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Title: Finding A Way Home – Some Time Alone 1/4
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: It’s time for a visit to Chiswick! So – who’s coming…?
Characters: Both Doctors and Donna and a few other familiar faces
A/N: Being part of the Finding A Way Home ‘verse, this follows on immediately from the events of The Most Important Question of All, however it might help if you read the first parts that started all of this in order to fully understand the Doctor’s feelings…
Part I
“No way! Nope, not an Ice Warrior’s chance in Hell!” the half-human Doctor explodes just as Donna enters the console room.
“What’s wrong?” she asks anxiously, glancing from the man in blue to a distinctly sheepish-looking Time Lord. “What have you done now?” she asks of the Doctor in the brown suit, although she’s looking at the other man.
“This cowardly man that you’re in love with…” he begins almost triumphantly.
“Engaged to,” the other Doctor corrects, reaching down to take Donna’s left hand, his thumb smoothing over the gleaming ring on her fourth finger.
“Engaged to,” the man with one heart corrects, “came up with what he thinks is a particularly cunning plan. And I think he should have to explain to you just what that was.”
He can’t help the satisfied tone of his voice when he sees the fear in the other Doctor’s eyes at having to tell Donna what he’s just suggested.
“Well?” the woman demands, clearly not willing to let her fiancé off the hook.
“I just thought,” the words are an almost inaudible mumble, “that maybe, in case your mother wasn’t too keen on the whole idea of us being together, if she, I don’t know, tries to kill me or something, he could go to Chiswick with you instead of me…”
“What?!” Donna pulls her hand free and turns to glare at him, while the other Doctor leans against the console, folding his arms over his chest, unable to help the smug grin creeping across his face.
“Now, Donna, you know your mother doesn’t like me,” the man in the brown suit begins in his most placating tones, holding his hands up as if to ward off her response. “I just thought it might be a way to test the waters.”
“You mean you were going to feed him to the sharks,” Donna corrects brutally, gesturing at the other man, although her eyes never move from the face of the man she’s arguing with. “I suppose he’s going to fill in for you on the wedding day, too, is he, just in case my mother decides to have a go at you then, too?”
“Ah.” The Time Lord rubs the back of his neck in an awkward manner. “Well, no. I mean, I didn’t…”
While they’re distracted, the Doctor in the blue suit enters a series of co-ordinates into the scanner and sends the TARDIS out of the vortex. He expects the other Doctor to stop trying to placate his fiancée at the sound of the engines, but the man clearly has other things on his mind. Donna might adore him, but she doesn’t cut him any more slack than she did when it was just the two of them travelling the Universe.
And the other Doctor doesn’t mind a bit.
The TARDIS lands with an almost imperceptible bump and the man at the console raises his hand and clicks his fingers. The doors swing open and the creak finally attracts the attention of the other two people in the console room.
“Here you are then,” he says cheerfully, seeing as the Time Lord blanches. “Chiswick!”
“And what are you going to be doing while we’re…” the other man begins, but Donna doesn’t let him finish his sentence as she grabs his hand.
“Oh, never mind that,” she tells him. “I know what you’re trying to do – you want to get into an argument that will put this off for as long as possible. Let’s get on with it. The sooner we leave, the sooner it’s over.”
“Or we could never go at all,” the Time Lord suggests hopefully.
“Yeah, dream on,” she snorts. “Just because Mum had a go at you about dropping me off at home and putting them through all that worry about me having my memory wiped, only to come back hours later and kidnap me from my room…”
“I didn’t kidnap you!” the man in brown exclaims in exasperated tones. “How many times do we have to argue about this?”
“Until you stop responding to her pushing your buttons,” the other Doctor tells him, unable to repress a smug tone. “Off you go, kiddies.”
The dark glare he receives from the other man is almost enough to shut him up – but then he figures he’s in enough trouble as it is.
“Have fun,” he calls after them gleefully, and distinctly hears the other Doctor snort before the TARDIS doors swing shut.
