Fender Bender
888
"You said it would be a quick walk around the universal block!" Grace said, leaning against the antiquated exterior of the TARDIS console.
"Well, it is." The Doctor replied as he blithely ignored the angry glare of his female companion, flicking switches and turning knobs, dancing around the console. "You're just underestimating the size of the universe."
"I shouldn't have let you talk me into it." Grace said, as she leaned against the console. She turned her head, looking through the clear central column where up and down pumping blue crystals raised up and down. "Were you really gone for three weeks in this thing?"
"For me it was three weeks." The Doctor said, reaching out and grabbing a television monitor that was affixed to a flexible metal arm that rose into the oblivion of the TARDIS ceiling. His, now, straight, dark-brown hair fell over his eyes, which had also changed slightly, gaining a little aqua-marine in the irises. "I took an extended vacation to Fiji, and Metalfa Obscura, and Corsica, the nebular formation not the island. It was a bit of an extended vacation, very refreshing. My regeneration needed some time to settle biogenetically and of course then there were those retinal grafts which ran havoc on my vision a few days after I left you." He stopped and took a deep breath shaking his head. "All of that, just to catch the Master in a trap? I can hardly imagine I could be so - Machiavellian."
"Well, it was only ten minutes for me." Grace said folding her arms. "I have to find a job, what about my house payments and I had tickets to…"
"Allow me to remind you that this is a time machine." The Doctor said, sweeping past Grace, the velveteen green jacket he wore ruffling behind him as he quickly walked down from the dais to the set of Victorian furniture positioned a few feet from the console. He snatched up a handful of crusty, brown sheets of paper and turned around and gave Grace a giant smile. "I can have you back before you leave; I can have you back before you're born."
"Before I left would be fine." Grace said, turning to the console as the Doctor passed her again. "So…when do we get back?"
"Uh, right now, not sure." The Doctor said as he flicked through the sheets of paper and then looked up at the monitor. "This star is about to go supernova. Proper supernova caused by a massive star at the end of its life, rather than an uppity kleptomaniac white dwarf."
The Doctor flicked a switch on the TARDIS console and the air above the dais shimmered revealing an image of an enormous, bright, bluish-white star. The large ball of plasma bubbled and pulsed in the air above Grace.
"Where are we?" Grace asked as she watched the star. She circled the console and stood next to the Doctor. "Well?"
"Oh about 6,500 light years from Earth." The Doctor said as he stared at the monitor, which seemed to be displaying multiple up and down bobbing bar graphs. "The Crab Nebula will be around here, soon."
"Soon, when are we?" Grace asked, looking at the Doctor.
"5446 BCE, by your current estimation. It's March, a Tuesday, about 4:45 in the PM." The Doctor said, as he slowly put his hands on the console.
"Why are we here?" Grace asked, as she watched the star's bubbling get more violent.
"I told you; this star's going supernova." The Doctor said, as she slowly started to punch a few buttons. "We're going to watch it go, the best fireworks in the universe."
"Is it safe?" Grace asked as the star started to bulge.
"Well, if I can dematerialize us at just the right time, we'll be fine, but if not, not even the TARDIS can't shield us from the gamma ray burst at the range we're at." The Doctor said. He looked to the monitor and his eyebrow quirked Grace looked up and didn't seem to understand what she was seeing but she noticed that the Doctor was biting his lip as his eyebrows furrowed. He frowning stopped and then his eyes got wide. "No - no, no, no no!" The Doctor started to dart around the console. "Bad, bad…"
"What?" Grace asked, frantically looking up at the star displayed on the holographic projection and then to the television monitor displaying the dynamic bar graphs which were now bobbing up and down randomly and angrily. Uncannily enough, they reminded Grace of an EKG of a patient with a heart attack.
The Doctor pushed past her, smacking buttons and violently throwing large, knobbed levers. "Neutrino influx is up-scaling…fusion output is becoming asymmetrical…gravitational implosions are happening in small, atypical regions…" The Doctor stopped suddenly and then made an angry face. "I didn't compensate for the solar wind of a Wolf-Rayet star…the mass difference…" He looked up at the monitors and then to the holographic depiction angrily wobbling above them and started dashing about again. "Not much time…"
He looked down at the console and started clattering at the keyboards on the console.
"What's going wrong!?" Grace asked hurriedly.
