Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Attack Of The Graske

Chapter 5 – Another Invasion?

"Wouldn't think I'd be running into anyone up here," the Doctor continued as he leaned his elbows against the railing above me, casting an amused – why amused, why? – glance down at me. Brown-spiky hair, coat all the way down to his ankles, just allowing enough room for cherry red trainers to poke out into the world. Naturally, his hands were in his pockets.

No. Absolutely not. Any Doctor but this one. I refused to deal with Ten's baggage and the near equal amount of baggage I'd be bringing to the party myself thanks to him being stuck with that face and that voice, not to even begin the process of considering Rose fucking Tyler's inclusion into that mess.

The whole thing was just an unending chain of nightmares and stress just waiting to happen.

To give a sense of scale to how much I didn't want to deal with this - I would take the Time War over dealing with Ten. Hell, I couldn't even use Seven as a comparison point for where my bullshit quota would be instantly exceeded because I liked him despite the tendency towards excessive levels of interpersonal bullshit. The fact that I lived with a version of him didn't hurt either for knowing how well cohabitation there would likely go.

Ten didn't have that saving grace. No, he came with active handicaps, ones that promised to leave me rattled for days even if this was our only interaction.

But I couldn't reasonably hold them against him. He didn't know the first thing about the trauma tied to an appearance he had no say in having and I couldn't honestly hold things that he hadn't done yet against him - which left only personality as an area of active complaint and... well, being kind of obnoxious wasn't a crime.

On the other hand, I could still worry. Did he know who or what I was already? Was I going to be captured and defanged before being thrown into the singularity of a black hole to prevent my 'unnatural presence' from perverting the universe? Or had my 'patron' so generously manipulated events to make sure that the Doctor would be thrown into my path with a pre-ordained interest in my existence without any clear reason to do so?

"Not that I can blame you; I love a good rooftop," the Doctor continued, blissfully ignorant of my internal freakout less than three feet away. "Excellent place for people watching, catching the breeze, and pondering the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."

My mouth engaged before my brain. "42."

The answer was automatic, pure reflex in the range of 'stupid, stupid references'. Still it was spoken aloud, so he blinked and looked down at me.

"What?"

"42," I repeated slowly, trying to get some moisture back in my mouth while stopping my hands from jittering in a way that couldn't be ascribed to the cold, "is the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything according to a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy authored by one Douglas Adams. One of the… you could call them subplots, I guess… is about these aliens who built this great big computer called 'Deep Thought' that they've set to solving the ultimate question. Seven and a half million years later, it gives them the answer of 42."

"Oh." An awkward silence began to fall like a drunk down a crooked staircase before the Doctor suddenly spoke again. "How would you rate the book?"

"Pretty good. Nobody really strings a sentence together like Douglas Adams and there's the marrying of the utter ridiculousness of a truly random universe to a good mix of horror, humor, and heart," I replied, still freaking out a little, though the absurdity was numbing the most immediate fear of Time Lord 'justice' as it became clearer that this was just a regular conversation. "Ah, Oh, and lots of bathos. Bathos is good."

Well, as regular a conversation as such things got for people like us, anyway, between him being a traumatized time-traveling alien genius and me being the cosmically complicated person still on the edge of a PTSD attack because of the sound of his voice.

The awkward silence was back.

"So," the Doctor finally said. "An American in London during the Holidays. Whatever happened to 'I'll be home for Christmas'?"

Well, no home, for one, as my hands clenched around the rail hard enough to creak. Not without my companions and they weren't people I could risk here.

"Never liked that song," I muttered as I pulled myself upright. "Gets played to death as soon as the snow starts flying."

The Doctor was still staring. Watching me with eyes set in a face uncomfortably familiar in all the worst ways, even if the expression was slightly too open to ever pass for anything Kilgrave would have worn.

"No, I'm not going 'home' for Christmas, if that's the question you're so desperate to know the answer to," I finally said. Not unless I pulled one of my properties into existence here, like the Baker Street place or the House of Mystery... and the last, being a magic based anomaly, wasn't really an option.

221A Baker Street was, but without anyone to physically share it with beyond the eternal housekeeper, there wasn't a lot of appeal in favor of using it either.

