Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Torchwood belong to the BBC and Russell T. Davies. They are not mine, nor will they ever be.
A/N: Set after 'Fear Her' (minor spoilers for the same). Written for the dwliterotica April 2007 Challenge - Easter: Prompt 29. Church Bells.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Somewhere nearby, church bells were tolling.
The sound was cacophonous, and yet somehow mournful, and Rose shivered uneasily, wondering what the noise portended.
It was close to midnight sometime in the May of 1929, and she and the Doctor were somewhere out in the middle of the Scottish countryside, with no people or houses in sight. Rose still wasn't clear on exactly why they were here – the Doctor had muttered something about the local folklore sounding interesting – and right now she wasn't clear on where the Doctor had gone either. He had simply vanished into the darkness, telling her to wait where she was, as soon as they had stepped out of the TARDIS.
Rose glanced around nervously at the moonlit landscape. The silvery light from above gave everything a washed-out appearance, but at the same time completely failed to dissolve the shadows, creating a light-and-dark patchwork effect that was confusing to the eye.
"Will you listen to those bells! Sounds like someone's getting married. But who would be getting married at midnight?"
The Doctor had reappeared without warning, and Rose uttered an involuntary shriek, her heart racing with fright. Turning, she whacked him on the arm.
"Don't do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"
"Oh, I did not. Believe me, you'd know if you were having a heart attack. And as someone with two hearts, I know what I'm talking about."
Rose whacked the Doctor again, but more gently this time – she was getting over her fright. "Fine, whatever. Where have you been, anyway? It's not been much fun standing here on my own in the dark."
"Just looking around," replied the Doctor. "I found a signpost that points to a village called Barraclough. It's that way…" He pointed off down the lane. "And, strangely enough, that seems to be where the sound of bells is coming from. Shall we check it out?"
The Doctor grinned at her, and Rose found herself grinning back. She had no idea why they should want to check out the bells, but then, why did they ever check out anything? They didn't really need a reason.
"Sure, why not?" she agreed.
Ten minutes later the pair crested the top of a small hill and found themselves looking down into a valley containing a small village. Or, at least, what used to be a village. In the moonlight Rose could see that most of the houses were at least partially ruined, some all but disappearing into the long grass and bushes that had grown up around them. Only the village church still appeared to be in one piece. And there was no doubt about it – the sound of bells was coming from that church.
Rose shivered again, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea. The whole place looked like it had been abandoned for decades, if not centuries, and even being this close was giving her the creeps.
The Doctor, however, appeared to have no such qualms. "Come on!" he said, and started down the hill.
Frowning dubiously, Rose had no choice but to follow him.
Standing in front of the church, her ears full of the cheerless sound of the bells, Rose for the first time thought to wonder why they were actually ringing. She realised, as soon as she had thought it, that it was a stupid thought. The bells shouldn't be ringing at all – the church was abandoned, after all, and there was certainly no one here who could be ringing them. But she had by now accepted the fact that they were ringing, and was instead wondering why. What event did they signify? And why at midnight? It wasn't Christmas, so it couldn't have anything to do with midnight mass. Was the Doctor right – could it be a wedding?
The Doctor was already moving away from her, looking at the graves in the churchyard, seemingly searching for something in particular. But Rose was drawn to the church itself. She wanted answers to her questions, and the only place she was going to find them was inside.
The interior of the church was covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, the result of years of neglect. But apart from that it appeared to be mostly intact – the only significant instances of damage were a hole in the roof about halfway up the aisle, and the complete destruction of what had obviously once been a very beautiful stained-glass window over the altar. These two apertures let in enough light for Rose to be able to see where she was going as she walked up to the altar. Thus far she hadn't seen any evidence to explain the ringing of the bells, and as she stood at the foot of the altar steps she began to wonder if the noise was simply in her imagination. But that couldn't be, because the Doctor could hear them too…
Without warning, the bells stopped. The silence was startling after so much noise, and Rose felt like her hearing had been muffled, so intense was the absence of sound.
But the hush only lasted for a few seconds. Then, somewhere, an organ started playing quietly, the tune quickly resolving itself into the wedding march.
With a slight feeling of dread, Rose turned slowly from her contemplation of the broken window, and came face-to-face with the Doctor, standing not three feet away.
