Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Love And Monsters

Chapter 28 - Loser Gone Wild

"Aren't you energetic today!" the Doctor noted with a smile from his position on Mickey's couch. "I'd ask if Christmas came early, but that's not a holiday you actually like."

I was running around the flat, spinning and dancing with excitement, freshly blue and purple hair spinning out like a tizzy halo as I waved my phone around. I could feel my eyes sparkling and it probably wasn't even a supernatural effect. "Centenary came out!"

Not in this universe, of course, but among the perks I'd picked up over the years had been an internet cable permanently linked to another one, which was very convenient for keeping up on shows along a semi-steady - if sometimes delayed or timelocked, depending on my relative year - timeline.

"The centenary of what? A hundred years is a lot of anything, be it Batman, Teletubbies… or… ugh. Facebook."

"Your show - well, the centenary special for the BBC, not Doctor Who. But the celebration came with an episode! The episode, even!" I insisted, waving my phone harder, before a particularly fast movement sent it spiking it into pieces on the floor. "...why did I do that?!"

It wasn't like I couldn't replace it or that it wouldn't probably fix itself like most of the things I owned, but still!

"I'm assuming that it must've been good for you to be happy-screaming while running laps around the flat."

Immediately, my destroyed phone was forgotten as I positively teleported into the Doctor's personal space.

"Good? Good? Good is an understatement! It was amazing! They brought back everyone! Well, not everyone-everyone, but practically everyone that's still able to get around!" I yelled into his face, catching myself a little too late to modulate my volume. "I'd managed my expectations, figuring that we probably wouldn't get a multi-Doctor episode with the surviving Classic set, but we'd at least get some old companions, but no! They got everyone! Peter, Colin, Sylvester, Paul - and more companions than expected too! Ace and Tegan had been announced, but we got to see Ian, Jo, Mel- I can't say any more than that but-"

The Doctor laughed.

"What?"

He waved a hand above his head. "Somehow, I always manage to forget how much of a fan you are… not the how much you know part, because I've gotten used to you being a chapter or ten ahead of me on certain things, but the affection. The enthusiasm," the Doctor said, gesturing at my face. "How happy I manage to make you just by existing - not even as a real person, but at all. Even as a story, even when I'm wearing a face you don't particularly like, I make you happy. And not just little happy. Big happy."

The Doctor had moved his hands to follow the last points, hands and fingers coming together and then flying apart just as quickly as he'd spoken. It was a fun little bit of visual punctuation to follow.

"Am I that obvious?" I said, not quite being able to force my smile away, even as it was starting to hurt my face.

The Doctor made a 'so-so' gesture with his hand. "Not always. But you're only a little better at hiding negative emotions. Positive ones? Not at all. Especially since you're not good at subtle or outright lying, especially not when you care. And you care a lot."

"Of course I do, Doctor. I'm all bleeding heart… but I'm not telling you anything else about the centenary. Spoilers. So many spoilers."

Now it was the Doctor's turn to smile. "Oh no, I was already planning on getting there on my own time, I know better than to pry too hard into futures that I haven't touched yet - my life's busy enough without taking too much of the long view. Too many plates in the fire and irons in the air to keep on the ball, a certain someone might say."

'Oh, has my name been mentioned?' a voice I hadn't heard in weeks said in my mind. 'I thought I felt my ears burning.'

Immediately, I summoned Zeke, tugging him into a spin with me as I grabbed him in a bear hug and lifted him into the air. "New Doctor Who thing came out!"

My own personal Doctor was long used to my fannish bullshit, to the point where being thrown around like a well-loved rag doll because I was just that excited wasn't worth commenting on. "Ah, and it was that good?"

"Yes!"

"Did they put me in it?"

"Yes! And Five and Six and Eight and Tegan and Ace-" I gave Zeke one final spin before I collapsed into the couch, taking him down with me as I sighed happily. "God, it was so good. Depression gone for the rest of the week - maybe even the month! I can't wait to- oh, but not in front of the Doctor. Can't do it in front of him."

