I ran down the ornate hallway—one of the only hallways in Area 51 that had more to it than just white and gray concrete. There were pillars every few feet, high ceilings with chandeliers, shiny dark brown floors, and intricate marble trimmings along the middle of the walls.
I almost slid on the shiny floor as Dylan caught me in his arms. "Woah, careful—"
"I did it!" I regained my breath, stepping away from him and giving him his cell phone. "I integrated the communication tech we found in Constantinople into our phones, so now it should work across universes, because it's a direct line."
Dylan took his phone back from me, and put it in the pocket of his suit. Dylan wearing a suit was definitely not a sight I was accustomed to seeing, but everyone had to be dressed their best for court proceedings as an unspoken rule of our society. "Are you sure about this?"
"Only one way to find out," I took my locket out from inside my knee-length red dress.
"Scarlette!" Dylan hushed, grabbing my hands, which were holding the locket. "Right here? Right now?" He nervously looked around at the other similarly dressed people loitering the hall around us, waiting to get inside the court.
"Not right here," I stated obviously. There was no way I could just disappear in front of these people and get away with it. "But of course right now!"
"Why can't you just wait until after the hearing?" Dylan asked.
"It's going to take all day. I would have gone back earlier, but I wanted our phones to be fixed in case anything happened. It's been two weeks—I don't know what I missed. I'm not going to wait any longer. But I promise it'll just be quick."
Dylan stepped away from me and let me go, knowing he couldn't argue with me about this.
888
"Just tell her." Craig told himself, staring at the picture of him and Sophie—the girl he should tell, hung on his refrigerator. "Just tell her—I love you. I love you." Craig hit his head against the refrigerator in frustration, trying to practice. "Oh, just. Hey, I don't know if you knew..."
Craig's soliloquy was cut off by a ringing of his doorbell.
He wondered who it could possibly be for only a split second—until he saw Sophie left her fluffy pink keys on his table, and snatched them up. "Oh, every time!"
"I love you, I love you," Craig practiced saying to himself, as he walked over to the door to open it, and finally admit the truth to his best friend.
He opened the door wide, and didn't realize it wasn't Sophie behind it until he had already gotten through the sentence, "I love you."
The Doctor cocked his head, trying not to smile weirdly. After all, it could be a custom he didn't know about. "Well, that's good, because I'm your new lodger. Do you know," The Doctor took the fluffy pink keys from Craig. "This is going to be easier than I expected."
888
I was walking through the court hall as fast as I could while simultaneously trying not to draw any attention to myself. I honestly thought I was doing a pretty good job of it, right up until Sally found me, and stopped me in my tracks.
"Scarlette, I need you to know this—" Sally grabbed my arm. She was usually cool an collected, and always seemed to have a trick up her sleeve, so it was unnatural to see her acting so urgent.
"What is it?"
"I love your father." She blurted out to me. "I would never do anything to hurt him. I would never do anything to hurt you. Okay?" She looked me directly in my eye, telling me this sincerely, waiting for me to say something.
I didn't know what this was about, and I wanted to give it more thought—but I didn't have the time, and suspected I was going to find out soon anyway. All I could manage was an "I know," before walking off again.
888
"These are your keys," Craig grabbed a simple metal ring with three keys on them.
"I can stay?" The Doctor asked excitedly, moving to stand in front of Craig.
"Yeah, you're weird and you can cook– it's good enough for me." Craig chuckled, holding up the keys in front of him and holding up each one individually, explaining what they were for. "Right—outdoor, front door, your door."
The Doctor wasn't even paying attention to the keys being held up, and was busy smiling at the fact that they were his. "My door, my place, my gaff!" He snatched the keys from Craig and laughed. "Yes—me with a key."
Craig nodded, trying to just accept his weirdness now, and spoke in a lower tone, as if telling a secret. "And listen, Mark and I, we had an arrangement where if you ever need me out of your hair, just give me a shout, okay?"
Craig winked at the Doctor, and the Doctor winked back, only pretending to understand what was going on before asking, "Why would I want that?"
