On the way, I discovered something else new: the city looked different.
Not visually—same grey concrete, same graffiti, same puddles trying to soak my socks—but in how it felt.
I could sense where time was thin and thick, where events had piled up over each other like layers of paint. Street corners that hummed with decision-points. Patches of air that tingled as if a ship had once landed there, or would.
London was messy, but it was alive.
Honestly, I liked it.
I also discovered that I could walk faster without feeling tired. Time Lord physiology for the win, I guess. Combined with some very efficient shortcuts that I didn't remember learning but had apparently walked a hundred times in other branch-lines of history, I reached the area near the Thames far earlier than any bus could have carried me.
That's also interesting. Now that I think about it, the Doctor always knew exactly where he was supposed to go. Well, frankly that was probably just lazy writing from the scriptwriters, but it could also mean that Time Lords just simply know where to go thanks to their connection to the Time Vortex.
By then, the sky was dark and scattered with light pollution. The London Eye loomed in the distance, its circle lit like a watch dial.
That's such an obvious antenna. Frankly, I can feel the electromagnetic waves coming from it. How did the Doctor not feel it too? Or maybe I'm just better suited for these things? Ah, so many questions, so few answers.
I stayed away from it. That was where the Nestene Consciousness would be confronted. And I'm not going to be present there. What would I even do? I have nothing on me. Even the Doctor is more armed, despite only carrying a screwdriver and a piece of funny paper.
Instead, I found a quiet spot under a railway bridge, out of the way of cameras and bored late-night pedestrians, and leaned against a pillar.
From here, I could already feel the storm.
Waves of plastic-born energy, Nestene control signals, the sharp, bright pulse of the TARDIS engine as it fought back. The Doctor's presence was like a jagged line across it all—angry, grieving, determined. Rose's was smaller but no less fierce, a human-shaped spike of... courage? Weird how I can just feel all these things like a newfound sixth sense.
I closed my eyes and just listened. Not to words, but to the patterns.
This, I thought, is the universe I asked for.
I'd wanted the Whoniverse because it was wild and ridiculous and full of people who kept trying even when everything broke.
Now I was standing in it, hearts beating in time with a fight under a giant tourist attraction, and realised that wanting was easy. Living in it was the part that mattered.
I stayed there until the storm disappeared. What storm? Well, this storm of… informa—? No, no. This… I don't know how to put it. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Hmm. That's actually a surprisingly accurate way of putting it. Ha.
Anyway, it ended. Not with a bang in my senses but more like a dull, tired sigh. The Nestene signal snapped, the plastic web across the city went silent, and the TARDIS line flared bright with survival.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
A minute later, I heard the familiar grinding, wheezing sound echo faintly through the night—closer than before. The TARDIS was moving. It simultaneously sounded exciting and painful. It's like when you're sitting in your pal's car, who doesn't know how to drive stick, and you're just silently sitting in the passenger seat, cringing at the sounds that poor car's making.
***
The TARDIS finished dematerialising.
I didn't try to approach yet. I stayed where I was, deciding I would act if the situation needed it.
The TARDIS looked exactly like the prop I remembered from TV and completely different at the same time. On the outside: police box. Solid, blue, a little scuffed. On the inside—I could feel it—she was huge, wounded, and wary.
She felt me too.
For a second, her presence flared, probing. Not words, not music, more like a tone shift. Surprise? Curiosity? A faint recognition of something similar to herself wrapped up in human skin.
"Hello," I whispered under my breath. "Don't mind me. Just… checking in."
The door opened.
Mickey rushed out first, panic all over his entire body. Rose followed, still in her hoodie and jeans, looking around the street with wide eyes. Finally the Doctor stepped out, hands in his jacket pockets, watching her rather than the surroundings.
Rose goes over to Mickey, who is trying to hide behind a pallet. The Doctor stays in the doorway of the TARDIS.
„A fat lot of good you were." Rose accuses the Doctor.
„Nestene Consciousness? Easy." The Doctor replied to her in a confidence that implied he just saved the day.
„You were useless in there. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me." Rose shot back in a way the Doctor decided to agree.
„Yes, I would. Thank you. Right tthen, I'll be off, unless...er...I don't know, you could come with me." The Doctor suddenly said. When Rose didn't say anything he continued,
„This box isn't just a London hopper, you know. It goes anywhere in the universe free of charge."
„Don't." Mickey suddenly interrupted, shouting. „He's an alien. He's a thing!"
The Doctor seemingly taking a mock offense replied. „Well he's not invited. What do you think? You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep. Or. You could go anywhere."
