Chapter Text
It was Morse code that the TARDIS picked up, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. Repeating endlessly,
The Doctor had dozed, curled up in a chair in a random room. He’d walked and walked after he had said goodbye to Donna. She was right, of course; he shouldn’t be alone. But he had seen what he could do to people.
He had walked for hours, days even, a form of meditative funk, remembering companions of the past, Barbara and Ian, Liz, Polly and Ben, dear old Harry... people he surely hadn’t damaged...? People he was proud of, so proud of, Nyssa, Ace, and Jo. Dear, dear Jo. Fantastic, brilliant Jo!
Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot...
He felt it in his mind before he heard it, along with the gentlest of telepathic of caresses from the TARDIS, ‘enough wallowing’...
He opened his eyes and saw white roundels; this far in the TARDIS the old interior still existed. He climbed out of the chair stiffly and opened the door in front of him that hadn’t been there when he’d sat down.
“Brilliant! I loved the old spare console room. Not seen you for centuries, you lovely wooden thing you!”
He sounded hollow, to himself.
Now he could hear the SOS quite plainly. He dashed over to the oak and brass console and examined the readouts.
“Ooh, now that’s not right, is it? Way out on the Madrillion cluster on the furthest reaches of the Andromeda galaxy? How does a human ship get there? Oh, I see, an unstable wormhole, opened up above the moon some time ago, flipping its openings... someone needs a ride home!”
*
The TARDIS materialized half a mile from the module, a Chinese space module from the early to mid twenty-first century. What the hell was it doing here? It was half buried in the soft earth, red and purple brambles and silver branches pulled over it. The similarity to the flora of Gallifrey had been a pain like stones where his hearts should be ever since he’d stepped out of the exterior police box door. The Doctor pulled them apart and clambered inside.
The first thing that struck him was that someone was living there, silver space blankets and hand woven patterned blankets were made into a bed at the back, parts had been cannibalised to make furniture and a stove. The smashed console had one flickering light, a radio transmission on repeat. The SOS signal he’d picked up.
“Ooh, you are a long way from home... Commander Chan?” the Doctor asked, spotting a space suit, the soft type over coverall used by humans for space stations and ships alike since the end of the twentieth century. The owner’s name was written on the breast pocket in Mandarin. “A long long way from home, lost in time as well as space.”
He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and performed a routine scan for temporal displacement. “Ah, definitely wormhole chronotron particles.” He changed the frequency. “And human DNA, definitely. So, Commander Chan, where are you?”
Judging by the local level 2/3 merchandise scattered among the twenty-first human belongings and technology, he had made himself at home. Humans! Such survivors!
The Doctor clambered out of the module and set off at a brisk pace along the well-trodden path. He soon came to a track way and made his way along it. The suns were high in the sky; the first, the large red one just declining from its meridian, the second, smaller white star just about to rise to it. It was growing hot. The Doctor removed his pinstripe jacket and rolled up his sleeves, undoing his tie and top button. He wished he had some water. He’d been walking, unfed and watered, in his funk, for far too long before he came out.
*
The Doctor meant to search all day. The local culture may have been a low-tech civilization, but he should know by now never to make assumptions, as it was no stranger to interstellar travel and alien species. The locals were mostly humanoid, with antennas above their foreheads, red of skin and with thick hair in deep reds, purples, and blacks, mostly worn long and dreaded or plaited. Some gave him a precursory second glance, but he saw many, many, other species among the locals in the market – many different types and shapes and colours. Most were in family groups or gatherings of young adults in mostly single sex groups. Wherever he was, it was obviously a tourist destination for this quadrant of the Andromeda galaxy.
The first thing he had done was get himself a large glass of water and a pot of the local tea, a spicy, fruity blend sweetened with the local honey. His waiter was happy to explain about the mountain spring flowers that fed the bees and how respect and the asking of the bees was a local tradition. The Doctor asked if the waiter had seen another traveller that looked like him.
“M’m, not exactly. Not really. Can’t say so. You look like the Peacekeepers of legend, perhaps a bit like those show people the Lurmans, apart from that you are far too subdued in your dress, as well as the obnoxious Salastopians, but they are banned.”
