Don't Blink - 40/?
I am so embarrassed that this hasn't been updated since July! Our family has been expecting a new addition recently and it hasn't been easy to find time to write this year. As things ease up hopefully I can update more frequently and wrap this fic up.
Title: Don't Blink - 40/?
Characters: Ten, Rose
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb
1~ 2~ 3~ 4~ 5~ 6~ 7~ 8~ 9~ 10~ 11~ 12~ 13~ 14~ 15~ 16~ 17~ 18~ 19~ 20~
21~ 22~ 23~ 24~ 25~ 26~ 27~ 28~ 29~ 30~ 31~ 32~ 33~ 34~ 35~ 36 37~ 38~ 39~
The rug came up easily. Instead of a loose thread, they saw the outline of a door.
“What is that?” Iris leaned over Rose to get a better look.
“It’s a trapdoor,” Rose said slowly.
“That’s a ridiculous spot for one.” Jim helped her peel the rest of the rug away, exposing all of the door. A small metal handle was built into the top, designed to lie flat in a recessed area. It was sticking up slightly, the cause of them tripping over the past few weeks.
Jim set his toolbox down and shoved it away. Rose obligingly scooted out of the way as he fit his fingers around the handle.
“What are you doing?” Iris said urgently. “Don’t open it!”
Rose looked at her with in surprise.
“Are you joking? We can’t leave it now that we know it’s here!”
“But we don’t know why it’s there!”
“Exactly. We should see where it leads.” Jim reached for the handle.
“This is a bad idea,” Iris stated as he lifted it up.
“Iris, it’s fine!” he assured her as he braced himself and threw the trapdoor back.
Rose leaned forward to see. Iris took a step back but watched with wide eyes.
The trapdoor slid up and out of the way with a smoothness that was out of place for 1969 London. Rose frowned and would have examined it more closely, but Jim made a sound of satisfaction.
“Brilliant! A set of stairs! Where’s my torch?” He moved to his toolbox on his knees and started to rummage around.
“We are not going down there!”
“Iris, you worry too much.” Rose stood up and brushed off her knees. “Come on, Jim!”
“It’s probably just a storage space!” Iris continued.
“Then why didn’t you know about it?”
“Or maybe a wine cellar!”
“A wine cellar?” Jim shook his head as he switched his torch on. “Your posh upbringing is showing, Iris. Who hides a wine cellar inside a shop?” He waved the torch downward. “It’s not too steep. I’ll just nip down and have a look around.” He started down the steps.
“I’m coming!” Rose was right behind him. This was more excitement than she’d had in months.
Iris let her breath out in a huff. “Fine! I suppose I ought to come along and make sure you don’t do anything irrational.”
Rose couldn’t see Jim’s face but she could hear the smirk in his voice. “You are the last person in the world to do anything irrational, so come along.”
The stairs were spotless, a sure sign that they were either in regular use or brand new. A set of fifteen of them led to a cement floor.
“How long have these been here?” Iris looked closely at the steps. “They’re brand new!”
“All that evening construction,” Rose said slowly. “Looks like they were up to more than just the shop renovations.”
Jim made a derisive noise in his throat. “No wonder he didn’t want my help with that part of it.”
Iris glanced over her shoulder at him. “Who didn’t want your help?”
Jim’s face was just visible in the light of his torch. He looked impatient at Iris’s question. “Who do you think? Troy. Who else would have a trapdoor set into the shop? He hired us to do all that work upstairs and never mentioned needing a secret space in the cellar.”
Iris looked troubled now. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, forget who did it.” Rose took the torch from Jim’s hand. “I want to know why he bothered at all?” She swept the light all around, revealing a room with neatly bricked walls and a smooth, clean floor. “What’s that?”
In the corner stood a metallic cylinder, about as high as Rose’s waist. She moved towards it, Jim close behind. As she aimed the light at it, they saw that the cylinder was smooth but composed of separate parts, each one a different shade of gold or silver. Scrolling along the sides were markings in a language or code that Rose didn’t recognize.
“What in the world is that?” Iris asked in surprise. “And why is it down here?”
Rose stared intently at the markings. She raised her hand to trace them with a fingertip, but Jim grabbed her wrist roughly and yanked her back before she could.
Both women stared at him in shock.