"No place to stay?" he asked. "No friend to offer up the use of a sofa?" The Doctor tilted his head to the side. "Sounds awfully lonely."

"Yeah. That's nothing new." Lonely was best staved off by staying busy and distracted, not by wallowing in the pitying glances of one of the few beings remotely similar to me without being monstrous about it. "And it's not that big a deal; I'm hardly what anyone would call a 'social butterfly'."

That title belonged to other friends. People like Selby. I was just the moth that fluttered silently behind, entranced by the light.

I stepped away from the Doctor, spreading my arms wide as I walked along an imaginary balance beam, placing my feet heel-to-toe as I widened the distance. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a very familiar blue, boxy shape hidden just behind the roof access.

So tangled up in my own internal drama that I'd missed that unmistakable sound of materialization? Or maybe her perception filters and my own dimness had been enough.

For a moment, I'd almost expected someone to interrupt me, to tell me to drop the self-loathing. And then I remembered that I was still alone.

"Besides, some people are just better off alone," I said, faking bright neutrality as I turned around to face the Doctor again. "So, instead of asking 'what sort of girl spends Christmas alone on a rooftop', the question should be 'what sort of man sees that girl spending Christmas alone on a rooftop and thinks, 'ah well, might as well intrude'?'"

My brief imitation of his accent brushed aside – how well it would have gone down if I had perfectly imitated his voice would have unanswered, but the act itself would probably leave a bad taste in my mouth for weeks after –, the Doctor stood up, hands still shoved deep into his pockets.

"Well, many could and would argue that intruding is a bit of a hobby for me. Maybe even a bit of a lifestyle. Intru da door, intru da window," his smile widened a bit more as he added, "Occasionally intru da ceiling, but I can't say I really recommend that one, 'cause if you don't stick the landing just right you just end up with a twisted ankle and a bill for a new skylight."

My mouth twitched towards a smile and I let it. It was just a twitch, but I had to give the Doctor that much - they always had charisma going for them, regardless of the regeneration.

The Tenth Doctor especially had the sort of bubbly charisma that sucked people in, either the passionate boiling geyser of righteous fury or the steady stream of focused intent... or the tickle of carbonation behind your nose when he was in a lighter mood.

It was almost physically impossible not to like him on some level and, unless you kept your sense of perspective in hand, it was easy to get dazzled by the spectacle of the present moment and forget the quieter, less appealing aspects of his character until they came out of hiding, reared back, and caved someone's head in.

Still, I'd met worse. Infinitely worse, with and without the ability to spread that around the entirety of time and space. And I was no saint myself - I was probably a match for the Tenth Doctor in terms of vindictiveness and temper, but I kept those on a tight leash.

...maybe that's why I didn't want to be on the same roof as him.

"Must do a lot of running if you're constantly bursting into places," I said, still holding onto that fake neutrality. "Ever take a flying leap out of a second story window?"

Why the fuck did I phrase that like I was suggesting he do that right now?

Thankfully, the implied 'fuck off' seemed to breeze past him. "Oh, yes, and higher as well. Always important to know how to make your own zip-lines and parachutes, that's what I say. That's right up there behind regular cardio and escapology in my book," the Doctor said before tilting his head at me. "Care to take the extended course?"

What.

"Is that an invitation to… go with you?" I asked, partially to avoid saying 'no' and because I wasn't entirely sure the Time Lord hadn't just told me to start running.

"No, I'm advertising a correspondence course," the Doctor replied flatly before slipping back into his usual energetic state. "Of course it's an invitation! I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't. So, do you want to come with me?"

The chance to take a trip of a lifetime, to see the ghosts of the past, aliens from the future, and see what a TARDIS was truly like, instead of working off of Zeke's memory and a TV show I'd watched front to back.

Sure, I'd time traveled before - lots of times before -, seen alien worlds, done all sorts of crazy dangerous things… but this was different. They were all different, I supposed. Every alien, every sentient ship, every universe… nothing was ever fully the same, no matter how many iterations of a concept, there was always something unique in the experience.

