Chapter Text
“Oh, hello!”
Her chest feels as warm as the hair laying on her shoulders feels soft. Something about this new body feels familiar - feels safe, like a beloved nightie, like a cup of tea in front of the fire at Christmas. Christmas. Christmas, Christmas, a human tradition. Human. Human, human. Is that what she is? No, she is Time Lord. She is more than Time Lord, but ‘Time Lord’ is easier to explain.
Let’s see. Two hands with five fingers on each (four depending on who you ask, and one thumb). Oh. That aside is a good sign: Curiosity! Good. She’s curious. She likes being curious. And she is a she again, isn’t she? A she! She-she! Yes, that feels right in her head; right like a left gone wrong.
The Doctor takes a bold step forwards, only for the TARDIS’s mavity well to push her back. In the hysteria of her post-regenerative state, she may have forgotten that before all this, she was standing an inch from the boundless void of space. “Ah,” she looks down at the infinite darkness and its grain of stars, “Thanks!” before turning and marching back towards the TARDIS console, skirt swishing valiantly behind her. Marching becomes skipping becomes bouncing, energy swelling up to her shoulders. She needs to get it out, so… quick! To the console! She runs the rest of the way, and finds the controls, and hits the switch for the door. It closes with its usual creak. Goodnight, Joy.
Now. Where to?
Trion
Mornings in Lintyre are always bright. Trion’s two suns, Major and Minor, rise one after the other - always early, regardless of the season - bathing the small valley town in amber, and its forest floors in spotted shadows. Picturesque in that sleepy, ethereal way that only small towns bordered by trees can be, it’s the perfect place to live for a photographer like Mikola.
Today, the bright morning never came.
Today, a shadow fell over Trion, far from the first time in its history.
“We are the Corporation.”
The voice hailed from the large warship that came like an iron cloud to blot out the two suns, casting the small village of Lintyre into a Winter-like darkness: Certainly a Winter-like chill. Its landing gears large enough to eclipse the great castle to the west, the Corporation’s ship came down in the forest outside town, turning the thick trunks of the oak trees to splinters, and its landing jets singing the red grass black. Mikola was the first out of the town and into the wilderness to watch - having changed her slippers for shoes and grabbed her camera. There, she ducked behind a rock as the local military came out to meet the invaders. And there, her camera lens watched as figures with their faces hidden by helmets stepped down from the ramp at the rear of the ship, and opened fire.
Vwwwoooooo-woooooo
Eooorrrrrp-rrrrpppp
Guided through the time vortex by the randomiser, the TARIDIS materialises between two buildings - a pillar of dark blue against a red world. And as the Doctor pokes her head through the TARDIS door and glances around, she finds it’s not a nice red, either. Perhaps it was a nice red at one time, but now, the sky is clouded over with thick, crimson clouds - like blood rolling in over the planet - except those can’t be clouds, can they? Clouds wouldn’t be so low down on a planet with such an Earthlike atmosphere. It must be smoke: Dark red smoke that billows from all around. The buildings the TARDIS had landed between don’t fare very much better. The Doctor steps out, and considers the ruins with a morbid frown. Hm. Only a few moments ago, she had felt larger than life… Well! Isn’t this a real mood-killer?
Still, she had wanted a trial by fire, and certainly seems to be that.
The two buildings are burnt away. The Doctor walks out onto the street, finding the same to be true for most of the buildings on this street. “Buildings:” But what kind of buildings are they? Town houses. This is a civilian area. This is a warzone.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, thankfully - alive or otherwise. The Doctor doesn’t know what she’d do if she found someone injured or worse in all this rubble. Well. She’d help. But after that… This is the problem with regeneration, sometimes - you never quite know how far your new persona is willing to go to help; to save; if need be, to avenge. She draws in a breath, and starts off down the pavement.
The wind howls through the shelled-out homes. On any other day, the wind might have been a pleasant summer breeze, bringing the flowers in the pots that hang either side of the neighbourhood’s front doors to a gentle wave, carrying their smell through open windows into busy kitchens. But the wind is cold: Despite the fires that rage elsewhere, the wind is cold.
