For a prompt on Tumblr. It's not quite what they wanted, but I'm pretty happy with it. :D Enjoy!
It had been a pretty normal day for Donna, even as her standards went. Shopping with a healthy amount of chocolate, and a pleasant walk home. It was not quite dark enough to be considered territory for mysterious people trying to mug her, so she was taking her time. She slung the brown paper bag containing her purchases higher up over her shoulder, and glanced at the blue police box sitting incongruously on the side of the road.
Weird, she thought. Haven't seen that around here before.
She shrugged. It was probably one of those fancy art installations that everyone was hyping about.
The rest of her evening would probably have been normal, if it weren't for the vampire that leapt out at her, intent on ripping off her head.
She screamed, instinctively ducking, but the big white beast-thing (and how onEarth had she know that it was a vampire?) was flying through the air in the opposite direction.
"Get back!" yelled a tall, slim man with a rather fashionable hat, running across the road towards it, waving his hands wildly, which probably wasn't about to do a lot of good.
"Now, just hang on a moment, sunshine!" Donna yelled. She really wasn't in the mood for this right now. The man clicked his fingers, and a ball of fire rose from it.
Donna suddenly realized that listening to him was a pretty good idea, and scrambled backwards, but still close enough to see what was going on. The vampire-whatever lunged to its feet in a fluid movement, heading straight for the man. He flung the fireball in its face, and it roared.
"Now!" he yelled, and the doors of the police box that Donna had dismissed only minutes before flew open. Another man emerged, this one with a closely shaven haircut and aquiline features. Also, he was brandishing a massive grappling hook. He fired it- and why did he look so familiar?- and it hit the vampire in the chest.
It exploded in a mass of blood, and Donna screamed again involuntarily. Both of the men glanced at her, suddenly noticing she was there.
"Who's she?" grunted the second man in a Northern accent.
"I have no idea. She was in the way of the vampire- I told her to get home."
"Like hell you did!" exploded Donna. "You never said that! Who the bleedin' hell are you two- and what the hell was that thing?!"
They looked at each other again.
"I'm Skulduggery Pleasant," introduced the first rather wearily. "Detective, adventurer, and all-round amazing authority figure."
"I'm the Doctor," chimed in the other one. "All of those, minus the detective bit."
Donna blinked. "…Doctor?"
"That's my name, don't wear it out."
She pressed a finger to her forehead, where the mother of all headaches was rapidly forming. "D-doctor. Time Lord?"
His face hardened. "How do you know who I am?"
"Time Lord," she repeated faintly, wondering where this words were coming from. "Gallifrey, Time War, Bad Wolf, metacrisis- oh, Doctor, help me, spaceman!"
And with that, she collapsed, her mind on fire, but her eyes still open, fixing on the man who was so familiar and so very different.
"Oh, bollocks," hissed the Doctor, kneeling down to check her pulse. "What has my future self done…?"
