A/N:- YAY! I finally have got round to writing this! This chapter is mainly exploring the Doctor's inquisitiveness and, err, Time Lord smartitude. (I'm making up new words as I go along. Well, technically I borrowed this word from my friend but… What you looking at?! =P QUACK!)
Hmm, I wasn't so sure what the Doctor's reaction to a morgue full of dead bodies would be, so I just made up what I thought he'd react to it and followed up some information on Wikipedia about some of the Doctor's previous encounters with dead bodies and morgues and stuff. Ooh and for the record, it's kinda weird to blend a lot of Jim Dale style narrating/writing into the Doctor Who parts, but I'll try to keep to it as much as poss AND I'll be using lots of alliteration to make up for it.
Thanks for all your awesome reviews so far – they've kept me going! Ooh and many thanks to LuckyBlackCat whose supplied me with many fabby quackity-quack ideas and support with this fanfic. HEHE – see if you* can spot the line I 'borrowed' from ya.
Disclaimer: *along to the tune of the fabtastic Rubber Ducky Rave* I don't own 'em, I don't own 'em, I DON'T. Doctor Who-oo and Pushing Daisies aren't mine!
Enjoy!
=D =D =D =D =D
*Oh you know who you are!
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Chapter Seven - Interruptive Intrusions and Unexpected Unions
The facts were these: the man who called himself 'the Doctor' was attracted to trouble - attracted to trouble like bees were attracted to trouble, like Emerson was attracted to money, like Olive was attracted to Ned and like the Pie Maker was attracted to the girl named Chuck. And like honey is sticky and sweet, tasty in small doses but nauseating and overpowering in too many, so was trouble to the Time Lord. It followed and clung to him, like the sticky substance honey was, and at this very moment, the man called the Doctor was nine-hundred and three years, twenty-four weeks and twelve hours old, he smelt trouble. But of a different kind – a sweeter kind.
"Did that dead body just move?" Donna gasped, stumbling back and scarcely avoiding colliding into one confused and dazed pink-and-yellow human.
"Oh, hell no," Emerson muttered aloud, staring at the dizzying blurs of colour in front of him that consisted of brown, red and yellow.
"Th-this isn't what it looks like," the Pie Maker stammered, quickly concealing his once-suspended hand behind his back.
"Oh, but I think this is exactly what it looks like," the Time Lord replied, eyebrows raised at a particular angle. "And the reason that I know that is because when one's eyes are twitching, it tells me that somebody's lying."
"But sometimes it's better to hide the truth and lie than tell it, because the truth can hurt the people around you and being hurt isn't a very nice feeling," Chuck chimed in respectably, in an attempt to ease the awkward conversation. "So it's best the truth is hidden and locked away in a closet, where it can't do any harm or hurt the people you love."
"She's good," Rose added playfully.
"Very clever. Chuck wasn't it?" the Doctor didn't wait for an answer and blathered onwards. "But, correct me if I'm wrong Chuck, lies are like ghosts – they come back to haunt and taunt you for the rest of your life – like an echo. 'Cos if the truth is locked away in a closet for all its life, then no resolution can be found and where can true peace ever be found, by feigning lies and making up excuses?"
Charlotte Charles, daughter of one Charles Charles and one 'Aunt' Lily, had experienced more than enough to know never to back down from a fight, whether it be verbal or physical. The girl named Chuck, trained at the age of nine years by one Lily Charles to whip up clever comebacks at first sign of debate, opened her mouth to speak…
"Stay out of this Dead Girl," muttered the Private Investigator irritably, before smiling sweetly at their intruders and craning his head around to face the Pie Maker in an 'I told you so,' manner. "What did I tell you about you an' your twitchy- eye, leaving the lying up to me."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Seventeen minutes, twenty-two seconds and twenty metres to the left earlier, one energetic Time Lord, one Rose Tyler and one Donna Noble clambered slowly up the large stone steps to the City Morgue.
"Should we be, I dunno, be talking to the victim's family, looking for victims and you know, that sort of stuff," Rose suggested, shrugging. "As opposed to skulking around a morgue like them pathologists from Silent Witness."
"Yeah!" Donna agreed, "I always thought that murder investigations meant looking for clues, intimidating interrogations and sniffing out suspects – at least, since we met the Agatha Christie, of course."
The Doctor simply raised his eyebrows, "I think some certain women have been watching too much ITV on the scanner," the Doctor winced and swiftly changed the subject, "Weeeell, to be honest, it depends how you look at it."
"Look at what?" Donna and Rose chimed simultaneously.
