Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

Chapter 4 – Identity

Posted Oct 7, 2012

A/N

Sorry it took me so long to post this one. I'm writing it simultaneously with another story called A Slight Misunderstanding. It was taking me about a week to write and post each story, but that went to two weeks for both this time around. I hope you like the results, though. And check out the other story if you haven't already.

Let me know what you think :)

Scop Out

~`0\~/0'~~`0\~/0'~~`0\~/0'~

Just before the lights went out Jethro felt another one of those funny warbles. It fluttered through him with a, sickly giddiness that felt evil, like it could burn his soul if it lasted too long. There was a difference though the warble he had felt just before they boarded the Crusader was a weak, distant thing. This one was much, much stronger...

That was magic! Jethro thought to himself. Evil magic. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew it was magic. This wasn't one of his vid games. This was real. Something dark and brutal was casting spells and this time, it's source was...here.

The True Nature of the Old Magic within him instinctively reacted to protect him. A process which normally occurred gently over the course of several months, allowing the memories of lives long past to integrate naturally would now unfold rapidly over the course of the next two hours inside Jethro Cain's mind. The sudden integration had only happened to him on a handful of occasions out of the blur of lifetimes his soul traveled through over the past five thousand years. It was only natural that the memories from those lifetimes, when the circumstances of the world around him had been so grim as to awaken the sleeping power within him at such an early age..,. It was only natural that those memories surfaced first. It would be the only time the process would fail him.

The explosion happened a moment later. Jethro saw it unfold in slow motion. The Crusader teetered to the left, then to the right. Starboard and port, an old nautical memory told him. Everyone on board toppled with it. Everyone except for him. For Jethro, the world rocked gently, slowly enough for him to compensate, It's just adrenalin, Jethro told himself. It heightens the senses, making it seem like time has slowed.

The front cabin door opened, just a tiny crack. Time slowed to a crawl. A flash of Xtonic light seeped into the cabin with all the speed of molasses spilling down a gentle slope on a cold day. A momentary panic passed through him: His Mum and Dad, they were in terrible danger. He could loose them again. Immediately the ship's auto repairs zipped the air seal closed with terrifying speed. The rest of the world continued putter at a snails pace.

Time doesn't work like this in real life, it's impossible.

~`0\~/0'~

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe...

Mickey Smith threw his spanner at the mangle of wires and connection coming out of the machine he'd been working on and cursed."It's no good! I can't get any more power out of her."

"We keep trying!" Rose Tyler glared at her friend. "Failure's not an option. We fail, we all die! Every universe, everywhere! Is that what you want?"

"No, of course not!" Micky yelled back at her.

"It was a slim chance anyway" Harry-one of the University Wiz Kids her father had hired into the project said. "The last time a connection was made between two parallel universes it took the power of dying sun. There has to be anomaly in space and time on the other side at the exact place and time we're looking if we're to have any hope of a signal getting through."

"Trust me, if there's an anomaly in space and time in my old universe, It's going to happen on the other end of that phone." Harry had rigged up a madding mass of wires and connectors to get her mobile connected to the technology of this universe. It sort of reminded her of how the Doctor rigged his TARDIS with bits of odds and ends. It was random, but it worked.

"I hope you're right about that." Harry said.

"I don't understand. We have Cybermen, Daleks... Why aren't there any Timelords in this universe? There was another me, why can't there be another Doctor out there, somewhere? Why can't we contact him?"

"There might be another Doctor, there might not. Maybe this universe's Doctor never survived the Time War. Maybe this universe's Doctor never stole a TARDIS but stayed on Galefrey instead. All we know is that if there is a Doctor in this universe, he never contacted Earth. One little change, that's all it takes. Something happened in our universe that didn't happen in this one. Whatever tied the Doctor to Earth in our universe, that series of events never happen here."

"What changed?" Mickey asked.

Rose glanced over to Harry, then shook her head. "I really couldn't say."

"Hang on, I'm getting something." Harry said. Something had him excited.

