A/N: This story is what happened when CCT told Babblefest, "I want to see what Angelus and the Doctor would talk about if they met."
To which Babblefest wisely replied, "Angelus would kill the Doctor. There would be no talking."
"Ah, yes," said CCT, raising a finger, "but not if we lock Angelus up!"
Perhaps both should have realized that, given enough time (and Angelus can get himself that time if he just talks long enough), he will escape. And bad things will happen.
Blood and Time followers: This happens before "The Moon Thesis" for the Doctor and Martha.
If you're new to the Blood and Time series: What'cha doin'? Who starts a series at story 11? But okay, you don't have to read the others to read this one. Here's the list of important things to know:
1. This is the Doctor's fourth encounter with Angel. He knows about Angel's soul and what it does for his conscience.
2. Angel knows the Doctor quite a bit better on the more basic personal details, such as what the Doctor did to the Time Lords, that he's father, etc. The gaps in Angel's knowledge will become clear. Also, Angel has tasted the Doctor's blood before, but from 11, not 10. (Ref: A Short Trip Outside the Universe.)
3. Calder: Once a child that Angel accidentally befriended and became a mentor/father figure for (along with Calder's best friend William, who's not really in the story but is relevant to the characters), now an adult and a Champion for the Powers That Be. Angel is his Seer, as he still has the visions that Cordy gave him.
4. Judith: William's mother, Calder's mother-figure, and recently Angel's lover. Their relationship is a sexual friendship, not romance. (Ref: Confidants and Rubies.) They are recently (like 4 months ago) recovering from a traumatic event involving a past Angelus/Darla massacre. (Ref: And None Contented.)
Chapter One
It started with a lie.
"I need it for myself," Ivy said, running her long delicate fingers over the cool metal of the device.
"Yes, of course, but you understand my concerns," Seth said. His sandy blond hair was combed so neatly to the side, Ivy wondered if it was real hair or a well styled wig. It seemed a crime to turn a man into a vampire after he'd started balding.
"I have no plans to destroy any of your precious toys," Ivy said.
"Or buildings?" Seth prompted. He knew that the fae could not tell lies.
"I will not destroy any of your property," Ivy assured him. "Souls are just delicious if served in the proper way. It's going to be quite the birthday party."
"Martha!" The Doctor slapped his scanner against the side of his palm. It either wasn't working, or was working and nothing interesting was happening. Which was why Martha needed to hold the auxiliary piece at an exact 67-degree angle and then he could- "Martha! Hold it up just a bit...a tick..."
The light lit up green on his scanner, indicating the sudden crash of energy rushing into a vacuum. Someone was being drained of life at that moment, but at least this time, the Doctor could track the direction of the attack. Maybe find who was sucking the life out of people and stop them before they could do it again.
Setting off at a run down the city street (a green city street with mossy sidewalks, vine-covered walls, and bioluminescent streetlights), the Doctor shouted, "We've got a read! Come on, Martha, we've got them now!"
Martha shouted behind him, "Doctor, wait! I have to get this unplugged."
Sighing, the Doctor jogged in place as Martha unplugged her auxiliary scanner from where he'd hooked it into the city grid. It took seconds. It took forever. "Martha!" he shouted.
"Coming!" Martha said, running to catch up, wires hanging over her arms.
The moment she caught up with him, the Doctor took off again, running toward danger. Or, actually, a bit parallel to danger until he found a cross-street. He took a sharp right turn around the next available corner, dodging around two men who were talking on the sidewalk. He heard Martha shout an "Excuse us!" as she followed him.
The Doctor continued across the next street and the next. At the next cross street he reluctantly slowed and pulled out his scanner again, hoping to be able to get another reading before the energy signature faded entirely.
"Doctor," Martha started.
"I know! I know! But we need another reading!" the Doctor said, furiously prodding the settings to get an accurate read.
"No, we're being followed."
