Chapter Text
The first time he met her, she was nine years old. He’d been replacing the flux capacitor he’d blown flying the TARDIS too close to a fixed point she didn’t care to visit. Circa 3762, the Rubicon, a sprawling space station that served as the gateway between a whole host of galaxies, was the best place to find just about anything. They were still a few decades away from the security lockdown that would occur when the Zedhez made another bid for galactic dominance, which meant that every single shuttle port was lined with stalls spilling over with wares from at least four hundred different planets. So far he’d found the capacitor, four other mechanical bits and bobs that could be used to improve various TARDIS systems, and a really cool lamp he planned to put in the library.
Those plans were literally shattered by the sudden appearance of a small being darting out of the way of two angry-looking humanoids. Around an armful of lamp and TARDIS parts, the Doctor didn’t get a good glimpse of the smallish blur before it was crashing directly into his knees. In a misguided effort to break the whatever-it-was’s fall, he loosed his hold on the lamp. It didn’t stand a chance against the unyielding metal floor of the Rubicon, but the shattery noises were much less wince-inducing than the fleshier crash that accompanied it. The little gasp of pain and surprise sounded young and feminine, and that combined with the unfriendly snickers from her pursuers was all it took to activate a little bit of The Oncoming Storm in him.
“What’s all this then?” he demanded, eyeing the two burly humanoids with distaste.
“Apologies, sir,” one of them grumbled as he approached the prone figure the Doctor hadn’t yet glanced at. “We’ll take care of the little nuisance for you.”
He smoothly maneuvered himself between the men and the little girl. “Oh, let’s not be hasty, gents. What’s she done to get on your nerves?”
“Brat keeps trying to sneak into the club,” the second man said, jerking one thumb over his shoulder toward a neon-lit, seedy-looking establishment. There was no line to enter at this hour, but it was obvious that these two were bouncers based on the particular aura of big and dumb that they exuded.
“Right then. I’ll handle things from here. You can run along now,” the Doctor said cheerily.
Bouncer B shrugged carelessly, but Bouncer A grew suspicious immediately. “She might be annoying, but I’m not about to leave a little girl with a random fellow off the street. We had a mind to take her to the GPK and let them deal with her.”
“Very responsible of you,” the Doctor said with just a hint of genuine approval. “Almost nice enough for me to forget that you were chasing her through the streets. Lucky for you, I’m perfectly qualified to take over.”
He flashed the psychic paper toward them briefly, just long enough for the suspicious one to ease off his suspicion at the sight of a fabricated badge.
“All right then,” the man muttered. “She’s a slippery one, though. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
True to his statement, the second the two hulking beings had turned their backs, the girl was rocketing off the ground in an attempt to slip away. The Doctor was quicker, but only just.
“Let me go!” she growled, yanking against his grip on her elbow as the remaining objects occupying his arms clattered to the ground.
“Oi! Careful with those! They’re important!” he chided, doing his best to force her to look at him without yanking on her too hard. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you. Might even help you, if you ask nice enough. Why do you want to get into that club?”
The girl swung around to face him, and the Doctor couldn’t help but chuckle at the look of pure fury etched in such a young face. Her eyes were too big for her head and colored a rich brown flecked with gold that flashed like fire in the artificial lights of the Rubicon. She looked to be somewhere around eight or nine, but she was smallish and delicate-looking other than her fiery eyes, so it was hard to tell. “Come on then,” he prodded, kneeling down to her level and keeping a firm grip on her arm. “What’s a midget like you want in a seedy place like that?”
Those eyes were too expressive for her own good. They narrowed ever so slightly as she replied, “My dad’s in there. I need to see him. It’s about my mum.”
The Doctor grinned, “Nope! Sorry! Try again.”
The fire returned half a second before she tried to run again. A quick grab for her other arm prevented that neatly.
“Fine!” she said. “There’s a man in there who knows how to find my mum, and I need to talk to him!”
Not a lie. Interesting. “Where’s your mum gone, then?”
Her whole face shuttered, all the expressiveness in her too-big eyes vanishing in a single second. “Away,” she answered vaguely. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Galactic Peacekeeper,” the Doctor replied. “Didn’t you see my badge?”
“I saw a piece of white paper that those trolls looked at like it meant something,” she said, suspicion lacing her tone.
The Doctor’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Really? What nonsense! Look again.” He flashed the psychic paper in front of her eyes and watched intently as she gave it a cursory glance before shifting back to look at him like he was mental.
“Blank.”
“Interesting!” the Doctor exclaimed. “That means you’re proper smart, you are.”
“And it means you’re not a Peacekeeper at all,” the girl announced. “So let me go, or I’ll scream for help, and you’ll get dragged off by the real GPK for being a creep!”
“Hang on then! So I’m not a Peacekeeper! I did save you from those trolls of yours, though. And if you tell me what’s happened to your mum, maybe I can help.”
“Sure,” she snarked. “Do you have candy back in your white space ship, too?”
“Proper smart, but my ship’s blue,” he answered with a grin. “How’s this, then. I’ll buy you an ice cream from that shop, and we’ll sit on that bench right there, and you can tell me all your troubles. And if you don’t want my help after, I’ll leave you alone.”
The girl eyed the street, taking note of the array of shoppers and shopkeepers within earshot. If she called for help, someone would certainly come see what the trouble was. He could see the moment she decided to accept his offer in the tiny, defeated slump of her shoulders curiously paired with a spark of interest in her eyes.
“First you have to promise not to call my dad. Or give me to the GPK. Or kidnap me.” she said quickly.
