Hi! Oh, an update earlier than normal! Yay!
There might be some questions for those who don't know the classic series well. I reccomend any episode with the 4th Doctor in it, the movie featuring the 8th Doctor, and watching at least the first episode ever of Doctor Who. It's on Youtube (mostly). Enjoy!
~~~~This is a Beginning~~~~
The Tardis let them back in after another day sulking and repairing in the alley, and by then Rose had woken up. She was still groggy and her head pounded, but she wasn't sleeping the day away on the couch. It was a sign for them to leave.
Jack would be sticking around in Cardiff for a bit longer, keeping an eye on the rift until he could train up a good enough team to take over for him, but he had a phone and Harry would answer the Tardis's so he wasn't stranded forever. Rose had one too, her old super phone from when she used to travel with the Doctor and he made sure she could still keep in contact with her mum. It had become slightly obsolete over the years as it didn't get signal in her world, but its sentimental value was too high for her to part with so she kept it in her keepsake cabinet. So Jack wasn't stuck on Earth for an indeterminable amount of time this go round.
But for Harry, his father and Rose, it was time to leave. The Doctor, for one, had taken apart and rebuilt enough of the electronics in the Torchwood hub to irritate Jack. Harry was also getting itchy, wanting to feel the Tardis again.
The interior of the Tardis wasn't that much different. Aside from a bit of a raise in the dias surrounding the controls and an extra couple of seats, the coral structures and low lighting had remained much the same. Harry was sure there were some changes down the corridors and in the rooms, but he was glad the control room had remained much the same.
Jack waved them off, giving Rose a long hug. "Be safe Rose. And keep those two from doing anything stupid."
"Of course."
Harry pounced on Jack as soon as Rose headed towards the Tardis doors, and Jack laughed, sweeping him up. "You be safe, imp. Don't let me hear that you've been doing things you shouldn't before I get back. Keep yourself in one piece, you hear?"
Harry nodded, sighing reluctantly. "Yes Uncle Jack. I'll be safe." Privately he thought it was rather impossible to be completely safe in the Tardis, not with his dad driving.
WIth a bit of reluctance, his uncle put him back down before he turned to the Doctor. "Keep them safe Doctor." He saluted and the Doctor smiled slightly, returning a little two finger salute, a sigh pulling at the corner of his mouth.
"See you Jack. We'll swing by to pick you up in a bit, yeah?" Jack nodded, then watched as the doors to the Tardis closed and, a few seconds later, the universal noise of the Tardis disappearing filled the air and the blue box faded from existence. Jack stayed there for a few more moments, then he headed back to Torchwood Headquarters. He had a team to assemble and a few promising candidates to go over.
~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~
The Doctor spun a few controls into position before he turned with a manic grin on his face, facing his son and the woman he thought would remain forever beyond his reach.
"Alright, who wants to go where? All of time, all of space, pick somewhere."
Rose laughed. Harry sighed. His dad was on a theatrical streak and it seemed to be heading towards epic and huge proportions ending in the eventual capture, grimy prison cell, evil plot and triumph of the righteous that his dad was known across time and space for. Harry wasn't sure he was up for a couple days in a prison cell. Not this time.
"I'm going to go work on my...my project. Have fun dad, Rose."
His dad looked at him, eyes wide. "Not up for an adventure Harry?"
Harry scoffed. "You're gonna end up landing on a planet that is, somehow, embroiled in civil unrest, end up in a jail cell, meet the mastermind of the evil plot and overthrow it. I just want to skip the cell part. I'll be in the lab." Harry spun on his heel, heading towards the corridor.
"There won't be any evil plots, promise." Harry looked at him over his shoulder, a smirk on his lips.
"Sure. I'll stay here for now. I have some things I want to do in the lab anyway. Have fun, take Rose somewhere."
The Doctor watched Harry stroll out of the control room. "Don't blow anything important up Harry! And keep your communicator on!"
"Yes dad!" was heard, drifting back as Harry travelled deeper and deeper into the depths of the Tardis.
Rose laughed. "He is your son. Willful and precocious. Does he do this often?"
"Do what?"
"Head off on his own?"
The Doctor sighed. "Sometimes. He likes to tinker with things. At least he knows which lines deal with the gravity and antigrav couplings so I don't have to try and reconnect them while suspended between the walls."
Rose laughed. "He is your son, Doctor. Eccentric, willful, and obsessed with tinkering."
"That's what I'm afraid of. Knowing him, he'll cause more problems than any civil unrest we come upon." The Doctor looked at the doorway that Harry and vanished down.
"I'm sure Harry will be fine. He's resourceful and he knows the Tardis. He'll be fine." But her words didn't quite erase the concern from the Doctor's face.
He knew Harry was resourceful, smart and willful. That was what worried him. He knew how trouble-prone he was as a child. He had most of his Family in an uproar and caused so many problems at school that he was shocked they didn't kick him out. Harry was so much like him as a child that it was a cause for concern. He hoped the Tardis would keep an eye on him.
"Alright Rose. Where to?" Rose smiled.
"Pick somewhere Doctor. I'm sure it'll be awesome." In truth, she was just glad to be back on the Tardis. To travel again, through time and space, it was something she never thought she'd get. She would revel in it.
"Alright! Adventure!" And the Doctor started spinning and turning controls. The control room began to rock and Rose laughed as she felt memories of being twenty and naive and traveling surface with a clarity she hadn't felt in many many years.
~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~
Harry felt the distant shake of the Tardis, not as pronounced back in the lab because it was protected from the tilting and shuddering by enough stabilizing fields to keep a planet from orbiting it's star. It was important though, the delicate nature of the work in the lab meant that the slightest shudder could send the universe into an implosion sequence if it was jostled enough. Not the best idea, really. He rather liked the universe the way it was, mostly.
His concentrated on his project. It was meant to be a multi-dimensional transporter, able to move through time and space over short distances. Not as impressive as his Uncle's time agent wrist strap thing but he couldn't recreate that because his dad forbade uncle Jack from letting him see it at all. He had to deal with fumbling around and trying his best. But that was fine. He knew enough about Time and Space that he could create a short distance hop. A couple years, one way or the other, was the max limit. At least, that was what he figured would be the limit.
He checked his equations again, pulling out the holopad he snitched from a mall on Sirius Prime during his birthday last year. (The Doctor had sighed and paid for it as they left the store, glaring at Jack as he did so. Jack grinned unrepentantly.) The intricate mathematical equations sprang up, a three dimensional rendering of the project he was working in. He looked over the base functions, the quantum models, the temporal schemas. Something had been bugging him about one of the temporal calculations. There was something just a bit off and he wasn't sure what it was. He knew it would severely affect something with the prototype, he just wasn't sure what it was.
He peered at the figures, dismissing some of the outer functions that were working properly to get at the problem. Finally he was left with a sprawling matrix and a series of gallifreyian numerals encircling it. There was something there...he fiddled with a few of the numbers that were obviously off, and tweaked another equation into a more efficient model.
