No one ever expected this to happen, I'm sure. Our Reader is traveling with the Doctor and Rose, but something's not right. Read it here first, folks. This part isn't even on my dA page, despite how long ago I wrote and completed it. Long enough that I can tell the difference in my writing style then and now.
And with this installment, this piece goes on another indefinitely long hiatus. Yay!
Part Nine — The Veil Flutters
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
"You all right, (f/n)?"
"I'm fine, thanks Rose."
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
"Good morning (f/n)! ...blimey, you look ill!"
"It's just the lighting, Doctor."
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
"Are you sure you're up to it? You sound tired."
"I just need some tea."
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.
"Hey, (f/n), do you-"
"I am perfectly fine, thank you Doctor!" I yelled, slamming the book in my hands down on the desk. I regretted it instantly as the thud aggravated the mounting migraine I'd had for what felt like months.
The Doctor obviously didn't agree with me as he stepped around the desk to face me and took my head in his hands. He tilted my head this way and that with a frown on his face, then looked me in the eye.
"There are bruisers under your eyes from lack of sleep. I notice you tried to cover them up with makeup." I looked sheepishly down at the tabletop. "Which, by the way, is darker than your skin at the moment. You're getting pale. Let us not mention the crow's feet developing prematurely at the corners of your eyes from constantly squinting against the light." The Doctor ran a cool hand over the side of my face and I leaned into it involuntarily. It'd been so long since he'd touched me beyond grabbing my hand and running from monsters. He was always busy hugging Rose, always touching lovely, perfect, smart Rose Tyler.
"Doctor," I moaned and closed my eyes. The Doctor hummed softly and ran his thumb over my cheek bone.
"Your face is getting sort of sallow," he said quietly and I noted the hint of concern in his voice.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. I teetered forward slightly, my eyes still closed, and I felt the Doctor place his other hand between my waist and hip to keep me steady.
"For what?" He asked in bewilderment.
"I-"
"Doctor? (f/n)? Doctor..."
Rose's voice came in from the hallway and I suppressed a moan of mixed pain, sadness, and aggravation at the interruption.
The Doctor turned and looked over his shoulder at the doorway into the library. "In here, Rose!" He called softly, obviously trying to keep it down for my sake.
"There you are!" Rose Tyler exclaimed happily as she entered the library and made her way over to us. However, before she had even halfway crossed the room, she stopped when she saw the position we were in.
I suppose that if I didn't feel so bad that it would kinda look a bit intimate. In that way. Hm.
I tiredly thumped my head on the Doctor's tweed clad shoulder.
The Doctor, in turn, slung an arm around my shoulders and used it to turn me along with him to face Rose. "(f/n) is ill," he told her plainly.
A look of understanding dawned on Rose's face. "Ah, I see," she nodded slowly. She stepped forward and gently touched the back of her hand to my forehead, and frowned. "Doctor, she's burning up."
I blinked sluggishly as the Doctor felt my forehead too. After examining my head every which way, my legs fell from underneath me as he scoped me up into his arms. My stomach churned at the sudden motion, but all I could do was bury my face in his tweedy arm and close my eyes. I felt us move across the library and into the hall before I realized where he and Rose were taking me.
"Doctor..."
"Shh, (f/n), it's going to be all right," came Rose's voice from somewhere off to my - the Doctor's left.
The hum of the TARDIS was the only noise I heard for several long minutes until the sound of an opening door and the smell of anesthetic assaulted my senses. The orange lights beyond my eyelids shifted to what I guessed to be white as the Doctor carried me into the room and placed me down on a soft, cushy surface. We were in the medical bay.
"Doctor..." My voice came out weaker than before. I had to tell him...tell him that my head was cracking and breaking and my mind was melting and imploding and exploding all at once and-
"What can I do?" Rose's voice came from far away.
The Doctor's reply was even more distant. All I could hear was a pounding in my ears - tap, tap, tap, tap - that grew louder and louder every moment.
"(f/n)."
And just like that, a soft voice broke through the raging beating inside my head. It wasn't Rose again, and it wasn't the Doctor...no, it was, it...
