Let Down Your Hair

“It’s… bigger on the inside?” I said in bewilderment, walking around the TARDIS console over and over again, wondering if I’d inhaled too many paint fumes and I was having a hallucination. Of the things that had happened today, that would not be too far off. I mean, I have magic hair that glows when I sing. Expect the impossible should be a motto I live by.

The console was cold and metallic, bathed in blues and other dark colors. It seemed strange, I hadn’t expected the Doctor to surround himself in such gloom.

“Yes! Yes it is! It’s a time machine!” The Doctor replied enthusiastically, and then the entire machine began to rock and sway, violently spinning as he twisted and turned knobs and levers. The Doctor pressed buttons, ran his hand across an entire array of gadgets before everything came to a very abrupt and very sudden halt. I had to keep a tight grip on the railing lining the console if I didn’t want to get thrown across the room and break my neck.

Time machine. Yes. Okay.

“That’s strange,” the Doctor muttered, looking at several screens before slamming his hand against one and pointing something he’d referred to as his “sonic screwdriver” at another. It made a high-pitched whirring noise, like a less-extreme version of the TARDIS. “Why isn’t the TARDIS moving?”

He then turned and looked at me, his eyes following the trail my hair left around the place. First it looped around the console just about half a dozen times, then it was tangled on the railing, falling from the ceiling until, finally, it was caught in the door of the TARDIS.

Oh.

I sighed exasperatedly, getting up to go unlock the door and pull the rest of my hair in. Some days I fantasized shaving it all off and handing it to Mother on a silver platter.

“This is a usual occurrence, I take it?” The Doctor said, and I nodded.

“Do me a favor and open the door, please?”

The TARDIS doors swung open and I pulled in my hair, a section of it snagged on something still in my bedroom.

“You didn’t it feel it pulling on you?” The Doctor asked quizzically, and I shrugged.

“It gets stuck everywhere, I’m pretty much immune to the pain now.”

I bit back a scream when I saw a strand cut completely off, the left over piece turned a withered brown.

“Rapunzel? What is it?”

“Some of my hair got cut off,” I responded flatly, closing the door and facing the Doctor again.

The Doctor looked confused, and displeased with the fact that he was confused.

“I can’t cut my hair,” I explained, rolling words around in my head to think of the best way to explain it. He’s the Doctor; nothing can be too far-fetched for him, right? “My hair… when I sing, it glows. It has the power to heal people, and my mother keeps me in the tower so that way no one else can try to cut it off and steal it because…” I trailed off, thinking of Mother. I felt very suddenly guilty for disobeying her. I started again. “Because when my hair is cut, it turns brown and it doesn’t have any power anymore.”

The Doctor looked like I had punched him in the face. He gripped the controls on the TARDIS as if it were life or death, muttering things to himself.

“Rapunzel I am going to ask you one question and one question only. Does your hair glow gold?” The Doctor’s face was so close to mine I could feel his breath, even his body heat.

I only nodded, a quick bob of my head.

“Show me,” he demanded.

So I began to sing and my hair began to glow, splashing the room in yellow light.

Then the TARDIS jerked, throwing me against a wall. The entire machine was shaking, and I wondered, briefly, if this was how I was going to die. Maybe Mother was right; I couldn’t handle myself out in the real world.

Did this even constitute as real?

“She’s responding to you!” The Doctor said excitedly, despite the grave expression on his face. “Rapunzel, I’m a Time Lord. The last of the Time Lords, and what your hair does it a quality very specific to me.”

“Your hair glows too?” I asked incredulously.

He laughed. “No, more like instead of dying, I explode and the glow puts me back into a whole different person. I’ve done it about eleven times now, twelve if you count that one other time, but that’s not the point. It’s called regeneration, and its somehow manifested in your hair. Yes, it’s a very weak form of the regeneration energy, but now you’ve got the TARDIS in a frenzy and it’s taking us some place—” The TARDIS jerked to a sudden stop, cutting the Doctor off midsentence. He raced to the doors, throwing them open and looking outside. “Oh, this could be bad. This could be very very bad,” he said, and fear crawled its way up my spine.

“How bad, Doctor?” I asked, weaving my fingers through my hair like it could protect me.

“World-ending bad. Apocalypse bad. Death bad. Or even worse, world beginning.” He looked at me with a grin on his face so wide I was convinced it was going to pop right off. “We’re still on your planet, Rapunzel.”

“My planet? Earth?”

“No, I’m afraid you’re not human, but you’ve probably got that one figured out by now. This planet came to be because someone made it so. You weren’t supposed to exist, Rapunzel, and now that you do, your entire planet was created to protect you. For some reason, it wasn’t enough.”

“What?”

“Rapunzel, there were these women on my home planet, Gallifrey, who were able to harness the regeneration energy in it’s least harmful form for medical use. It came from a field of flowers, strange golden ones that required a special incantation. We called them the Singing Muses, because there were nine of them and they never aged, ever. After the war they were said to have disappeared, but they didn’t, can’t you see?” The Doctor looked like a mad man, gesturing wildly every which way and running about the TARDIS. “They must’ve escaped the time lock and took a flower with them, and somehow, I don’t know why, that flower ended up in you.” He tapped me on the nose, chest heaving like his explanation was worth all the effort in the world.

My brain was whirling, images were floating around in my head and I could see the flower, and I could see someone ripping it from the ground and crushing it to make the essence into a soup. I saw a woman drinking it, who looked so much like me, and I could see me, being born.

I could see me being stolen. By Mother.

I was filled with anger, fueled by rage and I stomped over to the TARDIS doors, pushing them open and looking at a beautiful field bathed in sunshine. The warmth on my skin felt refreshing, peaceful, and I hated Mother even more for keeping it from me.

“Let’s go, Doctor,” I said firmly, and he looked back at me with a grin.

“Geronimo.”