GOSPEL
Summary: The words were like fire. He could feel it raging on his tongue, rolling like spiced curry cutting it's way to his teeth. He couldn't stop its persistence to exist, just that it was beyond his control. The Truth.
I had this idea a few days ago after beginning my re-watch of season six. Thought this would be a pretty interesting dilemma I'd like to see our TARDIS Team 2k go through. Hope you all like it.
I do not own Doctor Who, the show it's characters or it's iconic figures whatsoever. I just admire them with every fiber of my being.
i.
Rory's tongue curled under the bitter splash of the knotted red fruit.
"Whaaa—whhhat the hell is this?" He managed to squeak out through plush cheeks. He spat out his lapping tongue, scrubbing it furiously with his dry finger.
"Gallpato!" The Doctor exclaimed, pulling at the strange yellow lever he could have sworn wasn't there before. "From the planet, Nostros in the Galapagos Galaxy." The lever began to rumble uncontrollably, and the Doctor nervously lifted it back up. "Imagine like the islands. But not."
He ran the wrench into the side of the rusted metal bar beneath the glass floor.
"Just think, Rory. A whole league of planets, just strung up in the sky in a blanket of stars!" His thin hands slammed down on a bright blue button, springing the TARDIS into motion.
"So you just drop by some planet and picked one up?" Rory asked, clinging onto the steel banister, staring down at the masked Doctor.
"No, of course not." The Doctor shot back quickly. "That right there is a rare little fruit. And like most ancient civilizations, the people take their rarest and best fruits and sacrifice them to their gods."
Rory stared down at the fruit and frowned. It was a deep scarlet with a swirl of bright blue across its thin skin. Rory's half bite was drowned in a sea of pink juice that seemed to sizzle with an unknown acid. He didn't have a clue why he let the Doctor talk him into tasting it. But Amy was upstairs, sleeping and he was curious. But the fruit, if you looked at its glossy sheen against the deep fluorescent lights of the TARDIS and it's vivid blues and red, Rory could possibly see why someone would sacrifice this to a god they adored.
"So you're someone's god?" Rory asked, his lips still burning with the sting of the bulging red fruit.
The Doctor smiled, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and directing it towards a tangle of wires, "Everyone needs something to believe in, Mr. Pond." He pulled out a pair large silver scissors from his shirt pocket and began to snip at the wires. "Whether it's a god of thunder or just an old man tossing around in a box who swears a promise. People like truth, a gospel, to live by, to give them something if it's faith or—" he stopped snipping at a final wire. "There." He smiled, placing those scissors back into his small shirt pocket. "Maybe now I can—"
The TARDIS made a deathly jolt, sending the Doctor and Rory flying. Rory was shot to the tan leather seat strapped onto the banister he'd been clutching before, and the Doctor sent flying below the clear glass floor. The TARDIS wheezed hectically, wailing loudly, Rory now being juggled around the glass floor.
The chaos was blinding, the men being strung like ribbons through a shocking wind. When suddenly, just as quickly as it began—it stopped.
Rory was left sprawled across the small staircase, his long legs thrown askew through its openings, like leathered cheese.
The Doctor was laid across the bottom of the TARDIS, his wide green eyes blinking wildly.
"I hope that didn't wake Amy." Rory groaned, peeling himself up from the steel steps, his body aching.
"That wasn't good. That wasn't good." The Doctor muttered, straightening his stiffened legs and flying up the metal stairs, and hopping over to the TARDIS controls. "That wasn't good at all."
The Doctor's hands skated across the controls like fingers on fire.
"Wait—what happened?" Rory asked, massaging his head with the ball of his hand. His eyes began scanning across the TARDIS for the abandoned fruit that flung from his hands during the riot.
"I don't know." The Doctor murmured. "We weren't in orbit around any planets with substantial gravitational pulls…" His fingers began typing on the typewriter when a coddle of low footsteps clouded his speech as Amy waddled into view.
