Fic: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 4: Fixed In Time
Title: Pinstripes & Jacquard ‘Verse, Chapter 4: Fixed In Time
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: The Doctor had lived many lifetimes, but she still recognized the smell of evil when she encountered it.
Word count: 2,934
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of my previous ‘verse, Girl in the Mirror! Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). Consider this new series of entries as Season Two. Also started before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard 'Verse:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
The Twelfth Doctor sat up, dazed. She heard the turmoil of the townspeople and the runaway locomotive sound of the terrifying Death Winds around her, and she was brought back quickly to herself. She smelled the preview of additional portals descending through the atmosphere. She knew the caves were three kilometers away.
Most of them would never make it.
Statistics-theoretical statistics mind, as no one had survived an attack like this-said that probably none of them would make it.
However the Doctor had never trusted poindexter oddsmakers…
She preferred to make her own odds, thankyouverymuch.
From where she was on the side of the stage she could not see or hear the Tenth Doctor, until she heard him over the loudspeaker giving directions to get to the caves.
She decided to give the odds a little push in their direction.
She fished her sonic out from her jacket and pulled another spare bit of kit from her other pocket. Her nose screwed up as she attempted to mash and sonic the component parts back together after her spill off the stage. It was an oblong bit of metal with some wires and circuits stuck onto it, about the size of a wrist cuff. However this was no handmade bit of finery-and “finery” was no word for it, either. It was ugly. It was also a hack job at best; however she was sort of reassured that much like her Third incarnation, this one tended to do pretty well with gadgets constructed under duress.
Tended to…
Although she would have to admit that even for her, this thing wasn’t exactly trial ready.
Bugger that, she thought. Safety’s for wimps…
She pressed the button on the extremely experimental Vortex Manipulator that she’d been piecing together intermittently over the last few weeks.
She disappeared in a loud POP! that was heard by absolutely no one over the bedlam of the Wagnerian opera of destruction that sprawled around her.
WHAM!
Her legs gave out on her as she was slammed down onto her coordinates.
This was the third time in one day she had hit her head.
Couldn’t be good…
She swore loudly and made a mental note to tweak the device a bit more before final soldering.
Quickly looking around, she ascertained that while her junky manipulator was the cheapest of cheap transportation, it had done the job. She was still on Transboolian, she was still in one piece, and she was still in danger of being sucked up by the infernal Death Winds that were strewn about the planet and had proliferated in alarming numbers.
And she could still smell more on the way.
Hauling herself up onto her wobbly feet she scanned the horizon for a familiar landmark. Finding what she needed, she took off downhill at a treacherous run.
She knew she hadn’t much time until the multiplying Death Winds turned the entire horizon opaque with their numbers-and then nobody would stand a chance!
Letting out a small squeal of delight, she saw the TARDIS waiting for her just at the bottom of the rocky hillside. A silent sentry, it guarded the entrance to the Cave of Mysteries, where the Gem of Salvation was-although she didn’t know that.
But someone did.
Rocks slid and tumbled as she hastily descended, cursing her wedged plimsolls. |The looming hillside blocked out the light of the moon, but not the desperation of her racing thoughts, that tumbled through her head like so many falling rocks.
How did this happen? Why were they meant to be here? Why had the Transboolians thought they could help? Could the portals even be stopped? What was sending them? Could the villagers be saved?
Get the TARDIS there in time, then maybe she could help ferry people to safety...
Suddenly she grew woozy. She shook her head to keep focused. Something was not right. At first she thought it was her bruised head.
And then, she felt it…
TIMELINES WERE CHANGING!
Like golden threads that could be felt more than seen, she felt the strands of time shift and reconnect in new ways, tightening together to form a new fabric of reality-like a loom worked by ghosts. And once they converged, a new destiny was formed. It clicked into place in her mind as if it had always been a certainty; always the only possible conclusion.
Events had become fixed. The outcome of this day was now a fixed point in time!
She gasped.
The Emergence wasn’t a chance at forgiveness for the past-It was Extinction! Like the Chicxulub asteroid that caused the K-T extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth, these portals would cause the destruction of the current face of Transboolian.
Everyone would die. The planet would reset and start again. It would cleanse the planet to admit an Emergence, yes-but of a new planetary age…
No one could be helped. It was pointless, them even being there.
