Brem's Eleventh Hour (2/?)
Title - Brem's Eleventh Hour (2/?)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Amy, Rory, OCs
Spoilers - Through "The Eleventh Hour"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - "Eleventh Hour" re-imagined for the Chaosverse.
Author's Note - Yes, there is a character-name-gap in here. I was too lazy to look it up, and, since the story isn't finished, I've excused myself from that task.
Part One
Brem came to with his arm at an uncomfortable angle and his head pounding and his cheek against hard, dusty, uncomfortable dirt. He wrinkled his nose and then opened his eyes on a pair of legs. The legs were talking. Or, rather, the woman attached to the legs was talking.
“White male, early 30s, trespassing. Send me some backup, I’ve got him restrained.”
Brem wrinkled his nose again. Was she talking about him? Restrained? He struggled to sit up, coughing slightly as he dislodged more dust, and the legs, and the woman attached to them, turned in his direction.
“Oi,” she said. “You. Sit still.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, though. He was staring at the handcuffs that ran from his left wrist to the leg of the swing set beside him. He turned wide eyes on the woman. “Did you hit me? And then handcuff me?”
“You were trespassing,” she said, a little defensively.
“Trespassing? I-“
“And you crashed into my shed.” She flung out a disgruntled arm.
Brem looked at the direction she was indicating, at the ruins of the shed. “Not me,” he said, offended. “My ship. Like I’ve any control over where my ship tries to land.” He looked back at the woman.
She was staring at him now as if he were a ghost.
Which he kind of didn’t have time for. She was dressed as a policewoman, which meant there was probably a whole world of trouble about to descend upon him, and he didn’t want to be locked in a prison cell with Harry unattended in his control room. “Look, you need to uncuff me now.”
She seemed to have recovered, folding her arms now and lifting her eyebrows toward the police hat she was wearing. “Oh, really? Why? I have backup on the way, you know.”
“Yeah, fine, but I’ve got a baby in my ship and you need to uncuff me so I can go make sure he’s okay.”
“You’ve got a baby?” she said.
“Yes,” he affirmed, impatiently, jangling at the handcuff.
“You’ve got a baby?”
He bristled. “Why’s that so difficult to believe?”
“No reason, you just don’t seem like the…type.”
“The type to have a baby? Is that a type?”
“Yeah. It is a type.” Her chin jutted out challengingly.
“This is the most ridiculous conversation. And, anyway, it isn’t my baby.”
“So now I’ve got you for trespassing and kidnapping.”
“It’s my sister’s baby. Bloody hell, would you just uncuff me already?”
“So you’re telling me you’ve got a baby, in that box, that you just used to destroy my shed?”
“Yes, I-Hang on. Your shed? But you’re the police.”
“Yes, and I live here. Have you got a problem with that?”
He decided he didn’t really care. “Just uncuff me,” he demanded again.
“I don’t have the key, I lost it,” she replied, primly.
“How can you have lost it?” he exclaimed. “What kind of policewoman are you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “That was unnecessary. Look, if you really do have a baby in that box, I’ll fetch him for you.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Brem.
“Is it? Is it really?” She walked over to the TARDIS and tried the door. “It’s locked,” she announced.
“Yes. I know that.”
“So where’s the key?”
“I’ll show you my key if you show me yours,” said Brem.
She looked at him with a frown. “Are you flirting with me?”
Brem swore in Gallifreyan and shifted to dig into the pockets of his jeans. “Where’s my sonic screwdriver?” he asked, in annoyance.
“Now I know you’re flirting with me.”
“I’m really, really not,” he retorted, grimly. “That’s what it’s called: a sonic screwdriver. And I need it.”
“Is it this?” she asked, dangling it in front of him, just out of his reach.
He huffed in exasperation. “Yes. May I have it, please?” He held out his hand calmly.
She did something then he didn’t expect. She knelt on the ground in front of him, really close enough that if he’d so desired he could have taken the sonic screwdriver out of her hand but he was distracted by how intently she looked at him, searching his eyes. If she’d been a telepathic creature, he would have thought she was trying to read his mind, but she was quite human, and he was quite bewildered. “Did you come about the crack in my wall?” she whispered.
He stared at her, and then his eyes flickered to his crashed TARDIS. TARDISes normally didn’t crash unless they were trying to get your attention. He looked back at the policewoman in front of him. “I think,” he said, “that yes, I did. But you need to uncuff me, and I need to get Harry, and then I’ll look at the crack in your wall.”
“But you can’t,” she said, looking confused. “You closed it before. Or not you. Another one of you.” She suddenly shifted to sit heavily beside him, staring into space. “Why do I keep hallucinating men in boxes crashing into my shed? And if I’m hallucinating, what destroys the shed?”
Brem continued to stare at her, trying to piece things together. “Have I been here before?”
“What’s your name?” she asked him, looking at him now.
“Brem,” he answered.
“Are you a doctor?” she said.
He was asked that question, through space and time, more often than he would have predicted when he had started traveling on his own. And he had worked out by now how to answer it. He smiled and he said, “Close enough. Now if you give me the sonic screwdriver, I can uncuff myself, and I can go get Harry, and then I can look at the closed crack.”
“But why? Like I said, it’s closed.”
“I’m sure it is. But, all the same, man in a box crashes into your shed again, maybe he should do a bit of poking ‘round before he leaves.”
For a long moment, she regarded him as if weighing her options, and then she slowly handed him the sonic screwdriver.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerely, and then twisted to buzz the handcuffs off, jumping up as soon as he was free and running for the TARDIS, pulling his key out of his pocket as he went. He opened the door and headed inside. Harry was still safely on the captain’s chair, and he clapped his hands and giggled with delight upon seeing Brem. “Excellent,” said Brem, scooping him up. “Did you enjoy your time to yourself in my TARDIS? Figure out faster-than-light travel yet?”
Harry giggled again.
“Okay, you and I are going to have a very, very, very small adventure, but if neither one of us tells your mum and dad, we should get away with it, right? Deal?” Harry reached out and tugged at a strand of Brem’s fringe. “That I will interpret as a yes. You’re going to be a lot easier to deal with once you learn to talk, you know.” He turned and at that moment realized that the policewoman had followed him inside, was standing just inside the door studying everything. “Let’s go,” Brem told her, smiling, and nudged her out the door.
She opened her mouth, and then seemed to think better of it and closed it.
Brem smiled again, and then said, “This is Harry. Say hello, Harry.” Harry gnawed at his fist again. “That’s his version of hello,” Brem explained, helpfully. “Actually, it’s kind of his all-purpose response.”
The policewoman looked at him. “He’s cute,” she said, vaguely, and then frowned in a thought. “You had a baby in a box, but it was bigger on the inside…”
“Yeah. Forget about it. Listen, call off your backup, and then show me where this crack on your wall was.”
She focused on him. “My backup?”
“Yeah, your…” He gestured to her outfit with the hand that wasn’t holding Harry. “Backup,” he finished.
“There is no backup,” she said.
“You said there was backup.”
“I was bluffing.”
“But you’re a policewoman,” he pointed out, in confusion.
“How thick are you? Look at what I’m wearing.”
Brem looked her up and down. “It’s…a police uniform.”
“Look at my legs,” she bit out.
He did. “They’re…quite nice,” he told her, honestly.
She made a frustrated noise. “Have you ever seen a policewoman wear a skirt like this?”
“I dunno! I honestly don’t spend much time look at policewomen’s legs.” He glanced back at her legs. “Maybe I should be spending more time looking at policewomen’s legs,” he admitted.
“Stop looking at my legs.”
“You’re the one who brought them up!” he protested. “Why are you dressed as a policewoman if you’re not one?”
“You were trespassing in my back garden! I had to think quickly! This seemed more likely to inspire fear than the French maid outfit.”
“French maid?” echoed Brem, and then, slowly, “Hang on…”
“My God, you’re slow on the uptake, aren’t you? I don’t think I even want you looking at the crack in my wall.”
He frowned. “I’ll have you know, I’m brilliant at saving the planet. Alien invasion, I’m your man. Finding strippers in disguise, not my forte.”
