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Most reputable time travellers will say from experience that it's one thing to be hurtling through the space-time vortex, and another to be hurtling and exploding all at once. The Doctor, claiming he's neither reputable or experienced, asks the important questions such as: 'does the concept of speed truly exist in the time vortex?' and, 'are we on fire again?'.
Travelling in the Tardis was anything but inconsistent. Even if that meant consistently failing.
In the midst of a calm summer's day on a planet not so far away, ('not so far' is a term often used by scientists studying distances in deep space, used to mean, 'actually, it's really far, but who cares?'), dim noises of life drifted on the gentle breeze, the outline of the horizon basked in the sunlight and everyone agreed they were doing quite well for themselves. In a bush, an insect went to tell another exactly how well it was doing, when a great blue box dumped the entirety of its weight onto it. The Tardis shuddered, groaned, jumped another foot forwards and ground to a stop. Three figures stumbled, choked and spluttered from the box which had now settled uncomfortably on a hill. Smoke billowed out, marking it as a small landmark against the otherwise clear sky. One figure was joined by the others in forcing the doors shut.
"Oh, my ears!" shouted Dodo. The blaring noise coming from the Tardis was barely muffled by the small amount of wood between her and it. Steven rolled onto his shoulder to face her, grimacing.
"Sounds like an alarm!"
It stopped sounding like an alarm pretty quickly after he gave it a good kick. All that remained of their rocky landing were the lifeless wisps of smoke which hung in the air, and the usual atmosphere of apprehension which came with being anywhere new.
"What was that, young man?" the Doctor asked pointedly, straightening out his lapels in a 'how-very-dare-you-dare-kick-my-Tardis' fashion, which was obviously a gesture he had perfected after some time.
"An alarm," Steven said, "You know, they go off when things go wrong. Although if the Tardis has one, it's a wonder it's not going off permanently…."
While the Doctor examined a small splinter in the Tardis and Steven pretended it wasn't at all his fault, Dodo decided to admire the place they'd landed in.
"Hey, Steven! Doctor!" she exclaimed almost at once. "Come and look at this!"
The three of them looked over more hills of rich green, punctuated by shrubbery as far as the eye could see. An array of houses spiralled from the valley below, nestled between the surrounding banks. Their brightly coloured roofs reminded Dodo of gingerbread houses, and dimly she wondered if there was such a place like that. Of the few planets the Doctor had taken her and Steven so far, it wouldn't have been too out of the ordinary. What if it rained and all the gingerbread people melted? Maybe their houses were edible like in Hansel and Gretel. She loved playing Hansel in her school play, mainly because he was the one who didn't get cooked by the wicked witch. She never could understand why someone would choose cannibalism when there were so many sweets and so little people to hand.
"Just our luck," said Steven grimly, shaking Dodo from her thoughts.
"What's wrong?"
"What, do you think we're going to walk right in and ask for a place to stay? They'll probably wonder what we're doing here, other than ruining their countryside."
As he spoke, he scanned the steep decline down the hill and gathered all his thoughts into one concentrated frown, which quite frankly looked ridiculous on him.
"Don't be silly, I think it looks like a nice place! You're not worried about walking, are you? It's not even that far."
Although it was clear Steven's mouth was moving normally, all of a sudden it started to make a very wooden, very not-Steven sort of noise. Over his shoulder, the Tardis doors buckled with the full force of the Doctor throttling its handles. Steven didn't seem to notice, but if he did, he certainly wasn't bowing to the racket any time soon.
"It's…" shhck, shhck, shhck, shook the Tardis, "...if we don't know the…" shhck, shhck, shhck, shhck, shook the Tardis, "...too far, or…" shhck, shhck, shhck, "Alright, what are you doing!"
The Doctor took a step back, composing his defeat into a sigh. "I'm afraid we haven't much choice," he said. "It seems the Tardis would rather have herself to herself for now... therefore our best and only hope is to consult the owners of the settlement. They may be able to help us, hm?"
"We could ask to stay there for the night!" suggested Dodo.
"Yes, quite the idea, my dear girl!"
