New Fic: St. George's Dragon (Doctor Who)
Dec. 8th, 2007 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aenariasbookshelfTitle: St. George's Dragon
Author: Aenaria/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
io_aenaria
Character/Pairing: unabashed Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: “Octavia’s bring a dragon for show and tell tomorrow, you know...” Silliness inside. Read at your own risk. ;)
Disclaimer: Not mine. I think I'll be getting a sonic screwdriver of my very own soon though...
Author's Notes: The first of two promised fics.nyaaaaaauuuuuuu gave me a prompt, and I hope this lives up to it! It diverted a bit from the original prompt, but I got a sudden bolt of inspiration one day and just had to follow it. I admit I got a bit silly with this, but it's all in good fun. Thanks for reading!
“Octavia’s bring a dragon for show and tell tomorrow, you know,” one of the children said in a hushed whisper from somewhere behind Rose. The words caught her ears and she turned around, shooting a look in the direction of the kids huddled around the braided multicolored rug. None of them noticed her, but she supposed that was just ones lot in life when one ended up being an assistant for a harried year 1 teacher, who was currently on the other side of the room trying to separate two girls who both had latched onto one specific doll and weren’t letting go any time soon.
They had been on their way to Ziggy Stardust’s retirement concert but the TARDIS had spotted a major temporal issue hovering right around St. George’s Preparatory school out in the English countryside and refused to budge until they had checked it out to her satisfaction. One week later Rose was the new pre-prep year one assistant, the Doctor was stuck teaching history to the ‘most ungrateful bunch of stupid, immature, twelve year old apes I’ve ever seen - I’ve seen a lot of stupidity across various species in my time, but this lot is stupid beyond compare really’, and there was no sign of making any progress with the temporal disturbance. At least she wasn’t a dinner lady this time.
Rose glanced over at Ms. Ibbott once more, still attempting to get between the two girls who looked like they were about to descend to the depths of hair pulling, and shuffled a bit closer to the whispering kids. “Dragons ain’t real,” she heard one of them shoot back.
“Oh yes they are,” the boy said, attempting to look like he knew what he was talking about even though his school sweater and trousers were beyond grimy from a busy game of football during recess. “S’true. My brother’s in her class, and he said she promised she’d bring her dragon in for show and tell tomorrow.”
“Liar,” a girl said, her bright red hair bouncing along in pigtails.
“I’m not lying. Ms. Ibbott said she’d take us to see it tomorrow too.”
Rose just nodded to herself and backed up a few steps, moving over to where Ms. Ibbott was sticking the infamous doll on a high up shelf and setting the two culprits to sit at desks on the opposite side of the room until playtime was over. “I offered one of them that shiny new truck that we just got in,” she muttered to Rose as she sat against the side of her desk, “but no, they both wanted that damn doll.”
“Girls just like dolls,” Rose shrugged, not one to talk. She’d had more than her share of dolls at that age.
“Bloody gender stereotyping,” she mumbled, trying to keep her language out of the ears of her young and impressionable students. “You try to enlighten the parents, tell them that it’s okay for their girls to play with trucks or their boys to play with dolls, but nooooo, talk about underlying gender assumptions…”
Adeline Ibbott was a pretty young woman, and intelligent to boot, but when she rambled on about the plight of women over the ages of history, it had a tendency to annoy everyone in the school. In the week she’d been there, Rose had even seen some of the other teachers throw small bits of paper at her in the break room when she started to lecture on about how modern American television shows had no respect at all for women. “Addie?” Rose asked hastily, cutting her off.
“Sorry, what? Got a bit distracted there.”
“I can tell. Octavia’s dragon, what’s up with that?”
Adeline sighed and ran a hand through her curly dark hair. “It’s not a dragon, it’s an iguana, or so Octavia’s teacher has assured me. Or, at least, that’s what Octavia’s mum has said. Year three’s show and tell’s during our recess, so I’m going to take them up there to observe just to keep them quiet.” She glanced up at the clock. “Oh thank god, day’s done.” She stood up, moving out to the middle of class. “All right, time to go! Get your coats all.” The two women worked fast, getting the kids bundled up for the fall weather and guiding them to their various modes of transportation.
Rose sighed and leaned against the side of the old stone building, watching as the buses and cars brought the children away. It was a gorgeous autumn day, with just the right amount of color on the leaves and a slight chill in the air to make it just perfect. Air scented with just a slight bit of burning wood whipped around her, and she leaned her head back to soak up a bit of afternoon sunlight. Really, it wasn’t a bad place to be. She’d rather be back on the TARDIS though, flying across the stars. Once the TARDIS got over her fit of stubbornness, of course.
And speaking of which…Rose turned on her heel and headed back inside. Instead of heading back to the year one classroom, however, she went up a couple of flights of stairs to where a certain someone was probably tearing his hair out in frustration over something or the other. It didn’t take her long to get to the classroom he was currently inhabiting. She glanced through the window quick, making sure that no one else was in there, and slipped inside.
“Rose, pop quiz,” the Doctor called out, not looking up at her from where he was slumped over the desk top. “What’s the Battle of Hastings?”
“Battle of Hastings?” she repeated, strolling through the aisles of slightly askew desks towards the front of the room. “1066, William the Conqueror coming to England from France, defeated the Saxons, and pretty much established England as we know it today.” She perched on the edge of his desk, looking down at his slumped head.
His head shot up and he gave her one of those grins that made her insides go a bit funny in the best sort of way. “Very good,” the Doctor said. “And you were taught that when?”
Rose shrugged. “God, couldn’t tell you, it’s been years.”
The Doctor waved one of the quiz papers currently spread out over the desk in a haphazard fashion. “According to this, I quote,” he pushed his glasses up, settling them in place, “’The Battle of Hastings was when Adam Hastings beat the snot out of Michael Perkins on the village green.’ Or, alternately, ‘Battle of Hastings was in the Americas when the French fought the Indians a few centuries ago’. Do they have no concept of history at all?” He slouched back in the chair and ran his hands through already quite messy hair. It was kind of weird, seeing him like this. Almost too normal.
She nudged his leg with her foot, bringing his eyes back to hers. “They’re just not as brilliant as you are, that’s all,” she flattered. “And at least your class isn’t totally distracted by a dragon coming to school tomorrow.”
“You mean the gila monster? Yeah, Octavia’s brother is in one of my classes – not, thankfully, the one with these geniuses in there. He said it’s just an overgrown lizard.” The Doctor ripped off his glasses and tossed them on top of the stack of papers. “I can’t deal with this rubbish anymore.”
“Any luck with finding the source of the temporal disturbance?” Rose asked. “The sooner we find it the sooner we can get out of here.”
