Work Text:
The Doctor tossed a grimy rag to the grating. “Alright…let’s see if that’s done it.” He gave the assimilation contrastor a final tweak and swiftly retreated a few steps.
When it didn't burst into sparks or flames, he dared to indulge in a celebratory fist-pump. “Finally,” the Doctor breathed. This would’ve been much easier with another set of hands, but he’d managed alright with just the one…well, after a couple of tries, anyway.
The TARDIS grumbled beneath his feet. He rolled his eyes. “Oh, stop that. It's not my fault it wore out, is it?”
The grumble grew louder.
“Okay, so I could've been a bit gentler with it,” he allowed, wiping his hands on a fresh rag. The final corner of the Indy Flying Five Thousand had been rather tight… “But it's sorted now, isn't it? Or it will be, once I finish installing the new circuit board.”
Her next complaint abruptly ended in a confused hiccough.
The Doctor frowned. “What's that? You alright, Old Girl?” The rag dropped to join its brethren as he checked and rechecked her readings. Please let the actuators be alright…
He nearly leapt out of his trainers when he looked up and found a strange woman standing less than five feet away. “What?” The word flew from his mouth before he could think.
She whirled around in a flurry of skirts, shrieking, “Oh, god, oh, no—I didn't mean—don't look at me!”
The Doctor only caught the briefest glimpse of her slapping her hands over her eyes before he covered his own. There was no sense in disrespecting anyone's cultural traditions, even those of mysterious interlopers. “What? Why?”
“I didn't mean—oh, god, I didn't mean to hit the button!” she wailed. The echo of someone else’s voice through the console room was strangely deafening. How long had he been travelling alone, that she affected him this much?
“A button? What button?” The Doctor dropped his hands to check the console. “Was it orange?”
“I said, don't look at me!”
He obediently slammed his eyes shut again. “Sorry! Sorry, I just—” The Doctor hesitated. He didn't want to upset her further, but… “…I didn't mean to be rude or anything, but I sort of, er—caught a glimpse of you before you started shouting.” White, mostly—a lot of white. Was she a painter? A beekeeper?
“Argh!” The Doctor imagined that slapping sound was her hands dropping to her sides. “Of bloody course you did,” she grumbled, “You've always had awful luck. Why wouldn't that be true today as well?”
His brows drew together. Who exactly did this mystery woman think he was? “Erm…can I—?”
“Yes, you can look!” she snapped. “Might as well…it's already too late, anyway.”
The Doctor lowered his hands and finally took his first proper look at this woman—this bride, he quickly corrected himself. The white wedding dress she wore was all pearly silk and intricate lace. The rich red chignon framing her face was frosted by a sheer veil, as well. On reflection beekeeper hadn’t been a terrible guess, considering the headgear.
The bride turned on the spot. Her nose wrinkled as she took in the tangle of singed wiring and filthy rags on the floor. “What's this mess?” She twitched back her skirts to nudge the loose circuit board with an elegant toe.
“Oi, leave that be! I'm working!” The Doctor swooped his prize to safety.
“That's no excuse to leave a mess!”
He popped up from hastily stowing the circuit board under the grating to glare. “I'm not! It's not a mess until I’m done, and I'm clearly not finished installing it in my ship!” She didn’t have to know about the vast collection of dirty plates and tea mugs behind the jump seat.
Her hands landed on her hips. “Your ship?”
“Yes!” He swallowed back a rush of loneliness—the Doctor hadn’t shared his ship with anyone for ages. “She's called the TARDIS.”
The bride's eyes widened with a near-audible pop. Her mouth opened and immediately snapped shut again. He could almost read the words she was biting back on her forehead as her hands clenched and unclenched in her skirts.
The Doctor patiently waited a moment longer. The bride worried at her earring as she looked away.
The silence in the console room made the barrage of questions in his head echo louder and louder and louder until he finally blurted out, “…How did you get here? Why are you here? What's going on? I was technically in flight! Or on standby in the vortex, anyway. You shouldn't have been able to just appear here!”
Her mouth moved silently. “I—um, I just…” She abruptly dropped her hand from her ear.
He slipped his sonic from his pocket for a quick scan. “Did you see anything strange right before you appeared? Or—you said something about a button? Did you push one?” The readings were predictably inconclusive…well, the readings he managed to get before she smacked the instrument aside, anyway. The Doctor hurriedly put it away again before the bride could hurl it to the ground and stamp on it.
