-Chapter 2-
"This," the Doctor began, holding up a piece of something - maybe a whisk? - "is the TARDIS." He beamed and then frowned and then stroked the half-beard he had grown in the past two weeks of ranting, frenzied silence. Behind him was what resembled a small table in the soil. Well, a table only if one didn't particularly care that it was too steeply slanted for any cups or food to stand upon without tumbling to the ground. Melody shrugged inwardly. At least he was talking to her instead of at her general vicinity for the first time in a week.
The Doctor frowned as if something about his own words had turned sour in his mouth.
"Well," he went on, "it would be if - it's rather complicated - do you know about cells?"
Melody did. She brightened.
"Smaller division of terrorist groups. Best dealt with through total annihilation by military forces given lethal sanctions covertly, providing deniability to government or church officials." Melody didn't know where the words had come from, but she did know that they were right. She was rather clever, wasn't she? The Doctor's frown deepened. He must have not known about cells.
"Ah," he started, and then, "I meant more in the biological sense."
"What does that word mean?" Melody asked. Did words often have more than one meaning?
"Biological?" the Doctor looked at Melody for a long time without answering, as if seeing her for the first time, "it means life. Didn't they teach you about life?"
"Didn't who teach me about life?" Melody was puzzled.
"The people who," the Doctor started and then sat down, dropping the whisk – the cell – letting it fall into the thick, partially burnt soil which characterized the clearing in the middle of blue forest where the Doctor's ship – the TARDIS – the debris of the TARDIS – crashed. Or perhaps, the clearing the ship had created into which to crash. Earlier the Doctor had muttered something about a four dimensional impact. The Doctor finished, distantly, "made you."
"My parents?" Melody sat down beside him, leaning against the tweed of his jacket. He was a funny, sad man, but he meant well, this funny old – why did he look so young? – man. The Doctor didn't respond at first.
"Do you ever get dreams or hear voices?" the Doctor tried again. Melody's stomach lurched. She did. All the time.
"No," Melody lied. The Doctor laughed. Not believing her. But it was a good natured laugh, as if Melody's lie was just making a game more interesting. Suddenly the Doctor rolled his weight back onto his arms, standing up as abruptly as he had sat. Honestly, could this Doctor not make up his mind? The Doctor shrugged off his jacket. Melody had never realized just how pink the shirt underneath was, or noticed the bright red straps which attached his trousers to his shoulders.
The Doctor began to stretch. First putting his arms behind his neck, then touching his toes. He squatted and took deep, loud breaths, as if preparing for a sprint.
"Let's fight," the Doctor said.
Melody gaped.
"You're joking," Melody began as a booted kick glanced past her head. Dangerously close and at full force. Maybe he wasn't.
"Right," the Doctor stopped his fluid movements as quickly as they had begun. His awkward, slumping posture returning in a blink. "Shoes! Sorry," The Doctor apologized, falling to a sitting position. He undid the laces to his boots with a painstaking focus that would have looked fastidious on any other grown adult. But Melody's weeks with the Doctor, quiet, sad weeks, woefully bereft of the kind of information or reunions this man had promised, had firmly characterized this man to Melody as one who would spend as much concentration on untying a shoelace as reassembling the cells of a living ship.
The Doctor finished untying his boots and placed them, with delicate care, alongside his folded professor's jacket.
Then he stood to face Melody.
Once more, the Doctor's entire body language changed in a moment from the bumbling grace of an idiot savant to the dangerous waiting of a trained fighter. Could Melody read body language? That was new.
Or was it?
'Didn't they teach you about life?' the Doctor had asked. Who were they? Had Melody's dreams of the white room been more than dreams? The lines were so blurry and Melody had had so many dreams after breaking her suit. Dreams of a woman with an eye-patch and dreams of men in black suits. Well, not men. Things that watched and clicked and waited. What had they done to her?
What was the Doctor planning to do? Surely not hand her back to some idyllic parents to live forever after in fairytale bliss. Melody did not know who had been teaching her, but she had certainly learned that those sorts of things didn't happen.
"Is this about those chicken-looking-lizard-things I bring back?" Melody tried to be the joking one of the two for a change. "Look, I know you're a vegetarian, you made that more than clear the first night. But I need to eat." A punch whipped out of the Doctor and into Melody's shoulder. Hard but restrained, as if probing to see how Melody would react.