Carefully the Doctor pushed Rose’s legs to one side, neatly draping them over his lap, and pulled out the drawer below her with his foot to reveal a contraption with lots of blinking lights, metal coils, a small monitor, and what could have possibly been a tower of Legos. “Nope, nothing. We’ve managed to puzzle out that there is a disturbance, and that it’s coming from somewhere inside this school building, but other than that there’s nothing. Oh, however, a few days ago village police found what they reckon is an honest to god medieval knight wandering around the main road through town. Thought it was a bit of a prank at first, but then one of the cops got speared through the foot by the man’s broadsword, at which point the knight was hastily hauled off to the local mental ward.”
“Knights and dragons, blimey,” Rose muttered. “What’s going to turn up next, King Arthur himself?”
“Arthur’s just a legend, an amalgamation of various medieval Celtic, Christian, and French traditions and one real life fifth century tribal chieftain all mashed together to form one of the more enduring tales in your planet’s history,” the Doctor replied as he kicked the drawer shut.
“Don’t spoil the magic, Doctor,” she warned, winking at him.
“Far be it from me to deprive you humans of your magic,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender.
“So, when are we breaking the knight out of the loony bin?” Rose asked, grinning a bit. This was more like it, adventure, danger, saving the innocents (well, innocents who knew how to handle five foot swords but still innocent in the eyes of a twenty-first century mindset).
The Doctor looked over at her, eyebrow arching as his lips quirked just a bit. “Got any plans tonight?”
Rose hummed thoughtfully. “Well, you know, the usual, make dinner, do a bit of laundry…” she trailed off as she felt the Doctor’s finger start to circle around her ankle. St. George’s had an old fashioned quirk that dictated that the female teachers were still required to wear skirts every day…but right now she definitely wasn’t complaining, as his finger wandered a slight bit higher up her stocking covered calf. “You cheat,” she said, resisting the urge to let her eyes flutter shut.
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. He didn’t remove his finger from her ankle though, and his eyes didn’t look anything like innocent at the moment. His fingers curled around her calf and stroked lightly. Rose, not really willing to argue at the moment, leaned back on her hands and watched the Doctor’s face.
So of course at that moment the door to the classroom just had to open, bringing yet another teacher inside. This one was a fellow history teacher, an older man in traditional tweeds. Rose hastily removed her feet from the Doctor’s lap and twisted around to see the teacher standing just past the doorway with a very suspicious and knowing look on his face. To be fair, they had said nothing about their personal relationship when they first got there, however part of their cover story was that they were staying at the same hotel in the village while waiting to find accommodation together. It wasn’t hard to figure out what people would think after knowing that.
The Doctor leaned forward, bracing his arms on the desk. “Professor Powell, how can I help you?”
Powell nodded towards the door. “Staff meeting in two minutes, Smith, in the Headmaster’s office. Everyone’s requested, even you two.”
“Thank you; we’ll be right there,” the Doctor said, standing up as Powell walked off.
“Staff meeting, sounds…thrilling,” Rose said flatly as she hopped off the desk.
“Just smile and nod and you’ll be fine. Although…” he grabbed some of the more dreadful test papers off of the desk. “Maybe I can bring to light just how disastrous this class is, see if they can do something to change it.”
“I know you like doing the impossible, Doctor, but that might be pushing it, even for you.”
* * *
“Now, Geoffrey, you just hold tight here for a little while and we’ll have you home in no time at all, okay?” the Doctor said, backing out of the room and pulling the door closed. “No, no really, you’ll be fine, don’t worry. We’ll see you in the morning.” He pulled the door firmly shut and exhaled deeply, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Well, it was nice of the TARDIS to make ol’ Geoffrey in there a habitat he’d feel comfortable in. Looked just like Medieval France in there.”
“Smelled like it too,” Rose frowned, wrinkling her nose as she sniffed at her shirt, hoping that the odor of unwashed people, overcooked meat, and animal offal wouldn’t linger in the fabric. “What say we leave Geoffrey to his own devices, hmm?” She began to walk off, but then yawned widely and stumbled just a bit. “Actually, I think I should head to sleep. You might have boundless energy but I still need at least-“ she checked her watch, wincing when she saw just how late it was, “-well, if I can get four hours of sleep before we have to be at the school tomorrow I should be all right.” She attempted to walk off again, but this time almost walked into the wall, so overtired she could barely see straight. The adrenaline of the adventure was over and done with, and this was the inevitable crash.
“That’s it,” the Doctor said, moving fast and scooping her up. “Come on, let’s get you to bed. Before you injure yourself or the TARDIS.” When they arrived at her room Rose was placed on her bed, bouncing with a quiet giggle. “Now sleep,” he said as he pulled off the practical black shoes she had worn for breaking Geoffrey out of the mental ward. He moved up to her face and stroked a few pieces of hair out of her eyes. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
Rose didn’t say anything, just reached up a hand to cup his cheek, gently stroke her thumb over his lower lip. This was the Doctor, dark and dangerous, that oncoming storm that could devastate anything in his wake…but also quiet and giddy and surprisingly tender, a damaged soul that only rarely showed its face to the universe; a face that she was lucky to be able to see sometimes, when his walls dropped.
He took her questing hand in his and kissed the pad of her thumb. Feeling a bit more awake and a bit more playful, she tugged on her hand, pulling him forward until his lips met hers. Rose could feel him smile against her mouth…how could she not smile back?
It was safe to say that not much sleeping was actually done that night.
* * *
“You look exhausted,” Adeline whispered to Rose as they ushered the year ones up the stairs to the year three classroom where the infamous show and tell was taking place.
“Didn’t sleep well,” Rose whispered back. Didn’t sleep at all, really, aside from a brief doze, but you wouldn’t hear her complaining about it. Two cups of Adeline’s rocket fuel coffee didn’t seem to do the trick either, and she still felt wiped out.
Adeline looked up at the kids a few feet ahead of them, then dropped her voice even further. “Actually, you look like you had a right proper shag last night. Kind of hard to mistake that rosy glow about you.”
Rose stumbled on a stair and hastily righted herself. “Addie!” she gasped, shocked a bit at the woman’s blunt words. They weren’t inaccurate, however…
Adeline just shrugged, an impish grin on her face. “What can I say? Your Mr. Smith is well fit. Bit skinny for my tastes, but I can just imagine the stamina.”
“Can we please just get the kids up to show and tell?” Rose said, ignoring the fact that she was blushing a rather deep shade of pink at the moment. Adeline laughed at her and continued the march to the classroom.
“Blimey, it’s packed in there,” Adeline said, peering in through the glass. Sure enough, when Rose peeked in she could see a few classes’ worth of kids sitting on the floor, with most of the desks stacked on the sides so they could fit as many kids as possible in there. The teachers were lined up at the back, all looking beyond bored. Adeline and Rose guided their kids in, pointed out where they should sit, and joined the rest of the adults at the back of the room.
One of the younger teachers shot Adeline a glance. “So are we going to get a lecture on the symbolism of dragons and how they’ve traditionally represented female repression?” he teased her.
