Text Key
"Audible speech."
'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'
Tooth And Claw
Chapter 7 - Lunatics
This was punishment for something. Somewhere down the line of all the morally suspect shit ever done and petty vengeances ever exacted, karma had found one tiny little thing that it hadn't kicked my ass for and had thought to itself 'yeah, I have just the thing for that'.
And that thing was 'girl talk' with Rose fucking Tyler.
Which was bullshit. We didn't know each other, there were no established common interests… hell, I wasn't even a girl, not that most people noticed. What the hell was she expecting to happen?
Alright, maybe that wasn't fair. It wasn't like I wore a little non-binary pin - honestly could stand to start though, if I could rely on people to understand what it meant - or like I knew her. All I knew was a TV show version of her and the highly exaggerated fandom perception, both of which had grated on me to unspeakable ends, but I knew that what was seen out-of-universe could be very different from what was the truth in-universe. I could take the time to understand her–
"So what do you think of the Doctor?" Rose asked as we made our way to the wardrobe. Dress for November 1979, the Doctor said, as punk as you come. I wasn't entirely sure I would change my outfit, knowing where we were really heading on this next trip.
Actually, fuck time and understanding. Just let this conversation be over as soon as possible, for the sake of my temper and sanity. "He's a regular chatterbox. Pushy sort."
"Nothing else jump out at you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at me as she turned around the door to the wardrobe with a touch of theatricality that just managed to strike me as wrong. To be fair, Rose Tyler managed to do that on her lonesome, but this seemed wrong even from approached from that baseline distaste.
"Patently ridiculous hair," I added flatly. Was I presenting some kind of threat to her relationship with the Doctor by dint of having two X chromosomes or was this some sort of twisted bonding exercise? I had every reason to believe it was the former, seeing as that was her usual reaction in the show.
"Well, I like it."
I could do something about the chromosome thing, if I felt like fiddling around, but for now, I'd have to stick with rolling my eyes. Good for you. Personally, I was more focused on not punching the Time Lord out every time I saw his face. Hardly his fault that he shared it with someone I loathed, but god, tell that to my reflexes.
"So what do you find attractive?" Rose asked as she started shifting through the clothes racks.
Oh, there were probably guidebooks to be written on what appealed to me in any given incarnation. Probably more than a few by the people who'd looked at the time-share complex time-space anomaly and gone 'yeah, that's marriable', but if they had, I hadn't seen a copy yet.
"The brain of Albert Einstein, the personality of David Lee Roth, and the body of Kelly LeBrock," I deadpanned, taking the opportunity to open up a closet in the ensuing awkward silence, looking for a lint roller. "I'm also partial to curly hair."
Not looking like people who'd manipulated and tortured me in a previous 'verse was good too. I wasn't usually the type to hold grudges on the merit of resemblance alone - most people didn't have much say in picking a face, even if most of the David Tennant lookalikes I'd met had - but there was something to be said for the sheer depth of the scars that Kilgrave had left. Scars that were making it very difficult not to punch the Doctor in the face every time he got too close for comfort.
"What, you're going to wear that to Ian Dury?" Rose asked, giving the increasingly less dusty but still blatantly Victorian outfit I was wearing an incredulous once-over. "That's not exactly mosh wear."
If we were actually going to arrive at said concert – I somehow doubted it –, there was going to be people wearing everything from leather and spikes to trash bags and rags and, based on previous experience with the punk scene, I wasn't ready to rule out tutus either. A little Wild Bill Hickok wasn't going to stand out by much. "I really don't feel like changing my clothes right now and it'll be warm enough for November."
"Who cares about being cold?"
"People who like having fingers."
Rose swiveled her head around to look at me. "Where do you come from that you're worried about that kind of cold?"
"Michigan." At her blank look, I added, "It's in the Midwest United States. There's snow by the end of October most of the time."
"Ah," she said before disappearing into the clothes rack, once more on the hunt for suitably punkish attire. "So how you run into the Doctor?" she called back through the hangers.
"I supposed I just managed to catch his attention somehow." Likely through the interference of a certain omnipotent being with a predilection to dick moves.
Wouldn't be the first time, wouldn't be the last, I figured as I finally pulled the last of the dust and cobwebs from the borrowed coat. Meeting Queen Victoria was going to be rough enough without looking like I'd been dragged through the Parisian Catacombs by a mutant dust bunny.
That'd been bad enough the first time.
