Chapter Text
The TARDIS whirred.
You looked up from the second-most top step of the short stairs leading from the console room into the greater depths of the ship. Taking the half-eaten red licorice into your right hand, you marked the page you were reading with your left.
“You know,-”
“Wha-?”
“I said, you know, it’s not supposed to make that noise.”
“Oh, I know!” Came the answer of the Doctor, from somwhere hidden on the other side of the circular control panel.
“Says here is an easy way to fix it: You just gotta-”
“What are you…?” And there she was, taking the steps up to where you sat two at a time until she plopped down one step above yours. “Is that the TARDIS manual?”
Her voice rose towards the end, like it was something she hadn’t seen in quite a while and couldn’t really believe you’d dug up. Or was quite displeased about you finding and bringing it out here while masking it with curiosity; you couldn’t really tell.
“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know an awful lot about spaceships, or time machines, and especially not about spaceships that are also time machines but I was wondering about that noise that comes when you start it up.”She scooted a bit closer, peering over your shoulder into the yellowed pages littered in ink. “Where did you even find that.”She took the licorice that really didn’t taste much like licorice at all from your hand and bit a good chunk of it off. It was the last package of american sweets you’d picked up during your first trip, and their long endurance was likely to the fact they had been a great disappointment in both taste and texture.
Now you furrowed your eyes at the resident Time Lady.
“The library? Where else would I look?”
The warm light in the console room painted her eyes golden brown as she looked up from the magazine-esque manual she’d taken out of your lap. The red string of candy dangled from between her teeth.
“Found it in the library, eh.” Her gaze rose to the ceiling, and after another bite she, too, took the remainder of the candy in her fist. “Interesting. Wonder what you’re on about, there.”
“Come again?” You reached inside the package and took out another piece, chewing it somewhat listlessly. Someone had to eat it.
The Doctor swallowed the rest of her stolen piece and made grabby hands for more. You handed her two pieces. Cheek hollowed out by half of the first of the two, she tapped her heels against the stairs.
“Oh nothing, was just rambling again. Found anything yet?”
You took the manual back and rubbed a hand over your forehead.
“Yeah, as I said, it’s written here that if you-”
“That noise, I like that noise. It’s the brakes. I leave ‘em on, isn’t it a nice noise?” She grinned, chewing her second candy already.
“Ah.” You could feel the expression on your face falter a bit. “Well, in that case.”
“How far’d you read in that old thing anyways?” She leaned back a bit and you wordlessly passed her the entire pouch. Satisfied for now, she kept on munching.
“Uh, I’m about- Halfway through, I think. Lots of stuff I don’t really get, but some of it became a bit more clear when put in context.”
“Like what?”
You thumbed through the pages, trying to settle on an example.
“Can’t say right now, but-” You closed the manual briefly, looking up into the air. “-The rainforest oxygen thing, how the light of star that fuels the TARDIS is redirected to the rainforest so the trees have sunlight. Well, starlight, I suppose. That was a lot more complicated when I read it in here, but I understood that.”
You pointed a finger at the Time Lady who, chewing, raised an eyebrow approvingly.
“I do have some questions about the whole travelling aspect.”
You turned so you could lean your back against the hand railing while talking to the Doctor. She fished for another piece, seemingly having some trouble with the package design, but nodded enthusiastically to signal for you to go on.
“TARDIS is the acronym for ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space’, but- I can’t even begin to-” She paused mid-chew to observe how you struggled to put into words what had been brewing in your thoughts for some time now.
“Everything moves.” You began anew, leaning forward and using your hands to underline your words. “Space, moves, constantly. For example the solar system around Earth - the planets circulate around the sun, yes, but the sun isn’t stationary. She’s moving, too, through space, and her gravitational field pulls us along, right? Assuming we’d be on Earth right now, or elsewhere within that system.”
You probably weren’t, which was just another detail worsening the headache beginning to creep in. Although cautious, the Doctor nodded to affirm your words.