Adeline just crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “I’ll keep me mouth shut.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
Rose tuned their chattering out and looked towards the front of the classroom, her eyes settling on the girl who was obviously Octavia. She was a small, unobtrusive girl, with light brown hair that was pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore the school skirt and sweater, sleeves pushed up over bony elbows. She was dragging a large wagon behind her. On the wagon was a cage that had a blanket over it. Suddenly the cage rattled, making Rose lean back instinctively. Those weird bells were going off in her head; something just wasn’t right about this situation. She mentally thought about the school’s layout, trying to think of the fastest way to get to the Doctor’s classroom.
Octavia cleared her throat delicately and pulled her wagon to centre stage, straining a bit under the weight. “Right,” she said, commanding attention surprisingly well from the assembled mass. Well, they all wanted to see the mysteries that blanket was hiding. “This is my dragon. Her name is Belle.” Octavia pulled the blanket off the cage and stood back, smiling smugly at the expected gasps.
Rose leaned forward just slightly, getting a better look at the creature inside the cage. She had always figured that a dragon, if it did really exist, would have looked more like a Reaper, not like this…thing. It was about half a meter long and stoutly built. The skin was a muddy and mottled green-brown, and her head was slender and pointed, almost like the beak of a bird. The two distinct features that she noticed were a hefty tail that waved back and forth in the confines of the cage, and a massive claw in place of where the index fingers would be on the front paws.
Octavia opened the door to the cage and grabbed the leash that was draped over the dragon’s back. With no small amount of coaxing (and what appeared to be a tub full of live crickets) she dragged the dragon out onto the floor, where it began to sniff around things and paw at the floor, leaving a few deep scratches in the linoleum with its two massive claws. Sure enough, while the teachers tried to keep their students away from the dragon, most of them rushed forward, wanting to get their hands on the creature.
The young teacher who had ribbed Adeline before crossed his arms over his chest and took a step forward. “Now, call me crazy, but that doesn’t look like any iguana or gila monster I’ve ever seen. My little brother raises the things, and whatever that is isn’t one of them.”
“So if it’s not one of those, what is it, Nate?” Adeline asked, shuffling a little bit behind him. Lizards of any sort were obviously not one of her favorite things.
“What I think it looks like or what I think it really is?” he said. Rose glanced over at the other teachers, who were slowly spreading out trying to corral their students away from the dragon. The dragon didn’t look too good either. The whites of her eyes were beginning to show as she glanced back and forth in a panic, no doubt rattled by all of the kids trying to pet her, or scratch at her back, or, most unforgivably, pull at her tail.
Rose winced as one hard tug finally got to the dragon, who then whipped that powerful tail around, sending a few of the kids who couldn’t leap out of the way in time to the floor. “Oh no,” she muttered to herself as the kids started to chatter loudly, startling the dragon even further. Then, with a speed unexpected by her bulky size, the dragon leapt up onto the teacher’s desk, sending books and papers all over the place as her tail crashed into things.
This galvanized the teachers into action, who started pulling students in the direction of the door. The scared students didn’t need much help in that arena though, as they began to rush to the door en masse, leading to a nice bottleneck.
“What do you think it is?” Rose yelled in Nate’s direction as they and Adeline began to pull the desks away from the wall, attempting to form some sort of barrier between the students and the huffing and snorting dragon.
As Nate and Adeline upended a table to use in the barricade, he laughed disbelievingly. “If it wasn’t so impossible, I’d say it was a damn dinosaur!”
Rose froze, her hands grasping onto the back of a wooden chair. The dragon did look rather like replicas and skeletons of dinosaurs she’d seen in a museum as a kid. Combine that with a temporal disturbance taking place in this very school… “Oh hell,” she muttered, running for the door. “I’ll be right back!” she yelled. “I’m going to get help!”
“Who on Earth is going to know how to handle a rogue dinosaur?” Adeline shouted at Rose’s back as she darted around students and slipped through the crowded doorway. She ran down the hall and pushed open the door to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Halfway up she felt one of the side seams on her skirt give, the rip echoing against the walls. It was a hell of a lot easier to run this way though, that was for sure.
She practically flew down the hallway, skidding to a halt at the doorway to the Doctor’s classroom. Rose peered through the window, gasping for breath, and could see the Doctor there in front of a class, hair in a state and right eye just slightly twitching. ‘Must be that class then,’ she thought. She rapped on the window and beckoned him urgently, telling him to get out here now.
The look he gave her could only be described as grateful as he walked hastily towards the door. “Just…read the next chapter in your textbook,” she heard him say as he pulled the door open. “Rose, what’s going on?” he asked.
“You know that dragon-iguana thing?” she said, panting a bit. “It’s neither. It looks like a dinosaur.”
The Doctor’s eyes grew wide. “What?”
“Yeah, it looks an awful lot like a dinosaur, and it’s currently destroying the year three classroom.”
“Read the next four chapters!” the Doctor hollered back into the classroom, then pulled the door shut and locked it tightly with the sonic screwdriver. “That should keep anything from getting in there.” He grabbed Rose’s hand and they tore off down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time.
The second floor corridor was packed with students and teachers, most of them heading for the exits. It was apparent that word had gotten out to the other classrooms about an escaped animal and everyone was trying to leave the building post-haste. The Doctor and Rose moved against the tide of humanity, not stopping until they reached the door to the classroom.
Adeline and Nate were still in there, attempting to make a rather dodgy barricade that the dragon was in the middle of dismantling with a few swipes of her powerful tail. The rest of the teachers had hastily buggered off, preferring to call either the police or fire brigade once the school had been suitably evacuated. The Doctor paused inside the doorway, staring at the dragon with a healthy bit of admiration. “Not a dragon?” Rose panted behind him.
“Definitely not a dragon,” the Doctor said, moving slowly into the room. Anything faster would startle the creature even further. “Scientific name that your time’s given it is Drepanosaurus unguicaudatus, also known as, well, a monkey-lizard, but definitely a long extinct monkey-lizard.”
Adeline looked up as the two approached and groaned. “I thought you were bringing help, not a history teacher.” The Doctor just arched his eyebrow at her. He was about to come back with a snappy retort that could put many a retort throughout history to shame, when Rose spoke up.
“Just trust me, Addie, we’ll take care of this.”
The dragon – no, dinosaur – was now standing on top of the barricade of desks, staring at them with strangely inquisitive eyes. The four of them backed away slowly, pressing up against the back closets. No one dared breathe, thinking that the slightest movement would make the dinosaur charge right for them. Between the four of them they could probably take the dinosaur down, but most likely the dinosaur wasn’t trying to deliberately hurt them. She was probably scared and a very long way from home, a feeling Rose knew all too well. And so it would be up to them, well, she and the Doctor really, to get the dinosaur out of the school and eventually back to its proper time, hopefully without getting injured or damaging too much property in the process. Rose felt a small scrabbling beside her, and she looked down to see the Doctor’s hand thumbing at the settings on the sonic screwdriver. To her right, she saw that Adeline had a death grip on Nate’s hand, and neither one of them looked too good at the moment. Fear had a way of doing that to people, especially if they weren’t used to these sort of life-endangering situations.
