Fic: "Belle Surprise"
Oct. 15th, 2008 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watch_is_me'Verse: None in particular; uses personal canon as a base.
Words: 3,038
Prompt:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
oncoming_storms, 59.4, "Write a conversation between your character and another using only dialogue. However, both characters are doing something and it must be obvious from the dialogue what it is." And that pairings meme that was going around. This is what comes of me thinking about Astrid/Doctor meeting in my universe.
So, all dialogue, long, long, long, and ROUGH. Really rough. But I think there's potential here and would like to get it cleaned up and tightened. Any feedback would be spectacular.
“Films, Astrid Peth. Immerschips, v-holos, realreels, Betamax, anything. Horror stories. How many have you seen?”
“I—I don’t really watch the ‘casts, there are so many other things to do, but…Vina did drag me down to see that remake—Terror House XII, it was horr—“
“Right, Terror House. Let’s see…saw the fifth one of those, the bit with the fish, turned me off aquatic planets for a week. But there’s always… Here we are. …There’s always a group, isn’t there? Group of friends, teenagers, explorers, investment bankers, doesn’t matter, there’s always a group, and they get in the house, and then—then they start splitting up. You watch them, you think, how thick can they be, you go that way, I’ll go this way, when they’re in this house and it’s trying to kill them. Safety in numbers, two heads better than one, right? …There. Actually, two heads, worse than one, five works well, nice spread of opinions, odd number for a deciding vote. Fiklian Forty-eyes, best spectaclemakers in the universe, walking mini-democracies.”
“Doctor? The console… Am I reading this right?”
“…Mm, it’s working fast.”
“…Those lifesigns, that’s…the passengers. Where are they? They’re missing from the display.”
“They’re not missing. They’re gone.”
“Where? We’re in deep space.”
“They’re dead, Astrid. Gone. They split up.”
*********************
“Everyone still alive on this ship. We have to find everyone. If we miss a single person, any person, it can hang on. It can leave that one person alive, keep them that way, keep them frightened and uncertain, until it sorts the rest of us, separates us again. And then it’s back to picking us off. Feeding.”
“What? What’s feeding? Tell me, Doctor, I want to help.”
“You are helping. You are helping so much, Astrid, right now, just by being here, with me. Where are you from?”
“Sto.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“It’s not home.”
“No?”
“I don’t need a home. This is just…the Starman, waitressing, it’s temporary. I’ll get shore leave someday, and then…!”
“You’ll see it all, will you?”
“Yes.”
“Stay with me, Astrid from Sto. Stick right by my side, and you will. That’s a promise.”
*********************
“The passengers were easiest. Private rooms, feel like they own the place, time to pop off on their own, change clothes for dinner, grab some beauty sleep, but the crew… They keep you on your toes, up and down, this way and that, bellpulls and service corridors, not a moment to call your own, am I right?”
“Well, they keep us pretty busy. I don’t mind, we all to get to know one another really well—we just had a birthday party for Vina yesterday.”
“D’you see? That’s it. You’re accounted for. If you’re not together, someone knows where you are, where you’re supposed to be. Shifts and timecards, Big Brother Bureaucracy, and the better stuff, the good surveillance—camaraderie and friends, you against the customers, you know, I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine. You’re certainties, salaried, waged, and networked. It’s harder to get through to you, to wipe you out.”
“Doctor. You’ve never worked customer service, have you?”
“What? No, no. NO, blimey, no. …Why’re you asking?”
“You’re terrible at explanations.”
“I am not."
“Something’s made the passengers disappear. The Starman’s not my home, Doctor, and we’re not family, the crew, but—they’re good people, they’re the best I have. What’s happening?”
“…You know that feeling you get, like eyes watching you, when you know there’s no one there?”
“Yes.”
“Can you feel it right now? Hold very still.”
“…Yes.”
“It’s strong. Stronger than it’s ever been, except maybe once or twice in your life, when you’ve found yourself alone, suddenly, in the dark. Maybe you hid somewhere clever as a child and then couldn’t get back out, and you weren’t sure anyone would know where to find you, and you imagined they’d never come. You sat in the dark and waited and finally someone did come, they had to have, but right up until that moment, you knew. You knew you were all alone in the dark but there was something else there, too. Something that was watching, patient, until the rest of the world had forgotten you, until it could take you, devour you, and no one would be the wiser. No one would care. No one would ever even know. Do you remember?”
“…How did you know?”
“Everyone’s felt it. I’ve felt it. But, now, this…”
“What is it?”
