Chapter Text
He just wanted to get out of there; where he went was immaterial provided only that he could rest for a moment or two before the inevitable crisis hit. His TARDIS was no longer fit with a randomizer, which meant that the Doctor had just spent a good five minutes trying to come up with a random spacetime location to send himself to. Eventually, he did something he had attempted only on the rare occasion. Leaning under the console, he felt around with his hand for the control he knew was around there somewhere. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed when his fingers brushed against the toggle. ‘Telepathic mode,’ and he clicked the toggle home.
He stood erect and observed the lights dimming around the console room. He hmmed softly to himself, still making a show of competency. The truth was rather that he had no idea how the TARDIS operates in telepathic mode. He raised his brows, and extended his hands towards the time rotor.
‘Go!’ he commanded. To his surprise, the rotor duly lit up, began to rise and fall in rhythm to the comforting whine of the TARDIS as it dematerialised and shifted into the vortex. Rematerialisation would begin in a minute, but in that short time, the Doctor found it impossible to keep his thoughts from straying to recent events. He sighed as the TARDIS finished its brief journey. Giving the console a rap with his fingers, he turned and walked through the door.
He walked directly into a downpour. ‘Urgh!’ he ejected with a shudder. He took one look around at what looked like an urban street lined with shops before turning back and hunting around the TARDIS cupboards for his rainbow-coloured umbrella. He stood at the threshold of the TARDIS’s exterior doors and opened the umbrella with a pop, stepping daintily out into the street.
He walked along confidently, habitually ignoring the lingering sidelong stares as he passed. The street was not crowded, due to the inclemency of the weather, but little groups of people passed up and down the sidewalk running their errands or coming home from a matinee at the theatre. One of these groups of theatregoers bore down on the Doctor. He looked from side to side but had to totter on the curb as they pushed their way past him without a word. He frowned and gave a soft grunt at their lack of concern for other people a moment before a car sped down the road and deluged him in muddy water from the large puddle he was standing beside.
He drew himself in, rather like an irritated – and soaked- feline. ‘This was a terrific plan,’ he muttered. ‘The tension is simply melting away!’ he swatted hopelessly at the dingy brown of his once brilliantly coloured coat before giving it up and continuing his walk. Before long, he truly was enjoying himself. He was travelling, exploring an alien world again. He glanced expertly at his surroundings as he passed. ‘Twentieth century Earth, probably. I always end up in this era somehow…’ His eyes locked upon a shop sign swung out over the pavement. ‘Hello!’ he said cheerily. ‘A bookshop! Just the thing for a cosmos-weary perigrinator like myself!’ he hurriedly shuffled under the awning, folded his umbrella and slipped inside the shop.
The Doctor smiled unconsciously to himself when he saw that this was not just any bookshop: it was a used bookshop. It was a very cramped and messy bookshop with shelves literally stuffed and, indeed, spilling out onto the floor in places. Rough stacks of books littered the walkways where customers barely seemed to move as their eyes racked the contents of the store.
He headed into the fiction section. His reading speed was astonishingly advanced, compared with that of Humans and so he had finished scouring the spines of every visible title in a minute or two. But he took his time, even so. He allowed himself the pleasure of wandering up and down the cramped aisles and even stopped to direct a student who was at her wits end looking for a good German dictionary.
The Doctor made his way around the entire shop until he was looking out over the first floor from the second floor balcony at the top of the stairs. This was their history section, the last stop on the Doctor’s tour of the place. He had just been examining a volume when he happened to glance in the direction of the checkout. A woman was bending over a canvas bag. She and the bag were soaked and it was obvious she had only just come in. She stood up and placed some books on the counter. The Doctor turned back to the shelves, replaced the volume and stepped away to look for another, more interesting one.
‘That sounds fair to me,’ the woman was saying. The sound barely reached the Doctor where he was, but the sound immediately struck him. He knew who that voice belonged to, but it was so impossible that she could be here- unless, of course, she was. Stranger things had happened, of course. He moved over to the stairs just in time to see the woman leave the store. She didn’t look like Tegan, thought the Doctor. But there was no telling how long it had been since she had left him in London- or was it the other way around?
He hurried along to the checkout where the clerk was just stacking the books the woman had left onto a shelf behind the counter. The Doctor strained to catch a glimpse of them. ‘Excuse me, sir, but that woman- is her name Tegan Jovanka?’ The man shrugged.
‘We get people come in here all the time, we don’t keep track of their names.’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I’ll take… that one,’ he said, pointing at one of the books the man was shelving.
‘I haven’t had a chance to-‘
‘Oh, nevermind!’ snapped the Doctor impatiently. ‘You have a lovely bookshop,’ he added sweetly before snatching up his umbrella and rushing out into the street. He cast a look around the street and quickly spotted the woman standing just a few yards away at a bus stop. She had her collar turned up in a vain attempt to stay somewhat dry.
In his haste, the Doctor forgot to open his umbrella and simply trotted over to where she stood in the rain. She saw him coming out of the corner of her eye and turned to take a better look before resuming her watch for the bus. He stepped closer. ‘It is you!’ he exclaimed boisterously with an excited little bob. ‘I thought I heard your voice in the bookshop!’ The woman turned towards him again and frowningly peered at him through the rain.
‘What a coincidence!’ he continued. ‘Not that something of this nature hasn’t happened before, of course.’ he added with a smile. ‘That was funny, come to think of it, far less so than meeting up with you now!’
‘My luck,’ said the woman as she turned back to the roadway and took a determined step away from the Doctor. He looked hard at her, annoyed.
‘Tegan,’ he said slowly very much as he used to do when in his last incarnation. ‘This is not funny.’ She stared back at him, on her guard now.
‘How do you know my name?’ she demanded.
‘You don’t remember me!’ exclaimed the Doctor loudly and indignantly. Tegan looked around her, almost embarrassed.
‘Well, yeah, I’d remember knowing someone like you,’ she said. ‘You’d be hard to forget.’
‘Exactly!’ he declaimed back at her. ‘I’m relieved that you are aware of the absurdity of this situation.’
‘I’m cold, tired, and soaking wet from this bloody storm- I don’t. Have. Time for this!’ The Doctor remembered his umbrella.
‘I have an umbrella,’ he suggested, as he began opening it.
‘Good for you, then.’ He looked up, piqued.
‘You may share it with me,’ he announced grandly, as he swung it over his head.
‘No thanks,’ said Tegan as she turned her back to him.
‘Tegan,’ he said sadly. ‘It’s been only a few years and you’ve already forgotten me?’ The sincerity of his tone began to give Tegan the impression that this man might not be the nuisance she assumed him to be. She took a good look at him. He waited patient and expectant. She shrugged.
‘Never seen you in my life,’ she said. He slumped.
‘Well, perhaps not seen, exactly,’ he added sheepishly. Tegan frowned.
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘You don’t make any sense.’ And then, she saw it. ‘The Doctor!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes!’ he cried happily.
‘You’re wearing his shirt!’ said Tegan. ‘Where did you-’ The Doctor groaned.
‘Honestly!’ he huffed. ‘It is the Doctor’s shirt and the Doctor is in it!’ he pronounced. Tegan stared in response.
‘Oh god,’ she said after looking deep into his eyes. ‘It’s you.’
‘I knew these would come in handy someday,’ he looked down and tugged at his white shirt lapels embroidered with red question marks. It was partly a means of breaking Tegan’s gaze. Something about it was extremely unsettling to him. When he looked away from them she was standing under the umbrella.