“So what do we do now?” Rose whispered to the Doctor.
“Get her back to the TARDIS…somehow. Give Geoffrey something to play with until we’re able to get them back to their proper times?” the Doctor said, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers.
“It’s not going to eat us, is it?” Adeline whimpered from her other side and dug her nails into Nate’s hand again, making the man wince. “That would be really, really bad.”
“Drepanosaurids eat mostly insects,” the Doctor said, glancing over at her. “Hence the massive claws on the front limbs; they’re used to scrape away at bark to get to the critters beneath it.”
“Pygmy anteaters have the same feature,” Nate whispered. “Really one of the only other species around today that have that distinct claw.”
“That’s right,” the Doctor replied, shooting him an impressed look – well, as much of an impressed look that could be given to something that wasn’t a rampaging werewolf.
“Dabbled in zoology once upon a time,” Nate said, blushing just the slightest.
“Good man.” The conversation quickly degenerated into rather dull and scientific terms, leaving Rose and Adeline gaping incredulously. Really though, Rose knew she shouldn’t haven been surprised. Temporally displaced dinosaur on the loose, and the Doctor ends up ignoring it in favor of chats about tree sloths. Temporally displaced dinosaur trotting out the door to the classroom into the hallway…
“Oh, shit,” Adeline said, moving for the door with Rose hard on her heels. They were just in time to see the dinosaur push the door to the stairwell open with her bulky body and leap downwards.
“Oi, boys!” Rose hollered, making them look her way. “Talk about tree sloths later - runaway dinosaur just took off down the stairs!”
Without any more words the group took off running, following the path of mild destruction the dinosaur left in her wake. The Doctor led the pack, sonic screwdriver held out in front of him flashing intermittently. They took the stairs two and three at a time, with Adeline eventually kicking her shoes off when one of the heels broke. “What’s the flashy thing he’s waving about?” she asked Rose as they approached the first floor.
“Sonic screwdriver,” she yelled up at her.
“What?”
“Explanations later!” the Doctor said, stopping at the base of the stairs as soon as he saw the fire doors swinging wide open. He aimed the screwdriver at them, then nodded after a few seconds. “Okay, you two head around to the front of the building and see if she went that way. Rose and I will head towards the woods and see if she’s in there.” The other two just stood there, gasping for breath, definitely not as used to the whole running away bit as the Doctor and Rose were. “Go!” he prodded, making Adeline and Nate run off for the front.”
“That’s them out of the way,” the Doctor nodded, walking towards the woods as if he were on a leisurely stroll.
“Why couldn’t they help?” Rose asked.
“Be easier with just the two of us,” he replied. “Besides, if I’m reading these results correctly, which I no doubt am, we’re not going to need them…”
* * *
Sure enough, not five minutes later they found the dinosaur fast asleep, curled up between the large roots of an old tree. “It looks so harmless asleep,” Rose said softly, leaning in close.
“And it’s going to stay that way, ‘least until we get it back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, adjusting the frequency and aiming it at the dinosaur once more. “So, do you want the head bit or the tail?”
* * *
The halls of the school were totally empty Rose saw as she walked through them, however when she reached the staff room it was buzzing. A handful of the teachers were in there, including Nate and Adeline, who were slumped over on an old sway-backed plaid couch nursing cups of tea. Octavia and her family were there as well, mother and brothers all in a corner having a rather…vocal chat with the Headmaster, complete with hand gestures on both sides.
“Any luck?” Adeline asked, staring distastefully at the soles of her feet, the stockings laddered and smeared with grass stains and streaks of mud.
“Nope,” Rose fibbed, helping herself to a cuppa. Would they really believe though that the dinosaur was currently holed up in a room in a spaceship that was bigger on the inside than the outside, with an alien pilot who was attempting to figure out if the TARDIS would finally start moving again now that they had the dinosaur aboard as well? “Went through a good bit of those woods back there and the only remotely interesting thing we saw there were a couple of squirrels.”
“Damn,” Adeline sighed. “We were all around the front grounds and nothing there either. Dunno where she could have gone…”
“Don’t worry,” the Doctor called out as he walked by the open door to the staff room, “I’ve just called animal control.”
“We called them an hour ago,” Professor Powell shot back, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, right…”
Rose glanced over at Octavia, who was sitting at the table with a not quite despairing, but still pretty upset look on her face. “Give me a minute,” she said, putting her cup down and moving over to the girl. She pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, making Octavia shoot her a glare with watery eyes. “How are you doing?” Rose asked.
“I want Belle back,” she said decisively.
“Well…” Rose trailed off, searching for the right words. “Maybe she had to go home. She really was just a baby, so she probably has a mother out there looking for her.” She tapped Octavia lightly on the nose, making the girl wrinkle a bit. “Just imagine how you would be if you got lost? You’d want your mum more than anything else, right?”
“I guess so,” Octavia sniffled, going a bit misty in the eyes. “Do you think she’s all right?”
Rose leaned in and winked at the girl, a show of solidarity between females. “I’ll bet you anything that she’s just fine right now, and almost home.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “That’s good.” Rose patted her on the back comfortingly, giving her a few more minutes to sniffle and shred up a tissue as she calmed down. When she glanced up she saw the Doctor staring at her from just inside the doorway, an unreadable look in his dark eyes. Suddenly though, he smiled widely at her, and winked.
“I’ll be back in a minute, love,” she said to Octavia, then went to join the Doctor. He pulled her out into the corridor, out of earshot of everyone else. “How’s she doing?”
“Settled comfortably and munching away on some lovely insects. At least the TARDIS is in a good enough mood to do that.” The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and exhaled roughly.
“Still not moving then?”
“Nope. We’re going to have a menagerie in there by the time we pick up everything that got lost falling through time.”
“She’ll come around eventually, you know that.” Rose grinned up at him. “Besides, she wouldn’t want you stuck with the class from hell much longer either. The TARDIS is even more protective of you than I am.”
“Funny that, I thought I was supposed to be the one protecting you,” he grinned at her, both of them knowing full well that the whole point of things was that they protected each other, and that was what made things brilliant. Impulsively, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, then grabbed her hand and trotted off down the hall. “Come on, we’ve still got work to do.”
* * *
One knight, a dinosaur, a painting by Leonardo DaVinci, a 48th century hover-scooter, a first edition of the Canterbury Tales, and an escaped llama from southeast New England later the TARDIS began to move again, taking the strays home and returning Rose and the Doctor to the stars.
