Doctor Who Fic: Restless 1/??
Mar. 22nd, 2006 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zouzounakiTitle: Restless
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghanistarkiller (Mrs Peel on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind Fanfic Archive)
Summary: The Doctor, Jack and Rose arrive in an eerily abandoned city only to find that the real puzzle lies within the walls of a drastically fenced in settlement. Just exactly what is the mysterious "illness?" What happened to make the citizens so frightened of being outside the fence after dark? And just what -or who- is dying to get in there?
Rating: R
Genre(s): Horror, Mystery
Characters: The Doctor (9th), Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Warnings: Mixed (mostly gen/het), Swearing
This dead city longs to be living
Is it any wonder there's squalor in the sun
-Patti Smith
1.
Rose was sat cross-legged upon the warm, cracked concrete, her elbow propped against the soft denim of her knee, her chin rested in the palm of her hand as the fingers of her other played with the laces of her trainers. The problem, she reflected, with a slightly psychic paper is that it showed your target what you wanted them to see, not what they needed to see, and if you didn’t know what that was, well, there you were then, right where you had started.
Both Jack and the Doctor had been trying for the better part of -she checked her watch- the better part of four hours to wheedle, persuade, threaten and otherwise charm their way past the dreadful looking armed guards that were assembled rather densely straight in the way of the massive and imposing -it must have been at least seven metres high with enormous tangles of barbed wire at its distant top and at regular intervals to discourage any mental attempts at climbing- chain link fence’s few gates.
A mass of desperate citizens mobbed each entranceway, pleading their cases to the stone faced sentries; their entreaties fell on indifferent ears. Rose had even witnessed a man so inconsolable and distraught, he had thrown himself upon the fence. Rose had learned that, as well as being impossibly huge, the wire barrier was also electrically charged. She could still catch the unmistakable scent of burnt flesh in the somewhat stagnant air, tinged with the body odor of the frantic throng, when she breathed deeply enough. To say she wasn’t exceedingly impressed with what she’d seen of New Earth colony Celestial City Moon 4.7 would have been a massive understatement.
They had landed on a little metropolitan street corner, somewhere Rose could picture had once been a busy, bustling municipal setting, almost like London though the buildings were slightly off. Futuristic, she supposed, and they must have been something to behold once, before the urban decay and neglect had set in, glass domes smashed in, once gleaming metal dulled and rusted. If they had spotted anyone at all, it had been quick, covert glances from nervous, wary squatter. They had spotted a shuttle -she’d overheard it called a ‘scoot’- landing outside the fence’s perimeter and had followed the departing crowd here.
Now that the afternoon had started to wear on, some of those travelers had dispersed nervously, most likely looking for shelter for the night. She guessed that’s what they should be doing except that she’d gotten a weird feeling in her stomach, like the derelict constructions of the mostly abandoned city had eyes of their own, as if something was watching her from the shadows. She just knew they had to get inside that fence by sundown.
“Well, that’s all I got,” Jack said, slumping down on the pavement next to Rose. He stretched out his legs before his, crossing his feet at the ankles as he braced his palms against the uneven surface of the concrete. “I swear, that line always works,” and Rose couldn’t help but chuckle as he rubbed his jaw where he’d just been slapped. “Tough crowd,” he told her, shaking his head. “And it doesn’t look like the Doctor’s doing much better.”
“Aye, aye, me ears are burning,” the Doctor sighed through a stilted, displeased grin, his hands crossed behind his back as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “We can forget about the sonic screwdriver, I couldn’t even get near enough to try it.”
“Whatever they’re trying to keep in, they’re doing a good job at it,” agreed Jack.
“Or keep out,” the Doctor said thoughtfully, glancing along the boundary of the barricade. Rose shivered, not wanting to turn her back on the mouldering metropolis, a childish fear that something might sneak up behind her and grab her, nor did she want to look at its sinister, crumbling façade. “I wonder what they’re so scared of.”
