THE ALMOST PEOPLE PART TWO
edited as of june 6th, 2020
Led by Cleaves, the group was walking in a red-lit tunnel when they turn into a hallway. And the sight Charlotte saw caused her face to recoil as she held a torch up to the wall... Where the backs of eyeballs were melted onto the wall but they still seemed able to watch every single one of their movements.
"Ah," says the Doctor as he looks at them, seemingly unfazed. "The eyes have it."
Amy looks towards the eyeballs in confusion. "Why are they here?" she asks.
"To accuse us." After answering, the Doctor moves down the hallway.
"Let's just ignore them," says Charlotte, who has trouble herself tearing her eyes away from them. Those eyes sent chills up her spine as she walked away and she had to hold in the urge of glancing back, as she knew they were still stuck on the wall following them as they turn a corner.
---
It wasn't long later when as an alarm blares, they stand in the Thermostatic Chamber. While the Doctor and Cleaves stand at the control panel, working in a haste, Charlotte stands among Amy, Jimmy, and Dicken. But as another explosion causes the floor beneath their feet to rumble, Charlotte shouts over the sparkling machinery and the alarms, "We need to get out of here!"
With Amy rushing out first, they all began running back into the tunnel. Hardly even out of the doorway, she runs into Rory, who stood in the hall with Jennifer. "You alright?" He asks them.
"Thank God," sighed Charlotte when she saw him. For a second there, she was beginning to get worried.
"Oh, Rory!" Amy rushed up and hugs him tightly. "Oh, Rory."
He pulls away and begins looking around to the rest of the group. "There's a way out," he tells them. "Jennifer found it. A secret tunnel under the crypt."
"From the crypt?" Cleaves repeated as a question. "It's not on the schematics."
"It runs out of the monastery." Focusing on the Doctor, Rory adds, "Maybe even under the TARDIS, Doctor. Follow me."
Without a thought, Charlotte runs behind Rory as he begins leading them down the tunnel. The Doctor, however, glances back in the opposite before joining them.
Not long later, they all rush into the acid room. Charlotte stops at the tub of the liquid flesh, looking over the edge, she watched as it bubbled up. Jimmy goes over to a station, saying as he did, "We can't leave without Buzzer."
"I'll go back for him," said Cleaves.
In all honesty, Charlotte couldn't recall, of the crew members, who lived and died. She knew the real Jimmy, both Jennifers, and the Ganger Cleaves will die but other than that she's clueless. It made her feel useless. Of all vital moments, why can't she just know that information? Why is it always these moments?
Rory lingers in the doorway. "Doctor, look... I'd better tell you, I haven't been quite straight with you-" What Rory wanted to say was cut off by Jennifer pushing him back into the hall as she locks the door.
Charlotte runs over to the door. "Rory!" She shouts as she reached the door, able to see his through the window on the door. She pulls at the door handle, but it didn't even seem to budge.
With Cleaves and Amy, the Doctor rushes up and tries the door to no avail. "Rory Pond!" He exclaims. "Roranicus Pondicus!"
"Rory!" Amy shouts to him, "What the hell are you playing at?"
Looking away from Jennifer, Rory faces them on the opposite end of the window. "They've been throwing away old Flesh and leaving it to rot, alive! I think the world should see that." He turns back to Jennifer.
"Rory, there is no time!" Knocking on the window, the Doctor tried to catch his attention. "This factor's about to explode!" The Doctor moves away from the door, and Amy replaces his spot in front of the window.
Standing at the side of the door, Charlotte stood before a control panel placed on the wall, in hope that there was some way of breaking the lock or some sort of emergency way of opening the door. But, of course, when she pulled open the hatch for the controls, she had to wave a hand in front of her face as smoke billows out.
"No, no, no! Come on," Charlotte cried out as her shoulders slumped when once all the smoke left the panel, she saw nothing but sparking wires and switches burnt to a crisp. Slamming the hatch shut, the brunette heard the last of Rory before he's pulled away by the Ganger Jennifer.
"I'm sorry!" He shouted. Amy pounds on the window, shouting out his name. She moves away from the door, quickly replaced by Cleaves, and leaned on a railing as she took in what happened.
Charlotte stood beside her. "Amy..."
"If anything happens to him." Amy left the sentence open for interpretation, but Charlotte knew what she meant, and knew that she had to make sure everything went to plan (while she always makes sure it does, this time especially).
