Some days with the Doctor were exciting. Some – not few, but some – were boring. And some simply involved a lot of running. The Ponds found that most of them were simply that.
And so with a good deal of running and one slammed TARDIS door later, the trio were flying away from their daily adventure and back into the stars where they belonged.
With a cheer the Doctor stood up, straightened his bow tie, and started flicking at the TARDIS's many levers and buttons. Amy, still panting, leaned on Rory's shoulder and buried her face in his neck before bursting out in laughter.
"I suppose we won't be seeing much of them again." She snorted. The Doctor joined in the laughter, shaking his head. Even Rory, red faced with fatigue from the recent sprinting, giggled a bit.
"Nothing to be done about that." The Doctor said. "I think they are a people best left alone for a while." He leaned against a nearby railing and started to listen to the hum of the engines, the speed of his two hearts slowing until they were back at their normal rate.
"What time is it?" Rory asked absentmindedly. The Doctor opened one eye and looked at him strangely. Rory glared back a bit. "Okay, fine, time vortex and all that, but what time is it for me and Amy? I want to know if I can go to bed without being ridiculed."
Amy glanced at her wristwatch, which was spinning its hands like mad. She shrugged.
"I've given up trying to tell our time in this thing." She said with a salute to the remarkable machine in front of her. "Maybe it is time we called it a day though, Doctor. Can you take us home?"
A flash of disappointment crossed the Doctor's face, but it passed as quickly as it came. "Your wish is my command, Amelia. You sure you don't want to stay for a while?"
"Just come fetch us next time you feel lonely, all right?" Amy said. The way she said it made it sound a bit like a warning. The Doctor nodded in understanding. With a push of a few more buttons, the TARDIS began to land with its signature Whooshing sound.
"Sunday, July second. Eleven twenty-three pm. No one will have even missed you." The Doctor announced with flourish of the arms as he opened the door. "Now leave. I have to fix the chrono capacitator anyway."
Rory nodded and did not hesitate to make for his home, where a hot shower and warm bed were waiting for him. Amy stopped to kiss the Doctor on the cheek before jumping out to follow her husband. The couple waved goodbye as the TARDIS disappeared from their lawn.
The Doctor flipped a few more buttons, did a couple of twirls and shouted some impressive things. It was then that he realized he was trying to impress someone that wasn't there. He set the TARDIS onto an automatic piloting program and let them drift for a while.
Where do I go now? He thought to himself. He didn't like staying still, but for the moment that seemed to be all he could do. His hearts were calm, but his body was still exhausted from the day of running with the Ponds, and the TARDIS wasn't in miraculous shape herself. It had been months, maybe even years since she'd had a refueling.
He contemplated the possibilities. He could just make a much needed pit stop in Cardiff to refuel, maybe take a nap or read a book for a few hours and let the TARDIS soak up energy. But the usual pull decided against it. He was avoiding Cardiff much for the same reason he was avoiding early 21st century London, a time and place that had once been his favorite. There were just too many memories there, and he didn't need another Jack Harkness to attach himself to the side of his ship. But he also couldn't bring himself to find a new temporal rift to refuel with. It felt almost like an insult to the Doctor's memories.
So instead of refueling, he decided to do exactly what he had told Amy. He hadn't been kidding, the chrono capacitator did need fixing. That should occupy his time for a while, he decided.
The TARDIS moaned a bit as he set up the quantum stabilizers. The Doctor cast her a glance, but she didn't say anything else, so he proceeded.
"How should I go about this..." He muttered to himself. Cursing himself for throwing away the manual for the thousandth time, he raced down underneath the console and started rewiring things so he could get a direct access at the capacitator.
"Maybe..." He said aloud. "If I can get access to the dilation matrix, I should be able to open up the capacitator and tinker with it a bit." Tying up the wires so they didn't tangle, he raced back up to the console and pulled up a monitor.
Typing furiously at the keyboard, he pulled up the control panel for the dilation matrix. The TARDIS gave off another moan. The Doctor checked to make sure everything was stable, and couldn't find anything wrong so far. He gave the her a reassuring pat, and activated the matrix.
The TARDIS began to shake. The Doctor pulled up on one of the levers to crank up the quantum stabilizers, but this proved to be a mistake when something in the console started to spark and bang. The ship shook violently, and the Doctor grasped at a hand railing. There was a distortion in the space around him, and the monitor began to flash a warning message.
