Chapter 1
He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of a Time Lord…and we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons – why he had run away from us and hidden.
He was being kind.
He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star. He tricked my mother into the Event Horizon of a collapsing galaxy. To be imprisoned there…forever.
He still visits my sister. Once a year, every year. I wonder if he might one day forgive her… but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror.
Every mirror.
If you ever look at your reflection and see something move behind you, just for a second – that’s her. That’s always her.
As for me, I was suspended in time, and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England as their protector.
We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did.
The Doctor finished putting in the last of the coordinates and pulled the lever, sending them spinning back into the vortex. He stood there for a long moment, staring unseeing into the time rotor as it flexed up and down. He was so silent and still. There was no evidence of the overwhelming fury that burned at the center of his being. Martha thought she’d never seen him look more alien.
“What happened to them?” she asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.
“Hmm?” The Doctor’s eyes flicked over to her, and they held nothing but polite, empty curiosity.
Martha shivered. “The Family. What happened to them?” Her voiced dropped to just over a whisper at the end, half-hoping that he wouldn’t hear her. His face – did she really want to know?
“Nothing.” He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and stared at her with unfathomable eyes.
She blinked. “Nothing?”
He turned away and disappeared down the hallways of the TARDIS with calm, measured steps. His voice came floating back at her out of the gloom of a darkened arch. “Nothing at all.”
Somehow, she knew that he’d answered her question.