After that dry conclusion, Steven spluttered and muttered opinions to himself until eventually - and reluctantly - he agreed to follow Dodo and the Doctor down the bank.
The settlement began to define itself as the three drew nearer. As they got closer, the houses rearranged themselves to look as though someone had stacked them across the hills like a set of children's bricks. Shapes flitted between the houses. Humanoid looking things, which Steven thought might actually be human. Then again, the Doctor could have passed just as easily by that judgement.
"I mean, I'm not complaining," he explained, confident with the notion he could persuade either Dodo or the Doctor to be a little careful. "There's shelter if we need it, but we don't know these people, do we?"
Even if it was Earth, what time period was it? Certainly not his own, and if it were Dodo's, she would've kept on about the fact all the way down. So, the only reason they had not to assume it was a lure or a trap of some kind... was the Doctor's bare instincts.
Great!
Great.
Soon the grass began to form a path beneath their feet. Steven kept Dodo by his side as sounds of chatter reached them from afar. The town of clay-painted houses and polished stone obscured the view of the surrounding hills almost completely, as if they were entering another world entirely. Meanwhile, canopies of dyed fabric matching the colours of the houses they were hung from billowed and shimmered in the light. Only when they passed the first houses properly did Steven notice the size of the place. For a moment, he thought they were speeding up. In fact, the passing houses only became denser and more frequent by the minute. The people themselves, much to his relief, took almost no notice of them. Dodo tipped her hat cheerfully to anyone she did catch the attention of, but others passed the trio obliviously.
Whatever species they were, they wore an array of light tunics, from delicately sewn vests to thick layers and cloaks that looked like they could trip anyone in a mile's radius. If there was ever a worse place to wear a black T-shirt with black trousers and a pair of even blacker shoes, thought Steven, it was just here. Dodo, in her thankfully bright jumpsuit, trotted up to the Doctor's side.
"So, where are we going?" she asked.
"Well," the Doctor began, "we– agh!"
Never before had Steven witnessed a man so unsuspecting so suddenly knocked down. Even now, when he did, he didn't expect it to be by twelve or so children. It turned out he was right about all those layers being dangerous. Somewhere during the following complaining and apologising, a small audience gathered around the commotion. "Great. Now they're interested," he said through his teeth, flashing a smile at the ring of onlookers. One of the older children who hadn't yet been dragged away by their parents smiled back, which was a small comfort if nothing else. Despite the fact they'd been partially responsible for flooring a grown man.
While Dodo helped the Doctor get to his feet, someone made their way through the crowd to greet them. They crouched down to one of the children and whispered in their ear. It must have been something with good intentions, since the child turned and handed the Doctor a small ribbon clasped in their hand.
"Oh," the Doctor grunted, pressing out his jacket. "Thank you, thank you indeed. Now, I mean to ask if any of you are in charge. If so, would you mind telling us who you are, so we may do the same?"
Faltering for a second, the person who had come through the crowd smiled at the strangers and extended an arm. "We are the Liss," they said, clasping the Doctor's hands as if they were a precious gemstone. Albeit a precious gemstone that they had a lot of. If they just looked around, they might have noticed hands weren't a particularly rare sight.
"Yes, thank you. You may call me the Doctor. This is Dodo, Steven…"
"I'm Eme. You look lost, if you don't mind me saying. We don't–"
"–get many visitors, no I gathered as much from your... secludedness," said the Doctor, and Eme took Dodo's hands with a grateful smile. "Although we did hope for a little accommodation, if you offer it?"
Eme turned their attention to Steven and held out their hands. Not meaning to look rude, he let them greet him the same way.
"Oh! I see. I'm sure we can find you somewhere comfortable to stay."
Once the crowd dispersed about their daily business and a pair of Liss had eagerly volunteered to let them stay the night, Steven managed to pull the Doctor away from a long conversation he was having with Eme that he thought might drive both of them to an early death. While they had been discussing the occupational hazards of being an unsuspecting walker in the town, Steven noticed the two other Liss had left to, presumably, show Dodo wherever it was they were supposed to be staying. At least he hoped that was why they'd taken her away. It was this thought that eventually urged him to take the Doctor aside.
