A happy birthday note to NewDrWhoFan, with my love and loads of huggles! Special thanks are due to OV, again, for the beta, and the discussions of variations on the Byzantium theme.
The newest Recipe for Disaster: Divide companion and Time Lord. Add aliens. Prepare blue-eyed Time Lord in silk instead of leather. Elevate one pink-and-yellow human. Return prepped Time Lord. Stir, gently. Add panic. Hide and watch.
The Invocation
The door of her royal suite was firmly closed behind her before Rose Tyler was willing to risk letting the perfect smile drop off her face. Come to think of it, did you call it a royal suite when you were a goddess, or was it a goddess suite? And if the goddess was also a queen, which title did you use first? Did any of it matter, when you hadn't actually agreed to run for either office, thanks?
Rose flung herself down on the rather large bed and very strongly considered having a royal and/or divine temper tantrum. Whose bright idea had this one been, then?
It wasn't hers, Rose knew that. She'd been a little stressed, lately, what with having to make sure she woke herself up thoroughly before she left her room in the mornings, and also with trying to figure out what to do with certain images in her mind. She'd been fine with the idea of curling up in front of the fire with a good book, especially if she could bully the Doctor into reading to her. It wouldn't do a damn thing for the thoughts in her head, but at least she'd have him there with her while she was thinking of how pretty he was without that jumper.
It certainly wasn't Jack's idea, either. Rose thought he hadn't really recovered from having his dignity beaten to a pulp when their last "simple visit" to an alien planet had turned misadventure. All the same, he'd covered it well. He'd claimed the whole idea was boring and told them to wake him when it was over. Then, he'd settled down with a beer and the Doctor's five thousand channel telly.
The Doctor had made a point of telling Jack not to watch the porn. Jack had made a point of pointing out that the Doctor knew which channels to forbid him.
And speaking of the Doctor...
"You'll love Byzantium, Rose. The planet, not the city, mind. They're both nice, I s'pose, but only one's got proper plumbing..."
"They wear cloth of gold, it'll look fantastic on - on you..."
"Tell you what, I'll buy you a sapphire the size of a hen's egg..."
"We can go during the Midsummer Fest - they've this enormous bazaar around the Temple to the Goddess Ze'ev Ra..."
Oh, she remembered. This one was all down to the enthusiastic salesman who had talked her into coming to this place, in other words, his Time Lordly Uselessness, the Doctor.
Normally, she didn't think of her Doctor as useless, honest. Normally, however, she wasn't deified due to failure of both the "Time" bit - they were two thousand years early - and the "Lord" bit - the locals thought he was a very badly behaved servant.
Usually it was only one or the other that went wrong.
They were so early that the goddess whose festival they were meant to be attending didn't seem to exist yet. The planet wasn't called Byzantium yet, either, because it hadn't been exposed to human beings. Or space ships. Or golden dresses.
So that's the scene set: cue sinister music, materialize the TARDIS in the middle of the town square, fade in bright sunlight, open the doors, and throw out a vast collection of natives to witness the laughing, shiny figure innocently stepping out into the wrong situation entirely. Add the Doctor, blustering out after her, dark and moody, and complaining that she'd slammed the door open. Sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch her arse firmly planted on purple cushions while they haul him off to "fix him".
On the plus side, they didn't seem to plan to sacrifice the Doctor - or anyone else - to her. That was better than that one planet where they'd wanted to feed her to the Doctor. He'd spent his time panicking and trying to rescue her, and she'd spent too much time not helping because she was too busy trying not to make the obvious pun.
And speaking of obvious puns, Rose jumped off the bed and paced the floor, wondering what exactly needed fixing. What the hell was she thinking, wallowing in self-pity, when the aliens might, at this very moment, be trying to get themselves blown up? She'd been paraded through the entire town three times, crowned in three different places, and been given three formal introductions since they'd run off with him. There wasn't a moment to lose. She'd be willing to bet that the whole "Oncoming Storm" thing would have absolutely nothing on a man like the Doctor attempting to defend his bits.
Besides, if they actually succeeded... She wasn't even going to entertain that notion. Not at all.
There was a knock at her door, just as Rose was trying to figure out if she should climb out the window or just walk out like she owned the place. She supposed she technically did, after all. Sorta. Rose stared at the door warily. What if the goddess Ze'ev Ra was like the Queen of the May in some old Earth cultures?
She dithered too long, and the door was opened by two of the locals, who marched in and blew some sort of instruments. They were a cross between a trumpet and a kazoo, but Rose didn't like to mention all that. The tall green humanoid Vizier let himself in after them.
