"A Whole New World"
Chapter 6
"What Is This, An Orman Novel?"
Another month went by, during which Zeta had returned to tell Tegan that the Lady President had ordered the original blueprints for the Type 40 TARDIS pulled. A special team made up of temporal mechanics, temporal physicists, experts in quantum theory, experts in spatial relationships, and every other discipline involved in designing, building, and operating a TARDIS had been called together to search for a design flaw in the Type 40 that might have allowed the sort of disaster that Tegan had suggested to have actually occurred. Tegan had thanked him for the information and he had gone on his way, promising to contact her immediately with any news.
That had been three months ago.
The Doctor had now been gone for a total of seven months, and Tegan was finally beginning to realize that he just wasn't coming back, not today, not next week, not next month, not ever. She felt herself sinking into depression and refused to succumb, instead packing every waking hour of every day with some sort of activity; work, visiting friends, spending time with Angelina.
She attended every single fashion show in Paris that season, once even offering the seat that had been reserved for the Doctor at the Versace show to Zeta. The Time Lord watched the proceedings with a grave expression of utmost seriousness that made her laugh every time she stole a glance at him. Later, at the party after the show, Tegan noticed him renewing his acquaintance with the brunette model with whom he had danced so scandalously at Angelina's birthday party. She smiled to herself when she saw him put his arm around her and discretely lead her from the party and out into the glittering Paris night.
Naturally, that sight brought up thoughts of her own night spent in Paris with a Time Lord so many years ago, and she felt tears stinging her eyes before she could throttle her grief into submission. Resolutely, she blinked them away and turned her attention back to the aging rock singer who was trying to engage her in conversation. The man had been her idol during her teen years, and she couldn't believe that she was having such a difficult time keeping her mind on their conversation. Some part of her brain was dimly aware that he was hitting on her, and she suddenly found that she couldn't possibly have been less interested. This realization astonished her, for she could remember when she would have done nearly anything to be with this man… but of course that had been a very long time ago, and she had been a very different person. Pleading exhaustion and jet lag, she quickly extricated herself from the conversation and went to her hotel room where she lay in a hot bath for a long time, just thinking. When the tears came this time, she didn't try to hold them back.
Now Tegan had returned to New York, pulling her little suitcase on wheels behind her through the luxuriously appointed hallways of the Central Park West apartment building that housed Angelina's penthouse apartment. She was cranky, she was jetlagged, and she was dehydrated and cramped from having spent the better part of the previous twenty hours either on a subway, in airports, on an airplane, or in a taxi. She was ready for a drink, a bath, and her bed. She turned her key in the lock and pushed the door open, dragging her suitcase into the empty darkened apartment and pulling the door shut behind her. She was so exhausted and muddled from her long day of planes, trains, and automobiles that she actually walked right past the blue police box without even giving it a second glance. Now that's the way to travel, she thought to herself. No hanging around in airports drinking bad coffee, or trying to explain to a taxi driver who spoke no English that she wanted -
She was halfway up the hallway leading to her bedroom when realization hit her. She dropped the handle of her suitcase and raced back out into the living room, flipping on the lights and blinking at the police box in astonishment.
"Doctor!" she cried, looking around for him. He wasn't in the living room, he wasn't in the kitchen or the dining room, or… A hasty search of the rest of Angelina's apartment failed to turn up the Time Lord. She went to the police box and knocked loudly on the door. "Doctor, are you in there?" There was no response. With a frown, she went to her bedroom and looked through her jewelry box, locating her TARDIS key on its little silver chain. Angelina had returned the key to her mother after the incident with the Rani had rather soured her on wearing it as a necklace.
Tegan took the key into the living room and quickly unlocked the TARDIS door, nearly falling down the steps that she kept forgetting now led into the console room. "Doctor!" she called, glancing around at the dim interior. "I wish he'd turn on some bloody lights in here!" she muttered. "Doctor! Where are you?" She thought she heard something… a low moan? She glanced around again, but she was quite alone. Must be my imagination. She recalled that the last time she had gone into his TARDIS looking for him, she had found him in the bath and decided to look there first. She was heading for the interior door when she heard the sound again; it was definitely a moan, she was sure of it. She was also sure that the console room was empty. "Rabbits! Where are you, Doctor?" She heard the sound again and began a slow, careful circuit of the console room, peering into every shadowed corner and under or around every piece of furniture. She found him on the settee, curled up in the fetal position on his side, a white sheet wrapped around him. "Doctor?" From behind the settee, she bent over him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.
