Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Only Card I Need

Ace doesn’t sleep, the first night on the TARDIS.

She watches carefully as the Professor pilots his ship, taking note of which buttons and levers he uses. He smiles, enigmatic, but doesn’t seem to mind the attention.

“Where are we going?”

He makes a low humming noise and leans forward, peering into the central pillar. It’s glowing, a soft mixture of pink, blue and white. She’s not sure what he’s looking for, but he nods and stands back, seemingly satisfied. She crosses her arms over her chest and waits for him to answer her.

“Nowhere yet,” he says.

She frowns and reaches out to touch the console, he doesn’t try and stop her.

“So, we’re in the vortex,” she says.

He hums again and then walks out of the control room, hands in his pockets. She follows him down a hallway and into a decent sized kitchen.

“That third rule better not involve making tea,” she says; he still looks more like a professor than a doctor to her. "I've had enough of mixing drinks."

Something like surprise flickers across his face and then he smiles.

“I’ll make the tea,” he says, “you get the biscuits.”

He pulls two mugs out of the old fashioned oven and then fills a transparent kettle at the tiny sink. He doesn’t tell her where the biscuits are so she just starts opening cupboards and drawers. She finds them underneath a large burlap sack filled with turnips. The packets are all slightly crushed. She examines the options and then settles on shortbread.

“Excellent choice,” he says, setting two steaming mugs down on the table.

The first one is covered with water colour images of kittens, the other one is an electric neon yellow colour. He pushes the latter in her direction as she sits down opposite him. The chairs and table look like something out of a fifties diner. The wrapping tears awkwardly when she opens up the biscuits and crumbs fly out in every direction. The Professor uses his fingers to pick up and eat the fragments. Ace crumples up the rest of the plastic wrapping and puts it in her pocket.

The Doctor takes two biscuits. After some consideration she takes a sip of her tea and frowns.

“Are you telepathic?”

“What a delightful question,” he says.

“That’s not an answer,” she says, trying not to make it sound like an accusation.

She might need some more practice.

“Why do you ask?”

“You know how I like my tea,” she says, looking into the cup.

“It’s a hobby,” he says.

She narrows her eyes. He looks sincere enough but he’s clearly having her on.

"So what now?"

He chews on another shortbread. He seems to have forgotten about his tea.

"I suppose you need a room. I’ve found that your species benefits from keeping regular sleeping patterns."

He’s smiling, sort of, but there’s a sharpness to the look he gives her. As if he’s trying to unsettle her by bringing up their differences. If he wants to make her uncomfortable he’ll need to try harder than that. She looks around the eclectic kitchen and then to the futuristic looking white hallway beyond the door.

"How big is your ship anyway?"

"It varies," says the Professor looking unconcerned.

Ace tries to reconcile what she knows about physics with what he's telling her and then gives it up. She'll figure it out later, with or without his help.

She sips her tea and takes one of the shortbread before the Professor can eat them all. She places it beside her mug, saving it for after she’s finished her drink.

“Mel liked to dip biscuits in her tea,” he says, looking at his half-eaten shortbread with a frown. “I’ve always thought that was a terrible idea myself. Destroys the integrity of the biscuit and the tea.”

Ace privately agrees but keeps quiet. If living on Iceworld has taught her anything it’s that human or alien, future or present, people are generally the same. Never offering anything without expecting something in return. She wonders what the Doctor wants from her but doesn’t trust that he’d tell her the truth if she asked.

“So, my own room,” she says, testing the water.

“Of course,” says the Professor, with a little frown. "Who would you share with?"

His confusion seems genuine enough, if a little naive. She can't shake the feeling that she's safe here, with him, and that bothers her more than anything else.

She hunches over her mug and drinks the rest of her tea in silence. The Professor doesn't seem to mind, humming quietly as he picks up and then puts down his cup. He still hasn't actually drunk any of his tea. She tips her own mug, scowling at the dregs. He makes a little 'oh' sound and when she looks up he takes a big gulp of his tea, coughing a little after he swallows.

