January 20, 2011

Doctor Who fanfic: The Children’s Story (5/9)

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized doctor who, fanfiction, fanfiction: doctor who, my fanfiction, my stuff 2 Comments

Title: The Children’s Story
Author: sarah531
Rating: PG13
Characters: Amy and Rory’s children Alec and Johnny; totally OCs- plus Amy, Rory, Aunt Sharon and the Doctor, and mentions of River
Summary: Alec William Pond is about to discover that the bedtime stories his parents told so well were true.

The Children’s Story
5. Meddler

The five of them went outside, and Alec worried, because the real world looked less now.

“I can’t come with you, either,” said the Doctor.

“We have a spare room,” Dad said.

“Stay for a few days?” Mum asked.

The Doctor shook his head. And turned, but then-

“Oh,” he said. “The story thing? You told Alec and Johnny I was a story? Why?”

Alec opened his mouth, then closed it when Mum started talking.

“It was Aunt Sharon,” she said. “Doctor, she told me I was crazy.”

The Doctor started laughing.

“Crazy! Fairytale Amy, crazy?” And then he stopped laughing. “Of course you’re crazy, in the best and most brilliant way. Oh, Amy!”

“She wanted to take the children away,” Mum said simply, and the Doctor stopped laughing.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Always forget how humans are.” Those words sent a shiver down Alec’s spine, a you’re-too-young-too-understand sort of shiver. “I looked into her mind, you know,” the Doctor continued. Mum and Dad were silent. “So…I think I’ll nip over and have a word with her.”

“We’ll come with you,” said Dad.

And Alec heard it first, a twig cracking, something coming. And he was pretty sure he’d been expecting it, there were always monsters in the stories.

“Mum,” he said. “Dad.”

“Doctor,” said Mum, “you might make things worse.”

“What is it, Alec?” Dad asked.

A man stepped out of the dark.

Johnny gave a little shriek and everyone turned around. An ordinary man in ordinary clothes stood there in their front garden, eyes full of malice, triumphant smile-

“Oh, Peter,” said the Doctor sadly. “Choose your moments, don’t you?”

“Who are you?” squeaked Johnny, but Dad, who stood nearest, pulled Johnny behind him.

Everyone waited to see what was going to happen, without really knowing they were doing it, and Peter said, “Hi.”

“Hi,” said the Doctor, calm and collected. “Tell me, Peter, tell me how you got here.”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Mum and Dad were slowly backing away, shielding Alec and Johnny.

“Go home, Peter,” the Doctor said, “Go home, go down the pub, have your life, die old and remembering, don’t come back to me.”

Peter didn’t move. He seemed to be thinking it over, and Alec took the opportunity to get a good look at him. He was carrying something in his right hand…

“These are your favourites, in a way, aren’t they?” said Peter thoughtfully. “A family. Doing ordinary things to save the world, two good parents raising two good kids. Never in danger, never afraid, just what you wanted for them.”

“Peter,” said the Doctor, “think very hard about what you’re doing here.” And Alec remembered one of the stories, the story of the Doctor and River and the prison-box, and how the Doctor had talked to his enemies then, threatened them, and it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t working now…

“Bless their little lives, they mean so much to you,” Peter said quietly. “You’ll never understand, Doctor, I’m not doing this stuff for me, it’s not just because I’m angry, it’s because you keep taking people and
making them fight and die for you! You’ve left a trail of damaged soliders in your wake, and you have no idea how dangerous you are to everyone you meet!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alec saw the Doctor and Dad exchange a look.

“Doctor,” said Peter. “You’re a bloody alien, and you meddle.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor simply. “I do.”

“You never, ever, ever seem to face the consequences of your meddling,” said Peter. “I think it’s high time you did.”

Alec saw the thing he was holding, and it looked a lot like a gun.

“Doctor!” he squeaked, and he jumped to push him out of the way, and several things happened at once.

Mum, Dad, and Johnny vanished in a crackle of lightening, one of them shrieked (or it might have been Alec), the universe around them fizzed, the Doctor and Alec hit the floor-

“Get your friends out of this one, hero,” said Peter, and he vanished too.

The Doctor got up, slowly. He was covered in mud now, and clutching Alec to him.

“Peter! Come back! This isn’t how it works!” He was shouting to no-one. “Those people did nothing to you!”

No answer came back, and the Doctor got to his feet.

“You’re definately your father’s son,” he said, staring admiringly at Alec. Then he snapped into a cross expression. “Now tell me why you did that?”

“Um,” said Alec. “I don’t know. I thought you were going to die.”

“Don’t ever, ever do that again,” the Doctor said sternly. “I’m very old. You’re very young. Don’t do it.”

Alec nodded, anxiety churning in his stomach.

“Where are Mum and Dad and Johnny?”

The Doctor didn’t answer, just looked around. He ran to the back of the garden, nearest the house, poked around in the grass, and just before Alec was about to speak he said thoughtfully. “Now, that thing Peter had looked like a vortex maniplulator. That’s how he got out of here, but how did he transport your family? Alec Pond! Look in the grass!”

Alec felt sick, he knew whatever was happening was bad, but he knelt down and started looking.