Then he stared at it. For about and hour. Alright, nothing for it. He would have to feed it into the prototype to see the actual problem. He wouldn't use it, wouldn't touch it, but he could examine the software and hardware in action.
He plugged the tablet's external jack into the prototype's memory bank and started the compiling process.
And waited.
And waited.
And started spinning in a nearby chair. This is what he got for using the code from Yafrix v. While it allowed for the most freedom of expression it took forever for anything to happen. If he didn't have the Tardis's capacity for processing power to access he would be sitting here until his next birthday. As it was, he was going to have to wait for another few hours at least.
He didn't get that long. Instead, a bright glow started to fill the room, covering everything with an effervescent filter and Harry, staring in astonishment, promptly vanished from the room. The glow stayed.
~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~
Harry blinked, trying to clear his vision. Something had clearly gone wrong with the prototype but, unless he could see it, get to it, he wasn't going to figure out what exactly happened. As suddenly as the light appeared, it vanished, clearing Harry's vision and leaving behind little black spots of overexposure as a present. Harry reaches for something solid to stabilize himself while he tries to clear his vision.
He was touching the Tardis walls, he realized. He could feel the warm, golden energy swirling underneath his palm and wondered just how far he had staggered in the bright light. Obviously far enough to reach a wall.
Then he heard an echoing giggle. The Tardis was amused. This never ended well for him. He asked her what was going on, exactly, if she knew what had happened with the experiment. He didn't get anything useful back, just some giggles and sounds of amusement.
"Bloody helpful 12-dimensional being you are," he muttered at the wall. "Can't even help me out of a scrape with my maths, can you?" A ringing sound of righteous indignation, obviously a front as Harry heard what sounded like laughter floating through his mind, flared then faded and Harry was alerted to another presence heading towards him. He straightened up. Obviously not his dad, the Tardis would have told him that, but he couldn't get her to tell him who it was. He frowned, but nothing.
He would have to do thi the normal way. The figure rounded a corner, clearly heading somewhere, then stopped, shocked, as she saw him. Harry took her appearance in.
Slim, short, with pants that, if he wasn't mistaken, were of Earth origin somewhere in the late 1900's. Her hair was abnormally huge for a humanoid, especially an Earth human and she was young, judging by the young features. DId his dad pick up someone new? Had he been out for that long? And why was he in a different part of the Tardis? He hoped this girl would have some answers.
"Who are you? And what are you doing on the Tardis? Does the Doctor know you're here?" Harry blinked. Everyone on the Tardis knew who he was.
"I'm Harry." He wondered how to answer the next question, decided on the safest option. "Can you take me to see da...the Doctor?" If she didn't know who he was, 'dad' was likely not going to get him anywhere.
"Harry? Is that your name?"
"Of course. What's yours? You're from Earth, judging by the Earth-English, a regional dialect of England, your pants, sometime from the late 1900's, and your humanoid appearance."
Harry didn't think he had seen someone so astonished. "How...who are you? How do you know that?"
"It's obvious. Accented speech consistent with English of the 1900's, late 1900's, if I have to judge, pants that are either from 8900's Earth colony Halifrex VII8 on Pluto or, as would be more consistent with your accent, 1900's Earth."
The woman stared at her, slightly taken aback. "You sound like the Doctor. Well, you're on the Tardis, I better take you to him anyway. He'd want to know you're here. I'm Sarah Jane Smith. Are you from Earth? You look human."
Harry paused to consider this question. It wasn't exactly an incorrect assumption. He was human, or he was born on Earth and therefore fell under that category by virtue of planet of origin if origin was taken to mean birth planet. But he wasn't really from Earth. "I was born on Earth," he conceded. Sarah Jane Smith looked at him consideringly.
"What does that mean?"
"It's...complicated. Let's go see the Doctor, okay?" Harry headed towards the control room. It was the only hint he got from the Tardis as to where his dad was.
Sarah Jane was confused. She had wandered back towards her room in the Tardis, intent on finding her camera and swimsuit. The Doctor was taking her to the Crystal Falls of Jryia, a planet whose beauty was renowned as the most spectacular in the universe for it's time. Then she had stumbled onto a child. A child, dressed in some of the oddest clothes she had ever seen, and that was saying a lot considering the Doctor's penchant for scarves that were twice as long as he was tall. His shirt was some shimmering silver contraption that wound around his torso, without a beginning or an end. His pants, a dark green and wrapped around his waist and tied at his front, were wide and airy and had pockets. He wore shoes that seemed to allow him to hover several centimeters off the ground. He was human, so she gathered from the strange statement "I was born on Earth." His eyes were a bright, unnatural green and he wore a golden chain around his neck.
And on top of that he was absolutely tiny. He was just over three feet tall even though his vocabulary was much much older than his features. He sounded like the Doctor, rattling off a list of observations and facts that were both strangely accurate and oddly alien. She was used to it from the wildly intelligent alien she traveled with, but from a child who looked human was weird and disconcerting.
She hurried to catch up with him. How did he know where he was going? She had never seen him before, how could he possibly know where the Doctor was?
"The Doctor's in the control room, yes?" he asked. Sarah Jane nodded, then spoke up, realizing he couldn't see her.
"Yes, though, how do you know where the control room is? I've never seen you before, how could you know where anything is?"
Harry sighed deeply but didn't answer. Everything was all strange anyway.
They walked in silence for a while longer until they reached the control room. Sarah Jane could see the Doctor underneath the panels, fiddling with something and muttering to himself.
"What is it? What went wrong? We haven't even left the vortex so how could there be temporal leakage?" Then she noticed that Harry had frozen, staring at the Doctor and shaking his head as if to clear away some unpleasant image.
"Doctor? Doctor?" Sarah Jane tried to get his attention.
"What is it? There's something wrong with the Tardis. Some kind of temporal disturbance and I can't figure out why. Must be a disconnected coupling somewhere..."
"Doctor, there was something strange...Doctor!"
"Doctor," Harry spoke up. The Doctor banged his head against the console trying to get out from under it.
Harry stared at the man that was, somehow, his father. Well, would eventually be his father, he supposed. Or was his father at some point. Though judging by the Tardis's amusement, this Doctor was younger than his father was. He wore a colorful shirt, trousers that might not have been out of place from where ever Sarah Jane got her pants and wild, wild curly brown hair.
The Doctor looked at Harry. A small child, messy, longish black hair, bright green eyes, some strange, unusual gold necklace, clothes and shoes he had never encountered before. Also, some strange knowledge in those young eyes. He was human, the Doctor would put his sonic screwdriver on it, but that wasn't all.
"Who are you? And why are you on the Tardis? How did you get on the Tardis? We're in the Time Vortex, it should be impossible..."
Harry laughed. "I was messing with an experiment. I think it must have gone much more wrong than I originally assumed. It's probably why the Tardis is a bit tetchy. I messed with the Temporal Stability Generators when I breached the time vortex to end up here. Obviously didn't touch the spatial plane, judging by where I ended up. I knew I had messed up something with the Temporal Calculations. I just didn't anticipate this." Harry looked around him.