Author: Aenaria/
io_aenariaCharacter/Pairing: unabashed Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: “Octavia’s bring a dragon for show and tell tomorrow, you know...” Silliness inside. Read at your own risk. ;)
Disclaimer: Not mine. I think I'll be getting a sonic screwdriver of my very own soon though...
Author's Notes: The first of two promised fics.
nyaaaaaauuuuuuu gave me a prompt, and I hope this lives up to it! It diverted a bit from the original prompt, but I got a sudden bolt of inspiration one day and just had to follow it. I admit I got a bit silly with this, but it's all in good fun. Thanks for reading!“Octavia’s bring a dragon for show and tell tomorrow, you know,” one of the children said in a hushed whisper from somewhere behind Rose. The words caught her ears and she turned around, shooting a look in the direction of the kids huddled around the braided multicolored rug. None of them noticed her, but she supposed that was just ones lot in life when one ended up being an assistant for a harried year 1 teacher, who was currently on the other side of the room trying to separate two girls who both had latched onto one specific doll and weren’t letting go any time soon.
They had been on their way to Ziggy Stardust’s retirement concert but the TARDIS had spotted a major temporal issue hovering right around St. George’s Preparatory school out in the English countryside and refused to budge until they had checked it out to her satisfaction. One week later Rose was the new pre-prep year one assistant, the Doctor was stuck teaching history to the ‘most ungrateful bunch of stupid, immature, twelve year old apes I’ve ever seen - I’ve seen a lot of stupidity across various species in my time, but this lot is stupid beyond compare really’, and there was no sign of making any progress with the temporal disturbance. At least she wasn’t a dinner lady this time.
Rose glanced over at Ms. Ibbott once more, still attempting to get between the two girls who looked like they were about to descend to the depths of hair pulling, and shuffled a bit closer to the whispering kids. “Dragons ain’t real,” she heard one of them shoot back.
“Oh yes they are,” the boy said, attempting to look like he knew what he was talking about even though his school sweater and trousers were beyond grimy from a busy game of football during recess. “S’true. My brother’s in her class, and he said she promised she’d bring her dragon in for show and tell tomorrow.”
“Liar,” a girl said, her bright red hair bouncing along in pigtails.
“I’m not lying. Ms. Ibbott said she’d take us to see it tomorrow too.”
Rose just nodded to herself and backed up a few steps, moving over to where Ms. Ibbott was sticking the infamous doll on a high up shelf and setting the two culprits to sit at desks on the opposite side of the room until playtime was over. “I offered one of them that shiny new truck that we just got in,” she muttered to Rose as she sat against the side of her desk, “but no, they both wanted that damn doll.”
“Girls just like dolls,” Rose shrugged, not one to talk. She’d had more than her share of dolls at that age.
“Bloody gender stereotyping,” she mumbled, trying to keep her language out of the ears of her young and impressionable students. “You try to enlighten the parents, tell them that it’s okay for their girls to play with trucks or their boys to play with dolls, but nooooo, talk about underlying gender assumptions…”
Adeline Ibbott was a pretty young woman, and intelligent to boot, but when she rambled on about the plight of women over the ages of history, it had a tendency to annoy everyone in the school. In the week she’d been there, Rose had even seen some of the other teachers throw small bits of paper at her in the break room when she started to lecture on about how modern American television shows had no respect at all for women. “Addie?” Rose asked hastily, cutting her off.
“Sorry, what? Got a bit distracted there.”
“I can tell. Octavia’s dragon, what’s up with that?”
Adeline sighed and ran a hand through her curly dark hair. “It’s not a dragon, it’s an iguana, or so Octavia’s teacher has assured me. Or, at least, that’s what Octavia’s mum has said. Year three’s show and tell’s during our recess, so I’m going to take them up there to observe just to keep them quiet.” She glanced up at the clock. “Oh thank god, day’s done.” She stood up, moving out to the middle of class. “All right, time to go! Get your coats all.” The two women worked fast, getting the kids bundled up for the fall weather and guiding them to their various modes of transportation.
Rose sighed and leaned against the side of the old stone building, watching as the buses and cars brought the children away. It was a gorgeous autumn day, with just the right amount of color on the leaves and a slight chill in the air to make it just perfect. Air scented with just a slight bit of burning wood whipped around her, and she leaned her head back to soak up a bit of afternoon sunlight. Really, it wasn’t a bad place to be. She’d rather be back on the TARDIS though, flying across the stars. Once the TARDIS got over her fit of stubbornness, of course.
And speaking of which…Rose turned on her heel and headed back inside. Instead of heading back to the year one classroom, however, she went up a couple of flights of stairs to where a certain someone was probably tearing his hair out in frustration over something or the other. It didn’t take her long to get to the classroom he was currently inhabiting. She glanced through the window quick, making sure that no one else was in there, and slipped inside.
“Rose, pop quiz,” the Doctor called out, not looking up at her from where he was slumped over the desk top. “What’s the Battle of Hastings?”
“Battle of Hastings?” she repeated, strolling through the aisles of slightly askew desks towards the front of the room. “1066, William the Conqueror coming to England from France, defeated the Saxons, and pretty much established England as we know it today.” She perched on the edge of his desk, looking down at his slumped head.
His head shot up and he gave her one of those grins that made her insides go a bit funny in the best sort of way. “Very good,” the Doctor said. “And you were taught that when?”
Rose shrugged. “God, couldn’t tell you, it’s been years.”
The Doctor waved one of the quiz papers currently spread out over the desk in a haphazard fashion. “According to this, I quote,” he pushed his glasses up, settling them in place, “’The Battle of Hastings was when Adam Hastings beat the snot out of Michael Perkins on the village green.’ Or, alternately, ‘Battle of Hastings was in the Americas when the French fought the Indians a few centuries ago’. Do they have no concept of history at all?” He slouched back in the chair and ran his hands through already quite messy hair. It was kind of weird, seeing him like this. Almost too normal.
She nudged his leg with her foot, bringing his eyes back to hers. “They’re just not as brilliant as you are, that’s all,” she flattered. “And at least your class isn’t totally distracted by a dragon coming to school tomorrow.”
“You mean the gila monster? Yeah, Octavia’s brother is in one of my classes – not, thankfully, the one with these geniuses in there. He said it’s just an overgrown lizard.” The Doctor ripped off his glasses and tossed them on top of the stack of papers. “I can’t deal with this rubbish anymore.”
“Any luck with finding the source of the temporal disturbance?” Rose asked. “The sooner we find it the sooner we can get out of here.”
