The Girl Who Searched the Earth
It was getting dark, and I had made no progress whatsoever in locating the Doctor.
The slight chill in the air had since increased to a bitter cold once the sun finally set. I hadn't even noticed how numb my hands were until too many hours had passed.
I stopped wandering the field, the tenth one I had searched that night, and decided my plan was no longer effective. I flipped off my flashlight, and just stood in the wind for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. He was there, he had to have been there. I'd made the calculations - which, I had to admit, took a bit more gut instinct than I think traditional mathematics is supposed to entail - and I knew he had to have landed within two miles of here.
Okay, maybe more like three.
No. Fine. Four miles, if I'm being generous.
It shouldn't have mattered whether he was two miles or two hundred from me, I should have found him by then. Yet, he was nowhere to be seen. I teleported out of the field, after double checking to make sure it was clear.
I blinked at the sudden bright light that hit my eyes, and just barely ran out of the road in time to miss being hit by a car. I honestly didn't know where I was, but it was a city, of sorts. There were cars, there were lights, the occasional person passing by. It was quite a jolt from where I had wandered around, aimlessly, for what felt like days. It was loud, and there was construction going on a few miles off. For once, it was nice to actually see some life around me.
I crossed the street again - this time, making sure the road was clear beforehand - until I finally arrived where I was hoping to go in the first place. I pushed the doors open soundlessly, hoping to make the smallest disturbance possible.
~🌺~
"I'm...sorry. I still don't understand."
I placed my elbows on the table, holding my head in my hands. "What's there not to understand? Do you or do you not have a report of a man falling out of the sky?"
"I just - is this some sort of joke? Because I don't understand-" The policeman shook his head. "Look, if you need a ride home, I can arrange for that. Or I can call your parents, but this-"
"Listen, man, I am dead serious right now, I swear." I sighed loudly, leaning back to look around the room. "My friend has gone missing, and if I'm right, then he should have landed right around this area, at right around this time." I stopped. "Wait a second, where is 'here,' anyway?"
"You're in Sheffield."
I blinked. "Sheffield?" I echo, "what's a 'Sheffield?'"
"I have better things to do right now, Miss. Now tell me, what was your name?"
"Was there any people just...found, anywhere around here? A man, or a - oh, gosh, I don't even know."
"Now, hang on," the man said, suddenly a lot more concerned than he was a moment ago, "has your friend actually gone missing? Be serious, please, because I need to put out a call if that's true."
"No, no." I groaned. "That won't be necessary. He's not missing, he's just nowhere to be seen. Now, please, did you have anything unidentified, or anything strange for that matter-"
"How long has your friend been missing?" The man persisted. He meant well, but the way he was treating me was starting to get on my nerves.
"Dude, I literally don't know how to answer that."
"A day, two days, a week?"
"In a way, he went missing three seconds ago, and in another way, he's been missing for seven hundred and sixteen years." I sighed. "That's what makes time travel so gross. He goes one way, I go the other, and the next thing I know I haven't seen him in seven months."
"Your friends been gone seven months and you're just bringing this up now?"
"No," I exasperated. "I haven't seen him in seven months. He might have just seen me two days ago."
"I don't get it."
"Well you wouldn't, would you?" I scoff, "you, humans. With your silly, linear brains. I don't understand my life, so of course, I would never ask you to try to understand my life. All I need from you is a 'yes' or 'no' about the missing persons."
The man pondered my statement for an uncomfortably long time, before he finally spoke. "I'll need a physical description."
"I...I...I can't." I shrugged.
"Why not?"
"Well, I don't know what he looks like." I said, matter-of-factly.
"How do you not know what your friend looks like?"
I looked up at the dropped ceiling. "Remember how I said that I don't expect you to understand my life?"
"Look, Miss, if this conversation is to continue, then I'm going to need you to give me something."
I tilted my head slightly, "do you want me to start at the beginning? Because I can start at the beginning." I said so almost like a threat.
"Yes. That would be just fine."
"Okay," I nodded my head, and then I began, "when I was younger, much...much younger than I am now, I used to have these dreams. Well, I suppose to any other person they'd be nightmares, but not to me. In these dreams, I used to follow around the life of this man. A man who - at the time - had twelve different faces. There were certain faces that I...I saw more often. I grew more accustomed to. And when the dreams stopped, I met this man in real life, and we came to be friends, of sorts. But we grew apart - I grew apart - rather recently. I hadn't seen him for quite some time. And...and something happened." My head shot up, thinking about that day, "it was two thousand seventeen. A few months in. And I wanted his input on something. He was teaching, at the time, and I called...the university or whatever, and you want to know what they told me?" I leaned in closer, lowering my voice, "he hadn't shown up for work...in months. Just one day, out of the blue left, never came back. There was also," I pursed my lips, and my eyes shifted down to the floor. "There was someone else. A kitchen staff...Bill Potts...she hadn't shown up either. And so I...I went over there...checked his office. Everything was fine, it hadn't been touched. Except the TARDIS, that was gone. Then, I checked downstairs...and Missy was gone." My arms went slack, and I sighed. "I assumed the worse. I always assume the worse. Because then I'm either right, or thankfully wrong."
