Fic: [Doctor Who] The Mystery of the Cannibal Cave

[intrikate88]

Title: The Mystery of the Cannibal Cave
Rating: PG
Characters: Eleven, Amy
Summary: Cannibals, smugglers, and Old High German swearing- when Amy Pond meets a skinny boy who calls himself the Doctor, she finds that life takes a turn for the decidedly more interesting.
Notes: This fic was inspired by the first set pictures released several months ago, of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan filming on a beach near Cardiff. It struck me how very young they looked, and I wondered if the theme of Eleven's era was going to be that everyone was actually eleven years old, but it also made me think about all the adventure books I read when I was that age. Books with misfit children, mysteries to solve, buried treasure, delightful villains, kidnappings, and people who said "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!" All of these fun twists and turns were the delights of my childhood, and I continue to enjoy them while watching Doctor Who, which for all its mature themes does have a very childlike wonder and sense of adventure at its core. So that's what this fic is, an exploration of what could be with these characters, through that adventure story lens.


 

There was a girl named Amy Pond, and she had red hair, and a two-hundred year old house that used to be a coach house, and no mother. 

 

Sometimes she missed having a mother, but on the whole felt as if she was rather fortunate. In all the best stories girls didn't have mothers, and they got to find enchanted castles and go explore places; all one had to do was frighten away scheming potential stepmothers and one's opportunities were golden. And as her father was a professor of history who had eyes for Boadicea more than any female not several centuries dead and painted blue, there weren't too many worries on that front. (And if there were, Amy was desperate not to know about that.)

 

Being buried in books that looked at time in centuries, not days, Amy's father didn't always keep as close tabs on her comings and goings as he might, and this suited her. Even when he did, she generally announced when she was running away and he would nod genially and ask if she needed any snacks to bring with her. She had felt the need for a tent, with all her ramblings through fields and hills, and had asked him for it for her ninth birthday; he had bought it for her without asking why.

(It wasn't that the situation was an endless dream; Amy had a decided disdain for stealing, preferring rather to charm people out of their possessions, but she had found it necessary early on to budget her father's money in certain directions, such as Tesco, rather than allow him to believe he had all of that to spend on manuscripts. And what the good people of the Ayrshire community described (not especially kindly) as her "unique fashion sense" was really nothing more than being able to walk out the door without a motherly reminder that a girl should not really mix an argyle sweater with the paisley skirt that she found in the attic; eventually a series of jumpers and tights in all colours made her choices somewhat uniform.)

All this being the case, she generally felt little need to go straight home after school, preferring instead to find more interesting places to ramble. There was the beach, of course, right by her house, or sometimes she got on the train and took it for as many stops as she could before the ticket inspector kicked her off for having no ticket; and if she went inland instead, there were lakes and hills and very, very many sheep. And, one day, in the small wood behind her house, she found a blue police box and a boy who was also dressed as if he didn't have a mother. He appeared to be in possession of an apparatus built for shearing small unconscious sheep somewhat in the method of an apple corer, or perhaps it was the beginnings of a new type of bicycle.

"Why don't you have eyebrows?" Amy wondered, standing a bit back and balancing on one foot.

"Did they not grow in this time? Such a tricky process, growing into someone else, don't you think?" The boy wired a quartz crystal into the tip of the central rod.

 

"What is that thing?" Amy asked.

"It isn't anything," said the Doctor, not looking up at her as he bent over the thing. It was balanced on a wheeled office supply cart. "Not yet, anyway. It might turn out to be a specified-range radio telescope when it grows up. Might be a lump of something that shoots electromagnetic blasts and interrupts everyone watching EastEnders. I never really know." He straightened up and glanced over at her, a smile twisting up in the corner of his mouth. "Isn't that exciting?"

Amy was slightly more skeptical. "Maybe if it blows up. Is it going to blow up?"

That merited a full grin. "Entirely possibly!"

"Oh, alright then. When are you going to try it out? An' what do you want to do with it, anyhow?"

"So many questions. Do you always ask so many questions?"

It was something her teachers always said to her. And her neighbors. And Mrs Macauley down at the shop. And anyone she tried to be friends with. "Sorry," she muttered, coming back down to standing on two feet with a bit of a thump.

The Doctor looked at her, perplexed. "Whatever for? Questions, I love questions. How else do you learn anything?"

"There's always sneaking into places after everyone goes home and finding out what they hide in their desks," Amy suggested.

The Doctor flailed his hands in some sort of obscure gesture before grabbing her by the shoulders. "You," he announced, "are probably perfect. Want to help me find out where this damn thing will work? It'll probably take a long time, we'll travel the world, see the sights, feed the dolphins. If you like that sort of thing."

"Sure," said Amy. "I run away from home all the time. I have a bag packed, usually."

"Any hatboxes?" the Doctor asked suspiciously.

"Why on earth would I have a hatbox? I'll be right back. You'll wait for me, promise?"

"Pro-" was all he got out before she took off running, and finished, "-bably."

 

-

It took just under a minute for Amy to reach her house and another twenty seconds to get up the stairs, into her room, and pulling the rucksack off the hook on the back of her door. In another minute, she was standing in the pantry, tossing in whatever food seemed useful. "Made you tea," said a voice to her left.

"Can't, Da, I'm running away."

"I know. You need tea if you're going t'be out in the cold, Ames. It's in a bottle."

Amy looked up at her father, suddenly grateful. He was not usually good at taking notice of much that she did, or, in fact, much outside of his books and university work. She knew he loved her, and probably even more than his students, with whom he spent more time and energy. She knew he had gone to examine the artifacts of Sutton Hoo many more times than he had ever examined her homework, and that was all the way down in London. She knew that he knew all of this, and did not know how to begin being an involved father if the instructions to do so didn't have to be translated from the Anglo-Saxon.

