The TARDIS materializes on the fringes of the slightly shabby city, behind a cluster of trees and, ironically, the fifty-first century equivalent of a phone box, something like a high-powered sort of communications booth that's more likely to scan your retina than to politely request the drop of a fifty pence piece.

After a moment or two, the door of the blue police box opens and the Doctor steps out, shrugging into his brown overcoat. However, unlike has been the trend of late, the Time Lord isn't alone.

A young man steps out of the ship after the Doctor, dressed down in contrast to the alien in a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt with a jumper pulled over it. He looks around their surroundings, then turns to the Doctor with a questioning stare. "All of time and space," he states after a moment. "And you bring me to the fifty-first century equivalent of Splott?"

"Oh," the Doctor waves offhandedly. "Well, not my finest hour, but it wasn't my choice where she decided to settle down at. Ah well, allons-y, Mr. Jones!" He slides his hands into his pockets, then leads the way at a leisurely strolling pace for a large apartment building.

It seems like an infinity of walking (with the aforementioned Mr. Jones muttering about modern convenience not involving elevators or escalators) up stairs before they finally arrive outside a door, where the Doctor knocks.

Tags: character: donna noble, character: ianto jones, scene

The Titanic was just as much of a disaster as the ship it was named for. Not so much in the loss of life as the catastrophic level of crisis. The Doctor did all he could, and maybe he knows that, but he does not seem especially keen on acknowledging it. So many lives lost ... the cyborg-alien, the couple who had spent their life savings to go, the pompous aristocrat. Astrid.

Folded up on the jumpseat with his feet braced against the console and barely seeming to properly hold the precarious position, the Doctor has his arms folded across his stomach, staring into nothing. The TARDIS is parked on Earth just now, having given the tour guide and faux historian a lift down, and the Doctor seems to have little motivation of where to go from here.

Tags: master, scene

With his alternate in the console room working on tracing the parallel universe through Jack's mobile phone, and the captain himself safely asleep (he'd lingered at his companion's side, just to make sure), the Doctor seeks out the Master's presence within the vast interior of the ship. There will be time enough for him to get to work on tracing the vortex manipulator; for now, he is interested in his fellow Time Lord's opinion of things. The Doctor figures that the more capable minds they have working on the problem, the better ... and in all truth, he's just twisted up enough inside by Jack's situation that he needs (even if he won't admit it) the reassurance of his oldest friend and enemy's presence.

The Doctor isn't surprised at where his steps, unconscious ones following his innate sense, eventually lead him. He doesn't bother knocking before entering the room - as it is most appropriately adopted as his - a question on his mind. Koschei?

Tags: altverse, scene, the master

With a week of advent deeds beneath his belt, the Doctor has retreated back to the TARDIS for a bit of a breather. Instead of taking up residence in the shiny, tinsel-bedecked control room, he meanders off into one of the ship's many inexplicable side rooms. This one looks rather like a Victorian parlor, something Dickens might have held an intimate reading in. Speaking of Dickens, the Doctor has a copy of The Christmas Carol lying upside down on his lap, where he sits on an overstuffed couch with his feet up on the table. There's a fireplace across, that and a lamp providing all the merrily flickering light in the room.

This room is free of kitschy Christmas spirit, however, the only adornment some pine garland on the mantle with a large bow in the center. The Doctor doesn't look like his holiday-clad alter ego, either, except that he's wearing red shoes with his blue suit. There's a Christmas list off to one side, undoubtedly with peoples' inexplicable wishes, and an almost untouched glass of eggnog on the table, perilously close to being jarred by his foot. For all effects and purposes, head leaned against the back of the couch, the Doctor might well be dozing - or just lost in thought.

Tags: scene

Inexplicably, the TARDIS parked in the basement of Torchwood One seems to more closely resemble Santa's workshop at this point in time. There's a wreath hanging on the door that's left ajar, letting Christmas music spill out into the empty storage bay. Once anyone walks inside, they'll be greeted with a view of garland and the twinkling lights and sparkling ornaments of a real Christmas tree. And more inexplicably, the Doctor is wandering about the console room looking suspiciously festive in his hat. Wrapping gifts seems to have been on his agenda for the day, and he's busily stuffing them into a comically oversized bag (which is, true to form, probably bigger on the inside).

A little while has passed since their return to the TARDIS; enough, at least, for the Doctor to change back into one of his customary suits (this one blue, with accompanying red Chucks, of course), although he's shucked the jacket by now in the interest of rolling up his shirt-sleeves for the cramped space beneath the ship's console. After Harry had hovered around watching for a while, the Doctor - lacking the Master's fobwatch as assistance in preoccupying the man - had sent him off to find a kitchen and make tea; a broad request, given that the TARDIS has many kitchens and not all of them contain tea.

Now, the Doctor is on his stomach on the grated deck of the console room, a section of the plating swung open so that he can lean his head and arms inside. It's a rather precariously balanced place to be; he has his ankles locked ridiculously around the pedestal base of the jumpseat to keep from losing his balance and toppling inside. Having the Master to help with the process, rather than confined in a timepiece a hundred and fifty miles away would be convenient, but he remembers enough to have more of an idea what he's doing than he might otherwise.

"There's an emergency failsafe in here somewhere," he comments to Jack, voice muffled and barely rising over the whirring of the sonic screwdriver. "Is the Archangel network still active? I was going to warn them of it before my, ah ... vacation, but I didn't get the chance."