Without warning, the sky around her tore open in giant shafts as the pulsating light of countless portals ripped through the atmosphere like massive bolts of lighting, greedily racing toward the soil. The Doctor’s nose tingled with the freshly scrubbed smell of ozone, a result of the violent rupture of oxygen atoms in the atmosphere.
She imagined she could hear the screaming of the villagers from three kilometers away.
Her hearts pumped a little faster. She was still reeling with the stark realisation that this was now a decidedly fixed point in time.
There was nothing she could do, and she had no idea why this had suddenly become incontrovertible fact.
In retrospect, she thought it lucky she heard the snap of a twig off to the side of her.
The Doctor had lived many lifetimes, but she still recognized the smell of evil when she encountered it. The rank stench even overpowered the smell of the ferocious atmospheric anomaly erupting all around her.
He lay in wait for her, just out of the corner of her eye…
In a blink of an eye, she pulled the squareness gun from her waistband. She shot the ground out from underneath the figure in the black coat who was lying in wait for her by the entrance to the cave. He fell into the pit the blast of the squareness gun had made with a muffled shout.
By the time the mysterious figure had regained consciousness she had already dematerialized.
She never saw his face, but she could guess his name…
******
He felt the TARDIS leave. He wouldn’t have heard it, not from three kilometers away.
But every fibre of his being told him that he’d been left behind.
And there was a tiny part of him that wondered if what he was feeling was even remotely close to how his Metacrisis had felt watching him leave, all those years ago.
Blockheaded as he was, he never even considered Rose’s feelings about it.
Denial was still easier for this version of him.
His sluggish, tar baby thoughts were quickly interrupted by a deafening cacophony as the sky opened up above him. Scores of portals ripped through the air and thundered to the ground. Townspeople shrieked and ran in every direction as he yelled ineffectually, even over the microphone.
Suddenly, with an earsplitting crunch, a portal tore through the centre of the giant TARDIS bell tower, shattering it. The Tenth Doctor grabbed Marette’s hand and hauled her backwards as far as they could get. Together they scrambled to get away as deformed hunks of bronze bells hurtled toward the ground like cannonballs of the gods. In their haste to get away, many people ran headlong into portals, where they were sucked away in a blinding flash. Finding that their loved ones were missing from beside them, the panic grew exponentially-people were either being sucked into oblivion or crushed by the shattering parts of their own creation. And just when one avenue looked safe enough, another portal would come ripping down from the sky, exacting blind justice upon the populace.
Still gripping Marette, the Doctor had little time to dwell on being left behind.
“STAY WITH ME!” he screamed over the pandemonium, “I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE!!”
But she was fighting him.
She pointed off towards the dais, under the risers. There was a small figure crouched underneath, hiding under the small stage.
“THAT’S MY NEPHEW!!” she squealed in desperation. She pulled away from him and ran towards the boy. Reaching her nephew, she drew him into her arms and headed back towards the Doctor, who waved his arms frantically like he was pulling them towards him with an invisible rope.
He screamed with rage and anguish as a portal ripped open in front of them and swallowed them.
He barely noticed when one opened right next to him.
He was too busy watching the TARDIS materializing in front of him and he felt sick as he sensed the timelines fixing in place, the future cementing before him...
He felt angry.
The Twelfth Doctor hung out of the doors holding a long string wrapped around her left hand that trailed off into the ship. “GET IN HERE!!” she screamed at him over the raw power of the winds the portals created. She was holding the door open for him. She saw the look of confusion, anger and pain on his face and knew he still wanted to fight to help them.
He couldn’t stand to see more people he cared about being killed in front of him.
“WE CAN’T HELP THEM!” she yelled.
He shook his head defiantly at her and she thought he was too caught up in the moment, and hadn’t felt the shift of the timelines yet. “WE CAN’T! IT’S FIXED! IT’S A FIXED POINT IN TIME!!”
He shook his head, not wanting to understand, wanting to fight her to stay.
Sensing this, she screamed, “GET IN HERE, DOCTOR! I’M NOT LEAVING WITHOUT YOU!!!”
