Doctor Who/In Death Crossover: Bled Out (Prologue of 11?)
So... dqbunny and I challenged each other to write Doctor Who/In Death crossover fics. This is the prologue, the start of a monster. You don't have to know anything about the In Death characters for this to make sense to you. I cross my heart and hope to die.
Title: Bled Out
Pairings: Ten/Rose, Roarke/Eve, McNab/Peabody, Leonardo/Mavis
Rating: M. For graphic descriptions of sex, violence and murder. It's not for the weak-stomached among you. It follows more along the writing style of J.D. Robb than Russell T. Davies.
Summary: When a malevolent energy being creeps into Eve Dallas's 2060 New York beat, she doesn't quite know what to make of the evidence. Until she meets the Doctor and his Rose. Then all bets are off.
Bled Out
Prologue: Definite Articles in Death
The only thing worse than being called to a crime scene right after completing testimony in court in New York City was being called to a crime scene in the middle of July right after completing testimony in court. Andy Ravirez had been a guilty bastard, but he'd been a guilty bastard with two very good lawyers, and Eve had spent most of her time that week defending her investigation. She was pleased when the guilty verdict with 20 years, no parole, had finally been announced. Then her comm unit had gone off, and she was headed for the east side of town, to an apartment building known for housing high-class licensed companions, to a suspected murder or suicide.
Eve drew in a deep breath when she entered the apartment and turned toward the kitchen, where the officer on duty had told her the corpse was, and then immediately thought better of breathing for the remainder of her time inside the space.
It was among the more gruesome sights she had ever encountered on her long career in police work. And it wasn't just the sight - it was the smell of rot and piss and Seal-It and the lingering smoke from someone's late night Zoner-indulgence. You never got used to it, only learned to control the initial visceral reaction. Eve deftly stepped to the side as one of the younger field officers brushed past her as he ran out the door. She didn't blame him - she was swallowing a lump of bile as she stepped inside the crime scene.
Detective Delia Peabody looked up from where she was taking notes off to the side of the crime scene, looking more than slightly green. “Dallas.”
“Peabody. Report.” She'd already gotten the rundown from the field officer who had called her in, but she appreciated Peabody's growing powers of investigation.
“Victim is Marley Robards. Twenty-four years old, private dancer. High class licensed companion. Parents are in Ohio, one son from a previous cohab. Landlord called us in when the neighbors started to complain about the smell. She's been dead a few days, sir.”
“Hmm,” Eve stepped further into Marley's kitchen, studied the corpse arranged grotesquely, propped up against the cabinets cornering the stove. It appeared as though she'd slit her own wrists, but missed the major arteries, then stabbed herself in the stomach, the knife still embedded deeply in her body. “Belly wound. That's not a fun way to go.”
“No, sir.” Peabody coughed. “I did the initial evaluation on-scene, sir. If that's all right.”
Eve nodded. “You got something for me?”
Peabody squared her shoulders. “I don't think it's a suicide.”
“Oh?” Eve idly picked up a few pieces of mail - bills, credit cards, all with accept able balances and in reasonable amounts. If she'd offed herself, it wasn't because of financial woes.
“The angle of the cuts on the wrists, sir. It's all wrong. You can't slice yourself open like that.”
Eve dropped to her haunches and studied the remains of Marley Robards. The air conditioning unit had been off in the apartment, and so she was pretty far along in the stages of decay a corpse went through, but you could still see the wounds. Eve didn't touch her - bodies had a nasty habit of falling apart after they'd been left out in the open a few days - but angled her own head to study the marks.
“Fair enough point. So, she didn't kill herself. Why didn't she struggle? There's no sign of a fight.”
“I think we'll know after we get the tox screen back,” Peabody said. “I looked at her arms. She's got some marks, but you can tell she's not a regular user. Someone attacked her, sir. Or maybe attacked isn't the right word. Someone killed her, sir.”
Eve scanned the room, rose to her feet again. “I think you're right.”
“Really?” Peabody's eyes were wide, and she coughed. “I mean, right, sir. I was... totally expecting that.”
