Looking for Trouble at Decade
The Doctor's legs carried him to the last place the TARDIS had been. After sneaking back through the locked gate and making his way through the closed buildings and rides at the pier he found his way to the center of the park. The bodies had been dragged off, he noticed, and the blood had been covered in a layer of snow.
Standing on the spot where the TARDIS had last been, he reached out with his senses. Nothing. No tingle of her presence. No friendly screech of brakes. No warm glow of her light.
"It's very odd," the Doctor said to a lamppost that stood between two closed up buildings. It was, he decided, much more willing to listen than some vampires that he wasn't going to name. He had originally thought that the TARDIS's HADS system had triggered. "That's Hostile Action Displacement System," the Doctor explained to the attentive lamppost, "it dematerializes the TARDIS when it's in danger."
But the TARDIS should have returned within an hour. Certainly not days later. Unless, of course, she was feeling finicky.
The Doctor prodded the lamppost thoughtfully. He stuck out his tongue, tasting the air. "A reason the TARDIS wouldn't show up in an hour..." he mused, scuffing his shoe against the cement, "is if the danger wasn't gone."
The thought made a chill run up his spine. The Doctor twisted around, looking for the danger at hand.
It was a very subtle danger.
It looked just like an empty carnival at a pier. Which did have a creepy sort of feel, but possibly a normal sort of creepy. It was difficult to tell.
The Doctor pointed a warning finger out at the empty game booths. "I'm onto you!"
An empty cup blew by innocently in the cold breeze. Just in case, the Doctor directed the sonic screwdriver at it, which told him that someone had peed in it at some point, but it was otherwise very normal.
Clearly, this called for an Investigation. Nodding to himself, the Doctor stepped between two closed up buildings, looking for clues.
"It's possibly maybe, I-could-be-wrong, not the HADS system," the Doctor said as he let himself back into the apartment. "Unless it is. I thought I might try to sort out a sensor, you know, just to eliminate the option. As it were." He slipped his jacket off of his shoulders and hung it on the coat tree just to test how that felt. It was a familiar gesture and he liked the feel of it. Or the idea of the feel of it. He was feeling much better about everything after having walked out some of the tension in his legs and spending time trying to dig up problems. Even if no particularly noteworthy problems surfaced.
"I did run into a very nice chap called Jeb," the Doctor continued, as he walked deeper into the living room. Angel wasn't in sight. Nor was he in the kitchen when the Doctor stuck his head through the doorway, "and he said that we could visit a place called Decade. Apparently people can get up to trouble there. He said it in an odd sort of way, though..." the Doctor paused, remembering Jeb's odd smile and raised eyebrows.
Angel wandered out of the bedroom, blinking slowly at the Doctor, a toothbrush held in the side of his mouth. He raised one eyebrow at the Doctor.
The Doctor consulted his watch. 2:47 am. Right. Angel tended to go to sleep around now. "Or tomorrow," the Doctor allowed. "In the morning."
Angel rolled his eyes and continued to brush his teeth.
"You know, whenever you get done sleeping," the Doctor waved a hand dismissively. "I'll occupy myself. Don't worry." Not that Angel looked particularly worried, but still. Maybe the Doctor would occupy himself with a short nap. That certainly was something to do. But he wasn't actually that tired. Usually he had the TARDIS with him so he didn't have to deal with the huge gaps of time that resulted from other people spending 8 hours sleeping every day.
Angel grunted and disappeared. The water in the bathroom faucet came on and a moment later, shut off again. Angel returned. "Don't you ever sleep?" he asked from the doorway to his bedroom.
"Nah. It's a waste of time," the Doctor answered without giving it much thought. He picked up his little device from Angel's bookshelf and turned it in his hands. "Honestly, it's shocking you people get anything done."
Nevermind that the Doctor did actually sleep. When viewed as a ratio, he actually slept a little more than the average human. Just on a different schedule. But he liked the idea of himself as a person who was always available, so he didn't bring this up.
Angel gave him a long, curious look. Then he slowly said, "Huh. I guess that's why you're so…" he waved his fingers vaguely in the Doctor's direction.
"Fun?" the Doctor suggested. He flashed a grin at Angel.
"Your word, not mine," Angel replied. "So what are we supposed to be finding at Decade? Aside from trouble?" He gave the Doctor an odd look. "Unless...you want to find...trouble." His odd look became the same one Jeb had given the Doctor when he'd said 'trouble' earlier.
The Doctor tried to sort out what that look meant, but the connection wouldn't click in his mind. "I'll explain in the morning," he said calmly. He set the device down again on the bookshelf. He liked the idea of having the whole night to sort out what that look meant before he actually had to explain.
The look lingered, but Angel nodded. "If it turns out that it's a sure-fire way of getting your ship back here, I'm going to be very upset," he said, turning to head back into his bedroom.
"I promise I'm mostly uncertain about the likelihood of how exactly that might happen!" the Doctor called after him. "Oh, and Angel?"
Angel stuck his head back out.
