ashes ➝ Doctor Who²

XVII

"Off with his head!"
- Queen Elizabeth, The Shakespeare Code

Penelope huddled herself in her jumper. It was cold now the sun had set and she didn't feel like going near any fires with strange people from 1599.

So she just wandered down the streets, taking everything in and trying not to breathe in as much.

Then she spotted a woman in suspiciously modern clothing, sitting by herself outside of a house. Frowning, she walked over slowly, until the woman looked over and she waved.

She looked as surprised to see her as Penelope was. So she took a seat next to her. But it was very quiet for a while.

"So.. 2000?"

"2007. You?"

"Same. I like your jacket, what's your name?"

"Martha Jones."

"It's nice to meet you Martha Jones." It was quiet again for a minute, both of them equally confused as to how the other was there. "Well.. what do you do? Back home.. I mean."

"I'm a doctor, well I'm training to become one. What about you?"

"I run a company called Torchwood, we deal with extraterrestrial threats against the Earth. I've been sent on holiday, something about grief counselling and taking my mind off things." Martha watched her closely as she stared off into the sky. There was a hidden grief in her eyes, the same she sometimes caught a glimpse of from the Doctor.

"You lost someone?"

"Part of the job I guess, kind of wish my partner had left me in my apartment you know. But she died in the line of duty. She was.. she was good."

"How old was she?"

"Seventeen."

"God she was so young."

"Yeah.."

This kind of quiet was slowly eating Penelope alive. The kind of quiet that happened whenever she bought up someone that had died. It causes the tips of her fingers to go cold each and every time, and prays that something will break the silence before she breaks apart.

"What was it? That killed her? Alien?" Penelope smiled and looked over at Martha, trying to shake some life into her hands.

"I shouldn't tell you but it's 1599 so who'd know. It was some kind of alien entity taking over people and dead bodies. Started somewhere in Hungary and made its way across several countries before it reached us. We called them Borrowers. It- it was horrible and highly infectious and we couldn't let it spread. She got infected and tried to attack us, I had to.. I had no choice."

"I'm so sorry."

"We burned every single one of them into the ground or else they would have destroyed the entire human race. We did what we had to."

Penelope stands, sucking in a painful breath and blinking away tears. No point crying with a stranger out of her time who doesn't need to know this.

Looking down at the vortex manipulator on her arm, she punched in coordinates for Jasper's apartment in 2007.

"I think this is enough sight seeing for me. I've seen Shakespeare with my own eyes and I doubt anything interesting will happen. Unless his wife comes in from the county I don't really feel like seeing anything else." Martha stood with her, tempted to hook onto her arm so that she wouldn't leave.

"Not even Love's Labour's Won. A lost play seems interesting enough to stay, we can go sightseeing. I didn't expect to see anyone from my time here."

"You do have a way back right? You're not stuck in the 16th century are you?"

"I have a ride." The women smiled at each other, grateful for some normality in the time they found themselves in.

"Then I'll see you around sometime Martha Jones. If I somehow meet you again in this wide universe I'll give you my number. Enjoy the show tonight."

Just a few buttons later and the woman disappeared from 1599 without Martha even learning her name.

Penelope landed a little hard in Jasper's kitchen. She called out for him but there was nothing. The silence answered her and crept into her skin, making her so damn cold all over again. Biting at her heart and her brain. She wasn't able to keep calling out for Jasper as she slid slowly down the fridge, the cold and the grief taking over her.

She cried alone on the floor of Jamie Jasper's kitchen that night, wishing that she had believed it when she told Martha she had no choice.