(A/N): This is my short Doctor Who fanfiction [for the school writing competition We are Writers] which I have entitled 'Floored'. The characters are the TARDIS, the Doctor (Eleventh), Martha Jones/Smith and there are mentions of UNIT (along with Donna, Rory and Amy) which I felt were needed. Now, I humbly give you…
Floored
A spaceship and a time machine, both infinite in interior and not infinite at all.
"Hello, old girl." he placed a hand upon the wooden frame, remembering that most actual Police Boxes were made of concrete, "Did you miss me?"
The ship's lights brightened as he entered, a click of the fingers having brought the doors forth, "Yeah, 'course you did!" the room hummed and then blurred unusually before his eyes as he found himself settling on the captain's chair.
Certain instruments on the console bleeped and whirred, a desperate plea, "Don't worry, I just need to get my breath back…" he hardly noticed the spines as they bore deeper into his hand – the hand holding his sonic screwdriver, and he registered a dull thud when it fell to the floor, "Yep, perfectly fine."
The corridor leading the infirmary was highlighted, but he ignored it. He needed to get off this planet – planet of the bloody mutant porcupines… he was reminded of Sonic the Hedgehog (which is a given) and his former self's erratic hair. Having so many past incarnations, he felt old and tried to act so young while he had miraculously succeeded in looking as such.
"I think I'll drop in on old Roxy… bloke's gotta have a hard time running a detective agency when he's so clumsy." he lifted himself as best he could and manoeuvred his way to the console. He tried a few switches and dials, and when everything usually worked for him it was now certainly lax in… working.
"Why have you locked the controls?" he yelled at the columnal time rotor, scratching his stubbly face.
The screen moved his way and a reply appeared in Gallifreyan (but of course, for the convenience of my human readers I have translated): "HEAL."
"I'm okay… spry as a hundred year old. Right?" he faked a grin, something which his current face wasn't as suited to as the last two.
"LIAR. HAND."
"What's wrong with my…? Oh." he made his hand do a full 360, and sighed after realizing that the spines hadn't made it all the way through, "Is this what you're worried about? I can remove them easily."
A klaxon sounded and the screen flashed, "VENOM."
Oh, right, the spines of the mutant porcupines of planet porcupine just had to be laced with an adaptive bodily poison.
His legs gave way as the severity of his situation struck, and the venom took this moment to enter his bloodstream. He clambered semi-upright against the console, yelling, "Is there a cure?" the corridor lit up again and the takeoff procedure was initiated, "Are we leaving?" the screen came down to his level, and he thought he recognized the coordinates as he blacked out against the mosaicked glass floor.
Great walls flanked with white, telling him that he had somehow made it to the infirmary. But the sense and smell was different; he could usually hear the low buzz of the TARDIS engines if he were in the infirmary, and the room was bereft the stench of Artron energy permeating the sterile walls. Maybe a different place? Not his dear ship, nor anywhere else he could recognize at first glance.
A face, he recognized a face, which was nice. A bit hard to see at first, but was becoming clearer by the second, speaking as he squinted, "…This better not be you, Mickey Smith."
"Martha Smith, but an easy mistake to make." a female voice, soft and clear as he lay aghast.
"Do I know you?" Martha Smith; 'Martha' certainly ringed a bell, "Oh wait, Martha Jones!"
"Yes, good to see you don't have amnesia." his eyes came into focus and he saw her clearly for the first time.
"Martha Jones. You finally got married then? And to Mickey the Idiot, I presume." he tried to sit up, but to no avail, "Why am I strapped to this table?"
"We were worried about what you might do when you woke up; we had no idea what you had, and the sticks in your hand weren't a good sign. We've removed them and you seem to be okay now."
"Exactly what I told the TARDIS; remove mister spiky's spiky bits and I'm right as rain. And who's 'we'?"
"This was beyond my control." Martha said, shaking her head.
The Doctor looked around the room once more, "So I'm in a UNIT-controlled quarantine facility? I don't remember these places being quite so boring, but it can't be faulted on the company. You look older." Not a question, a statement.
