Walking around, I discovered something else about this city: It looked completely different.
Visually? Not so much. Same buildings, same puddles and all.
It was different how it felt.
I could sense time itself. I could feel where events piled on top of each other, like layers of paint. I could sense events like archaelogists study soil layers.
London looked as messy as it always did, but now it felt more alive I could even describe it.
Honestly, I liked it.
I also discovered I could walk faster without even feeling tired.
All in all, Time Lord physiology had its advantages, I suppose.
I decided, for a lack of a better alternative, I'll follow a strand of line only a Time Lord could sense. Combined with some very efficient shortcuts, I reached the area near the Thames far earlier than public transportation could have ever carried me.
Interesting. So that's how the Doctor just always know where to go. Well, frankly that was just lazy writing from the scriptwriters to hasten the plot, but it seems in reality Time Lords just simply know where to go thanks to their connection to the Time Vortex.
By the time I was on the shoreline of the Thames the sky had darkened and night lights polluted the city. The London Eye loomed in the distance, lit up like a watch dial.
That's such an obvious antenna. I can feel the electromagnetic waves it emits even from here. How did the Doctor not notice it? Or maybe I'm just better suited for these things? Ah, so many questions, so few answers.
I stayed away from it. That was where the Nestene Consciousness would be confronted. And I don't want to be there. What would I even do other than standing around looking like a baffon. Besides I would arrive late to the party anyway, I could feel the Doctor's presence already there, like a jagged line shooting out—angry, grieving, determined. I could also sense two other presence, but they were so small compared to everything else. The only reason I even noticed them because I knew Rose and Mickey must also be there. One of the human-shaped spike radiated… courage? That must must be Rose.
Weird how I could just feel these things, like some sort of sixth sense. Although useful. Very useful. I could essentially track people, and frankly even non-people if I can feel any unique… aura coming from them even from several hundred yards. Neat.
I closed my eyes, and just listened. Just listening the patterns around me, lighting up my mind like a colorful matrix.
This, I thought, is the universe I asked for.
I wanted this wild and ridiculous world full of people who kept trying even when everything broke.
But now, as I was standing in it I realized wanting was easy. Living in it was the part that mattered.
I stayed there until the storm disappeared. What storm? Well, this storm of… informa—? No, no. This… I don't know how to put it. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Hmm. That's actually a surprisingly accurate way of putting it. Ha.
Anyway, it ended. There wasn't any bang or light show. The signal simply snapped and basically lights out. The plastic web across the city just went silent in half a second, and I could sense a local Time Capsule flaring up bright and shifting across the spacial dimension.
I let out a breath I didn't even know I'd been holding.
Not a minute later, I heard a familiar grinding, wheezing sound echo faintly through the fabric of reality, a feeling I experienced many, many times on Gallifrey. The TARDIS was moving and started the dematerialisation sequence. Although this TARDIS's dematerialisation sounded simultaneously sounded exciting and painful. It's like when you are sitting in your pal's new car, who doesn't know how to drive stick, and you're just silently sitting in the passenger seat, cringing at the sounds that poor car is making.
The TARDIS finished landing.
I didn't try to approach, I stayed exactly where I was, hands in my pockets.
The TARDIS looked exactly like the prop from TV and completely different at the same time. I could see inside the capsule with my newly discovered sixth sense and marvel at the labyrinth the size of a small solar system. She was Huge. Like… huge. And more important than that—wounded.
And also wary. As she felt me too.
For a second, her presence flared up, probing me. I felt a sort of tone shift from her. Into surprise? Curiosity? A faint recognition of something similar to herself wrapped up in human skin.
"Hello," I whispered under my breath. "Don't mind me, just… checking in."
The door opened.
Mickey stumbled out first, practically falling over himself to get away from the box. Rose followed after him, still wearing her hoodie and jeans from the afternoon, looking around the street with wide eyes and the kind of adrenaline fueled grin that came from surviving against your odds.
Finally, the Doctor stepped out. Hands in his pockets, his leather jacket somehow still immaculate despite whatever chaos they'd just escaped from. He wasn't looking around the street. He was watching her.
I knew what was coming. The invitation. The "anywhere in the universe" speech. I'd watched this scene play out on a screen already, but hearing it in person—with the TARDIS humming behind him—
It hit different.
Mickey tried to argue. The Doctor dismissed him with his typical causal cruelty wrapped up in charm.
Rose hesitated. I'd known her for two years now. I could see she was torn between the safe life she always knew and the impossible in front of her being offered up on a plate.
"Is it always this dangerous?" she asked.
"Yeah."
One word. No apologies. Well, at least honest.
Rose's face split into a grin. "Wait here."
She ran. Mickey chased after her, shouting her name, and the Doctor just leaned against the TARDIS doorway, watching them go.
He's not going to acknowledge my presence, is he?
I want to be offended.
Look at him trying to pretend I'm not here. You specifically landed right in front of me, just 30 feet away. Try to explain that in court. Hmpf.
On impulse, I stepped out in front of the TARDIS.
The Doctor's head snapped up immediately. His gaze locked onto mine, and then we just stared at each other, neither of us moving.