"Oh, don't hold back on my account; he's just a reflection of one of my former selves, it's hardly awkward at all," the Doctor said, making a little go-on gesture. "If anything, it's a nice change of pace; usually it's me or Sandshoes getting-"

I leaned back, pushing my head into the Time Lord's side. "But the spoilers, Doctor. I don't want to stress you out with maybes that might not happen for you."

"Oh, that. Didn't realize you two were-," the Doctor said, almost sounding disappointed before cutting the thought off with a sigh. "No matter how many times I see you get excited about my fictionalized adventures, I still can't understand why you're as fond of it - them - me as you are."

"Oh, that was my issue for a long time as well," Zeke said, not making any effort to slip out of my grip beyond turning over to face the ceiling, instead just arranging himself to better prop up his legs on the armrest. "I simply couldn't quite understand how exactly I deserved such an odd combination of both naked adoration just by dint of existing and being utterly mundane. I thought it was a matter of simply being akin to a new toy or a parrrrticularly interesting insect at first."

"The most interesting," I corrected, before looking up at the Eleventh Doctor. "Did I ever tell you about how I got into Doctor Who?"

He waved his hand absently. "Something about accidentally catching one of the previous face's stories on public broadcast, wasn't it? You were twelve years old, just got home from school, turned on the telly just in time to -"

"-watch the Daleks blow up a homeless encampment, which stunned me long enough to catch the second half of the two-parter," I finished for him. "I'm surprised you remembered the details."

The Doctor gave me a look. "It was the first time you ever saw me. That's something I - especially in that face - would consider that memorable, even if it wasn't a proper first meeting."

So at some point, I really would tell him everything. So weird. "Even if I mostly remembered it because of him being a self-destructive, Messiah complex-afflicted dick the whole time?" I asked.

That was a detail that tended to feature every single time I related that story.

"Yes, you did say I didn't exactly make a good first impression, treating Martha like that. But that's old news for both of us."

"Did I ever tell you what got me to stay with Doctor Who?"

"Didn't you say it was the old dandy and his penchant for vehicular-"

"It was you."

That caught the Doctor by surprise. "What?"

"About... three years after I saw Ten for the first time, I managed to catch one of your episodes - I'm pretty sure it was your very first story, where you met little Amelia Pond."

"Not so little anymore, really..."

I ignored the aside. "And you know what? I loved it. Enough to tune in to every episode I could - not that it was a lot, at the time, but still," I continued. "You were the Doctor who got me to be a fan. Yes, Spearhead from Space got me hooked for good, but you - you with your speeches and focus on emotions and connections - were the one who got me interested enough to go looking for it in the first place. And for me to care that much about anything at that time in my life was..."

I trailed off.

I didn't know how many of the details about that part of my life the Doctor had, if he had any measure for how much I'd shut down under the weight of depression and stress and a thousand and one other problems I couldn't solve except by waiting them out.

But I had the feeling, despite lack of concrete proof, he already knew enough.

"...well, it wasn't something that happened a lot around then, so that makes you - this you extra special to me. Because you're the one that gave me something that I love so much. Just figured I should thank you for that, since I have the opportunity," I said, looking up in time to catch suspiciously shiny eyes. "...are you crying?"

The Doctor scrubbed at his face with his hand. "...happy crying, don't mind it."

…right. Somehow-

"Don't I get any credit?" Zeke asked, nudging me with his elbow. "For your interest, that is."

"Yes. You're the first Doctor who I looked at and thought 'oh, wow, he's such a mess, I would love to study him.' Assigned 'poor little meow meow' immediately. My favorite short little depressive demonic nightmare man."

"We are the same height, Delaine."

"But I wear it so much better."

"I still have no idea what a 'Spearhead from Space' is," the Doctor said as they locked up Mickey's flat and began their walk to LINDA's meeting place. "What thing did I do that was called that?"

"It was more of what the Autons were doing. You were mostly just having a post-regeneration episode and committing multiple thefts."

That was enough information to make the right memory click into place. "When I met Liz for the first time? Pretty redhead from the 70's? I know you'd remember that bit."

"Yes. Super competent, super hot science lady. Loved her outfit in that story."

"I do remember it being comfy looking, yes, anyway…" the Doctor put his hands together and turned back to Delaine. "Wouldn't a more straightforward title be something like 'Terror of the Autons' or or similar?"

