Right, here we go! As always, thanks for the wonderful reviews. They really do make my day and encourage me to write more and faster. Particular shout-out to Nimbus Llewelyn, again, for his help with this chapter. I wanted to use this part to address one of a speedster's greatest weaknesses, show that Barry isn't just an invincible powerhouse now he has his speed. There are drawbacks, too, oh yes...Enjoy, everyone!

"1979!" the Doctor enthused as he skipped around the TARDIS console. "Hell of a year! China invades Vietnam. The Muppet Movie. Love that film. Margaret Thatcher, Russia invades Afghanistan. Urgh. Hermione Granger is born! Skylab falls to Earth, with a little help from me. Nearly took off my thumb. And I like my thumb. I need my thumb. I'm very attached to…"

He trailed off as they exited the TARDIS onto a moor, where several Redcoats were pointing rifles at them, and a horse-drawn carriage waited on a track. The wind whipped straight through Barry's T-shirt.

"My thumb. Eighteen seventy-nine. Same difference."

Barry rolled his eyes as he quickly closed the doors behind them. Of course, they could just slip back inside the TARDIS, but he knew perfectly well that the Doctor would never agree to that.

"Are we in Scotland?" the Doctor asked, slipping into a brogue.

"How can you be ignorant of that?" the lead soldier asked.

"Oh, I'm, I'm dazed and confused."

"Och, aye, I've been oot and aboot," Barry chimed in.

"No, don't do that," the Doctor whispered.

"Hoots, mon."

"No, really. Don't."

"Fine."

He pulled out his psychic paper, claiming to be "Doctor James McCrimmon, from the township of Balamory."

As it turned out, the carriage contained none other than Queen Victoria, who agreed to let them travel with her.

"We just met Queen Victoria!" Barry enthused.

"I know!"

"So, uh, James McCrimmon?" Barry asked. "What happened to John Smith?"

"Nothing," the Doctor shrugged. "But I thought it was appropriate for Scotland. I used to have this, this friend from Scotland, Jamie McCrimmon. Picked him up from the Battle of Culloden. Oh, Jamie," the Doctor smiled wistfully.

"Tell me about him?"

"Well, we didn't get off on the right foot at first, but fortunately, he needed a doctor…"


After a fair bit of walking, they arrived at the Torchwood Estate, where they were greeted by the owner, Sir Robert MacLeish. He showed them to a telescope his father had built. Barry, the Doctor, and Victoria were all entranced.

"This device surveys the infinite work of God," she said. "What could be finer? Sir Robert's father was an example to us all. A polymath, steeped in astronomy and sciences, yet equally well versed in folklore and fairytales."

"Stars and magic. I like him more and more," the Doctor commented.

Sums you up, Barry thought, as Victoria mentioned that her late husband had enjoyed his company.

"When Albert was told about your local wolf, he was transported."

"So, what's this wolf, then?" the Doctor asked, and Barry sniggered to himself at his friend and mentor looking like a puppy with its ears perking up as he heard something interesting.

"It's just a story," Sir Robert shrugged awkwardly.

"Then tell it."

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted one of the servants. "Perhaps her Majesty's party could repair to their rooms. It's almost dark."

"Of course. Yes, of course."

"We shall dine at seven, and talk some more of this wolf," Victoria announced. "After all, there is a full moon tonight."


That evening, Barry sat in the room he'd been given, texting Iris. In this timeline—God, my life is so weird—they'd still been best friends, and he still remembered being head over heels for her as a teenager.

But they weren't brother and sister any more (never had been), so on top of double-thinking everything he said as usual, he also had to make sure he didn't reference anything that had now never happened.

Hadn't happened? Had never happened? Wouldn't have happened? Barry hit send, made a mental note to ask the Doctor and maybe Sarah Jane about time travel tenses, and got up to dress. He was a bit rusty on Victorian customs, but he was pretty sure wardrobes didn't usually contain housemaids hiding within.

"Oh my God!" he exclaimed.

"They came through the house!" she cried, grabbing at his arms. "In the excitement, they took the Steward and the Master, and my Lady."

"Who did?"

"The monks, sir."

"Okay," Barry thought out loud, running a hand through his hair. "Listen. I've got a friend. He's called the Doctor. He'll know what to do. You've got to come with me. Trust me," he added, giving his best attempt at the Doctor's patented I-can-handle-this smile.