“What makes you think I’ll keep a promise like that?” he asked, growing suddenly somber.
She stared at him for a long time, her eyes darting between his as if she was searching for something. Abruptly, she raised her right hand, pinky extended. “You look like the kind of person who keeps promises.”
Another grin took over his face, the kind that split this face in two and seemed to dazzle just about anyone. He liked that grin. The Doctor hooked his pinky around the girl’s and said solemnly, “I promise not to call your dad, give you to the GPK, or kidnap you. Now, I’m the Doctor. What’s your name?”
“Mercedes.”
“Nice name. Mer-ce-des. Rolls off the tongue. And speaking of tongues, yours looks like it would prefer… strawberry?”
A crooked little smile crept onto her face. “Yes, please.”
Two minutes and seventeen seconds later, he joined Mercedes on the pre-selected bench and handed her a waffle cone stuffed with strawberry ice cream. It was the blue kind, a sweeter variety grown on Deluce, which he had loved at some point or another. This tongue preferred pistachio.
“All right then, Mercedes, time for you to tell me your troubles. What happened to your mum?”
He observed the tiny girl take several precise licks of her ice cream while she considered her answer, progressing until the remaining ice cream formed a perfectly smooth sphere. “She left when I was a baby. Up until recently I thought she was dead, but my dad finally told me the truth. She went back to be with her people, and I want to meet her. So I have to figure out where she went.”
The Doctor absorbed all this information without pause and asked what seemed the most relevant question. “Who are your mum’s people?”
“The Yther. Ever heard of them?”
“I’ve heard of most things,” he said offhandedly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Yther don’t usually leave their tribes, do they?”
Mercedes shook her head. “She fell in love with my dad while he was studying the tribe. They ran away together, had me, and then she left to be with her tribe again.”
“Brave man, your dad, if he was trying to learn anything about the Yther. They like their privacy. How’d he even find them? Hang on, how do you plan to find them?”
If his memory served (and it always did), the Yther had a nomadic migration pattern that rotated on a hundred-year cycle. Even if you found them once, which was said to be nearly impossible to do, there was no guarantee that you would find them again, unless you could stand to wait a hundred years for them to be in the same place.
Mercedes shifted in her seat to look at the side of the neon-lit club. “There’s a man in there who claims to have visited with them less than three months ago. If I can get him to tell me where they were, they may still be there now.”
“What, so you thought you’d sneak into the night club in broad daylight, march up to him, and ask?” the Doctor snorted.
“Don’t be rude,” she chided in a very adult voice. Between her cleverness and her oddly grown-up attitude, the Doctor was questioning his guess about her age. “I was actually planning on sneaking into the night club, marching up to him, and telling him that I was a poor, lost Yther child kidnapped by pirates whose parents would definitely give him a reward if he could take me back to them.”
“That is a marginally better plan,” the Doctor conceded. “But how do you know this bloke’s not a pirate who will kidnap you himself? Not everyone honors a pinky promise, you know.”
Mercedes rolled her doe-ish eyes. “I already know who he is. He’s a history-destroying treasure seeker with a weakness for all things rare and expensive. I’ll hint he might get a Yther story-rug out of it, and he’ll be on board.”
“Treasure seeker?” Something tickled at the Doctor’s memory. “Thirty-fourth century… people who annoy me… wait! It’s not a fellow called Gundrak Hensen, is it?”
Mercedes shot him an odd look. “That’s him. You know him?”
The Doctor groaned. “Not yet. He’ll be young still. Just my luck. But never mind; it does settle one thing,” he steamrolled onward in an effort to interrupt her puzzled attempt to work out what he meant. “There’s no way I’m letting you into a very adult night club to talk to that tosser.”
The puzzlement transformed into outrage. “You’re not my dad! You don’t get to tell me what to do! I’ve got a shot to find my mum, and no random stranger with big ears and a jacket a thousand years out of style is going to stop me!”
Mercedes had jumped off her seat at some point in her soliloquy, and the remnants of her strawberry ice cream were threatening to spill out of their cone onto the metal flooring beneath unless he acted fast. The Doctor jumped up right along with her and fixed a smile on his face. “Now who’s being rude? Your eyes are nearly twice the size of your face, so you’re in no position to be calling anything of mine big! And anyhow, I didn’t say I was going to stop you. I was trying to say that I’d do it for you!” He didn’t give her much chance to consider this proposal before he let his smile turn a bit sharp around the edges as he instructed her, “Now sit here, wait for me to come back, and finish off that ice cream before it melts!”
Without another word, he strode off toward the doors of the club. A quick glance out of the corner of his eye revealed the slip of a girl watching his progress as she sank back onto the bench, her ice cream cone lifted back to her lips. Bouncers A and B were lounging near the doors of the club branded Jimmy’s in aggressively blue neon lettering. “Just going to give the place a quick look, lads. No need to stand to attention on my account.”
The suspicious one eyed him with distaste, but neither moved from their spots as he pushed his way through a pair of black velvet curtains into the dim interior beyond. The Doctor was immediately assaulted with an awful perfume of cigar smoke, alcohol, and the stale scent of residual sweat that lingered even though the dance floor was currently empty. The floor was so coated in spilled drinks and bodily fluids that his shoes stuck a little every time they touched down and made a sticky, sucking sound when he lifted them to stride further into the room. A tattooed humanoid at the bar gave him a nod of acknowledgement that seemed friendly enough, so he crossed over to lean against the shiny metallic surface until the man approached.
“What are you drinking?”
“Nothing today. I’m looking for one Gundrak Hensen. Need to ask him a few questions.”
