Success!

[regasssa]

I believe that I may have finished my darkfest fic.

Yey!

This means that I am one sex scene, Snarry Games art and an elves ficlet off finishing October deadlines, which isn't so bad. It gives me all of October for my other four projects, and I might even be able to take a shot at NaNo this year if there is time, but I fail at NaNoWriMo. Still, I think it's about bloody time I wrote something original, so it's worth a shot. But until then, I have Road Aheading to do. After tomorrow life should gradually tip back into the 'normal' scale, not including catching up on sleep. I am seriously sapped.

So, because I know journal entries are ever so dull, I will add a clipping of my Google docs. Not betaed, but quite slaved over and probably not superb because I'm by no means a Whoovian, but I do try. It's part of a much longer unfinished thirteen part story arc I planned but didn't write. This would have been the first chapters of the first story, to put it in perspective. Er...but there are some bits I like of it. So I share. Do I continue?

 

Matthew brushed his fingers along the computer console, its electric thrum tingling reassuringly against his fingertips. It was testing him, he knew, reaching into his mind and seeking out that word -- that one word, cried out in desperation towards the distant stars.

Doctor.

 

 

The computer buzzed happily, and then with a series of clicks and beeps, the screens around him came to life. On his left was a map, with tiny clusters of bright yellow dots blazing, and to his right a line of numbers rotated ever onwards. A single line, beating out a four-beat bar, indicated that the computer was waiting; charged up but inactive as it waited for his commands.

 

 

It was beautiful -- but then, it would be. It was his. His idea; his brainchild. Oh, the Mister Copper Foundation had built it, but that was the whole point. It was much easier to steal a fact than an idea, and the Sub-wave Network was very much a fact.

 

 

The Daleks had been sloppy. They'd caused a lot of damage on their rampage across the Earth, killed huge numbers of people. Even now there was no exact number of mortalities; only of the missing. In this little house in Flydale North, undiscovered thanks to the perception filter on the front door, lay the picked clean and sun-bleached bones of Harriet Jones, once Prime-Minister of the entire country. She lay forgotten, and not surprisingly, for many considered that a busybody like her couldn't possibly have avoided getting herself killed.

They couldn't possibly know how brave she had been.


Her fate didn't matter because the perception filter had done the most important job that it had been employed to do. It had protected the computer system; the Sub-wave Network. Now she was dead, there was nothing to prevent him from taking it.


"Thank you, Harriet," he said, "But I've got what I need, now. I'll just be heading off," he shot a grin over his shoulder at the skeleton. "You don't mind me taking this, do you? No, of course not."


A light in the corner of the display drew his attention, and Matthew turned, leaning over to look more closely. His grin faded into a grimace, and he turned, glowering at the skeleton bitterly. Despite his admonishing finger, Harriet Jones did not respond, so with a grunt, he turned back towards the computer, eyes narrowing as he began to shut the systems down.


"I can hear you laughing," he told the silent bones, angrily. "If you think turning control over to Torchwood is going to stop me, then you clearly don't know me very well." The computer's buzz crooned to a stop, and Matthew began to disconnect the bits that mattered, stashing the hard drives into his suitcase, and secreting the meta-data key into his breast pocket.


"It was lovely to see you again, Harriet," Matthew said, snapping the locks shut. "No please, don't get up. I can see myself out."


Outside, the cool damp air was instantly refreshing. Away to the east, mountains of black clouds rose up into the sky, but here it was empty and blue. The weather was still unpredictable, even now, months after the planet had been returned back to its original place. Hailstorms in Bengal. Sleet across central Africa, and it was all the Doctor's fault. A man of science and a healer, but this was the planet that he had left behind; damaged and abandoned.


The air was sweet from the recently fallen thunderstorm rains, and Matthew blamed his good mood on the charged ions as he strolled down the garden path and backed out through the gate, his ankles colliding with something just as he closed it behind him.


No longer quite in such a good mood he whirled on the spot, stopping when his eyes found only white. An old lady, her wisps of grey hair thinning, with her tartan shopping trolley in front of her, stood looking at him. Or rather, not looking at him, for her eyes were dead and pale.


"Er," he said.


"Pardon me, young man, I didn't see you."


Matthew bit his tongue to prevent himself from stating the obvious, and instead said: "Yes, well...no matter," and he moved to one side.


"Was she in?" asked the woman, making Matthew freeze on the spot. "The Prime-Minister. Was she in? That's her house, you know..."


"Is it really?" Matthew asked, in mock disbelief. "Well...Imagine that."


"It's such a shame. She was a lovely woman."


