Meeting a Stranger
The blue box was at the edge of the main street left free of rubble thru Andrasier, which was a shattered city now, walls of buildings sticking up on either side of the roads like teeth, now the smell of cordite and explosives was giving way to that of shit, and rotting corpses on the breeze, like everything else the Tardis was covered in dust. I kept walking towards it, I felt numb inside and out, like a ghost but for the unending ache in my head. I was aware of the quiet now, no gunfire, or explosions, just the fall of many feet, and voices low and tired. Now I could begin to hear, like a faint scream echoing inside my skull, what my heart thought of this war. I put my hand on the box, the Doctor had stopped the war. Thank god. It sank in that this thing was at an end. I leant against the box, and slid down to sit. I didn't have to go on any more. I put the rifle down.
The door of the box opened with the most ludicrous cartoon squeak and a little bloke with an impish face and a white hat stuck his head out, he went to say something, then he stopped and just stared at me with intense grey eyes,
"You're Kate, aren't you?" His voice was soft, melodic, scottish, beautiful, who was this man?
I nodded dumbly. He extended a hand to me, "Come on." He pulled me up, and through the doors, into a bloody odd, white room with half-spheres on the walls, so completely unlike the cavernous, organic structure I was used to I gaped at it, dumbfounded, "70's night?" it came out a croak, and I coughed, he put a hand under my elbow,
"I think you'd better come and sit down, I'll put the kettle on."
I went willingly.
When the strange little man turned around and put the tea on the table I caught sight of his jumper under the linen jacket, it appeared to have question marks knitted into it, I blinked, my eyes blurring, surely not. It was good tea, then he offered me food, even numb, I was ravenous, then he took me down the corridor and pushed me into a shower, the water was hot, but I could hardly feel it, I curled up in the bed next door, damp, and finally safe.
Something I dreamt disturbed me out of sleep, there were clothes about my size stacked on a chair in the room, I wasn't sorry the ragtag collection I'd been wearing was gone, I wandered thru the Tardis, back towards the control room that was just wrong, as I got closer I could hear humming, and tinkering, a dark, curly head bent over the central console as he fiddled with a dial, he looked up, he really was wearing a question mark jumper, he flashed me a smile,
"Ah, you're awake, cup of tea?"
Definitely.
It wasn't just tea, it was nice tea, I was in heaven. He waited til I was on my second before he said,
"You recognise the ship, don't you? The outside? "
Why does bad news always come with the tea? I nodded, and reluctantly put the cup down - in case my hands shook and spilt it,
"But not the interior." I shook my head, here it comes,
"Tardis' get remodelled," he paused, "so do Time-Lords." I stared at him, this man who was (wasn't) the Doctor, oh no fair, Universe, I'd known something was wrong, but this...
"You're a previous..."
"Regeneration." He supplied helpfully. My eyes wanted to burn with tears, he'd done what he could,
"Is it logical, " I said, losing control of my tear ducts, " to miss someone who is here?"
He handed me a big folded hankie, (who actually still uses these things?) and poured me more tea.
"I got a note, " said the strange little man, "left in a place where someone knew I would be. This wasn't an easy point in time to approach, there was a time event here, "something that made a fixed point," he was watching me intently as he talked, "something that must've involved my future self dirrectly in order to prevent that me coming back here." That would explain a lot. "Tell me, " he said, "what were you doing when you got left here?"
"Distributing Encephaline B vaccine. The planetary facilities couldn't produce enough to prevent an outbreak, not on a continental scale, we got the vaccine out, they went to restock, it all went to hell, so quickly it was clearly planned. " I stared at the table top, when the gunships had come whirring out of the skies within a day, dropping huge numbers of bombs, had they expected the population to be sickened and dying? The team of doctors I was with had tried to treat the injured, and in hours were forced to triage. By the day's end I was handed a bulky projectile rifle and told to watch for gunships. And I did. But only bigger ordnance was really effective in bringing them down. Then came the ground troops, and scrappy, disorganised fighting. Guarding the injured, supplies, medics, running and shooting uniformed troops, the man I probably killed with a close quarters blow from my rifle butt, watching the people around me get picked off in the attrition, watching the medic dying covered in blood. The sickness of watching the man I'd shot fold up and fall to the ground, probably not fatally wounded, to die, slowly, untreated, because we couldn't halt, and the supplies were gone. How many had I shot like that?
"I thought so." He said softly, "I think the Conodan government used a prrimitive time travel device to move attack forces into position at the moment of what should have been the peak of the epidemic, they expected to walk in over a devastated population, and then you and my future self arrived and rather put a kink in their plans. I think my future self's' Tardis may have been in transit when the Conodan device was operated, and by the time residue, I think it may have malfunctioned rrather permanently. It probably damaged the Tardis as well." he said thoughtfully.
"I don't know when I'm going to cross my future self's path again." He said gently. "It's dangerous to cross your own timeline, the consequences can be dire."
I was abruptly afraid I was going to start crying again. I might never see my Doctor again, that brilliant brooding giant, all sharp wit and kindness. My eyes started to overflow, I looked at the man in front of me, the same essence with a different psyche layed over the top, but it was the Doctor.
"There's something unusual about you, Kate." I nodded, wiped the tears off my face, "You are Earth Human?"
"Yeah." I sniffed, swallowed. "Some plank named Richard Lazarus built a hypersonic genetic manipulator, didn't do a very good job of it, I got caught in the explosion. " The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "It destabilised his genes, he turned into something nasty, I ran into your future self before I did, thankfully,.."
"He used his own DNA to stabilise you?" He looked shocked, scandalised, actually, aghast,
"Yup." I wondered how long it was since anything had rendered the Doctor speechless.