The Doctor pulled the psychic paper from his jacket and flashed it at the barman for good measure. His kohl-lined eyes widened a touch as he gestured toward one of several curtained alcoves adjacent to the main room. The curtains were half-parted, allowing a block of warm light to spill across the black floor and a wave of smoke to spiral out toward the ceiling. As he drew closer, the Doctor could hear a man’s voice pitched to storytelling volume.
His first view of Gundrak Hensen revealed that the years would ultimately be quite kind to the nuisance he knew from the future. He was already a handsome, golden-haired thing with a dazzling smile visible around the cigar between his teeth, and he would age like fine wine. Much like last time, Hensen was surrounded by a tableful of enamored lackeys, none of whom the Doctor spared more than a glance. His type attracted empty-headed coattail riders. They weren’t his kind of people.
“…and then I reached deep into the opening, imagining with every inch that some trap would spring and my hand would be crushed or cut off at the wrist. Slowly, slowly, I stretched out until I was in up to my shoulder, and then, SNAP! I grabbed the scroll and snatched my hand away just as a terrible grinding sound started and the opening collapsed! Another second, and I’d have lost my whole arm.”
“Isn’t that in Indiana Jones?” the Doctor said loudly, drawing the attention of Hensen and his adoring fans. He settled against the doorway with his arms crossed.
“Who is this… Indiana Jones?” Hensen said with a mocking smile. “Has someone been writing about my exploits again?”
With a groan, the Doctor replied, “I forget what an uncultured era this was. Mark my words, ten years from now there will be a grand revival movement, and all the youngsters will be watching the classics and listening to Queen again.”
“Do I know you?” Hensen laughed, shooting a look at his cronies that clearly said can you believe this weirdo?
“Not yet, no. I’m the Doctor,” the psychic paper appeared and disappeared in a flash, “and I need to ask you a question about the last known location of the Yther. Word is you paid them a visit not long ago.”
Whatever the paper had shown him, it made Hensen’s attitude shift from cocky to nervous. Should do. If he was anything like his future self at present, he had his hands in all sorts of shady business to keep his adventures bankrolled. “Oh, that little trip? Hardly very exciting. Why are you interested?”
The Doctor grinned. This was going to be easy.
—
Mercedes was an abnormally patient child. She regularly sat through two-hour lectures in subjects like Advanced Linguistic Theory and Work Culture in Ancient Societies. She even took notes. But something about waiting on this fellow the Doctor made her entire body prick with anxiety. Part of it was because he was a total stranger and she didn’t really know if she could trust him to help her. He had pinky-promised and had kind eyes, and she was a fairly good judge of character. But she wasn’t naive. People did horrible things and careless things and sometimes nothing at all, and any of those could cut her quest short and force her to go back home empty-handed.
After five minutes, she left the bench to throw away the remnants of her ice cream cone. At ten, she began to pace the length of the bench to and fro until she started getting strange looks from the passing shoppers. By fifteen minutes she had forced herself to sit back down and settled for running her fingers absently through the end of her dark braid, her eyes fixed on the corner of the building the Doctor had disappeared into. It was at least five minutes more before he appeared again, walking with a bounce in his step and a grin on his face that had her jumping up and running to meet him, patience forgotten.
“Well?” she asked before he could get a word in. She caught herself holding her breath and had to force the air to leave her lungs normally.
“I got it,” he said smugly.
“And? Where are they?”
“Well, they were on Gartugara when Gunny the Idiot saw them, but they were already packing up to leave then.”
Mercedes felt something deflate inside her. The bubble of fierce hope that had been carrying her through the first steps of her journey popped and left her feeling empty. The Doctor was still grinning above her, and in her sudden misery she felt strangely betrayed.
“Oh, go on then,” the Doctor crowed. “Ask me why I’m smiling.”
Mercedes didn’t feel like playing along. She felt like returning to the bench he had left her on and crying until she worked up the courage to call her dad and tell him to come pick her up.
“Go on, go on! Ask!”
“Why are you smiling?” she managed in a hoarse whisper that didn’t sound like it belonged to her at all.
“Because I can still take you to them!”
The hope-bubble tried to inflate again before good sense squashed it. “That’s not possible. No one knows the Yther’s migration paths.”
“Didn’t say I did! I said I could take you to them.”
“I don’t understand,” Mercedes said flatly after staring at the manic man’s blue eyes for a long while.
“Most people don’t when I get talking, but it’s rarely necessary. The only question that matters is, Mercedes, will you trust me?”
The strange man extended his hand toward her, his eyebrows lifted in question. She hesitated, her abnormally logical mind warring with her overwhelming desire to find her mother, no matter the cost. There was something in this Doctor’s eyes, something kind and steady that made her fingers twitch forward until they brushed his. His rough palm closed around hers, swallowing her hand completely as a grin impossibly bigger than any he had worn before split his face.
“Good girl. That was very Aladdin of me wasn’t it? So come on! Let me show you my magic carpet!”
He began to lead her down the street, his long legs and suddenly hurried stride requiring her to take two steps to every one of his so that she was practically jogging in his wake. It didn’t stop her brain from running even faster. “Aladdin… he’s that stupid boy in the Arabian Nights, isn’t he? What does he have to do with—”
“Yeah, yeah, but no,” the Doctor interrupted. “I mean the film. Brilliant film! Ah, but we still haven’t hit the revival movement! Just wait, Mercedes. Disney is going to knock your socks off.”
