The Adventures of the Doctor and Rory the Roman: Eight

[jesterladyfic]

627 AD

Rory had pretty much gotten used to their new home. He liked the way the Pandorica sat up on the dais, making Amy the queen she really was. And it was very quiet, a lot more quiet than Stonehenge had been, and he figured it probably had something to do with respect for the dead and the fact that there weren’t people tromping all over above ground either performing weird rituals or trying to figure out how the place had actually gotten there. In the last hundred and twenty five years he’d only had contact with one funeral party that had descended far enough into the earth to bury one of their own.

It was at that point when he’d discovered the exit. He hadn’t been able to before that and so he was at a complete loss as to what was going on in the world outside. Empires would rise and fall, he gathered, before he would poke his head above ground again. At least he hoped so. But now he did have access to the over world if he wanted it. There was a certain trick to opening up the tombs that he’d watched a slave perform once.

He didn’t really need to use it. After all, he didn’t require food. He had pinched a few of the newer burial robes to create a little nest for him to sit and read in. He’d long since memorized all of the Doctor’s books. He was fluent – book fluent, his accent was probably lousy - in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Latin – his Latin accent was absolutely perfect he knew – Greek, and he was grasping Mandarin, he really was. He had entire conversations – one sided - with Amy in foreign languages to keep up the practice. The Doctor had also included a lot of medical and history books so Rory kept up with his medical training too and figured he could probably pass any of his exams now if need be and trump all of his professors while doing so.

When he wasn’t reading, he was practicing with his sword and his hand-gun, keeping up a pretty pointless exercise regime, but he needed to move or he’d go crazy. He wasn’t sure if plastic people had muscle memory or maybe it was plastic memory. Either way, he felt like he could literally do or go anywhere or be anything. But he never ventured far beyond the cavern Amy was housed in. She couldn’t leave and so he wouldn’t.

He’d noticed the rumbling and didn’t really think anything of it. This far beneath the Earth there were strange sounds all over the place. But it kept happening for about three days and he started to worry. His hearing and eyesight had improved so much that it was slightly ridiculous, and he could tell that it wasn’t usual under-the-Earth sounds. He’d long ago planned how he would escape with the Pandorica if need be and most of the prep work was done, but it would still take awhile. The pulleys and levers of this day and age only went so far and he had no way of inventing the elevator a thousand years or so too soon.

Flakes of dirt started to fall on the wall across from the Pandorica and he had to switch his escape plan all around. He was busy working on that when the Tardis came barreling through the wall and nearly hit Amy in her box. It came to rest, slightly leaning on the cavern wall, and the door popped open.

“I’m sorry; I’m late, aren’t I?”

“Late?”

A man dressed in a velvet jacket with longish, curly hair sprang out of the box, dusting himself off. He was covered in dirt.

“Yes, I knew it was today, but I got caught up at the World’s Fair and it was amazing and I should’ve brought you a treat, I’m very sorry.”

“Doctor,” Rory stated, but it was a bit of a question too.

“That’s me. Eighth one.”

“If you’re the eighth, how come there’s a ninth?”

“Well, there can be thirteen, Rory. We went over regeneration, remember?”

“But Nine was…never mind, listen, thanks for all the books, but something’s going on and so I’ve got to get Amy out of here.”

“Books? Oh, well, yes, I know, that’s why I’m here.”

“Oh. What’s happening?”

“Moles.”

“Moles…?”

“Yes, Moles. They’re digging and I’m afraid this is right in their flight path.”

“Flight?”

“To them it’s flying, Rory. Now, this is going to be tricky, are you ready?”

“What’s going to be tricky?”

“Re-routing them. They’re fleeing, you know. There’s been a terrible flood. I am explaining this all in the wrong order, aren’t I?”

“Um, yes.”

The Doctor took out some weird device and leaned against the wall, pressed against it, listening. He stood that way for about five minutes and Rory finally just went back to preparing the Pandorica to move.

“We’ve about eight and a half minutes,” the Doctor finally said, striding over to the ropes. “Oh, excellent, you’re getting her secure.”

“Yes, we’ve got to move her.”

“No, no, she’s what’s going to deter them. It will cause a bit of a quake though, so we’ll need to secure her to make sure she doesn’t fall.”

“I’m not putting her in harm’s way, Doctor,” Rory said firmly. “I’ve already done that.”

“You keep saying she,” the Doctor said, then stopped, “I suppose I do too.”