"The star's exploding incorrectly! Too fast for what it's mass would have indicated…" The Doctor replied in a fever as he swooped to another section of the console.
Just as he did, the TARDIS ceiling flared with a bright, halogen-white light. Grace slammed her eyes closed but she could still see the glare of it through her eyelids.
"Come on old girl, don't let me down now!" The Doctor chanted as he darted around the perimeter of the console, flicking switches and then with certainty jammed his thumb down on a big red button.
The machine replied by groaning loudly. It sounded like giant gears scraping against each other as some horrible beast growled deep down in the pits of the ship. The column in the middle of the console moved as the long, round crystal shafts slid up and down interlacing with each other.
"What are you doing?" Grace asked, as she visored her eyes against the glare from above. She looked up as the light slightly dimmed and saw the depicted, central star recede.
"Moving, away…" The Doctor breathed as he watched the hologram. "Not fast enough - initial radiation burst is going to hit us, unless…" The Doctor dipped underneath the console. The sound of a metal plate falling free clanked through the console room. There was a zap, a curse and a puff of smoke. "Hit the large green button!"
Grace looked down at the console in front of her. On the face in front of her there were multiple large, green buttons. "Which one?"
"It's glowing!" The Doctor shouted, from under the console. "It's not on the panel in front of you, two panels to your right!"
Grace rushed around the hexagonal console and slid in front of the correct panel. "There isn't any glowing, green buttons, big or small. There's an amber one-"
"That's the one!" The Doctor said, sharply. "Press it!"
Grace pressed it, and instantly felt the entire universe tear out from underneath her feet. The console exploded in firecrackers and puffs of smoke. The entire TARDIS squealed like a tortured pig and the vessel shook like a hotel bed. Colors swirled around and around, leaving rainbow trails.
"What's going on?" Grace gritted as her body resonated with the rest of the TARDIS.
"Emergency Temporal Shift-" The Doctor said, forcing the words through his chattering teeth. "Just - give it - a-" Suddenly everything stopped and the Doctor jumped to his feet, "…second. See, everything's fine, adrift in temporal orbit." The Doctor looked at the small readout in front of him. "I'd say, about the 1890s from the color of Betelgeuse's outer corona."
"I feel like I was in a margarita machine." Grace said, rubbing her head.
"I suspect that's an appropriate analogy…" The Doctor said as he leaned against one of the fringing pylons. "Perfectly safe now, a few thousand years and a gob-load of parsecs from the supernova. Yes, perfectly safe-"
'Gong!'
Grace flicked a glare at the Doctor. She knew that haunting noise that rumbled through the TARDIS, bouncing up and down hallways and flooding into the console room like an acoustic tidal wave.
'Gong!'
A second burst rumbled up from some unknown place deep in the bowels of the internally huge TARDIS. The Doctor leapt forward putting his hands on the console as he flashed his aquamarine eyes over the multitude of blinking lights and monitors.
"Impossible." He said as he rushed around the hexagonal structure and snagged the monitor that hung down from the imperceptible ceiling above.
"What's wrong now?" Grace said, bracing herself against a pylon.
"Another ship, it's hurtling towards us." The Doctor said as he twisted the monitor around showing two dots a blue one and a red one. The red one was blinking closer and closer. "A time ship…"
'Gong!'
"Shouldn't you be getting out of the way?" Grace asked feverishly as she boggled at the Doctor's inaction.
'Gong!'
"Right!" The Doctor said as he exploded into activity. "Grace, hold down the blinking red button on the panel right in front of you."
'Gong!'
Grace pushed herself to the console and pressed the red button that winked at her from the bronze colored panel. The Doctor's emerald jacket flared as he danced around the console. He flicked a switched grabbed a lever and with a theatrical thrust and grunt, flung the lever upward, at which point the entire console erupted with white and lavender sparks. Seconds later the entire console room went dark and the air was filled with silence, not even the always present hum of the TARDIS was heard.
"Ah…" The Doctor said in a matter of fact tone.
"AH!? AH!? What ah!? We're dead in space with something flying right at us!" Grace yelped, her finger somehow still diligently pressing down the unlit button.
"Dead in time…" The Doctor said calmly as she heard him walk past.
"WHAT EVER!" Grace shouted at the utter irrelevance of the difference.
She heard the Doctor walk around the metal dais and rummage through a box on the far side of the console. His face suddenly appeared in a flash of light. He dipped under the console and Grace heard the sound of the sonic screwdriver whirr to life.
