If you have seen me IRL you've read it. Hopefully to develop a plot at some point.
The blue police box vworpped into Chicago, Illinois, United States of America, Earth, Two Thousand, just after sundown, surprising absolutely no one. When the tall, wiry man with the hair like a bird’s nest in a hurricane stepped out and took a deep breath, no one noticed.
A graveyard. The Doctor was almost positive he had not chosen to be here. Sometimes the TARDIS had its own ideas about where/when was best for him, but he’d had enough death for this week – year century lifetime – and it knew that. Clearly he’d got himself somewhere by accident, and more often than not when he did that he ended up saving the world, the human race, or the entire universe.
He’d had enough of that for this week as well.
He bounced on his heels and sniffed the air again, then screwed up his face. “That’s not good, no, not at all,” he muttered. “I’m sure I didn’t set it for Earth, and this is just…”
He left the thought unfinished as he ran back into the TARDIS, which whined at him, mentally. It didn’t like being here. Something – “Oh come on, what have I got into now?” he asked the machinery, darting around to the main monitor.
Tap-tap-tap and two levers and some telepathic nudges later, he had his answer. “Oh no no no this can’t be right!” He ran around to the opposite side as his ship sparked its indignation at him.
Outside, something loud and bright cracked into a tree, and the Doctor was one hundred percent certain that it had not been lightning. Not here.
“Don’t tell me that, I’ve just saved the one, don’t say there’s another one demanding it please.” His words matched the pace of his fingers on the keyboards, and his heartbeats were getting in on the race. “And not even oh, there goes that 23rd century monitor, I liked that one.” Things were falling apart at an alarming rate, and he’d made some backups after the last time this happened so the TARDIS would be all right in itself, but a lot of the peripherals weren’t meant to stand up to –
Another crack and the TARDIS whirred and died. The Doctor took only a moment to sigh over it; he’d better get the backups working before he went to investigate.
Plug the recharger into the disconnected energy source, switch it on, and watch it glow. Much more convenient than using up his lifespan, even if it was considerably less dramatic. “Hang on, all right? I’ll go do something about this,” he told the egg of blue light. He had the sonic screwdriver in his pocket and was out the door before the next flash of light crashed into the side of the TARDIS.
He winced, but the shields didn’t waver, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held. Something large and remniscient of a Korlzitelk, all big curled horns and goat legs, barrelled past him bellowing its displeasure. The Doctor was sure that Korlzitelks didn’t smoke, ordinarily, and stepped out of the way to let it continue its rampage.
Something that was probably human ran after it, shouting in very bad Latin, and sending another blast of the light – blue, now that he had time to notice – at the Korlzitelk, which shriveled and disappeared. They had been known to do that on occasion, so the Doctor decided to let it go.
The human – yes, certainly a human, no doubt of that now that he had time to look, really see the man – stopped, and stared at him. He had a big stick and a black trenchcoat, and his timelines and potentialities twisted in a way that gave the Doctor a headache.
Looking at Jack was wrong, because what Jack was was wrong. Looking at this man was wrong, but it wasn’t due to any inherent flaws on his part. No, in this case, the fault lay entirely with the Doctor.
“Oi, you, you nearly blew a hole in my ship,” he greeted the man, putting on his best disarming grin along with his spectacles. “Not that it did any harm, but that is a fascinating stick you have there. …Mind if I have a look?” he asked.
The man did not look impressed, and looked less impressed when he looked back to see the TARDIS where the Doctor had pointed to it. “That’s not a ship,” he said. “That’s a wooden box.” Though he did look a little concerned about the whole matter.
The Doctor sighed. Every time. “Well of course it is. Bigger on the inside though, I’ll give you that – though not if that thing you’ve got there had gotten through the shields.” He bit his lip thoughtfully. “Some kind of sonic blaster, isn’t it? Are you sure I can’t have a look?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man challenged. Well, all right, he’d walked into that one. He should have known he was dealing with the suspicious type.
“I’m the Doctor,” he said, and stuck out his hand. The man didn’t respond, his left hand clenched in a fist and his right still around the stick, which was glowing, and not just with the fascinating patterns it was making in causality.
The Doctor gave up on a friendly handshake and returned to the matter at hand. “You just discorporated a Korlzitelk. You lot aren’t supposed to have those until what, 3380?”
The man gave him that stare he knew so well – the one that said that here was a mind with untold depths of inanity. But the man wasn’t meeting his eyes. He was doing a good job of looking him in the face, but there’d been not a flash of eye contact since they’d begun speaking, or the Doctor had.
“But I think you’ve got in touch a little bit early, haven’t you? Yeah, yeah, different world different rules – I’m guessing eye contact does something kind of…” he waved his hand in an expressive manner: alarming, terrific, dangerous. “…You know, and you were speaking Latin back there. Very bad Latin, mind. So you chose words.” He was becoming unable to contain his grin. All right, he was stuck here, but a whole new universe, with whole new rules.
“But I bet if I tell you Carrionite…” he said, pointing. The man failed to shriek and disappear, but he did take a step back. The Doctor nodded and smiled. “Oh that’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”
“I don’t know what you are, but take your damn wooden box and get out of my city,” the man said, raising the stick. Or, rather, the sonic… sonic staff? Why not.
“Oh very good, very good! ‘What’, not ‘who’. Yes, very good. Except I can’t.” The Doctor went serious very suddenly, thinking of that little blue light in the darkness. “Because it’s going to take a little while for my TARDIS to put itself back together.”
