taxonomites | 1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

No sooner had the TARDIS come to a stop than the Doctor was throwing open the doors and dashing outside with a cheerful shout of "Come along, Ponds!", eager to see where they’d arrived this time. That was one of the fun things about connecting up the old randomiser every so often. Enter a few basic guidelines to avoid places that might end up with them all collapsing from something unfortunately terminal the moment the stepped outside or into the middle of a war zone (he’d been shot exiting the TARDIS once before, thank you very much, and had no desire to repeat the experience), then let the TARDIS do the rest. Guaranteed mystery the moment they opened the doors.

It was a little unfortunate then that it looked like 'mystery' in this case was...

"A white room with a sort of... thing on a pedestal. Not really what I'd call exciting but maybe there's something more out there. Like a ship or a space station or a..."

He trailed off, alerted by the silence even before he turned around to find no sign of the TARDIS or his companions. Just himself on a raised platform in an empty room in a place he wasn't familiar with. There was also something strange hanging overhead, and the Doctor frowned at it, his mind racing to fill in the blanks in what he knew.

"Some sort of teleporter maybe... I’ve been kidnapped?" The idea wasn't impossible, he knew for certain, since it had happened a few times before. But it had been a while since anyone had tried. "I suppose whoever’s behind this must be feeling pretty satisfied with themselves right now?"

His wrist felt odd, he realised. Well, he’d realised it earlier, in a vague sort of way, but it was only now that it persisted in feeling odd that he scratched at it and found what seemed to be a metal bracelet fused to his skin. "Did you go and tag me?" he asked the room incredulously. "Who goes around fusing jewellery onto people? ‘Oh, I know, he’d look so much better with a silver bracelet grafted to his skin’?"

The room remained silent, so obviously whoever had brought him here didn't feel like turning up to do the gloating bit. Which left him with the thing on the pedestal, the thing in the ceiling, and a door that proved to be locked when he tried opening it.

"If that's how you want to play it," he muttered, his hand delving into his pocket to produce his sonic screwdriver. It warbled reassuringly as he waved it in quick, apparently random patterns over the walls and door, but quickly escalated to a high-pitched shriek not unlike something in pain the moment he ventured too close to that thing hanging from the ceiling. Whatever it was didn’t want to be scanned in a hurry.

"Let's see what we've got then," the Doctor commented, extending the end of the sonic screwdriver with a practised flick of his wrist. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be ‘not much of anything’, which really only left the device sitting on the pedestal. Snapping the sonic closed again and returning it to his pocket, the Time Lord wandered over to it curiously, taking his time looking it over before reaching out and picking it up. Whatever it was, it was active and had been recording and uploading information to somewhere the entire time.

"Hello," the Doctor said, shifting his hands on the tablet to get a better look at it. "Been having a good look at me, have you? Let’s see... text, holo seems to be active... visual, voice... Oh, maps! Yes, let’s start with that then. Always a handy thing to have, a map." His finger hovered over the icon for a moment as he paused in thought, his brow furrowing. "Not that I normally use them. But I’ve heard they’re handy if you get lost easily and don’t like the fun of finding your way back on your own. Personally I always think that’s the best bit, seeing where getting lost takes you, but I suppose some people might—Oh?"

Cutting himself off suddenly, the Doctor’s eyebrows shot up as the map loaded, revealing this to be a decent sized city apparently named Taxon. But the really interesting and surprising part was how the map displayed people’s names next to some of the glowing dots on the map. Or, more accurately, the surprising part was what some of those names were. "Martha Jones? Charlotte Pollard? Fitz Kreiner? That’s... No. It can’t be. It’s just not possible..."

For a moment there was the barest flicker of uncertainty in his face, before it was quickly hidden again and the Doctor addressed whatever unseen audience he had. "I think I need some answers."

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"Blow up the city?" he repeated, looking very surprised. "Why would I do something like that? Are you sure that was me? I mean, I know I've been known to cause the odd spot of... collateral damage sometimes, but the whole city?"

"You were trying to get our captors' attention, I think. You intended no one to be in the parts you blew up, but that, uh, didn't work."

Tara makes a face; it was a bad time all around. "All it really did was made everyone except our captors mad at you."

That seemed like quite the mistake for him to have made, but there was very likely a lot that he didn't know about what had happened, so maybe it wasn't too much of a stretch. It was a little strange really, hearing about things he'd done and having no memory of them. He'd have to spend a lot of his time here just catching up.

"Right, no explosions then," he agreed with a quick, easy-going smile. "Ah, there's not going to be people trying to have a bit of a... chat over that, are there? No accusations or sudden attacks I should worry about?"

"I don't think anyone's going to try and lock you up again, over it, but there are some people who may not warm to you very quickly."

To her knowledge, most of the angriest people had since gone, but not all of them.

"But no, I think you'll be alright. Or as much as any of us are."

"Well that's one less thing to worry about, isn't it?" he answered. "Good to know I'm not going to find myself at the wrong end of a mob in the future. ...not that there's a right end to a mob, really. They're sort of made of wrong ends..."

