The Club At The End Of The Universe: Doctor Who FanFiction

Scene Ten: A Different Kind Of Sadness

The Doctor circled the Tardis console as it hummed away, the central crystal bopping up and down. He pulled himself over to the monitor console, and switched it on.  He could see a view from the same street back on earth.

Then an image of Lotus flashed on the screen. It was an older, more mature woman than the version the Doctor knew. Time slipped away in the Tardis like sand through fingertips.

The Doctor could see her, clear as day, carrying a small lump on her body. It was the clean and innocent appearance of a newborn, tightly snug in a warm blanket and a Tardis blue beanie covering his soft head.

Lotus bounced him up and down her leg, a pair of new eyes gazing around the world around him. Lotus then looked up to the sky, and it was as if she was looking at the Doctor, right through the screen's monitor.

The Doctor found himself smiling. He felt a tear roll down his cheek.

"Yaz, look, she-"

The Doctor looked up with his blurred eyes, away from the monitor and realized, as he looked around the empty console room. He closed his eyes, wiped them and then flicked off the monitor.

The Tardis hummed and creaked, almost like it was more silent than usual. The Doctor stood up straight, put his hands in his pocket and looked down at his shoes.

Then, as he continued to hear nothing but his own rapid double heartbeat, a thought entered his head, which shone through his eyes within an instant.

"No!"

The Doctor pulled forward the first lever he saw on the glowing orange console unit, and the Tardis began to thrum excitedly.

The Tardis pulled herself from the vortex, and within an instant, the blue box apparated across the night sky of London. It spun across a glorious view, flying across the city, shining with light, gleaming with the Thames river and the skyscrapers surrounding it.

She stopped at an alleyway, surrounded by exposed brick walls lined with a row of  light bulbs, gleaming the cobbled ground below it. The Tardis wheezed and groaned to a stop, the sound of the time vortex itself faded away.

The Doctor swung the doors open and poked his head out. This time he was careful not to jump out of the doors without looking, reminding himself of a rather unfortunate trip to San Francisco's Chinatown so many years ago.

The street was empty. He smiled. Coming out of the police box, he put his hands in pockets and strolled towards the sound of people, noise and bustle, with a smile on his face.

He was in Camden Town.