“So, if everything moves, always, then nothing is in the same spot twice. Like yes, the Earth rotates around the sun, but even after a full rotation we’re not back in the same spot, I mean, in relation to the sun, yes, but as the sun itself has moved through space, Earth is at an entirely new point in space, and thus, time, which makes space-time travel incredibly complicated and I really wonder how your species was able to build a machine that could not only travel extended lengths through this entire concoction, but also accurately navigate it?”
You had to pause to take a deep breath, but in that time the Doctor had leaned forward as well and put the almost empty package of sweets aside for now. She was still listening though, and what was possibly even better, seemed to understand exactly where you were going with this. Or at least could understand what you meant. Which was more than you’d hoped for already.
“So, the TARDIS, this, TARDIS, any TARDIS, is able to perform the mathematical and physical calculations necessary to accurately trace back or predict where each particle, planet and by extension, each continent, city and building was or is going to be and is able to navigate accordingly so as to safely drop its travellers onto the surface of the selected destination.”
The Doctor blinked, tongue coming out to sweep the remains of the sugary taste off her lips.
“Yes, that is- Very formally phrased but ultimately... Correct, yes.”
You looked at her, not really knowing how to progress from this.
“That is insane.”
“It’s science.” The hint of a smile came back to her face as she tilted her head slightly.
“Yeah but- That is an insane feat of technological evolution.”
“Yes? I know.”
The skin between her eyebrows began to crease slightly, as if she didn’t really get you, after all.
Faced with sudden lack of understanding after just having been under the impression that your mildly jumbled rambling had not fallen on deaf ears was quite a bit of a setback, and you turned back towards the console in the middle to gather your thoughts a little.
The Doctor sniffed and you heard the plastic crinkle as she pushed it further away before slipping down a step and shuffling even closer to you, her coat bunching between you and her thigh.
“Everything alright? Did I say something wrong?”
You felt her fingers brushing through the hairs by your temple, and involuntarily twitched back. Immediately afterwards you searched for her eyes, to say you hadn’t meant to, but the apology got stuck in your throat.
“It’s a lot.” You confessed, sliding the manual into her lap.
The Doctor smiled lightly, gingerly placed it behind her, close to the candies, before focusing her entire attention on you again.
You noticed how both her palms were pressed together between her knees and had your heart sinking down into the area of your belly button.
“Maybe… Try not thinking about it so much, hm?”
Her voice wasn’t condescending, wasn’t coddling. Troubled, you met her eyes again.
“It’s just… I can’t… There’s so much difficult machinery at work here, it’s incredible.”
A low ‘dong’ reverberated through the panels that made up the floor, somewhere deep down.
The Doctor stared between her shoes, smile widening. “Oh, I get it now.” She said quietly, as if to herself. The light painted shadows under her eyes.
Then, directed at you, she regarded you with a warm look. “Be careful, hm? Human minds are so easily over-worked, especially by stuff like this.”
She bumped the side of her knee into yours. “Don’t get too caught up in the finer details. Even I don’t understand everything that’s going on all the time. Wouldn’t be half as fun otherwise.”
“I guess.” You gave in, shoulders hanging and head drooping.
“Hey, that not enough for you? To know you were right?”
Her tone was lighter, almost mocking now, but the expression on her face still careful, still cautious.
“No, you’re right, I suppose. It’s just- It’s a big thing, and I don’t want to seem like I’m just taking it for granted, you know?”
Her smile only widened.
“I’m pretty sure noone here is doubting that.”
You could see her resolve crumbling and didn’t object as she reached out and ruffled your hair; Instead squinting your eyes close and smiling.
The candies were a good deal to her left and you had to lean over her lap to reach them.
“You said not even you know everything that’s going on?” You grinned and bit into a string of gummy.
The Doctor rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.
“No, I do not.” She admitted, lifting her finger to your face. “But most of the time, I do! Even if I might have not finished school.”
“When you say ‘school’, do you mean an institution that is similar to human’s idea of school or is it just the term that comes closest to making me understand what you’re referring to?”
