’s eyes with a sheepish smile. “Hi, Ode, hi,” she gave her a small wave. “Sorry, hope I wasn’t disturbing anything - just thought to bring you, uh…” she extended her hand and offered the blue cup of something light-beige inside, her motions hesitant but gentle.“Hi, nice to meet you,” Ode returned with a thankful smile, taking the drink and lifting it to smell. She was met with surprise when it was the familiar scent of coffee, specifically doused with too much milk that she liked to call it ‘coffee-flavoured milk’.She passed the bewildered look at Clara, who seemed to be avoiding her gaze and intently focusing on her hands.The Doctor raised another object to point at Ode, clicking away. “As I was saying,” he said without raising a look at either girl. “Ode, we’ve already met you. That’s why we know your name, why I have the letter, why that drink you unashamedly call ‘coffee’ is exactly to your… taste,” he gave Ode a disapproving look between her and her coffee.Ode rolled her eyes, taking a sip of it and realising it was in fact exactly as how she would make it. “Because I’m dreaming,” she slipped in, blinking innocently as the Doctor deadpanned.She liked to think this was an extremely, exceptionally elaborate dream she had concocted. That somewhere in the bleaker, less exciting real world she was blacked out peacefully in her own kitchen. Of course, she had to ignore the warmth of the coffee cup to come to this conclusion; and the soft bed sheet beneath her; and the subtle inhales and exhales of her own and the two other occupants in the room.Ode turned to Clara, who seemed to already have been looking at her as if she’d been a zoo spectacle, hiding away intrigue very terribly. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?” she questioned.Clara blinked and averted her eyes. “Sorry… it’s… nothing,” she cleared her throat, her gaze running about the floor uneasily.“Because we’ve met you,” the Doctor repeated. “You see, time is a… is a…” he made a mess of gestures with his hands, imitating chaos or something similar. “Well, there’s no succinct way to describe it. Time is not concise. You could think of it like a ball of yarn if it helps - albeit it’s not like that at all, but if it helps then it is like that - or a… you could think of it like crumpled fabric. But time is not concise, not the way you humans like to think of it, not as straightforward travel-all-linear as you lot might think,” he chuckled at the idea as if it was completely elementary if not foolish.Ode focused her gaze on the Doctor, trying to discern where he was going with his point but only finding herself becoming more and more impatient at the meandering nature of his explanation. If there’s anything less concise than time it’s you, she wanted to say but instead filled her mouth with coffee.“But in fact it’s far more, as I liked to say, wibbly and wobbly and… and…” he stared off into nothing for a moment, perhaps searching for more ways to describe the subject, but he shook his head instead. “Which doesn’t matter, but you understand it,” he looked to Ode for her confirmation of comprehension, which she gave hesitantly. “The point is that because of time being this way, it pulls you from di—”A loud beeping interrupted him, catching all their attention.But only Ode turned to search for where the interruption came from, both Clara and the Doctor fixed on her.Slowly, the Doctor turned the screen that had been towards him, letting Ode take a glimpse of it.On it were stark letters Ode presumed to be attempting to diagnose her. Incomplete stabilisation, she read, unsure what the circular figures around it meant, or the line-up of numbers above the main message.“What?” Ode looked between the screen and at the Doctor, whose face had become unreadable. “What does that mean?” she looked to Clara for help but found that the girl was more taken by something else on Ode’s body. Following her gaze, she looked down at her dangling legs. Her eyes widened at only seeing half of her knees remaining, the borders of her physical remains lined with something gold, corroding its way up her thighs.She let in a sharp breath, resting the mug on the bed and leaning back in an attempt to escape. “Doctor?” she looked desperately to the man in front of her who now held a poorly-concealed frown. “Doctor, what’s happening to me?” she gripped onto his arms, feeling his hands claw on her elbows.“Stand up,” he advised with a placid tone, his certainty consoling Ode into following. “You won’t like it if you fall,” he continued with a little more humour in his voice but ultimately failed to cheer the room up.“What does that mean?” Ode pressed, her hands digging into his coat for anchor. “Doctor? What does that mean?”He disregarded her panic and calmly released one hand from her, his fingers briefly slipping into his coat and pulling out the letter she had refused to continue reading. He pulled her arm from his own and placed the letter in her one hand, moving it close to her chest, avoiding her eyes. “Read it,” he patted the top of her hand. “You need to know a few things so you’re not completely clueless - one, I will not always look like this, but trust that it’s me,” he grabbed her other hand and pressed it to his own chest, his words flying without Ode’s comprehension.“What?” Ode whispered, unsure why he was keeping her palm on him. “What are you talking about?”“Feel it,” the Doctor hurried, pressing her hand tighter. “Two, you don’t travel in your perceived ‘chronological’ order - things won’t make sense for you for a while. Do you feel a heartbeat?”Ode nodded quickly, feeling the heavy, repeating thumps lightly beneath her palm.He moved her hand to the other side of his chest. “And three, do not spoil the future,” he watched her eyes widen, eyes fixed in the right side of his chest. “Be careful with what you say,”Ode shook her head, her heart once again rattling rabidly in her ribs. “Why do you have two heartbeats?” she whispered as though it was meant to be secret.He seemed humoured by this as though the answer were obvious. “Why are you disappearing?”“Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?” she asked more loudly, briefly catching a slip of his expression - something familiar, something soaked in upset and grief. She didn’t know what to make of it.The Doctor seemed immune to Ode’s pleas in comparison to Clara who had turned to leave the room in a hurry. But his eyes said otherwise and only Ode could read them.To her, they spoke an entirely different language Ode felt she should’ve been able to understand - like a long forgotten mother tongue left with only the ashes of how it sounded, how it felt to speak in the tongue, how the words moved through the body, but none of the effortless comprehension. But she knew he was speaking to her and her alone.Ode clutched the letter with both hands and pressed it to herself, closing her eyes as fear pricked tears from her, warming her cheeks. She wondered if she hated herself this much to induce her own confusion and fright.She felt the Doctor’s much warmer hands on her cheeks, the breath of his words felt on her nose.“Come time,” he solaced. “There are things you’re just meant to go through in order to understand,”Ode opened her eyes to her own floating chest, the glimmers of gold ravaging her body into nothingness. Though it was painless, the agitation of seeing herself be eaten away in this inexplicable manner was enough to cause terror. The higher it climbed, the more hopeless it all felt. She looked up at the Doctor to avoid potentially witnessing her own death.He looked back, the slight sense of a sad smile causing even more confusion for Ode. “It all starts now,” he said, one thumb gently rubbing Ode’s cheek. “Listen to me—Odirea, tell him ‘incomplete stabilisation’,”Ode’s focus fixed on him at the mention of her name.“Tell him ‘eternal ballad from twelve-point-zero’,” the Doctor’s hands slowly let go, earning a disconcerted exhale from Ode who now felt how cold the room had become, or perhaps merely her body.From the way his eyes followed around her neck and shoulders, Ode knew there was not much of her left, but she kept her eyes on him. “What? Tell who?”“What did I just say?” he moved towards her but paused. “What were the words?”Ode blinked out her tears, focusing on the words he had uttered to her. “Uh… incomplete stabilisation, eternal ballad?” she looked at him for confirmation. “From twelve-point—”And the world blinked out.
It was as if eternity had been folded into origami, something that could fit on the palm of your hand yet still be elaborate enough you couldn’t fully understand it upon seeing. But then it unfolds and the relief of discernment comes to quell the confusion.One could think of it as origami if it helps - albeit it’s not like that at all, but if it helps then it is like that.“Zero!” Ode caught her breath. The air had returned. But she couldn’t recall it ever being gone, but at one point there had been darkness and the world had been airless and there was only a second between the words “point” and “zero. The hours stretched out in between and squeezed back together.Ode opened her eyes to the familiar infirmary - still white as ever, the beds in the same positions, but the walls had been decorated with honeycomb patterns with rounded edges. Familiar, thought Ode, some previously dormant memory awakened and now scratching reminders in her mind.She bent downwards to survey her very-much-not-invisible legs, no sign of the gold anywhere on her. Just for good measure, she palmed her chest and legs, assuring herself they were in fact there.The Doctor.Ode whipped around, wild eyes searching for the old man. Had she blacked out? She entertained the possibility but later shook it off, realising she’d been standing the entire time.“Doctor!” she called out, making her way towards the door when she realised there had been more than just the walls that had slightly changed. The floor was a different pattern, the machinery in a different part of the room, the machines themselves entirely different.She consoled with her previous belief that it had been all a dream. There was no other logical way to explain the sudden switch of places, the minute changes of places. But then again - she recalled the Doctor’s words, doesn’t hurt to live as if it’s real. She appreciated the sentiment but appreciated less that it meant accepting the illogical, the reality that refused to be reasoned with.Ode folded the letter and slipped it into her pajama pants and stepped towards the exit, the doors sliding to the side in her presence and letting her out. Instead of the familiar hallway of the TARDIS, she was met with a hall of a different face but a familiar buzz. Something about the entire place seemed to reach out for her, asking for her attention, bleeding with want. It was the only thing Ode couldn’t find an answer for. Why it asked for her.She made her way through a rather short walkway that opened up to a similar looking console-room that the Doctor had introduced her to. But instead of the darker interior with bookshelves lining the walls, it was round window-like openings, a vivid shade of orange that made the entire room glow with welcome.Ode’s mouth gaped open in shock, a thousand questions flying around her mind. Several things pointed to the console-room being an entirely different place from the TARDIS, it hadn’t looked like the room the Doctor boasted about, its larger features more dissimilar. However, the inviting, warm, alive hum of the walls had remained, if not even stronger. The very same that had been prevalent in the TARDIS.“Can I help you?” a man’s friendly voice rose behind Ode, making her leap out of the centre of the walkway.She spun to face a man of similar stature to the Doctor, having to tilt her head upwards and back away in order to see him properly. She surveyed his tan tweed jacket, a bowtie sitting on his shirt collar - looking ever so polite with his genial stance, hands intertwined in front of him, a cordial smile on his lips.Ode watched his eyes scan her for a moment, latching on to different parts of her the way the Doctor did - her hair, her neck, her clothes, her hands. She’d have called it undressing if his brows didn’t seem conflicted over something.“See something you like?” Ode asked, sarcastically though cautiously.He seemed to have trouble looking at her eyes, his attention perpetually being caught by the details of her. Regardless, his face broke into a smile. She could tell he smiled often. “Brave question. I can’t seem to tell where you’re at,” he made a step towards her when he blinked in surprise at Ode stepping back. “Are you alright?”Ode focused on his face. His features. His smile. His studious gaze. The same as she did with the Doctor and Clara, it seemed to point to recognition. “You know me?” she watched his face glitch in confusion. So he did.He spat a choked-up laugh as if there was a joke she wasn’t quite delivering right. “Shouldn’t I?” he answered between breaths of short laughter. But upon further surveying of her more earnest expression, he faltered. “Why wouldn’t I know you?”Dream logic. Ode brushed away his interrogative stare. “The Doctor said to tell you, well I think maybe you, ‘incomplete stabilisation’,” she paused, attempting to measure his replying expression.“Excuse me?” he responded, his gaze flitting away in confusion.“Oh, and that ‘eternal ballad from twelve-point-zero’?” she repeated the Doctor’s words according to her memory, recognising how bizarre things had become. “Do you know what that means?” she turned her head to see his face clearer, reading his eyes that had become widened since she last surveyed. “And where is he? We were in the infirmary, last I remember,”The man buried his face in his palms, audibly taking a large breath. “Oh, this is… this hasn’t…” he turned back to her, his expression more serious. “You don’t recognise me?” he sounded strained when the words escaped him - both genuinely inquiring but saddened at the fact.On instinct, Ode wanted to shake her head. But the more her eyes lingered on his features, the more he became less of a stranger, pulling rusted chains from the recesses of her recollection. She opened her mouth to speak when two others chimed in, walking in from the familiar TARDIS doors.“We’re back!” a bright, ginger woman strided in with a lanky blond man behind her. “Oh, hey, Ode!” she greeted, her round cheeks beaming a smile at the dark-haired girl.The lanky man made his way up the stairs and handed Ode a plastic bag without so much as sparing her a glance, as if this was all routine. “That’s for you, your favourite,” he pointed across at the man in front of Ode. “And no, we didn’t you get you anything, Doctor,”Ode’s bewildered eyes snapped to the bowtie man, the Doctor supposedly.He stared back at her, unsurprised by her expression. “I see why that’d be difficult to understand,” he said quietly. “Took you some time,”“You’re not…” Ode furrowed, looking back at the TARDIS doors that really seemed the same. “Is it a title? Passed down?”The man, who Ode refused to think of as the Doctor, shook his head.“Or you’re some other Doctor - otherwise, it doesn’t make sense,” Ode tightened her gaze on him.He sighed. “It never does,” he sounded resigned, as if the words Ode had uttered had been thrown at him many times before her that he’d been bruised at the sound of them.“Doctor, what’s happening?” the ginger woman asked, making her way around the console and putting a hand on one of Ode’s shoulders. “You a’right, there?” she offered a kind smile, her eyes creasing up before they eventually fell the more she looked at Ode. “Doctor,” she gasped, staggering back and letting go of Ode.Ode backed up against the console, suddenly feeling opposed by the three strangers. Despite their new faces, there was something oddly familiar about them, like a word on the tongue asking to be said, or a melody that has lost the rest of the song to the shadows of a memory.When she looked at the lanky man, he seemed just as drowned in disbelief as the ginger woman, eyes hastily taking in each part of Ode’s image as if she’d been blurry or too saturated.Ode recalled to the old man, how he had been the Doctor, where she laid her trust only for it to be pulled out beneath her. Or he’d been talking sense all along. “He said he wouldn’t look like how he looked, but that it would still be him,” she translated from memory to sound, recontextualising what he may have meant.“And what did he show you?” the man encouraged, his eyes finding a little more light.Stammering, Ode gripped the plastic bag closer for comfort. She caught a breath to ask of Clara but decided against it, recognising she hadn’t seen her since she fled the room, and that the Doctor had said to be careful with her words.“What do you mean?” she scoured her memory for anything the Doctor would have shown her.The man shrugged, stepping closer cautiously. “Anything that would have told you he was the Doctor - distinct to himself,”Ode paused, bringing a free hand to her chest at the memory of the Doctor’s impossibility.When she looked back at the man, he seemed to gather what she’d realised, his face softening, his stance becoming more open, as if baring his chest in surrender.Ode’s hand lifted to reach him but she hesitated, looking back up with questions.“Go on,” he encouraged. “What does it take to prove it to you?”With that, Ode rested her hand on the left side of his chest. She felt the irregularly fast beats of a heart, familiar but all the while irregular. Then moving to his right side, her palm was met with similar thumps, disproving her without much attempt.“Two hearts apparently,” Ode said quietly in defeat, pulling her hand away. “Why?” she bore questions through a furrowed look, which he only gave a sly smile to.“Hang on, no, hang on,” the lanky man interjected, pulling the room’s attention. “Doctor?” he sent a confused look at the Doctor while pointing at Ode. “Is this the earliest we’ve had her? She’s known us from—”“Rory,” the ginger interrupted with a warning tone.“Earliest?” Ode piped up, turning to the ginger and lanky man - Rory.“Oh, Rory,” the Doctor sighed. “You know how it works. At some point we would’ve encountered this,”Ode looked between the pair, sensing the disappointment thicken. The way they looked at her as if expecting something but receiving nothing burned her, as if she were a mere substitute untrained for the job.She looked away, driving the ill feeling from her mind.“C’mon, you,” the Doctor tapped Ode’s arm, causing her to look up at him. “Infirmary,” he turned to make his way back in the hallway but abruptly turned around, his face lit up. “Oh! And that’s Amy, that’s Rory, good friends of yours… well,” he winced “Not yet. For you, anyway,” he disappeared into the hallway with only his footsteps echoing behind.Ode rushed to follow but briefly turned to Amy and Rory, bowing her head in apology. “Hi, nice to meet you,” she smiled, catching their perplexed expressions before trailing at the Doctor.
