Fandoms: Doctor Who/Supernatural/Dollhouse
Written for: myxstorie
Spoilers: Doctor Who up to season five finale; Supernatural season five (vague references only); Dollhouse show finale (including "Epitaph Two;" vague references only)
Prompt: Doctor Who (eleven), Dollhouse and SPN are the three fandoms that I love, and I thiiink of them all, I'd like Who!fic the most but… I don't know. Any chance I could ask you to surprise me?
Author's Note: After the Japan tsumami/earthquake disaster this spring, a fandom auction was hosted on livejournal in which a whole variety of fics, vids, etc. were offered up, with amounts bid to be donated to charity. A huge thanks to myxstorie for bidding on my offering (and the subsequent donation)! Thank you also to metonomia for beta-ing.
-X-
When the Earth apocalypse comes it is not from alien attacks or angel-demon wars. No, the cause of the destruction and havoc brought upon the Earth is due to humanity- nothing but humans and their shiny technology and inquisitive minds and internal drives for more-more-more.
When the apocalypse arrives, a band of hunters bunker down in an old farmhouse full of books. They spend their days patrolling the border of their land; their nights are devoted to research in hopes of a cure. And all the while, questions circle through their minds as they wonder what is happening and how did it begin and where have all the angels gone?
When the apocalypse arrives, a network of individuals around the globe improvise methods of communication in hopes that a certain blue box may be found. A secret hub in Cardiff acts as base, coordinating efforts and using their advanced tech to search for a sign of hope.
When the apocalypse arrives, Topher Brink pretends it is not his fault. He ignores the eyes and words of others and sets about tinkering and drawing up plans as if there is some hope of fixing the whole mess.
For when the apocalypse comes, it ravages the earth and leaves little in its wake but mindless bodies and cold terror and flimsy, faint-breathed hope.
(But the hope still lives.)
-X-
The TARDIS lands with a thud and a sigh and a creaking, protesting moan. The Doctor frowns briefly and pats the console; when he raises his head again, his eyes are cheery and his smile bright.
"All right, you two," he declares. "Out you go. Welcome home, yadda yadda."
Amy is already at the door, her hand on the knob and her back against the frame. "You promise you aren't going to disappear?"
"And why would he do that?" Rory responds, "You've left your things scattered all over."
She smiles wide at this and pecks a kiss on her husband's cheek before swinging about to throw open the door. "Hello, Leadworth!" she cries, "Hello, cozy home. Hello -" But what more she might greet is left unknown as the words die in her throat.
Rory follows her from the TARDIS, wordless as he examines the disordered furniture, looted drawers, and smashed windows. There are cracked figurines scattered on the floor, pictures crooked on the wall. "Doctor," he begins, and turns around to see the Doctor frozen in the doorway, "You said we were only gone a few weeks."
"Yes, I did," the Doctor affirms. He shakes himself as though to wake up his mind and bends down to examine a broken picture frame at his feet. "A lot can happen in a few weeks. But what happened here-?"
"The television's not working," Amy calls from the other room. "And the phone line is dead." She reappears at the end of the hall. "Doctor, this isn't just us. All the houses look like this, with their windows smashed and such. What's going on?"
The Doctor steps from the TARDIS, lifting his sonic screwdriver for a quick bzzt bzzt around the room. The action appears more automatic than informatory; he does not even bother to check the readings before slipping it back into his pocket.
"If I am correct," he says heavily, "we've hit the thought-pocalypse."
-X-
He tries to explain it to them, he really does. But how to describe the development of a technology so wrapped up in secrecy? How to describe the hidden organization and its corrupt ways? How to describe what is happening to people all over the planet?
"Imagine a document," he says finally, "and delete all the words from it. Then paste a different set of words. It's not the same document now, is it? But it's still saved in the same place. From the folder, it looks the same."
"Okay," Amy says.
"Now imagine that instead of documents, this is happening to people. Their personalities wiped and someone else's pasted in. Looks the same on the outside but a whole different person within."
"And that's what happened?" Rory asks.
"No, Rory, I'm just making this all up to fill the air!" The Doctor spins around from his position at the console to stare at the two of them. "Of course that's what happened."
Amy reaches for her husband's arm. "So we can change it, yeah?"
"No, because it's a fixed point. The thought-pocalypse has, is, always will happen. Can't change that." His voice drops. "I'm sorry."
He explained fixed points to Amy once before. Leave it alone, he hopes. I don't want it this way but it has to happen. Surely Rory must understand after reading all those rubbish science fiction novels.
