Doctor Who/HDM: "A Wind From Another World" (8/12)
Title: A Wind From Another World
Author: Poetry / joking
Characters/Pairings: Nine/Rose/Jack, Serafina, Lyra, Iorek
Rating: All Ages
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Summary: When a portal appears in the skies of Cardiff, the TARDIS team tumbles into another dimension and becomes tangled in an enigmatic prophecy. Doctor Who/His Dark Materials crossover (though no familiarity with the crossover fandom is necessary) set after Boom Town.
Notes: I'm going to post the rest of this story on a regular schedule - two chapters per week. Chapter 9 will be up on Wednesday or Thursday.
1. Prophecy | 2. Annunciation | 3. Nativity | 4. Gifts of the Magi | 5. Confession | 6. Fishers of Men | 7. Judgment
8. Temptation
The tethers linking the witches to the ship tautened as they put on a burst of speed. Rose's fists clenched around the railing, the cold metal burning her skin even through her gloves. The Magisterium ship was anchored at a nearby pier, which loomed closer and closer as the waters parted before the boat's prow. She kept trying to ask the Doctor what exactly had come over him back on that island, but every time she started, a look came over him that seemed to quell all speech. She breathed a sigh of relief as they came into harbor and the Doctor turned away to toss the anchor over the side. It was likely that he would never tell them, but that possibility troubled Rose. Were she and Jack not confidants enough?
In a great rush, the passengers of the ship stumbled out onto the pier. Out at the end of the dock, Nicola had an instrument set on a tripod that looked rather like a telescope covered in blinking lights, switches, and dials. Nicola was peering through the eyepiece while one of his technicians adjusted the dials.
The witches untethered themselves from the boat and circled watchfully above. The Doctor ran toward the end of the dock and snarled, “Stop! This ends now.”
Without looking away from the eyepiece, Nicola said, “Restrain him.” Two of the technicians bracketed the Doctor, one holding onto each of his arms. Rose started to move toward the Doctor, but he cut her off with a look. He was right. There were too many of them. They would only capture her too. But what about the witches?
The four witches and their dæmons began a coordinated dive toward the dock, but Nicola looked up and shouted, “My men will kill him if you dare try!” Rose looked back at the Doctor and bit back a cry. One of the men had a knife to the Doctor's throat.
Rose's mind raced to come up with a plan. Nicola had returned to his work on the instrument, and time was running out. Then the Doctor spoke, his voice curiously mild compared to how he had been a moment ago. “You ought to take a screwdriver to that, Nicola. If you don't get this right, then you might open up a pocket universe. There was this one time, must have been five - no, three - no, eight years ago, when I was in a situation not unlike this one…” The Doctor rambled on, his words washing right over Rose's head, but their meaning unveiled itself to her. Screwdriver. Right. Pocket. Five-three-eight.
She glanced at Jack out of the corner of her eye. He gave her an infinitesimal nod, and she lunged forward, grabbed the screwdriver from the Doctor's pocket, put it on setting 538, and pointed it at Nicola's instrument. At once, all the lights on the telescope went dark. At the same time, Jack surged toward one of the technicians restraining the Doctor, and wrested his grip from the Doctor's arm. His dæmon attacked the other technician's iguana dæmon. Iguana and man shrieked with pain as the lioness' paws trapped the struggling dæmon.
The witches took this as their cue to descend on Nicola and the rest of his crew. Inge swung her legs off her pine branch, holding on with just her hands, and kicked one of the technicians to the ground with both legs to his chest. Katrin's kestrel dæmon circled around and savaged another man's crow dæmon with his talons. In the midst of the confusion, Signe landed beside Nicola and twisted both his arms behind his back, all in a single fluid movement.
Once the Doctor finally struggled free of his captors, he bellowed, “Stop!” The battle suddenly ceased, with most of the Magisterium men restrained or sprawled out on the pier, their dæmons in similar states of disarray.
“Why, Nicola? Why must you keep doing this?” Signe shifted Nicola in her grasp so she could look him in the eye without letting go of his arms. “She died years ago. She's at peace. Move on.”
