Chapter One: The Impossible Scuba Diver
Author's Note: This is an edit, the content is the same but there were some glaring mistakes in this and they needed to be fixed. So I replaced the document after my beta got done and replace it with this one. Hope you enjoy!
From the moment the door opened on the tarmac in Bogotá, the heat had been siphoning the energy out of Molly Hooper. The climate, the culture, all of it was just far too different from London. She was spending a month in this? Molly hadn't ever had anything more Hispanic to eat than a corn crisp. She hadn't had ample time to prepare herself for this.
The muggy air assaulted her and within minutes she felt all slick and sticky, her clothes clung to her body and she just wanted to be somewhere cold. Hopefully there was air conditioning where he was staying.
Molly didn't know any Spanish and she had to negotiate the cab. When she failed at miming the address she found someone who spoke Spanish. The man laughed at her.
"You seem to have found the only cab without an English-speaker driving," he said.
"Lucky me." She forced a laugh.
As the cab piloted her through the packed streets she had a chance to really look out the window and see the city. Every building was a shade of beige or tan or light grey or bright white. And there was something familiar in the city too, that strange mix of old world and new world blended together in an area where the technology and society grew up around what used to be little more than a trade center. (And wasn't that all a city was, a trade center?)
The place she was headed, the 'villa', it had been called, was at the edge of town from what the man at the airport had said. The roads were bumpy and jostled the cab along. The inside the vehicle smelled of stale cigarettes and coffee—oddly the smell reminded her of Sherlock.
Awe bless, I hope he's okay.
When the cab dropped her off and she paid the man the driver with the money Sherlock had sent her. The sky was golden as the sun set and she could smell something that thrilled her and made her stomach ache with hunger, it was like lime and grilled meat wafting through the air all around her.
Molly stopped at the door. She still couldn't believe how painfully obvious this was, even for him, who seemed to love to flaunt things. A smile washed over her face and she read the doors out loud.
"Building B, Villa #221," she said in a light voice.
Without her prompting or knocking the door opened and there he was standing framed in light and followed by a burst of cool air. He looked tanner, but with the same green eyes. In one of his hands was a spatula covered in grease. His eyes scanned Molly. She had always felt like she was being psychically invaded when he looked at her like that. Like she was under an alien probe of some kind and her whole body was blocked from responding to her mind. Her mouth fell open slightly and, as if to call her back out of a dream state, he said her name. "Molly."
In some sense Sherlock Holmes was a ghost. In just the few days since she had seen him he had quit shaving and looked more rugged already. His skin was taking on an olive tone, surprisingly he hadn't just burned. He wore a white smock and black pants that made him look more like an extra on Merlin than the great detective.
"Sherlock, how are you holding up?" she asked.
"Fine," he was lying. She knew it and before she could call him out, he corrected it. "I'm bored and the heat has me feeling somewhat ill, I crave the comforts of home. But I've come to terms with that already," he said.
Molly nodded.
"I can tell you're bored. You seemed excited to see me," she joked.
Sherlock laughed and she could tell by the quality of it that he hadn't laughed in days. Molly found it hard to laugh in the week since his faked death. Everyone around her had changed and she was forced to hide or lie.
"You have your own room which provides ample privacy and some space to do any recreational activities you might want—"
Molly cut him off. "Thank God," she muttered.
The room was sparsely furnished with rustic looking pieces of furniture and there were slow moving fans everywhere to promote airflow. The arrangement reminded Molly of a vacation home she had stayed in with her family in Morocco one time. That was the first time she had been this hot and she didn't like it then either. Being this sweaty near Sherlock didn't help matters. She'd worn white and knowing him he'd already seen through her shirt.
"I just need you to help me set up for the long-term; I don't know how long I will have to live like this."
"I've brought you what I could without suspicion, but I had to avoid John and Mrs. Hudson. The look in their eyes just kills me."
"They'll be better for it. If I hadn't done this, they would have actually been killed," Sherlock says.
Molly felt a tinge of sympathy as she glanced at him, but it welled into something bolder.
