Doctors, Ponds, and Pocket Watches

Chapter 13: Silence

"Finally," Alice muttered, running a hand through her hair, and continuing to mess up her already horrendous hair, as she spotted the trapdoor high above them. "But how are we going to do this?"

The answer, it seemed, was for the Doctor to climb up on Rory and exit the trap door, then for Alice to copy the Time Lord, then the two of them pull Rory up into the mist coated courtyard.

"Amy. Where's Amy? Amy?" Alice asked, looking around.

"I can't see a thing. Just as well I brought this, then," Rory said, producing a tiny penlight, but the Doctor pulled out a small lightsaber from his jacket pocket.

"Ultraviolet. Portable sunlight," he said with a shrug at the wide eyed look on the two humans faces.

"Yours is bigger than mine," Rory complained.

"Let's not go there," the Doctor advised.

"Please, for my sake, do not under any circumstances, go there," Alice agreed.

...

"If we cancel now, we lose the deposit on the village hall. The salsa band," Rory said, talking about his and Amy's ill-fated wedding, but breaking off suddenly. "Oh."

"Oh?" Alice asked, spinning around to see what he was looking at. The Doctor and Rory were staring at a metal chest in front of them, and she hurried over as the Doctor opened the lid.

Alice recoiled in disgust and shock. Inside were piles of shrunken vampire corpses,

"What happened to them?" she asked.

"They've had all the moisture taken out of them," the Doctor supplied.

"That's what vampires do, right? They drink your blood and replace it with their own," Rory said, brow furrowed.

"Yeah, except these people haven't just had their blood taken, but all the water in their entire bodies," the Time Lord explained.

"Why did they die? Why aren't they like the girls in the school?"

"Maybe not everyone survives the process," Alice said. "I mean, it's got to be dangerous, and..." She sighed, and closed her eyes. Rory, however, flapped his arms about angrily and glared at the Doctor, storming away, before turning back.

"You know what's dangerous about you, Doctor? It's not that you make people take risks, it's that you make them want to impress you. You make it so they don't want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around," Rory accused. The Doctor bowed his head. Alice wanted to say something to one of them, but couldn't get the words to form. Because Rory was right.

"Who are you?" asked the voices of the vampires. Alice looked up quickly, jumping to her feet as six girls entered through the doorways around them.

"Oh, bleeding hell," Alice muttered. "Vampires. Couldn't anything be simple?"

"Never," the Doctor said as the two of them met Rory by the trapdoor.

"Guess I shouldn't complain. More fun like this," Alice said. The Doctor waved his UV light at the approaching vampires.

"We should run!" the Doctor said, barely holding off the vampires. "Run!" he shouted earnestly. Like always, they did, sprinting after the Time Lord. And, like always, running after the Time Lord, really just ended in disaster.

This particular disaster was crashing into a glass window. The Doctor still seemed to be very uncoordinated. Alice briefly thought he looked a little bit like a drunk giraffe as he smashed through the window. The good news was that he was relatively unhurt. The bad news was that the glass was rather loud and the Doctor had shouted,