"(f/n)." The voice returned and echoed through my mind like the ringing of the TARDIS engines. "(f/n), you're such a good girl...loyal, brave, and true...only you could have done it...only you..."
White lights erupted behind my eyelids and a sharp pain formed between my eyes, almost like a needle being forced into my skull. Far, far away I could hear the agonized high pitch scream of someone, of...me...
"Doctor!"
And just like that, the world turned right again, except for the sudden fit of lightheadedness that overwhelmed my senses. I bolted up and emptied the contents of my stomach into one of those ghastly pink buckets that were found in every hospital throughout time and space. When my stomach was devoid of contents, I began to dry heave and cough, gasping for breath. My vision swam as a pink and yellow blur came forward and touched me on the face and the back. A brown blur started whirring at me and waving a green star in my face.
"That was horrible!" The pink and yellow blur, no, Rose, cried, rubbing my back in a soothing gesture. "Can you hear us?"
"She should be able to," the brown blur - Doctor commented, continuing to whir at me with the sonic screwdriver. "(f/n)...?"
"Uh huh?" Was all I could say. I lifted my hands to rub my eyes, but before they'd even gotten halfway to my face, I froze. "My..."
Both Rose and the Doctor seemed to notice the problem at the same time as I did. My hands had begun to glow golden.
"That's not possible!" The Doctor cried in astonished bewilderment. Rose gabbed him around the middle and pulled him away, though neither could stop gawking at me.
"What-" I finally managed, but then something unbelievable happened. My veins began to burn like hot wire and my body felt as if it was on fire. I stumbled off of the examination table and to my knees, only to be jolted upward by a strange sensation throughout my entire body, as if every atom, cell, and molecule was exploding and reforming all at once. Golden light bubbled up all around me, bursting from every pore in my skin, and far away I could hear the TARDIS cloister bell ringing.
Then all at once, everything stopped, and I fell forward on my hands, gasping and dry heaving once again.
"(f/n)!" Came the Doctor's voice in alarm. I blinked and looked up at him in confusion.
He grabbed my face and turned it this way and that, examining my eyes and other stuff. Once he seemed sure that I wasn't going to explode with sunshine again, he helped me to sit up and lean against the wall.
"That was regeneration energy," Rose breathed as she crouched down next to the Doctor, who was now frowning at me. "But, how? You're the last, and she didn't even change! She's only human."
The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment as both Rose and I waited for his answer. Regeneration energy, the stuff that caused the Doctor to change form when he was near death, had been pouring from me? I'm only human, Rose had said, and she was right.
"Ah, but you're so much more than that!"
The Doctor and Rose both started and looked up over me. I looked over my shoulder to see a familiar looking man standing on the other side of the examination table with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his blue pinstriped suit pants. His brown hair stuck up in every which way, almost like he'd been playing with live wires and all the electricity had gone into his head.
"That's not possible!" the Doctor cried again, scrambling to his feet and facing the man.
Rose remained crouched on the ground, staring up at the man and the Doctor in surprise and shock. I blinked sluggishly at her; my mind was having trouble catching up.
"Hello, Doctor!" Said the man, waving a cheery hand.
The Doctor did not return the gesture. Instead, he shook his head and frowned. "You're dead."
And then it hit me why he was familiar.
"You're the last incarnation of the Doctor," I said suddenly.
The man laughed, but shook his head no. "Not quite, no. I'm-"
"The Metacrisis," Rose and the Doctor said simultaneously.
The "Metacrisis" looked at Rose almost tenderly. "You called me David once," he said softly.
"Once," was all the blonde said in reply as she rose slowly to her feet.
He came around the table and, to my surprise, helped me to my feet. I wobbled back and forth for a moment before I sat back down on the table. All I could do was stare between the three. Rose was pale and the Doctor's eye twitched, but all the Metacrisis did was smile at them. "Did you even tell the Doctor what happened? Why you had so willingly left me behind in the other universe?" His voice was even and light, but underneath I could tell he was furious with her.
Rose shook her head quickly, sniffling. "I, I..." she began, but he quickly cut her off.