"Do you have a hammer?"
Without a word, Angel closed the door to his bedroom.
Angel had been lying awake in bed for nearly an hour. When he'd first returned to consciousness, he'd noticed the suspicious quiet of the flat and then remembered his predicament. He was rooming with the Doctor, Judith was missing, and there was nothing he could do except find spells that might help him locate a spaceship that was Nowhere.
And also check Judith's messages, which only ever made him feel worse to see that several of her friends were trying vainly to reach her and know that he was going to have to come up with something to tell them that didn't involve the fact that he knew her at all; and that was a problem that always seemed far too heavy to solve in the moment.
Unwilling to tackle the day, he'd lain there, telling himself that he would get up as soon as he had a plan, but plans were not forthcoming. He grunted irritably up at his ceiling.
A clatter sounded, muffled through the bedroom door. And then a scraping of metal on metal.
Angel frowned.
Something started to emit a deep electric hum in the other room, setting Angel's teeth on edge.
"No," the Doctor's muffled voice scolded whatever it was, "not like that." The noise cut out, only to start again at a slightly different pitch. "Ah-ha!" the Doctor said, his boots clomping against the wood floorboards.
Angel debated with himself for a moment. One the one hand, getting explanations resembling anything near satisfactory was about as impossible as noontime walks for Angel, but on the other… It wasn't like he was getting anything done laying there.
He sighed deeply, threw the covers off, and went to find a pair of trousers before emerging into the brightly-lit living room. Angel even had to shield his eyes a bit.
When his eyes finally adjusted, he seriously debated just going back to bed. A contraption of some sort had been erected in the space between his door and the seating area. Large as a Christmas tree, the base seemed to be a very large speaker, with wheels and levers and antenna sticking out of it at every angle. Next to it, grinning from ear to ear and looking disgustingly pleased with the mess, stood the Doctor.
"Ah! Angel!" he practically shouted. "You're up. Good. Now I can use the hammer." He twisted around twice, looking for the hammer, only to discover it in his back pocket. Pulling out the hammer and giving it a warning glare, probably for hiding behind him, the Doctor slammed it three times against a lopsided wheel until it shifted its position.
Angel rubbed at his forehead. A headache had already started to develop, and the hammering didn't help. He groaned at the back of his throat and then asked wearily, "What are you doing now?"
"Investigating!" the Doctor said cheerfully as he hammered away at another part. "But other things, too. I fixed your toaster while I was in the kitchen. Also, I learned that the Gret demon clan was not involved in our little battle the other day, but they did think it a shame that you hadn't died horribly."
Angel's fingers moved to his temples. "Sil-Gret or Nar-Gret?" he asked. Then, realizing that it didn't actually matter, since the only thing the cousin clans agreed on was how much they hated Angel, waved his fingers dismissively. "Never mind. I have a toaster?"
"Both, actually. I've been making the rounds," the Doctor said this like he had waited his whole life to say "making the rounds." Thankfully, he shoved the hammer into his back pocket again and rubbed his palms together, watching the movement on the newly hammered contraption. He looked up after a moment. "Of course you have a toaster. Everyone has a toaster."
"I don't eat toast."
"Well, that explains why it was in such poor shape."
Angel wondered briefly what old appliance he used to have had started its life as one thing and ended up "fixed" as a toaster, but there were more important questions to be answered and Angel felt that he should save his luck. "So what's this thing do?" he asked, nudging the base with his bare toe.
The Doctor jumped to Angel's side. "It's brilliant, isn't it? This isn't a normal timey-wimey detector, this is a Super Timey-Wimey Detector!" He spread his arms to take in the marvelousness of the contraption in front of them. "It's bigger than the last one I built," he whispered unhelpfully.
Angel looked sideways at the Doctor and crossed his arms. "If you had to kiss the last one to get it to work, I don't want to know what you have to do to this one."
The huge grin dropped into a scowl. "Angel," he sighed, "it's already working. And I certainly don't want to be feeding it any of my biodata. I'm going to have to eliminate any results relating to me as it is. I am, after all, a bit of a temporal event myself." He tugged proudly at his bow tie.
"Right," Angel agreed, understanding none of that. "Of course. So what's it do? In English."
The Doctor smiled knowingly at Angel. "It goes 'ding' when there's stuff," he said solemnly.
Angel continued to glare at him as the machine continued to whir placidly. "In Spanish, then."
"It doesn't get more simple than that," the Doctor said. He reached out and adjusted a bottle cap that had been turned into a knob. The machine's tone deepened and a paper fan clicked out from the side of it.
Angel sighed, now-familiar despair beginning to creep back in. "Alright," he agreed in a defeated tone. "Ding. Stuff. I'm going to go eat." And then maybe try contacting Griska, one of the (dozens of) intradimensional deities he'd found in his books. As one of the less nasty minor gods, she only required a triple sacrifice that didn't even have to be human. Maybe he could pay a visit to one of the Gret clans tonight… Blow off steam, if nothing else.