“Always the little things, isn’t it? What was said, what was advised, what was suggested—and typically I can’t be bothered to remember but this…” the Doctor slowed from his rambling, hiding a maroon leather-bound notebook into his tweed jacket. By its size, it shouldn't have disappeared so seamlessly but so it did without a trace. This confounded Ode but she preferred not to think about it. “This is a critical, critical, time to remember. If ever it was mentioned,”Ode plopped onto one of the beds, watching the young Doctor pace around the room, tinkering between different machines and a small stick device with a glowing end. “What’s exactly happening?”He evaded the question and looked at the glowing stick, seeming to read something from its body. “Right,” he grimaced. “What have I told you so far about any of this?” he gestured with open palms.“Well, we’re in the TARDIS,” Ode began, parsing through her memories. “You travel through space and time with it, you were an old man last I saw, and I… also travel,” she slowed her speech with hesitance, looking back at him as he passed her a disappointed look. “Apparently,”“Old man, huh?” he pondered over the detail but seemed to quickly move on. “Any particular details that stood out?”“Eyebrows,” Ode replied without reluctance. “Serious eyebrows,” she found herself looking at the brows of the man in front of her, twisting her mouth to keep back from spouting unnecessary comments. Regardless, he seemed to sense this.“They’re sensitive,” he declared defensively but quietly, his body slightly turning away. “But he must be a future version of myself. After this body…” he wrung his hands apprehensively.Ode looked at him disbelievingly. “Right. Because time travel,” she held back a teasing laugh. “I was telling you, future you apparently, that at some point I’ll wake up from all this. I’ll think I’m a genius for all this. Space, time-travel, high-tech,” she opened her arms and motioned at the TARDIS’ interiors.She drew back when he gave her a sharp eye, his face no longer pensive or humorous. “I do not miss your hubris,” he expressed plainly, watching Ode’s face fall.“Well, I’ll wake up and none of this will matter—”“If you’ll wake up, you will live knowing you were unkind,” he glared down at Ode through hooded eyes, spearing down her blatant arrogance. “By choice. Just because you thought there were no consequences,”She furrowed. “Why does it mean so much to you?”“Why doesn’t it mean anything at all to you?” he tilted his head at her, glares warring with the other. “To the rest of us, this is all real. We live, we die, we feel happiness, and we feel the pain inflicted upon us. Sure, it may not be real for you, but it is for everyone else,”Ode acquiesced, looking away defiantly. “It doesn’t make things make any more sense,” she grumbled.The Doctor leaned away, his eyes lightening. “And so it means none of it is real?”“I don’t know,” Ode huffed. “Sure does look like it,”“A woman of science,” he breathed out, grabbing Ode’s attention. “Don’t blame you,”“And it doesn’t help that you haven’t really explained to me what this all is,” Ode lied back down on the bed, hands smoothing over creases and bumps. The cloth didn’t feel like an imitation, the threads fleshed out to the most miniscule detail she could see with her naked eye. “If this is all real,”She felt the Doctor take a seat beside her. “It’s difficult to explain things to someone who doesn’t want to listen,”Ode moved to look at him, slightly offended but knowing he was right. “I can try. I want to try,” she sat up, keeping her hands on her lap. “I'll try,”She didn’t fully believe her own words. But neither did she want to be unkind. If it was all in fact a dream for her, she had no proof that every other person did not feel things as a real person would. What if their pain was just as palpable as the pain of her awake world? What if it wasn’t? But did it hurt so much to be heedful just in case it was?For a man who she wanted to believe was of her own making, he so surely fought for her to believe he existed outside of her. Who was she to say otherwise?She swallowed a breath and held out a hand to him. “Hi,” her empty hand shook in the air, awaiting his. “I’m Odirea Dicosima. I catalogue ancient artefacts into museum archives for a living, I have a cat, I’m twenty-four, and it’s nice to meet you,”She watched the Doctor’s face slowly melt into a small smile, her own mouth turning upwards to mirror him.“Well hello, Odirea. I’m the Doctor,” he gripped her hand in his and shook, his touch warm and slow. “I travel through time and space with friends, I have no cat, and I’m around nine-hundred to a thousand years old,” his smile only grew when Ode’s eyes widened at the information. “It’s an honour to finally meet you,”
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From where Ode sat up, the sunlight had crept from a circular window adjacent to her bed. It warmed her face to the point of waking her, eyes meeting a golden gleam she mistook for the golden field from the day before.Someone seemed to have drawn the curtains to the side.For once in so long, her sleep was thick and undisturbed by dreams. The world behind her eyelids was black and silent, odd by the nature of her sleep that tended to be alive, but this she hoped to ignore.When she slid out, she noticed the letter she’d kept in her pocket was laid out neatly on the nightstand, slightly creased but stable. She resented what it possibly meant, driving her away from reading it. But the more she recognised her own resentment the more she remembered that she’d said she’d try. What was trying if not reading a letter she supposedly wrote?Someday, she huffed, standing and making her way to the closet doors, but not today.The bedroom the Doctor had shown her the night before was an amalgamation of her apartment’s bedroom and her childhood bedroom. She wondered what made it this way and had asked him, but even he grimaced at the sight of the room as though he’d never seen it that way before. Still, he said nothing all too illuminating to her, only that the TARDIS “provides” what was presently needed.Regardless, Ode did not understand. Neither the nature of why the room supposedly looked the way it did, implying it changed on its own, the items that she swore were exact replicas of something she owned, or why the Doctor said this “version” of her bedroom would follow her whenever she goes.Whenever? She didn’t even want to think about it. As far as she knew, her plans of returning home had no road for fruition.Familiar photos hung on an accent lavender wall - Telemachus, her father, Oli. Many she took herself so she never really appeared in them. They were the perfect likeness of the real photos she had in her apartment bedroom that she was tempted to believe they were the very same.The closet was an entire room in of itself, which she stared at disbelievingly the night before - large, circular, warm white lights showcasing the colours perfectly. Articles of clothing were arranged neatly the way she preferred, categories of type and sub-categories of “occasion”. This she smiled at in satisfaction as though she had arranged them herself. And though the collection of clothes looked incomplete, it was large enough anyway, double the amount of clothes she already owned.This only served to fuel the idea this was in fact a dream.In the bathroom, she leaned against the sink and cupped her face. Her skin on her skin and her skin pushing on skin. “Real?” her fingers pinched at the skin on her lips, slid over the bumps on the sides of her cheeks, the freckles on her nose. Every detail she’d scrutinised in her apartment bathroom was present in this TARDIS bathroom, every corner and freckle and hill of her body reflected back at her. She sighed, “God,”She brushed harshly through her straightened hair and tied it half-up, ignoring her face in the mirror and quickly exiting.There was something entirely deranged about it all - from what was supposedly happening, to her being there, and perhaps even to her own denial of it if in fact this reality was just as real as where she came from.She marched her way towards the console room and found the Doctor already standing there fixing his bow-tie.“Ah! Ode, wonderful,” he beamed gleefully her way and began fiddling with the console. “Your results were ready a few hours ago but I didn’t want to wake you,” he pushed a screen her way which swivelled around the console before stopping in front of her.Ode took a slow and careful approach to attempting to understand what was written but all seemed to be numbers with no obvious correlation to each other or the various animated line graphs beneath them.“Right…” she nodded, jumping between eyeing and screen and eyeing him. “I’m not… I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at,”He drew in a quick breath, as if remembering something. “Oh. Right. Yes. Right,” he moved beside her and began pointing at the line graph on the bottom right corner of the screen. “That one is saying you’re slowly recovering from your…” he glanced at her for a moment. “You know, jumping about the place,” his hand made circular gestures in the air.“What?” Ode furrowed up at him but he looked away.“You know, appearing here, appearing there,” he nodded and traced the upwards curve of the line. “It’s indicating that you’ll still be… jumping… quite a bit within the next few days—or weeks, who knows—but the time between each jump will get larger and larger until it eventually plateaus,”Ode squinted at the line graph, wondering which part of the line or the number said what he had told her. “So,” she traced back his points and her own memory. “I’m going to do that…” her face scrunched up in displeasure. “Disappearing thingy?”The Doctor nodded, seemingly pleasantly surprised.“Is that the jumping?”“Yes, yes it is. Well done,” he grinned at her.“And I’m going to do more of that within the next few days?” she clarified.She had half the mind to mentally prepare herself for it. Afterall, it didn’t hurt the first time, but that was all her evidence to prove that it wouldn’t hurt ever. Insubstantial at best.“So,” she shook off the thought, recalling how disturbing it looked seeing only the upper half of herself. “Where are we going?” she asked, backing away and keeping some distance as she watched him tentatively. There was something about the way he moved that made her want to study him from afar - possibly his sudden jerks here and there, the wringing of fingers and hands, as if his arms were withholding energy his body didn't know how to deal with.“Akhstaore,” he replied with a grin. He shoved his hands inside his coat and nodded contentedly to himself. “Wonderful planet. Hotspot for the best cuisine and markets on this side of the galaxy,” he stretched his hand out as an offer, smiling eagerly.Ode considered it for a second but only nodded, pushing her hands in her pockets and making her way to the doors first. “To Akastore we go,” she declared under a jovial tone, refusing to look back at the Doctor’s face. “Are Amy and Rory coming?”“Akhstaore,” the Doctor muttered while making his way towards her. “And no, I dropped them off while you were asleep. You’ll get to meet them more properly later, but you and I,” he poked her shoulder, making her look up at him. “Long talk,”Ode’s brows tightened towards each other while he only passed by her to open the doors.“About what?” she asked, being left behind inside the TARDIS.“Akhstaore!” the Doctor beamed outside the doors, arms wide open, face split into a grin. “Big markets, lots of—” he turned back at Ode with a glint of joy in his eyes. “Lots of little shops,”She stepped out of the TARDIS and closed the door on her way out. “What are we going to talk about?” she patted the wooden door, blinking in brief confusion when something about it seemed to grab her attention. “I’ve seen this somewhere,” she whispered more so to herself and the door than the Doctor.She twisted her lips in an attempt to hide her excitement. As uninterested she always was in space travel, still she grew enthused at the prospect of seeing another planet besides Earth. She likened it to travelling to another country. Perhaps it wasn't a perfect comparison but it was the closest she could think of. It was simply one of those things some people didn't necessarily care for but still loved doing when it came around.He hummed in response, glancing at her mouth briefly.A wooden door had never evoked such a response from her, if any person at all. It whispered of her recognition - a fading image, a blinking at the periphery, two hands barely meeting. She may never have seen it before that moment, or had seen it in excess her mind simply wrote it out. Or...Ode stepped back, taking in the blue doors when she realised it barely covered the size it showcased from within. “What,” she tilted her head to see the side, confirming in fact it was merely a box. Small and blue with 'Police Box' over the doors. “But we were inside it!” she exclaimed, pointing at the doors before inspecting the other side of the box. “And there were rooms! And—and the console room! How—”She looked to the Doctor for answers but he only smiled at her.She ran her fingers over the grain of the wood, feeling its warmth on her skin and its buzz quietly running through her arm. Still, it seemed to call for her. Both bewilderment and elation struck her, something childlike warm in her chest. “What’s wrong with it?”The Doctor’s face fell into an offended look. “‘What’s wrong with it’? What do you mean ‘what’s wrong with it’?” he stretched his hand and caressed the box as if it, too, had taken offence.Shrugging, she detached from the box to walk around it. “It’s all…” she made her way back to him, face still expressing her confusion, but mouth twisted to conceal her traitorous excitement. “Dimensionally incorrect. The insides don’t match the outside, or the outsides don’t match the inside,”The Doctor stared at her for a moment, seemingly taken aback before snapping back to the previous offended look. “Well that’s human science to you. But in short, the interior dimensions transcend the exterior, making it all weird and ‘dimensionally incorrect’ to you,” he wagged a finger at her. “When it is in fact perfectly correct for Time Lord science. Understand?”She shook her head “No,” while pieced together the implication. Very not human. It explained his two hearts but not his face.“Very well then,” he turned towards the Akhstaorian market ahead of them and resumed smiling. “Come on, take this,” he reached into his coat’s inner pocket and retrieved a large metallic circle the size of his hand. “This is Vuenakhsta, quite literally ‘money-Akhstaorian’. If you want to buy something, give this to the vendor and they’ll prick it,” he handed it to Ode who looked at it more curiously.It seemed essentially an oversized coin with three holes lining the middle. She held it in her hands and surveyed its metal, unsure what kind it was or if she would even know where to start, given the planet they were on.“What? What do you mean? How does this work? Do I just carry it around?” she trailed after him as they entered the market, her senses being met with different colours and unfamiliar yet alluring scents.Her attention was pulled from one stall to another, their contents varying widely from some vaguely food-shaped things to perhaps not-food things, some in pots, some in cages, some chained to the ground.The Doctor paused, turning to her while rummaging inside his pockets. “Aha, yes,” he whipped out a small leather satchel and placed it around her neck.Ode reached out for his coat and pulled one side slightly open to see its pocket. “How’d you fit this in there?” she asked, merely seeing a small but shapely pocket that could fit three post-its at best.The Doctor lightly closed his coat. “Like the TARDIS it’s—”“Transcends the exterior, right,” she sighed, giving into the reality that she perhaps wouldn’t understand the majority of what he says.“I was just going to say it’s bigger in the inside,” he said, smiling at Ode’s defeated look.She considered the description. “Okay. Concise,”He patted the bag he had given. “Money inside, don’t flaunt it unless you’re intentionally attracting thieves,”“Thieves!” Ode gaped at him, quickly hiding away the coin. “What do you—”“Sh! Well don’t announce it,” he gave her a cautious glance before carrying on, eyes gliding from one stall to the next. “And how it works is that there are kinds of metals the coins can be made of, each varying in strength and how well it can hold up being pricked. Each transaction is a prick from a device that melts a portion of the coin. The higher the value, the deeper the hole—ooh, lovely,” he pointed at something a seller seemed to be frying.Ode squinted, unsure what to make of it. Perhaps it was food but it resembled nothing like the food she recognised. She glanced up at the vendor and saw a rather human-looking face, putting her slightly at ease.“And as most things tend to go,” the Doctor continued, “The higher in class, rank, other else, you are, the sturdier your coin’s metal is. The lower, the weaker,”Ode frowned. “Class? Rank?” she watched the Doctor look back at her. “Is that what determines your wealth here?” It slightly disheartened her that it resembled human hierarchy.The Doctor half nodded and shook his head at this. “Well, not really, there’s all that about how important your work is, or how hard you work, or how important your product is—it depends, is what I’m saying,” he looked away when Ode’s face seemed comforted by this.The crowd appeared to be a mix of various creatures, some human-like, some reptile-like, some in between, and some Ode couldn’t even place. “If this is an alien planet, why are there humans here?” she whispered to the Doctor, wary of others they were walking past.He glanced at her for a moment. “For the record, we’re technically the aliens around these parts. But yes, humans travel to the stars at some point, spread out, mingle. The ones you see in the majority of places most probably aren’t pure humans. In fact, you might just be the only pure human around here,”He flashed her a smile but Ode couldn’t quite return it, unsure if this was a good or bad thing. “Right. So we’re in the far future?” she walked closer to him, eyes jumping from one vendor to the next, from one stall to another. But a thought struck her. Her eyes blinked, widened, furrowed. “But wait—” she considered the thought more closely. “Am I the only pure human here? Or in general? In this day and age,”She looked up at the Doctor and watched his face slowly morphe between longing and sorrow. “Ah, well,” he glanced down at her.Ode looked away, guessing it was the latter.Until he had brought her there, she supposed humans had been long wiped from the face of time. Inconsequential to the skin that made up the body of the entire universe and those beyond it. Species died out all the time, or faded away, or mixed with others until their stain on that spot of space was indiscernible from the emptiness. But how strange it was to think of your own kind in this manner.“Mhm,” he nodded. “Oh! Look at that, how perfect. Take a look, maybe you’ll like something,”They stopped in front of a larger stall with books and notebooks lined up by the dozen, various shapes of pens floating on a revolving display. The entire stall screamed in colour, from the backs of books, to the racks, shelves, pens, to the vendor themself who was a mustard-toned creature that towered over the Doctor and Ode, donning a welcoming smile. Or what she guessed was a welcoming smile.“My fairest morning, dear travellers,” the vendor greeted, curling their hand into a loose fist and bringing it to tap twice on their chin. “What brings you to Akhstaore?”Ode watched as the Doctor copied their movements.English? Ode tried to ignore the fact that the vendor seemed to speak perfect English but was finding it rather difficult due to their Northern accent. Did aliens in the future adopt English universally? She could find a way to believe it but postponed the thought.“My fairest morning, hello,” the Doctor greeted eagerly, “Just perusing the stalls. I’m taking my friend here to see Akhstaore’s glorious markets, it’s her first time,” he excitedly made his way to Ode and placed both hands on her shoulders, shaking her slightly. “You’ve got some lovely, beautiful books here,”Briefly, Ode shook at the sudden zap of energy coming from his hands. Briefly, his touch imitated the TARDIS buzz, the TARDIS want, the yearning that she associated with it, seeping from its walls and floors but now seeping from him.She looked back at him to confirm he felt it too but he seemed unfazed.“Any journals, by chance?” the Doctor’s fingers mindlessly tapped on Ode’s shoulders, bringing her attention to their conversation with difficulty as it aggravated the warm buzz. “Ode? Want to take a journal or two?” he let go of her and examined the four rows of journals the vendor had shown.Ode let go of a held breath and followed him, questions plaguing her mind. “For… what?” she joined him in looking over various notebooks, more so watching him pull out various red ones before putting them back.“Nothing, just a keepsake, you know,” he pulled out a dark blue one and gave it to her. “A little remembrance of your first planetary trip,” his eyes seemed interested in the journal he’d given her, jumping back and forth from its cover to Ode’s face.She surveyed it briefly, fingers gliding over a smooth leather-like back and into the thick paper with a coarse grain. Perhaps on any other occasion where he had not placed his hands on her shoulders and his touch had not ignited what felt like an electrical current she may have taken a liking to the journal and decided to purchase it.She returned the journal back into its slot in the row. “Hm, I’m all good,” when she looked back at the vendor, a shade of embarrassment crossed her. “But I can take a pen. I like that one,” she pointed to a random one on a high shelf.Her unease was quelled when the vendor smiled at her choice as they made their way to retrieve the pen.“It is well what you choose,” the vendor complimented, placing the pen’s glass case on the counter and pulling out a red box from beneath. “The make of Alden wood is soft, its ink cartridge refillable,”As the vendor showcased the pen’s features, Ode drifted away in thought, eyes clinging to the Doctor. He seemed to be who he said he was, every bit of him real but also clashing with what she knew to be reality. Instead he felt like a mirage, a child’s dreams come to life.“Perfect!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands.Ode looked back at the vendor, receiving a small bag seemingly made out of one giant red leaf. “Oh, here,” she pulled out the coin from her bag and stretched her arm out while the vendor tidied up the counter.Quickly, the Doctor grabbed Ode’s other hand and placed it to hold the coin.“Ah, yes,” the vendor pulled out a small tong-like machine with a long tail attached to the counter. She clamped the coin for a few seconds before pulling away and resting it. “I hail you,” she bowed her head.Ode blinked. “Excuse me?” she tucked away the coin that now had one more gaping hole on its surface.“Alright, time to go,” the Doctor started to usher her out by the elbow, once again inflaming the warm buzz. “We hail you,” he bowed back at the vendor for the last time before they rejoined the flow of the market.“What does that mean? We hail you? My fairest morning?” Ode asked, rubbing her elbow.The Doctor seemed distracted by other stalls but answered perfectly anyway. “It’s their way of saying gratitude, much like ‘thank you’ for English-speakers. And ‘my fairest morning’ is like a ‘hello’,”He grinned at others passing by, tossing out “My fairest morning” left and right.“See,” he gestured his hands at the crowd. “They nod, smile. Much like a ‘hello’. It’s like ‘my best wishes’. In Akhstaorian culture, it means you’re honoured to see them and wish to gift them your fair mornings—less for you, yes, but it more so speaks of your generosity and… gladness to see them. Though to English-speakers you’ll just hear the more abstract, literal meaning of things,”Nodding, Ode could see why they spoke so strangely. “Huh. That’s cool. But, well, I mean, they were speaking English, weren’t they?”He finally turned to her, brow cocked before nodding at something he looked to be remembering. “Ah. They’re not speaking English. In fact, I’m not entirely sure anybody here is speaking English except you and I,”“Now what does that mean,” Ode kept an open ear to the conversations people seemed to be having as they walked past.
