Hellooooo everyone!
Sorry for not updating! I've worked 60 hours this week, clearly had no time to write!
For your information, it might take longer to write the chapters as I am changing almost completely what is happenning in the episodes. Well except some parts that are setting everything up, like in this chapter :)
So this one is mostly dialogue, setting everything up as said, it's needed, though there are few changes.
Turtle, I'll always make reminders about Melody, because she's still in his hearts. And because I like writing pain! muahaha. Btw I hope you (and everyone) got everything about the skin, the room and what happened in it in a previous chapter. Just to make it more painful. I fear I've been too subtle on this one maybe...
Anyway, enjoy! And thanks to Freya Astrid Nova as ever for the proof reading and sorry if we've missed some typos, we both are exhausted.
Melody - x.
Chapter 30
"Oh how refreshing to see you taking an interest again. Was she nice?" asked Madam Vastra's voice on a speaker made by them in the carriage where the Doctor was in.
"I just spoke to her." he said.
"And made your usual impact, no doubt."
"No no, no impact at all." he said annoyed. "Those days are over."
"You can't help yourself!" exclaimed Vastra. "It's the same story every time, and it always begins with the same two words."
"She'll never be able to find me again! She doesn't even have the name 'Doctor'." the Doctor said more annoyed. "What two words?!"
Suddenly, a thud was heard on the top of the carriage, making the Time Lord look up, wondering what it was before a head showed up through the hatch of the roof, upside down. A mischievous smile across her lips, Clara asked:
"Doctor? Doctor Who?"
Outside Darkover House:
A carriage stopped in front of a big Victorian house, in the garden, covered in snow. A pond was at the front of the house, frozen.
A tall man in his thirties, wearing a black coat and top hat and a well-kept beard stepped out of the carriage. He looked like the very best example of a Victorian gentleman.
As the carriage went away, the gentleman looked at the frozen pond.
"Good evening, sir." Alice, the maid, greeted him, waiting for him at the front door.
"Pond's frozen over. Hasn't frozen since the night-"
"Since the night your children's governess died, a year ago." cut in a tall man, stepping out of the house. Passing by the gentleman, he did not even glanced at him, his eyes fixed on the pond. In his fifties or sixties, he was wearing his gray hair long and combed towards the back of his head. His face could be said to show no emotion, but if it was to, it would be disdain.
"Doctor Simeon, sir." Alice said. "He insisted on waiting."
"She drowned in this very pond."
"Which then froze." Simeon cut him in again. "You didn't find her till a month later, when the ice finally melted."
"I recall the incident." said the gentleman. "It is the sort of thing one remembers."
"The ice remembers too."
"Who are you? What do you want here?"
Holding out a business card with written "The Great Intelligence Institute" to the gentleman over his shoulder, Simeon answered:
"The pond is yours, Captain Latimer, but what is growing inside it, when it is ready, is ours. Good evening."
He walked away, his whole attitude as cold as the ice of the pond.
Walking in the streets, he suddenly got interrupted by a young woman in a black leather catsuit standing in his way.
"Well, Doctor Simeon, you're out very late tonight." she said with a strong accent.
"Almost makes you wonder what you've been up to." said another voice coming from a veiled in black figure behind him. "But then, I have often wondered about the activities of Doctor Simeon and his exceptionally secretive Institute, known to hire people to take sample of snowmen..."
This voice was easily recognisable: it was Vastra's. And the woman in the catsuit was obviously Jenny.
"Well, I am honoured this evening." said Doctor Simeon. "The veiled detective and her fatuous accomplice."
"At your service." said Jenny with sarcasm, mocking a curtsy.
"You realise Doctor Doyle is almost certainly basing his fantastical tales on your own exploits? With a few choice alterations, of course. I doubt the readers of The Strand magazine would accept that the great detective is, in reality…" he started, walking up to Vastra and lifting her veil, revealing her green reptilian face. "... A woman. And her suspiciously intimate companion."