“This was never just about Berenice, madre. If that's what you think, then you're a fool,” Nicola snapped. “The Committee on Heresy and Wrong Belief has been meaning to close the portal for years. The girl meddled in the affairs of God. It's blasphemy. I volunteered for the job because I thought it might help Berenice, but I would have done it anyway. I am a servant of the Church.”
“So you manipulated me.” Signe's voice was silky soft, but edged with steel. “You made me feel guilty about Berenice's death so I would help you.”
“It's not that simple. I can be loyal to my family and to the Church.”
“That's not good enough,” said Signe. “There's more to serving the Divine than following orders.” She let Nicola go, with a little shove in the direction of his ship. “Go, all of you. Return to your Church, and tell them that the portal's fate is not theirs to decide.”
As Nicola trudged back to the ship, Rose could hear him mutter, “Then whose decision is it?” He signaled to his crew, which hobbled aboard in varying states of injury. They weighed the anchor and drew out of the harbor, heading south to a friendlier port.
Signe watched the ship recede into the distance, her face hollow with regret. Inge laid a hand on her shoulder. “You'll see him again,” she said.
“Inge's right. They'll come back,” said Lyra. “The Magisterium doesn't give up. Not ever.”
“Then we'll make sure the portal is safe,” the Doctor declared, striding up to Nicola's instrument.
Jack didn't hesitate to join him, his curiosity sparkling beside the Doctor's determination. “Portal manipulator,” he breathed. “Based on the technology level we've seen, this has to be decades ahead of its time.”
Rose drew closer so she could see what they were doing, and noticed Lyra a few steps behind her. “Doesn't surprise me,” the Doctor murmured. “The Magisterium has the money to hire the world's best scientists, and the clout to keep their technology hidden.”
“So how're you going to keep them from trying to close it all over again?” Rose demanded. “What's going to make them give up? Decide it's not worth it?”
The Doctor paused in his examination of the portal manipulator and blinked. “That's it!” Excitement raced from his smile down to his limbs like a current. “We've got to make it so it's not worth the trouble. If we move the portal to a place, like, say, the center of an unstable wormhole...”
“Then they won't take the risk,” Jack concluded. “Make it close enough to home that it threatens the planet if they try to move it again. Another score for Rose Tyler!” He gave a whoop of joy and high-fived her and the Doctor in turn.
Rose giggled, out of embarrassment as well as triumph. She hadn't done much, just pointed out the obvious. “You know them,” Bree whispered, his whiskers tickling her ear. “Terminally incapable of seeing the obvious.”
Jack and the Doctor worked in perfect concert, the Doctor taking his place at the eyepiece and Jack manning the controls, as smooth as thought. For every movement the Doctor made at his end, Jack made a complementary adjustment. A high-pitched whine resonated from the portal manipulator, all the lights flicking on at once - then it was still. “Done,” the Doctor muttered distractedly, his focus still on the instrument.
Rose cheered and hugged Jack, smiling at Lyra and the witches over his shoulder, but soon the merriment was drained away by the Doctor's grim aspect. He was still hovering around the portal manipulator, his gaze distant. “Jack, can you fetch the Void stuff detector?”
Jack looked as confused as she felt, but dashed back to the boat. Rose watched over the Doctor's shoulder as he worked. “What's wrong, Doctor? Didn't you sort it?”
“The portal's sorted.” He looked at her over his shoulder, tenderness warming his eyes, then turned back to the portal manipulator. “But there's something I've still got to do. Oh, there we are.” Jack had returned with the Void stuff detector and passed it to him. The Doctor was stripping wires from the two instruments and intertwining them.
“What're you going to - ” Jack stared at the wiring in the Doctor's hands, and a growl built in Alizairi's throat. “No. Doctor, you can't!”
“I've got to, Jack. I'm sending us back.” His hands shook a little, but didn't falter in their work. “I can't let her mother spend the rest of her life wondering what happened to her - thinking she died somewhere. Rose is the only thing Jackie's got.” When Jack opened his mouth to argue, the Doctor added, “You too, Jack. I saw your timeline, back in our universe. I saw all that you could do, all that you could be.” He looked away. “I can't take that away from you.”