"My Queen, we come to escort you to your throne room!"
Rose dared to take her chance. It was now or it might be never, after all. "Er... Any chance I can get the Doctor back soon?"
"The Doctor?" the Vizier questioned.
"Bloke I was arguing with?" Rose clarified. "Blue eyes, leather, gorgeous?"
Now the Vizier blinked his beautiful pink eyes at her and, Rose would swear, shrugged. It was a sort of squaring up of his oddly trapezoidal shape, but she could just sort of tell. She wondered idly if the TARDIS translated body language.
"He will be prepared for you, my Queen," the Vizier assured her. Rose knew he was giving her a huge smile because she'd seen that same expression on all the aliens as they waved and called for her while she was paraded around for them.
"Good enough," Rose said, and hoped it was. She kind of liked these people - they played kazoos and came in pretty colors. If the Doctor got mad at them and wanted to blow things up, she might have to stop him, and she really hated taking his explosives away from him.
Like any kid, he got all pouty when you wouldn't let him play with his toys.
She hadn't gotten around to even learning what Ze'ev Ra was goddess of, but she was starting to suspect, somehow, that it wasn't quite as scary as she'd first thought. Squaring her shoulders and determined to look as in-character as possible, Rose allowed the Vizier and his kazooing trumpeters - or trumpeting kazooers - to lead the way.
When Rose had worked at Hendricks, corporate had once sent in a bunch of experts to make sure everything that sucked the day before didn't start to suck again until after the inspection was over. One of the people Rose remembered was this ergonomics expert, a frizzy haired giant tyrant of a woman who had gotten them all floor mats for the tills and told them they were standing wrong. At the time, none of the girls had ever wanted to see the petty dictator again.
Right now, however, Rose would have made her co-Queen, if she'd just come to fix this thing. A vast gold throne was just no place for any sort of biped to sit. It was too tall and far too chilly, and Rose needed a pillow almost as much as she needed a footrest, and that only slightly less than she needed to breathe. She had resorted to standing to do most of her speech-making.
It had probably been just as well at first, because all of her speeches consisted of some variation on the whole, "Yes, thank you, next," theme. The natives, on the other hand, all wanted to be seen. They got up in front of her and made grand spectacles of themselves, talking like a Shakespearean monologue and performing like peacocks dancing with trained monkeys.
Their costumes were bright and silly, though Rose was honestly sure that Beefeaters' ones were worse, so she didn't think too much about them. Their tones were like American pundits, all bluster and wit and next to no point. Their posturing was pompous and grandiose and it didn't matter what any of them said, because all Rose kept seeing in her head was the Lollipop Guild from the Wizard of Oz.
She kept a straight face only with effort, but she couldn't help finding "her" aliens to be absolutely wonderful, mostly because this was her first deification. All the same, it would be much better if the Doctor would show up and tell her how to stop being a goddess.
She was just about to consider a good old fashioned tyrannical outburst when a thick cluster of her new guards came in with someone obviously held securely prisoner within their circle. Unless he had been told she was stuck here and waiting on him, Rose would be willing to bet the Doctor was contemplating tripping one of them so he could escape while they all fell like dominos.
How she knew it was the Doctor, Rose couldn't have said. He had a sort of weight on the air around him, if that made any sense, an aura of presence that no amount of posturing on someone else's part could manage to disguise. However, the Vizier very helpfully cleared her of any need to answer that question, even to herself, by thumping his staff on the ground twice. Everyone quieted, even the most pompous courtiers.
"My queen," the Vizier said, "your concubine."
The guards parted. Rose was so happy to see the Doctor that she didn't even register anything beyond the merry mischief sparkle in those shining blue eyes. She darted off the dais to join him, throwing her arms around him to hug him before "her" aliens even knew what they were seeing.
The Doctor hugged back, burying his nose in her hair. Rose burrowed into his chest, rubbing her cheek against the smooth... She had to admit to being puzzled about one or two... Squirming away from the protesting Time Lord in her arms, she looked him over in complete and utter shock. "What are you wearing?" she demanded, as quietly as possible.
He looked like he'd escaped from Arabian Nights. He had on those puffy, flowing trousers you always saw in that kind of film, with tightly cuffed ankles above rather large, pointy toed shoes. Her eyes traveled up the blue silk, stopping to linger at his trim waist. She didn't do it on purpose, but the bejeweled length of the darker blue sash cinched there had forced her eyes to a stop. Besides, if she stopped there, her eyes wouldn't... yeah, wasn't happening. They wandered, all dazed and dreamy, across the bare expanse of his chest.
