A/N: I wrote this a few weeks ago for the birthday of a very dear friend of mine who loves Warehouse and Doctor Who as much as I do. It was up on Tumblr, but I figured I'd post it here, too. I hope you enjoy it! It's in the New Who canon for Doctor Who, and early season 4 for Warehouse.
Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13 or Doctor Who. I do, however, own a plastic sonic screwdriver and a ceramic TARDIS, so I'm on my way there, right?
Myka is the first to hear him.
It's an inventory day, and Artie wants them to be really thorough, so it's all hands on deck. Pete and Leena are working in the next quadrant over and Artie and Trailer are next to the Escher vault. She's not sure where Steve is until she hears someone a few aisles over exclaim, "Holy- is that actually Excalibur?"
Pete answers him over the Farnsworth. "Yup, that's the real one. Myka almost got shish-kebabed by it when we were tracking it down. Luckily, I was there to save the day."
Myka snorts and rolls her eyes. She's about to reply when she hears something a few aisles away- it's the kind of sound that she'd expect a spaceship to make. For half a second, she thinks that that's ridiculous, but then she remembers that she's in the Warehouse.
She grabs her neutralizer and her Farnsworth and starts to follow the noise, counting the aisles so that she doesn't get lost. It gets louder as she moves towards it, but she can't think of anything to describe the noise, except that it sounds vaguely like "vworp-vworp." (It's mildly disconcerting, because Myka's vocabulary hasn't proved insufficient in a very long time.)
She thinks she's almost figured out where it is when the noise stops. After a few moments, she hears a voice, though she can't make out what it's saying. Then there's a slam, and the noise starts up again, somehow faster now. Myka starts to run past aisle after aisle, desperate to find where it's coming from.
She gets to where the noise is coming from just in time for the sound to stop. She thinks she caught a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye, too, but it was probably just a trick of the light.
Myka never mentions what happened, explaining it away as an artifact that acted up and corrected itself. The only other option is that she's starting to lose it, and she doesn't particularly want to consider that one.
Pete is the first to meet him.
He's in the middle of target practice when Claudia claims his Tesla for an upgrade. She won't take no for an answer, so he's left with nothing to do. He's about to go to the Pete Cave when he sees Trailer barking loudly at something before beginning to chase it. Knowing Trailer, he could be barking at the fairy dust from JM Barrie's fountain pen, but Pete follows just in case. After all, he's pretty sure that that was the canned foods aisle, and there's going to be hell to pay if the original can of worms gets knocked over.
It only occurs to him when he catches up that they could be chasing an intruder, and he doesn't even have his Tesla anymore. Three seconds later, they run a little farther and he sees a brown trench coat whipping around a corner, and he knows he's chasing an intruder. Pete realizes that he's going to need a better strategy than this, so he stops running and just listens very carefully. He hears two sets of footfalls, and then a voice- with a British accent, no less- that says, "I think we've lost them."
He grabs a tennis ball, checks that it's not an artifact before throwing it, then tells Trailer to fetch. Once the dog has run far enough, Pete starts quietly walking in the same direction that the intruders went, staying on high alert. If there are strangers in the Warehouse and they want to do harm, there's no way that the artifacts won't start reacting. It'll be helpful in catching them, but if he's not careful, then he'll be in trouble, too.
He's an aisle or two away from them when he smells fudge. Instinctively, he ducks and braces himself. He waits a moment or two, but isn't hit by anything. Then, from where the strangers are, he hears a woman's voice (also British) ask, "What the bloody hell was that?!"
The man very casually responds, "Boomerang. Aboriginie in origin, I think. Very aerodynamic, if I do say so myself. You know, I once met an-"
The woman interrupts him. "Doctor, duck!"
There's a pause where Pete assumes they've ducked, then the man says, "Well would you look at that. That's brilliant, that is. It's like something out of a Harry Potter book. I wonder- what planet do you think that's from?"
"I don't care where it's from! Can't you just sonic it?"
"'Course I can't. The sonic doesn't do wood, you know that."
"So how do we stop it from-" there's another break and Pete hears the boomerang whiz by. "How do we stop it from killing us?" the woman finishes.
If Pete was confused about how they got in, he's utterly befuddled now. Are these people drunk? Crazy? Is this a test from the Regents? Regardless of what it is, he won't be able to find out how they've gotten in if they're dead, so he walks to their aisle. He doesn't acknowledge them at first, just waits for the boomerang to come back around and catches it.
After that, he turns around. "That's how you stop it from killing you. And trust me, there's no other way except to get seriously maimed, which if you ask me isn't much of a trade-off."
