The Doctor straightened his bow tie, pulled several levers on the console and was on his way.
"C'mon Sexy, take me someplace… exciting."
The TARDIS landed with a rather alarming sequence of bangs and a noise sort of like a bald man being slapped on the head. The Doctor raced to the door and flung it open, curious to know what lay ahead.
"Well this is brilliant, isn't it?" Surprisingly enough as he stepped outside he could hear some sort of wet, sniffily sound coming from ahead. As he moved closer he could make out what seemed to be a rather small human child.
"Well, hello." He said with a smile, looking into a pair of blue eyes so enormous they stood out in stark contrast to the think pale face they inhabited.
"Oh, um, hello. I don't mean to be rude, but who exactly are you and why are you here?" Asked the small boy, seeming surprisingly unafraid of the strange man that was looming above him with a ridiculous grin plastered on his face.
"Oh, right. I'm the Doctor. Pleased to meet you, hello, greetings or however you say it here. Also, would you be much obliged to tell me where exactly is here..?" the Doctor trailed off, pointing the Sonic Screwdriver at the walls and sort of just generally brandishing it about.
"Sir, I don't mean to be offensive but you must be affected! We're in Asgard. How is it that you don't know this?"
The Doctor stared down at the little boy, surprised to find his eyes were quite red rimmed and his face seems sort of red and blotchy. Crying, it would seem.
The Doctor leant right down to the child and examined his face closely. "What is your name? And what exactly are you doing down in this cold dark corridor all by yourself?"
"Oh, I'm Loki" he began with a half-hearted attempt at a smile, "I – I came down here to get away from Thor actually. He's well, he's my brother but we got into a fight and he told me I was an adopted Jotun! I'm not! I was upset and I broke his favourite mjolnir toy and then he never comes down here so I ran away. Do you think me a coward?" the boy – Loki – hung his head and scuffed his little boot on the ground, with a rather sheepish expression.
The Doctor didn't quite know what to think, honestly he hadn't heard of Jotun's being around for centuries. Frost Giants as he actually remembered them. And Thor? Was Loki talking about the Norse God Thor? Surely the Doctor hadn't arrived in his childhood. In his experience that often meant bad things were brewing.
"A coward? Never! Often brothers need a bit of loss to ground themselves, even if they don't realise it until later" The Doctor kissed the air on both sides of Loki's face, grabbing his shoulders and then confidently striding forward to find out why he was even here.
"Sir! Doctor!" Loki chased after him in considerably shorter legs, "you are mad! I like it! Everybody thinks I'm mad too."
"A little bit of madness is always a good thing!" The Doctor called behind him, stopping to sonic the wall to his left. Hmm, he was thinking, not exactly the results I was expecting. Strange. The results he was getting were technically, well, nothing. Apparently nothing at all was happening here.
"My dear Loki, if I didn't know any better it would seem that nothing odd is going on here. But I do know better and we had better get cracking before something awful happens." The Doctor took off at a ridiculously fast stride and Loki was again struggling to keep up.
"Doctor. What exactly do you mean? What's wrong? What are you doing?" The doctor has skidded to a halt outside Loki's room, and was staring at the door incredulously while waving that odd wand instrument about. It emitted a high pitched noise and a green line of light.
"I need your help because, right now, there is something awful in your bedroom. Would you mind opening the door for me?" Loki did as he was asked and stepped aside. The Doctor warily entered the room, pointing his wand around with Loki following close behind.
"Can you hear that Loki?" Loki listened carefully, not really sure what he should be listening for.
"Doctor, do you mean the clock? It's always made that noise." Loki pointed over to the wall, where a large clocked fashioned like a sun sat.
"Yes but, why is there ticking if the clock isn't moving?" The Doctor slowly turned around to face the boy, "I don't mean to alarm you at all, but maybe you should RUN!" The Doctor yelled, grabbing Loki's hand and pulling him down the corridor so fast his feet barely had time to touch the floor. The Doctor pulled to a sudden halt as they rounded the corner, putting his mouth right up to Loki's ear.
"That, my friend, is a Clockwork Man. Haven't seen one since, well, I wasn't myself. I thought I had got rid of them all but it would seem that one escaped. Bit not good, really. Well, really not good I suppose." The Doctor let out a puff of excited breath and listened closely for the Clockwork man's footsteps and the characteristic ticking.
"Loki, I need you to do something very brave for me. Do you think you can do that?" Loki nodded and the Doctor grabbed his shoulders. "I need you to go out there and draw the clockwork man over here. I promise you, I will not let him lay a finger on you. You will not be harmed." Loki nodded again, drew a deep breath and stepped out from behind the wall.
"Hey, assbutt!" he yelled, shaking a tiny fist at the imposing man of cogs and gears. With speed the Doctor didn't even know they possessed, the clockwork man made a vicious swipe at the boy and the Doctor panicked, getting the clockwork man right in the face with his Sonic Screwdriver. The Doctor immediately disregarded the now disintegrating clockwork man, grabbing the small, limp Loki by his shoulders.
"No!" The Doctor was on his way to working up a full scale freak out when the little boy's body gave him a small grin and simply vanished.
"Wha-?" The Doctor whipped his head around at the sound of a quiet, heart-warming giggle.
"I'm over here Doctor!" the boy was grinning so much the Doctor thought his face might crack in two.
The Doctor almost fainted in relief. "Loki, you scared me half to death thinking you were dead!"
The boy smiled and moved closer, "You're not the only one with special abilities around here Doctor."
The Doctor wasn't sure if he should be laugh or cry. He did an odd mixture of both and pulled the boy into a hug. "And I say, please never do that again in front of me! You were so brave my friend. Well done!"
Friend. That was what Loki heard. He had a friend. Not someone who thought him mad, but someone who thought he was special. Special enough to call a friend.
"Well, Loki, I - Aargh!" A large bang had alerted him to the fact that the TARDIS was, in fact, smoking slightly and giving off a pungent odour.
"Eeh! I am so sorry but I need to go back in there quickly. I'll be back in five minutes. You wait here!" And with that the Doctor whipped around the corner, jumped into an odd blue box and disappeared.
Loki sat down in the spot where the box containing his only true friend had disappeared, curiosity and excitement making it difficult to sit still. A friend! Finally, someone didn't think he was mad. Or adopted. He sat his face in his hands and began to count down until the Doctor said he would be back.