With no immediate response from Rose, I started browsing through the racks. Mmm, unfamiliar, weird, an incredibly distasteful shade of rust-red, Matt Smith's purple wish, a stripy sweater I vaguely recognized as Steven Taylor's, and… oh.
I smirked as I pushed a certain technicolor coat to the forefront. Definitely not a piece made for a wallflower, but it did look even more weirdly comfortable in person. Maybe I'd –
"What do you think – oh my god."
I held back the sigh as Rose Tyler, naturally wearing the same denim dungarees, t-shirt, and tights from the episode, stepped right by me to 'admire' Six's coat. And she had been criticizing me for not dressing in the spirit of a punk concert.
"Look at this! Oh, it's got to be in here as a joke," she said as she turned Six's coat over, laughing again as she saw the back, with its two completely separate patterns of plaid placed up against bright green and a marginally softer shade of tangerine.
"With infinite access to all of space and time, it's probably the height of fashion in some galaxy or another," I said, forcing my tone level.
"It's… so tacky."
I've seen worse. Much much worse. "Well, I like it," I said, pulling it out of her hands as I tucked it back into its place, trailing a finger down the sleeve as I did so. Very soft. Fitting for my favorite doctor. "Anyway, don't we have a concert to get to?"
Rose reached over and flipped the lapels of my coat outwards. "Ian Dury, not Liberace."
I rolled my eyes but left the lapels flipped up, smoothing down the velvet of my sleeve instead. This was my comfort object, not hers. "Punk is as punk does."
"And what does a punk do?" Rose asked.
"Skip school, run wild through the streets, and carry a half-brick in the event of fascists," I said as we made the short trip back to the console room.
The Doctor, as before, had made no alteration to his own look, instead dancing and drumming his fingers along to the tin-distorted lyrics of a punk song that sounded like it'd been recorded via a microphone hidden in the rafters above some dive bar stage. Considering the genre, the shaky quality had probably been deliberate.
The rest of his 'dance' – a generous interpretation of the word – was disjointed swaying and twisting at every possible joint, slightly beyond what the average human was capable of, no move fully committed to anything as clearly defined as 'a step'. Probably because going any further than that would prevent him from drumming on the various parts of the console.
Just as one hand stopped drumming to start twisting through the air in unearthly but strangely familiar patterns, Rose knocked on the outside of the door we'd just come through. The Doctor started, quickly turning the hand movement into a careless brush backwards over his hair as the rest of the dance ceased altogether.
"Well," the blonde asked, doing a little bounce. "What do you think?"
"1979, you'd be better off in a bin-bag," the Doctor replied with a certain curt playfulness before giving me a blink. "And you… you've changed absolutely nothing."
"Dusted off the shoulders a bit, threw up the lapels, but yeah, that's about right," I said, shrugging. "You don't dress for 1883, I don't dress for 1979."
And considering that we likely weren't actually headed for 1979, my non-adherence to any perceived 'dress code' was a moot point anyway.
The Doctor shook his head. "Well, if you're both ready, I'll just grab a few things and we'll be off. The TARDIS may be a time machine, but she does have a few limits."
The Doctor had a good feeling about today. He knew better than to depend on something as nebulous as a 'feeling' as a forecast for the future – at least not without cross-referencing his history books and his more informed time senses –, but there was still a sort of promise hanging over the immediate future. Or maybe that was the remaining buzz from the last adventure and the acquisition of a new and exciting human.
Either way, it was a pleasant thrum of positive energy that sent him skipping and bouncing around the console room.
"1979. I love 1979," he said brightly as he collected various bits and bobs from various areas. "All sorts of things happening in 1979!" He could probably turn this old phone and this focusing crystal into a decent camera, use this to break out of the handcuffs of the period if it came down to an arrest –
'It usually does,' one of his other selves muttered as the Tenth kept talking.
"China invades Vietnam, the Muppet Movie – love that film –, Margaret Thatcher," the Doctor stopped to make an exaggerated 'uggh'.
"Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park," Delaine added. There was a sour look on her face as she said that, though it was impossible for the twenty-something girl to have actually attended the event herself.
He personally had. Took advantage of it even. Nobody had been looking for a mind-controlling alien record in a pile of other records slated for imminent destruction and nobody had been looking for it after either.
