IT WAS 20,000 YEARS AGO TODAY

Chapter Sixteen

It was only when Ten got up to the hatch door that he realized he didn't know how to open it. The knocking continued, getting more and more insistent.

"Oi! Knock it off!" Ten yelled through the hatch, "who are you and what do you want?"

The knocking stopped and there was a long pause.

"Matza," a high-pitched voice finally said. "I have some things to sell that you might like to see. Could you open the door and let me show you my wares?"

Ten looked at everyone.

"Should we? What do you lot think?" he asked them.

"What the hell, I'm curious enough," John replied. "Like Amy said, open the door and let em in."

"Wait a tic, we'll try to open the door," Ten said before he ran back to the console.

"So is this the danger and excitement you were hankering for, Paulie?" John asked while they waited.

"Beats waiting around in here," Paul said with a shrug. "There was never any Matza in the film so this must be something new."

"And since we aren't wetting outselves and sucking our thumbs, I'm assuming that we're not following this film of yours exactly," John replied.

"No, I mean we're only saying that there are a lot of similarities. I didn't say we're following the film exactly," Paul replied.

They stepped back when the hatch suddenly lowered out followed by Ten yelling, "Found it!" to them. As the hatch lowered, they saw a short, plump man with wizened skin and a long snow white beard that reached down his chest. He blinked and smiled warmly at them. He was dressed in a red toga and had a small wooden tray with different compartments in it. The tray was suspended around his neck by a leather strap.

"Dear God, we've landed on an alien planet and found Father Christmas," John said to George and Ringo.

"Hello there," Matza said in a high-pitched voice, "welcome to the planet Denarius. I run the Matza's Any Age Emporium and I specialize in giving people a chance to be older or younger than they are now."

"John!" Jane yelled, "close the door now!"

"What's wrong? Don't any of you want to be younger or older? It's not much, my potions are only 5 credits each for a tablet and 10 credits for a spray bottle," he said, glancing down at the multicolored pills in his tray and the multicolored liquids in tiny spray bottles. "Would you like a free sample?"

"No, we're not interested," Paul said, "just go away, now!"

The door began to raise up to their relief, but to their horror, the annoyed Matza pulled out a spray bottle with some purple liquid in it, aimed it at Bill who was nearest the door and managed to spray some in his face before the door went up. Bill coughed and gagged while Paul and Jane pulled him away from the door. Amy and Rory screamed curses at the door while Paul and Jane examined Bill. They saw liquid droplets on his face and they noticed with alarm that he looked pale as he coughed and gagged.

"God, what'd that bastard do?" Paul said.

His eyes widened when he suddenly saw Bill begin to rapidly age between his eyes. By this time, Ten had returned. He saw his friend aging and ran over to Paul's side while Amy let out a curse.

"Hey!" she screamed through the door, "what'd you do to him, you bastard?"

"I gave him a free sample of my aging elixir," Matza said through the door, "if you need the antidote, it's 20 credits."

"Fuck!" Amy said. "The bastard's blackmailin' us! Give us the antidote for free, you bastard!"

By this time, the Doctor, hearing the commotion, came up to the door. He took one look at Bill who now looked like he was in his early '60's and cursed.

"Amy, what's going on?" he said, running to her.

Amy told him what happened and the Doctor groaned and turned to face Ten.

"Why'd you do that?" he demanded. "You just decided to open the door and take a look?"

"Oh…like you wouldn't have done the same thing!" Ten shot back at him.

Eleven opened his mouth to protest and then shut it when he realized he was right. He ran over to Bill and checked him. He cursed again when he saw he was now approximately 70 years old. He was sitting on the floor while Paul and Jane knelt beside him. His hair had thinned out and he had a full beard and liver spots were all over his hands and arms. He looked at the Doctor.

"Is this gonna stop?" he said in an aged voice, "or am I just gonna keep aging till I die?"

John, who had been observing all this, was surprised when he felt anger at Matza for what he did. But then he realized that he genuinely liked Bill and he didn't want to see him age to death. He walked over to the door.

"Oi, are you still there?" John yelled through the door. "You better give us the antidote so we can restore our friend, you hear me?"

"I will give you the antidote for 20 credits," Matza replied calmly.

"You'll give me the antidote in exchange for a fist through the face and that's all you're getting out of us!" John screamed. "You had no right to do that to him!"

"Well, you had no right to land your…thing in my garden!" Matza yelled back. "You squished my floridendron patch. Those were prized flowers!"

John sighed angrily and threw up his hands. He walked over to Bill who was now sitting on the floor while the others gathered around him, worried out of their minds that any minute he would die on them. The Doctor looked at Ten.

"Go and open the hatch. I'm afraid we're gonna have to negotiate with this git," he said to him.

