Hysteria
*chapter one*
The Doctor still couldn't believe his eyes when he looked at her. He kept expecting her to not be there when he looked, but every time…there she was.
He looked at her again. Still there. Still pink and yellow. Still his ( his? Yes, suppose so ). Not gone, not lost somewhere in the void, or stuck in a universe he couldn't reach. She was here, right here, standing right next to him. It had been almost four months since the battle at Canary Warf and he still couldn't believe his eyes.
Or his luck.
They landed in their regular spot on the Powell estate. They had to make the obligatory visit to Jackie, since she hadn't been sucked into the void or stranded on a parallel world either. The Doctor supposed that was sort of a good thing too, kind of.
Rose walked out of the Tardis, washing bag full of dirty clothes in hand, happy to see her mum again (because she was really running out of things to wear). The Doctor followed, slightly less enthusiastic.
"Come on Doctor, no dawdling! I really need to get this washing done and it'll be good to see mum again. We can tell 'er all about that planet we just left, Senti-, Sennerani-…something", Rose said.
"Senterenniseveripelarenting. And I wasn't dawdling, I do not dawdle", the Doctor replied.
"Yeah, that one. An' if you're not dawdling, what are you lazying about for?"
"I'm INJURED! Look!"
The Doctor put up his left hand, the one he cut across his palm catching the ceremonial sword of Senterenniseveripelarenting that he sort of, maybe, knocked off its holder, a little bit. Unfortunately he grabbed the sharp end of the sword in his effort to prevent it from touching the ground, which it apparently must never EVER do, and cut his hand. It wasn't really secured all that secure anyway, they should look into that.
"What, that papercut?" Rose teased.
"PAPERCUT!? I'm wounded Rose, WOUNDED!" the Doctor replied dramatically.
Rose just gave him a cheeky grin and bumped his shoulder. He bumped back and took her hand (with his uninjured one, because it did sting a bit) and they continued on to the flat.
They reached the flat still bickering playfully. Apparently his left hand was his banana-eating hand, which made the whole situation that much worse. They entered the flat still laughing and throwing mock-insults at each other.
"Allright, wots all this racket about!" a yell came from the kitchen. "What ya moanin' about now!"
"Nice to see you too, Jackie", the Doctor said, while shooting Rose a glance that said "see!".
Rose ignored him and went up to her mum, kissing her on the cheek and craftily depositing her bag full of washing.
"Hi mum, how've ya been?"
"'Ello love, fine thank you. He finally let you come 'ome to see ya mum, eh? 'Bout time too, 's been four months now! And 'course ya been phoning, but tha's not the same, issit?
'Least you're 'ome now and you'll be wantin' tea, I suppose. Can't get a proper cuppa on that ship o' his, I bet. Nice to know I'm still good for something. Well sit yourselves down! I'll get your tea!"
And with that Jackie Tyler left for the kitchen, leaving the Doctor and Rose standing in the middle of the living room. One a bit baffled and the other trying to smother a grin.
"She loves you really", Rose said to the Doctor and pulled him over to the sofa to sit down.
With the telly on in the background they spend the next few minutes together in the flat, all sipping ( really quite glorious )tea, while Rose caught Jackie up to her travels.
Since Rose was still unable to pronounce Senterenniseveripelarenting, the Doctor felt obligated to take over. Not in the least because she was downplaying his horrific injury and subsequent disability in the area of banana enjoyment. So, needing to set Jackie straight and explain to her the vital importance of properly consuming a banana, the Doctor was now animatedly engaging in the 'right hand versus left hand'-debate (one-sided as it was, seeing as Jackie was trying very hard to ignore his gibberish). All this meant Rose was now watching the Doctor standing in the middle of the room, babbling like a maniac, waving a banana about in each hand.
She really couldn't help laughing as hard as she did.
They almost miss it amidst the cacophony of the Doctor's rambling, Jackie screeching at him to sit back down and pull that banana out of his ear and Rose quite literally choking with laughter, but when the commercial comes on the Doctor suddenly stops what he was doing and turns around.
"Jackie, shush for a minute."
Jackie nearly explodes and takes a deep breath to get ready for a special 'don't tell me what to do, alien weirdo'- rant, when Rose puts her hand on her mother's wrist, asking her with her eyes to just do as he says for now. Reluctantly she quiets down.
The Doctor is absolutely glued to the screen, his brown eyes having widened a fraction and his whole posture slightly more stiffened than it was just a minute ago when they were all still having tea.
It actually takes Rose a moment to understand what it is she's watching, but when the penny finally drops she is appalled. She's watching a commercial telling people to hate aliens!
