Current location:	the garret annex (aka living room)
Current mood:	mellow
Current music:	BBC 7
Entry tags:	doctorwho100, dr who, fic, tardis, ten, ten/tardis

Fic: Forms
Fic Name: Forms
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Prompt: #6 - Hours
Claim: Ten/Tardis
Spoilers: Not a one.
Notes: Written for the doctorwho_100 challenge. (Prompt chart is here.) Also X-posted to 10thdoctor
• Fic happens when you and a friend spend 4 hours trying to get her car out of a NYC impound lot ... (And it's slightly off-topic, but it still appalls me: $20 for the taxi to the impound lot; $250 to get the car out of impound; $50 extra for the 'one-day storage fee'- because we passed midnight while waiting in line - and $150 for the parking ticket that they put on the car apparently while it was being towed. It's one hell of a racket.)

FORMS

"Next."

"Ah, yes, hello. Can you tell me - "

"Forms, please."

"I'm sorry?"

"I need your forms."

"My what?"

The woman in the cubbyhole sighed and tapped on the glass between them. "See this sign?" she asked.

"Yes, but - "

"What's it say?"

The Doctor leaned back to read the hand-written sign taped to the partition. "It says 'Have forms ready before coming to window' - coming should only have one 'm,' by the way - 'or you will be asked to step behind the line.'"

"Well?"

The Doctor blinked at her. "I ... have no idea what that means." The woman rolled her eyes and slumped in her seat.

"It means," she huffed, "that if you don't got the forms filled out and hand them to me, then you're gonna have to go and get them. And you gotta wait in line again."

"Oh! I see. So it should really say 'You will be asked to step to the back of the line,' then, shouldn't it? You see, it's a bit confusing - 'behind' seems to imply that there's some sort of actual line, you know, drawn on the floor or something, not a line of people, which is - "

"Sir?"

"Yes."

"You got your forms?"

"Er, no."

"Then get out of the line."

***

"Next."

"Hullo, me again! I'm sorry, but can you just tell me - "

"Forms please."

"Yes, well, I have a question about that, you see - "

"Are your forms filled out?"

"That's what I need to ask you about. I don't think this is what I'm meant to bring you."

"Is it yellow?"

The Doctor regarded the paper in his hand.

"Rather mustardy, I'd say, yes."

Expressionless, the woman stared at him through the glass. "Is it yellow?" she repeated.

Three dozen possible replies went through his mind before the Doctor settled on a diplomatic "Yes."

"Then that's the form. You got to get out of the line to fill it out."

"I have a question about the form," he said tersely.

The woman jerked a thumb towards the wall to the left of her cubbyhole. "See that sign?"

The Doctor's eyes flicked briefly to the side and back. "Yes," he hissed.

"What's it say?"

"It says," he said through clenched teeth, "'Si vez algo, di algo.' I'm not sure how that's meant to help me."

"Not that one, the other sign."

"There is no other sign."

"Yes there is."

"No, there isn't, that's the only one. Look - "

"Lorraine!" The Doctor jumped as the woman bellowed suddenly over her shoulder. A voice came from somewhere in the depths behind the cubbyhole.

"What?"

"They take the sign down?"

"What sign?"

"The one says you got questions, go to the window on the end!"

"Fell down."

"What?"

"The sign fell down."

"Oh, right." She turned back to him. "The sign - "

"Fell down, yes, I heard. Look, all I need to know - "

"Sir?"

"Yes."

"You got a question about the forms?"

"Yes, I have."

"Then you got to go to the window on the end."

***

"Next."

The Doctor stepped calmly to the window. "Hello," he said.

The woman opened her mouth to speak.

"Before you ask," he interrupted, "I haven't got any forms. And before you tell me to get out of the line, or to go to the window on the end - I have already been to the window on the end. Twice. The gentleman there - Derek, I believe his name was - seems to have worked it all out: There are no forms for what I need." The woman stared at him, speechless. "I know, it's astonishing, isn't it?" The Doctor nodded amiably. "Nowhere in the entire city of New York does there exist a form for what I am attempting to do!" He leaned casually on the tiny lip protruding from the cubbyhole and peered at her through the circular hole cut into the glass. "What's your name, then?"

She gestured weakly towards a small sign propped on the countertop of her cubby and continued to stare at him, slack-jawed.

"Margaret. Lovely to meet you, Margaret. Do you know Derek, over on the end? Look," he said, standing straight and regarding her through the glass once more, "the problem is this. All the forms are concerned with retrieving one's car from the impound lot, yes?" Margaret nodded. "Yes. But I am not trying to retrieve a car from the impound lot, am I?"

She shrugged feebly. The Doctor continued.

