The Doctor had not intended to end up here.
Of course, intentions mean little in the grand scheme of things. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow hadn’t meant to kick over a lantern, but that doesn’t change the fact that the entire world had blamed it for burning most of Chicago to the ground. Hard to blame the cow for being spooked by a teleportation device sparking like that.
( Wasn’t hers, to be clear. )
( She would NEVER use something that crass. )
Either way, the cow was there then, and The Doctor is here now.
On Daxam of all places.
She doesn’t like Daxam.
It reminds her of death and darkness -- all the parts of herself and her history that she’s tried to shed over the last handful of years. She’s getting older; she doesn’t have the time to carry around that baggage, not when there’s people to meet, places to see, and moments worth living. She’s back to being a traveller again. Not a god, not a savior, not a murderer -- just a traveller.
And as a traveller, she might as well poke around for a while, even if the TARDIS had brought her to this place without asking first. She slips out of the door as inconspicuously as possible, pulling it closed with a click and pocketing her key. She’ll do her best not to lose it again. She doesn’t like leaving keys spread across the universe. Who knows who might happen to pick one up?
She turns the corner, coattails flaring out behind her and almost immediately collides with another person.
“Oof, so sorry,”
she says, offering up a slightly awkward smile that still manages to read as genuinely contrite.