“The TARDIS, maybe if we sneaked in…” Rose began but the Doctor was already shaking his head.
“Too conspicuous,” he told her. “With those roughs,” he nodded towards the guards, “keeping watch, I doubt anything would go overlooked, let alone a mysteriously appearing blue box? Nah, there’s got to be another way.”
“Well,” Jack exhaled loudly as he leaned forward from his reclining position, a mischievous smirk on his lips. Rose highly suspected that whatever he was about to propose, it was undoubtedly something wickedly lewd. “I only ever attempt this in very hopeless circumstances…”
“You’ll do," a female voice declared decidedly and before he could finish the thought, he found his brawny forearm being seized with his body following along, being lifted off the pavement and rushed forward. He blinked, realizing he was being led towards the admissions area, fighting back confusion as he looked down at the tall, lithe woman who was dragging him along.
She was slender, well muscled but lean, her darkly violet-coloured hair cut in a straight line across her shoulders, her clothing the same drab coveralls that almost all the colonists seemed to wear, though hers were altered, the sleeves cut off and jacket buttons left undone, creating a vest look over her pink patterned shirt. The pants were covered in patches and badges, some indicative of where she had been -one stated boldly ‘Hard Rock Jupiter’- some merely decorative patterns or shapes, like hearts or teddy bears. “Probably should do something about the clothes but we don’t have much time…” she muttered.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jack protested, finally digging the sturdy heels of his heavy boots into the fractured concrete and halting their progression. “It may seem like too much to ask, but I do actually like to know what I’m signing up for before someone puts the pen in my hand!”
“You’re Americanation, brilliant!” the woman’s pleased smile spread across her gaunt face. “That’ll make things so much easier!” She was pulling a disorganized bundle of papers from a rucksack that hung slackly from her shoulder, sorting through them until she found what she needed. “You’ll need to sign this here,” she indicated a spot on the crumpled document, “and probably here, and here.”
“Is this a marriage commitment deed?” Jack frowned, even as she was forcing a pen into his hand. “And just who the hell is Clark Kent?”
“You,” she told him quickly, trying to hurry him along. “I got it out off a streaming info-feed on classic literature, they love stuff like that!” She detected his hesitation, which was, in fact, rather quite obvious; he was staring at the certificate like he‘d be signing his own death warrant. “Right, you already obligated? Is it Princess Peroxide…”
Rose scoffed indignantly.
“Or side flaps here…”
“Oi!” the Doctor objected.
“Or is it all three of you, ‘cos I’ve got authorization papers for it all,” she assured them, handing out more well-worn certificates. “But we’ve really gotta get a move on or the regulators’ll start turning hopefuls away and when the patrols come out, well, I don’t much fancy dealing with them. Listen, it doesn‘t look like you‘re much more successful alone than I‘ve been and, trust me, you don‘t want to be sleeping rough out here come nightfall. This benefits us both!” she urged.
“‘Harry Potter?!’” the Doctor read incredulously from his permit, his expression remarkable as his eyebrows shot up across his creased forehead, and Rose had to suppress a snicker. “Oh, laugh it up,” he challenged her, leaning over her shoulder to read from her certificate, “‘Fanny Hill!’”
Jack let out a bark of laughter as Rose groaned, examining her permit, “Oh, that’s just not fair!”
“Knew a Dorothy Gale once myself,” the Doctor grinned suddenly, taking the pen from Jack’s grasp and smoothing the paper even against a nearby freestanding pillar that seemed as if it at one time, some time ago, held up an interstate or overpass of some sort. “Remarkable girl, Dorothy, absolutely hated the name though, insisted on a nickname. She did extraordinary things,” and abruptly his eyes went faraway, as they had a tendency to do now and again, his expression serious as he completed the sentence, “in the short time she had.”
“These’ll get us inside, yeah?” Rose asked of the young woman, who nodded in affirmation. “Great, then just call me Fanny ‘cos I can’t spend a single second more out here with that city just… starin’ at me,” she said firmly, grabbing the pen from the Doctor.
