“It is,” said the Doctor. “I’m afraid that back then I was a very reckless person. I often found myself getting into trouble and then having to deal with the consequences of my actions.”
“Surely nothing’s changed,” said Dennington.
The Doctor had a wry smile. “I wasn’t very good at dealing with things. I made a few mistakes. I was maybe a little too overly sentimental.”
Alice put her hand on his. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“No,” said the Doctor, leaning back on the church pew, “but it meant that I failed in my job with Ivy.”
“Ivy had a good life,” said Dennington.
“Yes, but I should have stayed to help her through her grief. Instead I just ran away.” He sighed. “I did keep checking on her though. I saw her spiralling further and further out of control. The job she had…well, I think they called it a lady of the night back then.”
Alice nodded. She knew what he meant by that.
“When she finally hit rock bottom, I decided that I had to do something. By then, though, it had been a year since I’d first met her.”
London, England, 1860
The man stood there, his top hat filthy and falling apart. There was a whiff on stale beer on his breath and Ivy felt sick at the site of his fat, podgy face and grey stubble. He leered at her.
“How much then, love?”
Ivy looked him up and down. “Too much for you.”
Normally she wouldn’t have said anything. She would have accepted any money that came her way, but after seven months of being stuck in this rut, she was beginning to lose all hope. She should have just thrown herself into the Thames that day and ended it all. Then she’d be with James at last.
“I beg your pardon?” said the man, his eyebrows arched. “I’ll ‘ave you know I’ve got enough money to pay your wages for the year.”
“A year with you?” said Ivy with distaste. “Not a chance. If you had that much money, you wouldn’t be dressed as the most undesirable man in London.”
He snorted and then spat into the gutter. They were standing in a narrow alleyway lined with tall, old stone buildings, the gutters running with effluent and rain water.
Ivy found herself backing up a little. She was wearing a low-cut white dress and found herself pulling her shawl a little tighter around her.
“You don’t get a choice in this, you little whore.”
Ivy stepped back as the man came towards her.
And then, like a sound from the Heavens, there came a screeching and whining from somewhere down the alley.
She and the man turned to look as a blue box slowly materialised. His box.
They stood watching in stunned silence for what seemed like eternity. And then the door swung open and the Doctor strode form the box. He didn’t look any different. He hadn’t changed. His clothes were slightly different. He wore a shiny, burgundy waistcoat and had lost the white jacket, replacing it with electric blue, but he was still the same man she had met a year ago.
“Doctor…” said gasped.
“Step away from her, you animal,” growled the Doctor.
“Who the hell are you?” said the man.
“I’m the Doctor. And if you’re not careful, I’ll be the man that makes you wish you’d never set your ugly eyes on this young lady.”
“Hah,” said the man, “wait your turn.”
He turned back to Ivy and the Doctor grabbed the man by his shoulder, span him around and then brought his hand down onto his other shoulder with a chop. The man winced in pain and fell to his knees.
“Leave!” growled the Doctor.
The man didn’t need to be told twice. He barely managed to get to his feet as he ran across the cobbles and to safety.
The Doctor turned back to the astonished Ivy and then broke into a wide smile. “Venusian Karate.” He then smiled sadly at her. “Hello again, Ivy.”
Ivy found her eyes welling up and then, without thinking, whacked him angrily on his chest. “Where were you?! Where did you go?”
“I…needed to get away,” said the Doctor, looking upset with himself. “I’m not very good with…emotions. That is to say, I’m okay, but I don’t quite know how to deal with them exactly.”
“I looked for you for ages. For months.”
“You should have stayed with your family.”
“I couldn’t!” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Everything reminded me of him.”
The Doctor sighed. “Come with me.”
“What?”
“I can show you a better world. A better life. My apology to you.” He held out his hand for her to take.
“I spent a year thinking about where you’d come from.” She looked up. “You came from up there, didn’t you?”
The Doctor nodded. “A long, long way from here as well.”
“It hardly seems possible.”
The Doctor smiled. “Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.”