"Thanks, Da," she said, and impulsively gave him a hug. "I don't know when I'll be back. Not in time for tea."

Her father squeezed her, then stepped back. "I won't starve. Go on, then, don't waste daylight."

One minute and twelve seconds later, she had returned to the blue box in the wood, and the boy was nowhere to be seen. Amy said a word that she'd seen written on the wall of the boys' toilet at school and had instantly known she'd get into trouble if she said it in front of a teacher. She said it again, which didn't really make her feel better, and blinked away the burning moisture in her eyes. This was just like last week, with Mary and Zanna and Ryan asking her to go to a movie with them. They'd then told everyone she'd waited at the chip shop for them for three hours, which was absolutely not true.

Amy leaned against the blue box, and slid to sit on the hard ground. So much for that adventure, and a shame, since the boy seemed really weird and it probably would have been fun. Now she would have to find somewhere else to go. There was a house a few streets away that had been unoccupied for years, but she had seen lights and heard noises coming from it the other night. Perhaps that was worthy of investigation.

She decided this was a good course of action, and braced her back against the box to stand up. This did not go as anticipated: the box opened, and she fell directly onto her back, looking up at the boy. He pulled at his jacket. "What are you doing down there?" he asked with genuine bewilderment.

"What were you doing, hiding from me in a stupid box?" she countered. She rolled forward and to her feet as he quickly pulled the box shut behind him and locked it. "It wasn't funny."

 

"It wasn't meant to be." He held up a bag, protruding with a few metal arms. "I had to get something to carry this thing somehow, din't I?" He started striding away. Amy followed. "So, where to first? We need someplace with a clear view of the sky, not too many people jabbering away, maybe even a topographical concavity to focus-"

 

"The beach," said Amy. "It even has caves, which, depending on the direction, might be the exact sort of topographical concavity you're looking for."

 

He looked over at her as she trudged along beside him. "You knew what I was talking about?" he asked, as if this was new to him. Maybe, Amy thought, it was. Suddenly she was inspired to keep knowing what he was talking about, at least until it stopped being surprising.

 

"I know you were being difficult on purpose. My da's a linguist, so I pick up some things here and there. I can swear in Anglo-Saxon and some dialects of Old High German, too." Her teachers sometimes remarked that her body of knowledge was eclectic, which was a word that she did know if not in that context, and she eventually gathered it was a way for them to say that she was advanced in some things and completely failing in others. It was supposed to be the nice way of saying such a thing, but Amy didn't think it was nice to make people seem stupider by obscuring language.

 

The Doctor murmured something; Amy picked out the words muoter and foltrunkan and friudilin. "I don't know that about my mum, haven't seen her in years, and for all I know that is her job," she said.

"Clearly," the Doctor said, "we should run away together more often, don't you think?"

Amy grinned at him. "Wanna see what I brought?" He nodded at her, so she stopped and reached around for her pack. "Well," said Amy, dropping to the ground and sitting with her legs crossed, leaving the Doctor to follow suit, "I thought that if we were going to have a proper adventure, then we would need food, since we don't know how long we'll be gone. I found some biscuits in the pantry, chocolate ones, and then when Da saw what I was doing he made me bring a thermos flask of tea."

 

"And I have a packet of crisps, two Kinder Buenos, and a plastic bendy straw," added the Doctor, pulling them from his pockets, along with a length of string, a stone with a hole in it, and a sock.

 

"I don't see how we could need much more, even if we're gone for days. Somebody could always give us things, anyway, if we run out. Unless we need a tent. Have we officially run away yet? Or do we still have time to get my tent?"

 

"We've run away already," replied the Doctor firmly. He tugged at his bow tie. "Besides, I've got... things. Lots of supplies. If we need anything we can always go back there."

"In your box. Why did you paint it blue?"

"Easier to find, don't you think? What else is in that bag?"

"A map. Torch, notebook, a spyglass I found, two pairs of socks. A lighter." She shrugged. "And some other stuff, just what I've found to come in handy while wandering."

 

-

 

"And one of these caves, it's called Sawney Bean's Cave, is the cave of a family of Scottish cannibals," Amy said, with great relish. "They were incestous. I think. Incessantious, maybe? Nobody tells me what it means even though I have a few ideas, and Da turned funny colours when I asked, so it must be something interesting, but I keep forgetting to look it up. They used to drag people off the road and eat them." She paused and considered. "I wonder if they ate their horses, too. I would probably eat the horses, if I was a cannibal. Just for variety."

They had been strolling along the shore for an hour, often letting the water splash over their shoes and making a general mess of themselves. The Doctor's black boots seemed more suited to these sorts of adventures. When Amy complained that her socks had got soaked for the third time and maybe she shouldn't have worn the Chucks, the Doctor looked surprised. "I used to run around in those all the time, had loads of them! They're great!"

"I still think they're a bit rubbish, at the moment." She sank into the sodden sand up to the knot in her shoelaces.

 

"Let's try that cave," the Doctor suggested, pointing at a space in the cliffs, a dark hole facing the rough sea. "Fascinating geology, examples of both igneous and sedimentary rock, and glacial activity, probably, a lot more recently than whenever North America was getting washed away. Well, not washed away. You know. Tectonics. And they forced the plates together, wrinkling the sheets of rock so they'd fold like that. Like sheets," he said, "or cheese," he added, more obscurely, and rapped his knuckles on the overhanging stone.

 

Amy was fairly certain it wouldn't all come down on their heads, but asked, "How often do these shifts happen?"

 

"Oh, they happen all the time. Mostly very slowly, though. Unless you've been having lots of earthquakes around here lately?"