He shook his head, reminding himself what they were supposed to be talking about. "So then, Tara, what else have I been up to that I should know about? No, wait, don't tell me here. Might be best if we spoke face to face... Especially if the Master's here as well."

He smiled and added; "Besides, I'd like to meet you personally. What do you think?"

That gets a genuine smile from her. She'd like to meet him, she finds. Re-meet him.

"I can come meet you, if you stand outside in Sanctuary Square." A pause, then she adds, "There's a little blue box, the color of the TARDIS, that says 'suggestions.' I'll meet you by that."

"A suggestion box? For the city?" The idea got a laugh from him. "Don't suppose anyone's tried suggesting they return everyone home then? That'd be nice if it worked."

He turned on the spot, locating the stairs and heading towards them as he continued speaking. "Alright then! I'll meet you there. Won't take you too long, will it?"

"No, I'm nearby. Be with you soon."

And, true to her word, it takes Tara no more than 15 minutes to arrive; her shop is close to Central, even if it's technically in Wilde. She smiles, fond but sad, at the box as she comes up.

"It was Rose's idea," she says, by way of hello. "Making it blue."

She assumes he'll remember Rose, since he knew her from home.

The Doctor smiled brightly as he spotted Tara, about to say hello to her when she spoke first and mentioned a name that immediately made his smile take on a quieter, sadder edge.

"She was here then, before?" he asked instead. "With... me?"

Tara nods. "She came just a bit after you did. Went home around the same time."

Tara looks at the box, clearly missing the other woman for a moment as she does. "She and I did the suggestion box. She suggested it to cheer me up, when I was upset."

With shake of her head, she turns back to him. "Sorry. Hello. I'm Tara."

"Probably for the best," the Doctor decided. "It can be a bit complicated, meeting people from your past when you know about their future. All sorts of awkward questions pop up. She's happier in her own time and world..."

Of that he was certain. It would have been difficult to meet Rose again here. Difficult to explain that while he remembered what he'd felt for her before, it wasn't the same. He'd changed again and his personality had changed as well. And it was complicated enough here already.

The Doctor refocussed on Tara, his smile becoming wider and more pleasant, but still not quite managing to meet his eyes. "Hello, Tara. I'm the Doctor."

He puts her at ease quickly; he's much more recognizably connected to her friend than the lady Doctor, but it's something beyond that. There's some of the person she cared about there, but it seems like he's also missing some of the aspects that made her crazy about him, at least on first blush.

Besides, he's kind, and a new arrival, and Tara's not hard to win over.

"It's nice to meet you. Again. Sort of." Tara tucks some hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry you're trapped, though."

"Oh, I shouldn't think it'll be too much of a problem really," the Doctor answered lightly. "I've always been good at getting out of sticky situations."

He half turned away, thinking for a moment and his gaze automatically flicking to the blue suggestion box, then he looked back to her. "And good at getting into them, actually. Which is sort of how I got good at getting out of them, but since I'm already in one, that gets rid of that bit, doesn't it?"

"Maybe. But I hardly think being kidnapped is your fault; none of us meant to be here."

She pauses, then adds, "Are you going to get sick again, without your TARDIS?" She's a bit concerned, but she gets the feeling this sort of thing may or may not be consistent.

The question surprised him and the Doctor frowned at her, studying Tara for a moment and wondering exactly how much his previous regeneration had told her.

"Not really without my TARDIS, am I?" he said, smiling faintly even as he avoided answering the question properly. "There's the TARDIS here already, isn't there? Well, except that it's not really mine. Except that it is. Time travel and alternate dimensions, makes things a bit tricky."

"Oh! That's true, I hadn't thought of that. Good. That's good." It's not an answer, but it's a decent reason to guess he won't get sick the way he did before.

"And I can imagine. Taxon's made things complicated for my friends and I, and we don't even time travel back home."

"Well, complicated can be good, keeps things interesting. Not sure about you, but I'd much prefer that than something boring."

But the Doctor was aware that he wasn't really typical there. He was happiest with his TARDIS and all of space and time to explore; settling down to one place and one time was something that, while he had some experience with it, he doubted how happy he would be.

"So, you've friends from home here as well? That must be good for you then. Familiar faces around the place."

She nods. "It was helpful, especially when I first came. But... they're almost all from my future, so it took a little adjusting. I was suddenly younger than everyone, and they remembered things I didn't."

There's a bit of sadness underlying this last: knowing that she won't be there for those future memories still hurts, but she's been trying not to give in to self pity on the subject.

"From your future?" he shot her a quick, scrutinising look. "Well, hopefully they're not giving away too much there, are they? You know what they say about spoilers..."

The Doctor could understand the temptation inherent there; even as a Time Lord, he wasn't exempt from sometimes running into people who knew his future. In fact, he probably ran into them more often because he was a Time Lord. Time was tricky like that. It was always a bit disconcerting when it happened, but he was starting to accept it a little more easily than he had before, at least where someone like River Song was concerned. He knew he'd find out on his own soon enough.

"They did, yeah," she says, a bit softly. "It's a bit of a long story, but I know more than I'd like."

A long story involving glitches and one of her best friends sobbing over her own past death. It hadn't been a very good time.

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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