(no subject)
All Hallows E’en, Ten/Rose, PG
After catching the opening night of Phantom of the Opera the Doctor decides that they need to go to a masquerade ball, Rose massacres a dress, the Doctor then decides they should go to the Carnival of Venice and they end up in Missouri on Halloween. So, a typical day in the TARDIS really. 4,186 words.
After catching the opening night of Phantom of the Opera in London, Rose had requested that their next stop be somewhere a little less 80’s and a lot more glamorous.
“I’ve never seen so many shoulders pads and sequins in one place!” she shuddered dramatically. “The ruffles...puff sleeves! God, I can’t believe people used to wear that stuff.”
“Don’t worry. In twenty years or so you’ll be looking at the clothes you’re wearing now and wondering what on earth you were thinking too.” The Doctor told her absently. “I know I do. You would’ve laughed yourself silly at the sixth me - now that was a horrendous combination of...”
“At least the costumes were pretty.” Rose interjected wistfully and the Doctor stopped mid sentence.
“In Phantom?” he guessed.
“Yeah.” Rose said, distinctly glassy eyed now. “The stuff they wore in the movie was gorgeous too. Shareen and I saw it about five times in the cinema so we could drool all over Gerard Butler...”
“Gerard Butler?” the Doctor sniffed dismissively. “Michael Crawford was a much better Phantom than him. You can’t beat the original. Anyway, Gerard really let himself go after that other movie he did. You know, the one with all the blokes with the muscles?”
Rose scrunched up her face, thinking. “What year did it come out in?”
“2006 I think. 2007? Which means...oh. Right. That’s in your future. I’ve probably got the DVD rattling around somewhere. Anyway, yes you’re quite right, the costumes for the stage show are quite marvellous. Not necessarily completely correct for the time period but they didn’t do too bad a job I suppose. They had some marvellous stuff back in the 1880’s to base it all on though - especially for the women. All those big foofy dresses...what d’you call them? Princess dresses? The ones where the skirts take up enough space for five people?”
“I dunno.” Rose said, lolling about on the jump seat gnawing wistfully on a thumbnail. “Never had a chance to wear anything like that before have I?”
“Oh.” the Doctor said, pausing guiltily before exclaiming, very loudly, “OH! The wardrobe! Rose we should check the wardrobe!”
“We should?” Rose asked as the Doctor dragged her off the jump seat and waltzed her to the door, singing at the top of his lungs.
“Masqueraaaaaaaade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade! Hide your face so the world can never find-brilliant, yes - come on then!”
And he dragged her off down the corridor.
“Sorry,” she managed once her brain had caught up to her body. She seemed to have left it back in the console room. “What are we doing?”
“Checking the wardrobe for dresses of course!” the Doctor grinned back at her. “We are going to go and find ourselves a masquerade ball! Preferably not in France because knowing my luck I’ll go back too far and run into Reinette and cause a paradox and...” at the rather stony expression that had settled on Rose’s face he stopped that train of thought, backpedalled and tried again. “Yes. Well enough about Reinette. Onwards, to the wardrobe room!”
Rolling her eyes, Rose followed and ten minutes later she had been bullied into an enormous pink ball dress, a real diamond tiara and a sparkly pair of heels that were a size too small.
“What d’you think?” the Doctor asked, bouncing next to her from foot to foot. He seemed quite pleased with the effect but Rose wasn’t so sure. The bodice wasn’t that bad but the skirt was just ridiculous. Maybe, she thought grimly, there was a reason why she had never had a chance to wear one of these dresses before.
“I feel like a meringue.” She grumbled.
“Fluffy and delicious?” the Doctor guessed and she rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself.
“Oh shut up.” Grimacing a little as the shoes pinched her feet, Rose swivelled a little to inspect the back of the dress, nearly knocking the Doctor over in the process. “I feel like that blonde chick from the Wizard of Oz.” She admitted. “What’s her name? We were watching it the other day.”
“Glinda?” the Doctor guessed. “The good witch of the North? Wait, no, are we talking about the MGM movie with Judy Garland or the stage adaption of Wicked by that Gregory Maguire bloke? Because that would be Galinda. With a ga.”
He giggled to himself for a moment at his private joke and Rose narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You know, you seem to know an awful lot about musicals Doctor.”
“After nine-hundred years?” the Doctor shrugged it off, grinning widely. “I should certainly hope so. Nothing like a good bit of escapism now and again eh?”
He nudged her but Rose frowning again. “I look stupid.” she said flatly, fiddling unhappily with the sleeves on her gown. At least they weren’t puffy, although they were a little tight.
The Doctor sniffed in disdain. “Well I think you look lovely. So there. Now come on, lots of 18th century parties out there for us to crash!”
Slightly mollified by his compliment, Rose allowed herself to be led but quickly found herself stuck in the doorway by her ridiculously voluminous skirts.
“Ah.” The Doctor said slowly, tugging at her hand as though it might somehow manage to extricate her. “This could be...potentially problematic. I don’t think the doorway is quite...”
He gave a few more half hearted tugs which resulted in little more than the ominous sound of fabric ripping. The Doctor paused, chewing on his lip as he considered how best to proceed. Rose let him clamber over her skirts and under her skirts for a good minute before she finally gave in.
“Sod this.” she held her hand out commandingly. “Sonic. Gimme.”
He handed it over warily and she spent a moment flicking through the settings until she found the one she was looking for. The Doctor looked at the sonic for a moment and then up at Rose in horror.
