This story, now finished after languishing in an unavoidable dormant state for ages, is for a friend who long ago passed out a slew of hilariously awful romance titles and challenged everyone to base fics on them. Here's hoping it justifies the wait!
The Fake Fiancé
"Remind me again why we did this?" muttered Peri as the cell doors rattled shut behind them.
The Doctor paid her no attention. He glanced around, taking in the chipped plaster, the steps up to the cell door, the two bare cots taking up most of one wall, and the large, airy, heavily barred window directly ahead. The cell was barely wide enough for both of them, and the ceiling was low enough to brush his curly hair. Outside, dull halogens bathed the courtyard in a sickly orange light, and the footsteps of a lone guard echoed monotonously in the distance.
"Dreadful people," he grumbled. "Why did you have to look interested when they mentioned the dress?"
"I was just being polite." Shivering, Peri tore the top layer off her voluminous skirt and wrapped it around her shoulders. The Veriscian betrothal gown was as light as air and twice as chilly. "And it wasn't my idea telling them we were engaged!"
"Well, I had no idea the Mecal had been succeeded! In her day one wasn't allowed to glance at an unbonded woman without a letter of authority and a sealed contract of suit! We'd have ended up here faster than we could blink."
"And this way madesuch a difference."
"I must say," the Doctor mused, "the new one doesn't seem much better, from what we've seen of her."
"But we didn't see her at all!"
"One can't expect the royal Veriscians to parade their exaltedness before the common throng -- though she might have made an exception for me--!"
Peri smiled at his tone. Even from the back, he radiated righteous indignation.
With a muffled exclamation of dismay, the Doctor reached between the bars and fumbled with the window-sash.
"It's been painted over! Even a Hercules couldn't budge that! I'm afraid we're stuck, Peri."
Incredulous, she glanced from the window to his face. "And the bars just won't be a problem, huh? Or were you just going to glare at them until they got out of the way?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I wasn't trying to break out, Peri. This is a Veriscian betrothal cell -- the window is carefully designed to suck in as much of the wind and sleet as possible. We're facing north, too, and by the look of things, it's about to rain."
A convenient rumble of thunder emphasized the darkening sky and the damp wind already streaming through the wide window.
"It never rains but it pours," said Peri glumly, and half-collapsed on the lower cot with her back against the wall. Complaints left a sour taste in her mouth, especially after the Doctor had spent so much time searching for a pleasant place to land, but at the moment she couldn't think of any other reaction. "Some vacation this is."
He smiled in spite of himself.
"Beautiful, peaceful Verescis. We're just a decade too late."
He looked ruefully at the window -- then, to her astonishment, stripped off his multicolored coat and tossed it over.
"You'd better take the top bunk, m'dear. It'll be warmer up there."
Thunder pealed again, and Peri scrambled up to the top bunk as all the rain on the planet poured out of the angry sky. A high wind, funneled in by the outer walls, blew the torrent directly into the cell, and the Doctor, despite retreating to the furthest corner, was quickly soaked to the skin. The temperature dropped rapidly, and the rain became stinging sleet.
Peri curled up, pulling the coat over her face and trying to create a pocket of warm air. The coat wasn't big enough, though, and she finally decided to sacrifice her head to keep her feet warm.
The Doctor, with an exclamation of impatience, had abandoned the bunk and was pacing back and forth, pumping his arms and slapping his sides and legs to stimulate circulation. His light shirt was useless, soaked and clammy; steam rose from his shoulders in waves and he was grumbling nonstop in some obscure alien language.
At least she would never want for a distraction.
"So how long are we here for?"
"Hmm? Oh, just until tomorrow. Very prompt about these things, the Veriscians."
"What then? Will they let us go?"
"Not likely. They'll want us here for the wedding."
"Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, Doctor, but there is no way--"
"Ha! Not our wedding, Peri!" The Doctor slapped his knee and chortled, and she stuck out her tongue at him. "Hers. If I remember my history correctly, this Mecal supports some very unpleasant traditions, and one is for a royal couple to be escorted to their nuptial hall by forty bespoken couples--"
"That doesn't sound so--"
"Forty dead couples, Peri. In, as it were, the spirit and not the flesh. There's space made for them in the procession and everything. Of course, the Veriscians could never prove that the dear departed are really there, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?"
He moved from the bars to the rough walls, knocking, listening, searching for a weak spot.
"Doctor?"
"Hmm?"
"If this cell is made for the t-two of us, and the w-w-wedding is tomorrow--" She clenched her teeth, feeling as though her muscles were turning to stone. "Where are the other thirty-nine couples?"
