The Doctor, Detective, Widow, and Wardrobe (Pt. 2)
"…and THEN the Master annoyed me so much I tied him up and shaved off that ridiculous beard of his," the Detective was just in the middle of recounting a fond memory of the Master to the Doctor, wanting to keep him informed of all that ha happened between their confrontations, when Lily Arwell entered the room, looking from her, to the TARDIS, to where the Doctor was sitting at a desk and soldering something.
"You were lying about the panthers," Lily stated, crossing her arms.
"Famous last words," the Doctor laughed, glancing at her.
"Were we?" the Detective wondered, pulling something out of her pocket and tossing it to Lily.
"Where'd you get that?" Lily asked, catching the quite large stuffed panther plushie, looking between her and the animal, not having seen it in the room before.
"Pockets," the Detective sighed.
Lily nodded slowly and looked around again, eyeing the TARDIS oddly, "Why have you got a phone box in your room?"
"Why have you got a hammock in your room?" the Detective countered.
"You put it there," Lily pointed out.
"Exactly!" the Detective cheered, as though it made perfect sense.
"It's not a phone box," the Doctor, at least, tried to salvage the situation, "It's our…wardrobe. We've just painted it to look like a phone box."
"I said it ought to look like a portaloo, but I was outvoted apparently."
"What are you doing?" Lily asked after a moment, looking at the Doctor soldering away.
"Rewiring," he answered.
Lily followed the wires running out of the device before him to the phone box, "Why would you rewire a wardrobe?"
"Why would you rewire anything?" the Detective shrugged, now with two dinosaur figurines in her hand, playing with them, a T-Rex and a Triceratops, "To make it cooler!"
"Who are you?" Lily looked between the two of them, the Detective now having the dinosaurs fighting, "REALLY, who are you?"
"I've decided I am now the cook," the Detective announced.
"That isn't what I meant…"
The Doctor cut in though, a light blinking on the device in his hand, a warning that someone was tampering with their Christmas gift early, "Your brother, where is he?"
"Sleeping."
"Wish I was," the Detective sighed, turning to lightly kick the Doctor's chair, he had been the one to lock her out of the wardrobe with his wiring and he'd already poked her awake twice so she knew he didn't intend to let her sleep.
"Could you check, please?" the Doctor asked Lily, frowning deeply at the light. A gift under the tree was more likely to be fiddled with by a child like Cyril than an adult like Madge…unless that 'adult' was the Detective.
"You're one to talk," she muttered under her breath as Lily left, the Doctor could get so excited about gifts that he'd shake them to guess what they were and he'd broken a gift she'd gotten him once, shattered it into a thousand pieces.
"You're worse," he shot back, sticking out his tongue at her for good measure.
So she returned the favor before going back to her toys, "Yes," she deepened her voice as she fiddled with the triceratops, "Yes. This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land! And we will call it…this land!"
"I think we should call it 'your grave!'" she changed her voice to more of a growl, making the T-Rex attack the other one.
"Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" the triceratops moaned.
"Har har har!" the T-Rex laughed, "Mine is an evil laugh! Now die!"
"Oh, no, God! Oh, dear God in heaven!"
The Detective slowly lowered her toys, her 'attack' dying off when she noticed Lily had walked back into the room and was staring at her, "What?"
Lily opened her mouth like she wanted to ask something before thinking better of it and shaking her head, "Cyril's still in bed, asleep."
"Ok," the Doctor nodded to himself, turning back to the wires, sonicing them to try and find the source of the fault. Lily moved to sit on a trunk next to the Detective, clutching the panther plush and focusing on fixing the bowtie it was wearing…when the device beeped again. No fault detected, "You're sure he's still in bed?" he asked her.
"Yeah," Lily shrugged, "He was just lying there like a lump."
"Which means he's not there," the Detective stood, stretching and heading for the door, slipping her dinosaurs back into her pocket, "My bet's on giant teddy or that creepy inflatable clown."
The Doctor and Lily hurried after her to the kids' room, opening the door to see a lump under the blankets of Cyril's cot.
"See?" Lily huffed.
"I see something not breathing," the Detective remarked, heading over, "So either he's died, in which case, condolences…"
"What!?"
"Or…" she pulled the blanket off to reveal the giant teddy bear in Cyril's place, "Knew it!" she beamed, her hands on her hips as she looked down at the bear, "Oh I should have gone for the knife test…"
"You are not stabbing anything," the Doctor sighed and rubbed his forehead as though this were an all too common discussion.
