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George was more than a little surprised when a strange man he'd never seen before barged into his house, didn't even offer a greeting or an explanation, and ran towards the sound of the breaking glass that George himself was fleeing. George considered pursuing the man and inquiring just what the bloody hell he was doing, but then reconsidered. He had a wife to watch out for, after all, and getting her out of harm's way was more important than confronting some peculiar intruder.
Molly was waiting for him by the door, as perplexed as her husband. George gave the house he'd been living in for less than three years a final backwards glance, then took his wife's hand. Her palm was slippery with sweat, and he nearly lost his hold on it.
"He said he was a doctor. And he knew about the angel," Molly said.
"Wonderful. This'll turn out to be some government experiment gone wrong, we'll end up in quarantine for weeks, and I'll lose my job, my friends, and my home," George groaned.
"Then let's get out of here before they set up roadblocks. My sister has a flat in Liverpool and she owes me several thousand favors. She'll take us in."
"Your sister is an anarchist."
"She'll protect us if the government comes after us."
"She's been to prison."
"I think she has guns, too."
"Molly, be serious. Are we really going to stay with her?"
"It's her or the angel."
"Alright, her."
The debate settled, George and Molly ran for their car. Behind them, there came the clatter of pots and pans banging against each other.
George had just swung the car into the street when a young redhead threw herself onto the hood. George slammed on the brakes—even though the car was hardly moving—and Molly emitted a high-pitched scream.
The redhead looked up and offered a wave similar to the one the Doctor had given Molly. She then kindly removed herself from the hood.
"Sorry, I had to make sure you wouldn't drive off just yet. The Doctor's in your house, isn't he?"
"Yes, he's in there," George said.
"And he's fighting an angel, isn't he?"
"In all likelihood. Something's destroying my kitchen," Molly replied.
"I'm going to kill him. 'Don't worry, Amy, I won't do anything stupid or dangerous.' Right, Doctor," Amy said, rolling her eyes at the Doctor's lie.
"Can you tell me what's going on?" Molly asked.
"The Doctor's trying to save you from, and I quote, 'the deadliest, most powerful, most malevolent life form evolution has ever produced.'"
"The angel in my garden is really alive?" Molly asked.
"The angel in her garden is deadly?" George said.
"Yes, and very. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make sure the Doctor's alright," Amy said.
The redhead ran in through the front door as though she hadn't heard her own words of warning. Amy didn't know the house's layout, but it was a relatively small structure and finding the kitchen was easy.
The angel, with its wide-spread wings, had been too broad to fit through the window. It had been forced to take its stone claws to the window sill and had, in seconds, shattered the window panes, cut through the wood and plaster around the window, and sliced Molly's lovely curtains to ribbons. Once the hole was wide enough to admit its body, the angel had propelled itself into the room. It had crossed half the kitchen before the Doctor's continual stare froze it.
It was in this position Amy found the Doctor and the weeping angel. The living statue was standing amongst the debris from the ruined wall; it had turned immobile with its terrifying jaws thrown open and its arms drawn up in front of it. The Doctor was pressed against the far wall, and he was doing his best not to blink. The angel's impromptu demolition work had thrown a great amount of dust into the air, and the Doctor found both not blinking and not sneezing very difficult.
"Doctor? I could be wrong, but this looks both stupid and dangerous," Amy said.
"We'll discuss the subtle art of dangerous and stupid actions later. Right now, I need you to watch the angel," the Doctor said, as though he was doing nothing riskier than asking Amy to supervise his dog for ten minutes.
"Don't you remember what happened the last time I saw one of those things? Does my brain almost becoming an angel ring any bells?" Amy asked.
"Ah, but this time you'll know not to look at its eyes. Now, would you kindly stare at its nose—no, too close to the eyes—its chest? Just for a few seconds."
"But why? You're so good at staring it down."
"Because I'm going to sneeze in the next three seconds, and when I do, I'll close my eyes. I'd rather not have "achoo" as my last words, thanks very much," the Time Lord replied.