They don't appear to be as scared or as hostile as intruders usually are. In fact, the woman- who's very pretty, by the way- is looking at him with relief evident on her face.
"Thank you so much," she says. "This one here would probably just have tried to lick it or something. I'm Martha Jones, and this is the Doctor, and we've actually got a really good explanation for how we got here."
This is one of the weirdest things that has happened to him since the time he went crazy because of the telegraph. Pete shakes their outstretched hands.
"Pete Lattimer. Nice to meet you. Now, I'd appreciate if you'd just give me that really good explanation before I arrest you."
"Oh, absolutely," says the man, who Martha called 'Doctor.' (What kind of a name was 'Doctor', anyway? Doctor who?) The man started walking towards the end of the aisle. "But do you think we could move over one aisle first? This one's making me nervous."
The man's complete nonchalance throws Pete off, so he just nods dumbly and follows them down the aisle. The Doctor freezes as he gets to the end, looks around, then turns to Pete with a look on his face like he's just realized something. "Oh, of course!" he exclaims, looking excited. "We're in the Warehouse, aren't we?"
"I- you- what? How did you know that?" Pete asks. What is going on?
"Amazing. Never thought I'd see the Warehouse again. What is this, fifteen? Oh, no, that's on one of the moons of Poosh. Twelve's in England…is it thirteen? Oh, yes, it must be. Who's the caretaker of- oh, yes, Mrs. Frederic. Good old Irene. I wonder how she's doing." He says all of this without stopping to let Pete answer, which is probably a good thing, since Pete is currently speechless, staring at him like he has a second head. (Later on, he takes comfort in the fact that Martha was staring at the Doctor in much the same way, and she apparently knew him, so maybe Pete isn't the weird one here.)
"Oh, the Warehouse. I do love this place. Testament to the ingenuity of the human race and all that," the Doctor says, before continuing to walk and turn into the next aisle. Pete hears Martha breathe a sigh of relief and wonders what happened for a moment before he realizes that there's a big blue phonebox in front of him that definitely wasn't there yesterday.
The Doctor and Martha move towards the phonebox, and Pete asks, "What, are you just going to hide in there? How do you even fit? Where did that thing come from?"
"I'm so sorry Agent Lattimer- it is Agent, isn't it? We're going to have to cut this short. So sorry for intruding," is the only response he gets before the man in the trench coat steps into the phonebox.
Pete almost gets a glimpse inside before Martha blocks his view. "Thanks so much for saving us…and also for not arresting us," she adds, looking somewhat embarrassed. Then she steps into the box, too, and closes the door behind her
He's completely at a loss for what to do. The boomerang is his only weapon, and it's no help now. Besides, he didn't get bad vibes off of either Martha or the Doctor. It's just really alarming that they- holy crap, is the phonebox making that weird vworp-vworp noise? And why is it shimmering?
Pete blinks a couple times. Maybe he was wrong before. Maybe they weren't drunk or crazy. Maybe he was. Because now, the blue box is disappearing before his eyes. The noise fades out a second after the box does, and suddenly everything is silent.
It's an artifact. It has to be an artifact. It worked on Trailer, and then it worked on him. There's no Doctor or Martha, and there certainly isn't a big blue 'police box.'
Right?
It's Claudia who finally figures out who he is.
One night at dinner, Pete casually asks Artie how many artifacts aside from the telegraph cause tangible hallucinations.
"Depends on what it is you're hallucinating," Artie says, between bites of apple pie. "There's a set of sugar tongs, for example, that convince you beyond a doubt that you're having tea with the queen of England. Apparently, it's a nice Ceylon-Darjeeling blend."
"Uh, no, I wasn't thinking of tea," Pete says hesitantly. "I mean is there anything in the Warehouse that makes you hear phantom noises? Like, say, footsteps? Or maybe stranger, more unidentifiable noises?"
Next to Pete, Myka's eyes widen, but she doesn't say anything, pretending to be very interested in her empty plate. Claudia notices, though, and files it away for later.
Artie, on the other hand, is giving Pete the 'tell-me-what-stupid-thing-you've-done-before-we-find-out-the-hard-way' look. "Why?" he asks warily. "Are you hearing phantom footsteps, Pete?"
"What, me? Oh, no. No, I was just- I was with Trailer the other day on the floor of the Warehouse, and out of the blue he just started barking and chasing something. I didn't see anything, but he seemed like he was following someone," Pete explains. From behind Artie, Steve gives Pete a funny look, and then Claudia knows something's up.
Later that evening, once Artie's gone and they're all sitting around the fireplace, Claudia nonchalantly asks, "So, Pete and Myka, had any fun hallucinations lately?"
