this is entirely ria_oaks' fault
I was supposed to be doing word sprints today for my big bang fic. Instead I became mildly obsessed with this piece of art done by the amazing ria_oaks for the ds_c6d_bigbang reverse mini-bang. And then I wrote a 3200 word Doctor Who/Due South crossover fic.
It's an F/K rewrite of Rose (with Fraser as the Doctor and Ray as Rose), rated PG (for cussing and hand-holding), and entirely unbeta'd. It's comment fic and cracky and generally unfit for public consumption. You have been warned...
Officer Ray Kowalski was sent out to Heinrick’s department store to interview some guy named Wilson about suspicious stuff going on in the basement. Supposedly, nothing had been stolen, but the shop window dummies and clothes were all moved around. Not stuff a homicide detective would normally get called out on, but the guy Wilson was an old friend and poker buddy of the Lieu’s.
It’s just after closing time when Ray makes it over to the store. One of the employees is just locking the grate on the front door. Ray manages to convince her he wasn’t there shopping for clothes (the once-over she gave him said she thought he should have been), but had an appointment with a George Wilson. A flash of his CPD badge and his most charming smile and he’s inside with directions to Wilson’s office in the basement.
The basement is creepy; there’s no other way to describe it. It’s dank and poorly lit and the steam pipes clang just often enough to keep his heart rate over 100. Ray keeps telling himself he was imagining those creaking sounds and the feeling that someone was watching him. Then all hell brakes loose when the mannequins started moving toward him.
“Jesus! Okay, you got me. Very funny. Hardy ha ha. You can cut it out now.”
The mannequin continues to close on him, seemingly impervious to Ray’s best cop scowl.
“Look, asshole, Chicago PD, cut it out now, or I’ll kick you in the head.”
The mannequin raises its arm and it’s fingers flipped down to reveal what looked like a gun barrel. Ray stands frozen in shock, gaping at the dummy instead of drawing his own weapon or running. Suddenly, a white blur flies into his field of vision and the lead dummy goes down. Ray starts to step forward (holy shit, was that a wolf??) when a hand closes around his and pulls him into a run. Ray catalogues as he runs. The hand is attached to an arm, broad shoulders, red coat. Big hat. Black pants, big boots. The wolf streaks past him again and the man lets go of his hand long enough to pull out a blue-tipped flashlight, which he points at an elevator. There is a buzzing sound and the elevator doors open. The three of them stumble in and breathe a sigh of relief when the door closes again behind them.
“Who were they? Were they college kids or something?”
“What? Why do you say students?”
“Well, to get that many of them together, all dressed up and acting like jackasses, they had to be college kids, right?”
“That’s excellent deductive reasoning.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get this detective’s badge for being pretty.”
“Detective?”
“Yeah, Ray Kowalski, Chicago PD.”
“Lovely to meet you, Ray Kowalski,” the man says as the doors ding open and reveal more of the mannequins. “Ah. Run for your life!”
The man in red takes off down a side hallway and Ray runs after him, arms windmilling as he turns corners at full speed trying to keep up. Ahead, the wolf barks and heads down a hall to the left. The man in red follows the wolf, and Ray follows the man. He rounds the corner and sees it’s a dead end, no way out except a locked door labeled “roof access.” The man has his blue light thing buzzing away again.
“Great. Now we’re trapped, being chased by a bunch of crazy-ass students with -“
“They’re not students.”
“What? I thought you said…”
“I said that was excellent deductive reasoning on your part. I didn’t say you were right.”
“Who are they?”
The man turns from the door and eyes Ray critically. Finally, he nods to himself, apparently satisfied with whatever he sees.
“They’re made of plastic. Living plastic creatures. And they’re being controlled by a device on the roof.”
Ray’s pretty sure he’s making a stupid face while he tries to let that sink in. Then he hears movement echoing down the hall, so he pulls his glasses from his pocket and draws his weapon.
“Not students?’
“No, Ray, they’re not students. And we’re not trapped.”
