The Mad Men With a Box
The Eleventh Doctor pulled himself to his feet slowly, having nearly been thrown across the control room of his TARDIS when she suddenly decided to abandon his search pattern for Melody Pond— the infant, not the Doctor's curly haired time travelling outrageously beautiful future sweet heart.
"You alright, Old Girl?" the Doctor checks several dials, smacking one with a hammer to get it working.
"Oh, I see…this is one of things I need to be at," he muttered and resigned himself to exploring whatever little pocket of space the TARDIS picked out of all conceivable points in time-space. After all, she herself had made it quite clear that not only had she stolen (not borrowed) him and not the other way around, she would always take him where she thought he needed to be.
"Are we there yet, Sexy?" he called sarcastically out into the empty room. The TARDIS answered him by throwing him into an opposing wall.
"Ow…right, sorry dear," he stood up again, straightening his bow tie.
Although, she doesn't usually abuse me when I talk…
The Doctor checked his dials again. "What are you so excited about?" he stroked the control panel and a moment later the TARDIS landed.
"Alright, let's go explore," the Doctor checked that his sonic screw driver was still in his pocket and opened the doors to his TARDIS.
Outside the TARDIS was a barren wasteland. It was night time…or at least very cloudy…or maybe this planet had no sun; there seemed to be a lot of geothermic vents that provided enough heat. The Doctor scanned around, taking a few steps away from the TARDIS.
The doors slammed shut and the engines began to wheeze in take off.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!" the Doctor pointed his sonic at the rapidly disappearing TARDIS trying to bring her back. It was no use; she vanished, leaving the Doctor alone on a dark rock covered in quite possibly unstable thermal vents.
"What, again? Well that's just great," he found a rock and sat down only to hear the familiar engine noises of his TARDIS returning. Despite what River had once told him, the Doctor was not going to turn the parking break off.
River…Melody…who knew? And considering what Amy and Rory know about River and what River has told me about…us…why didn't Rory try to kill me? He had a sword after all…
The familiar blue box landed in front of him where it had disappeared from behind him. There was something odd about the TARDIS; she had left all neat and tidy, she'd come back looking all scratched up and more grey than blue.
"You have got to stop turning me into a madman with a box without a box! What was that for? Where'd you run off to? And there's something wrong with you, but I can't quite place my finger on it…" the Doctor continued ranting while he unlocked the door and stepped inside, feeling a strange mixture of relief, irritation and fear…fear?
"Something's wrong, something is definitely wrong…but what...?" he muttered as he walked inside.
The controls were gone. Completely gone, the Time Rotor wasn't plugged into the ceiling, the scanner was gone, the whole column itself was missing…and the Time Vortex was pulsing about the room for all to see. The Doctor averted his eyes from the light and raised his sonic screwdriver. He took a long and detailed reading and consulted the results.
"That explains it…" he nodded. The Time Vortex was contained in the TARDIS' control panel for a reason: it was literally all of time and space and the gaps in between. Without the Time Rotor to suppress it, the TARDIS should've exploded, taking a fair sized chunk of universe with it. Part of the Doctor's mind recalled telling a young Ian Chesterton about that in his first life when the TARDIS was threatening to explode. Stupid fast-return switch…
"Gotta focus…" he muttered and scanned again.
"Do you like it?" a sinisterly familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. The Doctor spun about, pointing his screwdriver.
"Madame Kovarian of the Silence… I've been looking for you," he glared at her and checked the rest of the room. No troops, no clerics, no creepy headless monks. The Doctor checked his hands, no strange tally marks like when he was in America in 1969. No Silence then.
"I'm alone if that's what you're thinking about," Kovarian smiled at him, evilly.
"If I asked questions…would you answer?" he prodded. Kovarian smiled again and started walking up towards the light.
"Don't do that!"
"It's not as dangerous as you think, Doctor," Kovarian calmly points out "but you already know that."
"If this was the actual Time Vortex, you and I and half the universe wouldn't exist by now," he surmised.
"Exactly," she nodded approvingly "Except that this is the real Vortex."
"What do you mean?" the Doctor demanded.
"I mean that while this is the real and actual Time Vortex that lives in your TARDIS, it's only a chunk of it. You already knew that too," she informed him.
The Doctor stepped closer to the light, still trying to avoid looking at it. He scanned again.
"This is…but wait, you already have Melody Pond, why would you need to do this? Shouldn't you be training up your little super weapon?" the Doctor glares. "Speaking of which, I'd very much like her back."
"There's nothing you or I can do about that, Doctor. It's true; I did take Melody Pond from you…five hundred years ago in my view. And then, without details, the following happened: you got yourself killed and I found your TARDIS. I destroyed the Time Rotor and unleashed the Vortex. Your TARDIS matrix put up quite a fight trying to keep it contained but while she was fighting to keep the Vortex restrained, I reached in and pulled out this. You've already figured out the rest," she waited for him to answer.