"Skylab falls to Earth – I had a hand in that," the Doctor continued as he finally stopped collecting scrap and began making his way to the TARDIS door, skipping his heels as he went. The door opened easily, and the Doctor walked out with his head still swiveled around to look at his companions. Rose looked excited while Delaine's expression hovered somewhere between alert and curious. That probably counted as a sort of excitement, didn't it? "Almost took off my thumb. I like my thumb. I need my thumb. I'm awfully attached to my –"
There were a number of clicks that his brain dully registered as belonging to guns being cocked. Behind the soldiers surrounding them stood a single black carriage, conspicuous by the fact that it was the only thing visibly distinct from the rest of the grey-green-and-brown shades of the moor.
"–thumb," he finished lamely as he took in the visual. So much for 1979, let alone that vague 'good feeling' he'd somehow expected to carry through the day. Typical. "1879. A hundred years off the mark, 'snot bad," the Doctor murmured to himself. "Should make a note to see where that randomizer got off to…"
"You will explain your presence, sirs, and the nakedness of this girl," the mounted soldier said in a thick Scottish burr. From the fact that man had a horse, revolver, and a shiny medal instead of a rifle, the Doctor would assume that this was the captain of this particular party. Or maybe some other rank that put him up above the common riflemen. He'd never been terribly good at interpreting the various patches unless they had what they meant spelled out in half-inch high letters.
"We're in Scotland?" Rose asked.
"Where did you think you were?"
"Sheffie–"
"Please excuse her," Delaine said, interrupting Rose smoothly before she could finish the sentence. There was a minute adjustment to her gravelly voice beyond a simple lowering of pitch, like her American-Midwest accent had jumped a few state lines and economic classes in the few steps between the TARDIS door and where they now stood. Whatever it was, it did fit with the visual image of a well-dressed – if somewhat geographically incongruous – American of the period. "Poor thing was afflicted by brain fever as a child, never quite recovered. Forgets where she is, her manners, and herself upon occasion. Had to chase her half around the moor before we caught up with her."
"Oh, aye," the Doctor said, shucking his Estuary accent like an old coat as he slipped into a Scottish one slightly more exaggerated than he'd probably fall into naturally. Two can play at being something they're not. "Over hill and over dale, we've been trying to stop this child from embarrassing the good name of her family, to no avail. Isn't that right, ya timorous beastie?"
"Och, aye! I've been oot and aboot," Rose said, laying on the thickest stereotypic brogue available in the British Isles.
"Don't do that." Somehow, the Doctor was desperately wishing that it had been Delaine who'd decided to play that particular accent impersonation game again, because at least she would probably limit herself to just the one specific Glaswegian rather than a broad, poorly-executed idea of how an entire country should sound.
"Hoots, mon."
Companions were overrated. Completely overrated. He should have just stuck with Jamie and Leela, over and over again. Infinitely easier to deal with than people with ideas about accents and clever jokes. "Really, don't."
"Identify yourselves, sirs," the soldier said, apparently satisfied with Rose's absence of wit.
"Doctor James McCrimmon, from the township of Balamory and graduated of Edenborough," the Doctor said as he pulled the psychic paper from his pocket. "My credentials here, as ye ken see. Trained under Doctor Bell himself. And this is my assistant, late of the United States–"
Delaine dipped her head, fingers rising to touch the brim of an imaginary hat. If the Doctor turned his head a bit and ignored the phantoms of other timelines around her – so many possibilities to have been other people, somehow ringing clearly still –, he could understand how the soldier mistook her for a clean-shaven young man. Some sort of mild psychic ability? "Eastwood. Clint Eastwood."
The Doctor took back every nice thing he had ever said – no, ever thought about Delaine. Forget human companions altogether. Humans were overrated. He'd just stick to robot dogs after this. Robot dogs with no concept of pop culture or ideas about where to stick it into real life situations.
Throwing that thought to the side, there was the question of whether or not they would escape this encounter with their lives. Clearly, the soldiers were transporting something important in that black carriage and the fact that there was no sign of civilization anywhere within eyeshot did the excuse of 'we just happened to cross paths' no favors.
"Let them approach."
The Doctor knew that voice. He was nearly certain on that point. Oh, it was older with all the fading and cracks that followed age, but he still knew that voice.
"I'm not sure that's wise, ma'am," the mounted soldier said, casting his eyes to the carriage and back to their party again.
"Let them approach," the woman in the carriage said again, the firmness of a command that would not be denied crystal clear.
The soldier realized this as well, turning his unease into something harder. "You will approach the carriage and show all due deference."
With that, any 'nearly' was wiped away with that statement. The Doctor nodded to his companions to follow as the soldiers parted just enough for them to slip through the sea of guns single file. One of soldiers stepped back to open the door of the carriage.