"You were going to stab him?" Lily seemed, understandably, horrified at he idea, "You could have killed him!"
"I was only going to stab it if it wasn't breathing," the Detective rolled her eyes, "Can't kill what's already dead."
"CAN traumatize a child watching though," the Doctor reminded her, with a nod to Lily, "Honestly, Sigma, I shouldn't have to tell you that for you to not stab things," he absently rubbed his hand at a phantom pain.
"And I shouldn't have to tell you a lot of things not to do, Theta, but I do."
"When?" he scoffed, "Name ONE time you've told me NOT to do something?"
"I told you not to eat that rancid chicken," she pointed at him.
"Something that could traumatize someone!"
"It traumatized me!" she defended, "It was coming out of you like lava! I thought the Master set off a bomb in the bathroom and…"
"Something not related to food!" the Doctor cut in, his voice a high squeak, his face flushed at the utterly embarrassing story she was letting slip.
"Oh, then no, I've got nothing," she shrugged easily.
She was sure there MUST be something in there, somewhere, she had to have told him at one point or another not to do something, but it must not have been an important moment. That happened a lot and it was amusing to her when the humans took that to be a lack of attention, when she'd forget something or another. They had no idea just how much attention she paid to things, but there were just SO many things that it just didn't make sense to remember ALL of it! That would be a waste of her memory. No, her mind would just ascertain which information and data was relevant and important and keep that, dumping what she didn't need. So yes, she may have paid enough attention to notice what color the wallpaper was but that didn't mean she remembered it because WHEN would the color of wallpaper ever be something important enough for her to need to know?
It was simple.
Humans just never seemed to realize that was how her memory functioned, they were fine just labeling her as inattentive.
Which, admittedly, did end up working better for her so she never said a word to counter it, because the more people underestimated her, the more she could surprise them and the greater advantage she had.
"And we've got a missing child," the Doctor announced, jumping at the chance to change the subject, "Come on!" he turned and grabbed the Detective's hand, leading them from the room, heading right for the sitting room downstairs. They reached it just in time to see a child's arm reach out of the open present box to grab a torch, before disappearing within, "Cyril!"
"THIS is what we get for tying it with a bow and not tape," the Detective sing-songed as the Doctor hurried to the box to try and grab Cyril, but he'd already got to the other side.
"What's happening?" Lily asked, seeing her brother not in the box, "I don't..." and then, as the Doctor crawled in after him, she saw there was something very much NOT the sitting room on the other end of it, "What IS that?"
"What, never seen a dimensional portal before?" the Detective asked.
"With me, quickly!" the Doctor's hand reached through the box to them, "Come on!" and pulled Lily through after him, the Detective grabbing the edge of the girl's sleeve to follow and ensure they came out the same time as the Doctor.
The forest on the other side of the box was like a winter wonderland, a large forest covered in snow and green pine leaves. A forest of Christmas trees and crisp snow.
"That's it," the Doctor helped Lily down from the box, "In you come…" he winced when the Detective toppled out after her, landing face first in the snow, "Sorry!"
"Thanks...for nothing," the Detective grumbled, before rolling over to her back and starting to make a snow angel.
"No time!" the Doctor chastised, reaching down to take her hand and yank her up, "We need to find Cyril!"
"You won't find him by shouting," the Detective pointed out, poking a finger to his cheek and pushing slightly so he could look in the direction she'd determined Cyril had gone in, "He's 20 minutes ahead of us and, given his size and gait, he's too far away for the human ear to hear a call."
"He can't be 20 minutes ahead of us, we just saw him," Lily argued.
"Besides the fact that time moves differently across dimensions, look," the Detective led them to a small orb on the ground, like a silver bauble that had cracked open or hatched. She pulled out her magnifying glass to peer closer at it and then to the faint footprints heading away from it, "See, Cyril's prints with a bit of snow already covering it, so you use the rate of falling snow for the time and the gait for his speed. 20 minutes ahead."
Lily, for a brief moment, got distracted by the world around her, having looked around to try and spot her brother despite what the Detective had said, "Where are we?"
"We've gone through a dimensional portal to a forest in a box in a sitting room," the Doctor told her, "Pay attention!" he began to follow the Detective as she followed the prints with her glass.
"Where did it come from?" Lily wondered, hurrying after them.
"It was a present. And it wasn't supposed to be opened till Christmas Day. Honestly, who opens their Christmas presents early?"