“No.” He said. “No, please...”
“Try and stop me.” Rose said and then aimed the sonic at her skirt with a triumphant grin.
~*~
“You have completely ruined the dress.”
“I have not.” Rose protested, rolling her eyes as the Doctor huffed his way disapprovingly around the console. “I’ve improved it.”
The Doctor paused to eye what little remained of the previously full skirt of her ball gown with dismay. “What, by cutting off the whole skirt? What am I gonna do with all that leftover tulle?”
Rose looked down at said skirt and twirled a little, smiling as the movement set the many ragged layers of tulle fluttering.
“I like it.” She told him, swaying towards the console. “S’like one of those ballerina skirt things they wear. Anyway, it’s not that short...”
The Doctor held up a finger in warning. “One, it’s a tutu, not a ballerina skirt thing and two, if I ever let you walk into your mothers flat looking like that then I would get the world’s biggest smacking...”
“Just as well we’re not goin’ to mums then.” Rose grinned, leaning up against the console and stretching out her legs, showing them (and the high heeled Mary Janes she’d discovered to wear instead of the sparkly pink monstrosities the Doctor had suggested) off. “Isn’t it?”
The Doctor looked down at her bare legs and then raised his eyes to meet her gaze.
“You know we’ll get kicked out of any self respecting party in the 1800’s if you walk in wearing that?” he said conversationally.
“You know that between your thing for musicals, dressing me up in big pink ball dresses and then not even caring that I’m about three inches of tulle away from flashing my knickers at you I’m beginning to think that you might be a bit of a closet case?”
The Doctor stared. “What...sort of closet are we talking about here?”
Rose eyed him very seriously, leaning right forward into his personal space. “The kind you come out of Doctor. Probably with somebody like Jack.”
She was expecting him to get flustered by the suggestion and start babbling. Instead, he leant around her to flick a switch and she suddenly found his pinstriped legs in very close quarters with her very bare ones. She drew a sharp breath in at his proximity but then he was launching himself back around the other side of the console and then he was putting on the handbrake and they’d landed.
“So where are we then?” she asked, absently pulling the view screen to her even though she couldn’t read the writing on it.
“Earth.” The Doctor pronounced, already heading for his coat and the door. “Change of plans, not the 1800’s but hopefully lots of masks.”
Rose followed a little slower, tottering slightly on her shoes. “Hopefully?”
“If I’m right, we’re in Venice and we’ve arrived just in time for the Carnival of! Amazing masks, extravagant costumes...”
By now Rose had caught up to him where he waited by the door for her, a devilish look on his face and all but jumping up and down on the spot in his eagerness to get outside and see what waited for them.
“Want to go scandalise some Italians?” he grinned and she laughed and eagerly took hold of his hand. Somehow they managed squeezed out of the TARDIS doors at the same time and together they stepped into...
A cemetery.
It was quite dark, the sun already going down but the old tombstones were lit up by the warm glow of a ramshackle collection of lanterns. A cool wind sent dead leaves swirling in little eddies every so often and Rose felt goose bumps rising on her bare legs.
“Cosy.” she said dryly, wrapping her arms around herself. “So not Venice then?”
“Apparently not.” The Doctor frowned, looking around at the trees. “Wrong sort of foliage for Italy.”
“Shocking.” Rose nudged him, still grinning. “You aim for Venice and end up landing us - where?”
“Presumably an old gravesite on Earth somewhere,” the Doctor said, bounding forwards to read the nearest tombstone by the flickering light of the lantern next to it. “Somewhere they speak English.”
“Well you’re just a regular genius then aren’t you?” Rose teased him. “A cemetery somewhere on Earth and they speak English, well done.”
The Doctor shot her a withering look but it soon melted as crouched down beside him to trace the name carved into the stone. “Well it’s a start.” He said defensively.
“I was only kidding,” Rose said apologetically. “Don’t take it personally, you could probably figure out how old the graves are just by using your...timey-wimey sense or something. I’ve got nothin’.”
The Doctor gave her a small smile before he began soniccing the gravestone and she knew he was pleased. While she waited, Rose inspected the lantern carefully. “What’s with all the lanterns?” she wondered.
“Dunno.” The Doctor admitted and then helped her up. “Shall we?”
It was at that moment that a small group of people came into view from the path that led out of the graveyard and they both stiffened. They were a ramshackle bunch, some tall, some short, some dressed in rags, others in black robes and others still in more colourful ensembles. The worrying part though was their faces - some of them were grotesquely misshapen and Rose recoiled a little despite herself. The Doctor automatically put a protective arm around her.
“Are they...?” she whispered, trying to make sense of it all but then she saw the lumpy shape of a ghost bringing up the year, tripping over their sheet with the frayed eyeholes and suddenly it clicked.
“Halloween!” the Doctor enthused. “Oh I love Halloween! And...” he cocked his head slightly, listening intently. “An American Halloween too if mine ears do not deceive me.”
He turned to her then, his eyes all but glowing. “Rose.” He said, gravely serious.
“What?”
“You do know what this means don’t you?”
“I’m...not going to look like an idiot walking around in this?” Rose guessed, indicating her dress. The Doctor shook his head.
“No. Well, that too I suppose. But! Halloween means trick or treating! Toffee apples! Sweets and chocolates and lots of people running around in costumes! Brilliant!”
“Oh!” Rose exclaimed excitedly but then her face dropped. “Oh. Can we go trick or treating? I thought it was more for kids...”
