Cub, a doctor who fanfic

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

Author's Note: I've had this idea for so long, now… I was gonna try to wait and write it after I was all caught up, but I couldn't. :I So I hope you'll forgive me for the inevitable inaccuracies. 8D;

Warnings: Spoilers through the beginning of season five (since that's all I've seen, haha). Maybe not totally accurate, but I tried. Takes place after the "meanwhile, inside the Tardis" scene post-episode 5 of season five. (Which, coincidentally, is the last thing I've watched. :I No spoilers, please~) Also, I know there's an episode in season six where the Tardis becomes human for a bit. I haven't seen it yet, so I dunno if these two ideas wholly contradict one another. But it's fanfiction. And this is just for fun. XD; So I hope you can enjoy it, anyway. :3 Crap editing, Doctor/Rose.

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Cub

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I create myself.

The Tardis is speaking.

She talks a lot, the Tardis. Nearly as gabby as the Doctor, and just as ridiculously cryptic. Rose grins in that special, lopsided way of hers— tongue between her teeth and head cocked to the left— as she strokes the consul's crystalline column, her skin growing a wraithlike green in the light of effervescent plasma. The other palm she braces against the control panel, fingers spread at odd angles to accommodate for levers and switches and buttons and thingamajigs. The toes of her trainers rattle the grille of the floor.

And the Doctor frowns. Just… frowns. Not an angry scowl, not a morose glower; something different, something musing and confused. He, too, reaches out to caress his machine, a still-distractingly-new shoulder brushing against his charge's.

"Says she feels… changed," he comments vaguely, forehead furrowing as he gazes deep into the astral of his ship's core. Rose, not quite as perturbed, tosses a glance towards the familiar stranger and shrugs, not bothering to inform him that she'd made that much out on her own, thanks. The Tardis, after all, is as much in her mind as she is in his. Though maybe, just maybe, the clever craft is relaying different messages to her crew, as Rose feels no reason at all to panic. Rather, a soulful calm has settled upon her: a profound, somewhat empty calm. The room hums a steady rhythm, in perfect harmony with the blonde's— "Different. Not bad-different. Just different-different."

Rose shakes her head, as if to clear it.

"Well, that makes all three of us, then, doesn't it?" the girl then amiably announces, her expression growing more pointed as her eyes travel up and down the lanky expanse of her regenerated friend. She's not really had a chance to look at him, 'til now. Not properly. There's still a bit of snow (ash) in his tousled chestnut hair, and his pinstripe suit clings unnaturally to his skinny body: too-crisp, like something he'd just yanked off a factory hanger. All so new. And while he's proven—with his sword, satsuma, and smile— that he remains her Doctor, deep down inside, he's still different. Everything about him, and this, and them, feels different. So it's to be expected, isn't it, that Rose feels different, as well. And the Tardis, too. It only makes sense, seeing as they are all connected by a psychic strand of thought and a deeper bond of emotion…

The Doctor grins, hand leaving the vortex tube and instead finding a perch atop his beloved companion's head. He gives her a condescending pat—much like he had his ship—and she laughs, and she shoves at him, and then he's laughing, too. Equally amused, lights fluttering like a heartbeat, the Tardis voices a soft whirr before carrying them towards their next adventure.

I want you safe.

The Tardis is conscious.

Which is impossible, she realizes. There's no such thing as a conscious alien spaceship. For God's sake, there's no such thing as alien spaceships, much less a Tardis! (What the hell is a Tardis, anyway? That's not even a real word!) But at the same time, she knows—she knows when she is being watched. When she is being monitored. (Or at least, she does now, having just finished a six month stint of being spied on by her fia… by Lance, and the Racnoss, and who can say who else.) So she knows, now. Recognizes the prickling, pickling sensation that dances across her skin; realizes what anxieties pinch at her belly and make her want to spin around. Someone is watching her now, here, as well— and not just this beanpole ET, either. Because unless he has another pair of eyes hidden in his ratty brown mop, there is no reason that the tingling would continue even when his back is turned to her.

But it does.