 

"Not really," Amy replied, and kicked a rock.

 

"Onwards?" The Doctor motioned at the blackness before them. He held out his arm, a strangely old and old-fashioned gesture, Any thought, for a boy of his age. Apparent age, she amended, if him being an alien wasn't a joke after all. That was hardly a determinate, though, as Amy had been known to tell people her mother was a diplomat in Dubai.

 

"Onwards," she said, and looped her arm through his. Together, they stepped into the dark.

 

Immediately, they fell forward off the ledge upon which they which they had not realized they had been standing, dropping about three feet onto a relatively flat, sandy space and landing rather harder than was called for. "Ow," stated the Doctor, and pushed Amy off. "Good thing you had something soft to land on, at least," he added with some asperity.

 

"Yes, wasn't it?" Amy chirped, rolling to sit up and feeling around for her bag. "I know I packed a torch somewhere in here..."

 

A steady blue glow began to light up the cave. "Don't need one," the Doctor said.

Amy made an indistinct noise of approval and interest. "Where did you get that?" she wanted to know.

 

"Oh, had it forever," he anwered, standing up and brushing grime and gravel out of the knees of his trousers. "Stop looking like that, you can't have it."

 

"You can wave it over here to see the map. And I didn't want it anyway," Amy added, looking away before yanking the map from her bag.

 

"Last time I was deep in a hole in the ground I got to chat with the devil while my friend blew up a black hole," the Doctor said, off-handedly.

 

"The last time I was in a hole in the ground like this I gave my lunch to an archeopteryx."

 

"Are you sure it was an archeopteryx? Because I have some friends down in Cardiff that have misplaced a pterodactyl, they look very much alike. Well, a pteranodon, strictly speaking."

 

"Maybe." Amy put a hand on her hip, the hand that wasn't holding the map. "Don't you think I'm just taking the piss, then?"

 

"Are you?"

 

Amy crossed her arms.

 

"I've seen weirder things than you've mentioned. Before breakfast, most days. Why shouldn't you give your lunch to an archeopteryx? Why should it really bother me if you haven't?"

 

"Well," Amy said, "lots of people don't believe me, that's all."

 

His expression softened -almost to the point of being too sympathetic for someone close to her age; someone with that sort of sad understanding should be at least twenty years older- and he pulled at his hair. "Aw, just because you like telling stories? And going off to explore places? I do that all the time!"

 

"An' I can tell it's won you loads of friends," Amy scowled, and stamped ahead. Even she wasn't entirely sure why, only it didn't seem fair that he could just come in and say everything that gave her problems was just fine. Not when she had to live in a world where it wasn't.

 

A scattering of stones behind her let her know the Doctor was picking up his pace to catch up to her. "Not really," he said. "All my friends are gone, moved on to different things. I'm on my own now."

 

Amy stared straight ahead. "Me too."

"Nah, you've got a mum and-"

"Mum left a long time ago, and Da's buried in his books. Nobody else really wants to talk to me. I don't know what you call that, but I call that alone."

There was a pause. The Doctor patted Amy on the shoulder, awkwardly, and said, "Did you know that about five hundred million years ago, Scotland was in the Southern Hemisphere? It's continental-drifted this far, in only five hundred million years!"

"Really?" said Amy, interested, and very ready to leave the topic of her personal life. This was all that was needed to prompt her companion on to a long discussion on the continent of Laurentia, a broken-off piece of Pangaea, and the geological variations of the region, and the uses of stones found in various parts of the world. Amy let the boy go on ahead, babbling about quartz aggregates and their frequencies. She wished she could simply not care about things like he did, but she was stuck in Ayr. And its nearest towns. And occasionally Glasgow. And that one time in Newcastle that her Da didn't know about. This boy (what was his name? Amy suddenly realized she didn't know) wasn't from Ayr or anywhere nearby, or she would have known him already. He seemed somehow detached from all the things that made her life difficult.

As he darted around a corner to examine something, Amy stumbled, and found herself caught before she could fall forward. Her backpack slid off her arm, tumbling to land in against a wall. A dirty hand covered her mouth, keeping her from crying out in surprise, and a thick arm wrapped around her arms and midsection. She wrenched to pull herself free, but her slight frame was not enough to make a difference. She was dragged away, the arm around her releasing her momentarily, and then there was a sharp crack on the back of her head and everything went black. Well, blacker than the cave already was.

 

-

 

The Doctor didn't know what to say to the girl, so he resorted to not saying anything at all and instead investigating how the quartz in the cave would impact the focus of a signal, with the frequencies that it would amplify. He bounded ahead, tugging at his bowtie, knowing on some level that he was not exactly being very comforting. He was, he knew, but a lonely girl in a lonely country was nothing he knew what to do with, and the people that would remind him not to be rude were a world away. He'd be rude all he liked to tiny ginger women.

That reminded him, he hadn't actually got her name. He turned around, his hand still resting on a vein of quartz.

 

She wasn't there. "Ginger girl?" he called, tentatively.

 

No answer.

 

He walked back around the corner to where he had last seen her, and there, he found clues. Their footsteps together, then his going ahead. Hers, rather than accompanying, instead were dragged off to the side. Adjusting the sonic screwdriver for more light, he aimed it at the footsteps. "Intriguing," he murmured. "Abduction?" Then the footsteps disappeared entirely, and much larger bootprints took their place. It appeared that she had been carried.

 

He followed the bootprints as the passage narrowed and then grew wide again, opening into rooms he would not have expected to find. The spaces were small, but his lithe figure (that was one thing that hadn't changed, the skinnyness) fit through wihtout any force. Finally, he began to hear faint voices, and dimmed the sonic screwdriver light.

