Chapter Text
A charm of powerful trouble
2005
There is nothing worse than two people who have just worked out they’re in love with each other. People who are mad for it; all hands and mouths and the sort of long, mortifying stares that could only be broken by bits of themselves in each other’s pants. Nothing helps here. Even if every grand declaration or gormless smile proves that you were, in fact, right.
Leadworth was small. It hadn’t taken Mels long to realise that a Leadworth where her best mates were shagging each other senseless was officially too small. There were books about that sort of trauma.
And everyone, Mels reasoned, needed a holiday from their parents, no matter how much she loved them.London might be big enough for her. At least for now.
***
Henricke’s emporium (“All The Clothes You Don’t Know You Need!”) was the sort of place that saved its finery for up the front. The staff areas were tatty and unwelcoming, and Rose Tyler shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair left out by the manager’s office, where Stella waited. Smiling, probably. Stella Parsons had gone to school with Rose’s mum, but seemed to forget she’d ever been anything other than a middle manager, responsible for the future of all the girls that had left A Levels for blokes or fame or other fragile things, and then felt superior to them. And Rose really needed the job. She twisted in the chair.
The door was flung open, someone’s laugh spilling out of along with a fresh burst of florescent light. “You know, Stel,” the voice said, bright and young and just a little too loud. “You’re right. I don’t think I’m suited for this line of work. But that doesn’t stop you from being an evil hag,” There was a brief pause, and Rose watched as a slight, grinning figure, with the most amazing boots she had ever seen, eased her way out the door. She turned, giving an obnoxious little wave.
“Thank you so much for your time. Call me, yeah?”
Rose stared.
The girl looked down at her, eyebrows raised as dark, thin braids fell about her face. “Who the hell are you?”
“Er...”
The girl shrugged, shaking her head. “Well, sweets,” she said, voice shifting to a creaky whisper, “Whoever you are, I just got you a job. They’ll take anyone who isn’t me.” She beamed, reaching out—and if this wasn’t the weirdest part of that morning, Rose had no idea—to adjust her headband. The girl’s fingers were deft and fast, careful not to snag her hair. She rocked back on her heels, gaze serious.
“Yes,” she said, apparently satisfied. “Much better. Good luck!” Her smile was back, and blinding even under the over-lit glare of the corridor. “And a tip: don’t look so gormless!”
“I am not gormless.”
“Yeah,” said the girl. “That’s more like it. Catch ya.” Another wave, and she was gone.
“Rose?” Stella’s voice, rather more faint than usual. “Rose Tyler?”
Resisting the urge to check her hair, Rose went inside.
***
There was an art to shoplifting. Shareen would go on for hours about it—all the ways you could get three sets of clothes and a stereo out safely without looking like you were knocked up with a cube. Rose had never been all that interested, even bored stupid in fourth form when even the shinier kids were doing it; she’d hung back with Mickey, who’d never get caught with anything in case it got back to his Gran. But she knew enough.
She’d seen enough, in her months at Henricke’s. Slick moves. Stupid moves. Daft kids and the real desperates, who made her want to turn away and pretend she was blind.
What Rose saw now was blatant. Blatant and mad. She watched as a girl wandered lazily through every aisle that might be picked up by Rose’s cameras, snatching up random items and managing to slip them under her coat. It didn’t seem to matter where she rifled the items from: a little from lingerie; the obligatory sweets section; outwear; the aisle meant for the sort of middle aged ladies who liked to buy their husbands argyle-on-nylon, or socks printed with kittens. She kept her face away from the cameras, but every move shouted, “Thief!” with the camera picking up it all refusing to form it into any sort of sense.
She was about to go find Stella, or detach Dawn from the awkward customer who kept asking for exchanges, when the careless shoplifter turned her head, looking straight at the camera positioned in the lingerie aisle. Braids. Triumphant expression. Great teeth. Mad, mad eyes. And she winked.
The girl from Rose’s interview.
***
Her name, apparently, was Mels. She was wearing a fedora.
“I was wondering what I’d have to do to get your attention.”
Rose pulled a wispy, red Kylie Minogue bra-and-knickers set from her hands. “Are you stupid, or what?” somehow, Rose found she couldn’t keep a laugh out of her voice. She busied herself setting the items back on their shelves.
“Oh, really? I thought that was genius. Good thing you check those cameras.”
“It’s my job.”
Mels only shrugged. “Jobs are hard, Rose Tyler.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Very mysterious. Oi. I saw that—” she snatched a camisole from Mels’s grasp, seconds before it would disappear—hanger and all—beneath her loud, large-hounds tooth wool coat.
“Can’t help myself. Listen, what are you doing tonight?”
“Not taking you to the police station?”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, I have no idea.”
Mels smiled. “Then you should introduce me to your mates after your shift ends, and we should have an absolutely ridiculous time.” Laughing at Rose’s narrow-eyed scepticism, she added: “Look, it’s been a terrible week. You know those dates, yeah? The ones you go on for a laugh, or because in a certain light he had kind of a sweet face, and so you go against your instinct that says he’s really just a—”
“—waste of space?”
“I was thinking more like charisma vacuum. Or, well, plastic. Anyway, you go, and then you find yourself stuck for a whole night with Plastic Man, and he doesn’t even pay the bill.”
“Did you?”
Mels smirked. “Come on, Rose. I just came by to see if you actually got the job here. I’m still new to London. I could really use a night out.”
“Do you always beg this hard?”
“You bet.”
Rose looked at the clock. “Well, if you’re still around at the end of my shift. I’ve only got another hour.”