The control room was geometrical, having taken a fondness for lines and cleanliness and spheres. It wasn't the natural, coral-esque configuration he was used to, but a rather more mathematical type of structure. He could hear the Tardis's amusement at his predicament.
"You knew this would happen, didn't you?" he said, putting his hands on his hips and glaring at the console. He felt the Tardis brush his mind soothingly, a laughing confirmation. Harry frowned. "Sly thing you are. You could have just told me what was wrong with the project. Now dad's probably freaking out and I'm going to be in so much trouble and I just said all of that aloud, didn't I?"
The Doctor (not his dad, though it was his dad, just, not yet) and Sarah Jane Smith were staring at him.
"Who were you just talking to?" the Doctor asked. Harry shifted on his feet, uneasy and not appearing too willing to answer questions. The Doctor didn't look pleased at all. "You appear in my Tardis, talking of a Temporal mishap that might have torn apart the vortex and speaking to invisible entities. I would like some answers. Your name, for one."
Harry sighed. "My name is Harry. I was talking to the Tardis and I am from your personal future Doctor. Unfortunately that's all I can say. Which face is this? I've seen it before but I can't quite remember which one."
Sarah Jane listened to this with confusion and shock. Someone from the Doctor's future? How could that be possible?
The Doctor was thinking along the same lines. "My future? How? This isn't something that just happens. You don't just mess with temporal anomalies for fun."
Harry shifted again, clasping his hands at his back. "I, well, you see, I was working on a, a, well, a kind of vortex manipulator. I mean, da...I wasn't allowed to see uncle's and so I wanted to make my own. I just...I think I miscalculated something within the temporal framework so when I fed it into the hardware I was using for the prototype it fritzed and sent me here." Harry scuffed a foot. Even if it wasn't his dad's face looking at him, it didn't make it feel any less like his dad.
"You did what? How in Rassilon's name did you manage that? You're, what, five? Six human years old?"
"I'm seven, I think. And I've been messing with temporal physics since I was old enough to understand quantum calculations."
The Doctor didn't quite know what to make of this. "What were you doing on the Tardis then? How did you get onto it?"
"I live here. I'm sure I could find my room if I looked hard enough, she likes me well enough. I didn't move anywhere spatially, just temporally. Which might have been the problem in the first place."
"And a future me lets you do this?"
At this, Harry scuffed his foot and looked at the floor. "Well, you see...you don't...exactly know about my project. It's been a bit of a secret."
Sarah Jane laughed behind him. "You managed to keep a secret from him inside the Tardis?"
"Well, it isn't that hard. You just have to know how to talk to her. She's rather amenable, though she could have just told me what was wrong with the equation, she was compiling it." Harry glanced at the console with a scowl. It flashed brightly and the Doctor and Sarah Jane jumped. The Doctor turned shocked blue eyes to the small boy that had, somehow, invaded his Tardis.
"What in the universe are you? Not just anyone can speak to the Tardis! I can't! Almost no Time Lord has ever been able to communicate with a Tardis directly. And you say you live in the Tardis. Who are your parents? And how did I ever allow it?"
Harry was silent for several moments, before he sighed. "I can't tell you that. There's this rule, see, about timelines and preserving the temporal fidelity and all that. We're inside a 12 dimensional being of immense power but knowledge is knowledge."
The Doctor frowned at Harry and looked at Sarah Jane. "What do you make of all this, Sarah?"
"I think it's all a lot of nonsense. Time talk and temporal whatever. I'm still trying to figure out how a seven year old even knows about any of that!"
Harry sighed. This wasn't getting him anywhere. He was on a Tardis, in the wrong time, with a Doctor who didn't know him and a companion who wanted to constantly point out his age. And he had no idea how to get back to the proper time. The Tardis wasn't being helpful either, laughing at him as he sighed.
The wild haired, blue eyed Doctor stared at him, still not sure what to make of everything that had happened.
"So, let me get this straight. You are a...companion? from my personal future, having messed with the temporal lines so thoroughly that you ended up in a past version of the Tardis and you don't know how to realign the temporal strings so, until you manage to correct the error, you are stuck here." Harry nodded. "Alright then. So, how about a jelly baby while we figure this out then."
Harry looked at the wrinkled brown bag curiously, then his eyes widened. "You're the fourth Doctor! Sarah Jane told me about your fondness for Jelly Babies. Granted, we didn't get to stay long with her, something about aliens and such, but she mentioned it." Harry turned round to look at the younger Sarah Jane he hadn't recognized before. "So you're Sarah Jane then. My d...Doctor told me about you. Brilliant woman, he would say. Determined and stubborn but always managed to figure it out in the end." He smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you Sarah Jane Smith." Harry smiled at the young woman. The Sarah Jane he remembered wasn't flustered easily and rarely stood around looking confused.
"Um...alright then."
"Though, I wonder why you didn't know who I was when I met you...you obviously met me before so you should have know who I was. You wondered why I was in such a dangerous situation, seeing as I was a kid. Not that it matters much, I caused it. Dad should remember too..." Harry trailed off, realizing he'd said far too much.
"So your dad's on the Tardis too. Have I really gone domestic in my old age? How do I get away with it without the Council interfering?"
Harry scuffed his shoe again. He should really learn to keep his mouth shut. "I...er, I can't really tell you. I mean, it's your future. I can't just go about telling people their futures you know. D...the Doctor would probably lock me in my room for a week and take away my screwdriver and comp-com and everything."
~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~
The Doctor and Rose rushed back into the Tardis, laughing breathlessly. Despite the running, they hadn't been chased or run off a planet. The planet they were on was rather well deserted, mostly jungle and beautiful waterfalls and jeweled rivers and streams. No, they had been running for the memories. Rose had insisted and the Doctor wasn't about to let a good run get away.
"I forgot how much I missed that. Don't really do a lot of running really. Well, not much with anyone to hold hands with."
The Doctor grinned. "Run!" he said, then chased Rose up the gangway and around the console, laughing and shouting.
Well, until the Doctor realized something was wrong. The Tardis was glowing a bright, unmistakable shade of gold, far brighter than she should. The Doctor looked at the console, concerned.
"What's that for? What's with the glowing?" The Doctor pushed a few buttons on the main console. "What's wrong? There's no temporal disturbances here. In fact, this whole planet is so temporally stable you shouldn't even be flickering." He pulled the screen towards him and Rose leaned over his shoulder.
"Could it be a blip in the vortex?" Rose asked.
"Nah, something like that would be more catastrophic and less...glowy. No, something's messing with the actual temporal strings of the Tardis. Which could only happen if something had gotten into the Tardis and messed with the Temporal Stabilizers, and the only ones who know how to are Me and...Harry." The Doctor stopped, looking through the door leading to the back corridors. "What has he gotten up to? I told him not to mess with the stabilizers. He is supposed to tell me if he is doing anything that might jeopardize anything important, or compromise anything." The Doctor took off for the back rooms and Rose followed, concern etched on her face. If anything happened to Harry...well, she didn't know what would happen to the Doctor, but she could bet it wouldn't be good.
