A fateful encounter

He didn’t know why the Tardis had brought him here, into the year 2015 of all places. Aimlessly he wandered through the streets of London. While passing a bookstore he saw a pretty young woman. He could hear her laughter outside on the street and felt the urge to go inside like magic. She was sitting on a table, a book in front of her and she was reading it aloud. Her voice was soft and tender. He had never heard anything more beautiful. It took some time for him to understand what she was saying. Her words where smart, funny and caring – they were full of intelligence. His pensive brown eyes where full of melancholy while he looked at her. When she lifted her head to look at her audience their eyes met. During the reading her eyes kept wandering to him and he got lost in her unique eyes. He wasn’t able to identify their colour as it seemed to change every time he looked at her. Around the pupil they were brown, but a green circle adorned the bright brown. Their beauty was incredible intriguing. Her shiny reddish brown hair flattered her delicate features, which were similar to an angels. He frowned and starred at her. He wondered, what about her made her so fascinating.   

After the reading was done, the audience queued before her desk, all carrying a book. Everybody wanted to have their book signed. She had an open ear for all of her listeners and gave each one time to talk with her. This sparked his curiosity and he grabbed a book from the stack, put on his glasses and started reading. At first he wondered about the main character. After all it was a small alien called Spocky, who travelled from planet to planet riding comets. He lived as a lodger with a father and his little daughter. The book was wonderfully illustrated with the funniest pictures. Spocky looked like a Gecko, a tiny dinosaur on two legs. He had green reptile like skin and a long tail. Instead of claws he had fingers. A friendly face was the last touch to his appearance. He showed a row of tiny sharp teeth when he laughed. His outfit consisted of nothing but a short trouser and a tank top, but Spocky was never cold thanks to his scaly armour. Of course his astronaut suit was never far, but he was never pictured wearing it, as he was always on earth anyway when his adventures took place. Instead his suit hung in his host family’s wardrobe.

After a while the Doctor managed to tear himself away from the book and looked up. The queue had shortened remarkably and the salesmen started packing up. He queued behind the last person. Again and again their eyes met. When it was finally his turn he wasn’t able to say anything. It was so atypical for him. He was a man of many words, always able to comment on every situation and he had seen many things in his long life. But now he stood in front of this young woman, silent as a fish and unable to move. Not even when she reached for the book in his hand.

“If you give me the book I’ll sign it for you… But of course only if you really want it.” She poked a bit of fun at him and grinned amused. Speechlessly he handed her the book.

“What name should I sign for?” She didn’t stop looking at him and that confused him even more. What was going on here? Was she hypnotising him? With her round eyes she starred at him.

„Earth too strange man. What’s your name?“

„What?“

„It’s ‚Excuse me‘.“

„What?“ With slightly gaping mouth he stood there, looking like an amazed boy.

„I asked for your name. Surely you have one?”

“Doctor.”

“Ah, just the Doctor? How mysterious. But okay, I’ll sign for my mysterious doctor.” She scribbled something with her pen and finally he found his voice again.

“And what’s your name?”

She closed the book and held it in front of his face. One finger was pointing at the name, which was written in bold letters on the front. Amelia Parrish.

“Weeeeeelll!” He tilted his head and looked down on her. He bared his teeth slightly and clicked with his tongue. After such a long ‘Well’ he often didn’t like to admit something. “I meant your real name. The name your parents gave you.“

„You’re not going to believe it, but also that one is Amelia Parrish. Don’t you like it?”

“Amelia Parrish”, he repeated, pronouncing the words overly enthusiastic. He let the words melt on his tongue like a delicious meal. “Amelia Parrish. It’s a wonderful name, almost like it was made for great deeds… and for great adventures worth living.”

“Do you like my stories, Doctor?”

“I love them, it´s brilliant. I’ve never read something that funny and affectionate at the same. We could argue about the sexist dress of the toad, but otherwise I love it.”

“It’s not a toad, it’s a gecko. Is there something wrong with your eyes, you peasant?”

“Do you want to witness your own adventures, Amelia Parrish? Are you ready for them?” The Doctor held his hand out to her. “Do you want to come with me?”

But she couldn’t. She laid her hands on the wheels of her wheelchair and rolled back from the table.

“My adventures take place in my head. I don’t have any other possibilities.” A shadow darkened her beautiful eyes. But after a short moment it was gone again. The Amelia that was left behind was more distanced. “Excuse me now. I’m done with work for today, Doctor.”

She used his name so natural as if she had always known him, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Saddened he looked down on her. But in the next moment he was smiling again and beaming at her, an enthusiastic glint in his lively eyes.

“Well, let’s see what I can do there.”