"What is it?" Rose asked. She and Mickey ran to his council to see what Harry was looking at.

"I'm not sure... It's like..." Harry was puzzled. "If I didn't know better, I'd say time was slowing down in the other universe... But that's... That's impossible."

"No it's not! I only know one man who can slow down time. It's got to be him!" Rose ran to the concil holding her phone.

"It's got to be the Doctor. He's trying to get through!" Mickey explained.

"No you don't understand, this isn't a localized event. It's happening at the same point in time as where your phone's connected to, but not the same point. It's every point. It's the whole universe-ah, the other one"

"That's impossible." Mickey said

"Oh, it sounds like him!" Rose said. An excitement filled her that Mickey sadly realized he hadn't seen in Rose since she'd been separated from the Doctor. "Do we have enough power to break through that anomaly?"

"Just barely... but..." Harry did some quick calculations. "...Yes! We can do it. If we give it everything we've got. I think we can actually do it. You won't have much time, though."

"Rose, get on the horn. See if you can contact that spaceman of yours." Mickey bellowed.

"Already there!"

~`0\~/0'~

As soon as he thought the word "impossible" everything began moving at normal speed again. For a brief moment, the Crusader's electrics flashed on again before dying into darkness once more. Peering into the darkness, Jethro blinked, trying to make sense of what had just happened. There had been something else. Something he'd almost missed in all the bizarro mind freak of the last two minutes. Just before the last of the Xtonic photons found a surface to illuminate, Jethro thought he saw a shadow slip through the mending crack in the cabin door and into the blond lady leaning next to it. The one who had been in a panic only moments before.

"Everyone, take a torch, they're in the back of the seats" Jethro heard the hostess say. He grabbed for one, not realizing the object of his desire found his hand before his hand located it.

"Oh sweetheart, come here." Jethro reached for his mums hand and they both gave a squeeze to reassure each other they were all right. Then he turned his flashlight to the front of the cabin. He had to find the blond lady, find out what happened to her. Make sure she was okay... and wasn't...something else.

The light from his torch passed over the front of the cabin. Amongst a ruined tangle of what had been the first row seats on the starboard side, Jethro spied a crouched figure. He dropped his mother's hand to get a closer look... just not too close. Illuminated in a single circle of light, crouched and perfectly still, Jethro recognized the blond lady.

"Never mind me, what about her?" The others shown their torches to where Jethro's was pointing. It was obvious something was wrong with her, something beyond just being frightened. The rest of them were frightened. She was something... else. Jethro gave a quick glance to the Doctor. Out of all of them, it just seemed natural he would be the one who would go to meet the unknown. Jethro would be ready, just in case, of course. In the background waiting to act if something went wrong. That seemed natural, too. He had no idea what he would do if something actually did go wrong-aside from them breaking down in the middle of nowhere and the Crusader being rocked violently by some unknown creature that shouldn't exist, sending the cabin into darkness-but he'd be ready. He had to protect his parents. He couldn't fail them again. Not this time.

"What happened to the seats?" his mother asked. Jethro reached back to take her hand again.

The Doctor approached the blond lady as if he were coming up to a frightened animal and petted her hair gently. "It's all right, it's over, we're still alive, look, The wall's still intact. D'you see? We're safe."

Jethro looked at the dents in the cabin walls, the worst of which were nearer to where the blond lady cowered. None of the dents were punctured. The light he had seen earlier, it had to have been it's imagination. Barely, he was aware of the hostess trying to contact the front cabin crew.

"I'm not getting any response, the intercom must be down." A bright, blinding light silhouetted the hostess as she opened the door to the front cabin. Jethro had read up on Xtonic radiation during the trip over to Midnight. Now he wished he hadn't He knew exactly what was going o happen to him, exactly how many milli-clicks it would take those rays to melt their bodies into dust. He wondered if it was going to hurt.