"This is my timeline," he states.
"Yes."
"You're hoping to send someone through and kill me before I can become a threat to you, before I become the Oncoming Storm that scares the emotionless Daleks, before I Time Lock the Time War. But why? If what you've said is true then really, all you have to do is wait for me to pop off then, isn't that right?" he faces her squarely, trying to keep from yelling like he had on Demons Run.
"Right on all accounts, your eventual death in this regeneration is only to leave the TARDIS undefended. We were hoping to send someone to kill you in your child hood but we can't seem to reach that part of your past," Kovarian looks at the light again.
"You really should stop looking at that," the Doctor glances at the Vortex Abridged Edition and then focuses back on her.
"Why should I? I've been here for five hundred years after all, hardly the lifespan of a human wouldn't you say?"
"Well yes but you're looking at the whole of my life; it's like reading my diary! And the reason you can't get to my child hood is because from this end of my time stream, Gallifrey is Time Locked! That would only leave the parts of my life when I'm not at home!" the Doctor smiles for a moment and then it fades "Which would leave you with seven hundred years or so of other opportunities to kill my past selves."
"Brilliant as ever, Doctor," Kovarian claps once smiling in a way that was completely out of character and downright creepy.
"See now, you're starting to take on my personality traits from my previous lives because you're staring at the light too long," the Doctor frowns at her.
"That compassion you have for your enemies is annoying."
"If I didn't have compassion, I'd be no better than most of the enemies I face on a day to day basis," he retorts.
"Hmm…and what if one of those enemies you face on a day to day basis was you? I only ask because you haven't bothered to ask a very important question: if I do have access to seven hundred years worth of your travels, why haven't I sent anyone yet? It should've been apparent to you that when I explained what this fragment of the Vortex is, I didn't say anything that would lead you to conclude that I had already sent some one," Kovarian smiled again.
Honestly, she should stop doing that.
"You want to send me to kill me? Have you never heard of a grandfather paradox? I'm not exactly suicidal either," the Doctor dismisses. "Honestly, I think watching this much of the past has knocked a few brain cells loose."
"But who better than you? In your sixth lifetime, you came so close to dying at the hands of the Valeyard who was in fact you and based on what I have seen of your past, it would take a very special Time Lord to kill you, the Master, Morbius and the Rani to name a few have all failed and the closest person capable of doing it and actually following through is the Valeyard. Unfortunately the part of you that is becoming the Valeyard won't finish cooking until your next life which I know you won't reach so that option is off limits. The only option then is to send you back to that point when you were stuck in 1963 and met those two school teachers. That would certainly do the trick," Kovarian had moved much closer to the Doctor while she was talking.
"Clever except for the fact that one: you're crazy and two: I've already told you I am not suicidal!" the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver just as Kovarian tried to grab at his throat. She grabbed the sonic instead and ripped it out of his hands and straight into the Vortex.
"Oh, did you have to- whoa!" he ducked as she tried to grab him again and rolled back towards the door.
"I know you'd never consent to go of your own free will, Doctor, I know you better than you know yourself! Naturally, I'll have to tweak your mind just a little!" she kicked out at him, barely missing his face. The Doctor ran back towards the door but Kovarian grabbed his throat and with inhuman strength tossed him into the air as easily as he would toss a coin…or a jelly baby. He hit a railing before the floor, cracking two of his ribs. He spat out blood. Kovarian stepped on his back to pin him down and the Doctor felt an alien pressure on his mind. He fought Kovarian off both physically and mentally and staggered to his feet.
"You're not actually Madam Kovarian are you?"
"Of course I'm me, it's just that part of me is sustained by the Vortex and the other part is maintained by some partial upgrades I obtained from the Cybermen," she explained as she kicked at him again. He dodged again just barely.
"That would explain the cybernetic steel toe in those high heeled boots," he nodded. She punched him in the shoulder dislocating it. The Doctor howled in pain and the pressure from Kovarian's mind broke through his flickering mental barriers. This time the fight for his mind was almost completely one sided, Kovarian wasn't joking when she said she knew him better than he did: everything he did to try and fight off her influences on his mind was perfectly counter attacked. The Doctor started seeing flashes of memory in the haze. His third life…the bow tie…the green velvet jacket that had made him look like a gambler…the white hair…the Venusian Aikido…
Kovarian's assault lifted, the Doctor opened his eyes to find himself in a defensive stance, exactly like his third incarnation would've done. While Kovarian was recovering from the punch to the jaw, the Doctor set his shoulder, eyes watering in pain before relief came. Kovarian lunged at him, he sidestepped and with a loud cry of "HAI!" he struck at her neck. Miraculously she dodged and kicked his legs out from under him.