Leaving the Doctor with his...contraption, Angel shuffled into the kitchen. He had gotten out a bag of blood and lit the stove when the Doctor stepped into the doorway of the kitchen. His enthusiasm had apparently been left in the previous room: he fidgeted nervously in the doorway, his fingers mingling in front of him until he pulled his hands apart and shoved them into his jacket pockets.
"What?" Angel asked, now crossing the room to the cabinet with the mugs.
One of the Doctor's hands made a break for it and tugged at his bangs. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mean for everything to..." his hand waved at the room vaguely until he shoved it back into his pocket, "that's just how it seems to turn out."
Angel relaxed a bit. So the Doctor wasn't totally clueless about how irritating he was.
He gave a little shrug and picked up his favorite mug, a black-glazed pottery piece. "It's okay," he said. "If it helps us find her…"
The Doctor coughed and scratched at the back of his neck. "Well, from a certain perspective..." he mused, "this could be about locating Judith. But it's actually, more directly, looking for dangerous things here." He tilted his head, like he was trying to listen to his own words. "Well, more like weird things here. Not necessarily dangerous. More just things that make a TARDIS a little twitchy."
Angel looked up curiously from where he'd set the mug beside his stove. "What kind of dangerous things?"
The Doctor stood up taller and pulled at the bow tie again. "If I knew that I wouldn't need a detector." He grinned and stepped in closer. "But my working thesis is that the TARDIS should have been back by now, and if it's not back by now, well, I wonder if there's something dangerous keeping it away."
Angel straightened, now turning to fully face the Doctor. He tilted his head a little, not quite ready to let the hope that had kindled take hold. "So…" he said slowly. "You're saying that the TARDIS jumped because something was after it…" He took a step forward. "And that something is still around, keeping it from coming back…" He took another step. "So if we find this thing and kill it...the TARDIS comes back? And Judith with it?" He stopped a few feet from the Doctor. "We have a mission?"
The Doctor started to back away, but stopped and pulled a brave face. "Yes," he said. "Something like th-" But the Doctor's words were cut off under Angel's sudden choking embrace.
"Thank you." Angel said, trying not to let his voice crack. Then he pushed away from the Doctor as he said excitedly, "I'm going to go put on a shirt!" and dashed off.
It took Angel less than 10 minutes to get dressed down to his boots and leather coat, and loaded up with knives, dirks, daggers, stakes, and a sword or two and open the front door, where he turned around, looking for the Doctor.
"Well?" he said. "Let's go get this thing."
The Doctor, who had been blinking in confusion as Angel had geared up, grinned. Tugging his coat sleeves into place, he strode over to Angel and nodded. "Yes," he agreed, "let's."
They both headed out, Angel's coat swirling behind him as he rounded the stairs down and the Doctor frowning seriously as he marched along behind. They had made it two blocks when the Doctor asked, "So do you know what it is?"
"Nope," Angel said confidently as they marched along. "That's the first part of the mission. I learned that from Doyle: you get a mission, then you figure out what it is."
The Doctor grinned. "Sounds like a very wise person."
"Not really," Angel replied, turning left and leading the way across the street.
The Doctor laughed, jogging along beside Angel.
Their first stop, because it was close and he was easily intimidated by Angel, was Ferguson's Occultte Shop. The electronic chime didn't clang any louder when Angel burst through the door than if he'd opened it gently and politely, but the door did make a nice loud crash as it banged against the wall.
The tiny Korean man behind the counter and several customers milling around jumped in shock.
"Ferguson," Angel barked sternly. "Tell me about the new player in town."
Ferguson paled. "N-new player? Angel, I- I don't-"
"Ah," Angel sighed. "Right." And he turned around and left the shop. The Doctor paused, waving at the new person.
"Hello!" he called through the door. "I'm the D-"
"No time," growled Angel, dragging him away by the collar.
The next stop was the Dragon's Crown, where they might actually find answers. It was several blocks away, though, and Angel's mind, fueled by hope and directed by familiarity, was working hard at the problem as they walked.
Something dangerous that wanted the TARDIS. Something clever enough to almost manage it. Something charismatic enough to gather followers. Something other than the giant floating psychic fish who had already tried and gotten blown up, of course.
"Doctor," Angel said as he pushed his way to the front of a crowd waiting for the light to turn. "Why would anything want to steal a TARDIS?"
The Doctor coughed. "Aside from how much fun they are?"
"Yes."
The Doctor scratched his head. "Well, there's the time travel bit," he mused. "You can get yourself into all kinds of trouble with that. Wanting to kill Hitler...wanting to remind yourself to not ask that girl to the prom, seeing how well that Christmas present really went off, trying to take out a patent on things you're too dumb to invent." He shrugged and they both stepped out into the street with the crowd, Angel frowning with thought. "You could also use it to hide. The TARDIS is one of the safest places in the universe."
The Doctor took a right turn when they reached the other sidewalk. "You could use it to gather information. It has an exhaustive information system." He paused, looking up at a building that interested him. "Also, world domination."
