Trapped in the TARDIS

Chapter 1

By James M

The Doctor flicked and twiddled the knobs and dials on the TARDIS control panel, every once in a while laying his hands down flat on the console just to feel her soft, subtle vibration resonate through his body. It was rare that he really stopped and slowed down enough to feel a sensation like this, the reassurance that so long as he was here together with her, everything would be okay, because no matter how bleak things got, she'd make it okay. Just the mad man and his box for nine hundred years, and with any luck, for at least another nine hundred years more.

Or at least, that's how it would have been were it just him in the control room. On the direct opposite side of the console, blocked from the Doctor's line of sight by the time rotor towering towards the ceiling, stood a stunningly gorgeous River Song. She was the youngest the Doctor had ever seen her, appearing as if she were in her mid-thirties at this point. Her golden-blonde curls descended well below her shoulders, and her pale grey eyes were full of life and energy. Any wrinkles or signs of middle age that had been present in their last encounters were gone.

She was still dressed in her getup from their recently concluded adventure in the Italian Renaissance. She played the part of a courtesan quite convincingly, to the point where even the Doctor found himself heavily distracted from his work by her…allure. The Doctor was too aware, however, that River was far more brains than she was beauty. She proved this when she uncovered the death of Pope Alexander VI to be an assassination by renegade Centrillions from the Phalanxion galaxy. He was so proud, she'd figured it all out herself…their secret coup, their hideout, their plans to place one of their own as the new Pope and use the Coliseum as a transport dock for the rest of their renegade squad to arrive and mount an invasion.

I'll be training her very well one day, the Doctor mused. He chuckled self-indulgently.

"What are you thinking about?" he heard her voice from the other side of the console.

Despite whatever fondness he had for her, the Doctor would never admit to being outdone by anyone, nor would he admit that he actually liked it. Thus, he lied.

"Your defiance," he responded coyly.

"And how's that?" River peeked out from behind the time rotor and smiled sweetly. Oh, this woman, the Doctor thought, how she loves it when I talk about how bad she is.

"I sent everyone to bed while I'm out here working, which means Amy and Rory."

"Yes."

"And you."

"Mm, yes."

"So, you should be in bed, getting some sleep." The Doctor flipped a switch on what he called the "lighty-wighty board", which shut off the light shining down on River, covering her in darkness.

"Still not seeing your point, sweetie." River stepped out of the darkness and sat on the console next to the lighty-wighty board, smiling at him.

"Careful, you might shut off all the lights," the Doctor said, nudging her aside.

"Oh, what a tragedy that would be," River sighs.

"You just found out the secret to a historical assassination," the Doctor said softly to the point of a near whisper, "a bit of shut-eye couldn't hurt, hm?"

"Oh but that would be a tragedy," River said at the same low volume, inching closer to him every second. "Every now and again you drop out of the sky, sonic the lock of my maximum-security prison cell, whisk me away in your magic box, and take me far away onto magical, indescribable adventures where, more often than not, I, or you, nearly die."

"That sums it up rather well," the Doctor agreed, although he knew that he had never sprung her from jail before, and she was speaking from her own past experience.

"You temporarily save me from a life of loneliness, and give me times I'll never forget…and then you put me right back." As she said this, a twinge of pain was audible in her voice, which was not lost on the Doctor.

"You said you had a promise to keep," the Doctor recalled. "Well, you will say that. Well—"

River puts her finger on his lips, silencing him. "Shh…spoilers." That familiar line. River's signature line, the line that always reminds him of the agonizing truth that their timelines are out of synchronicity. Every time beforehand that she had said it to him, the restriction it placed on knowledge relevant to himself would frustrate him to no end. But this time, the familiarity of that one word, "spoilers", soothed him.

"If you're going to leave me soon," River whispered, "at least don't make me sleep alone."

Before the Doctor could move his lips to speak, she was restricting them with her own. Their mouths were locked together in a slow, passionate kiss. They had only kissed once before, at least from the Doctor's perspective, and that time was awkward and new, but nonetheless enjoyable. This time the Doctor knew that kissing was part of their dynamic, and he was better prepared mentally. He was good at mental preparation.

The inhibited little Doctor, the one who didn't talk to girls in his youth in favor of building new kinds of screwdrivers, didn't feel little in this moment. He felt alive. His hearts beat at the rate of two hummingbirds' wings side-by-side, his face becoming hot and his body hairs sticking up on end. His right hand found its way to her left, and like perfect pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, his and River's fingers interlocked. His other hand ventured to the small of her back, that adorable little dip in her spine between her hips that, from now on, he'd make sure to hold whenever he possibly could. This was no longer the boy who ran away in the TARDIS all on his own, thinking about every little situation and solving every mystery of the universe in his head and constantly on the move, on the run from a life of Time Lord aristocracy that he swore would never catch him. In this moment he was just a physical being, a creature of pleasure indulging in his overwhelming carnal desires, letting lust and passion take control as he and the beautiful woman in his arms became one. For once, he didn't have to think. And he didn't miss it at all.

