Futilitarian
Onesmartcookie
Summary: The crepuscule of my old life lay before me, I knew, as I stared at myself sleeping peacefully in the only bedroom that would ever be truly mine. I had two choices: strap the ever-so-troublesome malfunctioning Vortex Manipulator to my own wrist, thus validating everything that had occurred within the past few years; or walk away and hope that, by not creating my own future, by not keeping up my own timeline, I would cease to exist in this hellish world, and return back to the girl who could sleep in that bed, unaware.
Disclaimer: I don't own, nor will I probably ever own, Doctor Who.
crepuscule (n.): twilight
I wake up when my head slams into the ground. Considering how much I toss and turn at night, I'd been expecting this to happen for some time now, but I'd never fallen out of bed in the past, so it was a little strange.
"Fuuuuck," I hiss, rubbing at the spot and blearily pushing myself into a standing position. Wait, what.
This...this was not my bedroom. Nope. Not by any stretch of imagination. Instead, I'm in a circular room with some pretty freaky looking columns supporting the ceiling. It's a good thing I don't have trypophobia. The walls had weird, hexagonal portholes on them, and the whole room was bathed in an orange glow, which I traced to the lights hanging from the walls in messes of black cable.
"What the fuck?!"
Because, you know what it vaguely, idiotically resembles, with my head throbbing and my brain mush from staying up so late writing my thesis?
It looks like that stupid ship-thing in Surgeon Who, or whatever it's called—that science-fiction show my friends had forced me to watch last night at my birthday party. I hadn't been too optimistic going into the whole affair, and as it turned out, I had not liked it. Clearly running on a very low budget with shitty acting and even shittier special effects, Surgeon Who relies on a gibberish dialogue that is meant to sound witty, but, when further examined, doesn't actually have any logic to it. It's like Star Wars, but without any of the good parts, and with equally shit character writing, as far as I'm concerned.
And, of course, my friends had insisted that I give the show to at least the third or fourth episode, Morgan, and you'll love season two and onwards, we know it, but you can't skip the first season because then you won't understand.
Anyway, what was this thing called? This...ship? The uhhh...
"Morgan."
Okay who is that? He's not the Surgeon. Maybe he's the actor's understudy or something? Oh, wait, this isn't a play or musical. It's a TV show. If Surgeon guy is sick, they would just take off filming until he got better.
But how had Jaye gotten me here anyway? I mean, it's one thing for my friends to make me watch this show, but to somehow smuggle me on set while I was sleeping and—
Oh, but he looked sad. He being the guy. Man, I kinda wanted to know him. He is a little very attractive in a brown pinstripe suit, his hair sticking up at odd angles. And he looks so lonely and longing and so very afraid that I—
"Morgan, it's going to happen again," he says quietly, his voice breaking a bit on my name.
How does he know my name? Jaye must have written some sort of script and hired an actor and—
"I can't control it."
Can't control what? The question floats around in my head, but Grace and Mary would easily have predicted that to be my response, so I settle for a far more neutral but no more knowledgeable: "I'm sorry."
He nods to himself, features twisting in pain. "I... I don't want to go."
Go where? I almost open my mouth to ask, but before I can say anything, or even formulate a coherent-yet-more-original response, he's violated my boundaries, stepped in nice and close, intelligent brown eyes glassy, and taken my cheeks into his palms, pressing a desperate kiss to my lips.
I make a noise of surprise and wonder if this is some weird Doctor Who (or is it Surgeon? Maybe Doctor-Surgeon?) kink thing that I'm now supposed to be into, where prostitutes dress up like characters from the show and—
Nah. Even if it were some fetish of theirs, my friends had to know that I would kink shame the fuck out of them for revealing it to me.
He pulls away, and I watch as his features begin to settle into something even more frightened, horror in his eyes, his skin shimmering faintly in... gold?
"Morgan, go. Go down the hall to your room and don't come out. I don't want you to be—"
I gape at him.
He gasps in pain, and his skin starts to go fluorescent faster than a light bulb. "Morgan, now!"
I gulp, because if this isn't real life and it's a dream, I would be fine, but if it is real and not excellent special effects, then what was—I was going to die.
Okay, think later, run down the corridor now. But he'd told me to go to my room and I didn't have a room!