There was a lovely spa in the—
And that was when Kaisa told him that—
I forgot about it until now you—
“Everyone’s speaking English,” Ode noted to him, hoping to hear his point. But she screwed her eyes at him when he began smiling. As if her observation was faulty.“That’s the TARDIS,” he said plainly, the strange smile still a ghost on his face. “It’s telepathically linked to its travellers. Any and every language becomes translated to a language or accent you expect or understand,”Of course it does. Ode swallowed the information. “Any and every language?”“Ah, well,” his face contorted for a moment. “Most, anyway. Some very, very few old ones can’t be translated. Maisatzen, Iupiom, Judoon, Ischor. Then there’s the one the TARDIS just isn’t designed to translate because it was expected anyone who’d travel in it would understand it. Gallifreyan,”His eyes drifted at the name of it.By the looks of him, Ode sensed it brought a weight he seemed to carry around. His gaze became more lasered, feigning focus on something far away, his lips ever so slightly pinched, his breathing a little more quiet.But she said nothing of it. “But why do they all have British accents?”Finally, the Doctor looked back at her, the face of intrigue and perpetual friendliness once again wearing him. “It means that’s what you expect most people to have,”Nodding, Ode quieted and began listening to the passing conversations once again.They were almost just like any other conversation she’d overhear on the street or bus on the way to work or home, save for the strange arrangement of their words that indicated a language of different grammatical rules.“And,” the Doctor continued. “When you’re paying for something, make sure to hold out the coin with both hands,” he imitated the action of holding the coin. “It’s impolite to hold it with only one,”Ode formed an “ah” shape with her mouth, recalling his quick correction of her hands in the stall. “Why?”He let his hands fall. “In Akhstaorian culture, giving something with both hands indicates respect, or something like… thinking of them as your equal,” he then took up both hands and motioned as though he was giving her something. “Important when the majority of the planet is essentially serving others,”Playing along, Ode took the imaginary object with both hands as well. “Oh. So giving something with only one hand is… disrespectful?” she looked up to see him nod. “Like you’re saying you’re above them,”He snapped his fingers. “Exactly. And you never want to be saying that,” he placed a hand on her arm, stopping in front of a yellow stall that seemed to produce a saccharine scent that stopped each passer-by’s eye.Ode ignored the continuous buzzing current that lit between his touch and her skin and instead focused on the odour. She couldn’t tell what it was made of, but the vendor stood within the small space scooping things into little yellow cups. Evidently, from the scent that seduced her hunger, it had an edible quality to its aroma. The way one typically knows when a smell is from perfume or from a meal. “Food?”The Doctor nodded, pulling her into the short line that waited eagerly.“What is it made of?” Ode tried to peer around the customer in front of them, attempting with difficulty to identify what sort of food it was.“Who knows,” the Doctor replied. “Sure does smell good, doesn’t it?”Ode looked back at him at the sudden lack of the electric current. She hadn’t noticed she’d been enjoying the feeling of it until it was pulled away, only then she looked at him more curiously than she already had been.Maybe he was secretly alien and an electric touch was merely what he felt like to humans, the way humans feel warm to other humans. Or perhaps he was intentionally making her feel it, mocking her lack of knowledge of this world that was so far removed from her own.She rose a hand and pressed her fingers to his cheek. And there it was again. She pulled away briefly at the surprise of it before reconnecting their skin. Tiny zaps danced beneath her fingertips, as if his skin was exposed wire.“Enjoying the little buzzing, aren’t you?” the Doctor questioned, only looking down at her with amused eyes and letting her hands prod him like an experiment.Ode furrowed at this. “You can feel it too?”He nodded. “Every time. Natural occurrence for you and I,” he squinted, taking it back. “Or it will be a natural occurrence for you,”“What do you mean?” she responded, poking his neck, his shoulder, laying her palm on his arm, his hand. That was as far as she was willing to go, but regardless if her touch reached skin or only his clothes, she could feel the excitation between them. “Will everyone feel like this?”Shaking his head, he reciprocated when she stopped prodding him, grasping her smaller hand in his and smiling at her quiet gasp. “No, I meant it’s a natural occurrence between you and I. Specifically you to me. The larger the contact, the stronger the current feels,”Ode unclasped and clasped his hand again and again, hooked on the high of his touch. “Oh, this is so strange,” she laughed, unclasping and clasping with both hands. “But why? What do you mean ‘specifically’ me to you?”He ushered her forward as the customers ahead walked away. “Hello! My fairest mornings,”Ode, displeased with his constant swerving of much of her questions, stared at him. For as unreserved as he seemed, he had several locked doors behind several locked gates. She felt it. When he didn’t answer a question, when his eyes would drift elsewhere, when his words dragged on too long. His conflicted skies and locked down reality behind feigned openness.“Yes, the larger one,” the Doctor smiled at the cup size before finally acknowledging Ode’s eyes. Quietly, he said, “I owe you many answers. I know that,”She backed down. Like a dog resolving to a more relaxed stance, she believed he spoke in earnest. So far she hadn’t sensed he’d been lying.“C’mon choose something,” he nudged his head at the array of options in front of them.Ode forced her gaze from his face and onto the food in round containers. Their sweetness only served to worsen her stomach’s grumbling but their unfamiliarity made it difficult to choose.“Hm... I’ll get the same as his,” she smiled at the vendor who nodded without further questions.
In the goopy orange substance were small pillow shaped things. When Ode sunk her teeth on them they bursted in her mouth, spewing something warm and even sweeter. And despite their unappetising look, they delivered what their aroma promised.Ode dug into them. After her first bite, it dawned on her how hungry she had been - considering she hadn’t had dinner the day before nor when she appeared in the TARDIS.The Doctor had dragged her into what looked like the city square, adorned with hedges, statues, 3 levels of benches, and a view of both the city and the market. It appeared to be right in between, serving as a transitional area for tourists.Together, the sat on a bench facing the city. Ode squinted into the distance, eyes following small spots that flew about the sky in a coordinated line. As they got nearer, they revealed themselves to be vaguely car shaped.“The energy buzz is purely unique to you and I,” the Doctor spoke up, not looking up from his food.Ode turned to him however, reminded of her unanswered question. “But what does that mean?”He swallowed a bite. “Well, it means…” he thought about it longer, eyes focusing on nothing. “It means that every time we touch, we’re going to feel it. Only when we’re outside the TARDIS, however. I’m guessing it’s because of something time-stream related,”Ode blinked in confusion. “You mean, you don’t exactly know why it happens?”He gave her a wilting look, as if apologising. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. Thankfully, you stay long enough some times for you to be able to help me with studying it,”At this, Ode was reminded of what he said the truth was. “Right. Me in your past?”The Doctor nodded. “Soon enough, anyway,” he briefly passed a glance at her and looked away before she could decipher anything behind it. “How’s your… journey to acceptance going?”Ode snorted, covering her mouth while looking at him in humorous disbelief. “Journey to acceptance? Really?”He grinned, the creases around his mouth exaggerating. “If it’s anything, it’s that,”“It’s going fine,” she looked down at her cup of almost finished… things. She hadn’t bothered asking what exactly it was. “All good,”Maybe the food was too real. Too sweet. As if trying hard to convince her. Or the grain of the container between her hands, cupping warmth and heating her skin. The breeze around her neck sometimes said how couldn’t it be real? The cool bench beneath her or the slightest dips and hills under her feet. All so solidly solid, as real as reality.Until she looked at the city in front of her, the faces of the people that walked by, the touch of the man who sat before her. Or perhaps not solidly solid. Not as real as reality. Did that make her just a human from just before humanity’s climb to the stars? Just as he suggested?“What is it?”The Doctor’s voice pulled Ode from her drifting contemplation. He looked at her expectantly and with slight concern, almost like an adult hovering over a wounded child.For a moment, Ode thought of lying. What good was the truth in this case?She returned his gaze, pinning her attention on his genuine expression.“I don’t know,” she shook her head.He leaned away, the air around her resuming. “Just be frank. It’s nothing new to me,”Ode looked back at him, sensing his sincerity. He meant every word of it. The way he just wasn’t supposed to. “But it’s new to me,” she kept her determined eyes on him but he stared back with the same intensity. Whatever he believed, he had proof to hold his faith so tightly.“Go on,”She was confounded with his confidence in her. Something about it scratched in the back of her mind, the endless interest, the gentle eyes. Seeming just as much strangers as lifelong friends.“The TARDIS travels through space, right?” she watched him nod. “Okay. I want you to take me to my apartment, I can point the directions in your map if you need it,”The Doctor turned to her with heightened interest and confusion on his face. “Ode… I don’t think that’s a—”“Please?”Still, he didn’t say yes.She’d started gripping the cup, eyes drifting to her hands. Warm, barely feeling the cool air. “It’s just that… I don’t know,” she focused on her breath and how her skin felt against her shirt when her lungs expanded, the almost unnoticeable sound of breathing between them, the crunch of gravel or the like somewhere far off where people walked on. “This feels real. I’m trying to figure this all out,”She studied his expression, scrutinising the details of his skin, his mouth, the way he bent his neck down to look at her. How tenderly he looked at her, she noticed. Just like the old man she had met.“I had a dream,” she interrupted, grabbing the reins of her thoughts before they furthered down the road of… wherever they seemed to be going.She avoided his eyes, fearing he’d discover her.“Hm? Tell me,”Ode paused for a moment, wondering if he’d interject about her avoidance. But nothing. “It was a gold field, I was walking through it—or no, it was a…” she screwed her eyes at the ground, recalling the haze of her sleep. “It was first a waterfall, but the more I looked at it it would change, then it was a field,”The Doctor hummed as if agreeing in recognition. “Let me guess: lots of things in your environment were ambiguous? Or changing from one thing to another?”Ode’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Exactly, but it became a field with a big tree after a little while,” she could still hear the whispers dancing around her head. “Do you have the same dreams too? Like the electric touch?”She watched the Doctor’s face twist and turn at this, agreeing, disagreeing, arguing. Similarly, his response followed, “Yes and no, and no not quite,” he looked playfully at her. “The dreams of this nature—the ambiguous, unsure-what-you’re-seeing kind—come often to people who have a strong connection to the TARDIS. Specifically, to time,”She could sense what direction his explanation was headed.“Their introduction will always be quite strange” he bent his hands this way and that, attempting to illustrate his point, though poorly. “Objects won’t remain the same, the environment changes right in front of you. This is Time that you’re seeing, it’s trying to modify its shape to your concept of it,”His eyes bore into hers and she was unsure if he was attempting to make her believe or test if she already believed.“Time?” Ode pointed out. Truly, I might be going crazy. “What do you mean ‘time’? I saw… forests, fields, waterfalls. How is that time?”He bobbed his head as if expecting this. “So—”“You mean ticking time? Time on a clock? That time?”“So,” he emphasised, shutting her up.Her eyes leapt from his and back, embarrassed.“And no, not time on a clock. The clock is merely the human measurement of it, which does not say for how accurate time actually is—but I’ve digressed,” he cleared his throat. “Why it changes is because of you. Time is… is…”A smile crept on Ode’s lips, recalling the attempt his Old Man self at trying to explain time.“It’s inconceivable to the human mind—so it leaves its form for you to interpret, and well, we all know how the human mind can be. You turn to your comforts, your preferences, your guesses and assumptions of how things are, sometimes to a fault. The ever-changing thoughts presented to your eyes at a larger scale. To you, it becomes a forest, a field, a waterfall, a tree. Time is all of it, sure, but at the same time none of it. It was there before everything and sees it all to its death. Who knows what would happen to your teeny tiny little baby human brain if it were exposed to the expanse, the full face of time. Even further-progressed beings can’t bear it,”He seemed to revel in the grandness of it all, his face displaying a grin that told of his pride in it as if he had made it himself. Though, as a time-traveller, Ode was sure he had some right to feel proud about it. It was like hearing the sea you sail in often bears a bountiful of fish.“What—no comment?” he interjected, half-smiling.Unsmiling, Ode quirked her brows. “‘Teeny tiny little baby brain’?”His smile fell, rubbing his knee and resuming the rest of his food that had probably gone cold by then.She shook her head. “And I’m not sure what to say, honestly,” she glanced away, attempting to make sense of his words. But of course by it’s nature and by her understanding of the world, it was a square piece trying to fit into a triangular hole. “But it helps explain why the waterfall became a field, the field not really being made of grass… but the… I don’t know about the whole ‘time modifying itself according to my conception of it’ thing,”“But you seem to get it just fine,”“Yeah, but I’m not sure how to…” she searched for her words but found nothing satisfactory.He tilted his head. “You can’t accept it?”She blinked at this. Though he had posed it as a question, his solemn expression told her he considered it her disposition - unaccepting of the science outside of her universe, closed off.This was an area she was proud to be arrogant in. Studying sciences and history growing up made for a combination of appreciating the past whilst knowing all that was understood was not all that was to be understood, that the discoveries were often shrouded in mist and shadow until someone had enough patience to wait it out. This was where she let her stubbornness dominate. A little girl with the whole-hearted belief there was nothing she couldn’t understand.“No,” she replied. This time her resolute face was shown proudly to him. “I can. But not yet,”Something flicked across the Doctor’s features, eyes eager for a moment before looking away. “Good. Start somewhere,”She nodded. “This is the science of this world. I can find a way to understand it,” her bravery hesitated when his eyes found hers again. “Somehow,”“The science of all worlds,” he corrected.She stared at him for a second before shaking her head. “That’s another thing to tackle if that may be so,”The Doctor chuckled, mumbling “If that may be so…”“But for now, one thing at a time: time is not as I perceived it,” Ode straightened, arranging everything new he had told her into a list. “It is not linear,”The Doctor chuckled again, shaking his head. “Foolish idea,”“It is… alive?” she looked to him for confirmation. “If it’s trying to communicate with me, then it’s alive and has a consciousness, right?”He nodded. “Yes it does. Still, it’s complicated, but as you said. One thing at a time,”Ode agreed with a satisfied shake of her head. “And... and it's physically inconceivable to the majority of living creatures’ minds, so it appears to us how we think—or expect? Time to be,” again she looked to him but already found him smiling at her. “What’s it like to you?”“What is?”“Non-linear time,”He pondered on the question for a moment, seemingly taking his time, unrushed by her piercing and waiting eyes.She traced her gaze on his face. She’d seen him somewhere long before she met him, she was sure.“It’s all a bit too… much, really, to summarise,” he finally responded, half laughing, half serious. “But one thing I wished weren’t the way it was is... you,”Ode didn’t answer, unsure what he meant and hoping it wasn’t the end of his sentence.“You and I don’t meet chronologically, so it’s a bit… unfortunate, to say the least,” his eyes fell to her mouth and to the ground. “Sometimes you’re younger and you still have to catch up with me, sometimes you’re older and I have to catch up to you. Walking on a twisted road in the dark with our eyes forced closed,”Ode removed her fixation on his face, seeing more and more some sadness he attempted to hide by looking away. “But if time’s non-linear then there’s no ‘chronological’ order for us to meet,” she replied, attempting to make sense of the absurdity. “Or am I getting that wrong?”He glanced at her briefly, considering her response. “No, yeah, that’s… that’s right. So it’s just unfortunate,”
“So?” the Doctor, with his hands in his pockets, stood a little too close to Ode.She, however, didn’t have it in her to move a few inches to the side. Her eyes confirmed a truth the Doctor had been attempting to drill into her. Before them was no apartment building, no entrance to the building lobby, no elevator that would take her to her apartment. Instead it was barricaded by metal sheets, preventing the public from seeing inside a construction site.“I don’t know,” Ode sighed, recalling the park she had initially appeared in. “I thought something would… click. I thought this would be…” her eyes drew back at the not-apartment-building.“Your building?” the Doctor finished for her.“Or a park,”“A park?”She heard a tone that indicated he was genuinely clueless about it. Looking up, she met his inquisitive eyes. Finally, she bothered enough to take a step back.“Yeah. Before I appeared in the TARDIS, I was in a park. Right here,” she pointed behind them at a laundromat. “That was still there, that too,” she gestured at the grocery store situated beside it.Upon further inspection, the neon lights about the grocery displayed a different name from what she was familiar with. She wasn’t sure if it had recently changed, or if this was completely different, or perhaps it had always been this way and she was just negligent with the memory of it.“What is it?” the Doctor moved in front of her vision.Ode shook her head. “So if my apartment building’s not here, where does the me of this universe live?” she attempted to detect his reaction but this seemed to be one of the moments he veiled his expressions purposely. She wondered why. “You say you’ve known me before. So you should be able to tell me these, right?”He stared at her for several moments, eyes boring into hers as if attempting to find something valuable within her irises. The corners would screw tight before loosening, then his gaze would drop and scan her face, her mouth, her hair, her clothes.She stared back with equal examination of him, though with a slightly irritated furrow that revealed itself between her brows. She was unsure whether he was staring in interest, in annoyance, in inspection, or something else entirely she did not want to name. But she wanted him to know he would not have it easy. Whatever his reason was.“You're very intense,” he said so quietly she was unsure he’d said it, but his face melted into the smile she’d started to become familiar with. “Very, very. I forgot how…” once again his eyes drifted about her face before snapping back to reality and glancing away.Ode felt a sense of pride come about her. “You called me ‘acerbic’,” she pressed her mouth into a thin line, hiding away a very arrogant grin. “When we first met,”He gave a half-hearted laugh, as if expected it. “Did I?" he bobbed his head, resting his hands on his cheeks, massaging as if marinating in a thought. “And yes, unfortunately I do know and would be able to tell you,”She hesitated to even want to hear what was next. Unfortunately?“You don’t exist here,” he said plainly. “We’ve investigated your history in this universe and there’s no trace of you or your family. Well, we found your uncle. Matthew Price?”Ode nodded."Yeah. He didn't marry your Aunt Elena, however," he gave a trying smile which didn't convince Ode. "The only family member we could find was your great... great-great-great grandparents. But none of their descendants have the same names as the ones you told me,"She didn't even know her great-great-great-great grandparents and only really her parents and grandparents, and still the information brought a grave of memories. But he’d delivered it in a matter-of-fact manner that she found herself thankful for it. She disliked the emotional appeals of apologies a lot of the time, the I’m sorry, but… that bad news tends to come with. Instead, she preferred them conveyed with little remorse as if merely answering ‘2’ to ‘1+1’. It helped ease some emotional turbulence the answer would've otherwise conjured.If it was fact, then it was fact. She fancied thinking of herself as level-headed because of this. But on a more self-prodding thought, she knew it was merely coping.“That’s it?” she retorted, realising herself to be more upset than she liked. Something in her chest felt pulled down involuntarily, as if his words weighed an unexpected amount she could no longer carry.Much to her dismay, he gave her a slight despondent look.They found themselves walking back to the TARDIS in a disappointed silence, their shoes scratching against the pavement and Ode’s ponderings dragging behind her.Disappointed was how she interpreted it at the very least, it was the only way she could look at it for the moment. She’d found herself unexpectedly troubled by the fact there was a place that did not have her in it, somewhere she couldn't imagine herself being removed from. Maybe it was self-serving but for once this universe and maybe-or-maybe-not dream place was serving her with a disbelief larger than her denial.She had hoped of finding some trace of her old life, something to prove there was something waiting for her. But a construction site and an ambiguous grocery shop did not fit the bill. Did she not make a mark at all? The laundromat was present in two universes but her existence was not? Was that saying something about her?Something about it stirred uneasily in her stomach.
