Aperture of Time {1.3.1}
Title: Aperture of Time
Part: 1.3.1
Sandbox: Doctor Who
Setting: Leadworth, England, 2013
Pairings: Nine/Amy, Jack/Rose
Summary: After being promised the whirlpools of gold of Catrigan Nova, something pulls the TARDIS off course and Amy, Rose and The Doctor end up in Leadworth -- just in time for Amy's five-year school reunion.
The Doctor was becoming unsurprised to walk into the console room late in the night cycle and find Amy already there. After a few days in the vortex since the assassination of President Kennedy for the three time travellers to recover, and each day he had woken to find his companion painting her nails, reading, or scribbling in a notebook. This morning, she seemed to be sketching. He tried to slide behind her to see what she was drawing, but she angled her sketchbook away.
"Good morning, Doctor." Amy said with a grin, as she hid her drawing.
"Good morning, Amy." The Doctor replied, deciding to play it cool and move over to the console. "What are you drawing this morning?"
"The TARDIS." Amy replied, just as the console lit up as if pleased to have her portrait done. "Well, the console anyway."
The Doctor looked around the room. "Why?" He ignored the buzzing from the console which he took to be the TARDIS equivalent of blowing a raspberry in his direction.
Amy glanced up from her drawing in amusement. "Did my nails already," she offered up, showing off the pinkish-rose-gold tone that had replaced yesterday's chocolate brown, "I raided the wardrobe for the day, and thought I'd catch up on my sketches." She flipped the pages of her sketchpad, closing it. "I like sketching things so I can remember like I saw them the first time."
The Doctor nodded, he understood that. "When you're my age, when you travel as long as I have, when you've done the things I've done - all you tend to see is the facts and the tragedy of it all. When everything's new, you see the wonder of it all." He watched as Amy tilted her head, looking at him as if she had never seen him before. The gaze made him slightly uncomfortable and he shifted, moving around the console, busying himself with tinkering. "So, what would you like to do today? I think it's about time we land again."
"Anywhere?" Amy asked, sketches forgotten as she jumped up in interest.
"Anywhere, anywhen!" The Doctor replied, with that infectious voice, deciding to think about the future and not the past.
Amy considered that, leaning forward to watch his movements around the console. "Well, we've been to the past and seen the present, both on Earth...can we see another planet?" Before he could answer, she continued on. "We saw the stars, but can we can go to another planet?"
"Of course!" The Doctor said with a laugh. "There are thousands of planets out there - Catrigan Nova and it's whirlpools of gold, Centauri Seven and it's purple-sand beaches, the living forests of Cheem,.." He turned in a circle and hit a button. "And those are just some that start with the letter C!"
Amy's eyes glittered with the pictures he painted with his words. "Any of it! All of it!" She resisted the urge to clap in excitement.
"Fantastic!" The Doctor said in amusement. "Go get dressed and wake Rose, while I land the Old Girl."
Amy started towards her room, but then paused. "And then we'll go to another planet?"
"Promise!" The Doctor said firmly.
Amy quickly rushed towards her room and dressed, and then headed towards Rose's room, which, oddly enough, was in a different corridor than hers. She figured it was because Rose came first but then the TARDIS had a habit of shuffling rooms, at least according to The Doctor. Living in a spaceship was interesting, but living in a spaceship that was living was even more fascinating. Just as she reached Rose's door, however, the TARDIS pitched hard with a loud whine, throwing her into the doorway just as Rose emerged, sending them both sprawling.
Rose groaned as she got up from where she had fallen. "What's going on?" There was an edge to her voice, but she chalked it up to getting a bony elbow to the gut as they fell.
"The Doctor said we were going to another planet." Amy said in confusion as she picked herself up and brushed off her denim skirt. "Seems like something is wrong though."
"He did?" Rose asked excitedly. She hadn't yet been to another planet either. Space station, yes. Planet? No. "Some aliens are just so...alien."
Amy rolled her eyes at that. "And to them, you look alien." She smiled anyway and joined Rose on the journey back to the console room of the TARDIS, which had gone from the quiet of night flight in the time vortex to the flurry of activity that accompanied landing almost anywhere. She sped up and the two girls took places around the console, watching in barely-disguised amazement.
"Bit rough, today." The Doctor said, sounding slightly cross. "But here we are, Catrigan Nova." He pushed either girl on the back. "Go, see the pools of liquid gold."
Amy reached the door first and opened it, sticking her head out briefly, before pulling it back and snapping the door shut, arms crossed over her chest. "Is this supposed to be a hint?"