“And remember to initial the matrimonial bonding agreement there at the bottom,” the woman prompted. “Trust me, it makes things go much, much smoother. Well, go on,” she nudged Jack who, with a self-deprecating chuckle, hesitantly took the biro, “sun’s setting, time’s a-wasting.” She was growing more and more nervous, Rose observed, the nearer dusk approached.
Jack grinned roguishly, “Well, I never imagined taking the plunge would be quite like this! I ask you, where did the romance go? Don’t I even get to throw the bouquet?” The young woman breathed an audible sigh of relief when pen met paper and Jack let his mark. “You gonna carry me over the threshold?” he quirked an eyebrow.
“Don’t make yourself so available,” the Doctor advised him good-humouredly, “puts them off, it does. Me, I like to play hard to get. Drives ‘em wild.”
“Mr. Clark Kent,” the outfitted sentinel -the woman had called them ‘regulators’- read over the permits, sussing Jack out as he looked him up and down, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. “Haven’t I already turned your application down?”
“Nope,” the Doctor added quickly. “Not us, must have us mistaken for somebody else. Just arrived, us. Thought we’d take in the sights.”
“Right,” the guard sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose; it had been a long day. He turned back to Jack. “And your lovely wife, Eleanor Roosevelt?”
Jack put his arm around the girl’s lank shoulders. “The little woman! I like to call her ‘Schnooky Toes,’” he confided in a sly, contrived stage whisper, sending the severe man a wink. “She’s double-jointed, and she can do this thing with her legs and involving her tongue that I’m pretty sure is illegal in…”
“Ha ha,” the woman chuckled forcedly through a smile of clenched teeth, snaking an arm about his waist and pinching it a bit too tightly. “I think that’s more than he needs to know, Lambie Lips.”
“Whatever you say, Bouncy Buns,” Jack smirked, ignoring happily the dirty look she shot him as he gave her backside a light smack.
He regarded the young woman and mumbled something about “halfie” colonial trash, sniffing as if it were below him to even consider her petition. He was more taken, however, by Jack’s strong accent and choice in clothing, both of which seemed to signal esteem. Still eyeing the two of them over, he held in his hand a large rubber stamp which he pressed to the bottoms of each page of the documents. “Welcome to Celestial City Lunar Outpost 4.7, designated citizens 5/3/teal and 5/4/ellipse.” He handed the two of them ident badges, which the woman hastily pinned to her vest. “And these two…” he surveyed the Doctor and Rose with an almost inaudible sigh, “are with you?”
“Aye, aye,” the Doctor grinned, waving a friendly hand. “Hello, nice to meet you, happy to be here.”
“I’m his wife,” Rose said a little too quickly, taking the Doctor’s hand and intertwining her fingers with his own. She disguised her palpable anxiety with an edgy titter as the Doctor looked slightly startled at her eagerness. “We’re… married. And I’ll shut up now,” she concluded too softly to be heard.
“Quite. Citizens 5/5/chip and 5/6/zebra,” the officious regulator sucked at his teeth distastefully as he authorized the second set of certificates with his imprint and passing over their badges. “Please remember to wear your emblems at all times, the Elysium Corporation takes no responsibility for lost and/or stolen identity,” he droned, evidently tired of giving this same speech all day. “Oh, and do enjoy your stay,” and the sarcasm was easily detected in his contemptuous tone. He stepped aside and allowed them to pass.
“‘Schnooky Toes?!’” hissed the woman quietly, miming a retch with her tongue hanging out and eyes bulging.
“C‘mon,” Jack shrugged easily, “I had to sell it. Eleanor,” he added pointedly with a smug grin.
Through two tiers of reinforced fence they scrambled, pushed from all sides, it seemed, and finally through a final stratum of sterilization; Rose cried out as a thin mist of liquid drenched them, smelling of stale soda on fabric softener. And then they were in.
