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The Doctor groped around above his head until his fingers met the lip of the control panel, and pulling on it, he levered himself up to his feet. He mopped at his brow with his handkerchief, glad to be clear of the heat radiating off the insides of the power conduits he’d just sealed up.
The console room was dimly lit, not quite too dark to work in, but hardly the ideal conditions for making repairs – still, it wasn’t all that long ago that he’d successfully coaxed the Tardis into developing a kind of night mode roughly synchronous to his human companions’ sleeping habits, and he didn’t think it worthwhile to go fiddling with that now – certainly not while Polly, Ben, and Jamie were finally sleeping peacefully in their rooms down the corridor. After everything they’d been through in the last several days, they at least deserved to get a good night’s rest in a safe place and without any interruptions – no matter how absurdly long they took with that sort of thing. For his part, the Doctor had already gotten about as much sleep as he could stomach in one go and was looking for something innocuous he could do in the meantime – and so he had settled for working on the console in the half-light.
Their rough landing on the moon – when he’d been so close to successfully getting them to Mars, too! – had been irritating him for days now, and even though he was more than happy to blame the navigational faults on the effects of the Gravitron, he knew a tune-up to the inter-dimensional shock absorbers and some of the Tardis’s external defenses could hardly go amiss.
Of course, now that he’d finished his work, he realized there was no real way to test how much of an improvement he’d made without another bumpy landing for comparison, but he had no intention of seeking one of those out any time soon. Nevertheless, like any good repairman, he wanted to at least feel like he could stand there surveying a job well done, so he found the control for the doors and let them trundle slowly open as he took his coat from the chair behind him and strolled over for a look outside.
He’d made a point of landing the ship somewhere remote before he’d started his re-calibrations – as much for the sake of a sterile work environment as to avoid attracting trouble. He had to admit they’d had a rather terrible track record with that lately, hopping from one place to the next to the next and rarely getting more than a few moments in at any of them before they were tangled up in some new dangerous situation. But the vacuum of space was fairly reliable for staying out of the way of the action, and though he hadn’t bothered to inspect the particular region the Tardis had selected yet, as he stood in the doorway pulling on his coat, he saw that she had obviously chosen well for his criteria.
They were parked somewhere on the outskirts of one galaxy, the view of its neighbors interrupted every now and then by a local star that shone more brightly than the rest. Some of the closest galaxies were near enough to take up sizable portions of the view, and the Doctor stared for a moment or two until he’d identified enough of them to get his bearings, not that it mattered much out here. He leaned a forearm against the doorframe, frowning for the briefest moment at a scuff on the paint that he tried to rub off with his thumb before shaking his head at his own absurdity. The Tardis could look like whatever she wanted without it being an indicator of the shape she was in – what mattered was that she was holding a fixed position, maintaining artificial gravity even on the doorstep of the void, and of course, sustaining the shielded bubble that kept outside forces out and the air in – all of which were in perfect working order, exactly as indicated by his readings back at the console.
He did have the utmost faith in his ship, however finicky she could be at times, but there was still something about actually seeing things with his own eyes that had very little to do with trusting the Tardis’s ability to protect them, and more to do with experiencing it for himself. And besides, a view like this really was rather lovely, now that he thought about it.
And if he were honest that really did make for a nice change, even for a stop as brief and trivial as this – when he compared it to what they’d seen lately when they’d opened these doors. The rough wilderness outside the colony’s walls. The barren, blinding landscape of the moon. The rocky beaches above Atlantis. That little patch of undergrowth uncomfortably within cannon range of Culloden moor . . . Yes, it had been a long time since he’d stood here in the doors of a ship that could take him anywhere in time and space and actually seen something as stunningly calm as this – a place a person could enjoy looking at, and with all the safety and freedom to do just that.
And that gave him another thought.
Jamie was asleep.
Consciousness had slid away from him on a tide of exhaustion that left no room for anxieties about the alienness of either the bed or the room – but if he’d been awake he might have noticed their absence anyway. The truth was, although this was the first full night he was spending in his new room on the Tardis, the travels he’d been through already had well and truly convinced him that, for all its strangeness, he was better off thinking of the ship as home.
There was an air of safety to it he couldn’t account for, but there were a lot of things he didn’t fully understand these days, and he was hardly about to choose the one mystery that happened to be comforting as the one to begin interrogating.