Maybe voyeurism is just a popular pastime in outer space. Maybe it's the creepy, intergalactic equivalent of football. Maybe the Martians have teams and tournaments and stuff organized around the fine art of peeping tomfoolery, with prizes like nicked purple jackets. That would explain…

The redheaded bride scrunches her slender nose at the thought, realizing she's probably not being fair. At least, not where this guy is involved. (Is he a guy? He's not human, but he still seems bloke-ish.) Sure, watching her captor storm off with that coat clasped possessively in a fist had seemed a trifle suspicious, at first… But thinking on it now, it hadn't been his behavior that had made her wavering breath hitch. Not really. It'd been something else. Something distressing. More so than the lonely gleam in his eyes, or the hard line of his lips. It'd been something she'd thought she'd heard, right in that instant: like a drum, almost, but less militant. Distant—practically inaudible—but there, right there in the room. Hidden. Hidden in plain sight, and she…

And she'd totally forgotten about it. It'd utterly escaped her. Because right before she could wrap her mind around that gnawing, grating little detail, he'd gone back to talking, and then there'd been the car chase, and the wedding (well, the reception), and the Thames, and before she knows it they're standing in the cold and the wet, and her dress is beyond ruined, and her hair and makeup is in shambles, and he's braced himself in the jamb of his impossible ship and her heart is pounding in her ears, and she is wishing so badly that she could go—can feel something tugging, wheedling, begging for her to say yes, please, for me, for him, say yes…

"Because I think, sometimes, you need somebody to stop you."

And with the swiftness and suddenness of a meteorite crash-landing against her temple, it occurs to her that it is the ship. That conscious ship, watching, alive, and begging: asking for her to come along, to be the somebody who'd stop him. Be that somebody, because I—

Donna blinks. The Tardis is piercing her with a forlorn gaze—literally, somehow. She thinks. (Kind of?) It's hard to explain—like an afterimage of an optical illusion. There's nothing there, but she can see it. Like a spirit, or a vapor: intangible but present. She can almost touch it, almost name it… Her heartbeat accelerates, rearing into overdrive as she and her thoughts and the world beneath her spins.

"Doctor!"

The door regains enough solidity to generate an unpleasant bang of sound as it collides against its outer shell. As the Doctor throws it open, he peers out into the winter night with a disgruntled curl to his lip, impatience scrawled across his features. It's only a mask, she knows. False. She's reminded of fool's gold: rough, shiny, and beautiful, but only for show. Behind him, the consul room glows the same color. In the air, glittering cinders hang in hopeful suspension.

"Oh, what is it now?"

She swallows hard.

"That friend of yours. What was her name?"

The sparks twinkle; the lights waver. His eyes are not the only ones to take on a glassy sheen, but the unwed widow isn't sure how she knows that.

"…her name was Rose."

I bring life.

The Tardis is alive.

It's a funny thing to wrap one's mind around—a living spaceship—but with everything else she has been forced to come to terms with over the past few weeks, she discovers it's one of the easier bits of culture shock to get over and accept. In her time, on her world, vehicles are little more than the sum of their parts; cogs and sprockets and an engine of a sort. She'd heard mention of fantastical theories like "ghosts in the machine," but had put as little stock in them as she had the idea of aliens or time travel… Needless to say, she's done a bit of reevaluating since meeting the Doctor. And with the rest of her world tipped on its head, the idea that something well-loved— certainly something as treasured as the Tardis— could develop a soul of its own over the years doesn't seem so silly, anymore.

On the contrary, it feels rather… right.

Martha allows a faint smile to play upon her lips as she wanders the endless galleries, trailing ginger hands over the latticework panels that cover the walls. Through the tip of each finger, she can feel the vibrating cadence of the ship—a live, thrumming beat, and she giggles a bit, imagining herself as a sort of platelet, traveling through the Tardis' sprawling veins. After years of medical training, the young woman has developed a few instinctive habits; as she meanders, she counts out a pulse. When they land, she monitors each wheezing gasp. The control room sparks like the synapses in a brain, always thinking-thinking-thinking.

Yes, the Tardis is alive. Sentient too, it seems: spluttering responses to the Doctor's prompting, purring when pet, grouching when smacked. If she asks for something, anything, the ship will always do its best to oblige… a fact that had been a real source of confusion (and mild alarm) in the early days, when Martha would mull aloud to seemingly no-one, only to turn and find what she'd desired sitting innocently on a shelf behind her. Toothpaste, gum, a jar of pickles…

"Is this ship haunted?!" she'd demanded, slightly manic, as she'd scampered to the bridge with said jar cradled in her arms. The Doctor, up to his waist in cords and conduits, had cast his new companion a bemused glance from beneath the grid of the floor before carefully spitting his sonic screwdriver into his palm.

