Chapter Text
Her twin heartbeats thumped away in her chest as she ran. Her feet slipping on the slick marble of the hall. Her mind was perfectly blank except for the pounding noise of her own footsteps and one resounding thought,
‘Run.’
The sky burned a vibrant orange through the windows, casting wine-red shadows on her frightened face. The twin-sunsets obscured by a thick layer of smoke. A once beautiful sight now obscured by the smog of war.
“EXTERMINATE”
The echoing noise of Dalek laser fire reverberated in the distance. The ground shaking underfoot of machinery and the heavy weaponry currently bombarding the planet.
She rounded the last corner sharply, skidding across the floor, her destination coming into view.
The open archway lay in front of her and, beyond it, the red Tardis fields of Gallifrey.
Her dress-skirts whipped her legs and her corset hung loosely around her frame where she had snapped it’s bindings earlier in her attempt to hasten her escape. She tore at the rich velveteen material now, pulling it from it seams and releasing her from its oppressive weight. Now, dressed only in her under petticoat she could run much more freely.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she gasped for breath, “damn legs move faster!”
The noise of her feet hitting the ground stopped abruptly as she passed through the arch, the soft un-packed dirt cushioning her step.
It was almost peaceful. The tall-red-grass of the field flowing at her sides, the blades of grass caressing her fingertips softly. The air tasted thickly of ash, but for a moment the sounds of battle seemed to go silent around her.
It reminded her of being a child. Newly loomed* and wide-eyed, playing in the fields with the other children. They would hide in the grass for hours, playing in their own make-believe worlds. Dreaming of the stars.
Scout had always wanted to be an adventurer. She had craved it since her days in the nursery. That’s why she had enrolled in the academy. She’d studied for decades so that she could travel to the galaxies promised to her. But, the promise of endless exploration had been a lie. She had graduated ready to see foreign skies and new worlds.
Then the war had begun, and she never even had a chance for her feet to get off the ground. All Tardises were called back to Gallifrey, and the dream of freedom had been snuffed by fear.
And now, she was fleeing, and the stars were finally her goal.
She slammed, palm first, into the first Tardis she came upon. Her hands scrambling on the coarse coral-like surface of the undisguised living-machine. Her fingertips caught on the door latch, and she threw herself into the larger on the inside ship.
The console room was dark, the lights of the controls dim from being unused. A thick layer of dust and grime covered the machine.
She squinted as her eyes adjusted.
“Just my luck,” Scout muttered, eyeing the dashboard, “I picked an old bloody bastard!”
The Tardis light flashed on brightly, the whole thing shuddering around her in anger.
“No offense of course,” She let out a nervous chuckle, “love me a good ol’fashion death trap.”
She patted one of the support beams, grimacing as her hand came away covered in muck. She wiped it unthinkingly on her already ruined dress, before cracking her knuckles loudly.
“But,” She smiled brightly, rolling her shoulders, “It’s not the time for condescending chatter!” She grabbed the randomizer on the console, “Now,” she took a deep breath, glancing back at the door she had come through, “it’s time to run .”
She pulled the lever, catapulting herself into time and space and away from the only home she had ever known.
Unknowingly, never to return. As, in that exact moment, Gallifrey burned behind her.
“Oh, this is an absolute blast!” Scout hollered as the ship shook violently. It felt as though the Tardis was being ripped apart around her as they whirled through the Time Vortex.
She tried to snag the nearest stabilizer switch with one of her shaky hands, but the Tardis lurched sharply.
“Woah there!” She stumbled, hitting the floor with a thud. She could feel a hell of a bruise forming where her hip dug into a support beam, “Give a girl a warning before you sweep her off her feet!”
The machine lurched again, and, once more, Scout was sent flying head-over-heels. This time landing hard on her back, her shoulder giving a loud pop.
Gasping, she sat herself up. Her short curly dark-hair sticking up in every which way.
“Blimey,” she roughly smoothed her hair back, wincing as her arm clicked back into place, “That’s some static time feedback. I’d be surprised if we didn’t just put a hole through a decade!”
