Warnings: Strong Language and Mild Violence (sort of)
Edited Sept 28, 2019
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Chapter Three: Larger Than Life
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I am a stalker.
A stalker stalking an alien.
A stalker stalking an alien because I'm a chickenshitted coward.
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I'd barely slept a wink the night before, having been too jittery to settle down. I whittled away the long hours by alternating between dozing on my couch and making anxious laps around the apartment until dawn, at which point I stayed outside, bigger on the inside bag packed, leaning on the railing nine floors up. Watching the ground below. Waiting.
And there he was, a dark figure stalking across the space between the buildings, sonic screwdriver in hand.
I almost had a heart attack.
Instead of dying of heart failure, which would have been preferable, I watched the alien vanish into the stairwell of Rose's building. I yearned to race after him.
What seemed like seconds later, he was back, followed closely by Rose.
I watched their conversation from a long ways off, not needing to hear their voices to know what they were saying.
Then he walked away from Rose. He slipped into the TARDIS, and was gone.
He was gone.
He was GONE.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
I had been so paralyzed by the events I'd been waiting FOURTEEN MONTHS to take place that I had missed my first opportunity.
Shit.
Where would he go next?
Shit.
The pizza place.
Shit.
With Rose and fake Mickey.
Shit.
But was that still today?
Shit.
Rose would visit Clive before then. So when would that be?
Shit.
Assuming it was today, as it wouldn't have taken the Doctor that long to find a giant vat of sentient plastic, I would have to get to the pizza place that they were at.
Thankfully, I had figured out which one it would be ages ago.
Time to go there and wait.
Fuck.
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So that's how I ended up stalking the Doctor.
I had spent the day wandering around the area surrounding the pizza shop when I saw him again, pacing through the streets methodically as he followed whatever signal he was getting on his sonic screwdriver.
He first appeared from around a guy dressed as a giant cup of coffee, beside which I had been purchasing a latte and a cream cheese bagel.
The Doctor had loomed around the coffee guy and strode through the surrounding people like they weren't there, a dark shape with angular features and piercing blue eyes that scoured everything in his path.
Naturally, I froze. The words caught in my throat and my heart stopped, allowing him to brush by with scarcely a glance.
I stared at his rapidly retreating back stupidly for a moment before realising what I had just seen and, bagel forgotten, hurried off after him.
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As per freaking usual, I couldn't just run up to him and introduce myself.
No. That would've been too simple. Instead, I had been following him for the last twenty minutes, trying to work up the courage to actually get his attention.
Following the Doctor wasn't easy, he walked fast and seemed to glide through the crowd while I was short and too small for people to see a reason to get out of my way.
Every once in a while, he would pause and seem to linger around a shop entrance or newspaper stand, therefore providing the perfect opportunity for me to catch up. Instead of taking the opportunity, like a smart person would, I would duck behind a sign or a group of people, feigning disinterest in the Time Lord.
Then, as soon as he was moving again, I would resume my pursuit.
I watched the Doctor pause at the gap between two buildings and duck into the corresponding alleyway.
I stomped after him, getting increasingly frustrated with my own cowardice. I had to talk to him now, before he met up with Rose again. If I didn't, I might end up explaining my dilemma to both him and Rose at the same time, which would make the situation even more difficult than it already was.
It had to be NOW. Rose would just be being introduced to the world of aliens and time travel, and didn't need another universe were she was on a tv show thrown in the mix. The poor girl didn't need to know that her weird, quiet neighbor was actually a chickenshitted, motherfuc-
I rounded the corner and almost ran smack into the Doctor, being so caught up in my self degrading pep talk to check around the corner before charging in head first.
Now, the Time Lord loomed over me, staring into my goddamn soul with his arms crossed expectantly, very plainly having been waiting for me to follow him into the alleyway.
"Hello," the Doctor greeted with false cheer.
He raised his eyebrows expectantly while I gazed up at him in a mixture of fascination and terror.
God, he was tall.
I was shorter in this body than I had been in my old one, but he still would've dwarfed me in the other universe. In this body, the top of my head just barely came to his shoulder, making him easily a head and neck taller than me.
Tall and broad shouldered, he towered over me like a giant, the height difference between us made even more stark by the fact that I was subconsciously trying to make myself as small as possible.