"What?" The Doctor asked, eyes knit in confusion. He didn't understand what she was asking. He could only tell that she looked upset.
"Do you want me gone? Did I say something wrong, or mess up somehow?" Amy repeated, blinking her hazel eyes and biting the inside of her cheek to cling to anger. "Is this because I wouldn't show you my sketches?"
Rose was sick of this, just because her legs were shorter and she hadn't made it to the door before the redhead. "What are you on about?"
Amy turned, opened the doors wide and sighed. "Welcome to Leadworth, England, and very much Earth."
The Doctor looked perplexed, checking the coordinates he had put in the console, and then shaking his head. "Something powerful must have pulled us off course." He grinned a bit, the adrenaline of a new adventure getting to him. "Fantastic!"
"In Leadworth?" Amy said in a tone that suggested he was acting even more insane than usual. "Nothing happens here, ever." She shook her head. "The last interesting thing that happened in Leadworth was when I punched Jeff in the throat for ruining my kissogram audition."
"Kissogram?" The Doctor repeated.
"You go to parties and kiss people...in outfits...for a laugh!" Amy said defensively. "Before I was recruited by van Statten it was my plan to get enough money to get out of here."
Rose snorted. "You were a stripper!"
"Kissogram, and I didn't get the job, thanks to Jeff." Amy defended herself, glaring at Rose. She turned to the Doctor, looking defeated. "We're stayinig to figure out what's going on, aren't we?"
"Of course!" The Doctor said, as if it was never a question.
Amy sighed again, and walked up through her back garden, letting Rose and The Doctor follow. She reached the door and checked under the mat, not that she was expecting her aunt to have remembered to put the spare back. Sure enough, the only thing under the mat was a dead leaf. With a roll of her eyes, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a hairpin, and set to picking the lock as had been her habit since adolescence.
"What are you doing?" Rose demanded. "We can't just break in to someone's house, they could have us arrested for trespassing!"
Amy grinned as she opened the door wide for the two of them. "Trust me, I'm not going to press charges on my ride out of here."
That stopped Rose, and her brow knitted in confusion. "This is your house?"
"Last time I checked." Amy said cheerfully, following The Doctor inside and flipping on the lights. "I'm the one who paid off the mortgage at any rate."
"Why don't you have keys to your own house?" Rose asked, looking around at the fairly large house, and comparing it to the council estate where she had grown up.
Amy opened the fridge and began chucking out food that had gone off since the last time Aunt Sharon had bothered checking it. "I did, but my keys are buried under solid concrete in Utah."
"Oh..." Rose said, leaving the kitchen and heading into the living room. "So it's just empty? Why don't you sell it?"
"Technically," Amy replied, defensively. "My Aunt Sharon lives here when she bothers to come home from work or whatever boyfriend's place she has now - not that it's any of your business." She was sensitive about Aunt Sharon - she knew the woman wasn't the best guardian in the world, but she was the only family Amy had, and she had done her best raising her with little to no help.
The Doctor was going about the room, glancing over trinkets and playing with the silly drinking bird that Amy had gotten Aunt Sharon for Christmas when she was nine. "What could have pulled us here?" He asked. "There's something wrong...something feels off...but I don't know what it is." He went into the next room, searching for the anomaly, the thing that could have pulled his TARDIS to his newest companion's house. "I'm missing it."
"So why did you leave?" Rose called, following behind the Doctor, as Amy stayed in the living room, sorting the mail. "Seems like you had it pretty good here, compared to working for that arse."
"The grass is always greener." Amy said, shaking her head. "Leadworth is some people's idea of paradise, but it was never mine." As she picked up a bill, she had to drop it just as quickly as Rose's scream filled the house.
Shocked, and half-wondering if a wandering alien who wasn't The Doctor had taken up residence in her house. If so, she would be incredibly cross and possibly charge it rent. What she found, however, was Rose, screaming in the hallway over the prone form of The Doctor. On the other side of them stood...
"Amy?!"
"Rory?!" Sure enough, there stood Rory Williams, in his scrubs, guiltily holding a cricket bat, over the unconscious alien. "What did you do? What are you doing here?"
Rory coloured in embarrassment. "I saw lights on here...I didn't know you were home, I thought maybe someone had broken in."
"Technically, she did." Rose felt the need to point out, from where she had dropped to her knees to check The Doctor's wounds. "She lost her keys."
Amy took the opportunity to childlishly imitate Rose's tongue-between-the-teeth smile and then stick her tongue out at the back of Rose's head. "So you came over here with a cricket bat to take on a burglar?"
