Tooth and Claw
"What do you think of this? Will it do?" Rose asked The Doctor with a glint in her eye, showing him a rather short denim dungaree skirt.
"In the late 1970s? You'd be better off in a bin bag. Hold on, listen to this." The Doctor stuck a cd into the console and 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' by Ian Dury and the Blockheads blared out.
"Oh I love this song." I giggled, doing a twirl round the console as The Doctor walked around too. "Growing up, me and my best mates used to blare this out through Amy's house, massive it was. Rory used to think we'd lost the plot but me and her and Mels didn't care."
"Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Number One in 1979." The Doctor grinned over the music.
"You're a Punk!" Rose laughed.
"It's good to be a lunatic-"
"That's what you are. A big old Punk with a bit of Rockabillly thrown in."
"Would you like to see him?" The Doctor asked, looking at me.
"How'd you mean? In concert?" Rose asked before I had a chance to answer.
"What else is a TARDIS for?"
"I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar... the first anti-gravity Olympics... Caesar crossing the Rubicon... or... Ian Dury at the Top Rank, Sheffield, England, Earth, 21st November, 1979. What do you think?"
"Sheffield it is!"
"Hold on tight." The Doctor grinned as he pulled a lever and we lerched forward, The TARDIS shaking madly as The Doctor bashed a hammer against the console as we sung along to the music. The TARDIS landed with a thud and we all flew to the floor, me ending up on top of The Doctor. He looked at me awkwardly before we both burst into laughter and got up, running out of The TARDIS with Rose following.
"1879." The Doctor sniffed as we appeared in a field, soldiers pointing guns at us.
"Same difference." I hissed.
"You will explain your presence. And the nakedness of this girl." One soldier nodded at Rose.
"Are we in Scotland?" The Doctor asked in a scottish accent.
"How can you be ignorant of that?"
"Oh, I'm- I'm dazed and confused. I've been chasing this... this wee naked child over hill and over dale. In't that right, ya... timorous beastie?"
"Ooch, aye! I've been oot and aboot." Rose said in a terrible accent as I bit my lip to stop myself laughing.
"No, don't do that."
"Hoots mon!"
"No, really don't. Really."
"Will you identify yourself, sir?"
"I'm Doctor James McCrimmon. From the... Township of Balamory. Eh... I have my credentials, if I may..." The Doctor began, taking out the psychic paper and showing it to him. "As you can see, a Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. I trained under Doctor Bell himself."
"Let them approach." I heard a posh voice say.
"I don't think that's wise, ma'am."
"Let them approach." The voice said again before we slowly walked towards the carriage. We stopped outside the door before a footman opened the door and there sat- holy shit it was Queen Victoria.
"Flo, Rose - might I introduce her Majesty Queen Victoria. Empress of India and Defender of the Faith."
"Rose Tyler, Ma'am. And my apologies... for being so naked." Rose curtseyed.
"Flo Maxwell, Ma'am." I mumbled, curtseying.
"I've had five daughters." Queen Victoria said to Rose. "It's nothing to me. But you, Doctor... show me these credentials." The Doctor handed over to psychic paper. "Why didn't you say so immediately? It states clearly here that you have been appointed by the Lord Provost as my Protector with your wife accompanying you." She nodded at me and my eyes grew wider as she handed him back the paper.
"Does it? Yes, it does! Good! Good! Um.. then let me ask - why is Your Majesty travelling by road when there's a train all the way to Aberdeen?"
"A tree on the line."
"An accident?"
"I am the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Everything around me tends to be planned."
"An assassination attempt?"
"What, seriously? There's people out to kill ya?"
"I'm quite used to staring down the barrel of a gun."
"Sir Robert MacLeish lives but ten miles hence. We'll send word ahead, he'll shelter us for tonight, then we can reach Balmoral tomorrow." Captain Reynolds said from behind them.
"This Doctor, his wife and his... timorous beastie will come with us."
"Yes, Ma'am. We'd better get moving - it's almost nightfall."
"Indeed. And there are stories of wolves in these parts. Fanciful tales intended to scare the children. But good for the blood, I think. Drive on!"
...
"So what was all that about then?" I asked as I turned round from getting dressed into a long baby pink dress with sleeves to my elbows with a low cut neck to see The Doctor lying on the bed. "How did I end up your wife?"
