Chapter Text
The TARDIS console room was quiet. Howling arctic wind outside was drowned out only by the occasional sonic screech and quiet clinking of tools and spare parts. The Doctor stood, hunched over the console with a comforting hand resting on it, the other fumbling with an ordinary screwdriver to remove the cracked and sparking display dials. Slender fingers and knuckles were bruised and flecked with dried blood—nothing compared to the damage those hands had done to the TARDIS.
“Sorry,” he whispered, lifting the panel of dials out of the console and setting it to one side. “So sorry. Working on a new display console. Had to take the old one out straight away. Don’t want a fire.”
“I—”
The word—or bleep—echoed around the console room, and the time rotor pulsed weakly. The Doctor’s eyes flicked up to study it with eyebrows raised. The TARDIS seldom spoke aloud, and her audio interface was turned off in any case.
“What is it?” he asked, looking over his progress: console pieces strewn out in order of most urgent fixings. “Have I done something wrong?”
“He—hel—”
“Help?” he interjected breathlessly. “Sweetie, I’m trying, I am trying—”
“Hell—”
From there his hearts plummeted. He’d just had enough with Heaven. Perhaps a fault in the interface speakers. He dashed to the other side of the console, skidding to a halt in front of the communication panels. He had not been anywhere near them in his fury, but it was possible that he had loosened things across the entire console in his rage.
A new wave of sickening guilt sized his hearts.
“Let’s recalibrate the hologram projector first,” he suggested, fumbling in his coat pocket for the sonic screwdriver as he knelt beneath the console. “I’m really hoping it isn’t a break in the speakers, I don’t fancy a trip to the shops today—ah, here we are, loose interface circuit.”
Another sonic screech as he mended another injury.
“Try again, sweetie,” he told the TARDIS, getting to his feet and dropping the screwdriver back inside his pocket.
“Doctor?”
His gentle, doting expression shifted to taut confusion. The voice echoing around the console room was not the TARDIS’, nor was it the holographic voice of the Brigadier.
“H-hello? Doc-tor?”
“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded, leaning over the console for a closer look at the time rotor’s weak glow, pulsing in time with the voice. “You’re not my interface.”
“Sorry,” the voice said, solemn. There was a long silence. “Sorry, I will go—”
“No! No, no, don’t go, wait,” the Doctor assured him—ostensibly “him,” it was the voice of a young man, probably Lincolnshire, maybe London. Reaching a hand out to the rotor, he bowed his head in thought. “Listen. You’re, ah… Well, you are actually inside my TARDIS, and she’s already hurt. Can I transfer you to a portable interface thingy?”
“Yes, that would be quite fine, Doctor,” the voice assured him.
“How is it you can channel the TARDIS’ interface network, anyway?” the Doctor asked while he lifted one of the floor panels and lowered himself down into the console’s wirework and ramshackle accessory storage. “This is Time Lord technology. It usually fries anything else—you’re lucky not to have been fried.”
“I am Time Lord technology—”
The Doctor smashed his head on the underside of the console floor in his rush to stand up. Clambering out with an old portable interface system clasped in his hand, he stared steely-eyed at the time rotor, with nowhere else to direct his glaring at the disembodied voice.
“What Time Lord technology?” he demanded, fumbling with the tangle of cables attached to the portable system as he returned to the console. “Not mine.”
“No, Doctor, not yours,” the voice agreed, with a drop in the previously pleasant, formal tone. “Regrettably.”
“The portable interface thingy,” the Doctor began to explain, even as he noted the changed tone with a slight tilt of his head. It occurred to him that the voice, though formal and pleasant, sounded strained. “It only supports holographic interface technology.”
“Yes, that’s just fine, Doctor,” the voice answered, chipper once again. “I am programmed to be accessible as a holographic, audio, video, neurobiologically telepathic, textual, and humanoid interface.”