If it was possible, Rory would have coloured further. "There was a strange, rough-looking man in your house, and you never called to say you were coming back - what was I supposed to think?"
"Rough?" Came the voice from the floor, as The Doctor sat up, rubbing his head. "Do you think?"
"Are you all right?" Rose asked worriedly. "You went down pretty fast."
"I got hit with a cricket bat!" The Doctor defended. "Who is he anyway?"
"Doctor, Rory Williams." Amy introduced, with a little dismissive wave. "Rose, go grab an ice pack out of the freezer." She then turned back to the two men. "Rory's my best friend." She reached over and ruffled Rory's hair, while he tried to maintain some sort of dignity. "Rory, this is The Doctor." She paused as Rose reappeared with the ice pack, trying to put it on the Doctor's head. The Doctor however, was distracted. "And that's Rose, the three of us have been traveling lately."
Rory was squirming. "Er...can I check you're head? I hit you pretty hard, Doctor..." He trailed off and put the cricket bat down quickly. "I'm a nurse."
"A nurse?" Rose repeated, in a questioning voice that Amy had heard before and did not tolerate about Rory's choice of profession. A quick kick to the shin had Rose glaring at her instead of asking.
"Er...yeah. Guilty." Rory answered, waving a little.
"Nah, takes more than a little knock to break this brain." The Doctor said easily, to the obviously guilty man.
Rory didn't look like he quite believed it, but he wasn't about to argue. Instead, he decided to focus on the person in the room he knew. "So, you came back for the reunion then?"
WHAM.
Amy's hand came down hard on the radiator. "You not only brought me back to Leadworth, you brought me back in perfect time for my high school reunion? You so owe me, Doctor."
"Cricket bat!" The Doctor said, defending himself.
"Gold whirlpools!" Amy argued back.
"Cricket bat!"
"I was voted most likely to get arrested!"
"Cricket...wait, really?" The Doctor said, stopping mid-defense, in interest.
"Really." Rory said, completely serious.
The Doctor considered that. "Okay, you win."
Amy didn't even pause. "Good, then you can be my escort, and Rose can go with Rory."
"Wait, what?" Rose and Rory asked together - one in horror and the other in surprise.
"All right then." The Doctor agreed, thinking maybe this reunion was why he was here. Maybe something was going to happen. One never knew. "Sounds like fun!"
Part: 1.3.1
Sandbox: Doctor Who
Setting: Leadworth, England, 2013
Pairings: Nine/Amy, Jack/Rose
Summary: After being promised the whirlpools of gold of Catrigan Nova, something pulls the TARDIS off course and Amy, Rose and The Doctor end up in Leadworth -- just in time for Amy's five-year school reunion.
The Doctor was becoming unsurprised to walk into the console room late in the night cycle and find Amy already there. After a few days in the vortex since the assassination of President Kennedy for the three time travellers to recover, and each day he had woken to find his companion painting her nails, reading, or scribbling in a notebook. This morning, she seemed to be sketching. He tried to slide behind her to see what she was drawing, but she angled her sketchbook away.
"Good morning, Doctor." Amy said with a grin, as she hid her drawing.
"Good morning, Amy." The Doctor replied, deciding to play it cool and move over to the console. "What are you drawing this morning?"
"The TARDIS." Amy replied, just as the console lit up as if pleased to have her portrait done. "Well, the console anyway."
The Doctor looked around the room. "Why?" He ignored the buzzing from the console which he took to be the TARDIS equivalent of blowing a raspberry in his direction.
Amy glanced up from her drawing in amusement. "Did my nails already," she offered up, showing off the pinkish-rose-gold tone that had replaced yesterday's chocolate brown, "I raided the wardrobe for the day, and thought I'd catch up on my sketches." She flipped the pages of her sketchpad, closing it. "I like sketching things so I can remember like I saw them the first time."
The Doctor nodded, he understood that. "When you're my age, when you travel as long as I have, when you've done the things I've done - all you tend to see is the facts and the tragedy of it all. When everything's new, you see the wonder of it all." He watched as Amy tilted her head, looking at him as if she had never seen him before. The gaze made him slightly uncomfortable and he shifted, moving around the console, busying himself with tinkering. "So, what would you like to do today? I think it's about time we land again."
"Anywhere?" Amy asked, sketches forgotten as she jumped up in interest.
"Anywhere, anywhen!" The Doctor replied, with that infectious voice, deciding to think about the future and not the past.
Amy considered that, leaning forward to watch his movements around the console. "Well, we've been to the past and seen the present, both on Earth...can we see another planet?" Before he could answer, she continued on. "We saw the stars, but can we can go to another planet?"
