It took three days, fourteen leftover police constables with some remaining sense of propriety, fourteen bottles of champagne, pea soup, curry powder, five bags of salt, a riding crop, and - absurdly - a plate of custard dreams, but by God, the Doctor was good for his word. Margaret still could not believe her eyes hours after the fact. She'd been taken by the beast after the second day, when she'd finally stopped trying to stop him calling her Maggie and had even managed to make him think she was clever.
"This goo, what is this goo?" he'd burst out after their afternoon plans were ruined by trying to navigate through the mess. To Margaret's disgust, he'd knelt down, put his fingers in the stuff, and licked his hand. "This goo's from the monster."
Margaret blinked at him, feeling very slow. "I thought we already knew that."
"We did, but something's different!" insisted the Doctor, ruffling his own hair. "There's something missing, something wrong! What is it?"
Seeing him so aggravated, Margaret looked around herself. "Is it because it moves of its own accord?" she asked. The aggravated eyes of her new companion suddenly became rapt. "Well, if it is secretions of this...tentacle-monster...then how is its secretion almost sentient? It consumes that which it touches, but it is not acidic, judging by the fact that you're alright from touching it. Perhaps it's only lethal in large quantities?"
"That's..." The Doctor nodded to himself. "That's actually quite brilliant, Maggie! Well, brilliant for a girl of your education level and the scientific state of your time period. So, yes, I think the word is brilliant, and - look out!"
She spun on her heel just in time to feel one of the tentacles wrap around her waist and let out a shriek. So much for her name being shorter saving her life. The Doctor grasped her hands and tried to pull her out of the monster's reach, but it was no use. It had her, it was over, she was going to die.
iI'll go fighting, then/i, she concluded, and wrangled her father's pistol from her boot. There was time enough for a few shots, but when one was in the air it made it difficult to aim, and then came the water. She'd barely had enough time to take a breath before she was sucked under, faint echoes of the Doctor shouting still ringing in her ears.
After the water was open air, and an enormous underground cavern, much like the one her imagination had supplied for the inside of the TARDIS. The beast released her onto a rough-hewn stone floor, from where then she was quite unable to move for reasons unbeknownst to her. She tried to think, to remember how long it had roughly taken between the victims being taken and resurfacing, gauging how much time she had left.
If she was very careful, she could look out of the corner of her eyes and see a little girl lying nearly ten feet away, just as helpless. Her heart clenched.
But then the Doctor had arrived, just as the beast was closing in on her, with his band of Irregulars at his side like a general's troops. They poured the salt over the monster and it writhed, scooping up enormous amounts of its own secretions to sooth the dry patches in its skin. Once it had scraped the stuff off of her, Maggie had felt weak but capable of moving, and yet the Doctor still picked her up like a child and ran with her to a safe space in the cavern.
"Are you alright?" he asked breathlessly, pressing cold fingers to her face, her black hair, her shoulders, everywhere in search of non-present injuries. His eyes were shadowed with fear, and she had to grip his wrist to ensure him that she was still alive.
"Doctor, I'm fine," she assured him, though her voice was shaky; she had no idea how long she'd been paralyzed before he'd come to her aid.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief, the Doctor leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Good, that's...that's good, Maggie. Now, eat this and you'll be right as rain." He pulled a custard cream from his pocket, though it was liberally covered in pea soup, curry powder, and what looked like coal dust.
"Perhaps it's because you claim to be from another world," she began lightly, and the Doctor rolled his eyes at the word "claim" - if he couldn't prove it she would not believe it, "but this is not how we typically take our custard creams."
On the word icreams/i he shoved the thing into her mouth and held her jaw until she swallowed a bit of it, choking and eyes watering from the foul, spicy taste. "That was revolting."
He grinned, not looking at all ashamed. "But you feel better, don't you?"
And, blast it all, he was right. Certainly there was a horrible taste in her mouth that set her stomach on edge, but she was no longer quite so tired, and much of the strength had returned to her muscles. Maggie reluctantly nodded; the Doctor beamed. She opened her mouth to ask how he knew it would work, but stoppered herself when the constables started to pass, each holding a large petrol can in one hand and a garden hose topped with a kitchen strainer in the other, approaching the monster.
"What is that?"
Humming inquiringly, the Doctor followed Maggie's eyes to the constabulary. "Oh! They're going to gas out the monster with a rather clever mixture of pea soup, curry powder, champagne, and more salt. Speaking of!" He hauled her to her feet, gripped her hand, and pulled her along behind him toward one of the sewer's maintenance ports. He used his unusual buzzing metal wand to loosen the bolts and pull her blinking into the morning sun. Nearly all of the "goo" had been scraped away by the monster, and survivors were peeking their heads out of windows to see what was happening.
All at once, the constabulary came spilling out of the sewers, dragging long fuses behind them, and lit the ends. "Run!"
