Author's Notes: Events occur in the Tenth Doctor's continuity, between Voyage of the Damned and Partners in Crime. Alex appears as an original companion in the stories Reprieve and Ember. Zoologist/adventurer Nigel Marven managed a wildlife preserve for rescued extinct animals on Prehistoric Park before being eaten by a giganotosaurus on Primeval. No relation to actual adventurer/zoologist Nigel Marven. (yeah, right) This story occurs some time before the Prehistoric Park Episode, The Bug House.
Warnings: (A?)OFC, gratuitous mud, mild profanity, gratuitous tea, telepathy stuff, preteen angst (now there's a redundant phrase).
Thanks to Spring at Teaspoon for all the beta reading.
Alex felt herself being spun around and stretched, then dropped, suddenly and sickeningly, then it all stopped and she found herself flat on her bottom on the mesh floor of the Tardis. After a brief, fortunately victorious battle with her own stomach, she grabbed the Tardis console and hauled herself to her feet. The Doctor closed the distance between them in two long strides, concern on his face.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she insisted, waving him off. "Does it always feel like that?"
"Like what?
"Like being drunk."
"What do you know about being drunk? Oh, right, most humans don't notice. You get used to it." He peered into a laptop screen jury rigged to the control panel. "I'm sorry, it looks like we're still on Earth. 280 million years in your past, though. Want to try again for a weird planet?'
"No!" she said a little too quickly, then, "No. That's the Carboniferous, right? Dragonflies this big?" She stretched her arms out as far as they would go.
"The same." He looked at her expectantly, a goofy grin plastered across his face.
"Cool," she allowed, not quite matching his level of enthusiasm.
"All right then." Was she imagining it, or did he look disappointed? "Some rules. No wandering off, no touching anything unless I say you can, and if I say run, you run. The Tardis has its own agenda, and when it sends me somewhere I haven't intended to go, there's usually a reason."
She cocked her head at him. "A reason that involves running?"
The Doctor shrugged and threw open the door. Dense tropical forest lay before them, full of oddly shaped trees, with an understory of ferns. Trills and whistles filled the warm, humid air, along with the rich smell of compost. "Well, come on then," he said, stepping outside.
She stepped out into the damp vegetation. Water pooled around her feet and soaked into her sneakers. A many legged thing as thick as her finger crawled over one damp foot and disappeared back into the undergrowth. They had landed in a small, oddly circular clearing dominated by miniature ferns and mossy plants she couldn't identify. The forest surrounded them on all sides.
Alex took a couple of steps away from the Tardis. Two slick, red, salamanders basked on the trunk of one of the trees, bright as flowers against the dark, diamond scored bark. "Real flowers haven't evolved yet," she said, half to herself.
"Right you are," the Doctor confirmed. "What did you find,there?" He stepped up behind her to peer over her shoulder. "Did you know there are centipedes as big as...as big as cows out here somewhere?"
"I hope we don't smell like food," Alex replied.
The Doctor circled the little clearing again. "Something bothers me about this place, but I can't quite put my finger on it."
Alex scratched her head. "The clearing's a perfect circle. Is that weird?"
"Hmm, you have a point." He pulled out his screwdriver and waved it vaguely at the air, then tucked it back into his pocket with a puzzled expression. "We're not alone," the Doctor said.
"Yeah," Alex said, crouching down to look at a dragonfly the size of her head, bright and perfect as jewelry. "Bugs all over the place."
He shook his head, pointing to the sodden ground. A wiggly, geometric pattern was impressed into the mud, unmistakeable. Tire tracks. He put a finger to his lips, then made a stay back gesture. Alex leaned back against the Tardis door. The Doctor took half a dozen steps forward, following the tracks, then gestured to Alex to follow. "The tread looks like human technology, twentieth or twenty first century. Goodyear, if I'm not mistaken."