"Emergency Temporal Shifts are a tricky thing…" The Doctor called to Grace over the whirr of his screwdriver. "They sidestep the buffers and safety controls, and can cause a lot of residual circuit damage and fuse outage - not to mention a terrible amount of backlogged energy…" The Doctor grunted and sat up; holding up what looked like a pancake of rubber. "Ah there's the problem, fused wires."
"We need to get out of here!" Grace said, trying to regain her calm. "The ship!"
"I wonder-" The Doctor said, staring at the ball of melted wire and then disappeared back under the console. The sounds of circuit boards being pushed aside and wires being shifted muffled up from where the Doctor was. "Yes, and let there be light!"
There was a quick whirr from the sonic screwdriver and suddenly the entire TARDIS came back to life.
'Gong!'
"Yes, old girl, I know, I know!" The Doctor said hopping to his feet. He made a glancing pass around the console. "We're still adrift - drive mechanics are over capacity-" He flicked an eye up at the crystals enclosed around the transparent containment in the middle of the console. "Rotor's jammed."
'Gong!'
"We're still stuck then?" Grace said as she looked at the Doctor.
"Yes, but now at least we can see we're stuck." The Doctor replied, trying to pass off a smile. Grace glared at him and the smile retreated. The Doctor returned to the console. "Let's see…I could put up a small energy bubble around us…should keep us together…"
'Gong!'
"Do it!" Grace pleaded as she watched the red light blink closer to their position.
The Doctor put his finger on a lavender button and turned a dial. He looked to Grace. "If I were you, I'd prepare for impact."
Though really the warning was totally meaningless, for no sooner had he finished the statement did the TARDIS stumbled forward, tossing Grace onto the console and then bucked backward knocking her to the floor. The Doctor crumpled to the ground a few centimeters away from her.
"Twice in one day…" Grace said, looking up at the Doctor.
"Not to worry…wasn't a clean hit…" The Doctor said with a smile. "We're stuck in the other ship's wake. With any luck we'll roll free!"
The TARDIS floor rumbled as the ship was dragged along. The Doctor, staggering, got to his feet and quickly clasped the console for support as he overlooked the instruments. Sparks fell from on high as the turbulence shuddered the entire ship. Grace moved towards one of the pylons and sat against it. She could feel the vibrations through the strong metal beams.
"Once we're able we should go after that ship…" The Doctor said his voice staccato from the vibrations.
"Why? To trade insurance cards?" Grace said, sarcastically.
"No, to see if anyone got hurt." The Doctor said as he flicked a few switches. "Though if they have insurance, it may help repair the helmic regulation matrix….I mean it was clearly their fault…I had the right of way."
888
AN: This one's a bit of a cheat…as this is something I wrote in 2007 I think….that was going to be part of a bigger sort of fanfic, thing…where I was going to try and write a series of 8th Doctor stories where he came back for Grace at the end of the movie. Only I realized it was going well passed me to do it because I just didn't have the patience or ambition, so I never published it, I just…have had it sitting here on my computer(s)…(it survived multiple computers and hard drive replacements) one scene for like the opening shenanigans of a story that never was, nor will be, continued or published; all I can say is that story featured the 8th Doctor, Grace, Cybermen from the Doctor's future (actually part of that survived forming into the 'Argentine Survival' (actually lots of stuff from that initial series of stories lives in a weird, chopped up form in this anthology; also I had to look up that chapter's title because it was SOOO memorably good…yeah…probably why it was never published in full). The story also leaned heavily on the idea of convergent evolution; it was purely me writing what I knew and it would've been horrible but I always liked this initial scene (parts of it survived into Shattered Grace…mostly Grace's mannerisms and attitudes towards the Doctor's more…flippant side). I've added some extra details, fixed some details and did some half-hearted clerical editing, but the heart of it is pure me from 13-ish years ago. Also double-cheat, because Grace died in Shattered Grace…so this is an AU of a fanfic that's an anthology which has repeatedly assumed canon is irrelevant because Time War….that's the purest Doctor Who sentence ever…. Followed by, I just like writing the sounds and things the TARDIS does under duress…it's the prose version of what Neil Gaiman said about how he felt about typing 'INT TARDIS….' When writing a script for the show. And this note is WAY too long…apologies….hope you enjoy it, comment, message, favorite and follow or whatever it is you do…eat something nice.