“Of course we can go trick or treating!” the Doctor said indignantly. “There’s no rule that says there’s an age limit on it!”
“What if they won’t give us any sweets though?” Rose asked and the Doctor eyed her in amazement.
“You are being a right misery guts today Rose Tyler!” he said, pointing his finger at her. “Nowhere I take you is the right place, you get all funny about never getting to wear pretty stuff and when I find you a nice dress you massacre it and now you’re whinging about going trick or treating!”
“Sorry,” Rose muttered defensively. “Didn’t know it was bothering you so much.”
The Doctor folded his arms. “You know what would cheer you up?”
Rose mirrored him, tongue teasing the corner of her mouth. “What?”
Leaning forward the Doctor lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Sweets.” He told her. “Lots and lots and lots of them. Now come on, if nobody’ll give us any then we’ll just have to commandeer one of this lot...”
As he spoke he snatched her hand up in his began to make his way over to the mixed group of goblins and ghouls, Rose protesting all the way.
“Hang on, you can’t just nick off with some kid so you can get free sweets...”
“Can’t I?” the Doctor asked innocently before turning his attention to the children who were all gathered in a chattering mob. “Oi, you lot. Where’s the nearest houses?”
“Bein’ rude.” Rose chided him quietly.
“They’re kids,” the Doctor replied. “They’re probably ten times ruder than me.”
The kids however looked quite stricken at being addressed by a pair of adults who had appeared out of nowhere. After a moment however, a slightly taller boy wearing a ninja outfit stepped forward and pulled back his face mask. He looked to be about sixteen and his face was heavily freckled with a snub nose.
“You folks lost or something?” he wanted to know.
“Nah not lost,” the Doctor said. “Just not from around here. Incidentally - where exactly are we?”
“Missouri,” the ninja told him. “And you’ve got a bit of a walk to get into town friend.”
“Missouri? Oh I like Missouri. Don’t worry about the walk, we don’t mind a bit of walking, do we Rose? This is Rose by the way and I’m the Doctor.”
“I’m Dave.” The ninja offered but didn’t hold out his hand to shake. The Doctor grabbed it and shook it anyway, and Rose had to hide her smile when the kid looked a little taken aback.
“And what are you all doing out here?” the Doctor wanted to know next as Dave nursed his rather squashed hand. “In a cemetery? On Halloween? Aren’t you scared?”
“Nope,” Dave the ninja said proudly, indicating the lumpy pillow slip he carried. “We already got all the candy we want so we’re gonna hang out here and tell ghost stories. We do it every year.”
“Really? Excellent plan!” The Doctor said approvingly. “Ghost stories! Brilliant! Molto bene! Well, I hope you have fun, we’re off to do a bit of trick of treating ourselves.”
He looked expectantly at Dave and the kid blinked before realising the Doctor was waiting for directions.
“Oh. Right.” He said. “Well if you follow the path out of the woods then go left when you hit the road you’ll get to the town in about twenty minutes.”
“Really? Cheers for that then!” the Doctor said, taking Rose’s hand before striding off. “Happy Halloween!”
“Uh, yeah. You too.” Dave waved them off, still looking dubiously at the Doctor who was, as always, oblivious.
~*~
Eighteen minutes later they were in the outer suburbs of the town and Rose had learned more about Halloween than she’d ever wanted to. The long walk had afforded the Doctor ample time to ramble at length about the customs and traditions of it and was now rattling off all the different names it had been given.
“There’s Halloween of course but that actually came from All Hallows E’en. Then there’s the Celtci festival of Samhain and of course there’s All Saints Day, All Hallows, Hallowmas...”
“Hallowmas?” Rose wondered, breaking her silence for the first time in miles. “Sounds like some weird cross between Christmas and Halloween. S’like that Tim Burton movie, Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“I like Tim Burton.” The Doctor said absently. “He’s a very clever man. Completely mad of course but then all great men usually are of course.”
“You’d know from experience of course.” Rose nudged him but the Doctor ignored her and went back to his list.
“Where was I? Oh yes, Hallowmas and then there’s Day of the Dead, or, really, Día de los Muertos if you want to get really technical...”
“Hold on,” Rose interrupted. “What?”
“...about-what?” the Doctor stopped abruptly.
“I just heard you talking in another language.” Rose said, confused. “Why didn’t the TARDIS translate?”
The Doctor stared at her like she was thick. Which clearly she wasn’t because she’d just asked a fair enough question after all. The TARDIS had always translated for her, except for when the Doctor was regenerating so why would she stop now?
“I deliberately spoke in another language. She won’t translate if I deliberately want to say something in another language.”
“Oh.” Rose said and then looked up at the door of the house they had stopped in front of. A carved jack-o-lantern flickered on the porch and there were bat motifs hanging from the eaves. “Shall we give this a shot then? Only we don’t have anywhere to put our sweets if we get any...”
The Doctor merely patted his pockets with a Cheshire cat grin.
“Bigger on the inside,” he reminded her with a wink. “Come on!”
They clattered up the path to the front door, the Doctor pausing briefly to inspect the jack-o-lantern.
“I love jack-o-lanterns.” He said, face lit from beneath by the orangey light as he lifted the lid. It threw the crooked line of his nose into sharp relief and made his dark eyes glow golden-orange as he inspected the carving closely from the inside and out. “A light to guide the good spirits home and a scary face carved into it to scare off all the bad ones.” Satisfied he looked up and pulled a grotesque face at her.