"Of course!" The Doctor said with a laugh. "There are thousands of planets out there - Catrigan Nova and it's whirlpools of gold, Centauri Seven and it's purple-sand beaches, the living forests of Cheem,.." He turned in a circle and hit a button. "And those are just some that start with the letter C!"
Amy's eyes glittered with the pictures he painted with his words. "Any of it! All of it!" She resisted the urge to clap in excitement.
"Fantastic!" The Doctor said in amusement. "Go get dressed and wake Rose, while I land the Old Girl."
Amy started towards her room, but then paused. "And then we'll go to another planet?"
"Promise!" The Doctor said firmly.
Amy quickly rushed towards her room and dressed, and then headed towards Rose's room, which, oddly enough, was in a different corridor than hers. She figured it was because Rose came first but then the TARDIS had a habit of shuffling rooms, at least according to The Doctor. Living in a spaceship was interesting, but living in a spaceship that was living was even more fascinating. Just as she reached Rose's door, however, the TARDIS pitched hard with a loud whine, throwing her into the doorway just as Rose emerged, sending them both sprawling.
Rose groaned as she got up from where she had fallen. "What's going on?" There was an edge to her voice, but she chalked it up to getting a bony elbow to the gut as they fell.
"The Doctor said we were going to another planet." Amy said in confusion as she picked herself up and brushed off her denim skirt. "Seems like something is wrong though."
"He did?" Rose asked excitedly. She hadn't yet been to another planet either. Space station, yes. Planet? No. "Some aliens are just so...alien."
Amy rolled her eyes at that. "And to them, you look alien." She smiled anyway and joined Rose on the journey back to the console room of the TARDIS, which had gone from the quiet of night flight in the time vortex to the flurry of activity that accompanied landing almost anywhere. She sped up and the two girls took places around the console, watching in barely-disguised amazement.
"Bit rough, today." The Doctor said, sounding slightly cross. "But here we are, Catrigan Nova." He pushed either girl on the back. "Go, see the pools of liquid gold."
Amy reached the door first and opened it, sticking her head out briefly, before pulling it back and snapping the door shut, arms crossed over her chest. "Is this supposed to be a hint?"
"What?" The Doctor asked, eyes knit in confusion. He didn't understand what she was asking. He could only tell that she looked upset.
"Do you want me gone? Did I say something wrong, or mess up somehow?" Amy repeated, blinking her hazel eyes and biting the inside of her cheek to cling to anger. "Is this because I wouldn't show you my sketches?"
Rose was sick of this, just because her legs were shorter and she hadn't made it to the door before the redhead. "What are you on about?"
Amy turned, opened the doors wide and sighed. "Welcome to Leadworth, England, and very much Earth."
The Doctor looked perplexed, checking the coordinates he had put in the console, and then shaking his head. "Something powerful must have pulled us off course." He grinned a bit, the adrenaline of a new adventure getting to him. "Fantastic!"
"In Leadworth?" Amy said in a tone that suggested he was acting even more insane than usual. "Nothing happens here, ever." She shook her head. "The last interesting thing that happened in Leadworth was when I punched Jeff in the throat for ruining my kissogram audition."
"Kissogram?" The Doctor repeated.
"You go to parties and kiss people...in outfits...for a laugh!" Amy said defensively. "Before I was recruited by van Statten it was my plan to get enough money to get out of here."
Rose snorted. "You were a stripper!"
"Kissogram, and I didn't get the job, thanks to Jeff." Amy defended herself, glaring at Rose. She turned to the Doctor, looking defeated. "We're stayinig to figure out what's going on, aren't we?"
"Of course!" The Doctor said, as if it was never a question.
Amy sighed again, and walked up through her back garden, letting Rose and The Doctor follow. She reached the door and checked under the mat, not that she was expecting her aunt to have remembered to put the spare back. Sure enough, the only thing under the mat was a dead leaf. With a roll of her eyes, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a hairpin, and set to picking the lock as had been her habit since adolescence.
"What are you doing?" Rose demanded. "We can't just break in to someone's house, they could have us arrested for trespassing!"
Amy grinned as she opened the door wide for the two of them. "Trust me, I'm not going to press charges on my ride out of here."
That stopped Rose, and her brow knitted in confusion. "This is your house?"
"Last time I checked." Amy said cheerfully, following The Doctor inside and flipping on the lights. "I'm the one who paid off the mortgage at any rate."
"Why don't you have keys to your own house?" Rose asked, looking around at the fairly large house, and comparing it to the council estate where she had grown up.