“Mum and Dad told lots of good stories,” he said, running through the day’s life-changing events in his head. “but I… it would have been too weird for you to actually be real. I mean, when I grew up, you were sort of like Santa or something…”

“Well, he’s real too,” the Doctor said.

“Or that man in the stories Mum and Dad told, the Lone Centurion…”

The Doctor gave Alec a very odd look.

“Anyway,” said Alec, choosing to ignore it, “I liked all the stories but I didn’t want them to happen to me, not really. Can you understand? Doctor?” And he trod on something.

The Doctor hurried over to see what it was. He lifted Alec’s foot and from under it pulled out what seemed to be a black plastic stick.

“Aha! An isomorphic device!”

“A what?” Alec asked. He suddenly realised he was very tired. And surely it was a school day tomorrow?

“Peter must have put this in your garden to record your…well, your signals, I suppose, your psychic blueprint. That way he connected his vortex manipulator to your family’s individual conscious waves and…zap! He got them. Kidnapped them.”

“What?” asked Alec, hearing only a jumble of long words.

“He took your family away,” the Doctor said, “but we’re going to get them back.”

Something occured to Alec that he felt should have occured to him before. “Why didn’t he get me?”

“Probably because you were touching me at the time.”

Alec really wanted to cry, but he knew he couldn’t. He was panicking to think of where his family had ended up, he knew it was nowhere good. But they couldn’t die, could they? His clever mother, his compassionate father, his brother who wasn’t even ten years old yet, they couldn’t die!

“Hey, hey,” the Doctor said, seeing his face. “You cry if you want to.” But Alec found he couldn’t, not in front of this storybook figure, not when he was pretty sure he was going to have to be the hero now.

“We have to go get them!” he said, sniffing just a little.

“And we will,” the Doctor said. He took the sonic screwdriver from his pocket – that thing that had also featured in so many stories, doubling up as a magic wand – and ran it up and down the little plastic stick. Then he grabbed Alec’s hand and they ran back to the TARDIS.

“Come on, Alec, you’ll be back with your family in time for pudding!” the Doctor said as they burst through the doors. He ran to the console, and stopped. And sighed.

A note had been pinned to the console. It was printed in large letters, and looked like it had been written some time in advance. The Doctor handed it to Alec to read.

Doctor- At this point I’ll have taken away your friends, and their children. It was dead hard to choose which ones, it’s funny but quite a few of your travelling companions went on to have families. I thought about one of the Jones clans but I thought I’d try someone more recent. So have fun finding and not saving the Ponds.

If you’re wondering how I knew how to lock down the TARDIS controls and where the manipulator came from, I’ve been poking around and spying and searching until I found that woman you talked about once, that River. I caught her at a difficult time.

This is for Angela, who I actually loved.

Alec put it down.

“Oh, River,” said the Doctor, and he stared into space for just a second. Then he tried the TARDIS controls. “Definately locked down. Oh… no.”

“Doctor?” Alec spoke up worriedly.

“There’s still a way! There’s always a way.”

One of the many screens around the console flickered.

“Doctor!” announced the voice of Peter. “Come and have a look.”

The Doctor and Alec ran to the screen. Peter was staring out at them, and there was smoke and fire just visible behind him, and a cage.

“What have you done?” the Doctor demanded, but Alec was far too scared to speak.

“Don’t worry, they’re still alive,” Peter said snidely, and then looked at Alec. “Why didn’t it work on you?”

“Not important right now,” the Doctor said. “Peter, you don’t really want to do this. Listen to me. Amy and Rory and Johnny- who is nine years old– are total innocents. They’re not responsible for anything I did, understand? If you lay one finger on any of them…”

“You’ll do what?” snarled Peter. “You don’t know what it’s like, losing someone like that! You don’t know how it eats at you, how it drives you insane, how you’d do anything just to feel a little bit better about it all!”

“Yes I do,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, whatever,” sneered Peter, and then he looked at Alec. “Kid? I’m sorry about this, actually. You should have died alongside your family. But now you’re going to watch them die instead. And I bet if you thought about it, you’d much rather just die than be the last one left.” And he flashed out of visibility again.

Alec couldn’t help but whimper. The scene on camera changed to the cage, and there was Mum, and Dad holding Johnny…

“Alec!” Mum screamed into the camera. She was panicking, panicking badly, he had never seen her like that, and he was going to be sick. “Alec, I can’t say goodbye, I’ll never say goodbye!” And tears were pouring down her face. “Doctor, the whole planet’s going to explode!”

“Amelia!” barked the Doctor. “Amy Pond, no-one is dying today! Not you, not me, not any of us! What did Peter say to you?”

“That the planet will explode in ten minutes!” Mum shouted back, swiping at her face. “And the ground’s shaking, and there’s smoke, and I know what an exploding planet looks like and my youngest son is here!”

The Doctor was thinking, moving around, but Alec couldn’t move.

“Alec!” shouted Dad, and Johnny was crying, “Alec, we love you!”

“Don’t do that!” screamed Mum. “No-one start talking that way!”

And then Alec started hyperventalating, and then everything tilted to the side and the floor hit him in the face and the whole world went black.