“I prefer ‘kiss-o-gram.’”
“Yeah. And I prefer not to be mistaken for a doctor everywhere I go. Now. Do you want me to look at the crack in your wall, or don’t you?”
“It’s a closed crack,” she reminded him. “There’s nothing to look at.”
“My TARDIS crash-landed in your yard. You know what it means when a TARDIS crashes?”
“Yeah. It means my shed is ruined.”
“No, it means you’re in need of a Time Lord. And trust me, that is a very, very bad thing to be in need of.”
She stared at him. “What’s a Time Lord?”
He smiled and answered, “Help.”
There was a long moment of indecision. Harry muttered to them as he gnawed on his fist some more. And then she said, shortly, “It’s this way,” and marched away from him, toward the house.
Brem followed behind her, Harry in one hand and sonic screwdriver in the other, deep in thought. So his TARDIS had crash-landed, which normally meant he was needed. And it had crash-landed in a place his father had evidently been before. He’d check on this crack in the wall, figure out what was going on, and then call his father for a consultation. No one would be in danger, least of all the child in his arms, he decided.
He was following the woman up the stairs, and he thought he needed to ask her what her name was. He was just about to ask her when something distracted him in the hallway. He looked over the staircase, down to the bottom, trying to figure out what was wrong.
“Just give me a second to…clean,” she called from one of the rooms.
He moved away from the staircase, into the room she’d disappeared into, just in time to see her stuffing a pile of papers into a wardrobe and slamming the door shut. She looked at him, and he could see her trying to come up with an explanation.
“I don’t want to know,” he cut her off. “Now. Where was the crack?” He looked around the room.
“There.” She pointed at a decidedly crack-less wall.
“Here we go, Harry,” he said, conversationally. “We have the sonic on this setting-“ He showed the baby, who did look at it obediently, although he did not stop gnawing on his fist. “-and this should pick up any wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness leaking around here.” Brem held the sonic up the wall and watched its reading. “And there’s none,” he realized, surprised, lowering the sonic. He regarded the wall. “Well. That’s disappointing. I was hoping to have to clean up after him and then hold it over his head.”
“Who?” asked the woman.
“Although…” He did a full circle of the room, thinking. “No, I’m missing something. He missed it, and now I’m missing it.” He looked at the woman. “How long ago was my father here?”
She blinked as he walked past her into the hallway. “Your father?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. My father. He was here before me. The Doctor, right?” He spoke as he looked up the next staircase, into the room across the hall. He looked back at the woman. “That’s who he said he was, right? The Doctor? Looked like me? Only brown suit and a brown coat? Or a blue suit and a brown coat?”
“It was a brown suit,” she said, “and yes, but…I don’t get it, you’re, like, a family of men in boxes?”
“And women,” he said, looking out the window at the back garden. “There’s something I’m missing.” He straightened, and the realization hit him then. He stared at the woman, focusing on something just outside of his sight.
“What?” she asked, staring back at him.
He didn’t dare move a muscle, focusing, focusing, one had to focus to break a perception filter, one had to see. “Out of the corner of my eye,” he breathed, slowly, and he moved just as slowly, forced the focus to sharpen. He looked at the door at the end of the hallway. “How many rooms on this floor?” he asked, not looking at the woman.
“What?” She sounded like she thought he was daft.
“How many rooms?” he repeated, staring at the door.
“Five.”
“Six,” he corrected. “There’s six.” He looked back at her then. “Okay, two things. One, you need to tell me your name. And two, you need to tell me about the crack that was in your wall.”
“My name is Amy,” she said, “and I don’t know anything about the crack in my wall! It was so many years ago, and anyhow, I imagined it.”
“You imagined the crack? No, you didn’t.”
“Four psychiatrists said I did.”
“Psychiatrists,” Brem scoffed. “What do they know? If you’d ever had a chat with Freud, you’d learn to be skeptical of psychiatrists.”
Amy was the one who looked skeptical. “And I suppose you’ve had a chat with Freud?”
“Yes,” replied Brem, simply. “I have. Okay, Harry and I are going to go back to the TARDIS and call my father to see-“
Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded.
Brem looked out the window in alarm, as the words boomed through it.
Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.
Amy’s eyes widened. “Human residence? Does he mean this?”
“Possibly,” admitted Brem.
“But who is that? And why do they want to burn up my house?”
“It would seem to have something to do with this ‘Prisoner Zero.’”
“Well, obviously, but why are they here?”
Brem gave her a look.
“You’re saying Prisoner Zero is here? That’s not possible. How can that be possible? I live here.”
“Yeah, with some kind of vicious escaped extraterrestrial convict, it seems.”
“Extraterrestrial? You mean, it’s an alien?”
“Amy, really, do you think anything that’s happened today, aside from, you know, you-“ He waved his hand to indicate her. “-has been terrestrial?”
She stared at him. “Are you an alien?”
“I really prefer ‘visitor,’ and we have to go, because you’re harboring a-“ Brem grabbed Amy’s hand and turned to run just as the sixth door opened and a man and a Rottweiler emerged. “Fugitive.”
“How did he get in here?” gasped Amy.
Attention, Prisoner Zero, boomed the voice outside.
“I think they’re looking for you,” Brem said to the man.
And then the man began barking.
“What?” said Amy, sounding as if this were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen. “No, seriously, what?”
“It’s an interdimensional multi-form,” said Brem. “And it got dressed in a hurry.”
The man growled, and then opened his mouth, revealing long, narrow, sharp, pointed teeth. Harry in his arms made a small sound like a squeak and gnawed harder on his fist.
The human residence is surrounded.
Prisoner Zero seemed to get distracted by this announcement, wandering into the room to his left in order to peer out the window, to ascertain the human residence really was surrounded.
“Go,” said Brem, pushing Amy. “Go, go, go!”
She dashed down the stairs, and he dashed down them afterward, Harry clinging to his T-shirt in order to hang on.
“You mean to tell me that Prisoner Zero is real?” Amy shot over her shoulder, as they exited the house. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Wait a moment,” said Brem. “You know about Prisoner Zero?” When Amy didn’t answer, he reached out and pulled her to a stop, whirled her to face him. “What do you know about Prisoner Zero?”
“Just that he escaped. Last time, when your father was here.”
Brem felt his eyebrows skid upwards. “My father was here, and Prisoner Zero escaped, and he didn’t stop to catch him?”
“Well, evidently not, since he’s been living in my house. With! Me! I could have been killed!”
“Yeah, you could have been,” mused Brem. “And that’s not like my father. How long ago did you say he was here?”
Prisoner Zero suddenly opened the door, the man still barking. Amy looked at him and then at Brem. “Can we talk about this later?” She turned on her heel and began dashing away from the house.
Brem frowned and dashed after her. “How much later do you want to talk about it? I need to figure it out now, or your house is going to be incinerated.”
“I thought you were calling your father? To discuss this with him?”
“Fine. Can I have your mobile?”
“You’re going to use my mobile, to call your father?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you were an alien.”
Harry was looking between them as if it were a tennis match. Brem shifted him to the other arm. “I said I preferred ‘visitor,’ and so?”
“So I’m not letting you use my mobile to call an alien. Those charges must be literally out of this world! Why can’t you just, I don’t know, beam him here?”
“Beam him here?” echoed Brem, in disbelief. “What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know! Apparently, I’ve been living with an alien fugitive for twelve years and now my house is going to be incinerated and there’s a family of men in boxes who go around crashing into sheds! I don’t think the idea that you could beam your father here is that far-fetched, Brem!”
“Twelve years? My father closed that crack twelve years ago, and nothing’s happened since-“
Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.
“Hang on.” Brem turned his head, staring at the ice cream truck a few meters away from them. An ice cream truck no longer playing Clare de Lune but instead broadcasting a threat from the guards of an alien prison. “The human residence will be incinerated,” repeated Brem, under his breath. And then he whirled to Amy so quickly that she took a step breath. “I need your phone, and I need it now.” He held out his hand.
She handed it over, still staring at the ice cream truck. “How can they be doing that?”
“Hold him,” said Brem, handing Harry across.