She’d switched from clenching her fists to wringing her hands somewhere in there. At this rate she’d develop a callus. He raised expectant eyebrows when she glanced in his direction. At last the bride burst out, “Oh, bugger it! I might as well just—I have these earrings.” She gestured dismally at the aforementioned accessories. “My fiancé gave them to me...they’re supposed to keep me safe.”
“Oh?” The Doctor pulled out his specs to peer at the delicate gems dangling from her ears. They certainly were sparkly. Brought out the blue of her eyes. “How do they keep you safe?”
“Some sort of emergency transport thingy. Don't ask me how it works,” she added before he could ask, “I hit the button, and it’s supposed to take me somewhere safe. That’s all I know!”
Well…the TARDIS was a safe place. Possibly the safest place in the universe. It sort of made sense she'd appear here, from that angle. The Doctor removed his specs and tucked them away again. “So you hit the button?”
The bride grimaced and nodded. “I was nervous…you know, big day and all. I was fiddling with my jewelry and must’ve hit it by accident. Next thing I knew, I was here. That's all I've got, Sp—sparky, alright?”
He nodded absently. His lip stuck out a bit as he thought furiously. A bog-standard teleport wouldn’t be able to reach into the Time Vortex, let alone deposit her safely aboard the TARDIS…a vortex manipulator might well be able to, but not without being keyed into his ship’s shielding—and the technology would never fit into an earring that small, anyway. Perhaps a variation on a transmat bracelet…?
The bride couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “Never mind how it happened! You need to get me to my wedding, right now!”
The Doctor started. “Ah, right, yeah—wedding.” He turned back to the controls. “Where are we headed?”
He waited for a response. None came.
The Doctor glanced at her. “Address?” he prompted.
She bit her lovely lip. “Can you…how's your aim?”
He waggled his eyebrows before he could stop himself. The bride went crimson.
“Oh, stop that! You know what I mean!” The Doctor grinned despite the smack to his arm. “Just get me back to my wedding!”
“I will! Soon as I get that address.”
She rapidly rattled off the street, borough, city, country, planet, date, and time. He swiftly set to work setting the coordinates. Before long he felt her eyes boring into the back of his head. “…What? What else?”
“Just…can you make sure we don't land right there? Maybe—round the corner? Or down the road?” Her voice wobbled slightly. “I can't—I can't have you landing a spaceship in the middle of the church, you know?”
“Sure, yeah,” the Doctor said absently...then he paused.
There was something about what she’d said—something she shouldn’t have known to say. He turned to stare at her. The bride fiddled with her earring again under his gaze until she seemed to remember she might hit that button again. Her fingers plucked anxiously at the fabric of her skirt instead.
“…You told me when to go,” he said slowly.
“Hm? What?” Her artless blinking only heightened his suspicion.
His eyes narrowed. She knew what the TARDIS was. “Who are you?”
The bride pursed her lips. “I can't say.”
“But—”
“I can't say!” she repeated, much louder this time. A dangerous spark illuminated her eyes. “I can't—you know I can’t!”
Suspicion hardened into certainty. He wasn’t done arguing yet, though. “You can't expect me to just ferry you about willy nilly when you know more about the TARDIS than you should. You won't even tell me your name!”
She somehow drew herself up an inch taller. The furious slant of her ginger eyebrows broadcast loud and clear that the bride wasn't about to budge. “Never you mind my bloody name! Just get me to my wedding!” This time her shout echoing through the console room was literally deafening.
The Doctor's teeth clacked shut as he finally pulled the lever for take-off. He aimed his thunderous glare at the magenta stabilizers rather than this…this infuriating interloper.
The familar hiss of the TARDIS' snickering reverberated around the console room. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he muttered under his breath. Typical—she would side with this tantalizing glimpse of his future. Not a moment of sympathy for her poor old pilot, faced with the temptation of meeting someone he’d only have the chance to know properly later…it just wasn’t fair!
That extra judder of the engines before landing must’ve been a bit of attitude from the Old Girl. In response, the Doctor made sure to set the parking brake sharply. She grumbled faintly, but subsided. “Here we are!”
The bride eyed the doors suspiciously. “…Are you sure?”
It was his turn to draw himself up with indignation. “I beg your pardon? I followed the coordinates you gave me precisely!”
She snorted. “Exactly.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
The bride rolled her eyes. “Oh, never mind.” She flounced down the ramp and flung open the doors. The Doctor rushed after her, nearly treading on her hem when she came to an abrupt halt just outside. “Hang on…” she breathed. “…I know this street.”
“I would hope so,” the Doctor huffed. He bent awkwardly to heft an armful of skirts out of the doorway, allowing the TARDIS door to shut behind them.