He screamed, a cry of pure terror. Before she could react, he was on his feet. In a blur, he had her from behind, one hand pushing her right arm up painfully behind her back, and his other arm locked around her throat in a stranglehold.
"Doctor!" she choked out. She clawed frantically at the arm around her throat with her free hand and was rewarded with having her other arm jammed further up between her shoulder blades. "Doctor, please!" she begged. "You're hurting me!" Her vision began to shimmer from oxygen deprivation, and instinct took over. She lashed out with her feet, swinging back to kick at his legs. She lashed out with her free arm, trying to elbow his stomach, his genitals, any vulnerable spot. Hissing with anger, he tightened his grip on her throat. A dark curtain began to descend over her vision, and her struggles were weakening. Oh my God, he's going to kill me… She felt his breath at the juncture of her neck and left shoulder, cold against her warm skin. "Brave heart," she whispered, as consciousness left her.
"Tegan!" Suddenly she was on the floor, lying across his lap and gasping for air. Her right arm and shoulder burned from their recent twisting, and her throat burned from its recent choking, but when she opened her eyes and saw the Doctor staring down at her with dark blue eyes filled with remorse and concern, her discomfort seemed unimportant, even trivial.
"Doctor," she rasped out. She reached up with her left hand to touch his cheek, trying to convince herself that was she was seeing was real. "Thank God you're back! I've been so worried!" She frowned. "You look terrible!" She tried to sit up.
"No, lie still," he told her. "Let me do it." He had his arm under her shoulders, and now he slowly drew her upright so that she sat in his lap. They were on the floor behind the settee, she realized; the Doctor was leaning his back against it, looking unimaginably tired and drained. "I'm so sorry, Tegan," he whispered. "Oh God… so sorry. I almost killed you – "
"It's all right, Doctor. You didn't. See? I'm still alive. I'm fine." But what's wrong with you? she thought but did not say. She pulled away from him slightly and looked at him carefully. His fine brown curls were dirty and tangled, and he had dark circles under his eyes. She slipped his white sheet off of his shoulders and realized that he was naked; she wondered briefly what had happened to his clothes. She ran her fingers down his chest over the little cuts, over the bruises that were dark purple and greenish yellow in their various stages of healing, over a new unevenness in his ribcage that could only have been a broken rib that hadn't healed correctly. Whatever had happened to him had happened over quite a long period of time.
"Oh, Doctor," she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "You look like you've…"
"Been tortured," he finished shortly. "Yes. It was terrible. And I don't want to talk about it." She nodded and put the sheet back around him along with her arms, pulling him close. He smelled of old sweat spiked with the bitter tang of spent adrenalin.
"Are you…" She swallowed hard. "Are you going to regenerate?" She felt him shrug.
"I don't know. I've been feeling as though I might." She nodded.
"It doesn't matter," she assured him, looking into his eyes. "Nothing will change."
"Except me," he said with a small, tired smile. For some reason, his little joke coupled with that smile made her want to cry. As she had grown so used to doing during his long months of absence, she buried her sorrow and her apprehension under purposeful action.
"All right," she said, gritting her teeth as she forced her tortured right arm to move. "Let's get you off this floor and into bed."
"I'm really not in any shape for it right now. I know I'm irresistible, but can't you wait at least a couple of days?"
"What?" she asked, too tired and overwhelmed to understand that his words were a joke.
"Oh come on, Tegan," he said, rolling his eyes. She finally got it.
"In your dreams!" she said automatically, wincing at the pain that shot through her shoulder as she grabbed the back of the settee and used it as leverage to haul herself up. Somehow she managed to get the Doctor to his feet, and they made their way into the interior of the TARDIS, leaning on each other like two drunken sailors staggering back to their ship after shore leave. How ignominious, the Doctor thought wryly.