Alex followed in his footsteps. The tracks led to a pond, where the jeep that had produced them had foundered. Two people in khaki safari outfits, a tall, gangly man and a shorter, rounder woman, both liberally doused with mud, eyed the jeep ruefully, their backs to the Doctor and Alex.
"Bloody hell!" the woman said, ineffectually kicking the passenger side door of the jeep. "We'll never get it out. Not without a winch. You didn't bring a winch with you, did you?"
The tall man shook his head. "I didn't think I'd need a winch to take atmospheric samples." He sighed. "Well, might as well have a spot of tea and think about it. Something will come to me."
To Alex's surprise, the Doctor stepped right up to the jeep, smiling broadly. "Something always does." He slapped the man on the back with an odd cameraderie. "Nigel! I should have guessed it would be you. What on Earth brings you to the Carboniferous? No, seriously, what on Earth has the capacity to transport you to the Carboniferous?"
The man turned around, nonplussed, to stare at the Doctor, giving Alex her first glimpse of "Nigel's" face. Her hands flew up of their own accord to cover her spreading grin. Nigel Marven! A little wordless squeak of glee escaped her lips. She bounced on her toes.
Nigel extended a hand to the Doctor, who shook it, then tucked his own hands back into his coat pockets. "I'm afraid you have the advantage of me," Nigel said. Nigel Marven! Alex stifled a squeaky giggle. Fantastic!
"I'm the Doctor, Nigel." He managed to look both sad and terribly impressed with himself at the same time.
Nigel shook his head. "You're not the Doctor. He's taller, and," Nigel mimed fluff on the top of his head, "Curly."
"I regenerated. Several times, actually. It's a Time Lord thing. How about that cup of tea? My place. I may even have a winch somewhere in there."
Alex recovered her wits enough to say, "Chased by Dinosaurs. That was supposed to be CGI."
Nigel appeared to notice Alex for the first time. "A fan, I see. We," here he indicated himself and the Doctor, "filmed those on a lark, then cut everything together and pixilated the wildlife a bit to make it look less authentic." He squelched toward her. She wobbled, torn between delight and panic as the ground seemed to tilt toward him. She pretended her mental shields with every ounce of conviction she could muster and prayed he wasn't a hugger.
The Doctor came to the rescue, stepping between them on the pretext of making introductions. "Oh, and this is Alex, my..." he paused a moment, at an apparent loss to describe their relationship.
"Project." Alex suggested, then dissolved into more giggles.
The Doctor cast her a sharp look. "You have got to be kidding. Him? He's not even that good looking."
Alex let the two of them pass her, followed by the woman with the backpack. "Soggy sort of era, the Carboniferous," the Doctor remarked, "Didn't catch your name?"
"Lynn."
"Right. Lynn. Coming, Alex?"
She squished back toward the Tardis, but hadn't quite caught up with them when an exasperated cry of, "Blast!" stopped her.
Lynn added, "I bloody hate bloody swamps."
She rounded the clump of vegetation that had been obscuring her view of the Tardis. For a horrible moment she thought it had vanished, but then she saw the angular blue shape behind the three others. Lying on its side. She wondered if the whole ship would be sideways now, or whether the same Escher-like topography that allowed it to fit inside the box would also assure that it was right side up, regardless of the box's orientation. Why were the three of them standing there looking dejected, in that case?
She caught up with them, finally, and the cause of their consternation became clear. The Tardis was not lying on its side. It was lying on its face, in about a foot of muddy water. A number of words she wasn't supposed to use came to mind. She settled on, "Ouch."
The Doctor walked all the way around it, even taking out his sonic screwdriver thingy and waving it about again. Alex caught his puzzled, almost distressed expression before he pasted cheer over it and turned back to Nigel and Lynn. "Right, your place then."
