Through Thick and Thin
The Eleventh Hour
Thanks to elijayde and FanFicWriter1125
The TARDIS careened wildly through the skies over London. Shareen staggered about the wrecked console room, trying to keep her balance as the box rocked and rolled all over the place, while the Doctor rushed about with a fire extinguisher, tackling the fires started by his explosive regeneration. Suddenly, the TARDIS gave a tremendous lurch, sending Shareen crashing to the floor, while the Doctor was sent flying out through the doors, which had been shaken open by the rough flight. He managed to grab hold of the floor to save himself and was left hanging in the air high above London, his sonic screwdriver in-between his teeth. He was just starting to pull himself back in when he heard a bell chiming and turned to see that they were on a collision course with the Westminster clock tower. Thinking quickly, he aimed his sonic screwdriver at the console and the TARDIS regained height, narrowly missing the top of the tower. Safely out of danger, the Doctor then pulled himself back inside and shut the door behind him. "Thanks for helping." he said flatly to Shareen, sitting down against the doors.
"I'm not the one who blew up the TARDIS." Shareen retorted as she staggered to her feet. "Blimey, was it like this the last time you regenerated?! It's a miracle ya didn't kill Rose!"
"It wasn't as bad as this last time." the Doctor muttered, but before they could discuss it further, the TARDIS lurched again and span out of control, jumping time tracks in the process.
~8~
In the bedroom of a modest house in a quiet Gloucestershire village in the spring of 1996, a little ginger-haired girl sat at the bottom of her bed praying. "Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you, but honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall." She cracked an eye open to look at the wall on her left. The wall had a glowing, W-shaped crack imbedded in it. The girl then returned to her prayers. "Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know it's not, because at night there's voices, so please, please, could ye send someone to fix it? Or a policeman. Or a..."
Suddenly, a strange wheezing and groaning noise came from outside, followed by a loud crash. The girl rushed to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look outside. The garden shed had been smashed to splinters and in it's place was a large blue phone box lying on it's side. The girl's eyes fell on a sign above the box's doors which proclaimed it to be police.
"Thank you, Santa." the girl smiled, then she threw on a red cardigan and wellies, grabbed a torch and went outside to investigate.
By the light of her torch, the girl approached the overturned blue box. The doors suddenly opened and a grabbling hook came flying out of the box, latching itself to a wheelbarrow. The girl watched as a pair of hands appeared at the edge of the box followed the head of a soaking wet man. "Can I have an apple?" he asked. "All I can think about, apples. Maybe I'm having a craving. That's new, never had cravings before."
"Oi! Stop yabberin' an' shift yourself!" an irate woman's voice called up from inside the box. "Honestly, I'm hangin' here an' you're yappin' on about bloody apples!"
"Temper, temper, Shareen." the man chided lightly and pulled himself up to straddle the edge of the box. With his full body on view, the girl could see that he was wearing a tattered blue dress shirt, a brown tie, brown pinstripe trousers that had clearly seen better days, and cream converse high tops. Both the shirt and trousers didn't quite fit him properly, like they were meant for someone taller and thinner.
With the man out of the way, another person climbed out of the box; a soaking-wet young woman dressed in some sort of black combat uniform. The woman climbed out of the box and sat down on the ground beside it. "God, that was absolute hell!" she grumbled.
"Are ye both alright?" the girl asked them both.
"Oh, yeah, yeah, fine, cosmic, yeah." the woman muttered, pulling her wet hair away from her face.
"We just had a fall." the man explained, putting both legs over the side and sitting on the edge of the box. "All the way down there, right to the library. Hell of a climb back up."
"You're both soaking wet." the girl pointed out.
"We were in the swimming pool." the man replied.
"You said you were in the library." the girl pointed out, wandering how a box that small could have a swimming pool and a library.
"And so was the bloody pool." the woman grunted.
"Are you a policeman?" the girl asked the man.
"Why? Did you call the police?" he asked back.
"Did ye come about the crack in my wall?" the girl tried.
"What cra...?" the man began, but suddenly gave out a yell of pain and fell to his knees on the ground.
"Are you all right, mister?" the girl asked him.
"No, I'm fine, it's ok." the man waved her off. "This is all perfectly norm..." He opened his mouth and a wisp of golden-orange energy wafted out into the air, much to the bemusement of the little girl.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I don't know yet. I'm still cooking." the man replied, looking at his hands, which were glowing too. "Does it scare you?"
"No, it just looks a bit weird." the girl replied.
"You got that right." the woman concurred. "I just hope there's no robot Santas out there to smell it."
"No, no, no. The crack in your wall." the man elaborated to the girl. "Does it scare you?"
"Yes." she replied.
The man promptly jumped to his feet. "Well then, no time to lose." he said hurriedly. "I'm the Doctor and that's Shareen. Do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions and don't wander off." He strode away with purpose only to smack headfirst into a tree and fall flat on his back.
Shareen rolled her eyes at the Doctor's pratfall while the girl went over to him. "You alright?" she asked him.
"Early days." the Doctor replied. "Steering's a bit off."
~8~
The girl led the Doctor and Shareen into the kitchen of her house. "If you're a doctor, why does your box say 'police'?" she asked the Doctor, offering him an apple. "And why're ye dressed as a soldier?" she asked Shareen.
"Long story." Shareen waved her off, filling the kettle up ready to make some tea.
The Doctor meanwhile took a a bite of the apple before promptly spitting it out again. That's disgusting." he grimaced. "What is that?"
"An apple." the girl replied.
"Apples are rubbish. I hate apples."
"You said you loved them." the girl reminded.
"No, no, I love bananas." the Doctor replied. "Bananas are good. Gimme a banana."
"We don't have any bananas." the girl told him.
"What?!" the Doctor stared, looking absolutely scandalised at that. "What house doesn't have bananas. Bananas are good! I'll have a yoghurt instead, then. Yoghurt's my favourite. Gimme yoghurt."
"Give me yoghurt, please." Shareen chided him as the girl ran to the fridge and produced a yoghurt.
The Doctor ripped the pot open and and gulped it down before promptly spitting it out in the sink. "I hate yoghurt." he said. "It's just stuff with bits in."
"Huh, a moment ago you said yoghurt was ya favourite." Shareen snorted, putting the kettle on.
"New mouth, new rules." the Doctor shrugged, wiping the remnants of the yoghurt off his mouth. "It's like eating after cleaning ya teeth, everything tastes wro-argh!" he groaned, having a momentary spasm.
"What is it? What's wrong with you?" the girl asked worriedly.
"Wrong with me?" the Doctor said, suddenly sounding grouchy. "It's not my fault. Why can't ya gimme decent food? You're Scottish, fry something." he ordered.
"Oi, leave her alone!" Shareen scolded him. "It's not her fault you can't make ya bloody mind up!"
~8~
The Doctor and Shareen dried themselves off with towels provided to them by the little girl, then Shareen poured herself and the Doctor cups of tea, while the girl fried some bacon rashers on the hob.
"Ah! Bacon!" the Doctor grinned as the plate of bacon was placed on the table in front of him. He took a fork-full and shoved it into his mouth. He chewed on it for a few seconds then spat it out in disgust. "That's bacon?" he grimaced. "Are you trying to poison me?"
"Ah well, waste not, want not." Shareen said, pulling the plate over to her and eating the rashers herself.
The girl turned the hob on again and cooked some baked beans while the Doctor looked on. "Ah, you see, beans." he said. When the beans were ready, he took a forkful of them and promptly spat it out in the sink. "Beans are evil. Bad, bad beans." he groaned.
~8~
Next, the girl tried a plate of bread and butter. "Bread and butter, now you're talking." the Doctor said. He took a bite, then grabbed the plate, went over to the back door and tossed the plate away. "And stay out!" he growled and returned to the kitchen.
Shareen was growing annoyed at the Doctor's antics. "Will you make ya bloody mind up already?" she grumbled.
The girl looked in the fridge. "We've got carrots." she suggested.
"Carrots? Are you insane?" the Doctor stared. "No, wait, hang on." He went over to the fridge and started rifling through it. "I know what I need... I need... I need... Fish fingers and custard." He produced a box of fish fingers and a carton of custard.
The girl looked to Shareen in bewilderment, who could only shrug. It seemed that this new incarnation of the Doctor was even more eccentric than the previous one.
~8~
The Doctor was soon happily tucking into his bizarre combo while the girl treated herself to a bowl of ice cream and Shareen finished up the bacon. When he'd finished with the fish fingers, the Doctor lifted the bowl of custard up and drank the contents, leaving him with a custard moustache. "Funny." the girl tittered.
