Five things that happened at Harry's wedding

[shot_my_shoes]

Prompt 008.2: Coerce an enemy to put down their superweapon. Right when they're about to act, show them that there's another path.

Getting married
It was a perfectly normal wedding - to start with anyway. Harry hadn't expected anything but a perfectly normal wedding - this was the part of his life that was perfectly normal and mostly untouched by alien influences. And it wasn't as if aliens invaded on a daily basis, so he only expected perfectly normal things to disrupt it. Which, of course, they did.

There was the usual panic about last minute changes that Harry had done his best to avoid. He had his stag night two days before the wedding, but he returned home the following afternoon when the drink was wearing off and the hangover was kicking in. Elaine was unsympathetic, but then she'd had her hen night while he was in Geneva and he only had her word for how drunk she hadn't been.

On the day there'd been something about flowers, which Harry wasn't really listening to, and then Elaine complaining that he hadn't been listening. He was almost glad when they got to the hotel and went to separate rooms to get ready. While he dressed he reminded himself it was just stress and he really did want to marry her.

Once they actually got to the wedding all they'd had to worry about was getting married and that turned out to be the easy part. Harry's main aim for afterwards was his knee holding up for their first dance, which it did, although Elaine did help to hold him up. So he was happy. But he should have known it wouldn't last...

Talking aliens out of destruction
Later on, when he'd wandered out for a breather from the overheated room, Harry noticed the wall down one of the corridors rippled. He'd seen too much of this sort of thing to do anything as stupid as to touch it, so he reached out with his walking stick. Which the wall started to suck in.

Bracing himself against the opposite wall Harry pulled back and managed to achieve a sort of equilibrium. But there was only so long he could hold it, so he was glad when he heard someone else coming. He only hoped they weren't too scared by what they saw and would be able to help him pull.

"Harry, what have you got yourself into?"

He breathed a sigh of relief. Out of all of the people invited to his wedding, Sarah was probably the most useful person to have come along now. "I don't know," he said, "but can you please help pull?" His arms were starting to ache. He could have let go of his walking stick if he'd had to, but he quite fancied the idea of being able to walk back to the reception.

Keeping her distance from the wall, Sarah grabbed hold of his walking stick further down and pulled. It was slow, but it was definitely moving. Then all of a sudden it was free and Sarah fell back against him.

"What is it?" she asked, once they were both on their feet.

"Not something you should touch," was all he could recommend. Beyond that it wasn't something he'd seen before.

"I definitely wouldn't touch it. That's a gateway to another world."

Harry and Sarah both turned at the sound of the voice. "Doctor!" Sarah exclaimed. Harry recognised this brown-suited, dark haired version of him from the UNIT files, but he hadn't expected to see him, especially not at his wedding.

"What world does it go to?" Harry asked.

"Well..." The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the wall. "Looks like Brimharia. Definitely not somewhere you want to go. Full of fire. Bit like hell really." He frowned. "Except the biblical idea of hell's not quite right."

"Doctor." Sarah cut him off before he could carry on down that route. "How do we close it?"

"Ah, now that's a tricky one." He looked at the readout on his sonic screwdriver.

"Whatever you're planning, I think you'd better do it fast." Harry could see something coming through the gateway although it was too soon to tell what it was yet.

The Doctor looked up at him. "Were you listening to me, Harry? I just said I don't know how to close it."

Harry had had plenty of practise at ignoring that. "So what do we do?" Whatever was coming through now looked a lot like a devil, which was concerning.

"We run." The Doctor took off, Sarah after him.

Harry sighed. "That's easier said than done." He opted for the fastest walk he could manage, which, given what he'd already put his knee through that evening, wasn't very fast at all. "Where's Sarah?" he asked the Doctor, when he caught up at the end of the corridor. They were close enough to the reception to hear the music but there was no one else around here, which he was glad about.

"Gone around to the other end of the corridor. Between her sonic lipstick and my sonic screwdriver, we should be able to stop anything else from coming through."

It was a start, he supposed. "That's not closing it, though."

The Doctor looked at him and frowned. "Why are you and Sarah dressed like that?"

"This my wedding reception."

The Doctor looked around.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Not here obviously. In a room down there." He pointed.

"Oh, congratulations." The Doctor grinned and shook his hand.

"I didn't expect aliens to be paying a visit. Any of them," he added, giving the Doctor a look.

"I picked up the gateway on the TARDIS scanners and thought I should take a look."

Harry couldn't say he wasn't grateful, he just wished the aliens had picked a better time. Any time except this evening would have done if the Doctor was going to turn up to sort it out.

"Hello!" the Doctor called, sounding far too happy for someone in the middle of a crisis. Harry worried that some innocent bystanders had arrived, but when he turned to look he was it was the red, horned alien.

The alien stopped in front of them. "This world needs to be cleansed," it said.

At least they weren't trying to invade. Mind you, that all depended on what cleansed meant. "I'm sure this hotel doesn't have any rats," he said.