 

"Whadya bring that back for?" demanded an English voice, dripping with loathing.

 

"She was wandering about in the entrance, she would ha' gone straight to the supplies an' it's too close to risk, yeah? I'll leave her tied up 'til after we're gone, an' she'll never know. Neither will anyone else. It's fine."

 

"You don't think she'll figure out you tied her up an' left her on a pile of counterfeit computer crap, then? You're an even bigger idiot than Martin said you were. Any idea what you're going to tell her if she wakes up? Dead girls mean police, or do you think you can just bring any trouble down on us you like?"

 

"Shut up, Martin told you to keep an eye on the crates, same as he told me. I don't care what happens to the girl, so long as she doesn't get between us an' the ship. Cave's big enough, she can stay down here with all the other bones."

 

There was no answer to that, but it was the kind of silence that formed around a withering look and a general sense of disgust, and he heard shuffling footsteps going in opposite directions, patrolling the cave for any other intruders.

 

The Doctor peered into the cavern, then pressed back against the wall as the smugglers' torches swept around the cave. There were stacks of crates, big ones that could be used for anything from smuggling laptops to guns, and a rickety table and a few matching chairs set around it on the most level patch of ground. He didn't see any sign of the ginger-haired girl in this room, and wasn't inclined to look; the men were the variety that were employed to ensure illegal activities were not discovered, and he had met (and run from) their type many times before. But he could see a dark spot on a far wall that hinted at a passage to another room, and the acoustics of the men's voices indicated that the area beyond was larger than this. That, he thought, might be where they were keeping certain valuable things, like smuggled goods and young women.

Young women of the sort that were jeopardy-friendly and had names he should probably learn if he ever wanted to vaguely pass for a civil human being in a bad light. A memory came to him, unbidden- Rose bumping into his chest behind Queen Victoria's back, reminding him he was being rude again- and with a pang, he felt himself missing her. But it was a strange feeling, no longer so immediate as it had been in his last body, but like the empathic connection with a character in a movie. He pushed away the feeling, knowing it to be not especially relevant or important, just one of those quirks of regeneration one had to deal with. Usually he dealt with it by not thinking about the past at all: it had worked for several hundred years, after all. But lately he hadn't been able to avoid dodging past connections. Maybe he was getting old.

Maybe that still wasn't relevant.

He slowly scraped along the cave wall towards the opening on the other side of the cavern, careful to stay out of the lights of the thugs. They exited the cavern through the passage by which he had entered it, looking closer to the entrance for any intruders, or perhaps for the ship that was picking up their crates. The Doctor brightened the sonic screwdriver again, striding over to the other passage and sliding through the narrow opening just as the sound of footsteps alerted him that at least one of the men was returning, and mumbling something about having forgot a packing list. He deposited his rucksack of equipment in an natural alcove in the rock, then crept along silently, not wanting to attract attention, but sure that the girl had been taken back this way. He had just entered a larger cavern at the end of the passage when he found it necessary to dive to the side and behind some more crates. The man that had been looking for the packing list emerged from the dark, and flashed his torch over in the Doctor's direction, but didn't see him. The light moved away from him to the end of the row of crates behind which he was hiding, and rested on the figure of the girl, lying curled and unconscious on the ground.

"Still out," the man muttered to himself, as the Doctor looked for a way to move without being seen. He dropped entirely to the ground from being merely bent over, as the thug turned and left the cavern; he waited a second, then flicked the screwdriver back on and directed the light towards his companion. The light revealed her to be not unconscious at all, but glaring with a directness that startled him. Pulling himself forward on his elbows, he wriggled towards where she lay, her hands bound behind her and a dirty bandanna tied in a gag. He untied the gag first before working on her wrists, as he thought it a tragedy that anyone be kept from talking: it made his mouth hurt just to look at her.

"By the way," he commented, examining the knots, "what's your name? I don't think we ever got to that. I'm the Doctor."

"Thedoctor?" she repeated, inaccurately. "Is that some sort of variant of Theodore? Or did your mum want to call you Doctor and forgot to leave off the definite article?"
 

"Neither," said the Doctor shortly, wiggling the cords loose and pulling her wrists free. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Amy Pond." She stuck out a hand, stretched her wrist for a second, and then held it out for him. Amy and the Doctor shook hands solemnly, and then Amy peered over the crates. "They've headed for the entrance, I think. I heard them talking about a ship that they're waiting for."

 

"They're smugglers," said the Doctor. "These crates are full of computers. Shall we see if there are any other egresses?" He paused, then added, "Those aren't actually-"

 

"Big white birds, I know what 'egress' means," interrupted Amy. "Isn't smuggling illegal? Shouldn't we be, I dunno, doing something about them?"

 

"I can't be expected to know the intricacies of shipping laws in small countries of out-of-the-way planets," the Doctor complained. "Why should we get involved? Don't you ever do illegal things, like riding on the train without a ticket?"

 

"Best way to get around. But smuggling! It's like a step away from being a pirate. I've always wanted to be abducted by pirates," Amy added, contemplatively.

 

"And look, now you have!" The Doctor beamed at her. Her glare softened, and her mouth twisted in a half-smile. "Come on, let's leave, and we'll decide what to do when we're not trapped by not-quite-pirates." He scanned the cavern over the boxes, and, seeing no one, stood and pulled Amy to her feet.

She looked around, then pried the lid off the nearest crate. "Look at all this stuff in here, couldn't we connect some of it to make an explosion? It would be a diversion and would thwart their plans."

The Doctor looked at her sideways. "Do you like to make explosions?"

Amy considered this. "Not as a lifestyle, but it's a good hobby."

