| Date: 29 December 2007
Characters: Mickey Smith, The Ninth Doctor Location: hotel lobby, outside, a shop Link to IJ: thread #22405 |
 Shaking the sand off of his shoes, Mickey glanced back up from the ground only to be faced with some place that wasn't the beach he was on a few moments before. Instead, he was standing in the middle of some sort of hotel lobby. Surely he hadn't wandered that far. Bad Wolf Beach was practically deserted. He had not marked it for a resort location. Odd.
Raising a hand to rest on the top of his head, Mickey glanced left and right for something that looked even vaguely familiar with absolutely no luck. "Well, shit," He muttered under his breath. "This is just what I needed today." |
 The Doctor stopped abruptly after slamming the door to Jack's office behind him. This... wasn't the cavern he'd expected. On the other hand, there was a familiar face. "Oi! Mickey!"
So long as the boy didn't start in on him about being a bastard for running away after Rose had died, he might be able to deal with him. Though, he wasn't dressed in the outfit he had been less than ten minutes ago. And there was... sand? |
| Of all of the people Mickey would have expected to see, that face was at the very bottom of the list. And it probably showed from the way that he'd frozen on the spot and just stared at the Doctor.
It was the Doctor, wasn't it? But how could it be? He'd just watched the other one, the new one, fade into non-existence on the other side of the Breach. "Doctor?" Mickey was finally able to voice after a long moment of silence. |
| "That's me." The Doctor frowned. He hadn't expected Mickey to stare at him like an idiot. "You been to a beach?" He nodded at the sand on the floor behind Mickey, and on his shoes. |
| Mickey glanced down at the floor, nodding as he knocked a bit more of the sand off of his shoes, "Yeah. I thought it was a bad idea, but Rose insisted that we go," He said, furrowing his brow as he glanced back up at the Doctor.
"But why do I have to tell you this? You're the one that dragged us out there," Mickey said before realizing he had to backtrack that. "Well, not you. The other you. The one...after," He said, making a motion at the Doctor's features. |
| It was the Doctor's turn to freeze at the mention of Rose. "Rose?" His voice was quiet, his expression blank. "Rose insisted you go to a beach? An' I regenerated." His voice was absolutely flat now, and he crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes narrowing. "You're not the Mickey I know." |
| "Oh. Brilliant," Mickey said, his voice dead pan as he stared at the Doctor. "Another bloody alternative universe. At least my name is still Mickey in that one."
Peering curiously at the Doctor, Mickey raised an eyebrow slightly at him before his curiosity overwhelmed his better sense, "What did you just come from, then?" |
| "Trouble," the Doctor replied succinctly, his expression saying better than words that he was in no mood to elaborate on that right now. "What were you doing on a beach with Rose, and some other me?" |
| "Saying goodbye," Mickey said with a slight frown. "It's a very long story, but the bullet points are basically that we ended up tangled in some mess with Torchwood that landed Rose, Jackie, and I stuck in a different universe than you." |
| It wasn't that the Doctor didn't want to believe Mickey, that somewhere there was a universe where his Rose hadn't died. And maybe, even, he believed part of what he said because of that. But another Doctor? Another Time Lord? Well, other than the Master, but he was in London. Other than them, there were none. It wasn't possible.
"Are you sure that that he was what he says he was?" He wasn't going to dispute the rest of it, even if he was skeptical. Not right now. Not yet. Not when it might mean somewhere Rose was alive. |
| "What? You mean the other Doctor?" Mickey asked, lifting an eyebrow curiously. Well, of course he'd question it. Mickey wasn't exactly thrilled when someone had showed up who was him. "We weren't sure at first. Understandably so. People don't just go and change their face on you everyday, after all. But it was pretty hard to deny once you...he...once that other guy came to. He might have acted differently, but he had the same tendencies."
Mickey paused a moment, peering up at this Doctor, his expression a mix of curiosity and worry, "I'm guessing that you didn't suck the Time Vortex out of Rose, then." |
| That made the Doctor give Mickey a sharp look, and he uncrossed his arms a moment, trying to figure out how... He snorted. Didn't matter how. Maybe it was another one of the side-effects of the Time War. Still shouldn't be.
"Wouldn't let me," he said quietly, guilt coloring the tone. "Should have tried harder, not just watched her burn." He should have done a lot of things, but hadn't, just run away, tried to protect himself. Reinette had seen that. Told him to 'go back, and give the mother some measure of peace'. Hard to do that when he was... well, not on Earth, that was certain. |
| Mickey paused for a moment, nodding slowly, "Sounds like something she'd do. Suppose she didn't want you to risk yourself for her, not in a way that would be so permanent," Mickey had said. He enjoyed prodding the Doctor, but this didn't seem like the sort of thing that needed prodding or lecturing.
Mickey stepped over, clapping the Doctor lightly on the shoulder, "Shame you had to get the short end of the stick, mate. Reality wise, that is." |
| The Doctor shrugged, not entirely comfortable with the (human) gesture of sympathy and support. Not from Mickey. Not when the last several hours he'd spent with the man in his universe were the less-than-pleasent drive from London to Cardiff.
"Don't suppose you have any idea where we are." He really didn't think Mickey knew, and the feeling that time wasn't quite right here was irritating him a little, making him snappish. |
| Mickey glanced around them before looking back up at the Doctor, "Looks like some sort of hotel," He said. Not that that statement probably helped anything as that fact was pretty obvious.