"No, Doctor, that's the second Auton story."

"With the Master?"

"No, with the Rani - yes, with the Master."

"So what's the Auton Story with the Rani?"

"Dimensions in Time - or maybe not. Had a lot of creature cameos, but I'm not sure if they had an Auton... it did have Mel and Ace in it, but not Tegan," Delaine said, her certainty in her trivia knowledge quickly returning. "Leela, Peri, and Romana were there, too. Along with most of the cast of EastEnders." At that, Delaine grinned. "Your choice on if Mandy or Big Ron saved the day - I know which side I'm on."

"That genuinely sounds like a nightmare I had once. And I don't think I like the titles your people come up with for my life very much, you know," the Doctor scolded playfully, smiling the whole time.

"If it makes you feel better, we make fun of them, too."

"It doesn't, actually."
"Then I've got bad news about the Deadly Assassin and the Curse of Fatal Death…"

At the next meeting, or rather, in the time before the meeting, as they waited for Mr. Skinner and Bridget to arrive, Elton kept finding his eyes going back to Della.

Not because she'd dyed her hair - though his eyes kept going back to that -, but because something had shifted her attitude so completely that he'd almost sworn that an entirely different person had come into LINDA's basement with Arnold. Della wasn't supposed to be happy and energetic, Elton had reasoned, even if he'd immediately felt a bit bad about thinking it, and he was still of the thought that happiness, even if it was a more 'normal' human action, didn't look right on her.

Of course, Bliss was more interested in Della's hair.

"I didn't realize you were… allowed to do more than one or two colors!" she said, pulling a longer bit out to look at how a shimmering lavender bled into an electric turquoise before fading into a rich midnight blue. "That's fun!"

"Yeah. It's nice to put a little extra color into my day," Della agreed as Bliss continued to ruffle her hair, as if she wasn't wearing an explosion of color completely separate from that, between the leather jacket covered with delicately painted jungle cats dancing up and down the sleeves and the same cranberry zebra stripe trousers she'd worn to the last meeting.

Arnold, to the relief of Elton's eyes, hadn't changed his outfit at all outside of his bowtie's pattern. Unfortunately, that relief wasn't extending to much else to do with the man.

"-and I do try to keep up on all the gossip about the Doctor, but there's always some new chat room or forum and there's really not enough time in the day, no matter how long you can stretch an hour," he was saying, the details of which Elton was already losing as he tried to tune his ears to any other conversation that could possibly be more interesting-

"What kind of art do you do?" Bliss was saying.

"Not that much at the moment, but drawing mostly. Pencil, ink, bit on the cartoonier side. Dabbled in other things if I had the supplies or the mood for it."

"Oh, do you do anything with oils? It's always so annoying having to wait for-"

-and that conversation wasn't it, Elton realized as the details became more and more particular. The nuances of texture and consistency and the particular trickiness of some paints and pigments was more than a little bit wasted on him…

"-but enough about what I've been doing, where do you go to talk, Elton?" Arnold asked.

Elton started. "About what?"

Arnold rolled his eyes, clapping his hand to Elton's shoulder. "Do try to keep up, Elton - aliens. The Doctor. I'd say 'anything at all' but that's a bit personal, is it? I've been informed that it's rude to just-"

Oh. "Well, I talk here, but you knew that already," Elton said. "But… there's a few chat rooms about. Clive's old site, the Eye of Providence… the Fortean Times sometimes puts out links to specialist ones, if someone has the inclination to throw money at it…"

"Mmm. Tried most of those."

"Are you looking for someone in particular?"

"Yes - no- well I know that I'm looking for a specific something, but I don't know if you are going to be helpful in figuring out exactly what that something is. I could ask De- but, right, no spoilers…" Arnold's hands fluttered up and down for a moment, apparently in time with the thoughts he was considering and discarding before finally flinging them up in the air slightly. "I'll just have to keep looking."

With that, Arnold stalked off to pace the room, apparently too caught up in his own thinking to bother with conversation for a while, even as Elton was left to his own new flurry of thoughts, which were slightly dominated by one word in particular.

"'Spoilers'?"

