01 | venice
"RORY! AMY!"
Rory flinched at the noise, and exchanged a look with Amy, both up on the console platform inside the TARDIS.
"Uh," Amy said, wide-eyed. "if we leave now, maybe she won't notice?"
Rory closed his eyes, "You know that won't work." He walked out of the doors, Amy and the Doctor trailing behind.
"Sorry, but what's not going to work?" The Doctor interjected just as a woman rounded the corner of the house, eyes blazing with complete and utter fury.
She trampled the poor flower bushes, and Amy winced, feeling bad for the poor flowers that didn't deserve Eli's ire. They really should have moved more quickly. Amy was just as confrontational as the next, but she hated having to fight with Eli.
"How dare you think about disappearing off again! And right before your wedding! What was I supposed to tell Dad?" Eli came to a stop in front of her brother, arms crossed, frowning. "You couldn't have at least waited until tomorrow?"
"I'm sorry, Eli." Rory hung his head.
"Hmph." She rounded on Amy and the Doctor. "Don't think you two are off scot free! We've had words about this, Amy! Many times! And you!"
She stuck her face right near the Doctor's and he looked quite uncomfortable to have someone so close to him, yelling.
"You better keep my brother and my sister safe. Otherwise, nothing in this world will— ah!" She stumbled, clutching her head in utter agony.
Rory instantly grabbed her arms and lowered her to the ground, crouching over her as Amy fluttered nearby, and the Doctor wondered why he felt so out of the loop. Usually he was in the loop. He was the loop. A minute or so passed before Rory moved back and hauled up his sister onto her feet, still looking concerned. Amy's lips were pursed, and she looked quite upset.
"How often? Have you told Dad? Have you been taking your medication? Evangeline….."
Eli's faced flashed with irritation. "Yes, I've told Dad that they've started up again."
Amy didn't buy her vague answer. "Eli."
The other woman sighed. "Every day. They started again in May."
"Sorry, again, what's going on?" The Doctor was quite put out at being left from the conversation.
"This is my sister, Evangeline." Rory gestured to Eli, who looked relieved at having the interrogation about her health broken off.
"Ah. Hello, Evangeline. I'm the Doctor." He was hoping she would do the thing that everyone did when he introduced himself and say "Doctor Who?"
"I know."
Well, that certainly wasn't what he was expecting. He said as such.
Eli laughed. "As if I wouldn't recognize Amy's Raggedy Doctor and his big blue box."
Amy just shrugged. Everyone knew she had an imaginary friend, and Eli and Rory had been the center of her adventures in childhood, pretending to fly around and go to alien planets. Amy missed those times, when life was easy and Eli's headaches weren't as common - or as severe.
"Well, go on then." Eli stepped back, nodding to the TARDIS. "Bring me something back you hear? Payment for having to cover for you. Again."
"Come with us." No one ever said the Doctor stopped to think about what exactly he was doing at any given point in his life.
"What?" The three humans said at once.
"Amy's going to be all tied up with Rory, and I'm going to be all alone!" The Doctor whined.
Amy grimaced. He had a bit of a point. A lonely Doctor was a trouble-making Doctor.
"Eli?" Rory turned to his sister, who was utterly beaming.
"Are you kidding?" Eli looked at her brother, "Traveling with the Doctor? Getting to see firsthand what Amy's been doing for months? I'd be an idiot to pass that up."
Amy grins, and suddenly all four of them are crowded in the doorway looking like a group of children who just planned a heist on a candy store.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" the Doctor asked, as he pushed open the doors, "Let's go!"
Eli was last in, and she faltered on the threshold, jaw open in awe. The soft orange light, the elevated platform, the central pillar. Her eyes landed on the round-things, and something in the back of her mind flashed, and she winced against the sharp pain that the feelings of déja vú brought. She continued forward, up the stairs, marveling at its size and its contents.
Amy, Rory, and the Doctor stood to the side, huddled, with varying degrees of amusement on their faces.
"Is that what I looked like when I first saw it?" Amy whispered to the Doctor.
"That's what everybody looks like when they first see it." He replied.
Eli turned her attention to the Doctor. "She's breathtaking."
A feat of extra-ordinary preservation, something in her mind whispered, a true museum relic.
Pain exploded behind her eyes, and it took all she had to not flinch.
"So, where off to?" She asked, as the Doctor began to circle the console, flipping switches and pulling levers.
