A.N.: This story has a very detailed description of OCD, and what it's really like to have OCD. I wrote it as kind of a way of telling people what it's actually like as a mental disorder, because I get sick and tired of people just thinking that someone who has OCD just likes things to be 'a bit neat'. It's a pretty horrible condition, and I just wanted to show people what it's really like.
Warnings: Minor spoilers for The Day of the Doctor, suicidal thoughts in later chapters
Series summary: The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.
Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who
Chapter 1 – A Promise Made
64 Tintagel Terrace. Help me. Please.
"What's that, Doctor?"
The Doctor quickly stashed the psychic paper away in his pocket as Amy walked around the TARDIS console to see what he had been looking at.
"Nothing," he lied, flashing her a quick smile as he went back to fiddling with the controls.
It had been a few weeks since he had regenerated and crash-landed in young Amelia Pond's back garden and, although lots had happened to both him and his new companions since then, he was still discovering things about this new personality that he had – and one of the things that he had discovered was that this version of himself was dreadfully good at lying. His last self had never been quite this adept at deceit, especially when it came to fibbing to his companions, and before that he had been lacking in anyone to lie to in the first place.
Nevertheless, he couldn't help but think that the other versions of himself would have been unnerved at the ease with which untruths fell from his new, youthful lips – not that it particularly mattered how they would have felt about it; they were all gone, after all.
Yet his lie had served its purpose, and Amy didn't ask again what it was that he had seen on the psychic paper. Rory sat on the seat by the control panel, watching the two of them silently, and with slightly wary eyes. The nurse didn't seem to fully trust the Doctor yet – not that he blamed him, especially after the disaster that had been Venice and the (literal) nightmare that his dark side had subjected them to just the week before.
Even so, the Doctor was quite warming to Amy's fiancé, and he wanted to find a way to get Rory to like him. So he decided to make up for the first date that he had tried to take them on, and take them somewhere where there would be absolutely no fish vampires – alien or otherwise.
"We're going to a delightful restaurant on the Third Moon of Sholvo," the Doctor declared, pressing buttons with more purpose than he had been the moment before. "The whole satellite was colonised by humanity in the early 78th Century, and was basically turned into a massive food court, sporting cuisine from all over the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Well, now it's the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire; the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire kind of collapsed, and it may have been my fault, but that depends on which historians you read, and who reads history anyway? Boring!"
The Doctor made a big show of flicking the final lever to set them off on course for the Third Moon of Sholvo before continuing his monologue.
"Anyway, this particular restaurant is absolutely impossible to get a reservation for. Luckily, I have one. Made it six months in advance some four hundred years ago, although it was possibly – probably – longer than that, and it still needs someone to make it. So you are."
"We are?" Amy asked, walking away from the console and flopping down on the seat next to Rory. "What about you?"
"Reservation's for two; besides, I'm not hungry." The Doctor looked up from the controls and over at the sofa where his two companions were sitting. "Think of it as a second Venice. Without me getting in the way of all the... kissing." He made a disgusted face before turning back to the controls before him.
The Doctor noticed that Rory seemed rather happy at the prospect of him not being there with them, and a small, paranoid part of him felt a little hurt that the nurse didn't want him around. Not that he wanted to be there himself, of course – he had pretty much forsaken relationships since Rose (though he wondered if he would have to keep an eye on that River Song) and he had a psychic paper message to investigate (which he felt would be a lot easier to do if his companions were out of the way).
Yet it was only by the time that the TARDIS was hanging suspended in the Time Vortex over the Third Moon of Sholvo that he realised that neither of them had said anything. He walked slowly around the console and observed them; Amy seemed to be considering the invitation, while Rory was all but ready to leave. It was a moment before Amy nodded, and a wave of relief washed over the two men in the control room.
"Excellent!" the Doctor exclaimed, clapping his hands together before bringing the TARDIS in to land. Amy and Rory rose from the seat and made their way over to the door.
"It's the third restaurant on the right; just look for the one with the biggest queue outside. The reservation's under the name 'Holloway'. Don't ask," the Doctor added, as he disappeared down the stairs to fiddle with the circuitry and his two companions thanked him before leaving to go off and have what was going to be a wonderful dinner.
