Spoilers for Doctor who up untill "The Day of The Doctor" (S7E15).
Spoilers for Criminal Minds through "Proof" (S7E2)
I just thought that the Doctors Who and Reid would be a good pair. This began as a simple dalliance to give Reid a bit of a break from the pressure of life and work... It has grown into something so much more than the intended 'vacation' for Dr. Reid (as so many of the adventures with The Doctor do). Meant as a one-shot, it's become a chapter fic. I hope you'll hange with me till the end. I'm so close.
I can't get anyone to beta for me, so all mistakes and space-time inaccuracies are all mine.
BIG also... Please forget how big a Docroe Who fan Reid is. Not so in this universe!
"This is one corner… of one country, in one continent, on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see."
-The Doctor
"Doctor?"
The brown mop of hair appeared inverted from his station on his back, beneath the console.
"Ah. Clara! Perfect timing. Pass along that spanner, eh?" She handed over the wrench quickly before resuming the urgency with which she had sought him out in the first place.
"Doctor, do you know there's a man mumbling and pacing your library?" she asked, trying to make the question sound more calm than she felt at that particular moment.
"Oh good, you've met," he said simply, reaching for his sonic and adjusting the settings with a casualty that always managed to get her goat just a little bit.
She took a breath and counted to ten.
"No. We've not met. But he looks in distress and I wondered whether..."
"Oh, all right. All patched up here anyway." The Doctor climbed out from beneath the console and wiped his hands on his trouser legs before grabbing Clara by the wrist. "Need me to introduce you like two kiddies on a play date?"
Clara shook her head in confusion as he guided her with rough enthusiasm down one of the meandering corridors of the TARDIS.
"No! Doctor! I can introduce myself, but..."
"Lovely," he interrupted as he launched her through the doors entering onto the vast expanse of books. "Back in a tick." And he disappeared back down the corridor, opposite the way they had come.
They man pacing the stacks was tall and young - maybe only a bit older than Clara, herself. He had a shaggy haircut and wore rumpled trousers and shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, with a slim vest and necktie. The frantic way he flitted about the aisles, searching through book titles, made her think he might be about to pull out a sonic of his own, declaring some impossible story as he did so. She approached him calmly and gave a gentle wave.
"Hello, there," she smiled. "Need help finding something?"
"Are you the librarian?" the man asked in a clean, American accent. He spoke to her, but kept his eyes clamped to the spines of the volumes in front of him.
"No. I'm Clara."
Finally, he turned to study her face.
"Do you know what language these are in?" he asked as his eyes darted quickly away from her again.
"Lots, I imagine. Don't really know. They all look the same to me." She took a half step back at the startled look he gave her at that.
"No. That's not... none of these symbols appear in any kind of pattern that would indicate a shared root language."
"Ah. Well... yeah... Doctor!" she called as she heard his tramp of footsteps entering the room. "Um... one minute," she shot out as she left him to go speak to the Doctor.
"How are you two getting on? He's really a lovely fellow, isn't he?"
"Who is he and why can he not read anything in here?" Clara demanded, concern and frustration warring in her voice.
"Yeah, it's the TARDIS Translation Matrix. Went a bit squiffy after the three-Doctor-day," he explained, fidgeting a bit. "But I've fixed it! Should be functioning again any minute..."
"What the hell?"
"Now!" The Doctor's grin widened with delight as the new passenger yelped in surprise.
"Um... one minute," the girl shouted over her shoulder as she sprinted to the library entrance. There was a tall man wearing a bowtie and suspenders standing there, greeting her. His sleeves were rolled up and he was fidgeting with some sort of pen or wireless remote.
The girl appeared to be about his age - maybe a year or two younger. She was dressed casually but expressively, yet she assumed an air of authority from the very beginning - offering to help him as though it was her job. He'd guessed librarian, but she could as easily be some sort of custodian or teacher.
Now, him... the man she was talking to was bouncing on his heels, showing both excitement and anxiety in his features in equal measure. Looking at him was like having caught Garcia doing something both delightful and forbidden on BAU servers. Spencer would need to speak to him before he made any kind of decent assessment.
Even in his dreams he couldn't stop profiling.
