Hi folks,

Just a little drabble that somehow emerged in my mind today while writing at my other story, and didn't let me go until I had written it down. Now you have got something to read and I'm happy to return to my Doc 4 romance stroy :-))

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She was too moody? SHE WAS TOO MOODY! She thought her telepathic receptors played tricks on her when she overheard the conversation between the two engineers in her console room. At the same time, she let her head hang low, figuratively speaking, she knew the thougths of the two engineers. Helplessly she realized it, she wasn't to live much longer.

„Our most ambitious project is just one massive flop. All of them are." The bulky engineer sighed heavily when he examined the last pannel under the console, crept out from beneath it and got to his feet.

„Yeah. An utter disappointment. 100 years of research and development wasted. All the high hopes for nothing. Well, it was an experiment." The other engineer mused. „I just got the order from the chancellor. Professor Belian made sure we have to decomission them all. Imagine that, he and his class lost for 20 years in the early Cariacene period unable to steer that damned thing home, apparently because she was having some kind of fit." He shook his head and menacingly glared at the console.

He said, she was having a fit? A fit, that man thought? That creepy prig with his dirty thoughts and podgy fingers, and they expected her to do HIS bidding? Impossible! She still shuddered at the thought of the awful man fumbling with her controls and melding his mind into her consciousness. But at the same time she knew. To be able to feel like this was death for a Tardis. And she was terribly afraid.

„Hm," the first engineer mused, „our finest development and then it turns out to be psychologically instable. Well, it can't be helped then, can it? We scrap them, but let's keep this one for the museum."

Hope kindled again in the mind of the distraught Tardis. She was clinging to life. Even if it was a miserable life in a museum. The two engineers left.

Some time later a team of technicians with anti gravity clamps came to her. They didn't even bother to take her for the short hop to her last destination. They were too afraid to end up anywhere in the universe, unable to return home. She fumed. Humiliatingly, they would drag her to her last rest like a piece of furniture!

„So the museum doesn't want her as for the exhibition?"

„Professor Belian intervened." Another technician replied, „he wants nothing that reminds anyone of his little adventure on public exhibition" He answered, snickering. The other technicians broke out in roaring laughter.

So they towed her to the most remote, dark and dusty storeroom of the museum and covered her with a heavy tarp.

And she sat there. Years went, centuries went, and she spent her time watching the turn of the universe, longing not to be so alone anymore in this cold cosmos, longing to be able to go out to the stars she could see in her mind just one more time. The museum built new facilities, and after more time the old store room was forgotten. And with it the too sentient Tardis, sleeping, dreaming of distant worlds.

One day, she had stopped counting them, something yanked her out of her ravings, tugged at the tarp.

„Hey, that's a Tardis. Thants... no... can't be... a Type 40! Wow, that's really old!" She heard the excited mumbling of a apparently very young Time Lord. Her heart jumped with joy when she felt him run his fingers reverently over her smooth, uncamouflaged hull and then patting her, feeling his excitement, desperately hoping that he would put the key into the lock and then take her away from this dreadful place.

But he didn't. He pulled the tarp back in place and then she sat there again. Alone. Disappointed. Sad. Angry at the young Time Lord.

Until one day, much later again hands tugged at the tarp. It was the young Time Lord. But the excitement in his mind was this time mixed with other feelings. Hurt, grim determination. Again he patted her hull, like years ago.

„You beauty!" He whispered to her. „I think, we both don't belong here."

With these words he carefully sticked the key into the lock and sneaked into the dimly lit console room. Her heart sang when his adventurous mind gently touched her consciousness and nimble fingers rested lightly on her controls to take her out to the stars. She still was a bit grumpy because he hadn't returned earlier. But she was sure, time would cure that, now she had her own Time Lord and all of the universe to see.