Nearly bouncing on his feet he went out of the shop and back to the Tardis.

A decision

When he reached the Tardis, he sat down and thought, staring into the air. Then he took the book out of his pocket and read the dedication:

„For the doctor, who never ‚just‘ is. I wish you much luck on your travels.“

For a long time he studied the book, every page of it. Sometimes he had to laugh loudly, other time he just stared holes into the air. He, who had seen so much… It was not a common thing for him to do. He had never been able to stay at one place for a long period of time. He was always so full of energy, it kept him going on and on. From one adventure to the next, through time and space. This time his fate had brought him to London once again. Was he meant to find Amelia and if yes, why? He stood up. Tenderly he put the book in a pocket of his jacket, as if he never wanted to part with it. He walked to the screen in the Tardis.

As always he said to her: “Why am I here?”

And just as always she didn’t answer. But on the screen Amelia Parrish’s face appeared and a resume of her live was shown. During Amelia’s birth her mother had died due to complications. A doctor pressed on Amelia’s spinal cord too hard and thus paralyzed her. The Doctor read carefully through her medical record and realized that it could only be the mistake of one doctor. Amelia’s mother should have never been pregnant. From birth she had a cervical narrowing and her doctor should have warned her. It was his fault Martha Parrish had died and he had damned Amelia to a live in a wheelchair. Despite her suffering she wrote wonderful stories. He wondered what she would be able to do, if she had lived her childhood as a healthy girl? His expressive warm eyes stared into the air. Suddenly he jumped up, his eyes now sparkling with energy. His whole face lit up with his smile.

“I can spare her from this suffering and a life in the wheelchair. I’ve got a time machine! In this timeline I haven’t influenced her life, which means-” He clapped his hands together like a happy child. “- I can change her past. Allons-y!”

Like a whirlwind he worked on the Tardis’ circuits, running in circles around her, pressing a button here and there and then the Tardis disappeared.

The Doctor interferes

The doctor was on his way to the hospital as there had been an emergency, when a man appeared in front of his car out of the blue. Potter just barely managed to swerve past him and his car stopped merely a few centimetres in front of a weird blue box.

Outraged he jumped out of the car and started screaming: “Are you insane? You can’t just stay there in the middle of the street. I nearly hit you.”

“Nah”, the Doctor waved dismissively. “You wouldn’t have.”

“What’s wrong? Did you have an accident? I’m on my way to the hospital and I can take you there.”

The Doctor smelled the alcohol in his breath. Even the peppermint gum couldn’t cover it. He also saw his shaking hands.

“No. No, no, no. You’re not driving anywhere.” He took his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the hood of the car. A clear sizzling sound was heard and that was it, the car wouldn’t drive another meter.

“What have you done? A patient needs my help!” Potter’s smoky voice sounded frantic, how was he supposed to get to the hospital now? It didn’t matter how drunk he was, he was a doctor and he didn’t want to abandon his patient like this. But that was exactly the problem.

“Dr. Potter, you have a problem and you know it.” The way the Doctor’s eyes rested on him made him incredibly uncomfortable. At first Potter tried to meet his stare grimly but soon he couldn’t face it anymore. When somebody tried to fool the Doctor, he simply stared at them until they broke down and couldn’t make up lies to defend themselves anymore. His gaze unsettled even experienced physicians like Potter.

Embarrassed, the man lowered his eyes, he couldn’t bear to meet his gaze anymore. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have to get to the hospital, a woman is in labour and I have to help her,” he mumbled desperately.

“What?” When the Doctor was angry and couldn’t believe something, he snapped an arrogant ‘What?’ It always gave his conversation partner the feeling that they had said or done something stupid. Paired with his strikingly furious expression and his eyes sparkling with anger, he was an intimidating man. However with that short word he not only expressed his disbelief over what he had heard, he also gave the man a chance to rethink his words and to change them.

Potter wanted to babble on again, but the Doctor interrupted him: “Oh you surely mean Martha Parrish, whom you should have warned before she got pregnant. Well because of you she is going to die tonight. And if there isn’t a more competent doctor at the hospital tonight than you are, Martha’s daughter Amelia is going to be disabled for the rest of her life. Is that what you want?” His eyebrows drew near to each other. When the Doctor was angry he was a force of nature, unstoppable for everybody. And now he was bloody angry, after all a person’s life was at stake and he took that very personally.

“How do you know that woman’s name and condition? Even I just got news of it. What am I supposed to do now? I have to get to the hospital.”