Peace, Ghani
Author:
ghanistarkiller (Mrs Peel on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind Fanfic Archive)Summary: The Doctor, Jack and Rose arrive in an eerily abandoned city only to find that the real puzzle lies within the walls of a drastically fenced in settlement. Just exactly what is the mysterious "illness?" What happened to make the citizens so frightened of being outside the fence after dark? And just what -or who- is dying to get in there?
Rating: R
Genre(s): Horror, Mystery
Characters: The Doctor (9th), Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Warnings: Mixed (mostly gen/het), Swearing
This dead city longs to be living
Is it any wonder there's squalor in the sun
-Patti Smith
1.
Rose was sat cross-legged upon the warm, cracked concrete, her elbow propped against the soft denim of her knee, her chin rested in the palm of her hand as the fingers of her other played with the laces of her trainers. The problem, she reflected, with a slightly psychic paper is that it showed your target what you wanted them to see, not what they needed to see, and if you didn’t know what that was, well, there you were then, right where you had started.
Both Jack and the Doctor had been trying for the better part of -she checked her watch- the better part of four hours to wheedle, persuade, threaten and otherwise charm their way past the dreadful looking armed guards that were assembled rather densely straight in the way of the massive and imposing -it must have been at least seven metres high with enormous tangles of barbed wire at its distant top and at regular intervals to discourage any mental attempts at climbing- chain link fence’s few gates.
A mass of desperate citizens mobbed each entranceway, pleading their cases to the stone faced sentries; their entreaties fell on indifferent ears. Rose had even witnessed a man so inconsolable and distraught, he had thrown himself upon the fence. Rose had learned that, as well as being impossibly huge, the wire barrier was also electrically charged. She could still catch the unmistakable scent of burnt flesh in the somewhat stagnant air, tinged with the body odor of the frantic throng, when she breathed deeply enough. To say she wasn’t exceedingly impressed with what she’d seen of New Earth colony Celestial City Moon 4.7 would have been a massive understatement.
They had landed on a little metropolitan street corner, somewhere Rose could picture had once been a busy, bustling municipal setting, almost like London though the buildings were slightly off. Futuristic, she supposed, and they must have been something to behold once, before the urban decay and neglect had set in, glass domes smashed in, once gleaming metal dulled and rusted. If they had spotted anyone at all, it had been quick, covert glances from nervous, wary squatter. They had spotted a shuttle -she’d overheard it called a ‘scoot’- landing outside the fence’s perimeter and had followed the departing crowd here.
Now that the afternoon had started to wear on, some of those travelers had dispersed nervously, most likely looking for shelter for the night. She guessed that’s what they should be doing except that she’d gotten a weird feeling in her stomach, like the derelict constructions of the mostly abandoned city had eyes of their own, as if something was watching her from the shadows. She just knew they had to get inside that fence by sundown.
“Well, that’s all I got,” Jack said, slumping down on the pavement next to Rose. He stretched out his legs before his, crossing his feet at the ankles as he braced his palms against the uneven surface of the concrete. “I swear, that line always works,” and Rose couldn’t help but chuckle as he rubbed his jaw where he’d just been slapped. “Tough crowd,” he told her, shaking his head. “And it doesn’t look like the Doctor’s doing much better.”
“Aye, aye, me ears are burning,” the Doctor sighed through a stilted, displeased grin, his hands crossed behind his back as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “We can forget about the sonic screwdriver, I couldn’t even get near enough to try it.”
“Whatever they’re trying to keep in, they’re doing a good job at it,” agreed Jack.
“Or keep out,” the Doctor said thoughtfully, glancing along the boundary of the barricade. Rose shivered, not wanting to turn her back on the mouldering metropolis, a childish fear that something might sneak up behind her and grab her, nor did she want to look at its sinister, crumbling façade. “I wonder what they’re so scared of.”
“The TARDIS, maybe if we sneaked in…” Rose began but the Doctor was already shaking his head.
