Fic Update: The Silver Dollar Paradigm (6/?)
Title: The Silver Dollar Paradigm
Author: ladychi
Beta: jaradel
Graphic Artist: ducktheduck
Rating: Teen
Summary: The Doctor and Rose tackle a vengeful ghost, temporal shifts, and an adventure that will test their relationship. AU after Doomsday. Written for chaosmonkey as a result of the Support Stacie auction.
Previous Chapters: One| Two| Three| Four|Five
Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.
-- Elizabeth Bowen, "The Second Ghost Book"
Chapter Six
Rose reeled back, horrified at the sight in front of her. She had seen her share of death while traveling with the Doctor, typically as it happened or just after; but she had never seen a corpse in this state of decay before. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she barely had time to register Nate's howl of pain as he ran past her to stand in the doorway. The Doctor caught him, preventing him from entering the shed. Nate seemed to crumple in the Doctor's arms, who caught him as he dropped to his knees. His head fell forward to the ground as he shook with the force of his sobs. The Doctor released him and backed away, his face a mask of empathy.
Rose ran forward, grasping Nate's shoulders and drawing him close into a hug, as the Doctor looked torn between comforting their new friend and investigating the body. "I'm sorry," she whispered, unable to think of anything else to say. She pulled away briefly for a moment to look over Nate's shoulder at the Doctor. "Doctor, can you just -- tell you what. Nate and I are going to go move over here," she said, guiding Nate over to a spot next to the shack. "Do whatever it is you need to do."
"Right," the Doctor said quickly, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the shack. "I'll just -- see what there is to see."
"Don't --" Nate started.
"He's not going to hurt anything," Rose said reassuringly. "He's just going to look and see if maybe there's any evidence left."
"Oh God," Nate moaned. "I'm going to have to call her parents and tell them I found the body. I'm going to have to tell them it's --" he went white and Rose immediately moved to the side, rubbing her hand on his back to soothe him as he emptied the contents of his stomach off to the side of the shack.
When he was finally done, he lay on the ground with the side of his face pressed into the cool grass. the Doctor stepped outside of the shack, his face implacable and his hands in his pockets.
"Well?" Rose asked, not moving from Nate's side. "What do you think? Did you find anything?"
"Well." The Doctor crouched and rocked back on his heels, studying Nate with an objective eye. "I can tell you she's been dead a year. I can tell you she died of a knife wound --"
"We knew all that," Nate spat, looking up bitterly at the Doctor. "Did you find anything useful?"
"Oh yes," said the Doctor. "I found these."
He drew himself to his full height and from his pocket he drew out two elegant throwing knives. They were excellently balanced and from the way the Doctor was gingerly carrying them, Rose guessed that they were incredibly sharp as well. Simple in design, they had no engravings or embellishments.
"Are those the ones? I mean, are they hers?"
"I would guess so," the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows. "Nothing fancy, nothing ornamental. Just pure metal. These are tools, Rose. The tools of a killer."
Rose shivered from her her head to her toes.
"So what do we do? Turn them in to the authorities?" Nate was struggling to his feet. "I mean, we've got to tell them we found Marie."
The Doctor and Rose looked at each other for a long moment. "We've got to burn it. All of it. The knives, the silver coin, the body, the shack. We have to sever whatever connection Emily May has with this world. She's got her eyes on Rose and she's going to kill again," the Doctor said swiftly.
"But --"
"Nate." The Doctor bit his name off. "Do you really want to call Marie's parents and tell them you found her like this?"
Nate's eyes filled with tears again. "No."
"Then come on. We've got to find something flammable. We want that fire to burn hot and fast. The closer it gets to the anniversary, the more powerful she becomes. And my head bloody hurts," the Doctor finished peevishly.
Rose opened her mouth to say that maybe it wasn't best to complain of headache when someone had just found their long-dead girlfriend's body, but Nate spoke first.
"There's some gasoline in the garage up the hill." Nate said, drawing a shaky breath. "If that's what we need to do, then let's get it over with."
"Right-o," said the Doctor, and then made a disgusted face. "Did I really just say that?"
"Yes," Rose said succinctly.
"Right. Well... Never again."
"All right," Rose agreed, and gave him a tentative smile. Mercurial though the Doctor was, switching from mood to mood in the blink of an eye, Rose found she couldn't quite make the leap with him as she felt the growing pressure of something against her brain. She swiftly ran to catch up to the Doctor and caught his hand in hers.