"I resent your implication of impropriety." said Vastra. "We are married."
"More than can be said for you, eh, dear?" Jenny said with that sarcastic tone of hers.
"Now then." Vastra smiled, walking up to a barrel to take some snow between her fingers. "This snow is interesting, don't you think? The ice crystals seem to have a low level telepathic field. Almost as if it can detect and respond to the thoughts and memories of the people around it. Memory snow. Snow that learns."
"How fascinating." said Simeon with that bitter disdain in his voice.
"I hope it's listening to the right people. It could be a terrible weapon in the wrong hands, don't you think?"
"I think winter is coming. Such a winter as this world has never known. The last winter of humankind. Do you know why I'm telling you all this?"
"I am intrigued." said Vastra, her eyes fixed on the man.
"Because there's not a single thing you can do to stop it." he spat out before walking away.
"Perhaps I can't, but I know a man who can!"
"I look forward to meeting him." he said, leaving.
Walking to the side of her dear Jenny, Vastra took her hands in hers.
"Do you mean the Doctor?" the young woman said. "He won't help us. He never helps any more, you know that."
"Yes, my dear, I do. So pray for a miracle, because I think we are going to need him."
Outside the Institute:
Simeon's carriage went back to the Institute. What he did not know was that, in darkness of the night, in a alleyway nearby, another carriage was parked.
A tall man was waiting next to it for the small and potatoe-looking one to tell him what he had seen with the binoculars he was using to watch Simeon.
After a moment, the Sontaran reported to the Doctor:
"They've taken samples from snowmen all over London. What do you suppose they're doing in there?"
"This snow is new. Possibly alien." said the Doctor who had knelt to take some snow between his fingers and was looking at it closely. "When you find something brand new in the world, something you've never seen before, what's the next thing you look for?"
The Sontaran thought for a moment.
"A grenade!" he then exclaimed.
"A profit!" the Doctor said back, rolling his eyes. "That's Victorian values for you."
"I suggest a full frontal assault with automated laser monkeys, scalpel mines and acid!"
The Time Lord got up and walked back to the Sontaran.
"Why?"
"Couldn't we at least investigate?" he said, losing his smile, this time being the one annoyed.
"It's none of our business."
"Sir, permission to express my opposition to your current apathy?"
"Permission granted." the Doctor said, leaning on shop window nearby.
"Sir, I am opposed to your current apathy."
"Thank you, Strax." said the Doctor sarcastically, walking up to him. "And if I'm ever in need of advice from a psychotic potato dwarf, you'll certainly be the first to know."
"But if the snow is new and alien, shouldn't we be making some attempt to destroy it? Be reasonable."
The Doctor shushed him by putting his index finger on the Sontaran's lips.
"It is not our problem. Over a thousand years of saving the universe, Strax, you know the one thing I learned? The universe doesn't care." he said. Then looking at his carriage, he added. "Now, we have a problem of our own to worry about."
They both walked up to the carriage and opened the door. Climbing inside in front of Clara, he said:
"Don't worry. No one's going to hurt you."
She looked at the Sontaran with wide eyes before blinking a few times, smile and say:
"Hello!"
"Silence, boy!" exclaimed Strax.
"That's Strax. And as you can see, he's easily confused!" said the Doctor with a disapproval in his eyes.
"Silence, girl. Sorry, lad."
"Sontaran. Clone warrior race. Factory produced, whole legions at a time. Two genders is a bit further than he can count."
"Sir, do not discuss my reproductive cycle in front of enemy girls. It's embarrassing." asked the Sontaran.
"Typical middle child of six million." the Time Lord whispered to Clara.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter because you're about to forget that you and I ever met." Then turning to Strax, he said: "We'll need the worm."
"Sir."
"You'll need the what? The worm? What worm?" asked Clara, starting to panic.
