ADRIFT


A/N: For the betterment of continuity, Clara Oswald does not exist here and I'm officially calling this an AU fanfic. This takes place after the Ponds, obviously, but without the mystery of Clara. I really wish I could write this with Twelve, but I'm not going there while we don't know who he really is.

Remember: this was speed-written by a non-native English speaker. Bear with my mistakes.


Also, this has not been proof read. I am not a native English speaker. Bear with my mistakes.

At the end of that first day, the Doctor and Hope had found the control room of the cybermen along with their hostages - the two employees of the bookshop and its owner, one Mr. Bell. They had scanned the whole great London area and disabled all the upgraded mailboxes (not before running against time when the Doctor's first attempt resulted in a countdown to self-detonation). They also had been kidnapped to the cybermen spaceship, ran for dear life while Hope screamed "WE ARE IN SPACE! IN SPACE!", then, the Doctor reversed the polarity of the teletransportation device and they were back to Earth. And of course, as much as he tried, he couldn't make the cybermen turn around and leave, so they ultimately blew up the entire spaceship into smithereens.

That had been one hell of a day for Hope Lightfoot.

It was night by the time they were back on Earth, and after checking up on Mr. Bell and his employees, Hope insisted that they needed some fish and chips. She didn't have to ask twice - the Doctor was all for it.

They walked through the chilly night holding their food close to their chest, while the Doctor complimented her for her bravery and quick thinking and Hope wondered who exactly was that man standing beside her.

They had ultimately ended up in a street corner, where a battered blue police box was standing, and that was when it happened.

The fish and chips was all gone by then, and the Doctor made a 360 degree turn on his heels, very cheerfully, clapped his hands together and pointed them at Hope.

"So, Hope..." he stopped for a bit. "Wait, let me do this properly. What's your last name?"

"Lightfoot" she answered, a bit confused, but thrilled nonetheless.

"Hope Lightfoot!" he clapped his hands together once again, delighted. "So, Hope Lightfoot, I have a question for you".

Hope raised an eyebrow. "Go on", she said.

"Would you, by any chance, be willing to travel with me?" he asked, a huge goofy smile on his face, his eyes bright as the stars.

"Travel? Where?" she wasn't about to say no right away. God knows that the main reason she wasn't in her hometown was that she had told everybody that she didn't need any of that and she was going to travel through Europe all by herself, thank you very much. And that's how Hope got stuck in London. She had never meant to be that way. So if a man who accidentally took you to space asks if you want to travel, you at least wait for him to explain himself.

"Yes, travel!" he leaned on the old fashioned police box.

"In space, you mean?" she asked, tentatively. She didn't want to get her hopes up.

He gave her a knowing smile. "Oh, but it's so much more than that".

"You have your own spaceship?" she asked, excited. "Your very own spaceship?"

"Of course I do, what kind of alien do you take me for?" he replied.

It was Hope's turn to make a 360 degree turn on her heels. "Oh my god! Yes! Wait, wait, hold on". Hope shook her head, confused. "You're an alien?" she gave a once over. Alien?

"Well, of course", he replied, adjusting his bow tie.

"An alien in a bow tie?"

"Something wrong?" Hope could see that he was getting a bit cross at her.

She shrugged. "Can't get any weirder than that, I suppose", and she accepted it. If a giant robotic alien tentacle could crawl out of a mailbox, he might as well be an alien in a bow tie.

The Doctor laughed. "So?" he insisted.

"Yes! Yes! Of course! Where's your spaceship? There'll be like a beam me up light so we can get on board?" she asked, looking up in the night sky.

"Ah, none of that..." and upon Hope's disappointed face, he added: "But fear not, you will be amazed!"

"How do we get there?" she kept asking, looking up in the sky.

"Through the door", he answered, and snapped his fingers.

To Hope's surprise, the police box's door opened, and a faint yellow light tinted the sidewalk.

"What is it?" Hope asked, wary. She was standing beside the police box and couldn't see what was inside it.

The Doctor just gave her a sheepish smile. "It's my spaceship".

"A tiny police box?", she asked, sceptical and just a bit disappointed. They couldn't possibly travel in that.

"Oh, but Hope Lightfoot", he approached her, putting an arm around her shoulders, and squeezing her reassuringly. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Don't judge a box by its size" he said, lightly pulling her in the direction of the opened door.

And that was her very first encounter with the TARDIS.

