As usual, big big thanks to my dear beta NoPondInTheForest - you're fantastic! Thank you all guys for all your reviews and follows and favourites! I promise Rose will be coming back soon, but a couple of things must happen first... Anyway, thanks for reading!
Having to go up a seemingly infinite spiral staircase is undoubtedly bad enough. Things can get even more unpleasant if one finds oneself having to do so in the company of someone else whom one will just not talk to. And yet, when the person one's not talking to happens to be either one's own past or future self, one realises that there's always a way for worst to come to the worst.
In their quest to find clues that might ultimately lead them to Clara, the two breathless and not-on-speaking-terms Doctors had explored all the dark tunnels the passage they had found had led them into. A momentary feeling of achievement took them over when, at long last, they found themselves reaching the top of the last of the spiral staircases and bumping into another wooden door. Putting down the sonic screwdriver he had been using as torch until then, the Eleventh Doctor devoted himself to the task of removing the metal bar that was securing it from inside, and he succeeded – but not without difficulty. He crouched down and carefully left the bar on the floor, then stood up again, and gathering all his strength, he pushed, but the door wouldn't open. As his fingers curled around the large metal handle, he was struck by a thought, and not a pleasant one at all. This, he realised, was for the time being his last chance to find Clara, and this door that he was trying to open could be a door to hope as much as it could be a door to despair.
Eventually, the Doctor gripped the handle firmly and pulled, but as the door still wouldn't open, he tried pushing again. Once again, nothing happened, so he pulled again, then pushed, and pulled, and pushed, and then kept pulling and pushing for a while, but unfortunately to no avail.
"What on earth are you doing, Chinny?" asked the Tenth Doctor, sonic still in hand, finally breaking the uncomfortable and bitter silence between them.
"What on earth do you think I'm doing, Sandshoes?" answered the older Time Lord, who just wouldn't stop pushing and pulling.
"Oh, come on, it's just a door!" said the Tenth Doctor grimacing, unable to believe his eyes. "How difficult can it be to open it?"
"If you ask me, I'd say this particular door can be astonishingly difficult!" grunted the Eleventh Doctor. "You wanna try?"
"Thought you'd never ask!" answered the Tenth Doctor, his voice full or sarcasm.
The moment the Tenth Doctor put his sonic down, darkness fell upon the small passage except for the almost imperceptible rays of daylight that filtered through the edges of the door. The Eleventh Doctor stepped aside so that Past Him could pull and push to his liking, and pull and push he did indeed, but with pretty much the same result.
"I don't know why we're even bothering," said the Eleventh Doctor. "If the door had been opened recently, that bar I removed wouldn't have been there at all."
"Shut up and let me push in peace," replied the Tenth Doctor, who had just worked up a sweat.
"Not to mention," went on the Eleventh Doctor, who hadn't really been listening to what his previous self had just said, "if neither I nor you can open it, do we really think Clara could have stood a chance?"
And it was precisely in that moment when the most unexpected thing happened. There was an unhoped-for sound which indicated the door was being unlocked from the outside. Then, in under three seconds, it gave in, and the two Time Lords suddenly found themselves standing face to face in front of Clara herself and some mysterious Renaissance man.
"Clara!" shouted the Eleventh Doctor. His happiness at finding his impossible girl right there in front of him made him jump through the door and out of the passage to run to her, but it vanished completely the moment the identity of the man who had unlocked the door was revealed as his face emerged from behind it. "Clara?" he repeated, his mouth twisted with disgust as he kept pointing at the sudden and unwelcome guest. "What on earth are you doing with him? Oh please, tell me you're not with him… You can't be with him, for goodness' sake!"
"You were so much nicer to me the last time I paid a surprise visit, Doctor," said Jack, pretending to be offended.
"How did you find us?" asked the Tenth Doctor stepping outdoors, as the other Doctor had done.
In the meanwhile, Clara took a few steps closer to her Doctor and hugged him on the spot.
"Clara Oswald, what did I tell you?" the Eleventh Doctor said softly to her as he hugged her back. "Don't you ever dare leave me," he whispered in her ear.
"We bumped into you in the future, Doc, and you told us where you were," Jack told the Tenth Doctor.
"Oh we did, didn't we? Brilliant!" said the Tenth Doctor excitedly. "And may I ask, where are we?"
