Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2009-03-09 06:38 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2009-03-09 06:38 pm
Entry tags:
Fake News/Doctor Who: George's World, part 1
Title: George's World (1/5)
Rating: PG
Warnings: Tantrums, time snarls, every parent's worst nightmare
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: New Who S3, TW S1
Jack, Ten, and teenage Stephen, from this universe, make an accidental hop and end up in this one—just in time for a creepy temporal phenomenon to hit adult Stephen and five-year-old George.
Table of contents here.
George's World - Part 1
"It's not FAIR!" hollered George, at the top of his five-year-old lungs.
Jon didn't entirely blame him. It was the fourth time in a row they had stood in line—himself, George, Nate, Maggie, and Stephen—only to reach the cartoon dinosaur holding a You Must Be This Tall To Ride sign and discover that George, well, fell short. Even when he stood on tiptoe.
"Calm down, honey," urged Stephen, trying to be soothing. "It's no big deal. We'll go find another ride."
"I don't WANNA find another!" wailed George, stamping his foot. "I wanna ride THIS one!"
"Shh, easy there, people are staring...."
"I don't CARE!"
"Dad-dy," put in Maggie, pulling on Jon's sleeve. "Daddy, do we hafta get out of line a-gain?"
"All right, that's it." Scooping George up in one smooth motion, Stephen slung the boy over his shoulder and got to his feet. "You guys enjoy the Wheel O' Death. We are going to go calm down."
He didn't move, though; just stood, rigid, glaring at a fixed point in the distance, while George wailed and thrashed and pounded on his back with tiny fists. Jon recognized the look in Stephen's eyes: it was the one that said Doesn't matter how much I love him, I am about five minutes away from throttling this little brat.
"Stephen," he said quietly. "You want to trade places?"
Stephen looked sharply at Jon, as if only just remembering that he was there. "No," he said, taking a deep breath, "no, I'm okay. I can handle this."
Jon knew he wasn't referring to George.
"Meet us by the ice cream stand in half an hour?" he added, stepping away from the line.
Jon nodded. "We'll see you then. Hang in there."
⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔
The TARDIS landed with a deafening crash. This happened on pretty much every other landing; Stephen had gotten used to bracing himself for it by now.
When the lights flickered and died, though, that was new.
"Aw, now, what did you have to go and do that for?" protested the Doctor's voice. A few seconds later the sharp blue light of the sonic screwdriver cut through the blackness, turning the console room into a shifting Rorschach print of hard-edged shadows. "What's the matter, old girl? Burnt a bulb? Oh, I do hope not. That was so much trouble the last time around."
His eyes stayed on the panel he was poking at, but Stephen had an uncomfortable hunch about where the comment was aimed.
"These readings don't even make sense," continued the Doctor, squinting at a small diagnostic screen that looked to Stephen like a glorified Etch-a-Sketch. "We're not on Balhoon, that's for sure. —Stephen! Did you manage to hold down that button the entire time?"
"Of course I did!" exclaimed Stephen, speaking extra loudly to cover up the fact that he was pretty sure he hadn't.
"Kind of a lot to ask of a guy when the floor's on a thirty-degree angle," pointed out Jack, sweeping across the room to join the Doctor, even though Stephen was pretty sure he couldn't read TARDISese any more than Stephen himself could. "Did we hit an inter-Vortex pothole, or what?"
"Naw," said the Doctor dismissively. "Well. Least, I don't think so. More sort of a zigged-when-we-should-have-zagged situation. Whatever that last jump we just made was, it sucked her dry. And we're not recharging near as fast as we should be."
"Like there's something else sucking up the power in the area?" asked Jack worriedly.
The Doctor tapped his bottom lip with the back end of the screwdriver. "That, or there's not a lot of power here...wherever this is...to begin with...."
He trailed off, then, without another word, leapt towards the door and was through it in two and a half bounds.
Stephen edged closer to Jack. Even though the Doctor barely spoke to him, much less told him vast expansive stories the way Jack did, he couldn't help picking up on a few of the Time Lord's moods. "Is this a Rose thing?" he asked.
