When a Time Lord meets their future self, they naturally forget shortly afterwards. But the Doctor has met many selves on many occasions. Perhaps too many… This is a Season 6B story. (“Season 6B” is a fan theory which postulates that the continuity errors that crop up from the Second Doctor’s return appearances on Doctor Who can be explained away by assuming Gallifrey’s black ops department coerced him into their service as an agent prior to his regeneration into the Third)

If you’re interested in more Doctor Who fiction, I have a tale in the Divergent Wordsmiths collection “Unbound Imaginings”. Which is well worth a look for the many fine stories within.

This is a submission to the Thursday Prompt writing group. The prompts used were ‘closer,’ and ‘speaker.’ Check out the group's user page by following this link. And the other stories generated from these prompts here  and here.

The Second and Third Doctor and Tardis are © The BBC.

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THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX


The Man He Shouldn’t Know
By: DankeDonuts
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/dankedonuts/

The short and shabby Doctor whistled to himself as his hands puttered about the Tardis controls. Flipping this and dialing that, satisfying himself that the vessel was indeed on course for the Samulak system of the Fifth Galaxy in its calendar year of 5462. The song soured as his work ended, the Doctor’s mouth having worked its way to an unsteady frown. For he was keenly aware, as ever, that the ability to assert true control over his vehicle’s jaunts through the temporal vortex had come at terrible cost.

He gave a grim look upward to the time rotor. Immediately, he leapt backwards. “Oh my giddy aunt!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed. “What in blazes are you?” he demanded of the specter standing opposite of him.

It was standing tall and straight-backed, lording over the Communication panel.  The more the Doctor tried to focus on any one aspect of its form, the more indistinguishable the same became. Its pale hair not quite identifiable in shape.  Its featureless face somehow stern despite lacking any means of expressing such an emotion. Its clothing was of hazy outline. Dark in color. Perhaps black, or perhaps not? The Doctor bobbed his head side to side with a mix of curiosity and concern. Noting vague shadows of red, purple blue shifting around and over one another. And the roundels of the Tardis walls seeping through the strange figure.

“Aha!” the Doctor clapped! “You’re not really here, are you? But you will be! It’s you, isn’t it? I mean, me! A future self. No, no, my next self!” He stepped sideways. “How many times have we met, eh? Enough times to leave a mark up here!” He pointed angrily to his head. “Where it doesn’t belong! I shouldn’t remember you at all!”

The figure sidestepped as well. Keeping the time rotor between the two of them. It tried to speak, with a voice that sounded very far away. As though processed through a broken-down speaker at the far end of a motion picture theater. Which happened to be sitting in a tub of treacle. Quite possibly pointed the other way. While the Doctor could make out no words, he could yet glean clues from the specter’s clipped cadence. A sprig of condescension. A dash of tried patience. A return to his own youthful pomposity, perhaps?

No, there was too much control. More poise than pride to this being’s hand-on-hips posturing.

“I really shouldn’t be thinking too hard about you,” The Doctor reminded himself, while absentmindedly rubbing his neck. “Crumbs! Now that the question is in my head, it won’t go away until I puzzle it out... Who are you, then?” The Doctor stepped over to the next section of the hexagonal control console, aiming to get closer to a being he knew to be housed inside his own mind. The figure mirrored the act, claiming an opposing position in due course. The Doctor leapt quickly to the next, and the next. The vision followed suit, and now the pair had reversed their initial places. But again, there were clues to be found by an observant eye, in the way this half-formed being walked. The rigid posture spoke volumes of of tightly restrained despair, and defiance against domesticity.

This was a creature in a cage.

Wordless patter escaped the Doctor’s lips before words could. “You’re no better off than me!” The realization sent shivers all along his skin. A second wave of them came with a corollary conclusion; that he must have connected the same dots each and every time they’d truly encountered each other. Only to forget again. Until now. When shrouded worries nibbling at the back of his mind had gnawed their way to the forefront. Never to be forgotten again.

The Doctor scowled at the panel before him. Where a red light atop a circular device, covered the circular glyphs of High Gallifreyan had been set firmly into the other mechanisms. Fury and terror battled for control of his voice. “It’s you!! You’re going to betray me! After all I’ve done for you! The Players, the Doredsor, and all the others! I put them to rights while you keep your dainty hands clean! Keeping me on a leash with the promise of freedom dangled before my eyes! But you’re still going to make me go through it, aren’t you? You’re still going to take me away from…” thick fingers flittered about the uneven lines of his jacket.  “Me!”

As if by answer, the little red light started blinking. The keepers of the leash, the Celestial Intervention Agency, had a mind to open a channel to him. They had told him where and when to go. Now they were going to tell him why. The Doctor rubbed his hands in wary anticipation.

“I’m not licked yet!” he spat at the signal device. “I’ll find a way out of this! You just wait!”

With a visible strain of effort, and a little help from his hands, the Doctor formed his face into a mask of levity. “A way out, indeed,” he smiled. He produced a dismissive laugh, then trotted ‘merrily’ over to the archway which separated the chamber from all others in the Tardis’ infinite confines. He formed his hands into a megaphone before calling, “Jamie! Victoria! Come along to the control room, won’t you? There’s work to be done!”


THURSDAY PROMPT STORY INDEX