"Me, you, the Master," the Detective said, though the Master was the worst offender, the most obvious, he couldn't wrap a gift to save his life so he'd sneak down, open it early, then try to rewrap it and it was always rubbish, "About 95 percent of humans who celebrate Christmas…"
"Ok, shut up. Everyone."
"I don't understand," Lily frowned, "Is this place real? Is it fairyland?"
"Fairyland?!" the Detective turned to her, sounding deeply, deeply offended, "Fairyland looks completely different!"
"Her second favorite place to go," the Doctor whispered, tugging Lily a little away from the Detective, "World made entirely of sugar," before he spoke louder to the woman to distract her from the inevitable rant about how and why Fairyland was brilliant and how dare anyone compare THIS to that?! "Have we gained on Cyril, Sigma?"
That had the Detective whipping around to look at the footprints, distracted back to their main topic from her ire, "No, but he's certainly gained on the one he was following."
"He's following someone?" Lily frowned, moving to the Detective's side to see what she saw.
"There's two sets of prints," the Detective stated, gesturing to the ground, "Last time I checked Lewis had one set of legs…"
"Lewis?" Lily frowned.
"Your brother."
"His name's Cyril."
"Is it?" she shrugged, "Now, ONE set of legs?" she asked Lily, who nodded slowly, likely a bit disturbed by the fact that someone needed to be told how many sets of legs a person had, "Then there's someone else here, but he's not walking with them, he's following them. Watching it grow before his four eyes I'd imagine, since the other footprints are getting bigger…"
"Well, then we have to get after him!" Lily ran ahead, knocking into a tree branch as she passed, shaking icicles from it with the move, spheres forming at the end of them. It was odd enough to catch her attention for she stopped and turned to them, not sure if she was in any danger.
"Oh look, wasn't me this time," the Detective smiled, moving to examine one with her glass.
"It's ok," the Doctor reassured the petrified Lily, "You're fine. Don't worry."
"Is that tree...alive?" Lily eyed it.
"It's a tree…" the Detective stated, eying her like she'd just dribbled on he shirt.
"Of course it's alive," the Doctor chuckled, patting her shoulder.
"But is it dangerous?" Lily asked.
"Only if it falls on you," the Detective turned back to the bauble.
"Every rose has its thorns," the Doctor agreed, joining the Detective, resting a hand on the middle of her back as he leaned in beside her, his side brushing against hers for a closer look.
"They're like Christmas tree decorations," Lily remarked.
"Yeah. Naturally occurring Christmas trees," he leaned in to sniff the pine needles, "How cool is that?" and laughed when the Detective took a needle or two and nibbled on it before spitting it out and wiping at her tongue on the sleeve of her hoodie…oh if Amy could see the woman now she wouldn't think him tasting that blue grass was so disgusting.
"I don't understand…" Lily sighed.
"You're going to have to be more specific," the Detective remarked, "There's probably a lot you don't understand. Pay more attention in school."
"It's a big universe," the Doctor tried to rephrase it more gently, "Everything happens somewhere. Call it a coincidence, call it an idea echoing among the stars. Personally, I call it a brilliant idea for a Christmas trip. Or it should've…been," he trailed off when the Detective frowned, staring at a lightly moving branch, an echo reaching him at the same time, "Do you know the difference between wind and trees talking to each other?"
"What?" Lily asked.
"There's no wind," the Detective pointed out how the branches were moving yet there was no wind to move them.
"I've been here many times…" the Doctor began.
"Yeah, thanks for that, Theta," she muttered.
"Thought you were dead, Sigma," he waved it off, continuing to speak to Lily, "But I've never heard the trees so active. Something's wrong."
"Alright, we can do this the easy way or the had way," the Detective crossed her arms and frowned at the tree before them, "You tell us what we want to know, right now, or I use my handy dandy axe to pry it out of you," the next thing either of them knew, there was a literal battle axe in her hand, "What are you up to?"
Lily frowned when she didn't move and looked to the Doctor, "Is she…is she really threatening a tree?" she whispered to him, shifting a bit closer to him and away from the woman with the weapon.
"Looks like it," he nodded with a sigh. He really, really needed to go through her pockets. HOW she got 'axes are fine' from him saying 'no sword' he didn't know.
"Alright, hard way it is," the Detective hefted the axe over her head and moved to bring it down on the tree, but found her hands empty. She spun around to see the Doctor with the axe in hand, "Theta!"