"It's what this job does to you." Martha said, unstrapping him from the medical table, "You haven't got older – I could say you've gotten younger. Are you reverting through every regeneration?"
"Probably. If I died and regenerated, you'd been talking to a lanky teenager right now." the Doctor said, laughing.
An awkward silence hung in the air until, "So… you changed the TARDIS interior?"
"Ah, yes, by no fault but my own; my last regeneration was a bit… iffy."
"What happened? You look queasy just thinking about it." Martha said, sitting on the chair in front of him.
"You remember my friend Donna?"
"How can I forget? You two seemed inseparable."
"Yes, well, I was there when everyone got turned into the Master on Christmas Day, and unfortunately Donna's grandfather – Wilfred – was with me. It was unfortunate for both of us because after I'd saved the day, Wilf had gotten stuck in a radiation chamber that was about to become flooded thanks to the Master's wiring skills. The only way to save him was to go into the chamber next to him, which started flooding as soon as I let Wilf out. I absorbed all the radiation and… that version of me died." he laughed drily, "You know the funny thing about it was when the time came for me to regenerate, I said 'I don't wanna go', like I had any control over it. And then, all the excess radiation from my regeneration was absorbed by the TARDIS, but she sustained allot of damage, so in the end she regenerated too. A new TARDIS for a new me."
"She looks nice." Martha said, then hastily explaining, "I mean, she looks tidier on the inside and looks like she's been give a fresh coat of paint on the outside."
The Doctor nodded, "Yeah, she's lovely – added by the fact that I can't do my usual jiggery-pokery above the floor now. Other than that, when will I be allowed out of here?"
"We got the spikes out, but the venom is still in your bloodstream; we can only do so much with our supplies here on Earth and medicines in the TARDIS. We think it's a progressive killer, so we don't really know what to do about it."
The Doctor patted around his body as if searching for something. "I don't feel like I'm about to die or regenerate…"
"I've been monitoring your levels of regenerative energy, and it seems to be draining fast. And the venom has numbed your to its' work, you wouldn't even feel it if you were in the middle of dying."
"So I'm a dead man, I should simply commit to genocide? No, I feel fine right now, I'm going to find those inbred hedgehogs and give them a piece of my–" He had moved to jump off the bed and found himself collapsing onto a cold white floor.
"Doctor, you can't go driving the TARDIS when you can't even stand!" Martha exclaimed, lugging him back onto the bed.
The Doctor thought about it and then looked to her hopefully, "I've given you a couple of lessons, you can drive her for me. If there's even the possibility of an antidote I'll need to talk to the hedgehog men."
"The ones that tried to kill you!"
"Don't be like that! You never know; if we're lucky you'll overshoot it a bit and we'll land in a time when they've evolved into creatures of peace – who just happen to have a great science department."
"Fine, you be optimistic and I'll be the realistic one as usual. But I suppose we could get you into the TARDIS…"
The Doctor clapped his hands together, "Then it's settled! We'll leave immediately, but not before retrieving a wheelchair."
Whirring and wheezing, the TARDIS made a hasty retreat.
"I'm going to get in trouble for this; you're not supposed to leave the facility and I'm your babysitter."
"I'm not a baby!" the Doctor whined, trying out the wheelchair he had landed himself in, "Now did you remember to pick up my things?"
Martha nodded, handing him an assortment of belongings before turning back to the myriad controls.
"Why did they take my bowtie? It's my best bowtie." the Doctor said, managing the wrap the red ribbon around his next with little difficulty.
"They said it might be a choking hazard."
The Doctor stared at her appalled, "Rubbish! My sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper I can understand, the Venusian rubber ducky maybe, but bowties are cool; they'd never do me any harm."
"What about fezzes? And before you ask: since you have no next of kin and you're pretty much dying, the TARDIS helped me contact the last person you travelled with."
"I assume she patched you through to Mr and Mrs Pond."
"I knew 'Mr Pond' since before I knew you, actually – I met him in my first year of medical training."