Interesting choice of words, the Doctor thought, and thought of Ace (talk about feeling removed; that was so many lives ago) as he glanced down at the computer components, tucked safely in their foam packing. He frowned, and picked up a circuitboard. "That's not right..." he murmured. "It's 2010, right? These sort of connections shouldn't be here, not until after mining starts on Mars, and... well." He cleared his throat. "I mean, other planets could make these, but not here, not this early. We have to stop these smugglers."

"I said that already," Amy pointed out. "I might have said it twice."

"Yes, but now I know I have to do something." The Doctor sighed and looked tragic. Amy lifted her eyebrows, not impressed, as he went on, "And I was so hoping not to get involved with anybody this time, just see the sights, it'd be like a holiday."

"You're involved with me," Amy replied, stung.

The Doctor quirked a smile at her and reached sideways to squeeze her hand briefly. "No, you're involved with me. I meant getting involved with people who will think I'm trouble. Do you mind getting into lots of trouble? Because I usually do. Get into it, I mean."

"So do I."

"What a coincidence!" He adjusted the sonic screwdriver, and pointed it at the farthest crate. "I do hope you're ready to run. Because..."  The first crate popped with a bright plash of sparks, and he rapidly pointed the sonic screwdriver at each of the adjacent crates. "-we have to, now."

Amy leapt to the side as the crate next exploded, and darted past the Doctor towards the passage. Flinging herself around twists in the path, she glanced back to make sure the Doctor was following her, miraculously without colliding with any stalagmites. The next cavern was empty, and they dashed through it, the Doctor only scrabbling briefly to a stop to gather his bag from the alcove in which he had hid it, dig in his pocket for the stone with the hole in it, and hold it against the sonic screwdriver's tip. When he pushed the screwdriver's button, all the crates in the room popped and smoked into burnt uselessness at once.

"Wow," Amy breathed, eyes shining.

"It's a certain type of stone from Mars," he explained. "It amplifies the frequency and reacts with the Martian electric components. What are you standing around for?"

Amy spun around and headed back down the passageway down which the Doctor had followed the marks of her being dragged along by abductors. Along the way, she tripped over her backpack. With a small noise of satisfaction, she picked it up and slipped her arms through the straps without pausing. Close behind her, the Doctor was obliterating the trails she had left, only to nearly collide with her when they emerged from the tunnel and she slid to a halt. "She's loose!" came a shout from the right, back towards the entrance of the cave. Amy said something rude in Mittelhochdeutsch.

"This way!" said the Doctor, veering left and prodding Amy as he passed her.

"That's back into the cave, we'll be trapped!" she answered, hesitating for a moment and then running after him when the footsteps from the entrance came pounding towards them, the light of torches much brighter than it had been before. "How do you know there aren't any bottomless pits or something?"

"I don't!" the Doctor said, dodging a stalagtite. Amy ran faster to stay closer behind him, within the bounds of his clanking rucksack and the glow of the sonic screwdriver. If he collided with something or fell somewhere, she might be able to know in time to stop, or at least land on him again. She nearly did so when he suddenly stopped and bent to the ground. After avoiding flipping over him entirely, she stood by the wall, looking back at the way they had come with some urgency. The Doctor had pulled the single sock from his trouser pocket, and was scooping little handfuls of dirt and pebbles into it.

"What are you doing?" Amy hissed. "He'll be here any moment!" The sound of footsteps grew louder.

"I know," answered the Doctor, and smiled slowly. He stood up. Amy stood back, and then moved around a nearby corner and peered out. Their pursuer came around the bend in the passageway, and was met with a the momentum of a sockful of pebbles, right between the eyes. His eyes crossed, and then he sank to the ground in an awkward heap. "Generally I don't resort to violence, but I didn't see us making any progress with him so close behind," the Doctor said to Amy, conversationally. He swung the makeshift cosh around in a circle.

Amy shrugged. "I don't mind. All's fair, he knocked me in the head too." She brushed some hair out of her face, then paused with her hand still raised. "Do you feel a draft?"

The Doctor sniffed with his nose in the air, like a dog, and Amy rolled her eyes. Swinging her backpack around, she pulled a lighter from the front pocket. When she clicked it on, the flame flickered sideways. "There's an opening up there," she said, pointing into the darkness.

"We can't go back to the entrance with the other one there," the Doctor said.

"Onwards, then."

The Doctor stepped over the prone smuggler's body to join her, and together they stepped forward towards the tiny breath of air. As the Doctor increased the glow of the screwdriver, they saw white patches up ahead reflecting the light. They became clearer, and then what they were became obvious to both of them at once.

"Are those... real?" Amy said, coming to a halt.

"I don't see why anyone would leave fake ones back here, it's a bit of a walk," the Doctor replied.

"But.. but they're skeletons. Human skeletons. Actual human skeletons."

"Old human skeletons."

Amy, fascinated though slightly horrified, crouched near the first of the skeletons. "Oh my god. I think I see teeth marks. This really is Sawney Bean's cave."

But the Doctor had already moved on, shuffling carefully between the skeletons sprawled on the ground and propped against the cave walls. "Amy?" he said. "Don't scream."

"Why-"

And he turned the sonic screwdriver off, dropping them into blackness. It was complete and enveloping, and even after the small glow of the sonic screwdriver, was too comparatively dark to see anything at all. The Doctor could hear Amy's breaths, short and nervous. In a moment, however, their eyes adjusted.

"Is there really a green light there?" asked Amy.

"Yes, it's some sort of signal, I think."

"Perhaps a signal to stay away? One that all these skeletons ignored?"

"Well, perhaps, yes. Still, we never know until we try and get the flesh torn from our bones and eaten, right?"