"Oh my god, it's you. I thought…"
She stopped. It wasn't the Doctor. It looked like him – same build, similar hair and eyes. But there were also some differences – not least that he was dressed in Regency-period clothes. And then, of course, there was the fact that she could see through him. The man was a ghost.
Rose gasped and jumped backwards, looking wildly around for a place to hide. The last thing she needed was to be the target of some wrathful spook. Then she realised that the ghost wasn't even looking at her. In fact, he didn't even seem to have noticed her. He was staring straight forward with a slightly nervous expression on his face, clearly waiting for something.
And what he was waiting for quickly became apparent. Movement at the church door quickly resolved itself into a second ghost, a bride this time, wearing a simple white dress with no veil, and carrying a bouquet of wild flowers.
As the girl drew closer, Rose gasped again, this time with startled recognition. For while the groom only looked quite like the Doctor, the bride was the spitting image of her. The likeness was so perfect that she could have been Rose's twin, or doppelganger.
"Quite the coincidence, isn't it?" muttered a voice in her ear. It was the second time that night that the Doctor had snuck up on her, and Rose had to resist the urge to hit him again, since she was fairly sure that her irritation might lead her to cause somewhat more damage than last time.
"What is going on?" she hissed quietly, not wanting to attract the attention of the ghostly couple. "Why do they look like us?"
"Beats me," replied the Doctor, shrugging his shoulders. "Let's just wait and see, shall we?"
Rose tutted in annoyance – sometimes the Doctor was about as forthcoming as a plank of wood – and turned her attention back to the bride and groom. She was getting over her fright now, since the ghosts didn't appear to have registered either her or the Doctor's existence, and was therefore unsurprised to see that the couple had been joined at the altar by a priest, and that there were another two shadowy figures sitting in one of the pews, witnessing the ceremony.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…" The priest had begun to speak, and Rose watched as the bride and groom progressed through the ceremony, looking into each other's eyes with so much love and devotion that she felt like an intruder into something extremely private. She held her breath as the priest asked if there were any objections to the marriage, but neither of the witnesses spoke out, and Rose sighed with relief. It would be such a shame if this marriage wasn't allowed to go ahead.
All the same, every time she looked at the couple standing at the altar, Rose couldn't help but feel a slight sense of awkwardness. The bride and groom looked so like herself and the Doctor that she couldn't help the inevitable associations.
She knew how she felt about the Doctor – the time she had spent with him was the most precious of her life, and she felt closer to him than she had to anyone except her mum.
And yet, at the same time, there was still distance between them. The Doctor was such a private person that she knew very little about him. Sure, she knew that he was the last of his kind, and that his planet had been destroyed, something he blamed himself for ceaselessly. But what did she know about him? What did she know about the man himself? He had made a veiled reference to being a father 'once', but that didn't give her much to go on. How many kids had he had? Had he been married? Had he been in love?
Rose wasn't fooling herself. What she really meant by that last question was, did he love her? She knew how she felt about him, but she was completely unsure as to how he felt about her. Oh, she had her hopes, which were fed every so often by a look or a smile or a passing comment. But she didn't know for certain. Just how important was she to the Doctor?
"Do you, William MacArthur, take Sarah Addlestone to be your lawful wedded wife…" The ceremony was nearing its conclusion, and Rose smiled as the ghostly Sarah looked up at William, preparing to say the words that would bind them together for as long as they both should live.
However, as the priest finished his question, and Sarah opened her mouth to speak, any words that she might have been about to say were drowned out by a sudden loud crash at the back of the church. And then, without warning, the entire ghostly scene vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving the church as silent and empty as if nothing had happened.
"Er, what just happened?" Rose whispered, feeling like she shouldn't disturb the stillness that now surrounded them.
"Well, it would seem to be obvious," replied the Doctor. "Something stopped the original wedding from taking place, and now the ghosts of William MacArthur and Sarah Addlestone are doomed to repeat their failed wedding ceremony on its anniversary every year."
And with no more explanation than that, the Doctor walked away down the aisle of the church. But Rose wasn't letting him get off that lightly, so she followed him, bombarding him with questions.
"But why did the wedding fail? What interrupted it? Who were William MacArthur and Sarah Addlestone? Why were they getting married at midnight? And why do they look like us? Doctor, will you please stop and answer me!"