Startled, he looked down at her. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Let's just get this done with, yeah? Then your head'll stop pounding and I won't feel so --" she shrugged. "I don't know. It's like I can feel her when she's not here."
"Rose," the Doctor paused, and Nate waited, a few feet away from them. "I need you to tell me if you can feel her start to focus in on you, all right? I rebuilt your barriers as best I could, but --"
"She was a fish monger, and sure 'twas no wonder as so were her father and mother before," a clear voice rang across the creek. Not a man's this time, but a girl's. Rose's stomach clenched as the voice continued singing in a thick Southern drawl. "And they each wheeled their barrow down streets broad and narrow, crying cockles and mussels alive, alive-o!"
"Up the hill!" the Doctor shouted. "Quickly now, come on!"
Rose vowed not to be caught immobile like she had the last few times and so she took off running behind the Doctor, legs pumping furiously to make it up the steep slope. She'd pushed through worse pain and discomfort before and bested creatures far scarier than this; she could outsmart an emonivore almost a century and a half older than her. Still, she had a hard time not screaming in fright when she looked off to her left and saw the ghostly form of Emily May keeping pace with her. She came to an abrupt halt.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "If you're going to kill me, good luck 'cause the Doctor's got your knives. And you can't hurt me on the physical plane, the Doctor says. So go away. I'm not having it."
"Show me yourself, Rose Tyler. Come with me and I will give you rest. I can save you from a fate worse than death." Emily May's eyes were wide and they started bleeding afresh, giant tears of blood streaming down her face.
"No bloody way," Rose snapped. "I told you to get out of here, now get!" She flung her arms to the side and thought she must have looked rather like her mum, shooing stray cats away from the flat.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted. He ran up behind her, sonic screwdriver menacingly pointed at Emily May over Rose's shoulder. "You can't have her... emonivore," he growled.
Emily May recoiled, her face twisting into something so far removed from the tragic beauty she normally displayed that Rose felt her heart stop for a second. Just as quickly, her placid facade returned.
"I see we understand each other... Time Lord," she said slowly. "What would I want with such a --" she paused and smiled, "-- feral child? Or is it the power of the Big Bad Wolf that I seek? You tell me, Doctor."
"I can find a home for you. Somewhere you can feed off emotions without hurting anyone. You don't have to kill, Emily May."
"In order to survive," Emily May said, looking off into the distance, "one will do the most despicable things. Things one has vowed for centuries never to do. Like survive on human flesh." She stared at him steadily. "Or commit genocide."
"Well, now, the mind games are well and good," the Doctor said, ignoring her taunts, "but you're still not answering the question. Will you accept my offer?"
"Time Lord, I say to you that if I could, I would. I did not pull you forward in time rashly," Emily May said honestly. "The flesh of your young friend, shot through with the power of the Time Vortex -- she would indeed, be the finest meal I have ever eaten. Still, I brought you here for another reason."
"What is it?" The Doctor demanded. "You've been trying to get inside my mind all this time. What did you want to say to me?"
"You must set me free. I have not been killing for survival these long years. You must burn it. Burn it all. The knives and the body and the box that was this human child's before I possessed her. But do not burn the coin. Keep the coin, Doctor."
"Why?" The Doctor demanded, taking a step forward as Emily started to fade into the air. "Why, Emily May?"
"Because you will not survive long in his presence without it," said Emily May, and she vanished into thin air.
Nate was the first to speak. "No, we're not doing it."
"What?" the Doctor turned to look at him, his jaw dropped.
"No, man. I've seen this movie. The ghost gets all friendly with the people, tries to convince them that they haven't been meaning to do all the bad things they've been doing -- then the blonde gets electrocuted and the ghost double-crosses them. Dude, I am telling you. She killed my girlfriend. I'm not setting her free."
"She wasn't asking for freedom," the Doctor said, cutting Nate off. "She was asking for death."
"What do you think she meant, that we wouldn't last long in 'his' presence?" Rose asked, following the Doctor as he continued walkng up the hill. "And what's so unusual about that silver coin?"
The Doctor shrugged. "No idea," he said and turned to beam at her. "Still, things are coming together, Rose! And you thought I was more interested in blueberry syrup."
**
They found the gasoline in the garage at the top of the hill, just as Nate had predicted they would. It belonged to a neighbor of his, a Mrs. Lowry, and Nate promised the Doctor and Rose that he would repay her with a fresh five gallon emergency supply before she even noticed it was gone.
Then it was back down the hill. The Doctor held Rose's hand the whole way and glanced over at her more often than he usually did. When she caught him surreptitiously trying to take her pulse, she lightly slapped at him.
