LSATB

Chapter Three: The Doctor

No one had ever listened to the Doctor so intently before, like he was actually serious about knowing this stuff when she had tried very hard to get him to shove off. But the Doctor wasn't sure if she was quite ready to have another companion, she was still… depressed was probably the best word for it.

"If you're gonna go with this living plastic, and I don't even believe that, but if we do... how did you… kill it?" 'Kill' probably wasn't the technical word for what she had done, and the Doctor shuddered at it just a little inwardly.

"The thing controlling it projects life into the arm, I can cut off the signal, dead," she shrugged a little.

"So that's like radio control?" he frowned, head tilted to the side.

"Thought control," she corrected; after a bout of silence, which seemed to be rather unnatural for him, she glanced over. "You alright?" He looked a little troubled, but mostly deep in thought.

"Yeah," he said softly, biting his lip. "So who's controlling it then?"

"Long story," that she didn't feel like, nor need to, get into as he probably wasn't going to hang around long. Which was rather sad, she kind of missed the company, but she didn't want to be around people right now. She only hurt them in the end.

"But what's it all for, I mean," there went the biting his lip thing again as he smiled a little. "Shop window dummies, what's that about? Is someone trying to take over Britain's shops?" the Doctor couldn't help it, biting down on her tongue only made a little giggle sneak out.

"No,"

"I know," John laughed a little more.

"It's not a price war," they laughed a little more, the Doctor began to enjoy that little happy sound, wondering how long it had felt like since he had laughed. Than she got serious, maybe she could scare him away now. "They want to overthrow the human race and destroy you." Her hearts thudded in the silence. How would he react?

He glanced at her, and she looked back, dark-eyed, "Do you believe me?"

"No," John's eyes flickered though, as if he knew he was lying to himself.

"But you're still listening," she wondered if that was the first glimmer of hope glistening in her mind, the first threads of time coming together before her eyes. But then John looked away, and the Doctor walked on, almost unaware of him stopping but for the absence of warmth on her cool side.

"Really though, Doctor," he paused. "Tell me, who are you?"

The Doctor stopped and looked back, looked at John confused face, his clever brown eyes working the information, and she knew he had a quick mind under that thick mop of spiky brown hair. Maybe for once, someone could understand this; understand him. He seemed to want to more so than the others, they were settled with the 'I'm the Doctor' bit after one question, but John seemed to want to know more.

"Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving?" he looked a little confused as to where this was going. She walked back up to him, ambling a little as she spoke. "It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like its standing still." He looked down at her, and she looked up at him, dead serious. "I can feel it." She reached over, and took his hand in hers for a moment, willing him to feel what she felt, how she felt.

""The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go..." She let his hand loose, to impress upon the point, but she wasn't quite sure how to finish that sentence. She wasn't quite sure she wanted to.

"That's who I am," she put her hands back in her pockets and gave him an urgently stern look. "Now, forget me, John Smith." She took the plastic arm from his hand and waved it in front of his bemused face with a fake smile. "Go 'ome."

She walked away again, almost wishing he'd call her back, almost glad he didn't. She didn't want him to get involved. There were some people she could just tell that would be persistent and keep showing up though, whether on accident or on purpose, and John was one of them.

She climbed into her police box and disappeared, leaving a much confused John Smith behind her.

"Hey, hey there's my mate!" Mickey grinned. "Where ya been all day?"

"Busy," John muttered.

"With that girl that just come in?" Mickey's grin got wider. "She was kinda cute, pretty rough for you, though, man."

"She, she wasn't, I wasn't…" John sighed, knowing it was virtually impossible to get Mickey off his back by denying it. "Whatever. Can I use your computer?"

"Yeah, sure," Mickey split off into the kitchen. "Don't read my emails!"

"Oh now I really want to see them," John muttered, falling into Mickey's chair and squinting at the screen as he dragged the mouse across the search page. Slipping on his black spectacles, he typed in 'doctor', but there were about 17,000,000 views, and many of them looked mostly like real doctors, not one's that poked about with living plastic things.

John changed his search to 'doctor living plastic', with around 55,300 results, again with plastic surgery and et cetera. He sighed and ruffled his hair impatiently. What else? How to look up a doctor, who wasn't really even a proper one most likely, who popped about in a… a blue box! What was that blue box he had seen earlier? John threw in the words 'blue box' after 'doctor' and searched that.

The first view was labeled 'Doctor Who?' And John knew that must be one, and he clicked it on it quickly. It led to a pale blue webpage with a fuzzy picture in the center, and the photo of a girl who looked remarkably close to the one he had seen earlier, the Doctor. Under the photo, in bold print, was the question 'Have you seen this girl?' and 'contact Clive' under that.