Rose smiled indulgently and replaced the lid of the lantern for him. “Very scary.”
“It’s funny actually,” The Doctor continued, absently taking her hand again and swinging it as they pressed the doorbell and waited. “Because there’s a very similar holiday to Halloween on the planet Gurd only people dress up in their dead relatives clothes and pretend to be them in order to honour them. They have lanterns too, to keep bad spirits at bay. Of course their lanterns are actually custom made LED lamps put inside antique styled cases. Well I say LED, they aren’t really. What they are is...”
He shut up very hastily when there was the sound of approaching footsteps and then the door snicked open.
“Trick or treat!” they chorused. The man who had opened the door however looked unimpressed.
“Bit old to be trick or treating aren’t you?” he asked before eyeing Rose’s costume with raised eyebrows. “What are you to meant to be then? Princess or something?”
“Oh she’s a princess alright...” the Doctor said baldly and Rose stepped, none-too-discreetly on his foot. At his muffled yelp of pain, the man turned to the Doctor, puzzling his ‘costume’ over for a long moment.
“Oh.” He said eventually, comprehension dawning. “Jack Skellington?”
The look on the Doctor’s face was priceless. Rose burst out laughing.
“My kid loves that movie.” The man admitted as he retrieved his bowl of candy. “Watches it all the time. Nice suit mister. Happy Halloween.”
The Doctor was too busy sulking to take any candy from the bowl so Rose took a handful for each of them and thanked the man. As they made their way back out onto the street she stuffed it unceremoniously into his closest trouser pocket, hoping that there was nothing in there that would eat it or spoil it.
“Jack Skellington?” he said, pouting.
“You are pretty tall and thin,” Rose admitted. “And he does wear pinstripes. All you need is a skull mask and you’d be right.”
Still pouting, the Doctor put a hand to the back of his head and instantly brightened. “I have better hair than Jack Skellington.”
“He has no hair.” Rose reminded him and his face fell again.
“Oh. Well! I still have better hair than him then don’t I?” he beamed. “Onwards then, to the next house!”
~*~
Hours later they returned to the TARDIS, every single one of the Doctor’s pockets stuffed full of sweets and Rose wrapped up in his overcoat for warmth. After taking a brief detour so that she could slip a pair of pyjama bottoms on for comforts sake they holed up in the library and organised their sweets into piles, swapping and haggling for their favourites and throwing out all the yellow ones because neither of them liked lemon flavoured sweets.
Unfortunately it didn’t take long for them to seriously deplete their collection and Rose was soon feeling quite ill, even as the Doctor methodically worked his way through what must have been his fifteenth mini packet of Skittles without complaint.
“Doctor?” she said weakly from where she lay, half hanging off the couch.
“Mmmn?” he barely glanced up, so engrossed was he in separating the colours into little piles in his hand.
“What’re the symptoms of a sugar coma?”
The Doctor paused to down his Skittles all in one go and then leant forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “Why?”
Rose groaned as she rolled onto her stomach. “Cos I feel like I’m gonna die.”
“Well then it can’t possibly be a sugar coma.” The Doctor said inspecting his hands briefly before licking his palms vigorously. “For one, if you were in a coma you’d be too busy being unconscious to whinge about feeling ill. Secondly, a sugar coma usually only happens with diabetics and as far as I know you don’t have diabetes although,” he eyed her rather large pile of discarded sweet wrappers. “If you carry on like that then you certainly will.”
“Oh. Well at least I’m not actually dying. Um...why were you licking your palms?”
Sheepishly, he held them up to show her and Rose laughed. The colour had sweated from his Skittles and now his palms were multicoloured.
~*~
It took them several weeks to polish off the rest of the sweets and the Doctor took to carrying around bits of his stash in his pockets so they would always have something to nibble on when they got thrown into prison. This of course led to squabbles because Rose ate as many sweets as he did and then wouldn’t share her own stash which she had hidden away in her room.
“You ate my last liquorice all sort!”
“Yeah well who broke into my room the other week and stole my last Mars Bar?”
“That was to bribe Ruffal! I told you that Werlyn’s can’t resist caramel...”
And so it went on until all that was left was the yellow sweets that they had initially discarded.
“Suppose we should eat them.” The Doctor said regretfully as they surveyed the pile he had just tipped out onto the jump seat. “Waste not.”
Reaching out a long fingered hand, he plucked the nearest sweet up and popped it into his mouth with a grimace.
A second later his eyes bugged so wide that Rose worried he might have been poisoned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately but the Doctor merely broke into a face-splitting grin and grabbed her wrist.
“It’s not lemon!”
Rose glanced at the pile of yellow sweets and then back at him, realisation dawning.
“Banana?”
He didn’t even both answering, just leapt into the fray with both hands, scattering sweets everywhere in his haste to discover more of the same. Grinning, Rose left him to it and retreated to her room and a trashy magazine which the Doctor scoffed at when he came in a little while later, practically leaping off the walls.
“What’s this rubbish?” he tossed it aside, leaping up onto the bed beside her. “I don’t know why you read this stuff, honestly. Do you want to go somewhere? Cos I was thinking maybe we could go to Pemalieyee and catch the end of their banana harvest because banana sweets are lovely and all but I much prefer the real thing and...I thought you didn’t have any sweets left?!”
Rose tried her best to look innocent. “Jelly baby?” she asked sweetly, offering him the packet.