She gasped, glaring at you.
“You really need to get out more and stop asking these questions! A thousand years in time and space and I’ve never met anyone who’s first wish to travel anywhere they could was a candy store in the United States of America, and who wonders about Gallifrey’s educational system! I really don’t understand what’s going on inside there.” She gently tipped her finger against the front of your forehead.
You turned your head, having heard an echo of some sort just a corner down from where you sat now.
“Sorry to disappoint.” You awkwardly grinned, looking back from the empty corridor.
“I never said that.” She crossed her legs, the alleviated foot bobbing up and down. “It never ceases to amaze me how different all of your are. But I think I understand why the TARDIS let you find her manual; This bit of thinking more than what you should… That’s nice.”
It felt like she had wanted to say something else and thought better of it at the last moment, but you didn’t hold it against her.
There was always something the Doctor wasn’t telling you, and if you had seen as much as her, you were sure you’d do the same.
It was a miracle on its own how the Time Lady had managed to keep sane and going on for so long, considering everything she must’ve been through.
“Pancakes?” You asked, then, and her eyes and mouth went wide with surprise and glee.
“Oh! Oh, yes, yes yes please! You make the best pancakes!”
She skipped ahead on your way out of the console room, through the front doors and into the small apartment you were renting.
“Pancakes!” She cried, throwing open the doors and vanishing into the sun-flooded room.
“Hey, can we go grocery shopping in the US again some time? Those flaming hot cheetos were really tasty.”
Her blonde head was already stuck into the fridge, but she resurfaced at your words.
“Of course! Do you want to go right now?”
You shut the tap off and dried your hands.
“I thought you wanted pancakes right now.”
She moved aside to let you take out everything you needed from the fridge, ever so helpfully closing the door behind you.
“I do want pancakes.” She pouted, sliding into one of the chairs.
“Can you help me weight the ingredients?”
And she was up on her feet again, eyes glinting and hands already reaching for the cupboard.
You caught her wrist, and now it was her who flinched slightly.
“-But first, take off your shoes, hang you jacket and wash your hands. Who knows what you track around on that skin of yours.”
She jutted out her bottom lip but begrudgingly did as you told her.
“I helped make pancakes!” She squealed, a good hour later.
The first two of the batch were placed on your plate, looking a bit more unsightly than the rest, but three of the more well-rounded looking ones were piled on the Doctor’s plate across from yours, and her cheeks were rosy and her eyes glistening with pride.
You took a sip from your glass.
“You know, I thought for someone who’s been around this long, you’d surely have picked up how to feed yourself and your companions adequately.”
She hummed through a mouth full of pancake and maple syrup.
Under some difficulties, she swallowed.
“Maybe I did! But maybe I enjoy seeing people happy doing what they’re good at.”
“I expected worse,” You admitted, finally taking a taste of your work. “You could have burned down the kitchen.”
The Doctor scrunched her nose.
“Maybe my second-last regeneration. He was quite clumsy. I’m not.” At your glare, she didn’t close her mouth after finishing her sentence and after not much of a break, added: “-As clumsy as him.”
You laughed and dug in.
“I wonder what they were like.”
“Hm?” She looked up from the random book she’d picked from your shelf, a yellowish paperback with ornaments on the edges and a stylistic unicorn at the front.
“Your past regenerations, I mean.” You looked at her, sat side to side on the sofa that could’ve comfortably housed three and a half people. Three people and a dog.
“Hmm…”
“Did you ever go back and pretend to be your own companion?”
“What is it with you today?” She looked you up and down, a finger on the page she’d been reading. “All these questions and wonderings! What are you up to?”
You lifted your hands in surrender.
“I don’t know! Mercy, please. I was just thinking, I mean, if you change your entire body... “
She placed the book on the table and her head on your shoulder.