"And you don't see how you're the hero. Look what you did to save your friends? Character assassination, making yourself to look like a fraud when all of the science you've ever uttered, every clue I've ever read in that blog or heard you talk about out loud either instantly made sense to me or did when I looked it up later. You're perfect," Molly said it all in one breath and only realized what she had said after. "I'm sorry," she added.
"Thank you," he said. "I do need to remain hiding and it's also to keep you safe. You're part of it now."
"I said I'd do anything for you and I meant it," Molly said. "But why did it have to be me?"
"Because he wouldn't consider you, he wouldn't even think of you. He underestimated you all of the time and I admit I abused you to some degree…" Molly didn't like apologetic Sherlock. Somehow, she liked it better when he was rude to her.
"Yeah, well I dumped him," she said. They both laughed and Molly leaned against the wall where one of the fans was aimed directly at her. "Shit, I'm going to have to get some shorter skirts." It wasn't something she meant to say it had just slipped out and it made Sherlock laugh harder. He had just wanted the company.
Suddenly the room exploded and there was a tumultuous sound mixed with some whirring noise. Glass and plaster rained down around them and Molly was pushed to the floor and held there by Sherlock. She squealed in fear, the sound muffled by floor and she could hear Sherlock shouting to her.
"Quiet, stay down! Stay down!"
She felt him move for something heavy and metallic pressed between them, she realized very quickly what it was.
Sherlock came up from the floor, holding her down with one hand and peered around the room. She could only peek up at him by turning her head sideways and he was indeed holding a gun aimed at someone. As he moved out of reach she rolled onto her side to see the thing that had caused the ruckus and it didn't look at all like a bomb or weapon.
Atop the mound of debris there was an unscratched blue box leaning back at an angle. Dust clouded the air and light poured through the hole perfectly illuminating the box in a majestic, almost intentional way.
Molly coughed as she struggled to get to her feet.
"A police box?" she asked.
Sherlock scrutinized the object. "A 1960s era Police Box, more than likely from London—to be precise."
"Fifty years out of service and eight thousand five hundred kilometers from where it should be…" Molly said.
The door was knocked open by a hefty object slamming into it and something fired out with a long cord attached. When Molly glanced up she could see that it was a harpoon that had buried itself in the ceiling. From deep within the blue box someone towed themselves out, as if they were rock climbing. Though the box couldn't be much bigger than a phone booth this person was making it a huge ordeal. Golden light was pouring out of the box making the whole matter that much more dramatic and to top it all off the person was wearing a diving suit with the old-style brass helmet.
Something far stranger than she could ever profess to having come across was going on here.
The person worked their helmet off to reveal an odd looking man with his hair mussed up at the front. He stared at Sherlock, who was still holding the gun and then looked to Molly.
"Sorry about the ceiling," he said. "Getting here is a bit more trouble than I would have thought and I had to make a few minor modifications…" the man trailed off.
"What are you?" Sherlock said, moving the gun slightly to reassert the point that he had it. The word 'what' seemed an odd choice because Molly was sure it was intentional. Sherlock did everything intentionally.
"The Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
The man smiled.
"Isn't that the question of the millennia," he said in a low slow voice with a rich quality that made him seem much too old and wise to be in that body. "The Doctor. They just call me the Doctor. And you're Sherlock Holmes, the great detective of Baker Street."
"You know a lot for a man who crashed through the wall in a big blue box," Sherlock said.
The Doctor smiled.
"This is more than a box, you're going to want to put that gun down and step inside of this box."
"What's in there?"
"The world and more, more than you could ever deduce," the Doctor said.
Molly could tell by looking that Sherlock was running over a list of ideas in his head. He was doing that Mind Castle thing or whatever it was called. She had seen it on more than one occasion and the results had been somewhat startling. As she and the Doctor looked on he moved his hands about in the air as if he were flicking through an imaginary touch screen connected to his brain to find the information that he needed.
The only thought that Molly could come up with was a Trojan horse.
"I've considered all of the possibilities," Sherlock said finally and keeping the gun trained on the Doctor he nears the opening of the box and peered down inside the doors. His face bathed in golden light, Molly sees something that she's never seen from Sherlock before. He's utterly stumped. Not even in a matter of that he can't figure it out, but as if he's seen the impossible.
She nears the box and glances down inside to see why.
