Chapter Three:
The Doctor set off towards said nurse and Scarlett realised that he was talking about Rory. Lovely, innocent Rory. Rory was one of her best friends; practically a brother, actually. Although to Amy, he was a little bit more than that.
"The Sun's going out, and you're photographing a man and a dog, why?" asked the Doctor when he was just an inch away from him. Rory looked to see Amy as she caught up, and was obviously relieved. "Amy!"
"Hi!" she replied before glancing at the Doctor. "Oh, uh, this is Rory, he's a... friend."
Scarlett frowned, and so did Rory. "Boyfriend," he corrected.
"Kind of boyfriend," nodded Amy.
"Definite boyfriend," Scarlett added.
"Man and a dog; why?" asked the Doctor again, ignoring the conversation from the trio next to him.
"Oh my god, it's him," said Rory, his eyes widening as he took in the Doctor's image.
"Just, answer his question, please," Amy urged.
"It's him though! The Doctor, the Raggedy Doctor!" He then looked at Scarlett as if for confirmation and she nodded in response. "But he was a story, he was a game –" He was then cut off by the Doctor grabbing him by the front of his shirt. "Man and a dog! Why? Tell me, now!"
"Sorry! Because, he can't be there, because, he's –"
"In a hospital, in a coma," finished Rory, along with the Doctor.
Rory just nodded. "Yeah…"
"Knew it. Multiform, you see?" He let go of Rory and brushed his shoulders down. "Disguises itself as anything, but it needs a live feed, a psychic link, with a living, but dormant mind."
A large ship with a giant eyeball underneath then flew in out of nowhere, hovering over the church, and started to scan. "See, that ship up there is scanning this area for non-terrestrial technology. And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver!"
With a large grin, he held up his 'sonic screwdriver' and pressed a button. Suddenly streetlights started exploding, car alarms were set off, and a poor old lady on a mobility scooter started zooming down the street. Even a fire engine started driving itself, its previous owners chasing it down the path.
The man and his dog barked and growled and the Doctor aimed his screwdriver at a telephone box, which exploded with a bang. But then the screwdriver itself exploded, and the Doctor dropped it onto the ground in front of him. "No, no, no! Don't do that!"
The ship above then started to move away and the Doctor yelled to the sky. "Come back! He's here! Prisoner Zero is... here..."
"Doctor!" said Amy suddenly. "The drain, it just... sort of, melted and went down the drain.
"Well, of course it did," said the Doctor, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"What do we do now?" Scarlett asked.
"It's hiding in human form. We need to drive it into the open. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, seventeen minutes, come on... Think. Think!"
"How can he be real?! He was never real!" asked Rory, continuing his confusion from before while the Doctor fiddled with the English boy's phone. "It was just a game, we were – we were kids, you lot made me dress up as him!"
"These photos, they're all the coma patients," the Doctor noted.
"Yep," agreed Rory.
"No. They're all the multiform. Eight comas, eight disguises for Prisoner Zero."
"He had a dog, though, there's a dog in a coma?" Scarlett frowned.
It was a little hard for her to imagine, but Scarlett was sure it had most likely happened somewhere at some point in time.
"Well, the coma patient dreams he's walking a dog, Prisoner Zero gets a dog. Laptop!" He looked up at the three friends. "Your friend, what was his name? Not him," – he pointed to Rory – "the good-looking one!"
"Thanks," said Rory, clearly offended by the statement.
"Jeff," stated Amy.
"Ohhh, thanks," he repeated, causing Scarlett to reach up and poke his cheek like the annoying best friend that she knew she was, but at least it made him smile a little.
"He had a laptop in his bag, a laptop. Big bag, biiig laptop! I need Jeff's laptop! You two, get to the hospital. Get everyone out of that ward, clear the floor, and phone me when you're done! Scarlett; you're with me."
He grabbed her hand and tugged her back into the direction of Mrs. Angelo's house before she could even think of responding. They ran up the front path to the house and inside, bursting into Jeff's room quickly.
"Hello! Laptop; gimme," said the Doctor as a way of introduction.
He crossed the room and attempted to prise the laptop away from Jeff, who was trying to cover the screen, and keep it away from the Doctor. "No, no, no, no, no."
"No, it's fine; give it here," said the Doctor.
"Just hold on!"
But the Doctor snatched it from him, and sat down on the edge of the bed – Scarlett plonking herself down next to him – and together, they looked at the screen. Jeff looked over with a frown, as Scarlett's eyes widened along with the Doctor's.
"Blimey," the girl mumbled.