"How...old is your friend?"
I rolled my eyes, impatient. "Old. Although, I'm starting to think I'm older. But that's not even the worst of it, man. Because that whole ordeal...I realized something. See, the Doctor's never gone missing for me. In fact, he can't go missing, because I know everything that's ever gone on in his life. Like a book, I know his life from the start until...now. But, there was always a point." I inhaled sharply, "where everything just sort of...stopped. The cliffhanger of all cliffhangers. One day, the Doctor, and Bill, and Nardole...they go to Mars, or something. Might have been Jupiter. But they go there, they cause complete chaos like they always do, and then they come home. Then, they went to...Scotland? I dunno. Somewhere up there. But...the thing is...after that...I never saw them come home. And I-" I shuddered, and, for once, it wasn't from the cold. "There's nothing past that. I don't know for certain what he did from then on." I stopped for a second to collect my thoughts.
"So, going back to that day," I continued, "I was flying blind, and my friends had just up and vanished with this gal Missy, the most dangerous person in the universe. It took me weeks to piece together where they'd gone, and I probably broke more laws in those weeks than anybody-" I stopped, grimacing, making an effort not to make eye contact with the policeman, "uh, anyway, so I found out where they had gone, or roughly, at least, but I couldn't get myself anywhere near there. The whole place was...like...time locked. And that only happens when big, icky things go down. So, my 'everyone's dead' theory begins to seem more and more plausible. But, I had one, one little theory left." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small Yale key. "This. I'm not technically supposed to have this, but am I glad I do. Because with this, and my clever, clever mind, I was able to track the last place the TARDIS materialized." I grinned. "Any guess where that was? Right here in good ol' Sheepfields."
"It's Sheffield."
"Whatever. That didn't concern me. What concerned me was that my readings said the TARDIS was a few hundred feet up when it materialized, and it never properly hit the ground. Where it is now, I don't even know. I tried looking for it. The whole thing's just gone. But who cares? She can take care of herself, but my friend can't. Hundred feet up, even he wouldn't survive a fall like that. He'd have to have regenerated somewhere in the process. Completely different man, dazed and confused, can't tell right from left, wandering around on his own. I don't know what happened to Bill and Nardole. I don't want to think about what happened to Bill and Nardole. But they're not here, and they're not in the TARDIS, so...who knows. Oh...what a horrible thing to say." I looked down at my shoes. "But, we're talking about my friend, now. I need to find him, while I still have a chance."
The man laughed, surprisingly, and I couldn't help but gawk at him. "Okay, Miss." He grinned, "cute story. This was fun. I need a little entertainment during these long shifts. But, I really do think it's time you head home, now. I'm sure your friends are hiding around the corner, so why don't you all head off, then."
"Oh, this face." I moaned, "I'm growing out of it, I swear. It's just too...too young. Nobody believes a word I say. Ever. Because I look like a child, I automatically don't have the same assertiveness as, say, my friend. I can't deal with it anymore...hold on a second. What is that?" I pushed off the desk, before sprinting over to the police station doors. I shoved my weight into them until they opened slightly, and I stood there, the wind biting at my face. I took the TARDIS key and held it flat in my hands. It had heated up, and a light gold aura was now surrounding it.
"Yeah. I felt that, too." I returned the key to my pocket, and turned back around to face the man. "He's obviously here, and he's obviously just regenerated because that amount of regeneration energy doesn't just exist. So, if you haven't found him, then that obviously means somebody isn't doing their job correctly, and that my friend is in much more danger than I first figured." I stopped, wondering if I was being too cruel. I decided to let it slide. "Thanks for nothing," I snapped, and walked out of the open doors. I had to duck under the arm of a young woman who had reached for the police-station door.
"Whoop," she said, catching the door before it swung shut. "Sorry about that." Then, she got a good look at my face, and squinted at me, concerned. "Are you all right?"
"Yep." I lied. "Just...I'm having a weird night."
Her long, dark hair was whirling in the wind as she spoke. "Really? Huh." She seemed to be speaking to herself. "There must be something in the air."
"Your day not going as planned, either?" I wasn't really sure if I was supposed to have said anything more. I couldn't tell if the conversation was supposed to be over or not.
"Yeah." She answered. "It's really...really not." She shook her head. "Anyway. I better-" she pointed into the building.
"Right. Sorry." I held up a hand, "I kinda gotta thing...too." That was about as in-depth as I was willing to get.
