Text Key
"Audible speech."
'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'
Tooth And Claw
Chapter 9 - Torchwood Blooms
The wolf pounded a fist against the glass of the skylight, a spiderweb of cracks splintering into reality with every hit. It was a testament to its workmanship that the thing was still holding up under the abuse, but it would only take one or two more good strikes before the whole thing came raining down on our heads.
Plenty of time for us to start running for our lives.
The Doctor and I were already to the door, throwing the various pieces of our makeshift barricade aside, getting the doors unlocked and opened just as the wolf finally broke through the glass.
"Astronomy room!" the Doctor yelled as we slammed the doors shut in the wolf's face. "Quickly!"
Tearing my eyes away from the smear of gore on the carpet - was that Captain Reynold's hand there, removed from both his gun and the arm it had once been attached to? -, we ran back to the stairs.
I should have stayed out there. Pushed the Captain back. I could have taken anything the wolf could have dished out and returned the favor with courses to spare - hell, even sticking with my current 'mostly normal' approach would have been more effective than relying on a simple revolver -
'You can't fixate on this, not when you've still got things to do,' one of my other selves murmured. Zeke? I didn't care to try picking out who it might have been. For all I knew, it was my own guilty conscience.
'Take all these pains to hide and then get upset when you don't manage to do something you could have done if you weren't hiding. Just pick one - it'll be healthier for all of us,' a voice that was most definitely Gemma said.
'Oh, shut up,' I thought back around grit teeth as we turned a corner.
Despite the lead we'd gotten between the doors and the wolf's inability to take the corners effectively, it was still less than a breath away from our heels, leaving any amusement at its clumsiness to die on the vine.
And then Rose failed to make one of those corners herself, skidding on the carpet as she slammed into the wood paneling with enough force to rattle the mirror on the wall. She turned, staring wide as the wolf started to loom -
Only for me to pull her out of the way as something hot and noxious splashed over the creature, sending it scrambling back down the hall with a whimpering scream.
Lady Isobel and a few of her maids glared after the wolf, a heavy iron cauldron in their hands. The smell of boiled-down mistletoe lay heavy around it, even as faintly green soup dripped down onto the fine carpet.
"Isobel!" Sir Robert gasped before taking his wife into a tight embrace and kissing her. "Please," he murmured into her cheek. "Take the maids, get to safety."
Isobel jerked back. "What about you?"
"Don't worry about me," he replied, letting his hand slide down the side of her face. "Keep yourself safe."
I looked up as the sound of scrabbling claws returned from down the hall. "It's coming back!"
Lady Isobel threw one more look at her husband – did she sense that he could very well be the next to die? – before running off with the rest of the maids. The rest of us ran in the opposite direction and up the stairs towards the astronomy room.
The sound of scrabbling claws just a story below us was plenty of motivation to keep running at top speed.
As we burst into the astronomy room, Sir Robert hesitated, only to stumble over his own feet as I pulled him into the room by his lapel. There would be no repeat pointless sacrifices tonight, sir. Almost as an afterthought, I pulled a pair of decorative swords off of the wall outside. Near useless as weapons, but they would serve to bar the door for a moment.
And once those were gone, I'd be waiting.
The wolf rounded the last corner, snarling through a still-scalded snout as I kicked the door shut. The sound of a whimper and a series of thuds and bangs as it apparently fell all the way back down to the bottom of the stairwell brought an unfriendly smile to my face as I set the cheap swords through the door handles.
Get dunked on, fuzz ball.
"Rose, Delaine, Robert!" the Doctor called over from the 'telescope'. He was climbing all over the thing, twisting different focuses as a small spot of weakly reflected moonlight fluttered on the floor, brightening and dimming as the Time Lord tried to get the focus on it right. "Help me get this into position!"