"A temporal fold. Damn." He said. He was flung backwards. The ship was shaking so much, he didn't notice his surroundings change. The clean metal roofing and posts were suddenly replaced with one of his older console rooms, a simpler area with loopy support posts and a grated metal floor.
"That's not supposed to happen." He said, his nose still on the monitor, trying to discern the source of the problem. He looked around and scowled at the flood of nostalgia. "Oh, what's wrong with you, old girl?" The Doctor straightened up and looked around, trying to figure out what went wrong, and why they switched console rooms.
His confusion didn't last long, because instead it was replaced by shock. His hearts plummeted in surprise when he realized he wasn't alone.
"What!" The other figure yelled in equal astonishment, gazing across the room at the Doctor.
The Doctor sighed. He hated when things like this happened. He took in the man in front of him. Brown, vertical striped suit and matching pants. Perfectly normal black (not-bow) tie, and red converse. Skinnier than he was, with thinner hair but long sideburns. It was a figure the Doctor knew fairly well.
"Who are you?" The Tenth Doctor yelled from across the console room. The Eleventh Doctor was suddenly very conscious of floppy hair, protruding chin, and his frankly outlandish choice of apparel.
Eleven leaned on the console and started to speak. "Er..." He began. Where to begin to explain? He could feel new memories flooding in from his old regeneration as he spoke. Struggling to ignore the bizarre feeling, he continued to talk. "I'm you." He said simply. "This is all my fault." He started to wave his arms around and bat at the console. He flailed around, looking for buttons and levers that weren't there anymore thanks to the older design.
"What did you do?" The Tenth Doctor asked without bothering for more of the particulars. His tone was that of a father scolding a guilty child.
"I accidentally crossed the dilation matrix with the quantum stabilizer." Eleven said, running his fingers through his hair almost absentmindedly.
"You what?" Ten yelled. Unwilling to miss his part in the action, he took his place at the console and started to take in the readings on his monitors, trying to discern the problem.
"I didn't think it would cause a temporal fold like this!" Eleven yelled back, his fingers flying desperately to remedy the situation before any more trouble was caused.
"Why did you even–" Ten started, throwing his hands to his face in exasperation. "Wait, if our timeline is folding then that means–"
The two Doctors had been so absorbed in their panics that they hadn't even noticed the third man appear in the room. "Which one of you idiots has been tampering with the dilation matrix?" The man said.
Eleven recognized the man's northern accent, and didn't bother to look up. Ten however was still fairly young with his regeneration, and was taken by surprise.
"No.." He exclaimed.
The new arrival to the room was a fairly tall man, and was in no way as youthful in the skin as the other two Doctors. He had hard set lines in his face that were fresh from the stress of war, and he sported simpler clothes than the other two. He wore blank pants, a red v-neck and a leather jacket, which happened to be much more sophisticated than the ridiculous suits and costumes the other two had.
He was the Ninth Doctor.
"Um..." Eleven spouted out as response to Nine's question. "That was me. Sorry, I was just trying to fix the chrono capacitator."
"Without stabilizing it first?" Nine scolded. Eleven flushed with shame at being scolded by a version of himself three hundred years younger than him, but continued with his efforts.
"How thick do you have to be–" Nine began, but Eleven cut him off before he could get any further.
"I didn't think it would be this bad–look, it's okay I can fix this." Eleven panted, his once calm hearts again racing.
"You know what," Nine said, taking his place at the console next to Ten, who was stuck simply staring at him. "Go outside and see if the chameleon circuit is still operational."
Eleven nodded and rushed towards the door. "Wait, what does this have to do with the circuit?" He exclaimed.
"Just trust me and go." Nine replied. Ten was about to mention that the chameleon circuit hadn't been operational for centuries, but he was cut off by Eleven's talking.
"Okay, okay I'll go look." He said. Eleven opened the doors and stepped outside onto a grassy lawn. "Everything looks okay out here." He said, looking up at the shining letters that spelled out the iconic Police Box. He barely had time to get the words out before the door shut and the TARDIS was warping away, leaving Eleven behind in the grass. He yelled out, but his ship was already long gone.
