Lost In Remnants

A Waste Of Time

Ellie

In London in the time of Queen Victoria, there were many tales of a remarkable personage known as the Great Detective. The non fictitious one, at any rate, because I refer, of course, to Madame Vastra.

You know her, of course, because we have had tea with her many times, though this is long after this point, the lizard woman of Paternoster Row, but you have not heard most of her extraordinary adventures, her beautiful assistant, wife, Jenny Flint, and their mysterious henchman, Strax, whose countenance was too abominable to be photographed. That is what they said in those days, in actual fact he was simply a Sontaran who once discovered the ability to grow a moustache.

No one was particularly fond of this, much less Madame Vastra herself.

For at time, however, we were there. The Doctor was not a willing member of this little group, and neither was I, but they started to disagree with how we went about our time in their city. Vastra once told me that where she at the time disliked Elizabeth from where they had met in the past, there was no one more than me that she hated for a very long time. She blamed me for the Doctor no longer caring for the upkeep of the universe. I was here to look after him, not everyone else.

It just meant that they resorted to drastic measures to start getting him down from the clouds to interact with someone other than myself. They created some of the most ludicrous things to attempt to tempt him to investigate what they sold as 'the direst of emergencies.' "I'm so glad you came. We have news, I think, of particular interest to you. There was a meteor shower in the south west, unexpected timing and density. I've calculated there is a thirty four percent chance it is the result of alien intervention." I raised an eyebrow, dressed in a long coat and what was considered mens clothing for the time but I wore what was practical only. "Twenty four percent." It was the late tails of the Perseids, creating their own different trail of comets, called Artemis' Shower on another world. You knew this, Vastra. "Well, they could just be meteors but it is worth looking in to. There is a very pleasant tea room in the area."

Now it was her wife who tried, with something even more ridiculous. "Also, there's a Professor Erasmus Pink who's claiming he's going to split the world open with a giant drill through the thinnest part of the Earth's crust." Surely Vastra would be fond of that plan, given that her people all lay deep beneath the surface. "I think we should investigate." Even the Doctor now sighed, shaking his head in his new, darker clothes, more Scrooge than his bumbling college professor clothes from before. There was no longer any form of tie around his neck, either because he feared me strangling him via it, or because what was the point without them? "I mean, he doesn't actually have a giant drill, and he's not really a professor, and he was a bit drunk at the time and singing a bit, but you know it is never too early to investigate a drill."

Last, last it was the Sontaran. Who was not actually joking, but decided to tell us all of a strategy that he had devised between one sherbet lemon and another. "I've declared war on the moon."

"Do be quiet, Strax."

"Too long the moon has hung unmonitored and unsuspected in the sky. It has gained an enormous tactical advantage."

Jenny rolled his eyes at her. I wondered what Jenny Caine would think of me, the Jenny that the Remembrance had through a machine, but died shortly after. "There's no one living there."

This was exactly what he thought. "Then it is clearly time to act. They won't suspect a thing."

"Who won't suspect a thing?"

"Moonites."

The Doctor finally spoke, half turned away behind me, shrouded by the shadows and smoke cast by the street lights in the snow. "Why do you keep doing this? What is the point? I have told you. I keep telling you, I had Ellie tell you, I don't do this any more. I've retired."

One last desperate attempt from the only human in the area, as he began to walk back to the park and the TARDIS upon the cloud. "There's a man on Praed Street with an invisible wife." My crimson glare fixed on her deep, soulful brown eyes. They all feared me. I did not blame them, but neither did I give them any reason not to. "Maybe he just doesn't have a wife."

"You are wasting our time." I told them as he just kept walking, not looking at any of the Paternoster Gang. "The Doctor has seen the deaths of thousands of planets, his sister several times over, and the death of just two more humans has left him unable to function as he once did. He has attempted retirement only a handful of times before, and never did it last longer than a decade. We may have only been here a season, but we spent almost a century elsewhere before he chose to live out his final few centuries from here. The Doctor is retired, and this time, I rather do think that he means it."

Jenny was still looking at him walk away, a broken man compared to how they had last seen him at Demon's Run, a God at the top of his power, but he no longer had his sister, and no longer had Amelia. Why did he should he care about the universe, when the universe kept giving him people only to rip them away as painfully as possible? "Merry Christmas!" Now he was out of sight, the snow covering his tracks but I heard him, thinking of how stupid it all was. "His sister isn't dead, though, is she? You're technically Elizabeth, so why doesn't that help him?"

"Because, dear, his real sister will only return long after his death. She's as good as dead because Ellody will not bow out quietly, so to speak." The Homo-Reptilia woman looked to me, her green eyes not afraid of my crimson, solely because there were those in her species that had the same. Red was natures warning colour, but some creatures in nature liked the challenge. "You say that you are here as his friend, as someone to look after him. How can you just sit there and allow him to go on like this?"

I let my muscular shoulders roll a little, hair up in its usual ponytail. "Where I may be his friend, I am not a companion. I do not in-still in him the drive for adventure, or the love of a sister. My job is to keep him alive, and keep him from taking out his losses on the universe in ways akin to the Warrior from the Time War. I have the Doctor on suicide, and genocide, watch."

"But what is the point in that if you're just going to watch him die anyway?" Jenny asked, still not understanding, while Strax? He was glaring at the moon. The moon that could not sustain life, because it was life itself. "How do you not have any love for him? He is your brother, whether you call him that or not!"

If the Doctor was my brother, then River Song my wife, and the Master my ex husband. I preferred to allow myself some degree of separation, given that I knew I was not the same, and had no inclination to be. My embrace of River was little more than to see if there was anything truly of her in me, and I felt nothing in regards to that woman that belonged to me over Elizabeth. "I believe that you and I both think of love in a different way, Mrs Flint. Love is being at someone's side and accepting who they are not asking to change every single detail of who they are. The Doctor has accepted me as myself, and I am accepting him. I am here until his end, and then I shall be alone until mine."

Vastra took a step towards me, both of us tall and strong, but hers was flexible, lithe and fast. I was fast, but I was better at a straight fight, over the finesse she could bring into the ring. "In my opinion, Ellody, this is little more than a distraction from your own mortality, is it not? Watching someone else die, instead of feeling your own ever coming. You are not a Goddess, nor even a half of one. Not even Elizabeth was, and you are dying even now, the same as every one of us."

My own feet took me a step towards her also, Jenny reaching for her wife, but we locked eyes for a moment. "Death does not scare me, Vastra. Death is promised to us all, and I await mine, knowing that it will have come when I am ready for it, the moment when tomorrow meets today. Goodnight, Mrs and Mrs Flint. Perhaps just leave us alone from now on, because the Doctor will not be changing any time soon."

Then I began to crunch away down the street after him, the snow steadily getting heavier as I walked so I looked up to the clouds to see just how much longer I had to deal with the inconvenience of the crystallised water. But stopped, staring into the clear winters sky and the full moon that shone down upon us with a spattering of stars still visible with the minimal light pollution. With snow still falling thick and heavy around us.

"This makes no sense." I muttered, flakes settling into my eyelashes so I blinked them away. "Something is happening, and if the Doctor does not care..." It left it to me to investigate, only I would not be telling either the Paternosters, or him. The Doctor said he was retired. I never said the same for myself, after all.