The Doctor raced down the hallways, taking turns at seeming random points, worry on his face. Rose followed him, keeping pace and worrying for him. Little Harry was far too intelligent and could get into infinite amounts of trouble with the resources he had available in the Tardis.
Trouble he seemed to have found, if the bright white light emanating from the room up ahead was any indication. The Doctor skidded to a halt, eyes wide.
"I told him not to go messing with temporal technology! He doesn't have enough experience with the mathematics! What did he do?" The Doctor headed into the room and Rose, swallowing hard, followed him in.
The room was empty save for a strange device that looked somewhat akin to a hypercube and what Rose might call a Universal Technology Drive, what eventually replaced the USB, plugged into the side. The Doctor cursed.
"What? What is it?" Rose asked worredly. "And where is Harry?"
"When is the better answer, if I have to judge by what he was messing with. I told him not to mess with this stuff! I told him! He doesn't have enough knowledge of temporal calculations!"
"What is it though?"
The Doctor turned to look at Rose. "It's...you know Jack's Vortex Manipulator?" Rose nodded. "Well, a while back I told Harry he couldn't play with it. I mean, there's enough technology in there that he could possibly poke a hole in the vortex if he wasn't careful, those things are rather delicate and dangerous and far from perfect in their usage. But apparently he decided that he really wanted to mess around with the concept of space/time manipulation. And it looks like he screwed up a very basic equation. Which is why I told him to leave that stuff alone!" He seemed to be yelling at a Harry who wasn't there to hear him.
That didn't make Rose feel any better. Time manipulation was a difficult process on its own, she had watched the Doctor screw it up often enough. Knowing that a seven year old boy was playing with the same concepts...
"Is he alright?" she asked, worried. "Where...when is he?"
"Oh, he's in the Tardis, he hadn't quite finished the spatial calculations to be elsewhere, and the Tardis keeps an eye on him. So he's in the Tardis. The question is when is he. And I don't know. The equation is so unrefined that it's impossible to pinpoint. And I'm going to have to untangle it to get him back in the correct timeline. This is gonna be a process." The Doctor looked at Rose. "Would you mind grabbing some tea from the kitchen? I have to start untangling my wayward son's experiments."
Rose nodded. The Doctor was in a mood and she didn't envy Harry at all whenever he got back. He had the music to face and she definitely didn't want to be in his shoes. Having the Doctor for a father was probably both exciting and terrifying, especially when one screwed around with things they shouldn't be touching.
~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~
Harry, stuck in the past with the fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane, and a laughingly unhelpful Tardis, was sighing. The Doctor, so much like his father but not at the same time, had dragged him around until they reached to central control.
"So, you've gone and messed with Temporal Stability and yet no one from the CIA has come to get you, or me. So, let's see what you've done to my Tardis exactly. And how we can fix it."
Harry looked at him. "I can't fix it from this end. The equations and the manipulator are back in my Tardis. And unless the Tardis wants to be helpful and reveal a room that, to you, doesn't exist yet, we're going to have to rely on the Doctor from my time to work out the problem." Harry looked at the wall. "Provided he doesn't spend half the time ranting at the wall about how irresponsible I am for messing with things I shouldn't be messing with."
"So you can't do anything from this end? Do you know how long you'll be here or anything?"
"Nope. No idea. Though..." Harry pulled out a piece of his paper and a writing utensil and started scribbling down equations. The Doctor looked over his shoulder, eyes wide.
"Is that Gallifreyan? How do you...how could you possibly know...?"
"Perks of being raised in the Tardis, you get to know the native language. Now shush, I'm trying to concentrate." Harry drew out a few more equations before he turned the paper over and scribbled a few lines in some language it took the Doctor a moment to recognize.
"How could you possibly know that language?" he said incredulously. Harry waved him off.
"Alright, here's the equation that I think I messed up. With some of the base equations outside it, but this is the main one. So, oh brilliant Time Lord, what did I do wrong?"
The Doctor, with wide eyes, took the sheet of paper from Harry and glanced at it. Then he narrowed them thoughtfully.
"I see why you screwed up. Have you taken a look at the Temporal Localities as Described by the 12th dimension and how they effect the relocation of the matter? No, I thought not. You failed to take in the actual temporal locality of the space you inhabited. If you came from the Tardis, which I assume because that's the only way you could have ended up inside the Tardis, Then you forgot to factor in the Tardis itself. The fact that it exists in twelve dimensions, in all possible times, well, then it becomes a matter of factoring that out. You might want to listen to me when I tell you not to mess with temporal anomalies."
Harry sighed and looked at the floor. "Of course that's what I did. Now I just have to hope that the Doctor can fix it before I'm stuck here forever. If the Tardis would just cooperate this wouldn't be so hard, would it." He said this last bit just a bit louder and glared at the walls. The laughing echo filtered through Harry's mind and he groaned. Of course the Tardis wouldn't be any more help. He had screwed up. It would be his mistake to figure out.
"I still don't believe you speak with the Tardis. It isn't something that can be done, no matter what you are. I can't speak with the Tardis."
Harry looked at him. "it isn't so much speaking as exchanging feelings and pictures. My words translate because of our unique bond, but otherwise she speaks to me with an impression rather than words or cohesive sentences."
"Unique bond?"
"Can't tell you that. Timelines to preserve and all tha..." Harry started to fade out, a white light encompassing his body. He looked at the fourth Doctor. "I guess dad figured it out. Bye, Doctor. It was nice to see your earlier face." Harry waved and then, with a bright white effusion of light, he vanished.
The fourth Doctor looked startled for a moment. Dad? Then, with the disappearance of the white light, his memory of the event vanished. He blinked, looking around. What was he doing in the control room?
~~~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~~
Harry felt like he was falling. He wasn't sure where he was falling to or what he was falling from, but he fell. A golden waterfall of energy surrounded him and he sighed as he wondered what was gonna happen when he ended up back where he was supposed to be. He was sure his father wouldn't be pleased. He could see it now. Small, black haired boy found suspended in time, punishment for messing with temporal calculations he couldn't fully understand. He might be left there for years. He moaned. His dad was going to be so upset.
He braced himself for the inevitable as he felt the light leave him. Any minute now he would see his dad's face looming over him.
Except, he didn't. Instead there was a young, boyish face with strangely old green eyes and a bow tie filling his vision. Harry blinked. Then he groaned.
"I'm in the wrong time, aren't I?"
"Indeed you are Harry. Just a bit overshot of your time, I should think. missed the mark, I did. Sent you too far forward. Well, I suspect I'll get it right at some point but for now, here you are. Here you are! Isn't that amazing!"
Harry looked up at the face of this Doctor. "So I take it you're a later incarnation of dad then?" he asked.
"Yep. Next one, actually. Eleven. Quite a bit of a mess, you created for yourself. End up bouncing through time. Forward and back and all around. Messing with time isn't the safest thing."
