Chapter Text
The TARDIS hadn’t wanted to go. That really should have been your first sign, the machine balking with sullen flashing lights and whining shudders of complaint as the Doctor, finished with a repair, punched in the coordinates.
“Oh, what’s this about then?” the Doctor asked, fond exasperation tinging her voice as she peered up at the main crystal. “This is no time for a tantrum!”
“Is it ever?” Graham asked, sprawled in a chair and enjoying a leisurely sandwich. He was too much the old hat to be fussed by an argument between the Doctor and her ship. “Maybe you should try talking to her, Doc?” The Doctor shot him a suspicious look, but Graham’s face was sincere and serene as he ate.
“Hm,” was all she said, darting around the console, her welder’s apron half removed and flapping in a heavy sort of way. You wondered, as you sat next to Graham and watched her, how she managed to avoid tripping in the thing. It was impressive.
“What’s the problem?” Yaz asked, walking into the room. She took in the the sight of the still flashing, complaining crystal and the harried, half-aproned Doctor. She groaned, then plopped down on a chair next to you, her legs stretched out. You could smell lotion on her; she’d obviously applied sunscreen in preparation for the emerald seas of Dusark, a fun beach trip the Doctor had promised.
“Sunscreen Yaz?” Ryan asked, from Graham’s other side. He shook his head. “Bit optimistic.”
“Oi,” the Doctor called, sticking her head around the console and scowling as Yaz groaned again and you and Graham laughed. “We’ll get there! I don’t know why she’s so fussed about it —”
“You know Doc, I have noticed,” Graham said, finishing his sandwich, “that thing - I mean, she, usually only throws these fits when you’re taking us somewhere particularly dangerous.”
“That’s true,” Ryan said, and you and Yaz nodded.
“So I’m wondering, I am,” Graham continued, “what else might be going on in these green seas? Something you haven’t mentioned to us?”
“Emerald seas,” the Doctor corrected, a touch grumpily, which rather confirmed Graham’s suspicious as far as you were concerned. Something on the console beeped, add she turned around. “Ah! There we go.” The Doctor threw back a lever and with a last shuddering complaint, the TARDIS quieted. The Doctor beamed, taking of her apron and pulling a display screen towards her. “We’ve landed.” She was quiet for a moment, tongue poking slightly between her lips. “Seems normal enough,” she murmured to herself, then straightened and seemed to become aware again of all four of you watching her with varying degrees of skepticism and amusement. “Ah, well,” she said, brushing some dishevled hair from her eyes. “I may have also received a distress call.”
Ryan and Yaz both groaned loudly.
“When were you planning on sharing that with us then?” Graham asked, a touch tart. The Doctor scowled, her gaze passing over each of you. You felt a small jolt when her eyes landed on yours, a moment that seemed to last longer and heavier than it had any right to.
“I was just gonna have a look around while you lot enjoyed your day,” the Doctor said airily. “No need to worry you. It’s probably nothing.” She trailed off, but was still eying the display.
“But?” you prompted, and again felt that small thrill as her eyes flicked to yours, glittering and golden in the half-light of the console. She flattened her lips, but she didn’t seem annoyed. Not with you, anyway.
“But the transmission is… weird,” she said finally. “I have a location for it, but that’s all, no other information encoded at all.”
“Strange distress calls and an upset timeship,” Graham said, pushing himself to his feet with a grunt. “Par for the course, then. I’ll just nip back and get my speedo and we’ll be good to go.” The Doctor scrunched her nose at his retreating back but made no comment, perhaps taking his mixed reaction as the best she’d get. You’d all given up on trying to dissuade Graham from his speedo long ago.
So, you exchanged half apprehensive, half amused looks with Ryan and Yaz, then slipped off to change as well, having (rightfully) not shared Yaz’s optimism in a timely and complication-free arrival.
“No respect,” you heard the Doctor muttering to herself, and you grinned. “I take them to the renowned emerald seas of Dusark and there’s one tiny distress signal, and they won’t stop moaning. This is your fault, you know.”
The TARDIS beeped back at her, a sound that needed no translation.