"No!" he pointed the axe at her, then tossed it to the side, "There is something very wrong in this forest, Cyril is in the middle of it, we don't have time for you to dismember a tree."
She huffed, "Spoilsport."
"Come on," he took her hand, "We need to find Cyril."
~8~
"Why would you bring us to this place?" Lily called to the Time Lords a short while later as they led the way after Cyril's prints, hurrying through the forest.
"It was supposed to be a treat," the Doctor defended, "This is one of the safest planets I know. There's never anything dangerous here."
"Boring, boring, boring," the Detective complained, only for them all to stop short when a loud thud shook the ground, "Oh, yes! FINALLY! Something interesting!"
The Doctor sighed, keeping a tight hold on the Detective's hand so she wouldn't run towards the thud, "There are sentences I should just keep away from," he admitted, turning to tug the Detective on after the prints.
"It's just irresponsible!" Lily continued, more feeling like she HAD to say it because her mother wasn't there than really blaming them, "How can you do this to my brother?"
"It was meant to be a supervised trip!"
"To the future?"
"The future, yes."
"On a different planet?"
"Yes, very different."
"Where Christmas trees just happen?"
"Well, sort of Christmas trees."
"They're not REALLY Christmas trees," the Detective argued, "Would be so wizard if they were, ooh! Look at that!" she beamed as the prints led them right to the door of a very large tower.
"What, are we going in?" Lily frowned when the Doctor made right for the door.
"Well, Cyril did," he argued, shoving the door open for them to enter. The first thing to be seen was a statue of a man sitting on something, the statue made entirely of wood and carved as though it were a king, "Interesting..."
"Oh, brilliant," the Detective stepped forward, looking at it with her glass…and poking part of it with a stick for good measure while the Doctor looked around the room.
"What's that?" Lily asked as she slowly approached the Detective's side, "What's that statue? What is it? It's like a king."
"Could be a king, not a statue though," she straightened up, absently cleaning her glass with the edge of her hoodie, "Living wood. Also, the thing that hatched from the egg."
"How did you…"
"Look down," she said, nodding at the footprints they'd been following, complete with a few indicating someone turning around to sit.
"So this is what Cyril was following," the Doctor came to observe it too, "The growing thing. Hatched from a bauble on a tree. Grew to this size in less than an hour, I'd say. Impressive."
"I've seen better," the Detective shrugged.
"Building's rather impressive, too, though…"
"Eh," she shrugged, "Not a building, group of trees growing in the shape of a building."
"Ooh, that's clever. Clever, I love. Clever, clever old forest. So, a forest grows a building. Why would it do that, Lily?"
"I don't know," Lily answered.
"Because it's the honey in the trap," the Detective stated, "Meant to lure people in."
"Thing about people, we can never resist a door," the Doctor nodded.
"Or a book, or a box, or…" the Doctor reached out to press a finger to the Detective's lips to stop her.
"So, this is a trap?" Lily panicked, "We've just walked straight into a trap?!"
"A people trap," the Doctor agreed, "Question is...why does a forest need people?"
"Let's find out!" the Detective cheered, prying the Doctor's finger off her and using it to drag him towards the stairs that wound around the edges of the circular room, leading them up, because the second set of footprints, the child-sized ones, headed for the stairs. They hurried up, round and round and round, till they came to the very top where a closed door was set into the wall.
"Cyril?" the Doctor called, "Cyril? Can you hear me?" he pulled out the sonic and tried getting the lock open, "Cyril? Cyril? Cyril, can you hear me?" but it wasn't working, "Of course, it's wood! It's rubbish at wood!
"It doesn't LOOK like wood," Lily eyed the rather metal-looking door.
"And neither does this building, doesn't mean it's not wood," the Detective muttered.
"How can trees grow into a building?"
"Never underestimate a tree, Lily," the Doctor grunted as he tried to force the door, "I met the Forest of Cheem once. She fancied me."
The Detective snorted, recalling the picture he'd shown her of his 9th self, "She probably thought you were a tree. Your ears and nose probably looked like knots to her."
"Oi!"
"Granted, she'd probably think that about your chin now…"
"What's wrong with my chin?" he spun to face her, pouting, the sonic forgotten for a moment.
"The exact opposite of what's wrong with your eyebrows."
He reached up to touch his delicate eyebrows, and pointed at her, "Yeah, well she wouldn't even know you had hair, she'd think it was just part of your face!"