"That!" the Doctor stated concisely, removed his hands from his coat pocket's and pointed visibly at the morgue's large windows, which were all covered head to foot in posters.
The words HAVE YOU SEEN ME? blared across each and every scrap of paper that covered the window. All were of different colours and sizes, shapes and fonts, from handwritten to computer printed, from large fancy lettering to small unreadable prints. Pictures upon pictures of 'missing' shoes, boots, sandals, heels and trainers splattered cross each large and small slip of paper, all ranging widely from colour to shading to brand.
"That's one hell lot o' missing shoes," exclaimed Rose, voice full of amusement.
"Gosh, there must be hundreds!" gasped Donna, "Where've they all gone?"
"That's just the bane of the problem – nobody knows," the Doctor said and whipped out the almost-forgotten newspaper article from out of his pocket, flashing it in front of his companions' faces. "Along with our Paris's lost sneakers, according to this article, twenty-thousand pairs of shoes have gone missing – all across North and South America."
"You're joking?!" Rose muttered disbelievingly.
"Twenty-thousand pairs of shoes…" Donna repeated, "Wow."
"Seriously, but there's been no connection whatsoever – all different types of shoes have been stolen, in people's sleep, in the street, even in the bathroom. Just stolen in the blink of an eye – literally," the Doctor explained, a little grimly. "Well, twenty-thousand, excluding the countless planets in the sky that've been hit by the infamous trainer thief – unknown to Planet Earth, ' course," the corner of his mouth turned downwards slightly and he planted a serious expression on his face, "But, no deaths recorded or found at all. Paris's unfortunate mishap could've just been a grain of rice, for our sneaky trainer thief…"
"No," Rose whispered, catching on quickly.
"Hang on, you're not saying that the killer of Paris is an…" Donna contributed, unable to finish her sentence.
Rose inclined her head to the side and pondered something aloud, "Wait a sec, if you've known this all along, why didn't you…? This has been part of your plan all along, 'asn't it?"
"Oh, yes!" grinned the man called the Doctor, as he quickly walked off and into the morgue.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
"John Smith," the Doctor stated quickly and produced his psychic paper, flashing it wildly at the Coroner. "I'm a doctor from the Papen County Sanatorium – they, err, sent me and my colleagues here to examine and inspect Paris du Elisabeth's body. See? It says it right here!" He gestured Donna and Rose, letting the Coroner drink in what the psychic paper said. "Family doctor."
"You British?"
"Just migrated from London just last year!"
"You British lie a lot?"
"Umm…"
"'Cos you 'ID' seems to think so – it's a telling me you're a liar."
"What, me? No, no, no, of course not! Never lied in my life, me?!" the Doctor exclaimed. The Coroner must've been expecting to find him a liar. He quickly snapped the psychic paper shut and jammed it straight back into his pocket. "Oh, sorry about that, must've slipped in the wrong identification card!"
"Mmm-hmmm," the Coroner narrowed his eyes, "Whoever you folk are, you're gonna have to wait your turn. Cod's in there – doing his usual shifty do-da ."
"Sorry, did you just say Cod? As in Emerson Cod?" the Doctor piped up, truly intrigued.
"Perhaps,"
"No need to worry then! I've known good old Emerson for years, best of friends we are. Well, on my part of the bargain anyway..."
"Mmm-hmmm."
"He won't mind if we just pop in to visit, I'm sure! Rose, Donna, you coming?"
Before the Coroner could protest, 'John Smith' and his 'colleagues' had bounced off to the door on his right. As soon as the man in the trench coat peeled the door open, a whole array of bright red buckets clattered out and whacked him painfully on the head.
"You ain't gonna find no dead bodies in the storage cupboard," the Coroner repeated the words dully and muttered to himself, scribbling away on a piece of paper. "The shifty folk always get it wrong."
After two minutes and thirty-two embarrassing seconds of apologising, head bumping and clearing up, the trio bounded sheepishly yet determinedly over to the other door. The Doctor was in lead – left with the trademark of a badly swollen head – as he yanked the door knob open, only to find an small, empty, white room in a cupboard sized amount of space to breathe. He spotted a door just opposite the first one and headed to open it, but stopped in fascination to examine the unique quality of the wooden doorframe
"It's a little cramp in 'ere you know," Donna reminded sweetly.
The Time Lord placed his hand on the doorknob and pulled the door open gently, signalling his fellow companions to be silent, as they crept into the back of the room, discreet, silent and unnoticed.