"You ended up with twice the energy didn't you. And you look like a teenager dad. I bet you'll end up a child by the time you reach 13. By the looks of you, you just age downward with each regeneration. And what's up with the bowtie?"
"Bowties are cool."
"What does Rose have to say to that?"
"Rose likes them just fine!" the Doctor protested. Harry sighed.
"And I guess I can't ask too many questions can I?"
"Nope, sorry. Timelines to preserve and all. I suspect you won't be here much longer either, seeing as I was quick to fix all the little errors I made when retreiving you. Though for some reason I can't quite remember how this whole thing ended."
"I bet it'll end with me being grounded for half of forever for messing with temporal anomalies and such."
"Oh, I bet you can count on it."
Harry got to his feet and looked around. "This is a rather nice look for her, you know. Clean lines but a bit of insanity. Matches you quite well Dad." The stairs were elegant and glass, a beautiful combination of usefulness and oddity. The glass theme was repeated everywhere. The floor around the console, the flooring in general.
It was a very very different Tardis that the one he knew. At least on the outside. The Tardis's essence still floated around him, caressing his mind and laughing at him. But still, with regeneration, the Tardis changed with it's driver, the Doctor shifting faces as staggeringly shocking as the Tardis did. A facelift of epic proportions. He wasn't sure he would enjoy that, if it happened while he was still alive.
Harry looked at his dad closely. Really looked. He looked so old, yet his face was so young. His dad, reborn into this strange, pseudo-similar shape that he knew so well, yet it was wholly different. He could see the excitement in his eyes, and he also saw a strange sort of longing. Harry held his hands out, a kind of unspoken request that he knew his dad would understand.
A smile filled the Doctor's face and Harry was picked up and hugged tightly. It was the kind of hug that Harry loved, tight and warm and full of love. Maybe a little too tight, a little too desperate, but Harry was sure that, by now, if he was still around he was an old man and this Doctor had never held the little boy that he had raised.
"Hey dad," he whispered in the Doctor's ear. He heard the sniffle.
"Hey Harry. No matter how angry I get at you for this stunt you pulled, remember that I am so glad you did so. I am so glad I got to see you again." He tightened his grip on the little boy.
The Doctor held on tight to the small form that was his son. His son out of time, out of his proper timeline, but his son all the same. It was someone he never thought he would see as a child, not with this face. He held on all the tighter. It was a privilege to hold onto the young, brilliant child Harry was.
"Doctor? Who...who's that?" Harry raised his eyes. A red haired girl with a Scottish accent (his dad, with the face he knew, was really good at scottish) descended the stairs. "Rose said something was up but...what is a child doing on the Tardis?"
Harry turned to look at the girl, then at his father. He smiled. "Hi, I'm Harry. Pleased to meet you..."
"Harry? The Harry? The Doctor's son Harry? But I thought...aren't you...why are you a child? Did something happen? I don't understand..." the girl looked at a loss. "Doctor, what's going on. I thought Harry was..."
"This is my son from the past. Well, my past, my personal past. He had the misfortune to misplace a few numbers in a calculation he was doing and feed it into a temporal manipulator and he is currently in a Time Shift between various parts of the Tardis's history and future. Constantly shifting back and forth and back and forth, well, until I can do something about it. So, Harry, meet Amelia Pond, current companion and fiance to Rory Williams."
Harry smiled at Amelia. "Hello Amelia. How are you?"
"Um, er, well, hi Harry. It's a pleasure to meet you. Just, just Amy, please."
"But Amelia is an awesome name! Theres a planet in the Nebula V7 galaxy named Amelia and all of its people are called Amelialites. It's fascinating."
Amy looked startled. "Really? A whole planet named Amelia?"
"Well, in translation it's Amelia. They speak in a series of squeaks and whistles so when it's back in Standard it's Amelia. Fascinating place, really. They have some wonderful music there."
Amy laughed. "You are your father's son, that much is true. I wondered, but here you are, a child and you still sound like him."
"Hazards of living on the Tardis, I'm afraid. Eventually we all sound like dad. It just sorta happens."
"No, just you. Rose doesn't talk like that and she's ancient. Supposedly. Well, er, um, she's, she doesn't look old, but she says she's really..." Amy trailed off when the Doctor looked at her, eyes piercing and shushing her.
"Amy dear! There you are! I was looking for you!" a voice called out, ringing through the Tardis as a woman with springy, curly hair entered through the far door. Harry blinked up at her, emerald eyes curious, and the woman made a gasping sound. "Harry? Harry, is that...is that you?"
Harry looked at the Doctor, who hoisted Harry onto the other hip and looked at the woman with stern eyes. "River, this is Harry, from the past. He's gotten himself mixed up in a bit of a time shift. He'll be here for a bit, at least until I can fix his math error in the proper time he belongs to."
River's eyes sparkled with tears. "Oh, oh, I see. Um, well, Hello Harry. I'm River. It's nice to meet you."
"Hi River. I would ask you more since you seem to know me rather well but I'm afraid my dad might get all fussy about that and he's not pleasant when he's fussy. Tends to throw tantrums and such." Harry smiled, a mischievous edge to it. "But it is so much fun to do that. He gets all worked up and such and starts going on these long rants. I find it rather amusing."
Amy giggled and River smiled, covering her mouth, but Harry could still see a kind of strange sadness in her eyes, a sadness he didn't expect from someone he had yet to meet. He tugged on his dad's bowtie and whispered in his ear, "Why is River so sad? Did something happen?"
"Oh Harry, you know I can't tell you that. I have to preserve the timelines and everything. If something happens differently...I couldn't stand that. No, no. It'll be alright. River's just glad to see you. Everything's fine, alright?" The Doctor told him, stern, but Harry wasn't fooled. It wasn't too hard to figure out when his dad was telling him things because he had to. Harry had gotten good at seeing the sadness hiding under the mask of good cheer.
But that didn't mean he could do anything about it. He sighed and resigned himself to being left in the dark for a while. "Fine. Whatever. I suppose." Harry rested his head on his father's shoulder for a moment, before he looked up. "Where's Rose?"
The Doctor smiled. "She's taking care of something. Besides, she says you never met her when you came here, so she's keeping out of sight. Can't mess with the timelines, can we? Alright Harry, I guess it's almost time for you to go, huh?"
Harry looked around himself. Within the Doctor's arms, he was starting to glow a bright white. The sign that he was shifting again. Falling through the timelines and into the past. Or the future. Or wherever he would end up next. he didn't know.
He hugged on tight to his father, hoping the next time he saw his dad it would be the one he knew and not one of his father's previous incarnations. He wasn't fond of the one time he met a Doctor who wasn't his father. "Bye dad, I love you," he said. "Tell Rose bye too. Bye Amy, River. I suspect I'll see you again sometime."
River smiled at him through the sadness on her face and Amy nodded solemnly. "Yes Harry, I suspect we will." And Harry vanished in a swirl of white light, leaving the Doctor, Amy and River standing alone in the console room. Little Harry had vanished and the Doctor dropped the happy face.