She was quickly learning that the Doctor’s answers rarely made the straightforward kind of sense. But Mercedes filed them away to pick apart a little at a time and kept on pressing for whatever information the odd man would give her.
“Do you have a name to go with Doctor, or is that it?” she asked him.
He stopped abruptly and turned to look at her with a bewildered expression on his face. “Why would you assume that’s it? No one assumes that. They always say the thing, and then they tell me, ‘No one’s called just the Doctor.’ So why would you assume I am?”
Mercedes shrugged, bewildered by his apparent confusion. “Because you put ‘the’ in front of it, I suppose. It makes it sound like it’s who you are. The Doctor.”
His grin reappeared like a ray of sun bursting from behind a cloud. “Oh, I like you. That’s me. Just the Doctor.”
The full force of his admiration was a little overwhelming, and Mercedes found herself relieved when he whirled around and began marching down the street again.
“What are you a Doctor of?” she asked after a beat as he tugged her around a corner into a quiet residential street of the space station.
“Everything,” he answered without missing a beat . She accepted this answer at face value. A few lifelong academics back on Schovarus would likely have said the same, and he could very well have been one of them. He had that same aura of very purposeful insanity.
She tried a different angle. “Okay, well what do you do?”
“Travel mostly. See the galaxies, get into trouble, help people.”
“So… do you often pick up random little girls who’ve lost their mums?” Mercedes asked, half teasing and half serious. A little squirm of uncertainty was roiling through her stomach as he dragged her further and further from the busy streets of the Rubicon’s markets. He had promised not to kidnap her, but what was a pinky promise really in the grand scheme of the universe? Bad people came in all shapes and sizes.
He gave her a look over his leather-clad shoulder that was somehow full to the brim with reassurance, even as he was answering rather sarcastically, “No, sometimes it’s little boys who’ve lost their dads. I’m not picky.”
The look in his eyes was her answer. The squirmy feeling calmed, and she jogged silently to keep up with his hurried strides.
“My turn to ask questions,” the Doctor announced as they crossed another busy street of shops and passed back into quieter side streets. “How old are you, anyhow?”
“Ten,” she lied. It would be true in a few days, so it wasn’t much of a lie.
“Does your dad who I’m not allowed to call know where you are right now?”
The Doctor’s eyes caught hers again over his shoulder. He didn’t break stride, but she stumbled a bit and had to catch herself to keep from face planting on the metal flooring as he continued striding forward. The slip up gave her a moment to think about her answer, which wound up coming out as the truth.
“He knows what I’m doing. I left him a note.” She tried not to sound too guilty about it.
“Mhmm,” the Doctor hummed. “And when would that have been?”
Mercedes definitely sounded guilty when she said, “About eight days ago.”
Yet another look packed with meaning was tossed back at her. His blue eyes did strange things that made it seem like he was speaking volumes without a word. This look made her guilty conscience rise up and growl like it was going to swallow her whole.
“He told me she was dead. For my whole life. The Professor… my dad… said he didn’t want me to be sad that she had decided to leave. He didn’t understand that I was still sad about never having a mum at all. He acted like never having something would make it hurt less than having it and losing it, but it doesn’t. When he told me the truth… I couldn’t just stay home and keep pretending I wasn’t sad like he does. I have to find her, Doctor.”
He slowed to a stop at the entrance to a narrow alley lined with neatly spaced rubbish bins and turned to face her again. “What happens when you find her?”
Mercedes had been asking herself this exact question since the day her dad had told her the truth some three months ago. There had never been a single doubt in her mind that she would go looking, and most of the time there was very little doubt that she’d succeed in finding her. But what she’d do once she managed it…
The Doctor seemed to read this fact off of her like it was written on her forehead. His next words were, “And yet, you packed up your bag, wrote a little note, and went anyway. Awfully human of you.” He softened the slightly condescending words with a gentle smile.
“I just want to see her,” Mercedes found herself admitting. “Talk to her. Just once, if that’s all she’ll give me.”
He nodded in understanding, leaning down to rest his hands on his knees and place his face at her level. “I want you to promise me something, Mercedes.”
“What?” she asked warily, her hands leaping to fiddle with the end of her braid again.
“Whatever happens with your mum, promise you’ll let me take you back to your dad. Have your chat, swap holo numbers with her, ask her to come with you—whatever. But when you’ve done it, I take you home.”
“Why would you make me promise you that?”
His eyes grew sad and serious. “Because you’ve already been gone eight days, and I bet he’s worried sick about you.”
The guilt tried to swallow her whole again at his words. The Professor wasn’t a very expressive man, but Mercedes knew that he loved her. She’d told herself before she left that he’d probably barely notice she was gone, but that had been a lie to ease her conscience. He may not have gone looking for her himself—she couldn’t imagine the Professor running about searching for her—but he had probably at least called the GPK. And he was almost definitely worried, even if he was worrying from within the safety and comfort of his well-worn routine.
She extended her pinky toward the Doctor again, and said with all the seriousness she could muster when he took it, “I promise.”
As soon as their fingers unlatched from around one another, the Doctor clapped loudly and turned on his heel to vanish into the alleyway of bins. She followed him at a slower pace, her forehead creasing in confusion when he came to a stop in front of a large blue box that she would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“What is that?” she inquired as she drew closer. There was a sign on the door that labeled it a “Police Public Call Box,” whatever that meant.
With obvious pride and a fair bit of mischief, the Doctor announced, “This is my ship! The TARDIS.”
He was watching her for her reaction, and she briefly wondered if he had simply been teasing her the whole way or was actually a delusional madman. But the universe was a big place. Maybe somewhere in it blue boxes could be ships.