No sooner had the maid, who'd introduced herself as Flora, led him out of the room than they came across a soldier lying on the floor.

"Not dead," Barry reported as he checked the man's pulse. "Probably drugged. But that means…"

He never got to finish his sentence, as a hand clapped itself over his mouth. Before he could struggle, there was a moment of pain, then darkness.


When he awoke, he was in some kind of cellar, chained up with Flora, several other maids, and a more richly-dressed woman he inferred was Lady Isobel, Sir Robert's wife. Judging by the angle of the moonlight through the bars, he hadn't been out long.

"You okay there, Flora?" he asked as he sat up, rubbing his head.

"Yes, sir," she responded quietly.

"Okay, good. Hey everyone, I'm Barry."

Lady Isobel warned him not to speak, nodding towards where a young monk was sitting cross-legged across from them.

"But he's in a cage," Barry shook his head. "He's a prisoner. He's the same as us."

"He's nothing like us. That creature is not mortal."

As if on cue, the young man's eyes opened. They were solid black. By now, the speedster had seen all kinds of things, and a young man with solid black eyes didn't even rank in the top ten. Barry rose and moved slowly towards it.

"Don't, child," she warned him.

"Who are you?" Barry asked. "Where are you from? You're not from Earth. What planet are you from?"

"Oh, intelligence," it breathed.

"Where were you born?" he repeated. "Or hatched, spawned, whatever."

"This body? Ten miles away. A weakling, heartsick boy, stolen away at night by the Brethren for my cultivation. I carved out his soul and sat in his heart."

Barry sucked in his teeth. "Fine. Your body's human. But what about you, the thing inside?"

"So far from home."

"If you want to get back home, we can help."

"Why would I leave this place?" it growled. "A world of industry, of workforce and warfare. I could turn it to such purpose."

"Oh yeah. How?"

"I would migrate to the Holy Monarch."

"You mean Queen Victoria?"

"With one bite, I would pass into her blood, and then it begins. The Empire of the Wolf. Many questions.

"And you…" it breathed, and the hair on the back of his neck stood at attention. "Your scent is everywhere and nowhere. You smell of lightning. You burned like the sun, but you carry the storm within you forever."

Barry took a step backwards, chains rattling, and raised his eyebrows.

"How'd you know that?"

He—it—bared his teeth, in a way that reminded Barry of a wolf's grin. "I know, child of the storm. I can smell the wind and lightning in your blood."

"Oh-kay…"

Barry spun, almost jumped out of his skin, and staggered as the cellar doors were flung open. Moonlight shone on the crate, and the young man rose from his cloak.

"Okay, everyone, don't look!" Barry shouted, feeling dizzy from adrenaline and fear. "Listen to me! Grab hold of the chain and pull! Come on! With me! Pull!"

Behind him, he could hear the young man beginning to transform. He had a pretty good idea of what the end result would be. "I said pull! Stop whining and listen to me! All of you! And that means you, your Ladyship. Now come on, pull!"

They pulled, and pulled, and the chain broke loose as the wolf howled from behind them. He staggered, exhausted, as the Doctor burst in, along with Sir Robert.

"Took you long enough!" he shouted. The Doctor looked over at the wolf within the crate, now rising to its full height.

"Oh, that's beautiful," he breathed, then ducked as it threw a piece of crate at him. Together, they, Sir Robert, and the ladies all ran outside, and the Doctor locked the doors behind them as the staff began passing out muskets.

"It could be any form of light-modulated species triggered by specific wavelengths," the Doctor mused. "Did it say what it wanted?"

"The Queen, the Crown, the throne, the usual," Barry rolled his eyes. There was a crash, and the werewolf charged towards them, only to be repelled by a volley of bullets.

"All right, you men! We should retreat upstairs," the Doctor ordered. "Come with me."

"I'll not retreat," the Steward told him. "The battle's done. There's no creature on God's Earth that could survive such an assault."

"That's the point, it's not from God's Earth!" Barry yelled.

"I'm telling you, come upstairs!" the Doctor insisted.

"And I'm telling you, sir, I will sleep well tonight with that thing's hide upon my wall!"

The Steward shrugged, shouldered his gun, and looked around. "It must have crawled away to die."

Those were the last words he spoke, as a furry paw erupted from the shadows. Barry dove forwards, but all of a sudden, a wave of exhaustion washed over him. He stumbled and fell flat on his face as the steward was swept away.

