We R Who We R

Hela

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“I don’t want to go...”

Tears streaked down the Doctor’s visage as he felt that all-too familiar and horrifying warmth of the regenerative energy bubbling to the surface. He caught the yellow-orange wisps in his peripherals as he shakily lifted his right hand into his field of vision. His fingers were nearly concealed in the glow of the potent energy. His sad, heavy eyes moved to his other hand, which was likewise enveloped.

Turning his attention to the TARDIS console, the Doctor looked upon the beautiful, derelict machine for what would be the last time with his current, weary eyes. Fresh tears broke away from the corner of his eye as he felt the final surge well up within his two hearts. Above the humming of the energy, he heard the TARDIS’ engines flare up—a sad, horrible noise that sounded more like a whimper than the normal roar of her reactors.

And just like that, everything was yellow. The final eruption of energy threw his head back and his arms out as the fury of the regeneration process turned the glow of yellow into surging pillars that spewed forth from his exposed skin. The entire chamber shuddered as the raw power of the outpouring energy tore apart the walls. Chunks of the honeycomb console room were blown away by the blast, and the dense, arched support struts withered and snapped beneath the horrible force.

Even the console itself was consumed in the blast—the delicate assortment of levers and dials erupted into flames as the massive glass cylinder suspended from the ceiling exploded into a thousand sparkling shards of crystal. And even after that first surge, the process did not relent—waves continued to emanate from the Time Lord’s quivering, energy-wreathed form. Fires spread across the cavernous chamber as sparks rained down from cracks in the ceiling.

Through it all, the Doctor remained conscious—his wide, teary eyes staring up through one of the cracks into the void of time. The storms of the Time Vortex surged violently, as if the Vortex itself wept for his passing. His gaze never faltered until he felt that familiar and never pleasant sensation that snapped his eyes shut.

In the next instant, the Time Lord as his recent friends knew him was gone. It was in that moment, his eyes clamped shut and his flesh born anew, that the Doctor let his mouth fall away. A scream—a quick, fleeting scream that sounded utterly new--escaped him before he snapped his eyes open.

The yellow and orange energies of his predecessor’s passing had dissipated, but in their wake, the console room was bathed in fires and still actively in the throes of a cataclysm. Sparks flitted from ruptures in the walls and danced above broken panels. Despite the fact that the room was an inferno and actively shuddering like a person experiencing a seizure, the fresh Doctor found his attention pulled elsewhere.

Looking down, the Time Lord lifted his leg up and grabbed his pants. “Legs! I’ve still got legs.” With a manic grin, he planted a kiss onto the tattered remnants of his predecessor’s pinstripe trousers. “Good!” He added as he patted his hands across his chest and then down his sleeves. “Arms! ...Hands!” The Doctor smiled widely as he flexed and twitched his ten new fingers.

“Fingers... lots of fingers.” He gently clapped his fingers over his ears. “Ears… Very small ones.” They then slipped over his eyes. “Eyes. Two.” One slid down and squeeze his nose. “Nose!” Sticking out his chin, the Doctor ran a hand over it. “Chin.” He then ran both hands through a surprisingly matty head of hair.

“I’m a girl? How progressive of me!” He exclaimed before one of his hands clasped a very distinct Adam’s apple on his throat. “No... no, I’m not a girl.” Reaching back up, he pulled a some of his hair down in front of his eyes to see it wasn’t much different from the brown shade of his predecessor. “Bah, and I’m still not ginger!”

With that done, the Doctor began to glance to and fro, his eyes wide and his lips pulled back in an erratic, tense grin. “Ah... there’s something important! I’m. I’m. I’m...” At that moment, something exploded deep within the TARDIS, and the Doctor was knocked from his feet. He would have slammed face-first into the floor if he didn’t manage to fall right onto the burning, broken console. As he stared up, the realization dawned and a manic smirk spread across his fresh face.

“Crashing!” At that moment, the flames surged once more and the room shuddered again as fresh fires seemed to spew forth from nowhere and everywhere. Outside the TARDIS, the ship, her hull literally consumed in flames, erupted from the time vortex and began an uncontrolled plunge down to the planet Earth.

Inside the blue box, the Doctor whooped and hollered as he ran around the other side of the console, where the view screen had somehow managed to remain intact. Despite the situation, the Gallifreyan text displayed on the window said that the systems were relatively stable. With that same, wide-eyed grin, the Time Lord grabbed both sides of the monitor, threw his head back, and let out a shout. “Yippie kay yay!”

As the TARDIS dropped down from the upper strata, the entire chamber shuddered violently, and the Doctor found himself thrown backwards over the railing. With a dull thud, he landed just a few inches away from a blaze erupting up from a ruptured pipe beneath the grated floor. The flames were close enough to leap onto his suit jacket, which the Doctor quickly shrugged off after retrieving his sonic screwdriver. Putting the device between his teeth, he glanced around with wide, gleeful eyes

Scrambling back up to his feet, he let out a far too energetic ‘woo’ as another shudder threw him down the walkway and clean through the doors of the TARDIS, which must have opened at some point.

