Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Doctor Who crossover fic: The Last (1/7)
Title: The Last (1/7)
Rating: PG
Characters: Giles, Ten
Timeline: Post-"Last of the Time Lords" for Doctor Who and pre-season eight for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Spoilers for season eight.
Summary: With demons threatening the safety of the planet, the Doctor turns to the one person he knows who can help: Rupert Giles. Can the two of them save the day without losing their heads?
Disclaimer: You know the drill. BBC. Joss Whedon.
A/N: Thanks again to quean_of_swords for the awesome beta. This is actually a revised version of a story I had written previously (but posted elsewhere) so if the plot sounds familiar, it was the other, crappier, version. I do reference the season eight comics, but intimate knowledge isn't necessary.
A few years ago, the simple act of writing in his Watcher’s diary would have helped Giles to unwind after an eventful day. Recording the details and adding his own insights had a certain rhythm to it and he could easily lose himself in the words. These days, though, he dreaded writing down his latest discoveries. The words that stared back at him were just further evidence that his impossible theory might actually have a ring of truth.
He threw down his pen and pushed his chair away from his desk, wishing to put some distance between him and his diary, and the balcony attached to his hotel room seemed ideal. Giles crossed the room and threw open the balcony doors, allowing the cold night air to drift in. A sudden breeze lashed at his hair and clothes and its strength was enough to flip the pages in his diary.
His breath instantly turned to mist but he expected nothing less from October in Russia. It would have been wise to grab a coat, but the sharp bite of winter helped to clear the fevered thoughts in his head. For the span of a few heartbeats, Giles closed his eyes and he breathed deeply, foolishly dreaming that he was back home in London enjoying a cup of hot tea and a good book.
The pages in his diary flipped again, breaking the silence of the night. Giles opened his eyes. There was no wind blowing against his face.
The diary pages flipped faster and faster as a small maelstrom formed in his hotel room. Giles turned around but he remained out on the balcony, even though his room was thirty storeys up. In his line of work, he knew full well it never hurt to have a few options.
Heavy shadows prevented him from staring into the depths of his room but it didn’t stop him from hearing an odd whooshing sound that seemed to rise and fall like measured breaths. With each passing second, the sound grew stronger, as though it was getting closer, until finally it rose slightly in pitch and was followed by a heavy clang. A moment later, a door creaked and muffled footsteps strode across the room.
Giles didn’t have to wait long to see a man enter the halo of light given off by the lamp on the desk. He quickly noted the man’s brown spiky hair, long brown coat, brown pinstriped suit, and, strangely, white trainers. The man, seemingly unaware that he was being watched, reached for Giles’ diary and idly flipped through the pages.
Judging that the man wasn’t a threat, Giles stepped back into the room and he quietly closed the balcony doors. He considered various greetings before deciding on voicing the foremost thought on his mind. “Do you plan to do this every time we meet?”
The Doctor continued to look through Giles’ diary like he hadn’t heard him. “Russia,” he mused. “When I told the TARDIS to find you, I wasn’t expecting Russia. You’re a long way from home. Did you have a sudden craving for rassolnik?”
Giles cleared his throat loudly but when the Doctor didn’t take the hint, he shot forward and snatched up his diary. He closed the book and stuck it firmly in the desk drawer. It was only then that the Doctor finally seemed to notice he was in the room. To this day, Giles still couldn’t figure out whether the man was that absentminded or he just enjoyed toying with people.
The Doctor greeted him with a smile. “I visited your flat. Your post is piling up.”
Up close, he saw that this Doctor was a little older than the last Doctor he had met, but he was still younger than Giles. He pegged the man’s current appearance at mid to late thirties. Despite the youthful face, when he looked into the Doctor’s eyes, he saw an old soul.
The Doctor’s penchant for appearing when and where he pleased still irked Giles. With any other man, he would have been charged with breaking and entering, but such an argument never stuck when the Doctor was involved. Just once though, Giles wished the man would use a phone. That blue box of his, which undoubtedly occupied a corner of his hotel room, had gone out of style years ago and it always drew unwanted attention.