Needless to say how that came about. She ran inside the TARDIS, then outside, then stared at it for a good while, and then circled it again. The Doctor watched her, delighted.

Now, as they bounced inside the TARDIS, several months after that very first encounter, Hope already felt very at home, despite the Doctor's crazy driving skills. She liked the TARDIS, and she had the suspicion that it liked her as well.

"DOCTOR!" Hope screamed once again. The quacking and rumbling was taking far too long this time. "WHAT IS GOING ON! WHY HAVEN'T WE LANDED YET!"

"IT SEEMS THAT AUSTRALIA IN 1974 HAS A SMALL TIME GLITCH!" he yelled in response, while the TARDIS turned about and wheezed. In a quick motion, the TARDIS cart wheeled. "DID I SAY SMALL?", added the Doctor, grabbing on to the console for dear life.

"BUT YOU PROMISED A SUNNY BEACH MONTHS AGO!" she demanded. That would be the third time they tried a trip to said sunny beach, and it appeared that it would be yet another failed attempt.

The first two times the Doctor promised to take her, he proposed alien beaches, in dreamy sunny planets, and in both times they wind up fighting against dark forces that wanted to either a) enslave an entire planet or b) implode the entire planet. And none of them had beaches.

This time, though, as the Doctor went on about floating islands and crystal clear cascades, Hope had interrupted his ramblings and simplified her request - going to another planet hadn't pan out very well so far, so she chose a very earthling setting: Australia.

But apparently, nothing was as simple with the Doctor (and not that Hope considered time travel as simple).

She lost her grip on the railing and fell on to the floor, quickly grabbing the console. The Doctor fussed about in the console as well, babbling Time science. The TARDIS made the weirdest of noises and the console sparkled and whined, and that told Hope what she needed to know: they were never going to Australia in the seventies.

"DOCTOR!" she yelled, very cross at him, even though this wasn't entirely his fault.

"I KNOW!" he screamed back. She wanted so badly to go to a beach, and he kept going to the wrong places at the wrong time.

And then, out of a sudden, they stopped.

Just like that, they stopped. The TARDIS went very quiet and very still. There was no sound but her usual humming and no motion whatsoever.

Hope got up from the ground and looked at the Doctor. "What did you do?", she asked, a bit worried. The only time she heard the TARDIS go as quiet as that was when the Doctor himself was asleep - which wasn't as often as one would imagine. Hope had some serious insomnia, and after a few months virtually living inside the TARDIS, she became very aware of some fun facts about it. For instance, the TARDIS itself was always a little noisy when the Doctor was awake, even if he pretended to be asleep in his bedroom. That's how she knew he was actually sleeping, when the TARDIS went very, very still and the humming very, very subtle.

That was what was happening, except the Doctor wasn't asleep.

"I didn't do anything" replied the Doctor, as confused as Hope.

"Then what is happening?" she inquired.

"I have no idea" he mumbled, and started typing away in one of the TARDIS keyboard. "Let me see... Aha!" he exclaimed, turning to Hope.

"What?" she asked, expectantly.

"We're stuck".

"What do you mean, 'stuck'?"

"Stuck as in 'we cannot move'"

"I know what 'stuck' means, Doctor..."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Doctor..." she said, as a matter of warning. Her patience was running thin.

"We're stuck in the Time Vortex... The TARDIS must've hit something quite big while travelling through it and now she's recalibrating... It can take a while until we can go anywhere. From the time being, we're adrift".

"Adrift?"

"Yep. In the Time Vortex".

She stared at him, agape. "Does that happen? Getting stuck in a time vortex?"

"As a matter of fact, no, it doesn't" he replied, swinging around in his usual manner, hit this and that button, pulling a lever, until he reached his cushioned chair and sat down. He took a pocket book from inside his jacket and opened it. "I suggest you occupy yourself. This can take a while".

"How long?" Hope asked. She didn't like the idea of being stuck anywhere, really, let alone in someplace she didn't know... whatsoever. If there was anything to know, actually.

"No long" replied the Doctor. "We're in the Time Vortex, Hope. This is no time and no place".

"But... I can feel time passing" she insisted, looking at the TARDIS door.

"I know. Book?" he offered, wiggling his eyebrows.

Hope sighed. That was going to be a long no-time.


A/N: I know I said that we would get to Donna in this chapter, but things didn't pan out as expected. Their talk was postponed to the next one (FOR REAL!). =P