After watching the two exchange several excited sentences, he turned back to the books on the shelves in front of him.
"What the hell?" he yelped as he watched the text on the book spines transform to English lettering right in front of his eyes.
"Ah, yes. Should be much clearer for you now." The man walking excitedly towards him spoke with a British accent, just like the girl had.
"Are you the librarian?" Spencer asked of the man this time. He didn't think so, but he was looking for some part of his subconscious mind to give him an explanation of what was happening. A librarian in a library was worth looking for.
"I'm The Doctor and this is Clara," the man said with a broad grin, as if that was answer enough. He glanced expectantly between Reid and the girl, waiting for... what?
"Maybe one of you could help me out... Um, what's this about?" Direct approach.
"Everything!" the man - The Doctor - exclaimed.
He took off out of the doors of the building and Clara shrugged apologetically.
"Best to follow," she said, mentioning him ahead. "It'll all come clear soon. Usually. Hopefully." She made for the door, but something prompted Spencer to glance back over his shoulder – the feeling of eyes on him.
"Reid, a pretty girl tells you to follow, you go with her," said the encouraging voice of Derek Morgan. His colleague and close friend stood there in the middle of the expansive library behind him, where no one had previously been. Surprised at seeing the familiar face, Spencer blinked several times before focusing again on the spot where Morgan had just been standing.
There was no one there.
"Stay close," Clara shouted from the doorway. "You could get lost here for days if she wanted you to." Cryptic.
Taking a deep breath, Spencer reminded himself that this was only a dream, and followed her though the doors.
The exterior of the library revealed that they were still inside a larger space. Metal walkways and hatches lining the walls replaced the sidewalks and trees he had expected to see. He followed Clara down a large metal corridor, similar to what he would have expected to see in a submarine or an aircraft carrier. After several minutes of walking, she led him through a large door and into another spacious room. In the center he found the man who called himself The Doctor.
He stood at a large central console, tapping numbers out onto a small screen above the control panel.
"'Who are you?' 'What's going on?' 'Where are we?'," the man spouted out as he saw the two of them enter the room. "All good questions. And they all deserve the best of answers. So… as I said already, I'm The Doctor and this is Clara. And what is going on is a bit of a vacation of sorts. Well, for you a vacation, for me a vocation, and, well… for Clara it's likely just another Wednesday. And where we are is only half of the question. The more intriguing aspect being when. When are we?"
"I… can't even…" Spencer sputtered before he'd had time to think of a more meaningful response to the excited rambling.
"Well, of course you can't. We haven't properly met yet," The Doctor said, plainly. "But we're about to. Then it should be easier to understand." He pulled a lever and the room shook, knocking Spencer and Clara off balance for a moment. She toppled towards him and he had no other recourse but to catch her.
"Thanks," she nodded as he gripped her arms, holding them both steady. He couldn't say anything, still trying to organize his thoughts, cataloguing all of the information that he had gotten in the past five minutes. Something else he noticed… Clara was warm as she leaned against him. And solid.
As the shaking stopped and the strange whirring noise subsided, The Doctor let go of the console where he'd been bracing himself, and made a dash for a smaller set of wooden doors on the opposite side of the room.
"Take a look," he said, throwing the doors wide open.
Clara moved to the door first, stepping out gingerly onto the concrete floor outside. Spencer followed, an equal mix of curiosity and reluctance warring in the pit of his stomach.
They looked down onto one of the Quantico courtyards where Spencer sometimes went to have lunch. They must be standing on the roof of one of the building's parking structures.
"Doctor, can't anyone just look up and see us?" Clara asked as she surveyed the scene below.
"Not to worry. Perception filter. Just stay inside of arm's length from the TARDIS doors. It's like we're not even here. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"Handy," she said with a little whistle.
As Spencer looked down on the courtyard he could see the doors to the wing where the BAU was housed. After a few moments it swung open and two tall men exited and headed for a bench. Spencer watched himself walk across the courtyard with the man he had only moments ago come to know as The Doctor. They sat down and Spencer began setting up a chessboard on the bench between them.
"We're playing chess," he said, narrating the scene below.
"Yeah. Said you hadn't had a decent chess partner in years. Had to oblige at that."