Back in the fleeing TARDIS, the Tenth Doctor had regained use of his dumbstruck brain, and turned back to his former self, who yelled "Good riddance!" At Eleven's leaving.
"What did you do that for?" Ten asked, trying desperately not to lose control of the ship.
"He was at the center of the limit field, so we needed to get him away from the TARDIS." Nine said. He didn't have to be told what was going on, he knew that he was dealing with his future selves, but he didn't have time to dread his coming fashion sense for the future. "Also he annoyed me." He added, just for good measure.
"You could have just told him." Ten scolded. Nine cast a smirk.
"Unfortunately, getting him out will only delay our timeline collapsing." Nine said. "At the very least, no more Doctors will keep showing up. But we still need to untangle us, using the TARDIS as an anchor."
Ten leaned down into the monitor, taking in the warning readings. "Maybe if we reverse the polarity of the neutron flow...it should work."
"Oh, that's good!" Nine laughed. He couldn't deny it was fun working his way out of trouble with another Time Lord. As great as humans could be, they couldn't really replace the companionship of his own species, even if it did mean a fold in time.
"Now if we can just fix the Huon flux..." Ten said as he reached across the console, using his feet to keep down levers as he grabbed for more.
"...and reset the quantum stabilizer..." Nine continued.
"There." Ten announced. "Everything's fixed. The timeline should start to unfold in a few seconds."
The Two Doctors smiled in relief. Ten leaned against the railing and took in his past self. It wasn't the first time he'd run into another of his regenerations, but this one had been so recent that it was leaving quite an impact.
"So...are you traveling with anyone?" Ten asked. Nine tried to avoid looking at the future Doctor so he wouldn't remember as much when it was all over, but he answered all the same. He couldn't keep the sassy smirk off his face as he replied.
"Yes, actually." He said, leaning against the console. "A girl named Rose."
Ten couldn't keep the smile off his face as Nine spoke. He remembered what it had been like, before he had regenerated. The Doctor and Rose, galavanting across the universe. It had been the first time in a long while that he could feel truly happy after the Time War.
"You take good care of her." Ten said. Nine cast a cautious glance Ten's way.
"Don't worry." He said. "I will."
They both shot each other farewell smirks as a white light came forward and engulfed them, sending each Doctor back to their own times.
"Oi–You all right there?" A voice cut into the Doctor's thoughts.
The Tenth Doctor sat up, rubbing his head from the impact he must have made on the floor.
"Yeah, I'm all right. What just happened?" He asked. Squinting through his groggy vision, he looked up and saw the concerned face of Donna Noble inches away from his own.
"You were right in the middle of talking, and then you just blacked out. I thought you were having a fit or something." She said, offering a hand for him to stand up with.
"Nah, I'm all right." Said the Doctor. "Just had a bit nostalgia trip, that's all."
"You sure?" Donna asked. She wasn't an expert, but blacking out in the middle of a rant wasn't normal, even for martians.
"YEahh." He said, flicking the TARDIS back into action, ready for another adventure.
Luckily for Rose's sanity, she wasn't actually in the room when her Ninth Doctor had passed out. He mentioned nothing to her, and just kept trudging on like he always did. Snarky comment here, exasperated sigh there, and all was well.
Being a Time Lord, one ability the Doctor would often have to exercise was his ability to forget. Forget seeing important bits of information about the future, let the details of a future regeneration slip from your mind. So that's what Nine did. He forgot what Eleven's voice sound like, he erased from his memory the clothing that Ten wore. His life continued unhindered by that day's unplanned incident. But still, there was always the thought nagging at the back of his mind. Ten's warning.
Even after Nine regenerated, he would often cast his memory back at what Ten had said that day.
"You take good care of her."
As much as he hated the thought, he knew what it meant. He had always known that he and Rose weren't meant to last. He had learned a long time ago that humans and Time Lords weren't really meant to mix. Every time Rose smiled, every time they hugged, cheered, or even sometimes kissed, he knew it would end someday. But he wasn't strong enough to leave her behind just yet.
Not just yet.
Hooray finally a doctor who story! I can't take much credit for this one, the idea and most of the dialogue comes from tumblr user thedoctorsthief. For the post go to thedoctorsthief d0t tumblr d0t com post/54454143262/time-crash-au-after-making-a-slig ht-mistake-the
Hope you like :)