I had half a mind to turn around and ask where I might find said room, but survival instinct tells me that the sound of metal scraping and an explosion and sparks and a sudden temperature increase of roughly a million bajillion degrees are things that I have to get away from, right now immediately. But curiosity fails me, and as soon as I'm ten feet down the hallway, I can't help but turn my head to look and holy shit, he's shooting fire out of his arms and his legs and his head but his clothes aren't burning, and even I don't have this active an imagination or the ability to produce such a unique dream and this can't be smoke and mirrors so maybe ohmygod maybe it is real and what am I going to do, I've been kidnapped by a stranger who is dying from something or—and—
It stops.
The interior of the room is almost completely destroyed: metal walls and floors scorched beyond repair; some of the twisting column-structures (they looked a bit like coral?) had fallen and were making half-decent campfires; and instead of the man who had kissed me, some very pale, floppy haired, younger-looking guy is standing in his place.
Uhhhh.
Wat.
I take a step towards him, then another, dodging debris, and—why? Why? I should be running away from him screaming, yet I can't stop myself from moving forward and—
My feet crunch loudly on broken glass, and I wonder when I'd had the time to put my slippers on, because I certainly hadn't slept in my slippers and that was a little weird, and—
He spins around suddenly, and when he sees me, he picks me up and whirls me around in circles, his arms tight on my waist. Once he's sat me down, he kisses me soundly on the lips, and then steps back to run his hands up and down all over himself, shouting out seemingly random body parts as he catalogues, by touch, what he looks like.
"AND WE'RE CRASHING!" he exclaims loudly, with a touch of delighted insanity, and I give him a look just before nearly toppling over as we suddenly lurch to the side.
What the fucking hell is going on?!
"Careful," he says, steadying me before running over to the console at the center of the room until he's positioned in front of a monitor. He laughs all the while, even as more of the columns crumble down upon us.
I, meanwhile, attempt not to scream bloody murder, especially when I notice that, attached to my left arm, is a very annoying cuff-thing that seemed to have buttons and a—
As if in a trance, my right-hand twitches of its own accord, fingers hovering over the device—
"Don't touch that now, you've only just gotten here, Morgan!" the man calls out between bursts of cackling. He pulls some bulky, cylindrical object with a blue tip out of his pocket and starts waving it around the console wildly, and it whirs and— "We've got an adventure on our hands, Morgan! GERONIMO!"
Okay, what is wrong with this guy. First, he replaces that other guy, and now he's acting completely fucking deranged when we're probably about to die?!
"ALRIGHT, WHAT THE FUCK IS—?!" I start, but I'm cut off when the (what were we even in? The Doctor's box thing?) jerks suddenly, throwing shit-for-brains backwards. He hits the door, and he doesn't stop there. Oh no. Instead, he somehow manages to open the fucking door when he's trying to pick himself up, and he slides and he—
Holy fucking shit, he went over the edge! He went over the edge, and he seemed like he knew what was going on, and I am so fucking dead now ohmyfuckinggod.
The console explodes in another shower of sparks and this is so not good and I am going to die and—
"YOU FUCKING MORON!" I shout as I run to the door, only to see him grasping the edge of the box, the thingy he'd been waving around earlier clamped between his teeth.
Mother. Fucker.
I reach out and clasp his wrist to help him back inside, only to hear a rather loud ding-fucking-dong and sweet Mother Theresa on the hood of a Mercedes-fucking-Benz, that's fucking Big Ben and—
And the box's trajectory is going to have us crashing into its fucking hands, fuck!
"Hm hmm!" he says steadily, letting go of the box with his other hand and shit I've never lifted weights in my life, and I am going to drop him or we are going to plummet to our deaths together and how poetic that he will be the death of me and I just—
As quickly as he lets go of the edge, he's snatched the thing in his mouth, pointed it at the console (which promptly explodes yet again) and I fall backwards, him landing on top of me, both of us panting.
"Hello," he said, grinning like a loon, like we hadn't just barely scraped by our deaths by the very tip of a clock tower. And he's still on top of me. Okay. Get off. Now. He pecks me quickly on the lips, then leaps up, shutting the door just in time for the box to careen to the side, sending him on top of me again, his elbow in my gut.
"Fuck!" I hiss. At this point, I'm injured, exhausted, confused, irritated, and pissed the fuck off, and oh did I mention, fucking perplexed as fuck, like this has to be real, I hit my head, I am not dreaming, I can feel pain, this dream is far longer than normal, in fact, I don't usually remember my dreams, and now here I am, and this has to be real.