"Was she? Oh..." he smiled, because he hadn't thought that Harriet Jones was at all nice. As far as he was concerned, she'd been a jumped up back-bencher who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And really -- as if meeting the Doctor twice made her special! "I ought to be going," he said, dodging the rest of the way around the old woman. "Lots to do."


* * * * *


The Doctor had been travelling alone now for years. Oh, he was used to travelling alone, but for this long...? Two thousand three hundred and eleven full earth days of travelling since he had left Donna with her family; very little in terms of the lifespan of a Time Lord. It felt like a long time now, though, as it never had before.


He had had plenty of time to think; to let it all seep in like damp through a broken roof. Even though it hadn't been he who had finally destroyed the Daleks, he had created a whole number of people, all ready to commit mass genocide in his name. To that degree, Davros had been right. It was no different to the last time: ending a war that had threatened to rip the very fabric of time and space to shreds. Last time it had been he that made the decision, destroying whole worlds in order to halt the Daleks. Some of those planets, such as Asterion, had already been ravaged and exterminated to cleanse it of life, but others that had been innocent - simply too close to the center of the explosion to be saved. Man, woman and child; Time Lord, Dalek, Human. Civilisations and histories and culture. It didn't matter. He had killed them all.


It had been his right as a Time Lord. His right to protect the universe in the only way remaining. But just because it had been his right didn't make it hurt any less. With every ticking moment, moving forward, he regretted it more. It hadn't ended. It kept going, on and on. The Time War never seemed to end, as long as his hearts kept beating. It gravitated towards him as though he were a black hole for all the evil in the universe. He kept killing it, and it kept coming; indomitable.


Leaning against the door frame, the Doctor inhaled air filled with the tingle of static from his shields. He could look out from here down to the planet below, where it hung suspended in space, exactly where he had left it. It was beautiful -- oh, it wasn't Gallifrey, no, but it was still very much his home. He was attracted to it like a pilot fish to a shark; knowing the danger, but wanting to help.


Many times in the past, but especially in the last few years, he had suspected that his own interest in the planet was part of the problem. If it wasn't for him then his enemies wouldn't continually to seek to destroy it. The Master, the Daleks...they had all of the universe in which to stage their battles, after all. At the same time, it was damage he'd done irreparably. If he left the Earth now then it would no longer have his protection, and in these coming few years the planet would need it. It was reaching out to touch the sky, and the sky was reaching back.


But that even he, alien and Time Lord, could not afford to leave the planet alone. He knew that he would be tempted -- tempted to take one of those silly, delightful little people under his wing and to show them the stars; to share with them all of the wonder in the universe. He couldn't allow that this time. He couldn't allow himself to be weak. One trip, he'd say, and then they would never leave. Except they always left -- always. Or ended up dead. He took his treasured humans and showed them the universe, and when he was gone, they would take up arms against it, forever changed for the worse because of him.


Insane or not, the Doctor could never deny that Davros was a genius. He had been there at the beginning, at the genesis of the Daleks, and he had seen plan after plan, and barely stopped many of them. Moving twenty seven planets one second into the future and building them into a great planetary battery... Now that was genius. Genius that was dead now, because he'd killed it. Kind of.


"Well," he said, bracingly. "It's good to be back."


No matter how guilty he felt, he couldn't quell the feeling of longing that filled him as he looked down on his planet.

 

"Shall we?" he asked, absently, but nobody answered.

The TARDIS purred at him soothingly in the silence, and then, like being stabbed in the belly, he felt it.

 

Down below - somewhere on that planet that he loved - was a Time Lord. He knew it like he knew the exact melting temperature of gold, and what the ‘F’ stood for in John F. Kennedy. It just appeared like a fact inside of his head, and his blood instantly began to boil like molten fire.

 

 

"That's impossible," he hissed. Yet he had to believe it because he knew it was true. Completely alone, that single beacon appeared in his mind like a blaze of colour across a sheet of blank paper. Before – oh, a long time ago now – it had always been like that. The Time Lords had been there, a spectrum of knowledge and colour in his mind, but it hadn’t been like that since Gallifrey was destroyed and it would never be that way again.

 

 

Couldn’t it be possible, though? If the Master had ran, if all of those Daleks had escaped, even though he had done so much to stop them... Wasn’t it be possible that another Time Lord had escaped too? He almost didn’t dare to hope.

 

 

A beep drew his attention, and he snapped the Tardis door shut, crossing to the console to look down at it. Already quite sick of saying the obvious, he none the less felt his knees weaken underneath him. But this was impossible too. Completely impossible: like toast falling butter side up.

