.oOo.

Doctor Who

{Something Old}

:Chapter Four:


"So, has anyone taken a look outside?" asked the Doctor—no, no, he was the Tenth now, wasn't he? He still needed to get used to that.

"We can't," said the Fifth, peering at the scanners while the Sixth nearly wrenched the jerry-rigged bike pump off the console in an attempt to get the TARDIS to behave. "As far as I can tell, we're still in the vortex. If we open those doors we could be sucked out into space...or worse."

"What in Omega's name happened to the console?" the Sixth demanded irritably. "A bike pump? A Typewriter? Too lazy to visit a repair shop?"

The look the Ninth shot him closed the Sixth's mouth with an audible snap, before he drew himself up with a huff and crossed his arms—intimidated, but unwilling to show it. The Tenth sighed just a little bit enviously, missing that little something about his past life that caused even the indomitable Sixth to shut up.

"We won't know what's outside until we look, will we?" the Ninth said, striding confidently towards the doors.

"What are you...? No—wait!" the Fifth cried, almost tripping over his own shoes as he rushed towards the other Doctor in a panic.

"Are you mad?!" the First demanded, jumping to his feet in alarm. "We'll all be killed! Come away from there at once!"

"Oh, my giddy aunt!" the Second flustered. "Someone stop him!"

But the Ninth had already seized the door handle and pulled it open—the others braced themselves—and...

"Looks like somebody's bedroom to me," the Ninth observed casually, poking his head outside.

"What?" the Third demanded. "But that's impossible. The scanners..."

"Have been known to be wrong on occasion," the Tenth smiled lightly, and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he strolled casually through the doors, not a little smug that he was the only one not to have panicked. Granted, he was the only one who really knew the Ninth, so it was a bit of an unfair advantage.

As the others exchanged somewhat chagrined looks, the Tenth stood and admired the room he found outside the TARDIS. It must belong to a girl, if all the stuffed animals and bright pastel colors were anything to go by. The cheery wall-paper reminded him of the Fifth's striped trousers, only sky-blue instead of beige. A canopied four-poster bed stood against the wall opposite the window, covered in a downy patchwork quilt and a small army of toys. Lacy white curtains framed the floor-to-ceiling window-seat, which offered a lovely view of the ocean-side mountains in the distance, and the quaint little town nestled into a valley near the shore.

Kites and wind-chimes and carved winged creatures hung from the arched ceiling, sprinkled with fairy lights and glow-in-the-dark stars, and winding among them was a an actual toy train track. He grinned, and resolved to nail a train track to his own ceiling as he watched the little red engine quietly chug along upside-down. Whoever slept here obviously had an appreciation for books, too, and he was more than a little delighted to find several of his own personal favorites stuffed among what had to be a hundred other titles. Only...

Well, that was odd.

Those books ranged through a number of different times and places, some of them thousands of light-years apart, and separated by eons. The only other place he knew of to have such a collection, other than his own, was the Library. Whoever owned these must travel almost as much as he did.

"Where do you suppose we are?" the Third mused aloud, obviously having noticed the same thing. For once, the Tenth was at a loss. It didn't happen very often, and the feeling bubbled in his gut with a kind of nervous giddiness. Nervous, because he didn't know. Giddy, because he didn't know.

"Someone open a window," grouched the First, his brows furrowed irritably. "The air is positively stifling."

"You're right, it does feel a bit stuffy in here," the Fifth replied, moving amiably to oblige. "Rather nice bedroom, though. I wonder who - "

"Oh, my word!" shouted the Second, and several of the Doctors whirled, bracing themselves for whatever creature had been hiding in the closet or was crawling out from under the bed—"I found a recorder!"

"Oh, is that all?" the Third groused, deflating like a popped balloon and shooting his past self an irritated look.

"What do you mean, 'is that all'?" the Second retorted, clutching the flute to his chest and drawing his brows together in wounded consternation. "Just because you don't have any appreciation for music..."

