Chapter Text
The button was cold under his palm.
He closed his eyes and pressed it.
In his brain, he felt it. The moment when their voices- the endless churning sea of voices that had been roiling and seething in the back of his mind since he first opened his eyes and drew his first breath- snapped, shattered, the fear gone, replaced by agony. All his people united, their collective mind joined into a psychic scream that echoed backwards and forwards across all of Time.
He fell to his knees, and he screamed with them.
And then it was silent.
All that was left in the cavern of his mind was a raw, bleeding wound, and the endless echoes of his people’s final scream, reverberating in his head for all eternity.
He was alone.
From now to the end of eternity, he would always be alone.
The Doctor bolted awake, gasping for air. Where- where-
Bed. TARDIS. Safe. Alive. War over.
Time asleep?
Two hours, thirteen minutes, five seconds, forty-two milliseconds.
His eyes fell on the spiral galaxy overhead on his ceiling. The TARDIS brightened the room with soft lighting, pressing into his mind and wrapping around him like a psychic hug.
Another nightmare.
He was so tired. He needed to sleep.
But the nightmares.
The nightmares, they never stopped.
He felt the wound in the back of his mind, the hole where the rest of them should be. Anywhere in time and space, he should have been able to feel their chatter, the comforting humming and singing of the Time Lords, all their minds twined into one collective morass. Anywhere and anywhen, always singing, always with him. Even in the Vortex, where no other collective could reach, the hivemind of the Time Lords still sang.
A constant reminder that he was never truly alone.
The Doctor moaned and curled up into a ball, sinking his nails into his scalp.
Telepathic species were never meant to be alone. Humans could manage. A lone human would find themselves a posse of alien friends and have grand adventures (or not, if that wasn’t their thing) and be none the worse for wear. As long as a human had company, a human was fine.
Him?
He wasn’t fine.
His soul ached for the collective mind, ached for it to just be there; a soothing white noise, something to rock him off to sleep, something that he’d always had there in his head.
Something to remind him that no matter what, he was never alone.
The Doctor turned over and closed his eyes, balling up those feelings and stuffing them away.
Silence. Total, oppressive silence.
The TARDIS hummed in his mind, then, doing her best to rock him off to sleep again. She dimmed the lights by way of a hint, but he knew he wasn’t getting back to sleep.
Not a chance in hell.
The Doctor sighed and rubbed his eyes, craning his neck up to look at the wiring he was adjusting. Another sleepless night, spent the same way most of them were- under the console, fiddling and tinkering. Making repairs to his ship, because anything was better than going back and facing his unending nightmares.
They were parked on a planet with a temporal rift and a thriving club scene, topping up the TARDIS’s fuel supply. Jack and Rose had gone off earlier that day to dance and party and whatever else they did- the Doctor had begged off to make some repairs to the overhead roundels and the time rotor. He’d started joining them occasionally, on these little jaunts- mostly just nursing a pint in the corner and watching Rose dance, enraptured by the way she moved under the flashing lights in time with the heavy club beat.
Sometimes she’d wave to him and he’d stumble towards her, drawn like a sailor to the siren, and they’d sway together, her back pressed to his front-
The Doctor dropped a spanner on his foot and swore to himself. He was getting distracted. Rose was not a conducive muse for TARDIS repair, he’d swiftly found out.
Still. Even if they didn’t have a name for this thing between them, even if she drove him half mad with desire most of the time- she was his and he was hers, and it was all just as simple as that.
Who needed labels for everything, anyway?
Jack’s footsteps echoed off the corridor walls, jerking the Doctor out of his thoughts, and he clambered out of the hole in the grating with a grunt.
The man himself breezed into the room with a stretch and a yawn, grinning evenly and sauntering up to the TARDIS console.
“Mornin’,” Jack said with a grin, “Don’t tell me you spent the whole night with your head under the console.”
“No morning on the TARDIS, Jack. Thought you’d know that by now. And yes, I did. Not my sleep night tonight.” He was lying, not that Jack would know. And Rose wasn’t in the room to give him the side-eye and her pointed glare, so hey. What was a little harmless fibbing between Time Lord and companion?
The Doctor knelt down and shoved the grating back into place with a grunt, standing up and meeting Jack’s eye.
“You shoulda come with us last night. Rose was hoping you’d come,” Jack said with a lazy grin, and the Doctor shrugged.
“I already told you. Club dancin’s not my thing. Too loud, does me head in.” That, and when he danced with Rose, certain parts of his body were more interested than others. Parts that made a noble and dignified exit as befitting a Lord of Time rather, uh, difficult. To say the least.
The Doctor’s ears started to heat up, and he silently redirected the blood flow away. Jack didn’t need to see him blushing.