Angel hmmed thoughtfully. World domination was promising.
"And then there's the obvious travel option. Sometimes you just need to get somewhere." The Doctor looked over at Angel. "And several things that I won't mention out loud. Shouldn't give people ideas." He furrowed his brow, thinking. "Actually," he said, "I can't think of a reason not to steal a TARDIS. I'd do it myself if given the opportunity."
Angel shook his head slowly. "No, this guy's smart. He knows what he was after, and there are other ways to travel. He wants something specific. A weapon, maybe?"
"The TARDIS is not a weapon," the Doctor said firmly.
"But couldn't it be, in the wrong hands?"
The Doctor glared at him, something very dark behind his eyes. Shaking his head, he said, "I think a more important question is who is capable of operating a TARDIS once they have it? You can't just pull someone off the street and assume that they can figure it out."
Angel nodded seriously. "So we're looking for an evil genius mastermind. Shouldn't be too hard: that type gets cocky fast."
Angel pushed open the door to the Dragon's Crown, the comforting smells of wood and tobacco washing over him, and made a beeline for Marty at the bar.
Marty, it turned out, knew little more than Ferguson, but Angel at least liked Marty, so he didn't hold it against him as much.
Angel did hold it against the half a dozen others he asked that night, though. Just because he needed to hold it against someone. After Grak - a Chyr demon that Angel played kitten poker with - slunk away when his questioning was over, Angel turned to the Doctor.
"We've tapped out this place," he said. "Did you mention something about Decade last night?"
"Oh! Yes!' the Doctor said, turning from where he had been tapping away at the electronic menu. "A chap named Jeb mentioned it. But more as a suggestion than anything else. And keep in mind that it's just as likely - more likely really - to be a thing as a person. The TARDIS doesn't take off every time someone has a negative thought."
"Right," Angel murmured thoughtfully. "Like an evil megalomaniac robot?"
"More...nuclear warhead," the Doctor said. "You know, something bad."
"Right," Angel murmured again. Then he straightened up and said, "Well, I know the owner of Decade and she knows a lot about the...shadier aspects of town. It's worth a shot." He started to lead the way out of the pub.
The Doctor followed a few seconds later, jogging to catch up. "Just as a point of interest, how many nuclear warheads are in the area?"
"To my knowledge, none," Angel replied. "But nuclear warheads are more of a human thing. When it comes to destruction, I keep to the demon side of things." He held the front door open for the Doctor.
The Doctor stepped through, but turned as he did to keep looking at Angel. "But that doesn't mean our problem is with demons."
Well. Damn. It didn't, did it? "If it doesn't have to do with demons…" Angel said slowly, leading the Doctor over to the nearest tram stop. "I'm not going to be of much help. Emily might… She has to deal with the humans, with her business…"
The Doctor clapped his hands and bent forward at the waist to look at the signage for the tram stop. "Let's go meet her then," he said. "I love meeting new people."
Ten minutes later, they stepped off the tram in Uptown; the city's Green Initiative. With its solar-powered lighting and leaf-clad buildings, it was like walking in a forest more than a city, although the electric cars, brightly-lit businesses, and crowds of people shattered that illusion a bit.
The people in line at the front of Decade were heavily tattooed and pierced, and the line to get into the club stretched far off down the block. Angel, however, had access to the back, so he directed the Doctor down the side alley and then to the left toward the back entrance.
"I've been debating about something," Angel said, interrupting the Doctor's story about pirates - or possibly two different stories about pirates that kept bleeding into each other - as they approached the door, manned by a grouchy, fat half-goblin. "I'm not sure if I should warn you about this place."
"Warn me?" the Doctor said, pulling his shoulders back, "Beyond the general warning of everyone saying this is where to look for trouble? Is there a reason we can't go in the front?" He turned, walking sideways as he looked back over his shoulder toward the front of the building.
"That's...kind of what the warning's about," Angel said. But he had (maybe intentionally in his subconscious) asked too late and they joined the small queue of vampires waiting at the back entrance. "This isn't a normal establishment."
"No," the Doctor said, turning back around and leaning to one side to get a better look at the people in front of them in the queue. Several of the vampires were wearing their demon faces. "I see there's a certain amount of segregation."
"That's putting it nicely," Angel told him. "This is the line to get into the...ahh…" He lowered his voice. "Human bar."
"Oh. Oh. Oh!" The Doctor looked at Angel and then leaned to look at the line again.
"Yeah," Angel nodded. "Emily's a...vampire. She created this...establishment. For...vampires…and their...food." He shifted uncomfortably.
"So the people in the front," the Doctor said, nodding his head back toward the front of the building, "are just the snacks?"
"Well not all of them," Angel said quickly as the line moved forward. "Only the willing ones get taken back. Not that they always know what they're… It's very selective."
"Ah," the Doctor said. He was silent for a tense moment while they moved forward. "And who does the selecting?"
"That would be Emily," Angel replied as they moved forward again.