"Am I?" the Doctor asked, wiping the custard away. "Good. Funny's good. What's your name?" he asked the girl.
"Amelia Pond." she replied.
" Oh, that's a brilliant name." the Doctor grinned. "Amelia Pond, like a name in a fairy tale. Are we in Scotland, Amelia?"
"No. We had to move to England. It's rubbish." Amelia complained.
"Oi! Don't diss my country!" Shareen snorted. "Where're ya parents, anyway?" she asked. "I'm surprised the Doctor didn't wake 'em up with all the racket he's been makin'."
"I don't have a mum and dad." Amelia sighed. "Just an aunt."
"I don't even have an aunt." the Doctor remarked.
"You're lucky. " Amelia said.
"I know." the Doctor smirked. "So, your aunt, where is she?"
"She's out."
"What? She just buggered off an' left you here all alone?!" Shareen stared.
"I'm not scared." Amelia said bravely.
"Course you're not." the Doctor chuckled, "You're not scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man and woman fall out of box, man eats fish custard, and look at you; just sitting there. So you know what I think?"
"What?" the girl asked.
"Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall." the Doctor replied knowingly.
~8~
Once they'd finished their impromptu late night feast, Amelia took the Doctor and Shareen to her bedroom, where the crack stood prominently in the wall. "You've had some cowboys in here." the Doctor remarked as he moved closer to the crack to examine it, "Not actual cowboys, though that can happen."
Amelia and Shareen both stood in the doorway, Amelia holding an apple in her hand. "I used to hate apples, so my mum put faces in them." she said and handed the Doctor an apple with a smiley face carved into it.
"Sounds good, your mum." the Doctor remarked, tossing the apple into the air and catching it, "I'll keep it for later." He put the apple into his trouser pocket and turned back to the crack in the wall. "This wall is solid and the crack doesn't go all the way through it." he observed. "So here's the thing; where's the draught coming from?" He scanned the crack with his sonic screwdriver. "Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey." he muttered, checking the readings. "You two know what this crack is?" he asked the others.
"Enlighten us." Shareen said smartly.
"It's a crack." the Doctor said rather obviously, running his fingers along the crack. "I'll tell you something funny. If you knocked this wall down, the crack would stay put, cos' the crack isn't in the wall."
"Where is it, then?" Amelia asked uneasily.
"Everywhere. In everything." the Doctor answered mysteriously. "It's a split in the skin in the world. Two parts of space and time that should never have touched, pressed together... right here in the wall of this bedroom." He pressed his ear against the wall. "Sometimes, can you hear..."
"Voices?" Amelia cut in. "Yes."
The Doctor picked up an empty glass from the bedside table and pressed it against the wall, his ear at the other end. Through the glass, he could hear a deep booming voice say, "Prisoner Zero has escaped."
"Prisoner Zero?" the Doctor frowned.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped. That's what I heard." Amelia confirmed. "What does it mean?"
"Prisoner Zero has escaped." the voice repeated.
The Doctor moved away from the wall. "It means that, on the other side of this wall, there's a prison and they've lost a prisoner." he said. "D'ya know what that means?"
"That you need to plug that crack now?" Shareen asked rhetorically.
"Well, yes." the Doctor replied, moving the desk out of the way. "The only way to close the breach is to open it all the way." he told the others. "The forces will invert and it'll snap itself shut. Or..."
"What?" Amelia asked.
"You know when grown-ups tell you everything's gonna be fine and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?" the Doctor asked
"Yes." Amelia answered wearily.
"Everything's gonna be fine." the Doctor said smugly, aiming his sonic screwdriver at the crack.
"It'd better be." Shareen muttered as the Doctor switched the screwdriver on and the crack widened, revealing a dark prison cell on the other side.
"Prisoner Zero has escaped." the voice announced from somewhere in the cell.
The Doctor stepped closer to the crack. "Hello?" he called out, "Hello?"
Suddenly, a giant eyeball appeared in the crack and peered at the trio. "What's that?" Amelia asked.
"A giant's eyeball?" Shareen said flatly.
A small ball of light flew out from the crack and zoomed into the Doctor's breast pocket, causing him to double over against the bed. The crack slammed shut, leaving an unblemished wall with not trace of a crack ever being there. "There." the Doctor grinned proudly as he recovered. "You see, told you it would close. Good as new."
"What was that thing?" Amelia asked. "Was that Prisoner Zero?"
"No, I think that was Prisoner Zero's guard." the Doctor replied. "That was an Atraxi. Level 20 civilisation. Efficient, if a bit stupid. They've sent me a message." He reached into his breast pocket and produced his psychic paper, which was glowing blue inside. "Psychic paper, takes a lovely little message." he explained to Amelia and opened the paper. "'Prisoner Zero has escaped.'" he read out. "But why tell us? Unless..."
"Unless what?" Amelia asked uneasily.
The Doctor looked around the room. "Unless Prisoner Zero escaped through here." he pondered. "But he couldn't have. We'd know."
"Unless this 'Prisoner Zero' is invisible." Shareen suggested ominously.
"Nah, no lifeforms can be 100% invisible." the Doctor answered. He went out into the hallway, Shareen and Amelia following him. "It's difficult." the Doctor said, looking around the hallway with a confused look on his face. "Brand new me, nothing works yet. But there's something I'm missing... in the corner..." He turned slowly, trying to focus on something. "Of my eye." Suddenly, the TARDIS' cloister bell started to toll. "No, no, no, no, no, no!" the Doctor cried and he took off downstairs like a hurricane, Shareen hot on his heels and a confused Amelia bringing up the rear.
~8~
The Doctor raced outside. "I've gotta get back in there!" he fussed, hurrying over to the overturned TARDIS. "The engines're phasing, she's going to burn?"
"But it's just a box. How can a box have engines?" a confused Amelia asked.
"It' s not a box, it's a time machine." Shareen waved her off as she hurried over to the TARDIS.
"What, a real one?" Amelia asked in disbelief, "You've got a real time machine?"
"Not for much longer if we can't get her stabilised." the Doctor replied, freeing the grabbling hook and gathering up the rope. "Five minute hop in the future should do it." He looped the rope through the box's door handles.
"Can I come?" Amelia asked.
Not safe in here, not yet." the Doctor told her as Shareen climbed inside the TARDIS. "Five minutes. Give me five minutes, I'll be right back." He hopped onto the edge of the box and prepared to jump inside.
"People always say that." Amelia sighed bitterly.
The Doctor jumped back down and looked into Amelia's face. "Am I people?" he asked. "Do I even look like people? Trust me, I'm the Doctor."
Amelia smiled at that.
"Hurry up, Doctor, there's red lights galore in here!" Shareen called from inside the TARDIS.
"Yeah, just coming." the Doctor answered and climbed back onto the box, then he gave Amelia one last look. "Geronimo!" he whooped as he jumped into the TARDIS. Amelia heard a splash come from somewhere inside the box before the doors shut and it disappeared right before her eyes, accompanied by the wheezing and groaning sound that she'd heard earlier.
Amelia ran back into the house, rushed upstairs to her bedroom, hastily threw on some clothes, packed her suitcase and ran back downstairs to wait for the Doctor's return.
~8~
The TARDIS materialised back in the garden the right way up and the Doctor raced out. "Amelia!" he yelled, seeing that the girl was nowhere to be seen. "I worked out what it was. I know what I was missing! You've gotta get out of there!" He sprinted over to the door of the house.
Shareen stepped out of the TARDIS and immediately realised that something was wrong. It was broad daylight, but it had been the middle of the night when they'd left. "Uh, Doctor..." she began, but the Time Lord wasn't listening; he was too busy struggling to unlock the door with his sonic screwdriver. Being exposed to radiation, regeneration energy and then being dunked in a pool twice had taken it's toll on the screwdriver and it took him several tries to get the door open.
Finally he succeeded and dashed into the house. "Amelia?" he called as he ran upstairs. "Amelia, are you alright? Are you there?" He stopped outside a door at the top of the stairs and soniced the lock. "Prisoner Zero is here!"
"Doctor...!" Shareen began as she came hurrying up after him.
"Not now, Shareen!" the Doctor waved her off. Prisoner Zero is here!" he called out. "Do you understand me? Prisoner Zero is..." He heard a thump from somewhere behind him and turned to see Shareen drop to the floor unconscious, then he saw a cricket bat come flying towards him and everything went black.