"It'll be alright Doctor. We'll figure something out, yeah?" Amy laid a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and the Doctor looked up at her, face drawn and full of pain.
"Yeah, yeah we'll figure something out.
~~~~~~~This is a Line Break~~~~~~~
The Doctor, in his 10th incarnation and with Rose beside him, fought with the machine his son had built. "Dammit Harry, when I tell you not to mess with something, I mean it! There is a reason you aren't supposed to mess with the temporal flux! You don't know enough!" He fiddled with something. "I hope this is the right one," he muttered.
Rose looked at the Doctor with concern. He was concentrating on getting Harry back so hard she didn't know if he could stand it if he never made it. What would happen if his misstep cost him dearly? She couldn't fathom how that would effect the Doctor.
~~~~~~~This is a line Break~~~~~~~
Harry was falling again. It was a golden tunnel of some sort, a pool of golden energy. He frowned. How was he getting out of this? He knew his dad would have to pull him back, he couldn't get a hold of the proper tools himself seeing as they were all with his dad in his proper timeline. But would he end up there this time? Would it work? He didn't know, but it couldn't hurt to hope.
When he landed, he looked around, hoping to see something, anything, familiar. And, no, he was definitely not back where he belonged. The Tardis was strange. White. Very white. And geometric, while regular spherical holes in the walls in a repeating pattern. Definitely not the Tardis he knew. He wondered how far back (or forward, though with the decor he sort of doubted forward) he had gone.
A couple chairs sat in one corner and the door (not the wooden doors of the exterior shell he knew but rather a set of white doors, matching the interior). The console was geometrical in design and blinking brightly, the central column was narrow, the room simple in concept. He must have gone quite a ways back.
Oh, and there were people. Staring at him. He sighed. Of course he had to come in in the middle of an altercation, since that was what this was, obviously. An older man, dressed in a suit and tie, stood beside one of the chairs. A young girl stood at the console, a woman and a man, both teachers of some sort if Harry guessed right. Wonderful, just wonderful. He waved a little. "Hi."
"Who are you, and what are you doing inside the Tardis? What is it with people entering the Tardis without permission?" the older man spoke. Harry smiled slightly. This was the Doctor, he would bet.
"Hello Doctor. I'm sorry to drop in on you like this, I wouldn't have chosen it, really I wouldn't have, but as of late I've been sort of...stuck in a Time Shift." Harry fidgeted. "Have to end up this far back, don't I? You could have just told me what was wrong with the equation, but no, you had to let me screw it up. He's going to be so angry with me when I get back. And you're just laughing at me, aren't you?" The Tardis was definitely laughing at him. He could feel it, the tinkling bell of the laughter from the eleven dimensional being filtering through his mind. And he wasn't getting any help from her.
"You're in a what?" The male professor said incredulously. Harry raised an eyebrow.
"A Time Shift. A...I guess you could say I'm being bounced from one point of time in the Tardis's timeline to another. I'm not going anywhere spatially but temporally I might as well be a ping pong ball, reliant on my Doctor fixing my mistakes." Harry gestured around him as he spoke. "I'm staying within the parameters of the Tardis, actually I'm re-appearing directly where I left from the previous shift. But I haven't made it back to my time yet."
"You sound as crazy as them. Don't tell me you believe all this nonsense about space and time travel! This is 1963! It just isn't possible," the man exclaimed. Harry blinked rapidly.
"Wait...you...aren't companions? What...what are you doing in the Tardis then? How did you get in the Tardis?"
The young girl spoke up, "They followed me. Though I must know, who are you? How do you know so much? I haven't even learned how to manipulate temporal/spatial locality and you're younger than me!"
Harry smiled wryly. "Technically I wasn't supposed to be practicing them. But I didn't tell my Doctor that I was and, well, ended up...messing it up a bit. I'm Harry, currently occupying the Tardis, technically born on Earth but I never lived there long. Nice to meet you." He held out his hand to the girl. SHe took it, smiling.
"I'm Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, born on Gallifrey at the end of the Age of Chaos as the reign of the Pythias ended. Nice to meet you too. You'll have to tell me what equations you were using! He never lets me study any-"
"Enough! I cannot let this absurdity continue any longer! Susan, you must stop this childish game, it isn't healthy!" the female professor said, hands in the air. Harry blinked in astonishment at her, then looked at Susan, who shrugged.
The Doctor, who had been watching with confusion and curiosity, came over to stand next to Harry and Susan. "My boy, if what you say is true, then you are rather far from your proper time. I have never heard of such a remarkable mistake, but I imagine that I have had quite a lot of trouble with you."
Harry grinned. "You have no idea." He turned to look at the two other adults in the room. "Who are they, and why are they here?"
"Grandfather isn't letting them leave. They shouldn't have come in in the first place and they refuse to believe us about the Tardis. They were my teachers at school but the followed me here." Susan glowered at her teachers.
Harry raised an eyebrow. "Really? And you're trapping them inside? Why? It's not like anyone would actually believe them if they left and you can just leave after you let them go."
"The council would be furious. We've already been exiled from Gallifrey, we do not need another reason for the Celestial Intervention Agency to interfere with us," Susan said. Harry's eyes widened.
"Exiled? Then you...you're the First! The very First Doctor! Oh, wow, I mean, I knew I went back, but all the way to the beginning...man, dad must be having a tough time with the problem..." Harry murmured.
"Dad? Is your father aboard the Tardis as well? Please don't tell me I've become an interstellar nursery."
Harry smiled. "Nope, just me. And I'm bad enough."
"I imagine so my boy. I imagine so."
"Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, I know those names! Oh wow, I really went all the way back, didn't I." Harry looked at the two stunned humans by the door. "Hello, it is an honor meeting you two."
They just stared at him.
Harry would have said more, but he felt the energy around him gather and he hoped he would end up back where he belonged this time. It was getting shorter and shorter, his stay in each time. He couldn't hear what anyone around him was saying anymore, though they were clearly astonished at the chain of events. He could hear the Tardis again, whispering soothingly in his ear. He wasn't sure what that meant, but he hoped it meant he would be getting back soon.
~~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
The Doctor was, Rose saw, now standing directly in the center of the light, fumbling with controls and cursing softly, eyes feverish. He was frantic, she could tell, though he was very very careful to keep it under control and make every move with precision. She heard his mutterings, mostly aimed at his wayward son and his ill-choice in hobbies.
"Really Harry, you couldn't have chosen anything less dangerous? There's black hole technology here, quantum experiments, wave travel, but no, you had to go for temporal/spatial transportation. When you get back, you are going to be cleaning out the storage halls until your next birthday." Rose was starting to feel a bit bad for the tot that she had met for barely more than half a day. He was in for a lot of work when he got back.
~~~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
The white light left him, and Harry was sprawled on the floor of the Tardis. These trips were becoming painful, he realized. Painful and mentally unbalancing. He hadn't noticed it before, but the shift was making his head spin and his mind was going crazy. He knew if his magic hadn't been restrained by his necklace it too would have exploded around him. As it was, he could feel his skin sparking as it tried to escape. He hoped this was the right time.