"Sounds...enchanting," the Doctor said. He reached up and adjusted how his bow tie was angled, from slightly tilted to the right to slightly tilted to the left.
They finally reached the front of the line and the half-goblin named Phil looked over Angel and then the Doctor. "Is this a patron or a guest?" he asked Angel.
"Neither," Angel said. "We just wanted a word with Emily."
"Ya don' have an appointment," Phil said.
Angel gave him half a smile. "Things are happening too fast for an appointment. Something extremely powerful is missing and we're hoping she has information about it."
Phil squinted at Angel and the Doctor like Angel had confessed to wanting to bring rainbows and puppies into the bar. Eventually he turned and hissed for someone inside the door just out of sight to go get Emily. "Would you like to wait in the lounge?" he said. He squinted at the Doctor again. "What are you anyway?"
The Doctor pulled his bow tie until it tilted to the right again. "I'm a Time Lord," he said, "If it matters."
"One of the gentlefolk, then?" Phil asked.
"I suppose so," the Doctor said.
Phil adjusted his posture. "Sorry, sir. Your illusion is particularly good."
The Doctor grinned first at Phil and then at Angel. "And I was worried it was getting a bit worn. Thanks," he said.
"Would you prefer to wait upstairs then?"
"Upstairs would be great," Angel said, latching onto that idea. Upstairs was the fairy bar. ...And fairy sex dungeon, but discreetly off to the side and behind a waterfall glamor. Upstairs would involve no vampires drinking human blood from scantily-clad bodies.
"Welcome to Decade," Phil said, sounding decidedly unwelcoming. But he stepped aside, allowing Angel and the Doctor to enter. Instead of descending the stairs in front of them to the vampire sex dungeon, Angel pulled the Doctor by his elbow toward the left and through the open doorway to the dim foyer. The entrance to the human bar was just in front of them, the elevators next to it, and just on the other side, Emily's closed office door. Angel pressed the call button.
"So what's upstairs?" the Doctor asked.
"The fairy bar," Angel replied. "It's a relatively new addition for the gentlefolk, since they have a significant population here in Ireland. And they're really touchy about the use of the land. Emily had it built about 15 years ago." And had won herself a very scary contingent of magical, psychotic supporters in the process.
"Fairies?" the Doctor said, sounding delighted. "I haven't met a fairy in years!"
"But you have met them?" Angel asked, craning his head back to look at the Doctor. The lift came and they entered the car. "You know the rules?"
"Don't ask more than three questions?" the Doctor said. "Come to think of it, they may have been on a different planet..."
"Try not to ask questions at all," Angel told him, pushing the button. "They can't tell a falsehood, so they don't like questions. Also, don't believe any answer they give you. They're great at twisting the truth. And never, ever make a promise or a deal with them. It's binding, and they'll come out ahead."
"I like them already," the Doctor said. He bounced on his toes. "Do I need to commit to pretending to be one?"
"Nah," Angel shrugged. "Hopefully Emily will be here soon and we won't have to talk with any of them."
The lift opened and they stepped out into a forest. This was much more like a forest than the forest of Uptown outside, with real tree trucks wide enough to sit four inside the carved-out notches, floor made of moss, and hanging flower-lights. Gentlefolk of all sorts flitted, swayed, and lumbered about. Angel pointed to an empty toadstool table that glowed blue and gestured for the Doctor to follow him over.
It was a bit short for both of them, and sitting on the mushroom cap chairs surrounding it was more like sitting at a traditional Japanese dinner table. Not far away, the waterfall glamor that hid the entrance to the sex dungeon thundered in their ears.
The Doctor looked around the room, bemused, but with a seriousness pulling at the corners of his eyes. "None of this seems particularly...explosive," he said.
"I don't think anyone here's going to be our guy. Or gal," Angel replied, looking around. "In fact, I don't really expect anything that dangerous to be here. Whatever mastermind is behind the threat that's keeping the TARDIS away, they're not going to be spending their evenings at a club."
"Right." The Doctor looked around again and then turned back to Angel. "Then why are we here?"
"To talk to Emily," Angel replied. "She's got a read on all sorts of dark and illicit activity in this city. Kind of like Marty, only on a much bigger scale. If whatever's keeping the TARDIS away is because of something supernatural, there's a good chance she'll know about it."
"Good. Good. I like people in the know."
A fairy about four feet tall with purple iridescent wings alighted next to them and asked for their order in a high-pitched voice.
Angel shook his head. "Nothing for me, thanks. We're just waiting for Emily."
The fairy sniffed. "Why aren't you downstairs, then? With your kind?"
The Doctor leaned forward as if the fairy had been addressing him and said, smiling, "I don't have a kind, but the man at the door thought I'd do better up here. I'm the Doctor by the way. Nice to meet you."
"Peridot," the fairy nodded to him. "Are you ordering something?"
The Doctor looked tempted, but eventually shook his head. "I'm drinking in the atmosphere," he said. "Very refreshing, by the way. Good job at that."