"A fine time for stargazing!" Rose snapped before I latched myself onto the main gear that would raise the angle of the telescope. It resisted, which was no surprise given how long it had been left to gather dust, but with the correct application of force in the right places…
"It's not a telescope, it's a light chamber!" the Doctor said as he fell into place beside me and Robert. "Capturing and focusing light to a laser point! If we can get it concentrated enough –"
There was a heavy thud as a large body slammed against the door. The Queen jerked back a bit at that, clutching at her necklace; a jet cross.
I preferred to rely on things I knew where there. Right now, that category was limited to myself, the door, and the makeshift door bar I'd set on it. The swords were holding for now, but for how long would they last?
The Doctor picked up on the urgency as well, twisting harder at the various controls before pulling the Koh-i-Noor from his pocket. "Everything else is in place except for this," he said, holding the diamond in his hand. His eyes fixed on Rose's and then mine. "If this doesn't work…"
"…can you just put it in already? We don't exactly have time for dramatic speeches."
The Doctor swallowed, breaking his gaze away from us as the wolf thudded against the door again. The Koh-i-Noor disappeared into a slot on the telescope and the flickering little spot of focused moonlight suddenly intensified, becoming an inch-thick circle of burning silver light centered right on the double doors.
With the third thud, the swords finally broke apart, shattering into fragments of gilded iron as the doors shattered open behind them. The wolf lunged into the room only to get a face full of focused moonlight directly to the head for its trouble.
It stumbled back with a bewildered expression as the pink burns on its face knitted themselves up, the raw flesh quickly being replaced with fur.
"Doctor, I don't think–" Rose started only for the Doctor to shush her.
"Let it take it," he said as he twisted on one of the prism controls, intensifying the stream of moonlight from a broad beam to a pinprick laser point. The wolf was still trying to move, but there was something sluggish about its movement and the increasingly silver sheen of its fur that didn't entirely jive with the current angle of the moon.
I knew where this was going and the werewolf apparently had realized it too. It lunged to the side, towards Victoria and out of the line of fire. One last attempt at realizing its goal and not enough time for us to realign the laser.
Too bad it would fail. Even as Sir Robert threw himself bodily between the Queen and the wolf, I pulled another silver blade from my armory and into my free hand.
Twist back, pinch between fingers, calculate angle and the force needed to hit the spot where that pinprick of light was no focused, and throw.
The wolf ducked away from the flash of silver as it flew past it, pausing to flash an unfriendly grin at me.
"You… missed."
"Did I?"
The bayonet caught the moonlight laser perfectly, reflecting it back at the wolf and striking it squarely in the back. The creature froze in surprised agony as the silvery sheen that had taken over its fur intensified, brightening enough to rival the sun.
There was just enough time for it to let loose one more frightful howl before it exploded into a splatter of silvery ectoplasm, with the chunks of flesh and fur hanging in it a good reminder not to mistake it for anything charming. Soon, even that began to evaporate, leaving nothing more than wet stains and a faint silvery shimmer like spilled glitter; a soft contrast to the horrible creature that had produced it.
Where the werewolf's primary mass had been, however, was something less whimsical; a withered, milk-white corpse, naked and twisted on the floor, one arm stretched out towards the Queen, six inches short of touching the hem of her dress.
The tension began to bleed out of the room, only to spike as the 'corpse' jerked, raising its head.
Dark eyes, barely visible in the sunken sockets of its face, looked up at Victoria with an emotion I could only describe as relief, only to immediately dim as the child's tenuous grasp on life finally slipped.
"What a pitiable creature," Victoria murmured, slowly releasing the death grip she'd held on her cross.
"Are you alright, You Majesty?" Sir Robert asked as he darted to her side.
"Fine, fine…" she murmured, finally tearing her eyes away from the corpse - another victim of the werewolf, not a monster nor accomplice - on the floor. "I am uninjured."
That was not, I noted, an actual answer to the question.
The Doctor waited, watching the moon – oh what a lovely, terrible thing the moon was, particularly after tonight – slowly make its way across the sky. He could have slept, make the hour or two before sunrise pass a little less tediously, but somehow, he just couldn't find it in himself to relax.
