**SPOILERS AHOY**
2017 Christmas Special: Twice Upon a Time spoilers for the ending.
Speculation/hope for the coming season (immediately to be jossed, most like) that the Doctor will find herself in a similar situation to the Third Doctor, stuck on Earth with Kate Stewart, UNIT, and a broken TARDIS at least for some part of her early days. Thank you, Thirteen, for reinvigorating my muse enough to write this.
Crossposted to Archive of our Own
One more lifetime.
The Doctor had to laugh at the irony, watching the TARDIS fall further and further away - though really, it was she who was falling, and how brilliant was it that she was a she - no! Focus Doctor! It wasn’t the time for post-regeneration distraction! She was free-falling through space, watching Time slip past her fingers, tumbling end over end, and she thought to herself, this is going to be the shortest life yet.
Somewhere, some-when in the cosmos, Missy was laughing herself through three bodies, she was sure of it.
A glint of metal flashed in the moonlight, catching her eye in silver and gold. Then another. She twisted, forcing coordination into new limbs to right herself into a controlled parachutist descent, and looked harder.
The first flash was a ring, keeping pace in a delicate tumble that seemed to laugh at the situation of mortal peril. She reached for it, capturing it between slender fingers. The wind-chilled metal warmed quickly in her palm, a time-echo of golden curls and mischief and love.
The second was the TARDIS key.
She snatched for that too.
“Come on old girl,” she muttered, clasping ring and key together in her palms, close to her chest, as she plummeted further and further towards the glittering lights below.
Gradually, the grinding scrape of familiar engines resounded in the air around her, and the Doctor laughed with relief as the TARDIS materialised around their pilot. Familiar round-things and ambient light replaced moonlit clouds and the circuit-board of civilisation.
The Doctor found herself suspended midair within the console room.
“Oh shi-”
The ensuing drop was shorter, but the landing by no means more pleasant.
Pleased with the manoeuvre, the TARDIS wheezed their way through the remainder of Emergency Relocation Program 2, disappearing from the sky over London.
The engines gave a final, rasping cycle, and then settled with a thump, landing procedure complete. The console room went dark.
The Doctor groaned as she staggered to her feet. The floor was littered with the detritus shaken free during the TARDIS’ hiccup; soot and sparks still belched from shorted panels, and books from the library were strewn underfoot. Coughing, she stumbled back, away from the destruction, until fingers found the doors behind her. She fumbled the latch open and emerged into the clear night air.
It was all she had the energy to do. Her knees buckled. She had enough control to catch herself against the frame, before she spun, slowly, collapsing backwards into the bushes of the garden the TARDIS had parked herself in.
...Thorns. Ow.
At least the moon was nice, she reflected. Pale, bright, waning out of full on a pleasantly balmy...she licked her lips, trying to estimate, but it didn’t seem this body had the taste of Time the last possessed. She guessed it was spring. The roses she’d collapsed in dangled delicate, peach-coloured buds from their branches.
There was the sound of a screen door slamming open, the shuffle of feet clad in impractical footwear for the outdoors. A low swear, unintelligible but for the incredulity of its tone.
A face swam into her blurry line of sight, golden hair and blue fuzz, the scent of tea and gunpowder. A quick blink, and form resolved itself into function, clad in a blue dressing gown and carrying a mug that steamed in the chill of the air.
Kate Stewart frowned down at her, half-bewildered, half-disapproval, 100% Lethbridge-Stewart through and through.
“...Doctor??”
“Hullo Kate,” The Doctor mumbled. “Sorry about the roses.” And her eyes rolled back in her head, surrendering to the blissful realm of unconsciousness.
(Kate Stewart looked from the woman, dressed in the tattered rags of a man’s clothing three sizes too large, unconscious among her father’s favourite roses. Looked at the familiar shape of the TARDIS, nestled neatly upon the remains of a bed of crushed begonias, smoke spilling from the half-open doors. And sighed, rolling her eyes towards the heavens. “Some things never change, eh Dad?”
She hoped the Osgoods were still awake.)