The Stolen Earth Incident - Chapter Thirty-One
The TARDIS
Oh, no, there was no way Clint was going to remain trapped onboard the TARDIS.
When he’d helped carry the injured Time Lord into the blue box that he knew was an honest-to-God time machine, Clint had been expecting something mind-blowing. He’d done his research, had learned about the Doctor and his appearances on Earth, as part of the file he’d gotten when he’d asked about Torchwood. Hell, even Phil had told him about his own family history with the alien; about Canton Everett Delaware III and the invasion of the Silence, and how the Doctor had managed to stop it by subliminal message. It had been exciting to know that his lover had had nearly personal knowledge of an actual alien, even though Phil had never actually met the Time Lord.
Still, his mind had been completely and utterly blown the moment he’d set foot onboard the ship.
He hadn’t been prepared for the feeling that the ship was alive. While it wasn’t actually speaking to him, there was this simple brush across his mind that was warm and gentle, and very friendly. Clint wasn’t sure if he was ecstatic or creeped out about it, to be honest. He thought, on the whole, that the TARDIS was beautiful and exotic and he felt as if he was on the cusp of something wonderful.
That was, of course, before he’d found himself mysteriously trapped inside said ship while it was being shaken to pieces.
Clint held on for dear life to one of the coral-like struts that surrounded the central console as the TARDIS jumped and shuddered, small explosions sounding along the walls and the controls, smoke beginning to fill the large room. He could just make out Donna, on the metallic grating of the floor, trying hard not to slide all over as the TARDIS jerked sharply around them.
He saw the very moment that Donna reached out to touch the jar that held that creepy hand that the Doctor had claimed to have been his.
Clint had almost been expecting the whole regeneration thing, as well. In the files, there were listed at least eleven different men claiming to be the Doctor, and there was this thing where, when he died, he’d get an entire new body and personality to match. So, when the guy had begun glowing and Jack had mentioned ‘regeneration’, Clint had known where it was going.
He was positive he wasn’t the only one shocked when it didn’t happen. The explanation kinda went over his head, but Clint didn’t have a degree in alien biology and was fine with not really understanding it all.
The hand was glowing as Donna’s hand touched the glass.
Clint wasn’t even aware of moving, until he was yanking Donna away and the glass shattered as his fingers brushed against it. An electrical shock went through him as he rolled with her, protecting her with his body, feeling a couple of the shards hitting his jacket but not penetrating the leather.
He curled around her, hoping to keep them both from being flung all over the room. It gave him a ringside seat for what happened next.
The glow that had been surrounding the hand stretched outward, flowing along the unsteady grating, until it had formed the shape of a man. The golden light faded, revealing a naked person who looked exactly like the Doctor.
The man sat up, eyes darting around, taking in what was going on around them. Those eyes met Clint’s, and they frowned as they regarded him and Donna, cuddled up on the heaving floor.
Then he was moving, clawing his way up onto the console, fingers stabbing at buttons in a frenzy. The ship steadied, and a strange grinding, whirring noise echoed throughout the room. The now-familiar warm presence of the TARDIS, having cut out when the power had been lost, touched the archer’s mind, and Clint relaxed his grip on Donna, somehow knowing that everything was fine.
“Doctor?” Donna asked tentatively.
“Oh yes,” the man answered fiercely.
“You’re naked.” She sounded almost grossed out.
Clint didn’t understand why she would. If this was the Doctor, then he wasn’t exactly a dog. Only he wasn’t going to say that out loud. He had a man of his own at home, after all.
“Oh yes,” he said once more, just as fiercely.
Then he was up and off the floor, heading deeper into the TARDIS, leaving Clint and Donna alone.
Clint looked down at the woman he was currently holding. Donna was shaken, and he couldn’t blame her. Things were getting just too weird, and this wasn’t a thing he’d had any sort of previous experience with. “So,” he said, “is this a Time Lord thing?”
He sat up, releasing his grasp on her. Donna looked vaguely disappointed. “No idea,” she said, “but believe me it’s a question I intend to ask him when he gets back!”
Clambering to his feet, Clint held out a hand to her, which Donna accepted. She held on a little too long, but then Clint couldn’t blame her, because he was just as freaked out as she was and comfort was a good thing. He needed just a little bit of it himself. He wanted to go looking for his bow, but Donna wouldn’t let go and he wasn’t going to force her to.
