Doctor Who fic: Nothing Bad Could Ever Happen Here
Title: Nothing Bad Could Ever Happen Here
Characters: Rory, Amy, and a mysterious stranger
Rating PG
Spoilers: Doctor Who, informed by up to 5x08 and Doctor Who Confidential 5x08
Notes: ~1300 words, so I suppose it makes sense that it took twice as long. I'm going to make a fic index next, but consider this chapter 4/? in Only When You Drink from the River of Silence (Shall You Indeed Sing), and I shall endeavor to make this a long and thoughtful enough fic to deserve such a long title. Meanwhile, you can find the previous chapters under the tag silence.
Rory Williams is twelve years old. He likes pizza, handball, and red things like sports cars. He likes Calvin and Hobbes and films about action heroes fighting aliens. He likes reading about things, and lately, just hanging out with his mates. There's not a lot of places in Leadworth to just hang out, but they make do. The duck pond's all right, because from there you can see everything that happens in the village, and toss things at the ducks, when the village gets dull, bread crusts and old biscuits found in pockets, and things like that.
Rory likes his mates well enough, but sometimes he prefers to be alone. There's lots of places in Leadworth to do that. He likes to get books out of the library about birds and salamanders and animal tracks and go out to the woods on his bike to look for them.
Well, he did. Until he met that Amelia Pond.
She's mad, that Amelia Pond.
"Wear brown next time," she says firmly as the sun sinks and he makes his escape. "And a blue shirt. With a collar."
Then she tears it. Rory has to tell his mum that he's lost his good school uniform shirt. Somehow.
"Take this rope and climb down into that wee gully," she commands, handing him the frayed part of a dodgy and cobwebbed coil. "I'll hold on to the end at the top. When you get to the bottom, find something interesting and shout up what it is."
Rory knows she can't possibly hold his weight, but when she gives him a Look, he peers over the edge. It's only a hop down anyway. He doesn't need the rope, really, so he could just pretend. He takes the plunge, escaping Amelia's arms-crossed impatience.
But hopping down is easy. Climbing back up, that's another matter.
He's so bruised from the ordeal he wonders if it'd be safer not to meet Amelia in the woods anymore, but the next day, he shows up, same time as always.
"I've brought you a tie." She holds out something that looks like it shouldn't be out in the muddy woods. "I'm sorry about the gully."
Amelia looks like she means it, but Rory knows that even if she is sorry, the tie is actually another step in her insane plot to turn him into the imaginary friend she's too old to have. He slips it over his head anyway. He doesn't really know how to tie it, so it hangs around his neck in a crooked loop that gets caught in brambles and confuses his mum until he shoves it in the back of his closet between Amelia days.
"You believe me, don't you?" She's subdued this time, staring at a stone next to her red wellies. He doesn't know what to say. But then he realises that she's not sad. She's fuming. She's gritting her teeth and bunching her fists on her knees, and it looks like she might be trying to crumble that stone into dust by the power of her glare alone.
"Yeah, I do," he says, and the funny thing is, he sort of does. A bit. You don't get that angry about something unless you really believe in it, even when you're eight, and Amelia Pond might be mad, but she's not actually crazy. Maybe it's true. Maybe it could be true.
As time makes the game an old, familiar routine, Rory finds he's never sure. Of course the Raggedy Doctor can't be real, but Rory's trust in Amelia is. And even though he wouldn't like to know what his mates would do if they found out he was sneaking off to play pretend with a little girl in the woods, he meets her there week after week, month after month.
When school starts Rory thinks maybe he won't go back any more, but he does. Their expedition has reached a critical junction; neither of them has been beyond the stream with the fence on the far side of it. It's not exactly forbidden, but it's generally understood that children shouldn't go any further without an adult.
They've decided to risk it.
There's a little shrubby rise that gives way to a pasture at the top, and when they get there it really does seem greener and sunnier here than it did in the woods round the back end of Leadworth. It looks like someone's worked very hard to make it look just a bit wild. Not too much.
With a sudden laughing shout, Amelia starts running across the field, arms out away from her for balance. She shouts back to him. "Come on, Rory!"
A moment later, Rory follows, catching up to her on longer legs. There's something good about running across so much openness, knowing that home and tea are only an afternoon away. It's like how a kite can soar higher and better with a string attached to someone on the ground, steering it to the warm currents.
This would be a great place for flying kites, this pasture.
They get to the other side and stop, because there's a trail with a medium-sized sign marking it. It's got a little dotted line to show where the trail goes, and some written stuff about it.