She took him automatically, watching as he zapped the mobile with his sonic screwdriver. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling my father.” He stuck the sonic back in his pocket, dialing the phone now.
“How are they broadcasting through the ice cream truck?”
“It’s not just the ice cream truck, it’s everything. Because they have the human residence surrounded.” He put the phone to his ear, listening to it ring.
“They mean Earth,” said Amy, not really to him, still staring at the ice cream truck.
“How can he not be picking up?” complained Brem, as the TARDIS phone rang and rang and rang. Swearing, he ended the call and dialed his mother’s mobile instead. Which also rang and rang and rang. He swore again and handed the phone back to Amy. “Okay, that was useless. Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“I haven’t come up with it yet.”
“Oh, well, that’s brilliant.”
“Look, it’s a Time Lord tradition, okay? You can’t plan a plan, or it doesn’t work.”
“But that’s why they’re called ‘plans,’ because you have to plan them.”
“They’re going to incinerate the Earth in twenty minutes, and you’re arguing semantics with me? The semantics of a language that’s going to be obsolete in eight hundred years?”
“You know, whenever you’re losing an argument, you start babbling about the world ending.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not. And you know how I know that? Because I don’t lose arguments.”
“What makes you say twenty minutes?”
“What?” Brem was momentarily thrown.
“You said they’d incinerate the Earth in twenty minutes. Where’d you get that number?”
“Oh. I did some complicated mathematical equations.”
“You just plucked a number out of thin air, didn’t you?”
Brem frowned. “Can we focus here?”
Amy smiled. “Gotcha,” she said.
His frown deepened. “Would you excuse me? While I try to do something useful?” He strode purposefully away from her, over to the small common they had been standing near.
“Something useful like what?” she asked, following him.
“Right now, there are prison guards orbiting this planet, and do you know what they’re looking for? Something alien. And guess what I am.” He winked at her, as he lifted his sonic screwdriver aloft.
She smiled at him. “A visitor,” she said.
“Exactly.” And then he activated the sonic.
Glass shattered up and down the common, streetlamps exploding. Sirens and car alarms sounded, blaring. People were shouting, trying to control machines that were no longer letting themselves be controlled. Harry watched it and clapped his hands and giggled with delight at the display.
Non-human technology detected, droned the announcing voice, and suddenly a spaceship appeared in the sky. A spaceship that looked like a snowflake and had a giant eye.
“Is that what spaceships look like?” asked Amy.
“Some of them,” answered Brem, unconcerned, as the huge eye swooped down and studied him closely.
Negative, said the voice. Prisoner Zero not detected.
“Wait a second!” protested Brem, as the eye withdrew and tucked itself back into the spaceship. “I’m not Prisoner Zero, but he’s here!” The spaceship, however, zoomed away, and Brem tore his hands through his hair in frustration. “Dammit,” he said.
“Now what?” asked Amy.
“Plan C,” said Brem, staring up at the sky and thinking. “Just…give me a second to come up with it.”
“Amy!” shouted a voice, and Brem, Amy, and Harry looked in the direction it had come from. A man was dashing toward them, dressed in hospital scrubs. “Amy! Did you see? That thing? In the…” He trailed off. “Whose baby is that?”
“Oh, it’s…his.” Amy nodded toward Brem.
“Hello.” Brem waved cheerfully. “I’m Brem. Who are you?”
“I’m Rory,” he said, looking at Brem as if he hadn’t made up his mind what to think yet. “Amy’s boyfriend.”
“Kind of,” inserted Amy.
“Why do you say that?” Rory asked her.
“Don’t have time for domestics right now,” Brem interrupted. “We need to-“
“Brem,” Amy cut him off, looking over his shoulder. “It’s Prisoner Zero.”
Brem looked behind him. The man with the Rottweiler, standing a few feet away, barked at him.
“That’s Mr. ________,” said Rory.
Brem turned to him, intrigued now. “How do you know him?”
“He shouldn’t be out here.”
“How do you know him?” Brem insisted.
“He should be-“
“In hospital. In a coma,” Brem finished with him.
Rory looked astonished. “Exactly. How did you know?”
“Plan C,” Brem announced to Amy, triumphantly, with a little flourish. “Back to the TARDIS. Come on, Harry.” He pulled Harry out of Amy’s arms and then took off at a mad dash, confident that Amy would follow behind him.
Which she did, as did Rory. As he skidded to a stop in front of his TARDIS, they were both right with him, and he decided he approved of their running abilities.
“What’s Plan C?” asked Amy.
“You and Harry are going to sit here in the TARDIS. I’m going to the hospital.”
“Wait, what? No, that’s not a Plan C.”
“It is a Plan C.”
“You’re going by yourself?”
“Look,” he said. “This planet is ten minutes away from incineration, and, let’s be brutally honest for a second, my chances of stopping it are probably not more than seventy percent. If this planet is incinerated, this-“ Brem tapped his TARDIS’s door -“will not be. It’ll be perfectly safe, and so will Harry. Which I promised his parents he would be. Someone needs to stay with him, and, if it’s me, the chances of saving this planet from incineration fall to zero. So what do you propose?”
Amy looked evenly at him for a second, then took Harry out of his arms.
“Good,” said Brem, turning to unlock and open the door. “If something happens to me, an emergency programme will engage, it’ll take you to my parents’ TARDIS. They’ll know what to do.”
“Got that, Rory?” said Amy.
“What?” said Rory.
“What?” said Brem, turning away from the TARDIS.
“Rory’s going to watch Harry. We’re onto Plan D now, and that’s you and me saving the planet from incineration together.”
“You and me?” echoed Brem.
“How are you going to get into the coma ward without a policewoman?”
“I was going to use my considerable charm, followed by brute force.”
“My plan is better. And we don’t have time to argue. Let’s go.” She strode away from the TARDIS.
Brem looked at Rory, who was holding Harry and looking absolutely floored. “Okay,” Brem decided, not seeing any other options. “It’s bigger on the inside, and if you touch anything, you could end up collapsing time and space, got that?”
“What?” asked Rory, sounding strangled.
“Excellent,” said Brem, and kissed Harry’s cheek. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” he told the baby. Then he pushed Rory inside the TARDIS and pulled the door shut and raced in the direction Amy had disappeared in. She screeched up to him in a tiny car, and shouted, “Get in!” as she leaned over and threw open the passenger seat.
He did, and she took off again immediately, taking a corner sharply enough that he collided with the door with an oof. “Do you always drive like this?”
“Only when the planet’s about to be incinerated. Do you have a plan?”
“Yes,” he said, bracing himself against the dashboard and closing his eyes against his will as she made a particularly daring turn. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“No, I know, a plan for when we’re inside the hospital.”
“Oh. No. Not really.”
She glanced at him. “I thought you were brilliant at saving the planet!”
“I am! I’ve kept it intact so far, haven’t I?”
“I haven’t made up my mind about you yet,” remarked Amy, grimly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. Ask me again if we’re still alive in five minutes.” She skidded to a halt in front of the hospital and they both jumped out of the car. The receptionist looked at them in surprise as they dashed in, and stood up as if to say something. “Important police business!” Amy threw over her shoulder, as they kept running.
“Do you know where the coma ward is?” asked Brem.
“This way.”
“Clear these rooms,” Brem said, frowning at the people they were passing. “Tell them they have to evacuate.”
“Everyone get out!” Amy shouted. “Everyone! Out!”
People were staring at them, as they tumbled into the coma ward’s doors and drew to an abrupt halt. There was a woman there, holding the hands of two perfectly, identically dressed little girls, and she smiled at them with such sickening sweetness that Brem felt Amy take a small step closer to him.
“It won’t work, you know,” said the little girl on the left, speaking in the adult’s voice. “None of your plans. The Atraxi can’t detect me in my human form.”
“I don’t have plans,” Brem said. “Shows how well you know me.” He ran his eyes around the coma ward. “Open consciousness, right? Psychic link? Clever.” He looked back at the little girl. “They’re going to incinerate the entire planet. You included. What good does it do you?”
The little girl sighed. “You’re right. I should just turn myself in, shouldn’t I?”