The door clangs open, showing a dark stairwell.
“I have to get up to the roof to blow the transponder. You head down and get out of the building as quickly as possible. I’ll give you all the time I can, Ray, but hurry.”
“No way.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Nope. That’s not the plan. The plan is we go to the roof together, see this device you’re talking about. You blow it, I cover you.”
“That’s unacceptable. There’s no reason for you to risk yourself when I can do this alone.“
Ray stares him down. He can’t quite figure out why, but he feels like it’s important not to let this man out of his sight. They look at each other for a long moment, until the echoes get louder.
“They’re coming,” Ray says softly. “We doing this thing or not?”
“Fine,” the man grates out, but his stubbornness has cost precious time. The door pushes open behind them and one mannequin starts toward them.
“Chicago PD, freeze!” yells Ray, pointing his weapon at the thing.
The man in red points his blue flashlight thing at it too, which would make Ray laugh if he weren’t scared for his life. Ray empties four rounds into it, center mass, which knock it onto its back. The man in red gets a pissy look on his face and starts yelling. Ray can’t hear anything over the reverb from shots fired in a stairwell and gestures to his ears with a “Huh?” expression. The man pushes his arm down so his gun is pointing at the ground. Ray puts the safety back on and holsters it as the man in red smiles at him approvingly. The wolf barks and the man aims his blue light at the mannequin, which is slowly getting back to its feet. Ray tackles the thing, pushing it bodily back out the door. He braces himself against the door as the plastic thing throws its weight against the other side and the man in red fiddles around with his light thing. Ray’s hearing is coming back, and he can tell whatever the man is doing is making the tool change pitch. There is a particularly hard hit against the door that pushes Ray back and a plastic arm snakes through. The man in red grabs the arm, points the light at the center of its palm, and the thing chirps until the arm stops wriggling. The arm pops free of the rest of the mannequin and Ray’s weight pushes the door closed again.
“What the hell?”
“I told you, living plastic.”
Ray takes the arm, looks at the solid plastic of the shoulder joint, and throws the arm on the ground. It bounces a little from the impact. The wolf picks it up and leads the way. They head up to the roof, the man in red and the wolf on point, Ray covering the rear. The man pulls a brick-sized device with wires and flashing lights out of his tunic pocket and starts attaching it to the transponder. As Ray wonders just how big the pockets in that tunic are, the man finishes attaching the device and pushes some buttons.
“Okay, Ray, one minute.”
“One minute?? We’re never going make it back down stairs in one minute!”
“We’re not going back down the stairs. Well, not in this building. But the next building is only 5 feet away and we can jump.”
“Jump! Are you out of your mind??”
“Thirty seconds, Ray,” the man says in a calm voice as he takes Ray’s hand again.
He leads Ray backwards a bit, then drags him forward, running at the edge of the building and leaping. The wolf clears the distance easily, landing on his front paws with the plastic arm still clenched in his teeth. The man in red lands in a textbook tuck-and-roll maneuver, coming up on his feet without a speck of dirt on his red coat. Ray lands on his hands and knees, feeling the jolt of the impact followed by a burst of pain as the gravel bites in to his palms. Ray hears the charge blow and instinctively covers his head with his hands. After the smoke clears, he slowly stands.
“Was it good for you?” asks Ray in a shaky voice.
“Hm. I suppose it was gratifying to have disabled the transmitter, yes. Was it ‘good’ for you, Ray?”
Ray barks out a laugh. “Yeah, I think I felt the earth move.”
“The Earth is always in motion,” the man said in an overly cheerful voice. “The Earth is rotating on it’s own axis, of course, and also orbiting the sun. The whole galaxy, in fact, is itself -“
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Doctor what?”
“Just, the Doctor.”
“The Doctor?”
“Hello.”
“No, but really, who are you?”
