supernova (11th doctor)

A Christmas Carol (pt 1) / Trial (pt 1)

I tried to keep my head down when it came to Area 51. Now that there was a huge scandal around me, I didn't really ask questions or make comments as much as I used to. However, when I walked through the big industrial concrete-white hallway again that Monday morning, someone stopped me despite my mental promise to try not to talk to anyone for the rest of my life here.

"You shouldn't have been selfish." Marla stood in front of me, blocking my way, her arms crossed. The hallway was quite wide, but I felt like I shouldn't try to move. After all, I did just have a part in the imprisonment of her girlfriend.

"I'm... sorry?" I tried to give a short answer, but unfortunately it sounded too much like a question for Marla to be satisfied.

"You shouldn't have tried to take your artifact. There was no good reason for it, and Meredith was just trying to help you." Marla continued, an obvious condescension in her voice.

"I'm—You're right. I'm sorry, really." My lips felt warm, and my voice felt stuck in my throat now, but I had run out of tears at this point. Besides, Marla was a part of one of the original families of Area 51. She was powerful, had every right to be angry with me, and was Sally's sister.

"Yeah, right. If you were really sorry you wouldn't even be here—you should be locked up too. The only reason you're not is because everyone your friends with has some kind of influence. Zodiac is the manager. Your dad is on the board, and now he's with my sister. Your boyfriend is the top ranking field agent, and even if he wasn't, everyone loves him anyway."

She spat this at me, and I knew she was talking about Dylan. I couldn't move even if I tried—I felt frozen on the spot. "You go off on your own to assuage your own stupid insecurities and find a useless artifact, and then when it doesn't do anything you try to steal it? Artifacts are not ours! You tried to steal government property. Were you ever even really friends with Meredith? Are you ever even really friends with anyone, or do you just pretend to love them because it means you can get away with—"

"Hey, what's going on here?" Dylan approached us, an obvious anger in his voice at having heard part of the conversation coming down the hallway. I didn't realize that tears were filling my eyes until he snapped me out of her anger.

"Nothing." Marla continued to glare at me with her arms crossed, not sparing him a single glance.

Dylan glared at her anyway, and put an arm around me, urging me gently to walk past her. "Come on."

My eyes were so blurry with tears because I refuse to let them fall, that I didn't even really see where we were going—I just let Dylan lead the way.

At least Meredith existed again.

888

Since Meredith was no longer with us, I was with Dylan all day as we went through the procedure of finding a new counterpart from the Technology Division. It was the last thing we had to do before we would get our long vacation days, some appointed time for all the news to die down so incidents like the one in the morning didn't happen again.

We were leaving for the day, walking down the hallway and to the elevators that would lead to the exits when Dylan mentioned it again.

"You don't... believe anything they say to you, do you?" Dylan asked me.

"Um... Well, I want to say I don't but I guess sometimes I can't help it. Bad habit?" I figured.

"But you have to at least know that, objectively, it's not true, right?" Dylan asked again. I didn't reply—not exactly sure what he meant by objectiveness and not really wanting to think about it, so he continued. "Right?"