"If you're asking if she has a consciousness, then yes," he'd returned—perhaps a bit more tersely than intended. He'd always been markedly defensive of his ship; no one was allowed to call her names or infer any unkind suggestions towards those who'd, uh, grown her. (Rather than himself, of course. On occasion. When she deserved it.) Fusing two bits of wiring together with his screwdriver, a paperclip, and a bit of krazy glue, he gently added, "She's haunted in the same way we are—a spirit animating a body. It's just that her body is comprised of different parts. And she has a higher capacity for rust."

Then, in afterthought, he'd added: "What's with the pickles?"

The memory makes Martha snort, these days: the thought of collapsing to the floor as she'd explained herself, sharing her worries and her snack, and the beautiful, understanding grin that the Doctor had offered as she'd come off of her panicked high. In the present, Martha pauses, resting against a sturdy I-beam somewhere between the library and the kitchen.

It's not that she'd ever been scared— not really. She'd never thought the Tardis had an infestation of poltergeists or anything, even if books do occasionally go flying off of their shelves, or glowing shadows with no castors occasionally haunt odd corners. It's just… Sometimes…

She ducks a bit as a rush of otherworldly particles stream past her, hovering a few feet above: caught in an unseen current of glitter and light, rippling and racing about the halls. Though the Doctor has never mentioned it, she's sure this is the lifeblood of the ship— beautiful and golden. Invisible and everywhere. It litters the bridge, collecting as dust beneath their feet; it gathers atop the hull's scrapes and dents, healing what it can; it's the sparkle in the freshly-washed dishes, the scrubbed floors and walls; it acts as her nightlight during the darkest times: will-o-the-wisps that distract the lovelorn companion from tears or homesickness, that comfort and listen when she needs to rant or curse or hate the Doctor for a moment.

It's alive.

And sometimes—just sometimes—when Martha thinks she sees someone from the corner of her eye… When she senses movement, and turns, but finds no one there… When the Tardis is about to ignite, or crash, or jolt, and something grabs her, or pushes her towards safety…

For some reason, Martha finds herself thinking she has this entity to thank.

I can see everything. All that is. All that was. All that ever could be.

The Tardis has two heartbeats.

She doesn't question it when she figures it out. (That sound she'd heard, that first time: it'd been a heartbeat.) Even when she realizes this, she doesn't give the discovery much thought. After all, it makes sense, doesn't it? The Tardis is alive, and it's Time Lord, so why shouldn't it have two hearts? Its owner does. It makes as much (or as little) sense as anything else in this place.

Two heartbeats, she can understand. Two heartbeats, she finds kind of bizarrely soothing. It doesn't bother her in the least. No, the sound only begins to niggle and frustrate when two— gradually—becomes an inexplicable three, pounding out a strange, frantic bass beneath the level synchronization of the originals. It makes her think of that rhyme from her childhood: One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong.

"Is it you?" she asks—blurts, really— as she stands in the dim light of the corridor, staring down a gilded whirlwind. The oddly-imperceptible eyes that had pleaded with her all those years ago stare out from a halo of blustering locks, and though she isn't close enough to make out this phantasm's bland features, Donna isn't afraid of her. Why would she feel fear? How could she? She knows this creature, inside and out. Has seen her flit about in her peripheral, ducking behind the oblivious Doctor.

It's the Tardis. Or the heart of the Tardis, anyway: the soul that animates the vessel. And, as its heart, she is always hovering around the one who holds her: prodding life back into the plugs he short-circuits; leaving cups of tea where he might see and drink them; resting his nightmare riddled head in what must serve as her lap, her touch soothing the tension from his face.

But it's unusual, all the same— this gnawing feeling, like I've forgotten, like I met you before I knew you— strange to see her so clearly, so frequently. Usually, the golden girl is shy, opting to hide herself in the workings of her machine, or to remain scattered as sparkling particles instead of converging into a form.

"Is it you?" Donna repeats, still mulling over her private joke. A sardonic quirk of a smirk coils the corners of her mouth as the apparition blinks its luminous eyes. Around her, the ship herself groans: metal moaning as inner workings spark, crackling like brusque chortles. Donna interprets this as laughter, albeit somewhat droll, because of course the Tardis would get the joke, private or not: the ship is, after all, inside of her head. She knows what Donna is thinking, what Donna is feeling, whether Donna wants her to or not. "Are you the one that's not like the others?" the redhead teases, albeit with all manner of affection.

