Vairë sighed and rubbed her head. She hated the hang-over-ish feeling that the sedatives left her with. It was like being drunk only without the pleasant buzz of having downed several hypervodkas. And, she wanted to know more about how she registered as being non-human on the Judoon scanners. The TARDIS was being treacherously silent about that. She thought she could sense her sister’s guilt on that topic.
“I won’t be angry,” she swore to the TARDIS. “Just tell me what’s happening to me!”
But answers were not forthcoming. Vairë tugged her hair in frustration. She couldn’t figure out what was happening to her. Still…maybe…with Martha Jones on board, she could at least determine if she was still human. She hated to wake the other woman. Martha’s reaction at entering the ship had mirrored her own from so long ago. Vairë grinned. She wondered if all of the Doctor’s companions had wondered at how the TARDIS was “bigger on the inside.”
Wandering through the ship, Vairë tried to sort out her own feelings. If she was no longer human, then what was she? Had she possibly picked up some virus that would have affected the scans? Or were her mother’s words right? Was she changing into some kind of monster? Something that was cold and dark? She was no longer Rose Tyler. Rose had died at Canary Wharf. Vairë shuddered. She wished that the Doctor were here. He would know what to do. He would be able to cheer her out of this. He would help her face her fears.
But he had chosen Reinette. Maybe he would turn from her, cast her out of his ship, curse her as some kind of abomination the way that the Dalek Emperor had. He might even kill her. She could be something unnatural. Something that deserved to die. Vairë kept hearing the words over and over again. They wouldn’t leave her, even when she screamed and clawed at her face until she could feel blood running down. Stupid ape. Child. Not my Rose. No longer human. Stupid ape. The Doctor is worth the monsters. Not my Rose. Just a serving girl. Nothing. Expendable. Stupid ape. Unwanted woman. Troublesome wretch. Unworthy. You will die screaming, bereft. Not my Rose. Cold and dark and no longer human. Nothing. Child. Abomination! Our freedom – to die! Death come and welcome!
Vairë screamed as she tried to blot out the voices swarming at her. Images flashed in her mind of the Doctor and Reinette. She saw her own dreams being shattered like glass. All of the times she’d dreamed of being with the Doctor, of him looking on her with love, of them being together in the TARDIS forever, those visions kept breaking. She shrieked until her throat was raw and it was all she could do to draw air into her lungs.
Martha heard screams and crying. A gentle tone rang in her mind, pulling her out of her sleep. She got up and began running towards the screams. Her medical training took over. Someone was hurt and, as a doctor, her job was to care for them. She came upon Vairë curled up in a ball in the hallway. Blood stained the floor and the woman was screaming as if she were being attacked. Martha glanced around. There was nothing but the two of them in the hall. She knelt down and tried to calm her new-found friend but Vairë seemed completely unaware of her presence. After a long time of screaming and crying with her face buried in her knees, Vairë quieted. She slumped over, every one of her muscles going limp. Martha’s breath hissed in her throat. Vairë had clawed at her face, leaving long, bloody gouges that ran from her forehead to her chin. Even her eyelids bled. Her breath rattled in her throat, a sure sign that she’d probably shattered or strained her vocal cords with her screams. What kind of emotional anguish could bring someone to this state?
Sighing, Martha pulled the unconscious woman up. “If there’s some kind of medical bay, let it be close by,” she muttered. Vairë claimed that the ship – her sister – was alive. The medical student hoped that that was true and that the ship could hear her. A door appeared in front of them and she carried her friend inside. A medical bay stretched out in front of her. Nodding in satisfaction, Martha maneuvered Vairë onto one of the beds and then began searching for something to treat her with. A computer terminal flickered giving directions in English as to where she could find the treatments she would need.
“Can you give me her medical history?” Martha asked. “Is there any family history of mental illness? Depression? Schizophrenia? Catatonia? Anything?”
Vairë’s medical history scrolled across the screen. Aside from a few bouts of depression as a teenager – brought on by a horrifically abusive relationship – she’d never suffered from anything major. “Is she human? Any allergies I should know about? Any treatments for a human that might be ineffective or dangerous for her?” Other than a warning to be careful with sedatives and not to use aspirin, there was nothing. “Do you have any idea what might be wrong with her? Psychic storm? What’s that? Telepathy?” Martha scoffed. “There’s no such thing!”