"I appreciate it just fine, thank you very much," the Third snapped. "It's your butchering of it I can't stand."

"Well, we can't all be musical savants, can we?" the Second practically shouted. "And I don't imagine you're any better at playing than I am!" He was puffing himself up rather comically now in indignant rage, and the Tenth found himself having to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

"Enough, the both of you!" the First barked, and the two Doctors grudgingly backed away from one another. "Let's find out where we are, hm? Preferably without all this childish bickering."

"Oh, but what's the point of being an adult if you can't be childish now and again, eh?" the Fourth grinned with a conspiratorial wink at the First, who blinked bemusedly back at him, before he swept towards the door with long, confident strides, the tails of his scarf trailing out behind him. "This way, I believe," he said, and led the way into the hall.

They found that the rest of the house, much like the bedroom, was an eclectic collection of things from all over space and time. Most of the furniture seemed to lean towards the early Victorian era, but the TVs and computers and things all seemed to come from the late 21st century and upwards. Some of the phones were vintage rotary dials, and in one room a cat-clock hung on the wall, its eyes and tail twitching back and forth. The artwork was another story entirely, and appeared to have been taken from all over, from cave-paintings to contemporary, from Earth to Androzani.

The house itself was enormous. Every room was unique, all showcasing different themes or eras or cultures. Great spiraling staircases snaked their way up and down and sideways, leading to secret rooms or hidden hallways or nowhere at all. There were bookcases disguised as doors, and doors disguised as walls, and walls disguised as paintings, and paintings disguised as windows. The Tenth had glimpsed a vast library, but he didn't dare step inside, knowing he'd be engrossed in that collection for hours. The Second had found a music room in the west hall, and had to be forcibly dragged away. The Ninth discovered the full-sized movie theater, where someone must have been watching the Looney Tunes, but the seats were left empty now. He paused to watch Daffy Duck get his beak blown off for the umpteenth time, smiling in amusement, before he moved on. The Third and Seventh, meanwhile, had found a fully stocked science lab and were studying the multiple experiments set up on the marble tables.

"I'd almost say this place has just about everything," the Fifth commented, stopping to admire the baby grand piano standing in the corner, well-loved and much cared for, by the looks of it. "But I think there's something missing."

"Oh?" said the Second, looking up from his perusal of the neatly shelved collection of vinyl records. He held one of the Beatles' albums in his hands, and was eyeing the record player speculatively, wondering if it would be too terribly rude of him to play it.

"Yes," said the Fifth. "For a house this big, where are all the people? We should have run into someone by now. One of the servants, at the very least."

"Ah," said the Second, with a knowing little grin. "So you noticed that, too. Yes, it is rather strange, isn't it? Especially for this time of day..."

"That's another thing," the Ninth said as he stepped into the music room, followed shortly by the Tenth, and gently tapped the glass face of the grandfather clock standing against the wall. "None of the clocks are working, have you noticed? They've all stopped at the eleventh hour."

"But it's not just the clocks..." the Tenth murmured, moving to stand by the window so he could look out over the town that stretched below. "It's...time itself. It's almost like it's just...stopped. Can you feel it?"

"I...yes," the Second blinked, surprised he hadn't noticed before. He had always felt the flow of time, just as surely as he felt the wind or the pull of the sea whilst standing in the waves. He could see it in the air if he concentrated, billions of golden particles streaming out in every direction - and now hanging in midair like the dust in sunbeams, all frozen in place.

Time was absolutely still.

But that wasn't the reason all the hairs along his arms were standing up. Now that he'd realized what was happening - or rather not happening - it was the most obvious thing in the world...so why hadn't he noticed?

He rubbed unconsciously at his forearm, and shuddered. "My, my, my," he said gravely. "That is peculiar. But it's not quite an absence of time, is it? More like...we've somehow stumbled into the doldrums."

"That's it!" the Tenth cried. "Why didn't we see before? That's why it's so stuffy in here! It's because time has somehow begun to stagnate!"