A thousand lifetimes or more ago, I might have said no, too scared to mess something up, too intimidated by the prospect of fumbling a timeline that was supposed to go a certain way. Another me from the same time might have said yes, entirely ready to indulge the fan fantasy of seeing the real thing and going to all kinds of strange places for even stranger adventures.

The me that was now? That me was torn, again between the fan - tamer now, but still there - and a trauma that was still too fresh in my memory to just ignore. How could I enjoy those adventures on alien worlds if it was in the company of someone who sounded and looked like a man who had burned himself into my memory and still gave me nightmares years after the fact?

...fuck it. I wasn't going to judge the Doctor by Kilgrave's measure. That wasn't fair to either of us.

"Why not?" I finally said with a shrug too relaxed to match how I was feeling. "I might see something new."

And maybe keep Ten's worst impulses in check while I was at it. I wasn't some easily dazzled kid anymore, after all.

The Doctor smiled before motioning for me to follow him to the TARDIS.

"So you think you've seen it all, then?" he asked as he reached the doors, looking over his shoulder at me. Gauging the distance between me and the TARDIS, as if waiting for the opportune moment to open that door and hear the words 'it's bigger on the inside'. "Everything that this little blue ball hurtling through time and space could ever offer?"

The smile turned into the sort that graced the lips of hungry sphinxes; the superior feeling of holding a puzzle in his hands that could only be solved by a clever twist of the wrist known only to himself, one that he would be unveiling in a moment.

"Think again."

The door was opened.

My jaw fell slack and my eyes widened as my feet, moving on automatic reflex than any deliberate action, carried me inside.

Oh god, she was beautiful.

For all my misgivings and worries about the Tenth Doctor, none of them had ever related to his TARDIS.

For all the coral theme slash grunge phase was supposed to be unspeakably tacky to the point where even the leopard skin was better, I loved it. The colors were warm and alien, but alien in a way that felt like a home away from home. Given, I'd grown up in a 1970's time capsule owned by a small-time hoarder, but unlike that mess of a house where half the rooms were unfit for habitation, the TARDIS aesthetic wasn't just functional, it was wonderful.

And to stand there in person, breathing in the charged particles in her air…

Oh, what she might have looked like I'd gotten my first look at her without my limiter, because this was already the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen.

The Doctor grinned, holding his laughter behind his teeth as he watched the girl go through the different stages of amazement.

Oh, there really was nothing like that first look. Nobody ever did it quite the same - he still remembered Sergeant Benton's quietly overwhelmed reaction particularly clearly - but it was the ones that looked at his TARDIS like the wonder she was that were his favorite.

This one - oh, he hadn't asked her name yet, that was a bit rude - was going to be a highlight even among those; the guarded, tired tension and wound-tight nerves that'd been his first impression giving way to spinning, arms wide and eyes fixed on the ceiling like it was showing off the most spectacular light show available on Earth and it was on her to drink in as much of it as possible at once, eyes dancing around the coral struts and the geometries of the eternally mysterious roundels...

And the smile. Oh, that was the best part. Too big to be contained, too honestly delighted to be anything remotely fake. It wasn't often that the Doctor got to just cure someone's depression, but - for the moment at least - he'd managed it with this random human.

And that, as far as Christmas miracles went, seemed like a job fairly well done.

"So, what do you think?" he asked as he walked around her to the console, leaning back against the controls, crossing one leg over the other and folding his arms in the very portrait of confidence. "Have I struck you speechless?"

The excitement faltered as the girl focused on him again. "You want… a speech?"

"Well, I don't mean to brag…" The Time Lord gestured at the console room around them. "But most people comment on the size."

There was a beat as she stared at him, the silent question of 'are you serious' plainly written in her eyes.

The Doctor made a little 'go on' motion.

There was a vague roll of the eyes and then -

"Oh - my - GOD!" she shouted, pulling up her voice a lot louder and deeper than the Doctor had expected for her size. "It's bigger! On the inside?" She gestured theatrically from the time rotor to the door with a boggle eyed look of disbelief. "Than it is… on the outside?!"

Wait, wait. That was a lot more Scottish than it should have been - and actually a fair imitation of a Glaswegian accent at that, even if there were far more dramatic pauses than generally required.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked.

