Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Doctor Who, those rights belong to the BBC. This fanfic was written for fun not profit.
The newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor reflects on his life so far and his relationship with his most constant companion.
"Oh, you sexy thing."
The TARDIS is beautiful. The Doctor thinks she's always been beautiful, but now the stripped down, darker, organic design of her previous configuration is gone, and she's... gorgeous. It's like she's put on a pretty new dress to go with his new suit.
He skips up the steps to the console and grins at his new reflection in the glass time rotor. His new hands dance over the new controls. He knows exactly where everything is and what it all does just like he's always done. The link between them is as strong as ever, letting him know how to fly her from this new design like he'd been doing it his entire life.
He pauses for an instant, enjoys the anticipation of the new adventure, and then pulls the takeoff lever. The time rotor shudders, the ancient engines roar, and they're off.
He twirls around the console and sets them hurtling towards the moon, and remembers that it wasn't always this way. When he'd started he'd never been able to make the ship do what he wanted. All his efforts to get back to a simple year on a planet he'd already visited so he could offload his pesky human stowaways had ended in failure. He'd blamed them, Susan, fate, chance, the Ship herself, anything but admit – with the arrogance of a young man – that a Time Lord of the High Council and the House of Prydonians was unable to master a simple Type 40 TT capsule.
He flattered himself that later he'd become more skilled, growing more accomplished in flying a particularly reluctant TARDIS until he was almost perfect. But it wasn't that simple.
He couldn't remember when he'd first realised the truth. It had been after his exile, after he began to re-involve himself in Galifreyan affairs. Perhaps it had been Romana who'd had to point it out to him: the simple truth that in those early days, the TARDIS hadn't been fighting him as he'd thought, but instead she'd given him exactly what he wanted. When he'd left Galifrey he hadn't wanted anything else but to run, as far and as fast as he could, and she'd given him the universe, everything that ever was and no need to look back or think of home.
And Ian and Barbara? It had been his fault that he couldn't get them home, but not for the reasons he'd thought. He hadn't wanted them to leave, not really. Not with the certain knowledge that one day Susan would need to be left behind. He hadn't wanted to be alone. If their paths ever crossed again he would have to apologise for that. But then he'd learned since that humans were far more intelligent and perceptive than he'd been willing to credit in those first days. They'd probably worked out for themselves that he needed their company long before he did.
If he ever saw Ian again he'd shake his hand, and with the humility of an old man who'd learned his lessons, say thank you. That was the other unrecognised gift the TARDIS had given him by keeping the humans with him. They'd helped him out of the arrogance and aloofness that came from being a child of Galifrey and a Lord of Time. He hadn't wanted to be like his people, sealed away in their ivory Citadel, looking down on the universe with detachment, amusement, and contempt. But in those early days that's what he'd been like, just like any other Time Lord, until his journeys with the humans had taught him the value of the simplest thing in the universe: life itself.
Whether he'd known it or not, he'd learned his lesson by the time his exile had ended. Once his enforced stay on Earth was over, he'd travelled in company because he wanted to show others the universe in all its wonder, and the TARDIS had obliged. They'd seen such amazing things together, and she'd never let him see anything but the best the cosmos had to offer, from quadruple eclipses to dew drops on a daisy at dawn. And she'd brought him to the people he could share this with: companions he'd laughed with, cried with and run with from one end of time to the other.
On his brilliant new screen, Earth glitters like a jewel. He wonders which of them had wanted to come back there most after the War. She is the last of her kind as much as he is the last of his, and the Earth is the closest thing either of them has to a home. There are probably more echoes of them both there than any other planet in the whole universe. Not so long ago, that would have filled him with despair that Galifrey was gone for good, but though he remembers those feelings, they aren't part of him anymore. He is free.
He is free and it is wonderful. He holds tightly to the TARDIS as they hurtle past the moon and back to Earth. She cares so much for that even while in pain and burning she managed to land him in the garden of a little girl who'd been praying for a policeman to bring her the Doctor instead.
This is the start of a brand new adventure, he can feel it. He is the Doctor in the TARDIS and the sky is nowhere near the limit.