“Yes, well, they are quite an greedy and venal race, and would probably want to exploit what you have here. At least, those who’ve I met. I’m the Doctor, but the way, Al’nama’du. How do you know I’m not?” Al’nama’du had introduced himself when he had come to take the Doctor’s order.
“Well met Doctor. Our gifts extend beyond and within. I can see your two hearts. I’ve not met a species with two hearts before? How deeply you must feel!”
“Ooh, I’m quite unique,” the Doctor quipped, failing to hide his grief and guilt from the slight telepathy of Al’nama’du, and presumably all his kind. It must be what made them so good at serving the happy tourists. Although the Doctor made a note to watch his thoughts and feelings a bit better for the rest of his visit.
“I share your sadness.” The waiter made a pyramid with his long fingers then touched the Doctor’s nose with the point of his splayed index finger.
“Waiter!” someone called from another table, a furry species, quite dog-like.
“Forgive me.”
Al’nama’du was rushed of his feet for a long while, although he brought the Doctor more tea and a lime coloured cheesecake that tasted of coconut and apple blossom ‘on the house’.
It was a good place to sit. The tourists and locals went past, as did scholars and monks, in purple gowns and orange and saffron robes. The place was steeped in ancient traditions and beliefs, old architecture and beautiful surrounding countryside with safe fauna and breath-taking flora and geology. A veritable tourist destination. Commander Chan had obviously crashed on his feet, as it were.
He suspected that the free tea and cake was less about any sense of his being ‘the last of his kind’ and far more about being cute. Al’nama’du gave him looks of speculative lust and wistful thinking in equal measure with his large round purple eyes.
Now, often the Doctor was one to present as asexual, or above such things, and Gallifreyans, as a telepathic species, preferred the committed and the bonded, as a rule, but the Doctor had been a renegade exile for a long while before the Time War and alone ever since...
If the Doctor didn’t have a lost human to find, if he wasn’t sure he would be using Al’nama’du as a painkiller and tranquillizer for the dreadful things he’d done to his companions, the loss of whom Donna had been, who she should be...
People who forget...
Companions who forget...
Jamie!
He hurt so much right now.
“Hey Doctor. Well met. My shift just ended. Let me show you the spots, let’s look for another of yours.”
The Doctor looked up with deep eyes through his eyelashes before scrubbing at his stubble across his face and smiling a lazy beam.
Commander Chan had obviously been surviving sometime alone already; one more night wouldn’t hurt. And the Cre Magtona people were obviously quite happy with personal xeno interaction with their visitors.
“Why not?”
*
Seventeen hours later the Doctor awoke in a bed of the brightly patterned blankets, a wall hanging in similar design on the wall above his head. His head ached, his mouth was dry, and he felt sore all over. The local wine had a kick like a mule, and although a Time Lord can chose whether to let alcohol affect him, the Doctor had chosen. Oh boy, had he chosen. Oh dear!
He lay back and concentrated on cranking his kidneys and liver into overdrive, eliminating remaining toxins. He rolled over and found a notelet in the shape of a blue five petaled flower, a small crushed real delicate blue flower on top. It looked similar to flax on Earth, apart from the red stem and leaves, the sign of love and lust on this planet. He read the note,
“Well met indeed Doctor my sweet flower. I regret leaving you. I must work and my husband returns this evening from his trade visit. Having thought about it, Wu the Juggler looks similar to you. No one knows what he is. You’ll find him under the Bridge of Sorrows, by the Dome of Books, or on the Bridge of the Twin Rivers, near the punt hire booth, entertaining the tourists. If he is not who you seek, he may be able to help. Travel Well Doctor. In peace and love, Na’ma.”
*
The Doctor crossed the Bridge of Twin Rivers first, as that was his way back to the centre from Al’nama’du’s apartment. The suns shone on dappled water, and pink willows dipped down into the edges as punts went past, gently lapping the water. On the other side were a crowd of aliens of many kinds, all oohing and aahing in front of a Scholar’s Tower. He elbowed his way to the front and saw...
A human. A compact, muscled, yellow skinned human, naked but for the brightly coloured linen baggy trousers and a necklace of stone beads. He was juggling fire sticks, six of them, spinning and catching and feinting dropping, only to catch them. He had the skills that could only have come from being trained from three at one of the People’s China’s Circus Schools. How did he get onto the Space Program, the Doctor wondered idly, as more primitive parts of his mind, awakened by Al’nama’du, took in the six pack, pecs, and abs, shining and glistening with sweat and lit by the flickering fire sticks.
