Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you know the drill
Feedback: Always a pleasure
AN: Just a one-shot, and I will warn you in advance that it's a dialogue-heavy narrative that relies significantly on knowing the details of the Sixth Doctor and Jamie's audio trilogy (City of Spires, The Wreck of the Titan and Legend of the Cybermen), as well as key plot elements from the Second Doctor ep The Mind Robber, the Seventh Doctor novels Conundrum and Head Games and the Fourth Doctor audio The Crooked Man, but I hope you like it if you've seen/heard those excellent storylines. It's also a crossover with the horror film The Final Girls (starring Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman, if you want specific details), picking up at the very end of that film; if you haven't seen Final Girls, you almost certainly won't understand the context of what's going on here.
I appreciate that I'm therefore writing for likely a relatively small target audience, but after I saw Final Girls, the idea for this storyline just kept on nagging at me, so I decided to just write it and see what everyone thinks.
The Scottish Guardian of Camp Bloodbath
Staring at Billy Murphy as he stood at the end of the hospital corridor, having just crashed through the window, Max let herself be consumed by blind rage for the first time in her life.
She'd just killed this guy by cutting his damn head off; unless she'd missed something about these movies, how the Hell could he have come back?
"This is great!" Duncan said from behind her. "The sequel is so much better than the original!"
If this had been any other situation, Max felt certain that she would have criticised Duncan's choice of words after he'd only just survived being murdered by a masked psychopath in another movie, but right now she had bigger priorities right now. Grabbing the nearest weapon (and refusing to think about the fact that it was a drip stick of all things), she charged towards Billy, determined to prove the rules wrong and kill this bastard right here and now-
"Craig an Tuire!" an unfamiliar voice yelled with a Scottish accent, followed by a strange burst of energy in the middle of Billy's chest left a large hole where his ribcage had been. Max barely had time to realise what had just happened before another strange burst of energy enveloped Billy and he vanished, collapsing into a small pile of ash.
Standing behind Billy at the end of the corridor, Max stared in awe and confusion at the sight of an old man in a red-and-black kilt and a white shirt, who was incongruously holding a massive gun that made her think of something from a science-fiction film rather than a horror movie.
"…OK," Duncan said at last, "I will admit that this is cool, but there was never anything in this film about a Scottish guy wielding high-tech weaponry."
"So… what?" Gertie looked uncertainly at the others. "Are we suddenly in some… fan film somebody edited, or somebody's deranged fanfic?"
"I dinnae know what's more depressing," the old man shook his head as he slung the gun over his shoulder while looking at the five of them. "That those are actually an option these days, or that I understand what ye're talking about…"
"Wait a- you know about that?" Max asked, forcing down her suddenly target-less anger to look at their strange Scottish saviour. "I mean, you know that-?"
"I'm in a world o' fiction?" the man finished for Max with a smile. "O' course I know; I guard it, after all."
"You… guard it?" Max repeated tentatively.
She'd thought that her life had been confusing enough when she found herself in the middle of one of her mom's old films, but the idea that she was in a whole world of fiction that actually needed guardians…
"OK, who the Hell are you?" Vicki looked indignantly at the stranger.
"General Jamie McCrimmon," the man replied, nodding politely at her. "Guardian o' the borders of the Land of Fiction on behalf of Mistress Alice Liddell."
"…What?" Gertie blinked incredulously at the Scotsman, which at least assured Max that she wasn't the only one lost at this turn of events
"Alice Liddell?" Duncan repeated. "As in… Alice in Wonderland?"
"Odd choice, I agree, but best option o' a bad lot," the Scotsman nodded with a smile. "I'm sorry 'bout all this; guardin' the borders became more difficult when that Jason kid took over-"
"I'm sorry, but where the Hell is this?" Chris cut in, glaring at the Scotsman in exasperation, apparently having woken up from the bed where he'd been lying earlier. "We've just been stuck in a psycho slasher film for the last few hours in some sick loop, Max is dealing with some serious issues about her mom, and now we've been saved from a serial killer by some… high-tech Scotsman who knows none of this is real?"
"Oh, I can clear that up, laddie," the Scotsman nodded politely at him. "You're in the Land o' Fiction."