“Does it have a camouflage feature?” she asked, trying to mask her doubts. “Until you walked up to it, I didn’t notice it was there.”
“More of a notice-me-not, feature, really. It’s a low-level telepathic perception filter that says, ‘Nothing to see here’ unless you’re actively looking. Could have parked her in the middle of the high street and no one would have batted an eye.”
“So why’d you park in a dirty alley between some bins?” Mercedes asked. It seemed an odd choice, if what he said was true.
The Doctor’s broad smile winked out and became a small, annoyed frown. “Well… you see… reasons! Enough of the being clever! Prepare to be amazed!”
—
The Doctor loved this part. He tugged a key on a chain from under his shirt and unlocked the door, quickly vanishing inside with a wave for her to follow. Striding quickly to the control panel, he turned to watch her entry into his ship, just in time to catch a glimpse of her darting back from the doors to peer around the edges of the TARDIS’ exterior in confusion. Three seconds later she was back, this time crossing the threshold fully with a look of complete awe etched into her young face. Her mouth was hanging open as she turned silently in place, her expressive eyes darting over everything the control room had to offer. It gave him a moment to look at her properly.
She was small for ten—if she’d been telling the truth—her features dainty without seeming delicate. Dark hair that was probably quite long outside its neat braid and smooth, olive skin with a healthy tan were both likely courtesy of her Yther heritage. Her general adultness came from the way she carried herself: shoulders straight, chin lifted, a small frame somehow taking up extra space through sheer force of presence. He smiled softly at the way her eyes danced with wonder when they finally came to rest on him.
Prepared to roll his eyes and mock her for whichever version of the usual nonsense crossed her lips, he was more than a little taken aback when instead she said, “How does it work? Does the doorway teleport you to a ship? Or does it just appear small when it’s actually huge? Is it the perception filter you were talking about making it seem small and harmless as well as making it hard to notice? But, no then it wouldn’t fit in the alley, so back to the teleport question. Or is all this actually folded into the little blue box somehow?”
He recognized that the look on his face was probably too close to a gape for his tastes and promptly snapped his mouth shut before saying, “Most people just say, ‘It’s bigger on the inside,’ and have done with it.”
“Well obviously,” she said, her little brows wrinkling in bemusement. “But how does it work?”
He’d pretty much decided as much when she saw right through his psychic paper, but the Doctor officially acknowledged in that moment that he liked this kid. “The last one,” he answered shortly, beginning his usual dash around the console to get the TARDIS ready for flight.
“The whole space is folded inside the box?” Mercedes clarified, trailing him as he moved around the time rotor. “Is the room smaller than it looks? Did we get smaller to pass inside?”
Her questions had the flavor of a kid who liked to read. They were too imaginative by half for some ordinary savant, and he loved it. “Brilliant thought, but no. The outside really is that small, and the inside really is this big. And this is just the control room.”
He turned his head in time to watch her spin around again until she found the doors that led deeper into the ship, but her eyes were just as quickly back on him, waiting for his explanation. Who was he to deny her?
“The ship is called the TARDIS, Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Inside it is another dimension, almost like a pocket sewn onto the rest of reality. Only the pocket is infinitely big, even though it’s got a small entrance.”
She seemed to readily absorb this information. “That’s amazing! Where do they make ships that contain a whole different dimension?”
“Nowhere. Not anymore, anyway. This is the very last one, and it’s mine,” he said, easily skirting a discussion about his people and less easily skirting the pang of sorrow and guilt that always accompanied the reminder of them.
“TARDIS…” Mercedes mused. “It’s a nice name for a ship, but the acronym itself doesn’t make much sense.”
Vaguely offended, the Doctor replied, “Oi! It makes plenty of sense!”
“It’s really just a bunch of words strung together that happen to spell TARDIS, like someone called it that and then decided it ought to stand for something too. I’m sure they all have something to do with the ship, though. You’ve explained the relative dimension bit, and I think the space part is obvious since it moves through space. But what is the time bit about?”
Another brilliant question, really, and the perfect segue for a bit of marvelous showmanship. The Doctor resumed his dance about the console, flicking all the right levers and spinning the necessary dials. He paused for effect, hand on the final lever, and said with a grin, “That’s the best bit! You might want to hold on.”
With a satisfying sound, the lever locked into place, and the TARDIS’ engines flared to life. The ship was relatively well behaved, only pitching a minimal amount as she hurtled to their destination under the Doctor’s direction. Mercedes had latched her arm around the railing and was clinging tightly to it as the ship shuddered and groaned, a look of nervousness that might be a carefully contained version of outright fear marring her features. A slightly disapproving hum in the back of his mind let him know that the TARDIS thought he should have given the girl a little more warning, a sentiment he ignored. After forty-seven seconds, the ship materialized with a distant thump.
“Welcome, Mercedes, to the past! Ninety-eight days ago to be exact.”
“We—you mean to say—we moved in time?” she asked, wide eyes growing impossibly wider. “How?”
The Doctor snorted. “Right, I know I said you’re proper smart, but suffice to say you’re not near smart enough for me to explain how we just traveled in time in a way that makes sense.”
She made a face at him, scrunching her tiny nose. “The Professor likes to say anyone who can’t teach something to a child with enough time and consideration doesn’t really understand it themselves.”
“Uh-huh. And what’s this Professor of yours teach?”
“Xenological studies and Linguistics.”
Another snort. “He can try that line on me after he’s tried to explain physics that haven’t been invented yet to a tiny human. Or any human for that matter. Your brains are just too small and too rigid. No offense.”