At that very moment, the redhead, the blonde and the Time Lord all gaped at the sight before them, shocked, stunned yet soundless, as they witnessed the undeniably fascinating, if not chilling, practice of a Pie Maker making Paris Du Elisabeth alive-again.
The Doctor's eyes were fixated in enthralment as Ned's finger came into contact with the clearly lifeless body of Paris du Elisabeth, which rippled with sparkling gold light, which what the man called the Doctor classified as residual revitalised body heat… Which was an energy that was physically impossible to have been released from an ordinary human being, the fact that it was in the early undeveloped 21st century made it ever more impossible. The fact that Ned was, judged accurately by the Doctor's alien Time Lord senses, human stirred the situation up even more. But one other wild conclusion seemed to stir the Time Lord's brain even more.
The deceased Paris du Elisabeth's body rippled, as pale, lifeless flesh turned pink, fleshy and rosy – so full of life, that it seemed impossible that he had seemed to limp mere seconds before.
The moments ticked by, like a time bomb waiting to be set off, as the Private Investigator, the girl named Chuck, and the Pie Maker casually questioned and chatted the amazingly reawakened body of the adolescent. One minute after the miraculous scenario started, the Pie Maker's finger merely tapped the bare flesh of the young boy, before he fell back to the autopsy table with a deafening THUD. The flash of pale electric blue light, ceasing his life, as his flesh turned pale and lifeless, once more.
Ned babbled something barely audible to Rose, Donna or the Doctor's ear before three equally stunned faces turned to face the Time Travellers.
Exactly three words came out of Donna Noble's mouth and the words were these:
"OH MY WORD."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
"Hello, Doctor, let me introduce myself - wait I already have," Emerson gibbered aimlessly, in an attempt to shoo the nosey 'tourists' away and pretend nothing had just happened. "now would you and your friends care to step outside, I believe it is called al fresco."
"Nah, I'll stay right here thanks," the Doctor said, beaming and summarily settling himself upon a metal disinfectant-pungent table top. "But thanks for the kind offer! SO, if you don't mind me asking, what just happened to young Paris there?"
"Big Hair'sworse than Little Big Mouth." Emerson muttered incoherently.
"Nothing at all – everything's perfectly normal and nothing is out of the ordinary," Ned elucidated, his pitch a little higher than usual. "How long, exactly, have you been standing there?"
"Long enough. So, if you don't mind me asking, what just happened to young Paris there?" the Doctor repeated, as he plucked his sonic screwdriver coolly out of his pocket and pushed down on a button. It triggered the classic piano piece Hands Against The Wall to suddenly blast loudly out of unseen speakers – much to the Coroner's distaste and irritation.
"Listen Doctor, I'm warning you and your pretty girly friends now, the truth ain't like puppies, a bunch of them running around, you pick your favorite. One truth and it has come a knocking. On your door. You open it or run away as fast as you can, your choice. I personally suggest you choose the second - and bring your shotgun with you."
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Meanwhile, at thirty-five years and thirty-four weeks years of age, Olive's vision swam from the empty Pie Hole back to the overcrowded Muse Museum where the great shoe exhibition was taking place. The little blonde waitress had just finished her visit to Couer d'Couers, where she had delivered pie and aimlessly babbled to, former synchronised swimming sister duo, underwater artists, Lily and Vivian Charles.
On her return to the Pie Hole, she found neither hide nor hair of the Pie Maker, the P.I. or the girl named Chuck at the famous eatery, so had tediously opened the Pie Hole but found neither hide nor hair of a customer in sight. As all attention was being called at Muse Museum, where an important exhibition of legendary shoes and sneakers was being held.
Hot and flustered, the lonely Snook chose to close the Pie Hole for the afternoon, due to its lack of customers. With help from a tub of mint and chocolate chip ice-cream, Olive Snook enticed, Golden Retriever, Digby into a long afternoon walk to pass the time.
But along the way, one tall, wealthy lady in one sparkly pink dress wearing darkly tinted shades caught the waitress's attention.
"Excuse me?" Olive called out succinctly, tugging on Digby's leash to pull him away from one truckful of ice-creams and she, herself, heading over to one distinctive figure. "Aren't you Lady du Elisabeth?"
Unbeknownst to the Pie Maker, the P.I. and the girl named Chuck, waitress and faithful Itty Bitty, Olive Snook was up to a little investigation of her own and about to make her own appearance in exactly four minutes, eighteen seconds.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&
"You can bring the dead back to life?" the Doctor exclaimed after Ned had completely his session of sprawling, tone a notch higher than usual and positively intrigued - reaching around to scratch a spot behind his ear. "Blimey! That's very advanced for a human. In this century especially – you lot haven't even grasped the pure basics of string theory yet. Ned, I'm impressed. Stiiiill, you humans never fail to surprise me!"
