Chapter 25 The One with the Banana Groves of Villengard
Wow okay, it's been a while... what's been happening? I met someone, it went badly then it went well again then life got ahead of me then I caught Covid! It's been a little bit mental recently I won't lie! But here's a new chapter, and I hope, I hope it makes up for my absence...
I own nothing recognisable x
Florence felt her back press up against the cool wall of the hospital ward behind her as she stepped back as far as she could go, the Doctor's leather jacket held tightly in her hand as he looked around for an escape route. The pessimistic voice in Florence's held telling her that it was too late for escape routes, that the weird gas mask patients were way too close, and any minute now they would touch them and become just like them. The more rational voice told her that if she met future versions of the Doctor very much alive and not wearing a gas mask then she should be more confident in the continuity of the timelines, though that was quickly shut down by the pessimistic voice that reminded her that timelines were fucking unreliable and got her into this mess in the first place.
"Doctor!" Rose called out to him as he stepped forward, the leather jacket falling from Florence's grasp as he did so.
"Go to your room." He suddenly told the patients firmly, causing them to - surprisingly - stop in their tracks. "Go to your room." He repeated, harsher than before, the heads of every advancing figure in the room tilting to the left slowly at his words. "I mean it. I'm very, very angry with you!" He told them, when they didn't move any further. "I am very, very cross. Go... to... your... room!" He punctuated his command with a raised arm pointing in any direction, and there was a moment of tense silence before the patients hung their heads and shuffled away slowly, walking back to their beds. The Doctor turned to his companions and offered them a relieved smile. "I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words."
"You are something else." Florence told him incredulously, holding a hand to her chest to calm her racing heart, and he gave her an over the top cheeky wink in response.
"Why are they all wearing gas masks?" Rose asked peering down at one of the patients, Jack moved around them, barely glancing at the people lying comatose, seating himself in Constantine's vacant chair with a very casual sigh.
"They're not." He told her, filling her in on what Florence and the Doctor had only found out earlier that night. "Those masks are flesh and bone."
"How was your con supposed to work?" The Doctor asked suddenly, the room filled with a tense atmosphere that stifled Florence, the knowledge that the con man sitting near her was a dear friend - or would soon become one, or maybe never was at all - not sitting right with her with all these people transforming into these creatures around London.
"Simple enough, really." Jack shrugged. "Find some harmless piece of space junk, let the nearest Time Agent track it back to Earth, convince him it's valuable, name a price. When he's put fifty percent up front, oops!" He pulled an innocent pouting face that made Florence grit her teeth. "A German bomb falls on it, destroys it forever. He never gets to see what he's paid for, never knows he's been had." Florence scoffed and folded her arms,
"Then what?" She asked calmly, but his smug face was making it harder to stay that way.
"I buy him a drink with his own money, and we discuss dumb luck…" He told her simply. "The perfect self-cleaning con."
"Yeah. Perfect." The Doctor agreed, though his tone suggested otherwise.
"The London Blitz is great for self-cleaners." Jack continued, clearly either ignoring the two scowls aimed at him or just completely oblivious to it. "Pompeii's nice if you want to make a vacation of it though, but you've got to set your alarm for volcano day." Florence raised an eyebrow at the attempt of a joke, and he stopped laughing almost as soon as he started. "Getting a hint of disapproval…"
The Doctor shook his head at him slightly. "Take a look around the room." He told the con man seriously. "This is what your harmless piece of space-junk did."
"It was a burnt out medical transporter." Jack tried to maintain some honour in the face of the Doctor's annoyance, though Florence didn't find it particularly convincing. "It was empty." The Doctor turned away, grabbing Florence's elbow as he went.
"Rose, come on." Rose finally took her eyes off of the patients around her and looked hopefully at the Doctor.
"Are we getting out of here?" She asked, as the Doctor strode towards the doors.
"We're going upstairs." He told them, the two women following after him, sharing a confused look.
Florence could hear Jack's feet falling from the desk to the floor as he stood to shout after them. "I even programmed the flight computer so it wouldn't land on anything living. I harmed no-one." The Doctor stopped, hand gripping the door tightly. "I don't know what's happening here, but believe me, I had nothing to do with it."
"I'll tell you what's happening." He told the con man firmly. "You forgot to set your alarm clock. It's volcano day." Before Jack could say another word in response an air raid siren resonated through the eerie hospital wing, causing Rose to jump slightly and look around at the patients as if expecting them to sit up once more at the sudden noise.
"What's that?" She asked.