“But we already talked about this,” Rory said, getting frustrated. “Oh, never mind. Listen, what’s the plan and how does it involve her being safe?”

“I’m going to use the Tardis to reroute the air patterns in here, letting the Moles get a whiff of the Pandorica. They’re somewhat primitive, but they have the best instincts in three galaxies and that smell will make them go miles around. We’ll have to cut it pretty close though.”

“What can I do?”

“Do you happen to have any concept of structural engineering?”

“Actually…” Rory said, thinking back to a certain book he’d found boring, but at least it wasn’t Wind in the Willows for the sixtieth time “…yes. That was one of the books.”

“You do like to talk about books,” the Doctor said. “Now, I’m going to man the Tardis and I want you to strap yourself to the box, on the left side, closest to the wall. I’m going to give you a device to measure the distance and when you see that the Moles are reaching the weakest point of the southwest corner of this room, you yell and let me know.”

“Okay…”

The Doctor reached into his jackets and handed Rory something that definitely shouldn’t be used in this century – this millennia for that matter - and disappeared back into the Tardis. Rory grabbed rope – that he had, uh, needed to snitch from above ground - and started to strap himself tightly to the harness he’d wound around the Pandorica – hadn’t that been fun, but he was glad it was done now. He tried to figure out how the thing the Doctor had given him worked and eventually worked out that it was upside down.

“Ready, Rory?” the Doctor yelled.

“Ready, Doctor.”

“Might be a bit of a bumpy ride and we might not get a chance to say goodbye. The Tardis is in the trajectory path of the Earth currents.”

Rory decided the Doctor was making that up.

“Right,” he said – there was no point in arguing – “so, thanks then.”

“I’m glad we’ll meet again,” the Doctor said and then vanished again.

“And again and again and again before I go mad as a hatter,” Rory said, under his breath.

He may or may not have been reading Alice in Wonderland before the rumbling episode had started.

Rory quickly used his plastic-y eyes – which, really, saw very well – to guess at what point he would need to yell for the Doctor. There were a few tense moments and all the while the rumbling grew louder and the cavern started to shake. Earth kept falling and now rocks were coming loose as well. Idly Rory wondered if, somehow, some way, Amy could feel this.

His eyes were trained to the machine and it was very close now. Then it was the moment.

“Now, Doctor!” he yelled at the top of his voice over the noise.

There was a high pitched groan from the Tardis and then air started to swirl all around them. Rory had to hold tight to the side of the Pandorica to keep from rising into the miniature tornado the Doctor had just raised.

There were new sounds, like stampeding buffalos and earthquakes and scared rodents, but they started to fade after a moment or two. Rory could hardly see because earth and rocks and all of his nice books were flying around and getting ripped apart. Well, he did have them memorized and the pages and things he’d really wanted to remember were in a satchel-type thing – which he’d gotten in Rome and had not stolen in any way - he wore around his belt. His feet started to lift off the ground and then the whirring stopped and the Tardis began to fly past him, following the sounds of the Moles retreating.

“Toss,” the Doctor said, from the open door of the Tardis.

Rory threw the device and it landed in the Doctor’s hands.

“Farewell,” the Doctor cried and the door slammed shut and the Tardis vanished into the dark.

Then the roof caved in.

Rory covered himself as best he could and the tall sides of the Pandorica were his shelter, just like they’d taught him back in school, however many lifetimes ago. It seemed like a few more before the shaking stopped and the dust settled and he could look upward and see the night sky again.

“Time to move again,” he mumbled – to Amy and to himself – “the neighborhood really has gone downhill.

Of course he was somewhat glad that no one was really around to hear him say that.

Comments

[rosaxx50.livejournal.com]

Eeee! A chapter on the plain logistics of trying to keep the Pandorica safe. This is so precious.

However, I'm not sure if you meant for the entire second half of the chapter to be in italics.

[jesterladyfic.livejournal.com]

I'm glad.

And no...I didn't. I worked with the code for like a half an hour before I gave up. I don't know what happened with it. Hopefully it's not too distracting.

[rosaxx50.livejournal.com]

I think it's this section:

“Actually…” Rory said, thinking back to a certain book he’d found boring, but at least it wasn’t Wind in the Willows</> for the sixtieth time “…yes. That was one of the books.”

You seem to have missed out a letter.

[jesterladyfic.livejournal.com]

You're perfection! Thank you. To think I looked and looked at that and couldn't see it...