"I'm all right, yeah? So stop your fussing."
"I am not fussing." The Doctor protested, his voice rising in pitch. "I'm over 900 years old, Rose, and I have never once, in all of that time, fussed."
Rose raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that right?"
"Well, that might be an overly-broad, very generalized sort of statement. I'm sure there have been a few times when I might have, yeah. In tetchier regenerations than this. It's not fussing if you're checking, just to be safe."
"Uh huh." Rose said, unconvinced. She stopped at the foot of the hill, staring at the dilapidated shack in front of them. The Doctor stopped alongside her, looking at Nate with genuine concern.
"If you don't want to watch, I'll just take it and..."
"No." Nate's voice was flat. "I'll do this myself."
He took the knives and the box from the Doctor and walked to the shack, throwing open the door and tossing the items inside. When he shut it, he paused for a minute, his mouth moving in what Rose guessed to be a silent prayer. He uncapped the gas can and tossed some of the liquid liberally around the perimeter of the shack. He then looked around and found a fallen branch, which he doused in the gasoline. Reaching inside his jeans pocket, he removed a lighter and lit the makeshift torch, watching as it caught fire with surprising speed.
The sun faded completely from the sky as Nate laid his torch against the shack's north wall. It immediately caught ablaze, the smoke from it reminding Rose pleasantly of a campfire, before she reminded herself of its morbid purpose.
They stood and watched for several minutes as the shack burned brightly, and the Doctor quietly removed his sonic screwdriver from his breast pocket. Eventually the roof fell in and all that remained was rubble. When the fire threatened to move on, he aimed the tool at the embers, pressed the button, and watched the fire slowly die out.
"What did you do?" Rose asked.
"Removed the oxygen from the space around the fire, just long enough to put it out," the Doctor explained, pocketing the slim device. He turned to face Rose and Nate, his expression serious. "All right. We've got to get a move on. I don't fancy being down here in the open on the night of the anniversary."
"But -- we killed her, right? We killed Emily May," Nate asked, clearly shaken. "I just thought we'd be able to feel it, or something."
"I felt it." the Doctor said darkly. "We killed the emonivore. But she was clearly scared of something else, and I, for one, would like to know what that is."
**
Chapter Seven
Author: ladychi
Beta: jaradel
Graphic Artist: ducktheduck
Rating: Teen
Summary: The Doctor and Rose tackle a vengeful ghost, temporal shifts, and an adventure that will test their relationship. AU after Doomsday. Written for chaosmonkey as a result of the Support Stacie auction.
Previous Chapters: One| Two| Three| Four|Five
Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.
-- Elizabeth Bowen, "The Second Ghost Book"
Chapter Six
Rose reeled back, horrified at the sight in front of her. She had seen her share of death while traveling with the Doctor, typically as it happened or just after; but she had never seen a corpse in this state of decay before. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she barely had time to register Nate's howl of pain as he ran past her to stand in the doorway. The Doctor caught him, preventing him from entering the shed. Nate seemed to crumple in the Doctor's arms, who caught him as he dropped to his knees. His head fell forward to the ground as he shook with the force of his sobs. The Doctor released him and backed away, his face a mask of empathy.
Rose ran forward, grasping Nate's shoulders and drawing him close into a hug, as the Doctor looked torn between comforting their new friend and investigating the body. "I'm sorry," she whispered, unable to think of anything else to say. She pulled away briefly for a moment to look over Nate's shoulder at the Doctor. "Doctor, can you just -- tell you what. Nate and I are going to go move over here," she said, guiding Nate over to a spot next to the shack. "Do whatever it is you need to do."
"Right," the Doctor said quickly, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the shack. "I'll just -- see what there is to see."
"Don't --" Nate started.
"He's not going to hurt anything," Rose said reassuringly. "He's just going to look and see if maybe there's any evidence left."
"Oh God," Nate moaned. "I'm going to have to call her parents and tell them I found the body. I'm going to have to tell them it's --" he went white and Rose immediately moved to the side, rubbing her hand on his back to soothe him as he emptied the contents of his stomach off to the side of the shack.
When he was finally done, he lay on the ground with the side of his face pressed into the cool grass. the Doctor stepped outside of the shack, his face implacable and his hands in his pockets.
"Well?" Rose asked, not moving from Nate's side. "What do you think? Did you find anything?"
