A/N: Thankee for the great response on the last chapter! Makes me feel all smushy inside and want to keep writing ... swoon.
I opted to update this one because I only had a wee bit of time and figured this would be the easier of all of them to do a short little snippet... Oh, I was wrong. This got a little more out of hand than I had originally planned... That said, it was a plot on the run ... and I truly hope it makes sense ..
It makes sense in my head ... Dunno if I got it right when I typed it out, though.
Anyway ... I hope you enjoy this one!
~~oooOOOooo~~
What a perfectly magnificent evening it was: The twin moons hung high in the brilliant deep purple sky above his head like a pair of eyes watching his every move, and every gasp of thrill, as he trotted along a red-stoned road toward the Castle.
Every once in a while he'd hear a light whine from his Wroddosk that would result in the tempo of his hoof falls shifting into uncoordination. Such uncoordinated and staggered movements made the Doctor's ability to time his rise and falls in the saddle falter toward discomfort. All it took, however, was a light tap of his hand against the beast's broad and muscled neck, and the footfalls would settle toward a more comfortable rhythm.
They'd pulled their beasts from a hard gallop only a single mile earlier. The Doctor had a brief moment of confusion as to why they had slowed their beasts after having exploded in an urgent flurry of red dust and loud hollers. His confusion, however, morphed quickly into amusement when a member of his party had advised him that it was a far more impressive sight to the lasses waiting behind if they took off at a full gallop. Whatever speed they opted to ride once out of sight didn't matter … the final imagery of a determined rider in the minds of their fairest was all that mattered.
…The Doctor couldn't exactly argue with that mindset; there truly wasn't too much he held higher than making sure that he looked as impressive as possible to his precious pink and yellow human girl that waited for him back in the village. And he had to admit, that he looked pretty damn impressive seated high in his stirrups and dressed in the finery of a horseman. If Rose saw him as being brilliant and very impressive in a truly manly way, then there would be no complaints from his big and beautiful Time Lord mind.
…His chafing thighs on the other hand…
With a one-sided wince of concentration and slight irritation, he took one hand from the reins and lowered it to his crotch in an attempt to shift the seat of the seams of his trousers.
"We're almost there, Doctor," a low voice in a deep register called out from his left.
As his look quickly shifted from concentration to guilt at being caught making an "adjustment", the Doctor lifted his eyes to the smoky purple horizon ahead of them. His brows fell into a frown of puzzlement that he couldn't see the castle – which was their intended destination.
…At least that's what he'd been led to believe to this point.
"I thought we were headed toward the castle," he managed suspiciously without completely abandoning his task of shifting trouser seams to a more comfortable location. "We aren't near any structure that I would call a castle. That is, unless the Haprietograwan idea of a castle is wide open paddocks lined with a bit of an unkempt shrubbery." He pursed his lips with distaste. "Not my ideal vision of a grand estate of a powerful Lord. Well. Then again, I'm a rather impressive Lord and I travel the universe in a blue box." He inhaled deeply and lifted his shoulders almost as high as his brows, then let them drop heavily. "Still. What's considered elegant and opulent on one planet isn't always considered grand on another…"
His words petered out somewhat as he was forced to pull his steed to a stop to avoid his fellow riders, who had herded themselves into a circle around him. He felt a shudder of warning ripple down along his spine and into his boots. Whether from the timelines possibly approaching a fixed point, or just from the looks and the rigid body language of the group of men surrounding him, it was enough to have him immediately on guard. His chin dropped so that he looked at the leader of the pack through his brows.
"Ewan, what's going on?" he questioned on a dark voice of warning. His mind couldn't stop wandering toward the village with warning that if he had ridden into an ambush, that Rose was likely hiding within one as well.
…He desperately hoped that she was protected.
He waited a moment for an answer. When he received nothing more than a handful of snickers and growls of derision, he asked the question again – only this time with far more authoritative warning in his tone.
Ewan broke from the circle and trotted his steed forward to stand nose-to-nose with the Doctor's animal, but he said nothing as his wroddosk stomped, snorted and shifted impatiently in place.
"Answer me," the Doctor demanded. "It's rather obvious that we aren't anywhere near a castle or any other habitable structure." He looked at the part of the circle to his front and then passed his gaze back to Ewan. "Judging by the glares of contempt that your friends are levelling in my direction, I'll hazard a guess that we aren't here to confirm our strategies against the castle."