"No, Margaret, I am not. What I am trying to retrieve from the impound lot is not at all a car. So when the form calls, for example, for a license number - I haven't got that. When it calls for 'make' and 'model' and the like, I haven't got that. All I've got is the colour: blue. Even the space for 'address' presents some significant problems. Now, Margaret, I've spent seven and a half hours here. Seven and a half hours. That's a very long time - I'm a Time Lord, and it's still a long time, right? So - "

"What?" The voice called from the depths of the cubbyhole again. Margaret, staring forward catatonically, gave no response. The Doctor peered through the glass into the darkness behind her.

"Lorraine?" he called.

"What'd you say?"

"Er - I said I'm not looking for a car. It's more a sort of a blue box - "

"After that!"

"I've been here for seven and a half hours?"

"After! You say you're a Time Lord?"

"Oh, ha - no, that's just a bit of a joke, never mind that, but if you could - "

"Sir?"

"Yes."

"Are you a Time Lord?"

"Oh. Well, yes."

"Step out of the line."

***

The creature that opened the door was squat, blue, and covered in a thick, scaly skin. It wore black trainers on its tiny feet and an I heart NY cap on its bulbous head. It ushered the Doctor in and offered him a rubbery flipper to shake.

"Pleased to meet you! Never had a Time Lord through here before - be honest with you, I thought you was all gone. Call me Lorraine."

"Hello, I'm the Doctor. You're a ... Traylax, aren't you?"

"Yep. We been on this planet - oh, about three-four hundred years now. That right, Jake?" A second creature, squatter even than Lorraine and sporting a dark double-breasted suit, had entered the room.

"Don't remind me," it said. "I was just a pod when we got here!"

"You're still a kid, Jake." Lorraine turned to the Doctor. "Don't let the expensive suit fool you - Jake's got a meeting with the mayor this afternoon, he don't usually look this nice. Come on through to my office, we'll get you outta here in no time." The Doctor followed her into a florescent-lit space crisscrossed with a labyrinth of cubicles. Lorraine gestured to the other Traylax at desks and counters around the room. "We're pretty casual around here, as you can see. We don't make the humans dress up out front, don't make much sense we gotta dress up back here, huh? Here we are." She led the Doctor into an office decorated with crayon drawings and macaroni sculptures, waved him into a chair and pointed a flipper towards a photo on the desk. "My kids. Buncha artists, all of 'em."

The Doctor inspected the photo of a smiling Lorraine and two other adults, surrounded by thirty-odd pale, egg-shaped lumps, each with rudimentary arms and faces in various stages of development. "That's me and my wife Jennifer, in the middle there, and our husband Albert."

"Handsome family," the Doctor said, replacing the photo on the desk.

"Thanks. Allrighty, lemmie get the computer fired up and see what we can do here."

"Cheers. So ... what exactly are you doing here on Earth?"

"Oh, well, unemployment on Traxis was getting pretty bad a while back, so a bunch of us headed off to look for work. Turns out there's a big demand for our skills in most major American cities - has been for centuries."

"Really? Now you see, I'd have thought they could do with rather less paperwork and bureaucracy, not more ... no offence, of course."

"None taken. Nah, what we do, we keep things running slow, otherwise these places, they just get out of control. Imagine the amount of trouble eight million people could get into, they didn't have to wait in line at the DMV for five hours." She squinted at the computer screen. "Allright. Size of vehicle?"

"Outside or inside?"

Lorraine glanced at him over the machine. "Please, I know how you fellas travel - outside is fine."

"About twelve foot high, six foot wide, six deep. Do you run the whole city, then?"

"Nope. Only place needs that kinda slowing down is Detroit. We took over everything there - oh, about a hundred years ago, now. Here we mostly handle Motor Vehicles, Public Works, bits of the school system - admin, mostly ... okay, that should do it. Lot 51, where we usually stick the out-of-towners. I'll take you there now."

***

The lift opened on an underground parking garage. The Doctor and Lorraine walked past rows of spacecraft, many covered in a thick layer of dust. "Some of these things been here for years. It's amazing what people'll junk in this city ... here we are. That yours?" The TARDIS stood in a yellow-lined space marked K-10. Stencilled onto the wall behind it were the words "Compact Vehicles Only".

"That's it." The Doctor reached into his pocket for the key, unlocked the door, and turned back to Lorraine. "Thanks for all your help. You're doing a fantastic job, by the way - seven and a half hours, and I had barely gotten anywhere!" he said admiringly. Lorraine smiled modestly and waved a flipper.

"Just doing our job."

The Doctor paused on his way into the TARDIS. "Oh, and Margaret - I'm afraid I may have, you know, melted her brain just a bit ... "

"No worries. Humans are pretty resilient. We'll take care of her; that's why they invented overtime," she laughed.

"Ha. Well, okay. Thanks again."

"No problem. Hey, Doctor - " He stuck his head out of the door and regarded the squat blue creature. "Next time you're in New York, and the sign says 'No Parking' ... it means no parking."