No. That's you.

Silence reigns.

If only the poor woman could've seen inside the ship's head, in that moment. If only Truth could always flow in both directions, as it had once been suggested. If so, she might have had a chance. She might have figured things out before it was too late: might have realized what happens to people who chose to play with fire. With knowledge. With time.

But I suppose, in that sense… it's me, too. Part of me.

Donna blinks, startled, by what feels like a brief static shock. An electric pulse, folded into her mind. Instinctively, she lifts a hand and starts scrubbing at her ear, trying to dampen the strange ringing that echoes within. How peculiar. It feels like someone had called out to her, had spoken something she'd been straining to hear, but she'd not been paying enough attention to make it out. As she frowns, trying to remember something she'd not fully caught in the first place, the vision before her flashes a lachrymose grin, then melds into the gloom of nothingness.

But you don't know me properly, yet.

My Doctor.

The Tardis is all he has.

And it isn't fair. None of it is fair. Nothing is fair. And for the first time in nearly a millennia, he feels like a child again: a petulant child, throat raw in the wake of a tantrum, eyes scalded from broiling tears. Unfair. For all that he has tried, all that he has saved, all that he has sacrificed, he is never given anything in return. No love, no security, no camaraderie. Not really.

They had each other. All of them. The lot of them had each other. Husbands and wives, children, friends. People to play with, dine with, run with, fight with, laugh with. To grow old and die with. But he…

He'd had his reward. He'd chosen it himself. And he has tried (he really has tried) to find happiness, to find closure in that. To rejoice in the safety and contentment of those he most cherishes, even if they no longer need, care, or even know about him. But as the pain creeps in—cold, clammy fingers of death; rage, rage against the dying of the light—, so do the anxieties, and the dread, and the anger, and the frustration.

He'd given them the world. The universe. Everything that he had. Everything. He'd given her his everything— every fleck and fiber and filament of love that he'd tried to lock away in two different bodies and fivedifferent hearts, but hadn't quite managed: his affections still somehow spilling across a hundred-thousand planets, a thousand-million stars, a million-billion years. He sees her, and his love for her, in everything. Everywhere. Even now. But she—never greedy— hadn't asked for the planets or the stars or the years. Just for a few measly moments of his time. Just for forever. And now she is gone, taking with her that one heart, that enviable human heart, the one that would wither and shrivel and turn to dust, leaving their immortal brethren broken and shattered.

Why? It's not fair…! It's not fair that he can't live, grow old, and perish with her; that he still has to die, but it can't be at her side. That she should get to live a life with a shade of himself, with his hand to hold, while he…

He…

"I don't want to go."

Not alone. He can't do it. Not on his own, not anymore. He hasn't the strength, the conviction, the desire. He has nothing to live for. Even as a cascade of revitalizing essence crackles through his veins— like the gilded light of dawn, announcing the birth of a new day— he can feel himself give up, and summon the night… Though the reformative rain refreshes his body, washing over and through him and baptizing him anew, his soul remains wilted and dry—

I don't want you to, either.

His ship. His ship is on fire. She's blazing. Smoldering and alive. Golden. Sloughed bits of regenerative particles hang twinkling in the air, like stardust and powdered comets, glinting alongside wafting embers and spurting sparks. Some part of her is screaming—he can hear it. She is in pain, just like he is: not done yet, not done yet. Feminine whispers are slinking about in his ears, too silken and slippery to catch proper hold of. Her consciousness nestles in the back of his brain— thoughts tugging, as if on his sleeve, vying for attention. The Tardis. She's pawing at him: the current him, and some other, fading awareness that had once been him. That part of him that is crumpling in on itself, curdled and comatose, refusing to take its proper place in his subconscious.

I don't want you to go alone.

He doesn't have time for this. Not right now. Sweat is beading upon his new brow, trickling down his new neck, leaving his new skin clammy. Antsy fingers dance across his scrawny chest, poking and pulling at bumps and knobs that are already new, but feel doubly-so under new hands. He's distracting himself, he knows: like some twisted form of retail therapy. The novelty of it all takes his mind off of other things. Legs, hair, teeth, voice; new, new, new, new. Everything is new. Everything except the feeling: the feeling that lingers, from regeneration to regeneration, unable to be escaped no matter how often he jumps bodies. More acute than ever now, lurking just beneath the thin veneer of life-or-death excitement.