Martha groaned. Whatever was wrong with Vairë, it wasn’t anything she could fix. Instead, she focused on gently restraining the woman’s arms before she went to work on the gouges in her face. Surprisingly, they were already scabbing over. When they began to scar, turning first pink and then white before fading entirely, Martha thought her heart would stop. She forced herself to keep working, though. When Vairë started struggling in the restraints, screaming, her hazel eyes opening wide and tears trickling down her face, Martha tried to wake her. Then it clicked. She went back to the monitor and checked, asking it to pull up scans of Vairë’s brain waves as well as her heart rate. Elevated delta waves and higher-than-normal theta and alpha activity. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was a night terror.
“Night terrors,” Martha muttered to herself as she tried to recall her medical training on them. They were different than nightmares. Vairë would not be able to recall this episode. There wasn’t a medical treatment for them and it was rare for them to occur in adults past the age of 30. The patient would possess no awareness outside of themselves during the episode. All Martha could do was wait until Vairë shifted naturally into the next stage of sleep. Hopefully this was a NREM stage 4 terror which meant that the next stage would be REM sleep. Once she’d had a few minutes of REM sleep, Martha would wake her and try to see if these episodes were frequent. If they were, she’d try to scrounge up some Valium so that Vairë could get some rest. For now, it was all Martha could do to sit back and wait. She couldn’t console Vairë. That was part of the problem with night terrors – unlike nightmares, you couldn’t rouse someone from them and you couldn’t console them. You had to sit there and watch helplessly as they struggled against some turmoil that not even they could recall. “Where ever you are, Vairë, you’re not alone,” Martha whispered as the other woman continued to writhe and scream. “You are not alone.”
~*~*~*~
Vairë woke up a short while later. She was still embarrassed over what happened. Apparently, Martha had found her having some kind of nightmare – the woman’s explanation hadn’t really sunk in – and then proceeded to give her the normal “I’m a doctor and you’re my patient” interrogation. She’d given Vairë some pills telling her to take them and get a hot shower and then sleep but Vairë was loathe to take any kind of medication. If she wasn’t completely human, she had no idea how her body would metabolize it. Instead, she’d managed to convince Martha that she would follow doctor’s orders long enough for the girl to return to her own bed and sleep. Then Vairë had begun trying to piece together just what she was. She’d drawn blood samples – dark bruises on her arms from missing the vein nearly a dozen times showed she was not cut out for the medical profession – and had pulled out some of her own hair with the follicles still attached. Now she just needed to convince the TARDIS to actually run the scans.
The argument with her sister had taken several hours before the scans were finally running. When a ‘ding’ alerted Vairë that the data was ready, she got into another heated argument with the ship. This one she lost. The TARDIS was not going to let her see the information. Instead, the TARDIS told her that she had superior healing abilities that her immune system was primed and in top form, and that her lifespan was currently ‘much longer than you’d expect it to be.’
“That is enigmatic,” Vairë told her sister. “That is textbook enigmatic,” she added, a ghost of a smile on her lips as she remembered the Doctor saying that about the Face of Boe back in Ward 26 on New Earth.
Back before he’d left her for the most accomplished woman on Earth.
Sighing, Vairë scrubbed her hands through her hair. Well, there was nothing for it. The TARDIS didn’t want her to know what was going on in her own body. Apparently she was suffering from some kind of sleep disorder. She was exhausted and drained. So, she did the most obvious thing – she headed to the kitchen and proceeded to make coffee that was so strong it would have knocked an elephant on its arse. Drinking the brew down, she went to the showers and took a cold one. Between the caffeine and the cold water, she started to regain some level of alertness. Completing her morning ablutions, Vairë dressed and then headed towards the console room. She’d promised Martha a few trips and she was not going back on her word.
“Did you sleep well?” Martha asked. She was already in the console room when Vairë arrived.
“Yeah. Had a nice kip,” Vairë nodded, lying smoothly. “So, where do you want to go? Backwards or forwards? We’ve got all of time and space in our hands here in the TARDIS.”