"We're tracking them. Just as soon as I get this-"
"No, like there are two big men about to catch up with us," Martha said.
"Two big-" The Doctor looked up to see that Martha was correct. Two men were running after them. One had sandy-brown hair, fair skin, was probably early-30's, and he wore a short-sleeved red shirt that seemed a bit light for the cool autumn weather and (more notably) what looked like a sword slung across his back. The other man, trailing just behind and also bearing a sword, had light skin, dark hair, and a short leather jacket.
"Angel?" the Doctor said, relieved that the weapon-carrying men were probably not there to kill them.
Maybe punch him. Angel tended to be touchy that way.
"What?" said Martha, her shoulders tensing for a fight.
"It's Angel!" the Doctor said again as the two men caught up. "He's probably not here to kill us, Martha. Unless he's mad at me again." The Doctor dropped his attention back to his scanner. "Love to catch up, but I'm a bit busy."
Angel and his companion caught up to them, feet pounding until they stopped next to them. Angel's companion was panting hard from their run.
"Doctor," Angel said, not breathing at all. "What've you got?"
"It's a scanner," the Doctor said. "It's supposed to have green lights..." the Doctor adjusted the settings, remembering that the auxiliary had been unplugged so he would need to recalculate the angles to account for...
"Someone has been sucking the life out of homeless people," Martha explained.
"Yeah," Angel said, nodding in agreement, "what have you got?"
"Oh," Martha said. "Uh, the Doctor says there's an energy signature when people use the weapon or whatever it is. We're trying to track that energy."
"You mean we can stop trying to find a particular bunch of red flowers?" the other man huffed. He pointed to the scanner and asked, "Angel, why don't you have one of those?"
"I-" Angel sounded stumped by this question. "I- I have visions, I don't need- Look, it doesn't matter. What matters is between the four of us we can figure out who's sucking the life out of people and stop them. That's the mission and- And we'll do it."
Lame pep talk, in the Doctor's opinion, but they didn't really need pepping anyway, did they? Ah!
"The four of us, huh?" Martha said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Who are you guys, anyway?"
"You don't remember?" Angel asked, sounding confused. Then he sucked in a breath. "We haven't met yet."
"No, we have," the Doctor said, a green light lit and extinguished. He slapped the scanner against his palm. "We did that thing in the monastery. Oh! I look different now!" He looked up, wondering if he needed to convince Angel that he was the Doctor.
Angel looked like he knew it was him. Well, that was helpful. He went back to hitting his scanner. "C'mon! The trail's going to go cold!"
"I'm Martha," Martha said, extending a hand. "This is a weird time travel thing, isn't it?"
"Yes," Angel replied, sticking his hand in his inner coat pocket instead of taking Martha's. "I have something for you."
The Doctor looked up to see Angel pull out an old-looking white envelope and put it in Martha's outstretched hand.
"Wait, wait," the Doctor said. "What's that?"
Martha flipped the envelope over. "It's a letter?" she asked. "For Martha Jones - read alone." She blinked at the envelope. "That's cryptic."
"What's it say?" Angel's companion asked eagerly.
"To read it alone," Martha said, flipping the envelope over to look at the other side. Her fingers ran along the sealed back.
Angel elbowed his companion in the ribs. "Honestly, Calder. She probably can't open it now because of some paradox-thing."
"Paradox-thing?" the Doctor asked, lifting an eyebrow.
"Yeah," Angel nodded. "She's the one who gave that to me, like, 200 years ago."
"Did I?" Martha asked, sounding amazed.
Angel's friend - Calder, he'd called him - looked at Angel and asked, "You've been carrying that letter around for two hundred years?"
Angel shrugged. "I mean, off and on, but I've heard about the dangers of broken paradoxes before."
The Doctor looked up from his scanner again. "Really? From who?"
"You," Angel told him. "After you took Judith and me to see the first fireworks show in China. We ran into you and-well, actually, I guess you still don't remember it, if it's even happened for you yet."
