Episode: Monsters of the Cosmos
Chapter: In Bed Above We're Deep Asleep [1/4]
Summary: Amy wanted to travel and ended in the middle of the UK. The Queen wanted the truth and learned nothing new. A little girl wanted her friend back and almost caused the end of the world. The Master wanted the noise in his head to stop and realized he had been right all along. Or the one where they visit Starship UK and learn more about themselves than they anticipated.
Rating: T
"We're in space. Oh my God, we're really in space!" Amy squeaks, shaking the Raggedy Man's shoulder, which earns her a huff equal parts amused and exasperated.
"I did tell you the TARDIS was also a spaceship," he finally tells her, and the hand he has on the back of her shirt gives her a tug. "Now, come back in so we can get at what we came for."
"Which would be…?" she asks, turning away from the breathtaking tapestry of stars and galaxies spreading all around them as they stand at the threshold of the blue box, and the Raggedy Man's smirk turns downright mischievous.
"Now, no prying. That would ruin the surprise."
When Amelia Pond was seven, there was a crack on her wall through which voices whispered at night. So, she asked for someone to fix it, and a blue box with a raggedy doctor landed on her shed. He closed the crack with a magical screwdriver, and promised to help her catch an escaped alien criminal, before he had to leave to fix his time machine. He vanished like he had never been there, leaving only a mess of dirty dishes in the kitchen and a crushed shed in the garden. Amy had grown up, convinced she had made it all up, only for the Raggedy Doctor to appear again twelve years and half a day later, convinced only five minutes had passed. They hunted down Prisoner Zero, who had been hiding in her house for all that time, with her boyfriend's, Rory's, help, and the Doctor had not only captured Prisoner Zero, but managed to scare away for good the guards who had been willing to burn the Earth down to capture it.
Then, he disappeared again, and Amy had come to the conclusion he really was the wandering hero she had made him out to be all those years ago. Only, he had popped up again two years later, on the eve of her wedding, and revealed that his time machine didn't always work as it should.
Amy had dragged him inside her house, managed to extract some answers out of him, and had been offered a one-trip deal in the time machine as compensation for all those years waiting and the four psychiatrists she had to deal with in her youth.
Only, turns out, the time machine is not just a time machine.
"I still can't believe we're really in space," she whispers with a huge smile, taking a step back so he feels finally secure in releasing her shirt.
"TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I told you twice already, pay attention," the Raggedy Man mocks, going back to the controls, but Amy is too overjoyed to feel offended, merely rolling her eyes as she takes one last look outside, reaching for the doors—
"Uhm, Raggedy Man?" she calls, wide-eyed, as she looks down.
She may be surprised and slightly overwhelmed at the whole 'bigger on the inside time-travelling spaceship' thing, but Amy's sure she is not shocked enough to hallucinate.
"Come on, Amelia, you're not even trying! What kind of name is 'Raggedy Man'?"
"Then give me one I can actually use, Saxon," she scoffs, glaring over her shoulder to see him wince down at the controls, before remembering why she called for him in the first place. "No, but listen. Is there supposed to be a city floating in space?" she asks, once more looking outside and down to make sure the vision hasn't gone away.
It hasn't. There's a city, a huge city, full of skyscrapers, sitting on a meteor, just floating innocently in the middle of nowhere, with a Union Jack painted on the side.
She hears him approach, but it isn't until he's by her side once more, a cold hand grabbing her shoulder as if afraid she would fall out of the ship, that she turns to him to see him frown.
The expression immediately changes to a wide grin and a glint of satisfaction in his pale eyes.
"Aha! Found it!"
"Wait, what?"
But instead of answering, the Raggedy Man tugs her back and closes the door, hopping to the controls and forcing Amy to follow to get her answers.
He fiddles with the buttons and levers, and the TARDIS groans and wheezes, shaking for a bit, before stopping completely. Then, he finally turns around, straightening and rearranging his jacket as he clears his throat.
