Raindrops And Sunshowers (5/RomanaII)

It was absolutely absurd how much Earth literature the Doctor had on his TARDIS. And how much he wanted her to read it. Romana picked up a thin paperback entitled 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and flipped through it idly. She concluded that it was a remarkably silly book, and put it back down.

Speaking of remarkably silly and absolutely absurd, where was the Doctor? He hadn't bothered her for hours. Sure, she was in her room, but that rarely stopped him from barging in or knocking incessantly for her to come out and see what he had done.

While she enjoyed the privacy and the relative quiet, she was also extremely suspicious of it. What was he up to now?

Romana pulled on her leather boots, which complemented her light orange knickers and fitted navy shirt, and went in search of the man.

"Doctor? You have been unusually quiet lately," she said as she entered the console room. The console itself was scattered with papers, as it usually was when he was trying to figure something out. His untidy scrawl revealed nothing to her. However, the readings on the console did. They had landed.

"Have you gone out without me?" She asked the empty air and pressed the button to open the doors.

The sun was shining lazily, shining with all it's might. It did it's very best to make the field smooth and light. The air was cool, but had a warm breeze blowing through the grass, forming a beautiful spring green and brown ocean. A picnic of patrons in picnic chairs sat on the outlines of a cricket field, watching the English Nationals team play though their sets for the upcoming season.

Players were coming up, batting, rebatting, having a jolly good time. Suddenly a hush fell over the crowd. A new player had come up to bat. Well, not nessicarily a new player, but someone who was made an honorary member of the team back in 1924. His uniform stood out from the crowd, being an unusual twist of vintage stripes held up with question marked suspenders, and a question marked dress shirt underneath, sleeves rolled up. The man approached the wicket, bat in hand. The pitcher gave his toss.

THWACK!!

The ball went soaring above the crowd, beyond outfield, settling the final score in favor of shirts. The crowd began to cheer and clap, reveling in the display they had just witnessed. Several players came up to the man, congratulating him on such an awesome hit. He simply slipped out of the crowd, gathering his jumper, frock, and hat, and began to travel to the police box from whence he came.

On the edge of the field sat the familiar blue box that he knew intimately. He had many great travels in that box, enjoying the life of travels and dangers he had experienced. He remembered that Tegan and Nyssa were still in the box, deciding to stay behind and relax after the last encounter of Daleks they had just been a part of. He gave himself a small chuckle, thinking Ah, the fragility of the human species. to himself.

As the Doctor got closer to the box, he realized that it looked different in the afternoon sun. The paint was brighter, the information panel on the door looked as if it were freshly painted. He paused for a moment, gathering in the beauty of the box. "Old girl, I didn't realize how good you looked in normal sunlight. And to think I said you needed a paint!"

He pulled out his key and stuck it in the lock. At that moment, the doors opened, causing an unfamiliar passenger to topple right into him...

Romana very nearly bowled the man over.

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that!" She said, just barely catching both herself and the blonde man before they could fall over. "I didn't see you there. You haven't seen a friend of mine, have you? He's got curly hair and a ridiculously long scarf. He-"

Romana frowned, taking a good look at the man she'd run into. He was young, blonde haired and blue eyed, wearing a cricket outfit. She'd never seen him before, and yet there was something remarkably familiar. It buzzed in the back of her mind.

"... Doctor?" It had to be him. He had that same childish spark in his eyes. And instantly, Romana scolded him. "What have you done to your appearance? Honestly I'm not with you for a few mere hours and you get yourself in enough trouble that you need to regenerate?"

"Oh that's perfectly alright, I was just-" He paused in his steps. He stood agape at the vastly familiar face standing in front of him. He looked him over with her mousy features. Her sharp, intellectual eyes examined his every detail. Her bright smile hidden behind firm but friendly facial features. She radiated of an ancient beauty that only Gallifrey could have produced.

"Romana? Is that really you?" She questioned him about a man with a scarf and hair that would give a disco a fever from hell. Has it really been that long since he had seen her? A million questions buzzed through his mind, but they were all suppressed by a sudden matronly scolding that he knew all too well...

"Romana! It IS you! My goodness, what on Earth are you doing in my TARDIS? I mean, what in the TARDIS are you doing on Earth? Where has scarfie gone off to? For goodness sakes, I'm so unpredictable." He took a look around the field. Some people were still lingering on the field from the cricket game earlier. They made eye contact with him, giving him head nods and some waved.