Jack sighed. "This is a Rose thing."
⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔
Stephen paid no attention to the direction he was walking. If people hadn't been giving him a wide berth to avoid George's kicking legs, he probably would have crashed into someone.
He was starting to regret turning Jon's offer down. The kids' worst tantrums never seemed to get to Jon. On a calmer day Stephen would have been fine, but right now it was taking all his concentration to keep his last nerve from fraying.
At last George seemed to have worn himself out, slumping in defeat against his father's back.
Stephen came to a stop. They had reached a fairly quiet area of the park; there were a couple of people laughing at a nearby hot dog stand, and a deserted Hall of Mirrors with construction tape over the entrance, but otherwise there was nobody in sight. "About time we turned around. You ready to walk now?"
"Hrngh," offered George. It sounded like a negative sort of hrngh.
"Well, you're going to have to do your best, because you're too heavy for Daddy to keep hauling around," pronounced Stephen, depositing him on the ground and straightening his shirt. "Now, let's go look for a ride you're big enough for, okay?"
George scanned the surroundings, then pointed at the taped-off building. "I wanna see that one."
"You can't. That one's closed," Stephen informed him.
He understood the defiant look on the boy's face too late. George was halfway to the Hall of Mirrors before Stephen even realized he had bolted. He didn't even need to duck to get under the tape.
Sucking back a tirade of frustration (though it felt like he might burst with the effort), Stephen took off in pursuit.
⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔
"This is weird," said Stephen as he stepped out of the TARDIS. "What planet has architecture like this?"
Jack fiddled with the computer-thing on his wrist. "Readings are consistent with twenty-first century Earth. I think it's just a theme-park house of mirrors."
Stephen groaned. "But that's so much less cool."
Ahead of them, the Doctor turned a corner and passed out of sight. Stephen wasn't worried. He was pretty sure there was nobody in the universe less likely to get lost, or better able to cope when it happened.
Much more interesting to him was his own reflection, which he suddenly found he could appraise from all angles.
Stephen had always been the pale, skinny type. Not that traveling on the TARDIS was doing much for the former, since their visits to exotic alien beaches were scattered between trips to dark caves and remote space stations and that one planet where the totalitarian regime refused to let the inhabitants look at the local sun. (Until the Doctor had toppled it with some fast talking, a socket wrench, and a half-empty jar of jam, anyway.)
Point is, it would have been grossly unfair if all the running he had done in the last month or so hadn't given him at least a little bit of muscle definition. Spotting a twist where the angle of the mirrors looked particularly advantageous, he scurried over to look.
When he came to a stop, he let out a yelp of surprise.
His reflection had stopped half a second after him.
"You okay?" called Jack after him.
"Some kind of freaky time thing!" replied Stephen, turning back as he did so. When he looked at the mirror again, he was treated to a second or two of the side of his head, mouth moving, before the image swung to face him. "And it's getting worse!"
"Hold still," ordered Jack. "I'll be right—"
Stephen was already frozen. The endless mirrors in front of him had started going dark, as if the reflection were a window to a long landscape over which a blackness was approaching. "Jack! Doctor! HELP!"
Jack lunged for him right as the time warp hit.
⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔ ⋅ ⇔
"George? George, this isn't funny. Which way did you go?"
When there was no answer, Stephen cursed under his breath. Of all the places for George to run! He could go in circles for hours and never find the boy.
Breathe, he told himself firmly. Don't panic. You do stupid things when you panic.
"Daddy?"
See! Everything's going to be fine. "George! Where are you?"
"I don't know." The voice seemed to echo off the glass.
"It's okay, honey. Just stay where you are and keep talking, all right? I'll come find you." The sound was coming from the left, right? He took the left fork.
"Okay," said George, but he didn't sound comforted. "Daddy? Something's happening."
"What kind of something?" asked Stephen. The left path turned out to be a dead end; he doubled back, walking more quickly now.
"I dunno. I'm scared. Dad-dy!"
