The Girl Who Ran

Chapter 4

"...out of the paradox..."

"...put it out!"

"...had it somewhere in..."

"...coming to!"

"Hand me that water bottle."

"Rachel? Rachel, can you hear me?"

I heard her. That was Rose. I tried to nod my head, say something, but my brain just wouldn't let me. I attempted to open my eyes, but against my will they stayed shut, as if some invisible lock had been placed on them. I was lying on the ground; the metal grating pressing into my back gave that much away.

"It's okay. You'll be fine." That was the Doctor speaking. My head rolled around on the uncomfortable floor a few times as I made another try at speaking, but only a sort of guttural noise from my throat came out.

What had even happened? I had put on the strainer-hat, and fixed my mind on a specific mind and place. What time and place, however, I couldn't remember. Something important though. Sometime important.

Without warning my eyes snapped open.

There were the Doctor and Rose, their faces hovering right above me. The Doctor gave a toothy grin and straightened up, pulling on his pinstripe suit jacket.

Rose's soft blonde hair swung about her face as she turned to face him. "So what do we do now?"

I blinked a few times, regaining control of my body, bit by bit. My head swiveled over to face the Doctor. "Wha-at hap. Hap-pened?" I was able to croak out. My entire body felt a million years older, as if it had existed eons before I had.

"The TARDIS realized we were going right into your past. She didn't like the idea at all, and so to compensate for the paradox, she tried to deter you from getting us to the right time and place."

I began to feel my arms and legs again as the memories rushed back into my head. Spencer. Paul. If we had, in fact, travelled back in time, they were both here, and I was about to make a choice. In my mind, back then at least, it was the choice. I found strength return to my shoulders and moved around a little on the floor.

"So that pinching," I said, word by word, not rushing anything. "That w-was the TARDIS fightin-ing back against me?"

"Yes. Well, probably. It's possible it was a space amoeba, but that's an unlikely situation."

I managed to prop myself up onto one arm. Rose reached down to help me, but I pushed her hand away. "I'm alright," I said. "I can get up on my own." With a surge of strength I propelled myself into a sitting position and looked around at the now dangerously hot control room. Items lay strewn about, as if there had been a violent earthquake. Bits and chunks of coral had fallen off, which either the Doctor or Rose had begun to collect into a pile. Next to me lay the spaghetti strainer, with a few of the wires sparking every so often, threatening to ignite my clothes. I shoved them aside and stood up. "Was there a fire in here?" I asked, once again noticing the heat. A fire extinguisher rolled out from behind the control panel, which the Doctor hurriedly kicked into a compartment of some sort.

"Nothing I couldn't handle," he said nonchalantly. "Just a few routine paradox flames."

"Blimey," Rose whispered to me as the Doctor launched into a sort of soliloquy about how he could have single handedly taken care of the situation, if the TARDIS hadn't tried to interfere. "If that's what he calls a few flames, then I'd hate to know what he calls a real fire. Sometimes I just don't understand him."

I leaned up against the control panel and looked over a Rose. "How long have you been traveling with him? You seem to be a friend, but it still seems like you hardly know him in some ways."

"I've been traveling for over a year now, and yet sometimes it feels as if it's only been a few days. Recently he...he changed. I've only known this one, this Doctor, for about a month. I'm still getting used to it all, I think."

"What do you mean he changed?" I made sure to keep my voice low, so that the Doctor wouldn't be aware that his long monologue was going unnoticed. "You mean his personality changed? Or he had memory loss?"

She watched the Doctor with some sort of longing in her eyes as he pace back and forth, delivering his speech. "He just...changed. His body, his personality, his entire being. He became a completely different person, just, with the same memories. He calls it regeneration. I consider it death."

I was about to ask her how and why he had undergone this "regeneration," when the Doctor cut me off.

"Oi! What are you two yapping on about! I've just been explaining some very serious stuff and you lot weren't paying any attention, were you?" He wasn't angry, but he most certainly did not seem to be the most pleasant person to be around at that moment.

Rose looked over at him and smiled. "Doctor," she said, emphasizing the last syllable a bit more than normal. "What do you say we go do what we came here for?"

"Fantastic idea!" I chimed in. Rose looked at me as if she had seen a ghost.

"Brilliant," stated the Doctor. "Let me just run a few preliminary checks first."

The Doctor skittered over to a screen and began to type away on a keyboard nearby.

"What's wrong?" I asked Rose. "You've gone pale."

She took a deep breath. "It's just...that's what he used to say. The Doctor. Before he regenerated."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"He would...it was his sort of...catch phrase. 'Fantastic.' Everything was fantastic to him, and I guess everything sort of became fantastic to me as well." She swallowed before continuing, her voice quivering ever so slightly. "Things change when you travel with the Doctor. You learn things that you wish you never knew. You learn about yourself. You learn that not everything can be fixed and that sometimes you can't run away. You sort of become like him, for better or for worse. Mostly for better. But when he just goes and...changes who he is, it's just so hard to know anything..." She trailed off, the moisture in her eyes reflecting the dull brown interior of the TARDIS.

"Right," said the Doctor from the other side of the room. "Looks like we've landed inside a school gym with flashing lights and all sort of noise. Mind explaining to us what we're about to walk into, Rachel?"

I nodded. "Yeah. This is the night I learned of my Mum's disappearance, five years ago. This is my prom of my sophomore year in high school." I paused as I realized what I was about to witness. "Let's do this."

With that, the Doctor pulled open the TARDIS doors and we stepped outside.