But Rory shuffles his feet and holds up a hand. "But," he says, "is the fixed point all of it? Or just the beginning? Can we change the way it ends?"
-X-
The air is hot and stuffy this time of year, even in the basement of the old farmhouse. Sam closes the book on zombies and pinches the bridge of his nose as if it could help in any way. Dean's disappeared upstairs and Bobby is catching a short nap across the room. No one else - they haven't seen proper humans for a while, now.
The stairs creak as Dean appears at the top. "Beer?" he calls down. He doesn't need to ask; he's already making his way down the stairs with a bottle in each hand.
"Thanks." Sam reaches for the bottle and uses the edge of the table to remove the cap. "Find anything?"
"Nope."
In unintentional unison, the brothers tip back their bottles for a long draught of cold beer. As Dean lowers his bottle again, he frowns. "You hear that?"
"Uh, no?"
But then Sam does - it is an indescribable wheezing sound, a vworp vworp that is steadily growing louder. In alarm, Dean bolts from his chair towards the safe room. "It's coming from - Sammy, there's something here!"
And there is. Tall, blue, and conspicuously parked in the center of the round room stands what appears to be a Police Public Call Box. The light is flashing in time with the sound until both stop. The box settles into the ground.
"Is this some sort of joke?"
-X-
The Doctor is flying all over the console room, flipping switches and twisting taps and generally hoping for the best. "See, I've got some friends, met them in a bar south of New Hampshire - well, I met them there, they'd already met me - timey wimey spacey wacey, right? And we're here!"
The TARDIS shudders to a stop and the Doctor allows his companions one moment to catch their breath before dashing to the doors. "Ready, steady -" He throws the doors open and with a triumphant laugh holds his arms wide. "Sam and Dean Winchester! Perfect! Right - I'm gonna need that book you have on the human mind by Edgar Welsh and a couple of those mind-wiping gun things, if you have them. Amy, Rory, I'll only be a -"
It is the shorter one that recovers first, recoiling from the Doctor with a strong, "What the hell?"
"Mind-wiping guns? That is what they're using, isn't it? I could have sworn-"
The tall one steps back. "Are you an angel?"
The Doctor frowns. "Angels? Bleh. Not my taste - especially the stone ones. Now I don't have time for -"
Amy dashes forward to grab his arm. "Uh, Doctor? I think it's gone timey wimey again."
-X-
"Wait, so - you've already met them, but they haven't met you?" Rory asks again. He's standing against the basement wall between the Doctor and Amy, hands in the air, trying to ignore the two guns pointed at them.
"How am I supposed to keep track of the years?" the Doctor retorts. He turns back to the Winchesters. "Can you please put those away? I really, really hate guns. I really do. And I still need that book."
"You were asking for a gun only a minute ago," Sam comments.
"Yes, but that wasn't for the gun itself. I need the technology inside it." The Doctor glances at his watch. "I would appreciate it if you could hurry things up. You're not going to shoot."
"And how do you know that?" Dean grunts.
"That's a very good question," Amy adds.
"Because you would be a lot more remorseful at the bar when we met in a year or two. Come on, don't be thick, we're the only ones who can help you and it would go much quicker if I could get my hands on some stuff."
And then, from the other end of the basement comes the rough voice, "What's going on in here?"
"Bobby!" Sam calls.
"Bobby!" the Doctor exclaims.
-X-
"Aren't you glad I made my way into the history books, then?" the Doctor asks Amy later as the TARDIS rattles and shakes and wheezes her way to their next destination.
Amy just shakes her head and grins.
-X-
"Wait, so - we've travelled through space?" Sam asks again.
Dean just shakes his head. "I'm still caught up on bigger-on-the-inside. Remind me why we haven't done this to the Impala?"
-X-
He's listing the periodic table in reverse order as he trudges up the last steps to the office room. One element for each step - he's already cycled through the table multiple times on the way up and his last step into the room is to oxygen. Fitting, really. Oxygen for life. Life that he took away, life he now returns, the life he sacrifices in order to rebuild the world.
Some might wish their last act on Earth to be some heroic gesture; Topher just hopes that no one will remember his name.
Piece by piece, he fits together his last invention. The High-Wave Personality Restorer, he named it - he named every one of his inventions, even if he hasn't told anyone else. No one else knows, no one else will know. What will they call this strange-looking device when they stumble up to the office, afterward? The funny little device and the sad, dead man. The nameless man. Maybe that will be what he's known as - but probably not. He hopes not. He hopes he won't be known as anything, and that's the way he wants it.
