Right, well I haven't done one of these for a VERY long time, so I figured I should. Disclaimer: I DO own Doctor Who… in an alternate universe.
Wrote this in a few hours. See, if you get writers block or sick of writing something (it was block by the way, just a little tired and slow with it) then write something else then come back, read over with new eyes.
Big thanks to heterodyne-girl for beta-ing!
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*Fires of Pompeii*
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What-ano?
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The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and grinned when he saw where they had landed. It was Donna's first real trip and he had set the controls to random. He was hoping they'd get a decent place, and boy did they get a great one!
"Ancient Rome!" he said, as Rose and Donna stepped up beside him. Rose took his hand. "Well, not to them, obviously; to all intents and purposes right now, this is brand new Rome."
Rose felt a small shiver run down her spine. Something was a little off about this place. It felt… she didn't know… stuck. It made her gut clench. She didn't know how to explain it, but she had felt it before. And it wasn't really the most pleasant of feelings. But she was too distracted by the sight of their new companion to worry.
"Oh my god!" Donna cried in delight. "It's so… it's so Roman!" Rose and the Doctor grinned and laughed as Donna spun around so she could look at everything. This was one of their favourite parts of taking a new companion. Rose could see now why he always had that huge smile on his face everywhere he took her. "This is fantastic!" Donna went on, giving them both a hug. "I'm here. In Rome. Donna Noble in Rome… This is just weird. I mean, everyone here is dead."
"Well, don't tell them that," the Doctor said when she spoke too loudly.
"As long as I don't get turned into a statue again, I'll be just fine," Rose said warily.
"Hold on a minute," Donna said flatly as she looked over their shoulder. "That sign over there is in English. Are you having me on? Are we in Epcot?"
"Nope," Rose grinned. "It's just the TARDIS translation circuits. Gets in your head, makes everything go English. Writing, speech. I kind of freak out the first time he told me… bit weird now considering I have the TARDIS and him in my head."
Donna looked at her weirdly. "You two are telepathic?" they nodded. "Hold on, so does that mean you speak Gallawhatsit and I just hear English?"
"No," the Doctor told her. "Gallifreyan doesn't translate. I speak whatever language I want to. Right now I'm speaking Latin. You are too."
"Seriously?" she said in surprise.
"Mmm," he assured her.
"I just said 'seriously' in Latin!"
"Oh yeah," the Doctor grinned.
"How do you say 'Time Lord' in Latin?" Rose said curiously.
"Dominus Tempus," the Doctor told her, articulating the words in a weird way so it sounded funnier than it already was.
Donna laughed. "What if I said something in actual Latin? Like 'veni, vidi, vici'? My dad said that when he came back from football. If I said 'veni, vidi, vici' to that lot, what would it sound like?"
The Doctor paused a moment. "I'm not sure… You have to think of difficult questions, don't you? Reminds me of someone else… before she became a bit of a know it all," he teased. Rose elbowed him in the ribs and he grinned cheekily.
"I'm going to try it!" Donna said excitedly. She walked over to a nearby vendor with a large grin.
"Hello, Sweetheart," he said. "What can I get for you, my love?"
"Um… Veni, vidi, vici," Donna said to him.
The man looked at her blankly for a moment. "Huh? Sorry? Me no speak Celtic. No can do, Missy."
"Yeah," Donna said exaggeratedly, a little disappointed. She headed back to Rose and the Doctor. "What does he mean 'Celtic'?" she almost whined.
"Welsh," the Doctor told her. "You sound Welsh. There we are. Learnt something."
"Congratulations, Donna," Rose grinned. "You actually taught a Time Lord something he didn't know." The Doctor just pouted indignantly as they continued on. "You know, I want to dress up again. You looked good in that toga." The Doctor pouted even more and Donna laughed.
"Him in a toga?" she cried in delight. "Actually, that's a good point. Won't our clothes look a bit odd?"
"Nah. Ancient Rome, anything goes. It's like Soho, but bigger."
"And you've been here before then?" Donna asked him.
"Yeah, a few times. Last time Rose and I got turned into statues. I was terrified. There was a statue of Rose in the London Museum a while back; I thought that it actually was her. Turns out I was the one who carved it. Before that I hadn't been back for ages. Before you ask, that fire had nothing to do with me. Well, a little bit. But I hadn't gotten the chance to look around properly. Coliseum - got stuck in there with a few dangerous animals once - Pantheon… Circus Maximus… You'd expect them to be looming by now. Where is everything?" he stopped and looked around, but there were walls on all sides. "Try this way," he said, dragging them off to one side.
"I'm not an expert," Donna said as they came into a clearing, "but there are Seven Hills of Rome, aren't there?"
"Ohh…" Rose said. "I may have been a statue most of the last visit, but I don't think that was there last time…"
"How come they only have one?"
