Nietzsche and the Doctor (Doctor Who FanFiction)

Nietzsche and the Doctor

The metallic whir of the machine swirled up the broken bits of sound in the air and leveled them properly on the ground in patches of shining dust. Rory and Amy watched through the viewfinder, a sense of wonder running through them at the patches of sparkling magic, as it seemed while they had descended from among the stars, they had followed them to earth. "So where are we?" Amy asked the Doctor as he found his coat and touched the handle of the sonic screwdriver, just to make sure it was there.

"Get your coats. We," he said, "are in Nuremberg." He swung the door open and motioned them out into the cold night.

"Nuremberg?" Rory asked, pulling the edges of his coat closer when the chill nibbled at his skin. A light snow filtered down. "Why? When?"

The Doctor tipped his head one way and then the other as he thought. "Not sure. It's like I heard something, but now that I'm listening for it..." He glanced around the landscape: a quiet, bare hill just outside the city, "...it's gone." He looked up into the deep, black sky. "Just gone."

The three musketeers began a walk off of the hill, guided by moonlight and the shining lights of the city. They walked across cobbled foot bridges, among people in foot-length dresses, men in hats and formal suits. "Did an opera just get out?" Amy asked.

"We're in the late 1800s, I'd say," the Doctor said, spinning about to try to capture all the stimuli around him. "Hopefully not too late."

"Too late for what?"

The Doctor knocked on the door of a modest house and smiled as an attractive middle-aged woman opened the door. "Hello," he said.

The woman was in her nightgown, with her winter coat on over top of it, and she stood mostly behind the door, looking her guests over with skepticism. "Can I help you with something?"

"We're here to see Friedrich Nietzsche."

**

"Friedrich's not been well for quite a while," the woman said as she closed the door behind Amy and Rory. "And you're a doctor?"

The Doctor smiled and took the woman's hand. "That I am. What's your name?"

"Elisabeth."

"You're his...?" Amy led.

"Sister," and the woman smiled.

"Friedrich Nietzsche," Amy chuckled.

"Do you know him?" the woman asked. "I thought perhaps I had met all of his friends by now."

"No, I'm...aware of his work?" Amy replied, glancing at the Doctor to see if this answer had been acceptable. He simply looked over his shoulder at her as he glanced around the room.

"I haven't met many people outside of academia who seem to have read his work. I'm still trying to get through it, myself." She looked Amy over. "You don't seem like you're an academic."

"Hey!"

Rory stepped between them. "Oh, my, where's the Doctor run off to?"

The Doctor had already made his way through the house to the back bedroom and was hovering over Friedrich's bed. Amy and Rory joined him, looking on as the father of the aphorism stared into space dreamily, almost wistfully, with stacks and stacks of books falling off the shelves around the room. He was frail and pale, but with thick dark hair and bushy eyebrows and beard. He looked like a man that hadn't been connected to the human world in some time. But Friedrich's eyes locked onto Rory when he entered the room, followed him as he came around the edge of the bed.

"He seems to recognize you," Elisabeth whispered, a touch of wonder in her voice.

"I just have one of those faces," Rory assured her.