Chapter Text
Setting the TARDIS to a random destination and time and seeing where it takes him has always been a very special kind of adventure.
Pushing open his ship’s front doors, the Doctor steps out into a bright summer day. A city, from the looks of it. The people in it humanoid – human-looking even. Or timelord-looking, but he much prefers to think of them as the former. The air rather smells like Earth, too, and not necessarily in a good way. There’s the stink of simple combustion engines, and many of them.
Unsurprisingly, he’s in a city. He starts strolling down the street, hands in his pockets, looking for any indication of where and when exactly he is. Earlier than he left. He’s pretty sure of that. A bit earlier, but not much. What was the TARDIS thinking, giving him such a short hop?
A newspaper eventually sorts both the where and the when, placing him in a city called Seacouver. The year is 1998. He can’t for the life of him remember that anything relevant to history ever occurred in this place. Maybe the TARDIS had thought he needed a holiday from adventuring.
He’s singularly bad with holidays.
Holidays mean downtime, which means time to think about things he’d rather not have on his mind, which means—
There’s a movie theater across the street, and that’s as good a distraction as any. Flashing his psychic paper in lieu of a ticket, he walks in, acquires a generous helping of popcorn and finds a seat to his liking.
*
He steps back out into the street about three hours later, two and a half of which he’s spent watching Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck save Earth in the most unlikely of fashions and biting back the urge to comment on the impossibilities of what he’s watching – people generally don’t appreciate that while watching a movie, and, frankly, neither does he. He knows how to just enjoy a good story. Well, most of the time, in any case.
Surprisingly, there has not been any alien attack since he’s arrived, no sign of Daleks anywhere, no one needing rescuing, no phenomena interrupting the show…
Maybe the TARDIS has sent him on a holiday.
He’s retracing his steps to return to his ship. He’s going to check the records, see if there’s anything of interest about this place. If not – well, maybe he should just take the hint and try to spend a few days doing nothing.
No, he’s bad at doing nothing. He’s just been over that a few hours ago.
Turning the last corner, he stops dead in his tracks.
He turns, checking his bearings.
Turns again, staring at the corner of the parking lot where the TARDIS had landed, before crossing the distance to the now-empty spot of concrete.
Maybe the chameleon circuit has suddenly come back on, a random thought flashes through his mind, only to be chased off again immediately by reason pointing out that a.) why would it have done that and b.) he would still be able to see his own TARDIS even if it had suddenly put on a different appearance.
“Just great,” he mutters under his breath. Last time the TARDIS disappeared on him had been in Pompeii, when a random vendor had sold it as a piece of modern art. There are no would-be TARDIS sales people around today. In fact, there is surprisingly little going on in this particular part of town.
A few moments more of intense staring across the parking lot in all directions, straining to make out anything blue – though why the TARDIS should just walk off to have a bit of fun of its own is beyond him – at least yield another person. He’s not quite sure what, but there’s an odd feeling drawing his attention towards them. They’re coming towards him with great deliberation and purpose in their step initially, though they slow down and frown at him in some confusion before actually making contact.
Well, he can take care of that.
A few long strides bring him close enough to not yell too impolitely at the other person.
“Excuse me?” he asks, “You haven’t happened to see a big blue box anywhere around here, have you?”
“A blue box?” comes the response. The other person is almost as tall as the Doctor, wearing a coat of similar color, though he’s filling it with a good bit more body mass.
“Yes,” the Doctor confirms. “A blue box. About this tall, this big? I left it there, and now it’s gone.”
“I haven’t see any box, blue or otherwise,” comes the response in an accent that seems to be a Scottish burr overlaid with something else. He treats the Doctor to another frown before adding. “Maybe check the junkyard?” he points.
“Junk?!” The Doctor blurts out. Something about the guy makes him think he’s trying to get rid of him, though he can’t quite fathom why.
Someone just randomly asked him about a big blue box, his brain supplies. Really, why might he think that’s weird enough to want to get rid of you?