~8~
When the Doctor came to, he found himself sitting in front of a radiator down the hall from the door, while Shareen was slumped unconscious next to the banister. In front of the Doctor was a young police woman in a uniform with a rather short skirt, who was talking into her radio. "White male, mid-20's, breaking and entering. White female, early-20's, also breaking and entering. Send me some backup, I've got 'em restrained." Then she saw that one of her captives was awake. "Oi, you! Sit still!" she barked.
"Cricket bat." the Doctor groaned. "I'm getting cricket bat."
"You were breaking and entering." the police woman said simply.
The Doctor tried to stand but found that he was handcuffed to the radiator, while Shareen was handcuffed to the banister. "Well, that's much better." he said lightly. "Brand new me, whack on the head. Just what I needed."
"D'ya wanna shut up now?" the police woman said fiercely. "I've got back up on the way."
"Hang on, no, wait... you're a police woman." the Doctor rambled.
"And you're breaking and entering." the police woman retorted. "You see how this works?"
"But what're you doing here?" the Doctor questioned. "Where's Amelia?"
The police woman stiffened slightly. "Amelia Pond?"
"Yeah, Amelia. Little Scottish girl." the Doctor replied, nursing his sore forehead. "Where is she? I promised her five minutes but the engines were phasing. I suppose I must have gone a bit far. Has something happened to her?"
"Amelia Pond hasn't lived here in a long time." the police woman replied matter-of-factually.
"How long?" the Doctor asked worriedly.
"Six months." the police woman told him.
"No, no, no! I can't be six months late." the Doctor snorted in disbelief. "I said five minutes. I promised."
The police woman just turned away and reached for her radio.
"What happened to her? What happened to Amelia Pond?" the Doctor asked, getting worried.
The police woman didn't answer him and instead spoke into her radio again, "Sarge, it's me again. Hurry it up, this guy knows something about Amelia Pond."
At that moment, the Doctor heard a moan and he turned to see Shareen regain consciousness. "Ah, my head." she groaned as she sat upright. "What happened?"
"Cricket bat." the Doctor told her.
"Huh, certainly feels like it." Shareen grunted. She made to move, but found that she couldn't due to being handcuffed to the banister. "What..." she began, then noticed the police woman coming back over. "Oh, cosmic." she grumbled. "Do the words 'police brutality' mean anything to you?" she asked the police woman dryly, using her free hand to nurse the lump on her head.
"You shut ya face!" the police woman retorted crossly.
"I need to speak to whoever lives in this house now." the Doctor said urgently.
"I live here." the police woman answered sharply.
"But you're the police!" the Doctor blustered.
"Yes, and this is where I live." the police woman retorted. "You got a problem with that?!"
"How many rooms?" the Doctor asked.
"I'm sorry, what?" the police woman snorted.
"On this floor. How many rooms on this floor? Count for me now."
"Why?"
"Because it will change your lives." the Doctor replied
The police woman rolled her eyes but complied nonetheless. "Five." she said and listed off each door lining the hallway. "One, two, three, four, five."
"Six." the Doctor corrected
"Six?" the police woman scoffed
"Look." the Doctor instructed
"Look where?"
"Exactly where you don't want to look. Where you never wanna look, the corner of your eyes. Look behind you."
The police woman slowly turned and her eyes widened when she saw the door the Doctor had been trying to open. "That's... that is not possible." she spluttered. "How's that possible?"
"There's a perception filter round the door." the Doctor told her, "Sensed it last time I was here. Should've seen it."
"Well, that would kinda defeat the whole point of a filter." Shareen muttered.
"But that's a whole room." the police woman said in shock. "That's a whole room I've never even noticed."
"The filter stops you." the Doctor told her. "Something came a while ago to hide. It's still hiding. You need to uncuff us now!"
"I don't have the keys. I lost them." the police woman waved him off, moving towards the door.
"You what?!" Shareen stared. "What kinda police officer loses the keys to her own handcuffs?!"
"Stay away from that door!" the Doctor warned the woman, who ignored him and continued to walk towards the door as if she was magnetically attached to it. "Do not touch that door!" the Doctor hollered as the police woman put her hand on the doorknob. "Do not open that..."
The police woman opened the door and she slowly entered the hidden room.
"Why does no one ever listen to me?!" the Doctor grumbled. "Do I just have a face that nobody listen to? Again..."
"Oi, you can talk!" Shareen huffed. "I tried to warn that we were more than five minutes late, but you wouldn't listen! Honestly, if you'd have just listened to me for five seconds, we wouldn't be in this mess now!"
"Yes, yes, alright, fine." the Doctor waved her off, rummaging through his trouser pockets to try and find his sonic screwdriver. Having no luck, he suddenly remembered that he'd been holding it in his hand when he'd been knocked out. "My screwdriver, where is it?" he called out to the woman. "Silver thing, blue at the end. Where did it go?"
"There's nothing in here." she called back.
"Whatever's there stopped you seeing the whole room." the Doctor called back. "What makes you think you can see it? Now, please, just get out!"
"Silver, blue at the end?" the woman called.
"My screwdriver, yeah." the Doctor called back.
"It's here."
"Ah, must've rolled under the door."
"Yeah. Must have." the woman answered back. "And then it must've jumped up on the table."
"Get out of there!" the Doctor hollered. "Get out of there!"
But the woman still wouldn't listen. "Oi, cloth ears!" Shareen called. "What're ya doin' now?" She could see woman's shadow circling the room as if she was looking for something.
There's nothing here..." the woman began, "but..."
"Corner of your eye." the Doctor called back.
"What is it?"
"Don't try to see it." the Doctor warned. "If it knows you've seen it, it will kill you. Don't look at it! Do not... look." Then he heard the police woman scream. "GET OUT!" he yelled.
The police woman came hurrying out of the hidden room with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver in her hand. She ran back down the hallway to join the Doctor and Shareen.
"Gimme that!" the Doctor said, snatching the sonic screwdriver from her. The screwdriver was covered in a sticky, translucent goo.
"Ugh! What is that, troll bogeys?" Shareen grimaced.
The Doctor used the screwdriver to lock the door to the hidden room and tried to undo his restraints, but it just stuttered and blinked feebly. "Oh, what's the bad alien done to you?" the Doctor moaned, realising that the goo had exacerbated the wear on the screwdriver.
"Will that door hold it?" the police woman panted.
"Oh, yeah, yeah, course!" the Doctor retorted sarcastically as he fiddled with his malfunctioning sonic screwdriver. "It's an inter-dimensional multi-form from outer space, they're all terrified of wood!"
"Ya know, maybe one day we'll get a Doctor who isn't a rude d*ck to everyone he meets." Shareen muttered.
Suddenly, a bright yellow light shone around the edges of the door. "What's that? What's it doing?" the woman asked.
"I don't know, getting dressed?" the Doctor grumbled, wiping his screwdriver off with his forefinger. "Run. Just go. Your back-up's coming, we'll be fine."
"There is no back-up." the woman told him.
The Doctor looked up to her surprise. "I heard you on the radio, you called for back-up."
"I was pretending." the woman told him. "It was a pretend radio."
"You're a police woman!"
"I'm a kissogram!" she retorted and removed her hat, letting her long copper hair fall free. At that moment, the door to the hidden room burst open to reveal a man in blue overalls holding the lead to a large Rottweiler. "But it's just..." the ginger-haired woman began.
"No, it isn't." the Doctor countered. "Look at the faces."
The women looked and saw that the man was growling and snarling while the dog was making no movement at all. "Now that's just weird." Shareen muttered.
"It's all one creature." the Doctor explained. "One creature disguised as two." The man and dog turned in unison, proving his point. "Clever old multi-form. A bit of a rush job, though. Got the voice a bit muddled, didn't you?" he goaded the man. "Mind you, where did you get that pattern from? You'd need a psychic link, a live feed. How'd you fix that?"
The man just growled at them and opened his mouth to reveal sharp pointed teeth then began to advance towards them.
"Stay boy!" the Doctor commanded, and the man halted his advance. "Apparently we're safe," the Doctor continued, "them and me, we're safe. Wanna know why? She sent for for back-up."
"I didn't send for back-up." the woman reminded.
"Yeah, but he didn't know that." Shareen huffed. "So way to go ruinin' his bluff."
"Ok, yeah. No back up." the Doctor said to the man. "And that's why we're safe. Alone, we're not a threat to you. If we had back up, then you'd have to kill us."
