Who: King Henry VIII and Martha Jones. What: Henry arrives. Where: The park. When: Saturday, January 11. Warnings: Low Status: Closed | Completed GDoc.
Henry had absolutely no idea where he was. All he knew was that he was supposed to be in England, and that his wife, Anne, had just been beheaded on his orders. This was definitely not England. Or, if it was, it was not the England he knew. He had woken up on a bench in a park, with his daughter Elizabeth sound asleep beside him. It smelled different here, it sounded different.
And the woman he spotted off to the distance was definitely not dressed the way women in England were dressed. ...he wasn’t completely sure it was safe to approach said woman, but he found he had absolutely no other choice. So he rose from his spot on the bench, and scooped up Elizabeth. It would be silly to wake her before he had any answers for her. And he knew she would have questions. Just like he had questions.
He made his way toward the woman in question, stopping a few feet from her. “How did I get here?” he asked her. “I am not supposed to be here. I have… obligations.” That was putting it lightly.
Martha had her head down in a book reading some history of magic that Constantine had suggested. She found it all fascinated and wondered how the Doctor viewed magic now that he was exposed to all these worlds and different universes. She was on the page about the witch trials when a voice cut through the fog. She glanced up and did a slight double-take. Sure, she was used to strange things both before Madison Valley and now, but it still didn’t quite prepare her for a man dressed in almost-familiar clothes who looked strangely familiar but she couldn’t say why. Martha held back a squint as she tried to think about it.
“That’s… going to be a complicated answer. One you might need to sit down to hear.” If he believed her at all. She had learned that some men from England’s past where particularly headstrong. At least he had the courage to ask her, of all people, the question. She closed the book and turned to address him more earnestly. “I know this is going to sound right mad, but you’re in America -” Martha paused. Was America even a thing for him? She really needed to brush up on her history. If the Doctor was here, she would know exactly what century he was from. “A place across the ocean. Anyway, it’s not home. No one’s able to get back there on their own, I’m sorry.”
She paused, looking at him and then the little girl. They were definitely rich, whoever they were. “What’s your name? My name’s Martha. Martha Jones.”
So she didn’t know who he was, even though she appeared to be from England as well. And America? “There is no such place as America.” He then paused for a moment, his head tilting slightly. “Are you referring to the New World?” he asked. Because in Henry’s time, America wasn’t a country. But America had been discovered before he was born.
“I am Henry, King of England,” he told Martha. “This is my daughter, the Princess Elizabeth.” He would have been a bit more offended by the fact that she had no idea who he was, if he hadn’t been so thrown off by the fact that he was suddenly across the ocean from England. And that apparently he was unable to return home on his own. If this woman was to be believed. He had no reason to believe her, but he also had no reason not to believe her.
He didn’t like this whatsoever. This entire situation was strange, and this place was far different from his home. Luckily for everyone involved, he hadn’t encountered anything like cars or something. Yet.
This was a lot to wrap his mind around.
“Oh my God.” She brought up her hand to her mouth to stop herself right then and there because she had traveled enough with the Doctor not to be that person. Still, she couldn’t help staring at him and then Queen Elizabeth who looked very different from the last time Martha had seen her. She cleared her throat in an attempt to recover and then Martha even curtsied… maybe because the Doctor had prevented her from doing it so long ago and she had always really wanted to to someone who expected it as the norm. Of course, she was in jeans and a leather jacket, but that was beside the point.
“Sorry, um, your majesty, it’s just… well, you’ve found yourself in the future. Far into the future, actually. Things have changed a little and the New World. It became a country on its own after a bit.” She kind of wished the Doctor was here, but then wondered if the Doctor would be able to explain things any simpler. They did enjoy being a bit of a show off. “This is… the year 2020… actually.”
At least this Martha person seemed to have a proper idea of how to react to royalty. After her initial shocked reaction, at least. He found that he couldn’t hold her initial reaction against her, either. He understood that people didn’t meet kings every day. He likely would be one of those people as well, if he didn’t happen to be a king himself.
He had no idea how to react to the information provided. The year 2020? That was impossible. He’d come from the 1500s, how could it be five hundred years in the future? But he supposed that if he could find himself in some random park and accept that as true, he could accept that the year was 2020 as well.
“How is it I am here?” he asked. “Why am I here? I have a country to rule, I cannot be stuck here in some unknown place!” He sighed softly, and decided it was probably best that he sit. That was the best way to go about things at the moment. As he sat, Elizabeth stirred a bit.
Her eyes opened, and she looked up at Henry, then over at Martha. “Father?” she said. “Who is this?”
Martha couldn’t help thinking Oh my God she is adorable and then Martha thought Oh my God I just called Queen Elizabeth the First adorable and then Martha decided to focus on Henry VIII because that seemed easier at the moment.
“That might be harder to understand than the year, unfortunately… because no one really knows. I’m sorry. I know that’s not really an answer, but that’s the truth.” Until someone figured it out, anyway. “But, from what other people have experienced, time stops back home, or it moves quicker here. Either way, people won’t know you’re missing and when you return, you’ll go back to where you were right at this moment. Hopefully that will come to some comfort to you.”
She paused and then looked back at Elizabeth and got a hold of herself. “Hello. My name is Martha.”