~`0\~/0'~

Sunlight poured through the vast windows overhead and bounced off the rows and rows polished chrome bed rails, dazzling his eyes. The memory was thousands of years old, but it came to Jethro as fresh as if it were from this lifetime. He was maybe about three years old, holding onto his grandmother's hand, walking through an open ward in St Mungo's Hospital, just across the Thames in the original London on Earth. The place smelled of musty herbs and antiseptic. The smell would become familiar to the boy over the years.

"Bed's are full these days. I don't like it." the nurse escorting them along-a ghost who's spirit still walked upon the floors, tending to the sick- said. "Don't like it at all. At least they caught those four who-."

"Not in front of the boy," his grandmother said.. "We can talk about that later."

"Can I see my mum and dad now?" he asked. He was running out of patience. Deep in the back of his mind, he could just barely begin to hear the whispers of his parent's thoughts. Terrible, disjointed things that kept repeating. Not good.

"Let's get you taken care of first, shall we?" Grandmother said. "You can see them after."

"I'm fine. I want to see them now! I can help!" It had been four hours since the attack on his parents. Four relentless hours he'd been kept away from them.

"Calm down, child. There's nothing you can-"

"I can help! I know they're in pain, I heard them screaming. Where are they? I can help!" he broke away from his grandmother's hand and ran the rest of the way through the ward. Through a double door, he found himself in the private wing. There it was, the third door down. That's where his parents were. The three year old did what no witch or wizard of his age should have been able to do. Without uttering a spell, he opened the lock on the warded door.

~`0\~/0'~

Jethro shook the memory from his mind. It wasn't his. It didn't belong here.

The Doctor was busy doing something with one of the monitor panels. Jethro let him to it. Everyone else in the cabin was giving him their attention. Jethro kept watch of the blond lady. If the light he had seen earlier had been real, then maybe the shadow he'd seen heading for her was real as well.

"Doctor," Jethro called. He had to get the man refocused on what was important. "Look at her."

The Doctor took a moment to break his train of thought before complying, then asked the hostess for a medical kit.

"Why won't she turn around?" Jethro wondered out loud. every one else was trying to assess their situation, trying to figure out their next move... everyone except her. Why? The hostess said her name was Mrs. Sky Silvestry. It was a pretty name.

As the Doctor took over watching Mrs. Silvestry, Jethro turned his attention to other things. Something was missing... The humming? He tried, listening for the familiar noise beneath all the din of conversation, but he couldn't hear it anymore. "That noise, from the outside..."

"What of it?" his mother asked.

"It's stopped." he said. Val was happy about that. Jethro wasn't so sure. He thought about the shadow he'd seen. "But what if it's not outside anymore? What if it's inside?"

"Inside? Where?" Val asked.

Jethro nodded towards Mrs. Silvestry. "It was heading for her."

The Doctor gave Jethro a worried glance, then proceeded more carefully, with the still figure in front of him, "Sky...it's all right, Sky. I just want you to turn around, face me."

~`0\~/0'~

Sensation, body, life, Breath, in, out, blood rushing, nerves tingling, sound, sight, smell, touch, gentle touch, movement. All these things it took from the Body. The Body belonged completely to it now. The bug who inhabited the Body before had crumbled so easily under her own fear and loneliness it had refined to perfection.

"Sky?" one of the bugs said.

Talking, that was talking. The creature had successfully attuned the minds of it's little bugs to it's own. It heard their thoughts like whispers, understood their meanings, but not the rasping, screeching, squawking sounds they were making which connected to those meanings. The language they spoke was different than any it remembered hearing-when it had hearing... so sooooo long ago.

It could feel Touch on the Body from where the sound came from. It focused on the word and on the mind of the bug who wandered so close to it's aura. Sky was a designation... a name... Sky was the Body's name. Sky meant the beautiful vastness of the heavens above. It liked the name Sky. It would take this designation from the Body as well.

Sky turned to where the sound of it's name had come from, tried to make sense of the blur of form in front of it, so new it was to vision, This form was the shape of it's bugs. Sky turned, found the other bugs, one by one and heard the echo of their thoughts. Unlike the cold things that didn't move, it's bugs fluttered about and rocked back and forth. Curious... they were all curious... A Timelord would be curious. It remembered the face of it's tormentor, knew the Timelord was on board... but none of the faces on board matched it's memory, and none in particular held reverence in any of the minds of the bugs to any one particular being. It didn't even know the name of it's jailer in the language the bugs spoke.

