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“I asked you not to leave several times .”
The Doctor was sitting with his head buried in his hands, in the console room of the TARDIS. He didn’t look up as Victorious entered, only forced himself to take a long, slow, steadying breath.
“Tell me you weren’t out there trying to find them,” he said, unwilling to face his older self, dreading what the answer might be. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“No.” Not a lie, but not the truth either. He paused for a moment, the gears now grinding in his head. He remembered leaving, but there was a sickness twisting in his stomach. “All I did was walk. I took a walk to clear my head; do you expect me to stay in and just roam around your TARDIS? Plus, constantly asking me to stay makes me want to leave more, I’ll let that one sink in for you there, bud.”
“Yes!” The Doctor snapped. “Yes, that is EXACTLY what I expected, Victorious! It’s not as if you don’t have an infinite number of rooms to amuse yourself with! I’m not exactly keeping you hostage!”
Quite the opposite in fact. Since Victorious had walked into his life, The Doctor had felt more and more as if his future self was hijacking both their timelines. His quest to save the Ponds, while admirable, was starting to border on obsession, and The Doctor couldn’t help but to worry about what exactly it was he had agreed to.
“... Victorious. You can’t just-... run off like that. You said you wanted my help. I promised you I WOULD help you get your friends back. But if we’re going to work together- Look, I’m not asking for you to act like one of our companions, but we have the ‘Don’t Wander Off’ rule for a reason! Where were you?”
