NaNo: The Doctor Lies

[paxieamor]

Title: The Doctor Lies
Fandom: Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes
Characters: The Doctor (which one is debatable, I'll leave it up to you to decide), Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Ari Jacobs
Summary: Everyone knows the Doctor lies...
Author's Notes: Started out as the Doctor and Ari visiting Holmes and Watson and investigating the Ripper killings... it's now something completely different. The crime is anyway.

 Chapter One

The Doctor

                If there is one thing I know for a fact that, it that Ari likes to dance; I’ve seen her do it. I also know that she likes Maroon 5, as she has quoted their lyrics to me on more than one occasion. There are few things stranger than searching for your companion and having her call out from the debris she’s under “Is there anyone out there, ‘cause it’s getting harder and harder to breathe”. Because of this, I have absolutely no idea why she’s not dancing right now, as I have “Moves Like Jagger” playing in the control room. Instead, she’s curled up in the chair by the railing with a cup of tea and a blanket, reading one of my many copies of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. No dancing. Not even a smile. That was odd.

                Now that I think about it, there was very little about Ari Jacobs that I do not find odd. When I first met her, she called to me by name(by name I mean “Doctor”); something that never, ever bodes well for me. She insisted on carrying a black umbrella, rain or shine, only stopping when she broke the umbrella over a Dalek’s head in an attempt to stop it from shooting her. When that didn’t work, she pointed behind the Dalek and yelled “Oh my god, what the hell is that”, running the instant it turned away from her. Apparently the new Daleks had lost the ability to turn their eyestalks around without having to move the rest of their body; Ari was glad she didn’t know they could have done that.

                Ari can sing in four different languages, not including English; the one she chose depended on the mood she was in. I have heard her sing in German when she was sad, Latin when she was terrified, in Spanish when she was upset and Elfish when she was trying to hold her temper. I have yet to see her properly mad, but am quite sure I don’t want to.

                She has no family. There was no explanation beyond that, she just flat out told me that her family was  gone and she was alone. There was such pain in her voice when she’d said those words that I was compelled to drop the subject altogether. She wore a silver key around her neck and she would clasp a hand around it whenever something family related arose; the little Garrettian boy on the Fivoian Space Station, lost in the rush of a holiday shopping spree came to mind quickly. One of Ari’s hands played with the key around her neck; the other held the hand of the small boy whose red scales were sticky with reptilian-esk slime. Anyone else would have refused to touch the boy, let alone hold his hand until they were able to find his mother and father.

                She didn’t complain when she ended up sick in bed for a week, due to exposure to the toxins the boy’s skin. Without looking up from her crocheting—she crochets too, did I mention that? Honestly, who crochets anymore?—she simply stated it was a biological self defense mechanism that came in response to his completely logical fear of being lost in a strange place and that he couldn’t have controlled if he wanted to.

                “Also,” she continued, doing something swirly and quite complex looking with her crochet hook, “it you can’t figure out how to cure me, be a good boy and fetch me a notebook and a pen, as I have a long will I want to make out.” She was completely serious about that.

                Clearly, she is the oddest person I have ever met.

                “What’s up?” I asked, flopping down next to her.

                “Is this a rhetorical question?” came the vaguely uninterested reply. She didn’t even bother to look up from her book “Should I be responding with ‘the sky’ or ‘the ceiling’?”

                “I’m being serious! You dance wonderfully, I know you like this group, yet you’re sitting here reading ancient literature!”

                “Classic literature,” Ari replied. “Sir Arthur may not have been able to keep his own cannon straight, but he can spin a great yarn.” A grin spread slowly across my face.

                “You know that’s just a pen name, don’t you?” I asked casually. She finally looks up at me, intrigued. “The stories are actually written by John Watson, he just used Doyle as a pen name to maintain Holmes’ cover.” The look of interest vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “What?”

                “If he really wanted to “maintain Holmes’ cover”, he would have done better to change the names of his characters rather than the author.” I rolled my eyes. I don’t roll my eyes often, but today I honestly couldn’t help it.

                “You are determined not to enjoy anything today, aren’t you? You’re not dancing, you’re not singing, you’re not even trying to have polite conversation with me. Why on earth do I keep you around?” She didn’t look up from her book, but she looked hurt. Very hurt. At the point of tears hurt. I tried frantically to remember what year she was from, as I knew that at some point it had become illegal on earth to make a woman cry.

                “My husband proposed to me to this song.” I honestly wasn’t sure I’d heard her right at first. When I was sure I had heard her right, I proceeded to be unsure if she was joshing me or now. Then, when I was sure she wasn’t joshing me, I spoke.

                “You lied to me then!” She finally looked up at me, just in time for a single tear to roll down her cheek.

                “Did I?” she asked. Her voice was wobbly. Not the good kind of wobbly, which often included wibbly, but the bad kind that included more tears and the phrase “You are such a jerk, Doctor!”

                “Yes!” I continued, completely unable to stop myself now. “You told me when we met that you didn’t have any family.”

                “I don’t.” My eyes narrowed slightly.

                “You just said you had a husband!” She set her book down and got up from the chair.

                “Past tense, Doctor… he died.” She left; anyone else probably would have slapped me in the face. At least once. Further proof that she was odd… and, yes, further proof that at times I am a complete idiot and occasionally a heartless bastard.