"The weeping willow look? I could go for that. Ooh, maybe I'll regenerate into a tree next…that'd be bloody brilliant!"
"Oi!" Lily cut in, having been trying to get their attention for the last minute while they bickered, "Look!" she pointed at the window next to them, "There are stars coming out of the trees!"
The two aliens turned to look out the window, the Detective lifting her glass to observe what did, indeed, look like small stars drifting up from the trees, "Nope, not stars, life force."
"Pure life force," the Doctor agreed, "Just...singing."
"Better than the Ood songs," the Detective muttered, turning away from the window and the lovely sight beyond to move to the door behind the Doctor's back.
"Beautiful," Lily breathed, "Doesn't it make you want to cry?"
The Doctor smiled at that, "Crying when you're happy. Good for you. That's so human."
A hissing noise suddenly sounded, like something electrical buzzing along a wire, coming from behind the locked door. The Doctor and Lily spun around, only to see the Detective crouched before it, a small cone of paper in hand, set into the lock, with her other hand pouring something small and grey, a powder, into it.
"Sigma, no gunpowder!" the Doctor huffed, moving over to take the powder away from her, only just getting his hands on it when a loud stomping noise sounded below them. They turned and peered below to see that the statue of the king had gotten up and was now moving towards them up the stairs.
"Oh, my God!" Lily breathed, wide eyed and terrified, "Oh, my God!"
"Oh, my God!" the Detective mimicked at the same time, wide eyed and utterly thrilled, "Oh, my god, this is brilliant!"
"Ok, change of plans," the Doctor spun around and ran for the door, "I take it back!"
"Yes, gunpowder?" the Detective whipped around, pleased.
"Yes, gunpowder!" he shouted, taking a step back from the door and flicking the sonic at the lock. While it wouldn't do anything to wood, it would certainly ignite the gunpowder. A small flash-bang went off and the door began to slowly fall open, the lock now blasted, allowing them to run into the tower room just as the statue reached them, it was fast for a giant lump of wood.
"Cyril!" Lily gasped, spotting her brother slumped over in a chair, a throne-like chair, with a band around his head, and another statue behind it, this one like a queen. But Lily paid it no mind, quickly kneeling before her brother to try and wake him, "What's wrong with him, Caretaker? Is he dead?"
"I could always…" the Detective began.
"No stabbing things!" the Doctor cut in.
"I was going to say check his pulse, thank you very much, Theta."
"No, you weren't."
"No," she sighed, "I wasn't."
"But good idea!" he hurried over and touched Cyril's pulse point, nearly sagging when he felt the steady beat, "It's ok, he's just unconscious."
"So who are you then?" the Detective turned her attention to the Queen statue, "I get you're a queen but, oh honey, that tiara that you have on the top of your head, it's overkill. Real royals, they don't need to try that hard."
"Sigma, look," the Doctor cut in on her trying to assert her own queenliness, and nodding to the window where they could see the life force floating even higher, "It's like the life force is leaving the forest…"
"Ooh, this is about to get good," the Detective cheered, pulling a small bag of popcorn from her pocket and tossing a handful in her mouth. The Doctor and Lily frowned at her, a bit confused…until they heard the stomping and spun around to see the king had appeared in the doorway behind them.
"What are they doing?" Lily gasped as the king began to approach them, "Stop him!"
The Doctor flicked the sonic at the king, but it did nothing, "Aliens made of wood! This was always going to happen, you know. Sigma!" he spun around, pointing at her, "What have you got?"
"Well, I had an axe, but SOMEONE…" she began, huffing when he shot her a look and moved to take Lily's hand, turning it so the palm was up to place her bag of popcorn on it, and then rummage through her pockets, "Let's see…wood, wood, what works for wood…ooh flame thrower, love that. Defoliant, bit anticlimactic. There's that bottle of termites…could be fun. Or…" she couldn't even finish listing all she had in her pockets when the king stilled to a halt and did…literally nothing, just stood there, "Is that it?" she gaped at it, "You're just gonna stand there?"
"Don't tempt them," the Doctor reached out to tug her back to his side, watching the statues closely as they merely stood on either side of Cyril's chair. He eyed them critically a moment, the fact that they hadn't attacked at the mention of all those things telling him they may be pacifistic, or at least peaceful, "It's ok," he murmured, "I think they just want to talk to us…"
"Sort of obvious by the neural receiver on Lewis's head," the Detective muttered, taking the popcorn back and sighing, slipping it into her pocket again, it had just gotten very boring, no use wasting her good 'excitement food' on this.