——————————————
“This is nice,” Ryan said, as the five of you stepped out of the TARDIS several minutes later and onto gleaming purple sand. The emerald sea stretched out ahead of you, the sound of the surf resonating in your chest. You took in a deep breath of the fresh, slightly metallic air.
“Thank you Ryan,” the Doctor said pointedly, shutting the TARDIS door behind her. “I do try.” She stepped up next to you, her coat brushing against your bare legs as she looked around.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” you asked her. “To the beach?”
She scrunched her nose at you, and you grinned. “This coat’s fine for the beach,” she informed you loftily, lifting a hand and shading her eyes. “I’m going to have a look ‘round first anyway, see if I can pinpoint the location that the call came from. You lot set up, have fun. I’ll catch you up.”
But you were shaking your head. “Not a chance,” you told her, and her scrunch returned.
“Yeah,” Yaz added, stepping up next to you. Ryan nodded.
“Hey?” Graham said, when he looked back and realized that the rest of you hadn’t followed him towards the sound of revelry and aroma of food. “Why not? I want a kip on the beach, I don’t see why we all have to follow the Doc just because she’s in a snooping mood.”
“Investigating,” the Doctor and you corrected Graham at the same time. She beamed at you, a quick smile, and the warmth that flooded from your face to the tips of your fingers had nothing to do with the sunny day.
“Right, investigating,” Graham said, throwing his hands in the air. “Call it what you will but I don’t see why all have to go.”
“You don’t,” the Doctor started, but Yaz cut her off, already shaking her head.
“Because what happens when the Doctor promises to slip off on a short side-trip and we get separated?” Yaz asked. Graham’s face fell.
“Everything goes to pot,” he said heavily, nodding. The Doctor made sounds of indignation, but you all ignored her. “Right, field trip with the Doc first, then beach,” Graham proclaimed, making it sound as if he was en route to his own funeral. You, Ryan and Yaz shared a grin at his expense.
“No respect,” the Doctor was muttering, turning on a heel and striding away. The four of you hurried after her.
“So what are we looking for exactly?” Yaz asked, falling into step next to you.
“Not sure,” the Doctor said. A breeze kicked up, lifting the hair from her face and neck, and the sun glinted off her ear cuff as she turned her head to glance back at you. You could feel a sort of… charged heaviness to the air, almost crackling with latent, coiled energy.
“Is there a storm coming?” you asked aloud, looking back out over the distant emerald water. The horizon was clear, only a few innocent clouds scudding across the sky.
The Doctor followed your gaze. “Hmm,” she said, stopping and lifting a finger into the air. “It shouldn’t be.”
“That’s not the same thing,” Yaz observed.
The Doctor grunted.“No, it’s not,” she agreed, walking again. She dropped her hand, curled her fingers. “The air feels strange.”
“It is an alien planet,” Graham offered, a touch acerbically, from the rear of the group. You would put good money on the likelihood of losing him to a restaurant or hotdog stand or anywhere else convient and offering food if the opportunity arose. That was probably why he was hanging back to begin with.
“Strange is relative, these days,” Ryan said, hands in his pockets.
“Strange is what I do, Ryan Sinclair,” the Doctor said primly, and you and Yaz rolled your eyes at each other. “And if I say something is strange then I mean it.”
“Can you imagine if we believed she meant everything that she said?” Yaz muttered, and you laughed. The Doctor acted as if she hadn’t heard; you and Yaz often got away with more snark than Ryan and Graham, something that delighted you both to no end.
“Now, if my calculations are correct, then — oh, what do we have here?” Between one breath and the next the Doctor whipped around a corner and out of sight. Yaz groaned, Graham said something he wouldn’t have if the Doctor had still been close enough to hear, and you all hurried after her. It was what you did.
You had left behind the main, touristy recreation area of the beach you’d landed on some time ago, something Graham had seen fit to remind you all of at regular intervals. You were in more of what looked like a neighborhood now, if you’d had to guess. The houses, if that’s what they indeed were, looked to be made out of smooth stone, but shaped in huge, spiraling cones and towers, almost like the shells of giant crustaceans. The depths of the spirals pulsed with a green light reminiscent of the sea, deepening the suspicion you held that these structures had once crawled along the seabed. It was eerie, and you began to walk closer to Yaz the deeper you wound through the town. You also made a mental note to ask the Doctor just how safe this ocean was to swim in.
