Chapter Text
The TARDIS rocked. Sheldon lost his footing on the ladder in the library and fell hard on the floor. It knocked the wind out of him but what worried him was that the ship had rocked at all. He tossed his newest find in Penny’s library, a compendium of ‘The Superheroes of the DC Universe 300th Anniversary’, aside. He ran to the control room. He expected to find Penny there or arriving close behind him but the room was empty. The monitor screens showed the ship sat idling in the time vortex. That worried him because they shouldn’t have stopped anywhere. They had a course set to Arcadia so the TARDIS shouldn’t be idling at all. Penny had shown him how to take the ship out of the vortex and put it into lockdown. She told him it was a kind of safe mode in case anything happened to her since he couldn’t really fly the TARDIS. He figured the rocking and idling was because something had happened to Penny. Now, he just had to find her. The TARDIS was bigger on the inside. Much bigger.
Sheldon headed for the pool first because it was one of Penny’s favorite rooms. It was empty. Their comics and video games were scattered about where they had left them. He tried the galley, the dining room, the bowling alley, the skating rink, even the shoe closet. Sheldon hated searching the wardrobe section because it was large and only Penny knew how big it was so it was hard to say if he had ever searched it all. It also reminded him that while she looked like a young twenty something and usually acted like one she really wasn’t. She was older than his Meemaw and several of their Meemaws back. She was an alien, a Time Lord of Gallifrey. This place reminded him of the centuries older she was. It reminded him of the mind bending with the Master. He had felt the Master’s mind. It haunted him for weeks afterward. He still sometimes woke up with nightmares from that competition.
Sheldon had the nightmares off and on over the last two years. The first time he’d had one of the nightmares had been after the excellent vindaloo on Krishna IV. Whether it was because he’d impulsively closed the TARDIS door and launched himself into life as a Time Lord’s companion like someone from his beloved Doctor Who, or because the closeness of being overwhelmed by the Master’s mind was haunting him, or it was just the vindaloo, he’d woken up afraid.
‘Danger, danger… Penny?’ He wanted to say no one came into his room but this was her TARDIS so he felt off balance saying she couldn’t go somewhere in it.
‘Hey, honey! I heard your nightmare. It’s OK, sleep.’
‘Penny, I don’t… that is I don’t usually have people, people at home don’t come in my room, but this is…’
Penny nodded in understanding. ‘It’s OK, Sheldon. This is your room. I wouldn’t come in except I heard you having a bad dream. Is it him, the weasel?’ Penny sighed. She worried whether the mind bending was too much for her friend in spite of Sheldon’s exceptional mind. He still wasn’t a Time Lord.
Sheldon looked around. ‘Are the walls really that thin?’
Penny smirked at that. ‘No, the TARDIS told me you weren’t sleeping well. She likes you, you know.’
Penny had smoothed his hair and told him to close his eyes. She had sung ‘Soft Kitty’ which would have surprised him if he hadn’t been so tired.
Sheldon had woken up the next day with a new understanding of his friend. He really knew then how different Penny was from humans. Penny and the TARDIS were connected like the Doctor and his TARDIS on the show. She knew he’d been having a nightmare because the TARDIS knew it.
‘Alright, if you two are connected why don’t you just show me where Penny is? Haven’t I been looking long enough or looking in the right places? What do I have to do to find her?’ Sheldon wondered why the ship didn’t just tell him. It abruptly occurred to him that maybe he had just not let the ship tell him. He had been going where he wanted to go instead of letting the TARDIS get him to Penny.
‘Well, Obi-TARDIS-Wan, how do I use the Force and find Penny?’ Sheldon leaned against the wall but a doorway opened instead making him fall on the floor for the second time today. It was moments like these he questioned Penny’s saying the TARDIS liked him.
Sheldon looked up at the ceiling from where a large ‘Hello Kitty’ face stared back at him. He sat up. He looked around the room. It had a large collection of Care Bears in a wall sized cabinet. He remembered Penny said she collected them. He got up from the floor and saw the bed in the middle of the room where Penny was lying under the covers. He’d fallen into her bedroom.
‘Thank you.’ Sheldon wondered for a second if the ship had a name. He’d have to ask Penny but for now he had to see what was wrong with his friend.
Penny was feverish, hot to the touch and sweaty. He knew she had to be sick because her normal body temperature was much cooler than a human's. Sheldon almost ran from the room afraid of the alien germs that could be attacking him. The TARDIS rocked again. He wasn’t sure now if the rocking was because Penny was sick or if the ship was just giving him her version of a kick in the pants to do something. Penny had shown him that the sonic screwdriver had features to analyze the health of beings. The sonic was connected to the TARDIS like all the rest of the technology in the ship so it was able to do more than just act like a screwdriver. Sheldon found the sonic and used it to check Penny’s health. He had no idea what the readings meant but he hoped the TARDIS did. The next place to go should be the infirmary.