"That might explain why the TARDIS was acting so strangely," the Ninth mused, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning deeply. "And why we haven't ripped a hole in the universe yet, with so many of us here. Converging timelines don't mean much of anything when time itself has stopped moving."

"But how is it even possible?" the Tenth demanded, restlessly pacing across the room, his hair sticking out in all directions from having worriedly run his hands through it so much. "To render a house completely unaffected by time...that is some fearsome technology. This place could go on...indefinitely. You could live forever in here!"

"Perhaps the town has been affected, as well as the house?" the Third suggested, stepping through the door to join them.

"Eavesdropping on yourself, were you?" the Second asked. "Have I become so suspicious?"

"Never you mind about that," the Third waved him off irritably. "I want to see how large an area we're dealing with. If it's the whole village, we may have a serious problem on our hands."

"Right then, let's go check out the locals," the Tenth grinned, his coat billowing out behind him as he strode off towards the front of the house. "And I'd really like to meet whoever it is that lives here. Whatever caused this has to be powerful, or it would have ripped apart the causal nexus—well, not that it still couldn't, but there's..."

That's when the Tenth pushed open the kitchen door, and what he saw stopped him dead in his tracks.

Blood.

A trail of dark blood was splattered across the floor, leading outside through the door on the other side of the room. At the other end of the trail was a girl. She was a young, pretty little thing who looked barely older than sixteen or so. Her hair was snow white, and tied into two thick braids beneath what appeared to be a blue police cap. She wore a pair of blue pin-striped coveralls that stopped about mid-thigh, over a white t-shirt and black leggings, as well as a pair of silver filigreed bangles that adorned each of her delicate wrists. Finally, a pair of dark blue high-top Converse painted with stars completed the outfit - now thoroughly ruined from the blood slowly pooling onto the floor beneath her.

Most striking of all, however, were the feathered silver-gray wings sprouting from her shoulder blades.

And she was still alive. Heaving and choking and sobbing into the kitchen tiles, and he could feel her agony from all the way across the room. A little gray terrier with wiry fur lay near her head, his black nose pressed against her cheek, and his tail tucked tightly beneath him. His ears perked at the Doctors' entrance, and he sat up with a whining growl in his throat, watching them with large, worried black eyes.

For one frozen instant, the Doctors stared in stunned horror, and then all moved at the same time. The Tenth was at the girl's side in a double heartbeat, skin chalk-white, throat squeezing, and his hands frantic, at a loss for what to do first. The little dog whined again, and showed his teeth for a moment - a warning. But he seemed to understand the Tenth didn't mean the girl any harm, and allowed him to touch her.

The Ninth dropped down on her other side, his jaw tight and his eyes dark with fury at whoever had done this, before gingerly trying to turn her over on her back to see the damage, careful not to bend her wings the wrong way. It looked like someone had opened her chest up with a blaster gun. Burns bloomed across her sternum, snaking their way over her shoulders and down her belly.

She looked up at him with a bright blue eye, the other covered with a black leather eye-patch, glazed over with pain and tears, as black blood ran from her mouth and nose. An old scar ran across the bridge of her nose, and another slashed her upper cheek along the rim of her eye-socket, intersecting with yet another scar that cut diagonally across her good eye and through her silver brow. Several more scars peppered her arms and hands, all of them thin and straight, like she had been repeatedly slashed with a sword. The Ninth's hearts clenched as he brushed some hair out of her face, before reaching for her throat in search of a pulse...and felt his stomach swoop when he found nothing but a steady hum.

"She doesn't have a heart-beat," he said faintly.

"Preposterous, she's obviously alive!" the First snapped.

"Come see for yourself," the Ninth gestured irritably. "I'm telling you, there's no pulse."

"Oh, that's alright," the Tenth said, shaking his head. "Lots of species don't have vascular systems..."

"Can you think of any humanoid ones that don't?" the Ninth asked pointedly.