One last click and the final piece is fitted into place. Topher twists a nob and adjusts a circuit and flips the last switch. The countdown begins - he could have added a digital clock if he wanted but there's no point when there's only him. One minute.
He rises to his feet and stares out the wide glass windows as though only noticing the world beyond them now that there is no chance of ever rejoining it. Fifty-four seconds. How had he never taken the time to admire this view before? Too busy destroying everything with his prideful genius. A flash of colour catches his eye and down below, Topher catches a glimpse of bright purple and green and blue. The dolls are out of the dollhouse, then. Forty-six seconds. The sky is brighter than he remembers, bluer and clearer. The world is so quiet, too. Forty-one. He listens for any sound at all but there is nothing, no plane or car or human or bird. It's like the world has gone on mute to commemorate this moment. Thirty-eight.
Now that there's no time to change anything, now that all he has to do is wait, Topher begins to doubt himself. Never before has he felt so uncertain about one of his inventions as now. Was that wire connected in the right place? Was the lever attached properly? Did he reassemble piece B to D or F? Eighteen seconds. It becomes a last minute, desperate prayer - let me do something right, let me fix the world for once, let me atone…
Five seconds. The silence is broken by an uneven hum as the device begins to warm up and build power. Funny, he hadn't planned that. Maybe he built it wrong after all. Four. Topher turns to the HWPR as if by looking, he can understand what went wrong. Two. A flutter of wind rustles the pictures on the wall; Topher tilts his head, utters one last sigh of curiousity, and takes a step forwa—
The TARDIS materializes around him with one last wheeze as the High-Wave Personality Restorer explodes in a flash of light and sound.
-X-
He finds Topher in the corner of the room, crouched in a nook beneath the flight of stairs that (usually) leads to the bedrooms. He's curled as small as possible, fingers intertwining and interlacing and constantly moving. His eyes are nearly vacant, staring ahead at something no one else can see.
"Uh, hey," Rory says, and he sets down the egg-beater generator the Doctor had told him to fetch in favour of sitting on the lowest step. "You ok?"
"…And the ankle bone's connected to the -" Topher breaks off and blinks up at him. "I did it wrong, you know."
"Did, uh, did what wrong?"
"The HWPR." Topher tips his head back as far as it can go and stares intently at the underside of the stairs. "I hooked it up wrong. All effects are temporary."
"Oh." It's uncomfortable, sitting here and attempting conversation with a man who is clearly off his rocker. Rory scratches his cheek nervously. In the background, the Doctor is directing Amy and the boys in the construction of a large and absurd-looking contraption. A contraption that is still missing its egg-beater generator. Rory leans forward in order to stand. "Well, I'd better-"
"And now that I'm dead, no one will know."
Rory stills. "Pardon me… what?"
Topher laughs. "No one will ever know that I failed again."
"You're not dead."
"Aren't I?"
"No, the - uh, the Doctor saved you. You're on the TARDIS."
Oddly enough, Topher does not act pleased at this revelation, merely curious. He's looking about the room with new eyes. "I'm not dead yet?"
"Nope. And trust me - being dead isn't all its cracked up to be."
Topher leans forward and, for a moment, Rory thinks he is about to grab his hand. Instead, he reaches for the egg-beater generator, turning it over and inspecting it carefully. When he finally stops, his brow is furrowed. "If I'm not dead, why am I in heaven?"
-X-
There had been some bickering at first but, in the end, it was Sam who ended up with the book. The Doctor had almost begun to pout - for all his years, Amy had sighed, he can be such a child - until Sam's confused, "Trans-neural what?"
Thus it was that the team settled into the following hierarchy: Sam with the book, the Doctor translating-slash-directing, Rory and Amy fetching, and Dean putting the pieces together. Only, Rory disappears halfway through with the egg-beater generator, Amy ends up helping Dean sort through a mess of screws, and the Doctor is peering over Sam's shoulder to read the page.
In the end, the team - minus Rory - stand back from their creation with pride.
"What a piece of crap," Dean says first.
Amy begins to nod in agreement, until she catches the Doctor's eye. "I, uh, I think it looks pretty good."
Sam has still managed to retain control of the book, despite all the Doctor's efforts to the contrary. "It doesn't really match the illustration - "
"Illustration, amalgamation!" the Doctor cries nonsensically. "It's perfect. That is… Rory!"
From the opposite side of the console room comes an apologetic, "Coming, coming." Rory scrambles up from one of the nooks and hurries over. Behind him, awkward and uncertain, comes a ginger genius with a shaky mind.
"Egg beater?" the Doctor requests, his palm out.