Carefully the Doctor pushed Rose’s legs to one side, neatly draping them over his lap, and pulled out the drawer below her with his foot to reveal a contraption with lots of blinking lights, metal coils, a small monitor, and what could have possibly been a tower of Legos. “Nope, nothing. We’ve managed to puzzle out that there is a disturbance, and that it’s coming from somewhere inside this school building, but other than that there’s nothing. Oh, however, a few days ago village police found what they reckon is an honest to god medieval knight wandering around the main road through town. Thought it was a bit of a prank at first, but then one of the cops got speared through the foot by the man’s broadsword, at which point the knight was hastily hauled off to the local mental ward.”
“Knights and dragons, blimey,” Rose muttered. “What’s going to turn up next, King Arthur himself?”
“Arthur’s just a legend, an amalgamation of various medieval Celtic, Christian, and French traditions and one real life fifth century tribal chieftain all mashed together to form one of the more enduring tales in your planet’s history,” the Doctor replied as he kicked the drawer shut.
“Don’t spoil the magic, Doctor,” she warned, winking at him.
“Far be it from me to deprive you humans of your magic,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender.
“So, when are we breaking the knight out of the loony bin?” Rose asked, grinning a bit. This was more like it, adventure, danger, saving the innocents (well, innocents who knew how to handle five foot swords but still innocent in the eyes of a twenty-first century mindset).
The Doctor looked over at her, eyebrow arching as his lips quirked just a bit. “Got any plans tonight?”
Rose hummed thoughtfully. “Well, you know, the usual, make dinner, do a bit of laundry…” she trailed off as she felt the Doctor’s finger start to circle around her ankle. St. George’s had an old fashioned quirk that dictated that the female teachers were still required to wear skirts every day…but right now she definitely wasn’t complaining, as his finger wandered a slight bit higher up her stocking covered calf. “You cheat,” she said, resisting the urge to let her eyes flutter shut.
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. He didn’t remove his finger from her ankle though, and his eyes didn’t look anything like innocent at the moment. His fingers curled around her calf and stroked lightly. Rose, not really willing to argue at the moment, leaned back on her hands and watched the Doctor’s face.
So of course at that moment the door to the classroom just had to open, bringing yet another teacher inside. This one was a fellow history teacher, an older man in traditional tweeds. Rose hastily removed her feet from the Doctor’s lap and twisted around to see the teacher standing just past the doorway with a very suspicious and knowing look on his face. To be fair, they had said nothing about their personal relationship when they first got there, however part of their cover story was that they were staying at the same hotel in the village while waiting to find accommodation together. It wasn’t hard to figure out what people would think after knowing that.
The Doctor leaned forward, bracing his arms on the desk. “Professor Powell, how can I help you?”
Powell nodded towards the door. “Staff meeting in two minutes, Smith, in the Headmaster’s office. Everyone’s requested, even you two.”
“Thank you; we’ll be right there,” the Doctor said, standing up as Powell walked off.
“Staff meeting, sounds…thrilling,” Rose said flatly as she hopped off the desk.
“Just smile and nod and you’ll be fine. Although…” he grabbed some of the more dreadful test papers off of the desk. “Maybe I can bring to light just how disastrous this class is, see if they can do something to change it.”
“I know you like doing the impossible, Doctor, but that might be pushing it, even for you.”
* * *
“Now, Geoffrey, you just hold tight here for a little while and we’ll have you home in no time at all, okay?” the Doctor said, backing out of the room and pulling the door closed. “No, no really, you’ll be fine, don’t worry. We’ll see you in the morning.” He pulled the door firmly shut and exhaled deeply, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Well, it was nice of the TARDIS to make ol’ Geoffrey in there a habitat he’d feel comfortable in. Looked just like Medieval France in there.”
“Smelled like it too,” Rose frowned, wrinkling her nose as she sniffed at her shirt, hoping that the odor of unwashed people, overcooked meat, and animal offal wouldn’t linger in the fabric. “What say we leave Geoffrey to his own devices, hmm?” She began to walk off, but then yawned widely and stumbled just a bit. “Actually, I think I should head to sleep. You might have boundless energy but I still need at least-“ she checked her watch, wincing when she saw just how late it was, “-well, if I can get four hours of sleep before we have to be at the school tomorrow I should be all right.” She attempted to walk off again, but this time almost walked into the wall, so overtired she could barely see straight. The adrenaline of the adventure was over and done with, and this was the inevitable crash.
“That’s it,” the Doctor said, moving fast and scooping her up. “Come on, let’s get you to bed. Before you injure yourself or the TARDIS.” When they arrived at her room Rose was placed on her bed, bouncing with a quiet giggle. “Now sleep,” he said as he pulled off the practical black shoes she had worn for breaking Geoffrey out of the mental ward. He moved up to her face and stroked a few pieces of hair out of her eyes. “I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
Rose didn’t say anything, just reached up a hand to cup his cheek, gently stroke her thumb over his lower lip. This was the Doctor, dark and dangerous, that oncoming storm that could devastate anything in his wake…but also quiet and giddy and surprisingly tender, a damaged soul that only rarely showed its face to the universe; a face that she was lucky to be able to see sometimes, when his walls dropped.
He took her questing hand in his and kissed the pad of her thumb. Feeling a bit more awake and a bit more playful, she tugged on her hand, pulling him forward until his lips met hers. Rose could feel him smile against her mouth…how could she not smile back?
It was safe to say that not much sleeping was actually done that night.
* * *
“You look exhausted,” Adeline whispered to Rose as they ushered the year ones up the stairs to the year three classroom where the infamous show and tell was taking place.
“Didn’t sleep well,” Rose whispered back. Didn’t sleep at all, really, aside from a brief doze, but you wouldn’t hear her complaining about it. Two cups of Adeline’s rocket fuel coffee didn’t seem to do the trick either, and she still felt wiped out.
Adeline looked up at the kids a few feet ahead of them, then dropped her voice even further. “Actually, you look like you had a right proper shag last night. Kind of hard to mistake that rosy glow about you.”
Rose stumbled on a stair and hastily righted herself. “Addie!” she gasped, shocked a bit at the woman’s blunt words. They weren’t inaccurate, however…
Adeline just shrugged, an impish grin on her face. “What can I say? Your Mr. Smith is well fit. Bit skinny for my tastes, but I can just imagine the stamina.”
“Can we please just get the kids up to show and tell?” Rose said, ignoring the fact that she was blushing a rather deep shade of pink at the moment. Adeline laughed at her and continued the march to the classroom.
“Blimey, it’s packed in there,” Adeline said, peering in through the glass. Sure enough, when Rose peeked in she could see a few classes’ worth of kids sitting on the floor, with most of the desks stacked on the sides so they could fit as many kids as possible in there. The teachers were lined up at the back, all looking beyond bored. Adeline and Rose guided their kids in, pointed out where they should sit, and joined the rest of the adults at the back of the room.
One of the younger teachers shot Adeline a glance. “So are we going to get a lecture on the symbolism of dragons and how they’ve traditionally represented female repression?” he teased her.
