Dr Grace Holloway sighed, rubbed her tired eyes and pulled at her locker door
Dr Grace Holloway sighed, rubbed her tired eyes and pulled at her locker door. It refused to open. She pulled harder; it rattled stubbornly. The frame was bent, the door didn't fit properly and it did sometimes jam. The icing on the cake of a difficult day. She tried the trick of hitting it in exactly the right spot a few times, with variations on the right spot, and when that failed to work, let her frustration overtake her, pounding on the door.
The door suddenly opened. Inwards, she noticed as her hand failed to make contact and she toppled forwards from her crouching position.
There was light. A lot more light, bright white light, than there should be, almost blinding her after the gloom of the locker room. And a voice, with a British accent.
"Have you quite finished?"
Grace looked up from the floor, squinting a little as her eyes adjusted. They immediately fixed on the only familiar object around, sitting no more than two feet away.
"That's my locker!"
"Is it?"
"Yes." Scrambling to her feet, she retrieved her bag from the locker, the door opening easily.
"Oh," said the short, dark-haired woman. "Is that why you were making such a racket?
It makes it quite hard to concentrate on calculating complexities," she added. "I thought it must be something important."
Grace stared at her, thoughts and responses tumbling through her head as the past overtook her present. Both the ship and the person were very different, but both were something she'd thought she'd accepted weren't coming back. Not that that stopped her checking her patients for two hearts.
"And I thought this must be my locker," she managed.
"It's a disguise." The woman, alien, (Gallifreyan?) leaned back against the console. "It's supposed to give a misleading impression."
"Like that?" Grace pointed to the scanner, pleased with how calm she sounded for someone who had just seen a colleague morph into an alien.
"Like…do you have any lakes around here?"
Then there was chaos and running and kissing and some legally questionable activities, surprising herself with her boldness, all in the name of saving the world, just like she remembered. She almost didn't want it to end, partly because she knew once the adrenaline drained out of her system, she'd keel over into exhaustion and partly because she suspected, believed (hoped?) she had a second chance, another choice to make.
"So why did you come here?" Grace asks, expecting another story that makes her doubt either the sanity of either or the both of them, involving Masters and Time Lords and Eyes of Harmony, because she doubts any of them do things by half.
"I was looking for a doctor," Susan replies and gently squeezes Grace's hand. "I think I found her."
And the choice was there.