Author's Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fanfic ever, and my first fanfic of anything that I've written for a few years, so just keep that in mind as you read this.
This fanfic is written from the TARDIS's point of view, as recorded by her/it. Since the 9th Doctor told Rose that the Tardis can get into your mind to help translate languages, I have elaborated on that by concluding that it has a one way empathic bond with anyone who enters it, and that bond is extremely close with it's pilot/mate, in this case The Doctor. And this fanfic is read as a written record that the Tardis keeps of her own thoughts as she experiences things with the Doctor and his companions.
This fanfic story is one of many stories I intend on writing, with two characters of my own creation. That's all the info on that I will give for now, cause I don't want to give anything away…
Disclaimer: I'm a mother of two young girls and a wife of 8 years. I live in the U.S. Knowing this, there is no possible way I could be named Russel T. Davies, or work for BBC. So therefore, I do not own Doctor Who! Darn!!!
Now on with the story! And Please Review! I love reviews, and they will convince me that I should indeed keep writing this story…
TARDIS's Journal Records
1 week 3 days after loosing Rose into the other dimension
The Doctor's 10th day of being in my control room, tinkering within my circuits and boards. This has always been an activity that he has loved; from the moment the two of us were brought together by fate, so long ago, and started our adventures through time and space. But this time, for these 10 days after the loss of Rose, his tinkering has taken on a sad desperation. It's the sad desperation I remember him having after the Time War. Back then he spent 3 whole months after the war doing nothing but tinkering with me, and who could blame him. So much horror, so much loss and pain. I wished and wished and wished that I could make it all better for him, I did, but I couldn't, so I let him tinker as much as I could. I even purposely made parts of me stop working so that he'd have to fix them. Anything to make him not have think about all that he'd been made to suffer and loose during and after the war. Even after he started doing adventuring again, and he felt a tiny bit better, he still tinkered with me in desperation a lot, to try to drown out his pain. But then Rose came, and all that changed, and his tinkering took on that childlike glee again, and I was happy.
Now it's all back to the way it was after the War. And he has his Time War nightmares back. And now instead of having nightmares only about the Time War, now he also has nightmares about loosing Rose. My heart aches to make him feel better. I want him happy again, but how…
……
Hours go by with him still tinkering away on me. Yet again I make lots of my parts break down, otherwise he'd run out of things to do on me. I imagine he must know that I do this, but he indicates nothing, just sadly continues working on one thing after another. Then he starts to talk, as he has done to me many times in the last 10 days.
"Oh my beautiful Tardis, I miss her sooo much! And when she said she loved me, and when I wanted to say I loved her back, I couldn't say it in time! And that's always the way it is with me isn't it. I can never tell anyone how I feel about them until they are gone. And now Rose, as special as she was, is just another of the many friends I've had that are forever gone…"
When he first started talking to me like this I expected him to go on, to break down in the privacy of my being, but he never did. My poor Doctor never does, even to me alone, except very rarely. He's probably one of the most pained, emotionally closed up people in the universe, and yet one of the kindest and bravest too. He deserves someone he doesn't have to let go of. He deserves to not have to be in pain like this anymore. I'd cry my soul out for his pain if I had tears to cry. But I don't, so all I can do is damage more of my parts for him to fix. So that is what I do. I think he knows that this is my way of comforting him. He rubs my console and thanks me. Telling me that he loves me and is grateful to me for being such a wonderful machine. My nonexistent heart wants to burst for the grief I have for him.
As I'm waiting for him to fix the parts I've most recently broke, and trying to think of what parts to break next, I sense something amiss out in the great void, as I have the ability to do. And because the Doctor long since directed me to do so, I give him a warning signal that something is happening that may require his help. While he extricates himself from one of my long, thin panel tunnels, I try to focus on what the disturbance is, so I have something to tell him when he gets to the console.
After a few nanoseconds I figure it out. There has been a huge rift in the time/space void, through which whole galaxies got sucked through and extinguished, including the life still contained within. I am shocked and awed. The magnitude of the void rift and the nearby galaxy damage is immense. Even the Time War pales in size and magnitude to whatever had transpired on the other side of the rift.
By the time I had figured this much out the Doctor had reached the console and was studying my readouts. His jaw dropped, "What in the universe could cause such incredible damage!?" he exclaimed. A question I wondered as well. The only way to find out was to go into space on the other side of the void rift, and see if there was any answer to our question.
The Doctor pressed buttons and pulled levers madly around on my console, and then after a few minutes we appeared on the other side of the recently mended rift. This part of space was enormously empty. Where usually there are galaxies within long distance sight, and cosmic dust and stuff like that, here, it was black as black could be. You couldn't see anything anywhere. So many galaxies had been sucked away that light from the closest galaxies wasn't getting this far. It was very creepy for me, and I had been in all kinds of places throughout space and time.
"Something has gone terribly wrong here. But what?" the Doctor said as he ran around my console some more, flicking more switches and pressing more buttons, getting me to take readings as far as I could, which was pretty far.
After 15 minutes of searching most of the black space, I was just about to quit and tell the doctor there was no evidence of what had happened, when I spotted just a tiny fragment of a planet floating on the perimeter of a galaxy near the black area. I then studied the galaxy that the fragment was floating around and saw nothing there that it could have come from. I reported this to the Doctor.