"Humans?" Chuck chipped in, blatantly confused.
The tourist called 'the Doctor' seemed to be drinking all of this in, like he was drinking milk and he didn't even seem in the slightest bit bothered. In fact, he looked very amused and chatted about everyone else as if they were a different species to him.
Though that would be clearly impossible. But then what about that blue box of his? Was that alien too?
"Ignore 'im," Rose replied Chuck warmly, still slightly frazzled by the situation. Bringing back the dead… She didn't understand why, but it sent a chill down her spine. "Long story."
"Flying fat, potato heads, giant wasps, carnivorous shadows, golden pepper pots on wheels, but waking the dead… How?" Donna piped up.
"First touch: life. Second touch: dead, again, forever," Ned explained pithily, shooting a tender loving glance at his childhood sweetheart.
As the couple exchanged meaningful gazes and the P.I. rolled his eyes at his fellow investigator's sickly sweetness, the man called the Doctor's air of suspicion of the non-physical couple grew ever more defiant.
"But why would you do that – let somebody die again?" Rose asked hotly, "Paris, that boy we saw come back to life, he probably 'ad a whole life in front of him and some cruel person spontaneously decided to take it all away. You could've given him another chance to live! But you just let 'im die… Again. Forever."
"It's like saying you're going to ignore the chocolate and eat the chilli, even though you've got a choice. It's like… murder." Donna threw in harshly, flashing a sensitive glance at Paris's pale lifeless figure.
"Hey, don't you go accusing me o'--" Emerson began.
"And I think you're doing this for the money – not for the life," intercepted the Doctor coldly, hands in pockets, strolling up to the Pie Maker. "Am I right?" the Doctor stared Ned in the eye and muttered, "Or is there something else?"
The Pie Maker shifted nervously from foot to foot before he blinked, stepped away from the Doctor and replied hastily, "If a dead thing is alive again for more than a minute – something else has to die in its place."
Emerson nodded rather smugly and shot a sneaky, but clearly reproving look at Chuck, who blushed and ducked her head in return. The P.I. cleared his throat punctually and started rocking back and forth on the balls of his heels, whistling, as sudden fascination of the shocking-white ceiling above overtook him. The Time Travellers by the names of Rose and Donna shared a nonplussed glance and shrugged at each other.
"I ain't saying nothing!" Emerson warned musingly.
"…Everything we do is a choice. Oatmeal or cereal. Highway or side streets. Kiss her or keep her. We make choices and we live with the consequences. If someone gets hurt along the way we ask for forgiveness. It's the best anyone can do," Ned continued, "I had a choice. I could hide in a corner and pretend I was a normal, avoiding as much dead things as possible, or I could hide in a corner and wait for a dead guy to come falling from the sky, with Emerson Cod witnessing," the Pie Maker paused. "I chose the latter."
"Good for you, Ned!" the Doctor chirped happily, as he energetically clapped the caught-in-unawares Pie Maker on the back.
But his inquisitive, serious tone possessed the Time Lord once more, as the defiant second half of his personality took over, as he passed a look between Ned and the girl named Chuck.
"Can I just say," Rose chipped in suddenly and nodded briefly at the girl named Chuck, "you an' Ned. You don't seem to touch much, do you? I mean, like this morning..."
"Kissing through cling— plastic wrap?" Donna completed, correcting herself quickly.
"Tender loving glances?"
"Gooey love talk?" supplemented the Private Investigator.
"Acting like you want to touch either other, but don't?"
"Holding my hand, instead of your own?" Emerson supplied again, but received prompted glares from the Pie Maker and the girl named Chuck. Donna and Rose stared at each other in bewilderment.
"Well, now, that's sorted - all that's left for me to do is… Chuck!" the Doctor exclaimed and danced over to her, his eyes bulging with enthusiasm.
"That's me!" she exclaimed, as cheerfully as possible, although her inner self was not so sure…
"Charlotte Charles, yes?"
"I'm 99.9 percent sure that I didn't tell you my last name was--"
"Lawrence Schwartz?"
"How d'you know 'bout him?" Emerson cut-in suspiciously, voice thick with both surprise and suspicion.
"Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles?"
"Who you working for?"
"I'd rather not be called by--"
"The living-dead?"
