Chapter Text
When you're a child, everything is so much bigger: chairs, cups, food, fears, dreams, sadness. It's all so big. Even the smallest things hurt a hundred times more than they would hurt an adult. There's one thing, though, that kids and adults have in common. They both love beginnings and hate endings. Beginnings can be the start of something grand, something amazing. Something Fantastic. Ends mark the final part of something or someone we once loved, and we mourn for what once was. This story, well, it’s just the beginning.
Lyra Grace: She is the one who starts our story, our protagonist, if you will. She wasn't a very happy girl; her life wasn't horrible, but just because something isn't horrible doesn't make it great. She was always second best to her sister Zoe Grace. Zoe was the firstborn, a better version of Lyra, despite both being adopted. As much as Lyra envied her sister, she loved her too much to actually hate her. Zoe adored her sister, but because she was so young, she couldn't do much to help her. At least that's how she defended herself in her head. (It will all make sense later.) All Lyra wanted was to be noticed and step out of her sister's shadow. One day, she was, but not by a parent, a teacher, or even a friend. It was by someone much grander.
The Doctor had parked the TARDIS in a nearby park for a moment while he and K9 worked on the engines. Little Lyra heard the odd whirling sound and found the box shortly after. She was curious; she had been to this park every weekend for nearly two years now and never once had she seen the odd blue box. She walked up to it and placed her hand on the door. The TARDIS hummed, pricking her skin in a comforting tingling sensation. She could tell this little girl was special and would mean a lot to her thief one day. In what way, she could not say, she just knew Lyra would be the Doctor's Saving Grace. She swung her doors open to the little girl and drew her inward.
Sarah Jane looked up when she heard the tapping of little feet. She saw a little girl with wide eyes looking around the engine room, her mouth open in a silent scream; excitement gleamed in her eyes. The TARDIS closed its doors right away, trapping the girl. While she was confused, she was not scared. This all felt very welcoming, even a little familiar. "Doctor," Sarah Jane got his attention quickly.
He looked up and, upon seeing little legs next to him, bolted up, ultimately hitting his head on the console. "How did you get in here?" he asked, rubbing his head with a bit of a bite of frustration in his voice.
She shakily pointed to the doors. His loud voice scared her; it was like he was shouting at her. "They just kinda opened," she said with a quiver in her voice, making Sarah Jane hit the Doctor on the arm. She shrank back and looked around again, "It's bigger on the inside." As if sensing her fear, K9 approached, she looked down at him, and her nerves almost instantly melted away, replaced by wonder and joy. "Aw, he's cute." K9 seemed to like her, too, as he immediately wheeled around her. "You're a good boy," she giggled, tapping his head.
"Affirmative."
"And he talks too!" she grinned, kneeling on the floor next to him.
The Doctor was very intrigued by the little girl. Why would the TARDIS let her in? He tilted his head at her and walked around her in a circle, examining her, "What's your name?"
She looked up and at Sarah Jane first. The said woman was captivated by her blue eyes, her blue eyes that looked much more pained than they should, but still held so much childlike wonder. Then she looked to the Doctor, she looked into his blue eyes, and she saw the whole universe, a galaxy of pain that made him look older than his face let on. Lyra didn't know why, but she felt like she could trust the man and, by extension, the woman. "Lyra Grace." And that was it. That simple exchange was how the Doctor and Sarah Jane became her imaginary friends they wanted, no, needed, to find out more about her. They taught her about the universe, taught her alien languages and writings, read stories to her, told her about the dangerous species that she had to look out for, and even took her on a few trips and brought her back in time for tea. Nothing dangerous, of course, and nothing ever turned up much. She seemed like a perfectly normal little girl.
One day, while they were playing with her, they heard another high-pitched voice on the monitor, "Lyra! Do you want ice cream? Mum and I are going to the shop."
Lyra's face grew dark, staring past the two. She got up and pressed a button on the console that she had seen the doctor push once or twice to talk to adversaries outside the door. "NO ZOE!" They heard the small steps fade as Lyra glared at the monitor.
"Ly, what was that about?" Sarah Jane asked.
"I don't want her to come over here, for once, I don't want you to leave me for her. You're my friends." She was a little girl; it was only natural that she would get jealous, but this was deeper than jealousy.
It sounded like she hated her sister. The Doctor kneeled in front of her. “You know we would never do that, star,” He reminded her softly.
She shook her head, “Zoe is better than me, you’ll want her more than you’ll want me.” That dark look was gone, replaced by a sad, resigned look, as if she knew she was the less impressive sister.
They knew they couldn’t change her mind, so they tried to show her, in little ways, how much she meant to them. A longer trip here and there, toys from alien planets, even her own room in the Tardis.
~~~
"I don't wanna move!" Lyra whined to her parents. Her little fists were clenched, her bottom lip stuck out in a quiver, and her eyes narrowed with tears pricking the corners.