At that moment, the loud, buzzing sound of an alarm burst from the console, throwing the Doctor and River out of their lascivious embrace.

"Oh, you!" the Doctor shouted, pointing at the TARDIS ceiling, striding around angrily and glaring at it. "You never let me have any fun, you know that?"

"Doctor," River beckoned while looking at the scanner.

"Not now, River, the princess is in one of her moods," the Doctor yelled, kicking the guardrail at the edge of the platform. He then knelt down, kissed the spot he kicked, and rubbed it while muttering apologies.

"Doctor, come look at this," River persisted.

"I'm sorry…" the Doctor whispered to the guardrail, "what's wrong? Tell me what's the matter, dear."

"Doctor!" River shouted.

"What!" He snapped back, and darted over to the scanner to look at what she wanted to show him. "Oh…that's…"

"What is it?" River asked?

"Bad," The Doctor answered concisely.

The scanner read in large, flashing red words: "EMERGENCY PROTECTION FAILSAFE", coupled with a countdown timer set for ten seconds.

"Ten seconds," the Doctor whispered, "Ten seconds until very bad things happen." He dug his fingers into the keyboard, typing away every override code he could think of, but none of them had any effect – the countdown continued, now at six. As he always did when he was out of options, he pulled out the sonic and pointed it at the keyboard, hoping for the best. The green light of his screwdriver illuminated the entire console, and the keys started tapping away on their own, typing in override codes even he didn't know, faster than he could have inputted them manually. None of them worked – the countdown was now at two.

"No! Amy! Rory!" The Doctor sprinted up the back stairs. When he reached the top, a huge metal door covered the corridor leading out of the control room.

"Doctor, be careful!" River cried.

Unable to process Amy's warning in time, the Doctor ran into the door headfirst, and his body started to convulse and glow as he was shocked by volts of what appeared to be blue electricity. He staggered back and fell down the stairs, being caught by River before he reached the bottom. His eyes were closed.

"Doctor," River urged, "Doctor are you all right? Doctor, please!"

At this, his eyes split open and he hopped up to his feet, at which point he cried in agony and collapsed back to his knees. "Condensed artron energy. The amount of background radiation that you'd absorb from a hundred thousand journeys through space squeezed together and used as a weapon, burning through your entire body."

"How can anyone survive that?" River asked, kneeling next to him with her hand on his shoulder.

"You can't," he replied, "I can because a hundred thousand journeys is like a summer road trip for me, a touch from that door is like a cattle prod." The Doctor turned to look River in the eye. "River, whatever you do, don't go near that door."

River returned his gaze, and nodded in obedience. The Doctor pulled himself to his feet with River's assistance, and she carried him to the TARDIS front doors.

"The door was electrified on this side, which means that the protocol was probably meant to keep the inhabitants of this room trapped, unless they want to be fried, which seems like a merciful option, as far as TARDIS deaths go," the Doctor rambled, "there's always getting squeezed to death by malfunctioning pressurizers. Lost one of my pets that way."

He drew his sonic screwdriver from his top pocket and used it on the handle of the front doors, which then sparked with blue electricity as well – more artron energy.

"Ah, now we know what we're dealing with. Every exit to this room is guarded by condensed artron energy. If we try to escape we'll be burnt to a crisp."

"Wouldn't you know what happens during an emergency protection failsafe? It's your TARDIS." River pointed out.

"Yeah, well, that part was probably in the manual. And that manual's in a supernova. So that's all cleared up now, is it? Good, good. More important. Amy and Rory are kept from us by a layer of steel and deadly energy," the Doctor reviewed.

"To what, keep them from helping us?"

"Oh, yes, definitely, the leggy ginger and the wonder-nose are the only hope for the nine-hundred-and-nine-year-old Time Lord and the Stormcage prisoner who keeps an Alpha Meson pistol strapped to her thigh? No, that'd be stupid. If something is on board this ship, which is very unlikely, and is threatening anyone, which in that case would be likely, they'd be threatening the two humans asleep in their bed, and keeping us in here so we can't do a thing about it."

"So what do we do?"

At this, the Doctor stopped. He wracked his brain for all the different ways he could try to reverse the situation, but he couldn't override the TARDIS's emergency protection failsafe even with the sonic, which means he was probably deadlocked out of the controls. If he even tried to get out of the main control room, condensed artron energy would pour into his veins, setting his body ablaze with pain, and that's nothing compared to what it'd do to River if she tried. There was no way out.

"Doctor, what do we do?" River repeated.

He didn't answer. He didn't know.