“I haven’t been home in…” Giles paused to think as he went to find the light switch. “Three months.” He hadn’t realized it had been that long, now that he thought about it. The weeks of travel had blurred together.
He found the light switch and flicked on the lights. As he suspected, the TARDIS stood in one corner by the bathroom. Giles sighed as he caught sight of it. If the Doctor was here, it could only mean one thing. “What sort of trouble have you stumbled upon now?” He tried to sound civil as he went back to sit down at his desk. Already the Doctor had taken a seat in the spare chair.
“Rupert Giles,” chided the Doctor. “What makes you think I’m in trouble?” This Doctor seemed to be all smiles, just like another Doctor he had met once before.
“You’re here.” After meeting the Doctor for the first time, it hadn’t taken Giles long to realize that trouble followed the man like flies followed honey. “And I’ve never known you to make a social visit.”
The mask of ignorance slipped and in an instant, the Doctor was deadly serious. “I need the Watchers Council.”
Giles took in a sharp breath, like hearing the words “Watchers Council” had pained him. It had, in a way. He had no desire to be tied up in Council business, not ever again. “The Watchers Council is gone.” He spoke with a matter-of-fact tone, not wanting to be overdramatic.
“I know.”
It was hard not to snap at the Doctor. “If you know, then what are you doing here? If you can,” Giles hesitated, always dreading saying these outlandish words, “travel through time why not visit London two years ago? I’m not the Council.” The Council was dead as far as he was concerned. Buffy and the others had established a new regime, with separate squads of Slayers stationed all over the world. Despite being the last remnant of the old guard, Giles had no plans to resurrect the old ways.
The Doctor pushed forward until he was on the edge of his seat. “The threat is in this time. There’s no point to transverse the timelines. And I like you, Rupert Giles.” The Doctor slumped back in his chair like a teenaged boy. “You were the only one to realize the Plasmavores were using the Underground as passage.”
It was a ringing endorsement, but flattery would get the Doctor nowhere. “You’re neglecting to mention the fact that I’m the last Watcher left.”
Some of the playfulness left the Doctor’s eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with being a survivor.”
“What about that organization you used to work for?” He racked his brain as he tried to remember the clever acronym.
“UNIT? I suppose they could help, but I’ve visited them in the future. I’d be crossing back on my own timeline, confusing history. This is a Council matter anyway.”
Giles slipped off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Confusing history? He was absolutely confused himself. Time travel was the sort of thing he paid no attention to, especially if Andrew was blathering on about it in relation to one of his science fiction programs. Already his head was spinning and the Doctor hadn’t even revealed the source of his troubles. “All right.” He admitted defeat and looked up at the Doctor. The problems the man faced were never small and Giles doubted the Doctor would have sought him out if it wasn’t something dire. “Why do you need my help?”
Looking at the Doctor, sprawled in his chair like they were having a civil conversation, it was hard to believe this man was from another world. To Giles, the Doctor looked like he should have been out enjoying a night with friends at a pub.
“The Watchers Council brokered a truce with these demons. They were allowed to leave this world without facing further persecution. It’s written that they left by a mystical portal. In reality, they left in a fleet of ships for another solar system.”
Reality. That was certainly a subjective term. Giles didn’t bother to ask how the Doctor knew all this. “They’re back I take it.”
“I picked up one of their ships a few days ago, on a direct course for Earth. I tried to track their movements but they’ve shielded themselves. I only caught up with them yesterday.”
“I still don’t see how this involves me.”
“You’re a Watcher. They’ve broken a truce with the Watchers Council. You might be able to convince them to leave without any bloodshed.”
Giles couldn’t remember the last time he was able to convince a demon to do anything without bloodshed, on either side. “You could pose as a Watcher. Again.”
