Ninth Doctor, Jamie, Zoe -- "Read Me" -- II of III
This the second part of my Second Doctor Cliche Ficathon entry, which expanded without my notice into a three-part story. It is quite late, but I must plead real life and promise to finish the tale as soon as possible. The first part is here, and the ficathon masterlist is here.
When posting the first part, I forgot to mention that this fic has a dedication. To Wally Schirra, which rhymes with Hurrah: March 12, 1923 -- May 3, 2007; Mercury, Gemini, Apollo -- an engineer, a scientist, and a man whose search for excellence never precluded the chance of a good joke. Wherever you are, hope you're having a blast.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Zoe, Jamie
Genre: gen, adventure, angst
Rating: PG for stuff blowing up
Spoilers: time war in general; slightly AU from the hypothetical Season 6B
Summary: Hurtling into the past, Zoe finds anachronisms everywhere... and one wears the face of an old friend.
Title:
Read Me
Part II
The trip took twenty minutes. Zoe waited, clinging to the rail for balance, and watched the Time Lord's every move as though she could actually tell whether he was fulfilling the bargain. He finished setting the course and braced himself against the console, looking her over with a familiarity bordering on insolence. The ship bucked and swayed and she paled at the motion, trying to fill her mind with Charon, wondering why an area so innocuous should have been targeted to explode.
When they finally shuddered to a halt, he threw the parking brake, stepped back from the console, tilted his head challengingly at the door, and cheerfully preceded her when she motioned for him to go first.
They had landed at the edge of a wide broadway under a sickly gray sky. A pall of haze hung heavily about them, parting reluctantly as ill-dressed pedestrians hurried past. The tall man would have leaned against the outside of the TARDIS, but Zoe barred his way, giving him no opportunity to reenter the ship and strand her there.
"This isn't Scotland."
"No," he said unconcernedly. "It's France."
She flushed, opening her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a cold glare.
"Don't doubt me. He's here, within a mile. If you can't bother to seek him out, it's not my--"
A peal of alarm bells interrupted him, their shrill echoes throbbing over the rooftops. A knot of people was forming some distance down the street, where a dark blot of smoke rose into the air.
The tall man immediately began to walk toward the source of the din.
"Wait!" she shouted. "Where are you going?"
He never broke stride, but his cool voice floated back to her. "First rule of investigatin': start where there's trouble. You should have remembered that."
Cursing, she ran to catch up.
The fire occupied the upper floor of a large building. The roof's scaly thatch was already incandescent; smoke belched from the windows. While the tall man craned his neck to see over the spectators, Zoe simply pushed through, searching the perimiter of the crowd. Nobody looked familiar; everyone was speaking French.
She was about to turn back when Jamie McCrimmon barrelled out the door of the burning building, a child in his arms and a string of lanky adolescents clinging to his coat.
He was her age, with his hair drawn back into a loose tail and an old bullet scar on his cheek. "There's some left in the back!" he shouted, releasing his burdens into the surging mob, then whistling across the street for a local boy to fetch water for the victims. Turning, he looked directly into Zoe's eyes and froze -- but only for a moment. Then, with a brilliant smile and a raised hand that seemed to say Just bide a minute, he vanished back into the black doorway.
Trying to follow, she was pulled up short by a hand knotted in her collar.
"You can't go in," said her traveling companion -- blithe, careless, as though he owned her. "You don't know the building."
She wrenched free. Jamie was in there, and look what happened the last time she left a friend behind. The Time Lord was now gripping her wrist, his pale eyes oddly intent, and he spoke as though reading her thoughts.
"You can trust him."
She dug for her blaster, but it had been replaced with a banana, and it took precious seconds to break his grip. As he lunged after her, a jet of water hit the top floor and its strained frame collapsed, raining bricks and brands into the shrieking crowd. He shoved her away from the building, interposing his body between herself and the torrent. Then, abruptly, he went limp, pulling her down as he collapsed.
Somebody helped her stand, and she eased the Time Lord's lank frame to the ground. His head listed to one side, revealing an ugly welt in his temple where a fragment of masonry had glanced off his skull. She looked up at Jamie -- soot-smeared, stinking of fire, completely unmistakable -- and blurted, "Did you get them all?"
