"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
-W Shakespeare
"Expelliarmus!"
-also, chronologically arguably, W Shakespeare
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Whrrrrrr. Whrrrrrrrrrr. Wheeeeeeeeeer.
"D'you hear that?" Pole asks Scrubb. They're in the ivies again, though this time not for camouflage; after the investigation into Experiment House many changes had been made, but this was where their adventures started, more or less, and as such it was a fond spot for them both to sit awhile and talk about things.
About other worlds. About friends who have become family, about lions and witches and doors inside walls. They talk about things they have known, and things that they hope will be.
They don't talk about reality much, there in the ivies; that is a special place, a place for Narnia, so when Jill catches the sound she is discomfited. Very.
"Sounds like – no," Eustace says, shaking his head. "Doesn't sound like a plane."
"Except it does," says Jill; not arguing, but following Scrubb's train of thought.
"Like a plane gone wrong," Scrubb finishes. "I hope one hasn't. And here? That'd be dreadful."
Whrrrrrrrrrr-eeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrr.
"It sounds close," says Jill.
"D'you see that?" Scrubb asks, angling his head in the general direction of the noise.
I can't see a noise, Jill wants to say, just because arguing with Scrubb is so fun, but she looks anyway, and there is a strange light. On. Off. On. Off. Off. Off.
"Think we should have a look?" Scrubb asks.
"'Course we should," Pole says stoutly. After everything they've been through, an asthmatic Spitfire crash-landing in the hedges is not particularly alarming. She accepts Scrubb's hand up and without letting go she leads him off, around a corner from the spot in the ivy towards the strange sound.
Whrrrrrrrrrrrr. The noise fades, but they have pinpointed its location with a Narnian tracker's accuracy. A turn – another turn – a jump over a mucky patch of ground – there.
There.
"I'm pretty sure that wasn't here before," Scrubb says.
"I'm pretty sure they only have those in London," Pole says.
It's a police call-box, of all things, settled neatly in a corner as though it had grown there. Eustace, remembering other stories of other adventures, is half inclined to point out that it may very well have grown there, before he realizes which side of the wall he's on.
Still, that witch had come here first. It may have appeared, not grown.
"D'you think—?" he gasps, turning to Pole, who clearly has come to the same conclusion.
"Maybe," she says. "I don't know. I hope so. But not."
"Why not?" Eustace asks.
"Because then something would be wrong, wouldn't it?" She pauses, glancing up – rather prettily, Eustace thinks, before stamping that thought down ruthlessly as he knows Pole is most emphatically Not Interested – and then looks back at him. "We're only ever called when something is wrong there."
"Wrong where?" a new voice asks. It belongs to a raffish man who steps out from behind the police box. "If something's wrong, I'm definitely in the right place. But are you?" He peers at the children curiously.
They peer back. There is a moment of mutual peering, before the man laughs.
"You wouldn't miss a trick, would you, either of you?" the man asks. He might be saying this admiringly, but he might be making fun of them. Jill isn't sure. "No, no, that's a good thing, very good. I like that. But are you where you ought to be?"
"This is our school," Pole says, "so I'd think so, yes. If anyone's out of place it's like to be you."
Eustace grins, then stifles it, because ever since their adventure Pole has been full of – well, Narnia is what she's been full of, in a wonderful way – and while it's gotten her into some trouble Eustace finds it all far too delightful to pull her back when he catches her about to go off, as his cousins would put it.
The strange man catches Eustace's eye and shares the grin, though on the man it turns into a face-cracking smirk, like a laugh without the sound. "Oh, she is very good." He quiets and straightens, replacing the mad friendly humor with a seriousness Eustace does not trust. "But it's wrong, you know."
"Not a thing wrong with her," says Eustace, stepping forward without realizing that he's placing himself between Pole and the interloper.
"No, no, no no no no no," the man says, holding up both hands placatingly. "Not wrong. Not at all, no. Very right, in fact, oh, you'll do well to hold onto that attitude, Women's Lib is right up your alley, shame you'll have to wait a bit. But it doesn't fit. Something about you doesn't fit, here." He reaches into a jacket pocket and pulls out a – a – Eustace has no idea what it is, other than shiny and vaguely pen-shaped. The man waves the not-a-pen in their general direction. "Mind if I? It won't hurt."