"Well." She paused, like she was considering saying something else. "Good luck, I guess?"
"Yeah. You, too. Uh...bye." I half walked, half ran until I was in a quieter area of the city.
The trail of regeneration energy left just as soon as it started, and I was once again left with nothing, except for a key to a ship that was nowhere to be seen. I was cold, and slowly getting tired. I knew I had to keep enough energy to be able to teleport back home. Eventually, I was going to have to call it quits. But at that moment, that was the last thing I wanted to do. I still didn't know where the Doctor was, and I wanted more than anything than to make sure that he was okay. Regeneration is when a Time Lord is at their weakest, and if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time...
But it was Sheffield, for goodness' sakes. We weren't in the middle of a Dalek war zone. He'd be fine. Right?
Half an hour. I'd give myself half an hour.
So, I continued on. Then again, I didn't make it very far on foot, but I wanted to conserve my energy. Earth was fun and all, but I was going to have to eventually return to my own planet.
Alone, if need be.
~🌺~
I had officially lost all feeling in my hands, and I could feel the blood rushing to my face as a last ditch effort to conserve heat. I made my best attempt to ignore the fact that I certainly had no idea where I was headed. I guess I was hoping some sort of instinct would take over. I guess, in a way, it did.
As I made my way out of the bustle of the city and into the darker, more quiet sections of town, I was ready to throw in the towel. The Doctor wasn't there. And if I had learned anything about him - and I do believe I picked up a bit - if the Doctor wasn't making a desperate effort to be found, then he was never going to be found.
At least, that's what I reasoned out as a way to convince myself that he wasn't, in fact, dead.
However, that thought was slowly starting to creep past my subconscious. Most of the time, I could just merely think of the Doctor and, barring he's within the vicinity, I'd be able to reach within a half mile of him. But something was wrong. It was like the connection was broken. I couldn't feel him. I couldn't even sense him. Whoever this new person he may or may not have sauntered off as was unfamiliar to me. We could pass each other on the street and I would be none the wiser. He was now a stranger to me, whether he was dead or not.
I turned a sharp left around a corner, and looked up at just the right time to see a massive blue explosion of light shoot up into the sky. I couldn't see exactly where it came from, but it took a while to fade away. I shook my head in disbelief. "What?" I said out loud.
I didn't have long to come up with any theories, however. I took off in a sprint when I heard a sharp shout coming from just a few streets ahead. I had no idea the direction I was going, nor did I know what exactly I was running towards. I did eventually find my way, but by then, it was already too late.
There was remnants of food strewn all about. I wasn't sure if it was done in an act of self defense or in the process of trying to escape. Either way, it was done in vain.
The body I found had only been killed moments before I arrived, and I hissed at myself for not being faster. It was completely mangled, the skull nearly cracked down the middle, with massive freeze-burns on the flesh. It was very...unearthly.
I didn't stay long enough to study it any further.
I circled around, struggling to find where the killer had exited. There wasn't any sort of trace, however.
And so, I just left. I figured some other poor soul would stumble across the body and report it...hopefully. That wasn't at all what I had expected my night to turn, and I couldn't help but find it a little too coincidental that this happened the same night of the disappearance my long-lost alien friend.
I felt this odd surge of both relief and horrible dread. He was most definitely somewhere around there. The problem that arose was whether he was still alive or not.
And at that moment, he was really looking...quite dead.
It was at then that I truly had no idea what to do. There was a possible murderer - possible murderer alien, but I tried not to think about that - roaming the street, and I felt this weird obligation to deal with that. There was also strange lights in the sky, which I figured I would have to look into at some point. But at the same time, I was just as concerned with finding the Doctor.
But, then I figured, this Doctor is still the Doctor I've known for all these years. If he was alive, he'd be right in there with the danger. If I could find the killer, I could find the Doctor, and vice versa. It seemed like a silly plan even at the time, but my half hour had ended over fifteen minutes ago, and I wasn't ready to just give up just yet.
I contemplated going left or right for probably a much longer time than necessary, but eventually I concluded that it was fifty-fifty either way. So...I chose right.
There was something rather eerie about running down that silent, vacant road. It was this strange metaphor for the lonesomeness I was beginning to feel in those moments.
It wasn't that I had "missed" the sense of social interaction. No, I spent months alone on a planet where I was the only intelligent source of life, and never felt imprisoned there like I did then. Maybe because, back then, I felt like I always had the option to leave. Perhaps that was how it was, I thought to myself. Loneliness was never about being alone, it was about having no choice but to be isolated.
My pace slowed down dramatically after only several minutes. It was no use. I had yet to see anything else remotely suspicious, and no suspicions meant I had no good reason to go running down an empty road this late at night. The street lights were spaced out so far now that the roads had virtually no visibility. The best case scenario at that point was for this murderer - whoever they were - to pop out of the bushes so I could sit them down and ask if they'd seen any disheveled men roaming the vicinity.