While the Doctor looks over his results from the sonic's scan over the tub of Flesh, the two grouped up with him beside the vat. Seeing the results, his eyes widened. "This is going to overheat and fill the room with acid, just as a point of reference."
"Is there any way we can stop it?" When he became silent for a moment, Charlotte's eyes widened. "At all?"
"Well... No."
Yet again, Charlotte wasn't even sure if this problem was a part of the episode or not. Where her watch once was, she began massaging her wrist, a nervous antic she's seen popping up recently. There has to be something we can do, she thought. Charlotte looks around the room for anything- a working control panel, an emergency exit, something to ram the door with, but found none of the like.
Her eyes land on the vat, which still boils profusely in the room's center. Has it ever boiled this high before? Most cooking pots have lids to them just for that, so does this Flesh vat have its own? She looks above the vat and her eyes lay on its own lid, hanging above it from a pulley.
At her own cleverness, she beamed and rushed and bent down to the crank. Beginning to turn the crank that lowered the cap (which was quite hard to her astonishment, she really should take advantage one of the TARDIS gyms soon), Charlotte says as everyone's focus turns to her, "It won't stop it, but it sure as hell will buy us some time!"
"Oh, that's brilliant," compliments the Doctor as he watches it go down.
From the opposite end of the vat, Jimmy reminds them, "It'll never hold her."
As the cap continues to lower, the Doctor squats down to keep the eye contact with Jimmy as he responds, "If you have a better plan, I'm all ears. In fact, if you have a better plan, I'll take you to a planet where everyone is all ears."
At long last, the cap drops with a bang. Charlotte let out a deep sigh then stood up straight.
Later, as most of them were creating a plan in a corner, including Charlotte, Cleaves, who stands by the vat, shouts to them, "The acid's eating through!" Hearing her, Charlotte turns around and quickly pulls Cleaves back as the building shakes under their feet.
The bubbling flesh pushes the vat's cap inches up and Charlotte's knees buckled as she could only stand by and watched as it happened. She couldn't remember, it was her fault she couldn't remember the thing that'd save their lives. How could she not remember?
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The lid got higher and Charlotte's heart thumped in her chest. "This is all my fault."
"No, stop that," said the Doctor as he glances between the vat and her- as he simultaneously wanted to watch the acid and reassure her this isn't her fault. The Ganger Doctor took her hand in his and said loud enough to be heard above the explosions, "This is not your fault!"
Jimmy steps forward and tried to push the lid back down, but with the acid's increasing force, of course, he struggled. Stepping forward, Dicken attempted to help him before getting pushed away. "Stay back," directed Jimmy. "One of us getting potentially hurt is enough. We don't need more."
Shaking her head, Charlotte takes a single step forward, ready to help, when the door slammed open and the Gangers Jimmy and Dicken. However, just as they did, acid splashed onto the original Jimmy's chest. Charlotte quickly caught the man and lays him on the ground as he heaves; the acid burnt straight through his jumpsuit, just around the size of a tennis ball, and opened up the skin underneath it.
"Let me through!" Shouts his Ganger self, pushing Cleaves to sit across Charlotte on the opposing side of Jimmy's head, he rests his head in his lap while his struggle for air continues.
"There's nothing we can do," says the Doctor. "The acid's reached his heart."
The Ganger Jimmy looks back down at himself. "Hang in there, mate."
"I'm quite handsome from this angle," Jimmy says in between his strives for air, causing Charlotte to give a puff of air.
Ganger Jimmy, on the other hand, barely acknowledges this. "I'm sorry. I'm the fake. Adam deserves his real dad."
"Shut up."
"What do you want me to do?" Ganger Jimmy asks him, still trying to remain calm. "Anything... just say."
"The way things are, mate... It's up to you now." Jimmy slowly lifts a hand up to his neck a pulls on the necklace around his neck, pressing it into his Ganger's palm. "Be a dad. You remember how." Both Jimmy's turn stiff. While one was paralyzed in his spot, with his original self lying dead in his lap, with his cold eyes still opened, there was nothing he wanted to do at that moment but stare at himself.
Seeing this, Charlotte closes the eyes of Jimmy for him. Jimmy takes what his original self pressed in his palm just seconds ago- his wedding band, no, their wedding band. This Jimmy lowers the late Jimmy onto the ground carefully.