"So we're staying here, are we?" he asked in a low voice.
"Thankfully so, dear boy," the Doctor said. "I do hope you're asking me to tell them how grateful you are for their hospitality?"
"They've taken Dodo!" Steven hissed urgently. "Shouldn't we have gone with them? We don't know where or what this place is. Right? Eme didn't even ask us how we got here. Maybe she's got some trick up her sleeve, even if she had sleeves. Which she doesn't."
The Doctor fingered his lips for a moment, then shook his head. "They," he said eventually, hanging onto the word until he knew he was testing Steven's patience, "have been quite kind to us, dear boy. The Liss, as a species I gather, don't appear to recognise the concept of gender or.." the Doctor mumbled considerately, "..or anything quite like it."
There was a quick pause. Before Steven could think of what to say, the Doctor answered, "By no means has it made them any less civilised than humans. As Eme was just telling me, the Liss are fully aware of either sex, but it has no influence over their identity. Hm! A fascinating evolution, don't you agree?"
A pair of Liss passed them by, followed by children waving more coloured ribbons around their heads. The Doctor opened his hand to hold up his ribbon, a royal purple silk that managed to shine blue and gold in the light. Questions rioted in Steven's mind, but only the biological implications of this information that he wouldn't dare ask, especially not to the Doctor. The last time he made that sort of mistake, Vicki asked him about the mating dance of the Halidron Diasms, the event of which they watched from a floating 'space balcony' orbiting Kelle-15. Before he could explain it to her, by a startling chance, the Doctor chose that very moment to inform them the balcony would suddenly disintegrate into the void of space if they didn't get back into the Tardis right away. With this in mind, Steven would spend the next half an hour trying to word the same questions to the Doctor in increasingly less obvious ways, but not before letting Dodo slip his mind entirely.
Two volunteers. Pic and Ori, thought Dodo. She'd have to remember who was who. Pic had brightly coloured bands tied all down their hair, which looked like a nightmare to untie at night, and Ori, Dodo noticed, wore a set of bracelets around their wrist which matched the ones Pic wore on a necklace. It was quite sweet actually, and went some way to explaining why they lived in the same house. Inside, Dodo peered through a window in the upstairs room, the window being little more than a moulded square in the wall just big enough to see out of. Pic kindly arranged a set of blankets and pillows on the bed, which otherwise Dodo would have assumed was a carved stone in the corner of the room. "Do you have trees?" she asked, out of curiosity and realisation all at once. There hadn't been anything on the surrounding hills apart from the shrubbery, and nothing here was made out of wood.
"Trees?" Pic chuckled, sweeping their hair behind them. "Not here."
"That's a shame! They're like those bushes out there, but much bigger. I used to climb lots of trees when I was little. You should try it if you find one."
Pic moved to furnish the second bed, which looked much smaller than anything Steven would fit on.
"I'm sure I will," they said. "You must have come a long way. If your friends hurry up, Ori's making us something to eat."
Dodo pulled away from the window. "Great! What's she making?"
Pic moved again to adjust a smaller canopy attached to the already low ceiling of the room and fiddled uselessly with the edge of the fabric. "What do you mean?" they asked softly.
"I mean, is she cooking anything we've heard of?"
"I don't know. Who?"
"Ori!"
Pic took a seat on the bed and shuffled between the newly laid blankets. "You.." they began, struggling to find the words, "you aren't really Liss, are you?"
Dodo shook her head. "Sorry. No, we aren't."
"Alright. The Liss use 'they' when they refer to any other Liss," said Pic, letting Dodo sit tenderly beside them. "Think about saying… they are cooking, they like cooking, or they eat their cooking. We are different in our own aspects, but only use the one term."
"I get it!" said Dodo. She explained how the concept worked on Earth, or at least how she thought it worked. Pic seemed quite amused by it all.
"People on Earth," they said slowly, "define other people by something completely out of their control?"