They trudged back to the partially submerged jeep for the tea things. Lynn casually tossed an amphibian the size of a dog off of a large duffel bag in the back seat and hauled it over her shoulder. Nigel spread a tarp on a bit of relatively high ground. Lynn put together a camp stove just to the side of the tarp, while the Doctor arranged camp stools. Alex stood at the edge of the tarp feeling useless and clumsy. After everyone had pulled up a chair, she sat down, crosslegged, on the tarp, not quite trusting the camp stools.
"There are four chairs," Nigel offered.
"I'm fine here." She pulled her own bag onto her lap to fish for some snacks, but Nigel and Lynn were well supplied with scones and jam, which looked appealing, and bread and marmite, which looked awful and smelled worse. The Doctor intercepted the tea and scones Nigel tried to pass to her, handing them off to her himself. "I'm not a complete cripple," she protested. Except she was kind of grateful.
"We found our time portal in a pocket universe linked to a spot in South Africa," Nigel explained. "UNIT supplied our portable field generators. We're building a sort of nature preserve. Extinct wildlife. You should see our pair of juvenile tyrannosaurs."
"And the animals stay in the pocket universe?"
Nigel attempted to appear shocked. "Of course, I'm not that stupid."
The Doctor shrugged. "Well, I won't say I like the idea, precisely, but humans mucking about in time is inevitable at this point. There ought to be an agency to regulate that sort of thing."
"They'd try to regulate you, too."
"Let them try," the Doctor remarked, grinning.
Nigel gestured to Alex, still speaking to the Doctor. "So, did you run out of post pubescent companions?"
"I'm her guardian at present." The Doctor turned to Alex. "So, how would you suggest we solve our twin problems, the jeep and the Tardis?"
Alex had the sudden, sinking feeling that she had landed in a practical math lesson. "That depends." She turned around to study the Tardis. "The Tardis is small on the outside, but big on the inside. How big is it in there, really? Big as the Earth?"
"No."
"Big as Chicago?"
The Doctor had to pause. "I don't think so, anymore. Used to be close. Do you have a point?"
Alex continued, "Where does it keep its mass? If its apparent mass is like a big wooden crate, we could use ropes and levers to move it. But the three of you aren't going to be able to move something with the mass of a city."
"Very good."
"So, which is it?" Alex prompted.
The Doctor's eyes twinkled. "I think you have enough information to figure that out."
She looked back over her shoulder at the prone timeship. "If it had the mass of a city, and the footprint of a box, it would have sunk further into the swamp. All the way to the bedrock, at least. Right?" Encouraged by the Doctor's nod, she continued, "So it can't be impossibly heavy. We could attach some ropes to it and pull it onto its side. What is its mass? I mean, practically."
"Two hundred forty kilos, roughly. What about the jeep?"
"We get inside the Tardis and find the winch. Although," she paused. "We could just tie a rope to the back bumper and take off. Would the jeep go with us, just flapping along behind?"
"Not my jeep, you don't," interrupted Lynn.
They were all interrupted, then, by a deep, irregular rumbling that shook the crumbs off their plates. "That sounded unnervingly geological," Lynn said. She started packing up the tea things, briskly, into a green Gore-Tex bag. Alex gathered the ones near her and set them in a pile next to the bag.
"No, it didn't," both Nigel and the Doctor said. The Doctor continued, "That sounded technological. Right, to work! Let's get the old girl flipped over. We are leaving."
"We just got here!" Alex protested.
"You know, ordinarily I would agree with you, but you are in no condition to investigate unknown technology. You can barely manage tea! It wouldn't be safe."
Alex protested, "If the world ends in the Carboniferous, I'll never evolve, and that wouldn't be safe either. You're supposed to be here. Do your job. I'll be okay."
"We'll flip the Tardis over, and you will wait inside."
"Fine." Alex sat on the tarp and watched Nigel, Lynn, and the Doctor rig ropes reinforced with duct tape around the Tardis until she got bored, then watched the dragonflies divebomb some less familiar flying creatures until ditto, then the ground underneath her rumbled again, louder. This time she noticed the slightly metallic scree to the sound that must have alerted Nigel and the Doctor. The adults redoubled their efforts to right the Tardis. Swearing was involved, mostly on the part of Lynn, who combined words Alex already knew into combinations she had never heard before.