The man hesitates, then moves closer. “It’s like what you were saying about the earth moving, when you were a child and they told you for the first time the world is turning, and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it…” he says, taking Ray’s hand and lowers his voice to a whisper, “…the turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go…”
He abruptly drops Ray’s hand. Ray stares at his fingers, still feeling the tingle. The man continues in a louder voice, “That’s who I am. Now forget me, Ray Kowalski. Go home.”
Ray comes back to himself.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m going with you. This is my case, and I’m going to solve it. So far, you’re the best lead I’ve got.”
“I work alone.”
“Well, now you’ve got a partner.”
The Doctor puts on a stubborn face, so Ray changes tactics.
“Look, you hear those sirens? All those cops down there are gonna wanna know what happened here. You can either march right down there and explain it to them, maybe get put in a holding cell overnight. Or I can go with you, flash my badge, and we’ll wade right through.”
Practicality wins out in the end and the Doctor agrees. They make their way through the crowd on the street as quickly as possible.
“Kowalski, 27th,” Ray says, flashing his badge. “This is the Doctor. Our case.”
After the third patrol officer responds with, “He doesn’t look like a doctor,” Ray starts introducing him as “the Mountie” instead. It really doesn’t make much more sense, but people seem to accept it more easily. A Mountie in Chicago may be nonsensical, but he is still a uniformed law enforcement officer. A doctor in a bright red tunic and a big hat with a wolf who is holding a plastic arm in his jaws is just plain weird.
Once they pass the gauntlet of unis and gawkers at the crime scene, the Doctor and the wolf take off east. Ray’s car is the other way, but he follows them.
“Where are we going?”
“To analyze this arm. The tower on the roof of Heinrick’s wasn’t the main transponder; it was just a signal booster. I might be able to trace the origin of the signal.”
“Need a lift? My car’s that way?”
“No, my…lift…is just around this corner.”
The Doctor and the wolf stop in front of a blue police box and the Doctor fishes around in his pockets for a key. He unlocks the door and steps in. Ray follows him inside for about two steps, and then backs out of the box again. He puts his left hand on the blue wood of the box and walks in a circle around it. When he comes back to the door, he steps inside again.
Inside is a huge room, bigger than his whole apartment, and about 3 stories tall. Round lights and what looks like ocean coral stretch elegantly up the sides of the ship. The metal walkway he is on leads to the colorful thrumming column in the center of the room. It pulses with an almost living energy. The doctor stands at the control panel surrounding the column and is running some wires into the plastic arm. The wolf sits curled up on a ratty old jumpseat. The Doctor turns to Ray.
“So, where do you want to start?”
“It’s bigger on the inside,” Ray says, eyes wide and full of wonder.
“Yes.”
“It’s…alien?”
“Yes.”
Ray hesitates, looks up at the central column again, then back at the Doctor.
“Are you alien?”
“Yes,” the Doctor says simply. Then, “Is that all right?”
“Yes,” says Ray, even though he’s not really sure. At least that explained the hand-holding thing. Must be something the Doctor’s people think is normal. He opens his mouth to ask another question when the control panel starts beeping, drawing their attention to the now-dripping arm. The Doctor pulls a monitor around and frantically tries to get a lock on the signal before the plastic melts completely.
“That’s the best I can do for localization. There’s nothing else we can get from this arm.”
Ray pulls the monitor toward himself and looks at the map. “Millennium Park. I know that. Come on, my car’s a couple blocks over.”
In the park, Ray feels a sense of urgency and frustration. The wolf is sniffing round in circles. The Doctor stops to inspect grease spots and pieces of grass, rubbing things between his fingers and occasionally licking them.
“That’s gross.”
“But effective.”
“It would help if you told me what we were looking for.”
“I’m looking for plastic residues.”
“That…actually makes sense. I think I’ve spent too much time with you.”
The cop in Ray can’t argue with effective investigative techniques, so he shuts up and follows the Doctor. They make their way across the south promenade, stopping at a pretzel vendor’s cart. The Doctor leans down and inspects the trashcan next to his cart.
“Hey, what are you doing? What’s he doing?” demands the vendor.
“Chicago PD, don’t mind us.”
