Donna woke up feeling dizzy. Vaguely, she could recall dreams of Lee, her husband, and their children. She could recall Evangelista and the other archeologists. Shuddering, she forced herself to be calm while she showered, dressed, and then followed the TARDIS’s lead to the console room. Vairë was waiting there for her.
“Vairë,” she said carefully, not remembering fully what the other woman had experienced. She had vague memories of a woman called River Song and then of Vairë vanishing, screaming that she would save River no matter the cost. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” the blonde muttered as she studied the console.
“Where are we going now?” Donna asked.
“My brother Koschei asked me to pick him and Lucy up,” Vairë said blankly. “He said that she needs a bit of a vacation. He’s found sitters to watch their children. So, I’m taking all of us to this resort planet called Midnight. You’ll love it, Donna,” she muttered. “Massages, mud baths, treatments of all kinds. And tours like you wouldn’t believe. The whole planet is under an Xtonic sun. It’ll give you a great tan but you’ll love seeing the sapphire and diamond waterfalls.”
“Let’s go pick up Koschei and Lucy,” Donna sighed. “Once we’re there, I’ll decide what I want to see on this planet of yours.”
Vairë nodded as she placed her hands on the console and began to sing.
~*~*~*~
Koschei studied his sister as she sang them to the planet Midnight. She seemed agitated and upset. Donna had been reluctant to say anything about their recent adventures other than that Vairë was taking the loss of some of her newly-met comrades rather hard. His sister had never once expressed any kind of romantic interest in any of the men who had sought to court her but, if he had anything to base her behavior on, she reminded him of a mother who had lost her children and seemed unable to figure out how she was supposed to carry on. It didn’t help that Vairë had an independent streak the size of a galaxy and generally refused to open up until she wanted to – her “wanting to” being either right before she was ready to snap or after she had finally come to terms with everything on her own and wanted absolutely no sympathy or pity. His sister was still a mystery to him even if he had known her for centuries now.
Vairë landed the TARDIS on the planet well within the luxury resort’s landing bay. Since the entire planet was exposed to Xtonic radiation from the sun – radiation that not even a Time Lord could survive – the resort’s landing bay was open to all. Donna, Koschei, and Lucy grabbed their suitcases and headed out of the TARDIS while Vairë stood in the console room, fingering one of her latest tapestries uncertainly. It showed a massive library with astronauts who had skulls instead of faces.
“Sota makora,” Koschei said aloud. “My precious little sister,” he repeated, using Terran English.
“I don’t want to talk about it, soma makirus,” she replied firmly, brushing off his gentle telepathic touch as well as the warmth in his voice. He loved it when she called him her beloved big brother. Still, he was not going to let her gentle tone push him off so easily. Something was eating at her and he wanted to know that she was at least dealing with it in her own strange way.
“Rose,” he whispered, venturing the name she had not carried for most of her life, “are you well?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t know,” she repeated more strongly. “Soma makirus…if I should die…”
“You will not die anytime soon, sota makora!”
“If I should die…and the TARDIS with me…would you remember me fondly?” she asked wistfully.
“If you should die right now, I would remember you with warmth and love for the rest of my life. And Lucy as well. God knows that my wife will long outlive me even if she can’t regenerate,” he grumbled, pretending to be annoyed. Lucy’s treatment would easily prolong her life into the thousands of years. However, he knew that, in time, Lucy would want to age and die. When she decided that time had come, he would join her in that, using treatments that Vairë herself had developed that would allow a Galliterran to age quickly in case they formed a bond with a shorter-lived race and did not wish to outlive their spouse by millennia. “Have you seen your death coming?”
“I see my death every day,” Vairë said quietly. “How could I not, traveling and fighting as I have ever since I was twenty years old? I am tired, my brother. The reasons for me to sleep far outnumber the reasons I have to keep fighting. I long to lay my life down, to let go of the struggle, and to rest. Once I had hoped to spend as long as I could living on with…with him. But the TARDIS can’t even sense him and I’ve been flung far away. I’ve seen so much death, my brother. So much death. It consumes me.”
“You have so much to live for, my sister. You have given life to so many. Eventually, you will be reunited with him. I feel it in my bones, Rose.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said without heat. “Rose Tyler died aeons ago.”
“You are Rose Tyler and Vairë Carter. You belong with my erstwhile brother Theta. Hang on for him? Hang on for me?”
“I have no plans to end my life, brother,” Vairë said quietly, “but I see a path before me. A path that leads to darkness. I hear the Song of Eternity in my ears – the Song that no mortal can sing and live. Soon, brother, I will face a choice and I will have to lay down my life to save others or I will have to choose to live and let millions of innocents perish in the inferno. I just ask that you remember me fondly and…if you find the Doctor after I have died…tell him…tell him…”
“Tell him what, my sister?”
“…that I am sorry.” Vairë took a deep breath and seemed to will herself to appear joyful. “Now, Midnight. Great luxury hotel here! Me, though, I want to see the sights. Think any of you would care to join me?”
~*~*~*~
Vairë settled onto the transport. None of the others had wanted to join her. Donna and Lucy wanted to relax and Koschei wanted to watch his wife relax. So, the blonde was on her own on the transport. She winced when the hostess turned on all of the entertainment options. Pulling out her sonic screwdriver and trying very hard not to think about River Song, Vairë disabled the annoying sound system and then began looking around the cabin. The other passengers looked relieved except for one teenage boy who seemed to be the epitome of resigned boredom. Vairë grinned to herself. She had worn similar expressions back when she was a teen and Mickey was trying to get her interested in watching football on the telly.