"Get a girlfriend, Jeff," finished the Doctor.
"What are you doing?" asked Jeff, cringing at the awful timing.
"Sun's gone wibbly, so right now, somewhere out there, there's gonna be a big old video conference call. All the experts in the world, panicking at once, and do you know what they need? Me. Ah, and here they all are; all the big boys. NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Centre, Patrick Moore."
"You can't just hack in on a call like that!" he answered.
"Can't I?" he grinned, typing frantically on the laptop. Suddenly six different boxes appeared on the screen with six different people representing six different places.
"Hello!" said the Doctor as the people on screen started to question who he was. "Yeah, I know, you should switch me off, but before you do, watch this."
The Doctor started to type frantically again while explaining the situation. "Fermat's Theorem, the proof, and I mean the real one, never been seen before, poor Fermat got killed in a duel before he could write it down. My fault; I slept in. Oh, and here's an oldie but a goodie; why electrons have mass, and a personal favourite of mine, faster than light travel with two diagrams and a joke." He stopped typing. "Look at your screens. Whoever I am, I'm a genius. Look at the sun. You need all the help you can get. Fellas; pay attention."
Someone on screen spoke up once more, "Sir! What are you doing?"
"I am writing a computer virus, very clever, super-fast, and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. And why am I writing it on a phone? Never mind. You'll find out. Okay, I'm sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. Email, text, FaceBook, Bebo –," Scarlett cringed at the mere mention of Bebo, "Twitter, radar dish, whatever you've got. Any questions?"
"Who's your lady friend?" said a man with a glance at Scarlett.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise as the Doctor said, "Patrick, behave."
"What does this virus do?" Scarlett asked.
"Oh, it's a reset command, that's all, it resets counters. It gets in the Wi-Fi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars, anything with a chip will default at zero at exactly the same time. But yeah, I could be lying, why should you trust me? I'll let my best man explain."
There was a pause, as the Doctor waited. Then Scarlett finally turned to Jeff and whispered, "Jeff? I think you're his best man."
"You what?"
The Doctor turned away from the webcam and looked at Jeff. "Listen to me. In ten minutes, you're gonna be a legend. In ten minutes, everyone on that screen is gonna be offering you any job you want. But first, you have to be magnificent. You have to make them trust you and get them working. This is it, Jeff, right here, right now. This is when you fly. Today's the day you save the world."
"Why me?" he asked, clearly baffled. After all, why would he be picked out of everyone to save the world? Why not Scarlett? I mean, she was there, too. "What about Scarlett?" he added, voicing his thoughts.
"It's your bedroom, and I need her with me. Now go, go, go!"
The Doctor got up quickly, and left, leaving Scarlett to wonder if he wanted her to follow him or not. Jeff took the laptop back and said, "Okay guys. Let's do this."
The bedroom door then re-opened suddenly and the Doctor appeared. "Oh. And. Delete your internet history." He waggled a finger at Jeff, leaned down to grab Scarlett's hand again, and dragged her outside again towards a… oh no. Is that a fire engine?
Scarlett's phone rang for the second time that day and the Doctor answered it quickly, knowing it must be Amy. Whatever she said was met with a simple "Look in the mirror."
"Ah, ah, ah!" Scarlett said, taking the phone from him and glaring at him as he looked at her in confusion. "No phones while driving! Don't they teach you that wherever you're from?" She then turned the phone call to speaker so that they could both hear what was happening.
"Are you on your way? You're gonna need a car," Amy spoke again.
"Don't worry!" Scarlett said, "He's commandeered a vehicle."
The Doctor started speeding then, and Scarlett feared he was going to crash the bloody fire engine and kill them both. She hung up the phone as he switched on the siren, causing her to roll her eyes in amusement.
It only took Amy a few more minutes before she called them again.
"Are you in?" Scarlett asked.
"Yep. But so's Prisoner Zero."
"You need to get out of there," said the Doctor.
She didn't reply and Scarlett frowned. There was a rustling sound from Amy's end of the phone, and Scarlett concluded that they must be running. "Amy! Talk to us!" she exclaimed.
"We're in the coma ward, but it's here, it's getting in."
"Which window are you?" asked the Doctor.
"Uh, first floor on the left, fourth from the end."
The Doctor nodded before telling Scarlett to hang up and send them a text instead. She nodded, following his instructions and sending one simple word to her best friends: DUCK!
And that was when the fire engine's ladder crashed through the window to the coma ward and the Doctor and Scarlett climbed up it before leaping into the room, Rory having the chivalry to help his honorary-sister land safely.