“I promise I won’t distract you,” said Mels, smiling and slipping a lipgloss from the centre display into one pocket. “Much. Just...get on time. It’s important.”
***
Nothing ever just takes an hour.
“Lottery money,” Stella had said, pushing it into Rose’s hands as the lights began their flickering death-throes. “Go find Wilson.”
And so Rose found herself back in Henricke’s grimy back rooms, looking for the one bastard too lazy to pay up.
H. P. Wilson, CEO. A pale blue door. Silence.
Come on. “Wilson?”
Her bag was heavy, cutting through the thick fabric of her hoodie, making her think of old school books and back strain. Rose shifted her weight, wincing as the hum of the lights seemed to fill in all the spaces in her thoughts, making her teeth ache and the rest of her itch to be outside.
“Look, I can’t hang about—” Would Mels be there? What would she do? “They’re going to close the shop…”
Nothing. Rustling caught at her from a side door. Scowling, she walked towards it. The man was probably doing unspeakable things with mannequins. Trying to shut down that part of her imagination, Rose went through the badly lacquered red doors, calling his name again.
When the doors slammed, a part of her wasn’t even surprised. “Stop trying to mess me about.”
Mannequins. Dummies. Dummies in rejected shirts and faded floral dresses. Long, jointed arms and narrow hips and sharply planed faces that glowed a slick, half melted white. And one of them stepped towards her.
“Okay, you got me. Very funny—!”
Slam! A scream that was half laughter rose up in her throat. Of course the door was closed. The door was closed. Rose ran to it and pulled anyway, because it was that or stay under all those lights and just watching. And there were more of them. They creaked as they walked, just the same as when she and the others put clothes on them upstairs and had to move their limbs.
Their moving limbs.
“…whose idea was this?” Rose backed up, straining to see someone human amongst all the mess. “Was this Derek? Derek, is that you?”
Stupid. There were boxes in her way. Racks and shelves and she tripped, because that was what happened when you were trapped in a basement with zombified plastic. Rose’s thoughts took on Mickey’s voice, the way it was when he thought they were playing video games together and he was really just being a patronising git and laughing as she failed to blow up the right things. She stumbled. A hand snatched hers in the dark, hard and warm and dry. Rose flinched. She felt lips against her ear.
“Run!”
The mannequin’s head exploded. Sound came later, along with the acrid reek of melting plastic. The hand around hers slackened, and she heard a long, low whistle.
***
“You lot are rubbish.” The familiar voice was breathless behind its drawl.
Mels stood before the wreckage, wreathed in smoke. She was balancing a hunting rifle, and Rose, for one mad minute, wondered where on earth she could have hidden it.
Braids swinging, Mels turned to glare at her. “Go on, get a move on,” she said. “You, too, sweets.”
Rose remembered the other voice. The hand on hers, tightening again even as she tried to pull away. It belonged to a tall man in a black jacket, who was shaking his head as if Mels was a far stranger thing than walking plastic men.
“She’s right,” the man said, looking down at her with a broad, dazzling grin. “Running is still good.”
***
He had them hurting down corridors, through doors that seemed much more agreeable now that he was staring them down. Mels was on her other side, the gun slung over her shoulder, one hand reaching for hers. “Hello again, Rose Tyler,” she said.
“Rose Tyler?” The man looked at her, still grinning. “Good name, Rose Tyler. Who’s your friend?”
Mels smirked. Even while running. “The one with the gun,” she said.
“The gun filled with birdshot?”
“This is from Leadworth. You can’t get any other kind in Leadworth. I can improvise.”
“Well then, scat! I have this.”
“Not likely, and that was dire.” Mels laughed as she kicked out at an oncoming lurcher. The service lift was up ahead.
“You’re both talking over my head, is what you’re both doing,” Rose snapped. A plastic hand reached for her arm, another for Mel’s hair. All three threw themselves at the lift doors. It was a difficult fit, Rose frantically pressing buttons.
The hand shot through the closing doors. Mels grabbed it. The man grabbed Mels. Rose winced something popped and the two of them fell back against her, clutching at a now amputated, and inanimate, limb. The man took it from Mels with another grin, throwing it Rose.
“…you pulled his arm off. Both of you.”
““Plastic,” said the man.
“Rubbish,” said Mels.
“Do I know you?”
“Not a clue, Big Ears.”
Panting, Rose flourished the hand. “So,” she said, loudly. “What was it, then? Was it students?”
“Why do you say that?” The man tilted his head, quizzical.
“Well…to get that many people dressed up and being silly…it’s got to be students.”
“That was a good answer,” he grinned.
“It was the wrong answer,” sighed Mels.
“Oi. It was a good answer. Well done, Rose Tyer. Now.” The lift opened, and he shoved the pair of them out the doors. “They’re not students.”
“They’re living plastic--” said Mels.
“—controlled by a relay in the roof, which would be a huge problem, except that—”
“—I’ve got this.” Mels pulled something shiny with brass and full of ominous ticks out of her pocket, just as the other man did the same.
“Snap,” she said, faintly.
The man’s face darkened, and he took Mels’s arm. “Right. You’re staying with me and we both might die in the process, but that’s all right. You, Rose, you go on home to your chips and beans and telly and—”
“You’re patronising her, you know.”
“—shut up. Just run.” The man pulled Rose back into the warehouse part of the shop, leaving Rose staring at the doors.
A click. The man’s head peered around. “My name’s the Doctor, by the way. Rose Tyler, run for your life.”
Rose ran.
This meant that she did not see the Doctor’s face change, manic grin shifting into surprised rictus, as he felt the barrel of a hunting rifle against his back.