The Doctor looked at the mountain in confusion. It seemed familiar…
Suddenly everything began to shake around them. Rose clung to the Doctor as the three of them toppled about. Around them vendors shouted and reached to secure their wares. Smoke began to rise from the mountain before them.
"It's a volcano," Rose gasped as she nearly felt to the ground, the Doctor pulling her up in time.
"Wait a minute!" Donna said as she tried to keep stable. "One mountain… with smoke… which makes this…"
"Pompeii," the Doctor stated darkly. "We're in Pompeii… and it's Volcano Day!" Everything slowly started to settle down.
"Sometimes I hate irony… and karma," Rose muttered. "This is what you get for teasing Jack about Volcano Day!"
"Let's go," the Doctor said, slightly panicked. He grabbed Rose's hand and started running to where the TARDIS was. Donna ran behind him, getting, but not fully understanding why he was so desperate to get away.
When they reached the spot, he whipped back the curtain it had been hidden behind… only to see that it was gone.
"You're kidding," Donna sighed. "You're not telling me the TARDIS is gone."
"Okay," the Doctor said.
"Where is it, then?"
"You told me not to tell you."
"Why does this keep happening? We need to put a homing signal on her…" Rose mused, thinking about when she had dragged it back.
"No!"
"What?" she said in bewilderment at the Doctor's reaction.
"You are never doing that again, you understand me?" he said forcefully. She could hear the fear in his voice. "Doing that almost killed you from exhaustion. You are not allowed to ever, ever again use yourself to lock onto the TARDIS."
"Okay, I promise I won't," she said, holding her hands up in a 'I surrender' stance. The Doctor planted a kiss on her forehead before running off to the vendor that Donna had spoken to before.
"Um, excuse me!" he said frantically. "Excuse me! There was a box. A big, blue box. A big blue, wooden box. Just over there. Where's it gone?"
"Sold it, didn't I?" he replied smugly.
"It wasn't yours to sell!" Rose said angrily.
"It was on my patch, wasn't it? I got 15 ses 30 for it. Lovely jubbly," he grinned, rubbing his hands together.
"Who did you sell it to?" the Doctor asked, his voice going squeaky in his anger and distress.
"Old Caecilius. Look… if you want to argue, why don't you take it up with him? He's on Foss Street. Big villa, can't miss it."
"Thanks!" he cried, and they began run off. Suddenly he ran back. "What did he buy a big, blue, wooden box for?" he cried in bewilderment.
The vendor just shrugged. Rose took his hand, and they began running again.
?...DW…?
They had had to ask for directions, not knowing where the hell Foss Street was. Rose really wanted to get out of here. Donna couldn't feel what they could. Ever since they had figured out that they were in Pompeii, the horrible feeling in her gut was getting worse. She realised where she had felt it before. Jack. It felt like Jack.
"Ha!" the Doctor cried as he ran back towards them. "I've got it! Foss Street, this way!"
"No, I've found this big amphitheatre thing… We can start there. We can get everyone together. Then maybe they've got a big, bell or something we could ring. Have they invented bells yet?"
"What do you want a bell for?" the Doctor asked in confusion.
"To warn everyone, to start the evacuation! What time does Vesuvius erupt? When's it due?"
"It's 79 AD, 23rd of August, which makes Volcano Day tomorrow," he growled pointedly.
"Donna, we can't," Rose told her. But Donna was too caught up in her planning to hear her.
"That's plenty of time. We can get everyone out easy!"
"Yes, except we're not going to," the Doctor said, grabbing her by the arm and attempted to take her in the right direction. But she pulled him back.
"But that's what you do! You're the Doctor, you save people. Rose, tell him he has to help!"
"I wish I could, but I have to go with him on this one," Rose replied glumly.
"It's a fixed point in time, Donna," the Doctor told her. "What happens, happens. There is no stopping it." Again he tried to get her to move, to no avail.
"Says who?" she asked defiantly.
"Says me," he said firmly.
"What, and you're in charge?"
"TARDIS. Time Lord. Yeah," he said.
"Donna. Human. No," she countered.
"Rose. Time Lord. Just shut up!" They both looked at her in surprise. "Donna, we can't tell them about tomorrow. It's a fixed point in time. You can change all the details you want. You can storm and rage and warn them all. You can send a few people out in time. But nothing will ever change the fact that tomorrow, Vesuvius will blow and thousands of people will die. Besides that, if you stand out here calling the end of the world, you're going to look like one of those homeless guys with a 'the end is nigh' sign."
Donna's mouth fell open and the Doctor had to try and stifle his laughter at the mental image that brought up. "But…" she squeaked.
"We don't like it any more than you. But I've messed around with established events before and it was not pretty. And I can feel it. It's not comfortable being here, Donna. Right now, I really just want to go home and get away from this awful place. Come on. TARDIS."
With that, she turned on her heal and strutted away. When she reached the next fork, she headed left.
