Lost In Time: A Doctor Who Fanfiction

Chapter 92 - Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, Part 1

"So the little charms Tirdis and Elektra gave us are connected to our timelines," Vina explained, crunching on a potato chip. "Which is how we're always at the same point in our timeline whenever we try to contact the other despite, you know, you jumping to different points of the Doctor's timeline. I would be on my end, but things have been oddly quiet recently, and I don't want to risk hurting the baby if I don't need to. I'll get back to that in a moment. Anyways, so they're matched to our timelines somehow - I'm not positive on this, but the impression I got was that it actually contained a piece of our timelines in them, probably thanks to Tirdis."

"I get the feeling there's some sort of side effect to this?" Lyssa asked absently, using her fingers to gently detangle a snarl in her wet hair, carefully pulling apart the tangled curls. "I mean, aside from the whole, 'it might accidentally kill you' thing if you press the button?"

Vina snorted. "Yes and no. Because they're connected to our timelines, if something happens to us, it'll affect the charms. If we're in life-threatening danger a small crack will appear, and if we die, the whole thing will shatter," she said somberly. "So... be on the lookout for cracks, I guess," she said on a deliberately more upbeat note. "Juuuust in case."

"It always comes down to the cracks, doesn't it?" Lyssa mused with wry humor, eyes flitting to her still-whole charm. "If one kind won't kill you, another will. I'm just waiting for some new kind to show up that's sentient and slightly homicidal, because why wouldn't it be?" She ran her fingers through her now neatly-ordered hair, mind wandering back to earlier that night.

The redhead eyed her. "You are oddly cheery considering our topic. Did you have a good night?" she asked genuinely, popping another chip into her mouth.

"Sorry," Lyssa said sheepishly, although she couldn't help her smile. "I had a great night," she said enthusiastically, gaze wandering over to her dress, which was hanging in her closet, to be put back in the Wardrobe tomorrow. "The Doctor took me to this new planet while Clara and the Ranger were sleeping, and it was gorgeous there."

"Oh? Tell me more!" Vina coaxed, leaning forward and resting her chin on her hands invitingly.

She probably looked like a starry-eyed dork, but Lyssa let herself relax into the memories she'd been playing back all evening. "Well, it's this place called Már Galadh. I don't know if you have it in your universe, but here it's home to this big tree that apparently was the inspiration for the Norse myths on Earth about Yggdrasil. And the planet itself is gorgeous - blue grass and purple skies, two suns and three moons... It was one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. You could see actual galaxies up in the sky, Vina! Galaxies! Not just stars, but swirling, turning galaxies!" she exclaimed.

"That sounds like a very pretty place," Vina smiled dutifully, looking oddly smug about something. "Please, keep going."

Lyssa didn't bother trying to figure out what she was up to now, too caught up in her story. "Well, once you got close to the tree, some defense mechanism activated, and this current of air would propel you upwards into the air and hold you there, and if you were barefoot, these little particles in the air would burst on contact with your skin and dye the air currents different colors."

"So you made a rainbow?" Vina guessed, tilting her head to the side in interest.

Lyssa shook her head with an excited grin. "Not a rainbow. The northern lights!" She laughed. "The actual northern lights that showed up on Earth! The Doctor told me there was some kind of pathway that connected the two planets, and the light could travel in between and show up on Earth as the northern lights!" She smiled as the memory came to her, "We had to work together to make it happen, so we just danced in a big circle around the tree, thirty plus feet up in the air."