Victoria – not the companion, but the Queen – was older than she was than he last saw her. Was it the coronation or… no, his Fifth had been appointed her scientific advisor for a time at a year longer after that. A passing title for a passing crisis.
There was no spark of recognition, only the silent elegance of royalty balanced with a shrewd eye. Not that he'd expected recognition. That adventure was that of another self, a man with another face and another voice. People so rarely were able to connect the dots between who he was with who he'd been and who he would be.
Next to the Queen sat another woman, likely – no, absolutely a lady-in-waiting. In contrast to the Queen's dignified bearing, she seemed only minutes away from some kind of nervous breakdown, her fingers twisting and locking in with each other in a complicated dance of anxiety.
Ah, Jane Loftus. Should have known that from the year alone.
"Rose, Clinton," the Doctor said, only allowing the slightest bit of annoyance to color his tone. There would be a conversation about Delaine's choices in alias later. "Allow me to introduce her Majesty Queen Victoria, Queen of Britain and Ireland, Empress of India and Defender of the Faith."
Delaine, for all it would have made sense for her to be fully at sea with what to do with royalty - Americans, so delightfully irreverent -, gave a deep bow at the waist while Rose curtsied.
"Rose Tyler, ma'am," she said, a smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth. "My… apologies for being so naked."
The Queen arched an eyebrow, clearly unamused by the proceedings. "I've had five daughters; the shape of a woman's body is nothing to me," she said briskly before turning her scrutiny onto the Doctor. "But you, Doctor. Show me those credentials."
This was where it could get dodgy, the Doctor knew as he handed over the psychic paper. Oh, he could hold a little influence over the psychic paper's readout at this range, but it was the Queen who would decide – consciously or not – what it read in the end. Oh, it would probably say something positive, nothing that would lead to their immediate execution, but 'convenient' was another thing entirely.
She studied the paper closely before blinking in surprise. "Why didn't you say so immediately?"
Because, despite certain cheap tricks and appearances to the contrary, the Doctor wasn't a mind reader... at least not unless that mind happened to be very loud, on a similar wavelength to his own – helped, sometimes, if a particular incarnation had a talent for it, which was not a description of this one –, or he happened to have some form of physical contact to make up the difference. Here, he was running blind.
"It says clearly here that you have been appointed by the Lord Provost as my personal protector," Victoria continued, glancing up to look into the Doctor's eyes. "A lofty position for a doctor."
Does it? Is it? "Yes it does and yes it is," the Doctor replied.
"The Doctor is a man of many talents, ma'am," Delaine said helpfully. "A polymath, some might say."
The Queen's gaze turned quickly to the American, sizing her up before somehow finding her wanting. "The Lord Provost would not choose any ordinary man to serve as my protector, young man. That much is fact."
The 'mind your place' was unspoken but clear enough for both the Doctor and Delaine to pick up. Part of him bristled – the old Time Lord pride rearing its head as it was wont to do –, but instead of being offended or shrinking away, something in Delaine seemed to turn cold. She might not speak out of turn again, but… no, that didn't bear thinking about until it ran the risk of being a problem.
"Anyway," the Doctor said around a cough. "Then may I ask why your Majesty is travelling by road when there is a train all the way up to Aberdeen?"
"A tree on the line."
Oh. "An accident?" he asked, knowing very well it wasn't any such thing.
"Hardly. I am the Queen of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Doctor… McCrimmon, was it?" she said dryly. "Everything around me tends to be planned."
"You suspect an assassination attempt?"
"I have grown familiar with staring down the barrel of a gun," the Queen replied. "Precautions have been taken."
Casting an eye at the soldiers around them, the Doctor wondered how many other precautions had been taken. Not enough to stop more creative plotters, that much was certain.
The mounted soldier from before trotted up, his mount casting the usual suspicious glance at the Doctor before dismissing him. "Sir Robert MacLeish lives but ten miles hence. We've sent word ahead. He'll shelter us for tonight. Then we can reach Balmoral tomorrow."
"These gentlemen and their timorous beastie will be accompanying us," the Queen told him.
The man nodded. "Understood ma'am. We should resume moving; it's almost nightfall."
"Indeed," she replied, her eyes shifting away from the Doctor and towards the horizon. "And there are stories of wolves in these parts. Fanciful tales intended to scare the children. But good for the blood, I think. Drive on!"
With that, the footman closed the door and took up his position on the back of the carriage before it started moving again, the soldiers falling into loose formation around it as it made its way down the road.