“I won’t deny that it’d make my life a hell of a lot easier,” said Brem.
“The Atraxi will kill me.”
“They’re going to kill you now,” Brem pointed out, and he pointed the sonic screwdriver at the nearest window.
The glass exploded in a deafening crash. Amy ducked behind him, away from the worst of it, but he had already moved onto the next window, and the next, and then the next. The woman-and-children watched, their needle-sharp teeth bared.
Non-human technology detected, droned the voice now.
Brem felt Amy run to the window, and then say, “There’s lots of ships here.”
“But they still won’t find me,” spat the woman-and-children.
“Pitch a sonic screwdriver just so,” said Brem, twirling it in his hands, “and you can disrupt even a psychic link.” His eyes cut quickly to Amy. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she didn’t quite finish asking, because he pressed the button and she fainted dead away. He caught her instinctively, even as he watched the woman-and-children in front of him flickered into a huge, scaly, slimy snake with needle-sharp teeth.
Prisoner Zero detected, crowed the voice, triumphantly.
Prisoner Zero snarled and thrashed and vanished in a bust of teleportation.
Brem gently set Amy on the floor of the coma ward and knelt over her. Her hat fell off her, revealing a cloud of ginger hair. “Alright, Amy,” he said, speaking to her unconscious form firmly. “That was just a blip. You’re regaining your equilibrium and you’re going to open your eyes right now.” Her eyes fluttered open. “Oh,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t think that was actually going to work.”
She focused on him. And then she frowned and slapped his face.
“Ow,” he exclaimed, shocked, putting his hand to his smarting cheek. “What was that for?”
“What the hell did you do?” She sat up.
“I just saved the planet!”
“What did you do to me?”
“I had to disrupt the psychic link!”
“The psychic link wasn’t with me!”
“In order to disrupt it, I had to throw off all the human brain waves in the room for a second.”
“You threw off my brain waves?”
“It was only for a second, and you’re perfectly fine.”
“Where’s Prisoner Zero?”
Brem picked himself up. “Back with the Atraxi, and good riddance. Although, I’ve got to track these Atraxi down. You can’t just threaten to incinerate an established planet like Earth and get away with that.” He reached down to help Amy up, but she wavered when she stood up, pitching into his arms. “Okay?” he asked.
“No,” she retorted. “You did something with my brain waves, and now I’m dizzy.”
“Maybe we should just rest here for a second,” Brem decided, and he sat against the wall.
Amy sat next to him, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes.
There was a moment of silence.
Brem looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, it…I can’t describe it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, after a pause. “I didn’t figure out what I had to do until right before I did it, and there wasn’t time to…” He trailed off. Sometimes, he thought, all he did was go scattering apologies through space and time. He leaned his head back against the wall like Amy and closed his own eyes.
“So this is what you do, is it?” she ventured, after a moment.
It was so like what he had just been considering that he chuckled. “What would you call it?”
“I honestly have no clue.”
“Then that makes two of us,” he said, and opened his eyes.
She was looking at him now, curious hazel eyes in a pretty, freckled face. “So you’re an alien,” she said.
“So to speak, yes.”
“You look human.”
“You look Time Lord.”
“Is that what you’re called then? Time Lord?”
“Yes.”
“And your box is a spaceship?”
She looked very openly interested in it, something Brem was somewhat unused to. Normally, in with the curiosity was a healthy dose of fear or distrust or just plain pity for his madness. Amy just looked fascinated. “And a time machine.”
“A proper time machine?”
“As opposed to an improper one?”
“And you just…”
“Travel,” he finished.
“Tell me about your favorite place.”
“I don’t have a favorite place. My TARDIS is my favorite place. And all the other places are just…” Brem considered the word he wanted to use. “Wonderful,” he concluded, finally, thoughtfully, looking at the glass he’d shattered, carpeting the floor of the coma ward. “Even the ones where they want to kill me, they’re still…wonderful. All in their own way.”
“It must be amazing,” breathed Amy.
Brem looked back at her. She was also looking at the glass along the floor. He said it before he thought, and it wasn’t that unthinking speech was unlike him-mostly, he let his mouth babble and waited for his thoughts to catch up with him-but it was unlike him to say what it was he said, which he had said only once before in his life to a woman who had then turned him down and broken his heart. “Come with me,” he said.
“Oh, I…” She still didn’t look at him, and her breath caught, stumbled, tellingly, in the direction of the glass on the floor, before she finished. “I can’t.”
He reached out, a finger under her chin, lifting and tipping her head until she was forced to look at him. Her eyes were very wide. He tipped a corner of his mouth up in a smile. “Come with me,” he said, again, softer this time.
Her lips parted, but it was a moment before she spoke. “That would be…It is…utter madness.”
“There’s a planet called Babylon, you know. The trees have leaves like prisms, and the skies are full of rainbows.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Four psychiatrists, Brem, told me there are no men in boxes knocking down my shed.”
“What’s your last name?” he asked, softly.
“Pond.”
“If you are making all of this up, then you have a very impressive imagination, Amy Pond.”
She startled him by grabbing the front of his T-shirt and pulling him to her and kissing him. He had not expected that at all, and he made a muffled exclamation of surprise, and then he kissed her back, hands caught up in her ginger hair, and so he was snogging Amy Pond, stripper dressed as a policewoman, in a coma ward.
She was the one who broke the kiss eventually. “Okay,” she told him. “My imagination is pretty impressive.”
He smiled a bit, then stood up. “Let’s go. The real police are going to be here eventually, and I don’t like to stay to answer questions, it never leads anywhere good.” He reached a hand down, helping her up, and waited. She looked at him quizzically. “Your head,” he explained. “Is it settled now?”
“Oh. Yes. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He kept his hand in hers, leading her out of the coma ward.
People looked at them curiously as they passed by, and a few tried to ask questions, but Amy shook her head and said, “Sorry, top-secret, can’t answer questions, no comment.”
“You are a very good fake policewoman,” he remarked, as they got back into her car.
“Thanks.” She started the car.
“I have to drop Harry off with my sister, it should only take a few minutes.”
“I haven’t said I’m going with you.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She tapped her index finger on the steering wheel. “How many bedrooms in this ship of yours?”
“How many do you want it to have?” asked Brem.
Amy’s eyes slid briefly over to him, amused. “Now you’re definitely flirting with me, aren’t you?”
“Not entirely,” said Brem, but he grinned as he said it.
Amy smiled a bit but fell silent, pulling the car to a stop on the side of her house. Brem could glimpse the red of his TARDIS through the trees of the back garden. They sat together, unmoving.
She turned to him abruptly. “Ten minutes, I need to…Can you be back in ten minutes?”
“I can be back five minutes ago, it’s a time machine.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Ten minutes, then.” She looked at him, and then she laughed. “Is this a daft thing to do?”
“Amy, the only things in life worth doing are the daft ones.”
“And I’m taking life advice from an alien in a box. The psychiatrists would not approve.”
“On our first trip, we’re going to visit Freud,” said Brem.
“Really?” she asked, sounding thrilled.
Her excitement was infectious. “Really. We’re going to tell him all about your recurring hallucinations of men in boxes.”
“He’s going to say they’re about sex.”
“Not the one about my father, please.”
She grinned at him. “And we’ll go to another planet after that? I want to see a different sky.”
“Different sky, yes. We can go to a dozen different planets after that, I promise. First, though, I’ve got to take Harry home, my sister will be fretting.”
“Yeah,” said Amy, and they got out of the car and walked to his TARDIS.
He dug out his key and opened the door. Rory was sitting so close to the door that Brem couldn’t even open it all the way, and he had to scramble a bit away from it. As soon as Brem had opened it wide enough, Rory scurried outside, clinging to Harry, who looked displeased and reached for Brem immediately. Brem took him.
“Thank God you’re back,” said Rory. “I do not like it in there,” he announced, with definitive distaste.
Brem bristled. “Well, she doesn’t like you, either, then.” He looked at Amy.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
Brem Tyler nodded and stepped onto his TARDIS.