Melody reacted by ignoring the pain, becoming cross, and falling into a stance she did not recognize. The Doctor smiled. He sidestepped a kick that, Melody realized as soon as she performed it, might have knocked off the Doctor's head if it had connected.
"You don't need to eat," the Doctor blocked Melody's following punch with ease and tried not to show how much it hurt. He failed. "Ouch," he said, but his smile never left his eyes, "you shouldn't need to eat. Your connection to the time stream should sustain you for the most part. Maybe a meal every other decade? That's the norm. Your body is most likely suffering from delusions of humanity. Understandable, but it's something we need to work on." He finished and returned Melody's punch. Melody got her block up this time. She had it up almost before he had moved to strike.
How did that happen?
The Doctor's smile grew, but he did nothing to relent or cede his advantage. He delivered a punch, a throw, and four light kicks with an unconcerned swagger. Half of them even connected. That was beginning to annoy Melody. If the Doctor was going to win whatever this was, shouldn't he try to take it seriously?
"You're not dressed for this." Melody didn't know if she was trying to distract the Doctor, hurt his feelings, or end this fighting through logic. Her comment did none of the above. Melody barely got out of the way of another set of kicks that would have knocked her into the blue tree behind her if it had touched her. The young girl was put off-stance, but the Doctor had his back to her now. A foolish move.
"Oh, I've done this in a cape and frock," the Doctor laughed. "Suspenders and a bow-tie? It gives me range!" Melody launched into a kick, putting all of her strength behind it. Without even looking, the Doctor caught Melody's kick and slammed her into the soft soil of the clearing. He stopped, not letting go. Melody panted.
"Now," the Doctor started after a pause, "how did I do that?"
"You read my body language," Melody insisted, cross, but knew the Doctor had been looking the other way.
"No," the Doctor smiled as if he were oh-so-clever, "I looked into the future."
"That's impossible," Melody almost shouted. Stupid lies and fighting. This was the worst day. Of course, it could have just been how spectacularly Melody had lost that had her on edge. Why did that matter? Melody had never been in a fight before a few weeks ago.
Maybe. Probably not.
"No, it's just unwise," the Doctor let go of Melody's ankle and let her fall onto the soil. He sat before her, himself panting a little bit. The effort made Melody feel a little better. Only a little.
"Someone taught you Venusian Aikido," the Doctor told Melody. His eyes didn't match the stern expression the rest of his face was attempting. "I don't know if they had a copy of my old UNIT file or if they just had the same rather brilliant idea that I did."
"What's Venusian Aikido?" Melody asked and then cursed herself for being so on cue.
"It's a fighting style practiced by Venusians," the Doctor replied, mocking Melody's obvious question. And then, "No, we're not Venusians. It takes two things to be any good at Venusian Aikido: four arms and precognitive aptitude. As Time Lords, we have enough of the latter to make up for our regrettable lack of the former."
"I can see into the future?" Melody was going to need to stop asking the obvious questions. But then, it was the first time the Doctor had been interested in imparting actual answers since the day she had met him on the rooftops of New York, worlds away.
"Your body can," the Doctor looked at Melody carefully. "If you work at it, you can too. But it isn't advised. It messes with causality which, if not a hard, fast rule, is an advisable ideal. It can also make you a bit," he swirled his finger around his temple to indicate that it could make you a total loon. Melody wondered if the Doctor had seen into the future too much.
"But the exercises and forms which characterize Venusian Aikido are designed to subconsciously unlock your precognitive abilities. Not too much. Just enough to turn a hit into a block or a block into a parry. Your forms are sloppy, but you're only just remembering them." The Doctor looked at her sympathetically, a look that Melody realized was devoid of condescension. He was that kind of man, Melody thought, if nothing else.
"That said, your enhanced strength, speed, and reaction time more than make up for it." It was the first time that the Doctor had mentioned anything different about Melody in terms other than 'Time Lord'.
"I thought this was because I was like you," Melody started. Feeling slightly betrayed.
"Oh," the Doctor didn't seem perturbed. "I'm sure it's possible because you're a Time Lord, but the same process which made you one somehow changed the fundamentals of your connection with the time stream. I don't know if whoever did this to you was brilliant or a total idiot. Probably both. You've regenerated twice since we've been on Alfalfa-Matraxis. What does that put you at? Seven? Eight?"