"Jimmy Wicks," says the Doctor, catching his attention away from the body. "You're a dad."
He takes in and lest go of a deep breath. They watched nervously as Jimmy stood up with a new look of determination on his face. "Let's go."
---
Charlotte punched his shoulder when they recouped in the Dining Hall, it wasn't a hard one, more of a friendly punch. While Jimmy has a holographic chat with a young boy, his son, Adam, she brought him into a hug. Yes, she still has a few mixed feelings about what he said, and she'd still like to hear an apology from this Doctor, but that doesn't demean the fact she just thought she was going to die.
Of course, he hugged her back, not for common courtesy, but because there was fear on both ends. Albeit, far less on his end because he knew she was going to make it out. Because that's just what she does... All those moments she was separated, and no matter the situation, she always seemed to make it out- even if it meant escaping within a brink of life.
"Charlotte?" He said to her, once realizing something critical.
"What?"
"The original Jimmy isn't here."
She pulled away and tried to reply as calmly as possible, but when she sees Jimmy she sees Gwen. And when she sees Gwen, she hears what he told her. This Doctor hasn't apologized yet, she knew what he meant, but apologizing properly means too much. She stuffed her hands in her windbreaker as she went over the events in the acid room with him, making sure to not mention the fear of her life.
"It's not your fault," he told her, but they were just four words this Doctor keeps repeating without more.
He was about to say more when the Ganger Doctor, who still is believed to be the original, says to Adam, "Daddy's coming home today, Adam." As the child beams, the hologram-call ends.
The Doctor's face quickly turns to the grave expression once the call ends. "Now we need to move."
---
The Doctor's Ganger leads them down a hall, but when they see Jennifer at the end of the tunnel he halts, everyone else doing the same as they watched her. "Run," he tells them, but no one listens as they watch Jennifer elongate. "Run." Not even he began running as her necks turns long and arms bending down as if ready to run on all fours. "Run!"
He backs up and began sprinting in the other direction. Seeing Jennifer turn into this monster, Charlotte did not need to follow his example as she runs in the way they came in, running into another room as the Monastery began creaking around them- setting a reminder of their time running out.
In the new area, they ran into, both Dickens tried to close the large, metal door with no luck. "We have to stop her," one of them said to the other. "This door doesn't lock."
"No, but the far one does." Without time for opposition, the original Dicken ran into the hall. Shortly after the slam of the door was paired with his shrieks. The door doesn't stop Jennifer, and she can be heard getting closer and closer.
The original Doctor, while everyone, including Charlotte, was pressed against the door to stop Jennifer, looks up to the ceiling. "Here she comes..." the ceiling creaks and out of nowhere, the TARDIS falls at his feet. "Oh, she does like to make an entrance!" He opens the doors and shouts out, "Move!"
"Go, go, go, go!" The Ganger Doctor pushes Ganger Dicken off the door and towards the TARDIS, he follows the order and runs to the ship. Now, he was met with Charlotte, who stood on the other side of Dicken. "Char, go!"
She stood still with her jaw clenched. "No. You were there when I thought I was going to die, alright? You're going to get a proper goodbye, 'cause I know what you're going to do." The Doctor left the side of the door and hugged her tightly, and she did the same. Charlotte could only just reach her head above his shoulder, something she thought of for a millisecond, before realizing he was bent down slightly.
"Are you sure there's no other way?" She asked him as he pulled away. "Are you really sure?"
He nods, raising his eyebrows for emphasis as he responds with, "Charlotte, remember, this is my choice to do this. There's nothing you can do to stop it. And remember I trust you, okay? I trust you, so much." She nodded, and then he kissed the top of her head before pushing her towards the TARDIS. "Go!"
Charlotte heads to the TARDIS but stops beside Rory when Amy still stands beside the Doctor, "Now's our chance," she told him.
"I have to stay." Jennifer hits against the door, causing his focus to be deterred for a second. "Hold this door closed. Give you time to dematerialize."
"Oh, don't be crazy. Okay, what happens to you?"
"Well, this place is just about to explode. But I can stop her."
"Both of you can survive this, okay?"
The other Doctor steps out from the TARDIS, standing in front of the two. "Or perhaps you think I should stay instead..." His nose scrunched up. "Mr. Smith?"