"Fine." Amy fixed her eyes on the angel.
The Doctor sneezed, and it sounded oddly loud in the silence of the kitchen. He blinked his eyes a few times, wiped his nose, and then resumed his duty.
"Alright, that little problem's been taken care of."
Letting out a sigh of relief, Amy took her eyes off the angel. "I'm glad for your sinuses. Maybe now you can figure out what to do with that thing before—" The words 'one of us blinks' died on her lips as the Doctor suddenly sneezed again.
"Doctor!" Amy cried.
The Doctor responded by sneezing a third time. He tried to hold back the fourth sneeze and failed.
Knowing it was already too late, that the weeping angel would be towering over her, Amy turned to face the killer statue. It was, to her great surprise and immense relief, standing in the exact same location. Even with the Doctor overcome by his sneezing fit and Amy equally distracted, the angel hadn't attacked. Why?
"This is absolute bollocks! It'll cost me my next salary to fix that hole."
Amy whipped around to see George and Molly standing in the doorway. Molly was still clutching her knife, and George had grabbed a lamp to use as a bludgeon. Both makeshift weapons would have been equally impotent against the angel.
"Whatever you do, don't stop looking at the angel," Amy said.
"Right, sure. We'll stand here like idiots and you can explain why we're doing it," Molly said.
The Doctor finished sneezing, straightened up and inhaled deeply through his nose. "As long as you keep your eyes on the angel, I'll walk through the house on my hands and talk like a Judoon if you want."
"Like a what?" Molly asked.
"Judoon. Big, space rhinoceros."
"You're mad."
"So I've been told. I'm not entirely convinced."
"Molly, if you don't mind, I'd like to know why the window's been replaced with a crater," George said. "Let the lunatic talk, please."
Taking no offense over being declared insane by both homeowners, the Doctor explained, "This is a weeping angel, one of the worst things in the entire universe you could ever hope to come across. It looks like a perfectly ordinary statue—and it is."
"It is not!" Molly refuted.
"It is right now. If we were all to turn our backs on it, it wouldn't be anymore."
"What would it be then?"
"Free to kill us in whatever manner it liked."
Molly took her eyes off the angel and used them to glare at the Doctor. He directed her attention back to the angel by poking his finger at the statue.
"The weeping angels have the single best camouflage of any species anywhere. Your chameleons and your cuttlefish don't even register next to the angels. They can mimic, but an angel truly becomes a statue the millisecond you look at it."
"So as long as we look at it, it can't move? It's stuck?" George asked.
"Quantum-locked actually, and in that state it's no more dangerous than any other rock. But turn away, blink, and you're dead."
"Then let's smash it! I've got a hammer in the yard, and I say we use it!" Molly suggested.
"By all means, just expect to be at it for a while. Bullets hardly chip them, and sonic technology doesn't faze them, either."
"What are you, the leading expert on these things?" Molly asked.
"No, the leading expert's a madman who's been dead for ages. I read his book," the Doctor said.
Molly had heard about all she could bear. Her kitchen was in shambles, she had a massive hole in her wall, a stone-solid killer angel was responsible for the destruction, and the weird, floppy-haired doctor who had come to save them all was spouting gibberish about quantum-locks and cuttlefish. She could put up with the nonsense and the madness for no longer.
"If I can't break it, I want it gone. Doctor, get it out of my house, now," Molly demanded.
The Doctor said, "That's going to be difficult."
"I don't care."
"The logistics are the problem. Stone being heavy doesn't help either, of course."
"Still haven't made me care, Doctor. Remove it."
"I'll need help."
"George, help him."
George grabbed his lower back. "I'm still aching from getting the damned thing into your garden."
"How convenient. What about you, ginger?" Molly turned to Amy.
Amy and the Doctor both visibly tensed. Molly had taken her eyes off the weeping angel, and George was giving his wife worried and not-so-covert looks. If the woman hadn't been in such a high state of agitation, the Doctor would have kindly reminded her that steady eye contact was the only thing separating them all from involuntary time travel or more direct death. His sharp suspicion that Molly would only leave the room if he told her any of that stopped him from opening his mouth.