“Say that again?”
“All of time and space.”
“No, the other bit. TAR something?”
“Oh, this is the TARDIS, my sister that I told you about,” Vairë explained, stroking the console lovingly. “Time And Relative Dimension In Space. T-A-R-D-I-S. TARDIS. Or Maggie,” she added with a grin.
“But this is a space ship or something. How can it be your sister?”
“She’s not just a ship. She’s alive. She was born and grew on Gallifrey.”
“Gallifrey? Sounds Irish. Can we go there?”
“Nah. Gallifrey is kind of…well, boring,” Vairë fumbled. There was no way to get to Gallifrey. The whole planet was locked and destroyed. And Vairë, if she did manage to break the Time Lock and land them on Gallifrey, would just be handing herself and Martha over to execution. Or rather, Martha would be executed. Vairë might be dissected. “No one in their right mind would want to go there. Tell you what. I’ll take you out for dinner and a show.” She spread her hands out on the console and conjured up the image of where and when she wanted to go. The Time Rotors spun up and Vairë sang with her sister as the two of them and their new friend Martha danced through the Vortex back to Elizabethan London.
~*~*~*~
Martha watched Vairë as she sent the TARDIS back into the Vortex. She still couldn’t believe that they’d been to see William Shakespeare. His plays were even better in the past than the most well put-together film adaptation in the future. And then those weird alien witch things showing up. She had no idea how Vairë had known what they were or how to deal with them. But, in the end, Martha had helped to put things to rights and had even been called beautiful by the Bard himself. No wonder Vairë couldn’t seem to stay still for very long. There was so much out there to see and do.
“So, where to next?” she asked the designated driver.
“You mean you’re not scared stiff after that run in with the Carrionites?” Vairë laughed. “Well, we went into the past. How about a trip to the future?”
“Where and when?”
“Hang on a tic,” Vairë grinned. She formed the image of New Earth in her mind. She wanted to visit a place where she’d been with the Doctor. She wanted to smell the apple grass and wander the streets of New New York. She wanted to see how the new humans were doing and visit the hospital. Maybe the Face of Boe would be there. She wanted to tell him how he had saved her life back on the Game Station. It was said that he was the last of his kind. Vairë was getting an inkling of what it must be like for him and the Doctor since she was – as far as she knew – the first, last, and only of her kind. No longer human. Uncertain as to whom or what she was. She wished for a moment that there were some way she could track down Jack Harkness. He would have made her feel better. He would have probably gotten her drunk but he would have been there for her. He wouldn’t care if she were no longer human. But he was gone. And, to be fair, Jack belonged to Rose Tyler, not Vairë Carter. Vairë shoved the thoughts away. “Right,” she said as the TARDIS landed. “Open those doors and you’ll see the year five billion fifty-three. We are in the galaxy M87 on a planet called New Earth.”
“I don’t believe this,” Martha laughed as she ran to the TARDIS doors. Vairë followed after her, somewhat surprised to see that she’d landed them in a distinctly run-down part of town. There were booths opening up where the vendors were trying to sell some kind of patches. Bliss, Forget, Sleep, Happy…Vairë was sorely tempted to buy a few. Maybe then she could get some rest. Maybe then, if just for a bit, she could forget the pain.
But pain was part of what defined her. It was part of what drove her. If she gave that up, then she really would be lost. So, she resisted her impulses and tried to keep an eye on Martha as the woman darted through the town, transfixed. Vairë found herself feeling calm and serene for the first time in a long time as she watched the human woman. Was this why the Doctor traveled with companions? To see things through their eyes? To discover the cosmos anew? Vairë shook her head and sighed. She needed to go back for him. He didn’t deserve to waste away in old France. And, she thought that she might be able to stomach the pain and the jealousy that washed through her when she thought of the Doctor and Reinette being together. After all, the TARDIS was nearly infinitely large. She could build her own world. Her own life. And it wasn’t as if she were still Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler was dead.
But deep in her heart, Vairë knew that no matter what name she carried, no matter what masks she wore, a part of her would always be Rose. Even if it hurt too much right now to acknowledge it. She glanced up and was stunned to see that Martha had vanished. “Oh no,” Vairë whispered. “What have I gotten her into now?”