…so she pulled out a small brown bag of blueberries to munch on instead.
The statues looked down at the band around Cyril's head, which lit up, the boys eyes opening, though he stared blankly ahead, "They're scared," the boy spoke, "Can't you hear them? The trees are screaming. Can't you hear?"
"Screaming like AHHHHH!" the Detective screamed, putting fear in her voice, "Or like AAAHHHHH!" this time going high, like she was excited, "Or like AAIIICCECream! Or like AA…"
The Doctor quickly jumped forward to cover her mouth, "Can you STOP that?" he asked, his ears ringing with how loudly she'd done that right beside him.
She rolled her eyes but nodded, pulling his hand away from her mouth and putting a single blueberry in his palm in apology. He tossed it in the air and caught it in his mouth, turning to scan Cyril's band once more, picking up the reading.
"No," he told the boy, "But you can. You're connected to them."
"Called it, neural receiver."
"Why have the stars left the trees?" Lily asked her brother, catching on that he could hear the trees and what they were doing.
"I think they're..." Cyril tried to put it to words.
"Dull?" the Detective offered, "Boring? Tired? Old? Excited? Scared? Or is it a verb? Growing? Dying? Fleeing?"
"Yes," Cyril said, nodding slowly to the Detective's long list, "Evacuating. They're evacuating."
"Why?" the Doctor frowned.
The Detective snorted, "Why would anyone evacuate? There's some sort of danger threatening their lives."
"But what danger?"
"They're...frightened of the rain," Cyril frowned, "The rain that burns."
"Ooh, Acid Rain," the Detective nodded, moving to rest an elbow on the Doctor's shoulder, "Yes, that probably wouldn't feel very good for a tree."
"Or the life inside it," the Doctor realized, "Those stars. They're pure life force. Souls, if you like," he added more for the children than anyone, "And they're trying to escape because they think their home is going to burn."
"Why can't they just float up into the sky?" Lily wondered.
"Well, if they lived in trees, maybe they can't unless they live in something else," the Detective rationalized.
Lily stared at her, a bit thrown by the fact she'd sounded so sensible just then.
"Yes," the Doctor nodded, "They need to travel inside a living thing. Inside Cyril. You see, this..." he pointed at the band, "Sigma's right, it's a relay. Not just a receiver, they're turning your brother into a lifeboat! That's what this place is for, then. It's an escape plan, is that it?"
The Queen moved then, leaning forward slightly to rest her hand on Cyril's shoulder, near his neck. The Doctor tensed but said nothing, carefully watching incase she harmed Cyril, but the fact that they hadn't attacked the Detective for all her weapons against them truly made him feel they were safe enough to not harm Cyril with this move.
"Your coming was foretold," Cyril spoke, though this time his voice was distorted, echoing with another's.
"My God, what is that?" Lily gasped, "Why does he sound like that?"
"What DO they teach you in schools these days?" the Detective frowned at her, shaking her head, "Receiver, relay, he's now a transmitter too."
Lily pursed her lips at the remark but thought through it, "They're speaking through him?"
The Doctor snapped his finger at her and nodded.
"We had faith," the Queen continued to speak, using Cyril to do so, "Your coming was foretold."
This time the Doctor snorted, "There's no such thing as foretelling. Trust a time traveler."
"Well, could be a self fulfilling prophecy in play," the Detective reasoned, "Go back in time, set up a prophecy of your coming, show up in the future…"
"We waited, and you came," the Queen interrupted, earning the Detective sticking her tongue out at the statue for it.
"So, you've got an escape plan," the Doctor remarked, "Why aren't you escaping?"
"The child is weak."
"Well yeah," the Detective rolled her eyes, "He's human and a child."
"No," the Queen argued, "He is weak. The forest cannot live in him. But there are others."
"There certainly are," the Doctor nodded, straightening, subtly shaking the Detective's elbow off him as he prepared himself, "And the good thing is, I look great in a hat. So, let's get this thing off, eh?" he moved to grab the band from Cyril's head, the Detective stepping back to Lily's side.
"You are also weak," the Queen stated.
"I'm really not," he glanced at the statue, then back to the boy, "Let's save a forest, Cyril?"
"You are not the one. You are weak."
"I'm really not," the Doctor continued to insist, moving to grab the band.