~*~
Also, I couldn't resist making this :D
After catching the opening night of Phantom of the Opera the Doctor decides that they need to go to a masquerade ball, Rose massacres a dress, the Doctor then decides they should go to the Carnival of Venice and they end up in Missouri on Halloween. So, a typical day in the TARDIS really. 4,186 words.
After catching the opening night of Phantom of the Opera in London, Rose had requested that their next stop be somewhere a little less 80’s and a lot more glamorous.
“I’ve never seen so many shoulders pads and sequins in one place!” she shuddered dramatically. “The ruffles...puff sleeves! God, I can’t believe people used to wear that stuff.”
“Don’t worry. In twenty years or so you’ll be looking at the clothes you’re wearing now and wondering what on earth you were thinking too.” The Doctor told her absently. “I know I do. You would’ve laughed yourself silly at the sixth me - now that was a horrendous combination of...”
“At least the costumes were pretty.” Rose interjected wistfully and the Doctor stopped mid sentence.
“In Phantom?” he guessed.
“Yeah.” Rose said, distinctly glassy eyed now. “The stuff they wore in the movie was gorgeous too. Shareen and I saw it about five times in the cinema so we could drool all over Gerard Butler...”
“Gerard Butler?” the Doctor sniffed dismissively. “Michael Crawford was a much better Phantom than him. You can’t beat the original. Anyway, Gerard really let himself go after that other movie he did. You know, the one with all the blokes with the muscles?”
Rose scrunched up her face, thinking. “What year did it come out in?”
“2006 I think. 2007? Which means...oh. Right. That’s in your future. I’ve probably got the DVD rattling around somewhere. Anyway, yes you’re quite right, the costumes for the stage show are quite marvellous. Not necessarily completely correct for the time period but they didn’t do too bad a job I suppose. They had some marvellous stuff back in the 1880’s to base it all on though - especially for the women. All those big foofy dresses...what d’you call them? Princess dresses? The ones where the skirts take up enough space for five people?”
“I dunno.” Rose said, lolling about on the jump seat gnawing wistfully on a thumbnail. “Never had a chance to wear anything like that before have I?”
“Oh.” the Doctor said, pausing guiltily before exclaiming, very loudly, “OH! The wardrobe! Rose we should check the wardrobe!”
“We should?” Rose asked as the Doctor dragged her off the jump seat and waltzed her to the door, singing at the top of his lungs.
“Masqueraaaaaaaade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade! Hide your face so the world can never find-brilliant, yes - come on then!”
And he dragged her off down the corridor.
“Sorry,” she managed once her brain had caught up to her body. She seemed to have left it back in the console room. “What are we doing?”
“Checking the wardrobe for dresses of course!” the Doctor grinned back at her. “We are going to go and find ourselves a masquerade ball! Preferably not in France because knowing my luck I’ll go back too far and run into Reinette and cause a paradox and...” at the rather stony expression that had settled on Rose’s face he stopped that train of thought, backpedalled and tried again. “Yes. Well enough about Reinette. Onwards, to the wardrobe room!”
Rolling her eyes, Rose followed and ten minutes later she had been bullied into an enormous pink ball dress, a real diamond tiara and a sparkly pair of heels that were a size too small.
“What d’you think?” the Doctor asked, bouncing next to her from foot to foot. He seemed quite pleased with the effect but Rose wasn’t so sure. The bodice wasn’t that bad but the skirt was just ridiculous. Maybe, she thought grimly, there was a reason why she had never had a chance to wear one of these dresses before.
“I feel like a meringue.” She grumbled.
“Fluffy and delicious?” the Doctor guessed and she rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself.
“Oh shut up.” Grimacing a little as the shoes pinched her feet, Rose swivelled a little to inspect the back of the dress, nearly knocking the Doctor over in the process. “I feel like that blonde chick from the Wizard of Oz.” She admitted. “What’s her name? We were watching it the other day.”
“Glinda?” the Doctor guessed. “The good witch of the North? Wait, no, are we talking about the MGM movie with Judy Garland or the stage adaption of Wicked by that Gregory Maguire bloke? Because that would be Galinda. With a ga.”
He giggled to himself for a moment at his private joke and Rose narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You know, you seem to know an awful lot about musicals Doctor.”
“After nine-hundred years?” the Doctor shrugged it off, grinning widely. “I should certainly hope so. Nothing like a good bit of escapism now and again eh?”
He nudged her but Rose frowning again. “I look stupid.” she said flatly, fiddling unhappily with the sleeves on her gown. At least they weren’t puffy, although they were a little tight.
The Doctor sniffed in disdain. “Well I think you look lovely. So there. Now come on, lots of 18th century parties out there for us to crash!”
Slightly mollified by his compliment, Rose allowed herself to be led but quickly found herself stuck in the doorway by her ridiculously voluminous skirts.
“Ah.” The Doctor said slowly, tugging at her hand as though it might somehow manage to extricate her. “This could be...potentially problematic. I don’t think the doorway is quite...”
He gave a few more half hearted tugs which resulted in little more than the ominous sound of fabric ripping. The Doctor paused, chewing on his lip as he considered how best to proceed. Rose let him clamber over her skirts and under her skirts for a good minute before she finally gave in.
“Sod this.” she held her hand out commandingly. “Sonic. Gimme.”
He handed it over warily and she spent a moment flicking through the settings until she found the one she was looking for. The Doctor looked at the sonic for a moment and then up at Rose in horror.