Jack seemed to be stunned speechless by these words. Did he really think so little of himself that he couldn't imagine the Doctor seeing the potential in him? Jack was so confident about some things, and so lost about others.
Rose wheeled on the Doctor, stepping into his personal space. “I thought you said that making holes in the walls between universes was dangerous.”
Jack regained his confidence and joined Rose at the Doctor's side. “It is dangerous. The barriers between universes could become unstable and collapse. That's why interdimensional travel isn't supposed to happen.”
The Doctor ignored them and kept working. “You've got to stop, Doctor,” Rose pleaded. “It's not worth the risk.”
“That's for me to decide,” the Doctor snapped, still not looking at either of them. “It was the Time Lords' duty to watch over the walls between realities. Now they're gone, and that duty falls to me.”
“So we don't get any say?” demanded Rose. Bree bared his glistening teeth. “I've learned a thing or two from you, Doctor. No matter what you think, you can't stop me talking, so I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen. You keep acting like our lives are over, like there's no hope at all. You're wrong. I've got hope, and Jack's got hope, and if you haven't got any, then we'll bloody well share ours with you, if you'll only let us.”
“There has to be a better way, Doctor. And even if there isn't, there's still so much for us here,” said Jack, and was that a hint of choked-back tears in his voice? “We could build a spaceship out of some old toasters and a difference engine, I know we could. Can't let a little thing like ending up in another universe stop us. We're still us.”
A few loose gears clattered to the ground from the Doctor's nerveless fingers. He was staring off into nothing, his eyes grey and flat as the Arctic sea. “She's dead. The TARDIS is dead, and without her, I'm lost.” His hand clutched at his chest. “My third heart's stopped beating.”
Bree tucked himself deep into Rose's coat, and she seized the Doctor in a fierce embrace. “Well, we've got a heart each, so don't you give up,” she said into the fabric of his jumper. Jack still stood a bit apart. “Oh, come here, you.” Rose took him by the wrist and pulled him in too.
“The whole of reality's too high a price.” Jack smiled into Rose's hair. “Besides, I like reality. Don't you?” Next chapter
Author: Poetry / joking
Characters/Pairings: Nine/Rose/Jack, Serafina, Lyra, Iorek
Rating: All Ages
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Summary: When a portal appears in the skies of Cardiff, the TARDIS team tumbles into another dimension and becomes tangled in an enigmatic prophecy. Doctor Who/His Dark Materials crossover (though no familiarity with the crossover fandom is necessary) set after Boom Town.
Notes: I'm going to post the rest of this story on a regular schedule - two chapters per week. Chapter 9 will be up on Wednesday or Thursday.
1. Prophecy | 2. Annunciation | 3. Nativity | 4. Gifts of the Magi | 5. Confession | 6. Fishers of Men | 7. Judgment
8. Temptation
The tethers linking the witches to the ship tautened as they put on a burst of speed. Rose's fists clenched around the railing, the cold metal burning her skin even through her gloves. The Magisterium ship was anchored at a nearby pier, which loomed closer and closer as the waters parted before the boat's prow. She kept trying to ask the Doctor what exactly had come over him back on that island, but every time she started, a look came over him that seemed to quell all speech. She breathed a sigh of relief as they came into harbor and the Doctor turned away to toss the anchor over the side. It was likely that he would never tell them, but that possibility troubled Rose. Were she and Jack not confidants enough?
In a great rush, the passengers of the ship stumbled out onto the pier. Out at the end of the dock, Nicola had an instrument set on a tripod that looked rather like a telescope covered in blinking lights, switches, and dials. Nicola was peering through the eyepiece while one of his technicians adjusted the dials.
The witches untethered themselves from the boat and circled watchfully above. The Doctor ran toward the end of the dock and snarled, “Stop! This ends now.”
Without looking away from the eyepiece, Nicola said, “Restrain him.” Two of the technicians bracketed the Doctor, one holding onto each of his arms. Rose started to move toward the Doctor, but he cut her off with a look. He was right. There were too many of them. They would only capture her too. But what about the witches?