The commercial, oblivious of Rose's disgust, carries on talking about the dangers that aliens pose on earth. Footage of the battle at Canary Warf is shown along with video's made on mobile phones showing the destruction the Cybermen and the Daleks caused. The whole thing is accompanied by a voice-over telling people that no alien can be trusted, how they are all evil scum that just want to kill us all. It ends with the logo of the organisation sponsoring the commercial, the EPO or Earth for People Only, and a small text saying they appreciate any donations made to further the cause.
The screen then fades to black and a happy upbeat commercial about fishsticks and polarbears comes on. The polarbear has less than five seconds to talk about his fillets when the screen turns black again, this time because Jackie turned the telly off muttering something about overpriced fishfillets. She then gets up to clear the teacups.
The Doctor and Rose just stays frozen for a minute. The Doctor is still staring at the telly and Rose is simply boiling with anger.
It's Rose that eventually can't hold it in any longer and breaks the silence.
"That's disgusting! It's..it's just…who does that? Why? Why would you make something so hateful! It's sick! Earth for People Only, like aliens aren't people!"
The Doctor shares a small smile to himself over Rose's last sentence but otherwise just seems puzzled. Finally he breaks his gaze on the telly screen and turns to Jackie who's putting things away in the kitchen.
"Jackie? What was that about?"
"Well I don' know, do I?" she answers. "One week it's three pounds twenty for a large box and the next it's FOUR pounds SIXTY! Bev says it's because o' them fishin' regulations an' the crisis an' what not, but if ya ask me-"
"The OTHER commercial, Jackie!" the Doctor exclaims slapping himself in the face with his non-banana-eating-hand. "The one about the aliens and the EPO. You know the one?"
"Oi! Don't get snippy wiv me mister! Just because you're a Time Lard- "
"Time lord, Jackie. Time LORD!"
"Wha'evah, Time Lord then. But just because you're on o' them, don't mean you can just come in an'-"
"THE COMMERCIAL , JACKIE, WHAT ABOUT THE COMMERCIAL?"
"WILL YOU LET ME FINISH!"
"I WILL IF SOMETHING SENSIBLE COMES OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!"
"WHY YOU-"
"FINGERS ON LIPS!" Rose suddenly screams. The Doctor and her mum both fall quiet and look at her. She stares back pointedly at the Doctor who quickly places his finger on his lips and looks innocently back at Rose. She then looks at her mother who rolls her eyes before putting her finger on her lips as well.
"Wow, that actually works", Rose says, looking rather pleased with herself at the Doctor who gives her a little smile and a thumbs up while still holding his finger in place with the other hand.
When things have calmed down a bit Rose finally lets the Doctor take his finger off his lips to ask Jackie about the commercial.
"well, is' been goin' on a while now, aftah tha' whole thing wiv Torchwood an' all, people 'ave been listenin' to all these group tha' is just poppin' up. I' only takes a coupla nutters wiv a loud enough voice, dunnit? They're all sorta sayin' the same thing, aliens is evil an' all tha', though tha' EPO's the biggest. Bu' it's all the same, innit? Jus' a coupla nutters on soapboxes, ain't they?"
"I don't know, Jackie", the Doctor says, now with a dark look in his eyes. "This sort of thing has a habit of spiralling out of control. People are scared and angry, they feel powerless and when someone just hands them a scapegoat like that they will jump on it. Turn that fear into hate. And hate like that…it can infect people, change them.."
"But it's okay, isn't it Doctor?", Rose asked. "The Daleks are gone now, so we don't 'ave to worry 'bout them anymore, and maybe it'll keep other aliens from invadin'. Tha's good, isn't it?"
"But what about the aliens already living peaceful lives on Earth, Rose? What if someone finds out his neighbour is from Barstol? There are plenty of aliens living happy, quiet lives here, but if this gets out of hand, they could be in serious danger", the Doctor advised her. Rose frowns at this, she didn't realise, but it's true. Even in this age aliens are already living on Earth and they would be in terrible danger if they were outed and handed to an angry mob like EPO. She doesn't want to think about what EPO would do with those aliens if they got their hands on them.
The Doctor and Rose decide to go out and investigate. Jackie tags along, despite the Doctor's plagued groan, because she still has some shopping to do.
A few hours later the Doctor has somehow been wrangled into carrying shopping bags and they haven't discovered anything yet. He is sporting quite an impressive pout. He is about ready to just call off the whole investigation and go back to the Powell Estates to hide from Jackie in the Tardi-..erm, that is, to do maintenance. Yes. Maintenance. When he spots a group of people across the street hanging up EPO posters. He immediately drops the bags, which probably felt more satisfying than it really should, and jogs over to the group to ask them what they're doing, all the while ignoring Jackie throwing insults at him from the other side of the road.