"One single tiny fragment on the fringe of the area, and no others. I don't know about you dear TARDIS, but that seems awfully suspicious to me. I believe it's time to pay that fragment a visit, don't you!?" he said. I rejoiced to hear a bit of his adventurous spirit back in his voice. Maybe this rift would prove to be a blessing to my dear Doctor.
After he pressed and lifted the right things on my console I materialized onto the tiny fragment. The fragment was indeed tiny, so tiny in fact that it equaled only about 4 of my inner rooms. After I had deemed it miraculously breathable the Doctor pulled on his jacket and walked outside my doors. I kept tabs on him, as I always can, through our empathic mind link, seeing what he saw and experiencing what he did, ready at any moment to translate languages for him if need be.
It wasn't much to look at, just a jagged chunk of rock, no plant life or buildings or holes dug into it or anything. The Doctor was as surprised as I was at not finding anything on the fragment to explain the rift and its damage. No super weapon, no alien ships, no aliens, no buildings, no remains of the aforementioned, nothing at all. And yet we both thought that this fragment's sole existence was too strange to be unintentional. Someone or something must have wanted it alone to remain. But who, and why?
Most of the fragment's walkable surface was on one side. The other sides were rough and highly slanted, ending at a tiny plateau that was hard to see from where we landed, and hard to reach as well. The Doctor was just about to head back to my control room when he heard the strangest sound, that is, the strangest sound to be hearing when you are on a tiny fragment of planet in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around you at all but rock.
He heard the sound of a woman crying.
The crying was coming from the small plateau on the other side of the fragment, so he pulled up his suit sleeves and decided that a small mountain climb would be needed after all. He slowly climbed the little hill of rock and pulled himself over the edge.
The sight greeting him was that of a beautiful woman sitting on the rock, knees bent up under her turned down face, hair cascading over her face and legs and falling into a large pool around her feet. Her skin was remarkably shiny silver, and her hair was the color of the Earth's sun as it crests over the mountains at dusk. She wore gold boots and a gold tight dress. I could tell she was very thin and tall.
The Doctor hesitantly, but tenderly, walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Are you ok? Can I help you?" he asked. I knew he felt very awkward, as this situation couldn't be stranger. But the Doctor was always the one to feel bad for those in trouble, and to try to help them if at all possible, even if they were crying in the most desolate, strangest place possible.
The woman stopped crying and turned the most perfect face I've ever seen up towards him. Her gold face looked as if an expert artist had sculpted it. And her silvery eyes were filled with light and emotion. If there was a goddess of beauty, she could be it.
She blinked tears out of her eyes, as if to see more clearly, and slowly a sad smile framed her sculpted face, "That is very kind of you to ask, but unless you can turn back time, there is very little you can do to take away the pain I face. I doubt you could understand what its like to have to destroy billions of innocent people, that you consider as your own, in order to save the universe. But that is the pain I must face," she said, her smile fading, and tears welling up in her eyes once more.
I scarcely believed the Doctor's ears as she said this. So close was it to the Doctor's own experiences at the end of the Time War, that it was astounding. Who was this woman that claimed to have had such a similar experience.
It was in thinking this that I realized something else quite strange. I did not have to translate her words from her language to a language the Doctor knew! She was speaking Gallifreyan! And yet I could tell that she was not Gallifreyan, and I knew that the Doctor knew she was not Gallifreyan either, as he could sense those things.
Who was this woman then that could destroy whole galaxies, supposedly save Universes like my dear Doctor, and yet also fluently spoke Gallifreyan, an old language that few races knew how to speak?
I made a note to notify the doctor of this when he got back to my control room.
Meanwhile the Doctor spoke, "As a matter of fact I can relate, I too have had to destroy many to save the Universe. Is that what has happened out there," he asked, pointing out to the huge black nothingness around the rift in space.
The woman only nodded, tears starting to drip back down her face.
"Was there a war of some kind here? Did you stop it somehow? Did you create a rift in the void of space/time and take everything away?" he asked gently. I knew that he understood how tough a decision this was to make. I could see his expression become softer as he started to believe this woman's story, and the pieces of the puzzle started to come together.
"Yes… I was told that the only way to keep the destruction of the war from spreading was to wipe away the whole area, but I refused to believe it. I tried all other approaches until the last possible moment, I did! But nothing changed, things got worse, they were about to get completely out of hand unless I took action! I knew then that if I didn't erase it all, good and bad ones alike instantly, then I'd loose control and all would be lost! But I didn't want to kill so many innocents! I didn't want so many of the people I had grown to love to have to disappear forever! Oh God what have I done!!!" she practically screamed, sobbing, her head falling back down to her knees and her whole body heaving with the intensity of her sobs.
The Doctor both empathized and sympathized with her, I knew, and I could sense his eyes tearing up as well, as he felt for her, and remembered his own pain during the Time War. He quickly sat down beside her and took this strange but beautiful woman into her arms, pulling her head against his chest.
"I'm sorry. I don't know who you are, or even what your name is, but I know what you're going through and I know how much it hurts, and I'm so sorry…" he said, rubbing her thick, sparkly hair, his own tears running unchecked down his face. Memories of the Time War, and of being separated from Rose forever flooding his mind. A few minutes later and all the tears that he refused to let drop, even alone inside me, came out, and he cried for hours upon hours, on the fragment, while comforting the strange woman.
I was glad that in the company of this strange, lovely, sad woman he could find some emotional release. Keeping his emotions so bottled up was never good for him. Neither was being alone. He needed a new, good, kind, companion. And I hoped fervently that this woman would be it.