Jack put his hands up and reclined on the console, smiling easily. The Doctor could see the hickeys down the column of his throat- Jack had clearly had a good night. Probably staggered back in when the Doctor was thrashing about in his bed, trying to sleep-
No. Don’t think about that.
“Good night?” the Doctor asked conversationally, and Jack grinned at him.
“Oh yeah. Met a nice Vex out looking for a good time- nothing like a roll in the hay with a telepath. Mind-blowing…literally. ‘Course, I’m sure Rose would know all about that, hey?” Jack said with a wink, and the Doctor had to reroute his blushing before it gave him away.
Rose’s footsteps tapped down the corridor, mercifully, and his hearts did a little flip. He turned back expectantly, watching his golden girl skip into the console room. In that moment, he decided that now was the time to spring his little surprise on them. He’d been showing them how, and it was high time to see if they remembered what to do.
Rose hopped up to him and greeted him with a peck on the cheek, stepping back and looking at him expectantly.
The Doctor did not blush.
“So! Where are we going today, Doctor?” Rose chirped, and Jack turned to face him, looking expectant.
The Doctor smiled, stroking his chin.
“No alerts today, so I suppose we could go…ah! How about Poverty Rock, on Asanaipi? Swaying grasslands all around, beautiful skies…and a fantastic old boulder by a lovely warm river. It’s a brilliant place for a picnic.”
Jack and Rose nodded, and the Doctor- to their surprise, stepped back from the controls.
“Oh,” Rose said, biting her thumbnail, “You- you want US, to-?”
“Now?” Jack said nervously, “Right now?”
“Yep!” the Doctor said with a smile, “I did say I might spring the exam on you at any time. You’re both fed and rested- how you lot get anything done in those needy little bodies of yours, I’ll never know- so you should be fine to show me a takeoff.”
He folded his arms and leaned back against the railing, looking expectant.
“O…kay…” Rose said nervously, “You sure?”
The Doctor gestured at the controls. “Perfectly sure. Nobody’s calling for help, we’re not in a hurry. I’ve shown you how to do it, now let’s see if you’ve been paying attention. Go on!”
Rose and Jack shared a look, and both nodded.
They both moved into positions opposite each other around the console, Rose taking up residence in front of a bank of settings and Jack handling the navigation panel.
“Alright, um, well,” Rose started nervously, “First I’ve got to make sure the exterior shields are properly in place, like so…blue, then red, then the bell…” she said as she adjusted the knobs in question.
Jack meanwhile was fiddling with the keyboard, punching in the navigation code the Doctor had made him memorize. When the Doctor himself flew the TARDIS, because he was symbiotically and telepathically bound to her, she punched in the proper code automatically. Jack- lacking that connection and not being a Time Lord- had to do it manually. Normally the codes were tailored for each individual takeoff, but this particular code was a “999” of sorts; taking the TARDIS to a place in the vortex that was always safe and stable. The “Emergency takeoff” code, which made transit from easy and transit to much longer.
Jack bit his lip, muttering the code out loud as he punched in each character and flipping a little toggle beside him to check. The Doctor had installed that switch just for his companions- when held down, it displayed the codes in a more standard language format, not just circular Gallifreyan. That was essential for a human trying to fly the TARDIS manually- so they could check to ensure they’d gotten the very long code right.
Rose meanwhile was still narrating her way through her end of her assigned preflight checks- a habit that the Doctor found rather amusing, though he wasn’t about to tell her.
“So, um- then I’ve got to get a lock on a crack between one instant and the next, and you do that by fiddling with this diaaaaal, like thaaaaaat…” she twiddled it, looking up at the Doctor nervously for guidance.
He nodded, and gestured for her to continue. Confidence bolstered, Rose leaned forwards to start adjusting the transtemporal exterior dimension switches.
“Alright, code’s punched in!” Jack called, “Right, then I, uh- shit. What do I do-?”
“The pump!” Rose yelled, “You use the pump, and I use the levers and toggle-“
“Right, yeah, yeah-“
The Doctor watched this all with pride. Normally when he flew, the TARDIS did a lot of this busy-work herself; largely because he was her symbiote, the Time Lord to which she was bonded. Telepathic communication between pilot and TARDIS made a lot of this stumbling and fumbling unnecessary. His human companions sadly had no such automation to help them, and had to do it all manually.
They were doing fantastic.
Jack pumped the compressor switch a few times, and Rose lunged for the dematerialization lever, flipping it down with some force.
The Doctor grunted and grabbed onto the railing as the floor pitched out from under him with a violent juddering. The ship groaned and wheezed, the time rotor protesting as they bucked into the Vortex. He could feel the TARDIS’s malcontent humming in the back of his mind, and he chuckled and patted the floor. He’d let some of his strays take the saddle, and she didn’t appreciate their nerves.