With the portable system plugged in, screen alight and ready to receive the interface, the Doctor’s fingers hesitated over the dials. An audio interface was one thing, but telepathic, and humanoid; the possibility of reaching beyond the Doctor’s technology posed an additional risk that he did not want to unleash on an already injured TARDIS.
“What Time Lord technology?” the Doctor repeated firmly. “Who made you?”
It was a long while before the interface replied, “I fear, if I say… you will banish me.”
“Missy,” the Doctor stated, hazarding a fairly likely guess. When the interface did not reply, he reached for the plug on the portable.
“You’re right. I would,” the Doctor added, loudly, with his other hand resting on the TRADIS’ main interface lever. “The TARDIS’ interface is shut down right now, which is how you were able to connect in the first place. I activate it, you will be crushed and overridden completely, so tell me why you’re here—”
“It is true that the Mistress created me,” the interface blurted quickly, “But you must understand—”
The Doctor clenched his jaw. That Missy created an interface—a humanoid interface, from Lincolnshire, and programmed it to his TARDIS, made him feel sick. When had she done it? Why?
“Doctor,” the interface pleaded, “The Mistress has sent me away.”
“Sent you to me?” the Doctor snarled incredulously. “To check in, as I stared into the void where my planet used to be?”
The Doctor wrenched the TARDIS' interface power lever towards himself. One easy move to dispel Missy, killing her interface, severing ties with the race of Time Lords again… The very moment he did it, the second the intruding interface’s screams of agony pierced the room, the Doctor slammed the lever back to “off” and stepped away from the console, bringing a trembling hand to his mouth.
Don’t you trust yourself?
Missy’s voice echoed in his mind—her new voice, Scottish, he realized. Scottish, just like his.
“No,” he answered, barely more than a whisper. “I am alone… Alone, and taking everything out on… on the TARDIS and f-fucking artificial intelligence interfaces.”
He stood perfectly still, unwilling to touch the consoles, too restless to sit down, with the rare vulgarity to escape his lips hanging in the air, harsh to his own ears.
“Sorry,” he murmured to the TARDIS. “Sorry, so sorry…”
He could feel the emanating exhaustion. There were none of the usual hums, clicks and whistles of the working TARDIS, no blinking lights, no lit screens, only darkness, absolute quiet, fatigue. The Doctor sank to the floor, patting the cool metal as he sat cross-legged, not trying for comfort but letting her know he was there.
He closed his eyes.
“I w-watch-ch’d you and the TARDIS after the Cyberm-men dest-troyed the p-plane, Doct-t-tor…”
The Doctor opened his eyes slowly. The interface voice was still there. It stuttered and crackled like a weak radio signal; like it was in pain.
“Forg-give me for spea-speaking out of t-turn, Doc…tor,” he added, careful, fearful. “I must say… Even as you plummet-t-ted t-to your death, you had the clar…ity of m-m-mind to call… her. And she came for you, saved-d you…”
The Doctor got shakily to his feet, returning to the console and portable interface system. He plugged it back into the TARDIS’ central interface network, and into the holographic system to distribute the transfer load, as not to have it weighing so heavily on the TARDIS. His poor TARDIS.
“I promise, after this: rest,” he assured her, hands splayed encouragingly over the console, and then to the intruding interface: “I need your system identification and password to transfer you.”
“System I.D.: S.E.B.; system password: 12.”
“Yeah, I bet,” the Doctor muttered, entering the information. As ‘loading hologram’ successfully flashed across the portable system’s screen, the Doctor was safe to unplug it from the console, setting it on the floor.
“Do I call you Seb, then, S-E-B?” he asked as a beam of light flared six feet high from the portable system, and the projected loading screen presented the letters S.E.B. to him in Gallefreyan script.
“I would like that very much, Doctor.”
The Doctor, in mid-step to approach the materializing hologram, was stopped dead when the image cleared and he looked upon Missy’s interface. Though faint and flickering on the old portable system, Seb’s fear and pain appeared very real to the Doctor as the young man stood, badly burned and trembling in the middle of the TARDIS.