Subject: Continuity: Keys (part 4)
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Posted on: 2019-07-25 10:23:00 UTC

((Preventing a paradox again. The Reader must be miserable.

Anyway, on we go! If anyone can figure out a way to get Sarah Jane Smith into this, that would be amazing; I currently don't see one, but would love her to show up.))


"Alright," the Reader said. She'd already deleted the sonic screwdriver readings; the sonic was still in her hand for the moment, since returning it the first time had led to her catching the Doctor scanning a part of her ship. Best to remove temptation. "So I'm to go to Soho in 2023, and return this key to Martha Jones?"

"Yep!" said the Doctor. "Simple. I'd do it myself, only, well..."

"Crossing your timeline, you said." The Reader sighed. At least she wouldn't stand out too much: she'd foregone Gallifreyan fashion for this Council meeting, as she often did, and instead wore black pants, a particular white t-shirt with some writing on it, and an unbuttoned blouse overtop that managed to combine pale yellow, green, and purple in a way that she, at least, thought looked pleasant. "Why'd you do that to begin with, anyway?"

"Oh, you know how it is," the Doctor said. "Forgot something, had to go back, then had to go forward--"

"Yeah, I know all about your forgetting things," the Reader muttered. She sighed, and pulled out the neuralyzer. "Alright. Off you go, then, and off I go--the sooner this is done, the sooner I can get back to...actually, on second thought, I don't mind not doing paperwork right now. Cheers."


Five minutes and a vague warning from the Doctor later, she had returned the Doctor to his place in the timeline and set off for Soho.

"Well," she murmured to the TARDIS. "It's kind of nice to just be running an errand, isn't it?"

The TARDIS hummed, and mentally nudged her toward a different lever.

"Right," the Reader said sheepishly. "Sorry. I have been listening to Emiranlanoamar, but...we've focused more on combat and Academy topics lately. Did you know there are moves to get free of someone who's holding a staser to your head? It's fascinating, in a grim sort of way."

The TARDIS hummed again, this time with a note of disapproval.

"Yeah, well, he does like to go on about how many times he's had his limbs regrown," the Reader muttered. She shook her head, and patted the console. "Don't worry--I'm not keen to follow that example."

They landed smoothly--she'd managed to get that down by now, even without the TARDIS' help--and the Reader checked that the key was still in her pocket before stepping outside. She gave a final pat to the door of the hexagonal garden shed that was the TARDIS' favored outward appearance and set off to track down Martha Jones.

"I do wonder what he meant about keeping an eye on the mirrors," she murmured to herself. The TARDIS gave the mental equivalent of a shrug before settling in to wait while the Reader was out of range.


Martha Jones, the Reader realized after a while, was harder to find than expected. The mirrors weren't particularly interesting, either: she stopped to look at several, but they all seemed perfectly ordinary.

"Soho," she muttered to herself. It was a strange sort of word, really, but rather fun to say. "Soho, Soho, Soho--"

She was just thinking how very, very bored she was getting when she happened to glance across the street and--

It had been several years. Five or so, actually, spent in HQ and learning how to stop looking around corners and jumping when a friendly--not unfriendly--non-enemy Dalek, anyway, rolled past or stopped for a chat about the inferiority of Time Lords or some weird sort of game night.

But that--that, right there, that was a Meanwhile, inside a posh London shop, and the shimmer of it made her hearts pound and her feet stop and her face pale.

Not here. Not now. Not here, how could it be here--

The shimmer shifted, approaching a store employee as he walked past--

She darted forward uselessly, even as her common sense screamed at her to run the other way, and the Meanwhile vanished. Just--vanished, disappeared entirely, leaving nothing more than the man's reflection as he walked past a mirror set into the wall and began to stack his armload of shirts on a shelf.

"Oi, move it!" someone yelled. She stumbled to the other side of the street amid honking horns, shaking too much to do anything but--move, get out of the way, get to where she could stand in peace--but she couldn't do that, there were people shoving past her, knocking her about as she stared into the store--

"Sorry!" said a familiar voice. The latest person to knock into her actually paused to make sure she was steady--and then stopped. "Are you alright? You look a little..."

With something of an effort, the Reader looked down a few inches. Martha Jones looked back, mild concern clearly visible on her face.

"I," the Reader said. She looked compulsively back at the mirror; she was vaguely aware of Martha following her gaze and frowning. "Er--I thought I saw--" She shook her head, and made herself turn back. "Never mind, I suppose--listen, I have to--"

Martha made a strangled noise and caught her arm. "Oh my God."

"What?"

Martha unfroze faster than the Reader ever had, and ran for the shop door. The Reader followed automatically, and nearly stumbled over her own feet when she glanced through the window again.

Cybermen. Cybermen in the shop, and no one had spotted them yet--

"Get out of the way!" Martha yelled. "Get out, get back, it's not safe!"

The people closest to the Cybermen turned; one shrieked, and backed away.

Another one stayed, tilting his head to one side. "Hey, isn't that one of those ghost things--?"

"Move!" Martha yelled, and the Cybermen vanished. She stopped short, staring.

"What in the name of Rassilon's moldiest mug cake," the Reader breathed. She made herself walk forward, fumbling out her sonic penlight to take readings.

Martha's stare shifted to her. Around them, customers were laughing--nervously at first, and then there was even some clapping.

"Good show," someone said. "These stunts just get better and better..."

Martha walked around them, and approached the Reader.

"Doctor?" she asked hesitantly after a moment. "You...look very different."

The Reader frowned at the readout, wishing it was telling her more than 'something might possibly be a bit off here.' "I'm not the Doctor. Which is a shame, as he'd likely be more help right now." She took another, equally unhelpful reading, then turned to face the human. "Er, actually, I'm here running an errand for him. He's crossed his timeline too much to come here again, as it turns out, so--here." She dug in her pocket and produced the TARDIS key. "I'm to return this to you."

Martha looked from the key to the Reader's face, frowning. "I don't understand."

The Reader frowned back. "What's to understand? This is your TARDIS key. He borrowed it, and I agreed to bring it back to you so you'd have it at the right time to avoid a paradox. It's hardly that complex."

Martha shook her head. "Who are you, again?"

"Er--the Reader," she said. "And I'd quite like to go home, honestly, so if you could just--" She offered the key again.

"Well, Reader, I'm afraid it is that complex," Martha said. "You see, I've still got my key."

"What?"

Martha pulled out a small keyring and held it up by the only silver key on the ring. "This is my key. The Doctor doesn't have it." She shook her head. "However it is you got here, you're too early."

The Reader groaned. "Brilliant. Just perfect. Why would he give me the wrong date?"

"I don't know, but we should probably stop standing in the middle of this shop," Martha said. She put her keys away and took the Reader by the arm, steering her towards the door. "Come on. Let's go to a cafe. We can have a cup of coffee--my treat, since you've come all this way--and you can tell me all about how you got here without the Doctor."

"Right," the Reader said, and wondered if she could get away with neuralyzing Martha and skipping forward a day at a time until she found the right moment to return the key.

"And how you got a shirt with Gallifreyan writing on it," Martha added, as they stepped out the door. "That's rather unusual in Soho."


--
((Whoever ends up writing the next bit--let me know, and I can pass on to you my thoughts on what's going on here. They're a bit incomplete, but worth keeping consistent, I think. I'd just rather not stick what's essentially spoilers on the Board :) ~Z))

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