The vendor squints at Ray a moment before the Doctor draws his attention again.
“Hey, don’t do that!” the vendor squawks.
Ray sighs and looks over. Yup, the Doctor’s licking the trashcan.
“It’s okay. He does that. He’s an alien.”
“What?”
“He’s…um…Canadian.”
The vendor thinks about this for a second and then nods like that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Doctor’s behavior. Ray opens his mouth again to get some more mileage out of his Mountie story, but the wolf barks and the Doctor takes off at a jog toward the Cloud Gate.
It’s all a blur to Ray after that. Access panels underneath the sculpture-slash-transmitter, leading to a warehouse. A vat of orange goo hissing at them while the Doctor carries on a one-sided conversation with it. Something about wars and destroyed planets and holy shit, Ray thinks, aliens. More of those dummies and anti-plastic. And the Doctor’s in trouble again, held by two of those mannequins and getting pushed toward the edge of the catwalk.
Ray grabs one of the rolling sleds in the warehouse, having visions of coolly skateboarding to the Doctor’s rescue. He looses his balance on the rough grating though and smacks into the Doctor, freeing him from the two mannequins holding him. The Doctor lands hard on the rolling board in front of him, dropping the antiplastic into the vat of orange goo. The two of them hurtle down the catwalk on what feels like the toboggan ride from hell, shouting all the way. They land in a heap at the far end of the catwalk. Ray can’t decide if he wants to shout or laugh or cry or punch someone, but he doesn’t get the chance to do any of those. The orange goo is gurgling ominously and turning a weird shade of purple, and the Doctor grabs his hand again and they’re off running again.
Ray should feel ridiculous running through Millennium Park, holding hands with a demented alien dressed up like a Mountie, but all he feels is joy. The Doctor turns to him, blue eyes flashing, smiling this wide smile, and Ray smiles back at him like he hasn’t done since he was a kid. He has that same sense of freedom he always got when the last bell before summer break rang. Ray used to run all the way home that day, unable to stop the jumping-out-of-his-skin-excited feeling from taking over his limbs and making his body just GO.
There are no words between them as Ray drives them back to the Doctor’s ship. Ray parks the car in the mouth of the alley and the two men look out the windshield at the blue box.
“I was abducted by aliens when I was ten,” Ray says into the silence.
“Ah,” says the Doctor, frowning and rubbing his eyebrow. “Well, I can assure you, Ray, that I had nothing to do with that.”
“You’re not abducting me, then?”
“No, of course not!”
“Good,” says Ray. “Good. Although, someday, I think I’d like to have an adventure. A real one, you know, with places you can’t imagine and people you don’t know and danger and excitement and everything.”
The Doctor looks speculative, then hopeful, then hesitant. Then,
“You could come with me. See the universe. If you wanted.”
The strangely wistful note in the Doctor’s voice intrigues Ray, but he’s already shaking his head no.
“I can’t. I’ve got…” But Ray can’t think of a way to finish that sentence. His family disowned him years ago and wants nothing to do with him. Stella divorced him, and Ray is finally getting that she’s never coming back. Even his partner quit on him, not that Ray can blame him. Most days he can’t see the point of humping the job anymore either.
“I’ve got…a turtle,” Ray finishes lamely. “I have to feed him once a week, and there’s no one I can ask to do it for me, so I can’t go traveling.”
Ray feels himself blush. Way to go, Kowalski, just straight out tell the guy you’re a loser whose only friend in the world is a pet turtle.
“Oh,” says the Doctor in a disappointed voice.
The Doctor and the wolf get out of the car Ray follows them. The Doctor warns Ray to stand back, then waves one last time and closes the door. Ray hears a grinding wheeze and then the blue box disappears right before his eyes, taking everything he’s ever wanted with it. The trash is still swirling on the ground and the familiar emptiness is only just starting to settle back in when Ray hears the noise again.
Ray starts smiling before the Doctor even gets the door open.
“Did I mention it also travels in time?”