The four of you found the Doctor in a sort of clearing, perhaps a town square or small park. It was sandy, dotted with blue and grey tufts of grass-like plants. The Doctor was standing smack in the middle, coat and hair snapping in the wind as she pointed her sonic at the blue, cloudless sky, then dropped it to sweep around the buildings. She read the resulting output with a frown, then crouched down. Yaz started to speak, knowing what she was going to do, but it was too late, and the Doctor deposited a sampling of the sandy substrate into her mouth. She rolled it back and forth on her tongue as she considered it.
“Odd,” she said, the word slightly garbled. Yaz closed her eyes and breathed out, gathering her patience before speaking.
Ryan had fewer qualms. “Gross,” he said, cheerfully.
“What’s odd?” you asked, and the Doctor stood up, brushing her hands off on her coat and, unfortunately, swallowing her mouthful of purple alien sand.
“Not sure,” she said. “Energy readings are all over the place, if I didn’t know any better I’d say a huge storm was about to roll in but,” she gestured at the clear, friendly looking sky.
“And you got that from the soil, did you,” Graham deadpanned. The Doctor smacked her lips, glancing over at him.
“No,” she said guilelessly. Her hair was blowing in her face, obscuring her expression, but you could see that slight crease had appeared by her brow, the one that meant Things Had Changed.
“Then why did you —“
“Engine fuel,” the Doctor answered. She had looked away again, out over the horizon. “Traces of it, anyway.” Graham made a face, struggling with whether or not to pursue the topic of ‘the Doctor can taste engine fuel in sand’.
“Is that weird?” Ryan asked, filling in Graham’s silence. “This place has space travel, yeah?”
“Not this sort,” the Doctor said, still looking away. The wind gusted again, harder, flaring her coat around her.
“From whoever sent the distress single d’you think?” Yaz asked, frowning and looking around.
“Maybe.”
“Is this the location?” you asked, looking around at the shell-like structures.
“Yes,” the Doctor said.
“Nobody’s here but us,” Graham observed. Okay, so he was still annoyed about missing his beach nap.
“Yes,” the Doctor answered absently, but then her focus sharpened, a palpable change you felt, like a change in the weather. “Yes, Graham, well-spotted!” She spun away, pacing back towards you all, her head scanning the area.
It was odd, actually, you realized. You had started at the beach, bustling with locals and tourists, and the deeper you’d gone into the town, the fewer people you’d seen, until you were here. Alone.
“I should have noticed that,” the Doctor was muttering, scanning the buildings with her sonic. The wind picked up again, lashing her hair across her face. You shivered, though you weren’t cold. The emptiness felt wrong.
“Where is everyone?” Yaz asked. Her tidy braid kept her own hair out of her own face, and you could see the same tension you felt reflected in it.
“That’s not the right question,” the Doctor said. She pulled her sonic back in, regarded it with serious eyes. Yaz wrinkled her nose at the Doctor’s back, a fine imitation of the Time Lord’s signature scrunch.
“Who sent the distress signal?” Ryan asked, never one to miss an opportunity to one-up Yaz.
“When did they send it?” Graham added, getting in on the game despite himself.
“Closer,” the Doctor said. “But still the wrong questions.”
You stepped closer to one of the buildings, resting your palm against the sun-warmed, pitted surface. It even felt like a shell. “If everyone is gone,” you said, frowning, “then why did they leave?”
“Ah,” the Doctor said, from very close behind you, and your heart lurched; you hadn’t heard her approach. The wind snapped her coat against your bare legs. “That’s almost it.” She placed her own hand on the building, slightly above yours. You watched her fingers curl against it.
“It’s not like they went far,” Yaz said. “We’re what, twenty minutes from where we landed? Doesn’t seem like there’s a sense of urgency to it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the Doctor agreed. She leaned forward, resting her cheek against the building.
“More like they just... are avoiding it here, for some reason,” Ryan said. “Spooky.”