"This is gonna be good," the Detective whispered to Lily, offering her some blueberries as they watched the Doctor's fingers curl around the band...only to jerk back, pulling it off Cyril's head as it began to shine so brightly, sizzling as it burned the Doctor, who screamed and groaned, stumbling back in clear pain, "Told ya!"
"Let go of it!" Lily ran forward, seeing the Detective just watching on, "Just let go! Let go of it! Just let go! Please, just drop it!"
"I can't!" the Doctor grunted, falling to his knees.
"Do something!" Lily shouted at the Detective.
"Oh, alright," she sighed, moving forward and swiping the band from the Doctor's hand, shaking it in front of his face, "And you say I should tell you not to do things more? You never listen when someone else does!" she pointed out.
He panted, looking up at her, holding the band in one hand, the metal now softly glowing and not hurting her at all, though she hardly seemed to notice, "You're touching it!"
"Yes," she nodded, "It's a bit tingly, but nothing I can't handle."
"Tingly?!"
"And NO," she cut in, "My pain tolerance is still what it was."
"That's not helping me work it out," he muttered, rubbing his head. She had…a very odd way of handling pain. At times she could get a papercut and go on as though her entire arm had been cut off, other times she could be stabbed through the gut and try to 'walk it off' because 'tis but a flesh wound!' before she collapsed and regenerated.
"Oh, yeah thanks," she huffed, shooting the Queen a glare.
"What?" the Doctor frowned, pushing himself to his feet.
"She says 'she is strong, but she is wrong,'" the Detective muttered, waving the band at the Queen, "Keep it up and I'll chuck this out the window and then where will you be?"
"Ok," the Doctor took a breath, "You're stronger than me, it doesn't hurt you but it did me. Can't be age, we're the same, but…Cyril's young so maybe it is?" he rubbed his head, "She's strong, I'm weak…"
"Women, Theta," the Detective helped him along, "Pretty sure she means a woman should use this."
"Women…" he repeated, nodding, "Women are stronger than men to them, Lily's not much older than Cyril, you're not right either…what's left? What woman IS right?"
"Mummy?" Cyril called out, slowly coming back to himself, sounding more like himself again.
"Exactly," the Detective nodded.
Lily hurried to her brother's side, quickly checking on him, "Cyril, it's alright. It's me. Mummy isn't here, but we're going home to her right now. Aren't we?" she shot the Time Lords a look.
"Well, we COULD but we'd end up horribly burned, disfigured, or possibly dead," the Detective remarked, nodding at the window where it had already begun to rain outside, scooping one final handful of blueberries into her mouth and sticking the bag back in her pocket.
"The rain that burns," the Doctor shook his head at the sight, "Acid rain. We have to get out of this forest, we're in terrible danger. This tower won't protect us for long."
"Where's Mummy?" Cyril asked again, sounding near tears.
"She's coming," Lily promised him, "You know she's coming, because…because she always comes, doesn't she?"
"Cyril," the Doctor knelt before the boy, "The way we came here, that door won't stay open forever. Now, I'm not even sure if I can get us through the forest safely, but if we're going to have any chance at all, we have to go now. We might be able to avoid the worst of the rain if we're clever and…"
"No," Cyril crossed his arms, "We wait for Mummy. Mummy always comes."
"Not this time, Cyril. I'm sorry, but not this time…"
"Says you," the Detective called from the window, "I think Bridget has another idea…"
Lily turned to her, about to ask who in the world 'Bridget' was, only to see a bright light approaching the window, the ground shaking with each motion of the light, "What's that?!"
They hurried to the window, crowding around it, and looking out where a very large metal box on wobbly legs was walking through the forest towards them, "It's an Androzani Harvester, but..." the Doctor began.
"You recognize that thing?" Lily stared.
"More to the point...I think I recognize the driving!"
"Told you," the Detective grinned when they could see Madge at the controls of the harvester, moving it closer to them, "Bridget had other ideas."
"Her name is Madge," Cyril frowned up at her.
The Detective, without looking, just patted him on the head, "Sure it is."
The Doctor laughed brightly as the harvester reached them, "Madge has entered the forest! Come on, Madge, you can do it! You go, girl!"
The Detective joined in his laughter when she could just make out Madge mouthing the words 'Shut up, you ridiculous oaf!' before the harvester overcompensated and fell on its side.
"It's ok!" the Doctor rushed to reassure the children, "She's fine, don't worry. Stay here. Just stay here with Sig…no, no, Sigma, you go get her, I'll stay with the kids."
"Really," she huffed, "You lose ONE set of siblings and he never lets you forget it!"