Mentally marking the location of the TARDIS, the Doctor and his companions fell in step about ten feet behind the procession.
"Back To The Future? Really?" the Doctor hissed as soon as he was sure none of the soldiers were in the mood to strike up a conversation.
"You're a time traveler, Doc. The door's wide open," Delaine said around a fair imitation of Marty McFly and a grin that said she'd do it again if she thought it was funny. It wasn't that different from his Fourth's. "By the way; nice accent yourself."
He grinned back. "Aye?"
"Mm. Much better than that weird… squeaky weird thing you've usually got going on."
"What you got against Estuary?" Rose asked, before looking back towards the Queen's carriage. "Can you believe it though? Rose Tyler, council estate girl, talking to the Queen. Was like talking to a Tussaud dummy channeling a terrible customer, but it should count for something."
"Ah, I've met boatloads of royal personages," the Doctor said with a wave of his hand. "Half the time, you could replace them with a dummy and no-one would know the difference. I should know; I've seen that scheme done enough with them."
"Really?" Delaine asked. "I'd assume robots before simple mannequins…"
"Yes. Androids are useful like that… if people bother to program them correctly," he said, tucking his hands into his pockets as they walked along. "I recall this one adventure where this bloke called Styggron decided to recreate a small English town in exacting detail – practice for an invasion or something, couldn't make sense of the plot myself –, only to get some of the most elementary details wrong…"
In another universe, the Torchwood Estate may have belonged to the likes of James Bond villains, vampire aristocracy, or especially dedicated adherents of the theater. It was at least three stories high – the irregular heights of the windows made it difficult to gauge where a floor might end or begin –, made of stone and with an observatory parked on top of that, raising the ultimate height by another twenty-five feet easily. From that observatory, the acid-rain stained bronze of a telescope was clearly visible as it pointed upwards at the sky.
The end result was that of a sprawling estate rendered in various shades of black and grey under a partially clouded sky, the cold dry breeze at your back promising to make those clouds a memory at some point in the near future.
A good setting for the coming events, I thought as the royal entourage finally came to a stop.
At first, the place seemed deserted, bereft of anything resembling life. But then, slowly, people appeared. The assassins, I presumed. No ordinary person in this day and age moved with such mechanical, passionless precision, but the fact that all were men of like ages and appearances – save for their vulturine leader, who was at least twenty years older than his underlings – was a giveaway itself.
As some of my other selves would probably note, you could already smell the culty air from here.
The only one not to fit the description of 'bald and athletic' was Sir Robert MacLeish himself; a handsome man, one would suppose, if one with an obvious noose around his neck. His wife – Isobel, I remembered just before he confirmed it – and household staff held hostage, the threat of death hanging over their necks should he fail to play his part.
That didn't prevent him from dropping every possible hint that something was wrong in the house and that the Queen would be better off elsewhere, but all of those warnings were brushed aside, with only the Doctor's sidelong glance in my direction, eyebrows raised, to prove that anyone had picked up on it.
Oh goody. Just as the wrist wearing the limiter started itching - always a sign that it would have been smarter to leave it behind. Not that I could do anything about changing that just yet.
It wouldn't do for a guest to find their wrist more interesting than their host.
"I've had quite enough carriage exercise for one day," the Queen said, dismissing Sir Robert's final attempt at getting her clear of the trap, casting a glance up the high stone walls of the manor. "Besides, I've never had the opportunity to visit this house my late husband spoke so highly of. The Torchwood Estate."
The Doctor's look froze for a second before forcing a thaw. Panic, as was appropriate. This was the origin story for the shadowy organization and one that would set the tone for them for the rest of their existence.
"Now," Victoria said, breaking the spell her words had inadvertently cast. "Let us go inside. And please, excuse the naked girl."
"Sorry," Rose said.
"She's a feral child," the Doctor said with a small shake of his head. "Bought her for six pence in London Town. It was her or the Elephant Man."
"That's not funny," the blonde muttered.
Victoria gave an unamused glance at the pair, not even gracing me with that arch form of disapproval before looking back to Sir Robert. "Shall we proceed?"
The man nodded, stepping back as he guided the Queen and her civilian entourage into the building. Behind them, the soldiers busied themselves with some 'property'; a small locked box, meaning whatever was inside was likely important. Papers or some jewel of import. In another era, I might have even posited a USB drive or something of the like, but computers were simply mathematically minded individuals at this point in history.