Next Part
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Amy, Rory, OCs
Spoilers - Through "The Eleventh Hour"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - "Eleventh Hour" re-imagined for the Chaosverse.
Author's Note - Yes, there is a character-name-gap in here. I was too lazy to look it up, and, since the story isn't finished, I've excused myself from that task.
Part One
Brem came to with his arm at an uncomfortable angle and his head pounding and his cheek against hard, dusty, uncomfortable dirt. He wrinkled his nose and then opened his eyes on a pair of legs. The legs were talking. Or, rather, the woman attached to the legs was talking.
“White male, early 30s, trespassing. Send me some backup, I’ve got him restrained.”
Brem wrinkled his nose again. Was she talking about him? Restrained? He struggled to sit up, coughing slightly as he dislodged more dust, and the legs, and the woman attached to them, turned in his direction.
“Oi,” she said. “You. Sit still.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, though. He was staring at the handcuffs that ran from his left wrist to the leg of the swing set beside him. He turned wide eyes on the woman. “Did you hit me? And then handcuff me?”
“You were trespassing,” she said, a little defensively.
“Trespassing? I-“
“And you crashed into my shed.” She flung out a disgruntled arm.
Brem looked at the direction she was indicating, at the ruins of the shed. “Not me,” he said, offended. “My ship. Like I’ve any control over where my ship tries to land.” He looked back at the woman.
She was staring at him now as if he were a ghost.
Which he kind of didn’t have time for. She was dressed as a policewoman, which meant there was probably a whole world of trouble about to descend upon him, and he didn’t want to be locked in a prison cell with Harry unattended in his control room. “Look, you need to uncuff me now.”
She seemed to have recovered, folding her arms now and lifting her eyebrows toward the police hat she was wearing. “Oh, really? Why? I have backup on the way, you know.”
“Yeah, fine, but I’ve got a baby in my ship and you need to uncuff me so I can go make sure he’s okay.”
“You’ve got a baby?” she said.
“Yes,” he affirmed, impatiently, jangling at the handcuff.
“You’ve got a baby?”
He bristled. “Why’s that so difficult to believe?”
“No reason, you just don’t seem like the…type.”
“The type to have a baby? Is that a type?”
“Yeah. It is a type.” Her chin jutted out challengingly.
“This is the most ridiculous conversation. And, anyway, it isn’t my baby.”
“So now I’ve got you for trespassing and kidnapping.”
“It’s my sister’s baby. Bloody hell, would you just uncuff me already?”
“So you’re telling me you’ve got a baby, in that box, that you just used to destroy my shed?”
“Yes, I-Hang on. Your shed? But you’re the police.”
“Yes, and I live here. Have you got a problem with that?”
He decided he didn’t really care. “Just uncuff me,” he demanded again.
“I don’t have the key, I lost it,” she replied, primly.
“How can you have lost it?” he exclaimed. “What kind of policewoman are you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “That was unnecessary. Look, if you really do have a baby in that box, I’ll fetch him for you.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Brem.
“Is it? Is it really?” She walked over to the TARDIS and tried the door. “It’s locked,” she announced.
“Yes. I know that.”
“So where’s the key?”
“I’ll show you my key if you show me yours,” said Brem.
She looked at him with a frown. “Are you flirting with me?”
Brem swore in Gallifreyan and shifted to dig into the pockets of his jeans. “Where’s my sonic screwdriver?” he asked, in annoyance.
“Now I know you’re flirting with me.”
“I’m really, really not,” he retorted, grimly. “That’s what it’s called: a sonic screwdriver. And I need it.”
“Is it this?” she asked, dangling it in front of him, just out of his reach.
He huffed in exasperation. “Yes. May I have it, please?” He held out his hand calmly.
She did something then he didn’t expect. She knelt on the ground in front of him, really close enough that if he’d so desired he could have taken the sonic screwdriver out of her hand but he was distracted by how intently she looked at him, searching his eyes. If she’d been a telepathic creature, he would have thought she was trying to read his mind, but she was quite human, and he was quite bewildered. “Did you come about the crack in my wall?” she whispered.
He stared at her, and then his eyes flickered to his crashed TARDIS. TARDISes normally didn’t crash unless they were trying to get your attention. He looked back at the policewoman in front of him. “I think,” he said, “that yes, I did. But you need to uncuff me, and I need to get Harry, and then I’ll look at the crack in your wall.”
“But you can’t,” she said, looking confused. “You closed it before. Or not you. Another one of you.” She suddenly shifted to sit heavily beside him, staring into space. “Why do I keep hallucinating men in boxes crashing into my shed? And if I’m hallucinating, what destroys the shed?”
Brem continued to stare at her, trying to piece things together. “Have I been here before?”
“What’s your name?” she asked him, looking at him now.
“Brem,” he answered.
“Are you a doctor?” she said.
He was asked that question, through space and time, more often than he would have predicted when he had started traveling on his own. And he had worked out by now how to answer it. He smiled and he said, “Close enough. Now if you give me the sonic screwdriver, I can uncuff myself, and I can go get Harry, and then I can look at the closed crack.”
“But why? Like I said, it’s closed.”
“I’m sure it is. But, all the same, man in a box crashes into your shed again, maybe he should do a bit of poking ‘round before he leaves.”
For a long moment, she regarded him as if weighing her options, and then she slowly handed him the sonic screwdriver.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerely, and then twisted to buzz the handcuffs off, jumping up as soon as he was free and running for the TARDIS, pulling his key out of his pocket as he went. He opened the door and headed inside. Harry was still safely on the captain’s chair, and he clapped his hands and giggled with delight upon seeing Brem. “Excellent,” said Brem, scooping him up. “Did you enjoy your time to yourself in my TARDIS? Figure out faster-than-light travel yet?”
Harry giggled again.
“Okay, you and I are going to have a very, very, very small adventure, but if neither one of us tells your mum and dad, we should get away with it, right? Deal?” Harry reached out and tugged at a strand of Brem’s fringe. “That I will interpret as a yes. You’re going to be a lot easier to deal with once you learn to talk, you know.” He turned and at that moment realized that the policewoman had followed him inside, was standing just inside the door studying everything. “Let’s go,” Brem told her, smiling, and nudged her out the door.
She opened her mouth, and then seemed to think better of it and closed it.
Brem smiled again, and then said, “This is Harry. Say hello, Harry.” Harry gnawed at his fist again. “That’s his version of hello,” Brem explained, helpfully. “Actually, it’s kind of his all-purpose response.”
The policewoman looked at him. “He’s cute,” she said, vaguely, and then frowned in a thought. “You had a baby in a box, but it was bigger on the inside…”
“Yeah. Forget about it. Listen, call off your backup, and then show me where this crack on your wall was.”
She focused on him. “My backup?”
“Yeah, your…” He gestured to her outfit with the hand that wasn’t holding Harry. “Backup,” he finished.
“There is no backup,” she said.
“You said there was backup.”
“I was bluffing.”
“But you’re a policewoman,” he pointed out, in confusion.
“How thick are you? Look at what I’m wearing.”
Brem looked her up and down. “It’s…a police uniform.”
“Look at my legs,” she bit out.
He did. “They’re…quite nice,” he told her, honestly.
She made a frustrated noise. “Have you ever seen a policewoman wear a skirt like this?”
“I dunno! I honestly don’t spend much time look at policewomen’s legs.” He glanced back at her legs. “Maybe I should be spending more time looking at policewomen’s legs,” he admitted.
“Stop looking at my legs.”
“You’re the one who brought them up!” he protested. “Why are you dressed as a policewoman if you’re not one?”
“You were trespassing in my back garden! I had to think quickly! This seemed more likely to inspire fear than the French maid outfit.”
“French maid?” echoed Brem, and then, slowly, “Hang on…”
“My God, you’re slow on the uptake, aren’t you? I don’t think I even want you looking at the crack in my wall.”
He frowned. “I’ll have you know, I’m brilliant at saving the planet. Alien invasion, I’m your man. Finding strippers in disguise, not my forte.”
“I prefer ‘kiss-o-gram.’”