The Doctor turned, glaring.
"Very good, I'm impressed. You can count. Now will you please conserve your energy?"
"D-d-d-d-don't change the s-subject!"
"They're all around us," said he said distractedly. "The building's full of them. Lying around on their bunks like mindless paramecia. The worst of it is that they want to be here. If we let them all out, they'll just mill around and the guards'll shoot half of them down before they can get to the courtyard."
"How horrible!"
He sighed. "They're more fragile than you or I, Peri. Most of them will be dead before midnight. I don't know why you're so surprised, with all we've been through. Few cultures manage to eradicate their last thread of evil, no matter how enlightened they become."
"I wish you wouldn't be so cynical," she said. "Do any ever survive?"
"One in several thousand. They're sacrificed in the morning, of course, but their families are richly rewarded. That's what keeps 'em coming back, you know -- the ultimate refinement of torture, adding insult to injury. As long as it happens once in a few thousand ceremonies, they'll lie down on their bunks and wait placidly for chance to decide their fate."
He smiled grimly.
"Still, I seem to recall some massive toss-up during this time period. It was never properly charted, but I've often wondered whether some outside factor... hush! Do you hear that?"
The approaching footsteps were scarcely audible over the rain -- but there were several sets of them and, with the sudden hush, a faint mutter of voices. The door rattled. With a glance at Peri, the Doctor stepped swiftly behind it, tensing himself to spring.
A robed Veriscian slipped through, holding a lantern high. At once his eyes fell upon the empty lower bunk. Gasping in fear, he turned too late -- the Doctor, springing forward, had wrenched the lantern from his hand and forced him deeper into the cell.
Peri slid down to catch the door before it swung to, exclaiming in annoyance as she landed in three inches of water. The warm air from the hallway was like a magnet. As she slipped out of sight, the Doctor examined his prisoner. It was hardly a fair match: even in his shirtsleeves, he would have made two of the thin, shivering young man.
"Who the devil are you?" demanded the Doctor.
"I -- my name's Garr Varin," the Veriscian stammered, his lean face raw with astonishment and distress. "I was hoping someone was alive. But this isn't a ritual for outsiders--"
"Tell that to the Mecal," said the Doctor grimly. Shoving the lantern into the boy's shaking hands,
he brushed past him and up the steps. "Now, if you'll excuse us -- come on, Peri, we've clearly overstayed our welcome--"
He stopped short in the open door.
Peri, with the Doctor's coat pulled tightly around her shoulders, was surrounded by a ring of Veriscian acolytes. Trembling violently, blue with cold, some sobbing softly, some supporting those too weak to stand -- ten couples at least were crowded in the narrow hall, and sleet streamed in from open doors all the way up to the guardhouse.
Behind them, Garr Varin cried, "Wait!"
"Not likely," scoffed the Doctor -- but he did turn, just for a moment.
Garr took a few paces forward, staring from the girl to the curly-haired alien, seeming to find something reassuring in their faces. The lantern light glinted from the red stones set into his ears. "I'm looking for my young lady," he said defiantly. "Well -- she used to be, but something went wrong. She's somewhere in here, thanks to the Mecal's depravity. I -- I can't let--"
"You mean she's somewhere in a cell?" Peri, moved by his distress, took his hands. "Don't worry, we'll help you find her."
The Doctor was rolling his eyes, but he interrupted almost immediately, a sure sign that his sympathies were with theirs.
"How did you mean to get her out?"
"There's the priest tunnels. The temple's under sanctuary law, and this building has only three guards this time of night."
"And I assume they circulate as needed?" The Doctor glanced around the corridor; it offered no place for concealment.
"They'll only be in here twice more before dawn." Garr frowned bitterly. "They don't like to hear the prisoners cry. I snuck past the one in the guardroom, and the other two are outside."
"Then there's no time to lose." The Doctor turned back to the corridor, but Garr grabbed his sleeve, flinching at the Doctor's glare but refusing to let go.
"I'm not leaving her."
"My dear young idiot, nobody said you have to. There's a master lock at the end of the hall -- I saw it as we came in. You and the others be ready. I'm going to open all the doors at once."
"All of them?"
"Well, we can't do them one by one -- that'd be ridiculous. You're already running out of time."
"But--"
"All of them," said the Doctor firmly. "If you're going to perpetrate an epic rescue, you might as well get it right."
Garr stared at him for a moment. Then he nodded, beckoning to some of the stronger victims, sending them further down the hall to wait for their cue.
.o0o.