Item from a New York Post gossip column:
DARLING NIKKI
SUPERMODEL NIKKI BENSON has disappeared without a trace.
Sources report that the brunette bombshell was last seen in Paris leaving the Versace aftershow party in the company of a mysterious dark-haired young man.
The voluptuous vixen's publicist was more than happy to comment on the situation. "I know exactly who she's with and what she's doing. She is in absolutely no danger, and she certainly hasn't 'disappeared'. She'll be back."
Nikki's friend and fellow supermodel Angelina concurs. "Oh, I wouldn't worry if I were you," she told this columnist, sounding strangely amused. "I'm sure she'll turn up eventually… and probably with a huge smile on her face!"
Speaking of Angelina, the captivating clotheshorse and her Munch-able squeeze were recently spotted boarding the Carnival Victory for a seven-day cruise to Canada. This columnist wonders why they didn't go for the sunny Caribbean instead, but does admit that those chilly Canadian nights are perfect snuggle-up weather!
Tegan stayed in the TARDIS with the Doctor for the next two weeks, leaving only to phone the airline to tell them she needed some time off to attend to an ill friend. When told that it wouldn't be possible to arrange for a personal leave on such short notice, she'd snapped, "Well then I bloody well quit!" and hung up the phone.
There wasn't anything she could really do for him besides offer comfort; his body would have to decide on its own if it was going to regenerate. He had complained so frequently of being too hot that Tegan had turned down the temperature control in his bedroom to the point where she now wore a winter coat and grumbled good-naturedly about his body being unable to figure out the difference between "regenerate" and "hibernate". But secretly, she was worried. She had never heard him say he was too hot before, not even during a recent brutally hot New York summer that had kept Angelina indoors for weeks at a time. She didn't know what it meant for a Time Lord to lose the ability to regulate his metabolism, but she figured it couldn't be good.
Tegan was in the TARDIS kitchen putting together a breakfast tray when she heard the sound of a materializing TARDIS. She hurried into the console room and turned on the viewscreen to see that Angelina's living room now held a cute little Victorian armoire, painted white with little pink flowers at the corners. "Looks like we've got a visitor," she said, and went back to the kitchen to prepare more food. Soon, she was pushing a food-laden trolley into the Doctor's bedroom, where she saw a petite blonde woman perched on the edge of the his bed, holding his hand and talking quietly with him. She looked up when she heard Tegan enter.
"Your flight attendants are preparing to begin food service," Tegan said in her best airhostess voice, pushing the trolley forward. "Please remain seated until the captain turns off the 'fasten seat belt' sign, at which point you may move freely about the cabin. We would like to remind you that this is a nonsmoking flight, so please extinguish all smoking materials at this time, including the aircraft if possible." The Doctor laughed.
"I hope you don't say things like that when you're working," he said, grinning.
"Who works?" she asked rhetorically. He gave her a look. "Oh," she said to the blonde woman. "I don't think we've met. I'm Tegan Jovanka."
"And I'm Romana," the Time Lady said, standing and offering Tegan her hand as a human would have done. "And we have met, but you probably don't remember."
"Oh yes," Tegan recalled. "You're Madeline!"
"Sometimes," Romana said with a smile.
"Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof," the Doctor added, sitting up in bed. Tegan bent over the trolley to organize the food into trays, and Romana joined her.
"He looks terrible," Romana whispered, leaning in close. Tegan shrugged.
"He looked a lot worse when he first got here," she whispered back. "Did he tell you where he's been or what happened to him?" Romana shook her head. "I figured. He won't talk about it."
"Do you think it's cold in here?" the Doctor suddenly asked. Tegan glanced up at him.
"No, not at all," she replied jokingly, holding out her arms and peering down elaborately at her winter coat. "Why do you ask, Doctor?"
"It is a bit chilly in here," Romana added. "I can see my breath!"
"Hmm. Perhaps we'd better raise the temperature a bit," he said. Tegan grinned.
"That's the most wonderful thing I've heard you say in a long time, Doctor!"
CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5, "Dereliction of Duty"