“Yeah. And I prefer not to be mistaken for a doctor everywhere I go. Now. Do you want me to look at the crack in your wall, or don’t you?”
“It’s a closed crack,” she reminded him. “There’s nothing to look at.”
“My TARDIS crash-landed in your yard. You know what it means when a TARDIS crashes?”
“Yeah. It means my shed is ruined.”
“No, it means you’re in need of a Time Lord. And trust me, that is a very, very bad thing to be in need of.”
She stared at him. “What’s a Time Lord?”
He smiled and answered, “Help.”
There was a long moment of indecision. Harry muttered to them as he gnawed on his fist some more. And then she said, shortly, “It’s this way,” and marched away from him, toward the house.
Brem followed behind her, Harry in one hand and sonic screwdriver in the other, deep in thought. So his TARDIS had crash-landed, which normally meant he was needed. And it had crash-landed in a place his father had evidently been before. He’d check on this crack in the wall, figure out what was going on, and then call his father for a consultation. No one would be in danger, least of all the child in his arms, he decided.
He was following the woman up the stairs, and he thought he needed to ask her what her name was. He was just about to ask her when something distracted him in the hallway. He looked over the staircase, down to the bottom, trying to figure out what was wrong.
“Just give me a second to…clean,” she called from one of the rooms.
He moved away from the staircase, into the room she’d disappeared into, just in time to see her stuffing a pile of papers into a wardrobe and slamming the door shut. She looked at him, and he could see her trying to come up with an explanation.
“I don’t want to know,” he cut her off. “Now. Where was the crack?” He looked around the room.
“There.” She pointed at a decidedly crack-less wall.
“Here we go, Harry,” he said, conversationally. “We have the sonic on this setting-“ He showed the baby, who did look at it obediently, although he did not stop gnawing on his fist. “-and this should pick up any wibbly-wobbly timey-wimeyness leaking around here.” Brem held the sonic up the wall and watched its reading. “And there’s none,” he realized, surprised, lowering the sonic. He regarded the wall. “Well. That’s disappointing. I was hoping to have to clean up after him and then hold it over his head.”
“Who?” asked the woman.
“Although…” He did a full circle of the room, thinking. “No, I’m missing something. He missed it, and now I’m missing it.” He looked at the woman. “How long ago was my father here?”
She blinked as he walked past her into the hallway. “Your father?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah. My father. He was here before me. The Doctor, right?” He spoke as he looked up the next staircase, into the room across the hall. He looked back at the woman. “That’s who he said he was, right? The Doctor? Looked like me? Only brown suit and a brown coat? Or a blue suit and a brown coat?”
“It was a brown suit,” she said, “and yes, but…I don’t get it, you’re, like, a family of men in boxes?”
“And women,” he said, looking out the window at the back garden. “There’s something I’m missing.” He straightened, and the realization hit him then. He stared at the woman, focusing on something just outside of his sight.
“What?” she asked, staring back at him.
He didn’t dare move a muscle, focusing, focusing, one had to focus to break a perception filter, one had to see. “Out of the corner of my eye,” he breathed, slowly, and he moved just as slowly, forced the focus to sharpen. He looked at the door at the end of the hallway. “How many rooms on this floor?” he asked, not looking at the woman.
“What?” She sounded like she thought he was daft.
“How many rooms?” he repeated, staring at the door.
“Five.”
“Six,” he corrected. “There’s six.” He looked back at her then. “Okay, two things. One, you need to tell me your name. And two, you need to tell me about the crack that was in your wall.”
“My name is Amy,” she said, “and I don’t know anything about the crack in my wall! It was so many years ago, and anyhow, I imagined it.”
“You imagined the crack? No, you didn’t.”
“Four psychiatrists said I did.”
“Psychiatrists,” Brem scoffed. “What do they know? If you’d ever had a chat with Freud, you’d learn to be skeptical of psychiatrists.”
Amy was the one who looked skeptical. “And I suppose you’ve had a chat with Freud?”
“Yes,” replied Brem, simply. “I have. Okay, Harry and I are going to go back to the TARDIS and call my father to see-“
Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded.
Brem looked out the window in alarm, as the words boomed through it.
Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.
Amy’s eyes widened. “Human residence? Does he mean this?”
“Possibly,” admitted Brem.
“But who is that? And why do they want to burn up my house?”
“It would seem to have something to do with this ‘Prisoner Zero.’”
“Well, obviously, but why are they here?”
Brem gave her a look.
“You’re saying Prisoner Zero is here? That’s not possible. How can that be possible? I live here.”
“Yeah, with some kind of vicious escaped extraterrestrial convict, it seems.”
“Extraterrestrial? You mean, it’s an alien?”
“Amy, really, do you think anything that’s happened today, aside from, you know, you-“ He waved his hand to indicate her. “-has been terrestrial?”
She stared at him. “Are you an alien?”
“I really prefer ‘visitor,’ and we have to go, because you’re harboring a-“ Brem grabbed Amy’s hand and turned to run just as the sixth door opened and a man and a Rottweiler emerged. “Fugitive.”
“How did he get in here?” gasped Amy.
Attention, Prisoner Zero, boomed the voice outside.
“I think they’re looking for you,” Brem said to the man.
And then the man began barking.
“What?” said Amy, sounding as if this were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen. “No, seriously, what?”
“It’s an interdimensional multi-form,” said Brem. “And it got dressed in a hurry.”
The man growled, and then opened his mouth, revealing long, narrow, sharp, pointed teeth. Harry in his arms made a small sound like a squeak and gnawed harder on his fist.
The human residence is surrounded.
Prisoner Zero seemed to get distracted by this announcement, wandering into the room to his left in order to peer out the window, to ascertain the human residence really was surrounded.
“Go,” said Brem, pushing Amy. “Go, go, go!”
She dashed down the stairs, and he dashed down them afterward, Harry clinging to his T-shirt in order to hang on.
“You mean to tell me that Prisoner Zero is real?” Amy shot over her shoulder, as they exited the house. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Wait a moment,” said Brem. “You know about Prisoner Zero?” When Amy didn’t answer, he reached out and pulled her to a stop, whirled her to face him. “What do you know about Prisoner Zero?”
“Just that he escaped. Last time, when your father was here.”
Brem felt his eyebrows skid upwards. “My father was here, and Prisoner Zero escaped, and he didn’t stop to catch him?”
“Well, evidently not, since he’s been living in my house. With! Me! I could have been killed!”
“Yeah, you could have been,” mused Brem. “And that’s not like my father. How long ago did you say he was here?”
Prisoner Zero suddenly opened the door, the man still barking. Amy looked at him and then at Brem. “Can we talk about this later?” She turned on her heel and began dashing away from the house.
Brem frowned and dashed after her. “How much later do you want to talk about it? I need to figure it out now, or your house is going to be incinerated.”
“I thought you were calling your father? To discuss this with him?”
“Fine. Can I have your mobile?”
“You’re going to use my mobile, to call your father?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you were an alien.”
Harry was looking between them as if it were a tennis match. Brem shifted him to the other arm. “I said I preferred ‘visitor,’ and so?”
“So I’m not letting you use my mobile to call an alien. Those charges must be literally out of this world! Why can’t you just, I don’t know, beam him here?”
“Beam him here?” echoed Brem, in disbelief. “What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know! Apparently, I’ve been living with an alien fugitive for twelve years and now my house is going to be incinerated and there’s a family of men in boxes who go around crashing into sheds! I don’t think the idea that you could beam your father here is that far-fetched, Brem!”
“Twelve years? My father closed that crack twelve years ago, and nothing’s happened since-“
Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.
“Hang on.” Brem turned his head, staring at the ice cream truck a few meters away from them. An ice cream truck no longer playing Clare de Lune but instead broadcasting a threat from the guards of an alien prison. “The human residence will be incinerated,” repeated Brem, under his breath. And then he whirled to Amy so quickly that she took a step breath. “I need your phone, and I need it now.” He held out his hand.
She handed it over, still staring at the ice cream truck. “How can they be doing that?”
“Hold him,” said Brem, handing Harry across.
