The Girl of Colours (Book TWO)

Just a Daydream Away

Callie:

Every time I tried to talk to Luke on the phone, every, single, time, dad did something, and I had to drop the call quickly. The reason I was still here, the reason I hadn't gone home yet, to him and our daughter, was because I wanted as much time with dad as possible, before, before he sent for the past version of me and I screamed the colour out of myself. "And then we discovered it wasn't the Robot King after all, it was the real one. Fortunately, I was able to re-attach the head."

"Do you believe any of this stuff?" Amy and Rory asked me as I walked past, the stitches pretty much dissolved on my stomach, just leaving the scar of the bundle of cells that tried to kill me.

"I was there. And I was the one to put the head back on."

At which point dad sighed, looking at flashing lights on the console. "Oh, it's the warning lights. I'm getting rid of those. They never stop." Because you hadn't refuelled in months.

The Ponds followed me as I walked past in my tall heels, my dark brown and white hair in perfect waves around my face. "Hey. You're still thinking about it, aren't you?"

"Oh, shush. We saw him die. We watched my dad die."

"Yeah, two hundred years in the future." Rory reminded me.

I rolled my eyes, feeling them match the sorrow in my voice, icy blue. "Yes, but it's still going to happen." Then something knocked on the door to the TARDIS. "What was that?"

"The door. It knocked." Yes, I got that, dad. Was rather obvious, the red knocking in the gold TARDIS.

Rory frowned a little. "Right. We are in deep space."

He nodded in agreement. "Very, very deep. And somebody's knocking." Dad ran to the doors, and opened them to find a small glowing box, and his face lit up. "Oh, come here. Come here, you scrumptious little beauty."

It flew inside, and ended up whacking me in the boob. "Ow! Dad, take your little friend here and teach him a lesson on manners."

"I've got mail." Aaaand he wasn't listening. I swear, I'm the parent sometimes. "Time Lord emergency messaging system. In an emergency, we'd wrap up thoughts in psychic containers and send them through time and space. Anyway, there's a living Time Lord still out there, and it's one of the good ones." You were shitting me. They tried to kill us!

"You said there weren't any other Time Lords left." Rory reminded him. "That it was just you and Callie left."

Dad looked over the console and beamed at us. "There are no Time Lords left anywhere in the universe. But the universe isn't where we're going. See that snake?" Ourobouros, a snake eating its own tail, meaning Immortality and Eternal Life. "The mark of the Corsair. Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooo, she was a bad girl." There were times I really doubted how much he loved his first wife, there really was. I mean, he had her, Lucie, Rose, Queen Bess, Marilyn Monroe, and then after all that, River.

And then things started to go bang, and I ran quickly to the console, trying to fix whatever the hell broke. "Oh, what is happening?"

"We're leaving the universe."

"How can you leave the universe?"

"And have you not forgotten the last time we did that, when we were stranded on Jackie's World?!" I yelped at him. "For crying out loud, dad, you're an idiot this regeneration!"

He gave me a hurt look, but kept going. "With enormous difficulty. Right now I'm burning up TARDIS rooms to give us some welly. Goodbye, swimming pool. Goodbye, scullery. Sayonara, squash court seven." Everything went barmy for a moment, before everything went still and silent.