"Venusian karate? You think I didn't know that?" she laughed and started using his own moves against him. The Doctor rolled back onto his feet and fixed his stance again, breathing hard. His hearts were straining to keep up.
I must be getting old…again…she keeps using her legs more than her arms.
Kovarian kicked at his face again, the Doctor rolled under her other leg but she jumped up over his assault.
"You're rusty."
"You're cheating."
"I suppose eight life times of disuse has taken away your ability to use these moves properly!" she punched when he expected another kick and the two cracked ribs broke. The Doctor staggered towards the hole in the floor with the raging pillar of light that was the Vortex. Kovarian grabbed his sore shoulder and started crushing it.
"Just a bit more…" she whispered and the Doctor felt like a knife tore through his mind. He screamed at the top of his lungs. He sifted though his ever fragmenting memory and found the image of his third self. He felt himself punch the demented cyberwoman only to have her break his arm in response. Thoroughly disoriented, the Doctor blacked out for a few moments only to come back just in time for Kovarian to push him into the Vortex.
"1963…" she declared in triumph.
White hair…bow tie…Venusian aikido…velvet coat…the bow tie…the bow tie…
Bow ties are cool…
The third Doctor returned to his lab at UNIT to find it empty.
Odd… "Jo?" he called out.
Of course there wouldn't be a response; Jo was in South America with Clifford Jones, she wouldn't be coming back to UNIT soon if at all. The Doctor sighed and turned to the TARDIS.
"When it all comes down to it, it's just the two of us isn't it, Old Girl?" he polished the door handle with his sleeve and smiled. From inside, he could hear something bleeping.
"That sounds like…but it can't be…" the Doctor opened the TARDIS and went to the control column. The Doctor had installed a temporal proximity alarm to pick up the Master's TARDIS some time ago with out telling the Brigadier. Lethbridge-Stewart would only have a panic attack every time the alarm went off. After all, it could only pick up TARDIS' in general and not just a specific one. Somewhere out there, quite nearby, a TARDIS landed.
That's what the Doctor thought before another alarm went off on the other side of the panel.
"Not a TARDIS after all…though that's usually a bad thing," the Doctor scratched his chin, thinking. The second alarm was the TARDIS telling him that time had been interrupted by something strange and definitely not a TARDIS. This fact eliminated the Time Lords and the Master who were perfectly capable of using a proper TARDIS to travel. That meant someone had either caused a temporal accident or someone was using a Vortex Manipulator…a faulty Vortex Manipulator.
Cheap way to travel…the TARDIS is much more elegant…
The Doctor sighed again. If someone was fooling around with space-time without the proper knowledge or equipment, the Doctor had to do something about it. Had to.
Now, to sneak away before the Brigadier tries to rope me into another one of his painfully simple problems.
Captain Mike Yates rolled over in his bed and tried to go back to sleep. He was on sick leave after the whole BOSS fiasco in Wales and his mind was still a bit fuzzy. Most days he woke up with headaches but mostly it was the knowledge that he had been forced to do things that weren't of his own reasoning that kept him up at night. As Yates tried to find sleep, a familiar sound hovered on the edge of his consciousness, a sweet sound like breathing and singing at the same time. There was only one thing that could make that sound: a TARDIS.
Yates forced himself awake and grabbed his house coat. Outside, the morning was just beginning. Yates looked around. There wasn't a blue box anywhere on the horizon…which meant there was only one other Time Lord it could be.
"If the Master's here again…" Yates shuddered and looked around for anything that wasn't there the day before.
There are several new cars…but not much else. If only it wasn't dawn and I could see what I was doing…
Yates started walking up the street only to trip over something lying on the pavement. He steadied himself on a car. The thing he kicked groaned. Yates gasped, lying unconscious on the ground was a man in a brown jacket with a bow tie. His breathing was ragged. Yates knelt down and checked his pulse; the man's hand was freezing against his. There was something wrong with his pulse, it was too fast for an unconscious human and it didn't have the telltale ba-bump, ba-bump that a normal human would have.
"One-two-three-four…one-two-three-four…" Yates counted and pressed his ear against the man's chest in two places.
"Two hearts!" he fell backwards at the shock. There was no doubt that this man was a Time Lord like the Doctor. Perhaps the Doctor knew him. Yates started to lift the man up but had to stop when the man groaned in his sleep. Yates opened his shirt and saw the black bruise over two broken ribs.
"What happened to you?" Yates asked, knowing the Time Lord couldn't give an answer. Yates dragged him by his feet back to his house minding his broken arm. Once he was safely inside, Yates was on the phone to UNIT.
"Get me Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart!" he ordered to the poor night-shift comm. officer.