“No! I mean, I know this street—and it's not by the church!” The bride rounded on him, her chest heaving with fury. Her veil floating in the breeze gave her an otherworldly air. “We're twenty bleeding minutes away!” He caught his breath—her cheeks very nearly matched her hair.
“Erm…right.” Oh, no—he still hadn’t replaced the circuit board. No wonder the landing was off. The Doctor reached for the door handle. “Back on the TARDIS, then. I'll try again—”
“No!” The shock of her hand on his arm stopped him in his tracks. “God knows when we'll end up if you try again! I can't be late to my own wedding—not after all that work!”
His eyes automatically flicked over her ensemble. All that was a sort of work, if he thought about it. And besides, without that circuit board installed, they might very well end up on another Sunday morning in the Middle Ages.
“…Oh, alright,” the Doctor sighed. He stuck out a gentlemanly elbow. “There's got to be a bus about.”
The bride pressed her lips thin. “A bus on my wedding day…I can't bloody believe this.” She deigned to take his arm anyway. The Doctor tripped over his own feet as she hauled him at top speed toward the nearest stop.
Fourteen minutes of pacing, muttering, and cursing under the bride’s breath later, the bus finally grumbled to a stop at the kerb. The Doctor helped her up into the vehicle, gathering an armful of dress spilling out the doorway. He moved to follow her toward the seats when the driver held up a hand. The Doctor froze mid-step. Did he want a handshake? A high five?
The driver’s eyebrows rose. “…Your fare, sir?”
Oh, right. Money. He patted hopelessly at his pockets as the bride's expectant gaze burned his cheeks. “Er…”
“You've got to be kidding me!” She glared daggers of disbelief at him. “You don't have any cash on you? Not even a fiver?” A teenager coughed awkwardly further on the bus.
The judgement of all the passengers pressed heavy on him. “…Not in this suit, no. Sorry, I—I don't usually—don't you have any?”
Her nostrils flared. “I'm in my wedding dress.” The Doctor nodded in agreement. She certainly was. After a silent moment, the bride added, “It doesn't have pockets,” in a dangerous hiss. An elderly lady wearing a faded mackintosh glared at him from her seat. The Doctor looked away at once.
“…Oh,” was all he could manage. Her nostrils flared somehow wider.
Fortunately for him, that was when the driver sighed. “…Oh, go sit down. S'your wedding day, so consider it gratis.” His expression conveyed an unusual mixture of pity and distaste.
The thunderous look on the bride's face cleared with shocking speed. “Bless you,” she fervently told the driver. She shot another glare in the Doctor's direction and flounced further into the bus.
“Good luck, mate,” the driver muttered under his breath when he hurried to help squash her skirt through a tight spot. The Doctor grimaced at him over his shoulder.
Once they had her dress safely tucked out of the way of the other passengers, he cleared his throat. “Erm…sorry about all that,” he mumbled. The Doctor kept his eyes trained on the large stain of dubious provenance on the seat ahead rather than the elderly lady who’d swivelled to glare at him some more. “I just…never usually need cash, so…”
“That's no excuse,” she grumbled. “You really ought to carry something, just in case. But I guess…all's well that ends well.”
He glanced at her. The bride was already watching him with an odd expression. Her veil bunched up behind her hair in a strangely lovely way.
The Doctor cracked a smile at her without hesitation. Her answering smile was broad—and brief. Her eyes flickered down to her hands almost guiltily. The Doctor followed her gaze. Capable hands…strong and smooth with a neutral manicure. On her left hand she wore a frankly enormous ring.
He tapped the massive diamond. “Your fiancé must be doing well for himself.”
The bride grinned, her whole face brightening with it. For the first time since she'd materialised on his ship, she looked entirely happy. “Yeah, he is.”
He leaned back in his seat. “What's he do, this fiancé of yours?” If he knew more about him, maybe the Doctor could finally work out how this woman learned about the TARDIS.
She hesitated for a century-long moment before answering. “…He’s a sort of consultant.” The bride adjusted how her skirt hung over her lap. “Never settles down, that one. Always dragging us hither and yon, all over the world...” Her fingertips traced the leaves and whorls woven into the luminescent silk.
“And you’re alright with that?” the Doctor asked, oddly breathless.
The bride’s smile widened. “Course I am. I’d better be if I’m marrying him, right?”
“Right.” He felt strangely deflated. “Right, yes. Good,” he added in an effort to hide it. So her fiancé was a traveller—that could explain how he’d run into them later on.
