(Author's note: Welcome to A Cold Reunion, my next Doctor Who fic. Due to the popularity of my previous fic "From Afar", I have decided to write a sequel, including one of the most beloved companions, Sarah Jane. As a huge fan of Sarah Jane and the late Elizabeth Sladen, I would have loved to see her interact with the 12th Doctor. This is my imagining of that. As for cannon, this takes place after Clara leaves at the end of Death in Heaven. This contain spoilers from that episode. This is also related to my previous fic, "From Afar", however you do not have to read it to understand this one. It would undoubtedly be helpful though. I would like to thank my friend Poes Daughter for all of her help and encouragement with this fic, as well as Feline38 for her help brainstorming. I do not own Doctor Who or it's characters. Last but not least, read and review. Reviews are food! Feed me, feed me now! Enjoy)
Mathematic scribbles filled George Paxton's chalkboard. To the uneducated eye, they looked like a confusing, nonsensical, collage of nothing in particular. The ramblings of a mad man perhaps.
Said uneducated eye would be very wrong. George Paxton was not mad. He was a revolutionary. A maverick of his field. He finished scribbling another notation near the bottom of the crammed board. He back stepped and meticulously looked over his work with steely eyes, then returned, smudged out a mistake with his thumb, and rewrote. This had to be perfect. There was no room for error.
George was a portly sort of man. Older, and with a round face, his greying hair seemed to fit him well. It made him look scholarly, fitting for his occupation. Many of his friends likened him to Winston Churchill, by both looks and attitude. He never minded 'Church' being his nickname. If he had his way, he would be just as famous as his namesake very soon.
His London studio apartment reflected this ambition. Some may call him eccentric, but he preferred driven. Against one wall was a small, twin bed. Spread out on top of it were a multitude of books. Some were dedicated to Physics, others Environmental Science, some even Experimental Theories from various fields of study. Across the room was a kitchen with moderate counter space, this too cluttered. Tools and other implements lay tossed about; from hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, drills and rivet guns to saws, a wielding torch, a nail gun, and a soldering iron, he had it all. In amongst all of this were seemingly useless items. Random copper wires were mixed with long pieces of pipe, next to piles of nails and screws. A dismantled toaster sat next to a sawed up fire extinguisher, piled on top of two car batteries. The only working appliance was the coffee maker, which was surrounded by empty cups and crushed cans of energy drinks.
There was a couch next to a coffee table. This area was also cluttered beyond belief. Piles of note books and crumpled rolls of paper lay across the cushions, and the table was coated in blueprints like a second skin.
There was a dining table in between the living space and the kitchen. On this was a large cylindrical object. It was built out of metal piping and ended in funnels on both ends. These were attached to hoses, which were intertwined around the main piping. Both were hooked to a pair of fire extinguishers, that were haphazardly wired to a primitive switchboard. Attached to the main console was a heat pump torn from a mini-fridge. Hooked via another hose was a shiny metal tank the size of a baseball. There was a blue light that flickered on it, and blinked in regular intervals. This looked rather out of place with the rest of the objects this contraption was built out of, comparatively high-tech of the rest mundane household materials.
George Paxton's masterpiece was almost complete. All he would need to do was test fire it. He had absolute faith it would work. All the math was right, even if the science was experimental. If there was ever a person that could make this breakthrough, it was him.
His thoughts of grandeur were abruptly interrupted by a loud pounding on his front door. He looked at his watch. It was nearly two in the morning. Who would come to his door at this hour? There was never anyone else in the building awake at this hour, and if they were they were up to no good, usually drug users or worse. After three knocks it stopped.
He stared at his door for a few moments. There had been a rash of burglaries just a few blocks away. The scientist was not going to let just anyone come waltzing in, not with his creation just sitting on the table. He may have been a bit strange, but he was not stupid. He waited, looking down at the door crack. Even though there was no more knocking, he could see the dark shadows of feet beyond the door. He could hear an odd ticking sound, like some one tapping two marbles together. It was strange to him, because it sounded almost... reptilian. He had worked in a laboratory many years ago, around Iguanas, Monitor Lizards, and Geckos. It was quite common to hear that same high pitched clicking when they were agitated.
The pounding started again, this time faster and heavier, shaking the whole door.
"Who is it? What do you want?" he shouted, fear creeping into his voice. He pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, and crept toward the door. Quickly, he dialed the local police station, and got ready to press send. If whomever this was tried anything funny, he'd have the cops here in a second.
He reached the door, and listened. In addition to that strange ticking, he could hear labored, raspy breathing. Perhaps the man on the other side was hurt or sick, and needed help.
"Or he's here to rob you George," he thought to himself. If he was hurt he would have called out for help, not just stood there. Maybe it was a friend of his here to pull a prank. If he was, George didn't appreciate it. Still, there was only one way to find out who this was. Mustering up his courage, he unlocked the door, and turned the handle.
The door creaked open, revealing a very tall man. He was in fact, almost a half a foot taller then George. He was dressed in robes similar to a monk, with a hood up over his face, completely obscuring what he looked like. His barrel chest moved up and down with his rasping breath, and the hood silently looked down at George.
