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1.
Indy's just about to drive home the last tent peg, here at his Valley of the Kings site, when the weirdest sound echoes through the sunset. It's sort of... off, that's all. A low, vibrating hum, like he's only heard when, say, he's opened a tomb he really, really shouldn't --
Grabbing his hat and shoving it on his head, he bolts around the tent.
And almost slams into some goddamn blue box, bigger than a sarcophagus, with English writing on it. POLICE, it says.
He raises his hand to touch it, but a door opens, right in front of his face, and a white-headed old man pokes his head out.
“You there!” the old man says in an imperative English way which instinctively raises Indy's hackles. “When is this?”
“1927,” Indy says, “and what's it to--”
“Oh, this is not the right time at all,” the old man says fussily, “Ian must have been touching the console again,” and starts to close the door.
But this is Indiana Jones' dig, by God. Interlopers and blue boxes need to explain themselves to him. He catches the door with one hand – feels the hum transferring itself to him, opening up the world – and says in a much less commanding voice than usual, “What's your name?”
“The Doctor, not that it's any of your business,” the old man says.
Without really intending to, Indy lets go of the door. Beyond the old man he sees the oddest mechanical workings, and it seems, Christ, it seems bigger in there than just a blue box.
“Good day to you,” the old man says as the door closes, and almost immediately the blue box shimmers, and almost immediately after that, Indy stands alone in the sunset. He can hear the tent flapping in the breeze, he can hear the call to prayers. The humming is gone.
He looks up. In the onrush of night, he can already see the stars.
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2.
Marion's moodily scrubbing the bar when the door blows open. She's trapped here in this damn place, cold, alone, mourning...
A small man wrapped in what look like very, very odd furs bounds in. “Hullo, hullo!” he says genially. It's an English accent, but with a little... something different. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn somewhere – usually happens in time, not space, but then these little Earth countries all do run together – this isn't Tibet, is it?”
“Nepal,” Marion says. “And this is also a bar. You want something to drink?”
“I suppose I might have a little something hot,” the man says, and takes one of the old wooden stools and sits himself down. “Nothing too strong, mind. I've a bit of a journey, off to find a monastery. Detsen, do you know it?”
“No. I guess it's, you know, in Tibet,” Marion says. She puts the kettle on. For him, odd as he is, she'll pull out some of her most treasured tea. She likes his face, she doesn't know why.
“In Tibet,” the man says agreeably. “Perhaps stop and say hello to a proper Yeti on the way, too. But, my dear, I've quite forgot my manners. I'm the Doctor.”
“Marion Ravenwood,” she says, as the steam rises. “And there's no such thing as a Yeti.”
“Really? You should be open to experience, Miss Ravenwood,” he says sternly, and then catches her hand. Ordinarily that kind of liberty and that kind of corny line would get a guy knocked ass over teakettle, but she somehow knows he doesn't mean anything bad by it. “And if you'd like to see the stars, I do have room as I travel...”
She can imagine just for a moment how it could be – out of this cold, lonely place, out in whatever strange vehicle brought this very strange man here. She can almost feel the rush of eternity on her face.
But, no. Something in the wind still whistling through the door... “Thanks, Doctor,” she says, “I think I'll get out of here on my own. I'll earn my own way.”
He smiles, and drinks his tea, and disappears into whiteness. She goes back to scrubbing the bar. Occasionally, though, her glance goes to the coin he left her on his way out.
It's not gold. It's not a ticket out. But she thinks she sees the stars in its glitter.
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3.
Indy is on sabbatical from Marshall, although he's brought a bright graduate student along with him. It's not wise to go into the depths of Brasil alone, no matter what hint of conquistador gold a mild-mannered, tenured archeologist is tracking.
Manaus isn't exactly the depths of Brasil, of course. In fact, Indy's had to brush himself up, even dig a suit out of his field kit, in order to attend a dinner given by one of his colleagues at the University of Manaos. Over the first course, he can dicker with Eduardo over the rights to the dig out on a tributary of the river.
Of course, he's got to get past this door, and the weird, oddly familiar humming he feels more than hears...
“Stand up straight, Perkins,” Indy says to the grad student – a bright kid out of Alabama, whose dark skin has elicited one or two comments even here – and tugs at his own tie as the inner door opens.
A strange man, his long coat fluttering almost as much as this long striped scarf which trails to his knees, strides out. “Professor, I'll hold you to your word,” he calls, even though Eduardo is right there at the door. Then the strange guy stops himself and looks at Indy. “So, young man, we meet again.”
“What?” Indy says.
“You need to pay more attention to the world,” the strange man says, “but your open mouth is understandable. I didn't look like this when you met me. Didn't introduce myself, either.”
“What?” Indy says again. He left his damn knife in his other suit, or he'd arm himself against confusion...
The man smiles, a wide, gleaming smile. “Think back. 1927.” And as Indy recalls that sunset, that blue box, the man reaches back and collects the hand of a stunning brunette dressed... well, not exactly dressed in conventional style, just strategically placed bits of leather. “Come along, Leela,” the man says to her, then aims his smile at Indy once more. “I'm the Doctor, and this is my companion, and we must be off. Eduardo, don't let this one talk you out of anything you don't want to give!”
“Not after you've done so, Doctor,” Indy's contact Eduardo says as he appears in the doorway. He looks shell-shocked, despite the civilised clothes and the shell of gracious living here. “Indy, Mr Perkins...?”