Then, the booming voice of the Atraxi sounded from outside, "Attention, Prisoner Zero. The Human residence is surrounded. Attention, Prisoner Zero. The Human residence is surrounded."
"What's that?" Shareen asked.
"That would be back up." the Doctor told her and turned back to the man. "Ok, one more time. We do have back up and that's definitely why we're safe."
"Prisoner Zero will vacate the Human residence or the Human residence will be incinerated." the Atraxi announced.
"Well, safe apart from, ya know, incineration." the Doctor said flatly.
Prisoner Zero just turned and walked into one of the rooms while the Doctor resumed his struggles with the sonic screwdriver. "Work, work , work, c'mon!" he grunted, whacking it on the floor. Finally, the screwdriver buzzed into life and the Doctor used it to unlock his handcuffs and then he unlocked Shareen's too. "Run!" he urged, jumping to his feet.
Shareen jumped to her feet, grabbed the woman by the arm and the trio legged it downstairs. "Kissogram?" Shareen asked the woman as the Doctor locked the door with his sonic screwdriver.
"Yes!" the woman grunted.
"Why'd you pretend to be a police woman?" the Doctor asked her
"You broke into my house!" she retorted. "It was this or a French maid. Anyway, you can talk!" she said to Shareen. "Why're you dressed like a black ops soldier for?"
"'Cos I had to borrow this uniform to rescue some friends of mine an' I haven't had time to get changed." Shareen answered.
"What's going on?" the woman demanded. "Tell me! Tell me!"
"An alien convict is hiding in your spare room disguised as a man and a dog, and some other aliens are about to incinerate your house." the Doctor rambled. "Any questions?"
"Yes." the woman said through gritted teeth.
"Me too." the Doctor shrugged and went to unlock the TARDIS, but his key wouldn't turn. "No, no, don't do that, not now!" he groaned. "She's still rebuilding, not letting us in!"
"I'm not surprised after the mess you made in there!" Shareen remarked.
The woman looked back at the house to see Prisoner Zero looking down at them from an upstairs window. "Come on!" she urged, grabbing both time travellers by their arms and starting to drag them away.
"No, wait, hang on, wait, wait, wait. The shed." the Doctor waved her off, running up to the garden shed. "I destroyed that shed last time I was here, smashed it to pieces."
"So there's a new one." the woman waved him off. "Let's go."
"But the new one's got old." the Doctor countered. "It's 10 years old at least." He sniffed the woodwork before running his finger along it and licking that finger. "12 years." he realised, "I'm not six months late, I'm 12 years late."
"Oh, real smooth, Doctor." Shareen remarked. "Not content with gettin' Rose back 12 months late instead of 12 hours, you go an' overshoot by 12 years this time!"
The Doctor walked towards the woman. "He's coming." she blustered, trying to change the subject.
"You said six months." the Doctor pressed. "Why did you say six months?"
"We've got to go."
"This matters." the Doctor persisted. "Why did you say six months?"
"Why did you say five minutes?!" the woman snapped, her accent slipping from an English one to a Scottish one.
"What?" the Doctor blinked as the penny dropped. This woman was in fact an adult Amelia Pond.
"Come on." Amelia urged.
"What?" the Doctor repeated, still stunned at the revelation.
"Oh, come on!" Shareen interrupted, grabbing both of them by their arms and leading them away.
~8~
The trio walked down the road towards a village green. "You're Amelia." the Doctor blustered.
"You're late." Amelia said bitterly.
"Amelia Pond, you're the little girl!"
"I'm Amelia, and you're late!" Amelia fumed.
"Huh, wouldn't be the first time." Shareen commented.
"What happened?" the Doctor blustered, still in shock.
"12 years." Amelia contined to fume.
"So ya decided to bash our heads in with a cricket bat as revenge." Shareen grumbled, rubbing the lump on her head.
"12 years." Amelia grunted.
"A cricket bat!" the Doctor huffed.
"12 years and four psychiatrists."
"Four?"
"I kept biting them."
"Why?" the Doctor asked obviously.
"They said you weren't real." Amelia grunted.
Suddenly, they heard the booming voice of the Atraxi coming out of the speakers of a nearby ice cream van; "Prisoner Zero will vacate the Human residence or the Human residence will be incinerated."
Amelia stopped in her tracks. "No, no, no, come on... What? We're being staked out by an ice cream van?!" she groaned.
The Doctor headed over to the van. "What's that?" he asked, "Why're you playing that?"
"It's supposed to be Clare de Lune." the baffled ice cream man replied.
The Doctor picked up the radio and listened to the Atraxi's threat being repeated over and over again, then he noticed a jogger looking at their MP3 in confusion and realised that she was getting the message too. Shareen checked her phone and heard the message too. "What the hell's going on?" she frowned.
The Doctor leapt over a low fence and ran towards a nearby house, the two confused women following. They entered the house to find an elderly woman flipping through TV channels. On every channel was the Atraxi eyeball, their threat being repeated. "Hello!" the Doctor greeted. "Sorry to burst in, we're doing a special on television faults in this area." He glanced at Amelia and Shareen's costumes. "Also crimes. Let's have a look." He took the remote and flipped through channels.
"I was just about to phone. It's on every channel." the woman remarked, then she noticed Amelia. "Oh, hello, Amy dear. Are you a policewoman now?"
"Well, sometimes." Amelia shrugged uncomfortably
"I thought you were a nurse."
"I can be a nurse."
"Or, actually, a nun."
"I dabble." Amelia squirmed.
The woman then decided to spare her from further embarrassment. "Amy, who are your friends?"
"Who's Amy?" the Doctor questioned. "You were Amelia."
"Yeah, now I'm Amy." the ginger shrugged.
"Amelia Pond. That was a great name." the Doctor bemoaned.
"Bit fairy-tale." Amy muttered, looking away.
"Ah, I changed my last name, so I can't really judge." Shareen shrugged.
The woman meanwhile turned to the Doctor. "I know you, don't I?" she asked him. "I've seen you somewhere before."
"Not me. Brand new face." the Doctor replied, pulling some funny faces. "First time on." He turned to Amy. "And what sort of job's a kissogram?"
Before Amy could answer, Shareen got there first. "Bit like a stripper, except instead of takin' their clothes off, they just kiss people instead."
"With outfits. It's a laugh." Amy shifted uncomfortably.
"Hey, I'm not judging." Shareen held her hands up.
The Doctor on the other hand was judging. "You were a little girl five minutes ago." he chastised Amy.
"You're worse then my aunt!" Amy rolled her eyes.
"I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than everybody's aunt." the Doctor retorted. "And that is not how I'm introducing myself." He picked up a radio and soniced it. The Atraxi's threat played over it in French, German and several other languages. "Ok, so it's everywhere, in every language." the Doctor thought out loud. "They're broadcasting to the whole world." He went to the window, opened it and peered up to the sky.
"What's up there?" Amy asked. "What're you looking for?" All she saw on the way over here was a clear blue sky.
The Doctor pulled his head back inside. "Ok, planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core..." he rambled to himself. "They're going to need a 40% fission blast."
A young man entered the house carrying a laptop bag and the Doctor walked over to him, still rambling. "But they'll have to power up first, won't they? So assuming a medium-size starship, that's 20 minutes." He stood on tiptoes, measuring his new height compared to the young man. "What d'you think, 20 minutes? Yeah, 20 minutes. We've got 20 minutes."
"20 minutes to what?" Amy asked.
The man eyed the Doctor closely. "Are you the Doctor?" he asked.
"He is, isn't he?" the elderly woman laughed. "He's the Doctor! The Raggedy Doctor. All those cartoons you did when you were little." she said to Amy. "The Raggedy Doctor, it's him!"
"I know." Amy muttered.
"Cartoons?" a bemused Doctor said, flopping down on the settee.
"Gran, it's him, isn't it?" the young man asked. "It's really him!"
"Jeff, shut up!" Amy hissed.
The young man turned to Shareen. "And you must be his assistant, Shareen."
"I'm not his assistant." Shareen said flatly.
"I liked the drawings of you the best." Jeff continued. "You're even prettier in person."
"Oh, thank you." Shareen smirked, running a hand through her hair.
"Oi, can ye flirt later?!" Amy said irritably, then turned to the Doctor. "20 minutes to what?" she asked him.
"The Human residence." the Doctor replied. "They're not talking about your house, they're talking about the planet. Somewhere up there, there's a spaceship and it's gonna incinerate the planet. 20 minutes to the end of the world."
"What?!" Shareen stared. "You mean to tell me that if they don't find Prisoner Zero in 20 minutes, they're gonna destroy the whole world?! What kinda sick alien bastards are they?!"
