Chapter Text
“Oh, don’t you dare!”
The TARDIS wheezed in pain and her cloister bell bonged, black smoke billowing from her console, sparks igniting from the interior lights and time router. The police box rocketed through the vortex like a crashing aeroplane. Valarie gripped onto the console, smashing buttons, flipping leavers, doing anything she could think of to try and stop the crashing TARDIS.
The controls let out an electric fizz under her hand–she was thankful she couldn’t feel it–and the machine hissed like an angry snake. The TARDIS loathed her tugging at her controls, even when neither were having a good time. Valarie ducked down as a thick vent of black smoke blew at her, then she took hold of the controls again.
“I’m trying to help! Grr–I’m starting to regret skipping out on the flight lesson!” The TARDIS jerked violently as it shattered through the wall of the vortex, like a hammer to glass. The box hurtled through space, exterior singed from the violent exit, but thankfully the TARDIS had endured far more before.
Valarie was almost thrown back by the sheer force of it, but luckily her grip around the railing was strong enough to hold on. She grabbed onto the nearest panel of the console, hoping it would magically hold the one control that steadied the vessel–though she mostly hoped it held any sort of control in the first place. She pulled down on some sliders and the TARDIS bellowed an unhappy roar through the room, blasting another vent of steam at her.
“Oi!” She growled and returned the sliders to where they were before fumbling to the next panel, where she recognized the four yellow and red sliders in its centre–she’d seen the Doctor attempt to fiddle them when the TARDIS was taken out of his control by the mystery person from the phone. The sliders were splayed awkwardly, with most of the red ones completely at the top, the yellows and remaining red toward the bottom at an awkward angle.
She clumsily realigned them downward hoping and praying it would work, but the room kept shaking. It felt like at any moment the lights would pop, or the rotating circles above the router would spin so hard they’d fling off the ceiling and then just before the breaking point a silver pull-down lever beside the sliders snapped downward and the room’s rumbling ceased on the spot.
In reply the TARDIS let out an echoey warble that sounded at least a little bit pleased that she was no longer being throttled, but still not completely settled. Valarie recovered from almost falling over as the rocking came to its sudden stop.
The router's sporadic wobbling noises stopped too, and it was now rhythmically and calmly chugging up and down. Valarie checked over the controls to make sure nothing had been severely damaged, and thankfully nothing had been–or, at least, looked like it had.
“You alright now?” Valarie asked the room, running a hand over the edge of the console.
The TARDIS bleeped a sarcastic beep.
Valarie huffed. She didn’t speak TARDIS but she knew enough to know that beep was some sort of snarky comment. “Well maybe if I was told what was happening I wouldn’t have–” She inhaled a sharp breath before she could say anything nasty. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t the TARDIS’s fault.
The room's tense air seemed to lift in acceptance of her apology. Moving on, she pulled one of the rotating screens attached to the centre column’s track closer. The screen showed a solar system imposed onto a nebulous blue background, one pulsing with hexagonal patterns; it zoomed in on one of its planets, a recognisable and predictable planet.
Earth.
She was about to ask the room about anything else when some new information popped up. It was a date: December 24th, 2015. The location: England. More specifically a place called Gloucestershire…wherever that was. The ship let out a chuff and the time router slowed to a halt, but the ship gave one last jerk as it settled, the regular vworp she made upon landing was broken and sounded strained. The police box had landed.
After catching herself and shooting a glance at the machine Valarie looked over at the doors, the gateway that held back an entire world. A world he’d promised was more magnificent than anything else. And for a time it was. They’d travelled the universe and seen the impossible. But then it all went wrong, place after place became so dangerous and horrible… and the next she knew he was shoving her back into the TARDIS and leaving himself behind like a hero sacrificing themselves at the end of the story.
He made her want to rip her hair out. They’d been fighting after he’d quite literally used her for spare parts on that stupid planet, in that stupid junkyard just so he could get his memories back and save the day. Of course it was worth it, she even said so. The day had been saved along with countless lives. But now she couldn’t even look him in the eyes. What he did would sit with her forever, a cold shadow that loomed over her mind every time she drifted too far from thought.
She was tired of his whimsey. His facade was worn purely to impress. She knew it wasn’t for her sake, it was for his own. For his ego. Even now, he'd planned to bring her to some holiday planet, a bid for her to 'feel better' before once again turning into the Doctor becoming a saviour and her merely 'his companion' as everything went to shit.
But even through all of her hate and all of his emotional blindness, she still cared.
The Doctor was still her friend, a person who she knew cared for her but was just really, really bad at showing it. She would never forgive him for this, he didn’t deserve that and he’d never earn it. It would take time, a lot of time, but eventually she’d be okay on her own.
But at the moment, here and now being alone in a strange world with no guide, no ideas of what to do or any way to get back, she felt alone...
She didn’t know what to do…
The air softened around her as the lights dimmed, and a gentle weight pressed around her like a weighted blanket. Even though she was stressed, upset, confused, and a thousand other colours under that rainbow–the feeling was welcomed. A sympathetic gesture from the machine around her.