"Very motivational, Doctor."

"Thank you, Amy. Shall I turn the light back on?"

"If you don't I may beat you to death with a femur."

The light came back on. Amy found that she was about to tread on a ribcage and drew back; the Doctor kept shuffling towards the back of the cavern, passing by skeletons growing more and more dismembered as he went on. "I can see a crack back here," he said, and Amy started following his path, carefully only stepping where he had. She trod on a finger bone, which crunched under her foot and made her wince. The Doctor reached the fissure in the rock. "Oh, clever, very clever. Two things in one. Amy, there's a ladder to get out of here, calcified into the rock!"

"And what's the other thing?" she asked, coming up next to him.

"That's a little more problematic," said the Doctor. "It's a beacon. It's built in the same design as the circuitboards, so it's probably owned by the same people. And it's signaling to them, right now."

"Didn't we just destroy their stuff...?"

"Yes, don't you think that's a good idea to get out of here?"

Amy didn't wait but grabbed onto the highest rung of the rock ladder she could reach and began pulling herself up. There's wasn't much to see, looking up, but she thought she could see a tiny sliver of sky in the chimney. The Doctor followed close behind, and wordlessly they pulled themselves hand over hand to the roof of the cavern of skeletons, and then through it to the narrow part of the chimney. It became narrower and narrower, and Amy, who wasn't usually a claustrophobic person, began to worry that they might be stuck, that maybe they couldn't go up. But then there were no more rungs to reach for, and she found herself collapsing onto horizontal ground with relief. As she gulped for air, the Doctor popped up and then sprawled beside her, his tweed coat covered in dust. But she could see he was covered in dust, could see everything about their surroundings, because they were sheltered by an overhanging rock, just a bubble in the earth, only accessible by a thin crack in the rock.

After a moment of catching their breath, Amy suggested, "We should get going before the aliens come back. Or the smugglers find the ladder. They are aliens, right?"

"The smugglers aren't. They're human, as far as I know. But whoever is signaling the beacon is alien. And I'm alien. And you're alien to the aliens. There's a lot of aliens around."

"You don't look alien. But prove it to me when we're not running from anybody, yeah?"

"I think I'm always running from somebody, actually..."

Amy didn't answer him, but got up and peered carefully out the crack in the rock. It was very bright after the cave, and faced the ocean and an expanse of rocky beach. There were no shouts, so she pushed her bag out through the crack, waited a moment for any sound, then climbed through herself. The Doctor quickly followed: he wasn't inclined to have Amy kidnapped twice in one day because he let her out of his sight. As he pushed himself out into the daylight world, he glanced regretfully at his bag of equipment; it seemed such a shame that he hadn't managed to try it out yet. Satellites were safe from him this afternoon.

"So now what?" Amy said, shading her eyes from the brightness. "We've destroyed the alien computers, we've gotten rid of at least one of the bad guys and kept them from smuggling, we've escaped the cave. What do we do next?"

"Get chips?"

"You said you get into trouble a lot. Don't you have a plan?"

"No, never. What good are plans?"

"Not as good as improvisation," came a third voice. Amy spun around, only to back into the other man from the cave. He had stepped out from behind the stone, and in one movement that seemed too smooth for his rough appearance he wrapped an arm around Amy, pinning her arms to her sides, and drew a knife from his belt. "You the kids that've been meddling in my business?" he demanded. "Where'd Liam go, then? I didn't see him come back out. Can't say it ain't possible that he found himself a quiet corner to enjoy his flask in, but now all the computer parts I'm waiting to ship are missing, too." He placed the knife against Amy's throat and looked meaningfully at the Doctor. Amy squirmed and pushed back against her captor, trying to keep away from the sharp blade and the tetanus it might very well carry. "Want to tell me what you did with the crates, boy? It'll keep me from hurting your little friend, here. You kids think you can play grown-up games?"

"Let me go!"

"You have no idea what a bad mistake you're making," the Doctor told the man holding Amy. "Let her go. Because hurting her is not going to get your crates back, but I make sure that the people that hurt my friends regret it."

The man laughed. "Oh, I doubt that. Scrawny thing like you? Or her? Try threatening someone who couldn't use you as a toothpick." The amusement dropped as quickly as it had come. "Better answer my question. What'd you do with the crates? You were in there long enough, and now they're all gone, and I'm going to start cutting into this pretty little girl here if you don't start talking."

"Oh, I can talk," the Doctor assured him. "I can talk about all sorts of things, especially about those crates that I know don't belong to you. What happened, did you find them in the cave? Were there skeletons in those caverns, too? Should've taken that warning then, don't you think?"

"Oh god, I am actually going to get my throat cut," commented Amy, with some warmth. "Stop talking, you idiot."

"What does anything about how I got the computer parts have to do with you?" the smuggler demanded.

"Oh, it has nothing to do with me," the Doctor replied. "Has everything to do with how many people I've met in my life, which is more than you've met. I know about the H'Coulies and their software empires, their factory colonies of computer-builders. I know that they occasionally attempt to colonize off-planet, too."

"Stupid stories aren't going to get you out of this one," the smuggler warned. "One last time or I cut her wide open. What did you two do with my crates?"

"And I know one more thing about the H'Coulies," the Doctor added, ignoring the smuggler. In fact, not only was he ignoring what the man was saying, but he wasn't even looking at him at all, rather behind him. "I know that they're very, very hungry."

The smuggler, whether from being easily distracted or from some ignored sense of danger tingling in his scalp, turned his head to see what the Doctor was looking at. In doing so, he loosened his grip on Amy, and the Doctor sprang forward to grab her. The smuggler didn't even hold on, but was transfixed by the sight of the materializing H'Coulie as it shimmered into the visible spectrum.