"But that's.. the High Council..the Time-Lords..." Oh crap, he was sputtering, I can't tell him, no, I mustn't tell him, too cruel, and a future he doesn't know, must not know. Oh hell. How do I keep this from him?
It was way too late, he was staring at me, had read the lot on my face,
"Something happened, didn't it?"
I cannot tell this man his whole species is dead. Will die. I stared resolutely down at the table, it had been such a throw-away comment the way my Doctor had said it, "Last of the Time-Lords, me." I felt like an executioner. A cool hand took my chin, tho I resisted, turned my face up towards him, I stared down,
"I need to know, if this can be averted, if it's a disaster.." He trailed off, I don't think he really believed that,
"You shouldn't know. I don't know any details." This was bloody torture I was inflicting on him, either way.
"Kate." His voice had a hard edge to it, I felt almost a pressure on my mind, "What did my future self say?"
"Almost nothing. But he felt grief, anger, sadness, but no self recrimination, no doubt. " I looked up at him, it was all I had to offer.
He dropped his hand, "Well,.." sat back down preoccupied.
I sat outside the Tardis, I don't think he even noticed when I left. What a fucking horrible situation, I'd lost the Doctor I cared for, and hurt another badly, and the terrible things I'd done in the war were replaying increasingly clearly behind my eyes. If my Doctor hadn't fixed my head I don't think I would have stood it. I couldn't bear to go back in, so I decided to see if there was a medic station or clear up squad that could use me, for as long as I could keep going. Something grabbed my arm before I got more than a few paces, yanked me back so hard I stumbled into someone's arms, a soft scottish voice said in my ear, "Oh no you don't, you were of great importance to my future self, you're not getting away that easily."
And he turned me round and walked me back into the Tardis. He slapped the hat and brolly on a hatstand inside, towed me back to the kitchen. He didn't look happy, but he didn't look angry, which was a relief, he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and started to cook,
"Now, let's see, sausages, bacon, eggs.."
"No meat. Please." I said. A daft request, perhaps, in the middle of the fighting I'd eaten what I could get, but now- there was time for choice again. When he put a plate in front of me, he said, "Plant protein." I was grateful.
"I've got a few things to finish up here," that'd be the Conodan time machine, then, "you should stay here and rest." I nodded, found my way surprisingly easily to the room I'd occupied last night, I was not at peace, but I was weary.
I woke up with an anguished yell, trapped between conscious and unconscious images of death I'd seen and dealt, I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes wailing, rocking, as if that would drive the knowledge from my head, someone wrapped an arm around me, "Kate, easy, easy now." There was a sensation of pressure and the sudden image on my retinas of the crystal desert of Ryanax, and then something, and the terrible Atraxian images began to fade, lose immediacy and focus, til they were almost gone, like forgotten photographs. I was left gasping for air, shivering, in the Doctor's arms. "It's alright, Kate, you'll be able to sleep now." He let me lie down, touched my head, and I began to slide into blank, empty rest.
He stared down at her as she slid into induced sleep. "You sent me a message." He said softly, "You knew I would find out when you sent me there to stop the escalating war," He leaned forward and replaced his hand on her head, "now lets see what you had to say..."
The Tardis was still, with only a quiet hum, when I woke, the console room was empty. "With just the running lights on." Said my lost Doctor in my head, with a wry grin plastered across his broken-nosed, big-eared face. [Where was he?] I wandered around the strange boxy console room, I recognised the readings for the vortex, and the relative elapsed time since take off as 21659 seconds, just over six earth hours, my eyes strayed to the last materialisation co-ords 1001100,02, definitely not Atraxia. I searched for the information query sequence below a small screen, couldn't find it, punched for previous destination, 844625,03, I wasn't sure but that looked like the Atraxian co-ords, but the elapsed time was 129579 seconds, nearly three days? What was going on? I walked through into the kitchen, also deserted, no signs of use. I didn't feel like I'd slept for three days, something was amiss. I looked up-this Tardis didn't know me-but I knew what to do, "Clear your mind, formulate the question, feel there for the response." Instructed the Doctor is my head. I imagined the dark void of space, then sent a location query into the ship-presence, "Where is he?" The reply made me jerk, it took a moment to separate the responses: surprise, mild alarm, distress pertaining to the Doctor. I couldn't place the location, so I asked again, it came back more clearly this time: on the ship, on a hillside. Somewhere inside the ship. I started walking down the corridor to see if the Tardis would lead me there, but the Doctor met me coming the other way, sober looking, hands in pockets, he didn't look pleased to see me. So that was it.
"Not many people can do that," he said, "communicate with the Tardis."
"He showed me. You found the details in my mind didn't you?" His eyes unfocused, and his expression tightened, there looked to be anger there, and pain and despair. I sighed and hung my head, "I would have spared you that, if I could." I looked at him, "But I would have looked too."
"I know." He said, and took my arm, walked us toward the kitchen.
I almost didn't want to drink the tea at this point, afraid I'd always associate it with terrible memories, but I drank, it was a small comfort.
"What are you going to do?" I said,
"I don't know." he said quietly,
"Those co-ords, they're your planet, aren't they?" He looked grim, and said nothing. "It's going to be a time war, with you lot involved, and it's probably going to end up a fixed point, and the other side's probably dead as well." He stared at me, "My Doctor wasn't running, or out gunning for revenge. I suppose you can affect it up until it's a fixed point." I said thoughtfully. "What's your list of bad guys?" He was staring at me in astonishment,
"How did you come to those conclusions?" he growled, I blinked at him,
"It was ...obvious." I shrugged, "The most likely scenario, given what little I know."
The Doctor hummed non-committally and regarded me with unreadable grey eyes, the silence lengthened, it appeared our conversation was at an end..