"I don't remember wandering off of the beach, though," Mickey said with a slight frown. "So, no, I don't know." |
| "Right!" The Doctor snagged Mickey's sleeve, heading for the door with a grin just a shade from manic on his face. "Let's see what's out here." He needed to move, to explore, to not stop and think anymore about what had been said - before he came here, and by the Mickey he was intent on dragging outside with him. |
| "Whoa. Wait. What?!" Mickey exclaimed in rapid secession as he stumbled, catching himself as the Doctor dragged him toward the door of the hotel.
Dragged him toward the door of the hotel. All right. That was about the last thing in the world that he'd thought would ever happen, much less today. Oh, Rose was going to absolutely murder him when he get back from...wherever this was. "What do you expect to find out there?" Mickey asked. "I mean, this is just a normal hotel. Bit boring, actually." |
| The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Thought maybe realities were different enough you had a bit of a brain in there, Mickey." He pushed open a door, letting in light. "We're not, either of us, where we're supposed to be. 'S not a normal hotel, if we can arrive here without knowing it." He gave Mickey a look like he was trying not to pat him on the head and be a good little boy and just stay close. |
| "Oy! I've got a brain, mister. Been using it quite a bit the last year," Mickey said, an annoyed expression gracing his face. This was something that he hadn't missed about this Doctor. The other had had less of a tendency to insult his intelligence.
"And besides, that's what I meant. It's a normal hotel. Boring everyday Earth hotel," Mickey said with a heavy frown. "If that looks like a boring everyday Earth hotel, nothing out here is going to look any different from boring everyday Earth." Looking around at the normal everyday suburban type town that they stepped out into, Mickey glanced over at the Doctor, "Told ya." |
| "What's with you humans thinking that just because something isn't wildly different, it's all the same?" The Doctor scanned the street, frowning. "It's too empty. Should be people about. Walking, shopping, coming back to their hotel room." He didn't see anyone, really. |
| "Looks and is are two very different things, big ears," Mickey snapped, frowning as he looked around, taking in everything with a critical eye. |
| "So you've learned that, have you?" The Doctor started down the street, picking a direction at random. "Good for you." He peered down side-streets and into shops, trying to figure out where they were. So far, not any place he recognized. |
| Oh, some things never changed. And Mickey still wanted very badly to smack this version of the Doctor upside the head. Though, the Doctor was right about one thing. For the size of the place, there didn't seem to be that many people about.
"There's got to be someone minding these places." |
| "There doesn't have to be." The Doctor stepped up to a shop that appeared to have a variety of odds and ends in the window. Might as well make any searching here useful for more than just finding out where and when they'd ended up. "Some places just use robots, or computer terminals. Not in the century you're from, not on Earth, but it's not impossible that we're not on Earth in the twenty-first century." |
| "Is it even possible to just accidentally step into another time or place?" Mickey asked, lifting an eyebrow at the Doctor's back. Sure, there was the TARDIS, and there were teleportors or things like that that he'd seen used. But just randomly walking and ending up somewhere else? |
| The Doctor rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, "Stupid ape. Goes and does something, and then asks if it's possible." He peered around the shop as he stepped in, looking for anyone, or anything that might be useful. "'Course it's possible," he said, louder. "Just did that, me. And you." He wasn't about to admit he didn't actually know what had happened. |
| Mickey really wanted to sock him, "All right, mister big guy," Mickey snapped, "if you know so much, then what the hell just happened? How did we get here?" |
| The Doctor didn't reply, striding across the shop towards what looked to be a computer terminal. "Here we are. Might be able to find out where we are." It would be easier if his sonic screwdriver wasn't still in London along with his TARDIS. "Just a bit, got to figure out how this system works, see if its connected in with a network." |
| "You don't know, do you?" Mickey asked, glaring at the Doctor's back as he followed him over to the computer terminal, standing next to him and just watching. "You're doing that the long way," He said after a moment of watching the Doctor.
If there was one thing Mickey did know, it was computer. |
| The Doctor looked over at Mickey a moment before stepping aside with a mocking grin, waving a hand at the terminal. |
| Mickey glared at the Doctor before stepping in front of the terminal, tapping out a few keys to pull up a coding screen.
"See, you were trying to work against the system. What you have to do is fool the system into thinking you're working with it," Mickey said, typing the whole time before the terminal gave a beeping sound and the coding screen flashed off and several screens worth of information appeared in their place. "Mhm," Mickey said as he stepped back and turned to the Doctor, motioning him to take back up the position in front of the terminal. |
| The Doctor merely made a small noise that could be approval or exasperation or anything in between, rapidly scanning through the information. Most of it was information on the shop and the location of other buildings around the town. And a waterway, and a park, but nothing that would place it on a particular planet at a particular time. No names, no sort of transportation, nothing.
"That's odd," was all he said, though it was more than odd. It was downright disturbing. There was no species that didn't name things in some fashion or another. Which meant he had no clue where they were. Or how to find out. |
| "It's all...horrible vague, isn't it?" Mickey said, frowning as he looked over the Doctor's shoulder at all of the information. |
| "Every species names things. Even if they are horribly boring about it." The Doctor grimaced, turning away from the terminal to poke around at what was availible in the shop. "Can't tell places and people apart without them." |
| "Maybe we're not supposed to," Mickey said, turning and looking at the buildings. "They all do look the same, don't they? And bland." |
| "Typical late-twentieth-century human architecture, at least from your part of the world." The Doctor peered out the window of the shop. "Right, though, they do all look the same. Like someone didn't want to put much thought into the architecture." |