A/N: Please review, I'd like to know what you think about the sudden twist at the end. Enjoy :)
*CHAPTER REWRITTEN 27/05/12*
"So what do you think, Doctor?" I asked, spinning round the platform on the heel of my new grey Converse shoes; swishing the rainbow scarf round my legs.
The Doctor grimaced; "Well…" he winked when he saw my disgusted expression, "No. You look lovely. Love the scarf. Used to wear it a lot."
"That's probably why I became so attached to it, then," I grinned, biting my lip. "The hat yours too, then?"
"Nah," the Doctor said as he ran a hand through his hair. "Not a hat person, myself. I'm more of a hair person."
"That's where you and I differ, Doctor. I'm so much more of a hat person." I replied. I demonstrated this by lifting the trilby off my head and quickly shoving it back on. "Too many bad haircuts when I was little. I specifically remember a school photo when I had an abominable mushroom cut, and I haven't been able to live it down since."
"There's nothing wrong with a mushroom, Ava." tutted the Doctor, approaching the doors of the TARDIS. "Unless, of course, you're talking about the carnivorous toadstools in the Perpetual Forests. Then there is definitley something wrong with a mushroom."
I laughed at the insanity of it all. "If you see the photo, my haircut did look slightly carnivorous."
I skipped down the stairs so that I was side-by-side with the Doctor. The scarf was longer than it really needed to be and it almost made me trip over, but I wasn't taking it off. Something about it almost made it fuse to my neck.
"Doctor, could I do the honours? Of opening the door?" I questioned, trying to contain her excitement.
The Doctor gestured towards the entrance. "It's your first trip, Ava. I could do this anytime."
Outside the two, supposedly thin, wooden doors was a new world. Me, plain old Ava Jackson, was going to be the first ever human being from the 21st century to step onto this new world. And that was amazing. The fact that I was going to be the only person from the 21st century to see this… It made me feel so extraordinary.
My mother was wrong all those years ago when I was kicked out. Ava Jackson was special and would amount to things.
And that, the first ever door opening, was going to be the start of many more.
It was only just the beginning.
-x-
Everything around her was entirely made of glass. Crystal-clear, completely transparent glass. So clear, that it looked like the life-forms (I couldn't be particular) which populated this place were literally walking among the stars and the midnight-blue sky.
At the centre of this glass planet was an orb of bright orange light. It was like all the glass had been built around this orb- like it was a core. The planet's visible core. It should've been blindingly bright, but for some reason I could stare at it without even my vision going blurry. It was like the glass was shielding me from the initial brightness- despite it being completely clear like a window.
Rockets and other modes of outer-space transport were whizzing about above our heads, every so often ducking down and parking or lifting off and blasting into space. I could see exactly where each one landed and each one took off- I could see pretty much everything.
Including aliens. Lots and lots of aliens.
But that wasn't thing that surprised me. It was the fact that on this planet, I wasn't the only human. Hundreds and hundreds of her species were milling about, doing their own thing, taking this amazing glass planet as the norm. To them, this was completely normal. To them, my century belonged in the history books. Long forgotten.
The human race had lived on. They didn't perish in the dramatic end of the world theories; they were here, in the year six-hundred-and-eighty-two-thousand. And something about that made me feel so warm inside- my descendants would be alive somewhere. Rose's descendants. And… Oh god, that was just… Well, it was unbelievable.
"So what do you think?" the Doctor breathed in my ear. "Not bad, eh?"
"Not bad?" I exclaimed, taking one more second just too properly take in my surroundings. "It's incredible! Whatever it is. A glass planet?"
"Well, you got the name correct," the Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets, "The Glass Planet."
"Seriously?" I raised an eyebrow, "Very original."
"Yeah," the Doctor wrinkled his nose, "I suggested The Big Amazing Enormous Glass Planet, but that was deemed 'too adventurous'. The Planet Naming Society have gone down the pan recently, if you ask me. They've stopped taking my advice- ever since I accidently caused a massive war between Planet m56 and Planet m57. Seriously, you make one mistake…"
I shook her head. "So do people live here?"
"Oh no," the Doctor replied, "It's more like a massive tourist destination. Literally billions of life-forms come here daily because of the sheer impossibility of The Glass Planet."
He grabbed my wrist and dragged me through knots of humans, humongous robotic things and various aliens- one caught my eye in particular; it was basically a badger in a spacesuit. I didn't stare at it though, that would've been a bit rude.
We finally stopped at a sort of café thing, where a humanoid woman with silver skin and bright green eyes was standing behind a desk. On the wall behind the desk were hundreds of bottles, each filled with a different colour liquid. Some of them were frothing and bubbling, others were completely still, and one or two had various lumps floating in them… And, for some reason, none of the signs which were scattered around said what those lumps actually were.
The sign above the desk read 'Core Shakes', so I presumed it was some sort of intergalactic milkshake bar.
"Ava, we cannot come to The Glass Planet without you trying one of these," insisted the Doctor, pointing to the desk. "Core Shakes. They're brilliant!"
I winced. "I don't know, Doctor, they look pretty awful…"
"Oh, trust me, they're not," the Doctor approached the desk with me in tow. "The Glass Planet is the first ever planet to have a real, living star as its core. Literally, a star. A group of very, very clever scientists came all the way out here, trapped the star, and just started to build around it. Isn't that amazing?"
"What has that got to do with these shake things?" I asked.
"Once the scientists had finished building –it took over a thousand years, the glass is a billion miles thick to stop things from getting scorched- they discovered that the core left a sort of residue. They collected the residue and did lots of really complex tests on it and they found out that the residue was safe to eat. Not only that, it was delicious! So they collected the entire residue and made these shake shacks and they've been popular ever since."
"So they're… Not as disgusting as they look?" I asked, hopefully.
"Think of the most delicious thing you've ever tasted, times that by a million, and then you're about a tenth of the way there."
I jumped onto a barstool round the desk. "Okay, I'll have one. If you order. Plus, I get to spill it all over you if it tastes horrible."
The Doctor pointed to an item on the board, and the woman nodded and turned around to the various bottles. "You can throw it on the floor and force me to drink it. And I don't say that very often."
I grinned and rested my hands on the desk, drumming my fingers on the table top. I hadn't slept at all, but no way was I tired.
The Doctor was chatting away to the woman at the till; she had a very musical voice that sounded a bit like birdsong. She was working very fluently and I soon discovered that she had six arms doing six different things.
Suddenly, I felt a pair of hands clamp round my shoulders. I gulped and shot straight around in my chair- who the heck was that? I quickly glanced to my side and saw that the Doctor was still there, so I could scream if I needed too. Not that I was going to
In front of me was a man, with dark mussed up hair, a cocky grin, and a long grey military coat.
"Hello, Ava. D'ya miss me? I didn't think I'd be seeing you so soon." he flashed a cocky grin, his American accent prominent. I had never met this man in my life… So how did he know me?
"Who the heck are you?" I demanded. I didn't like men who were this straight forward and in-your-face. And good looking.
His face instantly fell. "Wait… You don't know me? Makes sense, I suppose. You knew me when I first met you."
"What?" I screeched, "Am I supposed to know you?"
"I better start at the beginning." the man struck out his hand. "The name's Captain Jack Harkness."