The four witches and their dæmons began a coordinated dive toward the dock, but Nicola looked up and shouted, “My men will kill him if you dare try!” Rose looked back at the Doctor and bit back a cry. One of the men had a knife to the Doctor's throat.
Rose's mind raced to come up with a plan. Nicola had returned to his work on the instrument, and time was running out. Then the Doctor spoke, his voice curiously mild compared to how he had been a moment ago. “You ought to take a screwdriver to that, Nicola. If you don't get this right, then you might open up a pocket universe. There was this one time, must have been five - no, three - no, eight years ago, when I was in a situation not unlike this one…” The Doctor rambled on, his words washing right over Rose's head, but their meaning unveiled itself to her. Screwdriver. Right. Pocket. Five-three-eight.
She glanced at Jack out of the corner of her eye. He gave her an infinitesimal nod, and she lunged forward, grabbed the screwdriver from the Doctor's pocket, put it on setting 538, and pointed it at Nicola's instrument. At once, all the lights on the telescope went dark. At the same time, Jack surged toward one of the technicians restraining the Doctor, and wrested his grip from the Doctor's arm. His dæmon attacked the other technician's iguana dæmon. Iguana and man shrieked with pain as the lioness' paws trapped the struggling dæmon.
The witches took this as their cue to descend on Nicola and the rest of his crew. Inge swung her legs off her pine branch, holding on with just her hands, and kicked one of the technicians to the ground with both legs to his chest. Katrin's kestrel dæmon circled around and savaged another man's crow dæmon with his talons. In the midst of the confusion, Signe landed beside Nicola and twisted both his arms behind his back, all in a single fluid movement.
Once the Doctor finally struggled free of his captors, he bellowed, “Stop!” The battle suddenly ceased, with most of the Magisterium men restrained or sprawled out on the pier, their dæmons in similar states of disarray.
“Why, Nicola? Why must you keep doing this?” Signe shifted Nicola in her grasp so she could look him in the eye without letting go of his arms. “She died years ago. She's at peace. Move on.”
“This was never just about Berenice, madre. If that's what you think, then you're a fool,” Nicola snapped. “The Committee on Heresy and Wrong Belief has been meaning to close the portal for years. The girl meddled in the affairs of God. It's blasphemy. I volunteered for the job because I thought it might help Berenice, but I would have done it anyway. I am a servant of the Church.”
“So you manipulated me.” Signe's voice was silky soft, but edged with steel. “You made me feel guilty about Berenice's death so I would help you.”
“It's not that simple. I can be loyal to my family and to the Church.”
“That's not good enough,” said Signe. “There's more to serving the Divine than following orders.” She let Nicola go, with a little shove in the direction of his ship. “Go, all of you. Return to your Church, and tell them that the portal's fate is not theirs to decide.”
As Nicola trudged back to the ship, Rose could hear him mutter, “Then whose decision is it?” He signaled to his crew, which hobbled aboard in varying states of injury. They weighed the anchor and drew out of the harbor, heading south to a friendlier port.
Signe watched the ship recede into the distance, her face hollow with regret. Inge laid a hand on her shoulder. “You'll see him again,” she said.
“Inge's right. They'll come back,” said Lyra. “The Magisterium doesn't give up. Not ever.”
“Then we'll make sure the portal is safe,” the Doctor declared, striding up to Nicola's instrument.
Jack didn't hesitate to join him, his curiosity sparkling beside the Doctor's determination. “Portal manipulator,” he breathed. “Based on the technology level we've seen, this has to be decades ahead of its time.”
Rose drew closer so she could see what they were doing, and noticed Lyra a few steps behind her. “Doesn't surprise me,” the Doctor murmured. “The Magisterium has the money to hire the world's best scientists, and the clout to keep their technology hidden.”
“So how're you going to keep them from trying to close it all over again?” Rose demanded. “What's going to make them give up? Decide it's not worth it?”
The Doctor paused in his examination of the portal manipulator and blinked. “That's it!” Excitement raced from his smile down to his limbs like a current. “We've got to make it so it's not worth the trouble. If we move the portal to a place, like, say, the center of an unstable wormhole...”