"It doesn't matter, Lyra, it's happening," her father told her. He was always the more tight-fisted of the two, meaning Lyra saw him as the meaner parent.
Her mother knelt down in front of her, “Dear, your father got a better job down in Southwark. This is a good thing, our new house is in London right by the Eye. We can all do it together, just like you wanted for your birthday.”
She didn’t care about the eye anymore; she hadn’t thought about it in months, not since the Doctor took her to a planet with never-ending snowfall and the biggest library in the universe. “What about my friends!”
“You can still ring them, and I’m sure you’ll make so many new friends.”
Tears streamed down her face, and she ran. “Lyra!” her father yelled, but she didn't look back. She ran out the front door, slamming it on her way, running to her park. In Lyra's childish mind she attributed the Doctor and Sarah Jane to that park; she had never seen them land anywhere else on earth, so she figured that was the only place they could go. Kind of like when you're a kid, and you think teachers live in the school. In her mind, she was moving away from the Doctor and Sarah Jane. "Doctor, Sarah Jane!" she yelled. She looked like a lunatic, "Doctor!" She yelled again just as the TARDIS appeared. She didn't wait for them to come out like she normally did; she just ran in and slammed into Sarah Jane.
"Star, what happened?" The Doctor asked, rushing over.
She was a sobbing mess, but Sarah Jane was able to decipher and tell the Doctor. They just let her cool down and play with K9 for what she thought would be the last time. The Doctor and Sarah Jane got into a very heated discussion about what they should do. They had grown attached to the girl, and neither wanted to leave her behind, but they needed to do what was best for her. In the end, they concluded that nothing ever happened with Lyra; she was nothing but a normal girl, and they should let her live a normal life. The Doctor would be sure that she was convinced that they weren't real. They would disappear; they would vanish like they were a figment of her imagination. Her imaginary friends that she had grown out of.
As their time came to an end and they kneeled beside her, she tied a close-knit bracelet on each of their wrists that she had been making with K9 for the past hour. A rainbow one that matched the Doctor's scarf and the blue one for Sarah Jane to match the same blue as the TARDIS. She moved into Sarah Jane's lap like a child hugging her parents. "Please don't forget me." She whimpered.
"Of course not," they assured her. "Here," Sarah Jane placed a silver bracelet on her wrist. "You can extend it whenever you want. It was mine when I was a kid. Keep it."
The Doctor placed a necklace with Gallifeyen symbols around her neck; He had been waiting to give it to her for her birthday. Now, this may seem weird if they wanted to disappear, but they knew she would see these as little gifts she had gotten years ago and would forget about. They would end up in a jewelry box somewhere and be lost to time. They knew Lyra better than she knew herself at this point. She had costume jewelry and little crafts lost all over her room in the Tardis. She could never keep a pair of earrings together for more than a month. "If you ever need me, make a wish, and I'll be there," he told her with a smile, tapping her nose. She let a small giggle rip from her. He had no intention of coming, really; she needed to forget him. To live a normal life, to not get attached to a life among the stars, because that life hurts, and it takes, and she was too young to be hurt and taken.
A voice came through the monitor again, "Looks like your sister is looking for you." Sarah Jane said, still holding her close.
He showed her the monitor and her sister yelling out her name. “Lyra! Lyra, come on!” Her voice was panicked, and she sounded close to crying.
She sighed, giving them each a tight hug. She looked back at them one more time before stepping outside and watching the Tardis disappear with the sound of the time rotor that she had become so accoustomed too.
She stared at the spot where it had been for a moment before Zoe slammed into her, “Lyra, there you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Her worry fell on deaf ears. Everything was a blur as Zoe rushed the five-year-old back home.
~~~
It had been two months, and Lyra hated her new school. One day, while running to class, she met a girl named Rose Tyler, a girl two years above her, whom Zoe briefly remembered from a wedding when she was seven, and Lyra was two. She then introduced them both to a boy a few years older named Mickey Smith. When Lyra would make up stories about distant planets and draw pictures of funny aliens, her parents thought she just had an overactive imagination. They thought she would grow out of it, but she never did. She ended up in therapy for years, where every child psychologist she ever saw told her that imaginary friends were for little kids and that she was growing up. That she’ll do amazing things one day, and she just needs to wait until she's big enough.
Over the years, she slowly started to believe them. The Doctor and Sarah Jane had been her imaginary friends, and that was all. The bracelet and necklace were toys given to her by friends she had long since forgotten. That she was simply broken as a kid. Everyone treated her that way. Like, even the mention of space would break her fragile mind once more.
Only one person treated her like she wasn’t broken, his name was Javic Thane. He never told her the Doctor wasn’t real or that stories about other planets were all in her head. He treated her like she was right, like he believed her. He even told her that maybe, just maybe, the Doctor would come back someday.
She didn’t believe him; she never imagined that the Doctor would come back or that she would go on all the amazing adventures he promised her as a child, with him and her best friends.