The Doctor chuckled softly as he was reminded of his past escapade. “The Council wasn’t very forgiving, was it?” He shook his head, tossing the memory aside. “The demons are master telepaths. Judging from the size of their ship, there are thousands of them. I’m good with mental barriers, but even I can’t hold up against that many. You’re the ticket in.”
“What’s stopping them from killing us on the spot?” Two men against an army of thousands were not fair odds.
“Our open, honest faces.”
This was typical of the Council. It had been so concerned about the big picture that it always forgot about the consequences. Though, who was he to judge? Giles thought of the latest entries in his diary. If the others knew the true reason he was travelling the globe, they would have ostracized him.
This was the last thing he wanted, to go gallivanting around with the Doctor. His world was always turned on its head whenever the Doctor was around. Demons as aliens. Police boxes that could travel through time. It was easier to believe in the mystical because it was the reality Giles had been raised with.
But as the last known Watcher, this duty fell to him by default. He had turned his back on the institution that had employed his family for nearly a century, but that didn’t mean he would abandon it completely. He had sworn an oath and he would uphold it.
“How should we proceed?”
A bright grin lit up the Doctor’s face and instantly he became animated. “There’s that Council spirit!” He jumped to his feet, so childlike in his enthusiasm. “We’ll take the TARDIS. I’ll explain everything when we get there.”
Giles’ gaze ticked over to the blue box in the corner. All the times he had to deal with the Doctor he had never been inside the thing. As someone old enough to remember a time when police boxes had been on street corners, it was hard for him to consider that it was something more.
The Doctor seemed to sense Giles’ hesitation. “It’s perfectly fine. It’s a sideways trip in space, so no chance of us ending up in the Dark Ages.”
That hadn’t even been a possibility before now. Giles hoped he wasn’t charging into something careless. “I’ll need to gather some supplies.”
“Do what you need. I’ll be waiting.” The Doctor returned to the TARDIS, disappearing into whatever depths lay behind those doors.
Giles was sorely tempted to flee the hotel room, but he knew the Doctor would find him eventually. Instead, he got to his feet and grabbed his satchel, which was already filled with a few weapons and some generic magick supplies. With all of his constant travel he had taken to travelling light and he found himself wishing he had brought some books with him on mystical portals. He had more trust in opening a portal than allowing the demons to flee in their… spaceship.
After slipping on his coat, Giles approached the TARDIS. No one in the Watchers Council had ever been inside. It was just a strange object that had appeared in the back gardens sometimes. There were stories of course, from Watchers-in-Training who claimed they had wandered in while the Doctor had been away. One story said a boy had gone mad from looking inside.
“Are you going to stand around all night?” The Doctor’s voice sounded from… Giles wasn’t exactly sure of the source, but it seemed like it was coming from the light atop the machine. A speaker of some sort then.
Stories, that’s all they were. With one hand, Giles pushed one of the doors open and headed inside. He actually had to pause for a moment. It was far more than he could comprehend.
The TARDIS interior was bigger than the laws of physics could allow. A large domed room inside a moderate telephone box. The whole space was probably larger than his hotel room. The improbability of it all was enough to give Giles a moment of vertigo. He reached out and grabbed onto a railing for support.
“It’ll pass.” Giles glanced up, the dizziness already fading. The Doctor watched him from the centre of the room, where a glass pillar rose to the ceiling. It was housed on top of raggedy control console. “You’re not the first to be baffled by Time Lord science.” The Doctor seemed to be amused, much to Giles’ chagrin.
He continued further into the TARDIS, focusing on the control console as his destination rather than letting his gaze wander. Fixing on a solitary point kept his mind from screaming out at the impossibility of the room.
“Most humans I take on don’t know aliens exist until their first trip. You may call them demons, but you’ve been battling aliens for a good long while. Impossibilities should be common placed for you.”
“Science rarely has a place in mysticism.”