So, papers or jewels… ah, right, it had been a jewel, one of the Royal set. Good to know that my deductive skills were a few miles ahead of what the peanut gallery and memories of my favorite show would have supplied me.
As we went into the house and joined the rest of the 'tour', part of my brain was fixed on the math. Hostages, werewolf, a short list of absolutely unacceptable losses… and what I had to work with. The house was built in the style for the era – high ceilings, narrow hallways, and tight corners. Not good for high speed chases, particularly if one was a large creature, inertia being what it was. If the werewolf was built to the traditional specifications, it would be a small advantage to my side of the field that I could exploit if I somehow was unable to get rid of my limiter.
Even at baseline human, I was dead fast and had excellent stamina to match, but straight combat? No, that would not go over well, even if I was pulling every dirty trick I knew to even the odds.
I glanced over the rest of the group. Sir Robert and the Queen in polite conversation, the Doctor and Rose with me in the back, and would-be assassins all around us. Not to speak of all the soldiers outside and whatever hostages were in the building.
It was a large list of objectives, even if I had no interest in saving even a single one of the assassins, but the question of how well I could pull it off without getting caught was… unclear.
The limiter would have to go, clearly, if I wanted to maximize the number of survivors, but how far to go? This was a genre where punching was only the answer a handful of times and this wasn't City of Death.
The tour, after a seemingly endless staircase, finally came to the observatory.
It was a large room for its purpose, with only half of a glass ceiling and a large tarp above that to protect it from the elements. Dust lay thick on the floor and equipment, only the occasional trail of footprints giving away the fact that anyone had even entered the room within the last year or more. Dominating the space was some sort of telescope; the same one that I'd spied from the courtyard. It was a lovely piece, one that I would have been more than happy to call my own.
Even the Queen looked impressed by it. "So this must be the great Endeavor," she said, looking it over.
"Yes," Sir Robert said, taking in the sight of it with that special resignation reserved for those looking at That One Thing that they'd been set aside for. "My father's own design. His last years were totally dedicated to its construction, to the point where he neglected the rest of the manor house. A good portion of it was built by his own hand; mostly the inner workings."
By size alone, it should have been one of the most powerful privately available telescopes of its era, but it had been built for a different purpose than surveying the stars.
Naturally, the Doctor was already in love with it.
"Sounds like a fascinating man; pity I never got the chance to meet him. May I?" he asked, gesturing at the telescope.
"Help yourself."
The Doctor was already there and touching it, gazing through the eye piece. "Oh, she's a beaut. Absolutely rubbish as a telescope," he added as he continued poking around, "but an absolute wonder in design."
Robert tilted his head in genuine curiosity. "What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, there's too many prisms and the magnification too powerful for stargazing," the Doctor said, pointing at certain spots along the line of the 'telescope'. "Closer to a burning glass than a telescope in practice, but between the positioning and the focus being off just enough, you haven't had the risk of fire." He looked up at Sir Robert. "What did he model it on?"
There was a touch of embarrassment in the man before he answered. "It's an original design. My father was, shall we say, 'eccentric'? Sadly, I never thought to ask him anything about it." The embarrassment faded as some memory seemed to ghost across Sir Robert's mind. "I regret to say that we didn't have the… closest father-son relationship."
"Ah. My condolences," the Doctor murmured as he stood up. "Still, a masterwork of a design, even if I couldn't not begin to tell you what it was built for."
"For surveying the infinite works of God. What higher function could man build his devices for?" the Queen said. "Sir Robert's father was an example to us all. A polymath steeped in the sciences, but also versed in folklore and old tales, willing to turn his imagination to higher callings." Her piercing grey-blue eyes turned to the Doctor. "Not unlike yourself, Doctor?"
She knew. She absolutely had to know something about the Doctor. Maybe a passing encounter? Leave it to the time traveler to get around. I would ask Zeke if I had the ability to take the limiter off right now. He'd be the one to know, unless it was an adventure that took place further down the Doctor's time line than he had been, but his memory of previous incarnations tended to be a hazed over to broad details.
Or maybe I was reading too far into it and she was merely bringing up my own reference to the Doctor's multiple uses to serve some point.
"Oh, I do my best," the Doctor said, taking the apparent slight in stride. Easier going than I remembered this one being, but it'd take something properly nasty to get a full measure of him… whether that nastiness came from his own quarter or somewhere else. "Stars and magic. A man after my own hearts."
"Must have had lots of stories to tell," Rose said.