A groan of metal shifting and warping under immense pressure scraped through the air. Scout slammed her hands over her ears at the piercing noise.
“No, no, no that doesn’t sound good at all!” she watched as a gasket on the console popped, releasing a thick cloud of steam into the room. Her eyes widened in shock, and she scrambled to her feet.
“Don’t give up on me now!”, she smacked the console once, and then once more when that had no effect, “we’ve got a whole universe to see!”
The Tardis only started to shake worse. Scout's hands went flying over the controls in an attempt to do anything in her power to fix the collapsing machine. But the controls were quickly growing too hot to handle.
“C’mon!” She pounded her fists against the dashboard as her attempts went in vain, wincing when they came away red from the heat, “We’ve only just escaped!”
Another gasket popped, and the temperature in the Tardis began to become stifling.
She glanced at the console readout, “Right, coolings down. I can work with that!”
A cracking noise ran through the room and the ship rocked back and forth.
“Stabilisers burnt out, that one’s not great!” She reached for the breaks, “Maybe we just try for a nice simple landing, yeah?”
She hit the brake lever, but nothing happened. The ship continued to sway to and through.
“Really? No brakes,” She raised her arms in frustration, stumbling around in the chaos, “I need the brakes…”
“At least we still have power!” She said sarcastically.
The room went dark as all of the lights went out. The red emergency lighting flickering on beneath the floor’s grating.
Scout yelled in frustration.
“Right then,” she snarked, “worst-case scenario here,” She wiped the sweat from her brow, “only one thing to do, then!”
She punched the emergency brake and in a beat of one of her hearts, everything went silent.
She collapsed against the dashboard. Taking inventory of her bruises and scrapes. Nothing too serious, a couple of strained joint but nothing a little time-lord advanced healing couldn’t fix-up.
She let her eyes flutter closed, and she glanced at the completely dark console.
“Oh no,” Scout sighed, “you really were a damn ol’beasty weren’t you?”
She stroked the shell of the Tardis. Because that was what it was now, just a shell of something once living. Now both of them were trapped somewhere in space and time, possibly entombed together, a time machine’s corpse and a young Time-Lord girl.
“You only had one last trip in ya, huh?” She rose back to her full, fairly short, height, “must’ve been ancient.”
She wandered around in the dark for a bit before patting around the waist of her petticoat. If only she could find her-
Ah, there it was. She pulled out her sonic-lighter. Flipping the top-off she fumbled with the switch until it turned to torch mode.
The small light illuminated the room.
“Now I just need some presentable clothing, and then I can see if I’ve landed somewhere not completely hostile and unsurvivable,” she gave a half-smile, “certainly is an adventure I’ve gotten myself into.”
---
Scout rolled the ankle on the single pair of gray pinstripe trousers she had managed to find in the Tardis. The ship had locked all of the rooms before it had kicked the bucket, leaving her only with access to the main console room.
Luckily, the previous owner had left a bit of a mess, and she had managed to come across a well-worn travel trunk containing a change of men’s clothing and an old-earth videocassette labeled plainly, ‘Phantom Menace’.
She had quickly decided that the oversized clothing would have to do and had happily redressed.
She had managed to Macgyver her sonic torch into an improvised headlamp, and the faint light was the only illumination in the dark room.
Now, she stood contemplatively taking in her still frazzled, but less dirt-crusted, form in the low-light. She had managed to deal with the overly long pants by rolling them four times and shoving the legs into her dark leather boots. She had done-away with her ruined corset and instead wore a threadbare grey jumper.
She let out a huff, attempting to push her oily hair behind an ear, but the raven strands were too short.
“Why do I even need hair?” she mumbled angrily to herself. “Oh look at us! Powerful ol’ Time Lords, and what do we got here? Hmmm,” She mocked, pulling on the dirty strands, “Yes! Of course, still got hair on our heads! Can evolve past death, but we haven't evolved past that have we?”
She leaned back against a wall in frustration.
She glanced over at the door, her body perfectly still. Nervous, that's what she was. All full of jitters and fears, because right outside that door was something entirely new. Something she had longed for her entire life.