“Funny. I would say the opposite.” With a flick of a switch, the Doctor closed the doors of the TARDIS. Another flourish and a mechanism inside the glass pillar began to rise and fall. The same whooshing sound that announced the arrival of the TARDIS infused the room. There was a slight shake, enough to cause Giles to stumble a bit. He bumped against the console, drawing the Doctor’s attention. “And off we go!”
It was easy to deny that they were in flight or in time or in whatever the ship used to travel. It didn’t feel like they were moving at all. And while he may have just claimed that science was the last thing he was concerned about, Giles’ curiosity got the better of him, now that he was well and truly a passenger aboard this ship and there was no escaping. He studied the console with a keen eye, allowing himself a moment to examine the technology the Doctor had always boasted about but had never been seen. It looked like a hodgepodge of switches, dials, buttons, and levers, like someone had salvaged various pieces from a junkyard and thrown them together. How the Doctor managed to travel through time was certainly called into question when one saw his controls.
“Is there anything-” Giles was forced to pause as the Doctor ran around to the other side of the console. A dial was twisted then the Doctor kicked the console.
He poked his head around. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Is there anything else I should know about these demons,” said Giles. He half expected the man to start beating on the controls next.
“You can see for yourself.” Above them the glass pillar came to a stop and the TARDIS fell silent. Grabbing his coat from the nearby railing, the Doctor slipped it on and headed for the doors. He added nothing else and left Giles standing by the console. After years of following Buffy’s lead, Giles was quite used to receiving orders from someone younger than him. Only, in this case, youth was just an appearance.
He followed the Doctor, feeling like some bloody sidekick trailing after the hero. Stepping out of the TARDIS was less confounding than entering and when Giles found himself outside, it only seemed like he was exiting a building and stepping out into the street. A few steps more and he saw they had landed on the roof of a warehouse.
It was night here, too. Presumably they hadn’t travelled outside of the Eastern Hemisphere. A distant landmark gave Giles the final clue to their new whereabouts. The pyramid of lights atop the tower of glass and steel drew his eyes like a beacon.
The Doctor had taken him to London.
Rating: PG
Characters: Giles, Ten
Timeline: Post-"Last of the Time Lords" for Doctor Who and pre-season eight for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Spoilers for season eight.
Summary: With demons threatening the safety of the planet, the Doctor turns to the one person he knows who can help: Rupert Giles. Can the two of them save the day without losing their heads?
Disclaimer: You know the drill. BBC. Joss Whedon.
A/N: Thanks again to quean_of_swords for the awesome beta. This is actually a revised version of a story I had written previously (but posted elsewhere) so if the plot sounds familiar, it was the other, crappier, version. I do reference the season eight comics, but intimate knowledge isn't necessary.
A few years ago, the simple act of writing in his Watcher’s diary would have helped Giles to unwind after an eventful day. Recording the details and adding his own insights had a certain rhythm to it and he could easily lose himself in the words. These days, though, he dreaded writing down his latest discoveries. The words that stared back at him were just further evidence that his impossible theory might actually have a ring of truth.
He threw down his pen and pushed his chair away from his desk, wishing to put some distance between him and his diary, and the balcony attached to his hotel room seemed ideal. Giles crossed the room and threw open the balcony doors, allowing the cold night air to drift in. A sudden breeze lashed at his hair and clothes and its strength was enough to flip the pages in his diary.
His breath instantly turned to mist but he expected nothing less from October in Russia. It would have been wise to grab a coat, but the sharp bite of winter helped to clear the fevered thoughts in his head. For the span of a few heartbeats, Giles closed his eyes and he breathed deeply, foolishly dreaming that he was back home in London enjoying a cup of hot tea and a good book.
The pages in his diary flipped again, breaking the silence of the night. Giles opened his eyes. There was no wind blowing against his face.
The diary pages flipped faster and faster as a small maelstrom formed in his hotel room. Giles turned around but he remained out on the balcony, even though his room was thirty storeys up. In his line of work, he knew full well it never hurt to have a few options.