"Sorry!" he exclaims, leaping to his feet and pulling me after him. "We need to land, the TARDIS needs some time to recover from the damage I put her through," he explains, looking over at me. My expression must be wholly unimpressed because he adds, grimacing, "Sorry, Morgan, but it's—"
"Who are you?!" I shriek.
He winces, presumably at the pitch.
"Who are you, how did I get here, what is this—" I shake my left hand at him menacingly, as though threatening him with my wrist "—thing and what the fuck is happening?!"
His brows are furrowed, teeth clamped down, and a muscle jumps in his cheek. And, you know, he wasn't half bad looking, but that was beside the fucking point, answer the fucking questions, asshole!
He's saved a response when the console flares up again, sparks shooting every which direction, and then, suddenly, I'm being pitched forward, tackling the man to the ground. His arms come up, securing me to him, and at that exact moment, we go plummeting down the hallway, past an endless number of doors. I tried valiantly not to scream in what's-his-face's ear, but when I see that we are heading for a wall—which, upon impact, we would become a conjoined pancake—I can't exactly help it. Somehow, though, the door opens, and we're still falling until—
"HOLD YOUR BREATH," floppy-haired-guy warns me, evidently able to see something I am not, and with that, I draw a deep breath in, and our direction changes again, and we're falling backwards, or at least backwards for me, and the wind is knocked out of me as I slam into some water with all the force of my mass times gravity and maybe momentum, I don't know, I fucking majored in philosophy, what the fuck do I know?
My instant reaction, of course, to having the air seized from my lungs is to breathe in, a rather awful decision if one is completely submerged in water, mind you; zero out of ten, would not recommend. And my instant reaction upon inhaling water is to try and expel it and, really, it's an endless cycle of fucking drowning and I am going to die and Christ on a cracker, this is the end, but it can't be and—
Hands grab me under the arms, and then I'm being hastily dumped on the ground and the world is really fucking blurry and there is salt in my eyes this was a saltwater pool, are you kidding me, and I can't breathe, ohmygod–
He immediately began compressions, and after what feels like a century, I'm coughing out all the water, sitting up and wheezing, and Jesus, that was close.
And his hands are cupping my cheeks, forcing me to turn to him. "Morgan, are you—"
I nod and knock his hands away. "Fine," I say hoarsely, looking around. Anywhere but at him, with those concerned green eyes and that hurt expression. There are books everywhere, all knocked from their places on the huge bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling, which was at least twenty feet high. So... this is a library? With a pool in it? That seems like rather poor planning on the architect's part. "What's happening?" I finally manage to rasp, the S rather sibilant.
He swallows and smooths his ridiculous hair back. Somewhere along the way, he's divested himself of the suit jacket, and all that's left of his ensemble now is his blue button up, a tie, and a rather tight pair of wet dress pants that I'm not going to complain about. He coughs and loosens the tie further, looking away from me. "Right. Uh, this is going to be a bit, uh, alarming to you but—" he scratches his head, and as quickly as his bright eyes had flicked to mine, they're once more looking away. "Um, long story, or short story? Short story is good for now or—" he cuts himself off at my death stare. "Right. Long story is good too."
I fold my arms over the sopping fabric of my tank top, suddenly very keenly aware of the fact that I'm pretty much giving him a free show and a half, and he swallows at the action and oh, is that why he's been looking away, oh that is precious.
"So long story!" he bursts out, clapping his hands together and staring dutifully in the opposite direction. He bends and picks up a coil of rope from the ground, to which a grappling hook is attached.
Where did that come from?
I frown at him.
"We're going to talk and climb, Morgan." He's grinning again, a genuine, maniacal grin that is so tinged with happiness, it's almost contagious.
"You are fucking crazy," I tell him, scowling instead. There's a loud bang from above us, and a tiny window to the world outside the box appears. The TARDIS has opened its doors.
He just smirks. "Ava Morgan Kingston, if there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I am absolutely crazy!"
And with that completely reassuring and not at all alarming statement, he flings the grappling hook all the way up and through the newly created opening. He gives it a firm tug to make sure it will hold our weight, shooting a smile at me over his shoulder that reeks of seeking attention and approval, and begins to inch his way up the rope. Already, I can see this ending in disaster. The first fifteen feet, I'll have to climb using solely the rope and my own strength. The rest of the way, I'll have the floor under my feet, meaning I could theoretically walk vertically and use the rope to keep me upright, but the first fifteen feet...damn.
