A/N: A few months ago, one of my friends challenged me to write a story where 11, Amy and Rory meet Jane Austen. It took me a while to organise my thoughts, but this is what I eventually came up with. Because I watched Becoming Jane prior to writing this, I couldn't help but picture Anne Hathaway as Jane interacting with 11 and company the whole way through - which was, admittedly, a pretty entertaining image.
Enjoy!
Austen Adventure
Chapter One
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a stable fortune, however small, must not be in want of adventure. However little known the feelings or views of such a person may be, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of well-to-do families that it would be improper so as to even entertain the idea that adventure may be welcomed with open arms into a tastefully decorated and well-kept home. Adventure is an alluring and flighty mistress, one whose characteristics are appealing on page and in ink by the light of a warm hearth, but never face to face. The infectious impropriety brought on by adventure is one that can simply not exist in the homes of those who live to boast (or appear to boast) their own good breeding to their neighbours.
At twenty-two years of age, Jane thought of adventure as a brilliant, shining jewel, something to be devoutly wished for in the humdrum of ordinary life in her rural village; yet she knew as surely as she knew the sun would rise the next morning that adventure was something she could only dream about. If she ever had the chance to look it squarely in the face, she knew instinctively that she would throw it out her front door without so much as a "good-day". Adventures were lived through her imagination, through her pen, and the magic of words was enough to satisfy her.
"It would be foolish to consider otherwise," Jane murmured to herself as she scratched away at her most recent endeavour. She paused, setting down her pen to relax her cramping hand; she had been writing for most of the evening. She had lost track of the hour, as was usual once the sun went down.
Jane gently lifted the top sheaf of paper and held it up to the nearest candle, careful not to smudge the still gleaming ink. With a furrowed brow, she scanned her most recent words:
At fifteen, Susan began to mend her appearance: she curled her hair and longed for balls; her complexion improved, her features growing rosy with colour and softened by plumpness; her green eyes sparkled with intelligence, and her figure, much to her satisfaction, gained more consequence. She lost her love of dirt, instead becoming more inclined towards finery, and as she grew clean, she grew smart. Much to her pleasure, she frequently heard her father and mother remark upon her personal improvements: "Susan has become quite a good-looking girl – she is almost beautiful today!" And Susan was pleased whenever her ears caught those fine words, and how welcome were those sounds! She was pleased to look almost beautiful; it was an improvement upon the plainness that, as she now viewed it, had plagued her for the past fifteen years of her life. To have the generous word "beautiful" spoken within the same sentence as her name was the highest delight she had ever received.
"'To have the generous word'…" Jane frowned. The words felt awkward in her mouth. "That does not sound appropriate—" With an exasperated exhale, she threw down the page and stood up suddenly, causing her chair to skid backwards across her bedroom floor.
Wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders, Jane paced around her small bedroom, her thoughts flying. Words, words, words… they were as important to her as food or rest. She had so many ideas, so many characters, so many people inside her head whose stories were clamouring to be told, and words were the only way she could let them out. It was her greatest love to write, but there were times when she could not find the right words.
Jane toyed with the end of her long plait and stared out the window. Though it was dark, she could see the splatter of water on the window pane in the flickering candle light. Steventon had endured nearly a week of rain and foul weather.
"You are as unsettled as my imagination," Jane said, smiling bleakly. Sighing, she sat down at her desk once more and shifted the pile of papers belonging to Susan to the far edge. Taking a new sheaf, she filled her pen with ink and began afresh.
Dearest Cassandra,
I hope you are faring well on your trip to London; I am sure it is lovely there in August. I do long to hear about all the marvellous adventures you must be having; I'm afraid that I have been the example of boredom over the past week. I have been attempting to complete my newest manuscript, but I have been having difficulty finding my way with this particular tale.
I withdrew early to my room this evening, intent on continuing my work. Susan is proving to be quiet difficult indeed... though I can hear the story within my mind, I cannot seem to find the correct words to tell it. I suppose that is the plague that is brought upon the heads of all writers. Writing is a fickle friends; it provides such peace of mind, but only when inspiration strikes. I know that you, good sister, would tell me that I should rest and leave my imagination for another day, but I confess that I cannot. My mind is the most awake at night and I am not disconcerted by what may lurk in the darkness. It is a peaceful time, where I can set my imagination loose, unfettered by the whims—
Jane dropped her pen; a deep, howling sound had blown out of the night, interrupting her train of thought. She looked up, peering out her window once again, and saw nothing.
