Chapter 2 The One with the Doctor
Hello again! Here comes chapter two, time to discover where Florence ended up... Once again, I don't own anything you recognise, that's all BBC.
Enjoy!
Florence opened her eyes, slowly flexing her fingers on what looked like metal grating flooring in confusion. She looked up, all she could see in front of her was a mess of wires and, what looked like, coral beams from floor to ceiling revolving around a platform that held a central column. Standing next to the column was the person she assumed called out to her moments before, it was man who looked to be in his thirties dressed in a brown pinstripe suit with dark messy hair and looking at her with a broad smile on his face, a smile that was slowly fading when he noticed her shell shocked expression, "Florence?"
"What… what's going on?" The young woman looked around at the room bathed in a sort of yellow light before landing on the set of doors at the end of the ramp near where she landed. She stood and ran to them, unable to see the man begin to hold his hand up to stop her but letting it fall back to his side, understanding what it was he was witnessing. Florence reached for the doors, pulling at the handles and shouting in frustration when they wouldn't budge. "Let me out! Let me OUT!" She turned and faced the stranger, back against the doors, a terrified look on her face.
"Who are you? Where am I?" He was silent, mouth open to explain but not quick enough for Florence, "I said where the FUCK am I?" He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled,
"It's.. a long story, Florence."
"Well start talking! Why do you know my name? Tell me! Now!" She looked around her, "Am I in some weird stalker dungeon?"
The man seemed insulted by this, "Why do people keep thinking I'm a kidnapper… thought this was a friendly face this time…" He seemed to be talking to himself now, something that royally pissed Florence off, and she clicked her fingers at him,
"Hey! You! Question, answer, now!" She braved it and stalked up the ramp, pointing an accusatory finger at him, which he looked at with a smirk,
"Florence, I promise you're safe okay," He saw this did nothing to soothe her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm the Doctor, okay? You know me. This is all very confusing to you-"
"Confusing?" She interrupted, crossing her arms defensively, "I'm fucking terrified! What do you mean you know me? Doctor who? What is this place?"
The 'Doctor' pointed at the off yellow chair to her left, "Just sit down okay, I'll explain everything." She raised an eyebrow and him and he nodded, "Okay okay, still not comforting. You're in the TARDIS, it's my ship, and I promise I had nothing to do with bringing you here. How can I convince you that you know and trust me? Please."
His pleading eyes almost broke through Florence's resolve, almost. "Tell me something only someone I know would know."
"Your birthday is November 15th."
"Not good enough. Try again." She wasn't letting him off on something he could easily find through a good bit of stalking.
"No of course not… Okay, you have a scar just below your left ear." Florence frowned at that, that was weird. "I know you got it when you were 13 years old and you were proving to Josie Farrow - who you still resent - that you could hang upside down on the monkey bars, but you lost your grip and cut yourself on the compass from your maths class - your teacher was Miss Owen, by the way - that was poking through the canvas of your bag you'd placed there just in case you fell." He smiled, pleased with himself, and Florence gaped.
"How the fuck do you know that?"
The 'Doctor' sighed, "Because I know you, Florence. You told me that story, just in the future. Your future, my past. What more can I do to prove it to you?"
"My future? Your past? I just… I don't understand."
"Blimey, I forgot how difficult it is with you at first." Florence scowled,
"Hey! I just dropped into some weird funky mechanic's nightmare with no idea who you are. Do not call me difficult."
"Fine, fine. What else do you want to know." She looked at him in disbelief. "Right, of course, yup. So, TARDIS, it's a… ship. A spaceship. A time and spaceship." He noticed this was doing little to convince her. "I'm the Doctor, I'm a time traveller, we've met many many times before but in the wrong order. It's very, wibbly wobbly…" Florence walked away from him and round the central console, "Hey, listen. This is very strange, yes, just please, don't fiddle with anything." She looked over her shoulder at him,
"'Wibbly wobbly'? You're insane." She ran her hands over the metal buttons and wires, carefully not to press anything, no one could say she wasn't cautious, "This feels so real." She looked up at him. "I'm not drugged lying in some dirty alleyway am I?" He smiled softly at her, she hated the way she felt calmed by it.