Amy opened the fridge and began chucking out food that had gone off since the last time Aunt Sharon had bothered checking it. "I did, but my keys are buried under solid concrete in Utah."
"Oh..." Rose said, leaving the kitchen and heading into the living room. "So it's just empty? Why don't you sell it?"
"Technically," Amy replied, defensively. "My Aunt Sharon lives here when she bothers to come home from work or whatever boyfriend's place she has now - not that it's any of your business." She was sensitive about Aunt Sharon - she knew the woman wasn't the best guardian in the world, but she was the only family Amy had, and she had done her best raising her with little to no help.
The Doctor was going about the room, glancing over trinkets and playing with the silly drinking bird that Amy had gotten Aunt Sharon for Christmas when she was nine. "What could have pulled us here?" He asked. "There's something wrong...something feels off...but I don't know what it is." He went into the next room, searching for the anomaly, the thing that could have pulled his TARDIS to his newest companion's house. "I'm missing it."
"So why did you leave?" Rose called, following behind the Doctor, as Amy stayed in the living room, sorting the mail. "Seems like you had it pretty good here, compared to working for that arse."
"The grass is always greener." Amy said, shaking her head. "Leadworth is some people's idea of paradise, but it was never mine." As she picked up a bill, she had to drop it just as quickly as Rose's scream filled the house.
Shocked, and half-wondering if a wandering alien who wasn't The Doctor had taken up residence in her house. If so, she would be incredibly cross and possibly charge it rent. What she found, however, was Rose, screaming in the hallway over the prone form of The Doctor. On the other side of them stood...
"Amy?!"
"Rory?!" Sure enough, there stood Rory Williams, in his scrubs, guiltily holding a cricket bat, over the unconscious alien. "What did you do? What are you doing here?"
Rory coloured in embarrassment. "I saw lights on here...I didn't know you were home, I thought maybe someone had broken in."
"Technically, she did." Rose felt the need to point out, from where she had dropped to her knees to check The Doctor's wounds. "She lost her keys."
Amy took the opportunity to childlishly imitate Rose's tongue-between-the-teeth smile and then stick her tongue out at the back of Rose's head. "So you came over here with a cricket bat to take on a burglar?"
If it was possible, Rory would have coloured further. "There was a strange, rough-looking man in your house, and you never called to say you were coming back - what was I supposed to think?"
"Rough?" Came the voice from the floor, as The Doctor sat up, rubbing his head. "Do you think?"
"Are you all right?" Rose asked worriedly. "You went down pretty fast."
"I got hit with a cricket bat!" The Doctor defended. "Who is he anyway?"
"Doctor, Rory Williams." Amy introduced, with a little dismissive wave. "Rose, go grab an ice pack out of the freezer." She then turned back to the two men. "Rory's my best friend." She reached over and ruffled Rory's hair, while he tried to maintain some sort of dignity. "Rory, this is The Doctor." She paused as Rose reappeared with the ice pack, trying to put it on the Doctor's head. The Doctor however, was distracted. "And that's Rose, the three of us have been traveling lately."
Rory was squirming. "Er...can I check you're head? I hit you pretty hard, Doctor..." He trailed off and put the cricket bat down quickly. "I'm a nurse."
"A nurse?" Rose repeated, in a questioning voice that Amy had heard before and did not tolerate about Rory's choice of profession. A quick kick to the shin had Rose glaring at her instead of asking.
"Er...yeah. Guilty." Rory answered, waving a little.
"Nah, takes more than a little knock to break this brain." The Doctor said easily, to the obviously guilty man.
Rory didn't look like he quite believed it, but he wasn't about to argue. Instead, he decided to focus on the person in the room he knew. "So, you came back for the reunion then?"
WHAM.
Amy's hand came down hard on the radiator. "You not only brought me back to Leadworth, you brought me back in perfect time for my high school reunion? You so owe me, Doctor."
"Cricket bat!" The Doctor said, defending himself.
"Gold whirlpools!" Amy argued back.
"Cricket bat!"
"I was voted most likely to get arrested!"
"Cricket...wait, really?" The Doctor said, stopping mid-defense, in interest.
"Really." Rory said, completely serious.
The Doctor considered that. "Okay, you win."
Amy didn't even pause. "Good, then you can be my escort, and Rose can go with Rory."
"Wait, what?" Rose and Rory asked together - one in horror and the other in surprise.
"All right then." The Doctor agreed, thinking maybe this reunion was why he was here. Maybe something was going to happen. One never knew. "Sounds like fun!"