“It doesn’t quite… work like that.” Her voice was calmer now. “We Time Lords… Ladies, I always get it wrong… We’re quite different from humans. We don’t look like it, but we are. We can sense each other. We can recognize the other, most of the time. So if I were to go back to myself, not only would that mess with my timeline-” You snorted softly, and she nudged her elbow into your side. “-But also I would recognize myself quickly. Also, wouldn’t that be weird, more than one of me in the same place?”
You could only lift your shoulders so far without disrupting her spot on it.
It was quiet for a while. Outside the wind pushed clouds over the sky like chess pieces.
“Are there others like you out there?” Your voice was smaller, both afraid of asking the question and getting an answer. “Time Lords, and Ladies, I mean… You love to travel so much, do you have any Time Lord friends you meet up with on sundays? Have a cuppa, talk about the latest gossip?”
The blonde on your shoulder stayed quiet, which was fairly unusual. “Doctor?”
She mumbled something incoherently at hearing her name called but didn’t react further.
Something tugged on your heart as you held her face with one hand, carefully letting her down until she was lying across the spot you’d been sitting in.
There was no way to tell how old she was, how old she really was, even if you didn’t know how old the face she was wearing now was, either.
But you had seen the skin growing darker under her eyes over the past days, had noticed the increasing difference between being overly fidgety and then quiet and more reclusive.
Here, on your couch, with her socks threatening to slip down her ankles, and her suspenders pushed off her shoulders; With her coat hung by the door and her shoes neatly placed below, she could’ve also been a friend after a rough week at work.
Nothing indicated her extra-terrestrial origins, if one looked past the big blue box parked somewhat haphazardly on the edge of the carpet, barely squeezing in between the couch and the door to the hallway.
You unfolded one of the blankets you kept draped over the back of your sofa and tucked the sleeping Time Lady in, combing the blonde hairs away from her face. She snuggled in deeper, lips moving but no words your ears could pick up coming out.
Not making a single sound you stole away, bringing the plates into the kitchen and deciding to clean your bedroom again. It had been a while.
You had no idea how long Time Lords and Ladies rested, or needed to sleep once they did.
The double hearts system that the Doctor had told you about a while ago suggested faster metabolism, which would also explain why the Doctor was constantly snacking on things left and right, but you’d never really seen her sleep.
While taking little souvenirs and trinkets off their shelf and wiping it off with a dust cloth, you made a mental note to try scouring the TARDIS’ library on books about Time Lord physiology. While pinning the metaphorical note to the ever-crowded pinwall somewhere to the back-left of your brain you had to think back on a Lord of the Rings post you’d came across on Pinterest months ago, about how elves could keep running for weeks before they ultimately crashed and went out cold for three days of sleep that nothing could rouse them of.
Maybe Time Ladies were similar. Maybe the Doctor would sleep for the next days until she’d spring up, all fizzing energy and sparkling eyes again, tugging you off to another adventure.
Would she get a sleep-hangover? Complete with bed head, swollen eyes and a startling lack of hand-eye-coordination after such a long nap?
As it turned out, her sleep would not last as long as a headcanon about elves from The Lord of the Rings, as you were forced to realize over cooking dinner.
The noodles were almost good to be put on plates, complete with the sauce you’d cooked out of what was left in the fridge, when a crash from the living room and a slurred call of your name interrupted the otherwise serene mood.
Outside rain pattered against the glass, but the Doctor’s shout for you drowned that out. The door to the living room opened under your hand and you came face to face with an obviously distressed Doctor.
“Oh thank Rassilon you’re okay!”
She fell forward and over you, and it was all you could do when you took a small step back to brace her sudden weight, and lift your hands to her back to answer the hug she’d swallowed you with.
“Yes? Doctor, of course I am. We came to my flat to have pancakes earlier, remember? Dinner is about to be ready.”
She pulled back and pressed her forehead against yours, eyes shut, and lips in a tight line. Her palms were still switching places, running over your back and arms and sides of your face and throat, as if she couldn’t be sure it really was you until she’d checked.