"Perceptive, aren't you," Ewan answered with a filthy smirk as he pulled a short musket from a pouch behind his though on his saddle.
"Well," the Doctor sang in reply. He extended the end of the sound with his tongue pressed thoughtfully against the back of his teeth, but he quickly released his tongue and settled his glare back toward Ewan. "I'd be betraying my reputation of observant brilliance if I didn't notice that something was out of the ordinary when I find myself suddenly surrounded by gun-wielding highwaymen on a deserted roadway."
"Shame you couldn't recongise the danger before you took one of our wroddosks and left your ship – and therefore your own safety behind," Ewan countered with a hitch in his voice at the jagged movements of his impatient steed. "You didn't even take the musket, Doctor. Why would you leave yourself so wide open like that?"
The Doctor swallowed thickly. "Is Rose in danger?"
Ewan let up a laugh and shook his head. He looked upon the Doctor with an expression of utter contempt. "I just told you that you're away from anyone or anything that could possibly protect you. You're without a weapon of any sort, and yet you worry about the safety of the woman…"
"Of course I'm concerned for her safety," the Doctor interrupted with a bark loud and sharp enough to startle his own beast into impatient stomping. "I'm no stranger to mischief, mayhem and peril. I can deal with all of you and be the only one to walk away from it. Rose, however. Rose isn't. Oh, my precious girl can certainly hold her own if she needs to…"
A laugh from all the men in the circle cut him off. The Doctor looked around the group with a tic in his eye and a curl in his lip at each and every one of them. Each of them seemed to hold the very same stature as the man next to him: Head thrown back, left arm across his belly to hold himself firm as he exploded with sanctimonious mirth. Each man held a weapon in his right hand; identical weapons, right down to the flaw in the gilding on the hilt
He lifted his eyes to Ewan, and then shifted his eyes toward the faces of the other men surrounding him. He couldn't make out much of their features in the lighting provided only by the twin moons, but he could definitely tell that each one of the pairs of eyes that regarded him so disdainfully were all as identical as the other.
"Who are you?" he seethed in question. "And is Rose safe?"
Ewan tipped his right shoulder up in a shrug. "Who are we? We are the obedient and loyal subjects of Lord George – ruler of Haprietograwa!" He lifted his musket in a gesture of victory and looked behind him to ensure that each of his men displayed the same loyal behaviour. They did, with grunts and snorts and cheers.
The Doctor looked on with a single brow curled high on his forehead. "I. See."
Ewan looked back at him and curled both lips to display his perfectly white rows of teeth in a smile. "And as for your mate…"
"Her name is Rose," the Doctor ground out.
Ewan snorted. "Well. Then Rose," he forced out through his teeth with obvious distaste. "Let's just say that by now…" he looked up to the location of the moons with an analytical eye of assessment. "Well, by now she's learned for herself just what happens to filthy off worlders that think they can come to our planet and try to overthrow our leader…"
"If you or any of your friends have so much as put a single hair out of place on her head…"
"Much more than a single hair," he chuckled out. He leaned his forearm over the horn of his saddle and leaned forward in a confident slouch. "I'd say that your precious mate has been well and truly educated on the ways of Haprietograwa, and how we treat those who dare threaten our Lord and ruler."
The Doctor pursed his lips and slowly nodded his head. His eyes were dark, but not flared and wild. His posture wasn't threatening, nor stiff with fury. Instead, he seemed relaxed and even thoughtful as he considered Ewan's words.
After a moment he took a breath – a deep one – and exhaled through a very very slight smile. His words, when they finally tumbled from his lips, were spoken airily through a smile. He even clapped his hands together and held them together; the fingers of his right hand curling around the palm of his left.
"Well. Then I suspect there is very little I can do about that, is there?"
Ewan's eyes flared with puzzlement. "Excuse me?"
"Well," he blustered out somewhat condescendingly. "If she's gone, she's gone, isn't she? Nothing much I can do about that." He chuckled out along a breath. "Clever and brilliant though I am, able to travel through all time and space and in some instances even control events to obey the sands of time." His eyes widened. "Oh! I like that: Sands of Time. Like sands through the hourglass, these are the Days… Oh," he shook his head. "No. Never mind. That's a Soap Opera from Earth." He tapped at his lip and petted his chest pocket in search of his sonic screwdriver. "You'd like Earth. Not much different from here, really. Well. Depending on what century you decide to land in of course. The Show.." his words slowed as he felt the glares of all the men darken with impatience.