"Look out!"

Barry rolled over, seeing the claws and fangs of the werewolf glinting in the moonlight as it bore down. He let out a desperate cry and ran towards his friend, almost collapsing again into his arms.

"Come on!" the Doctor ordered. "Front door's no good, it's been boarded shut. Pardon me, your majesty. You'll have to leg it out a window."

With the wolf almost literally nipping at their heels, the Doctor, Barry, Victoria, one of the soldiers, and Robert all charged up the stairs.

"I'll take this position and hold it," the soldier snapped. "You keep moving, for God's sake!"

"What's your name?" Barry asked quietly.

"Reynolds. Alistair Reynolds."

He grabbed the man's shoulder for a second. "Good man."

Reynolds shot him a stiff nod, then turned to buy them some time.

Having barricaded the library doors, earned themselves a moment of peace, and begun researching werewolf myths, Barry turned to the Doctor. "Why didn't my speed work?"

The Doctor frowned for a moment, then realization hit.

"Barry, when was the last time you ate something?"

"Uh…Christmas dinner with the Smiths, I think."

"Of course," the Doctor breathed, running a hand through his hair. "Your metabolism was accelerated by the lightning, but that means you need to eat a lot more calories than normal."

"I was super hungry," Barry admitted. "I thought it was just Sarah Jane's cooking."

"You used yourself up. Have to be careful, Barry. When you move fast, you burn through calories in a flash. If you try using your speed for anything else...well,

let's just say that won't be good."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay, will do."

"Why does it want the throne?" Robert asked, coming over to them.

"That's what it wants," Barry responded. "The Empire of the Wolf."

"Imagine it," the Doctor nodded, rubbing his chin. "The Victorian Age accelerated. Starships and missiles fueled by coal and driven by steam, leaving history devastated in its wake."

"Sir Robert," Victoria began. "If I am to die here…"

"Don't say that, Your Majesty," Robert insisted.

"I would destroy myself rather than let that creature infect me. But that's no matter. I ask only that you find some place of safekeeping for something far older and more precious than myself."

She withdrew from her robes a diamond, which the Doctor identified a the Koh-i-Noor, the greatest diamond in the world.

"Why do you travel with it?"

"My annual pilgrimage. I'm taking it to Helier and Carew, the Royal Jewellers at Hazelhead. The stone needs recutting."

"How come?"

"My late husband Albert always said the shine was not quite right. But he died with it still unfinished."

"Unfinished," the Doctor breathed. "Oh, yes. There's a lot of unfinished business in this house. His father's research, and your husband, Ma'am, he came here and he sought the perfect diamond. Hold on, hold on. All these separate things, they're not separate at all, they're connected. Oh, my head, my head. What if his father and your husband weren't just telling each other stories? They dared to imagine all this was true, and they planned against it, laying the real trap not for you, but for the wolf."

As if on cue, the glass in the skylight cracked, and they looked up to see said wolf right there.

Charging up to the observatory, the Doctor looked around wildly.

"No mistletoe in these doors because your father wanted the wolf to get inside. I just need time. Is there any way of barricading this?"

"Just do your work and I'll defend it," Robert told him.

"If we could bind them shut with rope or something…"

"I said I'd find you time, Sir. Now get inside."

"Good man," the Doctor murmured, as Barry closed his eyes for a moment and added Robert's name to the list he carried inside his heart.

"Your Majesty, the diamond."

"For what purpose?"

"The purpose it was designed for," he ordered, and nodded his companion over to the telescope.

""You said this thing doesn't work," Barry reminded him.

"It doesn't work as a telescope because that's not what it is. It's a light chamber. It magnifies the light rays like a weapon. We've just got to power it up."

"Power it up? Oh, right, duh. Moonlight!"

"You're seventy percent water, but you can still drown."

The two men rolled the telescope to catch and refract the moonlight, which was channelled down into the room. As the werewolf broke through the doors, the Doctor tossed the diamond to where the light hit the floor. It refracted upwards, catching the werewolf in its beam and lifting it up off the floor. The wolf turned back into a young man, hanging as if crucified in mid air with a moonlight aura around him.

"Make it brighter," the man whispered. "Let me go."