"And you!" The Metacrisis exclaimed, rounding on the Doctor, who had remained silent throughout nearly the whole exchange. His posture was tense and his fists were clenched tightly at his sides, but still he leveled the Metacrisis with a temperate look.
"Me?" He prompted.
The Metacrisis laughed. I knew it was supposed to be a happy laugh, I'd heard the Tenth Doctor laugh before, once, but something about it just sounded wrong. "You didn't even bother to ask her about the clone you'd foisted off on her. Foisted. Is that a good word, (f/n)?"
I blinked, having not expected him to ask me anything. "Eh, yeah, I guess," I have a halfhearted shrug.
"Yeah," he said, grinning at me. Just as quickly, he turned to glare at the others. "You locked me away with your ex girlfriend and you didn't bother to fix my DNA or stabilize my brain or anything! You sent me to my death! Just like you sent Donna!" By the end, he was yelling.
The Doctor looked cold. Like ice had settled under his skin and frozen his hearts and stayed his breath in his chest like winter wind.
Huh, that's rather poetic.
"I did what I thought was best," the Time Lord retorted frostily.
"You thought wrong!" Screamed the Metacrisis. "You gave up on me! All of you!" He rounded on me, and I froze in fear. But instead of shouting at me like he did my companions, he placed a hand gently on the side of my face. "Except (f/n), she saved me."
The Doctor, my Doctor looked at me. He wasn't angry with me, I knew, but I couldn't tell exactly what he was feeling or thinking. "What did you do?" He breathed. "(f/n), what did you do?"
"I don't know!" I shook my head.
The Metacrisis continued to caress my cheek. "That's true, she didn't actually realize that she did it, but I asked her, and she said yes, so it was all her."
My Doctor blinked in surprise. "You let him imprint himself on your subconsciousness?"
"Er..." I didn't know what that meant, but it was probably why I threw up.
"Look," Rose said, trying to be diplomatic. "About what happened between us, I thought you were dead! I saw you crumble to dust!"
"He crumbed to dust?" The Doctor asked in bewilderment.
"Yeah," I shrugged. "Ticked off her mum something awful."
"Just because I'd disintegrated didn't mean that I was no more," the Metacrisis growled at her.
Rose started, "I didn't..."
"Know! Yes, I know! Neither of you bothered to look deeper!" The Metacrisis began to cackle. He ran his hand down and placed it under my chin. He tilted my face up so that I had no choice but to look at him. "He told you how he changes," he stated matter-of-factly, to which I could only nod. "But did he ever tell you, dear (f/n) (l/n), that he has another incarnation that no one gets to know about? One, he believes, is so evil that he would try to kill all of the other incarnations of himself?"
I shook my head, no, of course not. I wasn't even sure that the Doctor's clone was even telling the truth. My Doctor? Try to kill his other selves? That's-
"Doctor? What is he on about?" Rose asked, glancing nervously between both versions of the Time Lord.
The Doctor shook his head. "No, you can't be him."
"Oh, but I am!" He cried. His arm fell away from my face, only to grab my arm and, in his first display of aggression toward me, hauled me to my feet as he spread his arms. "The Valeyard!"
My blood ran cold. I didn't know what "Valeyard" meant, I hadn't even ever heard of the word, but something about that name rubbed me in all the wrong ways and places.
"No." The Oncoming Storm had reared its head in the Doctor's face.
The Metacrisis waved at him with his free arm. "Hi!"
The TARDIS cloister bell began to ring again, louder than before. The Metacrisis - the Valeyard stuffed the hand that didn't have my arm in a vice grip into his pocket and pulled out a silver cylinder with a blue tip. The Doctor and Rose seemed to realize what he was going to do only a moment before he did it, but it was too late for them to move when he pointed the blue sonic screwdriver at the light fixture above their heads, showering them with sparks and cutting the lights in the medical bay off.
And then the Valeyard was pulling me out of the room, into the hallway and down the corridor, away from the Doctor and Rose and to the console room.
"What are you doing?" I wheezed, trying to keep up with his long stride.
"I am going to kill the Doctor," he said, sounding as if we were only discussing the solar flares back in 1859. "And Rose too, maybe. Or I'll just strand her somewhere. Then we will carry on our wayward way!"