"Oh, yes. My late husband loved his stories dearly. Prince Albert acquainted himself with many of the local legends, but no-one had quite the talent for telling them as Sir George." Victoria recalled, her eyes falling away to some far-away place. "Particularly the tales of the local wolf."
The lead assassin's eyes sharpened at that. Oh, so he'd planned on all parties but his own being unaware of anything to do with his plot? Ha. No one's life was ever that easy, mine included.
"What's this about a wolf, then?" the Doctor asked.
"Just a local folk tale," Sir Robert said quietly. "Nothing of grave import."
Oh, but it was. It was the backstory and keystone to coming events. It was of extreme importance if we wanted to live to see daylight. Our assassins might have wanted us to dismiss it as nothing more than a fairytale, but there was far more meat and bone in it than that.
"No reason not to tell it then," I said, casting a glance at the darkening sky. "It will be a night for one, it seems."
"Well, it is said that –"
"Excuse me, sir," the lead assassin interrupted as he stepped forward. The man had glassy, almost empty eyes, like one of the scavenger birds I'd mentally compared him to earlier turned to taxidermy. While appearances weren't everything, I was one of those people who equated eyes to being the windows of the soul – call it a side effect of being able to actually use them as such when standing in a universe that didn't hate half my essential nature – and nothing about the man seemed to counter that belief.
"Perhaps Her Majesty's party could retire to their rooms. The hour grows late and it is almost dark."
"And then supper?" the Queen asked before casting a glance at Rose. "And some clothes for Miss Tyler. I grow tired of her nakedness."
With that dismissal, we moved on from the observatory, Rose being guided to the rooms of Sir Robert's wife to acquire a suitable dress. No-one except the assassins and I knew what was coming.
Come dark and moonrise, they would make their move with their wolf working at point. When they did that, I would be ready to meet them.
Author's Notes
Updated 11/19/2021
Changed a few bits - mostly for improved flow, some of it to tone down/better explain Delaine's hostility levels. Oh, and peppered in the fact that Delaine (and I) are non-binary - a discovery made a bit after the original posting of the chapter.
(old apology for update issues) Anyway, sorry about the long time between updates. Stuff came up, for both my beta and myself. Unfortunately, they weren't able to help with this chapter (or any of the other based around this episode).
(new apology for update issues) Again, stuff came up - stress, Covid, family health stuff. You know, the usual nightmare. Don't have a beta at the moment though a friend of mind will take up something in that capacity once I'm past all the updated bits so she has more room to work. Have been binging 13 content this month and will follow that up by injecting other DW content directly into my spinal cord once that's sorted. The edited versions of this story's remaining chapters will be worked on within that time period, hopefully without too much delay cause I managed to get 2 done (admittedly, 2 that I'd gotten mostly done years ago) within 24 hours.
Updated again 5/18/2023
Remembered the Disco Demolition Night line in this chapter. 2017-2018 me was only aware of the superficial motivations behind the event and 'hurhur disco bad'. I have since learned more about the history of Disco, improved my own music tastes, and recognized that the hatred of disco at the time was based in racism and homophobia.
The 'Brain of Albert Einstein, Personality of David Lee Roth, and Body of Kelly LeBrock' line was in reference to the character Lisa from the movie 'Weird Science', which is basically Frankenstien meets wacky teen sex comedy as interpreted through the lens of the 80's. Also, Robert Downey Jr. is there. Apart from one pointless section that is more than a little racist for the time period, it's rather enjoyable.
I learned about Tutu and the Pirates watching a documentary on punk music (probably American punk) like… six or seven years ago (probably the documentary 'You Weren't There', but hell if I know for sure) and the name just kind of stuck with me. Anyway, they were probably Chicago's first punk band, coming together in 1977 out of an assemblage of weird friends.
Just so you know, Tutu played the drums.
The Wild Bill Hickok comment was based on the fact that the Eighth Doctor's first outfit (well, after wandering around the hospital he regenerated in wearing nothing but a toe tag and a sheet) was a Wild Bill outfit one of the mortuary workers was going to wear to a New Year's Eve costume party.
Michigan has a saying; 'If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes'. We also have the special kind of idiot who likes to go out on rotten ice on their snowmobiles once the spring thaw hits, dragging their equally stupid friends behind them on skis.
Steven Taylor was one of the First Doctor's companions. A spaceship pilot from Earth's future who got himself marooned and held prisoner on a planet called Mechanus for two years with only a stuffed panda toy named HiFi for company. Very nice hair.