“Can you find out where we are?” If they’d moved in space and time, there was no telling where they’d ended up.
“Nope, sorry.” Donna shrugged. “I’m not a bloody Time Lord so I can’t work the controls. Although, if you ask me, half the stuff the Doctor does around the console is just to show off. Just my opinion, mind.”
Clint knew, then and there, that he and Donna were going to be friends. He just adored her attitude and wanted her to meet Natasha, because he thought they’d get along like a house on fire.
All that red hair, it was more of a statement than a metaphor, actually.
Wait, was that a metaphor?
Hell, it didn’t matter.
“So, tell me,” he said, “just how did you meet the Doctor, anyway?”
He was really interested. Clint had read a lot about the Doctor’s many companions. There had even been a pair of them that had been recruited into SHIELD during its earliest days under Director Carter, and were both listed on the Wall of Valour at the Triskelion. In fact, Clint had wanted to ask Rhys if he had been related to Rory Williams, but changed his mind. He was certain there’d have been a certain amount of bragging if there’d been any sort of blood tie between them, since Rhys was very proud of his roots. Clint already knew about the great-grandfather who’d saved the world by stitching time back together.
Donna was in the midst of telling him about the Racnoss under the Thames when the Doctor Double showed back up, dressed in a blue pinstriped suit and looking even more manic than when he’d left. He darted about the console, touching various places on it, as if soothing it.
Maybe that was what he was actually doing. After all, it was a part of the TARDIS, and the TARDIS was alive, so it made sense if the guy was trying to make her feel better. “All repaired, Lovely,” he cooed. Then he turned to the pair of them, putting a finger to his lips. “Shush. No one knows we’re here. Got to keep quiet. Silent running, like on submarines when you can’t even drop a spanner.”
Clint knew, from his short time in Cardiff, that ‘spanner’ was a fancy name for ‘wrench’. Did the Doctor even have something that low-tech on this ship?
“Don’t drop a spanner!” the Doctor Double warned. Then he smoothed a hand down the front of his suit. “I like blue. What do you think?”
“I think you’re bonkers,” Donna answered sharply, and yet with an undertone of fondness.
The man frowned. “Why? What’s wrong with blue?”
Then she asked the question she’d threatened with before he’d shown up. “Is that what Time Lords do? Lop a bit off, and grow another one?”
“Time Lords are like worms!” Clint couldn’t help but chortle. Yes, he was in serious danger of adoring Donna Noble.
The Doctor - and he was going to be the Doctor Double until Clint could come up with something new - looked affronted. “No no no no no! I’m unique!” He puffed out his chest. “Never been another like me. Because all of that regeneration energy went into the hand, the one I lost to the Sycorax.” He raised his right hand, waggling the fingers. “Look at my hand! I love that hand.”
Clint thought he might just be a little bit nuts. But in a good way, because he knew the difference between good crazy and bad crazy.
“But then you touched it. Wham!” He slammed his hands together. To either of their credit, neither Clint or Donna jumped. “Instantaneous biological metacrisis. I grew out of you.” He frowned again. “Both of you, actually.” Then he shrugged. “I guess it could have been worse.”
Wait…what?
Donna was snarking back before Clint could even react. “Oi! Watch it, Spaceman!”
“Oi! Watch it, Earth girl.” Then the Doctor Double recoiled. “Ooo! I sound like you. All sort of…rough.”
Clint was insulted on Donna’s behalf. “Hey!”
Donna had her hands on her hips, and she was glaring so hard Clint was surprised the Doctor Double didn’t explode into flames.
“And what did I get from you?” he demanded, stabbing a finger at Clint. Then he squinted. “Is that a bit of bacon grease on your collar?” He jerked back again. “Are human eyes supposed to be this good?”
“I’m not called Hawkeye because I loved reading Last of the Mohicans,” Clint bragged. He was damned proud of his eyesight, thank you very much! And he actually had never read James Fennimore Cooper, but Phil had and he’d ended up being talked into seeing that movie with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Then the Doctor Double was pressing his hand to his chest. “Oh, you are kidding me!”
“What’s wrong?” Donna demanded, suddenly worried.
“No way!”
“What?” she shouted, as if trying to break through all the babble.