"The Land of Fiction?" Vicki repeated. "What the hell is that?"
"Askin' the wrong man if you want to know how it works," General McCrimmon grinned at her. "The only thing I can tell ye for sure is that this is a world where everything fiction, from old world fairy tales to modern fan fictions, is basically real."
Max had no idea how to react to that statement.
"Everything?" Gertie repeated uncertainly.
"We got the four-colour kingdom for comic book superheroes, generic robots as a security force, a fairy tale kingdom mixed in with forests laid out like word games, whole sections for classic literature, all kinds o' sub-sections for modern media adaptations…" the Scotsman shrugged uncertainly at them. "O' course, there has to be a Master or Mistress o' the Land to control it properly, and that's normally a writer chosen from the real world, but some time ago there was a war with an alien race for control o' the Land-"
"OK, aliens are a thing now?" Chris protested. "As in actual aliens? Really real, not from any kind of book or TV show aliens?"
"O' course aliens are real," General McCrimmon smiled at them, before he waved his hand dismissively. "Anyway, durin' that invasion, the last organic master… well, she had to leave, so we had tae put one of the characters from the Land in control o' it to keep things stable."
"And you chose Alice in Wonderland as the one to be in charge of it all?" Max asked.
"Well, most o' the characters had been lost or converted by the enemy, so we only had a few choices while we worked on restorin' everyone who'd fallen, but I think ye'd prefer Alice tae Captain Nemo or Count Dracula."
"…Yeah, I'm not a fan of putting those guys in charge of a place like this," Chris nodded.
"OK, I get why Dracula's bad, but Nemo?" Vicki asked. "Isn't he the guy with the submarine?"
"Who was attacking innocent ships to vent some old vendetta about the loss of his family," Duncan observed.
"…Right," Vicki said, nodding tentatively at her acquaintance. "Probably not a good guy to have in charge of something this… tricky."
"OK, so how does Alice being in charge tie into what happened to us?" Max asked.
"Well, like any place dealing with a major coup, the Land's had to deal with a few people tryin' to get out while everyone else is focused on something else," Jamie explained, a wistful smile on his face for a moment before he continued his explanation. "From what Mistress Alice was able to tell me, Billy Murphy was tryin' to get into the real world during that showing of the film in your world because o' the intense emotions of the screening on top of the fear caused by that fire."
"Billy Murphy… was trying to escape?" Gertie repeated, shaking her head as though trying to straighten out the concept in her mind. "So… a fictional character wanted to get out of his story?"
"I cannae explain it either, but at some point, we've been… well, runnin' out o' space here," Jamie explained with a shrug, indicating the fading impression of the hospital around them. "With all the forms of fiction goin' around these days, what with online publishing an' that kinda tot, there just isnae enough room for everything to stay here, so some o' the lesser characters are getting' booted out to make room for the big leaguers."
"To confirm, what defines a 'lesser character'?" Duncan raised a curious hand.
"Some o' the characters who tried to get out that way included a… tabloid, I think was the term used… interpretation o' a famous actress, the monster in a novel some dad wrote to scare his kid, and the killer in a little-known murder mystery novel o' some sort."
"Right," Duncan nodded, turning that information over in his mind. "Yeah, Billy Murphy would probably fit in there; he might have set a few standards, but he doesn't really define them the way, say, Jason Voorhees does…"
"Yeah, I saw some of those films on the way here," Jamie nodded, shuddering slightly as though at some unpleasant memory. "Seriously, a man goes around stabbing people in the heart or crushing heads with his hands, and you people find that fun?"
"It's… a cultural thing," Gertie shrugged, evidently abandoning the idea of explaining it to someone who had to ask that question.
"So Billy Murphy wanted to get out of his film and into the real world?" Duncan asked. "But he really seemed confused about us-"
"Because we came to him," Gertie interjected, nodding in understanding before she looked curiously at Jamie. "But how would that work? Him getting into the real world, I mean."
"It basically involves the fictional character killin' someone to take their place in the real world," Jamie shrugged. "Wouldnae have been hard for someone like this Billy, but somehow… well, Mistress Alice wasnae sure how it all happened, but while that fire in the cinema did inspire intense emotions, somethin' else in the cinema caused the portal to be an entrance rather than an exit as it pulled you all into the Land rather than letting him get out."
