Chapter Text
“Doctor, what kind of signal is it again?” Donna leaned back against the TARDIS console while the Doctor moved frenetically around her.
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m interested.”
Donna sighed. They were going back to Earth. Again. Earth was dull. Admittedly after having been nearly eaten alive by shadows, a little dullness might not go amis. “And it’s in London.”
“Yes.” The Doctor moved her aside to flip a lever that had been behind her. “It’s near…” he peered at the screen which displayed a map, “Covent Garden”
“At least I can do some shopping.”
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, making it spike up even more. “Donna, if there are aliens invading London…”
“Again,” Donna interrupted.
He nodded. “Again - finding the best deal on that vintage dress isn’t going to be your top priority.”
The redhead rolled her eyes. “What about the last time we found a ‘weird signal’? It was a car alarm, for goodness sake!”
“A space station is not a car.”
“It was deadly boring.”
“Yes. Fine. You shop. I’ll find the signal.” He flipped another lever and the TARDIS materialized with its familiar groaning wheeze.
They stepped outside. Donna wrapped her jacket around her more tightly and looked around at the busy street. “When are we?”
“2013. After the Olympics. Sorry.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “Meet back here in three hours, yeah?”
The Doctor nodded, held the sonic screwdriver up in front of his eyes, made an adjustment to it, and headed off down the street without a backwards glance.
“And when you end up getting captured by something slimy, I’ll come find you,” she muttered under her breath and stalked down the street in the opposite direction.
o0o
The Doctor dodged through the crowded streets, eyes fixed on the sonic screwdriver. He automatically avoided pedestrians, bicycles, and cars alike. The Time Lord wasn’t even sort of looking where he was going, so when he found himself stumbling through a wood and glass door into a comparatively dark room, he started.
He looked up and around and grinned. “A bookshop! I love a bookshop.” The shelves were packed, books laying horizontally above the regimented titles. His task momentarily forgotten, he plunged into the stacks.
Two minutes and fifty-three seconds later, someone cleared their throat behind him. The Doctor spun and the large, ancient (by human standards) tome fell from his startled fingers. It was caught before it hit the ground. The other man straightened, book cradled in his long hands. He looked down at the Doctor over a perfectly straight, aristocratic nose. And it was actually down. The man was taller than himself by a couple of inches and almost as thin. Long black hair framed a handsome face with high, sharp cheekbones and startling bright blue eyes.
“Can I help you?” The man’s voice was deep, cold, a bit disdainful and terrifically posh. He was dressed in neck to toe black. The collar of the shirt was high but split in the front revealing several inches of long white throat.
The Doctor swallowed hard. “Ah, no, thank you. I was just looking around your - your? - lovey shop.”
“It’s mine, yes.” The man flipped the book over in his hands, then looked back up at the Doctor, eyebrow raised. “Read ancient Greek, do you?”
“Well yes. I read everything.”
The other eyebrow joined the first. “Really?”
The Doctor tugged at his collar and ran a hand through his hair. “Yes?” What the hell was wrong with him?
The taller man pushed the book back towards him. “Prove it.”
The Doctor took the book back and opened it up and read a passage at random. “εἰ δ᾽ αὖθ᾽, ὃ μὴ γένοιτο, συμφορὰ τύχοι, Ἐτεοκλέης ἂν εἷς πολὺς κατὰ πτόλιν ὑμνοῖθ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἀστῶν φροιμίοις πολυρρόθοις οἰμώγμασίν θ᾽, ὧν Ζεὺς ἀλεξητήριος ἐπώνυμος γένοιτο Καδμείων πόλει.”
The other man’s eyes grew wide as the Doctor read. “Very well, you read Greek. But everything?”
The Doctor grinned and snapped the book shut. “What’ve you got?”
As it turned out, he had a lot. Over the next thirty-two minutes and twenty-three seconds, the strange man challenged the Doctor with books in twenty-one human languages. It was child’s play, but for some reason the Doctor felt the need to impress this man. He reminded him of…
“What’s your name?”
“Lukas Sterling. You?”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Just ‘the Doctor’?”
“Yup, that’s me.”
The other man - Lukas - smiled at him. It was sharp and full of very white, very straight teeth. A nice smile, but with an undercurrent of… darkness? Danger? Something terribly familiar which tugged at the Doctor’s mind like an old friend. “A pleasure.” He held his hand out.
The Time Lord shook the proffered hand and smiled back. “Likewise.”
“Was there actually something I could help you find?”
The Doctor was reminded that he hadn’t actually come in here to look for books or to chat with mysterious strangers. “I actually was just… passing through?”
The eyebrow was back up. “Try again.”
The Doctor retrieved the psychic paper from inside of his jacket, and flipped it open. “I’m investigating…”
“That is blank.” Lukas pointed to the paper and a scowl drew his brows down. “Don’t bother trying to lie to me, it will not work.”
It was always annoying when the psychic paper didn’t perform properly. “Oh fine.” He tucked the paper away and pulled the sonic screwdriver out instead. “I’ve been following an anomalous spatial signal and it lead me here.” He thumbed the switch and the screwdriver buzzed to life. The light at its tip was the same color of Lukas’s eyes.
“You’re not… that’s...” Lukas stared at the screwdriver, winced and brought long fingers up to massage his temples. “I think you should go.”
“Please, this could be very dangerous for you. You’ve got to let me take a look around.”
Lukas closed his eyes, brow creased. “I… very well.”
The Doctor smiled. “Thank you.” He turned in a tight circle and headed off through the stacks again. The signal got stronger to the northwest, and soon he came up against a large metal door. “What’s in here?”
“Nothing.”
The Doctor turned at Lukas’s strangely flat tone. He tried the door handle. It was locked. “Will you let me in?”
“No. There is nothing down there.”
The Doctor looked at the taller man. His eyes seemed to glow in the dim light. “Sure about that, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Well I’m not.” He aimed the sonic screwdriver at the lock only to have his wrist caught in a vise-tight grip. The Doctor looked up and met implacable blue eyes.
“You need to leave. Now.” There was a dark violence stirring in that voice and the hand on his wrist was inhumanly strong. It felt so familiar, this confrontation. Comfortable and dangerous. The Doctor wanted to dive into it, but something - common sense, maybe? - held him back.
“If that’s what you want…”
“It is. Go.”
The Doctor nodded and took a step away from the metal door, towards the front of the store. Lukas released his wrist with a small shove. The Doctor retreated to the outer door, Lukas stalking after him, looming dangerously in the dim light. The Time Lord spilled out the front door and stumbled against the door jam. The other man shut the door in his face, visibly bolting it and flipped the placard in the window to “closed”. With a glare, he spun back into the dim interior of the shop.
The Doctor shook his head. “Well that wasn’t suspicious at all.”