With a less enthused yelp, the Doctor grabbed hold of the threshold before he was dropped onto what looked like Washington DC. As the TARDIS zipped over the White House and in a direct line toward the top of the Washington Monument, it became extremely clear to all parties involved that this was Washington DC. Pulling himself up far enough to rest his chest inside the ship, the still smiling Time Lord let out a sigh and aimed the screwdriver at the battered, burning console. The tip of the device light up with a hum as one of the levers clamped down with a pneumatic hiss, sparks spraying out all around it.

The TARDIS let out another groan as she angled upward, causing the Doctor to lose his grip and nearly plunge out of the ship once more. He managed to catch himself with enough time to lift his dangling legs so they could skirt by the tip of the marble obelisk.

A sigh escaped the Time Lord’s lips as his beloved blue box continued to angle upward, away from any more pointy monuments. Immediate crisis averted, he let out a grunt and gradually pulled himself up into the veritable inferno of a console room. Once he was snug inside, he slapped the doors shut behind him and collapsed against them. The wailing, burning machine permitted him only a few seconds as a respite before another explosion shook him back to reality.

***​

A little blond girl, a sole streak of purple in her bangs, sat in her room, alone and as apathetic as one could imagine an eight-year-old could get. She was perched on the end of her bed, her blue eyes staring blankly ahead at the drapes. A cool breeze from the cracked window was making them waft ever so softly. Like many nights before, mom and the brothers were running late on their way back home, which meant they probably wouldn’t be back before she fell asleep.

The little girl let out a sigh and fell back onto her bed. As she did, she lifted her hands up and clasped them above her head. “Whoever’s listening, I need a really big favor... I want out of this place.” A tiny scowl spread across her face as she glanced over at her desk, where a book sat open, its pages scrawled with a days’ worth of irritating memories. “School is bad, and I don’t like those people. They’re mean.”

Another sigh escaped her lips as she looked up at the ceiling over her head. In the dark, the white musical notes glowed a vibrant shade of green. Her mother, a songwriter and aspiring performer, had purchased them for her because the two of them shared a love of music. The little girl loved the times she got to go with her mother to the studio and sing. On nights like these, she couldn’t wait for the day she could run away from all of this and become a rock star like Freddy Mercury, Johnny Cash, or Madonna. She’d often imagine herself playing with dinosaurs or fighting the monsters under her bed. “I just want away...”

From the crack of her open window, the little blonde girl heard a bizarre noise—like the sound of grinding gears echoing in and out. Then, a beat later, there was the recognizable sound of something crashing through wood and slamming into the ground. Hopping off her bed, she ran over to the other side of her room, shoved aside the drapes, and threw up the window.

She poked her head outside to see that the backyard shed had been obliterated. Lying in the midst of the smashed structure and its equally flattened assortment of tools and lawn care devices was what looked like a large blue box with a telephone container. A light at the top of the box flared a few times before going out, and the words ‘Police Public Call Box’ emblazoned at the top of each side seemed to both alleviate and muddle the mystery of the crashed object.

Scooping up her coat and flashlight, the little girl scampered down the stairs and burst through her backdoor. As she drew closer to the box, she heard the squeak of old hinges as the ‘top’ side of the tipped over booth fell inward. A beat later, a grappling hook erupted out from somewhere within the small box, and after barely missing her head by a few feet, it landed in the middle of her carousel and latched onto one of the handles once it was pulled taut.

As she watched, a grinning, raggedy-looking man drenched in water hoisted himself up over the edge of the box and slumped onto what would have normally been the base. He glanced around for a few moments before he noticed the girl, whose mouth had fallen open at the sight of the wide-eyed man in the box. “Can I have a pear?” Her brow furrowed as the smiling man continued to gawk at her. “All I can think about are pears. I love pears. Maybe I’m having a craving...that’s new, never had cravings before.”

With a grunt, the damp man pulled himself all the way out of the box and straddled the threshold. Leaning to the side, he looked down into the box. “Woah!” From somewhere inside the blue box, the little girl heard a series of strange, warbling sounds. “Look at that!” He declared as he grinned madly at something she couldn’t see. “I didn’t think water could do that.”

Pursing her lips in what amounted to something between confusion and more confusion, the little girl glanced once more at the label on the box. “Are you okay?”

The man smiled as he swung his leg around so both were on the outside of the box. “Just had a fall. All the way down there, right to the library...heck of a climb back up,” he concluded nonchalantly as he fixed one of his rolled up sleeves.

“You’re soaking wet,” the girl replied.

“I was in the swimming pool,” he shot back.

“You said you were in the library.”

“So was the swimming pool.”

The girl blinked hard as her mind tried to wrap itself around the casual tone of the man’s replies. “Are you a policeman, mister?”