"No, trust me…"
"You're a doctor?" She joked, making him chuckle, before she shook her head again and sighed, "Okay, let's say you're telling the truth." She held up a hand to stop him interrupting. "Let's say you're telling the truth. What does this mean? What happens now, do you drop me home and I meet up with you in a couple years time and you won't know me so we can do this lovely introduction all over again and we fly off into the stars? Or is this it, I'm just stuck here?"
The Doctor, she still felt weird referring to him as that, rubbed the back of his neck and made a non committal noise, "Well it's sort of, like… I'll show you, okay?"
He was interrupted by the sound of footsteps walking up the metal grating near them and a voice accompanying them, "This place is HUGE!" Florence blinked and looked to where the voice was coming from, a young black woman appeared with a bright smile on her face, "So! Where to next, guys? Oh, Florence, did you change?"
The Doctor winced at the sight of Florence's face, where a frown was growing again. She turned away from the other woman and glared at the Doctor, "Sorry, did you forget to mention ya mate?"
"Florence, I told you, wrong order. This is Martha."
'Martha' looked confused, "What? Wait, is this? Has she…?" The Doctor nodded, hoping to quickly explain,
"Yes Martha, first meeting, very weird. Florence," He held his hands up once more in surrender, "This is our friend Martha, we've just been somewhere very exciting and we're in the middle of taking her somewhere else, okay?"
Florence stared at him.
"Oh yeah! Go ahead! Please, explain things in less detail!" She said sarcastically, before turning to Martha with an apologetic smile, "Hi, Martha. I'm so sorry, the Doctor here was just saying that he was about to take me home, right?" The Doctor shook his head,
"Nope, I was about to show you that everything I told you about me and you and the TARDIS was true." He smiled smugly, "So, hold on."
Florence frowned, at this rate she was going to have forehead wrinkles by the time she was twenty-five, "What?" She looked over at Martha, who grinned and grabbed the side of the console just as the Doctor pulled a lever and the ground beneath her began to shake so hard that she lost her balance, falling into the chair that the Doctor had tried to get her to sit in only a little while before. The Doctor grinned over at her as he ran around pressing more buttons and hitting the glowing panels with what looked to be a mallet. Florence grabbed a hold of the soft leather of the chair as she was thrown from side to side, screaming while the two mad people she'd just met laughed and held onto the console,
"What is happening!"
The Doctor pulled one final lever and the shaking stopped, he stood up straight with a loud whoop and held a hand out to her to take, "I told you, time and space ship. You wanna see?" He wiggled his fingers at her and she looked apprehensively at him, "Come on, Flo, trust me."
She caught sight of Martha smiling behind them, bouncing on her toes in excitement, itching to discover what was waiting beyond the doors. Florence looked again at the hand stretched out in front of her and gently placed her own into it, letting herself be pulled up and out of the chair and stood in front of this bizarre man, "Okay."
That simple word seemed to light up the Doctor's face with such joy that she almost felt guilty for not trusting him from the get go.
He held her hand in his and spun them both around to face Martha, "So, Martha Jones! Just one trip, that's all I said. One trip. But with Florence here, how about we stretch that definition? One trip into the past, one trip into the future. How do you fancy that?" Martha grinned at him,
"No complaints from me! So, where are we?"
The Doctor squeezed Florence's hand and smiled down at her and back to Martha before replying simply, "Another planet."
