Disclaimer: We've been through this. I do not own Buffy. I do not own Doctor Who. I make no money from fanfiction. Full stop.
"That's odd."
The Doctor frowned at the readings on the screen before him, and gave the console a precautionary smack. The display remained unchanged, so he hit it harder. This had no effect on the readouts, but the Tardis creaked in protestation at this unwarranted physical abuse. The Doctor's frown deepened. The ship wasn't playing up, apparently; but the data on his screen was wrong. Very wrong. It had to be. He jabbed at a few buttons and twisted some controls at random. The Tardis sensed his disbelief and flashed up an outside view, as if to justify the claims its scanners were making. The Doctor was confronted with an image of deep space, infinitely black and peppered with the pinpoint lights of stars.
It would have been perfectly normal if not for the great sprawling space-time disturbance at the centre of the image. It resembled a huge mass of fog, gold in colour. Fingers of curling mist shot from it chaotically, and tendrils of white lightning rippled across its surface. Worst of all, it was getting bigger. Before he could alter his course, the disturbance had enveloped the Tardis, Doctor and all, and swallowed them up. The lightning coursing through it intensified, and it began to contract, gaining speed, shrinking until finally it imploded with a blinding flash of white light. Then nothing. The storm was spent. No change had occurred; it was as though the disturbance had never existed. Only one thing indicated that that an event of any kind had happened at all. The Tardis, complete with the last Time Lord, was gone without a trace.
XXXX
The Doctor picked himself up off the floor, just in time to be thrown down again as the Tardis gave a great lurch to the right. He clung to the grille on the floor for a few seconds as his ship rocked and shook, buffeted by the temporal gales at the heart of the storm. Eventually, he heaved himself up onto his knees and by leaning his weight on a nearby strut was able to clamber into a position by which he could see the monitor. It didn't do him any good; the screen showed only a blizzard of static, interrupted sporadically by pixellated scraps of Gallifreyan that flickered across the display incomprehensibly. The turbulence worsened, and the Doctor wrapped both arms around the strut and planted his feet, resigning himself to simply riding out the storm and waiting for the shaking to cease.
And just like that, it did. The crazy rocking was replaced by a profound stillness. Sound and movement stopped altogether as the time rotor fell silent and motionless. The mess on the screen cleared, and the Doctor tentatively released his hold on the strut. He swept over to the console and poked at some controls. Sensible Gallifreyan txt blipped into existence and the Doctor scanned over it quickly. Earth. Early 21st Century. Right. He marched over to the door and stepped out of the Tardis, into the dazzle of the sunlight. After an initial spell of furious blinking, the Doctor found himself looking at an apparently American town, with people milling around the streets shopping or sipping languidly at iced drinks as the chatted under parasols in the forecourts of trendy cafés. He wasn't able to ascertain it from his immediate surroundings, but the Doctor guessed his location to be somewhere coastal. California, maybe. Come to think of it, this town did look very familiar.
Right planet. Right century. But the more he observed, the more he felt a sense of déjà vu as to the streets around him. He knew this town. He had most definitely been here before. It almost looked like…
"Doctor?"
Turning, the Doctor recognised the vaguely timid shape of Willow Rosenberg. Her hair was shorter, ad her posture more confident, but it was undoubtedly Willow. Before she could say another word, the Doctor leapt on her in a bone-crushing hug. After a few seconds, she tapped his shoulder awkwardly, and croaked:
"Okay…oxygen…becoming an issue here."
He released her with a mumbled apology. It was only as they separated that he realised exactly where he was.
Right planet. Right century. Wrong universe.
A/N: A sequel was requested, and the writer lives to obey the reader(s). I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this, so any suggestions (within reviews) would be greatly appreciated. Please review either way!