Untold Knowledge (Doctor Who x Genius Fem! Oc) [Book 1]

Chapter 08: School Reunion

After they had arrived at a coffee shop nearby, Rose and Mickey were getting food while the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Echo were sat around the defunct K9 on the table. On the jukebox was softly playing 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' by Joy Division. "I thought of you on Christmas Day. This Christmas just gone? Great big spaceship overhead. I thought, oh yeah, bet he's up there." Sarah mused with a gentle smile.

"Right on top of it, yeah." he smiled in return as he continued to work, Echo helping here and there as she enjoyed watching him work. He knew fully well that she'd be able to fix it up herself, but he was also learning that she enjoyed just watching even more. 

"What about Rose and Echo?" she wondered.

"Rose was with me, I hadn't met Echo yet."

Her eyes then landed on the quiet and clearly highly intelligent woman beside him. "How did you two meet?"

Echo shrugged, "Oh, you know, the usual. I was dimension hopping and just kinda ran into them. Can't get rid of him since." she joked, getting a mock glare and a smile from the Time Lord before he went back to work.

"Are you a Time Lord as well?" Sarah asked curiously.

Echo scoffed and shook her head, "Oh no, I started out as human. But after hopping through dimensions and time and such, I was filled to the brim with time energy. I did multiple experiments and found out I basically have the time vortex pumping through my veins now." she answered nonchalantly, then attached a few wires together. 

Sarah's eyes widened at her, pure shock running through her. But she shook her head and knew that anything was possible when with the Doctor. At that thought, she turned back to him. "Did I do something wrong, because you never came back for me. You just dumped me." 

"I told you. I was called back home and in those days humans weren't allowed." he said, wanting her to understand.

"I waited for you. I missed you." she admitted quietly.

"Oh, you didn't need me. You were getting on with your life." he brushed off with a smile, not quite getting what she meant.

"You were my life." she insisted, making his smile drop. "You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens next, or with what doesn't happen next." The Doctor looked back to K9's circuitry. Echo noticed the hurt in his then hunched shoulders and the slight down turn of his mouth. She placed her hand on his for comfort, just out of sight from Sarah Jane as they stayed half behind K9. "You took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, you showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles, and then you just dropped me back on Earth. How could anything compare to that?"

"All those things you saw, do you want me to apologize for that?" he asked incredulously.

"No. But we get a taste of that splendor and then we have to go back?"

"Look at you, you're investigating. You found that school. You're doing what we always did." he tried to lighten the mood, wanting her to see the reality of what happened.

"You could have come back." she muttered.

"I couldn't." he immediately denied, his eyes growing darker.

"Why not?" the human woman pressed, desperate to know why she was forgotten about. But he kept working on K9 as if she hadn't asked. When Sarah looked to Echo, the mysterious woman simply shook her head as a silent way of telling her to drop it. If the Doctor wanted to talk about his darkest days, it should be on his accord. Not in an interrogation. "It wasn't Croydon. Where you dropped me off, that wasn't Croydon." 

Echo's smile began to slowly return, already seeing how bad of a pilot he was. "Where was it?" she asked, hoping it wasn't to far for her.

"Aberdeen." she answered with anger flaring up.