He can’t very well point out that the box is actually his spaceship. That information goes over much better if he has the actual thing there to prove his words. This kind of era is notoriously bad at taking statements like that at face value.
Well, the TARDIS isn’t here, and getting out his screwdriver for a scan is probably also not the best idea now that he’s caught this stranger’s attention and no way to prove any claims he might make. So the junk yard it is, at least to quickly confirm that no one has actually disposed of the apparent police box there.
Glancing back over his shoulder once, he spots the Sort-of-Scottish stranger stride back across the deserted parking place, towards yet another person approaching from the opposite end. He’s just in the process of taking off his coat, and the Doctor could have sworn that for just a moment, he’d seen a sword flash.
*
That sword keeps nagging at him, though. Was it one? What has he seen there? Did he see anything, or was it a trick of the light, nothing more?
The problem is, he’s pretty sure about his own perception, and his perception says sword.
He turns around. The TARDIS can look after itself for a few hours. He’s going to find it eventually.
He’s hurrying back, his view of the parking lot still blocked by some buildings, when the lightning starts.
Now that’s odd. A glance up confirms a cloudless sky all around – and it’s really shooting up from the ground like fireworks, lashing through the air and ending as if running out of steam, or bending back on itself to connect to something unseen--
If he had needed any proof that that is not any ordinary kind of lightning, that might have been it. It makes the air buzz in the strangest manner, though, driving home without any doubt that this is not normal lightning. He has his screwdriver out now, taking readings, which are no more help than what his own senses are giving him. It’s almost as if—
Another one of those lightnings goes up, and he takes a step back away from the buildings, trying to increase the portion of it that he can actually see. He’s so preoccupied with witnessing this impossible phenomenon that feels both entirely alien and scarily familiar at the same time to him, that he spares no attention for his surroundings.
That is a mistake. He has only a split second to realize that before the impact knocks the breath out of him, rips him off of his feet and sends him flying uncontrollably to the sound of breaking bone and tearing flesh.
What kind of a Time Lord are you, backing up into a speeding car? he just manages to berate himself before he hits the ground again, dazed. Pain hasn’t quite caught up with him yet. He vaguely realizes that his screwdriver has parted company with his hand somewhere along the way.
A reflexive attempt at pushing himself up again is cut short when only his left hand rises to the task.
His other arm is sticky, and the moment he spares a glance for it, he wishes he hadn’t. The sleeve of his coat is torn and darkening as it is soaking up his blood. He catches a glimpse of white in the red and groans as his body remembers that injuries hurt.
The car that hit him hasn’t stopped, a fact for which he is incongruously grateful. The last thing he needs is a helpful human or two trying to get him anywhere near a human doctor who can put his Time Lord blood under a human microscope and realize they’re dealing with an alien. He knows where that sort of thing ends.
He needs to be off the street. Every breath is now accompanied by the sting of broken ribs, and more sources of pain are springing up with every attempt to move, but he isn’t sure he’s quite badly injured enough to send his body into regeneration. He doesn’t want to regenerate, but he certainly doesn’t want to fall into the hands of a human doctor while helpless. Actually, he’s not sure that anything vital enough to trigger regeneration has been destroyed. If only he can manage to get off the street and crawl somewhere he won’t be found while his body goes into a healing coma to repair the damage—
He hates to think of what will happen if it does that with a piece of bone sticking out of his arm, but figures that as long as he can find his TARDIS afterwards and fly her back to where he’d started out from, he can then have Martha re-break his arm and set it properly no matter how it turns out. Not that he’s sure he can pilot the TARDIS with only one hand working. Some days, he can barely do so with two.
Pain spikes in his ribs, his arms, and his shoulder as he manages to roll over, which puts him in no better a position than he’d been before, except that he has less dirt in his mouth now. The lightning, he realizes vaguely, is still ongoing. He stares up at it once again, trying to collect the energy and courage for making the next move, when a branch splits off.
He has just enough time to realize it’s heading for him before it connects, in a disorienting feeling of regeneration energy that isn’t his, shreds of memories he cannot place, and followed by a wash of darkness.