This story is for my best friend's birthday; who wouldn't love to get the gift of going on an adventure with the Doctor? (; Happy Birthday, Morty! I lovers you! - Michi
He had offered himself up to the will of the gods. Having deserted his mystery bound wife at the destination of her choosing, he had moved on to carelessly floating in the cover of clouds. They shielded him and his spacecraft from the prying eyes of the human race and he was rather content with that, away from those he longed to be with. But he had made up his mind; the Doctor had decided to keep them out of sight, after what happened.
But they were his weakness, his own vulnerability. And that, it would seem, was why he flew over the Earth, only observing and keeping to himself. He needed to be closer to them, but not so close that he would be tempted to let them aboard the T.A.R.D.I.S.
It wouldn't last long, though. Because, after all, the last advice he had been given was, "Don't be alone."
Normally, she wouldn't be awake at this hour, but today wasn't a normal day. Peeking through the curtains, she watched as the sun crept across the horizon and through the tree tops in the distance. It was almost seven in the morning; Sam hadn't gone to bed until two, but had managed to awaken without an alarm, and still felt oddly refreshed.
Sam hadn't thought twice about not going back to sleep; she and her mom had plans to go into town early anyways to meet her dad at Cracker Barrel during his lunch break. It wasn't a normal occurrence, but today was her birthday. And food and family was close to her heart.
Her hands lifted over her head in a stretch and let out a moan of relief. The muscles she stretched ached so good and when she returned to her previous position: holding a book to her blanket-covered lap and, now, using the light collecting outside instead of her beside lamp to read.
Within the hour, it's gotten warm enough for Sam to embark to her family's newly-built porch with the blanket and book to plant herself in a seat until when she needed to wake her mom so they both could start getting ready for her birthday lunch.
But quickly, instead, something odd begins to happen. Across the road at a neighbor's house, the dogs Sam had dubbed "Hellhounds" suddenly started yapping, which caused an annoyed eye roll from her. Great, she thought. What a way to ruin my morning. In her annoyance, she remained seated, firmly planted in her comfy seat and not paying any time to the small figure making its way towards her.
The barking continued but Sam simply ignored the sound, delving only into her world of fantasy. Many minutes passed before anything else concerned her.
Mid-bark, the angel kidnapped the dogs and sent them away to a previous time. The Doctor felt the hatred radiating off of both him and the angel.
"You think you're so tough," he growled, keeping his eyes firmly planted on the gruesome statue. "Stealing away innocent little animals for your own selfish needs."
He stowed away a hand behind him, reaching out for the azure door he knew would greet him. Slowly, he stepped back into the T.A.R.D.I.S. with a near-smirk etching etching its way onto his lips. He was so unprepared, having only a few minutes until the angel disappeared before he could exact revenge.
When his dials had gone mad, he had with frightening pace unshielding the time machine and descended into what appeared to be a normal neighborhood, save for the fact that it was unsettlingly warm, which had caused him to believe he was in the United States.
He swung the door closed and used the locking mechanism before he let out a loud "HAHA!" He had thwarted a weeping angel's grasp yet again, but this time he believed they didn't know what was coming for it, while banged and bit unmercifully and the exterior of the T.A.R.D.I.S.
The Doctor picked up the mirror and grinned at himself; oh how sweet revenge felt. He swiveled on his feet and returned to the door, unlocking it, and quickly shined the mirror before him. Later, he would swear he could hear the screams the angel made before it was set in stone forever. He was tempted to laugh, the Doctor, but a scream all-too-familiar called to him instead.
Sam stared at the small angel that had somehow managed to make it from the lawn to the porch since she had returned from the kitchen to grab a cup of sweet tea. She had looked away for an instant and it was closer.
She observed the angel, refusing to blink until she had figured it out. The wing that was missing from when her mom dropped it the day she got it looked jagged, the white it once was was now a dulling grey. Green bits from the lawn's newest mow speckled its unearthed feet.
She blinked.
The Doctor leapt across the fence that held him from the road and darted instinctively towards the sound. The only person he saw that had been awake and alert was a woman across the street reading out of a paperback book. But it now seemed she was frightened.
The glass he witnessed falling from her hand and crashing against the ground only proved his hunch correct.
He regretted not being able to see the perpetrator before now and stared down at the small figure that had caused the scream to slip from the woman's lips.
"You boys never give up do you," he shouted in frustration.
He had left the mirror behind and he didn't know what he could do to stop its assault on the woman.
"Who are you?!" She looked more startled about the guy who had leapt over the banister as if it was nothing.
"Don't take your eyes off it," he said, ignoring the question from now. His name wouldn't matter if she were in the '40's in a split second.