It was a distinctly aquatic-looking creature, very much like the pictures of anglerfish that Amy had seen in oceanography books. However, it was about fifteen feet tall, and crossed the ground quickly on four short legs, reaching the smuggler with disconcerting speed. Amy and the Doctor scrambled to get away from it and its giant protruding teeth. The smuggler, however, did not start running in time, and the alien leapt forward, gobbling him up and tossing him back with a snap of its teeth.

A moment later, it spat out an entire human skeleton, followed it with a knife that clanged against the stones, did something like a yawn, and sauntered off towards the main cave entrance.

"I think we just solved the mystery of Sawney Bean's cave," Amy said, turning away from the unfortunate white thing heaped on the beach. She swallowed once, twice, and then took a deep breath. "Can we please go?"

"One last thing, sorry," the Doctor said. "See that shimmer in the air, there, just over the water? That's it's ship. And it's here to colonize."

"It's here to set up colonies of those things?" She pointed towards the hole where the H'Coulie had disappeared.

"Actually, no, it has no interest in earth. It's an economic colony, they want to introduce their own technologies to computers, and then take them over. You know how reliant people are on their computers? Most of Earth would be under H'Coulie control in a matter of hours. So we have to get rid of them."

Now Amy eyed the sack the Doctor had been carrying all along. "Please tell me that thing is going to be useful in bringing down a H'Coulie ship," she said.

"Well, it might activate its engines and force it to leave the atmosphere. Or it might just blow up. I can't really tell."

"Well, we never know until we get the flesh torn from our bones and eaten, do we? How do we set it up?"

In the end, they positioned it inside the crevice from which they had emerged a few minutes previously, aimed it at the hovering ship, and the Doctor brought the two metal ends of a circuit together. They held their breath together as the device warmed up with a worrying static sound, and then the sound stopped. They waited. Then, with a crackle and a flash of light, the H'Coulie ship became visible, and promptly shot off into the west, like a bottle rocket. They were packing the disruptor back in its sack when the Wookie-like cry of an abandoned H'Coulie came echoing out of the depths of the cave. Amy turned to the Doctor. "Run?"

"Run," he agreed, and, their bags clattering and clanging on their backs, they ran down the beach, between the cliffs and the sea. They were nearly a quarter mile away before they saw the H'Coulie emerge from the cave, bawl derisively at the sky, and scamper back inside the cave. They didn't stop running until they could head inland, back to the wood where the blue police box was standing. "In here!" the Doctor ordered, and Amy, without thinking, ran inside. He followed her, and shut the door.

"Can't it break through the door, if it decided to follow us?" Amy panted.

"Armies have tried to break through that door with no luck," the Doctor said, with deep satisfaction. "We'll be fine."

"Great, then it'll just swallow the box whole, then. Did you see the size of its mouth?" She looked around at the vast expanse of the control room that fit inside of a box four feet square. "Oh, this is neat."

"I think so too. We can go other places in this box so the H'Coulie can't find us at all. We can go anywhere, space, time- anywhere. I just travel, all the time. You could, too, if you want. It's pretty much like this all the time, with the running."

"Travels in time?" she said. "So my Da wouldn't even miss me if I was gone? I mean, he doesn't notice much, but I think he would notice if I left for a few months."

"We could come back to any time you wanted," the Doctor promised. "What do you say, Amy Pond? Want to run away?"

"I always do," she told him, and grinned.


----------------

The Legend of Sawney Bean's Cave

The house in which Amy lives.

What an anglerfish and therefore the H'Coulie look like.

Comments

[andi-horton.livejournal.com]

YAY PRICKLY ANTAGONISTIC RELATIONSHIP!

I will be disappointed to no end if that's not how it actually is, between them.

There was something very Lindy/Harry about the casual, running-away, like-to-blow-things-up aspect of their relationship, and I quite enjoyed that. I also loved the cosy vein of mistrustful scepticism that seemed to colour the bulk of their interaction; I could definitely believe them as two people very insulated in their own brand of adventuring having to accomodate, however reluctantly, a newfound fellow adventurer.

Honestly I'd have been perfectly content just to read about them talking to each other the whole time, but the plot itself was more than a little delicious, too. Smugglers always make for a wonderfully entertaining read, and with the possibility of incestuous cannibals who actually prove to be giant anglerfish from space, well . . . I had an awful lot of fun here, darling *smooches*

Now I must run away to work, and that is not nearly as fun . . . I hope you are doing wonderous things at that test this morning! Can't wait to hear all about it :)

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Haha your icon is perfect for this story. And you're right, they're quite a bit Harry/Lindy, and I didn't even really think of that! I know it is a tad vain to be a bit of enamoured of one's own fic, but I really enjoyed writing them this way and I very much hope I caught a bit of what they're going to be, and have had some slight apprehension mixed in with my excitement, in wanting them to be not unlike this.

Now I think I better go make a post about that exam.

[bardingtide.livejournal.com]

I like it.

Well thought out and well written.

Brilliant

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading, I appreciate it!

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Can't read and review now! But I will! Oh yes! Because I know it will be GREAT

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

I promise it is great, come back, come back! :P

[orange-crushed.livejournal.com]

Oh, my.

Can I even tell you what this is like for me? This is like reading Edith Nesbit and Edward Eager by flashlight. This is magic. I want to run away with Eleven and Amy and live sometimes in a tent and sometimes in the TARDIS and always with a thermos packed by my unsuspecting paterfamilias. The adventure is lovely and their dialogue is a great back-and-forth, but more impressively you manage to strike that rare and perfect balance between whimsy and the genuine awkwardness of that age. That you manage to give Eleven both childish qualities and that timeless sense of "Doctorness" speaks to what a good writer you are. And, AMY!