Now that she was here though, she was only filled with dread.
Dread over the fact that her only route of escape was dead. Dread that she would be caught for running away from her homeworld. Dread that, outside that door, was something infinitely worse then what she was running from.
“What am I going to do?” she murmured, eyes still locked on the door.
Her mind ran through all the possibilities, all the horrible outcomes, but one thing remained the same in all her scenarios. She couldn’t stay in this dead ship, at least, not forever.
She rose quickly from the wall with that thought. Marching across the room robotically, she made her way to the door.
“How bad can it really be right?” She reached out for the door handle. “It’s not like 99.9% of planets have inherently hostile atmospheres, is it?”
And she opened the door and stepped out of her sanctuary.
“Oh, ‘scuse me there! Didn’t see ya,” a woman said as she almost bumped straight into Scout.
“Sorry, my bad,” Scout quickly moved out of the way in shock.
Another passerby's shoulder brushed up against Scout’s, jostling the young Time Lord.
She turned in panic, coming to the awareness that she had landed in a rather crowded park. The woman who had bumped into her moments before was walking a small dog on a rather garish pink leash.
Scout blinked dumbly at the bright green plant life and rather bland inhabitants going about their daily lives.
“Well then.” Scout smiled brightly.
“Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom, Sol III - Earth. The year, hmmm.” She stuck her tongue out to taste the air, “2012! ”
A rather large man bumped into her this time, knocking her back into the doors of the Tardis, which felt decidedly more metal than they previously had.
“Watch where you're going!” The man yelled, only now looking up from his mobile. His eyes, however, glanced right off of Scout’s small form and instead locked on the ship behind her. He blinked confusedly for a moment. The Tardis’ inherent cloaking making its presence hard for the man to focus on.
His face went red and he glared back down at her.
Scout paled. What was she doing! Landing a Tardis in the middle of a populated pre-space flight civilization. When the council found about this she was going to be dead. Worse then that actually, she was going to be planet locked. Her Tardis license stripped and her academic achievements revoked.
“Um er, well you see,” Scout started to try to explain, but the man held up a single hand to stop her.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Well-”
“You think you're better than everyone else?” he barked.
“What-”
“You and your kind aren't welcome here,” he started angrily. “You teenage punk-”
“Oi, who are you calling a teenager?” Scout stepped forward, frowning.
“Don’t play dumb, I know your type,” He huffed, looking down his beaky nose at her. “you young kids and your van homes, well guess what?” He didn’t wait for her response, “We don’t want your hippy-dippy type loitering in our parks.”
“Van homes?” Scout furrowed her brow, “What do you mean my van home?”
“Yeah, then? What do you call your vehicle right behind you?” The man scowled.
“That’s not a van. That my-” Scout turned around, her mouth falling open at the sight.
Instead of the undisguised Tardis, a perfectly average looking blue van was parked behind her.
The paint on the vehicle was old and well scratched, but it was rather bland and otherwise unmentionably normal in appearance.
Scout sagged in relief. The Chameleon arch must have still have been functioning when they had landed.
“Right then, my Van” Scout corrected herself quickly. She turned back towards the man who was waiting impatiently with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Well, you see,” Scout started. “Not a teenager, and er, possibly might be a punk but…”
She fumbled a bit in the bigger-on-the-inside pockets of her borrowed pants until she triumphantly pulled out what she was looking for,
“As you can see I’m perfectly within my rights to park here. I’ve even got a permit!” She flashed the slip of psychic paper at the man.
The man grabbed the paper from her hands, looking it over thoroughly looking increasingly more sheepish as his eyes trailed across the paper.
“Sorry Miss.” He handed the paper back to Scout. “didn’t realize you were with tree services. Knew the storm last night blew down a couple of branches, but I didn’t expect anyone out here so soon.”
“Right, yes! Tree services, “ Scout nodded vigorously. “That’s me! And, eh, this is my van for… tree things.”
He nodded at her before he continued to walk on.
She slumped against the back doors of the van as soon as the man was out of view.
“Well then.” Scout let out a tense sigh. “I got one thing right, the atmosphere is definitely hostile.”