"Acanthus Berm Nature Preserve," Rory reads. "Funny name. I've never heard of it, have you?"
Amelia shakes her head, but she repeats the name slowly, sounding out the syllables. "Acanthus Berm. I like it. There could be an Acanthus Berm on a distant planet, in the far future, where there's a two story slide growing out of a tree."
"Erm, I guess." Sometimes Amelia's fantasies take Rory by surprise. "Looks like they're looking for a new warden. Maybe you could become the Warden of Acanthus Berm and find the slide tree somewhere in there."
Rory catches a flash of a skeptical face, but it suddenly turns to shock as Amelia sees something behind him. He gasps, his heart leaping into his throat, when a firm hand lands on his shoulder.
He freezes.
"Shouldn't children be in school?" The voice is soft, male, and different the way Amelia's is different, but not. "Are you two bunking off?"
Slowly, gradually, Rory cranes his neck to look around at the stranger. His mind is, strangely, full of panic, like the noise on the television when it isn't tuned to a proper channel. The man who has him by the shoulder isn't really menacing, though there's something that doesn't connect up about him. He's dressed like the homeless people Rory saw on the street when his family went to Gloucester, but it looks like...like a costume.
Later, when he has time to think about it, he remembers that there was no dirt under the fingernails of the hand clamped around his shoulder, and that the stranger's light brown hair wasn't at all greasy or matted.
It's Amelia who finally gathers her wits to answer the question. "Actually, it's Saturday," she says, managing to sound scornful.
The fingers squeeze, tightening, and Rory squirms uncomfortably, trying to get away from the ring that digs into his shoulder.
To his relief, the man lets go. "Right." He furrows his brow at them, and then turns away, dismissing them. He snatches the job posting paper from the sign, tears it right off the board, and stalks away down the path toward the interior of the park.
After Rory manages to make himself start breathing again, he looks at Amelia. "We should go back to Leadworth," he says. She's wearing a puzzled frown, still directed at the empty path. It isn't fear, or confusion; it's like she's trying to work something out.
But Rory, unsettled, wants to go home.
"Come on, Amelia," he says, echoing her. He's thinking about that tea and that safe place, out of the open unknown. "I'll race you back to the meeting place!"
eta: Also, there is a clue hidden in this chapter as to the (actorly) identity of the Master in this series.
Characters: Rory, Amy, and a mysterious stranger
Rating PG
Spoilers: Doctor Who, informed by up to 5x08 and Doctor Who Confidential 5x08
Notes: ~1300 words, so I suppose it makes sense that it took twice as long. I'm going to make a fic index next, but consider this chapter 4/? in Only When You Drink from the River of Silence (Shall You Indeed Sing), and I shall endeavor to make this a long and thoughtful enough fic to deserve such a long title. Meanwhile, you can find the previous chapters under the tag silence.
Rory Williams is twelve years old. He likes pizza, handball, and red things like sports cars. He likes Calvin and Hobbes and films about action heroes fighting aliens. He likes reading about things, and lately, just hanging out with his mates. There's not a lot of places in Leadworth to just hang out, but they make do. The duck pond's all right, because from there you can see everything that happens in the village, and toss things at the ducks, when the village gets dull, bread crusts and old biscuits found in pockets, and things like that.
Rory likes his mates well enough, but sometimes he prefers to be alone. There's lots of places in Leadworth to do that. He likes to get books out of the library about birds and salamanders and animal tracks and go out to the woods on his bike to look for them.
Well, he did. Until he met that Amelia Pond.
She's mad, that Amelia Pond.
"Wear brown next time," she says firmly as the sun sinks and he makes his escape. "And a blue shirt. With a collar."
Then she tears it. Rory has to tell his mum that he's lost his good school uniform shirt. Somehow.
"Take this rope and climb down into that wee gully," she commands, handing him the frayed part of a dodgy and cobwebbed coil. "I'll hold on to the end at the top. When you get to the bottom, find something interesting and shout up what it is."
Rory knows she can't possibly hold his weight, but when she gives him a Look, he peers over the edge. It's only a hop down anyway. He doesn't need the rope, really, so he could just pretend. He takes the plunge, escaping Amelia's arms-crossed impatience.
But hopping down is easy. Climbing back up, that's another matter.
He's so bruised from the ordeal he wonders if it'd be safer not to meet Amelia in the woods anymore, but the next day, he shows up, same time as always.
"I've brought you a tie." She holds out something that looks like it shouldn't be out in the muddy woods. "I'm sorry about the gully."