Not dream?
She closed the TARDIS doors and the Doctor took off without another word.His spirits seemed to be lifted as he had started talking about another place, Amy, Rory, and adventures. But Ode stood by only half listening.She took a seat as the TARDIS wheezed once again, shaking only slightly that the Doctor took concern.“She senses your distress,” he said, making Ode look up. “She’s intentionally landing softly,”At this, Ode tilted her head, which the Doctor seemed to understand as confusion.“The TARDIS is alive,” he continued, smiling at this information. “Conscious. She senses what her travellers are feeling. Every bit just as real and beating as you are,”Had Ode not been in somewhat of a numbed state, she might have freaked out at this additional news. But she took it in and accepted it for what it was. Because of course the TARDIS was alive.The more she lingered on the thought the more she understood. Of course, it’s alive. Every buzz beneath her feet, every touch that—“She,” the Doctor blurted, looking up at the centrepiece of the console.Ode blinked. “What?”The Doctor looked to her. “Whatever you were just thinking. She wants you to know it’s ‘she’. The TARDIS,”This pummelled what understanding she had left of the universe. She?At that moment, the floors surged with an energy that ran up Ode’s legs, shivering and dancing up her bones that it made her sit back at the abruptness. She gripped the seat as a disembodied thought formed in her head, as if words floating together without cause or history.“That’s right.” the feeling floated about her mind, orphaned from her other thoughts, but indicating some smugness. It was not so much as 'words' but a feeling that something of that nature was said.Ode shrank into her seat, feeling slightly violated but largely intrigued. It was like a finger had prodded itself into her mind, wiggling it around experimentally and testing the space inside.“Did she just speak to you?” the Doctor stood in front of her but made no effort to bend down, looking at her with an amused expression.Somewhat laboured, Ode replied, “Is… was… is that what just—” she held her head between her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to conjure up the same voice but nothing came. Her own thoughts felt dissimilar. It was as if another person was inside her head.She felt a patting on her knee and a laugh from the Doctor. “Always a trip when it first happens, trust me,”“Doctor!” A woman’s voice sprang from the opened TARDIS doors and in came Amy and Rory, grins plastered on their faces.“Ode!” Amy greeted her with a half hug around her head but backed away when she caught a good look at her face. “Oh—woah,”“Same Ode as before,” Rory stated from behind Amy.Ode patched on a welcoming face and smiled at them. “Hi. Sorry to disappoint,” she gave a half-hearted laugh which was received with a cooing Amy.“Ah, no,” she sat beside her and swung an arm around Ode’s neck. “We’re just used to a different version of you,” she smiled, seeming genuine, and poked Ode’s cheek.“So I keep hearing,” Ode replied, taking note of Amy’s comfort around her.“Mhm. Same you. Just you,”“Hey, help me with this,” Rory called the Doctor over near the stairs, leaving Amy and Ode near the console, somewhat in each other’s arms.“Been on any adventures yet?” Amy asked.Unsure what she meant by ‘adventure’, Ode simply answered, “Uh… no?” she furrowed. “Does this entire thing count?” she gestured at the entire TARDIS which Amy laughed at.Ode found comfort in knowing at least someone was familiar with her, but it was her unfamiliarity with them that gave her pause. She saw the initial ease in their eyes, looking at her as though she’d known them their entire lives, but when they blinked it was gone, slightly widened. It reminded her it was not this her they supposedly knew.Out of place, out of time. She wondered how long they had known her, how long she knew them, what experiences they shared that she at that moment couldn’t yet remember. Perhaps if she smiled enough and went along enough, they could forget she wasn’t the friend they knew and she could pretend she was wanted in this place.“Gosh,” Amy sighed, hanging her head with exaggerated boredom. “Doctor, d’you have a playlist or something around here? Some Stones? Muse? Erm… Nirvana?” she stood back up and circled the console, eyes raking over the buttons.The Doctor whined. “Please. No,”Ode watched them, slightly smiling at the Doctor’s annoyance. Though Amy was right, the TARDIS tended to have a non-musical wheezing and groaning that often did not inspire anybody. Her mind drifted to one of the only songs she knew from Muse.Without missing a beat, the very song’s intro began blasting from nowhere, its signature electric guitar tune catching everyone’s attention.“Amazing!” Amy praised, pressing her fingers to her lips, kissing, and lifting them to the air. “One of these days, I’ll have to steal the TARDIS from you, Doctor,”She hopped towards Rory who seemed busy with something on the stairs. Ode caught the Doctor’s eyes, however, he appeared to be studying her from where he stood.Timidly and with just as much confusion as she felt, she shrugged, meaning to say I swear, I didn’t do anything. Don’t look at me like that. but remaining silent.He gave up, looking away and becoming busy with screens, buttons, and levers.Standing up, Ode made her way to Amy, who she found herself starting to grow comforted by.“Odie, look, taste,” Rory turned to her with a biscuit between his forefinger and thumb, his words half buried by something he was chewing. “Amy and I saw this convenience store and they had so much things on sale, you would not believe—this one is pretty good,”Ode received the biscuit, opening her mouth to bite but being interrupted by a large alarm sound blaring through the TARDIS.“Doctor?” Amy called, her entire body tensing up.Looking up at Rory, Ode tried to make out what was happening. He seemed just as tense as Amy.Before they heard any answer from the Doctor, the TARDIS shook with such enormity it knocked everyone sideways and all about the railings.“Ode!” the Doctor’s voice called from the other side of the console.Too busy hanging on, Ode failed to respond, her other hand gripping on Rory’s sleeve.“Ode! Hold tight!”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“And, underneath, a monastery. Uh, 13th century,”The group had begun trailing out the TARDIS door one by one, the Doctor, Rory, and Amy seemingly not as affected by the turbulence as Ode was. Still, with shaking knees and raw confusion, she followed Rory out the door.There was a certain plight in following strangers to a strange place, trusting their supposed trust in you, trusting that their intentions are good.“Oh, we’ve gone all medieval,” Amy followed.Ode stood against the TARDIS, closing it and following everyone’s movements closely. Perhaps finally this would prove to her this was all real. The soil, the wind, the mud beneath her shoes and how her feet were slightly sinking into it. Perhaps the inconvenience would be the one to change her mind.“We’ve travelled back in time?” Ode whispered in bewilderment, slightly disappointed the past did not look as different. Maybe the past’s wild similarities to the present would sober her up and make her believe this wasn’t a dream. That it would just be so boring she would believe it.“I’m not sure about that,” Rory responded, turning to survey their environment.Amy snorted. “Really? Medieval expert, are you?” she retorted with sarcasm.Rory pointed out the Dusty Springfield song blasting from somewhere, which simultaneously calmed and disappointed Ode. The Medieval ages still had to prove itself to her, then.She squinted at the sky, ears attempting to pick out the melody. “It sounds familiar,” she closed her eyes to single out the song, finding another version of it in the recesses of her memories. “Come posso stare una vita senza te…” she more so noncommittally sang in continuation to Dusty’s verse.She found herself smiling at a memory of the dusty jackets of her aunt Nena’s records, the record player sitting on a carpeted floor. She had a large shelf of records collected by Nena herself, Ode’s mother, and their mother. It was like a secret family club, the story of it reduced to whispers falling down the vine and onto Ode. She used to wish to become a collector as well, join in on the club, somewhat following in her mother’s footsteps.When she opened her eyes, directly across her was the Doctor, his lips faintly tilted to a smile before something else washed over him and seemingly sobered him up. He cleared his throat and attended to something on the ground behind him.She approached him and looked over his shoulder as he bent over what appeared to be an exposed pipe on the ground.“The solar Tsunami sent out a huge wave of gamma particles—this was caused by a magnetic quake that occurred just before the wave hit,” he rattled. Ode could see the cogs turn in his mind, eyes darting from here to there at nothing in particular.She looked to Rory, eyes asking in confusion. There was a vague sense this was somewhat normal for them, as they approached each detail with careful examination yet seemed eager to find out. The kind of curiosity that kills horror movie characters.“You okay?” he asked quietly.Nodding, Ode mustered a smile. “I’m good. Is this normal?” she trained her eyes on him as it turned briefly perplexed by their activities. “Turbulence, strange new place,”The ‘o’ his mouth made signalled he understood. “Right, well. It’s…” he glanced at the Doctor and the fissure pipes he was looking over. “It’s sort of what we do, actually,”Before Ode could answer, the Doctor had stood up and announced the contents of the pipes, pulling everyone into his monologue as he held up a metallic stick in the air. “Right, let’s go!” he slid the stick back into his coat. “Satisfy our rabid curiosity,”He stopped right by Ode and held out a hand. “C’mon then,” he nudged his head at the stairs leading upwards, a smile and eager eyes on him, pointed softly at her. “Sort of, somewhat your first adventure with us,”Without much of a thought, Ode took his hand in hers. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t hesitated, though she thought of it more and more as he led her up the stairs and into the monastery.Their skin buzzed in excitement by each other, something she was sure he wasn’t even sparing a thought against, but to her, it was all that occupied her mind. How couldn’t it? When it burst and sparked underneath their palms, as if cooking the air with a mere graze.He brought his metal stick back into the air, waving it about as it emitted a droning sound.“I think we’re here. This is it,” he stated, seemingly to himself, everyone, and simultaneously no one.Ode furrowed at this. “What?”“What are you talking about?” Rory piped up from behind them. “We’ve never been here before,”Amy continued, “We came here by accident,”“‘Accident’?” the Doctor echoed for a moment, turning to the couple behind. “Yes, I know. Accident,”Ode turned to him, breathing in to interject but staying silent. Quietly and as smoothly as she could, she slipped her hand from his and feigned a scratch on the back of her head. This he noticed but said nothing about.Rory winced and yelped as something sizzled from beside him.“Acid,” the Doctor noted while Ode and Amy tended to the wounded man. “They’re pumping acid off this island. That’s old stuff. Fresh acid? You wouldn’t have a finger,”Ode’s gaze lingered on him for a moment, taking notice of the rather relaxed way he relayed the information. “You alright?” she peered over Rory’s hand as Amy held it close to her face.He nodded, hurt, from the look of his face, but bearing it. “Just burns a bit. But I’m fine. Are you alright? This is your first trip with us, we should be tending to you,”With a huff of breath, she laughed to herself. “What, like babysitting? I’m fine,” she looked to Amy with humour in her eyes but only found concern on the redhead.“We know you can handle yourself, Odie,” the girl began, still holding Rory’s hand in hers. “But that’s the you that we know you’ll become. About this version of you, we don’t know. Last time I saw this you…” she glanced at Rory, pursing her lips.Ode tilted her head. “What?”She released a short and breathy laugh, shaking her head. “Nothing. I’ll say one thing,” she held up her pointer finger. “Sunflowers,” she smiled cheekily at the word. “Still. We should be watching out for you,”Rory nodded in agreement at this. “And things get pretty dangerous. So we’re serious when we say that,”Realising they were genuine in their concern over her, Ode stayed by their side. “You guys sure know a lot about me,” she remarked, slightly sarcastically in humour but it fell away when she saw Amy widen her eyes and sigh.“You have no idea,” she murmured.“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” a computer’s voice blared through whining speakers, calling the Doctor back to the group with his metal stick out.“There are people coming,” he said towards the huddled three. “Well, almost,”“What is that?” Ode stared at the stick he brandished.“Sonic screwdriver,” he answered quickly.Amy interrupted. “Almost coming?”The Doctor responded, “Almost people,”“Screwdriver?” Ode repeated, still occupied by the not-screwdriver-looking stick.
