January 29, 2006

Go Home (1/12)

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized adam mitchell, doctor who, fanfiction, fanfiction: doctor who, jackie tyler, mickey smith, rose tyler, the tenth doctor 13 Comments

Well, here’s another Doctor Who fic. You’ll never guess who the main character is. XD

Title: Go Home
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13
Characters: Mickey, Ten, Rose, Jackie, Adam
Summary: In the year 2006, Mickey Smith asks Rose and the Doctor if he can come with them and they say yes. In the year 2012, Adam Mitchell asks Rose and the Doctor not to leave him on Earth with a metal chip in his head and they say no. In the year 2038, someone steps out of a time machine into the burned wreckage of the Powell Estate…
A/N: If you fancy reading Turn of the Earth, it might give you a bit of background information about a few things that crop up in this. (Trisha, Sam and Shireen, mostly) But it’ll make sense without it, I think. :)

Go Home

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
-Ambrose Redmoon

*****

prologue

Nighttime, London, 2006. Christmas Day, to be exact- there was ash falling from the sky and the world had changed forever. Everyone around them- all the people wrapped up in winter coats, all the people who’d just faced certain death- seemed perfectly happy, but that was because, Mickey thought, they didn’t know. They didn’t know how much danger they all were in, how much danger had passed them by, and that what was settling on the ground wasn’t snow but substance from an alien spaceship. If they did that thing that kids did, and stuck out their tongues to taste the snow- they’d get a shock. The snow would be dust.

Mickey’s world had changed forever long before today. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact time and place -sometime in the year 2005, back when things had been saner. Maybe it had changed when a tiny, insignificant department store had blown up in 2005 London- or maybe it had changed with the words You’re not invited. Maybe his driving his then girlfriend to see some strange bloke with a website had been the beginning of the end, or perhaps the short conversation that went Thanks. For what? Exactly. had been it.

Either way, it didn’t matter now, because it looked like things had come full circle.

“Well,” the Doctor said, as Rose grinned excitedly and looked around at them all, “we’d better be off. Lovely to see you all again.” He clapped his hands together enthusiastically, and turned to Rose.

Rose turned to Mickey, and smiled at him. “I’ll see you sometime, alright? I’ll be back for next Christmas, I swear.” She hugged him and then let go of him, then gave Jackie a hug, and then stepped into the TARDIS with the Doctor.

Mickey ran forward and grabbed the door before it shut.

“Oi,” he said helplessly. “I want to come with you.”

*****

chapter one- a long way down the road

He sat in the console room, and let it all dawn on him. Would it occur to Jackie to inform his family where he had gone? He’d have thought so, considering what she had been through last year, but…you never knew, with Jackie.

And where were they going? Would they want to go off on their own, and leave him to do his own thing? What could he do? What if he ended up in trouble and the Doctor gave up and dropped him back on Earth? Or worse, left him on some planet somewhere with no hope of rescue?

No…he wouldn’t do that. Rose would stop him. Wouldn’t she?

Maybe he’d made this decision way too quickly. He hadn’t thought about it. But, he figured, he wouldn’t have thought about it if he hadn’t stepped forward and stopped the doors. He’d just have moped about it, moped about throwing away yet another chance.

In came Rose. He wondered where she’d been. How many rooms were in here, anyway? Because if you could fit anything in here…there might be a swimming pool, a cinema, or a football pitch. Or perhaps not.

Rose held something out to him- it was a mobile phone. “Here,” she said.

“What’s that for?”

“Well, most people use it for phoning or texting,” she said, grinning cheekily at him like she always did. “It’s set up so you can phone anyone, whatever time or place you’re in. So, I thought…if you fancied telling anyone where you’d gone, that you were gonna be travelling for a while…”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the words gonna be travelling for a while. He didn’t really know why, though, because although he wouldn’t have admitted it to her in a hundred years, he was a little…wary.

Scared.

“Thanks,” he said, and she hovered around him while he held the phone and pressed buttons. Should he text his mother, or ring her? Texting would be easier. And his older brother, Josh- he was a DJ up in Slough and Mickey hadn’t seen him for months- maybe he’d better text him as well. And then…what about…

What about his father? No way was he going to text him.

He carefully typed out his messages, making sure not to give out too much information. rose came back for xmas, she’s asked if i want to go travelling with her. i said yes, so i’m off & i’ll be back sometime later.

That would do.

As he sent his explanations (goodbyes?) to various people- his mother, Shireen (who he knew would manage just fine without him, but anyway), Maggie and Thomas Finch, and some others- he was aware of Rose watching him carefully. He didn’t know why. Maybe she was observing how odd he looked, here in her world. Or something.

As he was writing the final text message, Rose wandered over to him, possibly thinking it was about time she got her phone back. She looked over his shoulder.

“You’re writing to Trisha?” she asked, a note of faint annoyance in her voice.

“Yeah. I thought she might want to know.” He paused before saying the next thing, afraid of screwing up. “We were friends.” Rose bit her lip and looked perhaps a bit relieved…and at that, Mickey was quite relieved as well.

“We should be friends,” Rose said quietly.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, and he finished with the phone and handed it back to her. “We should.”

They looked at each other for a good few seconds, neither of them sure what to say, and then the Doctor came in.

“All out for Pluto,” he said cheerfully. “Wrap up warm.”

*****

Within a couple of seconds Mickey was standing on Pluto.

It was so weird. It was all icy, and very, very cold- but behind him there were people.

At that his thoughts stopped dead. People. People. Not humans, just aliens. And he was right here, among them, and he wasn’t scared.