"You can't be living and dead at the same time. 'Alive again' sounds a lot nicer, don't you th--"
"AHA! How stupid am I? No, no, don't answer that," rambled the Doctor, "I should've realised in the beginning, it was that simple!" the enthusiastic Time Lord continued, hands wildly gesturing at the bemused Charlotte "Chuck" Charles. "Your name – it was so familiar, that I began to suspect… It was like I knew you from somewhere, but where? You weren't alien, I knew that much, the whole genetic scent just gave it away. You humans – always drawing attention to yourselves, it's a wonder how you go by a day without yelling your existence out to the Universe. That was the question buzzing around my head like a million bees, questioning your very existence from the moment I met you. But now… Oh ho-ho, I remember… THIS!"
A piece of paper was plucked hastily out of the Doctor pocket, as the Time Lord danced about manically. The man called the Doctor laughed and unfolded the page of creased newspaper, tapping a certain small article.
All six room-occupiers, bemused and perplexed, closed in on the Doctor and huddled around the small, yet evidently significant slip of paper. At that very moment, when six pairs of eyes attacked the neatly-printed writing, two gasps, two squeaks, one choked laugh and one 'Hell, no," filled the air. But the newspaper was ripped away from their eyes, as fast as it was taken out, as the Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully and waved the paper up in the air.
Neighbouring the blaring article of Paris du Elisabeth's tragic end, sat a subtle tiny article, labelled "Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles's Grave Raid". In one corner, was the faded, crumpled photograph of the girl named Chuck , cheeks rosy and canary yellow sunhat drooped sloppily over her head, as the younger Charlotte Charles posed for the camera. Behind her the large, gleaming white figurine of the Cruise Voyage Cruise Ship stood tall and proud, as she prepared to board the ship – monkeys hidden in her suitcase and Boutique Travel Travel Boutique's manager Deedee Duffield's (shadily) reassurance speech ringing her head. Little did the girl named Chuck know, she was only never to return… alive.
Underneath, the Doctor's eyes danced across the page, at the miniature lettering of the article in question – his mind absorbing every scrap of information, with gleaming eyes, alight with energy and ruse.
Without a second's thought, the Doctor's grin faltered slightly as he tucked the article straight back into his pocket and leapt backwards – a mouthful of information to verbally splatter out in great chunks of babble and fascination.
"It's not what it--"
"Is it just me or did that newspaper article just say that Chuck's d--"
"I'm still not get--"
"You might be British, but you certainly ain't no tour--"
"Everybody just calm dow--"
"You two don't touch – you can't touch," the Doctor elucidated over the hubbub, voice gravelly and hands flailing, as he continued trekking backwards and stared intently at the girl named Chuck and the Pie Maker.
"…The slightest ounce of physical contact is deadly – literally… Oh, Ned, you made a mistake 'cos you told me yourself. First touch: life. I knew there was a different something in your genetic scent, something different, something not-normal, the same something that's kept me away from a certain Captain, actually,"
His eyes grew pensive and he found himself not directing his words at anybody in particular, "The reason why our friend the Pie Maker and good old Chuck can't touch is because--"
"You might wanna….!?"
CRASH! The Doctor's eyes widened tremendously, as the heels of his red Converses met the cold metal of a gurney's wheel, causing his to topple backwards and crash onto the floor – banging his head ludicrously against a pile of metal… buckets.
"Because of their deadly skin allergy, silly!" trilled the optimistic voice that belonged to none other than one…
"OLIVE?!"
"Look what the cat's dragged in," grumbled Emerson bluntly. One merry, lively Golden Retriever bounded flamboyantly into the room and the P.I. changed his mind, "Make that dog."
"WOOF!"
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
A/N:- MWAHAHAHAHA! More next time peoples. But remember, regarding this chapter in particular, things aren't always as they first seem… Eep, yes I know, if you spotted the little Fires of Pompeii type thing I copied and put into this, feel free to chuck some *shifty eyes* Kinder Buenos at me… Yes, go on, chuck more at me. AND MORE! Mwahahaha. Sozzy guys, I couldn't remember/didn't know the name of the Cruise Ship that Chuck was murdered on.
Please read and review! It won't take that long, I promise and the bribes have upped, a sack full of choccies for reviewers. HEHE.
KK, off to start my R.E. essay, before I forget and get stuck in a lunch time detention on Monday…
Disclaimer #2: I DO NOT OWN HANDS ON THE WALL. No prizes to guessing where that tune/song/piano piece comes from. YOU DON'T KNOW?!? *stalks off and runs round the TARDIS screaming, power-puff girls in hands* Ahem…