"My entire understanding of physical space has been transformed!" the girl cried as she threw herself dramatically over one of the coral struts.

'Taking the piss out of you, I would wager,' his Fourth said, sounding entirely too entertained by the scene. 'Look at her go.'

Yes. The girl had released her grip on the TARDIS coral, her energies now focused on flinging her hands everywhere as she spun, as if she was trying to point at every corner of the TARDIS at once through force of speed and random chance alone.

"Three-dimensional Euclidean geometry has been torn up, thrown into the air, and snogged to death!"

The Doctor wondered if he should try to interrupt.

'Don't. I want to see how far she can take the bit,' his Fifth said, sounding almost as engrossed in the show as Four. 'I don't know how much steam is left in it, but I think there has to be at least one more…'

"My grasp of the universal constraints of physical reality has been changed…!"

'Bit of unapologetic ham on stolen bannock bread to throw in my face?' the Doctor finished, only to find himself jumping as the girl flung herself at the railing in front of him, dark eyes locking onto his like vice grips as the smack of flesh on metal echoed.

"Forever," she finished in a stage whisper, the tip of her nose barely three inches away from his, letting him just barely catch the scent of cocoa on her breath.

The Doctor waited a moment, not even daring to blink or breathe. And then waited another, just in case the first was just another drawn out pause that would soon be shattered by another dramatic declaration of just how impossible the TARDIS was.

There wasn't, but...

"Are you done now?" he finally asked, figuring it was better to check anyway.

She stood upright, the dramatically overblown wonder tucked away for a fairly dull neutral expression. "Yes."

"You're supposed to stop with 'it's bigger on the inside'."

Neutrality gave way to a lopsided smirk that seemed equal parts rueful to unrepentant. "Well, you wanted it done properly," she said, still not fully shed of the Glasgow accent yet.

The Doctor had to concede that point. However… "Most people settle for just 'it's bigger on the inside'."

"She's smaller on the outside and looks like the inside of an artisanal bong. You like that better?"

'...she isn't wrong.'

"And here I thought you liked the old girl," the Doctor groused.

"I do. She's gorgeous," she said, standing back upright. "But I'm still not clear on why a guy like you is pulling a girl like me into a lovely space-age beauty like this for. It can't be to prop up your ego, is it?"

"Oi, my ego's fine, I just needed a little help with something," the Doctor said as he turned back to the console, tapping away at the old typewriter before pulling the view screen around. "Specifically, I wanted a second set of eyes to help with tracking down an alien running around London."

There was a pause.

"What kind of alien? Because if you mean like those… Sycorax from last night, I don't think –" she asked warily. Oh yes, that wasn't all that long ago for her. There was a fair chance that she'd been one of the people left standing on the edge.

"Oh no no no. They're nothing for you to worry about. No, this is something completely different," the Doctor said as he flicked the videos on the screen to the side as he relocated the video he wanted and leaned back in the command chair. "Here, take a look at this."

The video played again, the shuddering and frankly shoddy quality of the cheap early 2000s digital camera quickly giving a panoramic view of some nearly anonymous flat decked out in tinsel and fairy lights. The cameragirl quickly discovered the zoom effect and focused on the various faces of her family.

"You were watching other people's Christmas videos?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked away from the screen.

The Doctor shushed her. "I was looking for something, anyway, tell me what you see."

She gestured at the screen, pointing at each point she was focused on. "Well, Grandma's clearly on her fifth or sixth cup of eggnog and Granddad's eyebrows are attempting to eat the rest of his face, but I'm pretty sure you mean the hellish eyeshine on the mom."

The Doctor smiled. "Exactly. Humans don't do that, don't have the anatomy. Anything else?"

"Not a lot to work with here, unless you want me to start spinning whole cloth," she said, locking eyes with him again. The grin from earlier was gone, replace with razor sharp focus. "If whatever it is living like a human, paper and electronic trails should be easy enough to track down…"

"Already ahead of you. She's Lisa Belfrey nee Petty. Born 1972, married since 1993, mother of two. Nothing to suggest that she's been anything other than human for the whole of her life," he said before pointing the sonic screwdriver at the screen and switching the video to a CCTV capture. "Except the video you just watched and this."