"Wherever we want! All of time and space, every planet, every star, it's all ours!" He slammed one last lever, and the TARDIS made a deep rumbling sound, and then a sort of wheezing, groaning noise that struck something deep and long buried within her soul. She held onto the railing, laughing, feeling lighter than air. No wonder Amy was so loathe to stop traveling. To even think about giving this up felt like a sin.
The Tardis materialized in a plaza, disturbing absolutely no one, despite the activity of the market. The Doctor sticks his head outside, and bounds out, like some overgrown puppy. His new companions strolled out behind them, and he snapped his fingers, closing the door behind Rory.
"Venice! Venezia! La Serenissima! Impossible city, preposterous city! He twirls around, leaning over the railing to view the water below.
"Founded by refugees running from Attila the Hun. It was just a collection of little wooden huts in the marsh, but became one of the most powerful cities in the world." She grins. Venice. And clearly the past, if the dress of the townsfolk was anything to go by.
The Doctor smiles, "Constantly being invaded, constantly flooding... constantly... Just beautiful! Oh, you gotta love Venice. And so many people did. Byron, Napoleon, Casanova."
He looked fearful for a second "Oooh, that reminds me." He checks his watch before relaxing. "1580. That's all right. Casanova doesn't get born for 145 years. Don't want to run into him. I owe him a chicken."
"You owe Casanova. A chicken." Rory asks.
"We had a bet."
A man in official robes halts the group as it tries to make progress further into the city. "Papers, if you please. Proof of residency, current bill of medical inspection."
Amy and Eli exchange confused glances, and The Doctor fumbles around in his jacket before pulling out a booklet, and handing it to the official. "All to your satisfaction, I think you'll find."
The official looks surprised, and bows deeply, "I am so sorry, Your Holiness. I didn't realize."
The Doctor just smiles and takes back the paper. "No worries. You were just doing your job. Sorry, what exactly is your job?"
"Checking for aliens, visitors from foreign lands who might bring the plague with them." He answers.
Amy rolls her eyes. "Oh, that's nice. See where you bring me? The plague!"
The official smiles. "Don't worry, Viscountess." Amy sighs, and the official bows again. "No, we're under quarantine here, no-one comes in, no-one goes out, and all because of the grace and wisdom of our patron, Signora Rosanna Calvierri." He points to a crest on the box he's carrying.
Eli furrows her brows, looking curiously at the official, and the crest on the back of his box. "Interesting. I was under the impression the Plague died out years ago."
The official stammers, "Not out there, Your Grace. No, Signora Calvierri has seen it with her own eyes. Streets are piled high with bodies, she said."
Eli frowns at the man. How odd. The Plague was active until well into the 1750s, yes, but not to that extent. The devastation of the 1300s was well past.
The official moves on, and Rory snatches the booklet from the Doctor.
"According to this, I'm your eunuch!" Rory is horrified. "Eli's a duchess, why is it just me?"
Eli laughs, pats her brother on the shoulder, and follows the Doctor and Amy who have already gone farther into the city. She stops next to the Doctor who's paused at a railing, gazing across the canal at a procession of girls in white in two straight lines. A man runs up to them, and starts to raise the veils of the girls, shouting for his daughter, Isabella. The woman at the head of the procession tries to shoo away the man, but he raises one veil after another, before he gets to one girl and drops her veil, hands pressed against his mouth. One of the other girls lurches towards him, and he scrambles backwards. A man, obviously wealthy by the state of his clothes, places his foot on the other man's chest to keep him down. He sweeps away, and the man makes another desperate call for his daughter, as he is dragged off.
"What was that about?" Amy asks, turning to face the Doctor, only to find him always down the street and disappearing around the corner. "I hate it when he does that!"
The Doctor is leaning against the wall of a passageway, and crosses behind to leave up onto some stone steps in front of the man. "Who were those girls?"
The man looks up at him, eyebrow raised. "I thought everyone knew about the Calvierri school."
"My first day here." He jumps off the steps. "Parents do all sorts of things to get their children into good schools. They move house, they change religion." The Doctor peers at the man and whispers, "So, why are you trying to get her out?"
"Something happens in there. Something magical, something evil. My own daughter didn't recognize me. And the girl who pushed me away, her face... like an animal."
The Doctor puts his arm around the man's shoulder. "I think it's time I met this Signora Calvierri."
At the same time, Amy, Rory, and Eli round corner after corner, more so seeing the sights and getting lost in the maze of Venice than looking for the Doctor.
"What have you been doing?" Rory asks, and Eli slows her steps a bit to give her brother and his fiancée some space. This was their trip after all. She was just kind along for the ride.