As soon as Bridget arrived, with a pan of dessert and an apology for a 'prior' engagement delaying her a little longer than expected, LINDA finally settled into the usual circular talk - though this time, Elton was ready to drag Della into talking since she apparently knew something more than what she was letting on.

"We figure the Doctor's… a title," he said, leaning forward. "A role passed between these different people whenever the previous one can't do it anymore for whatever reason. The only thing that doesn't change is this faux police box. It's always there, always…" Elton found himself distracted by Della's hair again. "...blue…"

"Well, except for the one time it was teal, but even then they're not always the same kind of blue either," Ursula added, pointing at a picture on the collaged wall of evidence that was one of her big contributions to the group. "The sign changes around sometimes too, with font and color choices. Not exactly sure about the size of the box being consistent either, but-"

"Yes, Ursula has the details," Elton said before turning his attention back to Della - or, her face, at least. "Della, you said last meeting that you had some previous knowledge…?"

Della stared at him for a moment, dark eyes too steady and too unreadable to let Elton relax much, but the spell broke once she rearranged herself in her chair.

"It started out simple," she said, keeping a steady tone. "Stories, rumors - ran into one from the Great Depression when I was about twelve or thirteen and just... kept finding more. Second hand accounts, articles, theories, timelines... all of it bleeds into a sort of... mythos."

She gestured vaguely. "Some parts argued with each other. Other parts... well, it was less the stories and more how people reacted to them - you'd have the people who took them too seriously and wouldn't make room for anything that added anything outside of what they wanted to believe about the Doctor, and then those that took nothing seriously and just liked making trouble wherever they could."

That was something Elton was familiar with from his own research. How the non-believers weren't always the worst you could find when digging up more of the Doctor's trail.

But Della didn't stop there.

"But the first time, up close and personal? SoCal, about… 1997, I think. Halloween," she said, certainty locking into place as she pinned down the holiday. "Town had… well. Weirder problems than what people usually have to deal with. I'll leave out the details, because they sound insane to anyone that wasn't there, but I will say that the Doctor showing up was probably in the top ten for remarkable events there."

Elton felt his breath catch in his throat.

Mr. Skinner leaned forward. "What did he do?"

Della shrugged. "Spent a couple years making a mess of the state of 'equilibrium' we had going with some of the 'less friendly' regulars - not that it was necessarily good beforehand, but he definitely turned a few heads in ways nobody appreciated." She tapped her fingers against the side of her chair. "He also stole my car."

That was not something Elton had been expecting to hear. "What?"

"Oh, was it the Duesenberg?" Arnold said, making a pleased noise. "I love the Duesenberg."

Della scoffed. "You would. And yes, it was the Duesenberg. I think I would have been less upset if he didn't crash it - fixing that kind of damage is a pain."

For someone who was a 'fan' of the Doctor, the level of annoyance seemed more fitting for someone dealing with an irritating significant other rather than an idol. And the story was just… silly. Harmless, even where it wasn't hopelessly vague.

It was the sort of thing that sounded like a complete and utter lie, except for the part that Arnold backed up just by confirming that Della did, in-fact, possess the car in question.

"Why did he steal your car?" Ursula asked.

"The first time, for some dramatic entrance or exit attempt, probably, but after that, I think it was just out of spite for me being difficult… or because it was amusing," Della said with a shrug. "Anyway, whole town collapsed a few years after that, I moved on with my life, and ran into a different Doctor just after that last Christmas invasion. Just hanging out on a rooftop having a good sulk, and this spindly cockatiel of a man just comes up and starts bothering me about if I liked Christmas carols-"

"She doesn't," Arnold supplied helpfully.

"-or if I'd seen anything strange lately. And then he started making presumptions at me about why I was up on the roof like I hadn't been up there first."

Bridget frowned. "I mean, depressed on the edge of the rooftop on Christmas doesn't exactly sound…"

Elton focused on something else - the math. "That's almost ten years apart! And he looked the same?"

If that was the case, it'd be something to back up his own experience with the Doctor, something that made it feel less like a waking nightmare and more like something he could -

"Nope," Della said, stretching the sound of the 'P' until it popped. "Completely different both times, apart from the utter confidence in their own intelligence and tendency to walk into a room like they owned it. Short, sneaky, and Scottish in a panama hat and chintzy custom umbrella vs Ursula's tall spiky-haired Estuary twig."

