Alone after the space Titanic, the Doctor tries to read a book... only to be interrupted when the TARDIS forces a landing in the 37th century with no explanation, except that there seems to be a few temporal anomalies out on the Stone Star, a galactic market place of renown.
The finishing touch, part 1: The first word
The Doctor wasn't particularly willing to read, as it was, but he had to do something, and reading was as good an occupation as any other. In fact, it was one he really enjoyed – especially when he actually took the time, not only to read, but to appreciate the words, the story, the life in a book.
Sure, he could flip through a hundred of pages in approximately one second and a half, and not miss a paragraph, which always confused whoever he was sitting next to at the time, but it just wasn't the same thing. If he really, really wanted to read something, if he had the time to read something, he'd take about, oh, three seconds for each page. Still much more than the average reading speed in the universe, but hey, he's a Time Lord, for Rassilon's sake.
The difference between speed-reading and normal reading, to him, was like the difference between reading a book for the first time, eager to get to the next page, to the next event, to what follows, and reading it again, this time enjoying the process of the story, sure, but also reading it deeply, taking in the nuances, what you couldn't notice the first time around – because you didn't already know the end, because you had no idea what was truly significant – except, this time you did.
He was alone, right now, and while he also enjoyed travelling alone, he had just saved a solar system earlier in the day, and he surmised he did deserve some downtime – something he didn't do much lately, for fear of remembering that he was alone.
He missed Martha already, Astrid was dead before she could even accept to come aboard, Donna had refused the offer some time ago already, and Rose... As for Mickey, he was with Rose in an alternate reality, and wasn't quite one of his biggest fan; Jack, even if the Doctor liked him a lot, Jack had his own life, and wasn't exactly the safest passenger to have aboard a time ship. Sarah Jane had definitely moved on, and he was happy for her.
There really wasn't anyone left to come with him.
There were a few others he missed too, some other people he had travelled with a long, long time ago. Most of them were probably dead, now – some had died because of him, of his tendency to take passengers, because he couldn't bear to travel alone. Others were done, not with him per se, but with the hectic life. They would welcome a visit, yes, but wouldn't come with him.
Not anymore.
A book, on the other hand...
A book would never refuse him.
Besides, if the book was good, he'd forget about his issues for a while.
Like the fact that he was completely, utterly alone.
Time to start looking for a book, or he'd die of brood. Was that possible, dying of brood? Like, you brood so much you end up dying? The Doctor didn't particularly want to fing out. So. A book.
His eyes roamed across the library, and he immediately rejected any sort of scientific publication. He wanted to escape, not to ponder on the probability of crossbreeding successfully a donkey and a tiger – not that he had such a book... or, he didn't think so, at least. Did he? And if he did, it would mean someone had actually thought about the subject, and now he was wondering what a donkey / tiger hybrid would be like. A vegan tiger with long ears?
Erm.
Might want to move on.
He wandered all the way to the fiction section, and stood there for a moment, unsure of what to take. He could read one of Dumas' stories again, he supposed, or maybe give a second chance to Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea – he really wanted to read it, but last time he had gotten around to it, someone had made something explode, and after that he had kind of forgotten.
Except he wasn't quite feeling like it.
The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment, and violently spun around, his arm outstretched with pointy finger and everything.
He opened an eye, and squinted in that direction.
Uh.
Slightly-odd-and-mysterious section of the TARDIS' library. Well. At least, he should find some interesting books in there. Interesting, as in curious. Whether or not it'd be worth the curiosity was something he'd have to discover – once he had bought a book because everyone said it was the most unsettling thing of the era, had kept it in that section, for three centuries, then had read it during his eighth incarnation, and let me tell you, he had chucked the book into a black hole right after that; unsettling was a very mild adjective for that particular work of disturbing fiction.
His footsteps echoed weirdly as he walked through the shelves, searching for the book that'd get his attention this time. One of the reasons he didn't like being alone. When there are absolutely no other sounds than yours, everything seems so much louder, so much...
There. That one.
The Doctor remembered having bought the book many years ago, decades, even, centuries probably, in his own timeline, but he had never quite gotten to read it. Things had happened, and it had laid unopened on its shelf.
He turned the old, leatherbound volume upside down, peering at the "summary" that should be on the cover, yet wasn't. The book was smooth and free of any title, any author name, any indications at what was inside.
One of the reasons the Doctor had bought it to begin with.
Turning down the urge to just speedread through it first, to find out the big secret, he searched for a seat in some dark – well, not too dark, wouldn't want to damage his eyesight – oppressive corner of the library. Somewhere he wouldn't feel the constant reminder that he was alone in a ship that could house thousands.
Eventually he sat down, put on his glasses – brainy specs, please – and opened the book.
The moment his eyes fell on the first word, the TARDIS rumbled, whirled even. Started shaking.
The Doctor frowned, speechless. Apparently the universe was against him reading that book.
The lights started to flicker dangerously, and was it a hint of mauve he was seeing on that monitor? Not good, not good, not good! He shot up, let the book, open, on the armchair where he had been sitting before the TARDIS went crazy, and ran to the control room – had there been anyone else on board, he'd probably be babbling some half-assed reassurance and the beginning of a long-winged explanation that he was absolutely not certain of by now. Except he was alone.