Rory passes it over.
The Doctor drops to his knees to hook up the last piece to the contraption. "There!" he exclaims, "Perfect!"
But Topher is shaking his head. "No, no, no," he says absently. "No, no." And he drops down to tinker with the wiring structure.
"Huh," says the Doctor when Topher moves back. "I hadn't thought of that."
-X-
The people of the earth are just starting to pick themselves up from their jolted awakening when everything begins to unravel. Some faces fall vacant; others change expression.
"Did it not work?" cries Caroline 2.0 of the Wrong Body.
A second explosion rockets out from the office tower and spreads across the sky. Once again, the dolls and Caroline 2.0 collapse to the ground. It is only Zone who hears, faint and high above like a shout from the heavens, "Sorry, sorry, but I think you'll find it's all right now."
-X-
"I told you we'd get a draft if you didn't close the door," the Doctor coughs.
He's not the only one. Everyone in the console room is choking on the smoke that has billowed in from the aftermath of the second explosion. Dean is trying to breath through his shirt sleeve. Amy finds a handkerchief and passes the second one to Sam. ("Oi!" cries Rory.) The Doctor routes about in his pocket and pulls out a full-fledged gas mask that he wears triumphantly while cracking mummy jokes that no one else understands. Only Rory has the sense to get down below the smoke, bringing Topher with him to hide out beneath the glass floor.
"I thought - cough - you said that - cough - nothing gets in through - choke - your doors," Amy accuses. A handkerchief can only do so much and talking does not help.
"Yes, well." The Doctor's voice is distorted through the mask. He loses concentration and falls to saying "echo, echo!" in various accents.
"You are impossible," Amy sighs.
"Hey!" calls Rory from below. "Shouldn't we be getting Topher home?"
The Winchester boys exchange a glance. "And," says Sam, "if you don't mind, us as well?"
-X-
The TARDIS door squeaks open to reveal the basement of an old, worn farmhouse. One man stands waiting; another joins him in the blink of an eye.
"I think we did it, Bobby," Sam has started to say, but the words die in his throat.
Dean coughs in disbelief.
Behind the two of them, the Doctor and the Ponds stand oblivious to the drama that frequents the Winchester life-style. "Home, safe and sound!" Amy proclaims.
Dean stalks out of the TARDIS, arm raised to point accusingly to the man on the right. "Where the hell were you, Cas? Where the hell were you?"
Sam scrambles forward as if hoping to prevent a confrontation. As he steps out, the Doctor moves forward to swing the door shut.
"Uh - why did you do that?" asks Rory.
The Doctor smiles broadly. "Family drama. Messy business. Don't want that. Topher's turn!"
"My - my turn?" exclaims a small voice from under the floor.
-X-
Adelle is crying when she hears the sawing, resonating sound from the back of the room. The first thing she thinks when she turns around and sees the large, blue box is that she's finally joined Topher in the ranks of the mentally unstable; then she remembers that he can't be labeled "insane" any longer because he's quite simply "deceased." Another batch of tears come and she wipes at her cheeks furiously and lowers her head before admitting to herself that it's just no use.
A door opens somewhere with a squeak. Which only shows how far the Dollhouse has come - has gone: doors squeak, floors creak, the plumbing splutters. A footstep sounds and she looks up.
Oh god, now she's seeing ghosts, too. "Don't you have… somewhere better to be?" she asks, and her heart breaks all over again.
His face drops at that. "I could - I could go."
Oh, Topher, never change. (Except, whispers her mind, that he's dead upstairs.) But she steps towards him, anyway, and holds out a hand to feel real, warm skin and a pulse and -
"Surprise!" he says and his expression is so eager to please that suddenly, she knows.
-X-
"But Doctor," says Amy, following him around as he twirls about the console pushing buttons and typing coordinates, "We can't just leave him like that."
"Like what? He's happy, she's happy, the world's been put together and he's been a part of saving it. What more could you want?"
She scowls a little. "He's - you know, he's not quite right in the head."
The Doctor stops to face her. "He's very right in the head. Just right. Beautifully right. And his life - woo, he's going to have a wonderful one!"
-X-
When the Earth apocalypse ends, it is for the same reasons it began: a dash of gadgetry and the mind of a genius. When it ends, the world is in scatters and the humans have to pick themselves up, dust themselves off. The citizens of Earth have to learn what happened and why, that the mistakes are not made a second time.
Some say that history is there to teach those in the present; others say it serves as a warning. Let this act as both, that our world does not fall to pieces again.
-X-
End.