The TARDIS never been this alive when the Doctor was around. Valarie didn’t dare try to understand the inner mechanics of the semi-sentient, infinite, space-time machine but she had to guess it was because the Doctor wasn’t here hogging up all her attention, the two were telepathically linked–that's what the Doctor said at least. Either way, she was thankful the ship was here. For now.
“If I leave, you’re just going to run off back to him,” Valarie murmured.
There was a quiet winding as something flickered on a panel, a cone of light extending forward displaying the image of a man. His hair was buzzed and he wore a black leather jacket and purple shirt. She didn't recognise his style, but his eyes were unmistakable even on an otherwise unfamiliar face.
It looked like the TARDIS had winded the recording to a specific point.
“This is Emergency Programme One–now listen, this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean fatal. I'm–The Tardis is taking you–The Tardis can never return for me–Emergency Programme One means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine.” The hologram recording was spliced together, presumably only relaying the important information. Still, Valarie couldn’t help but notice the pained expression on the man's face, his eyes filled with sadness.
She hummed. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear but that seemed to be the best she was going to get. She pushed herself away from the comforting feeling of the weight still hugging her. “Alright, I’ll trust you. But if I come back and you're gone,” she threatened, pointing a finger at the console which chirped back at her in a tone she couldn’t quite decipher.
The lights stuttered, and dimmed to near darkness as Valarie approached the door-she figured it was part of the emergency programme-and pulled it inwards, not hearing the console hiss like a strained balloon behind her, or seeing the red blinking warning flashing on the screens. She stepped out into the settling light with held breath.
It was cloudy and cold. Snow crunched under her boots and fell from the sky like soft rain. Valarie was in the corner of a graveyard, the TARDIS had landed in front of the door to a building and against a small stone brick wall—she was nestled in quite close as well. Snow blanketed the ground and headstones, leaving any of the names unreadable and, lastly, a grand chapel, stained glass windows looking outward and a spire extended up and through the darkness.
She turned back around to the comforting blue box who’s windows and headlight were dark and almost hidden by the thin blanket of snow over her top. Hovering her hand over the handle, Valarie hesitated to pull it closed. The Doctor would have a plan–if just to save his own ego. He’d remember her; or more likely he’d remember the TARDIS, and he’d come back.
Clinging to that thought, Valarie closed the door.
***
A door clicked and creaked open, a soldier peering into an office.
The room was dark, the only source of light in the room being the dim orange desk lamp propped up to shine directly on a single desk. It was loaded with different documents and papers, a notebook and sketchbook laid out behind the papers with scribbled drawings and written information. There was nobody to be seen.
The soldier peaked back out and mumbled to somebody else who was obstructed by the door; the soldier shuffled away and a taller Indian man in a captain's attire replaced his position, his gaze mildly annoyed as he leaned in and shouted into the dark, “Knight!”
The response came when something heavy hit the floor with an echoed bang which caused the captain to rapidly shuffle in and feel for the light switch, clicking it on and letting the shoddy lights brighten the room. The source of the noise being a stack of papers that was now covering the floor, the captain realised he hadn’t needed to be quick. Standing above with his hands open in a frustrated stance was a tan, black-haired man dressed just a bit too formally for this job, around his neck–almost tucked under his collar alongside a dark blue bowtie—was a pair of earbuds wired into something in his pocket.
The formally dressed man looked up and noticed the captain and the frustration almost instantly fell from his demeanour. “Captain D'alia! You scared the life out of me,” he said and frowned, motioning to the papers.
Captain D’alia leaned his side on the doorway, sporting a slight smile, his hands held onto the corners of his bulletproof vest. “Your fault.”
Knight huffed and unplugged the earbuds from within his pocket and shoved them into the other before kneeling down to collect the papers. “Was there something you needed?” he asked without looking up.
The captain craned his head back as the soldier he was with shouted something. He responded with a thumbs up and then, that question and answer done, walked into the office. He glanced at the papers on the desk as he passed; just things about the Doctor and his box, Knight’s usual fascination.
“We’ve got a possible in Oxford. Description matches a few old cases.” He knew the less information he told Knight the higher the chance of interest, and indeed Knight was interested. He paused his paper shuffling and looked over expectantly.
“Big green scaly man, bright red eyes, and ‘lego hands’,” D’alia explained.
Knight raised a brow, that description was familiar–and a bit comedic. “Ice Warrior?” he questioned, though he had no doubt his guess was right.
Captain D’alia nodded, removing a hand from his vest to pick up and look at one of the pages that had been dropped; it was about an old UNIT investigation attempting to learn more about the Doctor’s box.
D’alia spoke while glancing over the mundane information. “A pickup towing a refrigerated trailer flipped a mile from the sighting. The responding officer said it looked like the doors were ripped off the hinges and the interior has dents that suggest an ice block was being transported.” D’alia handed the paper back as Knight stood up, the other papers shuffled messily into a frayed manilla folder labelled: ‘Blue Eagle Investigation 16-11-1976’.