Not the whole world, but a much bigger world than the one on the outside. The inside of the box was an entire room bigger than the villa and yet somehow it was only as small as a phone booth. She grabbed the edge of the box and held on, her knees going wobbly.
"Something is wrong with time, well, with your time. In the world I come from you're a thing of the past, a detective written about in great stories by a man who practically invented the modern crime novel—but there's been an error somewhere, something I'm missing and you're at the center of it …" The Doctor walked up to stand atop the box in the course of his speech and then made his way down to stand before them in a theatrical fashion.
Time? My world? It was too much and that sent Molly spiraling down into that hole. She slumped against the blue box and everything went dark.
When Molly blinked awake she was in that world inside of the blue box and everything was painted a dream-shade of yellow. The lights were all too bright and she laid still as her body tried to reorient itself. She was still a little dizzy but could see that she was surrounded by random things. There was a car seat bolted down, the petrol reservoir off of a weed-whacker hung from a huge center console that was topped off by something that seemed to be a blown glass display. The floor was a glass platform and the walls made it appear she was inside of a giant, well-lit honey comb.
Sherlock was talking to someone in the background and at first she could only tell by the quality of the voices, that silky, sexy, sarcastic tone Sherlock spoke with and the other person like grown child, excited to be speaking about whatever it was they were saying, yet knowledgeable none the less. Slowly the words became audible and she fully understood her first half a sentence.
"…which is why we've got to cross back over the void and get you to 1884," said the other man—Molly remembered him as the Doctor now. He walked into view holding what looked like some sort of alien torch in his hands.
Sherlock sighed.
"This box that's bigger on the inside is a scientific possibility so I can accept that you can bend space to look smaller than it is on the inside while still managing to occupy more space and have anything that enters that space retain its properties," Sherlock said. "But time travel is scientific impossibility," he said.
"Course it is, for your people-brains," the Doctor said.
Did he seriously just talk to Sherlock like that?
There was tension in the air and Molly went to sit up, she could tell that Sherlock was going to speak. But just before he did the Doctor put his fingers to his lips and shushed him. Sherlock, as if compelled, froze looking utterly cross. The Doctor threw his arms out wide with joy as he saw Molly stirring.
"There she is, see I knew she'd be okay. Not the first person to faint when faced with the inside of the TARDIS," said the Doctor.
"The what?" Molly pressed her hand to her forehead. The lights still hurt and she had to squint just to see anything.
"Ah the lights, sorry about that bit," the Doctor clapped his hands twice quickly and two thirds of the lights that were set into the wall cut out leaving the room with a sort of eerie teal glow that wafted up from the floor. Molly had to admit that it felt much better on her head.
"If you're good enough to walk, Molly, I think we should be going. This man, no matter how alien or intelligent is mad," Sherlock said as he crossed the room.
"Yes, I'm a mad man with a box, a time traveling box," the Doctor said leaning forward as if he were telling them a secret. "And if you're pretending to be dead, if you're hiding from the likes of James Moriarty's men then you simply have got no better choice than the past. I mean what have you really got to lose?"
"My dignity," Sherlock turned to ask Molly who was staring at the walls.
"But you don't care about that, you let a man drag your name through the mud without a fight just to save your friends—which is why I'm trying to help you in both worlds—because we're a lot alike." All the while the Doctor was smiling, his voice seemed to take on a prodding tone, Molly wanted to laugh.
"Am I this arrogant?" asked Sherlock.
Always. Molly thought.
"We'd both do anything to save those close to us and we both died to protect them," the Doctor said.
The room was perfectly silent except for the distant hum of the machines around them and Molly wondered what Sherlock had to say for this. He was expressionless and his eyes were locked with the Doctor. Seeing them both like this they seemed somewhat opposite of one another, Sherlock's hard chiseled features and the Doctor's more droopy, elongated face.
Molly was still trying to get her wits about her but she managed to utter the words that broke a long silence.
"You're on the run too?" she said trying to concentrate on the blurry form that was the Doctor. Things kept going in and out of focus.
"I've been running for a long time. Too long. Even when I stand my ground it just leads to more running…" he said as he braced himself against the center console. When her vision came back into focus he looked so much older with the grim expression his face had taken, the way his eyes had sunken into the shadows of the dimly lit room as he moved.