Ray is so filled up with happiness and freedom that he’s lighter than air. He feels his mouth stretch wider, into that last-day-of-school kid grin. And then he runs home.
It's an F/K rewrite of Rose (with Fraser as the Doctor and Ray as Rose), rated PG (for cussing and hand-holding), and entirely unbeta'd. It's comment fic and cracky and generally unfit for public consumption. You have been warned...
Officer Ray Kowalski was sent out to Heinrick’s department store to interview some guy named Wilson about suspicious stuff going on in the basement. Supposedly, nothing had been stolen, but the shop window dummies and clothes were all moved around. Not stuff a homicide detective would normally get called out on, but the guy Wilson was an old friend and poker buddy of the Lieu’s.
It’s just after closing time when Ray makes it over to the store. One of the employees is just locking the grate on the front door. Ray manages to convince her he wasn’t there shopping for clothes (the once-over she gave him said she thought he should have been), but had an appointment with a George Wilson. A flash of his CPD badge and his most charming smile and he’s inside with directions to Wilson’s office in the basement.
The basement is creepy; there’s no other way to describe it. It’s dank and poorly lit and the steam pipes clang just often enough to keep his heart rate over 100. Ray keeps telling himself he was imagining those creaking sounds and the feeling that someone was watching him. Then all hell brakes loose when the mannequins started moving toward him.
“Jesus! Okay, you got me. Very funny. Hardy ha ha. You can cut it out now.”
The mannequin continues to close on him, seemingly impervious to Ray’s best cop scowl.
“Look, asshole, Chicago PD, cut it out now, or I’ll kick you in the head.”
The mannequin raises its arm and it’s fingers flipped down to reveal what looked like a gun barrel. Ray stands frozen in shock, gaping at the dummy instead of drawing his own weapon or running. Suddenly, a white blur flies into his field of vision and the lead dummy goes down. Ray starts to step forward (holy shit, was that a wolf??) when a hand closes around his and pulls him into a run. Ray catalogues as he runs. The hand is attached to an arm, broad shoulders, red coat. Big hat. Black pants, big boots. The wolf streaks past him again and the man lets go of his hand long enough to pull out a blue-tipped flashlight, which he points at an elevator. There is a buzzing sound and the elevator doors open. The three of them stumble in and breathe a sigh of relief when the door closes again behind them.
“Who were they? Were they college kids or something?”
“What? Why do you say students?”
“Well, to get that many of them together, all dressed up and acting like jackasses, they had to be college kids, right?”
“That’s excellent deductive reasoning.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get this detective’s badge for being pretty.”
“Detective?”
“Yeah, Ray Kowalski, Chicago PD.”
“Lovely to meet you, Ray Kowalski,” the man says as the doors ding open and reveal more of the mannequins. “Ah. Run for your life!”
The man in red takes off down a side hallway and Ray runs after him, arms windmilling as he turns corners at full speed trying to keep up. Ahead, the wolf barks and heads down a hall to the left. The man in red follows the wolf, and Ray follows the man. He rounds the corner and sees it’s a dead end, no way out except a locked door labeled “roof access.” The man has his blue light thing buzzing away again.
“Great. Now we’re trapped, being chased by a bunch of crazy-ass students with -“
“They’re not students.”
“What? I thought you said…”
“I said that was excellent deductive reasoning on your part. I didn’t say you were right.”
“Who are they?”
The man turns from the door and eyes Ray critically. Finally, he nods to himself, apparently satisfied with whatever he sees.
“They’re made of plastic. Living plastic creatures. And they’re being controlled by a device on the roof.”
Ray’s pretty sure he’s making a stupid face while he tries to let that sink in. Then he hears movement echoing down the hall, so he pulls his glasses from his pocket and draws his weapon.
“Not students?’
“No, Ray, they’re not students. And we’re not trapped.”
The door clangs open, showing a dark stairwell.
“I have to get up to the roof to blow the transponder. You head down and get out of the building as quickly as possible. I’ll give you all the time I can, Ray, but hurry.”