"Ah," Vicki said, shooting a glance at Max that it wasn't hard to interpret.
Max might have no idea how any of this worked, but if her strong desire to see her mother again in some form hadn't played some part in turning that portal around to let them in rather than letting Billy out, she'd be very surprised.
"So… all those people really were all stuck in the movie?" Duncan looked at Jamie with an incredulous smile. "You mean I was right? Billy left us alone at first because he didn't know how to incorporate us into the storyline?"
"And then he worked out where you fit into everything and tried tae make you fit the rules," Jamie nodded, before he turned to Max. "On that topic, good on ye for stepping up when it counted."
"You mean when I killed Billy?" Max said, her tone bitter at the memory of what she'd had to do.
"When ye took care o' a dangerous monster that was never gonna stop and gave Alice time tae move ye all somewhere safer until I could get here," Jamie observed, nodding at her in approval. "Ye know, you should consider yoursel' lucky that the rules o' this place are so restrictive."
"Lucky?" Vicki repeated incredulously. "We were lucky in this mess?"
"Lucky because ye basically had ta kill Billy that way because his genre wouldnae even let him die any other way," Jamie explained. "Most o' the time, if ye go along wi' the narrative of whatever story ye're in as part o' the Land, ye become a fictional character yourself."
"I take it that's not a good thing?" Vicki asked.
"Would ye want to live your life totally dependent on takin' action only when someone else wrote it for ye?"
"…Hell, I barely get that as a kink, never mind as a full-time thing," Vicki observed, which said more about Vicki's sexual experience than Max had ever wanted to know.
"Point is," Jamie looked around the group, "in this case there was only one way to kill Billy, so you could give yourself some leeway in everythin' leadin' up to the moment you stopped him that meant ye werenae actually goin' along with the exact original plot."
"That… makes sense, I guess," Gertie nodded tentatively.
"Whoa…" Duncan smiled at the thought. "Way cool… and is that why we aren't dead?"
"That was just because we found about it soon enough to get ye to safety once yer bodies were taken off the board," Jamie explained. "Some parts o' this place are vulnerable to continuity errors, like one Master not keepin' track o' the size of a scrabble board; since none of ye went back to check the dead bodies o' the rest of ye, it gave us a chance to get y'all to safety the moment before ye'd have actually died."
"…Right," Gertie nodded tentatively, clearly confused at that explanation even if she understood the core details.
"So…" Max looked apprehensively at Jamie. "I get how you could save us… but when you say that people become fictional characters if they become part of the story… when I wanted to get Nancy out…"
"It wouldnae have worked," Jamie looked sympathetically at her. "I'm sorry, but she's part o' the narrative o' this world; you couldnae have gotten her out o' this place even if she'd lived unless you were willin' to kill someone once you got out o' here."
"Oh," Max said, lowering her head with a saddened sigh.
It hurt hearing that she'd failed, but she had to concede that Jamie was right; while she'd been willing to die to let Nancy have another chance at life, she knew that neither of them could have deliberately killed someone else to give Nancy that chance.
For a moment she just knelt on the floor, staring sadly at the ground, until she felt various hands settle on her shoulders, turning around to see her friends looking sympathetically at her.
It was a small thing in the face of what she'd lost for the second time, but right now, it was enough for Max to know that she still had people who cared.
"Ye'd better get goin'," Jamie indicated the corridor behind him after a few moments had gone by. "Ye follow me this way, and I can get ye to a new entrance to the rift ye used to get here in the first place."
"And… what then?" Chris asked.
"Then ye walk out of the cinema as though none o' this ever happened for anyone else," Jamie explained. "Advantage of ye bein' trapped in a film; it was already on a time loop, so time didn't really flow for ye the way it would normally."
"That… sounds complicated," Vicki observed as the five got back to their feet.
"The rules never made much sense ter me either; I just go along with them an' hope I don't make things too twisted," Jamie acknowledged as he led the way along the corridor. After a few moments of walking along a corridor that had subtly changed from a hospital corridor to a more generic grey corridor, ending in a large door that seemed to be slightly charred around the edges.
"Let me guess, this represents the fire that destroyed the cinema at the other end?" Duncan asked.