When the Doctor was alone, he rarely started rambling, no matter the incarnation. There was no one to tell him to shut up, after all, so why would he bother? No one to remind him that he wasn't alo...
Not the moment.
He bustled into the main control room, and his eyes went wide.
"What? What?! WHAT?!"
Correction, please. He babbled less often when he was alone, but it didn't keep him from talking, occasionally. Or, as it was, from acting as if there was someone with him... until he remembered that there wasn't.
Anyway, yeah, even alone, this incarnation was still very vocal about his surprise.
Every light in the room was samba dancing between red and blue, instruments chirping away, and the screens were showing readings that made absolutely no sense. Like, the TARDIS had ended up in an alternate reality that didn't exist because it actually was the right dimension but still there was something off that...
The wild craziness suddenly stopped, and the readings changed. The Doctor eyed the screens distrustfully, as if the ship had been playing a trick on him, but still came closer to have a better look at the situation outside.
Outside, because they weren't in the time vortex anymore.
The TARDIS had landed herself, again, without a care as to what he thought of it. Sometimes he really wondered why he put up with her to begin with – honestly, he wasn't even that bad of a driver, though, yes, maybe he had never quite bothered to read the manual, and no, he had never paid any attention in class, but was it really his fault when his TARDIS decided that she knew better than he did where he wanted to go anyway? People always blamed him for the bumpy driving, but more often than not it was because the TARDIS was interfering, and yes, there were supposed to be be six drivers, not only one. Who cared if he did park a bit forcefully from time to time, hum?
Brainy specs still on, the Doctor squinted at the readings.
He had basically been thrown on the other side of the galaxy, which wasn't that much of a jump, considering. And to the thirty seventh century, for some reason. The Stone Star. Been a while since he last came here.
He briefly wondered why the TARDIS had seen it fit to transport him in this particular corner of space and time... until the TARDIS' doors opened themselves lightly, as if inviting him to walk out and find out for himself.
Suspicious. Very suspicious, all that.
So, yeah, the TARDIS hardly wanted anything to happen to him, but. But, the Doctor was more than aware that his ship had a very particular notion of what "safe" meant. And she also had a tendency to send him where and when he was needed, except that didn't always mean it was a safe place. Quite the contrary, in fact. Since people hardly needed him when they weren't in danger.
Nonetheless, the temperamental ship usually waited for him to try and get somewhere before sending him off course.
Not the case this time.
So, sorry if he was being suspicious, but everything here smelled a tad dubious. Like, something had gotten into his ship unbeknown to him, and was manipulating the TARDIS – it made him shudder, to think of a thing that might live inside the vortex, that wouldn't even flinch out there, outside of time and space, and that would have somehow gotten into his TARDIS. In fact, that sounded exactly like the beginning of a gallifreyan horror story for the time tots.
Ah, don't be stupid. It was more likely that, had something snuck in his ship, it had happened during his latest stop. No such a thing as a vortex monster that crawls out of reality and under children's beds to grab their leg...
Besides, it might be the TARDIS deciding he ought not to read that book, for all he knew.
Nothing pointed to an intruder coming intru-da-window.
Not that the TARDIS had actual windows – or, to be precise, windows you could enter through.
For a moment he wondered if, perhaps, he should better stay on board; even, leave right away, if the TARDIS allowed that.
The problem being, as always, that if the TARDIS had chosen to dump him here, of all places, she'd probably refuse to leave, not until he did what she had brought him here to do. Honestly, a ship that did whatever she wanted, that one. Next time a brunette girl tells him to take that model rather than this one, he wouldn't listen – though he had to admit he loved his TARDIS.
Didn't mean the whole set up wasn't completely suspiscious.
The Doctor might have slightly glared at the console, as he walked out of the console room, in search of his favorite coat, which he had, again, left... somewhere. There wasn't any real heat in that glare, of course.
He found his brown coat tucked under a shelf, where the remains of a project he had started, and never finished – he had had a good laugh with Leonardo da Vinci on that subject – were scattered. How it had ended up there, he wasn't totally sure, and as long as he was still able to get the coat back, he didn't really care.
The Doctor put it on, checked the inside of his pockets – which, believe me on that point, could take a while, with how they were bigger on the inside and everything – and decided that yes, he had everything he needed to go outside, despite a possibly hostile environment waiting for him on the other side of the TARDIS' door.
He still grabbed the detector thingie he had last been working on, just in case. Calibrated for time anomalies, this one. Because the first thing he had noticed, before the readings had stabilized, was that while the main timeline out there was perfectly normal, there were a few temporal anomalies all around the Stone Star, as if someone had gone and added threads of time in the temporal tissue that didn't belong there. Meaning, he could totally do with a temporal detector.
The Doctor was always unarmed, yes, but that didn't mean he ventured in the unknown without a few gadgets to even out the odds.
As he pushed the doors completely open, he absent-mindedly realized he still had no idea what the first word of that book was.