She thought of Sherlock when he had come to her in the lab. Was she about to regret helping him?
Never.
"If you don't mind me asking Doctor," Molly stammered. "What are you really?"
"Just an old fool. An alien is the answer you're looking for—A Time Lord," he said. His coat was off and he wore bracers over mauve shirt that seemed to glow in the green light of the room.
Molly didn't know what she had expected him to say, she looked to Sherlock who made no protest and she knew somehow he was thinking the same thing—this man really wasn't from this world. This technology was impossible.
"Mister Holmes, tell me, if you could go anywhere in all the universe in an instant, where would you go?" asked the Doctor as a sly smile came over his face. He pulled a lever and worked a slider down a zig-zag path on the console.
An earthquake began, or what Molly imagined to be an earthquake. She was nearly thrown from where she was sitting and Sherlock had to grab hold of the railing around the platform they were on. When she looked up the Doctor was darting around the console, somehow keeping his balance and flicking at different switches, pumping mundane objects that seemed to do absolutely nothing and checking screens.
Sparks rained down from the center of the huge glass structure in the middle of the room as a whirring sound filled the air. Molly let out a shriek and crumpled to the floor, covering her head. The room rocked, bucked and shook and she could hear the Doctor yelling over the melee.
"Excuse the ride, crossing the void has its complications and I had to modify some things on the fly!"
The shaking became more violent and there was a thunderous crackle, the kind that Molly had seen when she went to air shows with her father and the planes broke the sound barrier. Then the movement became less pronounced to the point that it was just a gentle listing back and forth. She looked up and the Doctor was darting down the ramp that led to the door.
With a violent kick he knocked the door open and grabbed hold of the wall just before he slipped out.
"Geronimo!" the Doctor yelled dangling from the open door. When Molly saw outside she almost fainted again.
"A city…"
"London," Sherlock said. Though it couldn't be the London they knew, it was the London of old perhaps. They were flying through the sky hundreds of feet above London. How was a box flying?
"We haven't fallen out yet and that means the gravity is at least working…" the Doctor commented. But they were nearing the ground at an alarming speed and the Doctor turned, pulled that strange torch from his coat and aimed it at the center console. The end of it glowed green and one of the levers reacted.
The movement stopped, presumably they had landed somewhere. The Doctor slipped the torch back into his pocket and opened the door.
"Here we are." He held it so that they could get out, but Molly needed to be outside in a rush.
She sprinted out the door dizzily, pushing past Sherlock and the Doctor and ran into the room where they had landed. Instinct took over and she went for the bathroom where she vomited in the toilet. It seemed the motion had caught up to her and she hadn't even realized how she knew where the restroom was.
"Sherlock's flat?"
Sherlock stepped into the room behind her and handed her a clean towel that he must have found or been given by the Doctor. "Same place, in a different time," he said before he pointed out the window that was still visible from the door. Sherlock stood beside the window with muted shock as Molly washed her face and walked over to peer out into the street.
"London, in November 1884," the Doctor said as he stepped into view. "Are you okay, Molly?"
She blushed, though she wasn't sure why he had that effect on her. Maybe because he was saying her name and she didn't even know his.
"I'll manage, it's just the motion…"
Sherlock was staring out the window, the reflection of his face playing back for Molly the plethora of emotions that crossed his face. He turned back to the box, muttering something to himself as he examined it with a slide out magnifier.
"Shared hallucination, seeing what we expect to see. I've dealt with something like this before, Doctor," Sherlock ran his fingers along the hull of the box and looked them over when they came away.
"Even I'm not that clever," the Doctor said.
"This is some clever trick," Sherlock concluded. "Designed to make us see where we wanted to be," he said.
Molly shook her head. "That doesn't make sense, I see all of this too and—" Molly stopped herself. She was where she had wanted to be in Bogotá, with Sherlock. Sure it had only been for his convenience, but it was the truth. "Why would I have wanted to be at Baker's Street?" she said finally.