"I'm coming!" Stephen was running. "Hold on. I'll be right—"
"Daddy! DA—"
There wasn't even a scream. Just sudden, overwhelming silence.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Tantrums, time snarls, every parent's worst nightmare
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: New Who S3, TW S1
Jack, Ten, and teenage Stephen, from this universe, make an accidental hop and end up in this one—just in time for a creepy temporal phenomenon to hit adult Stephen and five-year-old George.
Table of contents here.
George's World - Part 1
"It's not FAIR!" hollered George, at the top of his five-year-old lungs.
Jon didn't entirely blame him. It was the fourth time in a row they had stood in line—himself, George, Nate, Maggie, and Stephen—only to reach the cartoon dinosaur holding a You Must Be This Tall To Ride sign and discover that George, well, fell short. Even when he stood on tiptoe.
"Calm down, honey," urged Stephen, trying to be soothing. "It's no big deal. We'll go find another ride."
"I don't WANNA find another!" wailed George, stamping his foot. "I wanna ride THIS one!"
"Shh, easy there, people are staring...."
"I don't CARE!"
"Dad-dy," put in Maggie, pulling on Jon's sleeve. "Daddy, do we hafta get out of line a-gain?"
"All right, that's it." Scooping George up in one smooth motion, Stephen slung the boy over his shoulder and got to his feet. "You guys enjoy the Wheel O' Death. We are going to go calm down."
He didn't move, though; just stood, rigid, glaring at a fixed point in the distance, while George wailed and thrashed and pounded on his back with tiny fists. Jon recognized the look in Stephen's eyes: it was the one that said Doesn't matter how much I love him, I am about five minutes away from throttling this little brat.
"Stephen," he said quietly. "You want to trade places?"
Stephen looked sharply at Jon, as if only just remembering that he was there. "No," he said, taking a deep breath, "no, I'm okay. I can handle this."
Jon knew he wasn't referring to George.
"Meet us by the ice cream stand in half an hour?" he added, stepping away from the line.
Jon nodded. "We'll see you then. Hang in there."
The TARDIS landed with a deafening crash. This happened on pretty much every other landing; Stephen had gotten used to bracing himself for it by now.
When the lights flickered and died, though, that was new.
"Aw, now, what did you have to go and do that for?" protested the Doctor's voice. A few seconds later the sharp blue light of the sonic screwdriver cut through the blackness, turning the console room into a shifting Rorschach print of hard-edged shadows. "What's the matter, old girl? Burnt a bulb? Oh, I do hope not. That was so much trouble the last time around."
His eyes stayed on the panel he was poking at, but Stephen had an uncomfortable hunch about where the comment was aimed.
"These readings don't even make sense," continued the Doctor, squinting at a small diagnostic screen that looked to Stephen like a glorified Etch-a-Sketch. "We're not on Balhoon, that's for sure. —Stephen! Did you manage to hold down that button the entire time?"
"Of course I did!" exclaimed Stephen, speaking extra loudly to cover up the fact that he was pretty sure he hadn't.
"Kind of a lot to ask of a guy when the floor's on a thirty-degree angle," pointed out Jack, sweeping across the room to join the Doctor, even though Stephen was pretty sure he couldn't read TARDISese any more than Stephen himself could. "Did we hit an inter-Vortex pothole, or what?"
"Naw," said the Doctor dismissively. "Well. Least, I don't think so. More sort of a zigged-when-we-should-have-zagged situation. Whatever that last jump we just made was, it sucked her dry. And we're not recharging near as fast as we should be."
"Like there's something else sucking up the power in the area?" asked Jack worriedly.
The Doctor tapped his bottom lip with the back end of the screwdriver. "That, or there's not a lot of power here...wherever this is...to begin with...."
He trailed off, then, without another word, leapt towards the door and was through it in two and a half bounds.
Stephen edged closer to Jack. Even though the Doctor barely spoke to him, much less told him vast expansive stories the way Jack did, he couldn't help picking up on a few of the Time Lord's moods. "Is this a Rose thing?" he asked.
Jack sighed. "This is a Rose thing."