Eve wanted to laugh, but she couldn't forget poor Marley in the other room. “Right, Peabody. Let's finish the initial investigation and get down to figuring out which son of a bitch killed her.”
The joy of a compliment from her senior officer faded from Peabody's eyes. “Right sir. Of course.”
“We need to figure out who Marley Robards was. Her clients, her schedules, what she did in the last twenty-four hours anyone saw her alive.” Eve sighed. “And we've got to call her son and tell him that his mother is dead. Christ, somedays I hate this job.”
**
The Doctor stepped out of the Tardis and inhaled, sticking his hands in his pockets.“New York! The year of your Lord, 2060. It is a fine summer's day in July, I believe, and wind's out of the northeast, and Rose... you're not anywhere near me, are you?”
“What did you say, Doctor?” Rose stepped out of the Tardis, blinking against the bright sun. “Did you land us in the right spot this time?”
The Doctor fairly pouted. “Rose, if you're not going to pay attention...”
“I was paying attention. I just got my heel caught in the grating of the console room.” Rose brushed her jacket with a hand. “What do you think of the outfit? Good for America sixty years in my future?”
The Doctor grinned at her. She'd dressed for a day out in future New York - cut-off shorts and a shirt proclaiming her love for Star Wars - a recent acquisition from a trip to Tatooine, the actual planet. “Brilliant! Although, I have to say, not one of our more successful trips.”
“If you hadn't insisted on speaking Huttese to Jabba, you wouldn't have gotten the pronunciation wrong,” Rose said pragmatically. “Then we wouldn't have been running for our lives because you insinuated his wife was skinny.”
“An honest mistake, Rose! The 'uh' and 'oo' distinctions are very hard in that language, I'll have you know.”
“I wouldn't know. Because I let the Tardis translate for me. Honestly, sometimes I think you start off with the intention to cause trouble,” Rose teased.
The Doctor coughed. “Well, that's neither here nor there! What do you want to do first? Statue of Liberty? Empire State Building? Cup of real New York coffee? What'll it be?”
“The Statue of Liberty's still there?”
“Yep! It took some damage in the Urban Wars, which... well, may or may not have been a by-product of our little... thing at Canary Wharf. Collapses into the sea two-hundred and fifty years in the future, though. No maintenance, world-wide depression.” The Doctor sighed. “Brilliant, though. Humans... always building concrete memorials to abstract ideals. It's just brilliant.”
“Doctor?” Rose was standing some distance away from him at a newspaper stand, waving a copy of the New York Times his direction. “I think you should take a look at this. It sounds up our alley.”
The Doctor grinned. “Really? Aliens in New York? Again?”
“I didn't say alien. It's just... weird.”
The Doctor took the newspaper from her and scanned the article quickly. When he finished, he raised his paled face and swallowed. “Rose. I know exactly what we're up against. We've got to find this Eve Dallas woman, just as soon as we can. We're not just dealing with an alien - we're dealing with The Barber.”
**
It turned out that navigating New York in the middle of the 21st century took a bit of doing. There were several layers of traffic and they were a few miles from where the computer terminal they'd located on a street corner indicated the police headquarters was.
“I just can't get over it,” the Doctor said, tapping the taxi window they'd hired to take them the last jog of their trip. “Eve Dallas. That name should sound familiar.”
“I've never heard of her,” Rose said, scanning the article one more time. “But it sounds like she's got quite a record: breaking up a cloning conspiracy, solving the murder of a Senator's daughter and uncovering a pedophilia scandal...”
The Doctor nodded. “It's something else, though. It's not the cop thing I'm remembering. There's something else I should...”
The taxi came to a screeching halt, and the cab driver looked over his shoulder at the Doctor and Rose. “Look, that'll be forty bucks, all right?”
“All right,” Rose said pleasantly, and fished money out of her purse, handing it to the harried man as she slipped out of the backseat. She'd learned to always carry money, since the Doctor often forgot such things. “What's this alien like, then? Worse than a Dalek? I've never seen your face get that pale.”
