Park Benches

Summary: Left companionless and alone, the Doctor is kicked out of the TARDIS in a time and place that will help him cheer up and remember the good old days.

It was 2004 in London when the TARDIS kicked the Doctor out. The TARDIS stubbornly locked its doors behind him without consulting him whatsoever.
"Come on, old girl," the Doctor whined. "Let me back in."
The TARDIS wasn't gonna hear it. He needed to step out into civilisation for a bit and stop sulking and moping about. It was getting on the TARDIS' nerves.
Once again the Doctor was companionless and lonely, although he never liked to admit it. He wasn't too sure what he was supposed to do now that his time travelling machine had stopped cooperating with him. He decided he'd go for a stroll until the TARDIS started collaborating. He hadn't the faintest idea of where he was going but it didn't really seem to matter.
On his stroll he passed many places and people. He passed a football oval where a herd of footy fanatics were playing. He was tempted to run onto the field and lose himself in the game but he didn't quite feel up to it.
He passed the park where the children were playing, running up and down the slides and monkey bars without a care in the world. He smiled. He remembered the times one thousand years ago when he was a kid living in Gallifrey. He missed he home planet and his fellow Time Lords so much that tears began to fill his eyes. He needed to sit down so he found the nearest park bench and collapsed onto it.
He closed his eyes, thinking about all the adventures he had had in previous generations. He had been travelling for so long and not once had he ever thought about going domestic. He would never be able to set the TARDIS down and cease to continue his adventures throughout time and space. It was too precious to give away.
"Are you alright, mate?" Sitting adjacent to him was Rose Tyler. He'd recognise her voice anywhere. Even if she was calling his name from a trillion lights years away, he'd still hear her. He turned his head to face his old companion. She was younger and for starters, not sealed away in another universe.
"I'm fine," said the Doctor. He'd wish for anything that she could remember him right now, but he knew that it wasn't possible. It wouldn't be until another year that she would be taking her first steps into the TARDIS. The Doctor wished he could relive his days as his ninth incarnation. "I just got kicked out of my time machine," he mumbled holding a smile.
Rose laughed. "Time machine? You know there's no such thing, yeah?"
"You'll be surprised," the Doctor grinned. The sound of her laughter was soothing his every doubt and sense of loneliness. The TARDIS always knew what was best for him.
"Will I?"
"Yes."
"If I had a time machine," Rose Tyler pondered, "I'd go back in time to see my dad. He was in an accident when I was really little. It's always just been me and my mum"
The Doctor remembered that day well. Rose heroically saved her father's life which, however, created a temporal paradox that was beginning to damage the Web of Time. To save the world, Pete courageously sacrificed his life to bring back order to the Time Web. Rose stayed by his side until the very end. Now Peter, Jackie and Rose are happily living together in a parallel universe, concealed from the Doctor's reach.
He didn't want to say he was sorry because he knew that her life was going to change and he was not sorry about that.
"If I had a time machine, which I do," he added, pretending to say jokingly, "I'd travel everywhere. I've already travelled to 2005. What a great year."
"Oh yeah? What happens in 2005 that's so special?"
"Spoilers."
Rose shook her head in amusement. "Not even a little hint?"
He wanted to tell her that next year would be the year that he told her to run. That next year her boyfriend Mickey the Idiot would turn himself into plastic. That next year well be the year that she mysteriously disappears - quite literally – off the face of the Earth, running around with a mad man in a box, travelling all of time and space. Including meeting her father Peter Tyler, becoming the Bad Wolf and saving the world from the daleks. So much was about to change for her that she never would have dreamed possible.
"Next year it's gonna snow."
"You're full of it, you are."
He laughed as he stood up, seeming to take interest in a crumpled, old leaf on the ground. "You just wait, Rose Tyler. It will snow next year." And with that, he began finding his way back to the TARDIS.
"Hey! How'd you know my name?"
But he had disappeared out of sight.
"It always snows in London," Rose mumbled to herself.

The Doctor, after walking around in circular formations since his reunion with Rose, finally found the TARDIS hidden from sight within a dusty, old alleyway. He snapped his fingers and the blue doors automatically swung open. In higher spirits than he originally was, he dashed around the console pushing bottoms and knobs, spinning taps and pulling levers. The TARDIS roared to a start and before long they were spinning around in the Time Vortex. Like always, the Doctor had his mind set on a certain destination. A certain destination that had an alien artefact museum with a little shop, which preferably sold fish fingers and custard, which came with your complimentary bowtie, but the TARDIS had something else in mind.
There was a little planet some light years away from Raxacoricofallapatorius that needed saving from some undiagnosed, foreign species and the TARDIS knew just the madman to take care of it.

Read and review and you'll make me smile. I hope you enjoyed my first actual Doctor Who fanfiction. Tell me what you think and perhaps there may be a follow-up.
~ TheBlackTower'sCurse