Life After Wartime

by Sean Gaffney


Extract from the Diary of Bernice Summerfield

I like to think of myself as a calm, cool, collected person.  When the going 
gets tough, the bombs start dropping, and sadistic villains with eyepatches 
start brandishing their silk ropes and bedsteads, you'll always find me ready 
with a telling quip or jaded putdown.  Why?  Because that's the sort of take-
charge, never-say-die gal I am.  I laugh in the face of adversity.  I look 
forward to the next brush with death.

Of course, generally I like my brushes with death to be on habitable planets.  
Or at least spacious, well equipped space stations.  Tiny little asteroids 
where the only thing on the entire surface is one tiny machine designed to 
keep a barely breathable atmosphere and explode if anyone tries to interfere 
with it... well, that just pleases me so much less.

And it does help that I know that at the end of the day I can settle in to 
sleep in the TARDIS, knowing that in its inviolate corridors I am safe and 
secure.  So having it utterly blown to bits is frankly a bit of a bugger.

And of course when the chips are down and the quips just aren't coming, 
there's one last person I can return to.  The Doctor is simply a magician at 
these sorts of scrapes.  Improvising a laser at the last minute... and then 
finding a way not to use it.  Hanging off of cliff edges so that he can rescue 
the last species of some bird.  Getting washed up forty-ish archaeologists to 
fall in love with him just when they least expect it.

And now he's sitting on the ground, staring at the rubble and debris where the 
TARDIS used to sit, and I haven't been able to get him to say a word in the 
past two hours.  Maybe he's simply conserving energy until we die of thirst.  
His eyes... I remember seeing the Doctor with those eyes once before, before 
he'd regenerated.  Back on Heaven, when I first met him.  After Ace left.  
It's why I came with him.  Well, one of the reasons.

But now I can't seem to do a bloody thing about it.  He's just not responding.  
I shouldn't be surprised, really.  He's known her for about a thousand years 
longer than he's known me.  How would I feel in those circumstances?  
Shouldn't be surprised, shouldn't be hurt, shouldn't be jealous.  Really.

And I'm not.  Mostly.  The TARDIS was more than my home or just a spaceship.  
She was... well, she was family.

But anyway, that's why I'm sitting here writing this all down in my diary.  
Because I'm trapped on some stone in the middle of nowhere with no way of 
escape and a suicidal Time Lord.  So it's not as if I have anyth

Extract Ends


     Bernice paused in her writing and swore loudly.  She carefully put her 
diary back in her rucksack by her side, and leaned back with a few more coarse 
epithets.

     "Doctor!"

     There was no response.

     Bernice sighed.  "Doctor!  My water just broke!"

***

     Compassion spiralled, trying desperately to find any way to slow herself.  
She wasn't even sure how fast she was moving, just that it felt very, very 
fast.  Wherever she was, it wasn't the vortex.  The vortex was something she 
was intimately familiar with, somewhere she always felt at peace.  This was 
nasty, chaotic, and bright.  Far too bright.  Blinding.

     She had been a little foolish, perhaps, to assume that the end of the 
Doctor's people would be the end of her troubles.  She had been feeling so 
ecstatic, so relieved to find herself free that she hadn't stopped to think 
about the things that would appear to fill the gap.  Things that would be 
equally interested in the universe's only Type-103 TARDIS.  They hadn't 
bothered to make a move before, with the Time Lords there to crush their 
ambitions.  But now there had never been any Time Lords.  So the ambitions 
were left unchecked, looking for a miracle.  Looking for Compassion.

     And now Nivet was dead, and she was spinning off into who-knows-where, 
and quite frankly she was feeling a lot less smug about things.  She'd assumed 
she could simply go off and explore the universe.  Fat chance.  Some things 
can't be controlled, including who she was.  She would always be in danger.

     Compassion turned, or at least tried to.  The lack of sensation was 
beginning to fade, and off in the distance she could sense something 
different... not the time vortex, but it would do.  She grabbed hold of its 
presence like a lifeline, pulling herself towards it, rushing to try and get 
out of this godforsaken *something* she was in.

     As she emerged into realspace, she realized that she was indeed 
travelling quite fast.  Moreover, her systems seemed to be reacting rather 
violently to this space... there was something innately wrong here, this 
wasn't the world she knew, this wasn't the *universe* she knew...

     And then she was smashing into a planetoid, so hard that she nearly went 
all the way through it.

***

     Benny was relieved that the Doctor immediately ran over to her.  At least 
he could react to something.  Start with big events, like the birth of their 
child, and gradually work back towards small talk.  He'd be right as rain in 
no time.

     He took off his coat, which he placed down beside her own on the rocky 
surface.  "Just lie back for a moment, would you, Benny?"

     "Oh yes, certainly.  I was planning on that 20-mile run later today, but 
I suppose I'll have to put that off."  Benny clamped down on her tongue, 
resisting the urge to spout one-liners every time she spoke.  It was something 
she did whenever she was scared, and this scared her.  She was trapped on an 
asteroid in the middle of nowhere with no food and water and her baby was 
going to be born only to die on an airless rock and it terrified her.

     The Doctor stroked her cheek, and she felt herself relax a little.  He 
was still here with her.  He'd find a way.  Somehow.  After all, it wasn't as 
if things could get any worse...

     She tried to stop that thought as soon as it left her head, but too late.  
There was a collossal crunch from about 200 feet away, and suddenly the entire 
asteroid was trembling and juddering.  The Doctor