That was very interesting. The Doctor itched with curiosity. When had that-?
The scanner lit up.
"Later, Martha!" the Doctor shouted. "We're back in business!" He set off at a run again, taking a right at the cross street. Three sets of feet followed him and he heard Martha's voice saying,
"Calder, huh? Have we met, too, then?"
"Nope!" Calder replied. "Nice to meet you!"
They careened around the next left and dashed across the street and around several cars with shocked drivers as their vehicles screeched to a halt to let them pass.
"Sorry!" Martha shouted at them as they reached the sidewalk again.
The green light on the scanner started fading again. "Nononononono! Not yet! Come on!" The Doctor sped up, ducking around surprised pedestrians, and nearly missed the next turn down a wide alley. "Whoop, hang on!" He turned so sharply his trainers slid a little on the glowing sidewalk and Angel nearly crashed into him from behind, but then he was off again, following the fading green trail on his scanner to the dead end of the alley, where he skidded to a halt.
"This is it," Angel said as he stopped next to the Doctor. "The place I saw in my vision."
It looked pretty empty. The Doctor looked up along the ivy-covered buildings on either side and in front of them. There was a fire escape made of actual metal on the left-hand building (on one of the landings was a flower pot with red tulips - hadn't Calder said something about red flowers?) and standing about two stories up- "There!" he said, pointing at the small figure of a woman holding what looked like an oversized gun and pointing it at a window. By the outline, the Doctor would guess the gun was alien. Maybe the system of Red Two… Maybe Three? He would have to get a closer look.
Something pale and blue floated through the window and into the gun. The Doctor's scanner lit up again: The gun had claimed another victim. "Nononono!" he shouted, running for the fire escape. If he jumped, he should be able to pull down the bottom portion of the ladder.
"That's a soul," he heard Angel say, along with the unmistakable sound of a sword sliding from its sheath. "That gun is stealing souls. Doctor!"
Probably Red Four then. They did have the technology to spiritually separate themselves from their bodies while keeping the bodies on life support. It was supposed to be enlightening, but the Doctor had never quite trusted the process enough to try it.
He wasn't excited to try the spirit-removal aspect without the required life support either. Still, the woman had to be stopped.
"I thought the people were dying," Calder said, catching up to the Doctor.
"Ripping a soul out can do that to you," Angel said.
The woman heard the commotion and turned, looking down at them. She had eyes so green that it was noticeable from two stories down. In the dark. They glowed almost like an animal's eyes reflecting light.
They weren't normal human eyes. They weren't Red Four eyes either.
She pointed the gun down over the bars and the Doctor skidded to a halt, lifting his hands over his head. "This stops tonight!" he shouted.
"Strong words from someone with the low ground," she said. Her voice had a high girlishness to it that matched her small frame. The Doctor would have taken her for a child if the time around her hadn't looked so distinctly old.
"Yeah, yeah they are," the Doctor agreed, his hands still raised.
There was a sharp-sounding click from the ground, and glancing down the Doctor saw Calder standing with a crossbow trained on the woman. "You kill him, I kill you," he threatened. "And in case it matters, these arrows are made of iron."
"Iron?" Martha asked Calder.
"We're in Ireland. Fae are everywhere," Calder explained.
"She's fae," Angel confirmed.
That was interesting. The Doctor hadn't run into the fae in centuries.
"Fae? As in fairies?" Martha said.
"Rude," the woman said with a huff of air. "Now back off before I turn you into toadstools. Or make all your shoes a little too tight. Or, you know, suck your soul out."
"Doctor," Angel said in a low, urgent voice. "Come on. We need to back away. Regroup." He tugged gently at the Doctor's elbow.
"Suck out their souls and you get iron through the heart," Calder called up to the fae. "Lower the gun."
"You first," she said, the gun moved away from the Doctor and pointed at Calder.