The entire ship spun in wild circles, gravity shifting around- Jack fell on his ass as gravity flipped to the floor, and then went flying into one of the coral struts, bouncing off and landing on the railing with a groan. Rose was dangling sideways from the lever for a few seconds, slamming knees-first into the floor, frantically looking at the Doctor for guidance.
“DOCTOR!” she yelled, “HELP!”
“ARTIFICIAL HORIZON!” he yelled, “BLACK HANDLE!”
“RIGHT, GOT IT!” Rose lunged for the lever, climbing the console as gravity pitched around again, and the Doctor couldn’t help but cackle with glee. This was the most fun takeoff he’d had in a century, EASILY.
Rose yanked the lever, and instantly flight stabilized- Jack was tangled in the railing and Rose hit the console chest-first.
The Doctor beamed, striding over to get Jack untied from the black bars. He checked the defrocked captain over quickly- nothing was broken, and Jack grunted and stretched the aches out of his bones.
“That was bloody brilliant! You two should see yourselves. A few more takeoffs and I can put me feet up and have some tea!” the Doctor said with glee, striding away from the definitely-okay Jack and towards his Rose. She hadn’t gotten tossed around so much- but he could hardly blame her, the artificial horizon was a tricksy little fucker.
Rose groaned from the floor, levering herself into a sitting position.
“F’ it’s all the same to you, Doctor,” she groaned, “And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’ll let you do the day-to-day flyin’. You’re smoother than us.”
“Yeah, no shit. Fuck. Didn’t think the TARDIS could DO somersaults, but here we are,” Jack grunted, rubbing his shoulder.
The Doctor snorted and waved his hand. “You’re learning! Always happens with a new ship, yeah? You’ll get better, just give it time. And you’re human, both of you- that’s a lot of manual busy-work you’ve got to do, just to fly the TARDIS.”
Rose stood up and staggered over to him, and the Doctor pulled her in for a hug. A tight squeeze and a pat on the back- his hearts thumped with pride for her. For both of them, really.
“To think, just a few weeks ago you were scared to even touch a switch on the console!” He said, “You’ve both come miles.”
He stepped up to the monitor to check that they were in stable flight, and yep- the vortex, everything as it should be. Not quite perfect, and he tweaked a few things- the TARDIS’s hum loosening in relief as he did. There.
He started to walk around the console, setting dials and pulling switches to take them to Poverty Rock, a nice little place in the Andromeda galaxy. As he did so, Rose hopped up on the jumpseat, watching him with interest. The Doctor met her gaze and beamed.
“Learning takeoff’s the first step,” he said, “You get good at takeoffs, you’ve mastered the hard part. Landing’s piss-easy- anyone can do a landin’. You’ll both get better with practice.” He said, eyes gleaming with pride.
He wasn’t sure if Rose and Jack would have access to the TARDIS’s flight computer, or if they’d have to learn all the location codes manually and punch them in by hand- most likely the latter, them being humans and all that. His plan was to teach them both a code for “home”- the Powell estate for Rose, and wherever Jack wanted to go for him- and then make them both memorize that code so they could go somewhere safe if something happened to him. So they wouldn’t be stranded a billion years in the future on an airless asteroid in case the worst happened to him.
And of course, there was always Emergency Program One if something happened before those lessons could be given.
He started fiddling with the monitor, reaching out with his mind and entwining himself with the mind of his ship. She sang a few notes across their telepathic bond; he sang a few right back. Flying a TARDIS was a duet, in most cases; for a Type 40, it was supposed to be a choir of seven.
“Supposed to be” wasn’t something the Doctor had ever been very good at.
She was already selecting his destination, punching in the proper coordinates (or so she claimed- a real liar, his TARDIS was) and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Jack checking something in one of the roundels. A flash of silver- ah.
He was charging his blasters, then.
The Doctor’s musings and pride-filled considerations were interrupted by an alarm blaring on the console. He stomped around to the monitor, eyes landing on the mauve filling the screen, and his hearts lurched.
“Picnic’s cancelled, sorry. We’ve got an alert.” He pressed a few switches to lock the TARDIS onto the signal, yanking a lever to pitch them out of the vortex.
“Where are we going?!” Rose yelled as they tumbled- gravity was shifting, but largely under their feet, wobbling left and right but never on the walls or the ceiling.
Experience was very useful.
“Don’t know!” the Doctor yelled, “Hold on to somethin’!”
He raced around the console, yanking more levers, and away from the screen- and as the TARDIS tumbled through the void, the words of the message faded onto the screen.