I was an eight-year-old living in New York City when I met the Doctor. I had long, dark brown hair that I kept in a braid that went to my waist, tan skin, an unbelievably small height, and an English accent from spending most of my days with kids in a London orphanage. Although I was told that I was Australian by my case worker, but I had nothing to show for it. The only thing I owned that my parents gave me was a twenty-foot long colorful scarf given to me by my mother that I wore every day, and a letter from my father saying how sorry he was that he couldn't raise me himself, that he knew I would live a better life without him. I guess he was right, for when my life started it was more amazing than I could have possibly imagined.
It started at one-thirty in the morning on December twenty-fourth in the year two-thousand and thirteen. I heard a sound that I could not describe, even now, except as the sound of salvation. I ran to my window, being careful not to wake up my fourteen-year-old foster brother, to look five stories down into the small alleyway that existed between our apartment building and a house owned by a cantankerous elderly woman who despised children. I saw a flashing white light that was so blinding im surprised im the only one who woke up and went to investigate.
I put on my white coat that I had since I was two and my mom's long scarf and ran down the steps, tripping over my own feet in excitement. Nothing exciting ever happened to me, but I was sure that that day was the day things would change. As I reached the bottom, I stepped unsurely into the deep white snow, admiring for just a moment the beauty of the swirling bits of soft ice, then running to the other side of the building where the flashing light was.
The flashing had stopped when I reached the corner, and I could see that the source was a blue box, about seven feet tall and four feet length and widthwise, with a lighted sign on the top that said, 'POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX". There were smoke and flames coming out of the side as though someone was shooting a few flamethrowers through the door, then came out a teenager, probably about seventeen or eighteen years old, with burnt brown hair, a beige coat, and a blue bowtie carrying another girl with flawless chestnut hair and more feminine clothing.
The girl in the bowtie and coat set the other girl, who seemed completely lifeless, on the cold ground and attempted to perform CPR on her. She then went to screaming, "Clara! Don't you dare leave me!" and pounding on her unmoving chest. After about ten minutes, the flames had died down in the blue box and the girl's screamed turned into soft sobs. I wanted to run over and comfort her, but something told me that this girl was dangerous, that I would be hurt if I went near her. So I continued peering from around the corner as I saw the girl, wet with tears, lift her friend up with shaking sobs and take her into the Police Box.
I went up to the box and touched the side, which was scorching, I was surprised the box itself didn't die. I stuck my hand in some snow to cool it off, and then placed myself between two garbage bins near the box. I don't know why, but I wanted so badly to see what would happen next to this person. I resisted the urge to drift off and kept my eyes on the box until the sun rose, when the mysterious woman, still dressed in a beige coat and blue bowtie, stepped out of the box and walked towards the street, lit with the sunlight of an early morning.
I followed her to a barber shop across the street and hid behind a counter as a stylist went up to her.
"Hi, there, my name is Ianto." This man, in his twenties, had deep brown hair with bleached tips, pale skin, and a tall muscular stature. "How are you doing today?"
"Okay, I guess," she said in an unconvincing tone that Ianto had obviously picked up, but didn't mention out of fear that trying to investigate would make her blow up.
"Great. Do you know which style you would like today?"
"I burnt my hair last night; I just want it all to be cut off. It has been getting in the way lately with work and stuff. A buzz cut would be fine." She had a stoic look on her face, like a soldier who had been hardened to the realities of war.
"Are you sure? There are plenty of other styles that would go well with the amount of hair you have been left with."
"Yeah, I'm sure." She was then reluctantly led to a chair by Ianto, who seemed resistant to butcher the beautiful hair on the girl's head. Or, what would be beautiful when the scorched part was cut off.
"I don't think I caught your name…" Ianto said as he prepared a warm tub of water for her hair.
"The Doctor."
"Doctor Who?"
"Just the Doctor."
"Okay…" He seemed a bit confused by her unusual title, but then proceeded to inquire more about her unusual being. But when he turned around, he noticed a few tears streaming down her still emotionless face. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah." She moved her hand across her face to wipe the tears away. "It's just… My friend. She died last night."
