Disclaimer: The Doctor Who ideas, main characters, and places all mentioned in the BBC show do not belong to me. They belong to BBC. The only things that belong to me are the new characters and the story line. Enjoy.
Doctor Who: The Time Architect
Chapter 1 Just a Stranger
As expected, the bookstore visit was crowded and exceptionally boring for Emily, who preferred borrowing books from the library rather than buying them. In doing so, she never had to waste money on books that could be potentially only worth enough to be used in place of firewood.
Samantha, on the other had, always bought every book--bestseller or flop--ever written. She had redone her parents' basement into her own personal library and could buy a new mini cooper with the amount of written works she owned.
"How can you even earn enough money to pay for all these books?" Harry asked her, picking up a copy of the book Samantha was about to purchase, glancing at the front cover before quickly putting it down. "Forget that question. How can you read this book? Just the cover gives me the creeps."
Emily couldn't agree more. As much as she admired reading, simply the cover of the new bestseller, the reason why the bookstore was so full, was enough to give her the creeps.
"Paranoia?" Emily asked, glancing at it herself. "Authored by Ima F. Legend? I've never heard of her." The cover of the book was completely black except for a pair of eyes staring out almost through whoever was staring right back.
"It's supposed to be really good. And scary. There aren't that many actual scary books out there, you know."
"Speak for yourself," Harry mumbled.
Emily laughed, "Harry, cartoons scare you. And Samantha, you shouldn't be so quick to talk. Books may not scare you, but movies sure do."
"Well, you're not buying the book either, Em," retorted Samantha.
"You know me and bookstores," Emily replied, turing to walk with her friends toward the checkout when she bumped into someone.
"Oh! I'm terribly sorry!" She hurriedly apologized, helping the gentleman whom she had bumped into, knocking down his merchandise.
"Oh, its alright," he replied, taking back his own copy of Paranoia before adjusting his glasses to get a better look at her.
Emily wasn't sure what to think, he was certainly dressed oddly, once you took the time to actually look over him. He was wearing a brown suit and overcoat with white tennis shoes. His hair was very unkept and he even had sideburns. But what was most unusual was his gaze. He was looking at her as though he could see right through her, just like the book he was holding. Only this was different; less haunting and more calculating.
"Excuse me," he finally broke the silence, walking past and out of the shop. All too soon, however. Emily's eye caught sight of two other things he had dropped and forgotten to pick up. The first was the bookmark that came with the purchase of the book. The second, she wasn't sure what it was really.
"Wait! You dropped your... thing." To her that's all she could think of to call it at the moment, a thing. She had never seen a trinket like it before. It looked like some sort of metal pen with a blue light at the end. Some sort of futuristic looking laser pointer, perhaps? She pressed one of the side buttons. Well, it certainly did light up, but this would have been the first laser pointer she'd ever come across that actually made a noise.
"Odd," she muttered to herself, pocketing the small device. Either an odd number of strange things were happening that day, or she was starting to go crazy with the amount of stress she was putting on herself. She hopped it was the ladder, because that would mean she wouldn't have to worry about any more than she'd have to.
The saleswoman at the front desk--her name tag read 'Emelia'--was now finishing Samantha's order. She had her eyes fixed on Emily, watching her with an odd stare.
"That man you were talking to," she said, "who was he?"
"I'm not sure. Just a stranger in passing," she said, before quickly following her friends out of the store. Not only was she relieved to be out of the saleswoman's gaze, but out of the crowded store as well.
"Oh, finally," Samantha sighed, taking the book from the bag and staring at it in awe. "I've waited six months for this to hit the shelves. It was well worth the wait."
"You waited six months for that thing?" Harry asked. "Couldn't you have waited two more weeks until the stores were a little less crowded?" Emily silently agreed. How someone could wait half a year for one mere book to be published was beyond her.
"Anyway," Samantha continued, as though she hadn't heard a word they had said, "look at this bookmark. Its got a little pendant on it, pretty nice to actually come free with the book. Brilliant, don't you think?"
"Looks more like a bunch of shavings of metal sautered together and tied to a piece of cardboard, if you ask me," Emily commented, looking over it. To her it was just some ordinary bookmark but she was used to Samantha getting overly excited about these sorts of things.
Samantha childishly stuck her tongue out at Emily. "Only you would find a book unexciting, Emily."
"It's not the book I find boring," Emily corrected her.
"Speak for yourself," Samantha replied, ignoring Emily's attempt to finish her sentence. "I've got to get home. Are we still getting together for fish and chips tomorrow?"
"Sorry, no," Emily replied. "I have to go shopping for my sister. She's got an interview tomorrow."
"I'll be there," Harry replied.
"Right, see you tomorrow then."
"You two have fun," Emily called before turning down another street. She was used to walking home alone, in fact she preferred it that way. Someone wouldn't be breathing down her neck about random and uncomfortable conversation topics.
As usual, Emily found the door unlocked, as her sister always forgotten to do on her way out. She locked the door behind her and moved into the kitchen to set her things down before washing up, taking out a few pans to begin to cook dinner with.