She took him automatically, watching as he zapped the mobile with his sonic screwdriver. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling my father.” He stuck the sonic back in his pocket, dialing the phone now.
“How are they broadcasting through the ice cream truck?”
“It’s not just the ice cream truck, it’s everything. Because they have the human residence surrounded.” He put the phone to his ear, listening to it ring.
“They mean Earth,” said Amy, not really to him, still staring at the ice cream truck.
“How can he not be picking up?” complained Brem, as the TARDIS phone rang and rang and rang. Swearing, he ended the call and dialed his mother’s mobile instead. Which also rang and rang and rang. He swore again and handed the phone back to Amy. “Okay, that was useless. Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“I haven’t come up with it yet.”
“Oh, well, that’s brilliant.”
“Look, it’s a Time Lord tradition, okay? You can’t plan a plan, or it doesn’t work.”
“But that’s why they’re called ‘plans,’ because you have to plan them.”
“They’re going to incinerate the Earth in twenty minutes, and you’re arguing semantics with me? The semantics of a language that’s going to be obsolete in eight hundred years?”
“You know, whenever you’re losing an argument, you start babbling about the world ending.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do not. And you know how I know that? Because I don’t lose arguments.”
“What makes you say twenty minutes?”
“What?” Brem was momentarily thrown.
“You said they’d incinerate the Earth in twenty minutes. Where’d you get that number?”
“Oh. I did some complicated mathematical equations.”
“You just plucked a number out of thin air, didn’t you?”
Brem frowned. “Can we focus here?”
Amy smiled. “Gotcha,” she said.
His frown deepened. “Would you excuse me? While I try to do something useful?” He strode purposefully away from her, over to the small common they had been standing near.
“Something useful like what?” she asked, following him.
“Right now, there are prison guards orbiting this planet, and do you know what they’re looking for? Something alien. And guess what I am.” He winked at her, as he lifted his sonic screwdriver aloft.
She smiled at him. “A visitor,” she said.
“Exactly.” And then he activated the sonic.
Glass shattered up and down the common, streetlamps exploding. Sirens and car alarms sounded, blaring. People were shouting, trying to control machines that were no longer letting themselves be controlled. Harry watched it and clapped his hands and giggled with delight at the display.
Non-human technology detected, droned the announcing voice, and suddenly a spaceship appeared in the sky. A spaceship that looked like a snowflake and had a giant eye.
“Is that what spaceships look like?” asked Amy.
“Some of them,” answered Brem, unconcerned, as the huge eye swooped down and studied him closely.
Negative, said the voice. Prisoner Zero not detected.
“Wait a second!” protested Brem, as the eye withdrew and tucked itself back into the spaceship. “I’m not Prisoner Zero, but he’s here!” The spaceship, however, zoomed away, and Brem tore his hands through his hair in frustration. “Dammit,” he said.
“Now what?” asked Amy.
“Plan C,” said Brem, staring up at the sky and thinking. “Just…give me a second to come up with it.”
“Amy!” shouted a voice, and Brem, Amy, and Harry looked in the direction it had come from. A man was dashing toward them, dressed in hospital scrubs. “Amy! Did you see? That thing? In the…” He trailed off. “Whose baby is that?”
“Oh, it’s…his.” Amy nodded toward Brem.
“Hello.” Brem waved cheerfully. “I’m Brem. Who are you?”
“I’m Rory,” he said, looking at Brem as if he hadn’t made up his mind what to think yet. “Amy’s boyfriend.”
“Kind of,” inserted Amy.
“Why do you say that?” Rory asked her.
“Don’t have time for domestics right now,” Brem interrupted. “We need to-“
“Brem,” Amy cut him off, looking over his shoulder. “It’s Prisoner Zero.”
Brem looked behind him. The man with the Rottweiler, standing a few feet away, barked at him.
“That’s Mr. ________,” said Rory.
Brem turned to him, intrigued now. “How do you know him?”
“He shouldn’t be out here.”
“How do you know him?” Brem insisted.
“He should be-“
“In hospital. In a coma,” Brem finished with him.
Rory looked astonished. “Exactly. How did you know?”
“Plan C,” Brem announced to Amy, triumphantly, with a little flourish. “Back to the TARDIS. Come on, Harry.” He pulled Harry out of Amy’s arms and then took off at a mad dash, confident that Amy would follow behind him.
Which she did, as did Rory. As he skidded to a stop in front of his TARDIS, they were both right with him, and he decided he approved of their running abilities.
“What’s Plan C?” asked Amy.
“You and Harry are going to sit here in the TARDIS. I’m going to the hospital.”
“Wait, what? No, that’s not a Plan C.”
“It is a Plan C.”
“You’re going by yourself?”
“Look,” he said. “This planet is ten minutes away from incineration, and, let’s be brutally honest for a second, my chances of stopping it are probably not more than seventy percent. If this planet is incinerated, this-“ Brem tapped his TARDIS’s door -“will not be. It’ll be perfectly safe, and so will Harry. Which I promised his parents he would be. Someone needs to stay with him, and, if it’s me, the chances of saving this planet from incineration fall to zero. So what do you propose?”
Amy looked evenly at him for a second, then took Harry out of his arms.
“Good,” said Brem, turning to unlock and open the door. “If something happens to me, an emergency programme will engage, it’ll take you to my parents’ TARDIS. They’ll know what to do.”
“Got that, Rory?” said Amy.
“What?” said Rory.
“What?” said Brem, turning away from the TARDIS.
“Rory’s going to watch Harry. We’re onto Plan D now, and that’s you and me saving the planet from incineration together.”
“You and me?” echoed Brem.
“How are you going to get into the coma ward without a policewoman?”
“I was going to use my considerable charm, followed by brute force.”
“My plan is better. And we don’t have time to argue. Let’s go.” She strode away from the TARDIS.
Brem looked at Rory, who was holding Harry and looking absolutely floored. “Okay,” Brem decided, not seeing any other options. “It’s bigger on the inside, and if you touch anything, you could end up collapsing time and space, got that?”
“What?” asked Rory, sounding strangled.
“Excellent,” said Brem, and kissed Harry’s cheek. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” he told the baby. Then he pushed Rory inside the TARDIS and pulled the door shut and raced in the direction Amy had disappeared in. She screeched up to him in a tiny car, and shouted, “Get in!” as she leaned over and threw open the passenger seat.
He did, and she took off again immediately, taking a corner sharply enough that he collided with the door with an oof. “Do you always drive like this?”
“Only when the planet’s about to be incinerated. Do you have a plan?”
“Yes,” he said, bracing himself against the dashboard and closing his eyes against his will as she made a particularly daring turn. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“No, I know, a plan for when we’re inside the hospital.”
“Oh. No. Not really.”
She glanced at him. “I thought you were brilliant at saving the planet!”
“I am! I’ve kept it intact so far, haven’t I?”
“I haven’t made up my mind about you yet,” remarked Amy, grimly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. Ask me again if we’re still alive in five minutes.” She skidded to a halt in front of the hospital and they both jumped out of the car. The receptionist looked at them in surprise as they dashed in, and stood up as if to say something. “Important police business!” Amy threw over her shoulder, as they kept running.
“Do you know where the coma ward is?” asked Brem.
“This way.”
“Clear these rooms,” Brem said, frowning at the people they were passing. “Tell them they have to evacuate.”
“Everyone get out!” Amy shouted. “Everyone! Out!”
People were staring at them, as they tumbled into the coma ward’s doors and drew to an abrupt halt. There was a woman there, holding the hands of two perfectly, identically dressed little girls, and she smiled at them with such sickening sweetness that Brem felt Amy take a small step closer to him.
“It won’t work, you know,” said the little girl on the left, speaking in the adult’s voice. “None of your plans. The Atraxi can’t detect me in my human form.”
“I don’t have plans,” Brem said. “Shows how well you know me.” He ran his eyes around the coma ward. “Open consciousness, right? Psychic link? Clever.” He looked back at the little girl. “They’re going to incinerate the entire planet. You included. What good does it do you?”
The little girl sighed. “You’re right. I should just turn myself in, shouldn’t I?”