Ivy stepped through the door of the blue box, and what greeted her was not what she was expecting. She had been expecting the inside of a dark, wooden box with maybe a chair or two to hold them in as they flew to another world, but this was the complete opposite.
It made Ivy stumble at first. It was bright. So, so bright. The room was almost like a large, white dome, filled with yellow circles that reminded her of cheese-holes. The floor was flat and grey and in the centre of the room was a white, hexagonal console with a tube that rose high-up to the ceiling.
The room hummed with energy and she could feel it vibrating through her body. It felt warm in here. Warm and safe.
And it felt alive.
The Doctor walked past her, to the console and pulled a leaver. The doors slammed shut and he smiled, folding his arms. “What do you reckon then?”
“It’s different than I’d have expected.”
The Doctor nodded. “Good-different?”
“Scary-different,” she said. And then she swayed slightly and found herself sitting on the floor. “And it can go anywhere? Any time?”
The Doctor looked at her sadly. “I know what you’re thinking, Ivy,” he said.
“What am I thinking?” she said.
He arched his eyebrows and looked at her.
“Why can’t we save him?”
“I can’t cross my own time stream. Whatever happened, happened.”
“But surely-”
“First rule - you can’t change the past. Not a fixed point, anyway. If I go back and save James then you’ll never meet me a year later to travel in this TARDIS to go back and save him. It’d create a paradox, and you don’t want that.”
Ivy rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. “Stop, stop.” She sighed. The thought had flashed across her mind when he had told her outside that they can travel in time as well. But she might have known it wouldn’t be that easy. “Can we just get out of here?”
“Out of the TARDIS?”
“No,” said Ivy. “Out of London. Out of this time. I can’t stand it anymore. The filth and the loneliness…”
“Don’t you want to pack a bag or-?”
“No,” said Ivy quickly. “I have nothing left here. I don’t want to see this place ever again.”
The Doctor nodded. “Any destination preference?”
Ivy shook her head. “Just somewhere away from here. Please. Somewhere clean with fresh air.”
A few minutes later Ivy stepped from the box onto a completely different surrounding. The air was warm and there was a gentle breeze that licked at her face and blew through her red curls. She could feel something warm through her shoes. It was sand. Warm, soft sand.
She smiled as she looked around her. They were on a beautiful, white-sanded beach. Behind the TARDIS was the clear, blue sea and at the top of the beach a lush, green jungle. A large green bird wheeled in the sky and made a strange, unearthly screeching sound. In the distance there looked to be some kind of large, stone statue near to the shoreline.
“Well?” said the Doctor, emerging from the TARDIS and locking the door behind him.
“Where are we?”
“Still on Earth,” said the Doctor. “Just some nice little island somewhere in the pacific. I like to come here to relax. Not many people come here.”
“Sounds like your life is very dangerous.”
“Yeah,” said the Doctor, sitting on the sand and gazing out at the ocean, “but rewarding. You get to see so much, Ivy.”
Ivy sat down beside him and slipped her shoes off. “What happened to the creature that killed James?”
The Doctor turned his head to look at her. “The Hoopex? It’s gone. On the other side of the galaxy. Probably back with it’s own kind.”
Ivy sighed. “Back then all I wanted was revenge on thing,” she said, finding herself welling up again, “but I guess…it was just doing what it does.” Those words were hard to say. More than anything she wanted to have the thing killed, but over time she had come to realise that it was just an animal. And an animal did what an animal had to do.
“I’m so sorry, Ivy.”
She sighed again. “Tell me more about yourself. What planet do you come from?”
He laughed, noticing that the change in conversation was necessary from Ivy. “How do you know I come from another planet.”
“Because nobody on Earth could ever be like you.” She smiled at him.
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m from a little planet called Gallifrey.”
“Can we visit it?” she said eagerly.
“It’s complicated,” said the Doctor.
Ivy took the hint that he didn’t want to discuss it. “Any family?”
“Family,” laughed the Doctor. “Now there’s a long story.”
“You’re not giving me much here, are you?” she smiled.