Another desolate street beyond the one the Doctor walks. Her head pokes out from around a corner, and she looks left and then right, and crosses over. An alley between another two houses leads to a wooden fence that sections off a playpark, which the Doctor jumps with ease. She walks the red grass.
“This isn’t Earth,” she decides, “Just looks a bit like it. Should have looked at where I landed… And now I’m talking to myself. Aaagain.”
Her shoulders lift and fall as she sighs. “I miss Belinda.”
This is quite the lonely song, isn’t it? One lonely Doctor’s voice, carried on by a lonesome wind, with percussion sampled from a healthy dose of silence. The Doctor comes to a bench in the park, luckily untouched by whatever happened here, and she sits down, resting her chin on her hands. She misses Belinda, yes, and she misses her last face. She’s not gotten a look at this one yet, and she’s sure it’s brilliant and all - it felt really good when she regenerated into it! But that last face was something special. “The best male,” ha. Her past self had been so right about that. After so long of gritting her teeth, that last face had felt like letting her hair down. He had walked the stars like they were his dancefloor; the universe his spritely dancing partner. She’s not dancing now, is she?
She’ll get over it. She’ll learn to love this new face, too! In fact, she thinks she can kind of get a look at her reflection in that metal bin over there—
Voices! The Doctor rises to her feet. No, not just voices. There comes a low rumbling, getting closer. She runs around behind the bench, and ducks down beneath it, peering through the slats at the street just outside of the park. A curious stare fills with anger as some sort of military vehicle rolls into view. Painted with an urban camouflage and rolling past on tracks, it’s certainly not here to defend the place. No, on a truck like that, you’re making a statement: ‘This place is ours now.’ The voices the Doctor had heard come from a small battalion of footsoldiers that walk into view just after. Mostly men from the sounds of their voices. They stride so casually through the wasteland of their creation.
There’s still an active invasion. She can still stop it. She crouches there behind the bench, straining her ears to listen for anything useful, but it’s all just idle chatter.
Click.
The Doctor looks over. Where had that come from?
Click.
There it is again. Like… a camera shutter. Her eyes land on the shape of a person atop a nearby roof, perched dangerously next to a large artillery hole, who - indeed - is holding a camera up to their eye. How very dangerous.
The Doctor stays low as she moves away from the bench, leaps the fence back into the residential area, and swings around behind the home her shutterbug friend has picked for a vantage point. Through the backdoor, the Doctor finds a staircase up, and on the first floor, she uses a shelf for a ladder. Still, the stranger is laying on their— her front, angling photos of the passing convoy.
“Hey.”
“Sweet Logar!” the photographer nearly jumps out of her skin.
“Sorry!”
The woman has dark skin and chopped hair - chopped in a way that it doesn’t seem styled. Moreso cut haphazardly; out of necessity. She wears a geometric fashion, trousers cut up to reveal some bandages beneath.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?”
“I—”
“Shush, shush!”
The woman gets somehow lower, and the Doctor dips back beneath the roof. Their little exchange had alerted the foot soldiers from that convoy. There’s silence for a good ten seconds…
…And then shouting from the street!
The Trion dips down through the hole in the ceiling, “They’ve seen us, come on!”
“Ah, my fault!”
“Quite!”
The photographer runs down the stairs - two at a time - as the Doctor just leaps down the entire case. Here comes that boundless energy again! At the back of the garden, Mikola lifts a fence post, and dives through, as the Doctor climbs it: Beyond is a steep drop down into the forest, which the Doctor rolls down as her new acquaintance slides. At the bottom, they take off into the trees.
“I’m the Doctor, by the way!”
“Mikola!”
“That’s a Trion name. This is Trion?”
“Uh. Yeah. Have you hit your head?”
“Not recently, but I can see why you’d think so!”
Legs, striding. Adrenaline, running. Two hearts, beat-beat-beating. This face feels like it’s already quite used to running. Always a good sign! As gunshots start ringing out behind them, the Time Lord and the Trion continue off into the dark of the woods.