They could have died.
How many times had he had that thought before? There was always that one adventure after a regeneration where fate took it upon itself to remind the Doctor's latest personality that the reality of mortality still applied to him and those he surrounded himself with.
Usually it didn't come with the additional risk of the destruction of history, but those stories were never rare either - there was even one that readily came to mind.
Sutekh.
Oh, the werewolf had been nowhere near the Osiran's level, but it could have destroyed the future just as easily just by dint of knocking a vital point in the web of time out of line. Without Victoria… well. It didn't do to dwell on dark timelines already averted. Fussing over those led down dark roads, the sort that resulted in Celestial Intervention Agencies and people who got ideas about 'optimizing' the universe.
The Doctor sighed, stepping away from the window to pace around the room. At least the situation had been resolved relatively cleanly. If Sir Robert's father had told his son of the plan or kept a detailed journal, it would have gone with nary a hitch.
In the absence of that, a man had lost their life to buy them a bit of time to puzzle out what should have been obvious.
Time. For a Time Lord. There was a bit of unfriendly humor in that.
If not for Victoria just happening to have the Koh-i-Noor on her person, how many others would have died to buy him more time? Sir Robert had almost done it, if not for Delaine making the choice for him. In another timeline – no, more than a few, every single one where he hadn't grabbed onto her arm –, the Doctor could see her attempting to fight it off herself, though the exact form of said fight remained out of focus. Heh, she'd be like another Leela, slashing around with that silver knife against what should count as impossible odds.
The Doctor couldn't quite bring himself to bet against her, though he knew quite well that no ordinary human could have stood up to that werewolf in a straight fight.
'Somehow, I suspect she's anything but ordinary,' his Fourth murmured.
The Doctor had to agree with that, but… 'If you existed anywhere but in my personal Matrix, Four, I'd almost be worried about you poaching my companion.'
'Well, with my charm, you know it wouldn't be hard.'
The current model rolled his eyes as he sat down on the bed. Delaine was his companion, just as much as Rose was. Maybe even more so, since Delaine didn't have another model in her memory to measure him up against.
'But you're concerned anyway. What are you worried about?'
Seven always had to be the one to point out the unpleasant things.
'Because…'
The Doctor couldn't finish the thought yet. Because something was off. There was no tangible reason to be worried about her leaving, there'd been no sign of wanting to go, but…
There were those little moments, and that big one, when Delaine had been at the top of the stairs.
He'd had a few like that, over the centuries. That moment of catching a curtain pulled back and seeing something very wrong behind it.
The small things - flinching, awkward movements, words clearly held back - weren't evidence of much, really. Not yet. But that sensation of looking at a being outside of his understanding for that brief moment… that was more troubling.
Would he have to…?
There was an uncomfortable feeling in the space between his hearts.
No, he couldn't start throwing around accusations yet. Not of being something 'wrong' or of even being friends - friends took a bit of time and right now they were at a solid 'possibility' of that sort of thing, with only two adventures packed into the span of twenty-four hours. But something about her felt important. Like he couldn't afford to lose her.
Why? Did she remind him of someone? Of something?
The Doctor rubbed at his chest, trying to soothe that ache down to something managable. Maybe some sleep was what he needed after all, even if it was just to take a break from the questions buzzing around his head. He could work on these puzzles later - tomorrow promised its own problems to be dealt with in the light of day.
I didn't sleep.
Without my limiter dragging me down to human limits, I technically didn't need to sleep, eat, or drink. If I wanted to, I could even go without breathing. Even walls would be mere suggestions at that point, though I didn't particularly enjoy that trick even under the best circumstances. I made a point to keep doing those things. Muscle memory was part of it, but losing the stimulation… no, there were advantages to those things.
Advantages like sanity and perspective.
