6pm came just as Cook finished setting the dinner table in the dining room for 3 people. Lady Christina, The Doctor and himself seeing as he was an integral part of everything that occurred within the manor walls. The sound of wheezing engines broke the silence and a warm gust of wind blew the swan like origami napkins from the place settings and into the pea soup warming on the serving sideboard. Cook huffed with resignation as the dining room door flew open and Lady C came bustling in in her dressing gown and pyjamas, not wanting to give the new lady Doctor anything to fancy about her seeing as she had snogged her once when she was a man! Waiting with baited breath for the Tardis doors to open and slightly unnerved that all she was thinking about was that kiss! She gave a sideways glance at the sideboard and pulled a confused face.
“Cook, why are their napkins in the pea
soup?”
“Erm, no idea MI ‘Lady, must ‘ave been
Hugo. I’ll flog the silly old git later”
“Well, I’m not eating it. Go fetch the
steak whilst I greet the Doctor”
Cook nodded and left the room mumbling under his breath. “If by steak yer mean fish ‘n’ chips from the chippy down south street then yeh alright”
Cook left and the Tardis doors opened and an old man stepped out looking very frail and slightly confused, not only at his surroundings but at the woman in front of him who seemed to be dressed for bed.
“Hello, did you call? I’m the Doctor! Well, what is it girl?”
Christina stared slightly open mouthed
for a bit and frowned, trying to respond to the dodgy looking pensioner in
front of her feeling slightly nauseous as she tried to push the image of that
snog out of her mind before she spoke.
“You’re the Doctor? Really? Oh dear,
what happened? I know it’s been a few years since we last met but has it really
been long enough for you to have aged so much and you’re a man again I see. Did
you get my message, the one about the key?”
Unknown to Christina, phoning the time
vortex to reach the Doctor was a very fractured experience in that there were
so many versions of him zooming about in space and time that it was impossible
to know which version of him you would get! And, unbeknown to her, she had
reached the very first version of him, a man so old and yet so young by
comparison that he had never met nor heard of Lady Christina de Souza before
and in fact in his time she hadn’t even been born yet!
“Oh, that was you was it? Yes, I got the
message. It’s the year 2021 isn’t it? Very futuristic I must say although not
as advanced as I imagined. Still using a basic cellular device for contact when
its very easy to establish mind to mind connections, you just need to
concentrate more. If you’re looking for the Omnia Clavis then you’re out of
luck, it was stolen from me some time ago. It is strange though because as soon
as I received your message the Tardis locked onto the Omnia and brought me
here, to this house and in this time. It is said that the key will only present
itself when an acceptable trade is offered for it, so what do you have my dear?
Christina stared somewhat confused as the old man rattled on in what
seemed to be a very old-fashioned dialect and offered him one her of best
educated responses…. “huh?”
“My dear, what have I stumbled into? It
seems the human race has travelled backwards and not progressed forwards. I am
the Doctor, the original you might say and by the look of confusion spreading
across that pretty face of yours I would say you were not expecting me but
possibly a newer version of me, is that Correct?”
Christina nodded
“Your primitive communications devices
found me in the time vortex, it is how we travel through time and space and on
a day when I myself was looking for something valuable to me so the two
connections have been made and here I am. You called me and I arrived. That is
how it works but not in the order one wishes it would. Are you in possession of
an eternal diamond by chance? One you wish to trade for the Omnia Clavis? The
key to everything?”
Understanding slightly more than she originally did, Christina nodded,
still open mouthed and possibly dribbling but she managed to regain her composure
as the mention of the key.
“Yes! Yes, I have the diamond but I am
confused, the key has been in my family for years, at least 100 or so and it
has been passed down to me by my family lastly my father who left it to me in
his will. I had no idea what it was until you, or a future you turned up here 2
years ago and took it from me claiming it was some kind of key to the universe
and would only be returned once I returned to you the diamond which I had
stolen from you, namely the eternal diamond. The thing is, I hadn’t actually stolen
it from anyone at that time and I had to go looking for it and literally only
came across it last week and stole it from a jeweller last night so none of
this is making any sense”
The Doctor listened with great interest and great boredom and wondered
why he bothered to save the human race anymore when all they did was babble on
and dribble down the front of their bed clothes.
“I have no idea what you are talking
about, I would just like to know if you have the diamond? If you do then bring
it to me, if it is indeed the eternal diamond then the key shall be returned to
you”
“But you said the key was stolen from
you, so you don’t have it do you?”
“That is true but as I said before if
you had cared to listen, the key will present itself when there is a compatible
trade for it. I do not know who stole it from me, only that it was and it ended
up within your family meaning you had it all along”
No one ever said time travel was easy and the inconsistencies of jumping
time were starting to show. Nothing ever ran in a smooth straight line so
nothing ever would make sense, a situation the Doctor had come to terms with
long ago and now never questioned but one the humans would never get their tiny
brains around. Before he could insist
she bring him the diamond, the dining room door opened and Cook walked in with
3 bags of fish ‘n’ chips and large box containing the diamond which he placed
on the table and opened.
“The eternal diamond. Thought to be
alien in origin but no beggar knows. Whats’it do then?”