But tonight, even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able. Like Ben & Polly, he’d had just enough leftover adrenaline to get himself washed up, changed, and through dinner and enough of the ‘evening’ not to be impolite before heading off for an early night. Neither the eerie stillness of his own room nor Polly’s helpful instructions about the wardrobe’s collection of pajamas had delayed him a bit, and after kicking off his shoes and collapsing on the bed, he was out within seconds – although he slept lightly enough that when a knock came at his door, hours later, he still heard it.
Or at least, he thought he had. He laid there for a few moments, half-propped up against the headboard, listening and wondering if he’d imagined it, before a hesitant voice called to him through the door in a stage whisper.
“Jamie, are you awake?”
The Doctor. Even only half-awake, it still didn’t surprise him.
“Aye, I am now – what is it? I mean, you can come in,” he added, hoping he hadn’t sounded rude.
The Doctor opened the door so they could speak more clearly, but he didn’t step inside. Instead he stood out in the dimly lit hallway, all but bouncing up and down.
“There’s something I think you ought to see, come on, it’s outside.” As soon as he saw Jamie starting to stand, his energy got the better of him, and he took off down the corridor, disappearing from view. Alarmed, Jamie scrambled after him, just barely pausing to step into his shoes on his way out of the room.
He was still half-stumbling, trying to get the left one on all the way when he finally caught up with the Doctor, stopped right at the junction that let out into the console room. Jamie still didn’t know what was going on, but there was enough light now for him to see that he was excited about something rather than worried, and he allowed himself to relax enough to lean against the wall, catching his breath and pulling the heels of his shoes up properly.
“What’s the rush?” he asked, a little late, since the Doctor was now waiting for him patiently.
“No rush at all – it’s not going anywhere, and neither are we, for the moment. But there’s something I’d like to show you,” he announced, taking one step over the threshold as if it held some special significance. There he stopped again, holding one arm out and beckoning Jamie to overtake him.
Still puzzled by his behavior, Jamie did as he was asked and followed him inside. The dim orange light bleeding out from the roundels on the walls already made the room feel different than usual – smaller perhaps, a little cozier – so it was a moment before he realized what he was meant to notice: the doors at the far end of the room were standing wide open. He turned back to the Doctor in alarm, but he merely nodded, that same pleased look on his face as before, so Jamie approached them, curious. He had to stand right in between them to see past their bulk to what was outside, but once he’d caught sight of it, he stopped in his tracks.
“But that’s—” his mouth hung open as he blinked at what he was looking at – a night sky, certainly, but unlike any he’d ever seen before – and it seemed to go on forever. He crept closer, passing the place where the thick white doors bent back into the Tardis, to where the gap narrowed down to just the space between the plain wooden blue ones, gasping when no ground came into sight. His first thought was that they must’ve landed on a mountaintop somewhere, or at least a hill to get a view so wide and uninterrupted, but now that he stood on the very edge of the floor he could see there was nothing, in any direction, except for the stars.
The Doctor had come up behind him, silently watching Jamie watching the stars, and now stood beside him as best as he could in the narrow doorway, though they had to crowd together to fit.
“Wow,” Jamie breathed, all but speechless as his mind finally made sense of what he was seeing.
The Doctor watched the shadows move across his face as he glanced slowly from one side to the other, the light from the nearest stars playing against his profile as he took in the spectacle before him. Together they peered out through the last fringes of this galaxy to its neighbors draped like curtains between them and the rest of the universe, filling the intervening void with cascading colors, the stillness and the darkness broken only by beacons of white-hot light and swirling showers of sparks tinted blue and yellow, lavender and amber, shining across so much emptiness to the place where a shabby old police box hung suspended in its own little bubble of warmth and light.
It was peaceful, it was empty, and in truth, it was beautiful too. The Doctor was rather certain he’d made the right decision, going to wake him.
“We’re up in the stars,” Jamie whispered, still too busy just looking to even feel foolish saying something like that. “In space, I mean. We aren’t even on a planet or a moon or anything – are we?” he asked, swallowing and turning back towards the Doctor with sudden interest.
“No, you’re quite correct,” he agreed, grinning gently and peering out of his side of the doorway, as if to confirm some hidden continent wasn’t lurking just out of view. “I parked the Tardis here to work on a few repairs to her outer shell, while you slept. We’re simply hanging in space, there’s nothing outside. . . Then again, of course, there’s everything.”
“Everything?” he asked eagerly.
“Well those aren’t just stars, Jamie – though some of those brighter, closer ones are, just there – or there,” he explained, singling them out. He paused a moment, letting him concentrate on them before pulling his attention away again. “But those shapes, the colored spirals and discs that look a little bit like bright, intricate clouds – each one of them is an entire galaxy, each full of billions of stars, some of them like your own sun, with planets—”
“Some of them like the Earth?” he guessed.