It was clear that she took offense, but equally clear that she decided there were more important things to be worrying about. She unlatched her arms from the railing and turned to face the door.
“So out there is the Rubicon three months ago? I can go out, find a shuttle to Gartugara, and the Yther will still be there?”
“Wrong! You forgot the last bit of my ship’s very sensible acronym.”
She turned a puzzled frown on him and asked, “So we can fly there in this? You can take me the rest of the way?”
“Wrong again!” the Doctor said gleefully. “No can about it! Have taken! Would say have flown, too, but that’s not strictly true in metaphysical terms.”
“You mean…” she started.
“Welcome, Mercedes, to Gartugara ninety-eight days in your past!”
If she was dubious about his claims, she certainly didn’t show it. She marched straight to the same doors she had recently stumbled through and tossed them open. Gone were the dingy alleyway and the blue bins. The TARDIS was parked on a hillside in a small wooded area. Through the thin trees, they could just make out a sprawling camp of colorfully painted space caravans that vined and blossomed in nonsensical groupings along a shallow stream. Eyes fixed on the sight, Mercedes moved as though spellbound through the trees until she reached the edge of the little wood. The Doctor was quick to close up his ship and come to stand at her side.
He’d expected shock and questions, maybe fear about what lay ahead. He’d expected she’d need him to hold her hand and help her find a way into the camp and far enough into the Yther’s good graces to find the woman she sought. He should have learned already to expect the unexpected with Mercedes, though.
“Doctor, I’m incredibly grateful for all of your help. But I need to do this next part alone. Will you wait here for me?”
The Doctor felt his jaw drop open in shock. “Wait for you?” he asked incredulously before he could stop himself. “With the Yther right down there?” It was nonsense, the idea that he would sit up on a hilltop alone while such an elusive and mysterious tribe was a hundred yards away, ripe for exploration!
“I’d understand if you wanted to leave,” she said firmly. “But whether I’m really welcome with them or not, my family is down there. I don’t want to spoil my chances of knowing them by bringing even more of an outsider with me.”
“Bollocks,” he snorted, vaguely thinking after the word left his mouth that such language was hardly appropriate to toss out around a child. “Maybe all the legends are just that, hmm? Legends! Maybe they’re the friendliest and most welcoming people around, once you manage to find them! Hensen certainly left intact!”
“And empty-handed,” she was quick to point out. “I only get one shot at a first impression, Doctor. If my mother isn’t with them, they’ll know where she went. I can’t afford to mess this up.”
He pouted, and knew he was pouting, too. “All the evidence to suggest they hate outsiders comes from exactly one source, and no one’s ever managed to get close enough to confirm it after Professor—Oh!” A wonderful thought had just occurred to him, which had him sizing up the girl beside him with new eyes. “Your dad is Professor Thaddeus Morvinius!”
She eyed him curiously. “You know him?”
“Personally, no. But who hasn’t read his work? His translation work on the Bothari cult scrolls from Leustovic was brilliant!”
It was Mercedes’ turn for her jaw to drop. “You mean he finds proof that the cult exists?” she asked incredulously, almost reverently.
“Oh, err. Forget I said that, actually. Besides, it wasn’t him who found them; he just translated. It was his—” belatedly, he forced his mouth closed with a snap, remembering exactly who it was who found those scrolls on Leustovic.
Too clever by half, Mercedes’ eyes burned with an eager light that informed him he had not closed his mouth early enough.
“Fine, yeah. Go down by yourself,” he groused to distract her from the plans she was already clearly laying to make her way to Leustovic as soon as possible. “I’ll wait here and install my capacitor. Shouldn’t really be traveling without a new one anyway. But you mind yourself down there! Cause some mayhem if you need a rescue. I’ll be keeping an eye out.”
She nodded, a steely determination settling over her as she turned to face the camp and set off down the hillside without another word.
“Nice one, Doctor,” he murmured to himself. “It’s like its your very first time in a TARDIS, you old ninny.”
The ship in question wasted no time in letting him know how amused she was by the whole thing. They both watched as Mercedes’ figure grew steadily smaller, till she reached the edge of the camp and vanished between the first of the vibrant caravans. Already feeling impatient, the Doctor turned his back on the whole affair the minute she was out of sight and started work on his repairs to pass the time.
—
Passing time turned into quite losing track of it, as he tended to do when he began fiddling with his ship. The creak of the front door opening and then shutting again drew him back to awareness of the present, and a quick mental review informed him that it had been almost nine hours since Mercedes left. He ineffectually wiped his greasy hands on a yellow cloth and hauled himself out from beneath the console to seek out his passenger and hear the results of her search.
It was immediately plain when he laid eyes on her that the news wasn’t good.
She was doing an admirable job of appearing brave. That seemed to be her default when everything was going wrong, and he had to admire her for it. But those eyes. They were loud with terrible pain and sorrow. If she had been psychic, she would have bowled him over with the feelings that were pouring off her in waves. As it was, he winced after only a glance at her too-straight shoulders and too-blank expression and slowly moved to put himself on the console seat, leaving space for her at his side.
She drifted to it almost mechanically. She hardly let herself settle before she answered the question he hadn’t asked yet. “I found my great aunt. She told me she died.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out who the second, referent-free she was. The Doctor let the silence stretch between them, letting the girl process. He was a stranger, after all, and no expert on being a source of comfort. Already, he could feel the familiar itch between his shoulder blades as her melancholy seemed to spread like a fog through the control room. It told him to run, hide, prattle, snark, do anything and everything but sit and let someone feel sad, because his own sadness would come out of the dark and swallow him whole if he allowed it to catch up to him. He was really trying, though. To give her a minute at least before he took her and her sadness and dropped them off at home so he could run to the other end of the universe.