"Aye," he said, rubbing a dirty sleeve along his brow, his hand lingering on her shoulder as though to convince himself that she was really there. "They're all out. Just a minute, though." He knelt beside the stricken man, checked his breathing, and lifted a wrist to check the pulse, glancing up at Zoe with an amused half-smile. "I'm a doctor."
.o0o.
By his own promptness, Jamie had made his continued presence at the burning academy largely unnecessary. He and Zoe lingered long enough to make sure that all the students had escaped serious harm, borrowed a stretcher from the fire wagon, and used the cover of the gathering dusk to move the only injured man to the closest shelter -- the surgery of Dr. J.R. McCrimmon.
Installed on a rude cot in the back room, the Time Lord looked skeletal and frail. He hadn't woken up. Jamie, his quick fingers probing the wound, explained that he had been examining a student's wrenched ankle when the fire broke out above, and then asked Zoe how she had come to be there. She didn't know where to begin.
"I felt the hearts," said Jamie quietly, "when we got him on the stretcher. He's not just another traveler like us. Something more's going on, isn't there?"
Zoe shrugged. Talking about it felt like murdering the past.
"He wouldn't give me a straight answer. I don't even know if he has a name. They usually don't." She shifted, hating the stranger for wearing her old friend's billet like a second skin. "We came in a TARDIS, but it's the wrong one."
Jamie stood, seeming to age a bit as shadows pooled on his face. "That's something to wait on, then." He moved over to a shelf, rooting among the bottles and assorted arcana, and then glanced back at her. "Does he at least have an infirmary? Those remedies give me nightmares sometimes, when I think of what I could have done with them here."
"I don't know," she said crossly. "Why don't you go find out -- bring back my pack, while you're at it? It's on the floor by the console." When he didn't move, she flipped up the edge of the Time Lord's jacket, found the TARDIS key in an outer pocket, and tossed it over. "There you are; go on!"
Jamie's hand was still sure. He caught the key fairly, turned it over in his hand, and said with his throat dry: "How will I know it?"
"It's -- it's the same on the outside."
He was gone for twenty minutes, and returned to find Zoe asleep.
Part III is coming soon. Honest!
When posting the first part, I forgot to mention that this fic has a dedication. To Wally Schirra, which rhymes with Hurrah: March 12, 1923 -- May 3, 2007; Mercury, Gemini, Apollo -- an engineer, a scientist, and a man whose search for excellence never precluded the chance of a good joke. Wherever you are, hope you're having a blast.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Zoe, Jamie
Genre: gen, adventure, angst
Rating: PG for stuff blowing up
Spoilers: time war in general; slightly AU from the hypothetical Season 6B
Summary: Hurtling into the past, Zoe finds anachronisms everywhere... and one wears the face of an old friend.
Title:
Read Me
Part II
The trip took twenty minutes. Zoe waited, clinging to the rail for balance, and watched the Time Lord's every move as though she could actually tell whether he was fulfilling the bargain. He finished setting the course and braced himself against the console, looking her over with a familiarity bordering on insolence. The ship bucked and swayed and she paled at the motion, trying to fill her mind with Charon, wondering why an area so innocuous should have been targeted to explode.
When they finally shuddered to a halt, he threw the parking brake, stepped back from the console, tilted his head challengingly at the door, and cheerfully preceded her when she motioned for him to go first.
They had landed at the edge of a wide broadway under a sickly gray sky. A pall of haze hung heavily about them, parting reluctantly as ill-dressed pedestrians hurried past. The tall man would have leaned against the outside of the TARDIS, but Zoe barred his way, giving him no opportunity to reenter the ship and strand her there.
"This isn't Scotland."
"No," he said unconcernedly. "It's France."
She flushed, opening her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a cold glare.
"Don't doubt me. He's here, within a mile. If you can't bother to seek him out, it's not my--"
A peal of alarm bells interrupted him, their shrill echoes throbbing over the rooftops. A knot of people was forming some distance down the street, where a dark blot of smoke rose into the air.
The tall man immediately began to walk toward the source of the din.