"The 'all clear'." Jack answered, and the Doctor scoffed slightly,
"I wish."
Florence found herself sliding around the linoleum hospital floors after Rose and Jack once the Doctor had managed to evade the trio with ease, slipping out of sight and further into the maze of corridors seconds after they had left the ward.
"Doctor?" Rose called after him, looking around, just as confused as Florence was.
"Have you got a blaster?" The northern twang sounded from a floor above them, causing the three time travellers to stop suddenly and try their best to avoid colliding into each other as they backed up to look up the staircase the Doctor was leaning against.
"Sure!" Jack called, bounding up the stairs excitedly, as the two girls followed warily, both just as eager as the other to get out of the creepy hospital. Florence rolled her eyes when they reached the top of the stairs,
"You're like a bloody cat!" She complained to the Doctor who smiled down at her. "What happened to no wandering off?"
"Where's the fun in that?" He asked her seriously, before nodding her head to what appeared to be a steel door behind him. "Besides, my sneaking found something, so don't complain." He turned away from her to look at Jack, the humour in his voice when he spoke to Florence disappearing entirely as he spoke to the con man. "The night your space junk landed, someone was hurt… this is where they were taken."
"What happened?" Rose asked, looking between the door and the Doctor.
"Let's find out." The Doctor told her, turning to Jack. "Get it open." He ordered, and Jack laughed excitedly, pulling a futuristic silver gun out of his jacket and pointing it at the door. The Doctor stepped back into line with the two women, and Rose frowned at him.
"What's wrong with your sonic screwdriver?" She asked him in a hushed voice, and the Doctor smirked slightly,
"Nothing." Florence turned her gaze towards Jack, whose gun was glowing and suddenly emitted a burst of blue light and a high pitch ring as he steel lock disintegrated in front of her eyes.
"Huh…" She murmured. "Handy." The door swung open, no longer stopped by the lock or handle, and Jack grabbed it with a pleased grin.
"Impressed yet?" He asked the brunette cheekily, before the Doctor reached forward and grabbed it from him, tossing it from hand to hand curiously.
"Sonic blaster, fifty-first century. Weapons factories of Villengard." He inspected the device curiously.
"You've been to the factories?" Jack asked, clearly keen to find some middle ground with the Doctor after his previous hostility.
"Once." The Time-Lord replied, still focusing on the blaster.
Jack shrugged slightly, hanging onto the door still. "They're gone now, destroyed." He told them all. "The main reactor went critical - vaporised the lot."
"Like I said, once." The Doctor quipped, smiling sardonically at the con man. "There's a banana grove there, now. I like bananas, bananas are good." Florence laughed slightly, rolling her eyes and nudging the Doctor towards the room, leaving Rose to deal with the gobsmacked time agent behind them. They entered a messy room, the Doctor finding a working lamp on a desk and flicking it on, illuminating a space filled with filing cabinets, furniture laying across the floor and what looked like radio recording equipment.
"What the hell happened here?" Florence asked, catching sight of the shatter glass window clearly separating the recorder from the recorder. There were drawings scattered throughout the room, some on scrap pieces of white paper, some drawn directly onto the walls, all depicting the same stick figure of a woman with long hair.
"What do you think happened?" The Doctor asked her, fiddling with equipment in front of him.
"I dunno." She replied, looking around. "It looks like…" She couldn't quite work out what exactly it looked like, children's drawings covering the walls of a room that was partially destroyed by the force of a small hurricane. "I mean-"
"Something got outta here." Jack cut her off, looking around at the shards of glass and the overturned chairs.
"Yeah. And?" The Doctor asked again, and Florence had a feeling he already knew exactly what had happened here, but wanted them all to work it out too.
"Something powerful. Angry." Jack added, picking up a teddy bear to I spect it before tossing it back onto the bed. "A child? I suppose this explains Mummy." Florence nodded, remembering the way the child had managed to put his voice into the TARDIS phones, and the appliances at the house.
"How could a child do this?" Rose asked, and before Florence could open her mouth to explain that they had no clue as of yet, the Doctor pressed a button on the recording equipment and the familiar voice of Constantine echoed through the room.
"Do you know where you are?" He asked the patient of the room, who responded the only way he knew how.
"Are you my mummy?" Came the small, terrified voice of the child.
"Are you aware of what's around you? Can you see?" The four of them stood in silence listening to the tape, and Florence couldn't take her eyes off the lonely stuffed toy still on the bed.