"Ca-can I help you?" George asked. He knew he sounded terrified, but he couldn't help it. This man was very intimidating. He looked like he could crack his head open just by flexing his bicep. He said nothing, instead pushed George out of the way, walking right into his apartment.
"Hey! I didn't say you could come in!" he shouted. The big man's head swiveled, like he was looking for something.
"Hey! I'm talking to you!" he grabbed at the mans back.
Suddenly, the robed man whirled around, catching his wrist in a vice grip. He cried out as pain spiked up his arm. Another gloved hand grabbed the front of his shirt, and shoved him backwards. George stumbled and fell to the ground, his phone smashing on the floor.
Silently, his assailant held out one finger, as though to tell him to stay put. The scientist was not about to argue.
Once again, the huge man stomped forward slowly looking around. He saw his head turn to the main table, and he started walking toward it. Toward George's invention. His masterpiece.
He walked up to it, and put his hands on it. He violently pulled the small, baseball sized tank off the side, and turned around.
Anger suddenly boiled in George. That was his. He had worked for over a year on his invention. Hours and hours were spent doing math and fiddling with blue prints to try and make something sensible out of practically nothing. All he had at his deposal were scrap piles of garbage and what ever he could scrounge from the broken electronics people threw away. Everything except what that man just took, the only advanced piece of hardware in the whole device. What right did he have? To take apart his creation.
George balled up his fists and stood up. He ran at the robed robber, intending to beat him senseless to get back what was taken. He wasn't about to give it up without a fight.
He went to throw a punch, but the giant intercepted it with a fore arm before he even came close. Silently, his other hand shot forward, the big fist cracking into his jaw. Immediately George hit the floor, the whole room spinning around. He felt like his stomach was in his throat, and everything was foggy.
He looked up at the big man in front of him. One fist held out in front of him, he grunted and hissed audibly, the clicking sound growing louder. He pulled back the sleeve of his robe, revealing some sort of gun barrel attached to his wrist.
George did not even have time to scream as bright, blue light engulfed him. It would have been pretty, were it not frigid. At first the frost shot agony into his whole body, chilling him to the bone. Then he felt nothing at all, every fiber of his body going numb. His head thundered, as he fell back. His final thought was to his creation, while the big, cloaked man walked toward the door, and how he would never get the chance to complete it. Everything started to fade on the edges, and he tried to raise his arm at the thief, failing beneath the cold's oppression. Everything went black. George Paxton was no more.
A strange grinding tore into the silence of an alley in the center of London, England. In a city so busy at mid day, none of the people in cars or walking down the streets gave it any second glance, not with the daily grind in full swing. Slowly but surely, a dark blue Police Box phased into existence, landing with a dull thud in the alley. The TARDIS had arrived, and its owner stepped out the front door.
One word to describe him was dapper. His black waistcoat was sleek, with a pair of matching pants and hardy, well made boots. His countenance was stern, with an age marked face, a large, hooked nose, and a stern mouth that had frowned all too often in recent days.
His bright blue eyes were piercing. Even though they belonged to an older looking man, they spoke of something ancient. They showed him for what he really was, a man who had seen a thousand years twice over, and not all of them were good. These eyes were topped with a pair of aggressive looking eye brows, that could probably intimidate almost anyone. His greying spikes of hair completed his older look, making him appear quite dignified.
The Doctor adjusted the collar of his coat, and the buttons of his white undershirt. He had landed in London, November of 2014. Two thirty in the afternoon. Perfect. Exactly what he was trying for. He locked the door to his time machine.
He walked out from the alley, and began down the street. London was always so... clogged. People hurrying every which way in cars or on foot, talking on phones and shouting for cabs. Never stopping, never sleeping, never sitting still. Then again though, human lives were short. Of course they did everything fast.
He was a man on a mission this day. A coffee mission. He needed a break from all the excitement. He had just come from a 'relaxing vacation' on Plujovex 8, a vacation that entailed hunting down a renegade cyborg that had grown a penchant for incineration. Not the thing he had in mind to relax.
So now he was here, so that perhaps he could get a cup of coffee and get out of his own head for twenty minutes. He needed that, badly. It was the silence of having no one in the Tardis with him that got to him the most. It was the quiet moments that ate him away slowly.
His mind wandered to Clara Oswald. She was probably happy right now, with her boyfriend Danny, preparing for the Holiday season. Her and PE, as he called him, were likely blissfully enjoying the coming days. He could assume Clara thought the same about him, that he was back on Gallifrey becoming a king, or whatever happy fantasy her little head could conjure about what he may or may not be doing. It was a cheery dream, and a lie she did not realize she was telling herself.
He shouldn't have lied to her. He should have told her the hard facts. Gallifrey, his home planet, was still gone, lost in some pocket universe somewhere in time and space. It was like trying to find a needle in a planet made out of haystacks. Actually, that was easier. With the needle, one knew it was actually there. With Gallifrey, for all he knew, it was destroyed, and gone forever. Maybe, The Master had lied.