“Jim!” Iris exclaimed.
Jim’s face was stern as he looked down at Rose. “Don’t touch it. You should never touch anything alien. You don’t know what it might do.”
He had a point, and he was so right that Rose had nothing to say.
Iris did.
“What do you mean, ‘never touch anything alien’? How often do you run into alien objects?”
Rose and Jim looked at her silently, which only annoyed her even more.
“You’re not honestly telling me that you believe in aliens?” Iris actually put her hands on her hips, wrinkling her linen blouse.
“You don’t?” Jim questioned, waving a hand at the cylinder.
“No, I don’t! Rose! Tell me you don’t agree with this nonsense.”
Rose opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Iris rolled her eyes, the most exasperated Rose had ever seen her. “Name one thing that you can prove is actually alien!”
From above came the most alien thing that Rose could think of.
“Rose? Are you down there? Rooose!”
Rose quickly moved to the bottom of the steps. “We’re down here!”
The Doctor’s face appeared at the top. “What are you doing down there?”
“We found something! Come look.”
The Doctor bounded down the stairs, his coat billowing out behind him.
“Hello,” he greeted Rose when he reached the bottom. “Come here often? What have you found?”
“How did you get in?” Iris interrupted. “I thought the door was locked.”
“I opened it,” the Doctor said vaguely, which Rose took to mean he had used the sonic screwdriver on the locked door. “Don’t worry, though,” he assured Iris. “I locked things up tight again. Now.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around expectantly. “What are you lot doing in the cellar?” He caught sight of Jim and started. “Hello there!”
Jim raised a hand in a brief wave. “Hello again. We’ve discovered a trapdoor, a staircase to down here, and a strange object shoved over in the corner there.”
“A strange object, eh?” The Doctor caught sight of the cylinder, made a sound of interest, and took out his glasses and put them on.
“Strange, yes,” Iris conceded, “but these two seem to think it’s some sort of alien creation, which is impossible.”
The Doctor was peering closely at the markings but glanced at her over his shoulder. “Is it? Impossible, I mean.”
“Of course it is,” she said crossly, now annoyed with him as well. “There is no such thing as aliens!”
“Mmmm,” he responded. “Rose, shine that light over here.”
Rose shone the torch where he was pointing. The Doctor made another sound of interest.
“What is it?” Rose asked.
He didn’t answer her, just leaned in closer to the cylinder. Rose hoped he wasn’t going to lick it.
“It seems that these small compartments might be a sort of storage. Little compartments,” he mused out loud. “What would their function be?” He reached out and gently touched one, causing both Jim and Rose to cry out in alarm.
The Doctor withdrew his hand and gazed at them in amazement. “What is wrong with you two?”
Before they could answer the cylinder made a whirring sound, drawing all of their attention. The small section he had touched was now glowing yellow.
“I bet that’s not good,” Rose said to the Doctor.
“You shouldn’t have touched it!” Jim said.
“Why not?” The Doctor looked amazed. “It’s something that shouldn’t be here, hidden away. Why not touch it and find out what it is?”
“Because you don’t know what it is!”
“And touching it will help us figure out what its function is,” the Doctor pointed out. He sounded perfectly reasonable, which only made Jim look more frustrated with him. Rose could sympathize with the frustration. The Doctor just had that effect on people sometimes.
Iris stepped up to them. She’d been hovering in the background, alternating between fidgeting nervously and glancing up the stairs to check on the empty shop upstairs. Now it appeared that she was ready to take up a defense of Jim.
“If you don’t know what it is, maybe you shouldn’t be touching it,” she said. “I think Jim makes sense, actually. Unless you think you now what it is.”
They all looked at the cylinder and then back at the Doctor. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, er, not really,” he admitted, glancing back at iris. “But it’s only been...” His voice trailed off as he stared, mouth falling open, at something behind them.
The others all spun around. Hanging in mid-air was a bright yellow spot. As they watched it grew larger, turning into a column of light roughly two meters tall and one meter wide. It abruptly stopped growing, flared an intensely bright yellow, and then split in half from top to bottom. Mr. Troy stepped out of the opening, and the light disappeared.
Iris let out a small scream and clutched Jim’s arm tightly. He put an arm around her to support her, all the time staring at Mr. Troy in shock.