“In one way or another, yes. Earth’s actually behind us from here, and a long way away too, but the planet and its sun and solar system are inside a galaxy of their own. Yours is shaped a bit like – like that one there,” he decided, picking out a good example of a barred spiral that faced them at a clear angle, but it was much further away than some of the others looming larger, and Jamie couldn’t find it.
“Where?” he asked, craning his neck up. The Doctor reached over and took his hand, stepping behind him so he was looking over Jamie’s shoulder as he pointed, trying to align both their vision and their outstretched fingertips.
“That one, just . . . there, you see?”
“That’s a whole galaxy?” he balked, taking half a step backwards and bumping against the Doctor’s chest. “I thought it was a planet!”
“No, I’m afraid it’s much, much larger than that – it’s just hard to tell because of how far away we are. And ah, from our perspective here, we can see that it’s round – but it’s much more circular than spherical, in fact. Like these,” he added, dropping Jamie’s hand as he swept his arm out to indicate the nearer galaxies. “At least a couple of these are spiral too, we’re just looking at them from the side, as it were, so they appear flat.”
Jamie frowned at the swaths of color that glittered in the darkness like gold dust scattered on black velvet. “They dinnae look very flat to me.”
“Well of course they aren’t completely, but they’re massive – so in comparison to how wide they are, looking at them from this side, they’re relatively flat. Like a disc.” He tried to make a circle with his fingers and thumbs to show him the two different perspectives, but the sides of his hands kept getting in the way from one angle or another whenever he tried to correct for it, until Jamie placed a hand on his wrist and gently lowered his arm.
“It’s alright Doctor, I think I understand. The Earth and the Moon and the Sun and all the planets I know are in a galaxy that looks like that from one direction, and far away, and like this another way, and closer up. And right now it’s somewhere behind us.”
“Spot on!” He beamed, before he caught himself and bent his head, blushing. “Not that I dragged you out of bed to give you a science lesson, of course. I simply thought . . .” he trailed off, looking back out at the stars, hoping there’d be a good explanation written in them somewhere, but none came to him. Jamie didn’t seem to mind though – he had followed the Doctor’s gaze and was nodding slightly to himself as if in understanding – so he let the thought die out on its own.
“And we’re in a galaxy now?” Jamie asked after a moment or two, and the Doctor nodded hurriedly, glad to hear a question that proved he hadn’t bored him yet with all his talk.
“Yes, just on the edge of one. Most of it’s behind us, but there are still a few stars belonging to it that we can see – that’s why they look bigger and brighter than the ones farther away in those other galaxies, even though they might be similar in size. They’re still very far away from us, of course, but they’re closer than the others.”
“But even though we’re in a galaxy, we’re not on a planet.”
“No, there’s quite a lot of empty space in between everything in – well, in space,” he admitted, a little lamely. “Even within one galaxy, I mean,” he added quickly, clearing his throat and trying to sound more helpful. “That’s why they’re so large, really – yes, they’re full of stars and planetary bodies and the like, but it’s the distances between all those things that truly add up to such a size.”
“But if we’re just floating in the empty part of space, I thought—” he broke off, looking confused, and the Doctor wondered what he’d left out.
He’d begun to enjoy talking to Jamie about these kinds of things, in the few chances they’d had to do so so far – there was something comfortable and easy about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. But that did mean he had to remind himself every now and again that they were still fairly new to one another, and if he thought too hard about it, there were perhaps things that made him a little nervous, cautiously trying to avoid either patronizing him or assuming that he already knew things he couldn’t. Not that he consciously thought of Jamie as terribly different from anyone else he’d traveled with – but perhaps it would be fairer to Jamie if he did. After all, the other human companions he’d had all came from points in Jamie’s future, and they’d all had far more thorough educations in these areas. All of them, of course, except—
“I thought you said people couldn’t survive, out in the space part of space. That you had to be on a planet, or something like a planet, with an atmosphere like Earth’s so you’d have enough air to breathe, and with enough gravity that you didn’t go floating away.” Jamie looked at him quizzically and the Doctor couldn’t help but smile in spite of himself as an involuntary tension slid from his shoulders. “Didn’t you?” he asked again, off the Doctor’s strange expression.
“Yes, yes I did,” he confirmed, and when Jamie continued to stare at him perplexed, he added, “I’m simply very glad to hear how well you’ve remembered that.”