 

 

“There are no other TARDISes. Not like you…you’re the last of your kind. You’re…old.” She gave him a little shock through the console for that insult. “Oi,” he said, too distracted to worry that after all this time he was still talking to his ship. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

 

Worse still, by implication, if a Time Lord was flying a Type 40 TARDIS he or she would probably be old too…perhaps even older than the Doctor. The others had never particularly liked him very much, which didn’t bode well.

 

 

“Alright,” he said, stroking across the edge of the console. “We’ll investigate. Let’s try not to land too close, shall we?”

 

 

A Time Lord… Oh, but it could be anyone. The Master had already proven that the good had all fought until their last breaths in the Time War, and that only left the bad. If one could hide, human for centuries, then perhaps another could too. Undetectable until he or she opened the Chameleon Arch and looked inside; or perhaps trapped inside the Void like the Daleks. The universe was full of ifs and buts.

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

"If you hadn't blown the escape capsule, we wouldn't even be in this situation," Andromeda snapped, her hands curled into fists at her sides. The focus of her anger was a small man with glasses too big for his face, his bad, stringy wig concealing the rest of his features. "We only came in here to make repairs!"


"That really isn't the issue here, Andy," said a square jawed man in the corner. The insignia on his frock coat identified him as a Commander in the Terran Space Core, and he leaned forwards, his hands braced on his knees, "Since I'm the highest ranking person in this escape pod, I think you'll find it's me that is taking command. I decide who gets thrown out of it, thank you very much. Now sit down!"


Andy sat, folding her arms and glaring at the other members of their 'crew'. The technician with the too big glasses was Georgie. He'd come with the ship, and despite being a complete idiot, there just seemed no way to get rid of him. Apparently, throwing other people out of escape pods wasn't in the manual, even if it would give them enough oxygen to survive the trip back home. To her left was the science officer, Bellavevre, looking bored and distant. It was her fault they were having this conversation at all. Depressed by the very fact that nothing ever added up in her favour, she had told them all about the oxygen situation, then fell quiet to contemplate her own doom. Sitting on her right was the cadet Teddy. He was a bit flighty, though they hadn't known him long enough to work out why.


And then there was Dave, the man that she was secretly in love with. Commander of the Idle Wild, and a complete womaniser; but she was the only woman that he had never looked at. Perhaps it was because she was so strong willed too; a security officer and a lieutenant, she wasn't even meant to be here, but a scuffle had broken out and she'd been sent down by her superior officer to investigate.


So now she was being catapulted through space with the rest of them, at four thousand kilometres per second, and it would be three weeks in this capsule, living on rations, before they almost got home, and suffocated.


”I want my mum,” Teddy said, drawing the attention of the entire crew.

 

 

For a moment, nobody said anything, and then scowling, Andromeda went to the boy’s side, settling down beside him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “I know, sweetheart,” she said, glowering at her shipmates.

 

 

“Can I have a hug too?” asked Georgie, flashing a toothy grin in Andromeda’s direction.

 

 

“Sure you can,” she said, and rolled her eyes, “Not. Just do us all a favour and don’t talk, and don’t touch anything else.”

 

 

“I don’t think there’s any need for that,” now it was Dave who interrupted. “It wasn’t Georgie’s fault.”

 

 

“In which reality was it not Georgie’s fault?” Andromeda said, her voice raising again, inch by inch. “La-la-land? Maybe Bonkersville?!”

 

 

“It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

 

 

“George…you threw the manual switch, with both hands, and cried ‘Yeehah!’”

 

 

“Enough!” Dave yelled, standing now. His voice boomed in the tiny space, and everyone fell quiet. “There’s no point blaming anyone for what’s happened. It’s done now.”

 

 

“So…”

 

 

“So now we just have to survive without killing each other. I’m sure someone will come and rescue us.”

 

 

The crew fell into silence. Space was vast. The chances of actually coming in contact with another ship, even though the escape pod was programmed to follow the ion trail back along the shipping route, was incredibly small. Even Dave’s optimism seemed to crack a little, as he sat down again and sank back into the nook to make himself comfortable.

 

 

“I want my mum,” Cadet Teddy said again, and the uncomfortable silence crept on.

 

* * * * *

 

Eva Moon hung her coat over her arm, rubbed sleep out of her eyes and stepped out into the alleyway. It was toasty mid-summer, although the weatherman kept warning them that it looked like rain. What did he know, anyway? Last week she’d been walking along the Strand in a wrap around skirt and a halter top, and it had snowed. Of course, it would have been on the way to the nightclub, with temporary green dye sprayed into her cropped blond hair. She was never going to trust a BBC weatherman again.

 

 

“Hey darling. Big Issue?"