Instead, he moves into the house, searching for a reflective surface and Sam stood motionless doing as the stranger said. If the figurine at her feet didn't scare her to death, she may have tried to stop him from entering her house without permission; maybe he knew more than she did...
He went straight to the kitchen, where more or less a hoard of reflective surfaces lived. He flipped the tail of his coat up and leaned down to search the bottom cabinet. Pots, pans, and a stray baby mouse was all he found as he tossed the items out of the cabinet. He placed the baby mouse in his front jacket pocket to return to a mother later.
"I thought there was a fad for metallic and.. and shiny a couple years ago!" he growled, still frustrated.
Tossing open another door, he digs even faster and lets out a great, "AHA!" He found a mixing bowl and it would work well enough, and if it didn't... He'd destroy another cabinet.
Jumping up, he returns to the girl that looks like she's about to cry because of the situation she's been thrust in.
"What are you doing," she asks in almost a whisper as he placed the bowl right at the face of the broken angel. He propped the bowl up with her book and unceremoniously grabs her by her hand and takes her into the house.
Sam removes herself from his grasp and back away from the man, not sure if it was he or the statue she had grown fond of over the years or the man who had just saved her ass she was afraid of.
"I believed I just saved you from unwanted time travel," he said, answering her question, finally. "Which I'm sure would have been unpleasant or at least give you heartburn... Or so I'm told."
The Doctor swiveled on his feet and made his way to the couch that was closest and plopped down.
"What, no T.V.?"
"Who are you?" She demands for a second time.
"I'm me," he said, canting his head to the side before realization sweeps over him." "Oh! You mean my name. You may call me the Doctor."
"Okay, Doctor, what the Hell was that?"
"Weeping angel...?" He trailed off and waited for her to respond.
"My name's Sam; what the fuck is that?"
"Language!" he shouted, but before he could answer, a door opened from the other side of the room and Sam jumped at the Doctor and flung him out of the door in which he had arrived.
"Go! And take that thing with you!"
Sam quickly jumped into her seat on the porch to act as if nothing was wrong and there wasn't about to be a shouting match in her living room and grabs her book from behind the mixing bowl hesitantly as the Doctor reaches for the now-harmless angel.
"I'll just put this in the garden, then."
We don't have a garden, Sam thought, but refused to make any response aloud.
It was only by chance that he had seen the Birthday Card addressed to Sam lying on the kitchen table. Now, he was thinking over something that hadn't crossed his mind in a fairly long time. It'll only be this once, he thought. Just once and I'll go back to my castle in the sky.
After he was pulled off of the very comfortable couch and turned out into the fresh morning air, he slide behind out of sight of anyone in the house and waited until the movement both he and Sam had heard ceased.
He peeked over the edge of the house and creased his brow at the sight of Sam; she was reading the same book she had before the "incident' had occurred.
Jumping back up onto the porch, be leaned over the banister and tipped the book up as she jumped.
"Dracula?" he inquired. "Lovely fellow, highly misunderstood. Although he had some sort of fetish for goat cheese."
Sam's eyes widened. This guy was a nut, she thought, but went along with it.
"Oh? I thought he was some monarch who went crazy and ate people."
"No, not people," he replied. "He was a vegetarian for a little while, but Vladimir wasn't very bright when it came to his military strategies."
The Doctor offered her a smile and then got to the point once she didn't respond.
"So how does a little adventure sound," he asked.
"Sounds like I'd have to get up," she retorted.
"A birthday adventure."
"I'm listening..."
The Doctor leaned off of the porch and though his words over carefully.
"If you could travel anywhere in the world, at any given point in history, would you?"
"You mean if I don't get heartburn?" she asked.
Laughing he replies with, "Yes."
"Then I'd be in the Renaissance, any day."
A sly grin graced his lips before he jumped back over the banister and offered his hand to Sam.
"Then why don't we go see what all of the fuss is about."
Sam stared up at him. Yep, crazy.
"Uhh," she started. "I don't know about that. I have to get Mom up in about an hour."
Waving the thought off, he says, "We'll be back by then. It's a promise."
Sam didn't like this idea, but he had saved her from, as he had said, "unwanted time travel," and she had always wanted to work at a Renaissance festival and dress up as a lady or beer wench, the latter the more likely. If he had known what the weird little angel thing was up to, then who was to say he didn't know about time travel itself? Or that he could do it?
Taking his hand, she stands and dusts herself off and slips into her flip-flops.
"If I die, I'm going to haunt your ass, I'm telling you now."
The grin resurfaced and the Doctor led Sam across the street and to the TARDIS.
"Before you ask, it's definitely bigger on the inside."
She side-eyes him and follows him into the blue box once he's started inside. Her eyes widened at the truth he speaks and utters a low, "Holy mother of sin."