“Where did you some from?” the Doctor said in surprise.
“What are you doing down here?” Hector Troy demanded of Iris at the same time.
She was still struck speechless, and could only shake her head as she gaped at him.
He turned to Rose. “Rose?”
She pointed behind him. “Was that, was that a portal or something?”
“Does this object belong to you?” the Doctor asked, indicating the cylinder.
Troy looked amazed. “Of course it does. Everything in this building belongs to me! Which is why I’d like to know what the hell you’re all doing down here!”
Iris finally found her voice. “We tripped on the rug upstairs. We found the trapdoor and the stairs and came down.”
Troy folded his arms across his chest, wrinkling his expensive-looking suit jacket.
“Iris, you had no business coming down here. It’s got nothing to do with the shop.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know that!” Rose said.
“Why is it down here?” Iris asked him. “What are you planning, Mr. Troy?”
“Planning?” he scoffed. “I’m not planning anything! I’m simply making use of some storage space.”
It was close to evening, but it wasn’t late enough for sunset. Somewhere outside, clouds parted and the sun appeared for a few final moments before nightfall. Rays of sunlight passed over the shop, came in through the windows and the skylight, and fell down the stairs and directly on the space where Troy was standing. As the sunlight travelled over his face it lit up his tan, making it look like a moment like he was glowing from within. It lasted only a moment before the sun disappeared again.
“What is it that you’re storing?” Jim asked, but the Doctor interrupted him.
“No, never mind!” He pushed his way past Jim and Iris to stand in front of Troy. “What was that?” he demanded wildly. “The sunlight hit your face, and you went all glowy! Did you see?” he asked Rose, turning around to look at her. “Did you see that?”
Rose shrugged. “I guess. The sun was pretty bright for a few seconds.”
“That wasn’t the sun! This late in the year the sun’s rays aren’t going to be so bright, certainly not in the evening!” The Doctor spun back to face Troy, a wild look in his eye. “What are you?”
Troy blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not the first one! I’ve seen people throughout London the past few months, going all glowy like you just did. What are you doing? That’s not a human trait.”
“I don’t think being tan is a sign of a non-human,” Rose said in a sing-song voice. Sometimes the Doctor got carried away, but he was really missing the point here. “Can we get back to the thing in the corner?”
“Did you see?” the Doctor asked Jim, turning to him. “Did you see how he got all bright? Iris?”
Jim and Iris looked less than convinced.
“I guess he got a bit...brighter there for a second,” Jim acknowledged. “But I don’t see how that’s a big deal. It was just the sun in our eyes.”
“Yes, the sun.” Iris seized on that explanation.
“The sun,” echoed the Doctor, and another look entirely came and went in his eye. It was curious and calculating and triumphant because he had just worked something out in that incredibly clever mind of his. Rose knew that look well.
The Doctor took a step closer to Troy. “The sun,” he repeated again. “Yes. Of course.” He looked up above their heads. “The skylight you put in is right over your head at this very moment. And you chose to appear in this very spot.” He looked down at the ground and the others mimicked his movements. “There’s a small sensor down here if I’m not mistaken.” He knelt on the ground, his coat swirling out and then back around his ankles. “And that contraption in the corner is meant to stand on top of it, and the sunlight...” His fingers found the sensor he was looking for.
Troy looked more annoyed than ever. Jim and Iris looked more confused than ever. Rose could sympathize with all of them. The Doctor truly was the most fascinating, most remarkable, most maddening creature she’d ever known.
The Doctor stood up. “You’re using that thing to catch sunlight,” he stated. “Your skin got brighter when the sun hit you straight on, and I’ll wager you’re not the only one of your kind in London, are you?”
“Kind of what?” Iris whispered to Jim. “What’s he talking about?”
Jim shook his head, transfixed by the conversation.
“What I’m doing here is none of your business,” Troy stated. “And I’ll thank you all to leave. Right now.”
“The shop is called Helio,” the Doctor continued as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “Very close to Helios, which is the Greek word for sun. It’s also the name of a scenic holiday spot in the Argosy sector, isn’t it? Very hot, very bright, with its own sun. A sun hotter than the one in this solar system. Anyone leaving Argosy would have to acclimate or suffer painfully, wouldn’t they? Unless they figured out a way to gather more sunlight.”