The sole advantage of this video over the last was the fact that it wasn't being flung in a new direction every three seconds. It was just as grainy in quality, far away from the action, and rendered in staid murky grey-scale, likely adjusted for the absence of light. Naturally, there was no sound to go with it.

That was the truth of security cameras sometimes, the Doctor had to admit. They were almost always the lowest common denominator for the technology level of the era, unless in the hands of people who he really didn't want to have pictures of him. Then they were high-definition and in full color with the clearest sound possible.

The scene was dim, the time stamp in the corner giving away that it was taken over a week ago at just before six in the evening. The street was mostly deserted, save for a few people heading to their homes laden with bags of groceries and Christmas gifts. Lisa Belfrey was one of these, walking along the near side-walk with four separate bags hooked over her arms.

Suddenly there was a disturbance in the camera feed, the only warning that the footage was about to go a small swipe of light rushing towards Lisa. The video came back a second later to show Lisa picking up a dropped sack and then glancing around, eyes glowing dimly in the gloom as she did so.

"So, my shiny new assistant, what did you see?" the Doctor asked.

"Can you replay it, but at half-speed?" she asked, eyes fixed on the screen. The video played again, as she requested, but she paused it as the spot of light was about to touch Lisa. "That. It's not a video error. That's how she got replaced. Teleported out and replaced with some sort of replicant," she said as she looked over to the Doctor. "Which means someone is on the outside pulling the strings."

"Yes," he replied. He'd guessed just about the same, but it was a good test of the new girl's abilities. "There's a changeling running about. You're pretty swift on the uptake, for someone I just picked up." The Doctor leaned in close to her, almost resting his chin on her shoulder. "Can I be absolutely certain that you aren't a UNIT scientist in disguise?" he asked in a low, mock-serious voice.

Ignoring the palpable shudder that ran through her body at the contact, her voice never wavered. "If I had any sort of job working for the UN," she said. "I would think they would have had the decency to at least invite me to the office Christmas party."

He smiled. "If they're anything like I remember, you didn't miss much," he said as he leaned back into the chair and out of her personal space. "But enough about that. Any thoughts about our mystery pod people?"

I looked at the Doctor, disbelief shoving away any immediate discomfort from the unsolicited and unwanted physical contact. Was he serious? Two videos and a bit of speculation and he expected me to come up with a good idea? It might have been different if I was a companion with some kind of established rapport, but asking someone he met less than ten minutes ago seemed a mite quick even by TV standards.

"At a guess, I'd say they picked her because she was convenient, not because of any specific strategic value. Relatively low foot traffic in the area, nobody really paying attention to anything but themselves. A lot less risk than other options," I said as I tried to pull theories out of the available facts. There wasn't much to work with. "The fact that the shot came from the alley might mean that our aggressor is somehow unable to disguise its alien nature, either physically or just the equipment required to pull the swap in the first place can't be disguised properly. The angle is bad, so I can't really take a guess at the relative size of our shooter. There weren't any other cameras available?"

"Nah. Least none that I could access," the Doctor said, crossing his legs as he studied me.

"Then, barring casual use of time travel, I don't know what else I could tell you than what we've established," I replied as I broke eye contact. I didn't like that appraising look. It felt too close to the sort of scrutiny that preceded a guilty verdict… or a chess player evaluating the strategic value of a piece.

I could just feel him grinning from behind me.

"Oh, so instead of just being the most beautiful thing ever, she also does time travel. Brilliant," I said as I reached up to caress the time rotor. Sorry, my sweet lady, but I must play the part of fool. "Style and substance in one bigger-on-the-inside package."

The TARDIS hummed, the various lights noticeably brightening.

"Oi, you keep flirting with her like that, I might get jealous," the Doctor scolded as he stood up and walked around to the other side of the console, flicking a series of buttons and switches as he went before reaching for a Lever.

There was a difference, I'd learned long ago, between a lever and a Lever. A lever just does something, no fuss or show, just flick it and you're done. It might as well be a mildly stylish light switch.