She'd seen it before, seen all of it in fact, just last week. However, something in the clothes they'd put him in, or in the confidence of his stance, or in the fact that she was wide awake with the view this time, made Rose go all gooey and stupid. Why was she standing in the middle of an auditorium full of aliens? Why wasn't she climbing onto those narrow hips for the ride of a lifetime? Oooh, or bent over that throne and...
Her eyes finished their lingering, longing trip, meeting the Doctor's dancing blue gaze. His irises were indigo, his pupils enormous, something hot and promising in just a look. They were laughing, but it was with her, not at her. Rose tilted her head back. She didn't even stop to think that she wasn't supposed to do that, just offered her lips up for his kiss, his touch, his fire.
He definitely bent his head toward her. Rose was absolutely sure of that, completely certain that he was going to take her offer, and probably her right after.
"My Queen, does he meet with your approval?"
Rose gasped and looked away from the Doctor, feeling like she'd been slammed into a wall as she found the Vizier peering at them with a concerned little smile. It was like vertigo, like dizziness. "What?"
"If he doesn't suit you," the Vizier promised nervously, "we can fix him!"
Rose panicked. Before she knew it, she was moving to keep herself between the Doctor and the Vizier. "He's fine," she insisted frantically. "Better than fine, actually, he's completely perfect. Perfectly perfect, wouldn't trade him." She clung tightly to his hand in case they had to run for it, as she tried to maneuver them so that the crowd wasn't surrounding them. "Gonna keep him forever and ever and never let him go and - and - and make a god out of him, too, so he can stay with me, and..." The well of words went dry, and Rose gathered herself to make a run for it.
The Vizier gave her a wild-eyed look. "As my goddess commands," he agreed, looking quite baffled at her vehemence.
Behind her, where she'd sort of shoved him really, the Doctor chuckled. Rose blushed crimson.
"All hail the consort of our goddess!" the Vizier proclaimed.
And the crowd bellowed back, "All hail!"
Jack was waiting for them when they got back to the TARDIS. "So, how'd it go?" he asked cheerfully. His face was pure mischief, almost as if he'd known this would happen. Rose glowered at him suspiciously while he stood there and polished his halo at her.
"Would my mistress like chips?" the Doctor offered, and his halo was dangling from his horns as he said it.
"Ooh, kinky!"
Rose tried to glare at both of them, but there was something so wonderful about the pair of them so happy that she couldn't manage it. She leaned against the console instead, trying to drag up as much haughtiness as she had left. Mind, it was hard to say, "Yeah, all right," with dignity, but she managed it somehow.
"What happened?" Jack demanded, fascinated.
The Doctor insisted on telling him every word while Rose stood there blushing flaming crimson. She was a little sulky on that point, too, because if the Time Lord was still dressed as the genie of her wish come true, Jack would've probably stopped breathing. He'd managed to get his kit back, though, so Jack didn't even know that the Doctor had done something so hot it had melted her brain cells.
"How'd you get away?" Jack wondered.
"Easy," the Doctor announced smugly. "Told 'em I was taking their little goddess here on a divine honeymoon. They gave us a rousing send-off, and here we are."
"That's all?" Jack pouted. "Just... you're her concubine, and... nothing?"
The Doctor shrugged, and Rose forced herself to shrug, too. Jack rolled his eyes and stalked off. As he shoved open the console room door, Rose heard him grumble, "There is something wrong with you people."
Rose pulled out her superphone, just to check the time, or something, she didn't know what. She just needed to get a break from the Doctor's dancing blue eyes. Part of her wanted to be able to order him around for real, because she wanted to order him to do something completely filthy.
"Calling your mum?" he asked lightly. "Gonna tell her you got me cheap on eBay or something?"
Rose couldn't help laughing at that. "God, can you 'magine? She'll want me to sell you back."
"You can't," the Doctor reminded her. "Promised to keep me forever and ever, mistress."
Rose couldn't decide if this new game of his was going to kill her or get him jumped or what. So she decided on honesty, just to set him back on his heels a little. "Was a little afraid they were gonna neuter you! It was a big relief when they brought you back, hearin' them call you that, so don't mock it, yeah?"
"You wanna check?" the Doctor offered, his voice bright with barely suppressed laughter.
Rose groaned. "Stop picking on me!" she demanded.
The Doctor chortled. "Yes, mistress."