"This is the twenty-ninth century," he starts with his politician voice and a grin that is just the slightest bit too sharp to be Harold Saxon's winning grin. "Solar flares assault the Earth, forcing the entire human race out into the stars until the Sun stabilizes and they can return. Whole nations move onto giant starships, searching for a new home. Ladies, gentlemen, neutrals and variations thereupon, welcome to the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. Welcome to Starship UK," he announces, stepping to the door and opening it with a flourish.
Only, on the other side, instead of stars and galaxies, there's an alley opening into a bustling marketplace, surrounded on all sides by buildings so tall they vanish overhead, huge names of towns on their sides and streets named after suburbs.
Amy is wide-eyed and slack-jawed as she steps outside, turning on the spot to take everything in while the Raggedy Man locks the door behind them.
"Oh my God, I'm really in the future. I've been dead for centuries now," she muses to herself, and startles when an arm is twined with hers.
"Bunch of laughs, you are," the Raggedy Man snorts, tugging her along with a grin. "What do you think of Harold? Proper English name, that one. Yes, call me Harold, I feel like a Harold today," he tells her, humming under his breath with a small frown as they walk past stalls that, despite some strange produce, aren't really that different from any other open-air market Amy has been to before.
"Yeah, sure, good one," she answers with an eyeroll, deciding not to comment on the fact he has actually used that name before, as Saxon, in favor of the adventure they're here to experience. "So, what are we going to do here, Harold? Are we going to help them find a planet to colonize?" she asks him, excited about all the possibilities, and he gives her an almost disgusted look.
"Help them? Hell, no, let them blunder. I'm not the kind of man who gets involved in the affairs of other people or planets. Not unless they benefit me, that is," he answers with a huge grin, and Amy rolls her eyes and releases his arm when he stops to look at the produce on a stall, using the chance to observe the people instead of the place.
"So, we're like a wildlife documentary, yeah? Because if they see a wounded little cub or something, they can't just save it, they've got to keep filming and let it die. Only, you'd be the guy who skins it after," she mocks with a teasing grin, thought she frowns as soon as the words dawn. "Okay, no, you wouldn't. You're not that kind of guy. Still, is that why you said you wouldn't help me with the crack on my wall, back when I was little? It's got to be hard. Don't you find it hard, being all detached and cold? I don't think I could do that," she asks, turning around once more to see what kind of face he's making or what memory he's lost in this time, because it isn't like him to be this quiet.
Only, Harold isn't there anymore.
Amy startles, worried for a moment, before she catches a flash of blond hair and blue jacket as he kneels in front of a crying girl sitting in a bench. He says something, startling the little girl, before he reaches for her ear and pulls a flower out of his sleeve, as if it was a magic trick, and, in the moment he moves it from one hand to the next, he replaces it with a purple lollipop the same shade as the flower with some clever sleight of hand. The little girl blinks, surprised, but accepts the lollipop when he offers it, so he straightens and leaves her without another word.
Amy is smiling incredulously when he finally reaches her, offering his arm again with a look that dares her to make a comment, so she just chuckles and takes the offer in silence instead.
They walk some more around the market area, and, no matter how amazed Amy is at the differences and similarities she observes, she still notices his growing frown and how his sharp eyes take in every detail.
"Hey, what's with the face, Harold? Cheer up, we're in a giant spaceship," she tells him, still trying out the name, and he hushes her softly in answer.
"Don't you hear it?" he asks seriously, and, starting to frown herself, Amy listens.
"It's a market. It sounds like a market. People, vendors, kids… Bikes. How come there are bikes on a spaceship?"
"Exactly," he hisses, and Amy startles, looking at him with an arched eyebrow.
"The bikes?"
"The spaceship," he answers, untangling their arms and plucking a glass of water from the table they walk past, kneeling in the middle of the road and resting the glass on the floor.
"Hey! What are you doing?" the couple ask, startled, as they get to their feet, but Harold takes the glass again and hands it to the speaker with a no-nonsense expression that makes them gulp and sit down, looking away nervously.
Before Amy can ask, Harold's looped his arm around hers and tugged her away.
"What was that about?" she asks in a hush, starting to get worried, more so when he gives her what Rory calls his shark smirk.
