Dr.Who: The Girl in the Mirror
She has lost count of how many days it has been, lost count so long ago that it is a thing to her now, rather than a memory or a sense of time; palpable and physical, in ways impossible to define using human language. Instead she marks the passing in years, as the days and the faces blur into each other.
At first, she had wailed and screamed, kicked her feet and beat her fists, the string of her red balloon clutched tightly in one tiny hand. She doesn’t know for how long this lasted; her little body was indeed frail, barely a chit of a thing, but there was no pain, no tiredness, nothing that could tell her how long she had bemoaned her fate.
She remembers the day she stopped. He had been there. She had looked up and seen his eyes on her. Such eyes they were, old – no, ancient – and care worn. He had watched her, staring, unblinking, until she stopped and calmed down. They had stood watching one another, not a word spoken, until he turned and left. Left her there alone.
Now, she stands hidden, as much as one can be in a mirror, watching the universe outside pass her by, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day... Soon, she knows, she will lose count of the years and mark the passing of time by decades, then perhaps, centuries.
It took her a time, but she found she could cross from one mirror to the next and so she does. It is the only thing that keeps her sane, for there is no sound in the mirror – for a mirror does not reflect the vibrations in the air as one speaks or stamps or plucks the string on an instrument. Nor does a mirror reflect scents or temperatures or tastes. The mirror is a cruel sensory deprivation, sight being the only thing to keep her mind working.
It is lonely in the mirror – in all the mirrors, of all the worlds, in all the galaxies of the universe. She stands behind the reflections, watching through cracks in walls, slightly open doorways, from behind furniture and through dusty window panes. Occasionally she can catch a glimpse, a mere fleeting seconds glimpse, through an open doorway or window cracked open just right, of her Brother, forever scaring the crows.
Clutching her balloon in one hand, she stays silent and simply watches, as this person primps and preens, fussing over their hair and makeup; as this creature scuttles across the impenetrable glass, leaving nothing but tiny, tiny foot-prints in its wake, that she touches a finger too, experimentally; as this red sun crosses the sky, casting eerie reflections in the alien room; as this couple make love amongst the furs, their bodies as different from her own as one could imagine; as this domesticated animal stares at her, making noise she cannot hear, alerting it’s owners to something they wouldn’t notice, even if they could understand.
The world she inhabits is smaller than even she had first thought. It consists of only the reflected rooms, corridors, halls and sundry that you can see when you glance in a mirror.
Unlike the old Earth story of a girl who climbed through her mirror, there is no opposite world inside – simply the parts of the room you can actually see. And that is not much. Behind the reflections is nothing. A nothing that makes her mind blank when she looks at it, incapable of comprehending, forcing up barriers that make her look away, out into the real world that she knows she will never again be a part of.
To help her mark the passage of time, she looks for the Man, the Man with the ancient eyes, who imprisoned her here. Sometimes, she sees him, a quick glance into her world as he checks his own reflection. There is rarely any recognition in his eyes at these times, in fact, he doesn’t notice her – in the same way every other being with a mirror doesn’t notice her. He cannot see her, for he doesn’t know she is there.
She understands that these times are before he placed her there – the convoluted chronological disorder of a Time Lord’s life. She has learned to place him in a time, by watching the women with him.
Sometimes he has a blonde woman with him; she primps and preens as every other female of her race is want to do, discreetly watching him as he discreetly watches her in return, grins and knowing looks passed between them. She knows that these times are long before her imprisonment.
Other times, he is with the black woman, the one who had defied Mother and Father – she is behind him, always behind him, as if he barely notices her. Occasionally, his eyes will flick to the red balloon when the black woman is with him, but not always. She knows that only some of these times are before her imprisonment.
From time to time, there is a red-head with him, and again, the body language is vastly different, this time they ignore each other, treating each other as she and her Brother had treated one another. When the red-head is there, he always makes a quick glance at her red balloon, as if checking she is still there and she knows that these times are long after her imprisonment.
She uses his rarely glimpsed glances of recognition as affirmation of her existence. When he recognises her, she knows it was all real, that she was real, that her memories are real, that she once had a life outside this empty half-life. She longs for the days when he looks directly at her.
Once a year, she returns to her original mirror and waits. She stands in the doorway, or sits on the floor; presses against the smooth glass or stands to one side. She waits and she watches, until he arrives. She believes the room is in his ship, though it could be anywhere, full of dusty old books as it is, books that she cannot open, cannot move.