“Spanner!” he warned.
Clint wondered if the Doctor was like this all the time, or if this was something that the Doctor Double only had. Because it was starting to get just a tad bit annoying.
“I’ve only got one heart,” he finally exclaimed, his expression horrified. “This body only has one heart!”
Clint barely resisted the urge to shout, “Spanner!” at him.
Of course, those files he’d gotten had mentioned that Time Lords had two hearts. He tried to imagine what that was like, and decided he couldn’t. But it must have been weird for him to discover that he’d lost one during this metacrisis thing.
The archer still wasn’t sure how he felt about him having a bit of Clint in him. It really didn’t bear thinking about, to be honest.
“That’s disgusting,” the Doctor Double said, putting his foot right through Clint’s sympathetic feelings.
“Oi!” Donna shouted again. She was practically quivering in rage at all the insults.
“Oi!” the Doctor Double repeated at the same rather loud volume.
“Stop it!” Clint butted in.
“No, wait,” the Doctor Double cried. “I’m part Time Lord…part human.” There was that horrified look once more. “Well…isn’t that wizard?”
The sheer sarcasm in that statement would have put Owen Harper back on his heels, and Owen was most likely the most sarcastic person Clint had ever met. He was actually a bit offended, for both himself and Donna, and that had never once been the case when Owen had launched one of his own rather nasty barbs.
He thought it was the condescension. Clint despised that sort of attitude, having had to deal with that sort of thing during his childhood. How did Donna deal with it when she travelled with the Doctor?
By sassing back, as evidenced by her next remark.
“At least I’m not some dumbo who talks down to his friends, am I!”
The Doctor Double cocked his head, eyes regarding Donna closely, a line between his brows as he considered her. “I can see it, you know.”
She crossed her arms, looking as if she was about to start tapping her foot at any moment. “See what?”
“All that attitude,” he said, “all that lip, because all this time you think you’re not worth it.”
Donna went pale. Clint could see the beginning of a tremble in the set of her shoulders. “Stop it.”
He wanted to break into this conversation and demand the same thing. Was this bastard deliberately pointing out her secrets, or was he just an oblivious jerk?
But the Doctor Double went on, “Shouting at the world because no one’s listening.”
“That’s enough,” Clint growled, feeling very protective of her.
That got the man’s attention, and he turned those dark, knowing eyes on Clint. “You’re almost the exact same way,” he went on inexorably. “Being charming because you’ve been told most of your life that you’re not good enough, or strong enough, so you have to be the very best you can be so people will think you’re confident when, really, you’re not.”
That earned the Doctor Double a sock in the jaw.
Clint didn’t need to have all his faults dragged out into the open like that. It had taken a lot of time and effort for him to finally dig himself out of the hole his abusive Dad and equally abusive mentor had dropped him into, and bringing all that shit up wasn’t doing anyone any favours.
The Doctor Double blinked up at him from the metal grating of the TARDIS, obviously surprised by Clint’s reaction. “If you’re done raking up my shitty past,” he gritted, “don’t you think we should be doing something about the Daleks?”
Donna was shaking her head. “I’d say thanks but you beat me to the punch. No pun intended.”
Clint snorted, and then, to show that there really were no hard feelings, he held his hand out to help the Doctor Double to his feet. The guy looked at the offered hand as if he was expecting it to do something else unexpected, but then accepted it, letting Clint haul him up.
There was a sudden beeping noise coming from the console, and the Doctor Double raced around it, pushing a button and dragging a screen down to eye level. He frowned at what he was seeing, and both Donna and Clint joined him. Looking over the man’s shoulder, Clint tried to interpret what was on the monitor, but it was in some weird language he’d never seen before.
Probably the Time Lord’s own language. It resembled nothing more than a bunch of circles and whorls and it made him slightly dizzy to look at.
“What is it?” Donna demanded.
“The twenty-seven planets…” the Doctor Double mumbled.
Clint glanced over at Donna, and the woman looked as perplexed as he felt. “You mind explaining that to the Earth kids?”
“It’s a single string of zed-neutrinos compressed…no way.”
“What the hell is that when it’s at home?” Clint demanded. He felt a bit like someone who’d been hanging around Tony Stark too long.
“It shouldn’t be possible,” was the answer. “But what it would do is wipe out reality…”
Well, shit.