 

 

"Is it this week's?" Eva asked, stepping cautiously from the streetlight into the shadows in which the young homeless man was standing. "Brilliant," she said, spotting the front cover in the dark, and reached into her bag to fetch out as many coins as she could spare.

 

"D'you think you can come back next week?" Eva asked, already flicking through the pages as she stepped back into the blinding light. "My last vendor vanished after..." she trailed off. A lot of people had vanished when the spaceships had come.

 

 

"Oh," said the man, thoughtfully. "You won't want next week's..." There was no answer, Eva had already sank into an interview with a young man from Bournemouth.

 

 

"So you work here?"

 

 

"Hmm?" Eva asked, blinking up at him from her reading. "Oh, yes. Yeah. I'm Eva Moon."

 

 

"I've walked by a few times, once or twice. You work with Polly Jackson, don't you? The writer? I always loved her work."

 

 

"Mmm."

 

 

"Is she still here?" there was a note of exasperation in his voice now and his left hand opened and closed around the coins that he'd been given.

 

 

"Oh no, she doesn't come in often. Gone home already I should think. Here, if you want me to get her autograph for you..."

 

 

The man's expression shifted in the darkness, but Eva didn't see it, she still had her head down. "I'd much rather meet her in person. But thank you, Eva Moon."

 

 

"Yeah..." Eva replied, rolling her eyes. "Whatever you say."

 

 

Eva could only read between patches of streetlight, and a couple of those still hadn't been repaired, which didn't help matters much. Deciding that she'd be better off reading the rest at home, curled up in bed, she folded the magazine and stuffed it into her over-sized handbag. Her friends often had a good laugh at her expense, but the truth was that she had everything she might ever suddenly need in here. Make up and make up remover, a spare pair of sexy pants, just in case she got lucky, and a toothbrush, for exactly the same reason. There were mints and a book for long train journeys, sunglasses, a bottle of water, and tissues. Then, obviously, she carried her phone, her purse and a personal alarm. Oh - and the A-Z of London; because you never knew when that might come in handy.

 

 

The best thing about tonight was that it was unremarkable. There were no giant spaceships swooping down, no planets in the sky, and no murderous shop dummies leaping out of the windows of Marks and Spencer's. It was just a normal day, with normal people.

 

 

Except for the blue box.

 

 

Eva stopped, watching other people walk past it, apparently not even noticing it, but she couldn't help herself from staring. It had never been here before. She knew because she walked home every day along this bit of road, always on the very left hand side because it was the furthest she could get from the cars. She'd have noticed it.

 

 

Yet it looked as though it belonged there, somehow. It seemed to be part of the scenery. Eva knew it wasn't, but somehow that didn't help much either.

 

 

And then someone stepped out of it, looking surprised as he walked straight into her.

 

 

"Oh, hello. Sorry..."

 

 

"Better be," Eva said, sizing the stranger up. He had silly dark brown hair and equally brown eyes, and all of his brown pinstripe suit was too short, but somehow it worked - especially with the white trainers. Still, he looked more geeky than dangerous. "You want to tell me what you were doing in that box?"

 

 

"Er..." said the man, looking around warily. "Yeah - Police, actually. Surveillance." He tapped his nose.

 

 

"So show me your badge," Eva answered, rolling her eyes.

 

 

"Badge...badge. Oh, hang on." He disappeared back into the blue box, then came out a moment later holding up a piece of blank paper. "See? Detective John Smith. CID."

 

 

"It's blank."

 

 

"Is it?" the man turned the paper towards himself briefly, clearly puzzled, then turned back toward Eva. "Wrong bit of paper. Alright!" he threw his hands up in the air. "I admit it, I'm not a police officer. I'm researching...for a television show."

 

 

"Uh...huh."

 

 

"Yeah...we wanted to know how many people noticed if we put a big blue box in the middle of the street."

 

 

Eva raised both eyebrows, unimpressed. "How many so far?"

 

 

"One," answered the strange little man. "Sorry, what's your name?"

 

 

"Eva Moon," she answered, folding her arms across her chest. "Listen, is this thing going to be staying here, because I've got a mind to report it to the Council."

 

 

The man looked surprised now, and then grinned. "Don't worry, Eva Moon," he said - and really, what was with everyone using her full name today? -"It'll be gone by tomorrow, I promise."

 

 

* * * * *

 

 

The Doctor watched the woman called Eva Moon, waiting for her denim shorts and T-shirt to vanish around the corner before he looked back down at his psychic paper, still looking very official with 'D.I. John Smith' written across it.

