Title:
Three's a Crowd
Authors: Gillian Taylor
Rating:
PG
Characters: Eighth Doctor, Charlotte Pollard
Summary: I love company, you know. I just don't care for it when it
decides you or your friends make a tasty meal.
Spoilers:
BF Audio Storm Warning
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I
just like playing with them...a lot.
Archive: Sure, just
let me know.
A/N: Thanks, as always, to my fabulous betas WMR and NNWest. Written for Acestar in Ponygirl's Solstice Fic Exchange. Acestar requested:
1. A 'dead end' chase - the
typical 'running into a back alley with a brick wall at the end' type
affair
2. The Doctor baffling someone with science/logic (though
this is pretty much the norm!)
3. Something in the TARDIS going
wrong (again, getting to be normal for the new series, at least)
Three's
a Crowd
by Gillian Taylor
Chapter 1: For Whom the Bell Tolls
It started with a sound.
It was a low, deep tone that was barely audible beneath the movement of thousands of wings. She didn't notice it at first. She was listening to the breeze, the fluttering of the butterflies, and the sound of her own heart. It was beautiful here. Peaceful. Almost a holiday from a holiday.
Charlotte Pollard, Edwardian adventuress, on holiday. Yes. She liked that. After the past few days of one death-defying adventure after another, it was nice to relax. To take a break. To listen to the butterflies, watch them land on her clothes, her hair, and her nose. To watch a sea of colour – blue, red, green, chartreuse, and amber – dotted across the seemingly infinite landscape.
The TARDIS was a wonderful machine, a beautiful home, and she was always astounded by it. Just as she was astounded by the clock garden, or the cloisters, or the sheer size of the ship. She'd thought her trip on the R-101 would be exciting, dangerous, and thrilling. It had been, of course, but only because of him.
The Doctor.
She smiled, ignoring the small shiver that always coursed through her soul at the thought of him and of that day on the R-101. She knew that something dreadfully wrong had happened that day – something associated with her – but she tried to ignore it much as he did.
Her mother hadn't brought her up to ignore problems for long, but for now, she was busy having fun. And a holiday.
A holiday with...
Was that a bell?
As if that realisation were a trigger, the world tilted sideways and she found herself sliding across the grass toward the doorway.
"Doctor!" she cried, digging her fingers into the dirt in a desperate attempt to prevent injury.
She still slid. Inch by inch, she couldn't gain purchase. Her fingers couldn't hold on.
"Doctor!" she cried again.
And then it stopped.
No more sliding. Up was up, down was down, and she was safe. However, safety was only illusory. She suddenly felt herself lift into the air before slamming back into the ground.
As she fell into unconsciousness, her last thought was of the Doctor.
Where was he?
Oh, where had he hidden that TARDIS manual? Last he'd remembered it was in the library. Or was it the kitchen? Maybe he'd thought to bring it out for a late night read? Or an early morning read, or, or...Oh! Yes. It must be in the library.
He darted past thousands of books that were written, had yet to be written, and might be written from almost all the ages of the universe. There was one particular section where it'd be most likely to reside.
Ah, yes.
"Mechanics!" he announced, holding out his arms as if he wanted to embrace the bookcase. Of course. Must be here. "TARDIS manual, TARDIS manual," he murmured as he traced the spines.
"No, what's this doing here? Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book'? That can't be right." His brow furrowed as he pulled the book off the shelf.
Wait a moment. Did something fall? He could've sworn that he'd heard something. Barely noticeable, but something. However, when he looked around, he saw nothing. Shrugging, he returned his attention to the book and flipped idly through the pages. "Oh, first edition. Signed, too. Forgot about that." With a brief shrug, he put the book back onto the shelf. It might not belong there, but he'd sort it out later.
For now, he wanted the TARDIS manual.
He'd barely started searching for the book on the other shelves when it happened. It began low, but it always did. A bell. And not just any bell, either.
The Cloister Bell.
Abandoning his search, he ran out of the library, intent upon reaching the console room. He barely had the time to spare a thought for Charley when the internal gravity changed. Barely managing to catch himself before he slammed into the wall, he tried not to slow his frantic pace.
Internal gravity change. Cloister Bell. What could've happened? Time anomaly? No. Those tended to toss them about a bit, but it'd never affected internal gravity before. A signal of some kind? Remote control? They had passed through the time-space shadow of a black hole that was exactly six point seven five kren off-centre with the rest of the universe? No. That was too easy.
It was never that simple.
