Cold

Chapter One: Setting Sail

'It's a fez. I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.'

"WHAT THE-"

The cry was cut off abruptly as the person from which it had been voiced was thrown ungracefully into metal railing, their body wrapping around it and acknowledging that bruises would occur in the near future.

The TARDIS lurched violently, seemingly more so than could be considered normal. Normally, the machine would list and tilt in an identifiable pattern, akin, therefore, to a ship traversing an ocean of swelling waves. Though, it was a fairly gross understatement to compare a time-space ship which travelled regularly through the ravages of the savage time vortex to something as simple as a boat on a body of water. On this particular occasion, the two human companions noticed, the machine seemed many times less secure, jerking about with worrying frequency.

"What's wrong, Dear?" asked the Doctor, a crazed yet oddly restrained madman at the best of times. Hunched over the glistening mossy-green illuminated console of glass and buttons, the Doctor's eyes seemed to emanate an emerald shimmer of slightly worried concern, "Has something got into your engines?" he paused briefly before adding, "Again?"

"OI!" roared Amy, her accent adding to her voice, which echoed powerfully around the console room with all the authority of an attention-deprived child, "What's happening?"

The Doctor was unable to restrain a roll of his eyes as a brief, breathless sigh escaped his lips. He turned his head, turning it just enough to see his two companions in the very peripheries of his vision, and fixed his eyes on them with an expression of reassurance. His expression was met with scepticism and Rory's mouth half-opened was ready to unleash a protest until the TARDIS intervened, pitching left and launching the pair once more into the metal railing. The Doctor remained silent, refusing to answer until he was ready. They didn't need to know anything was wrong until he was ready; not that he'd have all that much choice in the matter when they finally clicked.

"Doctor!" shouted Amy, recovering from her collision with the railing and voicing her apparent disapproval of the Doctor's lack of concern for the well-being of his passengers. At least, that's how it personally seemed to her, despite her subconscious informing her that if something was wrong with the ship, the Doctor had other, more pressing concerns than whether his friends had sustained some minor bruising.

"Is something controlling the TARDIS again?" asked Rory, having been attentive to the Doctor when he had voiced his concerns as to the mysterious 'Silence' days earlier, "Is that what's wrong?"

The Doctor span on his heels, clapping his hands together, his body brimming with almost volcanic energy. However, a hasty lurch forwards, launched everyone present off balance. Falling away from the glass console and towards the floor, the Doctor twisted around and grasped onto the monitor, confident it would hold his weight. Amy and Rory weren't so lucky, falling from the landing down the flight of stairs, collapsing in an ungraceful heap at the base of the console. Groaning radiated from the pair until they got to their feet, brushing off non-existent dust and dirt from their clothes as they did so.

"No," replied the Doctor simply, answering the question and ignoring the fact that they had just fallen… been thrown down a flight of stairs, "No, no. She's flying perfectly."

"Must be your driving then." stated Amy, brushing through her hair with her hands in an attempt to recover some dignity after the dramatic fall she had experienced seconds earlier.

"I thought we'd been through this," growled the Doctor, wagging his finger aggressively at Amy, evidently aggravated by the jibe, "Pond-"

"Not Pond anymore," retorted Amy, clearly taking pleasure in outsmarting her alien-genius friend, as she waved her hand and pointed cheerfully at the glistening wedding ring, "Remember?"

The TARDIS shook. Wobbling rapidly from one side to the other, as though vibrating briefly, a strange sound erupted around the console room. The usual wheezing of the time machine was briefly interrupted by a distinct whooshing sound, hiding, poorly, the familiar groaning noise underneath. There was a brief moment of silence before the action was repeated exactly, reminiscent of a time loop due to its freakishly accurate repetition. There was something strangely recognisable about the movement and the sound the TARDIS was making, but neither of the humans present could quite place their fingers on what.

Amy and Rory, physically shaken by the sharp movement, looked at each other, and then to the Doctor, with distinctly confused and bemused expressions on their faces. The Doctor, however, looked upwards, an expression of concern, worry and sympathy etched into the contours of his face. Placing a hand on the time rotor, the Doctor frowned and closed his eyes, as though attempting to communicate with the machine. A second later, a smile lit up his face and his eyes snapped open. His eyes often did so once they had been closed for any extended period of time beyond that of a blink.

"What was that?" asked Rory.

The Doctor turned to face them. His face was the picture of youth but his soul was something far older than their comprehension allowed them to envisage. His eyes were bright and lively, vibrant even, but his clothes were old-fashioned and out of date. Peculiarly enough, the clothes suited him. Whether that was because his companions had simply gotten used to seeing him wear them or because they just genuinely suited him, however, was another matter entirely, and one that Amy would not leave unsolved.

"Well, you see… wait," stated the Doctor, holding up his finger to strengthen his statement before he hopped to the other side of the console, "I'll get back to you."