Matt Smith's Purple Wish – the purple outfit that Eleven wore once Clara became a companion. I forget if he said that during a behind the scenes bit or an interview, but 'I got my purple wish' was an exact quote.
'What a Morpork citizen liked to have on his side in a fight was odds of about twenty to one, but failing that a sockful of half-brick and a dark alley to lurk in was generally considered a better bet than any two magic swords you cared to name.' – Terry Prachett, Sourcery
Yes, I am going to drag as many of you as I can into reading Discworld as well.
The Doctor's 'dance' is supposed to be halfway similar to Susan's in the first episode/pilot of Doctor Who. If you guys didn't think I was going to drag you deep into the Classic, you thought wrong.
Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park was a baseball promotion gone terribly, terribly wrong. Or right, depending on your point of view. For the people who owned the part, the teams, and the people who came to watch a doubleheader, it went very wrong, seeing as how the field was pretty much destroyed and the second game couldn't be played at all. For the people who came there to blow shit up, throw disco records around like Frisbees, and start a minor riot… well, they got what they came for.
Brain fever is a very dated (to the point of not being used in modern medicine) term for… pretty much anything that might addle the wits in the 1800's. It could be used to describe shock, PTSD, sunstroke… and probably a whole bunch of different stuff. It's basically a writer's excuse and Delaine used it as a handwave for Rose Tyler's everything.
Jamie McCrimmon was one of the Second Doctor's companions, and his longest lasting one (and the longest running male companion to date, and longest running companion by episode count), showing up in the second story of Two's run (The Highlanders) and only departing in his last story (The War Games). Sadly, many of the episodes of this era are missing, reduced only to audio and telesnaps. Blame the BBC.
Anyway, Jamie McCrimmon – Scottish Highlander, clan piper of the McClarens, named Best Legs In the UK. Don't miss him.
Leela was another Classic companion, to the Fourth Doctor this time. She of the leather bikini (well, more of a leotard), the knife, and Janus thorns. Killed the shit out of everything and screamed exactly once – and only after a giant rat started gnawing on her leg. Would have stabbed a Dalek if given the opportunity.
The Doctor has seen Queen Victoria two times in show canon (going to her coronation at some point during or before his Third Incarnation and the events of Tooth and Claw) but I'm also going to throw in the Fifth Doctor novel Empire of Death for reasons. Mostly because I want to and because I'm taking a bit of material from the various novels to flesh out this fic (for content, background, and ideas for future chapters).
The inclusion of Jane Loftus, even in passing, was to correct an error noted by some reviews of the episodes that said it made no sense for the Queen to be travelling without a Lady in Waiting. So I put on my research hat and found out who was Victoria's Lady in Waiting during the period the episode takes place. You're welcome.
I'm pretty sure that I'm writing Ten's Estuary accent as not being his natural one and that he shares his real one with David Tennant, but if it is going to end up being a minor plot point, it's probably not going to show up until sometime after Rose leaves.
This might not have been a question except for the fact that in The Time of the Doctor, Eleven called out his younger self's accent by calling him 'Dick Van Dyke', which is apparently – I found this out via the TARDIS wiki, so grain of salt – a reference to that actor's awful attempt at Cockney in Disney's Mary Poppins and a possible dig at the Tenth Doctor possibly faking his Estuary accent.
Which would probably work fine for Delaine, since another Estuary-accented character played by David Tennant who just happens to have a very similar speech pattern to Ten is associated with some major past trauma, which will be uncovered gradually, in-universe by the characters most concerned with it.
Some of the other 'replace the royal' plots that the Doctor has gotten involved with include the Androids of Tara and the King's Demons.
The Android Invasion is kind of famous in the Doctor Who fandom for… not really making sense (if you have a super-ultra deadly poison that you're going to kill everyone on Earth with, why do you need all these android duplicates, is dicking around with that human astronaut really necessary, and how is building a hyper realistic simulation of Earth going to actually help out with any of this?) Let's just say that there are a lot of plot holes for a half-standard Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type story.
On the other hand, everyone playing an android is very good at being spooky and the one we see without its skin on is also very creepy.
City Of Death is a weird serial, but most of the serials are weird. This one is mostly weird because it's written by Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's fame. It involves time-travel, the Mona Lisa, and this detective named Duggan who is absolutely clueless and not very good at his job but still willing to punch an alien in the face. John Cleese is there. You really need to see it to appreciate it. Or get the novelization that they finally got around to making. That would be good too.