“Scared of a ghost town, Ryan?” Yaz teased, and he delivered her a Doctor-scrunch of his own. You were all getting quite adept at it.
“Perception filter?” you wondered aloud. The Doctor made a soft sound.
“Gold star for you,” she said, flashing you a quick smile. You flushed, and ducked your head to study your shoes so that the others (so that the Doctor) wouldn’t notice. She moved away from the building, striding back to the center of the clearing. She craned her neck up, eying the sky.
“Perception filter, on this area specifically?” Ryan asked. “Why?”
“And what’s it got to do with the distress call?” Yaz added, looking around furtively as if she might find the mysterious sender.
“Are they even connected?” you asked; traveling with the Doctor had taught you that things didn’t always connect in the ways they seemed like they should.
“Hang on,” Graham said. “If there’s one of them perception filters over this, keepin’ people out, then what’s it doing letting us through?”
“Ah! Ten points for Graham,” the Doctor said. ”Now that is the right question.”
“Can perception filters do that?” Yaz asked. “Let specific people… perceive them?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor said, sounding surprised. “It’s sophisticated, if that’s what it is. Way beyond the tech of this planet right now. Way beyond.” She shook her head, bemused.
You were getting a bad feeling about this. You remembered, suddenly, how the TARDIS had balked at coming here. How the distress signal had been nothing more than this set of coordinates. The wind shrieked through the clearing, a high-pitched keen as it resonated off the buildings. Goosebumps erupted along your arms.
“Doctor,” you asked slowly, the rising wind snatching the words from your mouth and distorting them, “what type of engine fuel did you say it was?”
You thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to answer, as the wind whipped around you all. “Ah, well,” the Doctor said finally. She still wasn’t looking at any of you. Premonition sent a wave of unease through you. The Doctor seemed farther away than she actually was, as she stood with her back to you, the wind clawing at her coat, her hair. Her sonic was clutched in her hand; the sunlight glinted off the crystal, an erratic flash of light. She didn’t look… apprehensive, so much as she looked… eager, almost. And you knew, in that moment. Before she even spoke, you knew.
“It’s faint,” the Doctor said, and the wind was twisting her words too, as if she spoke from across a barrier, from underwater, from a different room. A different time. “I can’t be sure.”
“But?” Yaz asked, and from the sudden sharpness to the word, you knew she felt the same apprehension you did, the same falling towards something inevitable.
The Doctor blew out a breath. Took one back in. “It matches the TARDIS engines."
Silence filled the space between the five of you, a bubble untouched by the shrieking wind.
“Doc,” Graham said, finally. She looked at you all then, and there was in that moment something wild in her, something unnerving and alien. The wind shrieked, louder, and the Doctor’s eyes shifted to yours. Her face flickered, too quickly for you to decipher, then settled into… her, again. The Doctor you knew, and trusted, who didn’t long for contact with her greatest enemy, didn’t take you directly into his path.
“Right,” she said, briskly, coming to a decision. She moved the way you’d come from, back towards the beach.“Come on, fam, let’s — “
A bolt of lightning struck the cobblestone street, right in the center where the Doctor had been standing heartbeats before. You fell to the side, blinded, ears ringing. You weren’t sure for a moment what had happened, where you were. There was only confusion, and pain.
It was the Doctor’s voice, as ever, that led you back out of the dark.
Her hands found you, shook you gently.
“ — come on, easy, stay with me — “
You blinked as her face swam into view; her hair was wild, eyes wilder still; you thought groggily that in that moment, the storm had nothing on her.
“Stay there,” she instructed, resting her hand on your cheek so briefly you thought you may have imagined it, a fleeting touch. Then she was gone from you wavering, fractured vision. You could hear her rousing someone else — Yaz.
You pushed yourself to your knees, and then your feet, wobbling.
“What…” you mumbled, “was that.”
The Doctor was shaking Ryan, who sat up with his head in his hands. You could see Graham and Yaz — Graham moved immediately towards Ryan. Yaz, like you, turned to watch the Doctor.
“Nobody move!” she cried, and Graham froze, steps from Ryan. She had pointed her sonic upwards again, then pulled it in and read the output.