"Oh, I'm so sorry." He seemed concerned, like he actually knew her and cared about her. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she wiped it off.
"Well, it happens to everyone sometime, doesn't it?" She looked up at him, the tears having stopped. "It will even happen to me, sometime."
"Look, you are grieving. This whole wanting to cut your hair off thing could just be a part of it. Let me do your hair a different way, so you won't regret it-"
"I don't care about my hair!" She nearly shouted, if anyone else was in the room it would have attracted their complete attention. "I may regret a lot of things in life, but one thing I am sure to not regret is my bloody hair."
He gently set his things down on the table next to him and leaned against the wall. "Tell me about her."
She looked up with a minor amount of confusion, then proceeded to stare the mirror down. "She was my companion. I travel a lot, and she went with me."
"But tell me about her. Not just what you two did, but what kind of a person she was."
"A flirt. But brilliant, so brilliant. I… solve crimes a lot, and she was able to help me, saved my life a few times. I'm sure I couldn't have stayed alive as long as I had without her." She closed her eyes for a moment, like she was thinking. Ianto looked at her the whole time, didn't move a muscle.
"Fine." She said, opening her eyes. "Do my hair the way you want it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, now hurry up before I change my mind."
I watched him transform her into the woman I know today. Rather than being the emotionless robot that has no value of human life she was turning into, she was a gentle and kind person who wasn't just intelligent, she was creative and brilliant. When he was done, he spun the chair to face the mirror, and she looked in awe. Her hair was thinned a bit, cut to her chin and dyed a natural-looking ginger.
"Ha, ginger! Who knew it would take twelve tries to get it done?"
Ianto returned with three bottles of hair products, and started instructing the Doctor as to how to use them as six girls, all extremely pale and bearing sun umbrellas entered the shop. I hid under the counter, getting a distinct feeling that they were evil. Not like with the Doctor, who seemed to be attracting evil, but these people seemed to be evil.
"Doctor!" The woman at the front stepped towards the chair that the Doctor was still in.
It was then that she decided to get up. "Signora Calvierri," she said, waving down Ianto as he went to approach them, "I thought you were dead."
"You mean like your little pets? No, I am still very much alive." She spoke in a clear voice that seemed almost deadly.
She tried to ignore that comment. "I saw you die, Signora. You and your Saturnynians were eaten by that water beast back in Venice. I SAW you go."
"Well, it did seem very convincing, didn't it? We did die, but then we were brought back."
"By who?" The Doctor seemed to grow angrier every second, so angry that it masked the fear that I could barely pick out.
"Muerte."
"Who is Muerte?"
"Our sponsor. Everyone's sponsor. Anyone willing to help him, anyway. And we said yes. We came here to complete our first task: kill the Doctor."
"Are you sure that is such a good idea?" The Doctor started walking towards Signora.
"Why?"
"My companion just died. I am more dangerous than usual. And everyone knows how dangerous I am. There was a religious movement formed just to kill me." She then stood a foot away from Signora. "A lot of people in my life have died, because creatures like you hunt me down and try to kill me, just because I try to save these humans. And I am sick and tired of it! Now! Before I gave you a warning, just like everyone else but I WON'T this time because I know that if you take it you will come back, even more ready than before and I will regret the time I took the high road and let you slide. So, SATURNYAINS! Get ready, because I am done with second chances."
And with that a beam of light burst from her hand, wounding the leader. Everyone in her crowd hissed then turned into large monster lizard things. I screamed, which drew their attention towards me. They were about to attack when the Doctor shot them with a weapon that looked like a modernized magic wand. They then went to attack the Doctor, and Ianto started to throw hair products onto them. When he was done, he flung them to the side, and I managed to read that one of the labels said, 'Caution; Flammable."