He’s almost surprised by the silence.
Not because he hasn’t been in the console room on his own before – he has, particularly when he tries to give the other Doctor and Donna some private time – but because it’s the first time the TARDIS has been truly empty.
He’d forgotten what it felt like, and for a brief instant, he’s tempted to run after the other two, before he finally gets hold of himself.
After all, he’s the Doctor.
It’s just the fact that the part of him that’s Donna hates being alone even more than the Time Lord does.
Still, if he appeared in Chiswick, or if the TARDIS remained in the street for the length of the visit, he knows how much teasing he’d have to put up with from the original Doctor.
He’s about to send the TARDIS into the vortex and find some way of passing the time when he decides he might as well actually go somewhere and see what happens instead. He sets the randomiser and dashes around the console, flipping the switches and spinning the knobs and dials as the TARDIS dematerialises.
However when the ship decides on the destination and the details appear on the scanner, a beep brings the Doctor to the place where the Time Lord usually stands, a frown forming on his face as he reads the information with which he’s being presented.
“I haven’t been here before,” he says aloud. “I haven’t,” he repeats, in response to a beep from the TARDIS. “I haven’t,” he says again, although the small change of emphasis tells him everything he needs to know. “But he has, in that little window of time before I crossed back over from the parallel universe, and after he left Donna back in Chiswick. So I shouldn’t go out there to prevent a paradox.”
Another negating beep comes from the ship, which only causes the Doctor to frown even more.
“He landed here,” he says slowly as he studies the swirling circles on the scanner, “but he didn’t spend long here because,” he adds, speaking faster as realisation strikes, “he realised I’d crossed over from the other universe and he came to get me instead. So he’s never been here, and I’m here to do whatever it was that he never managed to do. Right.”
He can’t help sighing as he rocks back on his eyes, lifting his eyes to study the white doors on the other side of the console room.
He can’t quite explain the reason for the reluctance that is keeping him from going outside, only that a tiny part of him would like to return the TARDIS to the vortex. Frowning again, he takes deliberate steps away from the console, picking up the brown duster draped over the jumpseat – his, as the Time Lord’s is always hanging over one of the coral supports – and pulls it on as he heads for the doors.
The sight of snow falling from the sky, as well as the babble of voices and the waves of delicious scents that fill the air outside the TARDIS, causes the frown to vanish from his face at once. All thoughts of retreat gone, he steps out and closes the doors, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants as he strolls out into the cheerful bustling atmosphere.
“You there, boy,” he says to a young lad standing nearby, “what day is this?”
“Christmas Eve, sir,” comes the obliging reply, and the part of him that’s Donna groans at the news, although the Doctor side of him can’t help being delighted.
“And what year?” he prompts.
“You thick or something?” the boy demands in obvious surprise.
“Oi!” he exclaims indignantly, hearing his ‘Donna’ voice coming the fore. “Just answer the question,” he goes on rather more calmly.
“The year of our Lord 1851, sir.”
“Right.” He nods, turning away. “Nice year. Bit dull.”
“Doctor!”
His first fear is that the person calling him is the other Doctor and panic begins to build in his stomach before he realises that the voice isn’t familiar. And it’s female.
The Time Lord never sounded that girly, even the time he found the spider in his wardrobe.
“Who, me?” he can’t help asking, almost waiting for the Time Lord to step out of the shadows and assert his authority.
When that doesn’t happen, and he can’t help grinning when it doesn’t, he takes off running in the direction of the voice, skidding to a halt in front of a young woman who is standing opposite a violently shaking door.
“All right, don't worry. Stand back,” he orders. “What've we got here?”
“Ooh,” he can’t help adding as the door gives a particularly loud bang. “Okay, I've got it,” he says in his most reassuring voice to the woman behind him. “Whatever's behind that door, I think you should get out of here.”
“Doctor!” she calls as if in reply, and he turns to her, confusion at war with concern.
