Anomalies Can Cry, by Matthew Clarke (my fan fiction)

Another story about Big Finish character, Elizabeth Klein. Klein is a Nazi scientist from an alternate timeline and was briefly a companion of the Seventh Doctor. This is set between A Thousand Tiny Wings and Survival of the Fittest.

Klein is a very cold, hard-edged character. I wanted to explore her softer, more vulnerable side. This story underlines just how tragic Klein's story is, something that is very easy to forget.


The Doctor had returned to the TARDIS, leaving her to enjoy the solitude of beach.

Klein felt deliciously cool in her light summer dress. The sun was still warm as afternoon turned to evening, but the ocean breeze was cool and refreshing. She had dispensed with her sandals and walked barefoot, feeling the fine green sand between her toes.

The scene was so beautiful. The green-sanded beach seemed to stretch for miles, framed by shiny green cliffs. The sea was golden, reflecting the magnificent golden sky above. Here and there, peculiarly shaped green rock formations jutted out of the golden waters, the waves lapping around them. Strange birds cried out in the air above (or were they flying reptiles or mammals? Klein wondered).

Klein felt her eyes moisten as she drank in the sight in her solitude. She was almost certainly the only human on this planet. Just this moment, she wished that somebody else was there to enjoy the glorious sight with her. She almost wished the Doctor had not returned to the TARDIS. 'No,' she told herself. 'Never mind the Doctor. Forget about him.'

Jonas. The name returned to her mind like lightning. Seldom did she allow herself to think of her lost lover. From her world. Her timeline. The world that was supposed to be. It seemed like eternity since Jonas had held her hand or kissed her. How she missed his strong embrace!

Jonas was gone. Erased from history, along with everything in her world. Of course, there must be a Jonas in this timeline. He had been born before the war, before the Doctor's meddling, so a version of him must still exist in this timeline. She knew, however, that this would be a different Jonas, a man who had lived a different life, with different memories. Not her Jonas. A man who had never known her, never loved her and never known her love for him.

Klein hated to think about it, but she was horribly aware that there must be a another Elizabeth Klein in this timeline. A Klein who had been born in England before the war, like her and who had gone through the same trauma of internment with her German parents by the British. Yet this Klein had never seen the victory of the Third Reich and the magnificence of its triumph across the world. This Klein would have grown up thinking that the Allies were supposed to win the war. This was the Klein who belonged in this timeline. Not her.

Klein wept with grief as she allowed herself to dwell on the enormity of her personal loss. Everyone she had known and loved had been erased from history. She was utterly alone in this unfair world.

The Doctor called her a 'temporal anomaly.' It was another way of saying she was a nobody, a non-person. She might be an anomaly, but she was a human being and she felt loss like any other. She needed the love of friends and family like any other person. The Doctor had taken all of that away from her.

Klein continued to stare out at the beautiful, but uncaring horizon, her eyes filled with tears. She realised what the Doctor was doing to her. He was manipulating her yet again. By taking her to so many beautiful locations, he was trying to soften her; to trick her into letting down her guard. Just another of his games. She was not going to let him win.

When she was a child, during the war, she had been an 'anomaly.' A child of German parents on British soil, she was deemed to be an 'enemy alien.' She and her parents had been taken from their home and interned by the British government. The Doctor was doing exactly the same thing to her. To him she was an anomaly, another enemy alien. He might like to pretend that she was his travelling companion, but in truth, it was just another form of internment. The Doctor was keeping his enemy alien under guard.

As Klein treaded softly back to the TARDIS, her bare feet still enjoying the soft green sand, her heart burned with the desire to get even. The Doctor would regret manipulating her.