"Well...no," the Tenth replied. "But that doesn't mean it's impossible. And she's clearly not human..." He gave a nod at the wings on her back, and resisted the urge to reach out and touch one. The only species he knew of that had wings like that were the Weeping Angels, but this girl certainly wasn't made of stone.

"If she hasn't got a vascular system, where's the blood coming from, then?" the Third wanted to know.

"Perhaps she's an android?" the Fifth suggested. "That might explain why it's black. Perhaps it's some kind of oil?"

The Tenth blinked, and glanced down at the blood coating his fingers, realizing with a start that the Fifth was right. It was black. He was getting old if he'd actually missed something like that.

"There's one way to find out," he said, laying a gentle hand against the girl's temple. "It's gonna be alright," he told her quietly. "It's okay, I'm the Doctor. We've got you. I just need to take a look, you're okay..."

Then he reached for her mind, and for a moment was overwhelmed by a surge of rolling emotion too confused to make out, but beyond that there was something...there was something so familiar about her that his hearts actually stuttered. But...for the life of him he couldn't remember where he knew her from. Because he did. He knew her, and it was right on the tip of his consciousness, if only he could remember...

The girl's brows were furrowed, and her lashes fluttered as he tried to lull her to sleep - but then her gaze flashed, something snapped in her psyche, and the Tenth jerked back just as her mental walls came down like a guillotine. A brief pain lanced through his temples at being so forcefully kicked out, and he reeled back on his heels in surprise.

"What?" he said, and stared down at the girl in complete, flabbergasted shock. The dog barked, bunny-hopping with the force of it, and flashed his teeth again, his feathery brows drawn together in an angry snarl.

"What happened?" the Ninth demanded sharply.

"She...she threw me out!" the Tenth cried disbelievingly.

"But...that's impossible," the Ninth replied, shaking his head in bewilderment. "Only a Time Lord has that sort of mental capacity..."

"Well, she's no Time Lord," the Tenth shook his head. "But she's not an android, either. This is...something else."

"Nevermind that, we need to get her into the TARDIS," the Third said, his voice edged with steel. "Quickly now!"

"Right," said the Ninth, and stooped to scoop the girl into his arms. She fought him, weakly pushing against his chest and beating at his shoulders with small fists, her wings fluttering uselessly.

"No..." she groaned. "No. Let...go...I won't...!"

"Shh, calm down, it's alright," the Ninth told her as he moved through the house back towards what he assumed to be her bedroom, the terrier trotting briskly at his heels. "It's okay, we're here to help, I promise."

But her panting breaths were turning into panicked sobs, hitching faster and faster until he was afraid she'd start hyperventilating. Her blood was slowly seeping into his shirt and trailing down his legs, and in her gaze there was a jumble of pain and fear and such a crushing grief he almost couldn't bear to meet it.

"What on earth is going on?" the Sixth demanded irritably, emerging from what looked like an aquaponics garden just as the Ninth pushed roughly past him.

"Out of the way!" he barked.

"Excuse me, who do you think...Who is she?" the Sixth cried, catching sight of the bloodied girl in his future's arms, and nearly tripping over in his hurry to catch up. "What happened?"

"Don't know," the Ninth bit out. "Why don't you make yourself useful and go get the Eighth, alright? We could use his help. He seems to be the best when it comes to telepathy. He might get through to her."

"I think I saw him in the library," the Sixth said, his voice oddly quiet, and his typically disdainful eyes darkening with concern as he turned abruptly on his heel and marched off.

By the time the Ninth arrived in the TARDIS medical bay, news of the injured girl had reached the other Doctors. It wasn't long before all ten of them were gathered in the room, watching grimly from the doorway or standing by the bed. The girl was thrashing, her wild gaze delirious, and despite her injuries she was surprisingly strong for such a little thing.

"Hold her down!" the Tenth shouted as the girl screamed obscenities at them, and took a vicious swing at the Ninth's face, catching him a glancing blow in the jaw. He jerked, and stared down at her in incredulous shock as she tried to aim another punch at him through dazed vision. The Sixth pushed past him and climbed up onto the girl's bed, where he pinned her wrists up over her head and tried to keep her shoulders straight while the Tenth assessed the damage. The Fourth followed his example, and gently settled his weight down on her legs, to stop her from kicking.