"Right! Hello! Are we late? No!" The Doctor looked at the clock, "Three minutes to go. There's still time."
"Time for what, Time Lord?" asked a woman, holding the hands of two children. Scarlett assumed it was Prisoner Zero in a different form.
"You came to this world by opening a crack in space and time. Do it again. Just leave," said the Doctor simply.
"I did not open the crack."
"Somebody did."
"The cracks in the skin of the universe – don't you know where they came from? You don't, do you? The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know. Doesn't know, doesn't know!" said Prisoner Zero in a sing-song voice before returning back to normal. "The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."
"Look at that," The Doctor raised his hand and pointed to a clock on the wall behind Prisoner Zero, which had reset to 0:00. A small smile spread across Scarlett's lips. She knew he could do it. "Yeah, I know, just a clock, whatever, but do you know what's happening right now? In one little bedroom, my team are working; Jeff and the world. And, do you know what they're doing? They're spreading the word. All over the world; quantum fast. The word is out… And do you know what the word is?"
"Zero," Scarlett said from behind the Doctor with her smile still in place. He turned to look at her with a grin – he was fast becoming quite proud of the people he had met in Leadworth – before turning back to the matter at hand.
"Zero," he repeated. "Now, me, if I was up in the sky in a battleship, monitoring all Earth communications, I'd probably take that as a hint. And if I had a whole battle fleet surrounding the planet, I'd be able to track a simple old computer virus to its source in... what, under a minute? The source, by the way... is right here."
He pulled out Rory's phone just as a white light flashed through the window. "Oh, and I think they just found us!"
"The Atraxi are limited. While I'm in this form, they'll still be unable to detect me. They've tracked a phone. Not me," smirked Prisoner Zero.
"Yeah! But this is the good bit, I mean, this is my favourite bit. Do you know what this phone is full of? Pictures of you. Every form you've learned to take, right here. Oh, and, being uploaded, about... now. And the final score is, no TARDIS, no screwdriver, two minutes to spare... Who da man?!" he grinned with his arms outstretched.
Scarlett let out a low groan, Amy gave him a sympathetic smile, and even Prisoner Zero looked unimpressed. Rory had an expression that said 'hey, I think I'll use that sometime'.
The Doctor sighed, "Oh. Well. I'm just, never saying that again. Fine."
"Then I shall take a new form."
The creature then started to glow orange, and they all stared closely, until suddenly Amy collapsed behind them.
"Amy!" Scarlett yelled.
"Stay awake, Amy!" added the Doctor.
"Doctor!" yelled Rory, pointing at Prisoner Zero who had transformed into… the Doctor.
"Well that's rubbish; who's that supposed to be?" asked the Doctor.
"It's you," Scarlett said.
"Me? Is that what I look like?"
"You don't know?" Rory frowned. Just how crazy was this guy?
"Busy day. Why me, though? You're linked with her! Why are you copying me?"
"I'm not," said Prisoner Zero, and suddenly another figure appeared; young little Amelia Pond, holding the Doctor's hand.
"Poor Amy Pond. Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the magic Doctor she knows will return to save her. What a disappointment you've been," snarled Prisoner Zero.
"No, she's dreaming about me because she can hear me," replied the Doctor before joining Scarlett on the ground next to Amy. "Amy. Don't just hear me, listen. Remember the room; the room in your house you couldn't see. Remember you went inside, I tried to stop you but you did. You went in the room. You went inside. Amy... dream about what you saw."
"No!" Prisoner Zero started to glow orange again and the Doctor stood up, walking to face it, as it turned into the creature Amy had seen.
"Well done, Prisoner Zero. A perfect impersonation of yourself."
"Prisoner Zero is located. Prisoner Zero is restrained."
"Silence, Doctor. Silence will fall," growled the creature before the Atraxi ship took it away. But even though it was gone, the Doctor still didn't seem satisfied, and pulled out Rory's phone again.
Amy woke up then and Rory moved closer to her immediately. "Amy? Are you okay? Are you with us?"
"What happened?" she questioned.
"He did it; the Doctor did it," smiled Rory.
"No, I didn't."
"What are you doing?" Scarlett asked him.
"Tracking the signal back. Sorry, in advance," he said to Rory.
"For what?"
"The bill."
Scarlett smirked and Rory shot her a glare as the Doctor started speaking into the phone. "Oi! I didn't say you could go! Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation; this is a fully established level five planet. And you were gonna burn it? What? Did you think no one was watching? You lot. Back here, now."
He threw the phone back to Rory after hanging up and wandered off, saying "Okay, now I've done it."
