Work Text:
The Doctor is sitting at the top of the stairs in the console room, fiddling with the chain of their pocket watch, when the time rotor starts spinning and the TARDIS dematerialises without them even being anywhere close to the controls.
While the TARDIS has been known to take them to places they need to go, she also sometimes takes them to places where she believes they should go.
This is, apparently, one of the latter times.
The Doctor shoots up from where they are sitting so quickly that they nearly go toppling down the stairs before racing down to the controls.
“No no no—“ Their hands fly over the panels as they try to stop the TARDIS from wherever she is taking them. “Where are you taking me?”
They do not feel like saving anyone or doing anything remotely resembling ‘heroic’ right now.
The TARDIS rematerialises with her usual clank.
The two of them are just getting ready for bed when the familiar sound of the TARDIS arriving fills the air.
Amy levels her husband with a confused look, that he returns.
The Doctor is back already? They had left just two weeks ago. It is strange that they are back so soon. Or had they gotten used to there being weeks or months between their visits?
Both Ponds abandons what they are doing to venture outside. Amy leads the way downstairs, as she had been closest to the door.
When she opens it, the Doctor is standing on the doorstep with a fist half-raised as if they had been about to knock.
They’re frozen, eyes caught on her as shock sparkles in them. Before skipping over to Rory then back to settle on her again. As if they can’t quite believe what they are seeing. One of their hands twitches at their side.
“Doctor?” Rory questions, after a minute of standing in silence. “We weren’t expecting you back here so soon,”
The sentence doesn’t have the effect that he is aiming for. The Doctor’s expression crumbles.
“Sorry...”
And then they are rushing forward to wrap their arms around a shocked Amy, who stumbles backwards slightly from the force. The Scot wraps her arms around them a moment later.
While the Doctor is very much a touchy kind of person, they aren’t much of a hugger. As contradictory as that sounds. Rory can count on one hand the number of times he or Amy have been hugged by them.
The nurse watches as his wife and — whatever the Doctor is to the two of them — hug, and studies the latter.
A realisation hits him like a truck.
This isn’t their Doctor.
Or at least not the Doctor that had left them two weeks ago
They have changed their clothes, gone is the tweed jacket, red bowtie, and suspenders. Instead, they wear a dark purple velvet jacket and waistcoat, with what looks to be a gold chain peeking out from a pocket.
And no bowtie around their neck.
That’s the most glaring detail, more so than the change in attire. Rory doesn’t think that he’s ever seen the Doctor without a bowtie (the exception being when the three of them first met).
Dark clothes, that crestfallen expression when they had seen them after Amy opened the door…they’re mourning.
What on Earth happened?
This is a future version of the Doctor they know.
And Rory doesn’t know what to do. Awkwardness starts to fill him the longer that he stands there watching the two of them hug. Eventually, he wraps his own arms around them, joining in.
After an unknown amount of time, Amy pulls away and ends the hug.
“You should come inside — it’s freezing out here,” she tells them.
“Is it?”
Well, they are wearing a waistcoat and over-jacket, Amy and Rory are in their pyjamas.
They do indeed come inside after that to sit together on the sofa.
The redhead locks eyes with her husband as they go, her gaze flicks up towards the ceiling briefly and tells him to go get the box that was hidden in the closet up there.
Already? Rory questions silently.
Yes.
This Doctor needs it more than their past version does. Who knows how much time is between that one and this one?
Rory turns and heads upstairs to fetch the gift box instead of going into the living room with them.
“Doctor,” the nurse calls, after returning with it. They look up. “I — we’ve got something for you,” he says.
“A present,” Amy clarifies as Rory hands the gift box to them.
The Doctor tugs off the lid and pulls out their present: a bowtie, whose material is such a deep purple that it looks black. There are tiny white polka dots all over it.
They hold it like they are expecting it to crumble into dust at any minute.
The look that haunted them earlier, like they don’t quite believe what they are seeing, is still here; but so is surprise and delight.
They hadn’t wanted to be here but in the end, they didn’t have much say in the matter. The Doctor steps outside to see where the TARDIS has taken them, their hearts plunge into the soles of their shoes when they recognise the house she has parked opposite, the Ponds.
The lock behind him clicks.
“Hey!” they shout, trying to open the door again. “Let me in!”
The door stays locked. The TARDIS does not let them back in, instead, she stands blue and boxy right in the middle of the footpath. Leaving them standing there and making it painfully clear what she wants them to do.
They are just about to knock when the door is pulled open and Amy Pond is standing in front of them, Rory right behind her.
A small part of them had been hoping that the Ponds weren’t home, for whatever reason they wouldn’t be home at 8 p.m., so that they could turn around and go back to the TARDIS.
That same part wasn’t ready to see the Ponds again just yet.
“Doctor?” Rory questions and the Doctor realises they’ve been standing there staring at them. “We weren’t expecting you back here so soon,”
“Sorry…”
They’re pulling Amy in for a hug before they have even realised they’ve moved.
The two of them will pick up on the fact that they aren’t the same Doctor who left them however long ago — two weeks if they remember correctly — soon enough if they haven’t already.
“I’m not the same Doctor who left two weeks ago — well I am the same one, but not from the same point in time, I’m from your future but I can’t tell you when exactly,” they ramble.
Rory joins the hug.
The three of them head inside and they’re given a present, of all things. But it’s not December.
“It’s not Christmas, is it?” the Doctor asks, looking up from the gift box to the Ponds. They hadn’t checked the date properly before rushing out.
“No, it’s only September,” Amy reassures them.
“We just wanted to give you this,” because we don’t know when our Doctor will become you goes unsaid but they hear it all the same.
The gift, they discover soon, is a bowtie.
They aren’t able to stay much longer, as much as they would have loved to stay here with their Ponds forever, that simply isn’t possible. They know what is coming.
The sound of the TARDIS fills the air. It isn’t the clank of her departure or her arrival, it’s the chime to warn the Doctor that another TARDIS is arriving.
Time to go.
When they are back inside the TARDIS and safely away from 2012 before the other TARDIS and their past self has arrived, the Doctor strokes a hand down the length of the console, between the rows of buttons and switches on this panel.
“Thank you.”
The TARDIS hums gently underneath their fingertips.