“I won’t deny that it’d make my life a hell of a lot easier,” said Brem.
“The Atraxi will kill me.”
“They’re going to kill you now,” Brem pointed out, and he pointed the sonic screwdriver at the nearest window.
The glass exploded in a deafening crash. Amy ducked behind him, away from the worst of it, but he had already moved onto the next window, and the next, and then the next. The woman-and-children watched, their needle-sharp teeth bared.
Non-human technology detected, droned the voice now.
Brem felt Amy run to the window, and then say, “There’s lots of ships here.”
“But they still won’t find me,” spat the woman-and-children.
“Pitch a sonic screwdriver just so,” said Brem, twirling it in his hands, “and you can disrupt even a psychic link.” His eyes cut quickly to Amy. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she didn’t quite finish asking, because he pressed the button and she fainted dead away. He caught her instinctively, even as he watched the woman-and-children in front of him flickered into a huge, scaly, slimy snake with needle-sharp teeth.
Prisoner Zero detected, crowed the voice, triumphantly.
Prisoner Zero snarled and thrashed and vanished in a bust of teleportation.
Brem gently set Amy on the floor of the coma ward and knelt over her. Her hat fell off her, revealing a cloud of ginger hair. “Alright, Amy,” he said, speaking to her unconscious form firmly. “That was just a blip. You’re regaining your equilibrium and you’re going to open your eyes right now.” Her eyes fluttered open. “Oh,” he said, surprised. “I didn’t think that was actually going to work.”
She focused on him. And then she frowned and slapped his face.
“Ow,” he exclaimed, shocked, putting his hand to his smarting cheek. “What was that for?”
“What the hell did you do?” She sat up.
“I just saved the planet!”
“What did you do to me?”
“I had to disrupt the psychic link!”
“The psychic link wasn’t with me!”
“In order to disrupt it, I had to throw off all the human brain waves in the room for a second.”
“You threw off my brain waves?”
“It was only for a second, and you’re perfectly fine.”
“Where’s Prisoner Zero?”
Brem picked himself up. “Back with the Atraxi, and good riddance. Although, I’ve got to track these Atraxi down. You can’t just threaten to incinerate an established planet like Earth and get away with that.” He reached down to help Amy up, but she wavered when she stood up, pitching into his arms. “Okay?” he asked.
“No,” she retorted. “You did something with my brain waves, and now I’m dizzy.”
“Maybe we should just rest here for a second,” Brem decided, and he sat against the wall.
Amy sat next to him, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes.
There was a moment of silence.
Brem looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Does it hurt?”
“No, it…I can’t describe it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, after a pause. “I didn’t figure out what I had to do until right before I did it, and there wasn’t time to…” He trailed off. Sometimes, he thought, all he did was go scattering apologies through space and time. He leaned his head back against the wall like Amy and closed his own eyes.
“So this is what you do, is it?” she ventured, after a moment.
It was so like what he had just been considering that he chuckled. “What would you call it?”
“I honestly have no clue.”
“Then that makes two of us,” he said, and opened his eyes.
She was looking at him now, curious hazel eyes in a pretty, freckled face. “So you’re an alien,” she said.
“So to speak, yes.”
“You look human.”
“You look Time Lord.”
“Is that what you’re called then? Time Lord?”
“Yes.”
“And your box is a spaceship?”
She looked very openly interested in it, something Brem was somewhat unused to. Normally, in with the curiosity was a healthy dose of fear or distrust or just plain pity for his madness. Amy just looked fascinated. “And a time machine.”
“A proper time machine?”
“As opposed to an improper one?”
“And you just…”
“Travel,” he finished.
“Tell me about your favorite place.”
“I don’t have a favorite place. My TARDIS is my favorite place. And all the other places are just…” Brem considered the word he wanted to use. “Wonderful,” he concluded, finally, thoughtfully, looking at the glass he’d shattered, carpeting the floor of the coma ward. “Even the ones where they want to kill me, they’re still…wonderful. All in their own way.”
“It must be amazing,” breathed Amy.
Brem looked back at her. She was also looking at the glass along the floor. He said it before he thought, and it wasn’t that unthinking speech was unlike him-mostly, he let his mouth babble and waited for his thoughts to catch up with him-but it was unlike him to say what it was he said, which he had said only once before in his life to a woman who had then turned him down and broken his heart. “Come with me,” he said.
“Oh, I…” She still didn’t look at him, and her breath caught, stumbled, tellingly, in the direction of the glass on the floor, before she finished. “I can’t.”
He reached out, a finger under her chin, lifting and tipping her head until she was forced to look at him. Her eyes were very wide. He tipped a corner of his mouth up in a smile. “Come with me,” he said, again, softer this time.
Her lips parted, but it was a moment before she spoke. “That would be…It is…utter madness.”
“There’s a planet called Babylon, you know. The trees have leaves like prisms, and the skies are full of rainbows.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. “Four psychiatrists, Brem, told me there are no men in boxes knocking down my shed.”
“What’s your last name?” he asked, softly.
“Pond.”
“If you are making all of this up, then you have a very impressive imagination, Amy Pond.”
She startled him by grabbing the front of his T-shirt and pulling him to her and kissing him. He had not expected that at all, and he made a muffled exclamation of surprise, and then he kissed her back, hands caught up in her ginger hair, and so he was snogging Amy Pond, stripper dressed as a policewoman, in a coma ward.
She was the one who broke the kiss eventually. “Okay,” she told him. “My imagination is pretty impressive.”
He smiled a bit, then stood up. “Let’s go. The real police are going to be here eventually, and I don’t like to stay to answer questions, it never leads anywhere good.” He reached a hand down, helping her up, and waited. She looked at him quizzically. “Your head,” he explained. “Is it settled now?”
“Oh. Yes. I’m fine.”
“Good.” He kept his hand in hers, leading her out of the coma ward.
People looked at them curiously as they passed by, and a few tried to ask questions, but Amy shook her head and said, “Sorry, top-secret, can’t answer questions, no comment.”
“You are a very good fake policewoman,” he remarked, as they got back into her car.
“Thanks.” She started the car.
“I have to drop Harry off with my sister, it should only take a few minutes.”
“I haven’t said I’m going with you.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She tapped her index finger on the steering wheel. “How many bedrooms in this ship of yours?”
“How many do you want it to have?” asked Brem.
Amy’s eyes slid briefly over to him, amused. “Now you’re definitely flirting with me, aren’t you?”
“Not entirely,” said Brem, but he grinned as he said it.
Amy smiled a bit but fell silent, pulling the car to a stop on the side of her house. Brem could glimpse the red of his TARDIS through the trees of the back garden. They sat together, unmoving.
She turned to him abruptly. “Ten minutes, I need to…Can you be back in ten minutes?”
“I can be back five minutes ago, it’s a time machine.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Ten minutes, then.” She looked at him, and then she laughed. “Is this a daft thing to do?”
“Amy, the only things in life worth doing are the daft ones.”
“And I’m taking life advice from an alien in a box. The psychiatrists would not approve.”
“On our first trip, we’re going to visit Freud,” said Brem.
“Really?” she asked, sounding thrilled.
Her excitement was infectious. “Really. We’re going to tell him all about your recurring hallucinations of men in boxes.”
“He’s going to say they’re about sex.”
“Not the one about my father, please.”
She grinned at him. “And we’ll go to another planet after that? I want to see a different sky.”
“Different sky, yes. We can go to a dozen different planets after that, I promise. First, though, I’ve got to take Harry home, my sister will be fretting.”
“Yeah,” said Amy, and they got out of the car and walked to his TARDIS.
He dug out his key and opened the door. Rory was sitting so close to the door that Brem couldn’t even open it all the way, and he had to scramble a bit away from it. As soon as Brem had opened it wide enough, Rory scurried outside, clinging to Harry, who looked displeased and reached for Brem immediately. Brem took him.
“Thank God you’re back,” said Rory. “I do not like it in there,” he announced, with definitive distaste.
Brem bristled. “Well, she doesn’t like you, either, then.” He looked at Amy.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
Brem Tyler nodded and stepped onto his TARDIS.
Next Part