"No, of course not." Standing in front of him, Amy says, "But look, this man, I've flown with him, you know? And you are amazing and yeah, I misjudged you, but you're not him. I'm sorry."
Charlotte gave a deep sigh. "Amy, bless you, they switched shoes!"
"I'm the Doctor," said the Doctor facing her.
And the one at the door, who stands alongside Cleaves' Ganger says, "And I'm the Flesh." Another clash at the door caused the door to shake.
"You can't be." Amy shakes her head, looking towards the Ganger Doctor. "You're the real him."
"No, I'm not, and I haven't been all along."
"What?"
The original speaks up, "I'm the original Doctor, Amy. We had to know if we were truly the same. It was important, vital, we learned about the Flesh. And we could only do that through your eyes."
Amy rushed over to the Ganger Doctor, hugging him until Jennifer crashes against the door again- creating a crater in it. He pushes her away, and just as Rory called out her name, ran back inside the TARDIS alongside a very hesitant Charlotte.
She stops in the doorway to hear the original Doctor laugh. "Doctor! Hurry up!" She called out. Stepping fully inside the TARDIS, for what felt like the first time in a year, she watched in amusement as Dicken walked around the console with his head held up to the ceiling, hardly taking in the size of the ship.
Just seconds after entering, the rest of the team enter after her and they were off for their first destination.
---
They just dropped off Jimmy with the red balloon for Adam on a cold beach. As the father met his child, Charlotte stood beside the Doctor, waiting impatiently for his apology. She could feel the tickle up her spine, a sign she'll leave soon. But first, she wanted to hear his apology, not his Ganger's.
"It wasn't your fault, none of this was your fault," is how he started off.
She lets out a sharp exhale. "You've been repeating that so much. But what do you mean by that?"
"I just haven't been able to finish what I want to say, with all that's happened." He told her, staying completely serious while Jimmy greets Adam in the background. "All of this, the death, all of them are catalysts for future events... Whether you know about them or not. My point is, you can't see yourself as useless because, if that person, were to be alive, they could change something."
She nodded along, but there was still that nagging voice in the back of her head. "But I already have? Is that bad?"
He shook his head. "Never... You just can't save anyone as their death could be deeply important to how the universe functions. But, every now again, someone can be saved and the universe just goes around it... Doesn't make them any less important."
A breeze passes by while the tide comes in. Charlotte stuffs her hands into her pockets as she adds, "I get that. But why did you say you didn't trust me?" Yes, the Ganger Doctor answered this perfectly, but as she's stated before, she wants to hear it from him too.
The Doctor exhaled dramatically. "In those days, I hated you. I was suspicious when you got there, and I was poking at your every action and turned it into something worse than it was because I didn't trust you. Right after I said that I was held accountable, thankfully." He pauses before saying, "I was wrong. Trusting you is one of the best choices I've ever made, and I swear I'll never say something like that again. It's just stupid."
"Alright. I forgive you."
His face scrunched up. "That quick?"
"Well, one, your Ganger already explained it."
"Then why did I!" He exclaimed although he didn't seem totally offended.
"Two, I'm about to leave, so I had to cut it short."
He nods solemnly before quickly remembering something and getting ecstatic, digging in one of his inside pockets. "Oh, Charlotte Mary Thomas-Bolton, I have been waiting for this moment for years." The Doctor grinned to her as he pulls out a cord of twine with a key at the end.
That enough caused Charlotte to gawk. A TARDIS key, an actual TARDIS key. It was about time. She took it from him and proudly put it around her neck.
"So, does that prove I actually trust you?"
"Yep." The pins began poking at her skin, and she knew she was about to leave any second now. And in that last moment she'll have with him before the Battle of Demons Run, she said to him, "Doctor, good luck." And at the end of the final syllable, she was forced to leave once again.
---
Reappearing was getting easier for her. It was still an uneasy sensation of being pulled from one place to another, but it wasn't necessarily painful. For six hours, after reappearing in early-twentieth-century Chicago, she was taken hostage by a gang- As she was caught eavesdropping on a meeting. Of course, as she was cuffed to a chair, it was the sonic-less Tenth Doctor they brought in and handcuffed to a chair behind her after the six hours.