Getting rid of the only indoor guard proved ridiculously easy. Uniformed and heavily armed, he stood with his back to the cell-block doorway and was hardly bigger than Garr. The Doctor grinned incredulously as he saw the wires in the man's ears. He was swaying, almost imperceptibly, to some unheard music. Edging out of the silent hall, the Doctor tapped him on the shoulder, and caught him as he turned with a crippling strike to the base of the neck.
As he lowered his victim to the floor, he caught sight of Peri's expression. Exasperated, he snapped, "Don't tell me you had a better way."
"No. I just wish it hadn't been necessary."
"And you think I don't?" Snorting, the Doctor dragged the guard into a room off the entranceway. "He'll wake up eventually and may get some well-deserved sick leave. The important thing is that we'll be gone before he has to worry about any of it. Ah... this control panel should do the trick -- one way or another."
They emerged from the guardroom into chaos. Doors had sprung open from end to end of the halls, but only half of the seventy-eight acolytes had actually emerged. Most, as the Doctor had predicted, were milling around or collapsed against the walls. A number were unable to walk. Garr and some others were pulling people out of the furthest rooms, but it was hard to see how any kind of organized escape would be possible.
The next twenty minutes were a frozen nightmare. Grumbling -- as if that fooled anyone -- the Doctor helped Peri and Garr haul the rest of the victims out into the corridor, arranged a buddy system for those who couldn't walk, and closed door after door so nobody could wander back to their deaths. The tunnel, a slim, secret passage hidden at the far end of the hall, was even worse -- the ragtag band trundled through the frozen dark like a many-headed caterpillar, each part holding the rest of itself upright -- but as they filed out into shadows cast by the dim halogens they'd seen from the window, the Doctor was amazed to find that all of the shivering Veriscians were still alive.
They had emerged in a courtyard the size of a small city block, and were again forced to endure the killing cold; but Garr assured them that the ordeal was almost over. At its opposite end, the temple reared above the surrounding buildings, its massive steel-bound doors invitingly ajar.
As Garr and the others hurried the acolytes up the steps, there was a shout from the far end of the courtyard. Brightly uniformed troopers poured in through a wide gate, their weapons at the ready.
"Get everybody in," shouted Garr, springing to the top of the steps. "Don't leave anyone behind!"
The Doctor and Peri rounded up the stragglers, rushing them past Garr as he paused on the threshold. He was still standing there when the last of the acolytes had been ushered in.
"Well?" cried the Doctor. "Aren't you coming? Help me close the door! Move, man!"
Garr stood as though frozen in the temple doorway. His head was thrown back, and the light gleamed strangely on the massive gemstones in his ears. In the cold, damp air, the steam in his nostrils made it look as though he were breathing fire.
"Wait," he said softly. "This is the end."
"It doesn't need to be--!"
Garr flashed him a quelling look. The Doctor paused in astonishment, staring at him as though seeing him for the first time.
"You planned for this," he said accusingly. "You were expecting something to happen. What else haven't you told us?"
Garr shook his head and looked out over the approaching crowd. "One way or another," he said, "this moment had to come."
The troop, their light-spears leveled, ringed the door -- and then stopped. More poured into the courtyard, taking up stances just beyond the front line, and held absolutely still, ignoring the frightened weeping of the erstwhile prisoners clustered in the temple. They were still coming, a tide of square jaws and crisp uniforms, when those nearest the west gate stirred and parted to let someone through.
"The Mecal," breathed the Doctor. "What's she doing here?"
The Mecal was young, but far gone in sloth: short and stubby, with small pale eyes and rings on every finger. Her heavy coat had been flung over an ornate dressing gown, and her thick ankles were heavily booted. She advanced to the lowest step, and froze as Garr raised his hand.
"What's the meaning of this?" she cried. The Doctor opened his mouth, but the Mecal wasn't speaking to him. "This isn't the time for one of your games, Garr. The whole wedding will have to be resanctified now."
Garr stared down at her, his face written over with disdain.
"All you people--" the Mecal gestured imperiously at the huddled crowd of weeping youths -- "you know better than this! You are the acolytes! Confusion is tempting you, but you must remember your duty! Come out and be purified from these interruptions!"
"Not likely," snorted the Doctor.
"We're taking refuge in the temple," said Garr. "All of us. There will be no sacrifice, and you will do as you promised my mother and abolish the acolytage. There's nothing holy about murder."
The Mecal sputtered, looking more like a mad turkey than a Veriscian. With a supreme effort, she reined her temper in and asked slyly, "Why couldn't you wait one more day? You would have had a lot more influence, with the council as well as with me--"
"Because eighty of my people would have been dead," snapped Garr. "And also because I'd rather freeze to death myself than be wedded to you!"