"Well." The Doctor crouched and rocked back on his heels, studying Nate with an objective eye. "I can tell you she's been dead a year. I can tell you she died of a knife wound --"
"We knew all that," Nate spat, looking up bitterly at the Doctor. "Did you find anything useful?"
"Oh yes," said the Doctor. "I found these."
He drew himself to his full height and from his pocket he drew out two elegant throwing knives. They were excellently balanced and from the way the Doctor was gingerly carrying them, Rose guessed that they were incredibly sharp as well. Simple in design, they had no engravings or embellishments.
"Are those the ones? I mean, are they hers?"
"I would guess so," the Doctor said, raising his eyebrows. "Nothing fancy, nothing ornamental. Just pure metal. These are tools, Rose. The tools of a killer."
Rose shivered from her her head to her toes.
"So what do we do? Turn them in to the authorities?" Nate was struggling to his feet. "I mean, we've got to tell them we found Marie."
The Doctor and Rose looked at each other for a long moment. "We've got to burn it. All of it. The knives, the silver coin, the body, the shack. We have to sever whatever connection Emily May has with this world. She's got her eyes on Rose and she's going to kill again," the Doctor said swiftly.
"But --"
"Nate." The Doctor bit his name off. "Do you really want to call Marie's parents and tell them you found her like this?"
Nate's eyes filled with tears again. "No."
"Then come on. We've got to find something flammable. We want that fire to burn hot and fast. The closer it gets to the anniversary, the more powerful she becomes. And my head bloody hurts," the Doctor finished peevishly.
Rose opened her mouth to say that maybe it wasn't best to complain of headache when someone had just found their long-dead girlfriend's body, but Nate spoke first.
"There's some gasoline in the garage up the hill." Nate said, drawing a shaky breath. "If that's what we need to do, then let's get it over with."
"Right-o," said the Doctor, and then made a disgusted face. "Did I really just say that?"
"Yes," Rose said succinctly.
"Right. Well... Never again."
"All right," Rose agreed, and gave him a tentative smile. Mercurial though the Doctor was, switching from mood to mood in the blink of an eye, Rose found she couldn't quite make the leap with him as she felt the growing pressure of something against her brain. She swiftly ran to catch up to the Doctor and caught his hand in hers.
Startled, he looked down at her. "Are you feeling all right?"
"Let's just get this done with, yeah? Then your head'll stop pounding and I won't feel so --" she shrugged. "I don't know. It's like I can feel her when she's not here."
"Rose," the Doctor paused, and Nate waited, a few feet away from them. "I need you to tell me if you can feel her start to focus in on you, all right? I rebuilt your barriers as best I could, but --"
"She was a fish monger, and sure 'twas no wonder as so were her father and mother before," a clear voice rang across the creek. Not a man's this time, but a girl's. Rose's stomach clenched as the voice continued singing in a thick Southern drawl. "And they each wheeled their barrow down streets broad and narrow, crying cockles and mussels alive, alive-o!"
"Up the hill!" the Doctor shouted. "Quickly now, come on!"
Rose vowed not to be caught immobile like she had the last few times and so she took off running behind the Doctor, legs pumping furiously to make it up the steep slope. She'd pushed through worse pain and discomfort before and bested creatures far scarier than this; she could outsmart an emonivore almost a century and a half older than her. Still, she had a hard time not screaming in fright when she looked off to her left and saw the ghostly form of Emily May keeping pace with her. She came to an abrupt halt.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "If you're going to kill me, good luck 'cause the Doctor's got your knives. And you can't hurt me on the physical plane, the Doctor says. So go away. I'm not having it."
"Show me yourself, Rose Tyler. Come with me and I will give you rest. I can save you from a fate worse than death." Emily May's eyes were wide and they started bleeding afresh, giant tears of blood streaming down her face.
"No bloody way," Rose snapped. "I told you to get out of here, now get!" She flung her arms to the side and thought she must have looked rather like her mum, shooing stray cats away from the flat.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted. He ran up behind her, sonic screwdriver menacingly pointed at Emily May over Rose's shoulder. "You can't have her... emonivore," he growled.
Emily May recoiled, her face twisting into something so far removed from the tragic beauty she normally displayed that Rose felt her heart stop for a second. Just as quickly, her placid facade returned.
"I see we understand each other... Time Lord," she said slowly. "What would I want with such a --" she paused and smiled, "-- feral child? Or is it the power of the Big Bad Wolf that I seek? You tell me, Doctor."
"I can find a home for you. Somewhere you can feed off emotions without hurting anyone. You don't have to kill, Emily May."