The remark caused the man to furrow his brow and lean forward. “No. Why, did you call a policeman?” He glanced over her shoulder toward the darkened house.

“Did you come about the monsters under my bed?” She asked as she lifted the beam from her flashlight up to his face.

“What monst—ah!” The man’s eyes went wide as he stumbled from his perch and hit the ground in front of the girl.

“Are you all right, Mister?”

“No, I’m fine, it’s okay,” he gasped as he clasped one hand to his chest and held the other up toward her. “This is all perfectly nor—” the raggedy stranger was cut off by a seizing pain in his gut that hunched him over. Lifting his head up, he opened his mouth and breathed out a sparkling yellow puff of air.

The girl’s eyes went wide. “Who are you?”

Visibly more relaxed, the man leaned back and lifted up his hands, which were also sparkling yellow. “I don’t know yet. I’m still cooking.” The girl twisted her features up in yet another exacerbated. confused expression. “Does it scare you?”

“No,” she scoffed as she shook her head a wee bit.

“No, no, no,” he waved his hands, which still glimmered faintly. “The monsters under your bed. Do they scare you?”

“Yes,” she answered, which prompted a fresh grin on the man’s damp face.

“Well then!” He exclaimed as he hopped up off his haunches to a vertical stance. “No time to lose! I’m the Doctor. Do everything I tell you, don’t ask stupid questions, and don’t wander off.” With that, the man pivoted on his heels and marched straight into an oak tree, which lai

“Are you all right?” The girl asked again.

“Early days. Steering’s a bit off.” With another grunt, the Doctor scrambled up to his feet and was led by the little girl through a gate, a back door, and then into her kitchen. He stood in the threshold as she ran over to a bowl on the counter to retrieve a pear.

“If you’re a doctor, why does your box say police?" She inquired as she handed him the fruit.

Staring down at her, the Doctor lifted the pear to his mouth and took a large bite. Without breaking eye contact, he chewed it for a few moments before promptly spitting it out the side of his mouth onto the floor. With a cough, he held the fruit out between them. “That’s disgusting, what is that?”

“A pear,” the girl replied with an incredulous look on her face as the man shook the fruit at her.

“Pears are terrible. I hate pears.”

“You said you loved them.”

“No, I love peanut butter. Peanut butter is my favorite, give me peanut butter.”

Without objecting, she ran back over to the counter, reached up into a cabinet, and grabbed a large plastic jar of peanut butter. Scampering back over the raggedy man, she extended the jar toward him, and he snatched it up. A quick twist removed the lid, which he dropped on the ground, and the Doctor scooped a handful up into his mouth. He held it there for all of three seconds before spewing it out over her shoulder. “I hate peanut butter. It’s just slimy stuff with bits in it.”

“You said it was your favorite,” the girl retorted, unsure whether to be amused or frustrated with the strange, damp man’s eccentric behavior.

“New mouth, new rules,” he answered matter-of-factly as he rubbed away the traces of the gunk from his lips. “It’s like eating after cleaning your teeth. Everything tastes wro—Ah!!” The shout seemed to force itself up from the man’s gut without his consent. If that wasn’t enough, his entire body started to shudder and he clamped a hand over his forehead.

“What is it, what’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me? It’s not my fault...why can’t you give me any decent food? You’re… Southern, aren’t you? Can you barbeque something?”

The girl furrowed her brow for a brief moment before spinning around and jogging over to the oven. She twisted the igniter with one hand as the other threw open the nearby fridge. As the Doctor watched, she threw some meat onto a griddle and poured a heaping amount of thick, brown sludge from a Mason jar on top of it.

Moving over to where she was cooking, he grabbed a small towel off a nearby rack and used it to start drying his sopping wet hair. “Ah, barbeque pork!” With his hair dry-ish, the Doctor dropped the towel onto the counter and plopped into a seat on the kitchen’s tiny table. Grabbing a fork that had been left there, he grinned wildly and tapped it on the table as his cook finished tinkering with the food.

A few moments later, the girl sat down across from him and slid him a plate of barbeque pork. Cutting off a chunk, the Doctor stuffed it into his mouth and looked across the table as he chewed. The tiny blonde smiled proudly right up until the strange man’s entire body quivered. He then opened his mouth and scraped off the chunk of meat as if it were venomous. “Pork. That’s pork...” he declared as he leaned forward. “Are you trying to poison me?”

A frown spread across her tiny features as she slid up out of her seat and reignited the burner. The Doctor followed her and watched as she dumped a can of beans into a pot. “Ah, you see? Beans!” He exclaimed before rushing back over to his seat and picking his fork back up. He tapped the fork onto the table for a minute or so before he was rewarded with plate covered in beans. A beat later, he scooped up a mouthful, and after all of one second, he shot up out of his seat and toward the countertop. With a distinct ‘ugh,’ he spat out the entire mouthful of beans into the sink.

