(no subject)
Title: Little Lord Fauntleroy
Genre: Het, Angst, Character Study
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Adam Mitchell, Mrs. Mitchell, the Harp, Lynda Moss, implied Rose/Adam, the beginning of Lynda/Adam
Summary: "Hey, Little Lord Fauntleroy! Got you a girlfriend."
Warning: Written in first person.
Notes: A character study of Adam Mitchell that took an interesting turn. Sequel will be up soon. I must be completely mad...
Britpicker: The fabulous Ellie, who put up with my forgetfulness of time zones to BP this fic.
Little Lord Fauntleroy
She looked at me, her mouth open in utter horror. I looked back at her, twisting my mouth in what I thought was a sufficiently apologetic smile. Mum wouldn’t take her eyes off the Data Port. With a little sigh, I snapped my fingers. The little circle of metal closed, sufficiently concealing what had been revealed by-what I saw as-her carelessness.
“Hello, Mum,” I said as cheerily as I could, trying to distract her from the fact that my skull had just opened up. “Mr. Van Statten let me off early; said I could have an extended holiday. It took me a while, all the airports were jammed…how’ve you been?”
She blinked several times, as though divining whether or not this apparition was her son. “Adam…your forehead…”
“Oh, that! I’m beta-testing a new form of communications.” It was a stupid lie, but it came out easily. “I volunteered, so now I have a call-centre-thing in my head…I’m not quite sure what it does yet, but it’s perfectly harmless.”
“Harmless?” Mum’s voice rose dangerously high. “Harmless? Adam, you can see your brain!”
I shrugged. “So it’s got some setbacks.”
“Setbacks! What did they do, drill a hole in your skull while you were sleeping?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“And you let them?”
“I told you that I volunteered.”
“You volunteered to-“
“Mum!” My self-control was beginning to crack as I watched her attempt to grapple with the falsehood. “I’m twenty-one, I think I can judge what’d be best for me. I can honestly tell you that the Type II Data Port is not going to hurt me.”
I had never seen my mother look so suspicious. Sensing trouble, I quickly changed the subject.
“So, er…how’s Dad doing?”
Her eyes darkened, but at least they weren’t carrying that accusatory look any more. “Not so well. He’s back in the hospital.”
“Oh…I’m sorry.”
“It’s to be expected.” She was moving about now, straightening up the books on the coffee table, making sure everything was in its place. “They’re running more tests.” It was her turn to change the subject. “Are you going to be staying for dinner?”
“Where else would I go? I moved out of the flat.”
“Oh…that’s right.” Mum nervously shifted her balance. “Well, the camp bed’s up in the attic, you can use that for as long as you need.”
That left nothing for me to say that would not make me sound like a complete idiot. I simply nodded and headed in the indicated direction, uncomfortably aware that my mother was keeping my forehead in sight as much as humanly possible.
The attic room was exactly as I remembered it; dark and dusty, as most of them are. It was not unlike my “workshop” back in the bunker, and I smiled as I clicked on the lights. This had been my room during the odd (and extremely rare) holidays I was given, and it showed. Little pieces Van Statten had rejected were piled neatly on the rickety desk, a welcoming sight in the seething normality of my mother’s house.
I began digging around in my bag, routing out the few pieces Diana Goddard had allowed me to salvage from the base. Meteorite crystals, a piece of twisted metal…it wasn’t much, but I grinned like a kid as I added them to the collection on the desk.
And then began the tiresome process of unpacking. Genius-I was never very modest about my mental capacity-is generally incompatible with action and more a friend of physically indecent laziness. Sorting unearthly objects is a game, child’s play, but putting away clothing…unbearable!
Sadly, though, it had to be done. I reached into the tangled mass of my clothing…
And froze.
It couldn’t be.
With shaking fingers, I pulled a glowing, fluted piece of silvery metal out of the general debris. The blue glimmer was dimmed, but drawing my index finger across it produced the same lovely tone it had in the GeoComTex office. Dumbfounded was no word for my reaction as I sank back onto the camp bed. I had no memory of packing the Harp-as I called it-along with the rest of my things. In fact, I was almost certain that the last time I had seen it was when I brought it along to the “workshop”.
If an inanimate object, and I wasn’t sure that the Harp had no life of its own, could be said to stare unnervingly at someone, than this one certainly did so. It was impossible to put the instrument down. I sat there, simply running my fingers along the glittering “strings”, the notes echoing with an ethereal cadence in the dusty silence of the attic room.
I remembered the first time I had heard the notes of the Harp. It had been in the GeoComTex office, soon after the “intruders” had been marched in.
How long ago that seemed!
The intruders, the Doctor and Rose Tyler.
Oh, Rose.
Perhaps it was just the fact that I hadn’t seen any girl remotely my age since I had gone to work in the bunker, but I can honestly say that I fell for her on first sight. If I had thought I could’ve gotten away with it, I might have even followed Van Statten’s less than tactful suggestion of “canoodling”.
I thought it was mutual. Deluded fool. They only wanted me on the TARDIS to make the coffee.
Suddenly disillusioned with the Harp and the sourness of the memories that had spilled from somewhere in the back of my head, I placed it in a drawer of the battered old desk. Remembering Rose would do me no good. A sudden headache had taken lodging where the chip was inserted, and I absently passed my right hand over it.
It was the Data Port II that had done me in, I suppose. The Doctor was…well, furious was no word for it. He’d destroyed the bloody answering machine. No need to tell him I could have recorded over the dangerous message, it was no use; he wouldn’t have believed me anyway…
Something cut my thoughts short. I could have sworn the lights were dimmer. I blinked. No change.
The room was definitely brighter now, and my interest was piqued. I leaned forward from my perch on the camp bed, focused on the expanding golden glow in the centre of the room. There was an immense gentleness radiating from the focal point of what was quickly becoming a blinding sunburst, a magnificent benevolence that somehow seemed to be taking shape in the centre. A female shape.
It wasn’t possible. There was no way in hell…
The light exploded into oblivion without the smallest of noises, leaving only the girl who had materialised in the centre. She quickly collapsed, her blond hair rippling behind her. I watched her, Van Statten’s lewd suggestion once again playing in my head. Rose was completely motionless…I could have…
She let out a muffled whimper into the threadbare rug. I rose, almost timidly, from my position on the bed. The half-dozen steps across the room seemed to take an eternity, and it was with an odd sense of relief that I knelt at her shoulder. Shyly, like an awkward little boy at a school dance, I reached out and touched her lovely hair.
“Rose?”
As soon as she raised her head, I knew something was wrong. She recoiled, as though bitten by a snake. I fell off the perch of my heels. She scooted as far away from me as she could within the confines of the attic walls. The look on her face was one of incredulity and terror, one I probably would have laughed at had the circumstances been different.
“Who the hell are you?” Her voice was sweet, but thin and tinny, not at all what Rose’s had been. And now that I could see her properly, the hair was the only resemblance. “Where am I?” She had backed herself up against the wall, using the shadows as a shield. “Answer me, you great prat!”
I blinked. All I could muster up was a simple, astounded, “What?”