Climbing By Inches

Author's Note: This takes place during Season Seven, probably after the events in Inferno.

"Doctor, I expect that you'll finish those requisition reports I asked for by Monday. That is, if you expect them to continue to be fulfilled."

A sarcastic retort was on the tip of the Doctor's tongue, but he managed to hold it back. The fact of the matter was, the Brigadier had accommodated many of his requests since he had moved into UNIT Headquarters. Granted, the Doctor was aware that there was a price for all the equipment and lodging he had been given, but most of the time, it wasn't a price that was too steep for his principles.

The Brigadier looked in at the laboratory one more time before giving a nod of satisfaction. "Right, I'm off. I will drop by next week, Doctor. Barring emergencies, of course."

"Of course," the Doctor said with a wave of his hand while not bothering to look up from the gadget he was working on. "Farewell, Brigadier."

The Doctor listened as the Brigadier's foot falls echoed and faded down the hall. Once they were gone, the Doctor heaved out a sigh and put down the instruments he was working with.

He wasn't giving up. He had no intention to. It simply wasn't in his nature. But sometimes, during moments like this, he could understand why people chose to give up. Here he was, stuck in some dingy laboratory during an archaic period of Earth's history with no means of escape. Only a few months ago, a mere moment in a Time Lord's sense of time, he had free reign of the universe of time and space. Now, he was limited by how far he could drive Bessie around England.

The Doctor stood up and walked over to his TARDIS. He ran his hands along the door, feeling the hum of the living machinery underneath his fingertips. Every day, he spent time just touching the sides of his TARDIS or placing his hands onto the console inside. It was a faint, foolish dream, but some part of him still believed that he could absorb….something of what he had known about how to operate the TARDIS, how to calculate and navigate the flow of spacetime. Whenever he did this, he could feel a slight tickle as if something was trying to poke its way back into his brain, but it never could take hold.

He stood up and went over to look at the night sky. Looking at the stars from Earth could never match the brilliance of seeing them from space. The Doctor often wondered how long he could bear to be trapped in the limited perspective of Earth, England, UNIT, scientific advisor. How long could he spend parading about with humans as if he could ever be one of them?

The answer was simple and painful: for as long as the Time Lords decided his punishment should be.

The Doctor turned and went back to his work table. The decision to trap him on Earth was the sort of elegant torture the Time Lords were feared for. They knew how being trapped gave him a constant ache rather than a direct, acute loss which is exactly why they did it. The plan was to punish, not destroy. And so they would punish and draw out that punishment just short of destruction.

Unless he could find a way out of this, find a way to shorten his exile and be released into the universe again. That meant either figuring out on his own how to use the TARDIS again or performing some feat that would get the Time Lords to reconsider their decision. Both seemed unlikely and impossible, but impossible simply meant more challenging than usual to the Doctor.

So he would keep trying. He would not give up.

He couldn't.