Amelia looks like she means it, but Rory knows that even if she is sorry, the tie is actually another step in her insane plot to turn him into the imaginary friend she's too old to have. He slips it over his head anyway. He doesn't really know how to tie it, so it hangs around his neck in a crooked loop that gets caught in brambles and confuses his mum until he shoves it in the back of his closet between Amelia days.
"You believe me, don't you?" She's subdued this time, staring at a stone next to her red wellies. He doesn't know what to say. But then he realises that she's not sad. She's fuming. She's gritting her teeth and bunching her fists on her knees, and it looks like she might be trying to crumble that stone into dust by the power of her glare alone.
"Yeah, I do," he says, and the funny thing is, he sort of does. A bit. You don't get that angry about something unless you really believe in it, even when you're eight, and Amelia Pond might be mad, but she's not actually crazy. Maybe it's true. Maybe it could be true.
As time makes the game an old, familiar routine, Rory finds he's never sure. Of course the Raggedy Doctor can't be real, but Rory's trust in Amelia is. And even though he wouldn't like to know what his mates would do if they found out he was sneaking off to play pretend with a little girl in the woods, he meets her there week after week, month after month.
When school starts Rory thinks maybe he won't go back any more, but he does. Their expedition has reached a critical junction; neither of them has been beyond the stream with the fence on the far side of it. It's not exactly forbidden, but it's generally understood that children shouldn't go any further without an adult.
They've decided to risk it.
There's a little shrubby rise that gives way to a pasture at the top, and when they get there it really does seem greener and sunnier here than it did in the woods round the back end of Leadworth. It looks like someone's worked very hard to make it look just a bit wild. Not too much.
With a sudden laughing shout, Amelia starts running across the field, arms out away from her for balance. She shouts back to him. "Come on, Rory!"
A moment later, Rory follows, catching up to her on longer legs. There's something good about running across so much openness, knowing that home and tea are only an afternoon away. It's like how a kite can soar higher and better with a string attached to someone on the ground, steering it to the warm currents.
This would be a great place for flying kites, this pasture.
They get to the other side and stop, because there's a trail with a medium-sized sign marking it. It's got a little dotted line to show where the trail goes, and some written stuff about it.
"Acanthus Berm Nature Preserve," Rory reads. "Funny name. I've never heard of it, have you?"
Amelia shakes her head, but she repeats the name slowly, sounding out the syllables. "Acanthus Berm. I like it. There could be an Acanthus Berm on a distant planet, in the far future, where there's a two story slide growing out of a tree."
"Erm, I guess." Sometimes Amelia's fantasies take Rory by surprise. "Looks like they're looking for a new warden. Maybe you could become the Warden of Acanthus Berm and find the slide tree somewhere in there."
Rory catches a flash of a skeptical face, but it suddenly turns to shock as Amelia sees something behind him. He gasps, his heart leaping into his throat, when a firm hand lands on his shoulder.
He freezes.
"Shouldn't children be in school?" The voice is soft, male, and different the way Amelia's is different, but not. "Are you two bunking off?"
Slowly, gradually, Rory cranes his neck to look around at the stranger. His mind is, strangely, full of panic, like the noise on the television when it isn't tuned to a proper channel. The man who has him by the shoulder isn't really menacing, though there's something that doesn't connect up about him. He's dressed like the homeless people Rory saw on the street when his family went to Gloucester, but it looks like...like a costume.
Later, when he has time to think about it, he remembers that there was no dirt under the fingernails of the hand clamped around his shoulder, and that the stranger's light brown hair wasn't at all greasy or matted.
It's Amelia who finally gathers her wits to answer the question. "Actually, it's Saturday," she says, managing to sound scornful.
The fingers squeeze, tightening, and Rory squirms uncomfortably, trying to get away from the ring that digs into his shoulder.
To his relief, the man lets go. "Right." He furrows his brow at them, and then turns away, dismissing them. He snatches the job posting paper from the sign, tears it right off the board, and stalks away down the path toward the interior of the park.
After Rory manages to make himself start breathing again, he looks at Amelia. "We should go back to Leadworth," he says. She's wearing a puzzled frown, still directed at the empty path. It isn't fear, or confusion; it's like she's trying to work something out.
But Rory, unsettled, wants to go home.
"Come on, Amelia," he says, echoing her. He's thinking about that tea and that safe place, out of the open unknown. "I'll race you back to the meeting place!"
eta: Also, there is a clue hidden in this chapter as to the (actorly) identity of the Master in this series.