"Distractions," she muttered, leaning over and securing the latch on her window to make sure it was closed against the wind and the rain. She lowered her eyes to the letter on her desk and sat down. Picking up her pen and setting it to the page, she paused on the verge of continuing, but found she could no longer think of the words.
The howl continued to rumble in the shadows beyond her window, growing deeper and hungrier, echoing the wind. The roof creaked. Jane sat still, contemplating defeat, wondering whether she could continue her endeavours for another hour at least.
Jane began the sloping traces of the letter 'O' when the light suddenly vanished, as if some imperceptible wind had gusted through her room and blew the candles out.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Jane snapped, standing up so abruptly she knocked over her chair. She fumbled through the darkness and found her tinderbox, hastily using it to re-light the nearest candle.
The howling continued, steady and persistent. Jane stood still, as if torn between thought and action, and finally action won out. She seized the lit candle and strode from her room, thundering down the dark stairs to the entrance hall. She flung open the front door to the wind and the rain, shielding her candle's lonely flame with one hand as she felt the cold wet misting about her.
She stood on the threshold, her nightdress and shawl billowing about her, rain on her face. She peered into the darkness, and for one brilliant, mad moment, she considered running into the wild beyond her doorstep. She was so seized by the idea that she took a step forward – and then a bright bubble of laughter burst from her lips and she turned, shutting and latching the front door behind her.
Her candle had blown out and she shivered with the wet and the cold, but she could not suppress the laughter rising within her as she stumbled back up the stairs to her room. Running out into the wilderness beyond Steventon in the middle of the night, barefoot and in her nightdress, during a storm—
That was an adventure best left for the written word.
As Jane found her way back to her room knowing she could no longer write tonight, she did not notice that the persistent howling from before had ceased. Nor did she notice the shadowy presence that clung to the walls of her home, ushered into the house by an open door way and a favouring storm.
Adventure is a call to the wild left unanswered by many who would consider its nature improper to their positions in life. However, when one does not seek adventure, then adventure will surely and undoubtedly seek them.
"That?"
"What?"
"You want me to wear that?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"It'll make me look like – like – like I'm pregnant!"
"It's the style, Amy; I can't have you running around out there without one of these on."
"Can I dress like a boy?"
"No," the Doctor and Rory said in unison.
Amy swung back and forth on the banister of the TARDIS' main wardrobe room, puckering her lips and fixing the evil dress with a death stare that would make even the hardiest of her Scottish ancestors quiver with fear. "I personally think it would make an interesting challenge."
"You're not supposed to be challenged, Pond," the Doctor said absentmindedly as he tried to unknot a long piece of string.
She blew a loud raspberry. "You didn't use to have this rule."
"I made it up," he said. "Just now. Thought it would be… cool."
"Rules are made to be broken," Amy said immediately, her eyes lighting up.
"Just put the dress on, Amy," Rory said.
Amy rolled her eyes and leapt off the banister. "Oh, fine," she said, striding towards the clothes rack and seizing the offensive piece of dark green material off its hanger. She caught a familiar look in Rory's eye as she passed him, but she spun around with a pointing finger and said, quite clearly: "No."
"Amy!"
She wiggled her fingers at him, silent laughter gracing her lips, and disappeared into one of the many dressing rooms while the Doctor burst into a round of extremely loud laughter.
"Not funny," Rory said.
"She's got you on a string, Mr Pond," the Doctor said. "Oh look, string!" He had successfully unknotted the long strand of string and held it up, delighted, for appraisal.
Rory crossed his arms. "Like I said: not funny."
"That was excellently timed, don't you think?" the Doctor continued, now wrapping the piece of string around a finger. "'She's got you on a string' and 'oh look, string' – uh, no? Not at all?" His voice faded as Rory purposefully ignored him. "Not funny one bit?"
"Not funny."
"Okay, not funny."
The Doctor unravelled the string and put it away into one of his many pockets.
Rory did not look impressed. "Whenever we go into the past, you always insist that we not mess anything up by looking too modern; I don't see why you can't follow your own rules for once. Last I checked, bow-ties aren't part of the fashion."