The Commander must have sensed the speculative, scrutinising look, or just by mere coincidence, he glanced in the Doctor’s direction. Either way, the shock of seeing a human, or what looked human, caused him to falter, and he missed a swap and a stick hit the floor, causing some of the dog-people’s puppies to squeal and clutch their mother’s dress. The father stamped on the flame to put it out. Other viewers began to mutter; some drifting away, other’s staying to watch the curious inter-change, only understanding it all by the grace and kindness of the TARDIS.
“Commander Chan I take it? I got your signal.”
“Are you human...? How?” he stumbled out in a slow, accented, version of the local language.
“Well, not exactly human. In fact, no, not at all. But some of my best friends have been human.”
Chan Yu looked at the Doctor with an intense study. The Doctor was surprised to grow pink across the cheeks. Damn his encounter with Al’nama’du, however pleasant, stirring up all these base hormones...
“Who are you?” Chan asked now in English.
“I’m the Doctor.”
“I know you. That is, UNIT files are standard reading for anyone on the Space Programme. Can you get me home?”
While they spoke, Chan extinguished his fire sticks and put them in a purple cotton draw string back, along with juggling balls and clubs and small bean bags, he had used to teach children, and pull on his white shirt and black waistcoat, then his boots. He looked very much the hippie street entertainer from many Western cities in Europe – particularly Britain – and America, but not very Chinese. His face though, told a different story, with sculptured high cheekbones and almond shaped dark brown eyes under a blue-black fringe of hair.
“I am at your service,” the Doctor replied in Mandarin, bowing deeply.
Chan laughed deeply and put his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Thank fuck for that!” he said happily in his own language.
*
In his first incarnation, his grumbling, aging loom body, when he first travelled, he really had no idea. He had practically kidnapped dear Barbara and Chatterton in a panic attack, frightened for his granddaughter. In his fifth, the TARDIS was still a little bit of a mystery, as his regeneration had seemed to have wiped a lot of what he had been taught by Romana – not that he would ever give her the satisfaction that watching her had taught him more than his stumbling about over the console had taught him in several centuries. He had tried so hard to get Tegan home, and had failed time and time again, although he was often close, within a few parsecs or centuries. Turlough, of course, he had persuaded by various arts, to drop his wish to go home. When he’d left, it had been to care for his brother. He hoped. He had so many regrets there.
Companions after that came and went as they chose. He could pilot the TARDIS as he wished.
However, there was what Koschei far back at the Academy had once called Theta Sigma’s Rule One – he lied. It took Commander Chan Yu months to realise it wasn’t that the TARDIS wasn’t failing or the Doctor didn’t know what he was doing, but that the Doctor had fished out the old randomiser he and Romana had once been forced to use. By that time the Doctor was using the same gentle persuasion as with Turlough. And Chan Yu was, he had thought, equally happy.
After all, Donna was right, he should not be alone. He couldn’t trust himself alone. He needed someone with him. And Yu came with the added bonus of making him feel amazing, of drowning him in bodily sensations until he forgot himself, forgot all he had done.
But being lied to is not something a lot of humans easily forgive. Apparently even when they are having fun in a physical relationship. Especially when they thought they were having fun in a physical relationship.
“Take me home Doctor. Now!”
“But... but... we...”
“It’s been great, yeah. But I have a duty. I need to get home. My flight was an experiment. I have to report my findings. I have a responsibility. I have parents who will be worried! I have a fiancée!”
“What? You have a what?” he was so shocked his voiced rose almost as high as it could in his fifth persona. The Doctor knew full well the cultural differences between the Cre Magtona and human Chinese morality.
They rowed on and off for 48 hours. Doors were slammed. Voices rose. Finally Yu slapped the Doctor. Not punched. Not hit. Slapped. The Doctor knew enough about human cultures and gender differences and roles to silently turn, with dignity, and set the controls to take Chan Yu home. He then sulked in the Cloisters until they dematerialised.
Sulked and cried and hugged his knees and rocked.
Destroyer of Worlds. The Oncoming Storm. Time’s Champion. Reduced to a pathetic puddle by a slap from a boyfriend.
But it was ever thus.