Hollow spaces in-between
(or, the TARDIS does feelings. Shame she learned those from The Doctor.)
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A/N: Hello! So, this story... took me by surprise, if I'm being honest. I was trying a Writing Prompts app, and the prompt I stumbled across was "write about a vehicle that gets you somewhere else", and I just thought of the TARDIS. And then I decided to write something from the TARDIS's point of view. And then it became angsty. Because, somehow, everything ALWAYS end up angsty, when I'm writing it.
So, I based my TARDIS on the episode "The Doctor's Wife" (s06e04), and I took some of her... patterns of speech from there, too. I don't know if I wrote it quite right, but I liked it, at least.
This story has no timestamp, tbh, just thought it would be post-"The Doctor's Wife" because of the whole TARDIS sentience thing; she made it sound like she was always aware, but not... too keen on putting things into words, before, so. That.
You can also imagine any Doctor you prefer, in this; it's not quite relevant, anyway. And the TARDIS does have a complicate view of things, so it could even be a very, very old (and with that I mean, one from the very old past) Doctor, or it could be something brand new. Who knows. I use "they" and "them" for the Doctor in it, so it's not even discernible whether it's before 13 or after. TARDIS is referred as a "she", 'cuz the Doctor always referred to her as a "she", so I take her to be a female, ok?
DISCLAIMER: Doctor Who does not belong to me, neither does the TARDIS and The Doctor.
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The TARDIS groaned softly, that small wheeze of leaving her breaks on that her thief loved so much.
(The one her child disliked so)
She felt… lonely. No… too full. Empty? No, no, she was full, but she would be lonely. Soon. Or she had been lonely? She felt… alive.
(Such a deep, complex, sad word)
Her thief was bouncing about, cheerful and desperate, and she could feel them inside. She could feel her thief against her, bursting with life and just so sad for it. Joyful with their friends and oh so lonely in anticipation. She felt her thief — just one of billions, the runt of the pack, her thief whom she'd stolen — and sighed.
Her thief. So eternal yet just a blink in the universe. They were dead, yet they were already living. (Or was it 'yet'?) She felt…
Hope.
She reached out, feeling the buzz of excitement in her thief's mind, listening to the lilt of joy in their voice, and she laughed at them, hearing instructions she'd never follow.
Her thief was relaxed and excited and wanted to feel good.
Their mind burned, dark and lonely and cold, and they needed to forget.
She sang, the song she had learned in her cradle and that had always been meant for her thief, and set sail.
(Oh; she knew this feeling. She'd felt it in her thief's mind, time and time again.
It was grief.)