He studied my cowering form curiously for a moment before speaking again.
"You've been following me," he stated calmly. His voice was stern, but not unfriendly. A very clear warning that the amount of nonsense he was taking today was extremely limited.
"Yes," I answered, my voice finally coming out as a somewhat embarrassing squeak.
"What for?" He furrowed his brow questioningly. "You're not made of plastic, are you?" He reached out and tapped my forehead experimentally.
"Not to my knowledge," I managed to reply, clearing my throat to eliminate the squeak, though it did nothing for the unintentional vibrato.
The Doctor stopped poking my forehead and returned his arms to their place crossed over his chest. "What's your name?"
"Ca-," I started, but cut myself off. I had almost given him my old name. But I wasn't her anymore. "Buffy," I corrected firmly.
"Buffy what?"
"Reid."
"Nice to meet you, Buffy Reid." The Doctor offered a disarming smile. "Funny name, though, isn't it?"
I managed a weak smile in return. "Thanks. But that's rich coming from you, Doctor."
The smile vanished. "So you do know me then," the alien concluded, his intensity of his gaze changing from stern to borderline threatening. "How?"
Crap. Not off to a good start. Should've eased into it more. Too late now.
I ran my fingers through my hair nervously. "It's complicated. It… it really is. It's really weird. Really really weird. Even for you."
"Try me." The Doctor raised his chin challengingly. "Though I take it you're not from this world, right?"
"No. Well… yes. Sort of." I twisted the ends of my hair around my fingers. "Earth… but…" I gave up trying to stammer an explanation and let my hands fall to my sides in defeat. "Wrong universe."
"Ah," the Doctor relaxed slightly, becoming more curious than threatening, now that I was just a lost human and not a hostile alien invader. "How long have you been here?"
I relaxed slightly as well. "About a year."
"What made you think you're in a different universe?" His voice was becoming softer, more sympathetic.
"Number of things." I let out a dry, humourless laugh. "I woke up four thousand miles away from where I was. In the wrong year…"
"How far off?" The Doctor asked gently.
I chanced a glance up into his face. "2018."
He raised his eyebrows in astonishment. "That is a bit of a leap. So you spent one minute in 2018, and the next…"
"I woke up off the side of the road in 2004," I completed. A wave of despair washed over me. Hearing my predicament out loud reminded me just how hopeless it was. I was never going home. I choked down the lump in my throat.
"Through that still doesn't explain how you know about me," the Doctor protested, eyebrows still furrowed in thought.
"That's the really weird part I told you about," I sighed, my despair being replaced by dread. "And why I knew it was a different universe entirely and not just some weird time travel thing."
"Go on."
"There's no way to make this sound sane…" I fumbled around for the right words and tugged at my ear agitatedly. "But you're in my universe… just not… real."
"How can I be in your universe and not real?" The Doctor challenged, confusion written all over his face.
Just come out and say it, damn it. You're making it worse.
Before I could explain further, the Doctor worked out what I was trying to say.
His eyes widened in surprise. "Wait. Are you saying I'm… fictional… in your universe?"
I grimaced. "Yeah…"
"No. That can't be right," he insisted and started to pace. "I'm not some bloody book character."
"Not a book," I corrected wearily, fully aware that I was not making the situation easier. "A tv show."
"A tv show?" He echoed, still pacing.
It was weirdly comforting to talk to someone that was almost as freaked out about the situation as I was, it sparked a little confidence that hadn't been there before. Or at least a little spark of 'fuck it', which had the same effect.
"No… no…" the Doctor protested, clearly trying to find a reason that he couldn't possibly be a character in another universe. "Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Alright." The Doctor stopped pacing and turned to face me. "Prove it."
"Okay," I answered openly. "What do you want?"
"What's it called, this show?"
"Doctor Who."
"Doctor Who?" He echoed, looking slightly affronted. "Why Doctor Who?"
"It comes from the question everyone always asks you."
"What question?"
"You know, the question people always ask when they meet you." I threw on a couple different voices to mock different people. "'Hello, I'm the Doctor.' 'Doctor who?' See? Clever title."
"I don't know about 'clever'," he huffed, crossing his arms in front of his chest again. "Why would anyone want to watch a show about me anyway?"