Peridot preened at the compliment. "Yes, well- Let me know if you need anything." His wings started flitting, lifting him a few inches off the floor, and he zoomed off.
The Doctor grinned at Angel. "Do the drinks cost you the color of your eyes here?" he asked. "That's a bit steep for me, to be honest. I didn't want to ask."
"Not the drinks," Angel replied. "Though I'd imagine back there," he gestured toward the waterfall, "anything goes."
"Ah," the Doctor turned in his seat to look back at the waterfall. "What's back there?"
"Sex dungeon," Angel replied casually.
The Doctor did what Angel counted to be a triple take, looking quickly between Angel and the waterfall, the waterfall and Angel, and then Angel and the waterfall again. He finally settled on sitting up slightly straighter and saying, "Oh."
"The waterfall's a nice touch, isn't it?" Angel added. "It's not real - just a glamour. But the sound is a nice barrier to the other - ah - sounds."
"A glamour?" the Doctor said, peering back in the waterfall's direction. "So is it a loop of sound and light energy, or is the idea of waterfall being directed into our minds?" he squinted his eyes at the waterfall. "It's beautiful. Now that you mention it. Or is it just directing the idea of beautiful into my mind? It doesn't… No, I'm sticking with the sound and light idea."
"To my understanding, it's projecting the idea of a waterfall into your mind," Angel replied. "Which means that theoretically you could block it, if you had strong enough psychic powers. But I mean...why would you want to?"
"Why indeed..." the Doctor said softly. He inched away from the waterfall on his mushroom seat, but didn't have far to go.
Angel spotted Emily striding toward them and he sat up a bit straighter. "Ah," he said, nodding toward her. "Here she is." He pushed himself up from the table.
"What? No. What?" the Doctor said quickly, looking around quickly. He finally followed Angel's gaze to Emily and stood up himself.
Emily clearly stood out starkly in the fairyland. Where everything on this floor had the cool and calming colors of nature, Emily looked more like a black and white photograph brought to life. Turned in the 1980's, she'd lived her human life in the goth scene and saw no reason to change once she'd become a vampire. She had porcelain skin and black hair teased high above her head. She had enough silver piercings in her body that she could likely set off a metal detector at fifty paces.
"Angel," Emily said as she approached, nodding in Angel's direction. She paused and dipped into a small but polite curtsy to the Doctor. "Lord," she said, "Welcome to Decade. I don't believe we've had the pleasure before."
"Oh," the Doctor said, sounding equal parts flattered and confused. "Doctor will do," he added.
"Doctor then. Welcome. What can I do for you gentlemen?"
Angel knew her use of the word 'gentlemen' applied mostly to the Doctor; she had lost most of her respect for Angel as a vampire long ago. Angel replied, "We're trying to find someone - or something," he added with a glance at the Doctor, "- that's beyond the normal level of threatening. Something big, probably destructive. Have you heard of anything weird going on like that lately? Like, within the week?"
Setting a hand on her hip, Emily's arm jingled as the metal bracelets readjusted. "I think the weirdest thing would be the floating psychic fish down at the pier. He had a bunch of henchmen patching into the city grid. I killed a few when they cut power during Metal Mayhem. They've stuck to their side of town since then."
"We were there for that, actually," Angel said. "None of them seemed particularly…" He waved his hand vaguely. "...noteworthy to you?"
"They died easily enough," Emily said dully.
The Doctor opened and closed his mouth. He raised a finger and dropped it. His head jerked over in the direction of the waterfall briefly before he dragged it back and said, "I think what we're looking for is going to have a particular energy signature. Something timey-explosioney-ish...y."
Angel was pretty sure that a culture advanced enough to have invented TARDISes shouldn't have vocabularies that included "timey-explosioney-ish...y."
The Doctor wiggled his fingers in what he clearly thought was a helpful manner.
Emily looked like she was trying to hide a low level of disgust. "A particular energy signature," she said, grabbing on to the last thing the Doctor had said that made sense.
"Exactly!"
"Okay," Angel interceded on the Doctor's behalf, "the thing is, we've got someone on a ship and the ship won't land in an area it deems too dangerous. We're trying to figure out what that dangerous thing is."
"So you're not on one of your saving the city missions?" Emily said, twirling a finger in a circle at Angel.
Angel winced. "Not this time. This is an entirely personal mission."
Emily rolled her eyes like Angel was a particularly stupid dog that kept running into a glass door. "Good," Emily said, dropping her other hand from her hip. "I'd hate for Decade to blow up with the city and I have no idea what you're talking about." She started to turn, but turned back, raising a finger and tapping a black-painted nail on her chin. "But you might be in the right place. Summer Rain is here and she's very talented at divination. Might do to check amongst your own people," she said, nodding at the Doctor.
Angel glanced at the Doctor, remembering how he hadn't exactly denied the bouncer's assumption that he was Fae. Well, it wasn't hurting anything to go with it. "Great," he said, nodding. "Summer Rain. Which one is she?"
