The Time Ring

“This place is really creepy” Her statement was subjective. It didn’t necessarily look bad. It was clean and the hall looked pretty much like the one from the first floor. The Doctor had a different opinion.

“Eh, I was actually expecting something different. Like you said, maybe there are aliens hiding up here. I was actually looking forward to that” She scoffed. He was the one who told her to calm down but he was actually thinking about the same thing.

“Maybe we should split. I take this way” She pointed to the right.”And you take that way” She pointed to the left. The Doctor agreed. Unfortunately, they collided while trying to go their way.

“Sorry. It’s dark. I can’t see what your way is and what’s mine” She rolled her eyes and turned him towards his side.

“Go forward”

In the end, they didn’t really find anything suspicious. The darkness wasn’t helping them at all.
Mousy was on her way back to the stairs when her ring started to glow a faint red color. She stared at it for a few minutes and tried to figure what was the cause. There wasn’t any door around. She narrowed her eyes at the walls and decided to test it. She walked forward before she took a few steps back. She did that a few times until she realized that both walls were suspicious.

“Doctor! I found it!” She didn’t know if that was right. Therefore, she walked closer to one and touched it. Surprisingly, her hand went right through it. She grabbed her hand back before she decided to try it again. Indeed, her hand was going right through the wall. The other side was really cold too.

She was ready to go after the Doctor when she felt someone from the other side tug on her hand. She tried to move back but the grip was too strong. She gulped before she let herself be pulled into the wall.

The Doctor didn’t hear or see anything. He touched the walls and inspected them thoroughly. The smell was there but the mold wasn’t.

“I hate dead ends” He really hated how silent it was. Mousy would often liven up the atmosphere.

She was a woman with the heart of a kid. He walked back towards the stairs and waited. A few minutes later, he figured she wasn’t going to return soon. He frowned. That was weird.

He walked down her way and realized that the hall was empty. There was no door on either side of the wall. He started to point his screwdriver around just in case. It started to beep loudly when he swayed it closer to the walls. He hurried closer and placed his ear next to the wall. Unlike what happened to Mousy, he didn’t fell through. The wall was normal.

She just vanished. He hoped that she got lazy and returned to their room. Unfortunately, when he entered, he found it empty. He sighed and grabbed a hand through his hair. He didn’t know what to do.

“I really hate dead ends” He was really worried. He knew she could take care of herself but that didn’t mean he didn’t care enough to be worried.

The next morning, Jeremy decided to pay his sister a visit. He knocked a few times until the Doctor opened it. He leaned against the door frame trying to minimize the view of the room.

“Is there something you need help with?” His response sounded familiar. It sounded very similar to something Mousy would say. From the few words he exchanged with the Doctor, he noticed how similar his and her personalities were.

“I want to talk to my sister” He walked right past the older man. The room was empty. In the end, he turned to the Doctor and looked at him expectantly. “Where is she?”

“Jogging!” The Doctor tried to hide it with a good lie. “Yes, she got a few pounds and didn’t fancy it” Jeremy raised an eyebrow and stared at the older man. The Doctor only hoped he would buy the lie. Jeremy seemed like an easy target.

“Mousy’s body has been scientifically modified. She can’t get fat” The Doctor blinked in astonishment. Well, Jeremy proved to be a hard target.

“Dress! Yes, she went to buy a dress” That sounded smarter. She was a girl and she would do that. Jeremy didn’t look convinced. He looked pretty mad, actually.

“She suddenly disappeared, didn’t she?” The Doctor gave up.

“It just happened. She vanished! I searched for her but I couldn’t find anything. The wall was perfectly normal. It’s not my fault” He found it vital to say the last sentence. Jeremy frowned.

“I know. She has the habit to run away from family” Somehow, he understood her. Family was a sensible subject to her. Moreover after she went and talked to her parents directly; it just became even harder.

“Did it happen before?” Jeremy rolled his eyes.

“Yes. It always happens” The Doctor watched the younger man hurry out with an angered face expression.

On the other side of the wall, Mousy had her own problems. She found herself in a weird situation, again. She was chained to the wall and the surroundings looked very dusty.

