Chapter Text
“We came here a long time ago, Professor”, said Ace as she left the Tardis onto Totter’s Lane.
The Doctor nodded. “Twice in a row.”
Ace remembered. “That’s when we met the Daleks. But you missed the first time and we ended up in the future. My future.”
“And now we’re… well, what year is it?”
A fly-poster caught her eye, with a date. She wondered if she could do the mental maths to correlate the days of the week, decided she couldn’t be bothered with all that, and then simply looked around to see if there was anything different to what she’d expected in 1987. A brand new F reg car was the only real difference. “This is 1989. This is my future - or it was. If it’s been a couple of years for me, is this my present?”
“A time-travelling clock can be right several times a day”, noted the Doctor.
“Why are we here, Professor? Why are we now?”
The Doctor simply shrugged. “You know the Tardis. We’ve crossed your timeline before.”
Ace frowned, remembering the incident at Perivale. “I thought that might be the end, you know, Professor. I could have stayed there. But…”
Ace stopped, not wanting to say it. “But what?” prodded the Doctor.
“But I realised there was nothing for me. My mum hadn’t even had me declared missing! Those kids who disappeared from the youth club, I was just as lost as them.”
The Doctor looked pained.
“Why are we here?” asked Ace, again.
“I don’t know, Ace. You know how the Tardis is. Sometimes it likes to fixate on times, on places, on significant events and dates. You remember the Hand of Omega? First thing we did after we left Gallifrey was put it somewhere safe. Here. We stayed here a while afterwards. We had nowhere else to go. It was before we had learned about running.”
“You and the Tardis?”
“Me, the Tardis, and Susan.”
“You left Gallifrey with someone!?” interrobanged Ace.
The Doctor paused in thought.
“What happened to her?”
“She found a young man in the future - Earth a couple of centuries from now - and decided to stay.”
“Like Mel?”
“Yes. It was… a difficult farewell.”
“You’ve visited?”
“The Tardis was not exactly reliable back then - even compared to now. I couldn’t. And we had to go on, I had a couple of stowaways from the 60s I had to return.”
“Stowaways?”
“Ian and Barbara. They were teachers at Coal Hill School, trying to solve a mystery in a junkyard. They taught…” The Doctor paused guardedly, before continuing with “me a lot.”
Ace noticed his hesitation but didn’t challenge it. Getting secrets out from him was hard work, and he’d just volunteered a bunch of them, almost unprompted.
“The Professor’s professors”, she said, to defuse the tension.
The Doctor laughed.
“Not the first, and not the last. Tell me one thing Ace - how did you know it was 1989 so quickly?”
“I’ve learned a few tricks, Professor. You see that poster there?”
“The one for some kind of soda Ouroborous?
“For Pop Will Eat Itself. They’re a band, I think.”
“Like the Common Men?”
“No idea. Anyway the release date. May 1st.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Ace, but there is a 1st of May most years, is there not?”
“Yes. But what day of the week would it be?”
“In the year 1989, a Monday.”
Ace smiled. She’d noticed that the Doctor knew about big changes, but often didn’t notice the subtle stuff. And sure, she could tell him that the car registration plates were basically a code for the years, or she could try this one…
“Monday’s when records come out. I guess you’ve never paid very much attention to release dates, have you, Professor?”
“Quite right, Ace.”
“Last time we were here, we followed a flyer we were given and that turned out pretty alright didn’t it?” noted Ace.
“Well, we did end up in grave peril,” said the Doctor.
“But we defeated that horrible comedian! So let’s go and… um, go to the record shop?”