A story that'll hopefully be knocked out in about three or four chapters, with no guarantee on steady updates because I am, in fact, a hobo who is in college. Basically inspired by this piece and the bits of wackiness that transpires when you get people making Doctor Who OCs at the same time.
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After the dust had settled, Tati took note of something.
“…It’s really hot.”
The Doctor dragged himself up from the ground, despair settling into his eyes as he stared at the console of the TARDIS. “Oh no, poor thing, what happened…” he moaned as the console sparked. “Hyperspace fluctuation? No, come on, you’re better than that…Solar flare hit us? That wouldn’t be too good, would it. Oh! Did we – oh no, we hit a quasar, didn’t we! Bloody –”
“DOC,” his companion barked, snapping him from his trance. He looked over just as she dropped her jacket to the ground, flapping her arms to get airflow to the sleeves that had been covered.
“You want to be a chicken, Tati?”
“Ugh – no, I was just wondering – what the hell happened?!”
“I was trying to figure that out before you demanded me to see you flapping.” The Doctor looked back to the console just in time to avoid a poison-laced glare from Tati before she attempted to open the door of the TARDIS.
“Ugh – piece of –”
“Don’t be insulting her now,” the Doctor called over his shoulder as he combed his fingers through his bangs. “Urrgh…Bess, what happened to you…?”
“HA!” Tati gave one final grunt and managed to push the door open about an inch before sand poured through. She lept back when she saw the size of the mound flowing in, hanging onto a guard rail for support as the stream slowed and eventually stopped. “Lovely…”
“Blimey Tati, can’t take you anywhere can I?” The Doctor again looked away in time to avoid a death-glare, but chuckled when she untied her red trainers to empty the sand that had been dumped into them.
“Can’t you at all tell where we are?” she asked, brushing the sand off her socks.
“Instruments are all borked,” he replied, flicking a switch and flailing his arms wildly at the sparks that erupted. “Only thing that’s running is the light.”
“I can see that,” Tati answered, pulling her shoes back on and hopping towards him. “You seriously put the lights as the first priority in this kind of situation?”
The Doctor shrugged. “You do know how dark it is in here without them? They’re rather necessary. Second is the temperature, which we must be in a pit of trouble if that also went out…”
“It’s…it’s really effing hot Doc,” the pickpocket moaned, contemplating on her actions heavily before finally giving in and slipping off her t-shirt. All that was left was a grey tanktop, an article of clothing he had rarely seen except for the few times he caught her during the night. “Much better…”
“You better not be going down any more than that,” the Time Lord murmured rather disapprovingly. “We’re not at a beach resort…”
“Given the sand? We might as well be at one.” Tati stretched her arms out, wadding up her shirt and throwing it onto a nearby couch. “Wish we were, really…” She paused, fiddling with her hair, holding up the back in an impromptu ponytail before waving her hand at the Doctor.
“…You want something?”
“Hairtie.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Get your own then. You know where they are.”
“You mean you won’t let me borrow yours?”
He rolled his eyes. “No Tati. You know where they are, your legs aren’t broken, and no, you are not seeing me with my hair down.”
She sighed, dropping her arms. “Damn, how is it you can read my mind?” She shuffled off towards the back, heading down a ramp and into a hallway.
“I’m the Doctor, that’s why!” he called out after her before returning to fiddling with the console. He began pulling out wires and cables, nudging plates of metal and plastic out of the way, before accidentally setting his hand on one hot wire. “Ahhh ffffffffff…” he managed to contain, sucking on the finger he had burned. “Tati, get a wrench!” he called out, waving his hand in the air to cool it down.
“Get it yourself!” she called back, hearing a thump and a series of latches being undone. He shook his head, far too used to her actions to know she was being serious. She had a tendency to run sarcastic, which he worked rather well with.
Sitting there, staring at the console, the Doctor himself could feel the heat radiating from wherever it was they had crash-landed. It was rare that he ever felt uncomfortable with the temperature – maybe it was Tati’s insistence on the heat that got to him. He tapped his foot as he heard the toolbox being returned to its shelf before sighing and deciding to take his jacket off.
It was, of course, at this time that the pickpocket chose to return from the back, hopping over a railing to join him at the console but stopping dead in her tracks. “…Are you stripping?” she asked incredulously, staring at him.
“Wot are you talking about,” he balked, tossing the coat jacket aside, it landing neatly on a chair. “Is it so wrong that I wanted to take the bloody thing off?”
“Um, maybe.” He stared at her, but then continued staring for different reasons. Somewhere in her searches she had located an old pair of goggles, its green lens tinting her forehead, the brown leather strap swallowed up by her mane of hair, which had been hung into a high ponytail. “…Where did you find those.”
“I ‘unno. They’re yours, shouldn’t you know about them?”
“You can’t honestly expect me to remember all the things I’ve collected, now do you?”
“Hey, you remember everything else.”
“Things that matter, yeah.”
She rolled her eyes before looking at the console. “So…borked, huh?”
“Yeah, seems that way.”