"She's typically at the bar this time of year," Emily said. "Grey hair to the floor. Nails long enough to cut out a heart."
"Poetic," the Doctor said.
"Factual. I've seen her do it," Emily said.
"Ah," the Doctor said.
The vampire in Angel found this deeply intriguing, but he managed a slight grimace. "Thanks Emily. We appreciate your time."
Emily nodded. "Keep the city standing," she said. "I live here."
"Yes, ma'am," Angel tapped his fingers to his head in salute.
Emily's mouth twitched in a smile and she bowed formally to the Doctor before striding away toward the stairs, her bracelets clinking like chains as she went.
Angel and the Doctor stood from their seats and made their way deeper into the forest with Angel taking the lead. He hadn't spent much time on this floor of Decade. It had been built both as a way to appease the fae by offering them their own space, and also as a way to keep the rest of the clientele safe from the fae's haughty, irritable natures. But the path to the bar was well worn so Angel pushed forward with confidence.
"There," Angel said as the bar came into view. The bar itself was made of stone that looked as though it had been cut and rubbed smooth by the sea. Behind it, more trees grew so thick and tangled that they worked as shelves to hold the rows of brightly colored but otherwise unlabeled bottles. Many contained a white liquid that Angel suspected to be fresh cream. Angel nodded to the tall woman sitting at the far end of the bar. "Her hair even looks like rain, doesn't it? Weird. Come on." They both stepped out into the small clearing, their boots crunching softly on the carpet of leaves. "Excuse us? Lady Rain? Summer Rain?"
Summer Rain turned on the log that functioned as her stool and either the dark pooling skirt or her long grey hair made the soft white noise of a steady rain as it moved. The sound was like walking through a small rainstorm and then walking back out again. She looked them both over slowly with her head held high and said as though coming to a conclusion at the end of a conversation instead of the beginning, "Yes. You wish to trade."
"Trade?" Angel said. "Oh, yes, of course. We do wish to trade. We have a question and Emily Slipp recommended you for your fine divination skills."
"A question," Summer Rain repeated in a voice that pattered like raindrops on leaves.
"Yes," Angel nodded. He paused, wanting to be careful of not asking too many questions and considered how to ask for her price without actually asking. He settled on, "We're willing to consider offers of equal value for your answer to our question."
The Doctor nodded in agreement, his fingers tapped together in front of him like a slow release of pent up energy.
Summer Rain hmmm-ed like the gentle buzzing of summer insects, taking in the two of them with huge, watery eyes. "I would ask for the answer to a question of my own," she replied after a moment. Turning to the Doctor she added, "You have so many questions. And more answers. Delicious answers."
The Doctor fell still and Angel could feel the Doctor's lighthearted energy flip like a coin to a darker, more intense demeanor. An earlier version of the Doctor (the one with the short hair and big ears) had worn this demeanor like his leather jacket. Angel tensed a little. He'd been wondering when that layer was going to come back out. Was the Doctor's mask slipping or was he lowering it intentionally?
"What sort of answer do you want?" the Doctor asked slowly.
Summer Rain blinked her watery eyes. Dewdrops fell from her long lashes. "That answer would also cost you."
The Doctor let out a huff of air. "It's a bit pricey," he said under his breath to Angel.
"Is it?" Angel replied quietly, considering the situation. "Does it have to be your answer?"
The Doctor lifted a shoulder. "I hope not. She knows enough to know what I might know. Which is..." he turned his head to smile at Summer Rain, "possibly...profoundly dangerous."
There was a deep moment of silence between the three of them. Angel continued to assess things in his mind. They wanted information about a dangerous presence in the city; Summer Rain wanted an answer to an unknown question that apparently the Doctor was most qualified to give. Given that the Doctor had knowledge to tuck entire planets away in a time bubble for all eternity, that did seem like an unreasonably steep price. Angel's bank of knowledge seemed much closer in value to Summer Rain's than the Doctor's, from where Angel was standing.
"I'll give you an answer," Angel volunteered. "Any answer; to any question." It was a risk to offer blindly, but Angel couldn't think of an answer to a question that was too dangerous for her to have. His human name, perhaps? His vampire name was spread everywhere, but his human name wasn't so well known. Could she even do anything with it, when that man was dead?
Summer Rain pouted for a moment. "A hard bargain," she mused.
"We could leave you to consider," Angel offered. He turned to the Doctor. "There are other Divinors in the city. We could ask someone else."
The Doctor nodded thoughtfully.
"Of course, Doctor," Summer Rain said in a tempting voice, turning to him, "I have answers to other questions too. You have so many questions. I could tell you about..." she turned her head slightly, like moving to read the next page in a book, "...Utah."
The Doctor's jaw clenched and then relaxed again. "I already know about Utah," he said softly. "Blue post cards. Stetson. Got the list."
"There's an alternative," Summer Rain said. "But you could go ask the other Divinors about that, couldn't you?"