"Is it yours?" Florence looked up at him sharply at that, pulling her hand from his,
"What?" He chose to ignore her for the time being,
"Oh, there's plenty of other places…" To Florence, he seemed on edge, like he was hiding something, but Martha didn't notice,
"Come on, planet of the Time Lords! That's got to be worth a look, what's it like?" Time Lord? Florence mouthed to herself, every time she thought she knew what was going on something proved her wrong. She only half listened to what the other two were saying, getting to grips with what seemed to be the weirdest situation of her life, the man next to her said something about burnt orange skies (she didn't even want to know) and cathedrals (religion on an alien planet, or did he say Citadel, she couldn't keep up). She was pulled from her thoughts when the Doctor grabbed her hand again and started pulling her towards the doors,
"Nah!" He was saying, grabbing his coat from the coatrack and pulling it on, briefly releasing Florence from his alien grip she thought with a wince, before grabbing it again, "Where's the fun for me? I don't want to go home." He paused at the doors and grinned at the two women, "Instead, this is much better. Imagine it, well actually you don't have to! Year five billion and fifty-three, planet: New Earth. Told you, Flo," He squeezed her hand and gave her a wink, "Time and spaceship. Anyway! New earth! Second hope of mankind. Fifty thousand light years from your old world, and we're slap bang in the middle of New New York. Although, technically it's the fifteenth New York from the original, so it's New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York." He waggled his eyebrows at the girls, one of whom was grinning with starry eyed wonder and another whole was looking at him like he was mad. "One of the most dazzling cities ever built." He concluded, opening the door with a flourish, and stepping out into the pouring rain in a filthy, dark alley.
Florence stepped out with him, unconsciously tightening her hold on his hand, looking out in front of her in wonder. This was not London. It most definitely was not the street she last remembered being on. She was looking out at a different world, and she was taken aback. Martha, on the other hand, was less impressed,
"Oh, that's nice. Time Lord version of dazzling." She pulled her leather jacket tighter around her and zipped it up, wishing she'd brought a hoodie like the one Florence wore and was currently covering her hair with. The Doctor frowned a little as the rain soaked his hair flat but smiled nonetheless,
"Bit of rain never hurt anyone! Come on then, let's find some cover!" He led the way ahead down the alleyway where the ship was parked, and Florence looked back to see what kind of sci-fi spaceship she just stepped out of but saw instead a blue police box. She pulled the Doctor to a halt and gestured the box,
"Wait, is that your ship? Does it extend further down the alley or something?"
"Nope." He replied, looking proudly as his old girl, "That's her!"
Florence nodded, letting him carry on leading them, feeling sorry for the two who didn't have hoods sheltering them from the rain, but still persisted, "So its just, you know, bigger on the inside." The Doctor grinned madly down at her. "What? Isn't it?"
The Doctor nodded, "Yep. Never get tired of hearing that."
The trio exited the alley into a larger area littered with crates and seemingly bordered up food trucks, with shelter from the rain Florence pulled down her hood and pushed the slightly damp hair out of her face, watching the doctor walk towards a blank monitor. Martha still wasn't particularly impressed, "Looks like the same old Earth to me, on a Wednesday afternoon." Florence laughed,
"Oh but Martha, it's brilliant! My clothes are wet! With alien rain!" Martha scrunched her nose a bit. "This planet could rain 24/7 and I'll still be happy."
"Hold on, hold on." The Doctor called, pulling their attention to the monitor he was trying to get working, "Let's have a look." He fished an odd cylindrical device from his overcoat, pointing it at the screen and pressing a button on the side. Florence watched as the end glowed blue and emitted a high pitched buzzing noise. "Sonic screwdriver, before you ask." She rolled her eyes at his assumption, mouth still half open ready to ask. The screen suddenly turned on, showing a grainy image of what must have been the upper level of the city, with rolling hills and flying cars (Florence's eyes widened seeing them) and tall futuristic buildings. A feminine customer service voice read the weather report and traffic update in the background.
"It's beautiful." Florence whispered, almost knocking the Doctor out of the way to get a closer look at the screen.
"Oh, that's more like it." The tour guide himself declared, "That's the view we had last time. This must be the lower levels, down in the base of the tower. Some sort of under-city." Florence nodded, in the back of her mind wondering when he last came, Martha seemed to have the same idea,
"You've brought me to the slums?" She didn't seem pleased to hear, which caught Florence's attention, she stood up straight and looked between the two of them. The Doctor looked oblivious to his friend's annoyance and looked around,
"Yeah, but this is much more interesting. It's all cocktails and glitter up there. This is the real city." Florence at them both,
"God you sound like one of those locals that swears they hate the London Eye." The Doctor made a so-so motion,
"Bit naff, easily weaponised in the wrong hands." Martha paused, before asking something she was desperate to know,
"When you say 'last time', was that you two and Rose?" Florence looked at her in surprised,
"Me?" The Doctor seemed to ignored Florence's confusion, and rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable,
"Er, yeah. Yeah, it was, yeah."