They were back outside now, and the Doctor was still striding ahead through the graves, seemingly intent on making his way back to the TARDIS. Rose had to resort to grabbing his arm and pulling him backwards to make him stop, the result of which was that they both ended up stumbling against one of the massive gravestones lining the path. As she regained her balance, Rose glanced down at the inscription on the stone, and gasped in surprise.
Here Lies William MacArthur
Born 3rd February 1784
Died 5th June 1810
Also
Sarah Addlestone
Born 19th September 1787
Died 9th June 1810
Together In Death
As They Never Were In Life
"If they didn't get married, how come they're buried together?" Rose asked, now thoroughly confused. "What was going on with these people?"
The Doctor sighed, a small sound filled with sorrow. Rose looked at him with surprise. Why should he be so affected by the story of two people he had never even met?
"Doctor?" she said tentatively, now not sure whether she should be pressing the issue or not.
"William MacArthur was the only son and heir of James MacArthur, laird of Barraclough," began the Doctor suddenly, sounding as if he was reciting from a history book. "The father wanted the son to make a good marriage, and had even gone so far as to arrange one to the daughter of the laird of a nearby estate, Mary Clifton. But William had already met and fallen in love with Sarah Addlestone, the daughter of a tenant farmer on his father's estate. The pair met frequently in secret, and eventually decided to get married. But they had to do this in secret too, with only two of their most trusted servants as witnesses, so they arranged the ceremony for midnight on the 22nd of May 1810. But Mary found out about the marriage and told William's father in revenge. James MacArthur interrupted the ceremony, dragging his son away and exiling Sarah and her family from his estate. Two weeks later, when James again tried to make William marry Mary, the two men had a furious argument, which ended with the father shooting the son dead. Sarah died just four days later, it was said from a broken heart. James MacArthur was so overcome with remorse for what he had done that he allowed the lovers to be buried in the same grave so that they could at least be together in the afterlife. But apparently that wasn't enough. Every year, on the anniversary of the wedding, the ceremony plays out in the church where it originally happened. But William and Sarah never get to finish it – they are always interrupted at the crucial moment. That crash we heard would be the noise of James MacArthur flinging the door open to stop the wedding."
The Doctor sighed again – he looked drained by his recitation. Rose felt sorry for William and Sarah – theirs was not a happy story – but she still wasn't entirely clear on what this had to do with her and the Doctor.
"Doctor?" she said softly, not sure of the welcome her words would receive. "Why are we here?"
But the answer she got was not the one she was expecting.
"May 22nd was an important day for William and Sarah," explained the Doctor. "It was the last day in their lives that they were happy. This day is important to me too, and I felt like I should honour it by remembering them. After all, I have no other way of honouring it, since those who made it special no longer exist."
Rose was gobsmacked. Was the Doctor really saying what she thought he was saying? Was May 22nd his wedding anniversary? She didn't know what to say, but her heart went out to him, and she suddenly understood that his earlier cheerfulness had been entirely forced, probably to hide the depth of his emotion.
The Doctor, for his part, looked like he would rather not dwell any more on the subject, and Rose tried to think of something to divert his melancholy thoughts.
"So, why do William and Sarah look like us, then?" she asked. "No, wait, let me guess. Something in the supernatural aura of the church means that they look like anyone who happens to be around at midnight on the anniversary of their wedding. Am I right?"
But the Doctor surprised her again. "Actually, I don't know why they look like us," he replied. "I suspect it's just a massive coincidence, that's all."
"A coincidence? Is that it?" said Rose disbelievingly.
The Doctor shrugged. "Well, look at it this way," he said. "At least you know now what you'll look like in a wedding dress."
"I suppose…" mused Rose. "Do you think that style would suit me?"
The Doctor smiled at her fondly. "You would look beautiful."
Suddenly embarrassed, Rose didn't know where to look. She settled for gazing across the churchyard back towards the hill they had climbed over. "Well, if there's nothing more to see here, what's say we go home?" she said, trying to change the subject once again. "I bet the TARDIS is missing us."
The Doctor watched her walk off down the path, his smile dissolving into a rather more melancholy expression. He knew how she felt about him, and he knew how he could feel about her, if he would but allow himself to have those feelings.
But he couldn't allow himself. Whenever he did, something bad inevitably happened, and he found himself alone…again.
This time, though, he knew he was treading on thin ice. Rose already meant far more to him than she should, and it was a constant struggle not to let her mean more. He had to keep a certain amount of distance, otherwise it would be all too easy to give in. And that way lay only heartache…