“Well, you remember that thing with the Sycorax?” the Doctor asked, sticking his hands in his pockets as they began to climb the steps to the police headquarters.
“Yep, of course. Saving the world in your jim-jams,” Rose said, and stuck her tongue in between her teeth.
“Very Arthur Dent. In the best possible way. Of course, I was slightly better looking than he was, poor man.”
“Funny, I recall you looking a bit like you got ran over by a lorry,” Rose said, skipping a step and pausing to look down on him. “It was all coughing and hacking and near-death rambling until the last possible minute. I think you were trying to give me a heart attack.”
The Doctor beamed. “Now, Rose! I can't believe you'd suspect me of such a thing. What was I saying?”
“How the Barber is somehow related to the Sycorax.”
“Oh yes. Right. Well, I gave that marvelous little speech...”
“--It was very marvelous.”
“Thank you. I gave that marvelous little speech about blood control and hypnotism and how you can't really force someone to take their own life through something like that, right?”
“Right.”
“I lied.”
Rose stopped and faced him. “What are we talking about, Doctor? Someone that can brainwash people into killing themselves?”
“Oh yes. Well, it's not really that simple. The Barber's a... malevolent energy, really. His people were destroyed in the Time War. Wiped out by the shock waves of the destruction. They used to have real physical forms. I ran into them when I was traveling with Martha... or what remains of them.”
“There's more than one Barber?” Rose tilted her head. “Or there's just one complete nutter?”
“Oh just the one. And he's more than enough. They jettisoned him into space, but every once in a while I ran across stories of him wiping out entire populations.” The Doctor's eyes steeled. “I've caught up with him now, though.”
“Do all of your arch enemies have definite articles in front of their names?” Rose asked, after a moment of silence. “I mean to say, there's The Master, and now The Barber? Who's next, the Taxi Cab Driver?”
The Doctor sighed and pretended impatience. “That's it. No more grammar for you. In fact, no more reading. Or asking questions.”
“You love it. Come on. Let's go meet this Eve Dallas. Maybe seeing her in person will spark something in that massive brain of yours.”
“Maybe.” The Doctor grinned. “We won't know until we've met her though. Should be fun! Allons-y!”
Title: Bled Out
Pairings: Ten/Rose, Roarke/Eve, McNab/Peabody, Leonardo/Mavis
Rating: M. For graphic descriptions of sex, violence and murder. It's not for the weak-stomached among you. It follows more along the writing style of J.D. Robb than Russell T. Davies.
Summary: When a malevolent energy being creeps into Eve Dallas's 2060 New York beat, she doesn't quite know what to make of the evidence. Until she meets the Doctor and his Rose. Then all bets are off.
Bled Out
Prologue: Definite Articles in Death
The only thing worse than being called to a crime scene right after completing testimony in court in New York City was being called to a crime scene in the middle of July right after completing testimony in court. Andy Ravirez had been a guilty bastard, but he'd been a guilty bastard with two very good lawyers, and Eve had spent most of her time that week defending her investigation. She was pleased when the guilty verdict with 20 years, no parole, had finally been announced. Then her comm unit had gone off, and she was headed for the east side of town, to an apartment building known for housing high-class licensed companions, to a suspected murder or suicide.
Eve drew in a deep breath when she entered the apartment and turned toward the kitchen, where the officer on duty had told her the corpse was, and then immediately thought better of breathing for the remainder of her time inside the space.
It was among the more gruesome sights she had ever encountered on her long career in police work. And it wasn't just the sight - it was the smell of rot and piss and Seal-It and the lingering smoke from someone's late night Zoner-indulgence. You never got used to it, only learned to control the initial visceral reaction. Eve deftly stepped to the side as one of the younger field officers brushed past her as he ran out the door. She didn't blame him - she was swallowing a lump of bile as she stepped inside the crime scene.
Detective Delia Peabody looked up from where she was taking notes off to the side of the crime scene, looking more than slightly green. “Dallas.”
“Peabody. Report.” She'd already gotten the rundown from the field officer who had called her in, but she appreciated Peabody's growing powers of investigation.