"We are standing right in front of one of the two entrances to The Mermaid Tavern, sir," Edward answered. "The most popular of the two entrances, and the one I always use to enter the tavern myself, is the one located on Friday Street, sir, right around the corner. It fills me with the deepest shame, sir, to discover the entrance on Bread Street to be a fake one, and to realise that I have never had any knowledge of it until this moment."
It had already been a while since the Tenth Doctor directed a stern look at Edward de Vere.
"And who are you, sir?" he asked him.
"Clara?" asked her the Eleventh Doctor in surprise as he took a step backwards and let his hands rest on her shoulders. "What's wrong? Why are you shaking?"
"Doctor, we need to go to the Tower immediately," she said, her voice almost breaking.
"Of course we'll go to the Tower immediately," he told her. "What's going on there? Have you found out anything interesting?"
"Do you really think it's a good idea to have this conversation in the middle of the street, Chinny?" asked the Tenth Doctor as he took a look around them. It was probably midday, as the street was vibrant and busy and there were considerable amounts of people walking up and down that particular corner of the town. In consequence, the Tenth Doctor lifted his hand and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, at the dark passage he and the other Doctor had emerged from, and then he quickly disappeared into it. The others immediately followed.
Once they were all inside, Edward de Vere, who'd been the last of the party to get in, closed the door and joined the circle the others had gathered around, but the moment he did he was blinded by two unexpected flashes of blue. Disturbing and annoying as they were, he couldn't help but keep staring at them, as they were like nothing else he had ever seen.
What happened next came naturally to the Doctors. Each of them grabbed Edward by an arm, pushed him towards the door and threw him out against his will, then closed the door and left him out of the passage.
"What do you think you're doing, Doctors?" asked an incredulous Jack pointing at the door the Doctors had just closed.
"What do you think you're doing, Jack?" asked a furious Tenth Doctor. "You were supposed to be undercover, but even so, you had nothing better to do than to invite one of your flings to keep you company!"
"Oh, look who's talking!" Jack snapped. "The man who's been taking his flings to his place since who knows when! But so as you know, Doctor, that was no ordinary fling – that was William Shakespeare!"
"No, that wasn't," said the Tenth Doctor, snorting. "I met Shakespeare once, Jack, and so as you know, he looked nothing like that man. Besides, I don't think he'd live up to your expectations. You see – he happened to fancy Martha. A lot."
"Martha Jones?" asked Clara.
"Well, that bloke had excellent taste in women, I'll give him that," Jack replied, "but so far you haven't given me any reasons why he should've been disappointed if I'd had the chance to spend a night with him… In any case, Doctor, that guy you and Martha met must've been Fake Shakes."
"What do you mean, Fake Shakes?" the Eleventh Doctor asked him, narrowing his eyes.
"I mean that the man you've both thrown out of this room is the man who's truly written all of Shakespeare's plays, and for the record, his name is Edward de Vere."
"He's right, Doctor," added Clara. "I couldn't believe it at first either, but he's telling the truth."
The Eleventh Doctor narrowed his eyes again as he took in the conviction he was seeing in Clara's big round eyes.
"Well," his past self finally said, "I'm sure you'll understand if I say I'd like to see that for myself, and I'm sure so would Chinny!"
Fixing his eyes on the former Time Agent, the younger Doctor tilted his head slightly in the direction of the door. Captain Jack Harkness rushed to open it and then reached out for Edward, who had patiently been waiting outside all the while, as Jack had imagined that he would.
"It's okay, Eddie," Jack told him, reaching out a hand to him by way of invitation. "You can come in."
Edward smiled shyly and kept his eyes fixed on Lord Boeshane as he went through the door for the third time in what Jack thought to be a ridiculously short space of time. As soon as his new friend shut the door behind him, the Earl of Oxford made a beeline for the Doctors, whose faces were now the ones being lighted up by the green and blue lights of their sonic screwdrivers.
The two Time Lords kept looking at him pointedly for an instant until the Tenth Doctor decided to break the silence.
"The ides of March are come," he said defiantly. "How does that sentence end, Mr de Vere?"
"Doctor, stop it," Clara told the Tenth Doctor as she pulled the sleeve of his tunic. "That's exactly what I've done."
"Oh, is it?!" said the Eleventh Doctor as he looked at her with a feeling of pride. "Well done, Clara!"