Indy looks around again – and the Doctor and his gorgeous companion are gone. That faint humming he'd registered now intensifies, now disappears.
When Indy goes into Eduardo's study, a star chart is flung carelessly across the mahogany desk, and the night is coming in, and he remembers heat and prayers and a sudden clutch of fear at time.
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4.
“Don't worry, Ox, it's not your fault we're late,” Marion says, then tugs at Mutt's jacket. Kid's just got it and he's already almost outgrown it, all ten-year-old arms and legs that her boy is.
She yearns for Mutt's father sometimes, when her boy rushes into danger or says something clever or just grins in a certain way. Times like this, however, visiting the English country house where her late husband Colin grew up, she says a silent, fervent prayer that Mutt does not take after his father.
His biological father, that is.
Harold Oxley, the archeologist who stands in pride of paternal place for both of them, tucks Marion's arm more firmly against his side. “Chin up, old girl. It's just a weekend, not a grand adventure.”
The heavy oaken door swings open, and instead of the matron she expects, a cute, floppy-haired blond man in cricket clothes appears. He's got a cricket bat on his shoulder, and he's saying something to someone behind him, but when he turns – a pause, and a smile, and a charming “Marion! Marion Ravenwood! However did you get out of Nepal, my dear?”
“Excuse me?”
A short-haired woman in skirt and blouse tumbles out after the blond man. “Doctor, I really do need... hello.” Her voice is Australian, her eyes appraising, and Marion likes her at once. “You used to travel with this one, then?”
The door opening, wind and snow, and an odd coin on her bar. Marion remembers. The smile is the same.
“Tegan, please,” the blond man says – no, somehow, impossibly, he's the Doctor -- and then smiles again at Marion. “I wish I could stay and catch up, but the thing is... just no time.”
“Time enough for a cricket game,” Tegan says dryly.
“Always,” the Doctor says, then, “Must be off now, sorry. You all be careful of the recorder in the study, mind.”
“Why?” Mutt says in a truculent way that reminds her again, painfully, of his father.
The Doctor gazes at him solemnly. “Because it's not really a recorder,” he says to Mutt, “and I don't think you're ready for alien technology.” Before anything can be said in reply to this insane comment, the Doctor lifts his hat to Marion. “Hope to see you again sometime, Miss Ravenwood. We must chat, but...”
“Here, there, never where a woman wants to go,” Tegan says, and then she smiles at Marion and Ox, ruffles Mutt's hair in passing, and then pushes the Doctor off the steps and into the English spring day.
That night, Marion goes out on the terrace alone and watches the stars. The strange coin she turns between her fingers reflects the glitter of the heavens.
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5.
“It's not a damn... whatever you said,” Indy growls. “It's just a scroll. One of the Dead Sea scrolls, yes, historically significant, yes, but not some alien encrypted--”
“Key to a lost piece of Gallifrey's history,” the Doctor says. There's a hollow echo in his voice when he says 'Gallifrey,' something old and grieving, but he covers it up with a hop and a grin and a bright, “And what are you doing with this historically significant bit of paper-equivalent, Dr Jones? Shouldn't it be in the museum? Or left where you found it?”
Marion can see her husband starting to steam with irritation, which never ends well. And she thinks that this incarnation of the Doctor knows it, and is provoking it, which is even more a guarantee of disaster. So she steps in from the doorway of Indy's home office and says, “Jones was asked to take it, Doctor. It--”
“--hummed,” Indy says in a dogged voice. “Hummed, like a certain blue box of yours.”
“Because it's Gallifreyan, see?” The Doctor beams. “Because there are some things humans aren't meant to know. Not that I think knowledge is a bad thing, of course, curiosity's responsible for so much goodness in the universe, weeelll, multiverse, but sometimes too much of it can hurt.”
Marion looks at Indy. He looks back. She can almost smell the burn from Akator, the loss of a woman who wanted to know too much, who dared the aliens and lost...
“Delusions of grandeur,” says the Doctor's companion. Donna, she called herself, before she excused herself and ran off to the bathroom. But now she's back. “Delusions of bloody grandeur.”
The Doctor's smile deepens. “Donna keeps me honest,” he says, and then, to Indy, “What do I need to do to convince you to give me the scroll?”
Indy leans against his desk, puts his hands in his pockets, pretends to be as casual as the Doctor. (His loving wife knows that he is simmering with excitement underneath his Associate Dean tweed.) “Got a couple of other leads on equally mysterious scrolls. You care to look at the files, see what I've been doing?”
“Information,” the Doctor murmurs, "that's what you want?"
“Yes. Just enough,” Indy says. “Knowledge is my game.”
“Perfect,” the Doctor says, and smiles in a very familiar way.
That evening, after a good dinner and a bottle of wine, after Indy's covered ten pages of notes from the Doctor's dictation, Marion shows their guests to their quarters. Donna gets the spare room -- “I don't sleep with Space Boy, he's far too skinny, like to cut myself,” she's made a point of saying – and the Doctor's bunking down in Mutt's room. Marion thinks the Doctor looks oddly at home amidst the detritus of boyhood.
Then Marion goes out to the back garden, to the wrought-iron bench where she hides sometimes from the stresses of being the Associate Dean's wife. It's a clear night, with just an edge of cold.
She sits on her bench and turns that strange coin over and over in her fingers, catching the starlight in its glitter. After a few minutes, Indy comes out too. Without speaking, he sits beside her. Puts his hand on her thigh, comfortable, not yet demanding.
Together they watch the stars, and think of time.
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