Chapter Text
Imagine this.
Your name is Takashi Shirogane, and you’re ten years old when you’re sure, surer than you’ve ever been about anything in your life, that one day you’re going to reach up and touch the stars.
Your name is Takashi Shirogane, and you’re fifteen years old when a doctor sits you down and takes to your dreams with a sledgehammer. You’re fifteen when your mother goes into emotional shutdown because her son is dying, and your Dad falls back into drinking and then falls off the map completely.
By the time you’re nineteen your life has just… Stopped. You’re stuck in the suburbs looking after a mother who can’t look you in the eye, trying to fill the hole left by a father who jumped ship the moment the going got rough. You can’t even see the stars anymore through all the light pollution.
Then you meet another Doctor, who takes your hand and holds it tight and leads you out of the dark.
(his skin is tanned, and his smiles are sharp and serious, but his eyes dance in starlight.)
He takes you to end of the universe and back in a little blue box, to see the birth of stars and the end of empires.
(stern, controlled, disciplined.)
You save planets, found civilisations and vanquish monsters.
(kind, heroic, empathetic.)
He saves a life you didn’t think was worth living anymore. He finds you just when you think your time is running out and gives you all the time in the world. Finally, you can let go of responsibility, let go of the parent you had to support like a child and the death sentence that aged you before your time. The Doctor sets you free.
And then one day he turns to look at you from the crest of a hill, his face bathed in royal purple by the blue and red suns in the sky; his smile gleams like the first stars at twilight and you think, shit.
Your name is Takashi Shirogane, and you’re twenty years old when you fall in love.
…
The Galra Empire has stood for ten thousand years. For generations beyond counting it has dominated galaxy after galaxy, spawning the most despicable war criminals of the age. These people are genocidal mass-murderers who bathe in the blood of whole star systems. Their names are the terror of every planet for a thousand lightyears.
But in the end, none of that matters.
In the end, the guy who kills the Doctor is a nobody. Shiro doesn’t even know his name.
They’ve won, the Doctor and him, as always; disabled the Galra death-ray poised to scorch the planet below and set it to drop out of orbit. The station would burn up on re-entry and they would just saunter off back to the TARDIS. As always.
Until this random grunt turns on his heel and blows a hole through the Doctor’s chest.
Everyone stares down at the body like it isn’t real, a prop from some tragic farce. Then there’s lots of shouting and running from the other soldiers (Shiro thinks, he isn’t listening) and then they’re gone (Shiro thinks, he isn’t looking) and now he’s left with this lifeless mannequin of his saviour.
The floor wasn’t that red a minute ago, was it?
An explosion rocks the station and jerks Shiro to life. He realises what’s happening, crouches down, rolls the body over - oh God, that’s too much blood –
“Takashi…“ the Doctor manages, still breathing, barely, “TARDIS.”
Shiro nods numbly and lifts him onto his shoulder, dragging him out of the control room as quickly as he dares.
Another shockwave almost knocks them off their feet; the Doctor cries out but Shiro catches him under his armpit, hoists him back up. The screech of rending metal wracks the corridor, and through a window Shiro watches the bottom half of the station tear away like paper.
OK, level head, get to the box and the Doctor can do something. He’ll have healing pods or a medical bay or something… there’s always something…
Shiro tears himself away from the planet corkscrewing bigger and bigger through the window, seizes the Doctor’s arm and picks up the pace.
Energy crackles across the metal plate ceiling. The station’s cabling must’ve ruptured: Yellow energy lacerates the metal around Shiro’s feet and he breaks into a sprint, the Doctor slung across his back like a ragdoll.
“Come on, stay with me,” he’s babbling, “stay with me you can’t leave I need you stay with me –“
Up ahead, to the left, a few soldiers batter at a locked door, desperate, screaming. Shiro barely notices.
“Stay with me, I –“
“Door, Takashi,” the Doctor whispers, threadbare, failing.
“What?” Shiro pants.
“Sonic the door,” his head flops toward the soldiers still beating uselessly at the lock, “help.”
“We don’t have –“
“- time to argue,” the Doctor finishes, “left pocket, setting 36… 362.”
