Hey guys. This first part is pretty short and doesn't really get to the action much, but I was impatient and wanted to get this posted. This is my first Dr. Who fic, so, sorry if I messed up the canon at all. I also apologise ahead of time for my horrific attempts to incorporate British slang. I'm as Yank as they come, so, I'm sorry if it switches horribly back-and-forth between English & American idiom. Google-searches only get you so far . . . Any suggestions/comments/help-with-writing-about-England-when-you've-never-actually-been-there would be appreciated!
I'm the kind of girl the world forgets. Raised in lead-painted rooms with windows always stuck open when its cold and stuck shut in the summer, brought up on chips and fish-sticks and warm pop. The closest thing I saw to family was East Enders and the closest thing I got to love were the Easter baskets they handed out in Sunday School. I guess, in the end, the man in the brown coat, the one Elton called the Doctor, was forgotten too.
I was lucky I guess: my mum dragged me to St. Edmund's Sunday School from age 8, when she found God, to age 13, when she was kicked to death by her dealer in our living room. And it was probably the shelf in the back of Miss Paravel's Sunday School room what saved my life when they sent me off to foster care.
I kept going to St. Edmund's – I guess 'cause I liked the biscuits after service and the people there smiled at me. Ms. Paravel was your stereotypical village mum: over-teased hair and bad sweaters every day of the year, even in August, but she kept that shelf pristine and full-up of all the Narnia, Prydain, and Hogwarts a kid like me could need to stave off the anger and loneliness. I didn't get into drugs 'cause I swore the day mum died that I'd kill the next dealer that came near me. I didn't push myself in school, but I liked reading enough and kept my head and voice down, so the teachers didn't mind me and kept passing me through my levels. The books kept me off the street and out of the trouble, and the lack of a record at the age of 16 meant I could grab myself a decent job frying burgers in a lunch-truck.
Mr. Hajib owned the truck, and Ms. Custer ran it. Jackie & Tom Custer, her kids, helped me with the grunt work. Our favorite parking spot was across from the industrial dumpsite known locally as The Wasteland. None of the other lunch-truckers could stand the smell, and a hot, greasy meal goes down well with those that haul iron all day. I figured I had reached something like happiness, forgotten though I was. I had managed to keep my head down out of all the troubles that great men had visited on us in the last few years. I didn't make much difference to me whether the Queen reigned from the palace or little trashcan men reigned from the sky. I just cooked up, cleaned up, went home to read, and prayed that the next time giant stars started shooting laser guns they'd keep their aim at the sparkling lights of Notting Hill and leave me and my dumpy flat alone.
Elton didn't see it that way. He lived in the flat across from me, and we didn't bother each other much until the day I walked in to borrow an egg and found him snogging a paving stone. His girlfriend, Ursula, he said. Put that way by some bloke called The Doctor who stuck her in a cobblestone to keep her from dying. It was strange times, so I didn't much argue – after all, hadn't it been just a year-ago Christmas that a bloody mountain had appeared in the morning sky and half the neighbors had taken a mind to stand on their balconies and contemplate jumping?
Elton had once been devoted to a whole little side hobby, following this Doctor and documenting all the times he'd supposedly saved the Earth from this, that, or the other thing. He hadn't been into it much lately, he told me, seeing as he and Ursula had only narrowly escaped with their lives the last time they'd seen him. But they had a way of speaking of him – like all of Christmas & Easter and Bank Holidays was wrapped up in this strange, skinny man from the stars.
"Like Aslan crossed himself with Aragorn and then decided the thing to do was fly a Police box," said I.
"Yeah, somethin' like that," said Elton.
"Don't be silly," said Ursula-the-Paving-Stone, "He's nothing like them – I read you see, all this toff does is dance around to ELO. He's nothing like Aslan or Aragorn or Gandalf . . . but he wants to be. That's what makes him a hero."
"He's saved us enough in the last few years," said Elton. "But I bet he wishes sometimes we could figure a way to manage it on our own."
"Well, as far as I'm concerned, the aliens can have us as long as they don't outlaw hamburgers. Or books," I said.
"You'll think different, one day," said Elton. "Aliens don't sound so bad, maybe, long as their far away. But when you're staring down the maw of one who wants you for a Happy Meal, you'll be yelling for the Doctor quick as any of us."
"Oh, you're so scary," I scoffed, "there's hungry maws enough on the streets after dark. Don't need aliens for enemies, we humans don't. We do well enough on our own. And most of 'em don't need a Doctor for their fixin, either – just a swift kick in the jewels or a pipe to the ribcage."
Elton and Ursula just shook their heads at me, but they came around more often after that. I suppose when you're keeping secrets for so long it's a relief to expand the circle. Elton burned me ELO CD's, and Ursula & I would read aloud to each other from Susanna Clarke or Orson Scott-Card. I wasn't as forgotten, I suppose, with them, even if one of them was just a rock with a face. And I suppose now I can admit they were right – everybody needs the Doctor before the end.
It all happened on a cloudy day just like every other cloudy day. The wind was sharp and smelled even more than usual like smoke and metal and wet, fouled earth. I remember there were three men in line at the lunch truck – two regulars, Tommo & Ginger who worked at Mr. Pike's foundry 'round the corner, and a blonde, bearded hoodie I'd never seen before wearing all black – he had an awfully terrible expression I remember now, like he could eat the whole world and still leave room to have the moon for dessert. Silly how plain it all seems to me looking back – but we never look twice at evil the first time we meet it, I think.
Tommo & Ginger ordered their usual, and the ravenous blonde just stood there, staring at the menu. I heard Ms. Custer ask him what he wanted. Tom was at the grill. Jackie was restocking the soda machines. Mr. Hajib was finishing up emptying the bins. He handed me the bags overfull with greasy paper and leftovers and pointed to the door. I was halfway to the dumpster when the screaming started.