DOCTOR WHO
TO MEND AND DEFEND
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
(Contains spoilers for "Resolution")
The Doctor had a feeling.
As she set the TARDIS scanners to detect non-terrestrial life forms in the sewers back on Earth, the unsteady feeling continued to fill her with apprehension.
She needed a distraction; she needed to surround herself with the familiar, a place that had that welcoming sense of warmth about it.
"So where is it that we're going?" asked Graham as The Doctor chose the precise spot where her needs would be fulfilled.
"Your house of course" she said.
"What?" Graham said, almost in protest.
The Doctor simply gave him a warm smile.
The TARDIS buckled and swayed from side to side as it shot through the time and space vortex towards its destination. New Years Day 2019.
The Doctor's excuse was to go to Graham's kitchen and borrow some eggs to check the protein alignments in the otherworldly DNA left behind at the excavation site where the alien intrusion had been detected
The TARDIS landed and The Doctor stepped outside, finding what remained of a wooden chair lying underneath her trusted ship.
She'd arrived in the right time, right place, but her co-ordination skills in landing had proven faulty once again.
She knew whose favourite chair this was too, and she knew what kind of mood he'd be in if he should see what her shoddy piloting had done to it.
Sure enough, Graham stepped out along with Yaz and Ryan and bore witness to the deed.
"Sorry" The Doctor said, giving Graham a remorseful gurn.
"You broke my chair" Graham said.
"Well, you will leave things around the place..." The Doctor replied disapprovingly, trying to shift the blame away from her and towards habits she knew Graham best for.
"This is my front room" Graham rattled back.
Yaz and Ryan watched as they bickered, they had all too telling expressions on their faces, faces that had seen plenty of domestic quarrels like this, both quaint and extreme, up close.
"Never mind, I just need to use the kitchen" The Doctor said, and explained her intentions to Graham.
Graham caved in to her needs and pointed her in the direction of the kitchen, The Doctor beamed and headed over there.
She already had reserve eggs in the TARDIS that she could use for the experiment; she always had a little bit extra laying around her ship that she could utilise for an emergency. That would defeat the purpose of coming here though.
She wanted to be here, in the new year, for there was that feeling she wouldn't be back on Earth for a while for the duration of it, the lure of travelling was taking her friends further and further into peril, mischief and misadventure, and she wondered just what could pull her back from those travels, what it would take to ground her to a planet that had so little left for her.
And then her hearts settled on this place, somewhere she could wind down, make breakfast the old fashioned way, even use the spare eggs she'd kept preserved in the TARDIS, serving Graham, Yaz and Ryan finely cut slices of bread and egg, watch them bite into it while getting irate at how poorly the local team were doing at a football game on the television, thoughts came to her of Graham sitting comfortably in his chair biting down on the toast and complimenting The Doctor on being able to manage the toaster.
Then her thoughts turned to the broken chair in the front room, and the guilt she was feeling not only for that, but for trying to deflect the blame from herself for it.
She knew she'd have to make it up to him, she thought of replacing the chair, but she realised in that instance there was something better she could do.
She was a Doctor, doctors mend things.
So mend it was what she would do, once all of this was over.
That was the first resolution she would make that day, little realising she would have to prioritise a bigger one as the threat to Earth grew.
She would have to go from mending a chair for one person to defending a planet for a billion more.
The Doctor would later come to appreciate both resolutions as the adventure came to an end and the travellers headed towards an infinite number of tomorrows.
To mend and defend.
That's the kind of woman she was.