A Lever is a bit more than that. A Lever with a capital L not only does the thing big, but it tends to be big itself, complete with a noise to match. A metal screech of resistance, a solid thump as it falls into place... it doesn't matter, but something will be there. A Lever with a capital L is designed to be dramatic and is almost always the size of the user's hand, if not bigger.

The Doctor's Lever fit all these qualities, I noted.

"You might want to hold onto something," he said right before he threw it, and before I could get a grip on the railing. I fell over immediately, scrambling uselessly for some kind of handhold before finally grabbing the railing and locking my arms and knees around it. Of course the Doctor himself wouldn't be bothered, barely rocking back on his heels because he'd grabbed the edge of the console in time.

The short shuddering trip through the Vortex was over quickly, though not so quickly for me not to express a couple thoughts about how to get my revenge. All of them would be petty and ridiculous.

"And here we are at the scene of the crime, approximately five minutes before it occurs," the Doctor said brightly as he walked around to the view screen again, casting a glance down at me. "Everything alright down there?"

"What do you think, you–"

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," he said around his grin as he opened up the scanner. "No sign of Lisa Belfrey… although we do have an excellent view of a few garbage bins and a stray cat..." The smile faded a little as the Doctor checked the coordinates again. "Aaand we're on the wrong side of the street."

"It's not like there was an eighteen wheeler in the way," I groused as I climbed my way back to a standing position. The view through the scanner was a lot clearer than the security footage, offering up a clear view across the street to where our mystery agent was going to be.

There was nothing visible in the other alley yet, nothing beyond a pile of garbage bags and cardboard boxes. But that was just something else to hide behind. To actually fire whatever weapon or teleportation device that replaced our subject, they would need to have a clear shot.

"And there's our victim," the Doctor said, calling my attention away from the opposite alley.

Lisa Belfrey wasn't much to look at. She was the sort of woman who entered her thirties slightly wilted; a side-effect of having two children to deal with I supposed, but the fact that she was spending December 20th loaded down with grocery bags probably didn't help the image of perennial exhaustion.

Just over her shoulder, something moved. Something that didn't even approach the image of 'human'.

"What the hell is that?" I asked, staring at the alien.

My first impulse was to say 'ghoul'. The pink, burn scar texture of its face and the structure underneath was a dead ringer for that level of radiation burn but everything else was wrong. The chin was inhumanly sharp, no ghoul I'd ever encountered had faintly crocodilian scales or tentacles dangling from the back of its head, and the height… well, who was I to discount the probabilities of a ghoul dwarf? Weirder things had happened.

But still, there was enough evidence to know on sight what I was looking at right now was never human.

Still, there were enough similarities to raise the hairs on the back of my neck as a memory prickled in the back of my mind; the distant sensation of my face and eyes being burned–

"That's a Graske," the Doctor said, interrupting the flashback. "Somehow, I'm not as surprised as I thought I'd be."

"A what now?" I asked, watching the 'Graske' raise its hand, some sort of small black device clenched in its clawed fingers. It pressed a button and a flash of blue-white light shot out of it to strike Lisa Belfrey. She stumbled, catching herself before she could fully fall to the ground, and when she looked around, a flash of gold was readily visible in her eyes.

"Oh, they do this sort of thing. Sort of their species hat, changing out people with their copies. They're part of the reason why changeling myths are so pervasive," he said, not even watching his hands as they flew over a keyboard. "Standard Graske invasion pattern. Mind you, I'm not saying they're particularly good at it, between picking poor targets and just generally mucking up their own plans. I mean, they've got a couple of successes historically, but win-to-lose, they're worse than the-"

"The Detroit Lions?"

The Doctor made a bit of a pinched expression. "...yes, roughly."

The Graske, apparently done with its task, suddenly disappeared in a flash of blue-transmat light.

"And right there's a signal I can follow!" the Doctor crowed, pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket, flicking them open before setting them on his face.

Ooh, the Brainy Specs. "You couldn't trace Lisa's?" I asked.