“Listen closely, I will tell you what you have to do. First you are going to run the few kilometres back to your house, you will pick up your phone and you will call a rehab clinic and get admitted there.” His eyes were cold and without mercy. “Otherwise I will destroy you. And believe me, I destroyed men much stronger, than you will ever be.” The threat was cold-blooded, his voice barely a whisper. But there was no doubt that he would have no qualms fulfilling it. That he said it so calmly was not a sign of weakness. No, the Doctor never screamed and he never threw a tantrum. He was the most dangerous when all of his anger was focused on somebody.

Without another word Potter turned around and ran back to his house. He didn’t even stop to take his coat off, just walked up to his phone and dialled the number of the rehab clinic he had dialled so often already. Except this time he didn’t put down the receiver at the last moment.

The Doctor saves Amelia

The Doctor stepped inside his Tardis and travelled back to 2015. But he couldn’t find her, actually there were no news of her anywhere in the past few years. Finally he found a newspaper from 1989. An eight year old girl and her father had been killed by a drug addicted young man while he was trying to rob a grocery store. Before that he had raped the pretty young girl. The police had already searched for the criminal for a bunch of other robberies.

“No, no, no, no, no. I can’t let that happen!” And again the dance around the Tardis’ circuits started and he was on his way to that fateful day, Amelia Parrish’ new death date.

The evening outside of the grocery store on the 19th of September 1989 was black. Peter Parrish had never witnessed an evening that black. While Mike, the owner of the store, packed the food in a bag, he looked out of the gigantic window. There, the darkness was again ripped apart by a bright flash, thunder following closely. Amelia clung to his leg. She had never been an especially timid kid, but the rumble of the thunder made her shudder. He softly placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close to him. Smiling she looked up at him.

“Oh, look there!” he suddenly exclaimed excitedly. With one of his long fingers he pointed at the sky. “A comet. I saw it clearly!”

His little daughter looked into the direction he was pointing, but she couldn’t see anything special. “I don’t see anything, Dad. Where is that gourmet?” She didn’t want to admit that she had no idea what her father was talking about.

“Honey, I meant a comet. They are flying objects in outer space on which aliens travel to earth. Just today we got a lodger from the comet Krax.” His voice was so earnest that his daughter was staring at him, eyes and mouth wide open.

With childlike interest she asked. “Where is that alien supposed to sleep and what is his name?”

“His name is Spocky and I gave him the room next to yours. He hopes you don’t snore all that loud.”

“But I don’t snore at all!”

"He’s going to be happy to hear that.”

Incensed she glared at her dad, but for that moment all her fear of the thunderstorm was forgotten. She had thousand questions about their new lodger and she had to ask them all!

The Doctor stood behind one of the shelves in the back and listened to their conversation amusedly.

Now he knew, where she had gotten her talent for storytelling and where the ideas for the tiny alien names Spocky came from.

The people inside the store couldn’t hear the sirens of the police cars outside as they were muffled by the storm. But in that moment the police surrounded a young man, carrying a gun, not far from the store. The next day you could read in the papers, that the police had only been able to find that man thanks to an anonymous tip. An observant citizen had been able to tell them the exact time and place where the criminal was.

As they arrested him, there was a loving father in a tiny grocery store telling his daughter a story about an alien, who travelled from planet to planet. Meanwhile she stood there on her healthy legs and smiled at her Dad. When the Doctor passed by Amelia he smiled and winked at her. He whispered softly: “Keep a stiff upper lip!” A radiant smile from the bottom of her heart was a good enough reward for him.

The Funeral

One year later in her life, the Doctor wasn’t able to save Amelia’s father, just as he hadn’t been able to save her mother before that. Their deaths where fixed points in history and couldn’t be changed. The laws of time and space forbade him to intervene. Even though the Tardis was a powerful weapon at his disposal, he had never used her for unlawful purposes and he wasn’t inclined to do that now. He didn’t have an idea just yet, that a time would come where he would bend the laws of time quite a bit. But even though he wasn’t able to do anything for young Amelia this time, he wanted to be with her in this hour of need. So he hid in the cemetery behind a tree and watched her. His eyes were dark with grief, he felt her pain intensely.

After everything was over, Amelia stayed behind, watching over her father’s grave. Suddenly she turned around and looked directly at him.

Recognition flashed through her eyes and she walked up to him. She said: “You are the men from Mike’s grocery shop, am I right?”

He nodded confirmatory.

“Where you and my father friends?”

“No, Amelia Parrish, but I do hope that we two will be friends someday. But not now, that point is still far away in the future.”

She blinked confused at him. “You are a strange man. What’s your name?”

“Doctor.”

“Ah, just the Doctor? How mysterious.”