"You basically re-sparked the War of the Roses!" he yelled after her, he'd known it was a mistake to let her babysit those two princes…if only he'd known HOW much of a mistake it would end up being to let her watch them and have the two lads sneak off when she'd taken them to the market after they'd broken the boys out of prison, the conspiracy theories about it, he never would have let her. And thus was born his rule of never, ever letting people just wander off.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she waved it off, actually waving her hand behind her as she headed for the door and basically skipped down the stairs to the door, reaching it right as Madge rushed in, the hood of her jacket up over her head, her hands tucked into her sleeves to protect them from the rain, though her coat was ruined and littered with burn marks, "Hmm," she pulled out the magnifying glass to look at the burns, "Hold this," she pressed the band into Madge's hand so she could tug her sleeve out to extend the arm for a better look, "Yeah, we'd never have made it back before it ate through our clothes…and not in a good way."
Madge yanked her arm back, "Stay inside," she agreed, "The rain is frightful!" before she turned to run up the stairs, calling for her children, "Lily? Cyril?"
The Detective let her go, looking down at Madge's footprints and following them outside to the harvester…if she was wrong about Madge, they'd need a way to escape and the Harvester might be their best bet if Madge hadn't destroyed it too badly with her atrocious driving…didn't look that way.
A/N: So last few days to vote on the pairing name for the Detective and the Doctor on my profile ;) I'll announce the winners in the next chapter :)
Also in the next chapter, I'll be talking a little about some AUs I have in mind for Sigma ;) We'll also see the TALK finally happen lol, for as 'distracted' as the Doctor and Detective are by the imminent danger, both of them are internally freaking out about their upcoming talk ;)
For this chapter though, we get a bit more of the Detective in detective mode lol :) But still with her very unique brand of solving things. Instead of trying to find a way to get the lock unlocked, she went right to 'let's blow up the door!' and instead of examining the trees it's 'let's chop them down!' and instead of just checking if the child was hiding in bed it's 'let's stab him and find out!' Oh Sigma lol :) I like to think she wouldn't have actually stabbed anything in the off chance it actually WAS Cyril, but you never know with her :/
It's actually been really fun to write Sigma with all her traits, because she's exhausting and fun and sort of ridiculous and hard to take seriously...and then you realize that's the point and that's exactly how she wants people to see her, so she doesn't hold back and she doesn't get offended by it and she sort of makes small comments when people ask things to further lead them to underestimate her. It gives her more freedom, in a way, she's seen as less of a threat or a challenge, and so she can make her deductions and get closer than normal to get what she wants. So when she WANTS to be a threat and when she wants to launch her attack, she can, because literally no one sees it coming, not even the Doctor at times. One of the perks of her perkiness, as she says }:)
With the way she determined that the trees were looking for a woman, I felt like that is also one of her subtle strengths coming out. She's processed all the information the trees gave, the way the band affected the Doctor and herself, and she's made that connection. But she also doesn't do it in any obvious or loud way, more an offhanded comment. She doesn't go into detailed explanations, she doesn't have epic epiphanies, she sort of just goes with the flow and her realizations and deductions get caught in the stream of it all. She could probably work something out and, unless someone is actively asking her to investigate, she'd probably keep it to herself unless it needs to be said. She loves her mysteries and solving them, but it also means she just needs to solve them, not always share them ;)
I know there's a lot of mystery around the Princes in the Tower and what happened to them, how they died and who was responsible and so on. I know there were a few audio versions of DW that explored this too, but the story is largely based on the show canon and, given the audio has about 3 different versions of the same mystery, I decided to go with this version for this story. Sigma and the Doctor saved the princes, but who in their right mind would trust anyone after being locked away like they had been, so they escaped Sigma's notice when they were in the market and fled into hiding. Sigma could have found them, I don't doubt that, but it would have brought up a lot of notice and questions and likely made others aware that the princes were alive and put them in danger so they had to trust they'd be alright. I like to think, in this version, they escaped and eventually came to a lovely farm and were taken in by an older couple who had no children, raised with love and grew up to have loving families of their own :)
For this chapter there are 3 intentional quotes (one is technically an entire little scene though), and one small reference (it IS a quote, but not one said out loud so I count it as a reference ;))
Quotes from the last chapter:
One hundred billion dollars! - (plus the putting a pinky near her mouth) Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies ;)
Congrats to anyone who spotted it! :)
No real notes on reviews for the last chapter ;)