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“They certainly have you looking lovely, mo nighean donn,” laughed Jamie as a scruffy, ridiculously-clothed Doctor stepped out of the familiar blue police box on-screen.
“Oh stuff it.” The Doctor replied, settling in beside her companion with some tea and toast.
“With pleasure!” He replied, snatching a slice of toast off her plate.
“Oi!” She made a grab for the toast, but he gobbled it up before she could snatch it back.
“I like bananas!” Jamie protested, as though that excused his actions. “Ye ken that.”
“I should never have introduced you to banana daiquiris” She grumbled, carefully balancing her plate on the armrest away from him before nearly overturning it as she gestured angrily at the TV.
“Honestly, why is it always a man? For a show with such imagination, you’d think they’d be able to conceive of a non-white and/or non-male timelord.”
“Weel they canna do that. After all, he is a doctor, aye?” He replied nonchalantly, washing his stolen snack down with a swig of coffee.
She turned to him, furious, to find him grinning foxishly back at her.
“Watch yourself there laddie, or I’ll drop you in the Paeleolithic age and leave you to the mercy of the glyptodons and sabre-tooth tigers.”
“I could hold my own.” He said confidently, leaning back and propping his feet on the small coffee table.
The Doctor snorted.
“And besides, ye’d come back.”
She raised her eyebrows “Oh would I?”
“Ye ken ye’d get lonely without me, even if ye did have the nice-looking Nine lad the watch on the box.”
The Doctor grinned. “Don’t risk it, that’s one interpretation of me I have no problem spending lots of quality time with.”
Jamie opened his mouth to protest, brow furrowed in jealousy, before catching a glimpse of his own TV counterpart.
“Speaking of interpretations, I’m nothing like that gowk!” He exclaimed, gesturing at the mop-haired Scot talking with the TV Doctor.
The Doctor laughed. “Really? I think it’s a rather flattering portrayal.”
Jamie scowled.
“I dinna ken why that lout inspired yon American to write about us.” He commented, with a nod to the blue book on one of the side tables whose cover bore a crown and thistle.
“Well, at least she got it mostly right, except for the nonsense about the Stones.” The Doctor allowed.
Jamie cocked his head and hummed in agreement. “Hmm, and te be fair, ye did show up on Sanhaim, and a tad worse for the wear at that.”
“Damned Daleks.” The Doctor muttered, recalling the cold, wet night she’d met Jamie after one particular plan of hers went awry and she’d had to beat a hasty retreat. Unfortunately the Tardis had been a bit too enthusiastic about that course of action and had spit itself back out a few centuries later than she’d expected, and a few countries away from where she’d intended.
“And it was some time before we made our way back to the wee large box.”
That too was true, the Doctor having been taken prisoner by the friendly MacKenzies and separated from the Tardis for a good few years. Luckily it had disguised itself as a faerie stone and, superstitions being what they were in Jacobite-era Scotland, nobody had dared take a closer look.
The Doctor took Jamie’s hand thinking, as he was, of their abandonment of his people. For all she’d explained that you can’t change a fixed point in time, it had been hard for them both – him in particular – to leave them to their fate. They had ensured Jamie’s family was as safe as they could be, and his tenants too, but in tying his fate to hers, he’d been unable to shape history himself as he would have.
“It wouldn’t have worked, Jamie.” She reminded him for the hundredth time.
“I ken. And ye canna know how happy I am that I’m able to stay with ye. But…”
“You mourn it the life we could have had there.” It had been some years now, but the Doctor knew he still imagined them living in a large place with a couple of children running around. In another world, perhaps that would have been possible.
He nodded. “Aye, it would have been hard, but then, so is this. And in this, we’re alone.” He noted, reminding them both of that this little distraction was merely a way to calm their nerves as they waited.
“Well, alone except for the 12 other version of us, plus our book counterparts.”
That teased a smile to his lips.
“Aye, except for them.”
Just then they heard a mechanical noise from outside.
The Doctor sighed and reached for her disintegrator gun. “Well, I guess break time’s over then.”