She ignored the way Arnold had mouthed 'chintzy' silently as she leaned forward.

"That's why I'm on with the 'title' theory," she said. "Met two entirely different guys calling themselves the Doctor, didn't get a word of 'oh, don't I know you' from either. Best answer for it."

"Ooorrr the Doctor is an immortal alien time traveler with a tendency towards amnesia and changing their face every few centuries," Arnold said, holding up a finger. "And the spiky one is also Scottish but faking his accent to impress a girl."

"Or maybe they're all servants of the Ur-Doctor; avatars and channels of the pure concept rather than the Doctor on their own, mere actors playing the part assigned to them," Della countered, not sounding like she particularly believed her own theory. "It's all impossible to pin down without first-hand information."

Mr. Skinner made an uncertain sound. "That's all a bit much for me without the right set-up... the right evidence. Besides, you'd think the hair styling would be enough..."

Bridget laughed. "Oh, you've never raised a teenager, Colin. There's no such thing as 'enough' for them when they've got the idea to impress someone."

"...immortal time traveling alien..." Elton murmured, tapping his lip as he considered it.

That fit with the stories he'd found, the ones that had the ring of truth rather than the sound of someone trying to prove themselves right or spin a funny yarn out of the air. And the theory would account for the spread of sightings across so much of recorded history.

But if he wanted to actually find the Doctor, he was going to have to do some more research. Find the connecting lines between all of these points… and then, within them, hopefully, the Doctor.

"You got a little too specific in there, 'Arnold'," I said, nudging the Doctor in the side as we walked back to the council estate - the long way around, admittedly, though that wasn't quite as big a deal as it might have been, considering that the distance between LINDA's headquarters and the Powell Estate wasn't all that far.

"I'm always specific, except when I'm not," he said as we rounded a corner onto Clink Street.

"Aren't we all?" I replied, looking over the street for details.

I must have been a bit more obvious than usual, because the Doctor felt the need to comment. "Having a bit of a fannish moment, are we?"

"Mmm. Some of Talons was filmed here - not my favorite Classic serial, but it's still interesting - and I appreciate the work of this one fan who managed to pin down the exact locations used through photographs, even after the street was redeveloped," I said, pointing at a nondescript gap between two buildings. "That's where they parked the TARDIS prop back in 1976."

"Really? And someone figured that out even after the area was redeveloped?" the Doctor said, sounding pleased. "Now that's clever. Very very clever."

'The best fans always are,' Zeke said, riding along at the edge of my consciousness.

I jerked my thumb to our side towards a heavily weathered wall fragment standing over a set of garden boxes and worn stone fragments, the empty openings of the rose window near its apex framing the view of a much more modern glass-sided building behind it. "The corner of that wall was one of the important landmarks used."

"Oh, Winchester Palace - lovely place, excellent bowling. Glad I got that invitation to visit back in the day," the Doctor said, giving the ruins a fond lookover. "Of course, it was someone else's invitation but - oh, you should have seen that window when it had glass in it; Henry never spared any effort when it came to decor - I don't imagine you've ever had the pleasure of seeing it when it was new, have you?"

I shook my head. "We're usually around the modern era if I'm on Earth - or, well, Victorian to early 21st century, as far as 'modern' goes - there've been exceptions to the rule, but not many," I said, staring at the stone and trying to imagine it unworn and new. I couldn't quite manage it. "And you know how things get - you think you're going to have time for tourism, someone hands you a crisis and a half to contend with, and there goes your free time for the rest of the decade."

"Oh, yes. Always difficult when that happens." The Doctor fumbled with his fingers for a moment, flitting through the starts of half a dozen gestures in an attempt to find a proper excuse. "But back to the subject of fan theory - what was with that idea you cooked up back there? I would have never taken you for the kind to believe that sort of thing about me-"

"I don't - too Call of Chtulu for my tastes. I just needed something to counter your 'theory', given how you decided to give one so detailed that you'd either have to be the Doctor or a companion to think of it."

"Well, yes, but did your counter-counterpoint need to be so…?"