He finished this up with a triumphant look around, but his companions were unable to be impressed because they didn’t understand what he was going on about. He looked faintly disappointed, as though he’d hoped for more of a reaction but couldn’t blame them for being human and thus unable to appreciate his brilliance.
Rose’s eyes grew wide. “He’s gathering sunlight!”
The Doctor laughed. “Rose Tyler, you are brilliant.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips that left her smiling.
“He is gathering sunlight and storing it in that contraption.” The Doctor pointed towards the corner. “Somehow he’s siphoning off energy and using it to survive. Like a sort of solar panel.” He stepped closer to the device and held out a hand. “And once these small sections are opened up, the solar power is released.” His fingers hovered over one of the sections, and he had almost come into contact with the metal when Troy finally gave in.
“Don’t touch it!” he snapped, and the Doctor spun around.
“So I was right, was I?” he asked, pleased.
The others gaped at him.
“Were you guessing just then?” Rose demanded.
“Not guessing,” he corrected her. “Hypothesizing. Well?” he asked Troy.
“It’s storing up the energy from your sun, just as you said,” Troy replied reluctantly. “It’s too cold here to sustain us for very long. The extra power helps us survive.”
“But surely the sun in England isn’t a strong enough one for you?” Jim protested. “It’s hardly the first place I would go to if I needed to stay nice and warm.”
“Well, our scouts were a bit off in their information,” Troy admitted. “Bloody idiots. We have many more spots around southern Europe. This was the first place I settled, and I kept it up for sentimental reasons.”
“How many more spots?” the Doctor asked. “You can’t just keep siphoning off the sun without consequences, especially at the rates your people would need. How many of you are there?”
“We require far less in the warmer climate,” was all Troy would say. “We have been on your planet for five years. It has not caused a problem in any way with your solar system. I assure you, we have our scientists monitoring the situation. It doesn’t help interspace cooperation to destroy the source of light and life of an entire solar system.”
“But why are you here?” Rose asked, coming up and standing beside the Doctor. “What was wrong with your home?” The Doctor found her hand and squeezed it, as though congratulating her on such a clever question. She glanced at him and grinned as she squeezed his hand back.
“The same reason anyone goes anywhere,” Troy replied. “Because we could.”
Forty-one
Title: Don't Blink - 40/?
Characters: Ten, Rose
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb
1~ 2~ 3~ 4~ 5~ 6~ 7~ 8~ 9~ 10~ 11~ 12~ 13~ 14~ 15~ 16~ 17~ 18~ 19~ 20~
21~ 22~ 23~ 24~ 25~ 26~ 27~ 28~ 29~ 30~ 31~ 32~ 33~ 34~ 35~ 36 37~ 38~ 39~
The rug came up easily. Instead of a loose thread, they saw the outline of a door.
“What is that?” Iris leaned over Rose to get a better look.
“It’s a trapdoor,” Rose said slowly.
“That’s a ridiculous spot for one.” Jim helped her peel the rest of the rug away, exposing all of the door. A small metal handle was built into the top, designed to lie flat in a recessed area. It was sticking up slightly, the cause of them tripping over the past few weeks.
Jim set his toolbox down and shoved it away. Rose obligingly scooted out of the way as he fit his fingers around the handle.
“What are you doing?” Iris said urgently. “Don’t open it!”
Rose looked at her with in surprise.
“Are you joking? We can’t leave it now that we know it’s here!”
“But we don’t know why it’s there!”
“Exactly. We should see where it leads.” Jim reached for the handle.
“This is a bad idea,” Iris stated as he lifted it up.
“Iris, it’s fine!” he assured her as he braced himself and threw the trapdoor back.
Rose leaned forward to see. Iris took a step back but watched with wide eyes.
The trapdoor slid up and out of the way with a smoothness that was out of place for 1969 London. Rose frowned and would have examined it more closely, but Jim made a sound of satisfaction.
“Brilliant! A set of stairs! Where’s my torch?” He moved to his toolbox on his knees and started to rummage around.
“We are not going down there!”
“Iris, you worry too much.” Rose stood up and brushed off her knees. “Come on, Jim!”
“It’s probably just a storage space!” Iris continued.
“Then why didn’t you know about it?”
“Or maybe a wine cellar!”