"What?" I squealed.
He shrugged absently. "It won't always be wayward...merry. Do you like merry, (f/n)?"
"Yes! No, I - David, Valeyard, whatever your name is...why do you want to kill the Doctor? Can't you two shake hands and make up?"
He looked at me in disgust, and I almost thought he'd whack me, or at least throw me away from him, but he only gripped my arm tighter and pulled me closer. My neck reared back as he put his face right up next to mine. "The Doctor is the villain here, love. The people he's killed, the lives he's ruined, and I'm about to prevent him from inflicting any more damage on the universe."
I turned my face away; anything to get away from the mad expression the darkened his, admittedly handsome, face. "The Doctor," I said firmly, "is a good man. He saves people. He stops the villain and he doesn't stick around for praise. The Doctor - ah!"
The Valeyard yanked down on my arm, pulling me to my knees as I let out a screeching cry. "What's that supposed to be, a bloody banshee's scream?" I glowered at him, but kept my mouth shut. If looks could kill, the pretty boy Doctor clone would be a smoldering pile of not pretty ashes. We held each other's gaze for a full minute before he decided to continue dragging me to the console room. Upon entering, he extracted a set of plastic toy handcuffs and took no time at all in securing me to a railing.
"And you honestly think I can't get out of these?" I asked rather passively, jiggling my wrist and the plastic chain.
The Valeyard gave me a calculating look before extending his silver and blue sonic toward the handcuffs and whirring it at them. A scowl blossomed over my face as the plastic melted on the trick openings, effectively securing me.
I shoulda never opened my fat mouth.
"You're a lovely girl, (f/n), but I can't decide quite yet if you're exceptionally clever or just another companion to him," he said nonchalantly as he circled the TARDIS, flipping switches, turning nobs, and looking - painfully - reminiscent of the previous incarnation of the Doctor who I'd observed briefly when I'd retrieved Rose from the parallel universe. Reminiscent, except for the stiff set in his shoulders and the dark look on his face.
"What are you?" I whispered, suddenly filled with horror at the sight of him.
He looked at me sharply as the TARDIS gave a lurch. I caught ahold of the railing with both hands (I'd rather not have a dislocated shoulder from being thrown around with toy handcuffs being my only tether) as we spun off to who knows where.
"I told you: I am the-"
"Doctor's evil Metacrisis clone who became the dark incarnation called the Valeyard, yeah, you said," I cut in, feeling dangerously plucky despite the terror his presence seemed to give me. "And you told me why the Doctor "must die", but...but, you're so cold and broken and-"
"Be quiet," he grumbled, and I went silent again. Rationalizing with this madman would be madly impossible.
"What does Valeyard mean?" I piped up sometime later. After watching David the Evil Metacrisis fiddle with the console, disappear and ditch me for a half hour (in which I didn't necessarily watch him) to probably go and gloat at the Doctor (who, with Rose, was probably still trapped in the medical bay), return, swing on the loveseat thing in boredom, listen to The Bangles sing "Eternal Flame" five times (what was the point...), and throw darts at a picture of Picasso (where'd they even come from, I didn't know, but he missed half the time and those that fell short rolled all over the floor), I'd had it.
"Learned court prosecutor," he said as a dart whacked Picasso in the nose.
"Uh huh, so you're like a lawyer, then?" The Doctor as a lawyer was a laughable idea. But this wasn't the Doctor, and there was nothing to laugh about.
The Valeyard shrugged noncommittally. "Of a sort."
"Are you going to sue the Daleks over their fear of the letter ""J"?" I snorted.
He looked at me with guarded curiosity. "How did you..."
He trailed off as an alarm on the console panel started blaring and a purple light started blinking.
"Bloody Mary!" He swore as he leapt up from the captain's chair where he'd been declining. He made for the corridor before rounding back at me. "Stay here, (f/n) (l/n)!" He ordered before disappearing into the depths of the time machine.
"Yeah, okay," I called after him.
And then I started scrambling for a dart.