Again the Doctor took her by the hand and pulled her away, toward his machine that she hadn't seen since the day she'd met the unusual man. "Inside, quickly," he coaxed, opening the door for her and locking it firmly behind them. He dashed up to the center console while Maggie had to take another moment to adjust herself to the alien surroundings, pulling a hanging...well, she didn't know what it was, really - toward him and turning a knob on it. Then, like some sort of window in the wrong place, she could see everything going on outside!
"What is that?" she asked, hating how vacant she sounded as she drifted toward the device.
The Doctor barely glanced over his shoulder at her before turning his attention back to his strange window. "It's a monitor," he explained, "it monitors things."
"But how does it work?"
He grinned and tapped a long finger against the tip of her nose; she squirmed away. "It'd be easier just to teach you how to operate it, eh? You turn these to what angle you want to see - have angles been done yet? I do lose track of discoveries in mathematics - and it'll show you. See?" He turned the knob slowly, and the picture - the imoving/i picture - rotated to show the whole area surrounding the TARDIS. Maggie could hardly breathe with how enraptured she was.
"You must teach me how to use this device!" she practically shouted, and the Doctor laughed.
"In a bit. First, we're going to watch our monster go back to his planet. I've sent him a message; I'm sure he'll heed it."
Banishing the dozens of questions dancing through her mind - how could he send the monster a message? When had he done it? How did he know what could be used to mobilize those who had been paralyzed? - Maggie turned her attention to the monitor and watched the air fill with an otherworldly blue light. The tentacles rose out of their hiding places, but no longer looking predatory. Instead, they looked almost as though they were reaching. Then, with a blinding flash of the blue light that made MAggie turn her head away, they were gone.
All was silent. She took a breath. "Is that it?" she asked, almost feeling a bit disappointed in the anticlimax. "It's just gone?"
"It's just gone," the Doctor nodded. Seeing the look of mixed relief and disappointment on her face, he smiled and patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of chances to see more."
She shot him an inquiring look. He shifted from foot-to-foot. "Well, that is, I mean...do you want to see some more?"
"More?"
"Planets, aliens, stars, those sorts of things?" supplemented the Doctor. "It won't always be this dangerous, and it won't always be this safe, but I can tell you that it iwill/i change your life, Maggie Moss. Do you want to come with me?"
Looking carefully into his face, Maggie saw a maelstrom of different emotions there: expectation, worry, doubt, and the barest glimmer of hope. She wondered if she really did want to embark on such a journey as the one he suggested. Her life would not be one of luxury or relaxation any longer, but after the past week, would she want to go back to the life she'd led? Would she ever stop yearning for the same thrill of adventure, the dream of flight?
Just as the Doctor's face began to fall, she conceded. "Yes. Yes, I'll go with you." Before she could see his reaction there were long skinny arms around her, pinning her own arms to her side. "Doctor! This is hardly decent!" she laughed, not really minding at all.
"Oh, let 'em talk!" replied the Doctor before releasing her and pressing a kiss to her forehead, then cringing when they both realized she was still coated in muck. "Perhaps you'd fancy a bath?"
Maggie wrinkled her nose at him, amused. "Is my smell so offensive?"
"It's not your smell," the Doctor assured her, though didn't bother to say it wasn't offensive. "I'll show you to your rooms until the TARDIS starts telling you herself; right now you're still too new. Old girl's getting shy after last time." He gave one of the walls a pat; Maggie was suddenly flooded with fatigue and could not bring herself to wonder why he was speaking of his machine like another living being. The only thought that drove her feet forward was that of a hot bath and soft bed, even as the Doctor helped her navigate through seemingly endless corridors.
Though he was silent, Maggie had the odd feeling that the Doctor had no clue of where he was going as they traversed the dimensionally-transcendent ship, but finally came to a stop at a door. "Here we a-!" he froze as he opened the door, and held out a hand to keep Maggie from entering as though it were hallowed ground. She peered in, curious, and saw a very barren-looking room. There was no paper on the walls, but they were a pleasing shade of blue, and there were photographs - icolored/i photographs - hung up here and there beside the bunked beds, which were much nicer than any she'd heard of before in an army barracks.
"Why do you do this to me?" murmured the Doctor to the air. "They're gone. They aren't coming back. Take me to Maggie's room. Now."
The door closed with a snap and Maggie thought she heard a derisive sort of sniff, only it was more like she imagined it than heard it. The Doctor led her on, and opened the door to a much more comfortable-looking room with a large bed and pleasantly-papered walls in various shades of light green. There was a gleaming and very sleek-looking washroom attached, and another door beside it that led to what the Doctor called the wardrobe.
"Everything you need in way of clothes is in there. Anything you want that fits, have at it!" he told her before leaving her to her privacy.
She fell onto the plush bed that was unlike any she had ever felt before, and slept for ten hours straight, forgetting the bath altogether. She didn't even think of what the Doctor meant by "anything" in the wardrobe. She dreamed of flight.