“A wine cellar?” Jim shook his head as he switched his torch on. “Your posh upbringing is showing, Iris. Who hides a wine cellar inside a shop?” He waved the torch downward. “It’s not too steep. I’ll just nip down and have a look around.” He started down the steps.
“I’m coming!” Rose was right behind him. This was more excitement than she’d had in months.
Iris let her breath out in a huff. “Fine! I suppose I ought to come along and make sure you don’t do anything irrational.”
Rose couldn’t see Jim’s face but she could hear the smirk in his voice. “You are the last person in the world to do anything irrational, so come along.”
The stairs were spotless, a sure sign that they were either in regular use or brand new. A set of fifteen of them led to a cement floor.
“How long have these been here?” Iris looked closely at the steps. “They’re brand new!”
“All that evening construction,” Rose said slowly. “Looks like they were up to more than just the shop renovations.”
Jim made a derisive noise in his throat. “No wonder he didn’t want my help with that part of it.”
Iris glanced over her shoulder at him. “Who didn’t want your help?”
Jim’s face was just visible in the light of his torch. He looked impatient at Iris’s question. “Who do you think? Troy. Who else would have a trapdoor set into the shop? He hired us to do all that work upstairs and never mentioned needing a secret space in the cellar.”
Iris looked troubled now. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, forget who did it.” Rose took the torch from Jim’s hand. “I want to know why he bothered at all?” She swept the light all around, revealing a room with neatly bricked walls and a smooth, clean floor. “What’s that?”
In the corner stood a metallic cylinder, about as high as Rose’s waist. She moved towards it, Jim close behind. As she aimed the light at it, they saw that the cylinder was smooth but composed of separate parts, each one a different shade of gold or silver. Scrolling along the sides were markings in a language or code that Rose didn’t recognize.
“What in the world is that?” Iris asked in surprise. “And why is it down here?”
Rose stared intently at the markings. She raised her hand to trace them with a fingertip, but Jim grabbed her wrist roughly and yanked her back before she could.
Both women stared at him in shock.
“Jim!” Iris exclaimed.
Jim’s face was stern as he looked down at Rose. “Don’t touch it. You should never touch anything alien. You don’t know what it might do.”
He had a point, and he was so right that Rose had nothing to say.
Iris did.
“What do you mean, ‘never touch anything alien’? How often do you run into alien objects?”
Rose and Jim looked at her silently, which only annoyed her even more.
“You’re not honestly telling me that you believe in aliens?” Iris actually put her hands on her hips, wrinkling her linen blouse.
“You don’t?” Jim questioned, waving a hand at the cylinder.
“No, I don’t! Rose! Tell me you don’t agree with this nonsense.”
Rose opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Iris rolled her eyes, the most exasperated Rose had ever seen her. “Name one thing that you can prove is actually alien!”
From above came the most alien thing that Rose could think of.
“Rose? Are you down there? Rooose!”
Rose quickly moved to the bottom of the steps. “We’re down here!”
The Doctor’s face appeared at the top. “What are you doing down there?”
“We found something! Come look.”
The Doctor bounded down the stairs, his coat billowing out behind him.
“Hello,” he greeted Rose when he reached the bottom. “Come here often? What have you found?”
“How did you get in?” Iris interrupted. “I thought the door was locked.”
“I opened it,” the Doctor said vaguely, which Rose took to mean he had used the sonic screwdriver on the locked door. “Don’t worry, though,” he assured Iris. “I locked things up tight again. Now.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around expectantly. “What are you lot doing in the cellar?” He caught sight of Jim and started. “Hello there!”
Jim raised a hand in a brief wave. “Hello again. We’ve discovered a trapdoor, a staircase to down here, and a strange object shoved over in the corner there.”
“A strange object, eh?” The Doctor caught sight of the cylinder, made a sound of interest, and took out his glasses and put them on.
“Strange, yes,” Iris conceded, “but these two seem to think it’s some sort of alien creation, which is impossible.”
The Doctor was peering closely at the markings but glanced at her over his shoulder. “Is it? Impossible, I mean.”
“Of course it is,” she said crossly, now annoyed with him as well. “There is no such thing as aliens!”
“Mmmm,” he responded. “Rose, shine that light over here.”
Rose shone the torch where he was pointing. The Doctor made another sound of interest.