"In case you want to bring someone round—"
"Right!" The Doctor interrupted, immediately thinking of someone. "By the way, something you should know. There's a woman called Nova, she's usually with me but she's at home right now sorting out some... family problems, and I don't know if she'll be back soon or not." The Doctor explained.
"Oh, everything alright, mate?" Craig picked up on the Doctor's worried tone.
"Yeah, yeah," The Doctor quickly changed his demeanor. "I just thought I should let you know she might come around some time."
"Okay, well you might want to tell her to bring a pillow—cause there's only one on the bed right now," Craig informed him.
"Oh, it's okay, we don't sleep much." The Doctor assured him, smiling gently.
Craig cringed just a little. "Didn't need to know that, mate."
The Doctor assumed he was right, but wasn't sure why. "By the way, that rot," The Doctor looked to the rot that was slowly growing across the ceiling. "I've got the strangest feeling that we shouldn't touch it."
888
"Why does the universe hate me so much?" I asked, holding my head in pain, noticing that once again I landed on the floor when there was a perfectly good bed next to me that I could have landed on instead.
"Nova! I didn't know if you would make it here," The Doctor kneeled beside me and helped me stand up.
I waited a few moments for the pain to subside before responding. "Yeah, I just wanted to make sure..."
I stopped, still not able to speak a sentence all the way through with the pain in my head, so the Doctor continued. "Make sure of what?"
"That my phone would work..." I replied sheepishly, before looking around at our oddly normal surroundings. "And where exactly are we?"
"My room! In Essex, in the flat of a man named Craig," the Doctor told me excitedly.
"IS THAT NOVA?" I heard a familiar shriek from the Doctor's ear.
"OW!" The Doctor held a hand up to his ear. "Not so loud! Yes, it's her," the Doctor took out the earpiece from his ear and gave it to me.
I looked down at the strange blinking device and then back up at him, not knowing what to do with it. He grabbed it from my hand and moved my hair back, putting it in my ear himself. I only had a brief moment to think about the sensation of his fingertips brushing my hair behind my ear until I giggled a little. "That tickles..."
"Nova?" Amy asked from the earpiece.
"Yeah, hey! What did I miss?" I smiled. I really did miss Amy while I was gone.
"Well, there's a Van Gogh painting dedicated to me now," Amy said nonchalantly.
I grinned. "That's so cool! It's technically always been dedicated to you."
"Yeah, I know! Listen—the Doctor told me what happened, I know you have to be... over there, but do you think you can still help him sort out whatever's going on? I'm stuck in a raging, manic TARDIS here."
"Of course, I'll do what I can!" I glanced to see that the Doctor was now poking around at some miscellaneous items on a dresser, and spoke quietly— "Also, we should do Nora Ephron for our next director marathon."
"Ooh, deal!" Amy chirped excitedly.
I gave the earpiece back to the Doctor, tapping him on the shoulder with it, and he squinted back at me. "Director marathon?"
"Girls only," I plopped back down on the bed to try and calm what was left of my trans-universal headache as he continued pacing around and talking to Amy.
"Now, all I've got to do is pass as an ordinary human being. Simple. What could possibly go wrong?" The Doctor chattered away.
"I'm going to ban you from saying that," I groaned. Every time that line was said, something always went wrong.
The Doctor only raised his eyebrows at me mischievously, before continuing on with Amy. "Bow ties are cool. Come on, Amy, I'm a normal bloke. Tell me what normal blokes do... Fine." The Doctor turned back to me. "Nova, what do normal blokes do?"
I sat up. "Well, first of all—how did you pay your rent?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"Soniced the nearest ATM— works every time."
"And then?"
"Put the money in a bag, gave it to Craig."
"Cash? In a bag? Well, he definitely thinks you're a drug dealer—so maybe that will help subside whatever doesn't pass as normal." I shrugged.
The Doctor sneered at me playfully, and paid attention to Amy in his earpiece again. "I could do those things. I don't, but I could."
