Zoe and the 11 Doctors - The Image of an Angel

Chapter 7

She blinked.

One little blink was all it took. She heard shouts of her name briefly before everything went white. It felt like she was moving at the speed of light, maybe she was, she couldn't tell. Pain throbbed through her head and her stomach clenched together horribly. She felt like being sick, but she was able to keep it in. She fell with a thud onto the soft grass, and fell unconscious.

"Zoe. Zoe? There you are. Come on, up we get." A firm hand pulled her up, and she saw the fifth Doctor smiling over her, presumably bringing her back to 1940.

"Where are we, Celery?"

"1604. Lucky, really. A year earlier, and I wouldn't have been able to get you back."

"That's the year Elizabeth I died, right?"

"Exactly. It was aliens that killed her. There were so many terrible possibilities that I had seen as alternatives, which could never happen. If anything had gone differently, any new people, any new events, a fixed point in time -"

"Would have been changed and torn an unfixable hole in the universe. You Doctors really do go in for danger, don't you?"

"Danger's out middle name."

"What is your name, actually?"

"Doctor."

"No, your real name. And don't tell me your real name is Doctor, because that's ridiculous."

"I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

He paused. "Various reasons."

"Such as?"

"Look, I really can't say, and there's no way you're going to make me say, so stop trying."

"Fine." Zoe huffed. As they headed back to the Tardis, Zoe looked at her surroundings, the seemed to be in a very large garden. Right at the other end was some kind of palace, but it wasn't clear; the garden spanned over such a distance.

"So, this is 1604. So I know when we are, but where are we?"

"Where do you think? In the gardens of James I. And I think this is our queue to leave. Zoe followed his gaze, to see a man in fine robes walking out into the gardens, two guards following just behind him. Zoe and the Doctor began to back away, but they had spotted them. The guards were beginning to run towards them at a tremendous rate, and they only just made it into the Tardis. Banging and shouting came from the outside, telling them to open up, but Zoe heard the wheezing sound of the Tardis, and the noise outside became quieter and quieter, until it was muted completely.

"Ok then." The Doctor tapped his console impatiently.

"What?"

"The Tardis wants to take us somewhere else."

"Where?"

"Quite near that old laboratory, 1938. Year before the war started."

"And why's that?"

"I honestly have no idea." The Tardis landed with a final whoosh, and the Doctor held out his arm, which Zoe linked her own with. "Shall we?" They smiled as they stepped out of the Tardis, not really knowing what to expect. But the faint images that had crossed their minds were nothing like what they saw.

It was a spaceship. A proper spaceship, half buried into the ground, just enough space in the door that wasn't covered by dirt to get in and out. It seemed very badly damaged, with dents and broken pieces everywhere, and little flames flickered on the edges.