"And what about-?" Chris began, before he looked down and realised he was back in his original clothing rather than the hospital gown he'd been wearing just moments ago. "What the Hell?"
"How did-?" Vicki began as she felt at her jacket collar, realising that the rest of them were back in their clothes as well.
"Just condensed that particular sub-plot to keep it simple," Jamie explained. "Easier for all concerned if people don't know about your little excursion into the Land once you get home, which meant givin' ye all yer clothes back."
"And giving them a clean?" Max added, staring down in surprise at her now repaired and blood-free shirt (and when she thought about it, Gertie and Vicki's clothes should have sustained some kind of fire damage even if they'd been rescued).
"Hold on; if we're just going back into that cinema-" Gertie began, her panic reminding Max of the situation they'd left before becoming trapped in Bloodbath.
"All the cinema's doors will have been opened when ye get there and ye can leave it as ye wish," Jamie nodded at her with a smile. "Advantage o' it bein' a rift to this land and me bein' me; I cannae leave myself, but as a guardian, once a rift's been discovered I can make sure there's a safe exit on the other side."
"So… that's it?" Vicki asked, looking at the door incredulously. "We go through all this shit and now it's just… this way to the door?"
"Ye still needed me ter get ye to it, or ye'd have just stayed trapped in the reality of the Land," Jamie observed, before he turned to look tentatively at Max. "By the way, after all that happened to ye… before ye leave, if ye want… well, I… I could bring back Nancy for ye."
"Bring her back?" Max repeated tentatively.
"Bring her back?" Gertie repeated incredulously. "As in, back from the dead?"
"More like get her rewritten to be here to say bye to you properly," Jamie clarified. "She couldnae leave here, o'course, but ye could say a last-"
"I already did," Max cut him off, fighting back the tears at the memory of Nancy walking off to her death at Billy's hands even after Max had tearfully confessed the truth of their relationship in the real world. "I've said one goodbye I never got a chance to say… and even if I don't know that much about this place, if you brought another version of her back… you'd just…"
"It wouldn't be her, it'd just look like her," Duncan put in solemnly. "Like… building a robot of an earlier robot, right?"
"Hard ter say, but the analogy pretty much works," Jamie nodded at Duncan before he turned to Max with an understanding smile. "That's a big call, but it's… well, it's your decision, really."
Lost for what prompted her to do this, Max leaned over to give Jamie a hug, smiling as the older man reached up to give her an awkward hug in return.
"Thanks for offering, anyway," she said as she stepped back, smiling at their strange Scottish saviour once again.
"You're welcome," Jamie replied, looking at her with a soft smile that suddenly made Max think of the father she'd never really known. "And Max?"
"Yes?" Max asked uncertainly.
"When you get back tae Earth… keep an eye out for a blue box that's often in the middle of events when things get strange," Jamie said, looking at her in an approving manner that somehow made Max think of the father she'd sometimes imagined but never seriously believed she would meet. "I have a feeling an old friend o' mine would greatly enjoy the chance to meet ye."
"You… have a friend in the real world?" Max asked.
"Is it your author?" Duncan asked, before he snapped his fingers and looked at Jamie with a new sense of curiosity. "Actually, what are you from, anyway?"
"That's… extremely complicated," Jamie smiled at Duncan with a wistful expression. "Let's just say I was never a conventional part o' this mess an' leave it at that."
Max would have thought about asking for more, but she soon decided against it; not only was she not sure how long this portal back to reality was going to stay open, but there was something in Jamie's expression that suggested he didn't want to share that kind of information.
"Anyway," Jamie shrugged as he indicated the door again, "you'd best be off; sooner you're home the sooner I can make sure Billy goes somewhere very unpleasant for what he nearly did to ye all."
"Give him Hell," Vicki said, before she opened the door and walked through it, followed by the rest of the group. Max only paused long enough to give Jamie one last goodbye hug and a kiss on the cheek before she walked out after her friends, the scent of smoke and flames filling her nostrils even as she saw the door close behind her.
It had been a strange and confusing experience, and Max wished she'd had a chance to ask Jamie a few more questions, but faced with his last advice, she suddenly found herself already planning her next course of action.
Find the blue box that's there when things get strange…