"Bow-ties are cool," the Doctor said, smugly adjusting his. "They're part of any fashion."
"Bow-ties are not cool, no matter what the century!" Amy said, returning. She was yanking at her long skirt, a grimace etched into her features. She passed both Rory and the Doctor and twirled in front of the mirror, observing her reflection sceptically. "I look pregnant!" she said.
"You look wonderful," Rory said, putting his arms around her. He kissed her on the cheek. "Very Jane Austen, like you walked right out of Pride and Prejudice."
"Hmm." Amy raised an eyebrow. "So, Mr Darcy, how about you convince our friend over there to change his mind and take us someplace more interesting than England in the eighteen hundreds?" She raised her voice a little on the last phrase.
"Oi! I picked from the hat! It was fair." The Doctor re-adjusted his bow-tie again.
"Larconian System, the starscape at Mentos—"
"Menedos," the Doctor corrected. "Mentos is a type of mint—"
"And now England—"
"—which actually has a very interesting effect when you drop one into a bottle of Diet Coke—"
"Doctor!"
"Amy!"
The TARDIS whooshed to a stop.
"Am I the only one who noticed we've landed?" Rory said.
Jane was becoming quite frustrated with herself. Every time she sat at her desk to write, the words refused to come. Slowly, she could feel the panic begin to rise in her. If she could not write, she would certainly go mad. She took to practising the fortepiano, sometimes very early in the morning, despite her father and mother's protests. It was one of the few ways she could clear her head and squeeze another word or two out onto the new manuscript.
Long walks in the woods and about the village helped to calm her mind. Throughout the rest of the week, she rolled a few sheaves of parchment and stuffed them into her pocket along with a bottle of ink and her pen in case inspiration should strike while she was out walking. Her plan worked; the further she went from home, the easier it became to write and soon she found herself curled under a grand old oak tree in the forest, scratching away as the paragraphs of Susan's story unfurled themselves as clearly on page as they did in her mind.
Her mother sniffed with irritation when Jane returned home late in the afternoon, her fingers stained with ink and her hems with mud – it was still raining frequently – but Jane was content. However, her evenings were no longer peaceful moments of solitude. The howling became ever clearer as the days wore on; it drew closer each night, which was no comfort to Jane. It was continually cold, and she began to have a feeling deep in her gut that she was being watched. There was some kind of mischief occurring in the village, but Jane could not understand what.
It must be my imagination, she wrote in her letter to Cassandra. I fear that I am acting like a child, scared of the dark, scared of monsters of my own conjuring. For this reason, I have not mentioned the howls to father; I am certain I am imagining them and they will disappear once I have properly found my inspiration once again. Though it pains me to say it, there are moments when I wish that I was not so insistent on becoming a novelist!
A week after the cold, wet evening the howling had first begun, Jane fetched her shawl and her hat and left on a long walk down the lane. Though it was still cold for August, today was brighter than it had been; the sky was clear, though storm clouds could be seen stirring far away on the horizon.
She was walking along the path without another person in sight when it happened. She felt as though someone was creeping up on her from behind, but whenever she turned around, there was no one there. Jane froze, the breeze billowing loose strands of dark hair around her face, and kept her feet firmly planted on the muddy ground.
"Who's there?"
No one answered.
Jane spun around, one hand held high, but no matter which way she turned, she could only conclude that she was alone as far as the eye could see in the woods. She sighed, knowing that it must be the result of her overactive imagination, and continued along the path.
When she reached her great oak, she curled up against its trunk, breathing in the soft woodland air. Slowly, she spread her pages out before her and nestled her ink bottle in a small crook between two large roots. Setting her pen down beside her, she mulled over Susan's ambitions in her mind, not yet daring to touch her writing instruments for fear her inspiration may flee as soon as she sought to write it down. She did not know how long she stayed there; her eyes closed and she was drifting off into the land of the imaginary, a dreamland where only stories existed. Jane was woken abruptly from this rapture by a strange noise not far from where she sat. Startled, she lurched to her feet, scattering her pages, and placed one hand on the tree trunk, looking around for the sound's source.
There was a whoosh and a thud, and something that sounded very much like the squeak of a door. Jane's brow furrowed. How could a door possibly be in the middle of the woods? she thought. Perhaps I am going mad…
She glanced down at the blank pages now strewn across the ground and hastily knelt to pick them up. As she did, she thought she heard voices: two men and a woman.
