The Dalek Companion
Father's Day
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
- - - - -
Author's Note: This is remake of the Doctor Who episode 'Father's Day'
- - - - -
As Peter Tyler helped a now conscious Jackie back up to her feet, the door was once again being pounded by one of the winged creatures outside. The doors creaked, but did not open.
"…The older something is, the stronger it is," muttered the Doctor
"Just what is goin' on here? And you!" the furious woman rounded on the Doctor, "Who're you?"
He turned with a mocked surprised smile and tugged on his leather jacket expertly, "Me? I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor? You don't look like a Doctor! Doctor who?" She said confusion rising like the red on her face as the Doctor ignored her to address the crowd.
"Please, calm down! There is a logical explanation for this," shouted the Doctor as heads turned, "These creatures are called Reapers, They exist only when there is wound in the fabric of reality and time, acting like the bacteria that take advantage of a cut in the flesh. Their purpose is to sterilize everything within that wound and consume all else."
Silence remained as he nodded once and began giving instructions to make sure the Church is properly closed up. Jackie stomped up to him as he finished givng a set of orders to a young man, "And you expect us to believe you?"
"Yes," was the Doctor's cheerful reply.
She pursed her lips and was about to launch into another rant when the Doctor ordered her to check a set of doors and make sure those in shock are taken care of. "WHAT?! This is my wedding day! You can't just waltz in here with all these monsters outside and order me around!"
With terrifying slowness the man turned around with a very happy looking smile, "I've been waiting for a long for this Jackie Tyler." "How'd did'you know my name?" she asked furiously as the man before her leaned forward, "I've never met you in my life!" "No and you never will if I saw this out now will I? Now for once in your life DO AS I SAY AND GO CHECK THE DOORS."
Her eyes narrowed as she stumped away, muttering a "Yes sir."
The Doctor chuckled lightly, "I should've done that ages ago."
He turned around again, this time facing Danny, who was speaking softly, or as softly as Daleks can speak, to Rose. "Hey, R2, how come you left the TARDIS?"
"I Was Bored," replied Danny ruefully, though he added brightly, "I Locked The Door Though."
"Great. Fantastic," said the Doctor sarcastically as Rose asked him if this was her fault. His face became stony and did not reply.
An aisle away, Pete Tyler looked up upon hearing this, not understanding why he felt so concerned for the girl he just met after she saved his life.
- - - - -
"So what do you wanna do?" asked young Mickey as he sat on a chair next to the Dalek.
"I Do Not Know…"
"Cause I'm bored," the kid whined.
"Me Too."
Mickey ruffled in his pocket and pulled out a deck of card, "Gold fish?"
- - - - -
At the far corner of the room, opposite of where Danny the Dalek and young Mickey were playing goldfish, Pete and Rose were sitting together on top of the old chairs piled in back of the church bonding (Against the rules of time thanks to the paradox she herself created).
"…Its wonderful," he was saying as he tried to hold back his tears of seeing his would be daughter, "Well, well, I'd thought I'd be a bit useless with genes an all…"
Rose choked back a sob as Pete caressed her cheek with a loving hand, "But still…how'd you get here?"
She gave her father a small smile and a wistful answer, "D'you really want to know?"
"Yeah."
She delivered the bombshell, "A time machine."
Rose smiled at Pete's utter shock, then disbelieving expression as he repeated her, "Time machine."
"That made me smile."
"Do you have time machines back where you came from?" he asked with a crinkle of his eyes as he flexed his hands nervously as old reruns of Star Trek featuring Captain Kirk and the laws of time travel.
She shook her head, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes, "Nah, just the Doctor."
"Didja know these, these things were coming?"
A shake of her head as the tension mounted up. Pete hastily changed the subject, "God my heads spinning…" Multiple expressions flickered across his face as he tried to process all this information.
"So what's the future like?"
"Well," started Rose, "Isn't mostly different…"
The change of subjects seemed to cheer him up as he raised his head with a fatherly smile, "What about me? What am I like? Have I gone gray?" He chuckled at his little joke.