The men tell the doctor they are hanging up EPO posters because they hate aliens. The Doctor frowns at them a little and innocently asks them how they would recognize an alien.
The men seem a little caught out by that, but one of them eventually shouts that it must be because they are weird and disgusting and the rest seems to agree with this.
"Weeeell, that's not entirely true, is it? It's a big universe out there, could be loads of different kinds of aliens, they may even look like humans. Just 'cause they're aliens doesn't mean they're evil. Or disgusting", the Doctor adds, a little affronted.
"Yeah?", one of the men says. "How'd you know that, then eh?"
The Doctor is just about to respond when a furious Jackie comes running up to him, Rose in tow.
"'Oo, d'ya fink ya are, then!? Jus' runnin' off like tha'! Jus' leavin' my bags in the street like tha'! I got them bleedin' fishfingers in there!"
The Doctor sputters and tries to calm her down, but she's not having it.
"Oh no ya don'! I ain't 'avin' it! Ya might think you're somethin' high an' mighty mister, runnin' off when somethin' takes your fancy, but 'ere on Earth things are different, ain't they?"
At the mention of Earth Rose starts and nervously shoots a glance at the Doctor, but he's much too preoccupied with Jackie yelling at him. The telling off rapidly evolving into a full blown rant.
"Mum..", she tries.
"no Rose, I'm not hearin' it! Himself 'as 'ad this comin' for a long time now an' I'm bloody well gonna tell 'im what's what!" Jackie's yelling at both Rose and the Doctor now, completely oblivious to the men who were hanging up the poster and who are now getting increasingly more interested.
"He can' jus' go around throwin' food to the ground, I don' know abou' 'im, but us humans need to eat! Even if it's them overpriced fishfingers! We can' go around magickin' it outta 'is Target!"
"Tardis", the Doctor mutters, but that was the entirely wrong thing to say.
"Don' you start up wiv me, ya may be some big time guy from Pluto or wherever, bu' tha' don' mean you're any less importan' than me, you hear!" Jackie shouts, her finger practically poking the Doctor's eye out.
He glances around at the postermen, who have gotten downright intrigued by now and are eyeing him with a strange look on their faces. It's making the Doctor a little fidgety and quite unnerved.
He tries to get her to stop but he just gets a slap in the face for his efforts and an extra shrieking about dropping bags and ruining food.
"Alien or not, you got no righ' to jus' throw around my shoppin'!"
Uh oh.
The postermen all suddenly turn to the Doctor.
"You're an alien?"
"What? Nah. Nothing of the sort. Me, an alien. That's just silly, isn't Rose? An alien", the Doctor nervously laughs.
"If anyone's an alien, it's that guy from the veggie isle, what with that big honker of a nose he had. Big nose like that, definitely alien", he tried to joke and draw the attention away from him, but the postermen weren't falling for it.
In the meantime all that ruckus had attracted quite a crowd, with curious people asking what was going on. Soon people were calling out that that man in the suit might be an alien, pointing at the Doctor who was frantically trying to deny any alienness.
"Come off it", Rose tries, "you're just being stupid now."
"Yeah", Jackie chimes in, realising her mistake, "I was jus' angry an' sayin' things, 'e don' even look like an alien."
"But what about what he himself said, eh? He himself said that aliens don't always look like aliens, he said they could look human", one of the postermen suddenly yells.
And at this all eyes turn on the Doctor who groans and has to supress the urge to facepalm himself. That was a bloody stupid thing to say.
Now everyone seems to be advancing on the Doctor who's got his hands raised in an attempt to hold the crowd at bay. Then someone notices the bandage on his hand. It has bled through and the blood is an orangey-red. One of the postermen makes a grab for the Doctor's hand and rips his bandage off, showing the bloody gash in his hand to the entire crowd.
The orange coloured blood is like a red flag to the crowd and in the blink of an eye they turn into a hysterical mob, all screaming and grasping for the Doctor.
The Doctor manages to tear himself free and grabbing Rose and Jackie by their wrists, makes a run for it.
"I'm sorry Doctor! I didn' think..I-" Jackie stammers, stumbling alongside the Doctor, trying to apologize.
"It's alright Jackie, I don't care. Just run!" The Doctor shouts back.
Then Jackie trips and the Doctor lets go of Rose to help her up. Rose has stopped to and is turning back to her mum and the Doctor.
"No Rose! Keep going!" He shouts.
"I ain't gonna leave ya!" Rose shouts back, looking at both the Doctor and Jackie.