I'd met beings like me that had lost those and didn't quite feel like making the same leap. Better to take the small indulgences to stay down to Earth.
Still, just because I still indulged in things like sleep didn't mean I had to. And right now, I had questions that needed answering more than I needed extraneous Z's.
The question was 'had I done enough?'
For all I was limited by the lack of magic in this universe, it wasn't a proper handicap - it was an inconvenience, an annoyance, a mild nerf in the grand scheme of my capabilities. Just because my own preferred talents tended to run its way didn't mean I was useless without it.
So there was no excuse for letting Reynolds die.
'Your desire not to be caught on the wrong end of a creative Time Lord's ire is reasonable,' Alice pointed out. 'I do distinctly recall our dear Professor making a rather severe nuisance of himself when he first joined our collective.'
'Yes, and that was without benefit of a TARDIS or any external tricks - only psychic pressure and my own guile, further sharpened by desperation and a lack of understanding,' Zeke said. 'With more resources on my side, I would wager that our contest would likely not have ended quite as cleanly as it did.'
And that 'contest' hadn't gone cleanly at all, with an unrelated crisis that forced teamwork being the only reason why it ended at all. I still figured that it was dumb luck that that'd happened before Zeke managed to kill me in some capacity.
"I can still feel the migraine you gave me," I muttered, rubbing the bridge of my nose. Over half an eternity and I was still flashing back to the sensation of having my brain battered to pieces from the inside out.
'Yes, I'm still very sorry for that… though, I must say, if there's one thing to be said about the current model, he seems… more receptive to oddities than my counterpart would have been, though I can't testify to how pretty that reception will be the longer you put off telling him.'
"I'll keep that in mind." Specifically, as something I wasn't likely to do, but would probably end up being the smarter choice down the line long after it was too late to actually make it.
Casting a glance at the window and the first traces of dawn beginning to crawl across the sky, I leaned back where I sat and slipped into a light doze.
The next morning saw us kneeling before a Queen. Victoria stood in front of us, a purse clutched in one hand while the other held a sword, even as Jane Flotus trembled in the back. There was a joke in there somewhere. An extra-dimensional transhuman abomination, a renegade Time Lord, and a chav rescue the Queen of England –
"By the power invested in me by the Church and the State," Queen Victoria intoned, lifting the sword above our heads before descending on the Doctor's shoulders. "I dub thee; Sir Doctor."
The sword turned towards the blonde. "Dame Rose."
"And Sir Delaine."
Oh. The Doctor had yelled my name in the tower. The fact that the other half of the secret identity equation had gone unsolved was kind of funny - though, in a way, entirely expected given that I was making the mildest effort there with my powers to pass as needed -, but at least Clint Eastwood wasn't getting a knighthood fifty years before he was born, so far be it from me to correct the nomenclature.
"You may stand."
We rose together, Rose barely able to contain her grin while the Doctor just settled for looking slightly smug. Well, knighthoods didn't come around all that often, even if one had the advantages of immortality and time travel.
"Many thanks, your Majesty," the Time Lord murmured as he gave a small bow.
"Nobody back at the estates is ever going to believe this," Rose said, almost bouncing in place.
"Your Majesty," the Doctor said. "You said last night about receiving no message from the great beyond. I think your husband cut that diamond to save your life. He's protecting you even now, Ma'am, from beyond the grave."
She almost blinked. Almost. "Indeed. Then you may think on this also. That I am not amused."
Oh. Here we go.
The Doctor looked like he'd been slapped with a fish. Not a particularly large one, maybe a smelt. "Eh, sorry?"
"You consort with the subjects of stars and magic as if they are trivial things, Doctor. You change your face as easily as men would change a suit," Victoria continued. "I don't know what you are or where you are from, but it is clear that you are not of this world. So I bar you from it. Your world is steeped in terror, blasphemy, death, and darkness, and I can only hope that by banishing you from mine that it will not be touched by the forces you dabble with."