The offer given was seemingly taking an effect as Rose was deep in thought.
„Is it always this dangerous?"
„Yeah."
„Wait here."
Then Rose suddenly ran away, back towards her home with a smile on her face. Mickey, before taking a last glance at the Doctor, also ran after her, shouting her name and asking her to wait for him.
I watched from the shadows as the Doctor leaned against the door, staring into the middle distance with that same thoughtful expression he'd worn in Jackie's living room.
He's not going to acknowledge my presence, is he? I want to be offended.
On impulse, I stepped out in front of the TARDIS, face to face with the Doctor.
The Doctor's head snapped up immediately, gaze locking onto me as if he'd been expecting this.
Played me, huh? Well, for several long seconds, neither of us spoke.
I decided to speak first as I realised we were just being childish and we'd never get anywhere if things stayed like this. So I put on a gentle smile that hopefully portrayed confidence.
"Hello," I said. "We met earlier. Plastic arm. Screaming. All that. I borrowed something of yours."
The Doctor's eyes flicked down, taking me in—my posture, the new look in my eyes that hadn't been there in the morning.
"Yeah," the Doctor said slowly. "I noticed."
His gaze shifted, sharpened.
"Double heartbeat," he added, almost casually. "That's new too."
"Yeah," I admitted. "Long story. Time Lord story."
The Doctor didn't move for a moment. Then he pushed off the door and took one step closer, just inside the pool of light spilling from a streetlamp.
"Funny thing," he said softly. "Far as I knew, I was the last."
There was no answer to that that didn't hurt.
I met his eyes.
"I was meant to be gone," I said. "Evacuation project. Emergency reincarnation, long way off the main board. The Engineers thought it was clever at the time." I gave a humourless little smile. "Turns out we were right and wrong at the same time."
"The Engineerss?" the Doctor asked.
"TARDIS Corps. Maintenance, diagnostics, the lot." Steven tapped his temple lightly. "I did the fiddly bits. She—" I nodded at the box "—was never really meant to fly without us looking over her once in a while you know?"
The Doctor's jaw tightened at that, a flicker of defensiveness, grief and guilt all at once.
"She does fine," he said. "She gets me where I need to go."
"Eventually," I said, before I could stop myself. "And screaming the whole way."
The TARDIS gave a faint, offended hum that both of them felt more than heard.
I raised my hands in surrender toward the box.
"Hey, I didn't say you weren't brilliant," I told her. "Just that you're overdue for more than a slap on the console and a nice word."
For the first time, the ghost of something like amusement whispered through the ship's presence. The Doctor felt it too; his shoulders eased a fraction.
"So what then?" he asked. "You planning to stand on street corners giving my ship performance reviews?"
"Noo," I said. Then I took a breath. "I'm saying I can help. Proper service. Full diagnostic. Recalibrate the old girl so she doesn't have to drag herself through the vortex half-running on... stubbornness."
The word slipped out before I could stop it, capitalised in my mind.
"The others might be gone," I went on, quieter, "but you've got at least one left. Might as well put him to use."
The TARDIS pulsed, suddenly and unmistakably. A feeling like a door opening.
She wanted this.
Not as a passenger. As an Engineer. One of hers.
The Doctor felt it and rolled his eyes skyward.
"Traitor," he muttered at the box, then looked back at me. "All right. Fine. You want to help, you help. But you take orders when it counts, you don't second-guess me in a crisis, and if you start thinking you know better than everybody else in the room—"
"I've met the High Council," I cut in. "I'm allergic to that sort of thinking."
That, finally, got a real smile out of the Doctor. Brief, but genuine.
Rose's footsteps echoed down the street then, trainers slapping pavement.
"Doctor!" she shouted. "I had to pack—sorry—oh!"
She spotted me and her face brightened.
"You!" she said. "You just ran off! Thought you'd legged it halfway to Cardiff by now."
"Got winded by the stairs. Figured I'd better not get between you lot and your grand adventure."
"Adventure?" Rose repeated, turning to the Doctor with that spark in her eyes.
He grinned, wide and reckless.
"Yeah," he said. "That's us."
He jerked his head toward the TARDIS. "Come on then."
Rose bounced past me toward the doors,
The Doctor turned back to me and asked with his signature smile on his face.
„Forgot to ask your name, I'm the Doctor"
Rose turning back in the doorway in condusion looked at the Doctor.
„What, you forgot already?" she then turned to me „He's my neighbour, Stev-"
„I'm called The Engineer." I interrupted Rose, back straightened, nose held up a little, also wearing a grin that reached to my ears.