Heavy shadows prevented him from staring into the depths of his room but it didn’t stop him from hearing an odd whooshing sound that seemed to rise and fall like measured breaths. With each passing second, the sound grew stronger, as though it was getting closer, until finally it rose slightly in pitch and was followed by a heavy clang. A moment later, a door creaked and muffled footsteps strode across the room.
Giles didn’t have to wait long to see a man enter the halo of light given off by the lamp on the desk. He quickly noted the man’s brown spiky hair, long brown coat, brown pinstriped suit, and, strangely, white trainers. The man, seemingly unaware that he was being watched, reached for Giles’ diary and idly flipped through the pages.
Judging that the man wasn’t a threat, Giles stepped back into the room and he quietly closed the balcony doors. He considered various greetings before deciding on voicing the foremost thought on his mind. “Do you plan to do this every time we meet?”
The Doctor continued to look through Giles’ diary like he hadn’t heard him. “Russia,” he mused. “When I told the TARDIS to find you, I wasn’t expecting Russia. You’re a long way from home. Did you have a sudden craving for rassolnik?”
Giles cleared his throat loudly but when the Doctor didn’t take the hint, he shot forward and snatched up his diary. He closed the book and stuck it firmly in the desk drawer. It was only then that the Doctor finally seemed to notice he was in the room. To this day, Giles still couldn’t figure out whether the man was that absentminded or he just enjoyed toying with people.
The Doctor greeted him with a smile. “I visited your flat. Your post is piling up.”
Up close, he saw that this Doctor was a little older than the last Doctor he had met, but he was still younger than Giles. He pegged the man’s current appearance at mid to late thirties. Despite the youthful face, when he looked into the Doctor’s eyes, he saw an old soul.
The Doctor’s penchant for appearing when and where he pleased still irked Giles. With any other man, he would have been charged with breaking and entering, but such an argument never stuck when the Doctor was involved. Just once though, Giles wished the man would use a phone. That blue box of his, which undoubtedly occupied a corner of his hotel room, had gone out of style years ago and it always drew unwanted attention.
“I haven’t been home in…” Giles paused to think as he went to find the light switch. “Three months.” He hadn’t realized it had been that long, now that he thought about it. The weeks of travel had blurred together.
He found the light switch and flicked on the lights. As he suspected, the TARDIS stood in one corner by the bathroom. Giles sighed as he caught sight of it. If the Doctor was here, it could only mean one thing. “What sort of trouble have you stumbled upon now?” He tried to sound civil as he went back to sit down at his desk. Already the Doctor had taken a seat in the spare chair.
“Rupert Giles,” chided the Doctor. “What makes you think I’m in trouble?” This Doctor seemed to be all smiles, just like another Doctor he had met once before.
“You’re here.” After meeting the Doctor for the first time, it hadn’t taken Giles long to realize that trouble followed the man like flies followed honey. “And I’ve never known you to make a social visit.”
The mask of ignorance slipped and in an instant, the Doctor was deadly serious. “I need the Watchers Council.”
Giles took in a sharp breath, like hearing the words “Watchers Council” had pained him. It had, in a way. He had no desire to be tied up in Council business, not ever again. “The Watchers Council is gone.” He spoke with a matter-of-fact tone, not wanting to be overdramatic.
“I know.”
It was hard not to snap at the Doctor. “If you know, then what are you doing here? If you can,” Giles hesitated, always dreading saying these outlandish words, “travel through time why not visit London two years ago? I’m not the Council.” The Council was dead as far as he was concerned. Buffy and the others had established a new regime, with separate squads of Slayers stationed all over the world. Despite being the last remnant of the old guard, Giles had no plans to resurrect the old ways.
The Doctor pushed forward until he was on the edge of his seat. “The threat is in this time. There’s no point to transverse the timelines. And I like you, Rupert Giles.” The Doctor slumped back in his chair like a teenaged boy. “You were the only one to realize the Plasmavores were using the Underground as passage.”