She cast her eyes towards the door. "You have your reward. Now leave my world, Doctor, and never return."
Fucking typical. The wolf had been here long before the Doctor had showed up, but it was always the person who had showed up right as everything went to pot that got blamed. Human logic at work - fully reactionary, the product of the fear change mingled with ancient superstition, otherwise known as 'pure ingratitude'.
And this was the seed from which would spring Torchwood.
Hah.
The Doctor swallowed, giving a small bow before turning towards the door. Rose and I moved to follow him.
"Sir Delaine, if you would remain –"
I stopped, pivoting around on my heel. "Your Majesty. Do you know the origin of my name?"
"It strikes as French."
"It's Irish."
The Queen stilled.
"So you can imagine that any relationship I have with you is going to be… awkward. Not merely as an American, whom is not bound to honor your country nor empire, but as an individual who has lost an innumerable amount of family thanks to the choices made by those under your auspices," I continued, staring down a woman who was ruler of nearly a third of the world. "I try not to let personal matters get in the way of helping in a crisis, but, alas, the crisis has been resolved. And I intend to accept my banishment gracefully."
With that, I followed the Doctor out of the Torchwood Estate.
'Oh, that was good. Should take that moment and frame it on the wall.'
'I'd call it stupid if we didn't have access to a time machine.'
'Please, like Victoria could ever touch us. After all, we–'
"Are you alright?" the Doctor asked as we stepped out of the main gate, touching my shoulder.
Easing my clenched hand loose again, I let go of the breath I'd sucked in. "I'm always alright."
He didn't look entirely convinced, but Rose cut off any other question.
"I can't believe she banished us for helping," she muttered.
"Different era, different approach to the strange and unusual," the Doctor said with a shrug as we started walking along the road. It wasn't a bad distance to the TARDIS from here – maybe three hours walking at a slow pace–, but just enough to be annoying. "A couple thousand years back, they might have considered us messengers of the gods sent to rescue them from supernatural malefactors. A couple thousand in the future, we're just experts in our given field."
"Stopping monsters?" Rose asked right as I threw out, "Causing trouble?"
The Doctor grinned. "Oh, bit of Column A, bit of Column B."
The road wasn't particularly rough, but we were still grateful when a passing farmer let us ride along in the back of his cart for the rest of the trip. The conversation naturally had to turn to less era-specific gripes - my own background in farming coming up useful in that - and Rose's relative nakedness had been brought up and summarily dismissed, but it did shorten our travel time significantly.
As the familiar blue box came into view and then drew level with the cart, we hopped off, giving the farmer our thanks – his reply was a succinct 'you fuck right on off' – and started walking again.
The Doctor was the first to reach the TARDIS, quickly unlocking the doors.
He turned around to look at us, walking backwards into the TARDIS as he went. "So. Where would you like to go next? Just to be safe, I wouldn't make an attempt at Ian Dury just yet. The TARDIS gets finicky about places she doesn't want to go just yet. Learned my lesson on that one a long time ago."
Really? Was it the Eye of Orion, Metebelis Three, or Heathrow Airport where you realized that it just wasn't going to work out?
Regardless of my thoughts about the pilot, it was nice to be inside the TARDIS again. Unlike the tight and claustrophobic hallways of the Torchwood Estate – would it turn into a headquarters for the agency? Would Sir Robert be executed for his 'treason' despite my efforts to save his life? There were too many uncomfortable questions there –, the TARDIS was the definition of breathing room. Maybe it was just her transcendental nature, but the mundane fact that I didn't have a chance of knocking into a wall unless I deliberately threw myself at one was a sort of reassurance.
Rose turned to look at me.
I blinked. "What?"
"It's your first… well, third trip in the TARDIS. Figured you should get to pick where we go next," she explained. "He does take suggestions, sometimes."
Huh. I turned towards the Doctor, my raised eyebrow all the question he needed.
"You don't think I'd do that?" he asked back.