"Hey, hey," the Doctor said, stepping forward in hopes that the gun would redirect at him. He wondered if he did get hit, if he could manage to put his body into a trance to survive the experience. Of course, then it would be up to the others to figure out that he wasn't quite dead and to take the opportunity to put his soul back.
It was a good plan, actually; they definitely should work on doing that. He looked at Angel, wondering just how quickly the vampire could get up to the woman. Probably very if he remembered the destruction at the monastery in Sri Lanka with the demon monks. Angel could really jump if he had a mind to. He'd jumped up one story, at least, but could he do two?
Could the Doctor communicate any of this when Angel seemed fixated on the fae above?
Doubtful.
Still, he really would prefer the gun pointed at him. Or no one. Preferably no one, but he was being realistic here.
What else did he know about the fae?
"What do you want?" he asked. "Maybe we can help you."
"How sweet!" she said. "Let me tell you my plan." She rolled her animal eyes and shifted her hands so only her left was on the gun; the right hand moved in a graceful circle and soft white tufts appeared behind her fingers like someone was blowing the top off of a dandelion.
"Martha, get back!" the Doctor said. Martha grabbed his hand and tried to drag him back as well.
"No spells!" Calder shouted, but the fae continued her chant, a wind picking up the dandelion puffs and blowing them into an oddly precise circle.
"Doctor, can you use the name-thing, like you did on the witches?" Martha asked, still trying to pull him back.
The Doctor wasn't sure he had a more accurate name. "We haven't exactly been introduced!" he objected indignantly.
The fae started a soft chant.
"Okay, you're done," Calder said under his breath. The crossbow twanged and the fae let out a little yip, turning away from the bolt. It hit her in the arm and the circle of fluff blew away as the fae dropped onto the metal of the fire escape and lay there motionless.
They all let out a sigh of relief.
"We'd better get up there," Calder said, starting forward. "I missed the heart. She's going to be weak, but that didn't kill her." He reloaded the crossbow with a casual proficiency that implied he'd used the weapon a lot.
The Doctor winced. This wasn't how he'd planned to end this.
"Angel," Calder said, bracing the crossbow with his feet and pulling the bolt back, "mind doing the honors? The ladder's not pulled down."
"Right," Angel said, hefting the sword in his hand and eyeing up the fire escape.
"Wait," the Doctor said, realizing that the plan seemed to have devolved into chopping the head off of the (admittedly dangerous) fae, "what if we-"
Angel started to run before he could finish.
"What's he-" Martha started to ask as Angel jumped, flying into the air with inhuman strength.
"Angel!" the Doctor shouted after him.
That's when the fae moved. Not just waking-up-from-passing-out moved. Not weak moved; more a predatory jump into a crouch. Her left arm bled from where the bolt was lodged in her bicep and hung useless but the other lifted the gun, aimed it precisely at the top of Angel's jump, and pulled the trigger.
The Doctor started to run again, his mind working the problem. He couldn't get there in time, but Angel's body was technically already dead. Like his own trance, the body should remain immobile until they could get the gun and replace his spirit.
Behind him he heard Calder swear and a second twang as he fired the crossbow again.
The Doctor saw the bolt hit the fae's other arm. She let out a scream and dropped the gun as the blue-white wisp of Angel's soul was pulled into it. The gun clattered against the fire escape, bounced, and dropped.
Changing course, the Doctor's shoes skidded on stray gravel and he ran to catch the gun.
He was only just going to be able to make it. He put on a final burst of speed, reaching out and just managing to grab the end in his hand. Pulling the gun in toward his chest, the Doctor had a second of relief before Martha called out his name.
And then Angel hit him.
Or landed on him. Being hit by the weapon had caused him to miss landing his jump, what with being unconscious and all. He fell on top of the Doctor like 13 stone of potatoes. The Doctor had enough time to think he really should have figured on this before his head hit the concrete and he blacked out.