Suddenly, she was aware of another sound. It was a tiny, little sound, something like a trickle, like a leaking toilet. It grew a little louder, became a rivulet, water running over obstacles. The others had not noticed, they were so intent on their work. The Tardis had not yet budged, but there was a line of mud about two inches up on its side, like a high water mark. Where had the water gone? The sound grew louder. "Can you hear the water?" she said. Her voice came out small and uncertain.
She tried again. "Can you hear the water?" There was no answer. She stood up, ran over to where the Doctor and Nigel were discussing knots, and tumbled to the sodden ground when Nigel moved suddenly. "Doctor! Listen to the water!" she shouted.
The Doctor stopped. The sound grew in the seconds that he stood, listening. It was roaring now. The ground canted underneath them--really actually tilted, sending Nigel and Lynn rolling into the side of the Tardis. The Doctor stayed upright a bare moment longer. He snatched Alex up, tight against his body with one arm, then they, too, slid feet first toward the pit opening beneath them. She could feel his mind, an unbearable brilliance, for a split second before he damped himself down. Silent running, she thought, and wondered if the term was her own idea. Ahead, the Tardis tipped into the hole, followed by Nigel and Lynn.
"Take a breath and hold it!" he shouted over the roaring water, then they were over the side. They hung in midair for a sickening instant before slamming into turbulent, bathtub warm water. It was pitch black, but picked out in the darkness were the golden nimbus of the Tardis, two patches of swirling, refracted light that were Nigel and Lynn, both shot with fear-static. She could hear them shouting. Funny she hadn't noticed that before.
"I can swim, get them!" she yelled, squirming clear of the Doctor's too tight grip. "They can't find the Tardis on their own!" Once he released her, she swam a fast crawl over to the Tardis, which, miracle of miracles, floated. The door would not open. She clung to the wooden slats, pulled along with the ship in the current.
The Doctor led first, Lynn, then Nigel to the Tardis, then climbed on top. She wished she could see what he was doing, but he was just a big bright blob, she couldn't pick out limbs or anything. Nigel shouted, "The little girl, where's the little girl?"
"I'm over here! Stay over there." She racked her brain for a good excuse. "If we move, we'll tip it!" That even had the advantage of being true.
"I've got the door open. Alex, you first." He hauled her up by the arm. This time he remembered to go silent(ish) first. She tumbled into the Tardis, and was right side up. She couldn't even feel the motion of the ship bobbing in the water. The sudden change distracted her enough that she forgot to get out of the way of Nigel as he rolled into the Tardis and right into her. The floor dropped out from under her and she was swallowed up in deafening color and brilliant noise. She couldn't breathe or think or find her legs to escape.
Words cut through the chaos. "All right, you over here." Hands under her shoulders, dragging her over to one wall. She rolled over, threw up, and started to cry in earnest. "Nigel, you all right?" the Doctor said, then turned his attention to Alex.
She turned her face away from him, ashamed. "Leave me alone," she whispered.
The Doctor turned to Nigel and Lynn, but still kept looking over at her. He had that worried look she hated to see on her mother's face. Nigel was sitting on the floor with a handkerchief to his face. "She kicked me in the nose, I think," Nigel said, in that stuffed up voice people use when they're trying to stifle a nosebleed.
"I hurt you," she said, disgusted with herself. Great, now that would be how he'd remember her. The stupid, clumsy girl who kicked him in the head and then bawled like a stupid baby.
"Yeah, you kicked me in the nose. I've had worse," Nigel insisted. "I just want to know why you're so upset."
Alex tried to stand on wobbly legs. "I'm a monster." She headed for the rear of the control room, using the wall for support. "There's always a monster. I'm it." She stumbled to her room and slammed the door.