"Yes. Well. Irrelevant, really," he ventured somewhat petulantly with a shrug in one shoulder, which allowed him to finally grasp at his sonic and juggle it in his hand. "Although TV dramas like those Earth soaps…" He blew out a breath and blew wide his eyes as though impressed. "I really don't know how any of those characters would make it without having to be heavily medicated day in and day out…" He dropped his chin, shook his head, and chuckled to himself.
"Oh course, that's because they're fiction, right? Made up characters. Mindless really. No self-thought or free will at all." He lifted his eyes to lever a look toward Ewan. "They are figments of their creator's imagination, brought to life for no other reason at all than to be the puppet to a twisted mind."
He shifted in his saddle and leaned a forearm along the horn in front of him to slouch in as nonchalant a manner as Ewan had done earlier. "Sick and twisted minds sometimes, he said with a smirk. "Oh, some authors and creators are genius and create characters meant to inspire, delight, and thrill the audience." He grinned. "Oh, but those characters have life, don't they? In the imaginations of others they can survive an eternity. Bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger that the whole universe itself."
He nodded with a very serious look upon his face. "Now they … they are characters I want to read about, watch, spend my time with. When you are a genius creator who creates for everyone else and not just himself, well. Well, you become immortal – revered by all and never forgotten."
He let out an almost sorrowful breath. "And then there are those that have no creativity beyond their own selves. Oh, they create character upon character upon character. Armies of characters, in fact. Armies and cities and towns of characters." He frowned and lowered his eyes to the saddle. "I probably should have said town before city, but…" He lifted his eyes again and shrugged. "And while they have all these multitudes of characters – there isn't much that really separates them from another."
"They look alike. They act alike. They have all the same behaviours and attitudes: Smug, Sassy, condescending, self important, righteous… Bit like running a document through a copier over and over again. Ahh, you might get some slight variances here and there as the image degrades, but essentially it's all one and the same thing. A cardboard cutout. Each. One. The same."
He smiled widely. "A true genius can mould new and brilliant characters that are utterly unrecognisable from the rest…"
"Enough!" Ewan growled and lifted his musket. "You will cease this infernal prattling immediately."
The Doctor actually laughed. "No. I won't," he challenged. "But. But I'll tell you what I will do."
"And what's that?" Ewan asked with a huff of boredom.
"Well," he sang. "I'll finish this story once and for all."
Ewan tilted his head to one side in confusion, much like a curious dog. "What story is that?"
The Doctor pursed his lips and swallowed before answering. He let his thumb and finger shift along the shaft of his screwdriver in a very purposeful manner.
"The story of the evil tyrant Lord George and his unending fight against alien invasions, of course," he muttered with a roll of his eyes. "Nothing but a twisted fairy tale from a maniacal man." He looked up at the moons above him. "Really," he remarked as he lifted his sonic and pointed it toward Ewan. "I have to give you credit where it's due. This really is a remarkable set up you have here. And I'd almost be happy to let you go on and continue this fanciful – and egoistic – tale of absolute domination and power…"
He depressed the button on his sonic. The blue light shone against the purple darkness and it's buzz rang out across the plains. There was a tick and a click, and then a whirring sound that sped up and up and up….
"But you made a fatal mistake," the Doctor said with a growl through a darkened and dangerous tone as he directed his wroddosk to stomp and turn in a tight circle in place at the centre of the ring. "You threatened someone I care about very, very deeply…."
Around him. One, by one, the heads of the riders began to shimmy and shudder. Their shoulders rocked backward and then forward, side to side. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, each one of them lifted up and high in their saddles with their heads held back and their mouths open in a silent cry toward the sky.
The Doctor looked toward the moons with a sneer. "…You shouldn't have done that."
With those final words, each of the riders who had led the Doctor to this point, exploded in succession – one-by-one – in a hail of screws and cogs, whirs and pops.
The Doctor didn't drop his arm, even as the shattered bodies tumbled from their saddles and collapsed noisily on the dirt roadway. He listened to the metal innards of the riders shatter and break apart, and the sloth and slide of the spreading pools of oil, grease, and hydraulic fluid around each man.
"Elaborate set up you have here. I almost believed it for a moment, the tale of tyrannical rule of an all powerful man, and the pleading of his people for salvation," the Doctor called toward the moons. "Only for the saviours to be defeated by the all-powerful Lord George, ordained and protected by the Gods themselves." He curled his lips with disgust and shook his head. "But it's nothing but an elaborate lie. Just a clockwork production by a pathetic madman named George. That is your name, right? George?"