"Amelia Pond, welcome to the police state of Starship UK," he answers in the same soft voice as they return to the main area and sit down in an empty bench. "Don't you see it?" he asks, nodding to something further ahead—
The girl, the same one Harold showed his magic trick to, is sitting on the last bench, past a group of playing children. The lollipop is in her hands, untouched, and she's still crying quietly, looking down at it.
"One little girl crying. So?" she asks, frowning softly, and his frown darkens as he pockets his hands quite roughly, as if forcing himself to stay still.
"Crying silently. Come on, Amelia, you're not the stupidest human around. Why do brats cry?" he scoffs, and Amy scowls at him, insulted, but doesn't manage to retort before he continues with his explanation. "Attention. Tantrums, wailing, all that snotty sobbing – all of it is for attention. They want something, or they're scared or hurt. That's the way they ask for things, most basic of communication. But she's not making any noise, she's not trying to get any attention. And that? That means she just can't stop," he points out, his eyes darkening as he bows his head slightly, turning to look at the busy stalls and the people going to and fro. "Parents learn to ignore tantrums, can't give in to the brat's every whim and fancy. But this? No parent would ever ignore this. And yet, they do. Hundreds of parents walking past, seeing her and doing nothing. Because they know, they already know why she's crying, and it's something no one talks about, something no one can do anything about. Secrets, fear. But do you see anything wrong? No, of course not, it's a bloody marketplace, full of people going about their business, what's wrong with it? Nothing. Which means it's everywhere, constant monitoring to keep the populace controlled, behaving. Police state."
Amy gulps, looking around as casually as she can, and realizes that no, she can't spot anything wrong, other than the fact there's a child crying and no one is doing anything.
No, that's not right. Someone did.
Startled at the realization, Amy turns to the man sitting at her side, the crafty alien who managed to make a whole fleet run away at just hearing his name, and who is now glaring darkly at every person who walks past the playing children and the crying girl without so much as a look at her.
No parent would ever ignore this.
He doesn't lie to children, he focuses on a little girl crying that Amy hadn't really noticed because she's not a parent, and that conversation, back at her house…
"Time Lords? Oh, that isn't pretentious at all."
"Who said they weren't?"
Put all that together, and the pain in his face whenever she mentioned Last Christmas, and Amy is not sure if she wants an answer to the question floating in her mind.
"Are you a parent?" she whispers before she can stop herself.
Harold stands up before she can see if anything changes in his face, and she follows suit, afraid he'll run away. Instead, he takes a colorful wallet out of a pocket, opens it to glance at it briefly before pressing it into Amy's hands, and turns to face her seriously.
"Deck two oh seven. Apple Sesame block, dwelling 54A. You're looking for Mandy Tanner. She dropped her wallet," he tells her, nodding at the wallet in her hands while flicking a look at where the little girl had been sitting, and Amy's grip on the wallet tightens as she realizes what it actually is. "Ask her about the smiling puppets in the booths."
Amy frowns at those last instructions, but follows his gaze obediently.
There are some kind of robots in booths all around the marketplace, like creepy mockeries of ticket stalls in a cinema or a fair.
"Why?" she asks carefully, cradling the wallet closer, and Harold gives her a brief proud grin.
"Look at this place, all old and dirty and used. But the booths are pristine, and the floor within two feet of them is as clean as the day it was installed. Police state, remember?"
"Something is observing, and it's everywhere," Amy repeats, realization dawning, and, when he nods, she nods back, determined, and pockets the wallet. "What are you going to do?"
"Don't know yet. Meet me back here in half an hour," Harold answers with a nonchalant tone and shrug, pocketing his hands and walking back into the market while whistling an unknown tune.
Amy watches him for a moment longer, the hand in her pocket tightening around the wallet she's mostly sure he stole, and can't help but smile softly at his retreating back.
"So, that's how it works, isn't it? No interfering unless you can get something out of it… or there are children crying," she whispers under her breath, remembering just how scared she'd been when it had looked like he would simply walk away after examining the crack on her wall, and how he'd only promised to help her once she'd started tearing up. "The Big Bad Doctor, all prickly on the outside but a big softy on the inside," she chuckles, pushing it out of her mind as she moves to the lifts.
Amy has a girl to find.