She doesn't smile, but she kind of wants to.

“Do I get to choose,” she says, after he’s recovered, “or do you have some kind of dorm section?”

“Even better than that,” he says, eyes crinkling at the corners when he smiles, “you get to find your own room.”

She doesn’t press for details as he’s more or less just given her permission to look around his ship without setting any boundaries. He drinks a bit more of his tea and looks from his stomach to the three remaining shortbreads.

“Is that what you do? Travel around and pick up strangers,” she says, immediately regretting her choice of words.

“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘pick up’ and ‘strangers’,” he says.

Doughnut had seemed friendly enough, she supposes, and she’d just upped and left when she wanted. So it can’t be that bad. The Professor stands, pockets the last biscuits and then takes their mugs to the sink. She watches him rinse out the cups and place them on the drainer. It’s the most normal thing she’s seen in three months.

He mutters ‘goodnight’ and pats her head absentmindedly as he makes his way to the door, gone before she can make a fuss about it. She eats her shortbread slowly and then goes exploring.

The first door she opens turns out to be a window looking out into, what she assumes, is the vortex. A tornado-like storm, shifting to and from every colour imaginable. It’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen and she stands there like an idiot hand pressed against the glass for who knows how long. By the time she thinks to move her legs feel stiff.

The next room is a soft grey, with two old fashioned beds and a feminine dressing table. She pokes around but everything is disappointingly prosaic, dimensionally transcendent ship aside. She mutters ‘no thanks’ and moves on. The next three doors lead to bedrooms as well. There’s a narrow single bed in the first one, weapons covering all of one wall. The second has a large king size bed with dark pink bedding, which takes up most of the room. The third looks like Scotland threw up over it, tartan as far as the eye can see. She makes a note of the first one but keeps looking.

There’s a large room full of clothes behind a two metallic double doors. Rows and rows of dresses, jackets, shirts, and boxes full of shoes. There’s no consistency in size, style or era, so she guesses they’re for general use. At least she won’t have to worry about laundry anymore. There’s a large chest of drawers full of underwear as well. She pulls out a complicated set of delicate red strings, turning it around. It reminds her of cats cradle. There’s male underwear too, everything from silk boxers to what appears to be a leather g-string. She raises her eyebrows and shuts the drawer. Moving on.

She trails her fingers along the wall of the hallway. The vibration of the ship is pleasant under her fingers. She finds a door that won’t open. A modest wooden arch with no keyhole or handle. She assumes it leads to the Professor’s room but spends twenty minutes trying to get in anyway.

There’s a glass door, delicate and slightly rippled, which opens into a vast library. Four walls of books that extend at least fifteen feet above her head, connected by balconies, ladders and bridges. An olympic sized swimming pool takes up the middle of the room. Dark blue water, and the smell of salt and dusty pages fills the air. There’s a fantastical Shakespearean feel to everything. She takes off her jacket and dips her fingers in the pool. The water is the perfect temperature. Even though she doesn’t like swimming she’s tempted to pick up a book and read it with her feet in the pool, but she still hasn’t found a place to sleep yet.

It feels almost as if the TARDIS is playing with her and it occurs to her that the ship might be more than just a collection of engine parts. Her cheeks are a little warm, but she grits her teeth and fights down any embarrassment.

“Alright,” she says, after looking around to make sure the Professor is nowhere in sight, “go on then. Take me to my room.”

She worries that she might be going in circles when the walls stay smooth and unbroken for more than several minutes. She stops, presses her hand against the white wall, and then continues on anyway. She turns a corner and there’s a simple black door with a large, brass knocker in the shape of a wolf’s head. There’s no handle but when she runs her fingers along the painted wood it swings open to reveal a modestly sized room. The walls are a deep blue and a double bed with a black metal frame has been pushed against the wall to her right. A tall wardrobe and a bedside table sit against the back wall and the carpet is a dark grey but it’s the ceiling that catches her attention. The night sky painted on it in realistic detail. Swirls of space dust, stars, planets and asteroids. She lies down on the bed and looks up. She pats the wall gently.