He looked at her, and the cold look in his eyes told her that he was all too aware that the timelines had changed. She could tell that there was still a part of him that was still fighting the urge to stay to help-because that’s what they did-to try even when things looked bleakest, to dig down deep, not give up, try to save at least one person or end the whole thing altogether. It was their purpose in the universe; it gave their lives meaning to help.
Except when they couldn’t, but even then they almost always were able to do something.
The realisation that they couldn’t do anything wasn’t only foreign, it was insulting.
Especially to Ten.
She remembered her rage when, one Christmas night-wearing his face-she was unable to save another resident of Sto-so long ago…
I just need to override the safety. I can do it. I CAN DO ANYTHING!!
She also remembered a hopeless day before Christmas-November 21st, 2059-and how she’d fought Time itself to do her will…
No one should have that much power…
Understanding his resistance, she screamed at him once again, “WE CAN’T!! YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME???!!”
She looked at her Tenth self, struggling with his powerlessness-looked him right in the eyes, eyes that looked so similar to her own-and everything else melted away. She knew that a part of him was struggling against the seduction to be the Timelord Victorious once again. For despite having lived through her Eleventh and her most recent incarnation until recently, the man before her was still very much the same as he had been before his “death”: Broken, desperate and alone.
Only he wasn’t alone any more. He had her now. They had each other.
“I need you,” she mouthed, and held up her hand. “Please!”
She needed him…
She needed him!
Snapping out of it, his feet pounded on the ground as he ran straight towards her. His hair jerked with every footfall, until a giant beam of plasma tore through the sky between them, cutting off his escape.
He jumped anyway.
Reaching into the portal, she caught him around the wrist and hauled him into the ship, the doors shutting behind them. He collapsed on top of her as they toppled to the ground. The TARDIS shuddered with the impact of the portal until she yanked the string around her hand, activating the dematerialization sequence.
The TARDIS had sheltered them from the impact of the destructive forces of the portal by opening an air corridor to bump their chance of survival.
Like she said, the Doctor preferred to make her own odds…
The strong engines packing a powerful punch, the TARDIS easily escaped the portal and flung them safely into the Vortex.
The two Doctors lay on the floor of the TARDIS, their limbs entangled.
“You thought I left you,” she reasoned, her voice soft.
His brown eyes met hers-too afraid, too ashamed, to admit she was right, among other things.
“We’re a team, you and I,” she said. “Lennon and McCartney, Martin and Lewis, Boris and Natasha, Churchill and Roosevelt, Frodo and Sam-“
“Sonny and Cher?”
She nodded. “Sure. As long as you’re Cher…”
There was sadness in his light guffaw.
“Marette’s dead,” he mumbled thickly.
She avoided his gaze, “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, too.”
They helped each other up, and struggled internally-but silently-with their own frustration of not being able to help.
They’d also been the only two people in history to survive the Death Winds.
Twelve was also dimly aware that she had made a decision for both of them in escaping the melee, but she decided not to apologise for it.
She was still the Doctor-a Doctor-and sometimes the Doctor made unilateral decisions for the greater good.
Surely Lennon or McCartney had done the same?
“What do you think happened?” he asked.
“Why time became fixed?” she said, clarifying his question-he nodded. “No idea.” She turned and headed into the TARDIS, anxious to get away from a planet that had turned out to have more mysteries than she’d bargained for.
On her way to the console, she grabbed the camel coat hanging across the jump seat where she’d left it and went to walk it back to the old coat rack completely by habit. However, once it was in her hand it stopped her cold. She looked down at it.
She didn’t need the coat anymore.
She turned to the Tenth Doctor and held it out to him with a little half-smile. “I think this belongs to you, Doctor.”
Startled appreciation broke across his face like a door opening to sunlight.
“Really?” he asked, almost breathlessly.
Twelve shrugged. “You don’t look like you without it. Plus I know you’re dying without your brainy specs! They’re in the inside pocket, along with the psychic paper…”
He snaked his long fingers around the moleskin fabric. His smile lit up his whole face. The Twelfth Doctor could tell that the gesture had both touched him and thrown him.
Fine, she thought, let him wonder. It saved her from admitting to him that she thought it suited him better…
The Tenth Doctor didn’t wait around for additional invitations. Sliding his old coat on, the sigh of the fabric against his skin were like whispers of endearments from an old lover. He reveled in the silken feeling of the material as it lined up and settled into all the creases and bends in his arms and body, like a second skin.
