To follow that star

Finch

The Doctor's long legs took him to the TARDIS in two strides. He pushed the door open and looked back at Finch with a grin. "Well, are you coming?"

He was so different than the Doctor Finch remembered. So young and eager. So old and desperate. Could one be old and young at the same time? Desperate and alive with eagerness for the next adventure at the same time? Finch had never felt old until after Nathan died and he woke up in the hospital unable to move. And yet to this Doctor he was still a child, a brilliant young afternoon's companion.

He got up from his chair and limped slowly toward the door. Mr. Reese's eyes were popping again. They didn't do missions together. Things worked much better when they each did their own parts, and Finch had no desire to experience the situations Reese got himself into. But he turned back at the door and said deliberately, "Well, are you coming?"

Then, ignoring Reese's popping eyes, he stepped inside the door.

"I knew it was alive," he murmured, gazing with eyes as wide as the child Harold Sparrow's at the first sight of a blue shed that appeared out of nowhere in a whirl of sound.

"You did?" The Doctor was rushing around in circles, pushing, pulling, prodding, and hitting things on the console in the middle of the impossibly large, strangely living room. "Oh, I knew you were brilliant, Harold Sparrow! But she's not an it. She's a she. Close the door, Martha!"

Martha was pulling a chair up the ramp. She tucked it into the closest thing to a corner in the round room. "Wait a minute, Doctor! Mr. Finch, please, have a seat. You'll want to hold on tight. Doctor, please try to keep this thing steady."

"Oh. Right." He hit a few more things, one with a mallet and cried, "Ready?"

Given the way Mr. Reese and Martha were both bracing themselves, it seemed they were in for a rough ride. Finch grasped the rail and closed his eyes, unaware of what an incongruously prim figure he made in that absurd room. "Ready, Doctor."

One might expect a space and time ship from the future to have the technology to deal with turbulence. Finch had reason to be thankful for the chair, and when the shaking and shuddering and wild noise stopped and he opened his eyes, he found Martha beside him.

"Alright, then?"

He took stock. "Yes, thank you, Miss Jones. That was very thoughtful."

She tilted her head. "I know the symptoms of fused vertebrae when I see them. The TARDIS isn't exactly the easiest ride at the best of times."

"Are you a Doctor too?"

"Oh, not like him. Strictly medical. Or will be, if I ever get back to London, 2007, to take my exam." She gave him one of her vibrant smiles. "Come on then, Mr. Finch."

Reese was grinning his quiet, snarky little grin as they all went down toward the door. He liked this different Doctor and his wild ways, Finch could tell and was a little surprised. Illogically pleased, too. He had no desire for his childhood and his present associations to have any meeting at all, and yet it pleased him that Reese liked his Doctor.