He waved his hands wildly, as if trying to encapsulate the New Age, Dr. Nyarlathotep tinted, Humanities-Student-On-A-Deadline bullshit I'd puked out earlier.

"Had to offer up something weirder than what you were serving," I replied with a shrug. "So I thought 'what's the weirdest, niche, hamfistedly obnoxious intellectual AU I could have cooked up in a fandom space that at least five people would have bought?'"

"...that implies significantly worse things than quite literally anything else you've told me about my adoring fandom."

He still said the word with that edge of mockery, like the idea was still patently ridiculous.

I simply raised an eyebrow. "Worse than Ian Levine?"

The Doctor made an expression of pain that could have only come from an understanding of exactly who I was talking about. "...perhaps not him. Or any of the other bigots you may or may not have described."

"Worse than the in-depth hypotheticals about your sex life or lack-thereof, anatomical details included?"

"Please, Delaine. I think that between..." the Doctor paused, grimacing as he did a mental count only to find the final result of his calculations unsatisfactory. "Let's just say that it's not an uncommon line of inquiry as far as companions are concerned - stop looking so smug about it."

"I'm not being smug," I said, smugly. "I'm delighting in being right, which is completely different. But now I suppose the question is, was Jackie right about you having two-"

"Oh, what fun I'd have if he did," a sultry - and very, very familiar - voice cut in.

We both stopped.

We both turned.

River Song just smiled. "Hello, sweetie."

My heart and my brain both skipped to a stop.

It was the kind of smile that belonged on a sphinx, the kind that happily held the answer to a riddle you couldn't quite figure out in its corner and behind its teeth, teasing you with how close yet so far it was. It was the smile of a cat burglar that had already gotten the cream, the canary, and the most valuable half of your art collection.

One of the Alters had a much more concise summary of what was happening;

'Fucking Carmen Sandiego simp.'

It wasn't often that the Doctor got to see Delaine caught on the backfoot. Even rarer was a backfooting that was, for the most part, utterly harmless...not that the Doctor would call River Song 'harmless', because she really wasn't, but contextually, it was probably fine.

Delaine being flustered meant Delaine taking things easier, at least until she became fully at ease with River, which was what the Doctor wanted in the first place, even if it was funny to watch Delaine bump into bits of scenery because she was a bit too distracted to function.

...though usually his wife's arrival usually meant some sort of crisis was afoot, but he'd hope this was one of the exceptions and this would just turn out to be an extended date - something in the vein of their varying encounters with Jim the Fish, where the biggest problem to consider was the question of 'where to eat'.

After all, while it wasn't rare for a restaurant to serve both fish fingers and custard, it was a rare one that would allow for both to be ordered at the same time.

Thankfully, Delaine was just easy going when it came to food as the Doctor remembered, picking an adjacent combination of sweet-cold-cream and savory-hot-crunch off the menu in the form of chips and a chocolate milkshake without a comment as to his own, occasionally even taking a moment to dip a chip before eating it.

River, of course, had found a way to circumvent all of that and had come up with a parmigiana from an entirely different restaurant, complete with plate, silverware, and wine glass, none of which went with the umbrella streetside table they were sitting at.

"I would have bothered one of you for something special, but the garçon had just brought out the most delightful Chianti Classico and you both know that I'm hardly one to turn down a perfectly good crime of opportunity," his wife said as she swirled said wine around in its glass, studying Delaine out of the corner of her eye. "Or perhaps, I should just say that the Doctor knows - you're rather fresh, aren't you? Never thought I'd get to see you this blushy."

Delaine, face positively pink for the past fifteen minutes, made a small fizzling noise as she fumbled with a chip, which was quite a trick to manage with human vocal cords.

"River, really," the Doctor scolded. "Delaine's on a rest period right now."

"Oh, is she? And how does one manage to put a near god-like entity in the kind of condition where they need a rest period? You haven't done anything ridiculous to her again, have you?"

"Oh god, don't get her in on it too..." Delaine moaned as she buried her face in her hands.

"Oh, I'm going to," the Doctor said before turning his full attention to River. "Delaine here had the oh-so-clever idea to feed almost fifty percent of her power and thirty percent of her soul - yes, that soul - into the TARDIS during a little trip into an alternate universe without a Time Vortex."