"Are you my mummy?" Was the only response Constantine received, but he still persisted,
"What do you want? Do you know what-" The child cut him off quickly,
"I want my mummy! Are you my mummy? I want my mummy! Are you my mummy? Are you my mummy? Mummy? Mummy?" He continued to repeat his cry, calling out for his mummy, while Rose pointed at the recording shakily.
"Doctor, I've heard this voice before." Florence nodded, looking at the Doctor,
"Us too, it's the same boy from the house…"
"Mummy? Mummy?" He called out hopelessly.
"Always 'are you my mummy?' like he doesn't know." Rose wondered, the room feeling stifling. "Why doesn't he know?" The Doctor was silent, staring blankly around the room.
"Doctor?" Florence asked him, he looked like he was in pain.
"Can you sense it?" He asked her, hands clenching in and out of fists. Jack shuffled slightly on the spot, looking around,
"Sense what?"
"Coming out of the walls." The Doctor murmured, easily heard in the stifling room. "Can you feel it?" He looked at the three humans as they shook their heads at him. "Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?"
"Mummy!"
Florence frowned at the Doctor, childishly pouting and crossing her arms. "Well that's just rude." She scolded him, and Rose rolled her eyes,
"When he's stressed, he likes to insult species." She explained to Jack, who looked equally as offended.
"Rose, I'm thinking." The Doctor berated the blonde, but she just rolled her eyes at him - clearly used to his behaviour.
"He cuts himself shaving, then does half an hour on life forms he's cleverer than." Florence huffed out a laugh slightly, he really had no social boundaries.
The Doctor clicked his fingers for some quiet, before looking at Florence. "Florence, those children, living rough round the bomb sites…" Florence nodded,
"The Oliver Twist kids, yeah?"
"They come out during air raids looking for food… suppose they were there when this thing, whatever it was, landed?"
"But none of them knew what we were talking about?" Florence reminded him, only for him to shake his head slightly,
"No, not just to see it." He turned to look at Jack, who threw his hands up innocently,
"It was a med-ship! It was harmless!" He insisted, but the Doctor scowled,
"Yes, you keep saying 'harmless'. Suppose one of them was affected, altered?"
"Altered how?" Rose asked, and Florence shook her head,
"You think this child, was… what? Infected by something?" Jack opened his mouth to argue back but the Doctor cut him off sharply,
"All I know is that it's afraid. Terribly afraid and powerful. It doesn't know it yet, but it will. It's got the power of a god, and I just sent it to its room." Florence frowned at his statement,
"What do you mean?" There was a tapping sound coming from the radio on the desk.
"I'm here! Can't you see me?" The child's voice was telling them, Florence shifted her eyes away from the Doctor and around the suddenly too small room.
"Doctor…"
"What's that noise?" Rose asked, noticing the tapping sound.
"End of the tape." The Doctor told them, and Florence's eyes shot to his. "It ran out about thirty seconds ago." He sounded too casual about their situation for her liking.
"What?"
"I'm here, now. Can't you see me?" The little boy asked, and the Doctor shrugged slightly,
"I sent it to it's room…" He told them. "This is its room." He turned quickly and revealed to Florence, Rose and Jack what, or rather who, had been concealed behind his form.
"Are you my mummy?" The child asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion. "Mummy?"
"Doctor…" Rose began, Florence assumed she was wondering the same thing she was, specifically how the hell they were going to get past the creepiest child in the world. Well, Florence considered, probably not in those same words.
Jack shifted slightly behind them. "Okay, on my signal… make for the door." He slowly inched in between the Doctor and Florence, before reaching into his coat with speed and drawing his weapon: a banana. "NOW!" He looked at the banana in confusion, allowing the Doctor to pull the sonic blaster out of his own coat and aiming it at the wall to their left.
"Now!" He repeated the Captain's command as a square hole was blasted into the wall. "Don't drop that banana!" He told Jack, who began to push the two young women ahead of him.
"Why not?!" He called out incredulously over his shoulder.
"Good source of potassium!" The Doctor yelled as he followed them through the hole and into the hallway, Jack held his hand out for his gun as the child began to approach the hole.
"Give me that!" He pointed it at the wall and pressed another button that replaced the gap with concrete once more, hiding the child from their sight. "Digital rewind." He explained to them casually, before throwing the banana back to the Doctor. "Nice switch." The Doctor examined the banana with a small smile.
"It's from the groves of Villengard. I thought it was appropriate." Florence smirked slightly,
"Oh so was there a choice of fruit coming out of those pockets then?" The Doctor wiggled his eyebrows and tapped the banana against her head lightly before putting it back in his jacket.