Every year, at the same time, he steps into the room and simply looks at her. He slips his hands into his pockets, tucking the long brown coat behind him as he does. His hair is a
mess, his posture a strange mix of slouch and straight. Sometimes he says nothing, simply standing and looking. Other times he says one word and one word only.
As he looks at her, she looks back, sometimes hugging herself in self pity; sometimes raging at the glass she cannot break; sometimes crying; for the most part simply standing, looking back at him, doing nothing but hold her balloon in one tiny fist, the fingers of her free hand twining and fiddling with her skirts.
His eyes are always cold. Ancient, hard and cold. Occasionally she brings herself to lock gazes; every time, she wishes she hadn’t.
She learned to recognise his eyes early in her imprisonment, and so is unsurprised when she sees them in different faces. An old man with white hair, wearing a suit; a middle aged man with a long scarf and scraggly brown hair; a man of indeterminate age wearing a hat and carrying what she thinks is an umbrella; a man with a big nose and bigger ears, wearing a leather jacket and a ready smile – this man sometimes with the blonde woman, sometimes not; different faces, the same eyes and all of them before her time, none of them checking her mirrors for the balloon. All of them with ‘companions’ and all of them smiling. Only one other face, with those same eyes, looks for her balloon.
After a time, the other face whose eyes look for her, steps into her room. His face has changed, his posture is different, his clothes are different. But his eyes are the same. Ancient, mysterious, wise, cruel and lonely. She would recognise them anywhere, despite the change to the face in which they are now set.
Now, when she sees the new face in her mirrors, there is a new woman with him. Long curly hair and smiles that he shares. She still sees the other three women, and his old faces, but now she most often sees the new face and the new woman. His eyes still search out her balloon whenever he glances in a mirror, but the sad look has left them slightly and if she could, she would scream.
Finally, he comes to her and the sad look is back – a hundred fold. He says nothing as he slips into her room. Simply stands with hands in pockets, looking at the reflected floor, eyes sliding over her sensible shoes as she stands there, watching him in the perfect silence of a reflected world.
Before he leaves, this time, he touches her mirror and she brings her hand up to his. There is no reflected person on this side of the mirror, to get in her way. For some reason, people, creatures, do not appear on her side of the mirror. She feels nothing and knows that he feels only the cold of the glass, but he appears to take some comfort in the gesture. She clenches her fist and brings it back down, hiding it in the folds of her skirt.
From then on, there are no more women. Whenever she sees him in her mirrors, he is alone and increasingly saddened. He still looks for her balloon. Whenever he visits her, once a
year, every year, at the same time, the cold look has been replaced with emptiness. The lines around his eyes have deepened and she forgets her own self pity, her own emptiness, her own anger and feels a sadness steal over her.
After many, many, uncountable years, years that she has started counting as decades and will soon start counting as centuries, he stops coming to her original mirror. She returns every year for countless years, waiting for him, but he does not come.
She still sees him out there, now and then, but it is obvious these glimpses of him are from before he vanished, before he stopped visiting her. He even forgets to check for her balloon. There are increasingly wider and wider gaps between each sighting she has of his various faces. Eventually, he is no longer there at all.
And she slowly loses what little mind she had left.
She begins to notice that there are fewer and fewer mirrors for her to roam. She has lost count of the centuries that have passed; indeed, she has lost count of the millennia upon millennia that have passed. The peoples on the other side of the mirrors have changed so many times she has given up looking for anything resembling her own frail body. When she does recognise a humanoid form, it is fundamentally different from her own.
She goes through madness and back into sanity so many times, she loses count. There are large gaps in her memory now, blessed emptiness in her mind. Her balloon is gone, she must have let go of it somewhere, in one of her other mirrors. It doesn’t bother her though, because she finally see’s the man again. The black woman is with him, and a man she recognises from other times in his past.
His eyes briefly flick to her and she can see the slight shock in his expression. Did he not realise what he had truly done to her? Perhaps he expected her to die long before now. He should have known she would not.
There is an old man and an alien woman, a watch, machinery, steam and excitement. She watches, entranced in her lucidity, as the old man opens his watch, and things go wrong for the man. Eventually – he and his companions are once again gone and she settles back in her mirrors.
Soon, there is nothing left, only blackness. Forever dark, forever empty, forever cold.
As the universe dies, so her mirrors die. Until, there is only one and she sits, palms flat against the surface, watching as her last tiny fragment spins through the final moments of reality. A tear slips down her cheek unnoticed.
She understands him now. His one word.
And then; nothing.