"Sky?" the bug so near said again.

Followed the movement of the bug's muscles, it echoed back the word "Sky?"

"Are you hurt?"

Concern for well being. "Are you hurt?"

"You don't have to talk"

Concern for vocalizations may cause self harm... this one could be a nurse of some sort. "You don't have to talk," but that's exactly what I must do!

"My name's the Doctor"

Designation accepted "My name's the Doctor." Sky repeated.

"Okay, can you stop?."

The nurse was getting nervous."Okay, can you stop?"

"I'd like you to stop."

Was this the Timelord? But could such a simple thing as repetition make a Timelord nervous? "I'd like you to stop." Timelords were too arrogant to fear for themselves and to aloof to fear for other beings... except their pets.

"Why's she doing that?"

Sky looked at the new noise. Scientific curiosity. "Why's she doing that? The bald one had the arrogance of a Timelord

"She's gone mad."

Pudgy male, thinks he's an Alpha. "She's gone mad."

"Stop it!"

Fear - Mother protecting a cub?. "Stop it"

"I said stop it!"

The mother will be useful "I said stop it"

"My name is Jethro"

Designation accepted. "My name is Jethro" The cub, a mere boy who wants to play .

"Jethro, leave it, just shut up!"

Scolding a child? "Jethro, leave it, just shut up!" No, nurse Doctor didn't want boy Jethro to interfere. He didn't think the boy a boy.

Nurse Doctor switched from asking caring questions to asking probing ones.

"The square root of pi is"

"The square root of pi is" Pi? Mathematical constant for circular mechanics

"1.77245385090/5516027298167483341..."

"1.77245385090/5516027298167483341..."

"Wow!"

"Wow!" Why would a nurse need to memorize Pi to so many decimal places?

All the bugs began squeaking at once. Sky turned to make contact with each of their minds, hearing their thoughts, connecting to the sounds they made, repeating their sounds, just as it whispered their thoughts back to them. Sifting through the thoughts, trying to find he ones that inspired the most fear in it's little bugs, pushing back harder with those.

Slowly, it began to make sense of the words, sense of the faces, learning each of their names and the fears prodding their thoughts. Sky had narrowed the possibilities down:

The arrogant bald one, his assistant who was wiser than she let on. The boy who wasn't a boy. One of them had to be the Timelord. The others were unimportant. It could do with them as it pleased.

All it had to do was push at the weakest point in their minds, coax the dirges of fear awake that lie sleeping in there. The bugs would do the rest. Sky could wait. The Timelord would reveal itself soon enough. Timelords were too clever not to.

~`0\~/0'~

Jethro watched amazed as Mrs. Silvestry repeated every word of the multiple conversations around him-well, she wasn't really Mrs. Silvestry anymore, was she. Buy then, what was she?

"She can repeat anything." Even that comment, apparently. He started shouting out random numbers "5, 10, 16, 35" something less predictable than Pi. He would have chosen Tau himself.

He even tried a number that was supposed to expose demands if you could trick them into saying it. He remembered it from somewhere, probably a game.

"Six six six!*

Mrs. Silvestry repeated the number, not missing a beat as she went on to repeat the next flirt and flutter of words, following faster than before. Okay, not a demon.

As the conversations rose in pitch around him-

"You're scaring my wife!"

His mother's panic was beginning to worry Jethro-he kept his watch of the Mrs. Silvestry anomaly. Hence he was watching her when the lights went on.

"It's the back-up system" the hostess said. Mrs. Silvestry repeated... no, not repeated. She said that at the same time.

"Well, that's better" His dad said about the lights. She was synced with his dad as well.

"What about the rescue, how long's it gonna take?" His mum? Mrs SIlvestry was synced with her, too. Not just his dad. She was synced with everyone.