"That's the Atraxi for you." the Doctor replied. "Efficient, but stupid, just like the Judoon."
~8~
The Doctor, Amy and Shareen walked out onto the village green. "Where is this place?" the Doctor asked. "Where are we?"
"Leadworth." Amy replied
"Where's the rest of it?" the Doctor questioned, looking around at the rather dull-looking village.
"This is it."
"Is there an airport?"
"No."
"A nuclear power station?"
"No."
"Even a little one?"
"No."
"Nearest city?"
"Gloucester, half-an-hour by car."
"We don't have half-an-hour." the Doctor scowled. "Do we have a car?"
"No."
"Oh, that's cosmic, that is." Shareen grumbled. "End of the world in 20 minutes and we're stuck in Camberwick Green with nothing useful except a post office."
"And it's shut." the Doctor finished. "What is that?" He pointed at something up ahead.
"It's a duck pond." Amy replied as the Doctor rushed ahead to examine the pond.
"Why aren't they any ducks?" he asked.
"I don't know. There's never any ducks."
"Then how'd you know it's a duck pond?"
"It just is." Amy grumbled. "Is it important, the duck pond?"
"I don't know." the Doctor burst out. "Why would I know?" He suddenly gave a grown of pain and dropped to his knees. "I'm not ready. I'm not done yet." he grunted, clutching his chest.
Suddenly, the sky darkened and they all looked up. "What's happening?" Amy asked/ "Why's it getting dark?" It was 11:00 in the morning, nowhere near sundown. The sky then returned to normal, but the sun appeared to be a burning shade.
"Is it them?" Shareen asked. "Are they doin' something to the sun?"
"No." the Doctor replied, standing up. "You're looking at it through a forcefield. They've sealed off your upper atmosphere, now they're getting ready to boil the planet." Then he saw everyone on the green aiming their phone cameras at the sky. "Oh, and here they come, the Human race." he scowled. "The end comes, as it was always going to, down a video phone."
"This isn't real, isn't it?" Amy blustered. "This is some kind of big wind-up."
"Why would I wind you up?" the Doctor asked.
"You told me you had a time machine." Amy said to Shareen.
"'Cos we do." Shareen replied. "And we could've used it to sort all this out if someone hadn't gone an' wrecked it." she cast a dirty look at the Doctor.
"You believed us." the Doctor said to Amy.
"Then I grew up." Amy replied.
"Oh, you never wanna do that." the Doctor said, then suddenly smacked his forehead. "No, hang on, shut up, wait! I missed it." He smacked his forehead again, earning him a confused look from Amy and an eye-roll from Shareen. "What did I see?" he muttered, turning to face the green. "I saw... what did I see?" He scanned the people on the green closely with his superior Time Lord vision. His eyes fell on a young man in surgical scrubs who had his camera phone out like everyone else, but he wasn't aiming his at the sun, he was aiming it at a man and his dog; Prisoner Zero. The Doctor turned to the two women. "20 minutes, I can do it." he said confidently. "20 minutes, the planet burns. Run to your loved ones and say goodbye or stay and help me."
"No." Amy said sharply.
"I'm sorry?" the Doctor blinked.
"NO!" Amy bellowed and grabbed the Doctor by his tie then dragged him over to a car that had just parked nearby.
"Amy, no, no, what're you doing?!" the Doctor protested as Amy slammed his tie into the car's door, snatched the key fob from the surprised car owner and locked the car.
"Oi, leave off him, will ya?" Shareen said as she caught up with them.
"Who are you? Both of you!" Amy demanded.
"You know who we are." the Doctor said reasonably.
"No, really. Who are you two?" Amy persisted, snatching the key fob away from Shareen's reach when she tried to grab them.
"Look at the sky." the Doctor said, trying to get Amy to look at the bigger picture. "End of the world, 20 minutes."
"Better talk quickly, then." Amy snarled, still not getting any perspective.
"Amy, I'm going to need my car back." the car owner reasoned.
"Yes, in a bit." Amy snapped "Now go and get coffee."
"Right, yes." the driver said and walked away.
"We don't have time for this." Shareen muttered and reached into the Doctor's trouser pocket until she found the apple apple with the smiley face on it. "Oi, party girl, catch!" She tossed the apple to Amy, who caught it.
"I'm the Doctor, she's Shareen and we're time travellers." the Doctor implored Amy. Everything we told you 12 years ago is true. We're real. What's happening in the sky is real, and if I don't stop it, everything you've ever known is over."
"I don't believe you." Amy scowled.
"Just 20 minutes." the Doctor encouraged, "Just believe me for 20 minutes. Look at the apple. Fresh as the day you gave it to me. And you know it's the same one."
Amy looked at the apple, and then at the Doctor.
"Amy, believe for 20 minutes."
Amy took a breath, then unlocked the car. "What do we do?" she asked.
"Stop that nurse!" the Doctor said and ran across the green to the nurse. When he reached him, the Doctor snatched his phone off him. "The sun's going out, and you're photographing a man and his dog. Why?" he asked hurriedly.
"Amy?" the nurse blinked as Amy and Shareen reached them.
"Hi!" Amy greeted, then turned to the Doctor and Shareen. "This is Rory, he's a... friend.
"Boyfriend." Rory corrected.
"Kind of boyfriend." Amy persisted.
"Amy!" Rory scolded.
"Man and dog, why?" the Doctor interrupted sharply. Now was not the time for Human domestics.
"Oh, my God, it's him!" Rory blinked as he looked at the shabbily dressed man.
"Just answer his question, please." a rather embarrassed Amy said
"It's him, though. The Doctor. The Raggedy Doctor." Rory blustered, then he noticed Shareen. "An-and she's his assistant!"
"I'm not his assistant!" Shareen rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, they came back." Amy said simply to Rory.
"But... he was a story." Rory continued to bluster. "He was a game."
The Doctor lost patience and grabbed Rory by his lapels. "Man and dog, why?" he demanded. "Tell me now."
"Oi, get off him!" Shareen scolded, pulling the Doctor's hands off Rory.
"Thanks." Rory nodded, then turned back to the Doctor. "Because he can't be there." he said. "Because he's..."
"In a hospital, in a coma." Rory and the Doctor said in unison.
"Yeah." Rory mumbled.
"Knew it." the Doctor grinned. "Multi-form, you see. Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a live feed, a psychic link with a dormant mind." He heard a snarling from behind and turned to face Prisoner Zero, who was standing a few feet away. "Prisoner Zero." the Doctor said calmly, walking towards him.
"What, there's a Prisoner Zero too?" Rory blustered.
"Yes." Amy rolled her eyes.
Shareen meanwhile noticed something in the sky. "Heads up, here comes the cavalry." she called, and everyone followed her gaze to see a blue snowflake-shaped spaceship with a giant eyeball in the centre descend from the sky and hover nearby, the eyeball swivelling back and forth as if it was looking for something.
"See, that ship up there is scanning for non-terrestrial technology." the Doctor told Prisoner Zero calmly, taking his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. "And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver." he finished smugly, holding the screwdriver above his head. He switched the screwdriver on and chaos erupted in the area. Streetlights blew out, car alarms blared and a nearby fire engine began to drive itself, the hapless firemen chasing it. Shareen, Amy and Rory could only watch the mayhem in bemusement while Prisoner Zero snarled angrily.
"I think someone's going to notice, don't you?" the Doctor gloated and lowered the screwdriver to aim it at a phone box which blew in a shower of sparks. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bridge too far for the damaged screwdriver and it promptly exploded too, causing the Doctor to drop it. "No, no, no, don't do that!" he growled, bending to pick up the screwdriver, which was now little more more than a charred and mangled lump of metal, almost completely unrecognisable as a sonic screwdriver.
"Look, it's going." Rory said, and the Doctor turned to see the Atraxi ship flying away.
"No, come back, he's here!" the Doctor shouted after it, "Come back, he's here! Prisoner Zero is here!" But of course, it was no use and the ship was soon out of sight.
"Oh, for God's sakes! How bloody stupid are those aliens?!" Shareen huffed. "An eyeball that big and they didn't see any of that?!"
Seeing that he was in the clear, Prisoner Zero grinned smugly and evaporated into a mist that disappeared down a drain. "Doctor!" Amy called, having seen this. "The drain. It just sorta melted and disappeared the drain."
"Well, of course it did." the Doctor grumbled.
"Cosmic." Shareen huffed. "What do we do now?"