“Halt and remain calm” the computer ordered and everyone followed suit, Ode most of all, fearing something might shoot at her if she moved suddenly.“Well, we’ve halted,” the Doctor remarked. “How are we all doing on the “calm” front?” he looked back at the group, his demeanour baffling Ode entirely.“How are you so calm?” she pointedly questioned. She looked to Amy and Rory to validate her frustration but to no avail, they appeared significantly more calm than she.But she quieted herself. She had nothing good to say except complaints and expressions of confusion. More and more the Doctor and his little group were puzzling Ode into silence.“Don’t move!” a man yelled as several of them in orange jumpsuits ran into the enclosure, holding up weapons and directing them at the group.“Stay back, Jen,” another one of the jumpsuits said, holding something spear-like over his shoulder. “We don’t know who they are,”“So let’s ask ‘em,” a woman’s voice replied, presumably Jennifer. “Who the hell are you?”“Well,” the Doctor started, seemingly unfazed by their weaponry, “I’m the Doctor, and this is Amy, Rory, and Ode - it’s all very nice, isn’t it?”Ode peeked her head sideways to see better, her view mostly obstructed by the Doctor. Upon seeing their faces clearer, she paused - they were the exact replicas of the people lying in the ribbed contraption around them, but instead of being asleep and blissfully unaware of the world, there they stood in front of them ready to attack.“Amy,” she whispered, elbowing the redhead until she turned to her. “The people,” she nudged her head at one of the sleepers.This caught Amy’s attention, eyes widening and turning to the other and looking back at the awake versions. “Hold up,” she interrupted. “What are you all? Like, identical twins?”Ode looked to the Doctor, expecting questions to be bursting from him. Instead, he said nothing.Before the awake jumpsuits could answer, another voice approached from their side. “This is an Alpha-grade industrial facility,” they walked in donned in full brown suits which, to Ode, resembled something more cockroachy than anything industrial. “Unless you work for the military or for Morpeth Jetson, you are in big trouble,”The woman speaking looked down at Ode, who stood nearest to her since Amy had backed up. Her strict us screwed tight as if probing into her mind.“Actually,” interrupting, the Doctor stood between them and reached into his coat. “You’re in big trouble,” he presented the woman with something that seemed to be a rather thin wallet, but her eyes fixed on it.“Meteorological department, since when?” the woman looked at him contemptuously, grabbing the wallet.Attempting to not get figured out, Ode kept her face neutral, but her eyes darted from the wallet, to the woman, to the Doctor, and to the wallet. Meteorological department? She looked back to Amy but found no surprise or shock in her face.“Since you were hit by a solar wave,” the Doctor replied.“Which we survived,”“Just, by the look of it. And there’s a bigger one on the way,”“Which we’ll also survive. And these are your…” the woman eyed Rory, Amy, and Ode before looking back at his wallet.“Assistants, trainees, interns,” the Doctor gestured at the three, sounding more like he was listing than actually responding.The woman gave him a disbelieving look. “Well, which is it?”“All of them,” the Doctor nodded and pointed to Ode. “Assistant,” then to Amy, “Trainee,” and lastly to Rory, who seemed like he had given up already. “Intern,”The woman hadn’t looked back up, instead very intently focusing on the wallet. “Dicken, scan for bugs,” she said without much commitment.“Backs against the wall,” the man beside her took up a machine in his hand. “Now,”As ordered, the four backed against a pillar, the Doctor’s hands raised palms to show no harm.“You’re not a monastery. You’re a factory,” he added, catching Ode’s attention. “22nd-century, army-owned factory,”She looked to him, searching his face for something that could give his intent away. Before that, he seemed just as unsure and curious as she, Amy, and Rory, but he had taken the situation entirely into his hands.On the other hand, which surprisingly occupied only a small space in her mind - 22nd century. She was unsure what this meant for the rest of the world. Several possibilities flew around her head - she’d be long dead if she had ever existed in the first place, the world would be at an entirely new stage of technology, the economy would have fallen and risen several times, how many wars would there have been?“You’re army?” Amy asked the woman.“No, love, we’re contractors and you’re trespassers,”Ode attempted to relax her body as the suited man positioned his scanner in front of the group, and after a second it released a whining beep that seemed to sing.“Accidentally,” Ode informed, trying to sound not at all off-put. “We were h—”“Unexpectedly badly damaged,” the Doctor tapped her hand behind his back.Ode furrowed and looked to him but he didn’t look back.“We meant to inform you of our arrival but my assistant accidentally pushed the wrong buttons,” he lied with a smile, glancing at Ode, who only looked embarrassed at the extra attention. “Ship took a swerve, ended up in your backyard,”Ode turned to avoid his eyes but found the woman’s eyes already set on her. She looked at the floor, pursing her lips. Hopefully, it sold her to their charade.“It’s okay, boss,” the man backed away.“Alright, weatherman, your I.D. checks out,” the woman folded the wallet while the Doctor stepped forward to retrieve it. “If there’s another solar storm, what are you going to do about it? Hand out sunblock?”Ode pressed back a laugh while the Doctor faked his, dry with individual ‘ha’s. It only made Ode look down even more to suppress a smile.“I need to see your critical system,” he easily slipped back into a serious tone, showing no sign of friendliness or humour.“Which one?”“You know which one,”Ode wondered if this was merely another ploy to investigate without having to know much about the place, or if he actually understood what was happening. Both seemed equally terrifying. Either he didn’t know what he was doing and was leading the rest of them to doom or he knew what he was doing and had deceived them.The orange jumpsuits had pacified themselves, setting down their weapons as the woman in the roach - industrial, rather - suit guided them out.“Was the plan to just bear through it and hope for the best?” the Doctor asked, looking about the walls and floor while they waited for her to remove her suit.“We trusted our gear,” she answered, her resolute eyes challenging him.The Doctor shook his head at this.Once she had redone her hair up into a neat bun, she turned to the Doctor with a hand out. “We haven’t been properly introduced, I’m Miranda Cleaves,”The Doctor shook her hand, his face remaining stoic.Cleaves nodded at the extra four behind Amy and Rory. “Dicken, Jennifer, Buzzer, and Jimmy,” she gestured at the group and led them into another roomImmediately, Ode smelt something thick hanging in the air, the way humidity often interacts with the day’s heat. It had difficulty being breathed, as if they were walking through soup.Ode looked back at Rory with a wrinkle on her nose only to see he was doing the same.“What is that?” the Doctor noted, breathing deeply for a moment. “What’s with the air?”“It’s thick,” Amy continued, following Cleaves more closely.The entire room was church-cold that Ode could see her own breath forming ghosts in the air. “You don’t have heaters or something?” she remarked, half-joking.“C’mere,” the Doctor motioned for her, his eyes secured on a white goo that bubbled in what looked to be a cauldron,Ode made her way to him, eyeing the goo just as suspiciously. “What is it?”Overlooking the substance, she stood by the Doctor with both hands tucked into her armpits. For a moment she considered acting as if it wasn’t affecting her at all, it was her own lack of preparation that got her here anyway - but she refrained, liking the warmth of her own body to home her fingers in.Without a word, she felt a bigger coat slide over her shoulders. And upon looking to her side, the Doctor’s tweed jacket was off and being fitted on her. He did this without sparing as much as a look, purely focused on the white substance in front of them.She wondered if he got something out of this chivalry he liked to display.She clutched the jacket closer to herself, wearing it properly and feeling grateful for him and his much warmer body.“Meet the government’s worst-kept secret, ”Cleaves started again as the Doctor bent to get a closer look. “The flesh,”Ode grimaced at the name.“It’s fully programmable matter. In fact, it’s even learning to replicate itself at the cellular level,”At first thought, Ode believed it to be ingenious. Half of her was slightly awestruck at the idea that this was where humankind was headed, the other half was horrified by the implications such technological advances could make.“Right,” Amy nodded. “Brilliant. Lost,”“Okay,” Cleaves gave her a curious look. “Once a reading’s been taken, we can manipulate its molecular structure into anything,” she made her way closer to Amy and Rory while Ode listened intently. “Replicate a living organism down to the hairs on its chinny chin chin. Even clothes, and everything’s identical - eyes, voice—”“Mind, soul,” the Doctor interrupted.Ode’s eyes widened. “Memories?” she looked to Cleaves, hoping this wasn’t so.“Don’t be fooled,” she advised, remaining cool and composed. “It acts like life but it still needs to be controlled by us from those harnesses you saw,”With concern, Ode glanced at the Doctor as he folded his hands together, his eyes far away in thought.When she looked at the substance, there really didn’t seem to be much about it that indicated danger. It bubbled rather ominously and seemed quite thick, but other than that it was any other goo but in excess. Of course, the whole replication of a living being was a different issue on its own.“You said it could grow. Only living things grow,” the Doctor interjected, his voice strained with thought and worry.“Moss grows. It’s no more than that,” Cleaves replied plainly. “This acid is so dangerous, we were losing a worker every week,”Ode’s face twisted into a frown, realising where she was heading with her sentence.“So now, we mine the acid using these doppelgangers. If these bodies get burnt or fall in the acid—”“Then who the hell cares?” Buzzer piped up, eyes pointed at Jennifer from across the room. “Right, Jen?”Although there had been no outright sign of immediate danger, Ode couldn’t help but feel it was certainly coming. The furrow on her brow was deepening already with this conversation - though it was good to know they weren’t true humans, it was another thing to know that they would feel every single thing the way a human would if they were in fact completely copies of the original.“Wouldn’t they feel pain?” she blurted, driving everyone’s attention to her. “If they’re exact copies of you, then they have nerve endings, pain receptors, they’d feel it just as bad as if you were the one hurting,”She could tell the room was slightly off-put by the mention of this.“Well, the nerve endings automatically cut off like… airbags being discharged,” Jennifer explained, bandaging the silence with technicality. “Except we wake up and get a new ganger,”Ode nodded, smiling at her clarification but looking away in discomfort. Still, it did not sit well.Meanwhile, the Doctor had taken out his “screwdriver” and was pointing it at the goo. It gave off a humming sound as he hovered it over the bubbling substance.Looking forward to seeing what exactly the screwdriver could do besides build shelves, Ode said nothing and observed, standing to the side and keeping her eyes on the gadget.“Hang on. What’s he up to?” Buzzer said. “What are you up to, pal?”Nobody answered him.The Doctor’s body began pulling away from the substance but his arm remained outstretched to it, the screwdriver’s buzzing getting higher and higher the longer he held it out.“Stop it—” he struggled, his face seemingly scrunching in distress.“Doctor?” Ode took a step towards him to help when he held up a hand to stop her.He finally pulled his hand away and nodded, his eyes wide and full of interest. “Strange. It was like, for a moment there, it was scanning me,” he held out his hand over it again.“Doctor,” Cleaves warned.But he placed his palm flat on the surface of the substance, earning a gasp from Ode who moved quickly to remove him.“Get back, Doctor. Leave it alone!” Cleaves advised loudly.“Don’t do that!” Ode half-shouted and whispered.She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled with difficulty, ignoring the warm energy that pulsed between their skin. Upon looking up at him and seeing his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth wide in a silent scream, she pulled harder, moving her other hand to grip his fingers.She properly wrapped her hand around his, dipping her fingers into the goo along with him. After a stronger pull, his hand separated from the substance stained white and dripping.“I understand,” he breathed out, his hand gripping onto Ode’s.She said nothing, eyes stuck on their stained hands. Whatever the substance was, it wasn’t right. For the brief moment she had contact with it, it was enough to bring her to the conclusion there was something off with it. It held onto her for a second. Or was it just the density that made it feel like so?“Are you guys alright?” Amy asked.“Incredible,” the Doctor murmured, still seeming lost in his own soup of thoughts. “You have no idea. No idea,” he let go of Ode as he spoke.Ode, left to herself, looked to her hands. Gone was the signature buzz that came along with the Doctor’s touch, but they still tingled strangely in a way she couldn’t decipher whether it was merely an after-effect or if something had gone wrong.“I mean, I felt it in my mind. I reached out to it and it to me,” he turned somewhat excitedly to Ode, snapping her out of her daze. “How’s this adventure going for you, huh?”Gaping like a fish, she blinked in confusion. “What?”“Don’t fiddle with the money, Doctor,” Cleaves said.Putting on a straight face, the Doctor turned to her. “How can you be so blinkered? It’s alive, so alive,”Ode looked at her tingling fingers.“You’re piling your lives, your personalities, directly into it,”With no idea what he possibly meant by this, Ode wasn’t sure whether to feel dread or excitement. This was either going to turn into a disaster or a scientific discovery.Momentarily, the entire room lit up white as a thunderous crack resounded against the walls. The ground shook beneath them, inciting wary eyes toward the ceiling and windows.“It’s the solar storm,” the Doctor informed.Ode held onto the cauldron as another struck and made the floors quiver.“First waves come in pairs. Pre-shock and full-shock. It’s close,”As the group drew closer to each other in conversation, Ode stayed by the cauldron, eyes directed at her feet as her toes started to feel a numbing encroaching at the very tips.She wiggled them and confirmed she could feel the insides of her shoes, yet concern still drew from her when she couldn’t feel her own toes otherwise.She contemplated for a moment to excuse herself and take a quick trip back to the TARDIS to add another layer of socks. She figured that was what it was about anyway.When she looked back at the group, they had huddled around the tub enclosure in front of the cauldron, with Cleave operating buttons right by it.Slowly, Ode moved towards the Doctor, watching intently as the tub filled with the white goo.The room grew thick with anticipation as everyone’s attention lay stuck on the filling tub. It crept up inch by inch until it was largely white, something stirring and bubbling from underneath. Before they knew it, it was decreasing, filling and emptying quicker than anticipated and revealing a body-shaped from under the substance.Its mouth and eyes opened.Ode looked away, a chill running up her arm at the eerie face.More and more as the goo subsided underneath the figure, it took clearer form, from hair to its shoes. It rose its hands to the edge of the tub, its face becoming flesh-like, sat up, and pulled in a quick, strong breath.Ode couldn’t quite comprehend the figure. Person? She had the exact likeness of Jennifer whom Cleave had ordered away, even her breath formed a slight cloud in the air, indicating warmth in her body.“Well, I can see why you keep it in a church,” the Doctor remarked, wringing his hands. “The miracle of life,”“No need to get poncey. It’s just gunge,” Buzzer replied, earning a look from Ode which he didn’t seem to catch.Ode couldn’t fathom either possibility that was happening. Not human, just gunge - she saw herself the makings of the… woman. Or, human, not just gunge - she was skin, hair, and breath. Why not human? She watched warily as gunge-Jennifer stood and hopped off the tub.Another thunder echoed throughout the room, freezing everyone in their places.“Did I mention the solar storm?” the Doctor added curtly. “You need to get out of here,”Ode backed away from listening in as her feet grew numb. She shook her leg to force feeling back into it but it was to no avail, rather it worsened the lack of feeling.Straightening herself at the sound of an alarm ringing through the monastery, she looked to Cleaves and the Doctor.“Should we be going?” she quietly asked Amy. “Or…”“How do you get power?” the Doctor asked Cleaves.Amy shook her head, crossing her arms. “Nah. We usually stay to help,”Ode looked up at her, eyes wide with shock. “Help? With what?”Cleaves, without looking up, answered the Doctor. “The solar and we use a solar router. The weather vane,”Ode furrowed at this.“Big problem,” the Doctor shook his head.“I’m not sure your monastery’s gonna survive this one,” Ode commented, drawing Cleave’s eyes towards her. “It’s gonna fry everything in here with a power surge,” she looked to the Doctor to confirm this and he gave an affirming nod.Cleaves and Jimmy discussed hiding underground, Jimmy’s argument ultimately being disregarded for Cleave’s reminder of staying another rotation. Another year of working there perhaps.Ode rested her weight against the wall, hanging her head and giving her feet a wiggle. The good news was that they seemed to work just fine, and outside of their heavy discomfort at merely existing, there was nothing wrong.“Hey, you okay?” Amy gave a quick look at her.Nodding, Ode resumed her position. “Yeah, I’m good,” she stretched one leg and twisted her ankle left and right. “I think I just need to sit down or something,”Amy accepted this without further question.“Three lefts, a right, and a left, third door on your left,” Jennifer replied to the Doctor, earning a grateful thumbs up from him and a small ‘thank you’.Out Ode, Amy, and Rory followed as he winded down the monastery corridors, their swift steps reverberating against the stone walls.“Um,” Rory interrupted as they turned a corner and neared the monitoring station. In turn, another shake of the walls interrupted him, the storm’s low grumbling and cracking passing reaching their ears.They entered the monitoring station as the room shook, slightly catching Ode off balance.“The wave’s disturbing the Earth’s magnetic field - there is gonna be the mother and father of all power surges,” the Doctor erratically made his way around a control console in the middle of the room, fiddling with its buttons and leavers with ease. “You see this weather vane? The cock-a-doodle-doo? It’s—’“Solar router?” Ode interjected, having taken a seat on the stairs to let her numbing feet, now legs, rest.The three turned to her, eyes straining.“Takes energy from the sun and provides this entire place with electricity? So if it gets blasted with too much then, well. I told her it’d get fried,” she leant her head back, stretching her back. “God, that was a lot of standing, my legs—”“Ode, they’re disappearing,” Rory said plainly, making Ode whip back up to look at him.She looked down and saw half her calves gone, her feet long gone without a trace. As before, the edges of what remained of her was lined with something gold, like an intense ember burning through paper.Instead of the panic she expected, a wave of relief washed over her, as if connecting two dots previously unfound. Though her feet were very much within sight the last she checked, it helped ease her racing heart to know she’d been getting signs beforehand.“Oh,” she blinked, unsure what to do about it.“Stand,” the Doctor ordered, turning back to the console and pressing several other things before facing her.“Do you know where I’m going next?” Ode asked, doing as he said and slipping his jacket from his shoulders. She passed it to him, waiting as she held it out.With reluctant fingers, he accepted it and placed it back on himself, eyes lost somewhere else. Instead of answering, he wrapped his arms around her and took her in.She felt him rest his chin on her head before placing a warm kiss on her forehead. At the very second he did so, she drew in a sharp breath, making it as quiet as she could. The electrifying touch he had was something she preferred to shelve at that moment, considering her disappearing body.Once he parted, he said nothing else and made his way out - to fix the cockerel, Ode assumed.Leaving her with only half her body and cold air, she gave a sad smile to Amy and Rory. “It was nice meeting you,”As if turning on something motherly in her, Amy reached for Ode and hugged her. “We’ll see you soon,”She’d said it as if knowing it would happen, which Ode realised she probably did. You hear these most often with a “probably” or “hopefully” tone, dancing between the line of certainty and hopefulness, and on a rare occasion uncertainty. Ode only nodded at this, choosing to believe Amy did in fact know.“Take care of yourselves,” Ode continued, feeling the gold creep up her shoulders. “And take care of him,”Rory’s mouth twisted into something half frown and half smile, though his eyes seemed to affirm the former. He stepped forward and pressed a kiss to the side of her head before everything turned black.