“Definitely an Ice Warrior,” he clicked the dim lamp off as he threw the folder down on the table. “Truck’s owner?” Knight added, grabbing his parka off the back of the chair and slinging his arms through it. He rifled his pockets, going over a mental checklist of all the things in them: knife, pen, keyring, spare pen, notepad, mobile.
“Unaccounted for, but a manifest in the truck said it was being delivered to Cardiff from London, presumably to be auctioned off. Or be put in a storehouse,” Captain D’alia wondered.
Knight pursed his lips. “Ehhh…storehouse; unlikely, auction; maybe? Doesn't make much sense to auction a frozen Ice Warrior,” he debated, walking out of the room with Captain D’alia trailing close behind.
D’alia seemed confused, asking, “What do you mean? It's alien tech. It could be sold for more than our combined lifetime paychecks.” He chuckled painfully. “But seriously, is the promise of that not enough?”
“Well…,” he paused to think. “Well! From their angle yeah–I guess.” He couldn’t even begin to understand why they—whoever they were—would auction off unusable technology. Ice Warrior tech was strange even to UNIT. Not to mention it was also quite stubborn.
“Well, it’ll have something up its sleeve no matter what. Anything on Christmas,” D’alia said with a sigh.
Truer words have never been spoken. For some reason Christmas in the UK had become a magnet for alien activity and disaster. Knight himself could recall every disaster he’d been read up on (as he just so happened to miss almost all of them). There was the Sycorax using a blood magic scare tactic in an attempt to steal Earth, a Titanic replica falling from orbit and nearly striking Buckingham Palace and destroying London and Earth itself; then there was that time when the Master replaced almost all of the population with themself. That was a weird one to go over.
“Anything going on with you this Christmas?” Knight asked.
D’alia shook his head, “Same old, Amma will be making far too much fruit cake and Papa will probably be eating all of it.” He smiled. “What about you? You never talk about your family.”
They rounded the corner to the armoury wing where the experimental weapons and explosives were tested in the confines of safety; it was the nearest segment of building to their destination, explosions better off happening at the edge of the building.
“My family is… they’re back home. Don’t really have a connection with them anymore.” Knight lamented, and for a moment a strange sadness crept onto his face, though he quickly blinked it away. "I typically spend Christmas stargazing-when I'm not on call, that is."
“It's a bit hard to see through all the snow, no?” D’alia asked as they rounded a bend.
Of course it was, even with a telescope–but Knight didn’t need that. He knew every star, the name of every crater on the moon, and where every constellation would be. He didn’t need the sky to be clear. All he had to do was look up and there it was, a sky filled with colour even when the grey clouded.
“A bit.” He replied simply and shrugged.
The two field leaders exited into an underground garage, one of many, a concrete box with armoured vehicles lined up on each side, and a great big UNIT insignia stamped onto the floor. There were three vehicles pulled out and idling with their lights running, two armoured vans with some soldiers standing around and talking, and one large repurposed armoured bank truck.
The bank truck had been reinforced with Dwarf Star Alloy (which had been donated by the US branch after the idea of the vehicle was proposed) in hopes of containing the more humanoid threats and so far it had performed quite well. The back was completely sectioned off from the cab and the door was protected by a hand scanner that only specific people could use.
The waiting soldiers, including the one who peered into the room earlier, straightened up when they realised their superiors had entered the garage. Captain D’alia would be leading this charge as he was the one who was handed the report. The captain made a round-up gesture with his finger and the soldiers scrambled to get into the two armoured vans.
Captain D’alia opened the driver's side of the converted bank bank truck but paused when he noticed Knight hadn't followed on the passenger side. He stepped down from the hard metal step beneath the door and rounded the front of the truck where Knight was leaning against the closed door.
“Knight, you alright?” Captain D’alia approached cautiously and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, which seemed to wake him up but didn’t improve the weird sense of ‘wrong’ in his gut.
He took a shaky, heavy breath and stood up. “Vikram, I need you to take over this mission.” His tone was more serious, and scared than Captain D’alia had ever heard him, even when facing off against alien threats head-on. And using his full name–this was serious.
D’alia’s face twisted to worry. Knight was always a wildcard–hell on one of his first high-priority missions he simply walked up to a Silurian general and talked his way into a peaceful resolution. He was never scared, which made this uncalled-for terror rather terrifying for everyone else in the garage.
“I need to go somewhere–I’m going to take my car, go deal with the Ice Warrior.” He wiped his hands over his face as he shuffled in his parka pocket. “I'll be on channel six.” He added quickly, attempting to shimmy himself out of the confrontation.
D’alia grabbed his arm tightly. “Knight.” They locked eyes, Knight's gaze intently determined in something but also scared looking, the regular impressive blue replaced by a dull, drained grey almost.
“I need you to trust me, please.” Knight pleaded, grabbing his arm in return. D’alia had never seen such urgency in him before.
With a begrudging huff, and strained trust in his friend, Captain D’alia let go. “You better explain this later.” He narrowed his eyes but backed off.
Knight nodded quickly and turned on his heel back to the tower's entrance. He heard the driver-side door slam with much more force than usual and the three vehicles roared out of the garage and out of earshot.