Chapter Text
Location: Space, somewhere.
“Now,” He began, he being the Doctor. A lanky, taller man with a bright red bowtie and a smile continues a quirky conversation with two of his most recent companions: Amelia and Rory Pond.
“How was the Isles of Ilo?” He flips a few switches on the large circular console in front of him before spinning towards the two who sat on the steps in front of him with a smile and clap of his hands. Amy looked back with her head resting on her hands and a bored expression before answering with a Scottish accent:
“It was alright”
“Alright?!” The Doctor answered, a dramatic shock spread across his face. “You think that the Isles of Ilo, whose crystalline waters are known across 5 specific galaxies, alright?!”
“I-I mean it would probably have been better if we weren't attacked by a nesting alien bird race?” Rory spoke up, causing Amy to nod in agreement. However, the Doctor’s shock remained until an idea appeared in his mind; he quickly spun his attention towards the TARDIS console.
“Alright, but we did stop it from becoming a whole natural disaster that would cause the collapse of the entire society in…” The gears in his mind turned at rapid speeds as he turned a couple of nobs. “...30,000 years!”
Amy gets up with a loud sigh and walks around towards the Doctor, the heels of her black boots echoing on the glass floor of the center console before stopping to lean on the nearby railing. The Doctor watched for a moment, unamused. “Fine! Fine, let’s see..”
He rounds the console, muttering to himself as he flips a switch or two and taps a few keys on the 1980s-Esque keyboard looking at the screen above him. His concentrated face suddenly lights up and turns towards Amy who watched him with a crooked smile with Rory behind her looking a tad bit confused. The Doctor sprung up excitedly, his mouth open to talk about their newest destination when a loud metallic crunch before the TARDIS took a literal turn for the worst. The console room tilted heavily to the right and started to rattle and shake, causing the time travelers to fall onto the console floor with a surprised yelp.
The Doctor immediately whipped his head up and gripped at the end of the center console, trying to stabilize himself as he slowly tries to get up from the shaking console floor. He is pulled and tugged from the heavy turbulence but his eyes are glued to the screen in front of him.
“That can’t be, no...no! No one can just-” The Doctor began muttering aloud.
“Doctor what the HELL is going on?!” Rory yelled from the console’s floor, clutching onto a railing for dear life as the Doctor promptly ignored him, continuing to mutter about how absurd that whatever he is looking at is.
“But it doesn’t make any sense!” The Doctor shouted as he rushed (albeit wobbly) towards another end of the console to flip a few more switches and handles. He was deep in thought, his ever-expansive mind cranking through possibilities before Amy’s impatience rang through his ears.
“Doctor you aren’t making any sense!” Amy began while also being able to stabilize herself upward, clinging to the top of the console’s railing. “You aren’t making any sense!”
“It’s like the fabric of the current reality just got completely erased, rewritten, and then completely fixed all in the span of a few seconds! It’s causing the TARDIS to go haywire, but what in the entire universe could cause such-” He stops in the middle of pulling a lever as his eyes widen. “Oh.”
“Oh?!”
“Ohhh no. No..no no..” The Doctor speeds right back around the console to where he was originally, quickly typing in what seemed to be coordinates. “If I can just pinpoint the exact location of the-HA! Hold on! It is going to be a bit of a bumpy landing!”
The TARDIS quickly warps and spins in the direction of its destination. The Doctor continuously turns gears and pulls levers on the console in a hurried fashion while Amy and Rory collectively scream in a panic until the turbulence suddenly stops. As the console room stabilizes, the two companions get up cautiously with adrenaline running through their veins.
“Is it...over?” Rory speaks up before another forceful shove of the console room lands them all on the floor. “I guess not...” He answers, painfully.
The Doctor springs up as if nothing happened and checks the monitor. He grimaces, making Amy and Rory look at each other, confused. “Alright, come along Ponds.”
The Doctor starts to rush out from the console before he is immediately stopped by Amy stepping in front of him with her arms crossed.
“Hold on, are you going to explain what's going on? You’ve been going all-” She hesitates, scrunching her face a bit as she tries to find the word to describe his current rushing about. “-bonkers about something that caused the TARDIS to go all haywire. Come on, out with it.”
The Doctor looks at Amy, his brows furrowed as if he is almost trying to will her to move before he steps back in defeat and starts his reluctant explanation. “There was a space-time anomaly that caused a huge tear in the fabric of this universe’s timeline to be opened, changing Earth’s course of history and the birth of an obscenely large number of alternate timelines. These timelines became so overwhelming that they almost collapsed on themselves and nearly destroyed all of time and space. Yet, this all happened in an instant, and since we were traveling through time with the TARDIS she felt all of it and started to...die.” He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Luckily this anomaly fixed itself, however, I now know where it originated…”
“And?” Rory asked, concerned as he looked at the Doctor’s posture getting a bit more ruffled and his face showing more frustration as he continues.
“AND,” The Doctor starts to walk ahead towards the TARDIS door, pulling down on his jacket to straighten it out, and angrily fixes his tilted bowtie. “if it is who I think it is we will be having a very, very long chat.”
Rory looks at Amy once more, who gives him a confused shrug before following the Doctor down towards the doors. Rory follows close behind before the both of them are stopped by the Doctor turning around facing them with a serious look.
“Alright one rule while we’re here, you do not touch anything and I’ll do most of the talking. Ok? Ok.”
The Doctor turns to open the door to the TARDIS, placing his hand on the handle before creaking it slowly open. The golden light from the room in front of them started to pour into the TARDIS as the all-consuming yet comforting smell of fresh lavender, old oak wood, and dusty books waft through the crack of the TARDIS’ door. The Doctor then fully opens the door and steps out into a large circular room with two floors and a large table with books and papers covering it haphazardly. Papers that were once on the table are now scattered on the ground and up a winding staircase to the second floor. The Doctor takes out his sonic screwdriver, meticulously scanning the area.
Stepping out, Amy was confused as what the Doctor described was supposedly a masterful fiend that messed up time to the point it almost killed the TARDIS mid-flight. She thought they would be on an evil-looking spaceship or hidden otherworldly base. However, it seemed that they were in an odd-looking, yet decently pleasant and empty library. That is until she managed to spot an Asain man of average height with a bowl of popcorn in his hands. He was frozen in front of them but on the other side of the table, looking back and forth between them and the TARDIS. Amy also froze, tugging the Doctor’s tweed jacket sleeve to grab his attention.
“Doctor.” She said in a soft tone, causing the Doctor to quickly whip his head around towards her, quickly assessing if she was ok before looking in her general direction, seeing the young man in front of him. The Doctor releases the button on the sonic screwdriver, using his other hand to set it back in place as he starts to make direct eye contact with the man.
The young man jumped a little before moving his head to the side and back, still keeping an eye on the three strangers in front of him before he worriedly calls out to someone:
“BAIRD...”