"Come along, Morgan!" he shouts, looking down, suspended from the rope like some kind of monkey, already fast approaching the hallway, smug expression in place. "If you don't climb, you won't get to hear the story!"
And, oh, is that cheating, because this rope is a death trap, and we have no idea what it's attached to, and what if it's only meant to hold one person at a time, because if it snaps, he's probably going to have enough luck to fall into the pool, meanwhile I'll be introducing myself to an early grave following an impromptu meeting with a fucking bookcase. That would be my luck but—
It's a tempting fucking offer. "How do you know my name?" I shoot back as I reach up, latching onto the rope with my right hand positioned above my left. I clamp my thighs firmly around the rope, and begin to slowly move upwards, my right hand reaching up and pulling, my legs following, boosting the rest of my body up, and then my left hand reaches up, and wash, rinse, repeat.
It's infinitely harder than it sounds or looks. Especially when one is in poor physical shape, like me. If this was truly Doctor Who—well, I had only seen one episode, but it seems to me like there is a lot of cardio, and I'm not really looking forward to it. I'm so going to be killed by some aliens because I don't run the treadmill in my free time.
Anyway, my arms are burning, and this is really fucking hard, and—
"Because I know you," he finally answers. He's just reached the hallway, and he takes the opportunity to glance at me again, a soft smile gracing his mouth. "I met Ava Morgan Kingston for the first time when—well, spoilers."
Spoilers?
But, more importantly, "Who the fuck are you?"
He frowns. "I'm the Doctor."
Bull. Fucking. Shit. "You look nothing like him," I said flatly, arms straining, knuckles white. "The Doctor is an asshole who calls humans apes and travels with some blonde bitch named Rose."
Now he's scowling. "Rose isn't that bad; I don't know what you have against her. Not so long ago, I would be very cross at you for saying that, but I understand that you're confused right now, so I'll tell you to try and be civil instead," he warns like a parent lecturing their child. "And I am the Doctor. The man from before was the Doctor. Same man, new face. Is it a good face? I was hoping to be ginger, but it's just sort of… brown. So hopefully it's a good face to make up for it. That's regeneration, by the way, all the fire and—" he starts coughing, and gold comes rushing out of his mouth, like he's been to a craft store and taken a good swallow of all the glitter they'd had. "All the fire and TARDIS destroying," he concludes, gesturing with his hands to illustrate "TARDIS destroying" as though that was somehow the most unclear part of what he'd just said.
Finally, I reach the hallway, and from there it's easier going. All I have to do is fight the urge to let go, hoping that death will get me out of this new, hellish reality of mine.
"Right," I say sarcastically. I've nearly reached him at this point. He's slowed down, and I wonder if it has to do with the gold dust and the regeneration thing he'd said he was going through. "So, assuming you are who you claim to be, why should I believe anything you say? I've never seen you before in my life."
"Oh." His reply is quiet. "Oh. First time. I thought maybe you'd only seen me in my ninth regeneration, all leather jacket and ears," he shudders, as though he had been a fashion crime, "but no, this is your first time meeting me at all."
He sounds...lost? Lonely? Disappointed?
Probably has something to do with the kissing business from earlier, which I'm still fucking annoyed about, to be quite honest. There's no way that is ever going to happen. Not now, and not ever. I don't know anything about Doctor Who space magic or whatever, but I had seen Back to the Future and I am an avid reader of science fiction, and I could say that, to my knowledge, if I actively ensured that I never became romantic with the Doctor, I could change whatever notions he had in his head about our relationship.
He clears his throat, and I'm close enough now that I can see just how tightly he's holding the rope, and how stiff he's become over the topic. "Right." His voice cracks. He clears his throat again. "Right. So, you have a vortex manipulator on your left wrist. It's broken, completely out of whack, can't be removed. Sends you everywhere and anywhere in time and space, with one common denominator: me."
"So, I jump uncontrollably throughout your timeline," I say slowly, skeptically, "and, what, travel with you? Assist you on your adventures?" Die, inevitably, because I'm far too much of a klutz to make it down the stairs without injury, let alone much further on this rope.
Just a little bit longer, Morgan.
"Something like that," the Doctor says wryly, mouth twisting in amusement.
We're just a few feet from the top now and my arms are spaghetti like mom's spaghetti. I'd somehow survived, and I'm not dead quite yet, but I have a feeling that I must have done something wrong in life to end up here; I mean really, the least karma could have done is send someone who knew the show and had memorized all the lines.