"Well done indeed," said the Tenth Doctor. "When I met Shakespeare, whoever that man might've been, I kept quoting some of his verses but he never seemed to recognise a single one of them…"
"Fake Shakes! I told you!" Jack teased him.
"I knew that," said Clara. "You told me when we got here, Doctor, and that was why I did it. Can we go to the Tower now?"
"Gentlemen," said Edward with his customary bow. "The extraordinary nature of the events my eyes have witnessed in the last few hours tells me you must be most extraordinary men. For that reason, I shall leave aside my resentment for your former manifestation of distrust – which otherwise was entirely justified by the fact that we had never met before this instant – and express my contentment at having the honour of providing my assistance in your mission, which, I have gathered, is most secret and delicate. My name is Edward de Vere, and I am the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford."
"Oh, wow!" exclaimed the Eleventh Doctor, his eyes shining brightly as he went on speaking enthusiastically. "Nice introduction, Verie! Can I call you Verie? I love the way that sounds! I'm the Doctor so call me Doctor, everybody does that. Well, everybody except him – he calls me…"
"Will you please stop jabbering, Chinny?" the Tenth Doctor finally manage to say. "Nice to meet you, Edward. You don't mind me calling you by your first name, do you?"
"Not at all, sir."
"Good! Good!" he said as his eyes widened. "I'm the Doctor, and he's also the Doctor, so whenever you want to speak to any of us, just say 'Doctor!', then wait until one of us turns around first. Guess it'll be me anyway. Chinny here will probably be extremely busy babbling and flailing his arms about, so no matter how loudly you may call him – he won't hear you."
"Oi!"
"Oh dear…" interrupted Clara, her eyes darting from one Doctor to the other. "I'd forgotten what you two are like when you're together."
The two Time Lords went immediately quiet after hearing her say that. All at once, it had hit them how, during the hours they'd spent together exploring that one last tunnel not talking to each other, oddly enough, they'd sort f missed those silly rows of theirs.
"Well," Clara went on, "in case anyone's interested, I've been to the Tower."
"What?" the Doctors exclaimed in unison, equally shocked by Clara's news.
"Yes I was!" she told them. "It would seem that putting on a tunic and pretending you're a monk is the most atrocious crime you can commit if you happen to be a woman. And yes, I was imprisoned by the same people who have a woman on the throne… Anyway, I found a few things out. The prisoners, for starters – once they're taken to the torture chamber, they never come back to their cells."
"Do they actually make it to the torture chamber?" asked her the Tenth Doctor.
"I don't know," she answered. "Didn't really have time to find that out."
"How many prisoners are gone?" asked the Eleventh Doctor.
"I'd say nearly all of them," Clara told him.
"Nearly all of them?" asked the Tenth Doctor, furrowing his brow as he marked the word 'nearly'.
"There's a girl in one of the dungeons," she went on as her eyes turned to the Tenth Doctor, "and I think she's the only person held captive in the Tower at the moment. Captain Jack and I tried to go back and set her free but ended up in the future, and by then she wasn't there anymore."
"How exactly did you turn up in the future?" asked the Tenth Doctor.
"Oh… With this!" she answered as she lifted her forearm and rolled up her tunic sleeve, and the Doctors' screwdrivers and eyes fell upon the vortex manipulator that was wrapped around Clara's wrist.
"Clara!" whispered the Eleventh Doctor as a broad smile spread over his face. "You're still wearing that!"
"Guess I completely forgot that I was the moment Kate Stewart said there wouldn't be enough power for a round trip," she told him.
"So…," started the Tenth Doctor, trying in vain to conceal how upset he was feeling, "We walked and walked and walked, first across the countryside, then around the city, through tunnels, and up and down those bloody staircases. And all the while, we could just have teleported?"
"I suppose this won't make things any better," interrupted Jack as he pulled up his sleeve high enough to make his own vortex manipulator visible, "but yes, we could've teleported, and quite comfortably even."
"No way!" said a surprised Tenth Doctor. "Is it working?"
"Seems all it needed was a confidence boost from its twin over there," Jack replied, directing his gaze to Clara's wrist.
"Oh, brilliant," protested the Tenth Doctor. "So we could've saved lots of time!"
"We could start saving time this instant, Sandshoes," said the Eleventh Doctor. "We already know what Clara's been up to. What about you, Jack? What did you find out?"
