A Companion's Farewell

Something slightly different.  I'm a huge Doctor Who fan both the original series with its cardboard sets and frequently dreadful acting and the much slicker and occasionally better new series although whoever came up with the idea of shooting a golden arrow into a spaceship in order to refuel it should never be allowed near a writing implement again.  One thing which is touched on somewhat in the new series is what happens to the loved ones of the Doctor's various companions.  This got me thinking, companions come and go but what would happen if one didn't?  So I wrote the following with apologies to any of you who were expecting something funny and thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson for the ending.

***

Two women were finishing a late lunch in the single teashop the little village possessed.  The first woman was in her middle forties but looked ten years older, grief and loss had worn at her features draining them of life.  Her clothing was inexpensive but respectable.  Her companion was nearing seventy but by contrast looked twenty years younger, fit and vigorous with it.  Steel grey hair was pulled back from a strong set of features, her clothing was unorthodox; shirt, trousers and boots all showing signs of hard wear.  Her face was set in an expression of sympathy as the first woman finished her tale.

"So there you have it," said the first woman simply, "I lost my husband in the war, as did so many other women, but then shortly afterwards I lost my brother and my dear daughter as well.  His house burned down, they found his," her voice shook, "remains but there was nothing left of my daughter."  She gave a watery smile, "For some months I hoped that somehow she had escaped."  A sigh, a determined attempt to pull herself together, "but as the years went by...well you have to accept it don't you?"

"Let me tell you a story," said the older woman sipping at her tea.  "It isn't an easy one to believe, it has spacecraft and time travel and creatures from other worlds."
"Really? I'm not sure that..."
"It's just a story," said the older woman then, apparently going off on a tangent, "What year is it?"
The first woman blinked, "It is 1951," then, gently mocking, "it has been since January."
"Of course," said the second woman, "forgive me, one gets absent minded at my age.  Well my story begins in 1945 just a month or so after the end of the war.  A young girl, barely eighteen travelled into the country to visit her uncle.  Unknown to her, the simple act of doing so placed her in dreadful danger.  Her uncle's old house was occupied by strangers, strangers she later learned had murdered him and taken over his home.  In all innocence she approached the house and there these strangers almost killed her.  They shot at her with weapons the like of which she had never seen.  If it had not been for the intervention of another stranger she, and my story, would have died there.  But she didn't die, this stranger saved her life and rescued her from the others who pursued them both." A sip of tea.  "When they were safe the stranger told her that the people in her uncle's house were aliens, criminals from another world who had come to this place to steal something hidden long ago.  She didn't believe him of course, this young girl.  She was not, after all, a fool but the fact that dangerous strangers had taken possession of her uncle's house was obviously true and this man for all his wild tales had saved her life and was determined to defeat them.

"Defeat them he did, with some small assistance from the girl and as she looked fully on their enemy she saw that what the stranger had said was true.  Whoever these people they were not human; their appearance, their clothing and their weapons all were truly alien and what had begun as fear changed to horror but gradually drowning out the horror and the loss of her uncle was fascination.  Until that moment the stars had been nothing but a decoration of the night sky now she wondered what else was out there.  Then the stranger piled miracle on miracle.  He was a traveller he claimed, wandering not just through space but through time itself and he invited her to join him.  All of time and all of space would be at her fingertips just waiting to be seen.  Still only half believing she accepted his offer and discovered that everything he claimed was true and more.

"She walked across the Earth millions of years before the first human and roamed its wastes in the unimaginable future after the last of humanity had left.  This girl whose furthest journey was a school trip to the continent stepped onto worlds unknown to mankind and walked under alien skies.  She saw wonders beyond description and horrors beyond imagining.  Unearthly beauty and terrible cruelty, the universe in all its glory.  As he had done when he met her the stranger fought the evil and the cruelty and she learned to fight beside him.  At first little more than a tourist clinging to her companion's coattails she learned quickly.  She discovered skills and talents she didn't realise she possessed.  She led a revolt against a cruel overlord on one world and tended to the dying in a plague zone on another.  She negotiated a peace treaty between two mighty powers neither of whom had heard of Earth but either of whom could have reduced it to dust.  She swam with talking fish, danced with creatures made of stone, she learned, she loved and always moved on with the time travelling stranger to see the next wonder, to fight the next evil.

"And in that time she changed, she changed so completely and irrevocably that there was almost nothing left of the eighteen year old girl who had stepped so willingly into the time machine so long ago.  Of all the people in the universe, even her own, she resembled none so much as the man she travelled with; alien even to all the others she met.  She thought of her home sometimes, her family but she did not worry.  Wasn't she travelling in a time machine?  She could return to the moment she left and none would be the wiser, certainly none would need to worry.  But she had forgotten that while people may travel through time, time must travel through people.  She aged slowly in the time machine but age she did and as wonder followed wonder so year followed year until decades had passed and she had barely noticed their passage.  When, finally she noticed it was too late.  She was too old, decades too old, to return to that time and pretend nothing had happened.  Of the eighteen year old girl almost nothing was left.  In its place was a stranger; a wise, knowledgeable, caring, infuriating, brilliant stranger.  Just like the man she travelled with.  When she struggled to recall something of the person she was she realised that one thing and one thing alone of that eighteen year old girl remained.  Perhaps worst of all she didn't regret the loss.  She will continue to roam until one day her bones lie on a distant world kissed by a wind that never blows on Earth."

The old woman stopped and finished her tea before drawing a piece of paper from her breast pocket.  The younger woman stared at her, sadness changed to fury.
"How dare you," she spat.  "I told you of my loss, my heartbreak and you weave this ridiculous story around it.  Does it amuse you, to invent fancies built on other people's misery?"  She took a deep breath, gathered the remnants of her dignity about her.  "I shall leave now," she struggled to rise but the older woman was already on her feet.
"Stay and finish your tea, I shall leave you in peace."  She placed the piece of paper on the other woman's plate and fished a handful of coins from her pocket, not all were minted in England, not all were minted on Earth but enough were to pay for the tea.  She left without another word with a long easy stride belonging to a woman decades her junior.

Dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief the first woman noticed the piece of paper and picked it up.  On it were written three words;

"Please forgive me" in her daughter's handwriting.