Stephen paid no attention to the direction he was walking. If people hadn't been giving him a wide berth to avoid George's kicking legs, he probably would have crashed into someone.
He was starting to regret turning Jon's offer down. The kids' worst tantrums never seemed to get to Jon. On a calmer day Stephen would have been fine, but right now it was taking all his concentration to keep his last nerve from fraying.
At last George seemed to have worn himself out, slumping in defeat against his father's back.
Stephen came to a stop. They had reached a fairly quiet area of the park; there were a couple of people laughing at a nearby hot dog stand, and a deserted Hall of Mirrors with construction tape over the entrance, but otherwise there was nobody in sight. "About time we turned around. You ready to walk now?"
"Hrngh," offered George. It sounded like a negative sort of hrngh.
"Well, you're going to have to do your best, because you're too heavy for Daddy to keep hauling around," pronounced Stephen, depositing him on the ground and straightening his shirt. "Now, let's go look for a ride you're big enough for, okay?"
George scanned the surroundings, then pointed at the taped-off building. "I wanna see that one."
"You can't. That one's closed," Stephen informed him.
He understood the defiant look on the boy's face too late. George was halfway to the Hall of Mirrors before Stephen even realized he had bolted. He didn't even need to duck to get under the tape.
Sucking back a tirade of frustration (though it felt like he might burst with the effort), Stephen took off in pursuit.
"This is weird," said Stephen as he stepped out of the TARDIS. "What planet has architecture like this?"
Jack fiddled with the computer-thing on his wrist. "Readings are consistent with twenty-first century Earth. I think it's just a theme-park house of mirrors."
Stephen groaned. "But that's so much less cool."
Ahead of them, the Doctor turned a corner and passed out of sight. Stephen wasn't worried. He was pretty sure there was nobody in the universe less likely to get lost, or better able to cope when it happened.
Much more interesting to him was his own reflection, which he suddenly found he could appraise from all angles.
Stephen had always been the pale, skinny type. Not that traveling on the TARDIS was doing much for the former, since their visits to exotic alien beaches were scattered between trips to dark caves and remote space stations and that one planet where the totalitarian regime refused to let the inhabitants look at the local sun. (Until the Doctor had toppled it with some fast talking, a socket wrench, and a half-empty jar of jam, anyway.)
Point is, it would have been grossly unfair if all the running he had done in the last month or so hadn't given him at least a little bit of muscle definition. Spotting a twist where the angle of the mirrors looked particularly advantageous, he scurried over to look.
When he came to a stop, he let out a yelp of surprise.
His reflection had stopped half a second after him.
"You okay?" called Jack after him.
"Some kind of freaky time thing!" replied Stephen, turning back as he did so. When he looked at the mirror again, he was treated to a second or two of the side of his head, mouth moving, before the image swung to face him. "And it's getting worse!"
"Hold still," ordered Jack. "I'll be right—"
Stephen was already frozen. The endless mirrors in front of him had started going dark, as if the reflection were a window to a long landscape over which a blackness was approaching. "Jack! Doctor! HELP!"
Jack lunged for him right as the time warp hit.
"George? George, this isn't funny. Which way did you go?"
When there was no answer, Stephen cursed under his breath. Of all the places for George to run! He could go in circles for hours and never find the boy.
Breathe, he told himself firmly. Don't panic. You do stupid things when you panic.
"Daddy?"
See! Everything's going to be fine. "George! Where are you?"
"I don't know." The voice seemed to echo off the glass.
"It's okay, honey. Just stay where you are and keep talking, all right? I'll come find you." The sound was coming from the left, right? He took the left fork.
"Okay," said George, but he didn't sound comforted. "Daddy? Something's happening."
"What kind of something?" asked Stephen. The left path turned out to be a dead end; he doubled back, walking more quickly now.
"I dunno. I'm scared. Dad-dy!"
"I'm coming!" Stephen was running. "Hold on. I'll be right—"
"Daddy! DA—"
There wasn't even a scream. Just sudden, overwhelming silence.