The man raised an eyebrow, cocking his head back in the process. “Come again?”
The Doctor wrapped his fingers around the lower of Tati’s belts and pulled her straighter up against his side. “What I said. You, my, line, taking. I’m the Doctor, not you.”
Robyn shot her glance between the two of them, confused. “Wha –”
“Oi’ey, I think a bit more is wrong with you other than your obvious need of a haircut.”
“Wot, like that mop on your head is any better?”
“Um, Doctor,” Robyn cut in as the man opened his mouth to retort. He instead stopped and jerked his head to look at her. There was annoyance in his eyes, but also kindness, a sense of calm – a total 180 from his behavior not two seconds before.
The Doctor stole a glance at the unconscious form that was his own companion. He imagined he looked the same as this man did when he looked at her most times – the pickpocket was, afterall, his fellow traveler, his friend, his comrade.
“…Probably should take better care of her then,” he murmured as his gaze wandered to her left arm. A make-shift gauze had been wrapped around her forearm, which he assumed was a bit of her clothes (and the ripped and frayed bottom of the tanktop confirmed this). There was a clear stain of blood that still seemed to be spreading.
“- imagine though, finding –”
“Time to play doctor,” the Time Lord smirked, turning on his heel and dragging the lifeless pickpocket with him and through the forced-open entryway, skidding down the pile of sand that had piled down the ramp. He carefully hefted her limp body onto the worn-down blue sofa of the console room before turning around and jerking to a halt.
“What have you done to her?!” the man bemoaned, his expression bleak.
“Are you mad? She’s always like this!” the Doctor barked in return, stomping his foot. “This is MY ship! She has always been MY ship! And as such, I should know what she looks like!” He paused. “Who said you could even come in here?!”
“Doctor, didn’t you say that this was a copy?” Robyn piped up, clutching a railing tightly with both hands. “I mean…if it’s a copy, it obviously wouldn’t look like yours, right?”
The man swung his head back to her, as if confirming a thought, then returned to look at the Doctor. “Alright then - say this is a copy.”
“It’s not,” the Doctor grunted under his breath.
“A bad copy then, how’s that?” He grinned wildly as the Doctor puffed his cheeks. “If it’s a copy, and has a bad decorative theme, and is broken down…” His eyes danced in excitement as the grin dropped to just a gape. “That’s why!” He swung forward off the post and dove head-first underneath the console.
“Whatdoyouthinkyou’redoing?!” the Doctor blurred out, diving underneath the console as well and pushing the man’s arms away from the panel he had begun to fiddle with.
“I’m actually helping you, rust-head!”
“I’ve already done that!”
“You have not! If you did, the red wire would be in the spot where the black one is!”
Robyn released herself from her spot and cautiously tip-toed onto the main floor of the console room. The two men were squabbling underneath the main hub, shoving and kicking one another in efforts to either stop or continue doing something, which seemed to be getting them nowhere fast.
She instead looked towards the older girl, still sprawled lifelessly onto the couch, and who could’ve been mistaken for dead if not for her breathing. “Um…excuse me, sir, but –”
The Doctor sprung forwards, banging his forehead on the underside of the console in the process. “Bloody – Agh, Tati, I forgot!” He stumbled up and into his step, giving a quick look of thanks to the girl before lifting up his companion’s bandaged arm. “Sorry miss, but pepper-face over there isn’t exactly being conducive to my thought process.”
“Oi’ey!” the man shot out, to which the Doctor ignored.
“I – I think she’ll be alright,” Robyn stammered before taking a breath and composing herself. “I mean –”
“Blimey Tati, nice mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” the Doctor mumbled, turning her wrist over, letting out a whispery sigh of relief, seeing that the blood had at least ceased spreading. He then looked to the girl. “Sorry, didn’t mean to cut you off – but uh, don’t worry about her.”
“Wha’ –”
He smiled. “You don’t know her like I do. To go out on a note like this would be an embarrassment.” He stooped up, tapping a finger to his forehead. “Now where is the first-aid kit…”
“The bathroom,” the girl blurted out, causing the Time Lord to perk up as she snapped her hands over her mouth. “Or I mean – in – with us it’s – that’s where it –”
“That’s where it is though!” he said with a grin, clapping her on the shoulder. “Do me a favor, just – keep an eye on her? I’ll be back in a jif.”
“Oh, uh – yeah – sure, okay.” She watched as the Time Lord sprinted out of the room and disappeared into a back hallway. A clatter of metal against metal caught her attention, diverting her thoughts back to her own Doctor.
