Broken Clocks (1/8)
Title: Broken Clocks (1/8)
Author:
stormwolf10
Rating: Teen
Characters: Ten, Rose, Mickey, Madame de Pompadour
Word Count: 3282
Summary: A fairly routine first trip for a new companion turns into a hard lesson for the Doctor about love.
Spoilers: Through The Girl in the Fireplace
Authors Notes: Written for the Time In Flux fic-a-thon. I have to admit, when I suggested that this might be a challenge for me, I honestly had no idea just how much of a challenge it would be. When I opened my e-mail and read that I had been assigned The Girl in the Fireplace as my episode to re-write, I was absolutely terrified. It took me a long time to even start. Hell, I was even too afraid to re-watch the episode, I was that nervous! How do you re-write an episode to get the Doctor and Rose together as a couple in an episode where the Doctor falls in love with someone else?
Well, I have to say, this challenge has been worth it. Now that I've finished, I have to say I'm pretty damn proud of it. I decided to take the hard route in re-writing the entire episode, with the exception of a scene here and there removed to keep the story flowing in the right direction. Other than that, the entire episode is in there, plus a whole lot more added in to fulfill the requirements of the challenge.
Many, many, many thanks go to the brilliant, patient, and wonderfully kind edgeofworld for being my beta. I've never had a beta before, and I was slightly afraid of the prospect of getting one, but she has been incredibly encouraging and helpful in this daunting task I set up for myself. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Also, this has no relation to my current fic, Life Less Ordinary. That will start up again soon, once my brain has returned to a semi-solid state. ;)
The Doctor chatted away to Mickey and Rose while he flicked switches and pressed buttons on the console, telling both of his young human companions all the places he could take them for Mickey Smith's first trip through the Vortex. "Let’s see, we could catch a green sunset on the planet Zanys Prime. Or...maybe into the past! That might be fun, chatting with Albert Einstein. Then again, that might only be fun for me."
He continued on for a while, rattling off time periods and exotic places, pretending to be oblivious to the fact that neither Rose nor Mickey were listening. The Doctor knew they weren't listening, and he knew why, which is why he had decided the most prudent course of action was to go on nattering. They were going to have one of those domestic, low-volume arguments, and the Doctor was better off as far away from it as possible.
Rose knew she was being childish, but she couldn't help it. Every time she had talked to Mickey about the Doctor in the past, he'd had some rude what-sit to say about the Time Lord, trying to shove his failings down her throat whenever he'd had the chance. It was as if Mickey's wish was to make Rose distrust the Doctor in order to split them up. And now, they were stuck on the TARDIS together, and she couldn't get away from her on-again, off-again boyfriend's smug "I told you so" grin.
"Rose?"
Speak of the devil, Rose thought with a sigh as she looked up and frowned at Mickey. "Yeah?" she asked, with a bit more venom than she intended, mumbling an apology when he cringed.
Mickey sat down on the seat next to her and stared down at the grating, picking at a stray thread that was sticking out from the upholstery. "I just wanted to know...I mean...I thought you'd want me around."
"We argue every time we're together, and you take every chance you get to taunt me," Rose snapped, glaring over at him, "Why would I want to live with that every day? I spend most of my time here running for my life, and you think I wanted to add you having a jealous fit all the time to it?"
"But--" Mickey stammered, turning white with anger as he struggled for words to hurt her with just as she had hurt him. After a moment, though, he stopped and realized she was right, in a way. He had let his hurt over her running off with the Doctor take over his mind, and he had become obsessed with finding different ways of showing her just how much it had wounded him. He hadn't stopped to think of how he was hurting her back.
Right, Mickey Smith, he thought as he took a deep breath, time to be a man about this. "I'm sorry."
Rose blinked, caught off-guard when he didn't shout at her again for leaving him. "Pardon?"
"I said I'm sorry," Mickey repeated and took her hand, "I've been kind of an idiot, I guess. Still, I get to see what's been keeping you away from home now, right?"
"Mhm," she replied, still looking at him skeptically.
"Look, I'm not saying I'm happy you ran off with the bloke. We had something nice and you just off and left me for some guy you just met, and didn't say if you'd ever come home again. It's just...I saw how you were when he was sick at Christmas, and I think right now all I can do is travel with you two and see how it goes. I'm sick of being the bloody tin dog. So, I promise I won't intentionally make this hard on you, alright?"