Ode opened her eyes to nothing.There was an expanse before her holding nothing but blackness. It rolled out as far as her eye could see, covering every inch of her vision. Maybe a sky. The depths of space. Or the backs of her eyelids.Before she could observe it any further, gold crept into the corners of her vision, burning through the black and filling it with something familiar.Blinking, the black had fully gone, replaced by the hexagonal designs of the TARDIS hallway.A relieved grin overcame her and she shot her hands up as if praising something. “Yes!” she shouted, her body’s comfort returned upon appearing there. “Doctor!” she turned to find the console room but paused, looking back at the walls and realising they weren’t quite how they looked the last time she saw them.She continued walking, hoping to find her room when she stumbled across French doors. They hadn’t been there, last she remembered, piquing her curiosity and drawing her in.She shook and turned its knobs but it remained closed. As she turned it again, the TARDIS walls gave a hum, making her pull away instinctively and turn her attention to where it was directed at.A few feet on the other side of the hall was her bedroom door. She was certain they weren’t there a few seconds ago, however.Giving the French doors one last look, she wondered what was inside. She could find it in herself to believe the Doctor was the kind of person to keep secrets, what with his elusive eyes and determination to never answer a question plainly, but the kind of secrets was an entirely different matter.She left the door and headed for her own, twisting it and finding her bedroom as she had left it.Still the same TARDIS, she noted to herself.In and out, she retrieved a jacket for an extra layer and folded socks into one of its extra pockets. She figured it wouldn’t do harm to be prepared. And when she had rechecked her list of belongings, she made her way out to look for the console.It was ever just ‘looking’ as she was never sure which direction was which in the TARDIS. The direction to her room would sometimes be near the console room, then the next minute it would be a few steps farther. The next morning it would be a different direction. But she knew she was never really too far from it.And so there it was. Maybe.It was darker. Less yellow. More grim. She wasn’t sure she was on the right TARDIS but something about it told her it was. Its grittier design brought an ache to her chest, as if recognising an old childhood friend.She lingered on its walls and floors, noting the vast differences while recognising some similarities. But still she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d been here before, standing where she stood.“TARDIS?” she whispered, unsure why she was whispering. She thought perhaps if they could communicate with her in her own mind, they could very well communicate outside of it. If logic did what logic did. Of course, she was in an entirely different universe. Regardless.The walls hummed, the lights dimming briefly before resuming normally.“Is the Doctor here?” she asked, looking up at the ceiling as if a face might appear in the air.She waited a few seconds, anticipating flickering lights or a buzz or hum. But nothing.“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” she murmured, making her way to the doors. “Or I was just talking to nothing,”Right as she stood across the doors, they swung open, revealing a man holding out a key mid-air.Or not nothing. She could feel the TARDIS slip away as if hiding.Her eyes landed on the taller, lanky man, his hair turned upwards as if a dog had recently licked him.She knew him somehow. His face. All familiar as if he was ripped right out of her dreams.“You,” she whispered, her mind jumping to various explanations that could not help her cope with his presence in front of her.His surprised look turned into a pleasant grin upon registering her. “Oh, hello, you,”Before Ode could say anything else, he swiftly strode in and buried her in between his arms, pressing kisses to her forehead. “Donna’s waiting for you by the pool,” he muttered into her hair.Frozen, whether by disbelief or something else, Ode stared up at him. It was him. It was him. It was him. Did this prove what she originally thought or did his existence prove something else entirely?When he finally looked down at her, he paused. And paused.The second his arms loosened, allowing some distance to slip between them, she knew he’d realised it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
All the doors of memory opened.She didn’t know why she hadn’t recognised him sooner. Retrospectively, it was almost impossible - it was like forgetting your own mother’s name. For such a thing one grows up with that it latches forever into your mind, it’s almost unthinkable to imagine a moment where it takes days for you to remember.And yet Ode faced the man who starred in her childhood dreams. The runaway man, the bowtie, the cape, the converse, the leather jacket. The man whose eyes found her no matter if it was from across a crowd or room.She felt a pang of guilt inching up her chest at the idea she hadn’t recognised him until then. But this version of him was always different. She as a child preferred this one, always gleaming at her, always smiling as if joyfully inspecting her. Not in the way the bowtie version looked sort of melancholy, sort of lost in the stars at the time. And not like the way the old-man version of him was - this one was not as time-worn, not soft in a way that meant he had previously been hardened. If he had been, this one hid it well.This version had welcomed her with that familiar, genuine grin. But of course it couldn’t last. Once he lingered and took in this her, a brief furrow crossed his forehead and his eyes fell to her neck, rose to her hair, draped to her hands. And suddenly he was not the same man.He awkwardly pulled his arms from her, motions hesitant as if he was physically incapable of doing so.Ode blinked. “What was that,” she deadpanned, unsure why he had greeted her so enthusiastically.A mask seemed to fall over him and he cleared his throat. “Hm, nothing, just been some time,”“Since you saw me?” Ode gathered.He nodded, once again briefly glancing at her clothes and back up at her eyes.“Do I not look like me?” she challenged, realising that even this version of him seemed to be looking for something that wasn’t there.Taken aback, he shook his head and sucked in a breath, looking away. “No. No, no, just…” he looked back at her. “I haven’t seen… this you in a while,” he shoved his hands in his pockets, rolling on the balls of his feet.“I figured it out,” Ode muttered. She was half satisfied with herself that she’d finally pieced it together, like a kid figuring out a puzzle. But the other half was made of the tar and dirt of doubt, stained with displeasure, and uncertainty was rearing its ugly and frowning face at her. How could she be so satisfied with herself when none of it made sense? How could she possibly believe she’d ‘pieced together’ what was happening when this universe seemed bent on being unknowable?Regardless, she beamed a grin at him. “You’re the strange, funny man that’s been loitering my dreams since I was little,” she screwed her eyes at him, pointing an accusing finger. “Which means I am, in fact, dreaming right now,”He did not seem amused by this revelation, if at all in belief. Rather, he continued looking at her with undeterred examination. “Hm? Does it?” he said without much commitment.Ode nodded, slightly off put by his mute expression that showed little. “It does,” Doesn’t it?The TARDIS gave a shudder that told Ode nothing.The Doctor seemed to smile at this. “You know how you sometimes dream of a memory?” he waited for Ode’s confused look, which signalled she was listening. “What if—”“Oh, no, don’t start,” Ode rolled her eyes and squeezed them shut.“No, listen to me, what if—”“Dreaming a memory? Of things that never happened?”The Doctor quieted but was still smiling. “Yes,”Ode was not entertaining this. “Like, what, a—a psychic? A fortune teller?”He shrugged. “Well, if you want to put a name to it, then sure,” he grinned just as stupidly, just as big, so sure he was correct and she wasn’t. “It’s all the same anyway—well, almost. Same-ish. Remembering backwards,”“Excuse me?” she folded her arms and made sure he saw the furrow on her. Different universe, different rules, she reminded herself again and again but at certain points it seemed a bit too weak and instead became the punching bag for her defiance.He didn’t respond but continued smiling at her, seemingly stuck in something, as if frozen in this face and stance.Glancing away in brief discomfort, Ode shifted her weight.“Are you still twenty-four?” he asked, eyes still boring into hers.She quirked a brow. She thought he’d have long known that. “Yes?” but she realised “How old is the version of me that you know?”Finally he gave a smile that didn’t look as though he was treating her like a child, as if finally she was eye level with him. “Ah, all kinds—you know, I could never keep track,”Ode gave a horrified look. What did that mean? Was she never to return home? Or never wake up? Maybe this was the afterlife. Maybe this was where people go to die, vacationing with a madman in his blue box that loiters around in space and time. Maybe he was God. “Are you God?” but maybe he wasn’t God. He was too confused to be God.“I… no, not God,”Not God. “Then why have you been appearing in my dreams? No, how,” she poked a finger at his chest, pushing him back slightly.He chuckled, scratching the corner of his eye and turning. “Come on, let’s walk, I’ll explain on the way,” he nudged his head at the doors and proceeded to leave her behind.Ode looked back at the TARDIS hallways. “Do I need anything from here? Something warm? Or cool?”The Doctor shook his head. “No, we’re at a leisure planet called ‘Midnight’, you’ll be fine,”Ode’s eyes widened. “Leisure planet?” she made her way out and exited to what looked to be a rather overly luxuriant resort, decked out in marble and glass from ceiling to floor. “Oh like Akhstaore? Tourism planet?”“Yeah, exactly, I should take you there some time, you’d love it,” he locked the TARDIS doors and returned the key to his coat. When he faced her, his mouth formed an ‘o’. “But you already know of it,”Ode nodded, which seemed to deflate him. “But you haven’t taken me there yet,”The Doctor stared at her for a moment before understanding. “Right. Right…” he briefly smiled before pursing his lips. “Well. We’re here right now. Donna suggested we take a break, relax,” he bobbed his head, rolling the ‘r’ of ‘relax’.“Donna?” Ode turned to him.His smile wilted. “You don’t… have you not met Donna yet?”Ode paused, counting back the days and the few she had met. Amy… Rory… Clara… not Donna. “No? Or I’m about to meet her now I suppose,”He nodded, his expression not quite fully satisfied. “Hm, s’pose so,”Ode followed him as he led her from the room, entering an arched hallway with glistening ceilings. If she squinted, she could convince herself they were stars. Their gleam reflected onto the floors, raining white shimmers onto their hair and faces.“Where’s Amy and Rory?” she asked, holding out her hand and letting the reflections dance on her skin.When he didn’t answer, she looked to him and found him already staring. Again, he seemed lost in her. Recognising a stranger in a friend’s face. How strangely his eyes were soft and sharp, wielding a weapon without intention of harm. And yet it was still there.“You just came from the future, haven’t you?” his eyes fell, hands bringing themselves to his coat to retrieve a leather-bound journal.Ode shrugged, supposing that she did since he was far too confused. However she shied away from saying anything definitive. “Maybe?”He said nothing, holding up the maroon journal from her eyes, shielding it with his arm. “Right,” he looked into it so intently he seemed almost lost in its plot, engrossed in the scrawls and drawings. It still seemed relatively used, attributes of any well-loved item.She rolled her eyes, smiling. “How long have you had that?” she asked, hanging her head to keep her eyes on her feet, keeping her steps in line with the gaps between tiles.The Doctor snapped the book shut, glancing back at her as he tucked it away. “Hm?”“The journal,” she nudged her head at the disappearing object. “Looks pretty beat up right now. But I remember you still having it…” she faltered on her own words, realising he would not know any day beyond the present, that she bore knowledge of his future. “In the future,”The imbalance of knowing someone’s future felt uneasy on her shoulders, sitting like a stomach too full or a conscience too guilty. When she looked to him, she could tell him what he’d look like in the future, who his friends would be, what he would wear, his personality to some extent (an evading, chivalrous idiot). All this she could say without much thought or attempt, she had simply been there to experience it, and yet it seemed also unfair.However, what did make it fair was that everyone else seemed to know about her and who she’d become. So really, things balanced each other out.The Doctor nodded at her remark, putting one hand to his chest where he had slipped the journal into. “Wouldn’t want to lose it,”Ode slipped back into her daydreams, imagining him beginning entries with ‘Dear Diary’ like a schoolgirl with only the barest knowledge of diary conventions.“Have you got one?”Ode looked up to him.“A journal,”She shook her head. “Ahah, no,” her face contorted into laughter as well as discomfort, as if cowering from the very idea of it. “Could never keep up with it. So tedious,”He seemed rather surprised by her answer, brows rising and falling then scrunching up.“I heard my mom kept many, though,” she digressed, mind starting to wander towards her Aunt Nena’s tales. Always beginning with ‘I remember…’, ‘Your Mama used to…’, ‘You know…’, and always ending with Ode somewhat enchanted by her own mother as if she were a fairytale princess. “My Aunt said she had two drawers of just journals,”This he seemed not surprised with. Instead, he chuckled, nodding, as if saying ‘of course’. “When you start and you find the beauty in it, it’s hard to just stop,”This brought Ode back to Earth sufficiently. She rose a brow at him, “The beauty in it?”In the brief instance he broke into laughter, his features split so excellently, as if his face were made for laughing and being seen. His mouth was wide open, bracketed by laugh lines; and the corners of his eyes creased and folded, streaked with the amusement that led him to squeeze them shut.Ode turned away.“Believe it or not, yes, the beauty in it,” he said between huffs of breath. “Especially when you’ve collected quite a bit and you see just how much you’ve written,”She thought of her own mother’s journal drawers, the years they must have taken to be filled up, her hand having dragged across each page, and how the last journal would have detailed her life the months before she’d given birth. She wondered if any of the entries were meant for her, addressing her name. Her mother’s handwriting in ‘Ode’ would be the closest to hearing her voice say it.“Donna!” the Doctor raised a hand and snapped, pulling the attention of a red-headed woman sitting by the pool. “Ode’s here,”Ode waved meekly when the woman turned to her. She noted the quick run of her eyes along her entire body, briefly studying her before responding with a wave.“Oh, hello there,” she stood as the Doctor led Ode to her. “You haven’t met me yet, have you?’Ode sighed, relief filling her. She caught on rather quickly, much to her surprise, but delighted she didn’t have to deal with her confusion. “No, sorry,” she shrugged. She looked to the Doctor, apology in her eyes, but he had turned away and had started conversing with someone who seemed to be a waiter.Donna shook her head and stood, pulling her into a side-hug and hand patting her shoulder. “No, no, don’t be. It’s just how it works, doesn’t it,”Ode nodded, slightly smiling at Donna’s motherly smile. But she hesitated at Donna’s brief sorrowful far-away look. “Nice meeting you,” she held out a hand which Donna shook. “Where are we?” she looked up at the glass ceiling, recognising nothing different from the sky. It was decorated with skyscrapers, the clear bright blue invaded by glass sculptures bending and reaching across the expanse.Some part of her wandered to the thought of Earth. She wondered what had happened to it. If she was displaced from time, did that mean the birth, growth, and death of Earth and humanity as she knew it had already happened? Still happening? Will happen? Clearly, with how she was meeting the Doctor he was not meeting her the same way. They did not have the luxury of sorting things out, this much she figured - implications of messed up timelines, paradoxes, self-fulfilling prophecies, changing the future that she’d been in or changing her past (his future) or his past (her future).Maybe time was an origami crane made of yarn.Donna let go of her and bent to retrieve a glass sitting by one of the lounges. “A resort, the best one on this planet, I’ve heard” she responded, sipping on her drink between words. “Been here a couple days now, you were just here yesterday, though I suspect we’ll have to get you your own room,” she chuckled to herself at some amusing thought she did not share.Ode’s head tilted in confusion. “Are you guys not sleeping in the TARDIS? I do have my own bedroom there,”Donna nodded at this. “M… yeah, s’pose you could do that. But experiencing what’s outside is what makes the travels so much better,” she patted Ode’s knee, eyes widening with her genuine advice. “You’ll have the TARDIS for all the other days, but you won’t always get to sleep in resorts, alien ones at that,”This did make some sense, Ode decided. What was travelling if not revelling in the foreign air and sleeping on foreign sheets. She looked around at the luxurious resort, every detail decked out in effort and shine. “Isn’t it expensive though?”Donna’s wheeze and quick plastering of her hand to mouth brought Ode’s interest back to her. “You know… I’ve never thought about how the Doctor pays to get us anywhere. We just sort of appear,” she laid back on the lounge, still decorated with a satisfied smile.Ode’s eyes widened at this remark said rather casually and humorously, as if it was without consequence. Criminals? Maybe that's why the Doctor found it so easy to boldly lie, face expressing nothing else outside of his words. And yet this did not align with what Amy said. They often stayed to help. Maybe it had an entirely different meaning to them, if it wasn’t an outright lie.The Doctor had become busy with the waiter, conversing over a tablet screen and pointing at things on it. This version of him seemed charismatic, easy to smile, difficult to keep eye contact with. Not that he was never consistent but that he was too consistent, even with the waiter he mindlessly held it strongly even when they weren’t looking.Ode wondered if perhaps it was with him where things took a turn, this version darkened in the end, leading to the bow-tied version that didn’t seem as gleeful. Though, gleeful at specific instances, but never really as bubbly. And worse, if the old-man version was often unsmiling and glum, did it mean things would only get worse for him?She saw his timeline on a flat surface, point A, B, and C one after another, and herself jumping from one to another in an order meant to be concealed, since it’s supposedly been possible all along. It was like holding the prize over their head, one of the most valuable information revealed without intention and seemingly without cause. She knew that he knew just as much about her, too. In his searching eyes, she saw that she was not yet who she would eventually become, but for her it also meant she would stay longer than expected or liked. Or would she stay by choice? Or was there no way out of it?