"I think I would mind, actually," Pole says. "A thing that doesn't hurt can still do harm."
"Oh, it won't do that either," the man says carelessly. Rather, he says it in a careless way; right now he is anything but. His attention – a bright, hot, not entirely welcome thing – seems focused closer on the pair than before. Eustace is uncomfortably reminded of the beetles on cards, back in a box at home. This is what it must feel like to be one. "It is harmless and painless, on my word as a doctor."
"You're a doctor then?" Scrubb asks keenly. "Of what?"
"I'm the Doctor. Got academics in the family, have you?" the man – the Doctor – asks. With a flick of the wrist he activates the device in his hand, which lights up at the end and makes a curious sound. "Oh, that is interesting," the Doctor says, staring at the device as though it's telling him something important.
Maybe it is.
"Shouldn't keep answering questions with questions," says Pole, stepping out from behind Scrubb. "Not when you're the one who isn't where he ought to be."
"Noticed that, did you?" the Doctor says wryly. "Very good. But you – both of you – I've never seen a thing like this before. You've been places, haven't you?"
A significant glance bounces between Scrubb and Pole.
"No, quite all right," says the Doctor, "you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. As long as it's your choice. To talk or not. If someone else is holding you quiet then that's another thing entirely and we shouldn't be having any of that."
Tension holds: everybody stares. The Doctor clears his throat, awkwardly. "But that's not the case here, I see. Well then."
"Then," Pole interjects smoothly, "since we are where we ought to be and there's nothing wrong with us and we're answering questions and you're not, we're going to go now. And if you're as harmless and painless as your – thing there – you'll let us."
Eustace feels a sense of impending doom that has nothing to do with the strange man and the strange box and the strange noise-making object: he is going to do something very foolish one of these days, like grab Pole and snog her senseless, because she is so unbelievably amazing and he doesn't know what else to do about it, and when it happens she will probably kill him for it. But this isn't the time.
"You're more right than you know," the Doctor says in a voice that almost sounds sad. "I'm not where I ought to be. I'm a traveler, same as you. But the place I'm from doesn't exist anymore."
Eustace grows cold all down his spine; he thinks of stories told by flashlight in his parents' house, that life-changing summer. He thinks of a witch and a place called Charn and a madwoman who took on London as if she intended to conquer it. Responding to another Narnian instinct, Pole notices this, and takes his hand.
"My ship, you see," says the Doctor, fondly slapping a hand against the police box, "it picked you up. Noticed you. You've been places most people haven't. Places I know nothing of. And I can't understand how that's possible, because I've been everywhere, and when I haven't I know where it is all the same."
Back in Narnia, back beneath Harfang, in the deep wicked city, Eustace had noticed something odd about Pole. A change had come over her, as though Rilian's awakening had caused one in her. She didn't have a bright fiery focus like the strange Doctor, but she was better at it than most people Eustace knew, and now all of her skill was pointed at the daft man with his buzzing device and his police box.
"I think," says Jill, taking great care with each word, "the only thing that I can tell you is that it isn't our story to tell. It happened to me, to us, but it isn't ours."
"Mmh," the Doctor says. "I can – well, no, I actually don't much like that, not knowing things, but I'll respect it all the same."
"Thank you," Jill tells him, honestly.
"Would you like to go somewhere else, then?" the Doctor asks. "It's what I do, you know, go places."
"I don't think we should," says Jill.
"Why not?" the Doctor asks, radiating genuine curiosity.
"We go when we're needed," Scrubb puts in.
"No," Jill said, stepping away from Scrubb, dropping his hand. He catches hold of her shoulder, in another Narnian reflex to keep close contact. ("Girls and boys oughtn't have their hands all over each other!" – this had been an unexpected difficulty, upon their return.) Jill shakes her head and gestures to Scrubb, quellingly. "No. I don't know what you're going on about with a ship," she tells the Doctor, "but it's you who noticed it. Because I notice it too, with you."