I know for a fact you don't do that. Oh, you might take a suggestion, but the odds of actually getting there…
"Surprise me," I said, throwing my hand up in the air. No room for disappointment if I didn't have expectations in the first place.
The Doctor smiled as he started fiddling with the console.
"But somewhere outside of the 1800's, please," I added.
"Oh," he said. "That was a given."
Author's Notes
Updated 11/19/2021
Removed the out of place magic discussion and replaced it with a much more relevant discussion concerning the Doctor - while also seasoning in some Zeke deets. Also made the Doctor's continued theme in the updates of actually being sus of Delaine present here.
Thirdly, expanded Delaine's refusal to work at Torchwood with a bit more meat than 'loyalty to a TARDIS crew she's not fully invested in yet'.
Zeke did come into the whole Jumper situation during the Buffy jump via Halloween and all plans point to their first run of 'mental co-habitation' going very, very badly up until a certain point.
Don't sweat the swears, Arashi. I say 'fuck' all the time – not to mention some other choice words –, don't worry about it.
Yes, as a general rule, Time Lords are dicks (to be fair, they're generally the kind of dicks that you're your life inconvenient rather than the douche who pushes you off a cliff). Rassilon is merely the douchiest dick of them all and very on-board with the cliff-pushing and kitten punting.
Sutekh was the main villain of Pyramids of Mars. Effectively a god in the ancient understanding of such, his whole thing was being totally evil bastard and being powerful enough that him getting out of his ancient prison means the destruction of Earth, period.
A werewolf is a bit of a step down from that, isn't it?
The power nerfing is just… to kind of play with the established rules of 'canon', so much as Doctor Who actually has canon. I've already mentioned that the Doctor Who universe does not have magic, though some stories say that in the wake of the Time War, magic started to come back.
I'm not following that rule, though it does bring a few ideas to mind...
Fixed an oversight I'd made in the original version of the story with Delaine's lack of banishment. This time, the Queen didn't banish Delaine herself, but our main took the banishment upon herself as a sort of combination defiance/gesture of solidarity with Team TARDIS, (update) which has since been expanded to involve a personal history gripe. Irish Americans might be annoying about being Irish, but some manifest it through holding grudges rather than inhabiting weird stereotypes.
Or maybe it was just a gesture of 'good job being not awful, please don't leave me with these people'.
Also corrected a problem with the knighting ceremony itself as was pointed out by the Discontinuity Guide, which I am referencing for both the novels and episodes (until they stopped reviewing towards the end of Series 3).
Metebelis Three was a planet that the Third Doctor really wanted to visit thanks to its reputed beauty, eventually getting his wish after literally hardwiring the coordinates into the TARDIS. Unfortunately, it really should have had a reputation for giant body-jacking spiders.
The Eye of Orion… is generally not a terrible place but considering that the one time the Fifth Doctor managed to get there ended up with him and his companions getting whisked away to a place called The Death Zone (which I believe I mentioned during the Highlights of Rassilon) and he kept trying (and usually failing) to go there after that. Too good not to mention.
The Doctor's inability to get to Heathrow Airport is (almost) the entire reason Tegan Jovanka, a companion to the Fourth Doctor (for approximately two hours before he fell off a building and died) and the Fifth Doctor, was a companion in the first place. The first time he (sort of) succeeds, they end up being three hundred years early for her flight.
Also the Master stole an airplane. For slave labor in the Jurassic Period, because he needed to dig up some alien that would give him supreme power or some shit. Why he couldn't have just hypnotized a dinosaur or something…
Other Universes/Jumps I've explicitly referenced Delaine having visited already so far include:
The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Hellblazer
Legend Of Zelda
Alice In Wonderland (which version or adaptation though, remains to be seen)
The Elder Scrolls
Star Wars
DC Comics
Fallout
There are quite a lot more I've got written down or powers and experiences displayed that may have come from other sources, but I'll only name them more specifically when they show up.