Rose felt her tension melt away at his words and smiled, squeezing his hand that was holding hers. "Alright," she whispered, "And I'm sorry I ran off. It's just that the Doctor is--"
"AHA! Yes!" The Doctor shouted excitedly, a bit louder than normal on purpose in order to interrupt Rose's sentence. He wasn't quite sure why he wanted to stop her there before she said how she felt about him. At the moment, he wasn’t quite sure if he was saving Mickey from having to hear it, or if the hesitation was all his own "I've got it! How about a mystery tour? Throw the TARDIS onto a random course and see where we go. How would you like that, Mickey Smith?"
"You mean, we could just go anywhere?" Mickey asked in amazement, and no small amount of curiosity.
"Yup!"
Rose grinned and nudged him with her shoulder. "Oh, go on. It'll be fun."
"Uh, well...sure! Sounds okay to me."
The Doctor's dark eyes lit up with excitement, his mouth spreading into a wide grin as his hand curled around the lever and slammed it home, hurtling them off through the Vortex to God-knows-where.
=============================================
The three of them piled out of the TARDIS, all eager to see where they'd landed. The room was dark and littered with cables, parts and half-finished repair projects. The air filled with a slight hum that seemed to bounce off the metal walls.
"It's a spaceship!" Mickey exclaimed as he looked around with the excitement of a kid at Christmas, "Brilliant! I got a spaceship on my first go!"
Rose, on the other hand, was a pro at this by now, and simply looked around with mild surprise. "Looks kind of abandoned. Anyone on board?"
"Nah, nothing here," the Doctor replied, himself looking a bit disappointed, "Well, nothing dangerous. Well, not that dangerous." He paused for a moment, feeling suddenly uneasy about the utter silence on a ship that should have a fairly sizable crew. "You know what, I think I'll just have a quick scan...in case there's anything dangerous."
"So," Rose said, casually wandering over to where the Doctor was fiddling with some sort of console, "what's the date? How far have we gone?"
"About three thousand years into your future, give or take." He pulled a cylindrical switch on the control panel up and to the right, causing the lights to switch on. Above them, the ceiling slid away to reveal a pane of glass looking out into black, star-filled space. "Fifty-first century. Dagmar Cluster! You're a long way from home, Mickey! Two and a half galaxies."
Mickey slowly approached a small porthole in the side of the ship and looked out, his mind not quite able to take it all in. The space seemed so infinite, and he felt so small all of a sudden. Off in the distance, a pink and purple swirl of gasses and dust floated peacefully. It was all so beautiful.
He felt Rose's hands on his shoulders. "Mickey Smith, meet the universe," she said, but he barely registered it. He never realized that understanding would come so quick. This is why she never wanted to stay home. Why stay on Earth, when the Doctor could show her things like this?
"See anything you like?" Rose grinned.
Mickey forced himself to turn from the beautiful view and smiled widely at Rose. "It's so realistic!"
The Doctor, on the other hand, was more concerned with other things. Namely, why was a ship floating out in the middle of space with no crew, running engines, and equipment strewn around so carelessly? "Dear me, had some cowboys in here!" He muttered disdainfully, idly dropping various a piece of someone's handiwork down on the console, "Got a ton of repair work going on." Taking a look at the display of the ship on the monitor, the Doctor's brow furrowed as he peered at it in confusion.
"Now that's odd. Look at that, all the warp engines are going. Full capacity! There's enough power running through this ship to punch a hole in the universe, and we're not moving. So where's all that power going?"
Rose peered around with a frown and asked, "Where'd all the crew go?"
Ah, brilliant Rose, the Doctor thought to himself as he leaned in and tweaked a few knobs, searching for some sort of answer to the mystery. "Good question! No life readings on board."
"Well, we're in deep space. They didn't just nip out for a quick fag."
"Nope, checked all the smoking pods," he replied, smiling inwardly as he heard Rose chuckle. It was a lovely sound, her laughter.
His thoughts quickly faded as he inhaled and found his nostrils filled with the scent of cooking meat. Cooking meat? In a ship that had no life signs? How odd. "Do you smell that?" he asked his two companions, wondering if he was just imagining it because he'd missed supper.
"Yeah, someone's cooking."
"Sunday roast, definitely!" Mickey said with enthusiasm. Apparently he'd noticed missing supper as well.