"No idea." He sniffed before looking up at me and smiling. "You look beautiful."
"Thank you." I blushed, walking over to the dressing table to tie my hair up, leaving my fringe down. "But," I said turning round and looking at him. "I've come prepared just in case we do find ourselves running from a werewolf." I pulled up my dress to show him my trainers still underneath before dropping it again and sitting on the end of the bed, looking at him. "Doctor?"
"Hm?"
"It's time we were honest with eachother." I sighed. "My timeline, what's so special about it?"
"Why do you just assume they'll be a werewolf anyway?"
...
"My father didn't treat it as a story. He said it was fact. He even claimed to have communed with the beast - to have learned its purpose." Sir Robert explained quickly after chat of a werewolf with her majesty. "I should've listened. His work was hindered - he made enemies. There's a Monastery in the Glen of Saint Catherine. The Brethren opposed my father's investigations."
"Perhaps they thought his work ungodly." The Queen commented.
"That's what I thought. But now I wonder... what if they had a different reason for wanting the story kept quiet?"
"What if they turned from God and worshipped the wolf?" The Doctor asked, watching Father Angelo chant out the window. "And what if they were with us right now?"
"What is the meaning of this?" The Queen ordered.
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty, they've got my wife."
"Rose! Where's Rose? Where is she?" The Doctor shouted, standing up. "Sir Robert - come on!" He said before we ran from the room.
...
"Where the hell have you been?" Rose shouted as The Doctor kicked down the cellar door.
"Oh, that's beautiful!" I whispered, looking at the wolf.
"Get out!" Sir Robert shouted at everyone as the cage started to break and we ran off.
...
"It could be any form of light modulated species triggered by specific wavelengths - did it say what it wanted?" The Doctor asked when we got inside the house.
"The Queen, the Crown, the throne - you name it."
"Fire!" I looked round to see soldiers shoot at the wolf, who started to stumble.
...
The Doctor squeezed my hand as he finished barricading us inside the library and we stood in silence.
"It's stopped." The Doctor whispered. "It's gone."
"What's stopping it?" I asked calmly.
"Something inside this room. What is it? Why can't it get in?"
"I'll tell you what, though..." Rose began.
"OH!" I shouted suddenly, spinning round, much like The Doctor did. "Staring us right in the face!"
"What is?" The Doctor asked.
"Big mokey boys wearing mistletoe all around them!"
"Oh you're brilliant!" The Doctor exclaimed, kissing me on the head and running up to the door, licking it, ew. "Viscum album, the oil of the mistletoe - it's been worked into the wood like a varnish! How clever was your dad? I love him! Powerful stuff, mistletoe. Bursting with lectins and viscotoxins."
"And the wolf's allergic to it?" Rose asked, glaring at me from out of the corner of her eye.
"Well, it thinks it is. The monkey monk monks need a way of controlling the wolf, maybe they trained it to react against certain things."
"Like mistletoe. Maybe it's jealous nobody will kiss it at Christmas because of it's breath." I chuckled.
"Nevertheless, that creature won't give up, Doctor, and we still don't possess an actual weapon."
"Oh, your father got all the brains, didn't he?"
"Being rude again."
"Rude and not ginger!" I exclaimed, The Doctor grinned at me and Rose frowned.
"How does she know about that?" Rose asked.
"Oh, long story." The Doctor waved off before walking towards the book shelves. "You want weapons? We're in a library. Books! Best weapons in the world. This room's the greatest arsenal we could have." He pulled some books from off the shelf and threw some to me and Rose. "Arm yourself."
"Hold on, what about this?" The Doctor asked, looking at a page in a book. "Hmm, that's the sort of thing. Ooh... Look what your old dad found. Something fell to Earth." He said to Sir Robert as we all walked over to him.
"A spaceship?" Rose asked.
"A shooting star. "In the year of our Lord, 1540, under the reign of King James the Fifth, an almighty fire did burn in the pit." That's the Glen of Saint Catherine just by the Monastery."
"But that's over three hundred years ago. What's it been waiting for?" I asked.
"Maybe just a single cell survived. Adapting slowly down the generations. It survived through the humans. Host after host after host."
"But why does it want the throne?"
"That's what it wants. It said so, the... the Empire of the Wolf."