She cocked him a knowing eyebrow and a surprisingly sensual smirk. The Doctor swallowed hard.
The bus rumbled away as the bride shook out her skirts on the pavement. The safe-keeping earrings refracted subtle glimmers of blue sunlight over her shoulders.
“Oh, god, it’s got to be filthy after being crammed in like that,” she moaned, trying her futile best to get a glimpse of her own back. “Are there any stains? Any wrinkles? I can’t see!” She spun on the spot.
The dress whirled around so widely that the Doctor had to take a few steps out of range. “No–o–o,” he drew out, scanning the pale fabric as she moved. The iridescent lace of the bodice caught the sunlight rather nicely. “No dirt, no tears….you look lovely.”
She came to a stop facing him. Her skirts took a moment longer to stop swishing. “And—and the veil?” Her hands came up to anxiously smooth it down over her hair.
The Doctor stepped closer again. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, her chignon still intact. From this close up, it was easy to spot the jewelled comb holding her veil in place. He checked that it was secure, and then gently adjusted the fall of a ginger curl over her forehead. Perfect. “…It looks gorgeous.” The Doctor cleared his throat. “Really—really gorgeous.” The bride’s answering smile deepened into something so soft and sweet that he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
A bell tolled.
She started. “Oh! Oh, I have to go! That’ll be the church…” The bride compulsively straightened her necklace.
He shook himself free of that strange fascination. Glancing down the road, it was easy to spot the steeple that rose nearby. Large specks that were probably people in respectable formalwear milled around the base of the tower. “Right, yeah…nearly there.”
The Doctor didn’t want her to leave. That was an odd feeling.
He held out his elbow again. “…D’you want me to escort you the rest of the way? Just in case?”
“No!” Her answer came almost before he’d finished offering.
The Doctor dropped his arm at once. “No, yeah—never mind. Stupid idea.” The rejection really shouldn’t sting that much. Was only to be expected, really. What would the groom think if she turned up with another man on her arm?
He shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets and turned on his heel. “Alright, then! Break a leg and all that…”
His voice died in his throat when there was a flurry of movement and a sudden warm weight against his back. She…she was hugging him. Her arms wrapped around his waist from behind, her long white dress billowing against his legs, her lovely breasts pressed—
“What’s that for?” the Doctor asked. His voice was more squeaky than he’d have preferred.
The bride chuckled. “Thank you. For everything.” She squeezed him a little tighter. His throat bobbed. “Really, I…I appreciate it.” With a final pat to his belly, she released him.
He took a moment to gulp back the sudden lump in his throat before spinning back around. “It was my pleasure,” the Doctor thickly told her. He took her hand and bent to kiss it. “Whoever he is…he’d better be worthy of you.”
When he straightened, her eyes were sparkling. With what he dared not say, but he’d almost swear it was a secret. “He is,” the bride assured him with surprising earnestness. “Doesn’t think it, mind, but…but he is.”
The Doctor nodded. “Good to know.”
“Yeah…” She gathered up her skirts. “Thank you. Really, thank you.” The bride beamed at him once more before she turned and dashed away.
Rather than watch her go, the Doctor turned on his heel again and began his long walk back toward his TARDIS. Distantly voices rose with surprise and welcome. He couldn’t resist one glance backward at the spot of white lingering at the base of the church tower. She was surrounded by other specks of pink and blue and green, until they all disappeared inside.
The Doctor forced his feet to move again. The temptation to stick around and maybe sneak in the back was stronger than he’d like to admit. But no, no—she’d been adamant that she didn’t want him there. He would respect that.
There was no good reason to get bent of out shape about it. He kicked at a pebble and missed. He’d known from the start that she had promises to keep to someone else—the dress she wore was proof of that!
Yet again, the Doctor simply hadn’t been able to help himself.
No matter how much he’d have loved to travel with her, some handsome nomadic consultant had already suavely swept her off her feet. The position was filled…or would be, as soon as they exchanged rings. And that was good. The bride deserved all the happiness in the world, to have her perfect wedding day just as she’d planned.
The Doctor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Besides, someday…someday he would see her again. Or, at the very least, his TARDIS would see her again. That was all still to come. Perhaps he’d actually learn her name, too.
As the Time Lord trudged back toward his lonely ship, he didn’t even glance at an unassuming newsstand.
Behind that newsstand was parked a familiar blue box. Framing her doors was a lush garland of geraniums, ivy, and heather. Miles of white streamers dangled from the light on top, and on the back was affixed a sign bearing the words ‘JUST MARRIED.’