"Ah, here we are!" the Doctor says, turning to grin at me over his shoulder. I roll my eyes at him as he throws his arms up and over the edge, boosting himself out. As soon as he's straddling the edge, he holds out his hands for me and helps me out, but he overestimates how much he needs to lean back to have gravity on his side and ends up pulling me on top of him. Again.
"Is there something you're trying to tell me?" I asked dryly, raising a single eyebrow at him in speculation, propping myself up on my elbow to cast a doubtful look at him.
I'm rewarded with a faint blush, his cheeks going ever so slightly pink, and he clears his throat. "Oh, look, a little girl!" he blurts out—and generally that's quite a bad thing to blurt out, except that this time, there is genuinely a little red-headed girl staring at us in fascinated confusion. He gently pushes me off him and picks himself up, dusting off his raggedy clothing and then offering me a hand.
I ignore his hand and help myself to my feet, refusing to feel guilty about his disappointed expression.
His hand lowers back to his side. "Can I have an apple? That's all I can think about, apples... Maybe I'm having a craving? That's new, I've never had a craving before."
Is he talking to me, the little girl, or himself? Probably all three.
I shoot him A Look. "Do you ever shut up?"
He ignores me and looks back into the box. "Wow, would you look at that?"
I'm half-tempted to push him into the gaping maw before us.
"Are you alright?" asks the little girl who's been watching us in confusion until she finally decides she isn't mute.
I shrug. "Well, I can't say anything about his mental stability, but we're physically unharmed and I'm probably hallucinating, so that's something."
"You're not hallucinating," the Doctor informs me, rolling his eyes in annoyance and bumping his arm into mine. I edge away, glaring at him. "And to answer your question," he points at the Soulless Ginger Ten-Year-Old (is she ten? Does it matter?), "we just had a fall all the way to the library. Hell of a climb back up."
She pulls a face. "You're soaking wet."
"Yeah, I still don't get it myself," I mutter.
"We were in the swimming pool," the Doctor says as though that explains everything.
Her eyebrows, if possible, knit together further. "You said you were in the library…?"
"You can't use normal person logic," I say matter-of-factly. "There's a swimming pool in the library, for some God-forsaken reason. Makes perfect sense if you ask me."
The Doctor frowns. "Hey, don't diss the swimming pool in the library! You love the swimming pool in the library!"
"No, I don't," I say flatly. "In fact, I hope all your books get damaged in the water one day."
He opens and closes his mouth a few times—a rather stunning impression of the goldfish I'd tearfully had to flush down the toilet in second grade—but can think of no response.
"Are you the police, then?" Tiny Soulless Ginger Ten-Year-Old questions, seemingly shaking off all of the weirdo beside me's… werido-ness. She nods to the box-thing while she speaks, and I'm reminded that the moron beside me thought a veneer from the fifties or whenever blends in with his surroundings perfectly.
But it's like a switch has flipped. Whatever nervous energy has been making him bounce slightly on his feet dissipates, and I'm left with a serious-faced, worried alien. "Why?" he asks. "Did you call the police?" His eyes narrow into emerald chips and he scrutinizes the little girl closely.
A crashing and burning spaceship of which, he is the pilot, is a laughing matter, but an unsettled Scottish girl… that gives him pause? All the fear and the adrenaline and the running around...all of that is fun, but the moment a child is involved…? Is that who this man is?
"Did you come about the crack in my wall?"
A crack? A normal crack wouldn't make her call the police. A normal crack would be nothing. This is an unusual crack. Something scary. How? Why?
The Doctor seems to have reached the same conclusion. He takes a step closer, "What cra—" his voice breaks and he jerks suddenly, falling to the ground in spasms.
I kneel before I even know what I'm doing, placing the back of my hand on his forehead. He's burning hot to the touch, and when I lean in close enough to get a good look at his eyes, sliding my hand down to his cheek to tilt his face and get a better angle, they're hazy, pupils dilated. I've just started to move my fingers to check his pulse when his hand catches my wrist, stopping me. He blinks, meeting my gaze with the sort of intensity that I'd only ever seen in movies.
"Are you alright, mister?" the little girl demands, breaking the moment.
His thumb brushes the inside of my wrist as he lets me go. My heart skips a beat, and he struggles halfway onto his feet. "No, I'm fine, it's okay, it's all perfectly norm—" he's cut off when some of the golden dust from earlier comes out of his mouth in a long exhale.