“Hold on, I'm standing right here,” he points out. “Hello.”
“Don't be stupid!” she snaps. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor,” he says at once, deciding this isn’t the time for details.
“Doctor who?” she shoots back.
His mind flies through a variety of answers to that question – MC, the DoctorDonna, the half-Doctor (as Jackie sometimes called him) – but only one name really fits: “Just the Doctor.”
“Well, there can't be two of you!” the woman tells him.
Actually, there can.
He thinks the words, but doesn’t get a chance to say them before pounding footsteps make themselves heard – steps that definitely don’t belong to the Time Lord.
“Where the hell have you been?” the woman says to the newcomer.
“Right then, don't worry,” says an unknown voice, and the man in blue looks turns to find himself staring into the face of a stranger. “Stand back,” that man says. “What've we got here then?”
“Hold on, hold on,” he interrupts. “Who are you?”
The answer leaves him gasping for breath. “I'm the Doctor,” the man says in a confident tone. “Simply the Doctor. The one, the only, and the best.” He winks and then turns to the woman. “Rosita, give me the sonic screwdriver.”
“The what?” he demands in astonishment.
“Now quickly,” the other man says without acknowledging the interruption, “get back to the TARDIS.”
“Back to the what?” he gasps, glancing back at where the blue box is standing beneath the archway. Before he can say anything more, though, the other man is forcing him to step back.
“If you could stand back, sir,” he says almost pompously, “this is a job for a Time Lord.”
“Job for a what Lord?” he repeats, wondering if he’s ever been quite as bombastic as this figure, and hoping he hasn’t. Still, at least if he has been in the past, Donna will be quick to set him right in the future.
However events give him no more time for musing as the doors in front of them suddenly fly open. In the shadows, the Doctor can make out a mask that is similar to those worn by the Cybermen. At least he has an idea of the threat he’s facing this time as he reaches in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver.
“Oh, that's new!” he exclaims as he fishes around for the object, finally finding and flourishing it. “Allons-y!”
The echo from his left is deeply unnerving and he glances sideways to find himself being studied by the man who introduced himself as ‘the Doctor.’ Thousands of possibilities are whizzing through his mind – okay, hundreds – well, actually only one. Two at most. Maybe three.
But while he’s thinking, the other man takes charge.
“I've been hunting this beast for a good fortnight now,” he says grimly. “Step back sir!”
The words have barely left his mouth, though, when the creature in front of them leaps several floors in a single bound, and the effortless action leaves both Doctors speechless.
“Some sort of primitive conversion,” the half-human Doctor muses aloud, seeing that the face is different, trying to determine the form that the body has taken. “Like it took the brain of a cat or a dog.”
“Well, talking's all very well,” the other Doctor interrupts. “Rosita!”
Out of the corner of his eye, the man in blue sees the woman hurry forward with a length of rope. “I'm ready,” she says eagerly.
“And now watch and learn,” the other man says patronisingly, swinging the lasso and giving a satisfied grunt as it lands neatly over the neck and shoulders of the masked figure. “Excellent!” he says. “Now then, let's pull this timorous beastie down to Earth!”
The Doctor can’t help thinking, though, that it won’t be as easy as all that. If this thing is some form of cyber creature – he likes the sound of ‘cybershade,’ actually – then it’s likely to be stronger than the man holding the other end of the rope.
He’s proven right when the man is suddenly hauled off his feet, left to dangle several dozen feet in the air.
“Or not,” he murmurs to himself in response to the other man’s earlier remark.
“Ah, I might be in a little bit of trouble,” the other Doctor admits with audible reluctance.
“Nothing changes!” the man in blue can’t help saying, grabbing the rope. “I've got you!”
It’s only at the last second that he wonders if this is a sensible idea, but the cybershade takes off up the wall at the feeling of additional weight on the rope and he’s too busy holding on to reconsider.
As his feet take off from the ground, though, he knows they’re in trouble.