“What is it?” Rose asked.
He didn’t answer her, just leaned in closer to the cylinder. Rose hoped he wasn’t going to lick it.
“It seems that these small compartments might be a sort of storage. Little compartments,” he mused out loud. “What would their function be?” He reached out and gently touched one, causing both Jim and Rose to cry out in alarm.
The Doctor withdrew his hand and gazed at them in amazement. “What is wrong with you two?”
Before they could answer the cylinder made a whirring sound, drawing all of their attention. The small section he had touched was now glowing yellow.
“I bet that’s not good,” Rose said to the Doctor.
“You shouldn’t have touched it!” Jim said.
“Why not?” The Doctor looked amazed. “It’s something that shouldn’t be here, hidden away. Why not touch it and find out what it is?”
“Because you don’t know what it is!”
“And touching it will help us figure out what its function is,” the Doctor pointed out. He sounded perfectly reasonable, which only made Jim look more frustrated with him. Rose could sympathize with the frustration. The Doctor just had that effect on people sometimes.
Iris stepped up to them. She’d been hovering in the background, alternating between fidgeting nervously and glancing up the stairs to check on the empty shop upstairs. Now it appeared that she was ready to take up a defense of Jim.
“If you don’t know what it is, maybe you shouldn’t be touching it,” she said. “I think Jim makes sense, actually. Unless you think you now what it is.”
They all looked at the cylinder and then back at the Doctor. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, er, not really,” he admitted, glancing back at iris. “But it’s only been...” His voice trailed off as he stared, mouth falling open, at something behind them.
The others all spun around. Hanging in mid-air was a bright yellow spot. As they watched it grew larger, turning into a column of light roughly two meters tall and one meter wide. It abruptly stopped growing, flared an intensely bright yellow, and then split in half from top to bottom. Mr. Troy stepped out of the opening, and the light disappeared.
Iris let out a small scream and clutched Jim’s arm tightly. He put an arm around her to support her, all the time staring at Mr. Troy in shock.
“Where did you some from?” the Doctor said in surprise.
“What are you doing down here?” Hector Troy demanded of Iris at the same time.
She was still struck speechless, and could only shake her head as she gaped at him.
He turned to Rose. “Rose?”
She pointed behind him. “Was that, was that a portal or something?”
“Does this object belong to you?” the Doctor asked, indicating the cylinder.
Troy looked amazed. “Of course it does. Everything in this building belongs to me! Which is why I’d like to know what the hell you’re all doing down here!”
Iris finally found her voice. “We tripped on the rug upstairs. We found the trapdoor and the stairs and came down.”
Troy folded his arms across his chest, wrinkling his expensive-looking suit jacket.
“Iris, you had no business coming down here. It’s got nothing to do with the shop.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know that!” Rose said.
“Why is it down here?” Iris asked him. “What are you planning, Mr. Troy?”
“Planning?” he scoffed. “I’m not planning anything! I’m simply making use of some storage space.”
It was close to evening, but it wasn’t late enough for sunset. Somewhere outside, clouds parted and the sun appeared for a few final moments before nightfall. Rays of sunlight passed over the shop, came in through the windows and the skylight, and fell down the stairs and directly on the space where Troy was standing. As the sunlight travelled over his face it lit up his tan, making it look like a moment like he was glowing from within. It lasted only a moment before the sun disappeared again.
“What is it that you’re storing?” Jim asked, but the Doctor interrupted him.
“No, never mind!” He pushed his way past Jim and Iris to stand in front of Troy. “What was that?” he demanded wildly. “The sunlight hit your face, and you went all glowy! Did you see?” he asked Rose, turning around to look at her. “Did you see that?”
Rose shrugged. “I guess. The sun was pretty bright for a few seconds.”
“That wasn’t the sun! This late in the year the sun’s rays aren’t going to be so bright, certainly not in the evening!” The Doctor spun back to face Troy, a wild look in his eye. “What are you?”
Troy blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not the first one! I’ve seen people throughout London the past few months, going all glowy like you just did. What are you doing? That’s not a human trait.”
“I don’t think being tan is a sign of a non-human,” Rose said in a sing-song voice. Sometimes the Doctor got carried away, but he was really missing the point here. “Can we get back to the thing in the corner?”