However, despite her less-than-warm welcome. Scout was ecstatic. She was on an alien world! And not just any alien world either, Earth! A hotspot of ever quickly advancing technology. Surely she could find something on this planet to help her, well, get off of this planet.
Also, Cardiff! What a stroke of luck. It was well known that Cardiff was host to a rift in space-time that was particularly grand for charging Tardises. Her chances of escape were becoming more and more probable.
//2 weeks later//
Scout hung from a makeshift swing strung up in the grating of the Tardis, humming to herself loudly as she worked. She was tinkering away with some of the wires in the Tardis’ circuitry.
“Right then!” she said suddenly, wiping her oily hands on a stained towel she had ‘acquired’ from someone's garden. “Attempt number 17; jumping the power grid with a boost from my sonic in an attempt to use any lingering time energy!”
She pulled her sonic lighter from the front pocket of the leather jacket she had also ‘acquired’.
It had been two weeks since she had crash-landed in Cardiff. So far she had been having no luck with any of her attempts at getting off-planet. But, considering she had nothing better to do than to keep attempting the impossible, reviving the dead Tardis, she had been continuing with the effort.
She flicked the sonic lighter to repair mode and grabbed the two wires necessary from her jumbled mess of work.
“Here we go!” she said excitedly, pushing the wires together into the light of her sonic-
SNAP
A rather large spark came from her lighter, and the entire bundle of wires caught on fire.
“No, no, NO!” Scout stumbled back quickly, falling off her swing and back into a pile of scavenged metal.
“You're not supposed to start fires!” she growled, looking down at her dinky tool. She threw it across the room in frustration, only to quickly scramble from her spot to hold it once more.
“I’ll just fix the repair setting, yeah,” she mumbled. “Then I can fix the ship, and then I can go explore space and time. Easy.”
She yawned, exhausted. Time Lords slept far less regularly then humans, but she had been going non-stop since her crash landing. Pulling a two-weeker was doing nothing for her frazzled nerves.
She stumbled her way back to the ladder and climbed her way up from the undercarriage and into the main console room.
Scout had never managed to open any of the sealed rooms, as they had deadlocked when the ship died.
Essentially she had been living out of the main room.
The floor was covered in wine bottles and bags from takeout chips. She had found all other local cuisine to be unpalatable to her Gallifreyan tongue.
But, yes, wine and chips were fantastic! Especially chips with vinegar and salt.
She liked the salt.
She had rigged up a projector of her own design after becoming curious over the videocassette she had originally found on board. Even now the projector was on.
She may have become a bit obsessed with the Phantom Menace. It had been playing constantly in the background since she managed to get it up and running.
She liked the background noise, it was almost like she wasn't alone.
She’d also rigged up a hammock, although she hadn’t gotten the chance to use it yet. But, sleep was sounding rather good right now to her frazzled mind.
She could close her eyes, maybe, just for a bit.
She flopped into her hammock with a groan. Falling asleep as soon as her head hit her old rolled-up dress she was using as a pillow.
---
Scout woke to week three of her strandedness with a start. The pod race scene played loudly in the background as she rubbed the sleep from her brown eyes.
Her usually warm tawny complexion was paled and ill-looking from a combination of bad diet and lack of sunlight.
She stretched irritably, flopping back into her hammock noisily. She felt rather terrible, physically and mentally.
This was the longest she had ever been without the contact of another Time Lord, used to the constant background telepathic connection she had with her closest family, the silence felt draining.
She had hoped, possibly, that she would awaken back on Gallifrey. The war and her hasty departure being a bad dream.
But no, she was still trapped Earthside, and her possibility of escape seemed to be becoming increasingly more unlikely as the weeks went by.
Perhaps trying to revive the Tardis wasn’t worth her time. Scout mulled over her other options.
She could potentially scan for alien tech. That would, of course, require her to build a scanner. That was more feasible than ship necromancy.
She hauled herself out of her bed and over to a pile of her gathered spare parts.
“Time to make a machine that goes ding when things happen,” she said sleepily, “just gotta hope things actually happen.”