“No way.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Nope. That’s not the plan. The plan is we go to the roof together, see this device you’re talking about. You blow it, I cover you.”
“That’s unacceptable. There’s no reason for you to risk yourself when I can do this alone.“
Ray stares him down. He can’t quite figure out why, but he feels like it’s important not to let this man out of his sight. They look at each other for a long moment, until the echoes get louder.
“They’re coming,” Ray says softly. “We doing this thing or not?”
“Fine,” the man grates out, but his stubbornness has cost precious time. The door pushes open behind them and one mannequin starts toward them.
“Chicago PD, freeze!” yells Ray, pointing his weapon at the thing.
The man in red points his blue flashlight thing at it too, which would make Ray laugh if he weren’t scared for his life. Ray empties four rounds into it, center mass, which knock it onto its back. The man in red gets a pissy look on his face and starts yelling. Ray can’t hear anything over the reverb from shots fired in a stairwell and gestures to his ears with a “Huh?” expression. The man pushes his arm down so his gun is pointing at the ground. Ray puts the safety back on and holsters it as the man in red smiles at him approvingly. The wolf barks and the man aims his blue light at the mannequin, which is slowly getting back to its feet. Ray tackles the thing, pushing it bodily back out the door. He braces himself against the door as the plastic thing throws its weight against the other side and the man in red fiddles around with his light thing. Ray’s hearing is coming back, and he can tell whatever the man is doing is making the tool change pitch. There is a particularly hard hit against the door that pushes Ray back and a plastic arm snakes through. The man in red grabs the arm, points the light at the center of its palm, and the thing chirps until the arm stops wriggling. The arm pops free of the rest of the mannequin and Ray’s weight pushes the door closed again.
“What the hell?”
“I told you, living plastic.”
Ray takes the arm, looks at the solid plastic of the shoulder joint, and throws the arm on the ground. It bounces a little from the impact. The wolf picks it up and leads the way. They head up to the roof, the man in red and the wolf on point, Ray covering the rear. The man pulls a brick-sized device with wires and flashing lights out of his tunic pocket and starts attaching it to the transponder. As Ray wonders just how big the pockets in that tunic are, the man finishes attaching the device and pushes some buttons.
“Okay, Ray, one minute.”
“One minute?? We’re never going make it back down stairs in one minute!”
“We’re not going back down the stairs. Well, not in this building. But the next building is only 5 feet away and we can jump.”
“Jump! Are you out of your mind??”
“Thirty seconds, Ray,” the man says in a calm voice as he takes Ray’s hand again.
He leads Ray backwards a bit, then drags him forward, running at the edge of the building and leaping. The wolf clears the distance easily, landing on his front paws with the plastic arm still clenched in his teeth. The man in red lands in a textbook tuck-and-roll maneuver, coming up on his feet without a speck of dirt on his red coat. Ray lands on his hands and knees, feeling the jolt of the impact followed by a burst of pain as the gravel bites in to his palms. Ray hears the charge blow and instinctively covers his head with his hands. After the smoke clears, he slowly stands.
“Was it good for you?” asks Ray in a shaky voice.
“Hm. I suppose it was gratifying to have disabled the transmitter, yes. Was it ‘good’ for you, Ray?”
Ray barks out a laugh. “Yeah, I think I felt the earth move.”
“The Earth is always in motion,” the man said in an overly cheerful voice. “The Earth is rotating on it’s own axis, of course, and also orbiting the sun. The whole galaxy, in fact, is itself -“
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Doctor what?”
“Just, the Doctor.”
“The Doctor?”
“Hello.”
“No, but really, who are you?”
The man hesitates, then moves closer. “It’s like what you were saying about the earth moving, when you were a child and they told you for the first time the world is turning, and you just can’t quite believe it because everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it…” he says, taking Ray’s hand and lowers his voice to a whisper, “…the turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go…”
He abruptly drops Ray’s hand. Ray stares at his fingers, still feeling the tingle. The man continues in a louder voice, “That’s who I am. Now forget me, Ray Kowalski. Go home.”