"It's hiding in Human form." the Doctor replied, "We need to drive it into the open. No TARDIS, no screwdriver, 17 minutes. Come on, think. Think!" he muttered, pacing back and forth and racking his brain to think of a plan B.
So, that thing, that hid in my house for 12 years?" Amy questioned, somewhat disturbed at the thought that an alien fugitive had been right under her nose all those years.
"Multi-forms can live for millennia." the Doctor replied, "12 years is a pit stop."
"So how come you show up again on the same day that lot do?" Amy asked accusingly, "The same minute?"
"They're looking for him, but followed me." the Doctor told her, "They saw me through the crack, got a fix. They're only late cos' I am."
"What's he on about?" Rory stared.
"He's saying that aliens are trying to destroy us... again." Shareen told him. "'Cos of course they are. After all, we're the galaxy's punching bag, aren't we?" she muttered irritably.
The Doctor turned to Rory. "Now, sport, gimme your phone." he demanded.
"How can he be real?" Rory moaned, "He was never real."
"Phone, now, give me!" the Doctor persisted impatiently.
Rory handed his phone over. "He was just a game." he moaned to Amy. "We were kids. You made me dress up as him."
"Huh, and I thought Rose was obsessed." Shareen muttered.
The Doctor looked at the photos on Rory's phone. Most of them showed random people standing around the village. "These are all come patients?" he asked.
"Yeah." Rory nodded.
"No, they're all multi-form." the Doctor corrected. "Eight comas, eight disguises for Prisoner Zero."
"He had a dog, though." Amy pointed out. "There's a dog in a coma?"
"Not necessarily." Shareen said and turned to Rory. "Does that man have a dog?" she asked him.
"Yeah, he has a photo of it by his bed." Rory confirmed.
"Well, there ya are; man dreams about his dog, Prisoner Zero gets a dog." Shareen said simply.
The Doctor suddenly had a brainwave. "Laptop!" he exclaimed and pointed at Amy. "Your friend, what was name? Not him." He jerked a thumb at Rory. "The other one, the good-looking one."
"Thanks." Rory huffed.
"Jeff." Amy confirmed.
"Oh, thanks." a hurt Rory muttered.
"Take no notice of 'em." Shareen counselled him.
"He had a laptop in his bag, a laptop." the Doctor said. "Big bag, big laptop. I need Jeff's laptop. You two, get to the hospital." he ordered Amy and Rory. "Get everyone out, clear the whole floor. Phone me when you're done. Shareen, you're with me, gonna need your computer skills." He and Shareen then took off across the green.
"Your car, come on." Amy said to Rory and dragged him away to where his Mini was parked.
"But how can they be real?" Rory blustered as they got in the car. "How can the Doctor be real?"
~8~
Jeff was lounging on his bed with his laptop when the Doctor suddenly burst in. "Hello!" he said hurriedly. "Laptop, give me!" He crossed the room and began to wrestle Jeff's laptop out of his grip.
"No, no, no, no, wait, hang on!" Jeff protested, trying to hang on but the Doctor was physically stronger.
"It's fine, give it here." the Doctor said as he wrestled the laptop away and sat down at the bottom of the bed. "Blimey!" he exclaimed as he saw what was on the screen. "Get a girlfriend, Jeff."
Jeff looked to Shareen, who had just joined them. "I'll give ya my number later." she waved him off, fiddling with Rory's phone.
"Gran!" Jeff called to his grandmother, who appeared in the doorway behind Shareen.
"What're you doing?" Jeff's grandmother asked the Doctor, who was typing rapidly on the laptop.
"The sun's gone wibbly, so right now, somewhere out there, there's going to be a big video conference call." the Doctor replied hurriedly. "All the experts in the world panicking at once, and d'ya know what they need? Me. Ah, and here they are. All the big boys: NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo space centre, Patrick Moore..."
"Ooh, I like Patrick Moore." Jeff's grandmother said dreamily.
"I'll get you his number, but watch him, he's a devil." the Doctor said, moving to the desk with the laptop.
"You can't just hack in on a call like that." Jeff pointed out.
"He just did." Shareen remarked as the Doctor flashed his psychic paper at the webcam, which introduced him as U.N.I.T's scientific advisor.
"Who are you?" one of the experts demanded. "This is a secure call. What're you doing?"
"Hello. I know, you should switch me off." the Doctor said. "But before you do, watch this." He began typing at lightning speed.
"It's here too, I'm getting it." one of the experts said.
"Fermat's theorem." the Doctor explained to the Humans. "The proof, and I mean the real one, never seen before. Poor old Fermat." he mused, "Got killed in a duel before he could write it down. My fault, I slept in." He turned back to the laptop. "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. 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."
Shareen meanwhile had resumed working on Rory's phone. "Sir, what's she doing?" the first expert asked the Doctor.
"She's writing a computer virus." the Doctor replied. "Very clever, super fast and a tiny bit alive, but don't let on. Why is she writing it on a phone? Never mind, you'll find out. Ok, we're sending this to all your computers. Get everyone who works for you sending this everywhere. Email, text, Facebook, Bebo, Twitter, radar dish, even smoke signals if ya have to. Any questions?"
"Who's your other lady friend?" Patrick Moore asked, looking Jeff's grandmother.
"Patrick, behave!" the Doctor scolded.
"Dirty old man." Shareen smirked, handing the phone to the Doctor so he could transmit the virus she'd wrote for him.
"What does this virus do?" the second expert asked.
"It's a reset command, that's all." the Doctor replied. "It resets counters, it gets in the Wi-Fi and resets every counter it can find. Clocks, calendars, anything with a chip will default to 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 silence. "Jeff, you're my best man." the Doctor prompted
"Your what?" Jeff spluttered.
The Doctor closed the laptop partway and turned to Jeff. "Listen to me. In 10 minutes, you're going to be a legend. In 10 minutes, everyone on that screen is going to 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?" Jeff asked.
"It's your bedroom." the Doctor shrugged. "Now go, go, go. Shareen, with me." He and Shareen left the room, then the Doctor poked his head back in through the door. "Oh, and delete your internet history." he advised and hurried away.
"Ya realise we're gonna need a car if we're gonna get to that hospital wherever it is in 10 minutes." Shareen pointed out as she and the Doctor left the house.
"Oh, we can do better than a car." the Doctor smirked, pointing to the fire engine from earlier, which had come to rest nearby.
"You're kidding." Shareen said.
"Nope, quite serious." the Doctor grinned, running to the fire engine.
Shareen reluctantly followed him and climbed into one of the passenger seats while the Doctor jumped into the driver's seat. "All present and correct, Shareen." he said as they strapped themselves in.
"Get on with it." Shareen said irritably.
~8~
Amy and Rory had arrived at the Royal Leadworth Hospital and Rory was talking to the nurses while Amy was on her mobile. Rory re-joined her. "Something's happened up there, we can't get through." he told her.
"Yes, but what's happened?" Amy asked, redialling in frustration.
"I don't know." Rory replied. "No one knows. Phone them."
"I'm phoning 'em." Amy waved him off, holding the phone to her ear. "Doctor? Shareen? We're at the hospital, but we can't get through. Oh!"
"What did they say?" Rory asked.
"Look in the mirror." Amy replied and checked her reflection. "Ha-ha! Uniform!" she realised, tying her hair back. "Are you on ye way? You're gonna need a car."
"Don't worry. I've commandeered a vehicle." the Doctor replied and Amy then heard the distinctive sound of an emergency services siren over the phone.
~8~
"How old are you?" Shareen asked the Doctor rhetorically as he turned the fire engine's sirens on.
"906." the Doctor replied obviously. "And having the sirens on means we can cut through the traffic." he said reasonably.
"Good point." Shareen conceded. "Ya know, this is gonna sound funny, but all this reminds me of the time when we first met Martha. I mean, those eyeball aliens are a bit like the Judoon, Prisoner Zero is like the vampire lady, your sonic screwdriver's blown up again and we're even going to a hospital. Heck, I think this is even the same year." She'd noticed a heavily vandalised 'Vote Saxon' poster by the side of the road and so realised that this must be 2008; the same year they'd met Martha.
~8~
At the hospital, Amy and Rory stepped out of the lift onto the floor where the coma ward was located. The corridor was in a state of disarray; with stretchers and tables overturned, scrubs lying everywhere and surgical utensils scattered about. Standing in the middle of the corridor was a woman holding hands with two little girls. "Officer." she called.
"What happened?" Amy asked as they approached.
