SIGNAL ~ Doctor Who fanfiction

Chapter 17

Author's Note

Hope you enjoy reading this book so far! I'm still editing some chapters as well. Ooh, also I just finished Season 4 finale - End of Time. Brilliant episode, one of RTD's best works.

*****

Chapter 17 - A Trip Down Memory Lane

Another light appeared in front of Olivia and Joltea jumped out of it. "Woah, okay." The Time Lord said, looking around. "This place is bigger than I thought."

"And dark," the middle schooler quipped. "Took you long enough."

"Sorry bout' that. I had to explain everything to your parents, managed to calm them down a bit and help them understand the situation. The Doctor was literally useless — he only ended up making them more confused." Joltea sighed.

"Okay... so if I remember correctly,  first step: You have to give the biological parent/relative/cousins full access to all your memories." The Visionary said.

Olivia blinked. "And I'm just supposed to give you full permission to all my memories? There's no other option other than this?"

"Yeah," Joltea replied bluntly. "But if it's any comfort, I already know everything that happened to you and everything that will happen to you in your future. Basically I know your entire life story so it wouldn't make a difference even if I had access to all your memories."

"How is that supposed to help?!"

"Well, I'm trying my best!" She let out a huff.

"Fine, then how do we do this?" Olivia asked.

"Just... try to relax. I'm sorry but I'm going to be bluntly honest with you — this process is going to hurt, a lot. It's going to much painful after this, so hold tight."

Joltea walked closer towards her, then held the young girl's hands in hers. Olivia followed her and they both closed their eyes as the darkness around them vanished and the ground beneath them disappeared.

*****

Mr and Ms Watson looked at their daughter, their hands still clasped together in prayer. They were utterly confused earlier of the entire situation. They wanted to call Dr Miller, but Joltea told them not to.

They were only trying to make sense of how their daughter was talking in a coma, and what were the meanings behind the Doctor and Joltea's weird twisted words. Mostly, they were just worried about their daughter.

But after some explaining, the Visionary had managed to help them understand. But the couple didn't really get much of what she was saying, only that their daughter was now apparently 'half alien' and Joltea along with the Doctor were aliens too.

They still had a hard time believing but they decided to go along with it for the time being. If Joltea and this 'Doctor' could help Olivia, that was good enough for them.

They had sat there with the Doctor for hours, watching as Olivia Watson mumbled in a comatose state, her eyelids still closed; Joltea was also currently sitting beside her, the Visionary's fingers placed on Olivia's forehead, and her eyes were shut as well, even though it couldn't be seen through the sonic sunglasses.

"Theta!"

The Doctor spun around from his chair and look towards Joltea. She let out a gasp for breath.

"Aren't you supposed to be with Olivia?" The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Being in someone else's conscious and still being fully aware in the physical world — and talking! That's impossible, even for a Time Lord."

"I'm just that good," Joltea smirked. "Now I just came to remind you to prepare a glass of water for Olivia. She's going to need lots of support after this."

She winked at the Doctor before shutting her eyes once more.

*****

Joltea and Olivia's surroundings changed. The 15 year old girl looked around and found that they were in something that looked like one of those hotel floors she had went before. There were many doors leading to the end of the hall.

It looked endless — there had to be at least thousands or millions of doors from the point they were on. Eternal doors, all with their own shape and designs, made in different material from wood to diamond. Much like hotel rooms, there was a label plastered on each and every door. Except instead of room numbers, there were names.

Names for each and every person Olivia Watson had ever known.

But there wasn't just memories of everyone she had ever met — locked behind those eternal doors were memories of everything she had ever done, every experience, every adventure, every pathway she took, every road she chose... every moment in time.

She glanced at the names written on the first few doors through the long hall — 'The Beginning', 'My Parents', 'Home Sweet Home', 'First Step', 'First Birthday', 'Christmas in London'. She assumed those were the first few memories in the early stage of her life. The memories of her one-year-old self.

"So this is sort of like my 'Mind Palace', yeah?" Olivia asked as they continued walking down memory lane. The memories came flooding at her all at once — the good, the bad, and the ones that she thought she'd forgotten a long time ago.

"Like the one in 'Sherlock'? Uhm, sort of, if you want to think of it like that." Joltea said, still gripping onto her hand. The process of remembering lost memories could be painful for some Time Lords. But somehow Olivia was doing great so far. So far.

"Can I open the doors?" She asked, looking at the differently designed doors.

"Better not, Livia sweetheart. There are cases where sometimes the memories are too painful, and the patient ends up getting stuck in that exact memory on a constant loop, like a horrid nightmare on repeat , never stopping even until the end of time itself."

Joltea sighed. "There are reasons why memories are forgotten and locked beneath a metal door, being pushed away into a deep corner in our mind — it's because they hurt too much that it's better to just forget."

After that it was just silence.

Suddenly as they walked through the halls, they found a rather peculiar door. Not that all the other doors weren't strange as well, but that door had chains wrapped around it, scratches and cracks on the surface of the painted door.

"Ah! So it's this one, then — the mental block." Olivia said.

"Yes," Joltea bit her lip when she heard screaming sounds coming from the other side of the door.

Olivia's eyes widened in horror at the realisation. Unwillingly, she put her hand shakily on the surface of the door and the same white light emitted, her hand burning through the wood and sucking them into the memory like a whirlpool.