The Doctor stood very still, his eyes fixed on Summer Rain. Angel watched the Doctor closely, fascinated. So far, Angel had only ever seen the Doctor ruffled in moments of imminent and serious danger - and even then, he'd had this remarkable ability to shrug out of the seriousness like it was a coat someone else had put on his shoulders. But the Doctor wasn't shrugging this one off.
"What's Utah?" Angel finally asked the Doctor softly. "An alternative to what?"
The Doctor jolted like Angel had shocked him. He looked around and laughed lightly, like a reminder of how to smile. "It's a party I'm trying to get out of," he said. "Of course, there are alternatives that I know about," he said more to Summer Rain than to Angel. "But the consequences are worse than if I'd just went."
A party, my ass, Angel thought.
"And the alternatives you do not know about?" Summer Rain asked, her voice sounding sweet as ripe fruit.
The Doctor sighed and leaned back onto his heels and then rocked forward onto his toes. "I think we should get to know your question," he said. "Since you know mine."
Summer Rain smiled; her teeth were shiny, but with a greyish tint to them. "The time, place, and manner of my death," she said. "Seems an equitable trade."
Angel raised an eyebrow. An equitable trade?
"That's not fun information to have," the Doctor said seriously.
"No, but it allows for...alternatives, doesn't it?" she said.
Angel frowned, glancing between the two of them, his suspicions clicking into place in his mind. Alternatives and an equitable trade? Was Utah the place where the Doctor would die? Utah, and not on his ship, with blood draining out of the vampire wounds on his neck? "Hang on-" Angel said.
"No," the Doctor interrupted, though he was looking at Summer Rain.
Summer Rain leaned away like his single word had knocked her back. Then she turned fluidly back toward her drink. "Very well, then…"
"Wait," Angel said, reaching out a hand to grab her elbow, but paused as he thought twice about the wisdom of that. He let his hand drop awkwardly. "What about my question?"
"Your question," Summer Rain said. "Of course," she took a long sip from her drink and then turned back to Angel. "In exchange...tell me why you care so much."
Angel jolted. He hadn't expected that. His human name, some secret of the underworld, or hell, even something about this powerful time-and-space ship they were searching for: those questions, he expected. Angel had carefully built a structure of power in Galway when he'd moved there, explicitly based on his not caring. That foundation had been crumbling, of course. A truthful answer could give her the power to bring that all down for good.
Angel shifted, clearing his throat. He gave the Doctor a half smile. "It is a steep price," he agreed. He let his gaze fall to the floor. He thought of Judith, stranded on a strange ship in a vortex of God-only-knew what it actually was. He thought of William and the other people Judith had left wondering and worrying about her. He thought about his tenuous grip on his section of town and how all the choices he had made for the greater good had started his decline in power, and how - realistically - he wasn't getting it back. One more choice for someone else's good was just another step in the pattern, and there was a chance that Summer Rain wouldn't even do anything with the information. "Okay," he said, looking up at Summer Rain. "You have a deal."
She smiled. "Please," she waved her hand at him and the jewels on her fingers glinted like sun on water, "gentlemen first."
Angel hesitated. He actually wasn't sure what their question was, given they could only present one to be answered. He could run through each of the Five W's and find questions he equally wanted answers to ( the "how" he really didn't care about at this point). Running through them in his mind, they mostly boiled down to "When is the ship coming back?" and "Why isn't it back already?" but then, maybe more pertinent questions would be "Who" or "What is keeping them away?"
Angel took in a deep breath, settling into the heart of the question; what he really wanted to know. He looked up at Summer Rain. "What can I do to bring Judith back now?"
"Bring her back now?" Summer Rain repeated. She blinked slowly and looked at the Doctor with a can-you-believe-this? expression. But she nodded and lifted her hand, water dripping from her fingers and making dark spots on the stone bar. She studied a single drop as it slipped over the edge of the bar and slithered down the side. "If you cannot employ a reasonable amount of patience," she said, "you could trade your quite unique soul to Betharr, the chaos demon. I think he has the required amount of power to pull the...blue creature from the sky upon request."
"Really?" the Doctor said, interested in this tidbit.
Summer Rain leaned back against the bar, her hair moving and glinting like a wall of water. "But in answer to the spirit of your question, vampire: your friend was right in his original assessment of the situation. The simple act of keeping patience will bring you success."
That was not at all what Angel had wanted to hear. So many more questions popped up as a response to this one, but he knew he had to honor the deal. What had been her question, exactly?
Tell me why you care so much.
Part of Angel wanted to argue that it hadn't really been a question, but she had answered his in spirit, which was generous for a fae.
Angel took in another deep breath. "Then...I care so much because I love people."
Summer rain smiled, her teeth looking wet and sharp.
Angel only let half a moment pass before he took a step back, nodding for the Doctor to follow him. "Come on," he said. "I need a drink."
"Thank you," the Doctor said to Summer Rain behind him. "I always like it when I'm right."
She laughed and there was the soft, rainy sound of her turning back to her drink.