His eyes slide shut and fear spikes in Shiro’s chest, he fumbles for the Sonic through blood-soaked pockets and finds it - the world is blurry for tears and sparks, but he presses the button and the door clicks and the soldiers thunder through like frightened animals and leave the Doctor and him for dead –
BOOM
Shiro staggers forward, ducks the energy cable whipping down, careens around the corner –
POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX
Shiro is crying now, the air is alive with energy but the man on his back is nearly dead. He rushes forward, the key scrapes over the lock come on –
The ceiling behind them collapses just as he shoves the door open and heaves the Doctor across the threshold into warm, golden light.
The door slams. Shiro lies on his back, panting. He needs to get up, needs to help before it’s too –
“Takashi,” says a hoarse voice Shiro barely recognises. He rolls over and meets the eyes that saved his life, old and strong and the colour of coffee drops. The Doctor smiles, and opens his mouth to say something comforting – tell me it’s OK, Doctor, make this OK – but all that comes out is red.
And then something… other happens.
Golden energy unfurls from the Doctor’s body like blooming marigolds, streams of gaseous amber shooting from his arms and head with the roar of a hurricane. His body is lifted up off the floor like a leaf in the wind. Someone screams from deep in the eye of the storm, but that voice isn’t the Doctor’s, isn’t anyone’s, the echo of a thousand others, unsure of which to be.
The energy shuts off like a tap being turned and the body drops back to the floor, still wreathed in a corona of golden light. Shiro stares.
“D… Doctor…?”
The bundle of shirt and greatcoat groans and shifts.
“Ugh,” says a little voice, and up pops a face framed by shock of auburn hair.
Shiro stares at the girl sitting where the Doctor’s corpse should be. She stares back with eyes the colour of sunlight through honey. The Doctor’s glasses slip down her nose.
“When the heck did you get so big?” she grumbles, pointing a finger Shiro can’t even see for how long the Doctor’s sleeves are on her, “When did I get so… small?” her hands fly to the space above her head like she’s expecting something to be there. “Oh my god, I’m a Sontaran!” she squeaks, running her hands from hair to face to neck, “A really skinny, really fluffy Sontaran! No, wait. That’s not it. I’m just…” she totters to her feet, a newborn doe taking her first steps, and twirls on the spot, bewildered, “That can’t be right either! There’s been a mistake. You did it wrong!” she yells at no-one, “You… I did it wrong, I’m only half done!” she scowls, “Oh, that’s rubbish, it’s like taking your cake out of the oven too soon –”
“Who are you?” Shiro manages. The girl remembers he’s here.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Takashi. Keep up.”
Shiro feels a stab at the sound of his name on an unfamiliar tongue. (Alien, he realises, properly for the first time),
“Well, it appears I’m a woman again. I think,” the girl chews her lip, apparently unsure of this conclusion, “that’s good. Always appreciate a change of pace. Aaand…” she whips back round to face him, making him flinch, and removes the Doctor’s glasses experimentally, “Shit. I still need these things.”
“You’re him?” Shiro realizes, remembering the conversation they’d had months ago, “You’re the regeneration?”
“Obviously,” she goes for an extravagant bow and nearly trips over her overlong trousers, “number fifteen at your service. Well, fifteen plus-one. There’s always a smidge extra. But not because of Peter Cushing!” she points at Shiro sternly, “those films were unlicensed knockoffs. Good for a laugh though,” she relaxes out again, chin-tapping thoughtfully, “Only time I ever heard an Ice Warrior giggle, watching one of those movies. Giggle, can you imagine? Ten-foot canned crocodile giggling like a schoolgirl. Ooh, there’s defensive application in that. Great distraction technique, though probably not against the Daleks." She whirls on him, eyes gleaming, "but what if it even worked on the Daleks, Takashi? What if Peter Cushing actually made the Daleks lau-”
“Don’t,” Shiro holds out an arm to protect himself from the barrage of words.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t… call me Takashi,” he manages.
Her face falls.
“Oh.”
Shiro shuffles awkwardly on the spot, suddenly painfully aware that he’s on board an alien spaceship millions of years and billions of miles from Earth.
“I want to go home,” he hears himself say, surprised he calls it that.
The girl is confused too.
“Home? But you’re already– oh. You mean... Lawn mowers, street signs, picket fences. That sort of thing,” she chews her lip again, a nervous habit developing, “Why?”