It felt like home. He felt indomitable.
He felt like himself.
“What do you say we call each other who we really are?” she suggested.
He looked at her, puzzled.
She pointed at herself, “Twelve,” and to him, “and Ten… Might save some confusion in the future…”
“What happened to Jane and Trevor Smith?”
“I don’t think we’ll be needing those anymore, do you?”
He grinned. “Capital idea, Doctor!”
Twelve gave a slight bow, returning the stuffy pompous accent. “Why thank you, Doctor. You are too kind!”
He stuffed his hands in his old coat and watched her with admiration. “My Twelve…”
She returned the look. “My Ten…”
Another grin broke across his face and washed over her as she watched him, a little tug at her hearts. She didn’t exactly ask for this outcome, but she was confident that they could work together. In a way it was nice to have someone by her side again-someone to understand her and share the burdens of the universe with. And while it was true that she had Jack and River-there was something both undeniably comforting-and terrifying-about having someone around that knew her utterly. For no matter what the outer packaging said, or what the ruling, outward personality appeared to be, they were still the same person.
They were the Doctor.
She was him.
And he was her.
They were the same.
He laced his fingers through her outstretched hand, pinstripes and jacquard.
Equals.
It looked as if they were fixed.
Just in time…
“How ‘bout you and me go watch Wall·E?”
He guffawed into his fist. “I’d love that…”
“Remember how to get there?” teased Twelve as they turned from the console.
“Oh, now don’t you start!” He held out his arm, “Allons-y?”
She wrapped an arm around his proffered one. “Let’s boogie!”
Laughing, they were just up the stairs when suddenly…
The wailing chime of a broken clock clanged off the walls of the TARDIS, stopping both Doctors cold.
It was the uneasy sound of broken time. Something was wrong with the universe.
Again.
The Cloister Bell was ringing…
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
To be continued in Chapter 5: Hell’s Bells…
Author: psyfi_geekgirl
BetaBabe: akkajemo
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Tenth Doctor
Rating: PG-13
Excerpt: The Doctor had lived many lifetimes, but she still recognized the smell of evil when she encountered it.
Word count: 2,934
Disclaimer: Until she’s Jossed, Twelve is mine-but of course, based entirely on stuff that ain’t mine… All hail Auntie Beeb!
A/N: Continuing Part II of my previous ‘verse, Girl in the Mirror! Which, if you haven’t read yet, will give you important backstory and character details which are essential to this ‘verse (the link to the GitM masterlist is provided below). Consider this new series of entries as Season Two. Also started before the end of DW season 6, so some details have gone AU.
Part I: Girl in the Mirror ‘Verse Masterlist
Part II: Pinstripes & Jacquard 'Verse:
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
The Twelfth Doctor sat up, dazed. She heard the turmoil of the townspeople and the runaway locomotive sound of the terrifying Death Winds around her, and she was brought back quickly to herself. She smelled the preview of additional portals descending through the atmosphere. She knew the caves were three kilometers away.
Most of them would never make it.
Statistics-theoretical statistics mind, as no one had survived an attack like this-said that probably none of them would make it.
However the Doctor had never trusted poindexter oddsmakers…
She preferred to make her own odds, thankyouverymuch.
From where she was on the side of the stage she could not see or hear the Tenth Doctor, until she heard him over the loudspeaker giving directions to get to the caves.
She decided to give the odds a little push in their direction.
She fished her sonic out from her jacket and pulled another spare bit of kit from her other pocket. Her nose screwed up as she attempted to mash and sonic the component parts back together after her spill off the stage. It was an oblong bit of metal with some wires and circuits stuck onto it, about the size of a wrist cuff. However this was no handmade bit of finery-and “finery” was no word for it, either. It was ugly. It was also a hack job at best; however she was sort of reassured that much like her Third incarnation, this one tended to do pretty well with gadgets constructed under duress.
Tended to…
Although she would have to admit that even for her, this thing wasn’t exactly trial ready.
Bugger that, she thought. Safety’s for wimps…
She pressed the button on the extremely experimental Vortex Manipulator that she’d been piecing together intermittently over the last few weeks.
She disappeared in a loud POP! that was heard by absolutely no one over the bedlam of the Wagnerian opera of destruction that sprawled around her.