Which is why I never left. Not all of me.

Frustration. Depression. Solitude. They claw at him, just like that sensation lingering in the back of his mind. So insistent. So demanding. The voice calls to him without words, just as the Tardis always does… Ordering him, begging him, turn around, please, turn and see me…

Just as you are him and he is you, I am she and she is me. I am the cub of the Bad Wolf—I am the human, I am the Tardis. We are one, and we are yours. I am yours.

"Geronimo—!"

You are not alone. My lonely god, I am here.

His head falls back. His jaw drops open. Because there—there, hovering near the ceiling— lingers his reward. His true reward. The equivalent exchange he'd longed for: the time lord yin to his human-counterpart's yang. She smiles at him, golden eyes alight; twining strands of the Vortex blossom around her tender face in spectral strands, gently fanned about the ether. Her body is little more than a gown of huon particles, evanescent but eternal: they ebb and they flow, they undulate and swell. She disperses for a moment, only to reappear beside him, smelling faintly of apple-grass.

I've been here all along.

His hearts have stopped. His limbs have frozen. And as he turns to face her, his dumbstruck features flaming in the gleam of her eerie radiance, the new-new-new Doctor reconnects with an old-old-old feeling. A powerful feeling, a blinding flare of emotion: one that his most recent body had tried to compress into a whispering flicker of light, hidden deep-deep-deep within the blackness of his innermost sanctum. But now— now, he can feel it surge back to life. Unbidden, frantic, intense. Brilliant and scorching. The inferno rises.

And I will stay with you forever.

It isn't just inside the Tardis, anymore. No. No, now it's inside of him. Inside, outside. Everywhere. Fire: the walls, the floor, his cuffs, his cheeks. It's hot, and it's painful, and it's beautiful, and he never wants it to go out, never ever, doesn't want to try or pretend— not any longer, never ever again...

Just like I promised.

"R- Rose…?" he whispers, rasped and trembling.

My Doctor.

She beams. Wide and lopsided, with the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.

In his surprise, he tumbles through the unlocked doors.

A message to lead myself here.

The Tardis gets more attention than she ever does.

Which Amy can sort of understand. In an abstract way. She supposes. After all, they've been through an awful lot together, him and this ship. It's his home, for God's sake, and she knows what it's like to cherish what bits and pieces one has of their home. But honestly, this is getting ridiculous. He's worse than those men with their sopped-up cars: they might call their scrapheaps "baby," but at least they don't genuinely expect a response to their coddling. The Doctor, on the other hand, seems to sincerely believe that the Tardis is a girl, of some kind… and, of the two of them, Amy is starting to think that he finds the Tardis more snoggable, to boot. In the back of her mind, she scathingly wonders if he uses empty CD slots to French-kisses the poor machine when she's not around. (Thinking on it, a buildup of saliva might explain all of the electrical issues they've been having, lately.)

"Come on, dear, don't make that noise at me," the Doctor is mumbling—almost dreamily, half-consumed by his repairs—as his fingers brush across the consul in a lingering, possessive touch. Emery board in one hand, the new companion lounges atop the first of many metal steps and gives her eyes a wry roll. She snorts and she scoffs, and while the sound isn't entirely without judgment (though it's silly to get jealous over a damn spaceship, she knows), the exclamation is, for the most part, nothing but good-natured mockery. "Yes, that's right, you sexy thing, you…"

"It's no wonder all of the pretty girls leave you, in the end," the redhead mutters under her breath, casting the Doctor a pointed stare. He starts a bit at the sound of her voice, apparently having forgotten she was there at all. What a charmer. "Not when you choose to ignore 'em for a little blue box."

"Hm?" Partially concealed by a pseudo-cocoon of multicolored cables, the Doctor blinks, unable to do or say much else with the sonic screwdriver caught between his teeth and his limbs bound up by plastic tubing. It takes a bit of dexterous maneuvering, but after a moment he manages to unravel a hand—at least enough to give it a dismissive sort of wave. "Oh… well," he then retorts blithely, removing the tool from his mouth and giving the pillar beside him another affectionate caress. "They don't all leave, do they?"

Amy arches a brow, befuddled by the evasive response. The Tardis, though— she makes a noise of affirmation, deep in the bowels of her being. Soft. Contented.

And for a moment, four hearts beat faster.

XXX

I love you.

XXX