"Never heard that one before," he says before locking the T.A.R.D.I.S.'s door and slips away to toy at some of the middle console's leavers and buttons.
Sam stayed planted at her spot at the entrance of the T.A.R.D.I.S. and takes in the interior. It looked nothing like it did on the outside, except for the vast amount of blue. She stepped forward and placed her hand on the railing as she walks down the stairs.
"What is this thing?" she asked.
"It's a T.A.R.D.I.S.," he says, poking his tongue out of his mouth as he concentrates on getting them to a place within their destined timeframe where millions of people were not dying from Bubonic Plague.
"A what now?"
"Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. T.A.R.D.I.S."
"Oh... Right."
Sam stepped off of the last stair and skirted along the edge of the craft. The room was nearly filled with the console in the middle, which she assumed to be the way they were traveling through time. There was an exit opposite here into a corridor that probably had a bedroom, kitchen, and the like. Why had she decided to do this again? Oh, right. Kings and Queens and Knights and Jesters.
"Do you have any food," she asks. "I didn't get breakfast or anything."
The Doctor turns back a dial and pushes a tough of wires away so she can direct her with motions of his other hand.
"Kitchen is down the hall, to the left, go down the stairs, to the forth door on, and on your left."
Blinking at the directions given to her, she makes her way down the hall.
"And don't mind the shark in the pool. He wanted to see the Atlantic from above and, well... I forgot about the whole 'need water' thing."
She got lost twice. Sam admittedly went looking for the shark in the swimming pool and wasn't surprise when she went down the wrong corridor. The pool was massive and if there hadn't been a sea mammal in it and the water wasn't in dire need of a cleaning, she may have went for a dip.
Once she made it to the kitchen though, she hoarded a plateful of strawberries that were perfectly ripe and a glass of tea she made with an actual teabag, ice, and sugar.
Balancing the plate on the glass, she made her way to the room she had left the Doctor in and found him arguing with a T.V.-adjacent machine attached to the console.
"There is no way I'm going back there. And I've got company, River. Isn't that what you wanted?"
Sam heard only part of the response the Doctor got from the machine and made it back to one of the small flights of stairs. She took a seat and waited until he had finished his conversation before making herself known. And while she waited, she would help herself to the fruit gracing her plate.
"She says her name is Sam... Yes... Yes... Very pretty." The next sound the Doctor makes is a snort followed by a laugh.
"Goodbye, River - I love you too."
He pressed buttons and pushed the machine away. The things he and his wife spoke about, when they did, wasn't very typical. But they didn't have a very typical relationship either.
"She seemed nice," she said, muffled slightly by the red berried in her mouth.
"She has her moments," he replied and turned around.
He leaned against the "oh shit" bar and watched her for a moment.
"Did you see the Shark?"
She choked on her strawberry and cleared her throat.
"Maybe."
"His name is Bryson and he enjoys krill more than dolphin," he says.
The lack of human interaction, or any interaction, had the Doctor spouting off information he normally would keep to himself.
"That's, uhh... Interesting," Sam said unsure. This guy was weird, but in a good way.
His eyes run over her and he is quick to think of something to quail the unnerving silence.
"This thing is itchy," she says as they walked through the marketplace.
Sam was adorned in an authentic-to-the-year lady's dress. The thread was made out of molded gold and the deep purple fabric had been ordered from Spain. The original owner of the gown had belonged to a princess who had ran off with her peasant lover.
"What did you expect, Sam?" he inquired with a smile. "It's 1568, height of the Italian Renaissance. England is getting it's monarchy situated, King Arthur's body has been found and tucked away into Avalon, the art is beautiful, and the clothing is exceptional."
He has a point, she thought. I signed up for the 16th century, so I got to stick out the itchy, bitchy, and creepy.
"So why aren't you dressed up, big bad mister time traveler? Why do I get authentic and you get -" She motions to his attire. "- 20th century bank teller?"
"Because I'm the Time Traveler and I said so," he said, matter-of-factly.
A woman selling eggs from the chickens she is also selling obviously overhears him and gives him the oddest look Sam could ever see anyone making. And if it weren't for the fact that she looked like a Princess but didn't even have a dime to her name, she might have bought something from the venders.
"And I don't think I have a dress that fits me," the Doctor continued.
Sam laughed at that. To imagine this tall, lanky fellow in a dress was a hilarious thought.
"Thank God."
Out of sight, there was a woman staring into the distance. Her face adorned a pair of sunglasses that shielded her cat-like eyes. The robes that she wore did everything to fill out her body, all skin and bones. Her hands were kept inside of the sleeves of her robes and she had herself positioned in the corner.
But that was simply on the outside.