"He never told me! Rory's been keeping that one quiet." the Doctor ran through allot of concurrent things in his head and finally said, "Sorry to adopt a cliché that so often my companion is the one asking, but are we there yet?"
The usual seafarer-like landing noise sounded, as if on cue, "I suppose so."
"Hold on," the Doctor said, stopping them short halfway through the double doors, "This was a primitive wasteland, the last I checked. Did you overshoot or undershoot?"
"S'your spaceship." Martha said, wheeling him out onto the plush grass. All around them was green and prosperity; it was like the Earth would be if human beings hadn't claimed it – with a few humans make sure everything didn't overrun on everything else.
"Doctor, do you know what this means? You first theory may have been right – wait, I saw movement!"
"Says the lethal weapon… just keep quiet or you'll scare it away!" the Doctor whispered, putting a finger to his lips and going Shhh for emphasis.
"Doctor, it sounds little; it can't harm us. Remember your bowtie?"
"Bowties are inanimate objects, they're an entirely different story. And I happen to remember that one time a companion said something was 'small and therefore harmless', my testes were nearly vaporized." the Doctor said, edging on a bitter tone.
"That was only once. Let's just see what it is, if it wasn't harmless it would have attacked by now."
The creature jumped the bullet before they did, and revealed itself to be one of the 'hedgehog men' that the Doctor had been so angry about, "Greetings! I am Lurr."
"Ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8?" Martha whispered to the Doctor, who was having a hard time trying to keep a straight face.
"I see you have returned, Doctor, very well. The curative compound is this way."
"Excuse me, but what? If I remember rightly, you lot are supposed to be vicious primitives."
The hedgehog-thingy nodded, "Our civilisation has changed since you last visited; We've learnt speech and the basics of a fruitful life, and most of us have dedicated our lives to further pursuit of knowledge."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this. Everything you said came true, and none of it was bad." Martha said, still wheeling the Doctor around while trying to keep up with the effortlessly fast mammal in front of them.
"I know, I can't believe it either; I think Homo-erinaceus europeaeus here has done pretty well for himself. He's even wearing clothes." the Doctor said, a jovial smile spreading across his face, "That's a pretty big feat in itself; you'd imagine they wouldn't be able to with all those spikes along their backs."
The hedgehog man stopped at a hedge-like building, beckoning them closer and whispering, "The curative compound is next to our monastery. We'll have to be very quiet as we make our entrance."
Martha, for a moment, craned her neck to see over the wall dividing the two buildings, and gasped, "Doctor, they're all wearing bowties!"
"I make it quite a fashion statement, perhaps?"
The hedgehog man hushed them, "Doctor, our ancestors were not trying to attack you all those years ago. You had saved their children from the winds, they saw you as a god!"
"Then why did they chase after me and give me splinters?" the Doctor asked.
"You were leaving; they assumed that if another disaster struck, there would be nobody to save them. They wanted their saviour to stay," Lurr said quietly, "If you'd only bothered to learn their language, you would have known they were calling for help."
The Doctor fell flat on his face as Martha upturned the wheelchair, "This is all because of a miscommunication!"
"Yes… and now I can't even move my arms. How long until we get to the antidote?" he now saw a few buttons inlaid into the wall in front of him.
Lurr pushed the purple button and a door miraculously appeared and opened. There were several shelves stuffed with several vials of different corresponding liquids, and Lurr waved his hand around them, sensing the antidote out until he removed a bottle of red liquid, "You shouldn't be so impatient, Doctor." he said, handing the red stuff to Martha, "Don't use it all at once; the effects of the venom are gradual, so should be the effects of the countering agents."
"Can I get up now?" the Doctor asked, feeling his neck creak as he tried to look in their direction, "I feel like an idiot here on the floor."
Martha brought the wheelchair back through and helped him back into it, being careful to give him a sip of the antidote beforehand.
"I feel better already." the Doctor said as he plonked down into the wheelchair, a warmth seeping through him that he didn't know he'd lost.
Martha glared down at him as she wheeled him out of the compound, "Great, now we need to get back to Earth and explain everything before I lose my job."
The End (please review!)