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Ryan opens his eyes to a darkened room. He stares at the ceiling, waiting for his memory to catch up; for his heart to start pounding and his bones to ache again. Except it doesn’t, like it didn’t yesterday and hasn’t done for a while now. His body is warm beneath a cocoon of blankets and all he remembers are perfectly mundane dreams. Which is not at all comforting, considering he lives in space and the Doctor nearly drowned and he’s spent his entire teenage years struggling to sleep like a functioning person. And so he throws back the covers, hissing as his toes hit the cold floor - and then hissing again as the floor instantly warms up beneath him, because he lives in space and this is his life now. The room brightens a little despite the complete absence of visible light fixtures, and he spots his jumper draped conveniently over the end of his bed where it wasn’t a second ago.
Ryan scoots on a pair of socks and steps into the corridor with a distinct destination in mind. The TARDIS clearly senses his urgency because he reaches the console room far sooner than he expected to, just in time to see the Doctor pull her arm free from one of the huge crystals with a squelching sound.
He files the image away for later.
“What’s up?” she calls, pointing her sonic at the crystal which emits a distinctly unpleasant whine.
“Couldn’t really sleep,” he mumbles to the floor, suddenly feeling incredibly foolish. Evidently she’s got better things to do than listen to how he finds her home a little bit creepy.
“Hey,” she calls as he turns on his heel. “Don’t leave, I’m done for the night anyway.” There’s another buzz from the sonic, a metallic bang, and a yelp as she is not-so-gently thrown to the floor. Any human person would’ve broken something, but the Doctor gets up as though nothing happened, grinning at him. “I think I finally managed to sort out that subroutine she gets so cranky about. Figured I owed her after scaring her with the drowning bit.”
She wipes her arm on her coat, leaving a gooey smear on the hood that makes her smell like thunder in the air just before it hits. Something he can’t quite decipher crosses her face as she steps past him to the console, but it’s gone by the time she turns to him.
“Everything ok?” she asks casually as she stands on the pedal for the custard creams. “You seem a bit -” she motions at him and scrunches up her face in annoyance, words evidently getting stuck as her brain is already several sentences ahead in the conversation, trying to identify the emotions in play.
“Yeah,” he nods. “I am a bit.” he takes a bite from one of the biscuits she holds out to him and lets the sugar dissolve on his tongue. He prefers bourbons, but custard creams make a good sugary pick-me-up in a pinch. They stand in silence for a little while, the Doctor munching on biscuits while gently tapping her fingers on the console, waiting for Ryan to find his question. It’s one of the things he likes most about her, the way she’s content to share a silence with him. Nan was like that too. It’s one of the things he misses most about her.
“I don’t have nightmares anymore?”
The Doctor looks confused.
“I used to get then all the time. ‘Cause of really stupid stuff like tests, but also things like mum and my dad leaving. But ever since we started hanging out with you - I don’t.”
“And you want to know why.”
“Yeah.”
The Doctor nods. “I have an idea what it could be, but you may not like it.” She taps the console with a half-eaten biscuit and it hums in response.
Be sure, he knows by now she isn’t saying. She’s giving him time to think it over, planning out her own reactions.
“I want to know,” he tells her.
She nods again and taps a few buttons, respecting his judgement of himself like nobody else does. “Watch this.”
The console room darkens until it looks like the crystals are smouldering, the background hum taking on a lower pitch. He’s a curious kid, always has been, and so he follows the Doctor around the console, trailing his hand along its surface the same way she does. It beats gently under his skin, and the realisation that the TARDIS is really alive fills him with awe.
The Doctor grins at him, eyes bright with the amber reflection of the central column. "Yeah, she’s magnificent,” she smiles, and then promptly looks guilty when she realises Ryan has not spoken the sentiment out loud. "Sorry," she mutters, taking her hands from the console. "Got a bit of bleed there."
"It's cool," Ryan answers, alarmed at the sad look on the Doctor's face. "As long as you don't go pokin' round on purpose, it's cool." She seems relieved, gingerly tapping her fingertips back against the console, and he wonders how often this interaction has gone an entirely different way.
“She doesn’t like showing new people this, but you’re her favourite so it’ll be alright,” the Doctor tells him. “Still, no touching anything unless I say so, got it?”
He makes a show of putting his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, adding: “her favourite?”
“Yeah; technically she’s not allowed them but that’s never stopped her. Don’t let it go to your head. Ready?”
Ryan’s still kinda stuck on the idea that his immortal friend’s spaceship/partner/house has apparently made him her favourite .
“Great,” the Doctor says, and presses her palm flat against the console, face screwed up in concentration. A smooth surface materialises in the space between her hands and she scawls a couple of interlocking circles on it; fingers starting either side and meeting exactly in the middle. It lights up, instantly digitising the Doctor’s writing, and moves the circles around. The Doctor frowns at it, then taps a squickle in the middle. It moves like clockwork in response, and it’s the coolest thing Ryan has ever seen.