Next Part
Author:
katherine_b Rating: G
Summary: It’s time for a visit to Chiswick! So – who’s coming…?
Characters: Both Doctors and Donna and a few other familiar faces
A/N: Being part of the Finding A Way Home ‘verse, this follows on immediately from the events of The Most Important Question of All, however it might help if you read the first parts that started all of this in order to fully understand the Doctor’s feelings…
Part I
“No way! Nope, not an Ice Warrior’s chance in Hell!” the half-human Doctor explodes just as Donna enters the console room.
“What’s wrong?” she asks anxiously, glancing from the man in blue to a distinctly sheepish-looking Time Lord. “What have you done now?” she asks of the Doctor in the brown suit, although she’s looking at the other man.
“This cowardly man that you’re in love with…” he begins almost triumphantly.
“Engaged to,” the other Doctor corrects, reaching down to take Donna’s left hand, his thumb smoothing over the gleaming ring on her fourth finger.
“Engaged to,” the man with one heart corrects, “came up with what he thinks is a particularly cunning plan. And I think he should have to explain to you just what that was.”
He can’t help the satisfied tone of his voice when he sees the fear in the other Doctor’s eyes at having to tell Donna what he’s just suggested.
“Well?” the woman demands, clearly not willing to let her fiancé off the hook.
“I just thought,” the words are an almost inaudible mumble, “that maybe, in case your mother wasn’t too keen on the whole idea of us being together, if she, I don’t know, tries to kill me or something, he could go to Chiswick with you instead of me…”
“What?!” Donna pulls her hand free and turns to glare at him, while the other Doctor leans against the console, folding his arms over his chest, unable to help the smug grin creeping across his face.
“Now, Donna, you know your mother doesn’t like me,” the man in the brown suit begins in his most placating tones, holding his hands up as if to ward off her response. “I just thought it might be a way to test the waters.”
“You mean you were going to feed him to the sharks,” Donna corrects brutally, gesturing at the other man, although her eyes never move from the face of the man she’s arguing with. “I suppose he’s going to fill in for you on the wedding day, too, is he, just in case my mother decides to have a go at you then, too?”
“Ah.” The Time Lord rubs the back of his neck in an awkward manner. “Well, no. I mean, I didn’t…”
While they’re distracted, the Doctor in the blue suit enters a series of co-ordinates into the scanner and sends the TARDIS out of the vortex. He expects the other Doctor to stop trying to placate his fiancée at the sound of the engines, but the man clearly has other things on his mind. Donna might adore him, but she doesn’t cut him any more slack than she did when it was just the two of them travelling the Universe.
And the other Doctor doesn’t mind a bit.
The TARDIS lands with an almost imperceptible bump and the man at the console raises his hand and clicks his fingers. The doors swing open and the creak finally attracts the attention of the other two people in the console room.
“Here you are then,” he says cheerfully, seeing as the Time Lord blanches. “Chiswick!”
“And what are you going to be doing while we’re…” the other man begins, but Donna doesn’t let him finish his sentence as she grabs his hand.
“Oh, never mind that,” she tells him. “I know what you’re trying to do – you want to get into an argument that will put this off for as long as possible. Let’s get on with it. The sooner we leave, the sooner it’s over.”
“Or we could never go at all,” the Time Lord suggests hopefully.
“Yeah, dream on,” she snorts. “Just because Mum had a go at you about dropping me off at home and putting them through all that worry about me having my memory wiped, only to come back hours later and kidnap me from my room…”
“I didn’t kidnap you!” the man in brown exclaims in exasperated tones. “How many times do we have to argue about this?”
“Until you stop responding to her pushing your buttons,” the other Doctor tells him, unable to repress a smug tone. “Off you go, kiddies.”
The dark glare he receives from the other man is almost enough to shut him up – but then he figures he’s in enough trouble as it is.
“Have fun,” he calls after them gleefully, and distinctly hears the other Doctor snort before the TARDIS doors swing shut.