Elizabeth wouldn’t have been accustomed to being called adorable, especially by a stranger. So it was probably best that Martha refrained from calling her adorable. At least, out loud.
“How can no one know how we are here?” he asked. But he supposed he understood. After all, he didn’t have any answers. How could he expect others to have answers if he didn’t? Well. He did it all the time, really. He expected people to be able to explain how things were, if he didn’t know himself. He didn’t like it when people didn’t know the answers to the questions he posed.
Elizabeth studied Martha for a brief moment. “Very nice to meet you, my lady,” she said. She had been brought up to be polite and proper, even at this young of an age.
The Doctor was never going to believe this. Okay, actually they would, but she thought about it as a turn of phrase. Martha was kind of exciting. They was the first historical person she met she actually knew some stuff about. Even if her sister would argue it, Martha did pay attention in school, thank you very much.
She gave Queen Princess Elizabeth a smile and polite nod in greeting.
“This is sort of like a bubble, if you want to think of it like that. A bubble of time outside of your actual reality…. Like stepping into a mirror into a whole new world.” Okay so she paid attention in school, but she didn’t remember everything. Lewis Carrol was probably from much later.
“There’ll be a lot of changes here. Technology… has changed quite a bit. Science and medicine.” She paused, though this was something she said with pride, being both black and a woman. “I’m a Doctor, for example.” She offered him a small smile. “There’ll be a lot of things to get used to.”
“A doctor,” he repeated. He was handling things quite well, all things considered. But a woman being a doctor was completely unheard of. He supposed that if he could accept the fact that he was in 2020 and in a country that didn’t exist yet… why couldn’t he accept the fact that this woman at least thought she was a doctor. He could do that.
He closed his eyes for a moment, to give him a chance to allow himself to process everything Martha had told him. It was a lot to take in. It was hard to believe, and he probably wouldn’t even consider believing it if he hadn’t woken up in a strange park when he knew he hadn’t fallen asleep there.
“Does anyone know anything about this town? I know you have told me quite a bit about it, but no one knows anything about why we’re here?”
At least he hadn’t laughed in her face otherwise she might have had to have some choice words with the former King of England. She let him try to gather himself and wondered if this news would have come better from a man. “Yes, a doctor.” Martha couldn’t quite help herself - she gave a small wink to Elizabeth before turning to attention to her father again.
“There are theories. Some people think it’s random. Other people think we’re here to learn a lesson. Others thing weren’t here as some sort of mass social experiment.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s hard to say which one is accurate. I suppose people pick the one that best suits them in understandin’ the place.” She didn’t think any of those would be overly comforting to his majesty expect maybe the first one. “Madison Valley itself is just a town like any other in modern times. Running water. Electricity. Horseless carriages called cars…We’re in a park right now so you can’t really see most of those things.”
She paused, then her eyes widened. “Oh!” Duh. She had a phone. Martha pulled out her phone and turned on the home screen. There was a picture of her with a selfie of Rose, Clara, and Ace. She held out the phone for him to take, should he want to look at it. “This is a cellphone. I can talk to people far away or look up information like it’s a book or take photographs which are… like instant paintings.” Yeah, there was going to be a lot.
“Horseless carriages and running water. This is… this is almost like witchcraft,” he decided. Having been raised in the 1500s, he had some strong opinions on the subject of witchcraft. But if no one knew why they were here, or who had brought them here… it was difficult to pinpoint the source of this so-called witchcraft. So he allowed the thought to leave his mind almost as soon as it had entered.
Both Henry and Elizabeth studied the cell phone Martha had offered. It was interesting. He had no idea how it worked, he had no idea where to even start with it. He understood the concept of a photograph, though, as there was one on the cell phone the woman had. It was her, obviously, along with three other women. And it was far superior to a painting.
“...things are definitely different here,” he decided. “I could tell, just from the park. I had no idea how vastly different it would be, though. How does a horseless carriage -- what you called a car -- work? If there are no horses?”
At least they hadn’t thrown the phone away because of it being evil, though she made an extra attempt at keeping the front of the book in her hand - ‘History of Magic and the Occult’. “We call them cars. Someone figured out how to harness energy from gas in a way to make cars go without horses. It’s -” She stopped herself from saying it’s something someone else could explain better. She didn’t want to give him any reason to think a man could explain Madison Valley better. “It’s just one of the many inventions over the years. We push a lot of boundaries in sciences, art, and maths, but you don’t have to understand everything right now… I’d say the first thing we should do is find you the welcoming committee. They’ll give you a nice place to live and some money… you can explore the town bit by bit on your own.”
“Yes, I should probably do that,” he said, after considering it for a moment. He should probably find this welcoming committee. And find where he and Elizabeth were supposed to be living while stuck here in Madison Valley. If what Martha said was correct, he was stuck here and couldn’t leave. So of course he was going to have to have a place for himself and Elizabeth. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be a living situation that he was used to, either.
He was not liking this situation whatsoever. He was going to figure out how to leave, how to get back home. He needed to get back home, even if what Martha said about him still being back home as well was correct.
He couldn’t be here.
“Thank you, miss,” he said, and rose from his spot on the bench.