Myka chokes on her tea, and once her coughing fit subsides, she hoarsely asks, "Why would you ask that, Claud? That's ridiculous."
Claudia just arches an eyebrow at Myka, shaking her head before she turns to Pete. He looks oddly pensive.
"I'm sure it was an artifact," he says slowly. "Because even for the Warehouse, that was too weird to be real."
Straightening up, Myka looks curiously at Pete. "Did you hear the sound, too?"
"What sound? The vworp-vworp? From the blue box?"
"Yes, yes, exactly!" says Myka, looking incredibly relieved. "So there was something blue there! I thought I was just going crazy or maybe being affected by an artifact."
"Oh, I'm so glad I'm not insane. So did you meet him, too, then?" asks Pete.
Myka furrows her eyebrows. "Meet who?"
Crap, maybe he is insane. "The Doctor, obviously."
Surprisingly, it's Claudia who speaks up next. "Oh my God, of course!"
The two of them, along with Steve, turn to look at Claudia.
"You know about him?" Pete asks her, hoping that the answer is yes and he can go back to the great feeling that comes with knowing that he isn't crazy.
"Sort of. I stumbled across some files on him a while ago. He's kind of a big deal in the Warehouse. He's got his own aisle," Claudia explains. "Hey, Jinksy, hand me my laptop?"
Steve passes Claudia the computer in question. "So if this Doctor guy is so important, how come we've never heard of him?" he asks. "I mean, all this artifact hunting and inventorying and I've never once heard of a man in a box that makes- what was it? A 'vworp' noise?"
Claudia is busily typing away, pulling up file after file until she finds what she's looking for. When she clicks on it, though, a password screen comes up, and she turns to look up at them. "Okay, this is going to take a second. I have to hack the system. So Pete, what happened when you met him? Where did you even see him?"
As Pete explains his encounter with Martha and the Doctor, Claudia breaks through her own security and yells, "Yahtzee!" just after Pete finishes his story.
"I'm in," she says, scanning the file. "Okay, so the Doctor is apparently the most important person we've never heard of."
She sets the laptop on the coffee table, and everyone crowds around the screen. "He's been around as long as recorded history. I mean, there's etchings of him from Rome all the way through to photographs of him from the London Olympics this summer."
"That's him!" Pete says, pointing to a picture of a tall, skinny man in Converse and a suit, with a trench coat over his arm. "That's the man I met in the Warehouse."
"That's one of him," Claudia corrects. "The Doctor has been seen all over history, but all of these pictures and drawings and statues show him with different faces. He looks different each time, but it's always the same MO, and he's always in a big blue box."
"Oh my gosh, he knows HG!" Myka exclaims, as she skims the list of 'associated Warehouse agents.' "And Mrs. Frederic, too!"
"He doesn't just know her; he calls her Irene. 'Good old Irene', to be exact," Pete tells them.
At this, the other three turn to look at him silently, their expressions somewhere between surprised, confused, and alarmed.
"Yeah, that's what I said."
"So this Doctor," Steve says, once they've gotten past that, "is he a good guy?"
"As far as I can tell, he is," Claudia says. "I'll keep digging, though."
Pete shrugs. "Hey, if Mrs. F trusts him enough to let him call her Irene, I'm sure he's not evil. I'm just happy that I'm not insane."
"Well, at least not in this case," Myka says with a smirk.
"Yeah, keep talking, Ophelia tittance," Pete counters, sticking out his tongue.
It's Mrs. Frederic who arranges for him to visit.
She doesn't tell anyone, of course. She just lets them think that the Doctor's arrived spontaneously again. But after the impressively dedicated work they put in preparing themselves and making sure he wasn't a threat to the Warehouse, she decided that they deserved something in return.
They're in Artie's office for a debriefing when they hear the unmistakable noise. Mrs. Frederic smiles- it's been entirely too long since she's heard those engines- and Artie just looks vaguely amused as the four grown up agents race out of the office and down the stairs like little kids.
Claudia slides down the railing, Pete takes the stairs in twos, and even though Steve and Myka are the most put together, they still look like kids on Christmas as they make their way to the slowly materializing blue box. It's a little different than the last time Pete saw it, but there's no mistaking that sound or the sign across the top.
They're all looking at the box, awestruck. Enough of a hush has fallen for them to hear someone snap their fingers before the doors swing open to reveal a man standing in the doorway of an impossibly large room. It's not Pete's Doctor, but they recognize this face from a Van Gogh sketch- it definitely is the Doctor.
As she and Artie descend the stairs, Mrs. Frederic grins at the sight of her old friend. He winks at her before stepping out of the doors.
"Hello," he says, smiling at the agents as he adjusts his bowtie. "I'm the Doctor."