"Bananas are good." He told the captain simply, but before anyone could question his oddities further a small crack began to appear in the wall in front of them.
"Oh my god!" Rose cried, it looked as if the child was forcing his way through the wall. The Doctor grabbed Florence's hand and pulled her down the hallway,
"Come on!" Florence blindly grabbed for Rose as she was dragged away from their temporary safe space, only to find themselves cornered on the other side of the corridor by the gas masked patients no longer in their beds.
"And again!" Florence yelled, pulling them both this time back down the corridor they had come from in the hopes of freedom.
Only, the other exit was also blocked.
"Oh, for fu-"
"It's keeping us here til it can get at us!" The Doctor yelled over the cacophony of voices calling out for their mummy.
"It's controlling them?" Jack shouted back, waving his blaster between the two sets of gas masked patients heading their way and the increasingly breaking wall in front of them.
"It is them!" The Doctor told him. "It's every living thing in this hospital!"
Jack took a deep breath, shaking the Doctor's confusing comments off. "Okay… this can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon and it's a triple-enfolded sonic disruptor." Florence wasn't even going to pretend she knew what half those words meant. "Doc, what you got?" The Doctor pulled out his thin silver instrument quickly. before looking at it almost shamefully.
"I've got a sonic… uh… never mind..." He faltered, and Jack craned his neck to see what he held before focusing again on the approaching figures.
"What?" The American asked, but the Doctor shook his head.
"It's sonic, okay?! Let's leave it at that!"
"Disruptor? Cannon? What?" Jack cried out, but the Doctor refused to let up.
"It's sonic! Totally sonic! I'm soniced up!" Florence screamed slightly as the wall gave in with the tiny fists of the child.
"Doctor, just tell him!"
"A sonic what!" Florence and Jack yelled at him at the same time, and the Doctor turned suddenly, his sonic screwdriver dimly lit with a blue glow.
"Screwdriver!" He relented, causing Jack to look at him in shock, clearly ready to ask more questions, just as the boy's face appeared in the freshly made hole and he began to climb through. Rose, thinking on her feet, quickly grabbed the arm attached to Jack's blaster and aimed it at the floor.
"Going down!" She yelled out, before pulling the trigger and opening up a large square hole in the floor. Florence screamed as the ground beneath her disappeared, bracing herself as her knees buckled and she hit the solid floor of the ward below them. Jack recovered quickly and restored the ceiling using the same function he had done before, while the Doctor and Rose sat up with a groan.
"Are you okay?" Rose asked the Doctor, who brushed himself off slightly,
"Could've used a warning." He grumbled before holding out a hand to Florence, who was still lying flat out with her eyes tightly closed. "C'mon, Florence, up you get." She batted his hand away,
"Just leave me, my body is broken." She opened her eyes to see the Doctor roll his own and Rose scoff slightly,
"Oh the gratitude." Florence smiled slightly and accepted the Doctor's arm, gripping the cool leather tightly, grateful to have made it out alive once more.
"Thank you, Rose…" She told the blonde mockingly, who pulled a face at her sarcasm.
"Who has a sonic screwdriver?" Jack asked in disdain, and the Doctor - rightly so in Florence's opinion - looked offended.
"I do."
"He does." They said in unison, but Jack shook his head.
"Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooo, this could be a little more sonic?" Florence briefly noticed Rose rushing around the room mumbling something about lights but was too focused on defending the device that had got her out of enough scrapes to feel defensive over Jack's attack.
"What, you've never been bored?" The Doctor asked him, and Florence pointed a finger indignantly at Jack,
"I'll have you know that that screwdriver can do lots of things!" She asserted, and the Doctor smirked down at her.
"Haven't you ever had a lot of cabinets to put up?" He asked snarkily, and Jack rolled his eyes at the two of them,
"All I'm saying is it doesn't exactly scream 'hero'..." The Doctor folded his arms,
"Who said I'm a hero?" Florence had to scoff at that,
"Alright, well you are definitely a hero but that's beside the point. Look at McGyver! He used a whole bunch of crap as a weapon!"
The Doctor pulled a face at her words, turning his mild annoyance onto her. "Hang on a minute, I am not McGyver!" Before Florence could defend her analogy, the lights switched on suddenly and they four found themselves once again surrounded by patients who were quickly rising from their beds.
"Mummy… Mummy…" They began to chant and Jack pointed across the room.
"Door." He instructed, racing towards it followed by the others, he whipped out his blaster and tried to shoot the bolted door open, but the weapon only made a few sputtering noises. "Damn it!" He turned to the others bashfully. "It's the special features. They really drain the battery." He informed them, and the Doctor smirked, working his magic on the door with his screwdriver.