“You did good,” she says.

Her eyelids are heavy and the mattress is a perfect balance between soft and hard, but there’s still a ship to explore so she pushes herself up and heads back into the hallway. She leaves her jacket on the bed though. Staking her claim.

She’s not sure how long she wanders through the TARDIS. She finds enough musical instruments to put together an orchestra, what appears to be a perfect replica of a greek amphitheatre and a space full of cat toys and food (although she doesn’t find any actual cats). There’s also one room with nothing in it but an old fashioned upholstered chair and another that resembles a museum, except that it’s full of toilets instead of historical artefacts. She’s slightly disappointed when the gravity doesn’t shift in the room where the furniture has been bolted to the ceiling, but she does spend some time looking up trying to figure out how it got there.

At some point the ship turns her around and she ends up back in the console room. The Professor is pointing a metal device at a sphere and muttering to himself. She looks around blinking slowly. It looks the exactly the same as it did the last time she was here.

“Quiet Ace,” says the Professor, tone sharp, even though she hasn’t made a noise.

There’s a weird buzzing noise and the sphere briefly glows a blinding shade of green. He shouts ‘aha’, before pocketing the metal thing and doing a very small double take when he looks up at her.

“Did you find a room?”

He rolls the ‘r’ with relish. Ace feels strangely weightless and disconnected.

“You’ve got a room full of spoons,” she says.

He puts down the sphere; it makes a dull knocking sound and then rolls towards a lever on the console.

“I’d completely forgotten about that,” he says, still looking excited. “I don’t suppose you remember where you found it?”

Ace wonders if this is some sort of test. Her legs are tired and it feels like her brain has been replaced by a pound of cotton wool. She remembers what he said about sleep.

“Of course,” she says with a frown.

He’s giving her one of those enigmatic smiles again.

She closes her eyes and concentrates very hard on the room she wants, the size, the smell, the feel of it. The Professor’s standing right in front of her when she opens her eyes and she flinches back, almost losing her balance. He catches her elbow before she falls. His grip is firm and warm. She wrenches out of his hold and takes a few steps back. She doesn’t want to know what he sees in her expression and she’s sort of grateful when he doesn’t comment on it.

“Lead the way,” he says instead, gesturing grandly, like some kind of eighteenth century gentleman.

She takes a deep breath and heads down the hallway, filling her head with thoughts of the room again. She ignores the first two doors, touches the handles of the next three and opens the sixth. A few spoons tumble off the pile and into the hallway. The Professor beams at her. She tenses when he moves, thinking he’s going to touch her head or shoulder, but he simply bends down and picks up the spoons.

“I can play these, you know,” he says, straightening and tapping them against his forearm.

The TARDIS is making a very loud humming noise.

“Is that normal?”

She’s more curious than concerned.

“Uncommon,” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s talking about the ship or the spoons.

He walks into the room, crouches down and starts sorting through the precarious pyramid. There’s not much space but Ace wedges herself between the wall and the edge of the stack, curling up and wrapping her arms around her legs. She grimaces and then reaches underneath herself to remove a couple more spoons. She hands them to the Professor who takes them solemnly and then starts telling her a story about some alien nobility and a piece of missing cutlery. It’s interesting, if a little unbelievable, and she doesn’t mean to fall asleep.

When she wakes up both the pyramid of spoons and the Doctor have vanished. His jacket has been carefully tucked around her shoulders and there’s a single spoon in the front pocket. A slightly bent, roughly beaten piece of discoloured silver with an ace of spades stamped into the flat end of the handle. She rubs her thumb over the design, liking how she can feel the slightly raised edges.

She returns the jacket to him later, pockets empty.