“Well, it wasnae that long ago,” Jamie said, shrugging as he looked back out through the doors. “And besides, you said it was important.”
“And it is.”
In fact it had been one of the very first serious conversations he’d ever had with Jamie, pulling him aside while Ben and Polly got cleaned up after their trip to Atlantis. There’d been a lot to show him within the Tardis just then, and the Doctor would need to repeat most of this warning to all three of them before they stepped outside anyway, just to be safe, but he wanted to speak to Jamie alone about it first, to make sure he understood completely and would have a chance to ask about anything that confused him, even if the others were sure to treat it as common sense.
He would never, could never, know for sure how deliberate Katarina’s last act had been, but he was determined to eliminate the chance of something similar ever happening by accident. Jamie seemed to’ve taken it well enough, but it was very much one of those conversations the Doctor couldn’t help but worry if he’d handled correctly.
“It’s very important,” he repeated, clearing his throat again, “which is why it’s such a relief to know you understand.”
“But I don’t understand how we’re alright right now,” Jamie reminded him, the wry little smile underneath his exasperation assuring the Doctor he was curious rather than annoyed by the delayed explanation. He obviously remembered how urgent he’d been in explaining this days ago, perhaps he’d already guessed at the reason for that himself. It wouldn’t be unlike him, the Doctor thought.
“Would you like to guess?” he suggested. He was only half-teasing – Jamie had impressed him with how well he took things in so far, and however proud he’d like to be for providing a solid introduction, he knew most of it was really due to Jamie’s own level head.
He didn’t seem sure of himself, but he was willing to play along. “My first thought’d be that it’s something to do with the Tardis – it wouldnae be any stranger than anything else about it, and maybe that’s how the ship works – maybe it just does whatever’s supposed to be impossible wherever you are.” Jamie glanced back at him briefly, and the Doctor was amused to see he only appeared to be half-joking before he went on, even more business-like. “But I’m expectin’ you’ll tell me it’s something more complicated than that, something to do with where we are in space – maybe things work differently than you first said, all the way out here on the edge of a galaxy, and you just didn’t bother mentionin’ it before because the important thing was the warning.”
Jamie had watched the stars while he explained his theory, as if scanning them might show him something to support it, but once he finished, he turned squarely in to face the Doctor, ready to hear the verdict. He couldn’t help but smile back at him.
“Not bad at all. And full points for both effort and creativity. You were closest with your first instincts, though.”
“It’s the Tardis?” he asked, surprised to’ve been right the first time.
The Doctor nodded, still grinning at his ingenuity. “I’m afraid you did make her out to be even more contrarian than she really is, even on her worst days – but yes, the Tardis can extend a kind of shield around herself, like a great invisible bubble. It’s not automatic, it doesn’t happen everywhere we land, and it also isn’t quite as random as you suggested – it’s something I can set specially in situations like this. But really, you were right: the Tardis has created a bubble with the same oxygen, air pressure, and even the same temperature we experience inside the ship.”
“And the same gravity?” Jamie asked confidently, raising his eyebrows.
“And the same gravity, yes,” he was already nodding, delighted, before he caught himself. “Well, actually, no – no, the gravity works a little differently.”
“Oh aye?”
“The air shield isn’t large enough for anyone to ‘float away,’ as you put it, but the Tardis has an artificial gravity that’s purposely directional – instead of just pulling objects together, it knows which way the floor is, and pulls them down toward it like you’d expect to see on Earth, right?”
“Aye, so it does.”
“Well, that gravity only works on things inside the Tardis itself, or if you’re leaning out, like we’ve been, and you’ve still got your feet on its floor. But if that were no longer the case –” he turned to Jamie, smiling with excitement at the sudden idea. “Would you like to see what happens for yourself?” He mimed a little jump, just bending his knees without lifting his feet from the floor, determined not to ruin the surprise, and encouraged him to do the same. The suggestion clearly surprised him but he didn’t seem outright horrified, and the Doctor took that as a promising sign.
For a moment longer Jamie looked at him, uncertain – then he took a step or two as far back as he could go into the corner of the narrow doorway until he bumped up against the open door. The Doctor was beginning to worry he’d pushed too far this time, but Jamie’s retreat turned out to be a miniature run-up instead – he glanced across at the Doctor once more, shook his head, sighed, and leapt out over the threshold.
The change was instantaneous.