“It’s the ship, Astrid. It’s haunted. Well, not haunted so much as possessed. WELL, not so much possessed as inhabited. Heisenian waviform, lives in built structures, hides in the corners, makes itself part of the woodwork, eats certainty by converting it into uncertainty.”
“Feeding. You said ‘feeding.’ It gets people alone…and it eats them?”
“Yes. Because only when you’re alone is it possible, just barely possible, that you might not exist.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Good. Thank you, Astrid. Right, then, allons-y! Let’s go find the others. Plus on est de fous, plus on rit!”
*********************
“No! Nonononono!”
“Doctor! Doctor, it won’t open!”
“It’s deadlocked. It’s the waviform, it’s using the ship. Astrid! Astrid, keep talking! Don’t stop talking, anything, just so I can hear you. I’ll get through this, I promise you, I won’t let it take you. Talk, sing, tell me you’re there. You exist.”
“What should I say?”
“Anything! Anything, just be. Speak, therefore you are. Overrides, overrides, come on, come on, come on…”
“Wait, Doctor, what about you? You have to speak, too, don’t you? Or it could take you, too!”
“Oh, right. Right, of course. Both of us. Shouldn’t be a problem for me. On three, then. One, two, three, cacophony!”
*********************
“You have a beautiful singing voice.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“You’ve wanted to travel that long? Ever since you were, what was it, six? That’s...Sto years, elliptical orbit, double star, carry the two... Four years, two months, and three days old, round up a few hours.”
“You caught all of that?”
“Every word.”
“You could hear it, over that…what was it you were singing?”
“Mm. Nothing.”
“What’s a hybrid rainbow?”
“Engrish. The Pillows. You wouldn’t have heard of them.”
“Hazy comic jazz?”
“Oi, cosmic jive. Oh, Bowie, now, I can teach you that. It goes like this…”
*********************
“They’re almost gone, Doctor.”
“I know. I know.”
“They…they keep going out. The lifesigns. Everyone—they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know…”
“It’s splitting them up. One by one.”
“And…”
“…”
“…Doctor.”
“We have to hurry. Stay close. Sing. …Do you know any Disney?”
*********************
“Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a passenger, aren’t you?"”
“Nope, I’m not.”
“What are you?”
“A traveler.”
“But not a passenger.”
”Never a passenger. Not me.”
“It didn’t take you.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You said it took the passengers first. Like—like extras.”
“Extras?”
“In the ‘cast, Terror House, the house had guests that lived there, first, and it killed them all. It was really early in the story, so they didn’t matter, Vina and I just…”
“They mattered.”
“…I didn’t mean here, Doctor, on the Starman. I meant, in the ‘cast…”
“Oh. ‘Course. Right. Extras. Go on.”
“Then the paranormal investigators arrived. The group, like you said, and they mattered. We talked about it afterward, Vina and I, we knew that some of them were going to die and maybe all of them and that’s what kept us paying attention, guessing…”
“How did it end?”
“There were two left.”
“Oi, see, someone always pulls through!”
“…You’re not an extra, are you, Doctor?”
“No. No one is, Astrid Peth. Not me, not you, not anyone.”
*********************
“Vina!”
“Hello! It’s alright. It’s alright! Vina? Come on, come here. Don’t run. Don’t run, no! Astrid, after her, with me!”
“Vina! It’s safe! This is the Doctor, he’s—he’s a Time Master from—”
“Oi!”
“What?”
”Lord, not—no, the door!"
”Vina!”
“Vina! Listen to me! Keep screaming, don’t stop screaming. Just don’t stop, we’re almost there, almost—no, nonononono, deep breath, Vina, breath, tell me you’re still there, you still exist, scream, sing, nursery rhymes, ABCs, unseasonal holiday songs, from the diaphragm—got it.”
“Let me go first, Doctor.”
“Astrid, no.”
“Together?”
“…”
“She’s gone.”
“No.”
“Doctor.”
“Stay with me. Astrid, stay with me.”
*********************
“We’re the last ones.”
“…”
“Doctor, I’m not a silly little girl. I can see. All of the lifesignals have gone out. Except for ours. It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend for me.”
“…Right. This is it. Two left, if it can separate us, then it can establish itself. Wipe one out into uncertainty and preserve the other.”
“Preserve?”
“Yeah. The Starman becomes a haunted hulk, floating in space, collecting deaths and legends, the waviform always leaving that last one alive to wander the passageways, driving them mad with fear and isolation, feeding off their uncertainty, their loneliness, their doubt of their own existence. Thin porridge, next to complete erasure. But enough. Just enough to get it through to the next batch. And the next.”