"Oh." Martha didn't look that impressed, crossing her arms across her chest, "You're taking me to the same planets that you took her?"
Florence was confused by two things: her involvement in this jealous moment of Martha's where she somehow was part of a past visit to the planet in her future, and who this 'Rose' was. When they got back to the Doctor's ship she was going to sit him down and demand answers, whether he wanted to or not. The man in question seemed affronted by Martha's question,
"What's wrong with that?" He looked to Florence for support, but she simply shrugged and pulled a face at him,
"Well, it's a bit, you know…" She trailed off and allowed Martha to jump in,
"Rebound-y."
Before the doctor could answer either woman, what Florence had assumed to be closed down food trucks suddenly burst open in a flurry of activity and noise. Three of the stalls opened up and their owners all called out to the travellers, trying their best to grab their attention,
"Oh!" One of them, a man, exclaimed, "You should have said. How long you been there?" Before they could answer he pulled out foiled square packets from his stash and waved them about, "Happy. You want Happy." Two other sellers joined him in the rush, shouting out different moods to their potential customers. Florence looked between them all, wondering what exactly was being advertised to her,
"Happy, Happy, lovely happy Happy!"
"Anger! Buy some Anger!"
"Get some Mellow. Makes you feel bendy and soft all day long!"
"Don't go to them!" The first told them, beckoning them closer, "They'll rip you off. Do you want some Happy?" The Doctor shook his head, gently steering the girls away from the stalls,
"No, thanks." He seemed concerned, almost somber, which Florence found unusual to see even in the brief time she'd known him.
"Are they selling drugs?" Martha asked, and Florence craned her neck to get a look at the little packets being waved at them,
"I don't know, mood enhancing drugs?" The Doctor shrugged, eager to get them away and somewhere a little more upbeat. It didn't have to be glitz and cocktails but maybe somewhere slightly less concerning. A few more people entered the area, dressed in dark shapeless rags, concerning Florence, and approached the stalls. She looked around,
"Looks like its opening time…"
One girl in particular caught their attention, she was incredibly pale and covered head to toe in black. Florence thought she looked sad, lifeless. She approached one of the stalls and looked up at the woman behind the counter,
"I want to buy Forget."
"I've got Forget, my darling." The woman replied, a sympathetic smile on her face, "What strength? How much do you want forgetting?"
"It's my mother and father. They went on the motorway." The woman smiled again,
"Oh, that's a swine." She handed her what looked like a patch the closer Florence was able to see it, "Try this. Forget Forty Three, that's two credits." The young, sad girl gently took the patch from her and handed over the 'credits', but the Doctor held a hand out to her before she could do anything with it,
"Sorry, but hold on a minute. What happened to your parents?"
"They drove off." She replied simply.
"But they'll drive back?" Florence asked, not understanding the problem. The girl shook her head,
"Everyone goes to the motorway in the end. I've lost them."
"But they can't have gone far. You could find them." The Doctor told her, but the girl wasn't listening, she had pulled the collar of her robe to the side and peeled the back of the patch off, sticking the adhesive to her neck. "No. No, no, don't." But it was too late, Florence and Martha glanced at each other in worry at the blank look on the young girl's face, who gave them all an innocent smile,
"I'm sorry, what were you saying?"