As he did so, something shifted in his expression. It was like he was seeing through Steven's face to what lay underneath it.
I broke the silence and spoke up first, keeping my voice steady. "Hello. We've met earlier. The plastic arm? I borrowed something of yours."
"Yeah," he said slowly. "I noticed."
His gaze sharpened, and I felt him reading me like I did just ten minutes ago the city. He was reading my temporal signatures around me like he was reading a book.
"Two hearts," he added, almost casually. "That's new too."
My own hearts stuttered at that. He'd clocked me from across the street. Course he had. Show off.
"Yeah," I admitted easily. "Long story. A Time Lord story."
He went very still hearing me say that. For a moment I saw it—like my words reminded him the knowledge of being the last weighing down on him. A loneliness so vast it almost had its own gravitational pull. He probably didn't think he will ever hear the words Time Lord again from another of his own kind. I recognized that look instantly. Then he pushed off the TARDIS door and took one step closer.
"Funny thing," he said softly. "Far as I knew, I was the last."
His words hit me like a punch in the guts. Because I knew that. I knew what that felt like. When I was waking up day after day, spending weeks building a fake life…
I met his eyes and give him a small smile that lasted only for a heartbeat, to let him see I understood.
"I was meant to be gone," I said quietly. "Evacuation project. Emergency reincarnation to hide among other species, long way off the main board. We thought it was clever at the time." I gave him a humorless smile. "Turns out we were right and wrong at the same time."
"We?" His tone sharpened with interest.
"TARDIS Corps. Maintenance, diagnostics and the lot." I tapped my temple lightly. "I did the fiddly bits. She—" I nodded at the capsule behind him "—was never really meant to fly without us looking over her once in a while, you know? We put her into that museum for a reason."
The Doctor's jaw tightened. I saw almost all emotions flash across his face once—defensiveness, grief, guilt. The weight of flying her alone through the war. The knowledge that he was barely keeping her together.
"She does fine," he said, and there was an edge in his voice. "She gets me where I need to go."
"Well yes, eventually," I said, before I could stop myself. "And screaming the whole way."
The TARDIS gave a faint, offended hum that we both felt rather than heard.
I immediately raised my hands in surrender toward her. "Hey, I didn't say you weren't brilliant. Just that you're overdue for more than some percussive maintenance and a few nice words."
For the first time, something like amusement whispered through the ship's presence. The Doctor felt it too. His shoulders eased just a fraction, and a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"So what then?" he asked. "You planning to stand on the street corners giving my ship a performance review?"
"No." I said. Then I took a breath in. This is it. The moment I chose what kind of a Time Lord I was going to be. "I'm saying that I can help. Proper service. Full diagnostic. Re-calibrate the old girl so she won't drag herself through the vortex running on… stubbornness"
The Doctor's expression flickered—somewhere between amusement and something of a more rawer emotion. But I pressed on.
"The others might be gone," I said, quieter now, "but you've got at least one technician left. Might as well put him to good use."
The TARDIS suddenly pulsed. Unmistakably.
She emitted a warm feeling—something urgent, almost desperate.
She wanted this.
Not a passenger. Not even a companion.
One of hers. Almost like after the Doctor "collecting strays" over the years, she finally wants one for herself.
My throat tightened. I hadn't expected that. Hadn't really expected to be wanted so fiercly by something I'd only just remembered existing.
The Doctor felt it too. He rolled his eyes skyward with an expression of fond exasperation.
"Traitor," he muttered at the box.
Then he looked back at me, and his expression was serious again. Assessing.
"All right. Fine. You want to help, you help. But you take orders when it counts, you don't second-guess me in a crisis, and if you start thinking you know better than everybody else in the room—"
"I've met the High Council," I cut in. "I'm allergic to that sort of thinking."
That finally got a real smile out of him. Brief, but genuine.
"Yeah," he said. "All right then."
Rose's footsteps was echoing down the street.
"Doctor!" she shouted, out of breath. "Had to pack—sorry—"
She finally arrived where we were standing and spotted me standing there with the Doctor.
"Oh!" Her face brightened with recognition, then immediately creased with confusion. "You! You're still here? Thought you'd legged it halfway to Cardiff by now."
"I'm fine," I said. "Just had a... bit of a moment."
Rose laughed, but her eyes were darting between me and the Doctor, clearly trying to work out what was happening. "Right, so… what's going on then?"
The Doctor jerked his head toward the TARDIS. "He's coming with."
"Coming with?" Rose's eyebrows shot up. "Like… coming with…with? On the…" She tried gesturing vaguely at the police box.
"Yep."
"Since when?"
"Since about thirty seconds ago." The Doctor's grin was back, wide and reckless. "Turns out he's handy. He'll keep the ship running."
Rose looked at me, staring me up and down.
"I know, he's very handy with things, but isn't some bloke from London a bit…"
The Doctor leaned against the TARDIS, watching this play out with interest.
"Rose," I said carefully. "Remember how that plastic arm attacked you? And you saw the shop window dummies moving?"
"Yeah, not likely to forget that, am I?"