                I was about to go after her when I saw her book about to fall off the chair; she left it open, spine up in order to mark her page and it was now sliding to the floor. I bent over to stop it, only to succeed in falling off the chair myself and landing face down on the floor, the book conking me on the noggin for good measure. I’m sure I somehow deserved that. I pushed myself up off the floor and picked up the book, which had not closed but Ari’s place was definitely lost. Instead, the book was opened to the back cover, which had some writing scrawled on it:

Doctor,

I thought you might like to see how I spun the story of Grimsby Roylott and his ‘speckled band’. I made the changes you suggested and as with all my and Holmes’ adventures with you, have left your name out. Please be sure to tell us if you… what did you call it? Regenerate? Please let us know if you do that again, as I’m sure Holmes doesn’t want to accidentally render you unconscious again.

Sincerely yours,

John Watson

                I had almost forgotten that Holmes took a swing at me. It was sometime after my fifth regeneration, I had brought Mel to Baker Street to settle an argument—she, like Ari, did not believe that Watson and Holmes were more than just fictional characters—and had basically barged into the residence as if I owned the place, scared Watson out of his wits and was punched square in the jaw by the consulting detective. A thousand apologies and an ice pack later, I had won the argument.

                A smile crept over my face as I closed the book. I knew what Ari and I were going to do today.

 

Chapter Two

Ari

                For the most part, I don’t like country music. Occasionally, there are a few songs that I’ll tolerate. Once in a great while, there are songs that I enjoy. The song in my head as I walked down the now familiar-ish hallways of the TARDIS was neither of these. I can’t for the life of me remember anything beyond the first verse and chorus, but that’s enough to haunt me on days like today. I don’t want to, but I find myself singing it as I head towards the kitchen for a fresh cup of tea.

                “It's that feeling that someone is standing behind me, and I turn around and there's no one there. And it's the sensation that someone just whispered, yeah and I still hear your voice but you're not really here. Your memory is like a ghost… And my heart is it's host…”

                I’m on autopilot by now and I’m vaguely aware of it. I’m not thinking about the process of putting the kettle on the stove—for such a highly evolved species, the Doctor’s kitchen is very much low tech, something he tends to blame on the TARDIS—or getting a mug from the cupboard or finding the tea strainer so I don’t have to use one of the Doctor’s disgusting bags of Guerran mint tea that tastes less like mint and more like someone shoved a dirty sock in my mouth. And I’m still singing.

                “I can still feel you just as close as skin every now and then. All by myself, in a crowded room, or my empty bed. There's a place you've touched with your love no one gets close to… I can still feel you…”

                I may have spilled hot water on myself, but I wouldn’t have known it right then. When I miss him the most, I tend to go numb and a slight burn from hot water is not the worst of the injuries I’ve suffered on days like today. The last one landed me in the hospital; I’d ridden my bicycle off a bridge and into a dry creek bed. With all the blood I’d lost, the people who had found me a few hours later were amazed to discover I was still alive. In comparison, the hot water may as well have been cold.

                I didn’t blame the Doctor for not knowing I was married; I’d never mentioned it before and I wore no ring. I didn’t have a wedding ring. Instead, I had the silver key that I rarely took off… the one that my Julius said was the key to his heart. I couldn’t blame the Doctor for not knowing. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t blame him for not saving Julius.

                He doesn’t know it yet, but the Doctor and I had met each other out of order. When I met him a few days before my Julius died, he seemed to know both of us well, passing himself off as a distant cousin of Julius’ and saying he and I had danced at our wedding.  He met me for the first time about six months later. The Doctor I’m with doesn’t know that my last night with my husband was spent in the hospital; the terror of the past few days was over, I never thought I’d have to worry about falling through the second floor of the building we had ducked inside to escape the rain. He doesn’t know that my Julius pushed me to safety and fell himself, falling straight down through the first floor and into the basement. He doesn’t know that I screamed twice, first for Julius and then, after I had gotten to the basement and found my husband barely alive, I screamed for him, begging him to come help us. The Doctor doesn’t know that his TARDIS took us to the hospital, where I spent the night holding Julius’ hand, begging him not to leave me. He doesn’t know that Julius didn’t make it through the night.

                The Doctor I’m with doesn’t know that I spent the next six months trying to figure out how to live without my husband… my best friend. He doesn’t know that I had to start sleeping on a small mat barely big enough to hold me, because trying to sleep in anything larger only reminds me that I’m alone. He doesn’t know that I wanted to kill myself so many times because I didn’t think I could go on without Julius. He doesn’t know that when I saw him again and realized my first meeting with him hadn’t happened yet, I decided not to tell him anything because I didn’t want to hate him for not saving Julius.

                He doesn’t know that I still don’t want to hate him… and I don’t want him to feel guilty if my Julius leaving me is one of those fixed points that he can’t change. If he asks, I won’t tell him the truth. When he finds me out, I’ll tell him that the Doctor isn’t the only one who lies.

                It’s not until I feel the hand on my shoulder that I realize that I’ve been pouring hot water into a mug for a while and it’s overflowing onto the counter and then to the floor. I look to my left; the Doctor is standing there, it’s his hand on my shoulder. He carefully takes the kettle from me and sets it down before turning me towards him and hugging me tight.

                “It’s alright, kiddo,” he said softly, smoothing my hair. “It’s alright now.”

                I believed him.