Scarlett turned to her friends and shrugged before taking off after the raggedy man.
"Where are you going?" Amy asked as she caught up with them.
"The roof! No, hang on." Then he ducked into a cloakroom, and they had no choice but to follow.
The Doctor walked around the cloakroom, picking up the pieces of clothing and holding onto some, flinging the rest over his shoulder. Rory followed, picking up the clothes the Doctor was dropping.
"Is now really the time for you to decide what to wear?" Scarlett asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm saving the world, I need a decent shirt! To hell with the raggedy – time to put on a show!"
Rory sighed. "You've just summoned aliens back to Earth! Actual aliens! Deadly aliens! Aliens... of death, and now you're... taking your clothes off." He was right; the Doctor had started to rip off his own clothes and try on some new articles of clothing. "Amy, he's taking his clothes off."
"Turn your back if it embarrasses you," shrugged the Doctor. He didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing.
The Doctor's shirt came off and Amy and Scarlett watched closely with smirks on their faces.
"Amy, are you not gonna turn your back?" asked Rory.
Amy folded her arms across her chest before shaking her head. "Nope."
"Scarlett?" he asked, hopefully. If his girlfriend wasn't going to look away, then maybe she would.
"Sorry, Rory, but when an attractive man starts taking his clothes off," Scarlett leaned closer to whisper the next part to him. "You don't look away."
"Come on then! The Doctor will see you now!" said the Doctor as they stepped onto the roof. He was now fully clothed, although he was still deciding between multiple types of ties.
The large eye from earlier that day appeared in the sky again and looked down at him.
"You are not of this world," said the eye.
"No, but I've put a lot of work into it." He fiddled about with the new ties, trying to decide which one worked best. "Oh, uhm, I don't know." He held one up to the threesome behind him, "What do you think?" Scarlett gave a shake of her head and he shrugged, throwing the tie and watching it land on Rory's shoulder.
"Is this world important?" the eye asked.
"Important?! What does that mean, important? Six billion people live here, is that important? Here's a better question: is this world a threat to the Atraxi?" He started throwing away other ties, and they always managed to hit either Amy or Rory. "Come on, you're monitoring the whole planet. Is this world a threat?"
A blue light streamed out of the eye, creating a hologram of a globe.
"No," it decided finally.
"Are the people of this world guilty of any crime by the laws of the Atraxi?"
"No."
"Okay! One more, just one; is this world protected?"
The globe changed to images of things Scarlett couldn't quite comprehend. There were some kind of metal men, some sort of machine with a plunger, and various other monsters. While the images changed, the Doctor continued speaking; "'Cause you're not the first lot to have come here. Oh, there have been so many. And what you've got to ask is... what happened to them?"
The images changed for the final time, showing lots of different faces of different men. Scarlett counted ten of them before the Doctor stepped through the hologram and it shut off.
"Hello. I'm the Doctor," he said, "Basically… run."
The Atraxi left immediately, and before anybody could even say how amazing he was and how thankful they were for him, y'know, saving their lives and all, he ran off, leaving them on their own.
Scarlett's eyes flickered open when she heard a strange noise from outside of Amy's house. Apparently Amy had heard it, too, because she jumped up and pulled her friend up off the ground with her.
"I know that noise," she said as she dragged them outside.
Amy was her nightie, and Scarlett was in sweatpants and a shirt so it wasn't exactly ideal for them to run outside in the middle of the night. They could catch their deaths, after all. But when they did run outside, Scarlett realised why they were there. Because the blue box was there again, with the Doctor leaning against it as if it were just an everyday occurrence, which for him, it probably was.
"It's you…" Scarlett said, "You came back."
"Course I came back. I always come back. Something wrong with that?" he replied.
"And you kept the clothes?" asked Amy as they reached the blue box.
"Well, I just saved the world; the whole planet, for about the millionth time, no charge, yeah. Shoot me. I kept the clothes."
"Including the bow-tie," Amy said incredulously.
"Yeah. It's cool. Bow-ties are cool," he said defensively.
Scarlett shrugged. Bow-ties were pretty cool.
"Are you from another planet?" she asked him.
"Yeah," he said nonchalantly. "So, what do you think?"
"About what?" asked Amy.
"Other planets, wanna check some out?"
"What does that mean?" Scarlett inquired.
"It means, well, it means... come with me."
Scarlett's heart leaped. She could do it. She could leave her boring life behind and travel with him. She didn't have much for her there; her parents, yes. An older brother, too, but they all had their own lives while she was stuck with a boring job in a café with not even a dog to keep her company.