Her bright red nightgown was blinding in the midst of her cloud of red hair. Her skin like a ghost, smooth and milky, poured into the long silk gown, her arms folded stiffly across her small chest.
"I," She began harshly, her Scottish accent cutting like knives. "Was sleeping. And a bloody good sleep at that." She stomped down the stairs, her bare feet squealing against the glass ground. "It's been 900 years, and you still don't know how to fly this thing?"
The Doctor smiled weakly, "Actually about 700, but nevertheless, I have absolutely no idea what happened. It could have been a wormhole… or something hit us…"
Rory's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "Something hit us? Can that happen?"
The Doctor typed quickly, "Of course, happens loads of times. Spare parts of broken ships, small asteroids… it's like swimming in a dirty ocean. You're bound to run into something." His voice trailed, his mind focused on the monitor.
"We were called." He whispered breathlessly. "Summoned. Someone essentially lassoed us through space, and forced us here."
There was a quiet that foiled between the three.
"Was is River?" Amy asked quietly.
"River? No." The Doctor chuckled darkly. "She's always extraordinarily extravagant with her calls." He sighed, reaching for his tweed jacket, and began to slide his arms into its long sleeves.
"So who would it be?" Amy asked, "Who even has that power of grabbing the TARDIS and yanking it somewhere?"
The Doctor clapped his hands together excitedly before speaking, a dark smile itching on his face. "We're going to see now aren't we?"
"We are? Wait—we are?" Amy uncrossed her arms quickly, "Doctor are you sure this is safe I mean… whoever had that power has to be insanely mean and have some crazy plan to basically kill you and—" She stomped her foot angrily, her voice now strained, "Besides, I'm in my nighty."
"And that's stopped you before?" The Doctor asked, skipping towards the TARDIS doors.
Amy grunted, reaching for her deep blue jean jacket on the coat hanger near door and combat boots tossed on the ground.
"If we get exterminated, Doctor, I'm going to kill you."
Rory stumbled down the stairs, his head still spinning from the disarray.
"So we're going to look for whoever pulled us here. Even if it kills us?"
The Doctor smirked, "You just now figured it out?"
He yanked the doors open, to reveal… a swamp.
It reeked of old sewage and rotting fruit. Weeping willows framed the skyline of what was a marvelous city as a golden sun began to rise in the East.
"Oh this planet," The Doctor whispered to himself proudly, "This planet," He began, directing his voice towards Amy and Rory, "Is a planet of great triumph, of great prestige, home of the greats, this is California."
Amy's left brow rose, "This… is California?" She asked, tucking her hands into the deep pockets of her short jacket.
"Very…" Rory began, his long nose stretching to inhale his surrounding. "Swampy."
"It's a very wonderful planet, Ponds." The Doctor snapped, "I'll pride myself on the fact that I had a lot to do with it." He took a step forward, his rugged black combat boots sinking in the deep, dampened soil.
"A beautiful race lives here, Alphatraxi." He hopped over an enlarged rock that seemed to rise from nowhere, "One of the predecessors to the Atraxi, in fact!"
"And we've met the Atraxi, right?" Rory asked, untangling himself from a damp brown vine that curled itself around his waist. "The huge in floating in the sky, right?"
The Doctor smiled, snaking through the cluster of swarming trees and bushes with grace and elegance. "Yes, those were the Atraxi."
Amy and Rory fumbled behind, clinging onto draping vines and soft, plotted ground.
"Can we go visit some cool planet now?" Amy whined, pulling a square leaf that landed on her shoulder. She could barely see where they were heading, only a wilted sign that slung from a tall brown wooden pole.
"This is a cool planet, Amelia!" The Doctor began, moving quickly up to the large sign that Amy had spot earlier. "'Turn left for museum.'" He read aloud. He coiled his body to the left, his bright green eyes searching wildly for a building. "Museum?" He began towards the west, down a trodden path that was leading into a darkened wood.
"I thought you didn't like museums." Amy said, reaching out for Rory's hand in the darkness.
