A/N This is a resubmission from a now-defunct account. Just xferring everything over. Peace out, y'all!
Chapter One
Perpugilliam Brown stopped dead in her tracks when she rounded the corner to enter the TARDIS's console room. The Doctor was lying on his back, knees bent, arms buried in the console - and not wearing his usual outrageous jacket. Or waistcoat. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up, his collar loosened and he was humming to himself, or to the TARDIS, Peri didn't know which.
She so rarely saw him dressed this casually that she had to stand there and watch for a few moments. It was almost like having a new Doctor lying in front of her. This made her wonder, briefly, how he would appear and act after future regenerations.
"Are you going to malinger in the entryway all day, my dear, or make yourself useful?" he asked, startling her out of her reverie.
Peri made a show of thinking about it, then said, "Um...useful! What do you want me to do?"
She heard a grunt in reply as the Doctor struggled with the tool in his right hand. A loud bang! came from the console and the Doctor yelped in pain.
"Holy Mother of -"
"Watch it, Doctor, you may be reduced to base and profane language." She grabbed the medical kit from another part of the console and ran to his side, dropping to her knees and peering in where he was working.
"Are you going to live?"
He answered with an exaggerated whimper that made Peri laugh. "I think I might," he whined. He lifted his head enough to see her and said, "To quote the great Han Solo, 'Sure, laugh it up, fuzzball!'"
He received the expected result when Peri fell the rest of the way to the deck, holding her sides and screaming with laughter. "You- you- you never- Oh my gawd!"
The Doctor stuck his hand out, close to Peri's face, and went "Ahem." She stopped laughing long enough to take a look and gasped.
"Doctor, I am SO sorry! I didn't realize you were actually hurt, why didn't you say something?" She began to quickly rummage through the med-kit, looking for an alcohol wipe, bandage and antibiotic creme.
"Sorry, sorry," she said soothingly when he hissed at the burning sensation of the alcohol. She smeared the creme onto the bandage, to avoid irritating the wound even more, and secured it on his hand. "Do Gallifreyans get tetanus shots?"
"Gallifrey has its share of nasties like Earth does, but fortunately Clostridium tetani isn't one of them." He started to sit up, so Peri helped him along by taking his unhurt hand and pulling. He rubbed his eyes with a shirt sleeve, sighed and looked at her.
Certain she was going to regret it, she asked any way. "What are you working on? And don't go all 'Star Trek' on me, tell me so I can understand."
He paused for a couple seconds, thinking about his reply, and simply said "I'm developing and installing a multiversal transference device." He waited for her to process the information.
"Multiversal...instead of universal? Transference. Going from one universe to another?"
He smiled and tapped her nose as he frequently did, "Very good! I've been thinking about such a device for my past couple of lives and it sort of 'clicked' into place last night, what I needed to do." He frowned to himself as he remembered. "It was rather odd, it came to me all of a sudden, as if from the blue."
Right after he said this, the TARDIS emitted a satisfied sound. He chuckled and patted the edge of the console lovingly. "'From the blue' is precisely right. The TARDIS told me the final steps to complete the process."
"The TARDIS told you? What do you mean?"
"You didn't know the TARDIS is semi-sentient? No, of course not. If I had told you I would remember, last life or this. She has telepathic circuits. Quite handy in many ways. For example, it will translate for you even if you're not physically in the TARDIS. As long as you've got a mental connection to her it will work."
Peri frowned as she thought about this. "You mean it - she - is reading my mind as we speak?"
A green light on the console blinked once. They both laughed at the same time. "There is your answer, Peri! Simple and succinct."
He climbed to his feet and stretched to relieve the kinks from his back and shoulders. When he was done, it was Peri's turn to get his attention.
"Ahem!" she said loudly, smiling up at him.
"I'm so sorry. Here," he said as he lifted her up, as if she was light as a feather. He steadied her as she stumbled a little. "Would you be kind enough to fetch me a cup of tea, Peri? I would be ever so grateful. I only have a couple of things to do and the device will be ready for its first test. A kind of 'shakedown' as it were."
"Sure!" she said as she flew out the door. "Don't go anywhere till I get back, I don't want to miss it!" he heard her yell down the corridor.
He dropped back to his previous position on the deck and completed the final touches on his new device. He was climbing to his feet when Peri returned with two cups of tea on a tray, with biscuits.
"Oh thank you, my dear, you've quite saved my life." They both gratefully sipped tea for a few moments, enjoying a comfortable silence. The Doctor dipped a biscuit in his tea, popped it into his mouth, then carefully set his cup down on the designated spot on the console.
He swallowed dramatically, cracked his knuckles and looked up at the TARDIS time rotor. "All right, my lady, are we ready to go on our first trial run?"
A green light on the console flashed once again.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," he chuckled. He turned to Peri. "For this first attempt, I am going to let the TARDIS go randomly. She has a habit of taking us to random places and times any way, doesn't she?" He received a disagreeable sound from the TARDIS, and patted her console once again. "I am sorry, love, you know I'm teasing. You just take us where we need to be, all right? There's a good girl."
The time rotor started huffing and wheezing up and down and the Doctor said to Peri, "I'm not sure if this will be a rough ride or not." He removed his tea cup from the console, just in case. It didn't take long and they were rematerializing.
The two stared at one another in shock. The Doctor said, "That was remarkably smooth, almost like she knew precisely where we needed to be." He flipped a switch and the panel covering the view screen lifted to reveal a long, gray, empty beach. The sky, water and land were Earth-like. He checked his instruments quickly and ascertained that they were in fact on Earth. Which Earth was the question, however.
"Earth," he stated.
"Really? Did it work? It's so empty and dismal out there, how will we know that we're in another universe?"
He operated more switches, knobs and screens on the panel he faced and said, "Yes, there are enough differences to indicate this is a parallel universe." He looked up when he and Peri felt, and heard, a thrum run through the TARDIS after his pronouncement. "What is it, old girl? You seem very pleased with yourself. Where have you taken us?"
He consulted another screen and said, "Darlig Ulv Stranden. Bad Wolf Bay, in the country of Norway." He turned a puzzled face to Peri. "Now why on Earth would the TARDIS bring us here?"