i have most of the story written/outlined, so the update schedule is mostly depending on the rest of my life.
this story is half for fun and half b/c a bunch of the oc fics on this site make me... frustrated. like, ok, i GET that it would be cool as hell to meet the doctor, but who the heck is well balanced enough to handle that properly? i'm a hot mess even without a bunch of alien misadventures!
please let me know if i get characterization right, it's so hard to write the eleventh doctor for some reason.
disclaimer: i own nothing! i'm broke.
Why did all hospitals have to look like the same endless labyrinth? Beatrice had taken so many twists and turns in an effort to escape that she didn't know where she was.
Not that it worked, you know, which is why she was hiding in someone's office.
It was a pretty nice office, to boot. The one wall was entirely made of glass and gave whoever owned the office a wonderful view of the winding road leading up to the building. Beatrice pushed a chair aside and huddled under the giant wooden desk sitting in the center of the room. She clutched her boots close to her chest and tried to still her ragged breathing.
The monster was still somewhere close— animalistic clicks and grunts carried ominously closer to Beatrice's location.
What was it? It was like something Beatrice would write about for fun, some horrible monster from the dawn of time, the kind that humankind only remembered in nightmares. This thing looked like it hung out with Cthulhu in its free time.
Oh God, what if it was Cthulhu?
But no. No. It couldn't be. Besides, Cthulhu had, like, tentacles and shit. This thing had… well, Beatrice wasn't really sure, but it definitely had teeth.
Big teeth. Big, sharp teeth.
If this was a hallucination, would it still kill her? Or was it real, and she was just too much of an idiot to grasp its existence even when it was right in front of her eyes?
A long growl came from the doorway to the office. Beatrice realized, extremely belatedly, that she should have closed the door behind her.
She didn't dare breathe. If she did it too loudly, it would hear her. Beatrice could see it now, too, reflected in the window before them. It towered over her hiding place and its presence seemed to fill the room completely. A fine row of teeth cut cleanly across the darkness.
It didn't have any eyes, but…
But Beatrice could feel it watching her.
The window. It could see her in the window, just like she could see it. She should have pulled the chair back to hide, how dumb was she!
Beatrice's reflection sat with wide, terrified eyes. She was trapped. The monster was too big, there wasn't any room to escape.
But oh God, the teeth. Its teeth were so sharp and its mouth so large that it wouldn't have any problem biting through her bones and pulling her skin off as she screamed herself hoarse. Her soft, supple skin. She'd probably taste like a fucking marshmallow to this thing, there was nowhere else to run, ohgodshewasgonnadie—
Miraculously, someone else spoke from the hallway.
"Whoa-ho!" They exclaimed, in a weirdly familiar British accent, making the monster jerk backward to look off to the side.
Beatrice's thoughts raced. British? What was a British person doing in Kansas? Why did it feel familiar? Did she really recognize it, or did it just sound like someone else's accent she'd heard before, and she didn't have the skill to really differentiate between the two?
The monster receded with a snarl and shot off down the hallway.
A beat, then two.
Beatrice couldn't believe her luck. She really, really couldn't. But like hell was she going to miss this opportunity, so she immediately threw her boots to the side, balled her socks in one hand, and sprinted the opposite direction of the danger.
She just needed to find a way out! Any way out, or even a way off the floor, for goodness sake!
The labyrinth was endless, everything merged into one, everything looked the same!
No, there! Red lights, all caps— EXIT!
"Look out!" The British man shouted from behind her.
Beatrice span, saw the blurry mass of shadows and sharp teeth barreling towards her, and froze up like a deer about to be hit by a truck.
Then—
Someone yanked her into a room off to the side. Beatrice's head swam, she didn't know where she was for a second.
Director Baker was talking to her, "Where were the men who were guarding you, what happened to them?"
Beatrice blinked.
She was in the back of a small waiting room, surrounded by multiple heavily armed UNIT soldiers, as well as the imposing form of Director Baker. The older woman was holding onto one of her arms and looking at Beatrice with a furrowed brow.
"What happened?" Baker repeated, shaking Beatrice slightly.
"I don't—" Beatrice glanced back at the door, "They're dead, the thing—"
Baker swore under her breath. She ordered her men, "Do not let anything through that door!"
"Wait!" Beatrice cried, "There was someone else out there!"
"They're dead," Baker stated.
Beatrice covered her mouth with both hands, too horrified to say anything else. That thing, it— it wasn't normal, if it broke in, she didn't think guns could stop it.
Why was this even happening?
Silence. Beatrice felt like her heartbeat was the loudest thing in the room.
The door burst open and the soldiers shouted to STOP, KEEP BACK, but it was a man, not a monster who had entered, waving his arms about wildly in the air.
"It's me, it's me, don't shoot!" The man shouted with the same British accent as before, and Baker groaned.
"Let him in," She said.
The UNIT men lowered their guns and the British man walked into the room, but Beatrice must have still been hallucinating. She must've, because the man was wearing a tweed jacket and a bowtie and had the face of Matt Smith.
Basically, the Eleventh Doctor just walked into the room.