“Okay, how about this; one of my brother’s once said to me that if you give everything away at once then you have nothing to give in the future.”
“And what happened to this brother of yours?”
“He’s gone now,” said the Doctor sadly. “Died a long, long time ago, back when I was still living on Gallifrey.”
Ivy noticed that the Doctor wans’t exactly eager to talk about his brother’s death, so changed the subject. “Ever had anyone else travel with you?”
“You’re the first,” said the Doctor with a cheeky grin.
“Liar!” said Ivy, laughing.
“Okay, okay,” said the Doctor. “I do tend to travel with an entourage from time to time. People like you, Ivy. Lost souls looking for their meaning in life.”
“Do they always find their meaning?”
The Doctor nodded. “Mostly.” He looked pained all of a sudden. “Listen, Ivy, it can be incredibly dangerous travelling with me. It can change you. It can make you unrecognisable from the person you used to be.”
Ivy nodded. “Right now, Doctor, I don’t want to be the person I am now.” She turned so she was on her knees and facing him. Something about him looked so, so old. She couldn’t quite put her fingers on it. “I want to come with you. I want to be changed. I want to be a better person. I need to get this pain out of me.”
He touched the side of her face lightly with his fingers and just nodded.
And they sat there for a long time, watching the sun go down..
Mars…Many years later
A long, long, long time had passed for Ivy. She had left the Doctor a long time ago, before meeting up with him again, this time with him sporting a new face. Before then they had explored the universe together, fighting aliens and visiting different races, different planets and different times. She had seen the fall of empires and the rise of warlords. She had fought metal monstrosities and she had changed beyond all that she had started out as.
Her and the Doctor had become the best of friends. She had learnt to grow and become more than the weak woman that she had been all those years ago. She had become wise to the universe and she had learnt so much about the Doctor’s past. The Time War, Gallifrey’s destruction and the complications that had arisen after that. She had fought the deadly Carracarra’s after they had stormed the Great Dome. She had met knew friends and fought alongside enemies. She had watched the Doctor win the Universal Scrabble Championship.
And she had almost fallen in love with the Doctor. He had never shown any such emotion towards her, but she had still felt it. It was the same feeling she had had when she had fallen for James, but something inside her heart told her that she couldn’t do anything about it.
And then she had met Leska. The beautiful, beautiful Leska. She had fallen in love with her and she had travelled with the Doctor and Ivy for some time. This had been the first time she had really loved since James.
And then it had happened again. This time Leska had died.
It was at the Bassassel gardens in China. She had fought bravely, but there had been nothing that they could have done to save her. And the heartache was too much for Ivy. To love the love of your life once, was bad enough, but to lose it twice…that was too, too much.
She had told the Doctor that she wanted to leave him, and so he had given her a time ring so she could explore the universe on her own.
And then he had gone. She didn’t know it at the time, but she would never, ever see that same face of his ever again. The next time she met him, he had regenerated. He had changed into somebody completely different, and although she still felt close to him, it was like she had lost yet another loved one.
After leaving Theen with Dennington, they had settled back on Mars and Ivy had gotten a job transporting minerals from Mars to Earth. She enjoyed her job. She knew she wouldn’t stick at it for long, but just for a while she needed some normality.
Dennington was the controller back at the station and she had just finished loading up her final load for the day when his voice crackled over the intercom.
“Come in, Ivy,” he said.
“Good afternoon, boss,” she said with a cheery smile.
“Are you coming home tonight, or what?”
“Easy,” said Ivy, flicking her switches and prepping the shuttle for launch. “I’ve just been having a Taligion tea with the Ice Warrior stationed at Earth Control.”
“We’re shutting down in an hour. Get yourself back here ASAP.” He sounded stern, but there was still warmth in his voice.
“On my way, Mark,” she smiled. “I’ll see you in another life, yeah?”
“Out,” said Dennington.
Forty-five minutes later, as the shuttle was coming in to land on Mars, it exploded.
Next time: The Doctor, Dennington and Alice bury Ivy Coldstone...and all Hell breaks loose! Coming 26th April 2014.
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