When he reached his destination, his eyes were immediately drawn to the sparking console. "Oh, you poor old thing," he murmured as he fought his way across the perilously sloped floor. Good thing all of the heaviest objects in the room had already accumulated on one side. It was, after all, hard to work when one was dodging flying furniture.
"Right. So, what've we got here?" he asked, bracing himself against the console. First things first. He needed to sort the gravity. Too many chances to hurt oneself in the TARDIS, for one thing. Charley. Oh, dear. Hopefully she'd found a nice, soft landing spot and stayed put.
Hopefully.
Now. Fixing the problem. He only had the symptoms, not the cause. But best to treat the symptoms first. Internal gravity. If he just reached under the console...here. Pulled that wire bundle there. And pulled out that power crystal...
The world righted itself before he had a chance to change his position. He ended up in a rather undignified heap on the floor.
It could never be easy, could it? He sighed as he picked himself off the floor, brushing off imaginary dust from his velvet coat. The console had thankfully stopped sparking, but he could still hear the low gong of the Cloister Bell echoing ominously through the TARDIS. Which meant they still had problems.
From the instruments, it looked like they were temporarily stable. Best to look for Charley and bring her back to the console room where he could keep an eye on her. It was a plan.
So, with a final check of the controls, he set off deeper into the TARDIS calling her name. Though if she were unconscious, she wouldn't be able to answer. No. He wouldn't think like that. She was fine. Found a nice landing spot and stayed put. Yes. That would be exactly what she'd've done.
However, he recognised that all he was doing was deluding himself. Charley was almost as apt at finding trouble as he was – and that was an impressive feat.
She awoke with a throbbing headache and the distinct sensation that something was terribly, horribly wrong. Charley groaned faintly as she rolled onto her back, wincing as the movement brought the pain to a crescendo. "Doctor? What happened?" she asked, keeping her eyes firmly closed.
That was when memory returned. The butterfly room. She was in the butterfly room – or had been - and the room had tilted for some reason and she had slid toward the doorway. And something else. It had stopped? And she'd floated for a moment and then nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except for the headache.
She murmured a very unladylike curse and opened her eyes. At least she was still in the butterfly room. Though why that particular thought had crossed her mind, she was uncertain. Right. Get up, find the Doctor, and figure out what had just happened.
It was a good idea. The best. The rest of her limbs seemed to be in working order. Only thing wrong was the headache, but that couldn't be helped. She sat up and paused as the world swam before her eyes. Once it'd stopped, she forced herself to her feet. Her stance was a little wobbly, but it could be forgiven. Now she had to find the Doctor.
She had barely decided to head for the door when everything changed.
The normally blue 'sky' in the butterfly room darkened, almost as if a storm were brewing overhead. However, she knew that it was anything but natural. For all its beauty, the grass never seemed to need rain. It was timeless. A perfect spring day caught in a bottle, except now something had altered the bottle. Something had changed.
It's looking for you.
It was an impression, not words, that curled through her mind. She was in danger. The bell. She could still hear the bell, only its notes had seemed to gain a more desperate timbre. It fed her fear, and the emotion lent speed to her feet as she began to walk, then run, toward the door.
That was when she began to sense it. Looming over her shoulder, chasing after her, as she sped toward relative safety. In the TARDIS proper, she could hide. Finding the Doctor suddenly lost its priority in the need to run. If she found him while she was running, that would be best but, otherwise, her intent was to flee. Normally, she'd confront her fear and laugh in its face. But, this time, something told her that that would not be her best course of action.
It's coming.
Reason fled. Instinct took over. And she ran.
With it, whatever it was, following behind.
Tracking collars. A bit beyond Charley's relative time, admittedly, but there were times that they'd be useful. Such as now. Then again, he should've thought of it sooner. That would've proved useful considering how many times his companions had been injured, captured, almost blown up, held for ransom, attacked, or almost swallowed by some sort of monster.
But this was the TARDIS. The TARDIS. Nothing could get inside her – at least, it was very, very, very difficult to do so. Impossible, improbable, and unlikely were just a few of the words he had at his command to describe that possibility. And that was just in English. That didn't count the forty thousand words from other languages from across the universe.
None of which was helping him find Charley. "Charley!" he shouted. "Charley, can you hear me?" Of course, if she couldn't hear him, she wouldn't answer. "Brilliant question, Doctor. And, if you're not careful, you might just start talking to yourself."