"The battery?" Rose scoffed, as Jack smacked his hand against the gun impatiently. The Doctor threw the door open and pushed Florence into the room before following, locking it behind them once Rose and Jack had run in. "That's so lame!" Rose complained, causing Florence to laugh slightly. She looked around the room for another exit but found themselves to be cornered in a storeroom of sorts, filled with various medical posters and equipment scattered around. Florence ignored Jack's defense of his weapon and patted the Doctor on the arm.
"Good job, McGyver." He scoffed and stuffed the screwdriver back in his pocket, but Florence caught the slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Yes well, that door should hold it for a bit." He announced to the other two, causing Jack to throw his arms up incredulously,
"The door? The wall didn't stop it!" He reminded them, but the Doctor simply moved past him, looking around the room.
"Well it's got to find us first!" He told them, opening a cabinet and then closing it again. "Come on, we're not done yet! Assets! Assets!"
However, Jack didn't seem to be done with his complaints. "Well, I've got a banana!" He commented, snarkily. "And in a pinch you could put up some shelves!'
The Doctor jumped up onto a slight ledge and looked at the barred window that was letting moonlight into the room, pointing at it. "Window." Jack shook his head, taking a seat on an abandoned wheelchair,
"Barred. Sheer drop outside. Seven stories." Sheesh, Florence didn't fancy their chances at seven stories, she could barely handle the one floor.
"And no other exits." Rose grumbled.
"Well, the assets conversation went in a flash, didn't it?" Jack asked, folding his hands in annoyance. Florence frowned at him,
"Oh you're a barrel of optimism, aren't you?" She threw at him, she wasn't impressed with this version of Jack, he was nowhere near as charming as his future selves. It seemed as though the Doctor shared her sentiments, throwing down to Rose,
"So where'd you pick this one up, then?" Rose turned her head away in embarrassment,
"Doctor.." Jack merely smirked.
"She was hanging from a barrage balloon, I had an invisible spaceship… I never stood a chance." He told them, and Florence gave Rose a knowing look, but the blonde blushed and turned back to the Doctor as he spoke.
"Okay…" The Doctor began, and Florence could almost see the cogs turning in his head. "One, we've gotta get out of here. Two, we can't get out of here… Have I missed anything?"
"Uhh, yeah…" Rose spoke up, and Florence turned to look at her, but she was staring at the other side of the room. "Jack just disappeared." Florence followed her gaze to see the wheelchair had once again been abandoned, and was still slightly rolling backwards into the wall.
The room felt quiet without the con man.
"Okay…" Rose began, looking around the room for anything else that could help them. She wasn't about to let the disappearance of the good looking - extremely good looking - American get in the way of their escape from what was the creepiest hospital she had ever been in. "So he's vanished into thin air." She put her hands on her hips and huffed, blowing a strand of blonde hair out of her face. "Why is it always the great looking ones who do that?"
The Doctor turned from where he was still examining the barred windows, an affronted look on his face. "I'm making an effort not to be insulted." Florence laughed slightly, and the Doctor threw her a look as well, causing the young woman to throw her hands up innocently.
"She said it!" Rose rolled her eyes at the pair of them, shrugging slightly.
"I mean men." She weakly defended. She wasn't completely lying, the Doctor was handsome in his own way, but it wasn't just about his looks. Rose couldn't pretend like physical attractiveness didn't help Jack's chances, but it was his general demeanor that really attracted her to him. After all, what girl didn't like being wooed and spun around an invisible spaceship with music and champagne? The Doctor could never, and would never, not with Rose at least. Perhaps if he looked at her the way he looked at Florence she might have thought differently, but that was not the case. Rose would take in the advances of the roguish charm that Jack offered, and leave the Doctor to moon over Florence as if she brought the dawn with every jump.
"Okay, thanks. That really helped." The Doctor sarcastically countered.
The old fashioned radio in the corner crackled to life before Rose could make things worse. "Rose? Doc? Flo? Can you hear me?" Rose turned away from the identical looks of distaste on the Doctor and Florence's faces at Jack's nicknames. "I'm back on my ship. Used the emergency teleport. Sorry I couldn't take you, it's security key-coded to my molecular structure. But I'm working on it, hang in there." Rose smiled slightly in relief, at least he hadn't left them for dead on purpose.
Next chapter will be up as soon as possible, I promise this time ;P
See you for chapter 26! xo