He, or in this caseshe, had lied before. Why he chose to believe this incarnation of the maniacal Time Lord that Gallifrey had returned he did not know. Perhaps it was pure desperation, or some disturbed sense of hope. What ever it was , he was kicking himself for it now. He should have known. Yet still, when he flew to the coordinates and open the door, half of him expected to see that gargantuan red planet looking back at him. When all he saw was the empty black of space and the winking of distant stars, it had broken both of his hearts beyond all recompense.
He shook his head and continued walking. All of this pondering wasn't doing him any good. It rarely did, but that didn't stop him. He looked about a bit, finding himself in an area with mostly small shops and restaurants. There had to be a decent coffee shop around here somewhere.
Abruptly, he started rifling through his pockets. Other than a yo-yo, his sonic screwdriver, and a cigarette case full of jelly babies he only had twenty Kru-naries, currency only usable about five thousand years from now. He needed some money first.
After another few minutes of walking, he came across an ATM machine outside of a convenience store. He looked both ways, to be sure no one was paying attention. People rarely seem to on Earth, or any other planet with large cities. So engrossed in their own lives, noticing the subtle was not the population at large's strong point.
He dug around in his pockets, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. A long, metal, wand like tool with a bright green light on the end, it was the most useful item in the Doctor's possession. He pressed the small button on top, and the tool warbled loudly. The tip flashed a few times, and the screen of the ATM winked and pixilated. It beeped, and bills of cash flooded out of the opening.
The Doctor scooped it up, and quickly counted it. Two thousand dollars. That should be enough for some coffee. Actually, it looked like more than enough. He hoped. Did they use dollars in England? Or was that India? He could never really tell...
He walked down the street farther, finding a small coffee shop on the corner. It looked... cozy. Like the sort of place one would sit down and read a book or relax after a long day of work. Perfect for his current situation.
He walked in, a small bell ringing upon his arrival, and the pleasant smell of freshly ground coffee beans wafted his way. This place was tiny by the standards of near by shops. There were around six small tables, each with a pair of chairs by them. At the far end was a counter where baristas made a variety of drinks. A single T.V hung from the ceiling near the counter, blaring the local news channel. It was empty save for a single other patron ticking away on a laptop near the counter. This was good. Perfect actually. No one to have any awkward conversations with.
As he walked up, a young man at the counter shouted to him.
"Hey mate, what can I get ya?" he asked. The Doctor gave him an exasperated look.
"Coffee!" he replied, his thick Scottish brogue leaking into his speech. Wasn't it obvious what he came in here for? It wasn't like he was going to order a car at a coffee shop.
"What kind? We're having a special on a double triple shot, iced, extra creamy, quadruple whipped, mocha latte," The Doctor shook his head. He had forgotten how ridiculous coffee orders were in this time period. Thank God people would be going back to basics by 2098.
"The hot kind. Preferably black," he said dryly.
"You got it. Have a seat, we'll get it to you in a minute."
The Doctor nodded, and walked over to the table in the corner, near the front window. He sat down, and waited. It didn't take long for his cup to arrive. He almost instantly took a swig from it. Nice and bitter, just how he liked it.
His sharp eyes stared down into the dark liquid, and his intense brows furrowed. He had to have missed something. In order for The Master, or Mistress now because he had regenerated into a woman this go around, to come back, Gallifrey had to be intact. But, how was he able to hop through the pocket universe into this one? It took an incredible amount of energy. Literal energy. A pocket universe could drain a TARDIS in mere seconds. According to the Time Lords, when he was moving Gallifrey he was trapping it in a single moment in time. It would be in stasis, basically a localized Time Loop of the same millisecond repeating itself over and over forever. Or at least until some outside force stopped it. The Mistress would have had to escape that, a practical impossibility.
Unless Gallifrey had fallen out of the pocket universe. It was possible, but that meant it could end up anywhere out there. Any galaxy, any solar system, or none at all. It could have hurtled into a sun, or a black hole, or popped into the middle of an asteroid belt and been pummeled into oblivion.
It couldn't have been destroyed, The Mistress escaped. He took another swill of the coffee and slammed his cup down in frustration. He was going in circles. For someone who was trying not to think, he was failing at it miserably.
"Well now, since when does Mr. John Smith drink his coffee black?" said a familiar female voice behind him. He would recognize it any where.
He slowly turned around in his chair, and saw just who he was expecting, and a wide smile spread to his face.
She was a middle aged women with shoulder length, brown hair that had only just begun to go grey on the edges. Her heart shaped face was somewhat marred by lines of age, though she had aged well from they young girl he had traveled with so many years ago. Her eyes still held that pure, soulful look to them, a kindness that most people seemed to lose some where along the way. She wore a very subtle outfit; a brown patterned sweater and blue jeans. It didn't matter what she looked like or what she wore, she was his oldest and most trusted friend in all of time and space.
"Sarah Jane", and for the first time in months, The Doctor beamed.