There was a monster roaming the halls of the hospital, so Beatrice really shouldn't have been surprised, but… seriously?
"Doctor." Baker monotonously offered in greeting as the Doctor spun and closed the door behind him.
"Rachel, lovely to see you again! I'd love to catch up, but there's a bit of an issue outside, no big deal, you know— just giant interdimensional monster." The Time Lord said, talking a mile a minute, "I don't suppose you know anything about that?"
"Not much," Baker answered in stride, "Showed up recently, killed a few of my men."
Why was Beatrice hallucinating the Doctor, of all people? Why not, like, someone from a show she'd watched more recently, or a movie? A young Harrison Ford, maybe? That would have been nice. And why specifically the Eleventh Doctor, the series was already deep into a season with Twelve.
"And you!" The Doctor said, and oh God he was looking at Beatrice, he was talking to her, "Hello, I don't think we've met before, I'm the Doctor, and you are?"
What should she say, she should say something right? Instead of just staring with wide eyes? Oh God she should say something—
"She showed up in a cornfield an hour from here, but doesn't exist in any world database," Baker answered for her while Beatrice was having an internal crisis, "We thought she was one of yours, another alien."
Beatrice gaped, "You thought I was an alien?"
The Doctor, quick as ever, reached into his breast pocket and took out his sonic screwdriver to give Beatrice a scan. The Time Lord drew it close to his face to look at something only he could see, "Nope, human, just like the rest of you." He said, but then his brow furrowed, "Wait, hang on. Where did you say you were from again?"
"I didn't?" Beatrice asked more than stated.
Something crashed about in the hallway and roared. Beatrice flinched.
The Doctor blanched, "Okay, we'll talk later, is there another way out of here?"
"No, we closed ourselves off in a room without any escape. Yes, of course there's another way out of here." Baker responded, highly sarcastic. The Doctor looked affronted but ran with everyone else out the second door and into another hallway. There, at the end, was—
"Ah, that's where I put her!" the Doctor cried and made for the tall blue police box sitting there in all its glory, "Follow me, everyone!"
The TARDIS. Holy fucking shit, the TARDIS.
Was it real? No, probably not, why on earth would it be—
Another crash, the sound of splintering wood from behind them, and Beatrice bolted for the time machine without another thought. She hit the doors and entered an orange room with a large time rotor in the middle that hummed with energy.
Beatrice knew, she knew that the TARDIS was bigger on the inside, but she'd never actually thought about how that must mess with someone's mind. There was something about it that was wrong, something that just didn't make sense.
She ran for a box, entered the doors and should've hit the other side almost immediately, but she didn't. Instead, she was standing in this massive space that was full of bits and bobs. It was like an optical illusion.
Her brain hated it.
But she didn't have time to worry.
Beatrice walked farther in and came to a stop at the bottom of the steps leading up to the console, where the Doctor was manically pulling various dials and switches. She craned her neck to look all the way up at the ceiling and wondered how the hell this was even possible.
"You're sure it can't get in here?" Baker addressed the Doctor, the woman finally moving away from the doors to join the Time Lord.
"Shouldn't," Beatrice mumbled, still in awe.
"She's right," The Doctor confirmed, "As long as none of your people touch anything they're not supposed to. I can see that!" He suddenly shouted, and a soldier fiddling with something on the lower levels skittered backward.
Beatrice blinked. How had he even known…?
"But what about the monster?" Baker asked.
"What about it?" The Doctor flippantly replied. He punched a lever forward, causing the TARDIS to shake. A familiar grinding noise filled the air.
"What do we do about it? How do we kill it?" Baker continued.
"Kill it! Don't be ridiculous, you can't kill it, we don't even know what it is." The Doctor responded. The grinding stopped, and the Doctor leapt down the stairs and around into the underbelly of the console room, pushing around boxes and throwing things this way and that. "However, we can trap it."
Beatrice turned to watch his movements with a cautious gaze, "How?"
"I hardly expect a giant net to work." Baker said, "It's not a squirrel, it can't be caught easily."
"That's why we're not going to use a net!" The Doctor responded and jumped up with a large tube that, really, in all actuality, could have come from the set of Ghostbusters. "Just put this in one place, chase the monster towards it, and remotely press the 'on' button. Do that, then you've got yourselves a monster."
Oh God, they were all going to die. Really, if Beatrice wasn't already in a coffin, she would be soon.
They all piled out of the TARDIS and onto a lower floor of the hospital, the light still ominously dimmed.
"Baker, you stay here, you and your people will just get in the way," The Doctor said, carrying the tube out, along with a long string of wiring. One end was plugged into the tube, and the other, Beatrice assumed, was connected to the TARDIS somehow.
"What should we expect?" Baker asked, cautiously.
"Nothing you probably haven't seen before," The Doctor responded, "But you, come with me." And he dropped a large pile of cables into Beatrice's arms, much to her surprise.
"What?" Beatrice squeaked.
"Come along, quickly now!" The Time Lord said, and once again holding the ghostbusters tube ran off down the hallway. Beatrice was dragged along whether she wanted to follow or not.
That part about the coffin? That was looking less and less like a joke.
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