"Oh, that is very good," says the Doctor, and this time he seems honestly impressed. "That's, oh, you're brilliant, you are." He beams, unexpectedly.
"D'you think he's been—" Scrubb starts.
Jill shakes her head. "No. Somewhere, but different."
"A different somewhere," the Doctor says happily. "That's a good way to put it, yes."
"Put what?" Scrubb asks, sadly one beat behind.
"Oh, my entire life," the Doctor says casually. "But none of my somewheres are where you have been. That's what I don't understand."
"Well, I don't understand a thing," Eustace says. Pole's strange intuition is all well and good, but he doesn't understand it, and he doesn't know what she and the Doctor are talking at angles about, and at this point he wants something to make sense. "You say you've been places, and you say that's a ship, but it's a police-box."
"It's always strange when people actually know what they're for," the Doctor mutters to himself.
"None of this makes any sense," Scrubb continues, determinedly. "And I'm used to Pole not making sense sometimes, because she does later, but I don't know if you ever will. How is that a ship? Where would it go? How would it go? It'd have to be bigger on the inside."
"It is, actually," the Doctor says, slightly miffed: he loves that part.
"That's impossible," Scrubb scoffs.
"It isn't," the Doctor assures them. "It's a time-ship. And a space-ship."
Scrubb's eyes light up: for once, he's in a situation where he has read the correct books, and he knows he's right. "That's even more impossible."
"Isn't," says the Doctor cheerily. "Wait. How can a thing be more impossible than another thing?"
It would be best, thinks Jill, to head this off at the pass: she knows how stubborn Scrubb is, and besides, there's something very important he's failing to realize. "Scrubb, listen to me," Pole says. "He's different. He's something entirely new."
"Not that new," says the Doctor. "Bit past nine hundred and fifty. And as old as I am my hearing is still quite good."
"You could at least try not to eavesdrop," Jill scolds.
The Doctor glares. And grins. A glare-grin is something Jill had never seen before. It's disconcerting.
"You're right though," the Doctor says. "The traveling I do isn't the traveling you do. I can tell that you've traveled, but not where. I can't see it. And I can see everything."
"See this," Jill mutters, making a rude gesture shielded behind Scrubb's back.
"Now that's uncalled for," the Doctor retorts. "But listen. That's what I found. You emit a, I guess, a signal, is more or less the thing. Only for someone who knows what to listen for. Well. It's more a lack of a signal. With a traveler, I can tell where they're from. Where they've been. You two, I can't. It's as though you've gone past reality entirely and – oh. OH!" He clutches his head. The next words rush out even quicker than the previous, which is quite a feat.
"How-could-I-not-have-realized?"
He gasps, theatrically, spinning to face his police box. "I thought it was a dimensional hop, which of course is impossible, can't be done anymore, not since – well, it can't be done. But a reality hop! Did I? Did I really? Ohhh-h-h-h-h-h! Of course! The TARDIS found the signal but I found you! But you weren't looking for them – or not at them. You scans for sister ships. You always do. Just in case. Even though there aren't any more. Poor girl." He pats the wood. "You found somebody like you, didn't you? Not a TARDIS, but like enough? Brilliant!"
He spins back around and blurts, "Do either of you know anything about wardrobes?"
The clearing is empty.
The Doctor sighs and slumps against the police box. "Even when I don't tell people to go running off, they go running off. Donna's going to be sorry she missed this one. Maybe she and I can come back." Still chattering to himself, he flicks the police box door open, steps inside, and shuts it. The thing whirs, a wheezing grinding noise, and slowly disappears.
Jill and Eustace stare at each other from their safe hiding spot in the thick ivy hedge.
"What else do you think is out there?" Jill asks, the levity in her voice masking nerves.
"I have no idea," says Eustace, "but I hope that man comes back so I can find out."
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I've had this one moldering unfinished on the hard drive for several years. I'd like to think it takes place in rthstewart's Everyone Lives Nobody Dies AU - which should give you an idea of how old it is.
Besides, if Polly met Doctor Watson, surely Jill gets to meet a Doctor too.