Unaware that he had failed dismally to actually answer the question, the Doctor leapt about the console. Flicking switches and poking buttons, the alien manoeuvred around the machine with experienced grace and speed, knowing precisely how to control his beautiful box. In the meantime, the TARDIS shook violently once more, vibrating as though being assailed by an epic earthquake. Grabbing the rails before they could be thrown into them, Amy and Rory clung to each other to prevent them attaining more bruises than they already had. Amy, in particular, had no intention of turning any shade of purple in the near future. The Doctor, not at all bothered by the miniature quake, continued his button pressing.

"Well?" asked Rory expectantly once the TARDIS had returned to some level of normality that didn't involve shaking its passengers around as though it weren't really a time machine and was, in fact, a highly sophisticated out-of-space blender.

"Sorry?" asked the Doctor, his head popping from behind the time rotor, as he was now situated opposite them, obscured perfectly by the glass cylinder that rose high into the ceiling. The frown on his face indicated that he was confused and perturbed by the question, not understanding its context and assuming, wrongly, that he had in fact already explained what was wrong with the TARDIS.

"TARDIS," snapped Amy simply, "What's wrong with it?"

"Oh!" exclaimed the Doctor, his face returning to the obscurity provided by the time rotor. Doing something to the controls that side of the machine, he walked around towards them in a clock-wise direction. An expression of 'how-could-you-possibly-not-know' sat on his face once again, as it so often did when he was explaining something to them, "Try not to worry about it, it's just a cold… well, I say a cold."

There was a long pause. The silence pervaded through the groaning and wheezing of the TARDIS's' engines as the machine doggedly battled through the time vortex. Amy and Rory, to the Doctor's amusement, wore the same air of disbelief on their faces. It struck the Doctor briefly that the pair had clearly already forgotten that the TARDIS was a she and not an 'it', as they occasionally crudely said. The silence persisted until Amy's mouth began to function as her brain had commanded it.

"Did you bash your head on something?" demanded Amy, "It's a machine, it can't get a cold."

"Wrong!" corrected the Doctor, "She's a TARDIS and she clearly can… well, it's like a cold, as I've said."

This is where, the Doctor had long since discovered, the human species began to really struggle. For some reason, they couldn't quite comprehend the true nature of the TARDIS, or his relationship to it. One companion, a long time ago, had observed that the relationship was symbiotic and she had come, perhaps, the closest to understanding. From Amy's tone and Rory's face, the couple were clearly struggling to understand that the TARDIS was far more than a machine, far more than just a vehicle.

"I don't understand." declared Rory, whose tone indicated that he was being frank and honest, something which the Doctor, to the ignorance of his travelling companions, admired greatly, seeing it as one of, if not the, best traits found in Rory's personality.

"The TARDIS is far more than just a machine. She is a living thing with a heart and a mind of her own," explained the Doctor, gently caressing the console as he spoke, "And if I'm completely honest, she's actually a bit stubborn."

Though making no signal obvious enough for the two onboard humans to pick up, the Doctor was well aware that the suddenly loud and clear beeping sound was a warning, alerting him to the fact that she was not overly happy with being called 'stubborn', even if it was true. Smiling like a goofy clown, the Doctor mentally calculated, mentally observed, precisely what question his two companions were most likely to ask following the revelation. Whilst confusion and intrigue covered the majority of their face, an undertone of some emotion too vague to identify was visible glistening in their eyes.

"So, when you're talking to yourself," began Amy, "You're talking to the TARDIS?"

"Sometimes," admitted the Doctor nonchalantly, "And sometimes I am just talking to myself. She keeps telling me to stop, which is what I keep telling myself too but I've never been very good at listening to anyone, particularly myself."

The TARDIS shook again, wobbling violently from left to right as a low wailing wheeze sounded throughout the console room. Once the violent shiver had ceased, the human occupants found themselves swaying on their feet, made dizzy by the movement which was repeated another two times after two second intervals. Amy and Rory, confused and frustrated by the repetition of the dizziness-inducing lurches, found themselves pleading with the Doctor to do something. Once they knew it was something beyond what they regarded as the Doctor's poor driving skills, they began to demand that something be done.

"Can't you do something, then?" asked Amy, "If it's a cold?"

"I am! What do you think I've been doing? Just randomly flicking switches?" the two reserved the urge to nod in the affirmative, "I'm sharing the cold with her," he explained, eyes raised to the ceiling and swinging about frantically, as though mentally reading the invisible lines of a book, "That could be fun," a mad grin brightened his face, "Can't remember the last time I had a cold… IFI even have hada cold. Get's hard to keep track after the first four hundred years."

"Share?" asked Rory, "What do you mean?"

"Symbiotic relationship," declared the Doctor, "We share the cold between us. I take part of the cold into myself, I could take the whole thing but we've worked out that's generally a very bad idea… and when I say very bad, I mean very very extremely bad," pausing, he swung to his left, clicking his fingers and continuing, "It'll stop her sneezing anyway… all that sneezing is giving her boring-ers a right hard time… not that I even use the boring-ers."