He looked over to see a look of shock on his tiny associate’s face. “Beans are evil.” He muttered, his eyes wide with genuine horror. “Bad, bad beans.”

For her next attempt, the girl dropped a slice of bread onto a plate and retrieved a dollop of butter. Sitting down across from the Doctor once again, she spread the butter thickly onto the bread as she glanced up at his expression, which was back to that sort of strange, manic glee.

“Bread and butter,” the happy tone made the girl smile. “Now you’re talking. An American staple… or something.” He added with a nod as she slid the plate over to him.

The Doctor took barely one bit before lunging out of the seat—plate and all—and making a beeline for the back door. He threw open the door with one hand and then flung the plate like a Frisbee out into the night. “And stay out!” He shouted as a cat meowed in the distance.

When he arrived back in the kitchen, the Doctor began to pace back and forth as the girl glanced through her fridge. “We’ve got some carrots.”

“Carrots? Are you insane!” The man declared as he spun to face her. “No, wait...hang on.” He added as he rushed over to her. “I know what I need. I need. I need... I need...” He threw open the freezer door and grabbed a box as his other hand found a tupperware container. “Corndogs and jello.”

A few moments later, the Doctor was sitting at the kitchen table, happily swirling a corndog through the plastic container of jello. Using the deep-fried hotdog on a stick as a spoon, he lifted a mound of jello up to his mouth and joyfully devoured it as he stared across the table at the little girl. She was also smiling as she ate ice cream straight from the box, using the scoop as a spoon. Once he swallowed the mouthful, he repeated the action with the remaining half of the corndog, and then he tipped back the tupperware and gobbled down the cherry jello until all that was left were the bits fused to the sides of the plastic.

“Funny,” she remarked as he set down the tupperware and sloppily chewed the gelatinous mouthful.

“Am I?” He inquired. “Good. Funny’s good. What’s your name?”

“Kesha. Kesha Rose.”

The Doctor furrowed his brow, thinking he should remember something that he couldn’t place. After a moment, he shrugged his shoulders before realizing he had never responded. “Ah! That’s a brilliant name. Kesha...like some type of alt-rock fairytale princess. Are in the South, Kesha?”

“Yea, you guessed it. Brentwood, Tennessee,” she answered with a noticeable sadness in her voice. “I was born in Los Angeles, though. I want to go back when I’m older. It’s crap here.”

“So what about your mom and dad?” The Doctor asked between bites of another corndog. “Are they upstairs? Thought we would have woken them by now...”

“I don’t have a dad, and my mom is with my brothers.”

“I don’t have a dad or a mom or brothers,” the Doctor replied with an awkward smile painted red with cherry jello stains.

“You’re lucky...” she replied as she turned her sad, blue eyes to the empty rooms over her head.

“I know,” he shot back with another grin. “So your mom and brothers...where are they?”

“They’re out.”

“And they left you all alone?” The Doctor scoffed as he used the corndog to shovel another mouthful of jello.

The remark caused Kesha to straighten her back and purse her mouth. “I’m not scared.”

“Of course you're not, you’re not scared of anything! Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats corndogs and jello, and look at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?”

“What?” She asked with a tilt of her head and a little gesture from a small hand.

“Must be a hell of a scary monster under your bed.”

Kesha mulled it over before giving a small nod, prompting a wide grin from the Doctor, who pushed away from the table and made his way upstairs. Realizing she’d been left behind, she made a detour at the fruit bowl before following the raggedy stranger. She arrived in her doorway to see the man on his hands and knees with a strange flashlight-looking device.

“Oh, you’ve had some cowboys in here,” he quipped as he brought the illuminated blue tip of the device up to his face and gave it a thwack with his index finger. “Not actual cowboys...although that can happen.” The Doctor stood up off the ground to see Kesha standing in her doorway with another pear in her hand.

“I used to hate pears, so my mom put faces on them,” with that, she walked over to the raggedy man and handed him another fruit. He accepted it with a warm smile and turned it around to see that she had tenderly carved a smiling face on it.

“She sounds good, your mom,” he remarked as he tossed the pear up and caught it in his hand. “I’ll keep it for later,” he replied as he dropped to his knees again and stared at the black space under her bed. “Ever wonder why it’s always dark under here, even when the room’s completely lit up?” He asked with a grin as he swept the space with his blue stick.

“...No?” Kesha replied as she went on her hands and knees next to him. Now that she looked under there at that dark, empty space, she did wonder if it always looked so black.

“Well,” the Doctor said as the tip of his stick blinked out mid-sweep. The raggedy man frowned for a moment and tapped it a couple of times before it lit back up. “There are certainly some monsters under here. Unless you live to be about two hundred years old, I don’t think you have to worry about them maturing and devouring you,” he added rather nonchalantly as he stood up and pocketed the stick.

“But what…”

The Doctor glimpsed at her. She still looked sad. Unsettled, almost. “Okay, then,” he replied as he grinned. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small little device. “You know when grownups tell you that everything’s going to be all right, and you probably think they’re lying?”