"There was a man. A man with a dog. I think Dr Ramsden's dead, and the nurses." the woman said.
Amy phoned the Doctor. "Are you in?" he asked.
"Yep." Amy answered. "But so is Prisoner Zero."
"Get outta there, you two!" Shareen warned.
Rory looked at the woman as she continued speaking and noticed that her mouth wasn't moving, but one of the girls' mouths was, yet the voice was that of the woman's. Then he remembered that this very woman was one of the coma patients.
"He was so angry." the woman's voice continued. "He just kept shouting. And that dog, the size of the dog, I swear it was rabid."
Amy and Rory backed away, realising that this was Prisoner Zero.
"Oh, I'm getting it wrong again, aren't I?" Prisoner Zero said, realising their mistake. "I'm always doing that. So many mouths." The woman opened her mouth to reveal sharp pointed teeth.
Rory recoiled in horror, while Amy swallowed grimly.
"Amy? What's happening in there?!" Shareen asked urgently over the phone.
Amy didn't answer; she and Rory legged it down the corridor into an empty ward. Amy slammed the doors shut and Rory shoved a discarded broom between the handles to brace them shut, then they both backed into the centre of the ward. "We're in the coma ward." Amy said into the phone. "But it's here, it's getting in."
"Which window are you in?" the Doctor's voice asked.
"First floor on the left, fourth from the end." Amy replied, not sure what was so important about that.
At that moment, the doors burst open to reveal Prisoner Zero. "Oh, dear. Little Amelia Pond." it sneered. "I've watched you grow up. 12 years, and you never even knew I was there. Little Amelia Pond, waiting for her magic Doctor to return, but not this time, Amelia." And it bared it's teeth menacingly.
Then, Amy's mobile beeped and she looked at it to see the message 'Duck!' displayed on screen. Then she heard the distinctive wail of an emergency services' siren and she and Rory hit the deck just as the ladder of the Doctor's fire engine burst through the window. The Doctor climbed up the ladder and joined Amy and Rory, Shareen following a moment later. "Right!" the Doctor grinned. "Hello! Am I late?" He looked at a clock on the wall. "No, three minutes to go. So still time."
"Time for what, Time Lord?" Prisoner Zero sneered.
"Take that disguise off." the Doctor ordered. "They'll find you in a heartbeat. Nobody dies."
"The Atraxi will kill me this time." Prisoner Zero retorted.
"Huh, ya should've thought of that before." Shareen retorted. "Now give up!"
But Prisoner Zero had no intention of giving up. "If I am to die, let there be fire."
"Ok. You came to this world by opening a crack in space and time." the Doctor pointed out. "Do it again, just leave."
"I did not open the crack." Prisoner Zero said.
"Somebody did." the Doctor countered.
"The cracks in the skin of the universe." Prisoner Zero said. "Don't you know where they came from? You don't, do you?" It switched to a sing-song little girl's voice. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know. Doesn't know! Doesn't know!"
"Stop that!" Shareen ordered.
Prisoner Zero switched back to the woman's voice. "The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Shareen demanded.
Before anyone could answer, there came a clicking sound, drawing the Doctor's attention to to the wall clock. "And we're off!" he said cheerfully. "Look at that." He pointed to the clock, which now read 0:00. "Yeah, I know, Just a clock, whatever. But d'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 d'you know what the word is? The word is zero."
Shareen pulled out her phone to see 0:00 displayed on screen. "Good, it's working." she observed.
"Now me..." the Doctor continued, "if I was up in the sky in a battleship, monitoring all Earth communications, I'd 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 it's source in, what, under a minute?" He produced Rory's mobile from his pocket. "The source, by the way, is right here." A searchlight shone through the window. "Oh! And I think they just found us!"
"The Atraxi are limited." Prisoner Zero scowled. "While I'm in this form, they'll still be unable to detect me. They've tracked a phone, not me."
"Yeah, but this is the good bit." the Doctor smirked. "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..." He pressed the phone's send button. "Right now. And the final score is; no TARDIS, no screwdriver, two minutes to spare. Who da man?" he crowed, throwing his arms out.
"No, no, no, don't do that. Don't." Shareen snorted, while Amy furrowed a brow and Rory looked at him as if he'd gone loony.
"Oh, I'm never saying that again! Fine." the Doctor said sheepishly.
But Prisoner Zero wasn't ready to admit defeat just yet. "Then I shall take a new form."
"Oh, stop it, you know you can't." the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Takes months to form that kind of psychic link."
"And I've had years." Prisoner Zero gloated and began to glow.
Amy's eyes suddenly rolled into her head and she fell unconscious, Shareen and Rory managing to catch her before she hit the floor. "No! Amy!" the Doctor cried, rushing over.
"What the hell have you done to her?!" Shareen demanded to Prisoner Zero, who was glowing all over.
The Doctor knelt down beside the unconscious ginger. "You've got to hold on, Amy. Don't sleep. Please." he urged, putting his hands on Amy's face.
"Look." Rory said, pointing to Prisoner Zero, who had now taken the Doctor's form.
"Well, that's rubbish." the Doctor snorted. "Who's that supposed to be?"
"That's you, ya plonker." Shareen told him.
"Me?" the Doctor blinked. "Is that what I look like?"
"You don't know?" Rory frowned, baffled as to why the Doctor had apparently never seen his own face
"Busy day." the Doctor waved him off and stood to face his doppelgänger. "Why me, though? You're linked with her. Why're you copying me?"
"I'm not." Prisoner Zero said in 7-year old Amelia's voice, and a facsimile of her walked out from behind the facsimile of the Doctor. "Poor Amy Child. Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the magic Doctor she knows will return to save her. What a disappointment you've been."
"No, she's dreaming about me because she can hear me." the Doctor said and turned back to the unconscious Amy. "Amy, don't just hear me, listen." he instructed gently. "Remember the room, the room in your house you couldn't see? Remember you went inside, we tried to stop you, but you did. You went in the room. You went inside. Amy, dream about what you saw."
"No!" Prisoner Zero screeched as it glowed. "No!" It transformed into a slimy eel-like creature with needle-like teeth.
"Well done, Prisoner Zero." the Doctor smirked. "A perfect impersonation of yourself."
The Atraxi searchlight locked onto Prisoner Zero. "Prisoner Zero is located." the Atraxi announced, and a forcefield appeared around Zero. "Prisoner Zero is restrained."
"Silence, Doctor." Zero spat as it began to be beamed aboard the Atraxi ship outside, "Silence will fall." It disappeared completely and the Atraxi ship flew away.
"Yeah, and good riddance!" Shareen laughed.
"The sun, it's back to normal, yeah?" Rory asked the Doctor, who was fiddling with Rory's phone. "That's.. that's good, yeah? That means it's over?"
Then Amy awoke, much to his relief. "Amy, are you ok? Are you with us?" he fussed.
"What happened?" Amy groaned as she sat up.
"He did it. The Doctor did it." Rory told her, relieved that she alright.
"No, I didn't." the Doctor said as he fiddled with the phone.
"What're you doing now?" Shareen asked him, certain she wouldn't like the answer.
"Tracking the signal back." the Doctor replied. "Sorry in advance." he said to Rory.
"What for?" Rory asked.
"The bill." the Doctor said, and held the phone up to his ear. "Oi, we didn't say you could go!" he said sternly into it. "Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation. This is a fully-established level 5 planet, and you were gonna burn it! What, did ya think no one was watching? You lot, back here, now!" He hung up and tossed the phone back to Rory. "Ok, now I've done it." And he strode purposefully out of the room.
"Tell me you didn't just call them back?!" Shareen groaned as she followed him.
"Did he just just save the world from aliens, and then bring all the aliens back again?" Rory blustered as he and Amy brought up the rear.
"Where're you going?" Amy asked as they walked through the hospital corridors.
"The roof." the Doctor replied, then stopped in his tracks. "No, hang on." He spun round and walked into a male changing room
"Oh, now what're you doing?" Shareen groaned as she and Amy followed the Doctor into the room.
"I'm saving the world." the Doctor replied, sifting through clothes, "I need a decent shirt. To hell with the raggedy." Seeing Prisoner Zero's doppelgänger of him had made him realise how much his previous incarnation's clothes didn't suit him. "Time to put on a show."
"He's just summoned aliens back to Earth." Rory complained as he joined them. "Actual aliens, deadly aliens, aliens of death... and now you're taking your clothes off." he squirmed as the Doctor pulled his shirt off. "Amy, he's taking his clothes off."