Ray comes back to himself.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I’m going with you. This is my case, and I’m going to solve it. So far, you’re the best lead I’ve got.”
“I work alone.”
“Well, now you’ve got a partner.”
The Doctor puts on a stubborn face, so Ray changes tactics.
“Look, you hear those sirens? All those cops down there are gonna wanna know what happened here. You can either march right down there and explain it to them, maybe get put in a holding cell overnight. Or I can go with you, flash my badge, and we’ll wade right through.”
Practicality wins out in the end and the Doctor agrees. They make their way through the crowd on the street as quickly as possible.
“Kowalski, 27th,” Ray says, flashing his badge. “This is the Doctor. Our case.”
After the third patrol officer responds with, “He doesn’t look like a doctor,” Ray starts introducing him as “the Mountie” instead. It really doesn’t make much more sense, but people seem to accept it more easily. A Mountie in Chicago may be nonsensical, but he is still a uniformed law enforcement officer. A doctor in a bright red tunic and a big hat with a wolf who is holding a plastic arm in his jaws is just plain weird.
Once they pass the gauntlet of unis and gawkers at the crime scene, the Doctor and the wolf take off east. Ray’s car is the other way, but he follows them.
“Where are we going?”
“To analyze this arm. The tower on the roof of Heinrick’s wasn’t the main transponder; it was just a signal booster. I might be able to trace the origin of the signal.”
“Need a lift? My car’s that way?”
“No, my…lift…is just around this corner.”
The Doctor and the wolf stop in front of a blue police box and the Doctor fishes around in his pockets for a key. He unlocks the door and steps in. Ray follows him inside for about two steps, and then backs out of the box again. He puts his left hand on the blue wood of the box and walks in a circle around it. When he comes back to the door, he steps inside again.
Inside is a huge room, bigger than his whole apartment, and about 3 stories tall. Round lights and what looks like ocean coral stretch elegantly up the sides of the ship. The metal walkway he is on leads to the colorful thrumming column in the center of the room. It pulses with an almost living energy. The doctor stands at the control panel surrounding the column and is running some wires into the plastic arm. The wolf sits curled up on a ratty old jumpseat. The Doctor turns to Ray.
“So, where do you want to start?”
“It’s bigger on the inside,” Ray says, eyes wide and full of wonder.
“Yes.”
“It’s…alien?”
“Yes.”
Ray hesitates, looks up at the central column again, then back at the Doctor.
“Are you alien?”
“Yes,” the Doctor says simply. Then, “Is that all right?”
“Yes,” says Ray, even though he’s not really sure. At least that explained the hand-holding thing. Must be something the Doctor’s people think is normal. He opens his mouth to ask another question when the control panel starts beeping, drawing their attention to the now-dripping arm. The Doctor pulls a monitor around and frantically tries to get a lock on the signal before the plastic melts completely.
“That’s the best I can do for localization. There’s nothing else we can get from this arm.”
Ray pulls the monitor toward himself and looks at the map. “Millennium Park. I know that. Come on, my car’s a couple blocks over.”
In the park, Ray feels a sense of urgency and frustration. The wolf is sniffing round in circles. The Doctor stops to inspect grease spots and pieces of grass, rubbing things between his fingers and occasionally licking them.
“That’s gross.”
“But effective.”
“It would help if you told me what we were looking for.”
“I’m looking for plastic residues.”
“That…actually makes sense. I think I’ve spent too much time with you.”
The cop in Ray can’t argue with effective investigative techniques, so he shuts up and follows the Doctor. They make their way across the south promenade, stopping at a pretzel vendor’s cart. The Doctor leans down and inspects the trashcan next to his cart.
“Hey, what are you doing? What’s he doing?” demands the vendor.
“Chicago PD, don’t mind us.”
The vendor squints at Ray a moment before the Doctor draws his attention again.
“Hey, don’t do that!” the vendor squawks.