The tension returned again as Rose stared silently at her father. The man that she never knew, that she saved. That she needed to tell him that all this happened because she saved him.
"…Have I gone bald?"
Her silence brough the tension up a few levels as Pete tried to lower it with a joking manner, "That's it, I've gone bald then…"
No dice. The silence seemed to thicken as Pete tried another tack, "So if this mate of yours isn't your boyfriend, well I'll have to say I'm glad since me being your dad I think he's a bit old for ya."
Rose let a giggle escape her, her smile lessening the unseen tension.
"Have you got a bloke?" He said pressing the new button, she began to reply but-
"Mickey?" Jackie's voice startled the two of them as a young black boy ran down the hall and wrapped himself around Rose. "Sorry, but you'll have to let go of me sweetheart," said Rose as she pried him off. Jackie ran down the hall stopping for a second to avoid the Dalek as it gave a low guttural noise sounding very much like a yawn.
"He'll wrap himself about the first thing that moves, the poor child," she said reprovingly, adding a rather harsh remark.
"Ah, well Rose and I were just talking," Pete said defensively.
Jackie put on her skeptical face, "Oh yeah, just talking? Well the world comes to an end and what do you do?" She faced Rose with an expression akin to an angry female lion, "Cling to the youngest blond."
Rose absorbs this without a word and raised her eyes to face her mother. Jackie turn her nose up and around, "Lets go Mick." She edged away from Danny as Mickey tried to wrap his arms around it too.
Pete watched all this and started forward with a grunt; but soon halted as Rose grabbed his arm, "You can't tell her."
Confusion blazed across his face as he turned around, "Why?"
"I really don't want you to tell her."
"No, but I think its alright," replied Pete about to turn around. Rose shook her head, "Where I come from, Jackie doesn't know how to work the time on the video recorder."
"Oh, well I showed her that last week," he said with a shrug.
Rose gave him a look that was so reminiscent of Jackie, that he froze and nodded. "Point taken."
- - - - -
"Now Rose," said the Doctor with a smile, "You are not going to bring about the end of the world are you?"
He gazed down with a little smile, "Are you?"
The baby inside the basket eyed him with an intelligent and innocent look. The Doctor looked up as he felt someone approach him from behind. "Jackie gave her to me to look after her…How times change," he said remarking the irony.
"I better be careful, I think I just imprinted myself on Mickey like a momma chicken," Rose replied with a small chuckle, leaning forward to touch the child that was herself at a year old.
"No!" The Doctor pushed her back with sudden swiftness, "Don't touch the baby." She glanced away as a Reaper flew by, it's shadow flying across the etched glass.
"You're the same person, and that's a paradox, and we don't want a paradox in here," he explained, "not with these things outside. Anything new, disturbance in time makes them stronger. The paradox might let them in."
"I really can't do anything right can't I?" sighed Rose dejectedly.
With a turning of his head the Doctor look pointedly at his companion, "Since you asked; no. So: Don't. Touch. The. Baby!"
"I'm not stupid," blurted out Rose defensively.
The Doctor didn't back down, "You coulda fooled me."
Her eyes spoke volumes about his words as she looked away.
Damn those puppy eyes. I must be getting soft! "Alright," sighed the Doctor, "I'm sorry."
The two of them looked at each other, eyes meeting for a moment, "I wasn't going to leave you anywhere."
"I know."
- - - - -
Danny sat behind the aisles, playing another round of goldfish, and losing for the seventeenth time. Score one for the inferior human child; Mickey knows his cards.
He listened vaguely at the Doctor's plan and sniffed, making a sort of sound if you're rolling your eyeballs at your worst enemy and knowing his plan needed to work and you'll need to agree whether you like it or not.
"Goldfish! I win," said Mickey happily, shuffling the cards again for another game.
Damn. Lost another game.
- - - - -
"No, don't touch the baby!"
Heads turned as the Doctor leaped into action, but the damage had been done as a Reaper appeared at the top of the alter, cutting off their way to the slowly materializing TARDIS.
People screamed as they ran behind the Doctor, "Behind me, get behind me!"