"I'm sorry," the Tenth said, brushing a hand over her temple. "I'm so sorry about this, I know it hurts, but I need to see..."

He gingerly unbuttoned her blouse, wincing as the girl clenched her teeth together and arched as the fabric was pulled away from scorched flesh. A strangled whine bubbled up in her throat, and he realized with a stab of compassionate admiration that she was fighting not to scream.

"Someone get the BRM," he said, running his screwdriver across her chest. His blood went cold at the readings, and he swallowed thickly. "I need to try and calm her down. At this rate she could kill herself..."

He moved forward and laid soft hands at her temples, waves of soothing coolness radiating from his fingertips. The girl sucked in a breath, and her vision unfocused just for a moment—and then her gaze snapped up, and her mind struck out at him again in a blind, inexplicable rage. She glared defiantly into his eyes, struggling uselessly against the other Doctors holding her down. The Tenth fought the urge to look away or draw back, struck breathless at the anger and hatred and grief churning inside her head.

"I...can't reach her," he gasped, fighting to keep a hold of her mind as she howled and clawed at him.

Another pair of hands joined his, and he sensed that his Eighth self had moved to the other side of the bed, dark eyes narrowed in concentration as he joined his own consciousness to that of his successor's. The Fourth and Sixth closed their eyes and focused as well, lending their own significant amount of willpower to the effort. Slowly, very slowly, the girl stopped struggling. Her good eye went hazy, but didn't close even with the four of them willing her to sleep. Instead, she stared unseeingly up at the ceiling, her chest heaving in short, sharp bursts and her whole body trembling badly. The Ninth let out a breath, and reached for the Biocrisis Reversal Modulator, a device he'd used all too often on his companions' bumps and bruises after a particularly nasty adventure.

The girl's shaking gradually subsided as her skin began to stitch itself back together, slowly closing in from the outer edges, and her breathing evened out as her eyes finally drifted closed. The Sixth and Fourth eased off of the bed, releasing her. The Fifth politely averted his gaze and activated the Defabricator, removing her bloodied clothes, before gently tugging the covers up over her.

The Tenth pulled out of her mind, and fell back against the adjacent bed, panting as if he'd just run a marathon. The Eighth didn't seem to be doing any better, and actually put his hands on his knees to try and catch his breath.

"She should be fine for now," the Ninth said heavily. "She just needs rest."

The little dog jumped up on the bed next to his mistress and laid his head in her lap, whining softly.

"Good dog," the Fourth murmured, smiling softly and running a hand along the terrier's back. The little dog gave a small wag of his tail in return, but didn't take his eyes off the young girl's face. A red collar was clipped around his neck, and the Fourth reached over to have a look at the tag.

And blinked in surprise.

Hello, it read. My name is K-9.

The Fourth read the tag again, remembering another little dog by that name (although his K-9 had been decidedly less furry) and wondered if it was coincidence. Could be - K-9 wasn't exactly the most original name for a dog - but somehow he doubted it.

"What on earth happened to the poor girl?" the Second asked, wringing his hands. "I didn't see any fire damage anywhere, so there couldn't have been an explosion. How did she get such terrible injuries?"

"I doubt it was an accident," the Ninth said, his fists clenched so hard his nails were digging grooves into his palm, but he didn't appear to notice.

"What was it, then?" asked the Third.

The Ninth sucked in a deep breath, and he looked up at them. "Those injuries aren't recent, and they didn't happen suddenly. The Modulator just healed days, not minutes."

"But...those burns looked fresh," said the Tenth, looking up from where he'd been holding his head in his hands. Fighting to keep the girl still had given him the beginnings of a migraine. "How can...How can injuries from days ago still be fresh? Unless..."

He stopped as realization hit his hearts, knocking the air from his lungs.