“No.” He said. “No, please...”
“Try and stop me.” Rose said and then aimed the sonic at her skirt with a triumphant grin.
~*~
“You have completely ruined the dress.”
“I have not.” Rose protested, rolling her eyes as the Doctor huffed his way disapprovingly around the console. “I’ve improved it.”
The Doctor paused to eye what little remained of the previously full skirt of her ball gown with dismay. “What, by cutting off the whole skirt? What am I gonna do with all that leftover tulle?”
Rose looked down at said skirt and twirled a little, smiling as the movement set the many ragged layers of tulle fluttering.
“I like it.” She told him, swaying towards the console. “S’like one of those ballerina skirt things they wear. Anyway, it’s not that short...”
The Doctor held up a finger in warning. “One, it’s a tutu, not a ballerina skirt thing and two, if I ever let you walk into your mothers flat looking like that then I would get the world’s biggest smacking...”
“Just as well we’re not goin’ to mums then.” Rose grinned, leaning up against the console and stretching out her legs, showing them (and the high heeled Mary Janes she’d discovered to wear instead of the sparkly pink monstrosities the Doctor had suggested) off. “Isn’t it?”
The Doctor looked down at her bare legs and then raised his eyes to meet her gaze.
“You know we’ll get kicked out of any self respecting party in the 1800’s if you walk in wearing that?” he said conversationally.
“You know that between your thing for musicals, dressing me up in big pink ball dresses and then not even caring that I’m about three inches of tulle away from flashing my knickers at you I’m beginning to think that you might be a bit of a closet case?”
The Doctor stared. “What...sort of closet are we talking about here?”
Rose eyed him very seriously, leaning right forward into his personal space. “The kind you come out of Doctor. Probably with somebody like Jack.”
She was expecting him to get flustered by the suggestion and start babbling. Instead, he leant around her to flick a switch and she suddenly found his pinstriped legs in very close quarters with her very bare ones. She drew a sharp breath in at his proximity but then he was launching himself back around the other side of the console and then he was putting on the handbrake and they’d landed.
“So where are we then?” she asked, absently pulling the view screen to her even though she couldn’t read the writing on it.
“Earth.” The Doctor pronounced, already heading for his coat and the door. “Change of plans, not the 1800’s but hopefully lots of masks.”
Rose followed a little slower, tottering slightly on her shoes. “Hopefully?”
“If I’m right, we’re in Venice and we’ve arrived just in time for the Carnival of! Amazing masks, extravagant costumes...”
By now Rose had caught up to him where he waited by the door for her, a devilish look on his face and all but jumping up and down on the spot in his eagerness to get outside and see what waited for them.
“Want to go scandalise some Italians?” he grinned and she laughed and eagerly took hold of his hand. Somehow they managed squeezed out of the TARDIS doors at the same time and together they stepped into...
A cemetery.
It was quite dark, the sun already going down but the old tombstones were lit up by the warm glow of a ramshackle collection of lanterns. A cool wind sent dead leaves swirling in little eddies every so often and Rose felt goose bumps rising on her bare legs.
“Cosy.” she said dryly, wrapping her arms around herself. “So not Venice then?”
“Apparently not.” The Doctor frowned, looking around at the trees. “Wrong sort of foliage for Italy.”
“Shocking.” Rose nudged him, still grinning. “You aim for Venice and end up landing us - where?”
“Presumably an old gravesite on Earth somewhere,” the Doctor said, bounding forwards to read the nearest tombstone by the flickering light of the lantern next to it. “Somewhere they speak English.”
“Well you’re just a regular genius then aren’t you?” Rose teased him. “A cemetery somewhere on Earth and they speak English, well done.”
The Doctor shot her a withering look but it soon melted as crouched down beside him to trace the name carved into the stone. “Well it’s a start.” He said defensively.
“I was only kidding,” Rose said apologetically. “Don’t take it personally, you could probably figure out how old the graves are just by using your...timey-wimey sense or something. I’ve got nothin’.”
The Doctor gave her a small smile before he began soniccing the gravestone and she knew he was pleased. While she waited, Rose inspected the lantern carefully. “What’s with all the lanterns?” she wondered.
“Dunno.” The Doctor admitted and then helped her up. “Shall we?”
It was at that moment that a small group of people came into view from the path that led out of the graveyard and they both stiffened. They were a ramshackle bunch, some tall, some short, some dressed in rags, others in black robes and others still in more colourful ensembles. The worrying part though was their faces - some of them were grotesquely misshapen and Rose recoiled a little despite herself. The Doctor automatically put a protective arm around her.
“Are they...?” she whispered, trying to make sense of it all but then she saw the lumpy shape of a ghost bringing up the year, tripping over their sheet with the frayed eyeholes and suddenly it clicked.
“Halloween!” the Doctor enthused. “Oh I love Halloween! And...” he cocked his head slightly, listening intently. “An American Halloween too if mine ears do not deceive me.”
He turned to her then, his eyes all but glowing. “Rose.” He said, gravely serious.
“What?”
“You do know what this means don’t you?”
“I’m...not going to look like an idiot walking around in this?” Rose guessed, indicating her dress. The Doctor shook his head.
“No. Well, that too I suppose. But! Halloween means trick or treating! Toffee apples! Sweets and chocolates and lots of people running around in costumes! Brilliant!”
“Oh!” Rose exclaimed excitedly but then her face dropped. “Oh. Can we go trick or treating? I thought it was more for kids...”