“The next group.”
“Mm.”
“Whoever comes looking for us.”
“There’ll be someone. There’s a distress signal going out. It’s been active in the system for hours.”
“If they arrive, Doctor, they’ll die, too?”
“Yeah. Yeah, they will.”
“But we’re safe. We’re together.”
“…The two at the end of that film—‘scuse me, ‘cast—Astrid, what happened to them?”
“They got out. They saved each other, and made it out together.”
“Did they?”
“What is a Time Lord, Doctor?”
“A very rare species. Like the dodo bird, but better-looking.”
“Dodos aren’t rare.”
“What? OH, Sto. Hm, perilizards, then.”
“…What do we do now, Doctor? It’s so quiet.”
“We find somewhere to wait it out.”
“Wait what out?”
“I’m not sure. Come on.”
*********************
“We need a room.”
“What? Now?”
“What? Oh, no, no, to draw out the waviform. One door, backup power, open floor plan. We’re the key. It’s going to throw everything it can at us, to try to separate us. Paranoia, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, xenophobia, nyctophobia, arachnophobia—well, maybe not arachnophobia. There’s a terrible film. …What are you most afraid of, Astrid?”
“Holding still.”
“What?”
“It’s—it’s silly, but if I hold still too long, I can hear my own heartbeat. If I listen hard, it gets so loud, and I can’t hear anything else and I feel like it might stop, at any moment. Like the next beat knows I’m listening and it might not come. I know it’s silly.”
“No. No, Astrid, it’s not.”
“What are you afraid of, Doctor? Anything?”
“Clams.”
“Clams?”
“Big ones. Now, large room, open, power and light, one door, you know the Starman best, anything come to mind?”
“Oh. The ballroom. The grand ballroom. This way.”
“Don’t let go of my hand, Astrid.”
“I won’t.”
*********************
“There’s a smaller one, on the second deck, but I thought, this one has the observation dome…”
“It’s perfect, Astrid. It’s brilliant! Look at that. The Twelve Sisters. Beautiful system. I’ve been to that one. Oh, and that one, there.”
“No. Really? You have?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How can you afford it? The transit companies…”
“I’ve got my own ship—oh. And here we go.”
“The lights!”
“Don’t worry. It can’t put out the stars.”
“What can we do?”
“Stay together. Mm, and bar the door. Let’s see. Grand piano, that’ll do. Help me shift this?”
“But it’s already in, Doctor. It’s in here with us. I can feel it.”
“I know. This is to stop us getting out. Come on, put your back into it.”
*********************
“It’s so dark.”
“It’s not, Astrid. Look up. A chandelier of galaxies. Light from thousands of years ago, here for us, now, when we need it. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“I can hear my heartbeat. Doctor. I can’t hold still. We have to go. Doctor, I have to get out of here. I can hear it, I have to move, I have to get away from it.”
“Ssh. Ssh, it’s fine, Astrid. It’s only your heartbeat, it means you’re present, you’re alive. Here. Come here. You can’t go.”
“Oh!”
“What is it?”
“You have two. Two heartbeats.”
“Time Lord. I told you.”
“I didn’t—it’s so loud, how do you hear anything else? Ba-bump ba-bump, ba-bump ba-bump. One-two three-four one-two—”
“Stop. Stop that right now, Astrid Peth.”
“Doctor? I’m sorry, what did I…?”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t listen and don’t talk.”
“I should—I should go, you don’t need me, you don’t want me here—”
“I need you. Stay here.”
“Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“I can hear it. It’s under your skin.”
“Drown it out. Sing. Something slow.”
“I’ll try.”
*********************
“I can’t breathe.”
“You can. In, out. In, out. Think of something. Anything. Power animals, penguins. Dodos. Sto. You when you were a little girl, dreaming of the stars. Did you have those stickers on your ceiling? Glow-in-the-dark, five points and comet tails, green-y light?”
“They’re darker. The stars are darker.”
"No. The waviform’s only here in the ship. The power, the doors, the structure, yes, it can use those. But not the stars, Astrid. The stars are free. They’re beyond this.”
“We’re so trapped.”
“We’re fine.”
“…Why do you keep tapping your fingers like that?”
“What? What?”
“Like that. Stop it, Doctor. Stop it.”
“Astrid. Hold them. Hold my hands.”
“No. They’re—like rats. Twitching. Stop it.”
“I can’t. Help me, Astrid. Stop my hands.”
*********************
“Doctor! Where are you going?”
“The TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS. That’s—that’s your ship. Right? But you said you couldn’t reach it. The deadlocks…”
“Oh, I can reach it. I can get out of here, free and clear, without you slowing me down.”