Just…sort of awed. Because space was big– he could faintly remember a line of dialogue from his old Hitchhiker’s Guide CDs: You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemists, but that’s just peanuts to space. He felt very, very small- but at the same time he didn’t and couldn’t, because he’d had all his moments of feeling small already, and those moments were in the past. Behind him. He was going to…

Going to…

Just look at things? Just travel? Or was he going to eventually end up with responsibility on his shoulders, like Rose had? Would they want him to save people? Save planets? Because he couldn’t do that. Could he? He was afraid again, and shook it off. This was just culture shock.

The Doctor and Rose had been browsing the market stalls behind him- Rose kept glancing in his direction, though. He glanced back at her, and she gave a smile and then carried on with her shopping, holding the Doctor’s hand.

Mickey folded his arms across his chest and scratched his feet across the ice. It left a line, and he wondered if maybe he should etch MICKEY WOZ ERE on the surface of Pluto.

“Oi, what you doing still on your own?” Rose approached, holding a box. “Don’t you want to buy anything?”

Mickey turned around to look at her. Night had fallen when they’d arrived, but someone had only just turned a load of multicoloured lights on near the marketplace, and he had to blink. “Got no money.”

“They don’t do money- you gotta swap things instead. I swopped two chocolate bars I got back home for this.” She opened the box- inside was a beautiful pink necklace. A beautiful Plutonian pink necklace. “They don’t have chocolate here, not much. You’d think they would, wouldn’t you? Anyway, you oughta buy something, ‘cos you didn’t bring anything with you.”

This was very true.

“Um. Alright. I’ll need clothes.”

Rose tilted her head in thought. “Maybe…maybe we could go back to Earth for that. You could go to your flat and grab a load of stuff. Like what I did. Once we’re done here, I mean.”

Mickey glanced at the Doctor; he was in the middle of an animated conversation with a man with two heads.

“Yeah. Maybe. I’ll probably need my passport, and stuff.”

“Yeah. I’ll ask the Doctor in a minute, alright?”

She opened up the box and took the necklace out, and tried to put it on. But the clasp, since it was made on Pluto and not on Earth, was unfamiliar to her and she dropped in on the ice.

“Here-”

Mickey picked it up, and Rose turned around and he put it on for her. The clasp was weird, and too complicated, but by some rare stroke of luck he got it.

“Aww, thanks, Mickey.”

Mickey looked up then, and saw the Doctor standing there on a patch of black ice. He didn’t look annoyed, or even jealous- not how the other Doctor would have looked- instead he looked like he was going over all his emotions and sorting them out, trying to decide if he felt even a little jealous.

And Mickey thought, Do I know this guy?

*****

Back in the TARDIS, Mickey took up his seat in the console room again, but Rose wasn’t having it.

“I haven’t shown you round yet! Come on. You’ve gotta see everything.”

She dragged him from room to room. The wardrobe (“See if there’s anything you like in there,”) to the very much existant swimming pool, to the kitchen with a fully stocked fridge. That was where all three of them- for the Doctor joined them- ate. The other two had some weird, exotic blue stuff, and Mickey had a cheeseburger. Rose tried to persuade him otherwise, but he had always been picky about food.

When Mickey had almost finished the burger, the Doctor pointed at it.

“That,” he announced, “was from the 30th centuary equivalent of a fast food restuarant. And that wasn’t part of a cow you just ate.”

Mickey felt rather sick, but he put the rest of the burger down and said. “Right.”

And then he ate the rest of it, because he’d have been annoyed with himself otherwise.

*****

They did stop off back at Earth, though. Rose asked the Doctor after they’d eaten, and he said, “Yeah, all right, then.”

Mickey looked out at the council estate. His council estate, he thought. Worn-down and battered and covered in graffiti but full of a load of lovely, if slightly apathetic, people.

Home.

It was night-time, and the stars looked very different now he was back on Earth.

“What day is it?” he asked the Doctor.

“Boxing Day. Not for much longer, though, it’s nearly midnight.”

“Right. I’ll go get my things, then.” He didn’t ask them to come- he didn’t know why. He stepped out of the doorway of the TARDIS, and headed off across the street. The street lights were on, and one of them was blinking on and off. And it was cold, but not as cold as Pluto.

He could feel their eyes on him. He turned the corner and headed up to the flats. He wandered up the dimly lit staircase, and took his flat key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

His flat looked just like it always did. A tip. He picked his way across the floor, and into his bedroom- he found a backpack in the wardrobe and started throwing things into it. Clothes, underwear, toothbrush, razor, books, socks…DVDs? CDs? Maybe a couple. His PSP and accompanying games. His laptop…

He stared at the laptop as he put it in his bag. The website was on there, and anyone in the world could load it up and go to the editor and continue it’s work. Maybe he should give it back to Clive’s family, if they wanted it. But Maggie was probably too busy to update it on a regular basis, and Thomas…

…well, maybe him. Either way, it wasn’t going to be his anymore.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Okay, Rose, I’m coming,” he called, and he slung his backpack over his shoulder and opened the door. But it wasn’t Rose. It was Trisha.

Mickey stopped in his tracks and stared at her- he simply wasn’t expecting this, because they’d split up. If, indeed, they’d ever been a couple. They were just friends…and he felt quite bad about leaving a friend, but…

But…

He’d said goodbye to her already, and he’d never said goodbye to Rose.

“Are you off, then?” she asked quietly.

She knew. How could she have known? She must have seen Rose and the Doctor and the TARDIS from her window. Or something.

“Yeah. I am. I’m sorry.”

“S’alright,” she said. “I thought you would go…” But she trailed off there, and Mickey looked at her- and found himself digging about in his pocket for the flat key.

He handed it to her,

“Um. This is for you,” he said to her. “Until I come back.”

“Yeah,” Trisha said softly. “Until you come back.”

He left, and now he felt her eyes on him. All the way down the stairs, and out of the door, and down the darkened street and to the blue box.