“Of course we can go trick or treating!” the Doctor said indignantly. “There’s no rule that says there’s an age limit on it!”
“What if they won’t give us any sweets though?” Rose asked and the Doctor eyed her in amazement.
“You are being a right misery guts today Rose Tyler!” he said, pointing his finger at her. “Nowhere I take you is the right place, you get all funny about never getting to wear pretty stuff and when I find you a nice dress you massacre it and now you’re whinging about going trick or treating!”
“Sorry,” Rose muttered defensively. “Didn’t know it was bothering you so much.”
The Doctor folded his arms. “You know what would cheer you up?”
Rose mirrored him, tongue teasing the corner of her mouth. “What?”
Leaning forward the Doctor lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Sweets.” He told her. “Lots and lots and lots of them. Now come on, if nobody’ll give us any then we’ll just have to commandeer one of this lot...”
As he spoke he snatched her hand up in his began to make his way over to the mixed group of goblins and ghouls, Rose protesting all the way.
“Hang on, you can’t just nick off with some kid so you can get free sweets...”
“Can’t I?” the Doctor asked innocently before turning his attention to the children who were all gathered in a chattering mob. “Oi, you lot. Where’s the nearest houses?”
“Bein’ rude.” Rose chided him quietly.
“They’re kids,” the Doctor replied. “They’re probably ten times ruder than me.”
The kids however looked quite stricken at being addressed by a pair of adults who had appeared out of nowhere. After a moment however, a slightly taller boy wearing a ninja outfit stepped forward and pulled back his face mask. He looked to be about sixteen and his face was heavily freckled with a snub nose.
“You folks lost or something?” he wanted to know.
“Nah not lost,” the Doctor said. “Just not from around here. Incidentally - where exactly are we?”
“Missouri,” the ninja told him. “And you’ve got a bit of a walk to get into town friend.”
“Missouri? Oh I like Missouri. Don’t worry about the walk, we don’t mind a bit of walking, do we Rose? This is Rose by the way and I’m the Doctor.”
“I’m Dave.” The ninja offered but didn’t hold out his hand to shake. The Doctor grabbed it and shook it anyway, and Rose had to hide her smile when the kid looked a little taken aback.
“And what are you all doing out here?” the Doctor wanted to know next as Dave nursed his rather squashed hand. “In a cemetery? On Halloween? Aren’t you scared?”
“Nope,” Dave the ninja said proudly, indicating the lumpy pillow slip he carried. “We already got all the candy we want so we’re gonna hang out here and tell ghost stories. We do it every year.”
“Really? Excellent plan!” The Doctor said approvingly. “Ghost stories! Brilliant! Molto bene! Well, I hope you have fun, we’re off to do a bit of trick of treating ourselves.”
He looked expectantly at Dave and the kid blinked before realising the Doctor was waiting for directions.
“Oh. Right.” He said. “Well if you follow the path out of the woods then go left when you hit the road you’ll get to the town in about twenty minutes.”
“Really? Cheers for that then!” the Doctor said, taking Rose’s hand before striding off. “Happy Halloween!”
“Uh, yeah. You too.” Dave waved them off, still looking dubiously at the Doctor who was, as always, oblivious.
~*~
Eighteen minutes later they were in the outer suburbs of the town and Rose had learned more about Halloween than she’d ever wanted to. The long walk had afforded the Doctor ample time to ramble at length about the customs and traditions of it and was now rattling off all the different names it had been given.
“There’s Halloween of course but that actually came from All Hallows E’en. Then there’s the Celtci festival of Samhain and of course there’s All Saints Day, All Hallows, Hallowmas...”
“Hallowmas?” Rose wondered, breaking her silence for the first time in miles. “Sounds like some weird cross between Christmas and Halloween. S’like that Tim Burton movie, Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“I like Tim Burton.” The Doctor said absently. “He’s a very clever man. Completely mad of course but then all great men usually are of course.”
“You’d know from experience of course.” Rose nudged him but the Doctor ignored her and went back to his list.
“Where was I? Oh yes, Hallowmas and then there’s Day of the Dead, or, really, Día de los Muertos if you want to get really technical...”
“Hold on,” Rose interrupted. “What?”
“...about-what?” the Doctor stopped abruptly.
“I just heard you talking in another language.” Rose said, confused. “Why didn’t the TARDIS translate?”
The Doctor stared at her like she was thick. Which clearly she wasn’t because she’d just asked a fair enough question after all. The TARDIS had always translated for her, except for when the Doctor was regenerating so why would she stop now?
“I deliberately spoke in another language. She won’t translate if I deliberately want to say something in another language.”
“Oh.” Rose said and then looked up at the door of the house they had stopped in front of. A carved jack-o-lantern flickered on the porch and there were bat motifs hanging from the eaves. “Shall we give this a shot then? Only we don’t have anywhere to put our sweets if we get any...”
The Doctor merely patted his pockets with a Cheshire cat grin.
“Bigger on the inside,” he reminded her with a wink. “Come on!”
They clattered up the path to the front door, the Doctor pausing briefly to inspect the jack-o-lantern.
“I love jack-o-lanterns.” He said, face lit from beneath by the orangey light as he lifted the lid. It threw the crooked line of his nose into sharp relief and made his dark eyes glow golden-orange as he inspected the carving closely from the inside and out. “A light to guide the good spirits home and a scary face carved into it to scare off all the bad ones.” Satisfied he looked up and pulled a grotesque face at her.