And, half-an-hour later, Donna Noble became a hostage too... Being dragged in with her mouth duck-tapped, but the tape could only muffle shouts. For some reason, she had the sonic screwdriver and they easily escaped from the handcuffs and returned an alien crown the gang got their hands on to its original planet, Solspir. That's how the Doctor and Donna both became hostages, from trying to get to it before them, but were too late (Donna escaped their clutches but was caught soon).
The Doctor deduced it must've been on Earth a thousand years through the rust, stolen during one of the last Solspirian voyages to the planet- which ended only because of the loss of the King's crown. Charlotte found it interesting, but once she caught up with the two of them, she had to catch some sleep.
Seven hours later she woke up in a sweat. At one point that night Charlotte was having an odd dream, she was at work in her old job at Shoe-World when Taylor Swift walked in and stole everything, even the counters. The celebrity left the store and Charlotte was left alone in what looked like a post-apocalyptic shop.
And then the damned doors opened on their own, a white light from the plains of Midnight flooded the store and burned everything in its wake. It got closer to her. She didn't move, her knees buckled while it got closer and closer. And then it touched her feet, and then she woke up in a sweat.
Knowing there's no way she could get any more sleep, she sat up off her bed. After a few minutes, and changing, she left her room to head to the TARDIS kitchen. After eating breakfast, Charlotte headed to the library, as she wanted to read a little.
However, she quickly forgot of that plan when she saw the Doctor sitting on a couch that's set in between two rows of unbelievably high bookshelves. His legs were kicked up on a coffee table as he read a book.
"What're you reading?" She asked him.
Putting his finger in as a bookmark, he held it up as he says, "She Was Nice to Mice. How did you sleep?"
Charlotte rubbed her hands over her face. "Not good." She answers, moving over to sit beside him on the couch. "Could we talk about something that hasn't happened to you yet? I can be vague about it." After they caught up, she learned they just got back from the planet of the Ood.
He set the book down onto the coffee table and turns to her. "Vaguely, but yeah."
"Okay, okay..." she drew out, trying to think of how to begin it. "Well, I- we." Charlotte sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Something happened and I got burned, really bad, and it hurt so much. It just," her voice cracks, "it hurt so much! It felt like forever, and it hurt so bad."
As she started to tremble, the Doctor went over to her side, putting an arm of her shoulders as he listened.
"And then..." She pauses as she got choked up. "When I was asleep, I had this dream... I was there again." Her sobs finally escaped- because of the pain she was forced to remember, the pain that made her scared more than the fear she was forced to endure when she didn't know how to they were going to escape the overflowing Flesh vat.
Charlotte was terrified of many things; spiders, failure, rejection... but nowadays she's finding herself becoming more scared of death. If it meant saving someone else, she'll put herself at risk, but if she has a choice, both her and them would make it out unscathed. And she realizes that the source of her fear of Midnight isn't the pain but the looming figure of death.
"I didn't want to die," she sobbed out. "I don't want to die!" She's twenty-seven and in the last month has had two major threats to her life (something she definitely wasn't used to before). Charlotte cries out those same five words repeatedly, each becoming less audible as she said them in her sobs.
The Doctor shifts in his spot to face her, bringing her into a hug, which she returned, as he tells her, "It's alright. Deep breaths." As her sobs began to cool down slightly, Charlotte missed the looks in his eyes from over her shoulder.
It was the look that told he was scared of the same, too. After what the Ood said earlier, he's becoming aware of this regeneration's time left. And of course, he doesn't like it, he refuses to even believe it. The Doctor hugged Charlotte tighter as he thought of the pain she had to endure (as a human, nevertheless). And if there was one thing he was sure of right now, it was how he isn't looking forward to the moment she told him of in the slightest.
________
Next up: The Sontaran Strategem (Charlotte Verus the Sontarans)
GIF FROM lecompanion ON TUMBLR
A/N: I was going to write this in my message board earlier but I knew this has far more traction so:
First of all, if you are going to any of the protests please stay safe!!
If you can't go to protests, donate! If you can't donate, sign petitions! In my bio, I have a link to a website with a crazy amount of them
Recently Charlotte reached 6k reads+over 300 votes and that's so crazy to me!!!! Thank ya'll so much from the bottom from my heart. Charlotte has been an idea in my head since November of 2018 and it's mindboggling how far she's gone since the beginning (at first her name was going to be Kennady lmao). Of course, we are still 4 episodes away from being halfway through but things are gonna get more interesting in the 2nd part.