A noise in the other room caught her attention. She knew her sister wasn't home. Could it have been that she left a window open and some breeze came through?
Playing it safe, or it could have been that she forgot she was still holding a frying pan, she slowly moved from the kitchen into the side room. Emily was keeping out of view of the doorway so as if there was any intruder she wouldn't be seen and then jumped.
Sure enough, as she peered her head around the doorway, someone started walking out of the door. There were two screams of surprise and then a bang. The intruder would have felt a great deal of pain in his head before he hit the ground as Emily's frying pan came in contact with the side of his head.
It took a few seconds for Emily to calm down before she finally recognized the intruder. It was the man from the bookstore. Had he been following her? Well, following her or not, she saw he had rummaged around the study, obviously looking for something.
A groan escaped him and Emily jumped back in fright, brandishing her 'weapon' in case he tried to attack her.
"Oh, ow... that really hurt."
"Serves you right!" Emily scolded in a high frightened voice. "Barging into someone's home like this. What the hell are you doing in here anyway?"
"Can you tone it down just a bit?" he asked, looking up and rubbing his head where a small bump had probably formed. "A bang to the head with a frying pan and then a scolding really gives you a splitting headache."
"Do you want another hit?" she asked, raising the pan again.
"No! No!" he replied quickly, holding up his hands to surrender. "Once was enough, thank you." He rubbed his head again. "Wouldn't have any ice would you?"
Emily watched him, still confused and more curious now. He didn't seem threatening, and the more she watched him, the less defensive she grew.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor," he replied. "Do you mind getting some ice?"
"If you're a doctor, fix your injury yourself," Emily replied. She didn't know why she was having this conversation. She should have phoned the police ages ago, shouldn't she? Still, she felt slightly bad about hurting him.
"Not a doctor," he corrected her. "The Doctor. And would it change anything if I said 'please?'"
Emily stood internally arguing with herself for a moment before walking back off to the kitchen. Se came back, a towel of ice in place of her weapon.
"Alright," she said, handing him the ice. "Explain this to me, Doctor. Why am I feeling bad about hurting you when it was you who broke into my house?"
"Oh, instinct of survival," he explained, putting the ice to his head. "Part of being a human. You get rid of anything potentially threatening, but you stick and help others to survive so you won't be alone. See, that's what's so interesting about human species, you strive to be the only ones, and yet you don't want to be alone. It's part of being human, nothing special for you."
Emily watched him, slightly amused at his manner of speaking, and yet at the same time still confused. "Do you always make this much sense?"
The Doctor glanced up at her. "Am I not making sense?"
Emily shook her head. "Nope."
"Oh good," the Doctor gave her an odd smile. "You didn't hit my head as hard as I thought then."
"Okay," Emily finally said, getting tired of loosing her anger with the stranger. "Why are you even here anyway. Start talking or I'll phone the police."
"Oh, come on," the Doctor replied. "There's no need to get the police involved is there? Just a bit of coming breaking and entering. It's not like I tried to hurt anything."
Emily raised her eyebrow. "Fine, forget the police. I'll just go get my frying pan again." She turned to head out of the door.
"Alright, alright!" he called, quickly getting up to follow her. "Please, no more hits on the head."
"Then start talking," Emily concluded, folding her arms.
"Yesterday I dropped my screwdriver in the bookstore, and my sources told me you would have it. So I came here."
Emily looked skeptical. "Screwdriver?" She didn't remember him dropping anything that remotely looked like a screwdriver.
"Yep," he replied. "My screwdriver. It's sonic."
"Sonic screwdriver?" she repeated, starting to think a mental hospital would better suit this man than a jail cell. "There's no such thing."
The Doctor gave an exasperated sigh. "It looks like a little metal tube thing. And when you press a button it makes a noise and a blue light comes on."
"Oh, you mean this?" she asked, pulling out the small device she had picked up off the bookstore's floor earlier that day.
"Yes!" he exclaimed, grabbing the so-called screwdriver from her hand and kissing it. "That's it! Thank you. See you later."
"Hold up a minute!" she called after him as he headed out, following him out of the house. "You can't just break into someone's house and then just walk away!"
"It's not like I stole or damage anything," he replied, not even giving her the courtesy of looking back at her.
"You left a huge mess in the study that I'm going to have to clean up!"
The Doctor winced. "Oh, right. Well, I do apologize about that." He gave her a sympathetic look before turning to walk off again.
"Hold up!" she called, grabbing the sleeve of his arm to keep him from getting too far away. "You can't just trespass on someone's property and then just waltz away like it's no big deal!"
"Look," he said turning to her. "I really have something I have to be doing. It's big. It's bad. It could change the course of the future. And now that I have my sonic screwdriver back," he waved the small device in front of her, "I can actually get to work on stopping it. Now if you excuse me." He turned again to head down the road.
Emily watched him a moment before finally following him at a quick pace so he wouldn't get too far ahead. If there was something so important that his ignorance of the law didn't matter, she wanted to know about it.