“What? Doctor, we need to stay together. You said…”
“I said. I’m always saying. Do you think I mean half of it? Quantity over quality, that’s me, always blathering on to keep you lot quiet. Reassured. Because you need it, don’t you? The noise. The sound. The voice in the dark, dear old Doctor reading you a bedtime story. Well, I don’t. I’ve heard enough, and I don’t need to hear you, I don’t need to hear myself playing the fool just to please you. I’m leaving.”
“Stop. Doctor, stop! That’s not you, it can’t be you, it’s the—the waviform, it’s getting into your head, frightening you.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You are. Your eyes are so dark. When it was in my head, you said—”
“I said whatever I thought you needed to hear. Get back.”
“It wants us separate. It wants you to run away, Doctor.”
“Well, it's preaching to the converted.”
“I’ve watched you, Doctor. You’ve stayed with me—you never left me. You don’t run away.”
“Oh, not away, Astrid. Little Astrid Peth, the waitress-turned-heroine, singing her musical number, the plucky girl from Sto. I. Just. Run. Everywhere.”
“Don’t go—”
“You said you can’t hold still. That you can’t stand the sound of your own heartbeat? Waiting for it to stop? Well, I can’t hold still, because if I hold still, I hear it, and I know, know it’s never going to stop, not for centuries. No peace, Astrid, because they are always coming.”
“What? What do you hear? Tell me. Doctor, please. Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”
“Drums. War. The dead. The oncoming dead.”
“If you leave, you’ll die.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“No.”
“What are you—? Oi, that’s my stethoscope!”
“Listen. Listen. That’s it, isn’t it? Your drums. One-two-three-four one-two-three-four. That’s what you were tapping earlier. Listen. It’s you. It’s your heart. Hearts. Both of them. The sound of what you are. A Time Master.”
“Lord.”
“Don’t swear.”
“Time Lord. It’s more than that, Astrid, it’s—”
“It’s only more if you let it be. It’s yours, it’s you—it’s not whatever the waviform’s putting in your head—”
“It was there before—”
“Stop talking! Listen.”
“…”
“It’s what makes you you. Brilliant, like you said, and why you can run like that and I can’t keep up—”
“Well, the heels probably don’t help—”
“It’s strong and steady. It’s not war, Doctor, it’s life, your life. One, two, three, four.”
“Astrid…”
“Wait. Listen. Here’s mine. If I can live with my heart, you can live with yours. Can you hear it? One-two one-two. Different beats.”
“It’s blood, Astrid…”
“Doing what it’s supposed to do. Warm and alive and invisible but you can hear it, and it’s so important and always, and it’s terrible, I know, but… Here. ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four.”
“What?”
“Come on, Doctor. Dance with me. It’s a ballroom.”
“I—”
“Don’t talk. Listen. How did that song go?”
“Bowie?”
“No, the other one.”
“Oh. …’Tale as old as time…’”
“Right. Shh. I’ll sing. Just listen, and dance with me. We’re together.”
*********************
“Is it gone?”
“Yes. Yeah, that’s it. It’s gone. Prolonged exposure to certainty, forced it right out of existence. Used all of its resources trying to establish uncertainty, hypometabolic reaction, burned up its own material, like a starvation victim, the body eats its own tissue. Screwdriver’s not picking up any readings, look!”
“We’re safe now?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Astrid Peth, safe! It’s just a ship, now. Only a ship. Rescue team’ll be perfectly fine, when it arrives.”
“Are we going to wait for them?”
“Well, you should…”
“I don’t want to stay here any longer, Doctor. Do you?"
"..."
"You said you had a ship.”
“…I do.”
“You need me.”
“…Yes.”
“Do you want me?”
“Astrid, I can’t, it’s dangerous, you—”
“Take me with you. I can listen to your heart—hearts—and you can listen to mine, and we won’t have to be—to be haunted. By ourselves. I want to see the stars.”
“...Oh, alright, but only if you promise to sing.”
“Whenever you want!”
“Brilliant. Fantastic. I can’t—oh, what am I doing? Come on, allons-y! Any star in the heavens, second to the right, third to the left, take two and call me in the morning. Freedom, Astrid, you’ll love it!
“Doctor…”
“Mm-hm?”
“That song. I don't know if I'm a beauty, but you're not a...”
“Maybe not. Maybe not, if you stay with me. Come on. Together.”
“Toujours. Toujours, avec vous.”
"You speak French?"
"Normandan."
"Zut alors! Keep surprising me, Astrid Peth. I like it."