Tags: fallout

The passage of time has always been different for them, as Lords of it, but with the very essence of his being trapped in such a limited space, the Doctor has entirely too much of it. He's trying to make the best of the situation, as he does most things (being trapped in 1969, living a bit of his life as a human in the early twentieth century, getting banished to Earth ...), although that doesn't mean he hasn't tried to be proactive as well. He'd experienced a brief burst of hope when he'd felt Jack's presence, briefly; but the captain's mind had been too great of a broken landscape for him to stumble across, and attempts at contact had failed.

There's no one around, now, he can feel it. So the Doctor is in the astral plane, location of his own making - based on a real place, but unlike anything on Earth. His coat is spread across the white sand and he's lying atop it, arms folded in a pillow beneath his head. His feet are bare, allowing for the lapping of the turquoise waves at his toes, and he's currently occupied with watching pink-tinted clouds scud across the violet sky. It would be pleasant, if not for the decidedly compressed feeling of it. His mind is a limitless space - but knowing that he can't leave it, can't vacate and return to his body, is more than a little disconcerting. He'd done this willingly, back when he was being followed by the Family of Blood, but this is much different.

If he doesn't get out of here soon, he might go mad.

Tags: fobwatch, timelord essence

It's over now, but this doesn't feel like victory.

The Master has been stopped, the world is at peace, and most of the humans remember nothing, but I still can't help feeling responsible. For everything. Those who know him in this world will forever remember him for the death and destruction. Cities razed to the ground, the very life of the planet cannibalized for his own dark deeds. But the Master was not always evil, not always mad. Once, he was a but a boy - Koschei, he was called, a young Time Lord from a planet with red grass and silver-leafed trees. A boy whose hearts were broken by his dearest friend.

Well.

As I was saying ... it's over now. The destruction has been undone, and I think it's time for me to be on my way. As soon as I repair the TARDIS, I'll go, and take the Master with me. It's time to make reparations for my failings to everyone - the earth, the human race, the Master himself. He's my responsibility now - to watch, to protect, to care for. I know he'll fight me every step of the way. Somehow, I'm rather looking forward to it.

Tags: end narrative, year of hell

( clock is ticking while I'm killing time, spinning all around, nothing else they can do to turn it back )

It's a heavy thing to suggest, that one might actually find time to be bored during the end of the world, but the Doctor has somehow managed just that extreme an accomplishment. If anything, the Master seems to be avoiding him. The convenience of freedom of movement is hardly a convenience at all, as the movement is hardly free. He finds the limitations and boundaries of his wandering room like an animal wandering aimlessly into an electric fence. After so many weeks, hardly anyone even pays him attention anymore. There are more pressing things for the brainwashed humans to do, organizing the members of their species into doing the Master's bidding. The Doctor has by now become only a mild curiosity to them, free to come and go as he pleases. Maybe it's by the Master's orders that they don't bother him, either.

Regardless, the Time Lord is not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. He observes what he can, picks up on little nuances of conversation and tries to figure out the Master's plans bit by bit as they leak out. He hardly feels he's learning anything far enough ahead of the rest of the world to actually do anything about it, but knowledge is power, and the Doctor is determined to have as much of that as he possibly can. In other times, when he's not keenly observing, he finds a quiet and unnoticeable corner and huddles into it, eyes closed as if he's in a trance - and no one particularly bothers to inquire as to what he's doing there, either.

It takes a while for the Doctor to find out enough to make an educated guess at where he cares to wander. Going from top to bottom of the ship seems logical enough, doesn't it? The trip takes a little more effort than the Doctor might like; he pauses at some levels, stops the lift and opens the doors, spokes his head out to have a look around. Other levels he skips, because the throbbing pain in his head is too great to remind him to open the doors. The lift in and of itself seems to be a curiosity affected mostly by the level he happens to be on. Finally, he reaches the last level, holding an unconscious breath as he waits for an assault of pain. Nothing comes, beyond that awful nagging itch that's almost always present when the Master isn't in close proximity.

So the Doctor steps through the doors and finds himself ... in ... "A boiler room? Why does an airship need a boiler room?" he mutters with a ruffle of his hair.

( i won't let you control my fate while i'm holding the weight of the world on my conscience )

Little concept of time passes for the Doctor at first, as he waits in solitude. Being trapped is horrible; that he is also alone only makes it worse. At the sound of footsteps, he’d prepared himself for the probability that the guards were there to take him. It had come as something of a surprise when instead it was Jack who was wrested away. He’d protested to no avail and spent futile hours casting about with his mind, only to have his fears confirmed when, after a while, he could sense nothing of the captain’s presence any longer.

After what must be a few hours after Jack is taken away, the Doctor begins to gauge the time with the changing of the guards. Assuming eight hours for each shift, around three days have passed, and he has slept for none of it. He cannot tell whether it’s morning or evening. Questions to the guards go unanswered, as they refuse to do much more than gape at him like a curiosity held within a cage - and maybe, he thinks bitterly, he is.

The Doctor finally ends up curled in on himself on the narrow bench, huddled into the corner with knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around, like a bogle on a hearth. There seems to be no cunning plan to formulate, nothing to do but wait in the cold and the silence, to see what happens next.

Tags: year of hell