The Doctor quietly adjusted the magnification on the eyepiece. The man turned back into a wolf shape, howled once more, and vanished. Barry closed his eyes and bowed his head, thinking of Reynolds, Robert, and the unnamed young man who had never had a life of his own. When he lifted his eyes again, he saw Victoria looking at a small scratch on her wrist.

"Your Majesty? Did it bite you?"

"No, it's, it's a cut, that's all."

"If that thing bit you…"

"It was a splinter of wood when the door came apart," she insisted. "It's nothing."


Morning. In the presence of the whole household, the Doctor and Rose knelt before Queen Victoria, holding a sword she'd picked up somewhere. The guys smirked at each other.

"By the power invested in me by the Church and the State, I dub thee Sir Doctor of TARDIS. By the power invested in me by the Church and the State, I dub thee Sir Bartholomew of Central City. You may stand."

"Many thanks, Ma'am," the Doctor told her as he rose.

"Yeah, thanks," Barry echoed, making a mental note to text Kara as soon as possible and trying—and failing—to keep a straight face. "They're never going to believe this back home."

"Your Majesty," the Doctor added. "What you said last night about receiving no message from the great beyond. I think your husband cut that diamond to save your life. He's protecting you even now, Ma'am, from beyond the grave."

"Indeed. You may go, then. I do not wish to see you again."

"Pardon me?"

"Your world is steeped in terror and blasphemy and death. I do not wish any part of it. Pray that you find your way back to all that is good."

Barry opened his mouth to protest, but the Doctor nudged him. They bowed and walked away together.


"So, that was a thing," Barry announced, his feet up on the TARDIS console. The Doctor shot him a look from where he was tinkering on the far side.

"A thing?"

"Yeah, you know. It…it's slang."

"Oh, right," the Doctor nodded. "C'mon."

The Time Lord led his companion through the corridors until they reached the wardrobe. Some concepts, Barry knew, didn't translate well from Gallifreyan to English. The phrase "walk-in closet" took a whole other meaning when you has a TARDIS infinitely bigger on the inside. Barry snagged a pirate hat resting on a hatstand and followed his friend into the depths. Resting on a table ahead was…

"That my suit?"

"Oh yes!" the Doctor beamed. He scooped it up and handed it to Barry, who held it up, admiring the lightning bolt emblem on the front, yellow against a white circle on the red suit.

"Resized to fit you better," he announced. "Plus I added a couple new features."

There was a gust of wind, and now Barry was inside it, holding an arm up as he examined it. "Now this is a super suit!"

He pulled the cowl over his head.

"Heads-up display and GPS in the eyepieces, infrared vision eyepieces, built-in oxygen tank, thermo-threading to keep you warm, and I added a communications system linked to your cell phone," the Doctor explained proudly.

"Whoah…"

"Everything I thought you might need. Not the first time I've done something like this."

"Thank you, thank you!"

They hugged, and when Barry pulled back, he saw that the Doctor was beaming at him. For a second, he thought his friends' eyes looked suspiciously wet.

"You're welcome."

Another gust of wind, and Barry was standing in front of the Doctor in sweats and T-shirt once more, the suit having been deposited in his ring.

"So," the Doctor announced. "Feel like testing it out?"

"What'd you have in mind?"

"Well, you know, I've always wanted to find out just how the Library of Alexandria was destroyed…"

As always, please leave a review, and stay safe! Oh, and by the way, there will be no School Reunion. It would be redundant, since a) Barry's already met Sarah Jane, and b) he's not immature enough to throw a temper tantrum just because he isn't the first person to ever travel with the Doctor. I may publish Clark and SJ dealing with the Krillitanes by themselves if there's enough interest.

Also, the reference to Hermione Granger doesn't mean that HP exists in this universe. 1979 is her canon birth year in the books, that's all.

Incidentally, in real life, while non-British citizens can be knighted, they wouldn't be dubbed. Call it artistic license. There's no word in canon as to which chivalric order they're part of. However, seeing as most of the orders a) are for diplomatic/military honors, which wouldn't be appropriate here, b) haven't been invented yet (or both), and c) work by the Government proposing to the Monarch whom to knight, the choices are down to the Order of the Thistle or the Garter. While the Garter is usually limited to a couple dozen people, since they're getting banished immediately anyway, I'm going with the Order of the Garter since it's more prestigious and probably more appropriate. This probably won't come up later in the story, but just in case you're wondering.