"You know, I always wanted to be a ginger," the Doctor said.
"I don't care if you wanted to be the Queen. The only thing I care about, or ever will care about, is getting that sodding angel out of here."
"What about me? Don't you care about me?" George whimpered.
"Oh, I suppose so," Molly said dismissively. George wasn't comforted.
"Alright, I can think of a plan. Amy, watch the angel again," the Doctor said.
"What? Why?"
"I need to pace. Pacing helps me think. If I try to pace and look at the angel at the same time, I'll walk into something. Then I'll be in pain. Being in pain doesn't help me think. Or pace, for that matter."
Amy was aghast at the idea of staring down the angel by her lonesome while the Doctor strolled around, coaxing his synapses. George took note of the redhead's horrified expression and decided he, too, would join the optical guard. Looking at the murderous lawn ornament couldn't be any worse than looking at the wife who didn't care about him.
The Doctor began to walk around the kitchen. He didn't have a particularly large area to traverse, as he was sharing the room with three other people, one weeping angel, and a sizable debris field. Still, the track he had seemed suitable for his purposes.
"I've got to get the angel out, but it's too heavy to carry. I can't drag it—that'll destroy the wood floor, and I'll probably be stabbed by the lady of the house. I can't bring it into the TARDIS, far too much time energy in there. TARDIS wouldn't fit in here, anyway."
The Doctor continued to throw out ideas to himself as he walked. He didn't like any of them. They were either too dangerous, the technology required didn't exist in this time period, or the plan culminated in the irate housewife braining him with a rolling pin. He didn't want to be forced to regenerate because of a rolling pin injury. That would be embarrassing.
"Something simple. Something that won't involve the top floor disappearing. Some…thing…ah! Got it!" the Time Lord announced.
"Thank God," Molly muttered.
"The wheel! We'll roll the angel out."
"That's your master plan? Roll it out? On what?" Molly asked.
The Doctor faltered. "Right, on what? You don't own a dolly, cart, or sturdy pair of roller-skates, do you?"
Molly snorted in contempt. The Doctor took that derisive snort to mean the house lacked anything remotely close to what he needed.
George opened his mouth and then closed it. This action was not missed by the Doctor.
"You, you've got an idea. Let's hear it," the Doctor said.
"It's stupid."
"Won't know unless we hear it."
"I was thinking of…of a skateboard. This boy down the street owns at least half a dozen. He does these brilliant tricks with them, so I'd assume they're strong enough, and he's a…Molly, you're about to ask for a divorce, aren't you?"
Molly might have been looking at her husband as though he'd suggested they all strip naked and shag the angel, but the Doctor liked the idea. He liked it a lot, actually. There was the practicality, but there was also the absurd and whimsical side of it. Imagine, a weeping angel being strapped to a skateboard or two and wheeled through a suburban home. It was beautiful.
"If you think you can get a board off him, go. If not, come back here and I'll try," the Doctor said.
"What makes you think he'll give one to you if he won't give it to George? He doesn't even know who you are," Molly said.
"Because I can show him tricks that haven't been invented yet," the Doctor replied. Amy made a mental note to ask where the Doctor had learned to skateboard, and if he'd be willing to give lessons.
"I'll be right back. Two ticks," George said.
With that, he was off. Since the angel guard was reduced to three, Molly decided, if only to save her own skin, that she'd stop casting baleful glares at the Doctor and the ginger and focus them on the statue. The Doctor and Amy were both grateful for this redirection.
George was far too occupied to notice the subtle changes in the living room. Even as he skirted the coffee table, he failed to notice that his cell phone, and the video it contained, had vanished. The tall, gray figure in the corner that twitched—but at the last moment decided to let its prey go—went unseen. As the door slammed shut and George emerged into the warmth of the noon sunshine, he was oblivious to the second angel that he'd inadvertently created.
TBC