Words: 3,038
Prompt:
oncoming_storms, 59.4, "Write a conversation between your character and another using only dialogue. However, both characters are doing something and it must be obvious from the dialogue what it is." And that pairings meme that was going around. This is what comes of me thinking about Astrid/Doctor meeting in my universe.So, all dialogue, long, long, long, and ROUGH. Really rough. But I think there's potential here and would like to get it cleaned up and tightened. Any feedback would be spectacular.
“Films, Astrid Peth. Immerschips, v-holos, realreels, Betamax, anything. Horror stories. How many have you seen?”
“I—I don’t really watch the ‘casts, there are so many other things to do, but…Vina did drag me down to see that remake—Terror House XII, it was horr—“
“Right, Terror House. Let’s see…saw the fifth one of those, the bit with the fish, turned me off aquatic planets for a week. But there’s always… Here we are. …There’s always a group, isn’t there? Group of friends, teenagers, explorers, investment bankers, doesn’t matter, there’s always a group, and they get in the house, and then—then they start splitting up. You watch them, you think, how thick can they be, you go that way, I’ll go this way, when they’re in this house and it’s trying to kill them. Safety in numbers, two heads better than one, right? …There. Actually, two heads, worse than one, five works well, nice spread of opinions, odd number for a deciding vote. Fiklian Forty-eyes, best spectaclemakers in the universe, walking mini-democracies.”
“Doctor? The console… Am I reading this right?”
“…Mm, it’s working fast.”
“…Those lifesigns, that’s…the passengers. Where are they? They’re missing from the display.”
“They’re not missing. They’re gone.”
“Where? We’re in deep space.”
“They’re dead, Astrid. Gone. They split up.”
*********************
“Everyone still alive on this ship. We have to find everyone. If we miss a single person, any person, it can hang on. It can leave that one person alive, keep them that way, keep them frightened and uncertain, until it sorts the rest of us, separates us again. And then it’s back to picking us off. Feeding.”
“What? What’s feeding? Tell me, Doctor, I want to help.”
“You are helping. You are helping so much, Astrid, right now, just by being here, with me. Where are you from?”
“Sto.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“It’s not home.”
“No?”
“I don’t need a home. This is just…the Starman, waitressing, it’s temporary. I’ll get shore leave someday, and then…!”
“You’ll see it all, will you?”
“Yes.”
“Stay with me, Astrid from Sto. Stick right by my side, and you will. That’s a promise.”
*********************
“The passengers were easiest. Private rooms, feel like they own the place, time to pop off on their own, change clothes for dinner, grab some beauty sleep, but the crew… They keep you on your toes, up and down, this way and that, bellpulls and service corridors, not a moment to call your own, am I right?”
“Well, they keep us pretty busy. I don’t mind, we all to get to know one another really well—we just had a birthday party for Vina yesterday.”
“D’you see? That’s it. You’re accounted for. If you’re not together, someone knows where you are, where you’re supposed to be. Shifts and timecards, Big Brother Bureaucracy, and the better stuff, the good surveillance—camaraderie and friends, you against the customers, you know, I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine. You’re certainties, salaried, waged, and networked. It’s harder to get through to you, to wipe you out.”
“Doctor. You’ve never worked customer service, have you?”
“What? No, no. NO, blimey, no. …Why’re you asking?”
“You’re terrible at explanations.”
“I am not."
“Something’s made the passengers disappear. The Starman’s not my home, Doctor, and we’re not family, the crew, but—they’re good people, they’re the best I have. What’s happening?”
“…You know that feeling you get, like eyes watching you, when you know there’s no one there?”
“Yes.”
“Can you feel it right now? Hold very still.”
“…Yes.”
“It’s strong. Stronger than it’s ever been, except maybe once or twice in your life, when you’ve found yourself alone, suddenly, in the dark. Maybe you hid somewhere clever as a child and then couldn’t get back out, and you weren’t sure anyone would know where to find you, and you imagined they’d never come. You sat in the dark and waited and finally someone did come, they had to have, but right up until that moment, you knew. You knew you were all alone in the dark but there was something else there, too. Something that was watching, patient, until the rest of the world had forgotten you, until it could take you, devour you, and no one would be the wiser. No one would care. No one would ever even know. Do you remember?”
“…How did you know?”
“Everyone’s felt it. I’ve felt it. But, now, this…”
“What is it?”
“It’s the ship, Astrid. It’s haunted. Well, not haunted so much as possessed. WELL, not so much possessed as inhabited. Heisenian waviform, lives in built structures, hides in the corners, makes itself part of the woodwork, eats certainty by converting it into uncertainty.”