“…No idea why?”
“Not a one.”
The pickpocket sighed in frustration before swinging her arm up and offering the Doctor the wrench she had found. “I’m assuming you wanted the beast.”
“It’ll do.” He accepted it, his arm stumbling in support when he took full bearing of the weight.
“Alright. I’m going to try and get outside and see what’s up.”
The Time Lord nodded as Tati excused herself and hiked towards the pile of sand that had accumulated at the door. She kicked at the grains in mute annoyance before climbing up and wading through the mound, grunting when she deliberately fell over to reach the door and try and force it open.
“You know Tati,” the Doctor called out as he slid underneath the console, “Basic physics says you’re not going to be able to open that door.” He knocked off a panel, wincing as it clanged loudly on the floor. “If that much sand came in from just a crack…”
“Let me try and fail then, okay?” she grumbled in return. Clambering to her feet, she began shouldering the door, then kicking it after she had fallen over again. The door seemed to be nudging ever so slightly open, if judging by the small trickle of sand that poured in.
Still, it was slow goings, and patience was not on the pickpocket’s side. Sprawling out in defeat, she let out a huff of air to remove the bangs from her eyes.
“Doc…” she moaned, almost whined, flailing her legs in the air. “It’s…it didn’t work.”
He rolled out of the way of a plume of sparks. “As I said.”
“But this – hey!” Tati somersaulted backwards, skidding her feet against the ground before standing up and bouncing excitedly. “The windows!”
“Yeah, what about them?”
“Can I break them? I think the hole would be just big enough to get out.”
There came an absolutely dead silence. When silence lasted for more than three seconds when the Doctor was asked a question, she knew the answer wasn’t going to be good.
“You want to…wot…?” He crawled out from under the panel, staring at her with a look more suited to a lost puppy than a centuries-old man. “You want to…break them…?”
Tati swallowed, fighting off the urge to fear for her life. “I figured…I could get out…that…way…”
The Doctor continued to stare, his eyes wide, gaze steady and locked as he slowly walked towards her. “You know what you’re asking there?”
“…To break something?”
“You’re asking…” His eyes briefly looked to the door and back, “…to…destroy a part of her.”
“Now – hey, I never said - !”
“But that’s what it is!” He slid his hand down a railing, his eyes containing a loving glint. “You’re asking to destroy her, and you know what that’s like?”
Tati didn’t answer for a moment but, upon receiving a rueful glance from him, sighed and mumbled, “What?”
He slapped a hand over his chest. “That’s like destroying a part of me, you know tha’?”
“Whaaat,” she balked, throwing her hands on her hips. “Doc, come on!”
“How does that make you feel then, eh?”
After a considerable pause, she shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to hurt you, actually…”
Now he balked. “Wot,” he squeaked in disbelief, dropping his arms to his sides. “Now –”
“Oh right, like you’ve never wanted to do the same to me.” When she received no answer, she laughed. “See! Feeling’s mutual!”
The Doctor rolled his eyes, groaning. “That’s not the point, Tati…You know the TARDIS doesn’t let just anyone in her, right? She has to like you, and she likes you, so I’d advise to not ruin the thing that likes you.”
“I acknowledge what you say to be true. BUT!” Tati jutted her arm out, pointing at him dramatically, “If she’s already as borked as she is, then doing something as teeny as that won’t make much of a difference. BESIDES!” she shouted as the Doctor opened his mouth, “I’m not just doing this ‘cause I want to, it’s because I have to! And maybe there’s somebody or something out there that can help us.”
The Time Lord made several faces in the silence that followed, Tati still keeping her arm out and pointed at him. After considerable thought and foot-tapping, he sighed. “Alright…”
“Score!”
“But!”
“But?”
“You have to fix it afterwards.”
Tati swung her hand to her forehead in a mock salute, grinning widely. “Of course!’ she said before hopping on her feet and dashing across the room and back into the hallway.
The Doctor sighed, making his way back to the console. What she said was true – at the rate he was going and the extent of the repairs needed, they were going to be stuck there for a while. Any information about their location would be useful, and if they were lucky, perhaps even a person or a town that could help them out.
If they were lucky.
Probably a bit too enthusiastically, Tati came dashing out from the hallway, hammer clenched tight in her hand, leaping full over railings like a sprinter and eagerly climbing up the mound of sand. The Doctor just stared, a hollow pit emerging in his stomach as he watched her take a few practice swings.
“Relax!” she said, though perhaps not in the most sympathetic of ways, before winding back her arm in full and swinging it out, making contact with the windows and shattering the glass upon impact.
Whether imagined or real, it felt like somebody had just chiseled into his shoulder and shattered the bone. Tati proceeded to gingerly tap out the remaining glass shads, knocking out the frame in the process.
“Alright, looks good,” she called out, though the Doctor felt too nauseous to even look. He slumped over the panel, head in his arm, waving his free hand in the air.
“You – you be careful,” he managed to get out as he heard her shoes scraping against the door. “Glass is –”
“Ungh – shit!” she cursed from the opposite side. Finally lifting his head, the Doctor saw no one in the room but himself.