Sheldon found the infirmary around the corner outside and across from the door to his room which had a poster of The Flash on the door. ‘Has my room always been this close to Penny’s room or are you moving things around?’ The TARDIS rocked again. Sheldon got moving before the pants kicking got harder. The lights were lower than usual in the infirmary except for a central table that was well lit. It had a hypo-spray for drug injections lying in the center of the pool of light. Sheldon couldn’t be sure if this was something to help Penny or not; he had to trust the ship. Sheldon brought the hypo-spray back to Penny’s room. He knelt down by the bed. She was moaning and talking in her sleep but the language was unintelligible.
The hypo-spray looked like a gun. The barrel had a meter with ten brightly lit green bars on it. It worked much like a gun, press and pull the trigger but where? Sheldon hovered for a second and then the ship rocked again. ‘I’m doing it!’ He pressed the hypo-spray to Penny’s neck and pulled the trigger. The device hissed. The meter on the barrel showed a reduction of one bar out of ten on the meter. It seemed there were nine doses left of what Sheldon prayed was helpful medicine and not a poisonous mistake. In a few minutes, Penny’s moaning stopped. She started breathing more comfortably. She didn’t seem to be lying as uneasily as she had before the injection. Sheldon put the hypo-spray on the table by Penny’s bed. He pulled a reading chair over to the bedside. He sat for a while watching his friend. He started to worry about her more than he was comfortable with. He thought about his Meemaw, too. He had never gone so long without calling her. Sheldon had to find something to do.
He glanced at the bookcases around the room. He was curious about the many volumes on the bookshelves. He figured a book would help pass the time. He was intrigued to discover what a Time Lord would read for bedtime. The first book he saw was an unpromising shock.
‘’Secrets of the Tarot’, seriously, Penny? You have all of time and space to chose from. You’re from a civilization that has reached the pinnacle of achievement and the first book on your bookshelf is about the Tarot?’
The TARDIS rocked causing the Tarot book to fall on his head. ‘I’m sorry, no need to take it personally.’ Sheldon spoke softly to the walls. He put the book back but he determined to be more diplomatic in his comments while he perused Penny’s bookshelves. He settled on ‘A General history of the Pyrates’ a book he’d loved when he was growing up. He’d found it in his Meemaw’s house. It had been one of his Pop-Pop’s favorite books. That would pass the time with less worry. While he read Penny started to moan again. He looked at her with worry that he might have done something wrong with the hypospray.
Her eyes were open but unfocused. He got closer wondering if she was really awake. He couldn't tell if she was trying to say something. The TARDIS should be translating her speaking but all he heard was repetitious babbling.
‘Penny, what’s wrong. Can you understand me?’ Her eyes were very green, almost luminous. Her eyes had been the first thing he’d noticed about her in Stuart’s Comic Shop. Enchantment had danced in them but now this wasn’t enchantment it was indefinable. Sheldon stared into her eyes searching for any recognition. Her eyes drew him to her even though he wasn’t moving. It was very much like the mind bending but unlike that game this wasn’t forceful.
The mind bending had felt like a fight against someone right from the start but this was like being with someone on a roller-coaster starting slow and then going faster and faster. Sheldon felt the presence of Penny’s mind like he had felt the Master’s. They were both powerful and grand but her mind wasn’t commanding or regimented, it was vast like space and galaxies stretching away. However, as scary as the Master’s mind was it had always been outside looking at him. Here, he was with Penny, he was Penny in some weird way. Sheldon felt or saw, he couldn’t say, a vast plain. Waves of silvery grass rustled in the wind. He was standing on the plain gazing at a massive city that stood in the distance. It was encased in glass, looking like a city in a crystal ball. He was standing in a long flowing red robe. He felt an odd helmet on his head. A voice recited the same kind of language he had heard Penny speaking in her delerium. Penny had seen this place somewhere. It looked like the Citadel of the Time Lords but it was nothing like the TV show. It was better and more terrible. He felt the older than time and vaster than space that David Tennant had described. The reality of it was beyond anything he imagined because he/she was feeling the awesome reality of it.