"I suppose so. But mustn't it get confusing when you call everyone the same thing?"
Pic led Dodo back down the narrow staircase, talking all the while. "Why else would we have our names? You have yours, do you need much more than that?"
At the bottom of the staircase, Dodo turned and shrugged. "I'm not really called Dodo. But I like it better than Dorothea."
Again, Pic tipped their head in confusion by something she assumed sounded perfectly normal.
"Then surely, Dodo is your name? You call yourself that."
The two ducked under a low archway which was the best the house could do for any doors, where Dodo realised that, aside from the beds upstairs, there was nothing to sit on. It didn't matter. The misshapen pillows strewn out across the floor looked inviting enough. She picked one with a pretty red hem. "On Earth, our parents have to choose our names. We don't get to change it that much."
She waited until Pic had gone into the next room and returned with Ori. She could hear them muttering to each other through the wall, but try as she might to press her ear up to it, it was too thick to hear much else. Ori came in eventually, carrying a tray of glazed pink bites, and handed Dodo a small silver rod.
She turned it in her hands for a moment, then reached out and impaled one of the bites with the sharper end. From Ori's smile, that must have been the right way to do it.
"Take two," they said, seeing how much Dodo enjoyed the first. "Pic's been telling me about your planet."
"It's really not that bad," Dodo grinned, impaling another of the pink things.
"Ori's had a lot of names," Pic added, "I think we all have. Do your friends also come from your planet?"
"Oh, yes. Steven comes from Earth."
Speaking of him, neither he or the Doctor had turned up yet. As if reading her mind, Ori placed the tray down and turned towards the doors.
"I'll see if they're outside yet."
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Steven asked again, "No, I've got all that, that's alright, but what if two Liss wanted to–?"
"Steven? And the Doctor?" someone asked aloud, the voice being followed by an older Liss approaching the two from a large yellow house down the street.
"Ah, thank you," said the Doctor.
Ori frowned. "Did I say something?"
Steven trailed again behind the others towards the house on the street, the very place he assumed they'd be staying for the night. "No," he said in a low voice, "he's just grateful for the interruption."
After a while, the 'mmm's and 'aah's coming from the Doctor's appreciative food tasting were forcing Steven to consider whether eating his own head would be a much preferable situation. The words, "I had better see how the Tardis is," had never come with such relief. "Would one of you care to come with me?"
Dodo shook her head. "It's getting dark. I want to go and sit in my new bedroom!"
She patted Steven's arm with enough innocence to let him know that she very much intended to throw the burden of climbing all the way back up the hill on him, and that he should be quicker to find an excuse next time.
Once the conversations downstairs had subsided, most of which sounded like Steven and the Doctor debating with each other, Dodo watched their heads bob by below the window. They disappeared around the far end of the street, only leaving the colourful gingerbread houses and holographic fabrics. She kneeled on the bed until her knees started to hurt, desperately trying to glimpse the sunset over the back of the houses. Some Liss emerged from their own houses carrying fuzzy squares of light, small orange lanterns which kept the canopies around them shimmering in their glow. Other Liss leaned from their windows to watch the people dance and hum in tune, even until Dodo found herself humming along with them.
"Nice, isn't it?" Steven remarked, nodding vaguely towards the horizon over which he was sitting. The Doctor kindly replied by flinging a piece of metal over his shoulder. Having practised this just a moment ago, Steven flinched out of the way and had a terrible flashback of the previous ten minutes, the memory of which was currently forming a bruise on the back of his head. The Doctor, so far bruiseless, was working with a pile of collected bits and pieces which would occasionally glimmer in the dying light. The sunset often made Steven feel as though he should say something poetic, partly because he rarely watched them. 'Nice, isn't it?' had taken a good ten minutes to come up with. At this point, the sun realised nobody was going to say anything better about it and sulked away altogether.
When Steven first asked the Doctor what he was working on, he got a reply something along the lines of, "Mm-mmrh hm."
"What?"