"Imagine it... the Victorian Age accelerated... starships and missiles fueled by coal and driven by steam... leaving history devastated in its wake..."
"Sir Robert!" The Queen said. "If I am to die here..."
"Don't say that, Your Majesty."
"I would destroy myself rather than let that creature infect me. But that's no matter. I ask only that you find some place of safekeeping for something far older and more precious than myself." She opened her bag and took out a big big diamond.
"Is that the Koh-I-Noor?" Rose asked.
"Oh, yes... the greatest diamond in the world."
"Given to me as the spoils of war. Perhaps its legend is now coming true. It is said that whoever owns it must surely die."
"Well, that's true of anything if you own it long enough. Can I...?" The Queen gave him the diamond and we looked at it closely. "That is so beautiful."
"How much is that worth?"
"They say... the wages of the entire planet for a whole week."
"Good job my mum's not here. She'd be fighting the wolf off with her bare hands for that thing."
"And she'd win."
"Where is the wolf? I don't trust this silence." Sir Robert said.
"Why do you travel with it?" I asked, nodding at the diamond.
"My annual pilgrimage. I'm taking it to Helier and Carew. The Royal Jewellers at Hazelhead. The stone needs recutting."
"Oh, but it's perfect."
"My late husband never thought so."
"Now, there's a fact - Prince Albert kept on having the Koh-I-Noor cut down. It used to be forty percent bigger than this. But he was never happy. Kept on cutting and cutting."
"He always said... the shine was not quite right. But he died with it still unfinished."
"Unfinished... oh, yes!" The Doctor exclaimed, throwing the diamond back to Queen Victoria. "There's a lot of unfinished business in this house. His father's research - your husband, Ma'am, he came here and he sought the perfect diamond - hold on, hold on - all these separate things, they're not separate at all, they're connected! Oh, my head, my head! What if - this house, it's a trap for you - is that right, Ma'am?"
"Obviously."
"At least, that's what the wolf intended. But! What if there's a trap inside the trap?"
"Explain yourself, Doctor."
"What if his father and your husband weren't just telling each other stories. They dared to imagine all this was true. And they planned against it. Laying the real trap not for you... but for the wolf." I looked up at the ceiling, where the wolf layed on a glass dome.
"That wolf there…" I whispered.
"Out! Out! Out!" The Doctor shouted. "Gotta get to the observatory!"
...
"No mistletoe on these doors, your father wanted the wolf to get inside! Get inside I just need time! Is there any way of barricading this?" The Doctor said as we ran into the observatory.
"Just do your work and I'll defend it."
"If we could bind them shut with rope or something!"
"I said I'd find you time, sir."
"Now get inside."
"Good man." The Doctor nodded before shutting the doors.
"See, told you these trainers would come in handy!" I said breathlessly.
"Your Majesty, the diamond."
"For what purpose?"
"The purpose it was designed for." She hands it over.
"Rose! Flo!" The Doctor instructed. "Lift it! Come on!" The three of us struggled, turning the wheel on the telescope before it eventually started to rise
"Is this the right time for stargazing?" Rose asked.
"Yes, it is." The Doctor said as Sir Robert's screams filled our ears.
"You said this thing doesn't work!" I said.
"It doesn't work as a telescope because that's not what it is! It's a light chamber! It magnifies the light rays like a weapon. We've just got to power it up!"
"But there's no electricity!"
"Moonlight! But it needs moonlight! It's made by moonlight!"
"You're seventy percent water but you can still drown. Come on!" The wolf burst through the door and was hit by the light, turning into human form, floating up in the air.
"Make it brighter. Let me go."
...
Later on in The TARDIS, everything was safe. I sat in the library when I heard The Doctor's call.
"Flo, come here a sec!" I got up and followed his voice. The Doctor stood outside a blue door, grinning like mad and nodding at the door.
"It's a door." He said nothing and opened the door. Inside was a big bed covered in purple bed sheets, a massive wardrobe room to the left side of the room and a en suite to the right. "Oh my god." I whispered.
"It's your room."
"My room?" I asked, spinning round and looking at him. "I can stay?"
"I assumed you were anyway." He grinned before I threw myself into his arms, and he hugged me tightly, snuggling his face into my hair. After a minute of silence he whispered, "Who are you Flo?"
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