Oh, no, there was no way Clint was going to remain trapped onboard the TARDIS.
When he’d helped carry the injured Time Lord into the blue box that he knew was an honest-to-God time machine, Clint had been expecting something mind-blowing. He’d done his research, had learned about the Doctor and his appearances on Earth, as part of the file he’d gotten when he’d asked about Torchwood. Hell, even Phil had told him about his own family history with the alien; about Canton Everett Delaware III and the invasion of the Silence, and how the Doctor had managed to stop it by subliminal message. It had been exciting to know that his lover had had nearly personal knowledge of an actual alien, even though Phil had never actually met the Time Lord.
Still, his mind had been completely and utterly blown the moment he’d set foot onboard the ship.
He hadn’t been prepared for the feeling that the ship was alive. While it wasn’t actually speaking to him, there was this simple brush across his mind that was warm and gentle, and very friendly. Clint wasn’t sure if he was ecstatic or creeped out about it, to be honest. He thought, on the whole, that the TARDIS was beautiful and exotic and he felt as if he was on the cusp of something wonderful.
That was, of course, before he’d found himself mysteriously trapped inside said ship while it was being shaken to pieces.
Clint held on for dear life to one of the coral-like struts that surrounded the central console as the TARDIS jumped and shuddered, small explosions sounding along the walls and the controls, smoke beginning to fill the large room. He could just make out Donna, on the metallic grating of the floor, trying hard not to slide all over as the TARDIS jerked sharply around them.
He saw the very moment that Donna reached out to touch the jar that held that creepy hand that the Doctor had claimed to have been his.
Clint had almost been expecting the whole regeneration thing, as well. In the files, there were listed at least eleven different men claiming to be the Doctor, and there was this thing where, when he died, he’d get an entire new body and personality to match. So, when the guy had begun glowing and Jack had mentioned ‘regeneration’, Clint had known where it was going.
He was positive he wasn’t the only one shocked when it didn’t happen. The explanation kinda went over his head, but Clint didn’t have a degree in alien biology and was fine with not really understanding it all.
The hand was glowing as Donna’s hand touched the glass.
Clint wasn’t even aware of moving, until he was yanking Donna away and the glass shattered as his fingers brushed against it. An electrical shock went through him as he rolled with her, protecting her with his body, feeling a couple of the shards hitting his jacket but not penetrating the leather.
He curled around her, hoping to keep them both from being flung all over the room. It gave him a ringside seat for what happened next.
The glow that had been surrounding the hand stretched outward, flowing along the unsteady grating, until it had formed the shape of a man. The golden light faded, revealing a naked person who looked exactly like the Doctor.
The man sat up, eyes darting around, taking in what was going on around them. Those eyes met Clint’s, and they frowned as they regarded him and Donna, cuddled up on the heaving floor.
Then he was moving, clawing his way up onto the console, fingers stabbing at buttons in a frenzy. The ship steadied, and a strange grinding, whirring noise echoed throughout the room. The now-familiar warm presence of the TARDIS, having cut out when the power had been lost, touched the archer’s mind, and Clint relaxed his grip on Donna, somehow knowing that everything was fine.
“Doctor?” Donna asked tentatively.
“Oh yes,” the man answered fiercely.
“You’re naked.” She sounded almost grossed out.
Clint didn’t understand why she would. If this was the Doctor, then he wasn’t exactly a dog. Only he wasn’t going to say that out loud. He had a man of his own at home, after all.
“Oh yes,” he said once more, just as fiercely.
Then he was up and off the floor, heading deeper into the TARDIS, leaving Clint and Donna alone.
Clint looked down at the woman he was currently holding. Donna was shaken, and he couldn’t blame her. Things were getting just too weird, and this wasn’t a thing he’d had any sort of previous experience with. “So,” he said, “is this a Time Lord thing?”
He sat up, releasing his grasp on her. Donna looked vaguely disappointed. “No idea,” she said, “but believe me it’s a question I intend to ask him when he gets back!”
Clambering to his feet, Clint held out a hand to her, which Donna accepted. She held on a little too long, but then Clint couldn’t blame her, because he was just as freaked out as she was and comfort was a good thing. He needed just a little bit of it himself. He wanted to go looking for his bow, but Donna wouldn’t let go and he wasn’t going to force her to.