"I don't dislike museums, but they rarely tell the truth. Most of the time they're lies from another man's perspective. Ask a Roman about Rome, and they're bound to sugar it up." They emerged through a wall of snarled vines to reveal a large and spectacular marble mansion.
"Wow." Rory droned, eyes trailing up to examine the magnificent building. It rose from the ground like a boulder; it's rounded edges sculpted form fine stone. Large marble columns mounted the brilliant structure up, and from the middle rose a vast gilded dome. "This is absolutely beautiful."
The Doctor cackled to himself excitedly, before beginning up the tangle of stone stairs. "Let's go have a field trip, Ponds!" He barreled up the winding stairs, Amy and Rory trailing behind.
Once they reached the top, they stopped and The Doctor began to read off of the etched stone at the front of the building.
"The Gospel of the Universe." He began in a boisterous voice. "Year's zero to forever."
They stared into the dark steel doors dusted with age.
"Forever seemed like a shot in the dark, didn't it?" Amy spat.
The sun began to warm their backs. "So a museum of the history of the universe. Been one of these before, but that was one Earth. This right here," he gestured before him, "This I'm sure will be just as amazing." He turned to them both, his eyes noticing their linked hands. "Ready to explore, lovebirds?"
He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed to the door. With a click the door snapped open.
The trio stalked inside, The Doctor stationed in front. The inside rotunda was just as vast and extravagant as its exterior. Exhibits lined the galleries, large scaled planets strung from the ceiling lined with a skin of dust. Taxidermy animals and aliens catered the walls; old Daleks and Cyberman frozen in time.
"This isn't freaky at all, this isn't freaky at all." Amy whispered. She slapped The Doctor on the shoulder, "Can we go now, because quite frankly, this is really creepy."
The Doctor ignored her, his eyes drinking in the beauty of the forgotten museum. History was all there—all of it. The Rise and Fall of the Crestonian Empire, The Beginning of the Adultu Era, The discovery of the Totecular Sonic Technology. Every moment, every heartbeat of the universe was there, and had never been more truthful.
"Amy, stop, you're stepping on my foot—" Rory barked.
"Well if they weren't so long maybe I wouldn't be stepping on them—" Amy retorted.
"Will you two stop—?" The Doctor exclaimed.
There was shuffle to the left of them, and a knocking noise.
"What was that?" Rory whispered.
The knocking noise continued, when suddenly a young woman appeared from a dark. Her eyes were sunken, her lips chapped and bleeding. Her heart shaped face was swimming in a fog of white hair and her cloudy skin yellowing with age. The youth beneath her skin had vanished, and wrinkled inhabited her face.
The Doctor reached towards her hesitantly, "Hello?" He asked quietly, his voice jumping from the walls. "Can we do anything?"
She smiled, reaching her hands out, her fingers curling in her palm, "Find it." Her brittle voice cracked. She collapsed, The Doctor ran towards her, scooping her up in his arms.
"Find what?" He asked, propping her bobbing up for support.
"The—The Gospel." She wheezed, "Find it, please, find The Truth." She collapsed in his arms, the life finally exhaling from her body.
The Doctor peered up at Amy and Rory in grief.
"Did she say find The Truth?" Amy asked, "What's that?"
The Doctor laid her body down gently, closing her bright blue eyes and folding her arms across her chest.
"I don't know," He replied grimly, "But there's something here… and we're going to have to figure it out."
(A/N): And that's chapter one! I hope this turned out well enough; I spent a good amount of time outlining and stuff! I hoe there weren't too many grammatical errors. I'm not too good at that stuff, if there were any, I'm sorry and I'll try to clean that up for the future. Well, I hope you will leave some sort of review. Good or bad, anything helps. Sometimes, the worst reviews are the ones that help out the best, because they force you to shape up! (I hope that doesn't influence anyone to write a scathing review just for the heck of it!) But I'm about halfway through the second chapter, so it shouldn't be too long before I finish it up and publish it. All in all, I hope you all enjoy it, and hope you come back soon to see what happened next!