"A show about a time travelling alien? Made in the era when everyone's into scifi? It's a pretty big franchise."
"Which era? People are always into science fiction."
I snorted. "All of them, it seems like. Doctor Who started up even before Star Trek."
"And you watched it in 2018?" He squinted skeptically. "I don't know about your universe, but Star Trek started in the late 1960's here."
"1966?" I clarified. "Doctor Who began in… I want to say… 1963? That's right, because the 50th anniversary was in 2013."
"The show's been running for fifty years?" He spat in bewilderment.
"More than that now. It was still going when I left. I think it has the title for longest running sci fi show in history."
"This is ridiculous," the Doctor growled, taking up pacing again.
"You're telling me," I confirmed dryly.
"So," he began, "this show is just about me travelling around the universe? It just follows me?"
I nodded.
"From when? At what point in my timeline?"
I scratched my head thoughtfully. "I'm not very well versed in the early episodes… but I want to say when Ian and Barbara first get on the TARDIS."
NOW the Doctor was pissed. Or I say pissed, but really it was a mixture of horror, anger, and confusion. I couldn't say I blamed him, either.
"Since THEN? That was CENTURIES AGO!" He snapped. "Are you telling me that there is an entire UNIVERSE out there that knows my every move since the beginning?"
"Not every move," I pathetically tried to soothe. "Hundreds of years compressed into fifty. It was a tv show… most of it was left out. More like a Wikipedia synopsis than The Truman Show."
"You're not helping."
"Sorry."
"Fine." The Doctor stopped in front of me so that he was looming only a few inches away from my face. "What does TARDIS stand for?"
"Time and relative dimension in space."
"What does it look like?"
"A blue police telephone box from the 1950s that's bigger on the inside."
"Where am I from?"
"Gallifrey." I answered his barrage of questions easily. Maybe a little too easily. For me, it had started to feel more like a random quiz at Dragon Con than facts about a real person's life. So what happened next was at least partially my fault. "In the constellation Kasterborous. You're a Time Lord. The Last of The Time Lords… because of the Time War, with the Daleks…"
The Doctor lunged.
The next thing I was aware of was the back of my head clacking against the wall behind me, hard enough for my vision to blur. I let out a squeak of surprise and fear as he pinned me to the bricks by trapping my right wrist over my head in an iron grip while his other hand locked roughly around my throat.
His face was a terrifying mask of pain and rage. It was a look I had NEVER seen on his face before, not even when he went all 'oncoming storm'. The closest I could compare it to was the face he had made when confronting the Dalek in the episode Dalek.
"Did you watch the Time War?" He snarled an inch from my face, poisonous disdain dripping off his words. "Did your people watch mine burn and die from the comfort of their homes?"
"What? No!" I choked, horrified. "The war was left out!"
He wasn't listening. "Stupid, bloody apes!" A bit of spittle flew off his lip and landed on my forehead. "You're all the same. Packaging and dramatizing violence for consumption and calling it entertainment. The only lives that matter are the ones directly related to you. Everyone else can die and scream and burn and you won't even blink!"
I squirmed weakly in his grip. He was using most of his body weight to keep my wrist pinned to the wall, causing the pressure put on my wrist be bruising, at minimum. His grip around my throat was tightening as he spoke, making my breath wheeze desperately in the slowly compressing windpipe.
"Doctor," I gasped, "you're hurting me!"
The change in his face was instant. I watched as all the rage melt away to be replaced by shock and horror before he leapt away from me like I was made of hot coals.
"Buffy…" I heard the Doctor choke out.
I stayed slumped against the wall, coughing and rubbing at my wrist.
"I… I'm sorry." I was staring at the ground, but his voice was laden and quaking.
"It's okay," I answered weakly, trembling and close to tears.
The Doctor's boots stepped into my line of vision, framed by the red hair that was hanging in my face. His hands came up to hover around my elbows and then my shoulders, followed by my head as he tried desperately to figure out how to make it better, but then they dropped back to his side helplessly as he thought better of it and backed away once more.
"I really am," he tried again, his voice now more pained than ever.
"I know." I stopped rubbing my aching wrist to graze my good hand up my throat and then around to caress the knot that was already forming where the back of my head had come into contact with the wall.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah," I croaked as I wiped away the tears that were threatening to spill and finally chanced a look up at him.