“Right. Ryan Sinclair, welcome to your room of not-nightmares!” The console groans, the central column flares up, and the room is filled with a projection of tiny, interconnected lights that dance around each other, some webbed together, others shooting up like embers in the fire. The outer walls and ceiling darken until he cannot see them any more and he finds himself taking a few steps amongst the lights, carding them through his fingers.
“This is a visualisation of the TARDIS’s sensory network,” the Doctor explains, spreading her arms wide. “She and I are telepathic. We’re like a set of radios, always checking in with each other. You lot though, it’s like you’re always low on batteries. You sort of send a signal, and every once in a while you pick up random bits of static.”
Ryan stares up at the lights above him, noticing a network of hair thin threads between some of them.
“The Tardis picks up on your signals. Not maliciously, it’s just literally how she’s wired. And so when you came on board, she saw that you were having nightmares, and she wanted to be nice and took them away from you. But humans are bound by time and emotions in a way that our people never were, and so she guesses through the static about what you’re saying in a language she only half understands.”
Ryan glances at the web of lights dancing around him, realises he has no idea what he’s really looking at, and thinks he understands a bit better how the TARDIS feels. Like she’s trying to pick up a spec of dust and bring it outside without squashing it.
“Everything alright?” the Doctor asks softly, eyes tracing one of the lights, and he knows she’s not asking about the nightmare thing anymore.
“Most of the time,” he starts, trying to find the words. “But then sometimes I see all these mad things out there, and I get really happy, but then I realise she’ll never see ‘em and it just makes me really sad instead.” He takes a breath, continues: “And then I feel bad, like I’m wasting time being sad when there’s all this amazing stuff out there.”
“I don’t think anyone ever really wastes time,” the Doctor offers quietly. “Underappreciate it; regret it, maybe. But not waste it. Being alive is not a waste of time, and neither is being sad or being happy.”
She’s looking up now, remembering something far beyond the lights in the air, and for a moment she looks more alien than Ryan’s ever seen her. Like she’s gone fuzzy at the edges somehow, a brightness spilling out that normally sits contained behind her eyes, and he wonders how much experience the TARDIS really has with nightmares.
The Doctor pushes her hair behind her ears, angry red chain mark on her wrist, and the moment is broken.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to know Grace better,” she says, before he has a chance to worry about it.
Ryan thinks about all the people who turned up for his nan’s funeral, so many they barely fit in the hall. All the nice things people said. And then he thinks about all the things he’s learned from her and the wonderful things he’s seen her do, and he blurts out: “She made the best cakes, and I’d always sneak in and grab a slice and she always pretended not to notice.”
The Doctor grins.
“It’s just - I don’t want to forget that.”
She looks at him then, and it’s not often that he gets treated to the full voltage of the Doctor’s undivided attention. There’s an absolute earnesty to it that’s almost overwhelming. “You won't,” she tells him, absolute conviction in her words, and he finds that he believes her. “The Tardis can obscure things, hide things; lock them away; but she can’t erase your memory.”
A reassuring pressure forms at the back of his head and he looks around in wonder. The Doctor points to the crystal above the console and Ryan presses his fingers against it like he’s seen her do a couple of times. The pressure solidifies; flares up with an apology and warmth and then fades away completely, leaving him staring at his fingers.
“I think she just told me she was sorry,” Ryan mutters. He flexes his fingers, and an idea strikes him. He presses his fingers back against the crystal, palm flat against it, closing his eyes. He bites his lip and whispers “thank you” to the crystal, thinking the words as he does so. The Tardis lights around him flare and the Doctor beams at him as he lifts his hand.
“Not bad for a broken radio transmitter, is it?”
She laughs, long and hard and earnest, the sound filling the console room with bright light as the Tardis reacts to her emotions. Ryan feels himself getting pulled in and grins widely at the ship as the small lights fade and the regular lights come up. He yawns as the Doctor’s laughter fades and feels infinitely tired.
“Right; I’m gonna turn in,” he tells the Doctor. “And thanks. For this, I mean.” he gestures to the console room. “I feel a lot better.”
“You know me,” she smiles, avoiding his eyes. “Always up for a chat. Can’t seem to shut up, frankly.”
And maybe it’s the tiredness, or the fact that she suddenly looks small and lonely again against the vastness of her ship, but he feels the urge to ask.
“Doctor, can I hug you?”
The question visibly startles her, like she can’t quite comprehend why anyone would want to hug her, but then her face lights up and she nods at him. He pulls her in and wraps her up, her arms firmly around his torso, and they stay like that until he has to use his hands to stifle another yawn.
“Good night,” he tells her, patting the console to convey the same to the Tardis.
“Night,” the Doctor answers, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn herself.
“Oh and Ryan?” she calls from the console when he is nearly at the corridor. “Thanks. I feel a lot better too."
“Anytime, Doctor.” He smiles to himself.