A stack of newspapers filled one corner and Sherlock walked over to them, he snatched the first one up and scanned it. The room looked much the same as Molly remembered it. The last time she had seen it was a few months after Christmas when she came by to drop something off, John had called her though she knew it was for Sherlock. The wallpaper looked to be brand new, but the same pattern. The furniture was completely different as was its placement.
She ran her hand over the fabric of the couch as she edged toward the window. The city's shape was the same. It was London. But Victorian London, the way she had always pictured it when she read about it as a child.
"I over think these things. If the simplest explanation is the best, then there must be something else besides time travel to substantiate what's happened here," Sherlock muttered. "Drugged again…we could have been drugged when the box crashed into the villa—that would explain why were able to see a huge world inside of the police box and why we're seeing all of this now.' His words sounded rushed on the last part, like he was part of the way into a panic.
"But the Doctor wasn't wearing any sort of breathing apparatus, so it couldn't have been like the case John wrote about—as much as it might be crazy to admit, I think this might be the truth," Molly said, she didn't know how she was taking this so well. How was she being the calm one?
"November of 1884, what day is it?" Sherlock said.
"The sixth," the Doctor said as he ran his fingers over the blue box.
"Four days ago Timișoara became the first place in Europe with streets lit by electric light," Sherlock commented.
"The lamps outside look like gas, they're beautiful," Molly said.
The sun was still out and there were people here and there on the streets. A light rain was falling over the city and there was something magical and lush about the whole scene. Molly was always a bit too much of a romantic, but she refrained from mentioning any of her thoughts to Sherlock.
He stepped closer to the window, his shoulder almost touching hers and she could still smell the grilled meat and lime. The aroma's of the villa and Bogotá were still fresh on him, yet they were standing an ocean away and one hundred twenty-eight years in the past. A horse drawn cab trotted to a stop on the cobblestone street in front of the flat. Someone with a parasol climbed out of the carriage, their person hidden from view.
Straightening his bow tie, the Doctor stepped in behind them and wrapped his arms around their shoulders.
"So Amy and Rory, where to first?"
"Who?" Molly glanced at him.
"Sorry—force of habit," he apologized.
Molly smiled warily and glanced down at her clothes. She pulled away from the Doctor and tugged at her skirt. "I certainly can't go out like this—I'm going to need clothes," she said. "Real Victorian clothes. I guess it won't get too much different for you two."
"Hello? Is somebody there?" came a familiar voice from the stairwell.
"Mrs. Hudson?" Sherlock mouthed the words, Molly had to wonder if she had actually heard them.
"Oh Doctor, it's you—dear, you all frightened me. And you've brought up some—kind of strange wardrobe up," the woman who stepped into view was the spitting image of Mrs. Hudson right down to the voice. She was examining the blue box.
The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her on either cheek.
"How lovely to see you again, Mrs. Hudson," he said.
"Was this the niece you told me about—the one that would be moving in?" Mrs. Hudson asked.
"Yes, this is Molly and her husband Sherlock Holmes. They've been looking for a place here in the city," said the Doctor said.
Mrs. Hudson smiled.
"Oh newlyweds, you must be so proud." Those words sent Molly reeling, she felt faint all over again. The Doctor reached into his pocket and his arm seemed to go too far and he pulled out a huge wad of strange paper money tied with twine.
"This should cover the first month's rent plus utilities," he said. "Not sure how much it is…"
Mrs. Hudson's eyes went wide.
"Oh, this shall do nicely for far longer than a month!" she said. Sherlock couldn't take his eyes off Mrs. Hudson, everything about her was exactly the same as the Mrs. Hudson they both knew. "You look like you've been traveling a while. Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Possibly, I shall be taking Molly to purchase some clothes—they're recently back from India and she's become taken with their strange fashions," the Doctor said. "Could you stay here, Sherlock and just finalize things with Mrs. Hudson?" he asked.
Sherlock nodded. He seemed to have no objection to Molly pretending to be his wife. Of course people would be much less likely to rent to two unmarried people trying to move in together.
The Doctor wrapped his arm around Molly and led her out of the flat and down to the stairs that led out to the street.
"You might be here a while, so you need to look the part," the Doctor said. "I even took the liberty of picking up your cat Toby—friendly fellow, had nothing but good things to say about you…"