“I have a pride, you know. This” She raised her hand and moved it around. “I really had high expectations. I had been locked in cells that looked better than this” There was a guard in front of her cell. He looked tall and intimidating. However, his face was very pale and his dark eyes looked a little out of the orbit.

He glanced at her over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at her. He was trying to make her scared and shut her mouth. She only sighed desperately.

“Does high technology rings any bell? The bars of gatekeepers’ cells were draining the energy when they were touched. And they were flashy. There’s nothing flashy here. I like flashy” She was annoyed. Usually, her ring would help a lot in such situations. But it looked pretty useless in that moment. She sighed and leaned her head against the cold wall. “You should go and buy some new technology from eBay. You can get it cheap”

It was really dark. She didn’t notice when the guard left and when someone familiar entered her cell. She bit the inside of her cheek when she saw him there.

“I’d like to talk to you, miss” She blinked. “We need your help. We need you to help us return home” She blinked again.

“So, you want my ring right? Then what are you going to do to me? Freeze my body for later and steal the power of the ring now? Because that’s been done before and it didn’t work” The crow man frowned. “Or maybe is something else. Maybe you are innovative”

“I don’t quite understand. We do not want to kill you. We need you to supply our ship with energy”
She titled her head to the side in confusion. “We have been stuck here for a long time now. We are tired to hide in the shadows and between the walls”

“But you hired yourself as my aunt’s butler. You can do that job, here on Earth”

“We came here to research humans and their lives and cultures. We want to return home. We have been looking for the time ring ever since we landed. We knew its energy will be enough to get the ship functional again. We needed someone who could control it”

“And here I am, aren’t I?” The crow man nodded. “So you only want me to give you enough energy so you can just leave” He nodded. That theory sounded somehow like a subtle conspiracy. It was too good to be the truth.

“We do not want to harm you. We needed to speak to you without the Doctor around. We knew you would listen and help if he weren’t close by” She raised an eyebrow. That just made it seem like the Doctor knew better than her. He wasn’t her babysitter. She knew when to agree and when to fight against. However, the crow man’s problem seemed very genuine.

“What’s the catch?” She was skeptical. The crow man furrowed his eyebrows. He was genuinely confused.

“I'm afraid I do not understand” She sighed. She was really perplexed. He didn’t even understand that expression.

Later that day, the Doctor found himself back stuck with Matt. Jeremy had a few errands to run, as he falsely announced. The Doctor was sure he actually went to search for his sister. Unfortunately, that was going to be difficult. She didn’t run. She was somewhere in the house but he didn’t know where.

In the end, he had to install lights inside the living room. Matt didn’t look happy with the outcome either.

“That girl never knows when to play nice” The Doctor nodded. He didn’t have anything to talk to. There was no subject he wanted to approach; not with the childhood friend.

“She is quite complicated, isn’t she?” Matt chuckled.

“I heard she ran away” The Doctor bit his lip. He didn’t know how to respond to him. Matt was trying to have a conversation but his mind was wandering.

“Yep” Matt sighed and finished his side of lights. When he looked at the Doctor, he noticed he didn’t even start working on his side.

“She does that, you know. She runs away from commitment. She’s always hiding something and she’s never talking to anyone about her problems” the Doctor glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

“But she always comes back, doesn’t she?” Matt frowned. “She comes back here because this is the only place that means something for her. Her family is here, even if she admits it or not. I think she tries to keep you at a fair distance because she doesn’t want you to get hurt. She became so good at that, that she doesn’t even notices anymore. But she is lonely. She’s always lonely”

“I guess you understand her. She talks to you about these things” The Doctor sighed. He just started to feel guilty.

“She doesn’t want to talk with someone about her problems. She’s very independent. She is old enough to distinguish good from evil. She just needs someone to listen to her and see her as who she really is. You see her as a child, most people see her like that. But she is more. You should open your eyes wider when you look at her. You might find someone completely different form who you thought she was” That definitely made Matt silent.

But what the Doctor said, he didn’t know if he talked about Mousy or about himself.