but_can_i_be_trusted: from the Wayne & Shuster sketch, 'The Mark of Zero' (a 'Zorro' parody) (Vincent Price)
Echo Invictus ([personal profile] but_can_i_be_trusted) wrote in [community profile] 10prompts2024-10-09 09:32 pm

Table: Weather. Prompt #8: Foggy.

Title: 'Marissa'
Author: [personal profile] but_can_i_be_trusted
Table/Prompt: Table: Weather. Prompt #8: Foggy.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing/Character: Twelfth Doctor, original character
Summary: "Please. I need a ride."
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some eeriness
Notes: Crossposted to [community profile] whatif_au


"I need you to give me a ride."

Startled, the Doctor looked up from his book. He frowned at the sight of a young woman in a wispy dress.

She gazed at him, her face devoid of expression. "Please, I need you to give me a ride," she repeated.

"Nice to make your acquaintance," the Doctor sarcastically responded. "But I don't exactly run a shuttle service."

"I apologize. My name is Marissa." She motioned around them, at the late-night café that the eastern continent of Bekoria was known for. "But, this late at night, I can't get any other transportation."

It seemed to be true enough. Though many shops and cafés were still attracting custom, it was all foot traffic. The Doctor wasn't sure what time it was, but it appeared to be late enough for any drivers to have called it a day and gone home. Bekoria was just strange, that way.

"I see that you have your own transport," Marissa continued, ignoring the Doctor's terseness. "I'd be more than happy to pay you, but I don't have any money. As poor of compensation as this might be, I can at least give you my undying gratitude."

"That's touching," he replied, glancing back toward the book he'd been reading. "But I don't take passengers. I'm sorry, but I can't help you.' He wasn't going to bother asking how Marissa knew about his TARDIS. She'd most likely seen him land the old girl. "Perhaps there's someone else around here who can give you a hand."

When there was no answer, he looked up. Marissa was nowhere in sight.

"Fast mover, that one," he muttered, rising from his table. Taking one last quick sip of the coffee that he'd been working on drinking, he entered the TARDIS.

Marissa stood at the console. "Please. I need a ride."

"Who the hell do you think you are," the Doctor snapped. "I'm not trying to be rude...much. But I really don't take passengers. You're going to have to leave."

"Don't turn me out," Marissa emotionlessly pleaded, her hand absently grasping the sonic screwdriver from the panel that the Doctor had left it resting on. "No one else is willing to help me. It won't take long, I promise." Her fingers tightened around the sonic, almost becoming a wordless threat. "You've got to help me. Please give me a ride."

Gritting his teeth, the Doctor regarded Marissa. She was an odd one, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what was off about her.

Perhaps going along with her request would be for the best, for all concerned. Marissa would go on his merry way, and the Doctor would have her out of his hair...as well as out of his TARDIS.

"Very well," he sighed. "If you're being honest with me about nobody else wanting to help you. Put down my sonic, and tell me where I can drop you off."

To his chagrin, Marissa continued to grip the sonic, but quickly rattled off a series of coordinates. They led to Bekoria's northwestern archipelago, to an island at its very edge. Quickly, the Doctor punched the coordinates in, gratified to hear the TARDIS engines' usual traveling noises. Soon enough, they'd arrived.

"Here we are," the Doctor announced, turning toward his unwelcome passenger. "I hope you're...satisfied..."

There was no sign of Marissa. Nor was there any sign of the sonic screwdriver.

He hurried toward the corridors. "Don't wander off," he shouted. "You could get lost in here. Hello," he called, jogging a few yards.

Nothing.

"Damn it," he growled, stomping back up to one of the monitors. "That woman, whoever she is, is more trouble than she's worth."

While the Doctor's intention was to run a scan of lifeforms, to try to trace where Marissa had vanished to, he was thrown by what the monitors were already showing him, of the island that Marissa had been so adamant about reaching.

Outside, it was dark. Not from nightfall, as the TARDIS had just left the hemisphere of Bekoria that was currently shrouded in night. Instead, it was heavily cloudy; either that, or the island was currently draped in a dense fog that had yet to burn off in the light of day. Here and there, the fog looked darker, shapes hunching in orderly scatters.

"Where are we," the Doctor murmured. And why was his skin suddenly beginning to crawl?

Both hearts thudding uncomfortably, he approached the doors, and cautiously pulled them open. With the motion, the fog swirled in all directions, slightly clearing his line of vision.

A graveyard. Marissa had led the Doctor to a graveyard.

"Don't you dare tell me," the Doctor breathed. "Don't you ever dare to tell me that I've been taken in by a phantom hitchhiker. Those stories are just urban legends, becoming more tangled with every retelling. They're rubbish! And I don't believe in ghosts!"

Nevertheless, he felt his hearts skip several beats at the sight of his sonic resting on a gravestone. Much of the detail was worn away from time. But one small bit of text remained clear enough to read:

rissa
ne but not
rgotten