“Bad, bad, very not good,” she was muttering feverishly. The wind howled through the buildings; you could see leaves and other debris blowing in a circle around the pointed tips of the shells, a twisting crescendo.
“Doctor, we need to go!” Yaz called over the din.
“I need to stabilize it!” The Doctor shouted back, pointing her sonic at first one building, then another. “I think I’ve just about got it —“
“Why do you need to stabilize it? Let’s just go,” Graham said. His eyes were still on Ryan.
“Have to! Otherwise —“
All at once, the hair on your arms rose, a static, prickling sensation.
“Fam, DOWN —“ The Doctor yelled.
The lightning hit again.
You’d been farther from it this time, and managed to cover your eyes. Blinking spots from your vision, you pushed yourself again to your knees. Graham had reached Ryan and pulled them both down; they stirred slowly, having been closer to the blast. Yaz had moved towards the Doctor. You looked out at them, on the other side of the clearing from you. The Doctor was still standing, teeth bared into the wind as she flew through settings on her sonic.
“Don’t move!” she shouted again, throwing a quick look over her shoulder at you as you stepped towards her. You froze. “Almost,” the Doctor said, and you realized that her teeth weren’t bared in a grimace, but in a fierce, wild grin. “Almost —“
The air crackled again ominously. You flinched, looking up. The sky was still clear, but the color had shifted, slightly, a spreading green hue. You looked back at the others; you felt the distance between you and them acutely. “Doctor,” your began, but she didn’t hear you. Not across that distance, not with the wind screaming around you all.
“Almost,” she repeated, then the sonic reached a new pitch, one you could hear even over the wind. “Ah! Gotcha!” she cried, triumphant. Her eye met yours, in that moment. She was still grinning, as she pressed a button on her sonic.
The world went still, and silent.
You could hear the thunder of your own heart, the ragged breathing of yourself and the others.
“Result!” The Doctor said brightly, into that yawning, dangerous silence. You looked at her, with Graham and Ryan and Yaz. She was still grinning, chest heaving, hair wild and messy across her face. She held out a hand towards you. She opened her mouth, no doubt to tell you to come on, stop dawdling, come on then hurry up.
And then the sky ripped itself open.
Time softened, in that moment, and the ones that followed.
You weren’t aware of the full order of events, even later. Not all of them. You didn’t remember flying backwards, pushed forcibly through the air. Didn’t remember cracking against the side of one of those shell-like buildings, didn’t remember crumpling to the stone and sand.
You remembered the Doctor’s smile, though, and her outstretched hand. She was seared in your memory, against that sudden white-hot wreckage of the earth and sky. You remembered her, and the way she and the others vanished into into the expanding blaze of destruction.
You vividly remembered wanting to follow them, to get to them even as they vanished in that sanguine haze, don’t leave me, don’t leave me behind —
You remembered too how your arms and legs wouldn’t move or obey you. Remembered with shocking clarity, the gritty sand beneath your cheek, hot and abrasive and damp with what you’d later realize was your own blood.
You didn’t remember the silence that reasserted itself, slowly, across the clearing. Or the way it was broken by the groaning wheeze of a TARDIS, one you would have recognized. One you’d hoped to never hear again.
You didn’t remember the moment when your eyes shut and didn’t open again for a very long time.
The wind skated over your crumpled body, hot and acrid and nothing like it had been moments earlier. This air was wrong, and if you had been conscious, you would have been frightened of the way it tightened your chest as it threaded through your lungs. Of the way it burned, as it settled in your bones.
But you didn’t remember that, or the casual approach of footsteps that stopped abruptly next to you.
You certainly didn’t remember a boot nudging you, turning you over so that your face was turned up to the sky. You choked and coughed at the movement, red foam on your lips the first sign of that dangerous air, but you didn’t remember that either, or the way the boots jumped away from you, a voice exclaiming in disgust.
A few more moments of silence passed, marked by the fall of ash.
“Ah,” the voice said eventually. “Oops.” A long sigh, then the sound of a pocket rustling, something being pulled out. A button being pushed.
“It’s me. So. Slight complication.”