"Right. Well. Turns out there's a lot more to the universe than... than what we thought. And I'm part of that."
Rose's face went through several expressions at once—confusion, disbelief, a flash of fear. "What do you mean, 'part of that'? Steven, you're scaring me a bit here."
I looked at the Doctor, silently asking for help.
He straightened up, his tone gentler than I'd heard it before. "He's not human, Rose. Not anymore. Well—" He tilted his head. "Complicated. But the short version: he's like me."
"Like you?" Rose's voice went up an octave. "Like you as in... alien?"
"Time Lord," the Doctor corrected.
Rose stared at me. Really stared, like she was seeing me for the first time. "But you're… you're Steven. You live upstairs. You fix cars with my boyfriend. You helped Mum move her sofa last month!"
"I did," I said. "All of that happened. I was Steven. Or at least I thought I was. But in reality…" I struggled for words. "There was someone else. Something I'd forgotten. And today, I remembered."
"So you're not—" Rose's voice caught. "You're not my friend? You're not... Steven?"
The hurt in her voice made my chest ache.
"I'm still me," I said quietly. "The person who taught you how to bleed a radiator. I just... I'm also someone else. Something more."
Rose wrapped her arms around herself. "This is mental. This is completely mental."
"Yeah," I agreed. "It really is."
She looked at the Doctor. "And you knew? This whole time?"
"Suspected when I met him today," the Doctor said. "Confirmed it about five minutes ago."
Rose turned back to me, and I could see her working through it. "So what now? You're just... you're one of them?"
"Rose—"
"No, seriously!" She was getting agitated now, pacing in a small circle. "This morning you were, you were… normal. And now you're… what, an alien? And you're just gonna… what? Come along like it's nothing?"
The Doctor and I exchanged another look. He gave a tiny shrug—'your problem, mate.'
I took a step toward Rose. "You're right. This is mad, and it's not fair, and you have every reason to be freaked out. But Rose—" I waited until she looked at me. "I'm still the person who knows you burn toast because you get distracted by your phone. I'm still the person who listened to you complain about Jimmy Stone for three hours. That didn't change. I just... I remember being someone else too now."
"Someone else," Rose repeated. "A Time Lord."
"Yeah."
"Like the Doctor."
"Bit less dramatic, ideally."
"Oi," the Doctor protested mildly.
She studied me for another moment. "Fair enough. Suppose if I'm doing this, might as well have another sane person along."
"Oi," the Doctor protested again.
"You," Rose pointed at him, "tried to blow up a building with me in it."
"Worked out though, didn't it?"
Rose rolled her eyes but couldn't quite hide her smile. She turned back to me, something softer in her expression now.
"So," she said. "We doing this or what?"
The Doctor's grin widened. He stepped aside and gestured grandly at the TARDIS doors.
"Come on then."
Rose bounced toward the doors, practically shaking with excitement.
The Doctor paused, hand on the door frame, and looked back at me.
"Forgot to ask your name," he said. "I'm the Doctor."
Before I could answer, Rose's voice called back from just inside the TARDIS doorway, her tone dripping with exasperation. "Oh, come off it! His name's Steven. I've just called him by his name!"
The Doctor and I exchanged a look.
"Well," I said carefully. "About that—"
Rose's head poked back out of the TARDIS, suspicious now. "What do you mean, 'about that'?"
"I'm called The Engineer." I said
There was a beat of silence.
"The Engineer," Rose repeated slowly.
"Yeah."
"The Engineer."
"That's right."
Rose looked between us, and I could see the exact moment it clicked. Her eyes widened slightly. "Oh my God. You're doing the thing. The 'The' thing."
The Doctor's grin was absolutely shit-eating. "Yep."
"There's two of you now." Rose pointed at the Doctor, then at me. "The Doctor and the Engineer. Like some sort of... time-travelling repair shop."
"I mean, technically—" I started.
"That's actually quite accurate," the Doctor said thoughtfully.
Rose stared at us for a long moment, then let out a laugh—slightly hysterical, but genuine. "Right. Okay. Fine. The Engineer it is then." She shook her head, grinning despite herself. "Why not? Today's already been completely mad. Might as well go full mad."
"That's the spirit," the Doctor said cheerfully.
Rose pointed at me, still grinning. "But if you start getting all mysterious and cryptic like him, I'm going to continue calling you Steven out of spite."
"Noted."
"And you—" She turned to the Doctor. "You're not allowed to encourage him."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"Liar." But she was smiling properly now, some of the tension finally bleeding out of her shoulders.
The Doctor was grinning so wide I thought his face might split. "Oh, I like her."
"Yeah," I said, unable to stop my own smile. "Me too."
He clapped me on the shoulder. "Come on then, Engineer. Let's go see if you remember which end of a spanner to hold."
"It's the end with the grip, Doctor."
"Smart-arse."
We stepped into the TARDIS together, and the doors swung shut behind us.
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A/N: Oh wee, there were a LOT of typos in this one. I think I've caught them all, but please let me know if I've missed any. If not, feel free to bully me for it!
Also, in case you didn't know, Jimmy Stone was Rose's boyfriend before Mickey.