“Too conspicuous,” he told her. “With those roughs,” he nodded towards the guards, “keeping watch, I doubt anything would go overlooked, let alone a mysteriously appearing blue box? Nah, there’s got to be another way.”
“Well,” Jack exhaled loudly as he leaned forward from his reclining position, a mischievous smirk on his lips. Rose highly suspected that whatever he was about to propose, it was undoubtedly something wickedly lewd. “I only ever attempt this in very hopeless circumstances…”
“You’ll do," a female voice declared decidedly and before he could finish the thought, he found his brawny forearm being seized with his body following along, being lifted off the pavement and rushed forward. He blinked, realizing he was being led towards the admissions area, fighting back confusion as he looked down at the tall, lithe woman who was dragging him along.
She was slender, well muscled but lean, her darkly violet-coloured hair cut in a straight line across her shoulders, her clothing the same drab coveralls that almost all the colonists seemed to wear, though hers were altered, the sleeves cut off and jacket buttons left undone, creating a vest look over her pink patterned shirt. The pants were covered in patches and badges, some indicative of where she had been -one stated boldly ‘Hard Rock Jupiter’- some merely decorative patterns or shapes, like hearts or teddy bears. “Probably should do something about the clothes but we don’t have much time…” she muttered.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jack protested, finally digging the sturdy heels of his heavy boots into the fractured concrete and halting their progression. “It may seem like too much to ask, but I do actually like to know what I’m signing up for before someone puts the pen in my hand!”
“You’re Americanation, brilliant!” the woman’s pleased smile spread across her gaunt face. “That’ll make things so much easier!” She was pulling a disorganized bundle of papers from a rucksack that hung slackly from her shoulder, sorting through them until she found what she needed. “You’ll need to sign this here,” she indicated a spot on the crumpled document, “and probably here, and here.”
“Is this a marriage commitment deed?” Jack frowned, even as she was forcing a pen into his hand. “And just who the hell is Clark Kent?”
“You,” she told him quickly, trying to hurry him along. “I got it out off a streaming info-feed on classic literature, they love stuff like that!” She detected his hesitation, which was, in fact, rather quite obvious; he was staring at the certificate like he‘d be signing his own death warrant. “Right, you already obligated? Is it Princess Peroxide…”
Rose scoffed indignantly.
“Or side flaps here…”
“Oi!” the Doctor objected.
“Or is it all three of you, ‘cos I’ve got authorization papers for it all,” she assured them, handing out more well-worn certificates. “But we’ve really gotta get a move on or the regulators’ll start turning hopefuls away and when the patrols come out, well, I don’t much fancy dealing with them. Listen, it doesn‘t look like you‘re much more successful alone than I‘ve been and, trust me, you don‘t want to be sleeping rough out here come nightfall. This benefits us both!” she urged.
“‘Harry Potter?!’” the Doctor read incredulously from his permit, his expression remarkable as his eyebrows shot up across his creased forehead, and Rose had to suppress a snicker. “Oh, laugh it up,” he challenged her, leaning over her shoulder to read from her certificate, “‘Fanny Hill!’”
Jack let out a bark of laughter as Rose groaned, examining her permit, “Oh, that’s just not fair!”
“Knew a Dorothy Gale once myself,” the Doctor grinned suddenly, taking the pen from Jack’s grasp and smoothing the paper even against a nearby freestanding pillar that seemed as if it at one time, some time ago, held up an interstate or overpass of some sort. “Remarkable girl, Dorothy, absolutely hated the name though, insisted on a nickname. She did extraordinary things,” and abruptly his eyes went faraway, as they had a tendency to do now and again, his expression serious as he completed the sentence, “in the short time she had.”
“These’ll get us inside, yeah?” Rose asked of the young woman, who nodded in affirmation. “Great, then just call me Fanny ‘cos I can’t spend a single second more out here with that city just… starin’ at me,” she said firmly, grabbing the pen from the Doctor.