"Are you all right, there?"
I turned on the spot to face the source of the voice, tensing up slightly as I did so. It took me a second to notice the figure standing a few yards away. We were too far away form each other to make out faces.
"Oh." I said, after a rather awkward pause. "Uh. Yeah..." I faced back towards the road, and slowly started to pick up my pace, but I could hear the person slowly following behind. I stopped again, sinking my weight into my heel, and stepped back around. The person was closer then, just a few feet away. We were able to finally look each other face to face.
She was just a woman. Harmless enough, I figured. But...there was definitely something...off about her. Maybe it was her torn clothes, which seemed much too large for her to be wearing in the first place. Or, maybe it was the fact that following a strange girl through the streets of Sheffield appeared to be the best thing she could think to do with her time.
"I don't need anything, thanks." I did that weird wave you do when you're trying to get someone to leave you alone. "I'm really fine." My eyes darted toward the road for half a second. "You might want to get inside somewhere. It's going to be a cold night, I believe." There's also a killer on the loose, I wanted to add. But, I kept it to myself. The woman didn't move, though, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "Look, I don't have time for this. I don't think it's a safe night to be wandering around alone."
"I could say the same thing to you, I suppose." The woman said. She still didn't leave. Her wild eyes seemed to be scanning me. It wasn't normal.
Why did I always attract the strange ones?
I guessed it was my turn to say something. "Well. Bye, then."
"Are you looking for something?" The woman persisted. A strand of her blonde hair blew in her face, and she stared at it, cross-eyed, with a bewildered expression.
I slowly nodded my head, my stiff posture relaxing . "How'd you know?"
"Oh!" She looked back at me, like she had forgotten I was there. "I lose things all the time, really. It's...quite strange how often it happens, actually." She turned her attention back to me. "Can I help you look, or..."
"No." I said flatly. "I'm looking for my friend, is all. He's...somewhere around here. I just know it."
"What's your friend look like?"
I sighed. "That's a weirder question than you might think. I don't...really know."
"Oh. Okay." She nodded her head, like it was helping her absorb the information. "Well, then, if you don't know what he looks like, how will you know when you've properly found him?"
"I think." I sucked in a breath. "I think I'll know. He's an...interesting character. Or, at least...he's bound to recognize me, right?"
"Right. Right." Her gaze traveled to somewhere far off behind me. She took a step closer to me, and I slowly took a step back. "Actually, maybe you'd be better off heading home." She sounded wary. "It'd be safer to look around in the daylight."
I clenched my jaw. "I think it will be too late then." She was distracted, again. She was definitely looking at something behind me. I twisted around. "What are you—"
"–Lightning." The woman said much too fast. "I heard there's a storm coming in, you might want to get inside. Quickly." She seemed like she was trying to communicate something more.
"But it didn't - never mind." I was losing time standing around talking. The woman seemed nice - oblivious, maybe - but she was just odd enough that I made an effort to keep my distance. I wasn't in the mood to pick up random strangers. "I'm going to go now. Good luck with...whatever you're doing."
"Yeah. I best be getting back to my...friends. I'm actually rather busy, at the moment."
"Right." I said. "And what was that? That you were doing?" I couldn't help it, I was curious.
"Uh." She tilted her head to the side. "It's a rather long story, actually."
I shrugged. "It's fine. I won't keep you any longer."
"I'm sorry your friend is gone. I hope you find him." There was something to the way she said it. It was a sort of...understanding.
"Yeah." I huffed. "Me too." I finally faced away, and headed toward a different road.
"What was your name again?" I heard the women's voice call after me.
"Uh." I waited a second, not bothering to turn back around. "It's...Brielle."
"Huh." The woman said. "That's a strange name. I don't think I've met a Brielle before."
"Well." I responded. "Now you have." I felt the echoing of her footsteps walking away, and I heard muffled voices mixed with her own a ways off.
I went on for another few minutes, but at that point whatever had killed that man was long gone. And with it, my best hope of finding the Doctor. I had failed my only mission. Out of all the countless times he'd helped me, and I couldn't do this for him. I ran out of time. The darkness was more evident now, and the quietness of the streets was enough to drive anyone crazy.
After all that, I wasn't going to find him that night. I would have to go home, and regroup. Maybe I'd come back to check on the other abnormalities I experienced that night. Although, at that point, I wasn't sure if I cared enough to ever come back. I felt so defeated. I tried to hope the Doctor was somewhere still out there, but at that point, it seemed highly unlikely. He couldn't, in his weakened state, survive in that dangerous place on his own. Especially without his TARDIS.
For all I knew, the same thing that went after that man...
It was the only explanation I could think of why I found no trace of the Doctor.
Although, as it turns out...well, I happened, on this one occasion, to be very, very wrong.