It was a ringing endorsement, but flattery would get the Doctor nowhere. “You’re neglecting to mention the fact that I’m the last Watcher left.”
Some of the playfulness left the Doctor’s eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with being a survivor.”
“What about that organization you used to work for?” He racked his brain as he tried to remember the clever acronym.
“UNIT? I suppose they could help, but I’ve visited them in the future. I’d be crossing back on my own timeline, confusing history. This is a Council matter anyway.”
Giles slipped off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Confusing history? He was absolutely confused himself. Time travel was the sort of thing he paid no attention to, especially if Andrew was blathering on about it in relation to one of his science fiction programs. Already his head was spinning and the Doctor hadn’t even revealed the source of his troubles. “All right.” He admitted defeat and looked up at the Doctor. The problems the man faced were never small and Giles doubted the Doctor would have sought him out if it wasn’t something dire. “Why do you need my help?”
Looking at the Doctor, sprawled in his chair like they were having a civil conversation, it was hard to believe this man was from another world. To Giles, the Doctor looked like he should have been out enjoying a night with friends at a pub.
“The Watchers Council brokered a truce with these demons. They were allowed to leave this world without facing further persecution. It’s written that they left by a mystical portal. In reality, they left in a fleet of ships for another solar system.”
Reality. That was certainly a subjective term. Giles didn’t bother to ask how the Doctor knew all this. “They’re back I take it.”
“I picked up one of their ships a few days ago, on a direct course for Earth. I tried to track their movements but they’ve shielded themselves. I only caught up with them yesterday.”
“I still don’t see how this involves me.”
“You’re a Watcher. They’ve broken a truce with the Watchers Council. You might be able to convince them to leave without any bloodshed.”
Giles couldn’t remember the last time he was able to convince a demon to do anything without bloodshed, on either side. “You could pose as a Watcher. Again.”
The Doctor chuckled softly as he was reminded of his past escapade. “The Council wasn’t very forgiving, was it?” He shook his head, tossing the memory aside. “The demons are master telepaths. Judging from the size of their ship, there are thousands of them. I’m good with mental barriers, but even I can’t hold up against that many. You’re the ticket in.”
“What’s stopping them from killing us on the spot?” Two men against an army of thousands were not fair odds.
“Our open, honest faces.”
This was typical of the Council. It had been so concerned about the big picture that it always forgot about the consequences. Though, who was he to judge? Giles thought of the latest entries in his diary. If the others knew the true reason he was travelling the globe, they would have ostracized him.
This was the last thing he wanted, to go gallivanting around with the Doctor. His world was always turned on its head whenever the Doctor was around. Demons as aliens. Police boxes that could travel through time. It was easier to believe in the mystical because it was the reality Giles had been raised with.
But as the last known Watcher, this duty fell to him by default. He had turned his back on the institution that had employed his family for nearly a century, but that didn’t mean he would abandon it completely. He had sworn an oath and he would uphold it.
“How should we proceed?”
A bright grin lit up the Doctor’s face and instantly he became animated. “There’s that Council spirit!” He jumped to his feet, so childlike in his enthusiasm. “We’ll take the TARDIS. I’ll explain everything when we get there.”
Giles’ gaze ticked over to the blue box in the corner. All the times he had to deal with the Doctor he had never been inside the thing. As someone old enough to remember a time when police boxes had been on street corners, it was hard for him to consider that it was something more.
The Doctor seemed to sense Giles’ hesitation. “It’s perfectly fine. It’s a sideways trip in space, so no chance of us ending up in the Dark Ages.”
That hadn’t even been a possibility before now. Giles hoped he wasn’t charging into something careless. “I’ll need to gather some supplies.”
“Do what you need. I’ll be waiting.” The Doctor returned to the TARDIS, disappearing into whatever depths lay behind those doors.