“Uh huh,” Kesha replied in a tone that told her she hadn’t heard that phrase for the first time.

“Well… everything’s going to be all right,” the Doctor grinned as he ran the tip of the sonic along the edges of the oversized computer chip. A beat later, he chucked it under the bed. Lifting the screwdriver, it buzzed a few more times before the faded musical notes on the girl’s ceiling started to glow bright. “Well nothing exploded. That’s a bonus.” He chuckled as turned, saw her diary, and scooped it up.

Before the girl could protest, the man started thumbing through her open diary, his lips tight in a frown as he read words quicker than anyone should be able to. “Hey!” Kesha shouted as she pulled the book from the desk and slipped it into a drawer.

“You shouldn’t let people bring you down,” the Doctor spoke with that warm smile as he reached up onto a shelf above her desk and retrieved a bottle of glitter. “I’m going to say from the hair that you make it an effort to separate yourself from others, but the problem is, you either have to go big or go home. Me? I ran. I ran as fast as I could and I never looked back.”

Kesha shrugged her shoulders as she tenderly ran her hands over her purple streak.

“Ahh!” He shouted as he popped the cap off and walked over to her. “Rule of thumb: Glitter makes everything more awesome,” before the little girl could react, the Doctor drew something on her face with the tiny bottle of dry-on glitter. “There you go, you wanna see?”

With a grin, Kesha nodded her head. Reflecting her enthusiasm, the Doctor stepped out into the hallway and began to glance around at the numerous doors that lined the rather cramped passage. Kesha ran out after him, but before she could get a word out, they both heard the distant thrum of what sounded like a giant gong or bell. Whatever the sound was, it made the color drain from the raggedy man’s visage.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” The Doctor shouted as he spun around and started sprinting for the stairs, leaving the bewildered little girl to follow after him as he leapt down the stairs three at a time and made a beeline for the backdoor. “I’ve got to get back in there!” He shouted as he erupted through the door into the backyard. “The engines are phasing. She’s going to burn!”

“But...” Kesha shouted as she followed him to in front of the toppled box. “It’s just a box. How can a box have engines?”

“It’s not a box,” the Doctor replied as he undid his grappling hook and spun around to face her. “It’s a time machine.”

“What, a real one? You’ve got a real time machine?” She asked as he ran around to the other side of the police box.

“Not for long if I can’t get her stabilized,” he remarked in a rushed but still casual tone as he tossed the newly lassoed rope down into the box. “But a five-minute hop into the future should work.”

Kesha looked down at her feet, back at her boring home, and then back to the erratic, raggedy man in front of the blue box with the orange glow. “Can I come?”

“Not safe in here...not yet,” he answered as he continued to feed the rope in. “Give me five minutes. I’ll be right back.” With that, he hopped up onto the toppled box and stared at something inside.

“People always say that,” Kesha muttered as she frowned.

The girl’s despondent tone gave the man pause. He spun around and hopped back down to the ground. Walking over to her, he crouched down to her eye level and smiled at her. “Am I people? Do I even look like people? Trust me, I’m the Doctor.”

When he saw a smile start to creep across the young girl’s face, the Doctor turned back and hopped up onto his box once again. He glanced over at her and held her smile for a few moments before slipping off the ledge and into the orange glow. “Yippie kay yay!”

The Doctor’s voice echoed up for a few more moments before the doors snapped shut and a strange, gentle thrum began to emanate from the box. The orange light on the top started to glow as wind kicked up around it, knocking Kesha’s hair back as she continued to smile. As she watched, the blue box slowly faded away until only the wrecked remains of the shed were left behind.

Without wasting a second, the little girl turned around and scampered back into her house and up to her room. Once back in her room, she threw open her closet and retrieved a pre-packed suitcase she had stashed under some clothes for an occasion just like this one. Throwing it onto her bed, she unlatched it and tossed open the lid. After stashing a small pile of folded clothes into it, she ran across the hall to the bathroom, retrieved a few more odds and ends, and then stashed them between the clothes and a large, stuffed dinosaur.

Shutting the door behind her, she ran back to the spot where the Doctor had vanished. She plopped her suitcase down on its side and used it as a chair. With her knees pulled up near her chest, she sat her chin on them and waited for the goofy, raggedy man to return in his time machine.

The little girl waited until she fell asleep.

***​

“Atta girl!” The Doctor shouted gleefully as the TARDIS rolled and twirled through the Time Vortex. As the gravity and orientation stabilizers kicked back on, the burnt-out chamber stabilized, and the Time Lord was able to remove the harness he’d used to tether himself to the controls. With the weight off his waist, he took a few steps back and collapsed into the chair, lifting up his feet to take a look at his scorched trainers.

Leaning to the left, he grabbed what remained of the reverse thruster and slammed it down. A moment later, the TARDIS engines whirled and flared as the ship returned to Tennessee. Without skipping a beat, the Doctor glanced one more time at the devastated console room and rushed out the door.