The Doctor stepped forward and took a closer look and smiled before
reaching out for it and placing it inside his coat.
“It is the heart of a storm on my home planet
of Gallifrey. Without the storm our crops cannot grow and we cannot feed
ourselves. It was lost during the Autumn Rains of Never, and we feared it had
gone forever and how it turned up on earth I do not know but with our last
stocks diminishing from the 5 years without the storm, we can now farm our
lands again”
“It was Cooks turn to look confused” You’d
be better off getting’ yerselves a Tesco I reckon”
Once he had the diamond safely in his possession
the strangest thing happened. The sound of wheezing engines followed by a warm
familiar wind brought another Tardis into the dining room making Cook step back
with fear and panic so he was using Lady C as a human shield just in case the Time
Lords had come to invade Earth. Instead, the door opened and a woman with a
blonde bob stepped out sinking Christina’s heart completely as she was still
hoping her Doctor, the man she had met on the bus, would one day come back for
her and take her travelling among the stars whilst they did some more snogging.
“Brilliant!” The second Doctor explained as she
looked round the room. “No 13, or is it 14? I never know but hello number 1,
got the diamond I see? That’s so cool! I knew we wouldn’t all starve to death
cos well, future stuff and all that but I had forgotten a lot of it which is
why I made a mental note to myself, bit like an alarm clock, to come here at
various points in time to set this all up. The eternal diamond originally fell
through a crack in time landing in the jewellery shop just 2 days ago. Obviously,
no one reported it stolen cos no one knew it was there but I needed a thief to
get it for me and I needed me to come at the right time to get it back, the
right time being just a few days after it was lost. With me so far? In order to
do that, I had to convince Christina here to get it for me and not try and sell
it on herself so I went back in time to another me, number 10, the handsome one
with the hair? Took a valuable family heirloom which was the key then travelled
back in time again to me being number 1, left it in his Tardis with a note
telling him what it was and that he was to keep it safe and then a few
regenerations later when I remembered cos, I do sometimes forget stuff, I went
and stole it back off him leaving him with the memory of a fabled key to
everything that would present itself at the right time to its rightful owner.
Then, I gave it to a young woman called Angela de’ Castiel as a wedding present
to the 5th earl of Norway and told her to keep it safe as it was a
magic key that could open anything which then became a family fairy story and
something of a mystery that would reveal itself at the right time to the right
person, then I stole it back off Lady Christina here 2 years ago and when I
knew it was time for her to steal the diamond, I did a bit of jiggery pokery on
the internet so she would find what she was looking for, and here I am to give the
key back now I have the diamond back! Bit of time stuff in-between but it got
the job done otherwise Gallifrey would have died long before the time war and
nothing I’d done since then would have made any difference to the universe and
the earth would have died too”!
Finished rambling she took a very deep breath and looked very proud of
herself, grinning happily as everyone including the other Doctor looked on in
complete fascination.
“What time war? What do you mean?” He
bellowed at her with etched concern that furrowed his brow in shock.
“OH bugger, erm yeah nothing for you to
worry about gramps, you’ll be long gone by then especially if you don’t get the
diamond back to the heart of the storm”
The first Doctor assuming his beloved home world was under attack, left
as quickly as he arrived without so much as a thankyou or a nod of appreciation
to lady C and her butler leaving lady C and her butler to turn to the new lady Doctor
for questioning with one of the questions from Cook wanting to know if she was
single which was met with a hard look of menace from her ladyship causing him
to lower his head in shame and mumble… “Well, you snogged her so why can’t I?”
“SO, the key? Do you have it? What does
it do exactly? I was never left any instructions as to what it opened by my
father only that he said it would open something one day when the time was
right and I would never want for anything every again, so do you have it?”
The Doctor took the key from her coat pocket
and handed it to Christina with a genuine look of remorse on her face.
“I’m sorry Lady C, it’s just a key and
one I planted in your family history as a decoy so that I could convince you to
get my diamond back. It really doesn’t do anything, it’s just an heirloom now
with a bizarre history attached to it. It is alien though, cos I got it from a
market stall on the planet Diarumous, but I’ve scanned it and it really is just
a key, probably to an old relic of a castle somewhere judging by its size but I
really couldn’t tell you where.”
Shrugging, she spied the bag of fish and
chips on the table and grabbed one for herself. “Cheer’s mate, love a bit of
fish, anyway gotta be going now, planets to save and all that. Laters!”
Before anyone could say anything more, she left and the Tardis
disappeared into the night leaving Cook rather red faced at his indecent
proposal and Christina rather red faced from her burning anger at being taken
for a fool, used and cheated out of something magical and wonderful that had
filled her head with wonder for all of her life, The Key to everything!
She slammed it into Cook’s hand with
disgust and took her own fish ‘n’ chips to bed with her to sulk away the night
as she attempted to plan a way to get the Doctor back. Cook took his own meal
into the kitchen and dumped the key in the bin knowing the bin men would be
arriving in the morning and as he sat outside the kitchen door on an old wooden
chair eating his fish supper, in the bin unknown to him, the key had stared to
glow!
The End
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