He felt his hope soar when he looked around at the Tardis console he ended up it. It was the strange, coral shape he was used to, with the soft lighting and the dim blue colors. But it was, somehow, not the right one. He knew almost right away, as soon as the hope ebbed. There was too much pain for his Tardis, too much raw pain and despair and he could only guess this was the 9th Doctor, the one who survived the Time War, and he shuddered. His father rarely spoke of that time. It wasn't a pleasant memory for him, clearly, but Harry wasn't sure he was ready to confront a Doctor fresh from pain that, occasionally, overwhelmed his own father.
He didn't have much of a choice though, it seemed, since the ninth Doctor came striding into the console room only to stop short at seeing Harry on the floor in the corner.
"Who are you? Why are you on my Tardis?"
Harry sighed. He really wanted his father back, really wanted him back. He would take the yelling and the grounding over this confusion of identity and lack of knowledge.
"My name is Harry. Unfortunately you don't know me yet. I'm from your future. Yes, yes, you have a future, stop looking so grim. I'm in it, I should know."
"How am I to believe that? You're just a kid!"
"I was messing with temporal calculations and I screwed up a few. Whoops. So now I'm stuck in a time shift of sorts. I guess my Doctor will sort it out soon enough. I hope. Otherwise I'm going to be shifting from time to time for a while." Harry scratched his head, looking at the Doctor. "Which I am not enjoying nearly as much as I should. It's rather irritating, to be honest. Meeting different yous who don't know me is frustrating and I really just want to go back to my proper time. It's also starting upset the chemical balance in my brain and my internal core is being thrown off."
The Doctor spluttered at the boy standing in front of him. "Impossible. There should be no way you could have done that! The mathematical calculations, the dimensional expansions, they shouldn't be feasible for a child!"
Harry raised an eyebrow. "This is why I like my Doctor better. He learned the value of the word impossible as something that should never be said because someone would go and break it."
"It doesn't change the fact that it shouldn't be possible for you to...to do what you did! You're, what, five? Six?"
"I'm supposed to be seven, thank you, but that isn't important. Since when has age ever been of import when it comes to what someone can or cannot do?" Harry brushed himself off and leaned against a coral structure, trying to regain his bearings. The Tardis tried to caress him, but the pain was still too fresh and she couldn't push it aside. He stroked the coral strat soothingly, letting her taste his magic and wrap around it a bit. He looked accusingly at his father. "You haven't been taking very good care of her," he accused.
The Doctor stumbled back, shocked. "You...are you talking to the Tardis? That's impossible!"
Harry sighed. "I really am very glad you got rid of that word by the time I came around. It is rather annoying. And it still doesn't change the fact that you haven't been caring for her. She's in pain and she's trying to find some comfort in you, help you, and you won't let her."
The Doctor glared at him. "I...I can't. I just, what I just did...I shouldn't even be here. It's her fault I'm here. I should have...I should have been there, with them, but she wouldn't let me! She wouldn't let me stay and die with my people!" Harry stiffened slightly at this. He had underestimated how bad this time was for his father.
"That still doesn't make it right! She's all you have left then, yeah? All you have left of home? Then you should treasure her! Find comfort in her, she's home for you now, all the home you have! Ignoring her won't make it any better, you or her!"
Blue eyes pierced him. "I destroyed my entire race, all of them. How will I ever get 'better'?"
"You will. It'll take time, and others. It'll take a lot of time and you'll feel terrible for a long while. It won't go away, my Doctor still hurts, but it's better, and he loves the Tardis." Harry was still trying to wrap his head around the destruction of the Time Lords at the hands of his father, he had never really heard that before. He never actually knew what had happened and his dad was sure that he was kept away from any of his own personal documents about Gallifrey. He thought it was for other reasons, maybe embarrassment, his dad didn't want Harry getting a hold of his school records or whatever, but maybe...maybe it was worse. He knew Gallifrey was gone. He learned as much when he was younger and had wanted to go. He knew it had perished in a terrible war with the Daleks, but he was never sure how. He would have a talk with his father when he got back.
If he got back.
Harry and the Doctor stared at each other, blue eyes against green.
"Who are you? To me? Who are you to your Doctor? Because you aren't just some companion to him, no companion would ever speak to him like that. Like...like you have some kind of power or knowledge."
Harry sagged against the coral strut. "I can't tell you that. You should know that. Timelines have to be preserved, they are fragile things." Harry sent him a weak smile. "You'll have to find out in time."
The Doctor frowned. "I...I sort of remember you. You...you've shown up before, in the past. Why do I remember them now, when I see you, but I couldn't before?"
Harry gestured around him. "The Tardis. She does what she can to preserve the timeline by not letting anything slip through when it shouldn't."
"How could you know that?"
"I sort of talk to her."
"That...that's impossible," the Doctor stated flatly. Harry raised an eyebrow and refused to answer him. "How do you talk to the Tardis? She's an eleven dimensional being who exists at all points simultaneously. How could you possibly talk with her?"
Harry patted the coral strut. "Mostly though emotions and pictures. It's easier. DOn't have to deal with all that talking business. Tenses get in the way when you travel in time, or when you exist at all points in time." Harry shrugged "And I don't think I'll be here much longer. My Doctor is getting better at fixing whatever error I had in my calculations." He appraised the Doctor. "And you need to start helping your home. She's upset, just as much as you are. And she couldn't lose her Doctor. Whatever she did, she did it to save you." Harry smiled at him. "And I am so glad she did. You are the best thing that ever happened to me."
The look of astonishment on the Doctor's face as he disappeared in a swirl of white light. It was getting tiring, it really was.
~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
"Almost...not quite yet...Harry, you really messed up this time didn't you? Screwed the maths up right and proper. When you get back I am going to make sure you get your remedial maths lesson in triplicate. This will never ever happen again. Ever. If I catch you so much as carrying a two improperly you'll be doing all your basic calculus all over again. I'll block off all the quantum-based books, everything that has anything more than four dimensions in it and you won't be touching it. I'll make sure of that."
Rose stood in the doorway, worrying her lip and growing increasingly concerned. The Doctor had been struggling with it his son's equations for the better part of an hour or so and with each pulse of white light, Rose fretted more. Harry had yet to reappear and she could see the panic rising in her Doctor.
She didn't know how much longer he would hold out. She hoped Harry would be back soon.
~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
Harry landed and his eyes were filled with white light. It was getting worse, these trips. Each time it was worse and worse. This time it took a while, fifteen seconds, for the light to clear from his eyes and his vision to register more than just pure white.
And, judging by the dark wood construct around him, he was still not home. This was becoming far more than just frustrating. It was becoming irritating and he wanted to be with his dad and not his previous incarnations who he couldn't tell anything about himself. If he could just tell them he was their son, from the future, it would be far easier, but his father had drilled the preservation of the timeline into his skull since he was old enough to understand the concept of time travel. The Tardis could only hide so much, and something significant as a son would break through the wall at some time and the timeline would be broken. He couldn't.