“Can you find out where we are?” If they’d moved in space and time, there was no telling where they’d ended up.
“Nope, sorry.” Donna shrugged. “I’m not a bloody Time Lord so I can’t work the controls. Although, if you ask me, half the stuff the Doctor does around the console is just to show off. Just my opinion, mind.”
Clint knew, then and there, that he and Donna were going to be friends. He just adored her attitude and wanted her to meet Natasha, because he thought they’d get along like a house on fire.
All that red hair, it was more of a statement than a metaphor, actually.
Wait, was that a metaphor?
Hell, it didn’t matter.
“So, tell me,” he said, “just how did you meet the Doctor, anyway?”
He was really interested. Clint had read a lot about the Doctor’s many companions. There had even been a pair of them that had been recruited into SHIELD during its earliest days under Director Carter, and were both listed on the Wall of Valour at the Triskelion. In fact, Clint had wanted to ask Rhys if he had been related to Rory Williams, but changed his mind. He was certain there’d have been a certain amount of bragging if there’d been any sort of blood tie between them, since Rhys was very proud of his roots. Clint already knew about the great-grandfather who’d saved the world by stitching time back together.
Donna was in the midst of telling him about the Racnoss under the Thames when the Doctor Double showed back up, dressed in a blue pinstriped suit and looking even more manic than when he’d left. He darted about the console, touching various places on it, as if soothing it.
Maybe that was what he was actually doing. After all, it was a part of the TARDIS, and the TARDIS was alive, so it made sense if the guy was trying to make her feel better. “All repaired, Lovely,” he cooed. Then he turned to the pair of them, putting a finger to his lips. “Shush. No one knows we’re here. Got to keep quiet. Silent running, like on submarines when you can’t even drop a spanner.”
Clint knew, from his short time in Cardiff, that ‘spanner’ was a fancy name for ‘wrench’. Did the Doctor even have something that low-tech on this ship?
“Don’t drop a spanner!” the Doctor Double warned. Then he smoothed a hand down the front of his suit. “I like blue. What do you think?”
“I think you’re bonkers,” Donna answered sharply, and yet with an undertone of fondness.
The man frowned. “Why? What’s wrong with blue?”
Then she asked the question she’d threatened with before he’d shown up. “Is that what Time Lords do? Lop a bit off, and grow another one?”
“Time Lords are like worms!” Clint couldn’t help but chortle. Yes, he was in serious danger of adoring Donna Noble.
The Doctor - and he was going to be the Doctor Double until Clint could come up with something new - looked affronted. “No no no no no! I’m unique!” He puffed out his chest. “Never been another like me. Because all of that regeneration energy went into the hand, the one I lost to the Sycorax.” He raised his right hand, waggling the fingers. “Look at my hand! I love that hand.”
Clint thought he might just be a little bit nuts. But in a good way, because he knew the difference between good crazy and bad crazy.
“But then you touched it. Wham!” He slammed his hands together. To either of their credit, neither Clint or Donna jumped. “Instantaneous biological metacrisis. I grew out of you.” He frowned again. “Both of you, actually.” Then he shrugged. “I guess it could have been worse.”
Wait…what?
Donna was snarking back before Clint could even react. “Oi! Watch it, Spaceman!”
“Oi! Watch it, Earth girl.” Then the Doctor Double recoiled. “Ooo! I sound like you. All sort of…rough.”
Clint was insulted on Donna’s behalf. “Hey!”
Donna had her hands on her hips, and she was glaring so hard Clint was surprised the Doctor Double didn’t explode into flames.
“And what did I get from you?” he demanded, stabbing a finger at Clint. Then he squinted. “Is that a bit of bacon grease on your collar?” He jerked back again. “Are human eyes supposed to be this good?”
“I’m not called Hawkeye because I loved reading Last of the Mohicans,” Clint bragged. He was damned proud of his eyesight, thank you very much! And he actually had never read James Fennimore Cooper, but Phil had and he’d ended up being talked into seeing that movie with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Then the Doctor Double was pressing his hand to his chest. “Oh, you are kidding me!”
“What’s wrong?” Donna demanded, suddenly worried.
“No way!”
“What?” she shouted, as if trying to break through all the babble.
“Spanner!” he warned.