Amy gives an offhand answer about running and being scared and something in Eli wanted to retort that you ran so much and saw so many people and places and things that you forgot to be scared.
Rory isn't quite happy with that answer, and it shows in his face, "Did you miss me?"
Amy falters. "I—I knew I'd be coming back."
Rory just sighs, scuffing his foot against the ground, watching as a pebble skidded across the cobblestone. "He was right. It blots out everything else."
Amy turns to him, pleading, "Rory—this is our date. Let's not do this, not now."
A bird flutters overhead, and Rory turns his face to the sky. "Ha! We are in Venice and its 1580!"
Amy laughs in agreement, taking up his arm and passing through an alley adjacent to where the wealthy man from across the canal is leaning against the stonewall of the houses, noticed and acknowledged only by Eli with a crook of her eyebrow as she follows her brother. A flower seller offers a handful of poesies to the man, which he declines. Within a few moments, he comes down from the steps, where he passes the flower seller again, this time taking the small purple blossoms from her.
Amy is posing in front of a doorway when the scream came. Eli instantly rounds, sprinting back the way they had come towards where the scream has originated. Eli comes to a dead halt seeing the wealthy man bent over the flower seller, blood on her neck. Eli can't move her eyes away from his mouth — its filled with teeth, too many and much too sharp for his human face. He stands, hissing pressing his cape to his mouth, and pushes past the still-frozen Eli. Rory kneels next to the girl, and Eli shakes away the feeling of dark foreboding to squat next to her brother. Amy runs past the doorway after the man, and Rory looks at his sister in disbelief before following his fiancée.
Their trek ends at the drop off into a canal, as still as ever, no signs of the wealthy man.
Unbeknownst to the three companions, the Doctor and the man, Guido, were scheming. The Doctor wanted into the Calvierri School to investigate — Guido was only happy to oblige if it meant that he could find out what had happened to Isabella. As Guido makes quite a ruckus at the entrance, the Doctor slips into a canal grate. He walks until he comes to a chamber with only a mirror on the wall. He checks himself out in the mirror, but pauses as a collection of voices sounds behind him.
"Who are you?"
The Doctor turns to face five girls, then looks back into the mirror where they aren't reflected. He does this twice more, before fulling standing to face them.
"How are you doing that?" The Doctor grins, "I... am... loving it. You're like Houdini, only five scary girls, and he was shorter. Will be shorter. I'm rambling."
The girls speak as one: "I'll ask you again, signor. Who are you?"
He thrusts out the same booklet he had given the official when they had first landed in Venice. "Why don't you check this?"
The girls just look at the booklet confused, and the doctor looks it himself. A wizened old man peers back, the Doctor's first incarnation, the first of his 11 faces."Library card. Of course, it's with... He's... I need the spare. Pale, creepy girls who don't like sunlight and can't be seen in..." The Doctor glances back in the mirror, almost giggling now. "Am I thinking what I think I'm thinking? But the city. Why shut down the city? Unless…"
The girls speak once more. "Leave now, signor, or we shall call for the steward... if you are lucky."
"Ooh!" He's definitely giggling now.
The five girl hiss and bare their fangs as they advance on the doctor. He turns, hopping up the stairs in the doorway, back the way he came. "Tell me the whole plan! That one may not work. Listen, I would love to stay here. This whole thing... I'm thrilled. Oh, this is Christmas!" He scrambles backwards, the girls still hissing.
The Doctor runs into his three companions at the canal across from the school.
"Doctor!" The girls chorus.
"I just met some vampires!" He replies in greeting.
"We just saw a vampire!" Amy grins.
They both talk at once, their words undecipherable. The two jump up and down excitedly, and Rory joins his sister in leaning against the railing of the canal. Eli is stretching her neck and wincing, but her glare stops Rory in his tracks before he can comment on the headache that he knows is settling in his sisters head.
"We think we just saw a vampire." Rory deadpans.
The Doctor fidgets excitedly. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Amy was just telling me."
"Yeah! The Doctor actually went to their house." Amy informs Rory, who looks quite worried at that information.
"OK, so..." The Doctor slaps Rory's cheeks. "First we need to get back in there somehow.
"What?!" Rory asks, startled, at the same time Eli says "So you want to go vampire hunting."
Amy looks happy, like this is her hobby. Eli guesses it is, to an extent. "How do we do that?"
"Back in where?!" Rory asks, now seriously worried.
"Come and meet my new friend." Is all the Doctor says by way of answering.