Some banging upstairs interrupted, and I jolted, remembering what was going to happen for the first time since I landed here.
"Hang on, wait, wait, wait—Amy?" The Doctor asked, putting down the items he was poking around at on the shelves, looking up to the ceiling where the noise had come from.
I stood up, seeing that the clocks around the room were spinning forwards and backwards rapidly. I walked up to the Doctor and grabbed his left arm, holding it up and moving back his sleeve to look at his watch on the inside of his wrist, noticing that it was moving back and forth also. "Ooh, time distortion."
"Localized time loop," the Doctor continued for me, sitting down on the bed. "Amy—whatever's happening upstairs is still affecting you... My end's good. No, no, no, not really. Just keep the zigzag plotter on full!"
"Um... Doctor, I'm going back to 51 now, but I'll try to come back as soon as possible," I said softly, holding my locket in my hand, knowing he was busy enough over here.
The Doctor seemed caught off-guard by my statement. He stood up again, but seemed hesitant to approach me. "Well, I'll see you soon, then."
I nodded, and smiled after a moment. "Yeah, see you soon."
888
I quickly shuffled next to Dylan on the court bench, not many people noticing my entrance. There were many others moving in and out at a constant rate, but I still spoke in hushed tones. "What did I miss?"
He leaned over to me, whispering towards me. "Pretty much just the boring stuff. Now they're about to reveal another director."
"Emergency director," I shuddered. "Do you think the revealing rumors are true?"
"Definitely, at least for emergency courts. They always try to say they choose which director to reveal next at random, but everyone thinks they've had to have messed up somehow." Dylan muttered.
I moved my head up and around, trying to get a good angle to see the very front row of people. There were eleven people sitting next to each other in black cloaks there. Those people were the directors, and one of them was about to be revealed.
"If the appointed director could step forward," the judge asked. One of the cloaked figures stood up, and approached the judge cautiously. "And please remove your hood."
Slowly, the figure brought up their black leather gloved hands, and pushed their hood back, revealing a mass of brown curls.
"That's.... Is that...?" I asked Dylan, hardly believing what I was seeing, but simultaneously looking back to certain things that had happened, and piecing them all together. I didn't want it to—but it made perfect sense.
"Please face the jury, and answer any following statements and questions that may arise to you throughout the session," The judge ordered. "State your name."
The person turned, revealing themselves and proving my recently developed hypothesis correct. "Sally Jones," She echoed, staring straight ahead, not daring to look at anyone.
"Your recommended demotion is Assistant to Head of Division 3, Zodiac. Do you accept, or keep your pretense of Manager of Transfers?" The judge read from a paper, reading out Sally's new job options since she was no longer a director.
Sally gulped, but her face was carefully emotionless. "I keep my pretense."
"Thank you, you are dismissed for the present moment."
Sally stepped down and sat a row behind her old seat, still holding herself as powerfully as the people sitting in front of her. I stared at the back of her head, choosing to believe that what she told me before was true quicker than I expected. After all, even though she was a widely liked person—now that she was revealed as a director, she definitely earned herself new enemies.
However, I took this as an opportunity.
"Scarlette? Are you okay?" Dylan asked, noticing my new expression.
Sally being my father's girlfriend was a well-known fact, so it would have been easy to leave, and everyone would assume I would be shaken by her reveal since no one exactly knew how close we were.
I nodded and waved my phone at him, signaling that he should text me when something comes up, and walked out of the courtroom, and back to the other universe.
A/N: i'm SO happy that you all liked that last chapter, i hope you all liked this one too! i know that i skipped vincent and the doctor-- that's where the doctor took amy when nova told him to taker her "somewhere nice," and when i was outlining everything a long time ago i realized it would be better and more realistic if i skipped it-- after everything that happened, the doctor and nova probably need some time away from each other, and nova needs to spend more time being scarlette.
thank you all again, i have a lot of work to do but i seem to be ignoring it all pretty well, so expect another chapter soon again!