Which meant the man standing over him with the floppy red hair in ringlets and dressed in a velvet green coat was, judging on the fashion sense, his father. What incarnation, he wasn't sure, but it was definitely his dad. Only his dad had such bad fashion sense.
"Well, hello there. Who might you be? And how did you appear inside my Tardis?" Harry groaned, pushing himself up. He felt hands lift him, steadying him. "You are a small one, aren't you? So how did you get in here? I saw the white light, so some sort of transportation, but nothing I can trace. No spatial transference."
This was the, Harry counted, fourth time he explained this. It was getting tiring. "I messed up a temporal calculation. I'm shifting only in time, not space. It's a Temporal Shift and I'm stuck in it until my Doctor can fix it. So i'll be guesting in this version of the Tardis for a bit." He smiled weakly.
"Are you okay? You look a bit unstable," the Doctor said, concern rushing across his face. Harry raised an eyebrow. This incarnation of the Doctor was far more concerned with well being than most others, especially those who didn't know him.
"Just...the shifting is starting to cause physiological effects. It's a side effect of temporal travel without a stable transport method or shell. Much more and I won't be in one piece anymore. If I wasn't who I was, I would probably have been a goner much sooner. As it is I only have one, maybe two trips left before my body starts to break down."
The Doctor looked disconcerted, worried. "But you're just a child! How could this have happened to you?"
"I messed up a calculation at the core of a temporal/spatial transport device and fed it into a device. And until my Doctor stabilizes it I'll be shunted through time until I'm in little pieces or until the Doctor manages to get me back in the right time. Which I dearly hope is soon."
"I as well, if this is so dangerous. How did I ever let you do this?"
"You didn't know. I was just experimenting. I didn't think it would do anything, but I must have fed the activation code in as well when I sent the calculations in."
The Doctor led him to a rather comfortable armchair, letting him sit down and take stock of his body as he bustled off somewhere. Harry could feel his heart straining just a bit, calming down now as he had a break between shifts. His stomach was churning uncomfortably and his brain was racing. He would take any amount of punishment right now, just to be back home.
The Doctor hurried back in, a steaming mug in his hand, and Harry smiled. The tea. Of course. What else could it have been?
"Here, tea. It should help soothe you some. If nothing else it tastes amazing. From Frion, the Tea Planet. Settled by descendants of the British, who managed to turn a local crop used for health purposes into a drink. Made a fortune. And excellent tea."
Harry grinned wider. "My favorite." He took the mug, sipping and sighing in contentment. The Doctor watched him intently, and Harry looked him over. A very effeminate man, this Doctor. Longish red-blonde hair, delicate features, velvet green jacket. Harry would tease him about it for a long time to come.
"So, young one, what is your name, and how exactly did you manage such a spectacular mistake? Why haven't the Time Lords interfered? This should register as a rather large disturbance on their instruments."
"In order then. I'm Harry, I think I forgot to account for the extra dimensions within the Tardis and I fed the activation code into the device as well as the basic code, and" Harry shrugged. "Not sure. Possible because I stay within the Tardis each time I shift so I don't really go anywhere spatially and the Tardis protects me from their peering eyes." He smiled.
The Doctor chuckled. "You are an interesting young one, Harry. I take it you're rather brilliant, so I can understand how you might have managed to do such a wonderful job of mucking up your numbers, but how did you do so without me noticing?"
"Er...I sort of borrowed a spare lab in a back corner of the Tardis. And I never told you about it." THe Doctor laughed.
"Oh, I see you're going to be a right handful when I finally meet you." Harry hid his face in his mug sheepishly. "So, when do I meet you?"
Harry tilted his head at him. "Really? You're trying to find out the future?"
"Have to give it a shot." They traded grins. "I knew there was a reason the Time Lords exiled me. Never conventional. Teaching children temporal mathematics. I bet that tickled them."
Harry blinked in shock, before he collected himself, but it didn't escape the Doctor. It was news, that the Doctor was exiled. What else didn't he know about his dad? "Um, yeah, I guess," Harry hedged. The Doctor looked at him closely.
"You...you don't know anything about it, do you? About the Time Lords. Just what am I teaching you about?"
Harry shrunk into his chair. He didn't trust himself to speak. This incarnation was sharp, sharper than he had expected, and he caught every shift, every twitch.
~~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
"Ah-Ha! Got it! That boy, when he gets here I'm going to be sitting him down with all remedial math and dimensional calculations and he won't be touching technology until he can name the calculations and expansions for all of them. This will not be happening again!"
The Doctor ran a hand through his wild, gravity defying hair and typed in a few more numbers before he spun around and raced for the door. Rose grinned. The white light in the room flashed brightly, before it died down. The Doctor spun in a circle in the hallway, smiling.
"Did...is Harry coming back Doctor?" Rose asked softly.
"Oh yes," he said, smiling broadly. "He'll be back, and he has quite a bit to answer for."
~~~~~This is a Scene Break~~~~~
Harry gasped softly as his body was surrounded by light. He looked up at the Doctor and smiled weakly. Everything that was coming before him, the Time War and the loss of his people. Harry could only offer a wave as he vanished in a swirl of light. Hopefully for home and his dad and the Tardis he knew.
His body protested the travel even more, and when he landed (he still had the mug from the earlier Doctor) his entire body shuddered in protest. The Tardis filtered into his mind, concerned, no longer laughing. Harry knew he had no more of those shifts left in him. His body was not happy, not happy at all. His magic sparked and danced on his skin and little lightning bolts of energy flared up and down his body. He groaned.
"I so hope I'm back in the right time. I really do."
He heard voices filtering down the hall. "Is Harry coming back Doctor?" It was Rose.
"Oh yes." He heard his father say, sounding relieved. "He'll be back, and he has quite a bit to answer for." So he was back. His relief at being returned to the right time overshadowed the trepidation at the consequences of his actions.
He called out, "Dad! Dad! I'm in the console room!" He hoped his weak cry would reach them. And, hearing the running footsteps, it obviously did.
"Harry! Harry! Oh, Harry, you're back! When I'm done hugging you you are in so much trouble!" Harry was summarily lifted off the floor and hugged tightly. He didn't have the breath to protest, not that he wanted to. His dad was here, he was back in the right time, and there was nothing better than that.
"Hey dad," he whispered. "I had quite the adventure." His dad laughed weakly, and he saw Rose standing behind, smiling happily, tears in her eyes. He smiled at her, before dropping into a dead faint. He had had a long day.
~~~~~~This is an Ending~~~~~
Hey, an update earlier than my usual ones! Joy and celebration!
Thank you to all of you for your amazing words! For those who replied anonymously, or those who I can't reply to via Private Messaging, thank you. Thank you so much! I'm sure this chapter will leave some questions, but I hope the adventure was interesting enough! For those who know the classic series much much better than me (i know the 4th Doctor well, the 1st sort of, and the 8th) I apologize for any inconsistencies. 0.0
Thank You so Much!
Kuroi