"Mm-mmrh hm," said the Doctor again, jabbing him in the back. Steven turned to him, and was pointed towards a silver rod on the grass that lay just out of the Doctor's reach. A similar looking one was held between his teeth. Which was funny, because another similar looking one was sitting right at the front of Steven's memory. He picked it up and handed it to the Doctor anyway, but not before noticing that whatever contraption he was building had a collection of ribbons tying the parts together.
Beyond the two men and the box on the hill, strings of light snaked through the settlement below. As the lights passed behind the houses, it looked as though the settlement was a twinkling array of lights. Once again, Steven could think of nothing to say. The distant glow illuminated the last of the Doctor's efforts.
To the untrained eye, all he'd done was rearrange a pile of junk into a pile of junk with slightly better job opportunities. It was safe to say that only the Doctor understood its full strengths and capabilities. Steven chose this moment of finality to ask about it again.
"What is it?"
"Air conditioning."
"Oh."
The settlement continued to dance and flicker. Steven thought of Dodo being down there too. She seemed happy enough.
Staring upwards, Dodo could just about make out the mist of her breath in the light. The dancing glow of the lanterns had subsided so late into the night. The window struggled to make the rest of the room look more than a jumbled setting of shapes and colours. The night other than herself was utterly still.
"Steven?"
The night was still still. If she blinked and sharpened her gaze enough, she could see Steven's stirring outline in the bed opposite.
"Steven? Wake up."
"I'm too busy sleeping," came the muffled reply.
"I'm not. I can't sleep."
Steven's blankets rustled. "I can." He turned over.
"Steven!"
The next pause coming seemed to be the time it took Steven to decide whether or not a conversation at this point was worth having. After a while, it sounded more likely he'd gone back to sleep. Dodo thought she'd carry on anyway. "Alright, fine. I couldn't stop thinking about Pic and Ori and all the other Liss. Do you think they're right?" He was definitely asleep. "I like being Dodo, I do really. I didn't used to like it, but it's much better than being Dorothea. I didn't think a lot of it on Earth… but maybe it is unfair to call everyone either a boy or a girl. Lots of people we've met haven't been either. Sometimes they've been both! Do you think humans will evolve to be like that, to be like the Liss? I might ask the Doctor. I was telling Pic about when I was little and climbed trees a lot. Sometimes I used to pretend I was a pirate king, sailing the seven seas! But then someone asked me why I wasn't being a pirate queen. I didn't know why, really. I just said that I didn't mind what I was, so long as it was fun. And some of the rules we had at school were silly. My legs got all chilly because we had to wear skirts in the summer, mostly when it was still cold. You wouldn't have had to do that if you were there. I bet if the Liss have schools like on Earth, everyone gets to wear what they want. All it was, was… I thought… I would much rather be Liss than be human. Oh, Steven. Am I being silly?"
She sighed defeatedly. It wasn't important enough to keep herself awake, let alone Steven.
"It's not silly at all."
Dread filled Dodo's chest. "I thought you were asleep. I didn't really mean it."
"I think you did," said Steven gently.
"Well, I don't think I did. I'm tired, too."
He rolled over to face her.
"Dodo, listen to me," he continued, his voice holding in it a fierce calmness. "In my time, gender isn't something you can't change. Not everything's perfect, but you can choose your pronouns or your name or your identity. You don't have to stop being human. In fact, it's a very human thing to feel."
"I don't know…" Dodo said in a small voice. "I'm just Dodo."
"Well, there you go! You don't have to be any more than that." He took a deep breath and shuffled up until the thick blankets came from his chin to his waist. Dodo could see him clearer in a dim glow the window cast on that side of the wall. "I don't know about the Doctor - I don't think anybody does - but I had another name before Steven. Nobody told me I had to keep it, so I chose my own. There were some false starts, but I knew I was Steven in the end."
"Then.." Dodo furrowed her brows through the darkness, "what were you called?"
Steven laughed. "I can't tell you that!"
"Come on, you're teasing me now!" said Dodo, sitting up straight so she could meet him at eye level.
"Alright. Alright, fine…" His expression hardened. "But you don't tell anyone else. Understand?"