It took a great deal of scrambling and wriggling around like a dying fish before I managed to snag one of the darts with the instep of my shoe and drag it toward me. Once it was in hand, I stared at it. My plan hadn't gotten further than obtaining the pointy object. Before I could decide what to do with it, however, the sounds of arguing men came from the corridor. Pocketing the dart, I straightened myself out as the Valeyard led a protesting Doctor (who was also bound with handcuffs, real ones this time) into the console room.
"(f/n)!" The Doctor cried when he noticed me and my toy handcuff prison.
"Hey," I shrugged at him.
The ancient Time Lord with whom I traveled rounded on the Valeyard faster than I thought possible. "If you've hurt her in anyway-"
"Oh, but I haven't!" His clone chortled. "Isn't that right, love?"
"Aside from nearly getting my shoulder dislocated...I'm cool," I shrugged again, before freezing. Did the narrative in my head actually say the Valeyard chortled? Honestly? I've narrated weirder words, but still...
The two Time Lords (was the clone even a Time Lord?) proceeded to glower at each other. "You can't be the Valeyard," the Doctor said firmly.
"Really?" Said person inquired, as if this was news to him. He had a second pair of handcuffs in hand: one end was locked on the chain between the Doctor's wrists; the other he proceeded to fasten to the railing opposite the one I was stuck to. "I wasn't aware you were the one who took my ID!"
"While you were getting that done, did you also happen to rob a police station of their equipment?" I asked.
He ignored me. Which I expected, but it still kinda hurt. Oi! I was talking to you!
"Where'd you take Rose?" The Doctor ground out. Why he didn't fight back, I don't know. It was actually kinda worrying, to tell the truth. The Valeyard ignored him as he threw a lever on the console and glanced at the monitor, which, oh so conveniently, was at an angle where neither the Doctor nor I could see the screen.
I gave the Doctor a worried look before my eyes drifted back to the man who had, basically, arrested us. "Um, David-"
"Valeyard, if you will, love."
In the background, the Doctor scoffed, but I ignored him in favor of speaking to his clone. I stepped forward as far as I could, just managing to grasp his pinstriped shoulder. "Hey, okay, um Valeyard," I started, casting around for something to say to him. "So, where are we going?" I finally settled.
He grinned his strangely dashing smile at me, and I was vaguely aware of the Doctor making gagging gestures in the background as the Valeyard reached up and entwined his fingers with mine.
My heart squeezed painfully when I noticed how well our hands fit together.
"Just a little place to dispose of some unwanted cargo before we go," he said, sounding rather amiable for the bad guy.
"Oi!" Yelled the Doctor, jingling his handcuffs. The Valeyard rolled his eyes at me before turning to face the irate Time Lord. "You can't endanger Rose Tyler like this and then steal my companion! Kill me and take (f/n), as you say, and strand Rose Tyler alone to die? I won't let you do that to her!"
"Oh, what's Rose Tyler but the girl who was left behind to clean your messes?" The Valeyard laughed, swinging around to face the Doctor with his hand still in mine. "She's not even a decent maid, for all the good she did!"
The Doctor's face took on a very stormy expression. "Rose Tyler," he growled lowly, "is the most brilliant girl I have ever had the fortune to meet! She is kind, clever, beautiful-"
"We get it, you're in love with her!" The Valeyard scoffed, dismissing his words.
But I didn't. Couldn't. He'd said it, as good as said it. He'd leave me to this madman to save Rose Tyler. Perfect, lovely Rose Tyler.
My hand slipped from the Valeyard's, but he took no notice as he stepped away from the central console toward the police box doors.
"Strand her to die," he recalled, "that's what you think I'm going to do with your girlfriend?" He threw the doors of the TARDIS open. Beyond them, spiralling out for endless lightyears, was the dark expanse of space with its distant stars and solar systems and galaxies. "I thought this'd do more for your hearts, Doctor."
As he spoke, he tossed one of the darts on floor out the doors. The air shimmered, rather like a curtain shifting, as the dart was lost to the vacuum of space.
"No," I whispered in horror as the Doctor began to struggle and pull in vain at his cuffs.
"The veil flutters and Rose Tyler is lost to the howling winds of space!" The evil incarnation of the Doctor cackled. "How poetic an end!"