This is gorgeous, and I'm going to be re-reading it again and again, finding new things to love.

"If you don't I may beat you to death with a femur."

♥ ♥ ♥

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

♥ ♥ ♥

I am so happy because you got exactly out of it what I was hoping it would be, all those adventures that you're sure you can have at that age. I guess I wanted to have them at a sort of pre-adolescence: both the Doctor and Amy are at a place where they are new and growing, but dealing with old and new connections and the urgencies of childhood and the prickly bits of young adulthood. I was so concerned it wasn't balanced enough, that Amy was too young or too old, that the Doctor was showing his years, so I'm glad you found that it came together the way I wanted it to. Thank you, thank you, thank you. :D

[marginaliana]

This is delightful! I love the way you manage to make Eleven both childlike and also still clearly The Doctor. And his musings on emotional distance were spot on. Great story.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you enjoyed it and felt that my characterization, for going in a slightly different direction than the show, still rang true and came together the way I intended it. I appreciate you reading!

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

Grrr. I had a comment and it disappeared! Where did it go? I just adored this Kate. I am one who loves ships but still prefers her Doctor and Companion stories ship free and this just makes me feel so tingly inside with adventure and excitement and oh yes, lots of running. The Doctor's sense of detachment seems spot on to me -- that this regeneration finds the memory of Rose a bit dimmer. Thank you for that very much.

The banter here is just wonderful. Amy is superb, with the swearing in old German and the discussions of continental drift and Pangea and the qualities of crystals. And poor, brittle Amy telling people that her mother is in Dubai. I find it interesting that they are referring to one another as boy and girl.

A favorite line: "Last time I was deep in a hole in the ground I got to chat with the devil while my friend blew up a black hole," the Doctor said, off-handedly.
"The last time I was in a hole in the ground like this I gave my lunch to an archeopteryx."

Amy's love of explosions was especially delightful. I don't know if the real Amy Pond will have an appetite for destruction but it is nice to see a companion with such a flair. Nice nod to Ace there.

Thank you for this. I've still not seen it. My Other Fandom Friends were over for dinner this evening and I told them that I know lots of women who have LOVED it. I'm putting it off in part because I shall fall hard to the 11th Doctor and so am forestalling the inevitable. So I may wait and watch it on the 17th because I'm old that way.

Thank you for this delightful story. I'm thrilled with it.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

:DDDD

Your review pretty much makes my day.

I am one who loves ships but still prefers her Doctor and Companion stories ship free

I've kind of gone that direction too; while I started in DW fandom as a big Doctor/Rose shipper, and I still do love them, I've found it a lot more interesting to write about non-romantic relationships- Donna and the Master are both especially intriguing to explore.

And poor, brittle Amy telling people that her mother is in Dubai.

After I saw the pictures of Amy in a jumper and short skirt, and knew she'd be running off with the Doctor, it seemed obvious that this was a girl who clearly did not have a lot of parental influence. Lots of fairy tales and adventure stories have dead mothers- otherwise nobody would have adventures because Mum said stay within shouting distance! So just starting from that basis, I knew that Amy would have some issues, and people with issues have all sorts of conflicts with other people with issues and characterization just kind of magically happens. :P

I already saw the ep, it was a lot of fun. It was a little strange, too, that some of what I wrote in this fic was remarkably similar to elements of the show's Amy and Eleven (and the monster: that similarity was especially disconcerting.)

So, so glad you enjoyed this! :D

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

I've kind of gone that direction too; while I started in DW fandom as a big Doctor/Rose shipper, and I still do love them, I've found it a lot more interesting to write about non-romantic relationships- Donna and the Master are both especially intriguing to explore.

Of course plenty of people make the Master/Doctor relationship shippy -- which actually of any of them, I can sort of see, even though I really don't do slash. I can see that one more logically than Rose. I think I'm just too old for Rose. I just see the Doctor, by this point in his life, being simply beyond that sort of attachment. Oh, and I meant to say that I love that I love momentum XKCD icon. LOVE it.

And of course your story is akin to the show. You are just that brilliant that way and saw things in the character from watching the trailer over and over and over. I have, btw, been recc'ing this all over the place, err, well, Twitter (I think) and over on NFFR.

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't really do slash either, but thunderemerald and I had a long and interesting discussion about The End of Time episode and it's strengths and weaknesses, which turned into a discussion of the Master and Doctor's unique relationship. (http://intrikate88.livejournal.com/247600.html?thread=673840#t673840) And yes, I can understand not relating to Rose, and the way the Doctor would relate to her; I can see why he initially needed her, after the Time War, to help him regain his sight of the universe as a wondrous place. But that's a chapter that's closed, now.

PBS had a public-programming-is-awesome type commercial on the other night that was singing the XKCD I love everything song and I was shocked and delighted.

EEE thanks for recommending the story, I appreciate it.

[metonomia.livejournal.com]

This is amaaaazing!

A bit odd, having watched The Eleventh Hour, but so good! I love Amy being so 'eccentric' and smart and wryly witty and prickly because she's learnt she has to be...but not with the Doctor!!!

Such a fun read! I adored all the geology tidbits and random mumblings - the Doctor is spot on and I'm picturing them being all adorable and adventuresome together and it's so fun! The whole piece reads very reminiscent of various children's stories that I love - I'm getting huge flashbacks to The Boxcar Children, somehow, and that's hugely enjoyable.

Thanks so much for writing this!

[intrikate88.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading- I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'm really glad the style of children's adventure stories came through; I was really trying to give it that feel, and it seemed it worked. Where the characters begin really lend themselves well to that sort of genre of story.