“Feeding. You said ‘feeding.’ It gets people alone…and it eats them?”
“Yes. Because only when you’re alone is it possible, just barely possible, that you might not exist.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Good. Thank you, Astrid. Right, then, allons-y! Let’s go find the others. Plus on est de fous, plus on rit!”
*********************
“No! Nonononono!”
“Doctor! Doctor, it won’t open!”
“It’s deadlocked. It’s the waviform, it’s using the ship. Astrid! Astrid, keep talking! Don’t stop talking, anything, just so I can hear you. I’ll get through this, I promise you, I won’t let it take you. Talk, sing, tell me you’re there. You exist.”
“What should I say?”
“Anything! Anything, just be. Speak, therefore you are. Overrides, overrides, come on, come on, come on…”
“Wait, Doctor, what about you? You have to speak, too, don’t you? Or it could take you, too!”
“Oh, right. Right, of course. Both of us. Shouldn’t be a problem for me. On three, then. One, two, three, cacophony!”
*********************
“You have a beautiful singing voice.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“You’ve wanted to travel that long? Ever since you were, what was it, six? That’s...Sto years, elliptical orbit, double star, carry the two... Four years, two months, and three days old, round up a few hours.”
“You caught all of that?”
“Every word.”
“You could hear it, over that…what was it you were singing?”
“Mm. Nothing.”
“What’s a hybrid rainbow?”
“Engrish. The Pillows. You wouldn’t have heard of them.”
“Hazy comic jazz?”
“Oi, cosmic jive. Oh, Bowie, now, I can teach you that. It goes like this…”
*********************
“They’re almost gone, Doctor.”
“I know. I know.”
“They…they keep going out. The lifesigns. Everyone—they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know…”
“It’s splitting them up. One by one.”
“And…”
“…”
“…Doctor.”
“We have to hurry. Stay close. Sing. …Do you know any Disney?”
*********************
“Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“You’re a passenger, aren’t you?"”
“Nope, I’m not.”
“What are you?”
“A traveler.”
“But not a passenger.”
”Never a passenger. Not me.”
“It didn’t take you.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You said it took the passengers first. Like—like extras.”
“Extras?”
“In the ‘cast, Terror House, the house had guests that lived there, first, and it killed them all. It was really early in the story, so they didn’t matter, Vina and I just…”
“They mattered.”
“…I didn’t mean here, Doctor, on the Starman. I meant, in the ‘cast…”
“Oh. ‘Course. Right. Extras. Go on.”
“Then the paranormal investigators arrived. The group, like you said, and they mattered. We talked about it afterward, Vina and I, we knew that some of them were going to die and maybe all of them and that’s what kept us paying attention, guessing…”
“How did it end?”
“There were two left.”
“Oi, see, someone always pulls through!”
“…You’re not an extra, are you, Doctor?”
“No. No one is, Astrid Peth. Not me, not you, not anyone.”
*********************
“Vina!”
“Hello! It’s alright. It’s alright! Vina? Come on, come here. Don’t run. Don’t run, no! Astrid, after her, with me!”
“Vina! It’s safe! This is the Doctor, he’s—he’s a Time Master from—”
“Oi!”
“What?”
”Lord, not—no, the door!"
”Vina!”
“Vina! Listen to me! Keep screaming, don’t stop screaming. Just don’t stop, we’re almost there, almost—no, nonononono, deep breath, Vina, breath, tell me you’re still there, you still exist, scream, sing, nursery rhymes, ABCs, unseasonal holiday songs, from the diaphragm—got it.”
“Let me go first, Doctor.”
“Astrid, no.”
“Together?”
“…”
“She’s gone.”
“No.”
“Doctor.”
“Stay with me. Astrid, stay with me.”
*********************
“We’re the last ones.”
“…”
“Doctor, I’m not a silly little girl. I can see. All of the lifesignals have gone out. Except for ours. It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend for me.”
“…Right. This is it. Two left, if it can separate us, then it can establish itself. Wipe one out into uncertainty and preserve the other.”
“Preserve?”
“Yeah. The Starman becomes a haunted hulk, floating in space, collecting deaths and legends, the waviform always leaving that last one alive to wander the passageways, driving them mad with fear and isolation, feeding off their uncertainty, their loneliness, their doubt of their own existence. Thin porridge, next to complete erasure. But enough. Just enough to get it through to the next batch. And the next.”
“The next group.”
“Mm.”
“Whoever comes looking for us.”