"In order to survive," Emily May said, looking off into the distance, "one will do the most despicable things. Things one has vowed for centuries never to do. Like survive on human flesh." She stared at him steadily. "Or commit genocide."
"Well, now, the mind games are well and good," the Doctor said, ignoring her taunts, "but you're still not answering the question. Will you accept my offer?"
"Time Lord, I say to you that if I could, I would. I did not pull you forward in time rashly," Emily May said honestly. "The flesh of your young friend, shot through with the power of the Time Vortex -- she would indeed, be the finest meal I have ever eaten. Still, I brought you here for another reason."
"What is it?" The Doctor demanded. "You've been trying to get inside my mind all this time. What did you want to say to me?"
"You must set me free. I have not been killing for survival these long years. You must burn it. Burn it all. The knives and the body and the box that was this human child's before I possessed her. But do not burn the coin. Keep the coin, Doctor."
"Why?" The Doctor demanded, taking a step forward as Emily started to fade into the air. "Why, Emily May?"
"Because you will not survive long in his presence without it," said Emily May, and she vanished into thin air.
Nate was the first to speak. "No, we're not doing it."
"What?" the Doctor turned to look at him, his jaw dropped.
"No, man. I've seen this movie. The ghost gets all friendly with the people, tries to convince them that they haven't been meaning to do all the bad things they've been doing -- then the blonde gets electrocuted and the ghost double-crosses them. Dude, I am telling you. She killed my girlfriend. I'm not setting her free."
"She wasn't asking for freedom," the Doctor said, cutting Nate off. "She was asking for death."
"What do you think she meant, that we wouldn't last long in 'his' presence?" Rose asked, following the Doctor as he continued walkng up the hill. "And what's so unusual about that silver coin?"
The Doctor shrugged. "No idea," he said and turned to beam at her. "Still, things are coming together, Rose! And you thought I was more interested in blueberry syrup."
**
They found the gasoline in the garage at the top of the hill, just as Nate had predicted they would. It belonged to a neighbor of his, a Mrs. Lowry, and Nate promised the Doctor and Rose that he would repay her with a fresh five gallon emergency supply before she even noticed it was gone.
Then it was back down the hill. The Doctor held Rose's hand the whole way and glanced over at her more often than he usually did. When she caught him surreptitiously trying to take her pulse, she lightly slapped at him.
"I'm all right, yeah? So stop your fussing."
"I am not fussing." The Doctor protested, his voice rising in pitch. "I'm over 900 years old, Rose, and I have never once, in all of that time, fussed."
Rose raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that right?"
"Well, that might be an overly-broad, very generalized sort of statement. I'm sure there have been a few times when I might have, yeah. In tetchier regenerations than this. It's not fussing if you're checking, just to be safe."
"Uh huh." Rose said, unconvinced. She stopped at the foot of the hill, staring at the dilapidated shack in front of them. The Doctor stopped alongside her, looking at Nate with genuine concern.
"If you don't want to watch, I'll just take it and..."
"No." Nate's voice was flat. "I'll do this myself."
He took the knives and the box from the Doctor and walked to the shack, throwing open the door and tossing the items inside. When he shut it, he paused for a minute, his mouth moving in what Rose guessed to be a silent prayer. He uncapped the gas can and tossed some of the liquid liberally around the perimeter of the shack. He then looked around and found a fallen branch, which he doused in the gasoline. Reaching inside his jeans pocket, he removed a lighter and lit the makeshift torch, watching as it caught fire with surprising speed.
The sun faded completely from the sky as Nate laid his torch against the shack's north wall. It immediately caught ablaze, the smoke from it reminding Rose pleasantly of a campfire, before she reminded herself of its morbid purpose.
They stood and watched for several minutes as the shack burned brightly, and the Doctor quietly removed his sonic screwdriver from his breast pocket. Eventually the roof fell in and all that remained was rubble. When the fire threatened to move on, he aimed the tool at the embers, pressed the button, and watched the fire slowly die out.
"What did you do?" Rose asked.
"Removed the oxygen from the space around the fire, just long enough to put it out," the Doctor explained, pocketing the slim device. He turned to face Rose and Nate, his expression serious. "All right. We've got to get a move on. I don't fancy being down here in the open on the night of the anniversary."
"But -- we killed her, right? We killed Emily May," Nate asked, clearly shaken. "I just thought we'd be able to feel it, or something."
"I felt it." the Doctor said darkly. "We killed the emonivore. But she was clearly scared of something else, and I, for one, would like to know what that is."
**
Chapter Seven