“Then they won't take the risk,” Jack concluded. “Make it close enough to home that it threatens the planet if they try to move it again. Another score for Rose Tyler!” He gave a whoop of joy and high-fived her and the Doctor in turn.
Rose giggled, out of embarrassment as well as triumph. She hadn't done much, just pointed out the obvious. “You know them,” Bree whispered, his whiskers tickling her ear. “Terminally incapable of seeing the obvious.”
Jack and the Doctor worked in perfect concert, the Doctor taking his place at the eyepiece and Jack manning the controls, as smooth as thought. For every movement the Doctor made at his end, Jack made a complementary adjustment. A high-pitched whine resonated from the portal manipulator, all the lights flicking on at once - then it was still. “Done,” the Doctor muttered distractedly, his focus still on the instrument.
Rose cheered and hugged Jack, smiling at Lyra and the witches over his shoulder, but soon the merriment was drained away by the Doctor's grim aspect. He was still hovering around the portal manipulator, his gaze distant. “Jack, can you fetch the Void stuff detector?”
Jack looked as confused as she felt, but dashed back to the boat. Rose watched over the Doctor's shoulder as he worked. “What's wrong, Doctor? Didn't you sort it?”
“The portal's sorted.” He looked at her over his shoulder, tenderness warming his eyes, then turned back to the portal manipulator. “But there's something I've still got to do. Oh, there we are.” Jack had returned with the Void stuff detector and passed it to him. The Doctor was stripping wires from the two instruments and intertwining them.
“What're you going to - ” Jack stared at the wiring in the Doctor's hands, and a growl built in Alizairi's throat. “No. Doctor, you can't!”
“I've got to, Jack. I'm sending us back.” His hands shook a little, but didn't falter in their work. “I can't let her mother spend the rest of her life wondering what happened to her - thinking she died somewhere. Rose is the only thing Jackie's got.” When Jack opened his mouth to argue, the Doctor added, “You too, Jack. I saw your timeline, back in our universe. I saw all that you could do, all that you could be.” He looked away. “I can't take that away from you.”
Jack seemed to be stunned speechless by these words. Did he really think so little of himself that he couldn't imagine the Doctor seeing the potential in him? Jack was so confident about some things, and so lost about others.
Rose wheeled on the Doctor, stepping into his personal space. “I thought you said that making holes in the walls between universes was dangerous.”
Jack regained his confidence and joined Rose at the Doctor's side. “It is dangerous. The barriers between universes could become unstable and collapse. That's why interdimensional travel isn't supposed to happen.”
The Doctor ignored them and kept working. “You've got to stop, Doctor,” Rose pleaded. “It's not worth the risk.”
“That's for me to decide,” the Doctor snapped, still not looking at either of them. “It was the Time Lords' duty to watch over the walls between realities. Now they're gone, and that duty falls to me.”
“So we don't get any say?” demanded Rose. Bree bared his glistening teeth. “I've learned a thing or two from you, Doctor. No matter what you think, you can't stop me talking, so I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen. You keep acting like our lives are over, like there's no hope at all. You're wrong. I've got hope, and Jack's got hope, and if you haven't got any, then we'll bloody well share ours with you, if you'll only let us.”
“There has to be a better way, Doctor. And even if there isn't, there's still so much for us here,” said Jack, and was that a hint of choked-back tears in his voice? “We could build a spaceship out of some old toasters and a difference engine, I know we could. Can't let a little thing like ending up in another universe stop us. We're still us.”
A few loose gears clattered to the ground from the Doctor's nerveless fingers. He was staring off into nothing, his eyes grey and flat as the Arctic sea. “She's dead. The TARDIS is dead, and without her, I'm lost.” His hand clutched at his chest. “My third heart's stopped beating.”
Bree tucked himself deep into Rose's coat, and she seized the Doctor in a fierce embrace. “Well, we've got a heart each, so don't you give up,” she said into the fabric of his jumper. Jack still stood a bit apart. “Oh, come here, you.” Rose took him by the wrist and pulled him in too.
“The whole of reality's too high a price.” Jack smiled into Rose's hair. “Besides, I like reality. Don't you?” Next chapter