Sheldon prided himself on his superior mind but, now, he understood he was no Time Lord. He wanted to run away but Penny’s mind was moving across the plain with a group of children, they were going to a meeting or test. They had to go because of what they were. They looked like any ordinary children to Sheldon. He felt fear and anticipation. It was the Day when the Children had to look into the ancient. Sheldon wondered frantically what the ancient was. He/Penny walked up the path. Their anticipation and fear and wonder rose. Darkness and torches and Time Lords in formal regalia standing on steps walked on by Rassilon before humans had come down from the trees felt solid and cold and as real to Sheldon as his fast beating pulse. He felt the void ahead as Penny/him moved closer to it. He felt more afraid than when he’d fought the Master. This wasn’t something for him to see; he couldn’t see it. This was more than a dramatic actor’s speech. Sheldon felt the ancient void. He was Penny about to look into it. The Schism was all of space and time. Penny’s mind was inside it and it was inside her but Sheldon knew he would never come back sane if he didn’t run away.
Sheldon yelled incoherently. He flung himself away from Penny. He scrambled to his feet and ran out the door. He hit the wall across the hall. He stumbled to his knees. He picked himself up and ran towards his Flash poster. He flung himself into his bedroom and dove onto his bead. He threw the blankets over his head. He was afraid. He knew he wasn’t afraid of anything real because there wasn’t anything really to be afraid of; this was simple fear, primeval fear. He had seen something too big to comprehend. His primal instinct for survival had taken over. He passed out soon after. Sheldon felt cold and clammy when he woke up. His clothes were soaked through from sweat. He shivered from the sticky cold cloth on his skin. When he felt calmed down, he went into the shower. The hot water helped more than any shower he’d ever taken before in his life. He felt like a conceited idiot with his Novus Human. Maybe, his mind was bigger than other humans but he wasn’t a Time Lord.
He finished his shower and dressed. He checked in on Penny. He found the hypo-spray blinking. He guessed it meant it was time for another dose. Penny seemed to be sleeping quietly. She didn’t seem as feverish and sweaty as last time much to Sheldon's relief. He gave her a second dose of the medicine. He put the spray back down on the table hoping Penny would come around soon. He looked at his friend who looked so very human. He knew how different she must be after his tussle with the Master’s mind but he hadn’t been in the Master’s mind. He had stayed himself. He had felt the Master’s mind like someone else he was fighting. When he had looked into Penny’s eyes he had lost any sense of himself. He became more her than him. When he was her with the kids he felt like any child but when they got to the Schism the feeling became bigger than he could contain. Sheldon guessed the ceremony actually altered the children's minds. The abyss on Gallifrey really did look into them.
Sheldon got some chamomile tea. He thought about what he had experienced. Penny and the TARDIS were connected like one being. Penny and the Schism connected her to all of space and time. The Time Lords were pretty much space-time itself in a way. No wonder they got so pretentious with so much in their heads. It was his Novus Human on super steroids. Sheldon looked at Penny being careful of making eye contact. He guessed her delirium had been the reason for the experience. Time Lords really were some kind of telepaths. Penny was connected to the ship and even to the Untempered Schism. Maybe the Schism was what made them telepaths. Did the universal connection make it possible to reach out to other minds? He’d have to ask Penny but he wasn’t sure there was an answer that would translate any more than he could explain String Theory to a cave man or for better analogy explain up to a Flatlander. Whatever the cause, being sick made her telepathy uncontrolled so it was best to avoid eye contact until she was more herself. He assumed it was the eye contact, at any rate.
The next morning Sheldon woke in the reading chair to a hand brushing his arm. ‘Hey, Sheldon, how are you?’
‘Hey, Penny, are you feeling better?’ Sheldon poured a glass of water for his sick friend.
She drank some of the water slowly. Penny felt like old shoe leather from how dehydrated she was but she wasn’t sure her stomach was ready to keep anything down. ‘A little dizzy, but I feel better than a couple days ago.’ She hadn’t paid any attention to the flu symptoms that were coming on. She’d been having too much fun with Sheldon. ‘That will teach me to ignore a temperature.’
‘What happened? Can I catch it?’ Sheldon felt awkward with the question in his ears. His fear of germs was bigger than his sick friend right in front of him so he felt like an ingrate.
‘No, honey, I doubt it. Gallifreyan diseases aren’t any more likely to bother you than human diseases can bother me. Our diseases evolved with us and they don’t jump easily.’ Penny saw the hypo-spray on the bed stand and picked it up. ‘Found your way to the infirmary, I take it.’
Sheldon shrugged and smiled. ‘Yeah, your TARDIS helped a lot there when I figured out the shaking was her trying to tell me something.’
Penny got a faraway look in her eyes that made Sheldon get up and fuss with the blankets to tuck Penny in. ‘She thinks you did a pretty good job, I do, too.’
‘Do you want something to eat?’ Sheldon guessed Penny would need some food after not eating for days even if she didn’t feel like it at the moment.
‘Sure, some chicken soup, a small one, light for colds and stuff.’ Penny was glad someone was here to play nurse.
Sheldon made an excellent and appropriately fussy nurse but Penny noticed he was acting more distant and his attention was a lower on her body than usual for him.