For the first time, the little girl actually looks a little afraid, though that's soon replaced with plain curiosity and weirded-out-ness. "Who are you?" she sensibly asks, staring at his hands, which are glowing faint gold again.
I'm reminded of how they'd exploded a few scant minutes previously, and I nearly take cover until I realize that, before, he'd warned me away when the same thing had begun to happen. Unless this—version? Reincarnation?—of the Doctor is supremely irresponsible, he would have warned me again. And, given the amount of concern he'd displayed for the child already, that disregard would be especially careless.
As I watch, his fingers lengthen a few fractions of an inch. I raise my eyebrow and reach out to touch them. He allows me, and I'm struck by how warm the gold dust is, how comforting, how normal. Absentmindedly, I compare the size of our hands.
"I don't know who I am yet," he tells the girl slowly. I can feel him watching me instead of her. "I'm still cooking. Does it scare you?" And, although the question is in response to what she'd asked him, it doesn't seem to be wholly directed to her.
Almost indignantly, offended that he would think her frightened, she replies, "No, it just looks a bit weird."
"Is she talking about my face? I hope she's not talking about my face; it would be awful if she were talking about my face. I just got this face, you know? If it were really that bad, I suppose I could use residual regeneration energy and—"
I helpfully slap him, and goddammit are his cheekbones made from marble? When he sputters at me, hand coming up to the quickly forming mark on his face, I shrug, still shaking out my hand. "You were hysterical," I say matter-of-factly. "Is that no longer a common medical treatment? Forgive me, I'm not a doctor."
He does a fish impression again, and I have half a mind to start calling him St. Andrew von Fishenstein after my beloved pet. "No, no, no. I was talking about the crack in your wall," he finally manages, rubbing vigorously as though that would make the wound disappear. And he's a fucking liar. He had not been talking about the crack. "Does it scare you?"
"Yes."
Oh, dear. Brave little girl is afraid of it and she just met a totally fucking creepy dude who fell out of the sky in a box and came out and started talking to her like a child molester on LSD. Must be a terrifying crack. Hopefully the house is structurally sound and doesn't collapse on us.
Having gotten over my hitting him and the Gold Dust Problem, the Doctor straightens. He has the gall to look fucking happy at the girl's fear, because he's probably reached the same conclusions I had about the danger level required to scare the fearless red head. Given his excitement at being on a crashing ship, I suppose that means he's a bit of an adrenaline junkie; he'd have to be, for him to spend his whole life doing shit like this.
"Well then, no time to lose. I'm the Doctor: do everything I tell you, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off," he recites as though this is an actual list of rules and not just more inane rambling. He spins on his heel… and promptly slams into a tree.
I snort as he leaps to his feet, brushing at the seat of his pants and the wrinkles in his shirt.
The little girl blinks at him, ironically, like he's insane. "Are you alright?"
"Early days," the Doctor says with a wave of his hand, "the steering's a bit off."
I suppose that makes some sense: if he's used to walking around with a few extra or a few less inches and pounds, it must be quite different, like what I imagined it to be like if one broke their arm or lost their sight.
"What's your name then, kid?" I ask as she begins leading the two of us out of her garden and towards the house. I'm impressed and a little concerned about the level of trust she's showing us. One hell of a terrifying crack indeed. And who must her parents or guardians be that she was having random strangers examining it and not them?
Something twists sharply in my stomach at the insinuation.
"Amelia," she replies, "Amelia Pond."
"Oh, that's a brilliant name. Amelia Pond," the Doctor chimes in from beside me, "like a name in a fairytale."
As much as I hate to admit it, he's right—very fairytale indeed. "Well, Amelia, I'm Morgan, and this is the Surgeon," I say, since apparently it befalls upon me to make introductions.
"Actually, it's 'the Doctor,'" the Doctor replies.
I ignore him. "Are we in Scotland, Amelia?"
She slates me with a pout as she opens the door and flips the light switch, dousing the kitchen in harsh white light.
I blink spots from my eyes. "I suppose not, then?"
"No, we had to move to England," she says, and the chair at the table scrapes along the floor as she drags it out. She practically throws herself into it, sitting the flashlight on the table beside her and crossing her arms. "It's rubbish," she adds, as if her disdain weren't already so highly implied. Yeesh.
"If it helps, I didn't want to move to England," I tell her in a conspiratorial whisper as I sit down across from her. "I'm American. I didn't want to move, but I had to, and now I'm here."