“Victim is Marley Robards. Twenty-four years old, private dancer. High class licensed companion. Parents are in Ohio, one son from a previous cohab. Landlord called us in when the neighbors started to complain about the smell. She's been dead a few days, sir.”
“Hmm,” Eve stepped further into Marley's kitchen, studied the corpse arranged grotesquely, propped up against the cabinets cornering the stove. It appeared as though she'd slit her own wrists, but missed the major arteries, then stabbed herself in the stomach, the knife still embedded deeply in her body. “Belly wound. That's not a fun way to go.”
“No, sir.” Peabody coughed. “I did the initial evaluation on-scene, sir. If that's all right.”
Eve nodded. “You got something for me?”
Peabody squared her shoulders. “I don't think it's a suicide.”
“Oh?” Eve idly picked up a few pieces of mail - bills, credit cards, all with accept able balances and in reasonable amounts. If she'd offed herself, it wasn't because of financial woes.
“The angle of the cuts on the wrists, sir. It's all wrong. You can't slice yourself open like that.”
Eve dropped to her haunches and studied the remains of Marley Robards. The air conditioning unit had been off in the apartment, and so she was pretty far along in the stages of decay a corpse went through, but you could still see the wounds. Eve didn't touch her - bodies had a nasty habit of falling apart after they'd been left out in the open a few days - but angled her own head to study the marks.
“Fair enough point. So, she didn't kill herself. Why didn't she struggle? There's no sign of a fight.”
“I think we'll know after we get the tox screen back,” Peabody said. “I looked at her arms. She's got some marks, but you can tell she's not a regular user. Someone attacked her, sir. Or maybe attacked isn't the right word. Someone killed her, sir.”
Eve scanned the room, rose to her feet again. “I think you're right.”
“Really?” Peabody's eyes were wide, and she coughed. “I mean, right, sir. I was... totally expecting that.”
Eve wanted to laugh, but she couldn't forget poor Marley in the other room. “Right, Peabody. Let's finish the initial investigation and get down to figuring out which son of a bitch killed her.”
The joy of a compliment from her senior officer faded from Peabody's eyes. “Right sir. Of course.”
“We need to figure out who Marley Robards was. Her clients, her schedules, what she did in the last twenty-four hours anyone saw her alive.” Eve sighed. “And we've got to call her son and tell him that his mother is dead. Christ, somedays I hate this job.”
**
The Doctor stepped out of the Tardis and inhaled, sticking his hands in his pockets.“New York! The year of your Lord, 2060. It is a fine summer's day in July, I believe, and wind's out of the northeast, and Rose... you're not anywhere near me, are you?”
“What did you say, Doctor?” Rose stepped out of the Tardis, blinking against the bright sun. “Did you land us in the right spot this time?”
The Doctor fairly pouted. “Rose, if you're not going to pay attention...”
“I was paying attention. I just got my heel caught in the grating of the console room.” Rose brushed her jacket with a hand. “What do you think of the outfit? Good for America sixty years in my future?”
The Doctor grinned at her. She'd dressed for a day out in future New York - cut-off shorts and a shirt proclaiming her love for Star Wars - a recent acquisition from a trip to Tatooine, the actual planet. “Brilliant! Although, I have to say, not one of our more successful trips.”
“If you hadn't insisted on speaking Huttese to Jabba, you wouldn't have gotten the pronunciation wrong,” Rose said pragmatically. “Then we wouldn't have been running for our lives because you insinuated his wife was skinny.”
“An honest mistake, Rose! The 'uh' and 'oo' distinctions are very hard in that language, I'll have you know.”
“I wouldn't know. Because I let the Tardis translate for me. Honestly, sometimes I think you start off with the intention to cause trouble,” Rose teased.
The Doctor coughed. “Well, that's neither here nor there! What do you want to do first? Statue of Liberty? Empire State Building? Cup of real New York coffee? What'll it be?”
“The Statue of Liberty's still there?”