"No. Wherever they sent her, they don't want anyone to know about it. Bounced the signal around enough with double backs and split branches for flavor…" he grimaced as he looked at the screen and the horrendous tangle of lines and incomprehensible Gallifreyan scribble, his fingers still tapping away at the keyboard at breakneck speeds. "Naw, it'd be easier to unthread a twenty-foot scarf by hand than to pull her end destination out of that mess."

"Like daisy-chaining anonymizers or onion routers."

"Oh, computer savvy. I like that," the Doctor said as he flicked the screen, switching to a much less complicated spinning graphic. "Well, this is a bit different. If I can get another sample, I can eliminate the extraneous data and isolate the commonalities. From there, I can figure out where the Graske are keeping their victims."

"But you can trace the Graske itself?" I asked.

"Oh yes," the Doctor said as he reached around the console to flick some switches. "Y'see, he did a bit of daisy-chaining, but not anything close to what they did for Lisa. Probably means he's not headed to their home base, but is still out on errands, so to speak, but if he snatches someone else –" He spun around, pushing buttons and twisting dials all around the console. "– I can get another sample. I'll need you do help with the flying a bit though."

"Walk me through it." I wasn't taking the limiter off just yet. Not for this.

The Doctor reached around the rotor, leaning over half of the console. "This," he said, pointing at a lever, not quite as impressive as the one he'd pulled before, "is the dimensional stabilizer. That," he said, his hand swiveling to point at a dial matched with a dial, "is the vector tracker."

"And the bicycle pump?" I asked.

"Either the vortex loop or the thermo-buffer," he said before looking over to his side of the console. "Nope, that's the thermo-buffer there. You've got the vortex loop. I really should label things."

I suddenly recalled an old joke about the Label Maker of Rassilon. "Anything else?"

"Nah, that's it," the Doctor said. "I'll handle the tracking, you just fiddle with the bits when I tell you, alright?"

Any immediate double-entendre I might have reflexively made with literally anyone else was shoved down and replaced with a simple, "Got it," as I placed my hands within easy reach of the controls.

"Good. And try not to fall over this time."

Jacka–

The thought cut off as the TARDIS dematerialized again, flying through the vortex at breakneck speeds. I barely stayed upright, holding onto the console with white knuckles until I got my bearings back.

"Depress the vortex loop!" the Doctor called from the other side of the console and I grabbed the bicycle pump, shoving it down into its canister.

"Brilliant, now the dimensional stabilizer. After that, take the vector tracker and twist it twenty degrees to the – left."

"My left or your left?"

"It's everybody's left!" the Doctor yelled back.

I pulled the lever and twisted the little lever to the exact degree requested. "Anything else you'd like me to play with?" I asked over the sound of the TARDIS engine. "I don't know, like a Bop-It or something? I don't do Simon Says, just throwing that out there."

The TARDIS abruptly thudded to a stop, but I didn't stumble this time. I'd been ready this time.

"Alright, we just went back about a hundred and twenty years," the Doctor said as he checked the scanner. "I couldn't get much closer than this, geographically speaking, but I do have the means to scan for alien DNA. Coordinate that with the discharge of the cross-chronal transmat he's using, it'll be easy to figure out where he is specifically."

I looked towards the door. "So where are we now?"

"We're in a geostationary low Earth orbit above Europe," the Doctor replied before looking away from the scanner and at me. "Do you want to have a look? We are ahead of schedule and I won't be able to pinpoint the Graske's exact point until he arrives."

Somehow, that felt like a lie, but I'd leave it alone for the moment as I considered the offer itself.

I'd seen planets from orbit before. Not as often as the others, and mostly with worlds that weren't Earth, but… well, they were always beautiful. The treasures of the universe, jewels hanging in the cradle of star studded black velvet called 'space', surrounded by the halo of airglow that gave away the edges of the atmosphere. That tiny envelope of gas and vapor, capable of supporting life in the the great cold vacuum…

It was a reminder of the precious fragility of life. Of what was worth protecting.

"Of course I want a look."

The Doctor smiled like he knew I was going to say that from the start.

The Earth was always beautiful from this distance.