“Is that what you call that thing?” the man asked.
“Yep. It’s partially alive, but a lot of it is electronic,” he explained. “And your technology doesn’t play well with my technology.” And he was stuck in a world where technology was in the head and on the tongue.
“Magic. It’s not technology, it’s magic,” the man said. “Dresden,” he said finally, shifting the staff into the crook of his left arm and putting out his hand. “Harry Dresden.”
“Nice to meet you, Harry Dresden,” the Doctor said. They shook. Harry was wearing a bracelet of silver that glistened and rippled in eye-bending ways.
“And you’re the Doctor. Just the Doctor? I gave you my name,” Harry said.
“Yeah, and thank you for that,” the Doctor said, moving on quickly to the next question. “So, magic! The staff is, the bracelet is, the ring is, you are,” he added. “Do you count the Korlzitelk as magic too?”
“You mean the satyr,” Harry corrected him. “It was a satyr. And it was trying to kill me,” he added, almost defensively.
“It probably had a good reason for it, but no harm done,” the Doctor said. “It’ll be back eventually.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, trying to kill me again. Are you going to try that? Only it’s been a hell of a week and I’d rather not.”
“What? No, I’m not,” the Doctor told him with genuine shock. “I’m just stuck here, not bent on invasion. You lot have had enough of that.”
Harry gave him a long, suspicious look. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s 2000, isn’t it.” Canary Wharf, the Christmas invasion, even the Master were all still half a decade off. If they happened happened. If Torchwood here would leave well enough alone – would there be a Torchwood here?
Only if there was another him here. The thought gave the Doctor pause, but he didn’t let the uncertainty show on his face for very long. Last thing he needed was for Harry to take control of the conversation.
Manic expression again. “That aside, if you’re done shooting up the place, I’m here for at least another forty-eight hours. The TARDIS’ll be fine by itself. You wouldn’t know where I could get a good meal, would you?” he asked.
“You haven’t told me anything,” Harry pointed out. “That box shouldn’t still be standing. You’ve got no name and half of what you’ve said is nonsense.” He shifted the staff back into his right hand, setting himself up. As if the Doctor were a threat.
“I told you enough, haven’t I? I’m the Doctor and I’m stuck here. And I’m absolutely starving. Come on, let’s go find a pub. Are we in Chicago?” That was what the TARDIS had said, but the skyline was different. A few extra buildings here, a clear space there, nothing too dramatic – and on the other hand, it certainly smelled like Chicago. He set off.
Taking the lead usually worked, and people were happy to follow him, or at least too confused to do otherwise. Harry Dresden was different. The Doctor was nearly out of the graveyard when he heard, “You don’t want to go that way. There’ll be more of them.”
“What, more Korlzitelks? I’m not the one who’s shooting at them,” the Doctor reminded him, leaving the boundries of the graveyard. Then he stopped, looked around, and ducked, quite suddenly. Bullets whizzed over his head.
“Always with the shooting!” They’d come from over to his left, from the parked cars, and then there was Harry, already running in the opposite direction, and shouting at him to do the same. It seemed sensible. He ran. Behind them, bullets bounced off a force field in midair.
Harry launched himself into a small and beat-up multicoloured Bug, and the Doctor, slightly faster, whipped around into the passenger’s side.
“Well that’s a good old-fashioned Earth welcome for you,” he commented. Harry ignored him, intent on speeding away as fast as possible. Just as well too; three cars had pulled away from the curb and were in hot pursuit.
“What are you doing in my car?” Harry growled, and made a turn that had to be illegal, by the laws of nature if not the laws of man.
“You said to run!” The Doctor glanced behind them. “Good idea, by the way.” Someone was leaning out the window of the car behind them. The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver, rolled the window down, set the device to ‘resonate lead’ and pressed.
The gunshot went off but was not followed by a bullet, and Harry turned into a busy street while their pursuers slowed in confusion. “There! No harm done.” Assuming they weren’t followed any further. The Doctor looked back; the cars went past the intersection and then faded from sight. That was new.
“You’re not a wizard. What the hell did you just do?” Harry asked, with a suspicious glance at the sonic screwdriver.
“Wizard? No, not so much. Well, I am brilliant enough for it. But this…” he tossed the screwdriver from hand to hand “…is just a fascinatingly good piece of technology.”
Harry gave it a look like he expected it to explode at any second. Given the TARDIS’s reaction to his sonic blaster, maybe it would. Better to avoid it: the Doctor slipped the thing back into a pocket.
“So, have days like this often?” he asked Harry brightly.
“More often than you’d expect,” Harry told him. “Though the suicidal British guy is a new one on me. Why are you following me again?” The light was green, and the car traveled slowly down the street. Almost as if they hadn’t been nearly killed moments before.
The Doctor shrugged. “Seemed the best thing under the circumstances?”
“It isn’t. I’ve got something weird after me. And I’m leaving you out of it.” Harry’s jaw set, and the lines on his brow deepened. Outside, the heavy traffic gave way to a side street which offered the tantalizing possibility of parking space.
“Oh, weird, I like weird. How weird?” the Doctor asked. “How much weirder does it get than a wizard?” He gave Harry his it’s-just-an-innocent-question look, but Harry was having none of it.
“Someone with no name who stepped out of a police box that wasn’t there five minutes ago?”
“Yeah, well. At least I’m consistent.”
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