Jamie had expected it to be like his first spacewalk on the moon, but without that or even the Gravitron to draw him back in eventually, he simply floated there outside the Tardis, as free as if he were laying on his back in calm, still water. He felt his clothes spreading out slightly, his shirt pooling around him instead of draping down directly from his shoulders; even his hair seemed to expand upwards and outwards.
If he’d been on the ground – the real ground – Jamie knew his little leap would’ve hardly sent him forward at all; in his mind’s eye he could still see the landing his instincts had anticipated involuntarily: just in front of the Doctor, face-to-face with him where he stood looking out from his side of the doorway, probably mere inches apart. But with the height of his tiny jump exaggerated in the weightlessness, his feet were now dangling a good little distance above the bottom edge of the police box, and over its roof he could finally see the galaxy behind the Tardis in all its glory, extending around them on all sides. He still believed everything the Doctor had said about how far away it all was, but suspended there, unencumbered by a strange spacesuit and with stars shining all about him, it felt awfully hard to believe he couldn’t just reach out and touch one, hold it in the palm of his hand, and take it back inside with him.
There was so much to take in so quickly, and the effect so strange and all-encompassing, that it was a moment before Jamie even thought to wonder why the small force of his initial jump hadn’t propelled him further still – but just as he’d stepped from the Tardis floor, the Doctor had reached up and caught hold of his left arm, and there his hand was now, right above Jamie’s wrist. He didn’t need to grip tightly to hold him now that he weighed nothing, but it was enough to keep him tethered, hovering just a little ways above him even though the Tardis’s own gravity had stopped acting upon Jamie personally.
Jamie wasn’t frightened – he knew he wouldn’t’ve drifted further than it was safe to go; he trusted everything the Doctor had said or he never would’ve taken that leap in the first place. But there was still something so nice, so comforting about finding the Doctor’s hand on his arm, barely more than resting there but still holding him steady while he took in the view. His eyes flickered from the stars to his arm to the Doctor’s face and met his eye, and he found himself suddenly beaming and quite unable to stop, practically giddy with delight. He tuned his arm over within his grasp to match the hold he had on his wrist and went on staring for he didn’t know how long – time both seemed to stretch on for ages and not to pass at all – and he wasn’t sure he ever would’ve stopped, if he hadn’t eventually noticed that the Doctor’s heels were already beginning to lift from the floor a little as he balanced on the threshold.
After that he gave in to impulse entirely, reaching down to the Doctor with his other hand too now, and when he took it automatically all Jamie had to do was pull slightly and he bobbed up effortlessly into the air alongside him. He leaned to his side as the Doctor came level and they spun in a tight circle, still holding each other firmly by the arms, before he slipped one hand free and used the last of the momentum to land himself back inside the Tardis.
He’d thought the Doctor might float there for a while as he had done, but he followed him inside instead, sinking down just as easily as he’d shot up and settling on the ground beside Jamie. For a moment they simply leaned against one another in the doorway, breathless and regaining their balance.
It was a while before Jamie met his eye again, smiling bashfully now. He shrugged, tilting his head toward the view as if it could explain anything the Doctor might’ve found odd about his behavior.
“It really is beautiful.”
The Doctor took a deep steadying breath, drawing himself up. “It is.”
“Have Ben and Polly seen it yet?” Jamie asked, gazing out ahead.
“Ah, no, actually. No, I probably should go and get them, shouldn’t I?”
“Aye, I’m sure they’d like it too.”
“Of course.” He sounded agreeable enough, but there was something far-away about his words that Jamie couldn’t place, and when neither of the them moved after a moment, he turned back to look at him.
“Why did you just get me, Doctor?” he asked hesitantly, knowing the slight falter in his voice probably saved him from sounding presumptuous, but made it harder to claim indifference too.
“Oh, no reason,” the Doctor replied mercifully breezily, his eyes still on the view. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think I thought much about what I was doing at all, really.”
Jamie gave a little nod and turned abruptly back to the stars. It was silly of him even to’ve asked, he was just lucky the Doctor didn’t seem to think much of it either way.
“I suppose . . .” he began, and Jamie felt his spirits lift for a moment, grateful for a new subject and an end to the awkward little silence he’d created, before he continued, “Well, I suppose I just thought, ‘this is a beautiful view – certainly much nicer than anywhere we’ve landed for a while – it’d be a shame not to show Jamie.’”
“Oh aye,” he agreed, crossing his arms over his chest as nonchalantly as he could and ignoring the prickling sensation in his cheeks. “I guess the others’ve had their fill of bein’ dragged out of bed to look at the stars by now.”