“This thing’s a mess!” he grumbled, bringing his knees up as he twisted his upper body to see something from an angle. “No wonder all this happened…”
“Hey, Doctor...”
“Hang on, hang on –”
“No, really.”
There were few times that Robyn demanded his attention, most of the time remaining respectful and quiet. But when those times came around, he would honor her request. The man shimmied out from underneath the console before swinging his upper body up off the floor, resting his arms on his knees.
“S’wrong Robyn?”
She looked from the older girl to the hallway before setting her gaze on the man. “I don’t understand any of this.”
He shrugged, sniffing and wiping the bottom of his nose. “Aye, I don’t understand it a whole lot either. Wot I’m guessing is…” He paused, spinning his eyes around in thought. “Is…”
“It’s okay if…if you don’t know, you know…”
“Oi’ey, don’t sell me short!” the man bluffed, swelling his chest in hurt pride. “I know more than that rust-head does, I assure you.”
Robyn stifled a giggle. “Just keep telling yourself that.”
“What kind of idiot has a quantive drive in the place of the carbon converter? And why is that where the neutron spinner is? And where is the flux wave capacitor? I mean really, it’s basic stuff that that idiot just got all wrong.”
His companion shrugged, choosing to pretend to understand his flow of logic. “I dunno. He’s just different than you. His TARDIS worked –”
“Worked until now, when it went to crap, and don’t call it a TARDIS, that’s mine.”
“Doctor, this thing is a TARDIS.” She folded her arms across her chest, sticking her bottom lip out in annoyance. “That man says he’s the Doctor. So do you.”
“There’s only one Doctor, and that’s me.” The man stood up, clapping his hands together. “I need something more, something more than just that before I’d even remotely consider the minute and vague possibility that he’s, well, me.” He paused, taking a few steps forward, before looking back at her. “Besides, who would ever dress like that anyway?”
Robyn looked around before lifting a black suit jacket from the floor. “This.” She waved it deliberately. “He would usually wear this. It matches his pants. He’d normally be in a full suit.”
“Alright then, if that’s the case, why’d he take it off?”
“Same reason there’s another jacket and shirt on the floor. He got hot. It’s hot, Doctor.” She paused. “I’d be wearing less clothes if I could.”
He rolled his eyes. “You just proved my point, though. If he was the Doctor,” (emphasizing the word with air quotes), “then he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in this heat.”
“But –”
“Get off it, Robyn,” he scowled. “He’s not the Doctor.”
She made an annoyed face, her gaze slinking off to look at the older girl. “You’re way too stubborn,” she mumbled before sitting down on the arm of the couch. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t care to respond, instead choosing to wander off the platform and investigate the bookshelves that lined the edge of the main hub.
He traced his fingers over the spines, slowing down in his step and staring around in muted awe. Robyn peered at him from the corners of her eyes, holding back a grin as he let a very quiet “Blimey” slip out.
The other Doctor came running out from the back hallway, a red box in one hand and a bucket sloshing with water in the other. He seemed a bit manic, in a crazed and cheerful way, sliding to a halt right before the couch.
“You know how I said this would be an embarrassing way to go for her?” he spoke from nowhere. It took a moment for Robyn’s brain to catch up to the conversation.
“Um – y-yeah?”
“Well, I realized something,” he continued, wringing out a washcloth that had been in the bucket before setting it on the older girl’s forehead. “I realized that she had some sort of heat stroke, or something, a heat attack. And when you combo that with blood loss, it can make even Goliath crumple to the ground, yeh?”
“I – I guess.”
“Answer – yes, it can.” He moved to the arm, peeling off the bloody fabric, pinching it between his thumb and index finger in disgust. “She really thought this was a good idea?” he murmured, dropping it to the floor and investigating what was left. The wound had scabbed over in crusted blood and, after poking around the spot, the Doctor found that the cut wasn’t extremely deep, just a bit long, running from her wrist to the middle of her forearm. Luckily, none of the veins had been pierced.
“She’ll really be alright?”
“No worries,” the Doctor replied cheerfully, popping open the red box and tossing a plastic bottle of clear liquid into his hand. He popped the top open with his thumb and squirted the substance on to her arm. “You know,” he said, taking out a wrapped package of gauze, “I can’t even remember the last time I had to use this stuff.”
“Eh?”
“Time Lord,” he replied, tossing the gauze back in the box and taking out another unopened package, this one of cotton squares, “Healing factor. Tati once said I was ‘like Wolverine’ as a comparison.”