"Where?"
"Wherever you like."
Amy looked up at his blue box and said, "All that stuff that happened, the hospital, the spaceships, Prisoner Zero –"
"Oh, don't worry, that's just the beginning, there's loads more," the Doctor grinned.
"Yeah, but those things, those... amazing things, all that stuff," she continued before glancing at Scarlett. She nodded slightly before stepping closer to the man so that her face was an inch away from the Doctor's.
"That was two years ago!" she snapped.
"Oh… Oops."
"Yeah!" she said.
"So that's…"
"Fourteen years!" added Amy.
"Fourteen years," he nodded.
"When I was a kid, you said there was a swimming pool and a library, and that the swimming pool was in the library."
Scarlett nodded along. She had heard this story many times before to know all the ins and outs.
"Yeah. Not sure where it's got to now, it'll turn up! So! Coming?" asked the Doctor again.
"No," said Amy, shaking her head.
Oh please don't mess this up for the both of us, Scarlett thought.
"You wanted to come fourteen years ago."
"I grew up."
"Don't worry. I'll soon fix that."
With a snap of his fingers the door to the blue box opened and an orange glow spilled out. Amy looked at Scarlett, who just shrugged with a small laugh before stepping inside. The pair followed her and the Doctor looked very smug as Amy and Scarlett stared around, wide-eyed.
"Well? Anything you wanna say? Any passing remarks? I've heard them all."
"Why blue?" Scarlett asked.
"What?" he replied, clearly confused. These girls were in a machine that could travel through time and space, and they're focusing on the colour?
"Why don't you mix it up a bit?"
"Yeah, you could paint it orange on Halloween," said Amy.
"And red on Christmas," Scarlett agreed.
"Right, well… I've never heard that one before."
Good, Scarlett smirked, that was my intention.
"We're in our pyjamas," said Amy suddenly.
"Oh, don't worry! Plenty of clothes in the wardrobe and, possibly, a swimming pool. So! All of time, and space; everything that ever happened, or ever will… Where do you wanna start?"
"You are so sure that we're coming," Amy rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, I am."
"Why?"
"Cause you're the Scottish girl, in the English village, and I know how that feels. All these years living here, most of your life and you've still got that accent. And you," he gestured towards Scarlett, "A young girl in an old village that doesn't really have much to offer her. You're bored and you want some excitement in your life and I can provide that for you. So yes, you're both coming."
"Can you get me back for tomorrow morning?" asked Amy as she leaned against the rails.
"It's a time machine. I can get you back for five minutes ago. Why? What's tomorrow?" he asked.
"It's her wed –" Scarlett started before Amy cut her off.
"Nothing. Nothing! Just, you know. Stuff."
"Alright then. Back in time for 'stuff'," the Doctor agreed. He'd find out why tomorrow was so important later.
Something then rose up from the console of the machine – which Scarlett found out was called the TARDIS – and he took it gleefully. "Oh, a new screwdriver! Lovely! Thanks dear." He had whispered the last part but Scarlett heard it, and smiled slightly at his affection towards the box.
"Why us?" Amy asked.
The Doctor couldn't help but think that the girl was full of too many questions at a time like this. "Been knocking around on my own for a while, my choice, but I've started talking to myself, all the time, it's giving me earache."
"You're lonely," Scarlett said, "That's it; just that."
"Just that. Promise," he nodded.
"Okay," agreed Amy and Scarlett's smile grew wider.
"So you're both okay then? 'Cause this place. Sometimes it can make people feel a bit... you know."
"I'm fine. Scarlett's fine. It's just… everything you said. It's all true. We'd started to think that maybe you were just like a… madman with a box."
"Amy Pond, Scarlett Watkins, there's something you better understand about me, 'cause it's important, and one day, your lives may depend on it," they both leaned closer as he continued, "I am definitely a madman with a box."
He grinned broadly which caused Scarlett to laugh, setting the others off, too.
"Ha yes!" he smiled while flicking switches on the TARDIS console. "Goodbye, Leadworth! Hello... everything!"
He pulled down a lever, and they all clung to the console as the TARDIS began to dematerialise, their laughter continuing. Eventually the TARDIS disappeared, completely, from Amy Pond's garden.
A/N: So! I want to thank you for getting this far, I know this chapter was pretty long. If there are any episodes you would really like me to include in this then please let me know and I'll do my best. I'm planning on skipping The Beast Below and going straight on to Victory of the Daleks if that's alright with everyone? Anyway, thank you again, and I'll see you soon! x