"Promise I won't. Not even the Doctor, if you like."
Steven went quiet.
"Don't worry about that. The Doctor already knows." He looked down into his lap. "Anyway, it was Lee."
"Lee?"
"Lee. Not quite… Lee. Lillian."
"What?" Dodo laughed. Steven sat up taller than her just to answer back.
"Hey now, it wasn't my choice. Lillian Taylor. It never had a ring to it."
Dodo shook her head. She couldn't believe Steven would get a name like that, even in the far future. It was obvious why he didn't like it. "It doesn't even sound like a boy's name."
Steven blinked. "No. It really doesn't. Anyway, I thought you agreed with the Liss, being a boy or a girl shouldn't matter to everyone."
"Alright," said Dodo, crossing her arms confidently, "if you really say I can, if you really think I can; I'm not going to be a girl any more. I'm going to be Dodo and I'm going to use the same pronouns as the Liss. And yes, I did know what pronouns were before you mentioned it!"
Steven outstretched an arm and put a reassuring hand onto Dodo's blankets. As much as it seemed to be a nice gesture in his head, he started slipping off the side of his own bed. "Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"You know you don't have to tell the Doctor," he said, straining to grab the end of Dodo's bed to try and help himself up. "...if you don't want to yet, but– oh!"
With a yell he rolled onto the floor, landing with his own covers on top of him.
If the house had any doors, the 'bang!' which came next would have been the sound of the Doctor slamming one open. Since there were none, it could only be assumed that the 'bang!' and the following word uttered were the result of the Doctor hitting his head on the low arch into the bedroom. "What sort of racket do you think you're making up here?" He looked down and jabbed the moving pile of blankets with his stick.
"Ow!" said the blankets.
"Go to sleep. The pair of you."
"Yes, Doc," the blankets mumbled. And got jabbed again.
By morning, the sun shone brighter than ever, the insects of the bushes had finished holding a funeral for their squashed friends while wearing their darkest shades of green, and afterwards returned to their daily lives of sitting on leaves and occasionally sitting on some other, further unexplored leaves. The Tardis whirred gently on the hill, waiting patiently for the travellers to return. If it had been her choice, she would have landed in one of those nice vehicle stations on the outer arms of the Circinus Galaxy. She'd been there once and only once, landing in a slick white maintenance area. If it hadn't been for the Doctor making such a fuss about her being re-oiled, she might have been kinder than to take him and his human friends to the mouth of the next volcano they came to. After over a hundred years of creaking doors, it wasn't as if it was an overreaction. Soon she sensed something coming up the hill. Lots of somethings indeed. One of those was the Doctor, the others were either strangers or his humans again.
"Thanks for keeping us," Dodo said with a grin, walking between Pic and Ori. Ahead of them, the Doctor was once again deep in conversation with Eme, and Steven listened in thoughtfully. Dodo glanced back at the Liss' settlement. For living in such a lonely looking place, the Liss were some of the most colourful and welcoming people they'd met. It would take a while after they'd left for Dodo to realise how much the Liss and Steven had opened their eyes last night. Steven shot them a glance as the Tardis came into view, as if to say… it will all be okay.
"Hopefully you get on well with your travels," said Eme, carefully dismissing the curious size of their ship. While everyone exchanged brief goodbyes, Dodo slipped through the doors of the Tardis and let the gentle hum of the interior fill their ears. The Doctor and Steven joined them eventually, discussing something about cutlery and the large air conditioning unit currently balanced on top of the Tardis' rotor.
"Doctor?" said Dodo. He still spoke to Steven.
"Now, I was forced to acquire everything on my own terms, whether that comes under the term stealing or cautious gathering, it makes no difference whatsoever to–"
"Doctor," Dodo jumped in louder, "That's not what I was going to talk about."
Steven perked up and gave them a nod from over the Doctor's shoulder.
"Yes, my dear child..?"
The Doctor's eyes sparkled with kindness, and Dodo felt their stomach settle. They took a deep breath just for luck.
"There was something I was going to try and tell you. Something Steven told me about, you see…."