Ten nodded and ran back to the console room. The Doctor knelt down beside Bill. Bill gave him a weak smile.

"Gee, should we all break into a rousing chorus of When I'm 64 now?" he quipped.

The Doctor chuckled.

"Not till your beard is down to your shoes, mate," he said fondly.

"I think I'll be dead before that happens," he replied.

"Not on my watch," the Doctor said with steely determination.

The other Beatles knelt down beside him and the Doctor stood up while the hatch door lowered. Bill was now visibly scared and Paul was angry while he watched his brother slowly age in front of his eyes.

"Just keep calm," Paul said to him. "Doctor will get you out of this."

Nog knelt down next to Bill.

"What's happening?" she said fearfully.

They tried to explain it to her while the Doctor stepped down the hatch towards Matza who had a smug look on his face. The smugness quickly vanished when the Doctor seized him by his toga.

"Restore my friend!" he snarled as he pointed back to Bill.

"20 credits," Matza said.

He gasped when the Doctor jerked his toga.

"You won't get any credits since you did this to him without his permission! Now give us the antidote!"

Meanwhile, Bill was watching him with eyes that were slowly losing focus. John was watching him and he turned his eyes to Paul and saw how scared he was that Bill was going to die in front of him. He realized then how much the man meant to him and fury gripped his mind while he tried to restrain himself from going down the ramp and beating the crap outta Matza who was still trying to get the Doctor to give him 20 credits. He looked at Bill who now looked like he was nearly 90. Bill was closing his eyes which scared everyone even more since his breathing was becoming shallow. He reached out and grabbed Bill's arm.

"Hey, don't go dying on us, you hear?" he said to Bill when he opened his eyes. "I've seen enough death in my life; I don't wanna see one more."

"Yeah, but I don't think he's gonna give us the antidote," Bill said weakly. "So you might not have a choice."

Paul growled deep in his throat as he got to his feet. He ran down the ramp.

"Doctor, please just pay him whatever these credit things are, Bill's nearly dead!" he said.

The Doctor sighed angrily and whipped out a credit stick. Matza smugly ran it through a scanner located on the back of his tray.

"Now give us the antidote!" the Doctor snarled as he snatched the credit stick out of his hand.

Matza gave him a spray bottle with clear liquid in it and instructed the Doctor to spray it in Bill's face. The Doctor quickly hurried up the ramp and Matza turned to leave. He grunted when someone seized his arm and gasped when Paul spun him around and grabbed his toga, his eyes blazing with rage.

"Don't you even think of leaving this spot until he's back to normal!" Paul snarled at him. "Because if my brother dies, you die! And don't think for one moment I'm not capable of doing it because I'll tear you limb from limb if Bill stops breathing!"

Matza swallowed hard when he saw that the man meant what he said.

"The antidote will work," he said nervously, "look!"

He pointed up to Bill and Paul turned his head to look at him. Bill's eyes were open and he was breathing more normally while he slowly returned to normal. Paul looked at Matza.

"It'll stop when he reaches his proper age? He won't just go past thirty and become a fetus?"

"No, he'll stop at his proper age," Matza said, insulted. "I know what I'm doing."

"I'm not so sure of that."

He looked up at Bill and noticed that he now looked like he was in his fifties while everyone around him breathed sighs of relief.

"So…I s'pose I was the one that they used when they did the whole aging sequence in the film?" Bill said to everyone.

"You had us scared half to death, ya git," Amy teased as she gave him a light punch in the arm.

"I had YOU scared to death?" Bill said to her while everyone laughed.

By now he was nearly back to normal. Paul continued to hold onto Matza's toga while he and the others nervously watched Bill's progress.

"Let me go, he's fine!" Matza said.

"No, not till we're sure. I'm not gonna have you run back in your house and lock us out!" Paul said, pointing to a small white house that was beside the hourglass. "You already proved to us that you're untrustworthy and I'm gonna make sure Bill is back to his old self before I let you go."

By now Bill was back to being a thirty year old man. He sat still for a moment while everyone watched him closely, fearful he'd keep going. But after a couple of minutes, Bill shrugged.

"I think it's stopped," he said.

Paul let go of Matza's toga as everyone hugged him.

"Go away," Paul said to Matza.

"Get out of my flower bed," Matza shot back.

"Happy to, we'll leave as soon as we can, trust me," Paul retorted as he went back up the ramp towards Bill.

Matza grumbled under his breath, muttering curses at them as he stomped back to his house. Paul knelt down beside Bill and gave him a firm hug while the Doctor ran to close the hatch.

"Good to have ya back, mate," Paul said.

"Well, I really couldn't die just yet. Gotta be in the Beatles version of My Fair Lady, you know," Bill replied.

Everyone laughed while Paul nodded.