"Wait outside if it embarrasses you." the Doctor said casually, pulling his shoes off.
Rory turned and made for the door. "Are you stealing clothes, now?" he moaned. "Those clothes belong to people, you know." He paused when he saw that Amy hadn't budged. "Are you not gonna wait outside?" he asked her.
"Nope." Amy smirked as she watched the Doctor begin to undo his trousers.
Rory was about to argue when he saw Shareen rubbing her head with a grimace. "Are you alright?" he asked her.
"Yeah, just a headache." Shareen replied. "Your girlfriend tried to bash my head in with a cricket bat."
"Ah, right." Rory nodded. "Come with me, I'd better check you out." And he and Shareen left the Doctor to it.
~8~
A few minutes later, the quartet stepped out onto the roof. The Doctor was now dressed in a pinkish-red dress shirt, navy blue trousers with red braces, black boots, a gold wristwatch and a number of ties were draped around his neck. "So this was a good idea, was it?" Amy asked him. "They were leaving!"
"Leaving is good. Never coming back is better." the Doctor replied simply. In the years since the Sycorax, he'd come round to Harriet Jones' view that simply leaving wasn't good enough. He had to make sure that the Atraxi would never threaten Earth again. "Come on, then!" he said flippantly as he strode over to where the Atraxi ship was waiting. "The Doctor will see you now!"
"Huh, still full of himself." Shareen muttered to herself, holding an ice pack to the lump on her head.
The eyeball disconnected from the ship and scanned the Doctor. "You are not of this world." the Atraxi stated.
"No, but I've put a lot of work into it." the Doctor replied and tried on a tie. "What d'you think?" he asked no one in particular.
"Is this world important?" the Atraxi important.
"Important?" the Doctor stared. "What's that mean, important?" He tossed the tie over his shoulder and Rory caught it. "6 billion people live here, is that important? Here's a better question: is this world a threat to the Atraxi?" He discarded another tie which Amy caught. "Well, come on. You're monitoring the whole planet. Is this world a threat?"
The Atraxi projected a hologram of Earth with scenes from the planet's history. "No." they stated after a moment.
"Are the peoples of this world guilty of any crime by the laws of the Atraxi?"
"Ok, one more. Just one. Is this world protected? Because you're not the first lot to come here." the Doctor said, and the Atraxi hologram showed some of the many lifeforms the Doctor had encountered in his many travels through the centuries.
Shareen recognised the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Empress of the Racnoss, the Sycorax leader, a Sontaran and a Vashta Nerada in a spacesuit, but there was also a floating green blob-like creature, a webbed sea creature and a giant plant-like creature, none of which she had seen before and she didn't want to either.
"Oh, there have been so many." the Doctor said. "And what you've got to ask is... what happened to them?" The hologram then showed the Doctor's previous incarnations. While this was playing, the Doctor took the opportunity to finish off his new outfit by donning a red bowtie and a tweed blazer from a bundle of jackets that Rory had been carrying for him.
Shareen looked at the men in the hologram. First was an elderly man with a stern expression but a mischievous glint in his eyes. Next was a dark-haired man in a bow-tie and baggy jacket, followed by a dapper grey-haired man in a velvet smoking jacket. Then came a curly-haired man in an impractically long multi-coloured scarf, followed by a blonde man in Edwardian cricket player's clothes. Shareen recognised this man from the time he had appeared in the TARDIS. Granted, he looked considerably younger in the hologram, but she could still recognise him. After that came a curly-haired man in a hideous multi-coloured coat, a small man in clothes with question marks on them, and by a long-haired man in Victorian gentlemen's clothes. Finally came the two Doctors Shareen was familiar with; the big-eared Northerner in a leather jacket and the vain peacock in a pinstripe suit.
The Doctor's new incarnation took this as his cue and strode purposefully through the hologram. "Hello. I'm the Doctor. Basically... run!" he said simply.
The Atraxi took the hint and the eyeball went back inside the ship, which then flew away very quickly. "Yeah, and don't come back, you alien bastards!" Shareen jeered, giving the departing ship a V-sign. She then turned just in time to see the Doctor running towards the stairs. "Oh, no, you don't." she muttered and ran after him. She caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs. "Oi, what's the rush?" she asked him.
"TARDIS has finished rebuilding." the Doctor replied, climbing back into the cab of the fire engine. "Come on, if you're coming." he said impatiently.
"Alright, keep ya hair on." Shareen grumbled, joining him aboard the fire engine.
~8~
The Doctor and Shareen were soon back at Amy's house looking at the TARDIS. The exterior of the box had had a facelift; now being a more vibrant shade of blue and boasting a St. John's Ambulance sticker on the door. "Ok. What have you got for me this time?" the Doctor said eargely and opened the door, bathing himself in an aqua glow. "Oh, you sexy thing!" he smiled. "Look at you!" And he went inside the box.
Shareen followed him to see that the console room had changed beyond recognition. Gone was the rustic coral room that she was used to and in it's place was a sleeker, more mechanical-looking room with silver-grey walls, aqua lighting, a new, hexagonal console with two monitors instead of one, Galifreyean text on top of the time rotor, two smaller auxiliary consoles built into the railings with seats at either end of them, and a raised walkway around the perimeter of the room. "Hmm, nice rebuild." Shareen commented, looking around. "Guess the TARDIS must've taken Wilfred's advice about being cleaner. Reminds me of some posh kitchen."
The Doctor ran to the new console. "Right, so, time for a test drive. Fancy a lift home?" he asked Shareen.
"Yeah, and make sure you get the date right." Shareen told him pointedly. "I don't wanna get back and find that I've been gone for 12 years!"
"That won't happen again, I promise." the Doctor reassured her, setting the new controls ready for departure.
~8~
The new and revamped TARDIS materialised outside Shareen's house in Richmond, London. The door opened and the Doctor and Shareen stepped out. "Here we are, as promised." the Doctor said.
"Well, looks the same as when I left." Shareen observed, seeing that the houses all still had their Christmas decorations up. "What day is it?"
"Boxing Day 2009," the Doctor replied, "about five minutes after we dropped Wilfred off."
"Right." Shareen nodded. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm just gonna make sure." She ran to her neighbour's house, knocked on the front door and spoke to the neighbour for a moment before coming back to the Doctor. "Yep, Boxing Day 2009, you were right." she said.
"Told ya." the Doctor smirked, puffing his chest out. "Don't give me any credit, do you?"
"You don't exactly have a good track record, Dickie-Bow." Shareen snorted. "12 months instead of 12 hours, 12 years instead of five minutes... need I say more?"
"Dickie-Bow?" the Doctor pouted.
"Well, I can't call ya 'Peacock' anymore," Shareen shrugged, "and you're wearing a dickie-bow, so it's either 'Dickie-Bow' or 'Mr Bean', take ya pick."
"Dickie-Bow will do fine." the Doctor muttered begrudgingly. "So, I'll be off then, unless, I dunno, you wanna come with me."
"Huh, you're kiddin', aren't you?" Shareen snorted. "After the last few days I've had, I just wanna go home and hibernate 'till New Year's! Tell ya what, though, you should take Amy and Rory with ya. We ruined Amy's childhood so it's only right she gets to see the universe and if it wasn't for Rory, we'd be dead now, so he should get a trip too."
"Alright, I'll pop back and see if they're interested." the Doctor nodded. "I think Amy will definitely want to come, don't know about Nosey, though."
They were silent for a moment, then Shareen spoke again, "Well, I'm gonna get inside. I'll call ya if I get some time off work an' I'm in the mood for a trip. See ya around, Dickie-Bow."
"Goodbye, Shareen Costello." the Doctor nodded.
"Actually, it's Whitland." Shareen said. "I think it's time I stopped pretending to be someone else."
"Very well, Shareen... Whitland." the Doctor nodded. They then shook hands and went their separate ways; the Doctor going back to the TARDIS to resume his adventures in time and space and Shareen heading back to No 41 to resume her day-to-day life as a proud Human being.
Author's notes: And so we come to the end of Through Thick and Thin. It's certainly been quite a ride, taking us through RTD's magnum opus and finishing up here with Moffat's first go in the big chair. Figured this would be a good place to leave it, since The Eleventh Hour is something of a passing the torch episode, but don't worry, we haven't seen the last of Shareen; she'll be back in one-shot adventures with the Doctor, covering selected Moffat-era episodes. I'm also thinking of doing one-shots with Chelsea and Iris too. So, I'd like to thank everyone for supporting this story and I hope you've all enjoyed reading it. Here's to the future!