“Doctor.” You trapped her hands by their wrists, held them over your heart. “I’m okay. You’re okay. Nothing is after us. You’re okay.”
“Okay… Okay..” She repeated, eyes still a bit glazed as alternating looking into both of yours. “I’m… okay.” It didn’t sound like she believed you fully, but it was enough to occupy her mind for now as she swam towards full consciousness. “I’m… In your flat, I’m okay.”
She cleared her throat.
“I made pasta.” You took a step back, to bring some distance, but she followed your movement, a hand of hers catching the hem of your shirt and tugging at it like a child.
“Don’t leave, please. Don’t leave me, please. You’re one of the best.”
“And I’m sure you’re not telling any other companion that, ever.”
She let you disentangle her hand from your shirt, and let you sit her down across the table.
She watched you, yawning widely, as you split the pasta in two and gave her the slightly larger serving.
“Bon appetit.”
She squinted at you. “Are you french? I don’t remember. I don’t think I’ve spoken french in the last hundred years? -Maybe it’s the language filter, I really need to get that check-”
“Doctor, food.” You reminded her, a fork full of noodles pointing at her plate.
“Hm? Oh! Oh, pasta! Great!” She paused. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
She yawned after finishing the slightly overdue cup of pudding, sleepily blinking up at you as you stepped next to her, put a hand on her shoulder.
"Do you still need more sleep? How long does this go on?"
"Hmmhm…" She slung an arm around your middle and tugged you close enough so she could mush her face into your stomach. "Hmm… I should've… Should've really taken better care of m'self." Another yawn. "Us Time… Folk… Can go a long way yknow? Um… Tomorrow.. I'll be good s new."
"You need to brush teeth, Doctor. I'll pick out some pyjamas for you."
A Sleepy Doctor was one of the most cooperative, you found.
Clothed in a slightly big shirt and some clean boxershorts she fell into bed, having used a brand-new toothbrush you'd dug up from the bottom of the bathroom mirror.
The bed wasn't really large enough for two people and you were still mentally preparing to spend the night on the sofa.
"I flossed!” She told you proudly while you unnecessarily smoothed out wrinkled in the bedsheet.
“That’s very good. Being a true role-model, you are.”
Her tone changed from pride to something quieter with the next words.
“You're gonna stay, right?" Her breathing had sped up, the grip on your hand surprisingly strong. "You won't leave. Right? Don't leave me. Don't…"
With a sigh you gave in and swung up your legs, clicking off the lamp.
"Move over a little, won't you?"
She made room enough to fit you on the mattress, but as soon as you settled down you felt the warmth by your side.
"'S cuddling 'kay?"
"Yes, of course Doctor."
Her hand snaked over your stomach, a leg hooking over yours.
She slid closer until her entire front was pressed against your side.
If you kept real quiet you could hear her heartbeats.
Dun-dun-dun-dun.
Dun-dun-dun-dun.
Four beats, exactly fitting themselves between yours.
"Sleep well, Doctor."
Her breath, fanning over your jaw, evened out.
The rolls were so fresh they were still warm in the paper bag, and you made sure not to accidentally squish the croissants.
You'd skipped the coffee or tea, still having plenty at home and not even knowing what the Doctor preferred.
Halfway back to your flat your eyes happened to fall into an alley, a strange shape rising between two big dumpster.
The familiar blue made you stop.
Had the Doctor woken sooner than expected?
When you had left the bed this morning she'd still been fast asleep.
Your key got stuck.
"Aw c'mon, don't be like that. I brought breakfast! Here, it's still warm. Did the Doctor decide to-" The door opened outwards and you pocketed your key.
The sun shone in your back, dipping the inside of the TARDIS in darkness.
You turned on your spot and gently pulled the door closed behind you.
The breath to call for the Doctor was still entering your lungs as you faced the control panel.
Your gaze found another across the top of it; Thick, bushy brows twitching together as the dark eyes beneath them flickered from you to the door behind you.
Body frozen in place, the only thing you could do was say
“Fuck.”