A line of lightning cracked across the sky, splintering a tree at his side. The Wroddosk whinnied loudly with fear, and reared up to turn around. Another crack of lightning, and the large, powerful beast launched a high leap over a pile of clockwork machinery to head back toward the town.
The Doctor kicked both ankles into the beast's belly and urged it forward.
"Great idea, you big and beautiful creature!" he called out as he lifted his arm high and let the light of his sonic screwdriver light their way. "Take me back to town! Rose is back there, I have to make sure she's …"
Another bolt of hot, white, lightning crashed at his side. The Doctor slid in his saddle, but managed to stay on the back of his beast with a tightening of his ankles into its belly. The wroddosk whinnied in protest, but continued to run, clattering loudly along the stones and the gravel, and smoking up the road behind them.
In his mind he pleaded to the almighty Rassilon for Rose's safety. He prayed that his precious pink and yellow human was safe, and that the only pieces of this cruel and terrible tale were the men who had ridden with him. He prayed that Bess and Oein were true and trustworthy, and that they had Rose and his beloved TARDIS safely hidden away.
They had to be. They absolutely had to be. He would never forgive himself if…
Another violent flash of lightning struck the road in front of them. The wroddosk whined and whinnied in terror and reared up before falling backward onto its side. The Doctor was thrown from the saddle and was launched into a nearby bush. He felt his left shoulder separate from its socket with a blinding rip of pain and a loud pop with the impact to the bush's trunk, and let out a long and haunted cry of agony.
There was no time to feel sorry for himself, though. He knew that Rose was in danger, and he had to get to her. The time for fun and games, and taunting his enemy was over. He clutched at his arm and he struggled out of the scraggly brush and stepped out onto the road. He had a limp in his stride and winced with each movement, but he pushed himself on.
He limped and dragged himself along the road as fast as his aching feet would take him. He tried not to focus on the pain that shot up along his injured arm – an arm detached from its socket and utterly useless to him now. He wouldn't even be able to hold his sonic, wouldn't be able to carry Rose if she needed him to.
After a walk that seemed to him to span at least two miles. Two miles in which he was tortured with the incessant crashing of lightning onto the bushes and gravel surrounding him, he could finally see the village in the distance. There was light above the trees. He could hear the TARDIS' song in his head. He was close. So close.
"Not so fast, you filthy offworlder."
He stopped walking and slumped with defeat and annoyance for a moment. His head shifted from side to side and a slow shake of disbelief and frustration. His words were deep and low, and full of fury as he turned around to face whatever man had magically appeared behind him. "You have to be kidding…."
His eyes blew wide to see perfect and pristine replicas of all of the men he had felled only a short while ago. They each stood side on to him and held their muskets high, aimed only toward him.
"Well," the Doctor breathed out with annoyance. "This day's only getting worse, isn't it?"
Ewan – well, the replacement Ewan at any rate – gave him a toothy smile. "You shouldn't have come here, Time Lord."
The Doctor inhaled deeply and nodded. He knew where this was about to go, and he was going to take it with at least a small ounce of dignity – when he truly considered it, this was probably the best option. He really was useless to Rose in this condition, anyway.
He only hoped she'd accept the next him a little quicker than she'd accepted this him.
"Do you honestly think you can take down a Time Lord, Ewan?" he challenged with a grin as he opened his arms to give them the best target possible. "Go ahead. Give it your very best shot."
"Oh," Ewan answered with a laugh. "I intend to." He looked over his shoulder at his men and then looked back toward the Doctor. His smile fell and his face morphed into an expression of utter disgust and loathing.
"Kill him."
He felt the hot piercing slice of a multitude of small metal fragments puncture at his chest, belly, arms and legs, but didn't cry out. Although the pain was greater than anything he'd ever experienced, the Time Lord stood tall against the barrage.
Either side of him, lightning sizzled and crashed.
The Doctor looked up into the sky and actually found himself laughing. "You call that a storm, George?" He smirked and wriggled his fingers as he felt the rush of Lindos that was initiating his regeneration. Hot, swirling energy pooled in his belly. He knew that the complete explosive regeneration was only moments away and looked up to the twin moons with a dark and dangerous smile. "Oh. I can do much, much better than that."