As soon as he heard the doors to the TARDIS close, he raced back up the stairs again to watch the two of them on the scanner. There was a large hustle and bustle in the street outside as people of all ages and species wandered between the various restaurants. Amy and Rory were easily lost in the crowd, so he waited a few moments until he was absolutely sure that they were out of ear's range of the ship before he entered the coordinates for Tintagel Terrace and followed the message on the psychic paper, wherever it would lead him.
Tintagel Terrace turned out to be a long residential street somewhere in London, and he had landed at night; the darkened sky was ablaze with artificial lights, and somewhere in the distance he believed he could make out the blinking light atop Canary Wharf. Shuddering at the memory of what had happened there, he stepped out into the street and went off in search of Number 64, locking the TARDIS behind him.
The street was rather unremarkable, though extremely busy even in the absence of people; a few of the houses had posters in their windows, advertising things such as dance classes or fetes, while others had ornaments in their front gardens. Yet the houses themselves were fairly similar in style, only distinguishable by the multitude of different colours that they had all been painted on the outside: beiges and pinks and blues and lilacs and yellows and oranges and greens filled the street, bringing colour to the otherwise boring road.
Number 64 was blue: a smaller house than many of the others in the street, though it was the only one with a porch outside. The Doctor walked up to the black front door and rang on the doorbell.
He only had to wait a few moments before the door opened, and he was faced with almost exactly what he had expected to see at an address that he had been called to so desperately.
The door was opened by a woman, in her late twenties or possibly early thirties. Her long brown hair flowed down her back, though it was in desperate need of a brush, framing her thin and pale face that was marred with large purple bags underneath her eyelids and drying tear tracks down her cheeks. Her bright, brown eyes were glistening, and it seemed that she had only just stopped crying – or, at least, had only taken a pause in crying – though any traces of real sadness had been wiped away as her brow was creased in confusion at the sight of his face.
"Good evening," he smiled, but the woman didn't seem to be feeling any better at the prospect of someone who could help her with whatever it was that was bothering her.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice hard and sharp and accusatory. She looked him up and down, and he felt the smile on his face falter.
"Uh…" He cleared his throat awkwardly. He had been expecting the person who had called him to know that she had called him; maybe he had arrived before she had sent the message, or maybe something else entirely was going on. "I'm the Doctor."
The woman's eyes filled with fear at the sound of his name, a terror that he had only known himself whenever he was faced with a Dalek.
"No!" she screamed, slamming the door shut in his face with such force that he physically recoiled from it. He heard the sound of retreating footsteps from inside the house, getting quieter as they got further and further from the front door.
The Doctor decided to forego the doorbell again, instead electing to rap the door knocker a few times before he knelt down and called through the letterbox.
"Are you okay?" he called, not entirely sure exactly how far from the front door she was by this point, or if she would be able to hear him.
"I'm fine!" she insisted, but her tearful voice betrayed the lie. There was a loud, wet sniff before she continued. "Please, just… I'm fine."
The Doctor sighed, shifting from where he was resting on his haunches to sit beside the door, leaning against it while he held the letterbox open with his first two fingers.
"Are you sure?" he asked; she didn't sound that far away, so he felt that he could speak at a merely slightly elevated level and she would still be able to hear him. "You don't sound 'fine'."
"I'm not crazy!" she cried, a desperation so deeply ingrained in her voice that the Doctor's desire to know exactly why he had been called there grew tenfold. "You can't take me away! I won't let you!"
The Doctor was beginning to understand why he had been called there, but it was clear that this woman – whoever she was – had not known that her distress had summoned a Time Lord to her aid. She hadn't sent for help, and she wasn't expecting any to have come. The question remained, however: what exactly did she need help with?
"I'm not going to take you anywhere," the Doctor assured her. "I'm not even a real doctor; my doctorate is purely honorary."
There was a pause, but when the woman finally spoke again, it was clear that she was far more interested in engaging in conversation with him.
"If your doctorate is only honorary, why do you call yourself 'Doctor'?"
The Doctor laughed slightly, looking briefly down at the front step before looking back up to reply to the woman who was now sounding more intrigued than distressed.