“Kesha!” He shouted as he threw open the doors. He paused once to shut them behind him before running across the all-too familiar backyard to the door. When the knob resisted his efforts to fling it open, he fished out the sonic screwdriver and tried to unlock it that way. The device sputtered a few times before flaring to life and unlocking the door with a rhythmic click.

“Kesha!” The Doctor shouted again as he ran up the steps. “Hey, are you here?” The Time Lord rounded the landing and went right into the path of an oncoming baseball bat. A flash of stars was all he got before he was forcibly thrust into the realm of the unconscious.

A short while later, the raggedy man let out a grunt and opened his eyes. An attempt to stand up revealed that he was stuck to a chair, and a glance down at his right hand revealed the culprit was a pair of pink, fur-covered handcuffs anchoring one of his hands. “Well I think this breaks the record for how long before I’m knocked unconscious and chained to something...”

“Yea, no, I’m fine...probably just an overzealous fan. I have it taken care of.”

The voice drew the Doctor to the bed—the little girl's bed—where a blonde in her mid-twenties was sitting leisurely, a cell phone pressed against her ear. “Hey, you there, I’m trying to find a little girl...Kesha Rose?”

A scowl spread across the woman’s face as she turned over and stared at the man for a moment. “I’ll call you back,” she muttered as she set the phone down. “She hasn’t lived her for a while.”

“No...” the Doctor muttered as he looked around the room, which was clearly different from the last time he’d been there. “How long?”

“About six months.”

“No! I said I’d only be gone five minutes! How could it have been six months?” The Doctor let out a manic ‘ugh’ and threw his head back against the chair frame. The woman walked off and grabbed her phone again. “What happened to Kesha Rose?” He asked before he caught something in the corner of his eye. A frown spread across his face as he looked at the black space beneath the bed. “That’s strange...” he muttered as he started to fidget uncomfortably in the chair.

“Excuse me?”

“I need to speak to whoever lives in this house,” the Doctor asked as he lifted his shackled hand. “It’s important.”

“I live in this house,” she replied before noticing him glimpse toward the bed. “What are you looking at?” The woman asked as she leaned forward to glance through her legs to the dark space.

“N-n-no!”

Her head snapped up almost immediately and she turned to look at him--her eyes wide and confused and just a slight bit startled. “What?!”

“Last time I was here I told her she had monsters under there, but she shouldn’t have anything to worry about since they’d take a while to mature.”

“And?”

The Doctor smacked his free palm against his forehead and put on a crooked smile. “Everything’s still wonky because of the regeneration. I had the species wrong...those actually mature in about fifteen years. But we should still have...” The Doctor lifted a raggedy, scorched wrist up to his face. “Fourteen and a half years?”

Just then, something under the bed let out a violent hiss, and the old wooden frame started to shudder as if an unseen force was trying to stand up from underneath it. The blonde let out a nervous chuckle and edged toward the man. “I may have lied.”

“About what part?” The Doctor asked nervously as he started to pat at his pockets.

“It hasn’t been six months,” she replied as the shadows beneath the bed began to bubble out from the pitch blackness.

“What?”

“It hasn’t been six months,” the blonde woman repeated as the Doctor retrieved his sonic screwdriver from his pocket. The device didn’t react as he wanted, and he quickly found himself tapping it frantically against the wood floor. “Been fifteen years.”

The Doctor’s eyes went wide as a gurgling hiss started to emanate from the darkness beneath the bed. Tendrils of twisting shadow stretched from the frame and cushions as he lifted the screwdriver up to his face. “Come on, you,” he muttered as he pressed the activator and got that lovely blue glow. A moment later, the handcuffs opened with a click. “Run!” He yelled as he discarded the cuff and followed the blonde into the hallway.

They made it down the stairs and out the front door before their erratic exodus concluded with the pair of them slamming the heavy wood closed. After flashing the sonic over the lock, the Doctor turned to the woman and furrowed his brow. “Why did you say six months?” He asked before she started to walk away from him.

Before an answer came, one of the upstairs windows exploded as black strands of shadow slithered out across the side of the house. “We’ve got to go.” She muttered, her eyes wide as she looked up at the monster and back to the raggedy man with the confused look.

“Why did you say six months?”

“We have to go,” she repeated as she tried to peel away. The Doctor stepped in front of her path and frowned.

“Why did you say six months?” Another window shattered as the side of the house started to bulged outward. “This is important!” The Doctor pleaded.

“Why did you say five minutes!” The woman shouted, revealing a slightly southern accent that caused her eyes and those of the man to go wide.

The remark caused the blood to drain from the Doctor’s face. “What?” He muttered as he saw the faded streak of purple near the woman’s roots. Her eyes danced between him and the house. “W-what?” He repeated.

“Come on!” She yelled as she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him from the porch.