“What happened?”
“Nerrr – just – cut myself on some glass.”
“…Are you okay?”
“Y – yeah, yeah, I’m fine, this is nothing.”
Tati stared at the cut on her arm, which was more like a deep gash. Deep down she felt it was like poetic justice, though she really wished she hadn’t thought of that.
“You sure?”
“Positive,” she answered, confidence having returned to her voice (no matter how fake it was). “You can track me down if you need to, right?”
“If I need and want to, yeh.”
She rolled her eyes, a move that was more automatic at this point. “Come look for me if I’m not back in an hour.”
Without waiting for a response, Tati began her trek – straight forward in the dead heat, making her suddenly regret ever wearing jeans. Right away she gathered a few facts: There were two suns in the sky, one about half the size of the other and trailing behind it. The sky was a deep blue, a bit more saturated in color than what she had grown up with.
There were no plants and no animals, silence swallowing the landscape and only broken by her moving feet. They were drenched in sand, the grains sifting into the holes and cracks of her trainers, but she ignored them.
Right now, the biggest problem was probably the blood coming from the wound. Tati looked behind her, the TARDIS now just a fleck on the horizon. Turning back now (and somewhat admitting defeat to the Doctor) would just be a waste of time.
With this in mind, she turned a full circle before quickly shimmying out of her tanktop and setting it down on the sand. “Standing half-naked in a desert,” she mumbled, reaching behind her back and pulling the switchblade off its clip on her belts. Flicking the switch, she proceeded to cut off the bottom hem of the shirt before slicing it in half to create a strip. “If it’s something I’ve ever wanted to do…” She retracted the blade and, to the best of her ability, tied the cloth around the gash with her free hand. “Then I can cross it off the list.”
Now somewhat mended, Tati pulled her tanktop back on, relieved that it still covered her torso. If nothing else, at least the Doctor wouldn’t pitch a fit about her looking “indecent” or anything.
---
It probably wasn’t a good idea to send her on her own.
The Doctor paced rapidly around the console, jittery in his step, annoyed at his actions but also frustrated at the ridiculousness of his companion’s own. Still, he had the ability to stop her. Still, she should’ve known better. Still…he had promised a rather aggressive pawn shop dealer that he would keep her safe, with repercussions being…probably several knife wounds to the chest. (Whatever it was, it wasn’t a pleasant prospect.)
It hadn’t been an hour, but that wasn’t what worried him. Shortly after her departure, the Doctor investigated the opening Tati had created and noticed one of the shards left behind in the door had a noticeable stain of blood on its tip. But try as he might, he was just that much too large to fit through the gap.
So in the TARDIS he remained, antsy and neurotic, fearing the worst but also hoping the best. His thoughts were in heavy argument, which did little to quell his frustrations.
Then there came a knock on the door.
“Who knocks in the desert,” he mumbled out loud, slowly making his way to the door. “Usually it’s not good…”
“Oi’ey, open up!” a male voice shouted in annoyance, causing the Time Lord to freeze in his tracks.
“Doctor!” a female’s countered, though it carried the same accent. “Don’t be rude…”
“Don’t be rude?” the male balked. “This is my TARDIS! Who in their right mind thinks that they can copy it?”
“Doctor, it’s a police box…”
“And there’s where you’re wrong dear Robyn, because a police box wouldn’t be out here in the middle of a desert where –”
“You ever see Digimon?” the female asked quite earnestly. “There’s an episode where they find phone booths on the beach and –”
“This isn’t Digimon, Robyn.”
“It’s sure enough like it.”
The Doctor stared at the door, unable to move. What in the world had he just heard?”
“…Maybe nobody’s here,” the female – Robyn, it must be – suggested meekly.
“Hardly.” The man – who she had called the Doctor? – made a few grunting noises before a familiar buzzing noise hit the air.
The doors of the TARDIS swung open, sand crushing and crumbling into the entryway. Blazing sunlight hit the Doctor’s eyes, though he fought off the discomfort in order to get the first glimpse of who was on the other side.
It was, as the voices confirmed, a male and a female, a bit disproportionately matched in age and appearance. But most importantly was what – or rather, who – was slung onto the man's back.
“Ta – Tati!” the Doctor fumbled, climbing over the sand mound and making his way outside. “How did – where did you –”
“This yours then?” the man asked, amusement dancing in his eyes. He turned around and motioned for the Doctor to take her off his back, which he did, instead supporting her by swinging his arm around her shoulder. “Take better care of her.”
“She was passed out,” the girl spoke up, her voice bright, if just a touch nervous. “Thought she might’ve been…you know…”
Her words hung in the air as the two men stared at each other, eyes scrunched and scrutinizing one another. They bobbed and twisted their heads in almost mirror-like movements before the Doctor spoke.
“Thank you for finding her but – who…are you?”
The man raised an eyebrow. “I’m the Doctor. You?”
“…You’re taking my line there.”