WHAM!
Her legs gave out on her as she was slammed down onto her coordinates.
This was the third time in one day she had hit her head.
Couldn’t be good…
She swore loudly and made a mental note to tweak the device a bit more before final soldering.
Quickly looking around, she ascertained that while her junky manipulator was the cheapest of cheap transportation, it had done the job. She was still on Transboolian, she was still in one piece, and she was still in danger of being sucked up by the infernal Death Winds that were strewn about the planet and had proliferated in alarming numbers.
And she could still smell more on the way.
Hauling herself up onto her wobbly feet she scanned the horizon for a familiar landmark. Finding what she needed, she took off downhill at a treacherous run.
She knew she hadn’t much time until the multiplying Death Winds turned the entire horizon opaque with their numbers-and then nobody would stand a chance!
Letting out a small squeal of delight, she saw the TARDIS waiting for her just at the bottom of the rocky hillside. A silent sentry, it guarded the entrance to the Cave of Mysteries, where the Gem of Salvation was-although she didn’t know that.
But someone did.
Rocks slid and tumbled as she hastily descended, cursing her wedged plimsolls. |The looming hillside blocked out the light of the moon, but not the desperation of her racing thoughts, that tumbled through her head like so many falling rocks.
How did this happen? Why were they meant to be here? Why had the Transboolians thought they could help? Could the portals even be stopped? What was sending them? Could the villagers be saved?
Get the TARDIS there in time, then maybe she could help ferry people to safety...
Suddenly she grew woozy. She shook her head to keep focused. Something was not right. At first she thought it was her bruised head.
And then, she felt it…
TIMELINES WERE CHANGING!
Like golden threads that could be felt more than seen, she felt the strands of time shift and reconnect in new ways, tightening together to form a new fabric of reality-like a loom worked by ghosts. And once they converged, a new destiny was formed. It clicked into place in her mind as if it had always been a certainty; always the only possible conclusion.
Events had become fixed. The outcome of this day was now a fixed point in time!
She gasped.
The Emergence wasn’t a chance at forgiveness for the past-It was Extinction! Like the Chicxulub asteroid that caused the K-T extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth, these portals would cause the destruction of the current face of Transboolian.
Everyone would die. The planet would reset and start again. It would cleanse the planet to admit an Emergence, yes-but of a new planetary age…
No one could be helped. It was pointless, them even being there.
Without warning, the sky around her tore open in giant shafts as the pulsating light of countless portals ripped through the atmosphere like massive bolts of lighting, greedily racing toward the soil. The Doctor’s nose tingled with the freshly scrubbed smell of ozone, a result of the violent rupture of oxygen atoms in the atmosphere.
She imagined she could hear the screaming of the villagers from three kilometers away.
Her hearts pumped a little faster. She was still reeling with the stark realisation that this was now a decidedly fixed point in time.
There was nothing she could do, and she had no idea why this had suddenly become incontrovertible fact.
In retrospect, she thought it lucky she heard the snap of a twig off to the side of her.
The Doctor had lived many lifetimes, but she still recognized the smell of evil when she encountered it. The rank stench even overpowered the smell of the ferocious atmospheric anomaly erupting all around her.
He lay in wait for her, just out of the corner of her eye…
In a blink of an eye, she pulled the squareness gun from her waistband. She shot the ground out from underneath the figure in the black coat who was lying in wait for her by the entrance to the cave. He fell into the pit the blast of the squareness gun had made with a muffled shout.
By the time the mysterious figure had regained consciousness she had already dematerialized.
She never saw his face, but she could guess his name…
******
He felt the TARDIS leave. He wouldn’t have heard it, not from three kilometers away.
But every fibre of his being told him that he’d been left behind.
And there was a tiny part of him that wondered if what he was feeling was even remotely close to how his Metacrisis had felt watching him leave, all those years ago.
Blockheaded as he was, he never even considered Rose’s feelings about it.
Denial was still easier for this version of him.
His sluggish, tar baby thoughts were quickly interrupted by a deafening cacophony as the sky opened up above him. Scores of portals ripped through the air and thundered to the ground. Townspeople shrieked and ran in every direction as he yelled ineffectually, even over the microphone.