“And remember to initial the matrimonial bonding agreement there at the bottom,” the woman prompted. “Trust me, it makes things go much, much smoother. Well, go on,” she nudged Jack who, with a self-deprecating chuckle, hesitantly took the biro, “sun’s setting, time’s a-wasting.” She was growing more and more nervous, Rose observed, the nearer dusk approached.
Jack grinned roguishly, “Well, I never imagined taking the plunge would be quite like this! I ask you, where did the romance go? Don’t I even get to throw the bouquet?” The young woman breathed an audible sigh of relief when pen met paper and Jack let his mark. “You gonna carry me over the threshold?” he quirked an eyebrow.
“Don’t make yourself so available,” the Doctor advised him good-humouredly, “puts them off, it does. Me, I like to play hard to get. Drives ‘em wild.”
“Mr. Clark Kent,” the outfitted sentinel -the woman had called them ‘regulators’- read over the permits, sussing Jack out as he looked him up and down, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. “Haven’t I already turned your application down?”
“Nope,” the Doctor added quickly. “Not us, must have us mistaken for somebody else. Just arrived, us. Thought we’d take in the sights.”
“Right,” the guard sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose; it had been a long day. He turned back to Jack. “And your lovely wife, Eleanor Roosevelt?”
Jack put his arm around the girl’s lank shoulders. “The little woman! I like to call her ‘Schnooky Toes,’” he confided in a sly, contrived stage whisper, sending the severe man a wink. “She’s double-jointed, and she can do this thing with her legs and involving her tongue that I’m pretty sure is illegal in…”
“Ha ha,” the woman chuckled forcedly through a smile of clenched teeth, snaking an arm about his waist and pinching it a bit too tightly. “I think that’s more than he needs to know, Lambie Lips.”
“Whatever you say, Bouncy Buns,” Jack smirked, ignoring happily the dirty look she shot him as he gave her backside a light smack.
He regarded the young woman and mumbled something about “halfie” colonial trash, sniffing as if it were below him to even consider her petition. He was more taken, however, by Jack’s strong accent and choice in clothing, both of which seemed to signal esteem. Still eyeing the two of them over, he held in his hand a large rubber stamp which he pressed to the bottoms of each page of the documents. “Welcome to Celestial City Lunar Outpost 4.7, designated citizens 5/3/teal and 5/4/ellipse.” He handed the two of them ident badges, which the woman hastily pinned to her vest. “And these two…” he surveyed the Doctor and Rose with an almost inaudible sigh, “are with you?”
“Aye, aye,” the Doctor grinned, waving a friendly hand. “Hello, nice to meet you, happy to be here.”
“I’m his wife,” Rose said a little too quickly, taking the Doctor’s hand and intertwining her fingers with his own. She disguised her palpable anxiety with an edgy titter as the Doctor looked slightly startled at her eagerness. “We’re… married. And I’ll shut up now,” she concluded too softly to be heard.
“Quite. Citizens 5/5/chip and 5/6/zebra,” the officious regulator sucked at his teeth distastefully as he authorized the second set of certificates with his imprint and passing over their badges. “Please remember to wear your emblems at all times, the Elysium Corporation takes no responsibility for lost and/or stolen identity,” he droned, evidently tired of giving this same speech all day. “Oh, and do enjoy your stay,” and the sarcasm was easily detected in his contemptuous tone. He stepped aside and allowed them to pass.
“‘Schnooky Toes?!’” hissed the woman quietly, miming a retch with her tongue hanging out and eyes bulging.
“C‘mon,” Jack shrugged easily, “I had to sell it. Eleanor,” he added pointedly with a smug grin.
Through two tiers of reinforced fence they scrambled, pushed from all sides, it seemed, and finally through a final stratum of sterilization; Rose cried out as a thin mist of liquid drenched them, smelling of stale soda on fabric softener. And then they were in.
Peace, Ghani