"…boring! Out of all the places you had to choose from, we had to come here—"
"—it's a forest, far from dull, and a rather delightful one at that—"
"—I don't think it's boring, if that counts for anything."
There was momentary silence and then the argument began again. Jane tried to concentrate on what she was doing – she didn't want to eavesdrop on a private conversation between strangers – but she soon found herself standing by her tree with all of her papers collected, her ears trying to pick up every word the strangers said as they passed by some distance away from her.
"But we couldn't go for an alien forest, now could we?"
"Once you've been to an alien forest, you've seen them all, trust me—"
"—Oh, and every English forest is different then?"
"Ah… yes! Yes, they are all different! I can attest to that, too—"
"Please, if you think that'll work on me—"
"Do we have to argue about forests or is there something else we can bicker about? Or I've got a good idea! We're here, let's enjoy it, before something nasty sneaks up on us, like usual."
They were silent for a moment.
"Splendid."
"Yep. Good idea."
The voices slowly faded as they moved away. Jane paused, wondering about the meaning of their argument. She knew she shouldn't be curious – she had no business in the affairs of strangers – but she couldn't help feeling fascinated by their words. Their argument was a puzzle, and their words a means to fit it together in some shape or form.
The woman – a young woman, for she had sounded around the same age as Jane herself, perhaps younger – had such passion in her voice. Jane could not help but imagine a small, red-haired girl with a fiery personality to match her flaming hair. Then there was the first man; there was such an odd cadence to his voice, as if English were not his first language even though he spoke it flawlessly. Jane imagined him as a university professor, the kind of learned man who grew up learning three languages at once so that all three were indivisible in his mind. The second man was more difficult to place than the others; there was a sense of fond frustration in the way he spoke to the woman. Those two were clearly close acquaintances – brother and sister, or, more likely, a newly married couple. Yes… that seemed more appropriate.
Jane continued to walk, unaware that her feet were carrying her on a meandering course back to her house while her thoughts were occupied with the characters that were taking form in her mind.
A newly married couple, who recently obtained the keys to a small cottage on the property of a great manor house. Henry Watson, of a solid, British family, good-natured and kind, and his wife, Emily – young, beautiful, part-French, or perhaps part-Irish, that would count for her feisty personality. They would have married for love, despite Henry's father's objections. Some weeks after first arriving at their new home, they would explore the nearby woods with an older, distant relative – a Mr John Walker, a professor from Oxford. After a pleasant afternoon, Emily would slip away and discover a lost child left abandoned in the forest. With her kindly heart, she would have no other choice but to bring the child home with her; and then there would be a harsh decision. Should they leave the child to an orphanage, or adopt? Did they have enough money to feed three mouths? They did not; not until Henry obtained a higher paid position. And Mr Walker would advise them —
Jane paused. She was not yet out of the woods, but she had to stop. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the blank (and slightly muddied) papers, found her pen and ink, and flung herself at the base of the nearest tree. She sat with her knees pulled towards her chest, scrawling her ideas as fast as she could, for once not caring that she was smudging the ink. A new story had formed in her mind and she couldn't bring it into shape fast enough.
Emily, Henry, John, the lost child – the story swirled through Jane's head and she wrote and wrote until the muscles in her hand began to protest and it became physically impossible for her to write anymore. She let her hand drop to her side and her eyes surveyed what she had written: four full pages of cramped, angled writing, back and front, had brought the beginnings of Emily and Henry's story to life. She had never achieved this much with Susan in one afternoon. A satisfied smile (more smirk than smile) played across her lips and she silently thanked the three invisible passers-by who so kindly let her eavesdrop on them by accident.
Collecting her items, Jane stashed her pen and ink back into her pocket. The sun was just going down; they sky was turning pink, but she could see the grey storm clouds drawing closer. Judging from the sun's position in the sky, there was just enough time for her to get back home before it grew completely dark.
But I'll still hear it from Mother, Jane thought. Shirking household chores in order to write, once again…
Clutching her precious papers with their still-drying ink, Jane stood and began to pick her way back towards the house, oblivious to everything around her as she puzzled over the details of Emily in her head.
From the shadows of a tree, a dark figure flickered and followed, careful to keep a good distance away.