They ran across the backyard toward the TARDIS, which sputtered smoke from cracks in its sides. With nowhere else to go, the woman paused near the machine and glanced back nervously at the darkened house.

“You’re Kesha,” the Doctor broke the silence.

“And you’re late!” She shot back as windows continued to erupt like popcorn kernels in the background.

“But you’re Kesha… you’re the little girl.” The man was blinking a little too much as his addled brain raced.

“I’m Kesha, and you’re late.” She clarified as she looked around the porch. “What do we do?”

“You hit me with a baseball bat,” the Doctor spoke.

“Fifteen years.” Kesha remarked.

“A baseball bat!”

“Fifteen years and half a dozen psychiatrists,” she added, craning her neck to look back at him. “If I wasn’t famous, I’d still be locked up somewhere.”

“Psychiatrists?”

She scowled. “I kept biting them… they said you weren’t real.” The roof caved into the house as shadows started to creep across the backyard. “What do we do, Doctor?”

The man, eyes wide, turned back to the steaming TARDIS and nodded his head. “C’mon, girl.” He whispered as he slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. “Let’s go!” He shouted as Kesha followed him into the time machine.

“How are we goi—ahh, it’s bigger on the inside!”

“No time for that,” the Doctor shouted as he hopped over the wreckage toward the console. Jamming the screwdriver into the controls, he twisted it and stepped back as the machinery flared once more to life.

“Why is it burning still?” Kesha asked as the engines started to hum.

The Doctor turned and smiled. “It’s only been five minutes,” he chuckled as the TARDIS lurched forward into the vortex, causing them both to lose their balance.

“Where are we going?” Kesha shouted over the roar of the engines as the ship spiraled through space and time.

“Anywhere but your house!” The Doctor replied just before the console went black and the engines fell silent. A frown spread across his face. “She’s going to need time to repair herself…” he muttered as he turned to look over his shoulder. The door was swinging open, its hinges barely held together. “Where are you going?”

Racing out of the TARDIS, the Doctor was immediately taken aback by the weird gloom that hung over the landscape. Stepping out of the TARDIS, he spotted Kesha a few paces ahead, her eyes wide as she took in a sprawling plain dotted with what seemed to be giant carcasses.

“Where are we?” She gasped.

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders as he held a finger into the air. A moment later, he ran said finger across his teeth, swished his saliva around, and scowled. “Doesn’t taste like anything familiar.”
 
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They weren’t near Earth.

The Doctor was fairly certain they weren’t anywhere near Earth. Or the Milky Way. Or even Andromeda.

And I so badly wanted to say hello to those people on Eos.

“Doctor?”

The Time Lord pivoted and found a very stone-faced woman staring at him. “Yes?”

Kesha furrowed her brow as she gestured to the gloomy plain of short grass and occasionally sparking carcasses. “This isn’t Tennessee.”

“Correct,” the Doctor replied. “Can’t tell what time it is.”

The response that followed was immediate and lackadaisical. “It’s daytime.”

Rubbing his temples, the Time Lord glanced over his shoulder. “When time it is,” he clarified as he continued to try and calm the headache. He was reminded that this body was barely a few hours old. He was very much a pot of chili still sitting in a crockpot. Usually, he had a pretty solid knack for the time stream, but for the moment, his head was a muddled mess. The pharaohs didn’t wear tuxedos, did they?

“Well,” Kesha spoke as she stepped forward and placed a hand on the man’s raggedy shoulder. She flashed a grin and pointed in the direction of one of the corpse-looking decorations. “Let’s try another one… what in the name of David Bowie is that?”

The Doctor grinned. “It’s sparking, isn’t it?” He tilted his head. “That’s not me, right? Right?” He added as the woman slowly nodded.

“Kind of looks like a big ole robot,” the woman muttered.

“Let’s check it out!” The Doctor declared as he patted the woman on the shoulder and started to saunter off toward the oversized electrical corpse.

“‘Ey!” Kesha shouted, prompting her new (and mildly erratic) companion to pause mid-stride and spin on his back heel. “Your box?” She questioned as she gestured toward the smoldering TARDIS.

Instead of answering, the Doctor jogged passed her and vanished into the bigger-on-the-inside contraption. For about a minute, she stood there and waited, until he finally stumbled out from the smoke-laden interior. Coughing, he reached back and yanked the doors shut. His fingers twisted the latch to lock the door, and when he spun back to face her, he was back to that same manic pseudo-composure he had displayed since crash-landing in her backyard all those years ago.

All those hours ago? All that hour ago?

Kesha shook her head and then smacked the left side for good measure. She still half-expected to wake up from this and treat it all like some insane trip. Yet, there was nothing but crystal clarity in the strange, non-Earth around her, even though she was talking to her ‘imaginary’ childhood friend on a field. “You good?” She finally asked as the Doctor fumbled with a very plain-looking brass key at the end of a short rope.