Danny the Dalek felt fear, and oh how did he hate that feeling. He could see Rose's eyes were full of fright, and felt comforted that he was not the only one.
The Doctor took a step forward as the Reaper unfolded its wings; it's red eyes watching.
"I'm the oldest thing here!"
Even the Dalek had to admire the Time Lord's courage in the face of death as it dove forward, devouring the Doctor in seconds. Rose could only watch in horror as it dove towards Mickey. The Dalek threw itself forwards without thinking as Danny fired his laser stalk with no apparent effect.
True to the Doctor's words, the new paradox had made the Reaper stronger.
The Dalek disappeared in an instant as the Reaper chased after the fleeing wedding people, rounding up for another meal. It crashed into the TARDIS as it fully materialized, causing both objects to disappear.
- - - - -
Emptiness.
Objects would float by here and there. The Doctor was one of them. He sighed and looked around again. Something bright began t wiggle into the reality that was a Reaper's stomach.
"AAAAAAAAAH!"
A the loudness of the screeching Dalek popped the Doctor's ears, so much he grabbed a random object (a pear) and threw it hatefully at the Danny.
The pear ricocheted off the domed head, causing the eye-stalk to turn around and look at the Doctor, "You Are Alive! I Am Alive!"
"Yes and no, and can't you crank your volume down?"
"Explain Yourself!"
The Doctor glowered at the Dalek before going on to explain their new predicament, "Reavers as you know eat old things, the more aged the longer it lasts. This void," he swept his hands around the vast nothingness they were floating aimlessly about in, "Is is like a black hole of sorts, reversing time; old objects become slowly new and then…"
He stopped; there was no need to go on.
The Dalek shivered in it's casing, "And So Shall We?" The idea of being stuck forever within the void of nothingness of a Reaver was very…well it just wasn't a good scenario.
"Yes," nodded the Doctor, "But there is always a solution to every problem."
He smiled at the Dalek, despite not seeing any change of the color within that blue light in that eye-stalk, knew that it was hoping.
"All we have to do is wait," said the Doctor idly, snatching an old moldy-looking banana floating by. Looking closely, the banana was slowly regaining its yellow appearance. Soon it reverted from old and moldy to fresh and slowly unripe. The Doctor took several large bites of it before swallowing with difficulty. Apparently it just became unripe as he swallowed.
Recovering from the banana, he said the next phase of his solution, "And hope Rose does the right thing."
"…So…All We Do Now Is Wait?" said Danny skeptically, "What Did Rose Tyler Do To Cause The Paradox?"
The Doctor smiled, "She saved her dad from death when he was supposed to die."
"Humans…"
"Yeah," agreed the Doctor as he grabbed a tin of tuna, "Tuna?"
Though Daleks were not capable to showing expressions through their metal bodies, the Doctor felt this was completely taken back and was perplex by the offer. "Tuna? What Is Tuna?"
"Fish, this one is right in it's prime," said the Doctor as he pulled the tab and gulped the contents down.
"You Are Disgusting."
Time passed as the two unlikely pair, a Time Lord and a Dalek, sniped at each other, argued over pointless things. One would think that they were like old buddies.
That hated each other's guts, yes, but sorta. If you ignore the evil looks they give each other when they think the other isn't looking…
Then, inexplicably everything disappeared. Danny found himself back in the TARDIS, sitting in the same very spot when the Doctor and Rose left. Shock settled in as he realized the Paradox was resolved, resulting in everything that had happened to revert back to normal.
Rose! He had forgotten about her. Moving quickly, the Dalek headed towards the door, but stopped at the sight of her crying in the street, over a body.
Ah yes. Her father.
She got up and took her place next to a waiting Doctor, both walking towards the TARDIS hand in hand. He moved back as the door opened. As Rose sat numbly down in a seat and covered her face with her hands. Danny glanced at the Doctor, who looked away as he prepared the TARDIS for it's jump into the Vortex.
Never had a Dalek felt more helpless.
- - - - -
Sorry for the lack of updates, but Finals are almost over. And then I'll be able to get back to my fics shortly. Cheers!
- TARvA