Robyn giggled, looking towards the man wandering around the bookcases. “I never thought of it like that.”
The Doctor shook his head, rolling his eyes in the process. “Whatever you say…”
Even if he didn’t use the kit that often, the Doctor made quick work of cleaning and bandaging the cut, soon latching up the box and taking the washcloth off his companion’s forehead. He pressed a hand to it, giving a moment’s thought before plunging the cloth into the bucket, squeezing out the excess, and placing it back to its spot.
“Can you keep watch on her?” he asked, giving one last look to the pickpocket before making eye contact with Robyn. “Nothing much, just checking to see if she cools off…I gotta work on Bessie here before pepper-face does something wrong…”
The girl nodded earnestly. “Sure, I can –”
“HEY MOP HEAD!” the Doctor suddenly shouted, dashing over to the edge of the console platform and violently rattling the railing. “Hands off the first editions!”
“Oi’ey, keep your pants on!” The man snapped a book shut, sliding it back on the shelf, before turning on his heel and grinning. “Or are you gonna take those off too because it’s too hot?”
The Doctor threw his head back. “Wot are you talking about?”
The man dashed to the rail, hands shoved in his pockets, staring up at the Doctor as a sly grin came to his face. “That jacket over there on the floor – belongs to you, eh’ight? Took it off because you were getting’ a bit warm?”
“Pfft, as if. I just felt like taking it off.” It wasn’t a total lie, and he wasn’t even sure if it was a partial one or not. Had he really been uncomfortable, or was it just Tati’s words influencing his mind too much? Any amount of influence from her was a terrifying thought in and of itself, but the fact that she might’ve held some power over his subconscious…
When he snapped into consciousness, the man was gone from his spot. The Doctor whirled around and made a grunt-squeak noise in his throat upon seeing him once again under the console, poking around at the inner mechanics.
“I said to keep out of there!” he shouted, marching towards the center, hands balled into fists of out of frustration.
There was a few seconds lapse of silence before the man shimmed out froom underneath the panels. “Look,” he said, his voice low, his eyes flat. “I am actually trying to help you here, okay? Whatever this thing –” (he emphasized the word by flailing his arms around in an attempt to indicate the whole TARDIS) “- is, it interfered with my TARDIS, sending it off course and therefore here, here to a place I didn’t mean to end up and don’t want to be.” He paused. “Okay?”
“Then listen to me,” the Doctor said, kneeling down and craning his neck to see underneath the console and up into the mess of wires. “I know what this looks like, and you’re tearing it to shreds trying to…trying to get it into whatever you think it looks like.”
Robyn perked up when she saw the two men actually speaking calmly to each other rather than argue. True, it did take away from her entertainment value, but –
“STOP THAT, STOP DOING THAT, YOU’RE KILLING HER!”
Oh, there it was. Her Doctor had apparently touched something or another, causing a plume of sparks that made the other Doctor rather upset...And since yelling had been involved, it meant they were back to square one.
“Mmm, that’s new. Not used to seeing other peeps on here.”
Robyn jumped at the voice, snapping her head to the left to see that the older girl they had carried from the sand was now awake, attempting to pull off the red trainers from her feet.
“Are you – you feeling okay?”
“Oh yeah, sure.” She successfully managed to yank one off, brushing the sand off her sock before pulling that off as well and wiggling her toes. “Cut my arm, get heatstroke – nothing big.”
“Errr…yeah.” What had the other Doctor called her? Tati? “Tati, are you –”
“Oi, you know my name?” she asked, though it sounded like a statement. “That’s a one-up from me. Who are you, why are you here, and why is there another dude in here?”
Slightly taken aback by her bluntness, Robyn nodded stiffly, taking in a small breath before responding. “My name’s Robyn, and I’m here because me and the Doctor found this –”
“Woah hey, Doctor?” Tati looked at her, eyebrows raised, wiping the sand off her other sock in the process. “You were with Doc?”
“…Doc?”
“Aw man, you even sound like him…just my luck, I get to be the odd one out again…” She slumped into the back cushion of the sofa, pulling her knees up to her torso. “So he – hey, wait.” She tapped a finger to her temple, staring at the two men squabbling underneath the console. “Who’s – that guy?”
“The Doctor.”
“…Who’s that guy?”
“He says he’s the Doctor too.” Robyn paused. “I guess you…call him Doc?”
Tati’s eyes widened. “Oi now, that’s something new…"