Adeline just crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “I’ll keep me mouth shut.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
Rose tuned their chattering out and looked towards the front of the classroom, her eyes settling on the girl who was obviously Octavia. She was a small, unobtrusive girl, with light brown hair that was pulled back into a loose ponytail. She wore the school skirt and sweater, sleeves pushed up over bony elbows. She was dragging a large wagon behind her. On the wagon was a cage that had a blanket over it. Suddenly the cage rattled, making Rose lean back instinctively. Those weird bells were going off in her head; something just wasn’t right about this situation. She mentally thought about the school’s layout, trying to think of the fastest way to get to the Doctor’s classroom.
Octavia cleared her throat delicately and pulled her wagon to centre stage, straining a bit under the weight. “Right,” she said, commanding attention surprisingly well from the assembled mass. Well, they all wanted to see the mysteries that blanket was hiding. “This is my dragon. Her name is Belle.” Octavia pulled the blanket off the cage and stood back, smiling smugly at the expected gasps.
Rose leaned forward just slightly, getting a better look at the creature inside the cage. She had always figured that a dragon, if it did really exist, would have looked more like a Reaper, not like this…thing. It was about half a meter long and stoutly built. The skin was a muddy and mottled green-brown, and her head was slender and pointed, almost like the beak of a bird. The two distinct features that she noticed were a hefty tail that waved back and forth in the confines of the cage, and a massive claw in place of where the index fingers would be on the front paws.
Octavia opened the door to the cage and grabbed the leash that was draped over the dragon’s back. With no small amount of coaxing (and what appeared to be a tub full of live crickets) she dragged the dragon out onto the floor, where it began to sniff around things and paw at the floor, leaving a few deep scratches in the linoleum with its two massive claws. Sure enough, while the teachers tried to keep their students away from the dragon, most of them rushed forward, wanting to get their hands on the creature.
The young teacher who had ribbed Adeline before crossed his arms over his chest and took a step forward. “Now, call me crazy, but that doesn’t look like any iguana or gila monster I’ve ever seen. My little brother raises the things, and whatever that is isn’t one of them.”
“So if it’s not one of those, what is it, Nate?” Adeline asked, shuffling a little bit behind him. Lizards of any sort were obviously not one of her favorite things.
“What I think it looks like or what I think it really is?” he said. Rose glanced over at the other teachers, who were slowly spreading out trying to corral their students away from the dragon. The dragon didn’t look too good either. The whites of her eyes were beginning to show as she glanced back and forth in a panic, no doubt rattled by all of the kids trying to pet her, or scratch at her back, or, most unforgivably, pull at her tail.
Rose winced as one hard tug finally got to the dragon, who then whipped that powerful tail around, sending a few of the kids who couldn’t leap out of the way in time to the floor. “Oh no,” she muttered to herself as the kids started to chatter loudly, startling the dragon even further. Then, with a speed unexpected by her bulky size, the dragon leapt up onto the teacher’s desk, sending books and papers all over the place as her tail crashed into things.
This galvanized the teachers into action, who started pulling students in the direction of the door. The scared students didn’t need much help in that arena though, as they began to rush to the door en masse, leading to a nice bottleneck.
“What do you think it is?” Rose yelled in Nate’s direction as they and Adeline began to pull the desks away from the wall, attempting to form some sort of barrier between the students and the huffing and snorting dragon.
As Nate and Adeline upended a table to use in the barricade, he laughed disbelievingly. “If it wasn’t so impossible, I’d say it was a damn dinosaur!”
Rose froze, her hands grasping onto the back of a wooden chair. The dragon did look rather like replicas and skeletons of dinosaurs she’d seen in a museum as a kid. Combine that with a temporal disturbance taking place in this very school… “Oh hell,” she muttered, running for the door. “I’ll be right back!” she yelled. “I’m going to get help!”
“Who on Earth is going to know how to handle a rogue dinosaur?” Adeline shouted at Rose’s back as she darted around students and slipped through the crowded doorway. She ran down the hall and pushed open the door to the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Halfway up she felt one of the side seams on her skirt give, the rip echoing against the walls. It was a hell of a lot easier to run this way though, that was for sure.
She practically flew down the hallway, skidding to a halt at the doorway to the Doctor’s classroom. Rose peered through the window, gasping for breath, and could see the Doctor there in front of a class, hair in a state and right eye just slightly twitching. ‘Must be that class then,’ she thought. She rapped on the window and beckoned him urgently, telling him to get out here now.
The look he gave her could only be described as grateful as he walked hastily towards the door. “Just…read the next chapter in your textbook,” she heard him say as he pulled the door open. “Rose, what’s going on?” he asked.
“You know that dragon-iguana thing?” she said, panting a bit. “It’s neither. It looks like a dinosaur.”
The Doctor’s eyes grew wide. “What?”
“Yeah, it looks an awful lot like a dinosaur, and it’s currently destroying the year three classroom.”
“Read the next four chapters!” the Doctor hollered back into the classroom, then pulled the door shut and locked it tightly with the sonic screwdriver. “That should keep anything from getting in there.” He grabbed Rose’s hand and they tore off down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time.
The second floor corridor was packed with students and teachers, most of them heading for the exits. It was apparent that word had gotten out to the other classrooms about an escaped animal and everyone was trying to leave the building post-haste. The Doctor and Rose moved against the tide of humanity, not stopping until they reached the door to the classroom.
Adeline and Nate were still in there, attempting to make a rather dodgy barricade that the dragon was in the middle of dismantling with a few swipes of her powerful tail. The rest of the teachers had hastily buggered off, preferring to call either the police or fire brigade once the school had been suitably evacuated. The Doctor paused inside the doorway, staring at the dragon with a healthy bit of admiration. “Not a dragon?” Rose panted behind him.
“Definitely not a dragon,” the Doctor said, moving slowly into the room. Anything faster would startle the creature even further. “Scientific name that your time’s given it is Drepanosaurus unguicaudatus, also known as, well, a monkey-lizard, but definitely a long extinct monkey-lizard.”
Adeline looked up as the two approached and groaned. “I thought you were bringing help, not a history teacher.” The Doctor just arched his eyebrow at her. He was about to come back with a snappy retort that could put many a retort throughout history to shame, when Rose spoke up.
“Just trust me, Addie, we’ll take care of this.”
The dragon – no, dinosaur – was now standing on top of the barricade of desks, staring at them with strangely inquisitive eyes. The four of them backed away slowly, pressing up against the back closets. No one dared breathe, thinking that the slightest movement would make the dinosaur charge right for them. Between the four of them they could probably take the dinosaur down, but most likely the dinosaur wasn’t trying to deliberately hurt them. She was probably scared and a very long way from home, a feeling Rose knew all too well. And so it would be up to them, well, she and the Doctor really, to get the dinosaur out of the school and eventually back to its proper time, hopefully without getting injured or damaging too much property in the process. Rose felt a small scrabbling beside her, and she looked down to see the Doctor’s hand thumbing at the settings on the sonic screwdriver. To her right, she saw that Adeline had a death grip on Nate’s hand, and neither one of them looked too good at the moment. Fear had a way of doing that to people, especially if they weren’t used to these sort of life-endangering situations.