He’s almost surprised by the silence.
Not because he hasn’t been in the console room on his own before – he has, particularly when he tries to give the other Doctor and Donna some private time – but because it’s the first time the TARDIS has been truly empty.
He’d forgotten what it felt like, and for a brief instant, he’s tempted to run after the other two, before he finally gets hold of himself.
After all, he’s the Doctor.
It’s just the fact that the part of him that’s Donna hates being alone even more than the Time Lord does.
Still, if he appeared in Chiswick, or if the TARDIS remained in the street for the length of the visit, he knows how much teasing he’d have to put up with from the original Doctor.
He’s about to send the TARDIS into the vortex and find some way of passing the time when he decides he might as well actually go somewhere and see what happens instead. He sets the randomiser and dashes around the console, flipping the switches and spinning the knobs and dials as the TARDIS dematerialises.
However when the ship decides on the destination and the details appear on the scanner, a beep brings the Doctor to the place where the Time Lord usually stands, a frown forming on his face as he reads the information with which he’s being presented.
“I haven’t been here before,” he says aloud. “I haven’t,” he repeats, in response to a beep from the TARDIS. “I haven’t,” he says again, although the small change of emphasis tells him everything he needs to know. “But he has, in that little window of time before I crossed back over from the parallel universe, and after he left Donna back in Chiswick. So I shouldn’t go out there to prevent a paradox.”
Another negating beep comes from the ship, which only causes the Doctor to frown even more.
“He landed here,” he says slowly as he studies the swirling circles on the scanner, “but he didn’t spend long here because,” he adds, speaking faster as realisation strikes, “he realised I’d crossed over from the other universe and he came to get me instead. So he’s never been here, and I’m here to do whatever it was that he never managed to do. Right.”
He can’t help sighing as he rocks back on his eyes, lifting his eyes to study the white doors on the other side of the console room.
He can’t quite explain the reason for the reluctance that is keeping him from going outside, only that a tiny part of him would like to return the TARDIS to the vortex. Frowning again, he takes deliberate steps away from the console, picking up the brown duster draped over the jumpseat – his, as the Time Lord’s is always hanging over one of the coral supports – and pulls it on as he heads for the doors.
The sight of snow falling from the sky, as well as the babble of voices and the waves of delicious scents that fill the air outside the TARDIS, causes the frown to vanish from his face at once. All thoughts of retreat gone, he steps out and closes the doors, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants as he strolls out into the cheerful bustling atmosphere.
“You there, boy,” he says to a young lad standing nearby, “what day is this?”
“Christmas Eve, sir,” comes the obliging reply, and the part of him that’s Donna groans at the news, although the Doctor side of him can’t help being delighted.
“And what year?” he prompts.
“You thick or something?” the boy demands in obvious surprise.
“Oi!” he exclaims indignantly, hearing his ‘Donna’ voice coming the fore. “Just answer the question,” he goes on rather more calmly.
“The year of our Lord 1851, sir.”
“Right.” He nods, turning away. “Nice year. Bit dull.”
“Doctor!”
His first fear is that the person calling him is the other Doctor and panic begins to build in his stomach before he realises that the voice isn’t familiar. And it’s female.
The Time Lord never sounded that girly, even the time he found the spider in his wardrobe.
“Who, me?” he can’t help asking, almost waiting for the Time Lord to step out of the shadows and assert his authority.
When that doesn’t happen, and he can’t help grinning when it doesn’t, he takes off running in the direction of the voice, skidding to a halt in front of a young woman who is standing opposite a violently shaking door.
“All right, don't worry. Stand back,” he orders. “What've we got here?”
“Ooh,” he can’t help adding as the door gives a particularly loud bang. “Okay, I've got it,” he says in his most reassuring voice to the woman behind him. “Whatever's behind that door, I think you should get out of here.”
“Doctor!” she calls as if in reply, and he turns to her, confusion at war with concern.
“Hold on, I'm standing right here,” he points out. “Hello.”