Giles was sorely tempted to flee the hotel room, but he knew the Doctor would find him eventually. Instead, he got to his feet and grabbed his satchel, which was already filled with a few weapons and some generic magick supplies. With all of his constant travel he had taken to travelling light and he found himself wishing he had brought some books with him on mystical portals. He had more trust in opening a portal than allowing the demons to flee in their… spaceship.
After slipping on his coat, Giles approached the TARDIS. No one in the Watchers Council had ever been inside. It was just a strange object that had appeared in the back gardens sometimes. There were stories of course, from Watchers-in-Training who claimed they had wandered in while the Doctor had been away. One story said a boy had gone mad from looking inside.
“Are you going to stand around all night?” The Doctor’s voice sounded from… Giles wasn’t exactly sure of the source, but it seemed like it was coming from the light atop the machine. A speaker of some sort then.
Stories, that’s all they were. With one hand, Giles pushed one of the doors open and headed inside. He actually had to pause for a moment. It was far more than he could comprehend.
The TARDIS interior was bigger than the laws of physics could allow. A large domed room inside a moderate telephone box. The whole space was probably larger than his hotel room. The improbability of it all was enough to give Giles a moment of vertigo. He reached out and grabbed onto a railing for support.
“It’ll pass.” Giles glanced up, the dizziness already fading. The Doctor watched him from the centre of the room, where a glass pillar rose to the ceiling. It was housed on top of raggedy control console. “You’re not the first to be baffled by Time Lord science.” The Doctor seemed to be amused, much to Giles’ chagrin.
He continued further into the TARDIS, focusing on the control console as his destination rather than letting his gaze wander. Fixing on a solitary point kept his mind from screaming out at the impossibility of the room.
“Most humans I take on don’t know aliens exist until their first trip. You may call them demons, but you’ve been battling aliens for a good long while. Impossibilities should be common placed for you.”
“Science rarely has a place in mysticism.”
“Funny. I would say the opposite.” With a flick of a switch, the Doctor closed the doors of the TARDIS. Another flourish and a mechanism inside the glass pillar began to rise and fall. The same whooshing sound that announced the arrival of the TARDIS infused the room. There was a slight shake, enough to cause Giles to stumble a bit. He bumped against the console, drawing the Doctor’s attention. “And off we go!”
It was easy to deny that they were in flight or in time or in whatever the ship used to travel. It didn’t feel like they were moving at all. And while he may have just claimed that science was the last thing he was concerned about, Giles’ curiosity got the better of him, now that he was well and truly a passenger aboard this ship and there was no escaping. He studied the console with a keen eye, allowing himself a moment to examine the technology the Doctor had always boasted about but had never been seen. It looked like a hodgepodge of switches, dials, buttons, and levers, like someone had salvaged various pieces from a junkyard and thrown them together. How the Doctor managed to travel through time was certainly called into question when one saw his controls.
“Is there anything-” Giles was forced to pause as the Doctor ran around to the other side of the console. A dial was twisted then the Doctor kicked the console.
He poked his head around. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Is there anything else I should know about these demons,” said Giles. He half expected the man to start beating on the controls next.
“You can see for yourself.” Above them the glass pillar came to a stop and the TARDIS fell silent. Grabbing his coat from the nearby railing, the Doctor slipped it on and headed for the doors. He added nothing else and left Giles standing by the console. After years of following Buffy’s lead, Giles was quite used to receiving orders from someone younger than him. Only, in this case, youth was just an appearance.
He followed the Doctor, feeling like some bloody sidekick trailing after the hero. Stepping out of the TARDIS was less confounding than entering and when Giles found himself outside, it only seemed like he was exiting a building and stepping out into the street. A few steps more and he saw they had landed on the roof of a warehouse.
It was night here, too. Presumably they hadn’t travelled outside of the Eastern Hemisphere. A distant landmark gave Giles the final clue to their new whereabouts. The pyramid of lights atop the tower of glass and steel drew his eyes like a beacon.
The Doctor had taken him to London.