But Mercedes didn’t seem content to linger in her sorrow either.
“It’s quiet in here, but the whole ship seems full of noise. It almost feels alive, the way it breathes and hums like that.”
Startled by the change in topic, the Doctor tuned into the TARDIS’ sounds for a moment and realized that she was expressing her condolences. It was gentle and tender and so unbearable he instantly made his mind tune it out again.
“She is alive. TARDISes are born, not built, sentient ships nurtured over millennia.”
Mercedes lapsed into silence again, staring at the beautiful mechanisms of his ship and only half seeing their beauty.
“I don’t believe her,” the girl admitted after a while.
That was a leap the Doctor couldn’t quite follow. “Who are we not believing?”
“Mirela’s aunt. My mother’s, I mean.”
“Ah. And why not?”
“Because she wouldn’t tell me how. She said Mirela left with my father, and that she returned without him. She said that she brought shame on her tribe by breeding… well, me. And then she said she was there for a few years and then died. But she said it with the same face she used when she talked about the shame of leaving with my father. Like whatever happened was equally shameful.”
Hesitantly, the Doctor pointed out, “It could mean she died doing something they didn’t approve of.”
Mercedes made a noise of vague agreement. “It could. But I don’t think it did. And even if it did, I want to know what happened to her. If she’s really out there somewhere…” Another long silence stretched between them. He watched her while she watched the TARDIS. “I don’t have any proof. Just a feeling,” she admitted, a little desperation leaking into her voice for the first time since the beginning.
It was a question, he knew. And he wasn’t sure he was about to give her the right answer. But there was only one answer that he wanted to hear at night when his ghosts caught up with him, accusing, and he longed for nothing in the universe more than to doubt with even the smallest fraction of his mind that they were all lost to him forever. He would give her the gift and the curse he wished it were possible for someone to give him.
“Then there’s still hope,” he murmured. “You don’t have to give up, Mercedes. Not without a fight.”
She took a long, shaky breath. It shouldn’t be possible for a ten-year-old to be so stoic, but she didn’t cry. She signaled her acceptance with one small jerk of her head. “Thank you.”
“Right, you may not be giving up, but you can’t solve this mystery of yours in a day. You’re going home.” He rocketed off the jump seat and began throwing levers and pushing buttons without a pause.
“What?” she gasped. “But… we’re in a time machine! You could cart me all over the place and still get me home in time for tea the same day you picked me up!”
“I could, but I won’t. I do take people with me every now and again, but you’re not people. You’re a little girl, and you’ve got an absolutely brilliant scholar of a dad at home who wants to see you. And you want nothing more in all the universe than to go see him.”
She opened her mouth to argue before she seemed to have registered the last bit. When she did, her mouth snapped closed abruptly.
“It would be so much easier to find her if you helped me,” she said, but even he could tell it was half-hearted.
“Probably. Who knows. Maybe one day I even will. But not today. Today, you go home, and you be not-quite-ten, and you hug your dad.” He had taken a sliver of time in her absence to look her up on the holonet—just the basics; no spoilers—and do some math to figure out that she had fudged her age, though only by a handful of days. “And you get a bit more experience under your belt and a few inches of height before you go running off to try and track down any missing parents again. Understood?”
The look she gave him would probably be downright intimidating in a handful of years. Right now, the death glare tracking him in his mad dance around the console was just cute with an edge. She wrapped an arm around the back of the jump seat to weather the pitching of the ship as he piloted her into the vortex.
“Address?” he shouted over the noise of the engines. She rattled off a residential area on Schovarus, and eleven seconds later they were settling with a thud. “Come on, then! No time like the present!”
Unlatching her arms from the railing, Mercedes was facing the door with a great deal more trepidation than she had shown on Gartugara. “When exactly are we?” she asked.
“Evening of the same day I found you, just around dinnertime,” he said cheerily as he herded her toward the door with a series of shooing motions. “That way, if your dad wants to send you to bed without supper, he can. Oh, did you eat, though? With the Yther? Didn’t think about that.” He patted his jacket pockets until he found what he was looking for and pulled forth a slightly squashed candy bar. “That’ll keep you from starving to death until morning if he’s cross.”
The Doctor deposited the candy bar in her pocket just before he ushered her through the TARDIS doors and into a grassy expanse criss-crossed with paved paths. A little park, he guessed, letting his eyes rove until they found a brightly colored playground.
“Swings! Nice. Bet you wasted whole days on those when you were… well, smaller.”
Mercedes wasn’t listening. She had turned at once toward a large house across the street, its Tudor-style facade just visible past a few well-placed trees on the sprawling lawn, indistinct in the twilight. There were lights spilling from the windows, spelling warmth and safety on the inside despite the darkness of the exterior.
“I wanted to be able to tell him what happened to her,” she said in a very small and very young voice that tugged at his heartstrings more violently than he liked.
“I don’t think he’ll mind much that you can’t, Mercedes,” the Doctor said in his gentlest tone. Then he stuck a hand out to her and asked for the second time in their short acquaintance, “Do you trust me?”
She grabbed on without hesitation, this time, without so much as looking at him. It warmed something indefinable in his bruised and battered soul, that simple, childish trust placed in his hand. Quite literally, in the form of a much smaller one. He squeezed it reassuringly and led her toward the looming house, through the cracked-open front gate, across the shaded yard, all the way to the large front door where he reached up to lift the lion’s head knocker before Mercedes had time to stall.