Not that the planet wasn't beautiful from the Moon or even further, the Doctor knew, but it was more impactful from that rare prefect distance where the big and little pictures started to blur. All the big recognizable details like continents and the bigger islands, but none of the lines on maps, save for vague blotches of the cities illuminated inside the velvet shadow of the crawling dusk, roads looking like lines of golden thread gleaming in the black.

Those lines were humanity's fires against the cold of night - in a few decades, they'd spread further, some replaced by electric lights. A few more decades after that, and the entire world would be a glittering jewel in the night, those threads tracing the lines and movements of humanity throughout their entire sphere.

But for now, the Earth was darker, dimmer, but no less beautiful for the absence of highways and metropolises; a priceless, precious treasure full of life.

"It's pretty from up here," his companion said quietly, her voice shaking the Doctor free from his thoughts. "Space is, usually. Nothing like NASA's pictures of all the nebulas and the planets, all those impossible colors and all the rings… but Earth as seen from the Moon is the most beautiful."

"What do you think of the real thing?" the Doctor asked. He wasn't watching the Earth now - he was looking at how the Earthlight traced out the details of her face in the dark, the subtle lighting sparking brighter against those dark eyes.

There was something hypnotic about them. About sitting next to her. Like he was somehow meant to be there, next to this stranger.

She looked at him, just for a moment.

"It's better."

Author's Note

Beta'd by littleditto

Updated on 9/3/2017 for quality and continuity reasons.

Updated again on 12/3/2022 - almost all references to Harry Potter banished because I'm not touching TERF tainted ground. Some might be stuck in because I'm not going to tear myself apart fixing absolutely everything in the fic that I've already written, since I'd never get anything moving forward if I did that.

I confess; I muddied up the timeline a little. The show treats New Earth as happening maybe a week or so after the Sycorax invasion whereas I managed to cram it in the span of three days. Thankfully it was an offhand mention, so I've gone back and fixed it without too much of a mess. (Series 2 actually does have a lot of weird little timeline fucky-wuckies to get yourself tangled up in if you're not calculating your dates perfectly).

Douglas Adams not only wrote the incredibly misnamed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy (there's four of them) and the Dirk Gently series, but also was a credited writer on three Doctor Who stories (The Pirate Planet, City of Death, and Shada, unproduced because of strike reasons). While Doctor Who has referenced his work in different ways, with characters quoting his books and the Doctor once claiming to have met Arthur Dent, I'm treating it as outside-context knowledge for the sake of a joke and to avoid a celebrity paradox. (Not that that's a 100% rule, it's just what I opted to do here).

Bathos – when one reaches for pathos and slips on a bar of soap. Basically, an anticlimax during what should be a dramatic, serious moment. Sometimes intentional, other times… not. Like someone having a wet fart too close to a microphone during what was supposed to be a dramatic inspirational speech.

Attack of The Graske is an interactive episode / game that is still available (the last time I checked) to play. Seeing as I'm an idiot, I just opted to watch other people play-thru's on Youtube.

A large part of the Doctor's dramatic 'come with me' speech is taken from the Series trailers. I believe that most of this one comes from the Series Two trailer. Delaine's reaction to the TARDIS after that comes from The Husbands of River Song. If you haven't seen it, Google it.

Offhand references to things that might not make sense at present time are usually seeds for 'future' – as in, will be written and posted later, not taking place at a later point in the timeline – stories in the Chains Adventurous series. You might see a reference to something like Animorphs, Hellblazer, Sherlock Holmes, or the MCU that won't get more than an offhand mention or momentary use, but there's already some loose planning in the works. Anything really specific will be explained in the Author's Notes.

Like I mentioned in earlier chapters, I like research even if I might not have the mind for the subject in question. I'm also reading reviews of different episodes, particularly the ones where they point out plot holes, logic problems, or bad science (in particular, the fact that the Impossible Planet is actually quite possible, at least from the 'planet orbiting a black hole' angle). Most of the fun is applying real stuff to apply holes in what was constructed by imagination.

Some people have pulled on one of those threads I keep mentioning by now, I think.

Anyway, feel free to ask any questions in the comments / review section. I will either answer them in-story or in the next Author's Notes. Reviews, criticisms, and commentary are, as always, welcome.