Rose smiled indulgently and replaced the lid of the lantern for him. “Very scary.”
“It’s funny actually,” The Doctor continued, absently taking her hand again and swinging it as they pressed the doorbell and waited. “Because there’s a very similar holiday to Halloween on the planet Gurd only people dress up in their dead relatives clothes and pretend to be them in order to honour them. They have lanterns too, to keep bad spirits at bay. Of course their lanterns are actually custom made LED lamps put inside antique styled cases. Well I say LED, they aren’t really. What they are is...”
He shut up very hastily when there was the sound of approaching footsteps and then the door snicked open.
“Trick or treat!” they chorused. The man who had opened the door however looked unimpressed.
“Bit old to be trick or treating aren’t you?” he asked before eyeing Rose’s costume with raised eyebrows. “What are you to meant to be then? Princess or something?”
“Oh she’s a princess alright...” the Doctor said baldly and Rose stepped, none-too-discreetly on his foot. At his muffled yelp of pain, the man turned to the Doctor, puzzling his ‘costume’ over for a long moment.
“Oh.” He said eventually, comprehension dawning. “Jack Skellington?”
The look on the Doctor’s face was priceless. Rose burst out laughing.
“My kid loves that movie.” The man admitted as he retrieved his bowl of candy. “Watches it all the time. Nice suit mister. Happy Halloween.”
The Doctor was too busy sulking to take any candy from the bowl so Rose took a handful for each of them and thanked the man. As they made their way back out onto the street she stuffed it unceremoniously into his closest trouser pocket, hoping that there was nothing in there that would eat it or spoil it.
“Jack Skellington?” he said, pouting.
“You are pretty tall and thin,” Rose admitted. “And he does wear pinstripes. All you need is a skull mask and you’d be right.”
Still pouting, the Doctor put a hand to the back of his head and instantly brightened. “I have better hair than Jack Skellington.”
“He has no hair.” Rose reminded him and his face fell again.
“Oh. Well! I still have better hair than him then don’t I?” he beamed. “Onwards then, to the next house!”
~*~
Hours later they returned to the TARDIS, every single one of the Doctor’s pockets stuffed full of sweets and Rose wrapped up in his overcoat for warmth. After taking a brief detour so that she could slip a pair of pyjama bottoms on for comforts sake they holed up in the library and organised their sweets into piles, swapping and haggling for their favourites and throwing out all the yellow ones because neither of them liked lemon flavoured sweets.
Unfortunately it didn’t take long for them to seriously deplete their collection and Rose was soon feeling quite ill, even as the Doctor methodically worked his way through what must have been his fifteenth mini packet of Skittles without complaint.
“Doctor?” she said weakly from where she lay, half hanging off the couch.
“Mmmn?” he barely glanced up, so engrossed was he in separating the colours into little piles in his hand.
“What’re the symptoms of a sugar coma?”
The Doctor paused to down his Skittles all in one go and then leant forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “Why?”
Rose groaned as she rolled onto her stomach. “Cos I feel like I’m gonna die.”
“Well then it can’t possibly be a sugar coma.” The Doctor said inspecting his hands briefly before licking his palms vigorously. “For one, if you were in a coma you’d be too busy being unconscious to whinge about feeling ill. Secondly, a sugar coma usually only happens with diabetics and as far as I know you don’t have diabetes although,” he eyed her rather large pile of discarded sweet wrappers. “If you carry on like that then you certainly will.”
“Oh. Well at least I’m not actually dying. Um...why were you licking your palms?”
Sheepishly, he held them up to show her and Rose laughed. The colour had sweated from his Skittles and now his palms were multicoloured.
~*~
It took them several weeks to polish off the rest of the sweets and the Doctor took to carrying around bits of his stash in his pockets so they would always have something to nibble on when they got thrown into prison. This of course led to squabbles because Rose ate as many sweets as he did and then wouldn’t share her own stash which she had hidden away in her room.
“You ate my last liquorice all sort!”
“Yeah well who broke into my room the other week and stole my last Mars Bar?”
“That was to bribe Ruffal! I told you that Werlyn’s can’t resist caramel...”
And so it went on until all that was left was the yellow sweets that they had initially discarded.
“Suppose we should eat them.” The Doctor said regretfully as they surveyed the pile he had just tipped out onto the jump seat. “Waste not.”
Reaching out a long fingered hand, he plucked the nearest sweet up and popped it into his mouth with a grimace.
A second later his eyes bugged so wide that Rose worried he might have been poisoned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately but the Doctor merely broke into a face-splitting grin and grabbed her wrist.
“It’s not lemon!”
Rose glanced at the pile of yellow sweets and then back at him, realisation dawning.
“Banana?”
He didn’t even both answering, just leapt into the fray with both hands, scattering sweets everywhere in his haste to discover more of the same. Grinning, Rose left him to it and retreated to her room and a trashy magazine which the Doctor scoffed at when he came in a little while later, practically leaping off the walls.
“What’s this rubbish?” he tossed it aside, leaping up onto the bed beside her. “I don’t know why you read this stuff, honestly. Do you want to go somewhere? Cos I was thinking maybe we could go to Pemalieyee and catch the end of their banana harvest because banana sweets are lovely and all but I much prefer the real thing and...I thought you didn’t have any sweets left?!”
Rose tried her best to look innocent. “Jelly baby?” she asked sweetly, offering him the packet.
~*~
Also, I couldn't resist making this :D