The alien turned to him and Harry squirmed under its stare. "There is the perfect vehicle," it said, then pointed beyond the Doctor's shoulder. In its hand was a gun that Harry could have sworn wasn't there before. And when it pressed the trigger there was a buzzing noise that Harry didn't like the sound of at all.

"Oh, no, not the TARDIS." The Doctor turned and ran towards it, but only got a few steps before he bounced off what Harry assumed was an invisible forcefield. Harry bent down to him, to check he was all right, but the Doctor waved him away.

If they couldn't get to the TARDIS, then they'd have to get to the alien. Harry wondered how far Sarah had got. This hotel was a bit of a maze in places and he could only assume the Doctor knew what he was talking about and this corridor wasn't a dead end.

He stepped closer to the alien. "Why?" he asked, sounding braver than he felt. "What have we done that means you need to cleanse this planet?"

"You have committed sin," the alien replied, sternly.

Harry blinked. He hadn't expected religion from an alien looking like that. He saw Sarah come up behind it and carefully didn't look at her. From the way she wasn't looking at him he presumed her miming was for the Doctor's benefit.

"What will that achieve?" Harry asked, wanting to keep it talking, even if he wasn't sure how much of an effect it was going to have. "If we're all dead then we can't learn the error of our ways."

"Hmm." The alien stroked his chin as he considered it. "Perhaps you're right. I must consult the judiciary."

Harry gave a sigh of relief as the alien pressed a button on his gun and the buzzing stopped. Then he turned round and walked back to the gateway. Sarah had to press herself against the wall to keep him from walking into her. "That was too easy," Harry said.

The Doctor switched off his sonic screwdriver, which Harry presumed meant he was letting the alien go. "Now I have enough data to close the gateway," he said and ran off. Harry only managed a few steps before he heard the familiar sound of the TARDIS dematerialising.

"Where's he going?" Sarah asked.

Harry shrugged. "Closing the gateway, apparently," he said, although Sarah had heard the same words he had.

It was only a minute before they heard the TARDIS materialise behind them this time and when they reached the section of wall where the gateway had been, it was no longer there. But the TARDIS was parked beside it with the door ajar. Sarah pushed it open and stepped inside, so Harry thought that he ought to follow her, just in case.

Inside, the Doctor was leaning back against the console, grinning.

"What did you do?" Sarah asked.

"Are we safe?" Harry asked at the same time.

"The gateway is closed forever. They won't be coming back. Or ever leaving their planet." The Doctor twirled his sonic screwdriver before putting it back in his jacket pocket. "They need to do something about their own sins before they pass judgement on others."

Harry supposed he couldn't disagree with that. He was glad to know they were gone, but he would file a report with UNIT after his honeymoon, in case they ever came back again.

"More importantly," the Doctor said, stepping forwards to face Harry. "What have you done to your leg?"

"It's my knee. And it wasn't me, an alien pointed at it and now the inside of it's degenerating."

"Oh." The Doctor frowned and bent down to peer at it. Not that anything was visible on the surface - and he certainly wouldn't be able to see anything through Harry's best trousers.

"I don't suppose you know what it is," Harry said hopefully.

"I don't know." The Doctor stood up. "Come with me." He bounded around the console room and out of the door at the back. Sarah and Harry exchanged glances and followed him.

Some answers
In the TARDIS sickbay the Doctor ran all sorts of scanners over Harry's knee, never once saying anything beyond "Hmmm," which infuriated Harry no end. Sarah got to see what he was doing, even if she didn't understand it, but all he could do was lie down and ask questions which the Doctor never answered.

Eventually he put the equipment away and Harry sat up. "So what's your diagnosis, Doctor?"

"Nanobots."

"They don't do that," Sarah commented. Harry had heard of them but never so far come across them, so he didn't know everything they could do.

"These ones do. They've been programmed to eat anything they come in contact with."

Sarah blinked. Harry asked, "Can you get them out?"

"Yes, but they'd eat any container I put them in."

As much as Harry wanted them out so he could be sure a knee replacement wouldn't degrade the same way, he wouldn't wish them on anyone else. At least they were just in his knee and not in some vital organ, which was something.

"We'll turn them off," Sarah suggested. "I've done that before."

"I think," the Doctor said slowly, "there's a dead man's switch."

"So if we turn them off they get worse?" Harry asked.

He nodded. "But I can slow them down."

Harry closed his eyes. For a moment he'd been so hopeful and now the best he'd have to live with was for his knee to get worse more slowly. "Let's do that," he said, since it was better than nothing.

The Doctor tapped away at the keys on a console. Harry didn't feel anything, but he was thinking all the time. "What would happen," he asked, "if they got exposed to the air? Say if we cut my knee open, or my leg off, or I died?"

The Doctor hit the final key hard and turned to face Harry. "There's a lot more to eat outside of you."

Harry nodded. He had a feeling there wasn't going to be an easy solution. If there was he and Martha would have found it by now.

"Do you know anyone that can help?" Sarah asked.