Ray sighs and looks over. Yup, the Doctor’s licking the trashcan.
“It’s okay. He does that. He’s an alien.”
“What?”
“He’s…um…Canadian.”
The vendor thinks about this for a second and then nods like that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the Doctor’s behavior. Ray opens his mouth again to get some more mileage out of his Mountie story, but the wolf barks and the Doctor takes off at a jog toward the Cloud Gate.
It’s all a blur to Ray after that. Access panels underneath the sculpture-slash-transmitter, leading to a warehouse. A vat of orange goo hissing at them while the Doctor carries on a one-sided conversation with it. Something about wars and destroyed planets and holy shit, Ray thinks, aliens. More of those dummies and anti-plastic. And the Doctor’s in trouble again, held by two of those mannequins and getting pushed toward the edge of the catwalk.
Ray grabs one of the rolling sleds in the warehouse, having visions of coolly skateboarding to the Doctor’s rescue. He looses his balance on the rough grating though and smacks into the Doctor, freeing him from the two mannequins holding him. The Doctor lands hard on the rolling board in front of him, dropping the antiplastic into the vat of orange goo. The two of them hurtle down the catwalk on what feels like the toboggan ride from hell, shouting all the way. They land in a heap at the far end of the catwalk. Ray can’t decide if he wants to shout or laugh or cry or punch someone, but he doesn’t get the chance to do any of those. The orange goo is gurgling ominously and turning a weird shade of purple, and the Doctor grabs his hand again and they’re off running again.
Ray should feel ridiculous running through Millennium Park, holding hands with a demented alien dressed up like a Mountie, but all he feels is joy. The Doctor turns to him, blue eyes flashing, smiling this wide smile, and Ray smiles back at him like he hasn’t done since he was a kid. He has that same sense of freedom he always got when the last bell before summer break rang. Ray used to run all the way home that day, unable to stop the jumping-out-of-his-skin-excited feeling from taking over his limbs and making his body just GO.
There are no words between them as Ray drives them back to the Doctor’s ship. Ray parks the car in the mouth of the alley and the two men look out the windshield at the blue box.
“I was abducted by aliens when I was ten,” Ray says into the silence.
“Ah,” says the Doctor, frowning and rubbing his eyebrow. “Well, I can assure you, Ray, that I had nothing to do with that.”
“You’re not abducting me, then?”
“No, of course not!”
“Good,” says Ray. “Good. Although, someday, I think I’d like to have an adventure. A real one, you know, with places you can’t imagine and people you don’t know and danger and excitement and everything.”
The Doctor looks speculative, then hopeful, then hesitant. Then,
“You could come with me. See the universe. If you wanted.”
The strangely wistful note in the Doctor’s voice intrigues Ray, but he’s already shaking his head no.
“I can’t. I’ve got…” But Ray can’t think of a way to finish that sentence. His family disowned him years ago and wants nothing to do with him. Stella divorced him, and Ray is finally getting that she’s never coming back. Even his partner quit on him, not that Ray can blame him. Most days he can’t see the point of humping the job anymore either.
“I’ve got…a turtle,” Ray finishes lamely. “I have to feed him once a week, and there’s no one I can ask to do it for me, so I can’t go traveling.”
Ray feels himself blush. Way to go, Kowalski, just straight out tell the guy you’re a loser whose only friend in the world is a pet turtle.
“Oh,” says the Doctor in a disappointed voice.
The Doctor and the wolf get out of the car Ray follows them. The Doctor warns Ray to stand back, then waves one last time and closes the door. Ray hears a grinding wheeze and then the blue box disappears right before his eyes, taking everything he’s ever wanted with it. The trash is still swirling on the ground and the familiar emptiness is only just starting to settle back in when Ray hears the noise again.
Ray starts smiling before the Doctor even gets the door open.
“Did I mention it also travels in time?”
Ray is so filled up with happiness and freedom that he’s lighter than air. He feels his mouth stretch wider, into that last-day-of-school kid grin. And then he runs home.