~*~*~*~
Martha watched Vairë as the blonde stroked the strange, ancient, craggy face that the cat-nun said was called the Face of Boe. Martha was relieved to be out of that nightmarish traffic jam. She was glad that Vairë had finally found her and had managed to work with this Face of Boe to open the skyway so that all of those people could escape and rebuild their lives. Some kind of plague or something had struck down the people of New New York and now it was up to those drivers to repopulate it and rebuild the city. Martha thought they’d do quite well for themselves. Especially if they stayed away from those strange emotion patch things.
It figures, she thought to herself. Here we are, five billion years in the future and humanity still clings to its vices.In her era, it was alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana. In this era, they’d distilled experiences into patches that wound up killing people because all they wanted was to stay high on some emotion. So high that they forgot to eat, sleep, or take care of their bodies until they died.
“Oh Boe,” Vairë was whispering, “don’t die. Don’t leave me here. You saved my life once. On the Game Station, they asked me the name of the oldest inhabitant of the Isop Galaxy. And I knew that was you. Please, stick with me. I’m so alone. I don’t know what or who I am. I just know that you’re one of the first beings I met after traveling with the Doctor. Remember Platform One? The year 5.5/apple/26? You sponsored the event where I got to see the Sun expand and the Earth get roasted. That was my first date with the Doctor.”
Dearest Rose, the Face of Boe said to her telepathically, I remember seeing you there. You were so young then. So fresh and innocent. Time had not begun to weigh on your eyes. I look at you now. You are still young. But older than you appear. I remember seeing you even older than this, my friend. I remember hearing you sing me to sleep. Yes, I know. Rose Tyler died at Canary Wharf. You call yourself Vairë now. The weaver. The wife of Mandos. She who watches and weaves. You’ll go by other names before it is all over. Already, though, I see the weariness and the pain that defines you. You’re still searching to prove yourself to him, aren’t you? An image of the pinstriped Doctor flashed in her mind.
“Yeah,” Vairë sighed. “I still love him, the more fool me.”
It was always meant to be. The Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS. You will see these days reborn, my friend. You will be the mother of many. You will do the impossible – you’ve been doing the impossible for aeons now. Your children are out there, Weaver, Weeper, Gentle Woman of Compassion and Grace, Valiant Warrior, Bright-Crowned Lady of Righteous Battle, She Who Brings Justice, Peacegiver. So many names and so many titles all pointing back to you. So many lives you will live. But know this, Rose Marion Tyler, daughter of Terra, mother of the old and the new…you are not alone. Even now, he’s calling for you. He’s weeping for you. He did abandon you. He ran from you. Because of what he feared. Listen to your sister – not the TARDIS – but your sister. She will give you the answers you need so that, one day, you will be whole again. And remember, my lovely Rose…you are not alone. Remember that when the terror and fear grip you. Remember that when the pain and anguish try to take control. Remember that you are not alone.
“Please don’t die, Boe. Please. Stay with me? Travel with me? Where ever or whenever you want to go. Just…don’t leave me. I don’t know who I am anymore!”
You will remember and learn in time. But for me, my time is ending. Rose Tyler, my dearest friend…we will meet again. I will gather you in my arms and spin you ‘round the white sands of the silver shores in the Undying Lands. I will take your hand – and your husband’s hand – and we will walk into the Deathless West, going together to join in the Song. Together. As it is meant to be.
The Face of Boe took his last breath and fell silent. Vairë wept over him, pressing her face into the wrinkled and craggy skin of his cheek. Martha watched as the blonde mourned the passing of her friend. She felt bad that there was nothing she could do to help this strange creature. Old age caught up with everyone, in the end. Finally, after a long bout of sorrowful weeping, Vairë wiped her eyes, stood up, and gestured for Martha to follow her.
“He was a great person,” Vairë said, her voice quivering with grief. “The universe will always remember the Face of Boe. Now, come on. Let’s see what else there is out there for us two girls to do.”
Without a glance back, Martha followed the strange not-entirely-human girl on to their next adventure.