As he turned back to Romana, a loud emergency shrill came from inside the TARDIS. The console began to flash and buzz, lighting up the console room with red and yellow flashes. He looked down at Romana. "Looks like someone needs our help. Romana, I'm needed. My TARDIS is on the other side of town. I'm sure...your Doctor...is equally as preoccupied. I'm sure that if we take that call, I can have you back before we even left. Promise."

He gave Romana a youthful, cheeky smile. If someone observed this particular smile with the untrained eye, it could almost be perceived as the same smile a child begging for ice cream would give it's parent.

Now Romana understood. He hadn't regenerated. Not yet, anyway. The man with the mad curls and ever-present grin was somewhere in the present with her, but so was this younger, kinder-faced future him. She had just opened her mouth to tell him how glad she was he was well, when an alarm sounded behind her.

Turning, she could see the inside of the TARDIS flashing in shades of red and yellow. She could feel her sense of adventure tingling and turned back to the Doctor, who was asking to use his own, past TARDIS. The smile he gave her, though infinitely different from the one she was used to, still contained the essence of the Doctor.

As stern as she tried to stay, she cracked. A smile opened up her face and she let out a small laugh. "Oh alright," she said. "But you better get me back in time. You know how you get!"

With light, excited steps, Romana re-entered the TARDIS and made her way to the center console. "Come on, Doctor! Someone needs our help!" She called back with a grin.

With a youthful bounce and grin, he hugged Romana and raced into the TARDIS. He pulled the bright red knob, closing the doors and starting up the machine. The Doctor hung up his coat and gear and returned to the console. He stood looming above it, feeling nostalgic and reminiscent. A glimmer of a tear could almost be spotted running down his cheek. At long last he cracked his knuckles in an outward fashion, and dove right in.

He began to type in calculations directly into the computer herself, causing a bright and cheery humming noise to ruminate throughout the entire room. Beeps and trills were heard occasionally, along with the ever so delightful TWONGGGGGG that no one seemed to place it's origin. After racing around the console creating quite a spectacle of himself, the Doctor turned to Romana, who was just as entertained watching him work. "It's not so different from my own, you know. By the way, we haven't been formally introduced. I'm the Doctor. Well, the immediate predecessor to the scarf. So not a whole lot of time has passed. Where are you two in relative to time? Shada? What about Nimon?"

Romana grinned, watching him bounce around the center console (and her) with his usual youthful zeal. His body had changed, but he hadn't. She wondered if he would ever change in that respect. She let him pilot by himself, even though she knew perfectly well how to operate the TARDIS. He seemed to prefer it that way, anyway.

"Shada," she said. "We just got done returning all the prisoners. That was a less than pleasant experience, I must say. So you've gone from extremely long scarf to..." She put a finger under the Doctor's suspenders, emphasizing her point. "question marked suspenders? Interesting." She gave him a smile to let him know she was teasing.

"So, where are we, Doctor? You know Earth better than I do."

"Ah! Shada! How I miss the place. Well, sort of. I miss Chronotis more than anything else. But trust me, this isn't the last time you'll see him. Oops...never mind that. But let's see here..." He leaned over the console vector screen and let his eyes scan it wildly. "It looks like Earth still, so there's some sort of otherworldly technology. But it's usual where it's coming from though...."

A pang of confusion smeared across his face. It seemed to beckon from days gone by, almost as it he hadn't regenerated in the first place. He looked up at Romana with that look of dread and confusion that seemed almost too familiar. "It looks like Gaul."

Gaul was too technologically behind for anything of this caliber to call the TARDIS, at least from this day and age. He knew that some gypsies in the countryside had telepathic abilities powerful enough to send an SOS to him, but that was few and far in between. But this was unusual, however not impossible. The Doctor long since abandoned the idea of impossibilities....

He gathered his coat and jumper from the coat hanger, put them on, and returned to the console. He flipped the door knobs and started towards the open door.

Romana opened her mouth in what was meant to be a scolding, but turned into a laugh. "Doctor, you know better!" Well, he had given her something to look forward to, anyway.

"Gaul?" Her curiosity aroused, she took a look at the scanner herself. "How could Gaul have gotten through to your TARDIS? Come on, K-oh."

Looking around the console room, Romana noticed a distinct absence of a certain metal dog. "Oh, you must have taken him with you." She tried to hide the slight disappointment. "Ah, well. Lead the way, Doctor!"