Travellers' Hearts {The Wattys 2017}

Chapter 7

This was it. The last time Kate had seen her parents. She inhaled a deep breath and closed her eyes, taking time to calm herself down, and she was grateful that the Doctor gave her that time, stopping Rose from asking any questions. She knew she had to go now, or otherwise she would probably freeze like a deer in the spotlight and never move again. Kate could feel her heart painfully beating in her chest. She closed her eyes, stepped to the Tardis door and opened it. She was back. Back home.

The palace was exactly the way she had remembered it, with white, glowing walls and golden light coming from the ceiling and warm sunspots dancing on the floor. From behind her back, she could hear Rose whisper an overwhelmed 'wow' under her breath. 'This is beautiful', the Doctor said in response. 'Yes, it is', Kate whispered back, her chest swelling with pride. Her people had been experts when it had come to aesthetics, for they had had an eye for hidden beauty, and rulers from all civilizations had come to take advice about buildings and jewellery from their most educated people. She lead Rose and the Doctor through the castle hallway, signaling them to be quiet because the metal on the walls made a loud echo that intensified every sound they made. Finally, Kate saw the last corner that separated them from the throne room. She was too excited to breathe, her heartbeat racing, every fibre in her body seemed to radiate nervousness as she went around that last corner and stepped in front of two magnificent silver gates. A strange feeling spread in her stomach area; she knew exactly what was happening behind those gates.

Kate, Rose and the Doctor all ducked to peek through massive door bars made of pure diamonds that had been sharpened at both ends and resembled giant spears. Inside the hall, there were three people sitting. On two identical thrones were a beautiful young woman with long blonde hair, dressed in a gown made of so many transparent layers that it seemed to be white and a young man with golden hair like a child's and blue, shiny eyes. Seated between them was a blonde girl around Rose's or Kate's age. After a while, an old man with a beard entered the hall with a bowl made of diamonds, and inside the bowl, a blue liquid was sloshing. Kate took a deep breath, ready to explain. 'We had a war going on, our people against a planet in the neighborhood, the race of the Moules. We were losing, and everyone who wasn't a child or too old for fighting had to go to the other side of the planet to defend our borders with all our strenght. The adults went into war and took their children with them to the border, leaving the old and weak behind. But we needed someone young and strong to rule while King and Queen would lead our troops into battle. And they chose to let a young girl take care of the empire until the war was won. They chose the princess. They chose me.' Kate ended her explanation with bitterness in her voice.

'You?', the Doctor and Rose burst out synchronously in astonishment, 'you mean, that's you?' The Doctor looked at her as if she had gone mad. That girl looked anything but similar to Kate, starting with her hair. To their confusion, Kate nodded and hastened to give an explanation: 'It's a drug that changes every cell in your body except for the brain cells. They put me in this body, but the war killed them all, and they never came home again. The chemist', she pointed at the man who had entered the room a few moments ago, 'died, and with him the secret of how he had mixed up the drug.' Her voice small, she added: 'They all died in the war - my friends, my relatives, and I was left on the planet with only old people to rule over. After fifty years, they were all gone. Every single one of them, all of my people dead. Nothing I could do about it.' Her voice broke as she tried to hide her quiet sobs. She remembered how her great - grandmother had been amongst the last of her race, and how she had died in her arms. The Kate in the throne room didn't know any of that would happen. She thought that they would win, and almost looked proud when she was handed the bowl. She drank it in one draught, and all of a sudden, she screamed a loud scream, threw herself onto the floor, out of the travellers' field of vision, and let out horrible cries in her pain. A couple of minutes passed, and when she stood up, she was identical to the Kate that was standing next to Rose and the Doctor. Shaking, she went back to her mother's throne and took her seat. 'Goodbye, child!', the Queen and King said proudly. Kate only nodded stiffly, then reached out to the tiara on her left and placed it on her head, watching as her parents left the room, silent tears rolling down her mother's face. Tears that Kate hadn't seen back then. She also hadn't seen how her father had taken her mother by her hand as they walked away, into their deaths and the deaths of so many other people. None of the soldiers or their children should survive that war.