"Well," Jack answered, "you won't believe this, Doctors, but all seems to indicate that Elizabeth I is a married queen."
The absence of surprise or interest Captain Jack Harkness saw in Clara's and the Doctors' faces made him think that maybe, for some incomprehensible reason, they might have not understood his words… But was that even possible?
"Did you listen to me just now?" he asked them. "I said 'married'. Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, is a married woman." Still, Clara or the Doctors wouldn't say a word. They just kept staring at him, seemingly waiting for the punch line. "Am I being really stupid right now? 'Cause I honestly thought that piece of information would be terribly relevant!"
"Well, as is turns out, it is not," answered the Tenth Doctor harshly while his future self and Clara looked at him out of the corner of their eye. "So – the Queen's married. And?"
"There's something you're not telling, Doctor… What is it?" Jack asked him, confusion written all over his face.
"If he doesn't tell you, I will," the Eleventh Doctor told him.
"No, you won't!" said the Tenth Doctor indignantly.
"We know she's married, Captain," Clara told Jack. "We were there. We saw it. What else did you find out."
Jack's eyes darted from Clara to the Doctors. There was an important amount of questions that he would have loved to ask them, but as it was crystal clear he wasn't being given the chance to ask for the time being, he gave up and gave them the information they had been requesting from being.
"Apparently the Queen's been planning to have her husband publicly executed tomorrow morning."
The Tenth Doctor snorted again and kept looking at Jack with a silly expression on his face, but when Clara and the other Doctor turned their heads at neck-break speed in order to face him, he started to become a little uneasy.
"What?" he asked them. "What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Doctor…," said Clara, putting her thoughts into words without even taking the time to decide if they made any sense for starters, "what if that's always been the Queen's plan?"
"You're not being serious, are you?" the Tenth Doctor said to her.
"But that might be what the big day's all about, don't you think?" She crossed her arms over chest as she went on. "The Queen lures you into a trap, threatening to kill you if you try to stop whatever it is she's planning to do, when that had been her intention all along – to make you come here so that she can finally lay her hands on you."
"You married Elizabeth I?" asked Jack, his eyes fixed on the Tenth Doctor.
"Yes he did," promptly answered the Eleventh Doctor.
"It was an accident," grunted the Tenth Doctor.
"If you will pardon my interference, sirs," interrupted the Earl of Oxford, "since I have gathered that you do not belong in this place or time, may I ask, is that what has brought you here? A threat by Queen Elizabeth?"
"You haven't filled him in yet?" the Eleventh Doctor asked Jack and Clara.
"Haven't really had the time," Jack answered, "and given that five minutes ago neither of you really trusted him, Doctors, why don't you do it yourselves?"
"Fair enough," said the Tenth Doctor, and then, turning to Edward, he started to explain. "Cutting a long story short, Edward, Queen Elizabeth and I, we go way back. These days, she hates me and she's threatened me."
"And what has she threatened to do, sir?" Edward asked.
"She said she'd destroy something that is valuable to me," answered the Doctor. "Well, to the Doctor."
"To us," added the Eleventh Doctor. "We came here to find out all the details about what she's planning to do, but now I think Clara might be just right..."
"And do you think that what's going on in the Tower has nothing to do with her plan then?" asked Clara. "What about the beast and the goddess people keep talking about?"
"Superstitions?" said the two Doctors as if by mutual agreement, looking at each other with a frown.
"So no mystery to solve this time? No aliens in Elizabethan London?" she pressed on.
"Well," said the Tenth Doctor, "I guess we'll only find that out if we go to the Tower."
"With all due respect, sirs," Edward interrupted, "my lady Clara is right."
"Right about what?" asked the Tenth Doctor nonplussed.
"There are alien beasts in the Tower, sir," said Edward, "I've seen them with my own eyes. They're called 'Zygons', sir."
"Zygons?!" the Doctors muttered.
"Indeed, my lords," said Edward. "They have been living amongst us for decades."
The two Doctors crossed their arms as they frowned, both caught short by Edward's words, until they suddenly grasped their implications.
There were still Zygons in Elizabethan England. They had stopped them from invading the future on their previous visit, but for some reason they had stayed in London. And if they still regarded Queen Elizabeth as their supreme commander, which the Doctors were sure they did, what wouldn't they do for her?