I took an outlet extent ion out of the wall and started putting metal, sharp things in the holes. Kids in my orphanage had done this all the time; I was the only one who hadn't yet. Luckily, I was smart enough to not plug the other end into the wall until I grabbed the rubber handle, then charged the nearest lizard monster and set fire to them. The blast knocked me back a few feet, and I'm surprised I didn't go deaf.
The one part in war movies I have always found interesting is when the main character gets blown back by a bomb or a missile and everything is in slow motion, no sound. It is exactly like that in real life. But you can't see the little details, everything is blurry, like you just spent an hour staring into the sun. The Doctor was flying through the air, flares of light the colour of the ones coming out of the blue box earlier projecting from her arms, and Ianto was searching chaotically through the hair products, searching for more flammable liquids.
After a few minutes, all of the Saturnynians were vaporized, leaving the Doctor and Ianto catching their breath so they could run out of the flaming shop. I sprinted out as fast as I could towards the alleyway, where the Police Box was. I hid in my spot from this morning as the two stumbled down the alleyway, coughing up smoke.
"You seriously travel in time?" Ianto looked at her with a concerned look.
"Yep. For hundreds of years."
He coughed with surprise. "Hundreds? Are you even human?"
"No, I'm of these species called Time Lords. They perished long ago, haven't existed for centuries."
"So what do you do on your own?"
"Travel."
"Alone?"
"Sometimes, but I usually have a companion or two." She unlocked her Police Box then turned to face Ianto. "Do you want to see my space ship?"
He looked surprised. "Really? That's it?"
"Yep. Bigger on the inside than the outside technology. Want to see?" She stepped aside to let Ianto through the doors, and as she followed him in I went with, hiding beneath the bridge leading to a magnificent console so they wouldn't find me.
"My friend and I traveled in here. I had a lot of people travel with me in here. I show them all the wonders of the universe, take them back in time to meet Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare and Vincent Van Gogh, then take them forwards in time to see the future of their planet, the day that Earth is swallowed by Sun, alien species being born and killed."
"Is it always this dangerous?" Ianto was gazing at the mile-high ceiling, bursting with beautiful lights.
"Sometimes worse." The Doctor stepped over to the console and placed her hand on it. "Would you like to come with me?"
He looked down at her, shocked by the offer. "You mean here? In your…"
"TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space."
"Huh." He looked towards the entrance to the corridors with wonder. He then turned to her once again. "I have a boyfriend you know. And a job-"
"That just burned to the ground."
"Yeah, but I have family here. I am going to start school at the Fashion Institute in the Spring. I have so much here. How could I miss that?"
"I think you are forgetting that the TARDIS is a time machine too, not just a spaceship. We could go traveling for years, decades, and I could have you home in time for lunch."
"Huh. Okay, I'll go with you." He smiled, and she smiled back.
"How about you, little one? Do you want to come?" She was looking right at me, and I slowly climbed onto the bridge.
"You want me to come?"
"Yeah. That was some quick thinking in the shop, you helped a lot. I couldn't have done it without you."
"Okay!" I ran up and hugged her around the waist, then sat down in a seat across from the console.
"Great! Let's go then!" She snapped her fingers and the doors to the TARDIS shut, then she started to move levers and press buttons that made the whole place shake and spin. I was gripping onto the edges of my seat, and Ianto was almost thrown off the railing. Soon, we were flying through what the Doctor said was the Time Vortex and the flying was smoother.
Ianto went to discover the other rooms that the TARDIS had to offer; the Doctor told him that there were hundreds of them, filled with memoirs and books and there was even a pool. I knew that even if this box couldn't travel through time, living in here would be enough. I was admiring the buttons on the console when the Doctor asked me, "Where did you get that scarf?"
"Oh, my mom gave it to me."
"Did she say where she got it from?"
"No, I've never talked to her before. It was something she left me when she put me up for adoption."
"Oh. Well, it is certainly beautiful." She pressed a button and the whole place went wild again. We both gripped onto the sides for our life, but not like we were afraid of death, but instead like we were holding onto the fun that we were having. And we certainly were having the time of our lives.