Work Text:
He floats, weightless and helpless; tether broken, adrift in space. Just him and his tin can of a spacesuit. The connection to Ground Control is lost; so is his spaceship.
So is he.
He should be panicking. But there’s no space for panic, not here where there’s nothing but space. His wife’s face drifts before his eyes — he loves her very much, he knows — but even the regret at never seeing her again feels somehow muted.
His oxygen is running out. He can’t do anything about it.
There’s an odd freedom to this powerlessness; he’s never felt so peaceful.
He drifts in eternity. The stars look different. Earth is small, and far away, and blue. So very blue…
And suddenly, there’s something else. A hand, covered in the thick gloves of a spacesuit, reaching for him. A body, attached to the hand, face just visible through the helmet. The hand catches his own; anchors him. Draws him, inexorable, towards it.
He thinks he catches a glimpse of something blue — not Earth, it’s shaped wrong and too close besides — just as he loses consciousness.
Tom opens his eyes, gulping air, to find himself alive and staring up into a young man’s face with concern written all over it.
“You,” is the first thing Tom says when he can speak — somehow recognizing the features, though they aren’t encased in a helmet any longer. “You were out there. In orbit.”
The man nods.
“What were you doing out there?” Tom wasn’t aware of any space missions overlapping with his own. A secret Soviet mission, perhaps?
The stranger is staring at him, jaw dropped. “I was saving your life!”
“Oh.”
“You were drifting to your death in outer space.” Tom’s rescuer takes a long breath, eyes looking momentarily haunted. “I’ve lost friends that way. You were lucky we landed right by you. That is, if you can call it landing… we’re still in orbit.”
That can’t be right. Wherever they are, it has gravity. Tom can feel the weight of his body again, the weight of life settling back on his shoulders. That sense of eternity is retreating, though it’s still somewhere there in the back of his mind, along with the rush of something — inspiration? terror? madness? — that came with it.
The helpless, floating freedom is gone. Part of him misses it.
Breathing is nice, though.
“Anyway.” The man offers him a hand up, out of the bed he’s apparently in. “I’m Steven Taylor. Space pilot… or I used to be.”
“Major Tom,” Tom says automatically. “Astronaut. Er. Same thing as space pilot, I suppose?”
The man’s eyes widen. “We learned about astronauts in school! The bold pioneers, first to explore the new frontier—“
Someone else clears their throat, quite loudly.
“…Right. Sorry.” The man looks embarrassed. “That old man over there is the Doctor. He examined you while you were unconscious. Says there shouldn’t be lasting damage.”
Tom follows Steven’s glance to the other occupant of the room, standing off to the side, whom he hadn’t noticed before. The “old man” coughs again, pointedly.
“We’re on his ship,” Steven adds, offering a hand to help Tom up. As they execute that maneuver, he keeps talking. “It’s called the TARDIS. Er, the Doctor isn’t very good at directions—“
The old man makes an outraged noise.
“—but we can try to get you back to your spaceship. If you have one. It looks like your tether came undone.”
“My spaceship knows which way to go,” Tom says absently, swaying a little on his feet despite Steven’s steadying hand under his arm.
“…If you say so.”
Steven exchanges glances with the Doctor. The latter gives an irritable-looking shrug.
After a moment of hesitation, Steven turns back to Tom. “I guess you’ll have to ride with us, then, at least for a while.”
“Only until we get you home,” the Doctor adds sternly.
“Uhuh,” Steven says, though he looks dubious. “Welcome aboard, Major. Fair warning, we might take some detours to other planets. And other centuries.”
Tom blinks. He’s still a little loopy, too much to quite understand what makes sense and what doesn’t — but he’s starting to feel adrift again, in a very different way.