All of River's amusement froze over. "You what?"

"It was twenty percent, get the numbers right," Delaine mumbled, still dodging eye contact. "She needed the power and it's not like it won't grow back."

"'It was just one fifth of my immortal soul, don't worry, it'll grow back'; you are just as ridiculous as he is, you know that? Maybe more so, given that you can put yourself together so much more easily," River said, shaking her head. "Patently ridiculous, self-sacrificing morons. It's a wonder you two survive a week without me."

"Mostly, we take turns," the Doctor said, gesturing to Delaine and then himself again with his fish fingers. "One of us gets to be self-destructive and overdramatic in the name of doing 'the right thing' while the other pulls the first away from the edge, yelling about how dense they are."

Delaine mumbled something unflattering about his previous regeneration under her breath.

"That does sound right for you two," River said, picking at her own meal with much less enthusiasm than before. "I stand by my assessment of you both being ridiculous creatures, though. Delightful ones, but ridiculous regardless. How do you even go... how long did it take you to find out from your end of things?"

"Several centuries." And he was going to spend quite a while being annoyed about it. "I'd almost forgotten about it, right up until she reminded me of just how vexed I was with it at the time."

River clicked her tongue. "Oh, my lord. You really are just as difficult as he is young."

"Please stop saying that, I'm older than both of you," Delaine said, her attempt at salvaging her dignity undercut by the fact that her cheeks were still blushing pink.

The Doctor resisted the desire to roll his eyes. He knew that Delaine had no more idea on what her exact age was supposed to be than he did his own. "Please. I'm a perfect example of why age has nothing to do with maturity. It's all simple numerics, easily forgotten or fudged as convenient - and rendered all the more pointless by the fact that we're all time travelers."

"Like how you keep saying you're nine-hundred when we all know that's a fucking lie?" Delaine shot back.

Well, he hadn't used that specific number in a while, but it was still accurate enough to make a point.

"Exactly. I say it because it's close enough as far as most species are concerned and I like the cadence," the Doctor said, swirling a fish-finger around in the air to help establish his point, flinging a little bit of custard off. "Eventually, I'll decide I like the sound of 'two thousand' or 'ten million' more and move onto that, even if it's not necessarily accurate either."

"Sort of like how you ask a five year old what it means to be 'old' and they tell you that old is 'sixteen'," Delaine said.

"Right. It's a big enough number to give them an accurate idea of the difference between me and them, without having to do an excess amount of math and consideration as to if voided timelines or artificial lives experienced count or not."

"I prefer my own route, personally," River said. "After all, it's rude to ask a woman her age - and not knowing mine is certainly one way of never having to dignify such a question with a response."

The Doctor smiled at his wife. "And yet you make the effort to remember your birthday."

"Only because you take the trouble to celebrate with me, dear, and nothing you ever get up to could ever count as forgettable."

"I mean, barring the odd amnesia episode," Delaine said.

"You can't blame those on me, darling, I'm very careful with the memory removal drugs I use," River said. "If anything, I underdose him."

"I do appreciate not being poisoned. Once was enough for us, I think," the Doctor agreed. "Of course, there are other things to talk about - like what brings you to London at this time of year… and, slightly more importantly, this year of time."

Elton had been taking the long way around to his flat, mostly because that long way around happened to go past his favorite pizza takeaway shop, he had the time and energy to spare, and he wanted time to think about the question that Arnold - purposefully or not - had dropped in his lap earlier about knowing the 'right' places to find information about the Doctor.

Because it had made Elton realize that, of all the places he had looked, he didn't actually know that much.

LINDA was a good place to hear a few stories, yes, but the group was… well, it was more of a social club than one that was out for answers. They knew things, had some stories, but it was just as often for a meeting to just be a matter of talking about personal interests and hobbies than trading some bit of theory about the mysterious person that had drawn them together.

And today, Elton had come to the realization that, no, he wasn't satisfied with that.

The seriousness of his train of thought skipped for a moment as he caught sight of Arnold, Della, and a mysterious woman - older than both of them and with a head full of coppery spring-coiled curls - sharing lunch, laughing and chatting away about something or other that Elton wasn't quite close enough to make out.

