A/n: Many apologies for the weird upload of this chapter. All fixed now!
Steady as the Beating Drum
Chapter 2: The Tardis is Always Right
x
"Is there any particular reason you're being obstinate today or is it just that time of the month?!" the Doctor demanded of the Tardis as he was almost thrown from the controls.
The Tardis rumbled in its outrage. The deck around the console vibrated beneath his feet. Spanners shook themselves off their perches and clattered to the floor.
"You're right, I'm sorry. That was rude. Almost as rude as the hunk of junk ship of mine not doing as I say!"
In his mind's eye the Doctor saw Clara's stern face. She'd have pursed her lips and demanded he stop shouting.
A whir, as if to say 'when have I ever done as you've said?'
Behind him the door flew open, slamming against the wall with a resounding bang. "What's outside?"
More sassy whirring.
"Now don't give me that. I'm in no mood."
'One last adventure, you and me Doctor.'
The lights flickered and the Doctor shook his head and decided it was likely best to just do as the old girl said. Happy wife, happy life and all that.
The doctor took a tentative step outside, expecting wonders, horrors, or both, only to find himself standing at a bus stop that smelled like 21st century London. Behind him, the door to the Tardis slammed shut, smacking him on the bottom and causing him to pitch forward into the street.
"Oi mate, what the bloody hell do you think yer doin'!?" Shouted the bus driver who'd had to break suddenly to avoid splattering him across the pavement. This body was new yet; it would be a waste to lose it so soon.
With a backward glance at the Tardis and a huff whistling through his nose, the Doctor searched his pockets for the Oyster Card that Clara had given him and boarded the bus.
Surreptitiously, he glanced around. It was the early bus. The keener businesspeople, nurses and teenagers with coffee shop uniforms made up the population of commuters. He took a seat and systematically parsed out each individual, wondering what was so special about this hour and the 206 busline.
The stormy blue of his gaze fell on the woman seated directly across from him. She was engrossed in the crossword on her lap and was chewing the cap of a blue ink pen into flatness. Her red hair glistened in the early morning sunlight and her lips were pursed in concentration. He wished she would look up so he could meet her eyes.
There, not two feet from his knees sat Donna Noble. In all the universe; time and space alike, here she was, looking the same as ever.
Was this why the Tardis brought him here?
"Excuse me," he found himself saying curtly.
Donna didn't look up.
He cleared his throat loudly. The entire population of the bus looked up, excluding Donna.
A teenage boy in a cap emblazoned with the Starbucks logo nudged Donna out of her reverie. She looked up at the youth, scowling. He nodded his head in the Doctor's direction, which shifted Donna's irritation onto him.
"Allo," he muttered with an awkward perfunctory wave.
Donna's eyes widened and in the span of a moment narrowed into slits. She gave a sarcastically enthusiastic swipe of her hand through the air before rolling her eyes and returning to drumming the pen in a familiar beat against her lips.
"I was just, uh..." What exactly did he think he was doing? She was a friend from another lifetime entirely. It had been almost a hundred years for him since... Well, since. What good would this do? Did the Tardis think he was lonely? Was she telling him to quit his whining? 'Buck up, this isn't lonely. THIS is lonely. Now stop moping.'?
He'd been a wreck for the rest of that regeneration and beyond. The new man who had walked away had taken that baggage with him, and handed it off to good old Twelve it seemed.
Donna was still looking at him.
"Uh, four down is pentagon."
"Agatha Christie's Dictaphone victim is a pentagon is it?" She retorted before showing him her completed puzzle. 'Roger Ackroyd' written neatly in the boxes of 4-down.
At the next stop she jumped to her feet and got off.
The doctor remained in his seat until the end of the line. The bus terminal was in the center of the technological district and directly across from it was Uto-tech.
"Well. This is a bit of a letdown."
The familiar wheezing of the Tardis materializing sounded to his left. She had parked herself between two trees planted for the beautification of the city. "Great field trip," he told her with an eyeroll, "it could be worse, wouldn't someone's grave be nicer? More tongue in cheek I'd say. You know, I wasn't moping. I do not mope. I can manage just fine on my own."
Wheezing from the rafters.
"Come along-ooooh," he smacked his lips and clucked his tongue, "those words do not taste right anymore. Onwards to the rift in Cardiff. Piloting yourself could not have been good for your energy stores."
Whizzing from the transducing anti-displacement mechanism.
"Oi, don't you get sharp with me. Who decided to nip from one end of the universe to Chiswick? It certainly wasn't me."
X
The doctor hadn't planned on exiting the Tardis. It was Cardiff after all. But the compunction of his earlier encounter made him restless.
He burst through the door into the open air near the docks where the old Torchwood headquarters had been. Directly in his line of vision was a tall cubic warehouse lined with puce metal sheets that rusted at the edges. Snow piled on the flat roof and fell like melted white chocolate down the sides. Written in enormous letters across the side of the building was Uto-tech.
"Hm," hummed the Doctor. Perhaps the Tardis hadn't gone sap on him afterall.
He couldn't very well look it up in the Tardis database, lest he make them Ending the World a fixed point, a buttress on which the universe would stand and weep.
So the Oncoming Storm walked down the street to a café and stood imposingly over a teenaged boy's shoulder until he relinquished his laptop to him. With a click he closed the tabs for reddit and the hidden tab for 'Big Cocks' then went to work.
The CEO was a Dr. Masie Smith. The article described her philanthropic past as an organizer for Doctors Without Borders and her meteoric and unlikely rise up the corporate ladder of Uto-tech to become the owner's successor once the company became public. It was accompanied by a picture of a smiling black woman in her mid-thirties with a wide smile, full lips and strikingly large eyes.
Well she couldn't very well be real now could she.
With a terse "Thanks," he left the youth to his gross public indecency and made for a payphone.
The Doctor soon learned that it was a difficult thing to contact a CEO directly. Calling the corporate office gave him very little luck and the outsourced customer service representative seemed flustered at being asked what exactly they did there.
Eventually he gave up the reigns of the search to the Tardis' superior ability to just telepathically know how to find exactly what he was looking for.
What he was looking for chilled him to the bone.
"Dr. Smith's office, Donna speaking. What can I do for you today?"
Hm.
a/n: Clara grows on me more and more with every episode in her season with Capaldi. I'm a little disappointed that I can't keep her on as a primary companion for this story. But the plot goeth as it wishes… We'll learn her fate at some point and it'll play an important role later.
I'd really like to know what you guys think of the story. I'd also really like some help with the summary; if anyone's got a better suggestion I'd really appreciate it!