It launched open less than ten seconds later, pulled with such force the Doctor was preemptively grinning before he had even fully taken in the harried-looking man who stood on the other side. The first glimpse showed a man he knew from many a book-jacket, professorial from the top of his head to the shiny tips of his shoes—it was no wonder Mercedes called him the Professor like there weren’t several thousand others housed on the university planet of Schovarus. But what stood out about Thaddeus Morvinius the most was the look of tortured hope he wore when he yanked open the door, as though he had done it a hundred times in the last eight days, praying every time that good news would arrive. Those eyes latched instantly on Mercedes, his wayward daughter, and bled through every kind of parental emotion it was possible to feel, dialed up to the highest possible degree: anger, disappointment, fear, relief, and so much love it almost hurt to watch it fill up his face.
A half second later, the man’s tweed-clad arms had latched around his daughter and yanked her into the well-lit, warm safety of her home, fastening her against his chest like he planned to stick her there permanently. Mercedes latched on almost as tightly, burying herself in his arms. The Doctor had known it was the right choice to bring her home, but the way she clung to her dad only confirmed it. Now for the tricky bit.
As if on cue, Thaddeus moved Mercedes far enough away that he could take in the state of her through his wire-rimmed glasses. His hands roved every bit of her he could reach, searching for injuries, assuring himself that she was well. When his perusal of her extremities was complete, his eyes darted to the Doctor with a look that perfectly mixed gratitude with venomous suspicion. In his defense, the Doctor supposed this current face wasn’t his most harmless looking. The leather jacket certainly didn’t help matters. So he leapt in before the Professor got a chance to jump to any conclusions.
“Hello! I’m the Doctor, private eye, sometimes employee of the GPK,” he flashed the psychic paper, half worried about its effect. “Saw your missing person’s notice, then lo and behold! who did I see that same day but your Mercedes! She was on Gartugara, waiting on a transport that would bring her home. So I showed her my badge” true, though she had seen through it, “checked in with the local Peacekeeper’s branch” not true, though it would be as soon as he had finished here, “and hurried her back here to you.”
He gestured toward Mercedes with a wide grin and a flourish that in another life he would have accompanied with a flamboyant ta-dah! This regeneration was a little more gruff, but only just.
“Would have sent a message ahead, but there was some solar activity around the planet that was interfering with transmissions. I figured you’d rather have her back sooner than have us make a pit stop to drop you a line on the way.”
That part was made up. But it was highly unlikely that the Professor would be fact-checking his story, based on the way he had stopped looking at the Doctor and turned his attention entirely back to Mercedes after seeing his PI “badge.” For her part, the girl was looking wide-eyed between the psychic paper and her father, apparently reevaluating her view of him as the smartest being in the universe. Ah well. She already knew the man wasn’t perfect—hadn’t that started this whole quest of hers?—and it would only be so long before she realized the true scope of her intellect anyway. Stars help the man through her teenage years.
“Anyway, good deed accomplished! I’ll be on my way now,” the Doctor announced cheerfully, already turning toward his ship.
“Wait!” Thaddeus and his daughter called at the same time.
The elder Morvinius said with reluctance when he turned back, “Won’t you come in? I owe you an uncountable debt. Surely you’ll have a drink or something at the least before you go?”
“Nah,” he shrugged. “You two need to have a long chat, I imagine. I’ll only get in the way. And there’s no debt, Professor.” He wasn’t sure when he had unconsciously picked up Mercedes’ moniker, but it really did fit the man, every bit as much as The Doctor fit him. “I’m more than glad just to have met your Mercedes. She’s a remarkable girl, as I’m sure you’re more than aware.”
“Too aware,” Thaddeus agreed with equal parts pride and exasperation coloring his voice. He seemed content to let the Doctor go with another deeply sincere thank you. Mercedes felt differently.
“Wait!” she said again as he turned his back once more. “Hold on dad. I need to speak to him!”
She gave her father the slip somehow, half stumbling down the front steps in her haste to reach him. Thaddeus lingered nervously behind her, clearly loathe to let her out of his sight.
“That’s it then?” she asked quietly. “You’re just going to leave?”
“Yep!” he said, grinning ear to ear.
“You show me time, and the TARDIS, and tell me not to give up on finding my mother and then just vanish into thin air again? That’s… well, it would be monstrous if it weren’t so terribly wonderful,” she admitted, the longing plain in her voice.
The Doctor sobered, strangely touched that she could see him so plainly after such a short acquaintance. He knelt down where he could face her eye to eye, then tipped his head meaningfully back at her dad without looking away from her face. “Would you have it any other way?” he asked her.
She didn’t look away either, but he watched her consider her answer carefully. “No,” she finally admitted. “Not tonight.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m not fit company for a little girl.”
“No,” she said again. “I suppose not. But…”
Go on, he silently begged, ask.
“…will I see you again? Would you… come back? Later?”
His smile nearly split his face at her request. By way of answer, he held out his hand as he had already done twice before. Her own grin told him she got the message, and she wound her fingers briefly with his, squeezing once before she let go and let her arm drop shyly to her side.
“Be amazing in the meantime, would you?” he said, his own version of farewell, as he rose and began backing away.
“What else will there be to do while I’m taking the scenic route?” she quipped back, already heading back to her father’s side.
The Doctor watched them long enough to see her wrap her arms back around the Professor’s middle while he stroked her hair and quietly closed the door. Oh, he’d be back for that one, sooner or later. He just had a few stops in mind along the way.