With all the commotion, he wasn't sure the Doctor had noticed. "Doctor..." he cut his words short as he heard them simultaneously uttered from the blond lady."

"I know," the Doctor and Mrs. SIlvestry said together.

The others soon caught on. In the confusion that followed the Doctor was going to regret his mistake of not getting the hostess on his side. He couldn't handle Mrs. Silvestry and this lot at the same time. All he did was undermine her authority. That wasn't how he was supposed to act, he was supposed to be smarter than that. Kinder, some how. Not so Authoritarian. He was supposed to be... ["There is something about his face, something is wrong about his face!"] something whispered in the back of his mind. Yes, he'd seen that face before... somewhere impossibly long long ago and very far away. Jethro just couldn't remember where.

"Just make her stop!" Val yelled.

Jethro's breath caught in his throat. His mother was screaming...

~`0\~/0'~

His parents lay in two beds, motionless. So still... so pale... The sound was weaker now than it had been during the attack, but in his mind, he could still hear their screaming. If he could just touch them, he could take away their pain, take the curse into himself. He was stronger than they were, stronger than anyone in the Wizarding world could understand. He could fight the curse off. Easy enough to do for someone of his power. He reached out, almost touching, when someone whirled him around violently.

The man who held him firmly by the shoulders glared at him suspiciously. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"I-I.. Please, their my parents! I have to help them!" He tried to escape but the man's grip was too strong.

"Like hell! No child your age could get through those wards. You're in disguise! Come to finish the job, have you? I will never let that happen!"

"No, no! Please, let me go! Please!" He struggled, but the man's grip was firm.

Instead the man gave him a rough shake. "Who are you!"

He was going to have to cast a spell, he had to get away from this mad man. But just then the door to the room opened again and his grandmother stepped in.

"Mr. Lupin! You let my grandson go this instant!" Grandma Agusta pulled him away from the man, farther from his parents. She hugged him to herself proctively, despite his squirming to break free.

"That's no boy." The man said. "I caught him sneaking in here. Who knows what he would have done to Frank and Alice."

"I wasn't sneeking! I just want to see my mum and dad!"

"He got past the wards." Lupin insisted. "Can your grandson do that?"

"Can your wards hold against a child's pure love for his parents?" Grandma Agusta had him there.

Lupin stared hard into the boy's eyes. "You're sure? This really is the Longbottom boy?"

"I know my own grandson, young man. Pollyjuice Potion can't fool me," Grandma Augsta glared at the man.

Couldn't they argue later? He had to get to his parents, take away the curs, stop them screaming. "Please! I can help them!"

"I implore your forgiveness, madam, I didn't mean to hurt the boy. It's just... with everything going on... It's hard to know what's what these days."

"And I suggest you take more care. The boy''s still weak. He hasn't fully recovered from the trauma of what those four fiends did to my son and daughter-in-law"

"Please, just let me- I can help them!"

Lupin ran his fingers through his hair. "He shouldn't see them like this. Not in the state he's in."

"I agree. It's been too soon." Grandma Agusta said. "Come along, Neville. Let's get you looked over first.. Then we can talk about your mum and dad."

~`0\~/0'~~`0\~/0'~~`0\~/0'~

A/N I hope the addition of he Harry Potter stuff didn't tank anybody as a negative surprise. I did mention the connection in the first chapter, honest! So I hope you like it and can figure out where it's going. Neville just seemed perfect for a Merlin incarnation. I've got an Idea for that story as well, but I'll take that one up after I get through these two. Ah the things Neville was up to in the background...

I did take a couple small liberties with the HP cannon to make things fit. The original cannon has Neville's parents being tortured when he's an infant. I brought it up to when he was three so he could talk and walk during the memory, and I also put him nearby when it was happening so that event would trigger his awakening. Yep, there's more on that memory to come.

Oh, yeah, and I need to add the disclaimers

I Do Not Own Merlin, Doctor Who, or Harry Potter. Hats off and long bows to the people who do.