"Oh..." he said softly.

"Yeah," the Ninth muttered.

"Would one of you kindly explain what you're talking about?" the Sixth demanded, his voice somehow managing to be both commanding and petulant at the same time.

"The Modulator works by reversing time," the Tenth answered tonelessly, his face impassive and his eyes distant. "Specifically, the temporal energy around cells and molecules. It can reverse injuries, basically make it so they never happened. Obviously, the longer someone is injured...the longer it takes to reverse the damage."

"I still don't understand," said the Fifth uncertainly. "If she was hurt days ago..."

"No," the Tenth interrupted, his voice harsh and sharp. "She wasn't hurt days ago. I mean she was continuously injured for days."

"You mean...someone was torturing her?" the Second cried, his voice rising to almost a shout. "But that's...that's monstrous!"

"Who would do that to a defenseless girl?" the Fourth hissed, his wide eyes nearly white with rage and his teeth practically welded shut his jaw was clenched so hard.

"Not exactly defenseless," the Eighth murmured, rubbing at his temples in an attempt to stave off a head ache. "Her mind, did you feel it? Even with the condition she's in, it still took four of us to subdue her, and we still couldn't fully gain control. And there's...something else..."

"So you felt it, too," the Tenth said.

"...Yes," the Eighth replied quietly, staring down at the young girl's face with a contemplative look, like he was trying to remember something long forgotten. Almost of its own accord, his hand reached out and brushed a strand of snow white hair out of her face. Even with the scars, she was breathtaking little creature, but try as he might he couldn't remember where he'd ever seen her.

"Eh? What's that?" the First said.

"She feels familiar," the Tenth explained, huffing out a deep breath. "Very familiar. Like I should know her from somewhere, but I don't remember."

"No, it's more than that," the Eighth murmured, his fingers steepled and his his brows drawn into a darkening frown. "It's like I can't remember. Like something is preventing me. That worries me."

"Do you think it's her doing?" the Third suggested. "Perhaps she's blocking you."

"Maybe," the Eighth sighed, shaking his head. "There's no telling what she's capable of if she's that powerful, even in such a weakened state."

"If that is the case, then we must assume whoever attacked her is equally strong," the First surmised grimly.

"Yes, but then where are they?" the Sixth wanted to know.

"Perhaps she escaped her tormentors?" the Second suggested. "Maybe this is where she lives?"

"Hmm, yes, maybe," the Third hummed. "In any case, I expect we may find some answers in town."

"Indeed," said the First, drawing himself up and straightening his neck-tie. "Well then, while the young lady recovers, perhaps we should take a look around, hm?"

"Yeah, and maybe we can find the people responsible for doing this," said the Ninth darkly, his rough voice dropping into glacial fury. "I think I'd like a word with them."

He whirled and strode out the med-bay doors with long, purposeful strides, down the hall and through the console room, through the girl's bedroom and along the trail of blood all the way to the kitchen door, which he wrenched open with a forceful jerk—and stopped cold.

Beyond the door was a porch and a swing and three stone steps leading…nowhere. The world just ended. Outside, there was nothing but a white expanse of empty void, without sky nor ground nor up nor down. The Ninth blinked, shut the door, opened it, and looked again. Still nothing.

They were trapped.

"Fantastic," the Ninth said with a mirthless smile.


Whoever guesses who the mysterious girl is gets a cookie. I think some people already had an idea. I redesigned her from last time, to make it more obvious. Honestly, I thought about keeping her identity a bit more secret, but decided against it, so I'm just gonna run with it. I never really liked reading stories about complete OCs, especially in this fandom where there are so many lovely young people to put yourself into - I mean really, pretty much every companion in Doctor Who is kind of an OC if you think about it. So, yeah, this is my take on a certain character that will go unnamed for now. Truly, there aren't enough stories written from her particular perspective.

Also, I imagine fluffy!K-9 looks like the Tramp in Disney's Lady and the Tramp.

As always, read and review!

Raha