“There’ll be someone. There’s a distress signal going out. It’s been active in the system for hours.”
“If they arrive, Doctor, they’ll die, too?”
“Yeah. Yeah, they will.”
“But we’re safe. We’re together.”
“…The two at the end of that film—‘scuse me, ‘cast—Astrid, what happened to them?”
“They got out. They saved each other, and made it out together.”
“Did they?”
“What is a Time Lord, Doctor?”
“A very rare species. Like the dodo bird, but better-looking.”
“Dodos aren’t rare.”
“What? OH, Sto. Hm, perilizards, then.”
“…What do we do now, Doctor? It’s so quiet.”
“We find somewhere to wait it out.”
“Wait what out?”
“I’m not sure. Come on.”
*********************
“We need a room.”
“What? Now?”
“What? Oh, no, no, to draw out the waviform. One door, backup power, open floor plan. We’re the key. It’s going to throw everything it can at us, to try to separate us. Paranoia, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, xenophobia, nyctophobia, arachnophobia—well, maybe not arachnophobia. There’s a terrible film. …What are you most afraid of, Astrid?”
“Holding still.”
“What?”
“It’s—it’s silly, but if I hold still too long, I can hear my own heartbeat. If I listen hard, it gets so loud, and I can’t hear anything else and I feel like it might stop, at any moment. Like the next beat knows I’m listening and it might not come. I know it’s silly.”
“No. No, Astrid, it’s not.”
“What are you afraid of, Doctor? Anything?”
“Clams.”
“Clams?”
“Big ones. Now, large room, open, power and light, one door, you know the Starman best, anything come to mind?”
“Oh. The ballroom. The grand ballroom. This way.”
“Don’t let go of my hand, Astrid.”
“I won’t.”
*********************
“There’s a smaller one, on the second deck, but I thought, this one has the observation dome…”
“It’s perfect, Astrid. It’s brilliant! Look at that. The Twelve Sisters. Beautiful system. I’ve been to that one. Oh, and that one, there.”
“No. Really? You have?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How can you afford it? The transit companies…”
“I’ve got my own ship—oh. And here we go.”
“The lights!”
“Don’t worry. It can’t put out the stars.”
“What can we do?”
“Stay together. Mm, and bar the door. Let’s see. Grand piano, that’ll do. Help me shift this?”
“But it’s already in, Doctor. It’s in here with us. I can feel it.”
“I know. This is to stop us getting out. Come on, put your back into it.”
*********************
“It’s so dark.”
“It’s not, Astrid. Look up. A chandelier of galaxies. Light from thousands of years ago, here for us, now, when we need it. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“I can hear my heartbeat. Doctor. I can’t hold still. We have to go. Doctor, I have to get out of here. I can hear it, I have to move, I have to get away from it.”
“Ssh. Ssh, it’s fine, Astrid. It’s only your heartbeat, it means you’re present, you’re alive. Here. Come here. You can’t go.”
“Oh!”
“What is it?”
“You have two. Two heartbeats.”
“Time Lord. I told you.”
“I didn’t—it’s so loud, how do you hear anything else? Ba-bump ba-bump, ba-bump ba-bump. One-two three-four one-two—”
“Stop. Stop that right now, Astrid Peth.”
“Doctor? I’m sorry, what did I…?”
“Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t listen and don’t talk.”
“I should—I should go, you don’t need me, you don’t want me here—”
“I need you. Stay here.”
“Do you want me?”
“Yes.”
“I can hear it. It’s under your skin.”
“Drown it out. Sing. Something slow.”
“I’ll try.”
*********************
“I can’t breathe.”
“You can. In, out. In, out. Think of something. Anything. Power animals, penguins. Dodos. Sto. You when you were a little girl, dreaming of the stars. Did you have those stickers on your ceiling? Glow-in-the-dark, five points and comet tails, green-y light?”
“They’re darker. The stars are darker.”
"No. The waviform’s only here in the ship. The power, the doors, the structure, yes, it can use those. But not the stars, Astrid. The stars are free. They’re beyond this.”
“We’re so trapped.”
“We’re fine.”
“…Why do you keep tapping your fingers like that?”
“What? What?”
“Like that. Stop it, Doctor. Stop it.”
“Astrid. Hold them. Hold my hands.”
“No. They’re—like rats. Twitching. Stop it.”
“I can’t. Help me, Astrid. Stop my hands.”
*********************
“Doctor! Where are you going?”
“The TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS. That’s—that’s your ship. Right? But you said you couldn’t reach it. The deadlocks…”
“Oh, I can reach it. I can get out of here, free and clear, without you slowing me down.”