“Oh no, not really – I just mean . . . Well, I know you’ve been traveling with us for a while already, and we’re well past first impressions, but I also think it’s fair to say your first few trips with us haven’t exactly been the, ah, ideal introduction, shall we say? What with everything that’s been happening, one thing after another.”
“You mean Macra, and Cybermen, and mad scientists?” he suggested, unable to hide a slight smile.
The Doctor nodded sagely. “Yes, those. Not that you haven’t been handling it all incredibly well, of course, because you have, certainly, and we’ve all been terribly impressed – which isn’t to say that we’ve been talking about you behind your back either, only that—”
“I understand, Doctor,” he promised, not wanting him to worry.
“Right.” He shifted in place, looking back outside again. “Yes, well, I just thought, it might be nice to show you something better than all that for once. Safer. More peaceful. Just so you’d know that the rest of it – that isn’t all there is, you know. There’s good things about our traveling, too,” he said definitively, watching Jamie intently now.
“Things that aren’t so dangerous?” he offered, hoping to prove he was listening even if he didn’t quite understand why the Doctor felt it so important to convince him. Had he somehow made him think he was unhappy here?
“Precisely.”
“Well, it is peaceful, I’ll give ye that,” he admitted, shrugging.
“Yes, I thought so too.”
“And no, it doesnae look like there’s any strange beasties about.” He made a show of leaning outside, gripping the wooden door as he pretended to peer around the side of the Tardis in mock concern only, but the Doctor’s hand followed him forward anyway and hovered by his elbow, ready to steady him if he felt genuinely unsafe. He drew himself back inside to face him again.“But I hope you know I’m not just here for the pretty stuff either. I’d like to think you’d still call on me when it’s the dangerous things too.”
“I . . .” the Doctor’s mouth hung open for what he knew was just a moment too long not to show he was surprised. “Of course. I wouldn’t try to hide that from you, even to spare you the worry. I know you’ve a right to understand what you’re dealing with,” he added solemnly.
“Aye, and I appreciate that, believe me. But I also meant, I want you to know you can count on me. That I’m here for you all, even when it’s not so easy as this.”
“I know that.” He hadn’t, in all honesty – hadn’t felt that he should take it for granted before, but now that Jamie was looking at him so earnestly, he found it hard to argue with.
“Good.” Jamie settled his back against the open police box door so he could watch both the Doctor and the stars at once. He was so grateful for all of it, he hardly knew how to put it into words – but he felt he had to try. “I mean, look out there. You said some of those stars might have planets with them? And people living on them and things?”
The Doctor followed his gaze for a moment. “At this distance, looking at this many stars, certainly, many of them must.”
“Aye. And I look at them and think of my world, and what I left behind, and then the things we’ve seen and done – and there were dangers, but we made things better, everywhere we went,” he began to explain.
“That’s true,” the Doctor nodded – he ought to be content taking that as a victory and laying the issue to rest, he knew, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to. “But it – it isn’t always that simple either, though, Jamie. We don’t always get everything right all the time. And sometimes, our being there even contributes to the problem,” he admitted.
“Oh, of course – I mean, it stands to reason, anyway,” he amended, when the Doctor’s brow furrowed. “But I don’t mean to sound like I’m after making everything perfect everywhere, or that I think that’s your job. I’m just glad we’ve been able to be a part of things, where we’ve gone – to help. Otherwise, I don’t know if I could manage it. I think I’d have a harder time living with it, if it was just jumping from where I came from to this. If the places we visited all looked like – like a painting.”
“A painting?” he echoed, clearly amused by Jamie’s tone.
“Well, it’s beautiful, and right now, I’m glad of that. But we’re out here, floating in space, and it’s nice, but – we’re in the middle of nowhere,” he stressed, gesturing to the void and shaking his head. “It’s nice that it’s beautiful. It’s nice that we’re looking at whole worlds and we can see them like this and it’s peaceful and calm and happy. But, if you have to stand that far away from everything for it to look like that – if you have to be all the way out here with nothing else around you, where nothing can touch you but you can’t touch anything else either . . . well, ye couldnae do that for long, could ye?”
The Doctor blinked, caught off-guard by his sincerity. “Are you asking me, personally?”
“I suppose so,” Jamie said, shrugging. “I mean, you’re the only person I know who has a time ship.”