 

 

"Well that was weird," pocketing the psychic paper. He closed the doors behind him and double checked that they were locked, just in case. He wasn't about to have any old Time Lord go frolicking through his TARDIS, especially not now he'd finally managed to get it exactly how he liked it.

 

 

Still talking to himself, the Doctor looked up and down the London street, trying to decide which way to go. "Which way then?" He felt like he should know, but then again, he was surprised how much managed to pass him by these days. "This way it is," he said, beaming at his own wit, and followed his feet up the street, looking for something that might be a clue as to what he was looking for.


If it really was a TARDIS, then it would be concealed in some way. Oh, he could find it - he'd found other TARDIS easily in the past - but never on such a busy London street. It could be anything: a manhole, a car parked on the edge of the road, a telephone box that didn't open...even just a door. They could be made to take up exactly the same material space as an existing item, or even to appear inside of something. They didn't even need to have doors. No; he wasn't just about to suddenly find it in this place; not unless the chameleon circuit was broken and it appeared as something glaringly obvious like a carriage or a submarine.


The walk took him through Leicester Square, past the huge Odeon cinema and deep into the theatre district. Well, he supposed, maybe whoever it was was a cultural tourist, rather than trying to take over the world. It'd make a nice change. Yep. Probably just came down to see if the latest cast of the Phantom of the Opera were up to the standards of the originals, or something of the sort. Except it wouldn't be like that, would it? It would have to be someone trying to take over the world, because he was the Doctor, and he attracted that kind of bad luck.


The longer he walked, the less he seemed to see. Nothing was going on. The night was quiet. Even the bookshops that usually stayed open so late had closed. The lights had all been turned off inside the theaters, and only a few glowing signs remained. A homeless man sat in the porch of one of the theatres watched him as he fished in his pockets for something to give him that wasn't from another planet, finally finding a doubloon in the lining and tossing it towards him.


"Er...it's worth plenty to a collector," he said, apologetically. "It's all I've got on me." He stepped around the man to get a better look at the theatre programme behind him, tapping his lips thoughtfully. Hmm...Polly Jackson, David Warner, Mark Howard... Aha! Eva Moon! So she was an actress; that made sense. No wonder she'd seen straight through him. Even after nine hundred years he was still only a mediocre dramatist at best.


The Doctor turned on the spot, leaning against the wall, feeling close, but somehow miles away. It was a coincidence, and he didn't like coincidences -- had grown to hate them over the last decade. Eva had seen his TARDIS, talked to him, and then he had found her here. But she wasn't the Time Lord, he knew; he'd have been able to see it in her eyes. He was just a blind old fox, fixed on the smell of the rabbit but unable to chase it. Something wasn't right here, and he hadn't yet worked out what it was.


* * * * *


The TARDIS hummed softly, content and happy. It was enjoying visiting all of these new places, the Time Lord thought, moving around the console and leaning against it. His previous TARDIS was gone; it had died when it had lost him. This one was a downgrade, certainly, but for the purposes he had, he'd no need for weapons systems or artificial intelligence. Travel across space and time was all that this thing was good for, but space and time was all he needed.


Best of all, the chameleon circuit was working perfectly. The disguise had surprised him in how flawless it was; as an old Victorian underground toilet it had gone completely unnoticed, and yet he was running surveillance on the other TARDIS even now. The blue box was particularly badly hidden. The more years that passed, the more conspicuous it became. The Doctor had been gone for hours, but now he was wandering back, as chirpy as ever, whistling a show tune as he unlocked the sliding doors and stepped inside.


The Time Lord watched, waiting for the blue box to vanish, but the Doctor seemed content to stay parked. It wasn't a particularly interesting sport -- even when a gang of youths strode past they failed to even glance at the box, so voyeuristic vandalism was out of the question. After a few more hours, and with the slightest crick in his neck, the Time Lord turned everything off, deciding to go and find himself something nice to wear; tomorrow night was a special occasion, after all.


He would have to be careful. If the Doctor wasn't leaving, then he almost certainly suspected something, and it made the game far more dangerous to play.


* * * * *

 

Comments

[fidgetknickers.livejournal.com]

Umm, just so you know, your cut is borked XD But! Since it is on display, for the first time ever I have read Doctor Who fic, and am now mildy contemplating watching an episode or two :D

[regasssa.livejournal.com]

Ah bollocks. Thank you for telling me! Naughty spam, sorry about that! And do watch an episode or two! Or eight... Or thirty.

[featherxquill.livejournal.com]

I've been hiding lots, but I'll poke you next time I see you online. Is the fic ready for beta-ing?

[regasssa.livejournal.com]

Yes! I changed the label so that you could see :)

[melusinahp.livejournal.com]

\o/

[regasssa.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Mwuah.