“What? Doctor, we need to stay together. You said…”
“I said. I’m always saying. Do you think I mean half of it? Quantity over quality, that’s me, always blathering on to keep you lot quiet. Reassured. Because you need it, don’t you? The noise. The sound. The voice in the dark, dear old Doctor reading you a bedtime story. Well, I don’t. I’ve heard enough, and I don’t need to hear you, I don’t need to hear myself playing the fool just to please you. I’m leaving.”
“Stop. Doctor, stop! That’s not you, it can’t be you, it’s the—the waviform, it’s getting into your head, frightening you.”
“I am not afraid.”
“You are. Your eyes are so dark. When it was in my head, you said—”
“I said whatever I thought you needed to hear. Get back.”
“It wants us separate. It wants you to run away, Doctor.”
“Well, it's preaching to the converted.”
“I’ve watched you, Doctor. You’ve stayed with me—you never left me. You don’t run away.”
“Oh, not away, Astrid. Little Astrid Peth, the waitress-turned-heroine, singing her musical number, the plucky girl from Sto. I. Just. Run. Everywhere.”
“Don’t go—”
“You said you can’t hold still. That you can’t stand the sound of your own heartbeat? Waiting for it to stop? Well, I can’t hold still, because if I hold still, I hear it, and I know, know it’s never going to stop, not for centuries. No peace, Astrid, because they are always coming.”
“What? What do you hear? Tell me. Doctor, please. Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”
“Drums. War. The dead. The oncoming dead.”
“If you leave, you’ll die.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“No.”
“What are you—? Oi, that’s my stethoscope!”
“Listen. Listen. That’s it, isn’t it? Your drums. One-two-three-four one-two-three-four. That’s what you were tapping earlier. Listen. It’s you. It’s your heart. Hearts. Both of them. The sound of what you are. A Time Master.”
“Lord.”
“Don’t swear.”
“Time Lord. It’s more than that, Astrid, it’s—”
“It’s only more if you let it be. It’s yours, it’s you—it’s not whatever the waviform’s putting in your head—”
“It was there before—”
“Stop talking! Listen.”
“…”
“It’s what makes you you. Brilliant, like you said, and why you can run like that and I can’t keep up—”
“Well, the heels probably don’t help—”
“It’s strong and steady. It’s not war, Doctor, it’s life, your life. One, two, three, four.”
“Astrid…”
“Wait. Listen. Here’s mine. If I can live with my heart, you can live with yours. Can you hear it? One-two one-two. Different beats.”
“It’s blood, Astrid…”
“Doing what it’s supposed to do. Warm and alive and invisible but you can hear it, and it’s so important and always, and it’s terrible, I know, but… Here. ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four.”
“What?”
“Come on, Doctor. Dance with me. It’s a ballroom.”
“I—”
“Don’t talk. Listen. How did that song go?”
“Bowie?”
“No, the other one.”
“Oh. …’Tale as old as time…’”
“Right. Shh. I’ll sing. Just listen, and dance with me. We’re together.”
*********************
“Is it gone?”
“Yes. Yeah, that’s it. It’s gone. Prolonged exposure to certainty, forced it right out of existence. Used all of its resources trying to establish uncertainty, hypometabolic reaction, burned up its own material, like a starvation victim, the body eats its own tissue. Screwdriver’s not picking up any readings, look!”
“We’re safe now?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes, Astrid Peth, safe! It’s just a ship, now. Only a ship. Rescue team’ll be perfectly fine, when it arrives.”
“Are we going to wait for them?”
“Well, you should…”
“I don’t want to stay here any longer, Doctor. Do you?"
"..."
"You said you had a ship.”
“…I do.”
“You need me.”
“…Yes.”
“Do you want me?”
“Astrid, I can’t, it’s dangerous, you—”
“Take me with you. I can listen to your heart—hearts—and you can listen to mine, and we won’t have to be—to be haunted. By ourselves. I want to see the stars.”
“...Oh, alright, but only if you promise to sing.”
“Whenever you want!”
“Brilliant. Fantastic. I can’t—oh, what am I doing? Come on, allons-y! Any star in the heavens, second to the right, third to the left, take two and call me in the morning. Freedom, Astrid, you’ll love it!
“Doctor…”
“Mm-hm?”
“That song. I don't know if I'm a beauty, but you're not a...”
“Maybe not. Maybe not, if you stay with me. Come on. Together.”
“Toujours. Toujours, avec vous.”
"You speak French?"
"Normandan."
"Zut alors! Keep surprising me, Astrid Peth. I like it."