He weighed up his options as he glanced outside. He’d known the answer for years now, of course, but explaining it wasn’t something he did very often. “No, no I don’t think I could,” he allowed, hoping it sounded like he was only just giving it thought rather than choosing his words so carefully. “Once I thought, perhaps . . . but that was a long time ago. And then I thought just visiting would be enough, not getting involved really, just looking. . . But even that didn’t last. I wanted to see things up close too badly to keep my distance,” he concluded, relieved to see Jamie was nodding like he hadn’t heard anything that didn’t already make perfect sense to him.
“Well I think I’m probably the same. I’m glad there are beautiful things too, and they’re nice to admire from time to time. And I’m glad you got me up for this,” he added, grinning widely and steering him by the shoulder to appreciate the view once more, “because it’s no’ like anything I’ve ever seen before, and you’re right, it is amazin.’ ” He let his hand drop back down to his side. “But I think it’s also good that it’s not just like this all the time.”
The Doctor wasn’t paying attention to the view anymore, Jamie had all but entranced him.
“We could go now, you know, if you wanted,” he heard himself offer quietly.
“What, right now?”
“If it’d make you feel better. If any of this is too much.”
“It’s not too much. I do like it. I just don’t want you feelin’ bad when it’s a place that we land at instead of just a nice view, and—” he hesitated, biting his lower lip.
“Yes?” the Doctor prompted eagerly.
“Well, I guess I just wanted you to know how I was feelin’ more generally, too. I thought ye might understand it, so . . .”
“I think I do,” he nodded quickly, desperate to stop Jamie’s growing look of uncertainty in its tracks.
“Aye,” he agreed evenly, “I think you do too.”
The smile Jamie gave him looked particularly soft to the Doctor, lit half by the stark starlight outside and half by the dim warm lights of the console room. He became aware of an odd feeling like standing on the cusp of a moment, a horizon where there wasn’t one. But time machine or no, he couldn’t simply stand on his tiptoes and see over it. There was no rushing whatever it might develop into, and the moment, whatever it was – some archaic sense for branching timelines, as like as anything, the root of all his people’s oldest superstitions – passed.
“We really don’t need to stay here, though,” he reminded Jamie. “I did finish the repairs, there’s nothing keeping us. We don’t have to leave, I realize. But we could.”
“Without telling Ben & Polly about it?” he asked warily.
He shrugged. “Well, what they don’t know can hardly hurt them – in this case, anyway. Not that I want to give you the impression I make a habit of lying to my friends, but like you said – at this point, they may well prefer the sleep.”
“Aye, maybe,” he allowed, and unless the Doctor was fooling himself, he sounded rather tempted.
“Then, I won’t tell them if you don’t?” he proposed, taking a step backwards into the console room.
“It’s no’ even really a lie, is it?” Jamie suggested by way of answer, scratching at the back of his neck as he turned around, following him with his eyes.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so, and I don’t think they’d see it that way either – if anything, it’d be more of a secret, really. If that’s alright?” he added.
Jamie had been standing inside the Tardis’s gravity now for several times longer than he’d spent floating above it, but that had done nothing to quell the weightless, dizzy feeling swelling in his chest. In fact, the longer he stood there in the quiet starlit moment in the doorway with the Doctor, the worse it got, and although he wasn’t lying when he said he thought he might go mad if things were always like this, the idea of snapping back to normal so suddenly seemed equally unappealing, just then.
He tried to imagine one or both of them leaving the console room now and breaking the spell – cantering down corridors that twisted and turned and rapping on Ben and Polly’s doors, telling them ‘The view, you just have to see this view!’ as if merely staring at an unbroken field of stars was what had made him feel this way, and not something stranger and more personal, something he knew they wouldn’t be able to join him in feeling. He envisioned all four of them back inside the control room – and for some reason it was back to its full brightness in his mind’s eye, even though it was still what passed for night on the ship and he was fairly certain that the strong white lights might blind them to some of the subtler patterns of stardust outside. He didn’t not want Ben and Polly to see it, but he couldn’t quite make the picture of them all crowding round the doors fit with the mood he’d caught himself in now, and while he wouldn’t’ve stopped the Doctor from waking them, being asked to make the decision himself was another matter.
He wasn’t sure he had it in him to break open this fragile little world they were sharing right now, even if an undercurrent of unease welled up inside his stomach whenever he thought about it. But somehow that didn’t feel like the kind of thing that’d go away simply from a change of atmosphere – instead, it felt exactly like the sort of thing that stuck around, welcome or not, appropriate or not, ever trying to get his attention and color all his thoughts.
And worst of all, he was fairly certain he’d let it.