"How did we meet?" Suddenly all other questions fell from his mind and Spencer allowed himself to run with the dream state that this was some sort of time travel scenario he was caught up in. If it was just a dream, what could be the harm? Sometimes a dream is just a dream. Right?
"How did we meet?" the man asked. Clara still hadn't heard his name. With his question, she watched the Doctor's smile widen. He was pleased. Not a lot of convincing to get this one to believe him. She wondered how seldom that happened in his travels.
"I was… consulting. On a case."
"What were the details?"
"Ah. I can't go telling you about future events. Mess with your time stream. Bad stuff, that. Hard to fix."
"That's a brilliant understatement!" Clara exclaimed. She couldn't help herself.
"But, if this is my future… and you brought me here to see my future self… how does that not…?"
"Well… I'm not telling you anything, am I? Just brought you about to enjoy the scenery." He smiled and chuckled to himself; proud of that one.
"The Doctor likes to cheat the rules," she explained to the man as he kept his eyes trained studiously on the courtyard.
"So, you can't tell me what we're saying." It wasn't a question but he said it with a tone of skepticism anyway.
"Only that you – that is, the you from then – suggested that you – which is to say, the you from now – could use a bit of a holiday!" The Doctor then turned to Clara and spoke as though the other man wasn't there. "He said this poor fellow was under loads of stress. About to bust apart at the seams. I offered a few suggestions. Pegasus 12, Liserian Falls, New Las Vegas…"
"I told you that?" The other man barked back at The Doctor. "That I was…" His voice trailed off and his flare of anger seemed to dissipate as he turned back to face Clara and The Doctor.
"Listen… I know," The Doctor said gently.
"What do you know?" she asked as the man cringed away a bit at The Doctor's words.
"Quiet, Clara," he dismissed her, turning quickly back to the man. "The work you do – admirable work – it drains you."
"What work?" She was becoming suspicious now. The man had appeared in the Library without seeming to know where he was, or who either she or The Doctor were.
"Clara. Quiet." He quickly returned his attention to their guest, rattling on. "The work you do leaves you needing… craving… craving an escape. That's where I come in."
"What do you mean?" It was the mysterious man asking this time. Taking a step closer to The Doctor. Closer to the TARDIS.
"All of space and time. Anywhere you wanna go. Any when."
"Doctor!"
"Clara!" She recoiled as he shouted at her without even turning to look at her.
She turned away from the stupid, stubborn, git, and made her way back into the TATDIS. As She headed down the ramp and into the console room she heard the man speak again.
"Okay," he said. "I'll go with you."
"Doctor!"
"Clara!"
Spencer looked past the man to the girl he'd just verbally beat back three times in less than a minute. She was turning to walk back through the bright blue doors of what looked like an old wooden telephone booth. It had a placard on the front that read 'Police Public Call Box'.
In the past few moments, Reid had learned a few things about the man who was standing in front of him, his body nearly humming with excitement. One was that he was kind of a bully.
"Hotch is a bully. Not a great personality trait, but there are definitely worse to be had," said Prentiss from where she appeared at the threshold of the 'police box'.
Another thing Reid knew without a doubt about The Doctor was that he was sincere. He was a man who would help the BAU solve a case in the future. He was concerned about the job taking its toll on Reid. And he was offering a sort of pressure relief valve for it all.
"You don't have enough for a full profile," Emily said. "See what else you can get out of him."
"Okay," Reid nodded as he watched Emily disappear before his eyes. "I'll go with you."
"Spectacular!" The Doctor whirled around and headed for the door. "Notice anything about my ship?" he asked as Spencer followed him back on board.
"It's dimensionally un-equivalent."
"Heh," the man laughed humorlessly. "Most people just say 'bigger on the inside'. Except Clara."
"Where is Clara, anyway," Spencer asked as he glanced around what he gathered to be the bridge of the ship.
"She's…" Heavy sigh. "Around." Then, more quietly, "I shouldn't have shouted."
"Will she be alright?"
"Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. Impossible girl." A wide smile spread across his face as he thought of her in that role. "You know what she said?" he asked conspiratorially. "She said, 'smaller on the outside'. Hehe."