Silently chiding himself – this time – he tried to determine just where his errant companion might have hidden herself. The library? No, he'd been there when the systems started to fail. Her bedroom? Probably not. She'd told him that she was going to...what was it? "Think, Doctor, think." He used to be good at that. Thinking. Remembering conversations.
"Oh! Of course. The butterfly room!" He grinned brightly and changed directions. She'd probably be in there. Annoyed, yes. Possibly hurt. But safe. And, once he found her, they could start sorting whatever mess they'd found themselves in.
That was when he found himself facing a wall that shouldn't be there. He blinked, confused. "I'm sure this was the way to the butterfly room." Must've taken the wrong turn. Shrugging slightly, he turned and tried a different route. Through the garden, past the medical centre...
Another wall.
His brow furrowed. "I swear that I know the TARDIS like the back of my hand." To demonstrate, though he didn't have anyone to speak to beyond himself, he held out his hand. When he looked down, he realised that it was palm up. "Right." Could he have got lost on his own ship?
No. Impossible. This was the TARDIS, his TARDIS. He knew her halls, knew her rooms. Something was wrong. Beyond the gravity shift, beyond the Cloister Bell. Something else...but what could it be?
The secondary console room should be around here somewhere. He could drop in and check the internal scanners. It might be a faster way of locating Charley and of figuring out what had gone wrong with the TARDIS.
What if the TARDIS had moved the butterfly room?
She did have the tendency of shifting rooms now and again, but that didn't explain the wall. No. There must be something else. Automatic defence? No. That hadn't worked in years. Couldn't be that. Unless something else was on the TARDIS with them...
No. He'd already reasoned that that was impossible, improbable, and very unlikely. And, even if something had managed to get on board, what was the likelihood of it being able to affect the internal dimensions and systems of the TARDIS? He did a few quick calculations and sighed. Astronomically against, yes. But, knowing his luck, it was still possible.
He changed directions again, passing by different corridors, different rooms, intent on reaching the secondary console room.
Another wall.
"That's not right. One wall, I can accept that maybe I took one wrong turn. A second wall was suspicious, but maybe it was another wrong turn. But three? Three definitely makes a conspiracy." He turned. Main console room. Charley would have to take care of herself for the moment. She was resourceful. Competent. He had every faith in her. Besides, this was the TARDIS. What could go...
A wall. Another bloody wall.
So something didn't want him to have access to the console room. Right. He had other options.
He turned and set off for the library. It'd all started there. Might as well end there, too. Provided that the library wouldn't turn out to be another beginning. Knowledge was power, after all. Books were some of most powerful weapons in his arsenal, but he did wish that he could've reached the console room and the TARDIS' scanners.
What if his original assumption was wrong? What if something had managed to invade the TARDIS? Something malicious? Something that wanted...what? He couldn't interpret the motivation of 'something'. That was impossible. He needed a name, a species, anything that could give him some sort of idea of just what he might be dealing with.
He'd half worried that the library might've been blocked off, or that he might find himself in a rapidly shrinking box – that had happened once before and once was definitely enough. However, the fates were smiling upon him when he opened the double doors and found himself surrounded by books.
"But where to start?" he asked himself as he stepped inside. He'd been looking for the TARDIS manual before the gravity had been altered. Could that have had something to do with the problems? Say, something had known he might've found the manual and realised that the systems were behaving incorrectly and it chose to correct the problem in the only way it could? No. That'd be giving it, whatever it was, more credit than he suspected it deserved.
"Now, Doctor, you can't make assumptions," he scolded himself. And he couldn't. Couldn't assume that something had invaded. It could just be a systems malfunction. But since when had a systems malfunction prevented him from reaching rooms on the TARDIS? He'd ejected rooms before, yes. Romana's bedroom came to mind, but the TARDIS couldn't've ejected the butterfly room, could it? And sent Charley out into the vortex with it?
No. He refused to even consider that possibility.
So, TARDIS manual then. He dashed through the aisles of books, dodging those items that had fallen to the floor during the gravity shift.
When he reached the mechanics section he realised that he had a problem. A very large problem.
The mechanics section – and by extension the TARDIS manual – was gone.
His mind whirled with calculations, considerations, and possibilities. This wasn't a coincidence. It wasn't just happenstance. It was calculated. Coldly calculated. Because without the manual he might not be able to solve the problem.
This was wrong. All of it, every second of it, was wrong. Books didn't just disappear. The TARDIS wouldn't cut off sections of the ship. A systems malfunction wouldn't do that.
Which meant one thing.
They had company.
To be continued...
