Lost In Time: A Doctor Who Fanfiction

Chapter 34 - A New Hope

Content warning: Implied child neglect near the end of this chapter. 

Lyssa sighed, tapping her pen against her fingers in agitation as she glanced restlessly around her bedroom. She'd tried reading her book but only made it a few chapters in before she had to give up after having read the same page three times over and retaining literally nothing from it. Then she'd tried moving onto her journal.

But her lack of focus remained. She kept glancing up at the monitor - which remained blank, exactly the same as it had been the last half dozen times she'd checked on it after asking the TARDIS to turn it off. Between the near-constant glitching of the screen and the horrible pit in her stomach that kept growing the longer she'd watched... she'd had to turn away.

She'd tried to occupy herself with other things, but her nervous energy - energy she couldn't get rid of by pacing, due to her being restricted to her bed - kept her thoughts racing too much to focus on any one thing for very long. She just... wished she knew if the Doctor and Rose were all right.

She'd never liked this episode, so she'd only watched it the one time, and thus didn't remember much. Pre-jumping through time, that had never been an issue. Now she was wondering if there was something she could have done, some sort of warning she could have given beyond, "Don't die."

Which. Was good advice, really. Solid. She tried to follow it herself. But maybe something a little more detailed would have been better.

She glanced down at her journal, the blank page staring up at her, and groaned. Finally giving up on updating it, she closed the book and tossed it off to the side on her end table, burying her head in her hands. The expected thud of it landing never came, though, and she paused mid-sigh. She glanced over, expecting to see it had just fallen on her scattered pillows by mistake, only to find it floating in the air at the level of her head.

"Uh." Not sure she could believe her eyes, she reached out with one hand and tentatively poked it, sending it spinning in slow circles. She withdrew her hand, staring at it and then her journal with wide eyes. Glancing at the pen in her other hand, she uncurled her grasp and watched with wide eyes as it floated away from her palm.

"Old girl? Is this you?" she called nervously. She wasn't expecting much of a response, but when the lights didn't even flicker, she bit her lip. Knowing she wasn't supposed to move around much, but figuring she could at least check in the hallway, see if there was something going on there, she tossed aside her blankets and -

Immediately found herself hovering a few feet above her bed. 

Freezing with a gasp - as if movement had been what made her float in the first place - she tried to look around without moving her head. But when it seemed like she wasn't going anywhere - up or down - she tentatively began to shift, spreading her arms out wide as if to help her stay afloat.

"Old girl? What's going on?" she whispered, growing increasingly nervous. The ship was silent, even the usual faint humming was completely gone, and she shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth as goosebumps broke out on her skin.

She glanced around, vaguely wishing she had a ponytail as her loose curls floated in front of her face, and frowned when she saw her bookcase. That, thankfully, hadn't started floating, and neither had her bed, but the pictures and trinkets she had accumulated so far were now hovering precisely in the middle of the air between shelves, shimmering faintly. Even her pictures on the wall were now lined with a shimmery gray around the edges.

She frowned, traces of understanding starting to glimmer through. "You're... protecting all the breakable things," she realized. "Including me."

The lights flickered. And then a moment later, everything shook violently. Every unsecured item went flying, and outside her room she could hear a crash as something metal broke.