Amelia leans forwards, eyes suddenly interested. "You had to move too?" she asks, and there is hope in her voice. "Did you ever move back?"
I look over my shoulder at the Doctor, who's helped himself to an apple from a basket sat near Amelia's fridge. He takes a curious bite and almost immediately spits it back out. "No," I say to Amelia as I watch him frown at the apple hatefully, like it'd just demanded his firstborn. "Sometimes change is for the best, Amelia. It's hard right now, but you'll meet new friends."
When I look back at her, she's deflated. I hadn't told her what she wanted to hear, and in all honesty, I don't know what had caused me to say it. It might be something that, deep down, I believed, but given the suddenness of my situation, I hadn't come to terms with my fate yet, let alone progressed to the point of embracing it.
In essence? I'm a hypocrite.
The Doctor finally wanders over, brandishing the apple as though the very sight of it offends him. "This is disgusting. What is this?"
Sensing the apple's impending trip to the trash, I snatch it from him. "An apple. Or did your regeneration delete your knowledge of common human fruits?" I quirk a brow at him and continue eating it right where he'd left off. Things like this don't bother me, though perhaps I should be concerned about the amount of saliva-sharing I'd recently engaged in with an alien: who knows what diseases I could catch from him.
The Doctor merely observes my new snack like I'm eating literal trash. "Apple's rubbish, I hate apples."
Picky fucking child.
Amelia is less amusedly annoyed and more dumbfounded. "You said you loved apples?"
He frowns. "No, no, no," he insists, "I like yogurt. Yogurt is my favorite. Give me yogurt."
A quick trip to the fridge later, and we discover that, evidently, yogurt is not his favorite either. He tries to get Amelia to fry him something ("because she's Scottish") but even with the supervision of a qualified adult (and I certainly don't mean him) I don't trust a child with a stove, so I end up being the one to cook him a single slice of bacon and, when he deems that disgusting, warm him up some baked beans. After that, we use the toaster to make him some bread and butter, the taste of which offends him so greatly, he tries to chuck the whole thing down the street, plate and all. I try to talk him down from it with a simple "no, you could hurt someone," and then a firmer, "plates are expensive, don't do it," but, ultimately, the only thing powerful enough to stop him from frisbeeing it into the neighbor's yard is my glare, which effectively puts an end to his dramatics—though Amelia's mere suggestion of carrots just seconds later is enough to send him into a fit.
Extremely picky fucking child.
Eventually the Doctor says that he knows what he needs, and he bakes himself some fish sticks. I make a face at the choice, but I have no idea what I'm in for, because what he pulls out next is truly disgusting: custard. I don't mind custard on its own, that's not the problem—the problem is that he's dipping the fish sticks into it.
Grimacing, I attempt to ignore the man beside me's new (and revolting) food revelation. "Are your parents in, Amelia?" I ask conversationally instead.
She looks up from her ice cream, vaguely startled.
The Doctor catches on with a frown. "You're right, Morgan. I thought we would have woken them up by now."
Her lack of reply means something though.
"They're not around, are they?" I ask, tone dripping with sincere sympathy. "Who do you live with? Where are they?"
"My aunt," Amelia finally says defensively. "She's out."
My eyebrows shoot up in surprise and a rush of anger and protectiveness goes through me. The Doctor seems to notice, and his hand is suddenly covering my fist, gently prying my nails from my palm before settling his fingers between mine so that they are interlaced. The action is so absentminded and comforting that my head aches. This is my future, huh?
"No mum and dad, just an aunt, you say?" the Doctor interjects, inserting some much-needed levity. "I don't even have an aunt."
As if it were a fucking competition.
"Lucky," Amelia says glumly.
I squeeze the Doctor's hand so hard I'm afraid I might have broken something. Suddenly, a wave of concern and comfort wash over me, and my attention jumps to the man sitting beside me. I frown at him.
What the—?
"I know," the Doctor replies, as though having an aunt in general is a hellish experience. "So, she went out and left you all alone?"
Amelia's chin juts out at the insinuation. "Yeah, but I'm not scared."
The Doctor nods as though this makes perfect sense. "Of course not. Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of the box, man eats fish custard, and look at you, you're just sitting there. So, you know what I think?"
Amelia leans in subconsciously. "What?"
The Doctor and I exchange a look. "Must be one hell of a scary crack in your wall," I finally say.