Oh, he’d still try to drown it out, probably with reasonable success, aided by the distracting newness of all the places they’d go and the things they’d see and do there. But he knew in his heart it wasn’t something he’d ever really manage to banish completely, at least not as long as he was trying to. He wasn’t a complete stranger to this feeling, even if there was so much unique about this tenuous little moment it had chosen for rearing its head and making itself heard – and that was the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t starting now, not really, just demanding his attention worse than it ever had before, and he knew that the more he tried to squash it, the harder that would become – that the only hope there was for it fading away and leaving him alone was if he managed somehow not to think about it, to let it slip past him again without paying much mind to it at all. That would be hard, he knew. Maybe harder than it had ever been before, after tonight. Probably, he thought to himself with a strange mixture of shame and excitement.
But how he ought to feel about how he was starting to feel would have to be a question for another day, because the Doctor was still looking to him expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“Aye,” he said softly, swallowing when he felt how dry his mouth had become, “I can live with a secret.”
“Then that’s what it’ll be: our secret,” the Doctor said simply, as if that put an end to it, as if the mere sound of him saying that wasn’t all the proof Jamie had never needed to be sure that, try as he might, this wasn’t a feeling he’d be mastering any time soon.
It would sit inside him and fester and he’d poke at it when he was feeling bored or sentimental, knowing it would only make things worse for him in the long run but unable to stop himself from nursing it along all the same. He would not call it hope, no, he wasn’t naive enough for that, but all the same it would occupy his thoughts sometimes when he was alone and wished it wouldn’t – and still he would keep coming back to it. He’d get a little thrill of joy from simply having that secret, and now it would sit right alongside the pride of this one, however silly and pointless it was, simply because he shared it with the Doctor. Since he couldn’t share the other one, this would serve well in its place: every time he’d be tempted to confess his feelings, he’d have to stop himself – but if he slipped the Doctor a knowing little smile, well, that would be alright now, since he’d only think Jamie was remembering the night they’d looked out at the stars together, and the brief moment when they’d held each other, floating among them.
On its own it was a rather silly thing to bother keeping secret, but so long as he did it would protect his other, worse ones, and that was good.
With one last look out the doors to commit the picture to memory, he stepped away, allowing himself to just enjoy the feeling for now, however much he might come to regret indulging it in the morning. He stood at the console with the Doctor.
“You’re ready to go?”
“I am.”
“Then, this one controls the door, and this here is the dematerialization switch,” he explained, pointing them out with a flourish.
“You want me to do it?” Jamie asked, more than a hint of worry written on his face.
The Doctor nodded in agreement, correcting himself. “Well, perhaps for the sake of safety, we should set a rule or two about using them. . . How about, never touch them alone, just together with me – is that any better?”
“Aye, alright,” he nodded, concentrating, determined not to let him down. “And the second rule?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve thought of it.” He said it so seriously that Jamie snorted, dipping his head down quickly at the console in an attempt to hide it. But the Doctor was smiling at his own foolishness too as hurried on with his explanations, trying to cover up for the fact that he’d just wanted to make Jamie laugh.
No, in no world was this going to be easy, Jamie knew, but something too pleased to be wholly negative bubbled up at the thought – and besides, the Doctor was still rambling on.
“Here, this one is a kind of a lever, and this one is more of a dial, really, we’ll turn it that way in a moment – oh, the doors have to go first, always – maybe that’s the second rule, actually! Or, I suppose, perhaps it should be the first. Though if the other is not to ever do this without me, then possibly the order of the rules doesn’t matter, and all you should remember is the order of the switches—”
He traveled around the console rather more times than were necessary, positioning Jamie’s hands on each of the relevant controls as he went. Jamie braced himself against the panel in front of him – partially to keep his balance and his dignity, should things go awry again, but also so the Doctor could get close enough to reach around him easily.
But if he’d been worried about a bumpy take off, it was unnecessary – once the doors had swung closed the Doctor guided him to stand squarely before the dematerialization switch, though he still crowded against his shoulder, just to be absolutely certain they got the timing right. Evidently it worked, because when they pulled down together the Tardis sailed back into the vortex as smoothly as ever, with barely a bump in their flight – but all the same, Jamie felt he’d left his stomach somewhere far behind him.
He was in for a ride, alright. He’d just have to hope he kept his head and didn’t do anything stupid simply for the thrill of it.
He’d glanced very briefly back at the Doctor as they’d taken off, then watched the rise and fall of the central column for a few moments before letting his eyes drift upwards for fear of looking back down at the console, where neither of them had removed their hands from the lever yet, their fingers still ever so slightly intertwined.