No, this just isn't right, the Doctor thought to himself as he idly pushed more buttons, causing a door behind them to slide open with a loud, metallic thunk. As they approached the door, they heard the merry crackling of a hearth fire. There, in the room, was a beautiful antique fireplace, lit up by the golden glow of the fire within. On the mantle sat a clock who's glass face had been smashed. "Now, there's something you don't see in your average spaceship," he mused, going in for a closer look, "Eighteenth century. French...nice mantle."
Sliding the sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket, he buzzed it about the ancient mantle, trying to get some sort of reading from it. This just couldn't be right. "Not a hologram. It's not even a reproduction, this actually is an Eighteenth century French fireplace. Double sided, there's another room through there!"
"It can't be!" Rose exclaimed, peering out through another porthole, "That's the outer hull of the ship, look!"
The Doctor didn't hear her. He was too busy staring dumbfounded at a little blond girl in her nightdress, who had sat down on the other side of the fireplace and was staring just as dumbstruck back at him. "Hello."
"Hello?"
"What's your name?"
"Reinette," the little girl replied.
"Reinette, that's a lovely name," the Doctor replied kindly, trying not to frighten the poor girl who just found a grown man in her fireplace, "Can you tell me where you are at the moment, Reinette?"
"In my bedroom."
"And, where's your bedroom? Where do you live, Reinette?"
The little girl gave the Doctor a look like he'd just grown a second head and answered, "Paris, of course."
"Paris, right," he grinned with a nod. Silly question. Where else would a little girl sitting on the other side of an antique French fireplace be from?
"Monsieur, what are you doing in my fireplace?"
The Doctor scrambled for an answer as Rose smirked at him over his shoulder, "Oh, it's just a routine...fire check. Can you tell me what year it is?"
"Of course I can," the girl smiled proudly, "Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven."
"Right, lovely! One of my favorites. August is rubbish, though. Stay indoors." The Doctor smiled again, deciding that he should probably stop himself there before he frightened the poor girl, "Okay, that's all for now! Thanks for your help. Hope you enjoy the rest of the fire. Night, night!"
"Goodnight, Monsieur."
As he stood, the Doctor forced down a small pang of regret that the little girl stirred in him, making him remember the sweet faces of his own children that he would never see again. Stop it, Doctor. Get back to the situation at hand, instead of chasing ghosts.
"You said this was the fifty-first century," Mickey accused, pulling him out of his thoughts.
"I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the universe," he replied, "I think we just found the hole. Must be a spacio-temporal hyperlink."
"What's that?" Mickey asked breathlessly.
"No idea, just made it up. Didn't want to say 'magic door.'"
Rose, kindly, didn't mock him. Much. The cheeky woman. "And on the other side of this magic door...is France in 1727."
The Doctor nodded. "Well, she was speaking French," he conceded, "Right period French, too." Deciding to get to the bottom of this, he tugged off his coat and flung it aside, striding back over to the fireplace. If there was a hole leading to 1727, perhaps there was a way he could get through into that time period and find out why.
"She was speaking English, I heard her!" Mickey said, but Rose cut him off, wrapping an arm around Mickey's shoulders to explain, and the Doctor pointedly ignored the gesture of affection and the slow burn of jealousy that it caused in him.
"That's the TARDIS, it translates for ya," she explained.
"Even French?"
"Yup."
The Doctor's hands moved deftly over the wood of the mantle as they chatted, finding a bit of wood just enough out of place to be a convenient switch. "Gotcha!" he shouted and tugged, just managing to hold on in time as the entire fireplace and the wall it was attached to spun around quickly and thumped into place, cutting off the sounds of Rose shouting his name on the other side of the 'magic door,' and plunging him into moonlit darkness. His hearts clenched once more as he gazed at the form of little Reinette, sleeping peacefully in her bed, and wondered if he was always going to feel this regret whenever he saw a child. He supposed he always would. It was unavoidable, really.
A gasp from behind him startled him out of his thoughts and he turned away from the window to find Reinette sitting up in her bed, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.
"It's okay! Don't scream, it's me. It's the fireplace man, look!" He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and held it out to a candle, lighting it so she could see that it really was him. "We were talking, just a moment ago. I was in your fireplace."
"Monsieur, that was weeks ago. That was months!"
The Doctor blinked, rubbing at his earlobe in confusion. "Really? Hm." He walked back over to the fireplace and tapped at the mantle, wondering to himself how he could have possibly jumped months into the girls future just by stepping through the portal. "Must be a loose connection," he said, trying to sound nonchalant, "You need to get a man in."