“I...”
“Do you want to go… back?”
Not home. She doesn’t call it home, because she knows Shiro’s started calling here home, this funny little box on the corner of nowhere street, no-when.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. The silence stretches. He wants the rota to kick-start, so he can run away with –
Who?
“Well, that’s good,” the stranger wearing his Doctor’s clothes tries for a timid smile, “No point going somewhere you already know the answers.”
Then two things happen:
- The girl’s trousers fall down
“Ah,” she says, looking down at the pool of fabric around her ankles, “I suppose I’ll be needing new clothes.”
- The TARDIS explodes.
“Ah,” she says again, “perhaps clothes can wait.”
A chunk of falling space station smashes through the ceiling. Debris explode everywhere, the cloisters clang to life, roundles implode like a chain of firecrackers, pop-pop-pop, and Shiro’s stomach rollercoaster-drops.
They’re in freefall.
Station shrapnel whizzes past his face, sparks firework across the room, the sky whirls sickening through the gaping hole in the roof, and the girl is just standing there in the middle of it all, staring.
A column groans and starts to crumble. Shiro leaps and tackles the her out of the way just as an avalanche of rubble smashes a hole in the console.
More sparks. Fireball. The cloisters shut off. The TARDIS screams.
Shiro and the girl are thrown across the room; it’s all he can do to cocoon her with his body as best he can, take the brunt of it when they bodyslam the wall, cling tighter as they’re pinballed away – he knows a nosedive when he feels one, and they’re in trouble now. The hole in the ceiling veers into view and he kicks away from the open maw of sky flashing past, faster and faster –
“What’s going on?!” he screams over the keening of the ship.
“Her outer-shell’s been breached!” the girl yells, “it’s taking everything she has to keep us from being sucked out, she doesn’t have time for gravity –“
There’s another boom and something punches a huge dent the wall.
“This shouldn’t be happening!” the girl yells, “if you put the shields up when we got in –“
“If I did what?” Shiro yells. A sliver of rubble knifes past his ear.
“Shields, Ta- Shiro, did you not put up the shields?”
“You never taught me how!”
“Never taught you –“ her face brightens, “oh right, that was the other one!“
“Other one?!”
“One of them. Doesn’t matter, get me to the console.”
“But-“
“Now!”
Shiro grimaces and kicks off the wall; they soar between slicing shards of coral and steel (it’s OK, it’s just a simulation, you’ve flown these a thousand times –)
Something nicks his ankle. The console is within reach, a hole punched in it by the rubble. The girl stretches her arms out –
“I can’t reach!”
Desperation twists Shiro’s guts.
“You can’t –“
She flails in mid-air.
“Curse my short little arms! Shiro, push off!”
He understands, brings his knees in, places their feet together – so much smaller than his now – and pushes her with all his strength.
Good news: the girl grabs the console with both hands and holds fast.
Bad news: Shiro goes cartwheeling into a field of debris. A thousand razor blades fly at his face and white-hot pain streaks across his nose –
“Got it!” the girl yells, elbow-deep in the console like a plumber cleaning out a drain, “hold on to your butt!”
The same amber energy from before flares from inside the console like a match being struck.
The TARDIS bellows like a supercharged engine. The sky outside tears away like tissue paper and a seething kaleidoscope explodes in its place.
Unsurprisingly, two seconds isn’t long enough for Shiro to hold on to anything, even his butt.
The world goes tumbling like the inside of a washing machine, pain sears across his face and the hole in the roof swallows him up and he falls out of the box and –
oops.
Creation drowns him in a technicolour thunderstorm; liquid fireworks flood him mouth to lung to vein – and he sees the first sparks flare against cold cave walls thousands of years ago, and typhoons rage Mongol warships into matchsticks off the Japanese coast, and a bloated white boot comes down on the barren grey skin of the moon –
A hand catches his ankle, holds fast. Small fingers, slender, firm. They reel him in, a fishing line fighting the current –
Shiro is pulled back under the roof of the TARDIS and gasps deep lungfuls of air. He twists; the girl has him, a length of cable wrapped around the time rota the only thing holding them in place. She grins at him, bright and fierce as a lioness.
Then they (crash) land.
Ow.