Clint wondered if the Doctor was like this all the time, or if this was something that the Doctor Double only had. Because it was starting to get just a tad bit annoying.
“I’ve only got one heart,” he finally exclaimed, his expression horrified. “This body only has one heart!”
Clint barely resisted the urge to shout, “Spanner!” at him.
Of course, those files he’d gotten had mentioned that Time Lords had two hearts. He tried to imagine what that was like, and decided he couldn’t. But it must have been weird for him to discover that he’d lost one during this metacrisis thing.
The archer still wasn’t sure how he felt about him having a bit of Clint in him. It really didn’t bear thinking about, to be honest.
“That’s disgusting,” the Doctor Double said, putting his foot right through Clint’s sympathetic feelings.
“Oi!” Donna shouted again. She was practically quivering in rage at all the insults.
“Oi!” the Doctor Double repeated at the same rather loud volume.
“Stop it!” Clint butted in.
“No, wait,” the Doctor Double cried. “I’m part Time Lord…part human.” There was that horrified look once more. “Well…isn’t that wizard?”
The sheer sarcasm in that statement would have put Owen Harper back on his heels, and Owen was most likely the most sarcastic person Clint had ever met. He was actually a bit offended, for both himself and Donna, and that had never once been the case when Owen had launched one of his own rather nasty barbs.
He thought it was the condescension. Clint despised that sort of attitude, having had to deal with that sort of thing during his childhood. How did Donna deal with it when she travelled with the Doctor?
By sassing back, as evidenced by her next remark.
“At least I’m not some dumbo who talks down to his friends, am I!”
The Doctor Double cocked his head, eyes regarding Donna closely, a line between his brows as he considered her. “I can see it, you know.”
She crossed her arms, looking as if she was about to start tapping her foot at any moment. “See what?”
“All that attitude,” he said, “all that lip, because all this time you think you’re not worth it.”
Donna went pale. Clint could see the beginning of a tremble in the set of her shoulders. “Stop it.”
He wanted to break into this conversation and demand the same thing. Was this bastard deliberately pointing out her secrets, or was he just an oblivious jerk?
But the Doctor Double went on, “Shouting at the world because no one’s listening.”
“That’s enough,” Clint growled, feeling very protective of her.
That got the man’s attention, and he turned those dark, knowing eyes on Clint. “You’re almost the exact same way,” he went on inexorably. “Being charming because you’ve been told most of your life that you’re not good enough, or strong enough, so you have to be the very best you can be so people will think you’re confident when, really, you’re not.”
That earned the Doctor Double a sock in the jaw.
Clint didn’t need to have all his faults dragged out into the open like that. It had taken a lot of time and effort for him to finally dig himself out of the hole his abusive Dad and equally abusive mentor had dropped him into, and bringing all that shit up wasn’t doing anyone any favours.
The Doctor Double blinked up at him from the metal grating of the TARDIS, obviously surprised by Clint’s reaction. “If you’re done raking up my shitty past,” he gritted, “don’t you think we should be doing something about the Daleks?”
Donna was shaking her head. “I’d say thanks but you beat me to the punch. No pun intended.”
Clint snorted, and then, to show that there really were no hard feelings, he held his hand out to help the Doctor Double to his feet. The guy looked at the offered hand as if he was expecting it to do something else unexpected, but then accepted it, letting Clint haul him up.
There was a sudden beeping noise coming from the console, and the Doctor Double raced around it, pushing a button and dragging a screen down to eye level. He frowned at what he was seeing, and both Donna and Clint joined him. Looking over the man’s shoulder, Clint tried to interpret what was on the monitor, but it was in some weird language he’d never seen before.
Probably the Time Lord’s own language. It resembled nothing more than a bunch of circles and whorls and it made him slightly dizzy to look at.
“What is it?” Donna demanded.
“The twenty-seven planets…” the Doctor Double mumbled.
Clint glanced over at Donna, and the woman looked as perplexed as he felt. “You mind explaining that to the Earth kids?”
“It’s a single string of zed-neutrinos compressed…no way.”
“What the hell is that when it’s at home?” Clint demanded. He felt a bit like someone who’d been hanging around Tony Stark too long.
“It shouldn’t be possible,” was the answer. “But what it would do is wipe out reality…”
Well, shit.