"That's right, Audrey, you got some guitar lessons coming to ya."

"Gee, Rex, I can't wait," Bill said dryly.

Paul gave him another hug. Bill returned it and then looked around.

"Hey, where's John?" he said when he noticed Ten was missing.

"I'm right here," John Lennon said.

Bill looked at him and groaned.

"Oh no. Um…I meant the Doctor's duplicate. We were calling them both Doctor and we asked if he could go by a different name so it wouldn't cause confusion and he told us to call him John Smith but that was before you came on board so now I suppose we'll have to call him something else. But never mind that, where is the other Doctor?"

"I think he headed towards the back after he opened the hatch," Ringo said. "Maybe went down to the sleeping quarters?"

Bill nodded and got up off the floor.

"I have a feeling he's blaming himself for this and It's not his fault," he said.

He started to head back to the sleeping quarters when the Doctor came up to him. He smiled warmly and hugged him.

"Good, I'm glad you stopped at your proper age. Nice to have you back," he said.

"Thanks. I'm just going to find the other Doctor. I think he's blaming himself for all this and it's not his fault. He opened the door but no one stopped him, we all wanted to see who it was just as badly as he did."

"I know. I think he did go back to the sleeping quarters. Tell him if you see him that I'm not angry because he was correct that I would have done the same. In the meantime, I'm going to see what Pepa's up to before we get in an even bigger mess."

He patted Bill's arm and he walked back to the back of the ship while Bill followed. The others chatted and stayed near the front while Bill headed to the hatch that led to the sleeping quarters. He noticed the hatch door had been left open so he went ahead and climbed down the ladder. As he climbed down, he saw Ten sitting in the back of the room on the lowest bed looking sad and dejected. When he met Bill's eyes, his own eyes lit up and a grin spread over his face.

"You're alright," he said happily.

"Yeah, we went ahead and gave the bastard the 20 credits because I nearly snuffed it but thankfully, the antidote didn't change me into an infant."

"Bill, I'm sorry…"

Bill held up his hand as he walked towards him.

"Figured that's why you swanned off and I wanted to tell you that it's not your fault. No one's mad at you, not even the other Doctor. We all wanted to see who it was just as much as you did."

"Yeah, but that was a reckless thing to do," Ten said as Bill sat down beside him.

"Yeah, perhaps, but I'm getting used to doing reckless things since I started doing this," he replied.

He chuckled.

"Since we've traveled with the Doctor, we've seen so many wonderous things, like those DVD films. And now I can actually quote from one film now. We coulda stopped ya, it is possible to stop the great Ferris Bueller, you know."

Ten laughed and nodded.

"Great film," Ten said.

"I agree. I think Paul and I are thinking about not even going back to our time when and if we ever decide to stop this time traveling. We've had a taste of the future and we both like it too much. We're addicted to future things now."

"Oh, I see, so the Beatles will mysteriously disappear for several years and suddenly at some point in future, they return and to everyone's shock, they haven't aged a bit."

Bill laughed.

"Yup, that'll really get the fans wondering about them. From what I've seen, some of them do think of them as gods, perhaps if they disappear and show up later without aging, it'll confirm that."

"And what about you? You are going to try a music career?" Ten said.

"Yeah, I'd like to have the same kind of success as Paul. If I even had a tenth of his success, I'd be happy."

"So you are Audrey Hepburn then."

He laughed when Bill rolled his eyes.

"I have to say, they come up with weird ideas, Paul and his friends. But I like their sense of humor."

"Yeah, I do too," Ten replied.

His eyes glanced up and Bill followed his gaze. They watched Nog climbing down the stairs.

"Bill?" she said. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm alright, Nog," Bill said as she walked over to them. "I'm not getting any younger so the antidote must have worked."

"I'm glad. I was scared," Nog said.

Ten raised his eyebrow when Nog sat down beside Bill and laid her hand against his cheek. He looked at his friend and saw how shocked he looked and a grin spread over the human Time Lord's face when he realized why Nog was always constantly hanging around Bill. His smile widened when Nog leaned in and kissed Bill's lips. Bill hesitated a moment and then returned it.

"Hmm, perhaps I should leave you alone then?" Ten said in an amused voice.

Nog finished the kiss and Ten chuckled at the stunned look on Bill's face.

"Um, Nog…does this mean you…love me?" he said in disbelief.

Nog smiled and nodded. Bill stunned expression turned into a pleased one and he leaned in to kiss her again.

"Yup, definitely gonna leave you two kids alone now," Ten said as he got up.

Just then there was a huge BOOM and the three of them screamed as the ship suddenly lurched and rapidly picked up speed. Bill grabbed Nog and all of them got on the floor as the ship zoomed away.

"Now what?" Ten said as they listened to the terrified yells and screams of their friends and family above them.

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