Down the Rabbit Hole and Through the Mirror
Chapter One: The Veil and the Void
By BlackBlade
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It was a warzone, a battlefield, so full of chaos and danger that not even his very worst nightmares could have prepared him for it, and considering the kind of nightmares he suffered, that was saying something. Bright beams of multi-colored lights flew all over the place, hitting walls and floor and ceilings and glowing shields…and people.
It happened almost like in a movie, when some dramatic scene just slows down to let the viewers appreciate the whole effect, to become immersed in the story. Sirius falling towards the Veil. It happened just like that, like in slow motion, giving him just enough time to be filled with horror, his blood almost freezing in his veins from the sheer panic of it all.
It unfortunately did not leave him with enough time to come up with some clever idea or brilliant plan that would save his beloved godfather.
Then again, Harry Potter had always been the sort to act first and think after.
His body moved almost of its own accord, his instincts reacting long before his mind could even fully understand what was happening. He ran, with a speed that was reserved for life-and-death situations, and took a great big leap, arms extended as he tried to push Sirius away.
He only just barely managed.
The almost-tackle sent the older wizard tumbling down the raised dais, probably causing a few extra bruises if not a broken bone; whatever became the consequence of his actions Harry didn't find out. Even after pushing Sirius away the momentum was too much to stop and he painfully collided with the stone archway, hitting his head rather badly against the edges of the ancient stone. He was dizzy from the blow, from the adrenaline still coursing through his body and from the earlier panic. All in all, there was simply no way his addled mind and pained body could stop him from stumbling down.
He could have fallen either way. He could fall to his right, joined Sirius in a painful but otherwise probably safe little tumble down the dais; or he could fall to his left, towards that otherworldly Veil that whispered things and fluttered with a nonexistent breeze.
Harry Potter fell to the left.
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It was a warzone, a battlefield, full of chaos and danger the likes of which this city's inhabitants might never have seen before and hopefully will never see again. Daleks and Cybermen first fighting a war against each other and then soaring through the air towards the Torchwood Tower. It was absolute madness.
And, as usual, at the heart of the absolute madness the Doctor could be found.
The man with many faces was currently holding on to a metal clamp as though his life depended on it. It probably did. But he was paying no mind at all to the indescribable chaos around, or to the metal creatures flying around as though caught in a hurricane. For one horrifying moment, the Doctor's great and brilliant mind was frozen, completely and utterly. His eyes were firmly stuck on the figure flying, being dragged, towards the Void. But this was no Dalek or Cyberman, but his own dear companion.
The mighty Time Lord could do nothing but stand and watch as Rose Tyler was dragged towards a fate worse than death, powerless, helpless, useless. And then Pete-from-another-world came, using the Dimension Cannon the Doctor himself had been so adamant in using, and took her. He took Rose back to safety, back to her mother, back to the other universe he could now never go to. Rose was gone.
The Void was closing now, the roaring winds which had dragged his enemies and friend alike now no more than a breeze about to die.
The Doctor finally released his grip on the clamp and moved towards the now almost closed Void, unafraid but disbelieving. So close, they'd been so close to ending it when she slipped and now she was gone. But then, perhaps for her it would be better this way; she'd have her family and her safety and no longer would she be dragged into mad and dangerous situations with him. She was safe, but she was gone.
It was at that moment that the Void chose to interrupt his rather morose thoughts.
The dying breeze picked up into a mild wind again, making him fear for a moment that it wouldn't close after all, that it would all be for nothing and that he might yet be sucked into the Void. But then he noticed that the wind wasn't blowing towards the Void but away from it, out of it in fact, it wasn't sucking the voidstuff any longer.
And then imagine the shock he felt as something, someone fell out of the Void, a second before the wind finally died down and the rips in the fabric of the universes finally closed down. For a moment, for less than a second, he felt hope rise in him, selfish hope that perhaps Rose had come back to him.
It was of course, a short-lived sort of hope, for he soon noticed that the someone was a young man, a teenager actually, and he also remembered that his Rose was safely back in the other universe and had no business falling out of Voids.
After the shock had died down a little, and with the day he'd had he was more than entitled to a bit of shock, he also recalled the fact that nothing was supposed to come out of the Void, and certainly no young humans with no protection at all from the inhabitable environment that was said Void.
He quickly latched onto this new mystery with the zealousness of a severely dehydrated man who'd just found a bucket full of water, allowing his mind to be distracted from the pain of losing…nope, not thinking about it, not thinking about it.
He knelt next to the boy, noticing then that his head was bleeding from a rather ugly gash, and scanned him with the sonic screwdriver. The readings indicated that indeed he had come from the Void, for he was soaked in voidstuff, and some other weird but apparently harmless radiation that the Doctor had never encountered before, and certainly not on Earth.
His day had started with ghosts and Torchwood, followed by Cybermen and Daleks, parallel-universe people and the Void, the loss of Rose Tyler, and to top it all off there was now a teenager who clearly belonged in some other universe stuck in this one, having somehow impossibly traveled through the bloody Void.
The universe really wasn't being kind to him today.
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A/N: This is the result of a plot bunny that just...hit me while I was watching a very moving and beautiful video of Doomsday on YouTube while somehow simultaneously thinking of Harry Potter...yeah, I'm weird like that XD. So what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Completely indifferent to it? Write a review and let me know! :D