Now, those ones, for all they were odd ducks by his measure, they at least had lives outside of the Doctor.

Elton Pope did not.

He had a job, he had a flat, he had… well, LINDA was about the sum of his friend circle, if he was perfectly honest, but he didn't have much of a life.

So, what was he supposed to do with that realization?

Twenty minutes of waiting for a pizza to finish baking and the ten minute walk back to his flat was enough for Elton to plan his next course of action, one that was quickly taking form as he pounded on his keyboard, looking for those chatrooms that Arnold had mentioned.

For his own sake, Elton was going to figure out the Doctor. The who, the why, the how, the where… Elton was going to find the man - any of them - and get an answer. And then, with that ghost finally exorcised, he'd be able to close the door and find something else.

A girlfriend, a new job, something that would make Elton Pope out as more than just some… some nobody who never got over the death of his mum back when he was a kid.

As Elton dug further into the depths of the conspiracy boards, following any trace of the Doctor he could find as the afternoon light faded into sunset reds and then the bruised purples of dusk. He found a few, but none that were what he was really looking for… until a little chat notification appeared in the corner of his screen.

'I see you, newcomer. Lurking in the corners. What are you looking for?'

Elton stared at the chat, feeling a small bead of sweat slid down his neck.

'My name is Elton, of the London Investigation N' Detective Agency,' he typed out slowly. 'I am looking for the Doctor.' Again, he paused. 'But I've hit a dead end and I need help. More information.'

He waited, watching the little indicator that said his message had been 'read' and that his chat partner was typing blink on and off.

'What a coincidence - I am in the same boat myself,' the stranger replied after a minute. 'Perhaps we can work together. Two heads are better than one, and I'm sure your detective agency must have more than that to spare.'

For some reason, there was a shake in Elton's hands as he typed out his next question. 'Who are you?'

'You can call me Victor. Victor Kennedy.'

Victor Kennedy. That was a nice normal human name, wasn't it?

'Now, Elton,' Victor typed. 'Tell me everything.'

Author's Notes

Not the Abzorbaloff sliding into your DMs! Nooooo…! (I mean, the designer's a Youtuber as of the current year, but still!)

While this chapter is going to be uploaded sometime after "The Power of The Doctor", I hope you all were on the same wavelength as me in terms of excited screaming. It was fun working it in, seeing how much of this arc is pretty much an exploration of fandom as an experience.

Like last chapter, there's some bits that have been in there since early on in the process - the exchange about the importance of Eleven as the Doctor that got me hooked has been in here quite a long time (almost as long as this arc has had Eleven in it), even if it was originally going to be more towards the end rather than before the major meat of the arc as it's ended up here.

Also, River gets to be a feature in this arc! Not exactly a huge one, but I'm going to make as much use of her as I can, since I might not get the chance to play with her again until Silence in the Library.

Once again, a major thanks to my cowriter for checking over Eleven's dialogue - she has a much better ear for him than I do and catches a lot of the little slips I can make with him.

Monica: Eleven is all about the rambling baybeeeeee. Also the most I added wholesale was the exchange about titlings, because I feel like the title "Spearhead from Space" would never ever be guessed by The Doctor as belonging to "the time I first met Liz and The Autons".

Also getting the chance to reference one of my favorite bad Doctor Who bits - Dimensions in Time - again was fun, as was being able to shout out our favorite tautology and the Red Nose Day Prophecy.

Yes, I've seen theories like the distraction one floated. They're not necessarily bad but they're not my dish.

Chocolate milkshake + french fries is a great combo. It is a simple fact of the universe.

The whole exchange about the Talons' location was based on Dalek 63•88's video 'The Lost Filming Location From Talons And How It Looks Today'. It's a very good video if you're interested in that kind of background detail and trivia - I certainly was.

It wasn't entirely why I placed LINDA HQ in Southwark, but it was the cherry on top of finding a good compromise location that was within reasonable walking distance of Powell Estate's rough location + fit with the fact that LINDA HQ's outdoor filming location was at a former wharf + the fact that Elton was pretty reliably present for most of Series 1 and 2's various London based alien crises.