“Me? Yah.” He whispered as he jammed the key into the pocket of his tattered jacket. He pointed with a thumb over his own shoulder to the box, which continued to leak smoke through some cracks in its exterior. “She needs to cook some more, though. Not sure how long…”

“You leavin’ it?”

“Yes ma’am,” the alien man remarked as he adjusted his broken glasses and suddenly broke into a jog that left her standing by herself. Not wanting to reflect too much on a scenario that was ridiculous even by her standards, Kesha didn’t linger long by the totaled TARDIS. By the time she caught up to the Doctor, he was already crouched next to the elephant-sized corpse. He wasn’t examining the metal thing though, but his eyes were instead focused on the bent, slightly scorched object in his hand.

“Your pen looks worse than your box.”

“Screwdriver,” the Doctor muttered as he tucked the useless piece of tech into his pocket before crossing his arms over his chest and scowling at the metal animal that lay dead in front of them. “Have to do this the long way,” he added as he stared.

“It’s a giant robot elephant,” Kesha stated matter-of-factly as she stepped forward and pressed a hand against the hull. “Still kind of warm.”

“It hasn’t been… dead, for a while.” The Doctor clarified as he pointed to the seemingly fatal damage the machine had sustained.

“Looks like claw marks,” Kesha shot back as she noted. “Smaller ones are maybe fangs or something?” The woman held up her hands and curled her fingers into pretend claws before opening her mouth and baring her teeth like they were fangs. After a few moments, she dropped her hands to her side and nodded to no one in particular. “Animal, right?”

“You’re asking me?” The Doctor chuckled, eliciting a scowl from the woman.

“Are you saying the Raggedy Man doesn’t know what took down the giant metal elephant in the middle of this overcast savannah?”

The Doctor twisted his mouth up for a few tense moments before snapping his finger and popping up to his feet. “A lion.” He declared to a grinning Kesha.

“That was quick,” the musician replied. “How’d you piece that one together?”

“It was easy,” the Time Lord snickered as he looked at something behind the woman. “It’s standing right behind you.”
 
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The woman’s eyes went wide as she noticed the oil-like drool dribbling down onto her shoulder. “A lion,” she whispered.

Slowly nodding his head, the Doctor remained focused on the glowing red eyes of the robotic feline. “Big metal lion with angry red eyes.”

“Lovely,” Kesha spoke softly as she edged forward. “You… you have a plan, don’t you?”

The Doctor, eyes glued on the machine, reached into his tattered pocket to retrieve the sonic screwdriver. He brushed his thumb along the base of the device as he tried to find a setting he hoped would do something worthwhile. “When I say run… I want you to run.”

“Where?” Kesha rasped.

“TARDIS.”

“The broken spaceship?”

Scowling, the Doctor spied a glance at her sweat-stained visage. “We’re spit balling here.” Without waiting for a witty rebuttal, he thrust the sonic screwdriver forward and mashed the control. Labored but reliable, the device flared to life with a whirl of blue light and sonic fibrillations.

The mechanical lion let out a frantic roar before snapping its jaws shut. Before the metal clamps slammed closed around her head, Kesha had ducked, pivoted, and broken into a sprint toward the smoldering TARDIS. The popstar reached the spaceship a few paces above her raggedy companion and crashed through a door that should have been locked.

Filing in behind the woman, the Doctor smacked the door closed and fumbled at the deadbolt. The screws weren’t completely flush anymore, but he still managed to slide the piece of metal into place. A beat later, the entire TARDIS shook with enough force to throw the Doctor and his companion to the debris-stained floor.

Outside the door of the time machine, the metal lion roared—a strange, unnerving blend of a digital sound byte and a real-life noise.

“Will the door hold?” The woman cried as she scrambled over piece of shattered coral toward the central console. Just a few paces behind her, the Doctor reached the control panel and started to frantically yank and pull at what pieces of it remained intact.

“I locked that door when I left,” the Time Lord replied as something snapped off from the console. He gave it a quick, disheartening look before tossing it aside and driving his elbow into the static-sputtering hole.

Something deep within the TARDIS started to groan as what remained of the central display sputtered and hummed. With the monster outside raking apart the door, there wasn’t much time left.

“Come on,” the Doctor whispered as he drove his knee up into the underbelly of the machine. With a final, desperate spasm of its eons-old technology, the TARDIS dematerialized. Even though they had slipped into the time vortex, the engines were already seizing. The displays that hadn’t been broken during his plunge into Tennessee flickered with red warning signs as fresh chunks of coral toppled down from the high roof of the control room. “I know, girl.”

“Doctor,” Kesha muttered from behind him. “The door’s go—“

The Time Lord turned just in time to see his new-slash-old friend sucked out through the open doorway. Eyes wide, the Doctor slammed something on the controls, and the TARDIS lurched backwards—following the woman as best it could.

That turned out to be little more than an quick exit from the vortex, because the moment the familiar shades of purple and black faded, the TARDIS was crashing once again into a field.
 
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