The Doctor looked at her. Just a creep of worry on his brow. As if he was asking something important but didn't want to commit to the implications of what Melody's answer might mean.
"Thirty-seven," Melody replied. The Doctor almost choked, fully back into the transparent, bumbling manner in which he normally held himself. For the first time, Melody wondered if it was a choice.
"Perfectly normal," the Doctor was distant and obviously lying. "But maybe we could get it down to once every few centuries. Probably better for your... life-force."
"Like the TARDIS?" Melody tried to change the subject, even though her mention of the Doctor's crashed ship would more than likely send him into another week-long frenzy, shutting Melody out of his awareness. Again. "Biological?" she added, unsure.
"Hah," the Doctor said, but began to eye the debris around them. Was it just Melody's imagination, or had it grown in the last week? "No, not biological. The Tardis is alive, yes, she exists at all moments in space and time, but she's not bound by any silly qualification on life like 'biological'! Pfah!" The Doctor got up and began rooting around the pieces of crashed ship.
"Why," the Doctor muttered to himself, "if the Tardis was-" he trailed off, continuing his rant in his head.
Melody had lost the Doctor once more. She sighed and was alone.
–
By the time the Minister of Interesting Stuff knocked on the doors to the Master's chambers, the Master had decided that maybe he had been wrong to judge the Alfalfa-Matraxian's efforts at wine making so harshly. Sure, the first few glasses made your throat bleed, but there were sometimes more important qualities in a vintage. Like proof. Eighty proof, to be exact. What wonderfully two-headed idiots, the Master thought and ignored the obvious interruption.
When the knocking persisted, the Master sighed and shouted for the small, old man to come in. The Master didn't recognize him.
"Who is you," the Master asked, distantly but also quite too loudly.
"Half-King," the old man knelt, his twin white beards touching the floor. "I have come. With the interesting 'stuff' that my office charges me to bring."
"Who is you," the Master repeated, a little startled, "and who taughted you Gallifrey... speak?" The old man stood up and stepped back. Was he making a mess of himself? Again? Oh bother, he didn't want to erase someone out of embarrassment. Again.
"Why," the man's right head started, "you did! Over the course of two decades I have been your faithful student and..." he went on, but the Master stopped listening. Had the timeline shifted again, or was he really that drunk? Hrm. The answer was probably a bit of both.
"Fine, fine," the Master stood and interrupted his new/old student. "What is your stuffs?"
"There has been a space-crash, my liege," the old alien started.
"That's not interesting!" the Master almost fell over as he stumbled towards the old man. "That's barely stuffs!" The Master tried to concentrate on killing this man twenty years ago but he was just barely too wrecked to resolve anything concretely. Also, this man was ancient. Twenty years ago it would probably be harder to kill him. The Master sighed and began to contemplate just how he would murder this old, two-headed annoyance. Where was his laser screwdriver?
"My lord," the old man either saw the murderous intention in the Master's eyes or was just officiously eager to please, "this crash has been going on for three weeks! Continuously!"
The Master stopped.
"Did I let you use the things?" the Master needed to keep the timeline straight. That was getting harder and harder.
"I have been attentive at the Gateway, yes," the ancient crone – was crone an acceptable term or was it gender-restricted? – replied, dutifully. As if that technology wasn't supposed to be top secret. What had this version of the Master been up to?
"So it's crashing through space -" the Master began. Sitting down suddenly on the cold iron floor of throne room. Through the drink he barely felt his tailbone bruise.
"And time," the minister finished. The Master scowled. He didn't like being interrupted. But then the force of the words hit him and suddenly none of this tedious Alfalfa-Matraxis nonsense mattered to him anymore.
The Doctor was here!
The Master stood and grinned. Oh, this was Christmas! But wait, what was he doing drunk – oh my, rather sickeningly, embarrassingly drunk – when there was work to be done?
The Master concentrated and burned.
"Ah," the Master said to his rather startled Minister of Interesting Stuff – was his beard less gray and more white now? – and smiled with a wholly new mouth, "that's better. Now come along, whoever you are, we have interesting stuff to attend!"
It was a very good day.