The Doctor tried to stir up some memory, "Your parents, your mother and father. They're on the motorway." But the girl shrugged, unbothered
"Are they? That's nice. I'm sorry, I won't keep you." She left almost as quickly as she arrived, only a completely different person. Florence looked to where she'd disappeared to and back up at the Doctor,
"I don't understand. Did she…?" Martha shook her head,
"So that's the human race five billion years in the future. Off their heads on chemicals." Florence bit her lip, it seemed that way, although the stalls themselves didn't exactly seem to be thriving. Before she could voice her agreement, however, a man and a woman appeared from the shadows behind Martha and grabbed her, the latter pulling out a futuristic looking gun and pointing it at the remaining two. The stalls all happily yelling out their wares only moments before suddenly closed their hatches with fervour, and Florence immediately raised her hands in surrender as Martha yelled out to them, begging with them,
"Please, let her go! What are you doing?" The man seemed apologetic,
"I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry. We just need three, that's all." He backed away, still holding Martha in a tight grip as his partner pointed the gun as they moved. The Doctor called out to them desperately,
"No, let her go! I'm warning you, let her go! Whatever you want, I can help. I promise, we can help. But first you've got to let her go." It did nothing to solve the situation, the kidnappers continued to back away and surprised Florence by continually apologising as they went,
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." The woman called, holding the gun up until they disappeared through a green door. Florence ran towards it and tried to pull it open, yelling when it wouldn't budge,
"MARTHA!" She yelled through the door, stepping aside as the Doctor ran to her, unlocking the door with his blue metal 'screwdriver' and the two of them ran down a hallway but lost the sound of Martha's struggling screams quickly. The Doctor pulled Florence back towards the marketplace, a look of fury covering his previously cheery face, and hammered on the closed hatch of one of the stalls. All three opened up in response and a smiling woman looked down on them from the one the Doctor hit,
"Thought you'd come back. Do you want some happy Happy?" The Doctor ignored her, demanding,
"Those people, who were they? Where did they take her?" One of the other salesperson replied,
"They've taken her to the motorway." He said simply, doing nothing to soothe their worries.
"Looked like carjackers to me." Another replied, while the third joined in with a grimace,
"I'd give up now, darlings. You won't see her again."
"Used to be thriving, this place." The man told them, shaking his head in remorse. "You couldn't move. But they all go to the motorway in the end."
"Why did he say three?" Florence wondered out loud, "The guy, he kept saying three, why?" The saleswoman in front of them looked at them in confusion,
"It's the car-sharing policy, to save fuel. You get special access if you're carrying three adults." The Doctor seemed eager to get away and start their search of Martha, but even Florence knew the importance of getting all the information,
"This motorway, how do I get there?" The woman gestured back the way they came, the way Martha had been taken,
"Straight down the alley, keep going to the end. You canna miss it." She leaned forward on her elbows, "Tell you what. How about some happy Happy? Then you'll be smiling, my loves." The Doctor almost snarled in response,
"Word of advice, all of you. Cash up, close down and pack your bags." He grabbed Florence's hand and began to lead her away, but the sellers wouldn't let up,
"Why's that, then?"
He turned back to face them, glaring darkly, "Because as soon as I've found her, alive and well. And I will find her alive and well. Then I'm coming back, and this street is closing tonight!" Florence squeezed his hand in support and started to pull him towards the door and into the hallway once more. Running to the end and watching him unlock the dirty metal door they stood in front, he swung it open and the two stepped out onto a small balcony, immediately coughing as the exhaust fumes of the thousands of vehicles Florence could see invaded their lungs. She pulled the collar of her hoodie up over her nose and looked around to try and seem some sort of way through, but before she had a chance to ask the Doctor over the sound of car horns what their next step would be, the door of the vehicle in front of them slid open with a hiss and a figure looked out at them. They wore a vintage looking World War Two aviator jacket, helmet and goggles (Florence couldn't seem to get away from these War enthusiasts) with a scarf wrapped around their face, most likely doing a better job at keeping the fumes away than Florence's hoodie.
"Hey!" The figure called out, revealing a masculine Irish accent, "Ya daft little street ruts! What are the two of yas doing, standing there? Either get out or get in. Come on!" The Doctor quickly pushed her forward with a hand on her back and into the vehicle, it seemed they had no other choice.
End of chapter two! This is part one of Gridlock! I'm planning on splitting episodes up into two chapters to make it less content heavy for people, unless it works out better otherwise!
Would love to hear your thoughts, or a cheeky follow/fave! See you for chapter three! xo