Chapter Text
When the blue box oscillated into existence outside Helen's school at about two o'clock, Helen was not in the slightest bit surprised but she was very excited, so much so that she almost squeaked in class and got a reprimand.
She was also sort of grateful for the chance to use the word "oscillated", even inside her own head. It was a good word, but not the sort of thing you would use in an ordinary day, and nobody at school liked the same sorts of stories Helen did, so it languished, neglected, in daily life and they weren't working on physics right now so even in school-work she didn't get to use it often. But the TARDIS (because that was what it was) definitely oscillated, flickering in and out of existence with a little more push towards existence each time, until it quite solidly sat outside her window.
The TARDIS sat outside on the grass and Helen desperately wanted to run right out to it. But she sat in the middle of class, so she couldn't, not without breaking a lot of rules. So she sat, instead, and waited, and tried not to wriggle in her seat.
She felt exactly like Wendy from Peter Pan. Except, of course, less . . . .well, silly and pathetic. Helen chewed on her cheek and waited as she heard footsteps down the corridor.
The person who rapped sharply at the classroom door and demanded the attention of Miss Horn, however, did not look even a little bit like what Gran had described. To begin with, it was a woman. To follow, she was short. To finish, she had bright red hair in curls and rather brown skin with a lot of freckles, instead of black hair and rather white skin without any freckles at all.
She did point to Helen, though, and say, "I've need of that girl there. Here's a note from her mum," and then flash a wallet-y looking thing with some paper in it. To Helen's eyes it was totally blank, but Miss Horn read it with due solemnity and nodded. Then she said, "Helen, you're excused to go with Ms - "
But Helen was already gathering her bag and her notebook and wandering out after the Doctor (because it had to be the Doctor) before Miss Horn could finish being bewildered that nobody had given her a name.
"Come on, then," said the Doctor, so Helen followed her quite cheerfully out of the school and towards the TARDIS, trying to ignore the fact that her heart was racing and she could feel her face flush and the contents of her mind could most accurately be transcribed as eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! She would be very grown up and collected about this. She would. Even if her head totally full of eeeeee! and nothing else.
Except, of course, for remembering Gran's instructions very carefully. She wouldn't like to disappoint Gran.
When the reached the ancient blue police-box, the Doctor said, "I presume, then, that your grandmother has told you about me - "
As she turned around, Helen, obedient to Gran's oft-repeated instructions, punched the Doctor in the nose.
It wasn't a very good punch. For one, she was only nine and not very big, and the Doctor was a grownup and an alien besides. For another, Dad, being a conscientious objector, had interfered with every attempt by anyone else to teach Helen or her brothers to punch anyone properly; she'd had to make do with clandestine lessons from Gran, with careful look-rounds to make sure nobody else saw. And further, Helen had to hold her bag and her notebook. But given all of that, she felt it was a pretty decent punch.
The Doctor's head snapped back, at least, and her hands flew to her face. She stared at Helen in shocked outrage for a moment before exclaiming, indignantly, "OW!" but Helen didn't see any blood.
Helen bit her cheek, feeling slightly apologetic now. "Sorry," she said. "But Gran made me promise I'd do that if you ever showed up again. Plus I'm to tell you that if you get me killed she will break the last rule and build her own TARDIS and find you, and you're a bastard, and she hates you, and after we've done whatever it is you're after, if you don't show up for tea and an apology she will never speak to you again, and also you are a moron, and also she misses you." Helen looked upwards for a second, trying to remember if that was everything. "Oh, and also, apparently it's just like you to send a pair of weird Americans to do something instead of damn well coming yourself, you coward." The last came out by rote.
After a moment in which Helen's heart nearly stopped and she was terrified that she'd have to stay here at school after all and miss everything because she'd done it wrong, the Doctor flung her head back and laughed. "Oh Donna, I miss you too," she said, as if to the air. "Well then. You're - Helen, right? Right. Come in, come in. We'll go save some people, and then we'll see your Gran for tea."