“I’m sorry for what has happened to your father, I truly am.” He looked at her with an incredible sadness in his eyes, he seemed resigned. But his left eyebrow was raised slightly, causing his face to look slightly arrogant. It said, if I couldn’t help your dad, no one else could have done it.

“Amelia!” a high and piercing voice called her name and she turned around and shouted, that she would come in a moment.

When she turned back around to see the Doctor, he was gone. On a tiny branch in the tree hung an envelope. She took it and opened it.

“My little Amelia Parrish. The next few years in the orphanage will be hard for you, but you are strong and you can do it. I believe in you. And don’t forget to keep a stiff upper lip. We will meet again. In joyous anticipation, your friend, the Doctor.”

As he stood in the doorway of the Tardis he turned around and watched the sad little girl walking away. That was the doctor, an infinite soul full of emotion and a face that spoke of beauty inside and out. But in the next moment the melancholic shadow had passed. He clicked with his tongue and his whole face was light up in a smile. “Well…” He knew that was the way life was and you could just try to make the best out of it. So he did just that. “Allons-y!”

The social worker

Back in the year 2015, he searched for her book in the database. But he couldn’t find it anywhere, it had never been written. He also couldn’t find any other book written by Amelia Parrish. What had happened? Hadn’t he removed all disturbances? He searched for her and found her as a patient in a psychiatric hospital. She had tried to kill herself repeatedly. He hacked inside the database of the psychiatric hospital to read her file. He found out that she had been raped by a social worker when she was twelve. The Doctor couldn’t believe it, that girl seemed to attract misfortune wherever she went. Thanks to his intervention she had developed in a healthy beauty. She had also been pretty in the wheelchair, but it had protected her from assaults. Her handicap had scared men away. But as a healthy young girl she seemed to give off such an innocent sensuality, that men just weren’t able to resist. Her slim petite physique and the shining, reddish brown hair, that framed her delicate features, made her a victim. As soon as the men saw Amelia, they wanted to get the pretty girl for themselves. The only people that could give her support after this tragedy where the sisters Mona and Nina Braun. When they both died during a fire in the orphanage she lost every bit of grip she had on her life. Even her will to live couldn’t save her from the deep dark hole she fell in, after both of her best friends had died. She hadn’t lost that will to live after her father’s death or after the rapes, but her tiny, gentle soul couldn’t bear any more pain.

He also couldn’t prevent the sisters’ death. But he’d be damned if he couldn’t protect Amelia from the social worker. Now he was angry again, but mostly at himself. When he had seen Amelia for the first time, she had been bound to the wheelchair her whole life, but she had been happy and full off vitality. Especially that hat fascinated him so much. He had wanted to give her a better life without asking her and instead he had just made everything worse. Had his behaviour been selfish? He wanted her to come with him. He wanted her for himself.

But for him it was just a game, a game for his amusement. Of course, he loved humans, but why did he keep helping them again and again, even though nobody asked for his help?

He did it out of one simple reason: Because he could. But he was also driven by the feeling that he had to fix something. Again and again for all eternity that he had been given. Even now he had to fix what he had broken in his arrogant magnanimity and rashness.

He didn’t treat the social worker as gently as he had treated the doctor. Potter had lived a good live before the death of his wife, he had saved many women’s lives. But Karl Banger was a disgusting creature and the doctor had to stop him. And that was just what he did. Before Banger had the chance to hurt Amelia, the Doctor transferred him without mercy to the galactic police. They scanned his corrupted brain and threw him straight into prison, where he had to undergo a treatment to gain rehabilitation. Once a year they scanned his brain again to check if he had gotten better. For the next few decades the Doctor was present each year to make a statement against the potential rapist and murderer. In the first few years Karl Banger always wanted to know, where he was and why he was here, after all he hadn’t done anything to deserve this. All those years nobody answered his desperate pleas. His whole life he was locked up in the biggest prison in the universe just because of a possible crime he might commit, all of it solely based on the fact that it was what the Doctor thought was right and Karl didn’t know any of that. After some years he broke and stopped asking questions.

Karl Banger didn’t pose a threat to Amelia anymore. The fire he had set to the orphanage didn’t happen either. The three girls with similar souls gave each other somebody to hold onto in the often cruel game of life, which was hard and unfair, but also a great responsibility. Amelia developed into the women with whom – the Doctor had to admit it – had fallen in love with. She wrote many great works and all of her books where bestsellers. Her first book was still ‘The short stories of the alien Spocky’, written as a memorial for her father, showing her love for him.

As the Doctor extended his hand to her this time in the book shop and offered her to come with him, she got up jauntily and took it happily. She would be his companion for a long time, and his partner for most of it. Her last book was titled: ‘A Journey through time and space.’

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Publication Date: 01-20-2016

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