"It'll be okay, Rose, just go before they get you. I'll take care of Jackie. Go! RUN!" He shouts at her again and she reluctantly turns back around and runs.
The Doctor pulls Jackie to her feet, she's apologizing again.
"I'm so sorry Doctor, I really didn' know", she cries.
"It's fine, Jackie. It doesn't matter. We just have to get running again, they're right behind us!"
They start running again but it's too late, a group of men has caught up with them and are blocking their way. Behind them even more people are gathering. The Doctor looks at the group in front of them, some of them are the postermen, but not all of them. Though every one of them is looking at him the same way, like he's something filthy they need to crush under their boot.
The mob starts to surround the Doctor and Jackie, screaming at them, calling them both aliens.
Jackie is immediately offended. "Oi! I ain't no alien!" she shrieks back at them, throwing just as many insults back at them as are being thrown at her.
The Doctor steps forward, realising this could get very ugly very quickly and trying to calm everyone down.
"Yes", he says "I'm an alien, but Jackie's not. She's human, just like you, so you can leave her out of this, alright? And as for me, I'm not evil or dangerous, I was just doing some shopping. Just like everyone else", he tries to convince the mob of his harmlessness and his similarities rather than his differences.
"There's no need for all this hate", he continues "there are loads of aliens living among you right now. All living peaceful lives and going out to do their shopping and have chips, the same as all of you. If you can just let go of your prejudice and fear you can live together with these aliens, not hunt them down and be scared of them. What do you say, eh?"
The Doctor held out his hands in an unthreatening manner and looked around the mob, making eye contact with as many people as he could. It almost looked like it was working and then…
THWACK!
From out of nowhere a rock hits the Doctor in the head. Caught off guard he is knocked off balance and falls to the ground. Now the whole crowd pounces on him. People are yelling and shouting. Jackie loses sight of the Doctor, she screams for him but she can't see him. Someone is dragging her away, she slaps them and they let her go. She is pushed to the ground and almost trampled. When she finally manages to get up again she catches a glimpse of the Doctor in the crowd that seems to be heading towards a stage that was built for a benefit rally the next day.
She staggers on her feet and goes after them.
By the time she reaches the crowd again she can see the Doctor being dragged towards the stage by a rope around his neck. It looks like the old kind of rope that someone has had lying around in the boot of their car for years and Jackie spends a split second wondering where someone found the time to go get a rope from his car, it's the choking sound the Doctor makes that brings her back to reality. They'll strangle him, she's sure of it. She can see him trying to grab for his throat even though a couple of men are holding his arms back.
When they reach the stage they force the Doctor to his knees and, thankfully, take the rope off from around his neck. The Doctor gulps in a grateful breath of air.
But it's not over yet. The rope that was around his neck now gets tied around his right wrist and a pair of fluffy handcuffs attached to their own scraggly looking rope are fastened around his left wrist. The Doctor takes a moment amidst the panic and terror to think about the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Tied up by fluffy cuffs. Humans…they're nothing if not good improvisers.
He doesn't get long to let his thoughts drift though, as he is yanked back to his feet by the rope and cuffs around his wrists and pulled towards the centre of the stage.
He is presented to the hysterical mob, screaming for his blood. Sad and resigned he looks out into the crowd and spots Jackie looking at him with horror in her eyes. A quick scan tells him that Rose isn't among the rest of the crowd and for that he is thankful, feels relieved even. Because whatever is going to happen next, it's going to hurt and he doesn't want her to see that.
Jackie sees him wince and a closer look to his face reveals why. He is covered in cuts and bruises and he is bleeding from a nasty looking gash on the left side of his face.
One of the postermen steps in front of the Doctor and starts yelling about how the Doctor is a filthy alien, trying to hide among humans and pretending to be one of them. He's unnatural, evil, his orange blood a sure sign of his monstrosity. He doesn't deserve to be here. Earth for humans! Earth for humans!
Then, unexpectedly, the posterman turns around and slams an aluminium baseball bat into the Doctor's stomach. The Doctor almost folds in half, only being held up by the rope and cuffs around his wrists that are pulling his arms out to the sides. When the bat is pulled away Jackie sees something that makes her want to vomit. There are jagged pieces of metal welded to the aluminium of the bat, making sure each hit won't just bruise, but also rip and tear. Jackie's mind goes blank and all she can think about is what kind of monster must own a bat like that. But then she hears a muffled groan and sees the Doctor has been struck again and she knows she's looking at one.
The Doctor manages to catch Jackie's gaze and holds it. Staring in her eyes as he is beaten by the bat again and again as though Jackie looking back at him is the only thing holding him upright.
Looking back at him, Jackie thinks it just might be.
*end of chapter one*