Suddenly, with an earsplitting crunch, a portal tore through the centre of the giant TARDIS bell tower, shattering it. The Tenth Doctor grabbed Marette’s hand and hauled her backwards as far as they could get. Together they scrambled to get away as deformed hunks of bronze bells hurtled toward the ground like cannonballs of the gods. In their haste to get away, many people ran headlong into portals, where they were sucked away in a blinding flash. Finding that their loved ones were missing from beside them, the panic grew exponentially-people were either being sucked into oblivion or crushed by the shattering parts of their own creation. And just when one avenue looked safe enough, another portal would come ripping down from the sky, exacting blind justice upon the populace.
Still gripping Marette, the Doctor had little time to dwell on being left behind.
“STAY WITH ME!” he screamed over the pandemonium, “I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE!!”
But she was fighting him.
She pointed off towards the dais, under the risers. There was a small figure crouched underneath, hiding under the small stage.
“THAT’S MY NEPHEW!!” she squealed in desperation. She pulled away from him and ran towards the boy. Reaching her nephew, she drew him into her arms and headed back towards the Doctor, who waved his arms frantically like he was pulling them towards him with an invisible rope.
He screamed with rage and anguish as a portal ripped open in front of them and swallowed them.
He barely noticed when one opened right next to him.
He was too busy watching the TARDIS materializing in front of him and he felt sick as he sensed the timelines fixing in place, the future cementing before him...
He felt angry.
The Twelfth Doctor hung out of the doors holding a long string wrapped around her left hand that trailed off into the ship. “GET IN HERE!!” she screamed at him over the raw power of the winds the portals created. She was holding the door open for him. She saw the look of confusion, anger and pain on his face and knew he still wanted to fight to help them.
He couldn’t stand to see more people he cared about being killed in front of him.
“WE CAN’T HELP THEM!” she yelled.
He shook his head defiantly at her and she thought he was too caught up in the moment, and hadn’t felt the shift of the timelines yet. “WE CAN’T! IT’S FIXED! IT’S A FIXED POINT IN TIME!!”
He shook his head, not wanting to understand, wanting to fight her to stay.
Sensing this, she screamed, “GET IN HERE, DOCTOR! I’M NOT LEAVING WITHOUT YOU!!!”
He looked at her, and the cold look in his eyes told her that he was all too aware that the timelines had changed. She could tell that there was still a part of him that was still fighting the urge to stay to help-because that’s what they did-to try even when things looked bleakest, to dig down deep, not give up, try to save at least one person or end the whole thing altogether. It was their purpose in the universe; it gave their lives meaning to help.
Except when they couldn’t, but even then they almost always were able to do something.
The realisation that they couldn’t do anything wasn’t only foreign, it was insulting.
Especially to Ten.
She remembered her rage when, one Christmas night-wearing his face-she was unable to save another resident of Sto-so long ago…
I just need to override the safety. I can do it. I CAN DO ANYTHING!!
She also remembered a hopeless day before Christmas-November 21st, 2059-and how she’d fought Time itself to do her will…
No one should have that much power…
Understanding his resistance, she screamed at him once again, “WE CAN’T!! YOU REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME???!!”
She looked at her Tenth self, struggling with his powerlessness-looked him right in the eyes, eyes that looked so similar to her own-and everything else melted away. She knew that a part of him was struggling against the seduction to be the Timelord Victorious once again. For despite having lived through her Eleventh and her most recent incarnation until recently, the man before her was still very much the same as he had been before his “death”: Broken, desperate and alone.
Only he wasn’t alone any more. He had her now. They had each other.
“I need you,” she mouthed, and held up her hand. “Please!”
She needed him…
She needed him!
Snapping out of it, his feet pounded on the ground as he ran straight towards her. His hair jerked with every footfall, until a giant beam of plasma tore through the sky between them, cutting off his escape.
He jumped anyway.
Reaching into the portal, she caught him around the wrist and hauled him into the ship, the doors shutting behind them. He collapsed on top of her as they toppled to the ground. The TARDIS shuddered with the impact of the portal until she yanked the string around her hand, activating the dematerialization sequence.
The TARDIS had sheltered them from the impact of the destructive forces of the portal by opening an air corridor to bump their chance of survival.
Like she said, the Doctor preferred to make her own odds…
The strong engines packing a powerful punch, the TARDIS easily escaped the portal and flung them safely into the Vortex.