"You can do that?" asked Amy, admiration ringing audibly in her Scottish accent as it rolled across the air particles within the TARDIS.

Like all of the Doctor's so-called plans – so-called because they rarely turned out to be plans of any real stature – it inspired a temporary confidence within him. In that, simply, he would be completely sure that it would work until a few seconds later when he'd suddenly reveal a section of the plan where the entire thing could break apart and fail. However, this was only on one of the rare occasions when he actually had a plan. A lot of the time, Amy and Rory had concluded, he was simply winging it and hoping for the best.

"Yeah," declared the Doctor proudly, waving his hand as though attempting to whack the concept of him being unable to do such a thing, into the seven winds, "Course I can…" he paused briefly as he sidestepped to another section of the console.

Rory and Amy exchanged glances, concerned that perhaps the Doctor's foolproof plan hadn't accounted for the level of fool which the Doctor himself was capable of. The looked back at him and found that he was fiddling with a small collection of levers and buttons that they couldn't recall seeing him mess around with earlier, or at any point in their travels so far. Frowning the pair crept forwards, failing to do so with any stealth at all. The Doctor looked at the pair of them and noticed their synchronised frown.

"Are you sure this is safe?" asked Rory.

"Well, I just said that on all the other occasions I've done it before, it was a very very extremely bad idea, haven't I?" replied the Doctor, vague aggravation visible in his face, caused, undoubtedly, by the doubt expressed by his companions, "The TARDIS has never had a cold before and the manual said nothing about them being able to get illnesses."

"How do you even know what's in the manual?" queried Amy, "I though you'd thrown it into a supernova."

"I read it first," explained the Doctor, "And besides, that's not the point. I'm missing the point. There's a really big point. It's bigger than the normal sort of points and I'm missing it again. I think I'm becoming senile, and I really don't want to be senile. My granddad went senile and I really really don't want to end up like he did."

The two humans on board let him ramble. Sometimes, they'd discovered, there was simply no stopping him. Every time you tried, he'd either hush you loudly, tell you to shut up or attack your mouth with his finger in a movement that was followed by the order 'fingers on lips!' They knew that, eventually, he'd stop and end his ramble with some revelation that was usually very bad. In fact, they observed morbidly, there had yet to be a ramble that didn't end with something very bad that often involved death or dismemberment.

"He ended up in a home, trying to eat hats, more specifically, the President's hats. I don't want to end up in a home eating hats. And I'm rambling, missing the point. I'm missing it, missing something. What am I missing? The TARDIS, the TARDIS has a cold, but the TARDIS has never had a cold before and it wasn't in the manual, the comprehensive manual. The comprehensive manual written by the very Time Lords responsible for the creation of the Type 40. The comprehensive manual from which every other manual was written and not a single manual mentioned TARDISes getting colds… oh."

And there it was, the companions observed, the revelation. The moment after all the pacing, the head slapping and all the comments that could be considered to contain unnecessary amounts of self-insults. The moment when the Doctor finally worked out what he had been missing the whole time. Somehow, though Amy and Rory had yet to work out precisely how, the ramble was part of the alien's normal thought processes because he seemed to do it every single time and even when he wasn't, from his shifting eyes, it was clear that he was doing it silently in his head.

"What? 'Oh', what?" asked Amy, frustrated by the Time Lord's inherent inability to just communicate his thoughts through his mouth when they were of genuine importance. Sure, she'd observed, he could tell you what time it was in Paris and give you a lecture on the history of time zones, but when you really needed to know something, his lack of ability to communicate was bordering on the frankly ridiculous. There was withholding information and then there was withholding information Doctor-style and, boy, did it annoy her.

"Oh, I missed the point, I really badly missed the point."

"What point?" asked Rory, panicking slightly due to his lack of knowledge and the Doctor's inability to communicate that knowledge, "What's wrong?"

"It's so obvious! The TARDIS has never had a cold, the manual has never said anything about TARDISes catching colds," rambled the Doctor once more, "The TARDIS can't catch a cold. It shouldn't be physically possible."

"But she has!" exclaimed an exasperated Amy, "You just said she has! Why can't you use your mouth to tell us important stuff?"

"It's not a cold, Pond," shouted the Doctor, his hands flying about with his voice as his eyes stared dead at the TARDIS's' time rotor, "It can't be a cold. At least not the normal sort of cold, the filters would have incinerated it, it's simply not possible."

"Then what's wrong?" asked Rory.

"It's a virus," stated the Doctor, his voice as dead as his eyes as the revelation passed his lips, "Something's purposely infected my TARDIS with a virus. Someone's trying to kill my TARDIS."

A/N: So yes, this is a story written with the specific intention of looking into the symbiotic relationship between a Time Lord and their TARDIS because the series touches upon it but doesn't exploit it as much as it could be.

This ties in with another story called 'Recovery' though the link is fairly unnoticeable until later on in this particular story.

I'll update when I can but I'll try to be more regular than once a year.

Review if you feel so inclined.