“So what do we do now?” Rose whispered to the Doctor.
“Get her back to the TARDIS…somehow. Give Geoffrey something to play with until we’re able to get them back to their proper times?” the Doctor said, twirling the screwdriver between his fingers.
“It’s not going to eat us, is it?” Adeline whimpered from her other side and dug her nails into Nate’s hand again, making the man wince. “That would be really, really bad.”
“Drepanosaurids eat mostly insects,” the Doctor said, glancing over at her. “Hence the massive claws on the front limbs; they’re used to scrape away at bark to get to the critters beneath it.”
“Pygmy anteaters have the same feature,” Nate whispered. “Really one of the only other species around today that have that distinct claw.”
“That’s right,” the Doctor replied, shooting him an impressed look – well, as much of an impressed look that could be given to something that wasn’t a rampaging werewolf.
“Dabbled in zoology once upon a time,” Nate said, blushing just the slightest.
“Good man.” The conversation quickly degenerated into rather dull and scientific terms, leaving Rose and Adeline gaping incredulously. Really though, Rose knew she shouldn’t haven been surprised. Temporally displaced dinosaur on the loose, and the Doctor ends up ignoring it in favor of chats about tree sloths. Temporally displaced dinosaur trotting out the door to the classroom into the hallway…
“Oh, shit,” Adeline said, moving for the door with Rose hard on her heels. They were just in time to see the dinosaur push the door to the stairwell open with her bulky body and leap downwards.
“Oi, boys!” Rose hollered, making them look her way. “Talk about tree sloths later - runaway dinosaur just took off down the stairs!”
Without any more words the group took off running, following the path of mild destruction the dinosaur left in her wake. The Doctor led the pack, sonic screwdriver held out in front of him flashing intermittently. They took the stairs two and three at a time, with Adeline eventually kicking her shoes off when one of the heels broke. “What’s the flashy thing he’s waving about?” she asked Rose as they approached the first floor.
“Sonic screwdriver,” she yelled up at her.
“What?”
“Explanations later!” the Doctor said, stopping at the base of the stairs as soon as he saw the fire doors swinging wide open. He aimed the screwdriver at them, then nodded after a few seconds. “Okay, you two head around to the front of the building and see if she went that way. Rose and I will head towards the woods and see if she’s in there.” The other two just stood there, gasping for breath, definitely not as used to the whole running away bit as the Doctor and Rose were. “Go!” he prodded, making Adeline and Nate run off for the front.”
“That’s them out of the way,” the Doctor nodded, walking towards the woods as if he were on a leisurely stroll.
“Why couldn’t they help?” Rose asked.
“Be easier with just the two of us,” he replied. “Besides, if I’m reading these results correctly, which I no doubt am, we’re not going to need them…”
* * *
Sure enough, not five minutes later they found the dinosaur fast asleep, curled up between the large roots of an old tree. “It looks so harmless asleep,” Rose said softly, leaning in close.
“And it’s going to stay that way, ‘least until we get it back to the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, adjusting the frequency and aiming it at the dinosaur once more. “So, do you want the head bit or the tail?”
* * *
The halls of the school were totally empty Rose saw as she walked through them, however when she reached the staff room it was buzzing. A handful of the teachers were in there, including Nate and Adeline, who were slumped over on an old sway-backed plaid couch nursing cups of tea. Octavia and her family were there as well, mother and brothers all in a corner having a rather…vocal chat with the Headmaster, complete with hand gestures on both sides.
“Any luck?” Adeline asked, staring distastefully at the soles of her feet, the stockings laddered and smeared with grass stains and streaks of mud.
“Nope,” Rose fibbed, helping herself to a cuppa. Would they really believe though that the dinosaur was currently holed up in a room in a spaceship that was bigger on the inside than the outside, with an alien pilot who was attempting to figure out if the TARDIS would finally start moving again now that they had the dinosaur aboard as well? “Went through a good bit of those woods back there and the only remotely interesting thing we saw there were a couple of squirrels.”
“Damn,” Adeline sighed. “We were all around the front grounds and nothing there either. Dunno where she could have gone…”
“Don’t worry,” the Doctor called out as he walked by the open door to the staff room, “I’ve just called animal control.”
“We called them an hour ago,” Professor Powell shot back, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, right…”
Rose glanced over at Octavia, who was sitting at the table with a not quite despairing, but still pretty upset look on her face. “Give me a minute,” she said, putting her cup down and moving over to the girl. She pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, making Octavia shoot her a glare with watery eyes. “How are you doing?” Rose asked.
“I want Belle back,” she said decisively.
“Well…” Rose trailed off, searching for the right words. “Maybe she had to go home. She really was just a baby, so she probably has a mother out there looking for her.” She tapped Octavia lightly on the nose, making the girl wrinkle a bit. “Just imagine how you would be if you got lost? You’d want your mum more than anything else, right?”
“I guess so,” Octavia sniffled, going a bit misty in the eyes. “Do you think she’s all right?”
Rose leaned in and winked at the girl, a show of solidarity between females. “I’ll bet you anything that she’s just fine right now, and almost home.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “That’s good.” Rose patted her on the back comfortingly, giving her a few more minutes to sniffle and shred up a tissue as she calmed down. When she glanced up she saw the Doctor staring at her from just inside the doorway, an unreadable look in his dark eyes. Suddenly though, he smiled widely at her, and winked.
“I’ll be back in a minute, love,” she said to Octavia, then went to join the Doctor. He pulled her out into the corridor, out of earshot of everyone else. “How’s she doing?”
“Settled comfortably and munching away on some lovely insects. At least the TARDIS is in a good enough mood to do that.” The Doctor scratched the back of his neck and exhaled roughly.
“Still not moving then?”
“Nope. We’re going to have a menagerie in there by the time we pick up everything that got lost falling through time.”
“She’ll come around eventually, you know that.” Rose grinned up at him. “Besides, she wouldn’t want you stuck with the class from hell much longer either. The TARDIS is even more protective of you than I am.”
“Funny that, I thought I was supposed to be the one protecting you,” he grinned at her, both of them knowing full well that the whole point of things was that they protected each other, and that was what made things brilliant. Impulsively, he pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, then grabbed her hand and trotted off down the hall. “Come on, we’ve still got work to do.”
* * *
One knight, a dinosaur, a painting by Leonardo DaVinci, a 48th century hover-scooter, a first edition of the Canterbury Tales, and an escaped llama from southeast New England later the TARDIS began to move again, taking the strays home and returning Rose and the Doctor to the stars.