The two Doctors lay on the floor of the TARDIS, their limbs entangled.
“You thought I left you,” she reasoned, her voice soft.
His brown eyes met hers-too afraid, too ashamed, to admit she was right, among other things.
“We’re a team, you and I,” she said. “Lennon and McCartney, Martin and Lewis, Boris and Natasha, Churchill and Roosevelt, Frodo and Sam-“
“Sonny and Cher?”
She nodded. “Sure. As long as you’re Cher…”
There was sadness in his light guffaw.
“Marette’s dead,” he mumbled thickly.
She avoided his gaze, “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, too.”
They helped each other up, and struggled internally-but silently-with their own frustration of not being able to help.
They’d also been the only two people in history to survive the Death Winds.
Twelve was also dimly aware that she had made a decision for both of them in escaping the melee, but she decided not to apologise for it.
She was still the Doctor-a Doctor-and sometimes the Doctor made unilateral decisions for the greater good.
Surely Lennon or McCartney had done the same?
“What do you think happened?” he asked.
“Why time became fixed?” she said, clarifying his question-he nodded. “No idea.” She turned and headed into the TARDIS, anxious to get away from a planet that had turned out to have more mysteries than she’d bargained for.
On her way to the console, she grabbed the camel coat hanging across the jump seat where she’d left it and went to walk it back to the old coat rack completely by habit. However, once it was in her hand it stopped her cold. She looked down at it.
She didn’t need the coat anymore.
She turned to the Tenth Doctor and held it out to him with a little half-smile. “I think this belongs to you, Doctor.”
Startled appreciation broke across his face like a door opening to sunlight.
“Really?” he asked, almost breathlessly.
Twelve shrugged. “You don’t look like you without it. Plus I know you’re dying without your brainy specs! They’re in the inside pocket, along with the psychic paper…”
He snaked his long fingers around the moleskin fabric. His smile lit up his whole face. The Twelfth Doctor could tell that the gesture had both touched him and thrown him.
Fine, she thought, let him wonder. It saved her from admitting to him that she thought it suited him better…
The Tenth Doctor didn’t wait around for additional invitations. Sliding his old coat on, the sigh of the fabric against his skin were like whispers of endearments from an old lover. He reveled in the silken feeling of the material as it lined up and settled into all the creases and bends in his arms and body, like a second skin.
It felt like home. He felt indomitable.
He felt like himself.
“What do you say we call each other who we really are?” she suggested.
He looked at her, puzzled.
She pointed at herself, “Twelve,” and to him, “and Ten… Might save some confusion in the future…”
“What happened to Jane and Trevor Smith?”
“I don’t think we’ll be needing those anymore, do you?”
He grinned. “Capital idea, Doctor!”
Twelve gave a slight bow, returning the stuffy pompous accent. “Why thank you, Doctor. You are too kind!”
He stuffed his hands in his old coat and watched her with admiration. “My Twelve…”
She returned the look. “My Ten…”
Another grin broke across his face and washed over her as she watched him, a little tug at her hearts. She didn’t exactly ask for this outcome, but she was confident that they could work together. In a way it was nice to have someone by her side again-someone to understand her and share the burdens of the universe with. And while it was true that she had Jack and River-there was something both undeniably comforting-and terrifying-about having someone around that knew her utterly. For no matter what the outer packaging said, or what the ruling, outward personality appeared to be, they were still the same person.
They were the Doctor.
She was him.
And he was her.
They were the same.
He laced his fingers through her outstretched hand, pinstripes and jacquard.
Equals.
It looked as if they were fixed.
Just in time…
“How ‘bout you and me go watch Wall·E?”
He guffawed into his fist. “I’d love that…”
“Remember how to get there?” teased Twelve as they turned from the console.
“Oh, now don’t you start!” He held out his arm, “Allons-y?”
She wrapped an arm around his proffered one. “Let’s boogie!”
Laughing, they were just up the stairs when suddenly…
The wailing chime of a broken clock clanged off the walls of the TARDIS, stopping both Doctors cold.
It was the uneasy sound of broken time. Something was wrong with the universe.
Again.
The Cloister Bell was ringing…
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
To be continued in Chapter 5: Hell’s Bells…