“Alright, what say you, gang?” the Doctor approached with a grin on his face.Ode looked up. “What?”“We are not a gang,” Donna remarked, leaning back with her eyes closed.“A sapphire waterfall. It’s a waterfall made out of sapphires!” he looked between Donna and Ode with excitement glittering in his eyes. “This enormous jewel the size of a glacier reaches the Cliffs of Oblivion and then shatters into sapphires at the edge then falls a hundred thousand feet into a crystal ravine,” he held up his hand to somewhat imitate the shattering of the sapphires.This had no effect on Donna, as she remained in her peaceful position, in fact resting her hands on her stomach. “I bet you say that to all the girls,”The Doctor gestured to where Ode assumed was the exit. “Come on, they’ll be boarding in a couple minutes. It’s no fun if I see it on my own. Four hours, that’s all it’ll take,”Ode chuckled, considering his eager proposal. “Sapphire waterfall?” she asked, slightly incredulous though secretly enthused, which he nodded keenly at. “I’m up for it,”“Now that’s what I like to hear!” he celebrated, grinning once again. And it was such a boyish smile. “Donna? Come on…”Donna sighed, exaggerating, finally opening her eyes. “No. That’s four hours there and four hours back, that’s like a school trip,” she pointed an open hand at Ode. “I’m sure Ode would appreciate all your attention, too. I’d rather go sunbathing,”Ode stood beside the Doctor with her hands to her back, idling like a little kid waiting to be picked up by her parents. With the Doctor and Donna bickering like a married couple, she might as well have been a child.“You be careful,” the Doctor warned, his tone shifting, losing all childlike excitement. “That’s extonic sunlight,”Ode furrowed, never having heard of such a thing.“Oh, I’m safe,” Donna huffed. “It did say in the brochure the ceiling glass is 15 feet thick,” she shrugged off his cautionary tone and lied back down, closing her eyes once again.The Doctor nodded. “Alright, just Ode and I then,” he wrapped his hand around Ode’s and started walking, unaware to Ode’s surprise and widened eyes. Still, she was not used to his abnormally electric touch. “We’ll be back for dinner. We can try out that restaurant you—” he looked back at Ode, his features slightly stammering at his words. He cleared his throat and scratched his head, giving Donna a last glance. “That antigravity restaurant, with the bibs,”Donna, who had slightly risen at the first mention of the restaurant, nodded, briefly glancing at Ode before lying back down. “Be gone then!” she waved a hand to shoo them off. “And be careful!”The Doctor and Ode had almost exited the pool area when the Doctor replied “What could possibly go wrong!” he exclaimed as they entered the more private halls. Then, he added, “Just taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight,” he seemed to be entertained by this thought.Ode, who was somewhat being dragged behind due to his much larger strides, patted his arm. “Not to mention the ‘extonic’ sunlight? What’s extonic sunlight? I’ve never heard of that,”They turned a corner, his grip tightening to move her to his back when they passed through a group of non-humans dressed in bathrobes.The Doctor hummed, thinking out a response. “It’s a kind of solar radiation. Humans discover it a long, long way ahead. You know how Earth’s sun emits ultraviolet radiation?”Ode nodded. “Yeah, UV,”The Doctor looked ahead, seeming satisfied that she was following along smoothly. “And your sun actively spreads all that on whatever side faces it. Similarly, Midnight orbits a star. But this star is called an extonic star, they tend to be far brighter than most stars,”“So far hotter, too,” Ode continued, piecing together what he had put in front of her. “That’s why the resort needs 15-feet thick glass between the outside and in, to keep the radiation out?”He nodded as they turned towards an opening where some people were lining up before what looked like a security gate. “Exactly,” he seemed proud. “What else?”As they lined up, she looked up at him with a puzzled face, unsure why he was putting all the guess-work up to her. As far as she could gather, he seemed the more intelligent one, manning a time machine and all. “And…” she looked down, searching for more information. Theoretically, if the light was so intensely bright and hot, what could it do if it theoretically was being orbited by a planet? What would theoretically happen to the planet?She glanced to him for help but he only smiled, waiting. “Well, I suppose extreme heat would kill what’s on the planet,” she blinked, as still he hadn’t faltered his waiting expression. “Or the living things on it would adapt?”He snapped his fingers at this, grinning. “My thoughts exactly,”Although this did not mean much to Ode, she found herself strangely treasuring his glee about her right answer, like a validation hungry student. And there she was lapping it up.They boarded the vehicle - plane? Bus? She wasn’t entirely sure - and found their seats, the Doctor letting her take the window seat. She was surprised how human everything still looked. Despite laying foundations and profiting off of another planet, how advanced everything had become since the human age she was familiar with, they still kept some of its very human allure. From the mosaic tiles by the poolside, the very human design of the vehicle, to the flight hostess wheeling out a cart and handing out earphones and peanuts. Was it human allure or human stubbornness? Both tended to prevail strongly. Or were they merely masks of each other?The hostess reached Ode and the Doctor’s row, handing over two earphones. “That’s the headphones for channels one through thirty-six,” then another wire, “Mobile link for 3D vidgames,” then two packets of wire and something boxy, “Complimentary earplugs,” then two packets of white slippers, “Complimentary slippers,” then a small sealed cup, “Complimentary orange juice,” and finally two small tubes of nuts. “And complimentary peanuts,”The Doctor passed one pair to Ode who took them onto her lap as the hostess gave them a practised smile, having lost its genuine friendliness, a sign of her time in duty.“I must warn you that some products may contain nuts,” she forewarned, this time serious in her caution.Ode’s smile lost genuinity meanwhile, wading through the bizarre introduction.The Doctor said what she could not, looking at the hostess. “That’d be the peanuts,”Ode nudged his arm, fearing impoliteness. She leaned away and nearer the window, aligning her eye with the glass where light seeped through. They seemed parked between the building and the outside, where she could see the interior of the departure station, people walking back and forth and detaching several things from their vehicle, signalling to each other with glow sticks.“You be careful there,” the Doctor’s voice whispered behind her shoulder.She jumped, pulling away from the window and bumping against his head. He laughed at this, stretching an arm out and making sure the window was properly closed. “It’ll blind you if you look long enough,” he said, his tone carrying nothing but casualness. “And you will not be spared from pain,” he looked her in the eye this time, holding for a few seconds as she stared back and slowly nodded.“Right… okay,” she shifted in her seat, attempting to decide which was worse: the murderous light on her right side or the pendulum of a man by her left. “Duly noted,”She heard a chuckle that resonated from deep in his chest and she turned to see he was shaking his head and leaning playfully towards her. “Kidding,” he nudged her elbow with his, his grin showing off more of his teeth when she frowned. “Would be highly irresponsible, wouldn’t it, to have deadly light and have the windows open. They’ll probably close it once we’re actually outside,”Ode tightened her gaze on him, wondering if he was enjoying her ignorance about this world.“They call it the sapphire waterfall but there’s no such thing,” an older man’s voice lectured behind Ode’s seat.Turning an ear, she faced the Doctor who listened in as well.“Sapphire’s an aluminium oxide,” the man continued, earning a nod from the Doctor. “But the glacier is just a compound silicon with iron pigmentation,”“So what are we actually going to see?” Ode whispered as the conversation behind them digressed. “Is it or is it not a sapphire waterfall?” when she turned to the Doctor he had shoved a hand over the seat and was shaking the older man’s welcome.“Hobbes,” the man introduced “Professor Winfold Hobbes,”The Doctor’s hand flapped where Hobbes could not see, hitting Ode’s shoulder which prompted her to sit around and face him with a smile. “I’m the Doctor. Hello,” he grinned.Ode gave a small wave, eager to mind her own business. “I’m Ode,”Hobbes sent a polite nod her way. “It’s my fourteenth time,”The Doctor’s face lifted in surprise, looking to Ode and smiling as if in approval. “Oh, well look at that. It’s our first trip,”Nodding, Ode sat closer. “Explains why you know you much about it,”“And I’m Dee Dee,” a smaller woman stood and held out her hand, cheeks sporting a charming smile as she shook the Doctor and Ode’s hand. “Dee Dee Blasco,”“Don’t bother the man,” Hobbes cautioned, prompting Dee Dee to sit back down.Taken aback, Ode stared at the space she’d popped up in, sharing off-put glances with the Doctor.“Are they all human too?” she whispered, assuming her original position, eyes falling on the woman sitting on her own across the aisle. “They seem pretty human,”She wondered if, in fact, they were not. It would’ve surprised her. There are many characteristics humans embody that only seem eerie when worn by others, consequences of which produce the uncanny valley effect, but as far as she could see everyone else in the vehicle seemed human.The Doctor hummed, looking to his side at the rest of the passengers. “As far as I can tell,” he bobbed his head. “Maybe not a hundred percent, not entirely sure, but perhaps primarily, yes,”This answer Ode could not fully make sense with but let it sit in her mind. Primarily and not entirely.“Though I’m not sure they’d identify as human, we’re a long way from Earth at this point,”Any answer he gave never aligned with what she expected, but to a degree they made sense so she couldn’t help but accept it as it was. “But they’re dressed so…”“Early 21st century?” the Doctor finished for her, nodding, making himself comfortable in his seat as if the answer was just as casual. “Your trends cycle quite a bit. Before this one it was the early 2020s, which naturally evolved back into early 2010s. Funny how you lot do that,”Puzzled, Ode sat back. That much, she knew, was accurate. Trends came and went and tended to return, albeit never as extreme as reviving the petticoats and corsets, some returned regardless.Her mind reared its attention at the mention of the 2020s, an age of fashion she had not yet experienced and, at this point, perhaps never would. Then she found herself surprised how easily that thought came. Never was a weighty word with a lot to carry and there it was resting its body over her, and still she carried it with much less protest as she would have had a few days prior.“Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon,” the flight hostess flitted down the aisle, pulling everyone’s eyes to the front of the vehicle. “Welcome on board the Crusader 50,”“Variations,” Ode repeated in a hushed tone, pressing her lips to a thin line to hide a smile. This unsurprised her, having seen the Akhstaorian market and passed various beings she couldn’t even begin to decipher the kind much less their gender. It struck her that perhaps only knowing ‘male’ and ‘female’ could come across as blinkered to foreign races, or even ignorant - perhaps ‘male’ and ‘female’ belonged purely to the human race and the rest of the universe had their own names and kinds and a larger spectrum than the human language.The Doctor gave her a look which she ignored, whether it was fondness in terms of a proud teacher or a parent seeing their child stand up, she did not parse to find out.“If you would fasten your seatbelts, we’ll be leaving any moment,”Everyone followed suit.As the hostess continued to call down the doors and shields and present the exits and warnings, Ode could feel her foot shaking in anticipation. Her upper teeth pulled and rubbed against her lower lip, all her energy warming up inside and waiting to be revealed to their destination. Everything else seemed to resemble any normal human travel, but this familiar aspect was dipped in an unfamiliar world where she had no knowledge of, no prior experience, and only the Doctor’s information to go off of.It was like riding in the backseat of her father’s car, eyes running along the same road signs, the same routes, the same stop lights, until the car turned another direction she had not yet met. Oftentimes these led to days at a theme park, a festival, a museum, somewhere that was sure to light her up for the rest of her week. And although they would never again return to these places, they always held a place marker for each good thing, each good day, each time she had all her father’s attention. Even when the visit was a dentist or a doctor, it always ended with a shower of adoring words, to bandage the betrayal of leading her there. And all the time it was enough.“Jesus,” Ode sank into her seat.The retrovid blasting Raffaella Carra’s “Do It Do It Again” was playing along an old cartoon’s silly sound effects, the entire vehicle masked by the yellow art piece by an artist Ode couldn’t hear over the song. The three played in tandem disharmoniously, none of which matched or gave way to the other, but more rather striving to be heard most. While the pop song belted and pulsed, the cartoon’s pitchy flute and theatrical laughs blasted, continued by the banging of one of the character’s shenanigans.Perhaps not as similar to human travel, Ode realised. This seemed rather disconnected, pulling together vague details about how human life used to be and stitching it all into one body and deciding it was good enough.This seemed to sour the mood of the passengers, she sensed as the Doctor pulled out his screwdriver (which looked more stickly and thin this time) and seemed to disable the chaos.A collective sigh rolled out from the rows.“Well, that’s a mercy,” Hobbes remarked in great relief.Ode laughed, straightening and reaching over to inspect the Doctor’s screwdriver. “It’s different,” she reached for it, its cold metal body resting on her hands gently as he let her study it closely. The one she’d first seen was a chunkier version of it, pointed towards her by his old-man self. Then it was the white marble-handled version, a green pointer in between metal claws, held by the bow-tie man. Did it change along with his face?“It’s the best it has looked in ages, I’d say,” the Doctor replied as she twirled the device between her fingers.She snorted at this, surmising it to be older than the versions she saw. She was starting to comprehend the lay of it, where this brown-eyed version stood amongst the bow-tie and the old-man, the events in which she participated. To the old man who looked at her with history in his eyes who remembered this very moment while she, now sitting here with his younger self, remembered history in another sequence.“Uh, I do apologise, ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon,” the hostess strode down the aisle, attempting to revive the nuisance that she called ‘entertainment’. “We’ve seemed to have had a failure of the entertainment system,”One of the other passengers started up, “We’ve got four hours of this? Four hours of just… sitting here?”Ode looked back between the seats. Did nobody sit with their own company anymore? She looked to the Doctor with a look of incredulity basked in surprise. As much as how everything seemed human and still drenched in human customs, it was in fact very different in its core. It was another culture parading as its far, far ancestor.Sensing her disbelief, the Doctor chirped up and got on his seat with his knees, looking back at the other passengers with a giddy grin on his face. “Tell you what… we’ll have to talk to each other instead,”“Crazy,” Ode murmured sarcastically, hearing a genuine ‘Absolutely’ a few rows down which made her glance back to find whoever took her seriously.