Soon, the passengers were all talking to each other. Vairë was relieved to see them socializing instead of withdrawing into any private entertainment options – disc players, holovids, eBooks. Only the teenager, Jethro, held himself apart and she wasn’t too surprised at that. He was at the age where he no longer wanted to hang out with his parents or talk to adults but would much rather be spending time with his mates getting into all kinds of harmless mischief trying to impress the girls. Vairë listened as Biff and Val told her a funny story from their past, Dee Dee told her about the Lost Moon of Poosh, and Sky talked about splitting up with her lover. Vairë could sympathize with Sky. The man she’d loved had leapt through a mirror to get away from her and to be with the love of his life. Sky’s girlfriend had traveled to another galaxy. Time and space – they were the two great dividers.
When the transport lurched to a halt unexpectedly, Vairë wondered if somehow jeopardy had found her even so far off the beaten path. She spoke with the conductors briefly before something ripped the drive cabin off, sheering it cleanly away. Then something – she never did figure out what – was with them in the cabin, possessing Sky’s mind and body and terrifying all of the passengers. Vairë tried to reason with it and to reason with the others. Then darkness washed over her and she felt her own consciousness being shoved aside while an alien mind took control of her body. She fought it, desperate to regain control of her own body. The other passengers were talking, fear taking control of them as they plotted to throw Vairë out the airlock. She wanted to tell them that the alien was still in Sky – that it had only managed the roughest kind of control over her. It was trying to dig out the information in her mind – knowledge that would tell it how to travel through time and space. It yearned to be free, to feast on other minds.
Finally, just as the men were preparing to hurl Vairë out the airlock, the hostess realized that the alien was still controlling Sky. She grappled with the woman and opened the cabin door, clinging to Sky and holding her in place until the containment seal broke and sucked both of them out onto the planet Midnight. Vairë shuddered as she felt the tendrils in her mind withdraw.
“I said it was her,” Val muttered sullenly, trying to bolster her courage and assert that she hadn’t wanted to kill Vairë. Vairë glared at the humans in the cabin with a mix of anger and pity. How ready they had been to kill her in their fear. And how ready she had almost been to let it happen. Sighing, she took her seat, turning her back on the others, and tried to keep the panic from closing in on her the way the transport walls seemed to be doing.
“The hostess,” Vairë said softly after a long pause. “What was her name?” The others shrugged and glanced around guiltily. None of them knew the name of the woman who had sacrificed her life to save them all. Vairë lapsed into silence again. Soon, another transport would arrive to rescue them and take them back to the resort. As soon as she got back, she was going to drag the other three back to the TARDIS and find a planet with wide, open fields. She would sleep under the stars and away from walls. It took all of her considerable willpower to keep from panicking now, on this transport, and flinging herself outside. She could feel her heart thundering in her chest. Her lungs felt as if they had iron bands around them, squeezing them so she couldn’t breathe. Closing her eyes, Vairë willed herself to stay calm as the walls closed in on her again.
~*~*~*~
“I don’t like it,” Koschei said a few days later. When Vairë had returned from that ill-fated trip on Midnight, he had seen the fear and panic warring for control within her. Ever since, she had refused to sleep inside. Or rather, she would sleep in that massive universal room in the TARDIS or in one of the gardens. But in her room? Or the Library? No. If there were walls around her, she couldn’t seem to stay still at all. “She won’t talk about it at all,” he worried. He could sense his sister’s jittery emotions. They danced and skittered all over the place. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she was losing her mind. “It’s worrying me.”
“Vairë will talk about it when she’s ready,” Lucy said simply. “Until then, forcing her to face it will just make her run even further away.”
“She almost died, Lucy,” Koschei pointed out. “Those stupid apes were ready to kill her, to sacrifice her like they were no more advanced than the Aztecs! And yet she pretends to be okay. She dances around, going here and there and everywhere but never stopping. It’s not healthy.”
“Koschei,” Donna ventured bravely, meeting the man’s gaze with a level glare of her own, “Vairë is tired. She’s been hurt so deeply these past few months that she can’t even begin to process it all. She needs to be let alone to deal with it in her own way. If that means she needs to run, well then, we’ll all get good running shoes to keep up with her. When she’s ready to stand and fight, she’ll do it and we’ll all three be there to back her up. Until then, we’ll just have to let her handle herself in her own way. Unless you want her to drop us off on Galliterra and vanish for a few centuries,” Donna added, raising her eyebrows.
“I hate that she’s hurting and there’s nothing I can do to help her!” he shouted angrily. “She’s my little sister. She saved my life. She saved my sanity. She gave me a new world to call home. And now she needs someone to help her and she won’t let any of the three of us get near her!”
“If you ask me, there’s only one person who could help her. Only one person who could get her to stop and face her fears,” Donna muttered softly. “And that’s whoever it is that fathered River Song on her.”
“What?!” Koschei sputtered. “She had a child?”
“No, she will have a child,” Donna snapped. “No idea who she has the child with but River Song – a woman we met at the Library – is her daughter.”
“Let me see!” he demanded, his hands reaching for Donna’s temples. The ginger-haired woman let him press his fingertips against the sides of her head and opened her memories to him. He saw River Song and had to swallow a cry of triumph. “She has a daughter!”
“Will have,” Donna corrected.
“Has, had, will have, whatever. This means that she will get better. You’re right, Donna. We just need to leave her be until she’s ready to talk about what happened on that transport.”
“Glad you agree with me,” Donna muttered wryly. “Now, where was it she was planning to take us next?”
“Oh, you’ll love it,” Koschei promised. “You, too, Lucy. It’s a lovely little planet settled by the Chinese. It’s called Shan Shen.”