“Did you see?” the Doctor asked Jim, turning to him. “Did you see how he got all bright? Iris?”
Jim and Iris looked less than convinced.
“I guess he got a bit...brighter there for a second,” Jim acknowledged. “But I don’t see how that’s a big deal. It was just the sun in our eyes.”
“Yes, the sun.” Iris seized on that explanation.
“The sun,” echoed the Doctor, and another look entirely came and went in his eye. It was curious and calculating and triumphant because he had just worked something out in that incredibly clever mind of his. Rose knew that look well.
The Doctor took a step closer to Troy. “The sun,” he repeated again. “Yes. Of course.” He looked up above their heads. “The skylight you put in is right over your head at this very moment. And you chose to appear in this very spot.” He looked down at the ground and the others mimicked his movements. “There’s a small sensor down here if I’m not mistaken.” He knelt on the ground, his coat swirling out and then back around his ankles. “And that contraption in the corner is meant to stand on top of it, and the sunlight...” His fingers found the sensor he was looking for.
Troy looked more annoyed than ever. Jim and Iris looked more confused than ever. Rose could sympathize with all of them. The Doctor truly was the most fascinating, most remarkable, most maddening creature she’d ever known.
The Doctor stood up. “You’re using that thing to catch sunlight,” he stated. “Your skin got brighter when the sun hit you straight on, and I’ll wager you’re not the only one of your kind in London, are you?”
“Kind of what?” Iris whispered to Jim. “What’s he talking about?”
Jim shook his head, transfixed by the conversation.
“What I’m doing here is none of your business,” Troy stated. “And I’ll thank you all to leave. Right now.”
“The shop is called Helio,” the Doctor continued as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “Very close to Helios, which is the Greek word for sun. It’s also the name of a scenic holiday spot in the Argosy sector, isn’t it? Very hot, very bright, with its own sun. A sun hotter than the one in this solar system. Anyone leaving Argosy would have to acclimate or suffer painfully, wouldn’t they? Unless they figured out a way to gather more sunlight.”
He finished this up with a triumphant look around, but his companions were unable to be impressed because they didn’t understand what he was going on about. He looked faintly disappointed, as though he’d hoped for more of a reaction but couldn’t blame them for being human and thus unable to appreciate his brilliance.
Rose’s eyes grew wide. “He’s gathering sunlight!”
The Doctor laughed. “Rose Tyler, you are brilliant.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips that left her smiling.
“He is gathering sunlight and storing it in that contraption.” The Doctor pointed towards the corner. “Somehow he’s siphoning off energy and using it to survive. Like a sort of solar panel.” He stepped closer to the device and held out a hand. “And once these small sections are opened up, the solar power is released.” His fingers hovered over one of the sections, and he had almost come into contact with the metal when Troy finally gave in.
“Don’t touch it!” he snapped, and the Doctor spun around.
“So I was right, was I?” he asked, pleased.
The others gaped at him.
“Were you guessing just then?” Rose demanded.
“Not guessing,” he corrected her. “Hypothesizing. Well?” he asked Troy.
“It’s storing up the energy from your sun, just as you said,” Troy replied reluctantly. “It’s too cold here to sustain us for very long. The extra power helps us survive.”
“But surely the sun in England isn’t a strong enough one for you?” Jim protested. “It’s hardly the first place I would go to if I needed to stay nice and warm.”
“Well, our scouts were a bit off in their information,” Troy admitted. “Bloody idiots. We have many more spots around southern Europe. This was the first place I settled, and I kept it up for sentimental reasons.”
“How many more spots?” the Doctor asked. “You can’t just keep siphoning off the sun without consequences, especially at the rates your people would need. How many of you are there?”
“We require far less in the warmer climate,” was all Troy would say. “We have been on your planet for five years. It has not caused a problem in any way with your solar system. I assure you, we have our scientists monitoring the situation. It doesn’t help interspace cooperation to destroy the source of light and life of an entire solar system.”
“But why are you here?” Rose asked, coming up and standing beside the Doctor. “What was wrong with your home?” The Doctor found her hand and squeezed it, as though congratulating her on such a clever question. She glanced at him and grinned as she squeezed his hand back.
“The same reason anyone goes anywhere,” Troy replied. “Because we could.”
Forty-one