"Yeah. How do you explain that?" Spencer was less concerned with the logistics, and more concerned with whether his subconscious mind was able to throw an explanation at him, or if – like so often happened in dreams – he would find himself suddenly in a different situation when his mind was presented with something it couldn't reconcile.
"It's technically called dimensional transcendence. Big words. Means that the exterior…"
"Exists in a different dimension than the interior," Spencer finished for him. He had read a theory about dimensional transcendence when he had been at Cal Tech.
"Very good, Dr. Reid!" The Doctor exclaimed. "It's called the TARDIS. Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."
"That's clever," he said, less enthusiastically than his host. He was still skeptical.
"So. Where to… Spencer?"
"Surprise me," Spencer answered, turning to walk down the metal corridor he had traveled with Clara earlier.
As he walked down the hall, he felt like he was being led, or coached, into going a certain direction. The metal floor curved gently past closed doors, and only seemed to reveal to him the passages it wanted him to take. He mentally berated himself for thinking that way. After all a ship couldn't be sentient. But in a dream-state...
Finally, he came upon a lone catwalk leading to a heavy vault-like door. There was a window in the door and the light shining through it turned the small metal surroundings a dirty orange color.
At the foot of the door, back to its cold, thick metal barrier, sat Clara.
"What is it?" Spencer asked as he stopped his forward momentum only a handful of paces from where she sat.
"The eye of something or whatnot. Exploding or imploding, kept in a state of perpetual decay... something. Basically, you've stumbled upon the TARDIS engine from," she said, scoffing, with little humor.
"No," Spencer said, motioning to the object in her hands. "I meant, what is that?"
"No., I meant, what is that?"
Clara looked down at the leaf in her hands. It was her page one. But that wouldn't mean anything to him without some kind of drawn out explanation that she really didn't feel like going into just now. Instead she answered his question with a question of her own.
"Have you ever just known that you were in the exact spot you were meant to be, at the exact moment you were meant to be there?"
"Well, not like I think you mean it," he began, words hesitant at first. "But I know that if I hadn't been certain places at certain times, some very... bad things... might've happened to a lot of people all over my country."
"You know... that is what the Doctor dose. He's in the right place at the right moment." She stood and walked closer to the man leaning against the catwalk rail and holding the leaf out for him to examine. "If the Doctor hadn't shown up outside of my bedroom window one night, and practically chased me into this great bloody blue box - I call it a song-box." She caught the shadow of a grin on his face at that. "I would possibly – probably - be long dead right now. But he did show up, and he did save me... from a danger I'd've never known I was in. And he does it for lots of people. Whole world's of them..."
"But he can't save everyone."
"No he can't. And it kills him." She reached out and gingerly reclaimed her leaf from the man. "Before I met the Doctor, I never felt that right place, right moment feeling. Now..." Since the time stream...
"And the leaf?" the man asked again, gently.
Clara studied it for perhaps the millionth time in her short, many-lives, and realized that it had become more than her page one.
"Its a reminder that... What he's done matters. And now, what I do does as well." She smiled sadly up at the man standing next to her.
"Are you going to be alright?" he asked, his face an open book of sincerity.
"What, because he shouted?" she laughed dismissively. "I will have you know that I can give as good as I get."
"I'm sure you can," he said, smiling, an ironic hint of caution in his voice.
Suddenly, something made Clara glance toward the corridor hatch. The Doctor galloped purposefully towards them. She was developing a sort of sixth sense where the Doctor was concerned.
"What are you doing way back here? You should be in the wardrobe," he scolded. "We're here."
"Where is here, Doctor?" Clara asked as they took off after him, quickly tucking her prized leaf back into her blazer pocket.
"When is here?" their guest added cleverly as they dashed past the wardrobe and back into the console room.
"Doctor, our clothes," she prompted as they flew by.
"Ah, quite right. On second thought, never mind the change of clothes. Why not mix it up? That's what I always say."
"Fine. So then where... a-and when are we?" she added, giving a nod to the other man.
"Acreie 67. Best blackjack tables in the Black Sun quadrant." He smiled, nearly unable to contain his excitement as he opened the TARDIS doors onto a glittering hotel lobby. "Its the new New Las Vegas!"
"Because New Las Vegas was so ten minutes ago..."