“Don't be stupid!” she snaps. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Doctor,” he says at once, deciding this isn’t the time for details.
“Doctor who?” she shoots back.
His mind flies through a variety of answers to that question – MC, the DoctorDonna, the half-Doctor (as Jackie sometimes called him) – but only one name really fits: “Just the Doctor.”
“Well, there can't be two of you!” the woman tells him.
Actually, there can.
He thinks the words, but doesn’t get a chance to say them before pounding footsteps make themselves heard – steps that definitely don’t belong to the Time Lord.
“Where the hell have you been?” the woman says to the newcomer.
“Right then, don't worry,” says an unknown voice, and the man in blue looks turns to find himself staring into the face of a stranger. “Stand back,” that man says. “What've we got here then?”
“Hold on, hold on,” he interrupts. “Who are you?”
The answer leaves him gasping for breath. “I'm the Doctor,” the man says in a confident tone. “Simply the Doctor. The one, the only, and the best.” He winks and then turns to the woman. “Rosita, give me the sonic screwdriver.”
“The what?” he demands in astonishment.
“Now quickly,” the other man says without acknowledging the interruption, “get back to the TARDIS.”
“Back to the what?” he gasps, glancing back at where the blue box is standing beneath the archway. Before he can say anything more, though, the other man is forcing him to step back.
“If you could stand back, sir,” he says almost pompously, “this is a job for a Time Lord.”
“Job for a what Lord?” he repeats, wondering if he’s ever been quite as bombastic as this figure, and hoping he hasn’t. Still, at least if he has been in the past, Donna will be quick to set him right in the future.
However events give him no more time for musing as the doors in front of them suddenly fly open. In the shadows, the Doctor can make out a mask that is similar to those worn by the Cybermen. At least he has an idea of the threat he’s facing this time as he reaches in his pocket for his sonic screwdriver.
“Oh, that's new!” he exclaims as he fishes around for the object, finally finding and flourishing it. “Allons-y!”
The echo from his left is deeply unnerving and he glances sideways to find himself being studied by the man who introduced himself as ‘the Doctor.’ Thousands of possibilities are whizzing through his mind – okay, hundreds – well, actually only one. Two at most. Maybe three.
But while he’s thinking, the other man takes charge.
“I've been hunting this beast for a good fortnight now,” he says grimly. “Step back sir!”
The words have barely left his mouth, though, when the creature in front of them leaps several floors in a single bound, and the effortless action leaves both Doctors speechless.
“Some sort of primitive conversion,” the half-human Doctor muses aloud, seeing that the face is different, trying to determine the form that the body has taken. “Like it took the brain of a cat or a dog.”
“Well, talking's all very well,” the other Doctor interrupts. “Rosita!”
Out of the corner of his eye, the man in blue sees the woman hurry forward with a length of rope. “I'm ready,” she says eagerly.
“And now watch and learn,” the other man says patronisingly, swinging the lasso and giving a satisfied grunt as it lands neatly over the neck and shoulders of the masked figure. “Excellent!” he says. “Now then, let's pull this timorous beastie down to Earth!”
The Doctor can’t help thinking, though, that it won’t be as easy as all that. If this thing is some form of cyber creature – he likes the sound of ‘cybershade,’ actually – then it’s likely to be stronger than the man holding the other end of the rope.
He’s proven right when the man is suddenly hauled off his feet, left to dangle several dozen feet in the air.
“Or not,” he murmurs to himself in response to the other man’s earlier remark.
“Ah, I might be in a little bit of trouble,” the other Doctor admits with audible reluctance.
“Nothing changes!” the man in blue can’t help saying, grabbing the rope. “I've got you!”
It’s only at the last second that he wonders if this is a sensible idea, but the cybershade takes off up the wall at the feeling of additional weight on the rope and he’s too busy holding on to reconsider.
As his feet take off from the ground, though, he knows they’re in trouble.
Next Part
satisfied