“Yep! It took some damage in the Urban Wars, which... well, may or may not have been a by-product of our little... thing at Canary Wharf. Collapses into the sea two-hundred and fifty years in the future, though. No maintenance, world-wide depression.” The Doctor sighed. “Brilliant, though. Humans... always building concrete memorials to abstract ideals. It's just brilliant.”
“Doctor?” Rose was standing some distance away from him at a newspaper stand, waving a copy of the New York Times his direction. “I think you should take a look at this. It sounds up our alley.”
The Doctor grinned. “Really? Aliens in New York? Again?”
“I didn't say alien. It's just... weird.”
The Doctor took the newspaper from her and scanned the article quickly. When he finished, he raised his paled face and swallowed. “Rose. I know exactly what we're up against. We've got to find this Eve Dallas woman, just as soon as we can. We're not just dealing with an alien - we're dealing with The Barber.”
**
It turned out that navigating New York in the middle of the 21st century took a bit of doing. There were several layers of traffic and they were a few miles from where the computer terminal they'd located on a street corner indicated the police headquarters was.
“I just can't get over it,” the Doctor said, tapping the taxi window they'd hired to take them the last jog of their trip. “Eve Dallas. That name should sound familiar.”
“I've never heard of her,” Rose said, scanning the article one more time. “But it sounds like she's got quite a record: breaking up a cloning conspiracy, solving the murder of a Senator's daughter and uncovering a pedophilia scandal...”
The Doctor nodded. “It's something else, though. It's not the cop thing I'm remembering. There's something else I should...”
The taxi came to a screeching halt, and the cab driver looked over his shoulder at the Doctor and Rose. “Look, that'll be forty bucks, all right?”
“All right,” Rose said pleasantly, and fished money out of her purse, handing it to the harried man as she slipped out of the backseat. She'd learned to always carry money, since the Doctor often forgot such things. “What's this alien like, then? Worse than a Dalek? I've never seen your face get that pale.”
“Well, you remember that thing with the Sycorax?” the Doctor asked, sticking his hands in his pockets as they began to climb the steps to the police headquarters.
“Yep, of course. Saving the world in your jim-jams,” Rose said, and stuck her tongue in between her teeth.
“Very Arthur Dent. In the best possible way. Of course, I was slightly better looking than he was, poor man.”
“Funny, I recall you looking a bit like you got ran over by a lorry,” Rose said, skipping a step and pausing to look down on him. “It was all coughing and hacking and near-death rambling until the last possible minute. I think you were trying to give me a heart attack.”
The Doctor beamed. “Now, Rose! I can't believe you'd suspect me of such a thing. What was I saying?”
“How the Barber is somehow related to the Sycorax.”
“Oh yes. Right. Well, I gave that marvelous little speech...”
“--It was very marvelous.”
“Thank you. I gave that marvelous little speech about blood control and hypnotism and how you can't really force someone to take their own life through something like that, right?”
“Right.”
“I lied.”
Rose stopped and faced him. “What are we talking about, Doctor? Someone that can brainwash people into killing themselves?”
“Oh yes. Well, it's not really that simple. The Barber's a... malevolent energy, really. His people were destroyed in the Time War. Wiped out by the shock waves of the destruction. They used to have real physical forms. I ran into them when I was traveling with Martha... or what remains of them.”
“There's more than one Barber?” Rose tilted her head. “Or there's just one complete nutter?”
“Oh just the one. And he's more than enough. They jettisoned him into space, but every once in a while I ran across stories of him wiping out entire populations.” The Doctor's eyes steeled. “I've caught up with him now, though.”
“Do all of your arch enemies have definite articles in front of their names?” Rose asked, after a moment of silence. “I mean to say, there's The Master, and now The Barber? Who's next, the Taxi Cab Driver?”
The Doctor sighed and pretended impatience. “That's it. No more grammar for you. In fact, no more reading. Or asking questions.”
“You love it. Come on. Let's go meet this Eve Dallas. Maybe seeing her in person will spark something in that massive brain of yours.”
“Maybe.” The Doctor grinned. “We won't know until we've met her though. Should be fun! Allons-y!”