Ode surmised that this world, this version of humans, were far removed from the humans she knew. But they were genuine in their charm, the need to be acquainted with one’s ancestral roots, be it wearing similar clothing styles, adopting similar speech, decorating as they once did. It would not hide their well advanced state, however. The idiosyncrasies of their past did not carry on, consequently showing how dislocated they were from the age they attempted to emulate. Still, there was charm in it.Carrying the extra two cups of water to sit by Sky Silvestry, Ode found that perhaps this human charm wouldn’t be all too bad. They were humans of different make, but still human somewhere beneath. So she gave Sky a small smile as she took her place beside her, promptly passing a cup.Since there were only two seats, the Doctor managed to make himself comfortable on the floor, insisting that Ode take the other seat. He seemed to give his everything to making sure everybody was a part of something, be it trivial conversation or sitting by each other in silence. It became apparent to Ode that Sky was his next victim as the rest of the passengers seemed to carry their own weight without much guidance as initially needed, and so decided to assist in his well-intended invasion of personal space.“Ah, travelling on my own,” the Doctor continued from a conversation Ode hadn’t known had started. “Of course, it’s always better with a companion,” he looked up at her, happy eyes flashing a happy smile.She smiled back, surmising what the conversation was about. The more she watched him appeal to others, the more she found a sense of admiration for him. He coaxed conversations out of anybody he wished and he did it with such ease she was tempted to simply put it up to ‘alien magic’. Either that or he was dripping with charisma. The latter required more proof, she decided without further thought.She turned to Sky. “There’s also some appeal in being able to go wherever you want, whenever, anywhere,”The Doctor nodded. “Also that, yes,”“I’m still getting used to it,” Sky replied, opening up her food. “I’ve… found myself single rather recently,” the words slide out of her drenched in hesitation, eyes glancing between her food, to the Doctor, then to Ode. “Not by choice,”Ode felt pity flick at her heart. “Oh,” her hand, without consulting her mind, reached for Sky’s arm. “I’m so sorry,”Sky reached back and patted her fingers.“What happened?” the Doctor inquired.“Oh, the usual,” this brought out a sigh from Sky. “She needed her own space, as they say. A different galaxy, in fact. I reckon that’s enough space, don’t you?” she looked to him with a joking look which he didn’t reciprocate.He nodded, seemingly lost in thought. “Yeah…” his eyes focus on nothing in particular, the present moment appearing the farthest thing from the forefront of his attention.Ode furrowed, unfamiliar with this expression.“We…” he began but stopped himself. He glanced to Ode, evidently back. “I had a friend who went to a different universe,”This was explanation enough as to why his face faltered. Loss did that, didn’t it? But backpedalling, Ode kept her eyes on him, hooked onto the “we” he decided to discontinue.Later on, Hobbes would gather everyone his way as he held an impromptu lecture about the nature of Midnight. His eyes would widen, animated by his deep fascination with the planet. Any and every question posed by the group only served to absorb him into the topic, shoulders raising and dropping with each sentence, hands swaying this way and that to emphasise certain points. Everyone’s eyes stuck on him, engrossed with the topic at hand or entertained by his vigour.Ode slid to the back where what looked to be a coffee machine sat. It displayed more than a dozen buttons on its right side, brandishing obscure symbols on each which most likely indicated their individual purpose. This, she could not begin to decode.“May I assist you?” the hostess’ placid voice appeared from behind her, bringing with it a uniform smile she gave to everyone who needed help.“Hi, hey, sorry,” she stepped to the side and gestured to the machine. “I’m trying to figure out what this is,” she plastered a hopeful smile over her more helpless furrow.The hostess, who then looked at her quizzically, pressed a button on the top, a button on the side, a button on the bottom, and resumed her polite smile. “What would you like?”Blinking in slight confusion, Ode shrugged. Maybe it would be overstepping if she asked how to operate the thing, it would be to her amusement and enlightenment if she did know. But the woman’s unsmiling eyes conflicted against her smiling mouth. Something about it, Ode thought, was not meant to be challenged. “What’s…” she glanced at the buttons, trying again to decipher something. “Maybe coffee? If there is? Some coffee?” she feared perhaps the woman would shoot her down from the lasers in her eyes for asking such a question. Of course there’s coffee, it’s a coffee machine. Or of course there’s no coffee, this is a soup machine. Or something.Wordlessly, the hostess pressed several buttons, which Ode did not care to keep track of, and pulled a cup from the side of the machine, resting it below a claw-shaped opening. “Where are you from?” she asked, eyes unchanging. “Everyone has one of these nowadays,” she patted the machine as it began spouting dark liquid. “It takes a lot to avoid them. So you’re a foreigner?”Ode considered the question, nodding. “Very foreign, yes,” she wondered if time travel was common knowledge already, but as far as the Doctor had indicated, she guessed it wasn’t.Her lips quirked upward, dissimilar to her usual hostess smile, this one indicating more pride. “Ah. I see. Well, these are famous all over as far as I know. I’ve worked on several crafts on several sects now, and I’ve had to work with these all the time - worked with seventeen generations of these by now. The first generation was absolutely horrendous. Only twenty-six settings,”Ode feigned disbelief. If a coffee machine showed up with 26 settings, she would’ve considered it overboard.“Then of course they upgraded on the next rotation—thirty-five settings, can you believe that?” she threw the question up but continued before Ode could get a word in. “Upgraded again, forty settings, then people started taking it more seriously. Putting it in their homes and all’at. A couple rotations later, they’d gone real commercial, integrated in cabin crafts, keslets, hydro-loads. Makes the job a lot easier, too. And, you know,”Ode did not. What she did know was that this would become a conversation in which she would have no escape from for the next few minutes. So as the hostess continued, instead of placing notice to the tales of the grand beverage machine and all its various generations, she spared her attention to her face, her hands and the way they pinched and rolled and opened to emphasise certain points. She seemed almost bursting from her own skin, her mouth slipping sentences upon sentences with which her own gestures couldn’t keep up with. This woman was the other side of the blank-eyed smiling hostess, in fact devoted to her job, grinning at the mention of foreign places and people. Ode wondered if the dead eyes and performed smile was the effect of working the same job for an extended period, it happened to everybody and wasn’t so much something belonging to a certain period of time as it was a consequence of time happening.Some people liked to take what they liked and surrounded themselves with it, every inch of themselves brandishing their interests. Turned them into careers, businesses, and faced them every day until the flame of their passion either drowned them in smoke and burnt them out or lit them up and gave them reason for life. The latter seemed to be the hostess. Although initially appearing done with life, without much effort she unfolded herself and relayed her love for what she did. In her enthusiasm for the wider unknown world, it made sense why she did what she did, why she was there.Just as they settled into a rhythm, the vehicle’s body shook, seizing as somewhere beneath them a grating sound was forced. It buckled Ode’s knees which made the hostess hold her up while also using her as balance.All eyes widened, looking at each other with wild confusion, alert, still, and silent.Ode looked to the front of the vehicle where the Doctor was, his eyes already trained on her. By that, she guessed he didn’t know what just happened either. And from the startled look of Hobbes, neither did he.“We’ve…” one of the women, Val, started. “We’ve stopped. Have we stopped?”Her husband, Biff, looked about him then to the hostess. “Are we there?”The hostess’s hand left Ode’s arm, her performative smile not even appearing amidst everyone’s confusion and wariness.“We can’t be, it’s too soon,” Dee Dee replied, looking to Hobbes who affirmed her with a nod.“They don’t stop,” he said, wringing his hands, forehead creased with agitation. “Crusader vehicles never stop,”Ode heard the clearing of a throat from her side, turning to the hostess who had straightened herself up. “If you could just return to your seats,” she started down the aisle, attempting to comfort everyone with her certainty. “It’s just a small delay,”“Maybe just a pit stop,” Biff guessed.Ode crossed the aisle and returned to the Doctor’s side, hoping perhaps his version of certainty and wariness would appease her. He’d stayed silent all throughout, eyes darting from one person to another, barely even glancing at Ode.“D’you know what’s happening?” Ode whispered at his back, making him slightly flinch and turn to her.He shook his head, his lack of any telling expression sinking a dull worry into her chest. Her eyes jumped from passenger to passenger, only seeing apprehensive faces and a feigned security from the hostess.“Ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon, we’re just experiencing a short delay,” she gave everyone a reassuring smile but it was to no effect. “The driver needs to stabilise the engine feeds,”Ode felt the Doctor shift, his head tilting her way as his eyes narrowed. A look of suspicion? Disbelief? “What is it?” she whispered, nudging his arm with her elbow.Without looking back, he said with a low tone, “Stay here. Keep everyone calm,” and began walking towards the driver’s room, much to the hostess’s ignored protests, and flipped open a familiar wallet. “There you go. Engine expert,”And so he disappeared into the room, leaving Ode with the weighty responsibility. Not too long before then, she was tailing him around a castle, attempting to decipher what the situation was, while he seemed not at all affected by any of it - if not energised by it, even.“Everyone, please remain calm and return to your seats,” the hostess called once again, frustration forming lines between her brows as the rest of the passengers talked over each other. Hobbes was making his complaints known, Jethro was taunting his parents with the idea of a trip gone wrong, and his mother Val was not helping with any of it by raising her voice and denying her husband any word in. “Every—please, everyone,” the hostess tried again.Looking between everyone else and the hostess, she couldn’t be blamed for being unable to tame the wilderness in the vehicle. Ode cleared her throat and stomped her foot twice, the rather soft thuds stealing everyone’s attention from their voiced concerns.With all eyes on her, she braced herself for scrutiny. “You’ve been asked to stay calm and sit down,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yes, we don’t know what’s happening… right now,” she looked to the hostess for assurance but she had her eyes trained to the floor, mind clearly elsewhere. “But that doesn’t mean we should become…” she wanted to say ‘uncivilised’ but feared it was too strong. “Rude,” insufficient replacement. She cursed herself.The looks passed around seemed doubtful of her, as if she were a little child inquiring about serious business. This only served to prod her. “Your worries are understandable. You want to be heard. But talking over each other will not achieve that. If we could just…” she gestured to the hostess, feeling like the only grown-up among defiant children. “Follow what we’re told by the people that have worked here for—”“Well, I have some say, don’t I?” Hobbes, much to Ode’s annoyance, added. “I’ve done this trip fou—”“Yes, fourteen times. You must know it well,” Ode snapped, losing her neutral expression and replacing it with an unamused glare.He shrank into his seat.She continued, “But our hostess has done this trip more than…” glancing to the aforementioned hostess with a questioning look, Ode narrowed her eyes, attempting to perhaps stare a question into her mind.“At least thirty times,” she promptly replied, understanding.Ode nodded. “At least th—wow, that’s a lot,” her eyes widened imagining those thirty times. “But, yes, so… we should… we have a lot of reason, more than enough, I think, reasons… to trust her. And the drivers,”The room remained quiet, perhaps swallowing back Ode’s words. This somewhat brought her to some semblance of purpose. No longer following behind like a dog, but helping keep things afloat, or helping whatever larger purpose the Doctor had in mind. At that moment, she didn’t mind what Rory had told her. If this was what they did when travelling around, she found herself somewhat romanticising the idea.“And who are you exactly?” Val asked, eyes expressing genuine curiosity but it only served to morph the rest of the stares into suspicion.She shrugged. “Just… I’m just a traveller, like you,” she gestured her hands to the group. “The Doctor is the expert between us. Engine expert,” she pursed her lips, wondering why he had to pick such a specific title that coincided with their crisis.The group turned away from her, seemingly collectively agreeing she wasn’t worth any further probing, while Ode felt some approximtion of pride bloom in her chest. Something potentially done right, the prospect of competence, and it was half ugly, half beautiful, grinning genuinely but baring yellowed teeth.“Thank you,” the hostess whispered, bowing her head slightly before crossing the aisle.Ode bowed her head in return, left standing alone before everyone like a superior. She looked down at Sky who appeared lost in thought, twisting her lips while her teeth scraped skin, fingers fiddling with each other in repetitive motions.“You ok?” Ode asked, moving to sit by her.Sky gave a short hum, unremoved from her state of trance.Ode realised that perhaps she’d done a remarkably terrible job at helping everyone stay ‘calm’ and instead brought further anxiety. She imagined what the Doctor’s displeased face looked like while they waited in silence.When the doors opened to reveal the Doctor’s figure emerging from it, Sky shot up from her seat. “What did they say? Did they tell you? What is it, what’s wrong?” evidently not calmed by Ode.Ode leaned forward to listen in, catching the Doctor’s eye.“Oh, just stabilising, happens all the time,” he smiled.Liar, Ode wanted to laugh. It seemed so obvious.Sky, unhappy with the Doctor’s optimistic answer, continued. “I don't need this. I'm on a schedule,” she directed her frustration at the hostess as she passed. “This is completely unnecessary,”Ode furrowed, eyes narrowing at Sky’s slight aggression.“Back to your seats, thank you,” the hostess disregarded Sky’s exasperated sighs, clicking to enter the driver’s room.Following the Doctor, Ode slipped from the seat beside Sky’s and across the aisle back to him. It wasn't as though it would fix any of it or ease the crisis but it comforted her knowing he could be one of the better equipped during times of stress or pressure.Did he look like it? She gave him a once-over in order to presume so. As far as she knew, he was merely a lanky man in a suit wielding a “sonic screwdriver” who seemed to know everything going on. And seemingly everything about her.“What’s going on?” she whispered at his shoulder, eyes peering up.He looked down and pursed his lips, about to say something when someone else from behind their row interrupted.“Excuse me, Doctor,” Dee Dee’s small voice poked from behind, causing both Ode and the Doctor to turn. “But they're micropetrol engines, aren't they?”“Now don’t bother the man,” Hobbes interjected, causing Ode’s face to screw up at his remark.“Let her speak,” Ode knelt up on her seat and glared at him, which caught him by surprise, only looking up at her as she sank back down to her seat.She felt the Doctor pat her knee.“What is it?” he responded to Dee Dee.“My father was a mechanic,” she began, “Micropetrol doesn't stabilise, what does 'stabilise' mean?”This turned heads. Though it didn’t promote any theory as to why their vehicle had suddenly stopped, it certainly didn’t alleviate the growing tension in everyone’s minds.“Well. Bit of flim-flam,” he Doctor replied. “Don't worry, they're sorting it out,”“So it's not the engines?” Hobbes said.The Doctor, sensing the rising distrust in his words, attempted again to relieve the pressure. “Just a little pause, that's all,”“How much air have we got?” Hobbes furthered.Ode sighed, bewildered at where he even got the idea of air running out. Somehow, it made sense that perhaps they weren’t running out of air. This was, of course, due to the blind trust she had given to the Doctor, who seemed perfectly calm on all fronts, save for the slight undercurrent of suspicion. She had followed him too far not to trust him to some degree. Or perhaps she, too, was being fooled by a bigger, better lie. A better crafted one than his half-assed comfort given to Sky.“Professor, it’s fine,” he said to the old man. Again, confidently. He knew what he was doing, what he was saying, as if he’d done this too many times to be even slightly bothered.“What did he say?” Val asked from across the aisle.“Nothing,” the Doctor said curtly.“Are we running out of air?” Val instinctively grabbed her husband’s hand as she carelessly flung the question out for everyone to hear.Ode looked back with a scowl on her face directed at Hobbes who was now standing and questioning the Doctor, too. She imagined shutting him up with one word and never having to hear from him again, her chest brewing something hot at his baseless conjecture. Here was the Doctor attempting to salvage what little tranquillity there was in the room, confirming nor denying anything, and somehow the embers managed to spark a larger flame. No thanks to Hobbes nor Val.“Where did—” Ode raised her voice but was stopped by the Doctor’s hand on her arm. Though his touch was neither harsh nor gripping, the sudden jolt of electricity stole her attention away.“I was just speculating…” Hobbes replied to Val, shrugging. Not helping.Ode slumped down as the group continued to debate whether or not they were running out of air, effectively wasting the air they had had they actually been running out of it. No, it wasn’t a debate, so much as it was an argument between questioning fueled by anxiety and paranoia against the pleas to be calm. Both as incessant as the other.Someone behind was exacerbating the speculation Hobbes planted, someone else was telling another to stop, another was placing the blame on some other. At some point, the cacophony was too loud and disordered to be stopped, the tumult boiling over and spilling and causing everyone but the Doctor, Ode, and the hostess to join in. The hostess was listening to Sky’s complaints. The Doctor had stood up and was attempting an “everyone sh”. While Ode sat by the corner trying to ignore the chaos with her forehead on her hands.“Quiet!” the Doctor ordered.His voice cut through every word uttered in the room, dragging along with it a silence that asked everyone else to shut up and listen.Ode turned. He had snagged clear all their arguments and voice, holding a finger to the air like a teacher in front of a class gone awry.“Now, if you'd care to listen to my good friend Dee Dee,” he motioned to the smaller girl behind his seat.Dee Dee shifted in her seat and stood, all eyes on her.“It's just that... well,” she cleared her throat, seemingly searching for the words, or gathering back what she had attempted to say in the cacophony. “The air's on a circular filter, one of the best, I’ve read. So we could stay breathing for… who knows, ten or so years? Approximately so before they’d have to be changed, even then if it’s a recent model, maybe twenty years,”This put the running-out-air speculation in its grave, it seemed.“There you go,” the Doctor nodded approvingly at Dee Dee. “And I've spoken to the Captain, I can guarantee you, everything’s—”Something heavy struck the vehicle. Its two heavy hits hurt the attempted assurance the Doctor was building, wounding it as heads turned and eyes widened, hands starting to grip the leather of their seats.An uneasy lump sank in Ode’s stomach. She inched closer to the Doctor’s side.And as questions rose, the hush thickened, Hobbes and Dee Dee threw out rationalisations. Settlings. Rocks. Wind. Whether they were genuine suppositions or a thin bandaid over the clustering wound, Ode did not want to think about it, the Doctor’s silence telling her enough.Another two strikes to the side. The air grew warm with confusion, dry, brittle, perturbed by every motion in the periphery. Fueled by the burgeoning disagreements. Someone, something was holding an unlit match somewhere unseen, unknown. That was threat enough.“Is there something out there?” Sky asked. Suddenly the question didn’t seem so silly as it did at the start of the cruise.Ode looked to the Doctor. Still, even as she sat so close to him, divulged familiar gazes, and regarded him as the safest place she could be with at that moment, he was still just as much a stranger as he was a certain and assured man. Though there was disconnect between his other two faces, she couldn’t fully comprehend the hows and whys of it, she saw the same man underneath. He seemed to come out in particular moments she’d only seen not too long before, the hardened and at the same time softened look where you can hear his mind running.She sat up and turned to where everyone else seemed to be looking. “What if…” she whispered at his shoulder, careful not to be heard so that no one would take her theory and run with it as the cause. “Something does live out there,”The Doctor tilted his head where one ear would be closer to her mouth.“It adapted,” she continued, her voice almost losing breath and becoming mostly breath.Finally he looked at her, brows weighed downwards to the middle, eyes seemingly intensely considering her thought.Another knock from the outside, eliciting gasps and frightened questions. The Doctor rushed off his seat and neared where the last knock had been, pressing a stethoscope to the wall.Ode pursed her lips, somewhat brought out of the tension of the situation.The hostess demanded he return to his seat, being promptly ignored however.Another knock. This time it was near the door, the sinking feeling drowning the group in dread.It’s alive. Ode wanted to whisper it and shout it but what use was there? It would only worsen the tightening air and their shortening breaths, relieving nothing in their panicked hearts. But as it moved and as it knocked, there was only denying its existence and acknowledging it. Whichever provided more peace in the mind, she didn’t know. But she believed without proof, without sight, without word - it was alive.