The Doctor stared. "What, you're the Arteschria?" he said, and suddenly howled with laughter. "No, the Arteschria's son! No wonder you knew your about the priests' tunnel! You should have told us, Garr! We would have helped you anyway."
Bewildered, Peri looked from the flushed, triumphant youth to the apoplectic Mecal. "You mean you were--"
"--not whom I said? It's true." Glancing down at the Mecal, Garr shuddered and touched Peri's arm in apology. "She'd decreed that I marry her tomorrow. I'm sorry I misled you, but you'll admit that my fiancee really was nearby, and I did have to do something about it."
The Mecal's face twisted: corrupt, ugly, and dangerous. She pulled her coat about her and, with insulting deliberation, strode up the stairs. Garr didn't give way, even when the woman stopped on the stair directly below him.
"This is my temple," the Mecal said softly. "I can order these men to charge in and kill you all. One of your brothers will do as well as you for my consort, and there will be no lack of ghosts. No one will ever have to know how you died."
"That's where you're wrong," said the Doctor, striding forward in his shirtsleeves. He was at least a head taller than the Mecal, even without the extra step, and when he really wanted to, he I loomed /I . "Thanks to my slight redirection of the guardroom monitors, this entire conversation is currently being broadcast to every late-night viewer on the planet -- and they'll record it and send it to all their friends. By morning, this scene will be number one in the viewing queue."
The Mecal turned red, then purple, then white, and the guards behind her pulled out hand computers and started surreptitiously checking the news.
"Cameras everywhere!" sang the Doctor, with a negligent, expansive flourish, ostentatiously slicking back his flattened hair. "That's the beauty of the modern age. Smile for the nice civilians, Peri. And as for you, Your Ignominiousness, I hear Cerebus is nice at this time of year..."
With an inarticulate shriek, the Mecal whipped a small pistol out of her coat -- and the Doctor, with a perfectly executed circular block, slapped it out of her hand, shoved her into the arms of the guards below, and bull-rushed Peri and Garr back into the temple.
The acolytes slammed the doors.
A string of curses filtered through the heavy wood, and the refugees -- soaked, smudged, bedraggled, and finally thawing out -- looked at one another and embraced in relief and joy.
.o0o.
By high noon, the Mecal was squirreled away in her palace, her life scarcely worth a pin if she should venture outside. The militia, seeing which way the wind was blowing, had lost interest in the temple. Garr and the other priests were tending to those who were still sick from exposure, but even so, the time-travelers scarcely got out of attending the thirty-nine weddings that were slated to take place that afternoon.
"Garr Varin." The Doctor rolled the name off his tongue, fitting their recent acquaintance into his revised planetary history as the TARDIS doors closed behind them. "The priest-in-waiting whose mother and predecessor was assassinated for swearing to abolish human sacrifice. I met the old girl once -- he does her credit." He looked up from the console as the wrenching groan of dematerialization faded into the normal sounds of flight."But you're being unusually quiet, Peri. "
"After a night like that?" Peri muffled a yawn. "I'm surprised I'm still awake. Don't worry about me."
"You're not catching anything, are you?" He leaned over, examining her face in concern. "Those hours in the cell--"
"No, nothing like that. It's just..." Peri hesitated, frowning. "Garr. I don't think he ever planned to tell us the truth."
"And?" The Doctor's grin was a bit mischievous, as it often was when he decided to challenge something she'd taken for granted. "Veracity on Verescis may not have the same value as it does to your culture. And for a man trying to start a revolution, a well-spun story could make the difference between new life and a hideous doom."
"Like marrying that woman," said Peri ruefully.
"Exactly!"
She had to smile at the Doctor's enthusiastic reply. It wasn't enough, though. Escaping their own hideous doom had been sufficiently unpleasant without realizing they had been cats-paws the entire time.
"I'd still have liked to know the truth from the beginning," she muttered.
"That's because you have an inquiring spirit. I knew I kept you around for some reason." The Doctor keyed off the last of the coordinates with a flourish, then paused by the console, turning back to her with a rare seriousness. "The important thing is that it didn't lead into any more danger. And you know, Peri, I haven't told you my name either."
"Don't you start." She laughed, leaning on the other side of the console. "At least you don't pretend to be something you're not."
"And never forget it." With a warm smile, he reached over and clapped her on the arm. "Now go on and rest up before we land somewhere else -- and when you're quite warm again, I'll thank you to give me back my coat."
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