"Wait!" she shouted. "Where are you going?"
He never broke stride, but his cool voice floated back to her. "First rule of investigatin': start where there's trouble. You should have remembered that."
Cursing, she ran to catch up.
The fire occupied the upper floor of a large building. The roof's scaly thatch was already incandescent; smoke belched from the windows. While the tall man craned his neck to see over the spectators, Zoe simply pushed through, searching the perimiter of the crowd. Nobody looked familiar; everyone was speaking French.
She was about to turn back when Jamie McCrimmon barrelled out the door of the burning building, a child in his arms and a string of lanky adolescents clinging to his coat.
He was her age, with his hair drawn back into a loose tail and an old bullet scar on his cheek. "There's some left in the back!" he shouted, releasing his burdens into the surging mob, then whistling across the street for a local boy to fetch water for the victims. Turning, he looked directly into Zoe's eyes and froze -- but only for a moment. Then, with a brilliant smile and a raised hand that seemed to say Just bide a minute, he vanished back into the black doorway.
Trying to follow, she was pulled up short by a hand knotted in her collar.
"You can't go in," said her traveling companion -- blithe, careless, as though he owned her. "You don't know the building."
She wrenched free. Jamie was in there, and look what happened the last time she left a friend behind. The Time Lord was now gripping her wrist, his pale eyes oddly intent, and he spoke as though reading her thoughts.
"You can trust him."
She dug for her blaster, but it had been replaced with a banana, and it took precious seconds to break his grip. As he lunged after her, a jet of water hit the top floor and its strained frame collapsed, raining bricks and brands into the shrieking crowd. He shoved her away from the building, interposing his body between herself and the torrent. Then, abruptly, he went limp, pulling her down as he collapsed.
Somebody helped her stand, and she eased the Time Lord's lank frame to the ground. His head listed to one side, revealing an ugly welt in his temple where a fragment of masonry had glanced off his skull. She looked up at Jamie -- soot-smeared, stinking of fire, completely unmistakable -- and blurted, "Did you get them all?"
"Aye," he said, rubbing a dirty sleeve along his brow, his hand lingering on her shoulder as though to convince himself that she was really there. "They're all out. Just a minute, though." He knelt beside the stricken man, checked his breathing, and lifted a wrist to check the pulse, glancing up at Zoe with an amused half-smile. "I'm a doctor."
.o0o.
By his own promptness, Jamie had made his continued presence at the burning academy largely unnecessary. He and Zoe lingered long enough to make sure that all the students had escaped serious harm, borrowed a stretcher from the fire wagon, and used the cover of the gathering dusk to move the only injured man to the closest shelter -- the surgery of Dr. J.R. McCrimmon.
Installed on a rude cot in the back room, the Time Lord looked skeletal and frail. He hadn't woken up. Jamie, his quick fingers probing the wound, explained that he had been examining a student's wrenched ankle when the fire broke out above, and then asked Zoe how she had come to be there. She didn't know where to begin.
"I felt the hearts," said Jamie quietly, "when we got him on the stretcher. He's not just another traveler like us. Something more's going on, isn't there?"
Zoe shrugged. Talking about it felt like murdering the past.
"He wouldn't give me a straight answer. I don't even know if he has a name. They usually don't." She shifted, hating the stranger for wearing her old friend's billet like a second skin. "We came in a TARDIS, but it's the wrong one."
Jamie stood, seeming to age a bit as shadows pooled on his face. "That's something to wait on, then." He moved over to a shelf, rooting among the bottles and assorted arcana, and then glanced back at her. "Does he at least have an infirmary? Those remedies give me nightmares sometimes, when I think of what I could have done with them here."
"I don't know," she said crossly. "Why don't you go find out -- bring back my pack, while you're at it? It's on the floor by the console." When he didn't move, she flipped up the edge of the Time Lord's jacket, found the TARDIS key in an outer pocket, and tossed it over. "There you are; go on!"
Jamie's hand was still sure. He caught the key fairly, turned it over in his hand, and said with his throat dry: "How will I know it?"
"It's -- it's the same on the outside."
He was gone for twenty minutes, and returned to find Zoe asleep.
Part III is coming soon. Honest!