"Don't worry, it won't hurt." the Doctor reassured her. "But one touch on your bare skin and you lose the last hour of your memory." As he finished his explanations, Strax came back, not showing any sign that he brought the worm. "Where is it?"
"Where's what, sir?"
"I sent you to get the memory worm."
"Did you? When?" the Sontaran asked. Then noticing Clara: "Who's he? What are we doing here? Look, it's been snowing!"
"You didn't use the gauntlets, did you?" asked the Doctor, dismayed by his friend's stupidness.
"Why would I need the gauntlets?" asked Strax before leaning in: "Do you want me to get the memory worm?"
"You potatoe…" muttered the Doctor.
Of course, since Strax held the worm with bare hands, as the last hour of his memory was wiped he dropped the jar in which the worm was stored. They all went out of the carriage while the Sontaran was trying to get it as it had crawled under the vehicle.
"Well, can you see it?" asked the Doctor.
"I think I can hear it!"
Observing them as she was leaning against a wall nearby, Clara was giggling. Really these ones were funny. Noticing her, the Doctor turned towards her and pointed a finger at her:
"Oi, don't try to run away. Stay where you are!"
"Why would I run?" she laughed. "I know what's going to happen next and it's funny."
"What's funny?"
"I can see it."
"Ooo! Can you reach it?" asked the Doctor, suddenly forgetting about the girl. "Have you got it?"
After a second, Strax's eyes seemed to go empty and he said:
"Got what, sir?"
Stepping next to the Doctor at the front of the carriage, she took two big pieces of black leather with only the space to put three big fingers in it.
"Because these are the gauntlets, aren't they?"
"Sir, emergency! I think I've been ran over by a cab."
Pulling Strax out of under the cab, the Doctor put on the gauntlets himself to take hold of the memory worm. After searching for a moment, he finally found it and managed to take it.
"There you go! One touch and you lose about an hour of your memory. Let it bite you and you could lose decades." he said, putting it back in the jar. He then looked at Clara who was still observing him. "And you're still not trying to run."
"I don't understand how the snowman built itself." she stubbornly answered. "I'll run once you've explained."
"Clara who?"
"Doctor who?"
"Oh, dangerous question." he said, putting down the gauntlets but his gaze not leaving the delicate face of the girl. He had seen this face before. At the comic-con. It was Jenna, Jenna-Louise Coleman, he heard that day she was playing Clara. It was the day he met her. Thinking back to it, his hearts wrenched and pain started to flood in his veins like poison.
Suddenly, Clara's voice took him back to Earth.
"What's wrong with dangerous?"
A she asked that, a snowman in the adjacent alleyway appeared, building itself from the snow on the ground in a swarm while the Doctor, not paying attention explained:
"The snow emits a low level telepathic field."
"My snowman..."
"It seems to reflect people's thoughts and memories and because it's unusual, somehow it carries a previous shape and-"
"No, Doctor!" she pulled him by the sleeve for him to see the snowman. "My snowman!"
"Ah! Interesting." he said rubbing his hands together and walking up to it. "Well, were you thinking about it?"
"Yes."
Just as if the more she paid attention to it, the more they will be, two more snowmen appeared like the previous one.
"Well... stop!"
As more and more snowmen were surrounding them, preventing them to escape, he shouted to her:
"Clara, stop thinking about the snowmen!" and took her by the hand against a wall and made her crouch, cupping her face as he shielded her. "Clara, listen to me. The snow's feeding of your thoughts. You're caught in their telepathic f-" he stopped as they got drenched with ice cold water splashing on them. "How did you do that!?"
"Well if they appear when I think about them, then it was obvious they would disappear when I think about them melted." she says, shrugging and standing up, making a smile grow across the Time Lord's lips. "Is that going to happen again?
"Well, if it does, you know what to do about it." he said, grabbing the jar with the memory worm, ready to use it on the young woman, forgetting one teeny tiny detail she reminded him of.
"Unless I forget."
I hope you enjoyed, let me know :)