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For a civilian, the Doctor was excellent at dodging gunfire. It was convenient, Alistair noted, as he had a terrible habit of attracting it in some form or another.
One moment, they'd been investigating a strange energy reading in an abandoned facility; the next, they were pressed together, ducked behind an entrance desk as lasers and God knew what else shook the building underneath them.
They had been ill prepared for an ambush.
The Doctor had been insistent that it wouldn’t be dangerous, that the readings could be explained by any number of different things (here, he had ranted on the subject of ambient radiation for several minutes until interrupted) and that, more to the point, he neither needed nor wanted an escort. It had taken an extremely long argument before the Doctor finally threw up his hands and gave in.
But like an old dog with a bone, the man chewed over the argument the whole way there. Not ten minutes earlier, the Doctor had made a snide jab about the supposed hostile alien spies that would no doubt swarm them at any moment.
Alistair didn’t believe in that new fad of “karmic retribution”, but the thought did bring a small degree of bitter satisfaction.
More shots pierced the space above them, screaming through the air. Rubble from the wall crumbled onto the desk, depositing a fine haze of concrete powder and grit on them both. He had his gun out, held upright and tight to his chest, but he felt their vulnerability. They were outgunned. Possibly outmanned. His radio had been scrambled, even if he could shout loud enough to be heard by anyone on the other end. No backup was coming. If they were to get out of this alive, it would be by their own ingenuity alone.
The Doctor, hair speckled greyer and whiter from dust, was staring at the wall opposite them, murmuring something beneath his breath. He needn't have bothered being quiet — those energy weapons (or whatever scientific gobbledygook the Doctor would conjure up to call them and make Alistair’s next report to Geneva a living nightmare) were loud enough to wake the dead.
Alistair had to shout twice to be heard over the noise. “What's happening, Doctor? We're pinned down!”
Surprised, the Doctor glanced up at him, lips moving silently. He held up a hand, the universal sign for wait.
A less experienced, and far less moderate commander might have already wrung the Doctor's neck a hundred times over for his blatant flippancy on the subject of the chain of command. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart was many things, and often impatient, but he had a regard for the Doctor that encouraged him to turn not only a blind eye, but a deaf ear to the Doctor's… eccentricities.
When UNIT had first been formed, Alistair had vowed himself that he wouldn't let the whims of theoretical science types dictate military strategy against hostile alien forces. Much like all boffins of his ilk, the man was as impossible to manage as a litter of stray cats.
Unfortunately, the Doctor was also a genius.
“Doctor," Alistair snapped. It was as much a warning as an entreaty.
He heard the click, whine and fizzle of a spent weapon the same moment that the Doctor’s face lit up and he hissed, "Now, Brigadier!”
He didn't need to be told twice. He swung around the edge of the desk, pistol raised, finger automatically on the trigger. A few, well-aimed shots of his service pistol at the two figures did the job admirably.
Both targets neutralised: one permanently, the other rolling on the floor in considerable pain, nursing a broken trigger finger and shouting something that wasn’t the Queen’s English. Strangely, they both looked humanoid.
As it became clear these were the only shooters, he broke cover.
He disarmed the targets quickly, as the Doctor strolled over.
“Well, that's neatly done,” the Doctor commented. He examined the men. “NKVD, I should have thought.” He frowned. “Or are they the KGB by now?”
“KGB?” Alistair repeated, incredulous. “Our alien spies turn out to be…”
“Alien spies,” the Doctor confirmed. He sounded too cheerful by far. “Of a considerably more domestic nature than outer space, of course. Still, pass me that weapon of theirs, will you? I want to have a look at it.”
Hefting it by what he could only assume was the barrel of a squat, small gun (although gun was putting too fine a point on it, it looked like nothing he'd seen before on Earth or otherwise), Alistair passed it to the Doctor.
He hummed sceptically. “Just as I thought…” But instead of elaborating further, he trailed off. He glanced at the two men, eyes flitting over myriad details. “Thank you,” he said, abruptly.
Distracted by a new headache — the international repercussions of this would be extraordinary, if the Soviets weren't interested in a mutual hushing up — Alistair grunted, “Hm?”
The Doctor nodded at the men on the floor. “They were well armed,” he said, seriously, “and we blundered right into them. I thought…” He cleared his throat. “Well, for a moment, I did wonder if you might make it out in one piece.”
“Surely you mean we.”
A strange smile flicked at the Doctor's mouth. “Surely I must,” he agreed, voice neutral. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Onto business, hm? You’d better contact HQ,” he waved a hand, vaguely, “and do whatever it is you do.”
“Uphold national security, Doctor,” Alistair said, crisply. “And yes, I should. But, tell me–”
“Anything, my dear chap.”
“What would you have done, if I’d let you have it your way, and you’d been pinned down in a gunfight without anyone there?”
The Doctor laughed. “You can hardly expect a Time Lord to indulge an alternate timeline. What if this, what if that — we'd go mad if we stopped to consider every possibility. You'd collect nothing but paranoia and regrets.”
“I see,” Alistair replied, a trifle sharply, not best pleased by the Doctor's vague dismissal. He paused. The Doctor was looking at him keenly, rubbing the tip of his nose with the back of one finger in a curious expression of… chagrin? Embarrassment? Alistair's annoyance dissipated: he knew when a lesson had been learnt (even if he suspected the Doctor would soon forget; the man had a conveniently short memory for his own faults, and a long one for everyone else's). “Well. Good that I was here. No harm done.”
The man that Alistair had shot had not stopped groaning and swearing in Russian.
The Doctor glanced down at him, eyebrows raised as though scandalised. “I don't suppose you speak the language, Brigadier?”
“It wasn't a part of the boarding school curriculum, no. And you?”
“да,” said the Doctor dryly.
“Then after I get off the radio, you can ask him a few questions for me.”
“Certainly,” the Doctor agreed. He pursed his lips as Alistair called to UNIT HQ, and then added: “But you'll forgive me if I omit what he’s been saying about your mother.”