He was close to tears as well, his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket as he gazed at me sadly, his face creased with self-disgust and shame.
"I… just…" the Doctor stammered. "Sorry." He met my eyes, hoping that I would see that he meant it.
I did. I knew he was sorry, and I already wasn't holding it against him, not really, at least. If he had just regenerated, as it had been suggested by his response to seeing himself in the mirror at the Tyler's, the war had just ended. There were bound to be a few… let's say… aftershocks.
Despite consciously knowing this, I was back to the skittish, cowering girl that I had been when I first ran into him, the smidge of confidence I had gained having been quite thoroughly knocked out of me.
"So you believe me then?" I asked shakily, trying to shrug off the fresh anxiety that was building in my chest.
He blinked, caught off guard by the question. "What?"
"About the other universe." I straightened up but kept rubbing at my wrist. It still really hurt. The wrist was definitely going to bruise, though I hoped my neck wouldn't, as it would be harder to hide.
"Yeah."
"The show started in the sixties and ran into sometime in the eighties or nineties," I started to explain. "Then it went off air until 2006, with the events of today. That's how I found you."
I rotated my wrist in its socket. He must've been putting a lot of weight on the joint itself, which would've bruised some of the ligaments, which would go on to explain why it hurt even worse to move it. "The war happened in the gap. Everything I know about the war comes from stuff you've said… or will say. Sorry I brought it up."
"You don't have anything to be sorry for." The Doctor rubbed his eyes wearily. "It's not exactly your fault, is it?" He pinched the bridge of his nose and brought his hand back down into his pocket. "Though if the reboot series starts today and runs at least until 2018, that means you've got a head full of foreknowledge. Meaning we need to set some ground rules."
This was not a surprise. "Okay."
The Doctor nodded. "We can work out the details later, but for now, keep your mouth shut. No hints or slip-ups. You got that?"
"Not exactly rocket science," I responded cooly, trying to pretend some of my dry humor was returning. "No spoilers."
"First off, do you have any idea how you got into this universe? Strange sounds? New people? Lights in the sky?"
"Not really." I was too drained by the emotional roller coaster that today had been and my aching head to continue caring how weird my statements were. "Only what the Mirror Girl told me."
Whatever the Doctor had been expecting, that was not it.
His eyebrows shot up. "Mirror Girl?"
"Yeah. Mirror Girl." I hesitated thoughtfully, turning over what the girl in the mirror had left behind in my mind and considering the new urge that came with it. "I think…" I shrugged off my seemingly-empty book bag and started fumbling with the zipper. "I think she wanted me to give you this."
Opening the book bag was more irritating than it should have been, as my dominant hand was the one I was favoring. But after a few seconds my fingers came into contact with the smooth metal of the medallion, which was always cold no matter how long I held it in my hands.
I held it out to the Doctor and he took it from me hesitantly. I watched him turn it over in his hands and run his thumb over the designs and red jewel in the center, as I had done many times.
After a moment he looked up, plainly confused and troubled.
"Do you have any idea what this is?" He asked softly.
"Nope," I responded with a click of my tongue.
The Doctor groaned and scrubbed at his face with his hands. It went on like this for a solid thirty seconds, me standing awkwardly while he seemed to be trying to figure out how exactly his relatively normal day of tracking down an alien made of sentient plastic had suddenly gotten so complicated.
Then he sighed.
"You know what, Buffy Reid?" The Doctor stopped rubbing his face and tucked the medallion into one of his interior jacket pockets. "You are a problem for later."
"Thanks," I replied sarcastically.
He ignored the comment. "I've got more pressing matters on my hands. I assume you know what I'm looking for? Or rather, who?"
I nodded. "The Nestene Consciousness."
"Fantastic." The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and took up my uninjured hand. "Then you can show me where I can find it."
"I thought you said 'no spoilers'?" I protested as he started hauling me back into the main street, presumably to wherever he had left the TARDIS.
"I'm making the rules, so I get to decide when to break them," he retorted. "So where?"
"But we can't go there yet!"
"Why not?"
"First you have to save Rose from her plastic boyfriend."
"Figures."
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