The Doctor frowned as he thought. "I'm not sure. I'd have to visit a few places."

Harry stood before the Doctor could do anything else. "Not now. Not this evening. This is my wedding and I'm not going anywhere."

The Doctor opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I'll drop by when I have something, shall I?"

Harry nodded. "Now," he said, "I have to get back to my wife."

Sarah didn't linger too long with the Doctor, maybe because she knew Harry was waiting. Despite him not wanting to leave for many good reasons - what were the chances of the Doctor getting them back in five minutes and not five days or five weeks or five months time? - he was still a little reluctant to go back to his ordinary life, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help himself.

Sarah managed to smile at him as they left, but she was still looking at where the TARDIS was after it had dematerialised.

"Come on, old girl," Harry said, putting an arm around her. "We've got a party to get back to."

Jealous wife
They were nearly back at the room at the reception was held in when they met Elaine coming out of it. "I wondered where you'd got to," she said, in an odd voice.

"You'll never believe it--" Harry began, but she didn't let him continue.

"Then don't tell me." She turned and stomped off down the stairs.

Harry blinked and let go of Sarah. "I'll just go back to the party," she said. Harry nodded, then followed Elaine and was just in time to see her go into the toilets. After a moment's hesitation he cautiously opened the door. No one was in there except Elaine, sitting on a large padded stool in the centre of the room and she looked as if she might be crying.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly and sat down beside her.

She moved away. "You can't be in here, this is the Ladies."

"I'm not going anywhere." This was supposed to be a happy day, not one for arguments.

She sniffed and he offered her his handkerchief. She did at least take that. "Our wedding," she said eventually, "and you're off with an old girlfriend. I knew it was a mistake to invite them."

When that subject hadn't come up earlier, Harry had assumed she was happier about it. After all, he had married her, not Esther or Sarah and he was sure that would make her feel secure enough not to be so jealous. Obviously not.

"There were aliens. We had to deal with them, that was all." And seeing the Doctor so briefly had upset Sarah a little and that was hardly something he could ignore.

"And you expect me to believe that?"

"Yes. Because it's the truth."

She just turned away from him a little more.

He sighed. "Do you really think I would think about other women like that? Because if so then maybe you don't know me that well." Which didn't say much for their marriage, and it hadn't even lasted a whole day yet.

At that she she looked round at him. "I'm sorry." She sighed. "I wasn't always this insecure."

He smiled at her. "Everyone has their faults and I love you anyway."

"Do you?"

He frowned at the question. "Of course I do. Why else would I marry you?"

She shrugged. "It's just that you never tell me."

"Because you know I do." Although now he knew that assumption might not be as right as he previously thought.

"But it's nice to hear it sometimes."

He nodded. "All right." He supposed he could see the logic in that. He tried touching her again and this time she relaxed into a hug. "I love that I can talk to you about anything," he said into her hair. "And that you're patient and you care and keep me sane and--"

He couldn't continue because she lifted her head and kissed him, stopping just long enough to say "I love you" and in the end Harry had to pull away, as much as he hated to. "People will be wondering where we are," he pointed out. And he was in the Ladies.

"Give me a minute," she said. "I can't go out looking like I've been crying."

He loitered outside the door, trying not to look shifty, but it really was only a minute. She did look better, he noticed. You'd have to look closely to see there had been anything wrong. She smiled at him and he escorted her back into the party, hoping that would see the end of her jealous streaks.

Wedding night
It was late by the time they went to bed. Speaking to all their friends had been too good an opportunity to miss and Harry and Elaine were some of the last people to go to bed. The Doctor had come back, although Harry got the impression that it wasn't quite so soon from his perspective. He didn't have any more news for Harry yet, but he and Sarah (well, mostly the Doctor) were eating the remains of the buffet. Given the Doctor's tendency not to sleep, Harry thought it best to leave them to it.

Harry had been keen to keep Elaine away from their room to keep it a surprise. So when they entered he looked round to check someone had brought her things up here. Meanwhile she'd spotted the red rose he'd left on her pillow, although it was a bit wilted by now.

"Thank you," she said, smiling as she smelled it.

He smiled back. "Wait until you see the bathroom."

She frowned. "I saw it when we looked round."

"Yes, but you missed a bit." He held out a hand, which she took and let him lead her to the bathroom.

"It does look the same as before," she complained, upon entering it.

"But have you looked behind the door?"

Curiously, she let go of his hand and peered around the door. "Oh!"

Harry smiled. When she kissed him he knew he'd done the right thing in wanting to be married in this hotel, even though it was more expensive.

"Do we have enough time in the morning for the jacuzzi?" she asked afterwards.

He nodded. "Plenty. As long as we don't spend too much time in bed."

"Then do you mind if we just go to sleep? I know it's not traditional on your wedding night, but I'm so tired."

He smiled. "I was thinking the same thing."

Not that they got much sleep anyway - Harry made sure to set the alarm early enough so they had plenty of time to enjoy the jacuzzi before breakfast.