"It was a promise I made a long time ago," he explained to her. "And I'm making another one now: I will not take you away, and I believe you when you say that you're not crazy. I just want to help you. Please let me talk with you."
A moment passed in total silence, and the Doctor wondered if she was ever going to reply to him. Then, finally, the sound of footsteps reached his ears, and he heard her getting closer.
Suddenly, the front door opened and he collapsed sideways, landing in a heap beside the woman's feet, his torso inside the house and his legs still out on the front step. His vision was suddenly filled with pyjama-clad legs and slipper-clad feet standing on a plush red carpet – and he knew that it was plush because the side of his face was buried in it.
He rolled over slightly so that he was on his back, looking up at the woman who was now standing over him and looking down at him as she held the front door open with one hand. For a second, she looked merely perplexed; then, she burst out laughing, and her entire face – though it was still flawed with signs of her despair – lit up, and he couldn't help but start laughing himself.
The woman reached down to help him up, taking his hand in hers and hauling him to his feet.
"Thank you," he grinned as their mirth died down and the woman closed the front door again.
The Doctor realised that he was standing in a short hallway that ended with a flight of stairs going up to the first floor. Either side of him were a pair of doors: one leading to a living room complete with a sofa and a television; and the other leading to a chrome kitchen with a linoleum floor and chairs sat around a dining table that all looked as though they had been stolen from a restaurant's outdoor seating – silver, metal and cold.
"You're welcome," the woman nodded, and the Doctor noticed that the brief happiness in her eyes was quickly disappearing, like air being drained from a balloon.
"What's your name?" the Doctor asked, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking on the balls of his feet.
The woman sniggered, reaching up to her temple and scratching at her forehead. "Wow, you're really not here to put me in a straightjacket," she chuckled, dropping her hand back down to her side. "I'm Jo."
The Doctor's hearts both did a double-beat. "Is that short for Josephine?" he asked eagerly, disappointment dropping into his stomach like a lead weight when she shook her head.
"Joanna. Why?"
The Doctor shook his head, waving it away. "I… I knew a Josephine. A long time ago."
"When you made your promise, Doctor?" Jo asked, smiling slightly.
The Doctor shook his head slowly. "Not that long ago," he murmured.
Jo nodded in understanding, before swiftly changing subjects.
"Would you like something to drink?" she asked, turning away from him and heading into the kitchen behind her. The Doctor followed.
"I think we both need a cup of tea," he suggested, earning himself an enthusiastic nod from Jo, who reached up to a cupboard above the worktop to retrieve a couple of mugs and begin preparing the best beverage in the entire universe – much better than hyper vodkas, regardless of what Jack Harkness had to say on the matter.
"Please, have a seat," Jo offered, gesturing to one of the six metal chairs seated around the metal kitchen table. The Doctor accepted the offer with a small nod, sitting down on the seat furthest away from the worktop where Jo was preparing the tea.
He took the opportunity to look around the room and study it. It was certainly immaculate, and incredibly ordered: any straight surfaces were arranged so that they were just that, the entire kitchen being filled with parallels and perpendiculars.
He also took note of a strange tapping sound. He wasn't immediately aware of where it was coming from, but he knew that it hadn't been there when they had been standing in the hallway; but then he looked back over at Jo and saw that she was tapping her first two fingers on the side of the worktop after every single task that she performed: once after she had put the tea bag in her tea, once after she had put the tea bag in his tea, and the same with sugar, and the water, and the milk.
He suspected that the tapping had something to do with the reason that she had seemed so upset when he had first arrived, and the reason that he had been called to her in the first place, but when she turned back to him with her hands full of mugs of tea which she placed on the table before them – she took one of the seats opposite him and sat down – he noticed something else about Jo's kitchen which he hadn't been able to see while she had been making the tea, because she had been standing in the way.
There was a line on her kitchen wall, above the worktop and below the cupboards – a jagged line in the plaster: a crack.
And not just any crack: the same crack that he had seen the Weeping Angels fall into at the crash of the Byzantium; the same crack that was in Amelia Pond's bedroom wall – a crack in space and time.