"Who are you? And what are you doing here?"
But he wasn't listening. Instead, he found himself staring at the broken clock on the mantle as the ticking of clockwork got louder, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. "Okay, that's scary," the Doctor murmured.
"You're scared of a broken clock?" Reinette asked incredulously.
"Just a bit scared, yeah. Just a little tiny bit, 'cause you see...if this clock's broken, and it's the only clock in the room, then what's that?"
They both fell silent, letting the sound of the ticking echo in their ears a moment, little girl and Time Lord alike staring at each other with a frightened look in their eyes.
"Because, you see, that's not a clock," the Doctor said after a moment, slowly following the sound towards Reinette's bed, "You can tell by the resonance. It's too big. Six feet, I'd say, the size of a man."
"What is it?" Reinette asked in a small voice, clutching her blankets tighter in her hands to keep herself from running in terror.
The Doctor wanted to go to her and comfort her, but there just wasn't time. Instead, he strode towards the window and pulled back the curtain, moving on when he found nothing there. "Now let's think," he said, moving again towards her bed, "If you were a thing that ticks and were hiding in someone's bedroom, the first thing you do, you break the clock. No one notices the sound of one clock ticking, but two..."
He paused, feeling dread well up inside him as realization dawned on him as his eyes slid towards the space under Reinette's bed. "You might start to wonder if you're really alone." Moving slowly towards the bed, he began to kneel down and locked eyes with her, praying the little girl obeyed him. He didn't want to think what might happen if she ran. "Stay on the bed, right in the middle. Don't put your hands or feet over the edge."
Reinette nodded, fear keeping her frozen to the spot, and the Doctor peered into the darkness under her bed. The ticking was almost deafening now, as the Doctor reached out, sonic in hand, and began to slowly buzz it around, trying to find what was hiding. In a flash of movement, something lashed out at him and he fell backwards, rolling away from his attacker. When he finally pulled himself to his feet, he found the creature already standing behind Reinette, staring at him from behind the dead, black eyes of the carnival mask it wore.
"Reinette, don't look 'round," he whispered to the little girl, who was staring at him helplessly, trembling with fear. Then, looking up at the creature, he commanded, "You, stay exactly where you are."
Something tickled at the back of his mind, some sort of telepathic connection that had been forged between the creature and the little girl, and rage began to boil in his gut. "Hold still, let me look," he told Reinette, and placed his hands on either side of her head as he gently slipped into her mind. What he found made the rage flare even higher. "You've been scanning her brain! What, you've traveled two galaxies and thousands of years just to scan a child's brain? What could there be in a little girl's mind worth blowing a hole in the universe?
"I don't understand," Reinette said, her voice shaking, "It wants me?" She then summoned up the courage to turn to look at the creature and address it directly. "You want me?"
The ticking creature's head twitched in her direction and replied in a cold, mechanical voice, "Not yet. You are incomplete."
"'Incomplete'? What's that mean, 'incomplete'?" The Doctor asked it, but it would not answer him. The black eyes simply stared at the little girl, its painted-on smile unmoving. Standing to his full height, the Doctor held out the sonic screwdriver threateningly, snapping at the creature in irritation and anger, "If you can answer her, you can answer me! What do you mean 'incomplete'?"
Sensing the threat, the creature twisted and stalked towards the Doctor, holding its own arm out at him. With a ring of metal, a blade snapped out towards the Doctor's neck, glinting in the firelight.
"Monsieur, be careful!" Reinette exclaimed, terrified for the man who had come to save her.
"Just a nightmare, Reinette, don't worry about it," the Doctor reassured her, his eyes locked on the blade held dangerously close, "Everyone has nightmares." He leapt backwards and made a break for it across the room towards the fireplace, leading the creature away from Reinette as it swung wildly. "Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares, don't ya, monster?" As the masked thing took one more wild swipe at the Doctor, he sidestepped quickly, and the blade struck the wooden mantle with a loud clang. It tugged uselessly, but the blade was stuck fast.
Reinette stared at the two of them, still too afraid to move one inch from where she had been sitting. "What do monsters have nightmares about?" she asked.
"Me!" The Doctor shouted with a wild grin and pulled the lever at the side of the fireplace again, spinning back into the spaceship.
Part Two