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She’s persistent, the Doctor would give her that. Polite taps against the doorframe had given way to steady metallic clinking over an hour ago, with no sign of stopping despite the low furious swearing he can hear between the beats of the lockpicks’ rhythm. He stares wearily at the opposite wall, now smooth grey steel instead of the customary archway leading from the console room, and thinks, et tu? The TARDIS hasn’t gone so far as to let an intruder enter against her pilot’s wishes, but her opinion on the matter was clear.
He isn’t sure a TARDIS was meant to be able to trap him like this. In fact, he’s rather sure that she wasn’t.
He could go to the console and manually override the layout, program the corridors to his specifications, but what would be the point? This was as good a place as any. The memory of a dizzying spiral staircase over a sheer drop is enough to keep him in place on the grating, arms wrapped around his knees. He has too many memories of sitting near the top, legs slotted between the brass bars of the railing. The TARDIS must remember too; he hadn’t bothered to shield his mind in those early days, alone in the dark and the silence after... After.
There’s a particularly jarring clank of metal, and a vicious curse that sounds all the more brutal for coming from vocal cords that shouldn’t be capable of it. He can’t find it within himself to be surprised that Vastra’s teaching her Silurian. Or to react to the reverberating thud of a fist against solid wood.
“Oi, Doctor, come on!” Jenny shouts. Her voice trembles with fear and fatigue, distorted by a howl of icy wind. He doesn’t really intend to look, but the worry in her voice brings his eyes to the screen mounted on the console. He’s been here two days. Wherever here was, beyond the obvious: London, winter, 1891. He manages to drag his gaze away from the display before reading the precise coordinates.
The last time the TARDIS did this, parts of the ship had been beyond repair in the aftermath of the Time War: scorched to ashes, torn to scrap or fused into a sick, silent monument to their former function as the Doctor screamed his way through the agony of an unwilling regeneration. The landing took out most of the Brigadier’s kitchen; smoke and a busted water pipe did the rest while Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart hauled him from the flames in quiet horror.
He won’t put Vastra’s newfound family through that. As soon as his hands stop shaking, he’ll trigger the dematerialisation sequence. He thinks he’s worked it out. If he disables the Lockbourne safety, reconfigures the Hallivan network under the console to bypass the Korvan Limit, and if he gets very, very lucky, it’s just barely possible that he could—
The Cloister Bell lets loose a single, mournful tone, a funeral dirge that rattles the grating beneath him and makes Jenny shout for Vastra and Strax. For just a moment, he sees terrified, unwavering blue eyes and Captain Adelaide Brooke hisses, The 'Time Lord victorious' is wrong!
The memory knocks the certainty out of him, and a breathless sob cracks the floodgates. The shaking spreads as molten tears carve searing tracks down his cheeks. He buries his face against his knees and screams, one endless note until his throat is raw and his lungs burn.
The rasping clink of the lockpicks resumes, faster, almost frantic in the silence that follows. He doesn’t hear the sudden click of the lock giving way, but he feels the anguished press of the TARDIS against his mind as she comes to the decision. It makes him slam his fist against the grating again and again until chilled reptilian hands close over his. Rough scales catch on broken skin, and he pulls away just to feel her grip tighten, igniting more little flashfires of pain.
“Doctor, what’s happened?” Vastra asks. “Doctor?”
“Is he—” Jenny whispers.
He feels Vastra scenting the air around him, picking up his pheromones, deducing his emotions, and he has just enough presence of mind to refocus on his shield before he has to experience everything reflected and amplified through her understanding. This time, when he jerks his hand away, she lets him go.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, low and fervent. From the corner of his eye, he sees her take Jenny’s hand instead, leaving little crimson streaks on the young human’s ivory gloves.