"Other way!" the Doctor called to her. Even from a distance she could see his grin.
?...DW…?
As they walked through the entry to the house, another shock hit. Seeing a falling bust at the end of the hall, the Doctor quickly rushed to grab it.
"Whoa!" he cried as he caught it just in time. "There you go," he grinned, patting its cheeks.
"Thank you, kind sir," a man said gratefully. He had been rushing to catch it at the same time as the Doctor, but would not have made it. He had dark hair, shot through with silver and was wearing expensive looking robes. "I'm afraid business is closed for the day. I'm expecting a visitor."
"Oh, that's me," the Doctor said, shaking his hand. "I'm a visitor. Hello."
"Hi," Rose greeted him too. Slipping her had into the Doctor's and they walked past him into the house.
"Who are you?" he demanded, coming to stand before them, just as Donna caught up.
"I am… Spartacus," he decided. Rose tried her hardest not to laugh. It wasn't easy, especially when Donna spoke.
"And so am I," she said haughtily.
The man that they assumed was Caecilius looked between Rose, the Doctor, and Donna, especially noting the held hands. Confusion was written across his face, but then something clicked. "Oh! Brother and sister? Yes, you look very much alike."
"Really?" they both said in surprise, looking at each other for the resemblance. When Rose began to giggle at it, the Doctor pulled her closer.
"Oh, yes. And this is my wife, Helen."
'Helen?' she questioned through the link.
'Of Troy." She could hear the grin in his 'voice'.
'Helen of Troy. Really?'
'Well, she was so beautiful that the Goddess of Beauty herself gave her as a gift of *the most beautiful mortal*. I thought that other than the *mortal* part it was appropriate.' Rose rolled her eyes and gave him a mental nudge.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not open for trading," Caecilius told them.
"And that trade would be?"
"Marble." He placed his hand on his chest as a gesture to himself. "Lobus Caecilius. Mining, polishing and design thereof. If you want marble, I'm your man."
"That's good," the Doctor said, reaching for his psychic paper. "That's good, 'cause I'm the marble inspector." He held it up to them.
"By the gods of commerce, an inspection," a posh redheaded woman gasped from further inside the house. They went towards her, watching as she took a goblet from a young man's hand just as he was about to drink. "I'm sorry, sir. I do apologize for my son," she said, tipping the wine into the pool he was sitting on.
"Oi!" he protested.
"This is my good wife, Metella," Caecilius introduced her. "I - I must confess, we're not prepared for a-"
"Nothing to worry about," the Doctor assured them brightly. "I'm sure you've got nothing to hide." Rose could feel him brighten as she spotted the TARDIS. "Although, frankly, that object rather looks like wood to me." They started towards it.
"I told you to get rid of it!" Metalla hissed at her husband.
"I only bought it today!" he defended, rushing over.
"Ah, well. Caveat emptor," he replied. 'Buyer beware'.
"Oh," Caecilius said in surprise. "You're Celtic. There's lovely."
The Doctor made a small show of looking and measuring the TARDIS. "I'm sure it's fine, but I might have to take it off your hands for a proper inspection.
"Although, while we're here, wouldn't you recommend a holiday, Spartacus?" Donna tried.
"I don't know what you mean, Spartacus," he warned.
"Oh, this lovely family, mother and father and son… Don't you think they should get out of town?"
"Why should we do that?" Caecilius said curiously.
"Just for fun," Rose shrugged. "You deserve it. Compensation for the… wood."
"Well, the volcano for starters," Donna cut over top of her.
"What?" he said, puzzled.
"Volcano."
"What-ano?"
"That great big volcano right on your doorstep.-"
"Oh, Spartacus, Helen, for shame. We haven't even greeted the household gods yet!" the Doctor grabbed them both by the shoulders and dragged them over to a small shrine, beginning to flick it with water as he spoke. "They don't even know what it is. Vesuvius is just a mountain to them. The top hasn't blown off yet. The Romans haven't even got a word for volcano. Not until tomorrow."
"Oh, great," she said sarcastically. "They can learn a new word… when they're dying."
"Donna, stop it!" both Rose and the Doctor growled.
"And you," the Doctor looked at Rose. "What are you doing? You know it's a fixed point in time."
"Yeah, this is, but they're not," she whispered. "Look, it's not like I'm gonna do what Donna wants and run around shouting about a volcano. But we can try, can't we? We can just try. One family, two. It won't change a thing." She could feel Donna glare at her.
"So you want a thousand or so people to die?"
"No. But Donna-"
"Look at him, that boy," Donna nodded to the son. "How old is he, sixteen? And tomorrow he burns to death."
"And that's our fault?" the Doctor snapped.
"Right now, yes!"
Their arguing was cut off as a voice boomed from behind them. "Announcing Lucius Petrus Dextrus, Chief Augur of the city government!"
